Ezra's Essays

Category: 2011

  • PISSANTRIES, POLITICS, AND A GORGEOUS MISTRESS

    I generally keep my notes for future essays in my head but in some cases on an old dictating machine on my desk. Two of these notes appeared simultaneously and I thought that there were enough similarities that they could be married together. The first essay has to do with the ancient word for an…

  • THE MOTHER TONGUE AGAIN REVISITED

    In previous essays I have always credited Sven Lernevall of Stockholm with the observation that the English language is a rich language. Sven’s native tongue is Swedish and he has mastered the English language gracefully. When I comment on the mother tongue, it seems to me that the comments tend to be endless. I suspect…

  • THE MOTHER TONGUE REVISITED

    For better or worse, I was born in this country and so my mother tongue is the language of the Anglo-Saxons. Those of us who speak the English language are quite fortunate in that the language of the Anglo-Saxons has now become the lingua franca of the world. Perhaps one of the reasons for the…

  • MY HUSBAND ESSAYETTE NO. 3

    I don’t watch much television these days, being confined to the dialogue. But in noodling around the television, I ran into a program featuring an interview involving two homosexual men. From what I could gather, the two men have been together for more than 20 years and a crisis has now arisen. It seems that…

  • ESSAYETTE NO. 4 MULTIPLE HUSBANDS

    I have just finished dictating a small essayette on husbands in a homosexual arrangement referring to each other as my husband. From that point it is logical to proceed to the Mormon practice of polygamy. As a means of getting Utah into the United States, the Mormons were forbidden to take multiple wives in the…

  • “OLD AGE IS A DISEASE”

    -FRAU DOKTOR HERTA KNOPFMACHER FISCHER   I know a man who speaks lovingly, respectfully, and admiringly about his own mother-in-law. Can you imagine that? His mother-in-law furnished the title for this essay. This woman was born in 1878 in the Sudetenland. There is considerable mystery about whether in 1878 the Sudetenland belonged to the German…

  • THE OLD AND THE NEW NORMALS

    My linguistic skills are limited. I speak the mother tongue of English in a generally acceptable form. I used to mutter a few words in Italian and some in German. A lack of use has tended to cause those skills to diminish. And then there are two derivatives of the English language which are worthy…

  • THE KING WHO STUTTERED

    Over the recent Christmas holidays, my daughter and her legally-wedded husband went to a movie which must have had to do with George VI of England who stuttered. Apparently my daughter was impressed by the film, which my mother would have called a “picture show.” Eva Baker and Frances Licht, who are associated with these…

  • IT’S ALL HAPPENED AGAIN, AND AGAIN, AND AGAIN AND AGAIN

    About four miles south of this house is a major highway. It is called Highway 22. If one were to leave this house and turn left upon reaching Highway 22, it would eventually lead to the Holland Tunnel and New York City. If, on the other hand, the driver were to elect to make a…

  • FIVE HORRID MEN

    It must be that springtime brings blossoms and the discovery of five horrid men. Why this is so is beyond me, but the facts are the facts. First on the bad fellows list is Dominique Strauss-Kahn, who was formerly the head of the IMF. He earned a superior salary of $450,000 a year with no…