Ezra's Essays

Category: August

  • THE MOTHER TONGUE REVISITED

    Antonin Scalia, the Supreme Court Justice, is a man who has his head in the sand.  He insists that the law is what was written in 1776 – 1789 without any improvements to the law or the language.  You may recall that Scalia is the person who gave us George W. Bush when the hanging…

  • TIME

    Perhaps I should spend more time in my bathroom in view of the fact that the preponderance of ideas that occur for these essays come to me during my bathroom visits.  I am not alone in extolling the virtues of the bathroom.  John Munro, the wonderfully gifted artist and composer, wrote a song not long…

  • REFLECTIONS ON THE WAHHABI

    At the outset, it might be well for the author of this essay to explain the title.  In round numbers, the Prophet Mohammed lived about 1500 years ago.  The Prophet took several wives and they produced several children.  But if my understanding is nearly correct, two of his grandsons founded competing brands of the Muslim…

  • Tom Scandlyn Response: Country Speak

    [Note from Kevin — Tom, a 92-year-old friend of Pop’s for many years, wrote this after reading “Black Speak” but his response primarily concerns essays about “Country Speak,” of which I published an example very recently. Alternatively, view all of Pop’s essays on language here.]   In math sigma means the sum of. The limits…

  • BOA CONSTRICTORS REDUX

    [A quite note from Kevin — This is now the third essay in this, er, saga. Check out parts one and two first. Part one was about both dicks and snakes, part two was mainly about dicks, and now part three concerns primarily snakes.] ~~~ The word redux is a fancy one and it simply…

  • SYNONYMS FOR THE MALE UNMENTIONABLE

    Over the past few days or weeks, I have been negotiating with an entrepreneur who wishes to establish a new website for the purpose of making my essays available to all of mankind.  I view this as a means of spreading the gospel to all four corners of the world.  You can find it at…

  • JOHN EAMONN THE EIGHTH

    This week there is a ground-breaking aspect to this essay in that it is being dictated before breakfast.  Of the nearly 700 essays that I have written, this is the first one to be dictated without anything in my stomach.  More than anything else, this essay is to commemorate the birthday party that was given…

  • MITT AND WILLIE

    The principal characters in this essay are Mitt Romney, the Republican aspirant to the presidency of the United States, and a fellow called Willie Nelson, who is a singer of folk songs.  My memory is that Willie Nelson is perilously close to being 80 years of age. The knock on Mitt Romney is that he…

  • CHRISTIAN MINGLE

    I rarely listen to commercials broadcast on television.  One recently caught my attention.  The title is “Christian Mingle.”  Under ordinary circumstances, when I have some curiosity about a commercial, I ask the sponsors of the commercial for some detail.  In this case, I do not desire to get involved with Christian Mingle because I suspect…

  • Blog: Thoughts on the RNC

    [NOTE: This is a blog, not an essay. The difference between the two is that essays are planned at length, dictated, given to Eva Baker for transcription, and then finally re-edited and mailed out to all his friends and regular readers in hard-copy.  This, conversely is just some thoughts on yesterday’s Republican National Convention that…