Ezra's Essays

Category: Multi-Essay

  • INSPIRATIONS FROM THE W.C.

    The writing of essays requires an infusion of ideas. A good many of my ideas occur to me while I am attending to my duties in the bathroom. For example, you may recall that there were a series of essays which were entitled, “Thoughts While Shaving.” As time has gone on, I still receive thoughts…

  • TRANSIENT THOUGHTS

    These are transient thoughts; there is no continuity between one thought and the other. Now one of these transient thoughts has to do with baseball. For many years, Sunday afternoon professional baseball was banned. So you can imagine the thoughts that would go through a believer’s mind as he encountered a team nicknamed the Angels.…

  • A REPRISE ON THISA AND THATA

    Those of you who read Ezra’s Essays may recall an essay on Ben Bernie. He was a popular orchestra leader from the 1920s through the end of the 1950s. When he was pleased with the performance of his orchestra, he would say, “Yousa, yousa, yousa.” And when he was going to play a variety of…

  • GOING HOME

    Among my fellow GIs of the Second World War was an idea that enjoyed almost complete universality. The idea was to win the war, bid farewell to the United States Army, and go home. The GIs of World War II came from every walk of life and from every corner of the United States. But…

  • A LITTLE MORE OF THISA AND A LITTLE MORE OF THATA

    Ben Bernie was the subject of a previous essay distributed recently.   Bernie was a very popular band leader who led an orchestra from the 1920s through the 1950s.  You may recall that when his orchestra pleased him, he would say, “Yousa, yousa, yousa!”  And when he would introduce a variety of songs, he would call…

  • A LITTLE BIT OF THISA AND A LITTLE BIT OF THATA

    About the only advantage in being raised during the Herbert Hoover Depression of 1929 was that the radio carried intelligent music.  The lyrics had a story line and there were harmony and melody to the music.  There were dozens of bands that toured the country at a time when almost every major hotel offered a…

  • SCALLIONS AND WHISKERS

    Scallions and whiskers have absolutely nothing to do with each other but they occurred to me at about the same time as I was preparing to write an essay, so I have thrown a blanket over the both of them. Here are the two elusive subjects. Taking scallions first, I have been a devotée of…

  • “AIN’T NOTHIN’ YOU CAN DO” — GUY CLARK, SONGWRITER

    For the past three weeks, a drought has descended upon my being which renders me largely incompetent to write essays.  I trust that the drought is not a permanent condition but is a transient affair.  In the long time that I have been writing essays, droughts have appeared from time to time.  The title of…

  • MORE OF BITS AND PIECES, AND ODDS AND ENDS

    You will recall – or I hope you will recall – that these are bits that come from my notepad and that there is no connection from one subject to another.  So we continue with the spirit of bits and pieces, odds and ends.  The first thought has to do with the cicadas.  It might…

  • TWO RANDOM THOUGHTS

    The first random thought is that we are making some sort of progress in terms of imagining supernatural creatures sending storms and hurricanes to disrupt our lives.  At the moment those of us on the east coast of the United States are preparing to deal with Hurricane Irene.  It threatens to uproot our trees, blow…