A Fashion Note

      My editor-in--chief feels that this essay may be frivolous and perhaps better junked. I respond that what draws one's attention cannot be altogether frivolous. It must mean something or we would not notice it. Human beings wear clothing: there has to be something in that somewhere…. So, you decide.                       

    Much is said of how superbly turned-out Ms. Obama was at the Inauguration. As kids we would have called her a “looker”, but been too young to understand the joie that informs her every dress and step.

   But it is not the great lady about whom I wish to write: it is of her husband,

Down in the Mine

                                                   for

                                            Velma Biddle

                                                 Beloved colleague

                                                     1909 --2013

              Cans’t work i’ th’ earth so fast? O worthy Pioner?

                                               Hamlet

   Back in the Golden Age, the shepherd Strephon lay on a sun-drenched bank of flowers and, with his oaten pipe under a cloudless sky, sang ditties of love to his beloved Phyliss. In that perfected pastoral time, all creation lay before him, an immediate treasure of experience, like gold and silver and precious gems, all round the earth’s exquisite, unchanging shore.