The Great Male-versus-Female Guitar Contest of 1933 Little Lizzy Douglas (they called her the kid), was born in Louisiana, in a farmer’s shed. She didn’t like farming, she didn’t like her name, so she grabbed a guitar and hopped on a train. Little Lizzie Douglas stepped on board— but when she stepped off, Memphis Minnie […]

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Sense of Out-of-Place Barbecue. Unincorporated community in North Carolina. Bastardstown. Townland in Wexford, Ireland (Irish name: Baile Bhastaird). Batman. City, in Turkey, threatened to sue Warner Bros for use of name. Bitch Mountain. Summit in Essex County, New York. Boring, Oregon. Sister city to Dull, Scotland, and Bland, NSW. Boquete. Small town in Panama. (Boquete […]

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  Colonel John Paul II Who made Colonel Sanders (of the chicken) colonel? Goateed, string-tied, linen-suited, paternal, honorary title: Kentucky Colonel— a two hundred year rollcall, in the journals, of the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels. Charles Stewart Todd was the first, when his celebrated Kentucky Militia dispersed, after victory in the War of 1812. […]

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One of the biggest surprises I recall, when moving to Australia in 1979 from the States, was my discovery that the classic piece of patriotic Americana that I had been singing since a child, “America (My Country ’tis of Thee)”, was also known, in Australia, as “God Save the Queen”—same melody, but with different words. […]

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An Interesting Little Girl   An interesting little girl … The Argus read.   Further down, … hearing she was seriously ill, I volunteered to ride to Melbourne …   At a schoolhouse, gathering, May 18th 1851, … a full congregation of settlers heard the service … … but the Reverend P. Gunn had to […]

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“It’s a lawsuit. From Bullington’s attorneys. Accusing you, and us, of defamation.” John Bedoun, the paper’s editor, holding the Service of Notice, glared at Clare Rodgers. “You assured me your source was genuine.” “He touched her up during the South Carolina primary. When she objected, he called her the C-word,” said Clare. “Well, he denies […]

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The very first time I stepped on stage was in 1965 when a teacher from the Lake Erie Girls’ College French Club, in Painesville, Ohio, asked a teacher at my high school if there were any boys who were proficient enough in the language to play the role of Mascarille in a production of Moliere’s […]

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Toothsome   Chaucer wrote of the gap-toothed wife of Bath, suggesting lustful characteristics of the diastema.   Dents du Bonheur. Lucky teeth. Soldiers in Napoleon’s army, holding rifles with two hands, required perfect incisors, for use in opening powder magazines. Gap-toothed men were classified unfit to fight. Some broke theirs to avoid war.   The […]

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Poetry Is Like Looking Poetry is like looking for a haystack in a needle. Joe Dolce _________________________________ Ag Argentum. Seventh metal of antiquity. Noble metal of alchemists. Represented by crescent moon. Less malleable than gold, high polish. Thirty pieces sold Jesus. Muhammad wore it on his little finger. Da Vinci, Durer and Raphael drew with […]

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Little Blue Book   We were both eleven or twelve, shared desks at St Mary’s Bible study class, reading our little blue Catechism books.   One time he dragged me in a brown wagon across town, straight down the centre of a dangerous five-lane intersection, somehow avoiding whizzing traffic.   My mother was waiting for […]

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