SCRAPING THE BOTTOM OF THE BARREL

Roughly once a year, North Carolina gets snow, and the entire state is thrown into a panic.  Last night and today is this year’s time.  When I went to Whole Foods yesterday to shop for two dinners, the checkout lines were so long with people doing disaster shopping that I actually ate my cookie and drank my coffee before I could work my way to the head of the line and pay for them [I told the checkout lady, never fear.]

So today I am trapped in the house by the sleet and freezing rain that passes for snow down here.  Having nothing better to do than binge watch Mozart in the Jungle, I started thinking.  I have written a tremendous amount over the years, much of it in my judgment worth reading today.  For some odd reason, I have a deep-seated conviction that if I have written something already, even if it has never been published, it is cheating for me to post it on this blog, as though I were claiming it illegitimately as a new bit of writing.  But that is crazy, right?  As I have often observed, nobody in the world has read everything I have written, not even me.  I mean, even Bach and Handel reused portions of things they had composed in later pieces, so who am I to stand on ceremony?

Accordingly, from time to time I shall present on this blog essays in my files that I think still speak to a contemporary concern.  Or at least I shall if I can locate them on my computer or find a way to get them off JSTOR.  Fair warning.  I will of course identify them as previously written.  I am not that far gone.