Shakespeare, Chaucer And Mesopotamia!

A part from ducking out to fish when the weather allows I’m stuck at home (in Salisbury, Conn., in my case) like everybody else. Here are some of the exciting activities I do to stave off boredom.

I decided to reread Shakespeare, and dug out my old Riverside Shakespeare from high school. After two weeks, I am on page 11 and have yet to encounter any actual Shakespeare. The thick volume stares at me, in silent rebuke.

Mesopotamia! On a streaming service called Great Courses, I found a series of lectures on the Ancient Near East by Professor Amanda Podany. The prof was the bass player in a band that eventually became the Bangles. So stick that in your ziggurat and smoke it.

Organizing things. I organized everything so thoroughly I couldn’t find anything. So I pulled everything out again, and I’m back where I started.

I figured out the guitar chords to “New Age” by the Velvet Underground. This was not as easy as you might think. I’m sure the neighbors are relieved now that I’ve solved it.

“The Rockford Files.” Every American character actor of the 1970s shows up in this. Great nostalgia.

Innovative menus. Ever had split pea soup and scrambled eggs? It’s not horrible, but it’s best to have one, then the other. They don’t blend very well.

And this came to me. Suddenly, like acute indigestion.

From Geoffrey Chudstuffer’s “Covidbury Tales”:

Whan that April with its showres soote

The drought of March hath perced to the roote

And forced every manne to don a maske

Which vertu is a bigge pain in the asse.