And we are headed that way in the USA. The only autocrat I applaud is the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table: Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. I read some of his writings last night before trying to creep into the arms of Morpheus. It takes a little priming to get old Morpheus [AKA Sandman] to come my way.

Missive is one of my favorite words. I send them.

I wouldn't touch this discission with a ten-foot pole.

Before we dismiss zombies as fiction, we might want to look again. My Cousin, who seems quite sane, lived in Haiti many years. He claims to have encountered zombies there. He avers that there are Voodoo priests who have servants who are zombies.

One of my cousins translated the Bible into Hatina Creole. He used a French language Bible as one of his sources. In his opinion, Hatina Creole was just as close to the language spoken in France as is Canadian French. I worked in Montreal one year. They had a language police there.

I love my Jewish friends. But I find Yiddish to be an inferior language filled with schmuckish words. German and Hebrew are among the great languages of the world, approaching English in their greatness.

Bing Crosby conspires as he sings this little Christmas song: ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zifGp5KTBKg

I am no longer a farm boy, buy my sister is still down on the farm. Current cotton-picking practices leave much to glean but no one to glean it. The word always puts me in mind of the story of Ruth in the Bible. You may have noted that this sweet little domestic scene took place during the so-called...

I enjoyed this little mellow mallow romp. I put crunchy peanut butter on my graham crackers.

The mere sound of the word sprawl makes me uncomfortable. Suburban sprawl deserved the name. I do tend to sprawl all over the sofa in the den whilst wasting time watching TV.

As an active deacon of a large metropolitan church and the patriarch of a very large family, I have attended hundreds of funerals. I have been a pallbearer at many funerals. That meant carrying the casket in a group of four or six. I have seen sad ones and even funny ones. In my later years I have n...

My grandfather used to glean his own cotton crop. Not all cotton bolls open at the same time. When most of them were open we picked cotton by hand. Granddaddy used to leave the cotton stalks in the field and pick the rows again. Then came mandatory plowing cotton stalks under the ground to reduce th...

Parsley perhaps? I am very familiar with persimmons which I will at absent a better choice. The black persimmon of Texas and Mexico are said to be edible also, but we always let them fall from the trees to be eaten by the coyotes. As for parsimony, I nominate it as number 8 among the 7 deadly sins.

Just the mention of the word puts some people in a ravenous mood.

My brother avers that we had a one horned muley cow [a self- contradiction] who could never be cowed by anyone but himself. To me it was just a lot of bull.