A WORD FROM THE OWNER AND MANAGER OF THIS BLOG: My apologies for not posting anything this past week, but I figured four long posts last Saturday would cover the demand for the week. I know I should post more often, but life, as is its wont, gets in the way, and I am not the fastest writer in the world to begin with. I wish I could get away with doing what Professor Reynolds does; he dashes off a sentence and a link and everyone is happy. Unfortunately, the nature of The Passing Parade doesn’t let me get away with such an easy way of avoiding pencil and paper; this is an essay blog, and the only way you have an essay blog is to write essays, which is pretty damn frustrating, all in all. I am working on a couple of things now—the tank is not dry; I have any number of ideas for posts—I just don’t have the time to write them at the moment. But I will get to it. In any case, I’d like to thank Snoop over at SimplyJews for the sudden uptick in my daily traffic; a comment I made over there has become the most popular thing I’ve written since Kim du Toit linked to that piece I did about the origins of Christmas. I’ve even seen that comment quoted without my nom de blog on it, so I guess I should be happy; I’ve become a minor meme of sorts. Still, it would be nice to just link to stuff and put in a sentence or two and then have everyone read it; life would be so much easier. Heh. Indeed.