Sad but uplifted

Richard Francis Burton,
by Rischgitz, 1864

Not that Richard Burton

By Morris Dean & Bob Boldt

Yesterday’s “Sad like Jesus” revealed some of the consolations offered me following the short-lived publication, on July 3, of “Misunderstood, disrespected, resented: A meditation on Jesus: Glad, mad, and sad.”
    Another interchange provided much-needed comic relief:

To Bob Boldt: “Dear Bob, please don’t fail to read today’s post, which is more personally meaningful for me than anything I have written in a long time. Thank you.”

Bob’s responses, in four consecutive emails, were curiously uplifting:

1. Will do.
    I have been caught up in the political maelstrom swirling around us the past few weeks. Time to get my feet back on the ground.

2. Rumpole of the Bailey (the PBS/BBC production about the irascible old jurist) invariably referred to his wife as “She Who Must Be Obeyed.”
    A wise man indeed!

3.The wife of Richard Burton (no, not that Richard Burton) burned all of his ethnographic researches and his erotic writing [after his death] ostensibly out of consideration for his reputation. (Only as a worst-case example <Haha>)

On his religious views, Burton called himself an atheist, stating he was raised in the Church of England, which he said was “officially (his) church....
    Isabel never recovered from [his] loss. After his death she burned many of her husband’s papers, including journals and a planned new translation of The Perfumed Garden, to be called The Scented Garden, for which she had been offered six thousand guineas and which she regarded as his “magnum opus.” She believed she was acting to protect her husband’s reputation, and that she had been instructed to burn the manuscript of The Scented Garden by his spirit, but her actions have been widely condemned. (–Wikipedia)

Burton’s tomb. They say that on certain nights, in the dark of the moon,
the canvas drapes begin to rustle, and as the tent door opens....

4. Please forgive the previous post, but I shouldn’t try communicating when I am this stoned. No telling where free associations can take one sometimes. Sorry.

Copyright © 2016 by Bob Boldt & Morris Dean