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Murray C McClellan

An Archive of My Writing

  • Home
  • Key Moments in American History
  • Art and Archaeology in the American Funny Pages
  • Essays
    • A 19th-Century New England Voice
    • You’re Welcome
    • Return of the Gundelfingen Soldatenverein Banner
    • QAnon: Nothing New?
    • 17 X 3 = 51. A Reflection on My Life from the Perspective of the Life-Cycle of Cicadas
    • A Question (And Two Sub-Questions) about the Afterlife
    • A Few Thoughts on Time Travel
    • Looking at Death
    • #languagechanges
    • Accepting Senectitude: Some Thoughts on the Occasion of my Approaching Seventieth Birthday 
    • Another #languagechanges
    • The Life-Changing Magic of Holding Onto Stuff
    • Shiny Bits
    • Looking from Both Sides
    • Where Do We Come From?  What Are We?  Where Are We Going?
    • A Theory of Multiple Stupidities
    • Reflections on Reflections
    • Statues of Limitations:  Repatriate the Riace Bronzes?
    • Numbers Just Keep Getting Bigger (and Smaller)
    • The First Calendar?
    • A Modest Proposal:  Ban All Fiction
    • Seminar- Art History and Archaeology
    • The End of History:  An Upside to the Climate Crisis
    • Spain the Bypassed
    • Reflections on the US, 2024
    • Ghosts
    • In Defense of Tragedy
    • Pictorial Graffiti in Padua
    • History is Curious
  • Editorials
    • Time to take another look at Boston’s Civil War Monument?
    • Editorials from the Keene Sentinel
      • Fleeing the Death Star: Why I Self-Deported from the US
      • Nov 2017. Trump wins and east is north
      • Jan. 2015. Historical Myopia over Cuba
      • Oct. 2015. Sanders’ missed opportunity
      • Feb. 2014 Citizens United
      • May 2013. The real scandal is the role of big money
      • March 2007. There’s a lot we should teach
      • Feb. 2013. Constitution Day
    • Sept. 2013. An Ancient Line in the Sand
    • 40 X Rule
    • WTF?: Bruce Cantor’s Revisionist History
    • The Beginning of the End of the U. S. of A.?
    • Bunker Hill Boys: A Dialogue of Resistance
    • Make Amends, Grateful America
  • Poems/Stories
    • Leaving the U.S.A.
    • “Brushing My Teeth”
    • A Posthumous Ekphrasis by Emily Dickinson (1862) on a Vivian Maier Self Portrait (1954)
    • A Brief History of Electronics: A Poem
    • A Violet in October
    • Six-Year-Old Murray Encounters Plato
    • Re: Introduction to Poetry
    • The True Story of the Sad, Short Life of Jack the Tree Pumpkin
    • COVID-19 Poems
    • Pandemic Art Pastiches
    • The Envelope
    • Growing Old
    • The Booger and the Turd
    • Donald Trumps Sits for his Official Portrait
    • A Darkroom Life
    • Oceanic Orgasms
    • Has-Beens A Poem
    • Two Quatrains
    • Cliché Corner- To Coin a Phrase
    • A Poem: Time Does Stop for No One
    • Body Parts:  Another Cliché Poem
    • I Am An Old White Man: A Poem
    • Talent
    • Dash Away! Dash Away! Dash Away All!
    • It’s About Time:  A Space Story in Slow-Mo
    • Two new poems
    • “An Update to Robert Frost, ‘Fire and Ice’,” 2024.
    • Old Clothes on the Clothesline: The Sad Story of Diego Gayo
    • Things I’m Not “In”to
    • Misaligned Emergency: A Short Story
    • The First Stories
      • The First Suicide
      • The First Laugh
      • The First Sweat
    • Messy Cables:  A Metaphor of My Life
    • The Taming of the Dolphin
    • An Abecedarian Poem
    • A Poem for Lyndsey and Ilia: All that Glitters is not Gold.
  • Silly Riddles and Lists
    • What Bodies of Water
    • Homophonic Phrases
    • Monosyllabic Homophones
    • Palindromic Phrases
    • Murray’s Tom Swifties
    •  Match the Homophone Pairs
    • Guess the Heteronyms
    • Match the Homophone Pairs II
    • Match the Homophone Pairs III
    • Match the homophones IV
    • Match the Homophone Pairs V
    • Eponyms:  The Game
    • Collective Nouns:  Posses of Professionals
    • More People Posses
    • Nabobs of Positivity
    • Put through the Wringer: Technologically Anachronistic Idioms
    • Verbs and Nouns
    • Sweet Sweat:  More Homophonic Pairs
    • Another Homophone Game
  • Contact

A Poem for Lyndsey and Ilia: All that Glitters is not Gold.

Out of the box

And over the top,

Head over heels

In a winter wonderland.

.

On thin ice,

If at first you don’t succeed 

Try, try again.

Tomorrow is another day.

murraymcclellan Uncategorized Leave a comment February 21, 2026February 21, 2026 1 Minute

Make Amends, Grateful America

Here is another political rant, an attempt to create an alternative MAGA movement. The long version IS long–29 pages and 11,000 words. I tried to cut it down but the “short” version is still long, 12 pages and 4,500 words. Oh well, it you have nothing better to do, you can waste some time with either version.

Making Amends longDownload
Making Amends shortDownload
murraymcclellan Uncategorized Leave a comment February 6, 2026 1 Minute

Another Homophone Game

Yes, I can’t help myself from adding yet another game! The answers to the clues to the homophones (words pronounced the same but spelled differently) are below:

Another Homophone GameDownload
murraymcclellan Uncategorized Leave a comment December 6, 2025 1 Minute

An Abecedarian Poem

An Abecedarian PoemDownload

murraymcclellan Uncategorized Leave a comment December 6, 2025 1 Minute

History is Curious

Here is another, rather rambling, ramblings. At least it ends with some funny cartoons. (This is an updated version, including a section on Orwell’s 1984.)

History is Curious2Download
murraymcclellan Uncategorized Leave a comment November 20, 2025December 22, 2025 1 Minute

Sweet Sweat:  More Homophonic Pairs

Okay, here’s another homophonic game. The answers are at the end, but please don’t at them until you’ve tried to answer the clues.

Sweet SweatDownload
murraymcclellan Uncategorized Leave a comment October 27, 2025 1 Minute

The Taming of the Dolphin

Okay, here’s an alternative history story, one inspired by a wonderful National Geographic documentary about a Shetland Island man and an otter.

Domestication of the DolphinDownload
murraymcclellan Uncategorized 2 Comments October 2, 2025 1 Minute

Messy Cables:  A Metaphor of My Life

I can’t be the only old fart who has become bewildered by all those apps I have to carry around on my phone!

Messy CablesDownload
murraymcclellan Uncategorized Leave a comment September 11, 2025 1 Minute

The First Laugh

just after I upload “The First Sweat” here I realized that I had not posted this piece, which I wrote three years ago! Anyway, here it is:

The First LaughDownload
murraymcclellan Uncategorized Leave a comment September 2, 2025 1 Minute

Bunker Hill Boys: A Dialogue of Resistance

In thinking about the political mess the United States is now in (1 September, 2025), I wrote this, fictional, dialogue.

Bunker Hill BoysDownload
murraymcclellan Uncategorized Leave a comment September 2, 2025 1 Minute

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