On Wed, 14 Jun 2006 10:02:48 -0700, JR wrote:

Well, after all the rending of garments and gnashing of teeth I have
indulged in over the years regarding over-commercialization and the
insidious transformation of the sport into an "industry," I find myself
--for reasons we won't go into here--a part-time (and probably
temporary) fly-shop dude.

Who'd a thunk it?

If I can find a way to do it without annoying the owners of other local
shops I've patronized over the years, I will post some thoughts from
time to time.

Two presented themselves almost immediately:

- What with low pay and the phenomenal discounts offered by
manufacturers, employment is likely to be gainful more in a material
than a monetary way. The "savings" on just those few things I've
already got my eye on are quite likely to impoverish me....

- Please, please, PLEASE, look into, oh, I dunno, Shakespeare or Ambrose
Bierce or Oscar Wilde or Mencken or de Rochefoucauld before your next
trip to the fly shop. I had been told once you've heard several dozen
fly shop conversations you've heard heard them all. "Several" is an
lovely exaggeration. Honestly, the next person who tells me it's
"called fishing, not catching, har, har, har" is either gonna--depending
on my mood--get punched in the nose or see a grown man cry......

What light ov'r yonder Owl Creek Bridge breaks...the creek. The Creek!
It calls, to fish! To Fish! Fishing, like morality and art, usually
requiring as they are wont to do a line someplace, and as such, with new
tackle acquired imaginatively and well beyond one's means, ye shall doth
strive for an understanding of one's place on the small, besotted,
insignificant sphere called planet Earth, bereft of a universal human
condition, and come to a guarded peace with the mundane question one is
forced to ask oneself: why, oh why, must it be in our stars that the
thing be called fishing and not catching...

Better?

TC,
R
....are you both contemplative and contemptuous of being donned in the
fighting garb of St. Crispen's day or reaching thoughtfully yet angrily
for a lavender-scented handkerchief...it's hard to tell from here...