AS THE YEAR ENDS...

Instead of looking back over 2006, here's a very brief commemoration of some of the events of 100 years ago:

1906 saw a landslide victory by the Liberals in the British General Election (in which, of course, no women had the vote); The King's English, the original version of Fowler's Modern English Usage, was published; the great San Francisco earthquake occurred (Mount Vesuvius also erupted); Mr. Rolls and Mr. Royce formed a company to make cars; SOS was adopted as the internationally recognised distress signal; the newly-introduced Wasserman test offered the first reliable diagnostic procedure for syphilis; and Max Ehrmann wrote the Desiderata (though he didn't publish it till 1927).

The only one of these things to which I've ever made a Bob Dylan link is the last. It's mentioned, quoted from and footnoted on page 424 of Song & Dance Man III: The Art Of Bob Dylan (1999) in connection with Dylan's song 'Every Grain Of Sand'; this reference has been pared down but retained in the shortened - and I hope and believe improved - commentary on the Dylan song offered in the Bob Dylan Encyclopedia entry 'Every Grain Of Sand', Non-Blake Elements (page 220).