THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE

THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE. Sometimes when my father was self conscious about holding forth at a family meal, he would refer to himself as “the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table.” He had recommended to us the book by Oliver Wendell Holmes (the father who was a doctor and poet, not the judge). I got the Holmes book out of the library today. It is in the form of a series of conversations dominated by the self-described “Autocrat.” They take place in a boarding house at mealtimes. The Autocrat says, “My dear friends, I can do nothing but report such remarks as I happen to have made at our breakfast-table.” (pages 69 to 70 of the Airmont paperback). A lot of blogs are just people holding forth on the events of a day, just like at my family meals. When I am posting on this blog, I often think of my father in his chosen role of autocrat of the breakfast table.

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6 Responses to THE AUTOCRAT OF THE BREAKFAST TABLE

  1. Mary Jane says:

    This website is a bird’s eye view into Phil’s mind–what attracts it–how it reacts to various issues. A real pleasure to read.

  2. Lee says:

    I eagerly await every new post! I really like blogs. They can be an inside source of information on companies, a place to keep up with family and friends, and a method of collaboration on projects. It’s so nice to have fresh content greet visitors as opposed to the rather limited little personal pages that dotted the Internet in the late 90s. I was guilty of having a pretty content-free page myself.

    A research company has just projected that blogging will peak during the first half of 2007, with 100 million people blogging. I wonder what the next big Internet phenomenon will be…surely not everyone will want to have their own podcast.

    Boy, I really sound like an ad for blogs in that first paragraph.

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