Articles in Iva’s Input
Costume Crises
Well, it’s all the talk. Superman, in the new movie coming out soon, “Man of Steel”, has a new look–no tights!
Spam
Just in time for the summer cooking-out season, the Hormel company has now fessed up to producing ten–that’s 10 different kinds of SPAM. Well, who’d a thunk it?
A Bad Spell
It wasn’t pretty.
The brain trust here at the Weekly Villager sallied forth to adventures in orthography by participating in the22nd Annual Community Spelling Bee for Literacy, co-sponsored by the Portage County Literacy Coalition Community Partners at the NEOMED Conference Center on Friday, May 24, 20013. And fourth…maybe fifth… was about …
That was a fine old time!
That was a fine old time!
Well, if you weren’t trying to get anyplace in a hurry, that is. The annual Garrettsville community garage/yard/porch sale seems to have attracted quite a crowd for most of the weekend. Some of the narrower thoroughfares were a challenge for those just trying to get …
Ha Ha!
`You thought that spring had come, just because you looked at a calendar and got out your flip-flops and sunscreen (I wear sunglasses all year, so that’s really no indication), not to mention making pool plans. Think again, Hummingbird-watcher.
I DID hang out four loads of wash on the line to …
Getting Old is NOT for Sissies!
Just dealing with the medical and insurance issues is enough to send a rational individual(That would be me…no snickering out there) around the bend.
I will be the first to admit that my medical and insurance issues are–knock on wood–WAY less fraught with difficulty than many other folk out there who …
Become a Master Gardener
The Ohio State University extends itself into every county in the state–all 88 of them. These are called–what else–extension offices and they offer information, advice and services to local residents. This can cover agriculture & natural resources, community development, nutrition, family & consumer science, 4-H programs–a whole bunch of things. …
Caution ~ Auction!
The Kiko folks have taken to putting up signs of this nature along roads where one of their commercial activities is going on, and with good reason. These secondary highways are plenty full of just plain drivers, let alone the avid auction-goers looking for a place to park–without sliding into …
How’s your Easter Bonnet look with snow on it?
Good Grief! Polar Fleece and long johns, peeps and bunnies with frost on their little noses…er…beaks…er …whatever. Deep frozen chocolate eggs and jelly beans, rock-hard marshmallow anything. How crazy has this season been so far? This is Spring from the old days, the ones where hardy ancestors walked two miles …
Spring Things
How’re you liking Spring so far?
Yes, indeedy, the official astronomical beginning of Spring was on Wednesday, March 20 at 7:02, EDT ( Or 11:02, UTC). Actually, I lied; according to the Farmer’s Almanac there is no “official” start to any of the seasons. That all depends upon the climate of …
Going, Going, Gone!
Well, going to an auction is often an adventure. This last one, though, was more than I had bargained for.
First of all, it was being held at what must, surely, have been the last–or nearly the last–farm in Aurora. I saw a sign –kind of faded–that seemed to indicate that …
Super Bowl XLVII
So…O.K., …I took notes….not during the Super Bowl game, which didn’t turn out quite as I had hoped, but of the commercials that paid for all of the hoopla. Mercy, what an assortment!
How do I get on these lists?
How do I get on these lists?
Bad enough that I get pleas from every animal rescue organization on the planet–puppies, kittens, polar bears, horses, donkeys, whales, big cats, farm animals, exotic animals (I tend to hope that abusers, traffickers and slaughterers will all fry in hell), you name ‘em. I …
The Muse Is Angered
Well, I just hate it when electrical things get weird and I have to do something about the situation without having a CLUE as to how to approach the problem.
So, I go to start writing another of my pieces of deathless prose for inclusion in The Weekly Villager ( This …
What We Got For Christmas
Y’ know that old pop/novelty song, “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth”? He sort of lisps and whistles through the tune. Real cute. Ever wonder what the kid actually GOT for Christmas?
Party On!
Well, yes, it IS that season of the year when all sorts of disparate groups have their annual Christmas parties. The barrage has begun already.
Hiram College hosted a seasonal soiree last week for Friends (That’s Friends, with a capital F), faculty types and festive individuals of all stripes, featuring a …
Omnishambles
Omnishambles.
That, declares the Oxford English Dictionary–OED, to friends and family–is the word of the year, 2012, presumably, though it seems to have got its start in 2009 on a British political satire TV show. I’m sure you’ve used it countless times since then, right? It did manage to gain some …
Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock!
Here comes the Crocodile!
In my role as drama critic for the Weekly Villager (No rest for the wicked, as my father used to say), I recently took in the Baldwin Wallace University Department of Theatre and Dance’s production of J. M. Barrie’s “Peter Pan”. Quite an evening!
One of the motivating …
The Big Fandango
So here I am at the BIG FANDANGO at the Longaberger Basket Outlet Store at Aurora Premium Outlets and I’m making a basket…me, Little Miss Craftperson, whose biggest venture into crafts was probably when I used to make molds out of modeling clay and pour plaster-of-paris horse heads, later hand-painted, …
It’s Navy Week
Avast, me hearties…and a “Yankee Doodle” doo to you!
It’s Navy Week. It’s Navy Week and it’s being observed in Boston by the first sailing of the oldest commissioned ship in the U.S. Navy, the U.S.S. Constitution–“Old Ironsides”– since 1997 (It’s been tugged to a few places but this is the …
Curiouser and curiouser…
Curiouser and curiouser…as Alice said during her adventures in Wonderland….
NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)’s Mars Science Laboratory has just succeeded in landing the spacecraft Curiousity on Mars, the culmination of more than three decades of planning and building, theorizing and research, not to mention scrounging for money.
Friendly People…
My! There are so many really friendly people on the internet.
An individual named Trixie–doesn’t she sound friendly already–lets me know that somebody wants to meet me. Well, doesn’t everyone?
Reflections…
Heroes have been celebrated in song and story for generations and millennia. One local hero has lately left us–too soon–and three songs/poems come to mind.
Business Plan?!?!?
Awwwrighty-tighty, here’s the plan.
Dick, Larry, Casey…. Listen up!
What you need to do is put the entire village of Garrettsville under roof, hire all or nearly all of the inhabitants and you can play in the big leagues with the Hartville Hardware which just had its grand opening last weekend.
In Transit
June 5, 2012. LOOK! Up in the sky!
Nah. It was not Superman. He’s out making movies with the other Superheroes.
It was the transit of Venus…and don’t think that if you missed it last week, you’ll just see it the next time. Because of the way that Venus and the Earth …
Coming This Summer….
So, vacation time is here. What to do? Where to go? How about museums–educational, right?–of culinary phenomena?
You could start with the National Mustard Museum( formerly the Mt. Horeb Mustard Museum) in Middleton, Wisconsin, found on the National Registry of Hysterical Places, perched atop the Condimental Divide. It features over five …
Speaking of Graduation….
And speaking of graduation…. Well, isn’t everyone?
High schools…colleges…pre-schools& kindergartens…wait…pre-schools & kindergartens? Yup. Saw it in the R-C picture congrats. All very well and good, I suppose, and grandparents like to get in encouragement wherever they can but what’s the kid have to look forward to if they’ve already done …
Garden Fun…
So… I’m out playing caretaker here at the Manse and I’m deciding that what we’re running at this location is the animal equivalent of the food court at the mall when a whole cohort of teenagers–boys mostly–shows up to attempt to fill their hollow legs.
No Pun Intended
There are funny things out there, folks. A radio program the other day had on it a gentleman who had just had a new book published; its title was : The Pun Also Rises… a great play on words itself. I’ll have to get it and treat you to some …
Game On!
Now that the baseball has officially started–with a few fits and starts as well as a false spring heat wave–you might notice a few things different from last season. Sure, sure, there are new players; that happens every year, more or less. No. Look at what they’re playing WITH…new bats. …
Busy Week! Heckuva weekend.
Lots of it was just stuff. You know, things that have to be done but really not planned for except in a sort of fly-by-night fashion–medical events, grocery shopping, yard work– that kind of stuff. Then there were actually scheduled activities –lunch with the Nelson Literary Musical Club (All decked …
Election Red, White and Blues
Can we please have a rest until closer to November?
Good Grief! It got so that I was seriously thinking of just letting the phone ring–I never do that–until the machine picked up or the caller got tired–no caller I.D. here, Chatty Kathy, no screening of calls. In the end, I …
I also love seed catalogs!
I also love seed catalogs. They’re coming in now and probably will continue until Memorial Day; Hope springs eternal!
I used to get lots more. That was before somebody apparently tipped off Burpee’s Seeds and Plants, Stark Bros, Gurney’s, Johnny’s Selected Seeds, Park Seeds, et al. that I had a particularly …
Christmas Shopping
I sure hope that I get the hang of this “Christmas shopping” thing soon. I always think that I will get a head start on it –August, say–and have gifts all wrapped and ready, tucked away somewhere (Attic? Basement?) so that the holiday rush will be a …
Winter Prep
So…I missed the Rotary meeting on the 24th. They were working away at their Reverse Raffle and Silent Auction…as they have been for some time; get your tickets now. The array of donated items and services should make for spirited bidding and a good time for all. It’s a regular …
My Kind of Month
October is my kind of month. It’s interesting.
The harvest is winding down; those shocks of corn so prized by decorators are actually passe’ . Nobody uses them any more, unless they’re Amish, of course. Corn pickers are where it’s at as far as harvesting corn is concerned. They’re also one …
Forsooth!
The Settlers “Ye Old” State Renaissance Faire has shuffled off into history once again, leaving bags of gold for the Middlefield “Shop With a Cop” program and the “Middlefield Cares! Food Cupboard”. Generous supporters included the Nauvoo Family Market, White House Chocolates, Alley’s Grille, Mary Yoder’s Kitchen, Zeppe’s Pizzaria, EarthLight …
Going Batty!
So…my question is, if bats (Myotis lucifugus–lucifugus means “flees the light”) are supposed to have such a great echolocation system in their little heads where they emit sounds and then decipher the rebounding sound waves to avoid obstacles and catch their dinner, why can’t they figure out the fact that …
Hot enough for you?
Holy Schmoley! It’s-a some kinda hot out there! How much more of this is there going to be? We get a sort of “teaser” when the temperature is just hot–not an inferno–and then the whole thing turns on us and you can start looking for the hinges of H-E-DOUBLE TOOTHPICKS …
Fair Season
So here we are in the Fun Season…the Fair Season. Everyone comes up with a reason to promote hot grease and sno cones and enough sugar to sink the island of Puerto Rico. On any given weekend one can drive across the Buckeye State and catch a whiff …
Party On!
So…there’s this big birthday party at my house, see…first big event here since Christmas, see…significant birthday, see. Oy, oy, oy…such a party!So, the party is to be utilizing the park-like backyard and the covered porch and the custom deck and the flagstone patio and the flood-lit arbor (I told the …
Jackpot!
The Biggest Game in Town came up aces for virtually the entire SummerFest weekend. The brief, scattered showers didn’t seem to have deterred any of the fun-seekers who turned out morning, noon and night to enjoy all of the available activities.The opening of the Windham St. bridge provided a venue …
Belly Up To The Bar Boys!
Well, it hasn’t been quite like that, but close. The rounds of graduation open houses continues apace. What shindigs!
Back when I graduated (There was parking for the dinosaurs out back of the barn and we had to rub sticks together to cook the roast beast.), it was pretty much a …
After The Flood
We think that the second dove has not returned to the boat (Genesis 8:6-14) so we might be able to begin thinking about returning to what passes for normal around here.Normal is a pretty flexible term. It included the annual academic awards program, recognizing just rafts of outstanding individuals, many …
The End
O.K. So I want to invite everyone to the second annual M-O-M / T-A-T (Machine -O-Mania / Touch-A-Truck) coming up–rain or shine– on Sunday, May 22 from 10:00 to 2:00 at J. A. Garfield H.S.; admission: adults–$5.00, kids–$3.00. It’s a fund-raiser for the Garfield Academic Challenge team, the QuizMasters, and …
You Missed It…
You missed it! You missed the LAF/SOMe bus trip to the Dunham Tavern Museum and the West Side Market. What a hoot!
The museum was neat; it’s an oasis of green on concrete and steel Euclid Ave. With the main building, a reconstructed log cabin, a barn suitable for larger group …
Green Stuff
Green things are appearing here and there about the estate. Except for the crocuses–or is it croci, plural, you know–most of these items are a mystery to me. No, I lied; I recognize the snowdrops too. Pity they had to bring snow along as well. This green outburst is certainly …
I’m Doomed
I know; this may not be news to some but I was sort of hoping to avoid a swift descent to the fiery furnace for another decade or so, maybe more if I kept moving and eating enough dark chocolate.
This assessment has been confirmed by finding in yet another slick …
Spring Thaw?
Was that it? The Spring Thaw…New Year’s Day was the whole thing? When the subject comes up for the rest of the season we get to say, “ Been there. Done that.” Doesn’t seem right somehow. We ought to get a chance to get out and wash cars or something; …
Quick, check the calendar! Is it winter yet?
Wholeeee Snowleee! When the real thing hits, It’s gonna be “Bessie bar the doors!” if this is just the preview. Wouldn’t you know that this exercise in inclemency–weather division–happens in the year that the powers-that-be down in Columbus, where the sun never sets, have decreed that there will be only …
