Air Mail Part II
Same windsock. Same beautiful weather. Bright little plane coming in from the east with a mailbag, to pick up a mailbag filled with postcards--over five hundred of them--addressed the last time we all gathered here on this sunny county airport in Middlefield, Ohio to commemorate the centennial of the transcontinental postal air mail service in 1920. Air mail service...
Another Centennial
August 30, 2020--Geauga County Airport, Middlefield, Ohio--Where else can one go to watch airplanes take off and land, while listening to the clip-clop, clip-clop of passing horses and buggies…and spot an Amish family off at a distant picnic table watching it all?The windsock was blowing, the sun was out and so were air enthusiasts of all ages who had...
Not my fault!
Working at Garrettsville’s Precinct A for thirteen hours on Election Day—with a fairly steady stream of citizens exercising their rights, good for them—was enough to occupy my time; I had no occasion to commit mayhem on the Portage County Board of Elections computer system, though I’m sure there are those who probably think that I could do it by...
Welcome to 2016 — Need a Calendar??
Well, here we go again. ”Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme.” As you, no doubt recognized, the above aphorism attributed to Jean-Baptist Alphonse Karr, means “the more things change, the more they remain the same.” (You might also be aware that albums by the groups Cinderella, Machine Head and Bon Jovi used the phrase, either as album or song...
Turnpike Proud!
Well, that was interesting...and informative...and fun too. The Ohio Turnpike had an Open House on Saturday, October 24, celebrating its 60th Anniversary; it officially opened on October 1, 1955, all 241 miles of it. The construction took 38 months, in sections, employed some 10,000 workers—and 2300 bulldozers—at a cost of some $326 million, give or take. It connected to the...
Memorial Trash
Another Trick-or-Treat for adults? I am referring, of course, to the semi-annual trash pick-up in the village—not to be confused with the weekly services provided (paid for on an individual residence basis) to dispose of our pitch-worthy household detritus and garbage. Garbage Eve is observed every Wednesday night; no carol-singing or candles in the windows that I know of. The Trash...
The Old Farmer’s Almanac revisited.
What Dave Barry always calls “an alert reader” stopped me the other day in the PCDL and asked if I wasn’t going to write some more stuff drawing on the abovementioned publication and it seemed like a good idea, so here we are. The Old Farmer speaks : (Freely translated by yours truly) What is it that everyone quotes the...
Forget the Memoir
Everybody is writing memoirs lately. It’s the literary style du jour in all of the magazines and reviews. So I’m thinking, hey, my memories are as good as anybody’s, why not hop to it and make the big bucks? One reason may be that my memories are certainly just fine, but getting them to show up on cue is...
Whadda Prize
It’s awards season just about all of the time now. There are awards in television, for the theatre, for movies, for sports of every stripe and description, for just about every genre of music that one can think of( and some that I don’t really classify as music, but, rather as “entertainment”)—country, pop, rap, classical, you name it. But...
National Holiday Alert!
We’ve missed half of the month but the BIG DAY is coming right up, so get ready for a celebratory observance of…National Ice Cream Day ! Would I lie about a thing like that? It seems that, actually, the entire month of July is National Ice Cream Month…and…the third Sunday in July is designated as National Ice Cream Day!...
One Down!
Whew! Do you remember a TV program from ages ago called TW3 (That Was The Week That Was)? Well, tweak it just a little to That Was the Week-end That Was and you’ve got November 4th, 5th , 6th and 7th , 2010 at this establishment. It was --literally and figuratively--really cool! Thursday, the evening candlelight tour opening date of...
Odder Still…
The computer has forced me to type this piece over again after it deleted everything except the date, August 31. I don’t know if I insulted it or what. Maybe it’s been keeping track of the things which I have been saying about it--all true! There was a Dilbert cartoon the other day that might fit : Office worker...
Pretty Fair Fairs
Well, I seem to have hit my quota again this year. A little shy, perhaps, but got the basics done. I am speaking, of course, of fair attendance. I really like going to fairs. It’s the food, mostly. Nothing like hot grease wafting through the air to set the rustic mood and a culinary challenge. I got to the Portage...
A File In The Cake?
I’m sure that somebody is going to “rat me out” and tell the Portage Park District that I’ve been pulling up plants along the Headwaters Trail. Indeed, I have been doing exactly that but the evidence will show that what I’ve been pulling up is a vast number of invasive weeds known as Garlic Mustard. Actually, it’s kinda cute,...
Cat-astrophe!
At one time, there were, give or take, six—yes, six—cats in this house. That was, so to speak, the high water mark, but the tide seems to have receded rather precipitously lately. See, I started out, innocently enough, with just one, chosen from a litter just out of town advertised with a sign that said, “Free Kittens”. He was orange...
Skin In The Game
Ever since that piece about plastic surgery and the aestheticians who keep having the gall to send me email about how they can get me a “Facelift Miracle”(as if I needed such a thing), I’ve been noticing a number of items in the news about occasions where the focus is on skin and the display thereof. The first one to...
Mission Impossible
I continue my crusade to rid at least part of the Headwaters Trail of the noxious, invasive weed, Garlic Mustard...and everywhere else I spot the stuff, which is lots o’ places. Taking a loop around the back of the South St. Park (Bill Phelps Park, with baseball and softball fields) I encountered several stands of the stuff to go...
It’s That Time Of The Year
You think I know about nothing but cats? Ha! I can literary with the best of ‘em. Watch this: No sun - No moon No morn - No noon - No dawn - no dusk - no proper time of day. No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease, No comfortable feel in any member - No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,...
The Name Game
Speaking of winter storms.... This whole naming thing apparently started with the Weather Channel and a Latin class somewhere. This was apparently so that the on-screen prognosticators could get us all to focus on a particular weather event at a particular time and to nudge us toward acknowledging the fact that all of this weather stuff is related rather...
O, Say Can You See….
Well, it may have been July 4th, but it definitely was a first in a lot of ways…just like what’s going on all over the place lately. How bizarre to have virtually no public displays of fireworks for Independence Day. The locals did try to take up the slack, I notice, as there were booms, bangs and flashes going...
ZZZZzzzzzzz-zzz–zzzzz
Bob snores. I can hear him across a room or in my lap. He has a sort of combination wheeze and whistle. I’m not bringing this up to clue anybody in on my—virtually non-existent--love-life, I’m calling it to the attention of the members of Bob’s Fan Club. He has fans. One of these days he’s going to stop just sitting on...
A Stitch In Time!
Here’s one for the Village Piece Makers, you know, the dedicated quilt-makers who every two years come up with a lovely handmade spread to be raffled off at the Christmas Walk. I don’t know how they come up with the patterns—maybe they make them up themselves—but recently the AB-J ran a cartoon (It’s a regular series called Non Sequitur, usually pretty apt for what they put out there) that might get a rise from out local needlewomen, even Ellie Foster Monroe who does “Quilts for Causes”, contributing to efforts that she supports.
April Showers
O.K., if “April showers bring May flowers”, what, in the name of all saints are we going to get based upon our most recent weather extravaganzas? Gonna be some flowers! Speaking of which (Great segue, eh?), I’ve got all sorts of things coming up around here. As usual, I don’t know what most of them are until they’re in full...
Are We There Yet?
And just where are we going again? By the time that we get there, I’m going to be so out of shape that someone will have to haul me over the line in a wheelbarrow. When the Y closed, it so disrupted my self-designed fitness routine that all of my muscles have declared a national holiday and I’ve had...
How Long, O Lord?
We’re all going to wax Biblical if this quarantine thing doesn’t end soon. Which book? Well, we have several suitable possibilities, mostly Old Testament, such as Numbers: Six feet “social distancing”, Num 16: 20, “And the Lord said to Moses and to Aaron, ‘Separate yourselves from among this congregation, that I may consume them in a moment.’ Does that...
God Rest Ye
Well, rest is just what I’m looking for about now, lemme tell ya. I think that we’d be planning to petition somebody for an extra day in the week or an extra hour or two in the day, if we’re ever to get all of the stuff done that needs to be done. How about it? Who’s going to...
“Paw-toe-graphs”, Anyone?
The Porch Kitty Fan Club is still alive and well. The Fabulous Felines’ more-or-less annual Christmas gift arrived just the other day(Since it came on the 5th, I gather that the group belongs to an Orthodox faith and were celebrating the arrival of the Three Kings. They skipped Kwanzaa altogether.) Anyway the package contained a pouch of Crunchy Treats...
Your Attention Please
This is your last warning! The response to our request for personal recollections about Garrettsville--the village itself and, ahem, Greater Garrettsville, the surrounding area--has been, shall we say, underwhelming. John Porter, our very own senior version of the Energizer Bunny, came through with some highlight events, some including his home stomping grounds in Hiram. He also mentioned...
Time Limps On
Well, there was a weekend. The annual garage sale in the village and environs seemed to be going well. Maybe not as many commercial opportunities as usual but plenty of tents and canopies were out sheltering the displays of treasures--not much rain, thank goodness--available to the public. I even bought a small bench at the big Brookover house (the one...
We’ve Been Fooled Before!
Spring has sprung Some grass has riz We wonder where the boidies is. Well, actually, the boidies is here all right. I’m hearing them in the mornings, and while I can’t tell a nightingale from a yellow-bellied sapsucker( The only bird that I can reliably identify is a killdeer.), there certainly are more of them out there before the sun comes up. ...
