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. #1. Gilbert & Sullivan’s 1879 “Pirates of Penzance” contains a “patter song” titled “The Major-General’s Song” in which the gentleman referred to sings, ”I am the very model of a modern major-general.” Now Craig Moser would...
Cat Contest
Well, I’m certainly put out... disappointed... chagrined (Not you, Falls ites). Whilst the Garrettsville SummerFest was tootling along its merry way, I was missing the grand convocation of the Great Lakes Region of the Cat Fanciers Association at the John S. Knight Center in downtown Akron last Saturday and Sunday. The tractors, fire engines, unicyclists and French fries won...
HA HA ! Ha Ha! ha ha…what?
I have always thought that my sense of humor was, at least, O.K. But I’m beginning to wonder about everybody else, especially in the public prints and commercially-produced correspondence, i.e., cards of various sorts. Whole bunches of TV commercials too, fail to make it to contact my funny bone. Ditto for a lot of the programming. Too many laugh...
If It Weren’t For Bad Luck…
Well. It’s official : If it weren’t for bad luck, I wouldn’t have any luck at all...when it comes to gambling, that is. On all other fronts I’d say that I’m ‘way ahead of the game. The LAF/SOMe expedition to the Bright Lights/Big City bus trip to Wheeling Island ( O.K., I lied about the big city part) Casino and...
Easy Riders?
Well, they did it again. They came. They saw. They caught a break in the weather and had a very successful Road Apple Roubaix on Saturday (March 4, 2023) in Garrettsville…and surrounding locales, as they took to the roads, out-and-about, returned to Slim & Jumbo’s and generally made a day of it. Numerous bike-friendly businesses–Eddie’s Bike Shop, Mountain Road Cycles,...
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 out in green they were; I wasn’t), choir practice,...
Serving Fun and Community Impact: Grand Opening of Pickleball Courts and Several Upcoming Fundraising Events Around the Area
This was a “Really Big Dill”…the Grand Opening of the Park Avenue Pickleball Courts at the Craig Moser Park on Park Avenue across from the Y. This was to officially launch the use of the newly-created facility. This event was organized and attended by members of the Garrettsville Pickleball Association, as well as numerous individuals interested in learning more...
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 currency in Europe after Mitt Romney’s goof-prone visit there...
Final Bow
“Bow”…as in “leave the stage while acknowledging applause after an excellent performance.” Everybody knew Barry, Barry Vancura…and he knew everybody (If he did not, he’d continue talking until something or somebody clued him in as to who furnished the other side of the conversation, and went on from there--it was a gift.). Barry was the consummate retail guy. He knew...
Wild Hikes
Well, actually, it wasn’t all that wild but it definitely was interesting and fun. The Portage County Park District is offering opportunities to scope out some of the features of the newly-funded (THANK YOU, VOTERS)county parks with knowledgeable and entertaining volunteer naturalists (or one, at least, Thank you, Joe) to get a good look at just what’s out there. ...
Weirdnesses Revisited
Years ago--I’m dating myself here--somebody...Art Linkletter maybe...put out a book titled ?Kids Say the Darndest Things?. And that’s what it was all about, taken from his television show where he talked to children of various ages on an array of topics intended to get many levels of entertaining and/or embarrassing responses. Well, I haven’t been on television for a...
Well… That Was Fun
No, Really. I enjoyed myself immensely. Not everyone would enjoy having people–some known, some unknown–coming through their home for seven hours a day, looking around, commenting on everything in sight, wondering about what’s not in sight, asking questions about stuff that had been answered back when they hadn’t been listening. But I’m not everyone, and I had a fine...
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 real groaners. The late, great Donn Olin would have...
Ya Shoulda Been There!
Ya shoulda been there! “There”, in this instance was actually two places where it was all happenin’ last week. Not genuinely related places, really, but there were similarities, fo’ sure. The first one was the business-to-business open house at Facet Salon and Day Spa on Tuesday, August 6. The parking lot at the TLC was hopping and they weren’t all in...
‘Tis The Season
So… Didja get your entry in for the Name a Snowplow contest with the Ohio Turnpike commission? Some of the winners from last year were in the paper recently and I have to say they were pretty clever. This year’s contest ended Sunday, so we’ll have to wait and see what takes the $100 gift card prize–eight of them,...
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! The R-C had a short piece from the Associated Press headlined, “Celebs, babies, beer : It’s Super Bowl ad time”. Indeed it was, although I didn’t...
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...
Curses!!
Curse that groundhog! Well, it does depend on which groundhog you are going to believe. The storied Punxsutawney Phil, of Gobbler’s Knob, Pennsylvania, according to his “handler” (like a sports agent, I guess) interrupted his long winter’s nap, peered out of his burrow and predicted six more weeks of winter. This would NOT be hard to do, given our experiences...
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 factors for this drama excursion was, of course, the...
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...
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...
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! The new costume still sports the iconic red capital “S” across the--very broad--chest on an all-blue, sort of metallic, more-armored-look unitard. No belt, exactly, but a waist-defining red detail on the sides and red cuffs and a red...
Missing The Chicks
I miss the chicks. Nothing to do with the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue; that’s got more hot chicks than a KFC convention. No, I mean real, live “Peeps”, the little , fluffy yellow (and sometimes other miscellaneous colors, especially if they’re just on the edge of getting real feathers) fuzzies that used to occasionally appear under the auspices of Stark...
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 first time under its own sail power since its...
Comet ISON
AND…just in case you’ve been obsessing about the Comet ISON(International Scientific Optical Network—used by some Russian astronomers to first locate this fast-moving wonder) the one thing that most astronomers actually agree on is that it is highly unlikely to slam into the Earth, smashing us all to smithereens…that and the fact that nobody around right now is likely to...
Adventures in summer travel…or…You Can’t Get There From Here
You know those orange and white saw horses that the ODOT crews used to have marking off forbidden territory when the summer construction season started? (They have up-dated all that now with tall, skinny cones and plastic tape) An ironic gentleman of my acquaintance once proposed that they should be designated the state animal…probably because they spent even...
Favorite Son
This commonly-used political term came to mind the other day when my mom sent me a clipping from our local newspaper back in Wellington (Lorain County, west of here on St. Rtes. 58 & 18), either the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram or the Wellington Enterprise—I really didn’t check. In politics, the term usually refers to an up-and-coming sort that has aspirations...
Requiscat in pace…I guess
All of you Latin scholars out there no doubt recognized that phrase, often abbreviated as R.I.P. and translated as Rest in Peace. Well, it’s had an outbreak here at the ranch; our feline population has undergone some major changes. Boy, has it ever. First off, Ruffian, of the inside cat contingent, took off one day and could not be persuaded...
Folly? Did Someone Say Folly?
Oh, “Fa La La La La !” you said. My bad…or worse, maybe. “Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, Please to put a penny in the old man’s hat.” Or more like it, at my place, “Christmas is coming. The Walk is on its way. There are way, way too many things for me to do today.” That’s...
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; mine is middling filthy--salt-splash and mud-luscious décor bumper to...