Iva Walker

I love the Old Farmer’s Almanac…I don’t necessarily take it as gospel but I do love the miscellany of STUFF that is in it.  It is a veritable FOUNT of KNOWLEDGE of various off-beat and semi-useful pieces of information.  I say semi-useful because some of the wisdom that this...

Garrettsville - The James A. Garfield Historical Society met on November 18, 2013 in the historic Mott Building for their regular monthly meeting to conduct the following business : The historical marker grant commemorating the 1935 train robbery in Garrettsville has been approved by the Ohio Historical Society.  Julie Thompson,...

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...

There ARE drawbacks to having a warm spell this late in the year.  Yes, indeed. So…I’m sitting in the living room reading the paper; it’s a breezy, balmy (for November, anyway)fifty-something, sixty-something outside.  The room is pleasantly warm enough.  It’s evening, getting dark, I’m thinking about getting to bed early...

Elf Helpers, sign up for your Santa delivery of Christmas gifts ASAP.  Garrettsville-Hiram Rotarians are co-ordinating the personal visits by the “right jolly old elf” again this year.  For many families, it is a tradition  stretching across generations, so you’ll want to make sure that you  sign up and...

The James A. Garfield Historical Society met on Monday, October 21 in the historic Mott Building, Main St. , Garrettsville to pursue its usual business.  This included : • Enthusiastic thanks to Damaris Peters Pike for the contribution resulting from her recent presentation (with Jack Warren) “The Garfields—An Ohio Presidential...

Garrettsville-Hiram Rotarians met in the Hiram College Dining Hall on October 21, 2013 to hear from District 6630 Governor Bob Johnson of the Middlefield-Burton Rotary Club; Assistant Governor George Schumacher of the Aurora Rotary Club was also in attendance. They made announcements of events upcoming on November 3 at...

Did you catch the tunes by the Tuba Troubadours? They were the trio pumping out classy tunes in a lower register to keep up the festive mood at the Garrettsville Chamber of Commerce 11th Biennial Business showcase, held in the James A. Garfield High School gymnasium on Thursday, October 16. ...

Another Fabulous Freebie from the Hiram Community Trust  and the Hiram College Music Department: On Friday, October 25, hammered dulcimer virtuoso Tina Bergmann and string bassist Bryan Thomas will present a free concert in the Frohring Recital Hall at 7:30p.m.  The much-acclaimed duo are Ohio-based folk artists performing an eclectic...

Garrettsville-Hiram Rotary is on the move to sponsor another Rotary Youth Exchange candidate.  Rachel Schwan is beginning her trip through the required protocols and papers to reach her goal of spending her senior year abroad.  Carol Donley is the club liaison for the undertaking. The trash pick-up for St. Rte...

The computer strikes again!  Here I am typing away  at my keyboard-in-the-corner, writing  what I’m hoping will be more-or-less reproduced below and—WHAM!  It all disappeared.  Gone! Gone!  Nowhere to be found(Not that I could find it anyway, technological klutz that I am).  Nearly a page of deathless prose lost...

Garrettsville-Hiram Rotarians met September 30 in the Hiram College Dining Hall to make the acquaintance of a prospective foreign exchange student.  Rachel Schwan and her mother, Lisa Schwan, came, hopeful of gaining the group’s support for participation in the Rotary International Student Exchange  program.   Rachel expressed an interest...

The Twentieth Century Club of Garrettsville met at the home of Cherri Wolfe on Nichols Rd. on October 3, 2013.  Maxine Nimtz was the co-hostess and the roll call was answered by stating “Where I Get My News”. In keeping with the 2013-2014 program theme, Exploring the World with Dewey,...

Weeding and quite a number of other garden/lawn tasks are so essentially mindless that they offer “quality time” for pondering totally unrelated topics that  may have “gotten under my skin”, “stuck in my craw(What IS a craw, anyway?)”, “graveled my gizzard”, “frayed my last nerve”…whatever idiomatic expression you might...

“Women of Note”, aka Famed Dames, will be here in no time and you don’t want to miss making their acquaintance.  Your introduction will come in the person of Damaris Peters Pike, Professor of Music Emerita of Hiram College, musician, historian, communicator par excellence who will be presenting a...

Please pass the rambutan. Right.  I didn’t know what it was either but it was mentioned in a recent filler article in the R-C.  I’m not sure what’s behind it but there seems to be a rash of “record-setting” events and/or activities of all kinds that seem to be, basically,...

The first time that Damaris Peters Pike did a one-woman-show was in August of 1988.  Twenty-five years later, she has done more than 1050 performances in 10 states and France—as 11 different women!  To celebrate this silver anniversary, she will be “giving back” by donating a select series of...

Have another piece of cake, Chubby? OMG!  New scientific research indicates that obesity is likely about three times as great a factor in mortality rates as had been previously believed, up from 5% to 18%.  Some 78 million people in the U.S. are struggling with the condition…or not.  Some twenty...

It’s back.  The big yellow buses are on the road.  The kids are walking—on or off the sidewalks—to and from school/practice/meetings, detention (It happens)all that stuff.  Watch !   No texting (Sexting is absolutely beyond the pale, in more ways than one), no putting on make-up, no scarfing down...

Garrettsville-Hiram Rotarians are gearing up for the start of their fall club activities by fortifying themselves at the steak fry on August 19.  Hot grill, cool beverages, pot-luck  accompaniments, good company….  Way to go, Rotary.  New members welcome! Speaking of which…Kim Kohli and Delores McCumbers will be attending membership events...

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...

Spell Check can’t do everything. I was at the Farmers’ Market at Robinson the other day.  Small but interesting; an assortment of vendors with  good stuff.  Dave Stotler had Lodi apples, good for the first apple pies of the season.   A lady from Randolph was there with a food truck...

Garrettsville-Hiram  Rotary went in for nuts & bolts in their meeting on July 28.  Bolts were as follows : Members will be calling and contacting individuals who signed up at the Rotary booth during SummerFest with invitations to a fall meeting, September  23.   Save-the-date cards will be going out. The club...

Somebody out there is reading this stuff (Besides you, Mom). I got another correction, Heaven knows there are probably plenty more deserved.  Anyway, the first Garfield football game is NOT on the 23rd of August, but on the 30th at Cardinal.  That first glitch is a scrimmage, which, while it...

“Tis the season! For just about everything, I guess.  The other day, a container of blueberries and two squash magically appeared on my front porch sitting on some literature from the Jehovah’s Witnesses or some other well-meaning group and next to the comic strip umbrella from the AB-J.  Tasty stuff! ...

Garrettsville-Hiram Rotarians are gearing up for more activities on their very busy calendar. It’s never too early to begin thinking about the fall fund-raiser, the website project, the   quest for new members, the Santa Claus delivery night, Family Week, even the Four-Way Speech Competition next spring.  Possibly new on the...

Garrettsville - The James A. Garfield Marching Pride pulled out all of the stops last Friday to give a preview(Preview—that means that they’re just going to get better) of their fall band show line-up.  A fine audience of parents, grandparents, friends and supporters were treated to an evening of...

My, how Time flies! Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana. So, if the line above is an example of  a “garden path sentence” or syntactic ambiguity or  a pun, a double entendre or an antanaclasis—well, it would be, wouldn’t it—possibly by that great linguist, Groucho Marx, these...

“I made that s-o-b” Heckuva line to open with, eh?  Chalk it up to Julie Thompson who made it part of her presentation on the Last Great Train Robbery in the U.S. and the perpetrator, Al “Creepy” Karpis, who spoke those words in reference to J. Edgar Hoover, head of...

Garrettsville-Hiram Rotary reflected on a number of things at their most recent meeting in the Hiram College Dining Hall. To wit : Jim Irwin’s account of the Tall Ships event in Cleveland sponsored by the Rotary Club of Cleveland—interesting but HOT. Local flooding…with pictures on cell phones, natch…and recollections of other...