About The Other Chicks…
And about the other chicks…. The Sports Illustrated “swimsuit issue” recently came. A subscriber may choose to skip that issue—for ethical reasons or whatever—but I choose not to (I have no ethics that tender anyway) because I send it to my brother-in-law, a nurse and a fireman, both at once, who then is able to celebrate his birthday with the...
Sing a Song of Sixpence
Sing a song of sixpencePocket full of ryeFour-and-twenty blackbirdsBaked in a pieWhen the pie was openedThe birds began to singWasn’t that a dainty dish to set before the king? Never mind the sixpence, the blackbirds, the pie or the king (They’re all from the 18th century or earlier…Shakespeare, maybe?), what I’m really promoting here is the “Sing” part. Once upon a...
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. The “water feature” is bubbling its little heart out and any creature passing by can...
Do Things Talk To You?
Do things talk to you? You know, THINGS, do they address you with plaintive tales about their origin, the treatment that they should get, a recital of their finer qualities, a subtle urging to purchase more of their little friends? With all of the buying going on, I think that I must have just run into more of these than...
Random Observations
A Word to the Wise…. There’s a new restaurant –reported on in The New Yorker—that you might want to think twice about patronizing this month (or any other month, if you ask me ). It’s in Paris, for one thing, not exactly on our regular circuit of dining experiences (anyplace over twenty miles away seldom makes the cut), but...
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...
A Rash of Trash
Spring having sprung and all that, could I comment upon the sad indication that numerous persons hereabouts in the area are taking the opportunity to come down with a bad case of illiteracy? I am referring to the piles of stuff—junk would be a more accurate description but I’m attempting to be kind—that are appearing outside the various...
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 thing of the past. Well, so far what’s...
Garrettsville Summerfest Wrap-Up
The farmer in the dell. The farmer in the dell. Hi-ho the dairy-o. The farmer in the dell! The definition of the word “dell”—a small, secluded valley or glen (There’s another problematic word), usually a wooded one—isn’t exactly fitting here, but if we can idiosyncratically interpret it to mean “in Garrettsville for the parade”, it was a “dell of a...
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 this was once the location of a working sugarbush...
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 Art Source, Mangia! Mangia! and The Ghosts of Burton...
Good Grief
If it isn’t one thing, it’s another…how’s that for original thought? I went to my computer, the desktop, which is one of the newer dinosaurs, as compared to the iPads and tablets and such, intending to turn it on and get started on my weekly offering of deathless prose and witty repartee before journeying off into the wilds of assembled...
Don’t Look Now
Don’t look now, but the crazy stuff is still out there…and I don’t mean snow. That fickle pair, Punxsutawney Phil and Buckeye Chuck have predicted six more weeks of winter, so it’s pretty “old hat” by now ( a phrase that has transitioned from meaning something fairly pornographic in the 1700’s to just being considered a slangy way of...
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!...
Up, Up and Away!
Wasn’t that a song some time back? “Up, up and away in my beautiful, my beautiful balloon”...or something like that? Goes on to say, “Would you like to ride in my beautiful, my beautiful balloon?” Catchy tune. Google says that The 5th Dimension and Dionne Warwick got the most play with it. Anyway… Saturday last I was engaged in my...
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...
Strawberry Fields Forever
If John Lennon hadn’t written it, Roger Monroe would have had to. Maybe with a Pochedly on vocals or bass. Who better to whip up a little ditty about the most quintessential of spring/summer fruit? The fact that the song was written about a Salvation Army orphanage near Liverpool (U.K.) doesn’t disqualify it from being a fruit-growers anthem of...
A February Spring Is Not Worth A Thing!
So opines the Old Farmer’s Almanac (Actually the Old Farmer says it’s “not worth a pin,” but I took a few poetic liberties to improve {?} the rhyme). February has a number of putative highlights: andlemas/Groundhog Day, the Full Snow moon (Doesn’t seem to have been very consequential, at least around here), St. Valentine’s Day/ Sts. Cyril & Methodius...
Lights Out!
And speaking of eclipses…. Isn’t everyone? It’s all over the place, and with pretty good reason, since it’s been quite some time—38 years isn’t it—since the last total eclipse of the sun was visible over significant portions of the United States. It’s also the first since 1918 to be visible from coast to coast, AND the first since 1776 to...
All That Glitters
Thought for today : “All that glitters is not gold.” And, just for good measure, “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.” Thoughts to be thunk when you get a phone call purporting to give you large sums of money that you did not know you had even signed up for. Just sayin’. How do I know this? Thereby hangs...
A Quiet Week
Well, it’s been a quiet week in Little Garrettsville. (Lake Wobegone was another story) BUT…things are moving along. The paving over the “grooved pavement” is inching toward finished; there are lines and everything. Crews are on-site to take down the perennial eyesore downtown which has been “slip-slidin’ away” for –LO!—these many years. Haz-Mat suits and all, they seem to be doing...
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...
Season’s Greetings!
Looks like it’s well and truly winter, even though, astronomically speaking, we’ve got to wait until December 21 to be legit. Weather adventures already! Power went out Friday morning somewhere around 3:00 a.m.--the increasing chill in the house woke me up--and stayed out until about 9:30 a.m. Coulda been worse : Ohio Edison told me when I...
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 social event around these parts, starts off the holiday...
‘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,...
“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...
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, as gift items for favored individuals (Mom still has...
April Showers
April showers bring May flowers, eh? Somebody alert the providers of floral items. They’re either going to be left twiddling their thumbs because the general public is inundated by blooms of exotic sizes and descriptions springing up along every highway and by-way or their own backyards…or…there will be wholesalers of flowers lurking around corners trying to off-load cheap orchid and...
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...
SANK
SANK! The word is SANK! The past tense of “sink” is “sank”…”sank”, not “sunk”. “Sunk” is the perfect tense, which is either being shamefully abused or ignored most of the time by people who ought to know better. If I have to listen to some talking head on a TV screen or hear a faux-authoritative voice on the radio...
