Take Up A New Hobby
So here’s the thing…. We need readers and scorekeepers for the Garfield QuizMasters to go out to vanquish our intellectual foes in upcoming Academic Challenge competitions. Do I see any volunteers? Really, the hardest part is getting up EARLY on a Saturday morning to go ride a bus to the designated venue for the tournaments. Of course, riding in a...
Misguided Cats
Maplewood, beware! I’m thinking that the cats—at least some of them—need occupational/vocational counseling. One of the guys(It’s always the guys)apparently thinks that he is a watchcat, protecting us all from dangerous gray tiger cats out on the back porch. He pays no attention at all to the calico incipiently-maternal feline that appears on the front porch. When he spots this gray...
Oxford English Dictionary and then some
The Oxford English Dictionary has just come out with its quarterly revisions and additions. Some nine hundred new words and phrases have now been deemed worthy to grace its pages, some of them pretty far out there. How often do you wish to know the meaning of Empedoclean? ( Don’t go there. It’s about some Greek philosopher dude named...
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...
All’s Fair In…Maybe Not
Well, it is “Fair Time”, and any number of things go on there, except…. I always try to get to at least one fair as Summer winds down–Portage, Geauga, Lorain, State, whatever. Each fair has something about it, a story of how it got to be what it is, when it is, all that. Portage, for instance, has the...
All of The Nuts
So I’m walking around town and noticing…. What a lot of nut trees--black walnut, butternut, hickory, etc.--there are around here. Probably has something to do with the number of squirrels there are around here too. You can see the remains of gnawed-upon squirrel party refreshments all over the place. Plenty of gum tree gumballs too, all over the place. Makes...
May be… Maaayyybe not…
I was thinking that May would be pretty quiet, once the monumental trip to Chicago was over, things might calm down, I might be able to kick back, relax, let the mind wander (as it is wont to do), do some stuff that had fallen by the wayside, as often happens, get some things done, maybe. May be… First of...
And We’re Off!
Most recent R-C bulletin claims that the Old Farmer’s Almanac is predicting a very cold winter for much of the country. I have not got my 2022 copy yet, but it’s on my list to check out. As usual, there will, no doubt, be variations by specific locales, but I’m getting my woolies in order, just in case. Could...
The Frost Spirit Comes
That line comes from John Greenleaf Whittier, who was once considered one of the premier poets of American literature. Raise your hands out there if you remember his name at all…. That’s what I thought. The whole of the quote–found in the OFA– is this : “The Frost Spirit comes! And the quiet lake shall feel…The torpid touch of...
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...
Tell You What – An Editorial
Tell you what…. Let’s have everyone who says, “Why don’t they…(whatever it is about the rebuilding needed on Garrettsville’s Main St.) or “They need to…(suggestions for operations to be carried out to restore Main St.) or “They ought to…(directions on how to accomplish the rebuilding of half of Garrettsville’s business district), everyone who utters one of these or similar...
The Big One
And speaking of what’s happenin’ in 2017.... Make your reservations NOW for Beatrice, Nebraska—it’s in Gage County, in case you were wondering—to get the best look at “the Big One” as the astronomer-types are calling it—a 2.35 minute totality of the complete solar eclipse, being brought to us here in the United States at 11:37 a.m. (CDT) on...
Thinking Spring!
Another weekend, another home & garden show! Getting to the John S. and James L. Knight Center in downtown Akron is not real tough, although the predominance of one-way streets does sometimes make it a little tricky if you should happen to miss a turn. There’s a parking garage nearby too but I won’t even tell you how many turns...
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...
Home Sweet Home, both of ‘em
My current abode being somewhat the worse for wear, I was recently inspired to “go home” to Wellington to get one more look–maybe the last…or close to it–at the old homestead before someone new gets to call it “home.” So, anyway, it was a fine drive to Lorain County and even after all of these years, I still notice how...
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...
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...
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 again right across the road. Wheww! Leaving aside the fact...
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...
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 to school every day, uphill both ways, rain or...
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...
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,...
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...
Horticultural Report—Summer, 2017
Well, the ferns and the jack-in-the-pulpits were riotous this year and some even had to have some of their fronds evicted from the cozy jungle which they had created. There was green stuff everywhere! And moss!? The water feature/rock with a modest up-spout of gurgling liquid is burbling away but the water is encouraging a bumper growth of really...
News Flash!
Here’s a news flash : Tbilisi, Georgia (the former Soviet Union region, not the Peachtree State): “Sausage-wielding extremists” (There’s a phrase to ponder, right?) invade a vegan café –Café Kiwi--during a film festival in the neighborhood and proceeded to fling meat and fish at the café patrons. The ten to fifteen men, wearing sausages around their necks and waving skewers...
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...
And Another Thing…
I keep discovering (Not through Spring Cleaning–perish the thought) more stuff to put out on the Big Community Yard/Garage Sale coming up in May (as advertised on the electronic bulletin board downtown at the light). Tons-o-stuff stashed around here; some of it I vaguely remember acquiring, some of it, might as well have come from King Tut’s tomb or...
A Few Good Men!
It’s not just for the Marines, ya know. The Masons have been seeking good men, here in Garrettsville and around the world, for quite some time now, and doing pretty well at it, as a matter of fact. The Masonic Lodge–the Free and Arch Masons, along with affiliated groups such as the Shriners and the Knights Templar, have been derived from...
Ahhhhh….. Spring!
If Jack-in-the-Pulpits are any indication, my yard is a veritable vegetation revival! Nothing in the bulletin tells what the message is. They’ve popped up in the front, the back, the side lawns. They’ve out hustled even the ferns. They’ve beaten the trilliums, hands down. Wonder what got into them all of a sudden. Maybe the ferocious cold that knocked...
The Return of Champ
“Home is the sailor, home from sea, and the hunter home from the hill.” With apologies to Robert Louis Stevenson, I believe that we can remove the sea from consideration in this case (Camp Creek down behind the back yard hardly qualifies as anything like “the bounding main.” It doesn’t even come up to the level of Lake Erie.),...
