The Wheels On The Bus… Part III
And now, as the sun sets slowly in the West…. End of competition and return to God’s country (Garrettsville, in case you didn’t recognize the description). The contests, across so many topics and fields, illuminated our strong points and our areas ripe for improvement. All team members made some critical contributions—math, nineteenth century literature, scientific notation, historical events, whatever—at some...
The Wheels On The Bus…
The wheels on the bus go round and round, round and round, round and round. The wheels on the bus go…. Wait! We’re not moving. So that was one part of the saga. Wait until you hear the rest of it. Our intrepid band of Quiz Masters (James A. Garfield’s Academic Challenge team) was off to...
Flipped WHAT Bird?!?!
All of a sudden the avian population seems to be catching my attention. First it was the “sitting duck” mamma down at the Rite Aid in the landscape mulch, then it was the geese and goslings, duck and ducklings down on the creek behind the house, then it was the blue heron below the dam, which has been replaced...
That Red Buckeye Is A Show Off!
My Red Buckeye is showing off this year—full of blossoms and looking like it ought to be the guest star at the Home & Flower Show. Stop in some time and take a look. And if you’re walking around the estate, say “Hello” to the critter who seems to me to be the one munching up my...
Gone, But NOT Forgotten
Gone, but not forgotten…that’s my Bob, a classic over-achiever. How he became afflicted with liver disease--he wasn’t much of a drinker—is still a mystery to me, but he did use up what were left of his nine lives trying to fight it off. Not that he wasn’t apt to milk any situation for all it was worth to get what...
The machines are out to get me!
Does a computer count as a machine or a device? Matters not, they’re after me. So I’m sitting at the computer typing away at my much-anticipated column for this week, when, out of the blue—or whatever color cyberspace is nowadays—the screen went black (that color I know) and totally unresponsive. I wiggled and jiggled various plugs and...
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...
Weather or Not…
Don’t look now, but it seems to me that as far as weather predictions go, The Old Farmer’s Almanac has crashed and burned in its outlook for February. And in the ruins might be found the remains of a groundhog or two—Punxsutawney Phil and Buckeye Chuck, perhaps—who had stepped out for a snowball fight during the six more...
Cats Up To No Good
Well, it’s finally here! My sure-fire, brass-bound, copper-bottomed, iron-clad, nickel-plated, sterling silver, gold standard (Had enough of the metallics?) opportunity to live in the manner to which I’d like to become accustomed has arrived. Yes! Reading through one of my weekly newsmagazine—appropriately enough named The Week—I came across an item about an entrepreneur, Lainey Morse, in Oregon who...
Latest Unlikely News
Ya know, you can’t make this stuff up.... The news is rife with absolutely amazing little bits—factoids, we might call them—about what’s going on “out there”, and I don’t mean outer space. Doesn’t take much more than a skimming of the news to find a fine selection of nutballs running around in front of God and everybody and coming...
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...
Another year, another centennial.
The Almanac pages that the papers often have are, at times, sort of desperate to come up with some event having happened on a particular date that is significant enough to mention at all. They have to resort to mentioning obscure baseball players hitting their first home run or the birthday of Foghorn J. Leghorn (from the...
The cat came back!
The cat came back! Isn’t that Dr. Seuss or something? Anyway, the cat did not come back—it never left. The cat/kitten is still here and in fine fettle, as they used to say in British horsey circles. This is the sole survivor of a litter that was left on my back doorstep and, in the manner of kittens in general,...
Cats and Bats
One more mystery solved...sort of. The questions here are :”Where have the bats come from?” and “Where do the bats go when they’re not swooping around inside the house?” I mean, they’re not hanging from the drapery rods waiting for the sun to go down or anything, at least I haven’t spotted them, though given the state of my expertise...
May You Live In Interesting Times
There is , allegedly, an ancient Chinese curse, which says, “May you live in ‘interesting’ times”. Last week was really interesting. First off.... I have been waiting for and keeping an eye on the paw paws on the finally-mature paw paw bush on the east side of the house. There are only two bushes and only one of them had fruit...
Bats & The Queen
The season is on! Which season? Football, Volleyball, Cross Country, Golf, Soccer...you name it; the sticks and the balls and the nets, the helmets, the hitting, the sweat—all ramping up for participants and fans alike. And others.... Came home after the football game the other night—which, by the way, could have been played on top of the hinges of hell,...
Apocalypse?
Latest signs of the Apocalypse : O.K., so I’m listening to the radio, some story on economics and financial trends and I hear the money guru on there talking about the latest thing in supermarkets is cupholders in the supermarket carts, sometimes known as “buggies”. And I’m thinking, “What? We need cupholders to circulate around the grocery aisles? Refreshment is...
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...
Hug That Tree!
Awww, g’wan...hug the tree. It deserves a little attention. After the bushwhacker weather situations we’ve had around here the last couple of weeks, maybe we’d ought to pay a bit more attention to the greenery instead of taking it for granted all of the time. Many real estate agents will tell you that one of the things that will sell...
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...
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...
Amen for Jacks!
Can I get an “AMEN!” out there? Keep your fingers crossed; Spring may actually be here this time. For the occasion, all of the Jack-in-the-Pulpits at my place have climbed up to their little green lecterns and are giving us palefaces H-E-double toothpicks for all they’re worth. They are in the front where the ferns are finally unfurling, they are...
Parks and Trees…
Well...isn’t April –now that we’ve finally got some weather that resemble Spring—just the greenest month! We’ve got Earth Day. We’ve got Arbor Day. We’ve got Happy Birthday for the National Park System (which will actually be running all year to mark the centennial of the founding of the NPS in 1916...by President Woodrow Wilson, no less—at the direction of...
Boaty McBoatface
Always be careful of what you wish for; you may get it. A warning nicely illustrated by a recent item on various news media. It seems that some British outfit called the National Environmental Research Council, preparing to launch a brand-new $287 million—aw, let’s call it $300 even, like all of those government project go—polar(south) research vessel, thought it would...
Fiscal Fashions
So...I’m listening to a radio program called “Marketplace” and discovered an interesting idea from some economic guru—Michael Bloomburg or Warren Buffett or some such multimillionaire. Whoever this dude was, he said that he frequently followed the MUI—the Men’s Underwear Index(not to be confused with the Modern University of Information and Technology or the Multilingual User Interface)—when deciding the type...
Prodigality
O.K., I can definitely understand the viewpoint of the older brother in the Prodigal Son scenario and I have to wonder if there might be a story to be told about how family life went on after the younger brother returned, all contrite and grateful for a crust of bread, let alone the Fatted Calf. The older brother, upon...
Return of the Prodigal Cat
I started with a dog, you know. Her name was Samantha, which rapidly became “Sammie”; her mother was a purebred apricot poodle and her father was a traveling salesman of some sort...whatever he was selling, she bought it. Anyway, Sammie was a nice dog, a good dog...and not much more discreet than her mama—had three puppies under the couch...
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...
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...
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...
