Time Flies
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 recent weeks have been an example of pandemonium! (from the...
PARTY CENTRAL!!!
You know, the saying goes, “Be careful what you wish for.” Ain’t it the truth! The Villager took a brief hiatus on the Fourth, giving staff and media stars (That’s you, Benjamin.) a little time to set off and/or observe firecrackers and recoup after all of the frenetic activity of the SummerFest—BEST EVER—and come out swinging for the rest of...
No Computer! Received via email — Thank Goodness!
So…the lightning storm took out the computers—desk top, laptop, probably the remote control for the alarm clock, for all I know—and the Villager deadline is looming on Monday. What to do? What to do? The schedule is filling up : The computer guru who is working on the problem will be arriving with his bag of magic spells and incantations,(...
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...
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...
Spam
Just in time for the summer cooking-out season, the Hormel company has now fessed up to producing ten--that’s 10 different kinds of SPAM. Well, who’d a thunk it? Yes! You have your regular old Spam ( which the company likes to call “Spam Classic”). You have Spam Lite, Spam ”with real Hormel Bacon”, Spam with cheese, hot & spicy Spam...
A Bad Spell
It wasn’t pretty. The brain trust here at the Weekly Villager sallied forth to adventures in orthography by participating in the22nd Annual Community Spelling Bee for Literacy, co-sponsored by the Portage County Literacy Coalition Community Partners at the NEOMED Conference Center on Friday, May 24, 20013. And fourth…maybe fifth… was about where we wound up…out of five. Like lots of vital...
That was a fine old time!
That was a fine old time! Well, if you weren’t trying to get anyplace in a hurry, that is. The annual Garrettsville community garage/yard/porch sale seems to have attracted quite a crowd for most of the weekend. Some of the narrower thoroughfares were a challenge for those just trying to get into their own driveways. Down Park Ave. some savvy...
Ha Ha!
`You thought that spring had come, just because you looked at a calendar and got out your flip-flops and sunscreen (I wear sunglasses all year, so that’s really no indication), not to mention making pool plans. Think again, Hummingbird-watcher. I DID hang out four loads of wash on the line to dry; they didn’t even freeze. Planted several new flowers--I...
Getting Old is NOT for Sissies!
Just dealing with the medical and insurance issues is enough to send a rational individual(That would be me…no snickering out there) around the bend. I will be the first to admit that my medical and insurance issues are--knock on wood--WAY less fraught with difficulty than many other folk out there who have to deal with catastrophic situations and illnesses. BUT…...
Become a Master Gardener
The Ohio State University extends itself into every county in the state--all 88 of them. These are called--what else--extension offices and they offer information, advice and services to local residents. This can cover agriculture & natural resources, community development, nutrition, family & consumer science, 4-H programs--a whole bunch of things. It’s the largest non-formal education system in the world. ...
Caution ~ Auction!
The Kiko folks have taken to putting up signs of this nature along roads where one of their commercial activities is going on, and with good reason. These secondary highways are plenty full of just plain drivers, let alone the avid auction-goers looking for a place to park--without sliding into a ditch or quicksand (as I found to my...
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...
Spring Things
How’re you liking Spring so far? Yes, indeedy, the official astronomical beginning of Spring was on Wednesday, March 20 at 7:02, EDT ( Or 11:02, UTC). Actually, I lied; according to the Farmer’s Almanac there is no “official” start to any of the seasons. That all depends upon the climate of an individual country. It IS, of course, the Vernal...
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...
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...
How do I get on these lists?
How do I get on these lists? Bad enough that I get pleas from every animal rescue organization on the planet--puppies, kittens, polar bears, horses, donkeys, whales, big cats, farm animals, exotic animals (I tend to hope that abusers, traffickers and slaughterers will all fry in hell), you name ‘em. I also get tree-hugger stuff--parks, water, trees, natural resources, pollution...
The Muse Is Angered
Well, I just hate it when electrical things get weird and I have to do something about the situation without having a CLUE as to how to approach the problem. So, I go to start writing another of my pieces of deathless prose for inclusion in The Weekly Villager ( This is something that I do on a regular basis...
What We Got For Christmas
Y’ know that old pop/novelty song, “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth”? He sort of lisps and whistles through the tune. Real cute. Ever wonder what the kid actually GOT for Christmas? (This is all sort of a segue into the next topic, which is what I got for Christmas, which, as it applies to humans...
Party On!
Well, yes, it IS that season of the year when all sorts of disparate groups have their annual Christmas parties. The barrage has begun already. Hiram College hosted a seasonal soiree last week for Friends (That’s Friends, with a capital F), faculty types and festive individuals of all stripes, featuring a number of tours de force by AVI, their supplier...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Curiouser and curiouser…
Curiouser and curiouser…as Alice said during her adventures in Wonderland…. NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration)’s Mars Science Laboratory has just succeeded in landing the spacecraft Curiousity on Mars, the culmination of more than three decades of planning and building, theorizing and research, not to mention scrounging for money. The possibility of finding evidence of life on Mars is a motivator,...
Friendly People…
My! There are so many really friendly people on the internet. An individual named Trixie--doesn’t she sound friendly already--lets me know that somebody wants to meet me. Well, doesn’t everyone? An individual…or corporation, after all, the Supreme Court says that corporations are people too, which is part of the reason you’re getting all of those dreadful election-year ads on your...
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...
Business Plan?!?!?
Awwwrighty-tighty, here’s the plan. Dick, Larry, Casey…. Listen up! What you need to do is put the entire village of Garrettsville under roof, hire all or nearly all of the inhabitants and you can play in the big leagues with the Hartville Hardware which just had its grand opening last weekend. Holy Schmoley! The place needed a map to direct customers to...
In Transit
June 5, 2012. LOOK! Up in the sky! Nah. It was not Superman. He’s out making movies with the other Superheroes. It was the transit of Venus…and don’t think that if you missed it last week, you’ll just see it the next time. Because of the way that Venus and the Earth orbit around the sun--not in the same plane but...
Coming This Summer….
So, vacation time is here. What to do? Where to go? How about museums--educational, right?--of culinary phenomena? You could start with the National Mustard Museum( formerly the Mt. Horeb Mustard Museum) in Middleton, Wisconsin, found on the National Registry of Hysterical Places, perched atop the Condimental Divide. It features over five thousand various mustard-filled items from some sixty countries and...
