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...
Speaking of Graduation….
And speaking of graduation…. Well, isn’t everyone? High schools…colleges…pre-schools& kindergartens…wait…pre-schools & kindergartens? Yup. Saw it in the R-C picture congrats. All very well and good, I suppose, and grandparents like to get in encouragement wherever they can but what’s the kid have to look forward to if they’ve already done graduation at age four? Little tykes are going to...
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...
No Pun Intended
There are funny things out there, folks. A radio program the other day had on it a gentleman who had just had a new book published; its title was : The Pun Also Rises… a great play on words itself. I’ll have to get it and treat you to some real groaners. The late, great Donn Olin would have...
Game On!
Now that the baseball has officially started--with a few fits and starts as well as a false spring heat wave--you might notice a few things different from last season. Sure, sure, there are new players; that happens every year, more or less. No. Look at what they’re playing WITH…new bats. Not just new, as in “We bought these this...
Busy Week! Heckuva weekend.
Lots of it was just stuff. You know, things that have to be done but really not planned for except in a sort of fly-by-night fashion--medical events, grocery shopping, yard work-- that kind of stuff. Then there were actually scheduled activities --lunch with the Nelson Literary Musical Club (All decked out in green they were; I wasn’t), choir practice,...
Election Red, White and Blues
Can we please have a rest until closer to November? Good Grief! It got so that I was seriously thinking of just letting the phone ring--I never do that--until the machine picked up or the caller got tired--no caller I.D. here, Chatty Kathy, no screening of calls. In the end, I did not do that; I’m always worried that I...
I also love seed catalogs!
I also love seed catalogs. They’re coming in now and probably will continue until Memorial Day; Hope springs eternal! I used to get lots more. That was before somebody apparently tipped off Burpee’s Seeds and Plants, Stark Bros, Gurney’s, Johnny’s Selected Seeds, Park Seeds, et al. that I had a particularly virulent “black thumb”. Yes, sadly, for green things large...
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...
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...
My Kind of Month
October is my kind of month. It’s interesting. The harvest is winding down; those shocks of corn so prized by decorators are actually passe’ . Nobody uses them any more, unless they’re Amish, of course. Corn pickers are where it’s at as far as harvesting corn is concerned. They’re also one of the reasons why farming has always ranked as...
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...
Going Batty!
So...my question is, if bats (Myotis lucifugus--lucifugus means “flees the light”) are supposed to have such a great echolocation system in their little heads where they emit sounds and then decipher the rebounding sound waves to avoid obstacles and catch their dinner, why can’t they figure out the fact that my front door is wide open so they can...
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...
Fair Season
So here we are in the Fun Season...the Fair Season. Everyone comes up with a reason to promote hot grease and sno cones and enough sugar to sink the island of Puerto Rico. On any given weekend one can drive across the Buckeye State and catch a whiff of the abovementioned gastronomic outrages at nearly every turn....
Party On!
So...there’s this big birthday party at my house, see...first big event here since Christmas, see...significant birthday, see. Oy, oy, oy...such a party!So, the party is to be utilizing the park-like backyard and the covered porch and the custom deck and the flagstone patio and the flood-lit arbor (I told the local photographer, Ronda Brady, that the place was “wedding...
Jackpot!
The Biggest Game in Town came up aces for virtually the entire SummerFest weekend. The brief, scattered showers didn’t seem to have deterred any of the fun-seekers who turned out morning, noon and night to enjoy all of the available activities.The opening of the Windham St. bridge provided a venue that was not available in 2010 and the Lions,...
Belly Up To The Bar Boys!
Well, it hasn’t been quite like that, but close. The rounds of graduation open houses continues apace. What shindigs! Back when I graduated (There was parking for the dinosaurs out back of the barn and we had to rub sticks together to cook the roast beast.), it was pretty much a given that if you had an open house to...
After The Flood
We think that the second dove has not returned to the boat (Genesis 8:6-14) so we might be able to begin thinking about returning to what passes for normal around here.Normal is a pretty flexible term. It included the annual academic awards program, recognizing just rafts of outstanding individuals, many of the usual suspects who’ve been raising the bar...
The End
O.K. So I want to invite everyone to the second annual M-O-M / T-A-T (Machine -O-Mania / Touch-A-Truck) coming up--rain or shine-- on Sunday, May 22 from 10:00 to 2:00 at J. A. Garfield H.S.; admission: adults--$5.00, kids--$3.00. It’s a fund-raiser for the Garfield Academic Challenge team, the QuizMasters, and gives kids of all ages a chance to see...
You Missed It…
You missed it! You missed the LAF/SOMe bus trip to the Dunham Tavern Museum and the West Side Market. What a hoot! The museum was neat; it’s an oasis of green on concrete and steel Euclid Ave. With the main building, a reconstructed log cabin, a barn suitable for larger group activities and actual garden space out back and at...
Green Stuff
Green things are appearing here and there about the estate. Except for the crocuses--or is it croci, plural, you know--most of these items are a mystery to me. No, I lied; I recognize the snowdrops too. Pity they had to bring snow along as well. This green outburst is certainly welcome, after I spent time last fall poking bulbs...
I’m Doomed
I know; this may not be news to some but I was sort of hoping to avoid a swift descent to the fiery furnace for another decade or so, maybe more if I kept moving and eating enough dark chocolate. This assessment has been confirmed by finding in yet another slick magazine in my too-wide assortment of subscription reading material(...
Spring Thaw?
Was that it? The Spring Thaw...New Year’s Day was the whole thing? When the subject comes up for the rest of the season we get to say, “ Been there. Done that.” Doesn’t seem right somehow. We ought to get a chance to get out and wash cars or something; mine is middling filthy--salt-splash and mud-luscious décor bumper to...
