It’s All About The Home
Today I had a customer in the store looking at bar stools. Before we could get to the fun stuff like style and color, we had a few “technical” issues to iron out. Issues like what size and how many were going to fit at her kitchen island. It was at this point that I realized I could turn...
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...
Minks and Otters
As promised, we will continue up the family tree of the toughest family on the block, the Mustelids. This week we will be discussing the “middle “children of the family. But make no mistake, they are just as tough, fearless, and bloodthirsty as their siblings. Next time we will discuss the big boys, the Martens, Fishers, and Wolverines. Now...
“Respect is earned; not given.”
While Marlon Brando in The Godfather usually gets the credit for this quote, he was actually borrowing a bit of wisdom from the Pakistani Beggar King Hussein Nishah (1538–1599), who wrote, “Treat people the way you want to be treated. Talk to people the way you want to be talked to. Respect is earned, not given.” My father often drove...
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...
It’s All About The Home
Welcome to “It’s all about the Home”. Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Jane Ulmer and I am the co-owner of The Wayside Workshop in Aurora. The Wayside Workshop is our family business that my dad started in 1976 in Willoughby, Ohio. We spent about 6 years in Chardon before moving to Aurora Farms where we...
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...
Not my fault!
Working at Garrettsville’s Precinct A for thirteen hours on Election Day—with a fairly steady stream of citizens exercising their rights, good for them—was enough to occupy my time; I had no occasion to commit mayhem on the Portage County Board of Elections computer system, though I’m sure there are those who probably think that I could do it by...
“Don’t stir up the hornet’s nest!”
“Why go looking for trouble?” Dad would ask. “Some trouble is sure to find you at some point in life, but only a fool makes himself a target by intentionally causing a commotion.” Don’t stir up the hornet’s nest is a familiar idiom, likening hornets to angry humans, dating back to the first half of the 1700s. In case you...
Turnpike Proud!
Well, that was interesting...and informative...and fun too. The Ohio Turnpike had an Open House on Saturday, October 24, celebrating its 60th Anniversary; it officially opened on October 1, 1955, all 241 miles of it. The construction took 38 months, in sections, employed some 10,000 workers—and 2300 bulldozers—at a cost of some $326 million, give or take. It connected to the...
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...
Stuck in Ohio…And Proud Of It!!
During my lifetime I have been blessed with many opportunities to experience nature and our natural world. I have been to National Parks from Maine to California, talked to God in a grove of Redwoods, touched sequoias, climbed to 14,000 feet in the Rockies to sooth my feet in a cold alpine lake, hiked part of the Appalachian Trail...
Forget the Memoir
Everybody is writing memoirs lately. It’s the literary style du jour in all of the magazines and reviews. So I’m thinking, hey, my memories are as good as anybody’s, why not hop to it and make the big bucks? One reason may be that my memories are certainly just fine, but getting them to show up on cue is...
Whadda Prize
It’s awards season just about all of the time now. There are awards in television, for the theatre, for movies, for sports of every stripe and description, for just about every genre of music that one can think of( and some that I don’t really classify as music, but, rather as “entertainment”)—country, pop, rap, classical, you name it. But...
Pretty Fair Fairs
Well, I seem to have hit my quota again this year. A little shy, perhaps, but got the basics done. I am speaking, of course, of fair attendance. I really like going to fairs. It’s the food, mostly. Nothing like hot grease wafting through the air to set the rustic mood and a culinary challenge. I got to the Portage...
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...
Cat-astrophe!
At one time, there were, give or take, six—yes, six—cats in this house. That was, so to speak, the high water mark, but the tide seems to have receded rather precipitously lately. See, I started out, innocently enough, with just one, chosen from a litter just out of town advertised with a sign that said, “Free Kittens”. He was orange...
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...
Smooth As Silk
Within the natural world there are many spectacular things. But none more spectacular than to find the ethereal Luna moth or the massive Cecrcopia or Polyphemus moth. Theses giant moths can have a wing span of up to six inches or more. Not only are the adults spectacular, but so are the caterpillars. Some get to be the size...
Missing Brains…
I knew that I misplaced something. The Associated Press recently reported that nine—count ‘em, NINE—brains had been found alongside a railroad track near Gouverneur, northern New York state. Authorities said not to worry. Well, I won’t but it seems like there might be someone out there who is not ABLE to worry because the mechanism is missing. Anyway, the found objects...
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...
A Stitch In Time!
Here’s one for the Village Piece Makers, you know, the dedicated quilt-makers who every two years come up with a lovely handmade spread to be raffled off at the Christmas Walk. I don’t know how they come up with the patterns—maybe they make them up themselves—but recently the AB-J ran a cartoon (It’s a regular series called Non Sequitur, usually pretty apt for what they put out there) that might get a rise from out local needlewomen, even Ellie Foster Monroe who does “Quilts for Causes”, contributing to efforts that she supports.
12 Tips for Spring Home Buying in a Seller’s Market
With spring finally here for most of the nation, prospective homebuyers can look at houses and condos without traipsing through snow and ice. Better weather, plus the traditional belief that families search for homes so they can move in between school years, makes spring a major homebuying season in much of the country.
Like A Frog Trying To Ride A Bicycle
“Hey Dad, why don’t you think about taking some courses at Kent State. You are a senior citizen so you could take them free. You would meet some people and you might just like it.” So said my daughter Carrie who is also a Professor at Kent. Yeah, but I’ll be far older than anyone else in that classroom,...
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...
Begin the Beguine
“Begin the Beguine” was a popular song written by Cole Porter in 1934. To my father, it was yet another one-liner he’d toss into conversation for dramatic effect. My dad may have been an absent-minded professor, but he was a very intentional father. He never missed the opportunity to instill in us five children the high virtues of hard work,...
“It is not fit for man nor beast outside”
The first time I heard that saying was when I was a little kid, it was 15 below, the wind howling, snow blowing and I was freezing. I wondered how the animals, insects, and plants were able to survive these harsh conditions. I was able to bundle up in layers, go inside and sit by the fireplace, or get...
It Must Be February
Must be February, the Easter candy is on the shelves. And the “cabin fever news stories” are circulating. That’s what appears when all of the news outlets are sick and tired of going hysterical about the weather—record-high snowfall, record-low temperatures, funny (or not-so) pictures of people digging out, names for the storms (How about Hortense? We haven’t seen that name...
Cabin Fever Factoids
Being stuck inside(Where it’s marginally warmer) for extended periods can send a person(at least this one)over the edge, or at least out on the slippery part. While out there, one can run across some quirkily weird items in the news, To wit...
