Spoiler Alert
This is about the Portage County Park District, first in what will probably be a series of rants. Portage County DOES HAVE a park district. CATCH : Over 800 A of the land comprising the district are currently inaccessible because of a lack of funds. The budget has been severely cut, with the 2014 revenues projected to be only $99,500...
April Showers
April showers bring May flowers, eh? Somebody alert the providers of floral items. They’re either going to be left twiddling their thumbs because the general public is inundated by blooms of exotic sizes and descriptions springing up along every highway and by-way or their own backyards…or…there will be wholesalers of flowers lurking around corners trying to off-load cheap orchid and...
Out Like A Lamb?
Out like a lamb? Maybe a drippy-wet lamb. Maybe a lamb looking up at the occasional flurries and possible thunderstorms lurking in the wings next week. Baaaa! Enjoy it while you can. Quoting The Old Farmer’s Almanac here, “Showers often; the earth softens. Sunny and sweet. Watch out for sleet!” Sounds like Winter : Lite to me; a sunnier version...
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...
Gone…. GONE…. GONE!
The first department store in Portage County (Chic & Shabby/the Root Store)transformed into a source for home decorating with a distinctive touch…a craftsman fascinated by and devoted to clocks… a fledgling lawyer, an experienced attorney…the Barber of G-Ville…lawn and garden equipment gurus…a quilt shop drawing craft persons from all over the state and beyond…a podiatrist…an audiologist…a community food cupboard...
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...
The Old Farmer Says….
The Old Farmer says of the month of March (and I quote), “In like a sea lion, cold and wet with fishy breath. Rain to snow and snow to rain—di-si-do and back again! This month can’t be trusted; the hinge of spring has rusted.” Well, D’ya think? Good Grief! If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. The bit of doggerel above...
Whoa! Missed it Again!
Mardi Gras, that is. Fat Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday, beginning of the Lenten season. Carnavale, Carnival, Carnaval, Karneval, Faschtnact/Fasching…whatever your ethnic background, if there’s a shot of Catholic in there anywhere (or even if there’s no Catholicism but a lot of fun-lovers), you may be acquainted with Mardi Gras, one way or another. Some folk—like the ones in...
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...
Why are shamrocks considered lucky?
Various symbols and imagery breathe life into St. Patrick's Day celebrations. In addition to Kelly green clothing, leprechauns and Irish flags, shamrocks are commonly seen decorating homes and people. The word "shamrock" comes from the Irish seamrog, which is the diminutive form for the Irish word for clover, and translates roughly to "young clover." Clover is a grass-like plant, and...
Ragnarok
Well, here we go again. The Mayan “end of the world” didn’t pan out, so, now we can look forward to the Viking Apocalypse. It seems that in some enormously long poem in Norse mythology written in the 13th century by( Here’s a name to conjure with) Snorri Sturlson, the gods of just about everything and nothing have a whopper...
Spice of Life
Sometimes bon appetit, the 0h-so-upscale cooking magazine, is just too much. They just assume that everyone has access to—and a budget for—artisan cheeses and spirits, baby organic lettuces, at least four different varieties of milk…and we don’t mean simply whole, skim, 2% and buttermilk…oh no. You’re deprived unless the shelves boast the lactic fluid of cows, goats and maybe the...
Life, Art and Cookies
Recently, I heard an interview with a writer in Nebraska, who compared this winter’s polar vortex conditions to the ninth circle of hell mentioned in Dante’s “Inferno”. That reference brought to mind a quote by writer Oscar Wilde, who said, “Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” Lately I’ve realized that this is not the case, at...
This is Getting OLD
Don’t you just every so often look out the window or open the door or read the weather forecast and feel like the little boy on the internet the other day? The little guy must have been about four years old, bundled up to a fare-thee-well in mittens, hat , snowsuit and he was out shoveling snow, clearing the...
Curses!!
Curse that groundhog! Well, it does depend on which groundhog you are going to believe. The storied Punxsutawney Phil, of Gobbler’s Knob, Pennsylvania, according to his “handler” (like a sports agent, I guess) interrupted his long winter’s nap, peered out of his burrow and predicted six more weeks of winter. This would NOT be hard to do, given our experiences...
File Under…
File under “Sorry we missed this one.” New Years celebrators in London this New Year’s Eve were treated to an interesting array of flavored fun-type festivity-promoters. Indeed! There was banana-flavored confetti, there were orange-scented bubbles, peach-flavored snow, for starters. Mercy! So who first checked out this stuff? Somebody just stuck out his/her tongue and lapped up a healthy (?)...
Here’s Your Chance!
Here’s your chance to investigate the Mpemba Effect. There’s a video of some Canadian dude on the internet performing this interesting experiment. He takes a hard plastic water gun (A Nerf weapon would probably not work; you’ll see why)sucks up boiling water into it (That’s why you use hard plastic) and squirts the water out into the air. The...
“How can I get my dog therapy-certified?”
Many of us here at the Newton Falls Public Library have seen therapy dogs at work, whether at hospitals, nursing homes, or even colleges. Therapy dogs are different from service dogs such as seeing-eye dogs and seizure-response dogs. While service dogs are specifically trained to assist a person with their documented disability, therapy dogs are pets with the training...
Isn’t technology wonderful?
Sports Illustrated reports that there is now a “Smart Sensor” basketball(94Fifty) full of God-only-knows what kind of sensors, nine of ‘em, complete with circuit board, battery pack and Bluetooth relay—don’t ask—which will do amazing things for your mastery of the game. These sensors are processing whatever it is that’s happening with the ball, at your direction, of course, and...
Makin’ A List…
Now that the clock tower lights are lit, Santa has made the first of his (many) local appearances…for lunch, for breakfast, for pizza, etc….it’s time to get down to some serious shopping—preferably local, but wandering off into the exotic every so often. So, in pursuit of exotica (Try looking that up on the internet some times; Sears & Roebuck ,...
“Can you help me find a short story I read in high school? I want to read it again, but I can’t remember what it’s called or who wrote...
At the Newton Falls Public Library, we understand how discouraging it can be when you can’t find what you’re looking for. Our patron remembered that the story was about a son going through his father’s belongings to discover that he had been a prisoner of war in Vietnam. She also remembered that her high school had used the Language...
“I need a book with instructions on hemming blue jeans; it is getting too costly to have someone else hem them for me. I would also like them...
The staff of the Newton Falls Public Library has their own memories of children complaining about the appearance of clothing after shortening or alterations, and can understand a mother wanting to be frugal. We found a variety of instructions for hemming different types of clothing and fabrics in sewing books on our shelves, such as the “Reader’s Digest Complete Guide...
Old Farmers Almanac
I love the Old Farmer’s Almanac…I don’t necessarily take it as gospel but I do love the miscellany of STUFF that is in it. It is a veritable FOUNT of KNOWLEDGE of various off-beat and semi-useful pieces of information. I say semi-useful because some of the wisdom that this publication imparts, I would rather not have to actually have...
Comet ISON
AND…just in case you’ve been obsessing about the Comet ISON(International Scientific Optical Network—used by some Russian astronomers to first locate this fast-moving wonder) the one thing that most astronomers actually agree on is that it is highly unlikely to slam into the Earth, smashing us all to smithereens…that and the fact that nobody around right now is likely to...
Drawbacks To Unseasonable Weather
There ARE drawbacks to having a warm spell this late in the year. Yes, indeed. So…I’m sitting in the living room reading the paper; it’s a breezy, balmy (for November, anyway)fifty-something, sixty-something outside. The room is pleasantly warm enough. It’s evening, getting dark, I’m thinking about getting to bed early after a day that started fairly early for a weekend. Then...
“How do you get rid of a woodpecker?”
One of our Newton Falls Public Library patrons was being pestered by a woodpecker, and was hoping to chase it away before it caused damage to their barn. Fortunately, there are several methods they can try. According to the Audubon Society , woodpeckers peck for three reasons: to mark territory, to search for insects, and to make a hole in...
“Earlier this year, I was diagnosed with tenosynovitis in my hand. Could you find me some more information on it?”
“Earlier this year, I was diagnosed with tenosynovitis in my hand. Could you find me some more information on it?” Though none of us here at the Newton Falls Public Library are doctors, and therefore aren’t qualified to give medical advice, we could certainly provide the resources to help answer our patron’s question. First, we wanted to define tenosynovitis. -Itis...
A Fungus Among Us
The computer strikes again! Here I am typing away at my keyboard-in-the-corner, writing what I’m hoping will be more-or-less reproduced below and—WHAM! It all disappeared. Gone! Gone! Nowhere to be found(Not that I could find it anyway, technological klutz that I am). Nearly a page of deathless prose lost into the ether of cyberspace. What’s REALLY irritating about it...
Rants in My Plants
Weeding and quite a number of other garden/lawn tasks are so essentially mindless that they offer “quality time” for pondering totally unrelated topics that may have “gotten under my skin”, “stuck in my craw(What IS a craw, anyway?)”, “graveled my gizzard”, “frayed my last nerve”…whatever idiomatic expression you might prefer. So I’ve been using the time, perhaps not wisely,...
“I need a recipe for making buttermilk…”
“Help,” our caller said “I need a recipe for making buttermilk. Not the one that uses vinegar or lemon juice; the one that uses cream of tartar.” While the staff of the Newton Falls Public Library was more familiar with the latter, they had heard of the former. We were successful with an online search using the terms “buttermilk cream...