Weekend Travels
Well, that train left the station without me aboard. I had been planning to take the Portage County Farm Tour but it turns out that it was held on Saturday instead of Sunday and my schedule was all wrapped around the Aurora Band show, Thunder Over Aurora, so it was a setback to open the Record on Sunday and see...
Favorite Son
This commonly-used political term came to mind the other day when my mom sent me a clipping from our local newspaper back in Wellington (Lorain County, west of here on St. Rtes. 58 & 18), either the Elyria Chronicle-Telegram or the Wellington Enterprise—I really didn’t check. In politics, the term usually refers to an up-and-coming sort that has aspirations...
Trying To Embrace The Dating Dot Coms Part 3 of a Series
Why do people get hooked up with on-line dating services like EEK-Grominy and Lighter Dot Com. Well, if you believe all the hype shown you in the 90 second TV commercials it is because you want to find the right partner, that special someone, someone to marry. Of course it is also possible that maybe you just want to...
Thoughts From the Big Store
Every so often I make my way out of town(Somebody else is in charge as soon as I cross the village limits, just so everything does not “go to hell in a handbasket”. So far, so good.)and I frequently take the opportunity to “people watch” –especially when I go to one of the “BIG” stores, where there are a...
A Boardinghouse Reach?
The new boarder has apparently settled in...as if there were any question about that. She seems to have figured out the daily routine and grasps the fact that at certain times of the day, she can caterwaul as loudly as she likes, it still won’t get her whatever it is she wants. On the other hand, she’s terminally cute...
Back in the Saddle
“Back in the Saddle Again…Out where a friend is a friend…Where the longhorn cattle feed on the lowly Jimson weed…We’re back in the saddle again….” (Was that Gene Autry?. Gene had a sidekick named Pat Butram, I think, who always says said his name so that it sounded more like “artery”. Made him sound like a medical condition. I...
Foodtrucks in 1966
Have you noticed the abundance of competing food trucks at events you attend? Is this a machination of the current marketing minds? Excepting for the good humor truck and the milk man in his distinctly peculiar looking milk truck, I don’t remember food trucks being at events. Maybe the current food trucks are the modern manifestations of the old...
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....
Notes From The Vineyard
January is one of my favorite times of the year at the winery. Even though January brings in our “winter hours” (Friday and Saturdays from 3pm – 9pm) we are quite busy working behind the scenes at the winery. We are doing the usual work in the cellar, checking the wine from this past fall, monitoring the juice to...
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...
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...
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...
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...
Six Reasons A Real Estate Deal Can Fall Apart
You fell deeply in love with an updated Victorian, knocked a few grand off the asking price, and maybe even bought a spiffy camelback sofa for your new living room. Sweet! Still, until you close and the keys are in hand, there’s a sliver of dread in your mind: What if your dream of homeownership falls apart at the...
Yes Virginia, There Really Is A Spring
So.... I’m walking along early in the morning now and there are more and more bird sounds out there to be heard. During the winter there are always a few--cardinals, goldfinches, the ever-present sparrows, miscellaneous die-hards who have memorized the locations of every birdfeeder within several hundred yards. You also get the occasional Wrong Way Corrigan who wandered here...
WWJD: The Maiden Voyage
Brio would not get into his carrier and he dislikes being picked up and carried so the next step was to attach his leash and walk him to the van! He pulled a Houdini and slipped right out of it; thank goodness that did not happen someplace where the noisy world would have spooked him into doing a runner!I...
All That Glitters
Thought for today : “All that glitters is not gold.” And, just for good measure, “Don’t count your chickens before they’re hatched.” Thoughts to be thunk when you get a phone call purporting to give you large sums of money that you did not know you had even signed up for. Just sayin’. How do I know this? Thereby hangs...
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...
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...
How Can I Benefit from Tax-Advantaged Investments??
For many people, tax-advantaged investing is an excellent way to reduce their taxes. And while many of the traditional tax-advantaged strategies have been eliminated, there are still alternatives left that can help you reduce your taxes. Some are described below. Real Estate Partnerships Two of the most common types of real estate partnerships are low-income housing and historic rehabilitation. The federal...
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...
Memories of Christmas Past
Isn’t it funny how a smell can instantly take you back to a time and a place where you first experienced it? For me, when I smell crayons, I’m six years old, and back-to-school supply shopping. My mom would take me and my platoon of siblings to Kmart, long before the invention of the world’s largest retailer. There we’d...
“You’re your own worst enemy.”
As a professor and student advisor, my father spent a lot of time listening to people’s goals and their struggles on their way to meet them. Most often, these people would be highly critical, either of others or of themselves. My father would analyze their motives, character flaws and excuses as they made their case. More often than not —...
NOT One Of My Better Weeks
Not one of my better weeks; suffice it to say that I’m now looking for a new car and not a rehab facility. That’s the good part. Time to move on. The rollercoaster begins again : school is starting! Whooeee! Anyone got an office/coffee klatsch/bowling league/civic group/ neighborhood betting pool going on whether the newly -added-on-to Garfield Elementary School will...
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...
We’ve Been Sentenced To…
Finally ! A national observance I can, as an educator, relate to. I mean, I can serve as a fine example on April Fool’s Day and all, but Bastille Day, Ember Day –any of them, Sadie Hawkins Day (I do miss Al Capp, though), Lammas Day, Cheeseburger Day, Spaghetti Day, Dress up Your Pet Day, Appreciate Law Enforcement Day,...
SmartAssemblage?
he Mighty G-Men came away with the top standing in the very small school division and one of the top ten individual scorers in the entire meet. Varsity team members at the competition included Jack Rado, Cameron Edwards, Rene Fenshaw, Cass Swenson, Lillian Kercher; team members unable to attend included Katey Cisney, Emma Huter and Ellie Shay; they deserve credit too, a team doesn’t get to be good unless practices and competitions are an over-all effort, you know, a TEAM.
Just When All Hope Was Lost…
Imagine a dried-out sponge… no moisture, no spring or flexibility, just a hole-y husk capable of little else besides absorbing something new. That was the condition of Brenda Reiner’s bone marrow before she received a life-saving bone marrow infusion from an anonymous donor five years ago. Unfortunately, that was also the condition of her life: She had received two different...
All of The Nuts
So I’m walking around town and noticing…. What a lot of nut trees--black walnut, butternut, hickory, etc.--there are around here. Probably has something to do with the number of squirrels there are around here too. You can see the remains of gnawed-upon squirrel party refreshments all over the place. Plenty of gum tree gumballs too, all over the place. Makes...
“I remember many years ago that there were a pair of pianists who played the song Exodus. Can you find me their names?”
“I remember many years ago that there were a pair of pianists who played the song Exodus. Can you find me their names?” Some of the more mature library staff also remembered the pair and that their initials were F & T, but nothing more. The online search for the words “dual pianists played Exodus” brought immediate results. The Wikipedia...
