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,( no masks or sacrificial animals) as well as new hardware to replace the fried bits and the ones clogged by cat hair. There’s a stint as the sous chef for a lunch at church following an untimely funeral. Evening begins with a rousing session of the regular meeting of the Garrettsville-Hiram Rotary at the Kennedy Center, Hiram College. Garrettsville SummerFest is coming! The week end will be full. Not to mention the Goldfire Realty Tractor Parade, there’s the GRAND PARADE, with Barb Bejger as Grand Marshal. How GRAND is that? Rehearsals for the Community Band at Hiram’s Fourth of July festivities. Two engagement for “the theatah” this week. No rest for the wicked, as my dad used to say.
But NO computer to chronicle all of this hub-bub!
A report is also due on my recent attendance at THE METHODIST CHRONICLES, part II (Actually, I’ve been attending for many years but have only just begun to try to shoot it back home on the internet—sent bulletins from the wi-fi-equipped lobby of the Fountain Inn at Lakeside. The year before, I attempted this feat from the patio of an ice cream shop but didn’t succeed at much beyond getting hot fudge on my backpack—not a big breakthrough in electronic communication. The Methodist gathering was mostly uneventful…no big floor fights(It was all very mannerly, of course), no big voting/election procedures to deal with, no weather crises(One year a thunderstorm took aim at the electrical system in the auditorium and knocked it clean out. Trying to do business in the dark without a sound system and with a thousand or so people trying to tell their version of what had just happened and what should be done about it is pretty futile.)
No computer!
Other things are going on too, for sure, like picking strawberries at Monroe’s (Never fails, just as I’m getting ready to go off to Lakeside, the berries come in, ripe and delicious and—like time and tide—wait for no man…or me). Finally getting there, I find it always entertaining to listen to everyone else in the fields and what they’re doing…especially families with children : “No, we don’t put stones in our baskets.” “Just the red ones, Matthew.” Only pick the ones in THIS row, Ava.” “You have to WHAT?” One communication-enslaved chap was on his cell phone while trying to supervise kids and pick berries at the same time (Not real successful at any of those things.) One young woman and her current squeeze were chatting as they picked and she was saying that she hadn’t realized how low-to-the-ground strawberry plants were. She also asked him if this agricultural experience made him feel like a farmer. I didn’t hear the reply but I’ll bet it wasn’t the same as Roger Monroe’s would have been. The strawberries are so good that I may even go back to pick some of the sweet cherries, new this year.
Last graduation open house is now history. I’ve tapered off a little since retirement. Two weeks ago there was a Grad-A-Palooza that set some sort of celebratory achievement bar. The most recent one was an all-round achievement too—family-friendly/friendly family.
No computer!
No extensive coverage of Hiram’s Alumni (of which I am one…alumna, actually) Weekend, which rejoiced in absolutely perfect weather and what looked like good attendance. I got to see some folks who graduated in my class and re-connected with a friend who had graduated from Hiram a year ahead of me. She now lives in Germany near the world-renowned research institute where she worked, which probably has something to do with the fact that I probably haven’t seen her since she walked across that stage fifty years ago. We traded reminiscences about dear old Wellington High School—friends, faculty, fruits of the spirit—and current lives. Since she had been a chemistry major, I spotted her with Joe and Vi Denham (Some Garfield little tikes might remember her). A good time!
No computer!
So…I’m writing this in longhand, or, rather, my standard, idiosyncratic, rapid print honed for years on ancient blackboards—later on whiteboards which were not as forgiving—and groaned about by generations of students, without exception. And, speaking of Wellington High School, I learned this technique from my world history teacher, Frederick Francis Puderbaugh, who was quite a card, and a fascinating pedagogue(Once, during the test on the Chinese Boxer Rebellion, he patrolled the room saying, “Many men smoke but Fu Manchu.”).
The staff at The Villager will have to decipher this scratching as best they can. If I truly wrote in longhand, it would require the services of some archaeologist and /or philologist adept at translating stone tablets or papyri from lost civilizations ( The teenager in the comic strip “Zits” was shown last week in a Fred Flintstones outfit writing on cave walls when his friend popped in a asked how long his internet had been down. Kid wasw chewing on a chicken leg when he replied, “about an hour”) The information contained herein is not quite at the level of the cave paintings at Lascaux or cuneiform tablets from Babylon, but close.
Be that as it may, if there are any untoward turns of phrase or objectionable words and illustrations, the fault rests with the translators. I would never do such a thing, would I?
No computer? !#%#^&*#+~!#$%!!*+##//&^@`!
