Long before November, the television’s remote or its mute button or both will self-destruct. With my help.
Witness the gag reflex for the explicit commercials for what should be very personal problems for men and women, invariably aired at supper time. Hit the button.
And now pre-election political come-ons for both parties are repeated over and over, […]
“A funny thing happened on the way to …” and it should continue “the Forum”, but in this case, it was the recycling center.
Happily, the center is only about a block from me, and I recycle everything possible, so I make the trip about once a week. (And I am always appalled at the terrible […]
If there is one thing that will get you off your duff, whether or not you feel like it, it is the impending arrival of out-of-town guests.
Suddenly, your reasonably clean house and reasonably tidy barn look filthy, your just-mowed lawn seems to have turned into a hay field, your adequate supply of food and beverage […]
These 8-1/2 acres I have managed to save from almost wall-to-wall development represent such a small refuge, but refuge it is, and I constantly marvel at the variety of wildlife that has found it.
Here I can blink back at the fireflies over the pasture at dusk so it resembles a trackless city. Here I can […]
Like a breaking floral wave, the locust blossoms frothed and foamed in the breeze, their inimitable fragrance beckoning bees whose humming was an audible drone.
In our back yard at home, when the grass stretched down the little grade to Yellow Creek, there were maybe six towering locust trees and when they were in flower, we […]
The extremely heavy book in my lap as I write this column is titled National Encyclopedia of Business and Social Forms and Embracing the Laws of Etiquette and Good Society.
Written by James D. McCabe and printed by the Home Publishing Co. of Pittsburgh, Pa., in 1882, it contains 838 pages. This particular copy, according to […]
No matter your opinion of the late but unmourned winter — since this is a family publication we’ll not offer our thoughts — it would seem that every flowering shrub, tree, bush and even traditional spring flowers believed it was the best ever.
Maybe we’re mistaken, since the winter seemed so endless, but didn’t everything […]
Every spring, this column is committed to bring you in poetry the scent of hyacinths as you read once again the advice of an old saying:
If thou of fortune be bereft
And in thy store there be but left
Two loaves: sell one,
And with the dole,
Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul …
Now spring can really begin! And […]
Whatever happened to the March lamb? Did the ferocious March lion have lamb for lunch before slinking back to his lair, growling and lashing his tail as he went?
Do you remember my warning after January’s benign presence that somewhere down the road Mother Nature’s payback would take place, and I was right on the money. […]
Before launching a paean to spring — surely it is here by now — I must express fervent thanks to readers and friends who took the time and trouble to send me condolences about the Feb. 26 death of my sister, Barbara.