Does the word “relief” bring anything special to your mind except a slogan for an anti-acid? Probably not, unless you grew up in the Great Depression, and there are getting to be fewer of us as the years fly by. “Relief” was a government program to assist jobless families whose savings were gone, whose homes [...]
All through the night, especially during those nights when sleep isn’t quite sleep but a semi-consciousness, sirens wail. The emergency room of a huge hospital is just a country block south of me. Sirens scream 24/7 as law enforcement and fire department personnel do their dangerous duties. During the day, there are loud motorcycles, cars [...]
Once the Fourth of July is history, the rest of the summer seems to break all speed records in racing toward the end of the year. Just last week, someone had the temerity to remind me that six months from that day would be Christmas! I did not thank her for that information. But in [...]
What with 4 1/2 inches of rain one afternoon and a severe colic or twisted gut three days earlier, I’ve come to the conclusion that Mother Nature has decided I need to be taken down a peg or two. Or three. One thing about the rain, though, I can once again see the pond. The [...]
In just a minute or two, the longest day of the year will dawn and summer will officially arrive. Someone had better tell Mother Nature, though. If her rendition of summer is as cockeyed as that of spring was, don’t expect the rhapsodic example of which Henry Wadsworth Longfellow gushed: “…then followed that beautiful season…summer…filled [...]
A dear young friend — she is 45 and to me that is young! — and I were discussing the upcoming holiday weekend and I asked if she had any plans for Decoration Day. “For what?” she asked. “What’s that?” and I corrected my question to Memorial Day. Which got me thinking about the last [...]
Yes! Yes! Yes, I did go horseback riding — not on my exact 87th birthday but 10 days into my 88th year! I know this is not the most important happening I should write about — like the fragrant blizzard of pink and white blossoms now blowing across the driveway, like the two darling goslings [...]
No, I didn’t go horseback riding on my 87th birthday, the first time in many, many years I haven’t observed that tradition — but only because no “suitable” horse was available. Last year, there was a darling mare, Angel, visiting at Judy’s during one of her dressage clinics, and I was privileged to ride her. [...]
If you’re not from the tri-county — Mahoning, Trumbull, Columbiana — area, you might not find this column of interest. On the other hand, if you have a hankering to know what it was like to live in the early 1900s in a small community along the Sandy and Beaver Canal and the middle fork [...]
It’s about time, Mother Nature! You must have finally been paying attention to all the hoopla about “Going Green” and decided to give it a try because everywhere there is, indeed, green! Not all at once This hasn’t happened all at once. I watched the barberry hedges begin to sport a filmy veil that gradually [...]
