Reading the daily horoscope is always good for a laugh, especially when it predicts wonderful romantic encounters plus great wealth and adventurous travel. Mine for Oct. 15 expounds on stress, noting, “You’ve probably heard that there is good stress and bad stress. However, just now, you’d be wise to avoid both kinds. Take the measures [...]
To paraphrase the famous lines from Robert Burns’ To a Mouse poem: The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. (If you want the Scottish brogue version: The best laid schemes o’ mice and men gang a’ft agley.) Today’s plans were to play outside after first writing the column, maybe getting some [...]
In the column for the Sept. 11 edition, I wrote about all the scary storms everywhere else and hoped the other shoe would not drop. Well, didn’t it drop! When our area received microbursts and wind gusts upward of 60 miles per hour (or more some say), it is really frightening. And the odd part [...]
With the scary hurricanes and scary tornadoes and scary severe thunderstorms swirling all around us, we keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak, and hopefully by the time you read this, we’ll still be waiting. Amidst all of this, I found a lovely quotation that should give us pause, and to [...]
They were such an unlikely pair, but pair they were. Playing together. Sleeping together. Eating together. They were Hamilton, 70 lovable pounds of boxer mix, and Winston, maybe 8 pounds of Jack Russell terrier, a bundle of lovable, feisty, endless energy. Winston was boss. No one ate until Winston finished his meal, not even Jesse, [...]
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 [...]
“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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
