Echoes from the Loafers’ Club Meeting
I hate Monday.
Today is Thursday.
It takes me a long time to get over a Monday.
Driving by Bruce's drive
I have a wonderful neighbor named Bruce. Whenever I pass his drive, thoughts occur to me. I hate to brag, but I have a lot of pennies. I’m no billionaire, but I’ve found a penny goes a long way if I never spend it. I was introduced to the world of high finance by a coffee can that became my piggy bank. I grew up with real pigs and a piggy bank that looked nothing like a pig. I spent a few months in a hospital when I was a boy, and family members, friends and neighbors gave my parents silver dollars for me. My parents refused to sell me for my salvage price and put all those silver dollars into a coffee can, which was later stolen from our home. Now I toss coins into a jar. I make it rain! The jar fills and is carted to the local bank, which has a fancy coin-counting machine. Bills promise everything and coins promise little, but I can still make a big decision by flipping a coin.
It’s a small town if:
The city limits signs are all on the same pole.
The cafe’s special is take it or leave it.
The zoo closed after the chicken died.
The mayor is also the constable, the dogcatcher, the Little League coach and a banker.
The traffic light changes weekly.
Someone tells you his other vehicle is a John Deere.
The town shares the one horse with another small city.
You can tell when there is a tornado warning because every resident is outside watching for one.
The first baby of the year was born on August 17.
There are no public restrooms indoors.
A man forgot to turn off his porch light and won the Christmas lights contest.
People plan weddings around spring planting and fall harvest.
Everyone knows what cow pie bingo is.
You grew up on a farm if:
You used something other than paper as toilet tissue.
You called a farm place by the name of a family who had moved away from there before you were born.
You always knew which direction the wind was blowing.
You told a cousin from the city that a cow pie is made of beef.
I’ve learned
To expect delays.
That I learned to trust others while on the school’s teeter-totter.
The problem with all the presidential candidates is that they want to be the president.
The difference between a garage sale and an estate sale is about 500%.
If you worry too much, you have one more thing to worry about.
Bad jokes department
Dwayne Johnson confronted me in front of a Hallmark store. I was between a Rock and a card place.
I bought a small abacus because it’s the little things that count.
I met a microbiologist. He was bigger than I expected.
Never say “288.” It’s two gross.
Nature notes
I’ve believed all my life that someone introduced European starlings to North America in 1890-1891 by the American Acclimatization Society (dedicated to introducing European flora and fauna to North America), and the driving force behind it was Eugene Scheiffelin, who was obsessed with introducing every bird mentioned by Shakespeare into North America. It’s partly true. It likely had nothing to do with Shakespeare. Shakespeare mentioned starlings once in his works, Henry IV, because of their ability to mimic. John Miller and Lauren Fugate of Allegheny College found that starlings were released in the U.S. multiple times in the 1870s and 1880s, and people reported wild flocks during that time. Edwin Way Teale, in his book, “Days Without Time,” published in 1948, had popularized the Shakespeare angle. I read Teale and enjoy his writing. He wrote that Scheiffelin had the curious hobby of introducing all the birds mentioned in the works of William Shakespeare. But the American Acclimatization Society releases in 1890 and 1891 weren’t their first, having released starlings at least once before in the 1870s. The first assertion of Shakespeare’s influence on those releases happened nearly 60 years after the last release. Starling numbers are in decline in North America, with the current population half the size it was 50 years ago. The species is also declining in Europe. Starlings are common and widespread, but according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey, their population has decreased by over 1% per year, a cumulative decline of about 50% between 1966 and 2019.
Meeting adjourned
Don’t rob people of their stories. Be kind and listen.