OK, it's pathetic. I sit at my desk, surrounded by corn fields, and watch 46th Street at Times Square on earthcam.com.
Look! Other people! Walking! And some of them are talking at the same time! And not a Buckeye t-shirt in sight!
Yes, I know most of those people are tourists. But even tourists get temporarily smarter in Manhattan.
It's a bit hard to see detail in this, but there are about 40 birds of various kinds chowing down on our dime here. Somehow the little ... fellows ... manage to scarf up about 25 pounds of sunflower seed and corn every week.
And they get very angry if we let the feeder run dry. Seriously, they sit out there and shriek.
Not in the picture are the rabbits, squirrels, possum and probably deer who visit at night.
The Buckeye Lake Beacon, Newspaper for Buckeye Lake, Ohio
Buckeye Lake Police Blotter:• Dec. 9: A West 4th Street man reported that someone shot his truck with a paintball gun.
• Dec. 9: Officers were dispatched near to the Jett laundromat on a domestic violence incident between a mother and daughter. The mother was trying to keep the daughter from running away from home.
• Nov. 9: A Cliff Street woman reported her home was shot with a paintball gun.
• Nov. 9: An Albanese’s Food Gallery employee reported two customers worked together to shoplift nearly $200 worth of items. The female thief said she was going to her car to get her credit card to pay for the items. She never returned and another thief sneaked the groceries out of the building while she was gone.
• Nov. 10: A West 1st Street man reported someone shot his home with a paintball gun.
• Nov. 10: A Grandstaff man reported someone shot his home with a paintball gun. In various paintball related reports, the paint is described as “pinkish orange.”
• Dec. 12: Officers pulled over a Glouster woman whose vehicle’s license tags had expired last June.
And I promise never to come back.
Wisconsin Man Runs Over, Eats Seven-Legged Transgendered Deer
The Buckeye Lake Beacon, Newspaper for Buckeye Lake, Ohio
Nov. 27 edition, classified ad:
Knocked up, no friends? Get Free room & board, just keep an old man company. P.O. Box 17, Buckeye Lake, OH 43008.
In a strip mall in Heath, OH, Nails 3000 and Doggy Style Self-Service Dog Wash.
Nails 3000 used to be called Nails 2000, but they wisely rebooted just before Y2K, and are thus good to go for another thousand years.
Further on down the road. I am told that these are giant Norweigian sheep. Apparently they hibernate during the summer and sometimes attack if awakened suddenly. Nature can be cruel.
Took a walk down the road, saw soybeans, attempted conversation with soybeans (disappointing results). They certainly look RoundUp Ready, don't they? Not a weed in sight. You'll be eating this poisoned crap in your PowerBars next year.
Pretty sky, isn't it?
The antenna for our wireless internet service. The Morning Glories don't seem to impede the signal.
Lovely Millersport, on the shores of scenic Buckeye Lake.
A hardware store, Post Office, and a gas station (owned, ultimately, by Hugo Chavez, though I'm not sure anyone around here realizes that). Oh yeah, and a bank run by innumerates. We don't need no steenking library, we got us a football team.
Heat index is now 105 F. Lousy little window air-conditioner almost useless.
We are beset by nature. I saw the largest coyote I've ever seen running out of the cornfield across the road the other day, apparently part of the pack we often hear howling at night. The neighbors' beagle is missing, along with all the rabbits we usually see, and every time we go for a walk down the road in the evening there's another dismembered critter in our path.
Brownie and Fifi the Cat enjoying the day.
Radio says four to six inches of snow tomorrow. Go figure.
I knew there was a reason we didn't take down the Christmas lights.
Won't the neighbors be surprised....
Lancaster Eagle-Gazette - Lancaster, OH
POLICE BEAT
# Between 5 p.m. Monday and 6 a.m. Tuesday, someone entered a building belonging to Royal Pad Products, 403 S. Ewing St., Lancaster.
Stolen items included a circular saw valued at $50; a drill valued at $10; an emergency car kit valued at $20; miscellaneous hand tools valued at $100; a large socket set valued at $50; and a hand saw valued at $10, according to a Lancaster police report.
# Between 2:15 p.m. Saturday and 11:30 a.m. Sunday, someone entered a home in the 7100 block of Alspach Road, Carroll.
Stolen items included an air compressor, drill, jigsaw and two combination sets that included drills, saws and lights, according to a Fairfield County Sheriff's Office report.
The loss is estimated at $1,109.
# Between 9 p.m. Friday and 3 p.m. Sunday someone entered a 1989 GMC van parked in the 500 block of Amanda-Northern Road.
Stolen items included three nailers valued at $900 and a stapler valued at $300, according to a Fairfield County Sheriff's Office report.
# Between 7 p.m. Friday and 7 a.m. Sunday, someone entered a two homes under construction on Hocking Trail Avenue, Canal Winchester.
Stolen items included four jacks, braces, spud bar, ladder, copper fittings and trowels, according to a Fairfield County Sheriff's Office report.
The total loss was estimated at $5,490.
# Between 1 p.m. Sunday and 8:30 a.m. Monday, someone broke into a home and barn in the 10600 block of Marcy Road, Canal Winchester.
Stolen items included a gas generator valued at $4,000 and a tractor valued at $25,000, according to a Fairfield County Sheriff's Office report.
"Maybe you take orders from stuffed animals, but I don't."
Barn advertising, central Ohio, by Ben Shahn, 1938.
I came across this while browsing Documenting America, the parent site of the Library of Congress exhibition mentioned below.
You can still play "Mail Pouch" in Ohio, although the signs are nowhere near as common as they used to be. Basically, all you need is a car full of people driving through the countryside, and the first one to see the sign shouts "Mail Pouch!" That's it. This is, after all, Ohio.
My parents were long-time friends of Ben and Bernarda Shahn (Bernarda died just last year at 101). They were neighbors in Roosevelt, NJ (which has an interesting history) right after WW II.
Fuzzy-Wuzzy, whose childhood portrait graces the top of this page, took a trip to the vet this week to be neutered, due to his sudden and enthusiastic ambition to mark every room in the house as his territory. He emerged, alas, with an upper respiratory bug that had him wheezing in a most alarming manner, which led, in turn, to us staying up past three am two nights running nursing and petting the poor little fellow. He's on antibiotics now and seems to be improving.
Elsewhere in the news, I spent yesterday afternoon sealing the front door with plastic sheeting in an attempt to cut down on the freezing wind blowing through the house. This house was built circa 1870 and renovated in the 1980s by a certifiable moron who evidently thought the way to keep warm was to rip out any existing insulation and replace it with fake wood paneling. With winds coming straight off the fields to the south at 30 mph for much of the winter, things can get seriously chilly in the living room.
One word of advice for anyone who dreams of living in an old house: don't. Don't even dream of it unless you have pots of money, nerves of steel, and a thirst for endless disasters.
Personally, I'm zero for three in this game.
• Nov. 10: A W. 5th Street man reported that his wife hit him in the nose and he wanted to press charges. Later, he decided that he wouldn’t press charges and just wanted her to leave.
• Nov. 11: A Walnut Road woman purchased a trailer from her son, but her son’s live-in girlfriend refused to leave after the trailer was purchased.
Auction at the Fairfield County Fairgrounds, Lancaster, Ohio.
Kathy bought a box of ceramic rabbits.
When displaced New Yorkers wind up in L.A., they all seem to gravitate to Mulberry Pizza because it's the only place west of the Mississippi where they make pizza that doesn't resemble a shower clog doused with melted Velveeta and ketchup.
I'd say "west of New Jersey," myself. Ohio pizza is godawful. Tasteless gunk on a stale saltine with way, way too much sugar in the sauce. But folks love it. There's a place in Buckeye Lake called Pizza Cottage that serves possibly the worst pizza I've ever had -- bland, soggy crust, sugary catsup sauce, weird, synthetic cheese -- but people around here regard the place with a near-religious devotion and line up in the parking lot to get in. Go figure.
Fortunately, there is a place in Pickerington (about 20 miles from us) called Pizzeria New York that serves excellent real New York pizza. It only took us seven years and 500 hideous "pizza" experiences to find it.
Bucks and snowmen and Santa on rocks, Thornville, OH