You kinda gotta laugh.
If you pay any attention to the national news you have seen how Washington, D.C. has gone more berserk than normal. The cause of this particular derangement is this year’s emergence of the proud members of brood X of the 17-year cicada.
My maternal grandmother, were she still alive, would have turned 141 years old today.
In the spring of odd-numbered years, it’s my task to upgrade the operating systems on my computers. It sometimes goes uneventfully.
It’s not nostalgia that leads me to think of a television show that all but disappeared more than 50 years ago. I bring up the once-famous “GE College Bowl” for an entirely different reason.
In March 1981 a moderately successful television program premiered on ABC. “The Greatest American Hero” was a semi-spoof superhero show that ran for three seasons, neither a huge hit nor a bomb.
We’re not supposed to be surprised that Ernest Elbert Midkiff has died, which he did last Wednesday. He was, after all, 99 years old. He would have turned 100 on Veterans Day.
Though it’s not true all over the country, here in southeastern Ohio we are enjoying an early spring. As I write this, the forecast for today, Wednesday, has a high of 63 degrees, with plenty of recent days having reached 70 and above. A year ago today it only got to 46 degrees here.
For the last little while I've been watching a remarkable program, "Wonder Egg Priority," that adopts an unconventional fantasy approach in considering the tragedy of child suicides. Before that, I watched and very much enjoyed a series, "Rascal Does Not Dream of Bunny Girl Senpai," which despite the weird title takes a metaphysical view of adolescent issues. My favorite movie is the highly praised "Your Name," a comedy-romance-thriller-mystery.
Last week it fell to me to help assemble a piece of exercise equipment. There was no brand name or country of origin specified, but the enclosed documentation suggested that it was written in a distant land or else by an associate professor of one of the social sciences. In that once put together the thing actually worked, I’ll assume the former.
We’re in the midst of Lent, the pre-Easter period in which many of us who are Christians are called upon to give up some pleasurable item or practice. I am not a theologian, so don’t risk your immortal soul on this, but my impression is that the sacrifice should have some real meaning, be genuine: It doesn’t count if you forego hitting your head with a hammer or eating liver (unless you love those things, alas).