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Echoes from the

Loafers’ Club Meeting

We should switch to Roman numerals.

Who wants to do that?

I for one.

Driving by Bruce’s drive

I have a wonderful neighbor named Bruce. Deep thoughts occur as I drive past his drive. The journey of 1000 miles for a squirrel starts with running, stopping, then running in a different direction and repeating those three things endlessly. The journey of 1,000 miles for a killdeer (a bird that calls its name) begins with a run and halt, reacting to stop-and-go lights that only it can see.

Bob Dylan sang, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” but a weathervane helps. Pope Gregory I declared that the rooster was “the most suitable emblem of Christianity,” referring to Jesus’ prophecy that Peter would deny him three times before the rooster crows. In the 9th century, Pope Nicholas I decreed that a rooster be placed at the top of every church and the famous rooster weathervane was born. The rooster’s tail caught the breeze and allowed the weathervane to spin, with his beak acting like the point of the directional arrow. The rooster rose with the sun and announced the start of the day. We had both a rooster and a pig for weathervanes on our farm. They both knew which way the wind was blowing.

If you live in or around a small town, you know it’s a place where you’re no longer a stranger after having lived there for just five minutes, but you’re still a newcomer 50 years after having moved there.

I swatted at mosquitoes in a salute to our insect overlords. According to a scientific crew from the House of Research & Stuff, 43% of my yard is made up of mosquitoes this year. I haven’t used any bug juice at home yet, but I might.

I met a man who told me that he’d been an original member of a hit reality TV show, but he’d been fired because he wouldn’t follow the script. He said, “A reality show shouldn’t have a script.” If I’d been in a reality TV show as a boy, it might have been called “My Three Aunt Helens” because I’d been blessed with three Aunt Helens. If they were alive today, they’d be ancient. One of them loved shopping. She’d be a later-day Helen of Troy whose face would launch a thousand shipments, thanks to the facial recognition software on her iPad. She’d buy lots of bug juice.

She’d likely purchase some hiccup cures. I had the hiccups once for three long weeks. A guy bet me a dollar I couldn’t hiccup five times. That was his cure. It didn’t work. Any hiccup, mine or another’s, brings memories of that marathon. You can pretend to have the hiccups, but you can’t pretend not to have the hiccups.

Bad jokes department

I can cut down a tree just by looking at it. I saw it with my own eyes.

What do you call the dominant hay farmer? The alfalfa male.

We don’t walk through a door. We walk through a doorway. A door gets in the way.

I was going to tell you a joke about time travel, but you didn’t get it.

Nature notes

I enjoy a drumroll when I leave the house. Why not? A woodpecker was happy to provide one by drumming on a resonant limb like John Bonham on the day he graduated from the School of Hard Knocks.

I listened to an eastern wood-peewee and his slurred whistle, a plaintive “pee-ah-wee” or “pee-wee” falling in pitch at the end. I have named him Herman. He’s a peewee Herman.

I watched turkey vultures soar with limited flapping. In Tibet, vultures are considered angels who bring souls to heaven where they can be reincarnated.

Crown vetch is a legume native to Europe and Asia. It was introduced to the US in the mid-1800s, and by the 1950s became widely planted. In the Midwest, it’s been planted as a cover crop and used for soil stabilization on ditch banks. Crown vetch flowers vary from white to pink to lavender and bloom from May through August. Similar plants show violet-blue flowers on cow vetch (bird vetch), and blue and white on hairy vetch. The flowers of cow vetch and hairy vetch are arranged in a line along the stalk, unlike the clustered arrangement at the top of crown vetch. Crown vetch has a leaflet at the tip of its leaves and doesn’t have tendrils at the tips as cow and hairy vetch do.

Meeting adjourned

Don’t search for kindness. Find where it is needed.