Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Echoes from the

Loafers’ Club Meeting

I can see into the future.

When did you start being able to do that?

Next Wednesday.

Driving by Bruce’s drive

I have a wonderful neighbor named Bruce. Whenever I pass his drive, thoughts occur to me. I was upside down and walking backward. Situation normal. I got an email from a friend in Arizona. He’s a heat seeker who didn’t want to live in a land like ice cream, preferring a place where winter is a novelty. He recounted a flight from hell where a passenger, claiming her rights were being trampled upon, misbehaved and demanded more drinks despite being obnoxiously intoxicated. One of the most common dreams people have is about flying. I don’t dream about flying because the last time I did, the dream lost my luggage. Money can’t buy happiness unless you’re flying first class. I often sit frugally in the airplane’s wayback that rides like the rear of an old station wagon.

My wife and my mother shared a belief about me. They both thought I was a lovable doofus. Mother believed in paying bills the same day she received them. A bill showed up one morning, and the check was in the mailbox before the mailman arrived. My wife and I believe in prompt payments of bills. Even when first married, we were fortunate enough to pay all our bills on time. A Lutheran Brotherhood insurance agent thought we were ideal candidates for financial planning, which included the purchase of an ample amount of life insurance. He was as difficult to get rid of as are those few extra pounds that most of us carry. Financial planning? To us, that was hoping someone forgot to send us a bill on schedule.

I’ve learned

An hour of sleep before midnight is worth two after. My father said that often. It’s likely untrue, but the time spent in restorative deep sleep predominates in the first sleep cycles. Dad also told me that nothing good happens after midnight. He wasn’t always right.

It’s difficult to become lost if you don’t know where you’re going.

When someone tells me they can sleep through anything, I hope that never includes a fire or a tornado.

The state record hailstone is 6.0 inches in diameter, occurring near Elgin in 1955 and near Reading in 1986.

Sometimes, all we have are questions.

I see pennies on the ground near gas pumps. That’s because people are afraid of change.

After many visits to the State Fair, I’ve learned that it’s possible for me to get into one line just to have the chance to stand in another, longer line.

Bad jokes department

If they’d stop making margarine, this would be a butter world.

Veterinarians refuse to work on grizzlies unless the animals have been anesthetized because there is safety in numb bears.

The couple in the car ahead of me appeared to be smooching. They were weaving all over the road. I wished they’d get a loom.

If you want to know what to do after falling, check with Tripadvisor.

Nature notes

Bird songs have quieted, but insects call loudly to be heard. It’s usually the male that calls and the intensity increases at dusk and continues through the night. They aren’t using their voices, they use stridulation, the act of producing sound by rubbing two body parts together. The most well-known insects that stridulate are crickets. The snowy tree cricket, which is pale in color, inhabits woodland edges, bushes, small trees and vines. Often called the “temperature cricket” because it’s possible to tell the temperature by adding 40 to the number of chirps heard in 13 seconds. Nathaniel Hawthorne described its song as an “audible stillness” and declared, “If moonlight could be heard, it would sound just like that.” Producers of movies and TV shows frequently dub their songs onto soundtracks to signal that the action is taking place on a quiet summer night in a rural or suburban setting.

The field cricket is a common household insect. This accidental invader is a large, shiny black cricket. It produces its chirping by rubbing its wings together to create the quintessential cricket song.

Katydids, resembling muscular green grasshoppers, call ch-ch…ch-ch-ch…ch-ch-ch. This is likened to the words ka-ty-did or ka-ty-didn’t.

A gray treefrog hunted on my office window on a warm night. The light attracted insects, and that attracted the green predator (they come in various colors). I’ve been hearing their calls — territorial, I suspect.

Meeting adjourned

“The Supreme Ethical Rule: Act so as to elicit the best in others and thereby in thyself.”—Felix Adler. Be kind.