Echoes from the Loafers’ Club Meeting:

“No coffee for me.”

“Why don’t you ever have coffee at breakfast?”

“It keeps me awake.”

Driving by the Bruces

I have two wonderful neighbors — both named Bruce — who live across the road from each other. Whenever I pass their driveways, thoughts occur to me, such as: few things are further from reality than reality TV.

Things I’ve learned about food

1. Man does not live by bread alone. He needs peanut butter, too.

2. A little boy told me that he’d learned that if eating a certain food made him throw up, he’d throw up on that food. That way, he didn’t have to eat it.

3. A big boy told me that he could eat all he wanted to at a funeral because there was one less person to judge him.

The news from Hartland

Squash court closes after being filled with excess harvested zucchini.

Man wearing leisure suit to church claimed he was trying to be fashionably late.

Eagle snatches cat from a yard. In hindsight, it was a mistake to get the cat a fish tattoo.

A traveling man

I was near Saginaw, Mich. I was in a snazzy rental car because the rental company had upgraded me. The car was of the luxury kind that was much too good for the likes of me. It wasn’t a foreign car, but it was foreign to what I was accustomed to. The car had a GPS, a strange voice that told me where to go. I was OK with its presence. Not all roads lead to Rome. All roads lead to being lost. Besides, I wouldn’t have to fold a GPS like I would a paper map. I hoped I’d gotten a GPS with a sense of humor. One that would scream things like “Look out!” for no reason. I entered the address of my destination into the GPS. The voice guided me better than the voices in my head typically do. It was good, but it sounded as if it had an attitude. I saw the location, but drove past the turn in order to stop at a drugstore a block down. I needed to purchase postcards. I send my wife a postcard each day I’m away from home. The GPS voice had a conniption. It told me how to perform a U-turn. Then, I’m pretty sure of this, it sighed deeply. I appreciated that. It made me feel like my wife was seated next to me, reading a map.

Clarence

Clarence welcomed me. It wasn’t a guy named Clarence. It was a sign welcoming me to Clarence, Iowa. I was in town to visit the library. I love libraries. I parked my car in the shade. Shade provides premium parking in the summer. Before going into the library, I checked my smarter-than-I-am-phone. On that device, there was a message telling me that an old friend had died. I began to miss him instantly. Each time someone dies, it’s as if a library had burned to the ground.

Did you know?

A potato can be used to remove the jagged end of a broken lightbulb from its socket. Cut a raw potato in half and press the cut end onto the shattered glass. Be sure the power is off and that the potato is large enough to capture the glass edges and protect your hand.

The percentage of women who say they’d never date a guy who picked his nose is 84.

According to a recent survey from Pew Internet & American Life Project, nearly one-third of cellphone users have had their devices lost or stolen.

Nature notes

“I saw a nearly white robin. How common is this?” True albinos occur in about one in 10,000 mammal births. Researchers found that albinism occurs in 17 of 30,000 birds or one in 1,764 birds. Leucism in birds is much more common. It’s a condition where pigmentation cells in an animal fail to develop properly. This can result in atypical white patches appearing on the animal, or, rarely, completely white creatures. An albino’s eyes are usually pink or red.

Meeting adjourned

“Instead of putting others down, try improving yourself instead. The only person you have a right to compete with is you. In the meantime, treat others how you’d like to be treated. One trait that some of the best communicators share is empathy. A couple of kind words can not only make a person’s day, but earn you a friend and supporter for life. For the rest of the week, whenever you see someone you want to judge negatively, pay them a compliment instead. See what happens.” — Neil Strauss