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The Devil's In The Details

3/29/2024

AND the Lord sat among the celestial host, and he was greatly wroth. He looked down, far beneath the heavenly and earthly planes, and shouted, "YOU! Get up here! NOW!"
And lo, there appeared before the Lord the demon Satan, lounging upon a couch of flame and filing his claws. "You rang?" he said, nonchalantly inspecting a sharpened claw.
"Show some respect in my presence, Satan."
"No." said Satan. He stuck out his forked tongue and laughed. "What are you gonna do? Send me to Hell?"
"You bet I will," said the Lord, now mightily annoyed.
But as he prepared to cast the demon back down to the fiery depths, Satan sat up and cried out, "No, wait, Lord, not yet! Gimme a break, it's hot as you-know-what down there! Look I'm sorry, okay? For what have you summoned your servant, Lord?"
  "My servant?" said the Lord, shaking his head. "That'll be the day. I summoned you, all right. What the @#$% mischief are you up to now?"
  Satan mockingly raised a fiery eyebrow. "Oh, you don't know? What, you haven't been reading your New York Times?"
"Yes, I've been reading my New York Times!" shouted the Lord, shaking his copy of that morning's Times in the foolish demon's face. "And you just keep it up, smart aleck, 'cause you've got one hoof back in Hell!"
"Okay, okay," said Satan, raising his claws deferentially. "All respect from now on, all respect."
The Lord smacked his newspaper on the demon's snout. "Seriously, I know you have an inhuman capacity for evil..."
"Of course I do," said Satan, shrugging and rubbing his snout. "I'm inhuman."
"Yeah, you are," sighed the Lord. "But lately you've been working time and a half. All these wars, these genocides, these mass shootings, these disasters, all this suffering. Can't you take a break for one Me damn day?"
"Sure," said Satan. "Release me from Hell, I'll be as good as gold. A perfect angel. I promise."
"Yeah, and you're a liar," said the Lord.
"Got me there," Satan chuckled. "They don't call me the Father of Lies for nothing."
"Aw, look, man - er, I mean, beast, isn't it bad enough all the misery you cause on my favorite planet? Do you have to mock me on top of it all?"
"Mock you, Lord?" said Satan, now genuinely puzzled. "What are you talking about?"
The Lord shoved the front page of that day's New York Times in front of Satan's face and pointed to one of the headlines. "This!"
Satan squinted at the column of print then burst out laughing. He laughed uncontrollably, laughed too hard to speak but slapped his knee joint with glee and laughed until the steaming hot tears splashed down his hairy cheeks.
"Oh, you think it's funny, do you?" said the Lord, and in his anger cast Satan back down to Hell.
"No, no, wait," called the demon as he fell back down into the fire, "Hey, I'm sorry, gimme a chance to explain! Please!"
The Lord snapped the demon back up into his presence. "Explain," he said.
"Aw, it was just kind of a joke," said Satan. "I thought it would be funny."
  "Funny?  said the Lord. "Are you serious? You've granted this guy fame, fortune and power beyond belief, in fact you put him in the position of the most powerful man in the world. And what does he do?  He sins against me and commits crimes against man."
"And against woman," added Satan.
"Oh, don't worry, I haven't forgotten about his crimes against woman." "Against a lot of women, for that matter," said Satan.
"Right," said the Lord. "A lot of crimes against a lot of people. For which he never pays because you've also made him the luckiest son of a banana in the galaxy. And I'm guessing you're going to put him back into power next year. Am I right about that?"
Satan shrugged. "What can I say? The guy did sell me his soul. So I give him whatever he wants and let him slither off the hook. 'Til he comes slithering home to yours truly." Satan laughed. "Boy, is he gonna be one surprised sinner on that day! No gold-plated bathrooms in Hell!"
"Yeah, yeah, whatever. But this," said the Lord, smacking his hand on the news headline. "Letting him sell my book! For fifty-nine ninety-nine, yet!"
Satan sighed. "All right, maybe it wasn't the best idea. But the guy's broke, runs through money like nobody's business, even I can't keep him in cash. Selling the Bibles was actually his idea, I just accommodated him, like I do all his ventures. And, like I said, I thought it was...hee, hee...you know...hee, hee...kinda...hee, hee... Whoa! Hey! Wait...!"
"Good-bye," sighed the Lord.

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The Plane, Ms. James! Take The $%*! Plane!

3/25/2024

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"Equal And Opposite Reactions"
by Patti Liszkay
Available on Amazon
http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa

The Plane, Ms. James! Take The $%*! Plane!

Today, Monday, March 25, is the big day on which, if Donald Trump doesn't scrape up the $454 million dollar penalty he owes on his civil fraud conviction, New York Attorney General Letitia James will begin seizing his assets.

Supposedly.
I say "supposedly" because Donald Trump is constantly gifted with such uncanny good luck that one can't help but wonder if perhaps Mr. "Art of the Deal" made a deal somewhere along the way with a certain fellow entrepreneur,

...in which case by the end of the day he'll have slithered away as surely as he always slithers away from accountability for his plethora of earthly sins, and will likely continue to do so until the day he shuffles off his mortal coil.
But let's say that this time by some stroke of heavenly fortune and justice Donald Trump ends up having to pay for his crime the same as the rest of us would have to. Let’s just say that today Attorney General James actually starts scooping up some of Trump’s cash or high-priced stuff.
Word is she’s going first for one of his golf courses, but I say, forget the danged golf course. Why bother? He’s got well over a dozen of them.
No, I say take something meaningful, something that, while serving justice, would also be a great public service. Ms. James, please, before you take anything else, take Donald Trump’s plane!
Can you imagine if Donald Trump didn't have his plane to whisk him around to his monster rallies all the invective, venom, lies, disinformation, hateful, unhinged, racist, xenophobic rhetoric and other Trump-flavored garbage We the People would be spared?

Because If the Donald didn't have his Trump plane he'd have to scrounge around for a jet to rent. And who do you think would rent him a jet now that it’s public knowledge that he doesn’t have half a billion dollars to rub together?
Oh, I suppose maybe he could get some rich, super rich, or crazy rich toady to lend him their jet. But it surely wouldn't be as comfy for him as his own 100 million dollar flying Xanadu.

And then, landing at a rally in something like this,

...just wouldn't have the same schwing as landing in this.

The thing is, not having his own plane might put a serious damper on Donald Trump's campaign rally circuit. And wouldn't that be a blessing.

Reference
https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-legal-news-brief-trumps-media-merger-is-unlikely-to-stop-letitia-james-from-targeting-his-assets-on-monday-174625369.html?fr=sycsrp_catchall

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The Parable Of The Rich Billionaire And The Poor Billionaire

3/23/2024

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There once were two billionaires, one of them rich,

...and the other one poor.

The poor billionaire was a greedy man who gave little away and even refused to pay the wages that he owed his workers. He owned a luxurious mansion in the city,

...and another by the sea.

Now it came to pass that the poor billionaire committed many crimes against his country and against his fellow human beings, for which the judges required of him a mighty penalty, while his lawyers likewise required of him great fees, so that he was in debt for almost 600 million dollars.
But alas, the poor billionaire, who had foolishly run through his fortune, did not have the money to pay the debt, so that the judges called for the seizure of his luxurious possessions. And so the poor billionaire loudly wailed and gnashed his teeth.

But the rich billionaire was a generous woman,

...who gave away her two mansions,

...so that they could be sold and the money given to those in need.
The rich billionaire likewise gave away billions of dollars to help the needy, and she gave also of her billions to those who provide for the common good, such as the Girl Scouts and Habitat for Humanity.
And at the same time that the poor billionaire was wailing and gnashing his teeth because he had not 600 million dollars to bail himself out and his worldly goods were to be seized by the law, the rich billionaire gave away to charity even more than that amount.
And so I say to unto you, the lesson of this parable is not that one billionaire possessed more money than the other; the lesson is that true wealth lies in having enough money to be able give some away with a glad heart, while true poverty lies in not having enough money to be able to give some away. Or having enough money to give some away, but not enough heart to do so.
Now it later came to pass that the poor billionaire fell into another great sum of money, for the poor billionaire, though poor, always enjoyed wondrous good fortune.

And yet, I say unto you, even though he gain the whole world, the poor billionaire will always be poor.

And, though she give the sum of all her riches away, the rich billionaire will always be rich.

References
https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/19/business/mackenzie-scott-donates-640-million-open-call/index.html

https://people.com/home/mackenzie-scott-donation-beverly-hills-estate-california-charity/

https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/20/opinions/trump-bond-financial-problems-ghitis/index.html

https://www.forbes.com/sites/andrewsolender/2020/10/23/vast-majority-of-trumps-charitable-giving-reportedly-came-from-land-deals/?sh=6db83913610d

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dozens-of-lawsuits-accuse-trump-of-not-paying-his-bills-reports-claim

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Bye-Bye Buggies, Hello Ebikes

3/20/2024

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"Equal And Opposite Reactions"
by Patti Liszkay
Available on Amazon
http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa

Bye-Bye Buggies, Hello Ebikes

...Continued from previous post:
"Is it just me," I said to Tom during our recent visit to Ohio Amish Country, "or does it seem like Amish folks riding in buggies have been replaced by Amish folks zipping around on ebikes?"
My mate agreed with me that this did appear so.
It wasn't that there were no buggies at all to be seen. They were around;

They just weren't you know, ubiquitous.
The ebikes, on the other hand, were.

A little research on the subject revealed that ebikes are, indeed becoming an Amish thing, and not only where we were in the town of Berlin in the heart of Ohio Amish Country. Though each community makes their own rules on what is and isn't allowed, ebikes are apparently booming as the preferred form of transport around Amish world, where the bike charging stations are powered by solar panels.
As David Mullet, owner of Ebikes of Holmes County put it, "It's a lot quicker to jump on your [ebike] and go into town than it is to bring your horse into the barn, harness it to the buggy and go. And you travel faster, too."
All of which, of course, makes sense. But from that perspective, a car travels even faster. I suppose like all of us, the Amish will pick and choose their technology for as long as they can.
Still, I have a feeling that in Amish Country the horse and buggy is about to go the way of the horse and buggy.

Reference:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/a-modern-era-e-bikes-are-replacing-horse-and-buggy-for-some-amish-communities/ar-AA1iU8r7

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The Saint Patrick's Day Frogs Revisited, 2024

3/17/2024

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As St. Patrick's Day rolls around once a year, I've decided that henceforth on this day every year - well, maybe not every year, maybe just every now and then - anyway, in honor of St. Patrick's Day, and also in honor of a certain yummy cream-filled pastry from my childhood that I still to this day think about and yearn for at this time of year, I've decided that I would repost a blog that I wrote on March 17, 2019 about this particular St. Paddy's day delight.
Happy St. Patrick's Day to all. May your day be as sweet as a St. Patrick's Day Frog.

THE SAINT PATRICK'S DAY FROGS

Back when I was young, when my family lived in a row house on Barnett Street in Northeast Philadelphia (our old house today, below),

...and I was a student at St. Timothy's school,

...I used to love St. Patrick's Day. I loved the day for three reasons. First of all, even though St. Patrick, beloved Catholic saint as he was, did not merit for his feast day a Holy Day of Obligation on the Church calendar - which would have snagged a day off from school for us Catholic kids - St. Patrick's Day was nonetheless treated as a day of fun at St. Timothy's. We were allowed to wear something green with our uniforms and bring our crayons to school and towards the end of the afternoon our usual classwork was suspended, and we were allowed to instead color pictures of St. Patrick that Sister would hand out to us.

The second reason I loved St. Patrick's Day was that the day after the following day was March 19, St. Joseph's Day, which, while also not a Holy Day of Obligation, was important enough a Church feast day that it was a day off from school.
But the very best thing of all about St. Patrick's Day was the St. Patrick's Day Frogs.
The St. Patrick Day Frogs were a delicacy to be savored only on St. Patrick's Day and found only at Haegele's Bakery, which was a block up Barnett Street from our house.

The Frogs were a sort of amphibian-shaped pastry, the bottom two-thirds of which was cake and the top third a mound of vanilla creme the kind of which was used to fill creme donuts. The cake bottom and creme top were covered with green fondant upon which was piped icing eyes and a mouth.
       Every St. Patrick's Day my mother would buy each of my four siblings and myself a St. Patrick's Day Frog. For me coming home from school to my St. Patrick's Day Frog was on a par with the the delight of waking up on Christmas morning. I truly loved those bright green cream-headed cake frogs.
          I believe - though the passage of years may have blurred the time line for me somewhat, and if anyone wishes to correct me on the exact year I will stand corrected - but I believe that I was nine years old and in 4th grade at St. Timothy's when I ate my last St. Patrick Day's Frog .
           It was when I was ten years old and in 5th grade at my new school, St. Christopher's,

...that my Catholic conscience bloomed and, likely inspired by the more advanced doctrine taught in the 5th grade catechism in tandem with the exhortations of my teacher, I became aware that it was required of me to give up something for Lent. I believe I picked sweets because that's what everybody else in the 5th grade of my new school said they were giving up for Lent. So I gave up sweets, too.
       It was to my joy when I came home from school on that St. Patrick's Day to find that my mother had traveled across town to Haegele's to buy my brothers, sister, and I our Frogs. And to my horror when I remembered that it was Lent and so I couldn't eat my St. Patrick's Day Frog.
       I wanted so badly to eat that Frog, to bite into that sweet green icing at just the spot where one hit part cake and part creme, my favorite way to eat it. I yearned to eat the Frog, I longed to eat it, but I knew that I couldn't eat it because it was Lent and I'd given up sweets and I truly believed at ten years old that a Catholic could no more put into her mouth something she had given up for Lent than she could eat meat on Friday.
     And it wasn't just that I longed for my St. Patrick's Day Frog. I grieved for it, too, because now I knew that St. Patrick's Day arrived in the middle of Lent, that it would always arrive in the middle of Lent, and that I'd never eat another St. Patrick's Day Frog for the rest of my life.
      I don't remember who ended up eating my Frog.
      But I'm sure I didn't grieve for too long, and I rather think that was the last time my mother made the trip to Haegele's for the St. Patrick's Day Frogs, anyway.
       Anyway, that was sixty years ago, and in truth I'd forgotten all about the Frogs.
Until last night when my brother Joe sent my sibs and myself this picture that he found yesterday on the Haegele's Bakery Facebook page:

I swear, somehow, someway, I will eat another St. Patrick's Day Frog before I croak!

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Thrifting, Antiquing, And Tchotchke-Browsing In Ohio Amish Country

3/15/2024

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...Continued from yesterday:
Though I'd had a notion to change things up on this visit to Amish Country, we ended up doing pretty much the same thing we always do in Amish Country: we walked around and looked at the antique barns, thrift stores and tchotchke shops.
Soon after we settled in at our hotel, the Berlin Grande,

...we got started, walking from the hotel to the main thoroughfare in downtown Berlin.

Our first stop was the Berlin Village Antique Mall.

Not that we have any particular interest in antiques,

...except to look at the amazing amount of random and diverse stuff here,

...and ponder who might buy some of these things,

...and how the heck do the managers mange to inventory it all?

Next we walked down the block to an upscale-ish home goods store called Country Gatherings,

...the interior of which was soothingly infused with a vanilla fragrance and calming music and filled with all sorts of pretty and appealing items,

...including these stuffed animals that could be heated in the microwave and to which I took a great liking but resisted buying.

There's also a cute coffee shop in the store called Buggy Brew.

...where there was a surprising number of younger folks,

...which gave me the impression that this must be a popular local spot to meet up for coffee.

Another impression I had of Country Gatherings was that, even though Amish Country stores such as this one tend to offer a great variety of decoratives bearing religious and inspirational messages, it seemed to me on this visit that there was more religious messaging here than usual.

The following morning our first stop of the day was at the non-profit Share & Care Thrift store (which was called 61 Surplus last time we were here),

...located on an idyllic country road.

The store is always clean and well-organized, and full of nice second-hand housewares,

...and also promotes itself as a Christian establishment,

...as did the establishments that bordered our next destination, the public parking lot in downtown Berlin.

We did a once around the country crafts mega-store called Sol's Palace.

Next we headed for the German Village Center,

...where we visited the Gospel Book Store.

I left the wholesome Gospel Book Store with the same notion as I always have of this place: That my books, rather spicy romantic comedies,

...would not be welcome additions to the inventory.
By then lunch time had rolled around, and so we decided to head to the next town over, Millersburg, where we'd had our excellent pizza adventure the night before (see previous post, https://www.ailantha.com/blog/the-friendliest-pizzeria-in-the-whole-usa).

Our destination was a place I'd seen advertised in our hotel elevator called Jitters Coffee House, where one could apparently procure some lunch as well as some coffee.
Upon entering we found ourselves in a pleasant space which appeared to be a popular eating and meeting place.

A long table full of folks of my generation reminded me of my own Panera Posse,

...my group of friends who used to meet every Wednesday at Panera until COVID turned us into a mostly online entity.
This turned out to be a good place for lunch. Tom ordered one of the specialty hotdogs, which he said was very tasty, with chips,

...while I had a veggie and cheese sandwich on a pretzel bun, also very good.

As Jitters had a bakery with some nice-looking offerings, for dessert we decided to sample a couple of the giant, over-filled donuts. Tom had a cream-filled long john and I had a jelly doughnut.

On the table markers were written gospel verses.

While in Millersburg we caught sight of a few more thrift stores, so we decided to check out one of them, the Save & Serve.

This place was quite nice, as well.

The shelves held a finity of dishes of all sorts,

...and I saw a set of joy-inspiring multicolored dishes that I couldn't resist buying.

(I subsequently ordered from Amazon a bright yellow tablecloth upon which to set them, which I hope to do one of these days).
Having given in to the temptation to buy the dishes, I now felt like giving into those warming stuffed animals that had called to me at the Country Gathering the day before. So we returned to Country Gathering and I bought a couple of them.

We hit one more thrift store, Mission: Thrift,

...which was more of your standard-issue basic thrift store,

...but we did give it a once-around.

Then we stopped at Troyer's Market, where one can find an interesting variety of groceries and other things,

...and where we picked up a ten-pound bag of apples,

...and some salad to accompany the left-over pizza we were intending to (and ultimately did) have for dinner (see previous post).
The next morning we checked out of the Berlin Grande, but Tom suggested that before leaving Berlin we have a look at the Berlin Antique Mall, as this was just about the only second-hand store in the area that, in all our years of hitting the Amish Country antique and thrift store circuit, we'd never been to.
As for me, I was by this point all browsed/shopped out. But as Tom wanted to browse some more I, of course, accommodated my mate.
And so we set out for the Berlin Antique Mall,

...at the entrance of which we were greeted by a most eclectic batch of critters.

...and a rather annoying - but then, not altogether unexpected - religious screed, compliments of the store's owner.

And though we'd already toured half-a-dozen stores over the past day-and-a-half, I found myself mesmerized by this one.

There was such a plethora of used things of all kinds.

I was fascinated by all this stuff, captivated, as if I were in a vast museum of artifacts from the mid-twentieth to the first quarter of the twenty-first century.
"You ready to go yet?" asked Tom after I'd spent forty-five minutes engrossed in looking at things, but feeling a if I hadn't even started on all there was to see.
"No, not really," I said, reminding my mate that it was his idea to bring me here. However, I agreed to go and we left Amish Country for home.
But I swore I'd be back.

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The Friendliest Pizzeria In The Whole USA.

3/12/2024

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   Books by Patti Liszkay available on Amazon:
"Equal And Opposite Reactions"   http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
   "Hail Mary"    https://www.amzn.com/1684334888
"Tropical Depression"       https://www.amzn.com/B0BTPN7NYY

The Friendliest Pizzeria In The Whole USA.

...Continued from yesterday:
"Oh, snap, they're closed?" I said  upon the the discovery of darkened doors at East of Chicago Pizza, my favorite of all Amish Country eateries. "Now where do we eat?"
The question was more or less rhetorical, since if we wanted to eat in the town of Berlin, Ohio, there was only one other restaurant - in fact, there was only one other commercial establishment of any sort - opened past five pm in Berlin, and that was the Berlin Farmstead buffet, which I guess would have been fine, except that at that moment I wasn't feeling Farmstead buffet. I was feeling East of Chicago Pizza. Which nonetheless didn't appear to be in the cards on this night. "So I guess it's the Farmstead buffet?" I sighed.
Tom glanced at his watch. "It's five after seven." The Berlin Farmstead closed at seven pm. "There's that Burger King on the edge of town."
"Okay," I conceded, "Burger King it will be, even though I'm really in the mood for..." Then it hit me. "Hey," I said, "am I just wishfully thinking this, or did we pass another East of Chicago Pizza in Millersburg on our way here?"
Tom had no recollection, but I pulled out my phone to check, and, sure enough, there was an East of Chicago in Millersburg, about five miles away. And, glory be, it was open until 9 pm!
So I pulled up my Google maps, typed in our destination and we followed the instructions until we came to the brightly-lit Millersburg commercial strip lined with stores, markets, restaurants, gas stations and the like.
"Five hundred feet...one hundred feet...you have arrived at your destination," Ms. Google informed us.
  But among the sea of neon signage, we could make out not one that indicated the presence of an East of Chicago Pizzeria. After a couple of fruitless recalibrations we gave up on Google and pulled into a gas station. "I'm not sure this place exists," I said. "I'm calling them."
The number I punched in was answered by a cheerful young woman who not only verified for me that the Millersburg East of Chicago Pizza existed, but, when I told her we couldn't find the place, she asked me where I was and informed me that she was going to tell me how to find it and would stay on the line with me until we did.
And so our kind young guide shepherded us over the phone until she directed us to turn into the driveway of an anonymous building set back off the highway.
"Now you're here," she said. "See it?"
Ah, yes, now we did see the unlit, invisible-from-the-highway East of Chicago Pizza signs on the building.

We asked the friendly teenager who greeted us as we entered if it had been her who'd helped us find out way. She said no, so we asked her to thank whoever it was.
The restaurant was almost empty,

...and I wondered if the burned-out sign was partly to blame. Still, the workers kept busy replacing the pizza buffet trays before they were empty.

We noticed among the workers a little boy zipping in and out of the kitchen. One time he replenished the plates, another time the silverware. I thought he might be the child of one of the employees whose babysitter didn't show.
"You are such a good helper," I said to the boy when I passed him on my way to the pizza buffet. "And look how nicely you stacked those plates!"
But the little boy was shy, and quickly zipped back into the kitchen.
While we were eating - that is to say, relishing - our pizza, salad, and the restaurant's sublime mini-cinnamon rolls that I can eat my weight in,

...our waitress, the same teenager who'd greeted us, moseyed over to our table. "Where are you folks from?" she asked.
When we told her we were from the Columbus area she said that really liked Columbus and that she'd been there just the weekend before to buy her prom gown. We then got to chatting about this and that, where she went to high school, what she planned to do after graduation, that the little boy - who was now sitting in the dining room on the floor - was seven years old, that the East of Chicago Pizza in Berlin had been closed for a few days because of a plumbing emergency but that it should be opened again soon.
The man who was sitting in the booth behind us, a middle aged man wearing an Ohio State sweatshirt, stood and turned to us. "Did I hear you say you're from Columbus?"
When we said that indeed we were he told us that he'd lived in Newark, a Columbus exurb, for thirty years but moved back to this area, where he was from, to be with family. The man, our waitress, Tom and I all agreed that Columbus was a great place.
By the time Tom and I were ready to leave we were the last customers in the restaurant. Our waitress came out of the kitchen carrying two large pizza boxes.
"Here," she said, proffering us the boxes "we can't let you leave without taking all this pizza with you."
It turned out that by "all this pizza" our waitress meant all the pizza left on the trays.

"You want us to take...all this pizza?"
"Yep."
"Don't you or some of the other staff want to take some?"
"Nope. You want another box?"
I assured her that two boxes of pizza would be more than enough.
So I got to work filling my two boxes of pizza,

...and a carton of cinnamon rolls,

...all the while feeling like I was taking the food out of someone else's mouth.
Still, I suppose it was true that any left over pizza would be thrown out at the end of the night. And our haul did not go to waste. The following night we didn't have to worry about seeking out a place to eat dinner, as we feasted on our microwaved left-over East of Chicago pizza in our hotel room while we sat on the comfy couch and watched "Strays," a gross, vulgar comedy flick that I should be embarrassed to admit how much I enjoyed.

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Changing It Up In Amish Country

3/10/2024

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   Available on Amazon:
"Equal And Opposite Reactions"   http://amzn.to/2xvcgRa
   "Hail Mary"    https://www.amzn.com/1684334888
"Tropical Depression"       https://www.amzn.com/B0BTPN7NYY

Changing It Up In Amish Country

"Our anniversary is coming up," I said to my mate a few weeks ago.
"Oh yeah," he replied. "Which one is this, now?"
"Um...forty-six? No wait, was forty-six last year?"
"Yeah, I think is was."
"I think it was, too," I said.
But just to make sure I went and checked the old wedding invitation we keep in a frame on the shelf,

...and sure enough, this was anniversary number forty-seven.
"So, you want to do something for our anniversary?" said Tom. "Go eat at Red Robin or Chuy's or the Gahanna Grill, or something?"
"We could," I said.
"Or we could go always to Amish Country," he said.
"We could," I said.
After a brief discussion we settled on celebrating our forty-seventh wedding anniversary by spending a couple of days in Amish Country, our fallback destination when we can't think of anything else to do for our anniversary, which is most of the time.
And so on Tuesday, February 27, Tom and I headed out from our town of Gahanna to the town of Berlin in the heart of Ohio Amish Country.
As always, it was a pleasant two-hour drive through small towns and farmland.

We stopped for lunch at the halfway point in Danville,

...at a delightful eatery we discovered a few years ago located across from a granary,

...called The Hangout,

Here I ordered my Hangout favorite, the veggie sub with the hottest, crispiest French fries,

...and Tom ordered his favorite, the cod.

After lunch we continued on through more scenic countryside,

...until we reached Berlin,

Now, in the past whenever we've visited Berlin we've always stayed at the Berlin Resort, a cute, cozy hotel on beautiful sweeping grounds.

But this year I proposed we try staying someplace new, not because we don't enjoy staying at the Berlin Resort - we do - but because, I don't know, I just felt like changing it up a little.
To this end we decided to check out a newer hotel built a few years ago in downtown Berlin (such as downtown is in Berlin),

...called the Berlin Grande.

Though the decor of our fourth-floor room was rather minimalist, this room was twice as big as the rooms we'd had at the Berlin Resort, with a nice kitchenette and "living room."

And though the Berlin Grande does not have a free in-hotel movie theater as does the Berlin Resort,

...our room did have a big-screen TV in front of a comfy couch,

...and we could access any number of streaming channels so that we could watch anything we wanted to, unlike at the Berlin Resort theater, which offers films chosen by guests on a first-come-first -serve basis and nothing rated stronger than PG. So this arrangement suited us fine.
Nor did we mind that the view from our balcony wasn't the rolling view from the Berlin Resort rooms.

Besides, there were nice views from the hallway windows.

So we were happy with our new choice of Amish Country venue. I likewise suggested that we try to find someplace else to eat besides the buffet at the Berlin Farmstead restaurant,

...one of two restaurants in town opened past 5 pm, the other being East of Chicago Pizza. Normally, for the two nights we spend in Amish Country, we eat dinner on our second night at the Farmstead restaurant buffet, which I was getting a weence tired of, while on our first night we eat at East of Chicago Pizza, which I will never tire of. In fact for me East of Chicago Pizza is a big Amish Country attraction.
This eatery, which serves the most incomparable pizza buffet, has for some unfathomable reason not found a home in Columbus, Ohio. (Which, considering how much I love the place, is probably just as well). So I was greatly looking forward to digging into that pizza buffet, and when dinner time rolled around we headed over to the East of Chicago Pizza...only to find that the place was closed!
To be continued...

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A Piano Teacher's Thoughts On Joe Biden's Upcoming Recital

3/7/2024

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As a retired (or rather, permanently laid off by COVID) piano teacher who has shepherded scores of students through oodles of perfomances,

...it seems to me that the State of the Union address that President Joe Biden will give tonight has much in common with a piano recital.
A few years ago I attended a recital of the students of one of my colleagues, a master teacher whose students all sound like young virtuosos on the piano. When the recital was over I congratulated my friend on the stellar performances and told him that his students' playing blew my mind. He replied, "Aw, it's all smoke and mirrors."
At first I thought my friend was making a self-depreciating joke and I opened my mouth to protest. But then it hit me that what he said was true.
Not that a well-executed piano performance is all smoke and mirrors. But there are some tricks that a savvy teacher can pull from out of their sleeve to get a student to perform, a time or two a year, one piece above their normal playing level. And so during that one performance a mediocre student can sound good, a good student can sound better, an excellent student can soar.
But a performance can also go the other way. It can happen that even the most well-rehearsed piece, the most comfortable piece, the piece that went perfectly during every rehearsal, can come off on recital night not as well as it should have. The most accomplished pianist can miss one note that can throw off a whole phrase, that can require a brief pause or back-up while the performer recoups themself then continues on. The pianist can be coming down with a cold, can be feeling stressed, can be having an off night for any number of intangible reasons that can lead to an off performance.
And this is why before a recital I always told my students, especially the more advanced ones playing tricky and challenging pieces, that a recital is not a critical event. That what is important is that they have mastered their piece (for I would never allow a student to perform a piece that they had not mastered) even if for some reason this night's performance does not show how well they play it all the time. I reminded them that it's how well they play all the time that counts.
In truth, too much stock should never be placed in one recital, as a single night's performance seldom shows the whole scope of a performer's ability. A recital is only a few minutes in time and is hit or miss.
And though I understand this and wish everyone did, for the sake of our country I hope that tonight President Biden has a hit.

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Good-Bye, Nikki

3/6/2024

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I woke up this morning with a case of what I guess could be called the confused blues.
I was blue because the last sure firewall between this,

...and the presidency of the United States came tumbling down yesterday when Donald Trump swept up all but one of the Super Tuesday races and Nikki Haley threw in the towel on her campaign.
But though I was feeling plenty blue when this all-but-certain outcome became an actuality, in truth I was feeling even more confused; for, stir it around in my brain pan as I may, I can't make any sense of how so many millions of Americans want Donald Trump to return as their president.
I could understand people having supported Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, Chris Christie, really, any of the initial group of 2024 Republican candidates (well, except maybe that 38-year-old hyperkinetic ChatGPT-esque Donald Trump Mini-Me animaniac Vivek Ramaswamy, but then, nobody took him very seriously, anyway).

Not that I particularly liked or supported any of those above candidates; but I get how other folks could. Except that, with Donald Trump in the ring, almost nobody did.
But there was Nikki Haley, possessed of all the conservative Republican bona fides: pro-life, tough border policy, hawkish international stance, promoter of smaller government and reining in the national debt, and years of governance and international relations under her belt as governor of South Carolina and United Nations ambassador.
And yet over this experienced, capable, basically decent woman the Republican electorate has chosen a man who spent his four years in the Oval Office sowing chaos, who cozied up to North Korean dictator Kim Jung Un and Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and praised Russian intelligence while denigrating American agents, who alienated our foreign, allies who was incapable of putting together the infrastructure bill he bragged about during his campaign, during which he also bragged about grabbing women by their private parts, who made fun of a disabled reporter,

...who called these white supremacists at the violent 2017 Charlottesville, Virginia rally "very fine people,"

...who cruelly ordered that small children be separated from their parents at the Mexican border,

...who threatened to withhold aid from Ukraine if its president didn't dig up some dirt on the Biden family, who suggested using a nuclear bomb to stop a hurricane, who promoted horse de-worming medicine and injecting bleach as cures for COVID, who incited his supporters to storm the U.S. Capitol and try to overthrow the 2020 election, who is indicted on 91 - 91! - felony counts. I could go on.
I don't understand my fellow Americans.
They say that the last thing Americans want is another Biden-Trump presidential race. But that's obviously the very thing Americans want, since during the primaries they threw away the opportunity to choose someone other than Donald Trump to run against incumbent Joe Biden.
They also say that Trump is leading Biden among American voters. Maybe they're wrong about that, too.

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The Plane, Ms. James! Take The $%*! Plane!

Bye-Bye Buggies, Hello Ebikes

The Friendliest Pizzeria In The Whole USA.

Changing It Up In Amish Country