Opinions

“Did they show you the devil’s hole?” the young man across the picnic table asked me.
It was the third day of our ride.
It was a bicycling trip we made in August. Sabra’s sister, Lisa, and her husband Allen proposed it and we gladly joined. Who wouldn’t want to spend a couple of weeks visiting Austria and cycling along the Danube River to Vienna? Two friends of Lisa’s, Karen and Julie, also joined to make our group six.

So where did we leave off last week?
Oh, that’s right, Frank and I were out on a double date, and we came up short on the bill.
So what did we do?
Frank called his older sister, Sue. Even though she just put her hair up in rollers, she threw on a housecoat and brought us $5. The kindness of strangers and siblings at play.
Fast-forwarding to today, the highlight of their recent visit was attending the Beef Days parade. Frank, as it turns out, loves a parade, and rarely misses a chance to see one or better yet, be in it.

Having lived in Iowa all my life, I’m not familiar with the policies of other states regarding summer vacation and the beginning of the school year. I know there are places that take into consideration the weather (extreme heat or cold) and holidays (both religious and national) when scheduling the school year. Circumstances have changed dramatically since early pioneer days when schools were strictly local matters, often managed and taught by individuals with no official oversight by local government or even school boards.

In 1890, a New York City man named Eugene Schieffelin had the not-so-bright idea to import every species of bird mentioned in the plays of William Shakespeare. Among the few species he managed to actually introduce to the city’s Central Park, was a flock of European starlings (referred to in Henry IV). Within 50 years, starlings colonized the entire North American continent– with dire results.

Many years ago, I enrolled in an art class to learn more about painting with watercolors. I’d majored in art in college and had concentrated more on oil painting, but had always wished I knew more about this more portable form of painting. The watercolor class was in the summer and most of the sessions were held outdoors. I became acutely aware of the many different shades and variations of green there are in our landscape and eventually became seriously tired of green paint.