For Nuts and Coffee?

Dear Blog Reader

I hope that this finds you doing well. I am doing fine. Thankfully, the weather has given us some rain. We have just passed through a 10 day lapse of meaningful precipitation with a fair amount of heat. This 10 day lapse and intensified heat colored my imagination with the portent of the drought from last year more and more as the number of days rose through the ranks of single digits. The weather man of my mind has been given a reprieve and according to the forecast more reprieve is on the way.

The Amish child garden is exuberant, producing cucumbers by the boat load, gallon buckets of green beans, and next week I start to open hill after hill of new Yukon Gold potatoes.   Green beans, Yukon Golds, and bratwurst in the pressure cooker; I am in farm culinary heaven. In a week or two, we will push the epicurean delights over the top with a slice of juicy red acidic flavored tomato. Strike that; insert with a thick slice of juicy red acidic flavored tomato.

This morning finds me in Oberlin, Ohio. We are here to enjoy and celebrate Kyle's graduation. Hi, Kyle. As fate would have it, the open house is on the same weekend as the "active Socialist Workers Party Convention." We are so close to the end of the world. Should the streams of my libertarianism and their socialism cross . . ., well let's just say that Scotty would let out a stream of expletive laced explanation a mile long to Captain Kirk enumerating the laws of nature that would be violated in such a confluence.

They seem to be a fairly innocuous group. I haven't seen hide nor hair of them. Although, the lovely Miss Beverly encountered a small cluster this morning at the coffee shop; where they had beseeched the godless corporation to open an hour early for a caffeine fix, they did not pool their money, and did not all order a grande. I am thinking about mixing it up a little later by wearing my dark blue plaid shorts and light turquoise plaid button down shirt while walking downtown. I am still trying to decide about footwear. Do I confuse them by wearing Keen's or push them over the top by wearing white socks with wing tips while carrying The Wall Street Journal? However, the lovely Miss Beverly insists that the only confluence that might end the world is wearing dark blue plaid shorts with light turquoise plaid shirts.

In an effort to understand those of a different political stripe, I did read a couple of editions of "The Militant", the National Socialist Newsletter. (Dear N eighborhood S choolboy A dololecents, I was only reading to educate myself.) While reading, I was pleased to read that in May, planning had reached a fevered pitch as two staff members got together with an unwashed rank and file party member to discuss session topics over coffee at a local cafe. Then last week, they testified that session topics were coming together nicely.  Looks like the printer may have had to pull an all night print session.

Now, don't think that my imagination has only been fueled by the political intrigue unfolding 20 miles from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on this trip to North Central Ohio. I have spent considerable time riding a beach cruiser bike. For the uninitiated, these cruising bike have wheels about the size of a tractor tire. It appears that they are wide enough to allow the rider to flee across the water without snapping the surface tension in the event of an assassin deer attack from the land side. Since assassin deer do not as yet have a navy, this appears to be an effective means of escape.

The frame on a cruising bike is heavy enough that it could support a couple of 50 caliber machine guns. These lumbering contraptions need some armament. Their slow pace make them a target for even the smallest woodland creatures. Just yesterday a chipmunk ran between the front and the back tire of the bike transporting the lovely Miss Beverly , and I had to warn off a squirrel when I saw that he was contemplating dashing across the path in front of me. I could tell by his beady little eyes and the confused look on his face that he hadn't done well in story problem class.

If a bike with wheels the size of tractor tires leaves the trailhead 5 miles away, what is the last second that I have to scurry across this three foot wide path to get to more buried acorns? Acorns, did somebody say acorns? I'd better get go . . . splat. Thankfully, I had fenders on this cruiser which would have kept me from squirrel splatter if he had made the wrong choice.

With that, I leave you, as I sit on the shore of a small lake, watching planes lift gliders into the sky toward eminent release in front of a thunderstorm way to the East, which only provides a cooling breeze and a distant rumble, and the socialists hunting coffee and the squirrels hunting nuts.

Take care

Roger