Category Archives: Humor

Out of the Mouths of… #1

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Edward Everett HaleEdward Everett Hale was asked if he prayed for the Senators. He replied:

“No. I look at the Senators and pray for the country.”

The Reverend Mr. Edward Everett Hale (1822 – 1909) served as  Chaplain to the U.S. Senate. He was appointed to the position because of his outstanding public ministry as Minister of South Congregational (Unitarian) Church in Boston. He proposed a public retirement pension system for both women and men long before there was Social Security.

First Church Boston’s website provides this account of his  ministry.

Thanks to Caroll Bryant for capturing our attention with her blog’s publication of the witticisms famous historical figures.

Dog strikes back at cyberspace

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Think dogs don’t reason as we do? Think their reasoning is less precise? That they act only on instinct? Have no purpose of forethought? Think they can’t talk?

Consider the shoe by the front door.

boots by front door

The shoes belong to the “dog-owner” who has been upstairs blogging obsessively, ignoring his dog’s persistent pestering. Sebastian pawed, scratched his back feet on the carpet, and barked. At first the blogger ignored him and then chastened for interrupting the important message he was preparing to send into cyberspace.

Dog surrenders. Disappears for 10 minutes. Returns and quietly, without a word, jumps up to his customary place on the sofa in the blogger’s office.

Blogger completes his thoughtfully reasoned cyberspace communication and decides it’s time to take the little guy out.  Blogger goes downstairs, takes off his slippers, puts on the left shoe next to the leash by the front door, and winces.

Sebastian has left a perfectly directed, perfectly contained puddle in the shoe. No evidence to the side of the shoe or the back or front of the shoe. All of the message is IN the shoe, nature striking back at cyberspace with the clearest of messages carefully delivered with forethought and drone-like precision:

“Dad, you really pissed me off!!”

Sebastian

“The People’s Gas Company” SEQUEL

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“Adult Night Terrors”

They called it an efficiency

apartment with  just one room, one

short trundle bed/couch (so fun

for us, still newlyweds, could be

enjoyed, but rather awkwardly.)

…

My young wife held me by the wrist,

the torn sheet in my hands. I’d dreamed

I’d fought the foreman, kicked and screamed:

his torture made me use my fist–

a warrior from a pacifist!

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, January 8, 2013

No Snow

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In the tropicsDSCF0271

the people know

life is languid:

there is no snow.

…

Moving, working,

and thinking:  slow.

What’s the hurry?

It will not snow.

…

Ice is only

inside the drinks;

hockey players

must go to rinks.

…

Skating, sledding,

and snowman fun–

all is elsewhere.

Icicles:  none.

…

Brown ground:  dirty,

no change in sight;

nothing ever

becomes all white.

…

Bugs and kudzu

will swarm and grow:

never winter,

no saving snow…

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, January 1, 2013

Note from Views from the Edge:

Steve with kite in snow

Steve with kite in snow

Prayers on New Year’s Day for 2013 “saving snow” in languid-no-change-in- sight D.C. and the hinterlands.

After the holiday feast

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Natural Cures for Indigestion from www.natural-home-cures.com.

Natural Cures for Indigestion from http://www.natural-home-cures.com.

“Eat”

eat

feast

eat more

appetizers

fruit vegetables

meat potatoes pasta

i want i can eat i will eat

rolls bread pastry real butter

gravy beer pop wine champagne

deserts pie cake cobbler

cookies candy pudding

ice cream custard

flan trifle truffle

tiramisu tums

diabetes

fat

…

fast

work out

walk run lift

portion control

chew food slowly

carrots celery salad

put fork down between bites

talk listen share memories

drink water chew ice

cut small bites

exercise bike

swim trim

healthy

slim

Health and fitness motivation by elisa @ www.indulgy.com

Health and fitness motivation by elisa @ http://www.indulgy.com

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Dec. 30, 2012

Renovations

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Verse – “Renovations”

The unexpected is to be expected.

Bathrooms are the worst.

(Some say it’s kitchens, but to be

forced to eat out is tolerable–

outhouses are impossible

to find these days.)  Even the best

contractors, builders, architects

do not know what will be behind

old walls:  the pipes and wires they find

will cost you time and cash and tears.

Just forget new sinks and mirrors!

– Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, 11/12/15 sent to Views from the Edge’ blogger whose bathrooms are now in the sixth week of renovation because of unanticipated challenges. Wish we had had Steve’s advice before we dove into the project. Maybe wisdom will be born out of the experience? Nah. Too late. We’re never doing this again…ever.

Thanks, Steve.

The Greatest Human Invention (after Fire)

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A post-Thanksgiving Day dinner verse by Steve Shoemaker

Some say it’s small and made of rubber,

No, the disposable diaper,

Say some

But after big Thanksgiving dinner,

My vote goes to the clear winner–

It’s TUMS.

Basho and Election Day on Views from the Edge

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Old pond,

frog jumps in –

splash.

Views from the Edge jumped OUT of the blog pond two days ago. Then… yesterday… it made a big splash. The daily number of visits soared to 1,466 yesterday, 14 times larger than average. Why would the visits go up … at all … after announcing silence? Was it applause? Three cheers for one less noisy gong?

Answer? An earlier post, “The Germans at the Service Club Meeting,” had suddenly gone viral with 1296 visits – on Election Day.

Why or how it happened is a head-scratcher. Maybe yesterday’s inexplicable splash is a tribute to the efficacy of silence, our preference for the Older Pond over the new one, and reason for a humble re-write of Basho’s (1644-1694) old haiku:

New Pond,

frog jumps out –

splash.

This old frog is smiling the day after Election Day. Big money can’t buy the Old Pond…or the country. 🙂

A Retirement Obsession

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on-line Scrabble

The game’s computer keeps the score,

so we don’t  have to add.

Its dictionary tells us clearly:

 words are good or bad.

Yes, on-line Scrabble, Words-With-Friends,

that is the game we play.

My iPhone held up to my face

a hundred times a day.

I play my brothers, nephews, niece…

a guy who’s in my choir.

A don in England always wins

–he probably reads Shakespeare!

My fingers cramp, my eyeballs hurt,

my thumb is even sore,

but Scrabble keeps my mind alert

and keeps me from the bar.

My spouse complains, she feels left out,

but I play just the same.

How can she bitch when it turns out

Sudoku is HER game?

Nadja’s game – on-line Sudoku

-Steve Shoemaker, Urbana, IL, Oct. 30, 2012

“You can’t cheat an honest man”

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William Stringfellow observed that the greatest personal challenge is to be the same person… in every time…in every place.

If I’d been able to whisper words into the President’s ear last night, or make him speak like an Edgar Bergen dummy on my lap, he would have asked, “Which of the different people you have been  – from which time…and from which place – is the one you asking the American people to vote for?”

But, alas, I only get to grump and moan, holding the President on my lap, like Mortimer Snerd on the lap of Edgar Bergen. Are we really that dumb?

A lot of gas is holding up this balloon.