POST 11/2026/GOSHEN IN . . . The first four photos bow to lowly rhyme: “Amish farmers sweat it making hay. / Cyclists placidly wend their way. / Ice cream (at Lucys) screams, ‘Stop by today!’ / Heat advisories go away. / Happy the ones from whose shaded bower / The new-bathed moon and stars emerge at the tenth hour.”

Cottage week

Marty and I spent a week with sister/sister-in-law Mary at her cottage in LaGrange County, Indiana. A visit to the used bookstore in Howe never fails to deliver the goods for two dollars hardcover and one dollar paperback. I’ve breezed through one, Rotten Reviews. In short, it’s about reviewers who got it totally wrong. The authors became established, sold books, got the last laugh.

For instance, in an 1848 letter to C.H. Lewes, Charlotte Bronte wrote: “Why do you like Miss Austen so much? I am puzzled on that point . . . I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses . . . Miss Austin is only shrewd and observant.”

John Schwartz and Mary Miller at the domino table. We spent an afternoon with John and Jan at their home on Perrin Lake in Michigan.

We had two (so tasty) dinners with niece, Shari and her husband, Chuck Wagner in Carmel, a few minutes from Mary’s home.

Great niece, Iona Wagner came over for the meals and table games. She made this from-scratch lemon icebox pie. Yum.

Amelia holds a commanding presence in the Wagner household.

We passed wheat, corn and bean fields on our way home from Westfield. Some wheat had already been harvested.

“They dined on mince, and slices of quince. / Which they ate with a runcible spoon; / And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand, / They danced by the light of the moon.” Edward Lear, 1812-1888, from the Owl and the Pussy-Cat, published in 1841. One, among many, answers to what is a runcible spoon, is that it’s a spork or grapefruit spoon. Whatever it is, the nonsense poem has stood the test of time, and no reviewer dare pan it.

Sizzle medium well.

–John