Mulling things on my morning ramble with Storm, the family’s mixed Lab.
My daughter had the official opening night for the play she is in last night and it was a big deal, at least for us.
Tried to read weather radar and time the ramble right, but still caught in a small passing shower around dawn as the meathead and I walked off.
The last month has been an insane juggling act by my daughter, my wife and myself to fit in all the practices and related gatherings. Let’s just say lots of crockpot meals eaten late at night.
On Thursday, the opening day for the early performances before hundreds of school kids, I helped with kid patrol and guarding the boys room.
Being around all those theater types–and I am talking the kids, parents, play directors and staff–took me back some 30-plus years to college.
Theater majors ran in their little pack and English majors ran in our little pack. Neither little pack fit well into the mainstream of economic, science and business majors.
Yet, there was little overlap between the two little odd packs, both sort of cults off the college mainstream. English majors relish wry. Theater majors build performance on overwrought.
One is subtle, trending toward the internal; the other is overt and out there.
No new hedge apples (speaking of overt) were down on the east side of the south old clay pit. But I picked up one to take home to my wife to give our house its magical powers.
One of the reasons I make Garrison Keillor’s “Prairie Home Companion” a must-listen, no matter where I am at 5 p.m. Saturdays is because of his hilarious send-up on English majors with his running bit on Professional Organization of English Majors.
There is all kinds of wry in there, and a lot of needed jabs at English majors themselves. Sometimes ones I suspect only English majors catch all the self-aimed jabs.
Because the downed trees on the old rail bed, now a trail, above the south pit, I took a slightly different path out of the wilds of the town pond. And a rabbit bolted off in the underbrush. The meathead gave his obligatory surge.
On Friday, I wandered around Chicago’s Southeast Side with John Vukmirovich, a guy I am pretty sure was a fellow English major years before me. He calls his morning rambles, a perambulation.
For some reason, this morning “perambulation on wry” sounded fun, to me at least.
Back in town, a small mourning dove fluttered down to the sidewalk from an overhang by the insurance office. That was it for wildlife. Otherwise, just a dismal, gray fall morning only a duck hunter could love.
