LSJ Blogs: John Schneider

Tough to swallow

I realize we’re all trying to be cool and edgy these days, and that even a hospital is scrambling for attention, and may  feel the need to shout, “Hey — look at me!”

What gets me up in the morning …

I got a call Thursday morning from the owner of a local manufacturing company who offered to cover the full cost of wheelchair modifications for the disabled Gulf War veteran I wrote  about Wednesday.

In the same ballpark

I can’t say that Len Kluge and I were friends exactly, but we were solid soul mates when it came to one particular subject: baseball.
Whenever I wrote about the splendid spectacle, I could count on a passionate, and often poetic, response from Kluge, the local theater icon who died last week at the age of 63.

Me? A barbarian?

Help me out here: Is the phrase “foreign-sounding name” politically incorrect? Xenophobic? Barbaric?

I’m catching flak for using it in a recent column about people falling for a pitch from a company offering to provide copies of property deeds for an exorbitant fee.
After the Ingham County Register of Deeds gave me a list of people who ordered copies of deeds from National Deed Service Inc., I observed that it included a “disproportionate number of foreign-sounding names.”
My point? That new arrivals  to the U.S. might be more vulnerable to letters blurring the lines between official government agencies and opportunistic businesses.

Stars and Stripes … and a baby

On Independence Day weekend, you can’t go wrong with a cute kid and a flag.

Roadside distractions

What do you think of those spontaneous shrines that spring up in places — on roadsides mainly — where somebody has met a violent end?
Judy Matthews of Okemos calls them “pathetic.”

We pulled it off

No tornado. No unappetizing agricultural aromas. Not a drop of rain until midnight — and even then it was a shower that couldn’t make a handkerchief wet, let alone a blanket.

The tent stayed up. The mosquitoes stayed dead. The heat and humidity of previous days stayed away. The food drew raves. The DJ and bartender were congenial …
And, oh yeah, a marriage began.

L-R: My younger daughter, Caitlin (bridesmaid); my younger son, Benjamin (best man); the bride and groom (Roxanne and Justin: the bride's sister, Rachael (maid of honor) and groom's best bud, Jeff Struck (groomsman).

Down to the wire

It’s crunch time. When next  we meet, fellow bloglodytes, I’ll be an official father-in-law.

A person could starve

How long will the average office worker wait in line for a one-dollar sandwich?
Indefinitely, I guess.

Isn’t ‘intentionally set’ arson?

Regarding the fire at Discount Dave’s …
You may have noticed that while fire officials have concluded it was “intentionally  set,” they  stop short of calling it arson.