And then I wrote...
by Dick Schilling, "Editor Emeritus"
... that Shakespeare wrote (I am paraphrasing because I am too lazy to look it up) something to the effect that expectations often prove wrong, most often when most certain.
The Cedar Rapids Gazette each Saturday calls on half a dozen “experts” to predict the winners of some football games and the final score. With one exception, the experts are sports writers, which qualifies them as experts. I know, because I was one for 17 years. (Pause for chuckle).
The morning of the Iowa-Minnesota game, all but one of them picked Minnesota. The one who did not was the only female and only non-expert.
So the Bard was proven right once again.
Thing is, I tended to agree with the majority.
The high expectations I held for this year’s team lasted through the first two wins, suffered a bit of a blow in the loss to that Dakota school, did not improve with a narrow win over Rutgers, then tanked in the loss to Northwestern. Maybe Rutgers was a better team than we thought? Probably not. Two losses to conference teams since then have been by a combined score of 136-0! Northwestern has a losing record for the season.
Minnesota had been flying high, scoring lots of points. They only got seven against Iowa. Good show. But Iowa only scored 14, not such a good show.
So my expectations for the Purdue game were not terribly high.
I was surprised that Saturday morning when we had a significant frost event. The neighbor’s roof, my first check, was white, and the lawn showed patches of frost as well. A couple hours later, as I backed from my driveway and looked north, the street seemed paved with gold, as once promised to immigrants into the United States. Two huge pine trees are the type that shed golden needles in the fall.
My own pine tree sheds pine cones.
I picked up several large pails of them so I could mow the lawn. When the riding mower picks up a cone, it bangs off the casing and makes a noise like a gun shot, and can’t do the casing or blade any good. Then I also had to pick up a few pails of walnuts from a neighbor’s tree, for the same reason.
All those things are a sign of the seasons changing and a reminder that winter will follow.
Speaking of yearly changes, our Jewish friends recently celebrated Rosh Hashanah. They end it with a meal to break the fast, which is where breakfast comes from.
And, it marks the beginning of the Jewish New Year, so this is the year 5777 for them.
So I wondered, if a Jewish individual or business would write 5777 on the date line on a check, would banking institutions accept that?
