Back in the Day by Eric Scott for February 10, 2025

He’s been reading Poor Richard’s Owlmanac.

And not even a suitcase…

That’s just the calm before the other shoe drops in the woods.

that takes the cake…

There is a recurring image in “Back in the Day” that depicts Ike sitting under a tree in which foliage is often very sparse or sometimes entirely absent. This usually puts me in mind of the capricious now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t trees or foliage in Samuel Beckett’s “Act Without Words.”Sometimes the trees provide shade from the sun… which protection can vanish in a split second if the limbs fold in on themselves… which they randomly do. The effect is a suspended moment between hilarious and tragic.

I’ve often thought Beckett had harvested this image from the book of Jonah in the Hebrew Testament, aka the “Old Testament” of the Christian Bible. In particular, the very last few verses of the book in which Jonah seats himself where the sunshine is uncomfortably warm until…

God causes a leafy gourd vine to grow up and shade poor Jonah. But God, trickster that God is, later sends a worm to kill the plant.

Jonah cannot decide whether to laugh or cry. No spoiler here. Go read it yourself and decide for yourself. I have to admit that I can either laugh or cry at this development.

I think the owl’s “wise” advice to Ike is simultaneously as confusing and instructive as the final chapter of Jonah.

Also, a penny saved is worth two in the bush.

Three

Ike’s day is planned. I don’t think I will ask owl when I need wisdom. Who is next in line to ask???

All I ever got from an owl was potato chips!!

A puck saved is better than $3.00 spent to buy soda with high fructose corn syrup!

1. A penny saved is better than not to have loved @.

Owls do not speak with punctuation nor a day shift key.

2. All we are saying is give piece of cake.

The owls want suet cakes.

Valentine Blatz week bonus advice:

Speaking of a piece of cake , wedding Vows have been disastrous by design. More success would occur with more optimistic vows! Either or situations with only 2 option such as ‘better or worse’ is verbal entrapment that makes it too easy to settle or actually vow upon yourself ‘worse’ conditions, poverty and sickness with no way of escape.

These would be much better vows for a couple to officially start with:

“We’ll wed each other for good, better or for best, for adequate sustenance with ideal profits, for fitness and for healthy eating, tolerating unintentional injuries and aiding recovery tactics, to love, cherish and discuss matters with, and without forsaking other family members we surely won’t part if these vows are respected and honored by both of us. "

wise move, Owl

I can’t contemplate on an empty stomach. I need that piece of cake now.

Give cake a chance. Let me unpack my fork.

A stitch in time is never found again.

I’d like to know what was in the center of Owl’s special Tootsie Pop.