It Might As Well Be Spring

Another shirtsleeves week weather-wise, and spring is on its way regardless of what that groundhog in Pennsylvania says.

First, let's clear up the answer to last week's celebrity name question. Who was Emmanuel Goldenberg? He was the great actor Edward G. Robinson. I think offering the fact that he was born in Bucharest, Romania sent some of the readers down the wrong path and I got a couple of comments that it was probably Peter Lorre. My Friend Erika was the only one who pegged Robinson as the correct actor. Before he passed away, I remember reading an interview in which he stated that had he known he would gain such fame and sign so many autographs, he would have selected something like John Doe for his screen name. He got very tired of writing out such a long name. His last film was Soylent Green in 1973, co-starring Charlton Heston. In that film Heston is seen crying as Robinson's character is dying. The tears were real; Heston was the only person on the set who knew that Edward G. Robinson had terminal cancer and had but weeks to live.

This week's guessing game should get at least two or three correct answers. Who is Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg? A great actress on the big screen as well as TV, she appears less frequently now because her primary role is that of wife and mother. She had her own hit series on TV for five years.

Today, the sky was at times filled with tens of thousands of geese flying north. It is a spectacular sight and is seen every year, but much earlier than usual this year. It's amazing how they make those "V" shaped formations and keep trading off the lead when the bird at the head of the formation needs a break. They are literally everywhere.

I'll be on the phone in the morning calling the Rowe Audubon Sanctuary to make a reservation to be in one of the blinds on the Platte River to watch the Sandhill Cranes next month. It's hard to imagine, but there will be approximately 600,000 cranes in one fifty mile stretch of the river. The state spends a lot of time and money tilling the ground along the Platte to keep it vegetation free. The cranes will not land in an area covered with weeds and tall growth, which is abundant on both sides of the river in many areas. Most of the grasses and weeds are not native to America, but they surely love to grow here. It is a never ending battle to keep invasive plants out of the areas along the Platte used for roosting by the cranes. Also, all those plants suck up a lot of water, reducing the flow of the Platte, which is a broad, shallow waterway. It's the famous river noted as, "Too thin to plow - Too thick to drink", but without its existence, the migration to the west in the old days would have been much, much different. The Platte and Nebraska played a huge role in the opening of the west. The cranes stopped here even then. I wonder what those old pioneers thought when they saw them. Probably thought it was dinner time.

We had our first rain in a while two days ago. It was light but was accompanied by a lot of wind, and I can't get over how different the wind sounds here in Nebraska as opposed to southern California. The wind here has a deeper more "threatening" sound to it, perhaps because it comes down from Canada and has no hills or mountains to break it up or change its course. The wind in L.A. comes to town after passing through the mountains and hills that surround the city, and it sounds fundamentally different. If the California wind is a tenor, the Nebraska wind is a basso.

Went fishing last week and caught myself a couple of nice catfish of about five to seven pounds. They are currently known as fillets in my freezer. I also caught a carp about 12-15 pounds and I snagged a gar that was about seven or eight pounds. Both the carp and gar wound up on the shore to serve as raccoon food. Who would believe it's warm enough to go fishing in Nebraska in February? And I don't mean ice fishing - all I needed was a light jacket as temps were in the middle fifties.

I have two trips to Kearney coming up this week, Wednesday and Friday, helping friends who don't drive make it to medical appointments. It's a long drive, but it gives me a chance to visit Burger King, Wendy's or Hunan's for a Chinese buffet.