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Burton Cole

I need a cure to recover from cures for the common cold

Glance out the window to see what the weather’s doing. Good. Now peek again. Sure, it’s only been a few seconds, but that’s long enough for northeast Ohio to throw us another curve ball. The temperature may have changed by 20 or 30 degrees. If it was sunny, now it’s raining. Or snowing. And, of course, that’s brought on coughs, sniffles and sneezes. Even worse, a swarm of unlicensed doctors now are buzzing about you with their cures for the common cold. From snail slime to lizard soup, there’s nothing like a sure-fire cure to wipe out a minor irritation with a major ...

I didn’t want to know this much

In 1956, filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock released one of his masterpieces, “The Man Who Knew Too Much.” It was a film full of suspense, intrigue and not knowing what was really going on. Seventy years after Hitchcock’s movie, we’re now “The People Who Know Too Much.” Our lives are ...

That just ain’t normal

About 150 miles south and a tad east of Normal, Illinois, sits the village of Oblong. I know this because once upon a time, I wrote for a newspaper in Decatur, Illinois, which was a little closer to Normal than Oblong. One day, the society page of our newspaper carried this headline: ...

The Joke Lady of Niles: 82 and still giggling

You can’t hide from The Joke Lady. I met Marcie “The Joke Lady” Danyi of Niles by U.S. Postal Service back in 2020, shortly after some annoying virus was making its rounds in the news — and the world. Marcie was 78 back then (“My mind still thinks I’m 25,” she told me. “My ...

The ‘perfect’ sib crosses the finish line too soon

My brother Tim told anyone who would listen that he obviously was the best of us four kids. “Perfect,” I believe was the word he used. Tim would look to Mom to confirm that he never caused a lick of worry, concern or trouble like his three siblings. Mom has yet to corroborate that ...

I’m organized, but now I can’t find a single thing

Back in my college days, my roommate, Brent, and I each had what appeared to the uneducated eye to be stacks of random chaos on our desks. “How can you work like that?” the uneducated interlopers demanded in disgust. They usually wrinkled their noses, too, which neither of us understood. ...