Topics of Discussion
Rotary Social Hour January 30, 2025 
Your humble servant, KVBS
Rotarian: “Kevin, what are you writing?
Response: "Editarian notes."
Rotarian: “Say something funny about me in there!”
KVBS: “Working on it.”
Rotarian: “Wow, that’s such an exciting job!”
KVBS: “I know, I live for this.”
Rotarian: “How do you come up with such funny stuff?”
KVBS: “Just listening to you folks and it bubbles to the surface. Better out than in I always say.”
Rotarian: Can you make a short story that includes all your notes from today’s social hour?
KVBS: I was having a drink outside a sauna bar in Mohawk, Michigan. They were serving pasties of course and I said no gravy but give me a bucket of beer and a sixer to go, it’s for my grandpa. I was 12 at the time and already self-employed singing depressing show tunes from Les Miserables to the locals who’d been raised on a steady diet of Hee Haw, fatherless children and the Price is Right.
A comparative debate about swimming laps in the community pool versus World War II marines storming Pacific island beaches was interrupted when a fight broke out. A local football hero was chatting up my main squeeze. She was oblivious until a cheerleader threw a chair. True story, straight out of the Book of Mormon or maybe it was Hamilton or Shucked? I’m guessing a board member might know the answer. I’ll ask her next time I see her, but didn’t catch her name. She must be new.
I often get melancholy in bars, thinking wow, this is somebody’s work place. How wild is that? Listening in on conversations, picking up bits and pieces here and there, working at a party filled with spilled drinks, sadness and gladness all at the same time. Totally belonging to the place, yet an outsider at every table. Talk about Severance and the work life balance.
I couldn’t help but notice the banker with an ice cube bigger than a golf ball floating in a deep mahogany pond of bourbon. The banker looked at me and laughed a banker’s laugh. I tried to make small talk that a banker would appreciate but all I could muster was that I had a nephew who made ice cubes as a hobby. The banker was not impressed.
The end of our short storied trip to an Irish pub involves a presidential question. Would the president like something old? Something new? Something borrowed or something blue? It doesn’t have to be the same old Friday roast. We could try something completely new, improved different. She blushed and said “surprise me, ask my husband, here’s his number. He’s got the goods and silly photos.” I empathized with her husband trying to pick out a place to take her out to dinner for Valentine’s Day.
Rotarian: Wow is that what you’re thinking about when you’re at Rotary?
KVBS: Yes. Even when I’m there with you, I’m somewhere else.
Email for Kevin Schumacher: schumacher@glassenrhead.com