"Caldwell figured he wasn’t due to poke his nose out of his cave for another two months by his own bear’s winter schedule. It wasn’t a very accurate schedule. A week or so one way or the other was about the best he could do. With a contented smile he remembered finishing up the last of Mr. and Mrs. Wiggins' turkey the week after Thanksgiving. There were creamed turnips too – and some sweet potato pie left over from dinner. He ate all that and just about everything else they left in the garbage can on their back porch…"

"I'd drop the quarter in the hand he didn't pick and show him my empty hand… He had trusting eyes—blue they were, soft blue, like faded blue jeans. His mouth made a little "o" whenever he saw something he marveled at…"

"It was planted there by a gray squirrel one sharp November day about seventy five years ago. I saw him do it. He ran past my back door with an acorn in his mouth and dug a hole with his front feet, dropped the acorn in, covered it up and, as most squirrels do, forgot all about it…"

In his Radio City office. 1952.

"My stories are anecdotes of my past, the people I’ve known, the places I’ve been and the ups and downs of a lifetime…" -- Harry Buschman

I’ve been writing guest posts for my publisher’s blogs and reviewers’ blogs while leaving the StoryRhyme blog fairly unattended, which is bad because a blog left to its own devices will have the tendency to get into trouble...

The record was 12 kids until Charlie Blocker and the graduating class of 1990 came along. Charlie talked the school into allowing girls in the contest and even though they weren’t any smaller than the boys, you can imagine there was a real incentive to squeezing as many of teenagers in that telephone booth as possible. We could have squeezed in more if the girls had been a little more cooperative…

As everyone knows Rome is built on seven hills... Some of them quite steep. The tops of each of them are prime tourist attractions and climbing them on a three speed Schwinn can be an invitation to a coronary either going up or coming down.

"IThe heaviest thin book I ever read was Stephen Hawking's, "A Brief History of Time." Professor Hawking taught me a few things: A black hole is really brilliantly white. Just before matter is sucked into it, it reaches the speed of light and converts itself into energy. What we see is matter waving goodbye to us as it disappears into a great cesspool in the sky…"

"I had a box of hymnals in the trunk of my car to deliver to Pastor Gregory James Coots of the Full Gospel Tabernacle, a church in Paradise. Paradise New York, that is. Paradise is a small town just north of Schenectady. I always disliked Schenectady... Mainly because it's hard to spell and it's off in a place you don't want to be in winter. Not that you'd enjoy being there in the summer either, but you do have to go there if you're on your way to Paradise. I sell bibles and hymnals to churches, and while I admit it's not much of a job, it's the only thing like a job I could find with the economy in the shape it is…"

Our annual cornucopia of StoryRhyme.com''s most popular stories, pages and searches: 2011 edition...

On the final day of 2011, we take a quick peek at who's visiting StoryRhyme.com...

"The dolls lay in a disorganized heap in the dirty window of the thrift shop. They stared out at the pushcarts lining the snowy street outside. They didn’t know what to make of it.

"They had never been in a place like this before…"

The Professor picked up the small bottle at the end of the bench and looked at the brain inside. “It’s a very small brain, Igor...”

“Why, what’s so special about the Schatsky’s?”

“Sheila Schatsky is President of the Ladies-in-waiting Society that’s all. You want to get ahead, don’t you––you have to play nice with the Schatsky’s... What are you doing with that telephone book?”

“I have to call a plumber. Half the gargoyles on this side of the cathedral belfry are plugged up... Why do we have to go to the Schatsky’s anyway? Why can’t we stay home once in a while?”

“We have to keep up, Boris. I don’t want to have to polish candlesticks all my life...”

"Marcel Comeau is a superb portrait painter. He has the rare ability to capture the most fleeting of expressions, the subtlest of smiles and the evanescent qualities that reveal a man’s personality.

"He is painting a portrait of Mr. John Blank. Mr. Blank is president of a company that manufactures kitchen appliances that no one thinks of buying..."

"George is hard to convince, especially with the relentless reasoning of his wife Mildred. From a lifetime of looking in one direction he is very reluctant to change his point of view. Mildred, on the other hand, looks at all sides of every situation -- so many sides in fact, that she rarely reaches a conclusion. The most minor and basic decisions are delicately viewed from all angles.

"Their daughter, Angela, (and what an inappropriate name for the black-hearted wench she has turned out to be) is of marriageable age and is searching for the path of least resistance -- particularly where men are concerned..."

"A little revolutionary?" -- Harry

"In many ways it was idyllic. There were no good times and no bad times; except for the weather, everything was the same, from one day to the next...

"Pickpockets and Poets slipped through the net just as effortlessly as they have in every civilization -- the two P’s, like mumps and measles were ever present visitors at the back door..."

"Before it falls, they will be removed and put on a shelf in the kitchen of Paradise Caterers until the next wedding reception. That may be tomorrow or the day after... Or who knows? There may not be another one for a very, very long time..."

"Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate" -- Friar William of Ockham

“Times were tough. Shorty's father wasn't working and mine was on half time. We knew we'd never get the money from home, and even if we raised prices on the work we did in the neighborhood we'd never get near $149.50. I carried old one legged lady Schroeder's bundles from the grocer for her once a week. She'd give me a quarter, and I didn't see how I could tell her the price was now fifty cents. Deposit bottles were a nickel and newspapers were ten cents for a hundred pounds; those were the facts of life; we couldn't change them...”

“This is a little known work in German by the Grimm brothers. A Bible tale rather than a fairy tale. I've done my own translation into contemporary English. It makes a beautiful philosophical point and a nice piece for the Christmas season.” -- Harry

“When Adam and Eve were driven from paradise, they were forced to build a house for themselves on barren ground somewhere east of Eden. Life was hard and they earned their bread by the sweat of their brow. Adam hoed the field, and Eve spun the wool, and every year Eve brought a child into the world. Some were beautiful – some were ugly...

“A ‘Thanksgiving’ tale...” -- Harry

“She sat around watching television and writing in her blog and all the time she prayed some dark handsome stranger, (preferably one of royal blood) would scale the walls of her father’s remote castle and carry her away. As she grew older she lowered her standards a little and would have settled for someone less athletic and romantic. Sitting alone in the tower of her father’s castle she remained remote, chaste and inviolate...”

“They rode their carrousel until they tired of it. They walked the tiny bridges that spanned the painted landscapes. Tiring of that, they see-sawed, swung and sang to the wind chimes. Sometimes they listened to stories told by the bards of the castle of Melot. In rainy weather they played indoors. The King’s musicians would perform for them, or the King himself might tell them of his glorious exploits in the Royal House of Melot...”

Follow Chance the Dog's insightful yet slightly stupid StoryRhyme Twitter Tweets...

“The Goddess came down from the mountain top, and here at this very spot she knelt and kissed the earth. From her kiss sprang a fountain of cold clear water. It became a pond. It grew to a lake and from the far end of the lake a river flowed out to nourish the land back to health again...

Intentional misspellings, potty humor, robots, nuclear waste, and crude drawings...

“Let me see,” he said to an old man feeding his chickens. “Suppose there was a precipice in front of you, and your next step would be your last... Who would warn you in time?”

“Father Sebastian closed his ledger book. As of this date there were seventeen children of God. They were orphans, but to Father Sebastian they would always be the children of God -- until they were adopted...”

I have to admit, my blog has been gathering a bit of dust lately. I haven't been as diligent as I should be -- my writing energies have been focused elsewhere...

“The young man stared fixedly at the setting sun. ‘Think how wonderful it must be to live where the sun sets. Look there old man, it’s touching down just over the crest of that long dark hill. That’s where I want to be...’”

“George has been walking all day. His feet are sore and he is hungry. He is on his own; just like a rolling stone. He asks himself a pointed question, “Who’s going to stop and give a dwarf a ride?” His answer is simple: “Nobody, that’s who...”

"Yes, I know he doesn’t smell very nice, Elise, and yes he has food all over his shirt , but he’s a great composer, dear – he’s not like real people..."

"Once Tanko came upon the small village, he ventured over to a trading stand to see if the traders knew what this green thing was. The traders were greatly interested by the item, even though they had not the faintest idea what it was..."

"Gladys Worthington of Hoboken, New Jersey may have saved as many as 20 people from a watery grave this morning – and then again, maybe she did not..."

“Grandpa taught me how to play chess, don’t you remember?” Eva said as her grandmother joined her in the closet looking through boxes that had been accumulating for almost fifty years in the apartment her mother had grown up in."

Laura G. has sent us a story about loss that we can all relate to. When we lose someone dear to us, we keep our loved one alive with our memories of them. Sometimes a particular object will provide a connection to that person. After I lost my dad, many years ago, my mom gave me a couple of his belongings that she thought would have particular significance to me...

Just in time for the holidays, StoryRhyme.com is happy to present a short story by our friend Harry Buschman, "Christmas Story." Many of us are familiar with the story of Joseph and Mary searching for a night's lodgings and being turned away...

Charlie, our middle schooler, brought home "Diary of a Wimpy Kid, a novel in cartoons" by Jeff Kinney the other day. I don't think I've ever seen him laugh so much at one book. Silly, gleeful laughter. But, many parents don't like this series. Why..?

"Sadie Devons was declared to be a witch, but in an age when witches were burned at the stake, she enjoyed a long and comfortable life. She owed it all to her one eyed cat “Brimstone,” she said. It was a handsome cat; jet black except for her left front paw, which was white as snow..."

"The old man was a great reader. He could be a princess, a king or a roaring dragon and the children would be all ears and wide eyes with their blankets pulled up to their chins, and they would listen with rapt attention. He read well because he believed every word he read, and his belief made the children believe too. They never wanted their father or mother to read, they always asked for grandfather..."

“First of all I'm a nonagenarian – too old to be learning new things and probably too old to be giving advice as well. But never too old to tell stories about the way things used to be...”

Down Went The Spoon is an imaginative look at childhood from the perspective of a little one who's growing and discovering that gravity is often working against her. Oh, and the little one who inspired this story? She’lll be beginning college in the fall. We wish her well. My, how time flies...

We all get them, those noxious (and obnoxious) forwards.  The platitudes, the schmaltz, the misinformation -- the horror!  My favorite lately was the one about how Mister Rogers was a Navy SEAL and he wore those long-sleeved sweaters because his arms were covered with tattoos...

We'd have to spell out words around him, and he'd play hide-and-go-seek with us throughout the house...

I was going to title this story "Big Dog and Little Dog" until Charlie, resident Captain Underpants scholar and expert, informed me that that was the title of a line of Dav Pilkey books. Well, live and learn...

Our friend Laura G. has sent us a new story. When I read it, I was struck by how it applied to my family at this moment in time. Last week, my mother-in-law was in the hospital for a few days. She's okay, but we, our son especially, have to deal with the fact that she's getting older...

A few days ago, Chance was doing some serious barking in the backyard. I thought maybe there were men working in the trees (the phone company), so I went out, only to find him, full of righteous indignation, barking at a jet that was leaving behind a very long contrail...

These were the words used in a search query by someone (likely a high school freshman) who found StoryRhyme.com. To the seeker: I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that you didn't read the story, did you? Because if you did, you'd know that O. Henry's use of irony is not exactly subtle. In fact, if at first you didn't know what irony meant, you would after reading "The Gift of the Magi..."

Update: Jim And Della's Gifts; Irony... Okay, since it's the season of giving and since I don't want to feel like I've got spiders in my soul like The Grinch, I'm directing this post to the many of you who are seeking the answer to the question: What is ironic about the gifts Jim and Della gave to each other. Also, what were they really giving...

Growing up, part of our family tradition was going out every year to pick out a tree with Dad. I've kept up the tradition of fresh-cut trees until just two years ago. Lazy? Maybe a little. Now we have a beautiful (okay, well, it’s fine) artificial tree. All we need is a little pine air freshener and we're set.

Go on, vote. The poll’s right over there in the right sidebar...

Oh and if you have the time, share a Christmas Tree story..!

The idea of worlds within worlds is so interesting to me. After our recent trip to the Griffith Park Observatory and watching the planetarium show, I was inspired to write a story about Charlie's encounter with an inhabitant of one of those worlds within a world...

Every night when the moon is out, Kathy the Bunny Queen takes her basket and goes outside...