Daze Blog
A native of Chicago and a graduate of the University of Missouri, Eric Bernsee has enjoyed residing in Greencastle for more than 25 years. Years of consuming McDonald's iced teas, Dairy Castle flurries and Marvin's GCBs have helped make him the man he is today.
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For one shining moment, Dairy Castle on national TV
Posted Monday, March 21, 2022, at 12:00 AM2It’s always a bit of fun to see local people, places and things pop up in television settings. Remember when a character on the old series “Joan of Arcadia” suggested the group “eat at Marvin’s.” Tracking down that connection was like being a private investigator. Turned out one of the assistants was a DePauw University graduate, well versed in garlic cheeseburgers, or GCBs by Marvin’s lingo... -
‘Shear Madness’ fun first before Beef & Boards gets ‘kinky’
Posted Sunday, January 9, 2022, at 8:55 PMBeef & Boards is back and better than ever with a full house the first Saturday of the current run of comedy, “Shear Madness.” Having been bitten by the Covid bug in 2020, the venerable Indianapolis venue canceled its theater season, put the buffet away and stayed idle until this past summer when it brought the musical “Newsies” to the stage and followed that splendid romp through the yellow journalism days of New York publishing with an outstanding fall presentation of “Phantom of the Opera.”... -
COVID confinement getting expensive
Posted Thursday, March 11, 2021, at 2:01 PMMore than a year into it now, this continuing coronavirus confinement is not only boring, tedious and nerve-wracking, it’s getting expensive. Granted, I haven’t spent nearly as much on dining out in the past year. But then again, my Kroger expenditures have doubled or tripled for the month as I’ve eaten my way through the grub I had stashed in the pantry and freezer... -
Hammerin’ Hank joins sad Hall of Fame parade
Posted Friday, January 22, 2021, at 3:19 PM1And now … Hank Aaron. Father Time, it seems is breaking up that old gang of mine. Hank Aaron, who died Friday at age 86, becomes the 10th Hall of Famer to die since the start of 2020. He joins Bob Gibson, Whitey Ford, Tom Seaver, Joe Morgan, Lou Brock, Al Kaline, Phil Niekro, Don Sutton and Manager Tommy Lasorda in passing away and taking generations of memories with them. Wasn’t it bad enough that 2020 had already taken sports greats Gale Sayers and Kobe Bryant from us?... -
Election night newsroom traditions like no other
Posted Wednesday, November 4, 2020, at 1:14 PMSo Election Day 2020 is in the books, folks. All together now, exhale. Thank goodness. The results speak for themselves. Getting there, as they say, is half the battle. More like 75 or 80 percent this time. Being a journalist in this Time of COVID hasn’t been easy, believe you me. And now with the greatest show on earth unfolding in front of us, we have to play with one hand tied behind our back ... or maybe both hands. Sorry, no Zoom meetings allowed... -
No clue about going to bat to restore sanity
Posted Tuesday, August 25, 2020, at 12:01 PM5Last Wednesday night I was hunkered down in my living room, watching a late-night August hockey game, when the peace was disturbed by the arrival of an Indiana bat. He zoomed overhead, looped around the room, fluttered into the dining room and made the downstairs loop complete by sailing into the utility room, re-emerging into the hallway and back out for another lap of the living room. I had no clue what I was going to do... -
Divided limb from limb
Posted Monday, June 1, 2020, at 6:11 PMDivide and conquer. It’s a simple strategy really, although it didn’t work so well for General Custer and his 7th Cavalry... -
Bitter pill to swallow
Posted Friday, May 8, 2020, at 12:37 AM4If I remember right, a year ago at this time, the only meds I was putting in my body were the three Aleve tablets I took each morning... -
Not a Toomer or a porch pirate
Posted Monday, December 17, 2018, at 8:31 PMLike everyone else, I've seen the videos of so-called porch pirates making the rounds. The lady making off with a couple big boxes only to have them turn out to be cat litter. The people who send their little girl up to the porch to pilfer a parcel... -
Fair doesn't really start until that first elephant ear
Posted Monday, July 23, 2018, at 2:27 PMOver the course of covering 30-plus Putnam County Fairs, I've formulated my own series of platitudes about the fair and when to really consider it in full swing. To me, the fair never officially starts until we've been rained on at least once (that's been every day so far)... -
Monumental task worth doing, history tells us
Posted Friday, June 29, 2018, at 8:48 PMUntil recently, cemeteries essentially were something I have mostly hoped to stay out of for as long as humanly possible. But on a recent visit to Boone-Hutcheson Cemetery, the beauty of the rural surroundings captivated me. The property is nothing short of beautiful to behold with a gorgeous backdrop of the Big Walnut Valley creating postcard-like photo opportunities all around... -
Stormy weathers deer dilemma
Posted Friday, June 22, 2018, at 9:20 PMGrowing up in the Chicago suburbs, one of the great delights of my youth was listening to WLS Radio and particularly disc jockey Larry Lujack and his "Animal Stories" segments. That's where "Old Uncle Lar" would read "Little Snot-Nosed Tommy" an exaggerated and weirdly written animal-related story that never failed to entertain and always ended with Little Tommy pleading,"Is the (insert beaver, buffalo or baboon here) OK, Uncle Lar?"... -
Here's your sign ...
Posted Friday, March 9, 2018, at 11:09 PMIf you've been following the work of the Greencastle City Council in recent weeks, you know that its members have endeavored to right some longtime wrongs by turning a couple of perilous intersections into four-way stops. One is the no-brainer at Vine and Franklin streets, where even before Wasser Brewing Co. ... -
It's the time of the season ...
Posted Friday, August 25, 2017, at 2:34 PMWe're right in the thick of baseball season these days as pennant races loom. And football season awaits, kicking off within the week in the college ranks. But keeping our eye on the ball here in Greencastle, we know it's really music season. As The Zombies once sang, "it's the time of the season when love runs high."... -
Four of a kind
Posted Friday, May 19, 2017, at 12:12 PMPerhaps not since Frank Valli, his falsetto and the Four Seasons has anyone hit the high notes better than the last four mayors of Greencastle in their recent panel appearance at DePauw University. The brainchild of DePauw political science professor Bruce Stinebrickner, the two-hour mayoral event earlier this month was interesting, insightful, funny and a great reminder of how far we've come as a community and how we've gotten there... -
Musicals ... I've grown accustomed to their pace
Posted Thursday, April 20, 2017, at 9:29 PMHonestly, I don't know what it is about me and musicals. I enjoy the heck out of some of them. Others not so much. "Guys and Dolls" is an oldie but a goodie. I inherited my appreciation of that from my dad, who had me singing "I got a horse right here, his name is Paul Revere ..." when I was about nine. And betting harness races when I was 15... -
Muffin Toppers, yada yada yada
Posted Tuesday, March 21, 2017, at 6:21 PMIn what probably should have been a foreboding admission but my "ex" never got into "Seinfeld." In fact, she acknowledged she only watched it because that's what everybody would be talking about it the next morning at work and she didn't want to be left out of the conversation... -
Sheer fun and enjoyment join madness for Beef & Boards' season opener
Posted Wednesday, January 4, 2017, at 4:43 PMAd-libs, political zingers, a dash of innuendo and a few quips about our Hoosier neighbors from Carmel to Greenwood ... What could be more fun than all that rolled into a whodunit in which the audience helps determine the culprit? And no, it wasn't Col. Mustard or Professor Plum, candlestick or not... -
Too much like winter ...
Posted Thursday, December 15, 2016, at 10:25 PMOK, so it's not even officially winter yet, and already I'm over it. The first day of our annual winter indignation doesn't technically arrive until next Wednesday (Dec. 21), yet here we are already talking single digits and windchills and school delays... -
No crying in baseball? Then you're no Cub fan
Posted Thursday, November 3, 2016, at 11:17 PMBeing a Chicago Cubs' fan has instilled in me several virtues over the course of my lifetime. Perseverance. Loyalty. Humility. Futility. Patience. Ah, patience. It wasn't bad enough that the baseball gods made us wait 71 years for a return to the World Series and 108 years to repeat victory there. But when the Cubs whittled all that frustration down to one single, solitary baseball game Wednesday night, they felt compelled to tax our patience even more...
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