Two boomerangs

Yesterday boomerangs appeared in my life two times.

First was on Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me on NPR, where the special phone-in guest was William H. Macy. One trivia fact about him is that he's an avid woodworker, and has appeared on the cover of woodworking magazines (he mentioned that that's the only kind of cover he seems to appear on, but I don't think that's exactly true). But another triva fact about him is not that he collects boomerangs. The hosts mentioned this fact, and he said no, it wasn't true, but the story keeps coming up. "It goes away but then it keeps coming back again," he said, meaning that literally but then also playing up the boomerang theme. He said he doesn't know where it came from, the story is that he has a huge collection and is very interested in boomerangs, but no.

Second reference was something I saw on my walk around the little lake. I was on the other side headed back, and admiring the way the western sun glinted on the water and the geese glided so majestically. Then I heard a sound that instantly took me back to twilight at my grandparents' cottage - the sound of voices coming across water. I walked on and when I got closer I saw there was a group of men, some old and some young, playing in the lawn between the apartments and the main office building. Then my mind instantly went to backyard cricket, but I realized a second later that of course a group of Wisconsin men playing on a lawn on Easter Saturday would not be playing pick-up cricket, they've probably never even heard of it and wouldn't know what equipment you'd need or anything. I thought probably football, or maybe baseball since the season's just starting. But it turned out they were playing with a boomerang. The smallest kid, a little blonde guy maybe 10 or 11, was throwing it and the older guys were giving him tips. "Up and into the wind, right?" he said. So, they were playing with an Aussie thing, just not a set of cricket stumps.