PIES: “I’m almost out of frozen rhubarb, so luckily the new crop is up,” Clyde Johnson writes. “You can’t beat strawberry rhubarb pie. I usually add cranberries when available. I look forward to the berries getting ripe in the spring and fall. I freeze lots of cranberries so I will have them all year. My favorite pie is cranberry-cherry — yum!”

He listed others he likes to mix, too. Rhubarb, strawberries, blueberries, blackberries, gooseberries, elderberries, raspberries and currants.

“Apple pie is my second favorite,” he said. “You can’t beat a couple of apple pies sitting, cooling. The aroma fills the valley.”

Wasn’t the smell of fresh pie what always attracted Yogi Bear in the old cartoons?

“Most farms had a few apple trees, also most people in town had apple trees in their backyard. When you had an apple cellar full of various kinds, you felt good and you were ready for winter,” Clyde says.

“Apples had hundreds of uses, not just pies, for breakfast, dinner and supper. Making pies is fun and develops your skills whether you make your own pie crust or buy it,” he writes.

“Make a pie and give it away to needy seniors, churches, senior centers or eat it yourself with vanilla ice cream,” he suggests. “Enjoy and have fun.”

RESPECT: It was this day — April 29 — in 1967 that Aretha Franklin’s version of “Respect” was released as a single. The song became No. 1 on the charts after its release.

The Washington Post reported just after Aretha’s death in April 2018 that the song was originally written and first recorded by Otis Redding as a song about “a man’s demand for respect from a woman when he got home.”

But it’s Aretha’s twist — “a declaration of independence that was unapologetic, uncompromising and unflinching” — that everyone remembers today.