Tag: Grindrod

When it comes to signs, in trying to determine when they were first used, you might want to recall the 45 RPM by the Hollywood Argyles that came out in 1960 entitled “Ally Oop” because sign usage goes all the way back to the Stone Age. That was when Mr. Oop and his mates began drawing symbols on cave walls to advertise the products they had that they were willing to barter.

On weekends when I’m hosting my Lady Jane for the day, part of my experience is always providing a home-cooked meal to share with her. The fare is basic but, I think pretty good and nutritious, that is, until that last part that happens to be LJ’s favorite part of any meal, the dessert.

When it comes to what must be done to sustain life, eating really does head the list. Like so many, including my lovely daughters Shannon and Katie, I’ve developed over time a growing fascination with cooking. I think a part of the intrigue comes from the exposure cooking has gotten both in social media outlets and on television. And while I’m surely not interested in engaging in any cooking competitions against the likes of superstar foodies like Bobby Flay and Gordon Ramsay, whose culinary talents have allowed them to bank millions, I do like, especially on weekends, to see what I can do knocking out a recipe. Back in a former life when there was someone else here to do the cooking, to me, the kitchen merely was a shortcut to get from the living room to the family room.

On a beautiful fall Saturday last year, with both a deep blue sky and a bit of a snap in the air at 61 degrees, I asked Alexa if it was a pretty day. There seemed to be a bit longer of a pause from my AI roomie before “her” voice replied, “I don’t know that one.”

In any given year that comes to a close, there is reflection. Once most folks reach a certain age, there’s a realization that another year completed was truly a gift they were granted, one denied by many in 2023 and one surely not guaranteed in 2024.

Of the many gifts that define the Christmas season, besides the obvious, there are others as well that may not spring to mind.

With the official start of winter just a few days away, I better wrap up my travel log of an October trip to Michigan’s Lower and Upper Peninsula. Following time spent in Traverse City and Sault Ste. Marie, we stayed in the Upper by heading to Munising, the home of the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore.

With each passing year, I feel even more blessed to be well enough to take an autumnal sojourn with my Lady Jane, this past October, to our border state of Michigan. In that state, the nation’s 11th largest, when the talk comes around to peninsulas, it’s all about the Upper and Lower to either side of the Mackinac Bridge that serves as a five-mile-long line of demarcation.

While the origins of many words and expressions are often easy to pin down, others are shrouded in a blanket of vagaries. Often the best that can be determined by etymologists is when the word or expression first began to be used, and such is the case with the term “tall tale.”

While food is often front and center with each holiday of the calendar year, there really is no holiday more closely associated with food than Thanksgiving. However, unrelated to the multifarious and sumptuous dishes placed on our tables after the leaves far different than the ones we finished raking last month have been inserted in our dining tables, Thanksgiving has provided me so very much more.