Tag: Grindrod

If you’ve ever wondered just how many of us there are who participate in the affairs of the living at any moment in time, there’s actually a website, worldometers.info, which provides a ticker with a rolling count. There are 8,111,304,849 of us, although those last three digits bounce up and down constantly, depending on who’s winning the ongoing competition between joyous birth and sorrowful death.

Although it has been a very long time since I sat behind one of the little desks in a classroom, like most of us, I still carry lots of memories from those days, including the subjects to which I gravitated and also those with which I did not.

While we’d never ingest any liquid if, on the back of the bottle, it read, “Harmful if swallowed,” can the same be said when we rely of the medications that come with greater frequency as we age compliments of Pfizer, AbbVie Eli Lilly and the rest of the big pharm folks?

Each year during the run-up to Father’s Day weekend, of course, many of my thoughts are invested in my own dad, who left me at what now seems the impossibly young age of 58 some 46 years ago. He was hit by a train at a cross-buck crossing just outside of Paulding on a Monday work day while driving his roads going about the business of selling some of Central Steel and Wire’s products. Dad sadly never was able to inhale a deep draft of retired air at Lost Creek Country Club and plunge a tee and Titleist into the ground on what would ordinarily be a work day.

On the first day of May, the students of Lima Central Catholic were given a rare opportunity to hear from one of baseball’s once-upon-a-time heroes, Major League Baseball’s last 30-game winner, Denny McLain. During the program, McLain spoke not only about his baseball life but also about the work it took to achieve success during his 10-year career. The former two-time Cy Young Award winner, the sport’s highest pitching honor, won 31 games in 1968, a magical year for his Detroit Tigers, that year’s World Series winner.

During the month known for its basketball madness and the questionable decision-making of spring breakers, there was a story that became national news for almost a week, about a University of Missouri senior named Riley Strain, who was in Nashville on a trip with his fraternity brothers. You may recall he came up missing, last seen on video stumbling down a Nashville street in the entertainment district after being asked to leave one of the famous honky-tonks in a town that makes much of its money from its nightlife that begin way before dark.

During my student days, as my math grades will verify, I really wasn’t much of a numbers guy. My forte, whether speaking or writing, has really always been the language and its various components.

When it comes to trusting your fellow humans, it’s a far different world than the one in which I grew up.

As we approach Sunday when moms are feted, my thoughts turn to my own mother, the Nova Scotia-born naturalized citizen with the distinctive name of Cavell, one of just two women I have ever known with that Christian name.

While the winter that came and went so very quickly as time often does for us older folks was more a whisper than a shout, it’s still always good to welcome May’s warmth.