Tag: Grindrod

While I hesitate to call the city that birthed me my hometown given the fact that I left when I was a week short of my seventh birthday when my father took a job transfer, for years, I had no problem reminding people that I was a Chicagoan in my earliest days.

As we head into the start of another year with which we are all blessed, there’s always some accounting to be done as to what we’ve gained and what we’ve lost in the year now in the history books.

There is so much to appreciate during the Christmas season. And, like many of you, I’m certain, much of that appreciation revolves around the memories of Christmas mornings. Each Christmas which I’m blessed to experience I always think back on one of my earliest Christmas mornings, the one when Santa was indeed in the house.

With the temperatures dropping along with fall’s curtain in just 48 hours, it’s time to put a wrap on my autumnal travel log. This week I’ll give you a few Alabaman snapshots.

On Lady Jane’s and my fall sojourn — leaving Little Rock behind after delving into the ignominious history of central High School and the Little Rock Nine — we headed for Hot Springs, a little over fifty miles away and a small city of around 38,000, but one as unique for its size you’re likely to find.

Memories of my annual fall trip always seem to help sustain me when the weather turns cold, and this year is no different. While ordinarily Lady Jane and I head east for our mid-October trip to admire the autumnal blaze that New England and Mid-Atlantic deciduous trees always provide, this year, we went a different route.

The contemporary music world and I parted ways quite some time ago. I suppose that’s true for a lot of folks who’ve been Medicare recipients for a while. We really do tend to hang on to so very much of the world as it once was. And, for me, the songs of the 1960s are the ones with which I still can sing along and maintain at least 80 percent lyrical accuracy.

Of course, with Thanksgiving just a few days away, it’s time for some grateful introspection: to do some cerebral mining in the tunnels of our lives to this point, sorting through our personal hardships and the national stories that so often sadden us, and search for some nuggets of positivity.

On September 8, the United Kingdom lost her Queen, Elizabeth II, who reigned for 70 years, 246 days, the longest for any female head of state in world history. At 96, she didn’t quite make it to the 101 her mother did, but 96 is a really good run nonetheless. The TV coverage, of course, was quite extensive — both the mourning period and the funeral itself, which, given all the postmortem pomp and circumstance of such a personage, actually didn’t occur until September 19.

Psychologists have told us that one of the most common behaviors we practice is transference, which occurs when people transfer feelings from past experiences to their current experiences. As with so many facets of human behavior, it was Freud who first coined the term to describe this universal tendency.