Tag: Grindrod

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.

Language, whether it be in spoken or written form, is indeed a gift. That was a message I tried to impart to the scores of young people who passed through my classroom doors from my first year in 1973 through my final year in education in 2005.

I don’t think about it often, but I certainly do each November. That’s the month that has two dates divided by just four days, days that live in opposite polarities. The first date is the 11th, a day set aside to honor our veterans for the sacrifices they’ve made to safeguard our freedoms.

Most know that when it comes to aging, much changes. Not only do we know this when we look at old photos of our wrinkle-free visages but we also know it when we debate whether a trip up a staircase at home is really all that necessary. Beyond the physical changes, at least for me, there are also changes in my thought processes as far as my points of emphases.

Had you told me when I was a teen that someday I’d be 72 years old, I’d have been very skeptical. Even in my teens, I knew enough about my family history to realize that while my maternal and paternal ancestors may have been known for a variety of things, one of those would certainly not have been longevity. Of my four grandparents, one died before I was born, another, before I was 2 and a third when I was 6. As for my parents, well, I’ve outlived both, my father by 14 and my mom by two years.

When I first received the book that siblings Scott Campbell and his sister Tracey Campbell Frederick got to print with a huge assist from Scott’s daughter Amy, who typed the manuscript, I thought there was a mistake on the cover of From the South Pacific to the New River, a West Virginia Love Story. Scott had told me it was about his father, John Emerson Campbell, and his Navy experiences aboard the USS Taussig during World War II, and I assumed it to be a third-person account, co-written by Scott and Tracey.

While it’s the moms who obviously do the heavy lifting when it comes to bringing a baby into this world, that doesn’t mean that the dads can’t experience their own euphoria when it comes to the promise of new life. As for the way they express their joy, well, that can come in a variety of ways, from the predictable and clichéd to the downright larcenous.

Surely, I feel blessed, at 72, to be well enough and motivated enough to work. While it does mystify some of my retired friends that seem to find no trouble filling up their days with daily golf, trips to the Y and stops at the Beer Barrel, truth be told, one of my greatest mortal fears is how I would fill my days if I didn’t work. Fortunately for me, the world in which we live seems to embrace the reliability and experience that senior workers provide, especially after COVID, when so many of those who used to work found so many other things to do rather than work.

During the course of a typical week, it’s not unusual for me to receive 15 to 20 solicitations. Since I’ve tried to support the causes about which I’ve researched to ensure most of what’s donated goes to the cause and not to inflated salaries of administrators and about which I care, I’m pretty sure my name has been passed around to other organizations, which may explain the high volume.