Ponderings by Dan Ponder

Like most of you in Southwest Georgia and Northwest Florida, I still deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Michael.  Our community is slowly recovering from what seemed to be insurmountable odds last October. We are still trying to find that new normal that everyone talks about, but at the same time things for our city…

An unpleasant part of retirement is the dreaded downsizing.  This includes cleaning out closets and storage rooms, some of which have been untouched for decades.  It can be a bit depressing, especially when you try on clothes that haven’t fit you for years. I will admit I am a bit sentimental when it comes to…

It has been a while since I wrote a travelogue in this column.  This past week, Mary Lou and I, along with my brother, sister, mother and most of my cousins on my mother’s side spent a long Labor Day weekend in Portland, Oregon and Vancouver, Washington. It was a bittersweet time as my Aunt…

What is culture?  It seems like a simple enough question.  The answer is a bit more elusive. I consulted several dictionaries to find a few short words that define the meaning of culture. It is not that easy. Perhaps the description that I liked the most was culture refers to the values, norms, and beliefs…

It was an extraordinary Summer. My childhood friend, Keith Granger, and I took the first flight of our lives. We flew from Atlanta to St. Louis where we changed planes before continuing to Salt Lake City.  From there, we drove four hours south with a total stranger in a station wagon. We arrived in Koosharem,…

It was just after dawn when we headed out from home. We were picked up at the peanut mill and taken to the watermelon field.  It was our first day on the job. Six dollars a day with a dollar deducted for lunch. Lunch consisted of two packs of crackers and a Coca-Cola. We were…

The hottest June on record!  Not the hottest in the past few years, or the hottest since I was working in the watermelon fields. No.  June of 2019 was the hottest June since they started keeping records back in the 1800s. That would be enough for one year, but in the past nine months we…

There are few dates so momentous that they plant themselves into our collective memories forever.   Those events are so powerful that we remember exactly where we were and who we were with at the time. I was on the playground at Cottonwood Elementary School when we found out that President John F. Kennedy had…