Ponderings by Dan Ponder

Mary Lou and I, along with our longtime traveling companions, Bill and Pam Moench, are somewhere over Central America as I write this.  One of the marvels of air travel these days is the fact you can access the internet on certain planes, no matter where you are.  We left Atlanta a few hours ago…

Occasionally we experience a dip in temperatures that gets everyone in the Deep South all abuzz. Add the fact that it is the same night as the Iowa Republican Caucus and you have a non-stop news frenzy on television. I am writing this from Compass Lake because I know from experience that even in the…

Newspapers play a major role in the life of a small community.  Unlike the major papers of the past that were the primary source of news for the nation, a weekly newspaper feels the pulse of a community.  It tells a story that if never shared is lost forever. I first met Waldo “Bo” McLeod…

The years go by faster and faster.  My grandfather used to tell me that and I am now old enough to know this to be true from my own experience.  This will be my 70th new year.  It will also be the 14th year I have written about the day when we look back at…

Writing a weekly column is a treat and a challenge at the same time.  Sometimes the words just flow from my fingers as I type.  Occasionally, I struggle to come up with something to write.   Christmas would seem to be an easy topic to write about until you have to write about it every…

I grew up Baptist and have been reciting the Lord’s Prayer for as long as I can remember.  In my earliest days I recall the phrase “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”.  I envisioned someone crossing over a fence into someone else’s land since there were many “No Trespassing”…

The past few days my wife and I have enjoyed the sights and sounds of New York City.  We love to visit the Big Apple any time of year, but Christmas makes the city magical.  Perhaps Bing Crosby captured it best with his lyrics in the Christmas movie classic, “Silver Bells”.   “City sidewalks, busy…

The cake made it from Dothan to Panama City to Auburn, as my daughter, Elizabeth, made the rounds with her family over the Thanksgiving holiday.  It was an 8-layer chocolate cake with icing that had oozed down the cake and onto the cake saver.  The icing was so fluid that it seeped through the seal…

At the end of the third song, I leaned over and told my wife, “I thought we were coming to an acapella concert.”  She replied with that incredulous look that she occasionally gives me and said, “They are an acapella group”.  Only then did I realize that the orchestra that seemed to be backing up…

If you follow news in the sports world, particularly related to college football, you have already heard about the enormous buyout of the contract of Jimbo Fisher, the head coach at Texas A&M.  While coaches are hired and fired all the time, this event is noteworthy because of the amount of the buyout.  Just over…