Ponderings by Dan Ponder

When your children grow up and have their own families, there are precious few occasions that you get to spend extended periods of time together.  Life is busier for grandkids than it ever was for me.  Just scheduling a time for our kids and grandkids to get together is a challenge.   This past Friday,…

The fourth of July holiday is always different in our family, yet almost always the same.  For a little more than the past century, my family has gathered at Compass Lake to celebrate our country’s birth.  This year, as most, my mother joined us.  Mary Lou and I were there along with our daughters and…

This past weekend, a longtime family friend posted on Facebook a picture of himself wearing a T-Shirt.  “You can’t scare me.  I have two daughters” was on the front of the shirt.  As the father of two daughters, I can totally relate. I was raised in a family with lots of boys.  Four of my…

William Osler is often considered the father of modern medicine.  A Canadian physician, Osler was also one of the four founding professors of the world-renowned John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland.   Among Osler’s many accomplishments, he is credited with starting the first residency programs for specialty training in medicine.  Dr. Osler was also one…

I started Rehab some six months ago working to strengthen the muscles around my knee and hip.  The primary goal was to delay eventual knee and hip replacements due to arthritis.   The secondary goal was to be able to interact more with my grandchildren.  Who ever knew that getting up off the floor could…

The television ads became almost unbearable.   Auburn is located near the Georgia – Alabama border, which means that political ads from both states are saturating the airwaves as the primary election dates get closer.  In particular, the candidates seem to have bought all the spots available around the evening news slot, the only real…

Mary Lou and I walked into the packed theater to the sound of synchronized applause.  We were accompanied by some two dozen other people as we were escorted to our seats.  It could have been a tremendous boost to your ego, until you realized that the 1,000+ fourth graders were just clapping in time to…

The only teenager I ever met with the last name of “Ponder” that was not my sibling happened to be my future wife.   We met in the seventh grade at Girard Junior High School in Dothan, where our Algebra teacher made us sit in alphabetical order.   Mary Lou and I were great friends…

Some six hundred columns after I penned my first article, I still occasionally find myself searching for a subject to write about.  I believe that there is no shortage of topics, but sometimes you must search hard for something, anything that might be of interest to your readers. I might be a bit distracted because…