Grandma's Gleanings
Words and Thoughts from Grandma
With the calming lights of the Christmas tree glowing in the corner and the warmth of our teeny electric ‘fireplace’ filling the room, we settled in to watch a timeless, decades-old classic. Once again, the fictional story of George Bailey, a common man who never quite makes it out of his quiet, rather mundane hometown …
When a bacterium or virus becomes capable of spreading widely and rapidly, when the outbreak is of global proportions, a pandemic is declared. While an epidemic remains limited to a city, region, or country, a pandemic spreads beyond those borders, the infection becoming so widespread that several countries are affected concurrently. In March of 2020, …
There we stood, silently, arms crossed in deep concentration, as if we were viewing a priceless Monet at a chic French art gallery. But we were not in France, we were at our local shopping mall, enjoying an inexpensive date night, passing the time by window shopping. We would always find ourselves drawn to …
This phenomenon has occurred in excess of 190 times over a four-year span in the United States alone. During intense heat waves, steel, the major component of railroad tracks, gets hotter, causing that steel to expand and start to curve, referred to as buckling. In physics, this phenomenon is defined as thermal expansion, the …
In my experience, this phenomenon is simply a myriad of really bizarre scenarios tied together by a few hours of darkness. My brain can conjure up some of the most unique, terrifying, and just plain weird dreams on record. My husband never recalls his dreams, so he is dumbfounded as I relay the mystifying …
East of the city of Jerusalem the landscape dramatically plummets from mountain peaks to the lowest point on earth, the Dead Sea. The sandy area is littered with rocky caves where some of the most dramatic stories of the Bible have taken place. In 1947, a young Bedouin shepherd was seeking out a stray …
Only one hundred, forty-seven shopping days till Christmas! Yes, I am one of those obsessed early birds, busy planning the next year’s festivities as soon as the dust settles on Christmas morning. With unbridled glee the planning begins, what present would best suit each grandchild, each treasured family member, each intimate friend? What color …