A friend sent me the link to a file on YouTube that is entitled “The Top 10 Most Beautiful Songs of all Time.” I was curious about what kind of music someone may have chosen to fit such a list, as I would have a difficult time narrowing my favorites down to the top ten.

It’s not something that I spend a lot of time thinking about, but when I ran across this list of “Words that don’t mean what they used to,” I thought my readers might find this interesting, too. For example, way back in 1659, when the English clergyman Thomas Fuller used the word “unfriended” in a letter, it’s a safe bet that he wasn’t talking about his Facebook page. Instead, Fuller used the word to mean something like “estranged” or “fallen out,” a straightforward literal meaning that has long since fallen out of the language.

I rescued this one out of the round file. Sadly, it is probably truer than we would like to think.

What have you learned about yourself during the pandemic? Several times in my life I have kept a diary; but I could never keep it up and rarely made it through a month or two, let alone a year. I kept a diary religiously in high school, and I’m pretty sure it’s buried in one of my Time Capsules (okay, plastic storage box), preserved for some hilarious enlightenment after I’m gone and my kids and grandkids find it among my other personal things.

It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last, as tensions have occasionally run high between the state education board and the Legislature. And once again, there is a bit of a kerfuffle between the Kansas State Board of Education and Rep. Steve Huebert (R-Valley Center) after Huebert introduced a bill that would require high school students to pass a high-stakes civics test, modeled after the 100-question U.S. citizenship exam, in order to graduate. “If you don’t know the basics (of citizenship and civics), you can’t be civically engaged in a way that deals with our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, the freedoms we have, the checks and balances — you need a basic understanding,” Huebert says.

“I love deadlines; I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” ~ DOUGLAS ADAMS ~ English author, screenwriter, essayist, humorist, satirist, dramatist and self-proclaimed atheist March 11, 1952 to May 11, 2001 (died of a heart attack) I had never heard of Douglas Adams before I saw the above quote, but I was intrigued enough that I wanted to learn more about him. He didn’t get very many years to do the things he enjoyed doing, the long list of “-ists” that described him.

All throughout the year just gone by, there was one word that was used seemingly thousands of times a day, in many differing situations, and I would have bet money that “unprecedented” would be the Word of the Year (WOTY). But for Merriam-Webster, their choice for the 2020 WOTY was “pandemic,” and, okay, I get it... the pandemic came first. It wouldn’t have been such an unprecedented year if we hadn’t had the pandemic. Kind of like, which came first: the chicken or the egg?

Even if you did not watch the Inauguration Day activities, you have probably seen a picture of Bernie Sanders, socially distanced from everyone and wearing a blue disposable mask. For his cold-weather comfort, Bernie struck a matter-of-fact pose wearing a brownish/green parka. The Vermont senator completed the ensemble with a pair of brown mittens, handmade by a Vermont second-grade teacher. (Get that teacher to make you a matching beret, Bernie!)

This is fascinating to me, and I hope you enjoy it as well. Having toured the U.S.

Today is 1-21-21, and right from the get-go, I want to state that this is not a political editorial. I could not write a political editorial right now, even if I was paid to. I stay as far away from politics as I can, because I have come to a strange and difficult quandary in my life when I can’t or don’t want to relate to either of our political parties. But I refuse to feel hopeless or helpless.