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Month: September 2026

Dryasdust

Dryasdust

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My word of the day on Monday morning was “dryasdust.”

Pronounced, as you might expect like “Dry as Dust.”

Seriously?

Yup.

I was curious.

As a noun it means: “A boring, pedantic speaker or writer.”

As an adjective it means: “dull and boring.”

Yikes.

I started to think…

Dryasdust.

Is that me?

Am I dryasdust?

Am I “a boring, pedantic…writer?

I wasn’t sure right away, because I didn’t know what the word “pedantic” meant.

So, I looked it up.

Pedantic: “someone who is overly concerned with minor details, formal rules, or showing off specialized knowledge, usually in an annoying way.”

Oh no.

Is that me?

I don’t know.

I don’t think so.

Since I don’t follow any formal rules, maybe not.

And I certainly don’t have any special knowledge about anything to show off, unless you want me to talk about the moles I have in places you can’t see, I am safe there as well I think.

So, I don’t know about pedantic, but boring, still boring maybe.

I mostly write about things in my life, like my family.

But I don’t necessarily think my life is boring. Maybe compared to some.

I have three daughters.

How can life be boring?

How can one be dryasdust when you have three girls to write about?

Brokeasdust maybe.

Drivemetodrinkasdust possibly.

But not so dull and boring.

I remember writing Christmas letters and getting grief because I mentioned one them in sequence, before one of the others.

Or that I wrote more detail about one than I did the other, “you wrote more about her than me!”

After that one, I actually started counting words and making sure all three daughter paragraphs balanced.

Then, I decided to quit mentioning any of them in my letters to avoid these kinds of concerns.

But then I got told that I needed to start writing more about family and grandkids, and less about the cranky old guy stuff I have been writing about.

And then just recently I got this text from one of them “you always write about everyone but me” (sad face emoji included).

Yeesh, I can’t win.

Dustinthewind maybe.

Again, this year I missed the National Daughters Day social media opportunity.

When I sat down and started to write this, it was Monday, September 28, and I was only a few days late. Before I knew it, it was Wednesday, and I was still trying to wrap it up.

And now it’s Wednesday evening, and where was I going with this?

Oh yeah, dryasdust, “you never write about me,” and daughters.

Daughters are important.

Thanks to daughters, I have three grandsons to write about too Cameron, Christian, and Ethan (in no particular order of importance), and most recently, a little “grand dog.”

I haven’t written about Chester yet…hmm…maybe that’s why he barks at me.

But I am sure I will.

So you see my life is not dull and boring.

Earlier I mentioned Dust in the Wind, a song by the band Kansas most of us are familiar with. It was one of my brother Carl’s favorite songs.

According to something posted on the internet, the underlying message of the song is that “While the song expresses melancholy and despair regarding our physical mortality, the unspoken takeaway is an implicit call to appreciate the present and recognize what truly matters before our time runs out.”

We all know about time running out.

And what truly matters before out time runs out in addtion to family?

Well, Jesus of course.

I also read that Monday, in addition to being a few days late for National Daughters Day, was National Sons Day.

And I do appreciate those that truly matter in the present, and some from the past that still truly matter and present in my heart.

So happy “National Whatever Kid Day” to all my kids; Donny, Savannah, Hayley and Alexa (in no particular order of importance of course).

As they say now, “I appreciate you.”

I once wrote in one of my essays: “I often have fun writing about my kids and I have said before they are all good sports. The truth is my daughters have taken their share of lumps in life but they continue to rise up. They have had some life experiences probably shared by many daughters. And then they have had some I hope no child ever has to go through…Yet they are resilient. They are women now, some with their own kids (though no daughters thank God). And unlike the rest of the daughters out there, they have to put up with me. And they do a pretty good job at that too.

Even though I never write about them.

Postscript:
So I got this from the internet, it explains where the word “Dryasdust” originated from:
While the definition of “dryasdust” is literally “dull and boring,” the story behind the word is not. Sir Walter Raleigh Scott was a 17th- and 18th-century writer, considered the inventor of the historical novel. “Ivanhoe,” a historical novel concerning the life and times of a Saxon knight, opens with a “dedicatory epistle to the Rev. Dr. Dryasdust.” This fictitious character served as the intensely dull, but extremely informative, book antiquarian who supplied Scott with the necessary details to write his book (and also featured in the introductions of some of Scott’s other works). The word “dryasdust” has persisted as both a noun and adjective for a boring, pedantic sort.

In case you were wondering who this charming addition to the family is, this is Chester, sporting his raincoat. Hayley and Malcolm’s new addtion. “The Grand Dog”.
Grandparents Day

Grandparents Day

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Today, September 11th is a special day.
Because it’s Grandparents Day.

No, you are correct, it is not Grandparents Day.

But, if you are a follower of my daughter Alexa’s social media, as I am of course, you would think that today is Grandparents Day.
Because in case you didn’t know, I am the proud father of the President of the Partin Elementary School PTA.

And as an influencer, Alexa is showing some promise.

In addition to successfully squeezing a couple of dollars in donations out of me, she had me believing today was Grandparents Day.

And since I am a grandparent, which means I am old and a little slow on the uptake, I didn’t immediately process the fact that this was Grandparent’s Day for the school and the kids to celebrate, and not the actual Grandparents Day.

No, I didn’t realize that until I Googled it.

The fact is I should have known that because I wrote about it just three years ago in Ethan’s Guernica.

But since I am old, and a little slower lately, I had to look it up again.
So, in case you want to know, Grandparents Day is always the first Sunday after Labor Day.
This year, that is September 13th. I will save you other old folks the hassle of figuring that out.

And Google even confirmed that, “Yes, many schools still celebrate Grandparents Day” and “Events vary by school. Some align with National Grandparents Day in September, while others hold their events in the spring.”

And the official flower of Grandparents Day is the Forget-Me-Not.

But then, I learned that on this past July 26th, World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly was celebrated.

Wait, it’s on September 11th, it’s on September 13th, it’s on July 26th, it can be in September aligned with National Grandparents Day, or…it could be in the spring?

It’s starting to sound suspiciously like National Daughters Day, which I determined once could be any day, or maybe every day of the year.

The World Day for Grandparents and the Elderly, it turns out, is a celebration, which coincides with the Feast of Saints Joachim and Anne, who were the grandparents of Jesus.

Jesus’ grandparents, I didn’t know that either.

And Pope Leo XIV chose a verse from Isaiah as its theme.
The theme of this year’s celebration was, “I will never forget you,” from Isaiah 49:15.

I like that, “I will never forget you.”

I heard an interview recently where the speaker quoted the Roman philosopher Cicero, “Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.”

I liked that too.

We must treasure and guard our memories.

My mom often speaks of her relationship with her grandmother Flora. I have written about Flora before. The Brooklyn Dodgers, the Bronx Zoo and riding on an elephant, the way they would share and enjoy cucumbers and onions together, and how she would slice the cucumbers really thin.

I have nice memories of my grandparents too.

My grandfather Carl winning the blue ribbon for his portrait of John F. Kennedy at the art show at the Church of the Presidents in Long Branch N.J. in the late 60s, after my friend Matt and I may have stuffed the ballot box just a little. But he was happy, and that was important.

My grandmother Eleanora taking us kids to the beach at North Long Branch in the ’57 Chevy or the ’53 Pontiac. And the time she took us to Bahrs Landing in Atlantic Highlands when my parents were attending the Fireman’s Convention in Atlantic City and let us order whatever we wanted. I ordered a lobster and was mortified when the waiter made me wear a bib. C’mon, I was six, you don’t wear bibs when you are six.

And my Norwegian grandma Sofie pointing out my father’s new jacket when she couldn’t pronounce her “J’s” properly and always replaced it with a “Y”: “Carl, you got a new yacket, Carl.”

Yesterday I got this reminder through my text messages from Seven Eleven:
“Fuel up and fill up tomorrow! Swing by to redeem your 50 cents OFF/gal. Find a store…”

You see Seven Eleven has a promotion going if you sign up for their rewards program, that on the seventh and the eleventh of September and October, you can fill up your tank and get 50 cents off a gallon.

Pretty good deal, I filled up Kim’s car on the 7th.

I have been waiting all week for September 11th to fill up my truck.

So today I got up, put on what I felt was an appropriate tee shirt, went and filled up my tank at the Seven Eleven, ran a couple of errands, and then came home and finished this story.

Because you know, this story was never about grandparents or saving fifty cents on a gallon of gas.

But it is about Forget-Me-Nots and not forgetting.

And it is about that quote from Isaiah,” I will never forget you.”

Because today, September 11th, if you are an American and older than 35 years old, you probably remember exactly what you were doing twenty-five years ago.

And what they did.

And we can never forget that.

Or them.

“The life of the dead is placed on the memories of the living. The love you gave in life keeps people alive beyond their time. Anyone who was given love will always live on in another’s heart.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero

My Appropriate Tee shirt