A Thursday round up of Stories that have caught my attention in the past couple of days.

One in four adults read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Tuesday. Of those who did read, women and older people were most avid, and religious works and popular fiction were the top choices.

I’m really struggling with this headline. And, I’ve posted on the topic before. Where are all these non-readers? I totally get that I read more than the average norm, but I cannot fathom that one quarter of the people I interact with each day have not read a SINGLE Book in the past year? Although, my cousin-in-law tells me that my cousin is in that number. Help me out here, what about in your circle?

BALTIMORE -- The Rangers smashed their way into the record books on Wednesday night with the biggest offensive outburst seen in the Major Leagues in 110 years.
Marlon Byrd and Travis Metcalf both hit grand slams and Jarrod Saltalamacchia and Ramon Vazquez hit two home runs each as the Rangers walloped the Baltimore Orioles, 30-3, in Game 1 of a doubleheader at Camden Yards.
The 30 runs were the most in the Major Leagues since the 19th century and set a new American League record. The Boston Red Sox scored 29 runs on June 8, 1950, against the St. Louis Browns and the Chicago White Sox matched that on April 23, 1955, against the Kansas City Athletics.

Um, yeah, guess who the Mariners play tonight? Hopefully the Rangers have gotten several games’ worth of hits out of their system. Wow! Thirty points in a game – when I saw the headline, I thought it was a football score.

£260,000 medieval cross found in bin by woman hunting crockery
A cross from the Middle Ages has been found in a rubbish bin in Austria, by a woman looking for old crockery. That was in 2004, in the western town of Zell am See.
She had no idea what she tucked behind her couch at home. Now experts say the cross could be worth £260,000. A local museum has custody of it, temporarily. And whether the woman, who has not been identified, will get any money is not clear.
She found the cross after a hotel-owner who lived in Zell am Zee died, and his apartment was being cleared by relatives. The woman showed the cross to the niece of the dead man, but the she didn't want it and allowed the woman to take it, police said.

This came to me in my Medieval news update. Isn’t that fascinating? I have to admit, stories of antiquities that were displaced (and stolen) during the Second World War fascinate me.

And, lastly, what a lovely story of reconciliation coming out of the Russian Church, reminding us of the Orthodox history of the West... Holy Saints of Great Britain and Ireland, pray to God for us.

Moscow, August 21, Interfax - The Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church instituted a holiday to honor Christians who lived on the islands of Great Britain and Ireland and were canonized before the 1054 schism that divided Christendom into the Western Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches.
The holiday will be an annual event observed on the third Sunday after Pentecost in the Julian Calendar.

Photo credit.

“Hi Darlin’”
My grandmother, who would have been 81 today had she not died four years ago, always opened a conversation that way. My mom (her daughter) does it sometimes too, but I still hear her voice when I hear the statement, and when I think of my grandmother, this phrase comes to mind.

One of the things that my mother and I were recently talking about was my young-adult brother asked why my mom always ends a conversation with “love you”. She mentioned that growing up in the non-touchy feely days, she didn’t hear that often from her family, and she made an effort to say it to them as she got more “touchy feely”. She says that she has no regrets about the sudden death of my grandmother as she knows that she died knowing that my mom loved her. And, I, who am blessed to be raised by such a self-aware woman, am secure in the knowledge that my parents love me and if, God forbid, they were to die tomorrow, I would have the memory of them ending conversations with those words.

So, in memory of my grandmother, tell those you love that you love them. Often.