My Favorite Columnist Passes Away

My Sunday paper told me the news.

The columnist I'd read with anticipation each and every Sunday for years had passed away at age 79.

I knew him as L.M. Boyd, the author of the Grab Bag column in the San Francisco Chronicle. It turns out his column was syndicated in 400 papers under different titles...Checking Up, Draw Up a Chair, Fact or Fancy.

No matter what the title, each column held a random collection of facts about nature, people, the earth, space, love, war, and everything else under the sun. I, of course, loved the nature bits. In fact my 'nature' folder is full of Grab Bags I pulled out of the paper over the years. In a series of one or two sentence entries he could share an amazing amount of information with a bit of humor woven throughout.

Boyd retired in 2000, so I won't miss his column...I finally stopped looking for it in the Sunday paper. What I will miss is knowing he is out there somewhere seeing life through his magical kaleidoscope filter that showcased so many wonderful elements of our world since the 60's.