As I intended this blog for learning about portfolio posts and making a website- eventually – my main blogging is… in the main, all over the place, as most of you know. This reblog links to my primary blog (have now found the admin setting to alter that).
Thank you to all my followers here for encouragement and support along the way. I will continue to post here once a month for the recyled book challenge, with the first post tomorrow… there might be nothing else until the April post challenge, when I’ll be so busy playing April Fool’s that I’ll post on 2nd April instead of 1st…
If you’re joining in the Leapster challenge you can pingback and /or comment on any previous post and links will be rounded up asap, or leap here (your leap, your way) for my latest Leapster challenge announcement post (it’s not limited to just one day – leap your way through the next four years and be a 2020 Leapster too!)
Have a happy Leap into something somewhere and best wishes for Leap Day and the rest of Leap year 2016.
Thanks for stopping by 🙂 My blog is born again on 28th February 2016, I hope you like the theme (one day old today!) and it’s a comfortable visit – please speak up if there’s something lacking or anything you need here?
Wishing you all a Happy Leap Day and a Happy Leap year 2016 😀
Today would have been Kurt Cobain’s 49th birthday. It’s a time to rejoice in his ever having lived at all and for the gift he was to the world. He also apparently said:
“If you die you’re completely happy and your soul somewhere lives on.”
I found the quotes used for this post during today’s research at brainyquote.com, (toward my guestpost here, but not using this quote) then happened across the images used for his post, including to make the picture-quote, during research at pixabay.com (toward my Leap into…pix day 5 post, again, not using these particular images).
I almost applied the ‘light’ quote to this image instead, but thought the moon version more appropriate – what do you think?
Anyway, back to the point of ever making this post… another of the quotes (from Brainyquote.com), attributed to Kurt Cobain is: “If there was a Rock Star 101, I would have liked to take it. It might have helped me.”
WordPress / DailyPost / BloggingU team, will you ever be offering a RockStar101? I don’t expect so – and I’m still waiting for further news of Websites101 and Blogging301 (CSS)…
Wouldn’t it have been great if there’d been things like online streaming in the early days of Nirvana? Maybe there was, in smaller circles, and I’ve just been a dinosaur for too long…
Anyway, I’m very grateful for Blogging101 and other 101classes for meeting fantastic peope around the world, like Lydia – many of you might have bumped into her in class and know her as aidyl93.
Lydia’s having a blogging hiatus at the moment, but there’s lots to browse at her blog in the meantime. Last Saturday was #InternetFriendsDay, and I caught up with Lydia at Twitter, just in time for the live streaming announcement for the band she plays with, Lunar Tides.
Sadly, it was the last live gig the band were broadcasting at TwitchTV for a while – but the good news is that they’re busy recording their first CD – I hope I’m near the front of the queue to get mine and that overseas shipping will be do-able.
In the meantime, I’ll be keeping up-to-date with news from Lunar Tides, looking out for vlog announcements and crossing my fingers for that CD heading my way one fine summer’s day 🙂
I’m a glutton for souvenirs, and as I enjoyed being part of the livestream audience, I snapped a couple of screenshots of the gig. Many thanks to Lunar Tides for making music and making their live gigs accessible – and thanks again for permission to use these screenshots in my post.
That’s Lucas at the back on drums and vocals (says he’s really a guitarist, but makes a fine vocalist, drummer and front-man from the back of the set), Lydia playing bass guitar and at front-right Randy on guitar and vocals. Lunar Tides write and perform their own music and the couple of times I’ve managed to catch their live stream show I really enjoyed it. It just happened to be their evening time but my early hours of the morning, or I might have turned up every week.
Thanks again Lunar Tides, I may be missing your live-stream, but yet again you just helped make my Saturday special 🙂
Something in the air at Jacquies’s blogparty at the weekend had me all fired up and inspired. Seperately, having been issued 14 questions to answer in a challenge from a friend, I decided fourteen is a good number to work with and that there would be fourteen day until this year’s Leap Day and we won’t see another until 2020…
Naturally, what followed was thinking 14days, 14ways? Can I manage a Leap? and I want to make a four year plan – where would I like to be in my life by Leap Day 2020?
Alternatively, or additionally, how might I like my blogging to develop in those four years?
When I made this blog, my first concern was grabbing the url for my name, so that should I recover sufficiently to use it alongside semi-professional practise, I have it. Any hope of recovery enough to work outside of bedrest still appears a long way off. Never mind, it’s not impossible and considering this four year stretch could be a good way forward. Not the steps to get there, just where am I aiming for?
So, in the meantime, I’m of course making myself some fun and trying to extend my range in small ways. As well as continuing my informal blogging at the Wishing Well, I’m reviving my One for Fun Blog by challenging myself to two very quick posting tasks there for each of the next 14 days. The first task is about building an inspiring found image library (pixabay/unsplash etc) – I’ll aim to collect 14 images a day to my media library and select just one of those fourteen to post that day. The second task is to go back through my guest-posts at Snailzpace Daily. From the quotes I posted for my friend there, primarily for his resource, I’m going to select one quote a day that I really like and inspires me for my Leap – and apply it to the background I’ve chosen, like this first one that I’m reposting below.
So, this is what I’m calling the Leapster Challenge – if you’d like to join in, you don’t have to do something every day for fourteen days although you can if you wish! You don’t have to aim for fourteen ways either – it’s just my way of working out how many different small ways I might increase my posting, writing and creativity while at bed-rest and (believe it or not) trying to avoid burn-out. You could aim to just make one post on Leap day. If you like the number 14 theme you could use it, or split it into two posts of something 7… your leap, if you want to take the challenge. You could just think about it and join for a second wave of the Leapster Challenge springboarding from 29th Feb…
I’m pushing myself quite hard with things I think will take five or ten minutes each but might probably take longer.. as well as those two things at One for Fun, I’ve two things at the Wishing Well – the matchmaker Q&A, answering one question a day and making a psot of it – I’m also doing a reblog a day there from the party guests blogs… Two things to do here? I think I’ll just make a weekend post each of these next two weekends with something of seven things on each… then a Leap Day post on 29th.
Now I have to make a leap towards self-care and eating well today, so apologies for not applying links yet, I’ll have to save that for an admin task later…
Love to hear what you think of the Leapster idea – and how you might be making your Leap Day special …
There’s no reblog button now to share my post from Blogger’s World, so my screenshot pic will have to do for a preview, full post at http://wp.me/p6Cbfo-34v … the partial photo shows the young Helen Keller (left) with her governess Anne Sullivan, in 1988.
(This post isn’t repeating text from my BW-feature, it’s me rambling about my process adn focussing on a couple of particular excerpts of Helen Keller’s writing.)
I really enjoyed researching for this weeks #authorstory post. I included some resource links, the ABF Helen Keller archive, articles and recommended some video links too. But I most enjoyed reading some of Helen Keller’s work, so much so, that I made my first public podcasts, reading excerpts from a couple of pieces of her writing. If you can spare a few minutes to have a listen and like to hear attempted readings of poetry and prose, I’d love to receive feedback and criticisms are very welcome 🙂
I also thought that a couple of audio files might be assistive for visually impaired readers, so recorded and uploaded those to my post (part 1 approx 10mins, part 2 approx 5 mins). Then decided that I needed to provide transcripts too, as pages hosted at my other blog, The Wishing Well. Note to self: work still to do at that transcript! As well as sorting out the pre-formatted text formatting in the top section, there’s a paragraph repeated in part ii of the text citing different paragraphs on each. Oh, when I can’t see for looking!!! (and doing things while exhausted makes for many a mistake!) Please, dear reader, if you go there, forgive me – I’ll catch up soon-ish 🙂
I selected some paragraphs of Keller’s 1903 essay, Optimism and really quite like the condensing as an abridged version but also plan to revisit the full texts and study them in more depth, at some point. There are links to the various formats full texts online sources on the transcript for my reading – and it’s wonderful to see digitised versions of the original book pages.
Helen Keller’s intelligence and command of language is absolutely astounding. I think I should read my abridged version every day to strengthen my resolve.
I, too, can work, and because I love to labor with my head and my hands, I am an optimist in spite of all. I used to think I should be thwarted in my desire to do something useful. But I have found out that though the ways in which I can make myself useful are few, yet the work open to me is endless. .. Darwin could work only half an hour at a time; yet in many diligent half-hours he laid anew the foundations of philosophy. … it is my chief duty and joy to accomplish humble tasks as though they were great and noble. [from part ii, para.26]
Here’s another favourite excerpt from that same text:
These things which you see and hear and touch are not the reality of realities, but imperfect manifestations of the Idea, the Principle, the Spiritual; the Idea is the truth, the rest is delusion.
I realised when i began to research, that although Helen Keller’s name was familiar to me, I had forgotten any prior learning of who she was. I expect that when we heard small mention of her in school it would have been a very brief introduction, telling us what an incredible person and writer she was, but not actually sharing her work. It was probably one of those 300 words of contextual information and a set of comprehension questions on a workcard. It seems such a shame – and apparently that’s still a common experience, according to replies in the comments to my post at Blogger’s World.
The second piece of Helen Keller’s writing I selected to read from is her magnificent poem, ‘Songs of the Stone Wall’, published in 1910. The transcript is here (and hopefully without error) and theaudio file of my reading from this work is labelled as Part 2 on the BW-feature post. This was one of my favourite moments in the poem:
At the foot of the aged pines the maidens moccasins
Track the sod like the noiseless sandals of Spring.
Out of chinks in the wall delicate grasses wave,
As beauty grew out of the crannies of these hard souls. [from verse 12]
So, I came here not to write another few hundred words, but have enjoyed doing so, it seems.
I’d love to hear from you if you’re familiar with Helen Keller’s work and have any recommendations, or your own favourite moments in her work, or for any other feedback or discussion.
I wont be posting here often, while I work out how and why I am doing whatever next with this blog that I keep mulling over… so for now, and until next time… I hope you’re having a good day 🙂
This is the first idea I had as a response to today’s writing101 task to expand on a comment. I’ve combined two seperate conversations via blog commenting from yesterday in making this post.
I thought I’d show Calen the book I referred to when we were discussing reading. For the quotes excercise I chose a quote from a book I’ve not read yet and we had a quick chat about reading and my writing. The book pictured above is the one I set myself to read recently. I got as far as the end of chapter 1 almost two weeks ago, promised myself I’d read some every day and still haven’t. Overdoing writing101 because I have to expel burning ideas and keeping up with challenges and blog-hopping as much as I can makes for quite a lot of reading already. I will settle down to reading some of this book later (I promise myself).
So that’s ‘Shoes Were for Sunday’, set in Glasgow, post World War One, from the times of the author’s childhood. (ISBN: 978-0-241-95792-9) The author, Molly Weir, was born in 1910. She was also the actress who played Hazel McWitch in the popular BBC children’s television series ‘Rent-a-ghost’. Does anyone remember that programme (late 1970s?1980s?) I’m probably showing both my age and unwillingness to distract by research and linking again!
This photo and post also fits with my conversation with Jane – she’d written a fantastic poem about her ‘thingymijiggy’ in the corner of her living room. My new thingamijiggy (microwave) is set up in the scullery corner of my living room. I’ve adapted the one room to accommodate both my sofa and living room furniture, my dining table in front of the window, used my tall wall units as if a dividing wall and have my fridge freezer, an old kitchen cabinet with worktop-top and a wooden kitchen trolley to use as my necessarily compact kitchen area. The kitchen makes a very good dog-run and shed, but is still used for occasional washing-up and laundry. Out of necessity.
Reflection in my new bargain price (less than £40) Tesco microwave in my compact kitchen area. Reflecting …
Among other reasons, the extra steps a long kitchen requires is often problematic at times of low health and poor mobility. While there are risks to my dog to have me using and dropping sharp things, hot things and other hazards, it makes it safer all round to improvise a small working kitchen area.
Jane, re: your wonderful poem, I hope you understand my comment better when you see this post – Thank you also for inspiring my essay-writing this morning too! (by the way, the photo of my actual kitchen at the top of that essay page is cropped, also from a reflection in my new thingamijiggy… it’s coming in handy for culinary art and reflective practise today and for future use for sure.)
If you’re visiting from writing101 and you have a W101 post or poll you’d like me to check out, please live me a link in the comments below. Any other feedback or suggestions most welcome.
for all those globally who may be, or have been affected by suicide.
A quiet time for reflection:
Image courtesy of the originator via unsplash.com – attribution-free stock image (unaltered)
Positive action and attempts to raise awareness or support good causes, or to help an individual or group and perhaps make any small difference, need not be limited to just one day…
ColetteB.... 