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July 22, 2015 I'm going to start today to record on a daily basis whatever happens to strike my fancy. So, it is a very cool breezy day. I just posted 5 short book reviews to The Monthly Reading Challenge. I'm suppose to put away some winter wood today from the woodpile outside but I'm playing hookey from work to write so starting this blog will get done. I'm having a daily fight with a flock of English Sparrows that are trying to take over my barn. They are making a terrible mess so they have to go. I have destroyed several nests so far they don't leave but they get out of the barn when I am around. I'm just starting the fight so I guess I don't know how far I have to go to discourage them. I'm trying not to spread myself to thin on WDC because I find so many things that are interesting here and I am trying to work on a new story. I really enjoy sitting at my desk with a cup of tea and reading blogs on WDC. |
NEOWISE comet: “Enjoy it while you can. The frozen ball of ice won’t return to the inner solar system for 6,800 years.” Talk about it! https://www.nytimes.com/article/neowise-comet.html   Catching Up Quote: from https://earthsky.org/space/what-lives-between-the-stars What lives between the stars? Posted by Christopher Crockett in Space | November 28, 2012 The interstellar medium is the stuff between the stars. Made up mostly of hydrogen and helium gas, it contains all the material needed to make stars and planets. It is shaped by stellar winds, dying stars, galactic magnetic fields, and supernova explosions. I was shopping for 5 weeks worth of groceries yesterday so this is catch up for me. Many of the times over the years I have stayed up to watch a comet or other phenomenon only to find a cover of clouds so thick watching was worthless. NEOWISE is still near so I'll make an effort to see it for real. I have binoculars. I even have a telescope that shows me some good views of stars and the moon. In the mean time I like the pictures on the web. I knew scientists were involved in watching for comets that may harm the earth. I never heard the name of the program is NEOWISE until now. During the winter I went out to watch the stars on a couple of clear cold nights. There is always something going on in the sky. Here is a good place to go on our august vacation. We could go camping in space. Live on the space station. Visit the mars robots and telescopes. Visit the earth stations that watch the sky. I think I'll study teleporting. Is Saudi Arabia really interested in Mars? See Ya! apondia#1781748 |
Describe your sense of humor. Is it dark, sarcastic, slapstick, silly, or something else? Do you have any favorite comedians? What always makes you laugh?   Quote: The art of medicine consists of amusing the patient while nature cures the disease. VOLTAIRE https://www.goalcast.com/2019/10/16/quotes-about-laughter/ MY LAUGHTER Description: sometimes it's sarcastic, sometimes dark, sometimes silly. I just usually burst out laughing at something that strikes me a completely unusual or impossible to happen. I often see animals do something that seems out of character or not relevant. We have a squirrel that comes up on the porch, when I go out on purpose to chase it away it sits on the roof and screeches. It thinks it owns our house. It's from a clan that actually got into the house and made a winter nest. We chased it out and sealed up the place it was coming into as soon as spring hit. Plus, the cats are hunting squirrels and chipmunks that come onto the balcony. They have caught and killed some of them. So, it makes me laugh to see it scolding me for chasing it away from a place that is dangerous for it to be. "America's Funniest Home Videos" can be funny. Some of the things on it make me laugh and some make me worry if people or animals got hurt. We watch "Home Improvement sometimes" some of the things they do or say are extremely absurd and I laugh at them. I see things online that strike me as irrelevant and are funny. Laughter isn't something I plan it's something different that jumps out at me that makes me laugh. THE END   apondia#1781748 |
If you won a free trip to any foreign country, all expenses paid in your own private jet and had the time to go (and there were no travel restrictions due to a global pandemic *Pthb*), what is the first foreign country you would visit? Who would you bring with you? What would you spend your time doing?   Quote:“Do what you feel in your heart to be right, for you’ll be criticized anyway.” -Eleanor Roosevelt https://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifestyle/30-the-best-quotes-ever.html Travel? Because of the way the prompt is written I would have to say Israel. I would really enjoy taking a language course in Israel. Of course, if I went there I would like to see the sea of Galilee. And, I would have to visit all the places other vacationers go there to see. Who to bring? My daughter or one of my granddaughters. They are young enough to appreciate mobility of travel. But, I am not free to leave the country now and don't wish to be free of restrictions on my travel abilities. There are other countries I would like to meander around, England, Brazil, and Australia come to mind. But, only if the world were less a time bomb trying to find a way to explode. I really don't have any real urge to travel. I think instinctively, I know I'm safer right where I am now. Routine can be irritating. However, there is a peacefulness in routine that can be relied upon to keep one busy. I have 3 cats, 1 dog, and 2 parrots. I don't want anything to happen to them. I have to be here to take care of them. Also, going on a trip is someone else's dream. I don't want my body to be used to satisfy someone else's ideas about how I should be living. This isn't part of the prompt. But, there are no coincidences and lately I've had more than one suggestion about leaving. Summer moves on and I'm making progress toward winter. Be Safe.  is where the heart is. |
| Write about your favorite summer activity.  { The quote is from: https://www.keepinspiring.me/quotes-about-summer/ "Live in the sunshine, swim in the sea, drink in the wild air" --Ralph Waldo Emerson Summer  Summer is different from every other season. It's what life is suppose to be everyday. Before harvest the fields are rising up into full bloom. Orchard grass and timothy are heading out ready to be cut, baled and stored for winter feed. Branches on apple trees hang heavy with green apples that are expanding daily into the fruit for pies and juice. The apples grow and change in color as they get ever closer to harvest. I just like all of summer. I like the days that are so warm you don't want to move in the afternoon of any day. I like rainstorms that bring the release of humidity and favor us with a few days of cool breezes that whisper about how nice the days will be. I like the fact that the sun is now going to be with us longer each day. It tempts us outside for longer hours. Summer days and nights sing to us different sounds of birds that vacation with us during warmer weather. Little frogs sing to us froggy songs of warm summer nights. Moths bang against the screens seeking every bit of possible light before the long winter comes back. Bats zing back and forth eating insects. Owls hoot and doves coo. I like the swish of bicycle tires on hot pavement. I hear the chatter of angry squirrels warning the world to stay away from some nest. I watch barn swallows swiftly dancing back and forth through the air catching insects. I listen to lawn mowers humming over the lawns every day. Foliage in the nearby woods is so heavy the trees seem to be green from the top of the horizon clear down to the ground. My favorite summer activity is watching everything about the season mature into another year's growth. Because summer is when the earth's crust grows and grooms itself as it moves through another year. The earth is a beautiful place to be in any season but, summer is the season of growth and renewal. THE END  |
When did you first start blogging? (anywhere, not necessarily on WDC) Why? What did you blog about? (subjects, topics, personal news, etc.) Has your blogging style changed since you began?  Quote: “The internet is really about highly specified information.” Eric Schmidt https://blog.thesocialms.com/24-blogging-quotes-inspiration-motivation-perspecti... What's in a Blog I don't remember when I first began Blogging. I took a basic programming course through the mail which was really junk. But, I learned some interesting things about computers. My second son was interested in computers when he was in high school. We bought him an IBM computer that was called a computer but looked like a typewriter. He went to business school to learn programming and other computer subjects. Then I took the course at home. The first computer I had came with the course; but it only had one megabit of memory. This early we are talking about using bits and words to program but not a lot of graphics. When My daughter went to college I remember how great it was when she came home grouching about some problem with a disk that I solved for her.  Score one for the aging home team. Also, with this little nothing computer I was online and was writing articles for a pet bird website. Kind of blogging, very elementary.  Then, all children off doing their own thing I landed a job in a doughnut shop. Where the owners did not give raises but, we were allowed to take home one dozen donuts after each shift. Hmm, let's see, 350 to 400 calories per doughnut? You can imagine? Then I got in trouble for giving mine away. Who wants to eat a dozen donuts a day? I told people I was working to help my kids in college and so I could go myself. After the job was over I applied to a college where a lot of my relatives and two of my kids also had graduated. Then the comments were. Yeah but, I didn't think she was serious. First semester, fall of 1999. New computer for school, a gateway with memory and dial-up online. Also, classes in research, word, excel, websites and uploading them online, and other cool stuff. That's when dial-up became a pain. But we are rural. When I was a kid people out here had to fight the telephone company to get lines for a phone that everyone was on the same line with different rings to identify who was getting a call. Then there was Verizon. Who would not give us the ability (DSL) to run our computers on the phone lines or update the lines. Dial-up just got worse and worse. I signed up with google for Blogspot.com. That is when I began reviewing books. After school I ended up here on  . I think I was working on The Monthly Reading Challenge. I did some reviews. And, eventually landed on the 30-Day-Challenge. Started on dial-up. Then, fought for WiFi on Verizon. They kept raising the price. We kept looking at all kinds of service and finally are using Hughes net who went in with a few other companies and put a bigger satellite in the air a few years ago, now doing 5G.Definitely, it is easier to blog on WDC for me than on Blogspot. WDC has lots of learning implements and tools to make writing and research easier. As for style? I've read blogs online that are being done for pay. I believe they are a little different from what I do here. Because they are aimed at one subject, or if it is a book review it is longer than what I did for the Reading Challenge. Certainly organizationally I'm better than when I started. Not sure about style. BYE  apondia#1781748 |
 Quote:" I used to work in the cotton fields a lot when I was young. There were a lot of African Americans working out there. A lot of Mexicans - the blacks and the whites and the Mexicans, all out there singing, and it was like an opera in the cotton fields, and I can still hear it in the music that I write and play today." Willie Nelson Read more at https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/cotton-quotes Recomended Book:Picking Cotton by Jennifer Thompson and Ronald Cotton. This book was made into a movie. Fields of Music  Imagine what the world would be like today if humans had never discovered/invented the Cotton Gin._________ Eli Whitney brought the Cotton Gin into history in 1792. According to Wikipedia Cotton Gin means Cotton Engine. It's a machine that separates cotton fiber from the seeds. Seeds are used to make cotton seed oil and replant. The fiber is used to produce fabric. It is partly to blame for increased slavery because once the cotton fields became profitable more people were needed to pick the cotton. Also, considered a factor that helped bring about the civil war and freeing the plantation slaves. Cotton picking machines were not actually available until after WWII. Two brothers John and Mack Rust worked on developing and patenting starting in 1935. The first ones were not readily available. After WWII, Allis Chalmers produced one built on an updated Rust pattern. International Harvester also developed a pattern and built a cotton picking machine. Reference: History of the Cotton Gin and the Cotton Picker can be found in Wikipedia.org. From https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/q3om0/how_long_is_a_cotton_picking_m... we get this question: How long is a cotton picking minute? Longer or shorter than a regular minute? Feet2Big 3 points · 8 years ago "A cotton picker typically worked from sunup to sundown, as opposed to our regular 8 hour workday. I think that works out to an average of 65% longer. A cotton picking minute = 99 seconds." The part of the cotton plant being picked is full of prickers. The workers hands were always filled with pricks as they worked all day in the hot sun. Google:Picking cotton is back breaking work because you have to stay bent over at the waist dragging a sack behind you with 60 or 70 pounds of cotton in it all day. Those people that had weak backs had to crawl along the cotton rows on their knees because they couldn't stay bent over all day.Nov 4, 2001 The white master expected the slaves to pick two hundred pounds of cotton in a day work ten acres of land with only a ten-minute rest. Feeding the slaves undermined profits; therefore farmers gave them very little food to eat.  |
Go somewhere outside or where you can observe the happenings of the world beyond the walls of your home (looking out a window is fine). Spend at least five minutes watching and listening. What do you see, hear, and smell? Where does your mind wander when you sit quietly?  Storms Out My Windows Quote:“This is the problem with danger, isn't it? You can even be warned and ignore the warning. Danger can seem far away until the sky grows dark, and a bolt of fury heads straight toward you.” “ Deb Caletti, A Heart in a Body in the World https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/thunderstorm I'm usually prepared for weather upsets. This prompt follows last nights thunderstorm. We were happily watching a Monk story on TV when we heard a blast of sound from the West. looking out I saw lots of clouds forming over the western horizon. Thunder. I was actually hoping it would go away or around which it sometimes does. When I looked East a storm was heading our way from that direction. We get our worst storms from the East. Not a normal wind currant here. It came pounding in heavy with heat lightning and oppressive booms of thunder. When the electricity started flashing, we shut off the TV and went around pulling electrical plugs. There it sat over our heads flashing white hot flashes and silence. Our living room window is 8 feet long. Sooo, lots of viewing here. A stupid squirrel was chewing on something on the porch then, when the rain started I could here it scolding and screeching. It thinks it owns our house and sits on the roof and screeches, when it is disturbed. After silence, buckets and sheets of rain. I was thinking that it was going to give the deer, who usually show up under the apple tree to eat down fall;, relief from the hordes of bugs I've seen following them during this heat wave. Thursday's Monk is on during the afternoons until 8 o'clock p.m. We started watching at 7 after the news programs. At 9 I gave up and moved to my bedroom. The storm must have felt us move, because it turned and flew east. Watching out my bedroom window I could see it in the distance. White Hot flashes of light with red centers. That lasted for a hour or so. There is a small town over East of us and I wondered if it was getting a lot of the storm at that point. By this time there wasn't any electricity in the house. But, I have a couple strings of fairy lights. Then, I could see it was being driven back our way by blustery winds so, I got up shut off the fairy lights. A night light turned on. So I could see the electricity was back on. I turned on the fans to pull in some of that cool wind blowing our way. Pushed the cat off the window sill, who was soaking up cool air and shut the drapes. The lightning settled in. I could see it flashing all around outside the edges of the drapes. It stayed for awhile. One of the cats was really frightened, so I put her in her kennel with her plush toy. Another older cat let out a screech on the balcony and came tearing through the cat door. She spent the next couple hours sleeping on the bed. I fell asleep listening to the indescribable silence and watching flashes of blinding white light coming from around the edges of the drapes. We seem to be having more heavy thunderstorms every year. They seem to be a part of blinding white lightning. On the 4th of July there were all kinds of fireworks on all sides of us. The storms are always bad after a build up of humidity and in a heat wave. This one was probably the worst I've experienced recently so the science part of me wonders if it is an answer to the booms and bangs of fireworks. Or just breaking up the heat wave in an awesome way. I will have to look up some atmospheric thoughts on a weather site. Humidity is back. More storms expected tonight. Just watching out my window. More windfalls down for the deer. THE END apondia#1781748 |
Write about the last time you did something nice for yourself.  Quote:“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/be-yourself BEING Mr. Emerson must be a friend of mine. When I read this quote, I wondered if he had traveled the same road I've been on to get to the knowledge explained in the quote. Your mind does not seem to age. It remains in contact with your true nature all of your life. You can deny your true nature or you can embrace it. There seems to be a lot of ways I could go with this particular blog to impart knowledge and I am suppose to be outside learning to run the new tractor lawn mower, so I think I will stick with Mr. Emerson. One day when I was taking time to think about why so many of my friends and acquaintances don't like to be around me. One of the things I thought about is that they want me to live and believe how they live and what they believe. I read. Many people don't. I don't just read. I tell people what I read. Many people don't. I'm not any smarter than other people and I don't always make decisions that are helpful to my life. (If I did I would have been more helpful to people around me.) I have in a childlike manner made decisions that would make my life better. I don't always understand how consequences of my decisions are going to affect family members. (or the neighbors) Yes. Reading gives you knowledge of good and evil and yes knowledge of good and evil is forbidden fruit. (Forbidden fruit is a name given to the fruit growing in the Garden of Eden which God commands Adom and Eve not to eat. In the biblical narrative, Adom and Eve eat the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and are exiled from Eden.) Yet many other scriptures teach us to seek knowledge. For one thing the forbidden fruit is already loose on the earth. Now it's up to us to use knowledge to bring the earth closer to perfection of the garden of Eden. (Truly, I'm watching to many Law and Order stories since Pandemic started) For another, what you do with knowledge comes from your heart. From biology we learn that the heart and electrical system (brain) of your body are two separate systems that start up independently when the child is formed in the womb. So, yes. What is in your DNA, that causes you to be what you are? In around about way I've ended up back on my subject. You cannot be someone else. Just You. Don't try to make someone else into your image you will fail. Appreciate the differences in your children. They are just being who they are except if they end up in jail you might want to find out why? I recently read in an article that the reason the USA is what it is; comes from the fact that people are allowed individualism. But, caution, look before you leap. Some Of the things we forget: Proverbs 2:6 For the Lord gives wisdom; from his mouth come knowledge and understanding; James 1:5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach, and it will be given him. You can learn from your Grandmother to eat apples because vitamin C is a necessary nutrient, but what you do with the knowledge makes you who you are. Reading is the by- product of writing. Without writers there would be no readers. The punchline is BE YOURSELF AND WRITE ON!Trying to just remain myself is one of the things i do for myself. I have a whole list of to do some of which takes money and so doesn't get done rapidly This week I spent a whole day reading a book and of course I'm doing the 30-day which is for me. ![Merit Badge in Golden Reader Award
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| What historical events, besides your own birth, occurred on your birthday in the year you were born?  1/26/1945 1. On January 26, 1945, Audie Murphy single-handedly held off an entire company of German soldiers at the Colmar Pocket, an action that earned him the Medal of Honor. Born in Texas on June 20, 1925, Audie Murphy dropped out of school in fifth grade to pick cotton for a dollar a day to support his family.Jan 26, 2017 His commentary on 60 Minutes was famous. https://www.mysticstamp.com/info/this-day-in-history-january-26-1945/ 2.World War II: The Red Army begins encircling the German Fourth Army near Heiligenbeil in East Prussia, which will end in destruction of the 4th Army two months later. Reference:https://takemeback.to/26-January-1945 3. Soviet forces reached Auschwitz and begin the liberation of several concentration camps located there. 4.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_1945#January_26,_1945_(Friday) The Battle for the Kapelsche Veer began in the Netherlands. The battle of the Heiligenbeil Pocket began on the Eastern Front. The Przyszowice massacre began in Upper Silesia. Between this day and January 28, soldiers of the Red Army killed between 54 and 69 civilian inhabitants of the Polish village of Przyszowice. The reason for the massacre remains unknown. American Lt. Audie Murphy earned the Medal of Honor near Holtzwihr, France when he saved his company from potential encirclement by climbing onto a burning U.S. tank destroyer and single-handedly killing or wounding 50 Germans with its .50 caliber machine gun until its ammunition was exhausted. Despite taking a leg wound Murphy made his way back to his company and organized a counterattack that forced the Germans to withdraw.[29] British frigate HMS Manners was torpedoed and broken in two in the Irish Sea by German submarine U-1051, which was then sunk in turn by depth charges from Royal Navy frigates. The war film Objective, Burma! starring Errol Flynn premiered in New York City. Born: Jacqueline du Pré, cellist, in Oxford, England (d. 1987) A lot of war events started on this day. THE END |
What do you do when you are out of inspiration or ideas? Three Quotes for today: “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” ― Mahatma Gandhi “Any fool can know. The point is to understand.” ― Albert Einstein “Don't Just Don't just learn, experience. Don't just read, absorb. Don't just change, transform. Don't just relate, advocate. Don't just promise, prove. Don't just criticize, encourage. Don't just think, ponder. Don't just take, give. Don't just see, feel. Don’t just dream, do. Don't just hear, listen. Don't just talk, act. Don't just tell, show. Don't just exist, live.” ― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/learning ENERGY TRANSFORMED This particular blog will be aimed at showing you. What? Not to ever worry about inspiration or ideas. Take a walk. Mow the lawn. Give a home to an orphan human or pet. Play with your dog or pet the cat. Call your Mom, Dad, sister, brother, best friend, neighbor. Go kayaking. Play your guitar or other musical instrument. Surf the Web. Take a day off to sit in a local pub and take notes about what is going on around you or a local library or a local shopping mall. Read a book. Knit. Crochet, build a chair, upholster something, sew a new shirt. Go online and take a new course about something you always wanted to learn. Clean the house. Buy a new hairbrush. Try using a prompt on WDC. Enter a contest on WDC. Review other peoples writing on WDC. Go for a drive on the back roads near where you live. Take yours writing equipment, buy an Ice Creme Cone, go sit by a lake and watch the wildlife go about their everyday business and think about what ever you think. Take up exercising because you need exercise to be healthy. Check out the local Salvation Army or yard sales or sale barns. (I apologize--it's pandemic--stay home--be safe but don't stagnate) there are lots of ways to age learning is a good one. Oh you thought we were talking about inspiration and ideas, not aging. Take a verb write it on a piece of paper and then think of all the ways you can use it to describe something. If you read all that? You are already inspired maybe to stop reading. I like to write, but I'm lazy about it, just not always motivated. I blog because 30-day gives me a subject and off I go. The few other stories I wrote it was because I looked at the prompt and found a story or taking a course with New Horizons Academy I have a book started at home. I'm into it in two different chapters. Both are unfinished, but I know what is going to be written next I just have not done it. I read 6 books in the last two weeks. Keeping my mind busy. I have a lot of things that need doing around the house but can't stand to work in the heat which is in the 90's everyday now. However, K fixed a tractor and the yard is mowed so we are coasting for now. K lost his part time job because of pandemic and we are trying to live together without too much irritation. If I focus on something then I do it. Sometimes inspiration or an idea is about focus. My mind is always busy thinking something and more than one teacher told me to focus so I guess that is the key word to remember FOCUS. WRITE ON! (P.S. I wrote a poem one morning but it is not edited.} |
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