A2Z 2020 Challenge

“X” for eXegesis and a Wildcard Poem…

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The dual theme of my A to Z Challenge this year is the world of Commodities and Poetry Forms so the juxtaposition of these two themes may throw up some strange poems – could be a Heroic Ode to Heating Oil or will it merit a Haiku or a Haibun – whichever, I will be endeavouring to bring you interesting facts about commodities that may change the way you think about the stuff we variously depend on…

By commodity I mean certain items that are of both sufficient value/volume to be traded in special markets and are generally volatile enough to attract traders in “Futures” which are a way of hedging bets in the trading world of stocks, shares and commodities.

The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!

Exegesis – “critical explanation or interpretation of a text”

Usually, I review my A-Z Challenge at the end of the month as well as hopping on the Roadtrip to review some of the other blogs I have visited, but over the last week I have started to have a perspective on what I have learned on my journey through commodities. Since with the best will in the world, I could not find either a commodity or a poetry form beginning with “X” – I am going to allow myself time to draw some threads together before going on to “Y” and “Z” next week – oh, and to choose a poetry form that I did not write to already this month!

I thought there would be quirky facts about various substances, I thought that portraying stuff as Commodities might yield a different viewpoint, but I didn’t anticipate the Geopolitical tropes that would occur time and again or the Environmental recurring themes either. Of course, I have realised that that is partly because of me – who I am and what therefore stood out for me. For example, the imperial atrocities associated with the early extraction of Rubber, both in the Amazon and the Congo. The fact that atrocities are still being perpetrated against indigenous peoples in both those river basins not to mention virtual slave and child labour. How industries rose and fell like the Whale Oil industry between 1780-1860 and only the advent of Kerosene saved many more whales from extinction – and yet the age of oil exploitation threatens a wider extinction through global warming…

Time and again we have seen how commodities like Gold, Silver and Oil – “Black Gold” – have been the driver behind imperial conquest, how enmity between trading blocks has led to fluctuations in the market – Putin’s war on Ukraine has – through sanctions applied to Russia – affected grain prices, energy prices and even more exotic commodities like Palladium – and these are not just effects on the traders who gamble in commodity futures, but ordinary people who have experienced rampant inflation due to rocketing energy prices or in Africa – people who have suffered the euphamistic “Food Insecurity” due to the lack of Ukrainian grain as we saw in yesterday’s Wheat.
It’s not just the politics and the lingering effects of Imperialism, but the environmental issues that have come to light – we first encountered this with Barley – a crop which likes cool conditions but without too much rain and as we have come to know in the last few years (Donald Trump arch-denier notwithstanding) global warming can mean too hot, too cold, too dry too wet – too variable – so sip your malt whisky while you may…

Today the news is headlined by student protests against the genocide in Gaza calling not only for a ceasefire, and the implementation of the two-state solution, but the divestment of investment by their universities, in any company involved in supporting Israel – such as arms manufacturers like Lockheed. In making these protests, the students are not only demonstrating the ongoing ability of youth to see through years of invested bullshit and like the tale of the Emperor’s New Clothes, see what is really going on and call it out, but they reveal that they understand that the way to tackle it is through economics – hitting companies and errant countries in the wallet – the issues are complex and the histories entwined but much comes down to money… The issues of the environmental, socio-political and geo-political that my skimming through tales of commodities have raised, are much the same – if we want a better, fairer , safer world then it is going to cost us – choices will have to be made, things taken seriously…

Ever since last year, when the poet Misky introduced me to Midjourney – still the best generative AI picture app, I have been using it to produce illustrations – including a number of posts here on the A-Z Challenge. I am a painter and photographer but I would not rate my Illustration skills and so I am delighted by the ability of Midjourney to parse the instructions I “prompt” it with and watching the images form before your eyes is – well magic! But it can take a few iterations to get the AI to give you what you want (and sometimes you have to give up…) so here are some of the “nearly rans” from the past month!

You may recognise the unfortunate Sue (bottom left) from the post on Lacquer. When you ask Midjourney to create an image, it offers you not one, but four images to choose from and you can if you wish, either enlarge one or more of them or ask for variations on it – in this case I was happy with the first iteration.

I wanted an illustration of the many products that can be made from soya beans and although Midjourney made a credible and appetising looking effort, it was not quite comprehensive enough and in the end, I didn’t use it.

These happy families are quaffing orange juice and this illustrates how you can ask Midjourney to work “in the style of” – in this case the style of a Ladybird book cover which produced just the kind of post-war fifties feel I wanted to convey… Again, I went with the bottom left image but asked for it to be redone in a wider aspect ratio.

The problem with AIs is that they don’t fully understand what is going on in the images they learn from and this is particularly the case when asked to come up with something in the style of an old master. Here is the exact prompt I used here “The Goddess Athena impaling Pallas who is distracted by Zeus watching in the background in the style of Michaelangelo –ar 4:3 –v 6.0“. There is confusion about which and who Pallas is and even gender and though some spears are in evidence, they are not always held by the right person, and as for Zeus… You may say that my prompt is insufficient and you may be right but I think dealing with an AI is like trying to talk to an alien! The image I actually used in Palladium, had the following prompt – “The Goddess Athena fighting with Pallas as Zeus watches in the background in the style of Titian –ar 4:3 –v 6.0“

Lastly a series of images seeking to convey the Goddess Freya aka Vanadís for the post on Vanadium. I asked Midjourney to depict Freya Norse Goddes of love, beauty, fertility, sex, war, gold and magic but Midjourney declined until I removed the word sex from the prompt – Midjourney is a very modest AI… After that Midjourney interpreted the prompt with extraordinary beauty and imagination – I would tell you which two artists (separately) the following images were in the style of but I can’t let you into all my secrets but by all means hazard a guess in the comments and I will confirm if you are right… You might want to look at the one I finally chose (none of these) here.

And so to today’s poem. I used several lists of poetry forms to choose and guide me as to the poems I wrote for the A-Z Challenge but principally Language is a Virus, and The Academy of American Poets – Glossary of Poetic Terms. Looking through to find a form I had not chosen previously, I came across the Contrapuntal poem which combines two poems that can be read three- ways – each separately or together, reading across the lines, to form a third poem.

Knowledge and Wisdom – a Contrapuntal Poem

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

Lacquer (Shellac) and a Limerick Poem

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The dual theme of my A to Z Challenge this year is the world of Commodities and Poetry Forms so the juxtaposition of these two themes may throw up some strange poems – could be a Heroic Ode to Heating Oil or will it merit a Haiku or a Haibun – whichever, I will be endeavouring to bring you interesting facts about commodities that may change the way you think about the stuff we variously depend on…

By commodity I mean certain items that are of both sufficient value/volume to be traded in special markets and are generally volatile enough to attract traders in “Futures” which are a way of hedging bets in the trading world of stocks, shares and commodities.

The A to Z Challenge runs throughout April and will consist of 26 posts – there are only a couple of letters for which I couldn’t find commodities but plenty of poetry forms to carry the day!

Worldwide trade in Shellac – 2022 – $167.84 million

Of all the commodities that I have or will be dealing with this month, Lacquer or Shellac, is the one that I expect most people to know little about despite it being a material of great ubiquity and one that most people will have come into contact with in one of its uses or other…

Imagine you are the guest in a posh house and that the lady of the house has just handed you a glass of whisky and you turn to place it on a magnificent antique dining table standing next to you – before you can say “knock me sideways with a feather” – the good lady darts forward and pausing your placement of the glass with a tight grip on your arm, she deftly slides a coaster beneath your glass before allowing its descent to complete. “It’s the French Polish, you know!” she says to you. She was afraid that an odd dribble of alcohol might run down the glass and cause a ring to be “melted” into the French Polish necessitating an expensive visit from the French Polisher to repair the damage. On a personal note, I have attempted a little French Polishing in the course of my chequered career and it is hard work (and no, I am not talking about the kind of French Polishing advertised in London phone boxes – that is another story altogether!)

Various colours and grades of Shellac

You see French Polish, or Shellac, is a wondrous material – one of whose both benefits and deficits, is that it can only be dissolved in alcohol, ethanol or methanol will do it and alcohol is pretty rare in nature, especially distilled to the concentration required to dissolve shellac! This wondrous material may certainly be associated with furniture, both as a polish but also as a stain, yet that is only one of the many jobs we have found for it! “It is currently used in a wide range of applications, such as coating pharmaceutical pills, food, musical instruments, material conservation, painting, and electronics insulation, as well as in the military industry. Lac has insulation properties, adhesiveness, tastelessness, moisture resistance, and a smooth film texture and is non-toxic. Due to these properties, lac is anticipated to be widely used in the future for finishing many industrial products.” You can read more here. So you may have encountered shellac as the shine on an M&M, the coating of a pill, it may be inside a transformer you possess or a motor winding in your hair dryer, you may have drawn with it as the binder in Indian Ink. In the past, it was used to seal letters and more recently, was a vital part in a stage of making phonographic records – a stage known as “the shellac”. And so I say again – this may be one of the greatest products you have not been aware of… This is not merely an ancient substance from which we get the word Lacquer itself, but a substance for which we are constantly finding new uses as shown in the graph of patent applications being filed (below).

Applications of natural lac products: (A) uses in industries, and (B) patents on the use of shellac in the last few years.

Where does this miraculous material come from you may well ask although given its many uses, you may understand why it is important enough to be traded as a commodity and on the futures market. Shellac is the boiled up bodies, eggs, droppings and secretions of the Lac Fly – a group of insects “of the family Kerriidae (Hemiptera), also known as scale insects, which produce a resinous material that forms a hard scale test over their bodies.” The females of the species cling to twigs of very particular trees and suck the sap at one end, whilst at their rear end they extrude a tunnel of chitinous resin that contains and protects their eggs. Whole twigs become entirely covered (stick shellac) and are harvested, scraped, heated and filtered to extract the pure resin which is Shellac. There are several grades and colours of shellac depending on an interaction between the particular species of Lac Fly and the particular tree they were on since there are a number of species of both insects and suitable trees – at least 400 trees species have been identified. Only the least coloured shellac can be further processed and more colour removed to make the food grade and pharmaceutical grades of shellac – nevertheless, if you are of a squeamish disposition, you may want to think about what you are consuming next time you pop certain shiny glazed sweets in your mouth…

Drawing of the insect Kerria lacca and its shellac tubes, by Harold Maxwell-Lefroy, 1909
Stick Shellac from an article on Insect Farming

“Lac production is limited to south, east, and southeast Asian countries such as China, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Vietnam, Laos, and Myanmar” With all the uses being found for shellac in the First World, you can see how important a crop the Lac Fly represents to these Developing countries. And indeed, it is the fact that shellac production depends on a natural, growing insect, that makes it a “Soft” Commodity which is very amenable to those who wish to gamble on Shellac Futures – there are food years and bad years and a shortage of product in one country may be offset by a glut in another…

And so to today’s poem which as L has to be a Limerick. And as much as I looked forward to and enjoyed writing about Lac Flies and their wondrous product, I found the Limerick the most difficult to get right and it took endless tinkering to get the rhythm, the humour, the rhymes and just the right hint of bawdiness – I hope you like it…

Shellac – a Limerick

Sue who thought French Polish “encroyable!”
Knew nothing of the substance fabled
Poo, eggs and secretions of Lac Flies
Speechless, poor Sue nearly died
When told of the shit on her table!

© Andrew Wilson, 2024

Illustration by Midjourney

Z – Zounds –Bloody – Gor Blimey – Lordy – Abbreviations for religious purposes…

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Back in “J” for jiggered, we encountered modifying a word slightly to make it more socially acceptable and today with Zounds! We have an expression that may have changed through running the words together rather than deliberately disguising them Zounds is short for “God’s wounds” and similarly Blimey or Cor Blimey is for “God Blind Me” both of which are taking the Lord’s name in vain – not even recognised in current usage as swear words let alone as having a religious significance! Even Lordy is taking the Lord’s name in vain… Bloody – a very common swear word is short for the blood of Christ and is compounded in one of my mother’s favourite expressions of frustration “Hells Bells and Buckets of Blood!” which after our trip to Australia in 1968, where they use bloody with gay abandon, became “Hells Bells and Buckets of Bloody Blood!”

The Wikipedia article on Cant Languages became a feature of this year’s A to Z theme ever since writing about Cockney rhyming slang and I hope you have clicked through to a few. There is one language listed for Z but there is no article on it…

Zargari[

So there you have it, another year of A to Z letters completed – but there will be a Reflections post and I will start the Road trip by reviewing this year’s frequent flyers in my comment sections for which I thank you all and I hope you enjoyed it!

Water – the Vital Ingredient…

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If you have seen my Theme Reveal for the A2Z Challenge 2022, then you will know that I am writing about becoming Vegetarian gradually as a response to the crisis in food supply chains sparked by the pandemic and made worse by the WAR in Ukraine. As well, I am keeping to the theme I originally planned of food which can be eaten in its own right as well as becoming an ingredient in other dishes…

https://thewaternetwork.com/article-FfV/food-security-impossible-without-water-security-aiWmpPPiaCeDNrFfv1bhlA

When I made my first tentative list of posts for this year’s A2Z, I put down watermelon, wine and watercress and whilst I could have covered watercress (so-called because it is grown in gin-clear streams of water) since it makes an excellent soup, I wasn’t really inspired- something niggled at my brain – and then it came to me – Water – how could we cook without it? Aside from the fact that it is a constituent of many foods and of course drinks, it is also used as a solvent to dissolve other ingredients, to extract flavours, and it’s physical properties are vital to the cooking process. Water has three states – solid, liquid and gas, and all of these can be used in cooking, after slowly raising the temperature of greens in water to near boiling, the sudden cooling with ice cubes (blanching), preserves and enhances the greenness (and nutritional qualities) of the vegetables. Boiling foods in water is one of the commonest forms of cooking and, given that ability to dissolve and extract taste, steaming vegetables is even better if you want them really tasty. Water, or rather it’s removal, is involved in preserving many foods, from pulses to the powdered, dehydrated ingredients of packet soups – and to reconstitute? Just add back the water!

The name of Whisky is derived from the Celtic word isca, meaning “water” and some people call it “the water of life” and to make Scottish whisky, you must have a source of richly stained peaty water which contributes both to the taste and colour of the whisky. In fact, most liquids we know in the kitchen will have some water in them – even whisky, since we don’t drink 100% proof, nor is vinegar 100% acetic acid. One of the common instructions in recipes is to reduce a stock (made from simmering meat or vegetables in water) in order to lose some of the water and concentrate the flavour.

Water is vital to growing food, meat or vegetable, and with climate change producing either too much or too little water, flood or drought, often, but not exclusively, in the poorer parts of the world, then water is a major geopolitical issue. The photograph at the top is from a site which can keep you informed about such issues…

The water we drink and use to cook with, varies in taste and purity, depending on it’s source and in simple terms, this is likely to be tap water (with various additives to keep it clean), and bottled water – still or sparkling – also with a variety of different minerals, depending on it’s source. This is particularly the case with sparkling water where the dissolved carbon dioxide that makes it bubbly, may come from a naturally carbonated source or may have been added at the bottling plant. Vichy and San Pellegrino are well-known examples and as well as the bubbles, they have distinct flavours due to their mineral ingredients.

Adding sparkling water to batters such as Tempura batter produces a lighter, fluffier batter…

Tempura Batter
85g of plain flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp sugar
200ml of sparkling water, chilled
1. Add the dry ingredients to a mixing bowl
2. Gently whisk/fold in the sparkling water – over whisking will cause gluten to form and the bubbles to be lost making the batter heavy
3. don’t leave the batter standing. Coat the things you are going to fry with flour before dipping them.
4. Quickly fry in hot oil till golden brown!

Water is the thing that makes our planet so unique and hospitable to life, it makes up a large proportion of our bodies and the more we investigate it, the stranger it becomes -as always, the Wikipedia elves have lots of info…

Bread – in Geopolitics, in Vegetarianism and – as an ingredient…

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The Tribute to Jeremy Badge

If you have seen my Theme Reveal for the A2Z Challenge 2022, then you will know that I am writing about becoming Vegetarian gradually as a response to the crisis in food supply chains sparked by the pandemic and made worse by the WAR in Ukraine. As well, I am keeping to the theme I originally planned of food which can be eaten on their own as well as becoming ingredients in other dishes…

As the WAR in Ukraine rages on, Ukraine’s minister of agrarian and food policy, announced that – Ukraine’s government has banned the export of wheat, oats and other staples that are crucial for global food supplies as authorities try to ensure they can feed people during Russia’s intensifying war. New rules on agricultural exports introduced this week also prohibit the export of millet, buckwheat, sugar, live cattle, and meat and other byproducts from cattle (see article). As things are, Ukrainian farmers will be lucky to get out to fertilise the soon to sprout winter wheat – ironically, whilst Ukraine is often referred to as the bread-basket of the world, and the yellow colour on the flag of Ukraine symbolises the wheat, the fertiliser used to grow Ukrainian wheat, comes from Russia, illustrating the perfect storm of food supply chains that Putin has, with lack of, or incorrect, foresight, loosed upon the world. Every World War is different, and make no mistake, we are in a world war, because the countries and peoples affected by the WAR, lie far beyond the extent of the fighting. Economies and supply chains require no declarations of war to involve and decimate. European countries will feel the loss of Ukrainian wheat, but the other grains on that list – buckwheat and millet are vital imports to many developing countries such as in Africa. Russia looks likely to take all of Ukraine’s coast and ports so that even if they stop where they are at that point, and back down, how will exports to those developing countries take place?

We may have no choice but to eat less meat since as we saw in the last post, it takes so much grain to raise beef cattle, and we should face this shift with no complaint since there are many people in the world who will have less choice than we do. We will not be being forced to live solely on the staple dish of bread (or as Marie Antoinette would have it – cake) but undoubtedly some things will change our eating habits, whether we like it or not. The rich will, of course, continue to afford the full menu of choices.

Bread is a Staple Food! Of the ten world staple foods, wheat, the source of most breads, is at number three, after maise and rice, which might come as a surprise to Europeans, whose massive use of bread and whose knowledge of foods foreign is often dismal. Maise, or Corn, is, of course, the source of Cornbread, whilst Rice is the main ingredient in most Gluten-Free flour and the bread made from it. After these three staples, comes Potato which is also used in some bread recipes together with some wheat flour. The rest of the ten staples do not significantly feature in the world of bread – Cassava, Soybeans, Sweet Potatoes, Yams, Sorghum and Plantain. If you know of any breads made from these, please correct me by sharing in the comments!

Before looking at bread as an ingredient, let us take a quick trip around the manna itself. The first thing that comes to mind, is a loaf of bread, and to make this, you need hard wheat, as opposed to the soft wheat used for cake and some softer, cake-like breads such as brioche, of which more later. If you take morning toast and sandwiches, you have the main ingredient of two of the daily meals and think of beans/spaghetti/cheese/eggs on toast and that represents supper for some people, or think pizza, or hummus and pitta bread. Most bread is Leavened (made to rise), with yeast, but Soda Bread (risen with baking soda activated by buttermilk) also has it’s place. Sourdough is very trendy but has a long history and depends on natural yeasts which gradually accumulate and become something unique in each baker’s precious starter… But there are many unleavened breads – a plethora of flatbreads – from all over the world – Middle Eastern pitta bread, to South Asian Chapatis or even Aboriginal Australian Dampers.

Some like hearty wholemeal, seedy granary or dabble with ancient grains but many people, at peril to their health, like the refinement of white bread! During World war Two, The refinement of bread was regarded as wasteful and wholemeal was the order of the day, so once the war was over, white bread boomed – a whole generation put themselves at risk of diverticulitis – the cure? Bran cereal made from the bran taken out of the flour to render it white!

But what of bread as an ingredient?

Bread goes stale with varying degrees of speed – not that it can’t be eaten, but it is hard and dry, however, since it is still nutritionally sound, there are many ways to use up stale bread by turning it into an ingredient – breadcrumbs, bread pudding, bread-and-butter pudding, Apple Charlotte – the latter made with bread crumbs. Rusk goes into sausages and that could be meat or veggie and of course, bread itself is Vegan – seems those one-celled creatures, the yeasts, don’t count… I once, briefly, had a restaurant, and I worked hard at developing a range of sophisticated puddings, however, I made a rod for my own back by including bread-and-butter pudding, because over 50% of customers chose that – of course, it may be that they liked my particular recipe, or maybe they couldn’t be bothered to make it at home, though why ever not, I can’t imagine – preparation time, even for a full family size dish, is 10 minutes at most. My restaurant version, though, is even quicker and I made them to order.

https://www.goodfood.com.au/recipes/individual-bread-and-butter-puddings-20131101-2wow0

Frewin’s Bread and Butter Pudding
Preheat the oven to 170C, 325F or Gas mark 3
Take a ramekin or very small bowl, and grease it with butter
Cut a few slices of Brioch Bread and butter them with softened butter
Cut a slice into pices to fit the base of the ramekin
Sprinkle a teaspoon of the sugar of your choice
Sprinkle half a dozen plump raisins or mixed, dried fruit (must be large, fresh and soft, no small gritty ones)
Repeat till the ramekin is full to the brim (this won’t take much, leave small gaps for the mixture to find its way in)
The mixture for a large pudding is 5 eggs beaten into 1 pint of milk but you will have to scale down for just a couple of ramekins. To make it even richer, substitute a little single cream for part of the milk.
Sprinkle a little sugar over the top of the pudding and make sure no dried fruit is standing proud as it will go bitter if burnt.
You need a pre-heated oven to finish the pudding – but start off in the microwave if you are in a hurry, or bake completely in the oven if you are not. You could assemble your puddings and leave to soak while you have your main course and finish off between courses. One minute or so, in the microwave and a couple of minutes in the oven. Watch as it microwaves and when the surface begins to rise, transfer to the oven. Keep checking and when the pudding has risen (as it will, splendidly) and is browning a little – your pudding is ready!

And now for something completely different!

https://natashaskitchen.com/angelinas-easy-bread-kvas-recipe/

Kvass is a barely alcoholic drink made from stale rye bread from the Eastern European Countries through the Russias. When the USSR broke up, instead of embracing the western passion for Cocoa-Cola, the people of the east, in a patriotic passion, started to drink a lot of Kvass. what did Cocoa-Cola do? They bought Kvass factories on the basis that if you can’t beat them – join them! I can buy kvass from various Polish shops near me, but I was really intrigued by the fact that this drink was made from bread and that you could make it yourself, so I decided to have a go! There are many recipes on the internet and I am still trying them out, some contain beetroot, or fruit, but here is a good one to start with. So Rye bread is an example of a bread not made with wheat and many people are turning to it to avoid some of the side effects of wheat, gluten, bloating etc. – but the main reason to start including it in your diet is just that it is a rich flavour and when toasted, is crisp on the outside and soft in the middle – yummy! And now you know what to do with the leftovers!

So here were some ideas for using bread as an ingredient – care to share your favourites?

Carrie-Anne over at Welcome to My Magick Theatre, is writing about Ukrainian history and culture for this year’s A2Z Challenge and has a list of charities you may wish to donate to for the Ukrainian cause.

Zalka Csenge Virág posted on International Women’s Day, 10 tales about women and war (including a Ukrainian tale) over at The Multicoloured Diary.

Reflections on A to Z 2020 Challenge

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Being a newbie to the Challenge, I had not realized that a reflection post was de rigeur but better late than never! I only discovered the Challenge on April 1st and so I had also missed the theme launch which meant I had no option but to be a “pantser” and being full of thoughts on the lockdown, that became my theme – personal and societal responses (including my resumption of blogging). 

Having such a broad canvas meant I could also adopt a wide variety of styles, op-ed, poetry, fiction, and photography. I do think that once a few people found me, this varied nature might have helped to keep readers coming back. To begin with there were hardly any pageviews until I made a couple of reviews of other blogs – after all, I had no extant readers after a gap from 2013 but numbers started to climb after Fréderiqué gave me some good advice on promotion and offered solid support throughout the Challenge!

So by the end of the month, the pageviews had reached around 1000 and a couple of posts reached the dizzying number of 45 pageviews each! However, this is not the best way to measure success as a blogger and instead, what has pleased me much more, is that a I feel I have made a couple of solid friends who will continue to visit and vice versa.

What did I enjoy writing most (since I have already spoken about the blogs I have enjoyed reading) – well I did a lot of research for M – Money and N – neo Liberalism and I enjoyed boiling down complex issues to bite-sized pieces which I hope were digestible – there are some very complex issues facing the world at present. At the other end of the scale, I wrote the L – Love poem very quickly, using song titles to start and theme each verse and I think I succeeded in making something touching, funny and thought-provoking – not necessarily in that order…

Will I do it again next year? If the fates and Covid 19 allow both in health and time, I would love to join this special club again. As to whether I would pre-prepare posts, I don’t know – it takes some of the pressure off and allows reflection and editing time but there is great stimulation in “pantsing” and the opportunity to react to current events too. Hopefully, we shall not be living in quite such dramatic times by then – but I wouldn’t count on it…

Z – Is it the End?

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This post is part of the A to Z 2020 Challenge. I have decided to theme the posts around personal and societal responses to the Covid 19 crisis, including my resumption of Blogging!



A to Z – the last letter, the last day…

We sometimes use the expression A to Z to convey the idea of “everything” – all-encompassing. But is Z the last letter in the alphabet, it comes from the Greek letter zeta,  copied from the Phoenecian zayin and given new name to sequence and rhyme with eta and theta which placed it as the 6th letter in the Greek alphabet. We came to Z via Latin where it was initially placed at the end of the alphabet before being ditched altogether and then later restored. all of which goes to show that not only are we humans very fickle about our use and abuse of letters but also that whether you want to encompass everything with first/ last alphabet references – well it depends where you are and when you are… If you want to know more then Wikipedia is here for you!

However, the thing which is occupying those of us bloggers who have made it to the last day of the A to Z 2020 Challenge with 25 posts already under our belts and about to qualify for the Survivors Badge, is that it is all over for this year. Well, yes, and no! It has been hard work, especially if, like me, you only discovered the challenge on day one and therefore had done no preparation, no pre-writing, and then too, I had no readers at that point, having picked up a dormant blog and nursed it back to life. So building readership (956 page views for the month, as I write) has been hard work too but I have had help and encouragement (see my vlog post) and I am very happy with how it has gone. Before I found those helpful friends, I started promoting by doing reviews of the sites I liked from the Master List of participants and got as far as 120 or so out of 500 and so I still have 380 left to look at and dip into their offerings over the past month – so no it ain’t over yet!!!

I am sure everybody will relax and ease off just a little on both writing and promoting although quite a few people I have encountered have multiple blogs so perhaps they will simply switch to other subjects or perhaps find other challenges. I for one will keep posting on a varied range of subjects and in varied styles and I will keep on reaching out to the friends I have made as well as seeking new ones and……..
I can’t wait to see you all here again next year!!!!!


Y is for You…

humanist55
This post is part of the A to Z 2020 Challenge. I have decided to theme the posts around personal and societal responses to the Covid 19 crisis, including my resumption of Blogging!

There are very few words in dictionaries beginning with X but here is one you can get your teeth into…

You Make The Difference!

I first got a computer of my own around 1998 and shortly afterwards, I broke my hip and had to spend a year on crutches. But like the present lockdown, being stuck at home gave the opportunity to both develop a business and to explore the internet and how it worked.

What I learned was about the biggest business which sorts out the content of the internet at one end of the scale, and about all the individuals who contribute the content itself at the other end of the scale. At that time, the dot-com bubble had just about burst and like many people, I was wondering how you could make money out of something that was so exciting and full of potential as the internet clearly was. Well, it turned out that Google was the answer to that particular conundrum – it’s incredible power to index content plus the concept of matching advertising to words in emails, searches, etc., was winning combination and one that nobody else has since matched. However, without content, there would be nothing to index (or advertise) and whilst, as the years have passed since then, commercial sites have increased in size and sophistication, so too have the mass of individuals who put up content about their hobbies, hobby horses and interests – not least us bloggers!


When I first went on the internet, I was amazed at how much material was already there as a result of individual effort and passion and what a democratic, leveling process this was. Think of the libraries and encyclopedias and textbooks of the past, produced by professional writers and publishers at great cost and not always great profit. Now Wikipedia demonstrates both the strength and pitfalls of “co-operative” authorship. Tales of editing wars over particular entries are legendary. Nonetheless, it is often our first port of call when researching, doing homework or just filling an idle moment – although, surfing the net generally goes by the maxim that the most interesting items always appear when you are researching under time pressure and not so much when you are footloose and fancy-free…

The A to Z Challenge is an example of this liberal, undirected, fascinatingly varied contribution to the evergrowing internet and those who have laboured for  several hours a day for almost 26 days!  Some 500 blogs on the Master list at 2 hours a day for 26 days, well that is 26,000 hours work! We have seen essential oils, photographs, haiku, incredible quilting, politics, self-development to name but a few and all this has been done by YOU!

X is for Xenophobia…

humanist55
This post is part of the A to Z 2020 Challenge. I have decided to theme the posts around personal and societal responses to the Covid 19 crisis, including my resumption of Blogging!

There are very few words in dictionaries beginning with X but here is one you can get your teeth into…

Xenophobia – is it an instinct?

A little scout on the internet quickly reveals how debatable the subject of Xenophobia and its mechanisms are, almost as intractable as Nature v. Nurture and this is because we are in the same area of research v. belief. It is very hard to devise experiments that conclusively deal with instinct partly because you cannot create or find control subjects who have not been “taught”, however unconsciously, certain biases.
What we do know, is that babies have no undue reactions to babies of other races or colour, and, experimental psychologists claim, adult subjects shown photographs of all sorts of people, react more to different age groups than to different colour or ethnicity.
The philosopher Karl Popper said that it didn’t matter how you came up with a scientific theory, it was how you tested it that counted – and that since you can never establish something to be true everywhere, you were better to try and disprove a theory rather than prove it and thus find yourself in possession of something true for the time being… So he disagreed with the ideas of Freud and indeed all psychoanalytical theory because it was impossible to falsify. Einstein’s theories on the other hand, accounted for some of the flaws in the reigning Newtonian physics and so could be accepted for a time (they too have now got holes in and physicists are looking for theories to replace them…).
So perhaps it is not possible to get a definitive answer as to whether xenophobia is an instinct and focus instead on how it plays out in humans.

Is Xenophobia a choice?

If it’s difficult to screen out the teaching of xenophobia to infants then we must examine how that teaching takes place and for sure, it ranges from very subtle and unconscious biases that even good liberals may not be aware of as they raise their children, to raging bigoted indoctrination by other less liberal parents. Then again, it is not just parents who can consciously foster xenophobia – you only have to look at the exploitation of baseless, even non-sensical prejudice against immigrants in the ongoing Brexit debacle where just last week, vegetable pickers were being flown into the UK which has apparently voted against freedom of movement. What were the first actions of Trump upon election – the banning of Muslims traveling from certain countries, playing to the xenophobia he had stoked up in his election campaign? Of course, immigrants are always a handy distraction from politicians’ own failings be they management or putting their hand in the cookie jar.

Who are the ones that choose to teach their children hatred? They can be the wronged and downtrodden or the perpetrators of oppression. In Northern Ireland, partition took place to create six counties where the majority were Protestant and the minority, Catholic. The Protestants abused their power, “Catholics need not Apply” notices in job adverts, Catholic areas allowed to become slums, etc. So Catholics taught their children to hate the “Prods” whilst Protestants had to demonize the Catholics who remained a threat to them – if for no other reason than that their birth rate is higher and they will one day be in a position to vote for the reunification of Ireland.

Who chooses to oppose xenophobia? Liberals for sure, and they are usually prosperous enough not to be threatened by the alleged or actual consequences of high levels of immigration – their children not so likely to attend schools where multi-ethnic classes might reduce the academic standards. But also those who have learned better in life to trust and choose better.

Popper opposed Communism for the same reason as he opposed psychoanalysts – because he saw their beliefs as untestable, as matters of belief and thus choice. I believe that we should hold firm to this understanding that xenophobia is a choice, disproving the theories which its proponents push forward, for whatever spurious reasons and choosing instead to work together as human beings. If the present Covid 19 crisis has taught us nothing else – it is surely that together is strong, sharing is best in a common enterprise to beat the virus…

W is for Work…

humanist55
This post is part of the A to Z 2020 Challenge. I have decided to theme the posts around personal and societal responses to the Covid 19 crisis, including my resumption of Blogging!

Work in the time of Covid 19

If I was still working at my normal job (General Manager in a Gelato and pudding factory) – I wouldn’t be sitting here blogging! It’s not just the time factor, I struggle to fit in the two-and-a-half hours it mostly takes me to write and promote each piece – no, its the lifestyle. After eleven hours out of the house, I don’t have the energy to sit and blog. Also, my partner is already retired and so, in “normal” times, we need to spend the three days I am not working doing more “together” things.
Covid 19 has changed a lot of things for a lot of people and made them, and certainly me, reassess work, priorities, life.
It has been hard not to be useful when, away from the calm, bird-song filled streets and parks, you know that some people are still working frantically, whether on the “front-line” of the health service or in companies than can do mail-order and delivery -which includes my own place of work. My particular work can’t easily be done from home and because of mine and my partner’s age, I have been furloughed anyway.

 

“Cedar Waxwing, March 25, 2020, Allen Station Park, Allen, Texas” by gurdonark is licensed under CC BY 2.0

I watch the news of apparent government incompetencies in the supply lines, and the management of testing and I itch to get in there and help sort things out. I have had such varied jobs over the years that I think I have the ability to think outside the box and to translate thought into action, whereas it seems to me, most politicians have no experience outside politics and are lacking in any other skills. At 65, I would until recently, have been entitled to my state pension this year, but being part of the post-war baby-boom, it has been necessary for the government to extend working lives…

New Values

Like many people then, I have had the time and opportunity to think about the future, post-crisis, the so-called “New Normal” and personally, I am not sure I want to go back to work as I used to. My job in the factory was hardly a vocation and the things it was promised that I would be able to apply my skills to improve, have mostly not happened. On the other hand, blogging and knocking an allotment into shape, have felt worthwhile. The allotment, we hope, will make a contribution to our and our daughter’s family larder whilst blogging, has I hope, provided food for thought or maybe entertainment. Coming back to a comatose blog with no followers and slowly making friends and readers suggests some small success. Indeed, it makes me think that I would have enjoyed journalism and even, that it is not too late to contribute in some way. 

Because let’s face it, the world was in a sorry state before Covid 19 – the looming environmental crisis, the rise of right-wing governments, the wanton break up that was Brexit, the failure of capitalism, based as it was on constant growth and spurious war mongering. I remember going to a debate whilst a student, and being frustrated at not being able to formulate the questions I wanted to ask the speakers in time. Over the years, the themes and issues that keep me awake at night, have become clearer to me, the links between things, more obvious. I do know the key questions and have some ideas about the desirable direction of travel – if not the full answers.

It might be some time before my age-group are deemed safe to return to work and my partner and I, when we finally examine this month’s spending, may find we can manage without me going back to work, or maybe I can find a new way to bring in a little extra money to keep us ticking over – for me, just as for many people, there are uncertainties and opportunities in the wake of the coronavirus…