Blogging

The Big Reveal…

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 Last year, I only discovered the A2Z 2020 Challenge on the first of April – the start day and had to wing it with the theme of the unfolding Covid 19 Pandemic. This year I have had time to think about it in advance and have to make it not just a 26 day blogging challenge, but a 26 day novel completing challenge…


Some years ago, laid up after a hip replacement [I am not as old as that suggest but I have just reached pension age 🙁   ] I awoke in the middle of the night from a dream which I knew was meant to be the start of a novel. I immediately dictated all I could recall into my phone and began writing the next day.

I confess, I already had a novel on the go which has languished for more of the 15 years since its inception than not. Whilst still actively thinking and reaching and very occasionally writing a bit of the first novel – darting hither and thither within its structure, the second novel – “Train Wreck” – has been a start at the beginning and work through in order affair. Still, there has been a lot of time when life got in the way of writing and so I have decided to try and complete it with the impetus of the 2021 Challenge.

To comply with the A to Z part of the Challenge, I am going to invent an aspect of my novel’s world(s) – for it is a science-fiction in a thriller format – the Train Wreck is a whodunnit! But I shall then publish a chapter a day – luckily I have a headstart of twelve which gives me more time to write the balance…

And if anything else demands musing on, I will tack that on too…

Needless to say – Feedback would be most welcome!

I will aim to visit as many other blogs as I can – its going to be busy!

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?

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!



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…

V is for Vlogging – is it the Future or the Devil?

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!

Spoiler Alert!

If you are a Blogger who thinks that Vloggers are the spawn of the Devil then I must warn you that this post contains a Vlog post – by yours truly – but fear not, I am not going to become a regular Vlogger, this guest appearance is only in the interests of exploring the difference between the two phenomena – Blogging and Vlogging…

Appearances

Have you ever wondered how your favourite Bloggers look? In some cases, (including myself) they do provide a thumbnail or even a proper picture of themselves such as the writers Sharon Cathcart or Sarah Zama. I have a confession to make – my thumbnail is at least a decade old but I feel it strikes the right note – so it stays – if you want to see me now you will have to watch the Vlog… But there are others – and I am not criticising – such as my most faithful visitor, commenter and my mentor for promoting this blog – Frédérique at Applique Patchwork Quilting who remain a mystery. Frédérique has become a voice without appearance in my head and it is strange that we should apply that term to written words and that is one of the things that I want to explore by comparing blogs and vlogs.

Crossover

My first post in this A to Z 2020 Challenge was about Alistair Cooke and I suggested, that because he first wrote down and then read out  his iconic “Letter from America”, Cooke should be considered the prototypical Blogger and in recording his blog he made crossover to broadcasting – first Radio and later TV with his series “America”. Vlogging is the screen crossover child of blogging for the generation who hardly watch TV but get a lot of their screen leads from YouTube.

What is a Vlog?

Just like its progenitor, the Blog, the Vlog is, at its simplest, a dated video post. Like blogs, vlogs have many uses, diary, business tool, marketing, educational, documentary, political message but they differ from blogs because they each have different strengths and weaknesses.
Vlogs are visual and their authors (if blogs can have a voice, then videos can be authored) have to be seen – so not for the shy and self-conscious. in fact vlogs have been analyzed for “personality traits such as Extraversion, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience.” (Wikipedia) Since we humans learn in so many ways, then for some, video is a far more effective way to learn (or just be entertained) whereas others learn (or enjoy) the written word better. Surely the vlog conveys much more than the words that are spoken – the non-verbal cues are equally important and anyone who hs watched a nerd with a personality void give a video post about something technical will know what I mean. Text is notorious for being unreliable at conveying tone – short texts between people in particular but at least with a blog, we have longer pieces in which to develop our message and over the course of following a particular blogger, we get to recognize more accurately their “voice” and their stance through the choice of words, content and style.
This post has already included several links to other parts of the internet and this is more difficult to do on a vlog or indeed TV broadcasting – how many times following a TV programme – even drama, have we heard over the credits – “If any viewers have been affected by the issues raised in the programme – please go to our website for links to support you…” On the other hand a blog is limited to still photos or embedded videos to show the reader things with a flow – but then again – you can always go back to that link in a blog.

The Best of Both Worlds…

Perhaps the most effective way of managing content, if neither blogging nor blogging conveys everything you need to say, is a combination – a blog with a vlog embedded – that way you can put all the links, the carefully polished words into the blog whilst including the more emotional, personal, non-verbal communication into the vlog element.
To test this, I am going to take a leap into the dark, or considering that I will reveal myself, warts and all, a leap into the light by posting a vlog right here…

And Frédérique, there is something especially for you…


So there it is – Hit or a Miss? You decide…


You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter



U is for UB40

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!


Two days ago I said how important music was to me (and it’s still not too late to join the game ) – not only listening to the music itself, but the musicology – the story of where the music came from, the influences, the writers, composers, and even the producers and my relationship to the music of UB40 typifies how music has changed for me and I suspect lots of others.

When I met my partner back in the mid 80’s, I did not like spending money on myself, so she made up for that on birthdays and Christmas by buying me lots of music! UB40’s “Labour of Love” was one such (vinyl) album and featured the chart-topping “Red, Red Wine” – a cover of the 1967 Neil Diamond song but in the 1968 reggae styled version by Tony Tribe. This album gave rise to the idea that all UB40’s songs were covers but this is not the case yet the band with a very mixed ethnicity make-up, was very influenced by Ska, early Reggae and Lovers Rock. By the time they hit the big time and went to Jamaica, they were looking forward to meeting their musical roots who in turn were looking forward to the band which had given their careers a much-needed boost!


Named for the form issued to unemployed people applying for the dole, the members of UB40 hailed from Birmingham and were all unemployed when they formed up and indeed – their first album was called “Signing Off” to signify that they no longer needed to claim unemployment benefit. But all of these details had to wait for the internet to develop before I could become aware of them.

Meanwhile, CD’s came and went and now we have Spotify as my default way to listen to music. Now I have more musicology on the internet than I know what to do with, concerts on TV, access to many groups whole back catalogues yet I still have that first UB40 vinyl album given to me by my beloved – and hey! Guess what? Vinyl records are back and we can again dream of affording a bigger and better hi-fi system,  maybe with exposed valve amplifier – nah! Just play me UB40 on any tinny device and you will find me singing along.

T is for Trust…

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!

Do you trust your Politicians?

In a democracy, we choose people to represent us in doing the job of managing our country because the knowledge, processes and institutions involved in running a country are beyond most of us. In an ideal world, politicians would be elder citizens who have worked in the “real” world and bring a variety of experiences to the table. Too often, we get instead, a class of professional politicians who have never done a day’s work outside the bubble of government.

We have to place our trust in the politicians we elect and under the stress test of the present Covid 19 crisis, many governments are being found wanting, many are taking the opportunity to seize power in a more authoritarian way under cover of the crisis yet some governments, many led by women, are doing much better than others.

Sex and Trust

I am fascinated by the part that instinct plays in the human way of life. We must spend something like 21 years raising a family so the power of sex and love must glue us together for the duration through what, for most couples, is bound to have some ups and downs. Yet is said that infidelity on the part of men is down to their instinct to spread their seed wherever they can, and before the advent of genetic testing, men (and women) could mostly get away with this. However trust, once broken by infidelity discovered, is hard, and for some, impossible to rebuild. Women are often portrayed as the opposite of wild oat sowing men – faithful nest-builders yet not only among humans but also among some birds, has it been discovered that certain females partner up with good providers – first of nest-building materials and then food for the chicks. However the female then secretly mates with a more “fit” and showy male thus getting the best of both worlds…
In some bird species, such as the Bower Bird, it is the quality of the nest building and decorating which is the criteria for selection of a mate by the female whilst for others, it’s all about the Peacock plumage. How does this relate to trust in politicians?

“Male” and “Female” Values in politicians.

In an article by Avivah Wittenberg-Cox in Forbes, she writes about how the countries which have the best response to the corona virus crisis have one thing in common – women leaders! Iceland, Taiwan, Germany, New Zealand, Finland, Iceland and Denmark all have women Premieres and all have had better responses to the crisis than say Britain, the US, Brazil, India or Russia where right-wing politicians are consolidating power and wielding it unwisely at the cost of the lives of their citizens. Taiwan has had an exemplary response to the virus – a fast, testing and tracing based response by Tsai Ing-wen in Taiwan (which was lost to the world because the WHO is China leaning and wouldn’t acknowledge the existence of Taiwan or the warnings it issued about what was happening in China let alone report on its successful strategy!).
Iceland is a large island with a small population and a pioneer of whole-population genetic testing (which revealed lots of infidelity-produced babies that led to many divorces in Iceland) and so tested its entire population under the leadership of Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir, and “will become a key case study in the true spread and fatality rates of COVID-19” according to Avivah Wittenberg-Cox. Avivah goes on to suggest that for years, research has shown that the leadership styles of women have much to recommend them and points us to an article on 7 Leadership Lessons men can Learn from Women.

Are men led by the instinct first to reproduce and then to grasp power – the biggest and best tail feathers? Are some women seduced by the Donald Trumps of this world with their bright orange colouring and big towers? Are all women consummate nest-builders and faithful partners? How much are we driven by instinct to the detriment of common sense? These are the things that keep me awake at night – but on the evidence of the present crisis, whatever drives the women premieres in whom their people have placed their trust, seems to be working much better than the countries where men are the chosen ones…

S is for Sugar – A music game for our times…

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!


If this blog is to reflect its creator, then there has not been enough Music present! The following is a game I invented for long car journeys but it could be played in the present social isolation, by text, on Zoom or even in the comments of a blog…


The game is really word association but in the form of song titles, lines from songs or the names of bands. you go round the circle sparking off the last person’s offering, no repetition though you could have a line from a song whose title has previously been used. For me, it’s not about keeping score, but if you are really competitive, then it’s negative scoring – you lose a point for getting stuck or for an incorrect challenge so it is the one who has the least negative score who wins! Yes, you can challenge if you cannot see the association of another’s song with the previous one. Enjoy! I will start with The Archies classic hit…

A:- Sugar, Sugar
B:- Brown Sugar
C:- Brown Girl in the Ring
A:- Hurricane
C:- What! How does that follow?
A:- It’s Dylans song about a boxing champion who performs in the ring!
B:- Okay so then I’ll go with Blow the Winds Southerly
C:- Weather Report 
A:- A Change Is Gonna Come
B:-Better be home soon… 
C:- I don’t know if that’s tenuous or very clever! Home Sweet Home
A:- My sweet little Alice Blue Gown
B:- Tupelo Honey
C:- Honey Child
A:-Sweet Child of Mine
B:- You must have had the cutest little baby face
C:- Baby Love
A:-Love to Love you Baby
B:- Love is the Drug
C:- Cocaine
A:-I’m Waiting for My Man
B:- Brotherhood of Man
C:- He Aint Heavy He’s My Brother!


And so it goes! Please comment starting with your response to the last song above or following that, the comment before yours…