● Lady Percy moves me - might she move you? CLICK TO FIND OUT ● Plus my novels, stories, verse, vulgar interests, apologies, and singing. ● Most posts are 300 words. I respond to all comments/re-comments. ● See Tone Deaf in New blogger.
Sunday 19 April 2020
Whither the blog?
NOTE: A much-sniffed lamp-post. Yet still I sniff.
This post has been deleted by the author. One of its several defects was its argument was far too casually advanced, and could be construed as offensive. This was not my intention and I apologise wholeheartedly
Roger and I started our blog back in early 2005. We had just retired, moved from our home in Santa Cruz, CA to Port Townsend, WA north on the Olympic Peninsula. We suddenly had a lot of time on our hands. I learned about photography and atmospheric optics, and started reading blogs. Most of the blogs were political, but many were simply online personal journals. We bloggers told each other the stories of our lives. We blogged about our garden, our sightings of bobcats in the yard and coyotes climbing our fruit trees. It's been more than 15 years since we started and our efforts remain the same. We tell the stories of our lives. In this time on our planet it has been a gift to connect with like-minded virtual friends. It may be that we have nothing high-minded to say, but we do try to express what ever is in our hearts.
I think you are a little hard on bloggers when you infer lack of inspiration is pure laziness. Everyone goes through rough times. And I realize "pure" is an acceptable word to describe what you mean here. For the Catholic school girl who lives inside me, however, "pure" implies something elevating. Having it followed by laziness seems extreme. But maybe that is exactly why you did use the word? Because you think it is absolute? Really? Such a strong statement. I wonder if another word might have been better? Ha, you know I don't really care. I'm just yanking your chain.
I've been searching for the post where you used the word numinious before I did. I can't find it. But I'm not a close reader.
I like reading your posts, even if I don’t comment every time. I find you have a wide vocabulary, much more intensive than the vocabulary in American blogs. I also enjoy your sense of humor.
As for “nothing to write about” I am the reverse. I have too much inspiration. When I get an idea for a post I write the title on a document. I started in 2010 and now it is 7 ½ pages long, with a title on each line, double spaced. I have not looked at it for a while because in the meantime I keep thinking about something else to write about. Let me go back at that document and have a look. Here are some titles to give you an idea: The North Cape in Norway, Around Luxuor, the Pink Lake in Senegal, The Potemkin Steps in Odessa, Ukraine, Going down the Mekong River, Return to St Petersburg, Russia, Johan Strauss, Jr. House in Vienna, The old castle at Blandy-les-Tours, The Flagler museum in Florida, and many more on trips. My posts are about vagabonding after all. I have pictures for all of these posts. But I also have ideas for other subjects, let see: Emily Carr, Baron Haussmann and Paris, Father’s youth in Istanbul and Cairo, Hemingway’s cats, Simon Combes’ paintings, Gertrude Stein Collection, Camels. Well, there are 7 ½ pages of subjects. Am not sure I’ll live that long…
All: My apologies to you. As you see I have deleted the offending post. It's ironic that these observations have come from three bloggers whose work has honoured what I believe, sadly, to be the dying craft of blogging. Who never lacked output, variety and wit.
On reflection I realised I was touching on something that belonged to blog history. I started blogging in 2008 and it seemed to me that the atmosphere was much more fluid then. Bloggers arrived and departed with greater frequency, often admitting that that what had seemed like an attractive pastime had quickly turned into a burden. Several of them followed my blog, then called Works Well, and I was sad to see them go. Misguidedly, since it was none of my business, I suggested that the range of raw material they felt they lacked was wider than they suspected. That if they poked and prodded at familiar, often no more than domestic, matters they would find all they needed. It was significant that one or two said that Facebook appealed more.
I should have kept my silence both then and now but once an editor always an editor. In my own rather shaky defence I hope you feel I have responded with enthusiasm to your blogs (comparative newcomers to Tone Deaf's circle) because that enthusiasm was genuine.
I had a further point I would have liked to have raised: do we blog for ourselves or for others? But I shall leave that be.
robin andrea: There are no limits to what we may blog about, the criterion being how much interest do we generate? In fact you might well have turned that proof on me, a point I grieved about in my final sentence.
Colette: I avoided talking about inspiration. No one can legislate about that; it arrives when it chooses. I am as much its victim as anyone else. I offered the suggestion, now withdrawn, if one pondered about familiar activities (dish-washing was my example) one might find aspects that were bloggable. In fact I'd done that myself some months ago having discovered that the sequence in which items are handled at the sink can lead to greater efficiency. No big deal, really. Not in any sense "pure", just different. But one did have to ponder. For some that may seem like hard work.
Certainly not "elevating" as a prior aim, though if something of that nature cropped up there was no reason why it should not be used.
Consider the chain well and truly yanked.
Re: numinous. Just use blog's Search function. The word appears in my March 31 post, Fear of Nothingness. Sorry, the gap was longer than I remembered
Vagabonde: Your blog reflects your peripatetic life and your wide experience of different cultures. And languages. A huge (metaphorical) patchwork quilt. A triumph. Do I need to say more?
Awww, I missed the chance to perhaps take Offense or Agree with you... since the Post is now already deleted! I myself began my Blog for myself exclusively since the Art of Letter Writing and Exchanges had gone the way of the Dinosaurs and I found myself to be the last of them! Who knew Readers would show up and appreciate anything I had randomly done an Online Journal about, sometimes frivolously for Fun, sometimes pouring out the Heart and perhaps risking being vulnerable and transparent. It has connected to Kindred Spirits tho' and the most unexpected thing was how many New Friends I made, REAL ones, thru The Land Of Blog! I sometimes felt my Blog Audience knew a more intimate side of me than people who had known me for a Lifetime! My Topics have been diverse and it combined a Love of Photography with a Love of Writing, I have been saddened that Blogging isn't what it used to be in it's heyday! However, now we're all in Pandemic Lock Down around the Globe, there is a resurgence in having the Time and Desire to Connect to other Human Beings via this Community... which I'm rather enjoying while I'm Locked Down in the Desert! I Love reading your Blog even tho' I don't comment very often... you always expand my limited Vocabulary! *Winks*
Bohemian: You sound too jovial to have taken offence. I note you spell the latter with an s, thereby proclaiming your origins, yet you admit being locked down in the Desert (though this could, of course, be a metaphorical state). This suggests you aren't presently in Noo Joisey.
I could go on like this for ages and you'd love to read what I have to say about the Hackensack river. But honesty prevails and I remind myself that Princeton too is part of NJ and I'm enough of a snob to draw in my horns.
When I lived in the USA I, a Brit, was paid to correct the English of professors from Groves of Academe as hallowed as Princeton. Slip back four or five decades and I would have had a good deal to say about profligacy with capital letters but another matter has caught my eye. Notably "risking being vulnerable and transparent". As far as I can remember no one I know has raised this in so many words. And yet it is a feature of blogging. Sometimes we are so bound up in what we write we imagine we are addressing ourselves. And lo, we have offended. It was something like this which was behind the deleted post and it is not the first time this has happened.
Since I started writing this comment another blog comment of yours has appeared in my inbox and it confirms my earlier observation about your birthright. You'll have noticed from the publicity blah-blah on my home page that I have a glancing relationship with the state in which you live. I'll be popping round soon and no doubt leaving a spoor.
I Love your Observations and how you Write and I don't even know why I capitalize some words when I know it's not correct in regards to Writing! *LOL* It's something I just do in a Blog but not anywhere else, wonder what Freudian slip that reveals... humnnn?! *Winks* Yes, I was born in North Wales to a Welsh Mother who married an American G.I. and we were Global Nomads most of my Life, both in Childhood, then in Adulthood since I have the Wanderlust deep in my veins and Married a Career G.I. myself. Always Loved a Man in a Uniform, what can I say? *Smiles* I am actually in the Arizona Desert on a Mini Farm of a City that is blended with the Metro Phoenix Metropolis. We just bought this Home and moved in February, so that Process is ongoing of getting moved in and sadly, not getting nearly the time we Hoped to Experience a Community we Love and came back to on purpose, because it had so much to do and so many Beloved people to return to! I've had some Adult Tantrums about that, within the privacy of Home and the Blog. *LOL* Being a Full Time Caregiver I am used to the Isolation from Social stuff, but I could get Respites as The Man's TBI improved, one Grandchild I was Raising has Grown Up and moved to Washington State and the other Grandchild I am Raising is now 14 and very capable of helping with her Grandpa's Care. Spending so much time with Family isn't so difficult for us, could be for some, I feel particularly grieved for those living Alone, in total Isolation now. The Abnormality of Life during Global Pandemic is profound and it takes a lot of getting used to... of Humanity Resisting what isn't within their Control.
Bohemian: The excess capitals don't matter. Neither does over-inventive punctuation. Neither do spelling mistakes. What does matter is that the end-product is undeniably yours. And that it has - at the very least - the smallest pinch of originality.
Just one suggestion: don't disdain the paragraph. It helps the reader.
It's nice of you to say what you did but you must remember the quality - assuming it exists - has come at a cost. Some people have done things, I've just written about them while the world has gone to hell in a hack. All it takes is an obsessive attention to prose (as an entire universe) and an over-weening self-regard. Both dangerous attributes that frequently lead to anti-social behaviour.
North Wales I know. Capel Curig. Clogwyn du'r Arddu. Bettys y Coed.
Here's a short extract from Out of Arizona:
In the air his requests and guidance were almost monosyllabic and it was all she needed. Two or three equally curt questions and she flew straight and dead level at 5000 ft, banked, climbed, watched him induce a stall and recover (“Remember all that for next week.”). Then they flew out towards the Mogoller Rim where he found a deserted strip in the desert and had her fly “slow and dirty” down to 500 ft, lining up the runway with his wind corrections.
Roger and I started our blog back in early 2005. We had just retired, moved from our home in Santa Cruz, CA to Port Townsend, WA north on the Olympic Peninsula. We suddenly had a lot of time on our hands. I learned about photography and atmospheric optics, and started reading blogs. Most of the blogs were political, but many were simply online personal journals. We bloggers told each other the stories of our lives. We blogged about our garden, our sightings of bobcats in the yard and coyotes climbing our fruit trees. It's been more than 15 years since we started and our efforts remain the same. We tell the stories of our lives. In this time on our planet it has been a gift to connect with like-minded virtual friends. It may be that we have nothing high-minded to say, but we do try to express what ever is in our hearts.
ReplyDeleteI think you are a little hard on bloggers when you infer lack of inspiration is pure laziness. Everyone goes through rough times. And I realize "pure" is an acceptable word to describe what you mean here. For the Catholic school girl who lives inside me, however, "pure" implies something elevating. Having it followed by laziness seems extreme. But maybe that is exactly why you did use the word? Because you think it is absolute? Really? Such a strong statement. I wonder if another word might have been better? Ha, you know I don't really care. I'm just yanking your chain.
ReplyDeleteI've been searching for the post where you used the word numinious before I did. I can't find it. But I'm not a close reader.
I like reading your posts, even if I don’t comment every time. I find you have a wide vocabulary, much more intensive than the vocabulary in American blogs. I also enjoy your sense of humor.
ReplyDeleteAs for “nothing to write about” I am the reverse. I have too much inspiration. When I get an idea for a post I write the title on a document. I started in 2010 and now it is 7 ½ pages long, with a title on each line, double spaced. I have not looked at it for a while because in the meantime I keep thinking about something else to write about. Let me go back at that document and have a look. Here are some titles to give you an idea: The North Cape in Norway, Around Luxuor, the Pink Lake in Senegal, The Potemkin Steps in Odessa, Ukraine, Going down the Mekong River, Return to St Petersburg, Russia, Johan Strauss, Jr. House in Vienna, The old castle at Blandy-les-Tours, The Flagler museum in Florida, and many more on trips. My posts are about vagabonding after all. I have pictures for all of these posts. But I also have ideas for other subjects, let see: Emily Carr, Baron Haussmann and Paris, Father’s youth in Istanbul and Cairo, Hemingway’s cats, Simon Combes’ paintings, Gertrude Stein Collection, Camels. Well, there are 7 ½ pages of subjects. Am not sure I’ll live that long…
All: My apologies to you. As you see I have deleted the offending post. It's ironic that these observations have come from three bloggers whose work has honoured what I believe, sadly, to be the dying craft of blogging. Who never lacked output, variety and wit.
ReplyDeleteOn reflection I realised I was touching on something that belonged to blog history. I started blogging in 2008 and it seemed to me that the atmosphere was much more fluid then. Bloggers arrived and departed with greater frequency, often admitting that that what had seemed like an attractive pastime had quickly turned into a burden. Several of them followed my blog, then called Works Well, and I was sad to see them go. Misguidedly, since it was none of my business, I suggested that the range of raw material they felt they lacked was wider than they suspected. That if they poked and prodded at familiar, often no more than domestic, matters they would find all they needed. It was significant that one or two said that Facebook appealed more.
I should have kept my silence both then and now but once an editor always an editor. In my own rather shaky defence I hope you feel I have responded with enthusiasm to your blogs (comparative newcomers to Tone Deaf's circle) because that enthusiasm was genuine.
I had a further point I would have liked to have raised: do we blog for ourselves or for others? But I shall leave that be.
robin andrea: There are no limits to what we may blog about, the criterion being how much interest do we generate? In fact you might well have turned that proof on me, a point I grieved about in my final sentence.
Colette: I avoided talking about inspiration. No one can legislate about that; it arrives when it chooses. I am as much its victim as anyone else. I offered the suggestion, now withdrawn, if one pondered about familiar activities (dish-washing was my example) one might find aspects that were bloggable. In fact I'd done that myself some months ago having discovered that the sequence in which items are handled at the sink can lead to greater efficiency. No big deal, really. Not in any sense "pure", just different. But one did have to ponder. For some that may seem like hard work.
Certainly not "elevating" as a prior aim, though if something of that nature cropped up there was no reason why it should not be used.
Consider the chain well and truly yanked.
Re: numinous. Just use blog's Search function. The word appears in my March 31 post, Fear of Nothingness. Sorry, the gap was longer than I remembered
Vagabonde: Your blog reflects your peripatetic life and your wide experience of different cultures. And languages. A huge (metaphorical) patchwork quilt. A triumph. Do I need to say more?
Ah, I see the word (numinous). Many thanks, my friend. I do remember reading that post. I love that word so much.
DeleteAwww, I missed the chance to perhaps take Offense or Agree with you... since the Post is now already deleted! I myself began my Blog for myself exclusively since the Art of Letter Writing and Exchanges had gone the way of the Dinosaurs and I found myself to be the last of them! Who knew Readers would show up and appreciate anything I had randomly done an Online Journal about, sometimes frivolously for Fun, sometimes pouring out the Heart and perhaps risking being vulnerable and transparent. It has connected to Kindred Spirits tho' and the most unexpected thing was how many New Friends I made, REAL ones, thru The Land Of Blog! I sometimes felt my Blog Audience knew a more intimate side of me than people who had known me for a Lifetime! My Topics have been diverse and it combined a Love of Photography with a Love of Writing, I have been saddened that Blogging isn't what it used to be in it's heyday! However, now we're all in Pandemic Lock Down around the Globe, there is a resurgence in having the Time and Desire to Connect to other Human Beings via this Community... which I'm rather enjoying while I'm Locked Down in the Desert! I Love reading your Blog even tho' I don't comment very often... you always expand my limited Vocabulary! *Winks*
ReplyDeleteBohemian: You sound too jovial to have taken offence. I note you spell the latter with an s, thereby proclaiming your origins, yet you admit being locked down in the Desert (though this could, of course, be a metaphorical state). This suggests you aren't presently in Noo Joisey.
ReplyDeleteI could go on like this for ages and you'd love to read what I have to say about the Hackensack river. But honesty prevails and I remind myself that Princeton too is part of NJ and I'm enough of a snob to draw in my horns.
When I lived in the USA I, a Brit, was paid to correct the English of professors from Groves of Academe as hallowed as Princeton. Slip back four or five decades and I would have had a good deal to say about profligacy with capital letters but another matter has caught my eye. Notably "risking being vulnerable and transparent". As far as I can remember no one I know has raised this in so many words. And yet it is a feature of blogging. Sometimes we are so bound up in what we write we imagine we are addressing ourselves. And lo, we have offended. It was something like this which was behind the deleted post and it is not the first time this has happened.
Since I started writing this comment another blog comment of yours has appeared in my inbox and it confirms my earlier observation about your birthright. You'll have noticed from the publicity blah-blah on my home page that I have a glancing relationship with the state in which you live. I'll be popping round soon and no doubt leaving a spoor.
I Love your Observations and how you Write and I don't even know why I capitalize some words when I know it's not correct in regards to Writing! *LOL* It's something I just do in a Blog but not anywhere else, wonder what Freudian slip that reveals... humnnn?! *Winks* Yes, I was born in North Wales to a Welsh Mother who married an American G.I. and we were Global Nomads most of my Life, both in Childhood, then in Adulthood since I have the Wanderlust deep in my veins and Married a Career G.I. myself. Always Loved a Man in a Uniform, what can I say? *Smiles* I am actually in the Arizona Desert on a Mini Farm of a City that is blended with the Metro Phoenix Metropolis. We just bought this Home and moved in February, so that Process is ongoing of getting moved in and sadly, not getting nearly the time we Hoped to Experience a Community we Love and came back to on purpose, because it had so much to do and so many Beloved people to return to! I've had some Adult Tantrums about that, within the privacy of Home and the Blog. *LOL* Being a Full Time Caregiver I am used to the Isolation from Social stuff, but I could get Respites as The Man's TBI improved, one Grandchild I was Raising has Grown Up and moved to Washington State and the other Grandchild I am Raising is now 14 and very capable of helping with her Grandpa's Care. Spending so much time with Family isn't so difficult for us, could be for some, I feel particularly grieved for those living Alone, in total Isolation now. The Abnormality of Life during Global Pandemic is profound and it takes a lot of getting used to... of Humanity Resisting what isn't within their Control.
ReplyDeleteBohemian: The excess capitals don't matter. Neither does over-inventive punctuation. Neither do spelling mistakes. What does matter is that the end-product is undeniably yours. And that it has - at the very least - the smallest pinch of originality.
ReplyDeleteJust one suggestion: don't disdain the paragraph. It helps the reader.
It's nice of you to say what you did but you must remember the quality - assuming it exists - has come at a cost. Some people have done things, I've just written about them while the world has gone to hell in a hack. All it takes is an obsessive attention to prose (as an entire universe) and an over-weening self-regard. Both dangerous attributes that frequently lead to anti-social behaviour.
North Wales I know. Capel Curig. Clogwyn du'r Arddu. Bettys y Coed.
Here's a short extract from Out of Arizona:
In the air his requests and guidance were almost monosyllabic and it was all she needed. Two or three equally curt questions and she flew straight and dead level at 5000 ft, banked, climbed, watched him induce a stall and recover (“Remember all that for next week.”). Then they flew out towards the Mogoller Rim where he found a deserted strip in the desert and had her fly “slow and dirty” down to 500 ft, lining up the runway with his wind corrections.
You could say I've "used" Arizona.