A favorite truth

“One need not hope in order to undertake; nor succeed in order to persevere.” –William I, Prince of Orange

I love this quotation, which I’ve seen attributed to William I. It calls into question the nature of “success.” What is truly important, if one must choose between the two? Who we become? or What we achieve? What values will we uphold? Do we defend the right, or shift positions to align ourselves with the apparent “winning side”?

When it is apparent that, facing war, violence, or socio-political injustice, there is nothing one can do to affect the course of events, that the tide is moving in the wrong direction and we feel that nobody recognizes the fact–or nobody seemingly dares to speak truth to power, do we keep silent for fear of being different, ostracized, attacked, killed, or ridiculed? Do we try to quit caring, because we cannot do anything to change what is? Do we keep silent because we are afraid to find out that other people think we’re stupid to care about the matter at all?

I find myself quite often out of step with what is happening around me. So, too, does a favorite poet, C. S. MacCath, who feels a deep conviction to speak out against the annual killing of baby seals: The Annual Hay Island Seal Slaughter.

While I do not feel that any of us is called to be a passionate advocate for every just cause, to keep silent when we do feel that call to speak, which is as legitimate an action as any other, we owe it to ourselves and to the world to step forward and speak the words that are given to our hearts to speak.

Cross-posted from The Written Word Journal.

The Science Fiction Poetry Association’s 2010 Halloween Poetry Reading

The completed On-line Halloween Poetry Reading for 2010 can be found on SFPA’s newly revamped Website.  A great audio collection of themed poems read by the people who wrote them. The 2006-2009 pages also can be accessed at http://www.sfpoetry.com/halloween.html

I enjoy editing and putting the page together each year. I hope you’ll enjoy listening to the poetry and perhaps take a look at the forum and resources that are available on the site.

My poem for this year’s virtual reading is “Alien Life.”

Enjoy!

 

Virtual Halloween Poetry Reading by SFPA Members

Tags

announcement, event, halloween, poetry, sfpa

The Science Fiction Poetry Association’s Fifth Annual On-Line Halloween Poetry Reading is in progress. As of October 26, 2010, ten SFPA members have provided audio files (MP3, WAV) of themselves reading one of their own poems.

• “By the Grace of Winter’s Queen,” by David Kopaska-Merkel 
• “A Vampire’s Domain,” by David Lee Summers
• “House 5,” by Lyn C. A. Gardner
• “Country Inn,” by Karen A. Romanko
• “Neighbors,” by Elissa Malcohn
• “The Revolutionary Behind the Tavern,” by T.J. McIntyre
• “Night Falls,” by Shelly Bryant
• “Frost Bitten,” by Stephen M. Wilson
• “Alien Life,” by Liz Bennefeld
• “The Little One” [“Petite”], by Maria Alexander

This is the fifth year that I have coordinated the event, and it’s become one of the highlights of my year. I hope that you will enjoy the poems as much as I have.

Decorating the Halloween Poetry Reading page are spooky pictures provided by myself, Karen A. Romanko, Elissa Malcohn, and Lyn C.A. Gardner.

Looking forward/looking back

I think that I do not take growing older seriously enough in terms of more years of my life being in the past than in the future. Well, that is an assumption, but as I am in my mid-sixties, that’s most probable. One irksome part of the perspective that comes with age is that one finally sees what one didn’t at the time. I knew practically nothing, and there seemed to be no one I could ask, when it came to the mechanics of everyday life. Clothing? I wore what my mother sewed for me. I ate what was set in front of me. I practiced playing musical instruments, and I read voraciously, and whenever I could, I abandoned the house and yard for the fields and pastures and groves of the surrounding countryside.  I could climb a tree and sit among the branches for hours at a time, just being aware of the now.

I didn’t have any friends–didn’t know how to have friends, but didn’t realize, either, that I was supposed to want to have any. The people I knew, I knew only within specific contexts: classroom, baseball field, neighbors.  While I now realize that friends add a lot to life, and I hope that my friends’ lives are richer because of me, as well, I still have to work to include them. Most of my pursuits are solitary. Habits formed early! My major contact with people other than a few family members, is through my work. I have that in common with my father, although our jobs are not at all in similar fields. We have the same sorts of “helping” interactions with the public, and we derive pleasure from that.

Most of my life, though, has been centered around me, due to my  not really understanding what was going on around me at the time and struggling to keep from drowning in the consequences of my ignorance. Knowing that there were specific physiological/neurological factors that contributed strongly does not help much. The bottom line was that I didn’t know, and I was not in a position to know. The world– knowledge and understanding in general–has expanded so much during the past 50 years. All we can do at the time is go with what we’ve got. Requisite knowledge and understanding do not magically appear simply because I have a need. Sad! Very sad, but very true!

Transitioning

Tags

day job, linkedin, self-employment

I finally have made the arrangements to connect my business telephone number to a cell phone, rather than a land line. We are staying with Verizon, but now I will have only two telephone bills a month to remember, instead of three. The “yellow pages” marketing folks have yet to call me, as they were supposed to do, about the cost of a business listing, but at this point it has turned out not to be a deciding factor.

The most important thing about the telephone is that it should be there when I need it, and the second is that I need to have the telephone when someone is trying to call me. The third important thing about the telephone is that it shouldn’t inconvenience me. So, it makes sense that it should be as mobile as I am. (I hope to buy one of those hard cases for the phone I ordered, so I can just stuff it into my jeans pocket.)

Featured Photo

I previously mentioned taking a membership with RedBubble.com. Soon after, I joined several special interest groups, there, one of which chose a photo of mine as one of their Feature photos for the week. The title of the photograph is "Iris in Waiting."

I am enjoying working with my photographs, more, since the site sells various types of art, and not just “straight” photography.

Apropos Redbubble.com

After much futile effort at cataloging and weeding out my files at my current JPGMag account (id=ewb), I have decided to dump the whole thing and start over fresh.

And, if I figure out how to separate my photos at RedBubble very, very soon, I can avoid the same confusion there as I had at JPGMag. Galleries need to be managed. It is a good thing that when the retention dates on my The Written Word files arrive, all I have to do is delete the directories from the file server. After all, if a resume hasn’t been updated within two years, it probably needs to be reconceptualized.

Flying Free

free, then, from this earth
I will soar forever on
bright rivers of light

Membership at Redbubble.com

Tags

linkedin

Since so many photographers I know have recently moved over to Redbubble.com that I have followed suit, taking a membership there, myself. My account user name, there, is QuietSpaces. Hope you will stop by to take a look. There is more leeway as far as photo art, as opposed to straight photography, which makes it more friendly to what I have been doing with my photo work, these past seven years. Also, I have gotten around finally to doing something with my Postcard Art site; I’d been experimenting with a photo gallery for that site, and I’ve decided that I like one that comes with my web site.

A lot has been going on. Must–really must write about life in general. Soon.

The Moments Between

I look at “the moments between” in several different ways. First, almost everything I do is accomplished in the moments between “necessary” activities of daily living. During the moments between, more than at any other time, creativity takes place. On a larger scale, however, these are the moments between birth and eternity, the only moments we have before time itself becomes meaningless.

All moments are meant to be put to good purpose.