A-Z of why I still Blog

Uglemor undskylder. Der er ikke noget på dansk i dag.

Over at the A to Z Challenge Joyce @ From This Side of the Pond is guest posting about The ABC's of why I Still Blog. Some of her reasons are sure to be the same as mine. But I want to make my own ABC before I read hers and comment on it. 

A is for Accessibility.
    On a blog you can always find older posts, photos and even the very beginning.

B is for Blogger.
    Despite it's antics and bugs it's still the one that fits me.

C is for Comments.
    Without these, blogging would not be the same! 

D is for Discovering.
    I have seen and experienced so much via blogging. I am curious, and blogging is a way to get an insight in other peoples' lives, that I would never get any other way. 

E is for Escape.
    When I'm sad, worried or down, reading what you all are up to, fills me with gratitude, wonder and thankfulness over the big world and its many inhabitants.

F is for Friends.
    I've made friends all over the world by blogging. If I ever get rich, I'll go and see their cities and places, and maybe have a cup of tea or coffee with them in person -- and raise a glass to Elephants Child at the Kangaroo spot in Canberra.

G is for Gardens.
    I love to see what other people are growing in their gardens. Here I get to look over the fences.

H is for Home.
    I can stay home while travelling, and invite others to my home without travelling too.

I is for Ideas.

J is for Journal.
    My blog is a journal where I can revisit and re-find things I forgot.

K is for Kangaroos.

L is for Light.
    Blogging shines a light on life. A light that makes me see things I would not have deemed interesting without this light.

M is for Mother.
    I began by following mommyblogs, Moms of Many and suchlike -- from which not a single one is still blogging as far as I know. I learned lots about bringing up kids, homeschooling, and "family management" from these.

N is for Nuances and nostalgia.

O is for Open.
    A blog is always open. Just step in! And OWLS. Never forget the owls.

P is for Poetry.
    Poetry Monday has made me write more poetry - and read more poetry - than I would have done on my own. 

Q is for Questions.
    I love when people pose questions in the comments.

R is for Readers.
    Thanks to every one of you!

S is for Seasons.
    Blogging ebb and flow like the seasons. I hope and think we're soon in for a springtime flood again.

T is for Thankful.
    Ten Things of Thankful is a challenge, I do not do myself. But reading others' Thankfuls enrichen my life.

U is for Understanding.

V is for Vocabulary.
    One more thing that blogging enhances.

W is for Wonder and for Words and for writing.
    Words for Wednesday has had me writing stories I never knew I could write.

X is for Xenophobia.
    For which blogging is an antidote.

Y is for Yarn!

Z is for Zeal.
    I hope to preserve this for blogging for a long time yet.

Onsdagsord ~ June kapitel 12 Words for Wednesday ~ June, Chapter 12 & IWSG

The original Words for Wednesday was begun by Delores and eventually taken over as a moveable feast with many participants supplying the Words.
When Delores closed her blog forever due to other problems, Elephant's Child (Sue) took over the role of coordinator.
Now, after Sue's demise, River has taken the mantle of coordinator upon her shoulders.

No matter what, how, where or who the aim of the words is to encourage us to write. Poems, stories, subtitles, tales, jokes, haiku, crosswords, puns, ... you're the boss.
Use all Words, some Words, one Word, or even none of them if that makes your creative juices flow. Anything goes, only please nothing rude or vulgar.

This month the words are given by Sean Jeatings and can be found at River's blog Drifting through Life

If you are posting an entry on your own blog, please leave a comment on River's blog, then we can come along and read it and add a few encouraging words.

It is also a challenge, where the old saying "The more the merrier" holds true.

Please, remember to follow the links, go back and read other peoples' stories. And please leave a comment after reading. Challenges like this one thrives on interaction, feedback and encouragement. And we ALL need encouragement.

And for today we were given:
Contemporaries 
Easily 
Life 
Met 
Never
    and/or:
One
Say 
Sentence
Who 
Within

Using the first set, and almost in the order they were given, for a small chapter about June.

June's unease with the signalling persons in the big tree and aboard the ship won over her fear of getting involved with other people. She found her bike, the lights, and her helmet. And then she filled a small bag with walnuts and another with blackberries from the garden. A small gift was always welcome. She smiled and felt sad at the same time. Daniel had always been good at finding the perfect gift whenever they had an occasion. He’d been a very complex person, and people who looked beyond his tattooed exterior were often surprised by his compassionate and vibrant inner self. But she couldn’t ask him for help. It had been half a year since she’d had to let him go.
    And she locked the doors before mounting the bike and pedalling off towards Sanne's smaller town.
While her body was occupied with the mechanics of biking, her thoughts roamed freely. She wondered why a lot of her contemporaries had so many strange prejudices. She could easily remember three occasions from the last week alone where she had seen strange ideas about Catholics in the papers, in magazines, or just overheard something. And why were Catholics all of a sudden such a hot topic? It was probably just a case of frequency illusion ... Well, she was going to get wiser. She was about to visit at real life Catholic family. She never knowingly met any Catholics at home before. She had always been more curious than anything else, and her unbiased teacher in religion at school had only fanned this curiosity by talking of monks, nuns and so on as if they still existed, and were not far removed in either time or space ... which of course they were not, June smiled at her own prejudices showing.

På dansk
Endnu et kort kapitel i Junes historie.

Vi fik disse ord:
Contemporaries   - Samtidige
Easily  - Let, sagtens
Life  - Liv
Met  - Mødte
Never - Aldrig
    og/eller:
One - En
Say  - Sig, fortæl
Sentence - Sætning
Who  - Hvem
Within - Indeni, inden for,
Jeg har brugt det første sæt ord, næsten i den rækkefølge de blev givet, til endnu et lille kapitel om June.

Junes utryghed over de morsende personer i det store træ og ombord på skibet endte med at overvinde hendes modvilje mod at involvere sig med andre mennesker. Hun fandt sin cykel, cykellygterne  og sin hjelm, og så fyldte hun en lille pose med valnødder og en anden med brombær fra haven. En lille gave var aldrig af vejen. Hun smilede og følte sig trist på samme tid. Daniel havde været god til at finde den perfekte gave, når de skulle noget. Han havde været en meget sammensat personlighed, og folk der så længere end til hans tatoverede ydre, blev oftest overraskede over hans medfølende og sprudlende væsen. Men hun kunne ikke spørge ham om hjælp. Det var næsten et halvt år siden, hun havde måttet sige farvel til ham.
    June låste dørene grundigt, før hun satte sig på cyklen og cyklede afsted mod Sannes mindre by.
Mens hendes krop var optaget af det mekaniske ved at cykle, vandrede hendes tanker omkring.
    Hun undrede sig over, hvorfor mange af hendes samtidige havde så mange sære fordomme. Hun kunne sagtens huske flere gange alene i de seneste uger, hvor hun havde set mærkelige forestillinger om katolikker; I aviserne, i ugebladet eller bare noget, folk havde sagt. Og hvorfor var katolikker pludselig blevet et så aktuelt emne? Der var sandsynligvis bare tale om frekvensillusion, det at noget, der var nyt for en selv pludselig var alle steder … Nå, hun ville snart blive klogere. Hun skulle besøge en vaskeægte katolsk familie. Hun havde aldrig før været hjemme hos nogen, hun vidste var katolikker. Hun havde altid været mere nysgerrig end noget andet, og hendes fordomsfri religionslærer i skolen havde kun pustet til denne nysgerrighed ved at tale om munke, nonner og så videre, som om de stadig eksisterede og ikke var langt væk hverken i tid eller rum … hvilket de selvfølgelig heller ikke var; June smilede over sine egne fordomme.

- - A - - B - - C - -

October 6 question - Many people are calling for writers who use AI to disclose it. Most who employ ghostwriters do not admit it - do you think authors who use ghostwriters should have to disclose that, too?

My answer - Yes! Definitely yes. If you did not write the contents of your book yourself, tell us so. Not acknowledging the help you had is in my opinion a kind of lying -- and of stealing.  It does not matter if it's AI, a friend, your spouse, or a ghostwriter. Honesty, please.

Many autobiographies lately are called something like "Life of John Doe, the fisherman, as narrated to Peter Jones". I like this!

More so as in Denmark we have a sum paid from the libraries to the authors of books. Ghostwriters should have their fair share of this too.

June ~ 11

In this chapter June is in need of help. Can you be a solitary hero if you look to other people for assistance?

Finally home she ate some of the good bread and pulled out her Morse code papers. One of the library books had the list she needed. A chart over other European language, their specal letters and their codes (look below for a list). Comparing the letter combinations she had read as Danish letters or seen as errors, to this chart made it clear to her that it was indeed some foreign language. But which one? She first expected it to be one of the other Nordic languages, but there were far too many consonants mashed together for it to be even Icelandic, also there were some special letters not present there. French and the other Roman languages were ruled out for the same reasons. Maybe Romanian, but she was fairly sure that even though they had lots of extra letters they did not have initial consonant clusters of more than two maybe three, never four or five - had she only listened more attentively to the lessons in linguistics. Some Slavonic language might fit the bill. She tried Polish. All the extra letters fit. It made strange words, but they looked like they could be real words.
    She did not have much knowledge of Polish, only remembering that it had like seven cases, lots of conjugations and declensions and a crazy verbal system, which could fit the words in her text. Many first parts looking alike, but with different endings. The text still remained illegible to her for all her thinking.
    'Catholics!' she thought, almost saying it out loud. 'Many Poles are Catholic. Maybe Sanne and Jonah could help?' This would be a task for next Sunday - she realised that she intended to visit mass again - or for when the telephone started working.
    Wednesday she avidly tested the telephone at regular intervals. She had seen more flashes during the night. and those from the woods had been more insistent, repeating a short sequense more times; and she had heard someone yelling. Not clear enough for words, but angry ... in short June did not like the proximity. As soon as the telephone line had been opened, which happened that same afternoon, she phoned Sanne and Jonah.
    Sanne answered the phone, and June explained that she would like to get in touch with someone absolutely trustworthy and Polish speaking. June was very surprised when Sanne replied that she knew Polish. "I studied Polish at the university some years ago," Sanne told her. "I never finished my studies - too many kids happened - but I was quite fluent. And if I'm not good enough, I know who to ask, and he lives nearby. Just come over.

June was in two minds over this. She was in need of the help, but she did not want to get involved with, or dependent on other people ever again. But in the end common sense won. She was more afraid of the persons sending codes and yelling angrily  in the dark woods -- smugglers she imagined -- than of getting more intimate with Sanne and her family.

... to be continued

På dansk

Her bliver jeg nødt til at lade June opsøge hjælp. Kan man være en ensom helt, hvis man får hjælp fra andre?

Da June endelig nåede hjem, spiste hun lidt af det gode brød og tog sine morsekode-papirer frem igen og fandt biblioteksbøgerne frem. Især den ene var god. Den havde en oversigt over de specielle tegn og deres forskellige læsninger (Se nederst). Hun fandt hurtigt ud af at de tegn, hun havde oversat til danske bogstaver eller opfattet som fejl også var bogstaver på andre sprog. Altså var det bare morse på et fremmedsprog. Men hvilket? Først troede hun at det måtte være et af de andre nordiske sprog, men der var alt for mange konsonanter, efter hinanden, til det. Selv ikke islandsk var så sært, og der var også nogle specielle bogstaver, der ikke fandtes på islandsk. Fransk og de andre romanske sprog måtte hun udelukke af samme grund. Måske kunne det være rumænsk, men hun var temmelig sikker på, at selvom det havde masser af ekstra bogstaver, havde det ikke mere end højst tre konsonanter i starten af et ord. Bare hun dog havde lyttet bedre efter i sprogvidenskab. Et eller andet slavisk sprog kunne måske passe. Hun prøvede polsk. Alle de ekstra bogstaver passede, og det gav nogle voldsomt udseende ord der alligevel så ud som om det kunne være rigtige ord.
    Hun havde ikke meget kendskab til polsk, men huskede, at sproget havde syv kasus, masser af forskellige bøjninger samt et vanvittigt verbalsystem. Det kunne alt sammen passe på ordene i hendes tekst. Mange ordstammer lignede hinanden, men med helt forskellige endelser. Teksten forblev lige ulæselig for hende trods al hendes grublen.
    »Katolikker!« tænkte hun og var lige ved at sige det højt. »Mange polakker er katolikker. Måske kunne Sanne og Jonah hjælpe?« Det ville blive en opgave til næste søndag – hun indså, at hun havde tænkt sig at gå til messe igen – eller til når telefonen begyndte at virke.
    Onsdag testede hun ivrigt telefonen med jævne mellemrum. Hun havde set flere lysglimt i løbet af natten, og dem fra skoven havde været mere insisterende, og hun havde hørt nogen råbe højt derude … kort sagt kunne June ikke lide at de var så tæt på. Så snart klartonen lød, hvilket allerede skete tidligt om eftermiddagen, ringede hun til Sanne og Jonah.
    Sanne tog telefonen, og June forklarede, at hun gerne ville i kontakt med en pålidelig person, der talte polsk. June blev meget overrasket, da Sanne svarede, at hun kunne polsk. »Jeg studerede polsk på universitetet for nogle år siden,« fortalte Sanne hende. »Jeg fik godt nok aldrig afsluttet min uddannelse – der kom for mange børn – men jeg blev ret god til polsk inden jeg stoppede, jeg talte det næsten flydende. Og hvis jeg skulle have glemt for meget, ved jeg, hvem jeg skal spørge, og han bor i nærheden. Bare kom forbi.«

June var meget i tvivl om hvad hun skulle gøre. Hun havde brug for hjælp, men hun havde ikke lyst til at involvere sig i eller blive afhængig af andre mennesker igen. Men til sidst vandt hendes sunde fornuft. Hun var mere bange for skumle mennesker, der sendte koder og råbte højt og vredt i mørket – smuglere, forestillede hun sig – end for at komme tættere på Sanne og hendes familie.

fortsættelse følger ...

List of Morse codes in European languages (Please tell if I forgot any)
Liste over morsetegn på andre europæiske sprog (Hvis jeg manger noge, så vær sød og sig det):
É  Đ  É  Ę  · · — · ·
CH  Ĥ  Š   — — — —       
è  ł             · — · · –   
ñ  ń            — — · — —   
ç  ĉ  ć        — · — · ·    
Æ  Ä  Ą   · — · — 
Ø, Ó  Ö     — — — ·
Å  À         · — — · —      
ĝ       — — · — ·      
ŝ       · · · — ·   
þ       · — — · ·       
ð       · · — — ·       
ĵ        · — — — ·       
ü  ŭ   · · — —       
ś       · · · — · · ·       
ź       — — · · — ·       
ż       — — · · —      

Poetry Monday :: Rocket Mandagsdigt :: Raket eller rucola?

Poetry Monday is a blogging challenge started by Diane @ On the Border in February 2017; later it was picked up by Delores @ Mumblings and Jenny @ Procrastinating Donkey.
    Then Dolores took over the hosting duties; but when Dolores left the internet, Diane returned and took over hosting duty again with her and Jenny taking turns suggesting a topic.
    Now Mimi @ Messymimi's Meanderings and I have taken over, as Diane seems disinclined to take up Poetry Monday again.

The prompts are now taken from 365 Days of Drawing Prompts and other Arts group. This is a Facebook group with a (drawing) prompt for each day of the year, but no worries, the prompts will still be here and at Mimi's blog. And they mostly lend themselves perfectly for poeming as well. 

  I have something to ask of you: If you read this and the poetry of others via the links, would you please leave a comment.
  Half - if not more - the fun of these challenges is receiving the responses of others.

Today the prompt is Rocket. A word with at least two meanings.

Mom called us in, "Now come and eat!"
We asked: "What is for dinner?"
"Chicken and noodles and rocket as a treat!"
A rocket - this news was a winner.

We hurried in. Asked: "Where is it"
"Where is what?" mom said, "Now wash and sit!"
We did as asked, Expectations great.
"The rocket is there, right on your plate!"

It was a disappointment great.
No fire, no starbursts, no sparkling lights
And as we sat, the green stuff ate,
it was bitter even in smallest bites.

"Never again," we swore "will we
partake of this or trust in thee."


Og så på dansk!

Mandagsdigtet er en blogleg, som blev startet af Diane fra On the Border i februar 2017; senere blev den videreført af Delores fra Mumblings og Jenny fra Procrastinating Donkey.
    Derefter overtog Delores værtsrollen; men da Delores forlod internettet, vendte Diane tilbage og overtog værtsrollen igen, hvor hun og Jenny skiftevis foreslog et emne.
    Nu har Mimi fra Messymimi's Meanderings og jeg så overtaget, da Diane ikke synes at have lyst til at genoptage Poetry Monday.
    Stikordene hentes nu fra 365 Days of Drawing Prompts and other Arts. Det er en Facebook-gruppe med et (tegne-)stikord for hver dag i året, men bare rolig, stikordene vil stadig være her og på Mimis blog. Og de egner sig for det meste også perfekt til at skrive digte om.

  Jeg har en opfordring til jer: Hvis I læser dette og andres digte via linkene, vil I så ikke være så søde at skrive en kommentar?
  Halvdelen – hvis ikke mere – af det sjove ved disse udfordringer er at modtage andres reaktioner.

I dag er stikordet Rocket, der betyder mindst to ting Raket og Rucola

Måske får jeg også skrevet et digt på dansk senere i dag.


- - - - - Coming Prompts // Kommende stikord - - - - -

October 12 Contents of the safe  -  Pengeskabets indhold
October 19 X-ray vision - Røngtensyn
October 26 Clam - Musling
November 2 Big Birds _ Store fugle
November 9  Planes - Fly, høvle, plataner

Sunday Selections Søndagsbilleder

The colour of the Month for October is  ~  Månedens farve for oktober er

Ever since River called this colour for "Milk Chocolate" that's all I have seen whenever I look at it. I tried to take a walk, looking at leaves and flowers for this colour. I found no flowers, but ferns for plant dyeing and a King bolete for dinner.

🍂  -  📔  -  👣

River sagde i en kommentar, at den var chokoladefarvet. Siden har jeg ikke kunnet se andet. Jeg prøvede at gå en tur og finde blade eller blomster i den farve, men det eneste jeg fandt, var bregner til plantefarvning og en Karl Johan (eller sommerrørhat) til vores aftensmad.

Then we found another mushroom, a waxcap, not edible, but pretty.

🍂  -  📔  -  👣

Vi fandt også en anden svamp. En vokshat. Den er ikke spiselig, men flot.

The plant dyeing day was a success. Here's one of the pieces. More will probably follow after washing and drying.

🍂  -  📔  -  👣

Plantefarverdagen var en succes. Her er et af stykkerne. Der kommer sikkert flere billeder, når det hele er vasket og tørret.

And I think I ended up finding this colour somewhere not chocolate.

🍂  -  📔  -  👣

Og så endte jeg nok alligevel med at finde denne farve andre steder end i et stykke chokolade.