A to Z ~ Some thoughts and misgivings

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A-Z? Will I do it this year or won't I? Here's some of my not so positive musings, still comparing with 2025.

First of all the challenge itself. I think it has changed over the years from a simple "can you do this blogging marathon?" to something else.

 The stress on visits and numbers
There's too much stress on the SoMe part of it, too much self-promotion, too much "how many comments", "how many followers" and so on. 

  The non-participants
Last year too little was done to exclude the non-participants, and those having a "registederd users only" comment form.  I hope this will be better in 2026.

  The over-achievers
Some people plan almost a year in advance - this is not really the problem itself. But it sets the bar so high, that many give up participating because they of course cannot do as well on a day-to-day basis. Many also stop because of the pressure to visit and comment on others' blogs, which can be quite time consuming (and more so because of the non-participants).

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I felt some misgivings when I looked at the list I made after visiting all the Theme reveal posts.
I visited all the blogs, read, or at least skimmed through the theme reveal post, and marked them either Green for interesting, Yellow for maybe interesting (or interesting with bad graphics), or Red for not interesting at all. 

I had by the end date for the theme reveal read and marked a total of 65 blogs:
  6 in Green   only!
31 in Yellow  of these just 3 because of bad graphics
27 in Red of these 4 with no theme reveal posts before April 4. 
        (This only makes 64 - one was a double entry.)

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But my weightiest complaint concerns the content of the blogs.

  The not-for-fun-any-more in Blogland.
I find that in all this planning and socializing and promoting and fighting for ... the fun and camaraderie has dissipated. I do not really know how to say this without sounding like an old, grumpy person. The world is a tough enough place, unhappy, dirty, abused - you name it - and for this reason I think we should make challenges like this a place for smiles, flowers, puns, fun and positive vibes ... A place where everybody can say what they like as long as they do it in a civilized way and are not mean to anyone. I find too many of the blogs to be militantly pro-something, or bland or having an edgy undercurrent, or even all three - and this makes me apprehensive and disinclined to continue - or at least to sign up.

   Militant
  Many participants write in their header something like My blog is a place for mystery and creativity, fairy dust and bright woods; while reading on I find them militantly fighting for some -ism or alternative world view.

  Bland
The blandness ... It's a serious kind of blandness, a smoothness of expressions, like a mask or a facade of some kind.  I think a part of it at least comes from the self-censorship caused by the ubiquitous readiness to take offence. This blandness, smoothness, edge-lessness ... I don't know how to say this properly  (I never read any of the participants with adult contents, so that's definitively not what I'm lacking ;) ) bothers me and leeches the joy.

  Or aggressive
Aggressivity might be the key to my second complaint. People are aggressively healthy, pro-pets ... pro-something.
There's no harm in having a topic, but the lashing and kicking out, or the more subtle condescending tones pointed at everyone, or the passive-aggressively always reminding the reader of [Whatever the author is fighting for or part of].

Passive-aggressive might be the description, I'm looking for. It hurts me. I am curious, I like to read what people say and tell. More so when they tell me something new, or write of circumstances, places, cultures and so on I do not know much of - and also when I do not agree, but I do not like being told explicitly what to think, always to be reminded of the wrongs done to this group.
Show it, don't tell it. Blast it! ... and not interspersed with wagging fingers.

  To sum up
For me challenges like the A-Z Challenge thrive on fun, good natured banter, and the telling of tales with no hidden agenda.

Will I sign up? I still do not know. I find the challenge in itself fun, but the social media hype and the millitant challengers not so much, there's plain too many in it to promote something, be it themselves or some -ism, and too few in it just for fun.

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Poetry Monday :: Croissant

Poetry Monday - what's that? It is a blogging game, that Mimi of Messymimi's Meanderings and I have taken over the hosting duties, mostly the supplying of the prompts - only temporarily we hope - while Diane at On the Border is taking a break for health and relaxation, travelling the world with her husband as far as we can tell.  We just hope she's going to take back over once she returns home.

The prompts now come from 365 Days of Drawing Prompts and other Arts group. This is a Facebook group with a prompt for each day of the year, but no worries, the prompts will still be here and at Mimi's blog.

Today's prompt is: Croissant

You know it's true
- find it, I do
It's a mommy power!
And when I do
I follow through,
do as to pick a flower
and say "Croissant"
in mock up French!

But why?
Because some time ago the Owlets showed me a crazy video tha's basically about a man snatching croissants from thin air, every time saying 'Croasson' in terrible French.
It stuck ...  of course I can't find the video. If I do, I promise to  post it.

 --  A  --  B  --  C  --

And today I solved Wordle with only yellows - no achievement & badge popped up, contrary to what I would have expected ;)

Wordle 1.738 5/6
⬜⬜🟨⬜🟨
⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
⬜🟨⬜⬜⬜
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

I still would not have logged in - but maybe I'll post all my schievements here on the blog.

Friday Frustrations ~ Wordle Badges Fredagsfrustration ~ Mærker i Wordle

Yes, I know, I said I'd never play again. Citing myself from December 30, 2025.

Wordle, Spelling Bee, Strands, Connections, and Tiles* - I have enjoyed solving these four for the past three and a half years, I even based this year's A-Z Challenge on Wordle, but now it's over. Tiles, The Mini Crossword and Letter Boxed are only for subscribers as of September 1st. I know that Wordle, Strands and Connections are still free to play, but for how long? For me making Tiles pay to play was the last straw.

But I cannot keep away from Wordle. I made a promise never to log into my free account ever again (meaning I have no acces to my stats or the Wordle-bot, but also that NYT does not have the pleasure of seeing me log in).

Wednesday I felt sorely tempted, as this popped up.

 --  A  --  B  --  C  --

Ja, jeg ved det godt. Jeg sagde at jeg aldrig ville spille nogen af New York Times mini-games igen. Men Wordle er for fristende.
    Mit kompromis var, at jeg ikke ville logge ind (hvilket betyder at jeg ikke kan se statistik eller få nogen form for hjælp eller feed-back, men også at NYT ikke har fornøjelsen af mig).
    I onsdags var det bare lige før jeg faldt for fristelsen, da denne her poppede op efter at jeg havde løst dagens Wordle.

It seems they added badges to Wordle. I love achievements, ergo I checked it out.

Fortunately I soon realised that I would not break my promise to myself, even for this. Some of the badges were streak badges.

 --  A  --  B  --  C  --

Det lader til at de har lavet mærker i Wordle og de andre spil. Jeg elsker den slags, så jeg måtte lige se, hvad der ellers var.
    Heldigvis at jeg gjorde det, for jeg fandt ud af, at jeg ikke skulle bryde mit løfte til mig selv. Mange af mærkerne var nemlig for streaks.

They are even awarded retroactively, so no way I could avoid them. As I despise anything streaky, I had no problems closing the else very tempting log-in pop-up.

 --  A  --  B  --  C  --

De bliver også tildelt på bagskud, så de ville ikke være til at undgå for mig. Og da jeg hader alt, der har med den slags at gøre, lukkede jeg prompte den fristende log-ind pop-up.

 --  A  --  B  --  C  --

Here's the solution, that would have earned me the green badge

~

Her er den løsning, der ville have givet mig det grønne mærke.

Peter's Time Travel ~ Part 6

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. A story, a poem, whatever comes to our mind.

This month the words are supplied by River and are to be found on her blog.

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.

So 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, Wednesday 4, we were given:
Chips 
Herd 
Clamped 
Walk 
Over 
Cheese

Still continuing my dream-story of Peter's Time Travel.


Next day we walked to school, a trek of about one kilometre through woods and over fields. The children knew the way, but it was hard on me to walk this far in the snow. In school, the teacher already knew about me, and placed me in the back of the classroom with a slate and a book containing the alphabet and writing exercises for beginners. I blushed, and felt utterly uncomfortable with my long legs cropping out from under the table no matter how much I tried to keep them in. And my hair was still too long. Paul, the farmhand whose chamber I slept in, had promised to cut it for me, but not on a Sunday. Tomorrow, maybe.

The classroom incidentally rescued me from any faux-pas, by solving the question of who was king, as a portrait of king Christian 7 hung over the door there, I had been one king too far.
    After starting the younger children off, the teacher, Mads Laursen, came and sat next to me. He was very young, I think not much older than me, and we both felt the awkwardness of the situation. I felt his warmth and his breath crowding me, now had he been a young woman ... the thought made me blush, and I hurriedly fastened my attention on the letters at hand. It did not last long till I could write all the letters to his satisfaction, and after going to school Wednesday as well, he declared that by Friday I would be ready for work, I was less certain, but I felt restless and misplaced in the small school chairs, and I itched to be of use, to prove myself valuable.

I spent some weeks doing taxation papers and other accounting jobs for the farmers nearby. My maths were far superior to theirs, and I was happy for the back story of my father being a well to do merchant to explain this proficiency. Most farmers had a hard times doing simple sums in their heads, only when it came to grains and bushels they lit up. By the time I was done doing this, I was know by, and knew most of  the bigger and smaller farmers in the parish. I had learned to ride a horse, and I had grown stronger.
The winter had been unusually hard, and the night still were frosty. I recalled something called The Little Ice Age from the news, maybe this was it? Selfishly I felt happy about it. More time for paperwork meant that I would be fit for the field work once sowing season started, which could not be long now.
That Sunday the chaplain approached me and told that the scribe, which I knew from the 'grilling' as I still called it, had fallen ill, and asked if I was able to give him a hand with the church registers. He had gotten behind, and now he was looking for a vocation somewhere else, he would prefer to leave the registers in order. I asked Lars if it would be OK, and he approved. The next week I spent my mornings doing farm chores, then I rode to the church, where we sat in a room in the vicarage and brought all the church registers up to date, I learned much abut the people in the community and about human kind in general during these sessions.

By walking, riding and helping with household chores, mucking, cleaning, chopping, cutting, planing, threshing and so on. I grew stronger. Actually stronger than I had ever been.

I was still homesick and cried myself to sleep most nights, but I was slowly learning the ropes.

Then Spring came. And with it sowing of barley, oats and rye.
I asked Lars why we did not grow any wheat. At first he just gave me the expected: "It is not done," but then proceeded to tell me of types of soil, too short periods for growth and the larger fertilization needs of wheat.

 WHEAT! I had walked through the fields the day my former life ended. I had tasted some ears of wheat, and put some in my pockets, I had always loved the taste and feel of ripe wheat. And I had listened enough to my granddad to know that modern wheat would be vastly superior to anything grown in 1802. I asked to be excused and went to the attic and looked, and yes, my pockets were still stuffed with golden ears of wheat.

What now. Could I ask for a small field of my own, could I just sow them somewhere or what should I do? Of course I ended up in Lars' office. Riisbye was a small, dying town, more like a hamlet. Four farms in all; two big ones, Lars' being the smaller of the big ones, and two smaller. Apart from the farmer's families it housed the ususal farmhands. a beggar and a tailor. Nothing much ever happened here - much to my luck. Later in the afternoon he told me, that I could have the furthest of the fields for my experiments, it was no longer in use and had fallen into disrepai. I was free to try my hand at it if I liked to test out my "foreign crops" there. The only condition was that I did not neglect my duties on his farm. Next day, while Lars and a trusted hand were sowing his fields, I tried my hand at ploughing. It looked so easy, but man, it was tough. Horses are not the same as a reliable tractor. They get shy, they try to avoid the hardest work and my furrows looked like they were made by a drunken sailor. I sowed almost all my wheat, sawing only a couple of ears for an experiment in autumn sowing. Another "It is not done" this earned me.

Then came fencing and weeding. I had to do my part on Lars' fields as promised, so often my field was weeded and tended to in the late evening hours or just before dawn. The wheat prospered. I took to watering it with the contents of my chamber pot diluted with water.

During summer I also helped Elizabeth wash, bake and even weave. All of this was hard work. She also taught me of candle-making, soaping and conserving. I picked many fruits for her, cherries, strawberries and apples, lots of apples. Conserving was hard and hot work, and not menfolk's work, but I liked to be around her, and she often appeared in my dreams, slowly replacing my first love, Lucy, and after a while appearing more that friends and family from my old life.

I harvested my wheat by hand after the rest of the harvest had been done, All alone, because no-one believed in my foreign crops. I had learned to use a scythe, and my small field was soon done. I dried it in the threshing room when nothing happened, threshed it on the sly one Sunday after church and put away one small sack for sowing next spring. I was vary of mice and other rodent, so I asked for, and had the old trunk I came in. Helped by Lars and one of the farm hands I repaired it and stored my grains in it in the room, I shared with some of the menfolk. Later I took some of it along to the mill to be made into flour. We tasted it for Christmas and Easter baking, and I was promised more land for my foreign crop next Spring. It really was tastier, and whiter, which seemed to be a determining factor for Lars and his family.

... to be conlcuded next Wednesday.

Poetry Monday :: Obsidian

It's two weeks and a bit since I last gave Service notification for Bloggers! When blogging an important thing to learn, is to press PUBLISH once you're done!

I need to take my own medicine.

Also this poem is sorely lacking. After several times where I was convinced that I would retain the poem I created in the wee hours of Monday morning, I now wisely keep pen and paper by my bed.
Note to self: Remember to check that the pen actually have enough ink.

This one ran dry after the first two lines. Yes I was writing in the dark so as not to wake up hubby - I've done this many times before. Normally I use a pencil, but it was broken.
Note to self: Sharpen your bedside pencil more often!

The poem was way better when I wrote it. I've tried to collect the strands, but alas ...

Poetry Monday - what's that? It is a blogging game, that Mimi of Messymimi's Meanderings and I have taken over the hosting duties, mostly the supplying of the prompts - only temporarily we hope - while Diane at On the Border is taking a break for health and relaxation, travelling the world with her husband as far as we can tell.  We just hope she's going to take back over once she returns home.

The prompts now come from 365 Days of Drawing Prompts and other Arts group. This is a Facebook group with a prompt for each day of the year, but no worries, the prompts will still be here and at Mimi's blog.

Today's prompt is: Obsidian

Riddle-solving time. Obsidian is watching the only exit from the Arena.

Obsidian sits on his guard,
its eyes so black, like stone its heart.

Now Amber comes and speak its words:
"Like lightening I've often heard
me called, it is my due.
Now stand and let me through!"

Then Opal, Jade and Pearl they try,
they plead, they threaten and they vie.
Our Pearl it even sheds a tear
to no avail. Obsidian just sit and stare.

They try by day, they try by night
in sunshine golden, starry light

Ruby, Beryl, and Peridot
go on about it. On the spot
Obsidian is sitting.
They almost feel like quitting

Then suddenly the humble one
rise up, decides to join the fun.
Agate whispers in its ear
it then stands up, the way is clear.

Asked how the riddle met its end
Agate thinks a bit again:
"It is not light nor season,
It only stands to reason."


If you think you know this ending from somewhere, you've probably enjoyed Spider Robinson's tales from Callahan's Cross-time Saloon where a similar joke plays a small part of the short story A Voice is Heard in Ramah ...

- - - - - - - - - - Coming Themes  - - - - - -

taken from the 365 Days of Drawing Prompts and other Arts group.

Mar 23 Croissant
Mar 30 The Moon Tonight
Apr 6 Passover
Apr 13 Fabulous
Apr 20 Superhero
Apr 27 Plaid
May 4 Back pack
May 11 Futuristic landscape