DIVA?

The word diva used to really mean ‘something.”  Now it’s a word used among the commoners for themselves.  No accomplishments necessary, just being born to celebrity parents or money will do.  Just being born will do.

When I was a youngster a diva was usually entering middle age because it took that long to develop the skills necessary to achieve the appellation.  I think of Marilyn Horne, Dame Joan Southerland and our own Beverly Sills.  Continued voice training, learning long operas, and several languages, while working their way up in a crowded field filled with temperaments.  We admired accomplishment.

What do people admire now days?  Almost anything, including a show called jackass which elevated people for being stupid.  We admire mouthy athletes with double digit I.Q.’s and some even make hero’s out of criminals and idiots who are in and out of rehab all of their lives. 

What in the hell ever happened to accomplishment?

WHAT IF?

What if UFO’s aren’t mechanical devices sent by other ‘intelligent’ life forms?  It is a very egocentric point of view if you think about it.  Like the belief that earth was flat or the sun revolved around the earth.  Typical human conclusion.

God populated the great depths of the ocean with creatures who could live there. 

 

What if God populated the great depths of space with creatures who could live there?  Doesn’t the real live creature above kind of remind you of a UFO?  A giant space creature?

The second picture is a real life creature that God made.  Looks almost like a mother ship with ports for smaller commuter space craft.

Is man really that intelligent or has God created deep space creatures as he created deep ocean creatures?

 

     It’s an interesting idea to think about anyway or maybe write about.  Hummm!?!

Christmas in September?

We just finished with the Labor Day Holiday and started football season and what do I find on the media and in the stores?  Christmas decorations and ads.  Or should I say holiday ads since Merry Christmas is no longer politically correct. 

I’m afraid the department stores with their Happy Holidays rather than Merry Christmas ruined my zeal for gift buying.  Could ‘those people’ who oppose Christ in Christmas just not celebrate ‘our’ holiday and do their own thing?  No, instead of getting their own parade they want to rain on ours and ruin it.  The behavior of vandals.

Couldn’t we just get twelve paid holidays a year and choose which twelve we want to celebrate?  Wouldn’t that be less discriminatory?  They want Christ and the Bible out of our culture as if it threatens them somehow.  The Bible has been part of our culture for ages, a best seller for ages, and a wonderful piece of literature, so what is it with the Left? 

The ‘left’ wants to celebrate all cultures except our own.   But they want to pick and choose, Santa and gifts but no Christ.  How capitalistic of them! They don’t bother pointing out that Easter Bunnies don’t have eggs but seem to have a compulsion to criticize Christian holidays while the pagan ones like Halloween are typically enjoyed.  I must admit that other cultural holidays are of interest to me especially gastronomically and I don’t feel any compulsion to destroy them – so what’s with the Left?

Why does the left have to destroy or embrace?  There apparently is no live and let live in them, we must be in lock step or be condemned.  Now I understand why they don’t get the spirit of Christmas.

Words' of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. V

How to choose my favorite writer?  Their craftsmanship, their message, whether or not I agree with the content or approve of the characters?

Let’s discuss non-fiction first, and I’m interested in the craftsmanship but mostly in the impact the work had on me.  First, I have to note the, “I Have a Dream” speech.  The power of Dr. King’s words was overwhelming. The content was spiritual as well as practical and that is also true of “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” and, “Peacemakers.” 

Dr. Martin Luther King spoke more than words, he spoke truths.  The leader was shot down and killed on my birthday, April 4^th and each year I remember the man and his message. 

I guess Martin Luther King is a natural follow up to my early reading of Henry David Thoreau, “The Duty of Civil Disobedience.” The book was a study on the duty of an American citizen if we are to become and remain a free people.  Unfortunately, today’s citizen is more grasping than dutiful. We act as if lines on maps are a force of nature created by God rather than a punishment by God for our foolish ego manifested in the Tower of Babel. We weren’t gathered together here as His only true people as some humans seem to believe.

Now, I’ve given myself away.  I’ve spent long, happy periods of my life in Bible study.  I know it’s not cool or sophisticated but it’s some of the most beautiful writing I’ve ever read.  Our schools have classes in Elizabethan Literature and Shakespearean Literature why not Bible Literature?  So much of the writing is noteworthy and who can claim that it is not as big a part of our culture as Shakespeare or that it is not a best seller?  Then how can people oppose the literature and not ban all other manifestos?  “Mein Kampf,” Karl Marx, the Declaration of Independence, or the text of Martin Luther’s “95 Theses” at Wittenberg, or Martin Luther King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail?” 

 All who are trying to erase it from our culture don’t understand culture.  You are the ones who burned books in “Fahrenheit 451,” or the ‘more equal’ pigs in “Animal Farm,” and “Brave New Worlds.”  The new Puritans are little schoolmarm’s running around with missionary zeal, glasses sliding down their noses, making sure that our speech is politically correct.  No, they don’t abolishing the pulpits they try to destroy; instead, they use them for their own message.  They were called 'busy bodies' in my day.

Enough!

A Seventy Two Year Old and a Computer IV

 

 



Leave a seventy two year old alone with a computer and she will soon get into trouble.  I found a digital art set by Crayola and without a sinew of talent in my whole body I started to have fun.  I'm either getting senile or beginning to enjoy retirement. 

It's not art, of course, it's just a compulsive/obsessive's effort to control - in this case nature.  When, in fact, nature is what it is, in the hand's of God. 

 

Here's another, less tortured view of nature:

 



And one, stylistic, and kind of in between:

 



Why am I displaying my refrigerator crap to the rest of the world?  Probably getting senile, lol.

MY FAVORITE CHARACTERS: KAREN MACEANRUIG: First Post

MY FAVORITE CHARACTERS: KAREN MACEANRUIG: First Post: Should you wait to practice a craft until you can make a living doing it?   Is the value of time spent in the money earned? Don’t cook unles...

Hobby vs. Profession I

Should you wait to practice a craft until you can make a living doing it?  Is the value of time spent in the money earned? Don’t cook unless you’re a chef?  Don’t sew unless you’re a fashion designer?  Don’t play an instrument unless you’re a professional musician?  No amateur astronomers or athletes allowed. Nonsense! 

As with most writers I’ve been writing all of my life.  Am I published?  As with most writers the answer is no but it’s a compulsive obsessive behavior that is impossible to break and my nervous system would explode if I didn’t do it. It’s not wasted time, it’s time spent on my mental health. Don’t apologize for time spent or on your particular pleasure.  Enjoy it

When you read or write you get to spend time with the characters!  Did you ever have pretend friends when you were little?  I often wonder if reading and writing isn’t an extension of pretend friends.  We chose the place, the setting, the people, the activities, and the story.  We get to escape to ‘the other place’ for a while and come back refreshed.

As a writer my characters always come first in the process.  They grow and become more and more fleshed out and real and then begin to interact with one another and that is the stuff of the story. Sometimes I think that I'm just there to take it all down like a court reporter so they can speak to each other, live their lives, enjoying their friends, family and lovers.  They are much like Geppetto's carving who wants so desperately to be a real little boy.