A Blog About My Blog

essaysbysean.blogspot.com

Hello Reader,

Got blog?

The trick, if you have a blog, is not to post on weekends, and to post as early in the work week as you can. This is according to research, by Wordpress, from back during the heyday of blogs: It seems people don’t read on weekends, AND the web search engines are very date sensitive: Stuff posted a couple days ago, such as Saturday, won’t show up by Monday, so post early in the week. Actually, I get lots of hits for last week’s post on a new Monday, (but never on Sunday) and I often enjoy reading good sites on the weekend.

And that’s how I know I have fans: Lately, when I post a day early, on Wednesday instead of on my usual Thursday, I still get most of my hits on Thursday, as usual. “Thank you, fans and readers, thank you.” Another statistic I have read, more anecdotal than researched, I think, is that only one reader in a thousand will comment. This is true, by my experience with other blogs. So: If you ever comment anywhere, then consider yourself special.

May I be self indulgent today? As web administrator, my screen “page” is set to show 25 weekly titles at a time. I always wait for at least 25 posts before I indulge in a post about me or my blog—like today. 

Well. What can I tell you? Recently, when I scrolled the current page and the previous, my two most popular essays, one on each page, by hit count, were Abuse Science (Archived November 2017) and Giving Love. (Archived January 2018) How symmetric: Those posts are from two sides of the same coin.

As I see it, being abused need not mean retreating into a basement, nor becoming anti-social. One need not become grumpy, anti-humble or anti-good intentioned towards people. Even at Death’s door, one retains the choice to love or not. How could I know? Easy: A man who miraculously survived a Nazi death camp says so. In his book From Death Camp to Existentialism, Viktor Frankl found that when everything else is stripped away, the choice of attitude still remains. 

If I might indulge: I profess that love is the answer, and love is the meaning of life, even if we know love by other names such as doing a little service. Frankl found that the few inmates who survived the camp all had a “reason to live.” His book has been reprinted as Man’s Search For Meaning. He was very clear: All of his peers who merely existed, without a meaning to their existence, perished.

I have experimented a few times, during this last “admin page,” with running one essay over two blog posts, to make the posts shorter and easier for my readers. No reader-reaction, I guess it worked out OK. My post for next week, though, is a lonnnng “meadow read,” where you can walk trails and think it over. But since no one knows what that phrase means, I’ll just call it a “beach read.” It’s about Respect, and yes I have a lot to say. 

What else? I’ve recently discovered why quotations (and footnotes) are always in smaller font than the surrounding text: Because they can be way more fun! More fun to read than the actual piece. It’s like what I noticed back in childhood: When a TV station has technical difficulty, and they have to play music, only the CBC plays fun classical music. The rest play junk music, so their shows don’t look so bad. 

After experimenting with quotes in larger fonts… I still believe my readers come before my ego: I won’t shrink the quote-fonts, no, but I may just keep them in the same size as the rest of the essay, as I have normally been doing, in fact, all along.

Blogs are becoming increasingly relevant for those with experience in having attention spans from doing, say, performing arts, martial arts, fine art, or fine focused reading. Blogs are increasingly less relevant for those who prefer sound bites, tweets and moving pictures. In other words, the high tide of blogs was some years ago, before social media. Meanwhile, folks who have preferred reading over surfing the web, without FOMA, (Fear Of Missing Out) have been doing just fine all along.

In my personal life? I keep meaning to switch over to writing fiction. (And I need to read more fiction, too) So during July I finally figured out how to “serve two masters”: My essays are only to be composed and edited on weekends. During the week, let me confront the fearful blank page… Because I can write! I am a warrior! A black bear! And also, somedays, a grey mouse. Such is life, on a stage where we play many parts.

On stage at Toastmasters, people have noted that I have a more confident posture lately. Why? I mean, I have been public speaking for years, so why now? I have my guesses, but since I am still processing, I won’t talk just now. Except to say one thing: I have written two or more essays down the years about failing to declutter, and now I’ve succeeded. Weird. I surely will say more, self-indulgently, in my next meta-blog, 25 posts from now. 

Sean Crawford

August

Calgary

2018

Footnotes:

~My last such “25-titles” blog was called My Latest Meta-Blog, archived February 2018.

~At the time, I had recently added a “subscribe to this blog” feature at the bottom of each post. It goes below the footnotes.

~Here is a link to a review of Viktor Frankl’s book by Scott Berkun, a credible fellow who’s blog I often comment on.

~For personal growth, and to start your day, I can recommend the daily blog of starpasser.com, by Jodie, a fellow Calgarian. 

Incidentally, for links, instead relying on highlighting with coloured ink, Jodie will underline, while I will overtly say “here is a link.” In my case, it’s because I am sympathetic to folks new to computers like my dear dad, folks without colour screens or fast colour downloads, and folks reading futuristic colourless archives. (Maybe I’ll be read by grandkids in a shiny white moon-base) 

~As part of trying to switch to fiction writing, I have worked ahead on some essays. Future titles will include zen of listening, classical war, idealists among us and, wait for it… Free Fall Pieces my Peers said to Post. 

Free Fall in Britain

Hello Reader,

Got Britain?

Because last week’s post was bureaucratic, this time I thought I’d post an easy Free Fall (see footnote) one. 

We read our FF pieces out loud. After my pieces about Brown, Steven said he had met that very man, overseas, complete with binoculars, on a trail, telling Steve that he had been looking at some tits (European small birds).

At the end of every Friday we go around the circle saying what we had got out of today’s meeting. Often people say they are amazed at all the different writing that comes from the same prompt. On this day I said I had enjoyed creating my British character. Note: Brown would probably call himself English… But then again, praise the Lord, it was the British who put the A in assimilation. Lucky for us here in Canada. Not like over in Asia, where unfortunate people may share a country, on paper, yet live and die in cultural brick silos.

Here we go:

Prompt- 

favourite

So there he was, fifty-five and fit, white haired and still with a white hot love of birds. In the front of his anorak was a slim guide book to birds. From his neck, at just the right tension, was a grey strap for his black binoculars. His pen was in his favourite small pants pocket.

There he was, grateful for the complete panorama of trees and hills, with a copse to the lower right, a church steeple to the upper left. Grateful to the wind from the NNE, at only 4 kph, enough to know he was outside of any air conditioned bubble. Grateful too for his sturdy brown shoes with welts, from Wellobies, and yes they had cost a pretty penny. Grateful to be in a land that still had pennies—don’t you feel sorry for Canadians?

His name was John Brown. A plain name for a plain man, in the eyes of others, although Brown was happy to be an individual in his choice of headgear: Not a Tilly, not any sort of tweed, exactly, but a deerstalker: Brown’s ode to silent vanity.

Out in the nice outdoors he felt an affection for the little animals as he crossed the common, and for the children too, flying their kites just as had their parents and grandparents before them. Fewer kids, maybe, these days, as there was no denying the appeal of devices with screens.

Brown had watched screens himself, back in the day, in black and white he had thoroughly enjoyed Doctor Who, still his favourite program. Next was Babylon-5 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Prompt- 

two edge sword

I was at the British museum—and there they were! From that black and white photograph in my old 1930’s text book—those same swords, side by side. The text caption for the rapier had said, “for thrusting.” Although my brother later told me that some of them had three edges, hence the phrase, “his sharp three edged wit.”

Is there anything better for a grown up boy than the British Museum? World famous, and deservedly so. Taking up valuable real estate, in the heart of Central London, but bringing in lots of tourist dollars, that more than make up for the cost. Oh, but what sort of boring adult thinks of cost? How can you measure the torch of imagination, that beacon of science and history?

Here I saw, with a video and artifacts, the five components of a clock, or pocket watch, or wrist watch. It took the Swiss years to be able to make their gravity operated cuckoo clock, complete with a sound effect that did not require any electricity or chips.

Here I saw the craftsmanship and imagination of humble humans long dead who wanted to go just a little beyond utilitarianism in their clay pots and baskets. Their lives were hard, and on the margins, yet they found time to pay the cost of adding beauty to their lives. I just stood and marvelled, because my pots would have looked like mere pots. They had, our ancestors, the same I.Q. as us. 

Hence their clay pipes, lead pipes and vast array of aqueducts bringing life giving water for miles. As an adult I was to realize that their mixed bathing, in their grand bathhouses, was not from having a more immodest culture but from their lack of money for bathing suits and separate facilities. Like the Japanese of the 20th century, until they got democracy and good capitalism.

Our ancestors, down the centuries, found different answers to their quest for security and the rule of law, whether the castles of feudalism or the forums of the ancient Greek republics. The museum has a model of the acropolis, on it’s high hill, showing the high regard the Greeks gave to freedom of assembly and freedom of speech.

The Gods were there. In statues and frescoes, in the etchings of the pyramids—they have sarcophagi on the fourth floor! I manfully resisted calling, “Where are you, Scooby Do?”

Prompt- 

memory foam

Part of the fun of being a bird-watcher, in semi-inclement weather—but not inclement, for then the birds hid their heads beneath their wings—was the joy of returning home, or, in Brown’s case, to the Pig and Whistle for a hot toddy by the fireplace. It was, of course, gentlemanly to doff your headgear, and, let’s admit it, childishly fun to watch the steam rising off your bonnet by the fireplace. Every pub that Brown frequented had a fireplace, and warm dark tones. Not like on American TV where the bars had blue and teal walls. Then again, those wholesome Americans with their wholesome smiles probably hit the bars in the middle of the day, under a bright American sun.

No, no, bars were meant for the end of the day, after a fine bit of tramping along. That’s when you sank into your chair. Americans probably lined their chairs with memory foam—what a bunch of over-rich wimps—what more do you want, eggs in your beer?

What Brown deserved with his hot toddy, or his beer, was a packet of crisps, or a pickled egg. Extravagant? Fattening? Not when you have been tramping all day. Not like an American with a motor car. Someone said their housing developments didn’t even have sidewalks, except from the curb where the cars parked.

Of course Brown would socialize. Before going home to the BBC. This was a pub, and Brown was a proper neighbour. In public. He was vain about his bonhomie.

Sean Crawford

Grateful for Brexit,

Because then the plummeting exchange rate means I can buy “pounds Stirling,”

In the foothills of the Rockies,

Three time zones west of Nova Scotia,

Latin for New Scotland,

2018

Footnotes:

~Free Fall is where we have a prompt, then, using a timer, we all write swiftly, without editing ourselves, until the bell. This engages the Right Brain. Then we read aloud. It is such good practise, especially for those of us who write too carefully.

~Brown wears an anorak because my impression is that in Britain “an anorak person” is like a “wears a daypack” person over here: Less inclined to join a crowd to watch professional sports, less afraid to be different, and less aware that he is “supposed to” be afraid. 

~ I never even heard of an anorak until I went to Outward Bound school as a teenager: Then I found the concept of a wind proof pullover, as an optional outer layer, quite delightful, especially because of the front centre pocket, years before the invention of the tourist waist front pouch.

~No, I don’t wear a waist pouch—although my best friend Susan did—and yes, I’m a “daypack person”: I’ll even carry my pack from my car into the coffee shop. As I type this, at a Tim Hortons, relaxing half sideways in a booth, my pack is my side rest.