Telegram or Smoke Signals?
Since shuttering my Facebook accounts, including WhatsApp and Instagram, I have had time to explore alternatives. I’ve tried out Viber and Signal, but the only Messenger replacement I’m really enjoying – while trying to recruit more users to make it more fun and interesting – is Telegram. In terms of privacy and security, it’s much […]
One Stitch at a Time (#MondayMusings, #CrochetInsights)
Meditation There are natural nothing-thinkers in the world; I’m not one of them. The directive to “make your mind a blank” tends to have the opposite effect on me, like, “don’t think of pink elephants sipping Cosmos on the moon.” I try to think of nothing, but it’s a half-hearted effort. At best, I just […]
appreciation, art, craft, craftsmanship, crochet, material, meditation, movement
Blogging & Social Media Tips, Technical & How-to
Using Social Media to Complain
Oh, the power of social media! Where once we might have been limited to telling 15 of our closest friends about our negative experience with BrandX, we now have the bully-pulpit of blogs, Facebook, Twitter, and a host of other channels by which to trash our least-favorite brand of the moment. Using social media to […]
Easily Resize Smartphone Images for Your Blog
Most of the images on this blog are mine. The few that I did not take, myself, are used with permission, licensed under creative commons, or public domain images. But I prefer to use my own, and as digital cameras and camera phones improve in quality and usability, they also produce much larger files that […]
compress images, farluner apps, mobile phones, resize smartphone images, smartphones
Blogging & Social Media Tips, Humor, Visual Perspectives
Scavenger Hunt May 2018 #Hunt4AFreshPerspective!
It’s SUMMER! It’s a LINK PARTY! Remember summer scavenger hunts, running through the streets with a list of things to bring back from the neighbors? Only kids can get by with that sort of thing, I think! It was fun while it lasted, but just try asking your neighbor for a cup of sugar, a […]
blogging challenge, featured, fun, hunt4afreshperspective, scavenger hunt
Hero Tammie Jo Shults Earned Those Wings (a #WATWB Post)
She’s the kind of hero we hope and pray we never need and don’t like to think about needing while traveling in a tin can with wings, 35,000 feet above the planet. But to anyone who doubts that a woman has what it takes to fly a fighter jet or a commercial airliner, or who […]
flight 1380, hero, southwest air, tammie jo shults, watwb, we are the world
Technical & How-to, Uncategorized
Location Sharing: How and Why (Not)?
It’s not a new feature, but I stumbled across Google Maps Location Sharing almost by accident, one weekend, while walking in the park. It seemed prudent to share my location with a few family members and nearby friends, in case I dropped dead of heat exhaustion or got eaten by an alligator. I kid you […]
The Kind of Hero We Need (a #WATWB Post)
No Time to Waffle I’m convinced that nothing good happens in the wee hours of the morning, and it’s not proper to leave the house before coffee’s brewed and in the cup. But it’s not that simple: In those early morning hours, sleepy cities start to stir; babies are born; darkness gives way to dawn, […]
Devilishly Dangerous: a Double Acrostic
Face facts: some are ruled by hope and some by fear. All are mortal, even you. Yes, even you, Comrade, with your hundred smiling Facebook faces. Each keystroke, rat-a-tat-tat, fires gunshots Branding terror, while jaded papparazzi Offer bounties for another shot, a One-time deal, exceptional, American Killings as natural as apple pies. Mitchell Allen is […]
April is Poetry Month
Why on Earth in April? The poet T.S. Eliot famously declared: April is the cruellest month, breeding Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing Memory and desire, stirring Dull roots with spring rain. The cruelest thing about it was expecting restless high schoolers, too fresh-faced to have experienced life, death, and all the memories between, […]
I’m Not a Patsy for Russian Propaganda, YOU Are! :P
Listening to people argue that there is no way they were manipulated by some foreign power’s social media propaganda machine is both amusing and disheartening. I can understand deep denial and the impulse to say, “Hey, even though I shared 79 posts from a known Russian bot, no way was my vote influenced by it!” […]
denial, disinformation, featured, manipulation, propaganda, tumblr
Deep Breaths… #DeleteFacebook
It’s an addiction. Back in the 1980s, early 1990s, I posited the idea of “online addiction” and got nothing but funny looks. Now, the inclusion of “Internet Addiction Disorder” is studied and its inclusion in the DSM is seriously considered (though as of this writing, it is not a defined psychiatric disorder – you can […]
deletefacebook, facebook, featured, instagram, internet addiction, online addiction, whatsapp
Spring Showers MAY Bring May Flowers to the Garden
Spring has sprung with a vengeance – flinging us from 40ºF to 84ºF in the blink of an eye. I have stare-downs from the kitchen table with the garden gnome. Is it just me, or has he moved since I last mentioned him here? I’m pretty sure he does that just to freak me out. […]
The It’s-Not-a-Book-Report Report
These are the books I’ve read or bought since I wrote “Curing the Reading Drought.” The cookbooks, Roger Ebert’s The Pot and How to Use it, and The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook by Beth Hensperger and Julie Kaufmann will require a bit of creative adaptation; they have, in fact, inspired me to begin work, with […]
Blogging & Social Media Tips, Humor
President? Bah! I’ve Been Declared QUEEN!
Queen of the No-Niche Bloggers, that is! Rasheed Hooda, aka, “Mister Weirdo,” (never to be confused with Mr. Weirdo) – the man who, at age 62, walked from Chicago, Illinois to Santa Barbara, California, has handed me the virtual scepter in his post, “My Favorite No-Niche Bloggers.” I have apparently fallen down on the SEO, […]
Spun Up
I read a student essay, recently, that I would swear was written by someone for whom English was a second (or distant third) language. The conspicuous overuse of a thesaurus was one red flag. The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that it was written on Fiverr and spun through an […]
Weird Words Make for Weird Spellings
Is it jif, as in JIF brand peanut butter? Or gif, as in gift? Seems a strange thing for a giraffe to quibble over, especially if the inventor calls it jif. Weird words lead to weird arguments. Does the parent get to name the baby, or must he follow linguistic conventions? To say gif seems […]
Weirdly Competitive
I am weirdly competitive. I thought it was just me, but my friend Allie mentioned being “highly competitive when it doesn’t count” and I just burst out laughing. Now I find that my friend Mitch has a little streak of it; he rose to the challenge of writing a whole blog post without commas. Just […]
commas, featured, no comma rule, rules for writers, writing rules
Curing the Reading Drought
The Reading Drought How does someone who loves to read, who considers themselves an avid reader, end up going through long, dry spells without actually cracking open a book? This feels like the unburdening confession of a dirty secret I’ve lugged around far too long. I should have Googled sooner: It’s not just me. Read, […]
Update on This Pain in the Neck
I’m referring to me, of course. I have no real pain in the neck (or shoulder, arm, or hand), anymore. Would You Let This Woman Drive? Two weeks post-op. My son’s as hopeful as I am about the possibility of my not needing a chauffeur much longer. I’m going a little stir-crazy, and he can’t […]
artificial disc replacement, cervical spine, disc fusion, featured, post-op follow-up
Why You Don’t Let Kids Watch Scary Movies
When I was a little kid, my dad and I went to the movies together, often. We watched adventure films like Bullitt and Grand Prix and The Hellfighters – which explains why I won’t have gas appliances, pretend the hot water heater’s a dragon living in my attic and insist only my husband can feed […]
The Bionic Woman Eats BonBons
The hybrid cervical disk replacement and fusion surgery – to fuse C5-C6 and replace the C6-C7 disk with a bionic version (Mobi-C) was done a week ago Friday at CHI St. LukeThe Vintage. Fitting for A Fresh Perspective, I’ve seen this hospital many times – from the back side – while walking around Kickerillo-Mischer Nature Preserve. Now, […]
Those Other Places
We all have those other places. The places we go, when we drift out of consciousness. I had an odd dream, last night. We’d been traveling to a place that doesn’t exist, on a large ship. In one scene, there was a fascinating spider. It was a spider, but it was also a man – […]
I Swear, I Wasn’t Asking!
Remember how I said, “Never, ever, ask“? Well, I swear I wasn’t asking! But Karma has a wicked sense of humor. A bit of background: First, I’m needlephobic. I’m pretty sure this fear is related to my fear of spiders, hornets, and venomous snakes. I can mostly control my reaction, meaning I no longer have […]
bone, cervical, DDD, degenerative, dexa, disc, disc fusion, disc replacement, featured, osteoporosis
Liebster Award
What is The Liebster Award? The Liebster Award is a tag which helps new bloggers get noticed, connect with each other and make relationships in the blogging community. I am not a “new blogger,” but I am, nonetheless, honored to be given the award by my friend Roy A. Ackerman, Ph.D, E.A., whose middle initial […]
Ice and Dispassion
So, I bought the book. Yes, that book. I normally refuse to follow the crowd when it comes to “the most talked-about bestseller on the planet right now,” but when my husband asked me, over dinner, if I’d pre-ordered the book, I realized that it fit in nicely with two of my 2018 goals for […]
donald trump, featured, fire and fury, first amendment, free speech, potus, twitter
Never, Ever, Ask
Never, ever ask a writer, “How much worse could it be?” Because we can always imagine something… 2018 got off to a happy, auspicious start, for me, personally – I got to spend the holidays with family in Dallas. Even frigid temps were mostly cause for mirth; how often can you say it’s colder in […]
2018, cervical, DDD, degenerative disc disease, disc replacement surgery, featured
Resolutions 2018
I considered going back to my former, iron-clad resolution: “Make no stupid resolutions you have no intention of keeping.” My commitment – my resolve – has faltered, gradually, the last few years, and that’s one resolution I always managed to keep, till that day a few years ago when I decided to tempt fate and […]
A Quick Look Back on Things Worth Remembering from 2017
It is always worth remembering – and reminding each other: #InDarknessBeLight. After saying “goodbye and don’t let the door hit you in the behind” to 2016, I signed up for the We Are the World Blogfest (#WATWBF). I thought that the blogfest sounded like a terrific way to counter all the negative news 24/7 and to […]
2017, good news, looking back, retrospective, we are the world, worth remembering
