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 A new blog to contain answers to prompts |
Since my old blog "Everyday Canvas "  became overfilled, here's a new one. This new blog item will continue answering prompts, the same as the old one. Cool water cascading to low ground
To spread good will and hope all around.  |
| Prompt: Hope "The caterpillar feet were gone, the wings unfolded. One should never lose hope," Tomas Transtromer Write about this in your Blog entry today. ====== Are challenges ever inevitable? Good for you if you can hide from all the challenges that are thrown your way. I can't do that. What I can do, though, is hold on tight to a lifesaver, which is called hope. Hope is our greatest and the best ally, no matter the circumstances. It is what makes life meaningful. It is the light that guides us through darkness. It is the strength that propels us forward. Hope is more than a feeling. It is a state of mind and our conscious belief that something good or at least more acceptable could arise from the difficulty at hand. Why is hope so wonderful, then? It is wonderful and doable because the more I am hopeful, the more resilient I become. Hope inspires me to act and to seek solutions, however with small steps. Then, in doing so, it improves my mental health, and as a result I feel more connected to other people and I become more open to learning from our joint experiences, embracing change, and developing new skills or perspectives. Have I done all that in the worst of situations? To tell the truth, NO! I always allow myself some grieving time, but during that time, my mind, by my urging or by its own rote and experience, finds some hope somewhere. This is because hope is a source of inner strength and it keeps dreams alive, no matter how undoable. Better yet, hope lets me remember that I am human and what makes me human is (to me), creativity, empathy, and my capacity to dream of a better world. This way, I feel aligned with with uncertainties where hope helps me with a sense of direction and a belief in a few possible and positive outcomes. To put it in a nutshell, there's always a way out. Thank you, HOPE! |
| Prompt: Neighbors At where you live, what are your neighbors like? What do you think makes a good neighbor? Do you have any dramatic, funny, or annoying story about your neighbors that you'd like to share? ------- When we moved into our house in 1992, we were almost the youngest couple on the block. Now, I think I might just be the oldest one around as all the others went to live with their children or checked into nursing homes. Quite a few moved to other states. also, and unfortunately, several people passed away, some from Covid. At this point, I only know the neighbors to the left of the house well enough. The ones on the right, moved away about three months ago and the people who moved in are a young couple who are into jeeps and trucks. I haven't met them yet. All other neighbors are quite nice but, since they are probably much younger than me, they wave as they pass by and I wave back. So much for the street I live on. I think a good neighbor could be someone who is friendly, offering help if needed, and checking often on the neighbors to see if anything is amiss with any one family. Also, a good neighbor is respectful, and values everyone else's privacy, and doesn't cross any lines, such as blasting music at 3 AM. Talking about 3 AM, the people we bought the house from had moved next door to us. They sold the house to us because his wife (RIP) liked the floor plan of that house better because its living area was one open space and she used to have large parties as she was a member of several local organizations. Her husband David (RIP) was a retired businessman who was also a World War II pilot-veteran. They both were the nicest and the most gracious people. Now, coming to my mention of "3 AM", one night at 3 AM, David came to the back porch door and was banging on it like crazy. We both woke up and rushed to see what the trouble was. He said, "There is a guy running through the backyards of the houses. Be careful, he may be a burglar." We really hadn't seen anyone or anything, simply because we were sleeping, and we were quite confident that our neighborhood was probably the safest one in town. That night, David also went to a few houses on the street and woke people up with the same warning. Some thought he was getting soft in the head due to age, but a few days later, we found out what had really taken place. Four houses down from us, someone's granddaughter from Atlanta was staying with them for a while. This was because her parents wanted her to be away from the bad influence(!) of a boyfriend. It seems the boyfriend drove down to see her here, that night, and she was talking to him secretly in her grandparents' back porch after midnight. When the grandparents woke up to their conversation, the young lover had high-tailed it through the backyards of the houses. I don't know the rest of the story of the young lovers, but at least, everyone found out that David was really trying to warn everyone and there was nothing wrong with his head. I neither have those neighbors now, nor the ones I know are close to me. Maybe it is not the neighbors or the neighborhood that changed, but what changed us may just be the times and the "smart homes" with cameras that now electronically survey the area. |
| Prompt: Newspapers In the month of September, 1851, the New York Times newspaper was first published. In your opinion, in our day, are newspapers becoming relics? And if you were to establish your very own newspaper publication, what would its features be and what kind of news it would mostly contain? ------ The old respectable ones, yes. Such newspapers are already relics. But why should we be surprised? In the first place, the ease, price, and comfort of today's technology aside, the new newspaper people and columnists lack the intellectual capacity and the respect we used to get from the old and now defunct professionals. Unfortunately, journalism, or the art of writing fair, unbiased articles for newspapers, magazines, and other paper media is very nearly dead. To tell the truth, I can't even blame publishers and paper media that still insist working in an industry trying to take its last short breaths. Then, after saying all that in the above paragraph, who can expect me to have my own newspaper publication? It's now the newspaper trade that has become the news by shutting their doors one by one. If you take any newspaper today and look at its articles and opinion pages, you'll see that the content has become simpler and much shorter. This may be due to the social networks all over the internet and our ease of taking photos and videos of the incidents ourselves that would take pages to write about and evaluate. Would I try to establish my own newspaper, now? It would only take a miracle. But for argument's sake, let's say that such a miracle happened, or maybe all the digital and streaming media went kaput for a while. Then, that would be the rebirth of paper media. Wouldn't it! In which case, my newspaper would contain more reader interaction and fact-checking and strict editorial rigor. So, I guess, my newspaper would be something close to what the newspapers contained in the olden times, say 1950s to 1970s. To put it straight, all the news media today can be much more nuanced because a deep understanding of the evolving needs of populations is necessary. Even so, if we were to apply such reformations to newspaper publications, it could only be possible when and if a miracle or a catastrophe happened to all other digital and electronic media. While people are used to the new stuff nowadays, oldies like me still yearn for good journalism. I guess we are all paying the price for evolution. |
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