A to Z Reflection, atozchallenge

Again, this year, I felt under pressure to get the posts completed for the 26 days. I find if you don't write them ahead of time and then post on the day of, it doesn't work too well. I don't believe I put my best creative foot forward with this challenge and I completed it, mostly, to just keep my word and commitment. But that is not what writing is for me. I have a job and a family and I write as a form of expression and creativity. I don't write to get noticed and I don't make much advertising money from blogging. I felt a sense of falseness when other bloggers would visit my blog in a 'scratch my back, I'll scratch yours' gesture. I did make one brief, genuine connection with another blogger, but all in all, this felt too much like inauthentic marketing, and life is too crowded and too busy to pass by opportunities to be genuine, while instead engaging in activities that don't help me grow, flourish or help someone else. I don't think my blogging enriched anyone else's life, and for me, my enjoyment didn't outweigh the nagging feeling that my time could be better spent in a way that connected to others more authentically.

Sorry if my reflection is not very favorable. How could my opinion be changed? I suppose better blog categories could help - I would jump around the list to find blogs to visit, as part of the obligation, but many blogs weren't pertinent to my interests and some had topics that were so diverse and specific, which is totally ideal in the blog world, but not enjoyable for me to visit. Likewise, I bet many of my visitors didn't find mine very interesting! So if all of us bloggers could have a better idea about content, or have a matching system to make blog reading better, and make our own blogs a better experience for readers who are interested, the whole challenge would feel better.

V - Volkswagen/ Audi #atozchallenge

V - Volkswagen/Audi

The four interlocking circles on Audi vehicles symbolize the combining of four companies that were independent at the time, named: Audi, DKW, Horch and Wanderer. The owner at that time was a man named August Horch and the new mega company was subsequently named after him. 

He owned Horch, but created Audi prior to the merger and since he couldn't call the new smaller company by his name, they translated it to Latin and rolled with it (no pun intended). In German Horch means "listen/hear" and in Latin, audi means to listen. So there it was! 

Each of these four brands were retained and produced vehicles for differing segments of the market. DKW - Motorcycles and small cars, Wanderer - mid sized cars, Audi - deluxe mid sized, and Horch - luxury top end cars.

In 1960, Volkswagen acquired Audi and relaunched the brand in 1965. Shortly after VW introduced Audi to the US in 1970, and it is now one of the best selling automobile brands in the world. 

(Taken from Wikipedia photos)

Tea #atozchallenge

Tea

A stream of consciousness

mindful without words

a simple blanket on the throat,

history longer than my own.

I ask of it, to give to me,

each morning,

several times a day-

so for once I bow to it,

and give it these words to say:

thank you 

I love you

N- Nice #atozchallenge

Word origins often intrigue me - check out the origin of "nice" - talk about a change over time!!

Nice meant ignorant or foolish Back in the fourteenth century and has evolved many times over to now signify pleasant and kind. Yes, we can all remake ourselves, just like nice did, bit by bit, year by year. 

"The word nice, derived from Latin nescius meaning ‘ignorant’, began life in the fourteenth century as a term for ‘foolish’ or ‘silly’. From there it embraced many a negative quality, including wantonness, extravagance, and ostentation, as well as cowardice and sloth. In the Middle Ages it took on the more neutral attributes of shyness and reserve. It was society’s admiration of such qualities in the eighteenth century that brought on the more positively charged meanings of ‘nice’ that had been vying for a place for much of the word’s history, and the values of respectability and virtue began to take over. Such positive associations remain today, when the main meaning of ‘nice’ is ‘pleasant’ (if with a hint of damning with faint praise; it may yet turn full circle)" from Oxford Dictionary

M - Marriage #atozchallenge

We could all use some more love... Here are some quotes about M for marriage:

“For you see, each day I love you more 
Today more than yesterday and less than tomorrow.” —Rosemonde Gerard

“When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible.” —When Harry Met Sally

“For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul.” —Judy Garland

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” —Lao Tzu

L - Leopard Dog #atozchallenge

I have a Louisiana Leopard dog, also called a Catahoula Cur. This breed is the state dog of Louisiana and is used to assist in taking down the wild boar population by baying the boar. The can have spots and may have cracked or blue eyes, and webbed feet. They are said to be derived from a mix of the Red Wolf, Alano Mastiff, greyhound and Beauceron.

These wild hogs are nasty animals - if you remember in Old Yeller, these were the bastards that threatened Old Yeller near the end. 

Most say Catahoulas are very protective, tend to be alpha and need a lot of exercise and mental stimulation. By watching the videos of them working with hogs, they appear aggressive, but are actually even tempered, just serious about their job. Abbey has a great history of them, for all interested!

Currant Catahoulas 

(Two above):

Fair Mate Catahoulas

K- Kimchi #atozchallenge

Kimchi is a Korean style of a cabbage and/or vegetable side dish that is fermented with lactic acid bacteria. Foods that are fermented impart health benefits because of the probiotics they contain, and kimchi can offer these health benefits, just like yogurt or other fermented dairy products. Probiotics, simply, are "good bacteria" that can help to renovate our guts and promote health. But in addition to this, kimchi, because it is made from cruciferous vegetables, also contains fiber and other compounds that go above and beyond eating these vegetables alone, or yogurt alone. This Korean food is very flavorful and is often used to compliment rice dishes, or really any dish and is eaten with nearly every meal in authentic Korean culture. Not a bad practice!

Try an authentic recipe and enjoy!

Q - Queue #atozchallenge

Queue - how often are we waiting in a line or a queue on the phone! I am running out of ideas today so here is an acrostic for queue!

Q - questioning success

U - understanding patience

E - exercise mindfulness

U -  unanticipated time cost

E - exist in a world beyond immediacy

J - Joy #atozchallenge

Choose joy this day!

"Joy is the best makeup." Anne Lamott

"Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day." Henri J. M. Nouwen

I - Infinite Jest #atozchallenge

This is a post about that really long book titled, Infinite Jest .If you know it, or the movie The End of The Tour or the Rolling Stone guy's book, you'll know what I'm talking about. If not, you may want to skip this post...or if you like reading, you may find it interesting.

I saw The End of the Tour and wanted to read Infinite Jest. The characters in the movie were eating it up. The writer himself is overwhelmingly intriguing. (And in the end, tragically messed up because he ended up killing himself.) So I started the book and am near 200 pages into the lice-egg sized font book and have really only made it through 10% of it. 

All the other books I want to read are popping up into my mind like brownies when you're on a diet. I suddenly burn to read them. My daughter came to me with an infinitely cheesy middle grade book that she miraculously has two copies of and she wants to do a "mommy daughter book club" with it, starting tomorrow, and I am suddenly excited. (Books are usually my selfish time- my time is limited and I want to read for my own enjoyment, it's is not a sacrificial task, thought this may come as a terrible shock to my "gimme, gimme, I need, do-for-me" children.) 

This book started off interesting, though disjointed. But it continued on in this way and never connected any dots. It is a big long rambling of inner mind clutter of Mr. Intriguing Wallace. He makes up new words, uses abbreviations for many things and tells time by the year that random items were developed, like the Year of the Adult Depends Undergarment. (Which for the record is 1984 because I looked it up)

So I started to read some reviews to see what people saw in this book. It's like listening to terrible music that sells millions. I am not getting it.

"Infinite Jest is potentially infinite, an endless shaggy dog tale with no punch line. Chockfull/ of brilliant riffs, it is also repetitive and boring." Ethos Review Infinite Jest

--John McGowan is Ruel W. Tyson, Jr. Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

"Part of what clicks in a lot of Wallace’s work is that he writes in a way that maps to the way (at least some) people think. At its best, his voice mimics the infolding, obsessive, self-conscious, reflective brain voice that we think belongs only to ourselves but that most people have in some degree or another. And to my mind, one of the central theses of IJ is that to live with that voice only, to fail to escape your own head, is toxic. It’s why Hal, early on in the text (though late in the timeline) says “I am in here” while clearly manifesting to the deans as anywhere but in there." Daryl L

It turns out, I think, that this book needs to be read as a sort of study. Like a text book. It is not just a open it up at night and enjoy some mind-hot-cocoa before bed. (It weighs many pounds and will probably sprain your wrist, or possibly dislocate some fingers if you did that). One reviewer described using two bookmarks, one for his place in the book and one for the place in the back where Wallace has many footnotes that can go on for several pages, derailing the scattered plot even further, and he was often chewing on one of them. 

Inevitably, many readers appreciate Infinite Jest because it was like a marathon they had to train for, relapse from and finally, one day complete. You have to work, mentally, to get through it, you have to persevere through the hard times and you have to commit and dedicate yourself to a mindful conscious study of this text. It is a journey in focus and a memory challenge (because something from page 49 will finally relate to something from page 763 and you need to remember these one-liner somethings.) It is also a lesson in the fact that life never buttons up perfectly, because after climbing this massive jaggedly mountain of a book, apparently there is no resolution in the ending. There is no view at the top of the mountain. 

Infinite Jest turned me off from reading it by that 10% mark and it even turned me off from reading in general. It took my bean of reading joy, cooked it and stepped on it so the fibrous inner bean pulp squeezed out of its rough and colorful skin. And then my dog ate that bean and shit it out. I love to read so this is not a good reaction from this book.

I think that life has both handed and thrown at me these same lessons that this book imposes upon its reader. I don't need to learn them by request, they will come to me again and again - from parenting, from cancer, from working, from loving, from simply living. This book was meant to be devoured like those people in the movie were doing, but it is not that for me, right now. There are some good, enjoyable, thought provoking parts but that is like getting rocks thrown at you and picking up the pretty ones in the lot and wishing to get a stoning again to increase your collection. But in conclusion, I will be like Wallace and give no resolve for this post: I won't stop reading Infinite Jest, and I won't voraciously dig into it. As he said, you can find the answers somewhere to the right of the text, beyond the covers. For me, the answer is beyond the end of this post...

I laughed at this Jest review: why you shouldnt read infinite jest !! Enjoy!!

G - good kids books about tough topics (a tiny list) #atozchallenge

Good kids books about some tough topics: A tiny list of ones I've used or can think of!

Being bossy:

Ladybug Girl and the Bug Squad

Staying connected to someone - weather by distance or even death:

The Invisible String

A parent who has cancer:

A Purple Card for Papa: When Cancer is in the Family

Moral Lessons:

The Cookie Book: Bite Sized Life Lessons

F- Fun #atozchallenge

I'm sharing this because it is fun. 

My daughter is taking the State tests this week and she tends to get apprehensive, but these teachers at the wonderful Mott Haven Academy- a charter elementary school in one of the lowest income areas of NYC in the Bronx, made this fun video to get the kids feeling a little positive about the tests this week.

Way to get creative, put yourselves out there for the sake of the kids, and show them that adults can have a little fun!

Partnered with the city's largest social service agency, The New York Foundling, this school serves mostly at risk kids currently in foster care and the child welfare system. The Mott Haven section of the south Bronx is historically the lowest income area in all of New York City.

Kudos to all the teachers at: Haven Academny

E- Earth #atozchallenge (a poem for small steps)

The shading off a crumpled can

mustn't puncture the laziest of us

to cover among our

orange peels, bitter and bright

or half a meatball

tiny tummies couldn't but

ingest

if all that is chosen

for performance

is the branded aluminum sweetness

or but one box

that bounced from Kentucky

to DC to New York

connecting the dots

of the gloved and uniformed

if only one is put on stage 

this week 

he scored better than last

We can applaud

not that you

hugged upon the trees 

of your neighbors,

a standard immune to ridicule,

but that this week

simply

you did better than 

last

D - Diamonds and what matters #atozchallenge

Here is a poem for D- the first word that struck my creative chord was diamond. (Of course I was listening to Paul Simon... See W day from 2015, http://spokenfingers.blogspot.com/2015/04/w-wonder-have-wish-to-know-something-be.html )

Diamonds on the soles of my shoes

magnetic fuel of grateful beauty

I walk atop that which is valued most

by those who estimate me the least.

A rock so hard, by many

is treated like fragile glass

my heart hardens under

the pressure of their eyes

but on my soles, I walk

with my softer brilliance

wrapped around my fingers

C- chemo #a to z challenge

Chemo

This is a photo of my husband taking all his chemo and related pills every morning:

Here's an acrostic to go with the segmented visual:

Cure is elusive

Heal when I'm better

Emotional indigestion

Memories of youth and health

Only time

B- Black Cherokee - a post about judgement and being heard #a to zchallenge

If anyone has lived in New York City or driven down the busy FDR drive, you've probably seen the assumed homeless man there, or evidence of him. He'll set up weird standing arrangements, quirky, funny or just strange signs, or he may be standing there himself with props, often fruit. Well, this icon of Manhattan driving is not, in fact, homeless, not mentally ill to the point of lacking awareness of what he was doing or the motivation for it. His name is Otis Houston, Jr. and he lives nearby in East Harlem and works as a custodian at a health club. 

Mr. Houston claims he puts on this "show" to entertain and inform his audience of drivers in the natural bottleneck of this stretch of the FDR. He came to New York as a teenager from South Carolina, but fell into selling drugs and spend some time in jail years ago. While locked up, he took art classes and after his release, he used this spot on the roadside as his studio, trying out his skills as an artist and using the position to get himself noticed. That he indeed did! He's been noticed and known by thousands, passers by will often honk and wave and call out his nick name, Black Cherokee, for his part Cherokee heritage. Mr. Houston is simply an artist going old school to get people to see his work.

Two NYC filmmakers noticed him and put together a very original documentary about Houston that highlighted him in a whole new way than these urban drivers would ever know. There are clips of him caring for his father ill with Alzheimer's, and him giving conversation like any other New Yorker.

This post is an obvious lesson in withholding judgement. Everyone you pass today, in New York City, to Nebraska to South Dakota, has a story, and we're all just trying to be heard.

Below are some tags from everyday New Yorkers enjoying the Black Cherokee on their way to work:

(And him, as you can see, really enjoying what he does too!)