I’ve been thinking about Grace for a while now. I would bet that no one who went to Western Heights High School, Rotorua, New Zealand, in 1975/76 can remember Grace. I had forgotten about her for years, but she has suddenly begun coming into my mind at odd moments. I wonder why that is?
I’m having a bit of a dilemma. With the world the way it is, and the Big Orange Baby grinding the USA under his tiny heels, I am wondering if it would be better to shift all my sites to a UK-based webhost with servers in the UK. At the moment he doesn’t seem to have any thoughts about raising tariffs on webhosting. But he is currently trying to stop all US films being made outside of the country. Which would have been a problem for the likes of “Game of Thrones” for one. And it’s not just a problem of whether he raises tariffs on webhosting or not. Should I be paying for webhosting on servers in the US in the first place?
I’ve googled and cannot find anything, I’ve tried the webhostingtalk forum, and there is nothing there. While we’re on the subject, what about domains? I’ve been worried about it for a few weeks now. Any ideas, anyone?
Self expression: The expression of one’s personality : assertion of one’s individual traits. And there, I’ve been managing to crush my self expression for all these years. Really push it down as far as I can, stamp it down even further. I learned early on to never, ever express myself, my feelings, my thoughts and never my opinions. Doing so would lead to vicious violence at the far end, and ridicule at the lower end.
Over the years I have tried sometimes, to drag myself up from the bottom of the self expression box and, well, express myself. In fiction, writing what I came to realise was in the “weird” genre. But finding that no one, absolutely no one, wanted to read anything I had written. I remember the last writing class I went to before the lockdown. Around ten people around the table, with the tutor. As each person read, there was a little applause, a lot of “oh well done”. It came to my turn, and I read my story. No applause, no “well dones”. The tutor said, yes, well, next. And that was it. I never went back to that class.
I want to write, oh I so want to write. And I know I should just write for myself. But the point of writing is to share it with others. Otherwise it might as well just live rent-free in my head, where I can enjoy it and more importantly, understand it. There is no point in writing it all, and there is a novel waiting around the corner. No point at all if no one else is interested. I mean, no one reads this blog.
So I stamp it well down and jump on it if I have to, to make sure not one little bit is visible. Self expression is a trap and a snare, and is not to be trusted. In the meanwhile, bland, smiling, letter writing, and nothing brave or creative shows. I’m not stupid.
I am facing an uncertain future, ever since my optician told me that I have the beginnings of macular degeneration. In case you didn’t know, it is the degeneration of the retina which causes light-sensing tissue at the back of the eye to, well, deteriorate. The end of it is blindness. In the meantime the vision in the centre of my eyes will worsen, until all I will see is around the sides. Dame Judy Dench has it, and she is a woman to look up to. She is still working, though now she needs her scripts to be recorded for her. My father has it, and thereby hangs a lot of anger.
I feel like paraphrasing Tammy Wynette, sometimes it’s hard to be a Pagan. Doo de do de doo. I visited Chester cathedral last week and while it is very impressive, I have to say I’m glad to be part of a faith that can find the Deity in a forest. Obviously, a lot of money had been spent on building and decorating from when it was first built in the 16th century. Supposedly it was built for the glory of God, but it was more like it was built for the glory of the people who threw a lot of money at it. For the pomp and circumstance of the thing. However, it was refreshing to see that the whole space is being used. One side chapel has been turned into a very good cafe. I had a delicious Welsh rarebit there. Another was used for an art exhibition which, ironically, included a beautiful painting of Rhiannon. It makes me very glad to be Pagan and that I can go out into my garden and there is the Goddess. I don’t have to seek Her in highly-decorated building and I certainly do not need someone to intercede for me. I can speak directly to Her.
Later, I was in the little gift shop and I saw the most lovely, bright yellow flowered cover, journaling Bible. I was sorely tempted, it was that gorgeous. And I thought oh why don’t we have something like that for Pagans? Again, I realised it’s about money. Christians spending money on fancy books that they really don’t need. And I don’t need it either. I have googled the subject and there are lots of online shops who will sell you Bibles in the most beautiful covers, in all versions. And special pens for journaling as well as special paints, tags, oh so much stuff. You could go bankrupt being a Christian and wanting to take part in all the really cool trends. People actually paint pictures in their Bibles, and hand letter calligraphy verses and affirmations. I wondered, isn’t the Word of God enough for them? It’s all about the performance, not the message. Make your Bible pretty enough and that’s all you need to do to get a golden ticket into Heaven.
Nonsense! A second-hand copy of the late Scott Cunningham’s “A Guide for the Solitary Practitioner” is all I need. All that art stuff makes me anxious anyway. I get panic attacks even thinking about colouring books. Hard to be a Pagan? Yes, but it’s worth the extra effort.
No, this is not an actual photograph of my ancestor. This picture was created by Gencraft, the AI gizmo. But it is rather nice, and I thought it would be a good illustration of today’s topic. To wit: genealogy.
Several years ago I began to dig around in my mother’s family. She never spoke about them and I was rather curious. I had concentrated on her father’s family, mainly because that seems to be the dune thing in genealogy. My sister also worked on it, and she was more conscientious than I was, finding out so much more. But I’ve decided to switch to puzzling out mum’s female family line. It’s a lot more difficult, and so far I’ve only gone back a few generations. Helped by someone else who seems to share some family members.
I have found out that my mother, Margaret Jane nee Briggs was the daughter of Margaret Jane nee Pickering. I remember that one of my mum’s cousins lived in the same street as I did, years ago. That MJ was the daughter of Sarah Jane nee Walker, who was the daughter of Margaret Jane Minnikin. And there we stop for now. They all lived, married, and died around the same part of the north east of England. So that was my Great-Great Grandmother. She was born in 1848 and died in 1883, at the age of 35. Very young, when you think that my own daughter is 37. Quite sobering really. Her daughter Sarah Jane was one of a pair of twins.
When I was born, mum decided that I was not to be yet another Margaret Jane, especially as the name was popular in my father’s family as well. I’m slowly buying copies of the certificates of birth, marriage and death, as I can find them. I’ve also taken out a sub to Ancestory.co.uk. Who knows, maybe a DNA test will be next!
Once upon a time I had a domain, indelible.nu. I bought it from the “market” in Namecheap, as an unwanted domain someone else had had. I decided to have a blog and Indelible was it. However, it was sadly neglected. At one point hackers got in and had their way with it. Then yesterday I had a warning from Namecheap that it was about to expire, so what was I going to do about it. I thought about renewing it, but at £35 a year, or thereabouts, I’d have to have a good reason for keeping it. And that was not blogging, since this is my blog now. (It’s my blog now Dave. If you know, you know.) I have two other .nu domains, moody and songs. That’s enough of the expensive side of domains, I think.
So typical of me to wait until the last minute. I wanted to keep all the posts from indelible and mash them into this site. I tried the export function but that was going to take a year and a day to download. I tried a plug in, but that was ditto. So I decided the only thing to do was to cut and paste with my own fair hands, and add the posts that way.
I set to work and felt I had accomplished something. Until I realised that I had three pages of links to posts, not one, and it was already getting late. Arghhhh! There was nothing for it. A quick shower and then a good, hot cup of tea. And work at it, one by one, making sure to edit the publishing date as well. There were a few comments but I couldn’t transfer those over, so they had to go. I am sorry about that. Very few people, if any, actually look at this blog. Which is the hardest part of blogging: knowing that no one is bothered to read this, even when I read and comment on theirs. Ah well.
So, that’s it. Indelible will run out today and that will be that. I’m sticking to This Is My Day.
I have a lot of time for the RSPCA, I really do. In the main, they do a lot of good in helping wildlife and mistreated pets. However: I do wish they would have sworn not to act officiously. They had the best intentions, I am sure, but what they did was take a placid, friendly, even affectionate tom cat and turn him into a frightened, aggressive and vicious creature. For the best intentions. But if I had that RSPCA official here I’d bite them.
I’ve been discovering the strange world of artificial intelligence. It’s been in the public eye a lot lately, with the screen writer’s strike and many actors joining in. I can see their point. If a film/TV studio can save megabucks by using a computer to write their scripts, then what is the point of hiring real people? To be honest, sometimes I think they have been using A.I. for donkey’s years with all the cut-and-copy films out in the past decade or so. Rehashes of what has already been done, instead of coming up with something new. But still, it is reprehensible of the studios to even spread the rumour that that is what they were planning.
Powered by WordPress & Theme by Anders Norén
