As should be obvious by now, I have not posted any blog material in a long time. The comment-spam issues have not been resolved by the host, and I lack the time or the interest to deal with missing plug-ins.
However, of greater concern is that my employer (new ownership) has a policy of prior approval of any employee dealings with the media. Since I am in need of employment in today’s downward spiraling economy, I am willing to shut down the blog rather than agree to having it pre-approved. However, under no circumstances will my website itself be shut down. I may move it to another host, for rather obvious reasons, but it will not be shut down.
I thought we were making progress with the comment-spam as there was none for a few days. Hah! Now, there’s a flood of it again. Sorry, readers, but eventually, this problem will go away.
We continue to experience a flood of “comment-spam” with multiple links to mostly salacious websites. There are solutions for this, and I have been waiting for the host to implement one of them. For example, a software plug-in to eliminate the comment-spam would be a good decision, with multiple choices available.
For anyone not familiar with comment-spam, it is directed at the SEOs, not the blog itself. Persons of lesser intelligence and few morals are looking for ways to elevate their rankings with the search engines. In the process of doing this, they are selling their souls to the devil, of course.
While we wait for a solution, the highly tedious and unpleasant chore of deleting the comment-spam one at a time continues. Bathing in disinfectant after dealing with such garbage is highly recommended.
http://www.shirleyannparker.com/
Grapevines really talk! And I do mean the plant kind, not just the people kind.
I suspect most of us think the office grapevine got called that because grapevines spread rapidly, from a very small root to where they cover yards of concrete or brick wall, especially here in Southern California. If it’s true for an area that once was desert, prior to the massive aqueduct system, I’m sure it’s the same in other temperate or sub-tropical climates. Rumor does travel as rapidly as the leafy, and sometimes very aggressive, grapevine itself grows.
Every Fall this particular grapevine turns a riotous shade of yellow, orange and red leaves before dropping them all for the winter. In early Spring, the tender green shoots begin the process all over again. By late June, those leaves are a deep and shiny green, almost completely covering and decorating the cinder block walls around the backyard. Tiny purple-black fruit appears, but not before the even tinier, creamy yellow blossoms pop open.
I don’t know what’s going on, but there is a sound that is like the pattering of fairy raindrops throughout the grapevine. You can stand next to the grapevine and hear it! You can move further down the wall and still hear it! It’s not the buzz of honeybees. There were none in the vicinity, and with the terrible fungus that has already wiped out millions of commercial hives, let alone the wild colonies, there may not be many bees to be seen this year. (Please note that’s millions of hives lost, meaning billions of bees. This is a heartbreaker in the making. With worker bees leaving the colonies, we have very serious agricultural problems on the horizon because of this disaster. The queens, drones, and other remaining bees cannot survive alone. And they are desperately needed to pollinate our food crops.)
But whatever is producing the sound in the grapevine, I can assure you that the grapevine talks! I have heard it with my own ears.
www.shirleyannparker.com/discoveries.htm
It is obviously one of those years, a time when nothing is supposed to get done. One thing after the other has broken, been done incorrectly, or otherwise interfered with the accomplishment of anything creative. Just a few examples:
a highly incompetent plumber, sent by a “home warranty” company
a car dealership that shuts down without warning or notification
an air conditioner on the fritz during high temperatures
a computer that goes belly-up for ten days plus
the usual frustrations of employer demands vs employee needs
a Jury Duty call, where the recording requests that I “get a good night’s sleep and come in with a smile on my face” tomorrow morning. Now, really!
All these things, and more, eventually provide grist for the writer’s mill. In the meantime, at least I and my writing colleagues are moving forward with marketing. Be sure to check out http://www.nothingbinding.com/ and join us!!
http://www.shirleyannparker.com/
Are you new to earthquake country? Do you know how to live in earthquake country? Go to this website to download or order your free copy of Putting Down Roots in Earthquake Country.
The Spring 2006 editions of the handbooks are available in English and Spanish for the San Francisco Bay Region and for Southern California. They may also be available at various local community locations, such as hardware stores.
Links on the website to other areas include similar publications for the Northern California Coastal Region, Nevada and Alaska. Please become informed and also teach your family members and friends about living in earthquake country.
Having recently had yet another “opportunity” to ride as a passenger with someone who talks on his cellphone–or worse–almost the entire time he’s driving, I’m now being extremely picky about who drives me anywhere. What could be worse than talking on a cellphone? Looking down at the cellphone and trying to find contact numbers to dial out, while driving with just one hand and paying almost zero attention to traffic!!
Sorry, friends and coworkers, but it’s just not going to happen while I’m in your car. I don’t care how big a chauvinist you are, how bad your attitude is, or how huge your ego. When you’re driving a vehicle that weighs thousands of pounds, you are supposed to be IN CONTROL of that weapon; it can kill or maim a child, an adult or someone’s beloved pet. Accidents can happen in a split second to any one of us, even those who have a safe driving record. You’d darn well better give 99% of your attention to the road and others around you. Lock your cellphone in the trunk if you’re so addicted to it. And that’s as politely as I can put it, though plenty of other phrases come to mind.
From now on, it’s going to be a case of “I’ll meet you there!” if I have to go where you’re going. And that’s from someone who hates to drive in metropolitan areas.
www.shirleyannparker.com/discoveries
You may remember my earlier (April 11, 2006) posting and advice to visit the website of the Coalition of Mobilehome Owners - California, that is, http://www.comocal.org/, for the latest information on the seriousness of laws that will likely harm the residents of mobile home parks.
I’m passing on to my readers an update on the “PROTECT OUR HOMES” INITIATIVE. It is officially on the November 2006 ballot as Proposition 90. Comocal considers this to be very serious. Although Proposition 90 appears as an Eminent Domain initiative, it is said to be a Trojan Horse. And we all know, or should know from history, the havoc that type of horse can wreak in our lives! Prop 90 could eliminate statewide Rent Control and even the Mobilehome Residency Law. Such an outcome would be devastating to the owners of mobile homes. Comocal is urging you to call 1-800-929-6061 to learn more.
While you’re at the Coalition’s website, read about the book Mobile Home Wars by Donald DeVore. The author has collected more than 28 years of research regarding legislative activities to classify and regulate mobile homes as real property, and to protect owners of mobile homes by affording them the same rights and protections as every other homeowner. The book is available for purchase through an outside link.
www.shirleyannparker.com/discoveries.htm
At the request of a fellow writer, I’ve been trying to come up with a topic for his newsletter, a topic that’s of interest to writers. While pondering this, as I go about daily responsibilities in an increasingly violent world, the faint and insistent hammering from one of the many storage rooms in my brain finally got my attention.
What is it that writers are interested in? To misquote Charles Dickens, it is humanity that should be a writer’s business, and therefore of interest to each writer. For myself, I write to examine the society we live in, always preferring to write about the better sides of people. We are not two-dimensional, after all. I don’t like stories that don’t have happy endings, yet have written some myself that leave the conclusion to the reader’s imagination. Overall, I prefer to uplift people, not deepen their sorrows.
Yet efforts to write uplifting stories are too often blasted away by the daily horrors on the news. Always there is something barbaric going on, as humanity regresses further and further. It has long since been said that an eye for an eye will soon leave the entire world blind. And it is true. It is also true that we cannot ignore criminal actions: To do so encourages more of the same. We cannot allow cowardly, infiltrating terrorists to take over our lives and our countries.
Even so, to see innocent, sobbing, bandaged children with half of their faces blown away by indiscriminate bombing, tears apart every woman’s heart. There is never a valid reason to overreact and attack the innocent. It is men on all sides who start wars, and it is men on all sides who must listen to women and stop the violence now. We are sick and tired of shoveling up behind you. We are devastated by the cruelty you inflict on us and upon our children. We are heartsick at the maimed bodies and ruined lives. And like Nero, world leaders smirk and fiddle, their followers rape and pillage, while Rome burns and millions of innocent people suffer horribly before dying. Wake up and see what you are doing for what it is – carnage.
The world as a whole needs to turn away from the chains with which Satan has people bound. Change your attitudes and your actions! Change them now, before it is too late, before there is no world left for any of us, let alone future generations! Regardless of what the warped sectors of your cultures teach you, there is no honor in what you are doing. Wanton killing will not provide you entrance into your perception of the afterlife, however it is named. What you are doing is madness! Nations are permitted, even expected, to defend themselves. We are all immensely proud of our servicemen and women who perform that thankless task in the armed forces. However, nations do not have the right to go on the offensive, to take one hundred lives in place of a single one lost. Blood lust feeds upon itself and just keeps growing.
Simple retribution is the basic law of the universe: For every action, there is a reaction. We bring that upon ourselves with every decision we make, especially when we seek the downfall of others. Vengeance, on the other hand, belongs to God alone.
Time can get away from any of us, without our even noticing. It’s incredible that we are soon coming up on 4 July, but prior to that is the launch of the shuttle Discovery on 1 July.
I hope the space agency experts are right, that she is safe to fly, but at least two, and perhaps more of them disagree on that. The problem of foam separating and falling off the ice/frost ramps has not been fully resolved. And I’m as ill-at-ease as anyone. We were very fortunate in July 2005, when the foam that broke off on Discovery’s last flight did not do serious damage.
The official attitude (if the astronauts’ new technology sees damage that would make it unsafe to return to Earth, a second shuttle, Atlantis, would be sent to rescue them) still boggles the mind somewhat. A second shuttle would have the same potential problem, since future modifications will likely not be finished by July. There is no third shuttle yet capable of bringing two other shuttle crews back to earth from the International Space Station, nor can the space station support that many astronauts, and if there were and it could, the unresolved problem from potentially damaging pieces of foam is still there.
I fully agree that the space station must be completed, if it is to serve its intended purpose. It just seems unreasonable that the problem that caused the Columbia disaster of 2003 has not been fully solved. Yet the search for a solution involved highly complex research, as well as an emotionally charged decision to launch that the best scientific minds cannot agree on, so who am I to put in my two cents’ worth? Still, I feel anxiety, and pray that these brave souls will complete their missions and return to us. I do not wish to add more names and faces to my tribute before it is time. The problem now is one we know about, one we should have resolved.