Charles M. Schulz

“Snoopy: So this is the last day of the year. Another complete year gone by and what have I accomplished this year that I haven't accomplished every other year? Nothing! (He smiles.) How consistent can you get?”
Charles M. Schulz

Resolutions: 2024

My resolutions for 2024:

- gradually leaving all social media platforms
I already started doing this over the last few weeks, and I have already managed to accomplish so many tiny projects with the amount of time I have saved doing so.

- spending more time with my dogs
I lost my Koochooloo in 2023, and the other two — Hoppoo and Looloo — are not getting any younger, so I want to spend as much time as I can with them. 

- creating less waste
This is something I've already begun, but I want to challenge myself to bring my amount of waste to the minimum possible... and hopefully document the process.

- producing my own herbs and vegetables
Since I moved to the woods, I've experimented with this a little to see what works and what doesn't, and now that I have learned a little and possess a sunroom, I want to produce my own organic food as much as I can.

Rumi

“I want to sing like the birds sing, not worrying about who hears or what they think.”
Rumi

Toni Morrison

“If you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.”
Toni Morrison

Gratitude Girl

Today I wrote my last gratitude post on 
www.gratigi.blogspot.com.

Cold Weather

When it's cold...

First & Last

Today is the first day of the last week of 2023.

What can you accomplish in one week?

Farolitos & Luminaria

I read about farolitos and luminaria on https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day this morning and found the cultural aspect of it interesting.

Did you know?
"The tradition of lighting small lanterns on the night (or nights) before Christmas is an old one in what is now New Mexico, dating back to when the region belonged to colonial Spain and later to independent Mexico. Where one lives in New Mexico today, however, often determines what these paper lanterns are called. New Mexicans in the northern part of the state, around Santa Fe, call them farolitos, Spanish for “little lanterns.” Those further south, around Albuquerque, are more likely to call them luminaria (or luminarias), a word that began appearing in English publications around the 1930s, and that is today used more broadly to refer to such lanterns lit for other occasions, such as memorials, weddings, etc. Luminaria comes to English from Spanish, but the word has been around with exactly the same spelling since the days of Late Latin. It ultimately traces to the classical Latin word luminare, meaning “window,” and to lumen, meaning “light.” It is related to other light-bearing words such as luminary and illuminate."

(taken from Merriam-Webster)
To see it in context or listen to the pronunciation, check the link: https://www.merriam-webster.com/word-of-the-day (December 24, 2023). 

Sandra Bullock

"The rule is you have to dance a little bit in the morning before you leave the house because it changes the way you walk out in the world."
Sandra Bullock

Winter Wordplay

Winter is here!

Why not begin this season with a few winter words?

https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/winter-words

Yalda

Yaldā is an ancient festival celebrated on the winter solstice in some countries. On this longest night of the year, in Iran, friends and family get together, sometimes all night, to drink, read and recite poetry, dance, and eat nuts and fruit, particularly pomegranates and watermelons, because their red color symbolizes the sun... and light, which always prevails.

Papaya

I cut open a papaya...and surprise! 
What is the universe trying to tell me?

Soft Language

George Carlin's Soft Language never gets old:
https://youtu.be/7n2PW1TqxQk?si=F44ckBwv3wX97iGu

Dearest Devised Darling

 

 

Parker S. Huntington

“The existence of a word proves that someone in the history of humanity felt the same way I did and gave it a name. It means we're not alone. If there's a word for what we're feeling, we're never alone.”
Parker S. Huntington

Book Number 7

 

Effects of Emotion

a must-read article for those who write memoirs:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2676782/

A Useful Tip

If you want to learn a new language, listen to some music in that language. Then choose a song you liked (begin with slower songs) and look up its lyrics. Listen to the song again... and again... and follow the written words.

Helen Keller

“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart.”
Helen Keller

Mentor

While revisiting the English language as an adult and after spending years studying French literature, I needed time and practice to adjust to certain English words, which sounded or were spelled (almost) the same way as in French but had different meanings, sometimes even opposite meanings.

If you've read Languages & Life Lessons, you know what I mean, for I've mentioned several such words.

Earlier today, I looked up Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day, as I do every morning, and today's word, mentor, meaning "trusted guide," took me back to the early nineties and my challenge in remembering that it had nothing to do with the French word menteur, which means "liar" in English. 

Reflections

 

Henry David Thoreau

“There is some of the same fitness in a man's building his own house that there is in a bird's building its own nest. Who knows but if men constructed their dwellings with their own hands, and provided food for themselves and families simply and honestly enough, the poetic faculty would be universally developed, as birds universally sing when they are so engaged? But alas! we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have built, and cheer no traveller with their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter?”
Henry David Thoreau

A New Memoir

Yesterday I posted https://afarinrava.blogspot.com/2023/12/not-always.html, which may have seemed too cryptic because this morning I received a message from a fellow writer asking me what I meant.

Please accept the following as the best explanation I can provide at this time:

I wrote a short memoir in the last few months, and during the editing phase it changed into something I did not expect. I plan to publish it in January 2024. You'll understand what I meant in my previous post once you have the book in your hands.

Not Always

Words make sentences, and sentences make paragraphs... usually but not always.

Michael Bassey Johnson

“In solitude, listen to your heart, for at that moment, it speaks nothing but the truth.”
Michael Bassey Johnson

To Arthur Fletcher

For my contribution to Dearest Devised Darling: Anthology, I chose Arthur Fletcher as the fictional character to whom I wrote. Although I wrote the letter, it didn't come from me. I imagined what another character from The Girl in the Scrapbook by Carolyn Ruffles would want to say to him. An attentive reader may notice the initials at the end of the letter.

Words. Mots. Parole...

I dedicate last night and this day to the word nerd in me. 

I dreamed of words all night. 

https://youtu.be/NhK_XazdBUk?si=MBC1WaaaLSkVevaK

Editing & Transformation

I'm editing... 
and I've transformed my upcoming book into something I did not expect. 

Sanober Khan

“I was coming together...
limb by limb, after being broken
for an infinity.”
Sanober Khan

Fonts

Publishers recommend certain fonts for fiction and other fonts for nonfiction. Designers have their own opinions on which fonts to use and which to avoid. Ultimately, whoever designs a book often chooses the right font for it. 

Since I design my own books, I spend a little time choosing its font based on the context and my own taste. I consider this a fun part of the book publishing process. 

While creating the anthology Dearest Devised Darling, I initially chose a font that looked like calligraphy. It matched the context of the book beautifully, and reading it seemed easy enough, so I thought I had found the perfect font for the book. I formatted the book with that font, using a slightly larger font size than normal and a tiny bit more space between the lines, just as I do for all my books, to make reading easier on the eyes. Then I uploaded it to Amazon and requested a proof. 

On the day I expected the proof to arrive, as soon as I heard the mail carrier's car, I stepped outside the cabin to get it. The mail carrier wondered about my excitement, and I told her the package contained the proof of my new book. I opened it immediately, and she waited because she wanted to see my book. After I inspected the cover, I handed it to her. She opened the book and said, "Oh, I can't read this." "What do you mean you can't read it?" I asked. She explained, "This kind of writing is hard for me to read. The way the letters are... I just can't." I thanked her for telling me that and said goodbye. 

I went back in my cabin and changed the font entirely because I thought if one person, especially one who has to decipher different handwritings every day, can't read it, some other people may have trouble reading it as well. 

Here are the two fonts:

December 2023