Tag: blogging

Update: How Did You Do?

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So, how was No Whining Wednesday? You can be honest. I will.

Before I do, for those new to NWW, see last weeks post HERE to understand what it is, what it’s about and how to participate. Tomorrow is our second week of the newest feature to The PBS Blog and I’m going to try to do better because I was a mess last week. I failed miserably.

AND, I didn’t even have any quarters.

You know what, I don’t even want to talk about it.

OK, OK, I will. But only because I like you. What had happend was…

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I woke up that morning to a situation that brought me to tears. Not just tears but TEARS. I was balling. Here I was balled up on the floor praying away the anguish on the first day, but that’s not all.

Eventually, I decided to be a big girl about it and clean myself up because I remembered that it was No Whining Wednesday and I wasn’t supposed to be whining, let alone crying. I decided I would make pancakes before I got to work. Usually I’d just grab a cup of coffee or maybe some fruit so I was treating myself. So I thought.

This is Tuesday so I’ll get all my complaining out the way now. I hate…OK, hate is such a strong word… I dislike very much the taste of pancakes using oil. I like to use butter instead. For the twenty-nine years I’ve been on this Earth, my pancakes have always done well using butter. Except last Wednesday. They started to stick. I changed pans, thinking it was because I wasn’t using the cast iron skillet. It started to stick again and not just a little bit but like crazy. So, I started again using oil. It started to stick again. I should mention my sister in law is visiting. My plan was to make us a nice breakfast this morning (since I admittedly let her feign for herself the first night.)

My sister-in-law, awakened by the noises coming from the kitchen, walks in.

“Don’t worry, I’ll still eat them. I don’t really know how to make pancakes myself.”

“But I do! I do know how to make pancakes! Uhhgg.”

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After giving the pan (the butter and the oil) a piece of my mind I remembered this was No Whining Wednesday (something I started) and that I was definitely not winning.

At the end of it all the pans started to behave themselves and my pancakes and turkey bacon came out lovely.

The rest of the day smoothed itself out and all of my locs are still here. By the end of the day Wednesday all was well. I think I even had enough time left in the day to watch a chick flick (which turned out to be whack but I didn’t complain. I’d already done enough of that.) As I think back on it now it didn’t turn out so bad (maybe I just needed to write it out?) but I definitely had a rocky start.

So, how about you? I know you did better than me.

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No Punctuation

Dear Love,

your voice is the sound of pages

I’ve been waiting to read my entire life

like run on sentences

in a book too perfect to end

tell me

how do you shackle power to punctuation

If I could

I would end this poem with a period

or place a comma in the places I need

to catch my breath

but you

will only rush to the tips of my fingers

you see love

will only leak

from the pores in my skin

like the sounds of many waters

flooding its way from Noah’s Ark

you shelter me

like an infant

carefully encased in its mother’s womb

before language existed

before there was ever a need of capital letters

dear captain

you chose us

before there was a thing called history

sucking at its mother’s breast

we are nurtured by the past

to understand the future

Dear Love,

you are the answer to every question

and the sound of your mercy

is the only thing worth setting my alarm clock to

so I’ve chosen to reverence you this way

with outstretched pieces of paper

and ink pens

and a medley of words

all purposed to form the letters of your name

all destined to sing your praise

with no punctuation

no commas

or periods

or apostrophes

just run on sentences

limitless

like sign language I don’t remember learning in Public School

and while my tongue clings to the roof of my mouth

while my heart waits

I’ll write you poems

in the form of prayers

on the palms of my hands

and I’ll leave them running

like fountains of compassion

overflowing the levees of thought

I’ll leave them open

unedited

unrevised

and grammatically incorrect

so you’ll read me

like you always do

and never forget what my heart looks like

with no punctuation

because all the world has ever needed

was love.

This week in Indie Publishing News

This week in Indie Publishing from Don.

Unknown's avatarDon Massenzio

art1Self-Publishing: An Insult to the Written Word or a Boon to the Industry?

In an article by author Laurie Gough titled Self-Publishing: An Insult to the Written Word, she argues that self-publishing is devaluing to the art of writing, disrespectful, and less desirable than sharing “a cabin on a Disney cruise with Donald Trump.”

A divisive statement, in more ways than one. To rub salt in the wound, the word “published” is put in quotation marks whenever used to refer to a self-published author.

Read the rest of this story HERE.

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Authors offer publishing secrets

Will this be the year to finally publish your manuscript that’s been collecting dust in a desk drawer? If becoming a published author is on your list of New Year’s resolutions, check out local resources to help you reach your goals.…

Read the rest of this story HERE.

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The 2017 State…

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The World We Live In

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We wake up in the mornings and we go to work or we go to our office if we work from home. We get the children ready for school and send them off. Kiss our husbands. Kiss our wives. We complain about our jobs or the traffic on the way. We go to the grocery store or we log into our social media accounts. We go about our day and we don’t pay attention nor are we prepared for the time when our days are interrupted. We dream like those in movies where disaster pierces the peace of those who never expected things to be different. Open your eyes and look around. Things are different. But we do not pay attention nor are we prepared. For those who do prepare, like the old man down the street with a basement filled with extra food and water, he is crazy. Even though we don’t really know what crazy is. He’s just it. A conspiracy theorist fool. He is mocked by those who go into the grocery stores never contemplating the moment when the land may no longer produce the potatoes they so casually lift into their carts. Never expecting that one day the land won’t produce and the trucks will no longer be capable of being driven to the store to put on the shelf the Idaho potatoes we never considered won’t be there one day.

We just go about our day, writing our books, taking our pictures, building our businesses and shopping at grocery stores we’ve claimed as our own. It will always be there when we need it, we say. Our desensitization to evil has gone unnoticed. Death itself is a past time no longer cloaked under the veil of mystery but walking around openly, shaking hands and taking bets. The constant fuel of white and black relations is just the same ole, same ole song we’ve been singing since the 1960s until we look up and a race war has begun (and I don’t trust the economy can take it. The old man is wise). Who knows what may come upon this Earth or if it will be our airport next time or our minds tampered with. Who knows where the next Manchurian Candidate will come from or who will hear the voices next, but I’m talking outside the box now, I shouldn’t do that. Isn’t that right?

Just as long as we can update our Facebook pages and RT our favorite Twitterbugs, maybe post a cool picture of yesterday’s meal on Instagram, all is well. Keep walking on the wheel. Hampsters spinning. People moving in the same place. Too busy living to live. Too busy to see the world ain’t safe no more. Louisiana dropped to freezing temperatures this weekend only to go back up to the seventies this week but that doesn’t mean anything. Half the continent is in the winter months. How fitting, for the love of the world has gone cold. A change has come and no one is paying attention.