THAT is not my mantra! Word Clouds!

Sunday Scribblings:   Mantra… something that you repeat to help you concentrate while you are meditating.  

     Are you using your blog as a mantra…the ritual you repeat day after day to help you concentrate…a meditation of sorts?  If that is so then you probably want to be better, more interesting, less repetitive.  In the process you wander around the web searching for the perfect words/ideas to use.   Maybe you simply need to see your words scrambled or categorized.  Why don’t you try creating some word clouds?  Even those of you that are very serious writers should have some fun on Sunday! AND your might find some answers to questions you didn’t even ask.  That is what happened to me.

 Wordle

http://www.wordle.net/. Images of Wordles are licensed

     
     Wordle has been in my library of fun quick creative toys for quite a while.  You type in your words, a short poem for example, and wordle creates a cloud randomizing the words.  I find myself seeing the words in a different way.  My mind likes that.  It is innovative, interesting and easy. 

Tagul
     Day before yesterday I notices a different kind of a word cloud generated by Tagul.  By running your cursor over the cloud you can select a word and google will take you to the websites using the word.  Tagul decides which words to use by doing a search, gathering all the words in a blog and then cutting the list to the 300 most used.     (I made this cloud for my other blog, Retire in Style.)  Next it created a cloud making the frequently used words bigger than those appearing less frequently.  HOLY COW MARIE!!!  Three guess which words I used the very most.  A?  THE?  JUST? AND? I?  Nope….the prize winner was the ever present THAT…that.  I could not believe my eyes.  I keep telling myself that it is a good thing to have this kind of information…it will make me a tighter writer.  I am feeling hopeful.  I don’t think that the word deserves so much play.  In fact, it would seem that it could be omitted completely. This is what the cloud looked like.

     I have decided I will not use the dreaded word for as many posts as possible.  My mantra is WORDS…!  Wish me luck.

b

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I Couldn’t Abandon it Gradually

abandon, gradual, precise
  
I write A LOT about living with intention.  It would seem that I believe that action says a lot more that a boat load of words!  Then why was it so hard to intentionally find a new name for my blog?  Barbara’s Travels has been around for several years…but the emphasis and the content of this blog has changed a great deal.
     The shift has been gradual, almost indiscernible to anyone but me. As the blog evolved, I found it hard to keep the name and harder to change it.  It was as though I were abandoning something that had become very dear to me.  I even set up two other blogs to avoid changing the name of this one.  So I changed headers, colors, fonts, always avoiding the ultimate challenge of changing the name.  And that was precisely what I needed to do.
     Then I found that my blogs were being kicked into the spam folders on some prompt sites because I had the word ‘travel‘ in both the title and the address.  While I like to write, I like to scrawl for a purpose even more.  The last straw was  last week’s when Three Word Wednesday kicked me into the spam folder.  I have been posting here forever.  But the spam-kicker-outer does not have a personal attachment to me..
     So that is why.  I finally bit the bullet and changed from Barbara’s Travels to It Crossed My Mind.  Now the blog header says IT CROSSED MY MIND formerly Barbara’s Travels.  I hope you all like the name.  I suppose the blog template will need to change again to suit the name better but I am not going to shock my system too much at one time.
Thank you IIIWW for the prompt.  I love that you think of me when you choose these words.  They are perfect!

b

When Dragons were Real Sunday Scribblings

Cover of The Name of the Rose

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Sunday Scribblings

#216 – dragon

     Did you know that there was a time when man did not know if giraffes or dragons were real?  I actually had never really thought about the line that divides the real from the mythical.  In a day and age where the only thing under the sun that we really wonder about is space aliens, we have a hard time wrapping our minds around the fact that in the history of man a fire breathing dragon may well have been as real as a giraffe or a rhinoceros.  

     In a book by Umberto Eco called The Name of the Rose released in 1980, Eco wrote a spell binding mystery set in a labyrinthine medieval library during medieval times.  While there were many plots and subplots, what caught my interest was the narratives about the drawing in the margins of the books.  The images of mythical creatures were considered to be the works of a demented mind. The drawings included dragons and other mythical creatures as well as those that actually existed on the African continent.  In a library that only monks could enter with a special key, the wisdom of the ages were hidden from the eyes of the ordinary man.  These creatures were supposedly evil creations of men possessed by the devil or demons.  Keeping the knowledge about them under lock and key seemed the best idea.

     Isn’t is interesting that even today when all knowledge is at our finger tips, there are those that would burn or ban our books to keep feeble minds from being exposed to the evil dragons hidden between the pages.  As for those aliens that may live in space…if mythical dragons and real giraffes are any clue, we have a 50% 50% chance we may get to see a space creature someday.

     Thank you Sunday Scribblings.  I liked this one.

b

Be sure to read about Umberto Eco…his studies have taken him to some very strange places in the history or man. AND I did love this book…The Name of the Rose!

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God Was His Imaginary Friend

 

Writer’s Island

Imaginary Friends Prompt #4

Imaginary friends are those shadowy creatures that inhabit a child’s mind and insane people’s world.  They have been a source of fascination for me since my next to the oldest grandson decided that God was his imaginary friend.  His other grandmother, the one he loved the best, told him about God and how he was always around even though you could not see him.  Ethan just decided to make him a personal friend and invited God to play Legos.
There was a TV cartoon not so many years ago called “Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends” and the premise for the story was that when the child outgrew his friend, Foster’s was where it went to live.  Clowns, tigers and one blue dot lived in the home waiting to be claimed by another child.  They could be adopted and used over and over.  Isn’t that a lovely idea?
Ethan did outgrow talking to God and is almost 17 now.  Somehow it makes me a little sad.  Would that we could all have a friend as special as that.

b

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Hand-me-downs…thoughts on sharing!

I woke up thinking about hand-me-downs this morning.  I often wonder where these musings come from.  Somewhere in the back of my brain there must be a drawer that needs to be emptied.  For whatever reason I need to work things out so I can put them back in the drawer in a more organized fashion.
I am a child of World War II and heard all my life about shortages and the lack of elastic for underwear.  I think buttons became very important in those days.  My aunt never let my mother forget the day my panties fell off on a downtown street.  This beautiful aunt went into a store and bought me what I needed.  I was about three years old.  But I never wore hand-me-downs. I had no idea what that even was. 
So when I was a substitute teacher for 13+ years, I was not in tune with the fact that my students might not be wearing clothes that were specifically purchased for them.  In one case I called a little boy Raymond for a whole week only to find out that his name was really Tom. He was wearing his big brother’s old soccer shirt and the name on the front was…you guessed it…Raymond.   I can just imagine him going home and telling his mom that I was a lot like her…I was always calling him by his bother’s name!
Now my grandchildren are being raised in an entirely different world.  Their parents can afford to purchase the very best for them.  They do not wear things out and when they outgrown the wonderful clothes, they pass them on to a friend.  Some of my granddaughter favorite outfits were worn by a neighbor girl she admires. 
We are all products of the times.  Each generation brings a new perspective to the things all of us have in common.  I suppose the old saying the more things change the more they stay the same applies.
I feel better now.  Thank you for listening.

b

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Grasping at Straws IIIWW

     It is almost spooky when the words that come up on a prompt like Three Word Wednesday  were chosen for me!  How does our wonderful guru do that?

     I have been preoccupied so I did not notice the IIIWW prompt until this morning.  Dread, grasp, pacify were the words our friend chose for us to use.  I know you all will relate to this turn of events in our lives.  My husband is sick!  It is as simple as that.  We have been married almost 50 years.  It has not been easy nor have we always been happy.  But, when all is said and done, we are a team…two people that know what the other is thinking even before they know they are going to think it!  I do not like for him to be sick at all.

Brayden and Grandpa (Poppa)

      Like so many woman my age, I have always been the puny one.  My ailments have ruled a great deal of our life.  My husband, on the other hand, has never complained much and never talks about how he feels.  So what happens…he gets sick and all of a sudden I feel fine (almost).  I have dreaded this day and I find us grasping at straws…well, maybe not but it is not looking as good as it could.  Our family is a rock and they do not try to pacify me with empty words.  We are just hunkering down, having fun and enjoying today.  In a week or two we will have better answers.  But until then….well you know how it is.

b 

 

A Child’s Game…PEEK-A-BOO!

PEEK-A-BOO

Peek-a-boo

I see you!

Want to play a game?

It’s really lots of fun.

I know you’re out of breath,

So you won’t need to run.

Here is how you play

A game that’s fun at night.

You can hide someplace close

While I shut my eyes real tight.
 

Look!

 I see you hiding
Around behind the tree!

I found you right away

Because you peeked at me.

I think my game is fun

But I like your game too.

You can peek at me

And I will peek at you.

PEEK-A-BOO!

You can’t hide, even behind a wall.

You’re right behind that iphone…who you going to call?

Peek-a-boo!  b LINKED TO MONDAY POETRY TRAIN A Child’s Game…Peek-a-boo!

THE Recipe….

http://sundayscribblings.blogspot.com/
Sunday Scribblings
Recipe

They longed for the perfect recipe…the recipe for happiness, success, enlightenment, love…the perfect pattern their life could take that would be a solution for all that troubled them.  A book came into their hands on one sunny day.  When they opened the book, they found one word written on every page.  It was so simple.  They could not imagine why they didn’t see it before.

b

Three Word Wednesday … Weightless Joy!

Three Word Wednesday
fear, ignore, weightless

They floated on the cloud 
of weightless joy as
they gazed down at
the baby.  Still, fear of what could come
clouded the bliss.
They searched for answers in
books and from sages.  
Then the truth wrote itself
across their heart.

Ignore thoughts of what
might be and celebrate what is. 

b

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The Courage to be Happy! Sunday Scribblings

Post for Sunday Scribblings
#214 Courage
     I am one of those people the wants to know more about you!  I am curious beyond all that is reasonable.  Each week when I take a look at Sunday Scribblings, I am curious…who is Megg and what is that beautiful Laini doing with Clementine Pie this weekend?  I will go to your blog just to see if you are doing okay…is your poem singing of sunny skies or crying for healing?  I am funny that way.

     Megg Genge, one our Sunday Scribbling prompters, was the one I checked on today.  I was reading her very carefully crafted posts and then went to the About section at the top of the blog page…About Megg!  She talked about healing and searching for what was wrong…things just did not seem right and she was unhappy about it.  She quoted Ghanhi (“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”) and Henry Ford (“If you think you can do a thing or think you can’t do a thing, you’re right.”).  Then she wrote something that hit me right between the eyes…a courageous statement of a woman that finally figured it out.  She said so simply:

Are you ready for this? There is nothing wrong with [me].

     No excuses for things gone wrong.  No crying over spilled milk. Can you believe that? Could it be that there is nothing wrong with any of us?  It seems to me we forget to make our lives what we want them to be.  I have come to believe that we think too much…about ourselves, about our planet, about our neighbors.  We think so much that we  forget to live and enjoy this life we are given!  It takes a lot of courage to accept that we are just fine.  It is hard to go out there and live a life with purpose.  So we don’t go out there.  True?  I don’t know.  I know less thinking and more doing works for me.  Pain goes away, depression eases and my mind glows.
     I just thought you needed to know.  Bye…until I see you again.

b