I’m saddened to hear about the 5.9 scaled earthquake that has struck the Gansu state of China in the last 24 hours. It is an area that I have a great appreciation for, having visited twice. I don’t often travel such great distances multiple times, but after my first visit to Gansu, I had to go back for more…more mountains, history, massive carvings in cliffs, temples, monasteries, noodle shops (their capital, Lanzhou, is known throughout China by name, the way…
Now I’m writing the introduction to what it was like to leave the nation I’d lived for about seven and a half years during the Covid epidemic’s breakout. China was where it began. That’s not in question. Nor is it an issue to me beyond the fact that I was a resident of China at that time, so I was near some of the early real social earthquakes as they happened, and some of what I’m writing in this book…
This poem is the result of a poetry workshop assignment from the course I’m signed up for with Buddy Wakefield. Our meetings are each Sunday, and this week, our task was to write a warning label. It has not been reviewed by the community yet. Feel free to leave your feedback below. Be well there~ Warning! I’m a sharp-tongued artist with a penchant for kale Willing to build art, direct, at you. From books to sculptures to lesson-plans yo, I’m…
Creating my next book has me considering a Frame Narrative style for the fifteen/sixteen chapters in six or so main sections that I’ll be putting together a bit like the last book with the pictures of China. And, so what that made me think about is the Voice. The voice of the book needs to have particular ears perked for it, in my mind anyway. You’ll notice that I mentioned many who helped with that in the last one. While…
So, school has been busy. Good busy, but busy nonetheless. I accidentally started studying the Thai language and am apparently enrolled and doing fairly well in a Chinese language course that I already have credit for, and apparently achieved the minor last term, but hey, that’s cool. Languages are fun. Loving how Thai is built~ They wrap vowels around consonants and are grammatically similar to English with the SVO thang. Good stuff. Sticking with Chinese solidly though. So much good…
As my most recent history is with the Chinese system, that’s where my knowledge-base and tool-reflexes lay, but I won’t recommend that as a target this year as they have a system of isolation and quarantine that I wouldn’t wish on anyone. That said, depending on the goals of this student, there are still a lot of places to start that are more general than not. I used to use https://www.eslcafe.com/quite a lot, but that was many years ago, and it…
This year has been_ well… Yes. It has. There are many people saying that this year was tougher or kind, rougher or fine… Truth of the matter is that something to the tune of 7 billion people had 365 days and that leads to at least 2.555 trillion days’ worth of experiences. Think about that. One day to the next, a better or tougher day for each individual. Then, maybe a single day can have more than one way to…
I was going to share a new post that I wrote today, but found one that I am going to be installing from before I left China instead. It is a found-post that didn’t get uploaded. Following that, I’ll comment on a few of the things I mentioned and include a trimmed down version of what I’d prepared, since I largely said six months ago, what I wrote this afternoon. I think one of the reasons I didn’t post it…
Hi there~ I’ve got a holiday at the moment so I’m working on the eclectic photo-project that will come to be and my mom will be 79 next week, so I’m sharing 79 images from the next collection with you. I’m trying to keep the thing to no more than 600 pages. It’s not easy though. So, I’m breaking it into three sections. The first is almost complete. Below are a few. They will circulate at random and have no…
Hi there~ I hope this finds you well. Since last we visited, I’ve settled into a new town and a new job. I’m doing my best to keep up with a rugged work-load and keep looking good while I’m at it. The job is busy as all bones~ I’m managing the English department covering 7th to 12th grades. Six grades, two classes each ~ preparing events and giving presentations. That, while teaching 26 hours a week~ That, while watching the…