One Proud Post

Last month, I received an email from @pamkirst2014. She had written about a weekly/bi-weekly theme. “The contributor,” she had written, “should share “One Proud Post” from their blog.” She had given me some dates to choose from; I chose the the top one: December 24. I sat in front of my laptop in the morning to write this post but something came up and I got busy throughout the day. At 5:00 p.m., I remember again. And here I am still trying to find out which one post I’m proud of.

I have published more than 250 articles on my blog Stories of Sandeept since I started it in 2015. There are so many posts that I’m proud of. Which one should I choose? Please bear my rant as I decide to share the link to the One Proud Post. (I’ll take names of others but won’t share the link here.)

The first article that comes to my mind is “Some Women Who Died For Love”. This Valentine eve post got a huge boost from Blogger’s World when it was published. It still is my highest viewed post till date. Someone even plagiarized it on Quora!

“4 Exemplary Stories of Friendship From the Mahabharata” is the next one I’m proud out. It’s one post that is keeping my blog busy even when I don’t post a thing.

No doubt, I’m proud of these posts but showing my pride solely on the basis of statistics feels… odd. There must be others that I’m proud of, based on their content.

I’m now remembering a lot of articles that I wrote on Nepali. A lot of them were related to politics and so many predictions I have made have come true. (I should be proud but these predictions have had negative outcomes!) @onetarhayes often complains of those “foreign” script that she cannot understand. Mentioning them here makes no sense at all.

There are several posts related to book reviews, music and movies that I have loved. One article about the Nepali folk-music band “Night” is the one I remember the most. Whoever has heard them, loves them. But very few people talk about them. Very few mainstream media talk about them. Even in this surge of YouTube content in Nepal, they continue to remain underground most of the time. I feel great that I found them and wrote something about them.

But discovering others is not the most difficult task in the world. The most difficult thing is to find yourself. I have struggled a lot trying to find myself. Once, inspired by love, I wrote a letter to my Soul-Mate. I still read the letter to remind myself I am capable of loving someone unconditionally but also regret that I was not brave enough. Then, there are articles in which I wrote about near-death experiences. For a few days after such events, a rush of inspiration would come upon me, but it would fade away and I would feel more miserable.

To admit I am miserable, that I am not “the wisest” or “the most-hardworking”, and to confess that I am hiding a ton of problems under my smile was the hardest thing I had to do. This I did on my post: “Isolation”. This is the first and only article I was scared of posting. Before posting, I had to ask my best friend and friends from college, “Will you believe me if I say I am not friendly, that I deliberately push people away from me?” Only when they ensured that they would, I posted it. And the response I received was nothing short of magic. We opened up a lot. I came to know so many things about my friends, and in the process, I discovered something about myself. All of us have experienced nightmares. Everyone has faced problems in friendship and families. But we all crave for love, and only love can help us escape the “hell” we experience. And that’s the post, I’ll forever be proud of.

#oneproudpost

Deads turning in graves?

@pamkirst2014 may I know why the first three blogcasts are inaccessible? I did make one and I would have loved to hear my voice again. My old voice to compare notes.

Hello Everyone!

Thanks Pam and everyone.

It was the 19th of August 2015 AD when this forum was found. I was asked to ‘step down’ from the post of admin after four months because as per the other two admins my presence was ‘intimidating.’ My author access was also revoked: perhaps because my presence was considered ‘threatening.’

I was happy to have been part of this forum. I was active. If I keep contributing for more than four months in the days to come: I would be showing how much more mature I have been.

I found Pam and Collate to be kind then and now.

. Izza Ifzaal the poetess from Pakistan. Shine Ferrer from Philippines. Fatima the adept. Samira. Nandita. Rishuu. Devika. Varjak Baby. They all taught me something or the other: some more than others. The chiropractor whose name began with M(Edit: Meg Sorrick who took grammar weekly article features) The couple who travelled on a bus were kind to me too.

After 2008 when I was active on Madphilosophers forum created by another Pam who was from Germany, and The Couch forum where I learnt tricks of trade from Xanthos(China;) Monk2400, Henry Quirk(Voice of Lafayette, Louisiana) and Susan Lien Whigham herself: I found a temporary abode on this forum. Then moved on to create couple more blogs.

I learnt a lot from Heather too.

James Harbeck is popular now. If he says otherwise he’s lying. He was on Peter Schmies test scorers list: only person who entertained me when I tried contacting them. He let me write an article titled “Moksha” on his site as a guest author. I think I also discovered Win Wenger or a look alike blogging with an alias “My Place” when I was interacting with Varjak who had immense psychic awareness.

There were many others who let me interact with them. Let me feel that I belonged to an international community of bloggers. WordPress engineers were very kind. I kept saying things about WordPress and compared it to Google Blogger: because I was not going to make it to freshly pressed. Originality was always a concern. Many people including another Anand(Art flows in my veins) from Delhi were among objectors. I tried to be as original as possible. I discovered Tohu Verse. I started taking my own pictures. I still make no money from blogging because government and local people have taken everything away from me. I lived like a convicted felon. I know what afterlife looks like and most of it is because of the Tibetan Book of Dead by Padmasambhava and Supernatural TV series. I still watch movies on cheap websites as I can’t afford Netflix. I had a laptop once and only a smartphone now. I realized by 2017 that I was very popular despite being poor. It might be infamy but as Oscar Wilde said : only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about. That this forum survived is because of Pam and other members who are active. It was a gift for the class of August 2015 Blogging University. They said that they stopped doing those because I was planning the world domination.

The only flaw with WordPress is: everyone here is a practitioner. That is why you have authors like James getting merely four to five likes per post while they have tens of thousands of followers. It’s not a place to show your authorship. It’s a place to practice. How was the essay?

In the list of tools the tags should change to @pamkirst2014 from the previous tags. I won’t unnecessarily tag people this time around. Boob doctor was a babe! (Author: Meg Sorrick!) The forum is thirteen plus PGA rating. William the valiant. Vibrant . Anand. Five years and counting.

Meet Three Bloggers from Blogger’s World!

A lot of us, I think, start blogging as a way to build discipline, hoping that someday, maybe, we’ll actually finish a book. Well, Blogger’s World member Vishaka has done that, not once, but twice…and she’s almost done with her third. Vishaka is a YA author, a muser on what goes into good writing, and a “consider-er” of character, etc., in published work.

If you like smart, good writing, if you are interested in YA fiction, and if you need a little dose of inspiration, I recommend visiting Vishaka’ s blog. Here is a link:

https://poisonedappleclub.wordpress.com/

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It was nice to roam through the participants in Blogger’s World and rediscover Koolitzable. If you visit this blog, you’ll find all kinds of interesting reading…about travel, fashion, photography, and life in general. Jessy, Koolitzable’s author, self-describes as a techie, chocolate-loving, frugal, adventurous, blogger who knows that happiness is a CHOICE.

I guarantee you’ll find something interesting if you pay this blog a visit:

https://koolitzable.wordpress.com/category/blog/

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Oneta Hayes, at Sweet Aroma, is one of the most joyously spiritual bloggers I’ve encountered! Her positive, uplifting blogs are balm to hurting souls, and she imbues her work with compassion, humor, and down-to-earth wisdom. She’s also an old friend from Blogging 101, so she’s a seasoned blogger whose enthusiasm doesn’t seem to flag.

To check out Oneta’s blog, visit here: https://onetahayes.com/

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If you visit, I hope you leave a note and tell the blogger Blogger’s World sent you! And if you’d like to have YOUR blog featured, drop me a line at pamkirt@yahoo.com.

Have a great week!

Pam

Hi All.

Please join me in thanking Piyusha for all her time and work as admin here at Blogger’s World! Her Facebook contact info is below; I encourage you to like and follow this talented writer! I’ll be trying to fill the role Piyusha has taken on so capably; I look forward to discovering who is on Blogger’s World now, and how the site can encourage bloggers!

Pam Kirst

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Hope you’re all doing well.

I’d like to step down as admin and would like to pass on ownership to whoever is interested in continuing the site.
Please let me know.

I’m revamping my entire blog and website and with that this will go too. I’ve had some wonderful connections I’ve made here and I truly cherish the time with you all.

But with so much happening in my life (a new book comes out in October, plus there’s teaching and my own blogging) I’m finding it difficult to keep up with certain things.

I’d love to keep in touch with you all through my writer page on Facebook, though. the handle is @PiyushaVirWriter
Link – https://www.facebook.com/PiyushaVirWriter

Wish you all lots of love, luck, and happiness.

P.S. – do let me know if someone is interested in taking over ownership.

Hello, friends! How are you…

Hello, friends! How are you EATING these days? With shopping NOT being a preferred activity (where we are, they’re limiting the numbers of people allowed in food stores at any given time), we’re trying hard to mindfully use what we have…and maybe that mindfulness is one of the positive lessons I can learn from this troubled time.

This leads to some creativity, and it’s been kind of fun in a weird kind of way. Meals become events.

That’s what I wrote about this week (not that I think about food excessively, or anything…) I’d love to hear about your cooking and baking adventures during the Days of COVID-19…

Take the best of care!

Pam

https://pamkirstblog.wordpress.com/2020/04/04/food-in-the-time-of-quarantine/

“You’re Gonna Love This Book” – A Comment

For @pamkirst2014

And anybody else who’s interested! 🙂

I didn’t come to read this post of yours, Pam, until today but when I wanted to leave the comment below it, I couldn’t for some reason, so I am forced writing a new post. Apologies. 🙂

I’m totally in agreement with the idea that books mean different things to different people or even that they mean different things to the same person at different stages in their life. So much in agreement in fact that I explored this same avenue a few times in posts of my own on the blog – because Waterblogged: Dry Thoughts on Damp Books was always meant to be an untraditional book blog.

This is the post I’m talking about:

• Two Versions of The Old Man and the Sea

I’m pretty sure I explored the idea in some others but I can’t remember what they were called. 🙂 I think I remember this one because it was a very personal post that I didn’t expect anyone to take much notice of at all,  and it generated a lot of comments and some very interesting conversations.

I always thought that I was an oddity among book bloggers in that I never liked traditional book reviews,  or the kind of analyses that our literature teachers required us to write. (I did like it when they gave us essay questions that allowed us to explore a theme, a thought or a character from a book but that is not at all the same thing – as I think you’d agree!) So when I blog about books, I tend to write exactly the sort of posts that you were describing: talking about why the book matters to me and what I think it can offer to people, rather than going into details of the plot or characterisation or analysing the writer’s style. But I did it all instinctively, I never thought it through the way you did, so it was really interesting to read your thoughts on this.

(Oh and Happy New Year, by the way! 🙂 )

You’re Invited: BW PARTY

Party Date: 23 October

2 days to go!

All invited whether or not ever having been active members of this forum – bring all your “friends and relations”, business associates and the lonely old lady who lives next door! The more, the merrier!

Come and introduce your blogs, get to know others and have fun!

@ishitarc1908, @niciacruz, @wordsfromarifa, @21timetraveler, @thelink19, @adriennea3, @infobloomer, @raniamanda, @amommasview, @anandartist, @andysmerdon, @angieskitchenshenanigans, @annfishervirtualworld, @agord2015, @anushababbar, @arpitastravelblog, @thecajkovic, @bennabdycollins, @bethanyaharvey, @bobbyshabangu, @brendablagdon, @cathylynnbrooks, @niyati16, @colettebates, @darshith0000, @audreydcunningham, @camelliasentry, @wynstep, @princeramsey, @clockworkindigo, @visionofdestinyuganda, @continuingwithme, @crawcraftsbeasties, @dawnmarie823, @derekjlee, @devilrockz, @divorcinganarc, @donnainthesouth, @dj120, @drmegsorick, @dhyanmukta, @createtoenchant, @laikassuvaikais, @languorouspages, @megselizabeth86, @thestayengagedexperiment, @esk11, @feelings161, @fictionalkevin, @avenscent, @funsimplicity, @getyourlenson, @lizarebeca, @foodeezjunction, @agord2015, @garthmr, @garyloggins, @thegeneviever, @mumbletymuse, @gritsandpineconescom, @gritsandpineconescom, @myusername432, @robertmgoldstein, @bethanyaharvey, @haripriyakm, @hlindschinger, @hjsportsed, @contenttocapture, @hst4haiku, @kristinavanhoos, @lulaharp, @maddy1953, @onetarhayes, @iaminaplace, @iamabloggertoo, @indira2412, @irenecorl4u2013, @ivanproust, @insomniacbee, @janimey, @mkjackie99, @jahnavichintakunta, @aventuraroxy, @jessmcombs, @jeanburkespraker, @jsackmom, @jennierawling, @ashishvision, @jadekeahi, @justdreadfull, @kayeraye, @kelliblogs @k, @koolitzable @k, @dalees107, @laikassuvaikais, @laduchessederat, @lifeobserverwrites, @loriastratton, @confusionandknitting, @mylittlespaceinthesun, @kmmyrman, @maidsdayoff, @alongthesideoftheroad, @nandininautiyal, @neildsilva, @nicolaauckland, @worthinessambassador, @noorainsobiya, @santoshnc, @notionlux, @alongthesideoftheroad, @offshoreausterity, @ohmyglai, @sarahsatticoftreasures @o, @teiyaoloilolesoipei, @teiyaoloilolesoipei, @donnamcmillen300, @princeramsey, @iaminaplace, @lyndapoysor, @pamkirst2014, @preciousvalencia1, @piyushavir, @whitneyparchman, @raniamanda, @middleagedrager, @ramida78, @ranu802, @rdmaxwell55, @robertmgoldstein, @lilacsky22, @raforbeginners, @camelliasentry, @funsimplicity, @loriastratton, @beckyaluoch, @sumitagrawal01, @sashay909, @natashart, @sasmiths1112, @btarmstrong, @anandartist, @sirtonix, @bennabdycollins @iamdonovan, @vellissima, @vikrambishla, @wordsfromarifa, @suekwoodward, @wanderlusteternal, @welshshortbread, @whitneyparchman, @xaranahara, @yentll02, @justdreadfull, @revrumblefish

Apologies to anyone who accidentally got left out, whose @ call sign didn’t work, those who got pinged twice (three times?), &c., &c.! I repeat: All are invited whether listed above or not! Hope to see you all on the 23rd!

An Old Book

I got seduced by an old book… and ended up writing about it. Not my typical post so any feedback welcome. And for some reason I feel convinced that @pamkirst2014 might actually like it. 🙂

A Book with a History

She Decided What She Wanted; Then She Got It

Image of Laura Z Hobson taken from www.goodreads.com

I have been an appeaser at times in my life (although some of my closest peeps might right now frown in disbelief): declining to proceed; acceding to the louder, maybe more threatening, voice; trying to keep the ground stable and preserve the party’s peace. But even as I was trying gracefully to forgo my deepest wishes, I fiercely admired those who determined just exactly what they wanted and plunged ahead in pursuit.

That’s one of the things–and that’s in addition to her lyrical writing–that I admire about Laura Z Hobson; that’s why I was so excited to read her memoir, Laura Z.

Imagine: the well-heeled late 1930’s and early 1940’s in the USA—with people so well-behaved, on the surface, anyway. A glamorous woman with a lucrative career in advertising and a couple of failed relationships, Hobson decides she doesn’t want to give up her dream of parenting just because she isn’t married. She does her research, and she finds an adoption agency in the Midwest that looks like it might extend some hope to a single woman wishing to adopt.

She goes there, and she charms them. Her first child, Mike, is adopted.

I suspect that Laura Z’s charm was formidable. She got away with a lot, and she gathered firm supporters along the way.

Her second son, Christopher, was also adopted,–adopted AND biological. When Hobson realized that she was finally, miraculously, pregnant as a result of a brief affair that ran its course, she made fast, firm plans. She spent the last three months of her pregnancy in a tiny apartment, hidden in New York City, leaving for her doctor’s appointments early in the mornings (her doctor’s doorman, even, was in on the secret, and he would guard her car from patrolling police officers should she have to double park to run in for her checkup) before other patients would arrive. She shopped behind dark glasses. She left her son Mike with his devoted nanny, Rose, to celebrate his birthday and Christmas by themselves.

Then she delivered her baby son under an assumed name, gave him into the care of an agency for several weeks, and went to court to adopt him.

“Committing fraud on the legal system???” says my shocked attorney husband, but the judges and the lawyer seemed to know the real skinny and collude in circumventing their society’s rules about birth and wedlock.

What a story; what a plot! Holy cow.

Laura Z went on to write Gentlemen’s Agreement; the conception and creation of the novel, the buried anti-Antisemitism she encountered in its ‘birthing,’ and her ultimate triumph, shape the last part of her autobiography. Before that, she walks us through her unconventional childhood with socialist– but NOT communist, she notes firmly–Russian emigrant parents, a twin sister who was very, very different than she, a house built backwards to save on architect’s fees, and brothers so far ahead in age they almost seemed part of a different family. She lived many of the events I delighted in reading about in First Papers, taking nine Regents in the span of four days to earn a college scholarship, and bucking the family tide, which wanted to put her in a teacher’s ed program. (First Papers, a novel I discovered as a teen and have re-visited many times since, is one of the best books I’ve ever read.)

She DID go to college. She DID become wealthy. She DID achieve a glamorous lifestyle in a surprising, unorthodox way.

Some of that unorthodox behavior shocks my middle class heart. Hobson writes about leaving little Mike, and later, little Mike and little Chris, for long, long stretches. They were in the care of a loving and competent person, but it still hurts my maternal middle class sense of propriety to picture her putting the boys on a train to the East Coast and then spinning around to pursue a Hollywood script-writing career.

She made it all work, though, she reports, as she brings us, in Laura Z, to the surprise triumph of Gentleman’s Agreement–well, she assures us that she made it work, and she is a wonderful teller of tales. I have to research and see if she ever wrote the second half of her history, wrote about the years during which she fictionalized Chris’s secret birth and then wrote also about her realization, as he aged, that her son was a homosexual in a world not too terribly friendly to gay folks.That story became a novel, too.

Laura Z never denied her Jewish, agnostic, Socialist roots; she never let her roots or society’s bias against them–or anything else–deter her from what she pursued: motherhood, a compelling story, a lifestyle that defied convention. Sometimes I’m a little shocked, sometimes a little puzzled, and sometimes I want to cheer along with her, but always, in reading Laura Z, I am compelled and entertained.

(First posted on my book blog: https://wordpress.com/post/pamkirst2014.wordpress.com/101)

#authorstory

#weekly