Yahoo! 360° - From Boomer , NC

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Keep smiling. . . it takes years off your face!

So Long: Its finally official. I'm sure everyone has gotten the notice in their mailbox that 360 will be closed on July 13th. Well they told us and some along with myself moved our blogs to other sites already. Even though yahoo is offering another site where we can still blog and send messages, I don't know that I'll bother. I was over there tonight and sent out a few invites, but really people, all the ones that I care about already set up house at Multiply and we get along over there just fine. For those who didn't go and don't like Multiply but want to stay with the profile that yahoo is offering now just send me an invitation and we will stay in contact there.

Yahoo 360 is where I have met some pretty wonderful people and it makes me sad to see it shut down. But the good thing is I haven't lost touch with anyone.

So, see ya'll at the other places where we have decided to hang our hats.

Love you.

Friday May 29, 2009 - 10:44pm (EDT) Permanent Link | 1 Comment
Moonflowers: It took me a painstakingly long time to finally post this blog here in 360. A place where I used to have so much fun connecting with a world of great friends, the ones I have met here. I have moved on to other sites where I still connect with my friends, but I come back to 360 every now and then because I feel like its coming home in a way.

I just don't have the heart to shut down this page altogether. I know its been a long time sitting here with the same background and the same blog and pictures. But I keep thinking some old friend who may have lost contact with me will stumble by and see me still here and leave a comment or two just to say hello.

I know I hang on to things and won't let go easily, but I was thinking of planting more Moon flowers this year and remembered an old blog I did the year they actually grew up on the arbor that was in my garden. And then I came across this picture so here I am updating my 360 blog with a bit of nothing about flowers.

Ya'll should plant some, they are beautiful and bloom all summer long in the evening, filling the air with a fragrance that's indescribable!

Sunday April 12, 2009 - 11:23pm (EDT) Permanent Link | 2 Comments
They're Here!: I have my first shipment of my newly published book, Quiet Reflections. I am having a bit of an issue posting the video of me doing a hard sell of my book so please just follow this link to where it is playing and buy one for yourself or for your friends for Christmas.

Quiet Reflections Infomercial.

Saturday November 1, 2008 - 08:48pm (EDT) Permanent Link | 5 Comments
Henry David Thoreau: I was remembering today about my college Professor of Literature, Paul Wardzinski. Very few teachers or professors in my life have influenced my interest in the written word and even about history as did this man. He didn't just get up in front of the class and give some boring lecture and then assign volumes of independant reading. But he brought the lives of the authors and their craft alive for me.

One of history's greatest gifts to the world of literature in my opinion was Henry David Thoreau. You know, the guy who lived in the little house he built himself on Walden Pond. David lived there alone for two years, writing, studying both nature and the way people relate to the world and wrote one of his most famous of works, "On Waldon Pond"

Mr. Wardzinski brought Thoreau's life to "life" for me and started me on the road to voracious reading of such authors as Emily Dickenson, Sylvia Plath, Ralf Waldo Emerson and many others who left tremedous footprints that follow us here into our present and will continue into the future. People who seem to magically merge those three elements, Past, Present, and Future into the Now just by allowing us to lose ourselves in their written words.

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a tremendous eulogy for David and in it said about him:

" He lived for the day, not cumbered and mortified by his memory."

You can find the entire eulogy at this link if you want to read it.

Emerson's eulogy

Louisa May Alcott may have been in love with David, although he never married, because she also wrote something for him after his death a poem titled "Thoreau's Flute."

We sighing said, "Our Pan is dead;
His pipe hangs mute beside the river;
Around it wistful sunbeams quiver,
But Music's airy voice is fled.
Spring came to us in guise forlorn;
The bluebird chants a requiem;
The willow-blossom waits for him;--
The GGenius of the wood is gone.
Then from the flute, untouched by hands,
There came a low, harmonious breath:
For such as he there is no death;--
His life the eternal life commands;
Above man's aims his nature rose.
The wisdom of a just content
Made one small spot a continent,
And turned to poetry life's prose.
Haunting the hills, the stream, the wild,
Swallow and aster, lake and pine,
To him grew human or divine,--
Fit mates for this large-hearted child.
Such homage Nature ne'er forgets,
And yearly on the coverlid
'Neath which her darling lieth hid
Will write his name in violets.
To him no vain regrets belong
Whose soul, that finer instrument,
Gave to the world no poor lament,
But wood-notes ever sweet and strong.
O lonely friend! he still will be
A potent presence, though unseen,--
Steadfast, sagacious, and serene;
Seek not for him--he is with thee.

I have no clue what ever happened to my dear Professor. We developed a lovely friendship during my time spent in his classroom and he heartily encouraged me to write and to express my thoughts and my life just as did those other authors we admired so much together. He spoke of his mother and how she influenced his love for literature and how his bedtime stories as a child included Edgar Alan Poe, to name just one of his favorites.

Maybe one day the Universe will bring Paul back into my life if only just to give me the opportunity to tell him thank you thank you for opening these doors for me. Thank you for not being the traditional type who stood in front of your students a stiff and aloof paragon, unreachable. But for being vibrant and involved and accessible. And thank you for being my teacher by example and my friend.

Friday June 13, 2008 - 10:44pm (EDT) Permanent Link | 5 Comments
Shine?: No thanks Yahoo! I don't think I want to join Yahoo's newest online community bloging magazine.

First of all who does Yahoo think we are as women by offering us this venue at the exclusion of men? Some of the advertisements tout the phrase that "men need not apply" Well I'm not against women, or men either, having a place to gather with peers. But this particular offer by Yahoo is insulting to me. When I first joined Y360 and later Multiply, it was to meet new people and to exchange ideas and life stories with others. Not just men and not just women. When you offer me a place that shouts out that men are not welcome you limit my opportunites to meet new people by exactly half the population. I have met some pretty amazing women and men over the past couple of years that I have been blogging and some have become very dear and close friends. Both genders. I wouldn't trade any of them for an exclusive female focused blog/magazine.

Personally, I think Yahoo is desperately clawing at air to try and come up with a scheme that will revive itself at the risk of further dividing men and women and isolating us from one another, instead of offering us something that will bring us all together.

Well, Yahoo, I don't have time for your games. I love meeting people from all over this globe and from all walks of life. I am not interested in your exclusive blog/magazine for women only and I don't think I will join. If this is the best improvement you have to offer then I have to say that I am terribly disappointed.

Oh, and using poor Barry that way is a disgrace. I love to hear him sing.

Wednesday May 14, 2008 - 08:16pm (EDT) Permanent Link | 6 Comments