Just a bit of light fun today. I love the whole-world living that blogging and other social networking offers us. Look forward to tomorrow’s post featuring wild women: Artist Gretchen Del Rio and Poet and Activist Victoria Bennett, founder of Wild Women Press. It includes a potential opportunity for publication that will open soon.
Blogospher Map, A Network of Interconnections courtesy of Jenna Greenbaum under Attribution license and originally published in Discover Science. I was unable to find references for the numbers but still think it’s visually interesting.
Thanks to Die Erste Eslarner Zeitung for bringing the WebsiteBuilder.org graphic report to our attention. This is mostly about blogging as business, but there’s some information of possible interest to hobbiest bloggers, writers and poets toward the end of this report: ideal number of words in a title, best post-length, best time to blog … that sort of thing. You should find a few helpful hints amid the engaging trivia. Enjoy!
17th Century Mongolian Bronze, photo courtesy of the curator of The Buddha Gallery
2014 IS THE YEAR OF THE HORSE IN CHINESE ASTROLOGY, which promises adventure. (Okay, I made that last bit up, but where is it written we can’t hope?)
I’ve adopted Horse as my guiding spirit. In the ethos of the Chinese people, the spirit of Horse is marked by unrelenting effort. It is characterized by intelligence and ability. The ancient Chinese thought of an able person as Qian Li Ma, a horse that travels a thousand li a day, about 360 miles or 500 meters.
A thousand li according to Lao Tzu writing in theTao Te Ching is the journey that “starts beneath our feet.” We would say the journey begins with a single step. My first step is this: my first post of the year and my current re-reading of Isaac Asimov‘s autobiographies, InMemory Yet Green (1920-1954) and In Joy Still Felt (1954-1978). They present the opportunity to re-experience a time and place I have in common with Mr. Asimov (the ’50s onward) and also to immerse myself in Pulp Era of Science Fiction (magazines, 1920s/30s) and the Golden Age (“Hard SF”- linear, 1950s) and New Wave Age (“Soft” – artistic, literary, experimental, 1960s/70s). One cannot live by poetry alone.These books also provide the chance to observe the skill and absorb the wisdom of one of the finest, most versatile and most prolific of American writers. Some say his life was dull. I don’t agree. Isaac Asimov had many adventures in life but his adventures were of the mind.
“We have two ears and one mouth so that we can listen twice as much as we speak”. Epictitus
Another way to express my plan is that this will be a year of listening (reading) more and talking (writing) less. My father – not unlike Epictetus – used to say, “You have two ears and one mouth. That’s God’s way of telling human beings how important listening is.” So this year – my sixth blogging – there will be fewer of my own poems posted here, far fewer posts, and significantly more reviews of books and collections. As Stephen King said:
“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”
I’ve posted a small poetry collection on the Home page (My Poetry Sampler).
… and thus the journey continues …
May this be yourbest year yet for intellectual and artistic adventures.
Jamie Dedes' THE POET BY DAY Webzine 
