Day: July 24, 2019

They Just Disappear

Fandango34 Comments

Visualization of poof sound with big fluffy cloudIn the 26 months that I’ve had this blog, at least ten bloggers who I follow, and maybe as many as twice that number, have disappeared. As in “here today, gone tomorrow.” Most of these disappearing bloggers offered no notice of or explanation for their departure from the blogosphere. Just poof and they were gone.

Did they just get tired of blogging and quit? Did they lose interest? Are they having health issues? Do they have pressing personal masters to attend to? Will they be back at some point? Well, if they just disappeared one day, we likely will never know.

In a way, especially if the blogger is one you’ve followed for a long time and whose words, wit, and insights you appreciated, the blogger’s sudden disappearance is like losing a friend. A friend you “spoke” with frequently. A friend with whom you shared thoughts, ideas, perspectives, and opinions via blog posts and comments.

So it’s no wonder that these bloggers who are, for whatever reasons, no longer blogging, are missed in much the same way you miss a real world friend who inexplicably disappears without warning or explanation.

And that brings me to some sad news I received the other day about a blogger that I haven’t been following that long and really didn’t know very well outside of her comments on my posts and her prompts.

Hélène Vaillant, the blogger behind the “What Do You See?” prompt, passed away. Although I didn’t really know her that well, I felt the loss of her sudden and unexpected death not that differently from how I would feel about the death of a real world acquaintance.

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In Other Words — Daily Prompts

Fandango

2E12834B-7223-427A-8FD9-CD66284699EDEach and every day, a handful of bloggers post daily word prompts.

And each and every day I look at the four to eight daily prompt words and try to weave them all into a coherent and cohesive post.

For example, today’s eight daily prompt are resolute, blind, explicate, tag, unrequited, extravaganza, variable, and idle chatter.

It’s not always easy, and sometimes it’s quite challenging, to come up with a post that successfully leverages many or all of those prompts words.

There’s only one way that I can figure out how to fit all eight of today’s daily word prompts into a single post — and that is to improvise.

In other wordsWritten for the In Other Words prompt from Patricia’s Place. The challenge this week is to write a story or poem of five lines or fewer using the picture above and/or the words “improvise.” Image credit: Tumisu from Pixabay. Also for these daily prompts: Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (resolute), The Daily Spur (blind), Your Daily Word Prompt (explicate), Daily Addictions (tag), Word of the Day Challenge (unrequited), Ragtag Daily Prompt (extravaganza), Nova’s Daily Random Word (variable), and Weekly Prompts (idle chatter).

Fandango’s Provocative Question #33

Fandango26 Comments

FPQWelcome once again to Fandango’s Provocative Question. Each week I will pose what I think is a provocative question for your consideration. By provocative, I don’t mean a question that will cause annoyance or anger. Nor do I mean a question intended to arouse sexual desire or interest.

What I do mean is a question that is likely to get you to think, to be creative, and to provoke a response. Hopefully a positive response.

For this week’s provocative question, I am going to leverage a recent provocative post from Marilyn Armstrong in which she wrote about what it means to have a moral compass.  In her post, Marilyn wrote that she believes the concept of a moral compass is how one defines right and wrong, independent of religious beliefs. She wrote, “I’ve concluded that ‘religiosity’ and ‘morality’ have little to do with each other because you either have a moral compass — or you don’t.” You can read Marilyn’s full post here.

There are also those who believe that morality is a set of definitive laws gifted to humanity by God, where God has determined what is “right” and what is “wrong,” and these determinations are deemed to be unimpeachable. In other words, morality cannot exist without God. Thus “morality” and “religiosity” are inextricably intertwined.

So the question this week is this:

Do you believe that one can be moral without believing in God or being religious, or do you believe that you must believe in God in order to have a moral compass and to live a moral life?

If you choose to participate, write a post with your response to the question. Once you are done, tag your post with #FPQ and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments.

The issue with pingbacks not showing up seems to have been resolved, but you might check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

FOWC with Fandango — Resolute

Fandango22 Comments

FOWCWelcome to July 24, 2019 and to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). It’s designed to fill the void after WordPress bailed on its daily one-word prompt.

I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (US).

Today’s word is “resolute.”

Write a post using that word. It can be prose, poetry, fiction, non-fiction. It can be any length. It can be just a picture or a drawing if you want. No holds barred, so to speak.

Once you are done, tag your post with #FOWC and create a pingback to this post if you are on WordPress. Or you can simply include a link to your post in the comments.

The issue with pingbacks not showing up seems to have been resolved, but you might check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, please manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. You will marvel at their creativity.