Day: May 31, 2024

MLMM Friday Faithfuls — Ancient Wisdom

Fandango6 Comments

For this week’s Mindlovemysery’s Menagerie Friday Faithfuls challenge, Jim Adams asks us to respond to this challenge by writing about what ancient wisdom means to us.

I recently read a story about King Ptolemy I, a new ruler of Ancient Egypt and a former general of Alexander the Great. At around 300 BC, Ptolemy tasked an adviser with the mission to collect, if possible, all the books in the world in order to create a library of the accumulated human knowledge at the time.

Over the next two centuries, the great library in the Ptolemaic capital of Alexandria would be filled with hundreds of thousands of papyrus scrolls representing an extensive collection of ancient Greek and Egyptian literature along with Buddhist, Jewish, and Zoroastrian texts. Ships would be searched for books when they docked at Alexandria, and royal agents would pay hefty sums for almost any written work.

So, as per human nature, even way back in ancient times, a booming market in fakes and forgeries soon emerged. Entrepreneurial scribes dashed off scrolls of supposed secret wisdom from famous thinkers, while others created books that mixed the authentic with the imagined.

According to historian Islam Issa, in Alexandria’s merchant quarter, stalls that once sold vegetables and baskets were “replaced with those stacking rolls and rolls of books.” Eventually, the library had to hire experts to wade through the sea of bogus texts and identify genuine treasures.

I honestly don’t know if I was disappointed or pleased to learn that “alternative facts” and “fake news” have been around for centuries and didn’t just emerge in the 21st century. But given this realization that what we today call “ancient wisdom” may have validity to it, or may be the work of ancient entrepreneurs who mixed facts and fantasy for profit.

Reblog — Warning: Rant Follows

Fandango8 Comments

Yes, Carol, at Wanderings of an Elusive Mind, has posted a political rant. But I think the points Carol made in her rant are very salient and highly pertinent as we get closer to November’s presidential election.

I would like to add something to a point Carol made about our Supreme Court. She wrote, “At least two of our Supreme Court justices [Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas] have demonstrated partiality.” I would like to add the fact that three other justices, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, were Trump appointees, and Chief Justice John Roberts, appointed by Republican George W. Bush, seems inclined to go along with the positions taken by the other more coservative justices on the Court.

I guess that on November 5th we will get our answer to Carol’s closing question about American voters: “ DOES ANYONE CARE?”

So – one court has spoken. One jury has rendered its verdicts – 34 of them. A new entry for the history books has been recorded. And yet – the …

Warning: Rant Follows

Fibbing Friday — Spinning a Yarn

Fandango12 Comments

Di (aka Pensitivity101) hosts Fibbing Friday, a silly little exercise where we are to write a post with our answers to the ten questions below. But as the title suggests, truth is not an option. The idea is to fib a little, a lot, tell whoppers, and be inventive, silly, or even outrageous, in our responses. For this week’s Fibbing Friday, Di looks to Jim Adams for the questions.

1. Rumpelstiltskin spun straw into gold in exchange for what? Bitcoins.
2. What did humans do before the bobbin was invented? They picked apples out of trees with their hands instead of out of a bucket of water with their mouths.
3. What is the difference between knitting and crocheting? Knitting is what broken bones do inside a cast to fix themselves. Crocheting is a treatment for people who suffer from crotch rot.
4. What does a drop spindle do? It’s a device people wear to support their spine after back surgery.
5. What does a painted pony have to do with a spinning wheel? Absolutely nothing.
6. If you stick a needle in your eye, does that show sincerity? No, it shows stupidity.
7. What was Barthélemy Thimonnier known for? His strange name.
8. What happened in the Golden Age of sewing? Child labor sweatshops in the Far East were established to sew clothing sold to the West.
9. What breed of sheep makes the best wool? Polyester sheep.
10. What happens when the cotton field gets rotten? It’s time to switch to raising polyester sheep.

Fandango’s Flashback Friday — May 31st

Fandango20 Comments

Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year.

How about it? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year? You can repost your Flashback Friday post on your blog and pingback to this post. Or you can just write a comment below with a link to the post you selected.

If you’ve been blogging for less than a year, go ahead and choose a post that you previously published on any day this past year and link to that post in a comment.

This was originally posted on May 31, 2018.

And In the End….

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So this is the last “official” WordPress daily one-word prompt. It’s fitting that today’s word is “retrospective,” which means “an exhibition or compilation showing the development of the work of a particular artist over a period of time.”

I have been participating in this daily prompt pretty much since I started this blog last May. If you want to view a retrospective of my responses to these prompts — and you have nothing better to do with your valuable time — go to my Tag Cloud and click on “one-word prompt.” It’s pretty large. You can’t miss it.

But, as they say, all good things must come to an end. The past is the past and it’s time to look to the future. Whatever will be will be. And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.

Okay, Fandango. Enough with the trite and barely applicable platitudes.

I imagine that there will be quite a few bloggers who are going to attempt to make up for this abandonment and betrayal from WordPress by starting their own daily one-word prompts.

Well, starting tomorrow I’m going to be one of those bloggers. I’m calling it “Fandango’s One-Word Challenge,” or FOWC for short. I will choose a word and write a prompt post built around that word.

If you’d like to FOWC with me, please feel free to do so. Be sure to tag your post #FOWC and link it back to my daily FOWC.

Image credit: geralt at Pixabay.com

It’s hard to believe that I’ve been posting my FOWC with Fandango prompt every day for the past six years. Thanks to all of you who have been responding to my daily one-word prompts. My plan is to continue to post my daily word challenge until I run out of unique words or run out of breath, whichever comes first.

Again, thanks for showing up every day.

FOWC with Fandango — Quashed

Fandango8 Comments
FOWC

Welcome to Fandango’s One-Word Challenge (aka, FOWC). I will be posting each day’s word just after midnight Pacific Time (U.S.).

Today’s word is “quashed.”

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. Please check to confirm that your pingback is there. If not, ÿplease manually add your link in the comments.

And be sure to read the posts of other bloggers who respond to this prompt. Show them some love.