Wishing all Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year! Notes Tied On The Sagebrush is on a Winter break until after the New Year. See you in 2016.
Happy Holidays
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Tag Archives: Blogging
#GiveForGrandma This Holiday | NCOA
The National Council on Aging has started this holiday campaign and is reporting the sad statistic that half of the older women in the United States are struggling to meet their basic financial needs. Women are particularly vulnerable because they are the ones who stay home to take care of their families or take time off to take care of their parents. This effects the amount of Social Security and pension benefits women are able to accumulate in a lifetime. Add to that the loss of financial support due to divorce, job loss, or death and illness of a spouse.
AARP has a campaign as well to help financially strapped seniors and a link to help people determine what benefit programs they are eligible for.
AARP Foundation helps provide assistance to seniors with food, housing and income assistance.
This holiday, donate to NCOA to support grandmas in need. A $1 donation to NCOA can connect a struggling grandma with $60 in benefits to pay for daily needs.
Source: #GiveForGrandma This Holiday | NCOA
Or give to a charity of your choice that helps seniors and get involved in your community.
Happy Hanukkah
Happy Hanukkah which begins tonight. The image of latkes is by Jonathunder on Wikimedia. Latkes are really delicious and there are many recipes for them. I like ones like the ones in this image. Grated potato with a little flour, eggs and some onion and fried in oil. You can find many recipes on the internet. I like them with a little sour cream on top. You can cook them ahead of time and freeze them for future use.
This image is from the recipe page on Food Network.com
Hope you have a good week and a happy start to the Holiday Season.
Disconnections
I wrote this post last year and decided it was a good one for today’s Stream of Consciousness on the word “miss.” When you don’t check into WordPress or Facebook each day, do you feel like you are missing something? There is a popular phrase for that called “the Fear of Missing Out” or FOMO. This whole week, I feel like I have been recovering from the Thanksgiving weekend activities or maybe it is because the weather is getting colder here in Southern California. At least colder at night and in the mornings. Puts me into a sleepy, hibernating kind of mood. The leaves are falling off the trees, except for the palm trees. I feel like bundling up with a good book or movie. And I think my old post, with a bit of editing, from last winter will be new to many people so here it goes:
I know this is true but I had forgotten. When you are wrestling with an issue information will start popping up about it all around you.
Today I opened my email from Idealist Careers and here was a post about something I had been thinking and writing about myself. The post was called Embrace JOMO: The Joy of Missing Out by Allison Jones. In it she linked to another blogger Anil Dash who had written on this topic as well. JOMO is a response to FOMO or Fear of Missing Out.
I get a little crazy with all the acronyms. Believe me, it is not that I have never seen an acronym before because in my work life there were plenty of them. It just seems like, with all the frenzied communication, we are all talking in acronyms. When I first saw FLOTUS it reminded me of flatus and I thought of gas. POTUS, a potted plant. Well maybe these acronyms are a lot of hot air after all. But I digress.
The gist of the blogs about JOMO and mine is that we can be selective about all the social activities and interactions that are asking for our participation these days. We need to be in touch with ourselves and what our needs and priorities are. There is great JOY in taking time for our private lives and quiet pastimes alone or with our friends and families.
Other bloggers commented on my post with similar sentiments. The need to find a balance and find the JOMO.
Now to curl up with that good book and I have a nice cup of coffee right here.
Stream of Consciousness Saturday is hosted by LindaGHill
Mood Indigo
We don’t always have to be perky bunnies, do we? We can have low times. I am not talking about Depression. Because full blown Depression is not a mood to luxuriate in. I read an essay The Case for Melancholy by Loren Stover, which had some good points. That there is this big push to be Happy :))))) all the time and if you are not then you can read an article in Huffington Post, and just follow these 3 easy steps, and find your bliss.
There is something to be said for quiet, down days, when you can take it slow and think deep thoughts, or take naps, or watch old romantic movies, or read old romantic books, and recharge your batteries.
Stover says Happiness is overrated and bit much for us to aspire to continually, “Happiness, like the sun, is ridiculously bright, a hope you can never live up to, or even look at straight on.” At least not all the time. I am grateful I have experienced joyful times and some happiness but not continually. That would probably be a little weird, like Stepford Wives.
Her advice: “Should melancholy descend, you may as well welcome it, wear your finest lounging outfit; give it your finest fainting couch or chaise to lounge in, or that hammock stretched between two elm trees. Let it settle in….and no running shoes under any circumstances.”
Yes, no running shoes. No braggy, happy face of you on Facebook completing your 5 K or whatever.
A little quiet music:
Via DavidFarandWide on You Tube:
and
via evie 1942
and via disc 070s
What are your thoughts?
You Can Buy (Fake) Followers, Likes, and Viewers
I read about this in an article by Constant Dullaart in Hyperallergic, Why I’m Amassing an Army of Fake Facebook Followers, where he states he bought fake followers with “Profiles made to look like actual people, made to follow any profile I wanted for $0.002 each, so $5,000 bought me 2.5 million followers.” He says that there are people already doing this to make their product, candidate, and art look much more popular than they really are.
Isn’t it satisfying, a bit scary, ( and humbling I hope), to see more Followers for your blog? I mean real followers, not ones you bought and paid for.
image by Kate Ter Haar
Dullaart goes on to say how some artists were basing the market value of their work on You Tube views and being influenced on the types of work they produced according to the social media responses. He calls this trend in marketing ” the attention economy.” It turns my stomach a little.
A friend of mine just wrote that he received an email offering lots of fake views for a cheap cost. It sounds similar to what Dullaart was saying.
I like to think that I will go on writing whatever I write according to my inner inspiration, feelings, and things I feel strongly about, and not get too overly upset or influenced by Likes and Followers.
The best reason I have for liking real Likes, Comments, and Follows is that people show me they are reading what I am writing, which is encouraging. How do you feel about Social Media responses influencing what you write and are you shocked by the article and my blogger friend reporting the ability to buy followers, likes, and views?
Blood Moon
Viewing Maps from Space.com
Are you planning to watch the Super Moon Lunar Eclipse? Do you know any interesting legends about the Blood Moon?
The Arranged Marriage
PHOTO PROMPT © The Reclining Gentleman
Genre: Speculative Fiction
Zenarra thought the commute was worth it to have the beautiful natural landscape that surrounded her when she got home. She smiled to herself and sighed. She never thought she could be so happy.
She sensed his presence before she saw the headlights. ” How did you find me, Jolar?” she said dejectedly, ” Minat swore she would never betray me.”
” Those of royal blood have a sensor implanted at birth so that they can never be taken for ransom. You will fulfill your duty and marry Tomar with the next moon rising.”
Plein Air
She had a lot of time on her hands nowadays. Much more time than she had planned for. She had always told herself that if she had the time she would like to take up her art again. She hadn’t painted since High School when she was discouraged by one of her teachers from pursuing a career in art. It felt good to be doing it again. Once she got started painting she was in “the flow” like Mihály Csíkszentmihályi described it. She lost all sense of time and felt almost in a meditative state. She was barely aware of her surrounding except for the flower she was focused on capturing on her canvas. That was until she heard the sound from a TV news broadcast coming from the neighbor’s patio. Ashley Madison hack predicted to have impact on many marriages. It already had an effect on hers. She had endured his emotional abuse for years thinking it was wrong to get a divorce. When she saw his name on the website she knew it was time to start her new life. She moved out last week after she withdrew all the money from their savings account.
Flash Fiction for Aspiring Writers
Hosted by Priceless Joy and Thanks to Graham Lawrence for the image above.
The Tree House
“She lived in a Mango Tree,” she heard the kids shout as they ran past the house. Her husband had built the tree house when their kids were little. This was where their kids spent many hours playing and even slept there on hot summer nights. She had been spending more and more time up in the tree house lately.
As she climbed the stairs she thought she heard their laughter. They shouldn’t be up here now, she thought, it’s time to get ready for school. The caregiver came to the house later that morning. When she couldn’t find Miss Grace in the house she knew where to look. She found her asleep on the old bunk bed. She woke the old woman saying, “Miss Grace you know you shouldn’t be up here. You’re liable to fall and break your neck.”
The neighborhood kids would often sing out when running past her house, “There was an old lady. She lived in a Mango Tree….”
Notes Tied On The Sagebrush 