Deliyah…4-year-old reader of 1,000 books

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/01/12/meet-daliyah-the-4-year-old-girl-who-has-read-more-than-1000-books/?utm_term=.6403ea387b35&wpisrc=nl_mix&wpmm=1#comments

Now here is an inspiring story out of the Washington Post this morning, a four-year-old who has apparently read one thousand (1,000) books so far. She hangs out at the Library of Congress.

Yes…I hear you in the back there mumbling about the veracity of this story…and I’ll bet you either 1) don’t personally know any of Deliyah’s peers, other pre-schoolers, that is… or 2)are not paying attention. This child is indeed remarkable and a great role-model for other children—and she is not unique. (Meaning one-of-a-kind, not as in the modern fancy of “unique” as a mere synonym for unusual, or great.)

Today’s children all over the world are smarter and more aware than at any time in history.    Peer into the bright, shining eyes of a child…in person or in photographs…to see the intelligence shining through.

They “know” things, information gleaned from television shows, or books, chatting with other children…and, of course, school.   Pre-school kids commonly know the alphabet and basic number figures, understand the details about the hippopotamus, orangatangs, and mocking birds.   They often even know how to spell those words.

 

Why are we here? Why do we blog? observations from the keyboard.

Why Blog?

All it takes to write in a Blog
Is a Writer who is a Blogger
and a Reader who reads Blogs.

If someone is reading that Blog
–even if the blog is about nothing–
then all the components are there:
the Blogger blogs,
and the Reader reads.

And IF he is reading,
and she is blogging,
then there is a connection…
a piece of her mind
–for good or for bad–
is read and ingested
and taken to heart.

So what if the Post is about Nothing?

If its being read… someone is interested,
this is obvious right from the start.
The Key to blogging may be
not so much clever phrases
or figures of speech
as simply a communication.

So, if a blog is about Something
then it can’t be about Nothing.

What does that all mean?

If one is blogging…
well, they are blogging.

and if Reading?
Thank you for reading along!

©Sometimes,2015

[Originally published on Sometimes in 2015.)

What My Future Holds, In Six Words

[Daily Post Prompt for today:    Write a six-word story about what you think the future holds for you, and then expand on it in a post.]

Writing at last, I’m happy now.

Expansion on the title story:  “WHAT MY FUTURE HOLDS”

That short story, consisting of SIX WORDS, is self-explanatory–even if it does sound a bit like an epiteth that might be chiseled into my tombstone, IF I intended to have one.    But this tiny story, consisting of just six words, a comma, and a period…is anything but maudlin, rather a declaration of a specific stage and purpose in life.

Writing has been to me like a figurative carrot-on-a-stick , promising an eventual reward for years-served.    Although I have been writing all of my life, sometimes even getting paid for it, and have used writing skills in one form or another throughout my years as a news reporter, student, instructor, secretary, clerk, and so on…I always had the feeling that I was just biding my time waiting for the time when I could just Write.

All that time writing for “practical” purposes, I had a feeling of guilt…pressure and obligation to various pursuits which did not include Writing as I longed to do.

This all sounds terribly self-serving and contrite, and I confess that I would never be writing this post for a more general audience.  The people that I am aiming at are other Writers.  These–You are all Writers, real writers that live and breathe writing, and long to spend the most of their time at their keyboard–or with a pencil and paper.   No eye-rolling here…I firmly believe I am among kindred souls.

So what my future holds is…I hope…Writing.   I recently discovered poetry (again) and am absolutely in love with it!  I know that when I publish a post or a photograph, there are readers out there.  I’m not so vain as to believe that anyone waits anxiously every morning to see if I have produced something spectacular overnight.  Hardly.

But the thing about blogging in and with a community of other bloggers, is that everyone is in the same boat.   We write, and we want others to read our writing–but hey, if they don’t–well, it is Out There and available for Readers.

Once we hit the PUBLISH button, it is in the universe of myriad writers, our work there with the greatest writers who ever lived.  WHO IS THAT?  you ask?  Well, that is subjective of course.   One person’s Shakespeare is another’s Stephen King, or Dr. Suess.   There is no judgemental clicking of tongues when a physicist likes to read Mickey Spillane, or when a historian (like me) really, really enjoys reading Philippa Gregory’s version of the adventures of the English royalty.

I still have a LOT to write about.   Never at a loss for words, more build up inside my brain faster than it is possible to squeeze them out onto the computer screen.   So my future holds more of the same, but with a concentration and preferential option for the craft of Writing.   Obviously there is no time frame, my future could include twenty more years–or not.

<a href=”https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/six-of-one-half-a-dozen-of-the-other”</a href>