Blog – Top of JC’s Mind

1,000 Follower Celebration: Meet and Greet

Jay Dee Archer of “I Read Encyclopedias for Fun” is hosting a meet and greet to celebrate reaching the 1,000 followers milestone! Jay Dee is an author, teacher, spouse, and dad, currently living in Japan but planning a return to Canada next year. He blogs about writing, life in Japan, being a dad, geography, astronomy, and much more. Go check out his blog, introduce yourself on his meet and greet thread, and have fun!

Jay Dee's avatarI Read Encyclopedias for Fun

fireworks

I love milestones, and this is a big one. This blog has finally achieved 1,000 followers! So, I thought, what could I do for this occasion? Well, some other people have done something similar, one for a 500 follower milestone, and another who just does it to bring bloggers together.

Let’s have a good old meet and greet! It’s very simple, just leave a comment with a link to your blog (the main blog or a single post, it’s up to you) and say something brief about your blog or yourself if you like. If you have a book, tell us about it, too. I’d also like to ask you to do one other thing: share this post as much as you like and anywhere you like. Tell other bloggers you know about this post so they can also find some great blogs to follow.

I look forward to meeting…

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SoCS: ready or not

I put off starting to write this post, thinking I would surely feel more ready later on.

Well – no.

Sometimes, you wake up feeling ready for anything.

Today is not one of those days.

It’s more a day to peruse emails and play games and go for a walk or just sit.

Not ready for much of anything – or at least much of anything that involves deep thought.

Maybe tomorrow.
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This post is part of Linda’s Stream of Consciousness Saturdays. This week’s prompt is “ready.” Join us! Find out how here:  http://lindaghill.com/2015/07/31/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-august-115/

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SBP times two

I am pleased to announce that Silver Birch Press has accepted another poem of mine!

Last month, my poem “Becoming Joanne” appeared on the Silver Birch Press blog as part of their “All About My Name” poetry series.

Sometime between now and August 31st, my poem “Sturbridge, Massachusetts” will appear as part of their “My Perfect/Less-than-perfect Vacation” series.

Readers of my blog know that I am not so good with dealing with images. True to form, I have to re-scan and re-submit the photo that will run with the poem. With luck, I’ll get the size and resolution right this time.

When the poem is published, you can be sure I’ll post the link here at Top of JC’s Mind!

Comment removal

I’ve just done something I’ve very rarely had cause to do – remove a comment from my blog.

Truthfully, I am not so inundated with comments that this is likely to be a common occurrence, but, for the record, I have a low tolerance threshold for coarse language and decided that I won’t leave it on my blog.

I admit that I feel badly for erasing someone’s opinion, but civility and respect are important to me, so I am making space for them here as I am able.

SNAP

Dear Members of Congress,

I made a trip to our local farmers’ market this morning to choose among the amazing summertime bounty of fruits and vegetables from the NY/PA border region.

I was pleased to see the market so crowded and gratified to see that the vendors accepted SNAP benefit vouchers from shoppers. The people that I saw using vouchers this morning were retirement age women, but I know that there are also younger adults and families in our area who use SNAP benefits, even though household members have jobs.

I call on you to expand food benefits programs such as SNAP and WIC so that everyone in the USA has access to all the food they need to maintain or improve their health.

I also call on you to ensure that employers pay their employees a living wage, so that they don’t need to rely on government programs for basic necessities.

Both are ways to “promote the general welfare” as you are called to do by our Constitution.

Sincerely,
Joanne Corey

One-Liner Wednesday: coin flipping

“If a coin falls heads repeatedly one hundred times; then the statistically ignorant would claim that the ‘law of averages’ must almost compel it to fall tails next time, any statistician would point out the independence of each trial and the uncertainty of the next outcome, but any fool can see that the coin must be double headed.”
– Ludwik Drazek

This is part of Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday. Join us! Find out how here:  http://lindaghill.com/2015/07/29/one-liner-wednesday-just-one/

Binghamton in words and photos

A very interesting take on a trip to Binghamton NY with lots of great photos by Arian Horbovetz.  https://ariandavidphotography.wordpress.com/2015/05/28/binghamton-a-city-of-two-tales/

One slight quibble: The renewed arts scene in downtown Binghamton was not largely the work of the young artists. It was local, established middle-aged and elder artists and gallery owners who started First Fridays and the arts emphasis downtown. The young artists now here are the fruits of those efforts. The downtown renewal they began drew the University Center and housing into the downtown area, which has accelerated the revitalization process and made many new businesses possible.

Soon, one of the old factory buildings will house the Binghamton Hi-Tech Incubator, designed to help new businesses open, building on research from Binghamton University and the area’s traditional strength in technology industries.

Our Southern Tier Regional Economic Development Council also has a proposal for further development of the Binghamton/Johnson City/Endicott corridor, if our region wins one of the $500 million grants that the state has offered in the latest competition. Personally, I think the Southern Tier should have been given a grant directly as Buffalo was, but I know our proposal is strong, so hopes are high that we will get an award.

SoCS: vision

Last week, I had my annual vision exam. I have worn glasses since I was seven. I was near-sighted as a child, but now I have far-sightedness, too, related to age.

And my in-between vision is not great either, so I have been wearing progressives, which try to help you see well across all distances.

Last year, I finally gave up and got a special pair of glasses called an office lens. This pair of glasses is not good for long distances, like driving, but they are really good for short and intermediate distance, so I can read with them and, most importantly, use them when I am at my desktop computer without having to tilt my head at a weird angle and make my neck get a crick. However, they still let me see clearly about ten feet away, so I can use them for walking around the house without having to switch glasses every time I get up from the computer. I really love these glasses and I find my eyes are much less tired at the end of the day because of them.

I am thinking of replacing my progressives that I wear most of the time with bifocals so that I will still be able to drive and read and do kitchen work and such. Using my desktop is my main intermediate vision task, so I will switch to my office lens for that, but have the bifocal for general wear and being out and about.

And, someday in the future, I will need to have cataract surgery and will probably see better with the new implantable lenses than I have seen when I was six.
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Linda’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week is: “vis.”  the post should “use a word, or tie your post’s theme around a word, that contains the letters VIS, in that order.” Join us!  Details here:  http://lindaghill.com/2015/07/24/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-july-2515/

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I feel for you

I think WordPress, Facebook, and other social media should institute a new button.

When someone has written a beautiful post on a difficult, tragic, or emotional topic, I don’t always feel qualified to comment, but want the writer to know that I have read the post and that I sympathize with them. I sometimes hit the “Like” button, but it always feels a bit unsettling. I don’t “like” that they are grieving a loved one or that they are dealing with chronic illness.

I want a button that says “I hear you.”  “I feel for you.” “You touched me.”  “You are not alone.” “I don’t like what you are going through, but I am thinking of you and sending you good thoughts.”

Anyone else with me on this?

One-Liner Wednesday: teaching and learning

“We need to remember across generations that there is as much to learn as there is to teach.”
– Gloria Steinem
Join us for Linda’s One-Liner Wednesday! Find out how here:  http://lindaghill.com/2015/07/22/one-liner-wednesday-sympathy-for-a-weevil/comment-page-1/#comment-55155