May 20, 2013

Open Features : Give Thanks With A Grateful Heart

Yvonne Trunkwald reminds us of how lucky many of us are.

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Donkin's World : Seeking The Bubble Reputation

...Here in the UK we can be thankful that charisma and cunning alone can never be prized enough to propel anyone to high political office. Or can we?...

Richard Donkin considers the leadership qualities of Boris Johnson.

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Double Cream, Double Cream : Mice

Joyce Worsfold's poem tells of the day when there were mice in the classroom.

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A Writer On Writing : KDP Select - Is It Worth It?

Author Sally Jenkins considers the value of enrolling in the Kindle Direct Publishing Select program.

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Roses Aren't Everything : Epilogue

Leanne Hunt brings her novel, set in present-day South Africa, to a most satisfying conclusion.

Well worth going back to the beginning of the story and reading it for a second time!

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Word Acts : Keukenhof

Lawrence Willson's brief poem highlights the wonder of nature.

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May 19, 2013

Jambo Paulo - Jambo Mykoli : 26 - Ngoma And A Hunt

"On the last Saturday of every month, all the tribal people working in or around the town held a ngoma, a night of dance and songs,'' writes Kersi Rustomji, recalling his early days in East Africa.

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Delanceyplace : Masters Of The Word

The invention of the first alphabet -- a much simpler system
of writing using only 20 to 30 characters as compared to the thousands required in a hieroglyphic system -- unleashed an era in which broad literacy and abstract ideas were possible to an unprecedented degree. Though it is popularly believed
the alphabet came from the Phoenicians, this invention pre-dated them and may have come from the Egyptians, writes William J. Bernstein.

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Feather's Miscellany : Quill's Adventures In The Great Beyond

John Waddington-Feather brings us an extract from his book This time an extract from Quill’s Adventures in the Great Beyond at the point where he and Horatio, the tramp cat, cross the border of The Great Beyond and see the devastation which Mungo Brown and his army of Wasteland rats are causing by ill-planned urbanisation of the beautiful countryside. The scene was inspired by an oil-paining in Cliffe Castle Museum and Art Gallery of my hometown Keighley in about 1820. Where I lived was part of the estate of Eastwood House, a gentleman’s residence in Airedale. Parkland and farmland dominate the scene, but here and there the odd mill chimney is already appearing as the very first signs of the Industrial Revolution. By 1870 the hamlet of Keighley had become a dirty, smoke-ridden mill and engineering town of over 40,000 people. Slums appeared overnight and the rivers and streams around the town polluted – just as happened in the Great Beyond extract.
The Great Beyond novel is now on Kindle as will be the rest of the Quill Hedgehog series over the next few months.

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Visions Of Hope : Work

"Man and woman, after all, are made in the image and likeness of God with dominion over the earth, with a mandate to run it according to the will of God. I wonder if we need to get back to this fundamental principle,'' writes William Sykes.

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May 18, 2013

Eric Shackle Writes : Now They're Eating Lions

"A restaurant in Tampa, Florida, Taco Fusion, which has a reputation for serving unusual meals, added lion meat to its menu, which also offered beaver meat for $3. There was such an “uproar” that it was forced to delete the item a few days later,'' writes Eric Shackle.

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Open Features : Holland During The War Years - 5

"A feeling of relief, joy and freedom pervaded. It had been such a long time...''

Aloysius Joosten tells of the ending of the German occupation of Holland.

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Bonzer Words! : Ode To My Grandfather

Phillip Flockhart pays tribute to a hard-working man.

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Luddite Spring : 29 - Suffer The Little Children

...It was impossible to look into Mistress Smith’s eyes and not realise that here was a mother with no tears left to cry. No matter what might happen to her family in the future, her crying was over...

Continuing his story of a workers' revolution Ronnie Bray outlines the harsh conditions mill workers had to endure.

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May 17, 2013

The Scrivener : Beware Of The Fiend-Scathe!

"If, as some people believe, the Bible is the literal Word of God, it seems rather odd that there is disagreement among translators about what some of God's words actually mean,'' writes Brian Barratt.

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U3A Writing : Send Round The Hat

"My life has been enriched by the custom of sending the hat around,'' writes Jim Graham.

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Through Lattice Windows : What Is The Glory Of The Lord?

"I wonder if the glory of the Lord is not more than we think it is. I, for one, have always equated glory with shining light and thunderous sound, but is this the actual point of the descriptions of glory found in Scripture?'[' muses Leanne Hunt.

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Dr Ron's Laughter Clinic : Where Are Your Obligations?

Ron Pataky reminds us that its hard to be doing what we ought to be doing.

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Sam Pepys – His Diary : Singing Together

...my wife and I sat singing in my chamber a good while together...

Diarist Samuel Pepys had a tuneful day.

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