Surprise!!! Yes, we have a new look today. I guess I like to experiment. But my computer is still one of the “old-fashioned” style with a small, square screen, and the old theme format was not easy to read on it. So I’ve been playing around. Not sure I’m finished yet. (Probably never will be.) Anyway, if you have an opinion on the experimental look, leave a comment and let me know what you think. (Be honest. It’s okay. My pet lion doesn’t bite.)
May the Lord make His face to shine on each of you today!
The Happy Wordcrafter 
Love it,nice rich colour! Is there any significance with the big kitten or just that you like it?
Thanks, Gilly. Actually, I used the photo of the white lion mainly because I love it. It’s part of a photo collection that I have, with rights to use the pictures for any of my work, and there are some really great animal pictures. I’m also fascinated by the history of the white lions — and saddened by their sorrowful plight as so many people seem to breed them only for sport hunting.
But since my focus on my blog is that of looking at life from my Christian perspective, I like the fact the Jesus is referred to as the “Lion of Judah,” and I thought the significance of that fact added another good reason for using it.
In truth, though, I’m liable to use almost anything that I get a whim to use!
Thanks for your comments.
With the freedom you demponstrate to change the format of yuur blog, I just might try (WITH YOUR TUTELAGE) to set up a Relax With Max blog. This looks great! It’s so — Sandy!
Will it accomodate verse more readily?
I’m here to tell you
It don’t get better
Than Southern Illinois
In the Spring!
The winter-drab fields
Drink up the showers
To roll out their
Carpets of green.
That’s a really neat poem, Max.
Most of the themes on here accommodate prose and poetry pretty well equally. The only thing to remember when wanting to set up a poem in a certain stanza pattern is that when you come to the end of a line, don’t hit the “Enter” key to space down once. It will automatically space down two lines — because of something in the HTML code that these sites often use. (That doesn’t happen in the comment windows — like this one where you wrote this little poem) But it happens when you post on the actual blog.
The remedy is simply to be sure that when you want to space down only one line, hit the “Shift” key at the same time as the “Enter” key, and it will move down only one line. It really isn’t much to get used to. You’ve seen my poems on my “Original Poetry” page, but I’ll give you the links to two different poetry sites. I’ve become friends with these two guys since I’ve been on here, and we communicate regularly. They are both talented poets, and you will like their sites.
One is “The Bard On The Hill” He posts his own poetry, and every few days, he posts a poem by someone else — sometimes the old classics. Here’s the link to his site:
http://thebardonthehill.wordpress.com/
The other man is from Australia, and he has three different poetry sites, but I’ll give you the link to the one I communicate with the most.
http://dnobrienpoetry.wordpress.com/
It’s interesting — both of these guys are named Dennis. One day about a month ago, I was communicating with Dennis the Australian about cows. He used to be a dairy farmer, and we were talking about cows and how much we liked them. I closed the comments by saying, “Well, now I guess you or I one will have to write a poem about a cow.” The very next day, the other Dennis (from Texas, and who knew nothing about this conversation) wrote a poem about cows. It was intriguing, to say the least.
I’ll be glad to help you with what I know about the blogging. I think Ed wanted to start a blog too. Now that he’s retired, I could probably meet with the two of you some day at the library there in Pinckneyville — or even at your church, if you could get access to one of the computers there — and show both of you how to get started. In fact, I think Elsie wanted to do the same. If we could all get together at the same time, it wouldn’t take much longer than it would for one. But it would probably take too long to try to do it on a regular meeting night.
Boy, I have had a heck of a time getting this reply to post properly. I may not be as much help as I thought I would. This is my third try, but I think this one will go through.
How does one “moderate” a comment. Was mine immoderate?
That’s WordPress’ term to let you know that the owner of the blog will be reading your post and deciding whether to allow it to be posted or not. (Moderating, in the same sense that one would moderate on a panel of people — determining who gets to say what and for how long., etc.) They’re very careful to make sure the bloggers have control of what goes up and what doesn’t. Usually, once you’ve had a comment allowed, the system allows all the others, and then the blogger can delete them if they want to. But for some reason, tonight, the system is stopping even some people who have posted comments on my site previously. I’m not sure why. But then, we’re dealing with high-level technology after all. It tends to think it has a mind of its own.
On July 10,2012, Expression Unlimited will explore our own future; then around 7:00 Mrs. Sandy Connor will conduct a laboratory session entitled “Internet Tools For Writers.” I expect that one group of tools examined will be Blogs and Blogging.
Two more verses to Southern Illinois In The Spring:
‘Mid new fresh blossoms
The birds sing sweetly,
Promising renewal
And hope.
So dance away the vwinter
Blahs and sing
Of Southern Illinois
In the Spring!
I like the additions. Now put all of them together and add the music, and you’ll have your contribution to the program next Tuesday.
About the “internet tools”: I will be glad to say something about them, but there’s really not much more I can say than I said a few months ago when I talked to the group about it. Most of these internet programs and all the terminology is like a foreign language to most of the people. Unless they can see what I’m talking about on a computer screen and see the process of using it, it still seems threatening to them. I’ve been where they are, and I know how strange it all sounds. They don’t THINK they can do all of it, so they are not really interested. I can say the word “blog” to them over and over, but except for 3 or 4 of you, they don’t have any idea what I’m talking about.
So, in all honesty, Max, I don’t think it will do anyone any good for me to talk about it all again. Those people who don’t have computers are bored hearing it, and most of the rest are lost. And there’s no way to explain any of it without showing it to them. Now, if the church would allow us to go online on one of their office computers the night of the meeting, and I can show everyone exactly what I’m talking about, I think it would be very effective, and we might get a lot of the people interested in really learning how to do it. Some churches are very protective of anything in their offices and will never allow anyone not on staff into them, so that may not be a possibility. But if you’d want to check it out, that might be a way of presenting a program about the internet tools that would actually help the people in the group.
Or we can set up a time for anyone interested to meet at the library and go online with one of the computers there and do a sort of class instruction for everyone at once. We’d probably have to talk to the library and make sure they were willing for 6 or 8 people to congregate around one computer for 30 -60 minutes. Or Ed’s laptop is probably wireless, and we could use it at the library or McDonald’s — or any other place that has a wireless connection.
I’ll be glad to help in any way I can with getting more of the people into Cyberspace activity. I think they would be very surprised how much they enjoyed it, getting to communicate with people from all over the world. I checked out the statistics for this “By the Book” site the other day and found out that in just a 30-day period, there had been almost 200 people from the U. S. and 418 people from 25 different countries visiting this one site. But except for telling the group that fact, I can’t make it real to them without a computer that is connected to the internet.
I’ll bring my laptop and ask our pastor, Jim Brnett, where the nearest phone jack is; we’ll make the lab session work!
And for Mother’s Day: MOMMA (C) 2010 by Max Hanson
(Permissionn for use granted. I request my name be given.)
In the kitchen all day slavin’,
She’s an angel sent from heaven;
Troubled spirits does she leaven
With her love and tenderness.
When the evening found us weary,
We, her children felt so cheery
To have Momma call us “deary”
And our tired brows caress.
FIRST REFRAIN
Never outwardly compaining,
Nor from purpose ever waning,
All her pers’nal griefs containing,
She’d wipe up another mess.
Always to our future looking,
For our health and pleasure cooking,
‘Til we children got our booking
On life’s stage, she’d onward press.
See, she guides the little hand now,
Teaching of dog, cat, hhorse, and cow —
‘Til she coached us tjhrough marriage cvow.
She looks back on her success!
FINAL REFRAIN
Mom’s an angel! She’s a Blessing!
Always full of games and guessing,
And for rightness ever pressing,
Mom’s love eased our daily stress.
Great poem, Max. Are you doing that for Tuesday’s meeting?
I didn’t think about you still having dial-up connection on your laptop. That should work okay. Did you say that you wanted to do this program in July?
Also, I haven’t been able to get commitments out of Phil. He is really hard to pin down these days. I know he’s busy, but sometimes he THINKS he’s busier than he is — if you know what I mean. I’ll keep trying. I’m not sure what’s going on with him right now.
The meeting is July 10. After we evaluate where we go as a group, and everyone has a chance to make a 7-15 min. presentation in his or her own favorite mode or medium of expression, we’ll gather a smaller group around the laptop
for a lab session on “internet tools for writers”. I’m sending our Nine Month Schedule by E-mail. maxie
I go away for a little while and you go all purple! – or is it magenta 🙂
Well, right now it’s purple. But when I originally changed themes and did this post, the background was a brick red, and the header photo was of the same lion that is in the small picture. However, I continued to experiment, and this week I switched to purple and the photo of the rainbow. I’m on a roll, so who knows what color I’ll be a month from now.
I wondered why we hadn’t seen any new poems from you for a while. But I hate to sound nosy by asking people why they’re not on here. Hope everything is okay.
Everything is fine Sandra – I just go walkabout every now and then. Hope all is fine with you too. 🙂