Thursday, February 16, 2006

Well, Knock ME Over With A Feather!


Have you ever had a moment, as a writer or other sort of artist, when you received unexpected recognition or worthwhile comment on your work, and the experience just knocked you over with unimaginable joy?!

This is not a rhetorical question; please share your "bluebird of happiness" stories!

Mine happened TODAY!

An article I wrote was published in December in a magazine that comes out every two months. This morning I received word from a peer in R.I. that the new issue includes "a full page of letters to the Editor (including one from the Executive Director herself) affirming" the article! A short while later I received word from another peer in MA saying: "Did I share with you that copies of your article were given to us at the Residency? Excellent and so important to the dialogue."

Given that in the past whenever I have gone out on a limb and spoken out about something regarding the ministry I offer, I have been met with resistance and disdain, I am feeling a bit startled! So, it may take awhile to receive this news, but I will continue to savour it.

Now, I really DO want to hear your stories!
Tell us your "greatest response" and JOY story.

With Amazed and Delighted Gratitude, listener

13 comments:

Catreona said...

listener is first!

jc said...

Excellent, listener! ♥

Catreona said...

listener, I'm not JC, but I'll tackle your question anyway.

The image on JC's comments, and on some other people's comments that you might see at Puddle's blog, aren't gravatars. They are the images those people have placed in their profiles. If you go to JC's profile, you'll see that rainbow image. I don't have an image in my profile; a lot of people don't.

As far as I know, there's no way to add a gravatar as such. You could add your water lilly or black hole to your profile. Then, when you post to Blogger sites, that image would show up on the ones that have user profile images enabled.

I'm a little groggy. Went to have a bit of a lie down around 8:00 and fell asleep. It's kind'a hard to readjust.

jc said...

listener,

You have to have the photo stored online. The easiest way I've found is to do a post here on the arty blog, put the picture you want to use in the post, and put it in draft (rather than publishing). I have a few posts that I've left in draft for a few months, just to have the pictures. I haven't tested whether you can delete the posts once the picture is uploaded. It may stay online once it is put online.

The picture will be uploaded to blogger's online image storage, and you can use the same URL (found in the HTML view in the blogger dashboard) to add that picture to your profile.

Otherwise, you have to load it to your own website or some place like photobucket.com, where it must stay indefinitely, because blogger will keep reading it from that location rather than storing it here.

jc said...

listener,

If you just want to use the same picture of the water lily that's already posted on the arty blog, you can just find the URL to that and refer to it in your profile.

Catreona said...

listener, your letter to WNT is right on. I can't imagine any responsible person suggesting that reading to children etc. makes no difference. It is indeed the tests that are wanting.

On the other hand, reading to one's child and being home with her doesn't automatically make a well rounded, curious child. Our next door neighbors read to their little girl, and the mother stayed home. Clearly, they loved her and gave her a lot of attention. They had her working out in the yard with them from an early age; but, they didn't teach her anything about plants and animals. She didn't know flower names, or anything when she was little. Rather than museums and the like, they took her to the stock car races and had her watching football. She was a great swimmer and had dancing lessons from an early age... She was a late reader, and didn't seem interested in reading. As a little girl, she was sweet, caring sensitive, alert to anything that would be helpful to others and, conversely, on the look out for anything hurtful. She was a delightful child with endless potential.

Now in her early teens, she isn't interested in anything but socker, and she makes fun of another neighbor girl, about her own age, who loves to read and is very curious. The father graduated from Bodwin(sp?) and the mother's family owns a hair dressing business in NH. We're not talking uneducated people, here. Yet, they have taken a beautiful, brilliant, sweet child and turned her into a common, boring serly person. It's a heartbreaking waste. She could have been anything and been a star at it. Now, whatever profession or trade she chooses to pursue, she'll be totally unremarkable and probably have a boring, monotonous life. Somewhere along the way, whether it was her parents' fault I don't know, she lost her curiosity and sweet personality. Now, she's just another kid.

Catreona said...

listener, I think we *may* have a potential solution to your pic problem.

Remember way back at the inception of this blog, mprov told you about something called Hello? Well, it seems this is the system that's integrated with Blogger. If I read the info correctly, you download the Hello software, and *that* allows you to upload images to your Blogger blog. Since you are a member of this blog, it ought to work here.

Check out the info at the link below and see if it's going to be suitable.

http://www.hello.com/how_bloggerbot_works.php?sourceid=blo&subid=us-hpp1=howbbworks

Catreona said...

BTW I'm unclear on whether this system will allow you to post a pic to your profile. You'll have to check that out yourself. It sounds like a potentially good tool, though.

Catreona said...

Testing...

Catreona said...

Aha, it works! Behold the feminine pulcritude of yours truly! LOL

As to how I got the water lilly URL on the blog: it's in the template for the blog itself. Quite easy, actually. That's where I parked my photo as well.

Just a note of something to keep in mind, the blogger thingy that allows you to update your profile is very persnickety. It does not accept .jpg. It must be .jpeg. IIRc .gif and .png are also acceptable. That's the sum total of what I've learned and done today. *sigh*

Catreona said...

listener at 11:44 pm

Huh? Sorry, I'm tired, and I don't quite follow. *I* know zilch about photo tutorials. I was just thinking we need a new thread, though. Please clarify what you mean - try "explaining to dense three-year-old" mode, and you might get through to my brain in its current state, and I'll see what can be done.

Catreona said...

listener, er, thanks for the *very* kind words about my photo.

Yes, you are checked under Admin for this blog. I'm going to read the help file associated with Admin to see whether it might be helpful. Have you posted a main thread at the Dean's Back blog? If you can do that, it will be instructive.

Catreona said...

Well, help was *not* helpful. I'm totally baffled, listener. You ought to be able to do all the things I can do to and about this blog, including seeing it on your Blogger dashboard.

I'll put that new thread you suggested up tomorrow. Got to get to bed.

Good night.