Writing Process Wednesdays: Character vs. Theme vs. Story

     I cannot express my gratitude enough to the public library system, especially the DCPL, where I borrowed dozens of books on a host of topics related to this WiP.

     Of course I also found much information online, a great deal of that being contradictory or not useful for me, so I took copious notes, and then managed to lose half of them when my phone died.

     Note to self, do not use text messages to send yourself notes as you read a book.

CornellNotes Cue is Things to Recall

But, at last, this novel in progress, Who By Fire, finally seems to be coming together, but it has been everlastingly tiring.

 

    So, the individual characters have their own life stories, of course, most of which, I now see, I need to understand and know like the back of my hand before I start to write.   Those stories tie into the theme of the book as the plot uses some universal story idea to step on their wounds, thus saying something about the world in general.  I finally understand that this is not something one must or even should write in a scene somewhere, but rather, it is something that the story itself says, once the reader is done reading it.  And that sums up three years or more of studying story theory.  Go to, go write, Fellow Writers!

Shira

Action Prompts:

1.) Share your thoughts on writing, and on story, please.

2.) Write a story, post or comment that uses those thoughts.

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Click on the ShiraDest site menu above this post, out in your browser (I personally also advise loading an ad blocker extension to your browser, first…), for menu pages leading to posts on learning via book and film reviews, and some wonderful shows as well, and free lesson plans, and my writing in various forms, if you have time to read, and if you like:

B5, Hakan: Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem,  Lupin, or La Casa de Papel/Money Heist Reviews,

or,

Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,

           or,

Long Range Nonfiction, or Historical Fiction Writing (including Who By Fire, as I draft it, and  Ann & Anna…).

Also,

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading about #ProjectDoBetter.  This free learning tool set work is my personal way (as opposed to founding the Project, overall) of contributing to building tools that can help increase empathy and compassion in our world.   And remember how important empathy building is, as part of this project.   Let’s Do Better.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

ShiraDest  Publications and Shira Destinie Jones’ work, in this blog post, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Building A Food Related Library

   Well,  this is still Day 3 of 67 holistic high school lesson sets, and they are still freely offered to anyone working on building their own home study library.  Speaking of building your own home learning library of materials and ideas, I just read a very interesting idea on the news about the way we eat.  Ok, not all of us, but the we, in general, as in we human beings, especially those particular human beings who are currently located  in Japan.  And it bowled me over, yes, pun is intended.

     Apparently kids in Japan eat free, all and always free, lunches in school, and they even serve one other, and then help with the cleanup after (or during, as I learned to clean up as I go when I cook, from my Great Grandma Marie…), although I wonder if they do this for other meals,  as well?  This is a totally different approach than what I have ever seen in the US.  Aside from the food they eat, the way they eat it, and how they help while eating it, the author of this NPR article mentioned that obesity is far lower in Japan, also because the fact that:

“cities are densely populated, but safe, allows for heavy reliance on public transport, for example. And populations that use public transport tend to walk more and get more exercise just by virtue of that design.”

     Yes, it seems that  we Americans certainly can learn, if we wanted to, quite a lot from Japan.  I hope that more of us start wanting to learn more, very very soon.

From NPR article by  Yuki Noguchi

Shira

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Click here for more ideas on:

Learning through story:

                                                   Babylon5, Hakan: Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem,  Lupin,  La Casa de Papel/Money Heist, or El Ministerio del Tiempo Reviews,

or,

for the more traditionally minded:

Learning via Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,

     Thoughtful Fellow Learners, please consider learning about

   and then sharing  the #ProjectDoBetter  to help build, share, or learn from free libraries, or other subjects that you find useful.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

aka Shira, or:

ShiraDest

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Update of Libraries and Learning About Debt…

The role of public libraries in upholding the health of any local community is indisputable.  Too many people are pulled into debt by the wide variety of offers, products, and scams out there.  Then, many do not know how to escape.  That is what, in part, the public library system can help with, by facilitating public education on consumer protection, Statutes of Limitations,  and state laws surrounding debt collections.   We can all help by sharing information freely with our neighbors.

Let’s Do Better.

Shira

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil

Review: L’herbier Toxique: Codes Secrets Pour Plantes Utiles, by Bernard Bertrand

    I got this book as a gift when I lived in France, but lent it to someone, and never got it back.  Yet another reason to either borrow from or buy and gift to your local public library, since I could at least go back to the library to read this book again, were I still in that library circulation area (yes, I know, many libraries simply sell copies of donated books if they are not popular with the normal patrons in that local area, unfortunately, merely putting the book back into private hands, but at least the local library would have benefited from my donation of that book that I will never see again).

Excellent summary of many plants which range from mildly toxic to instantly fatal, with enlightening commentary on how (i.e. P. 7-8) fear is used to control public use of herbs and plants. On p. 10 and 12 the author poses wonderful questions about intellectual poisoning by authorities who grant power to the big pharmaceutical companies.

P. 15, 33 and 136 were positively shocking -why prohibit natural pesticides?

P. 152 gives a good warning on why one should cook potatoes whole and unpeeled

I wish I had a copy now to look up those interesting questions and at least list them for those without access to this book.  If all state/county/city public library systems had automatic free ILL exchange agreements with other library systems, like the BNF (Biblioteque National de France), we would have at the very least, the French copy of this book accessible to borrow, if there is no English translation yet available (though I’d be surprised if there were not one by this time, as it has been nearly a decade since I read this one in Brittany).   Yet another reason to learn other languages besides Esperanto, although a translation into Esperanto as an automatic default would make a worldwide library system far more accessible to us all.

  (As Project Do Better works to help accomplish…)

Shira

Action Items:

1.) Share your thoughts on how medicinal plant knowledge can again empower not only women as healers, but all of us in this world, please.

2.) Write a story, post or comment that uses those thoughts.

*****************

Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan: Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem,  Lupin, or La Casa de Papel/Money Heist Reviews

Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,

           or Long Range Nonfiction, or Historical Fiction Writing (including Ann & Anna…)

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading about and sharing #ProjectDoBetter.  This novel is my personal way (as opposed to founding the Project, overall) of contributing to building tools that can help increase empathy and compassion in our world.  Story, as part of how we see our world, helps us make sense of and define our actions in this world.  And remember how important story is also as part of this project. Let’s Do Better.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

ShiraDest

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Repost of Day 56/67: Five Month GED, More Math Language Learning, and Libraries for Continuous Learning: Project Do Better

We keep seeing the need to translate problems into mathematical terms, or into the language of mathematics, in order to solve those problems.         Libraries and librarians can help us translate mathematical, scientific, and social problems into terms that can facilitate problem-solving, if we fund our libraries properly.  How would you solve part […]

Day 56/67: Five Month GED, More Math Language Learning, and Libraries — Context, Critical Thinking, Continuous Learning: Project Do Better

When Frederick Bailey became Frederick Douglass, & Lesson Day 48/67

If today (September 3rd, 1838) is a lesson in history, let it honor our formerly enslaved ancestors, on Day 48 of 67 GED Lesson Plan Sets...

—

So, now my novel is back in planning mode.

And, it turns out that I can work him into my novel, as he is still in Baltimore at the same time that my protagonist is there.

Yassas,   γεια σας!    Salût !  Nos vemos!  Görüşürüz!     ! שָׁלוֹם

Action Items in support of literacy and hope that you can take right now:

1.) Share two different resources in your local public library on the life of any escaped slave.

2.) Write something that uses those thoughts.  Once published, donate one or more copies to your local public library, as I intend to do.

Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind?

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Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan:Muhafiz/The Protector,  Lupin, or La Casa de Papel (Money Heist) or El Ministerio del Tiempo reviews

Holistic High School Lessons,

           or Long Range Nonfiction, or Historical Fiction

Thoughtful Readers, please consider looking up #ProjectDoBetter.

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Ministry Mondays: Bibliotecas y la Deuda… Libraries Debt…

Click here for English…

“ -¿Adónde vas?
-A la biblioteca.
-Hija, la vida es más que leer libros.
-Ya lo sé, madre.
-Lo aprendí leyendo”

¿Cuantos hemos sufrido la pena de ser facturado injustamente por una deuda?
Muchos.
¿Cuantos tenemos la suerte de conocer nuestros derechos y que hay que defenderlos?
No tantos.
¿Cuantos sabemos donde encontrar los detalles de estos derechos y como defenderlos?
No suficientamente.
¿Y cuantos tenemos acceso a un abogado, o biblioteca de derecho, y transporte, sin decir la buena salud para irse?
No la mayoria de nosotros.
Por eso nos urge las buenas bibliotecas publicas y transporte publico, para ayudar a todos en defender sus derechos. En un epoca de escasos recursos para las escuelas y bibliotecas publicas, los que necesitan màs tienen menos.
Hay soluciones para ello: Primero, dar màs dinero a los transportes y bibliotecas publicos, y a las escuelas. Segundo, quitar de encima de la gente las deudas a cada rato. Así podemos cambiar la desigalidad que nos limita a todos.

Salud Para Todos! #PublicDomainInfrastructure
ShiraDest

“ -Where are you going?
-To the Library.
-Daughter, there is more to life than reading books.
-I know, mother. I learned it by reading.”

How many of us have experienced the pain of being wrongly billed by a debt collector?
Many.
How many of us are lucky enough to know that we have rights that we must defend, which cannot be transgressed by those debt collectors?
Not as many.
How many of us know where to find the details of those rights and how to go about defending ourselves legally?
Not nearly enough of us.
And how many of us have access to good legal counsel, or a law library, and the transportation, not to mention the good health, to get there, and then to court if necessary?
Not most of us.
This is where public libraries, and public transportation, become crucial as places to help all citizens research and learn about their rights and how to defend them. In an era of shrinking library and school budgets for the 99%, separate is still not equal: fewer libraries and fewer legal and research librarians are available to guide residents searching for current Statute of Limitations, debt collection laws, etc. The result is that those who need the most help get the least, and inequality continues to grow, harming all of us.

One short term solution to these problems is clearly to fully fund Public Libraries, Pro-Bono legal and consumer Education, Public Transportation, and Universal Health Care (4 major components of our Public Domain Social Infrastructure #PublicDomainInfrastructure ).
One possible long term solution could be an old solution, advocated by several major religions over the millennia: the forgiveness of debt after a certain period of time. Modern student loans, for example, in the UK are rumored to be forgiven after 15 years, while Ancient Near Eastern societies mandated forgiving all sorts of debts periodically. These policies, modern and ancient, were meant to prevent what we are seeing today, particularly in the USA: an entrenched cycle of inequality that prevents the vast majority of people from achieving liberty, let alone pursuing happiness.

Actions:

1.) Share for two different sources giving statutes of limitations in your state (or District).

2.) Share your thoughts on how a periodic debt forgiveness might help, or hinder, justice and help build more inclusive thinking, and

3.) Write a book, blog post or story using them, and, once published, please consider donating to your local public library.

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading about #ProjectDoBetter.

Power Generation At Home, and Libraries: The Common Good

        This  idea of having a pedal-powered TV, and a hand-crank laptop and phone charger, especially, is still gnawing away at me.  Everyone I know that I have suggested this idea to has laughed at me, but I keep remembering how  Mr. Kamkwamba, the 14 year old boy in the film The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, built that wind turbine in Africa thanks to having a school library with books that helped him figure out how to build it (Ejiofor, 2019), and powered a well pump that saved his entire village.    I’ve also read that a lady somewhere in either the US or the UK even wrote her entire debut novel using a pedal-power laptop, yet still got laughed at when I mentioned this individual and practical example.  Now I see that the idea is in fact in use, but not in any community that I have access to.  Why is this so difficult for people here in the Global North to imagine?   This is another reason that long term planning and access to educational and technological materials forms the basis of Project Do Better.

     The common good requires both knowledge of how to be self-sufficient in terms of energy generation, financial self-defense,  etc, and also the equal ability to access the resources needed to put that knowledge into useful action.   Like free dynamos, and electronics hardware.  When I was a systems administrator, we always had plenty of spare old equipment, from hard drives and motherboards to old chasis’ and memory boards which could often be swapped into current machines in a pinch.  This knowledge and equipment access is not that difficult to teach, and could increase ‘digital’ access dramatically, as well as helping our society to build a programming and hardware savvy population able to contribute to solving the more difficult problems confronting our world currently.  We can no longer afford to waste the human talent and time that withholding all of this wasted equipment has enabled in the past. 

   Perhaps  every library and community center (where have all of the Youth Centers and Community Centers gone, by the way?   It seems to me that there were many more back in the 1980s than there are now…) could have a basic hand-crank or pedal-power electronics charger kit to give to all residents.  Would this at least not help just a little bit during emergencies, since having a working smart-phone at least allows GPS to locate a lost person?  During hurricane Katrina, the “cell phone Samaritans” in FEMA shelters did much to help families of evacuees, merely by lending their cell phones to send text messages, since the voice access and phone lines were down.  So it doesn’t really take much, does it?  As a young boy in a far away village demonstrated, a decade ago.

     While there are many ways to help increasing empathy,  Language Learning as a Fourth Tool for Empathy Building is both fascinating and practical.  Empathy building is a crucial task, particularly in our contentious society today.  The task is tiring, and cannot be done all at once, but with careful planning, education, and greater cooperation between the generations, it can be done.

     Let’s Do Better.

–

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Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan:Muhafiz/The Protector, Sihirli Annem, Lupin, or La Casa De Papel/Money Heist Reviews,

Holistic College Algebra & GED/HiSET Night School Lesson Plans,

           or My Nonfiction  & Historical Fiction Serial Writing

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading and sharing about #ProjectDoBetter.

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Library Copy Review: Subversives: Antislavery Community in Washington, D.C., 1828-1865, By Stanley C. Harrold

 Noting that the DCPL did not have a copy of this book, but I was able to read it at the Library of Congress -thank you to our public libraries!

This is an Excellent and extensive work documenting cooperation in DC.   Read for my book: Stayed on Freedom’s Call.

StayedOnFreedomsCallGoodReads

Particularly:

Free Negroes in the District of Columbia, 1790-1846 [WorldCat.org]

quoting Cook’s need “to be very particular to do nothing knowingly, that would in the least tend to disturb the public weal…” P. 41 of Harrold, Subversives, 2003

and
“best known” Israel Bethel (split from white Ebenezer, 4th st.) minister. Mentioned with Mt. Zion Negro Church, 1814 in Georgetown (earliest Black church in DC) contrasted with cut ties to mother denomination. Praised with Wesleyan Metropolitan AME Zion church aka African Wesleyan Society on D St, (S.E?) split under Abraham Cole. Began welcoming white abolitionists to their churches -P. 41, No Segregated Seating!!

and

American slavery, 1619-1877 (Libro, 1993) [WorldCat.org] worldcat.org
Harrold (in “Subversives” LSU, 2003) uses Kolchin to claim that most Whites saw Black ppl as needing slavery to control..

found this related info. in the bibliography of “Snow-storm in August : Washington City, Francis Scott Key, and the forgotten race riot of 1835″, p. 4   (I will post an article combing the three reviews I’ve somehow managed to write but not post as proper blog articles…)

Congressional spitting/coarse lang. <-slave-owners; Slave despair & falling #s=slavery vulnerable in DC. Defense of slaves in DC <->legitimate institutution. P.6: 1850 GA secede if DC slavery abol. MD manumissions <-$ ->darker skinned free ppl, seen as more threat than mulatos. P. 16 Judge Cranch, 1821 ruled William Coston grandfathered out of new $20 free Black good behaviour bond. Black-White Cooperation: Quakers Tyson (est. school) & Lundy (pub. Genius of Univ. Emancip.). Mary Billings, George Drinker & Joshua Leavitt (1834 slave pen tour), Charles Torrey & Elisha Tyson (1840s), John Needle & William Chaplin (1850), M. Miner & (Gtown) Maria Becraft. Snow, Cook, Bradley. 1836 Gag Rule. J.Q.Adams, Gates, Giddings, Leavitt & Weld, Child & Torrey. P. 37: Geog. vs. Relational Community
ShiraDestinie

This work needs to be resurrected from the forgotten oblivion to which our society has consigned it.

Please, please, please, read this book, which I was fortunate enough to be a District resident when I needed to read it, as DCPL did not have it, but the Library of Congress did.  Sitting in the Jefferson Reading Room to take notes was amazing, given the size and history of that room, which is more the size of a lecture hall.

   Continuing Education is crucial to our republic, and to our future.  Reading and critical thinking on the work like this is crucial to how we vote, as well, in the immediate term.  Over the long term, empathy, built through tools like free adult education, probono legal aid, and #languagelearning, is crucial.

We really can Do Better.

Shira

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Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan: Muhafiz/Protector & Sihirli Annem,  Lupin, or La Casa de Papel/Money Heist Reviews

Holistic College Algebra & GED/High School Lesson Plans,

           or Long Range Nonfiction, or Historical Fiction Writing

Thoughtful Readers, please consider reading about #ProjectDoBetter.  Guest post writers welcome.

Shira Destinie A. Jones, MPhil, MAT, BSCS

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Do Better Wednesdays, Books for the Library Prompt

    A resource prompt from chapter 7: 

“I just requested a book purchase for my local library as part of #ProjectDoBetter!”

What books have you recently donated or requested for purchase at the library?

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Click here to read, if you like:

B5, Hakan: Muhafiz/The Protector, or  Lupin Reviews,

or,

Holistic High School Lessons,

           or

 Long Range Nonfiction, or Historical Fiction.

and

Thoughtful Readers, if you are so minded, please consider following   #ProjectDoBetter.

Shira

Shira Destinie Jones’ work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.