A Personal Experience - Open Book Blog Hop

I discovered home when I was eighteen years old.

Sounds like a line from a romance novel, doesn't it? But what I fell in love with was the mountains.

Growing up in northwestern Pennsylvania, I was surrounded by the Allegheny Mountains. I spent hours as a teenager walking and bicycling in the hills that surrounded my childhood home. The forests and meadows were part of my nature. I studies the plants and knew which ones were food and those that had other uses. I even knew where a few rare plants were sheltered.

But after high school, I took a Greyhound bus west to a college.far from my familiar surroundings. It was an exciting transition—new surroundings, new friends, new educational challenges. It was wonderful, and I was on a continuous high.

And then it happened. For one of the classes I was taking, we took a weekend field trip. In a college-owned bus, we piled in our sleeping bags and luggage and took off to study local flora. The road we took was unlike anything I'd ever experienced. Hairpin turns, sharp inclines, cliffs that dropped hundreds of feet from the side of the road.

Finally we got to the top. And I never wanted to go down again. I'd found my place on this earth.

After that I could not be content with rolling hills. I needed sharp peaks and deep valleys. I joke that I must have been a mountain man in a previous life. Some days, I'm not sure it's a joke. The mountains are where I feel the most like myself. From the lower reaches where you have to have to lift your eyes to see the snow-covered peaks to the upper heights where you can see for miles and beyond that's where I want to be. When I'm among them, I feel fulfilled.

Life's journey hasn't always allowed me to make my home among the mountains. Bit even when I lived in what other people considered paradise, I wanted to leave and return to my personal heaven or as close to it as I can get while I'm still alive.

Soon after the trip, I met a wonderful man and fell in love again. He loves the mountains too, so he doesn't mind sharing me with them. Most of the time, anyway.

To find out what other people are sharing, see the links below. And if you want to share something, you can o it in the comments. Thanks for reading!






July 25, 2016
Personal Experience Post – Let your guard down. Form a connection with your readers by sharing a deeply personal experience.
Rules: 1. Link your blog to this hop.
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3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants' blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person's blog post. Use ‪#‎OpenBook‬ when tweeting.
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Predictions! —Open Book Blog Hop

Welcome to this week's edition of the Open Book Blog Hop, where a group of authors share their ideas on random topics. This week we're making predictions about how changes in technology will
affect us as writers.

I'm going to start with one easy prediction, then move on to something that's more in the out-on-a-limb realm.

Smart watches are the upcoming technology. And they're useful for many things, like tracking the weather and stock market, but can you imagine reading a book on that little screen? So my prediction is that someone will develop an app that will read the books in your e-book library to you—without needing it to be in an audio book format. And then tie that same technology into Amazon's Echo Alex speaker system (and similar products.)

Alternatively, there will be a way to project the display onto a wall or whiteboard to make it easier to read. The technology already exists for laptops, so why not for smart watches?

As writers, the new technology may present formatting issues. We'll need to adapt our existing books into a new setup so the watches can read them correctly, and format our new offerings for yet another market. Same goes for our blogs and websites. As always, the early adapters will get the lion's share of the initial market.

Now onto a prediction that's a long shot.

Remember in Star Trek how everyone could talk to everyone (almost) and understand what everyone was saying? Even though they were from different countries and planets and solar systems? The universal translator (that came in various forms in different shows and movies) searched for similar patterns that occur in many spoken languages and, over a series of words, and interpreted them for the hearer.


That translator only works for the spoken word. I predict someone will develop a translator to interpret the written word. Maybe that's not such a long shot, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that capability already exists in super computer form. But how about in a hand-held device for the masses? Sure, you can go on line and find translations for specific languages, but what about a device that you can run over the page of a book and it will read the text to you in whatever language you select? Think of the possibilities that would open up to us as writers!

We'd immediately have our books available to a world-wide audience without paying for translators for every language. How great would that be? Of course, we'd need to change up our writing style or subject matter to fit more of the international audience. I'm not sure how wolf shifters would translate into a Hindi marketplace. Would readers from all over the world read our blogs if we didn't write them to include topics of interest to a broad audience? We as writers would have to work a lot harder to make ourselves "attractive" to the new market.

So those are my predictions. What are your predictions? Feel free to share in the comments below. And to find out what other writers on the loop have to say, follow the links below.

Predictions Post – How changes in the industry, in technology or in the tools (social media, blogging, etc.) will affect your ability to earn a living or make your mark as a writer.
Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants' blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person's blog post. Use ‪#‎OpenBook‬ when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.
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Why Human Rights Matter to Me—Open Book Blog Hop

No, you didn't miss a post from me last week. I was out of town and had no internet access. It was great, but now it's time to come back to real life.

This week we're talking about things that matter to us. As my title indicates, I picked the broad topic of human rights. I considered narrowing the topic, but back in high school, when I was first being introduced to the politics of women's rights, I decided that the rights of all people were important, and I haven't changed my philosophy. If anything, my areas of interest have grown broader over the years.

The men's rights movement was the breakthrough  that led me to explore beyond women's rights. The concept that women were automatically considered better parents than men floored me because my own father was a wonderful and caring parent. Besides, if we were talking about women being equal, shouldn't that extend to equality both good and bad? I couldn't find the fairness in being considered automatically "superior" in any field based on sex alone. Isn't that what the women's rights movement was fighting against?

Gradually, my world perspective grew larger. The Civil Rights Movement was only the tip of the iceberg. The issues of Native Americans began making the news. Remember the occupation of Alcatraz?  The American Indian Movement and Russell Means? I don't know too many people who do. Fascinating US history that I suspect doesn't make it into history textbooks. 




Somewhere along the way, my interests became international. So many issues, so many causes. Women not being allowed to drive or vote or have any rights under the laws of many countries. Children being forced in prostitution or slavery or used to fight in territorial wars. Men and women not being able to have opinions that are in opposition to the "official" position of their government. The struggles of the LGBT community all over the globe. Usable food being wasted or deliberately destroyed while people go hungry.

What can one person do about all the many issues? Admittedly, not much, other than pay attention and educate themselves  about what is going on in the world. Sign a petition or two or three. Pick one or two causes to donate money to. And when the opportunity arises, share your knowledge with other people. If we work together, we can make a difference.

To find out what other authors care about, follow the links below.





July 11 Why ____________ matters to me. Share what you're passionate about. Strong opinion pieces allowed.
Rules:
1. Link your blog to this hop.
2. Notify your following that you are participating in this blog hop.
3. Promise to visit/leave a comment on all participants' blogs.
4. Tweet/or share each person's blog post. Use ?#?OpenBook? when tweeting.
5. Put a banner on your blog that you are participating.
Wordpress:



Custom Blog:

An InLinkz Link-up

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