Between sanity and madness, there has always lain writing. I have written my way out of deep depression, terrible grief, loneliness, and hopelessness. When I write, I find my way. Lately, photography has become part of the writing. Not instead of it, but in addition to it. The pictures are part of my story, the thing that I am doing besides pondering the evils of the world.
Red-Bellied Woodpecker
It’s not just because “birds are pretty” or for that matter, because “flowers are pretty.” It’s because both of these things are of the earth and remind me that the earth brings forth beauty. Sometimes, the beauty is also terrible in its potential and consequences. Gigantic storms flood coastlines and river valleys. Fires destroy woods and towns. Winds blow down ancient trees and make the oak trees in our woods groan with the strain of motion for which they are never ready.
Tufted Titmouse
The process of taking these pictures is calming and it brings up a kind of genetic memory of a past built into my bones but lost from active memory. It reminds me of a childhood lived under waving white oaks — and that was the good part of childhood memories. It reminds me of the summer I spent reading hundreds of books about paleontology, volcanoes, and earthquakes.
So much of the stuff I know now I learned before I was ten. The things you learn “way back then” stick in your memory forever. The things I learned yesterday may scatter before dinner, but memories of books I read in childhood are permanent and have become the basis of later learning.
Chickadee
Today is a gray day with patches of blue. I realized that the birds needed feeding. I should have done it yesterday, but there was a holiday this week and it knocked my (very shaky) calendar off-balance. And so, while Garry is out testing the limits of his cochlear implant on creaky old colleagues from his working days, I refilled the bird feeders.
The pink cactus flowering
I had to learn to do it myself because no matter who else I depend on, in the end, I need to be able to do it alone. Sometimes, that’s the way it works. Garry is out, Owen is recovering from surgery and the birds are hungry.
And I need the pictures.
Blessed be the birds the fly through my woods. They keep me sane, keep madness outside the door and let me live just like a regular person.
Big thank you to Martha Kennedy for spreading this around. These days, I don’t think I need it, but in case I change my mind, it’s nice to know that there’s somewhere to go for a rational explanation.
If you do a lot of complicated posting — especially if you are using cross-references and inserts from other texts, this might be exactly your thing. It’s similar to Framemaker, Adobe’s once premier text editing system, although not quite as intense (or huge) … but Frame was made for designing technical books with footnotes over multiple volumes with all appropriate indices.
This is not intended for that although, in theory, you could use it. I’d be interested to know how it works for you. Especially since Adobe abandoned Framemaker years ago. It was almost a thousand dollars for a single single-user purchase — updates cost less — more than a decade ago. Its audience shrunk, making keeping it up to date not worth the development time, or in any case, that’s what I assumed.
Adobe had stopped fixing the bugs a couple of years before they stopped selling it anyway and since it was THE tool for multi-volume documentation, maybe that’s why companies stopped writing documents? No software?
Good luck and have fun!
Can I address the elephant in the room?
WordPress doesn’t look like WordPress anymore.
The WordPress Gutenberg Editor has replaced the familiar WordPress Editor.
Welcome to the world of blocks! There are blocks available for all kinds of content: You can insert text, headings, images, lists, and lots more!
This post will explain why WordPress switched to the Gutenberg Editor and offer a tutorial so you know how to use the new WordPress editor.
Why Did WordPress Switch to the WordPress Gutenberg Editor?
Bloggers were using third parties to build landing pages.
For example, bloggers and other content creators were paying to use DragDropr to move around content.
My landing page for new subscribers is an example of content moved around on that page.
As you can see, my image block and my text block are next to each other. Using DragDropr, I arranged the blocks this way.
WordPress wanted to have this functionality. By adopting this feature and more, WordPress will continue to grow. That was the rationale.
(NOTE: Gutenberg was created to help grow the business aspect of WordPress and was not designed for “regular” bloggers. They admitted this to me. Not even professionals need such a complex text editor. The good news is IF you need it, it exists. Hopefully, it will still exist in another year. You can never tell with WordPress.)
How to Use the New Gutenberg WordPress Editor
Are you familiar with Medium.com? Medium, a publishing site, works in a similar manner to the WordPress Gutenberg Editor.
You add blocks with different parts of your blog post in them.
WordPress Gutenberg Tutorial:
Once you click “Add Post,” you see a series of blocks on your screen.
Add your title, your blog post graphic, and the text of your post where directed.
The WordPress Gutenberg editor is intuitive. You don’t need to click the plus sign to add a new block. Each time you hit enter, a new block will be created.
Should you want to add a new element, click the plus sign.
If you drag your cursor to the left of the block, you’ll bring up the edit functions.
Look at your options for elements to add. Although they’re listed by most commonly used, you may find additional elements intriguing. These may be elements you never thought to use until you saw them as an option to add in the WordPress Gutenberg Editor.
To add an Image:
Create a new block and click the Image icon.
Upload your image. Notice the alignment and edit choices are directly above the block for your convenience.
Use the handlebars on the sides of the image to alter the size. You can also just drag the sides of the photo until they’re the dimensions you want. Write the caption directly in the draft if desired.
Don’t forget to put your focus SEO keyword in the Alt Tag.
Alignment choices for setting your image to the right, left, or center will be available as well.
Many of these features were available in the Classic Editor but were not so obvious.
If you want to create a new heading, after creating a new block, click the T (for text).
After typing, you see you are given a choice for what type of heading you want to add.
Under the block, you see you have choices such as adding HTML code to the block or an Image.
Clicking the 3 dots will enable you to choose additional options.
Did you notice the Grammarly editor appeared? You can now edit individual blocks with Grammarly.
Once again, you can add new elements by clicking the plus sign.
You can add YouTube or Vimeo videos simply by pasting the link into the block.
You can add blockquotes as well.
Do you like to embed lists in your blog posts?
You can also add numbered lists or bulleted lists.
To add Custom HTML in the new WordPress editor:
When you click the plus sign in the upper left-hand corner of the screen, you’ll be able to search for HTML. Look: The Custom HTML Code option came up when I searched for it.
Look:
The new WordPress editor is intuitive. I don’t have to search for HTML code. It “knew” I commonly use the HTML code and it came right up the next time I needed it.
Since I paste codes for embedded elements and throw a linky party, I use HTML code pretty often, so this feature was important to me.
You can toggle between the HTML and the preview so you can see how your text will look.
Click “Preview” to load a preview of this page so you can make sure you’re happy with your blocks.
Finished writing? Just click “Publish” and you’re good to go.
If you need help, there is a WordPress Gutenberg tutorial video. You can see how to use the WordPress Gutenberg Editor.
Fair warning: The video was made a year ago when the editor was still in the beta testing stages.
Advantages of Using the WordPress Gutenberg Editor
You can move the blocks around.
Resize your image by moving the handlebars on the sides. Just drag your image to the size you want it.
You don’t need 3rd-party tools like DragDropr to build landing pages.
You don’t need 3rd party plugins like tables since the editor allows you to insert a table.
The option to enter an image comes in when you add a new block. Therefore, you don’t have to keep going to the top of the screen to add media.
You have more options now.
The options you had before are more obvious now.
Using the Gutenberg editor is like using Medium. If you can publish at Medium.com, you can easily publish using the new WordPress Gutenberg editor since Medium uses the same concept of blocks.
If you’re not happy, you can install a plugin that will put the previous WordPress editor on your site.
Disadvantages of Using WordPress Gutenberg Editor
Bloggers now have to learn a new skill: Mastering Gutenberg.
You can’t use the editor on your phone and you won’t be able to until 2019.
Wrapping Up: Features of The New WordPress Gutenberg Editor and Tutorial
This post explained
What Gutenberg is
Why WordPress switched to a new WordPress editor
How to use the WordPress Gutenberg Editor
The advantages and disadvantages of the new WordPress editor.
Your turn: What is your opinion of the WordPress Gutenberg editor? Are you used to it yet? What is your opinion?
Readers, please share so bloggers struggling to learn the WordPress Gutenberg Editor read this tutorial and learn how to use Gutenberg.
Behind the words for this prompt is a blurry, but genuine picture of a rare Pileated Woodpecker, the “you better believe it” Woody Woodpecker. I have seen this guy a few times and they are rare, but we have one living in our woods. He doesn’t come to the feeder. I’ve seen him working on a nearby tree and this time, I saw him fly past the deck and deep into the woods. I have a 900-mm lens on this camera, but that Woodpecker was WAY back in the woods and there were a million twigs and branches in front of him. So this is as good a picture as I could get. It’s pretty blurry, but at least I can say with some surety that I’m not delusional. We really have a gorgeous Pileated Woodpecker living in our backyard. If ONLY I could focus on him!
Another sort of view of our Pileated Woodpecker.
Is there anyone who is the same all the time? I know I was different at work than at home. Different at home than when out with friends. Different writing than not writing. Different talking to strangers than chatting with family.
Garry had two almost opposing personalities for work and non-work. He was aggressively outgoing in his professional life. He had to be because that was what the work required. Personally, he was quiet and sometimes shy, though over the years the two parts have fused and become more alike.
We all have more than one face, whether we realize it or not. I think writers notice it more than non-writers. One of the great joys of writing for me is having the opportunity to clean up reality. Not scour it smooth, but get rid of the dust on the edges and smooth out the lumps in the middle. I figure we all tidy up reality as we write.
This isn’t a diary. I see no reason to expose everything going on in my sometimes very wacko brain.
The writing “me” is a more thoughtful “me.” In real life, I’m crabbier and more tired. Writing is painless; reality isn’t. Real me is in a lot of pain most of the time and could use a good night’s sleep. On the other hand, real and writing me has a great sense of humor. Even when I believe I’m dying, the idea is too hilarious to ignore. I almost tore my newly reworked heart out because I couldn’t stop laughing. Did you know it really hurts to laugh after major surgery?
Besides, I can’t be dead. Who’d write my blog?
I work at not talking about what’s bothering me. No one likes a whiner. I don’t even like me when I whine, so I certainly don’t want to put it all into print.
Sadly, the pain is probably the thing I spend the most time cleaning up. I wish cleaning it up as a writer would make it go away for real.
What might be the most interesting change since I began blogging 7 years ago (without the foggiest idea of what I wanted to do — or why) is how much clearer I am in my writing goals. I know what I’m writing. I know what effect it will have. I even know when what I am planning to say is going to piss a lot of people off.
Sometimes, I just need to piss people off. It’s part of the wacko thing.
I used to look at the posts that came to me. There was stuff to read. Thoughtful pieces full of ideas, humor. Whimsical material. Ideas to ponder. Often heartfelt pieces about personal tragedies, working through issues, finding answers to important questions.
I didn’t read everything. I never could get all of it in a day, but at least everything I read had meaning. Even if it was about a travel day or examining ancient rocks. Mountain climbing, dog-walking, memories — there was a heart in it and a bit of soul.
All I see these days — with some obvious exceptions are lists of supposedly personal (but not really) questions, riddles, games, and really bad short poems.
When I say “I don’t like poetry,” that’s not really true. I love poetry. I love good poetry. I love poems filled with emotion and humanity — or humor. Not just rhyming for the sake of making the final lines match. I used to read poetry. Amazingly, I even bought books of poetry and memorized it.
About the writing. Maybe it’s me, but with the aforementioned exceptions — people who have been writing for a while and know the difference between flipping off a “meme” or a comment and a post worth investing time into — where have they gone?
They’ve left, is what has happened. They got tired and went away. Between the crazy software and price rises … and now, one MORE price rise … and the resulting loss of quality … why bother?
Some people began writing but gave up in favor of puns, puzzles, and games. None of which are particularly inspiring for readers. They may be fascinating to those who write them, but for me? How many times do I need to find out all about the same person I read about yesterday? How many times does the same person need to answer supposedly “intimate questions, the answers to which are not intimate, but essentially identical to the previous?
Questions and answers are fun sometimes — but that’s not a post. It’s not for thinking. It’s not even worth getting to the bottom of the page before abandoning the piece. I have stopped adding a “Like” to the bottom of these pages because I don’t like them. I should stop saying I do.
So many of the people who used to write strong pieces have left and I don’t blame them. What’s the point in writing meaningful material if all that’s left for you to read are nonsensical puzzles and a dazzling array of Q & A?
This isn’t blogging. It’s gaming and after a couple of weeks, it’s also boring. The lack of thought and ideas is mind-numbing.
I put a lot of time into my writing and photography. I’m not the world’s best writer or photographer, but I work at it. I write, rewrite, edit. Republish when new facts are available. Even when a post isn’t as good as I’d like it to be, it’s never “tossed” off. I do the best I can and hope that I manage to connect, even a little bit. However it comes out, it comes from the heart. I’ve put time into making sure that it says something.
And a merry whatever you celebrate to one and all.
As WordPress gradually destroys itself, I’m sure I’ll go down with it. I’m losing the will to push on. The more I read of the “new stuff,” the less I feel compelled to keep writing. It’s not that I don’t get read. It’s that there is so little worth reading for me.
I keep hoping that someone will realize puzzles and Q and A is not interesting. It has no center, no concept.
This is not a rant. More like a moan. I feel so sad about this and I’ve been thinking about it for a while.
Yesterday, I went looking for something worth reblogging because if someone else has written it, there’s no need for me to try and do the same thing. Let the original author speak for him or herself. I discovered I’d already read, commented on, and plucked out the best of it. And it was surprisingly little.
Blogging isn’t only about “self-expression.” It’s also supposed to have some value of its own. You know, legs to stand on. If the stuff you are churning out has no value, why are you bothering?
I went to take a look at the brand spanking new format for WordPress.
WARNING: If you do that, you will NOT be able to go back to your old format. I think what they have done is eliminate all the old versions of the editor we used, so you can use the new one, or hope they don’t delete the old ones entirely and leave you with this mess.
Which is what I think is really going to happen.
Now, there are things about the “new new new new editor” that may — eventually, when they get the bugs fixed — be useful. But right now? You can’t even get a set of standard editing functions across the top of your page.
They also (apparently, unless it’s a bug) have a limited number of categories — AND they no longer offer you the option of picking up an old post so you can rewrite it.
I’ve got nearly 8,000 posts, so yes, I go back and rewrite material. After you’ve been doing this for a long time, why not?
In this new format, I opened categories and it dies after the letter “C.” What happened to “D” through “Z”? You can’t even find the missing pieces by typing the category name in the search list. Nothing comes up. This will effectively lose thousands of posts and pictures.
I went through and deleted all the one I used very rarely. That got me all the way to “D.” When I eventually found my way back to the “classic editor,” all the deletes were not made.
NOTHING IN THAT SOFTWARE IS WORKING. NO ONE BETA TESTED IT. NO ONE.
I don’t object to change. I object to untested changes and buggy software. I pay to use WordPress. I object to being forced to do stuff the way they decree. If this is such a great interface (it might be POTENTIALLY, but it definitely isn’t there yet), then people will use it. You don’t have to club us over the head.
Also, they are no longer offering help to anyone but business users … so they’ve forced me to use this very buggy interface and there’s no one to talk to. Maybe this will finally push me over the edge.
You know that whole thing about this being a free country? Well … this kind reminds me that anyone who doesn’t follow orders is not free. What is wrong with having more than one interface? How does it hurt anyone?
A thing that happens as we age is we lose contact with pop culture. We retire. We don’t feel impelled to learn to do it differently unless there’s a really good reason to do it. Unless you’re paying me to do it your way, try not to get too bent out of shape if I prefer to do it my way. It may be different, but that doesn’t make it wrong.
We are happy with the way we do things. They are comfortable and trust me, retirement and comfortable go together like guitar and bass. It starts early, as early as ones 30s when you realize you don’t like the music. By your 40s, you don’t care who knows it and by fifty, you drop any pretense of caring any of “the latest things.”
It doesn’t mean that nothing new makes the cut, but I’ve been a writer my whole life and any product that requires me to access multiple pages to accomplish the same task that previously could be done on a single page is NOT an improvement. This is poorly designed software.
That’s right: it’s BAD SOFTWARE. That’s not how the pros do it, kids. I was one of them.
I’ve been reading about this upcoming new interface for a while. I really had my fingers crossed that just this once, WordPress would have the grace to fully test it and make sure it worked. It is not an UPGRADE if it’s harder to use than the old one — especially if the task is identical.
Drop down lists for everything? Dumping most of my categories? Completely changing how media is handled without so much as an introduction? Discovering that we no longer have access to help?
So, they did it again, but this is the worst yet. I’m wondering if it’s worth it. WordPress doesn’t want writers and photographers. They want business accounts.
I’m not a business. I am not selling anything. I’m trying to just enjoy life.
This isn’t going to be fun. It’s going to be a major league headache. They’ve been cutting down on what they offer “premium” users for years and at this point, nothing seems to be what they are offering. Platform, templates, and good luck. What they are clearly saying is simple.
WORDPRESS DOES NOT CARE ABOUT USERS.
You know how Sears is going out of business? Well … guess what? I’m pretty sure driving away all the people who do creative stuff which brings in new people is not going to help WordPress get richer (they are already making plenty of money) than they already are. But not to worry.
I was taught how to write at an early age. In grammar school, I was very anxious and would get paralyzed when I had to write anything. My mom sat me down and showed me how to structure any piece of writing. The classic, “Say what you’re going to say, say it and then say what you said.” In other words, introduction, development, and conclusion.
Mom started me out by helping me write outlines for my writing. Once I had the basic ideas organized, I could expand on them on my own, with less anxiety. Mom would then edit my writing with me. That’s how I learned about style and sentence structure. Writing began to come easily to me.
By the time I was fifteen, I was helping Mom edit articles and books that my father, Abram Kardiner, was writing for psychiatric and anthropological publications. My dad was never a clear and concise writer. At this point, he was in his mid-seventies and was even less focused and coherent than before.
Me at about 16
Dad tended to write in a confusing stream of consciousness. Ideas just tumbled out in random order. He often buried the lead sentences explaining his premise, deep in the fourth or fifth paragraphs. He often went off on tangents for pages and pages, losing the thread of his thesis along the way. He had brilliant and innovative ideas. But you had to hunt for them and they weren’t always presented in the best way.
Mom and I would take his material and break it down into a detailed and sequential outline for him. Dad resisted us at every turn. He somehow felt that we were trying to get him to ‘write down’ to a more mass audience when he was aiming his writing at high-level academics in his fields. We argued that all writing has to be comprehensible, regardless of the audience. He would grudgingly go along with us.
Mom and Dad during Dad’s prime writing years
We would go over the outline with him meticulously. He would take it and go off to do a rewrite. He would stick to the outline for a few paragraphs if we were lucky. But then he would end up off on another rambling polemic. We never succeeded in improving his writing and he didn’t publish much after this point.
Many years later, I had another opportunity to help someone hone their writing skills. This time with better results. My first husband, Larry, was a brilliant litigation attorney. Part of his job was producing coherent and above all else, persuasive written arguments on behalf of his clients.
Larry had the same problems organizing his thoughts as my dad had. His arguments meandered, got muddled and lost emphasis and clarity. He was all over the place. This became a serious issue at work. It took him forever to get his writing done and he was never satisfied with the end product.
Larry as a young associate at a NY law firm
One day I was home sick from my own legal job. Larry was struggling with a pro bono criminal brief and was frustrated. I told him to leave his draft with me for the day so I could work on it. This was before computers. I spent the day literally cutting and pasting his brief into a whole new document. I added a few connective sentences here and there, but all the necessary material was already there.
Larry was very impressed with the document that I came up with for him. He was surprised to see how I had created a totally different result simply by rearranging and consolidating his material. A light bulb went off in his head. Unlike my father, he ‘got it’.
Larry and me in his early years practicing law
His writing improved. He was also smart enough to study the writing of two very good legal writers in his law firm. One of them had been a speechwriter for Bobby Kennedy in the 1960’s. The two men had very different styles and Larry forged his own style by adapting what he liked from both men.
Adam Walinsky – former RFK speechwriter and partner at Larry’s law firm
Larry became an excellent writer. One of the best in his law firm. In one major brief he wrote, he started each section with a relevant quote from Shakespeare. Brilliant! The judge in the case, who was a Harvard Law School graduate, was so blown away, he wrote Larry a letter. He told Larry his brief was the best the judge had ever read!
Quite a compliment for Larry, and obliquely for me as his original writing tutor.
So I succeeded in teaching one person how to be a good writer. Or I at least set him on the path to becoming one. I was very proud of Larry and of my accomplishment. It meant a lot to me because of my struggles with my dad’s writing. I guess one out of two isn’t a bad record.
Once upon a time in a land far, far away, you got your priorities in order. You set priorities. You decided what was your top priority, then you could change your mind forever but at least you knew there had been a priority.
You did not prioritize because the word “priority” was a noun. A noun was a thing. An item. A name. An object.
Marilyn as writer
One day, back in the 1970s or thereabouts, we ran out of grammar and punctuation. No one taught grammar in American schools. They hadn’t taught it is so many years that I had only learned grammar as an afterthought.
So it continued until we had the National Whatever-They-Were-Called-Back-Then exams that were supposed to determine what we did and did not know. I got amazingly good grades on everything, probably proving that all the teachers who called me an under-achiever were right on target.
I was much more interested in painting in the art room and reading books than doing “workbook” assignments. I, in fact, did not do workbooks. Once I discovered you could “fail workbook” for not coloring in the attached pictures, I thought “This is really STUPID” and flatly refused to do it. Rather than battle me to the death, they sent me to the art room which got me out of the way. No one was actually worried about whether I was getting educated. I apparently was educated enough to think the curriculum was stupid.
Remember this one?
I also refused to bother with the official school “readers.” I had already read them. In the second grade, I’d locked myself in the wardrobe closet (it was the size of a small bedroom and had lights) and read all the readers up through sixth grade.
Mrs. O’Rourke was furious and called my parents. My mother felt if I had read all the schools readers in less than two hours — in the closet in second grade — that they weren’t giving me an adequate education. For all practical purposes, they didn’t have a clue what an adequate education might be. I spent a lot of time in the art room.
All of this was fine until the high school sophomore year standardized tests when it was discovered no one in the super high IQ group, in which I was reluctantly included (high IQ, low grades), got better than a 60% score on grammar. Not a single one of us.
Louis B. Schuker, our principal called an assembly of The Smart Kids Expected To Go To College. He said we had all gotten grades of 98% or higher on every test they threw at us — except grammar. So the following year would be devoted to grammar. For all of us, even if we were planning on nuclear physics in our near future.
Jamaica High School
Thus during my junior and senior years of high school, I learned grammar — possibly as part of the last New York public school students to formally learn it. One of the things I learned is that you can’t just turn a noun into something else because you are too lazy to use the word properly.
It was hopeless. I might have gotten two years of parsing sentences, but the rest of the world didn’t parse.
The result is that today, we communicate with little tiny pictures known as “Emojis” and think “prioritize” is a real word. I guess it is a real word now. Everything is a real word, including Emoji.
Our language has no class. That’s why kids don’t talk to each other. They don’t know how.
To participate in the Ragtag Daily Prompt, create a Pingback to your post, or copy and paste the link to your post into the comments. And while you’re there, why not check out some of the other posts too!
