Why Looking Backward at 2019 is Worse than a Bad Valentine

I wrote this three months ago, the beginning of the winter that changed lives around the world. I realize that despite my intention to offer kind wishes, nobody got what they wanted when the last month became unprecedented in history.

I didn’t factor into the equation how long we would be at the same task. Speaking in terms of temperature forecasts, some days were more tolerable than others.

Today the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario ordered all non-essential businesses closed. They had already begun reacting to the new restrictions. When I raised the point with my dad the last couple of times we spoke together, he said that a cemetery is considered an essential service.

Photographer:
Elliott Chau

My dad has a business and we have an agreement that I will do some work for the cemetery which the business operates. The agreement is becoming strained, of course, because of the recession.

My mom asked me quietly why I seem disinterested. I wasn’t sure how to emphasize sympathy was the issue, given that the present events around the world are tragic and discouraging.

I decided to update this because that was kind of one winter I might be happy to put behind me. Seeing a copy of TROS was nice, though.

A week or so after a lovely Christmas rest and a pleasant New Year’s Day, we finished last year rather indignantly when a brushfire spread to one of our trees, a fire which we had to extinguish.

    My mother turned seventy years old in December.  She has been enormous for me, obviously, beyond what I can succinctly talk. She said she was pleased when she saw for herself this post.

    I remember when Mom was asking me as Christmas approached what Christmas TV programming I might get to see, and she reminded me that a lot of the network TV shows are having their mid-season hiatus.  It’s sort of in their absence, especially, that the network shows feel relevant and add heaps of joy to the calendar year.

   I don’t have the foggiest idea whether you have a sentiment for January, or if nothing else be alongside associates with who you can explore the winter month of January.  I know from the weight of popular interest in romance, and relationships, that there is something intrinsically human and good about the romance of winter.

Seeing the tree that had been alight

    While I’m a Canadian, I live in the southern ranges, where lake impact temperatures are generally sensible, while keeping you inside a greater amount of the time than you may somehow prefer to spend. Some people have that flair to form a unit that stops a problem, and sometimes, even if it is as routine as waiting for the cast of, for example, The Bachelor, to reconvene.

    I risk appearing to be dismal if I reflect what getting in some Bachelor may accomplish for me.

    It could prove, by the fact that I help at a cemetery, that being morose lives for me in a heart of darkness, but tempering that with an appetite for uplifting and curious experiences, you have in me, not a pack animal nor a reptile, but, I feel, an effusive human being, making a sound perceptible in its absence.

No Perceptible Difference By Its Presence or Absence – Aristotle

You don’t have a clue what you have until it’s gone, maybe, but I don’t know now that our certainties for the future have been upset what to expect entirely, nor, I take it, does anybody. Remember that prayer often provides relief.

Fandango–Dial

Fandango is a blogger who I consider every once in a while a nobleman, a savvy.  At one time WordPress would give prompts to urge befuddled bloggers to get a post distributed, yet since the official prompts have finished, Fandango has volunteered to give day by day prompts that are incentive to remember prompts that were, and prompts which are truly useful.

Photographer:
Alex Andrews

FOWC with Fandango — Dial

Fandango’s One-Word Challenge #FOWC

  The word for the nineteenth is dial, of which I think, immediately, the instruction to the telephone to ring out to someone with whom you wish to speak.  The dial could likewise allude to a check that illuminates how much a measure is accessible, or valuable.  However, I think immediately of dialing the telephone, to talk to somebody.

    I recall dial is a brand of soap cleanser, as well. This could perhaps be applied to the phone to keep it clean, or, taking it further, to clean the individual with who you wish to speak!

    In some cases, I can envision that for appearances, one using the phone to arrange business would appreciate a telephone kept up for neatness, as opposed to a unit that is open to all.  I am not sure the caller would always want to join the party for cleanliness, but common sense informs me that consistent measures to keep clean are best put in place, rather than, as my dad might say to me, letting myself go.  I remember a high school science experiment of trying to effect a bar of soap, from scratch.

    I am trusting with this post to add a sort of punchline to my post yesterday, as it didn’t charge well with my latest, fairly baffling to note. That said, perhaps a variation in my method will help me return to the dozens of readers I could reach, rather than the scant few who availed themselves of me, yesterday.   In any case, you are welcome to like this post, to follow me or to leave a comment.

    Thank you to Fandango, for the inventiveness of thinking to continue daily prompts, in the same fashion as WordPress did daily, not all that long ago.  I hope your troubles continue to be manageable, sir, and that you have a splendid winter ahead.  I’ll see you once more, I’m sure.

Ta ta for now! Merry Christmas

Mermaid’s December 2019 WordPress Tea Party

   Preparing for an upbeat end to 2019, WordPress blogger The Little Mermaid again has devised a tea party blog hop, to entertain and regale us.  In spite of the fact that I am late to return, after a bit of reflection, I haven’t overlooked all she sorted, multiple times now.  I wouldn’t have forgotten.

    For December, The Little Mermaid is asking about painting and art.  Painting is a huge region, you may put it, of craftsmanship, by and large, and it is untoward not to recognize it.  I haven’t gone to art museums, I don’t think, since college, but I did in that phase of my life, to see paintings and other art.

    I have a picture for this blog, a mockup of abstract expressionism, as elaborated upon in the book `Bluebeard,’ by Kurt Vonnegut.  Bluebeard is a novel that is a suitably handy foray into that style of art.

    Without enthusiasm for craftsmanship, you have far less scope accessible to you, to seek after, than if you have some hunger for workmanship.  You need, on some level, to be aware it’s important.  If I could buy one work of art, to hang, say, where my tinted mirror hangs on the wall, if it fits, I would like Liberty Leading the People.

Liberty Leading the People. 1830. Oil on canvas, 260 x 325 cm.

 Millennials, of who I disavow myself by virtue of my age, and whose influence is rapidly dissolving in today’s world, not only have lost the certainty of what art means in the digitalized world but are also facing a post-photographic eclipse, of the virtue of photography.

    It doesn’t mean an end is coming to pass.  It just implies that the world is evolving.  For all that’s past, I imagine fewer and fewer peeps cherish the methods of how things were once done.  C’est la vie, you might say, but all’s well that ends well.  Everything, I usually bend my will to say, is as it should be.

    Thank you, The Little Mermaid, for another lovely tea party.  All the best in 2020!  Visitors here are welcome to like, follow, or comment.  You can find me on Quora

https://www.quora.com/profile/Patrick-Coholan

Warning: You are Losing Money by Not Ranking on the First Page of Google

To further demonstrate the method to my madness, for one, the purpose of divining astrology, and also to honor my family, I make Sunday phone calls. It is part of my weekend routine each week.

“I got Disney+,” Josh told me, last week, on the phone. “Clara wants it for the children’s entertainment.” Clara is his nine-year-old daughter. “I’ve begun watching The Mandalorian,” Josh let me know.

Josh’s one-eighty impressed me. Here was a chance to watch The Mandalorian, in the company of family. It may not come to pass, but it was a shot.

Clara

“It’s good,” Josh said. “You know nothing about the content,” he added, as though to remind me of my shortcomings.

I was a shade subdued. I am not sure he knows I carry a blog, in addition to helping operate the cemetery. I write content, I tweet content, I post content to Facebook. All of this criticized in a few words?

“Fair enough,” I think, which is what I say when I am put on the defensive.

I think, by the word content, Josh hears business like an original on Netflix, a hit on Prime, or the launch of The Mandalorian. He doesn’t think of free content as anything at all. I don’t think he is on Twitter, or that he does Facebook, whatsoever.

I usually read that if you have a business of your own, you need to put a website at the center. And when you have a website, you need search engines to put you in the first few results, so customers find your website before they find your competitors’. That’s the construct of SEO, you might put it, usually executed with sophistication by professional bloggers.

As aforementioned, my dad and I direct the operation of a cemetery, which is different than the usual sort of entrepreneurial venture in 2019. I feel pleased that we have a Facebook page. It’s just short of eighty people. https://www.facebook.com/LouthUnited/

I enjoy Facebook, even after the armageddon when fake news on Facebook was exposed as having swayed the 2016 U.S. election. I admire the zeitgeist of Big Tech and hope it perseveres.

My dad and I never hired a consultant to evaluate our website. Dad gave me the responsibility of being a web designer, for which I had zero professional experience. Our niche is not the kind of thing that is required every day.

Our intention with Facebook, and with ipage, are to make ourselves available for a family desiring peace in the cemetery, and who would like to look further into that. We take neither costs from people on the Internet, nor donations, although, perhaps, in the case of the latter, we should. http://www.maplelawncemetery.org/24701.html

For regular businesses, that wish to be used by regular Internet customers, showing up via relevant

keywords on the first page of Google is a giant advantage. Customers want ready access to services, not something relegated several pages in.

I am not sure how many entrepreneurial folks see my blog, but if you are that kind of person, you should ask yourself how you’re doing with your SEO, on Google. I can see readily why most people consider it important. It can get real results.

I have a theory of SEO that provides consistent results, but nothing extraordinary. I wonder if I can anticipate changing methods of SEO ahead of the curve. Trying that, I feel like I am onto something.

I possess that sometimes elusive quality of willingness to change.

Icicles hanging on Mom and Dad’s backyard deck after the November snowstorm

You’re welcome to like, to follow or comment. Good luck with your holiday blogging, and all the best to you in the New Year.

Thursday was Christine’s birthday, the first since we lost her. I guess last year was kind of special.