Give my homemade search engine a spin
From the day I started this blog last July, I thought it should have a search function. Just think of all those serious websites that provide very helpful search functions. The best … well, if you make a typing mistake entering your search function, the best will guess what you intended, and enter that. Very helpful, just like the best browsers. But my blog designer said it was not a good idea.
I did not want the best. I just hoped for something serviceable. I needed it in part for myself, as I occasionally get confused about which epistles have been posted and which lie deep in my unconscious, waiting for a breath of inspiration. (Today I discovered an unposted guest contribution I had completely forgotten about!) If I could just take the time, I am certain I could quickly make a list of five dozen potential epistles—many of them of great importance to me, along, with a sentence about each, a sort of primer to get it started. But I digress. Let us cut to the chase.
Today, for example I feature an epistle about Miss Otis, the nom de blog I have given the element of my blog—and my internal process—related to my diagnosis of “mild cognitive impairment. So here is how I would search for Miss Otis in the blog:
I start out by typing the URL of the blog: mayidwellingratitude.com
Continuing, I add the search term, I define the resulting entry: mayidwellingratitude.com Miss Otis.
I copy it, open a new browser window, paste it in, and click. And presto, it works! I get links to the two epistles I have posted about Miss Otis, plus a couple more of my posts, the Wikipedia entry on Miss Otis, some other Miss Otis questions one might want to ask and at least five more screens.
This might be useful to readers as well as to a forgetful blogger. I will institute it as a fixture in the next Keyboard, just above the plea for more dialogue. And they said it couldn’t be done!
Okay, Call ME a Heretic
Mary Scriver has a guest contribution today explaining why she cannot properly be called a heretic. Her argument is scathing, and as I read I find myself exclaiming, But I WANT to be a heretic. Online we find that heresy is particularly associated with Christianity. And I couldn’t be that kind of heretic. I’m not a Christian, and I try not to pick fights with those who are. I did grow up a Methodist, and later spent 20 years as a Unitarian. So perhaps I could aspire to be an apostate. Good God, that sounds even worse than a heretic! When I was an editorial writer, I imagined myself to be a heretic, but I was too timid.
My one real claim to heresy lies in my practice of tai chi, of taiji, however your care to spell it. At the peak of my practice I tried to do away with all the applications that made tai chi martial art. I wanted it to make it an evocation of the natural world. But nobody noticed. There really is no taiji orthodoxy. Sigh. The bane of a would-be heretic’s existence. Be sure to read Mary’s post.
Featured epistles in this Keyboard
Taking on LoJong Slogan #2 is a challenge. Must I choose one over the other, or are both unsatisfactory for their total lack of permanence?
Miss Otis Tidies Up Miss Otis—the embodiment of the blogger’s mild cognitive impairment—likes her clients’ brains to be well-organized, regardless of limitations.
Organized religion has gone so far afield it can no longer identify or punish its heretics.
When she was a girl, Mimi was gullible. Perhaps it was the price of love. But a life well-lived has brought her to different outlook.
A Fragrant PHT
Subbing in for the Big Huzzah. Standard spelling has one ‘h.’ Pronunciation, just sounding out the letters, but I prefer a kind of farting sound. Like the Big Huzzah, A Fragrant PHT is something worth noting, but mainly to be lamented or feared.
Til next time …
Could Saint Patrick’s Day really be next week? Not really associated with meditating. But try eating a forkful of corned beef with complete mindfulness.