In loving memory...

This morning I looked through Google to see if I could find a picture or a quote which represented me in how I felt about “losing” my daughter. No, she didn’t die, but she walked away from me. She had her own reason, and I don’t know why.

Yes, I know I have frustrated her in the past couple of years, as I came out of hospital with my stroke keeping me down. I have “sort of” recovered in the past two years, but I know that my language is nowhere as good as it used to be. I can only talk now about something that winds me up, not my emotions.

But I can write. I have a lot of quote-pics on Reibus, which I hope that you have looked at. (If you have any quote that stirs you, let me know and I can picture it!) I have my own poetry. I have a second blog - not posted very much, I know, but I do it when a quote I found which is not attributed to the author really makes me indignant – especially if the quote means a lot to me.

And, of course, I have my first book which was published late last year and I did a presentation at the local library yesterday. My second book will shortly be published.

My writing can wind up my emotions, but only to the extent that when I write I can resolve. I resolve for me, not for anyone else. The presentation at the library yesterday proved that. I believe that any author, whether really successful or not, writes for themselves. They follow their own emotions. The group at the presentation were there with memories, which they shared with us based on what my book is about. Well done to this audience.

So, like I said further up, I went onto Google to look for a picture, and I found this quote:

            Those we love don’t go away

            They walk beside us every day

            Unseen, unheard, but always near

            So loved, so missed, so very dear

I had found “Anonymous” or “Unknown” on only a couple of pics, but most pics quoted the quote page where only their picture came from – such as all-greatquotes quoted in Quotes Gram, Gambar Club quoting a pic from Daveswordsofwisdom.com and too many on Pininterest. I also found the Comfort Company with this wording, unnamed, on a stepping sympathy stone which they have been selling. I have no idea if they can do that legally! 

Many of the companies using this wording are obituaries, bereavements, in memory and similar grief, but there is nowhere I can find which says who originally said these words and why they were said.

My grief is not for death. It is for losing reality. I haven’t seen any explanation about this quote, but, for me, it’s very real about how I am now living. 

And correctly acknowledged with “Anonymous”.

Funny... or not

This morning I was Googling for a quote and found these - said, apparently, (as "quoted") by Abraham Lincoln. I laughed! I copied a few of these to put them on here. And then I stopped laughing.

Yes, I found them humorous - but I know that these were made up by quite a few people as a joke. Anyone who knows anything about Lincoln knows that the internet wasn't around him any time when he was alive. Do you know this? Oh, and he never had a mobile phone!

The trouble is, far too many people probably know nothing about this. Is Lincoln included in your history class at school? Have you read anything - true history - about him - at all? Abraham Lincoln has a lot of real quotes, which have been provided on the internet by real people who know this. I wondered, after I'd been laughing at these joke pics, how many quotes like this have been spread around by far too many people who will copy them - but will not ever realise that Lincoln (or many others) have never said the quote they've seen.

History is changing from reality to falsity, mendacity and duplicity far too quickly. People may believe what they've read, and unfortunately far too many people will never research that and find out the truth about it. I've read too many bullshit quotes from bullshit webpages and articles. I've seen (and occasionally started to read) bullshit books, FFS!

If you are a real person, don't just believe in what you see. There are a couple of good webpages - Snopes, Quote Investigator - who research. Check out what you're reading - and find out if it is real!

Thanks, Abraham Lincoln, for this very good quote. Now everyone who reads it should laugh, and understand that... I said it!

Plain fact

Dalai Lama is a monk for Tibetan Buddhism. The 14th Dalai Lama is Tenzin Gyatso. Born in the Republic of China in 1935, he was made the 14th Dalai Lama in 1939, was enthroned in 1940, and took political power over Tibet in 1950 - he was only 15. He left Tibet in 1959 during a political uprising and lives in India, but he travels the whole world. He is very well known in Australia.

I found a quote which was printed in his name, and I thought I'd do my own pic with this same quote on it, until I saw on his other Wikiquote report that this particular quote was misattributed to him. I found, then, a  website note, on 17 January 2014, by a blogger called Alex Knapp who said that this quote was not Dalai Lama. It was David W Orr. 

Orr is an environmentalist. The book this quote was taken from was Earth in Mind: On Education, Environment, and the Human Prospect, originally published in 1994 and re-published in 2004. According to Wikipaedia, Orr is a "Paul Sears Distinguished Professor of Environmental Studies and Politics at Oberlin College and a James Marsh Professor at the University of Vermont". The quote, now in his name below, certainly means what Orr has learned and is passing on to schools.

On the Google write-up about the book, they said "...much of what has gone wrong with the world... is the result of inadequate and misdirected education that... alienates us from life in the name of human domination..." This is very much what I agree with. The 'inadequate and misdirected education' on quotes has lead to far too many people accrediting a decent quote to anyone, regardless of whether or not they actually did say it. Every quote should be recorded in a video or written on paper, on the website or kept on a USB to make real history. Too many people who do their 'quotes' wrong. 

Will that ever change?