This is a huge site on the web: created by Bob Hembree (Editor of T-Zero Quaterly), and run by Mr. Hembree and many, many assistants (some have web logs: check out author and mentor “benning”  Benning’s Writing Pad ;  Joni’s site, One Voice;  0r June Diehl , who has a wonderful book) . I’ve been a member for about five years (I think it’s five, I became a life member this year) and I’ve found many new friends like Laurel Wilczek (aka Raven) already an excellent writer, Susan Fourtane from way back  and covering the arts scene in Helsinki, “Granny” (now a mentor);  these are the ones with web links that I know of but there are so many names (and nicknames)  I should add – Maruxa (also mentoring, I  see now – my apologies),  “Grumps” , Malkeet,   “Otter”,  “Greywolf”, Gloria,  “Shriek”, Sonja …  and many many more (as I will be writing about these groups from time to time, I’m sure I’ll be covering most omissions) .

But it wasn’t my intention (nor would it be interesting) to make an extensive list of all my friends, old and new, here. There is one item in this Writers’ Village that should get our attention now:

F2K

It’s Bob Hembree’s creation (I think the name derived from “F” for “Fiction” followed by whatever year that course would be – until 2000, nine years ago and the “2K” stuck). It’s held four times a year and the next one starts this Wednesday 20th. of May. It is free to anyone – literally anyone, not only members, there is a first week of “Orientation”, where everyone can introduce themselves (user names, as you’ve seen before are both acceptable and varied); then there are six lessons – groups of exercises, surprisingly simple ones but the several times I’ve done it I’ve been astonished how quickly subscribers progress, specially beginners (though many drop out, there is no obligation to remain but one does so by keeping up to date with the assignments).  There are also many experienced writers that join – I’ve been doing this for nearly half a century and each time I’m humbled and overjoyed at finding how good fresh new talent can be, or can become. The final exercise can often produce a finished, or nearly finished, story – that alone is reason enough to join.  We post our exercises, within a study group small enough to allow each to follow the others work (all subscribers are split up into groups, each group has a mentor to resolve posting questions and provide prompts and encouragement,  but there is no impediment in visiting and participating in any other group): so we polish each others  exercises .  It really works extremely well. *

There is an option, by paying a small fee, of getting “one on one” assistance from one of the W.V. University mentors.

I’ll be joining this coming session (I appear as “Q”). Perhaps we meet there?

F2K – Free Creative  Writing Course – Wednesday 20th. of May 2009

* Since posting this I’ve been reminded of the best and most notable feature of this course. (thank you meer!), quoted roughly: “The joy of discovering true camaraderie in writing … learning how to have fun, and not be so uptight and even fearful about our writing …. How right, and how true that after a while we just take it for granted. There are many course, many tutors and even more books – but few have the lighthearted touch (with some pretty earnest learning, but one hardly notices that) as this course – and then later, if one should choose to join, in the groups and courses at the WVU. I don’t know how I could forget that, in this post.

Meanwhile – Hasta pronto!

Q

Sphere: Related Content

]]> http://www.byknight.com/journal/f2k-and-the-writers-village-university/feed/ 0 http://www.byknight.com/journal/armistice-day-in-memeory-of-veterans-of-all-wars/ http://www.byknight.com/journal/armistice-day-in-memeory-of-veterans-of-all-wars/#comments Tue, 11 Nov 2008 23:00:38 +0000 Q http://www.byknight.com/journal/?p=84

Royal Air Force

Had he been alive, this past weekend my father, Frank Knight, would have been joining his fellow veterans at the Cenotaph on Whitehall, London in the annual parade. He left his squadron as Flight Lieutenant, when it was disbanded – I’ve always suspected that he would have preferred to continue in the RAF after the war (he mentioned once that he had the opportunity) but his wife was going to have their first child and they chose to return to her parents in Argentina – where I was born a month before his official discharge.

He stayed for a while in Buenos Aires after his retirement (he worked as a salesman for a brewery, then for a steel company) and was at one time Chairman of the RAF Association there, but returned eventually to live in London, back to those of his surviving friends of that time – for though it was a tragic and awful time for humanity and the world – today we stop a little while in memory of all that die in wars and particularly this one – I think that bonds made then can never be undone. So honouring the memory o all veterans, and to Flt. Lt. Frank Knight, our Dad … with love,

Peter, John and Jeannie

About his Squadron:

No.172 Squadron was formed at Chivenor on 4 April 1942 from No.1417 (Leigh Light) Flight which had formed on 8 March to operate Wellingtons equipped with airborne searchlights on anti-submarine patrols. The first operational night patrol was flown on 3 June during which two U-boats were located and attacked. In August, seven aircraft were detached to Wick for patrols over the North Sea and were the basis of No.179 Squadron when it formed on 14 September. Patrols over the Western Approaches and Bay of Biscay led to many sightings and in March 1943 the Squadron’s Wellingtons were fitted with ASV Mark III radar to guide the aircraft into a position where their searchlights could be exposed to reveal a U-boat. This method soon brought results, U-665 being sunk on 20 March and the overall the squadron averaged one sighting for every four sorties.*

Between October 1943 and April 1944 detachments were based at Gibraltar and later, in the Azores. In September 1944, No.172 moved to northern Ireland and flew patrols over the Atlantic until disbanded on 4 June 1945.

Q

* Win one, lose one. From my father’s flight log: On the 8th. of October 1943, the German submarine U-340 was damaged and later scuttled (all crew but one rescued safely) but on the 7th. of January 1944 a surfaced sub blew a hole in one wing of my dad’s plane. – the sub may have been U-380 or U-952. The guy that would be my father, the Wellington’s crew, managed to get home and land safely. For better or for worse that’s why it’s me, Q, here and not somebody else (or no one at all).

Somebody in this region tried this some years back: design a garden, with trees, flowerbeds, shrubbery and all, alongside a highway – it’s not too hard to do, as long as there’s some way of providing a water supply and some people willing to undertake a bit of regular maintenance (here, along Provincial Route 5 in Cordoba, Argentina, had the fire brigade of a town nearby provide irrigation services but it went to weed when enthusiasm from the volunteer gardeners ran out).

This morning’s Science Daily picked up an initiative prompted by The American Horticultural Society  (as a ‘new idea’: fair enough as no one has published it formally as far as I know):  From small, manicured beds of flowers maintained by community volunteers to extensive landscaping projects along America’s byways, roadside gardens are taking root.

Whoever can take credit, it is a good idea and deserves support from any authorities, groups, anywhere in the world: a win win thing if there ever was one.  Best would be a cooperative of individual enthusiasts but it’s hard to imagine that many people that would take on a largely altruistic effort – this is a place where town councils, state and provincial authorities can meddle and provide fine outdoor work as ‘jobs for the boys and girls’ if they must.  Better by far than enclosing inexperienced youths in administrative offices so that they can mess up peoples lives with careless form filling and messed up data gathering (but that is another rant).

If you happen on this post – keep it in mind and if you can, approach anyone you can to get this show – literally – on the roads in your region. And if you can, spread the word through trackbacks and comments on your space on the ‘net.

Q

American Society for Horticultural Science (2008, July 26). New Roadside Beautification Concept Studied. ScienceDaily. Retrieved July 26, 2008, from http://www.sciencedaily.com­ /releases/2008/07/080717110228.htm

I have to find a good theme: Some look great at first but the text starts drifting across columns, or picture don’t quite stay put – at least, where I thought I put them. Others … I tried one and couldn’t find my way back into this site management place: Q was locked out of Q’s Place!.

Pretty can? The Original:

Still working on this site. “Q’s Place” is a little low on an overcrowded priority list.  Mrs Q and I discuss what might go here. It’s definitely be the place to put personal things,  for friends and family as well as any that wander by and care for the kind of things we post.  writing of course, and home making as we haven’t been able to settle down yet; for oh so many reasons!

This morning though there were forty seven messages spam queue, blocked by the wonderful WordPress Akismet plugin.  Wonderful software,  that!. But the topmost was nasty – a few hundred lines of filth. So long that it wasn’t practical to search back for any genuine messages.

So if I haven’t acknowledged a genuine post: my apologies. Please post again. I know I should check in more often and look at comments held by Akismet before the list gets too long … of course it wouldn’t have done anything about the garrulous pornographer of that long, long comment.

Of course, one can just let the sewage through and then collect from Adsense? I doubt it, the good people at Google must be wise to that one, ages ago. Whatever,  it’s sad to see so many twerps and nitwits using up bandwidth like this. Nitwits and twerps is too mild for those sad sacks that make a living promoting the junk.

Until the next one, soon I hope. Pictures of where we used to live.

Where we are now – which is also where we hope to move out from.

And some grandchildren pictures, and great pictures of great grandchildren as well.

Meanwhile …

Please don’t open the can !

Q

Three weeks now, about 200 hours: The cost of bad computer setup, even a small home unit like this one. It’s a Hewlett Packard/Compaq Mini-Tower 2200 with twin Intel processors and 300 GB: (not very small at all). With Windows XP Pro Sp2 installed from factory in Mexico – so it’s in Spanish which can be a nuisance for other reasons – I ordered and paid for MS Office (also in Spanish) which turned out to be a pirated version: The vendors, in Cordoba City, went out of business. It tanked along a couple of years but began to get slow and unpredictable. The bad Office went out and I repalced it with a legitimate one, on Office 97 I had from a previous machine. During the 2007 NaNoWriMo writers marathon it began to get really unstable, specially the Office installation: for a writer, the most basic. From Writers Village University I was clued to the alternative open source office suite:

Open Office: It is a wonder we use Microsoft.  Getting used to it can take a while, the Ways of Word are very ingrained. Open Office has a huge number of extra features and I see no reason for not making it the default suite here, but I’m not yet confident enough to use it for submissions on-line, where the finished product will probably be opened with Microsoft Word. Whatever, discovering Open Office has been the first big step forward.

Yesterday and the day before I may have found the second:  Ubuntu:

Quite amazing! It is the most friendly version of Linux / Unix I’ve ever had the pleasure of trying. The download took six hours! (about 630 megabytes) and this server actually managed to keep the connection live during all that time. I’ve been able to make a clean, error free, CD and It loads just fine. So now, as soon as I get on far enough with my writing commitments, I’ll see about installing it as the main Operating System on this computer.

But first:

• Get back to MFA and WVU. There I’ve left good friends and fine writers without contributing anything to that most excellent and brave course. Grumps, Susan, Raven, Joni and company…
• Maybe I’ll get back to the “Tales of Chestamovarado” and try and present some of it there.
• Jean Lauzier – The Book Tour will be in June. I Will have finished the next project by then (tentative working title “Plot Thickeners” but I see that is taken by another tutoring book, so will have to think of something else: A writer’s guide and cook book combined.

Tomorrow is crucial in this matter of the “property scam” we have fallen into (actually blundering into other peoples blunders is more like it). It seems we have good legal grounds to stave off the Golf owners claim that we should pay a 100% increase in the condo tax as well as their claim on supposed back payments, which are usury (in excess of three grand if they get their way, which of course is out of the question). But whatever the costs, we must avoid lawsuits (which in Argentina are another perpetual scam as neither judges or lawyers have any interest in the actual law). We will of course, be moving again. The only part of my own design that survived, the wood stove heated ‘loft’ is extremely comfortable, easy and economical to heat, so we’d aim at staying until this winter is over, at least.

Q

Experimenting with the theme, after the web log became inaccessible from a corrupted change I made to a new one I loaded – it was supposed to show pictures, and somehow that feature made the post impossible to load. Got back in, though, directly through /wp-admin, so that’s a lesson learned for another time; as no doubt there will be many, many more. Now the Sitemeter counter seems to have gone. Steam on regardless! In this place, we must learn by doing, no other way!

Q