Instructions---leaving a Permalink

I had this wonderful idea when I first read the new topic, but it's now Sunday and I am just now getting around to writing it up, so I hope someone else hasn't beaten me to this one. I couldn't think of a better set of instructions to share with Sunday Scribblers than the one passed on to me by my never-met but friend none-the-less, Briliant Donkey. Laini or Megg explained what a permalink was not: your basic blog address. And from that I figured that what I needed to do was go to the right entry in my blog and copy down every letter and punctuation mark on paper then go to Sunday Scribblings and copy it fastidiously into the comment section. But my mentor BD came to my rescue,unasked and unsolicited, just because he is a good guy. I have found so many of those in this blogging "community"; it is a precious serendipity.

So, to those of you, who like me, are relatively new to blogging, those of us who did not cut our teeth on computers or learn our alphabet from the keyboard, let me see if I can help you learn how to "leave your permalink."

1. Write your message and post your new writing to your own blog.
2. Open your blog page and find the "Previous Posts" list of links, which is in the side bar on either the right, or possibly left, side of your posted messages. The new writing should be the name at the top of this list.
3. Click on the name/title of the new writing.
4. Left click on the address which this has brought up in the address bar at the top.
5. Right click and select/highlight the word "copy" from the drop-down menu this has produced.
6. Open the comment section for the new Sunday Scribblings prompt.
7. Put your cursor in the comment box and right click. This time select "paste" from that drop-down menu.
You may put other comments in the comment box either above or below your permalink. But this is the very most important part of what you leave in that box. Then Megg or Laini will be able to link each of our blogs to the master list without headaches or annoyance. And we will all once again enjoy sharing in the profound and delightful writings of our fellow Sunday Scribblers.

PS. Oh, please, Megg and Laini, I hope I have gotten this right and made things easier for y'all and not more difficult. If I have messed it up, please let me know either by email or in the comments and I will do my best to retract and correct.

research it

I started with quite a diverse list of subjects I would like to know more about related to movies I have enjoyed. I was interested in the history and location where several of my favorite movies were made, interested because I would love to visit these places; I was also interested in what has become of some apparently very talented young actors who disappeared from the Hollywood scene after one or two good movies. I spent hours in research, an hour and a half on Friday evening, 3 hours on Saturday morning and another 2 hours Sunday afternoon. I read lots of interesting information---I enjoyed my reading on Google and wikipedia and particularly on the Somewhere in Time website--- but the specific questions I wanted to answer for myself and write about are still as much a mystery to me as when I began.

The closest thing JR and I had to a honeymoon was our R&R from his tour in Vietnam. We spent the week after our 1st anniversary in Hawaii. On the recommendation of a very dear and special friend who had also R&R'd there, I made our reservations at a truly fabulous place called the Hanalei Plantation at the north end of the highway around Kauai, "the Garden Isle." Supposedly the movie South Pacific (with Mitzi Gaynor; 1958, I think)was filmed there. The place was truly a paradise. I have always thought someday we would go back there again. Well, according to my research, we may go back to Kauai, but we will never go back to the Hanalei Plantation, because it doesn't seem to exist anymore. I researched the island of Kauai numerous places. Wikipedia was generally informative but not useful for what I wanted. Googling "movie locations" didn't help either, for altho South Pacific was listed, there was apparently no link. Finally I sent JR to the AAA office to get me a tour book and map. Hanalei Bay and its beach are still there, and now there is a town of Hanalei. The AAA guidebook does mention "the small beach along Hanalei Bay where Mitzi Gaynor sudsed her way through 'I'm gonna wash that man right outta my hair' in 'South Pacific'." But most of AAA's limited number of lodging options are condominiums. The very few hotels listed are good name chains. We actually stayed 2 places on Kauai, because our final night we moved to Lihue, to be close to the island's then only airport for our early morning flight back to Ohau. We stayed in another fancy, uniquely Hawaiian hotel that night, the Koko Palms. It doesn't seem to be there anymore either.

Next I worked on discovering whatever happened to the young actors who played Jem and Scout Finch, children of Gregory Peck's character Atticus in "To Kill a Mockingbird." Phillip Alford and Mary Badham didn't even have pictures listed. Each had done very few other things at all, Phillip more than Mary but all when he was still quite young. She,it seemed, had done some kind of an old/older woman role withing the last 10 or 12 years but it was a minor character in a movie I had never heard of and no information was given about her part but the character's name. But what I really wanted about both or either of them was a semi-current short bio. If such a thing is available, I never found it.

Finally, and with ever so slightly more success, I sought information on the Grand Hotel on Mackinac (sp?) Island, Michigan(?)where "Somewhere in Time" with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour was filmed. I found a fascinating 10 to 15 page journal entry by a lady who stumbled into a job as an extra on the movie and more than a passing acquaintance with its cast. I delighted in reading every page of her journal. But I basically found out zero about the history of that hotel which had been the true purpose for my research. The reason for my curiosity is that 3 weekends ago with a group of good friends, I stayed at the Bellview Biltmore Hotel in Clearwater, Florida. No one who has seen "Somewhere in Time" can fail to be reminded of Mackinac's Grand when you visit and explore this Bellview Biltmore, built in 1896 by Henry B. Plant, the railroad magnate (sp?). This lovely, but somewhat the worse for wear and recent hurricanes, wooden structure claims to be the largest all wood building in constant use for over 100 years. I also claims ghosts. I just really wanted to read and make my own comparisons between the two lovely romantic and historical hotels, with the focus of having stayed now at the one, planning a visit and exploration of the other.

I truly tried to do this assignment. I, also, enjoyed most of my research; although I must admit to being significantly frustrated. Probably if I were younger and more familiar with research on the internet, or with the internet in general, I could have found more. I hope what I have shared is interesting to some of you and teaches you something about subjects new to you. But, truly, I didn't learn much new.

never write--right!

Sorry Sunday Scribblings. Everything I tried to write that I would never write made it that much clearer why I would never write it. I couldn't right it.

Fortune cookies

While mentally playing with the Fortune Cookie idea, I remembered a poem I heard and loved and memorized when I was in elementary school. It mostly came back to me and although I have no idea to whom credit is due (I will try to Google it or see if I can check some other way before I finally post). I shall share it anyway but take no credit for its creation.
Three Wishes
I keep three wishes ready
Lest I should chance to meet
Any day, a fairy
Coming down the street.

I'd hate to have to stammar
And have to think them out
For it's very hard to think things up
When a fairy is about.

I'd hate to lose my wishes
For fairies fly away
And perhaps I'd never have a chance
On any other day.

So, I keep three wishes ready
Lest I should chance to meet
Any day, a fairy
Coming down the street.

I haven't thought of the poem in years, but I know back then I did keep 3 wishes ready---what were they? Who knows? Possibly one was for world peace and another for good health, happiness and riches for all I loved. But I do know the third. The third wish was always for more wishes, or as I believe I expressed it then: a wishing wand. As a child I thought that was really clever; now it sounds selfish, foolish and greedy. Needless to say, I never needed this odd little bit of preparedness. (Always the Girl Scout--then and now.) But I am convinced that had I met that fairy and gotten 3 wishes, my life would not have turned out any better than it has as a result of putting my hand in the hand of God and being let by Him.

Fortune cookies---they are a dime a dozen (almost literally). They are terribly generic and ambiguous. The best part of them now, as it seems to me, are the lottery number suggestions. But I don't use those often either nor have I ever won money on cookie numbers. But sometimes there is a little magic in thinking at the end of a very good day or a very lovely evening, that we ought to stop by the magic market on the way home and buy a lottery ticket. But we usually are tired and don't remember to stop. But I enjoy the little dab of sweet taste and the ubiquitous philosophical platitude at the end of a Chinese meal: the appropriate punctuation. I cannot imagine the meal without the cookie or the cookie without the "fortune."

Is it, maybe, that we keep, in fortune cookies and horoscopes and lottery tickets and wishes on shooting stars, just a tiny little bit of that magic we believed in as children?? If so, I think that's a good enough reason to keep enjoying them.

**********
Oh, fun!! Google gave it to me straight away and I had only missed about 4 words in one phrase (line 11), 'tho I had kept the meaning exactly. Google credits the poem to Annette Wynne. I fixed that line, so it reads as Ms. Wynne intended.