I am sharing this through my new blogger friend Cheryl Stober, a syndicated blogger on the BlogHer platform. She has been blogging for eight years, at a time when I was chasing after stories and yawning at township meetings for print media.
“You gotta cover that,” said the editor also yawning, “It’s our bread and butter you know.”
Among hundreds of posts, Stober caught my attention with her nice piece about getting ready for the conference. I was bummed that I couldn’t go so I literally devoured the article and commented and I got a comment back. And there you go we were friends.
My new BlogHer buddy Cheryl Stober
“I hope to meet you at the conference next year,” she wrote. “Follow me on @cherylstober.”
Her article included getting new business cards and clothes for the event. Of course fashion police at these conferences are on their toes.
Today, Stober tweeted she had lunch with my favorite Glee star, Gwyneth Paltrow. who is a keynote speaker at the conference. I am jealous, no just kidding.
I have probably the best news in a long time since I established the Emma Blogs, LLC last year in July. Prior to that I connected my EW blog into the Gatehouse Media, a 15-million reader market.
Now, again in July I found out about a great platform for women bloggers from a Monday’s post by Michelle W. “Heading to BlogHer ’15, so are we.”
Well I checked out BlogHer and found a perfect fit for my Emma Blogs,LLC. Under the umbrella of http://www.sheknowsmedia.com, the platform has a social media reach of 100,000 women across the country. Wow, I could not believe the great content, the great women. It was just an overall positive vibe.
Emma Blogs are now a part of the BlogHer network.
So, I submitted two posts, Coach Leigh Ann Dickey inspires and Women Inspired…
BlogHer ’15, one of the biggest and best annual conferences for bloggers, lands in New York City later this week, from July 16th through the 18th. You’ll find hundreds of passionate bloggers, workshops to hone every aspect of your blogging, incredible keynote speakers like Ava DuVernay and Gwyneth Paltrow — and us!
At our Happiness Lounge in the expo hall, you’ll be able to get one-on-one help with your WordPress sites. Staff from across Automattic will also be leading mini-workshops on some of the topics you care most about, and our “WordPress Insiders” panels bring multiple WordPress.com staffers together for informal panels to give you a range of takes on everything from tools to traffic.
The WordPress.com booth hums with activity at BlogHer ’14.
Lowell, MI -June 5th is the deadline for the major annual Writer’s Digest contest. I am entering this year with the following pieces in two different categories. The first one is non-fiction article that deeply touched me, “Hiker Babe walks in memory of daughter.”
This article is about a woman whom I have known for a long time. Her name is Gail Lowe. Lowe is a retired nurse, who has hiked the Appalachian Trail twice and most recently the North Country Trail in memory of her daughter Becka.
Mission accomplished
Lowe’s only fear remains that she won’t be able to hike anymore because of aging. Becka’s fear before she passed from breast cancer was not to be forgotten. So, her mother immortalized her with the 4,600-mile long hike through seven Midwest states. She got sick on the trail and turned 65.
The second piece I am submitting is fiction based in reality, “Twice into the same river.”
There is a saying that you cannot step twice into the same river, meaning that everything flows with time.
Well, I have. First, in the late eighties when I took care of my grandparents until their death. Then, I left Czech Republic for the USA.
Brother and sister in Reed City, a theme for a short story.
Now, I am facing the same destiny with my brother who suffers from paranoid schizophrenia. He can and cannot take care of himself. He refuses to take medication and is very angry most of the time.
I fear that I am not going to be able to handle him. The unknown ahead is so overwhelming that’s why I am writing about it to ease the burden.
I will be stepping twice into the same river, only some 25 years later.
Today is a big day. As I write to the morning chirping of the birds, I still have my feet wet from watering the flowers for my mother, for Mother’s Day.
My dog Haryk passed in September of last year. So, I don’t have him anymore. It’s bizarre how many things have changed in one year. I’ve made a lot of posts since April of last year. I had around 100 posts, now I am close to 300 posts.
Mistakes. Yes, tons of them. Success, too. I’ve established my company Emma Blogs, LLC in August of last year. I got my eyes fixed with Dr. Verdier.
It’s May 9th, it’s my birthday. I was born on the national holiday in former Czechoslovakia. On that day, the nation’s capital Prague, the mother of all cities, was freed from the Nazi occupation by the Soviet Army. That was the end of World War II.
Many years later, I was born in the wee hours at 4 a.m. to parents Ella & Vaclav Konecny. My mom woke up to the cracking noises of fireworks announcing the anniversary of the victory.
“I thought it was war again, but then I realized those were fireworks celebrating your birth,” she said to me this morning as she wished me a happy birthday. “The whole nation celebrated.”
Czech Capital Prague
Mom says that to me every year, as the nature too celebrates the awakening after long winter.
“The nature blossoms on your birthday,” she says. “You always had the day off and a parade.”
Birthday blossom
The above note is one of the many reasons why I dedicated the memoir “Greenwich Meridian where East meets west” to my mother.
200 Posts & beyond
This post is inspired by Anton Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” and the constant friction that I have witnessed between sisters in this world.
Mom Ella & I
Mom Ella and aunt Anna
As I watch people drop like flies around me, I realize how time is going by fast. I like the inscription on the clock in the living room, “Tempus fugit.” That’s why I bought that pendulum clock as one of the first things when I arrived on this continent in 1989 for $110. Not that I had that kind of money. I just wanted the clock so bad, that I probably borrowed money for it. It announces the time by boldly striking every full and half hour. My husband Ludek still has to wind it by hand much like the clock that the in-laws had at home in the old country.
“They probably wouldn’t even let us know if Anna’s dead,” mom said about her sister.
Well, I think she is right. There is probably no one left to let us know. That’s all part of the emigration package that I am writing about in the memoir “Greenwich Meridian.”
To be continued as part of the ongoing series 200 Posts & beyond
Note: I decided to feature WordPress blogger Rob Goldenstein, who suffers from dissociative identity disorder, because May is the mental health month. As always before I write about somebody, I study their work, whether it’s an artist or an entrepreneur.
Longtime blogger deals with alternates of the dissociate identity disorder to express himself
By Emma Palova
EW Emma’s Writings
Lowell, MI- I do not know Rob Goldenstein personally only from an interview over Skype and from studying his extensive work. Goldenstein mentions that quite often he cannot relate to his own writing, and that it has been written by an alternate.
Featured blogger Rob Goldenstein
Few themes keep emerging in Goldenstein’s blogs both on Flicker and on WordPress.
“The alternates describe the blog is an extension of second life,” he said. “I have all these different avatars.”
In his About page, Goldenstein writes about his passion for right of full access to health care for people with mental illness.
“By full access I mean access to all treatment modes regardless the prevailing myth of scarcity,” he stated. “In the About me, I express my intentions as they evolve as I continue to blog.”
Goldenstein has been blogging on Flicker since January 2010, and he has posted some 2,179 photos.
In his Inside Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) page Goldenstein outlines his goals as to organize what he knows about himself in a single place.
“It is where I can see it while interacting with other people,” he said.
His therapist told Goldenstein that he didn’t get sick in isolation, and that he is not going to get well in isolation.
One of Goldenstein’s goals is to let the alternates like Sara or Peter tell their stories.
“It is the only way that I can think of to set myself free,” he stated. The writing of this blog is only literary to the extent that I bring to it certain literary sensibility acquired from the study of poetry, literature, and film.”
The alternates, according to Goldenstein, use different styles in the way they write, but they share a certain tone of voice.
“That singularity of voice is my true self,” he stated. “I do my best to keep up with the people in my network, but my best is a bit slow now.”
Goldstein is thankful to other bloggers like Andy Weisskoff, LCSW, whose blog, 90 Days to Change, helped to understand the political aspect being a person with dissociative identity disorder.
The little I know about dissociative identity disorder is that it happens as a defensive reaction when overwhelmed, typically starting in childhood under extreme cases of abuse, and then gets triggered when situations in the present seem like dangerous situations in the past.
As far as what the government might do about treating mental illness, I’ve gotten very specific on my blog. The federal agencies that oversee medicare and medicaid dollars could audit Kaiser mental health services to ensure that basic services are being provided.
Kaiser is the largest provider of mental health services in California and so it is a very good place to start holding physicians’ groups accountable for providing the same level of service for people with mental illness as they do for people with other types of illness.
Psychology professor at Cornerstone University Daniel Ehnis said about the mental illness:
“In my opinion, the reason that DID is so misunderstood is that
it is often confused with Bipolar Disorder and Borderline Personality. Others think that
the symptoms can be faked. DID is a creative way to prevent repressed feelings from surfacing.
As a result, this creativity shows up in various ways.”
May Day is not only known for the International Worker’s Day to commemorate the Haymarket Affair in Chicago, but it is also a Northern Hemisphere spring festival.
It was an official holiday in former Czechoslovakia, complete with parades. But, most importantly, it was and it is a celebration of spring called Majales accompanied by the opening of the beer gardens. Majales are dances around May poles decorated with ribbons.
May Day pole tied with ribbons signifies love and spring.
The first day of May is known as the day of love immortalized by many artists, poets and writers. It was mainly the work of Czech poet Karel Hynek Macha who attached love to this day and the entire month with his poem May.
Karel Hynek Macha, Czech poet
Here are the first few verses from the poem translated by Edith Pargeter:
Late evening, on the first of May—
The twilit May—the time of love.
Meltingly called the turtle-dove,
Where rich and sweet pinewoods lay.
Whispered of love the mosses frail,
The flowering tree as sweetly lied,
The rose’s fragrant sigh replied
To love-songs of the nightingale.
In shadowy woods the burnished lake
Darkly complained a secret pain,
By circling shores embraced again;
And heaven’s clear sun leaned down to take
A road astray in azure deeps,
Like burning tears the lover weeps.
A haze of stars in heaven hovers—
That church of endless love’s communion—
Each jewel blanches and recovers
As blanch and burn long-parted lovers
In the high rapture of reunion.
How clear, to her full beauty grown,
How pale, how clear, the moon above,
Like maiden seeking for her love,
A rosy halo round her thrown!
Her mirrored image she espied,
And of self-love, beholding, died.
Forth from the farms pale shadows strayed,
Lengthening longing to their kind,
Till they embraced, and close entwined,
Coiled low into the lap of shade,
Grown all one twilight unity.
Tree in the shadows writhes to tree.
In the far mountains’ dark confine
Pine leans to birch and birch to pine.
Wave baunting wave the streamlets move.
For love’s sake—in the time of love—
Anguished goes every living thing.
The poem takes place by Doksy and the castles of Bezdez, Pernstejn, Holska and Ralsko point toward east and west, noon and midnight.
Castle Pernstejn the setting for the poem May.
Czech parks and castles invite to romance many designed in classical English style with strict hedges and groves.
A castle park in Vizovice where a big part of my book takes place.
Typical flowers for May are lilacs. Some have grown into trees and have been cross-bred into different colors. Some Czech customs have carried over to the USA. In the photo below, Americans of Czech heritage are dancing around a May pole easily recognized by the ribbons.
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