Everyone Talk: The Language Blog That Has Everyone Talking

Just over two years ago, I started blogging. I was going to have one blog with three sections: humour, languages, and generally causing trouble (yeah, take that, corporate overlords). But I remembered the adage, “Don’t put all your obsessions in one basket.” So I set languages aside for later. Now is later.

Good Evaning, the blog that is the change I want to see in the world, is a thriving two-year-old, so I now turn to my second born (which we all know is always the best). Everyone Talk, “The Language Blog That Has Everyone Talking”, has been sitting there in cyberspace almost completely ignored for 23 months (as often happens to second children).

International Phonetic Alphabet

Everyone Talk came out of hibernation in the first hour (in some time zone) of this month and has been up and running like a gazelle ever since. If you are one of those people who communicate through language, please sift through my blog posts on Everyone Talk, leave some comments, questions, suggestions, corrections, or smutty photos, and please don’t consider not subscribing to Everyone Talk.

Why am I doing this and why should you care? It is my profound belief that the vast majority of human unhappiness can be resolved through effective communication, especially listening. And even if not, it’s fun as hell to be able to talk with people from all over the world and read their ideas, news and literature in their beautiful and fascinating languages.

Most often, I will write in English — about English, about other languages, and about all things relating to second-language acquisition and communication in general — but periodically I will write in Spanish, French, Portuguese, Korean, and Japanese, and I may dip into other languages occasionally. If you can’t read things I’ve written in Korean or Japanese, it is the fault of your computer which can easily be adjusted to make those texts readable. If after that you still can’t read those scripts, what needs to be adjusted is your attitude towards language learning, a problem easily corrected by subscribing to Everyone Talk!

Solitude and Scribbling in My Writing Cave

A Writing Cave in Winter

Weeks have piled up into months since I escaped the necessary evil that is Toronto. Here in New Brunswick, looking down from the window of my second-story writing cave onto the snows and thaws of the tree-walled lawn where I learned to ride a bicycle, indeed where I first learned to mumble, chatter, yell and sing in my mother tongue, I consider that the number of hours I spend each day in writing, reading, corresponding and editing is greater than the number of people I have spoken with in person more than once since I arrived here in mid-December. I have crossed paths with more deer and rodents than bipeds.

My Writing Cave: A Room of One’s Own With a View

This semi-exile is a boon to my productivity (and piano playing), but the menu of stimuli to which I am exposed—though excellent—is sparse. In the neighbourhood I left in Toronto, I could walk in less than 10 minutes to my choice of half a dozen live music venues (including, importantly, first-rate jazz on an almost daily basis); a dozen Japanese or Korean restaurants, three each of Indian, Lebanese, Thai and Vietnamese; three new and used bookstores and a library to which I can have delivered any of a million books, DVDs and CDs; as well as swim in a public pool, go to my favourite repertory cinema, visit the dentist, do all banking, grocery shopping and other errands; and, most significant for me, meet with groups of native speakers of French, Spanish, Portuguese, American Sign Language, Korean or Japanese; or step onto the subway for access to ten times as many possibilities. Taking my New Brunswick writing cave as a point of departure, a 10 hour drive would scarcely bring the majority of such options within reach.

Fortunately, this is an era which enables me to make do with online substitutions for a number of these amenities, such as certain manifestations of language practice and films. However, such substitutions are not the same thing as being there, in that place where there is every day too much to do, where to partake of one golden opportunity causes you to miss out on several others.

All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy. All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy. All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy. (I did split this sucker!)

And yet, my writing cave lets me work with loud music on at 03h00; it lets me leap out of bed before dawn or crawl out at noon, depending on what the muse whispers to me in the morning or demanded of me the night before. The writing cave leaves me space — indoors and out (and psychologically as well as physically) — to start every day by doing my thumpy, jumpy, kicky taekwondo forms, or to contend with insomnia by pounding it out on the heavy bag in the garage below. It shows me the moon and the sun through its skylight; its windows like big-screen TVs show me snowfall, windstorms or chirping birds and meandering deer over a sun-glazed acre of land which is mine to neglect, maintain, or run and roll around on. Below my window, I can chop wood from a wind-felled tree, soak off the wholesome grime in my claw-foot bathtub, and then sit with my father by his fire discussing how the Romans could have saved their empire if only they had listened to us, or learn how to speak toddler-ese when my niece drops by, until a bottle of the world’s finest wine has breathed long enough and we gather to feast on local, organic, fair trade, free-run moose.

The Writer at Work

The world-famous city I was born in vs. the agreeably overlooked town I grew up in. Like moving and resting, waking and sleeping, getting dirty and bathing, an excess of one makes you wish for the other. Plainly, (unless I find a home* some other where), I must divide my months between the polis and the outpost.

*Home is where I hang my hat. Home is where I hang around. Home is where I hang out. Home is where I let it all hang out. Home is where I hang my head. Home is where I hang myself. Home is where I feel that I am myself, and that is not a place, it is a state of mind that comes more frequently and stays longer in some places than in others. “Wherever you go, there you are.”

My Snowy Acre

Oh, Mousie, Not Your Best-Laid Scheme. A Burns’ Day Tale, Sad But True

Too a Mouse

On Lifting up My Toilet Seat Last Sunday Morning, January, 2013

Wee, sleeket, soggy, floatin’ beastie,
Panic’s no more in thy breastie.
Thou shouldn’a jump’d in there sae hasty,
Wi’out floatation!
Had I but heard, I’d come an’ save thee,
From wet damnation!

I’m truly sorry human plumbing,
Unsuited to your way of coming,
Did lead to your most sad succumbing,
— that hinge-side gap —
and brought you to an end so numbing,
Last words? “Oh, crap!”

Thy attic fam’ly, now, in ruin;
They must be wond’rin what you’re doin’!
An’ no one, now, to feed the sma’ ones
Wi’ nibbles thieved.
An’ January’s snows keep blowin.
Thou shouldst ha’ lived!

If caref’ler foresight you did give,
What then? poor beastie, thou wouldst live!
Instead, kin scan the will for your bequest.
Or did you nothing leave?
Och, they’ll be pissed!

Thou walked the loo, (that’s for my wast),
An’ in you fell. Mistake? Your last.
An’ in the bowl you paddled fast;
Must ha’ been hell.
No splash! You scrambled till you passed.
Tough luck. Oh well.

Thou wee-bit heap o’fur an’ bubble,
Thy end, clearly, more sad than noble.
Now thou’s done in, for a’ thy trouble,
O mouse, so bold.
Now Mousie Jr’s strife is double;
Mouse Sr’s cold!

But Mousie, thou need na complain,
You’ll ne’er make that misstep again.
The best lid-schemes for toilets, then,
Are not mouse-proof.
But now you’re past your grief an’ pain,
Thou careless goof.

Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!
For now, each time I go to pee,
Or poo, I backward cast my e’e,
Ere dropping rear!
Faced forward, whyles I canna see,
I guess, an’ fear!

Robert Burns

Resolution: To Be My Bohemian Self

My New Year’s resolution is to be myself.

Don’t we all, at some point, feel about our life-choices the way George Kostanza felt? “Every decision I have ever made in my entire life has been wrong!”

Generally, I don’t regret my individual choices, even the most reckless ones. In fact, my perpetual hesitation to commit to reckless choices — and follow them through to their zany ends — is the one flawed thread running through the whole pilly jumpsuit that is my life.

Despite accusations to the contrary, I am insufficiently bohemian. All my life, I have imagined myself to be one freaky rebel spirit, but I have always been far too much of a conformist.

Like the vast majority of the world’s population, I grew up privileged and ungrateful, sorted out the non-existence of God at the age of 11, got a black belt and a degree in philosophy, became a baker and playwright, moved to Japan (on a dare), Mexico (on a whim), a reserve in Manitoba (on the make), and back to Mexico (on the rebound), where I went up a mountain in my kilt with a mariachi band and a woman I’d known for a few months, and got married to her in Spanish, by a priest — of all godforsaken things! (And, just to make my status completely quo, got divorced the statistically average number of years later.)

After a couple of decades of doing a wide range of jobs rather badly, I’ve accepted it’s time for me to stop standing in my way. I am genetically predisposed to be a nomad, The Fool on the Hill, watching the wheels go round and round.

No longer will I try to imagine myself living some “normal” life, not even some normal non-conformist, anti-establishment poser life.

I gotta ask myself one question. What would Evan do?

What I was “supposed to do” was work hard in school, and then work hard at some job (40 hours x 50 weeks x 40 years), spend a few years complaining about the ignorance of the younger generation, and then die.

What I did was scrape by in school, and then scrape by in a bunch of temp jobs, and then—as happens when dreams go bad—I woke up.

Finally, I am beginning to understand the freedom of being me. The meaning of your life depends on what you consider “wasted time”. Whatever that is, it’s what you should not be doing.

People have strongly conflicting views about what constitutes wasting time. Taking the train? Waste of time; flying is faster. Taking a bath? Waste of time. A shower is ten times faster. All right then, how about sex? Waste of time. Masturbation is faster.

Taking a long, leisurely bath is one of the best uses to which time can be put. Considerably better would be having sex in the bath, on a train.

For me, the best way to waste time is to work 9 to 5 at a job that I believe should not be done, such as selling things that should not exist (e.g., insipid wooden cats playing tin jazz instruments — I’m a cat and jazz lover; these objets d’art, shipped around the world to collect dust in someone’s tacky home, should not exist), or proofreading documents which should never have been written (one that stands out in my memory was about shareholder dividends earned on the sale of long-range missiles).

Working 9 to 5, “I can feel myself rot.” Whenever I’ve had to “get a real job”, it’s bad for me and it’s bad for the job.

For me, the first step in a healthy, sane life is never to wake to an alarm clock. Why? Because it’s #$@%ing alarming! The clock used to be the first and last thing I would see in a day, tabulating whether I was approximating a healthy number of hours of sleep.

As the new me, the real me, I go to bed when I’m ready for it, and I get up when getting up seems the right thing to do.

What am I “supposed” to be doing with my life? Writing, amongst other things, this dumbass blog. Go ahead, ask why. … Wh–?  I can’t believe y– … Because, apart from generally having a laugh, everything other than juggling words is a waste time. Writing “makes the pain go away.” 

And the fact that I get paid dirt* for writing (slightly earthier dirt for editing), doesn’t distinguish it from working for ‘the Man’, so in terms of employment, this is as real as my life is going to get.

(*Unless it’s pro bono, like this blog.)

Sounds like a privileged life, you say? Damn right! And I know how to appreciate it. My parents have devoted their lives to making my life as headache-free as possible. They’ve done a smashing job, and I’m not going to muck up their tremendous achievement by letting my life dissolve into a litany of anxieties, petty or otherwise.

Kurt Vonnegut, (whom I must read some day), wisely observed,

“We’re here on Earth to fart around, and don’t let anyone tell you different.”

Some other famous writer nailed my sentiments spot on when she said,

“Writing is the only thing that, when I’m doing it, I don’t feel I should be doing something else.” Ah, it was Gloria Steinham. (Thank you, internet. You’re so clever.)

As I began this year, embracing my bohemian self, I started my New Year head-shave but the clipper puttered to a stop and I couldn’t find the charger. Nothing left but the not-quite-bald spot on top. I have since found the charger, but I think I’ll keep my new hairstyle (which I call a “nohawk”).

I’ve been told it makes me look insane; I think it suits me.

If they didn’t laugh at it, it wouldn’t be the Way. ~ Lao-tzu, Tao Te Ching

Maybe tomorrow I’ll wanna settle down.

Lowhawk or D’oh!hawk?

Unanswerable: “Did You Write That Play?”

Typical review of Eat Poo Love

GOOD EVANING

Did you write the play Eat, Poo, Love, which received nothing but four-star reviews at the Toronto Fringe Festival last week?

EVAN ANDREW MACKAY

Asking me, [of Eat, Poo, Love] “Did you write that play?” is like asking a woman who has miscarried, “Did you have your baby?”

It was based on Paul’s blog, and conceptualized as theatre by my brother Dan. I wrote an incomplete first draft which I suggested we work on together to make a fully functioning first draft. But that fragmentary first draft was taken out of my hands and I didn’t see a script again until a few weeks before opening night. My input was no longer wanted. The moment I became aware that I was out of the writing loop, I knew I did not want to be involved in the show.

GOOD EVANING

Why didn’t you quit then?

EVAN ANDREW MACKAY

I knew it would be hard on me to remain in the show, but I thought it would be harder on Dan for me to make the hurtful move of “abandoning” him. He needed support from everywhere he could get it. Especially one of his brothers. The three of us are close. Just about anything any one of us does could be seen as a collective achievement.

But it was risky for me to stay in it. From the time I was excommunicated until about the fourth show, I was doing the Smeagol/Gollum routine: “Support the show”—“Sabotage it!” The acting challenge for me was showing up at rehearsals without speaking my mind. One performance, I screwed up my lines twice because as I waited for my cue I had been imaging addressing the audience with “This isn’t the way the script was supposed to go.”

GOOD EVANING

How was it hard for you to be in the show?

EVAN ANDREW MACKAY

Just about every rehearsal, I was reminded to know my place—an actor. Physical and social pains that Paul and I suffered were clowned and directed, and I was made to watch without comment. Lines I had written remained senselessly in scenes that someone else had reshaped, and I was given no opportunity to amend things.

GOOD EVANING

Why were you “dumped” from the writing team?

EVAN ANDREW MACKAY

My enthusiasm can be unsettling. I’m a loose canon. Imagine writing a play with Robin Williams back in his cocaine days.

GOOD EVANING

Did you like the final script?

EVAN ANDREW MACKAY

In my view, it was not ready for the stage. It was not ready to be shown to a director, for that matter. It has significant flaws structurally and thematically. (There is one line near the end that, as a patient, makes me shudder.) But it was put on stage for seven enthusiastic audiences. Can’t complain about that. Daniel accomplished what he wanted to do; that is a success. And I want my brother to have success in whatever way he seeks it.

GOOD EVANING

Has this done permanent harm to your relationship with your brother?

EVAN ANDREW MACKAY

No.

GOOD EVANING

Would you work with him again artistically?

EVAN ANDREW MACKAY

Probably.

GOOD EVANING

Aren’t you causing trouble by saying these things in this somewhat public way?

EVAN ANDREW MACKAY

If I can’t talk about my writing, I can’t be a writer. I have to be free to answer questions like, “What have you written lately?” Could I have left my brother out of this discussion? Not if he was my writing partner. (This blog post is probably a good example of why he hesitates to work with me.)

I have to say these words in this place at this moment so that I can stop repeating them in my head and to strangers at bus stops. After two months of not writing anything, this is what I need to do to I feel I have my writing back.

I’d say, “The last thing I want to do is hurt my brother.” But that shit ain’t the truth. The last thing I want to do is have a false peace with my brother.

A line from the beginning of the play—a line Dan wrote—says you can’t have perfection; the best you can hope for is harmony.

GOOD EVANING

So, do you love your brother?

EVAN ANDREW MACKAY

Oh, fuck off.

Evan as Dino Carcinoma; Dan as Patient Q

Marina Nemat’s Memoir “Prisoner of Tehran” Now on Stage

Just as Marina Nemat and director Maja Ardal had to be selective when adapting Nemat’s astonishing memoir Prisoner of Tehran for the stage, so did I have to be selective in adapting a half-hour interview with the author and human rights activist to a brief online Q&A format.

One point I wasn’t able to include was part of Nemat’s response to my question about how she can balance addressing the wrongs committed in Iran against the misconceptions and general negativity many North Americans may harbour about Iran. She said,

“The world is talking about Iran having a nuclear bomb? …The people of Iran have not been losing their children to the nuclear program; they have been losing their children to the terrible disregard for human rights in that country. …the problem of Iran is the struggle for human rights, and it is hurting the Iranian people more than it is hurting anybody.”

She also spoke about the role of the arts in addressing human rights issues. She spoke of how theatre, painting, and so on, shed light on the shades between black and white that are see in the media. “CNN and the news fail to introduce the human side of the story. And this play and [my] books and talks try to put a human face to this very difficult situation.”

Please read what did make it into the published interview here:

www.postcity.com/Eat-Shop-Do/Do/April-2012/Prisoner-of-Tehrans-Marina-Nemat-We-wanted-to-make-people-in-the-theatre-really-feel-uncomfortable/

Marina Nemat, human rights activist and author of Prisoner of Tehran

Finishing a First Draft for Fringe Festival

Brrr! Is there a draft in here? Damn right there is! First draft of my Fringe Festival eFfort. Cool!

The title of this work is yet to be confirmed (but stay tuned!). It is a comedic drama (as in, “if you don’t laugh, you cry”), which must not exceed 60 minutes in length, to be premiered at the 2012 Toronto Fringe Festival from July 4^th to 15^th. It will be my* third play to be staged, (and my first not to be workshopped by Theatre New Brunswick with actors from Playwrights’ Workshop Montreal). *Unlike my previous plays, which were entirely my own ideas and developed with no outside contribution prior to rehearsal, this Fringe show is based on the writings of Paul Clement and conceived of as a stage show by Daniel Mackay. It is an adaptation and it is very much a collaborative effort. The three of us have met several times to experiment with different approaches to the material, and we will continue to do so now that this draft is finished.

Playwright Tavern, photo Tim Carter

It’s funny to use the word “finished”, though. Any first draft is more like a foundation to build on than a house to start filling with furniture. But this is even more the case with theatre than with other types of writing. A playwright is more of an architect than a painter. Write a piece of prose and you can get feedback, but no matter how many suggestions you heed, the changes are made by the writer. A script, on the other hand, gets filtered through actors and a director. (The exception would be a monodrama scripted and performed by a single creator. And even then, if such a solo artist engages a director or dramaturge, the work becomes a collaboration.)

So, “finished” is misleading. What is finished is the preparation. This stage is not quite the laying of the foundation but the sketching out of the blueprints. Now our creative triumvirate has something to compare notes on. Up to this point, what we had was a wild stallion of a concept which we corralled into a chicken coop of ideas. Now we have a crude block from which we can hew away the chunks that impair a clear view of a vision we hope to share. (Hmm, could I cram another metaphor into this paragraph?)

The significance of having a completed first draft is that we have something tangible to work on. This would be equally true if I were developing this script all on my own, but it is all the more urgent when there is a creative team waiting to get their hands dirty.

For writers who haven’t yet learned the hard way, take it from one who did: It is counterproductive to discuss a partially written draft. (I spent 12 years getting feedback on a partially written novel which I consequently kept re-inventing. Once I stopped discussing it, I finished the draft in six months.) If your baby is not yet able to stand on her own, you can’t ask her to dance for an audience of even one. If she still needs you to hold her up, the onlooker won’t see her dance but will just see her dangling there. You can discuss an idea, and you can discuss a first draft—which has a thread you can pull on and twist and tie in knots and still follow how one end connects to the other—but you can’t discuss a partial draft because it is as vulnerable as a half-born fetus.

Showing a half-written draft would be like showing a half-finished haircut, so hold off the unveiling until there are no more “and then a miracle happens” gaps that need filling in. Especially in a play, you need to be able to explain why this happens at this point and that happens at that point because, if not, even the most well-intentioned listener can crush your fetal idea by asking what your point is.

The draft has been presented. Will it be tackled by builders or the wrecking ball?

What I Haven’t Been Writing about Lately

My last post wasn’t supposed to be a post. It was supposed to be a “widget” (if that’s what the kids are still calling it). I had seen the flag counter before and thought, “I want to get me one of them!” Following up on a comment left by Eva Lind of I’d Rather Be In Iceland on my last actual post, I saw she had the flag counter and I pursued it, but alas, the technology was beyond me (which is where technology is usually located). It was as if I tried to get a tattoo on my arm and it wound up on my eyelid. Eva kindly tried to help me sort it out, but it took me a couple of weeks, and now I have to start counting flags again from today. But this is not what has kept me from writing.

I didn’t write about Valentine’s Day, not that I find it a particularly worthy topic, although I did read some interesting history about it. A lot of people don’t want to think about Valentine’s Day and some are too busy enjoying it to sit and read about it. But that didn’t keep me from writing.

Talking to a Brazilian student last week, I was reminded that Carnival 2012 was underway. She gave me lots of material to consider, but I thought I’d rather join the local celebrations than stay home and write about it. But I did neither; that’s not what kept me from writing.

I’ve been reading a lot this month, much of it having been on my mind since I was writing about Black History Month, but they were books that have been on my “read soon” list for some time. The autobiographical Life of Josiah Henson (brief, compelling, uplifting) and the classic which it inspired, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, (more of historical than literary interest); Edugyan’s Half-Blood Blues, uncommonly deserving of the Giller Prize it won, got me interested in investigating a number of topics I will write about later; and I finally started Hill’s annotated The Book of Negroes (derived from the document of that name). But it wasn’t the reading that impeded my writing.

Half-Blood Blues, by Esi Edugyan

What has kept me from writing is writing. I’m working on that play for the Toronto Fringe Festival; the wheels were spinning for a few days, but now I’ve got traction again. I refurbished a short story which my stupendous new writing group thoughtfully critiqued for me. And I have written a review of the documentary play “Seeds” (Schmeiser vs. Monsanto) which you can now read at http://www.postcity.com.

Thank you to those who expressed curiosity about my apparent lack of output. My concern, until this recent pause, has been that people will want a break from my writings. There’s more to come, and I’ll take suggestions and consider requests. Tell me want you want or I’ll give what I’ve got.

Consistency, in Moderation

It is good to be consistent, sometimes.

Odd nut. (Photo by Evan Andrew Mackay)

Consistently washing your hands is generally commendable. As for the desirability of consistently laughing at my clever remarks, opinions vary.

Consistently driving on the right hand side of the road, in a forward motion, is helpful in some countries, but would likely be problematic in others.

Consistently comforting a crying child might seem a good idea, until (as I learned over the holidays) the child catches on to the potential for manipulation.

What about in my writing? I aim (with limited success) for my writing to be consistently satisfying – consistency of quality – but there is some expectation that a writer should maintain a degree of consistency in quantity, to produce a certain quantity of words within a certain time frame.

Should I write one blog post every week, every second week, or every three days? Or should I write a blog post when I have something I think would be of particular interest to, um, say, you for example?

In defense of the irregularity of my postings I could quote Oscar Wilde, “Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.”

If one is too consistent, they get called “extremist” like when Lisa Simpson insists her mother pay for the two grapes she ate at the grocery store – “I need a price check on two grapes. Yeah, you heard me, Phil. Two measly, stinkin’ grapes.” Lisa is just sticking to her principles. As Ayn Rand fairly observes, extremism is merely consistency.

I’m not extremely extreme, myself, but I am consistently inconsistent. So as my New Year’s resolution, by which I mean to say my first New Moon resolution of 2012, I will aim for consistency – in moderation – regarding the regularity of my output. And I mean that in an entirely non-medical way (but stay tuned for my upcoming Fringe show blog).

And now, in the spirit of “Moderation in everything, including moderation”, let’s open another bottle of Amarone.

All I Want for Buy-Nothing Christmas

Only 21 shopping days left till hypochrismas. Here’s how I rolled over the past week.

Last Friday on GoodEvaning, I wrote Occupy the 99%: How to Shop on Buy Nothing Day. In preparing that post, I encountered Buy Nothing Christmas, which reminded me of the documentary What Would Jesus Buy? and I said to myself, Yeah, right on, Brother! Those ideas are easy for me to buy into since, being a recently diagnosed freelance writer, I can afford to buy nothing.

That same evening I went to Swap Sity’s screening of the film Living Without Money and listened to guest speaker, “Barter Babe” Shannon Simmons, talk about how to make bartering a part of your personal financial plan. That’s something I could afford – Christmaswapping!

Buy Nothing Christmas

But when my dear family began to pester me for my “Christmas list”, which should be an oxymoron rather than a cliché, I felt myself toning down the buy-nothing rhetoric. I’m doing it for them, I told myself, because it would just break their little hearts if I didn’t have something under the tree to unwrap, from each of them, with their names on the tags. Altruism can be a vicious game.

So yeah, yesterday I sent out my list. If I were to get everything on my list, the retail value would be more than I’ve earned in the last six months – I’m talking hundreds of dollars – stuff that I have admitted I do not need.

Then today I flip-flopped again. After saying a firm “No” three times to joining an expedition to a non-specific warehouse sale, I caved rather than “ruin the Christmas spirit”. The aim of the mission was to buy “stocking stuffers” – the season’s most repugnant word pair. What horror. Mountains of infomercial rejects. Who could possibly want any of this crap? Damn, I am such a hypocrite! Okay, I confess – I let someone buy me a $4 baking pan, which I will use for baking Fair Squares*, the brownies I will be giving everyone for Christmas. [Too late for a SPOILER ALERT?]

Now here is my selfish Christmas wish, which I am sending out to you and the world. What I want for Christmas is to increase my readership of a dozen subscribers to over 100. So, please, indulge me. Try getting in the spirit of giving without spending, and make this the best Christmas ever – for me – by subscribing to http://goodevaning.wordpress.com/.

And it’s a gift you can give to everyone you know at absolutely no cost to anyone. And it’s a gift you can enjoy for years to come, or ignore without guilt, or get rid of without harming the environment, or – the best option – re-gift without letting go of it.

Please take a few seconds and subscribe, and then take a minute to suggest to a few of your friends and family that they subscribe, too. I don’t aspire to be “bigger than Jesus”, but I’d like to spread my words. That’s what I want; what do you want? Donate a comment.

Have a happy solstice!

 

*To help the producers of the ingredients – many of them actual Christians in Latin America – earn a wage that might enable their families to celebrate Christmas, I use Fair Trade cocoa and Fair Trade sugar (and eggs from local, free-run chickens). FREE RECIPE FOR SUBSCRIBERS.