Welcome to the Wakefield Doctrine (the theory of clarks, scotts and rogers)

‘A Garden-to-be and Namesake, both wait patiently.’

This is the bloghop that invites one and all to share the sources of gratitude in their lives. Being the virtual world, (in general), and the blogosphere, (in particular), the variety of experiences found on these pages are as remarkable as this ‘world’ in which they appear.

Hosted by Josie Two Shoes, the TToT, (from it’s proper name: Ten Things of Thankful), is blogging at it’s best. Eschewing the constraints of the common and ordinary ‘gratitude blog’, the TToT is the weekly repository of posts that are: written as well-ordered and engaging lists of the week’s past days; well-ordered lists with clever unifying themes as Mimi comes up with, each week; well-ordered lists utilizing photos that demonstrate the truism that (they) are worth, ‘thousand words’ Val having totally mastered the weaving of image and idea; lists that share the love of our non-human partners on this planet and lists that are as familiar (and enjoyable) as an impromptu conversation with a friend at a local coffee shop.

The TToT is all about allowing others a glimpse into one’s world, life, reality. Sure, we all have ‘real’ world friends, a relationship that, by tenure, entitles us a greater insight into their life. But for most of us, our ‘real’ worlds are populated with people about whom we know height, weight, occupation and family demographic. Nothing wrong with that. It is not uncommon among those who become friends here in the ‘sphere, that we find (and welcome) the opportunity to offer an insight into a part of our actual lives.

So there you have it. Your own very personal library where the shelves are full of tales of people living lives; the pages are full of words that cannot be made up, they can only be lived (and, perhaps, recorded) and they are ours to enjoy and learn from and know that there are others in the world who have done some the things we have done but better and others in the world who have failed at some of the things we have excelled at and others in the world who have felt as we have.

Not a bad way to spend a few hours, non?

1) Una and her garden (see photo above)

2) Phyllis (who pretty much has a hand in all the better images on these pages)

3) Irene Waters, over at the Six Sentence Story, Irene did a Six semi-based on the music of Led Zeppelin. This is surely one of the cooler manifestations of the socio-cultural benefits of this here blogosphere. Her comment (and post) prompted me to remember the ‘day the music got loud’. Hence the week’s music vid.

4) Speaking of other bloghops, you owe it to yourself to stop by the Six Sentence Story and try yer hand at short, short, really, quite short-story writing. (The Six Sentence Story ‘hop has a rather impressive pedigree.. Preceeding the current host, Denise, Zoe managed the weekly prompting of story writing. In the Department of Tiny Planets, none other than our own curatress, Josie Two Shoes cracked the word-whip prior to Z taking over. There are muy (or would that be muchacho?) talented writers participating each every week; Pat being in the forefront of writer-I-watch. (The ‘watch’ implies the part of the reading that ends with, ‘…how the heck did she do that?!!’ For me, the Six Sentence Story is as much about learning as about reading. Pat has that gift for creating a small, simple world with engaging characters doing interesting things. In six sentences. Can I get a ‘damn!’)

5) And a grat item on bloghops is not complete without mention of the FTSF crew. (Picture Pirates of the Caribbean ‘cept with a mostly female cast…. I’ll leave you to decide who plays Jack Sparrow: Kristi or Kenya or Tamara or Madra or Janine or Dana)

6) Kerry… not just ’cause she wields a mean keyboard over at ‘the ‘kerchief’... but because she does stuff in the ‘real’ world and has had things published and been on the radio and does a podcast… in the kid-parlence from a lifetime ago, Kerry’s a total three letter blogger.*

7) Speaking of powers of example. Kristi who does a blog that somehow manages to combine many of the cited attributes, including my favorite, ‘photos-through-windshields- of-moving-cars’. (In the interest of protecting reputations, Kristi hardly ever steers with her knee while rummaging through settings on the camera as a potential photo approaches at 70 mph…like some blogwriters I know ) And, in all seriousness, she is my role model in the photo description thing.

8) THIS SPACE AVAILABLE (there are, at least statistics suggest there are, at least 3.45 Readers who, while not regular participants in the TToT, nevertheless harbor a medium strong desire to “...join in that blog someday. But… alas, I have not Ten Items.”

Well… your wait is over. Send us your Grat Item in a Comment and I’ll totally place it here. capische?

9) Technology and the relationships it makes possible (sure, a little redundant, but only in a repetitious way)… Friend of the Doctrine Cynthia. A total power of example and a credit to her people. She’s been busier than usual (ayiiee!) so get yerself over to her blog Intuitive and Spiritual, you can thank us later.

10) SR 1.3  (this is the oft-employed Secret Rule 1.3, one of a number of Rules. One less frequently used SR is SR 89.3 (i) which states, in part: [t]hose who, finding that the comments on a given post have, (somehow), managed to anticipate one’s own remarkably clever bon mot, may (ref SR 3.21 ibid) reply to a comment in (another’s) post and not, by doing so, be prosecuted for ‘thread-jacking’ and may, in fact (SR 2.1;3) be applauded for ‘cranking up the volume on this thing'” op.cit Secret Book of Rules (aka Book of Secret Rules) Cambridge ed. 2014)

* ‘three-letter’ a reference found in high school culture (at least that culture as I experienced it) referring to those members of multiple winning sports teams… not just a letter sweater… but that, times three.