Mira Prabhu's Blog, page 70

How stories are told around the world

Mira Prabhu:

“Even if a story is the same, each culture will tell it differently, because each one has its own genres and cultural rules.��� That���s led to a host of different traditions and practices beloved around the world. Here are just some of them.” Read on, friends — and than you Amy Choi and the Story-Reading Ape!

Originally posted on ideas.ted.com:

It���s said��there isn���t anyone you couldn���t learn to love, once you���ve heard their story. Dave Isay knows that. The ability to honor every human by listening to what they have to say about themselves is central to StoryCorps, the nonprofit he founded in 2003.

The premise of StoryCorps is simple: One person interviews another and their conversation is recorded for posterity. It���s a strikingly straightforward proposition. But then, storytelling has always been less about glitz or gadgetry and more about connection and communication. No matter the tech, humans have invariably figured out a compelling way to tell each other stories.

That���s not to say we all tell stories the same way. Far from it. As Kay Turner, a folklorist and independent scholar who���s on the board of the New York Folklore Society, notes, ���Even if a story is the same, each culture will tell it differently, because���

View original 609 more words

18 Quotes to Inspire Writers, Bloggers–Everyone.

Mira Prabhu:

18 Quotes to Inspire Writers, Bloggers, Everyone… just spotted this beauty: ���Take rest; a field that has rested gives a bountiful crop.��� Ovid. Thank you Ronovan!

Originally posted on ronovanwrites:

The guy that came up with the Positivity campaign has a problem as he sits here and begins typing. He needs to think of something to write about. Part of the beginning an article with an idea yet to be developed is [image error]pressure to write an article that is specifically about a certain topic. I gave ideas for others involved to do if they wanted help thinking of something. I am contrary to myself at times. I wanted to do an article instead. I think I like to hear myself type. Now, here I am���writer���s blocked.

As I typed those last two words, the idea came to me. There is something that gets in the way of all of us at times. It keeps us from being positive as often as we could. Did you see the words be positive all of the time in that last sentence?

I may���

View original 565 more words

Naked Lunch On Trial For Obscenity

Mira Prabhu:

Naked Lunch on trial for obscenity in 1962 Boston. How much has changed since! Thank you Robert….

Originally posted on 101 Books:

Boston, Massachusetts has often been the setting of some major��trials, including the one going on right now for the Boston Marathon bomber.

But, back in 1962, a book went on trial. Yep, Naked Lunch���William Burroughs��� famous novel���faced the Boston court system after having been labeled obscene. The book, literally, was on trial.

Naked Lunch must have had bad attorneys because it lost.

View original 243 more words

Monday Funnies with Maxine

Mira Prabhu:

Monday morning blues? Lighten up with Maxine…and thanks. Chris Graham!

Originally posted on Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog:

[image error]

[image error]

[image error]

[image error]

[image error]

[image error]

View original

Terry Pratchett on books and writing Quotes for Writers ( and people who like quotes)

Mira Prabhu:

Terry Pratchett on books and writing Quotes for Writers…thank you Bridget Whelan!

Originally posted on BRIDGET WHELAN writer:

[image error]

Too many people want to have written.

Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.

The space between the young readers eyeballs and the printed page is a holy place and officialdom should trample all over it at their peril.

Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can.

While a book has got to be worthwhile from the point of view of the reader it���s got to be worthwhile from the point of view of the writer as well.

And finally one I���ve included�� just because I like it���

Oh dear, I���m feeling political today. It���s just that it���s dawned on me that ���zero tolerance��� only seems to mean putting extra police in poor, run-down areas, and not in the Stock Exchange.

Sir Terry Pratchett died on Thursday March 12th. He wrote over 70 books���

View original 49 more words

Terry Pratchett

Mira Prabhu:

Terry Pratchett passes away but his legacy does not…read what Jo Robinson has to say…and thank you Story-Reading Ape!

Originally posted on Jo Robinson:

I���ve been in love with this man ever since I was a teen and read The Carpet People. I���ve read every little thing he���s ever written multiple multiple multiple times too ��� they grow my soul and make me laugh like no one else has ever done. Right now I have to take my eyeball to some place where it can vegetate in the closed position, but old one eye or not, I���ll write my tribute to the greatest comedy fantasy writer of all time tomorrow. It will be EPIC. It will be VERY LONG. It will be full of love, and rude humour. In the meantime, I���m pretty sure our Sir Terry had some awesome rat-on-a-stick nibbles out for the reaper, and some knock out Ankh Morpork booze. So sorry that your next book will be written amongst the stars, but those of us who believe in the great���

View original 41 more words

Sally G. Cronin

Mira Prabhu:

Check out Sally Cronin’s “Flights of Fancy” ��� a collection of short stories about ghosts, romance, friendship, and revenge….oh, and by the way, Sally is a powerful friend to indie writers. Good luck Sally!

Originally posted on Reading Recommendations:

[image error] Sally G. Cronin

What is your latest release and what genre is it?Flights of Fancy ��� a collection of short stories.

Quick description: Ghosts, romance, friendship of all kinds and revenge form the basis of this collection of short stories. Ghosts hint at a chance of coming back to say goodbye, exact a little payback, or simply to help someone else carry on living. Romance is not just for the young and nor are second chances. As for revenge, well ��� Never underestimate a group of elderly ladies with contacts from the past.

[image error]

Brief biography:
I cannot remember when I did not have a pile of books that I was working my way through. I was a tomboy so opted for adventures on the high seas or dark continents. Then of course real life intruded in the form of 25 years in a number of industries before becoming a���

View original 200 more words

Gone Fishin’ & The Art of Taking Personal Responsibility…

At one point in my erratic freelance career in Manhattan, I landed in a small branch of an environmental law firm with its head office in California. It was headed by a cold and beautiful woman with grave emotional problems that she made no bones about publicly sharing.

Her personal assistant was a petite red-head possessed of a voice as squeaky as a Pomeranian. I shall call her Candy. Now Candy sucked up madly to our��boss���the benefit being that as long as she flattered the woman to bits, she was allowed to run the office as she damn well pleased. Candy was cute and funny and made us laugh with her endless fund of jokes���but she was also one of the most unethical office managers I ever came across in my history of freelancing. In fact, as soon as our boss flew west��on business, Candy would hang a ‘Gone Fishin���’ sign on her office door, indicating she was not to be disturbed; it was common knowledge that she needed time to study for her evening college classes, and office work be damned.

These were pre-internet days and our��attorneys��had a hard time citing relevant cases when writing up their law briefs. So our head office commissioned an expert to create a database for our use; soon after he��flew down from California to train us in managing this tricky animal.

Six of us attended his��classes���a petite Filipina with a��toothy smile and skimpy dresses, an earnest black gay man with thick glasses who yearned to make it on Broadway, a voluptuous Puerto Rican woman who considered��herself�� “one hot sexy mama”, two white women whose names I do not recall, and yours truly. Of the lot,��I and the Filipina seemed to be the only two willing to learn: I, because I am generally terrified of the consequences of not knowing what to do in an emergency, and the Filipina because she loved software.

Christmas holidays were almost upon us when out of the blue��the Filipina quit.��Since the others claimed they were not capable of operating the database on their own, I had no choice but to obey Candy when she ordered me to man it��in addition to my regular duties. Or rather, I had a choice, which was to stomp out of the job���but for some reason I don’t recall, I did not wish to quit this crazy firm as yet. Besides, truth be told, my ego enjoyed the feeling that I alone was able to operate this critical software.

Shortly��before Christmas I ended up putting in ten long hours of overtime to produce all the database work our attorneys required to file their briefs for the coming year. (It had to be��overtime since my regular workload had to be seen to between the hours of 9 to 5.) Candy approved this schedule and I went through with the work, despite reservations. I marked those ten hours of OT on my time-sheet, made a copy for myself, and handed it to Candy. But, when my salary check arrived a few days later, I saw that I had been given only 1��hour of overtime���instead of the 10 I had marked!

Just an error, I thought���but when I checked my copy of the time-sheet, I saw the “10” was clearly visible. I went over to��Candy’s office and saw the Gone Fishin’ sign hanging on her door. Pissed, I flung open the door and��explained what had happened.��“Just wanted to let you know I’m going to call Head Office and ask them to correct this,” I said, brandishing the time sheet.��“Oh no, don’t do that!” Candy begged.”Why not?” I asked, puzzled. Whereupon Candy��confessed that it was she who had whited out the “0” after the “1”, therefore depriving me of 9 hours of overtime!��She might have gotten away with her callous theft of my time and money���except that I had been so furious about being forced to put in��that overtime that I had actually checked my time-sheet to see that I was properly remunerated.

Candy��squeaked on and on about how Head Office was “getting on her case”���they frowned severely upon overtime, she went on righteously, and it was a black mark against her when a time-sheet went in with even a single hour of overtime on it. I could only stare at her dumbfounded. What an unethical creature!

My eyes turned heavenward and happened to��fall on a framed statement hanging on the wall over her head. It was an ALANON��(12-step program for the families of addicts/alcoholics)��statement about taking personal responsibility that went something like this: no matter what happens, take personal responsibility���if you blame, you give away your personal power. If someone betrays your trust, take responsibility for trusting an unreliable person; if someone humiliates you, assume responsibility for choosing such a friend; if someone cheats you, be aware that you put yourself in a position to be taken advantage of. Take responsibility because doing so gives you options���then you can either accept the situation, attempt to repair��it, or walk away, a wiser person than before.

I told Candy I felt betrayed by her action.”Suck it up, Mira,” she advised me coolly. “I did what I thought was best for us all.” Her attitude only served to piss me off the more���I told her she could either fix the problem herself, or that I would make a formal complaint to Head Office���and then I would quit the bloody firm, leaving her to operate that darned database herself.

I stormed out���and yet that statement of Personal Responsbility stayed with me.��What’s more, I empathized with Candy’s moral��weakness: I knew she came from a severely dysfunctional family.��Like her boss, and though their backgrounds were very different, Candy too spoke openly about her family: an alcoholic father, lunatic mother, and weird siblings. I’m the only one who’s sane, she’d say with a hysterical giggle, yeah, I’m the only one that flew out of the cuckoo’s nest, bay-bee. But��now I wondered: had she truly flown out of the nest? .

Back at my desk I brooded over the incident. What had I done wrong here? I’d obeyed my superiors and done what others had refused to do. So really, where had I gone wrong? Had I erred because��my heart had not been involved in taking on this extra work? Whatever the case, as the Americans say, Candy had played me for a sucker. And suckers always pay a price.

Once I accepted personal responsibility for the situation, my mind began to wander into other territories of my life:��why, I wondered, did I continue to��cling to a stagnant marriage when my goal was to seek liberation from desire and fear? Was I blameless? No, I decided sadly, I was not: It was my own egoic need to succeed, as well as to mask my inner suffering from the outside world, that had created this monstrous situation. The bald truth was that��my own��personal dishonesty was keeping me in chains.

Ever since I choose to honor the wisdom of��assuming personal responsibility. And when friends bitch and moan to me about anything ranging from the trivial to the major���an��unreliable gardener, money worries, a marriage gone sour, the onset of a debilitating disease, or the end of a job���I advise them to first take personal responsibility for the situation; do this first, I suggest, and you can then act properly���otherwise your thinking will be cloudy and weak and you won’t be able to walk free.

It was years after my face-off with crooked Candy that I met a Buddhist master who grilled us on the essentials of eastern philosophy. As I dived deeply into the ancient teachings on karma, reincarnation, Shunyata (emptiness) and enlightenment, I resolved that no matter what “happened” to me, I would accept it as the result of my own past karma. (The word “karma” just means “doing”���the results come later, in this or another lifetime.) If I could see my present situation simply as the result of my own past thought, speech and action, it would be easier to deal with���but if I blamed others for it, my power would drain away and I would be just another victim.

This holistic attitude of accepting everything I experience as my own projection has empowered me so greatly that, despite continuing ups and downs, I feel I am now on the right path up the mountain. That said,��I send you greetings from Arunachala, the sacred hill of pure consciousness that vows to burn down our ego so we can experience our immortal and blissful Self!

Follow Blog via Email

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Click the buttons below to SHARE if you liked this post.

William Faulkner’s Drinking Was A Matter Of National Security

Mira Prabhu:

William Faulkner���s Drinking Was A Matter Of National Security! Read Robert’s interesting post…

Originally posted on 101 Books:

Times they have a-changed, friends.

In today���s ���image means everything��� political climate, I can���t imagine the United States sending a drunken author overseas as an official ambassador. In the 1950s, though? No problem.

Over at Slate, Greg Barhisel discusses how, during the Cold War, many American authors traveled around the globe as ambassadors for the United States���meeting with foreign diplomats and dignitaries. Their purpose? To show that ���America wasn���t just Mickey Mouse and chewing gum.���

View original 198 more words

Dying Man, 24, Leaves an Awesome Message That Everyone Should Read:

Mira Prabhu:

I am only 24 years old, yet I have actually already chosen my last tie. It���s the one that I will wear on my funeral a few months from now. It may not match my suit, but I think it���s perfect for the occasion….thank you for this, Kindness Blog!

Originally posted on Kindness Blog:

[image error] Soon I Will be Gone Forever, but That���s Okay as Long as Someone Reads This.



I am only 24 years old, yet I have actually already chosen my last tie. It���s the one that I will wear on my funeral (above) a few months from now. It may not match my suit, but I think it���s perfect for the occasion.

The cancer diagnosis came too late to give me at least a tenuous hope for a long life, but I realized that the most important thing about death is to ensure that you leave this world a little better than it was before you existed with your contributions . The way I���ve lived my life so far, my existence or more precisely the loss of it, will not matter because I have lived without doing anything impactful.

Before, there were so many things that occupied my mind. When I learned���

View original 512 more words