Calling Alaska

Alaska mountain landscape / Photo credit through Flickr: blmiers2 / Thank you, Barbara Miers!

Flag Counter says this site’s visitors include people from 102 countries and 49 of the United States. Naturally, we all wonder, Who is missing??

Alaska!

So, hello, Alaska! How have you been?

How ironic that the next dream vacation on my list is an Alaskan cruise. I saw a travel film of that spectacular coastline with its colorful boats and homes, the calving of both ice and whales. (Wait–do whales calve in Alaska or someplace warmer? I’ve decided not to fact check that so I can keep the pun.) Maybe I’ll visit the Alaskans before they discover me. I know someone who owns a secluded hunting lodge in Alaska. I have friends who summer there–kayaking, cooking over a fire on the beach (or is it a river?) and covering their windows so they can sleep. (Is it cheating if they visit my site from there?) One Christmas, I passed along a YouTube video of “The Hallelujah Chorus” creatively presented by the schoolchildren of Quinhagak, Alaska. I know the capital is Juneau. (Then again, I know all the state capitals; I just proved it when my sixth grader’s teacher quizzed us parents. It helps that I grew up in eight states and a province of Canada.)

In other words, my understanding of Alaska is almost as limited as the Alaskans’ knowledge of me.

Arizona hosts winter snowbirds from many beautiful summer spots, but an Alaskan/Arizonan split would be hard to beat. I would love hosting retreats in Alaska all summer. And if you reversed the usual preference–so you’d winter in Alaska, and summer in Arizona–you’d spend so much time indoors, you could be a prolific writer. Either way, it’s one of those perfect pairs for a writer’s paradise.

So whenever you arrive here, Alaska, please comment. What do you want me to know about writing in Alaska?

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Text © Gwyn Nichols 2012. All rights reserved. WritersResort.com

Photo © Barbara Miers through Flickr: blmiers2

My International Guests

Gwyn's Flag Counter as of 10 24 2011

“If you are writing the clearest, truest words you can find and doing the best you can to understand and communicate, this will shine on paper like its own little lighthouse. Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining.”  — Anne Lamott

 

This is one of my favorite writer quotes, and my chief excuse for not promoting myself, but on a blog, it materializes at light speed. Recently, I noticed I was up to 73 flags on my blog’s flag counter–probably more by the time you read this. The other day my visitor report might have formed a quorum of the United Nations and resolved for world peace. You’re from Canada to Argentina, Finland to New Zealand, Ireland to Japan. Russia to Madagascar, Cambodia to Romania, Peru to Indonesia, Northern Mariana Islands to Brazil, Mexico to Luxembourg, Latvia to Bolivia, Greece to Vietnam,  Saudi Arabia to Trinidad and Tobago, Nigeria to Taiwan, Switzerland to Pakistan, Israel to Bangladesh, Czech Republic to Nepal, Ukraine to Venezuela, Papua New Guinea to Lebanon, Serbia to South Africa, Singapore to Portugal. And 35 more.

With English being the chief second language in many nations, I assume most of these visitors understand me, while I’d be lost in their languages. It’s mind-boggling.

With so many readers whose days are my nights, or whose autumns are my springs (or both), I have to wonder! How did you land here? Were you looking for a topic I wrote about? Did you meet me through someone I’m connected with? Was it purely accidental, like a misdialed phone number? (I can’t imagine you’d actually heard of me, though this week was another milestone. Recommended Tags began suggesting “Gwyn Nichols.” Do I tag my posts with my own name? How odd!)

And when you got here, did you feel welcome? Lost?

I’m sparkling with curiosity. Please feel free to comment and let me (and my other guests in the room) know where you’re from, why you’re here, and whether I’m making a lick of sense. (Suddenly, I’m self-conscious about my idioms.) What would be helpful to you?

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 Text © Gwyn Nichols 2011. All rights reserved. WritersResort.com

Image: screenshot from Flag Counter. You can get one for your blog here. I don’t know how I blogged without this service, it makes life so much more fun!

Most Beautiful Words

A reposting of a list of 100 Most Beautiful Words in the English Language has me wondering what my own favorites would be.

For example, bucolic doesn’t make my list. Its meaning, in a lovely rural setting, certainly qualifies, and that definition chimes beautifully in the ear, but bucolic’s cacophonous sound suggests it would mean sick cow.

Nor do I care for long latinate words when a more accessible word will do. I prefer cat lover to ailurophile.

I  concur on onomatopeia and panacea, but my favorite word has to be lullaby.

Remember when Bert and Ernie of Sesame Street sang the L song? Bert had “light bulb and lamp post,” while Ernie advocated the “lilting and lovely ones” like “laughter, lullaby, lollypop.” So Bert the boring came up with “linoleum!” The humor came in juxtaposing a melodic word with its pedestrian meaning.

For me, the most beautiful word captures the precise meaning you’re looking for, its phonetic symbolism matches its meaning, and its cadence fits the prosody of your passage. Good thing we can rummage around in this language with the largest vocabulary available; with a half million words to choose from, sometimes we can have it all.

What would you nominate as a most beautiful word?