Betsy Horvath

Author: Betsy Horvath

  • Out In The Fields

    Some days, you just need a little tranquility, you know?  And boy, has this been one of those days.   Which is why I thought I would share the following poem with all of you. This poem always makes me feel calmer. I think it has something to do with the rhythm of the words, the cadence, what they are saying.  When I read it, I can almost smell the fresh air, feel the sun on my face, and I find myself…settling. It almost always helps me back to my center. And after a day like today, it’s just what the doctor ordered.  Enjoy!

     

    Out In The Fields
    by Elizabeth Barrett Browning

     

    The little cares which fretted me,
    I lost them yesterday
    Among the fields, above the sea,
    Among the winds at play;
    Among the lowing of the herds,
    The rustling of the trees,
    Among the singing of the birds,
    The humming of the bees.

    The foolish fears of what may come,
    I cast them all away
    Among the clover scented grass,
    Among the new mown hay;
    Among the hushing of the corn,
    Where drowsing poppies nod,
    Ill thoughts can die, and good be born,
    Out in the fields of God.

     

  • 8+2 Things About My Mother

    Today is my sainted silver-haired mother’s 82nd birthday. In honor of this very special occasion, I thought I would tell you a few things about her. I was going to tell you 82 things about her, but then I realized that was probably a little excessive. So I decided to tell you 8+2 (10) things about her instead.  And, here you go –

     

    1. She paints amazingly well. She loves to paint winter landscapes in oil and acrylic.  She loves Currier and Ives.
    2. She has the neatest handwriting of anyone I know and has often threatened to disown me when she sees my signature.
    3. She does needlepoint and makes up geometric designs just in her head without sketching them out or anything.  I’ve never been able to figure out how she gets them to turn out right.
    4. She has a crush on Ryan Reynolds and Hugh Jackman, and she cried when Patrick Swayze died.
    5. She loves to read romance novels, especially Westerns by Dorothy Garlock and Linda Layle Miller.
    6. She loves romantic comedy movies, as long as the people aren’t too mean to each other.
    7. She loves the Gaither Gospel Group and will sing along quite enthusiastically at times (it’s a little startling).
    8. She spent every single afternoon at the nursing home with my father for 2 1/2 years before he died.
    9. Her favorite movie musical is Summer Stock with Judy Garland and Gene Kelly.
    10. She loves her whole family very, very much.   And we love her back.  Very much.

    Happy Birthday, Mom!

    (I guess now I’d better go let her know I posted about her all over the Internet. I’m sure she’ll be pleased.  Not.  LOL )

  • When I’m Not Writing

    When I’m not writing, I feel sad and out of sorts.  These facts came home to me with a vengeance last week, because for some reason, I stopped writing.  I didn’t write.  At all. Nary a word.  Nary a peep, except on the blog, Facebook or Twitter. Nary a jot nor a tittle.

    I’m not quite sure what happened.  In some ways last week was an exciting week – I got the draft of my book’s cover and cover copy, I found out my release date.  These are good things.  But the writing came to a full, dead, grinding, stop.  And that was very bad on many different levels.

    When I’m writing, I feel centered.  Grounded.  Happy.  Writing makes me feel full.  Last week I was empty. Stressed.  Depressed.  Unfocused.  Lost.

    I forced myself to start writing again on Monday.  So far, I’ve written every day this week.  At first it was like trying to push a boulder up a hill made of mud.  Day by day, it’s gotten a little easier, the boulder rolling easier, the inertia less.  Little by little, the gears are starting to move again.  The feeling of completion is coming back again.

    I don’t know why I stopped writing, but now that I’ve started again the feeling of hope and joy stirring inside me remind me why I am always compelled to go back to it.

    What about you?  Is there something you do that, when you do it, you hear a voice down deep inside you saying “Yes!  This is why I’m here!”

    Well, if you have that thing, if you know what it is, then you are blessed indeed.  You need to go out and do it!  No excuses!  It’s important.  Not everyone is so fortunate.

    And if you haven’t found your thing yet – don’t give up.  The possibilities are endless if you are willing to look.  We, all of us, are special in our own individual ways.

    Now, then.  I think that I shall go, take a dose of my own medicine, and write something  🙂

  • 10 Things I Love About eReaders

    Many of you know that I am a recent convert to the Kindle.  I chose the Kindle for a variety of excellent reasons I cannot remember at the moment (my short-term memory is a bit sporadic).  But regardless, I love my Kindle.  If I had a Nook or Kobo or any one of a dozen great e-reader alternatives, I would probably love them as well.

    I really didn’t expect to love my Kindle as much as I do – but I do.  So I thought I would give you 10 reasons why I think e-readers are great.  Oh, and by the way, when I’m talking about e-readers here, I’m talking about the dedicated e-readers that are designed for, um, readers, not tablets or phones also used to read e-books.

    Okay, here we go:

    1. Generally speaking, free books are readily available.  Need I say more?
    2. I can change the size of the type, so I can read more easily without having to buy one of those stupid over-sized paperbacks.  Um, not that I’m middle-aged or anything.
    3. E-Readers are light and I can hold them with one hand, thereby ensuring that I can drink coffee whilst I read and not slop it all over everything when I try to turn a page.
    4. If I’m eating while I read, and I get food on the e-reader, I can wipe it off without leaving unsightly stains that will forever need explanation. (“see, I was eating spaghetti…)
    5. I can read without breaking the spine of the book to see the words in the crease.  And if I’m reading a s*e*x scene, I don’t have to go break the spine in other places so people borrowing the book after me won’t wonder what I’ve been doing.
    6. I can pre-order a book, and if I order it from a place with automatic delivery, I can wake up in the morning of the day it’s released and it will be right there as soon as I turn on the Kindle.  Thus ensuring I will be late for work.
    7. I don’t have to worry about buying more bookcases. I really don’t have any room in my house for more paper books.  (no, really.  I don’t)
    8. I don’t have to worry about whether or not a spider has crawled between the pages of a book I’ve left lying out on a coffee table overnight, thus surprising me when I open the book to read it the next morning. (I screamed.  Loudly)
    9. I can carry many books around with me on one little device and read whatever I want to read, whenever I want to read it.
    10. And, last but not least, I love e-readers because MY book is coming out as an e-book from Carina Press on September 5, 2011!!  WOOHOO!

     

    So, see?  If you don’t have an e-reader and I tell you to buy one, I’m not being self serving.  I’m only telling you that because I love you and want you to be as happy.  Trust me.  🙂

     

     

  • Dancing With the Daffodils

    In lieu of an official blog post today, I thought I would take the opportunity to share one of my favorite poems with you. I love this poem, simply love it. It reminds me that although life may sometimes seem dark, or closed, or just cluttered, there is pure loveliness out there, and we can revisit it whenever we wish.

    “I WANDERED LONELY AS A CLOUD”
    by William Wordsworth

    I WANDERED lonely as a cloud
    That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
    When all at once I saw a crowd,
    A host, of golden daffodils;
    Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
    Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

    Continuous as the stars that shine
    And twinkle on the milky way,
    They stretched in never-ending line
    Along the margin of a bay:
    Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
    Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

    The waves beside them danced; but they
    Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
    A poet could not but be gay,
    In such a jocund company:
    I gazed–and gazed–but little thought
    What wealth the show to me had brought:

    For oft, when on my couch I lie
    In vacant or in pensive mood,
    They flash upon that inward eye
    Which is the bliss of solitude;
    And then my heart with pleasure fills,
    And dances with the daffodils.

    May you have a happy Memorial Day, my friends! And may you find a host of daffodils for your very own.

  • Everything I Know About SEO

    Here, in one post, I would like to present everything I know about SEO.

    I know what the acronym SEO stands for – Search Engine Optimization.

    Thank you!  I’ll be here all week!

    Okay, just kidding.  I know a little bit more than that.  Search Engine Optimization is a fancy term for helping your blog show up when people search for stuff on the Internet.  Ideally, you want your blog to be at the top of the search results.  It’s all about getting seen.

    Apparently there are these little robots out there that go and look for words and phrases to match to.  And if you have a matching word in your post or post title or permalink, then the robots find it and retrieve your post when somebody searches for that particular word or phrase.  The more matching words or phrases you have to things people generally search for, the more likely your blog is to come up in the search results.

    There is a lot of thought out there as to how to make this work, since everybody wants to optimize their blog (i.e. – get noticed and/or make money).  I’ve read articles suggesting that you research keywords people are most likely to search for, then sprinkle those keywords throughout your post to optimize the recognition potential.

    Yeah.  O-kay.

    Here are my thoughts on this.  These thoughts have made this blog the standard in blogging that it is today.

    Don’t worry about it.  Just write the best blog post you can.  Don’t worry about using buzz words or where they show up in your post.  If you have enough time to research buzz words and you’re not getting paid for doing it, you’re not spending enough time actually living, so go do something productive!  Besides, it sounds stupid when you force certain words into certain places in your post just to get noticed.

    On the other hand, there are a few easy things you can do –

    You can try to give your post a meaningful title.  Don’t lose sleep over it, but it helps improve searchability on a lot of levels.  “What I did last summer” doesn’t mean nearly as much to anyone as “My awesome trip to Yellowstone.”

    If your blogging platform will allow it, you can change your post permalink to a “pretty permalink”, so it assigns words instead of meaningless numbers.  This gives the little robots one more place to hang their hat, and it’s easy to do.

    If your theme has SEO fields, you can fill them in to highlight different keywords.  If this isn’t part of your theme, there are tons of plugins out there to give you that capability.  It’s helpful to associate certain meaningful words with your post to help searchers find you.  Sometimes I do this, sometimes I don’t.  It depends on my mood.

    So there you go!  Everything I know about SEO in one blog post.  Hmmm…I wonder if, by repeating the term “SEO” over and over again, someone looking for expert SEO advice on SEO will find my post about SEO in their search results and come to my blog where I’m talking about SEO…

    Um, if that’s what you did?  Sorry.