Happy Fourth of July, America, 2024

reader


If the temperatures haven't informed most of the country that July has arrived, let me fill you in. It has. My area of Tennessee has seen higher temperatures than is usual at this altitude. But I'm trying real hard not to complain! I got soooooo tired of being cold this past winter. I had to sleep on my flannel sheets way longer into spring than usual.

Since it is now, as I mentioned above, July, I must get a move on and update this website again! Thanks to encouraging(harassing?) a friend to check it out, I found one reason why I wasn't getting as many visitors as I'd like. The link in my email signature had an egregious error! (Face slap.)

If anyone who has created a website so knows something about them might have stumbled on my Arbor and wondered about my forgetting much I'd learned about coding as an explanation for said website not being responsive. I mentioned previously that I loved learning to code even as little as I did in that vast ocean of knowledge. I still do, though perhaps not quite as much! Those who may have wondered also may know there are website creating tools that will do it for you. Some existed when I first set up a website, what seems like aeons ago. Templates. Hosting companies had them even then, basic building forms for a site, little or no coding required. But often they refused to DO WHAT I WANTED THEM TO DO! And many were coded so their setup could not be changed. Though I'm a woman, I seem to have the characteristic Henry David Thoreau refers to in my DNA.

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away."

I even use the words as my imprint when publishing some of my books. Nowadays the templates (and the programs I used which morphed into more complicated ones) are way more sophisticated and can make beautiful websites (many also responsive). So I persevere to relearn, though maybe not as conscientiously as I did in the beginning.


sylvia
arbor

Sylvia's dream writing space!

I really did used to dream of having a small building in my back yard dedicated to my writing. A place where I could sit and write. Watch the birds. Listen to the rain. Burn up the computer keys when that idea for the great American novel struck me like lightning. As you may have guessed, it didn't happen. But I have managed to produce a dozen or so books of varying lengths and subjects. Mostly mysteries, my favorite genre.