ink marks on a blank page Wednesday Dec 17th

The name comes from the Middle English Wednes dei, which is from Old English language Wēdnes dæg, meaning the day of the English god Woden (Wodan) who was a god of the Anglo-Saxons in England until about the 7th century. Wēdnes dæg is like the Old Norse Oðinsdagr ("Odin's day"), which is an early translation of the Latin dies Mercurii ("Mercury's day"), and reflects the widespread association of Woden with Mercury going back to Tacitus.
That is a quote from Wiki although I knew that anyway being the clever dick that I am. One of the things that I revere in my life is a set of books that my Father owned. They are a little dated now of course as he died in 1942 but I still read them each and every one at least once a year. These books are amongst some of the first that I ever learned to read,as befits the times when they were published (early 1930's) the print was large ,readable, plus even for scholarly tomes they were simplistic in language. In the main,there are six, they were historical but dealt with myth ,legend and ancient stories of the gods of Egypt,Babylon,the Celts and of course Norse heroes . The picture I am posting of Ishtar is one of my very favourites,as a young boy of six I fantasied about seeing the picture in its reality. The painter was Ernest Wallcousins who was an illustrator of historical books but the painting itself I was never able to see although on subsequent trips to London I have seen several works of his but never that particular one. The cynics amongst some of you that may read this will of course come to the most obvious reason why I used to glorm over this plate, yes she is naked, yes I was attracted to the fact she was naked but also I loved the metaphor within this picture. At the time I did not understand what it was that drew me to it but I had a very fortunate upbringing in that my Grandfather, who we lived with, was a very intelligent man who took the time to explain to a young boy just what it was he should see in this painting.

When he saw how interested I became in trying to learn he drew a large copy of the picture then marked off sections to explain just what the story (narrative) in the visual related to the actual script on the page. His enthusiasm was so infectious as even I could see at such a young age (eight) that a small colour plate could contain points of a story that took a whole chapter to tell the reader in words. I loved being ABLE to read,followed the comic strips in the Sunday papers avidly to the point that 58 years down the track I am still reading the Phantom each day. The importance of the so-called comic strips in teaching people to read metaphor cannot be over emphasised enough which is just one small reason why the popularity of the Japanese cult Manga comics has grown exponentially into a phenomena worldwide where the market in the US alone was over $500mill in 2007. In OZ as with countries all over the world we are faced with the growth of texting as a form of communication.

Some learned folk within the communication world,educators who have communication doctorates, are telling us dinosaurs that text type spelling is okay and should in fact be encouraged as it is a form of evolved English. Well that it might be that ur is a form of you are, gr8 also a form of great. I would argue that yes, it is a subliminal form of the 'proper' useage but is also a dead end for to know that gr8 means great then you first have to understand just what the word great in the whole form means. So to say that the txt gr8 will become the standard eventually for great is just pandering to the users of text(txt) is also a grave disservice to education . Understanding of how metaphor shapes our life go read some good works on Shakespeare and how he shaped(created) words to create then complete the meaning of what he was trying to convey within his spoken word,the sub text in other words, for many of the folk who witnessed his plays could not read. Gr8,Txt all the other so called txt words are in themselves metaphors for to use them it is imperative that the user knows what the whole word means. The simple word great has many meanings ,the semiotic explanation of such a small word can run into pages which can become meaningless .

Yes Hortense I did get a little carried away.Yes it might have been boring,and no I cannot apologise for that as it is just one of the subjects I do like to get my teeth into. Hortense do you really mean that, I should just stick to stuff I know nothing about?, at least that might be entertaining you think. Perhaps we should talk at great length about that fellow in New York who ripped everyone off to the tune of billions.wasn't that all about trust Horty, all those folk who lost money actually trusted him, the securities people TRUSTED him.Trust is wonderful isn't it Hortense. Who do you trust Horty? I know you don't trust me 'cos I pushed you in the mud that time when I said I wouldn't, but we are still great friends are we not, we are but you still don't trust me.Well Hortense that is the way of it isn't it, you live and learn just what to put your trust in, but you do know I wouldn't push you in the mud again don't you.That isn't just because you walloped me with your handbag after and I'm scared of you, well perhaps. A good walloping might just do some folk a lot of good then Hortense. What about gelato tomorrow my lovely friend