Do you believe in ghosts?

Do you believe in ghosts? A ghost was in my house all week, but I only realized last night that it had taken control of my computer while I was writing the post  “Unveiling by Linda Pastan”

Poetry: Unveiling by Linda Pastan

When I originally wrote the post earlier this week I included Ms Pastan’s poem, some background stuff of what “unveiling” means, explained why people place pebbles on a tombstone,  added the little detail that it was my Mother’s unveiling on Friday, plus I included a photo of my Mom visiting my Dad’s grave, but just before publishing it, I – luckily – pressed the preview button and was shown an empty page. Very weird.  I immediately clicked on the back arrow. All the words I’d written for the past several hours were gone, but the poem was still there.

I re-wrote some of the post the next night, and before going to bed I wisely pressed the “Save Draft” button, but this time I got the message “WordPress is unable to do that“, and when I pressed the back arrow all my lovely words disappeared. I was clever though.  I’d had the foresight to do a “select all” and “copy” so all I had to do was “paste“, and voila, I was back in business.

I wisely went to bed at that point.

The next night while I was working on the final editing of the post, I constantly checked that it was automatically being saved – it was – so I didn’t make a “copy” before pressing preview.  Silly-silly me. Once again I was given an empty page with the “tags” and categories I’d listed, but this time even though I tried everything I could think of, I was unable to even retrieve the poem.

Okay I’ll own up that I shouted some nasty words at WordPress…

“After all this time you should know how to use WordPress,” said dear Mr F from the comfortable living room sofa.

Of course that made me really mad.

“I do so know how to use WordPress. I’ve written hundreds of posts, but I’ve never seen this before!  It’s given me an empty page, when I’ve been working for hours. Where are all my carefully selected words?”  I said.

He repeated, “You should know what to do…”

“It’s not rocket science. You write a post and then you press publish, and that’s all you need to do.” I said.

 

The Jewish tradition of leaving a pebble or stone on top of a tombstone signifies that someone has honored the deceased person’s memory with a visit to the grave.

It took me a while to find the poem again, re-write the biographical blurb, but at 11:30 pm when I tried to add something to explain the meaning of an “unveiling”, my little laptop computer began to vibrate.

It was so strange and unexpected that at first I thought there’d been an earthquake.

I was tired, it was 11:30 pm,  after a busy week at the Museum (American kids are all on spring break, and its Easter vacations for Europeans Ozzies and Kiwis) plus I’d worked all day at the busiest register in the main store, so maybe I was imagining “things“….

I wasn’t.

I sat still and looked at my computer and realized it had been growling at me.   It took me three days to finally got the message that I was to post the poem without including any of my thoughts about “unveilings” or that it was my Mother’s unveiling.   I added Linda Pastan’s YouTube reading to her poem, clicked publish and voila, I was permitted to post it.

I’m not sure whether I’ll be permitted to post this. I wonder if the ghost doesn’t like the photo of my Mom at my Dad’s grave?   My mother does looks old, and fat…. Sorry Mom,  I’ll take it off.

I’ve watched the “draft saved” function working every few minutes while I was writing this, but I don’t know if I’ll be permitted to post it. If I get a blank page, I’m not going to re-write it, I’m going to bed.

Here goes…