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Happy St. Dwynwen’s Day

Continuing in the theme of having plenty of holidays to celebrate, even in the depths of January, we come to St. Dwynwen’s Day. She’s the Welsh answer to St. Valentine and a pretty hot opportunity for stores to sell even more heart-shaped boxes of chocolate and mushy greeting cards.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 Who The Heck Is St. Dwynwen? 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿

Wales is blessed with some truly magnificent castles, full of history and a must see for visitors. ~Luke Evans

If, like me, you’d never previously heard of St. Dwynwen, here’s a little video to introduce you to her story.

Saint Dwynwen the Welsh St. Valentine

So, her story is actually a bit more romantic than St. Valentine’s story but it’s still an opportunity for me to gush about how gloriously wonderful my wife, Kelly, is.

As if I needed an excuse to say 🤍❤️💚 Dwi’n dy garu di! 💚❤️🤍

She’s my everything, forever & always. I’m blessed to have her and I’m reminded of that every time I see her come into view.

So much the better that there’s another holiday dedicated to letting me have an opportunity to show her how much she means to me.

What’s New 🐈 Pussycat?

Tom Jones Greatest Hits Full Album – Best Of Tom Jones Songs

When I think of love and of Wales in the same stream of thought, the natural sum of those notions is Sir Tom Jones. Sure, he’s a bit retro, but so am I. So, there you go.

Having grown up in the 70s, I lived at a curious musical crossroads. We’re just going to ignore disco and think about some of the other great acts of those days. Why? Because it’s my blog and I said so.

Personally, I’m not wild about The Beatles’ later hippie phase but I do particularly enjoy Michelle and Norwegian Wood. There were classic tunes from The Carpenters, John Denver, Chicago, and so many more.

Back then, there was no internet. The radio was the common ground among people. If you wanted to talk to someone in another country, you either needed to pay a fortune in long distance phone bills or keep a pen pal.

It was a simpler time with some interesting music, but progress must progress. I wouldn’t go back if I could. I didn’t have Kelly back then…

What’s A Hero Anyway?

Reaper of enemies; strong of grip; One kind with his fathers. ~Taliesin

The idea of heroes has been changing. Rather, people have been trying to expand the definition of what a hero is.

Heroes are what they’ve always been and what they will always be.

A hero is someone who is scared but does what’s needed anyway.

That’s pretty broad territory and it’s open to interpretation.

We typically think of heroes as mighty warriors of old or the waves of young men who slogged into certain death on the beaches of Normandy and countless South Pacific Islands during WWII.

We also think of fire fighters, police, EMTs and other people who voluntarily risk themselves to save others from dangerous situations.

We also consider the intrepid pioneers who set off into uncharted reaches in hopes of creating a new life for themselves and their descendents.

In our current age of participation trophies and “everyone’s special” mentality, the idea of heroism tends to get pretty watered down. Anyone who goes a little bit against the grain or joins in a chorus of mediocre conformity gets hailed as a hero.

I suppose they might be in their own minds or their own cliques, but I think that diminishes the term.

To really be a hero is to actually risk something. Whether life or reputation, heroism comes at the risk of significant loss in the interest of doing what’s right.

I suppose “right” can be pretty subjective, but I don’t think that conformity is necessarily heroic. Neither do I believe that being different for the sake of being different is particulaly heroic.

Heroism is about doing, not about being. That’s why it makes for interesting stories.

Look at that person being subjectively virtuous in the face of possibly being trolled by people with a different opinion. {golf clap}

Look at that girl going out in a blinding blizzard to guide her friends to the safety of a frontier schoolhouse! {standing ovation}

You can write your stories for your audience however you believe they’ll be received, but I don’t think your protagonist is truly heroic unless they’re doing something that actually invokes some serious risk.

A story can be interesting without being particularly heroic, but you can’t write a heroic story without it becoming interesting.

If your readers aren’t wondering how your protagonist(s) will get through the mess they’re in, there’s not enough risk to make it interesting.

Protagonists have situations, but heroes have adventures. That’s how I see it, anyway…

The Tale of Taliesin