Sunday, September 20, 2009

One Week to World Rivers Day

It's one week to go until World Rivers Day, and a reminder that its the topic for a group writing project.

World Rivers Day is a global celebration of the world's waterways held on the last Sunday of September, which this year will be the 27th.

The group writing project is to post about a river of your choice - and it can any bit of it from its source high in the mountains to the swollen estuary where it meets the sea.

It can be any river, from the little Piddle to the mighty Mississippi, the choice is yours. Just say why you've selected it, what it means to you, and why it should be celebrated.

And rumour has it that O'Docker has something already drafted to post for his all new blog - and the expectations are high about that!

I write a lot about the Thames so have already decided it;s not going to be my choice, so I'll mention a rather sad story about it now rather than next week.

A humpback whale was recently spotted in the Thames, but alas the excitement was short lived as sadly it died last weekend near the Dartford Bridge.

Maybe a reminder that we are messing up our planet big time and its time to take care of it a lot better.

More on the humpback whale story here.


16 comments:

O Docker said...

We had a similar event - or events, actually - about 25 years ago in San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento River. Humphrey the Humpback became so famous that he earned his own Wikipedia entry (the ultimate gauge of true celebrity) and songs were written about him. With much human intervention, he finally made it back out to sea, but, apparently he reveled in all of the publicity.

Five years later, he returned and the whole process repeated itself.

O Docker said...

At your service, governor.

Will have a Rivers Day post up in a few days.

Carol Anne said...

Planning my project now.

But would you please police your apostrophes?

JP said...

Cool - will check out the O Dock straight away.

Carol Anne: alas I studied Maths at uni and one of the benefits of the course is we were given a "Does not need to know about correct English" certificate and that includes use of apostrophes.

However the blog apostrophe police are on the case

tillerman said...

I rather liked JP's creative use of the semicolon instead of the apostrophe in "I write a lot about the Thames so have already decided it;s not going to be my choice."

"it;s" is clearly intended to be a more emphatic version of "it's", a contraction of "it is" or "it is".

He could have italicized or bolded the apostrophe but ' and ' and ' look so similar that the effect would not have been noticed. An underlined apostrophe would be ugly. So using a semicolon is the perfect solution to emphasize the apostrophe.

Bravo to JP for creativity and boos to the apostrophe police.

However there is no excuse for "its time to take care of it."

O Docker said...

So then it's boos and booze to the apostrophe police.

JP said...

Oh no, what a dilemma!

On the one hand there's Carol Anne and the apostrophe police, and on the other there is Tillerman's support for the creative use of said "'" - or even ";"!

After careful consideration over 20 dl of vin rouge (that's booze not boos) the answer became clear: I would keep the offending ";" because it reflects the rapid creativity of a post bashed out at speed.

Hurrah!

Pat said...

My typical typo is typing the wrong preposition or verb ending if I compose, change sentences while writing them, and then post without proofing carefully enough or at all. So, every once in a while my posts while have a "to" when I meant "for" or "-ing" instead of "-ed" and so on. It's a sort of a verbal dysgraphia with words and word bits.

By the way, you're entire welcome to send any excess water over toward New Mexico.

O Docker said...

What a coincidence! I happen to be posting about this river that flows through my neighborhood, and here it is, almost World Rivers Day.

JP said...

We in London are actually reasonably dry, but the west of Britain from Cornwall to Scotland have had a wet wet summer, so they would only be too happy to share weather systems with New Mexico!

Ooo! an O'Docker post, must go and do some reading......

Annie said...

Just posted a contribution (not original) for World Rivers Day:
The Silver Tems

bonnie said...

I'm so swamped that I probably wasn't going to have time to post, but I got a ferret from Queens to write something for me.

bonnie said...

Of course rereading this I'm not sure the ferret exactly followed instructions, but then I should've expected that. I don't think ferrets are noted for their ability to do what they're told. suppose that if I'd wanted instructions to be followed, I should have gotten a nice well-behaved dog to do it.

JP said...

No, ferrets are just fine, very good post.

Maybe you should give him/her a regular slot.

We mustn't be speciest (is that right?) in who we let post blog entries.

Golly, getting close, better start typing this end.

The O'Sheas said...

We're in! Working on it now. We have until Monday, yeah?

JP said...

I think its technically Sunday but can always do a Monday update.