Journal | It is Always a Great Encouragement ...

JOURNAL

Part I

IT IS always a great encouragement to see visitors and interest on the Poetry Blog.

Thank you.

I often publish articles in the Poetry Blog which sits on a separate blog feed within Squarespace, upon which all of my website’s platforms rest, so these do not automatically appear to a visitor to the Main Blog. This is deliberate. Some prefer to read the literary or poetry content and not be distracted by the Main blog content.

Similarly, some prefer to read only the prose content.

Occasionally, I put a spanner in the works by writing in the poetry genre on the Main Blog.

Oh my God! There must be questions in the House. He’s written something military as a poem!

Fortunately, many friends who served in the Armed Forces are very good poets, so I listen to them rather than the I am a judge by-self-appointment brigade.

Sometimes, I duplicate the article so that it sits on both Blog platforms.

This year, I decided against duplicating the two very long poems about the Holocaust to commemorate the International Holocaust Memorial Day on 27 January 2023, choosing the Poetry Blog.

My decisions are always subjective. Israel has the right to exist. Palestine has the right to exist.

I understand and support the right of Israel to exist. It has to be. I do not support Israel’s insistence upon reverting the borders to Biblical Israel. That is as wrong as is Vladimir Putin’s Invasion of Ukraine and his insistence on recreating the former USSR and therefore removing all traces of Ukraine. To silly fundamentalist Christians who insist that Israel is right to seize back its biblical borders, I believe the rejoinder might be Get real. Get a Life.

Port Out Starboard Home

Part II

The Royal Air Force is a very popular platform on this website. I will shortly launch a new website using the upgraded Squarespace 7.1 platform, and my IT Consultant in Denmark commissioned to build the platform. We will then transfer to that site all Royal Air Force and Aviation content. Aviation Book Reviews will also be carried across. Where these currently appear both as an RAF Article and as a separate book review, this will be followed on the new website.

Creating this new website frees me up to concentrate on writing about aviation, as well as monthly articles relating to famous war leaders - all wars, all sides - while leaving this website, our Flagship, to sail alongside its smaller but very active Frigate.

Part III

Continued interest in Poetry means these poems are often rotated. Some poems apply to specific dates.

For example, the very popular Tewkesbury Abbey will certainly appear on 4 May 2023 in remembrance of the Battle of Tewkesbury on that date in 1471, the 552nd anniversary of one of the decisive battles in the Wars of the Roses.

Occasionally, a poem is so popular that it is better that duplicate and schedule the poem for the applicable date.

Poems frequently visited call for them to be brought forward so that, like our favourite episodes in streaming platforms, we have our favourite poems easily to hand.

Part IV

Returning to the new website E2TS, more formally Eyes to the Skies the work referred to in Part II is now well underway. I have received and approved the first draft, and we are looking forward to building the content and setting the launch date.

The website’s name will be known to many around the world over nine decades. I first became aware of it in the 1960s as an eager air cadet in the Air Training Corps when the instructor would say something like this …

Right Everyone!

Eyes to the Skies …

Webb! I want you to tell me the names of the aircraft that I can see, their marks, speed of approach, angle of attack, altitude, and what tactic they appear to be undertaking, or preparing to undertake.

I, all of us in fact, were absolutely thrilled at this, for we were very aware that just 30 years before, our parents’ generation was doing this for real and in earnest. And this was so on all sides in the Second World War.

To this day, pegging out the washing has me still with my eyes to the skies.

I take this opportunity to thank you all for your continuing interest in the Kenneth Thomas Webb Website. It is an enormous privilege for me to have this, and to also have 95 countries currently following.

6 February 2023
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