{"id":859,"date":"2020-04-09T12:27:56","date_gmt":"2020-04-09T11:27:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/?p=859"},"modified":"2020-04-09T12:27:58","modified_gmt":"2020-04-09T11:27:58","slug":"season-xvi-alphaday-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/season-xvi-alphaday-11\/","title":{"rendered":"Season XVI -Alphaday 11"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Hi\nAlphas,<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Welcome\nto Alphaday 11, Season XVI. We\u2019ve enjoyed many inspirational writerly\nexperiences this season and there\u2019s still plenty to come over the next, final,\nthree Alphadays. This is our last full Alphaday with all the usual treats on\nthe agenda before we gradually close down for our annual rest from Alpha tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This\nis a difficult time for everybody, but while there are so many activities that\nare no longer possible we can at least enjoy taking part in the full range of\nAlpha items on this agenda:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>This\n     bulletin from me<\/li><li>The\n     results of the \u2018Terror\u2019 challenge from Morgen<\/li><li>The\n     collated entries for the \u2018drabble\u2019 challenge from Phil<\/li><li>A\n     call for entries to The Open Page, 3<sup>rd<\/sup> edition, from Christine<\/li><li>A\n     call for Log contributions from Phil<\/li><li>A\n     Writers\u2019 Reads prompt from Linda<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>All\nthis has been put together for your benefit, partly by those who\u2019ve organised\nthe items, and partly, of course, by all of us with our individual input. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Enjoy!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\nis no particular Alpha news this time. We carry on as best we can and settle\ndown shielded from the outside world while making the most of the extra spare\ntime and the social media to keep in touch with friends and relations and\nfollow the course of events in the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I\nprefer to avoid the <strong>general news<\/strong>\nthat hits all the headlines and pick up something of literary or arty interest.\nCovid-19 is too big to ignore. Some of the things we used to take for granted\nwill have changed after its devastating passage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Somebody\npointed out that top scientists, David Attenborough, Greta Thunberg, Greenpeace\net al. failed to persuade the world to reduce carbon emissions to save the\nplanet. Covid-19 succeeded; air pollution is vastly reduced and arctic glaciers\nmight soon stop disintegrating. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There\nare other advantages as well: shoplifting is harder with no crowds to hide in;\nburglaries aren\u2019t easy with everybody staying in \u2026 as we do, protesting that\nall\u2019s well, that we\u2019re finding new ways of occupying ourselves constructively.\nWe might end up with carefully ordered societies where citizens do as they\u2019re\ntold and never misbehave.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Only\nthe worst dictators have achieved such a strong hold on populations \u2026 until\nCovid-19 came along. Is there any hope that we can restore a society where\nfreedom reigns \u2013 and mistakes happen? I think the operative word here is\n\u2018Hope\u2019. As long as we hang on to the hope that we can be freed from the fear of\ndeath wiping out so many people whose lives we care about, then we can bear the\ndeprivations and emerge chastened after the ordeal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As\nfor that cynical misanthrope named Malthus \u2026 go and get lost, Malthus!<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Christine<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hi Alphas, Welcome to Alphaday 11, Season XVI. We\u2019ve enjoyed many inspirational writerly experiences this season and there\u2019s still plenty to come over the next, final, three Alphadays. This is our last&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[20],"class_list":["post-859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alphaday-bulletins","tag-alphaday-bulletins-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=859"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/859\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alphawriters.net\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}