Why won’t my bus pass work?

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Yesterday, I was rushing to catch the train as usual.

I scanned my train card and tried to go through the turn style. Negative, the turn style was not moving. Once again, I scanned my train card, and tried to quickly pass through the turn style. AGAIN, it was not working. The night before I had added money to my card, so WHY wasn’t it working. I scanned the card “one more time,” and the turn style would not budge.

At this point, I had to move away from the turn style. It was embarrassing, all of the busy commuters looking irritated that I was “holding up the line.”

WHAT was the PROBLEM!

I looked at my train card…  It was NOT my train card. It was my devotional card for Saint Leopoldo of Padua. I visited his shrine in Italy a few years ago. He is known as the Saint who could heal you of your illness. At his shrine, there was a room full of photos that family members had sent of loved ones that they asked Saint Leopoldo to pray and heal them. He had a small room where he would hear people’s confessions. I bought this devotional card and always carry it with me.

So, I did have to SMILE!

This was Saint Leopoldo’s CLEVER way of telling me to slow down. Time for a trip to Padua and Abano Terme. For those of you who do not know, Abano Terme has hot springs and mud baths. People go here to rest and rejuvenate.

Sometimes in life, we need a SIGN to take care of ourselves!

Thank you, Saint Leopoldo. We have a three day holiday coming up, I will rest!

Attention Bloggers, “Are your posts being HARVESTED?”

Taking articlesI was not surprised when I read Jo Hawk the Writer’s post “Attention Bloggers and Writers,” about a website that is harvesting Blogger’s posts. I encourage you to read her post, where fellow blogger, The Haunted Wordsmith, has been doing research to try and stop this copyright infringement.

Lately, I have had a variety of new Followers. While that seems great, I have gone to visit them only to find they are bogus sites. Many of them have 4 posts they created with photos that seem legit until you scroll down on their home page to see that they keep rotating those same 4 posts.

I did visit this site that The Haunted Wordsmith mentions, www.tygpress.com. I typed in my blog name with quotes around it. Sure enough, it appears like they created a specific section for my Blog’s articles. Of course, it is frustrating to see someone else creating a website based on other people’s written work without asking or telling us they are reblogging our posts.

Fighting this harvesting takes a lot of time and energy away from our main reason for Blogging, which is love of writing. Let’s see if they Blog this post!