and why it’s hard to care

When I was a small child, 80 or so years ago, I learned a cute little repetitive song, as so many children’s songs are:

Have you ever seen a lassie
Go this way and that way?
Have you ever seen a lassie
Go this way and that?

Go this way and that way
And this way and that way.
Have you ever seen a lassie
Go this way and that?

I had no idea what a lassie was (though I did know a TV dog named that), and I didn’t understand all the motions and contortions the children went through as they sang, but I loved the tune and the repetitive lyrics.

Now I will admit that I have seen many types of ‘this way and that way’ motions in my life.

1. A kite you are tying to fly.
2. A suicidal squirrel running down the road ahead of you.
3. Snowflakes falling on a slightly breezy day.
4. Cars on an icy road.

And speaking of cars and drivers, I know a young woman, married and with three children, who has no driver’s license. In fact, she doesn’t know how to drive. In fact, she refuses to even try to do it. Any time she wants to go anywhere, her husband has to drive her.

Her excuse? (It’s a good one.)

“I know that at the first hint of any difficulty I would just close my eyes and scream.”

Which is probably what the squirrel is doing, too.

To tell you the honest truth, I’m rather glad she doesn’t have a driver’s license under the circumstances. I wouldn’t want to meet her on a good road, let alone an icy one.

Which brings us to me. Me and tech.

Tech is changing faster than I am. A couple of days ago, somebody invented bar codes. The next day after that, they invented QR codes. Today they invented authenticator apps.

Huh? What the heck is an authenticator app? I was afraid to ask, but I did so anyway.

As you probably already know (since I am always the last to know anything, let alone anything technical), passwords aren’t good enough any more. Two days ago, the same day bar codes were invented, all you needed to do to log into a website was enter your ID and password. But password hackers found a way to invade somebody’s website, figured out what all the passwords were, and then used a stolen ID and the corresponding password to go in and destroy all the info in the account they had stolen the password to, plus all the other data in all the other accounts, too. Plus how to get into all the other websites, too.

So the next day, somebody invented 2FA. That is, ‘two factor authentification.’ Which means that when you try to login to your favorited website — after you enter your ID and password — the site sends a six digit code to the mobile phone number linked to the account. You read the code on your phone, enter it into the login tab on the website you are trying to get into, and boom . . . you’re in. Yay!

But — not so fast with the yaying! Today somebody figured out how to hack the 2FA process, so that isn’t safe anymore.

This afternoon somebody invented the authenticator app. When you go to your desired website and enter your ID and password, instead of them sending you the 6 digit access code, they send you a QR code. You scan the QR code into the authenticator app, and the app, which is right there on your desktop, creates a 6 digit code, and sends it to the website. You enter the code into your login tab, the website takes the code you entered, matches it with the one sent by the app, and, if they match, you’re in.

Of course, tomorrow, the hackers will find a way to hack the authenticator app and we’ll be right back where we started. But, oh well. Them’s the breaks.

The next stage will have some little grey alien from a UFO give you the passcode via mental telepathy.

I can hardly wait.

As many of the people reading this will already know, I teach music lessons. What you probably didn’t know was that I get paid to do so. But I don’t get paid by the students or by their parents. I get paid by the State of Arkansas.

Huh? How does the State of Arkansas know to pay me!

Well, it used to be simple. I used to create an invoice on my computer, print it out on my printer, give it to the parents at the next lesson, and they would forward it to the state. Eventually I would get paid. (The kids were all home-schooled and so the State was paying for the music they would otherwise get in the state-run public schools. Thank you.)

The key word there is ‘Eventually.’ When we started all this two years ago it took about three weeks from the day the invoice was given to the parent till the day I would get paid. That was understandable. The whole thing was just getting started, and it was taking them a while to figure out how it was going to work. Over the course of the next couple months they got better and better at it, until it reached the point where it was taking only one week. Yay!

But wait. Don’t yay too soon! (Don’t forget all that ‘this way and that way’ stuff.) It dawned on somebody at the state level that the system could be fraudulently mis-used. Nasty little people pretending to be music teachers, or other types of ‘vendor,’ could forge invoices with their own name, send those to the state, and get paid money they didn’t deserve. Bad! It had never happened, but it could. They spent a lot of time and money worrying about that possiblitly. As a result the one week gap between invoice and pay stretched to five weeks. Which if you’re a poor piano teacher living hand to mouth is a bit of a problem.

So about three months ago, a new system was put into place. I was given an account on a website called Class Wallet. I invented an ID and a password. Once a month, I logged in, created ‘bills’ for the lessons, Class Wallet sent those to the students’ parents for approval, the parents approved, and the five week wait got shrunk to three weeks. Yay!

But wait. That system could be hacked too! So they went to the (by now infamous) 2FA system, whereby before I could login, they had to send me a 6-digit code, which I then copied into the login tab. Yay!

But wait. That could be hacked too!

So on November 1, they went to a newer-than-new system. After I entered my ID and password, they sent me a little box with six blanks in it, and instructed me to enter the 6 digit code from my authenticator app into those blank, and then I could get into my account and create my bills.

Say what???

I had never till that moment heard of such a thing as an authenticator app. Now, my 18-year-old granddaughter, who is very tech savvy, has probably known all about it for, oh, at least a week, and could set me straight. If she was around.

She wasn’t around.

So I ‘took the bull by the horns,’ as the saying goes (I don’t want to even think about where that saying came from) and called Class Wallet. They were amazed that I was calling. Everybody knew what an authenticator app was. Everybody knew how to use one. Why was I such a Neanderthal? (The correct spelling drops the ‘h’ by the way — Neandertal — but my high-tech spell cheker won’t let me. Grrr!)

Well, yes, I am 86, and I’ll admit to being at least a Denisovan, if not an actual N-being. But I hadn’t heard of it, whether they liked that fact or not. So, help please?

Yes, they’d escalate the problem to the next level up and someone would get back to me about it. Eventually. (That word again.)

Having learned the hard way what the word ‘escalate’ means in such contexts — that is ‘bury and forget about’ — I sighed and went to my usual solution: Google AI.

Wait! you say. You used tech to solve a tech problem?!?!?

Well, yes, I did. Because Google AI is my friend. He never gets impatient with me. He never calls me stupid. (In fact he sometimes is almost as stupid as I am.) I typed in the words “What is an authenticator app and how do I learn to use one?” Hit return.

He immediately gave me about five pages of explanation, plus a long description of what to do on my phone to solve my problems.

I interrupted him. “No phone. Desktop.”

“Oh,’ he said. “So sorry. My mistake.” (He’s always so polite. Unlike some real people I’ve met. On the phone and otherwise. At Class Wallet and elsewhere.) He proceeded to repeat everything he’d just said, but this time relating it to laptops instead of smart phones. (Don’t get me started on smart phones. Mine has an IQ of approximately -45. When it’s feeling good.)

Within two hours my problem was solved. I created my bills, sent them, and two of them have already been approved. Same day! We’ll see how fast the money arrives. (Breath not being held.)

If it’s OK to fight fire with fire, as they say, then it should be OK to fight tech with tech, shouldn’t it? (The escalation department still hasn’t gotten back to me, several hours later, and I doubt it ever will.)

What I am going to do when they replace my Google AI chatbot with something like a Google AI interventionary agent, I have no idea.

Perhaps close my eyes and scream?

How Tech Gives Me a Pain was originally published in Questionality on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The day I met them was the day my life changed forever. It was a crisp Honeycrisp autumn evening when I first saw them. There was something about them, something straight out of a movie, that made it impossible to look away. I felt an overwhelming need to know them, to be their friend. Everyone around me warned me not to talk to them, but I couldn’t listen. Against everyone’s advice, I reached out in secret. It felt wrong, almost guilty, as though I was doing something forbidden, yet every conversation with them felt so right. I loved talking to them. At the time, it felt like everything was exactly as it was supposed to be.

But secrets never stay hidden forever.

Soon, everyone found out, and I found myself stranded between two worlds. One was the home I had always known, my troop, my people. The other was this new place where I felt understood in ways I never had before. Desperate to keep both, I became the person who belonged to each side. I balanced between them, telling each what they wanted to hear, convincing myself I could make it work.

For a while, it did.

But the cost was greater than I realized. I lost precious moments, trust, and friendships that once meant everything to me. The gap between the two worlds stretched wider and wider until it felt as though I wasn’t truly welcome in either. I stood with one foot on each raft for so long that eventually I belonged nowhere.

In the end, I chose one side.

Even though part of my heart remained on the other raft, I let it drift away. Watching them grow from a distance was heartbreaking. With every passing year, the gap between us widened. It felt as though I wasn’t meant to interfere anymore, as though my chapter in their story had ended while theirs continued without me.

Then, after years apart, we talked again.

And suddenly, everything came rushing back.

Being around her felt strangely familiar, like revisiting a place I had spent years trying to forget. Sitting beside her, looking her in the eye, noticing every habit and every little thing she did, it felt as if a love I thought had long disappeared had quietly survived all those years. Yet this time, it felt wrong.

Not because the feelings weren’t real, but because reality stood in the way.

Our futures were already set on separate paths. Deep down, I knew there was no point in holding onto hope. Yet every time I saw her, every time she smiled, my heart melted all over again. For a moment, the years disappeared.

Then reality would return.

You watch her grow into someone incredible. You hear stories about moments, achievements, and memories that you were never a part of. You realize just how much of her life has happened without you, and that realization hurts more than you can explain. You feel it when she talks about the kind of guy she wants in her future. You feel a jealousy that you hate admitting. You want to be him. You wish you could have been him.

Other people notice the way you talk to her. They speculate. They tease. And somehow, even that feels wrong. Because they don’t understand that what you’re holding onto isn’t just a crush or a dream. It’s a piece of your childhood. A story that never really ended, only paused.

Eventually, all that’s left is acceptance.

One day you’ll see her for the last time. You’ll smile, talk like everything is normal, and walk away carrying words you’ll never say. You’ll let your childhood go, not because you stopped caring, but because sometimes loving someone means accepting that they were meant to be part of your story, not the ending of it.

And so, without ever telling her, you’ll say goodbye.

DriftWood was originally published in Questionality on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

days left to till the #18 entry deadline

I don’t play golf. I did hit a golf ball once, or tried to. I used a type of golf club called a ‘driver,’ though it certainly has nothing to do with the sort of person who drives an automobile. Or a truck. Or even a golf cart.

When you do it right, a driver is supposed to be capable of hitting the poor little golf ball a couple of hundred yards or so.

I didn’t do it right.

I took a mighty swing, and the golf ball rolled exactly 1.5 inches. (We measured.) I immediately retired from the sport.

But I got to thinking today, and I realized that 1.5 inches is 4 centimeters. If you had a 4-cm putt to make, you opponent would undoubtedly concede it. Why? Because the hole you’re trying to hit it into is 4.25 inches in diameter. In other words, the goal in making a 4 cm putt is to hit a little white ball that weighs 46 grams and measures 4.27 cm in diameter into a hole that is 10.8 cm across. If you formed three of the balls into a triangle, you could easily fit that triangle into the hole with plenty of room to spare.

If you blew on the ball with pursed lips it would go in. If there was a 3.5 Richter Scale earthquake just before ‘addressing’ the ball, it would go in without you having to touch it.

The only way you could keep the ball from going into the hole would be to drive it (preferably with a four iron) in the opposite direction.

Just before hitting the ball off the tee to begin with, you’re supposed to yell ‘Fore.’ This is to alert the other players who are ahead of you on the course that there might be a ball coming their way, and to watch out for it. That is, if you’re anybody but me. If you’re me, you have to change the spelling, because you (I) am only going to hit the ball for 1.5 inches. (Four cm.)

What I should have yelled instead of ‘Fore’ was ‘Four.’

What does this have to do with anything? Well, today is November 8, 2026. We have a writing contest going. It’s known as Q-Contest #18. The topic is If You Were a Ghost, Where Would You Haunt? Or anything halfway remotely spooky related to that question. Yes, I know, Hallowe’en was 9 days ago, but we’re stretching things a bit here. OK? [Here’s a LINK to the original announcement.]

There have been six entries received already. Since the minimum number to have a contest is 5, we have met that requirement, so the contest is on! However, six entries seems like an awfully small number for such a big topic. Hence this warning.

Picture me shouting ‘Four!’ today.

And then ‘Three’ tomorrow. Two, One, etc. Till the deadline arrives. Then I can rest my voice.

In a moment I will post links to the six entries, so that you can start reading now, before the voting starts. Please note: The voting has not started yet. It won’t start till we reach that entry deadline (“Four!” days from now). Don’t vote yet.

PLEASE don’t vote yet.

That wouldn’t be fair to the authors who are going to enter but who haven’t done so yet. Of which you who are reading this right now are one, right? Right? RIGHT?

If the only thing holding you back from entering is that you don’t know how to enter, we’ll get to that in a minute. But first, as promised, here are the six entries so far:

• A Haunting I Will Go
• What happens if your dream comes true but takes a ghostly turn that makes it even better?
• Horror Genre Needs to Rewind the Clock
• Haunting is Optional
• The Forest Remembers
• Madam Midnight: The Ghost Who Haunts a Shopping Mall

Any contest has to have some rules, so here are the rules for this one.

First, you can have at most only two entries in any one of our contests. Having only one is fine, but two is also fine. Three or more? No.

Second, the entry has no length limits, either direction. No minimum length. No maximum length. (Though you might want to think hard and fast about the fact that people here on Medium almost never read anything that has a longer-than-ten-minute reading time. And if they don’t read it, they also can’t vote for the entry. Just sayin’.)

Third, there are three different ways to enter.

Way 1: You self-publish the post and let me know you intend it as an entry. (It doesn’t have to be published recently. It can be as long ago as you like.)
Way 2: You get (or got) the item published in some publication other than Questionality and let me know you intend it as an entry.

If you choose either Way 1 or Way 2, you need to send me a link to the entry so I can read it.

Way 3 (the most popular method): You label the post as an entry and submit it to Questionality. I publish it — or John Hansen PAL, our associate editor, publishes it — and you’re in.

Of course there’s a small catch to that third way. Q is not one of those ‘automatic’ submission sites where you can submit anything you like if you’re one of their followers. Nope. With Q, you have to be an authorized author, which you become by asking me to make you one. Since that can take upwards of a few minutes to a couple of hours or more, you might not want to wait till 11:59pm on the 12th before making the request, unless you can type and submit your entry in less than 60 seconds, which seems a bit iffy. In fact, making such a request might be something you want to do right away! (Hint, hint.)

But wait, we’re not done with the rules yet.

Rule Four (“Four!”): The entry can be made of any type of Medium-allowed entry that uses words. In other words, it can be poem or prose, fiction or non-fiction, literary or down-to-earth. Humorous or sad or tragic or entirely objective. Whatever.

Rule Five: It has to have a title. A subtitle is not absolutely required, but is strongly suggested, as otherwise the first part of your text gets shoved up above the illustration. A ‘kicker’ is entirely optional. But you HAVE to have a title. Not optional. You have to type it into the Medium format on the title line. Copying your whole post with a title into the format won’t work. A title submitted that way just shows up as part of the text of the post.

Rule Six: Speaking of illustrations, you have to have one. This is not my rule, it’s Medium’s. Used to be, an illustration was optional. Not any more. You have to have one. AND, you have to do some certain things TO it for it to count. You either have to upload it from Unsplash, OR you have to give it what’s known as a credit line, which is a little small-print line that shows up just below the illustration when you first attach it. (If you can’t see it, just click on the picture. The line will magically appear.)

This credit line has to identify the source of the illustration. If you made it yourself, you have to say so, and how you did it — including the app you used to make it. If you got it from the internet, you have to say where on the internet, even if it’s a public domain illustration. And if it’s copyrighted you have to reveal who owns the copyright.

Rule Seven (this is my rule, not Medium’s): The primary purpose of the entry can’t be to advertise your book — nor to supply links to other things you have written. Or to solicit donations. (You can mention those kinds of thing peripherally — just don’t make them the focus of the entry.)

Rule Eight: The entry must be submitted by midnight on Thursday, November 12, US Central Time. (The internet will be glad to tell you what time that is where you live and write.) That is, if the entry is a submission to Questionality, I have to receive it by then. (I do check my inbox every few minutes right up to the end. I even wait a few minutes before ‘slamming the door,’ to make sure I got everything. And the same deadline applies to entries not submitted to Q: You have to have informed me that the entry is one before that time.

Now, a while ago I mentioned that if the entry was not a submission to Q that you should notify me of your intent. How do you do that?

There are three ways:
One, reply to this article.
Two, send me an email at legendkeeper21@gmail.com
Three, send me a PM.

If you don’t know what a PM is, here goes:

A PM is a Private Message. Nobody can see it but you and me. It’s created by highlighting any word or phrase in this post and examining the little black strip that shows up when you create the highlight. At the right hand end of that strip there will be either a tiny icon of a padlock or the letters PM. Click on whichever of those is there. A small writing box will show up. Type your message into the little box and hit Send. Yay! You just sent me a PM. (I will acknowledge by the same method.)

That’s it for this time. I expect to see your entry soon. Meanwhile I’ll be playing something other than golf (probably the piano) and shouting a lot anyway.

“Four!” [shouted] was originally published in Questionality on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

hauntingly . . .

You know how I am. I’m always chasing off after the origins of words and their original meanings. Yesterday I did that with the word ‘haunt,’ and was startled to find out that it hasn’t always meant anything spooky.

What got me going was the phrase ‘hauntingly beatufiul’ that I have several times heard applied to tunes of a certain sort. And since I’m a musician, I was intrigued by the notion that a melody could be both spooky, or at least eerie, and beautiful at the same time.

Turns out that’s not what the phrase means.

The word was originally spelled ‘hant,’ and it simply meant to ‘hang out,’ or to often be found in a particular place. For example, if you attended worship services regularly, you could be described as ‘hanting’ your chucrh. A ‘hanted’ house was one with plenty of occupants. Any kinds of occupants, not just ghosts. When we go some certain place frequently, we are said to ‘frequent’ that place. The related word ‘hauntingly’ simply meant ‘frequently.’

As is so often the case, we can think a certain Mister Shakespeare for getting the ball rolling in the current direction.

The word had been around since the Middle Ages, but by 1500 or so had changed its spelling to the current one. Though the meaning was still benign.

Then, in his play A Midsummer Night’s Dream, he has bodiless spirits ‘haunting’ a forest. And in Richard III we hear about haunted dreams.

The combination of them being invisible with the use of the word ‘haunt’ to describe their hanging out there caught the public imagination, and. within a very few years, the spooky overtones had caught on almost universally.

Meanings and spellings pretty much ‘stayed put’ for a while. Then, in 1859, George Elliot, in her novella The Lifted Veil, used it to mean something far more generic than just a place. She said that a voice she heard spoke with ‘hauntingly sweet inflections.’ This was the first time anyone had used the concept in a way that gave it positive overtones, rather than neutral or negative ones.

That’s how a song can be ‘hauntingly beautiful.’ And how a contest can be as well.

If these entries linger in your mind after you read them, then they’re haunting you!

The contest launched on October 12, 2026, with the official topic If You Were a Ghost, Where Would You Haunt? By the end of October we had six entries [see below] and I fully expect to receive more by the deadline for entry, which is November 12 (Our contests always begin and end, so far as entries are concerned, on the 12th of any given month. Voting is a different matter.)

I later softened the topic a tad bit, to make it a bit more generically related to the season. Here’s a LINK to the post announcing that softening. It’s also a way to find out details about how to enter, although the bare bones of the ‘rules’ will be reviewed in just a moment.

Without any additional folderol, here are links to the six entries received so far.

DO NOT VOTE YET! This is just a chance to get started on reading the entries so that when the day to start voting arrives, you won’t have quite so much catching up to do.

In the order received:

Sandra Culver-Evans’s tale about an uncomfortable forest. LINK.

My own entry about a choice that may or may not be available at this time of year. LINK.

John Hansen PAL entered his combined prose and poem on the subject of haunting. LINK.

Pen & Page contributed a piece about a spooky personage in a very large setting. LINK.

Louise Ferrebee wrote about an interesting dress in an interesting museum. LINK.

Shiv Prakash Singh sent us a piece about turning back the clock in a sense. LINK.

What will your entry be, and where is it? And why haven’t you sent it in yet?

Oh! Because you haven’t written it yet? Understandable. But please don’t wait till the last minute. The last minute being at 11:59 pm on November 12, 2026, US Central Time. (The deadline is one minute later.)

Before we get to the minutiae of how to enter, here’s news about Q-Contest #17, the voting for which ended on the 31stof October, 2026, with winners announced the next morning.

Out of the six entries, we ended up with four winners, rather than the usual three. There was a first place winner, as always. Also a third place winner, as is usual.

But we had two second place winners, due to a tie vote for that spot.

The first place honors went to Shashwat Ratna. Second place was shared by John Hansen PAL and Louise Ferrebee. Third spot was taken by Shiv Prakash Singh. Here’s a link to the official voting results in the contest: click HERE. There’s also a way, when you get there, to re-read the winning entries.

Back to how to enter this contest.

There are three ways.

Way number one: You self-publish something and let me know it’s an entry.
Way number two: You get something published in some other Medium pub and notify me that you wish to enter it in the contest.
Way number three: You submit an entry to Questionality in the normal submission manner, stating somewhere near the beginning or end that it’s an entry. (Unless it’s obvious from the title or content that’s what it is. In that case you just submit the item and hope I’m astute enough to understand.)

For more detailed instructions, you can click on this LINK.

Just remember, there are a few ‘rules,’ including that you can enter any one contest only once or twice. One entry is fine, and so are two, but that’s the limit until the next contest.

Another rule is that the entry can be in any format: prose, poetry, essay, thought-piece, fiction, non-fiction, etc. Or any combination thereof. There are no length limits.

And it doesn’t have to be recent, though it’s fine if it is. There is no backwards age limit. If once upon a time you wrote it, and you want it to be ‘in,’ it’s in.

Provided it’s here by the deadline!

Q-Contest Newsletter 03Nov26 was originally published in Questionality on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Up, of course

Do you know where the word ‘Escalator’ comes from? (The fact that I capitalized it might be a clue.)

A lot of people assume that it comes from the word ‘escalate.’ That is, an escalator is something that escalates you.

In fact, surprisingly, it’s exactly the other way around. The word Escalator was invented in the year 1900. Escalate came later, in 1922, and was simply a way of turning the noun into a verb.

Before it became a mere noun — that is, before the year 1950 — Escalator was a trademarked brand. The word was owned (until that year) by the Otis Elevator Company. Nobody could call a moving staircase by that name except them. In fact, no one other than them could legally build a moving staircase. Of any sort. (Notice, I said ‘legally.’ Illegally, it happened rather a lot. Which is one of the reasons they lost ownership of the word.)

In 1900, one of the executives of Otis named Charles Seeburger became aware that a growing segment of the population was avoiding the use of elevators. Usually too crowded, and always too claustrophobic, even when it had windows, which many of them did at the time.

So he invented the Escalator, got the name trademarked (hence the capitalization), and began building and selling the things. They took up a lot more space than an elevator did, but space was something there seemed to be plenty of at the time, so sales were hot.

When he invented the word, he disclosed that it came from two different sources, one military, the other industrial. (Eisenhower hadn’t invented the words ‘military-industrial complex’ yet.) Earlier, as a young man in the army, he had learned the word ‘escalade,’ which was a term for a formation of ladders that made it possible for soldiers to climb over the wall of a fortification, and/or to describe the process of using such a formation.

And then there was of course the word elevator, which was the name of the thing people were getting elevated (and claustrophobic) in — a word which Otis did not own, by the way.

All he had done was put the two words together. And then patent the mechanism. And then get legal trademark protection for the made-up word.

What does all this have to do with a Q-Contest?

So glad you asked. It has to do with the strange technical fact that you can only go up an escalator. If you go down one, you’re not escalating. You’re descending. (An escalade only provides a soldier with a way to go up a wall. When he gets to the top, he just jumps off the other side. Jumping off the top end of an Escalator is not recommended.)

I have decided to invent a new word of my own, though I very much doubt I will be able to get it trademarked. From henceforth, the moving staircase that takes you from the second floor of your favorite mall to the first floor shall be known as a Descendalator. Thank you very much.

But that has nothing to do with the contest, whose topic, you may recall, is Which Way Is Up?

There were six entries. One of them got no votes at all. Another one received six points. The other four all made it into one of the winners’ circles.

The winner got 20 points. This top entry was mentioned on five of the six ballots, earning three first place votes, and one second and one third. It was written by Shashwat Ratna, and here’s a link to it:

Which Way is Up? Up is Where You Look to For Hope

There was a tie for second place, with 12 points each, resulting in both cases from getting one first place vote, one second, and two thirds.

The 2nd place winning entries were written by John Hansen PAL and Louise Ferrebee. And here they are:

• Going Up?
• Let Me Ask You, “Which Way is Up?”

Third place winner was Shiv Prakash Singh, who got one each of the three levels of voting, for a total of 10 points.

Hope vs Despair: Only One Can Pull You Up

In other news, we now have received six entries in Q-Contest #18, with another 12 days to go before the deadline. Within two days I will post a Newsletter with links to all six, for readers who want to get a head start on reading the entries, even though actual voting can’t start till the 12th of November, 2026. (I’m writing this on the first day of that same month.)

The topic for number 18 is: If you were a ghost, where would you haunt? The topic was later ‘softened’ to be anything at all about haunting, or ghosts, or bodiless spirits, or strange noises in the dark, or anything else related to the Hallowe’en Season.

If you’d like to enter, here’s a LINK to the rules and guidelines for entry.

And finally, for people who love links, here’s one to the post that announced Contest #17, if you’d like to see the idea that the above winners meant to be responding to. LINK. (To get to the #17 announcement part, you’ll have to read about 3/4 of the way down.)

Also, please be thinking about a good topic for #19. We’ll announce the exact wording of it in the same post in which we close the entry curtain on #18, that is, on the 12th of November.

Louise sent me a list of about twenty possibilities several months ago, but we’ve used two of hers in the last few months, so it’s somebody else’s turn, if you’re so inclined.

A couple of ‘gotchas’ though: We’ve had one holiday-themed topic now, and that’s enough. Nothing about Thanksgiving or Christmas, please. There will be plenty of other contests and challenges around those subjects. Plenty.

I will probably even enter some of them!

Which Way Did We Go? was originally published in Questionality on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.