Flummoxed

April 30, 2020 — Pat Bertram

I’m truly flummoxed. Facebook has completely blocked my blog from their site, saying it goes against community standards because it’s spam. Huh? Spam? It’s absolutely acceptable for me to post Amazon links to my books on my Facebook page, but I can no longer post links to this blog, even though I almost never promote my books here. Well, there that short bio at then end of every blog, but that’s more for self-protection than anything else. Certain sites pirate blogs without attrition, so having that bio there at least lets people know who wrote it.

Another thing that’s confusing about this situation is that a few months ago I was boosting posts to see if I could garner interest in Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One, and they very greedily took my money. Now those posts, too have disappeared along with all the rest of my articles. If they weren’t spam then, why are they spam now? If they met community standards then, why not now?

There’s really no recourse. I’ve appealed, but they admit they don’t give any real explanation, seldom reverse their decisions, and won’t respond individually to any request for reinstatement. Which means, except for a brief message saying that my blog goes against community standards for being spam, there’s no way of knowing why. Did someone report me? If so, why? If someone I angered with one of my “Bob” posts complained, why do they say this blog is spam? And even more confusing, if one person who complains can get another one blocked without any explanation or recourse, why would I — or anyone — want to participate?

One friend who got blocked fought them for four months before finally giving up and starting a new blog, which I’m not going to do. Just because FB is now blocking all links to this blog doesn’t mean that anything has changed here. I weathered Google blocking me (that turned out to be a matter of a misplaced piece of code in one post) and I’ll weather this, too. After all, I’m not writing for FB, I write for me and those who want to read what I have to say.

Admittedly, not being able to posts links on FB will make it harder for my FB friends to find me. If you are one of those friends and are able to see this, I would suggest you follow my blog directly rather than waiting for a link on FB that might never appear. To follow, scroll down a bit and on the left-hand side you will find a section labeled, “Follow Bertram’s blog via email.” Click on the link that says “follow.”

I’ve been on Facebook for twelve years. I joined as a place to promote myself as an author and blogger, and stayed because of all the friends I have made. It seems foolish now, but I’ve always been a supporter. Even when people complained about FB, I stayed. Even when FB changed their policies and algorithms, making my posts invisible to most people, I stayed. Even when they changed the groups all out of recognition, turning them into promo sites rather than discussion boards, I stayed.

Well, no more. If they don’t reverse their ban on this blog, I’m done.

**

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Posted in blogging, internet, life. Tags: , , , . 12 Comments »

The Truth About Truth

April 19, 2020 — Pat Bertram

During the last presidential election, I lost so much respect for so many folks that I didn’t think my opinion of people could get much lower, but I am now losing even more respect for people than I did back then.

It’s not their opinions that matter — or don’t matter — to me. People can believe whatever they want, can say whatever they want, share whatever they want. I read everything. (In this way, if nothing else, I am a bit different from those who read only that which illuminates or proves what they already believe.) I agree with some of what most people say and most of what some people say, so I really have no stake in what is generally believed or disbelieved.

I have learned enough to know that contrary to what people are saying, we are not all in this together. We might all be dealing with the same global situation, but everyone is dealing with their own particular brand of the situation. Some people are terrified while others don’t seem particularly upset. Some people are going stir-crazy with the lockdowns yet for other people, it’s not much different from their pre-quarantine lives. Some people are dying of loneliness and the lack of touch, others are dying from The Bob or other diseases. Some people are grieving, others are just waiting for the restrictions to be lifted. Some people are angry at those who don’t wear masks even out walking by themselves with no one else around. Some people refuse to wear masks unless it is mandated, and sometimes not even then. Some people are losing jobs, others are losing their minds. Still others are living in dread of the aftermath of the shutdown and the long-term repercussions.

We all live with the values we take to heart and whatever truth we can face. Some people’s truth tends to be very religious. For others it’s politics. Still others look behind the headlines of the news to find deeper reasons for what is happening in the world. It’s all good. It’s all truth in its own way.

As Berrnie LaPlante (Dustin Hoffman) says to his son at the end of the movie Hero: “You remember when I said how I was gonna explain about life, buddy? Well the thing about life is, it gets weird. People are always talking ya about truth. Everybody always knows what the truth is, like it was toilet paper or somethin’, and they got a supply in the closet. But what you learn, as you get older, is there ain’t no truth. All there is is bullshit, pardon my vulgarity here. Layers of it. One layer of bullshit on top of another. And what you do in life like when you get older is, you pick the layer of bullshit that you prefer and that’s your bullshit, so to speak.”

Yep. That about covers it, though I have to admit, the toilet paper analogy is especially amusing and apropos considering the current shortage of both toilet paper and truth.

So why am I losing respect? Because other people don’t have the same laissez-faire attitude that Bernie does. Too often people resort to ridicule, belligerence, sarcasm and other tools of the weak when they are confronted with ideas contrary to their own.

What does it matter to anyone what other people believe to be the truth? That’s their level of bullshit. You have your own. Does it matter that some of your FB friends are turning to God to help them through this situation? Does it matter that some are using this situation to foster their political beliefs? Does it matter that some believe the official story? Does it matter that some people are looking for causes and explanations from experts other than the “official” experts?

No. None of that matters. We are all coping the best we can. Sneering at people for their truth is no help to anyone. Getting nasty toward people who post different sources than yours shows a lack of open-mindedness. Ridiculing people only points out the ridiculousness of your own position, not theirs.

I still go on Facebook way more than I should. Partly, it’s to reply to comments that people leave on my posts. Partly it’s to catch up with those few I do respect — the people who post thoughtful articles from a variety of sources and who never resort to ridicule or belligerence or sarcasm.

And partly, I have to admit, because I am bored. (Boredom is not something I ever like admitting, because I believe any reasonably intelligent person has the resources to stave off boredom, but these are times that try even the most resourceful.)

Luckily, FB has a snooze button so I can put the less than reasonable folks in a time-out. Even more luckily, my knee is healing, which allows me to get around more and find other things to do than play on the computer. (Part of the issue with my knee/leg, I have come to realize is that I spend way too much time sitting at my computer, so staying away is good on so many levels.)

This the truth. Or at least my truth.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Posted in culture, internet, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 3 Comments »

Living in my Own Story

March 16, 2020 — Pat Bertram

I am feeling very déjà-vu-ish these days, as if I’m living in the pages of one of my books. (A Spark of Heavenly Fire is the story of a quarantine in Colorado where hundreds of thousands of people are dying from an unstoppable disease called the red death. Insomniac Kate Cummings struggles to find the courage to live and to love. Investigative reporter Greg Pullman, is determined to discover who unleashed the deadly organism and why they did it, until the cost — Kate’s life — becomes more than he can pay. This is a story of survival in the face of brutality, government cover-up, and public hysteria. It is also a story of love: lost, found and fulfilled. And is available on Amazon. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1630663662/)

Now that was a real pandemic, my red death. What we’re going through now is . . . I don’t know what it is, but it seems more fictional than my fictional disease. Truly, this panic over a rather tepid pandemic has me mystified. Maybe young folks would have an excuse because they haven’t lived through any of the previous named flus (Russian, Swine, etc.) , but most of them seem to be blasé since they are not being hit hard. But for the rest of us? I really don’t get it.

The Russian Flu killed 1 million from 1889 to 1890

The Spanish Flu killed 40-50 million from 1918-1919 (20% of the world’s population)

The Asian Flu killed 1.1 million from 1957 to 1958

The Hong Kong Flu killed 1 million between 1968-1970

The Swine Flu killed 200,000 between 2009 to 2010

Seasonal Flu (the various flus that hit us every year) kill between 300,000 to 600,000 every year.

The Coronavirus has killed 6,500 from Nov 2019 to March 15. 2020, which means we’re almost halfway through the typical period it takes for one of these named flus to run its course. People keep citing statistics, such as the rapid spread rate, the extreme potency of the organism to prove how important the hype is. And yet it is nowhere near as potent or rapid spreading as all the previous flus no one cared about.

The closest thing to this particular reaction that I have seen was the swine flu of 1976. There was a panic to create a vaccine with the ultimate goal of vaccinating 80% of the citizens of the USA. They reached 25%. And all that panic came from a single death. One death. That’s it. The vaccine caused more deaths than that, along with major problems for a lot of the vaccinated people, including an increase in reports of Guillain-Barré Syndrome. Because of that ridiculous mess, and because of being forced to get such a dangerous vaccine or risk losing my job, I will never follow the party line (either party line) when it comes to any sort of flu, epidemic, or pandemic, no matter how wild or how tepid.

Yes, I know. People are dying. For them and those who care about them, it’s a sad and terrible thing, but going by strictly by the numbers, it’s not that big of a thing. And it might never be. I’m not saying taking precautions is wrong, because it isn’t. In fact, most of the precautions, such as washing one’s hands, staying home when sick, and distancing oneself from those who are ill are things we should have all been doing anyway. If we had, there’s a good chance the deaths from seasonal flu would not be nearly as great.

Even if it turns out there are 200,000 to a million deaths from this thing, it’s still pretty much status quo for a virus, whether novel or known.

The main difference between this and previous outbreaks is, as one friend pointed out, an overactive media and an even more overactive social media, both of which seem to revel in riling people because riled people are involved people. (Involved in the story, that is, not necessarily involved in finding solutions to the story.)

I love the internet. I love interacting with people all over the world. But this current reaction has me wanting to hunker down and quarantine myself from all the hype.

Luckily, a friend is coming to stay for a couple of days, so I’ll have other things to think about than living in my own story.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Posted in culture, internet, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 9 Comments »

Website Rebuilding

February 6, 2020 — Pat Bertram

With as amazing as the computers and the internet are, sometimes things just don’t go as planned. I checked my website (patbertram.com) today to make sure it was still online. I am using a retired website builder as well as a defunct template, and occasionally the people who supply my domain will downgrade the site to a different server, which often causes problems.

The site was still up, but I found a black x at the top of my homepage. I have no idea what had been there originally, so I simply removed the x and hoped for the best. Then I checked out my book page and noticed that several of my book covers had also disappeared.

No problem. I just needed to add them back. Well, I added one photo, but when I tried to resize it to fit in the original slot, I kept getting strange messages. First, it said that flash player is outdated; click here to update. When I clicked, I got another message that said flash player was blocked, but to click to allow flash player one time. So I clicked. Then I got other messages saying, at various times: this page is opened in two windows, we couldn’t save your work, couldn’t update, error, try again, call technical support.

I figured there was some sort of glitch, so I closed out the browser and restarted my computer. Same thing.

After a couple of more tries, I finally gave in and called technical support. His suggestion was to clear my cache, which I did, then I tried again to resize the photo. Still all the same problems and messages.

His next suggestion was to try a different browser. So I downloaded Firefox but had to abort the download because I hadn’t unchecked the boxes that allowed a whole bunch of stuff I don’t want to be downloaded at the same time. When I tried to download again, I couldn’t find where the download had been stored. Sheesh.

Finally, got Firefox downloaded, and tried fixing my website again. This time, when I got the message saying that I needed to update flash player, it updated. But then all the same messages started reappearing, and the photo still didn’t resize.

By this time, the poor tech fellow was as frustrated as I was, but he came up with a different suggestion: to resize the photo and then upload the resized photo. I did that, but since I couldn’t remember what size I needed, I made the photo too big. To my delight, this time the resizing mechanism worked.

The only thing either of us could figure out was that the original photos had somehow become corrupted, because replacing the rest of the photos and resizing them went quickly.

Still, what should have been a five-minute fix ended up being a three-hour chore.

Luckily, I don’t often have to deal with my website. The last time I did a major overhaul was when Grief: The Inside Story — A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One was published. The next time I will have to do anything major is when my new book is published, hopefully sometime this year.

I paused here to double check to make sure I put the books covers with the correct blurb, and noticed that Grief: The Inside Story is not on the page with all the rest of my books. There is always something, isn’t there? Well, adding the book will just have to wait for another time.

The website is there mostly for convenience, anyway. This blog functions as a website, and is much more interesting, besides. At least, normally it is.

As if that weren’t enough, I hid the favorites tool bar on my browser so I could get a bigger image of the website to post here, and then couldn’t find the tool bar again to unhide it.

I think I’m done for the day.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Posted in blogging, internet, life. Tags: , , , , , , , . 3 Comments »

Fund Me Too

January 17, 2020 — Pat Bertram

The original concept of crowdfunding was to get people to fund artistic ventures like movies, and not, as it has become, a way to get others to help with the expense of everyday choices like moving.

To my surprise, when I wrote about being appalled by this high-tech panhandling — getting others to fund things we choose to do — many people agreed. In fact, some readers went one step further and included Facebook’s fundraising platform as an example of this egregious exploitation, and I have to admit, those readers have a point. Like them, I don’t understand the reasoning behind setting up a fundraiser for one’s birthday (it sounds too much like asking for a gift), but considering the number of such fundraisers that end up in my FB feed, many people don’t find the practice objectionable.

What I didn’t realize was that one could use the FB fundraising platform to try to get money for anything. All you have to do is set it up in a few easy stages. Just what I need — more people asking for money I don’t have.

In a wonderful show of irony, Facebook flagged my article about crowdfunding with a note suggesting I ask my community for support with a fundraiser on FB, which shows that their bots pick up words in articles but not necessarily intent. Below is the screenshot of this note above my fundraising post:

 

Needless to say — or rather, “needful to say” since I’m saying it — I won’t be taking FB up on their kind offer.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Posted in internet, life. Tags: , , , , , , , . 4 Comments »

Spam

December 29, 2019 — Pat Bertram

I wonder how many people fell for the following bit of emailed spam. It’s cleverer than others I have seen, but still obviously a scam. I’ve printed it exactly as I received it, though I must admit, I itched to correct the punctuation:

Greetings to you.

Please I am writing to you out of despair.

I was living with a foreign contractor ,I know he is not related to you but he is of the same last name with you ,I got a child for him, in the same year he was attacked by pirates on the coast of Island of Malta.

Before the attack, he shipped (Bucyrus continuous miner with other refurbished mining machines) to a firm based in Brazil on an agreement to be paid after confirmation of the functionality of the machines (which precisely was to be within November 2013).

Because of attack incident, they did not pay as at the stipulated time. I decided to wait ,hoping that the family of my daughter’s father would contact me ,thus we can make a claim to be paid. but ever since ,they never contacted us ,which prompted me to call the company’s lawyer that drafted the contract agreement.

He spoke with the company and invited me to come ,I have met with the company ,after our deliberation ,they said they prefer to pay the money to the family directly since I am not legally married to him.

Their lawyer asked me to invite the family for the money or let them call him for directives .and sincerely ,I am helpless with their decision ,because I don’t know his people ,they never contacted us since the incident. which is extremely understandable that they don’t know about us.

Therefore please ,I wish to beg for your cooperation to stand as his relative since you are bearing his same last name please so that they can release the money to you and you transfer back to me.

Please I pray you to help me for the sake of my child’s support please ,even if you can take 30% please.I beg you o help me.

I am worried with a hope that you reply so soon please .

Miss Suzy Bikam

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Posted in culture, internet. Tags: , , , , . 6 Comments »

Being Clever

December 6, 2019 — Pat Bertram

When I first started participating in the online world twelve years ago, I was unimpressed by the trivia of it all — the posts about what someone had for lunch, what their dogs or cats did, all the day-to-day things that make up the social aspect of networking.

Since I was trying to establish myself as an author, I tried to take a more grande-dame-ish approach. I wanted to be respected, to be seen a someone with dignity and grace, someone who had something to say and had the power to say it.

To that end, I tried to keep my clever, craft-oriented side to myself.

The whole great lady idea went out the window after Jeff died. It’s hard to try to maintain the appearance of being a grande dame when one is screaming their pain into the blogosphere. Still, I did try to maintain a bit of dignity and grace through it all. Now that my grief has been subsumed into my new life as homeowner and no longer brings me close to the great mysteries of life, what I’m left with is . . . whatever is the opposite of grande dame. Unsophisticated, maybe. Inelegant, perhaps. No high-blown thoughts, for sure.

There’s certainly no reason to keep my cleverness under wraps, especially since it’s about all I’m left with to blog about.

The truth is, I’ve always enjoyed being clever when it comes to small things. I’d prefer, of course, to be brilliant, but cleverness will do. It’s also nice to have a reason to be clever. Considering all the activities I am involved with, such as supplying treats for programs or creating something interesting for potlucks, I have ample opportunities to be clever. Like this little giveaway I thought of:

A Christmas Eve teabag on one side, a Christmas morning teabag on the other.

See? Clever.

But not at all grande dame-ish.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Posted in blogging, internet, life. Tags: , , , , , , . 10 Comments »

I Am an Escribitionist

November 17, 2019 — Pat Bertram

Escribitionists are those who blog about themselves, their experiences, and their reflections. It sounds like such a bad thing, connoting, as it does, exhibitionism, but it’s simply a way of distinguishing the diary-like bloggers from those who write from a more journalistic point of view.

The danger of being an escribitionist is that it leaves a blogger vulnerable, not just emotionally, but also physically. People have been known to retaliate offline for online disagreements and, more commonly, people with a felonious bent will take advantage of those bragging about being the Bahamas for a week. So not a good idea to advertise when your house will be vacant!

In the beginning, I was very careful not to say anything of a personal nature. I didn’t make my birthday known, where I went to school, where I lived. For a long time, I didn’t post photos of myself, and I protected my gender (some people were shocked when they found out I wasn’t who they thought). I even refrained from offering opinions about anything but writing and books (but even then, I sometimes got an argument from those who misunderstood what I was saying. See: “Ah, the Difference a Comma Makes!”)

I was especially careful during the years of Jeff’s illness, particularly the last few months when he was so bad off, not to write anything about my life. I was trying to establish myself as an author at the time, perhaps with a male pseudonym, and we both agreed a professional demeanor would be best. Besides, I felt it would be a betrayal of him to talk about what we were going through, and he was afraid I would seem pathetic.

After he died, though, all that care we had taken in laying the groundwork for my career as an author no longer mattered. I was in such terrible pain and so bewildered by what I was feeling (I’d never before encountered even a mention of the utter mental, physical, emotional, spiritual agony of profound grief), that my pain burst out of me. First I screamed my pain offline (I was pacing the house one day, feeling as if I needed to scream; when I realized no one could hear me, I just let the pain rip out of me). Then I spewed my pain onto this blog.

That’s when I discovered the adage “we all grieve differently” is wrong. Many people told me that they experienced the same thing that I did. We might show our emotions differently, but the pattern of grief for a spouse, life mate, or soul mate often follows the same timeline.

By the time my pain became manageable, I was in the habit of talking about my life, so I wrote about my experiences taking care of my nonagenarian father and my frustrations with my abusive homeless brother. I wrote about my travels (making sure always to post after the fact so that no one would know where I was at any given moment).

If I made a mistake and gave too much information, it didn’t matter because I was never in one place long enough for my indiscretion to catch up to me. But now that I am in my final home and not going anywhere, I can’t run away from the mistake of giving out too much information, though I fear it’s too late.

I do try to be careful, but any hope of anonymity (at least pertaining to geography) is long gone. Too many online friends have become offline friends. Too many offline friends have become online friends. Anyone who is paying attention can string together the crumbs of my life that I scatter online, and find me if they really wanted to, though why anyone would want to go through all that trouble, I don’t know.

Still, it is a concern. Unfortunately (fortunately?), it’s way to late to change my ways. If we writers are supposed to write about what we know, well, I know writing, grief, and me. Few people like to read posts about writing (they are either writers themselves who know it all already or non-writers who don’t want to know). I’ve said all I can possibly say about grief in my five hundred grief posts (https://bertramsblog.com/archives-grief-posts/) and my two books about grief: Grief: The Great Yearning and Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

So that leaves . . . me.

It’s always hard to admit the truth, but there’s no getting around it. For better or for worse, I am an escribitionist.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Posted in blogging, internet, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , , . 4 Comments »

Who Visits My Blog

November 5, 2019 — Pat Bertram

Well, yes, of course, you visit my blog. But so do people from all around the world.  Most come from the USA and other English speaking countries. Others come from countries I’ve never even heard of, and yet, someone in those countries has heard of me. What an amazing thing the internet is!

Here is a map showing where my visitors originate:

Pink shows visitors, and the darker the pink, the more visitors. Apparently, if I am reading the map correctly, the only places from which no visitors have come are Greenland, Svalbard, Turkmenistan, Western Sahara, Guinea-Bissau, Chad, and Central African Republic. I find this utterly astonishing. Not to be disingenuous, but I simply can’t imagine being interesting enough to attract so many different people.

Here is the incredible list of countries where visitors have come from. (The number represents visitations only, not views, since often people click on more than one blog entry, and each click is a view):

United States 364502
United Kingdom 64705
Canada 42126
India 35091
Australia 25092
Philippines 7152
Pakistan 6247
Ireland 6045
South Africa 4668
New Zealand 4236
Malaysia 4145
Singapore 4003
Germany 3227
European Union 2448
France 2093
Netherlands 1982
Indonesia 1657
United Arab Emirates 1556
Brazil 1364
Hong Kong SAR China 1318
Italy 1317
Spain 1283
Norway 1262
Russia 1258
Saudi Arabia 1091
Denmark 1085
Thailand 1053
Japan 1012
Sweden 1002
Turkey 957
Lebanon 939
Bangladesh 881
Vietnam 875
Romania 834
Mexico 827
Belgium 822
South Korea 799
Switzerland 739
Nigeria 733
Poland 714
Kenya 711
Greece 709
Argentina 685
Israel 589
Nepal 570
Egypt 561
Jamaica 556
Sri Lanka 510
Portugal 490
Finland 462
Trinidad & Tobago 444
Austria 415
Taiwan 406
Hungary 353
Ukraine 337
Jordan 330
Cambodia 319
Malta 316
Ghana 298
Qatar 292
Czech Republic 278
Bulgaria 278
Serbia 271
Mauritius 261
Kuwait 260
Morocco 252
Croatia 244
Slovakia 236
Puerto Rico 231
Colombia 226
Slovenia 194
Oman 185
Tunisia 171
Albania 162
Algeria 158
Chile 156
Iraq 153
Cyprus 153
American Samoa 150
Bahrain 141
Bahamas 141
Lithuania 138
Estonia 131
China 126
Uganda 124
British Virgin Islands 121
Iceland 119
Zimbabwe 119
Tanzania 117
Latvia 115
Georgia 112
Myanmar (Burma) 110
Peru 108
Ecuador 102
Venezuela 101
Macedonia 100
Botswana 96
Guyana 96
Costa Rica 94
Palestinian Territories 93
Panama 91
Armenia 91
Belize 88
Brunei 85
Barbados 80
Maldives 79
Fiji 77
Bosnia & Herzegovina 76
Isle of Man 74
Luxembourg 73
Jersey 71
Azerbaijan 70
Bhutan 69
Dominican Republic 64
Afghanistan 63
Namibia 62
Antigua & Barbuda 59
Yemen 55
Syria 55
Zambia 55
Kazakhstan 54
Grenada 54
Moldova 53
Malawi 49
Papua New Guinea 49
Guernsey 49
Ethiopia 48
Guatemala 47
Belarus 47
Macau SAR China 46
Bermuda 46
Guam 44
St. Vincent & Grenadines 44
Cayman Islands 44
St. Lucia 43
Cameroon 41
El Salvador 37
Libya 35
Uruguay 34
Curaçao 32
Laos 32
Bolivia 31
Lesotho 30
Gibraltar 29
Honduras 28
Paraguay 27
Mongolia 26
Nicaragua 26
Montenegro 26
U.S. Virgin Islands 25
Swaziland 25
Rwanda 25
Aruba 24
St. Kitts & Nevis 20
Suriname 20
Mozambique 20
Dominica 19
Monaco 19
Côte d’Ivoire 17
Northern Mariana Islands 16
Sudan 16
Seychelles 16
Åland Islands 14
Senegal 13
Congo – Kinshasa 12
Somalia 10
Kyrgyzstan 10
Angola 10
Madagascar 9
Vanuatu 8
Djibouti 7
Uzbekistan 7
Réunion 7
Guadeloupe 7
Anguilla 7
Liberia 6
Caribbean Netherlands 6
Solomon Islands 5
Faroe Islands 5
Haiti 4
Cook Islands 4
Turks & Caicos Islands 4
Benin 3
Iran 3
Burundi 3
French Polynesia 3
Cuba 3
Liechtenstein 3
Gabon 3
Sierra Leone 3
Timor-Leste 2
Martinique 2
Mali 2
Tajikistan 2
Micronesia 2
Vatican City 1
Burkina Faso 1
South Sudan 1
Congo – Brazzaville 1
Falkland Islands 1
St. Helena 1
Marshall Islands 1
Mauritania 1
Netherlands Antilles 1
French Guiana 1
Montserrat 1
Kiribati 1
Cape Verde 1
Niger 1
Samoa 1
Sint Maarten 1

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

 

Posted in blogging, culture, internet, life. Tags: , , , , , . 10 Comments »
« Older posts
Newer posts »