M

I’m relatively new to blogging and definitely a meme virgin. I found this term on a blog I just started reading.

Before I get to this meme, I’ll admit I didn’t know how this works. So I did some research and found the following on a site called The Daily Meme.

People often ask, "What is a Meme?" so here's a more than a little information on that. I pronounce it so it's rhymes with dream; some pronounce it so it sounds like mem (from mem-ory).
In the context of web logs / 'blogs / blogging and other kinds of personal web sites it's some kind of list of questions that you saw somewhere else and you decided to answer the questions. Then someone else sees them and does them and so on and so on.
Eventually some people decided they were going to creating weekly questionnaires (memes) and post them every week. Some are monthly, a few are daily and some are always there. Some suggest that you get five other people to do the same meme and they have to get five people (and so on), which sometimes increases their propagation. This probably stunts their mutated growth, having a permanent storage place where people go to find them but many people copy them from the site where they see it and they'll still change a bit.

After reading this, I still don’t really know how it works, but the blog author explained his particular meme … Pick a letter and write ten words that begin with that letter along with an explanation of what that word means to you.

His used the letter P. In response to a Comment I posted on his blog he “assigned” me the letter M. Here is what I came up with.


1. Music
Music is a major part of my entire life … from my 4th grade choir to high school band, from records to cassettes to CDs to a hard drive, from Motown to Mozart to Springsteen to Garth Brooks, from making tapes for a cousin’s wedding reception to playing songs on the radio.

2. Mustang
My favorite car. Especially the first 4 years and the brand new version. I owned one once and hope to own one again one day.

3. Momentum
A philosophy. Pick a goal, make a plan, take the first step, then another and another and another. Build momentum. Reach the goal. Start again.

4. Milwaukee
A very interesting city I lived in for four years. The city of my first drive in the snow, a great summer romance, significant career advancement and my first apartment in a high-rise building.

5. Maryland
My adopted home state, where I have lived, voted, married, divorced, married again, owned three homes and eaten great quantities of steamed crabs. I live less than 60 minutes from a bay, rivers, mountains, valleys, forests and the Nation’s Capital; less than 4 hours from the Atlantic Ocean, Philadelphia and New York City.

6. Maps
I have a hundred or more, new ones, old ones. Maps from AAA, maps from National Geographic. History maps. Mapquest maps.

7. Moonwalk
Not the Michael Jackson dance. Not the sidewalk along the river levee in New Orleans (although that holds some meaning for me also). The Moon walk taken by Neil Armstrong one summer night in 1969. I’ve been a space travel geek since the first Americans launched, and I watched Armstrong on TV as he took that first step and “one giant leap for mankind.”

8. Minolta
The brand of my first 35mm camera. My photography passion began with this camera. I carried it with me everywhere and shot thousands of photos. Eventually traded up to Canon, then Nikon. I still shoot film, but all my Nikon lenses will fit the digital camera I’ll buy some day.

9. Marilyn
My wife. She is one of a kind. Defies description on so many levels.

10. Mom
This past Mother’s Day was my first without her. She was caring, loving, curious, dedicated. Defied the odds of her generation by starting her family in her 40s and living into her 90s. A great story-teller with a great sense of humor. She’s telling her Katrina evacuation story right now, and angels are falling over laughing.