Archaic Idioms for 100, Alex: The We-Wu for October 5-16, 2026

Did you know you can get an email each time I post on the blog? It’s true! Go to the main page, put your email in the box at the bottom of the page, and hit Subscribe! And then you may get an email a week after I post because I forgot that part two weeks ago.

Oops.

I technically had time to write last week. I just didn’t. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed. I’ve actually spent a lot of time feeling overwhelmed lately. Things are fairly normal, nothing too crazy (for work, at least), but I have a lot of big things that I haven’t been able to get to.

It’s a bit ironic. I talk a lot about sweating the small stuff. But some things just start out big. And you can do little things to make the big thing smaller, but at some point, it’s just big and has to be done in one fell swoop. (Fun fact, that term was first recorded in Macbeth.)

In other news, it’s cold again, and I fear it has come to stay. Even worse, it’s cold and wet, which makes my joints ache. No bueno.

Last week, and much of this week, was spent finally publishing the Seed Sowers training manual in Chinese. I had to put this on hold back in July, and if I don’t get it done now, it won’t be done before the end of the year. There are actually four elements to this, and I’ve done two of them, but I have two left. I will power thru!

I also made more work for myself by putting the wrong files together for Bambara. In my defense, we have two training events in term 1 - 1A and 1B. I put 1B together (again) instead of 1A because they sent 1B first, and I was confused. Whatever. I figured it out. It’s back in their hands for proofing.

But then both Hausa and Arabic translators sent work in, so I had to stall Chinese again to put those files together for my team.

There were a lot of meetings this week, most of them part of the normal warp and weft, but there was one extra that was quite exciting! I spoke with someone via Zoom who is going to translate Urdu for us! We’ve tried to do Train & Multiply in Urdu before, and it did not go well. The publishing world is not well-equipped to deal with right-t0-left languages, and fonts are even more problematic. Most of them are created by someone’s brother’s friend’s cousin thrice removed. But some strides have been made in the past few years, and this may actually be possible!

This is the first language we’ll have started with me at the helm, which is just a bit daunting, and it won’t fit in the normal process, but I have high hopes.

That will do it for today, I think. I need to walk a dog and then get ready for crafting tonight. If you have some spare time and a desire to catalog books or collections, give me a shout.

Stay warm, my friends!

Bye!