A to Z Reflections 2023

This was my twelfth year doing the A to Z Challenge, and my tenth with two blogs. For the fifth year, I only began researching, writing, and editing my posts in March. Not only that, I waited until the second half of March to begin. One of the gifts for winning NaNo 2022 was a free title setup from IngramSpark, and though I knew I had no chance of coming anywhere close to finishing my radical rewrite of my WIP by 15 March, I just had to see how much I could accomplish by the deadline.

In years prior, I put my posts together many months in advance, sometimes as early as July and August. My initial plan was to research, write, and edit my posts in December 2022, due to the promised threat of the classic WordPress editor being retired on the last day of that year. However, to everyone’s great relief, the classic editor will be retained through at least 2024. Thus, I was able to push off my posts for a few more months.

Many times, I seriously considered doing a far less intensive theme on account of how little time I had left to complete 52 posts. But though I have ten lists in progress for future themes, none of them felt right in the face of what’s going on in Iran, and my near-lifelong personal connection to the Iranian people. All my other themes seemed so superficial in comparison.

I’m really glad I stayed with my original theme planned for 2023, even though I had to work overtime and started having daily tension headaches from the stress. I needed a long time to decompress, and didn’t write my final four posts for my main blog till the last week of April. After that, I needed to decompress all over again!

Topics I considered but crossed off my list were the Caspian Sea, the cities of Jahrom and Lahijan, Safi al-Din al-Urmawi, Zoroastrianism, Al-Farabi, Mohammad-Ali Jamalzad, Persian gardens, Ganjali Khan Complex, Zeynab Begum, Zhaleh Alamtaj, Arg-e Bam, the University of Isfahan, and Abdolhossein Teymourtash. I also began a post about the Iranian Art Museum Garden, but put it into my drafts folder when it became obvious there just wasn’t enough information for the kind of detail-rich post I like to write. You’ll be seeing it at some point in future.

The trickiest letters were L, O, U, and I. Surprisingly, despite their inclusion in the Persian alphabet, not many people, places, or things start with those letters. I also couldn’t do the most obvious I topic, Isfahan, since I already did a post about it in 2014. Though when I reviewed that old post, I realized I could’ve easily redone it with a lot more historical details.

Since the ongoing uprising in Iran was set off by the torture and murder of Mahsa Amini in police custody, and came after years of campaigns and protests against compulsory hijab laws, I felt it was important for my posts about people to exclusively feature women. The cry of protest is also “Women, Life, Freedom,” Zan, Zendegi, Azadi, زن ز​ن​د​گ​ی آ​ز​ا​د​ی.

Many of the materials I read for my research had to be translated from Persian, and a few times I had to transliterate names that just didn’t seem right (e.g., Lily and Victoria). The latter involved finding the right place in the original Persian lines where the names occurred. I also had to do this with a few sources translated from Arabic.

Another difficulty in translation was that Persian doesn’t have grammatical gender. I have no problem with this in and of itself, but the translations followed the archaic “generic he” convention and referred to women by male pronouns! And since Persian only has one word for a spouse, these women’s husbands were referred to as their wives! Context apparently doesn’t exist in Google translations.

Post recap:

Dr. Azar Andami (دُکتُر آذر اندامی)
Bibi Khanoom Astarabadi (بی بی خانم استرآبادی)
Chaharshanbe Suri (چهارشنبه‌سوری)
Sediqeh Dowlatabadi (صدیقه دولتآبادی)
Parvin E’tesami (پروین اعتصامی)
Dr. Farrokhroo Parsa (دکتر فرخ‌رو پارسا)
Golestan Palace (کاخ گلستان)
Hamadan, Iran (همدان, ایران)
Iranian Armenians (ارمنی‌های ایران, իրանահայեր)
Jewish Iran (ایران یهودی)
Kermanshah, Iran (کرمانشاه, ایران)
Layla and Majnun (لیلی و مجنون)
Mariam Behnam (مریم بهنام)
Nowruz (نوروز)
Osku, Iran (اسكو, ایران)
Persian cuisine (غذاهای ایرانی)
Qazvin, Iran (قزوین, ایران)
Rasht, Iran (رشت, ایران)
Simin Daneshvar (سیمین دانشور)
Tabriz, Iran (تبریز, ایران)
Urmia, Iran (ارومیه, ایران)
Vank Cathedral (Սուրբ Ամենափրկիչ Վանք, کلیسای آمناپرکیچ)
Weddings in Iran (عروسی در ایران)
Xenial Iran (زنیا در ایران)
Yazd, Iran (یزد, ایران)
Zahra Khanom Tadj al-Saltaneh (تاج‌السلطنه)