Happy New Year

As the ball gets ready to drop in 17 minutes at Times Square in New York City, I want to take this time to wish you all a Happy New Year. May your celebrations tonight and tomorrow be safe and joyous. May the new year bring you all the blessings that you ask. May peace come to this world soon.

As the celebration winds down this morning, remember to find a designated driver to carry your family and friends back to their homes or hotels safely. Keep warm in the frigid temperatures by dressing appropriately in layers.



Give thanks for the freedom and abundance that we enjoy in America and keep those who suffer in your New Year's resolution asking a blessing of healing in their families and in their countries. As part of my New Year's resolution, I am asking that wars end in my daily prayers and putting forth effort to share that message to as many people as I am able.

Enjoy the traditions that this great land has brought to us all. Have a wonderful day on January 1, 2009 and may it be an example of a good year to come.

Does anyone know how the tradition of singing "Auld Lang Syne" began and when?

The Midnight Writer

Prize for Secret Diary Quest

The person who answers the most clues in one month correctly will win some prizes. This one month time frame will begin once the first question is submitted to me either by email at themidnightwriter1@gmail.com or in the comments to this post.

Here are the prizes for the winner:

1. A link to a blog page of your choice in a subsequent post updating the contest every time you guess a clue correctly.

2. Your profile featured in the sidebar for one month until the next winner, complete with photograph, and blog or website link.

3. 500 Entrecard credits transferred to the blog of your choice.

4. An ad widget on one of my blogs. I will send the list to the winner.

5. A full scale review and feature article about you, your blog, your talents, your life. A questionnaire will be emailed to you at the end of the month. Your feature will appear on this blog as an honorable mention or linked to another one of my blogs. Again, if you want the feature written on another blog I will send you the list by email.

6. The opportunity to begin the next Secret Diary contest and to make the rules to open the quest.

7. If you choose, you get to write a guest post on one of my blogs. This will give you lots of backlinks as incentive.

So, all you Treasure Hunters and Secret Diary readers, come on down and join in the fun.

I am waiting right here on The Midnight Writer's Secret Portal.


The Midnight Writer

Midnight Writer on Facebook

If you have cruised down the sidebar of this new blog, you probably noticed the Facebook widget. Click on it to visit my profile at Facebook. If you haven't joined yet, please sign up and join the fun.

Facebook lets you connect quickly with thousands of established users.

Blog or send updates and messages.

Meet new people.

Share your links.

Get a little publicity for your blog or your website
or your cause while enjoying the social parlor of Facebook.

I will be posting updates on Facebook and Twitter for the Treasure Hunts, so check back about once a week to find out what's new. At this time, I have posted a notice about the Secret Diary Treasure Hunt. There will be others as this blog develops. So, sign up as my friend on Facebook and follow me on Twitter for some good old fashioned fun.

Send your ideas for finding secret treasure.

I am looking for Treasure Maps. Replicas or imaginary graphically created treasure maps. Will make a trade for something that you might need, like a review or advertising. I have a domain website that is gaining some good ranking so you can have advertising there or on one of my blogs.


Mountain Spirit Productions

Join me every week for updates on
The Midnight Writers Secret Portal.

The Midnight Writer

Secret Diaries

Have you ever tried to read someone else's diary?

Come on now, have you ever seen a diary lying open on a table and tried to read the secret thoughts of the writer?

Have you ever been tempted to pick the lock on your sister's diary and read about all her private thoughts that she just won't share with you?

Keeping a diary is an ages old tradition. At points in time, this form of putting down your thoughts has been kept under different names, but the custom remains the same. Whether it is called a journal, or a diary, or my daily thoughts...the concept remains the same.

In any form, the book is usually private and often kept hidden from all eyes except for those of the writer. Lock and key helps ensure that no one's eyes will gaze upon the things written that are unspeakable to any other human ears.

Diary keeping is a mystery within the mind of humankind that may never be explained. The custom is intriguing to any one, psychologists and philosophers included. Great artists, musicians, scientists, inventors from the ages have recorded their ponderings, their ideas and their secrets that usually ends up in a museum after they depart this world.

Are you fascinated with old diaries or journals of the deceased? Do you like family history and do you enjoy the quest to find a journal written by your great-great grandfather just so you can read and maybe catch a glimpse of the inside of the mind of a man you never knew? Do you enjoy museums?

If you have answered yes to any of the above questions, then maybe you will be interested in helping in my quest to search for historical or fantastic or mysterious journals and diaries. We can search the secrets lives of the people whose journals and diaries that we discover together. It will be a fantastic journey into the mind of our ancestors and it will help to paint a clearer picture of the world in which we now live.

Here is the quest that I propose...call it a treaure hunt, because it is...sort of...

The Secret Diary Quest

* Visit a geneology library or search a family history site online. I will find some links to include in the sidebar of this blog in the coming days.

* Share with us the sources for your quest in the comment section or by emailing themidnightwriter1@gmail.com. Links will be featured in a special section if a website is available. Or an address can be listed instead.

* Give three clues and ask five questions relating to the person/persons/time period and place in history.

* Each week for one month the secret diary quest will continue as you reveal more clues and ask more questions.

* Readers will answer the questions of the featured secret diary quest at the same time they may ask you questions.

* The historical and private information will be developed on this blog in a special feature series as the story of the diary/journal writer is written by you and the readers right here on this blog.

* At the end of one month, the identity of the keeper of the secret diary/journal will be revealed. A story will be submitted by either the holder of the secret diary or by me with your information provided.

* During the month long quest, links to the submitter's blog will be featured and any profile information you want included from social sites and article submission sites.

* A permanent link for the submitter of the secret diary will remain in the sidebar for one year.

* Links for participants in the quest will remain with the consolidated story at the end of the month, at which time a new quest will begin.

Feed back on this treasure hunt is welcome. Send me the first clues and questions to be the first in the secret diary treasure hunt.

To submit, please email themidnightwriter1@gmail.com. Leave a comment in this article to let me know that you want to participate. First one to comment, gets the chance to be the first exclusive Secret Diary Treasure Hunt.

The Midnight Writer

Cedar Chests

The History of Cedar Chests

A family tradition has existed for centuries, at least as far as I am aware.
Now I cannot say for sure how long, can you?

All I know is that my family has had the tradition of filling a cedar chest for generations. Mom had one that she shared with Dad. My grandparents on both sides had a cedar chest, or trunk, or treasure chest of some kind. Other relatives kept a "Locked Box" of some sort that kept treasures safe.

Did you parents and grandparents keep a treasure chest, or a cedar chest, or an old trunk or any kind of locked box filled with keepsakes and treasures?

If you send a photo and a brief description of the box along with a little story, I will publish your "treasure chest story" on this blog. Email me at themidnightwriter1@gmail.com. A link to a blog or website of your choice will be posted with the story.

Can't write very well?

Then let me write the story.

Give me some information and a photo. I'll ask the questions to bring out the story and off we go. Your treasure chest will be bared to the world.


Back to the cedar chest and its history.

Do you know what a cedar chest looks like?

Obviously, the chests are made from cedar, as shown by their given name. Cedar is a special type of wood that resists rotting and vermin. There was no need to use the ever stenching moth balls that so many old timers used with cedar. It is the same scent that you smell in the hampster cage, for those of you who have had little rodent pets.

The Midnight Writer

The Locked Box

People have had a zeal for treasure since before time can be remembered. You and I are no different. This blog will explore the inner mind and the transformation of heart when a mystery lurks in the shadows. First, let me tell you the story of The Locked Box. Our quest will be to find the hidden key so its secret contents can be revealed to the world.

My mother kept a trunk that she lovingly called her cedar chest. That trunk set mysteriously at the foot of the bed locked tightly. Mom used to drape pretty table scarves or afghans over the trunk to dress it up, or to hide it. That's what we thought anyway. We, being my brothers and sisters and yours truly..

The locked box became a mystery in our household that would travel through several years of trying to solve the mystery. Mom kept a key on her at all times and Dad hid a second key somewhere. I remember watching her go to her bedroom and shut the door behind her. When we asked Dad what Mom was doing in there whenever she would lock the door, he would smile and say she is looking in her treasure chest. He told us to make sure we didn't bother her. We were sure she was counting gold coins or some other valuable treasures that our parents would surprise us with when we got older. Or maybe not?