Hey there. You’re correct the Wade-Giles spelling is out dated for sure. It also causes some strange pronunciation problems from others when I speak to people about my work or they see my pub name.
I use it because it’s how I learned it several years ago and back on Medium.com my publication is The Taoist Online. I didn’t really think of the spelling at the time because I never thought anyone would read my work. But within a few weeks TTO was being read by tens of thousands of readers a month. So, they already knew it as Tao. When I moved to Substack I also thought about remaining it to Dao, but for consistency between the two I kept Tao. I use pinyin for everything else.
My oft-repeated comment "Negative attention is still attention." - and that is what I saw a street preacher doing outside the Silver Diner in Ballston, Arlington, VA last night. Can this be synchronicity? Last night, I ended up after dinner joining Mike Olmert at Tryst in Adams Morgan, DC to catch up. The conversation ranged around our histories. It's always good to connect. Looking forward to our connection...
It's a small world and street preachers love the attention. It's interesting to hear you had a similar experience just yesterday! I'm glad you enjoyed the piece and I also look forward to connecting more.
I'm about to head out for a walk and "Go Live" as I go - it's been part of my discipline over the past few years - only recently moved to Substack. I called it "The Passing Show" - initially crediting it to "Short Pointless Films" - as a production company of me, however, I stand on the shoulders of giants having been inspired by a film by Jonas Mekas done at the turn of the millenium, roughly, which I caught in a marathon cinema session at the Danish Film Institute (dfi.dk) and was that ever a hoot! Onward!
Why do you use Tao instead of Dao? Taoism is the outdated Westernized spelling. Daoism is closer to how the Chinese actually say it.
Hey there. You’re correct the Wade-Giles spelling is out dated for sure. It also causes some strange pronunciation problems from others when I speak to people about my work or they see my pub name.
I use it because it’s how I learned it several years ago and back on Medium.com my publication is The Taoist Online. I didn’t really think of the spelling at the time because I never thought anyone would read my work. But within a few weeks TTO was being read by tens of thousands of readers a month. So, they already knew it as Tao. When I moved to Substack I also thought about remaining it to Dao, but for consistency between the two I kept Tao. I use pinyin for everything else.
My oft-repeated comment "Negative attention is still attention." - and that is what I saw a street preacher doing outside the Silver Diner in Ballston, Arlington, VA last night. Can this be synchronicity? Last night, I ended up after dinner joining Mike Olmert at Tryst in Adams Morgan, DC to catch up. The conversation ranged around our histories. It's always good to connect. Looking forward to our connection...
It's a small world and street preachers love the attention. It's interesting to hear you had a similar experience just yesterday! I'm glad you enjoyed the piece and I also look forward to connecting more.
I'm about to head out for a walk and "Go Live" as I go - it's been part of my discipline over the past few years - only recently moved to Substack. I called it "The Passing Show" - initially crediting it to "Short Pointless Films" - as a production company of me, however, I stand on the shoulders of giants having been inspired by a film by Jonas Mekas done at the turn of the millenium, roughly, which I caught in a marathon cinema session at the Danish Film Institute (dfi.dk) and was that ever a hoot! Onward!