by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Today is Sunday, May 29, 2011. I shall celebrate it like millions of people worldwide by going to work, leaving me at the end of the day with only a tiny sliver of the leisure time my grandparents had every Sunday for their long lives. This continuing labor is not necessarily entirely beneficial... although many good things do in fact come from the Sunday tasks performed by its workers worldwide.
Today, therefore, I examine Sunday, its uses and, some suggested better uses. The objective, which I set for myself as clearly as for you, is to examine a problem that grows larger for more people every year: cannibalizing Sunday for the time that should be used for your necessary refreshment and revitalization; sadly each year less of it is. In our frenetic times, we no longer, like Ponce de Leon (1474-1521), search for eternal youth. But we, who are prone to think Don Ponce a bit of a fool, are engaged in our version of his odyssey. We know we need more time, and we are engaged in the never-ending pursuit of ways to get it.
We are victims of work creep and leisure drain, two insidious, inter-related conditions that threaten to turn us into drones who use improving their economic condition as their reason for changing Sunday from free time to work time. "We have to," they insist.
When I hear this, I think of how monkeys are captured, by a very clever and inexpensive method. The hunter uses no guns or bullets; he wants his monkeys in good condition. Instead, he uses a narrow-lipped jar packed with cookies and other primate delights. This jar is placed in an area frequented by the curious creatures; when they see piles of the sweet things they love best they thrust a paw down the jar... and are trapped.
Now here's the ironic thing: to regain their freedom, all the monkeys must do is open their paw and let the delicious but dangerous goodie fall to the bottom of the jar. Their clenched paw and the goodie inside have made them prisoners; merely opening their paw will free them. But the monkeys will not unclench their paws, for that would cost them the dainties. And so they are well and truly captured by their own avarice and their desire for more.
And so we, too, are well and truly trapped and captured by the work we must do every day, work we call completely urgent and necessary so as to preserve our life style. But at what cost? We are as trapped and baffled as the monkeys, and like them we might have chosen a less perilous way; one above all else preserving our own freedom.
How the concept of Sunday has evolved over the last 200 years.
Since the sweeping success of both the British and American evangelical movements at the end of the 18th century, three distinctly different Sundays have existed.
First was the evangelical Sunday, strictly reserved for God's Sabbath with absolutely no work of any kind permitted. England's Lord's Day Observance Society (founded 1831) epitomized the thinking that lead to strict Sabbatarianism. God had rested on the seventh day; you would therefore rest, and humbly so, whether you wanted to or not.
As the widely believed verities of the evangelicals began to wane at the end of the nineteenth century (later in America) Sunday changed, too. Progressive humanists argued that strict Sabbartarianism discriminated against the poor and laboring classes who had just Sunday and Sunday only to enjoy all the educational and other amenities. Criticism now centered on the people who advocated a strict and unyielding Sabbath, spent extolling God's virtues, to the neglect of everything else.This new view saw Sunday as desirable and deserved leisure time, not merely the occasion for weary strictness and total biblical focus.
This trend produced what came to be known as the "Continental Sunday", where leisure, all kinds of leisure, was wanted and indulged, the general sentiment being that the common folks worked hard for this day and deserved its delights and amenities. And delights and amenities they got as the golden days of the Continental Sunday with its laissez fair ways and relaxed conditions freed the nation from stringent rules and restrictions, mostly emanating from churches of an evangelical persuasion.
So matters might have stayed if matters of this kind are ever unchanging. But the leisured, recreational, family-centered delights of Continental Sundays were changed and challenged by such cultural factors as the desire to make more money to acquire the things money can buy. In periods of economic difficulty this factor changed again; in such periods people had to take Sunday and turn it into additional income, never mind the leisure that was thereby sacrificed -- and was so desirable and needed.
Now the nibbling process is at work on the grand, happy, burden-lifting Continental Sunday, an institution so needed by the hard-working folk on Planet Earth you might be excused for thinking this new, third phase had to be an improvement on what we already had.
But is it?
It is a sign of the times that otherwise sensible earthlings swap leisure and necessary recreation for money, money, and more money... and mountains of things we (for I include myself) do not need... but must acquire notwithstanding.
This is a deal made with the devil.... and you are one of the prime signatories... as I am.
It is time, here and now, to launch our bid for freedom... our July 4, Cinco de Mayo, Bastille Day... for we are as oppressed, burdened and weary of abuse as they for all that we have done this to ourselves.
We, like our revolutionary brethren of yore, must strike now, not a moment later, whilst we still have the good sense and strong arm to bring back, to all who desire and need it, our beloved Continental Sunday and the necessary leisure and relief we must have to live a life of balance and equilibrium, not killing stress in all its destructiveness.
All this is no small thing, nothing to be considered casually, without your full attention and concern. We humans are so finely crafted that we need leisure to reach our full potential and maintain our health and splendid spirits which are now and will always be the foundation of our success.
So, now, take the pledge.
Pledge! To fight work creep and leisure drain. Pledge!
Pledge! To think whether the work and its emoluments are more important than the revitalizing leisure you give up. Pledge!
Pledge! To resolve to use leisure as a means of strengthening your life, increasing its span and its quality. Pledge!
Pledge! To keep sacrosanct your special time apart from work, your carefree zone. It is essential for life's highest quality. Pledge!
Now sign and date this manifesto of common sense and resolute purpose. Your life in all its aspects will improve as soon as you do... the very moment you do!
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by David Lockwood <a href="http://mysmarthomebusiness.com%22%3ehttp//MySmartHomeBusiness.com%3C/a>. Check out Fast Fan Pages -> http://spiritbank.ffpages.hop.clickbank.net/
Sunday, May 29, 2011
Saturday, May 28, 2011
Joshua Bell: The most romantic man on earth.
Author's note. This is a story you will never understand until you hear Joshua Bell play. As he is an energetic, prolific artist this will not be difficult. .But what of his vast oeuvre to recommend?
Easy. Caprice No. 24 in A minor: Tema con Variazioni (Quasi Presto) by Niccolo Paganini (1782-1840). It was the last caprice (written 1817), the grandest, the most demanding, unyielding. Go to any search engine now to find it... and listen, enthralled.
This work, one of a bundle of caprices flowing fast from the facile pen of a grand master admired by Bell, must be played at the speed of love "quasi presto" -- "almost instantly" for nothing is more capricious than love...
... love can never be patient.... can never wait... is obsessive, thoughtless, bold, cruel and adamant. Love does not ask; it demands instant fulfillment. Love can never be rational, deliberate, cautious and sensible, and you cannot expect these from either Paganini -- or Bell either.
They are after you... They are about love, audacious love, a love of boundless energy and daring. They know you want it... and they mean to give you what you want... at the cost of your cozy, predictable, sensible, orderly life. That is the price great lovers, great romantics mean to exact from you for fulfillment... and Joshua Bell is a such a lover, agile, impetuous, practiced seducer of even the most grounded and careful.
And it all started in Indiana.
Joshua Bell, for all he is the wunderkind of the greatest concert halls in the greatest cities on earth, is in fact a boy of the prairies. I know something about that; I am one myself. He was born 9 December, 1967 in Bloomington, Indiana. If you are not familiar with this place it is a major research university, the intellectual heart of the nation's great heartland. It's a place of God, country, solid living, of people you like and trust; a true pastoral idyl that could well lead to humming about the moonlight on the Wabash, when you, now elsewhere, dream of your Indiana home.
The Bells were the kind of people you were glad to have as neighbors, not least because Joshua and his two sisters were so friendly and normal. Joshua was a boy's boy, handsome, smiling, polite, with a shock of hair falling over his forehead into his eyes, thereby causing local mothers, who could not help themselves to brush it back. Joshua was keen on video games... and sports. He once famously won fourth place in a national tennis competition without benefit of a single lesson.
But this was only part of the story... for there was genius in this family and genius will out, whether you like it or not. Fortunately Joshua's genius was noted early and by his two educated parents, both psychologists who gave Joshua the time his special situation necessitated, without slighting his sisters, as could so easily have happened. That was deft indeed, and praiseworthy.
Bell began taking violin lessons at the age of four after his mother discovered her son had taken rubber bands from around the house and stretched them across the handles of his dresser drawer to pluck out music he had heard her play on the piano. His parents got a scaled-to-size violin for their then five-year-old son and started to give him lessons.
Soon Bell studied under Donna Bricht, widow of Indiana University faculty member Walter Bricht. His second teacher was Mimi Szeig. Later still, he switched to the violinist and pedagogue Josef Gingold after Bell's parents assured Gingold they were not interested in pushing their son but wanted him to have the best teacher for his abilities. Wolfie Mozard's father Leopold should have been as solicitous of his famous son's human needs. Here again Joshua Bell was lucky. Satisfied that the boy was living a normal life, Gingold took Bell on as his student. By age 12 Joshua was truly serious about the violin, which even as an adolescent he used to deliver magic.
Just 14.
At the age of 14, Bell appeared as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Riccardo Muti. He studied the violin at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, while managing simultaneously to graduate from Bloomington High School North in 1984. In 1989, Bell received an Artist Diploma in Violin Performance from Indiana University.
Now he was ready to take his place on stage as one of the world's notable sounds.
In 1985, age 18, Joshua Bell, carefully, thoughtfully tutored, was ready to face the world. His Carnegie Hall debut with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra was the result. The young man who had been given so much love by so many... was now ready to give love... to the multitudes who needed the healing balm he could so artfully coax from his instrument. This was his truest talent: turning music into solace, empathy, and always love. For such a man just one thing was needed, the proper instrument... and in due course the instrument appeared.
Stradivarious, the master who accompanies every great violinist.
To a violinist there is only one human being who made violins capable of touching the deepest part of every human heart and showcasing their talent. That person was Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737). It is thought that this master crafted 1100 instruments (violins, violas, cellos); of these some 600 remain, many bearing the names of one or more owners so immortalized. Bell was now amongst them; he owned the "Tom Tyler" Stradivarious... but he desired the 300-year-old instrument called the "Gibson ex Huberman", made in 1713. It had been lent him, one memorable day, for a concert; thus Bell knew first hand how extraordinary it was, how desirable.
The owner who lent Bell this instrument jokingly told him the sale price, $4 million. But it was not for sale -- yet, and when Bell found out it was, it had already been sold to a German collector. In what can only be described as an act of rare, even unique, generosity amongst owners of these instruments, the new German owner allowed himself to be persuaded to give up what he, too, ardently desired... and so for $4 million the Stradivarious was Bell's... and the genius of Joshua Bell and Antonio Stradivarious were brought together, enriching lives worldwide from the mingled talents of two musical geniuses,a match truly made in heaven to create the richest and most poignant of sounds.
It was a sound that took the world by storm in films like Oscar-winning "The Red Violin" (1998), "Music of the Heart" (1999), and "Ladies in Lavender (2004). And in one recording after another, especially "Romance of the Violin" (under SONY Classical) which in 2003 sold more than 5 million copies and placed Joshua Bell, his boyish smile and colossal talent, among the true masters of his craft.
But amongst all his many honors, his wealth, and celebrity one gift especially touched the heart of the man for whom touching hearts was all in a day's work. It was a rare silhouette of Paganini autographed by the master. It was now owned by Bell's teacher Josef Gingold. Two days before he died, in 1995, this uncommon man of musical knowledge and common sense, called Bell to his bedside and gave it to the pupil he had not released to the world too soon, thereby helping to shape Bell into that most uncommon man of genius, well grounded and equitable, the better able to uplift mankind with his talent.
You can hear all this in Joshua Bell, above all the love that has formed from so many over so long and which now he pours out, strong and constant, to a world that so loves him.
Program note: End this article by searching for Joshua Bell's rendition of Vincenzo Bellini's "Casta diva" from"Norma" (1831). Keep a handkerchief at the ready...
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit,, providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by David Lockwood <a href="http://mysmarthomebusiness.com%22%3ehttp//MySmartHomeBusiness.com%3C/a>. Check out Fast Fan Pages -> http://spiritbank.ffpages.hop.clickbank.net/
Easy. Caprice No. 24 in A minor: Tema con Variazioni (Quasi Presto) by Niccolo Paganini (1782-1840). It was the last caprice (written 1817), the grandest, the most demanding, unyielding. Go to any search engine now to find it... and listen, enthralled.
This work, one of a bundle of caprices flowing fast from the facile pen of a grand master admired by Bell, must be played at the speed of love "quasi presto" -- "almost instantly" for nothing is more capricious than love...
... love can never be patient.... can never wait... is obsessive, thoughtless, bold, cruel and adamant. Love does not ask; it demands instant fulfillment. Love can never be rational, deliberate, cautious and sensible, and you cannot expect these from either Paganini -- or Bell either.
They are after you... They are about love, audacious love, a love of boundless energy and daring. They know you want it... and they mean to give you what you want... at the cost of your cozy, predictable, sensible, orderly life. That is the price great lovers, great romantics mean to exact from you for fulfillment... and Joshua Bell is a such a lover, agile, impetuous, practiced seducer of even the most grounded and careful.
And it all started in Indiana.
Joshua Bell, for all he is the wunderkind of the greatest concert halls in the greatest cities on earth, is in fact a boy of the prairies. I know something about that; I am one myself. He was born 9 December, 1967 in Bloomington, Indiana. If you are not familiar with this place it is a major research university, the intellectual heart of the nation's great heartland. It's a place of God, country, solid living, of people you like and trust; a true pastoral idyl that could well lead to humming about the moonlight on the Wabash, when you, now elsewhere, dream of your Indiana home.
The Bells were the kind of people you were glad to have as neighbors, not least because Joshua and his two sisters were so friendly and normal. Joshua was a boy's boy, handsome, smiling, polite, with a shock of hair falling over his forehead into his eyes, thereby causing local mothers, who could not help themselves to brush it back. Joshua was keen on video games... and sports. He once famously won fourth place in a national tennis competition without benefit of a single lesson.
But this was only part of the story... for there was genius in this family and genius will out, whether you like it or not. Fortunately Joshua's genius was noted early and by his two educated parents, both psychologists who gave Joshua the time his special situation necessitated, without slighting his sisters, as could so easily have happened. That was deft indeed, and praiseworthy.
Bell began taking violin lessons at the age of four after his mother discovered her son had taken rubber bands from around the house and stretched them across the handles of his dresser drawer to pluck out music he had heard her play on the piano. His parents got a scaled-to-size violin for their then five-year-old son and started to give him lessons.
Soon Bell studied under Donna Bricht, widow of Indiana University faculty member Walter Bricht. His second teacher was Mimi Szeig. Later still, he switched to the violinist and pedagogue Josef Gingold after Bell's parents assured Gingold they were not interested in pushing their son but wanted him to have the best teacher for his abilities. Wolfie Mozard's father Leopold should have been as solicitous of his famous son's human needs. Here again Joshua Bell was lucky. Satisfied that the boy was living a normal life, Gingold took Bell on as his student. By age 12 Joshua was truly serious about the violin, which even as an adolescent he used to deliver magic.
Just 14.
At the age of 14, Bell appeared as a soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Riccardo Muti. He studied the violin at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, while managing simultaneously to graduate from Bloomington High School North in 1984. In 1989, Bell received an Artist Diploma in Violin Performance from Indiana University.
Now he was ready to take his place on stage as one of the world's notable sounds.
In 1985, age 18, Joshua Bell, carefully, thoughtfully tutored, was ready to face the world. His Carnegie Hall debut with the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra was the result. The young man who had been given so much love by so many... was now ready to give love... to the multitudes who needed the healing balm he could so artfully coax from his instrument. This was his truest talent: turning music into solace, empathy, and always love. For such a man just one thing was needed, the proper instrument... and in due course the instrument appeared.
Stradivarious, the master who accompanies every great violinist.
To a violinist there is only one human being who made violins capable of touching the deepest part of every human heart and showcasing their talent. That person was Antonio Stradivari (1644-1737). It is thought that this master crafted 1100 instruments (violins, violas, cellos); of these some 600 remain, many bearing the names of one or more owners so immortalized. Bell was now amongst them; he owned the "Tom Tyler" Stradivarious... but he desired the 300-year-old instrument called the "Gibson ex Huberman", made in 1713. It had been lent him, one memorable day, for a concert; thus Bell knew first hand how extraordinary it was, how desirable.
The owner who lent Bell this instrument jokingly told him the sale price, $4 million. But it was not for sale -- yet, and when Bell found out it was, it had already been sold to a German collector. In what can only be described as an act of rare, even unique, generosity amongst owners of these instruments, the new German owner allowed himself to be persuaded to give up what he, too, ardently desired... and so for $4 million the Stradivarious was Bell's... and the genius of Joshua Bell and Antonio Stradivarious were brought together, enriching lives worldwide from the mingled talents of two musical geniuses,a match truly made in heaven to create the richest and most poignant of sounds.
It was a sound that took the world by storm in films like Oscar-winning "The Red Violin" (1998), "Music of the Heart" (1999), and "Ladies in Lavender (2004). And in one recording after another, especially "Romance of the Violin" (under SONY Classical) which in 2003 sold more than 5 million copies and placed Joshua Bell, his boyish smile and colossal talent, among the true masters of his craft.
But amongst all his many honors, his wealth, and celebrity one gift especially touched the heart of the man for whom touching hearts was all in a day's work. It was a rare silhouette of Paganini autographed by the master. It was now owned by Bell's teacher Josef Gingold. Two days before he died, in 1995, this uncommon man of musical knowledge and common sense, called Bell to his bedside and gave it to the pupil he had not released to the world too soon, thereby helping to shape Bell into that most uncommon man of genius, well grounded and equitable, the better able to uplift mankind with his talent.
You can hear all this in Joshua Bell, above all the love that has formed from so many over so long and which now he pours out, strong and constant, to a world that so loves him.
Program note: End this article by searching for Joshua Bell's rendition of Vincenzo Bellini's "Casta diva" from"Norma" (1831). Keep a handkerchief at the ready...
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit,, providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by David Lockwood <a href="http://mysmarthomebusiness.com%22%3ehttp//MySmartHomeBusiness.com%3C/a>. Check out Fast Fan Pages -> http://spiritbank.ffpages.hop.clickbank.net/
Friday, May 27, 2011
'.... there's nothing so good for a pobble's toes.' The comfort and friendshipof amiable lavender.
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's note. To set the mood for this article, be sure to search any search engine for "Ladies in Lavender", composer Nigel Hess, violinist Joshua Bell, recorded by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, 2004. It is based on a short story by William Locke (1916), filmed in 2004.
Before starting this music, put aside all the cares of your day, make yourself comfortable, and allow yourself the shear bliss of indulgence in this most lyric and evocative of scores.
There is a famous quotation that one always finds the particular England one goes in search of. Today we are en route, via the unrelenting power of remembrance, to the most loved England of all...
You are walking in the springtime of May through a woodland dappled with sunlight, repository of ancient secrets and long-ago laughter. Everything about this wood sings of a special place, a place of beauty and serenity, a place where there is peace, and to spare, for the weary traveler... without knowing why, you feel at home here, at once... every step taking you in a direction you now know you have always wanted to go... you cannot say why, but this is home... the home you have always wanted and cherish.
Every fibre of your being is happy... such is your joy in this place, a world apart where you are expected, as if everything about this place knows you and has been waiting, forever and patiently, for you.... and now rejoices at your arrival.
You are walking up a hillock... and in a moment you are at the top and then you know, no one needs tell you, why you are happy, at ease, serene...
On every side, you see -- and then inhale -- the sweet lavender. Fields of beauty! Acres so rich in flower you catch your breath... for there is such abundance that you are sure there is comfort enough here for the world burdened by its dismays and distractions.
You are glad that on such a day as this, glorious in every way, this last glory, too, has been vouch-safed you, to live forever in your heart..
Lavender has done its healing work again, certain balm for the troubled soul, your soul.
"We shall find a cleanly room lavender in the windows and twenty ballads stuck about the wall."
Izaak Walton, "The Compleat Angler". 1653-55.
Facts about lavender.
The lavenders are a genus of 39 species of flowering plants in the mint family. An Old World genus, distributed from Cape Verde and Canary Islands and Madeira, across Africa, the Mediterranean, South-West Asia, Arabia, Western Iran and South- East India. There is some reason for thinking the genus originated in India.
The leaves are long and narrow in most species. In other species they are pinnately toothed, or pinnate, sometimes multiple pinnate and dissected. Flowers are borne in whorls, held on spikes rising above the foliage. Flowers may be blue, violet, or lilac.The calyx is tubular, with five lobes. The corolla is often asymmetric. All this readies us for the most beloved lavender of all....
Lavandula angustifolia, English lavender.
Those without a drop of poetry in their veins call it "common" lavender, but wiser folk know there is nothing common about our relationship to lavender and the many ways it eases our lives.
Culinary uses.
Flowers yield abundant nectar from which bees, insightful and industrious, make a high-quality honey. Flowers can be candied and are sometimes used as cake decorations. Lavender flavors baked goods and desserts; it pairs especially well with chocolate and is also used to make "lavender sugar". Lavender flowers are occasionally blended with black, green, or herbal tea, adding a fresh, relaxing scent and flavor.
Lavender lends a floral and slightly sweet flavor to most dishes, and is sometimes paired with sheep's-milk and goat's-milk cheeses. For most cooking applications the dried buds (also referred to as flowers) are used, though some chefs experiment with the leaves as well. Only the buds contain the essential oil of lavender, from which the scent and flavor of lavender are best derived.
The French are also known for their lavender soup, most commonly made from an extract of lavender. In the United States, both French lavender syrup and dried lavender buds are used to make lavender scones and marshmallows.
Medicinal uses.
Lavender is used extensively with herbs and aromatherapy.
English lavender yields an essential oil with sweet overtones, and can be used in balms, salves, perfumes, cosmetics, and topical applications. Essential oil of lavender has antiseptic and anti-inflammatory properties. It was used in hospitals during World War I to disinfect floors and walls. These extracts are also used as fragrances by bath products.
According to folk wisdom, lavender has many uses. Infusions of lavender soothe and heal insect bites and burns. Bunches of lavender repel insects. If applied to the temples, lavender oil soothes headaches. In pillows lavender seeds and flowers aid sleep and relaxation. An infusion of three flowerheads added to a cup of boiling water soothes and relaxes at bedtime. Lavender oil (or extract of lavender) heals acne when used diluted 1:10 with water, rosewater or witch hazel; it also treats burns and inflammatory conditions.
More uses.
Flower spikes are used for dried flower arrangements. The fragrant, pale purple flowers and flower buds are used in potpourris. Lavender is also used extensively as herbal filler inside sachets used to freshen linens. Dried and sealed in pouches, lavender flowers are placed among stored items of clothing to give a fresh fragrance and to deter moths. Dried lavender flowers have become recently popular for wedding confetti.
Our constant friend and solace, humble despite such great gifts.
Ancient peoples were well aware of lavender's bounty and succor. So well regarded, it was one of the holy herbs used in the biblical Temple to prepare the holy essence. It was a plant, a scent that never intruded. It lifted! Soothed! Gave respite and release! As such it helped deliver the peace of God.
The magnificent English poet Edward Lear (1812-1888), partaker of lavender's solace, wrote characteristic nonsense more revealing than lucid prose:
"... his aunt jobiska made him drink lavender water tinged with pink, for she said, 'the world in general knows there's nothing so good for a pobble's toes!'"
This is why when you are weary, sore oppressed, make your way, if only in memory, to the place of these amiable and most hospitable of flowers. Sit down and drink in their beauty, given to you at the moment you most need it, for these are the good Samaritans, offering you in all humility what they most embody -- the enduring comfort of God Himself.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by David Lockwood <a href="http://mysmarthomebusiness.com%22%3ehttp//MySmartHomeBusiness.com%3C/a>. Check out Clickbank Traffic Warrior -> http://www.MySmartHomeBusiness.com/?rd=zh6a9T3Q
Author's note. To set the mood for this article, be sure to search any search engine for "Ladies in Lavender", composer Nigel Hess, violinist Joshua Bell, recorded by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, 2004. It is based on a short story by William Locke (1916), filmed in 2004.
Before starting this music, put aside all the cares of your day, make yourself comfortable, and allow yourself the shear bliss of indulgence in this most lyric and evocative of scores.
There is a famous quotation that one always finds the particular England one goes in search of. Today we are en route, via the unrelenting power of remembrance, to the most loved England of all...
You are walking in the springtime of May through a woodland dappled with sunlight, repository of ancient secrets and long-ago laughter. Everything about this wood sings of a special place, a place of beauty and serenity, a place where there is peace, and to spare, for the weary traveler... without knowing why, you feel at home here, at once... every step taking you in a direction you now know you have always wanted to go... you cannot say why, but this is home... the home you have always wanted and cherish.
Every fibre of your being is happy... such is your joy in this place, a world apart where you are expected, as if everything about this place knows you and has been waiting, forever and patiently, for you.... and now rejoices at your arrival.
You are walking up a hillock... and in a moment you are at the top and then you know, no one needs tell you, why you are happy, at ease, serene...
On every side, you see -- and then inhale -- the sweet lavender. Fields of beauty! Acres so rich in flower you catch your breath... for there is such abundance that you are sure there is comfort enough here for the world burdened by its dismays and distractions.
You are glad that on such a day as this, glorious in every way, this last glory, too, has been vouch-safed you, to live forever in your heart..
Lavender has done its healing work again, certain balm for the troubled soul, your soul.
"We shall find a cleanly room lavender in the windows and twenty ballads stuck about the wall."
Izaak Walton, "The Compleat Angler". 1653-55.
Facts about lavender.
The lavenders are a genus of 39 species of flowering plants in the mint family. An Old World genus, distributed from Cape Verde and Canary Islands and Madeira, across Africa, the Mediterranean, South-West Asia, Arabia, Western Iran and South- East India. There is some reason for thinking the genus originated in India.
The leaves are long and narrow in most species. In other species they are pinnately toothed, or pinnate, sometimes multiple pinnate and dissected. Flowers are borne in whorls, held on spikes rising above the foliage. Flowers may be blue, violet, or lilac.The calyx is tubular, with five lobes. The corolla is often asymmetric. All this readies us for the most beloved lavender of all....
Lavandula angustifolia, English lavender.
Those without a drop of poetry in their veins call it "common" lavender, but wiser folk know there is nothing common about our relationship to lavender and the many ways it eases our lives.
Culinary uses.
Flowers yield abundant nectar from which bees, insightful and industrious, make a high-quality honey. Flowers can be candied and are sometimes used as cake decorations. Lavender flavors baked goods and desserts; it pairs especially well with chocolate and is also used to make "lavender sugar". Lavender flowers are occasionally blended with black, green, or herbal tea, adding a fresh, relaxing scent and flavor.
Lavender lends a floral and slightly sweet flavor to most dishes, and is sometimes paired with sheep's-milk and goat's-milk cheeses. For most cooking applications the dried buds (also referred to as flowers) are used, though some chefs experiment with the leaves as well. Only the buds contain the essential oil of lavender, from which the scent and flavor of lavender are best derived.
The French are also known for their lavender soup, most commonly made from an extract of lavender. In the United States, both French lavender syrup and dried lavender buds are used to make lavender scones and marshmallows.
Medicinal uses.
Lavender is used extensively with herbs and aromatherapy.
English lavender yields an essential oil with sweet overtones, and can be used in balms, salves, perfumes, cosmetics, and topical applications. Essential oil of lavender has antiseptic and anti-inflammatory properties. It was used in hospitals during World War I to disinfect floors and walls. These extracts are also used as fragrances by bath products.
According to folk wisdom, lavender has many uses. Infusions of lavender soothe and heal insect bites and burns. Bunches of lavender repel insects. If applied to the temples, lavender oil soothes headaches. In pillows lavender seeds and flowers aid sleep and relaxation. An infusion of three flowerheads added to a cup of boiling water soothes and relaxes at bedtime. Lavender oil (or extract of lavender) heals acne when used diluted 1:10 with water, rosewater or witch hazel; it also treats burns and inflammatory conditions.
More uses.
Flower spikes are used for dried flower arrangements. The fragrant, pale purple flowers and flower buds are used in potpourris. Lavender is also used extensively as herbal filler inside sachets used to freshen linens. Dried and sealed in pouches, lavender flowers are placed among stored items of clothing to give a fresh fragrance and to deter moths. Dried lavender flowers have become recently popular for wedding confetti.
Our constant friend and solace, humble despite such great gifts.
Ancient peoples were well aware of lavender's bounty and succor. So well regarded, it was one of the holy herbs used in the biblical Temple to prepare the holy essence. It was a plant, a scent that never intruded. It lifted! Soothed! Gave respite and release! As such it helped deliver the peace of God.
The magnificent English poet Edward Lear (1812-1888), partaker of lavender's solace, wrote characteristic nonsense more revealing than lucid prose:
"... his aunt jobiska made him drink lavender water tinged with pink, for she said, 'the world in general knows there's nothing so good for a pobble's toes!'"
This is why when you are weary, sore oppressed, make your way, if only in memory, to the place of these amiable and most hospitable of flowers. Sit down and drink in their beauty, given to you at the moment you most need it, for these are the good Samaritans, offering you in all humility what they most embody -- the enduring comfort of God Himself.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by David Lockwood <a href="http://mysmarthomebusiness.com%22%3ehttp//MySmartHomeBusiness.com%3C/a>. Check out Clickbank Traffic Warrior -> http://www.MySmartHomeBusiness.com/?rd=zh6a9T3Q
Kids in your life? The Life Letter is for them -- and for you. Start yours today.
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
I knew the late Mrs. John (Elizabeth) Edwards was particularly devoted to her children and family... but when I learned from her funeral coverage that she had left behind a long letter which she had been writing for them over the course of many years, my admiration for the lady rose still more.
In my family we call such a letter, the Life Letter and encourage particularly parents and grandparents to start one as soon as you know a little one is on the way. It will quickly become one of your own most valued possessions... as it will become, in due time, valuable for the kids you leave it to. This article will help you get started with your own Life Letter, the gift of generations, assisting you to create a masterwork.
What is a Life Letter?
A Life Letter is a letter written by you to your children and/or (in due course) your grand children. It is "one-sided" in the sense that you are writing it for your dearly beloved without any expectation that they will either respond to it or even see during your life time. A Life Letter has a specific mission. It is to let the recipient into both your own life... and into theirs from your unique standpoint as parent or grandparent.
A Life Letter is neither a personal journal nor a regular posted letter. Nor is it either an email or random jottings and particular information as found in a baby book. It partakes of certain elements from these genres and types. However, it is very much its own thing, sui generis, as you come to see and enjoy as your Life Letter takes shape over time.
Get going, keep going
For a thing destined to rank amongst the most important possessions of your life, a treasured heirloom, surprisingly little is needed for its creation except for two must have features: the willingness to start creating your Life Letter at once... and an iron-clad determination to keep working at it for the duration of your life. A labor of love it may be... but the work involved is real nonetheless and must be properly organized.
What you need to start today
Before writing a word of your Life Letter, gather what you'll need:
fountain pen a ream of lined paper a folder with pockets a "writing place".
A quick word about these items:
fountain pen. Remember, your objective is to reveal yourself through your Life Letter and create a thing of beauty and insight for your family. For this a fountain pen is desirable. However, in recommending this essential tool, I know full well that today copperplate writing is as rare as a hen's tooth. As such, if you cannot rise to the elegance and style of a fountain pen... make sure you have a typewriter (my IBM Selectric II is a gem) or email.
There are trade-offs here. Your handwriting (execrable though it may be, like my own) is a better indicator of who you are than typed words. Moreover, your Life Letter must be spontaneous and "of the moment." Typing and email smack too much of deliberation -- and business. Unfortunately, too many people today have my problem of illegible scrawling. Thus, for us, while our Life Letter may be less personal if not hand written, it will be infinitely more readable. So, how about a compromise?
If your poor handwriting warrants, write the headings and special notes and salutations in ink. Type the rest. Thus you retain the special bond with recipient that comes with words handwritten.
Proper storage is crucial.
That's where the folder with pockets comes in. As you write, number the pages and put them away in folders. Each folder must be dated for the time covered... and always kept in the safest place in the house. (Unsurprisingly people who have spent decades on their Life Letters keep them in a safety deposit box, thereby indicating their value.)
Your warm, confiding "writing place".
When you sit down to "talk" to your children and grandchildren via your Life Letter, you need a warm, inviting, confiding place in which to do it. In such a place you are completely and entirely at home. It should be comfortable... with a family pictures, books, mementoes, a room redolent of cherished memories and always of cherished people.
Here favorite foods and liquids are de rigueur, with stains and spots proving use and personal title. Here shoes are kicked off and shirt collars opened. Here there is always a place for you... and as such the words flow thick and fast as you tell your posterity and record for yourself your journey on this planet... a journey that has brought you to this time and place and which you, no matter how imperfectly, want to share. Such a place is for you and the very carefully selected only, the people you value most and profoundly. They deserve your best... and you must give it to them, for their good and for your own soul's sake.
Begin today
Most people leave nothing on this globe but their genetic footprints implanted in their successors. You have chosen to leave more, a record of tales and occurrences, of items significant, hilarious, mundane, heart rending.
Start today.
Ready your writing place. Place before you the most challenging item in any writer's kit... the blank page. Then begin your Life Letter.
Write the date you have commenced on your folder. Write your salutation... and begin. Where? It doesn't matter for this is a letter. It has a place for everything... and tolerates random disclosures as well as lapses in communication, just as we do with old and valued friends who, loving us, abide our infirmities and inefficiencies, too.
And if such lapses occur, don't blame yourself, no matter how long it has been since you have written in this lifelong epistle. Simply pick up your pen and begin again. Your reader, your flesh and blood, will be fascinated by whatever you share, for in sharing yourself so you not only fill gaps in their personal intelligence... you illuminate and reveal their own lives. Begin this voyage now for you have much to tell:
Heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a fait un beau voyage. -- Joachim du Bellay.
About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., where small and home-based businesses learn how to profit online. Attend Dr. Lant's live webcast TODAY and receive 50,000 free guaranteed visitors to the website of your choice! Dr. Lant's is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by David Lockwood <a href="http://mysmarthomebusiness.com%22%3ehttp//MySmartHomeBusiness.com%3C/a>. Check out SEO Business Box -> http://www.MySmartHomeBusiness.com/?rd=ak6GZeVp
I knew the late Mrs. John (Elizabeth) Edwards was particularly devoted to her children and family... but when I learned from her funeral coverage that she had left behind a long letter which she had been writing for them over the course of many years, my admiration for the lady rose still more.
In my family we call such a letter, the Life Letter and encourage particularly parents and grandparents to start one as soon as you know a little one is on the way. It will quickly become one of your own most valued possessions... as it will become, in due time, valuable for the kids you leave it to. This article will help you get started with your own Life Letter, the gift of generations, assisting you to create a masterwork.
What is a Life Letter?
A Life Letter is a letter written by you to your children and/or (in due course) your grand children. It is "one-sided" in the sense that you are writing it for your dearly beloved without any expectation that they will either respond to it or even see during your life time. A Life Letter has a specific mission. It is to let the recipient into both your own life... and into theirs from your unique standpoint as parent or grandparent.
A Life Letter is neither a personal journal nor a regular posted letter. Nor is it either an email or random jottings and particular information as found in a baby book. It partakes of certain elements from these genres and types. However, it is very much its own thing, sui generis, as you come to see and enjoy as your Life Letter takes shape over time.
Get going, keep going
For a thing destined to rank amongst the most important possessions of your life, a treasured heirloom, surprisingly little is needed for its creation except for two must have features: the willingness to start creating your Life Letter at once... and an iron-clad determination to keep working at it for the duration of your life. A labor of love it may be... but the work involved is real nonetheless and must be properly organized.
What you need to start today
Before writing a word of your Life Letter, gather what you'll need:
fountain pen a ream of lined paper a folder with pockets a "writing place".
A quick word about these items:
fountain pen. Remember, your objective is to reveal yourself through your Life Letter and create a thing of beauty and insight for your family. For this a fountain pen is desirable. However, in recommending this essential tool, I know full well that today copperplate writing is as rare as a hen's tooth. As such, if you cannot rise to the elegance and style of a fountain pen... make sure you have a typewriter (my IBM Selectric II is a gem) or email.
There are trade-offs here. Your handwriting (execrable though it may be, like my own) is a better indicator of who you are than typed words. Moreover, your Life Letter must be spontaneous and "of the moment." Typing and email smack too much of deliberation -- and business. Unfortunately, too many people today have my problem of illegible scrawling. Thus, for us, while our Life Letter may be less personal if not hand written, it will be infinitely more readable. So, how about a compromise?
If your poor handwriting warrants, write the headings and special notes and salutations in ink. Type the rest. Thus you retain the special bond with recipient that comes with words handwritten.
Proper storage is crucial.
That's where the folder with pockets comes in. As you write, number the pages and put them away in folders. Each folder must be dated for the time covered... and always kept in the safest place in the house. (Unsurprisingly people who have spent decades on their Life Letters keep them in a safety deposit box, thereby indicating their value.)
Your warm, confiding "writing place".
When you sit down to "talk" to your children and grandchildren via your Life Letter, you need a warm, inviting, confiding place in which to do it. In such a place you are completely and entirely at home. It should be comfortable... with a family pictures, books, mementoes, a room redolent of cherished memories and always of cherished people.
Here favorite foods and liquids are de rigueur, with stains and spots proving use and personal title. Here shoes are kicked off and shirt collars opened. Here there is always a place for you... and as such the words flow thick and fast as you tell your posterity and record for yourself your journey on this planet... a journey that has brought you to this time and place and which you, no matter how imperfectly, want to share. Such a place is for you and the very carefully selected only, the people you value most and profoundly. They deserve your best... and you must give it to them, for their good and for your own soul's sake.
Begin today
Most people leave nothing on this globe but their genetic footprints implanted in their successors. You have chosen to leave more, a record of tales and occurrences, of items significant, hilarious, mundane, heart rending.
Start today.
Ready your writing place. Place before you the most challenging item in any writer's kit... the blank page. Then begin your Life Letter.
Write the date you have commenced on your folder. Write your salutation... and begin. Where? It doesn't matter for this is a letter. It has a place for everything... and tolerates random disclosures as well as lapses in communication, just as we do with old and valued friends who, loving us, abide our infirmities and inefficiencies, too.
And if such lapses occur, don't blame yourself, no matter how long it has been since you have written in this lifelong epistle. Simply pick up your pen and begin again. Your reader, your flesh and blood, will be fascinated by whatever you share, for in sharing yourself so you not only fill gaps in their personal intelligence... you illuminate and reveal their own lives. Begin this voyage now for you have much to tell:
Heureux qui, comme Ulysse, a fait un beau voyage. -- Joachim du Bellay.
About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., where small and home-based businesses learn how to profit online. Attend Dr. Lant's live webcast TODAY and receive 50,000 free guaranteed visitors to the website of your choice! Dr. Lant's is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by David Lockwood <a href="http://mysmarthomebusiness.com%22%3ehttp//MySmartHomeBusiness.com%3C/a>. Check out SEO Business Box -> http://www.MySmartHomeBusiness.com/?rd=ak6GZeVp
Thoughts on storage: needed, frustrating, a treasure trove... but not for the kids.
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Over the course of the last several months, I have been engaged in one of life's unappealing necessities, sorting through dozens and dozens of boxes packed (often years and years ago) with an array of things dubbed too valuable to be thrown away, or at the very least items which deserved another look, later.
Well, "later" has now arrived, and I am engaged in the business of well and truly sorting through each and every one of these stored items, deciding which can now be thrown away, which will be donated to places like Goodwill Industries and The Salvation Army, which ones will be kept... and (here we go again)... which ones will remain in storage,
Today I intend to share with you all my thoughts on this inevitability of life... partly because no one I know will listen to what I have to say on the matter. My friends are tired of providing a willing ear. They are polite but firm: say no more on this matter, or we shall bore you, too, with the ups and downs of our own storage problems... and the garage sales we've had to organize. This threat is sufficient. I shut up.
But you, I hope, will indulge me; at least this once. There is that about sorting things in storage which craves a congenial ear. May I have yours for a bit?
What went into storage.
The plain fact of the matter is that we all, every last one of us, has far too many things. What's worse, since we all have elements of the pack rat about us, not only do we acquire things; we are loathe to sacrifice anything on the off chance that we will need it one day. That's the first problem; we're deluding ourselves. We should all be tougher with ourselves on the matter of what we save. But we cannot. You see, things are evidence that we have passed this way, and we want as many tell-tale markers as possible. Still, the sorting process should begin the day you first think that you require storage.
In my case, I had the usual "good" reasons for resorting to commercial storage facilities. There was, first of all, my mother's possessions. Some of these had a substantial value; others, the sentimental ones, were even more important. These things have been stored for years in California; three thousand miles away from me.
A good friend, probably a saint, helped me pack these items. I was depressed that day; my mother was failing and I just couldn't deal right then with the thought of losing her. Packing boxes was something necessary; it was also therapeutic. But it only postponed the inevitable problem of sorting the items and making irrevocable decisions.
My friend offered to keep these boxes, each one filled with memories, until I decided what to do with all the items. I told my brother and sister what I had and that we should early decide who gets what. But they have mountains of their own things. It wasn't that they didn't want maternal mementoes; they just didn't want them then and trusted me to share when they were ready. I mentioned the matter to my sister the other day and she said, "Not yet".
In the way of these things, the favor my dear friend gave me went from a few weeks.... to years. It was scandalous, I know, to take advantage of her that way; even the frequent presents I sent were inadequate. But she said she didn't mind; she had them in her attic.
Finally I ran out of excuses and said the many boxes could be shipped to me. And so they were. My assistant Aime Joseph and I opened the boxes; he with care, I with trepidation soon confirmed. There was so much... all "important"... every piece needing attention and clarity. The books were the most difficult of all. My mother was an avid reader as I am. Often we read the same book at the same time, a continent between us which meant nothing when we discussed our findings.
I found her volumes of Robert Browning the hardest to deal with. She loved him so... "That's my last duchess painted on the wall, looking as if she were alive." I put this book and many others amongst my working library. I can see the cherished Browning from here.
Unpacked, too, was all her jewelry. I had given much of it, one Christmas, one birthday after another. These items are being kept for my niece Chelsea and nephew Kyle and his wife, when he has one. Chelsea asked if she could take one of the pieces, a jewelled dragonfly, to college. My official reason for declining was the number of light fingered folk in the dormitory and her tendency to be over trusting. But in truth, I wasn't ready to let even that go -- yet.
In fact, as each box was opened, Mr. Joseph would cluck and ask me just where I would put what was in it. Miraculously, we found a home for everything... until the others want some for themselves.
The other, bigger storage project.
The second storage project was arguably even more difficult, for it involved 4 large rooms packed to the ceiling with stuff which I had obviously found significant enough to pay thousands of dollars each year to keep. But enough was enough...
Mr. Joseph and I have been working on this project for months now. There are, after all, thousands of objects to be sorted, including items from every epoch of my life. Each week Mr. Joseph goes to the storage facility and, with his cell phone, he lets me know what's left in the first room, now nearly emptied. Then he brings me the boxes... each one filled with one conundrum after another.
What does one do with one's first suit, worn at age 3, well over half a century again? I can't get rid of it... I just can't. It's hanging in my closet, safe for now.
And the teddy bear that soothed me 6 decades ago? No one, including me I am ashamed to admit, remembers his name; I call him now "The Old Gentleman" and he seems content. Some people no doubt think it odd to see him here, but he and I go back a lifetime, and such bonds must be respected and ensured.
I am more ruthless with my things than with my mother's. Mr. Joseph makes regular deliveries of my books; ten thousand books, perhaps more, given away without a pang.
In the middle of this unceasing project, it occurs to me that, even with great disposals, there is far too much remaining. And if the point of keeping them seems clear to me, it will surely perplex and baffle the folks getting all this. What can "The Old Gentleman" mean to them? I have advised them, in my will, to be ruthless, but I know my flesh and blood. They will be unable to do so, try though they might.
"I can't give away the chairs Uncle Jeffrey wrote his books in... or the typewriter... or the pewter mug his friends engraved for him on his 21 birthday, in Scotland. I just can't."
And so, in due course, I, with the best intentions, will become a puzzle for them... a puzzle which they will defer, postponing resolution, by storing. Thus one generation succeeds another, overwhelmed by things, too much stored, grand resolutions for dispersal, but guilty whatever we do. You know what I mean.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by David Lockwood <a href="http://mysmarthomebusiness.com%22%3ehttp//MySmartHomeBusiness.com%3C/a>. Check out Fast Fan Pages -> http://spiritbank.ffpages.hop.clickbank.net/
Over the course of the last several months, I have been engaged in one of life's unappealing necessities, sorting through dozens and dozens of boxes packed (often years and years ago) with an array of things dubbed too valuable to be thrown away, or at the very least items which deserved another look, later.
Well, "later" has now arrived, and I am engaged in the business of well and truly sorting through each and every one of these stored items, deciding which can now be thrown away, which will be donated to places like Goodwill Industries and The Salvation Army, which ones will be kept... and (here we go again)... which ones will remain in storage,
Today I intend to share with you all my thoughts on this inevitability of life... partly because no one I know will listen to what I have to say on the matter. My friends are tired of providing a willing ear. They are polite but firm: say no more on this matter, or we shall bore you, too, with the ups and downs of our own storage problems... and the garage sales we've had to organize. This threat is sufficient. I shut up.
But you, I hope, will indulge me; at least this once. There is that about sorting things in storage which craves a congenial ear. May I have yours for a bit?
What went into storage.
The plain fact of the matter is that we all, every last one of us, has far too many things. What's worse, since we all have elements of the pack rat about us, not only do we acquire things; we are loathe to sacrifice anything on the off chance that we will need it one day. That's the first problem; we're deluding ourselves. We should all be tougher with ourselves on the matter of what we save. But we cannot. You see, things are evidence that we have passed this way, and we want as many tell-tale markers as possible. Still, the sorting process should begin the day you first think that you require storage.
In my case, I had the usual "good" reasons for resorting to commercial storage facilities. There was, first of all, my mother's possessions. Some of these had a substantial value; others, the sentimental ones, were even more important. These things have been stored for years in California; three thousand miles away from me.
A good friend, probably a saint, helped me pack these items. I was depressed that day; my mother was failing and I just couldn't deal right then with the thought of losing her. Packing boxes was something necessary; it was also therapeutic. But it only postponed the inevitable problem of sorting the items and making irrevocable decisions.
My friend offered to keep these boxes, each one filled with memories, until I decided what to do with all the items. I told my brother and sister what I had and that we should early decide who gets what. But they have mountains of their own things. It wasn't that they didn't want maternal mementoes; they just didn't want them then and trusted me to share when they were ready. I mentioned the matter to my sister the other day and she said, "Not yet".
In the way of these things, the favor my dear friend gave me went from a few weeks.... to years. It was scandalous, I know, to take advantage of her that way; even the frequent presents I sent were inadequate. But she said she didn't mind; she had them in her attic.
Finally I ran out of excuses and said the many boxes could be shipped to me. And so they were. My assistant Aime Joseph and I opened the boxes; he with care, I with trepidation soon confirmed. There was so much... all "important"... every piece needing attention and clarity. The books were the most difficult of all. My mother was an avid reader as I am. Often we read the same book at the same time, a continent between us which meant nothing when we discussed our findings.
I found her volumes of Robert Browning the hardest to deal with. She loved him so... "That's my last duchess painted on the wall, looking as if she were alive." I put this book and many others amongst my working library. I can see the cherished Browning from here.
Unpacked, too, was all her jewelry. I had given much of it, one Christmas, one birthday after another. These items are being kept for my niece Chelsea and nephew Kyle and his wife, when he has one. Chelsea asked if she could take one of the pieces, a jewelled dragonfly, to college. My official reason for declining was the number of light fingered folk in the dormitory and her tendency to be over trusting. But in truth, I wasn't ready to let even that go -- yet.
In fact, as each box was opened, Mr. Joseph would cluck and ask me just where I would put what was in it. Miraculously, we found a home for everything... until the others want some for themselves.
The other, bigger storage project.
The second storage project was arguably even more difficult, for it involved 4 large rooms packed to the ceiling with stuff which I had obviously found significant enough to pay thousands of dollars each year to keep. But enough was enough...
Mr. Joseph and I have been working on this project for months now. There are, after all, thousands of objects to be sorted, including items from every epoch of my life. Each week Mr. Joseph goes to the storage facility and, with his cell phone, he lets me know what's left in the first room, now nearly emptied. Then he brings me the boxes... each one filled with one conundrum after another.
What does one do with one's first suit, worn at age 3, well over half a century again? I can't get rid of it... I just can't. It's hanging in my closet, safe for now.
And the teddy bear that soothed me 6 decades ago? No one, including me I am ashamed to admit, remembers his name; I call him now "The Old Gentleman" and he seems content. Some people no doubt think it odd to see him here, but he and I go back a lifetime, and such bonds must be respected and ensured.
I am more ruthless with my things than with my mother's. Mr. Joseph makes regular deliveries of my books; ten thousand books, perhaps more, given away without a pang.
In the middle of this unceasing project, it occurs to me that, even with great disposals, there is far too much remaining. And if the point of keeping them seems clear to me, it will surely perplex and baffle the folks getting all this. What can "The Old Gentleman" mean to them? I have advised them, in my will, to be ruthless, but I know my flesh and blood. They will be unable to do so, try though they might.
"I can't give away the chairs Uncle Jeffrey wrote his books in... or the typewriter... or the pewter mug his friends engraved for him on his 21 birthday, in Scotland. I just can't."
And so, in due course, I, with the best intentions, will become a puzzle for them... a puzzle which they will defer, postponing resolution, by storing. Thus one generation succeeds another, overwhelmed by things, too much stored, grand resolutions for dispersal, but guilty whatever we do. You know what I mean.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by David Lockwood <a href="http://mysmarthomebusiness.com%22%3ehttp//MySmartHomeBusiness.com%3C/a>. Check out Fast Fan Pages -> http://spiritbank.ffpages.hop.clickbank.net/
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Reflections on Harvard's 360th Commencement, May 26, 2011.
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Today, for the 360th time in its exalted history, a history far older than the republic itself, Harvard will, with all the colorful paraphernalia of the Academy, send a goodly percentage of the brightest young people on earth on their way to kismet.
Some of these people will become heads of state, women too; that is why the address of Her Excellency Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the President of the Republic of Liberia is so important. It proves that even in territories inclement towards women, women may rise high indeed.
Some of these people will head corporations and reap billions, some of which will undoubtedly be given to Harvard in the form of very public generosities.
Some of these people will buck the capitalist trend and found worthy causes of every kind. The world has need for every one of them and the people who give up much, the better able to give more.
Others will rise high in the military, in governments of every nation on earth, in education, science, medicine, the arts... there will even be a movie star or two but, perhaps, no rap musician. Not, however, because Harvard would not welcome one; it would. Rappers, however, may demur; it's a matter of image.... and no people on earth are as stringent about image as they are.
One more category may well appear: terrorist, revolutionary. Harvard does not go out seeking such people, but Harvard has helped shape many such. Red John Reed, Bolshevik, (class of 1910 ) is buried in the Kremlin wall... a signal honor for a gentleman of Crimson. Like so many Harvard graduates he rose high, though this time for a cause most every other Harvard graduate loathed and disdained. John Reed wouldn't have cared about that; Harvard graduates are above such trivia. They know that what they do is important, even if no one else on this planet agrees. This profound conviction is part of what the graduates take away today... you can be sure of it. It is one of the best reasons for the very existence of Harvard.
Many of today's graduates will write about their Harvard experiences; I am one of them. Most will cherish happy memories and say so, fudging the truth on which Harvard prides itself and pruning things not quite happy enough. In truth, their classmates were probably never as bright as they will remember, as bright or as dedicated. The faculty never as welcoming and helpful as they will recall. And the university overall not as profoundly influential. But embroidering your Harvard past is winked at since happy memories beget handsome legacies. And there is no need to remind so many, and in print, too, that their time here was not as sun-kissed as they ardently desire it to be. You were young, vibrant, surrounded by possibilities, and you'd been marked with the most winning brand of all. Under the circumstances, the utmost joy and contentment are understandable; indeed mandatory.
There will be some of course, but just a handful who will write otherwise, telling, years from now, of painful isolation, alienation and the persistent thought that they never were, not for a moment, good enough to have gone to Harvard in the first place, that they were a fluke, a sport of nature. Perhaps. But they will write such sentiments in a ringing style, lyric, too, that shows in its careful refinement and clarity another benefit of a Harvard education.
This day, the most important day in the life of virtually every graduate, save only the day on which they were born, will start early; the ceremony commences in Harvard Yard at 9:45 a.m., but Harvard Square is awash with the camera-totting hours before, even from first light. A sign of the times: persons unable to be present can see it all, and clearer, on the Web. There is not a one who so watches that does not wish to be in Cambridge instead... for all that they see more and better than the audience shaded by the great trees in Tercentenary Theater.
Graduates, at once shy and proud, will move today surrounded by their personal claques, the lucky ones invited to see and venerate. Proud parents, who often dipped deep to make this happen, have been admonished, several times, to be prompt and organized. Graduates have conflicting feelings about these folks. They are grateful, of course, though never as grateful perhaps as they should be. It would not do to slight them, but, this is the last day, the very last day, they can see their classmates and friends, similarly burdened, as they will never be again: present, accounted for, resoundingly young; friends, colleagues, lovers, too. This recognition, this sadness is palpable. The pull of the golden past, slipping away forever, against the dawning future, ardently desired... but not this day. This is why the tears fall today for this must be a bittersweet moment for all. In these precincts the past and future truly collide today, to roil emotions. Parting is indeed such sweet sorrow... and now they truly know it.
It is now just 5 a.m., the dawn of this day of days is nigh. It is a day of memories, memories retrieved, memories born. Parents will recall memories unbeckoned of their beloved graduates and their brief lives. They will have, for themselves alone, moments poignant and keenly felt, the more so if they had, once upon a time, a Harvard Commencement of their own. Then Cambridge becomes the best it can be: an ever- renewing place of reverie and remembrance, a place where you are always welcome, for you are part of what has shaped this special place.
The trickle of early comers, seeking parking spaces more valued than gold, will soon grow into serious traffic. Ladies in hats otherwise known only at weddings and gentlemen in ties they will later shake off as gladly as a noose begin to appear as do the marked men of the day... the sheriff of the county who will ride in on white horse to declare the proceedings open; officials in their always ill-fitting cuttaways and top hats... and of course and always the brightly garbed graduates in mortar boards they never wear quite right. With their gowns a Rosetta Stone clearly indicating just where the graduates have been and where they are going, these players gather together, together to march into the ceremonies where they shall become, so the University's president will pronounce, members of the company of educated men and women.
This is what every graduate has earned... and everyone has come to hear. And it is a marvelous thing, not just for those present but for the entire world, soon to benefit from the skills, dedications,and hard work of this renewed company, the company we all rely upon so much.
Think of these new members of this company today. They have much to accomplish and many lives to touch and improve. We must all be glad they have such a day as this to start them on their way, for they go forward for us all.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by David Lockwood <a href="http://mysmarthomebusiness.com%22%3ehttp//MySmartHomeBusiness.com%3C/a>. Check out Auto Click Profits -> http://www.MySmartHomeBusiness.com/?rd=jf9jhWO1
Today, for the 360th time in its exalted history, a history far older than the republic itself, Harvard will, with all the colorful paraphernalia of the Academy, send a goodly percentage of the brightest young people on earth on their way to kismet.
Some of these people will become heads of state, women too; that is why the address of Her Excellency Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the President of the Republic of Liberia is so important. It proves that even in territories inclement towards women, women may rise high indeed.
Some of these people will head corporations and reap billions, some of which will undoubtedly be given to Harvard in the form of very public generosities.
Some of these people will buck the capitalist trend and found worthy causes of every kind. The world has need for every one of them and the people who give up much, the better able to give more.
Others will rise high in the military, in governments of every nation on earth, in education, science, medicine, the arts... there will even be a movie star or two but, perhaps, no rap musician. Not, however, because Harvard would not welcome one; it would. Rappers, however, may demur; it's a matter of image.... and no people on earth are as stringent about image as they are.
One more category may well appear: terrorist, revolutionary. Harvard does not go out seeking such people, but Harvard has helped shape many such. Red John Reed, Bolshevik, (class of 1910 ) is buried in the Kremlin wall... a signal honor for a gentleman of Crimson. Like so many Harvard graduates he rose high, though this time for a cause most every other Harvard graduate loathed and disdained. John Reed wouldn't have cared about that; Harvard graduates are above such trivia. They know that what they do is important, even if no one else on this planet agrees. This profound conviction is part of what the graduates take away today... you can be sure of it. It is one of the best reasons for the very existence of Harvard.
Many of today's graduates will write about their Harvard experiences; I am one of them. Most will cherish happy memories and say so, fudging the truth on which Harvard prides itself and pruning things not quite happy enough. In truth, their classmates were probably never as bright as they will remember, as bright or as dedicated. The faculty never as welcoming and helpful as they will recall. And the university overall not as profoundly influential. But embroidering your Harvard past is winked at since happy memories beget handsome legacies. And there is no need to remind so many, and in print, too, that their time here was not as sun-kissed as they ardently desire it to be. You were young, vibrant, surrounded by possibilities, and you'd been marked with the most winning brand of all. Under the circumstances, the utmost joy and contentment are understandable; indeed mandatory.
There will be some of course, but just a handful who will write otherwise, telling, years from now, of painful isolation, alienation and the persistent thought that they never were, not for a moment, good enough to have gone to Harvard in the first place, that they were a fluke, a sport of nature. Perhaps. But they will write such sentiments in a ringing style, lyric, too, that shows in its careful refinement and clarity another benefit of a Harvard education.
This day, the most important day in the life of virtually every graduate, save only the day on which they were born, will start early; the ceremony commences in Harvard Yard at 9:45 a.m., but Harvard Square is awash with the camera-totting hours before, even from first light. A sign of the times: persons unable to be present can see it all, and clearer, on the Web. There is not a one who so watches that does not wish to be in Cambridge instead... for all that they see more and better than the audience shaded by the great trees in Tercentenary Theater.
Graduates, at once shy and proud, will move today surrounded by their personal claques, the lucky ones invited to see and venerate. Proud parents, who often dipped deep to make this happen, have been admonished, several times, to be prompt and organized. Graduates have conflicting feelings about these folks. They are grateful, of course, though never as grateful perhaps as they should be. It would not do to slight them, but, this is the last day, the very last day, they can see their classmates and friends, similarly burdened, as they will never be again: present, accounted for, resoundingly young; friends, colleagues, lovers, too. This recognition, this sadness is palpable. The pull of the golden past, slipping away forever, against the dawning future, ardently desired... but not this day. This is why the tears fall today for this must be a bittersweet moment for all. In these precincts the past and future truly collide today, to roil emotions. Parting is indeed such sweet sorrow... and now they truly know it.
It is now just 5 a.m., the dawn of this day of days is nigh. It is a day of memories, memories retrieved, memories born. Parents will recall memories unbeckoned of their beloved graduates and their brief lives. They will have, for themselves alone, moments poignant and keenly felt, the more so if they had, once upon a time, a Harvard Commencement of their own. Then Cambridge becomes the best it can be: an ever- renewing place of reverie and remembrance, a place where you are always welcome, for you are part of what has shaped this special place.
The trickle of early comers, seeking parking spaces more valued than gold, will soon grow into serious traffic. Ladies in hats otherwise known only at weddings and gentlemen in ties they will later shake off as gladly as a noose begin to appear as do the marked men of the day... the sheriff of the county who will ride in on white horse to declare the proceedings open; officials in their always ill-fitting cuttaways and top hats... and of course and always the brightly garbed graduates in mortar boards they never wear quite right. With their gowns a Rosetta Stone clearly indicating just where the graduates have been and where they are going, these players gather together, together to march into the ceremonies where they shall become, so the University's president will pronounce, members of the company of educated men and women.
This is what every graduate has earned... and everyone has come to hear. And it is a marvelous thing, not just for those present but for the entire world, soon to benefit from the skills, dedications,and hard work of this renewed company, the company we all rely upon so much.
Think of these new members of this company today. They have much to accomplish and many lives to touch and improve. We must all be glad they have such a day as this to start them on their way, for they go forward for us all.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by David Lockwood <a href="http://mysmarthomebusiness.com%22%3ehttp//MySmartHomeBusiness.com%3C/a>. Check out Auto Click Profits -> http://www.MySmartHomeBusiness.com/?rd=jf9jhWO1
Wednesday, May 25, 2011
Thoughts on Princeton professor Cornel West and his egregious attack on the president. Does the intellectual really have any ideas?
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
First, the facts.
Just the other day, April 11, 2011, Princeton professor of African-American studies and religion Cornel West managed, in one fast-moving interview with the political blog Truthdig to
* make a series of outrageous, unsubstantiated remarks about his now former friend Barrack Obama, president of these United States,
* act like anything besides the Ivy League social scientist and truth seeker he claims and is supposed to be,
* show that just because you have a fancy title at a fancy institution doesn't necessarily mean you're any better informed than the guys on the street who mouth off without one scintilla of fact,
* prove conclusively that West has aged from being an enfant terrible to being a thin-skinned cry baby, petulant, spoiled, coddled, and an embarrassment to himself and the great institution which, in getting West, clearly got a pig in a poke and may well wonder why they didn't scrutinize longer and better and what it says about their selection process.
Because he is a professionally angry black man, he must always have a Cause (and because causes need to be photogenic and a fountainhead of publicity), these days West has massaged himself into advocate of the poor, clothing himself in moral hauteur and cheap outrage. Yes, when he sees himself in the mirror (no doubt frequently) he sees -- vox populi, and very much, vox dei.
Yes, to listen to West, he's morphed into a protege of Emma Lazarus, maybe la Lazarus herself whose iconic words (written 1883) grace the Statue of Liberty...
"Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free the wretched refuse of your teeming shore send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me".
West seems to think and certainly acts as if that last word, "me", meant him, their self-appointed, self-aggrandizing, tenacious (for now), unyielding (until something better comes along) but never get your hands dirty advocate, thank you very much.
Well-known 18th century British author Dr. Samuel Johnson one April day in 1775, pronounced in his magisterial fashion that "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." Boswell hurriedly wrote it down. I'll update that aphorism here and now for West's benefit: "the poor are the last refuge of the demagogue". ( Remember born-again populist Al Gore and that other glib Southern boy who belatedly discovered the poor, former North Carolina senator John Edwards? Gore ditched his populist mode in favor of things green; Edwards is seeking a berth as a Trappist monk... or any locale that makes women difficult to access while keeping a photograph of wronged ex-wife Elizabeth always at hand.)
It was in this mode of unassailable moral superiority, as one of America's overfed collegiate intellectuals, and a pampered black intellectual at that, that Cornel West mounted his high horse... and made one thing shockingly clear: the intellectual has no ideas, just pettiness, bile, self- pity, and now a social calendar which will no longer feature cozy chats with the president chez 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Oh, my!
"Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad." Euripedes. (485-406 bc)
One may imagine West's state before this now infamous interview. Like a colossus he strode forward, resolute, confident, his mere name a progressive statement, and much beloved too, of callow undergraduates. He would take his bro' Barrack to task in no uncertain terms and so reframe the whole debate on the poor... and keep the president where West wanted him, under his thumb, to be let loose only at the professor's dictate and whim and following a long course of Professor West's approved bromides and idiosyncracies. The gods had, as usual, done their work well...
This then is what esteemed Professor West outrageously said, each word an arrow into himself and any claim he could make, not just to truth, but to common sense and common civility.
Obama is a "black mascot of Wall Street oligarchy and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats". There was more of this red meat, much more:
"I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men... It's understandable. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he's always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He is just as human as I am, but that is his cultural formation."
And still more...
Obama, he said, is "most comfortable with upper middle-class and Jewish men who consider themselves very smart, very savvy and very effective in getting what they want."
Then, after much more of the same, a glimmer of why this is all happening now: our pampered house intellectual has been disrespected:
"I couldn't get a ticket (to the inauguration) with my mother and my brother. I said this is very strange. We drive into the hotel and the guy who picks up my bags from the hotel has a ticket to the inauguration... We had to watch the thing in the hotel."
Of course, lese majeste', not what the majestic West is accustomed to and perhaps the reason for his astonishing words and equally astonishing foolishness. Political sage Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) knew that if you intend to kill the king, make sure you do not just wound the king, for then of a certainty, the king will kill -- you!
This is why, so long as former buddy Barck Obama, remains president, Cornel West will learn why Machiavelli, long dead, is smarter than West, long on words and short on sense. For West is now not only intellectually irrelevant but a dead man, too, by his own hand.
One who no doubt saw this coming is Larry Summers. When he was president of Harvard, he had a celebrated run-in with West, (then on the Harvard faculty) whose friendships and professional relationships are prone to fray as folks come to know the man. Summers, a man of brilliance with his own propensities for self-destruction, rebuked West in 2000 for missing classes and other misdemeanors. But his major criticism was just: West needed to do a major book in keeping with his rank, giving tv talk shows and other trivial pursuits a pass, to concentrate on the really important.
Diva that he is, at this revolting development, West complained high and low; he ranted, he raved, he took umbrage, he played for sympathy. And in due course, he took his leave of Harvard where, to his surprise, a great research institution demanded -- great research, not trite opinions masquerading as undisputed fact.
To the surprise of cognoscenti of such games, Princeton University took West; no doubt they needed his brand of glib inconsequence. Or maybe it's just, as Cambridge folks suspected, that Princeton is a backwater, out of touch with neo-realities. West, from his new tenured perch, did what West always does... he lashed out at Harvard... the hand that had fed him so well for so long. Such ingratitude being one of the things he does best, as in due course Princeton will no doubt discover.
In any event, this tempest in a tea-cup proved at least one thing: Cornel West is irrelevant as he has been for a long time. The black community has grown up; they wanted -- and got -- a president. Such men as West, with only rants and cants became, at the inauguration he wasn't invited to attend, obsolete in an instant. For all his high titles and purported intelligence, it took him a while to figure that out. I suspect he knows it now.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also a historian and author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by David Lockwood <a href="http://mysmarthomebusiness.com%22%3ehttp//MySmartHomeBusiness.com%3C/a>. Check out 20 Minute PayDay -> http://www.MySmartHomeBusiness.com/?rd=sy1EiUf6
First, the facts.
Just the other day, April 11, 2011, Princeton professor of African-American studies and religion Cornel West managed, in one fast-moving interview with the political blog Truthdig to
* make a series of outrageous, unsubstantiated remarks about his now former friend Barrack Obama, president of these United States,
* act like anything besides the Ivy League social scientist and truth seeker he claims and is supposed to be,
* show that just because you have a fancy title at a fancy institution doesn't necessarily mean you're any better informed than the guys on the street who mouth off without one scintilla of fact,
* prove conclusively that West has aged from being an enfant terrible to being a thin-skinned cry baby, petulant, spoiled, coddled, and an embarrassment to himself and the great institution which, in getting West, clearly got a pig in a poke and may well wonder why they didn't scrutinize longer and better and what it says about their selection process.
Because he is a professionally angry black man, he must always have a Cause (and because causes need to be photogenic and a fountainhead of publicity), these days West has massaged himself into advocate of the poor, clothing himself in moral hauteur and cheap outrage. Yes, when he sees himself in the mirror (no doubt frequently) he sees -- vox populi, and very much, vox dei.
Yes, to listen to West, he's morphed into a protege of Emma Lazarus, maybe la Lazarus herself whose iconic words (written 1883) grace the Statue of Liberty...
"Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free the wretched refuse of your teeming shore send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me".
West seems to think and certainly acts as if that last word, "me", meant him, their self-appointed, self-aggrandizing, tenacious (for now), unyielding (until something better comes along) but never get your hands dirty advocate, thank you very much.
Well-known 18th century British author Dr. Samuel Johnson one April day in 1775, pronounced in his magisterial fashion that "patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." Boswell hurriedly wrote it down. I'll update that aphorism here and now for West's benefit: "the poor are the last refuge of the demagogue". ( Remember born-again populist Al Gore and that other glib Southern boy who belatedly discovered the poor, former North Carolina senator John Edwards? Gore ditched his populist mode in favor of things green; Edwards is seeking a berth as a Trappist monk... or any locale that makes women difficult to access while keeping a photograph of wronged ex-wife Elizabeth always at hand.)
It was in this mode of unassailable moral superiority, as one of America's overfed collegiate intellectuals, and a pampered black intellectual at that, that Cornel West mounted his high horse... and made one thing shockingly clear: the intellectual has no ideas, just pettiness, bile, self- pity, and now a social calendar which will no longer feature cozy chats with the president chez 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Oh, my!
"Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad." Euripedes. (485-406 bc)
One may imagine West's state before this now infamous interview. Like a colossus he strode forward, resolute, confident, his mere name a progressive statement, and much beloved too, of callow undergraduates. He would take his bro' Barrack to task in no uncertain terms and so reframe the whole debate on the poor... and keep the president where West wanted him, under his thumb, to be let loose only at the professor's dictate and whim and following a long course of Professor West's approved bromides and idiosyncracies. The gods had, as usual, done their work well...
This then is what esteemed Professor West outrageously said, each word an arrow into himself and any claim he could make, not just to truth, but to common sense and common civility.
Obama is a "black mascot of Wall Street oligarchy and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats". There was more of this red meat, much more:
"I think my dear brother Barack Obama has a certain fear of free black men... It's understandable. As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he's always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He is just as human as I am, but that is his cultural formation."
And still more...
Obama, he said, is "most comfortable with upper middle-class and Jewish men who consider themselves very smart, very savvy and very effective in getting what they want."
Then, after much more of the same, a glimmer of why this is all happening now: our pampered house intellectual has been disrespected:
"I couldn't get a ticket (to the inauguration) with my mother and my brother. I said this is very strange. We drive into the hotel and the guy who picks up my bags from the hotel has a ticket to the inauguration... We had to watch the thing in the hotel."
Of course, lese majeste', not what the majestic West is accustomed to and perhaps the reason for his astonishing words and equally astonishing foolishness. Political sage Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527) knew that if you intend to kill the king, make sure you do not just wound the king, for then of a certainty, the king will kill -- you!
This is why, so long as former buddy Barck Obama, remains president, Cornel West will learn why Machiavelli, long dead, is smarter than West, long on words and short on sense. For West is now not only intellectually irrelevant but a dead man, too, by his own hand.
One who no doubt saw this coming is Larry Summers. When he was president of Harvard, he had a celebrated run-in with West, (then on the Harvard faculty) whose friendships and professional relationships are prone to fray as folks come to know the man. Summers, a man of brilliance with his own propensities for self-destruction, rebuked West in 2000 for missing classes and other misdemeanors. But his major criticism was just: West needed to do a major book in keeping with his rank, giving tv talk shows and other trivial pursuits a pass, to concentrate on the really important.
Diva that he is, at this revolting development, West complained high and low; he ranted, he raved, he took umbrage, he played for sympathy. And in due course, he took his leave of Harvard where, to his surprise, a great research institution demanded -- great research, not trite opinions masquerading as undisputed fact.
To the surprise of cognoscenti of such games, Princeton University took West; no doubt they needed his brand of glib inconsequence. Or maybe it's just, as Cambridge folks suspected, that Princeton is a backwater, out of touch with neo-realities. West, from his new tenured perch, did what West always does... he lashed out at Harvard... the hand that had fed him so well for so long. Such ingratitude being one of the things he does best, as in due course Princeton will no doubt discover.
In any event, this tempest in a tea-cup proved at least one thing: Cornel West is irrelevant as he has been for a long time. The black community has grown up; they wanted -- and got -- a president. Such men as West, with only rants and cants became, at the inauguration he wasn't invited to attend, obsolete in an instant. For all his high titles and purported intelligence, it took him a while to figure that out. I suspect he knows it now.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also a historian and author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by David Lockwood <a href="http://mysmarthomebusiness.com%22%3ehttp//MySmartHomeBusiness.com%3C/a>. Check out 20 Minute PayDay -> http://www.MySmartHomeBusiness.com/?rd=sy1EiUf6
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Freshet. 3: 59 a.m. Eastern time. 65 degrees Fahrenheit. Wind SW at 11 mph.Humidity 90%. May 24, 2011.
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
I was scheduled to write quite a different thing today from this, but when the shutters blew in and snapped against the glass with cannot-be-denied insistence, making me at once startled and alert, I knew another force, call it Nature, call it Aeolus, Greek ruler of the winds; call it anything you care to... but certainly, a greater force than I was demanding, loudly too, my complete attention. I gave it.
The air was pregnant with liquidity; the rain had pelted in the night, the ground now etched with the evidence of freshets as they danced to the sea, happy for their journey, kissing the land to bring forth the luxuries of fruit and flowers; the necessities of grain and every nutrient.
Even the least observant could tell, there was something lush about the air and its caresses, somehow reminding one of some tropical destination so fetching on fly blown papers in travel agencies... a destination you save to visit then find deeply disappointing upon going, though you'd die than ever admit it. (And never to those who have hung upon your not quite honest tales.)
The air was thick, wet, heavy... not at all oppressive, completely comforting. You feel somehow even the most rigid task master ever conceived would (you are sure) pardon the venal sin of laying abed this day, such sloth spurring no guilt at all but pronounced self-satisfaction that you have lived to feel such a day as this, and at an early hour, too.
Freshet, you think well of yourself for remembering this word, so apt, moribund now, the careless work of generations wanting more and more communication, but killing the words that make it all possible.
Freshet. You were 16 or 17 the year freshet ceased to be a factoid unknown to you one minute and became instead the embodiment of good habits and certain success, bet on it.
Flash cards
Prestigious colleges were competitive then... but not as sharply so as now. Some sage counselor (perhaps even me) had recommended improving vocabulary (so very pertinent) by copying words from the dictionary and becoming a presence in constant motion and cogitation, thus
(flash card side 1) freshet, n.
(flash card side 2) rush of fresh water flowing into the sea.
New words added, new words mastered, and a wonderful way to torment parents and relations, one irritating but beyond punishment.
"Jeffrey, take out the garbage!"
But the-best-mother-in-the world quickly learned the inevitable response.
"Mom, I can't now. I'm working on my flash cards."
It was unanswerable... and one took pride in one's skill, for developing another useful talent, sure to come in handy with the she-who-must-be-obeyed certain to make her inevitable appearance in due course.
My parents never captured and reduced this irksome citadel, though on one memorable day, things reached a Crisis... and in front of Dwight David Eisenshower, too, his high and mighty duties at an end, shedding his celebrity and sharing his elder statesman years as grand marshal of a vastly honored Tournament of Roses, one new year's day.
Eisenhower brought his international renown and grandfatherly assurances. I brought my flash cards. The forces were nicely matched.
My father, a serving sailor in World War II, venerated Eisenhower (as who did not at that day's splendid Rose Parade?) as the leader of freedom's army, our bulwark for goodness, the American Way, and the values and virtues of the great heartland of the nation where "I like Ike" was not merely a motto but an irrefutable mantra.
My father had moved mountains to ensure that his family sat so close to the former president we could see, quite clearly too, every move he made; had we been lip readers not a single word he uttered would have gone unknown. Alas, we did not have that skill.
Soon, however, it was time to turn our attention from the casual conversation of a legend to the day's truly important business, the football game. But I never thought that sport or any sport, no matter how agilely played, nearly as exciting as a single word of our word-blessed language... for a football player may move a ball... but a single word can move the world and the path of humanity.
Now as the teams kicked, ran, shouted, huddled, and caressed each other every now and again, I sat immersed in my flash cards, scarcely looking up. I think this day I brought the Latin flash cards. These were store bought, unlike the English language cards; I had several other sets for different subject areas, too. Eisenhower, the great magistrate of a great republic, surely would understand my priorities; preferring stern duty over mere recreation. Thus, I had no difficulty rationalizing my choice.
After all (though I didn't know it then), Eisenhower himself had given up the great love of his life and the divorce from Mamie, because his friend and commander General George Marshall reminded him in no uncertain terms of where his duty lay and the heavy price the republic would pay losing him, as it would should he choose love. Perhaps the general was reminded of his chere amie that day. It might easily happen...
In any event, I soon became aware that my football crazed father was casting glances my way packed with aspersions and the promise of Serious Words, even a Lecture. I knew the harbinger's signs...
And soon came the preliminary salvo, along these lines etched in memory:
"Jeffrey Ladd...!" The exasperated tone.
Sotto voce to the stranger sitting next to him, "my son the intellectual..." Eyes skyward, touch of theatrics.
And then, not right away perhaps but as sure as sun, "Jeffrey, I am NEVER going to take you to a football game again."
And so he delivered the coup de grace... that made me grateful then, and laugh today; to be deprived for life of a thing both onerous and dull, the better to arrange my legions of words, to play the most interesting game of all, the one you play within the world without walls, your own head.
But while I exulted then, for I was free! Free! I little knew or comprehended the pain this gave my father or the fact he thought such sentence meaningful, when I did not. The sad fact is, getting my way through disappointing my father cut one avenue producing shared experiences... and I regret this now as only an adult of some wisdom and insight can... and hardly an adolescent since the dawn of creation is equipped to handle.
It all came pouring out early this morning at the moment when the night hangs on for dear life because it knows so well its time is nigh... and that this night is about to be gone forever, replaced by a new day, fresh-as-paint, not content to wait a moment; pushing the old aside without compunction or regret.
One strong breeze so laden with moisture you could wring it out like a towel; one rap of the shutters on the glass... and the freshets of memory run strong and true to the immemorial sea, never stopping, always replenishing. Let them run as they will... and be thankful.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc. providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by David Lockwood <a href="http://mysmarthomebusiness.com%22%3ehttp//MySmartHomeBusiness.com%3C/a>. Check out Auto Click Profits -> http://www.MySmartHomeBusiness.com/?rd=jf9jhWO1
I was scheduled to write quite a different thing today from this, but when the shutters blew in and snapped against the glass with cannot-be-denied insistence, making me at once startled and alert, I knew another force, call it Nature, call it Aeolus, Greek ruler of the winds; call it anything you care to... but certainly, a greater force than I was demanding, loudly too, my complete attention. I gave it.
The air was pregnant with liquidity; the rain had pelted in the night, the ground now etched with the evidence of freshets as they danced to the sea, happy for their journey, kissing the land to bring forth the luxuries of fruit and flowers; the necessities of grain and every nutrient.
Even the least observant could tell, there was something lush about the air and its caresses, somehow reminding one of some tropical destination so fetching on fly blown papers in travel agencies... a destination you save to visit then find deeply disappointing upon going, though you'd die than ever admit it. (And never to those who have hung upon your not quite honest tales.)
The air was thick, wet, heavy... not at all oppressive, completely comforting. You feel somehow even the most rigid task master ever conceived would (you are sure) pardon the venal sin of laying abed this day, such sloth spurring no guilt at all but pronounced self-satisfaction that you have lived to feel such a day as this, and at an early hour, too.
Freshet, you think well of yourself for remembering this word, so apt, moribund now, the careless work of generations wanting more and more communication, but killing the words that make it all possible.
Freshet. You were 16 or 17 the year freshet ceased to be a factoid unknown to you one minute and became instead the embodiment of good habits and certain success, bet on it.
Flash cards
Prestigious colleges were competitive then... but not as sharply so as now. Some sage counselor (perhaps even me) had recommended improving vocabulary (so very pertinent) by copying words from the dictionary and becoming a presence in constant motion and cogitation, thus
(flash card side 1) freshet, n.
(flash card side 2) rush of fresh water flowing into the sea.
New words added, new words mastered, and a wonderful way to torment parents and relations, one irritating but beyond punishment.
"Jeffrey, take out the garbage!"
But the-best-mother-in-the world quickly learned the inevitable response.
"Mom, I can't now. I'm working on my flash cards."
It was unanswerable... and one took pride in one's skill, for developing another useful talent, sure to come in handy with the she-who-must-be-obeyed certain to make her inevitable appearance in due course.
My parents never captured and reduced this irksome citadel, though on one memorable day, things reached a Crisis... and in front of Dwight David Eisenshower, too, his high and mighty duties at an end, shedding his celebrity and sharing his elder statesman years as grand marshal of a vastly honored Tournament of Roses, one new year's day.
Eisenhower brought his international renown and grandfatherly assurances. I brought my flash cards. The forces were nicely matched.
My father, a serving sailor in World War II, venerated Eisenhower (as who did not at that day's splendid Rose Parade?) as the leader of freedom's army, our bulwark for goodness, the American Way, and the values and virtues of the great heartland of the nation where "I like Ike" was not merely a motto but an irrefutable mantra.
My father had moved mountains to ensure that his family sat so close to the former president we could see, quite clearly too, every move he made; had we been lip readers not a single word he uttered would have gone unknown. Alas, we did not have that skill.
Soon, however, it was time to turn our attention from the casual conversation of a legend to the day's truly important business, the football game. But I never thought that sport or any sport, no matter how agilely played, nearly as exciting as a single word of our word-blessed language... for a football player may move a ball... but a single word can move the world and the path of humanity.
Now as the teams kicked, ran, shouted, huddled, and caressed each other every now and again, I sat immersed in my flash cards, scarcely looking up. I think this day I brought the Latin flash cards. These were store bought, unlike the English language cards; I had several other sets for different subject areas, too. Eisenhower, the great magistrate of a great republic, surely would understand my priorities; preferring stern duty over mere recreation. Thus, I had no difficulty rationalizing my choice.
After all (though I didn't know it then), Eisenhower himself had given up the great love of his life and the divorce from Mamie, because his friend and commander General George Marshall reminded him in no uncertain terms of where his duty lay and the heavy price the republic would pay losing him, as it would should he choose love. Perhaps the general was reminded of his chere amie that day. It might easily happen...
In any event, I soon became aware that my football crazed father was casting glances my way packed with aspersions and the promise of Serious Words, even a Lecture. I knew the harbinger's signs...
And soon came the preliminary salvo, along these lines etched in memory:
"Jeffrey Ladd...!" The exasperated tone.
Sotto voce to the stranger sitting next to him, "my son the intellectual..." Eyes skyward, touch of theatrics.
And then, not right away perhaps but as sure as sun, "Jeffrey, I am NEVER going to take you to a football game again."
And so he delivered the coup de grace... that made me grateful then, and laugh today; to be deprived for life of a thing both onerous and dull, the better to arrange my legions of words, to play the most interesting game of all, the one you play within the world without walls, your own head.
But while I exulted then, for I was free! Free! I little knew or comprehended the pain this gave my father or the fact he thought such sentence meaningful, when I did not. The sad fact is, getting my way through disappointing my father cut one avenue producing shared experiences... and I regret this now as only an adult of some wisdom and insight can... and hardly an adolescent since the dawn of creation is equipped to handle.
It all came pouring out early this morning at the moment when the night hangs on for dear life because it knows so well its time is nigh... and that this night is about to be gone forever, replaced by a new day, fresh-as-paint, not content to wait a moment; pushing the old aside without compunction or regret.
One strong breeze so laden with moisture you could wring it out like a towel; one rap of the shutters on the glass... and the freshets of memory run strong and true to the immemorial sea, never stopping, always replenishing. Let them run as they will... and be thankful.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc. providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by David Lockwood <a href="http://mysmarthomebusiness.com%22%3ehttp//MySmartHomeBusiness.com%3C/a>. Check out Auto Click Profits -> http://www.MySmartHomeBusiness.com/?rd=jf9jhWO1
How to research and write the cleanest, clearest, most persuasive blog copy on earth -- fast, too!
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Millions of people worldwide are waking up to the fact that they are going to have a blog -- no ifs, ands, or buts. That a blog -- a personal marketing and communications device -- is no longer a luxury. If you expect to stay on the cutting edge of the 'net, you're going to be a blog publisher, or else.
If you've accepted this fact, you're on the right road. If you haven't, you're already a dinosaur... but let's, for purposes of today's discussion, suppose that you have decided to produce a blog... and want the results to be superb, meaning to create a blog that's timely, well-written, persuasive and that delivers the cash, too.
Here are some key recommendations to produce this necessary result:
1) The most effective blogs are published on a regular, announced schedule, not just when you feel like it.
This point should need no discussion... but it does. One of the major problems I see in my work with blog publishers (I write their articles for them) is that these folks still see the business of blogging as something casual, episodic, to be done when and if they have the time.
Whoa!
That's completely wrong. Blogs, like every other periodical on earth, must have a regular date and time they will be written and released This gives your readers something solid to hold on to, to look forward to. You want your readers to know that you are a person of deadlines and schedules; someone they can rely on.
Stop thinking of your blog as something you can do whenever you feel like it, catch as catch can. Is this how you want your customers, your readers to see you? Not if you value their business.
2) Resolve to say Something Important in every issue of your blog.
When you see most blogs, you have to wonder why their "publishers" ever got out of bed to do them. Trivia! Drivel! Published so that their publishers can say they have a blog... rather than to say something timely! Significant! Motivating!
Now hear this: if you're one of these myopic blogsters, you're sabotaging your success. Blogs work because they deliver useful information that informs, persuades, excites and enthuses your readers... just the way all great publishers have from the very first day of the very first publisher.
Publishers present stories that lift up the readers.... and do everything in their power to create, develop, and maintain the crucial link between publisher and reader, creating prosperity for both.
3) Create the all-important blog article idea file.
Visit my office in Cambridge, Massachusetts ,and you see an assembly line for the creation of intellectual property. The first crucial link in this production process is the article idea file. It's a must.
Start with a pair of good scissors and the most important newspaper in your area. Supplement this material with the most important newspaper(s) in your country. Add other specialty publications to this list, publications which follow developments in your given field.
Go through these publications regularly and cut out articles that contain information of value and interest to your readers. Make sure every one of these articles is dated... then file for future use. As you become more and more proficient at your essential blog business, you will realize the crucial significance of this article "compost heap"... and you will make it a key part of your day to add to it by wielding your scissors and cutting out the crucial story ideas and information you need.
4) Each Monday, brainstorm the articles you will need for the week.
Post your draft titles and the date you intend to do them. Remember, your blog should have a format; your articles should fit into this format. My articles, for instance, (including this one) are 3 single-spaced pages in length, about 1,500 words. A lively, timely article of this length and substance anchors your blog and gives it "heft", the feeling of importance and "must read" value.
5) Do a subject search in the major search engines.
To gather necessary background information and to see what others may have said on the topic, use the search engines assiduously. This is vital. Search engines not only post critical information on any given topic, but tell you when this information was posted. In tracking a developing story, such data are vital.
6) Always, always, always search Wikipedia (founded 2001).
Frankly, for blog publishers and researchers of every kind, Wikipedia takes the cake. As a very active blog content writer, I can confirm that I visit it every single day, and not once either. You will, too -- if you want your articles to be informative, grounded by fact and not just your opinions.
7) Write your article copy.
Articles,as noted above, should be of a particular length and format, just like various departments in other publications. These should be written in the second person ("you").
Paragraphs should be limited to 6-8 lines for easy readability; line length should be limited to 10-14 words, again for easy reading. If you bury your readers under a mountain of intimidating text, they will repay your efforts by.. skipping the arduous task you have assigned them.
8) Edit, proofread, post.
Your blog copy production line should chugging along nicely at this point. Now's the time to polish with the finishing touches that transform a good article into a great one.
Read your article aloud. This will help you determine whether your sentences are balanced, or not; your construction difficult to comprehend, or mellifluous.
Make sure you have checked your spelling and any facts of which you're uncertain. Proofreading is a must for your credibility and the value of what you've written and will present to the world.
To conclude the production process, post the article on your website and in your blog. You are not merely a blog publisher, you are, better, a publisher, part of the great tradition. Enjoy a moment of joyful reverie, but only a minute. After all, your next deadline already looms, and you must and shall be ready.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc. providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is happy to give all readers, 50,00 free guaranteed visitors for attending his live webcast today. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by David Lockwood <a href="http://mysmarthomebusiness.com%22%3ehttp//MySmartHomeBusiness.com%3C/a>.
Millions of people worldwide are waking up to the fact that they are going to have a blog -- no ifs, ands, or buts. That a blog -- a personal marketing and communications device -- is no longer a luxury. If you expect to stay on the cutting edge of the 'net, you're going to be a blog publisher, or else.
If you've accepted this fact, you're on the right road. If you haven't, you're already a dinosaur... but let's, for purposes of today's discussion, suppose that you have decided to produce a blog... and want the results to be superb, meaning to create a blog that's timely, well-written, persuasive and that delivers the cash, too.
Here are some key recommendations to produce this necessary result:
1) The most effective blogs are published on a regular, announced schedule, not just when you feel like it.
This point should need no discussion... but it does. One of the major problems I see in my work with blog publishers (I write their articles for them) is that these folks still see the business of blogging as something casual, episodic, to be done when and if they have the time.
Whoa!
That's completely wrong. Blogs, like every other periodical on earth, must have a regular date and time they will be written and released This gives your readers something solid to hold on to, to look forward to. You want your readers to know that you are a person of deadlines and schedules; someone they can rely on.
Stop thinking of your blog as something you can do whenever you feel like it, catch as catch can. Is this how you want your customers, your readers to see you? Not if you value their business.
2) Resolve to say Something Important in every issue of your blog.
When you see most blogs, you have to wonder why their "publishers" ever got out of bed to do them. Trivia! Drivel! Published so that their publishers can say they have a blog... rather than to say something timely! Significant! Motivating!
Now hear this: if you're one of these myopic blogsters, you're sabotaging your success. Blogs work because they deliver useful information that informs, persuades, excites and enthuses your readers... just the way all great publishers have from the very first day of the very first publisher.
Publishers present stories that lift up the readers.... and do everything in their power to create, develop, and maintain the crucial link between publisher and reader, creating prosperity for both.
3) Create the all-important blog article idea file.
Visit my office in Cambridge, Massachusetts ,and you see an assembly line for the creation of intellectual property. The first crucial link in this production process is the article idea file. It's a must.
Start with a pair of good scissors and the most important newspaper in your area. Supplement this material with the most important newspaper(s) in your country. Add other specialty publications to this list, publications which follow developments in your given field.
Go through these publications regularly and cut out articles that contain information of value and interest to your readers. Make sure every one of these articles is dated... then file for future use. As you become more and more proficient at your essential blog business, you will realize the crucial significance of this article "compost heap"... and you will make it a key part of your day to add to it by wielding your scissors and cutting out the crucial story ideas and information you need.
4) Each Monday, brainstorm the articles you will need for the week.
Post your draft titles and the date you intend to do them. Remember, your blog should have a format; your articles should fit into this format. My articles, for instance, (including this one) are 3 single-spaced pages in length, about 1,500 words. A lively, timely article of this length and substance anchors your blog and gives it "heft", the feeling of importance and "must read" value.
5) Do a subject search in the major search engines.
To gather necessary background information and to see what others may have said on the topic, use the search engines assiduously. This is vital. Search engines not only post critical information on any given topic, but tell you when this information was posted. In tracking a developing story, such data are vital.
6) Always, always, always search Wikipedia (founded 2001).
Frankly, for blog publishers and researchers of every kind, Wikipedia takes the cake. As a very active blog content writer, I can confirm that I visit it every single day, and not once either. You will, too -- if you want your articles to be informative, grounded by fact and not just your opinions.
7) Write your article copy.
Articles,as noted above, should be of a particular length and format, just like various departments in other publications. These should be written in the second person ("you").
Paragraphs should be limited to 6-8 lines for easy readability; line length should be limited to 10-14 words, again for easy reading. If you bury your readers under a mountain of intimidating text, they will repay your efforts by.. skipping the arduous task you have assigned them.
8) Edit, proofread, post.
Your blog copy production line should chugging along nicely at this point. Now's the time to polish with the finishing touches that transform a good article into a great one.
Read your article aloud. This will help you determine whether your sentences are balanced, or not; your construction difficult to comprehend, or mellifluous.
Make sure you have checked your spelling and any facts of which you're uncertain. Proofreading is a must for your credibility and the value of what you've written and will present to the world.
To conclude the production process, post the article on your website and in your blog. You are not merely a blog publisher, you are, better, a publisher, part of the great tradition. Enjoy a moment of joyful reverie, but only a minute. After all, your next deadline already looms, and you must and shall be ready.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc. providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is happy to give all readers, 50,00 free guaranteed visitors for attending his live webcast today. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by David Lockwood <a href="http://mysmarthomebusiness.com%22%3ehttp//MySmartHomeBusiness.com%3C/a>.
Top 25 Search Engine Optimization Companies
The Internet is filled with so-called marketing experts and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) agencies. It's a speeding train in a changing marketplace. Some agencies have kept up to the times by integrating social media strategies, others haven't.
The SEO world has evolved rapidly in recent years with social media quickly gaining a much stronger foothold than most experts originally thought. Social media was once believed to be a waste of time by many, SEO experts now realize the power of social media to reach new markets and generate new revenue opportunities. Paid search and mobile applications cannot be ignored and have changed the SEO landscape. It's a relatively new field of expertise constantly in flux. As experts learn more clever ways to improve site ranking, the major search engines react by updating their indexing procedures. Just recently Google announced major changes to how they index sites in direct response to what they call content-farms that create skewed search results.
Here is a compiled a list of 25 Search Engine Optimization Agencies who will create and manage your SEO campaigns.
Spend some time at these sites, you will learn a lot and can make a comparative analysis.
1. WeBuildPages.com
2. SEO.com
3. bluegrass.com
4. fathomseo.com
5. OrangeSoda.com
6. icrossing.com
7. 360i.com
8. SEOLogic.com
9. Blurbpoint.com
10. SEOInc.com
11. MainStreetHost.com
12. crexendo.com
13. bestrank.com
14. vastvision.com
15. iProspect.com
16. ThinkBigSites.com
17. ThesearchAgency.com
18 BigMouthMedia.com
19 7Strategy.com
20. evisibility.com
21. 97thfloor.com
22. FreshRank.com
23. PrimeVisibility.com
24. 1stonthelist.ca
25. slingshotseo.com
SEO is not a task for the faint of heart. It takes time, money and a lot of patience to build a successful SEO campaign. Large companies hire staff just to create online content for social media sites.
For those of you without deep pockets, there are a number of do-it yourself software programs many of which are used by professional SEO companies. If you have the desire and time to learn, you can create and manage your own SEO campaigns. Training companies like Worldprofit Inc., offer software, guided instruction with live and video training on SEO and other online business strategies. With access to the best resources, you can get really good at it for your business purposes, then offer these services as a consultant. SEO experts and Social Media Content Managers are and will continue to be a highly paid profession.
About the Author:
Sandi Hunter is the Director of Website Development at Worldprofit Inc., where small and home-based businesses learn how to profit online. The company offers a free Associate membership. Republished with author's permission by David Lockwood <a href="http://mysmarthomebusiness.com%22%3ehttp//MySmartHomeBusiness.com%3C/a>. Check out Commission Maniac -> http://www.MySmartHomeBusiness.com/?rd=gr6etZka
The SEO world has evolved rapidly in recent years with social media quickly gaining a much stronger foothold than most experts originally thought. Social media was once believed to be a waste of time by many, SEO experts now realize the power of social media to reach new markets and generate new revenue opportunities. Paid search and mobile applications cannot be ignored and have changed the SEO landscape. It's a relatively new field of expertise constantly in flux. As experts learn more clever ways to improve site ranking, the major search engines react by updating their indexing procedures. Just recently Google announced major changes to how they index sites in direct response to what they call content-farms that create skewed search results.
Here is a compiled a list of 25 Search Engine Optimization Agencies who will create and manage your SEO campaigns.
Spend some time at these sites, you will learn a lot and can make a comparative analysis.
1. WeBuildPages.com
2. SEO.com
3. bluegrass.com
4. fathomseo.com
5. OrangeSoda.com
6. icrossing.com
7. 360i.com
8. SEOLogic.com
9. Blurbpoint.com
10. SEOInc.com
11. MainStreetHost.com
12. crexendo.com
13. bestrank.com
14. vastvision.com
15. iProspect.com
16. ThinkBigSites.com
17. ThesearchAgency.com
18 BigMouthMedia.com
19 7Strategy.com
20. evisibility.com
21. 97thfloor.com
22. FreshRank.com
23. PrimeVisibility.com
24. 1stonthelist.ca
25. slingshotseo.com
SEO is not a task for the faint of heart. It takes time, money and a lot of patience to build a successful SEO campaign. Large companies hire staff just to create online content for social media sites.
For those of you without deep pockets, there are a number of do-it yourself software programs many of which are used by professional SEO companies. If you have the desire and time to learn, you can create and manage your own SEO campaigns. Training companies like Worldprofit Inc., offer software, guided instruction with live and video training on SEO and other online business strategies. With access to the best resources, you can get really good at it for your business purposes, then offer these services as a consultant. SEO experts and Social Media Content Managers are and will continue to be a highly paid profession.
About the Author:
Sandi Hunter is the Director of Website Development at Worldprofit Inc., where small and home-based businesses learn how to profit online. The company offers a free Associate membership. Republished with author's permission by David Lockwood <a href="http://mysmarthomebusiness.com%22%3ehttp//MySmartHomeBusiness.com%3C/a>. Check out Commission Maniac -> http://www.MySmartHomeBusiness.com/?rd=gr6etZka
Monday, May 23, 2011
Republican faithful near despair at their plethora of ho-hum candidates who have underwhelmed America. It's time to prune to get serious!
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Many years ago Nancy Saunders, one of England's celebrated gardeners, informed me in no uncertain terms of one of the essential conditions for horticultural success: prune, prune, ruthlessly prune. Find the little buds and, ruthlessly, cut them off, focusing on just one bud, the bud you have selected for greatness. A house full of gardening awards great and small, local and international, testified to the lady's insights and no-nonsense approach to a stunning garden and a reputation as diva, sorceress, sculpter of beauty, impatient with anything other than the eye-catching and important.
The Grand Old Party could learn a lot from Ms. Saunders and her stringent regimen for success.
Politically alert Americans, particularly Republicans, have watched with growing dismay, chagrin and (let's be honest) complete fascination as the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Reagan, titans all, revered by the nation, has become the Pee Wee league of presidential candidates -- and this despite stunning electoral success in 2010 and a Democratic incumbent who has failed, so far, to gain the affection of the nation and portray himself as more than the necessary evil.
In fact, there has never been (since its founding in 1856) so many GOP candidates for president with at least some (no matter how attenuated) claim to plausibility. Even in the days of brokered conventions with "favorite son" candidates given nomination just to impress the folks in Paducah, such lavish numbers were rare indeed.
Surely, the GOP should be glad that it has so many potential presidents at hand, but if you recall Nancy Saunder's stern admonition about how to produce gorgeous flowers -- prune, prune, prune -- you get the message that too many candidates produces weakness, not strength and is a sign that the party that believes America is safe when and only when it governs has lost its way, becoming rivulets, not the great river it has so often been.
This situation has produced torpor, procrastination, and a growing sense that the GOP is not up to the necessities for governing a great land beset by high and serious problems, and economic muddle.
The biggest most Republican donors are, in unprecedented numbers, sitting on the sideline, listless, uninspired, concerned. Fully 45 percent of Republican voters (as per a May, 2011 Associated Press poll) are dissatisfied with their presidential candidates, a figure that is growing, not diminishing.
Democrats, of course, are not-so-secretly thrilled by a scenario which already shows them far ahead in fund raising; (President Obama has made it clear he'll raise a billion dollars or more to keep the White House as his house), with GOP fissures now causing some of the donkey ilk to speak, not too loudly just now, of land slides and electoral college pulverization. Early days to be sure... but the possible is there, oh yes it is. It is unseemly for Democrats to be so exultant so early... but they are.
For Republicans to counter this political "Happy Days", they must Saunderize, at once, with a will, ruthlessly... for a chance to produce a winning candidate. Humbly, since no one of significance in the Grand Old Party has stepped forward with garden shears and elimination list, I present myself accordingly. Without any expectation of power, privilege, patronage, or even gratitude, I am here to save the party, its chances for victory, and its (as yet) not obvious presidential candidate.
In the next few minutes, I intend, with a few deft moves, to change all that.
These Republican candidates (declared or still ruminating) are a bad joke:
Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives
Ron Paul, Congressman from Texas.
Michelle Bachmann, Congresswomen from Minnesota.
Rick Santorum, former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania.
Rudy Giuliani, former Mayor of New York City.
Sarah Palin, former Governor of Alaska.
Buddy Roemer, former Governor of Louisiana.
Herman Cain, Godfather's Pizza executive and Georgia talk show host. (An expert on three cheeses, but anything else?)
The unanswerable reasons for eliminating this drab, unappealing crew of Tweedle Dees and Tweedle Dumbs? Not one of them alone, or all of them together, have one ounce of charisma and the kind of fundamental popular appeal a winning presidential candidate must have. None is even remotely a household name (or done the exceptional to deserve it); some are so threadbare (Santorum) that they didn't merely retire from public office; they were booted out by local voters presumably the most knowledgeable about them.
In short, these are the Morgan Memorial, the Salvation Army candidates, colorless, spent, yawn making, infuriating... their highest potential service to the party to be placed as vice president on a sure-to-lose ticket.
Nice guys... too early.
Tim Pawlenty, former Governor of Minnesota.
Bruce Johnson, former Governor of New Mexico.
Jon Huntsman, former Governor of Utah. These three have legs... but they are too short and undeveloped just now for the Oval Office. They should be planning to emerge, not now, but as the most beautiful, fascinating candidates of 2016. Needless to say, each will disagree vehemently with my patriotic assessment and so, like Pawlenty, build candidacies on the irrelevant details of personal resume. ("I was born in the meat packing town of South St. Paul; my father was a truck driver.") Stop it, stop it at once!
Some who were in or contemplating, now (gratefully) out.
Haley Barbour, Governor of Mississippi.
Mike Huckabee, former Governor of Arkansas.
Donald Trump, billionaire enfant terrible.
John Thune, U.S. Senator from South Dakota.
Mitch Daniels, Governor of Indiana.
We owe them profuse thanks and appreciation for reading the tea-leaves early and right; no one wanted them for any reason and certainly not for president.
What's left? Just one.
Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts, though capable of denying it, stiff, austere, little loved, policy wonk, 100% committed to becoming president, doing whatever he must.
Romney may very well be the eventual nominee, but he must learn how to rouse America and make us not only think well of ourselves... but do well, too, a surgent nation again.
No one from this huge field of candidates has been able to do this and make themselves seem the inevitable resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And that's why Republicans of every stripe are becoming increasingly desperate, tossing even more names in the hat. They should instead solve the problem as Nancy Saunders would: prune, prune, prune. Then focus on turning the last bud into something glorious, historic, larger-than-life. For whatever pygmy we select today... by election day 2012 that candidate will have been massaged into history, person of legend, colossus. Let's hope by then he or she is ready for what we insist they be.......
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc. , providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also a historian and author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by David Lockwood <a href="http://mysmarthomebusiness.com%22%3ehttp//MySmartHomeBusiness.com%3C/a>. Check out Clickbank Affiliate Loophole -> http://www.MySmartHomeBusiness.com/?rd=sc81pBdD
Many years ago Nancy Saunders, one of England's celebrated gardeners, informed me in no uncertain terms of one of the essential conditions for horticultural success: prune, prune, ruthlessly prune. Find the little buds and, ruthlessly, cut them off, focusing on just one bud, the bud you have selected for greatness. A house full of gardening awards great and small, local and international, testified to the lady's insights and no-nonsense approach to a stunning garden and a reputation as diva, sorceress, sculpter of beauty, impatient with anything other than the eye-catching and important.
The Grand Old Party could learn a lot from Ms. Saunders and her stringent regimen for success.
Politically alert Americans, particularly Republicans, have watched with growing dismay, chagrin and (let's be honest) complete fascination as the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Reagan, titans all, revered by the nation, has become the Pee Wee league of presidential candidates -- and this despite stunning electoral success in 2010 and a Democratic incumbent who has failed, so far, to gain the affection of the nation and portray himself as more than the necessary evil.
In fact, there has never been (since its founding in 1856) so many GOP candidates for president with at least some (no matter how attenuated) claim to plausibility. Even in the days of brokered conventions with "favorite son" candidates given nomination just to impress the folks in Paducah, such lavish numbers were rare indeed.
Surely, the GOP should be glad that it has so many potential presidents at hand, but if you recall Nancy Saunder's stern admonition about how to produce gorgeous flowers -- prune, prune, prune -- you get the message that too many candidates produces weakness, not strength and is a sign that the party that believes America is safe when and only when it governs has lost its way, becoming rivulets, not the great river it has so often been.
This situation has produced torpor, procrastination, and a growing sense that the GOP is not up to the necessities for governing a great land beset by high and serious problems, and economic muddle.
The biggest most Republican donors are, in unprecedented numbers, sitting on the sideline, listless, uninspired, concerned. Fully 45 percent of Republican voters (as per a May, 2011 Associated Press poll) are dissatisfied with their presidential candidates, a figure that is growing, not diminishing.
Democrats, of course, are not-so-secretly thrilled by a scenario which already shows them far ahead in fund raising; (President Obama has made it clear he'll raise a billion dollars or more to keep the White House as his house), with GOP fissures now causing some of the donkey ilk to speak, not too loudly just now, of land slides and electoral college pulverization. Early days to be sure... but the possible is there, oh yes it is. It is unseemly for Democrats to be so exultant so early... but they are.
For Republicans to counter this political "Happy Days", they must Saunderize, at once, with a will, ruthlessly... for a chance to produce a winning candidate. Humbly, since no one of significance in the Grand Old Party has stepped forward with garden shears and elimination list, I present myself accordingly. Without any expectation of power, privilege, patronage, or even gratitude, I am here to save the party, its chances for victory, and its (as yet) not obvious presidential candidate.
In the next few minutes, I intend, with a few deft moves, to change all that.
These Republican candidates (declared or still ruminating) are a bad joke:
Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives
Ron Paul, Congressman from Texas.
Michelle Bachmann, Congresswomen from Minnesota.
Rick Santorum, former U.S. Senator from Pennsylvania.
Rudy Giuliani, former Mayor of New York City.
Sarah Palin, former Governor of Alaska.
Buddy Roemer, former Governor of Louisiana.
Herman Cain, Godfather's Pizza executive and Georgia talk show host. (An expert on three cheeses, but anything else?)
The unanswerable reasons for eliminating this drab, unappealing crew of Tweedle Dees and Tweedle Dumbs? Not one of them alone, or all of them together, have one ounce of charisma and the kind of fundamental popular appeal a winning presidential candidate must have. None is even remotely a household name (or done the exceptional to deserve it); some are so threadbare (Santorum) that they didn't merely retire from public office; they were booted out by local voters presumably the most knowledgeable about them.
In short, these are the Morgan Memorial, the Salvation Army candidates, colorless, spent, yawn making, infuriating... their highest potential service to the party to be placed as vice president on a sure-to-lose ticket.
Nice guys... too early.
Tim Pawlenty, former Governor of Minnesota.
Bruce Johnson, former Governor of New Mexico.
Jon Huntsman, former Governor of Utah. These three have legs... but they are too short and undeveloped just now for the Oval Office. They should be planning to emerge, not now, but as the most beautiful, fascinating candidates of 2016. Needless to say, each will disagree vehemently with my patriotic assessment and so, like Pawlenty, build candidacies on the irrelevant details of personal resume. ("I was born in the meat packing town of South St. Paul; my father was a truck driver.") Stop it, stop it at once!
Some who were in or contemplating, now (gratefully) out.
Haley Barbour, Governor of Mississippi.
Mike Huckabee, former Governor of Arkansas.
Donald Trump, billionaire enfant terrible.
John Thune, U.S. Senator from South Dakota.
Mitch Daniels, Governor of Indiana.
We owe them profuse thanks and appreciation for reading the tea-leaves early and right; no one wanted them for any reason and certainly not for president.
What's left? Just one.
Mitt Romney, former Governor of Massachusetts, though capable of denying it, stiff, austere, little loved, policy wonk, 100% committed to becoming president, doing whatever he must.
Romney may very well be the eventual nominee, but he must learn how to rouse America and make us not only think well of ourselves... but do well, too, a surgent nation again.
No one from this huge field of candidates has been able to do this and make themselves seem the inevitable resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. And that's why Republicans of every stripe are becoming increasingly desperate, tossing even more names in the hat. They should instead solve the problem as Nancy Saunders would: prune, prune, prune. Then focus on turning the last bud into something glorious, historic, larger-than-life. For whatever pygmy we select today... by election day 2012 that candidate will have been massaged into history, person of legend, colossus. Let's hope by then he or she is ready for what we insist they be.......
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc. , providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also a historian and author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by David Lockwood <a href="http://mysmarthomebusiness.com%22%3ehttp//MySmartHomeBusiness.com%3C/a>. Check out Clickbank Affiliate Loophole -> http://www.MySmartHomeBusiness.com/?rd=sc81pBdD
Sunday, May 22, 2011
Harold Camping said the world would end 6 p.m. Saturday, May 21, 2011. It didn't. It wasn't the first time, he was a false prophet. And it won't be the last!
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's note. To get into the right mood for this article, search any search engine and find the well-known gospel tune "I'm on my way (to Canaan land)". (Written by William M. Golden, 1914) . My favorite is the version by the great Mahalia Jackson.
Chances are over the last few days you've heard of a zealot named Harold Camping. He's the originator of Oakland, California based Family Radio... and he's got a bee in his bonnet for sure.
He's a man so fervently longing for the world to end, so that righteous rewards and punishments can be meted out, that he's willing to risk (over and over again) the public ridicule and mockery that inevitably follow when his specific world-ending predictions fail to occur.
Today he'll be especially busy explaining to his discombobulated flock just why he goofed on this occasion and why his absolutely precise prediction for the end of terra firma -- 6 p.m. May 21, 2011 -- was erroneous... but not, he'll aver, wrong,really.... in fact perfectly reasonable once you understand the minute horological calculations and Biblical truths he will be, today, explicating a mile a minute, without apology, embarrassment or any excuse whatsoever.
For you see, divinely appointed prophets like the egregious Camping are never, ever wrong. In Camping's case when he seems to be in error, it is rather that he, for an instant, misunderstood God and His purpose. But shortly and with prayer, God corrects his misapprehension and gives him yet again, total clarity, complete understanding, and a vision which cannot be doubted of how and when rapture will occur -- this (next) time for sure. Eternal damnation and total perdition will come to those who doubt... never mind the muddle that just occurred and the complete chaos and disruption to the lives of the disappointed True Believers who were certain today they would awake to eternal bliss in the bosom of the Lord... but instead heard nothing but the insistent assurances and renewed certainties of the prophet they trusted... the prophet who mislead them, again.
Camping's legacy: lives high jacked, disrupted, shattered without compunction or remorse.
When one is a prophet, with a speed dial to God, one has better things to think about and deal with than the tiresome, annoying but essential realities of life. Those are beneath the notice of the Elect of God. The job of such is to seize your body and soul; to prepare you for revelation, exaltation, rapture, for total immersion in eternal God. These prophets, with the stern message and visage of their ancient prototypes, are masters of agitation, fulmination, damnation and submission.
They -- and Camping is very definitely one of them -- tell a parent whose children are not believers that they shall not be together in the infinity of Paradise, because the children are on Satan's path. Prophets want total submission.... and so, obsessed by their mission, they are happy to spread fears, terrible fears, and profound anxieties, the better to achieve their objective. Believers in a household have an obligation to cause pain to those still at risk... if by so doing they can capture the soul and shepherd it to Heaven and bliss. They are under a moral obligation to do this... and they must act promptly since their leader and prophet has revealed God's specific date when personal choice ends...
And so, with the complete support of Harold Camping believing wives tell still disbelieving and unsaved husbands that they shall be separate through eternity if the husband will not submit. Day and night this argument is made, made again, insistently made, made with sincerity and profound belief, disrupting everything until it is resolved and the soul garnered....
Believing children turn the tables on non-believing parents and, speaking of eternal love and togetherness, work their will on them... and so, worn down, these parents announce, for love of child, their born-again belief. Hallelujah!
And so it goes as each family member using the potent threat of eternal loneliness and isolation, of alienation, despair, profound miseries and the unspeakable pain of Hell fire work tirelessly to capture the souls of the people they most care about. For so important are these people, that the pain Camping encourages you to give must be the greatest pain of all; you love them so and must, therefore, do everything, anything to harvest their souls. And the date, the date when you will be irrevocably placed throughout eternity is coming, coming... a God-given certainty, Prophet Camping says so... and he is a goodly man.
About Harold Camping
Harold Egbert Camping, born July 19, 1921, is a Christian radio broadcaster and president of Family Radio, a California-based religious broadcasting network that spans more than 150 outlets in the United States as well as website. Educated at the University of California, Berkeley, he earned a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering in 1942.
Camping early saw the potential of using media to establish a ministry without walls. His first acquisition was station KEAR in San Francisco; his mission to broadcast traditional Christian Gospel to conservative Protestants. During the 1960s, Family Radio acquired six additional FM stations and seven other AM stations under guidelines established by the Federal Communications Commission (FTC).
Camping went on the air at once and made an impression with his deep, sonorous voice coupled with a slow, emphatic cadence. Right from the start he was fascinated by and often broadcast about Bible-based numerology to predict dates for the end of the world.
Central to Camping's teaching is the belief that the Bible alone and in its entirety is the Word of God, absolutely trustworthy. However, he emphasizes, this does not mean that each sentence of the Bible is to be understood only literally. Rather the meaning of individual Bible passages also need to be interpreted in the light of two factors. The first is the context of the Bible as a whole. The second is its spiritual meaning.
With these guidelines, Camping has moved step by step towards ever more radical beliefs, including his oft broadcast assertion that the date of Christ's second coming can be worked out to a precise moment of time.
He regards three factors as essential to this precise determination:
1) Jewish feast days in the Hebrew calendar, as described in the Old Testament, 2) the lunar month calendar (1 synodic month = 29.53059 days), and 3) a close approximation of the Gregorian calendar tropical year (365.24219 days, rounded to 365.2422.)
He projects these into modern times and combines the results with other information in the Bible. His predictions, based as they are on the infallible Word of God, follow as a matter of course, including both his original prediction that the Lord's return would be in 1994; then when that failed, he lay low for a while, before announcing the amended prediction that this return would be May 21, 2011 with the entire world destroyed in a fiery inferno, October 21, 2011.
Nothing that Harold Camping has predicted with such absolute assurance and ringing certainty has come to pass. But hundreds of people revere him anyway and still pay credence to what he says, no doubt his reassuring voice assisting. But I say this unto these poor souls. Is what you are being asked to do truly what a loving God would ordain? Thus I admonish you:
"Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves". (Matthew 7:15).
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by David Lockwood <a href="http://mysmarthomebusiness.com%22%3ehttp//MySmartHomeBusiness.com%3C/a>. Check out Profit Monarch -> http://www.MySmartHomeBusiness.com/?rd=mp60h7FM
Author's note. To get into the right mood for this article, search any search engine and find the well-known gospel tune "I'm on my way (to Canaan land)". (Written by William M. Golden, 1914) . My favorite is the version by the great Mahalia Jackson.
Chances are over the last few days you've heard of a zealot named Harold Camping. He's the originator of Oakland, California based Family Radio... and he's got a bee in his bonnet for sure.
He's a man so fervently longing for the world to end, so that righteous rewards and punishments can be meted out, that he's willing to risk (over and over again) the public ridicule and mockery that inevitably follow when his specific world-ending predictions fail to occur.
Today he'll be especially busy explaining to his discombobulated flock just why he goofed on this occasion and why his absolutely precise prediction for the end of terra firma -- 6 p.m. May 21, 2011 -- was erroneous... but not, he'll aver, wrong,really.... in fact perfectly reasonable once you understand the minute horological calculations and Biblical truths he will be, today, explicating a mile a minute, without apology, embarrassment or any excuse whatsoever.
For you see, divinely appointed prophets like the egregious Camping are never, ever wrong. In Camping's case when he seems to be in error, it is rather that he, for an instant, misunderstood God and His purpose. But shortly and with prayer, God corrects his misapprehension and gives him yet again, total clarity, complete understanding, and a vision which cannot be doubted of how and when rapture will occur -- this (next) time for sure. Eternal damnation and total perdition will come to those who doubt... never mind the muddle that just occurred and the complete chaos and disruption to the lives of the disappointed True Believers who were certain today they would awake to eternal bliss in the bosom of the Lord... but instead heard nothing but the insistent assurances and renewed certainties of the prophet they trusted... the prophet who mislead them, again.
Camping's legacy: lives high jacked, disrupted, shattered without compunction or remorse.
When one is a prophet, with a speed dial to God, one has better things to think about and deal with than the tiresome, annoying but essential realities of life. Those are beneath the notice of the Elect of God. The job of such is to seize your body and soul; to prepare you for revelation, exaltation, rapture, for total immersion in eternal God. These prophets, with the stern message and visage of their ancient prototypes, are masters of agitation, fulmination, damnation and submission.
They -- and Camping is very definitely one of them -- tell a parent whose children are not believers that they shall not be together in the infinity of Paradise, because the children are on Satan's path. Prophets want total submission.... and so, obsessed by their mission, they are happy to spread fears, terrible fears, and profound anxieties, the better to achieve their objective. Believers in a household have an obligation to cause pain to those still at risk... if by so doing they can capture the soul and shepherd it to Heaven and bliss. They are under a moral obligation to do this... and they must act promptly since their leader and prophet has revealed God's specific date when personal choice ends...
And so, with the complete support of Harold Camping believing wives tell still disbelieving and unsaved husbands that they shall be separate through eternity if the husband will not submit. Day and night this argument is made, made again, insistently made, made with sincerity and profound belief, disrupting everything until it is resolved and the soul garnered....
Believing children turn the tables on non-believing parents and, speaking of eternal love and togetherness, work their will on them... and so, worn down, these parents announce, for love of child, their born-again belief. Hallelujah!
And so it goes as each family member using the potent threat of eternal loneliness and isolation, of alienation, despair, profound miseries and the unspeakable pain of Hell fire work tirelessly to capture the souls of the people they most care about. For so important are these people, that the pain Camping encourages you to give must be the greatest pain of all; you love them so and must, therefore, do everything, anything to harvest their souls. And the date, the date when you will be irrevocably placed throughout eternity is coming, coming... a God-given certainty, Prophet Camping says so... and he is a goodly man.
About Harold Camping
Harold Egbert Camping, born July 19, 1921, is a Christian radio broadcaster and president of Family Radio, a California-based religious broadcasting network that spans more than 150 outlets in the United States as well as website. Educated at the University of California, Berkeley, he earned a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering in 1942.
Camping early saw the potential of using media to establish a ministry without walls. His first acquisition was station KEAR in San Francisco; his mission to broadcast traditional Christian Gospel to conservative Protestants. During the 1960s, Family Radio acquired six additional FM stations and seven other AM stations under guidelines established by the Federal Communications Commission (FTC).
Camping went on the air at once and made an impression with his deep, sonorous voice coupled with a slow, emphatic cadence. Right from the start he was fascinated by and often broadcast about Bible-based numerology to predict dates for the end of the world.
Central to Camping's teaching is the belief that the Bible alone and in its entirety is the Word of God, absolutely trustworthy. However, he emphasizes, this does not mean that each sentence of the Bible is to be understood only literally. Rather the meaning of individual Bible passages also need to be interpreted in the light of two factors. The first is the context of the Bible as a whole. The second is its spiritual meaning.
With these guidelines, Camping has moved step by step towards ever more radical beliefs, including his oft broadcast assertion that the date of Christ's second coming can be worked out to a precise moment of time.
He regards three factors as essential to this precise determination:
1) Jewish feast days in the Hebrew calendar, as described in the Old Testament, 2) the lunar month calendar (1 synodic month = 29.53059 days), and 3) a close approximation of the Gregorian calendar tropical year (365.24219 days, rounded to 365.2422.)
He projects these into modern times and combines the results with other information in the Bible. His predictions, based as they are on the infallible Word of God, follow as a matter of course, including both his original prediction that the Lord's return would be in 1994; then when that failed, he lay low for a while, before announcing the amended prediction that this return would be May 21, 2011 with the entire world destroyed in a fiery inferno, October 21, 2011.
Nothing that Harold Camping has predicted with such absolute assurance and ringing certainty has come to pass. But hundreds of people revere him anyway and still pay credence to what he says, no doubt his reassuring voice assisting. But I say this unto these poor souls. Is what you are being asked to do truly what a loving God would ordain? Thus I admonish you:
"Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves". (Matthew 7:15).
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by David Lockwood <a href="http://mysmarthomebusiness.com%22%3ehttp//MySmartHomeBusiness.com%3C/a>. Check out Profit Monarch -> http://www.MySmartHomeBusiness.com/?rd=mp60h7FM
'It's so nice to have a man around the house'. Arnold Schwarzenegger's double life up close and really personal.
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's note. To get the most from this article, go to any search engine and look for the recording of "It's so nice to have a man around the house". Eartha Kitt's is the best; she was the mistress of steamy insinuations and wanton sensuality, implied, but never quite stated. Every word of her version takes on a whole new meaning when the subject is Arnold Schwarzenegger and his carefully calibrated infidelities.
Admit it. You would have liked to have been a fly on the wall the day the governator spilled the beans to the woman he cheated on for such a large chunk of his "perfect" 25-year marriage. But we can imagine, can't we?
Arnold: "Umm, Maria, have you got a minute?"
Maria: "Sure, hon, be right with you.... now what's up?"
Arnold: "Darlin', I've got a little confession to make. Something I've been meaning to tell you for a while."
Maria: "Oh, really, sugar babe. What's that?"
Arnold: "Well you see, it's like this. For the last, er, 15 years or so I've been bonking the maid, yeah Patty... and I've got a 14 year old son. Yah, funny isn't it? He's just about a week older than my other son, I mean your son, I mean our son, I mean Christopher. Can you believe it? I kinda thought you'd like to know."
But Maria, who has her lawyer's number on speed dial, is already on the phone, faster than you can say "community property". Arnold's double life ain't a secret anymore.
What's a guy (with a once gorgeous body) gonna do?
Have you ever heard of "Pumping Iron"? It was both a (1974) book and (1977) docudrama about the run-up to the 1975 Mr. Olympia bodybuilding competition. The film focuses on Franco Columbu, Lou Ferrigno and, above all, on Schwarzenegger. It gave him just what he most wanted in life: fame, recognition, esteem and -- love. These were just the things he didn't get at home.....
Spurned by his father.
Schwartzenegger was born in the small village of Thal, Austria, July 30, 1947. His father was local police chief, a tough man who fought with the German army in World War II as a Hauptfeldwebel of the Feldgendarmerie. In 1945 (then 38) he married Aurelia, 23, with a son named Meinhard. Gustav showed a strong bias in Meinhard's favor, which stemmed from unfounded suspicion that Arnold was not his child. Arnold, then, grew up in an atmosphere of suspicion and lack of fatherly love. Such things reverberate for a lifetime. What goes around comes around...
His parents' aspirations for him were not high. Gustav wanted him to be a police officer; his mother recommended trade school. But Arnold had something bigger in mind; he went to the pictures to see Reg Park, Johnny Weissmuller and his true idol, Steve Reeves. And so at age 14, he started weight training. He was assiduous, dedicated, obsessed in the way of all true champions, so obsessed that, at 18, during his one-year of compulsory military service in the Austrian army he went AWOL so he could attend a bodybuilding competition. He went to prison for a week.... it showed just how serious he was.
At age 20, he had the first great triumph of a life that was to be filled with triumphs. His assiduity paid off and he won the Mr. Universe title. He had the drive, the beautifully sculpted body, the goofy "boys will be boys" smile and the shaggy do... he had acclaim... but only in the very marginal bodybuilding world. What he needed was what Steve Reeves had: a camera that would love his body and project it, larger than life, on movie screens worldwide. He needed "Pumping Iron", the film that had " heart, soul, blood, guts, perspiration and plenty of muscle".
To achieve his objective, he needed to keep winning the bodybuilding competitions that kept him in the limelight... and he needed to learn English. He knew these were critical aspects of his success, and he did what was necessary. That is the way of all champions... and Schwarzenegger proved to be one of the best.
He pumped iron... and, with the help of such trainers as Joe Weider, Ric Drasin, and "Superstar" professional wrestler Billy Graham... won the big titles, including in 1970, age 23, the first of his seven Mr. Olympia titles.
While he pumped iron, he took English classes at Santa Monica City College and earned a B.A. degree by correspondence from the University of Wisconsin -- Superior where he graduated in Business and International Economics, in 1979.
Oh, yes, and very much as an afterthought, he had women... a lot of women. He liked them... and they, knowing every curve and sinew of that magnificent body... liked him... and wanted a piece of what male perfection could be. He gave... he enjoyed for the moment... but such women were never a part of his grand plan.
"I'm going to become the greatest actor!"
Despite one bodybuilding title after another (and he bagged them fast and convincingly), he wanted something else, something more lucrative, something that would make him a household name. And at last, in 1982, his wish came true with the sword-and-sorcery epic "Conan the Barbarian". It was a box-office hit, immediately followed by "Conan the Destroyer" (1984), not quite as successful as the original but keeping the unpronounciable name and very pronounced body before the public while looking for the next triumph.
In due course, after a number of unmemorable moments (can you say "Red Sonja", 1975) he lucked out (in 1984) with the first of three Terminator films, which placed him exactly where he had always wanted to be: at the top of the tree, rich, famous, desired... and finally, fervently loved by millions worldwide.
Maria Shriver, the perfect wife for the man who had everything... and wanted more.
On April 26, 1986 Arnold Scwarzengger married one of the beautiful and talented princesses of the Kennedy dynasty, Maria Shriver, niece of President John F. Kennedy. This made him a member of the most famous family in the land. They have four children.
But Arnold, being Arnold, was not satisfied... though one didn't know how unsatisfied until just the other day in May, 2011. Then it was announced that Conan truly was a barbarian, furtive (like all cheating husbands) but audacious, too -- for he never left the confines of his palatial 11,000 square foot home in Brentwood, California for his adulteries. He did them under his own roof with the family maid, Mildred Patricia Baena ("Patty").
There for some 15 years he made suitable excuses to the old ball and chain ("honey, I've got a little paperwork..."), striding down the corridor... to his mistress Patty's room. Then right back to the arms of his Maria. With careful logistics, without much effort but with great boldness, the man renowned for pumping iron and governing ungovernable California (2003-2011), produced a boy by each woman, the births just a week apart.
Those boys, particularly Patty's, are the ones needing special attention and care now. Maria will get half of everything, or at least $100,000,000. She and Arnold are separated now. When they divorce Maria will again be a very desirable heiress indeed. Patty won't do as well, of course; unmarried mistresses never do. But Arnold helped her get a loan from the Federal Housing Administration and ponied up at least some of the $219,224 down payment.
But it's Patty's son we should worry about. Schwarzenegger has called him an "accident". We can well believe it. But Scwarzenegger, who grew up under a cloud, his father questioning his legitimacy, Schwarzenegger of all people should have been more empathetic, more kind, considerate.
Instead in his most important role as father he proved to be nothing more than a cad who once pumped iron.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by David Lockwood <a href="http://mysmarthomebusiness.com%22%3ehttp//MySmartHomeBusiness.com%3C/a>. Check out My Free Money Formula -> http://www.MySmartHomeBusiness.com/?rd=cg1XExxf
Author's note. To get the most from this article, go to any search engine and look for the recording of "It's so nice to have a man around the house". Eartha Kitt's is the best; she was the mistress of steamy insinuations and wanton sensuality, implied, but never quite stated. Every word of her version takes on a whole new meaning when the subject is Arnold Schwarzenegger and his carefully calibrated infidelities.
Admit it. You would have liked to have been a fly on the wall the day the governator spilled the beans to the woman he cheated on for such a large chunk of his "perfect" 25-year marriage. But we can imagine, can't we?
Arnold: "Umm, Maria, have you got a minute?"
Maria: "Sure, hon, be right with you.... now what's up?"
Arnold: "Darlin', I've got a little confession to make. Something I've been meaning to tell you for a while."
Maria: "Oh, really, sugar babe. What's that?"
Arnold: "Well you see, it's like this. For the last, er, 15 years or so I've been bonking the maid, yeah Patty... and I've got a 14 year old son. Yah, funny isn't it? He's just about a week older than my other son, I mean your son, I mean our son, I mean Christopher. Can you believe it? I kinda thought you'd like to know."
But Maria, who has her lawyer's number on speed dial, is already on the phone, faster than you can say "community property". Arnold's double life ain't a secret anymore.
What's a guy (with a once gorgeous body) gonna do?
Have you ever heard of "Pumping Iron"? It was both a (1974) book and (1977) docudrama about the run-up to the 1975 Mr. Olympia bodybuilding competition. The film focuses on Franco Columbu, Lou Ferrigno and, above all, on Schwarzenegger. It gave him just what he most wanted in life: fame, recognition, esteem and -- love. These were just the things he didn't get at home.....
Spurned by his father.
Schwartzenegger was born in the small village of Thal, Austria, July 30, 1947. His father was local police chief, a tough man who fought with the German army in World War II as a Hauptfeldwebel of the Feldgendarmerie. In 1945 (then 38) he married Aurelia, 23, with a son named Meinhard. Gustav showed a strong bias in Meinhard's favor, which stemmed from unfounded suspicion that Arnold was not his child. Arnold, then, grew up in an atmosphere of suspicion and lack of fatherly love. Such things reverberate for a lifetime. What goes around comes around...
His parents' aspirations for him were not high. Gustav wanted him to be a police officer; his mother recommended trade school. But Arnold had something bigger in mind; he went to the pictures to see Reg Park, Johnny Weissmuller and his true idol, Steve Reeves. And so at age 14, he started weight training. He was assiduous, dedicated, obsessed in the way of all true champions, so obsessed that, at 18, during his one-year of compulsory military service in the Austrian army he went AWOL so he could attend a bodybuilding competition. He went to prison for a week.... it showed just how serious he was.
At age 20, he had the first great triumph of a life that was to be filled with triumphs. His assiduity paid off and he won the Mr. Universe title. He had the drive, the beautifully sculpted body, the goofy "boys will be boys" smile and the shaggy do... he had acclaim... but only in the very marginal bodybuilding world. What he needed was what Steve Reeves had: a camera that would love his body and project it, larger than life, on movie screens worldwide. He needed "Pumping Iron", the film that had " heart, soul, blood, guts, perspiration and plenty of muscle".
To achieve his objective, he needed to keep winning the bodybuilding competitions that kept him in the limelight... and he needed to learn English. He knew these were critical aspects of his success, and he did what was necessary. That is the way of all champions... and Schwarzenegger proved to be one of the best.
He pumped iron... and, with the help of such trainers as Joe Weider, Ric Drasin, and "Superstar" professional wrestler Billy Graham... won the big titles, including in 1970, age 23, the first of his seven Mr. Olympia titles.
While he pumped iron, he took English classes at Santa Monica City College and earned a B.A. degree by correspondence from the University of Wisconsin -- Superior where he graduated in Business and International Economics, in 1979.
Oh, yes, and very much as an afterthought, he had women... a lot of women. He liked them... and they, knowing every curve and sinew of that magnificent body... liked him... and wanted a piece of what male perfection could be. He gave... he enjoyed for the moment... but such women were never a part of his grand plan.
"I'm going to become the greatest actor!"
Despite one bodybuilding title after another (and he bagged them fast and convincingly), he wanted something else, something more lucrative, something that would make him a household name. And at last, in 1982, his wish came true with the sword-and-sorcery epic "Conan the Barbarian". It was a box-office hit, immediately followed by "Conan the Destroyer" (1984), not quite as successful as the original but keeping the unpronounciable name and very pronounced body before the public while looking for the next triumph.
In due course, after a number of unmemorable moments (can you say "Red Sonja", 1975) he lucked out (in 1984) with the first of three Terminator films, which placed him exactly where he had always wanted to be: at the top of the tree, rich, famous, desired... and finally, fervently loved by millions worldwide.
Maria Shriver, the perfect wife for the man who had everything... and wanted more.
On April 26, 1986 Arnold Scwarzengger married one of the beautiful and talented princesses of the Kennedy dynasty, Maria Shriver, niece of President John F. Kennedy. This made him a member of the most famous family in the land. They have four children.
But Arnold, being Arnold, was not satisfied... though one didn't know how unsatisfied until just the other day in May, 2011. Then it was announced that Conan truly was a barbarian, furtive (like all cheating husbands) but audacious, too -- for he never left the confines of his palatial 11,000 square foot home in Brentwood, California for his adulteries. He did them under his own roof with the family maid, Mildred Patricia Baena ("Patty").
There for some 15 years he made suitable excuses to the old ball and chain ("honey, I've got a little paperwork..."), striding down the corridor... to his mistress Patty's room. Then right back to the arms of his Maria. With careful logistics, without much effort but with great boldness, the man renowned for pumping iron and governing ungovernable California (2003-2011), produced a boy by each woman, the births just a week apart.
Those boys, particularly Patty's, are the ones needing special attention and care now. Maria will get half of everything, or at least $100,000,000. She and Arnold are separated now. When they divorce Maria will again be a very desirable heiress indeed. Patty won't do as well, of course; unmarried mistresses never do. But Arnold helped her get a loan from the Federal Housing Administration and ponied up at least some of the $219,224 down payment.
But it's Patty's son we should worry about. Schwarzenegger has called him an "accident". We can well believe it. But Scwarzenegger, who grew up under a cloud, his father questioning his legitimacy, Schwarzenegger of all people should have been more empathetic, more kind, considerate.
Instead in his most important role as father he proved to be nothing more than a cad who once pumped iron.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by David Lockwood <a href="http://mysmarthomebusiness.com%22%3ehttp//MySmartHomeBusiness.com%3C/a>. Check out My Free Money Formula -> http://www.MySmartHomeBusiness.com/?rd=cg1XExxf
Saturday, May 21, 2011
How to stay focused and make money on days you DON'T feel like it!
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Did you lay in bed this morning unwilling, unable to get up? Did every fibre of your body demand more time in the sack? Was it a struggle to open an eye... and get up?
Sure enough, if today wasn't like this, some of your many tomorrows will be. You need to be prepared for such inevitabilities... because they can and will occur and can and will sabotage your ability to make money. Here are some suggestions that'll help you rise and shine... suggestions I use myself when getting up and getting going are most decidedly NOT my first priority!
1) Create a "to do" list before you go to bed.
The key to making tomorrow organized, efficient, and profitable is what you do today. Make it a rule before you retire for the night to draw up a clear, clean, specific "to do" list. Write it, read it over, put it next to the bed... then turn off the lights.
While you're sleeping your subconscious mind will be busily at work helping you organize and implement the items on your list. Even when your body is screaming for more sleep and all the creature comforts it can get, the brain -- and your crucial "to do" list -- will be helping you get up and at 'em.
2) Take a cold shower.
The British empire, the largest the world has ever known, was practically built on a cascade of frigid water. Its young men, pillars of the imperium, were shipped off to prep schools and immediately subjected to the jarring temperatures which will work for you as well as it worked for them. Don't stand there and debate.... turn up the cold tap and plunge! You're about to be invigorated, rejuvenated, primed to run your empire.
3) Do some exercise.
Are you huddling in a corner of your kitchen, hands gripping a cup of joe, comfy in your bunny slippers? Whoa! This isn't helping getting your act together. You need some brisk, bracing exercise... the kind guaranteed to send vital oxygen to that all- important brain.
Put the steaming liquid down and kick up your heels... or quick-step around your back yard or up and down your street. With every step your brain will exult. The key isn't coffee... it's oxygen. Move bristly and infuse it where it must go for maximum good.
4) Give yourself an easy, immediate success.
Don't feel like doing anything? Then give yourself an easy, immediate success. This should, of course, have been indicated on your "to do" list. Before you go to bed be sure to post on your list an easy thing, a thing that will start today's sequence of successes. Once begun, as we say in New England, is half done.
What could this "easy" thing be?
It could be calling a long-time customer to get a nice re-order or following up with a new customer to whom you've already sent a proposal and quote.
One success engenders another. Even a small success is sufficient. Start successful, remain successful. It all begins when you least feel like it.
5) Put on your head phones and engage with some stirring music.
Still need help getting into gear? Go to the play list on your computer and choose something rousing. What? You don't have such a play list? Start it today. I can assure you, you are going to need it. Here are some of my sure-fire upbeat selections, guaranteed to get you going:
Wake up Little Suzie by the Everly Brothers (most appropriate, don't you think?)
Think by Aretha Franklin.
Natalie Cole's version of Pink Cadillac, and
J.P. Rameau's always motivating Tambourins I-II from Dardanus.
Your list may well be different from mine; the important thing is to have a list you can access at once. Turn up the sound... and move your body. Your uplifting selections are moving you towards another successful day.
6) Visualize what you'll get when you turn this day into a success.
All too often we work without conceptualizing why. We work today because we worked yesterday. This is not nearly good enough.
Remind yourself just why you're working and what special thing today's successes will help create.
In my case, for instance, I have a pile of auction catalogs stacked high next to my computer. I motivate myself on days when such motivation is needed by looking at the things I want from auctions coming up quickly. Getting myself focused and together is a precondition for maximum acquisition. Visualize success; then do what's necessary to achieve it.
7) Still not alert and moving? Then take the day off formally and properly.
Like most people these days, you are working more and longer than either your parents or grand parents. We are the most leisure-challenged generation ever.
The plain fact is, you may be unable to get up and resolutely face the day because you're just worn out. If so, take the day off... sleep in, sleep properly, sleep, relax and goof off without guilt. You'll be the better tomorrow if you take what is necessary and do not regard it as an indulgence but physical need. Enjoy!
About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., where small and home-based businesses learn how to profit online. Attend Dr. Lant's live webcast TODAY and receive 50,000 free guaranteed visitors to the website of your choice. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by David Lockwood <a href="http://mysmarthomebusiness.com%22%3ehttp//MySmartHomeBusiness.com%3C/a>. Check out Auto Blog Samurai -> http://www.MySmartHomeBusiness.com/?rd=mz63lAbg
Did you lay in bed this morning unwilling, unable to get up? Did every fibre of your body demand more time in the sack? Was it a struggle to open an eye... and get up?
Sure enough, if today wasn't like this, some of your many tomorrows will be. You need to be prepared for such inevitabilities... because they can and will occur and can and will sabotage your ability to make money. Here are some suggestions that'll help you rise and shine... suggestions I use myself when getting up and getting going are most decidedly NOT my first priority!
1) Create a "to do" list before you go to bed.
The key to making tomorrow organized, efficient, and profitable is what you do today. Make it a rule before you retire for the night to draw up a clear, clean, specific "to do" list. Write it, read it over, put it next to the bed... then turn off the lights.
While you're sleeping your subconscious mind will be busily at work helping you organize and implement the items on your list. Even when your body is screaming for more sleep and all the creature comforts it can get, the brain -- and your crucial "to do" list -- will be helping you get up and at 'em.
2) Take a cold shower.
The British empire, the largest the world has ever known, was practically built on a cascade of frigid water. Its young men, pillars of the imperium, were shipped off to prep schools and immediately subjected to the jarring temperatures which will work for you as well as it worked for them. Don't stand there and debate.... turn up the cold tap and plunge! You're about to be invigorated, rejuvenated, primed to run your empire.
3) Do some exercise.
Are you huddling in a corner of your kitchen, hands gripping a cup of joe, comfy in your bunny slippers? Whoa! This isn't helping getting your act together. You need some brisk, bracing exercise... the kind guaranteed to send vital oxygen to that all- important brain.
Put the steaming liquid down and kick up your heels... or quick-step around your back yard or up and down your street. With every step your brain will exult. The key isn't coffee... it's oxygen. Move bristly and infuse it where it must go for maximum good.
4) Give yourself an easy, immediate success.
Don't feel like doing anything? Then give yourself an easy, immediate success. This should, of course, have been indicated on your "to do" list. Before you go to bed be sure to post on your list an easy thing, a thing that will start today's sequence of successes. Once begun, as we say in New England, is half done.
What could this "easy" thing be?
It could be calling a long-time customer to get a nice re-order or following up with a new customer to whom you've already sent a proposal and quote.
One success engenders another. Even a small success is sufficient. Start successful, remain successful. It all begins when you least feel like it.
5) Put on your head phones and engage with some stirring music.
Still need help getting into gear? Go to the play list on your computer and choose something rousing. What? You don't have such a play list? Start it today. I can assure you, you are going to need it. Here are some of my sure-fire upbeat selections, guaranteed to get you going:
Wake up Little Suzie by the Everly Brothers (most appropriate, don't you think?)
Think by Aretha Franklin.
Natalie Cole's version of Pink Cadillac, and
J.P. Rameau's always motivating Tambourins I-II from Dardanus.
Your list may well be different from mine; the important thing is to have a list you can access at once. Turn up the sound... and move your body. Your uplifting selections are moving you towards another successful day.
6) Visualize what you'll get when you turn this day into a success.
All too often we work without conceptualizing why. We work today because we worked yesterday. This is not nearly good enough.
Remind yourself just why you're working and what special thing today's successes will help create.
In my case, for instance, I have a pile of auction catalogs stacked high next to my computer. I motivate myself on days when such motivation is needed by looking at the things I want from auctions coming up quickly. Getting myself focused and together is a precondition for maximum acquisition. Visualize success; then do what's necessary to achieve it.
7) Still not alert and moving? Then take the day off formally and properly.
Like most people these days, you are working more and longer than either your parents or grand parents. We are the most leisure-challenged generation ever.
The plain fact is, you may be unable to get up and resolutely face the day because you're just worn out. If so, take the day off... sleep in, sleep properly, sleep, relax and goof off without guilt. You'll be the better tomorrow if you take what is necessary and do not regard it as an indulgence but physical need. Enjoy!
About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., where small and home-based businesses learn how to profit online. Attend Dr. Lant's live webcast TODAY and receive 50,000 free guaranteed visitors to the website of your choice. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by David Lockwood <a href="http://mysmarthomebusiness.com%22%3ehttp//MySmartHomeBusiness.com%3C/a>. Check out Auto Blog Samurai -> http://www.MySmartHomeBusiness.com/?rd=mz63lAbg
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