A great sadness in the land. An open letter to my president, the Honorable Barack Obama.

Posted on October 3, 2011

October 3, 2011 | Author: Jeffrey Lant | Posted in Dr. Jeffrey Lant’s Article Archive, US Economy

 

Dear Mr. President

By Dr. Jeffrey Lant
A special preface for my readers worldwide. Today, with a measure of reluctance, I step outside my usual role as a commentator on a myriad of facts, occurrences, events, trends and happenings to be what from my birth I have been and treasured, a Citizen of the United States, my country.
Today I shall not merely report on the news in all its many aspects, at home and universally, but I shall, in a small but not insignificant way, make history… which is what Citizens do when they consider their nation, its affairs and directions, its misadventures and glorious achievements and report their opinions, feelings, complaints, concerns and admonitions to the individual who is, for the moment, the chief magistrate of the Great Republic, a position granted by the people who remain the ultimate repository of all power… and who, therefore, are, in such reporting doing what they have the right and indeed the obligation and responsibility to do… for all that their language may, from time to time, become choleric, injudicious, and intemperate.
As one of these people, these Citizens, I am today writing for and immediately thereafter sending to my president my thoughts and observations at this moment in our history, for I sense a great sadness beginning to move across the land, which must give pause to every thoughtful member of the body politic.
I want you, Reader, to note the matter of how I have headed these remarks, for I am sending them not just to the President of the United States, but to “my president,” for first and foremost he is not just a quondam official, holding office from such a time to such a time. He is, instead, the lawful leader of my country, a nation in which my hopes and dreams, along with the hopes and dreams of unseen millions of my countrymen, reside. I therefore write because I must… for the stakes are far too great to be silent… and I trust that the first lesson to be drawn from this letter is that you, too, shall, with thought and high seriousness of purpose, send to your president the fruit of your wisdom and concern, for whatever divides us, we have everything to unite us…. the articles and means of governance, centuries of shared triumphs and adversities, the first fashioned, the second overcome by our united actions. We share hopes, dreams, visions, and the abiding knowledge that, of all peoples on this earth, we have created our realities… and so we must take action when our direction falters… and our vision is obscured.
… as it happening now, to the growing certainty, concern, lamentations and jeremiads of the people. And because all these are not the best of us… we call upon you, as we are in duty bound to do, to lead the people… exhort the people… lift up the people and return us intact, renewed to former greatness and greater greatness yet to come.
Mr. President, you came into office in a flood tide of exclamations, gratitudes, hosannahs… a man not merely of destiny but a man of reconciliation, joy, and healing purpose. You broke the stringent and oppressive color barrier, for every office and high position in the land, an invidious reality that too long oppressed a nation dedicated to eradicating the oppressions of others, yet for long unable to eradicate the oppressions we inflicted upon ourselves. You were a living symbol of all that is best in us. And we were glad of it… and thanked you for liberating all the people from the cancer of oppressing.
Now, however, the man who verily walked upon the water, is in danger of being swept out to sea, a victim of expectations too high, a man perhaps to be remembered and derided, for having peaked as president in his first hour on the job. What has caused this implosion, this great fall from grace and on high?
It is not the problems which assail us, for the Great Republic was conceived, born and grew strong and proud because of great problems greatly engaged. Because we believed — and still I trust believe — that only from great problems solved can a great people evolve towards perfection.
It is not that the political climate is more divisive, harsh, noisome and belligerent than our Founding Fathers and their generations of descendants faced, for the political atmosphere and actions in this pantheon of strong opinions have often been incendiary, ad hominem, vulgar, and abusive. As a people we know the alchemy for turning such bile into unity. It is our particular genius.
Nor is it that we are less dedicated and committed to the usages of our great system of governance and life, for the blood and passions of our forefathers run strong in us, too.
What then is the cause for our disappointment, dismay, and of the incipience of despair and growing disillusion? And what then must we do?
There are many causes, profound, significant, challenging… and many are at work even now to bring solutions to the problems at hand. But your office, our customs and immemorial usage all dictate that you, our oathed and solemnly sworn leader take precedence in action and constructive purpose. And here you have faltered, and I wish to suggest why.
I am writing to you now from a neighborhood and institution you know well and loved, Cambridge and The Harvard Law School. There you learned and then mastered the principles and procedures of the law, one of the glories of our entire civilization. Here amongst the grassy precincts and serene buildings redolent of learning, judgement, and, above all, due process you found yourself and grew. You were happy here… but it did not prepare you for your current responsibilities, turbulences, conundra, attacks and altercations. As a result you are suffering… for lawyers learn how to divide pies… not how to make them. You are now the duly chosen Chief Baker… but without a recipe for sustaining and improving your aggrieved customers to be had.
These good people were at first confident, then patient, then exasperated, frustrated and irritated, now they have turned angry and exigent. They know what you should know: the casualties inflicted by global economic maelstroms and a host of related economic and social realities are greater than the greatest of wars. If a wreath was placed on the door of every individual adversely affected we should fall down in disbelief and horror. For the people know how great is the trouble in the land where God once shed His grace.
Your job, your only job, is to put America to work… for only an employed America can be a happy land of serenity, security and sustained peace of mind. You are Commander- in-Chief. Thus declare war on America’s most pressing enemy, unemployment
Create a “war cabinet” and set up your headquarters in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, already hallowed as a place to secure and defend America’s interests. Make it known throughout the land that this is not an Obama initiative; it is an American initiative and therefore you call upon all Americans to do their bit, as their parents and grandparents did in World War II. And if some oppose, let them. You have God’s work to do and cannot allow little men and their self-serving objections to hinder you. You are America’s leader, and you have America’s work to do.
Every time any business or organization adds a job, post a notice and laud the job creators. They are all heroes in a war we must fight and we must win. They deserve recognition. Set up a website where you list jobs created. Go live on the Internet at least one each day and show and tell the American people just what you are doing and results achieved. Our people do not understand our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan. But they will all understand this. You are at a crossroads of your life and office. But there is a grand, honorable and necessary thing which you can do. Leave the many good things you would do if you had world enough and time. Focus on the one thing we must have now and without which we can achieve little else. Embrace your true calling, sir, and lead the endeavor to put America to work. It is what’s needed… a goal we can reach together and must start today.
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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. Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell http://HomeProfitCoach.com . Check out Massive Traffic Ultimatum ->  http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=sk9BRJWy

‘If you’re ever in a jam, here I am.’ Thoughts on a friend you adore, eat, and shamefully forget (until your next craving): jam.

 

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Howard Martell

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October 1, 2011 | Author: Jeffrey Lant | Posted in Dr. Jeffrey Lant’s Article Archive

By Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note: Jam! Can you imagine life without it… smooth, delectable, always there, never contumacious like your last lover, never foul mouthed or vulgar (like some of your friends); something which never disappoints… always satisfies… a friend in fair weather or foul. Yes, jam is all this — and more.
Thus, we will today remember the preparers of jam (some of the most important people on earth)… moments of pure joy as you ate it… then dipped a spoon into the jar.. and ate some more, for additional, predictable bliss.
For such a day of exaltation, celebration and mouth-watering delectation, I have selected (as theme music) the peppy little number written by Cole Porter (1940), sung by Judy Garland at her most bouncy. She belts it out, “If you’re ever in a jam, here I am….” The tune is, of course, “Friendship”.
Go to any search engine now… find the recording. Don’t play it quite yet. First, get your very best serving bowl out… and fill it, heaping, with something you love now, have loved from the beginning, something you will always love and desire… jam.
Grammie’s best crystal… for a boy she loved who loved her incomparable jams.
The snows in the interminable prairies of the Great Republic bring days when you are sure the sun is a hoax, when the light is gray and harsh, when the wind howls early and late and your thoughts turn maudlin, oppressive, inward looking and sad. For such days God invented Grammie… and her jams.
My grandmother, Victoria Burgess Lauing, was of English stock… and this, I am sure accounts for her sweet tooth… and her love of (amongst many glorious foods) the concentrated joy that is jam. She came by it, I am sure, in her genes… even in her name, for the Great Queen she was named after had a sweet tooth, too, which she indulged with imperial frequency. Sweeties, and this included jam, were the secret of the empire… the reason the sun never set… and tea was religiously served each day… for tiffin meant….. jam and thoughts of England, home, so very far away and loved.
The very best jam in the very best crystal.
Grammie was what young women today disdain, but do not know or understand. She, the “lady of the house”, was a house wife. She mastered, she perfected, she exemplified every virtue of her place and profession… and just how practiced and most excellent she was could be seen to clear advantage with the jam she served on her best crystal.
It may have been Lennox or even Waterford, a boy doesn’t notice such things, but you knew you were being treated better than Little Lord Fauntleroy (published 1886) when, with great ceremony, she presented what you craved — jam — on a dish ordinarily used only and solely for the great family festivals of the year. On such a Winter’s day when the bleakness of the prairies had seeped into your soul, she knew a potent counterattack was absolutely necessary. And she knew where to find it… in the jams which harbored the sunlight and sweetness we all require on such days.
She, a thoughtful, conscientious, practical woman, had planned for just this day when, in high Summer, she had decreed it was time for making the jams, so sweet, so necessary against the inevitable Winter, its winds, and howling oppressions.
Pursuit of sweet perfection, labor of love.
It is time to tell you, for unless you had such a Grammie you cannot know, of the process, at once exacting and precise, that produced the jam which would, all too soon, sustain us.
My grandmother’s kitchen was her domain, everything about it was redolent of who she was, of her beliefs, values, organizational skills, what she deemed essential… and what she discarded, and when. Unobservant folk missed all this, but other house wives of the prairies never did… and it was partly for them that all was laid out in perfection. Grammie was a competitive woman… and she would never allow or tolerate any imperfection that would cause her neighbors to cavil, denigrate, or exult over any fault found. She was a proud woman… and she wanted to stand well before her peers and the world. She never disdained the house wife’s role… and what she did, she did in exemplary fashion, with exemplary results. So it was when it was time to make the jam.
Hot, hot, infernally hot.
If Illinois was arctic in Winter, it was nothing less than an inferno in Summer when the oppressive heat slowed the pace and made one wish, if only for a moment, of the snows they would get soon enough and disdain.
Jam, as you probably don’t know if you are an urban dweller, is made of chopped or crushed fruit and sugar. To begin, you wash the fruit. Crush it, but don’t puree. Then cook it stove top until the ingredients are well mixed and start to boil. At this point, very much on the qui vivre, Grammie would be vigilant, alert, watchful so as not to scorch. Perfection, she knew, is the result of every necessary decision exactly made, no error made, allowed, or tolerated.
The mixture, having reached a boil, would then be transferred from stove top to oven, always being sure to stir with practiced skill and care. Maestro that she was, she would have taken, time to time, a spoon full’s quantity of perfection in progress; to place this small amount in the freezer for just a minute, thereby knowing, in meticulous fashion, whether the jam was done, or would be better still by waiting a bit. These were not matters of conjecture… but of a lifetime’s knowledge of her subject, sternly to be followed and adhered to now, without rush or cutting corners. That would never do, and so was never done.
This was work that called for judgement, unstinting care, patience… of knowing just what to do and when to do it… and it was all done in a place heated twice, first by the unrelentingly sun of Summer… and then by the high heat of stove and oven. It was all necessary to derive the excellence, the perfection of the jam she would afterward share with her critical neighbors and friends (proof of her mastery) and with her family, who tasted in the finished jam the evidence she loved us so and would never give less than her always astonishing best.
Grammie gone, her revelations gone, too.
I have always wondered why neither of Grammie’s two daughters, my mother and her younger sister, bothered to record Grammie’s recipes, for they were her true genius and legacy. My mother now is gone herself so I cannot ask… but whatever the reason I rue the result and wish it otherwise. All this came home to me the other day when I saw that Tommy at the Montrose Spa right up the street was having a sale of Bonne Maman jams. I bought the fig preserves first… and the next day went back and bought the plum, the blueberry, the strawberry, and (for good measure) another fig. They are (and this is my highest praise) reminiscent of my Grammie’s highest skill. Product of France they may be, they yet bring me home to my English Grammie, who on the highest days of Summer could be found stirring the mixture that brought sweetness and comfort to all, reassurance we would get through the rigors of the Winter to come, made bearable by her great art and always by her love.
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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. Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell http://HomeProfitCoach.com . Check out Massive Traffic Ultimatum -> http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=sk9BRJWy

On croquet, a game of strategy, grace, humiliation and malice. Mere football cannot compare.

 

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Howard Martell

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September 30, 2011 | Author: Jeffrey Lant | Posted in Dr. Jeffrey Lant’s Article Archive

“A game of croquet” by Winslow Homer

By Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. Friend, I suspect you are not up on the all-important words and necessary phrases from the world of croquet. That is scandalous, of course, and you should be ashamed of yourself for the dereliction. Fortunately it can be remedied at once by going to the always helpful Wikipedia, where you’ll find an admirable glossary. Go now… and while you’re there be sure to find the original score for the quirky film “Heathers.” (1989). Why?
Because those ever inventive jeunes femmes fatales invent a game (so clever, don’t you know) called “strip croquet”. You won’t play it in your neighborhood; your crusty neighbors would be scandalized… but I can play it in mine, because I live in Cambridge… where beautiful young people abound, glorious to look at but without the sense they were born with. They’d love the inspired innovation. Play the theme music right away. It will put you in just the right frame of mind for this scrutiny of one of the most conspiratorial and vengeful games on earth and where (on the pretext of helping another player with her grip) you can snuggle up without demur…
Lord Reggie learns the power of croquet…
Lord Reggie Pasworthy was in despair. This 7th impecunious son of the impecunious 17th marquess of Unworthington had heard, always on the very best authority, that Lady Pamela Noacres had cast sheep eyes at…… but that couldn’t possibly be… for she was… his… and had once nearly said so. She couldn’t…… she wouldn’t. But it appears she might.
What could he do?
He applied at once to Basil Uppercrust, who knew all but said nothing, so admirably discrete, so clever Basil. “Freddie, old chum, you need to do only one thing to be right as rain with the gel… ” Then he whispered just one word……
“Croquet”…. and immediately wrote his cousin the duchess to arrange a week-end where Lord Freddie might shine amongst the wickets, his admirable figure displayed to best advantage.
Though it has been many years now since that week-end at Castle Allworthy not a thing about it has been forgotten. How Lord Freddie confounded Lady Pamela’s advance with a ball-in-hand.
How Lady Pamela distracted him by proposing a double-bank with her grace. (He won that, too.)
How it all came down to the final hoop… and that unforgettable moment when Lord Freddie took control, determined, insistent, a gentleman no longer but a beast, my dear, I tell you a beast…. Lady Pamela’s temperature rose from tepid to scalding… from polite interest to… riveted… while Freddie ran the hoops until he completed that glorious sextuple peel to roquet her ball spinning down the verdant acres… and when the gallant victor offered his lavendered handkerchief, her fate was sealed…
The engagement was announced in the “Morning Post” just today.
The plight of the World Croquet Association.
Pity the situation and plight of these admirable folks and their invaluable efforts on behalf of croquet. They want us to see croquet in the benign light of demos and beer…. when most of us enjoy the game because of its unabashed elitist, aristocratic nuances played out with insouciance and fine champagne on the most perfect grass we have ever seen, the result of hundreds of years of arrogance and care.
A brief history of croquet.
Ask anyone (anyone, that is, of any intelligence and discernment whatsoever) just where croquet was invented… and, without missing a beat — they’d tell you “Why, old man, in Jolly Old England, what.” And, of course, they’d be wrong… and, such are the ways of croquet, they’d also be right.
Croquet scholars (fastidious and accurate) will tell you the rules of the modern game arrived from Ireland during the 1850s, perhaps coming from Brittany, where a similar game was played on the beaches. A game called “crookey” was played at Castlebellingham in 1834 and, in 1835 was played in the bishop’s palace garden; later that year it was played in the genteel Dublin suburb then called Kingstowne (now Dun Laoghaire) where it was first spelled as “croquet.” There is, however, no pre-1858 Irish document that describes the way the game was played… but the Irish don’t care about such details. They claim croquet and that is that…
…but, of course, that most assuredly is not that, especially if you are of the English ilk, and damn their cheeky assertion.
In the book “Queen of Games: The History of Croquet,” author Nicky Smith offers another hypothesis. Smith says that the game was introduced to Britain from France during the reign of Charles II of England, and was played under the name of paille maille or pall mall, derived ultimately from the Latin words for “ball and mallet.” This is what the “Encyclopedia Britannica” wrote in 1877. But of course the xenophobic Britannica would say so, wouldn’t they?
But at last there is documentary evidence that confirms English inventiveness and croquet paternity. Isaac Spratt is the champion. He created the oldest document known to bear the word “croquet”. He wrote a description of the modern game of croquet and the first set of rules and regulations of a game which became ever more esoteric, obscure, arcane. Just the way the players like it!
Spratt’s contribution came in November, 1856 when he filed his document with the Stationers’ Company in London. It is now in the English Public Records Office. In 1868 the first croquet all-comers’ meeting was held at Morton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire and in the same year the All England Croquet Club was formed at Wimbleton, London. There was absolutely nothing democratic about any of it, and one would have drunk beer, instead of a stirrup cup, at one’s considerable peril.
This result, however, was unacceptable to Ellery McClatchy, dead at 86, in September, 2011 at his home in Pope Valley, California.
If you live in Northern California and are even remotely with it, you will recognize at once the surname, for there (and amongst the politically sentient) it is a household name because of their substantial newspaper properties, not least the major paper in Sacramento, the Bee. As you may imagine, to have such a property, such a position in the largest state in the Great Republic is to have financial resources… and the time and ability to pursue your particular interests. In this case… croquet.
McClatchy was, and this is crucial to the case, an all-American boy; thus he disdained the exclusivities of old regimes everywhere. He had a “desire to make croquet available to people of all ages and to see croquet lawns in a great variety of places,” according to a profile on the US Croquet Association website. He pursued this inclusive objective over the many years he was a ranked croquet player and in 1995 when he was inducted into the US Croquet Hall of Fame.
While we all think highly of his years of effort, democratic (or republican) croquet is not what any of us desires. Which is why our favorite croquet match ever is the one overseen by the Queen of Hearts in Lewis Carroll’s immortal book “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865). The balls are live hedge hogs and the mallets are opinionated flamingoes. It is curious, odd, unconventional, the best way to play this marvelous game which puts dull baseball and interminable football in their places. I say “off with their heads” to any with the reckless temerity to gainsay me.
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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. Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell http://HomeProfitCoach.com . Check out Massive Traffic Ultimatum -> http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=sk9BRJWy

Of polar bears. As the water rises, their prospects fall.

 

Posted on September 29, 2011 by Howard Martell

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September 29, 2011 | Author: Jeffrey Lant | Posted in Dr. Jeffrey Lant’s Article Archive

By Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. What music is appropriate for the undoubted decline and possible demise of one of the grandest creatures on earth — Ursus maritimus — the polar bear? I have selected Edvard Grieg’s 1867 masterpiece “From the hall of the mountain king”, for this is the story of a race of kings, sovereigns all, ruling over a land of snow and ice… a land now melting, imperiling these princes of the North… whose prospects for survival wane as the sea waters around them rise, a rise which threatens human kind, too. This is their story… and we must heed it for they are not threatened alone. You’ll find Grieg’s suite in any search engine. Find it now… and listen to its evocative, enigmatic sound. This sound will endure…. but will the polar bears whose tale I tell this day?
The seas at the top of the world are rising, rising…
While politicians argue about cause and effect, the undeniable fact of global warming and rising seas is beyond cavil and dispute. Sea level has been rising significantly over the past century, according to a newly released study that offers the most detailed look yet at the changes in ocean levels during the past 2,100 years.
Researcher Benjamin Horton, director of the Sea Level Research Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania, found that since the late 19th century — as the world’s industrialization intensified — sea level has risen more than 2 millimeters per year on average. That’s a bit less than one-tenth of an inch… a small amount that signals death for polar bears… and chaos for seaside humans, drip by inexorable drip. It’s all about rising temperatures.
Rising sea levels are among the hazards that rightly concern environmentalists and progressive governments with increasing global temperatures caused by greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels like coal and oil over the last century or so.
The heat generated works to steadily melt some of the millions of tons of ice piled up on land in Greenland, Antarctica, and elsewhere. Such melting raises ocean levels and this, in turn, raises the possibility of major flooding in highly populated coastal cities and greater storm damage in oceanfront communities.
Polar bears must swim further and further for food…
Researcher Anthony Pagano, a US Geological Survey biologist, at the International Bear Association Conference, has, in his newly released study, made it clear what happens to polar bears as the snow melts and the seas rise. He identified and studied 50 long- distance swims by adult female polar bears between 2004 and 2009 in the southern Beaufort and Chukchi seas.
“Climate change is pulling the sea ice out from under polar bears’ feet, forcing some to swim longer distances to find food and habitat,” said Geoff York, a polar bear expert at the World Wildlife Fund who coauthored the study.
And the cubs simply fall off…
York said polar bears, tracked by satellite devices, routinely swim 10 miles or more for food, principally the seals they dote on and devour. But as the seas rise, these distances increase. Twenty bears in the survey swam more than 30 miles at a time. The longest-distance swim was 426 miles; the longest-lasting swim was 12.7 days, with a few brief breaks on drift ice. All this is bad enough, but here’s the tragic element: eleven of the bears that swam long distances had young cubs when researchers attached the tracking collars. Five of those mothers lost their cubs while swimming… and thus the breed and its prospects are diminished…
Facts about the threatened polar bears, majestic, now vulnerable.
The polar bear, universally admired, is the world’s largest land carnivore and also the largest bear, together with the omnivorous Kodiak bear, which is approximately the same size. An adult male weighs around 350-680 kg (770-1,500 lb), while an adult female is about half the size. Although it is closely related to the brown bear, it has evolved to occupy a narrower ecological niche, with many body characteristics adapted for cold temperatures, for moving across snow, ice, and open water, and for hunting the seals, which make up most of its diet.
The polar bear is classified as a vulnerable species, with eight of the 19 polar bear subpopulations in decline. Researchers estimate there are 20,000 to 25,000 polar bears worldwide; they are listed as threatened under the US Endangered Species Act.
“Nanook of the North.”
Over the course of uncounted centuries, the intricate, necessary symbiosis between the polar elements, the polar bear, and Inuit and other indigenous peoples of the North has slowly, carefully evolved. The Northern people revered the bear whose flesh they enjoyed… they called the polar bear “nanook”… and took the name proudly for themselves.
In 1922, Robert J. Flaherty made one of the most celebrated documentaries of the silent film era, “Nanook of the North”, calling it “A Story of Life and Love In the Actual Arctic.” In the tradition of what would later be called “salvage ethnography”, Flaherty captured (and some critics said staged) the struggles of the Inuk Nanook and his family in the Canadian arctic. In 1989, this film was one of the first 25 films selected for preservation in the United States Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.”
But the human Nanook, though most assuredly a predator of the ursine Nanook, was never a problem, for he took only what he needed… and was never wanton. He never forgot he needed nanook. No, he is not the problem, though human kind as a whole most assuredly is. For we as a genus are thoughtless, careless always anxious to shift the guilt, the burden, the responsibility to others for what we have done.
And what’s terrible about this so sad situation is this: we know what to do and when and how to do it. We don’t need more learned studies; for studies about the future of the polar bear and its irrevocably changing environment are frequent, thorough, detailed, and unanswerable. We need action… before this matter becomes, like the histories of so many other species, academic.
But, for now, let us end as we began, with Edvard Grieg, master of unsurpassed, haunting melody. A creature of the North, knowing Winter well, he cherished the fleeting glories of Spring. In this spirit, he composed something so beautiful it is painful to listen to. He called it “Last Spring”, and you must go to any search engine now to play it. Let it fill your heart with compassion for the great creatures now completely at the mercy of their greatest predators, us. Let us pray that this song of soul by Grieg remains great music only and that there is no “Last Spring” for Ursus maritimus, beloved of man, dying through the works of man.
For where shall we find your like again; You who thrilled us so?
Where shall we look when you are gone you who have been made by God?
When you are gone who will care for why when your great heart beats no more?
God will know… … but He will not say for we who were bade to cherish failed you.
So now we lament… too late Now we shall know you not and nevermore.
Never to play again under the great northern lights once your heaven.
Where then have you gone? You whom we loved, and failed…
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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. Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell http://HomeProfitCoach.com . Check out Massive Traffic Ultimatum -> http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=sk9BRJWy

One of the proudest days of my life… the day I give you Internet success through a unique gift you can only get from me!

 

Posted on September 28, 2011 by Howard Martell

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Ludwig van Beethoven (1820) by Joseph Karl Stieler
By Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author’s program note. Today is a red-letter day for me… one of the most important days of my life. For such a day nothing short of one of our weary world’s greatest masterpieces, Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy.” (1824), will do . Please play it before you read this article. You cannot but feel the thrill and exultation. If a human being can do this, human beings can do anything. Find it in any search engine and turn up the volume. Then you’ll know how I am feeling now as I prepare to give you a gift only I can give and which has taken me a lifetime to perfect.
Deaf… sublime.
When great Beethoven sat down to compose his 9th Symphony, of which the “Ode to Joy” is perhaps the most celebrated part, he was stone deaf. Yet in his capacious, extraordinary brain the music rang out to thrill the world. He could have said, “a deaf person cannot compose,” everyone would have understood such a conclusion and offered the usual words of sympathy… but that is not the way of people with a mission to improve the world. They recognize no obstacle! Do not give way to defeatism! And reach deep into themselves to find what they alone can give the world and its people who rely upon such genius for relief! Instruction! And improvement! For you see those who have such a gift must give such a gift… and today I give such a gift, the greatest I have ever given, to each of you.
The struggling world… and the profound promise of the Internet.
I have now been on the Internet over 18 years, about a third of my life. During these years I have witnessed humanity’s struggle to make sense of this monumental invention which has the undoubted power and demonstrated potential to connect people everywhere and enable them to say what they want to say without shackle or inhibition.
Now think a moment: for the first time, the very first time, in the long cycles of humanity each person can, with the simple expedient of an Internet connection, present himself, in all his wonderful uniqueness, to others who have the ardent desire to do the same, without the pernicious intrusion of any of the world’s Thought Police who have intervened with impunity and malice in all previous epochs.
The Internet brooks no interference… no one telling you what you can do…when you can do it. Yes, for the first time in human history each person has a voice that can be heard… that must be heard…. and so transform the world — for good and ill.
Is it any wonder then that I have selected “Ode to Joy” and recommended that you play it now… for on our troubled planet we need all the help we can get and the Internet is here to provide it.
Commerce…
From the very first minute far sighted folk saw that such a means of connection could prove to be a superb means of commerce. But how? Most didn’t know and so, without guidance, commenced a struggle which left them frustrated, confounded, angry and, too often, embittered. How, they wondered, could this astonishing invention produce a golden outcome for them? It was a question that millions asked — and continue to ask — but which only a comparative handful have ever answered successfully. With the almost daily assistance of my cherished partners George Kosch and Sandi Hunter, I have found such success… and been given the opportunity to give it to others. Today we celebrate that opportunity and its ability to uplift! Enrich! And empower people worldwide.
It all started with a blank sheet of paper.
I am not just a writer, but a published writer, which is a very different thing. To write to connect should be every writer’s objective… and it has certainly been my objective since my first article appeared in print 59 years ago, when I was 5 years old. You may well imagine what a heady thing it must be for that child, any child to experience such excitement. Once you’ve had it, you spend the rest of your life wanting more and doing what is necessary to get it. In this regard I have been most fortunate… having written thousands of articles and 18 books, mostly on business themes. My word has been carried — and frequently, too — on radio, television and on the lecture circuit. But my connection with the Internet has radically transformed the entire matter of content and given me the means to give you substantial advantage every single day.
How?
As I have often said and frequently written and emphasized, “the list is the business, the business is the list.” Thus each person desiring to succeed in business must spend a significant amount of time building a list, and this activity must be a part of each and every day that you desire to remain in business and increase your profit.
But maintaining your list, growing your list cannot, on the Internet, be your sole objective; that would be protecting your list and ensuring that you can use it daily to email ad copy to your subscribers. The problem is, if you only email ads day after day to these subscribers, they will quickly become disenchanted, even disgusted, with you… and manifest their displeasure by unsubscribing your list, thereby depriving them of all benefits you offer and yourself of their golden custom.
This is the exact situation in which most Web marketers find themselves… and why so many of these people are killing their lists, thereby killing their profits.
Here’s where I — and Bill Gates — enter the scene and why you need to pay attention to our message. Gates has famously and enigmatically said of the Internet, “Content is king.” What does he mean? Just that people will not put up with an unceasing avalanche of ad copy; they need more, much more. They need content… and if you create a blog and give them this content you can accompany it — every day — with the ad copy that generates the revenue. Problem is, most people cannot write engaging, meaningful copy and cannot afford the cost of hiring the people who could create such copy for them; it’s just too expensive.
That’s where I come in… I can and will produce such copy — for free. And today we recognize and celebrate the completion of the first 365 articles, one for every day of the year. These articles, all about 1500 words in length, are timely, intelligent, often provocative, always informative and, my signature and pride, beautifully written. Let me explain the importance of these articles and why you are fortunate to have them: they save your all-important lists from being destroyed by your subscribers, people who want more than a steady diet of ads and as such are invaluable.
Let us be very clear with each other: if you email nothing but ads, you will kill your list and thus obliterate your business. Thus, you have these options. Email the ads anyway and test my thesis (suicidal); try to write such copy every single day yourself (highly unlikely given your writing skills). Or you could hire the necessary talent to do the work, thereby breaking the bank. Or…
You could use the copy I have created for you… and which I give to you, thereby enabling your list and with it your business to grow and flourish while I provide the necessary (and always beautifully written) copy. And that is why we are celebrating today… not just for what I have written… or how well I have written — but because with these often lyric articles I am keeping your online business on the profit path.
“You millions I embrace you,” and give you the best of which I am capable for our mutual joy — freude! So now finish as we began… with Beethoven and his “Ode to Joy”. For we, now working together, have everything to be joyful about! Let the celestial sound soar… as we do — together! Freude!
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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. Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell http://HomeProfitCoach.com . Check out Massive Traffic Ultimatum -> http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=sk9BRJWy

Welcome to my house. What you must do — or say — and not do — or say — if you ever want to be invited back. (I’m serious.)

Posted on September 27, 2011 by Howard Martell

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By Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. It took me the better part of nearly 5 years to suffer through the demolition of my Cambridge condominium and through all the never-ending (and always expensive ) stages to its glorious resurrection as a place fit for — me. Naively I thought I knew what would happen next, would happen that is when 25 years and more of serious art collecting would be positioned, each item in its appointed place, each contributing its special characteristics to the overall effect, the sum producing the critical “Wow!” factor.
Yes, I thought I knew just what people would do and say upon entering this earthly paradise, brilliantly lit, extravagantly appointed, a thing of beauty and a joy forever. But, as I still cannot quite grasp, I was wrong. And so, as a matter of your domestic comfort and serenity of mind, I am sharing my experiences with you… and you will thank me — vital if you should ever remodel and rehabilitate. God help you.
Let’s get the contractors out of the way.
This is not a story of how to select a contractor, attempt to bind them through contracts which are never to your advantage, much less how to keep them on schedule, within the budget. I am still not calm and judicious enough to write about that. My remarks on the subject of contractors deal with something I knew nothing about before undertaking this signature project; I did not know how many people have brothers-in-law and cousins, too, named Vinnie…. how much did you say you paid; Vinnie’s unlicensed but he could have saved you a lot of money… and look how your contractor is gypping you. The conversation always went something like this…
Delivery man brings package to my door… and sees I’m remodeling. “Can I take a look?” What you should say now is “Over my dead body”… and slam the door in his face. But it’s too late; the ever quick and curious delivery man is inside, and scrutinizing.
After a couple minutes of intense peeping, he renders his considered opinion: “Dr.,” he says, “what you’re doing here is amazing… incredible… You paying a lot of dough?” He doesn’t wait for an answer; he knows… and he knows I know he knows. I nod. Already I feel his hand in my pocket.
“Yeah, I’m sure. I wish I’d known. I gotta cousin Vinnie, over in Everett, Mass. Let me make a call, Doctor, youse Harvard guys, no offense, are over your head with things like this. And I want to help you, ’cause I think the world of you.” When they say that, you’re doomed. It goes without saying that it isn’t just delivery men, next-door-neighbors, people met casually in the grocery store check-out line who have cousins named Vinnie… no way. Every contractor seems to be amply stocked with the breed… and a cell-phone that instantly connects you, the money guy, with the next character certain to be feeding at the trough. Just writing this makes me break out in hives.
I can remember one dismal, and damned expensive, encounter with a never-ending conga line of unlicensed hooligans named Vinnie. Just telling you about one such encounter will, I trust, produce sufficient enlightenment for you without completely humiliating me. It concerned the recessed lights in my brand-new-in-every-way kitchen. I liked them.
But it is not the way of unlicensed cousins named Vinnie to like any work, any work at all, done by anyone other than themselves. They have made plausible disliking an art form… you’ve got to hand it to them, you never feel the complete effect of the shiv until they’ve left…
Electrician Vinnie didn’t like the new, expensive, kitchen lighting system. It was too this and not enough that. He might have understood his mumbo-jumbo analysis but I (while always sagely nodding my head) did not. Anyway, next thing I know my brand- spanking-new kitchen lighting is a mass of pulled out wires and smashed glass on the floor. I don’t mind telling you I threw myself down on the newly installed marble floor (soon to be re-laid by the flooring Vinnie) as if I were holding the mangled corpse of my beloved and wept bitter tears. Vinnie, of course, was already at work contacting the lighting fixtures Vinnie, who of course made me ashamed that I had ever had the temerity and bad judgement to do anything with anyone but him. Even with all the “special because I love you, man” discounts, the cost was 50% more than I had just paid for those now completely useless original light fixtures. I only knew, of course, after Vinnie gave me his “best offer, man.”
Soon, my wallet was being emptied not only by the original Vinnie but by his shiftless son Vinnie, Jr. whose skill at creating and delivering excuses for not showing up as scheduled was astonishing; then his wife Mrs. Vinnie (“she can wash your clothes and clean your house”) and of course those cute Vinnie by-blows of the next generation who took every opportunity to visit — and devour whatever was not nailed down. I knew them all… and suffered accordingly.
But all bad things must come to and end… and so it happened here.
In due course, even the ever resourceful Vinnies of every kind and description ran out of even implausible ways to “help” me. In short, they had battened, waxed, and grown fat off that once happy and self-contented man — me. One never to be forgotten morning, I woke to find they were gone, like so many gypsies in the night. Their tools were gone, even their half-eaten pizza (from Cousin Vinnie’s grease pit in Medford, Mass) was gone… anything with any value, no matter how remote, all gone.
I felt as happy as any prisoner on Death Row getting an irrevocable, eleventh-hour reprieve. It was, in fact, the happiest moment of my life… but, of course, it didn’t last. Happy moments in the midst of such projects are few and far between… but the tears are in my eyes now as I fondly recall the moment their removal was certain.
Problem goes, problem comes.
You know you are alive if you have problems. Only dead people don’t. By this measure, I must be the most alive cat on the block. Not only do I have problems; I positively seek them out. This was conclusively proved when I went from the frying pan of construction into the fire of arranging and proper presentation of the beloved items from my art and artifact collections. I started collecting as a boy, coins, books, autographs principally political. And if I collected it I know just when and, in theory, just where it is now. It is a herculean task, I can tell you… and the days when the art movers were here drove me close to becoming a Franciscan monk… because they are allowed very few personal possessions. It seemed a good idea….
… especially after the art movers had probed the limits of human endurance by stunts, while hanging, worthy of the flying Walendas. I can assure you you never take your eyes off their lithe movements when what they are hoisting an irreplaceable 17th Century Old Master. But no matter how anxious such moves made me feel, it was worse when the first visitors came to see the results.
The first thing I say is, “Don’t touch.” Of course that then becomes the first thing they do. They ignore the Biblical injunction from Jesus who told them “Noli me tangere,” don’t touch!
The second, “no liquids in the drawing room.” Moments later they are all but holding a car wash amidst the treasures of the Habsburgs.
And as if this were not enough, when they are poking and prodding, they say, “I have one just like this,” they announce about unique, valuable silver from the descendants of Joan of Arc. “Yeah, I got it at a garage sale for 56 cents. How much you pay?”
I want you to know something. If I end up murdering one of my guests, the jury is sure to acquit me. Lawyer Vinnie will see to it…
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About The Author

‘We need a little Christmas.’ Why I’m working hard right this minute to make Christmas 2011 the best ever.

Posted on September 26, 2011 by Howard Martell

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September 26, 2011 | Author: Jeffrey Lant | Posted in Dr. Jeffrey Lant’s Article Archive

By Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. Every year, it seems, the opening date for Christmas marketing creeps forward, adding days, not just hours, to the already lengthy selling season. This year my cadre of Christmas watchers reported seasonal catalog and store sightings as early as Labor Day, September 8 . But you can count on this: as people worldwide read this article, they will surely report even earlier sightings. This happens every year… and as it does one of the interminable debates of our times reignites: when is this much too much Christmas?
Ask this query in a crowded room and, hey presto, there will be pandemonium, mayhem, and strident calls for the public lynching of the people who so tamper with and wantonly extend the most important and revered holiday of the year. Christmas creep is here… and you have an opinion on this matter; I’m sure of that. Everybody does.
Christmas is the promised land — for merchants everywhere. That’s the problem.
Christmas purists, and their number is legion, never tire of beating up the merchants who are, they aver, at the bottom of Christmas creep. From this moment of the year forward, a large percentage of Americans will get up on any soap box to hand and excoriate, insult, belittle and besmirch people who earlier in the year they knew and attested to be good, hard-working, service-providing, tax-paying citizens. But where Christmas creep is the issue, truth and justice are early casualties.
People will creep… it’s as American as apple pie.
Know any folks from California? Or Oklahoma? I do. They are some of the nicest people you’ll ever meet. They are also the descendants of creepers.
Take California for instance. There a grand gentleman named John Augustus Sutter was peacefully minding his own business when James W. Marshall on January 24, 1848 discovered gold on Sutter’s land, at Sutter’s Mill, near Sacramento. The nation didn’t say, “Good for you, Mr. Sutter.” No way. Instead they took to creeping on to old man Sutter’s land, a little bit here, a little bit there… until the creepers had everything and Mr. Sutter had nothing but lawsuits and a footnote in history. A little bit of gold in them thar hills and a whole lot of creeping got us the State of California, and that’s a fact.
Or consider the folks in Oklahoma. They’re not called Sooners for nothing. In 1889, the federal government organized the great land rush, whereby folks who wanted land could get it free by racing for it against other land-hungry folks. Problem is, a good many of the wanters couldn’t be bothered to wait… and so they crept out early and grabbed the good stuff. Yup, they were creepers and some of the best families of the state started that way, and that, too, is a fact. Creeping pays, and only a Grinch would disagree.
But Grinches proliferate the closer Christmas comes and its insistent, unrelenting messages.
Although there have been plenty of Grinches in our history, lives, and culture, the actual character debued in the 1957 children’s book by Dr. Seuss, who was by all accounts a Grinch himself. It was titled “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” and was adopted into a popular television special in 1966. In an instant people with anti-holiday spirit and growly disposition were indelibly tagged as partisans of that scowling hermit with green fur, red eyes, and boots who lives in an isolated cave near Whoville.
Now exuberant Christmas lovers had just what they needed to characterize and lambast the nay sayers, “Don’t be a Grinch,” causing the justly labeled Grinches to writhe and squirm. Just as they deserve. We all know it’s fun — and de rigueur — to pick on each and every Grinch we know.
It’s a question of dates.
After the fall in 1815 of Napoleon and his gimcrack empire, a peace conference was convened in Vienna to divvy up the spoils. Participants included Russia, England, Prussia, Austria and — drum roll — the France now ruled again by its Bourbon dynasty and represented by the Prince de Talleyrand. One day Tsar Alexander I of Russia, who always made such a bad impression as he rattled on about God and morality, was being particularly insufferable on the matter of how to divide the Kingdom of Saxony, which had, in his imperial view, stayed loyal to Napoleon a little too long. Its king, he insisted, should be losing half his country, or more.
Talleyrand, polished, aristocratic to his manicured fingertips, the ultimate cynic and realist, scanned his colleagues, each of whom (but the English) had made deals with Bonaparte, and renigged on them, snapped out that toxic phrase, “That, sire, is a question of dates.”
And so it is with our Scrooges, our Grinches.
The person who wants no Christmas festivities at all, just strict, gloomy adherence to what they suppose has been ordained and sanctified…. are Scrooges to the people who want the Christmas season to exist for a day or two, but not more. These, in turn, get dubbed as Grinches by those who want more… and there are always those who do. And so it goes…
… merchants trying (especially nowadays) to make up for one punk month after another, delving deeper into the calendar….
… thereby fueling yelps of outrage and righteousness from folks who raise the cry of too much self-seeking commercialism too early…
… thereby forcing those who might even agree in theory, to push the adamant seasonal marketing forward and forward again, as an act of mercantile preservation and profit.
Each says, “Enough is enough”; each points fingers and mouths frantic imprecations; each postures, preens, pouts, and always acts and speaks as if truth lived in their house and only their house. So there!
Whoa! The baby at the center of Christmas has indeed been thrown out with the bath water, and this will never do. Thus some thoughts of reconciliation, offered humbly and with trepidation.
Christmas has had a significant commercial aspect since the three wise men of the Orient, who came so far and at such inconvenience, approached the manger and offered their expensive presents. Did they just happen to find such offerings — gold, frankincense, and myrrh — in their saddlebags? Doubtful. More likely, they had gone shopping at one of the great bazaars along the way; such bazaars, blazing with the riches of the rich lands of the East, were the malls of their times… even unto parking their camels, always malodorous and mean spirited. In such a place, even the most fastidious desires of the most demanding could be met, including those who shopped for the King of Kings, for whom they employed their most discriminating tastes and ample means, never rushed. Thus, commercialism and Christmas go hand in hand… as they always have.
These suggestions will help you cope with and better enjoy this best of all holidays:
1) Let every man set his own acceptable level for just the amount of Christmas he desires. A laissez faire attitude is not just useful, but mandatory. Stop worrying about whether the man next door is asking too much or too little from the holiday and instead concentrate on making yours the best ever.
2) Leave the merchants alone. They have had a bad year; even if we think they are going over board, let them get on with it without our jeremiads, lamentations and snide remarks. Where would we be at Christmas, after all, without them?
3) Remember Henry Ford II’s celebrated line, “Never complain, never explain”. Since the very inception of Christmas the Thought Police have attempted to coerce uniformity. Mr. Ford was right… you owe it to no one and nobody to adhere; simply believe in your own way and style. As the song says, “Have yourself a merry little Christmas…”
4) Select a few of your favorite Christmas carols and seasonal preferences and load them into your audio player. You’ll be a lot happier when you enter some establishment with music you detest, no matter how venerable, if you can hear the tunes you particularly like.
And one more thing, whether the Christmas you celebrate is long or short, the single day itself, or the 12 days with five gold rings and lords a-leaping, or something else altogether, remember this: the gift you should most give and be most fortunate to receive is love… it is the only true and essential element. All else pales beside it.
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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. Republished with author’s permission by Howard Martell http://HomeProfitCoach.com . Check out Massive Traffic Ultimatum -> http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=sk9BRJWy