by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's Note. To get into the right and proper mood for this article, search any search engine for Sir William Walton's resounding "Crown Imperial." This was the music Their Royal Highnesses heard as they walked the Westminster Abbey red carpet to their future subjects, the cynosure of every eye. Walton was the perfect choice... you'll see.
The State Landau, smart and polished had just driven up to the gate where the newly minted, newly married Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were waiting. The woman who started the day as Kate Middleton, turned to her new husband and said the magic words, so telling because we all felt the sentiment before she even uttered it. "I am so happy," she whispered to her prince, truly charming and a bit abashed by his position this day and perhaps thinking, "Waiting was worth it. I am truly marrying the woman I adore... and everyone is so glad about it. And I do believe she loves me for myself."
The pageantry and ceremony in general.
In the 19th century, the British and their monarchy were a byword for sloppy, disorganized, and often dangerous royal ceremonies. The person who was most instrumental in changing matters was Queen Victoria's "beautiful" (her word) hunk the German princeling Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. From his time at Court in the mid-1800s things got better, slowly but surely, as I detail in my book "Insubstantial Pageant: Ceremony and Confusion at Queen Victoria's Court (1979). By the early 20th century the overall reality of ceremonial muddle had been replaced by a professional approach to showcasing the monarch to his people. The British are now justly renowned worldwide for the flawless pageants that punctuate each sovereign's reign and present him to his subjects and the world just the way he wishes.
The now traditional and punctilious pageantry we expect was very much on display on Friday, April 29, 2011. It was a joy to watch the aspects emerge... particularly given the fact that this event operated under peculiar circumstances... the inevitable, could-never-be-avoided comparisons to the pageantry and circumstances of the marriage 30 years before between Prince Charles, Prince of Wales and Lady Diana Spencer. The marriage and ceremonial arrangements of Diana, Princess of Wales' elder son and his beautiful Kate had to be considered carefully so that all of the inevitable comparisons tilted in favor of the soon-to-be Cambridges... as they most surely did.
Princess Diana's marriage to the heir to "this throne of kings, this England", Prince Charles was an affair of the highest state; after all the groom was the heir to the imperium. In retrospect, what seemed so beguiling at the time appears as more an event than a marriage. Splendor (and perfect coordination) was there... love and affection were not. It was an omen for the tragedy which followed, besmirching the reputation of Prince Charles and ending in Princess Diana's sad demise.
Both of Princess Diana's sons, groom Prince William and justly concerned younger son Prince Harry were clear on what they wanted... a real marriage, a real wedding, true and heartfelt feelings all round.
There is no question but that they got what they wanted... which was a decided relief to the British nation and its Commonwealth... and its Queen, Elizabeth II, who arrived back at Buckingham Palace after the marriage ceremony and proclaimed the day's events "amazing." And so they were...
The Married Couple.
After the cynical, loveless marriage of the groom's mother Princess Diana, the nation and body language experts were on the qui vive for "the truth" about this couple, their wedding, and whether it confirmed (or challenged) the good feelings they had about Wills and Kate, and their pivotal role in establishing just the right reality (not merely image) that will allow the monarchy to flourish after the many crises of the current Royal Family, particularly the much married, much divorced children of Queen Elizabeth, a tawdry, shopworn crew.
April 29th delivered what everyone wanted: a grounded, affectionate, sincerely attached couple, people who are what they seemed to be, not a scandal waiting to happen.
Kate's gown was the first clue. Lady Diana's overdone gown made her look like a confectioner's bride. Who's idea was the taffeta anyway? But Kate, chic Kate, delivered exactly what one would have wanted for one's own family wedding: a form-fitting dress that breathed classic good taste, undeniable (though understated) elegance. It is the dress of a lady of taste, breeding, good judgement, and, so very visible, care, every one a desirable trait for her future job as one-who-may-be Queen Consort.
The little clues so beloved of commentators and would-be cognoscenti began to stack up:
* The interaction between Princes William and Harry indicated just how close they are; they needed to be given the scandal and tragedy of their parents' relations. Harry, for all that he's a known wise-acre, will be lonely now; Wills has other things to do which, even with the best will on earth, will limit time with Harry.
* The way he looked at his bride for the first time in her riveting marriage attire... and said, quite simply, "You look so beautiful." And so she did... and what every bride longs to hear, the compliment based on affection, awe, and a dawning awareness that he is really getting married, and to the person he has always wanted.
* The body language. As all the world knows, these two people took some eight years to get acquainted, know each other, argue and make up with each other, and love each other. The time they wisely took enabled them to become and be a couple, then yesterday, a married couple. They move together well; I was interested to see how they left the Abbey, hand in hand, the new Duke of Cambridge putting down the heel of one shoe on the toe of the other, so as not to hurry his duchess in her gown and (not too long) train.
Mad for Kate.
I have long been a Kate Middleton admirer; I thought she had just the right traits of heart and mind to be a truly helpful, loving partner to her prince, the better enabling him to do the important work he must do to transform and improve the monarchy in a world of relentless change. After yesterday, my already substantial admiration has substantially increased. She played her part faultlessly and, more than that, with her new husband's complete concurrence they turned their marriage from an event of monarchy and nation into a true wedding, dedicated to each other and their friends and family, including their great nation.
Everything was done well, thus delivering just what everyone wanted: two deeply devoted people with a great task, historic task before them, ready now together ready to do the best we well know them capable of.
And so the newest Royal Duke is now His Royal Highness of Cambridge, the old shire, not the University and Kate gets what the Duchess of Windsor could only long for, the coveted letters HRH. True, of the many new Royal Dukes of Cambridge since the 17th century, not one has been notable for anything other than his capacity for strong drink and wrong women and oodles of FitzCambridge children, royal byblows. Queen Victoria always had trouble with the Cambridges of her day, but from these self-same Cambridges came a pillar of the dynasty. That pillar was Queen Mary, Elizabeth II's dutiful, God fearing, monarchy reverencing grandmother... may our new duchess find such traits in herself. God Save the Queen (to be) and may she remain happy and glorious!
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 recognized royal expert and historian having penned 18 best-selling business books. Watch for his online televised interviews about the Royal Wedding of William and Kate. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol....http://WorkingAtHome101.com
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Saturday, April 30, 2011
Friday, April 29, 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 Ruthsella Corasol ..http://WorkingAtHome101.com
Get 10,000+ Proven Ways To Make Money From Home!.....http://www.WorkingAtHome101.com/?rd=fg6LI110
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 Ruthsella Corasol ..http://WorkingAtHome101.com
Get 10,000+ Proven Ways To Make Money From Home!.....http://www.WorkingAtHome101.com/?rd=fg6LI110
'And yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.' (Matthew 6:28) Easter Lilly, 2011
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
It is today Easter Sunday. Easter came late this year, April 24. And it came into a world that was dismayed by our elusive springtime; temperatures low, hints of snow and even some late flakes, and the bone chilling winds that convince you January has never left, though in fact it is 55 degrees in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
My house is awash with flowers, many more than usual. I saw some lovely orchids at Shaw's market in Porter Square; they were reasonably priced, too. And so then having nothing blooming inside, I brought them home. It is now two weeks and a couple days since I acquired them; they are faded now, of course. But they still have traces, and proudly too, of the tasteful colors that made me snatch them up.
Doyle Taylor, a perceptive friend, saw that I was preoccupied one recent day and tended to be more caustic than usual. Doyle is a man who not merely believes in saying it with flowers but doing so promptly with a most thoughtful card signed by him and his new wife Casey. They were high school sweethearts who lost touch, married others... then after fate had dealt with them, rediscovered and married each other. They are charming, intelligent, delightful. One can never know too many such but life delivers them sparingly.
Then there is my most recent floral acquisition, the mandatory (for some) Easter Lily. I got it only yesterday (when I inquired a week ago I was told they came in only a few days before the holiday. It has one flower open and many buds promising good value and good looks, too. It is of this plant and its Easter Lily -- Lilium longiflorum -- that I wish to speak for it is, verily, the symbol of the day and its world-changing events.
Many Easter lilies, not just one.
We speak in common parlance, as people do, of an "Easter lily," but in fact there are several such. First, of course, lilium longiflorum, the clear winner of the name by its indisputable commercial prowess.
Following far behind in popularity, use, and commercial value is Zantedeschia aethoipca, not a true lily at all, commonly called Lily of the Nile, Calla lily or Arum lily, native to southern Africa. Then Lilium candidum, commonly called the Madonna Lily, native to the Balkans and West Asia. Zephyranthes atamasco, commonly called Atamasco Lily or Rain Lily, native to the southwestern United States... then (you never guessed) daffodils, the daffs we love being lilies after all.
Where did Easter lilies come from?
Ever hear of the Ryukyu Islands of southern Japan? That's where today's Easter lilies originate. And therein lies an important fact about why this industry was once dominated by Japan... and why today it is almost completely American. World War II was the transforming event.
Prior to 1941, the majority of Easter lily bulbs were exported to the United States from Japan. World War II changed everything. Today 95% of all bulbs grown for the potted Easter lily market are not only produced in the United States, but more surprisingly within a narrow coastal region straddling the California-Oregon border, from Smith River, California up to Brookings, Oregon. It gets even more interesting; just 10 farms in this area produce almost all Easter lily bulbs in the US of A. Unsurprisingly these farms have dubbed themselves collectively the "Easter Lily Capital of the World."
An industry completely changed by one man and one bulb.
One man made a huge difference to this US dominance of the Easter Lily and how it looks today. That man was Louis Houghton who brought a suitcase full of hybrid lily bulbs to the south coast of Oregon in 1919. These he freely distributed certain that the weather and environment were perfect for the cultivation of a superior bulb to that grown by the Japanese. When WW II cut off Americans from the Easter lilies which were an integral part of religious services, Houghton was given his big chance on a silver platter.
He was successful beyond his wildest imaginings. By 1945 there were about 1,200 growers producing bulbs up and down the Pacific Coast, from Vancouver, Canada to Long Beach, California. The early comers profited for a time as the price of lily bulbs skyrocketed. It reminded some of the Dutch "tulip mania" of the 17th century, where a single tulip bulb cost the annual wages of 10 skilled crafts people. Were Easter lily bulbs next? A small army of lily farmers bet the ranch on it... and failed. The number of Easter lily producing farms steadily dropped; today there are just 10... comfortably dividing up the proceeds.
The Nellie White.
James White was one of the successful Easter lily producers. However, he thought the elimination of Japan (and its too small lilies) opened the door for other improvements, too. He wanted to end the dominance of the "White Gold" bulb... and significantly improve the look of Easter lilies with an entirely new bulb... in due course named after White's wife, Nellie. Today the "Nellie White" dominates the U.S. market and thus the entire Easter lily business. One crucial thing in season can completely change any industry, and no one in business should ever forget that.
More about the Easter lily business.
One major reason why so many Easter lily producers closed was the considerable difficulty in growing and managing the plants themselves. First, Easter lily bulbs must be cultivated in the fields for three, sometimes four, years, before they are ready to be shipped to commercial greenhouse growers. During these years the bulbs are never dormant and require constant care and attention to assure superior quality and cleanliness. Each bulb is handled up to 40 times before it is ready to be shipped. And remember the commercial selling season is just two weeks annually at the time of Easter (the date for which changes annually)... and all Easter lilies must be ready and should ideally have at least one flower open, the better to showcase the thing that matters most of all to everyone who sees this stately, evocative plant: the Easter lily itself. It is astonishingly elegant, dramatic, the very essence of purity. As such Jesus saw fit to use this favored plant as a means of quieting nervous Christians.
The Sermon on the Mount.
Of the many seminal moments in the brief ministry of Jesus Christ on earth, the Sermon on the Mount needs special attention. It was given in about AD 30 and contains one essential element of the Christian religion after another, including this reassuring sentiment to believers:
"Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."
And so Jesus turned a glorious flower into a symbol of God's love for and protection of even erring people. Thus, when you attend Easter services today or any day and see the unforgettable white trumpet-like flowers of the Easter lily, you are seeing an apt symbol and manifestation of a love that can be ours and eternal.
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 Ruthsella Corasol...http://WorkingAtHome101.com
Exclusive Offer: Get Your FULL PAGE Ad on over 50 High Traffic Websites Instantly
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It is today Easter Sunday. Easter came late this year, April 24. And it came into a world that was dismayed by our elusive springtime; temperatures low, hints of snow and even some late flakes, and the bone chilling winds that convince you January has never left, though in fact it is 55 degrees in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
My house is awash with flowers, many more than usual. I saw some lovely orchids at Shaw's market in Porter Square; they were reasonably priced, too. And so then having nothing blooming inside, I brought them home. It is now two weeks and a couple days since I acquired them; they are faded now, of course. But they still have traces, and proudly too, of the tasteful colors that made me snatch them up.
Doyle Taylor, a perceptive friend, saw that I was preoccupied one recent day and tended to be more caustic than usual. Doyle is a man who not merely believes in saying it with flowers but doing so promptly with a most thoughtful card signed by him and his new wife Casey. They were high school sweethearts who lost touch, married others... then after fate had dealt with them, rediscovered and married each other. They are charming, intelligent, delightful. One can never know too many such but life delivers them sparingly.
Then there is my most recent floral acquisition, the mandatory (for some) Easter Lily. I got it only yesterday (when I inquired a week ago I was told they came in only a few days before the holiday. It has one flower open and many buds promising good value and good looks, too. It is of this plant and its Easter Lily -- Lilium longiflorum -- that I wish to speak for it is, verily, the symbol of the day and its world-changing events.
Many Easter lilies, not just one.
We speak in common parlance, as people do, of an "Easter lily," but in fact there are several such. First, of course, lilium longiflorum, the clear winner of the name by its indisputable commercial prowess.
Following far behind in popularity, use, and commercial value is Zantedeschia aethoipca, not a true lily at all, commonly called Lily of the Nile, Calla lily or Arum lily, native to southern Africa. Then Lilium candidum, commonly called the Madonna Lily, native to the Balkans and West Asia. Zephyranthes atamasco, commonly called Atamasco Lily or Rain Lily, native to the southwestern United States... then (you never guessed) daffodils, the daffs we love being lilies after all.
Where did Easter lilies come from?
Ever hear of the Ryukyu Islands of southern Japan? That's where today's Easter lilies originate. And therein lies an important fact about why this industry was once dominated by Japan... and why today it is almost completely American. World War II was the transforming event.
Prior to 1941, the majority of Easter lily bulbs were exported to the United States from Japan. World War II changed everything. Today 95% of all bulbs grown for the potted Easter lily market are not only produced in the United States, but more surprisingly within a narrow coastal region straddling the California-Oregon border, from Smith River, California up to Brookings, Oregon. It gets even more interesting; just 10 farms in this area produce almost all Easter lily bulbs in the US of A. Unsurprisingly these farms have dubbed themselves collectively the "Easter Lily Capital of the World."
An industry completely changed by one man and one bulb.
One man made a huge difference to this US dominance of the Easter Lily and how it looks today. That man was Louis Houghton who brought a suitcase full of hybrid lily bulbs to the south coast of Oregon in 1919. These he freely distributed certain that the weather and environment were perfect for the cultivation of a superior bulb to that grown by the Japanese. When WW II cut off Americans from the Easter lilies which were an integral part of religious services, Houghton was given his big chance on a silver platter.
He was successful beyond his wildest imaginings. By 1945 there were about 1,200 growers producing bulbs up and down the Pacific Coast, from Vancouver, Canada to Long Beach, California. The early comers profited for a time as the price of lily bulbs skyrocketed. It reminded some of the Dutch "tulip mania" of the 17th century, where a single tulip bulb cost the annual wages of 10 skilled crafts people. Were Easter lily bulbs next? A small army of lily farmers bet the ranch on it... and failed. The number of Easter lily producing farms steadily dropped; today there are just 10... comfortably dividing up the proceeds.
The Nellie White.
James White was one of the successful Easter lily producers. However, he thought the elimination of Japan (and its too small lilies) opened the door for other improvements, too. He wanted to end the dominance of the "White Gold" bulb... and significantly improve the look of Easter lilies with an entirely new bulb... in due course named after White's wife, Nellie. Today the "Nellie White" dominates the U.S. market and thus the entire Easter lily business. One crucial thing in season can completely change any industry, and no one in business should ever forget that.
More about the Easter lily business.
One major reason why so many Easter lily producers closed was the considerable difficulty in growing and managing the plants themselves. First, Easter lily bulbs must be cultivated in the fields for three, sometimes four, years, before they are ready to be shipped to commercial greenhouse growers. During these years the bulbs are never dormant and require constant care and attention to assure superior quality and cleanliness. Each bulb is handled up to 40 times before it is ready to be shipped. And remember the commercial selling season is just two weeks annually at the time of Easter (the date for which changes annually)... and all Easter lilies must be ready and should ideally have at least one flower open, the better to showcase the thing that matters most of all to everyone who sees this stately, evocative plant: the Easter lily itself. It is astonishingly elegant, dramatic, the very essence of purity. As such Jesus saw fit to use this favored plant as a means of quieting nervous Christians.
The Sermon on the Mount.
Of the many seminal moments in the brief ministry of Jesus Christ on earth, the Sermon on the Mount needs special attention. It was given in about AD 30 and contains one essential element of the Christian religion after another, including this reassuring sentiment to believers:
"Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these."
And so Jesus turned a glorious flower into a symbol of God's love for and protection of even erring people. Thus, when you attend Easter services today or any day and see the unforgettable white trumpet-like flowers of the Easter lily, you are seeing an apt symbol and manifestation of a love that can be ours and eternal.
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 Ruthsella Corasol...http://WorkingAtHome101.com
Exclusive Offer: Get Your FULL PAGE Ad on over 50 High Traffic Websites Instantly
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'I Love Lucy.' Who doesn't? Then you love Madelyn Pugh Davis, writer, who cooked up the humor, dead at 90, April 20, 2011. An Appreciation.
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's note: To get in the mood for this article, search any search engine for the "I Love Lucy" theme song (written by Eliot Daniel). Make sure you get the version with the lyrics!
How many laughs has "I Love Lucy" given you over the years? More than you can even remember, I bet. And it's the best kind of laugher; deep, belly laughs, the kind that take over your body, as you howl, unable to stop. Such laughter is good for the spirit and the soul; it literally washes away cares and troubles.
Madelyn Pugh Davis was the presiding genius who delivered these laughs week after week, to the delight of the nation. Her name appeared as co-writer for every single episode of the series which ran from October 15, 1951 to May 6, 1957. It was a staggering achievement. Not least because Davis was a very successful woman writer in the male-dominated medium of network television.
** Remember the episode where Lucy battles a giant loaf of bread that emerges from the oven and pins her to the wall? A classic...
Madelyn Pugh Davis knew how to work the premise of the show and its 4 main characters for maximum comedic effect.
"I Love Lucy" was not particularly innovative -- the wacky housewife, the irritated husband, the oddball friends. What made the program innovative was the commitment of the 4 principal characters to do anything for a laugh...and the irrepressible inventiveness of the script. In other words, Madelyn Pugh Davis and the other key members of the team: Her longtime writing partner, Bob Carroll Jr; their producer Jess Oppenheimer. Writers Bob Schiller and Bob Weiskopf later joined the team.
** What about this classic? Remember Lucy slipping and sliding in a vat while mashing grapes? It was hysterical.
The four main characters.
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, married in real life, were married in the program, too, as Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. Their friends are Fred and Ethel Mertz.
Lucy was a scatterbrained housewife mad keen on a career in the entertainment business, for all that she had no talent. Ricky was a Cuban band leader, as he was in real life; a typical quick to boil Latin, occasionally misunderstood but always faithful to the Lucy he loves (not the case for this roaming Latin lover in real life.)
Fred (William Frawley) was a grump, ultra tight with the penny, but a man of the theater himself having played vaudeville along with wife Ethel (Vivian Vance.)
The job of the writing team was to keep characters (known to virtually every single American) fresh by putting them in the middle of one side-splitting funny situation after another. These situations, particularly for Lucy, involved some very tricky slapstick comedy. Lucille Ball, an international star, might have been expected to make heavy weather about some of these scenes ("are they right for my image?"), but in fact what Madelyn Pugh Davis wrote, Lucille Ball did... no matter how difficult... as a matter of professional pride. That attitude permeated all the actors and their incomparable team.
**What about the episode from 1955? It centered on Lucy's mortifying encounter with handsome Hollywood actor William Holden. Holden accidentally sets her fake nose on fire... and puts in out by dipping her nose in his teacup.
The most watched show in the United States in four of its six seasons.
"I Love Lucy," resting as did on Davis and team's just plain funny scripts, was hugely popular right from the start. What's more, unlike other series that started hot and fizzled because of weak scripts, the quality of the scripts never diminished. They were good in the first episode; they were good in the last.
The problem with "I Love Lucy" was the seething personal relationships, always likely to burst into flame. Desi Arnaz liked the ladies, the more the merrier. He was Cuban and thought rampant, careless infidelity his birth right. Lucille Ball disagreed.
The relationship between William Frawley and Vivian Vance was also poisonous; they could hardly stand to be in the same room together, not least because Frawley was master of the all too accurate put-down. He once said Vance's body was like a "sack of doorknobs." It was crude... it was memorable... it was funny. No doubt some of this (funny to onlookers) tension was slipped into the script to heighten the effect. Davis would have seen the humorous aspect and run with it... increasing the laughter.
** Must remind you of this one... an all-time favorite: Lucy and Ethel in this 1952 show land jobs in a chocolate factory, only to have the conveyor belt kick into overdrive.
Madelyn Pugh wrote and wrote... ascending the ladder one (usually funny) word at a time.
Pugh (her maiden name) was born in Indianapolis and graduated in 1942 from Indiana University. Because of World War II women had a crack at jobs ordinarily reserved for men, like the radio staff writer position she landed. It's important to recall the primacy of radio in those days. It was the primary mode of communication; virtually every family had one. Pugh was talented, hard-working and ambitious. She soon moved up to a CBS affiliate in Los Angeles.
"My Favorite Husband".
At CBS she met longtime writing partner Bob Carroll, Jr. Together they worked on several shows, including "It's a Great Life," starring Steve Allen... and "My Favorite Husband", starring...... Lucille Ball. The pieces that were soon to make America laugh were beginning to emerge and get together. "I Love Lucy" was the result... the program America took to its heart immediately and whose unique use of three cameras changed an industry and launched a thousand sit-coms, many through Desilu Productions.
And remember... there was never, ever a vulgar word, a cruel put-down, a bigoted, biased, or racist comment. It was literally and gratefully good clean fun.
Madelyn Pugh Davis, as she became upon her marriage, was widely recognized, honored, lauded.
In 2007, the publication Television Week named her one of the 25 most influential people who shaped the industry, noting that she was a principal writer on all 180 "I Love Lucy" episodes and 13 specials on CBS from 1951 to 1961.
She was a lucky woman no doubt, luck being defined as setting the desired objective and working one's tail off to achieve it. A woman of mirth,laughter, high hilarity she was deadly serious about that. And we, in our often bitter times which cry out for some good humor, are the better for this lady.
** Just one more. Who can forget the Vitameatavegamin episode where Lucy gets drunk filming a commercial for this alcohol-laced patent medicine? One of the best... but then that's the only thing Madelyn Pugh Davis delivered.That's why after 6 seasons, "I Love Lucy" finished its run at the top of the Nielsen ratings, the first program to do so.
++ Mrs. Davis and Bob Carroll, Jr. co-authors "Laughing With Lucy: My Life With America's Leading Lady of Comedy." (2005). Check it out.
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 marketer, consultant and author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol ..http://WorkingAtHome101.com
MASSIVE TRAFFIC PACKAGE Plus 50,000 FREE Guaranteed Visitors for YOU. AMAZING
http://www.WorkingAtHome101.com/?rd=iv4LSF5A
Author's note: To get in the mood for this article, search any search engine for the "I Love Lucy" theme song (written by Eliot Daniel). Make sure you get the version with the lyrics!
How many laughs has "I Love Lucy" given you over the years? More than you can even remember, I bet. And it's the best kind of laugher; deep, belly laughs, the kind that take over your body, as you howl, unable to stop. Such laughter is good for the spirit and the soul; it literally washes away cares and troubles.
Madelyn Pugh Davis was the presiding genius who delivered these laughs week after week, to the delight of the nation. Her name appeared as co-writer for every single episode of the series which ran from October 15, 1951 to May 6, 1957. It was a staggering achievement. Not least because Davis was a very successful woman writer in the male-dominated medium of network television.
** Remember the episode where Lucy battles a giant loaf of bread that emerges from the oven and pins her to the wall? A classic...
Madelyn Pugh Davis knew how to work the premise of the show and its 4 main characters for maximum comedic effect.
"I Love Lucy" was not particularly innovative -- the wacky housewife, the irritated husband, the oddball friends. What made the program innovative was the commitment of the 4 principal characters to do anything for a laugh...and the irrepressible inventiveness of the script. In other words, Madelyn Pugh Davis and the other key members of the team: Her longtime writing partner, Bob Carroll Jr; their producer Jess Oppenheimer. Writers Bob Schiller and Bob Weiskopf later joined the team.
** What about this classic? Remember Lucy slipping and sliding in a vat while mashing grapes? It was hysterical.
The four main characters.
Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, married in real life, were married in the program, too, as Lucy and Ricky Ricardo. Their friends are Fred and Ethel Mertz.
Lucy was a scatterbrained housewife mad keen on a career in the entertainment business, for all that she had no talent. Ricky was a Cuban band leader, as he was in real life; a typical quick to boil Latin, occasionally misunderstood but always faithful to the Lucy he loves (not the case for this roaming Latin lover in real life.)
Fred (William Frawley) was a grump, ultra tight with the penny, but a man of the theater himself having played vaudeville along with wife Ethel (Vivian Vance.)
The job of the writing team was to keep characters (known to virtually every single American) fresh by putting them in the middle of one side-splitting funny situation after another. These situations, particularly for Lucy, involved some very tricky slapstick comedy. Lucille Ball, an international star, might have been expected to make heavy weather about some of these scenes ("are they right for my image?"), but in fact what Madelyn Pugh Davis wrote, Lucille Ball did... no matter how difficult... as a matter of professional pride. That attitude permeated all the actors and their incomparable team.
**What about the episode from 1955? It centered on Lucy's mortifying encounter with handsome Hollywood actor William Holden. Holden accidentally sets her fake nose on fire... and puts in out by dipping her nose in his teacup.
The most watched show in the United States in four of its six seasons.
"I Love Lucy," resting as did on Davis and team's just plain funny scripts, was hugely popular right from the start. What's more, unlike other series that started hot and fizzled because of weak scripts, the quality of the scripts never diminished. They were good in the first episode; they were good in the last.
The problem with "I Love Lucy" was the seething personal relationships, always likely to burst into flame. Desi Arnaz liked the ladies, the more the merrier. He was Cuban and thought rampant, careless infidelity his birth right. Lucille Ball disagreed.
The relationship between William Frawley and Vivian Vance was also poisonous; they could hardly stand to be in the same room together, not least because Frawley was master of the all too accurate put-down. He once said Vance's body was like a "sack of doorknobs." It was crude... it was memorable... it was funny. No doubt some of this (funny to onlookers) tension was slipped into the script to heighten the effect. Davis would have seen the humorous aspect and run with it... increasing the laughter.
** Must remind you of this one... an all-time favorite: Lucy and Ethel in this 1952 show land jobs in a chocolate factory, only to have the conveyor belt kick into overdrive.
Madelyn Pugh wrote and wrote... ascending the ladder one (usually funny) word at a time.
Pugh (her maiden name) was born in Indianapolis and graduated in 1942 from Indiana University. Because of World War II women had a crack at jobs ordinarily reserved for men, like the radio staff writer position she landed. It's important to recall the primacy of radio in those days. It was the primary mode of communication; virtually every family had one. Pugh was talented, hard-working and ambitious. She soon moved up to a CBS affiliate in Los Angeles.
"My Favorite Husband".
At CBS she met longtime writing partner Bob Carroll, Jr. Together they worked on several shows, including "It's a Great Life," starring Steve Allen... and "My Favorite Husband", starring...... Lucille Ball. The pieces that were soon to make America laugh were beginning to emerge and get together. "I Love Lucy" was the result... the program America took to its heart immediately and whose unique use of three cameras changed an industry and launched a thousand sit-coms, many through Desilu Productions.
And remember... there was never, ever a vulgar word, a cruel put-down, a bigoted, biased, or racist comment. It was literally and gratefully good clean fun.
Madelyn Pugh Davis, as she became upon her marriage, was widely recognized, honored, lauded.
In 2007, the publication Television Week named her one of the 25 most influential people who shaped the industry, noting that she was a principal writer on all 180 "I Love Lucy" episodes and 13 specials on CBS from 1951 to 1961.
She was a lucky woman no doubt, luck being defined as setting the desired objective and working one's tail off to achieve it. A woman of mirth,laughter, high hilarity she was deadly serious about that. And we, in our often bitter times which cry out for some good humor, are the better for this lady.
** Just one more. Who can forget the Vitameatavegamin episode where Lucy gets drunk filming a commercial for this alcohol-laced patent medicine? One of the best... but then that's the only thing Madelyn Pugh Davis delivered.That's why after 6 seasons, "I Love Lucy" finished its run at the top of the Nielsen ratings, the first program to do so.
++ Mrs. Davis and Bob Carroll, Jr. co-authors "Laughing With Lucy: My Life With America's Leading Lady of Comedy." (2005). Check it out.
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 marketer, consultant and author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol ..http://WorkingAtHome101.com
MASSIVE TRAFFIC PACKAGE Plus 50,000 FREE Guaranteed Visitors for YOU. AMAZING
http://www.WorkingAtHome101.com/?rd=iv4LSF5A
An appreciation for the life of Violet Cowden, 94, died April 10, 2011. World War II aviation pioneer.
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
President Harry Truman once remarked that there is nothing new under the sun except the history you haven't learned yet. How right he was, and nothing proves the point so well as this appreciation for the life of World War II aviation pioneer,Violet Crowden and all the other 1,078 Women Airforce Service Pilots.
Here is the crucial problem they helped to solve:
When the United States entered World War II, (December 1941), it placed its massive manufacturing and industrial capacity at the service of the Allies. This meant producing aircraft in the quantities needed to overwhelm Germany and Japan thereby ensuring the fastest possible victory. But there was a problem here.
The war drained America of its male pilots; they were needed at the front, to fly the crucial missions. But there weren't enough male pilots in the country to replace them. That left a huge problem that had to be solved and had to be solved fast: how to get the planes being manufactured to the landing fields worldwide where our "boys" desperately needed them?
The solution?
Cherchez la femme, particularly the thousands of American women who were licensed pilots. They were the ace in the hole... though they had to get through a mountain of male skepticism and doubt before they got the opportunity to show America and the world that they could do their "bit" too.
Creation of the WASP.
Even before America entered the war far-seeing women were at work on solving problems that would occur when she did. Two famous women pilots -- Jacqueline "Jackie" Cochran and test-pilot Nancy Harkness Love -- independently submitted proposals for the use of female pilots in non-combat situations. These proposals were submitted to the US Army Air Forces (USAAF), predecessor to the United States Air Force, or USAF. They rightly believed the war would spread and that the United States must be prepared when it did.
Their (separate) proposals were rejected by General H. "Hap" Arnold, commander of the USAAF. Poor "Hap" was hapless. Not least because Eleanor Roosevelt, America's activist First Lady, intervened and strenuously so. Her involvement triggered the usual winks, nudges and (privately) malicious digs and comments; why couldn't she just give teas in the Blue Room like all the First Ladies before her?
But that wasn't Eleanor Roosevelt's way and the USAAF got a whiff of what one determined woman could do to help other determined women help America. In due course, America's need for pilots trumped the arguments against female pilots... and so, bit by bit, women were integrated into the services. Some ferried new planes to their destinations; others towed targets for aerial gunnery practice; still others were flight instructors.
The "Big Cheese" syndrome.
But if women could do men's work, they also suffered from the same turf battles. Who was going to be the Big Cheese of these proceedings -- "Jackie" Cochran or Nancy Love? Cochran was in England volunteering to fly for the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA). While she was gone, "Hap" Arnold decided to go with Nancy Love's proposal. "Jackie" Cochran, back from England, immediately made An Issue of this decision... while Hapless Hank Arnold claimed ignorance... anything to cool Cochran down.
Arnold's solution was classic: both proposals were accepted and a final decision postponed. Of course both tenacious, determined, bureaucratically adept women continued the battle for supreme control. In July 1943, Cochran, famous and better connected, got what she wanted. With Arnold's assistance Cochran became director of the Women Airforce Service Pilots. No one knew better than General Arnold why they were called WASPs.
Violet Cowden at work for America.
While these internecine battles were playing themselves out, the recruitment of women pilots got underway... and the results were astonishing. More than 25,000 women applied for WASP service. Fewer than 1,900 were accepted and just 1,078 of them got their wings... including Violet Cowden, who served the WASPs in 1943 and 1944. Cowden was typical of the kinds of women who became WASPs and the constant obstacles they faced.
Born October 1,1916 in Bowdle, South Dakota, in 1936 she earned a teaching certificate from what was then the Spearfish Normal School, in Spearfish, S.D. She then stayed in Spearfish to teach first grade. There, she rode her bicycle 6 miles each way to a local airfield for her first flying lessons.
After Pearl Harbor was attacked, Cowden, by then a licensed pilot, asked to join the Civil Air Patrol but got no reply. That was typical. She tried again and applied to the Women's Flying Training Detachment, an early incarnation of the WASPs. She was one of the 1830 lucky applicants and reported to Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas for six months of rigorous training.
There she discovered that because WASPs were civilian employees and not military, they had to pay for their own food, lodging, and (generally ill-fitting) attire. Barely 5 foot tall Violet Cowden was installed in a men's Size 44 for the duration.
Violet Cowden faced the snubs and slights the way most WASPs did -- by ignoring the fact they were ignored and getting on with the job. They knew something about America's pilots that these male pilots often forgot: they needed these women and their often overlooked skills. It was a simple as that.
Always an afterthought, Cowden worked seven days a week, sleeping on commercial flights that ferried her to and from her crucial business. There was hardly ever a good word for a dangerous job well done... and remember what the WASPs did could be very dangerous indeed. Thirty eight WASPs died in accidents during training or on duty.
And despite all they did, when in late 1944 male pilots began coming home in significant numbers, the WASPs were, with hardly a word of thanks or recognition, simply dismissed. For Violet Cowden that day came in December, 1944 when the Army dissolved the WASPs altogether and told them to go home. For Cowden this was the "worst day of my life"... but it was a man's world then... and this was how things were done. It was America at our crudest and most insensitive, and it is painful to recall that our nation treated these patriots so.
Recognition, at last.
If there contemporaries ignored and overlooked them, later generations did what they could to bestow proper recognition and acknowledgement for a job well done. President Jimmy Carter signed in 1977 legislation to give WASPs full military status for their service. On July 1, 2009 President Barack Obama awarded the WASP the Congressional Gold Medal and said, "I am honored to finally give them some of the hard-earned recognition they deserve."
As for Violet Cowden, having been kicked out of the war, the WASPs dissolved, she got the only job in aviation she could... behind the ticket counter of Trans World Airlines, waiting for history to catch up. Perhaps now it has...
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 Ruthsella Corasol..http://WorkingAtHome101.com
The Fastest Way To Get Real Cash From The Internet
http://www.WorkingAtHome101.com/?rd=it3pHP2v
L@@K -- 50,000 Visitors To Your Website F R E E -- Plus...
http://www.WorkingAtHome101.com/?rd=fi2WeDfQ
President Harry Truman once remarked that there is nothing new under the sun except the history you haven't learned yet. How right he was, and nothing proves the point so well as this appreciation for the life of World War II aviation pioneer,Violet Crowden and all the other 1,078 Women Airforce Service Pilots.
Here is the crucial problem they helped to solve:
When the United States entered World War II, (December 1941), it placed its massive manufacturing and industrial capacity at the service of the Allies. This meant producing aircraft in the quantities needed to overwhelm Germany and Japan thereby ensuring the fastest possible victory. But there was a problem here.
The war drained America of its male pilots; they were needed at the front, to fly the crucial missions. But there weren't enough male pilots in the country to replace them. That left a huge problem that had to be solved and had to be solved fast: how to get the planes being manufactured to the landing fields worldwide where our "boys" desperately needed them?
The solution?
Cherchez la femme, particularly the thousands of American women who were licensed pilots. They were the ace in the hole... though they had to get through a mountain of male skepticism and doubt before they got the opportunity to show America and the world that they could do their "bit" too.
Creation of the WASP.
Even before America entered the war far-seeing women were at work on solving problems that would occur when she did. Two famous women pilots -- Jacqueline "Jackie" Cochran and test-pilot Nancy Harkness Love -- independently submitted proposals for the use of female pilots in non-combat situations. These proposals were submitted to the US Army Air Forces (USAAF), predecessor to the United States Air Force, or USAF. They rightly believed the war would spread and that the United States must be prepared when it did.
Their (separate) proposals were rejected by General H. "Hap" Arnold, commander of the USAAF. Poor "Hap" was hapless. Not least because Eleanor Roosevelt, America's activist First Lady, intervened and strenuously so. Her involvement triggered the usual winks, nudges and (privately) malicious digs and comments; why couldn't she just give teas in the Blue Room like all the First Ladies before her?
But that wasn't Eleanor Roosevelt's way and the USAAF got a whiff of what one determined woman could do to help other determined women help America. In due course, America's need for pilots trumped the arguments against female pilots... and so, bit by bit, women were integrated into the services. Some ferried new planes to their destinations; others towed targets for aerial gunnery practice; still others were flight instructors.
The "Big Cheese" syndrome.
But if women could do men's work, they also suffered from the same turf battles. Who was going to be the Big Cheese of these proceedings -- "Jackie" Cochran or Nancy Love? Cochran was in England volunteering to fly for the Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA). While she was gone, "Hap" Arnold decided to go with Nancy Love's proposal. "Jackie" Cochran, back from England, immediately made An Issue of this decision... while Hapless Hank Arnold claimed ignorance... anything to cool Cochran down.
Arnold's solution was classic: both proposals were accepted and a final decision postponed. Of course both tenacious, determined, bureaucratically adept women continued the battle for supreme control. In July 1943, Cochran, famous and better connected, got what she wanted. With Arnold's assistance Cochran became director of the Women Airforce Service Pilots. No one knew better than General Arnold why they were called WASPs.
Violet Cowden at work for America.
While these internecine battles were playing themselves out, the recruitment of women pilots got underway... and the results were astonishing. More than 25,000 women applied for WASP service. Fewer than 1,900 were accepted and just 1,078 of them got their wings... including Violet Cowden, who served the WASPs in 1943 and 1944. Cowden was typical of the kinds of women who became WASPs and the constant obstacles they faced.
Born October 1,1916 in Bowdle, South Dakota, in 1936 she earned a teaching certificate from what was then the Spearfish Normal School, in Spearfish, S.D. She then stayed in Spearfish to teach first grade. There, she rode her bicycle 6 miles each way to a local airfield for her first flying lessons.
After Pearl Harbor was attacked, Cowden, by then a licensed pilot, asked to join the Civil Air Patrol but got no reply. That was typical. She tried again and applied to the Women's Flying Training Detachment, an early incarnation of the WASPs. She was one of the 1830 lucky applicants and reported to Avenger Field in Sweetwater, Texas for six months of rigorous training.
There she discovered that because WASPs were civilian employees and not military, they had to pay for their own food, lodging, and (generally ill-fitting) attire. Barely 5 foot tall Violet Cowden was installed in a men's Size 44 for the duration.
Violet Cowden faced the snubs and slights the way most WASPs did -- by ignoring the fact they were ignored and getting on with the job. They knew something about America's pilots that these male pilots often forgot: they needed these women and their often overlooked skills. It was a simple as that.
Always an afterthought, Cowden worked seven days a week, sleeping on commercial flights that ferried her to and from her crucial business. There was hardly ever a good word for a dangerous job well done... and remember what the WASPs did could be very dangerous indeed. Thirty eight WASPs died in accidents during training or on duty.
And despite all they did, when in late 1944 male pilots began coming home in significant numbers, the WASPs were, with hardly a word of thanks or recognition, simply dismissed. For Violet Cowden that day came in December, 1944 when the Army dissolved the WASPs altogether and told them to go home. For Cowden this was the "worst day of my life"... but it was a man's world then... and this was how things were done. It was America at our crudest and most insensitive, and it is painful to recall that our nation treated these patriots so.
Recognition, at last.
If there contemporaries ignored and overlooked them, later generations did what they could to bestow proper recognition and acknowledgement for a job well done. President Jimmy Carter signed in 1977 legislation to give WASPs full military status for their service. On July 1, 2009 President Barack Obama awarded the WASP the Congressional Gold Medal and said, "I am honored to finally give them some of the hard-earned recognition they deserve."
As for Violet Cowden, having been kicked out of the war, the WASPs dissolved, she got the only job in aviation she could... behind the ticket counter of Trans World Airlines, waiting for history to catch up. Perhaps now it has...
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 Ruthsella Corasol..http://WorkingAtHome101.com
The Fastest Way To Get Real Cash From The Internet
http://www.WorkingAtHome101.com/?rd=it3pHP2v
L@@K -- 50,000 Visitors To Your Website F R E E -- Plus...
http://www.WorkingAtHome101.com/?rd=fi2WeDfQ
Review of Extreme Niche Empires
Let me ask you a question. Are you fed up with all the lies and garbage put out by a lot of so-called “GURUS” recently? I know I am.
It is getting crazy out there, paid actors (that are really not that good), fake screenshots of trillion dollar incomes, outrageous claims that are just so far out there they are in ORBIT!
Then we have the “Push Button Millionaire” overhype with magic software that will have $1000s flying out of your computer every time you press that button! Really? Are you serious?
Well, even though I have become the ultimate skeptic as I am sure you are now, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Someone has finally stepped up and is setting the record straight… that person is Sean Donahoe.
Unless you have been hiding under a rock, you should have heard of Sean Donahoe. He was the guy behind the bestselling Video Marketing Goldmine course earlier this year. He is known for “Telling it like it is!”. I really love his no-BS message and REAL solutions for marketing and what actually works.
There are several things you need to know about Sean. First, his products are top-notch and very high-quality and he consistently over delivers. Second, his stuff just works!
No pie-in-the-sky claims, he will tell you straight “Getting wealthy online is possible but it takes work”. Now, that being said, he does show you how to do things the right way to avoid any pitfalls and hassles to really streamline things dramatically.
That is why I am really excited and writing this today. Sean is doing something AMAZING on April 28th. He is finally releasing his Extreme Niche Empires course. This course has been under wraps for almost a year as he honed, optimized and streamlined one of the most powerful money making strategies I have ever seen (and we have seen 100s of these over the years)
What Sean has done is nothing short of INCREDIBLE. He is going to share how he created an EMPIRE of high-authority autopilot income sites targeting niches that scare almost everyone else off… and he is making a FORTUNE doing it.
Now it’s your turn. This incredible course outline exactly how to do this yourself and do it the EASY WAY. This is not some crazy site building software that will get Google slapped (like many of them did after the recent Google Panda update). No, Sean is very unique, he shows you how to create laser-targeted, high authority sites that the search engines LOVE and rank like crazy.
He has packed this course with a ton of his INSIDER SECRETS that I have never seen anywhere else. This stuff is so powerful that it would blow your mind and has made me even rethink how I do things.
So, go check it out. If you are reading this before April 28th he has some very powerful videos that he is releasing too that will AMAZE you and give you a great idea about what is going on and even share some powerful tactics that you can start using right now.
I encourage you to go watch these videos and learn from one of the true masters of Internet Marketing and someone you should listen to!
Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol
http://WorkingAtHome101.com
Extreme Niche Empires
http://www.WorkingAtHome101.com/?rd=nf44iCAL
L@@K -- 50,000 Visitors To Your Website F R E E -- Plus...
http://www.WorkingAtHome101.com/?rd=fi2WeDfQ
It is getting crazy out there, paid actors (that are really not that good), fake screenshots of trillion dollar incomes, outrageous claims that are just so far out there they are in ORBIT!
Then we have the “Push Button Millionaire” overhype with magic software that will have $1000s flying out of your computer every time you press that button! Really? Are you serious?
Well, even though I have become the ultimate skeptic as I am sure you are now, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Someone has finally stepped up and is setting the record straight… that person is Sean Donahoe.
Unless you have been hiding under a rock, you should have heard of Sean Donahoe. He was the guy behind the bestselling Video Marketing Goldmine course earlier this year. He is known for “Telling it like it is!”. I really love his no-BS message and REAL solutions for marketing and what actually works.
There are several things you need to know about Sean. First, his products are top-notch and very high-quality and he consistently over delivers. Second, his stuff just works!
No pie-in-the-sky claims, he will tell you straight “Getting wealthy online is possible but it takes work”. Now, that being said, he does show you how to do things the right way to avoid any pitfalls and hassles to really streamline things dramatically.
That is why I am really excited and writing this today. Sean is doing something AMAZING on April 28th. He is finally releasing his Extreme Niche Empires course. This course has been under wraps for almost a year as he honed, optimized and streamlined one of the most powerful money making strategies I have ever seen (and we have seen 100s of these over the years)
What Sean has done is nothing short of INCREDIBLE. He is going to share how he created an EMPIRE of high-authority autopilot income sites targeting niches that scare almost everyone else off… and he is making a FORTUNE doing it.
Now it’s your turn. This incredible course outline exactly how to do this yourself and do it the EASY WAY. This is not some crazy site building software that will get Google slapped (like many of them did after the recent Google Panda update). No, Sean is very unique, he shows you how to create laser-targeted, high authority sites that the search engines LOVE and rank like crazy.
He has packed this course with a ton of his INSIDER SECRETS that I have never seen anywhere else. This stuff is so powerful that it would blow your mind and has made me even rethink how I do things.
So, go check it out. If you are reading this before April 28th he has some very powerful videos that he is releasing too that will AMAZE you and give you a great idea about what is going on and even share some powerful tactics that you can start using right now.
I encourage you to go watch these videos and learn from one of the true masters of Internet Marketing and someone you should listen to!
Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol
http://WorkingAtHome101.com
Extreme Niche Empires
http://www.WorkingAtHome101.com/?rd=nf44iCAL
L@@K -- 50,000 Visitors To Your Website F R E E -- Plus...
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Thursday, April 28, 2011
'Don't stop thinking about tomorrow.' The Queen, (no ) freedom of information, and the Succession
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
It was just the kind of event the Young Royals (Wills, Edward, and soon-to-be Princess Kate) could applaud and approve:
14 stylish students from England's tony Royal College of Arts donned self-designed matching Kate Middleton engagement outfits (so cute) with accompanying (copies) of the famous engagement ring; the one, you know, the ghost of Diana, Princess of Wales gave Kate the day she took her to her heart.
The pictures in the London papers, instantly beamed worldwide, were quite simply too, too...
This little photo opportunity was everything it should be: engagingly young, peppy, uncontroversial.
Graver matters involving the Royals, especially Her Majesty and the full panoply of lesser majesties were afoot elsewhere.
Freedom from information . January 19, 2011, a brand-new information law went into effect in the United Kingdom. It is best to style it a freedom from information act. Why? Because, quite simply, it exempts Her Majesty, Prince Charles, and Prince William from their kingdom's liberal freedom of information laws. This means that most of their activities will not be known for years, if ever; until that is long epochs pass after the slowest of bureaucrats can vet, deliberate, deny.
It is thought that the queen herself, known to her near and dear as "Betty Windsor," hoisted a festive glass (with impressive provenance) to celebrate the event, but we cannot be sure for this royal toast is classified, Top Secret.
Inquiring minds want to know.
Busybodies throughout the realm are, predictably, up at arms after this development which, per usual, treats the Royals as different from you and me. These inquiring minds, after the fashion of English revolutionaries throughout the ages, want to diminish, restrict, even abolish all semblance of royal specialness and privilege. They carry a portable stocks everywhere they go.... just in case an errant prince or erring princess happens by and needs immediate chastisement.
These people, and their number is legion in the increasingly egalitarian Britannia, are asking how such an act of inequality could possible be thought, must less implemented and even dignified as Law.
That's no poser at all. Cherchez le prince.
It is generally known and even more generally deprecated, that le Prince des Galles, Charles of that name and the Blood Royal, is a man with a bee in his (royal Stuart) tartan bonnet, indeed more than one. This new law will protect him (and the public, too, it's reckoned) from the never-ending effusions of his majestical pen.
Unhappily, we shall not know for years (if at all) just how insightful his constant jeremiads, commentaries, and elegantly pointed observations really are because they are now and lawfully so verboten to hoi polloi, like you and me.
Fortunately we do have some clues. Charles, to say nothing more, is a veritable whirlwind of activity on matters Green and his innumerable (sometimes distinctly odd) pet projects. Cabinet ministers are inured to powdered flunkies arriving at all hours whispering "From his royal highness, sir...."
Now these ministers are forbidden to publicize or even publicly mention or even acknowledge the existence of such correspondence. Charles' protective staff is said (unofficially) to be "relieved."
"The Sovereign is dead, long live her first-born child, King or Queen, whichever applies."
Monarchies, by definition, are conservative institutions, if not impervious to change then radically opposed to it. "We are already", they say "the top of the tree; we cannot see a future better for ourselves than the present; so we shall oppose and obstruct the unpromising future. It's what we do best."
But Britain, royal realm of many kings, is different from other monarchies. Their sovereigns are no less conservative than the rest... but they have a long proven ability to accept change just in the nick of time. However, they want it to be known that any change, any change at all, is their idea... not Parliament's.
That is why Her Imperial Majesty is fuming and fretting at Keith Vaz, Labour MP for Leicester East and now royal bete noir.
Vaz has distinguished himself by proposing legislation that would make the first child of the impending marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton heir to the throne, whether boy.... or girl.
Now this -- the "Swedish option" so called because it's the way they do things at the shabby, infra dig Court of Stockholm -- this pipsqueek, this legislative non entity, this parliamentary embarrassment (for he has chagrined his colleagues before) -- has had the brass, the unmitigated gall to propose a change to the Succession... the very heart of the institution.
So fundamental a change would transform the thousand year old British Monarchy into a genetics contest, rather than the ultimate gift to the most privileged little boy on earth. Thus a (still unconceived) little boy would be transformed from the petted child of fortune... into an also-ran, a situation that causes royal heretics to remind: "So what else is new?" Princesses have known this particular humiliation from Day I."
Even the suggestion of such legislation makes Betty Windsor fume. She just won't have it, exhibiting an adamancy worthy of Queen Victoria.
Prime Minister David Cameron to the rescue.
What Mr. Vaz, MP proposes is probably as near to a certainty as these things ever get. But not at his suggestion; his time will never come, though his idea may. The time is not nigh. Not least, Cameron has reminded all that such a fundamental change could not be effected without the full support of the 16 British Commonwealth countries where Queen Elizabeth II is head of state. And there is no chance for this notion there... even if many want it and see the equity of the idea.
For this more than equity is about the entire fate of the monarchy itself, what that monarch can -- and more importantly -- cannot do. And here the stakes could hardly be higher... which is why Ms. Windsor will dig in on this issue, insisting that this matter for all, for the very fate of the dynasty is a matter primarily and of right -- for her and the males of her house. She will win now... but only for now.
Which is why, of an evening, she listens and listens again to Fleetwood Mac and its pounding admonition: "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow. Yesterday's gone... yesterday's gone." Indeed it is.
About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., where small and home-based businesses learn how to profit online. Dr. Lant's is the author of 18 best-selling business books, as well as "Insubstantial Pageant: ceremony and confusion at Queen Victoria's Court." Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol ..http://WorkingAtHome101.com
L@@K -- 50,000 Visitors To Your Website F R E E -- Plus...
http://www.WorkingAtHome101.com/?rd=iv4LSF5A
Listen UP: Here's The Fastest Way To Get Real Cash From The Internet
http://www.WorkingAtHome101.com/?rd=it3pHP2v
It was just the kind of event the Young Royals (Wills, Edward, and soon-to-be Princess Kate) could applaud and approve:
14 stylish students from England's tony Royal College of Arts donned self-designed matching Kate Middleton engagement outfits (so cute) with accompanying (copies) of the famous engagement ring; the one, you know, the ghost of Diana, Princess of Wales gave Kate the day she took her to her heart.
The pictures in the London papers, instantly beamed worldwide, were quite simply too, too...
This little photo opportunity was everything it should be: engagingly young, peppy, uncontroversial.
Graver matters involving the Royals, especially Her Majesty and the full panoply of lesser majesties were afoot elsewhere.
Freedom from information . January 19, 2011, a brand-new information law went into effect in the United Kingdom. It is best to style it a freedom from information act. Why? Because, quite simply, it exempts Her Majesty, Prince Charles, and Prince William from their kingdom's liberal freedom of information laws. This means that most of their activities will not be known for years, if ever; until that is long epochs pass after the slowest of bureaucrats can vet, deliberate, deny.
It is thought that the queen herself, known to her near and dear as "Betty Windsor," hoisted a festive glass (with impressive provenance) to celebrate the event, but we cannot be sure for this royal toast is classified, Top Secret.
Inquiring minds want to know.
Busybodies throughout the realm are, predictably, up at arms after this development which, per usual, treats the Royals as different from you and me. These inquiring minds, after the fashion of English revolutionaries throughout the ages, want to diminish, restrict, even abolish all semblance of royal specialness and privilege. They carry a portable stocks everywhere they go.... just in case an errant prince or erring princess happens by and needs immediate chastisement.
These people, and their number is legion in the increasingly egalitarian Britannia, are asking how such an act of inequality could possible be thought, must less implemented and even dignified as Law.
That's no poser at all. Cherchez le prince.
It is generally known and even more generally deprecated, that le Prince des Galles, Charles of that name and the Blood Royal, is a man with a bee in his (royal Stuart) tartan bonnet, indeed more than one. This new law will protect him (and the public, too, it's reckoned) from the never-ending effusions of his majestical pen.
Unhappily, we shall not know for years (if at all) just how insightful his constant jeremiads, commentaries, and elegantly pointed observations really are because they are now and lawfully so verboten to hoi polloi, like you and me.
Fortunately we do have some clues. Charles, to say nothing more, is a veritable whirlwind of activity on matters Green and his innumerable (sometimes distinctly odd) pet projects. Cabinet ministers are inured to powdered flunkies arriving at all hours whispering "From his royal highness, sir...."
Now these ministers are forbidden to publicize or even publicly mention or even acknowledge the existence of such correspondence. Charles' protective staff is said (unofficially) to be "relieved."
"The Sovereign is dead, long live her first-born child, King or Queen, whichever applies."
Monarchies, by definition, are conservative institutions, if not impervious to change then radically opposed to it. "We are already", they say "the top of the tree; we cannot see a future better for ourselves than the present; so we shall oppose and obstruct the unpromising future. It's what we do best."
But Britain, royal realm of many kings, is different from other monarchies. Their sovereigns are no less conservative than the rest... but they have a long proven ability to accept change just in the nick of time. However, they want it to be known that any change, any change at all, is their idea... not Parliament's.
That is why Her Imperial Majesty is fuming and fretting at Keith Vaz, Labour MP for Leicester East and now royal bete noir.
Vaz has distinguished himself by proposing legislation that would make the first child of the impending marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton heir to the throne, whether boy.... or girl.
Now this -- the "Swedish option" so called because it's the way they do things at the shabby, infra dig Court of Stockholm -- this pipsqueek, this legislative non entity, this parliamentary embarrassment (for he has chagrined his colleagues before) -- has had the brass, the unmitigated gall to propose a change to the Succession... the very heart of the institution.
So fundamental a change would transform the thousand year old British Monarchy into a genetics contest, rather than the ultimate gift to the most privileged little boy on earth. Thus a (still unconceived) little boy would be transformed from the petted child of fortune... into an also-ran, a situation that causes royal heretics to remind: "So what else is new?" Princesses have known this particular humiliation from Day I."
Even the suggestion of such legislation makes Betty Windsor fume. She just won't have it, exhibiting an adamancy worthy of Queen Victoria.
Prime Minister David Cameron to the rescue.
What Mr. Vaz, MP proposes is probably as near to a certainty as these things ever get. But not at his suggestion; his time will never come, though his idea may. The time is not nigh. Not least, Cameron has reminded all that such a fundamental change could not be effected without the full support of the 16 British Commonwealth countries where Queen Elizabeth II is head of state. And there is no chance for this notion there... even if many want it and see the equity of the idea.
For this more than equity is about the entire fate of the monarchy itself, what that monarch can -- and more importantly -- cannot do. And here the stakes could hardly be higher... which is why Ms. Windsor will dig in on this issue, insisting that this matter for all, for the very fate of the dynasty is a matter primarily and of right -- for her and the males of her house. She will win now... but only for now.
Which is why, of an evening, she listens and listens again to Fleetwood Mac and its pounding admonition: "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow. Yesterday's gone... yesterday's gone." Indeed it is.
About The Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., where small and home-based businesses learn how to profit online. Dr. Lant's is the author of 18 best-selling business books, as well as "Insubstantial Pageant: ceremony and confusion at Queen Victoria's Court." Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol ..http://WorkingAtHome101.com
L@@K -- 50,000 Visitors To Your Website F R E E -- Plus...
http://www.WorkingAtHome101.com/?rd=iv4LSF5A
Listen UP: Here's The Fastest Way To Get Real Cash From The Internet
http://www.WorkingAtHome101.com/?rd=it3pHP2v
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Hot times in The Hague. The life and turbulent times of Juliana, Queen of the Netherlands.
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
A program note from the author. To get the most from this article, go to any search engine and find the theme of the fourth-movement Sarabande of George Frederick Handel's Keyboard Suite in D minor composed in 1731. It'll help set the mood for what follows...
I have a confession to make. I was not, until recently, up on the ins and outs of the last century or so of one of Europe's most enduring monarchies, that of the House of Orange-Nassau, rulers of the Netherlands. I suspect you are not up-to-date on the topic either... and I suspect, therefore, that you'll be as riveted as I am by what I've learned. I kept thinking: if they had been English princes, not Dutch, their larger-than-life existences, founded on the reality of a throne, their astronomical financial resources, royal shenanigans and hijinks, and all the rest -- would have been seized long ago by media producers.
But they are Dutch, hence and oh so wrongly, thought to be dull. I have learned otherwise... and now you will too.
My curiosity about Queen Juliana began by receiving one of the regular emails I get from Sothebys, the famous auction house, which finds me amongst its regular customers. They were having an auction (commencing March 14, 2011) of over 1700 lots of the personal effects of Her Netherlandish Majesty. Since I am a long time participant in such auctions, I dropped everything and went straight for the online catalog. It took several days to go through it all. As usual this auction was an aperture into a life as foreign to me as if the lady had come from Mars.
Daughter of a Queen, Queen Regnant, Mother of a Queen, ex-Queen.
Juliana Louise Emma Maria Wilhelmina was born 30 April 1909 and died 20 March 2004. She was born at the apex of the European royal caste, moving inexorably towards its cataclysmic conclusion, though its princes little suspected most of them were about to perish, with those remaining, dazed, admonished, everything they knew either changed or washed away. Whether before Gotterdammerung or after, Juliana of the Netherlands was always amongst the lucky.
She was born in The Hague, only child of Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands and Duke Henry of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, a German princely state about to face oblivion as a result of the German Kaiser's bombast and miscalculation.
Right from the start, she was already a social reformer... her mother determining that Juliana's education should include other young ladies of suitable family who would be educated along with their future sovereign. Her Royal Highness was 6 years old at the time. Already, without knowing it, she was changing established habits... helping others. She made a lifetime's work of it.
Her good fortune continued with something that didn't happen, namely the Netherlands going to war. Instead they remained neutral in the Great War of 1914-1918. The Dutch and their princess thereby avoided the destruction and ruination of most of Europe where every major dynasty fell except for the newly named Windsors of England. Juliana was to be seared by the flames of global war... but not yet.
Her luck ran out in 1936 at the Winter Olympics in Bavaria where she met Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld. Here she discovered love... its costs would come later.
Prince Bernhard seemed to solve a problem. Princes of suitable pedigree and religion (for the Dutch were strong adherents to the tenets of their demanding faith) were rare. He had the right heritage... he was willing to perform the always tricky role of prince consort (not the king). Importantly, he was good looking and good company in the jaunty German manner.
What no one knew then was that he was textbook perfect as randy rogue, flagrant adulterer, always dubious where money was concerned, with a yearning for Deutchland uber allies and absolutely no regard at all for his new country... or its crown princess and her impending destiny.
In short, a newspaper publisher's dream for selling papers...
Standing against many of her concerned and wary countrymen, who disliked Bernhard right from the start she married her dashing choice 7 January, 1937 and hardly ever had a happily married moment thereafter. Adolph Hitler (who had, let it be recalled, a puckish sense of humor) sent as his wedding present a strong hint that this marriage was really in the nature of an alliance between his acquisitive Nazis... and the Dutch.
Such was the outraged reaction of the nation that Juliana 's mother Queen Wilhelmina and her government were forced to issue the strongest possible denial, though of course many people still doubted... and rightly so. Hitler meant to have the Netherlands, its refineries, its far-flung imperial possessions, the Rembrants and Vermeers he coveted... probably he wanted all the tulips, too. He bagged them all, for a time, but he failed to capture the Royal Family. In the person of Princess Juliana, her two daughters (including future Queen Beatrix) and always her egregious consort, she went to Canada, where she lived a life of quiet simplicity and service, thereby gaining the hearts of Canadians, who can be quick to smell pretension. Quite simply, she set out to capture their hearts... and she did. It was a skill worth having.
She would need it in the eventful years to come, years marked by World War II and the Nazi occupation and spoliation; by her succession as Queen in 1948 upon the abdication of her mother and the simultaneous loss of Indonesia and the golden possessions of the East Indies, producing national despair. Juliana coped with all... until she had to cope with her last child Princess Christina (born 1947) born nearly blind and other afflicted because of her mother's German measles contracted during pregnancy. Desperate to help a much loved child, Queen Juliana, as she was now, sought help and consolation in mystic religion. Her people, sympathetic to her plight, were not as sympathetic to the faith healers in whom she sought solace. Her husband, of course, gave her the same attention he always had... none at all. There were serious grumblings against the dynasty. However a lifetime of service, the simplicity of her ways, and rising Dutch prosperity, saved the woman who as queen, liked to have her countrymen call her ("mevrouw", Dutch for "Mrs"). This covered her shady husband, too, from the fall out from one sexual and financial escapade after another. The woman, the queen he constantly wronged, constantly saved him. Such was her meaning of love.
There are echoes of all this in the over 1,700 items from her possessions in the March, 2011 Sothebys sale, the proceeds going to the Red Cross she ardently supported in life. Personally, I intend to pick up a little silver something for myself. It may be from the Queen's great store...or perhaps even from Prince Bernhard's. He had better, more royal tastes, and from his financial chicaneries he was able to indulge them.
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 a noted historian and the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol ..http://WorkingAtHome101.com
A program note from the author. To get the most from this article, go to any search engine and find the theme of the fourth-movement Sarabande of George Frederick Handel's Keyboard Suite in D minor composed in 1731. It'll help set the mood for what follows...
I have a confession to make. I was not, until recently, up on the ins and outs of the last century or so of one of Europe's most enduring monarchies, that of the House of Orange-Nassau, rulers of the Netherlands. I suspect you are not up-to-date on the topic either... and I suspect, therefore, that you'll be as riveted as I am by what I've learned. I kept thinking: if they had been English princes, not Dutch, their larger-than-life existences, founded on the reality of a throne, their astronomical financial resources, royal shenanigans and hijinks, and all the rest -- would have been seized long ago by media producers.
But they are Dutch, hence and oh so wrongly, thought to be dull. I have learned otherwise... and now you will too.
My curiosity about Queen Juliana began by receiving one of the regular emails I get from Sothebys, the famous auction house, which finds me amongst its regular customers. They were having an auction (commencing March 14, 2011) of over 1700 lots of the personal effects of Her Netherlandish Majesty. Since I am a long time participant in such auctions, I dropped everything and went straight for the online catalog. It took several days to go through it all. As usual this auction was an aperture into a life as foreign to me as if the lady had come from Mars.
Daughter of a Queen, Queen Regnant, Mother of a Queen, ex-Queen.
Juliana Louise Emma Maria Wilhelmina was born 30 April 1909 and died 20 March 2004. She was born at the apex of the European royal caste, moving inexorably towards its cataclysmic conclusion, though its princes little suspected most of them were about to perish, with those remaining, dazed, admonished, everything they knew either changed or washed away. Whether before Gotterdammerung or after, Juliana of the Netherlands was always amongst the lucky.
She was born in The Hague, only child of Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands and Duke Henry of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, a German princely state about to face oblivion as a result of the German Kaiser's bombast and miscalculation.
Right from the start, she was already a social reformer... her mother determining that Juliana's education should include other young ladies of suitable family who would be educated along with their future sovereign. Her Royal Highness was 6 years old at the time. Already, without knowing it, she was changing established habits... helping others. She made a lifetime's work of it.
Her good fortune continued with something that didn't happen, namely the Netherlands going to war. Instead they remained neutral in the Great War of 1914-1918. The Dutch and their princess thereby avoided the destruction and ruination of most of Europe where every major dynasty fell except for the newly named Windsors of England. Juliana was to be seared by the flames of global war... but not yet.
Her luck ran out in 1936 at the Winter Olympics in Bavaria where she met Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld. Here she discovered love... its costs would come later.
Prince Bernhard seemed to solve a problem. Princes of suitable pedigree and religion (for the Dutch were strong adherents to the tenets of their demanding faith) were rare. He had the right heritage... he was willing to perform the always tricky role of prince consort (not the king). Importantly, he was good looking and good company in the jaunty German manner.
What no one knew then was that he was textbook perfect as randy rogue, flagrant adulterer, always dubious where money was concerned, with a yearning for Deutchland uber allies and absolutely no regard at all for his new country... or its crown princess and her impending destiny.
In short, a newspaper publisher's dream for selling papers...
Standing against many of her concerned and wary countrymen, who disliked Bernhard right from the start she married her dashing choice 7 January, 1937 and hardly ever had a happily married moment thereafter. Adolph Hitler (who had, let it be recalled, a puckish sense of humor) sent as his wedding present a strong hint that this marriage was really in the nature of an alliance between his acquisitive Nazis... and the Dutch.
Such was the outraged reaction of the nation that Juliana 's mother Queen Wilhelmina and her government were forced to issue the strongest possible denial, though of course many people still doubted... and rightly so. Hitler meant to have the Netherlands, its refineries, its far-flung imperial possessions, the Rembrants and Vermeers he coveted... probably he wanted all the tulips, too. He bagged them all, for a time, but he failed to capture the Royal Family. In the person of Princess Juliana, her two daughters (including future Queen Beatrix) and always her egregious consort, she went to Canada, where she lived a life of quiet simplicity and service, thereby gaining the hearts of Canadians, who can be quick to smell pretension. Quite simply, she set out to capture their hearts... and she did. It was a skill worth having.
She would need it in the eventful years to come, years marked by World War II and the Nazi occupation and spoliation; by her succession as Queen in 1948 upon the abdication of her mother and the simultaneous loss of Indonesia and the golden possessions of the East Indies, producing national despair. Juliana coped with all... until she had to cope with her last child Princess Christina (born 1947) born nearly blind and other afflicted because of her mother's German measles contracted during pregnancy. Desperate to help a much loved child, Queen Juliana, as she was now, sought help and consolation in mystic religion. Her people, sympathetic to her plight, were not as sympathetic to the faith healers in whom she sought solace. Her husband, of course, gave her the same attention he always had... none at all. There were serious grumblings against the dynasty. However a lifetime of service, the simplicity of her ways, and rising Dutch prosperity, saved the woman who as queen, liked to have her countrymen call her ("mevrouw", Dutch for "Mrs"). This covered her shady husband, too, from the fall out from one sexual and financial escapade after another. The woman, the queen he constantly wronged, constantly saved him. Such was her meaning of love.
There are echoes of all this in the over 1,700 items from her possessions in the March, 2011 Sothebys sale, the proceeds going to the Red Cross she ardently supported in life. Personally, I intend to pick up a little silver something for myself. It may be from the Queen's great store...or perhaps even from Prince Bernhard's. He had better, more royal tastes, and from his financial chicaneries he was able to indulge them.
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 a noted historian and the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol ..http://WorkingAtHome101.com
For royal wedding guests of Prince William and his Kate, April 29, 2011 a list of does and don'ts, especially the latter.
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
By now I am sure you are aware that April 29, 2011 is a very special day in the prodigious annals of the British monarchy. H.R.H. Prince William, white hope of the dynasty, marries his Kate... and his grandmama The Sovereign is adamant that all be done just so -- or else.
Sadly, you have not been invited. Admittedly it is abashing, even humiliating. But you will be glad to know that the lot of the those precious few invited is not a bed of roses. The empire on which the sun never set is history, but protocol, the right thing done in the right way, is very much alive chez Windsor.
Let's take a look.
The Windsors are nothing if not keen on pageants that are meticulously planned and flawlessly carried out. They know that it was not always thus in royal ceremonial. One way they know this was by careful scrutiny of my first book "Insubstantial Pageant: Ceremony and Confusion at Queen Victoria's Court". (1979). I was the first American ever granted access to the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle... and it was part of the deal that The Queen and Prince Charles get advance copies to increase their knowledge of the hopeless mismanagement of ceremonies by their regal ancestors.
Confusions, muddles, and disorganizations were the order of the day. It was supremely frustrating, irritating, and inexcusable that the English made so many mistakes, even lethal, in presenting the monarchy to the nation. Ceremonies of the highest significance and importance -- coronations even -- were so lamentably organized and delivered that the English monarchy became a byword for ineptitude.
We owe improvement to Prince Albert.
Queen Victoria, only 18 when she ascended the throne in 1837 had far better things to do than worry about ceremonial derelictions. For openers she was free of the heavy thrall of the Duchess of Kent, her mother; perhaps the ultimate controlling Stage Mother of all time. The first thing the new queen did was order her bed to be taken out of the bedroom she had shared all her life with her mother... then order dinner to be served to her alone, the first time that had ever happened. She was free, free at last! She was queen, her every wish a command instantly carried out. A few glaring mistakes in court ceremonial counted for nothing.
But the German princeling she married, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was very, very different. The insidious culture of royal errors and tolerance for same made him nervous, dyspeptic, and determined to apply Teutonic efficiency to the problem. He fumed, he fretted, he even wept at the minuscule progress. But there was progress. Just not enough of it.
As the grasping English built the largest empire ever assembled on this planet, their royal pageants continued to be notable for all the wrong reasons: they were lackadaisical about the protocol that consumed other royal houses; thereby causing endless hurt feelings. Their planning was always of the too little, too late variety. And like clockwork, security arrangements were so lax that every ceremony produced a bumper crop of dead, the victims of English inability to get it right... and without fatalities.
All this is no doubt known to Elizabeth II and the princes of her house and their constant motto is "Never again!" Thus, they are fastidious in the business of Getting It Right. When the English were a great nation, the sovereigns themselves were scarcely punctilious about such matters; but with only the shadow of empire remaining, they are all adamant that the royal ceremonies, in which they so prominently feature, be the very essence of polished perfection.
Hence the list of do's and don'ts now circulating amongst the honored guests, be they princes of the blood royal or (that democratic touch the royals are close to perfecting) personnel from the various charities patronized by the bride and groom. In Windsor eyes there is really no difference between them. For them there are, after all, only two ranks: Sovereign... and the rest.
Now to the various admonitions, politely phrased of course as suggestions, recommendations. But they are in fact royal commands and must be treated as such.
1) Don't give the queen a friendly hug. Michelle Obama, First Lady of these United States did something akin to that and the royal reaction was a tad below frosty.
2) Don't tweet. You are attending an historic event. Curtail all distractions.
3) Be on time. On this of all days, there is no such thing as fashionably late, even by a minute. The Queen is the last person to take her place; to upstage her is lese majeste, intolerable.
4) Ladies, select an outfit that blends in. You should wear a dress -- not too short, not too skimpy, and certainly not white. Most British women will complete the unmistakable (rather frumpy) look that screams "We're English!" with a hat or a fascinator -- a small feathered or jewelled hairpiece attached to a clip or a comb.
More politely disguised commands.
5) Leave your cellphone in the car. No one wants your ring tone to the tune of "The Stripper" to be part of the record.
6) Make sure you have all necessary medications with you. You need to know that no one, absolutely no one, will facilitate your egress to get them... and you will not be allowed to return either.
7) Visit the facilities as often as necessary to ensure bladder control. This means limiting liquids, just as you'd do for a colonoscopy, a not inapt comparison. (Avoid the solution adopted by one ceremony attending gent. He brought a soft drink bottle and used it like a chamber pot. The name of the perpetrator and the incident itself was immediately classified.)
"I didn't really want to go anyway."
Upon reading these guidelines and rules, you may say, and actually believe, that you didn't really want to go to this critical event of "Rule Britannia."
But we're kidding ourselves, aren't we? For the chance to see Prince William and be able to tell your non-invited neighbor that he's taller than he looks on telly is just too good to pass up. Not to mention the bride, and wasn't she lovely?
Indeed, to secure lifetime bragging rights because we were well and truly invited, we'd all, if ordered, go naked with a full body search to boot. Honi soit qui mal y pense.
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 an authority expert on the royal family and author of 18 best-selling books. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol...http://WorkingAtHome101.com
By now I am sure you are aware that April 29, 2011 is a very special day in the prodigious annals of the British monarchy. H.R.H. Prince William, white hope of the dynasty, marries his Kate... and his grandmama The Sovereign is adamant that all be done just so -- or else.
Sadly, you have not been invited. Admittedly it is abashing, even humiliating. But you will be glad to know that the lot of the those precious few invited is not a bed of roses. The empire on which the sun never set is history, but protocol, the right thing done in the right way, is very much alive chez Windsor.
Let's take a look.
The Windsors are nothing if not keen on pageants that are meticulously planned and flawlessly carried out. They know that it was not always thus in royal ceremonial. One way they know this was by careful scrutiny of my first book "Insubstantial Pageant: Ceremony and Confusion at Queen Victoria's Court". (1979). I was the first American ever granted access to the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle... and it was part of the deal that The Queen and Prince Charles get advance copies to increase their knowledge of the hopeless mismanagement of ceremonies by their regal ancestors.
Confusions, muddles, and disorganizations were the order of the day. It was supremely frustrating, irritating, and inexcusable that the English made so many mistakes, even lethal, in presenting the monarchy to the nation. Ceremonies of the highest significance and importance -- coronations even -- were so lamentably organized and delivered that the English monarchy became a byword for ineptitude.
We owe improvement to Prince Albert.
Queen Victoria, only 18 when she ascended the throne in 1837 had far better things to do than worry about ceremonial derelictions. For openers she was free of the heavy thrall of the Duchess of Kent, her mother; perhaps the ultimate controlling Stage Mother of all time. The first thing the new queen did was order her bed to be taken out of the bedroom she had shared all her life with her mother... then order dinner to be served to her alone, the first time that had ever happened. She was free, free at last! She was queen, her every wish a command instantly carried out. A few glaring mistakes in court ceremonial counted for nothing.
But the German princeling she married, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha was very, very different. The insidious culture of royal errors and tolerance for same made him nervous, dyspeptic, and determined to apply Teutonic efficiency to the problem. He fumed, he fretted, he even wept at the minuscule progress. But there was progress. Just not enough of it.
As the grasping English built the largest empire ever assembled on this planet, their royal pageants continued to be notable for all the wrong reasons: they were lackadaisical about the protocol that consumed other royal houses; thereby causing endless hurt feelings. Their planning was always of the too little, too late variety. And like clockwork, security arrangements were so lax that every ceremony produced a bumper crop of dead, the victims of English inability to get it right... and without fatalities.
All this is no doubt known to Elizabeth II and the princes of her house and their constant motto is "Never again!" Thus, they are fastidious in the business of Getting It Right. When the English were a great nation, the sovereigns themselves were scarcely punctilious about such matters; but with only the shadow of empire remaining, they are all adamant that the royal ceremonies, in which they so prominently feature, be the very essence of polished perfection.
Hence the list of do's and don'ts now circulating amongst the honored guests, be they princes of the blood royal or (that democratic touch the royals are close to perfecting) personnel from the various charities patronized by the bride and groom. In Windsor eyes there is really no difference between them. For them there are, after all, only two ranks: Sovereign... and the rest.
Now to the various admonitions, politely phrased of course as suggestions, recommendations. But they are in fact royal commands and must be treated as such.
1) Don't give the queen a friendly hug. Michelle Obama, First Lady of these United States did something akin to that and the royal reaction was a tad below frosty.
2) Don't tweet. You are attending an historic event. Curtail all distractions.
3) Be on time. On this of all days, there is no such thing as fashionably late, even by a minute. The Queen is the last person to take her place; to upstage her is lese majeste, intolerable.
4) Ladies, select an outfit that blends in. You should wear a dress -- not too short, not too skimpy, and certainly not white. Most British women will complete the unmistakable (rather frumpy) look that screams "We're English!" with a hat or a fascinator -- a small feathered or jewelled hairpiece attached to a clip or a comb.
More politely disguised commands.
5) Leave your cellphone in the car. No one wants your ring tone to the tune of "The Stripper" to be part of the record.
6) Make sure you have all necessary medications with you. You need to know that no one, absolutely no one, will facilitate your egress to get them... and you will not be allowed to return either.
7) Visit the facilities as often as necessary to ensure bladder control. This means limiting liquids, just as you'd do for a colonoscopy, a not inapt comparison. (Avoid the solution adopted by one ceremony attending gent. He brought a soft drink bottle and used it like a chamber pot. The name of the perpetrator and the incident itself was immediately classified.)
"I didn't really want to go anyway."
Upon reading these guidelines and rules, you may say, and actually believe, that you didn't really want to go to this critical event of "Rule Britannia."
But we're kidding ourselves, aren't we? For the chance to see Prince William and be able to tell your non-invited neighbor that he's taller than he looks on telly is just too good to pass up. Not to mention the bride, and wasn't she lovely?
Indeed, to secure lifetime bragging rights because we were well and truly invited, we'd all, if ordered, go naked with a full body search to boot. Honi soit qui mal y pense.
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 an authority expert on the royal family and author of 18 best-selling books. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol...http://WorkingAtHome101.com
Those magnificent men in their flying machines to fly no more.... as NASA's shuttle program ends and an era with it.
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's program note. To get into the right frame of mind for this article, search any search engine for the music and lyrics to "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines" (released 1965, music by Ron Goodwin). Prepare to be aroused as one of the great stories of our lives soars...
For most of us the space age has a quite specific commencement -- October 4, 1957. That was the launch date of the world's first artificial satellite Sputnik I. I was there. Like every single American, my concerned, curious parents herded my brother and me into the backyard of our suburban Illinois home... as we saw our sense of security destroyed by a 184.3 pound device called a Sputnik. In my mind's eye, I remember the event with complete clarity; I seem to remember, too, that it made a beeping sound... but that may not be so.
What was so was that all the verities of the heartland ended for a generation right then and there.
"Better Red than dead," people said. Was that our new reality? We started to look for Russkies under the bed...
Eisenhower blinked.
Sputnik spooked us at the moment of our greatest power; we thought we were the only game in town... Sputnik was a jolting wake-up call which President Eisenhower, old and full of honors, missed. A restless Senator John F. Kennedy did not. It was Kennedy who read the thoroughly aroused and anxious public mood better... and in due course made him President of the United States, an office Ike, who established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (October 1, 1958), felt Kennedy unqualified to hold. Maybe so... but Kennedy is rightly seen as the man who galvanized America's fears and turned them into the fuel for conquering space -- and giving us back our lost security.
We had to conquer space... and that meant having a space station and the means to get back and forth to them. From the moment Sputnik flew, 1440 orbits of Earth in only 3 months, the shuttle program was a given. And we put all the king's horses and all the king's men to work on it. The result was the launch of Explorer I (officially Satellite 1958), January 31, 1958. It was the U.S.'s first earth satellite. It was rushed to launch so fast that its tape data recorder was not modified in time to make it onto the satellite. Nonetheless, the nation breathed a sigh of relief... we were back in the game.
Project Mercury followed and the grand era of magnificent men in their flying machines....men whose names the nation knew and whose pictures could be found in every schoolroom of a grateful America... astronaut Alan Shepard (first American in space May 5, 1961)... astronaut John Glenn (first American to orbit the Earth, February 20, 1961)... and all the others... culminating in that never-to-be-forgotten day of American pride, July 20, 1969 when astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked the lunar landscape while Michael Collins orbited above.
These were truly the up, up and away days! We were late to the space game, but having started we approached the matter with characteristic energy, imagination and determination, a great people committed to a great goal.
The first shuttle launch, February 15, 1977.
The shuttle program was our way of saying that our connection with space was a permanent one, that we'd be going back and forth as part of our preparation for ever grander explorations. And so...
2/15/77, OV-101, Enterprise (yes, it was named after the television series), performed its first (taxi) test flight as part of the shuttle program. It never flew in space and was cannibalized for parts.
Then April 12, 1981, OV-102, Columbia, blasted into orbit, becoming the first successful space flight in the space shuttle program. (STS-1, Space Transportation System.) It returned on April 14, 1981, after orbiting Earth 36 times. Columbia carried just two crew members: Apollo veteran John W. Young and rookie pilot Robert L. Crippen.
August 30, 1984, OV-103, Discovery, was first flown on mission STS-41-D, launching two communications satellites and becoming the third operational NASA orbital shuttle following Columbia and Challenger.
But tragedy lay dead ahead.
We must never forget that at the core of the shuttle program was danger. Good men and women, dedicated, our nation's finest, always understood that death was always a possibility. That no matter how often the system was tested; no matter how many experts signed off on the matter, catastrophe was always a real possibility. They all accepted that as part of the adventure, the great game, the cost of doing business.
January 28, 1986, STS-51-L Challenger, a nation shocked, a nation mourns.
This was supposed to be another day of American triumph; instead, with the disintegration of the Challenger over the Atlantic Ocean it became a signature day of national mourning.
These 7 crew members gave their lives:
Francis (Dick) Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Judith A. Resnik, Ronald E. McNair, Ellison S. Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe; the plucky teacher who meant to teach the world's school children about space and instead taught them all about the shortness of life and the costs of commitment. That day the nation was reminded of the terrible costs that may come when frontiers are challenged. That day, too, the nation was fortunate in its president; Ronald Reagan's decency and empathy were notable. We were all grateful for that.
975 days later, September 29, 1988, STS-26 Discovery launched with five crew members into space, always beckoning, always challenging, with so very much more to discover, study and know.
On February 1, 2003, tragedy struck again and again it was brought home to the nation that the costs of "conquering" space included periodic tragedy as it did this day when STS-107 came to an abrupt and tragic conclusion. Seven crew members died...
Rick D. Husband, William C. McCool, Michael P. Anderson, Ilan Ramon, Kalpana Chawla, David M. Brown, Laurel Clark.
And again the shuttle flew. It was the American way.
Now, however, changing budget priorities have done what no great tragedies succeeded in doing. Thus the shuttle, after just a few more flights, will end, thirty years and 133 missions later. Is this the last word on the matter? For the shuttle, probably; but for space? As long as one child looks up and wonders what there is in the great beyond, determined to find out, this story will never end...
Readers: for a thorough bibliography on the history of the space shuttle, search for "Toward a History of the Space Shuttle: An Annotated Bibliography " compiled by Roger D. Launius and Aaron G. Gillette.
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 Ruthsella Corasol ...http://WorkingAtHome101.com
Author's program note. To get into the right frame of mind for this article, search any search engine for the music and lyrics to "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines" (released 1965, music by Ron Goodwin). Prepare to be aroused as one of the great stories of our lives soars...
For most of us the space age has a quite specific commencement -- October 4, 1957. That was the launch date of the world's first artificial satellite Sputnik I. I was there. Like every single American, my concerned, curious parents herded my brother and me into the backyard of our suburban Illinois home... as we saw our sense of security destroyed by a 184.3 pound device called a Sputnik. In my mind's eye, I remember the event with complete clarity; I seem to remember, too, that it made a beeping sound... but that may not be so.
What was so was that all the verities of the heartland ended for a generation right then and there.
"Better Red than dead," people said. Was that our new reality? We started to look for Russkies under the bed...
Eisenhower blinked.
Sputnik spooked us at the moment of our greatest power; we thought we were the only game in town... Sputnik was a jolting wake-up call which President Eisenhower, old and full of honors, missed. A restless Senator John F. Kennedy did not. It was Kennedy who read the thoroughly aroused and anxious public mood better... and in due course made him President of the United States, an office Ike, who established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (October 1, 1958), felt Kennedy unqualified to hold. Maybe so... but Kennedy is rightly seen as the man who galvanized America's fears and turned them into the fuel for conquering space -- and giving us back our lost security.
We had to conquer space... and that meant having a space station and the means to get back and forth to them. From the moment Sputnik flew, 1440 orbits of Earth in only 3 months, the shuttle program was a given. And we put all the king's horses and all the king's men to work on it. The result was the launch of Explorer I (officially Satellite 1958), January 31, 1958. It was the U.S.'s first earth satellite. It was rushed to launch so fast that its tape data recorder was not modified in time to make it onto the satellite. Nonetheless, the nation breathed a sigh of relief... we were back in the game.
Project Mercury followed and the grand era of magnificent men in their flying machines....men whose names the nation knew and whose pictures could be found in every schoolroom of a grateful America... astronaut Alan Shepard (first American in space May 5, 1961)... astronaut John Glenn (first American to orbit the Earth, February 20, 1961)... and all the others... culminating in that never-to-be-forgotten day of American pride, July 20, 1969 when astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked the lunar landscape while Michael Collins orbited above.
These were truly the up, up and away days! We were late to the space game, but having started we approached the matter with characteristic energy, imagination and determination, a great people committed to a great goal.
The first shuttle launch, February 15, 1977.
The shuttle program was our way of saying that our connection with space was a permanent one, that we'd be going back and forth as part of our preparation for ever grander explorations. And so...
2/15/77, OV-101, Enterprise (yes, it was named after the television series), performed its first (taxi) test flight as part of the shuttle program. It never flew in space and was cannibalized for parts.
Then April 12, 1981, OV-102, Columbia, blasted into orbit, becoming the first successful space flight in the space shuttle program. (STS-1, Space Transportation System.) It returned on April 14, 1981, after orbiting Earth 36 times. Columbia carried just two crew members: Apollo veteran John W. Young and rookie pilot Robert L. Crippen.
August 30, 1984, OV-103, Discovery, was first flown on mission STS-41-D, launching two communications satellites and becoming the third operational NASA orbital shuttle following Columbia and Challenger.
But tragedy lay dead ahead.
We must never forget that at the core of the shuttle program was danger. Good men and women, dedicated, our nation's finest, always understood that death was always a possibility. That no matter how often the system was tested; no matter how many experts signed off on the matter, catastrophe was always a real possibility. They all accepted that as part of the adventure, the great game, the cost of doing business.
January 28, 1986, STS-51-L Challenger, a nation shocked, a nation mourns.
This was supposed to be another day of American triumph; instead, with the disintegration of the Challenger over the Atlantic Ocean it became a signature day of national mourning.
These 7 crew members gave their lives:
Francis (Dick) Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Judith A. Resnik, Ronald E. McNair, Ellison S. Onizuka, Gregory Jarvis, and Christa McAuliffe; the plucky teacher who meant to teach the world's school children about space and instead taught them all about the shortness of life and the costs of commitment. That day the nation was reminded of the terrible costs that may come when frontiers are challenged. That day, too, the nation was fortunate in its president; Ronald Reagan's decency and empathy were notable. We were all grateful for that.
975 days later, September 29, 1988, STS-26 Discovery launched with five crew members into space, always beckoning, always challenging, with so very much more to discover, study and know.
On February 1, 2003, tragedy struck again and again it was brought home to the nation that the costs of "conquering" space included periodic tragedy as it did this day when STS-107 came to an abrupt and tragic conclusion. Seven crew members died...
Rick D. Husband, William C. McCool, Michael P. Anderson, Ilan Ramon, Kalpana Chawla, David M. Brown, Laurel Clark.
And again the shuttle flew. It was the American way.
Now, however, changing budget priorities have done what no great tragedies succeeded in doing. Thus the shuttle, after just a few more flights, will end, thirty years and 133 missions later. Is this the last word on the matter? For the shuttle, probably; but for space? As long as one child looks up and wonders what there is in the great beyond, determined to find out, this story will never end...
Readers: for a thorough bibliography on the history of the space shuttle, search for "Toward a History of the Space Shuttle: An Annotated Bibliography " compiled by Roger D. Launius and Aaron G. Gillette.
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 Ruthsella Corasol ...http://WorkingAtHome101.com
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Advice on what makes business blogs work by three who know: George Kosch, Sandi Hunter and Dr. Jeffrey Lant.
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Today , April 19, 2011, is a special day for the three members of the Worldprofit blog writing team. Today we completed writing 200 business blog articles, a project which began in June, 2010. The response to these articles has been nothing short of spectacular, so we decided to discuss the reasons why this has occurred and what it means for you and your business blog.
1) Be clear on the objective.
We are focusing this article on blogs created by businesses. Their objective is simple: make money. No business blog should ever be created which has some supposedly "better" purpose. It's easy to forget this purpose; it doesn't take much to unfocus a blog. That's why we suggest posting this message prominently in your office: "It's the money, silly." A variation of this message helped Billl Clinton (a notoriously diffuse individual) from going off theme and was influential in putting him in the Oval Office. This message will also work for you.
2) Designate a good writer to produce your blog's content.
Business blog copy must be clean, clear, accurate. That means designating a writer with business writing experience. An experienced copywriter is perfect. They know how to write copy that sells... which is just the copy you need.
3) If you cannot find a copywriter, become that copywriter yourself.
Successful copy is based on just 4 important words:
YOU GET BENEFIT NOW.
The "you" is your reader, the person you need your blog copy to motivate to contact you.
"get" is there to remind you that copy is always about what the reader (your past, present and future customer) gets from you.
"benefit" is the specific thing they get from each article you publish.
"now" is when you want the reader to respond, reminding yourself that there must always be one or more offers in each blog issue, such offers being intended to stimulate the immediate reader response which must always be your objective.
4) Master search engines.
Writing business blogs means finding and using a never ending supply of data, information, research findings, quotations of note, etc. Blogs eat up lots and lots of information.
This means becoming expert at finding pertinent data from search engines. Surprisingly we discovered that many business blog writers do not use and therefore do now know how to ensure best results from search engines. That problem must be recognized and overcome ASAP.
Successful business writers know how to write articles with data "holes" in them, "holes" they can quickly fill by accessing search engines... without ever leaving the computer. Given the fact that not so many years ago, business writers had to use specialized business libraries, a cumbersome process at best, search engines have made all the difference in getting important data quickly and easily, all at your fingertips.
5) Always have a lead article, the focus of each individual issue.
We have found in practice that each blog issue should be anchored by a major article. The length we recommend is 1,500 words.
This article should be divided into two distinct parts; first, the actual content itself. Second, pertinent follow-up details which advise your reader what is available, its benefits, and how to get it. These follow-up details are crucial and must follow each article. (See below for an example.)
How long does it take for such an article to be researched, written, edited, etc.? Obviously that depends on the amount of research you must do, how quickly you find it, your own skills and speed as a writer, etc. However, we have found that this "anchor" article takes on average 4-8 hours.
6) Always have a "new uses" feature.
You've all heard the old adage, "sell the sizzle, not the steak". That's why you need a "new uses" feature. Select any of your products and services; then provide at least one detailed blog article on how to get the great results from its use. Remember, people buy products too achieve results; the more practical uses you detail, the more sales you make.
7) Always include customer testimonials, particularly testimonials that provide details on what individual customers did and their positive results.
Customer testimonials work. Thus, make sure you always include one or more in each blog issue. And always make a point in each blog of asking your customers to provide more.
8) Have a "new product" feature... and, as above, ensure the copy focuses on what it does, that "sizzle" again.
Remember, blog copy is about making money by generating reader inquiries and sales. Your readers are glad to read about new products to the extent that the copy introducing them focuses on what the customer gets.
9) Set and keep a fixed blog publishing schedule.
Your readers should expect to see your blog, like clock work, on a published schedule. They should be trained to look forward to it and respond. But if your publishing schedule is erratic, unpredictable, then your reputation will not be enhanced and your sales will definitely suffer. Ouch!
Once you've set the schedule, treat it religiously.
10) Always include a very special offer in every issue.
Make it a truly spectacular offer... one available to blog readers only.
Position this offer prominently. It is, after all, eye-popping.
Last words.
Blogs in general and business blogs in particular are here to stay. Businesses without them are businesses that suffer, having thereby circumscribed sales and growth. Make sure that isn't you.
One last piece of advice: Make your blog fun read and ALWAYS easy to respond to. If you follow these instructions, your blog will steadily grow in importance as a readily available source of customers and profits. As we can tell you from personal experience, what blogs deliver will truly delight, excite, and enthuse you. A steady stream of new customers and enhanced profits tend to do that.... Get started today and see for yourself.
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 Ruthsella Corasol ...http://WorkingAtHome101.com
Today , April 19, 2011, is a special day for the three members of the Worldprofit blog writing team. Today we completed writing 200 business blog articles, a project which began in June, 2010. The response to these articles has been nothing short of spectacular, so we decided to discuss the reasons why this has occurred and what it means for you and your business blog.
1) Be clear on the objective.
We are focusing this article on blogs created by businesses. Their objective is simple: make money. No business blog should ever be created which has some supposedly "better" purpose. It's easy to forget this purpose; it doesn't take much to unfocus a blog. That's why we suggest posting this message prominently in your office: "It's the money, silly." A variation of this message helped Billl Clinton (a notoriously diffuse individual) from going off theme and was influential in putting him in the Oval Office. This message will also work for you.
2) Designate a good writer to produce your blog's content.
Business blog copy must be clean, clear, accurate. That means designating a writer with business writing experience. An experienced copywriter is perfect. They know how to write copy that sells... which is just the copy you need.
3) If you cannot find a copywriter, become that copywriter yourself.
Successful copy is based on just 4 important words:
YOU GET BENEFIT NOW.
The "you" is your reader, the person you need your blog copy to motivate to contact you.
"get" is there to remind you that copy is always about what the reader (your past, present and future customer) gets from you.
"benefit" is the specific thing they get from each article you publish.
"now" is when you want the reader to respond, reminding yourself that there must always be one or more offers in each blog issue, such offers being intended to stimulate the immediate reader response which must always be your objective.
4) Master search engines.
Writing business blogs means finding and using a never ending supply of data, information, research findings, quotations of note, etc. Blogs eat up lots and lots of information.
This means becoming expert at finding pertinent data from search engines. Surprisingly we discovered that many business blog writers do not use and therefore do now know how to ensure best results from search engines. That problem must be recognized and overcome ASAP.
Successful business writers know how to write articles with data "holes" in them, "holes" they can quickly fill by accessing search engines... without ever leaving the computer. Given the fact that not so many years ago, business writers had to use specialized business libraries, a cumbersome process at best, search engines have made all the difference in getting important data quickly and easily, all at your fingertips.
5) Always have a lead article, the focus of each individual issue.
We have found in practice that each blog issue should be anchored by a major article. The length we recommend is 1,500 words.
This article should be divided into two distinct parts; first, the actual content itself. Second, pertinent follow-up details which advise your reader what is available, its benefits, and how to get it. These follow-up details are crucial and must follow each article. (See below for an example.)
How long does it take for such an article to be researched, written, edited, etc.? Obviously that depends on the amount of research you must do, how quickly you find it, your own skills and speed as a writer, etc. However, we have found that this "anchor" article takes on average 4-8 hours.
6) Always have a "new uses" feature.
You've all heard the old adage, "sell the sizzle, not the steak". That's why you need a "new uses" feature. Select any of your products and services; then provide at least one detailed blog article on how to get the great results from its use. Remember, people buy products too achieve results; the more practical uses you detail, the more sales you make.
7) Always include customer testimonials, particularly testimonials that provide details on what individual customers did and their positive results.
Customer testimonials work. Thus, make sure you always include one or more in each blog issue. And always make a point in each blog of asking your customers to provide more.
8) Have a "new product" feature... and, as above, ensure the copy focuses on what it does, that "sizzle" again.
Remember, blog copy is about making money by generating reader inquiries and sales. Your readers are glad to read about new products to the extent that the copy introducing them focuses on what the customer gets.
9) Set and keep a fixed blog publishing schedule.
Your readers should expect to see your blog, like clock work, on a published schedule. They should be trained to look forward to it and respond. But if your publishing schedule is erratic, unpredictable, then your reputation will not be enhanced and your sales will definitely suffer. Ouch!
Once you've set the schedule, treat it religiously.
10) Always include a very special offer in every issue.
Make it a truly spectacular offer... one available to blog readers only.
Position this offer prominently. It is, after all, eye-popping.
Last words.
Blogs in general and business blogs in particular are here to stay. Businesses without them are businesses that suffer, having thereby circumscribed sales and growth. Make sure that isn't you.
One last piece of advice: Make your blog fun read and ALWAYS easy to respond to. If you follow these instructions, your blog will steadily grow in importance as a readily available source of customers and profits. As we can tell you from personal experience, what blogs deliver will truly delight, excite, and enthuse you. A steady stream of new customers and enhanced profits tend to do that.... Get started today and see for yourself.
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 Ruthsella Corasol ...http://WorkingAtHome101.com
Happy and glorious...' Kate marries her Wills and every grumbler on earth has a field day. April 29, 2011.
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
What can you say about the quintessential non-event that has over 2 billion viewers showing up to watch with unfeigned interest?
Plenty, if you're Boston Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham, "God save me from the Queen," she wrote on April 24, as if her pen were filled with acid reflux. "And especially from their Wedding of the Century."
Then she goes on her hackneyed way, "I didn't embrace citizenship of a country defined by its violent rejection of monarchy to turn around and be surrounded by all things royal."
My, my Mother Abraham is in a pother today... and will, if she keeps on this way, be positively apoplectic by the time Kate becomes, at the touch of a golden ring symbolizing eternity, Her Royal Highness and the world oohs and aahs.
Ms. Abraham is Australian (she has to get that in in every column she writes), and Aussies can be amongst the rudest people on earth; too often priding themselves on just how cheeky and brash they can be. It's a sign of their often blatant need to "grow up" and abandon their egregious manners for better ones. But Abraham just cannot let go...
"Come Friday, the birthplace of the revolution will be lousy with cucumber sandwiches, Pimm's Cups and jelly donuts shaped like hearts (Et tu Dunkin D?)"
Why does the lawful marriage of one young man of striking good looks, a mega-watt smile, good posture and average intelligence to one young woman of intelligence, undeniable beauty, a coal miner's grand daughter who once denied him and broke off their thing, irritate so many... turning otherwise sensible folks into grumps and bores on the subject?
Such people tumble over themselves to recite the reasons for their loud lamentations and hostilities.
* The day for a monarchy has, they assure us, passed... down with the Windsors and every other crowned entity on earth.
* No one should be so privileged as the Windsors are and their ilk. It's time for them to get with the republican agenda.
* America, as Yvonne Abraham has naggingly reminded, went to war, bloody, long, vicious, to get rid of the very people the wedding glorifies.
* The monarchy is a symbol of all that's wrong with the world... being at once elitist, privileged, coddled, protected, immune from the realities of life from which we should all be suffering, prince or pizza maker.
Let's examine these remarks. Is there anything here beyond unsubstantiated opinion, bias, and the need to mouth off?
First and foremost: this is above all else the celebration of a fundamental rite, marriage, the selection for life of one smitten by another, hopefully equally smitten, or even more. A marriage celebrates the decision to try to love, honor, cherish. For 50% or so of the people so venturing divorce and mayhem loom... but people want to try anyway. And they are glad that their princes, too, embrace the concept.
As clever 19th century British journalist Walter Bagehot (1826-1877) wrote in his insightful book "The English Constitution" (published 1867): "A princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and, as such, it rivets mankind." Spot on.
This marriage will feature more carriages, more guests, more presents, and more media coverage than you got at your wedding... but the heart of this wedding will be the same as yours: "Do you...? Do you...?" And they with all their palaces, wide acres, jewels and powdered footmen to spare will then offer the same simple kiss that you gave your new spouse, the kiss that symbolized your desire to love and live for this now very special person and your sanctified relationship. And at that moment, with that kiss the two billion viewers will be thinking not just of the prince and new princess... but of themselves, of their marriages, their ceremonies... and their personal dreams and illusions. And of how not even princes emerge from fairy tales unscathed.
Their way will feature different problems than yours, but they will face problems all the same. What they are saying is that they want to be with each other as they face these problems. They deserve the same chance that you had and like all newly married couples the same generous good wishes from those of us who know better than they that even princes will need those good wishes in future since no one lives on this planet without costs of every kind and amount.
And as for the comments by designated commentators like Yvonne Abraham, angry that America, the first great republic of modern times, should waste its time watching people whose ancestors robbed, plundered and pillaged amongst us. Have we forgotten that, well have we?
Slow down, darling', most assuredly you have got your knickers in a twist... and every word beside the point.
Our interest in this marriage and attendant events has absolutely nothing to do with being seduced away from our republican constitution and government. Even the question is silly. First, many millions amongst us have a high regard for the old countries of the United Kingdom, England, Scotland, Ireland. They are part of our history and heritage. To abjure them is to abjure a part of ourselves. Why would we ever want to do that? Even the Founding Fathers didn't advocate such a course. The men who had toppled George III and his emblems in every colony worked hard after the Revolution to establish diplomatic relations with England. Then they worked long and hard to turn mere relations into an alliance of heart and mind, not just politics and commerce. The United Kingdom, whose monarchy we rebelled against and expelled from our land, is now our closest ally and friend.
Suppose for a moment that you had once quarrelled with your parents. Suppose terrible things, regrettable things were done and said by you and them. Would that end matters, in grief and recrimination? Certainly not, for are they not your parents still and have you no regard for them and the good things they did? And here's the point: if they invited you to an important event, say a wedding, would you refuse to be friends again? You'd go of course, for auld lang syne.
That is why billions of people will gather round their television sets this Friday, April 29. for us on this side of the Pond at very early hours indeed. We shall watch closely, commenting freely and, for nearly all, in good humor. And when these young now married people go onto the balcony of Buckingham Palace for The Kiss, our hearts will go out to them, not as gaudy royalty but as good people on whose slender shoulders a valued thousand year old institution will in due course be placed. Then they will surely need from us not just cheers, but support. They shall have it from me.
One last word for you, Mother Abraham. In 1999 the citizens of Australia voted in a national referendum about whether to abolish the monarchy and become the Republic of Australia, or not. Your fellow citizens voted 55-45 percent to keep the Windsors and the monarchy.
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 noted historian and author 18 best-selling books. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol... http://WorkingAtHome101.com
What can you say about the quintessential non-event that has over 2 billion viewers showing up to watch with unfeigned interest?
Plenty, if you're Boston Globe columnist Yvonne Abraham, "God save me from the Queen," she wrote on April 24, as if her pen were filled with acid reflux. "And especially from their Wedding of the Century."
Then she goes on her hackneyed way, "I didn't embrace citizenship of a country defined by its violent rejection of monarchy to turn around and be surrounded by all things royal."
My, my Mother Abraham is in a pother today... and will, if she keeps on this way, be positively apoplectic by the time Kate becomes, at the touch of a golden ring symbolizing eternity, Her Royal Highness and the world oohs and aahs.
Ms. Abraham is Australian (she has to get that in in every column she writes), and Aussies can be amongst the rudest people on earth; too often priding themselves on just how cheeky and brash they can be. It's a sign of their often blatant need to "grow up" and abandon their egregious manners for better ones. But Abraham just cannot let go...
"Come Friday, the birthplace of the revolution will be lousy with cucumber sandwiches, Pimm's Cups and jelly donuts shaped like hearts (Et tu Dunkin D?)"
Why does the lawful marriage of one young man of striking good looks, a mega-watt smile, good posture and average intelligence to one young woman of intelligence, undeniable beauty, a coal miner's grand daughter who once denied him and broke off their thing, irritate so many... turning otherwise sensible folks into grumps and bores on the subject?
Such people tumble over themselves to recite the reasons for their loud lamentations and hostilities.
* The day for a monarchy has, they assure us, passed... down with the Windsors and every other crowned entity on earth.
* No one should be so privileged as the Windsors are and their ilk. It's time for them to get with the republican agenda.
* America, as Yvonne Abraham has naggingly reminded, went to war, bloody, long, vicious, to get rid of the very people the wedding glorifies.
* The monarchy is a symbol of all that's wrong with the world... being at once elitist, privileged, coddled, protected, immune from the realities of life from which we should all be suffering, prince or pizza maker.
Let's examine these remarks. Is there anything here beyond unsubstantiated opinion, bias, and the need to mouth off?
First and foremost: this is above all else the celebration of a fundamental rite, marriage, the selection for life of one smitten by another, hopefully equally smitten, or even more. A marriage celebrates the decision to try to love, honor, cherish. For 50% or so of the people so venturing divorce and mayhem loom... but people want to try anyway. And they are glad that their princes, too, embrace the concept.
As clever 19th century British journalist Walter Bagehot (1826-1877) wrote in his insightful book "The English Constitution" (published 1867): "A princely marriage is the brilliant edition of a universal fact, and, as such, it rivets mankind." Spot on.
This marriage will feature more carriages, more guests, more presents, and more media coverage than you got at your wedding... but the heart of this wedding will be the same as yours: "Do you...? Do you...?" And they with all their palaces, wide acres, jewels and powdered footmen to spare will then offer the same simple kiss that you gave your new spouse, the kiss that symbolized your desire to love and live for this now very special person and your sanctified relationship. And at that moment, with that kiss the two billion viewers will be thinking not just of the prince and new princess... but of themselves, of their marriages, their ceremonies... and their personal dreams and illusions. And of how not even princes emerge from fairy tales unscathed.
Their way will feature different problems than yours, but they will face problems all the same. What they are saying is that they want to be with each other as they face these problems. They deserve the same chance that you had and like all newly married couples the same generous good wishes from those of us who know better than they that even princes will need those good wishes in future since no one lives on this planet without costs of every kind and amount.
And as for the comments by designated commentators like Yvonne Abraham, angry that America, the first great republic of modern times, should waste its time watching people whose ancestors robbed, plundered and pillaged amongst us. Have we forgotten that, well have we?
Slow down, darling', most assuredly you have got your knickers in a twist... and every word beside the point.
Our interest in this marriage and attendant events has absolutely nothing to do with being seduced away from our republican constitution and government. Even the question is silly. First, many millions amongst us have a high regard for the old countries of the United Kingdom, England, Scotland, Ireland. They are part of our history and heritage. To abjure them is to abjure a part of ourselves. Why would we ever want to do that? Even the Founding Fathers didn't advocate such a course. The men who had toppled George III and his emblems in every colony worked hard after the Revolution to establish diplomatic relations with England. Then they worked long and hard to turn mere relations into an alliance of heart and mind, not just politics and commerce. The United Kingdom, whose monarchy we rebelled against and expelled from our land, is now our closest ally and friend.
Suppose for a moment that you had once quarrelled with your parents. Suppose terrible things, regrettable things were done and said by you and them. Would that end matters, in grief and recrimination? Certainly not, for are they not your parents still and have you no regard for them and the good things they did? And here's the point: if they invited you to an important event, say a wedding, would you refuse to be friends again? You'd go of course, for auld lang syne.
That is why billions of people will gather round their television sets this Friday, April 29. for us on this side of the Pond at very early hours indeed. We shall watch closely, commenting freely and, for nearly all, in good humor. And when these young now married people go onto the balcony of Buckingham Palace for The Kiss, our hearts will go out to them, not as gaudy royalty but as good people on whose slender shoulders a valued thousand year old institution will in due course be placed. Then they will surely need from us not just cheers, but support. They shall have it from me.
One last word for you, Mother Abraham. In 1999 the citizens of Australia voted in a national referendum about whether to abolish the monarchy and become the Republic of Australia, or not. Your fellow citizens voted 55-45 percent to keep the Windsors and the monarchy.
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 noted historian and author 18 best-selling books. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol... http://WorkingAtHome101.com
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