Cost of college degree in U.S. has increased 1,120 percent in 30 years, Bloomberg report says. Here's something practical that will help pay the burgeoning bills.

 by  Dr. Jeffrey Lant.

Author's program note. His given name was Hubert Prior Vallee, and he was born July 28, 1901 in Island Pond, Vermont.  Boyishly good looking, suave, charming and a real life Yalie, the world (particularly its female moiety) came to know and love him as "Rudy". He was the world's first pop star, barnstorming the country with saxophone, raccoon coat, megaphone, college pennants and beanies galore and a happy-go-lucky disposition that wasn't quite his but suited his moment of maximum glory to the proverbial "t".

Told by his family, friends and even his own band members that he should give up vocalizing because of a voice that was thin and reedy, he listened instead to that inner voice each successful person seems to have. As a result, he blazed a trail many other crooners would follow, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como.

He also had a major influence in creating the brand-new American collegiate experience -- now with girls! College now became the place to go if you were one and twenty; providing suitable young men with the skills the Great Republic and all its enterprises needed and the sheepskin to prove it... and young women with access to these reliable males, the world their oyster; just the kind of men they were expected to impress and bring home for vetting and beaming parental approval.

They were called "Betty Co-ed" and in 1930 Rudy Vallee released the popular song of this name. It reached #4 on the charts and helped make college and its uniquely American environment the place to be if you were aspiring, bright, toothsome and ambitious... and so it has remained from that day to this. Thus, for the musical accompaniment to this article, I give you the bouncy "Betty Co-ed", the gal who "gets the men in rushes by well-cultivated blushes. And she's happy with a fellow on each arm." You'll find it in any search engine. Oh, yes, college it had to be by all means.

The problem was that paying for the college experience began to take all means... as I myself learned later as I watched my father struggle with the ever increasing financial forms and requirements dispatched by colleges to ensure he kept his nose to the grindstone the better to keep three kids in the best possible alma mater. Indeed, it seemed at times that he was working for the colleges his children attended. And so were all the other parents with children hoping to attend college, in college, or having graduated from college leaving a mountain of debt as proof of matriculation and attendance.

Alarming proof on just how bad this situation is and how much worse it is likely to get.

According to a new report just released by Bloomberg, the cost of a college degree in the United States has increased 1,120 percent over the past 30 years; that's an over 12 fold increase, far outpacing the price inflation of consumer goods, medical expenses, and food. Records used to study this walloping increase have been kept since 1978 and prove that the rate of increase in college costs has been "four times faster than the increase in the consumer price index". By comparison, the report notes that medical costs in this period have climbed 601 percent, while the price of food has increased "just" 244 percent.

A flurry of alarming news.

Bloomberg's detailed alarum is not the only distressing intelligence on this subject; not by a long shot. Earlier this year, the Associated Press reported the average tuition at four-year public universities increased by15 percent between 2008 and 2010. Private universities were also found to have had significant price increases.

"Soaring tuition and shrinking incomes are making college less and less affordable," Sen. Tom Harkin (D-IA), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, told Bloomberg. "For millions of young people, rising college costs are putting the American dream on hold, or out of reach."  Then the punch line, the obvious deduction: as tuition costs continue to rise and the national student loan debt hits $1 trillion, some people  have been left wondering if college is even worth it anymore. And that in the name of Rudy Vallee and his Betty Co-ed is a tragedy in the offing. Everything, and I do mean everything, must be done to save that paradise of rah-rah and "roguish eyes, telling lies, breathing sighs". And so in due course the matter came to the attention of the Honorable Barack, who in the best traditions of his ilk never met a cream puff he didn't like and couldn't finesse.

Thus the word came down from on high at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue; the President likes colleges; the President is agin' gouging tuitions; the President is shocked by the fast escalating numbers; the President particularly wants to assist beleaguered members of the middle class; the President feels your pain. You get the picture. He said the same kind of thing for Mom, apple pie and homeless kittens. Gosh, what a guy.

"Details? Who needs details!"

Like all successful politicians the Honorable Barrack knows how to turn a random crumb into a bakery. No where is his undeniable talent for producing gold from straw more evident than in his "plan" to cut the growth of college tuition in half over the next decade. Now if he had stopped to consider the matter, he would have asked himself, "Self, just how am I going to do this?" He would have responded, "Darned if I know."

But politicians, especially the highest muckety-mucks with a paragraph in history books, aren't like you and me. No way! We'd be asked for details, for specifics, for a clear statement and assessment of every assumption and contingency. The Honorable Barack didn't do any of that. He simply said he'd achieve this goal by using the powers of the Great Republic and his high office to force colleges to toe the line -- or else face the music.

Now I ask you... do you want the federal government intervening in the matter, dictating what colleges and universities can charge; what they can and cannot do? The Honorable Barack thinks it's a swell idea... but he achieved his goal of thumping his chest for middle class votes the minute he opened his mouth on the subject.

He didn't provide any details because he didn't have them and certainly wasn't going to wait to expatiate on the issue until he did. That was for lesser folks... not presidents of the Great Republic. It's "Mad Magazine What Me Worry?" "trust me", mystery politics at its most insidious. But what does the Honorable Barack care? Helping hard-pressed folks with their whopping college bills was never the objective; getting the votes of such people was.

A better plan from me right here right now.

Now hear this. Maybe the Honorable Barack can merely trifle with this issue... but you can't. You need real money... not deceptive words and false promises. You need to go to any search engine and search on categories like "scholarships for college," or "college awards, honors and prizes," "money sources for college tuitions", etc.  (Note: this is where learning how to refine your search is key. Brainstorm your categories, write them down; then search and refine again.) What you find will thrill you... thousands of potential funding sources.

I like Gale's "Awards, Honors & Prizes" and "Winners, the blue ribbon encyclopedia of awards", edited by Claire Walter.

Your search will garner resources that cover thousands and thousands of possible collegiate (and other) funding sources. Now the real work begins -- familiarizing yourself with each funding source and the appropriate entries for you in each. This takes time, patience, and judgement; not precisely the best traits of adolescents. But if you want the money you cannot simply rely on school guidance counsellors; you need to be fully engaged with the process yourself, treating it as the priority it is.

Does this work? It most assuredly does. It's what I did starting my junior year of high school and, because I was a fanatic, my labors lead to one gratifying money-making prize after another. I became something of a celebrity at school.

Will this produce enough money for all? Sadly not. But it will produce needed funds for people like you; perhaps even the crucial dollars that make the difference between going to college at all, or not. With them you won't miss these crucial moments of your life, the classes, the friendships, the games and of course... Betty Co-ed majoring in artful flirtation, oodles of charm and...you!

 Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol http://WorkingAtHome101.com.

'A boy! A boy! My kingdom for a boy!' On Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI,his dilemma, and an over-the-top picture of eye-popping grandeur and allegory.

by  Dr. Jeffrey Lant.

Author's Program Note. No royal court in Europe was more musically inclined than the imperial Habsburgs who ruled their vast real estate from the most melodious of capitals, Wien. Or as you would say, Vienna. To be a prince of this dynasty (called archdukes) was an honorable thing of course, a matter of dignity and respect.

But to be an emperor or even an archduke who was an accomplished musician was marvelous... and when this valued being composed, too, why this was very heaven and deserving of every paean and veneration. For the Habsburgs were the most fortunate of princes; to rule over a people as cosmopolitan and sophisticated as they were, with taste refined, pure, cultivated to the highest degree.

Their subjects realized such accomplished and refined princes were rare, and so gave them a fidelity less humane sovereigns could only envy but never emulate. As it turned out the last male ruler in his line was the Emperor Charles VI (1685-1740). Today I tell his story... and unveil one of the most magnificent pictures of his reign... the great day he, God's vicegerant on Earth, was crowned King of Bohemia, September 5, 1723.

For such an occasion, for such a man music, great music is required and what better than a brave little piece written by Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, two of whose musically inclined sons (Joseph I and Charles VI) became emperors, too. This piece is called "Lasset Ihr Stemen", and you'll find it in any search engine. Go now. You'll need to practice your courtly leaps and gambols; the music will provide the necessary clues about just when to jump and with what elasticity and exquisite precision...

The problem, the tragedy of Charles VI's life.

Charles VI was a man of taste, an aesthete, a connoisseur. He was also a prince of the first magnitude; a necessary cog in the complicated wheel of European statecraft.  At the time his childless cousin of Spain, Charles II, lay a long time dying Archduke Charles was not the next heir to Austria's empire. That was his older brother Joseph I.

But to the inconvenience of all, Joseph died, thus making his archducal brother Holy Roman Emperor and, due to the carefully contrived marriages of his canny predecessors, plausible heir to even greater lands, specifically those of Spain where his sickly cousin Charles II still lingered, a man whose only remaining importance was his much desired death... and who would get the glittering inheritance, about one sixth of the globe.

Two princes claimed the riches of the dons; Philip of Anjou, the French candidate; and the man now called Emperor Charles VI. Should Spanish King Charles select his imperial cousin, the great empire of Charles V would be revived, to the unmitigated detriment of both England and France. That, the disadvantaged all agreed, would never do.

And so King Louis XIV of France reluctantly allowed Philip of Anjou to accept the throne of Spain (as Philip III) and so began the draining, interminable War of the Spanish Succession. From Austria's standpoint it was not a "good" war. Along the way, their shrewd ally England, recreating their immemorial role as "Perfidious Albion", deserted the imperial cause thus allowing Philip III to stay on the Spanish throne. The condition was that the crowns of Spain and France must never be linked.

The bone tossed to Charles VI was a goodly part of the Netherlands. For all that he didn't triumph, France, victor, came out worse; desolate, bankrupt, exhausted. Such was the price of victory and the monarchical structure of Europe.  Things got better for Imperial Charles, and worse.

The real estate agents called Habsburg did what they always did: added properties, traded properties, bargained properties, married properties, ventured properties, lost properties. They were Europe's realtors, and they consistently got more than they gave up; garnering the crown of Bohemia in 1711; that of restless Hungary in 1712; trading Spain in 1738 Sicily and Naples for the gracious duchies of Parma and Piacenza.

This is what being a Habsburg meant and Charles VI played the great game as well as any of his imperial brethren. But he had to finesse his one glaring problem, the succession; the first task of a dynast. Charles produced two daughters but a brigade of such princesses was not the equal of a single prince. He needed that prince and a spare, and his need was urgent.

Thus the head of House Habsburg, the very model of monarchical tradition, canvassed a radical solution to the matter; a solution that would keep the succession to his own kin, never mind they were female, and so avoid another of Europe's debilitating wars of succession. It was called the Pragmatic Sanction and, bribe by bribe, concession by lucrative concession, the princes of Europe came on board with pledges of adherence hardly one had any intention of actually keeping. It was all part of the scheming that was sovereignty. Duplicity was the true droit de seigneur.

Revolutionary, unprecedented solution; ultra traditional presentation.

The Pragmatic Sanction was finalized in 1713. It was crucial to disguise just how unprecedented it was. And that's where Johann George Bohm (1673-1746) and his exuberant, signed and imperially commissioned "Allegory of the Coronation of Emperor Charles VI as King of Bohemia in Prague on 5th September 1723" comes in.

It may well be the most significant and is certainly the most glorious representation of monarchical legitimacy ever painted, bold in its objective, audacious in its purpose, a picture offering the strongest possible support to the legitimist principle and its current representative and champion, Charles VI by the Grace of God...

An allegory, a declaration, an assertion, a conviction, a proof.

Every picture contains a message, but in few pictures is that message as abundantly clear, striking, fierce and even bombastic as this one, which seeks, indeed demands, nothing less than your total belief in and submission to the unquestioned doctrine that this man and his dynasty are the favored and elect of God. It goes about elucidating this fact in the following way: by picturing the Coronation in Prague as grand theater, operatic, uplifting, inspiring, an event of grace and apotheosis.

Thus, the work offers a plethora of signs, symbols, and images, each with its individual task of supporting and hammering home the essential message: that the Emperor specifically and the entire dynasty generally are of God, ordained by God, sustained by God, forever and ever and that submission to these God-sanctified Habsburgs is mandatory, unalterable, eternal. Amen.

Let us take a closer look at the symbolic richness of this picture where each item and every representation is there to carry the overriding message and in as many ways remind the viewer that here is perpetual truth, no cavil or reservation of any kind permitted.

And so we see the sovereigns, Charles VI and his consort Elisabeth Christine of Braunschweig-Wolfenbuttel under a soaring cloth of state, the double headed eagle picked out in gold and their imperial monograms. The imperial couple are surrounded by personifications of the virtues intended to characterize the reign of the new Bohemian king. Amongst them Charity, represented with the arms of the city of Prague, their new kingdom's capital. Pheme floats above this group with the trumpet of fame. In the right foreground Chronos, father of Zeus, God of time, pulls back the curtain of history which cannot but bless this king, his dynasty, his reign which can only be happy ordained as it is by God Himself and His (Roman Catholic) church.

Now the question must be answered: who painted this magnificent declaration, this encyclical of color and splendor? Bohm. Johann George Bohm, Master, a man who knew his craft; the art of presenting royalty exactly as it wished to be seen by itself and all lesser folk. As such Bohm was welcomed wherever fastidious royalty needed his essential talent, amongst them the Courts of Saxony and Poland.

Lot 620, "Alte Meister", Dorotheum, 18 April, 2012.

It would be wrong to say it was love at first sight; rather it was lust, desire, and anxiety. It was something so perfect for my collection it might have been commissioned by me. As such it threw all my good resolutions about thrift, planning and self-control right out the window. I could only hope my valued conservator of over 3 dozen pictures would find flaws so grave even his genius would not suffice. But this is the magic of Simon Gillespie, Cleveland Street, London. If the picture can be restored to its pristine allure, then his triumph and the picture's future are assured even for objects as badly off as this daunting masterpiece, a skein of thousands of cracks, damages, imperfections, and assorted troubles on an imperial scale.

Surely this time even Simon might quail. But he did not quail. And so the master who painted this demanding masterpiece came to be admirably served by the master who saved the work from its pitiful downward spiral of distress, desolation, and despair.

Thus Gillespie and team went to work with a will, investing over 600 hours of their practised expertise, bringing the picture back one fraction of an inch after another, patience and a hand made sable hair brush the crucial tools. By such pains the picture and its splendid original frame with the Crown of Bohemia above all were restored, resplendent, a thing as proud as the sovereign who commissioned the work, and far more successful than he.

For you see, the great work of his reign, ensuring that the empire complete and indivisible was successfully passed to his daughter Archduchess Maria Theresa, crashed before his mortal remains were even cool; royal marauders, all sworn to support the Pragmatic Sanction, broke their solemn vows and grabbed what they could as fast as they could.

Now this picture, 117 x 89 cm, saved for the future, has come to its new home here in Cambridge, where I, the son of Puritans, carefully protect not just this imperial work... but a room full of Habsburgs, all in radiant condition. And so the present, in the persons of Simon Gillespie and me, has kept faith with a past we value, particularly in its artful manifestations. We have here worked to preserve; worked to maintain; and worked to secure... all tasks worth doing... all tasks done well.

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. Services include home business training, affiliate marketing training, earn-at-home programs, traffic tools, advertising, webcasting, hosting, design, WordPress Blogs and more. Find out why Worldprofit is considered the # 1 online Home Business Training program by getting a free Associate Membership today. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol http://WorkingAtHome101.com

Is there a future for the GOP? Yes, but only if they heed these admonitions andrecommendations. Otherwise the party's marginalization will continue, its end certain, ignominious.

 by  Dr. Jeffrey Lant.

Author's program note. Steven Spielberg's important new film "Lincoln" has just been released and not a moment too soon.  It's based on historian Doris Kearns Goodwin's best-selling book "Team of Rivals:The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln."

It's about what it takes to move mountains, manage men, get things done and lead, bending but not abandoning every moral principle or strongly held belief. It is about politics, America's blood sport, and how they are played at the very top where angels fear to tread... and rightly so. There's nothing angelic about the participants or the process. It's a very messy... and absolutely crucial... business that ensures our Democracy works.

For the music to this piece, I have selected "Dixie", written in 1859 by Daniel Decatur Emmett. Yes, the very anthem of sedition and treason. Why? Because Abe Lincoln thought it a fine tune... and because it reminds us that throwing away a good thing, the greatest reel ever written, makes no sense. Leadership, even in music, means enjoying the good; finessing the bad and remembering what Scarlet O'Hara said: "Tonight I could dance with Abe Lincoln himself".... and sailed through a sea of outrage and disapproval to prove her point and have a thoroughly good time.

Loss, bad loss, catastrophic loss.

John Boehner (R-OH), Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, is now again the highest ranking Republican in the Great Republic. That wasn't the idea, but it is the result after an unenlightening campaign that rained money but where victory eluded them... and not by a narrow margin either. Like most everyone in America Boehner has his ideas about why this happened... and to his credit he didn't hold back when he addressed his chastened, subdued House colleagues by telephone the day after the victory that didn't happen.

He made it clear they would have to work with the Democrats they viscerally detest... and in this deduction Boehner at last sounded less like the bombastic ultra-partisan, immutable control freak than he usually does but, perhaps for the first time, actually a tad Lincolnesque. For no American politician ever labored so hard or so successfully to work with (and ultimately control) the people necessary to the fruition of his administration and the nation than Lincoln.

He took his political competitors, even his avowed enemies, and plunked them down in his Cabinet... where he could see what they were up to, the better to control them to get his way. It was bold, audacious, unprecedented maybe even fool hardy. And no one knew whether it would succeed or not, not even Abe Lincoln, the most belittled, reviled, and underestimated American politician ever.  He asked every candidate who had opposed his nomination at the Republican convention in Chicago to take a portfolio.

They couldn't believe their good fortune and assumed their power and control of the new government assured. After all they were men of merit, nationally known, nationally renowned. Seward of New York! Chase of Ohio! Cameron of Pennsylvania! Bates of Missouri! No wonder the weak and untried Lincoln wanted them at hand. He would reign. They would rule. Or so they thought...

But Lincoln understood men, understood how to manage them, and bring them along, always finagling, brokering, deal making to accomplish the needful and always with country humor and good sense. Speaker Boehner ought to ensure that every House Member, Democrat and Republican, gets Goodwin's book and masters it.

Don't bet the ranch on Aging White Men.

Lincoln had a goal and never lost sight of it: to preserve the federal Union. He made it clear what he would do to achieve and maintain that goal: anything, everything. If it would help, it was on the table.

"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that."

Now have you ever heard Boehner and company say anything like this about the crucial matter of righting America's rickety financial house? You haven't because he hasn't. And until he does, until he says that everything is on the table to achieve the great goal of saving America's finances, the goal will never be achieved and all our lives and endeavors blighted accordingly. This great goal, in short, can not just be accomplished by aging white men, the foundation of the Republican party.

Here are the bleak statistics the GOP must wrestle with, statistics which cost them not just the 2012 presidential election but, if not radically improved, will cost them every future presidential election as well:

Women: 55% Obama, 44% Romney.

Hispanics: 71% Obama, 27% Romney.

Young voters under 30: 60% Obama, 36% Romney.

Black voters: 95% Obama, 4% Romney.

Asian American voters: 80% Obama, 19% Romney.

Note: For the record, I must remind you that these numbers are based on various election-date exit polls and other unofficial surveys. Still, the results of these polls are consistent, and therefore are very much to the point.

Radical outreach required, starting at once.

The staff, offices, and work of the national committees dwindle significantly as soon as the election results are in. This model won't serve the GOP or solve its glaring problem, that it has come to rely upon a group of aging white men who cannot deliver victory in and of themselves. Anyone who can count can see that and the fact that 7,000,000 fewer of these men voted in 2012 than 2008 ought to scare the bejesus out of anyone who wishes the Grand Old Party well. The natural mortality of its favored constituency promises assured cataclysm.

What, then, must be done?

1) Building the new GOP and measurably increasing its voter turn-out in each designated category (women, voters under 30, Asian Americans, etc.) must be an explicit objective. A vigorous title such as "Building the NEW GOP!" should be adopted.

2) Respected office holders should be recruited to head each category and its outreach efforts.

3) Adequate budgets should be drawn up and, with the full assistance of the national party organizations, ample funds raised. This is crucial.

4) IT professionals must be hired to advise on the best way to utilize Internet options, including social media.

5) Internet recruitment campaigns along the lines of "And I'm a Mormon" should be implemented, e.g. "And I'm a Republican".

6) Focus groups should be established to ascertain reasons why designated groups would and, importantly would not, vote Republican. Congressional leadership should be involved in this matter.

7) State legislatures and local civic, business and elected leaders should be canvassed for desirable candidates in each category for federal offices. Such information should be shared with congressional campaign committees to allocate funding, etc.

8) A list of open or vulnerable Democratic representatives and senators should be drawn up. Resources should be raised and concentrated on the most likely targets.

9) All information from national headquarters should be "translated"  into a form most likely to resonate with designated populations.

10) Study the great coalition and team builders who built the modern Democratic party. Congressman Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill, Jr. (later U.S. Speaker of the House) whose work in a generation changed Massachusetts from solidly Republican to solidly Democratic. Or Senator George McGovern whose signal work transformed overwhelmingly Republican South Dakota into a state "in play" for the Democrats. And, of course, the greatest Democratic coalition builder, Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose transforming brilliance ensured Democratic victories and Republican irrelevance for a generation. These far-sighted, hardworking strategists set the objective for themselves and the Democrats; then did the necessary to achieve it.

Study Lincoln, every fibre, every nuance, every move, every thought.

Remember, the Republican Party, the Grand Old Party, is the party of Lincoln. What this means is that you are charged with doing whatever it takes to keep America strong by keeping its people strong. Sadly too often, and glaringly in 2012, you have forgotten your great charge, lost amongst the negativity and nay-saying which has turned the party of Lincoln into a petty shadow of its historical grandeur and significance.

Changing this reality into a vision to thrill America is your urgent task now. Restore the primacy of great Lincoln's unsurpassed genius for governance and in the process you will not only save the Grand Old Party and make it grander still; you will save the Great Republic, our nation, our people, our mission. Your moment is here. Seize it... for the good of us all.

About the Author Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Services include home business training, affiliate marketing training, earn-at-home programs, traffic tools, advertising, webcasting, hosting, design, WordPress Blogs and more. Find out why Worldprofit is considered the # 1 online Home Business Training program by getting a free Associate Membership today. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol http://WorkingAtHome101.com.

Amazing Technology And Your Online Marketing

Blending the amazing technology and your online marketing strategy takes a little thought. With all the automated systems available today you can do so much  quicker and easier than ever before.

Even though the amazing technology and your online marketing strategy do work together, that does not mean that you won't have to work. Ultimately you need to plan the best course of action for your business.

It is about more than just getting some software, pushing some buttons and sitting back waiting for the money to roll in. As a matter of fact, this is one of the most common mistakes that many people make. They have bought into the hype of online marketing. They have come to believe that with a little time and virtually no effort, they can can make a ton of money.

The problem is that the software won't do it all and if you don't understand at least the basics of how it all goes together, you will miss out on a great opportunity.

So, no matter what technology and automation you depend on  you need to be willing to learn the basics of how it all goes together or you won't have much, or any success.

Another thing that many would be internet marketers overlook is the fact that they need to be able to track all of their results. There are things that may need to be tweaked but unless you are tracking your results you won't be able to identify which things work well for you and which ones don't work.

For that reason you should add, and learn to use, some type of code to track elements of your online business. Two things that are very important to track are the number of visitors you get to your site and the percentage of conversions (people who actually take some action like buy your product or sign up to your list) that you are getting.

Most of the tweaks you do to your site will be geared to increasing one of these things - traffic or conversions. You need to be able to figure out which tweaks have worked and which ones haven't worked.

To that end, make sure you only make one change at a time. If you try to change too many things at once how will you know which one of those changes made a difference and which one didn't?

And worse, you may have actually had one thing that made a positive change and one that made a negative change and they have balanced each other out. If that happens you have no way of knowing that one of the changes actually worked.

Make one small change at a time, wait a few weeks or months to see if the change helped or hurt (or didn't do anything). If the change worked try something else to get even better results, if it didn't work go back to what you had before and then make another change.

 Ruthsella Corasol is the Owner of http://WorkingAtHome101.com. Check us out anytime for marketing tips and a free subscription to our cutting edge newsletter.
 

Review: Home Business Bootcamp Training with George Kosch. Nov 9, 2012

Worldprofit's, November 9th, 2012 LIVE Home Business Training started promptly at 10 AM CT led by George Kosch, a well known web marketer.

George Kosch reviewed 5 new tools released to Members in the last week.

The purpose of these latest tools is to help you earn money online.

1. Lead Funnel:  What it is and how to access and use. (included in Silver or Platinum VIP Membership) Live online demonstration.

2. Promo Organizer:  What it is and how to access and use. ((included in Silver or Platinum VIP Membership) Live online demonstration.

3. Squeeze Page Builder (Landing Page Builder): You need a WordPress Blog or Prebuilt Blog, both are available from Worldprofit for one time set up fee) Live online demonstration.

4. GVO (Global Virtual Opportunities) added to Money Makers section. For those Worldprofit Members who are also involved with GVO. 

5.  Add-On to Magic List Builder. Live online demonstration.

Plus, George has a copy of Windows 8 and offered up 3 things that will save you a lot of frustration with Windows 8.

Discussion Topics

1. How to build your OWN list.

2. Link Cloaking:  what it is and why you need to do it.

3. Landing pages/Squeeze Pages/ Splash pages (the same thing really, people land on them, and submit contact info)

4. Autoresponders (tying in your autoresponder system with your landing pages, piggybacking)

5. How to use Worldprofit services, training and resources to build ANY and ALL business/affiliate you are involved.

6. Marketing and Promotion

7. "Millionaire Goggles": How to look at things differently.

8. Money Makers Promo Kit   (included in Silver or Platinum VIP Membership)

9. The secret to online success.   If it is so easy to get wealthy from an online business, why aren't there more doing it? Why isn't everyone doing it? There is no secret to succeeding online, it comes down to your own hard work, discipline and using the right tools and services to accomplish your financial goals. Focus is critical.

Worldprofit Member Resources referenced in today's training

-Money Makers Program
-FastCash Program
-Recommended Advertising Resources
-Bootcamp Lessons (Now over 60 and growing) 
-Banner Promotion Kit -Magic List Builder
-Cool Tools
-What Worldprofit Buys
-E-book Rebrander with content

George invited and answered questions throughout the training program.

IMPORTANT NOTE for NEW Worldprofit Members:

If you are brand new to Worldprofit and feeling a little overwhelmed by the amount of information you have been provided, or the various terms being use, we urge you watch the BASIC TRAINING VIDEO. The basic training video covers terms you should know, the basics of our program and what you need to focus on to get on track to making money online with the Worldprofit system. Find this video in your Member area, on the TOP MENU select TRAINING then click on the link for the video that is marked as the MUST WATCH BEGINNER'S VIDEO. If you have any questions submit a Support form so we can also help you that way.

Thank you to each of you for participating in today's LIVE interactive Home business bootcamp training. Attending the training, then actually DOING what is taught is the key to your success in building your online business and earning income.

We had lots of questions today and we encourage this. The LIVE training is the perfect opportunity to tap into George Kosch's expertise and get direct instant answers with on-screen demonstration as relevant.

Comments from participants

Toni: Upgrade to Silver????? Yes I think so, I signed up last week, wish I had this in May when I first started, would have saved a lot of money.
James: Awesome new add to Magic List Builder thank you for that
Arvell: Thanks George... that was an  excellent course!!!
Arvell: I say you are the BEST Glenys: This is truly the best place to be at. 
Wallace: Well Done George, Carry On!
Minta: George this is great! You are really taking us to another level. Thanks!
James: One of the KEYS George is that you teach us what you are actually do and you do what you teach. I think that is a key value to what you offer us here. Thank you for that!
Inge: Thanks George you are the best Mentor I know
enrico: incredible value to me, i just want to adverise now
Liz: Awesome training George thank you

Summary:

Today's LIVE home business training session with George Kosch ran for 60 minutes.

The recording of today's session will be posted to the Worldprofit Member area (under top menu TRAINING) for the convenience of those not able to attend the LIVE training.

Reminder to all Worldprofit Members, you can access 60+ training lessons with your Member area, self-paced and accompanied by screen captures, examples. Watch when convenient for you. The online training videos, screen captures and lesson plans are included in your Silver or Platinum VIP Membership.

About Worldprofit. Worldprofit is a home based training company providing tools, resources, software and LIVE and recorded training to help people earn money from home. Started on a kitchen table in 1994, Worldprofit now has over a million free Associate members. Find out how Worldprofit can help you make money from home from a number of reputable income sources.

Next LIVE training session: Friday November 16th at 10 AM CT .  

Worldprofit, Inc., provides a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Services include home business training, affiliate marketing training, earn-at-home programs, traffic tools, advertising, webcasting, hosting, design, WordPress Blogs and more. Find out why Worldprofit is considered the # 1 online Home Business Training program by getting a free Associate Membership today. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol http://WorkingAtHome101.com

A recognized Internet marketing master delivers the sober word you don'twant to hear: The way you're 'marketing' online your failure is assured.Take the challenge and see for yourself.

In a Biz op or doing Affiliate Marketing? 5 SHOCKING REASONS why you aren't getting any leads.

By Sandi Hunter

1.  You are promoting a website and not a Landing Page, also known as a Squeeze page.

To generate leads you need an eye-popping landing page. It's exactly what it sounds like. You promote your landing page, people LAND on it, see your offer and provide you with their contact info so they can get more details on what you offer. Your standard website simply can't accomplish this effectively, usually websites are too busy, to generic, too "professional." In contrast a landing page SCREAMS benefit! It tells readers what they will get (SOMETHING AWESOME) but they must act now!     Landing pages are FILLED with benefits, short punchy copy that gets attention. Landing pages include a limited time offer, they include a form that needs to be completed in order to get the offer. Guess what you are doing with that lead form? YES! You are generating a LEAD, and getting the follow up info you need to provide the requested material/product, then follow up, and build your house list for sending future offers to that person.  Did you catch that last part about list building? I slipped that in an the end, but it is IMPORTANT.  A Landing Page must ALWAYS   ALWAYS give readers the option to SUBSCRIBE to your newsletter/or future offers.  You've worked hard to generate that lead so do your best to offer them the chance to receive future offers or mailings from you.

2.  Your promotional copy is boring.

In case you haven't noticed you've got oodles of competition out there. The web is filled with gizmos and gadgets. Your copy needs to get noticed or it will die a quick death in the email trash folder. Whether your offer is an email offer, or a landing page, or an online post, you have got to lead with a powerful headline, and follow that up with copy that keeps people reading.  Most affiliate companies provide you with excellent copy or banners for promotion. Don't try to rewrite something better if that is not your strong suit, use what they provide, copy, paste send.  Simplify.        

3. You haven't made an offer.

If you want to get leads you MUST, MUST, MUST make an  offer.  Whatever  your pitch is REWARD the person reading it for taking action - NOW - TODAY - in the next 24 hours! Instill excitement and a sense of urgency. You've got a great product or offer  right? You don't want people clicking off any moving on to something else. You want and MUST get people to read and RESPOND to your offer. Give them reasons to do so.    Don't know what to offer?  Check for online products and affiliates that include Private Label and  resell rights, if they do you can use those as leverage in your offers.  By adding these you can convert a luke-warm offer into one that is HOT, HOT, HOT.

4. You aren't marketing in the right places to the right people.

A lot of  people new to online marketing make the mistake of spending money on advertising or leads that never produce results.  Taking shortcuts and buying mass leads or mass lists simply doesn't work. I am going to say that again. If you think you will generate QUALITY leads by buying mass lists, visitors, subscribers or hits, stop right now. Sorry to tell you the harsh truth, but building an online business means finding the best places to advertise that target YOUR market.  Hint: Google is NOT the place to start if you have a small budget.  In the business opportunity market you will want to look at Safelist marketing, Traffic Exchanges, Solo Ads, Ad Swaps, and email marketing providers like Aweber and GetResponse.  Your budget for online promotion doesn't have to be huge but you will get the best results with paid ads at reputable sources.  Do your homework.

5. You are so busy copy, pasting and promoting you have forgotten one of the most important rules in business.

Personality can make all the difference.  Connecting with people is the key to making sales.  In your zest to build your online business, don't forget to be a REAL PERSON. Include your name, email address, skype number, facebook etc on your ad copy to provide people with assurance that you are more than a promoter, you are an online business owner.  Anything you can do to stand out and separate yourself from all the other offers out there helps.  

 About the Author: Sandi Hunter is the Director of Website Development at Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Services include home business training, affiliate marketing training, earn-at-home programs, traffic tools, advertising, webcasting, hosting, design, WordPress Blogs and more. Find out why Worldprofit is considered the # 1 online Home Business Training program by getting a free Associate Membership today.

 Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol http://WorkingAtHome101.com

'Pardon the witches of Connecticut', say relatives. 'Cause there's no nicerwitch than you.' Some thoughts.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author's program note. It all happened a long time ago, in 1663 in fact, but some of the good citizens of Connecticut just cannot let it go. And it's easy to understand why. After all, it was their ancestors who were burnt, hanged and otherwise mistreated because their anxious neighbors deemed them witches and were adamant that their property values would plummet if they didn't take Immediate Action and get rid of these noisome influences immediately.

This is the story of how it happened, why it happened, and how it is that His Excellency Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy is spending so many of his waking (and perhaps sleeping) moments dealing with the matter, trying hard to find a formula that will accommodate everyone and end this matter once and for all.

Such a subject, you'll agree, needs an appropriate tune to put you in the mood for what follows. So I've selected Frank Sinatra's sultry 1957 song "Witchcraft". It was composed by Cy Coleman with lyrics by Carolyn Leigh. Go find it now in any search engine. Watch out! Its seductive sound and smooth words are designed to entrance you, "Cause it's witchcraft, wicked witchcraft/ And although, I know, it's strictly taboo".

"It's such an ancient pitch."
Admit it, we're fascinated and repelled by the idea of witches, gals who like to spend their time boiling the body parts of particularly disgusting creatures; turning them into potions, philtres, unguents, incenses, elixirs, oils and other loathsome concoctions all easily found in their handy grimoire, the textbook of white and black magic. Such people, hair uncombed, stinking and unwashed (my particular aversion) gathered deep in forests, there to summon their Boss, known hereabouts in New England as Old Scratch. They liked being able to summon him. It made for a really festive evening. He was such a cut up and his tricks with fire were mesmerizing!

However, I've got a hunch Scratch didn't  much like hanging out with such a motley, reeking crew, but since a guy's got to take his followers where he can find them, he no doubt made the best of it, as we all do. Besides I have it on excellent authority that Scratch particularly favored their preserves featuring hard-to-find eye of newt. He could always position himself to avoid their more gruesome features. And as for the smells... he could always sit upwind and use his brimstone cologne.

"I've got no defense for it/The heat is too intense for it."

Of course the participants want their little soirees to be discrete, private, secret. Equally, people who want to know will move heaven and earth (there's a potion for this) to find out. And in due course, they do... and, man oh man, are they ever shocked, not least at the smell, for remember these are Puritans where cleanliness is next to Godliness.

In short order, the fat is in the fire and the Witch Problem commences. Witches are suspected, identified, charged, tried, found guilty and done away with as quickly, publicly and painfully as possible. Their remains are often left to be seen, to warn others that witches are real, are evil, move amongst us... and that if you ever see anything odd to summon at once the authorities, the purest of the Puritans, who can take action and return the community and all its residents to God's strict, unalterable tenets. Hallelujah!

Sadly, to achieve the desired results, a few must be extinguished but since these are always low-income, low status, completely powerless women, the Godly divines go forward, sure that the sweeping removal of such undesirables is beneficial, their mere existence in the community being outrage enough to justify even the most heinous deed.

"My Grandmother Mary Was Hanged."

This time the problem was discovered by 82 year-old Bernice Mable Graham Telian. She was researching her family tree when she discovered that her seventh grandmother, Mary Barnes of Farmington, Connecticut, was condemned as a witch; then dispatched by the gallows at the site of the old State House in Hartford. This happened in 1663.

"You won't find Mary's grave. She and all these people who were hanged were dumped in a hole. Their graves aren't marked," said Telian,a retired university administrator who now lives in Delhi, New York.

This discovery so shocked Telian that she spent the last five years writing a book entitled "My Grandmother Mary Was Hanged." She was immediately recruited by other outraged citizens with ancestors charged with witchcraft and executed. For you see, Mary Barnes was only one of 11 Connecticut residents so charged and executed between 1647 and 1663.

What would you have done? The most difficult question of all, information, empathy, due deliberation required.

Since Connecticut and the other colonies of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Virginia assigned those believed to be witches to death, our view of God, evil, Satan, witches and punishment has changed dramatically. Thus we, with our progressive view on the matter, imagine that had we been present we would surely have saved the ladies from the gallows. But I argue this view is naive, merely another opportunity to praise ourselves and assign virtues which are at best spurious. I am not saying that these executions were right; they were not.  However, are they understandable? Can you see how otherwise reasonable people made such decisions under the stress of the moment?

They believed in sin, in the devil and that the devil's disciples, some called witches, actively moved amongst them. They did not just think this as some intellectual parlor game. It was an essential element of what they believed and how therefore they arranged their lives in every aspect. And so, given their viewpoint they made decisions of the greatest gravity, ending lives because by so ending they saved and preserved the community of the Godly they had established in the New World. All this is overlooked, forgotten and pooh-poohed by those who, in an instant, condemn the perpetrators without understanding, their judgements sweeping, emphatic, final... and wrong.

"Cause there's no nicer witch than you."

Of course you can't ask Bernice Telian to accept this. It's her ancestor who was charged, found guilty and executed for witchcraft. That ancestor, Mary Barnes by name, deserves absolution, pardon, her name entirely cleared. The descendants of the other "witches" entirely concur, and they are now inundating Governor Malloy with postcards reading "I am a Pagan/Witch and vote. Clear the names of Connecticut's eleven accused and executed witches."

Malloy is in hot pursuit of a way to accommodate the aggrieved but he lacks the constitutional ability to pardon while the state Board of Pardons and Paroles doesn't grant posthumous pardons.

Still, I feel sure they'll find a way of resolving the matter to the satisfaction of all, "Cause there's no nicer witch than you."
 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. Services include home business training, affiliate marketing training, earn-at-home programs, traffic tools, advertising, webcasting, hosting, design, WordPress Blogs and more. Find out why Worldprofit is considered the # 1 online Home Business Training program by getting a free Associate Membership today. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol http://WorkingAtHome101.com
 

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‘The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind, the answer is blowin’ in the wind.’ Waiting for Hurricane Irene in Cambridge, Massachusetts, August 28, 2011.

By Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s program note. Whether it is because of the unsettling information we have received minute by minute over the last few days; whether it is because of the ominous predictions of so many knowledgeable authorities; whether it is because it is just 5:48 a.m. and it is still pitch black, the moment of the day when night fights its ouster and will not cede to the light, I cannot say… but this is a moment of apprehension, disquiet…even dread.

This is the moment we remember the power of a Nature we so often forget and so regularly outrage.
Now this Nature has reminded us of where true power resides… and of what it means when we talk of an “act of God.”

For now, this very minute, amongst the treasures and securities of my comfortable life, I await the advent of the manifestation of unrelenting power, a force capable of disrupting this cherished life in an instant, leaving me, and millions like me, bereft, shocked, lamenting.

This is the tale of an act of God, called Irene by mankind; this is the tale of one man in storm’s path, waiting, waiting, every daily occupation and thought now set aside while we await the capricious judgement of this mighty storm.

We ask ourselves and carefully scan our multitude of information sources for answers to these insistent queries:

When will it hit?

Where will it hit?

How long will it punish us?

What will it take… what will it leave?

These are the questions of the hour… and we have only the fallible devices of challenged mankind to answer them… and so “the answer is blowin’ in the wind…” Thus I selected “Blowin’ in the Wind” for today’s background music. You can easily find it in any search engine. Find it now and listen carefully.
Written by Bob Dylan in 1962, it became the anthem of a restless generation… which wanted answers… and got none. Now I want answers, too, and renewed securities and peace of mind…. But none but God Himself could reassure me at this moment when even the coolest hand of all craves confidence to be reinforced, restored.

6:25 a.m., first light.
From the window of my study I look out upon the usual early day scene. There is rain in the air… and a light breeze blows the still-green leaves, not yet touched by an autumn now just days away. It is quiet now… no living soul to be seen. This is my world… and at this moment no man alive could say what its condition will be just hours away. But we know, in every fibre, that what is present now will somehow be different, great or small; storms, even as they weaken, make sure of that.

6:48 a.m.
Like millions I scan the news services, not so much for a history of this storm’s destructiveness as for clues and prognostications of what my future holds in the hours ahead. Fallible though even the greatest storm authorities can be, I nonetheless examine their predictions with care; my life, my future, perhaps my very existence on this planet is here foreshadowed. Whether the news be intoxicatingly good or the very worst it could be, I must know…

While scanning my sources, gleaning every fact, I note the condition of my dining room; my storm command center. There are crumbs on floor and table, this room with its historic paintings on the wall not as pristine and well ordered as usual…. and there’s the open pizza box, a certain sign that last night’s meal was eaten in a rush, gulped down while listening to the latest storm coverage. People facing grave disruption, even extinction do not concern themselves with dirty dishes and wayward crumbs. They have graver issues at hand than where crumbs have fallen and what to do with last night’s congealed remains. Normality is when these matters regain our notice with broom and dust pan at the ready. What seizes my attention now is battlefield intelligence from this fast- moving war zone.

9 of my fellow humans, quick and alive just hours ago, now dead. Irene has cost them everything while robbing us of the necessary time and mental state essential for mourning. For now, the dead must take care of the dead; the living have other priorities.

Item: Millions of people from first battered North Carolina north have “at this hour” (as only t.v. newscasters ever say) no electricity… It’s loss drives home their vulnerability and submission to the storm. To be without power is to lose the vital moorings of life. To lose power is to be removed at an instant from every essential service of the 21st century. We feel its loss keenly, for the loss of power is crippling, humbling, demoting us in an instant to the primitive realities of our ancestors who lived with the reality that it is better to light just one little candle than curse the darkness. Do you have your candle ready for just this moment? I do…

8:01 a.m.
The news reports are coming in thick and fast now as sleepy journalists file the day’s first reports. Outside the windows the trees now bend low before a wind not so gentle as before. The light of early Sunday morning is greyer now and obscured by the rain, now heavier, harder falling. Is this a worrisome portent of what we may expect as Irene moves toward us… or is it but the kind of storm that irritates and inconveniences but does not disrupt or kill?

While I wonder, the great cities of the Eastern seaboard are shuttered, quiet, watchful; it’s inhabitants chary, anxious, hopeful that they and their world will survive intact, this incident to be forgotten, not the day of dread remembrance which may still be their fate. They cannot know if their roofs will hold, they cannot know if they will suffer and lose all; they cannot know if dear friends and neighbors will die. And they cannot know in these hours before impact if they will live… or be nothing more than a statistic, dead, so brought to oblivion by Irene’s thoughtless puissance.
Its winds now 115 miles per hour.
Its wingspan 500 miles.
Frothing the sea with waves of 7 feet.
And the most important statistic of all: 65,00,000 million people directly impacted, prisoners of a remorseless presence, disregarding the people of this land, their lives and occupations. Storms care nothing for these; their movements, their actions; in everything they do explicable only to themselves and answerable to none.

8:30 a.m.
Darkness now covers the land, the day now awash in heavy rain from a darkening sky. Except for a few daredevils, impacted humanity is now inside, hopeful, a nervous prayer on their lips and quiet words to God for deliverance. My shutters are beating now against the glass… the chandelier above my head has now flickered and flickered again. Thus does the great storm announce its movements and threaten our already threatened equilibrium.

It is said that there are no atheists in a fox hole. Neither do such disbelievers abide in storm zones and catastrophes. In such times prayers come as easily as breathing. As the stormy sea rises, as the seas rush in to threaten and drown our realities, this is my prayer, for myself and my beleaguered fellow travelers now facing the fate that great Irene carries through the surges for us all:
“O Eternal Lord God, who alone spreads out the heavens and rules the raging of the seas, receive into your protection all those who go down to the sea in ships and occupy their business on the great waters. Preserve them both in body and soul, prosper their labors with good success, in all times of danger, be their defense, and bring them to the haven where they would be, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
Let God hear this our prayer for we are all mariners today, threatened by Irene’s great wind, roiling the seas around us… and so now we wait… prepare… and pray,, our Lord our sure redeemer now and forever.

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 is also a syndicated writer and author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol http://WorkingAtHome101.com

Michael Jackson The Experience 360 (Kinect - Required).

Source: astore.amazon.com via Ruth on Pinterest

At a lunch counter in Harvard Square. A place of friendly people and tasty meals; a dinosaur en route to extinction. Some thoughts.

by  Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author's program note.  We've been having a lot of rain lately here in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It's the kind of rain that all locals greet with amiable forbearance, saying even to total strangers (especially if they are grumbling), "We need the rain." It makes us feel important when we say it; as if we were trained agronomists advising farmers on the matter of rain, when, where, how much. Of course it also needs to be said that when we hear other people say it, we regard them as conversation impaired, offering up such banality with such seriousness.

Ordinarily, weather doesn't interest me very much. Rain or shine inside a penthouse where the shutters in my office are always closed, no exception; looks much the same, as do day and night. Others may not like such a situation, but it suits me and my pursuits perfectly. It's not only where I do my writing but where my daily webcasts and running commentaries take place. The shutters and two fine verde mare marble columns once in a French palace constitute the elegant back drop to subjects discussed which may be anything but.

Yesterday, however, the rain lifted and even I, the ultimate urban dweller clueless on the rhythms and rhymes of nature, thought descending from my ideally appointed space capsule was in order. I grabbed the Harvard cap one of my visitors had forgotten and left behind; took an umbrella that another of my visitors had forgotten and left behind. I was ready for an excursion, lunch in Harvard Square was indicated...

"The Square", isn't.

Irregularly shaped and sprawling Harvard Square is one of the half dozen places on Earth every person of consequence, real or imagined, visits at least once in a lifetime. It is a place of human flotsam and jetsam; of people who come to move up (including future presidents of the Great Republic) and those who are down on their luck, street dwellers who solicit those who feel generous for giving a buck or two, which will probably end up amongst the blood-stained profits of one Mexican drug cartel or another. But Mexico and its hecatombs and legion of hapless victims are too far away to worry about, especially as so many of its leaders were schooled at Harvard, which is just the way it's supposed to be.

Down Massachusetts Avenue, the brick sidewalks muddy and wet, passersby smelling like a dog left out in the rain.

I am walking to lunch on the sidewalk along Massachusetts Avenue; "Mass Ave" to the cognoscenti who are past masters at making people like you seem unsophisticated, unhallowed, unready for the world Cambridge folk are imagining and inventing this very minute. These multi-degreed paragons are the planet's movers and shakers. They want to be sure you know this about them instantly, so that they may then exhibit the modesty for which they will one day be so renowned despite so many momentous achievements. But this is now... and so they regard modesty solely as a trait for those who have much to be modest about -- that would be you.

Labor Day Week-end, 1969.

I am in my stride now passing one Harvard-owned property after another. Here the lavish donations of long dead alumni are put to current use, fully rented out generating still more money for The World's Greatest (and already Richest) University. The kinds of shops tell you much about the place and its inhabitants: bank, ice cream parlor, smoke, ice cream parlor, bank, Harvard insignia, ice cream parlor, bank. Get the picture? The Square has more banks and ATMs within a few blocks than many cities as well as untold tons of ice cream.

Because Harvard students are the most privileged people on Earth, strident calls for world revolution and sweeping change rarely have much presence either in the Square, or in Harvard Yard, the heart of the place. People who like the status quo are hardly likely urge its destruction. Yet John Reed '10 did so urge. "Red" Reed is buried in the Kremlin's walls. Even that dubious honor needs must go to a Harvard man. We wouldn't want it any other way, even though he was Red; at least that's a shade of crimson.

Even the homeless like the situation as it is, idling life away, supported by those who can only imagine having so much free time since they do not, and never will. Thus instead of earnest young people, grim faced and determined (at least until winter arrives to chill their resolution), there are boys with pony tails selling designer ice cream to undergraduates who will one day (and not so distant either) rule the world and reap its benefits. They already regard each day at Harvard as the best years of their lives; Harvard likes it that way. The more they think like that, the bigger their alumni contributions over the many years to come... and so memory and remembrance help Harvard wax richer. 

I arrive. 1246 Mass. Ave.

About 10 minutes from the time I entered the elevator, I am at my destination, a place of importance for two reasons: first, this is my first memory of Harvard; the moment I saw Harvard and the Square for the first time; Labor Day Week-end, 1969. And because I remember everything about that epiphany, I clearly remember Mr. Bartley's. That's where I shall lunch this day... but not because I am nostalgic about food, but because the food is good and, for once, I am really hungry.

A hole in the wall, a dive, a joint.

Bartley's opened its door (it has but one) in 1960, just 9 years before I arrived in Cambridge to start my graduate work. I cannot tell you how many times I've gone, but dozens seems conservative. What's more, more times than not I order what I always order because I like it: large raspberry lime rickey (to be refilled); Burger Supreme medium well, onion rings, extra dill pickle. If I ate this same meal every day, I might be thought to be in a rut, but going just two or three times in a year to order and devour this specialite' of the house makes me a connoisseur; I insist on the description.

Uncomfortable, packed like sardines, chairs too low.
Let me be plain with you; if you are not willing to overlook its inconvenient aspects, if you insist on every amenity, then you will never be happy at Bartley's which in an astonishingly small space packs in an astonishing number of chairs, booths, human and machine food cookers, waitpersons, the raspberry lime rickeys that I crave and can nowadays get nowhere else -- and the lunch counter.

Bit by bit you see just how much is going on in this compact space. The walls are covered with clever sayings, double entendres, pictures of film stars, pictures of politicians, and accolades for its signature "burguhs". You want to get up to see these better but chances are you'd be tripping over a few people to do so; unless you come right at opening there is no chance you'll get to do this. You'll have to return. After over 40 years I still have not seen it all.

The first time a waiter screams "Burguh Supreme" at the cook, you'll be startled, but pretty soon you're screaming your comments and conversation at the top of your voice, like you've been coming for decades, and here the sheer proximity of other hungry humans, from Kansas, Greece, or Timbuktu works its singular magic.

Forced to be close to them, you make your choice, a choice with universal implications. Either you decide to ignore your very near neighbor, or you talk to them, like our fathers and grandfathers used to talk... up close, personal, direct, often humorous, even hilarious ... but talk... to the astonishment and discontent of the young, who are at first often affronted and monosyllabic when an adult like me offers a comment, an introduction, an opening to the wonder of people meeting each other and actually conversing, not just texting some inane, impersonal drivel. Bartley's works because the food is good and, if you're lucky, you've made a new friend...

This is the way America used to be and now so little is, for along the way we have lost the ability to talk with our neighbors about everything, about anything, about nothing in particular. Now we want what Greta Garbo wanted, "to be left alone." And then when we are, we text message wildly in a vain attempt to conjure the kind of relationship text messaging can never supply.

So, now a newly minted old age pensioner of 65, I shall keep going to Bartley's, where I shall inform everyone (especially the staff not one of who was then born) how long I've been coming, like old codgers do. I shall ask for help getting into and especially out of the blue plastic chairs which always make me feel older than the hills. I shall greet the only senior on the staff and will politely turn down the offer of a menu. I know what I want. And I shall say something like this to the person sitting across from me, "You look like Ernest Borgnine." "Oh, yeah, didn't he just die?..." I am on my way to acquaintance with all its myriad of possibilities.

And while I wait for the best burguh on Earth, I will wonder how much longer Bartley's will last, its price for burguhs being the highest in the Square, each increase a nail in its coffin.

However for now I intend in my small way to help keep them alive, a place of good food and the chance to connect with another human or two. And so I have selected as the music for this article, the 1964 tune by the Newbeats "Bread and Butter". It's a peppy little number, completely foolish and inane, about his food and his woman. "She don't cook mashed potatoes/ She don't cook T-bone steaks". No, she secretly gets them at Bartley's... where she also found her new boyfriend, a man who really appreciates "her" cooking! Find the story in any search engine... and enjoy. 
 
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. Services include home business training, affiliate marketing training, earn-at-home programs, traffic tools, advertising, webcasting, hosting, design, WordPress Blogs and more. Find out why Worldprofit is considered the # 1 online Home Business Training program by getting a free Associate Membership today. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol http://WorkingAtHome101.com

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'... before the darkness falls.' Thoughts on my father's last home, changing places and the pains that make us human.

by  Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author's program note. It is 3:07 a.m. here in the East. It is not so much that  I cannot sleep. Rather, it's that I don't want to. I am thinking about my father as I often do. He is undoubtedly asleep now, has gotten safely through another day and will awake in due course to the promise of another. In other words, he is being well taken care of, and I don't need to worry, the Number One Son in Massachusetts; he in California. But I do worry...

"Jeffrey, let me ask you..."

He called me the other day, with that note of concern I've come to know and which bites me so. "Jeffrey let me ask you..." and so it started. Another chip to the father-son relationship which defined and guided us for so many years, now as ancient as the hills. Things between us, once well defined and wary, are changing now; changing, changing... we neither of us like it, but the realities of living always pulverize our mere wishes... and because we are living, we must still live, no matter how painful that may be. And it often is...

He asks.

"Jeffrey, you've never had a house have you?" "No, Dad, I never did."

"You've always lived in an apartment, haven't you?" "Yes, Dad, I have."

"You like it, don't you?" "Yes, Dad, I do."

"Why's that?" "Well, for openers I don't have to take out the garbage... or plant the flowers... or paint the fence... " And the list goes on.

"You used to hate doing those things, didn't you?" "Yes, Dad, every minute, every single one. I wanted to read. You wanted me to wash the windows." There is more than a little bit of asperity, accusation and unresolved irritation in my voice. I am 65, it all happened a half century ago and more; it shouldn't matter, but it does. Memory makes the long ago the active and unresolved, still on my agenda of things compelling attention. I might wish it doesn't matter, but it does.

"I do not plant or reap."

Now the benefits of apartment living pour forth. I discover I am defending my choices, as children of any age feel compelled to do from time to time. To live the life I want takes teams of people taking care of me. I am used to this and rely on them to do the necessary. This is how the privileged classes of history have lived; it is how I always wanted to live; it is how I live; it is how I want him to live; it is how he should live in this his too fast dwindling of days.

But he is of a different time and place, a time of self-reliance, where if you wanted warmth in winter, you chopped fire wood and so warmed yourself twice. I hated this work... and I hated all such things... things that obstructed the life I wanted; the life waiting for me, beckoning me, insinuating itself into every thought. "I am what you want, what you must have," and I couldn't wait to seize it. The myriad versions of chopping wood were important, but they were never imperative, like the dream that enthralled me. And thus there were problems and a battle that waxed and waned, but never stopped.

However he is not criticizing, judging, he is seeking something perhaps only I can give: confirmation that he has done the right thing, for with assisted living, without responsibilities, comes an avalanche of doubts, uncertainties, and the kinds of anxieties which force one to sit bolt upright in dead of night... and wonder...

"Jeffrey, I don't like not having a home anymore."

But he does have a home. It's in a wonderful facility that looks like a college campus or place on a golf course. He and Miss Ellie, his wife, did not rush their choice. They looked at the full range of possibilities, moved with due deliberation, not haste. Visited, revisited, discussed, revisited. There was no rush about it, though it was apparent to both a decision must be made and made while they were both entirely able to make it.

He recalls each house he has ever owned.

He is remembering now and my role is clear. I must hear what he says, completely... and I must pledge (though he doesn't say so) to remember. And so a chant begins; of houses built or bought; houses turned into homes and profits; a lifetime of patient acquisition and certain return. "I have always made money on every house we ever lived in." And he recites them now, not to brag, but so that he is sure I know and will remember. My memory is tenacious; he knows that, and so the litany begins... from 4906 Woodward Avenue, which he built with his own hands (and partly mine)...

His eyes are closed now and as he recalls, he recites; my eyes are closed, too, and I am remembering with him... and these, his memories of being a good father, chary of his resources, patiently awaiting the results he foresaw and planned for, are clear, poignant, bittersweet. And triumphant.

For he wants me to know, and to sear into my mind that he made money enough for his family, enough for himself and Miss Ellie so they would burden no one, and something for the next generation, too. He was proud, as he had the right to be; not arrogant. He knew what he was due... and knew that I would give it, full measure. We who had often engaged in combat and dispute fully understood each word now, each recollection, each and every nuance, delivered with sureness and finality... for on this subject there was nothing more to say... and we were both glad he had done so, so well, every word apt, every description complete and accurate.

He was tired now. So was I.

It is often said that as parents and children age they reverse roles. But this is not entirely true. Instead a situation infinitely more complex and difficult emerges; a situation where the parent may remain the parent as well as the child and where the child may be in an instant not just one but both, thereby dramatically increasing the possibilities for confusion; things clear to one, misunderstood by the other. It would be easier, far easier, if a simple role reversal  took place, clear to each, but this is not the way it is for either party. And so, before the darkness falls, we need to learn, again who we are, who they are, what they need and must have, what we have that we may give and give still more. In short, we must at their end begin again, new roles to learn and urgent, too, for the darkness is nigh and there is much to learn and do before the end.

Thus one of the most important, revealing and timely conversations of my life ended; we were weary and needed rest. The meeting, by phone, ended as easily as a sigh. We had done what needed to be done.

But I had one more thing to do, one more thing to listen to, to ponder. Bruce Springsteen's 1982 evocation "My Father's House." And I went to a search engine to play it. I urge you to find it now... and ready yourself for a melody and lyrics which cut deep and place an unrelenting memory in you.

""Last night I dreamed that I was a child... I was trying to make it home... before the darkness falls I ran with my heart pounding down that broken path... I broke through the trees and there in the night My father's house stood shining hard and bright the branches and brambles tore my clothes and scratched my arms But I ran till I fell shaking in his arms."

Now I can do as much for him... and must.

 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. Services include home business training, affiliate marketing training, earn-at-home programs, traffic tools, advertising, webcasting, hosting, design, WordPress Blogs and more. Find out why Worldprofit is considered the # 1 online Home Business Training program by getting a free Associate Membership today. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol http://WorkingAtHome101.com

Did he or didn't he? Thoughts on whether Jesus married or not.

by  Dr. Jeffrey Lant

Author's program note. I am writing today where I write every day; from my eyrie hard-by the Cambridge, Massachusetts Common, across the street from Harvard University, my alma mater whose motto -- "Veritas" ("Truth") -- is everywhere apparent.

It is important, particularly for this article, that you understand something of the history of this venerable place, the city of Cambridge itself, its designated mission, what the Puritans aimed for, and whether they achieved it.

The first settlers to Massachusetts (arriving November 11, 1620) underwent the greatest possible travail and difficulty. They endured their acute miseries, even welcomed them, because they insisted upon their view of God and their direct and personal relationship with Him.

In their new land, there would be no bishops, no cardinals, no fathers Holy or otherwise ... just a man, his Bible, his vision of God, and no overweening, dictating authority. On this basis they divided their new home into two parts; Boston was designated the administrative, governmental and commercial headquarters. Cambridge (then called Newe Towne, until 1638) was designated the theological center, including schools; most importantly the most celebrated educational establishment ever created, Harvard.

From its very first moment, it was clear that Cambridge and Rome would be the axes of two fundamentally different views of God and how men should regard, worship, and honor Him. Each side spoke well of the other when necessary, but each regarded the other as capable of any outrage. How could it be otherwise when one claimed infallibility and the other believed no man and therefore no human institution was infallible, a state reserved for God Himself.

From time to time the tensions, always latent, flared. My brilliant classmate Professor John Boswell (1947-1994), though a zealous convert to Roman Catholicism, was one who rocked the boat in one seminal study after another on the Church, its long, early acceptance of openly gay priests and same sex marriage.

Discerning people knew at once with the publication in 1980 of "Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality" that here was a clear, new, lucid, learned voice on some of Rome's greatest problems. His National Book Award in 1981 was just the first of a cascade of honors. His tragic death from complications of AIDS was a huge setback for tolerance and a way out of Rome's Gordian Knots. It was rumored then and after that the Roman Catholic Curia breathed a sigh of relief at his death, sotto voce claiming it was God's will. So the Vatican acknowledged Boswell's importance and the Veritas that was always his objective. 

Now Harvard offers Rome Professor Karen L. King and the now celebrated text suggesting that Jesus was married... his wife being (a) Mary but as yet unclear which one; (there are three mentioned in the Bible). Even the possibility that the Son of God was married has generated a tsunami of controversy, learned (and not so learned) commentary, and knee-jerk reactions of every kind. 

Now it is time for me to weigh in, on the principle that fools rush in where angels fear to tread, a phrase written by English poet Alexander Pope in 1709. It became the title of a well-known 1940 song, lyrics by Johnny Mercer, music by Rube Bloom. Bing Crosby, himself a fervent Roman Catholic, added it to his string of hits. You'll find it in any search engine. I like the sultry version by Mildred Bailey.

Recognized scholars confirm the document is genuine.

The two essential questions: is the document authentic? And is what it reports about Jesus and his wife accurate, thereby proving the case for what would then be the most important marriage in all history?

As for the authenticity of this inelegant document, smaller than a business card, written in a coarse hand with a pen well worn and past its prime, one recognized scholar after another has been sought out by Professor King. Tellingly each and every authority who has seen and scrutinized the actual document has endorsed its authenticity; as the actual thing it purports to be. Exhaustive testing and analysis by the world's leading experts have failed to produce a single dubious element, feature, or aspect. In short, there is not a single "red flag" to be had, although there are still plenty of doubters.

Professor King, historian of the early Christian church, did her work well, and shrewdly. By her outreach to her peers, she kept her worldwide colleagues in the loop, giving them no grounds for criticism. She shared what she had.... and in the process covered herself, too, in case later analysis yielded doubts not present now. Should such a day ever dawn, Professor King would not be the only one with egg on her face. It would be generously shared with every poobah in the field.

Is the text accurate?

Thus King cleverly dispensed with the lesser query, getting comfortable shared responsibility while ensuring her name would be forever linked to this epochal matter. Now she must go to a far more difficult and controversial place, for the truly essential question is: "Is the message history, true, or merely tittle-tattle in the Coptic language?" And here, to date, there is not only no agreement in general, but little desire to stray beyond the verities of papyrus and pen. And so it's time for this fool to rush in...

Fate? Accident of history? Conspiracy?

Why is there so much hubbub in the world, both amongst theologians and historians and people on the street concerned about their immortal souls and the Good News that is Jesus, regarding this text specifically and the subject generally? It is because for hundreds of years all manner of people have speculated on the man called Jesus and every aspect of his world-altering career.

Every aspect of his known life matters to us, and so both believers and non-believers alike have made it a point to study and master "The Greatest Story Ever Told"... a story that rivets our attention not least because it so closely touches the matter of our souls and our eternal place in the firmament.

Thus in studying the story of Jesus, we study, too, what may happen to us, individually and species. And because the matter is so significant, we must approach each new development as the greatest of lawyers would have done... with minute scrutiny, wariness, doubt and dubitation; the matter is too significant for us all to warrant any other approach.

Advocates for Jesus' marriage must ask and answer such piercing questions as these:

1) Is it likely that such a crucial event as his marriage would be found and solely communicated to us in just one document, and that unclearly written in an ungrammatical and uneducated hand?

2) Is it likely that the marriage of Our Saviour would be treated as silently and unheralded as to appear in but one text?

3) Why are the Prophets predicting the advent of Jesus universally quiet on the matter of the help-mate who would partly share his life and lighten his excruciating load?

4) Given the fact that such a spouse presumably out lived Jesus, why is there no document proved and incontrovertible that mentions her in any of the stringent activities and customs of her Jewish widowhood?

5) Why is there no document, authenticated or not, that mentions seeing, visiting, embracing or listening to this spouse, even being given by her any of Jesus' effects, each of which would have immediately become the holiest of artifacts?

6) And what of the Pharisees and of the Romans? They had each been apprehensive of Jesus when alive and so might well have monitored his widow and any cult of her husband, which she might well have been expected to bolster and grow.

Why is none of this and the thousand related queries not mentioned in the texts and documents which constitute the Bible and related texts? A good sleuth must be forced to conclude they are not there because there was no wife, no help-mate, no spouse, thereby proving yet again how much the Son of Man forfeited for us. And yet....

Where the definitive answer probably resides and three dates.

There has been, so far, a huge hole in the debate, and I suspect that within this hole is the solution to the married Jesus conundrum. This hole is the most lavish, ostentatious, and palatial library ever created, suitable for the men on whom God built his Church. This place is the Vatican Library and it is here, amongst its 75,000 codices and over 1.1 million printed works, that the likely answer is to be found. Yet neither Karen King nor any of the many publications and media sources following this story have even mentioned this absolutely vital resource and its importance for elucidating the matter at hand.

Did Professor King seek to get access to either the general collection or the all-important Secret Archives? If so, why has she not said so, reporting what she may have seen or was not allowed to see? Or did she fail to ask for admission, thereby leaving an enormous gap in her research? For make no mistake about it: the most likely place to find what will solve the matter is amidst the documents of those who have the greatest vested interest. All roads lead to Rome as they have from the days of the Caesars, and to the Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana.

476, 1202,1475.

Three dates are significant to the work of any Biblical scholar, theologian or historian in hot pursuit of Veritas. 476 is when the Roman empire of the West finally fell. Thereafter the greatest library of the world and repository of Church documents was to be found not in Rome but in the Eastern empire, in Byzantium -- until April 13, 1204 when during the Fourth Crusade the Christian crusaders sacked the greatest of Christian cities, dispersing its riches, including the riches of its great library; carrying back to Rome masses of crucial Church history. From this emerged in 1475 the library of the Holy See. And it is likely there, Professor King, you will find the answer to the matter at hand, an answer one way or the other, for as Mildred Bailey at her loveliest sang, "Though I see the danger there/ If there's a chance for me /Then I don't care."  
 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. Services include home business training, affiliate marketing training, earn-at-home programs, traffic tools, advertising, webcasting, hosting, design, WordPress Blogs and more. Find out why Worldprofit is considered the # 1 online Home Business Training program by getting a free Associate Membership today. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol http://WorkingAtHome101.com