In the Red Drawing Room, June 14, 2013...... At ease, at home, all thoughts of you.

Author's program note. When was the last time you ensconced yourself in a favorite space and wrote a letter with your own hand, from the heart to a friend long distant, unseen perhaps for years, but still fondly remembered, loved, a letter which confided all, withheld nothing, touched every emotion, and above all allowed the bliss of deep remembrance, all pretense gone, just you and your dear correspondent, a joyful connection so important to be renewed, too important to hurry.

I am writing such a letter here, now, each word to be savored, no word rushed, each one carefully selected to revive a precious friendship, so important, so cherished, a connection I cannot lose, lest I lose part of myself, for memories of you, of us, are the finest memories of all ... and I want them, all of them for here is love, and love I must have, or be but a fraction of a man.

Thus I am spending this evening in a special place, with you, a special person, my friend, the only requirement is for sweet sincerity, for we have known each other too long and with such intimacy of expression and purpose to proffer anything else, and as our memories are vital, so must they be honest and true, as I pledge mine shall surely be.

The sound.

The music I have selected to caress us is graceful, elegant, written sharply at knife point by the most fastidious of masters, no superfluous note, annointed by the most discerning of monarchs to enhance his court, the grandest and most civilized on Earth.

It is Couperin, Francois Couperin, the Grand Couperin (1668-1733), composer, teacher, harpsichordist, court organist to Louis XIV with the precise title "ordinaire de la musique de la chambre du Roi". Tonight he plays for us, "Les Barricades Myste'rieuses", "Les Concerts Royaux," "Le Parnasse, ou L'apothe'ose de Corelli." Find them now in any search engine, close your eyes. We are together again, at last, just the two of us, the years erased, a memorable evening at hand, to the deep satisfaction of us both.

Pray, dear friend, walk in... for no one is more welcome here than you, and we have so much to recall.... and not an affecting moment to lose.

7:42 p.m. in the Red Drawing Room.

It is the hour when there is beauty within and beauty without. The rains have ceased, outside there is deep, lush, lavish green, splashed with dazzling sunlight, the more radiant because destined to be so soon gone. It is pastoral, bucolic, verdant to excess. The shutters are open, the barest breeze stirs the air. It is quite perfect... quiet, serene, the mood enhanced by the courtly rhythms of Couperin whose every well considered note improves even perfection.

This is the scene moving towards oblivion, soon to be a gracious memory. And then that sun is gone, the shutters closed, the night at hand, as we turn inward, to the Red Drawing Room and to each other, joyous, complete, where we most wish to be, together, in soul, in mind, in heart. And we are happy.... alone in  a world of our constructing and unfettered imagination.

"Too much with us ,late and soon." (Wordsworth)

We like to think, may actually believe, and are quick to say that ours is the most anxious, harassed and pressured generation ever, as if that perverse distinction was a merit badge. Perhaps. However as I scrutinize the Red Drawing Room, first the pictures, then the signed photographs I must disagree with this characteristically egotistical assessment of my peers.

There are seven Old Masters in the Red Drawing Room, each featuring a single individual contorted by life and life's exigencies. Behold the stately and elegant picture of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha by L.F. Doell, a painter of Germanic precision whose meticulous exactitude deserves to be better known.

To look at this striking picture, with its confident look of condescension and unquestioned superiority you would suppose His Royal Highness (1784-1844) hadn't a care in the world. But that would be a gross mistake for he had a lifetime of troubles, for all that he was reckoned the handsomest prince in Europe, his sole competitor his own brother, Leopold Georg Christian Frederick, later elected the first King of the Belgians (1831), a set of whose very chairs grace this room. Here is the most brief rendition of his persistent and recurring woes...

When he succeeded to his miniscule patrimony in 1806 it consisted of three even smaller duchies, even in good times by no means sufficient to meet the urgent requirements of fashionable royalty. But he succeeded in bad times, when his duchy was occupied by Napoleonic troops and was under French administration. It was not an auspicious start for the man who called himself Ernest III, for there is nothing quite as pathetic as a prince with neither a principality nor a penny.

But there were more ructions, disappointments, and even for this supremely arrogant and self-absorbed prince events that must have touched his soul, if he indeed had one. His 1817 marriage to Princess Louise of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg was unhappy because of flagrant infidelities that broke the heart of his wronged lady whose untimely death at 30 was a tragedy for her children, a mortal sin for her errant and callous spouse.

Perhaps because he could not bear to see this very model of outraged virtue, he exiled her, removing her from his sight and causing his two sons, Ernest and Albert, to hate, loathe and despise him... which in no way prevented him from pestering Albert for money when he married his cousin who just happened to be the wealthiest woman in the world, and as Queen Victoria was sovereign of the greatest empire on which the sun never set. It was all most edifying, a clear moral tale, but it made for gloom and self-pity. Happiness was never a consideration.

But happiness, you see, must always be a consideration for us poor mortals and not just "a consideration" but "the consideration", the sine qua non that turns mere existence into la dolce vita, the life worth living. And that is why M. le duc of Saxe-Coburg Gotha is here, on the wall in front of me.

It is because he discovered, perhaps too late for the actual man, that being master of three duchies and not just two is not good enough; that marrying the suitable princess to burnish his noble luster instead of loving the woman who loved him is not good enough... that sixteen quarters of noble heraldry instead of sixteen quarters of true affection is not good enough and can never be the basis for the substantial life, the life of joy and contentment, the life that goes beyond oneself, that takes the larger view.

Yet have too many of us and even I betimes have given up everything, yes unto and including our very soul, for the insubstantial evanescence of tawdry things which can never be enough, no matter how ardently desired and joyfully praised upon achievement and possession. There has to be more, must be more... and that is why Ernest of Saxe-Coburg Gotha in all his exuberant panache selected me to sustain and harbor him for my lifetime, because of course, each object in this and my every other room selected me, not as the uninitiated suppose, the reverse.

But, friend, I feel sure you are smiling now, and broadly too, at such a notion of fanciful conceit. I remember how once you told me that you believed in the verities of the material world, nothing more, a world where people purchase pictures, not vice versa.

That, of course, is why you need me and the wizardry and magic that permeates the Red Drawing Room, a place where visions are born and horizons broadened... just by stepping across the threshold where we shall find each other... and peace.

Author's dedication. It is my pleasure to dedicate this work to my friend and colleague Lance Sumner and his two children Rochelle and Joshua upon the occasion of their first visit to the Red Drawing Room, June 21, 2013. May its undeniable magic and allure remain with all of you forever and a day, always a happy memory.

 About the Author

Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is the author of several print publications as well as ebooks and over one thousand online articles. Dr. Lant is also and art collector. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol http://WorkingAtHome101.com

'Thy rod and Thy staff, they comfort me,' but only if you give them R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant .

Author's program note.  I wrote this article because of the appalling news emanating from one of the greatest institutions of the Great Republic, namely the American  Academy  of Arts and Sciences. Founded in 1780 by three of the titans of the American Revolution, scholar-patriots John Adams, John Hancock, and James Bowdoin, its purpose was laudatory, important, visionary... nothing less than the dedicated uplifting of the new nation so that it would direct, inspire, and improve itself and all the world.

Over the years, over 10,000 fellows have been inducted, men and women whose dedicated commitment and unremitting labor have changed the world -- and your life -- over and over again. Thus have we all been the beneficiaries and should know it, the better to extoll its undeniable virtues and signal achievements.

Sadly, scandal now rocks this venerable institution in many ways, but all these ways, every single one, point to one person, the Academy's 45th President, the woman who called herself "Dr. Leslie Berlowitz," a prestigious title she bestowed on herself, when her desire for advancement subdued her integrity, judgement and the loyalty she should have felt towards the Academy which raised her high and rained riches, respect, deference and trust upon her, only to be repaid with deceits, prevarications, misrepresentations, and shame.

This lamentable result was the product of two breathtaking, supremely arrogant decisions made by "Dr." Berlowicz; first, that she would forge her professional credentials, including the all important doctoral degree and, second, once that bogus degree (and exaggerated employment history) had worked their dark purpose, securing her the lucrative plum job she desired (with its 2012 compensation package yielding $598,000), immediately set about the business of threatening, cowing and controlling her staff, thereby creating an atmosphere of fear, angst, perniciousness, and menace.

Thus what should have been the most liberal, progressive and humane institution of the Great Republic became instead the very symbol of hypocrisy, cant, insincerity and dissembling, the corroding antithesis of what its august founders and generations of lofty members desired and worked assiduously to achieve. What's more, aided by the somnolence of her Board of Trustees and an incurious world, this rogue made awesome progress from the moment in 1996 when she became the Academy's president until just the other day in June, 2013 when her web of lies and shoddy practices unraveled on the front page of The Boston Globe, her treatment of the staff ensuring maximum indignation, ribald comments and fascination about how she had gotten away with it all for so very many years.

All bad things come to an end.

Then one day "Dr." Berlowicz woke up happy as a lark, the world her oyster, another day of proven chicaneries ahead, opened The Boston Globe and... ran smack dab into Nemesis, the goddess of "what goes around, comes around." And she stood there in her luxurious robe and bunny slippers discovering that God indeed moves in mysterious ways... and now He had come for Leslie. Her jig was well and truly up and no amount of self deception could disguise that crucial fact. And so she became a candidate for that amazing grace that ""saves a wretch like me."

How had this happened, after so many years of bountiful misrepresentation? Who blew the whistle on Leslie? I can't tell you for sure, but I'll put my money on a member or members of the Academy's long suffering staff, people who had endured the slings and arrows of the lady's outrageous fortune. They had suffered in silence, but that silence was now broken and on the front page of The Boston Globe no less.

The rage of the "little people" had begun at last and over the next days these folks tumbled over each other with their personal stories of how Madame Leslie, now naked before the world, had humiliated them, shouted at them over trifles, belittled them, demeaned them, denigrated them, so making their lives just as miserable as possible. In such ways, she had established an environment as dark and fearful as any gulag. It was in fact just about as bad as it could be. All because Miss Berlowicz had forgotten one little word... a word Aretha Franklin knew was key for successful staff relations, indeed for any human relationship... and that word was respect.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

A 1967 hit that changed America, the anthem of uncompromising righteousness and determined purpose.

On February 14, 1967 Aretha Franklin, about to become a household name and a symbol of the "new woman", got up and sang her way into history.... telling men and reminding women in sharp words that could not possibly be misunderstood, "What you want, baby, I got it/ What you need. You know I got it." This song radiated confidence, clarity about the objective, a determination to stop taking it... and to fight back. It flew high, it was adamant, it was insistent, it was pure energy and unflinching determination... Thrilling! Magnificent! Empowering!

Go now to any search engine and listen to it carefully. Its potent magic has the undeniable power to turn back the clock to days when you were young and still finding your way... but you knew upon hearing it, even for the first time, that you would succeed... seizing the respect to which you were entitled but had to be always vigilant to ensure and enjoy.

"Yes, respect, all I need is respect."

Like all business executives, owners, and managers "Dr." Berlowicz had a choice to make, to treat her staff with decency, courtesy, and, yes, kindness... or not. She chose the dark side of the force, in the process outraging one past and present staff member after another. It worked for a time, a long time, because no one wanted to get on Leslie's notoriously unpredictable and abusive bad side, which might well result in embarrassing chastisement before their peers or even instant dismissal.

Thus she got away with one unacceptable behavior after another, her irresponsible board acting like Rip Van Winkle; perhaps unsurprising since Washington Irving was a fellow of the Academy at one time.

However, every time she dressed a staff member down, engaged in caustic commentary at their expense, or otherwise belittled and demeaned a staff member she was planting Satan's teeth, in due course to become a minefield of destruction and woe, destroying all of "Dr." Berlowicz' carefully contrived schemes of flagrant and unremitting selfishness.

Do not make her mistakes. Instead do the following, all of which comes under that crucial category of R.E.S.P.E.C.T.

Honor thy staff. Recognize that you and your staff are two crucial aspects of the same team. Each of you has a distinct but related function. You are not master but leader. Your staff is not composed of so many servants but that many necessary and vital supporters. Only on this basis can there be sustained success.

Know thy staff. Each has his strengths and weaknesses. Your job is to learn these, understand these and, where possible, minimizing weaknesses while maximizing strengths through timely, pertinent education and instruction.

Listen to thy staff. Each member of your staff, even the most junior has an opinion about how to make your organization run better and more efficiently. You are not now and will never be the sole repository of information that improves your operation. And never pretend that you are. Instead keep all means of beneficial communication open with the staff, solicit their ideas, consider them carefully, and reward such participation and ideas lavishly.

Critique thy staff softly. Praise thy staff loudly. To build the best of teams, the team that deliver success soon and bountifully, you must identify problems and their perpetrators... critiquing them thoroughly but always gently. Remember, you want to improve not demean, enhance not dismay. This process guarantees success. To achieve this success earlier and more thoroughly praise more often and more widely. Always accompany such praise with tangible rewards ranging from free cinema tickets to a free trip to Paris. You are the fountain of honour. Act like it.

"Dr." Berlowicz' outrages.

We now know from voluminous media reports that Miss Berlowicz outraged each and every one of these crucial points and is, therefore, suffering public disgrace, obloquy, and anger accordingly. She is a marked woman and will be for the rest of her life, her very name a by-word for cruel and hurtful exhibitions, misuse of her high position, and remarks always calculated for maximum pain. In  this way, she is a veritable model of what not to do and when not to do it. How different so many lives would have been had she lived by the points listed above.

Had she, she would have earned the trust, admiration, and even love of the staff, to each and every one of whom she could say along with Aretha,

"I ain't gonna do you wrong because I don't wanna/ All I'm askin' is for a little respect..."

And she would have got it, deservedly, for when you treat your staff with R.E.S.P.E.C.T "thy staff, they comfort me." (Psalms 23 verse 4) and so goodness and mercy shall follow thee.... and you will find true success.  

About the Author

Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is the author of several print books, ebooks and over one thousand articles on a variety of topics. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol  http://WorkingAtHome101.com

Review: LIVE Home Business Bootcamp with George Kosch June 14, 2013.

George Kosch, bootcamp instructor welcomed Worldprofit Members to the LIVE training session.

The number one question we hear is,   "How do I make money online?" Followed by "What's the key?"

The way to make money online is by building a list.

Making money online is an ACTION you must take consistently to generate leads and make sales. Without a list you have no one to sell your products and services.  You have no one to buy what you are offering.

So how do you build a list?

You use landing pages to generate leads with an optin to your list/newsletter.

How do you get people to see your landing pages so they can optin to your list?

You must promote consistently.  Your focus in earning online should be 100% on promotion.

At Worldprofit we teach you how to generate leads, and build your list.  In the Worldprofit system leads are referred to as free Associate members. The concept, the requirement to generate leads from consistence promotion is fundamental to selling ANYTHING online. We teach you how to do so within the Worldprofit framework, but what we teach you to do, and the resources and tools we provide can be applied to building any online business, and selling any product or service.

You need to ask yourself each day, how many free Associate Members (leads)  have I generated today from my promotion (landing pages)? To see a conversion to sales you need to work on this every day.

When you are signing up free Associate members you are also building your list. Remember you can sell anything you like to your list. Worldprofit provides you with a number of your own list options, and don't forget we send a newsletter out to ALL Associates on your behalf with incentives, offers and specials to encourage logins.

When you have a growing list you can make sales from your list. George referenced several income streams within your Member area as an example, the CB Maximizer, the Offer Builder, the Money Maker kit and the FastCash program.

DISCUSSION:  Got something else you want to promote? A product or service of your own?  Here's what to do.

So now that you understand the value of the list and the critical importance of consistently working to build that list you should start to see how you use that list to promote any product or service you like!  The larger the list the higher the likelihood of seeing sales. 

The list provides you with the power and ability to:

-generate leads -make sales
-benefit from leverage (buy this and get that)
-do ad swaps with OTHER list owners (expand your marketing reach)
-use your list to promote whatever you like, affiliate programs, products, services, your own stuff etc.

DEMONSTRATION and discussion:  George demonstrated how to send out a promotion 

New product Announcements

George revealed two new products coming soon.

1. The Easy Deal Builder.  We've purchased a developer's license from this vendor as we like this software so much and want to make it available to our Worldprofit Members. This product will help you easily promote your own sites allowing you the power of leverage and list building to make more sales - of whatever you are selling.  We will do the installation and set up which can be difficult for non-techies.  Planned release by end of June at a discounted rate exclusively for Worldprofit Silver and Platinum VIP Members.

and

2. The Advanced Ad Tracker. Silver and Platinum VIP Members currently get the Ad Tracker included in the Silver and Platinum VIP Membership at no cost and we will continue to do this. We are however, developing an ADVANCED version of this software for more serious experienced marketers who require more detailed  ad tracking analysis and data summaries.  We are working on this now and will be releasing this mid-summer at a discounted rate exclusively for Worldprofit Silver and Platinum VIP Members.     

DISCUSSION: The Millionaire Mindset - the growth of a business.

George provided the example of the farmer who decides he wants to make money growing apples but has only one tree. He isn't happy with just a few apples and a little profit. He learns he must plant more trees to get more apples.  It takes a while to grow the trees and get the apples, there is no such thing as INSTANT apples.   Then he has to nurture those trees, buy fertilizer, work hard to increase his apple harvest, invest in equipment to farm his orchard, find people to buy his apples.  If you want more apples (and more money) you have to invest,  put in the time,  and work your business consistently to make it grow.

DEMONSTRATION: At request of a member, George provided a demonstration of how to use Safe-Swaps.

Summary:

The recording of the July 14, 2013 Home Business Bootcamp will be posted within 24 hours to the Worldprofit Member area.

Next LIVE training session with George Kosch  is June 21st at 8 AM CT.

 Worldprofit has become known as the online Home Business Experts. Comprehensive training program, video tutorials, unique products and services, LIVE training every week with marketing experts, and people who care about your success. Get a free Associate membership today to see how Worldprofit can help you build your own successful online business. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol http://WorkingAtHome101.com.

Perfecting the fine art of complaining.

by  Dr. Jeffrey Lant.

Author's program note. Oh, my, she was angry, angry to the point of bursting, to the point of indiscretion, even scandal. And so she let fly a cascade of hot words, each one hotter and less controlled than the last. It was a bravura performance... a rip snorter of a complaint months in the making, starting with this memorable opening, "Your servant, your servant? Indeed, I'm not your servant".

Can you recall this cinematographic moment of choler, rage and unbridled anger? It was, of course, from Rodger and Hammerstein's brilliant production "The King and I", the film version (1956) starring Deborah Kerr as royal Siamese governess and Yul Brynner role perfect as His Arrogant, Condescending Majesty, life-and-death master of all; one "civilized", the other a jewel-encrusted, half-naked "barbarian".

Mrs. Anna (as her charges called her) was Welch, plain spoken, clean living, a woman who understood what was right and what wasn't, as she made perfectly clear in her memoir "The English Governess at the Siamese Court" (1870). As such her path to acute irritation and the strongest possible disapproval of her capricious, exacting employer was inevitable.... her outburst one of the greatest complaints ever. Go to any search engine now and find this tune, "Shall I Tell You What I Think Of You?"  There could scarcely be a finer tune for an article on complaining, don't you think?

Something we do every day, without thought, with often acute consequences.

Let us start at the beginning, the way a good governess like Anna Leonowens would certainly do.

Complaint: A statement of  wrong, grievance, or injury. From the  French "complaindre". The word also has a legal dimension, "the first paper setting forth the plaintiff's cause of action," and a medical angle, too: "A physical ailment, disease." As such complaints, problems to be solved are at the very root of our civilization and knowing how to handle them is crucial to your well being.

What level of complainer are you?

Before we deal with the matter of how to handle complaints, it is useful to see how much of your time and energy is bound up in complaining. All people complain of course; it is the most constant and human of activities. But what level are you at? Someone whose complaints are mild and occasional, or someone who sees grounds for complaint in every matter or incident, big or small?  First, then, recall to memory the last day or two. What happened that caused complaint? And what did you do to complain; keep the complaint(s) to yourself, share with friends and co-workers, contact the establishment where the complaint was generated, or what? You will know immediately, if you do not already know, whether you are an infrequent complainer or someone with a cosmic axe to grind, complaining as frequent as breathing.

Turning complaints into improvements.

A complaint properly handled is a device for improvement, not a means for showing off your superior intelligence and bosom buddy friendship with God. In other words, a complaint can be used to ameliorate or belittle. It all depends on how you handle it. For example a few days ago an argumentative acquaintance of mine managed to get himself into the most common of bar room altercations.

The matter at issue could easily have been dealt with if there had been any mutual desire to solve it. But liquor and morality were in this lethal mix. Thus, in just a minute or two my sanctimonious, always right, never wrong friend lay on the floor, writhing in pain, three front teeth at his feet, When he called me, as he was sure to do, he expected tea and sympathy from me. After all I was "his" friend, the right to speaking truth waived for the duration.

However, what he got instead of soothing acquiescence was another version of the "truth" -- mine.... And it went something like this. You're nearly 60! Your bar room brawl days are long over. "But they were trying to take advantage of me." So now we had dueling complaints. His about the rightness of his tawdry cause...  mine about his unarguable and abashing propensity to "pop off" whenever truth, justice and the American way were in his corner, as they always were. His dentist told him the final replacement work would be done -- "No, sir, I am not exaggerating" -- in about a year. And that, of course, generated additional, full, rich, resonant complaints, which he immediately began to lay on friends everywhere, for he was assuredly a man of righteous grievances... "didn't I agree"?   My (justifiable) complaint, irrefutable, unassailable, totally veracious, long overdue.

No, I did not agree, and so here, now I intend to take this matter in hand giving an ample piece of my mind to every non-stop complainer in the land. You've had this coming for a very long time. For openers, the only reason I ever listened to your unending litany of "I'm right, I am never, ever wrong" complaints is so that I can force you to listen in turn to mine.

Thus, I want to go on the record, once for all, to tell you what I think of you and the grievances you expect me to listen to and agree with.

Now hear this:

Your unending stream of complaints has alienated every single person who, through courtesy and for no other reason, has listened to your trivial chronicles of woe; each less important and more boring than the last. By now you surely must be the Guinness Book of Records Cosmic Complainer Award winner... for you have achieved the enviable distinction of turning absolutely everything in your life (including the hideous tattoos which deform your aging bulk, each a reminder of outrages past) into the basis for complaint and moral indignation.

And thus, began my epic flight as a complainer, a flight recalled to this very day as a matter of the great possible impact and interest. Once begun, I couldn't help myself. I had waited a lifetime to unload the burden of my silence. Now I intended to let every grievance out and allow it to breathe, prosper and expand, to the wonder of all.

In just a minute, my cause picking up speed and momentum as I went, I had advanced into the ranks of senior complainers everywhere, deft, thorough, awing the world with practised skill and wondrous delivery. I discovered I had a knack, even a genius for complaining. And so I began to understand why everyone and his brother complains so... not to air grievances... not to correct gnawing injustices of every kind... no, indeed.

... but for one reason and one reason only: because the delightful selfishness of complaining enables you to gather every eye, engage every brain and turn your unending rodomontade into glorious selfishness, and what a joy that is! But I must not let this selfishness get out of hand.... and neither must you..... Thus, this great, this overdue, this public-spirited way to handle the insufferable business of non-stop, universal complaining.

We have, you well know, a universal energy crisis. Complaining, or to be quite specific, the hot air it engenders can solve the problem in record time. Here's how.

Each person on earth even those who claim never to complain will be assigned a hose by a grateful government. Instead of complaining in the usual way, hot air generated but uselessly expended into the air; this time we will voluntarily agree to blow the hot air effusions directly into a tube that connects with a central processing facility, built just so to generate heat, light, electricity, power and energy. My science  team says the idea is not only feasible but certain to win the Nobel Prize. I shall be the saviour of the planet.

Broken reverie.

"What do you mean my idea stinks? That you haven't heard anything so daft for a coon's age? That it can't' be done, won't be done, and shouldn't be done? Are you trying to be a smart ass? Then hear this... I'm glad those punks nailed you; you had it coming. they should have punched out all your teeth and kept going. You twittified, arrogant, bloody jerk!" A moment more and we were both on the floor, Mrs. Anna singing in the background "Shall I Tell You  What I Think Of You?" There was already one tooth on the bloodied floor... "you conceited, self-indulgent...."  

 About the Author: Dr. Jeffrey Lant is a 15 time author, consultant, marketer and are collector. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol . http://WorkingAtHome101.com.

10,000 (Wo)men of Harvard. Oprah Winfrey at Commencement, May 30, 2013 and I am proud to be there for

Author's program note. I knew I would go to Harvard Commencement this year after I read a disconcerting article in The Boston Globe some months ago. It cited the opposition of certain alumni to having Miss Oprah Winfrey as this year's principal speaker and honorary degree recipient, Harvard's chief honor. Their argument went something like this, some of it overt, some (the ugliest) not.

She wasn't up to Harvard standards, she was not a woman of education, not a woman of merit, and most important, NOKD, "Not our kind, dear." As these words, written and implied, rolled out, I knew in my bones that come hell or high water, I would be present, in full regalia, to honor the lady and what I knew would be her message of hope, inspiration and empowerment.

And so yesterday, on the unexpectedly hottest day of the year, I went back to Harvard, on the day of my own 43rd graduation anniversary... to show solidarity, support, good manners and discerning judgement. And no one cheered her more loudly and with greater sincerity than I did... for I recognized that this was not merely an event to honor a single woman, no matter how deserving of such honor. But far more important to honor the sisterhood and their gentle revolution, an epochal event that changed the world and liberated not just women but men, too, for the liberation of women has certainly meant the liberation of men, though not all such have recognized this yet.

Dramatis personae.

Before I go on I want to take this opportunity to introduce you to the principal players in yesterday's production. First, there is Mr. Aime' and Mrs. Mercedes Joseph, born in Haiti, two of the principal reasons why my life works so well and smoothly. I took them to Commencement to thank them, to show them an aspect of Americana they would not otherwise see, and, frankly, because it is easy to trip and fall amidst the undulations of such a huge crowd... and their support was very useful indeed.

Drew Gilpin Faust, President of Harvard University, Lincoln Professor of History.

Sandra Demson, '58, distinguished attorney in Canada, veteran of the revolution.

Oprah.

Diane Neal Emmons, Ed.M., an old friend rediscovered, another soldier for the cause, her weapons of choice her wit, ebullience, and an optimism that will not waver, despite the provocations life throws at each of us, delighting to see what we will make of them.

Fate.

As a social scientist, student of the material world in all its manifestations, I should not believe in such matters as destiny, providence, or kismet. Should not. But when a day arranges itself as felicitously as yesterday's did, the right things happening in just the right order, one is forced to consider the inconvenient notion that something other than random chance is present, "inconvenient" because unpredictable, though that doesn't necessarily mean bad. Yesterday's serendipities were anything but...

Security.

Since I arrived at Harvard in the fall of 1969, I have passed through the great Class of 1877 Gate thousands of times. But when I passed through it yesterday I was patted down by a female security officer. It is a sign of our times, a blip that tells us the world has changed, and not for the better. Once inside a recollection from "Gone With The Wind"  came to mind. It was at the beginning of the film, where the newly engaged couple, Ashley and Melanie, stand on the balcony of Twelve Oaks and look out at their world of grace, luxury and privilege, a world they love, threatened with destruction whether the South wins or not.

I stood for a moment, just next to the president's office in Massachusetts Hall and looked at the vibrant scene before me. It, too, is challenged, roiled by even positive change...  I was determined to see, determined to remember what I saw this day and what was part of me: class marshals in top hat and cut-away; their female counterparts wearing bright red rosettes with bright smiles to match; academic gowns from every renowned and prestigious university on Earth; new graduates wearing the most desirable costume of all, their unflinching youth. They would shortly sing "Gaudeamus igitur, Juvenes dum sumus" (Let us rejoice while we are young.) They would not understand... but the alumni before them would... for the words, once just lyrics of a well-known song, gather their profound meaning with every passing year in an exercise we call wisdom and which we cannot approach unmoved.

Rubbing for luck.

Every alumnus becomes perforce a guide when escorting guests to Commencement, and so, hobbling, I lead the Josephs to the statue of John Harvard, the Founder. Only it isn't. There are no extant images of the man whose gift of books, lavish as all gifts to Harvard should be, launched the greatest educational establishment on Earth (1636).

What to do? Improvise! And thus a suitably attractive young man of noble countenance from the class of 1884 was invited to pose for the famous statue by Daniel Chester French. It stands in the center of the Yard, the faceless Founder facing eternity in the body of flawless youth. Both have thereby been immortalized, and this is perhaps why one is advised to rub the shoe for luck... for seizing eternity is certainly worth the doing. This is something every Harvard student knows.

The President!

When you talk of The President in Cambridge, you mean the President of Harvard. It was my privilege to share a few minutes conversation with the current occupant yesterday, Drew Gilpin Faust, president since 2007. An historian herself, she is a person of history; the first woman to lead Harvard. Let me tell you this: she is well and truly on her way to becoming one of the most respected and beloved leaders of this historic institution and thus one of the great benefactors of the Great Republic and the wider world beyond, for Harvard is universal now and forever more.

When you think of President Faust think of what has happened to and in the world since her historic appointment. You will then understand she has presided over six turbulent years, years when even Fortress Harvard knew anxiety. If she never did another thing, she would find an honorable place in Harvard's story. But at just 65, she is in her prime... ready to do battle for the light. What will she do? Here's a clue to one of her projects...

In her remarks yesterday she drove home one essential point; that the impending massive cuts in federal research funding are short sighted, self destructive, ill advised in every way.  Research is what gives us the improvements we desire; slicing any part of it gives us less. Does this make sense?

President Faust will ensure Harvard's clout is used to avoid this folly. And she has my support in doing so. Just as she will always have my support in any and all endeavors to strengthen the liberal arts and humanities, always the great beating heart of Harvard.

"Is this seat taken?"

There were just three seats left in about the fourth row, and I knew we should grab them. But first I needed a positive response to the question asked through the ages: Is this seat taken? And so I came to meet a new friend, Sandra Demson, Class of '58. She had come to participate in the 55th Reunion of the Harvard and Radcliffe Classes of 1958. I introduced myself and in just a minute or two we were chatting like a house afire, discovering one person after another we knew and had in common. Harvard meetings are like that.

However, the most important aspect of our conversation concerned my questions to Sandra about the differences she discerned in the situation of Radcliffe students in 1958 and the position of women undergraduates today. And here a pleasant afternoon's smooth conversation became more than chat, an insight into history, something she wanted to tell... and I very much wanted to hear.

You see, Sandra Demson, smart, attractive, charming, was part of the generation which placed every aspect and feature at the foot of Man... and lived to regret it, like so many other women who not only discovered father didn't know best; they discovered that father knew hardly anything at all... and this made for many problems, ructions, and difficulties, especially when Man continued to insist upon a superiority he clearly did not possess.

And so Sandra, like every "good woman" of her age and outlook learned to carry on, bite her tongue, and somehow keep the faith alive, that better days, and lasting love, too, would come to her. And, in due course, "this too shall pass" passed... And God granted her marital love, peace, and the easy, "woman of the world" manners which we have all erred in not insisting our young successors should have and which she graciously shared with me on this sweltering day.  

Oprah!

It was Sandra Demson who looked at Oprah and said, "She's nervous. She's trembling"... No wonder. A poor black girl from the Deep South,had by dint of unceasing work, determination and an attitude of "must" not just "can" do had scaled the heights into the very citadel of American prestige. There she was, physically smaller than her outsized television presence, quivering just a bit but the crowed roared for her... and so the lady of embracements, hugs and love, was soon awash in the huzzas which must have been heard blocks away. In a very real sense, Oprah Winfrey had come home, and she was greeted accordingly.

The music.

When the tumult ebbed a bit, Oprah began. Soon, just in passing, she mentioned a tune she loved. I looked it up when I got home and immediately understood her better as well as why she'd referenced it, holding it close, a security blanket. It is "We'll understand it better bye and bye". Written by Charles Albert Tindley (1851- 1933), an ex-slave and "the Father of Gospel Music", it is a rousing, barn stormer of a song, the lyrical equivalent of Oprah herself. Go now to any search engine and listen carefully..."We are tossed and driven/ on the restless sea of time... We will understand it better bye and bye." I prefer the inimitable version by Mahalia Jackson. Listening to this mistress of godly soul, you can believe, deep in your heart, that better times will come as they came to Oprah Winfrey.

Then Oprah told us how they came to her, what she learned, what she had to do... and what she had to share with others. She spoke, like a female Polonius, of being true to thyself, of living your own life, not the life assigned to you or allowed by others. She spoke of the commitment one must make, the unceasing focus one must maintain. And she spoke of what must be done in the inevitable days when troubles come and one faces the reality of dread and defeat. This was not mere eloquence, though the lady excels at eloquence. It was not mere rhetoric, though the lady's rhetoric is notable... no, indeed. Instead she was speaking from what the world knows as her great heart... so motivational, so inspirational, so uplifting that along with her massive crowd of the eminent, learned and well connected, I was on my feet, not just cheering, but shouting approbation and encouragement... yes, Oprah had come home.... and for the lady who loves there was ample love indeed.

Dee-On.

My day was, I thought, over and completely successful. Aime' and Mercedes Joseph had given support. President Faust impressed and reassured. Sandra Demson gave charm and friendship. Oprah gave the formula not merely for success, but how to conquer failure. It was enough, more than enough, but there was more....

Leaving the Tercentenary Theatre, Oprah whisked away by the omnipresent security, I saw a face I knew so well... and it was Diane (always pronounced Dee-On), Diane Neal Emmons. And so serendipity continued, unpredictability its metier, for here was a long-lost friend, benefactor when I was a penurious graduate student, forty years ago, success in the future, but when? Diane and her legendary hospitality helped make waiting bearable. This time she invited me to her home for the 4th of July celebrations when the known world gathers in her front yard  to extol the Great Republic. I may even go... for there is a story there... and I want to be the one who tells it, for only thus will we "understand it better bye and bye..."

  About the Author Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc. at www.worldprofit.com, providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Republished with author's permission by Ruthsella Corasol http://WorkingAtHome101.com.