‘But there are dreams that cannot be And there are storms we cannot weather.’ Of Aaron Swartz, 26, Internet visionary. Dead by his own hand, January 11, 2013.

‘and the ladies they will all turn out.’ How war came to Main Street enlisting every single one of us. Some thoughts.

Posted on April 28, 2013 by Liz English

' How war came to Main Street

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.

Author’s program note. I was restless the evening of April 18 and so did what I almost never do, turning on the television for some light entertainment. This, however, was not destined to take place. Indeed, there was to be nothing light and no mirth at all for that day and the excruciatingly long day to come…

I saw the feature that so often distinguishes late night newscasts, video feed from a crime scene, the place usually being somewhere in the inner city no sensible person would ever go to, much less in dead of night. Sirens blared. The sharp reds and blues pierced the night. Police swaggered, made the kinds of adamant gestures which look so officious and ridiculous but which we card-carrying members of the middle class are glad at moments like this are on our side.

Yes, it was the usual late-night distraction that would be buried on page 8 or so in tomorrow’s paper. Nothing to do with me… not even the caption on the bottom of the screen: “MIT security officer killed.” But from then on, through the long night and the longer day that followed everything was direct, personal, everything to do with me.

The reporter noted the crime scene as Vassar Street, Cambridge while the on-screen video showed a great fortress-like structure that was a building well known to me. There the overflow of my pack-rat life is stored… copies of my books and articles, my father’s letters from the Pacific front in World War II, both sides of the voluminous correspondence when my mother and I were working out the rough patches in a relationship where loving each other did not keep us from saying the sharpest, often wounding of words, she in her copperplate hand, mine rushed and illegible.

Such things and so many others were the crucial artifacts of life, things to be stored in boxes now, to be considered at leisure, some day, I promise… It was all in the building behind the reporter… and I glanced at the time, just about 11 p.m. Life was about to change forever as the total war of our times swept me up, imperious, without thought of who I was, what I had been doing, no matter how important. My desires, wishes, priorities counted for nothing… and neither did yours.

“When Johnny Comes Marching Home.”

The lyrics to “When Johnny Comes Marching Home”‘ were written by the Irish-American band leader Patrick Gilmore. Its first sheet music publication was deposited in the Library of Congress on September 26,1863, with words and music credited to “Louis Lambert”, a pseudonym Gilmore unaccountably used instead of his own name. The copyright was retained by the publisher, Henry Tolman & Co., of Boston.

Determining who actually composed the music is much trickier. There is, for instance, a melodic resemblance to an earlier drinking song entitled “Johnny Fill Up the Bowl”. Someone named J. Durnal claimed credit for its arrangement, though not its composition. This in turn had a distinct melodic resemblance to a tune by Robert Burns, “John Anderson, my Jo”, which harked back to a tune of 1630 entitled “The Three Ravens,”… which harked back to… but you get the picture.

The important thing is how popular it became both with Confederate and Union troops. And no wonder… it’s a grand marching song… the music urging tired feet to go farther and never waver… while the lyrics remind them of the delights of home, theirs soon to savor and enjoy, just one more battle… just one. Before continuing, go to any search engine where you’ll find several fine versions. Listen carefully to lyrics which are now ironic and as far away as ancient Troy.

“The men will cheer and the boys will shout.”

This was how wars were fought in those days… and, until just the other day, in ours. We knew who the enemy was. We knew where he was. We knew what he was fighting for and we knew he had a martial code of honor which would (at least occasionally) cause him to think twice before doing the unspeakable. To be sure, it was a code more often honored in the breach… but it did exist, if only in one Geneva convention or another.

Thus did our much loved troops dress up in battle kit, self conscious about the last kiss to girlfriend or wife; these held back the tear that will surely fall when alone just minutes from now when the beloved is gone, perhaps forever. Fathers hugged the children they would not recognize when they returned; they grow so fast.

This was the war we knew… cheers on departure, certain victory for our cause was always right and our resort to warfare always reluctant and unwilling… then loud, sustained, enthusiastic cheers when Johnny comes marching home.

Now that kind of antediluvian warfare is only a thing of memory, resemblance, and wishful thinking… for now we do not go to war in full regalia, flags flying, the music brassy, suitable for the high affairs of the Great Republic. No indeed. For now we do not go to and return from the war. That war comes to us and confounds our lives more than even the greatest of battles… for we are all of us fully engaged in this new kind of undeclared, limitless war without any rules and procedures whatsoever, war where the first casualty may well be a child of 8, his life sundered and blown to bits by malefactors whose movements are secret, stealthy, and murderous, utterly without meaning, honor and the respect soldiers in the other wars might give their worthy opponents.

But this new kind of war is entirely different, insidious, taking prosaic objects and situations, turning them into the weapons of fear, anxiety and random death. This is a world where evil can lurk behind young and boyish faces and demeanors. Where there are no military helmets, but rather baseball caps, worn backwards in approved adolescent chic. This is a world where the element of deadly surprise always belongs to the attackers and thus can be wielded with merciless accuracy and acute precision.

This is a world where the elements for the bombs made to maim, dismember, and destroy are no further than your local hardware store, for amidst the waxes, sprays, paints and screws are the essential tools of pitiless catastrophe and the reverberating fear that paralyzes a great city whilst causing millions more worldwide to wonder if this could happen to them, knowing full well in their anxious hearts that these purveyors of death could already be about their cruel, selfish work; perhaps the surly young man who scowled when greeted today… worse, perhaps the handsome young man who smiled, offering a friendly quip or passing pleasantry. You see, the agent of mass pain and suffering can so easily wear the most amiable of faces.

These are the aspects of our new kind of war, the war, here now, here for the rest of our troubled, fretful lives.

“Stay in your house. Do not open your door.”

I had never received such a call before, but I feel sure I will get others like it in the years ahead. I had decided to go out and see what I could see. But I never got the chance because the Cambridge Police Department called to say I was to stay at home and to make sure I didn’t let any strangers in. They called this lockdown; it turned me, and hundreds of thousands of others, into a legion of the interned…

And so all of us, surrounded as we are by a plethora of communications devices, used them to feed our anxiety and disbelief. On the firing line as we were, we listened intently for each piece of often inaccurate, incomplete, and alarming detail. Like any good journalist, we examined, reviewed, made deductions, listened to more suppositions and soon-to-be-discarded “facts”… veering first one way, then another as events unfolded; our attention rapt and disbelieving that so much was happening, so close, so unaccountable, in my city, my neighborhood and on my very doorstep.

It was surreal, unforgettable, riveting, frightening, the new reality of our challenged, jittery, insecure times. And it can all take place anywhere at any time against any of the peoples of this Earth, people whose race, creed, color or disposition are deemed unsuitable by some “superior” group whose first target is killing the very idea of diversity. For in a world which must necessarily value, strive for, and cherish the diverse; they aim for just one truth, theirs, and as such are willing to go to any length, destabilize any society, engage in any barbarity to secure their way. These are the absolutists of world politics… the lordly thugs who hold the rest of us and everything we value at risk…. they offer hate, violence, an agenda of unmitigated evil and unrelenting malice.

Against such a litany of horrors all the good people of this planet must stand united for our credo, tolerance for all, acceptance, humanity, diversity, inclusion and always love, for without love there can be no lasting peace… and lasting peace is what we strive for. This way, the way of unity and community, is the only way. Otherwise random death and the awesome apparatus of response will be our portion… Thus to save our freedom we are forced to give up our freedom, losers whatever happens. We are already on this perilous road, right to be apprehensive and filled with grave foreboding and growing alarm.

“And let each one perform some part/ To fill with joy the warrior’s heart/ And we’ll all feel gay/ When Johnny comes marching home.”

PHOTO CREDIT: The Atlantic

About the Author

Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is a well known author of 15 books, 3 ebooks, and over a thousand of articles on a variety of topics.

Republished with author’s permission by Elizabeth English http://LizsWorldprofit.com

Posted in Life | Tagged boston marathon, marathon bombers, when war comes to main street | Leave a comment

‘So drop the top, baby, and let’s cruise on into it’s better than ever street.’ The maid did it. Thoughts on Barbara Piasecka Johnson, the world’s 149th richest person, dead at 76, April 1, 2013.

Posted on April 13, 2013 by Liz English

If your subscription is not active (canceled or declined), your account will automatically expire when it reaches the expiry date (which is usually the date when your next payment was supposed to be made). On that date the account will be placed into "Grace" mode for 15 days.

An account in "Grace" mode has limited functionality, and the members could complete the outstanding payments, setup a new subscription and reactivate their account without any penalites.

Note: If an account in Grace mode is reactivated, the next payment date will come 30 days after the expiry date, but not 30 days after the payment has been made.

If the member does not reactivate the subscription; the account goes from "Grace" mode to "Lockdown" mode and the downline is passed up. This cannot be reverted.

An account could be reactivated from Lockdown by paying the correspondent fees, but the downline will not be placed back.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

‘Riders on the storm.’ A nor’easter wallops New England. Its aftermath, Sunday, February 10, 2013. The landscape of our mind changed.

Posted on February 12, 2013 by Liz English

<img src=”http://blog.lizsworldprofit.com/image1.jpg/” alt=”'Riders on the Storm'”/>

Nor'easter Wallops New England

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.

Author’s program note. Whatever you were doing, whatever you thought important a moment before. Whatever your plans, schemes, intentions, wishes and desires, each alone and all together are trumped by the hauteur of wintry weather… a force of Nature, a creation of God which goes where it would and cavorts as it pleases with no thought whatsoever about us, puny beings consigned to cower on the sidelines by a force pure majesty, unimaginable energy… breathtaking beauty… certain killer… covering all corruption in white, just long enough for us to imagine our world pure and pristine again.

All hail such power… not least because it reminds us of our true place in the Cosmos and how little we count.

For such a time, the music is “Riders on the Storm,” recorded in December, 1970. As things turned out, it was Jim Morrison’s last recorded song. It entered the Top 100 on 3 July, 1971, the day Morrison in all his unmatched beauty died, removing a troubled man from this Earth, leaving behind a legend which causes fervent pilgrims to break off stones from his defaced monument in the cemetery Pere Lachaise, his final resting place, where there is still no rest.

Or for us, either.

Portents, Friday afternoon.

Even the fiercest of blizzards begins with a single frail flake, exquisite, poetry from ice, so lovely in its decent from heaven we must stop and wonder. We have seen it before, but no matter how rushed we may be, we pause to see it carry its celestial luster to a habitat which all of a sudden seems dreary without its allure. This is not snow; it is cool alchemy, turning commonplace elements into joy that dances before your eyes, kissed by wind, beckoning you from every responsibility, joy, pure joy… thus do even the greatest storms begin, as small bits of magic held in hand, and if you’re lucky, captured on tongue, an agile result which no age eschews, even the oldest for whom the subtle taste is a passport to years gone by and people long gone and cherished.

“Blown away”.

But, of course, the first snow flake is but the precursor of millions. And so while we scrutinize the first with eagerness and scrupulous attention, we prepare for all the rest, if not expecting the worst, at least readying for it. This time it came, in all its rampant ferocity, voracious, inexorable, inimical to everything in its path, no matter how hallowed or substantial. All of us, each thing, held hostage, no succor handy or soon expected. Thus were we humbled by a thing we had held in our hands just hours before, welcomed and extolled.

“Meterological bomb”

What had happened? Gleeful meteorologists, with too little to do this winter until now, tripped over themselves to educate a public suddenly desirous to know all — and assess their peril accordingly. Thus we learned every worrisome and anxious aspect of the storm galloping to the very heart of our seaboard civilization, now a target, not just a desirable destination.

The jet stream that flows from west to east, 18,000 feet above the surface of the Earth, has two branches: a polar stream that takes a northerly route and a second, more southerly stream. When those branches converge (which is not infrequent during the winter), snow falls, as the frigid air from the north mingles with the humid air from the south. This winter there was very little of this mingling.

Until Friday.

And then we all became riders on the storm as we raced to the security of homes and families now in the face of threat more precious than ever. Would we be in time? Thus little by little as we fled prayers were sent aloft; first a handful, then thousands, then hundreds of thousands, heartfelt, sent up from even the least believing, while in the background dead Morrison’s incantation became insistent, “Riders on the storm… riders on the storm… riders on the storm.” Suddenly the God we usually bury deep in the recesses of our mind, was apparent, puissant and vital… our true shield and bulwark, not just a word we use in vain. “O God, our hope in ages past…”

Just how at risk we were, how right to worry, how right to prepare the statistics tell:

190,000 power outages reported 2,000 utility crews mobilized to respond to power outages 4,000 pieces of snow-clearing equipment on the road 5,000 National Guard members activated 416 flights from Logan Airport canceled… the air now belonging to the dangerous weather, more powerful and more beautiful than ever.

“Killer on the road, yeah.”

Then from the Corner Office under Bullfinch’s great golden dome came the final indication, if one were needed, that the situation was bad and likely to get worse. His Excellency Governor Patrick, no alarmist, startled the Commonwealth by banning almost all traffic from Massachusetts roads. And so we all found ourselves marooned, cut off, alone, as the storm grew and excited weather experts found themselves in urgent demand, glad to inform us just how bad things really were and hint at records over the Great Blizzard of ’78, records sure to fall before the impressive matter of our own troubles.

One such fact might truly beguile the Governor, namely that the last governor to apply such bold remedies was Michael Dukakis. No one knows better than Patrick that this predecessor secured the Democratic presidential nomination one year after he ruled the blizzard-stuck state, a sweater-clad executive ruling by media. How awfully clear that picture, that possibility must be to His Current Excellency, perhaps potent enough to obscure the fact Michael Dukakis lost resoundingly. So I remind him this: snow makes head-aches, not presidents.

Close but no cigar.

And then, bit by bit, the whole shebang begins to change. The snow falters. The skies open, light blue beneath dark gray, and Sol Invictus shines through as if Little Orphan Annie, that unquenchable optimist, had finally got her wish…

… best of all those obnoxious weather people, filled with helium, seem to deflate before our eyes. We have survived… the evidence is everywhere. And so I decide to go out early Sunday morning, for I like to see for myself.

The roads are passable, the snow piled efficiently and high, brick sidewalks with a coating of snow; so much better than the dangerous black ice that will come with melting. Crooked paths abound; I see I am no pathfinder though it is early. And I am glad for my legs can be unsteady, and I am too proud to use a cane, though I am wavering.

I carefully walk the two blocks to the Sheraton Commander, where hot buttered toast and storm tales are to be had, the egregious waiter (never condescending to a smile) orders me away from a table for four (for I have newspapers to spread and spill on); saying I must use an inconvenient table for just two. There are just 4 people in the entire restaurant but the waiter is inflexible. It is a sure sign the blizzard and its aura of comrades and fellow travelers is over.

This feeling is reinforced when one of my new neighbors (going away) is forced to pass me (going home) on a trail as narrow as a celery stalk. I stop to let him by and wish him a good morning. He glowers, looks at the ground and rushes on, making sure he never catches my eye. Yes, we are back to normal while the storm named “Nemo” (“no one”) blows North into other anxious lives waiting for it now, praying for deliverance.

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 Elizabeth English http://LizsWorldprofit.com

CHECK OUT-> Expert SEO & Backlinking is NOW LIVE!! (Run, don’t walk…)

http://www.LizsWorldprofit.com/?rd=ur4E6OYv

Posted in General Interest | Tagged new england, nor'easter, riders on the storm | Leave a comment

‘Varvara’, a story of today’s Russia… of love, lust, deceit… of international intrigue, email, muscles, murder… and poetry. A cautionary tale. | Vavara

Posted on February 11, 2013 by Liz English

<img src=”http://blog.lizsworldprofit.com/image1.jpg/” alt=”Akhmatova”/> by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.

Author’s program note. Dear friends, I am rushing to get the facts of this matter into your hands for it is crucial that you have them… and do everything possible to use them, to protect yourself and your family. For you must be vigilant to ensure that the dire events described here do not disturb, even destroy, the joys and benefits of the life you have worked so hard to create. Regard this matter as urgent, for it most assuredly is.

Flooded with piteous pleas.

If you’re like most everyone on the Internet, your email “in box” has been packed with an unending torrent of plaintive letters from beautiful Russian women, than whom there is nothing lovelier, more desirable, more voluptuous… and more ardent. They are contacting us, all of us, every day, over and over again, not merely with letters but with pleas for immediate assistance that would melt even the sternest and least responsive of hearts.

They are reaching out to us, begging for succor, for liberation, for relief placing their very souls at our feet, abject, alone, distressed. These letters do not merely state facts, though the facts are undeniable; they sear our very souls.

How can we, valorous men particularly, ignore the plaintive communications of such renowned beauties in such parlous circumstances? I certainly cannot… for I have chivalry in my blood… as you surely must, too. This, therefore, is not merely an article of facts and figures. No, indeed. It is a clarion call to the humane and generous, the manly and protective for action now, action swift, action decisive, true Galahads all, sans peur et sans reproche.

The music to act by.

In 1965 one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century (published 1957) became one of the greatest of films, “Doctor Zhivago”. Its author was Boris Pasternak (1890-1960), a master of masters; a man who took the brutal, seismic events of the Russian Revolution and transformed them into language which was now magnificent prose, now the most affecting of poetry. It was a great tale in the grand manner, and it mesmerized the world, helping us understand how the Evil Empire of Red Muskovy worked and what it could do to us — if we were not eternally vigilant and resolute.

I have chosen as the music for this article “Lara’s Theme” by Maurice Jarre, winner of the 1965 Academy Award for Best Original Score. One of the most immediately recognizable of movie scores, it, too, captures the essence of a great nation, which in 1917 moved from friend to foe, and has not so far moved back again. Thus is “Doctor Zhivago” still a tale for our unsettled times and Vavara but one of the cataclysms’ many victims. Now thanks to the generosity and civic spiritedness of one of my dearest friends, a gentleman of age and honors, now resident in the greater Colorado Springs, Colorado area I am able to share Varvara’s story… and her fate… with you.

The first email message.

“My best wishes to you! I am Vavara 22 y.o. I am looking for a man to have a strong family. And you? Let’s chat, My profile and new photos are here. Contact me now. I am waiting… impatiently.”

Along with this message there was a photograph that could only be described as a “Wow!” Varvara looked exactly like the young Countess Natalia Rostova from the 1967 filmed version of Tolstoi’s undying 1869 masterpiece “War and Peace,” known to every civilized person on Earth. So beautiful, so charming, so distressed. How could any man resist the siren’s call? That was impossible….. for she was Woman, and her correspondent just a man.

His email response.

“Dear friend Varvara. I am Harvey, a businessman in the beautiful State of Colorado, home of the majestic mountains and air like the finest champagne. I am 59 years old and of manly physique weighing in at 350 pounds. I hope I am not too big or too old for you. My friends call me Big Daddy. Rush me your response, for I long to know more.”

The very same day, just hours after he emailed her, Varvara responded… with gratitude, with joy, with the first hint she was a woman with an Idea and the necessary determination to make it happen.Thus:

“Friend Harvey, Big Daddy, how your picture moves me. I see, not too much, but just the right proportion of a man, large of frame, larger of heart and generosity. How I wish I could be with you today, but I am forced to attend to a job I detest which has already begun to destroy whatever semblance of youthful beauty I ever possessed. I tell you, though I regret to tell you, that I work for a company that makes plastic lawn furniture.

My soul swoons but one must work and the rent is past due. P.S. Do you know the great effusions of my idol Anna Akhmatova? She is beyond poet…. she is the guardian of my soul. How I long to sit at your very large feet and read dear Anna to you. When may it occur… for I am mad with impatience to enjoy the musings of our two hearts together?

I have just heard the landlord knock upon the door. I hope he doesn’t evict me. All for lack of just $500… but our Kindred Spirits must always be above such prosaic chains of slavery and bourgeois necessity.”

Vavara’s email to Andrei.

“Andrushka, the flavor of your kisses has burned my very soul. Your eyes! Your arms around me crushing me in a love that will astonish the ages. I expect to get the $500 you have demanded in just a few days, perhaps even a few hours. I long to see you now, every inch of you, but I know your rule… and wanting you so must obey. But even you cannot stop the thoughts, hot, insistent, painful, delirious. Quite simply, I adore you… even more than I adore my muse Akhmatova, though she would understand all, savor all, condone all, forgive all. Expect to hear from me soonest. Yours for a passion beyond passion; a love beyond love.”

Andrei’s email to Nicholas.

“Nicki, the flavor of your kisses has burned my very soul. Your eyes! Your arms around me crushing me in a love that will astonish the ages! I expect to get the $250 you have demanded in just a few days, perhaps even a few hours. I long to see you now, every inch of you, but I know you would scowl should I neglect the funds… and cannot bear anything but perfect harmony, so must obey. But even you cannot stop the thoughts, hot, insistent, painful, delirious. Quite simply, I adore you… even more than I adore my muse, Akhmatova, though she would understand all, savor all, condone all, forgive all. Expect to hear from me soonest. Yours for a passion beyond passion; a love beyond love.”

Now all the players were assembled, Vavara, her deliverer Big Daddy; the man Vavara loves beyond reason, Andrei, and the man Andrei loves beyond reason, Nicki; each using the other and using email to effect their goal, defrauding here, to sustain love there. How could such a tangled web, fueled and sustained by manifold deceits end… but badly? And so it did, when Big Daddy (his ample girth such that it required two seats) flew to Moscow for his long delayed meeting… there to find sad recognition not never-ending bliss. In due course, he came to rest not on Vavara’s comfortable bosom but on a battered couch at Interpol whose agent listened for just a few minutes, then filed a report that would be read by no one.

One sympathetic cop.

But the bored agent was not a bad guy; besides he knew the name “Vavara” and her game; so was able to assist to this extent; viz to drive Big Daddy to “Vavara’s” real address. Taking an already chagrined Big Daddy in hand, he knocked at the door of a run-down apartment reeking of cooking oil and blasted dreams. At the well-worn key board “Vavara” sat, grey, worn, 65 if a day. No words were exchanged between “Vavara” and Big Daddy. None were necessary. But something did occur. “Vavara” handed an open copy of Akhmatova’s poems to her crestfallen would-be lover. It was some might say scant recompense for his over $25,000 investment in love and the promise of endless passion. But the poem on view was one of the most celebrated of her lyric life (1889-1966),

“I taught myself to live simply”

I taught myself to live simply and wisely, to look at the sky and pray to God, and to wander long before evening to tire my superfluous worries. When the burdocks rustle in the ravine and the yellow-red rowanberry cluster droops I compose happy verses about life’s decay, decay and beauty.
Envoi

Big Daddy, older, poorer, perhaps wiser returned to Colorado. As he got out of the taxi, his careworn wife of 30 years shot him dead. At her trial she claimed justification and provided all the materials on which this article is based. She was acquitted.

As for all the materials she provided after rifling Big Daddy’s computer, they are all, even the well-thumbed pages of Akhmatova’s mystic,keening verses, part of the public record, a cautionary tale for the ages; to be ignored like all the rest.

About the Author

->Check out Syndication Rockstar -> http://www.LizsWorldprofit.com/?rd=mr7LdU2O

Posted in General Interest | Tagged email, russian ladies, Vavara | Leave a comment

‘Girls, you know what they want.’ Tales of Ma Pfeiffer, the quiddities and contortions of courtship, a world on the edge of destruction. Cornell College,1965. | it's a wonderful life

Posted on February 7, 2013 by Liz English

<img src=”http://blog.lizsworldprofit.com/image1.jpg/” alt=”cornell college”/> by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.

Author’s program note. In 1946 Frank Capra (with whom I spent an afternoon while a graduate student at Harvard), produced and directed a film classic that never ages, never palls, never loses its impact or ability to touch our often jaundiced hearts.

Its title is “It’s a Wonderful Life,” and at its conclusion, after you’ve wiped the happy tears away (you, softie, you), you agree that ,yes, it is a wonderful life indeed and you wouldn’t have missed it for the world, or even more.

Especially if there was a Special Someone in the mix, for that person made all the difference.

That is why I have selected a lovely tune to accompany this article; a lovely tune with a clouded history. It’s called “It’s a Wonderful Life” and was written by master film score composer Dimitri Tiompkin. Unfortunately Producer Capra for whatever reason decided not to use it, and so this joy-making number stayed on the cutting-room floor for over 60 years when, at last, it was discovered.

Played by the City of Prague Philharmonic its uplifting lilt is now free to make a burdened world a little happier. Go discover it for yourself in any search engine. Play it twice; an extra dose of sweet sentimentality is just the thing for any malady. Down the hatch and “see heaven from my lucky star.”

The Look that asked for and promised Forever. “See me walking around on air/ Because you care.”

The urge to merge goes back to the Garden of Eden and its thoughtless residents; folks who, like many of us, threw away a good thing, in order to get a better thing; that proved in short order to be far worse than what they once had… and is now gone forever.While the urge has stayed constant, its manifestations have been anything but.

They change with each generation, each couple, each rendezvous, each nation, its culture, taboos, inhibitions, modesties, scandals and indiscretions. Thus this subject, of acute importance to our species, never fails to entice each of us. We want to merge; we want to see how others merge, and are at all times and places curious to a degree, and obsessed, and not so very rarely either.

“Mister Cupid just winked his eye.”

Here you will discover, thanks to yours truly who, splendidly agile and expectant, was very much present and accounted for, a slice of amorous intentions as made manifest at the end of the first phase of Post World War II America, when the prosperous nation reigned supreme, its political union strong, united and confident in its unlimited future… and when young women, still in hats and gloves, demur and patient, matriculated to find the man of their dreams who, they were confident, would find in them and their dazzling Pepsodent smiles exactly what they were looking for; for the prom; for home-coming week; for forever and a day.

Such serious objectives demanded thoughtful care and prolonged deliberation. After all, nothing less was at stake in such concupiscence than the future of the Great Republic, even terra firma itself. This was why The Look was so important to men, women, the future of America and of the land that we love. A prime example is the image that accompanies this article. It is worth far more than a thousand words. See for yourself…

In it, an enraptured Donna Reed stares deeply into the grateful eyes of Jimmie Stewart, sundry children hanging on them like so many Christmas tree ornaments. Reed’s look is a soothing mixture of gratitude, content, bliss, support, joy for life and lot, an incontrovertible declaration that she is just where she wants to be, in just the right condition she has always wanted. Everything s’wonderful, s’marvelous… man and woman in perfect sync, unrifled perfection at their finger tips.. And, if by chance any rough patch intrudes they can always return to this image, to scrutinize and readjust so they are all perfect again.

To shape such women, young women (and young men for that matter) must know precisely what to do and when to do it. The post war collegiate scene was tailor-made for such instruction and preparation. Here is where the Donna Reed “awe” look was carefully contrived and perfected; where the fortunate men who had it beamed at them day and night, every day and night unsurprisingly accepted it as their right, only to discover its confinements and limitations later. Nothing so good, after all, comes cost free.

Everything so good must be protected round the clock and thoroughly, too. The goal was important, the investment substantial, the pay-off astronomical…. It goes without saying that such a system needed sentinels of the most severe and punctilious kind; it needed Ma Pfeiffers, and so every college had them; incorruptible, no standards higher, no task too large or small if it were for the good of the girls, the surveillance and control of the elusive, hormone-driven boys, every one a practised predator ready to drink deep of life’s fleeting pleasures.

“Girls, you know what they want!:

Every Cornell dormitory whether for men or women had a house mother called “Ma” and then her surname. Their purpose was generally similar, but varied greatly in the particular. House mothers for men had to ensure that their high flying charges did not climb on the snow-covered roof in bath robes and bare feet in winter; (I plead guilty), or put snakes in their room-mate’s bed (not guilty) or blow them up with cherry bomb fireworks, thereby recoloring the house mother’s gut-spattered private quarters; (I knew the perpetrators but cannot, even now, snitch.) House mother life was different in the women’s dormitories where one woman, a single Amazon, did battle in defence of purity, virtue and enforced innocence. Her name was…

Ma Pfeiffer, and she was a model for her time and position. As such I see her clearly in my mind’s eye.

Bowman Hall, her tightly held battlement on the frontier of the unending war between the sexes, seems to me to have been on a slight hill, the better to survey the open territory of her charge, the territory where lurked degradation and baby bibs for the unwary. Here did Ma go, like Achilles to the Plains of Troy, go nightly in righteous defence of every vulnerable maiden. There, punctual to a fault, was she to be found, the great door of Bowman opened wide, bathed in the strongest of lights.

Ma stood in the middle of the door way, habited in house dress, comfortably worn bunny slippers, and Woolworth’s best and largest curlers. There she stood arms akimbo, scanning the horizon for outrages and girls about to fall victim to the smooth charms of plausible young men probably wearing too much hair oil.

“9 minutes. Girls, you know what they want.”

The game was now well and truly a foot.

The perimeter now became alive with writhing bodies, lurid thoughts, and fervent hopes Ma Pfeiffer and her sisters meant to derail. It was serious business all round. Picture this scene. The upper stories of Bowman were packed with protected maidens in deshabilles looking down and freely commenting on the action. Each contortion, every uncomfortable position, each kiss, whether expertly delivered or not, the subject for public scrutiny without mercy. Yes, he was handsome but couldn’t kiss; that one could dance, but what a dweeb; but that one, yes over there, ou la la!

“6 minutes. Girls…”

And so it went, everyone, man and woman, joining the count-down as the action changed every minute, careful strategies for maximum impact now forgotten in the frantic urge to merge that made this bit of Iowa alive with possibilities.

Reputations were wagered; made; lost; made again. All under the Argus-eyed Ma who was never more adamant, more insistent, more admirable and heroic than now as the inexorable clock moved all towards closure for this night. Ah, this was living.

And then it was over, as the great clock of Cornell struck the hour, every inamorata now safely ensconced. Suddenly purposeless boys now bereft of occupation… just one stylish thespian quoting (and credibly, too) the balcony scene from “Romeo and Juliet” to his beloved now unattainable, no nurse to intervene. Of course there were gibes, but these faltered before Shakespeare’s immortal stanzas. In the moonlight, we all stopped and listened as the great lyric words came alive, perhaps for the very first time. It was sublime.

“Parting is such sweet sorrow.”

And then, as if by wizard’s wand, gone, all gone, not just for this occasion, but forever. For this tableaux, so perfect of its kind and way, played out before me on divers occasions was already destined for destruction, killed along with too many of the love lorn boys who braved ridicule and public embarrassment for a kiss, and little more. They, in all their radiant youth, were soon to find another end in a far-away place called Vietnam. Life was never quite as wonderful again…
About the Author

->Check out Syndication Rockstar -> http://www.LizsWorldprofit.com/?rd=mr7LdU2O

Posted in General Interest | Tagged cornell college, It's a wonderful life, Ma Pfeiffer | Leave a comment

1965. My year in the heartland. ‘It’s still not too late to leave, Laddie.’ ‘Count me in.’ | Cornell

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Liz English

<img src=”http://blog.lizsworldprofit.com/image1.jpg/” alt=”My year in the heartland”/>

Cornell College, Mt. Vernon, Iowa

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.

Author’s program note. I am still unclear even after all these years how I ended up at Cornell College, Mt. Vernon, Iowa (founded 1853). But it probably went something like this. My grandmother Lura Marshall Lant graduated from Knox College (founded in 1837) in Galesburg, Illinois; it was in the same Midwest conference of fine small liberal arts colleges as Coe (founded 1851) in Cedar Rapids, Iowa where my mother went. And Grinnell (1846), in Iowa, too, where I was advised to apply but wasn’t accepted.

So Cornell may have been chosen because they made my hard-working dad a better deal, which amongst other things included a job for me on the cafeteria clean-up crew (called “Slobs”) paying some 28 cents or so per hour, maybe less.

The summer of ’65.

Cornell was the kind of genteel institution of high standards and moral rectitude which expected you to read a series of improving books on timely topics before classes began; so you hit the ground running in September. In those turbulent days, the Great Republic’s race relations were front and center, especially after the Watts section of East Los Angeles exploded into a galloping inferno; the summer reading list was heavily tilted to the bitter quandary of Black and White.

Unexpected “expert”.

Because I had just graduated from University High School in West Los Angeles I found myself in the unaccustomed position of being sought out as an expert on the Gordian Knot of America’s racial puzzles currently playing out in the dangerous streets of the City of Our Lady the Queen of the Angels where mayhem raged from August 11-17, 1965; 34 dead, over $40 million in property damage; the nation appalled, outraged, anxious, uncomprehending.

I never said that I had not, to that date, met a single Black person and that my upbringing had been as lily white and unexceptional; as racially clueless as the rest. This silence was taken as evidence of a modesty so admirable in the young; that I knew more than I would say; and had been more affected by the horrifying events than I would admit. Thus did the silence of discretion bestow stature… which a shy, “ah shucks” smile and undoubted charm only enhanced.

My byline on every door step.

What enhanced it more was the fact that I was the only freshman whose name was known in advance to the entire Cornell community, thanks to my regular column in “The Cornellian”. To get it, I sent Editor Marty Malin a raft of my columns from my high school newspaper “The Warrrior” of which I was sometime Editor-in-Chief. In the best traditions of Yankee journalism I was retained at once… copy needed at once for the frosh orientation edition…. delivered at once; ontime and length perfect, for these are marks of my pride and reliability.

Thus I became the most well-known of students, even before my nervous classmates arrived for an orientation which I no longer needed. Their open papers with my new column prominently featured gave me a thrill I can acutely recall to this very hour and which has never lost its savor.

But all was not smooth…

The first fly in the ointment (and the insectile imagery is most apt) was my Guild Hall roommate; (name withheld to protect the guilty). Per college directive, we exchanged “get acquainted” letters during the summer, the better to commence and build the cordial relationship alma mater expected from two bright young men carefully selected to room together in the Honor Residence for Men and so bond for a lifetime of fund raising pleas and auld lang syne events of the “gaudeamus igitur” variety.

My mother, with her well-honed people-reading skills put paid to that notion: “He looks like a pompous twit fortified by bigotry”. And of course she was right… The first thing this porcine paragon said to me, the very first, was “Los Angeles is today’s Sodom and Gomorrah. So are its people scourged for their sins.” And that was the high point of our “relationship.” It says volumes that this allworthy became the first member of our class to become a Trustee of Cornell and to otherwise rise high amongst those of doctrinal certainty with direct pipelines to God. Of course this insufferable prig had to be punished… and by now I had a kindred spirit to help me dream up and administer suitable penalties, always designed for maximum impact and complete deniability.

Lance Neckar.

When you meet your kindred spirits the correct procedure is to whoop for joy and give them hugs of unstinting gratitude and glee. For make no mistake kindred spirits are a major reason why life is worth living, even at its most bleak. Kindred spirits, you see, need no introduction; no owner’s manual. You understand them… they understand you… They are more precious than rubies, more desirable than gold. They must be loved, cherished and kept contented for the well-lived life always depends to a considerable degree on… them.

Lance Neckar was a kindred spirit and I treasured him accordingly, not least because of his deft assistance with the plump bump who needed to be removed from the dormitory room he foolishly believed was half his, whilst I persisted in believing he was an unwanted (infuriatingly tidy) squatter whose tenure must be abbreviated and at once.

Of course I applied to the necessary authorities who delivered the usual judgements; viz. that my esteemed roomie was a paragon; that such paragons were rare as unicorns and should be humored, embraced, deferred to, even adulated; not cast away by the likes of me. And, not least, that he and I were “brothers”, hand picked by Cornell’s administrators as certain future leaders, hence the adamant need to work together for the common good. Blah, blah, blah. It was clear extra curricular steps were necessary and at once. Thus Lance and I set to our work immediately and with a song in our hearts.

About Guild Hall.

Guild Hall, Honor Residence for Men, was not only unique to Cornell; it may very well have been unique to the nation. Whereas all other residences were monitored and guarded by old dragons called “house mothers”, given the honorific “Ma” before their surnames; Guild had no such figure. Located off the campus, we were entirely self governing; a privilege bestowing pride and responsibility. It was an honor indeed.

Whereas other boys might be boisterous and high spirited, prone to outbreaks of hormones and hijinx, all we young princes of the realm were always calm, respectable, causing absolutely no trouble whatever, just unadulterated good sense and reasoned measures. And as for brains, why the minutes of our monthly meetings were rendered in poetic pentameters. I am not kidding.

That is why no one suspected us when from the large striped awnings of Guild Hall we launched Operation Eradication…

Fueled by need and the desire to enter the annals of prankdom, we learned the secrets of lacing young Tauby’s bed with ice cubes one night, warm water the next, foul smelling stink weeds, the olfactory pride of Iowa, and fouler smelling wash clothes; the secrets of emulating the midnight yelps and cautionary shrieks of predatory birds… and shuffling up stairs sounding like ancient gents with a full agenda of ill will and ample malice. We even filed a report with the college on our firm belief Guild was haunted, perhaps with the uneasy spirits who had once, when Mt. Vernon was a rail stop and Guild its hostelry, brought so much loneliness and unhappiness along with their sample cases. Yes, their ghosts abided…

Against such strenuous and inventive measures, my soon-to-be-ex room-mate had no chance… and soon my kindred spirit moved in, a million laughs in his suitcase. But this and all the other goodies which emerged from my short stay at Cornell very nearly didn’t happen.

“Count Me In.”

My grandmother Victoria Burgess Lauing, for all that she spent most of her waking moments as a haus frau, had, when needed, a sharp sense of style. And because she loved me so, she dressed to the nines in a tailored suite (color her favorite mauve), obligatory diamond broach, and ordered her brand-new Oldsmobile immaculately clean. She insisted on driving me to college, the 245 miles from Downers Grove, Illinois. It was a great honor and I regarded it as such. But it almost upended the apple cart.

You see, the actual town of Mt. Vernon, Iowa (population just 2593 in 1960) was not impressive; in fact, if you blinked you missed it… and thus was born in Grammie’s voice a distinct sense of apprehension. This got worse when we stopped at what seemed to be the town’s only eatery, for which the words “greasy spoon” would be a compliment, dead flies, slatternly, perspiring waitress, food that would haunt you through many a rest stop. Then she and with anguish in her voice said, “It’s still not too late to leave, Laddie,” using my childhood name. “We can turn around now and go home…” perhaps forgetting for a moment my “home” was now in Los Angeles. She missed me so….

Sympathy in the porch swing. “Count me in.”

My fate was now in the balance and perhaps I wavered, I cannot say. But then the president of Guild Hall came out to greet, first, Grammie, for stylish ladies in diamonds are worth the most amiable of greetings; then me. Grammie, charming as always, worried about me asked if he had a moment to talk. And so the two of them sat down on the old porch swing to determine my future.

In a moment they were earnestly engaged, going a mile a minute, her hand in his. Then they were done and she beckoned me and whispered, “You’re going to like it here. This nice young man will help you.” And the “nice young man” nodded that he would and was as good as his word. I remember Harvey well and can now thank you from the unimaginable summit of 66 years and by reminding you of Gary Lewis and the Playboys and their 1965 hit “Count Me In” which wafted through Guild’s corridors that August day so long ago.

“If you need someone to count on, count me in/ Someone you can rely on through thick and thin.”

You were the first of so many Cornellians I met who helped make it all so very, very good.

About the Author

->Check out Syndication Rockstar -> http://www.LizsWorldprofit.com/?rd=mr7LdU2O

Posted in Life | Tagged cornell college, Guild Hall, heartland, The Cornellian | Leave a comment

She’s got the power! The lady with success tied around her little finger… Meet Linda Elze… force of nature, lovable champ, an example to us all. Worldprofit Sales Person of the Year, 2012.

Posted on February 4, 2013 by Liz English

<img src=”http://blog.lizsworldprofit.com/image1.jpg/” alt=”linda elze”/> by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.

Author’s program note. I am about to do you the biggest favor of your life. For right here, right now I am going to introduce you to a svelte California grandmother named Linda Elze… and I can assure you it’s a contact you will cherish, the way so many all over this grand world already do.

Linda Elze! (Pronounced “El Zee”).

Say it out loud.

Roll these two words on your tongue.

Say them as often as necessary until they are engrained in your brain… because she’s about to become one of the most important people in your entire life and that’s a fact.

To put you in the mood for what’s coming, go to any search engine and call up a tune that turns the timid into tigers; wimps into winners; the cowering and terminally cautious into champs with attitude and energy to burn. I’m talking about the pulsating number called “The Power”.

It’s an electronic pop hit by the German music group Snap! from their January 1990 album “World Power”. It’s not a tune for sissies, and if you’re the kind of person who’s prone to throwing in the towel whenever the smallest obstacle intrudes, you’d better scram now because this tune, like Ms. Elzee herself, is raw energy and not for quitters, whatever the “reason”. Capisce?

Thousands and thousands in debt. “Oh yeah, gettin’ kinda heavy.”

One fine day several years ago, Linda arrived at Worldprofit’s Live Business Center at worldprofit.com. She was depressed, despondent, dazed and all but bleeding to death. She wanted to make money online, was willing to invest, was keen to work and work hard but so far her endeavors had generated nothing but anger, frustration, and a whole lot of unladylike verbiage. Linda was at the end of her tether, thousands and thousands in debt, good money thrown after bad. She was about to become one of the legion of also-rans whose bleached bones litter the Internet. It was not a pretty picture, and the prognosis was worse.

But then the lady got lucky…

She got an invitation to visit that interactive gem of the Internet, Worldprofit’s Live Business Center, a place where generous experts donate their time 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to help people like Linda — and you. When you enter, without waiting even a minute, you find the kind of mature, helpful, informed, good-natured folks your mother told you make the best friends and why didn’t you bring a couple of them home after school, she’d like to meet them?

“Don’t need the police to try to save them.”

As her name was called out — “Hi, Linda!” — she felt — right then — that she’d come home. “They had me at ‘hello’ “, as she likes to say. And she meant it just as thousands of others have.

She joined that day, within the first hour she knew of this oh so special place… that reached out with technology made easy (per chief technical officer George Kosch); ongoing instruction in how to create, develop, market, promote and maintain an online home-based business (also per George Kosch)… prompt, friendly, understandable answers (per director of website development Sandi Hunter) to the queries which inevitably pop up to even experienced marketers and need immediate attention. And over 1.5 million formatted words by that “lyrical Jesse James” (that would be me) ready for blogs, ebooks, videos and more. It was Christmas, Valentine’s Day and your birthday all rolled up together and presented on a solid silver plate engraved just for you.

Part-time to full-time.”Quality. I possess something. I’m fresh.”

Like so many Worldprofit members, Linda kept her day job while she mastered the ins-and-outs of online marketing. She played it cool; doing her home work, attending George Kosch’s supremely practical, do-able, and precise step-by-step training sessions which were both live and recorded.

She was champing at the bit to go full-time, especially after the money started rolling in; (just days after she joined and which she used to polish off that multi-K monkey on her back)… but took our advice: “Slow and steady wins the race.” She’s a smart lady, listened and moved ahead — always ahead — one certain step at a time. In short order she was a full-time online marketer, home-based, her favorite television programs crackling in the background as she soon exceeded the income from her old J.O.B., and that was just the beginning, for her objective was as infinite as the Internet itself.

“Maniac, brainiac, winning the game”.

In quick-step time, by following a proven cash-producing system developed and perfected over nearly 20 years online and available in the Home Business Bootcamp, Linda Elze jumped up the ladder of success; first by mastering the basics. Then by implementing them EVERY SINGLE DAY. Her unyielding mantra went like this:

On sunny days, promote. On days that aren’t, promote. On days you’re hungry, promote. On days you’re not, promote. On days you feel like it, promote. On days you don’t, promote.

Get the picture? Promote every single day without fail. Never permit yourself the license or luxury to forego this absolutely essential activity.

By following George Kosch’s system, for the improvement of which she made excellent suggestions from time to time, her goals were achieved with speed and efficiency.

Item: She made back the thousands in previously lost money. She had assumed such a loss was permanent, but Worldprofit’s tested system returned the funds, an unexpected moment of pure joy.

Item: She was able to quit the J(ust) O(ver) B(roke) and work her ever burgeoning online business full time, with substantially improved financial returns. Her always cheerful disposition showed just how happy she was, how well she was doing.

Item: The business she built so well, so thoroughly, so happily produced not just funds for her but a substantial legacy for her family and that gave her peace of mind.

“I’ve got the power!”

Today Linda Elze stands before the world as testament to what happens when you are willing to invest in yourself, follow a proven system, and work within a life enhancing community where all work for themselves and each other.

On every level, in every way, on every day Linda has shown us what is possible when a great system, a great work ethic, and a great heart are united…

Envoi. Words from your CEO on behalf of the three Co-Founders of Worldprofit and all the Members.

Friend Linda. Here you are again in the Winner’s Circle, as you have been so very many times before. You, who so avoid the lime light, are enduring it again… Not for yourself but because you know that people worldwide need to hear your inspiring story, need to know what you did and how you transformed long-standing defeat into continual victory. They need to know… so that they, too, can do. And for this we thank you as we thank you for the privilege of traveling this information highway with you.

Thus, on behalf of the three partners and Co-Founders of Worldprofit, Inc., George Kosch, Sandi Hunter, and me; and for all your many friends, colleagues, dealers and well wishers, I name you Worldprofit Sales Person of the Year, 2012. What will you do now? I know.

After having graciously accepted our words, kind, well-meant, honest, you will go back to your work and touch the lives of people worldwide who, not yet knowing you and what you can do, will soon know better and thank you for being you, the lady we know, the lady we respect, the lady who long ago won our hearts and admiration.

About the Author

-> Check out Syndication Rockstar -> http://www.LizsWorldprofit.com/?rd=mr7LdU2O

Posted in Home Business | Tagged champion, home business, linda elze, power, success, Worldprofit | Leave a comment

‘We’ll always be bosom buddies.’ An appreciation for the lives of Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren and the warring twins who kept America on the straight and narrow, laughing the while. | 'Auntie Mame'

Posted on January 28, 2013 by Liz English

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.

Author’s program note. In 1955 when I was just 8 one of the happiest of books hit the best seller lists… and launched a glittering palace (it was far too lucrative to be considered just a “cottage”) industry that continues to this very day. The book was Patrick Dennis’ delicious confectionery “Auntie Mame”, and in our house as so many others it quickly became the most effective treatment for whatever ails you.

Its mantra, “Life is a banquet and most poor suckers are starving to death”, became the litmus test for whatever we did… wherever we went… whoever we knew. Was the task life enhancing… was the destination exciting… and were the people the kind Auntie Mame would have at her ultra chic Beekman Place soirees on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, bright, fun, a bit off center, nary a fuddy duddy amongst them?

You may have supposed such a larger-than-life personality could only exist between covers or on the silver screen… but you’d be wrong… For there was not merely one, there were two — and twins at that. Born Eppie and Popo Friedman in Sioux City, Iowa July 4, 1918 just 17 minutes apart, you, me, and the rest of the world came to love them as Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren…

… and they were, quite simply, box office magic from the very first moment they sat down to listen to America, its problems and secret angst… only to provide even more than a sympathetic ear; rather, a response that was at once practical, shrewd, trenchant — and funny.

It was an art form which in its concise brilliance rivalled Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571), Renaissance master craftsman of breathtaking jewels. Had the sisters known him, they would most assuredly have called him “Bennie” and told him to sit down and take the load off. It was their winning way.

To accompany their felicitous story of massive influence, wise cracks and hand-holding sympathy, I’ve selected two tunes, one entitled “Drifting” by Bronislaw Kaper from the 1958 film starring my personal favorite Auntie Mame, Rosalind Russell; the other (“Bosom Buddies”) from the first Broadway show I ever saw on the Great White Way, “Mame”, (1966) music and lyrics by Jerry Herman. How the sisters Friedman must have loved them…

It all began in… Russia.

Father Abraham Friedman was born a Russian Jew, at a time when anti-Semitic execration was the least of his problems; humiliation and pogroms were far worse, deadening, demeaning, dealing death and destruction. Amidst so much bleakness and despair, there was one great hope… and that hope was America, the happy ending to every story.

Thus did Abraham Friedman do what was necessary to escape the calculated oppressions of the tsars and breathe free. And so, by laborious stages, did he shake off Russia and embrace the Promised Land of America, its Great Republic, and the immemorial vastness of its great plains, Iowa in particular.

There out of the freedom that never lost its luster, hard work and… chickens… he prospered, moving up, moving up again, moving up some more with sweat and gratitude until itinerant chicken peddler no longer he owned a string of movie theaters.

God and America had shed their grace… and the twins were thereby born into bounty and liberty. That they were born on Independence Day only confirmed their privileged position. There was only one problem… Each had a sister who had to be beaten, put in her place, and triumphed over. This rivalry, in time celebrated, aggravating and embarrassing, was crucial to understanding everything that came next.

To begin this chapter of their story, a tune from the musical “Mame” will help. It’s the barn burning rendition of “Bosom Buddies” in which Vera Charles (Bea Arthur) and Auntie Mame (Angela Lansbury) tell it like it is… hilariously… but upfront, personal and honest to a fault. It takes no trouble to imagine the ultra competitive sisters belting out this tune to each other… each claiming at the end that her rendition was markedly superior, so there. Here is just a sample of the delectable lyrics which you’ll find in any search engine.

“We’ll always be bosom buddies/ Friends, sisters and pals/ We’ll always be bosom buddies/ If life should reject you/ There’s me to protect you…

(Vera) If I say that your tongue is vicious. (Mame) If I call you uncouth. (Vera and Mame) It’s simply that who else but a bosom buddy/ Will sit down and tell you the truth?”

Who else, indeed? And so these supremely skilled sisters, with torments and tortures both exquisite and refined available at all hours, delivered their home truths to each other with enthusiasm, gusto and complete certainty that she and she alone was right. It was a pattern which started with birth and shaped their entire lives. Thus, in 1939 when Popo dropped out of college to marry Morton Phillips, an heir to a liquor fortune, Eppie wed Jules Lederer, who later founded Budget Rent A Car.

Thus did money marry money, twice, in a lavish double ceremony in which the flamboyant twins flaunted their stuff, for their well-heeled hubbies –and, in every one upping way, for each other. But marriage was never enough, for either. They, both of course, wanted Something To Do… and with “Ask Ann Landers”, they (both) got it.

“Ask Ann Landers.”

Since there have been newspapers, there have been advice columns. Why? Because we just cannot get enough of other people’s problems or (cheap) solutions to our own. Such columns, of course, had to be short, punchy, informative and capable of making readers laugh (or cry) on command.

One unheralded mistress of the genre was Ruth Crowley, Chicago nurse, who in 1941 started writing a child-care column for the “Chicago Sun-Times”. When she diversified into the general advice business she selected, at random, the pseudonym. She kept her actual identity strictly secret until her death, aged just 48, on July 20, 1955. Eppie entered the contest to find a replacement… and won. She was a rank beginner, no experience, biddable, buried by all the mail she got; unsure how to respond to every complaint known to humans.

Swamped, overwhelmed, she called on Popo for assistance. In two shakes of a lamb’s tail she (naturally) concluded she could do the job better. And called “The San Francisco Chronicle”, identifying herself as a local housewife who thought she could do better than the current advice columnist. The editor genially told her to drop by when next in the neighborhood. Next day, she donned a Dior original and took the astonished editor up on his invitation. She left her chauffeur-driven Cadillac idling while she went in to make history.

To get this obviously determined woman out of his office, he gave her a stack of letters to answer. She did… dropping off her characteristically blunt responses the next day. She was hired at once for $20 a week… and the greatest sister feud of American journalism (including long periods of complete estrangement) was launched; Eppie as “Ann Landers”, Popo as “Abigail Van Buren” (a name that was a combination of the Bible and old money). Their arch rivalry made for good copy and the kind of white-hot competition that brought out the best; each one, after all, was “better”… and they meant the world not only to know so… but to say so.

Thus the ladies who didn’t have to work worked even harder, building empires worth hundreds of millions. They liked the money, of course, but they liked beating sis even better. And so America learned about how many did housework as God made them; the proper way to position the toilet roll; and the shocking statistics on how many would not marry their mate again and get rid of the children they didn’t like and wished they had not conceived. In the process they enriched the language with phrases like “MYOB”; “Wake up and smell the coffee,” and “The sample was ample.”

“Dear Abby: I’m a twin. My sister has been a thorn in my side for our entire lives. What can I do to solve the problem and show her who’s boss? Had It In San Francisco.”

“Dear Had It, pick up the phone, call her and beg her pardon. It’s what I should have done years ago. I’m dialing your number right this minute, Eppie. I love you, Popo”.

Envoi

Eppie Lederer died in 2002 at 83. Popo Phillips died January 16, 2013, aged 94. As for me, I’m Inconsolable in Cambridge… Special for “Lovers in Las Vegas, Doyle & Casey. Don’t stop the magic. You’re an inspiration to a glum and dreary world and a joy to me.”

About the Author

-> Check out Easy Video Suite -> http://www.LizsWorldprofit.com/?rd=mr1oiWhW

Posted in General Interest | Tagged 'Auntie Mame", ask ann landers, dear abby, gossip columnists, twins | Leave a comment

U.S. Presidential Libraries. Time for radical rethinking as “Hail to the Chief” gets way out of hand.

Posted on January 24, 2013 by Liz English

<img src=”http://blog.lizsworldprofit.com/image1.jpg/” alt=”U.S. Presidential Libraries”/> by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.

Author’s program note. I admit it. I am a presidential buff. I have been for all of my 66 years. I like reading about them, can’t get enough of their early lives, campaigns, policies and peccadilloes, and the tragedies and obsequies which I regard with the same high seriousness and reverence as my own family’s.

For make no mistake about it, for most of us presidents are the Fathers of the Nation and deserve the admiration, consideration and respect we give our own fathers. And it is because of this admiration and respect that I advance the audacious proposals of this article, for it is past time to scrutinize and re-think the matter of the presidential legacies called Presidential Libraries and Museums.

For you see they are, as they stand today, obsolete, expensive, white elephants, inconvenient, grossly inadequate to the task they must perform but cannot perform under the present inefficient system which has grown up like Topsy without vision, efficiency, sufficient financing, organization and maximum utility. In short the “system” is a mess, more muddled with each new president’s addition of his library, the ultimate presidential “entitlement” of all. Here, now I draw the line:

Presidential ego (none more bloated anywhere on earth) must give way to public instruction and utility.

But before we begin, here’s the peppy campaign song I selected to accompany this article. It appears in no presidential library because none of the three presidents mentioned in it have such libraries. And that, of course, is just one more reason why the present flawed, inadequate, incomplete system ignoring most presidents, must be reconstructed for the benefit, first and foremost, of the presidential institution; the executive branch of our tri-partite government.

Such an institution must be a testament, an ornament, a monument to the presidency itself, infinitely more so than merely to the men who have, for a time, held the high office and wrestled with certain events occurring during their administrations, events which might very well have had, most likely did have their roots in earlier administrations and their conclusions still later, in others.

Intricate problems, intractable, interminable, incontrollable demand the talents of many presidents; to truncate such matters into one administration, one president warps, distorts and misrepresents history. Events must never be boxed into terms for mere ease but must be presented as they developed through the several presidents involved in each. In such a way is history best served as well as the various presidents who had a hand, deft or otherwise, in making it.

Now the tune… “Tippecanoe and Tyler Too”, originally published as “Tip and Ty” was a very popular and influential campaign song of the Whig Party’s colorful Log Cabin Campaign of 1840. With its catchy lyrics (and unlimited hard cider) it helped end the era of President Andrew Jackson and his hand-picked successor Martin Van Buren, ridiculed as a small man, effete, with small ideas, rumored to wear scent and a girdle. Find it now in any search engine and enjoy its infectious rhythms.

“What’s the cause of this commotion, motion, motion/ Our country through?/ It is the ball a-rolling on/ For Tippecanoe and Tyler too/ For Tippecanoe and Tyler too/ And with them we’ll beat little Van, Van, Van/ Van is a used-up man.”

General William Henry Harrison won, thereby becoming the first Whig president. He got a burial place in Vincennes, Indiana and a modest house museum in North Bend, Ohio. But no grandiose presidential library.

His successor John Tyler became the first vice president to ascend to the presidency upon the death of the incumbent. He, too, warranted nothing more upon his death in 1862 than a respectable monument in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, engraved with suitably sonorous sentiments.

His private residence Sherwood Forest is still owned by his family, who, from their own resources, make the nation’s longest frame house open to the public. Because he died an avowed secessionist and supporter of the Confederacy, he was dropped from the honorable roll of American presidents, for all that he had tried, right into Abraham Lincoln’s early days as president to preserve the Union. When Virginia seceded, he went with her and so became a traitor, and that was that.

The man they defeated, Van Buren, ended up with an historic property called “Lindenwald” near Albany. It is thread bare and artifact-less to a degree. The day I visited with a friend, we were the only visitors. The park ranger asked if we might like to purchase Van Buren’s heavily ornate early Victorian dining table. He wasn’t kidding. It sold at auction in New York just a few months later!

The administrators couldn’t raise the few bucks needed to keep it in situ and so created another problem screaming for prompt resolution. With any luck one fine day His Excellency’s dining table and chairs will return to Old Kinderhook. Brief history of the U.S. presidential library system.

The presidential library system is a nationwide network of 13 libraries administered by the Office of Presidential Libraries, which is part of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA). These are repositories for preserving and making available the papers, records, collections and other historical materials of every President of the United States since Herbert Hoover. Just 13 libraries, you say; what happened to all the other presidents? Good question; without a good answer.

Some presidents (but by no means all) have libraries and museums operated by private foundations, historical societies, or state governments. The Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum is owned and operated by the State of Illinois, for instance. Thus some presidents are ignored, their deeds undervalued and forgotten whilst others reside through the years in elegance, luxury, their place in the nation’s history secure and comfortably maintained. This is not right; it is not fair; and it does not do justice either to the presidents so poorly treated, if treated at all, or their individual and collective work. “Hail to the Chief has taken precedence over all and thus is the republic undermined and the imperial presidency built.

It is time to take a new look at the entire business of Presidential Libraries and Museums, ob ovo, “from the egg.” For each addition to the present system only exacerbates its inefficiencies and makes the inadequacies even more glaring than they already are.

What needs to be done… and at once.

First, President Obama, the next slated for elevation to library and museum sainthood, must say “basta” to the nation, that enough is enough; that he is willing, in the greater interests of the nation and his office, to forego perhaps its greatest perquisite…

… That instead, he will use his position, his clout, his undeniable fund raising skills to create a new kind of museum with the explicit role of explaining and exalting the presidency, not just the presidents, much less just a handful of them.

This new institution, placed in a plum position in our great capital, would exist first of all to explain what our citizens need to know about the executive office and how it works. It is a scandal how little our citizens currently know about this essential function; a living, breathing, changing institution can change all that.

How?

Look to the video games of our youngest citizens for inspiration. Their computer role plays, simulations, combats, interactions, holographics and strategies point the way to what must be done… and can be done if President Obama will lay down ego and take this opportunity to advance the greater good. He is now uniquely placed to make this decision and give the Great Republic a unique gift that will benefit the nation and all its citizens whilst giving him another historic role and feature. If he takes the long view, and not the selfish one, he will make the right decision….

About the Author

Republished with author’s permission by Elizabeth English http://LizsWorldprofit.com

Check out Easy Video Suite -> http://www.LizsWorldprofit.com/?rd=mr1oiWhW

Posted in US Politics | Tagged museums, president, presidential libraries | Leave a comment

‘But there are dreams that cannot be And there are storms we cannot weather.’ Of Aaron Swartz, 26, Internet visionary. Dead by his own hand, January 11, 2013.

Posted on January 21, 2013 by Liz English

<img src=”http://blog.lizsworldprofit.com/image1.jpg/” alt=”Aaron Swartz, 26”/>

Aaon Swartz 26

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.

Author’s program note. Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman and Aaron Swartz had been an item for 18 months or so. She was sharply aware of the dark melancholy that could come at any time out of nowhere, seizing him, casting him into a despair without end, without mercy, without reason and with utterly no hope whatsoever. It was always frightening for both of them because it left both exhausted, anxious, never knowing when it might return… only to stay forever, locking her out and him within, lovers separated by bleak futility. So were their young lives and love blighted and made uncertain.

On Friday, January 11, Taren was up, getting ready for work. Aaron was still in bed. Instinctively, she knew that if she could get him up, entice a little food in him, put a smile on his pale face, he was better positioned to meet another day and his particular demons. And so as she told The Boston Globe in a telephone interview, “I really tried everything I could think of to get him out of bed. I opened the curtains, played music, tickled him, and eventually it got to the point of throwing water on him.” Nothing worked. She was terribly worried… knew he was in a “really difficult place” with his trial dead ahead… didn’t want to leave him, was already late for work.

He smiled and told her he needed rest, that he’d be fine, that he’d stay in bed and sleep. Yes, he’d be fine, urging her on her way. Then he smiled again, perhaps the last smile of his young life. So she smiled and shut the door. He and the melancholy he called “Raw Nerve” were now alone together… together with God Almighty, omniscient, omnipotent, omniparous…

Throughout the morning, Taren texted him with affectionate messages and the ideas he loved. There was no answer, no response at all to the concern of his beloved. Nor to anything else. Aaron, firebrand, computer prodigy, revolutionary, lover of humanity, seeker after truth… was already beyond the cares of men, free of even the miseries that had assailed him just minutes before, turning life into unendurable burden.

At last, and by his own determined hand, he was at peace… the countenance of God lighting his way, lightening his load; inscrutable no longer but welcoming, accepting, the God of eternal love.

“I Dreamed a Dream.”

For this tale of our wired times and one of its gifted creators gone awry, now gone forever, I have selected one of the greatest achievements from the fertile partnership of Claude-Michel Schonberg (music) and Alain Boublil and Jean-Marc Natel (lyrics). It is “I Dreamed a Dream” from “Les Miserables” (1985). It is a tune that bites deep and makes the tears run hot and fast, for like Fantine we have all believed… and been disillusioned; loved and been abandoned; given and been spurned…

… oppressed by “dreams that cannot be And… storms we cannot weather.” Thus we have all known our own particular version of Aaron Swartz’ story… and can therefore attest to its validity… and its excruciating pain, searing, so fundamental a part of our human experience. You’ll find many fine versions in any search engine. Go now… and let it move you.

Aaron’s story.

Swartz was born November 8, 1986 in Chicago, the son of Susan and Robert Swartz. His father had founded a software company and from an early day young Aaron was obsessed by technology, ardently studying computers, the Internet and its unique culture. When he was just 13, Swartz was a winner of the ArsDigita Prize, a competition for young people who created “useful, educational, and collaborative” Web sites.

The prize included a trip to Cambridge, Massachusetts to the august Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Thus, unknowingly on both sides, did the protagonist of the tale, American computer programmer, writer, political organizer and Internet activist and the “scene of the crime” come together in an uneasy embrace, from which even death did not part them.

MIT, of course, citadel of America’s technical might and constant innovation, knew prodigies of course; they were common along Massachusetts Avenue in the inelegant concrete bunkers which disdained any grace or artistry whatsoever. Harvard students, on the other side of Central Square, might sniff and condescend to the “nerds” but these nerds wore their social awkwardness and bad manners like the red badge of courage. They knew that the planet’s future and the well being of millions would be shaped by them, however socially inept, ill at ease, unwashed and disheveled they might be.

Swartz, slight, a wisp of a lad, looking like a child up too late, hair an outrageous mop, eager to know you, befriend you, learn from you loved the 24-hour-a-day, projects-always-percolating environment. Its high energy, high stakes, high destiny lifestyle grabbed him like fly paper. He was to this manner born… and it took him, quirks and all, to its ample and exuberant heart. Aaron was home…

“I dreamed a dream in days gone by/ When hope was high / And life worth living”

To understand what happened next you must know something of the Internet, something of the tech community and something about MIT, at once corporate giant and bubbling cauldron of constantly new and exciting ideas. It is a place of the youthful enthusiasm that only comes once in life; a place where the best and the brightest constantly advance, discuss, shape and discard ideas, all night, all day, thereby inventing our future.

It is a place where change, transforming change, is the object of the day and the ideas of the past, no matter how serviceable they may once have been, are derided as old hat and unapologetically cast aside, only to be replaced in their turn.

Swartz loved this culture and its unending focus on making the world, in every aspect, better and better still. He approached this objective from many directions for he was a man glad to share, hoping you’d share with him as people were generally glad to do. Sharing, not selling, information became his mantra… and his downfall; increasingly because what he “shared” did not belong to him, was not his to give.

In late 2010 and early 2011, Swartz downloaded about 4 million documents from the JSTOR (“Journal Storage”) archives. In the process he crashed some of JSTOR’s servers. By now a host of people were involved in this matter, including officials at MIT, JSTOR… and the FBI.

On January 6, 2011 Swartz got the knock on the door he must have hoped would never come. He was arrested and charged by Carmen Ortiz, U.S. Attorney for Massachusetts, with wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer and recklessly damaging a protected computer.

This was a felony charge; the kind of charge major criminals get. Not least the kind of charge which, if proven, would deprive Swartz of his right to vote, give him up to 35 years in prison and a million in fines.

All of a sudden the world was a very different place, threatening, ominous, determined to crush and obliterate.

“I had a dream my life would be/ So different from this hell I’m living.”

Once Swartz was arrested all the characters of the final chapter began to assemble… Aaron’s lawyers and supporters… prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s office and other law enforcement agencies… representatives of JSTOR and MIT… partisans of the prosecutors who wanted to “make an example” and his supporters who cited his previous squeaky clean record and willingness to sign an agreement not to do anything like this again.

But perhaps most important of all there was “Raw Nerve” which wiped out all hope and exacerbated all despair until Aaron Swartz bore only a semblance to the high energy, far seeing, joyful reformer he had once been, and not so long ago.

Now was the moment for humanity… to read Swartz the riot act for he had transgressed… but without locking him away for even the four to six months proposed; convicted felon; no right to vote ever again. Now was the moment for empathy… for understanding… for an appropriate deal; a deal that would admonish Swartz without destroying him… for the nation needs such audacious thinkers with their profound knowledge of the Internet, its technology, and its burgeoning uses.

Where was this person? How could so many who knew Aaron and his plight see him and yet fail to perceive his need… how could this happen?

“There was a time when men were kind/ When their voices were soft/ And their words inviting… /There was a time/ Then it all went wrong.” No more so than with Aaron Swartz..

Envoi, Aaron’s words, his timeless warning to us…

“And it will happen again; sure, it will have another name, and maybe a different excuse, and probably do its damage in a different way, but make no mistake, the enemies of the freedom to connect have not disappeared. The fire in those politicians’ eyes has not been put out.”

Thus does dead Aaron Swartz, far too soon taken, show us what we must do. Now we must do it and keep the faith.

About the Author

http://LizsWorldprofit.com

Check out Easy Video Suite -> http://www.LizsWorldprofit.com/?rd=mr1oiWhW

Posted in Interesting People | Tagged Aaron Swartz, Boston Globe, internet, internet visionary, MIT, Raw Nerve, Taren Stinebrickner-Kauffman | Leave a comment

Lizs Worldprofit Blog

‘and the ladies they will all turn out.’ How war came to Main Street enlisting every single one of us. Some thoughts.

‘So drop the top, baby, and let’s cruise on into it’s better than ever street.’ The maid did it. Thoughts on Barbara Piasecka Johnson, the world’s 149th richest person, dead at 76, April 1, 2013.

‘Riders on the storm.’ A nor’easter wallops New England. Its aftermath, Sunday, February 10, 2013. The landscape of our mind changed.

‘Varvara’, a story of today’s Russia… of love, lust, deceit… of international intrigue, email, muscles, murder… and poetry. A cautionary tale. | Vavara

‘Girls, you know what they want.’ Tales of Ma Pfeiffer, the quiddities and contortions of courtship, a world on the edge of destruction. Cornell College,1965. | it's a wonderful life

1965. My year in the heartland. ‘It’s still not too late to leave, Laddie.’ ‘Count me in.’ | Cornell

She’s got the power! The lady with success tied around her little finger… Meet Linda Elze… force of nature, lovable champ, an example to us all. Worldprofit Sales Person of the Year, 2012.

‘We’ll always be bosom buddies.’ An appreciation for the lives of Ann Landers and Abigail Van Buren and the warring twins who kept America on the straight and narrow, laughing the while. | 'Auntie Mame'

U.S. Presidential Libraries. Time for radical rethinking as “Hail to the Chief” gets way out of hand.

‘But there are dreams that cannot be And there are storms we cannot weather.’ Of Aaron Swartz, 26, Internet visionary. Dead by his own hand, January 11, 2013.

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

Archives

Categories

Meta