Please read and enjoy our articles. Turn off the T.V. the radio, lock the door, and take the telephone off the hook . Give yourself a bit of quiet time to enjoy the full flavour of emotions, ideas, and inspirations you will get from these articles.
Come on in ActionEqualsprofit.com Meet and chat with the renowned Dr. Jeffrey Lant himself! He will be there at 2.15 PM EST most days,Saturday come 2 hrs. early and will be reading his latest article.
Call me at
310-618-8107
Confidential for YOU to get the 100% Give Away: Software Packages To Generate Massive Waves Of Traffic To Your Website
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBlbPw7WAqM
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Today is Mother's Day in the United States. It occurred just the other day in England... and will occur around the globe at various times all year long as millions of people make a point of honoring mother and making this day special for her. Those of us whose mother has passed on will take time this day for remembrance... turning this into a day of bittersweet joy and sorrow. There will be tears... but there will be smiles, too, as we recall every aspect of Mom with all the memories we cherish so. Yes, there most assuredly will be smiles, too... for Mom, even if gone, still has the power to lighten our lives and soothe us, just as she did so often once upon a time...
Anna Jarvis and the creation of Mother's Day, 1914.
There have, of course, been mothers' days as long as there have been mothers. Kind-hearted fathers and grateful children undoubtedly saw to that... but one woman wanted more for mothers than a casual, occasional compliment. Her name was Anna Jarvis and she is the reason you are dropping by your mom's today, your arms full of spring flowers and a myriad of affectionate tokens.
Anna Jarvis was born May 1, 1864 in Webster, Taylor County, West Virginia. She was the ninth of eleven children born to Ann Marie and Granville Jarvis. From childhood Anna idolized her mother, and she often heard her say that she hoped someone one day would establish a memorial for all mothers, living and dead.
Anna always recalled one particular incident that drove home her mother's unceasing message. This incident occurred during a class prayer given by Mrs. Jarvis in Anna's receptive presence. Mrs. Jarvis' lesson was on "Mothers of the Bible". She closed the lesson with the prayer "I hope that someone, sometime will found a memorial mothers day commemorating her for the matchless service she renders to humanity in every field of life. She is entitled to it."
Anna was just 12 years old... and not only did she never forget; she dedicated her life to achieving her mother's desire. We can now see the contours of this story. Mrs. Jarvis, kept perpetually pregnant, laboring under a mountain of never- ending work, with a husband who never understood all she did and how much he relied upon her... and a daughter completely receptive to her mother's urgent plea for recognition, assistance, and above all else -- love. Mrs. Ann Marie Jarvis poured it all into her daughter's dutiful ears... and whatever her resentments, disappointments and moments of chagrin... here at least she was abundantly rewarded. Her darling Anna saw to that...
After her mother's death on May 9, 1905, Anna, now living with siblings Claude and Lillie, began her life's work, to create a day that would fulfill her mother's fervid desire. Fueled by love and the image of her overworked, under loved (but never by Anna) mother... Anna put her active pen to paper, determined to achieve her goal of establishing a nationwide observance of Mother's Day. Nothing was going to stop her, and so from love came the focused, unceasing activity that moves mountains. She bombarded hundreds of legislators, executives, and businessmen on both state and national levels.
Everyone was polite, muttering general words of support... but, despite her efforts and her skills as a notable and motivating speaker, Anna Jarvis was making no progress. Then one of the greatest marketers in history, John Wanamaker, merchant prince, entrepreneur, philanthropist heard Anna and saw at once that her idea was good for Wanmaker's, good for business, good for America, and good for mothers everywhere. It was a win-win situation all round...
With the inventive genius, power, influence and energy of John Wanamaker (1838-1922) behind her, Anna Jarvis and her idea moved onwards and upwards at incredible speed. On May 10, 1908 15,000 folks eager to Honor Thy Mother showed up at Wanamaker's Store Auditorium in Philadelphia to hear Anna Jarvis speak. 10,000 of them had to be turned away for lack of room... It was a magnificent event... thereafter success followed success, Wanamaker saw to that; he was a dynamo of a man, success his birthright.
By 1909, 45 states, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Canada and Mexico observed Mother's Day. People by the millions wore the white and red carnations the movement had adopted as a visible means of showing that the wearer loved Mother and supported the cause. President Wilson proclaimed the first national Mother's Day in 1914. Everyone was happy now; a great goal had been achieved... everyone, that is, but Anna Jarvis.
Every time a florist sold a bouquet... every time a husband hard-pressed for time and with worries of his own bought a card... every time anyone made a buck off her Mother's Day, Anna Jarvis winced. And so as the number of participants grew into the millions, Jarvis who should have been the happiest of all became the most miserable. This isn't at all what she had in mind for mothers... or the memory of her mother.
So began the sad decline of Anna Jarvis, the woman who now proceeded to burn every bridge and sunder her intimate connection to Mother's Day until with the death of her sister, she was entirely alone... having nothing but memories and the assurance of her mother's love. And so she went on, bitter, alone, forgotten, neglected until at last she died, November 24, 1948, her mother's zealous defender until the end...
... but too much so. I like to think that Anna's mother would have been glad for the card (even if store-bought), for the flowers (even if not picked from your own garden), and the candy you didn't have time or talent to make... because each is a token of a love which cannot be celebrated too often... the love of mother. And so if your mother is alive today, do something, anything, indicating you care.
And as you are lavishing these gifts on your one and only mother, give a thought to Anna Jarvis and her troubled spirit. She is the reason you have the happy task of turning this otherwise ordinary day into the reassurance your mother requires that yes, resoundingly yes, she was and yet is a good mother, the best of all whatever her faults or limitations. All she really needs is to hear you say so....
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Lawrence Rinke http://ActionEqualsProfit.com.
What’s your opinion on this?
Please leave a comment!
I hope you Enjoyed this article.
Lawrence Rinke
YOU Can have yourself over 180 Articles on YOUR Blog
Call me at
310-618-8107
http://ActionEqualsProfit.com.
Takes the time to check out what Worldprofit offers. You not only learn extensively how to market your business, but how to market yourself as well.
For Leaving a comment you will get
When YOU click and fill the form on the next page.
100% Give Away: Software Packages To Generate Massive Waves Of Traffic To Your Website
http://www.ActionEqualsProfit.com/?rd=uv82n09j
Sunday, May 8, 2011
Saturday, May 7, 2011
Lawrence: 'Green grow the lilacs, all sparkling with dew.' ...
Lawrence: 'Green grow the lilacs, all sparkling with dew.' ...: "Please read and enjoy our articles. Turn off the T.V. the radio, lock the door, and take the telephone off the hook . Give yourself a bit o..."
'Green grow the lilacs, all sparkling with dew.' Haunting, evocative, elegiac, the lilacs return to Brattle St.., Cambridge, May 7, 2011.
Please read and enjoy our articles. Turn off the T.V. the radio, lock the door, and take the telephone off the hook . Give yourself a bit of quiet time to enjoy the full flavour of emotions, ideas, and inspirations you will get from these articles.
Come on in ActionEqualsprofit.com Meet and chat with the renowned Dr. Jeffrey Lant himself! He will be there at 2.15 PM EST most days,Saturday come 2 hrs. early and will be reading his latest article.
Call me at
310-618-8107
Confidential for YOU to get the 100% Give Away: Software Packages To Generate Massive Waves Of Traffic To Your Website
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBlbPw7WAqM
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
I was out early today. Even before dawn's first light, I was up and about and soon on my mission... to find the first bunches of lilac, and drink in their unmistakable scent with the pristine dew.
What passersby (not too numerous so early) must have thought to see the flowers held against my face, though gently so as not to crush them, I cannot say. I did not care. The lilacs that I love to excess have returned to Cambridge... and with them every memory of this most evocative of flowers and their flagrant, haunting fragrance.
Beloved of Russian empresses...
One day the great Empress Catherine of all the Russias (1762-1796) went walking in her garden of Tsarskoe Selo and found a branch of lilacs, so perfect she was sure it would be picked to amplify the bouquet of some lovelorn lad to his much desired lady... so she stationed a soldier next to this lovely branch. In 1917, a soldier was still stationed where the plant no longer flowered or even existed. But then Tsar Nicholas II wasn't surprised... for his wife Alexandra, called "Sunny", loved lilacs to distraction, too... and created a room in the most palatial of palaces where everything was in a shade of lilac. It became, in due course, the most famous room of the empire...
My grandmother Victoria had this same tendresse for her much loved and coddled lilacs. She craved their scent and their colors, too, in every shade of purple... heliotrope, mauve, violet, lavender, puce, and all the other variations. Even my grandmother's perfume, Muguet de Bois by Coty (launched 1941) featured lilac... and lily-of-the valley. Proust-like, that scent brings her back... as does my mother's Chanel. Lilac is like that. It will not be denied and can never be resisted.
And now the lilacs are in rampant bloom along Tory Row on Brattle Street, breathtaking, sensual, glorious. The Loyalists would have remembered them for all the rest of their long lives; the merest hint of their scent would trigger the painful memories that come with unending exile.
A few facts about lilacs.
You may be surprised to learn (I was) that syringa (lilac) is a genus of about 20 to 25 species of flowering woody plants in the olive family (Oleaceae) native to woodland and scrub from southeastern Europe to eastern Asia.
They are deciduous shrubs or small trees, ranging in size from 2 to 10 meters (6 feet 7 inches to 32 feet 10 inches) tall, with stems up to 20 to 30 centimeters (7.9 to 12 inches) in diameter.
The leaves are opposite (occasionally in whorls of three) in arrangement, and their shape is simple and heart-shaped.
The flowers are produced in spring and are bisexual, with fertile stamens and stigma in each flower. The usual flower color is a shade of purple (generally a light purple or lilac), but white, pale yellow and pink, even a dark burgundy color are known. Flowering varies between mid spring to early summer, depending on the species.
The fruit is a dry, brown capsule, splitting in two at maturity to release the two winged seeds that have within them everything that produces the lustrous magnanimity of the lilac and commands your eye and reverence.
The poets irresistible attraction to and understanding of lilacs.
Poets, including many notable poets, saw lilacs and wished, in words, to produce the lyric quality of their scent. The scent, the unforgettable scent, swept them away. It was exuberant, excessive, a warning to the dangers of immersion in a thing so powerful, so rich, so cloying; a thing that draws you away from the little duties and miseries of life and whispers of pleasures you want beyond reason. Too much of this unalloyed richness gives way to madness... and exultation.
Amy Lowell (1874-1925) knew the potency of lilacs. She wrote
"Your great puffs of flowers Are everywhere in this my New England... Lilacs in dooryards Holding quiet conversations with an early moon; Lilacs watching a deserted house Settling sideways into the grass of an old road; Lilacs, wind-beaten, staggering under a lopsided shock of bloom...."
And then....
"You are everywhere. You were everywhere."
Lilacs know their power and seduce you with it, every wind wafting the scent into your brain and memory. They offer you the same terms that a beautiful woman offers the man distracted by her -- none at all, just surrender. Lilacs are the sorceress of blooms, enchanting, elusive, sharing their magic for an instant... leaving you longing for what you fear you will never have again.
The flower of elegy, mourning, decay, death.
Lilacs are the flower of remembrance. After the fall of Tsar Nicholas II and the entire structure of tsardom, the ex-emperor and his wife Alexandra found themselves prisoners of the new regime, forbidden even to walk in the magnificent park at Tsarskoe Selo. Alexandra looked out upon an ocean of lilac, once hers, now as distant as the moon. Her haunted look, beyond mere dismay, touched the heart of a simple soldier. He gave her a sprig. His officer saw this as "fraternizing with the enemy" and had him shot.
Amy Lowell, too, saw lilac as an accoutrement of death.
"The dead fed you Amid the slant stones of graveyards. Pale ghosts who planted you Came in the nighttime and let their thin hair blow through your clustered stems."
Walt Whitman (1819-1892) also knew the immemorial association between lilacs and death, and he gave us the simple words that bespoke the greatest tragedy:
"When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd, And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night, I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring."
He picked a sprig of lilac and thought of the passing into eternity of Abraham Lincoln, "Night and day journeys a coffin." It is unbearably painful for him, only the simple words -- and the lilac -- with its promise to return -- giving solace, for that is within the power of the lilac, too, which Whitman knew and relied on:
"Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes, With loaded arms I come, pouring for you, For you and the coffins all of you O death."
But this cannot be the last word on lilacs, not this.
Think instead of Lynn Riggs' 1931 play "Green Grow the Lilacs", the basis for the libretto of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Oklahoma," a musical about real people and their real concerns. They brought lilac seeds with them to beautiful their often difficult lives because they couldn't bear the thought of life without its beauty, comfort and serenity. And I cannot either.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Lawrence Rinke http://ActionEqualsProfit.com.
What’s your opinion on this?
Please leave a comment!
I hope you Enjoyed this article.
Lawrence Rinke
YOU Can have yourself over 180 Articles on YOUR Blog
Call me at
310-618-8107
http://ActionEqualsProfit.com.
Takes the time to check out what Worldprofit offers. You not only learn extensively how to market your business, but how to market yourself as well.
For Leaving a comment you will get
When YOU click and fill the form on the next page.
100% Give Away: Software Packages To Generate Massive Waves Of Traffic To Your Website
http://www.ActionEqualsProfit.com/?rd=uv82n09j
Come on in ActionEqualsprofit.com Meet and chat with the renowned Dr. Jeffrey Lant himself! He will be there at 2.15 PM EST most days,Saturday come 2 hrs. early and will be reading his latest article.
Call me at
310-618-8107
Confidential for YOU to get the 100% Give Away: Software Packages To Generate Massive Waves Of Traffic To Your Website
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBlbPw7WAqM
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
I was out early today. Even before dawn's first light, I was up and about and soon on my mission... to find the first bunches of lilac, and drink in their unmistakable scent with the pristine dew.
What passersby (not too numerous so early) must have thought to see the flowers held against my face, though gently so as not to crush them, I cannot say. I did not care. The lilacs that I love to excess have returned to Cambridge... and with them every memory of this most evocative of flowers and their flagrant, haunting fragrance.
Beloved of Russian empresses...
One day the great Empress Catherine of all the Russias (1762-1796) went walking in her garden of Tsarskoe Selo and found a branch of lilacs, so perfect she was sure it would be picked to amplify the bouquet of some lovelorn lad to his much desired lady... so she stationed a soldier next to this lovely branch. In 1917, a soldier was still stationed where the plant no longer flowered or even existed. But then Tsar Nicholas II wasn't surprised... for his wife Alexandra, called "Sunny", loved lilacs to distraction, too... and created a room in the most palatial of palaces where everything was in a shade of lilac. It became, in due course, the most famous room of the empire...
My grandmother Victoria had this same tendresse for her much loved and coddled lilacs. She craved their scent and their colors, too, in every shade of purple... heliotrope, mauve, violet, lavender, puce, and all the other variations. Even my grandmother's perfume, Muguet de Bois by Coty (launched 1941) featured lilac... and lily-of-the valley. Proust-like, that scent brings her back... as does my mother's Chanel. Lilac is like that. It will not be denied and can never be resisted.
And now the lilacs are in rampant bloom along Tory Row on Brattle Street, breathtaking, sensual, glorious. The Loyalists would have remembered them for all the rest of their long lives; the merest hint of their scent would trigger the painful memories that come with unending exile.
A few facts about lilacs.
You may be surprised to learn (I was) that syringa (lilac) is a genus of about 20 to 25 species of flowering woody plants in the olive family (Oleaceae) native to woodland and scrub from southeastern Europe to eastern Asia.
They are deciduous shrubs or small trees, ranging in size from 2 to 10 meters (6 feet 7 inches to 32 feet 10 inches) tall, with stems up to 20 to 30 centimeters (7.9 to 12 inches) in diameter.
The leaves are opposite (occasionally in whorls of three) in arrangement, and their shape is simple and heart-shaped.
The flowers are produced in spring and are bisexual, with fertile stamens and stigma in each flower. The usual flower color is a shade of purple (generally a light purple or lilac), but white, pale yellow and pink, even a dark burgundy color are known. Flowering varies between mid spring to early summer, depending on the species.
The fruit is a dry, brown capsule, splitting in two at maturity to release the two winged seeds that have within them everything that produces the lustrous magnanimity of the lilac and commands your eye and reverence.
The poets irresistible attraction to and understanding of lilacs.
Poets, including many notable poets, saw lilacs and wished, in words, to produce the lyric quality of their scent. The scent, the unforgettable scent, swept them away. It was exuberant, excessive, a warning to the dangers of immersion in a thing so powerful, so rich, so cloying; a thing that draws you away from the little duties and miseries of life and whispers of pleasures you want beyond reason. Too much of this unalloyed richness gives way to madness... and exultation.
Amy Lowell (1874-1925) knew the potency of lilacs. She wrote
"Your great puffs of flowers Are everywhere in this my New England... Lilacs in dooryards Holding quiet conversations with an early moon; Lilacs watching a deserted house Settling sideways into the grass of an old road; Lilacs, wind-beaten, staggering under a lopsided shock of bloom...."
And then....
"You are everywhere. You were everywhere."
Lilacs know their power and seduce you with it, every wind wafting the scent into your brain and memory. They offer you the same terms that a beautiful woman offers the man distracted by her -- none at all, just surrender. Lilacs are the sorceress of blooms, enchanting, elusive, sharing their magic for an instant... leaving you longing for what you fear you will never have again.
The flower of elegy, mourning, decay, death.
Lilacs are the flower of remembrance. After the fall of Tsar Nicholas II and the entire structure of tsardom, the ex-emperor and his wife Alexandra found themselves prisoners of the new regime, forbidden even to walk in the magnificent park at Tsarskoe Selo. Alexandra looked out upon an ocean of lilac, once hers, now as distant as the moon. Her haunted look, beyond mere dismay, touched the heart of a simple soldier. He gave her a sprig. His officer saw this as "fraternizing with the enemy" and had him shot.
Amy Lowell, too, saw lilac as an accoutrement of death.
"The dead fed you Amid the slant stones of graveyards. Pale ghosts who planted you Came in the nighttime and let their thin hair blow through your clustered stems."
Walt Whitman (1819-1892) also knew the immemorial association between lilacs and death, and he gave us the simple words that bespoke the greatest tragedy:
"When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd, And the great star early droop'd in the western sky in the night, I mourn'd, and yet shall mourn with ever-returning spring."
He picked a sprig of lilac and thought of the passing into eternity of Abraham Lincoln, "Night and day journeys a coffin." It is unbearably painful for him, only the simple words -- and the lilac -- with its promise to return -- giving solace, for that is within the power of the lilac, too, which Whitman knew and relied on:
"Copious I break, I break the sprigs from the bushes, With loaded arms I come, pouring for you, For you and the coffins all of you O death."
But this cannot be the last word on lilacs, not this.
Think instead of Lynn Riggs' 1931 play "Green Grow the Lilacs", the basis for the libretto of Rodgers and Hammerstein's "Oklahoma," a musical about real people and their real concerns. They brought lilac seeds with them to beautiful their often difficult lives because they couldn't bear the thought of life without its beauty, comfort and serenity. And I cannot either.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Lawrence Rinke http://ActionEqualsProfit.com.
What’s your opinion on this?
Please leave a comment!
I hope you Enjoyed this article.
Lawrence Rinke
YOU Can have yourself over 180 Articles on YOUR Blog
Call me at
310-618-8107
http://ActionEqualsProfit.com.
Takes the time to check out what Worldprofit offers. You not only learn extensively how to market your business, but how to market yourself as well.
For Leaving a comment you will get
When YOU click and fill the form on the next page.
100% Give Away: Software Packages To Generate Massive Waves Of Traffic To Your Website
http://www.ActionEqualsProfit.com/?rd=uv82n09j
Friday, May 6, 2011
Lawrence: A great nation's disgrace: the National Assessment...
Lawrence: A great nation's disgrace: the National Assessment...: "Please read and enjoy our articles. Turn off the T.V. the radio, lock the door, and take the telephone off the hook . Give yourself a bit o..."
A great nation's disgrace: the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Civics report card, May 4, 2011.
Please read and enjoy our articles. Turn off the T.V. the radio, lock the door, and take the telephone off the hook . Give yourself a bit of quiet time to enjoy the full flavour of emotions, ideas, and inspirations you will get from these articles.
Come on in ActionEqualsprofit.com Meet and chat with the renowned Dr. Jeffrey Lant himself! He will be there at 2.15 PM EST most days,Saturday come 2 hrs. early and will be reading his latest article.
Call me at
310-618-8107
Confidential for YOU to get the 100% Give Away: Software Packages To Generate Massive Waves Of Traffic To Your Website
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBlbPw7WAqM
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what America's students know and can do in various subject areas. Assessments are conducted periodically in mathematics, reading, science, writing, the arts, civics, economics, geography, and U.S. history.
Since NAEP assessments are administered uniformly using the same sets of test booklets across the nation, NAEP results serve as a common metric for all states and selected urban districts. The assessment stays essentially the same from year to year, with only carefully documented changes. This permits NAEP to provide a clear picture of student academic progress over time. May 4, 2011 it dropped its latest bombshell. America's present and future citizens know less and less about the democracy they will inherit.
As retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said in a statement, "Knowledge of our system of government is not handed down through the gene pool. The habits of citizenship must be learned.... But we have neglected civic education for the past several decades, and the results are predictably dismal."
Some of the shocking results.
Item: Many high school students (being at least 18 years of age) may be old enough to vote, but just one quarter of them demonstrate at least a "proficient" level of civics knowledge and skills. As if this figure weren't bad enough on its own, this 24 percent figure actually represents a slight dip from the proportion of 12th graders scoring proficient or "advanced" in the subject four years ago.
76% of these high school students could not name a single power granted to Congress by the Constitution. Neither could they identify a single effect of foreign policy on other nations.
Item: Just 22 percent of U.S. eighth grade students had any idea of the purpose of the Bill of Rights and were unable to identify even a single one of these rights. This result is now chronic. This result has not changed at all since first measured in 1998.
Only 1 in 10 of these eighth graders demonstrated acceptable knowledge of the checks and balances between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches,the bedrock of our entire way of governance.
A tiny ray of light.
Amongst all the dismaying news in this study, there are, it is true, two aspects which show improvement. Since we must take our good news as we find it, even if meager, here it is:
Item: The average 4th grade score rose compared with both 2006 and 1998, the first time "the nation's report card" was given. Twenty seven percent were proficient or better in 2010, compared with 24 percent in 2006.
Item: Hispanic students, a growing proportion of the country's population and student body, narrowed the gap between their scores and those of non-Hispanic white students. On average, Hispanic eighth-graders scored 137 and non-Hispanic whites 160. This 23-point gap was down 29 in 2006.
We stopped teaching civics, and such egregious results are inevitable.
Justice O'Connor's comments upon the release of the newest NAEP survey are apt. If you fail to teach what used to be called "civics" in my day... you get students (and future citizens) with inadequate information on what our government is and how it works. (Justice O'Connor last year founded a non-profit organization icivics.org. It teaches civics through Web-based games.) Ignorance is endemic, systematic, embedded and completely predictable.
It's time to attack this pervasive problem root and branch. What we must do:
1) Recognize the problem. We cannot solve a problem unless we recognize that there is a problem. Here there is more than a problem; there is incipient catastrophe. The President himself must recognize the grave seriousness of the matter and direct the nation's attention to it, basing his remarks on the solid foundation of these important data from NAEC, which was created by Congress in 1988 and not a minute too soon.
2) You cannot have students proficient in civics where their teachers are not proficient. The lack of civics awareness can be traced to several causes, one crucial aspect of which is the abysmal level of teacher training in civics. Teacher proficiency and student proficiency must take place together, for to blame students for the inadequacies of their teachers is unjust and unproductive.
This leads ineluctably to what teachers are taught in their training programs and what they must teach in the classrooms of our civics challenged students. We must agree that there are certain civics topics which both students and teachers must know, so to be introduced into the curricula of each. And then, though the teachers unions will scream bloody murder, these teachers, no matter what level of seniority, must be tested (as their students are) in the subject matter they are expected to know.
3) We must reward students (and even teachers too) who demonstrate superior civics knowledge. When my mother was in high school in the 1940s, she received two medals for civics education; I have them still. I received honors, too, in the same subject. We can help students excel in civics by giving them tangible reasons to excel. There was nothing to be gained by destroying a culture which recognized and rewarded merit. We are suffering the consequences now and will continue to suffer them, and even worse, if this critical problem of our endangered democracy is not dealt with now... and with the total focus and seriousness it requires.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Lawrence Rinke http://ActionEqualsProfit.com.
What’s your opinion on this?
Please leave a comment!
I hope you Enjoyed this article.
Lawrence Rinke
YOU Can have yourself over 180 Articles on YOUR Blog
Call me at
310-618-8107
http://ActionEqualsProfit.com.
Takes the time to check out what Worldprofit offers. You not only learn extensively how to market your business, but how to market yourself as well.
For Leaving a comment you will get
When YOU click and fill the form on the next page.
100% Give Away: Software Packages To Generate Massive Waves Of Traffic To Your Website
http://www.ActionEqualsProfit.com/?rd=uv82n09j
Come on in ActionEqualsprofit.com Meet and chat with the renowned Dr. Jeffrey Lant himself! He will be there at 2.15 PM EST most days,Saturday come 2 hrs. early and will be reading his latest article.
Call me at
310-618-8107
Confidential for YOU to get the 100% Give Away: Software Packages To Generate Massive Waves Of Traffic To Your Website
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBlbPw7WAqM
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) is the largest nationally representative and continuing assessment of what America's students know and can do in various subject areas. Assessments are conducted periodically in mathematics, reading, science, writing, the arts, civics, economics, geography, and U.S. history.
Since NAEP assessments are administered uniformly using the same sets of test booklets across the nation, NAEP results serve as a common metric for all states and selected urban districts. The assessment stays essentially the same from year to year, with only carefully documented changes. This permits NAEP to provide a clear picture of student academic progress over time. May 4, 2011 it dropped its latest bombshell. America's present and future citizens know less and less about the democracy they will inherit.
As retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said in a statement, "Knowledge of our system of government is not handed down through the gene pool. The habits of citizenship must be learned.... But we have neglected civic education for the past several decades, and the results are predictably dismal."
Some of the shocking results.
Item: Many high school students (being at least 18 years of age) may be old enough to vote, but just one quarter of them demonstrate at least a "proficient" level of civics knowledge and skills. As if this figure weren't bad enough on its own, this 24 percent figure actually represents a slight dip from the proportion of 12th graders scoring proficient or "advanced" in the subject four years ago.
76% of these high school students could not name a single power granted to Congress by the Constitution. Neither could they identify a single effect of foreign policy on other nations.
Item: Just 22 percent of U.S. eighth grade students had any idea of the purpose of the Bill of Rights and were unable to identify even a single one of these rights. This result is now chronic. This result has not changed at all since first measured in 1998.
Only 1 in 10 of these eighth graders demonstrated acceptable knowledge of the checks and balances between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches,the bedrock of our entire way of governance.
A tiny ray of light.
Amongst all the dismaying news in this study, there are, it is true, two aspects which show improvement. Since we must take our good news as we find it, even if meager, here it is:
Item: The average 4th grade score rose compared with both 2006 and 1998, the first time "the nation's report card" was given. Twenty seven percent were proficient or better in 2010, compared with 24 percent in 2006.
Item: Hispanic students, a growing proportion of the country's population and student body, narrowed the gap between their scores and those of non-Hispanic white students. On average, Hispanic eighth-graders scored 137 and non-Hispanic whites 160. This 23-point gap was down 29 in 2006.
We stopped teaching civics, and such egregious results are inevitable.
Justice O'Connor's comments upon the release of the newest NAEP survey are apt. If you fail to teach what used to be called "civics" in my day... you get students (and future citizens) with inadequate information on what our government is and how it works. (Justice O'Connor last year founded a non-profit organization icivics.org. It teaches civics through Web-based games.) Ignorance is endemic, systematic, embedded and completely predictable.
It's time to attack this pervasive problem root and branch. What we must do:
1) Recognize the problem. We cannot solve a problem unless we recognize that there is a problem. Here there is more than a problem; there is incipient catastrophe. The President himself must recognize the grave seriousness of the matter and direct the nation's attention to it, basing his remarks on the solid foundation of these important data from NAEC, which was created by Congress in 1988 and not a minute too soon.
2) You cannot have students proficient in civics where their teachers are not proficient. The lack of civics awareness can be traced to several causes, one crucial aspect of which is the abysmal level of teacher training in civics. Teacher proficiency and student proficiency must take place together, for to blame students for the inadequacies of their teachers is unjust and unproductive.
This leads ineluctably to what teachers are taught in their training programs and what they must teach in the classrooms of our civics challenged students. We must agree that there are certain civics topics which both students and teachers must know, so to be introduced into the curricula of each. And then, though the teachers unions will scream bloody murder, these teachers, no matter what level of seniority, must be tested (as their students are) in the subject matter they are expected to know.
3) We must reward students (and even teachers too) who demonstrate superior civics knowledge. When my mother was in high school in the 1940s, she received two medals for civics education; I have them still. I received honors, too, in the same subject. We can help students excel in civics by giving them tangible reasons to excel. There was nothing to be gained by destroying a culture which recognized and rewarded merit. We are suffering the consequences now and will continue to suffer them, and even worse, if this critical problem of our endangered democracy is not dealt with now... and with the total focus and seriousness it requires.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Lawrence Rinke http://ActionEqualsProfit.com.
What’s your opinion on this?
Please leave a comment!
I hope you Enjoyed this article.
Lawrence Rinke
YOU Can have yourself over 180 Articles on YOUR Blog
Call me at
310-618-8107
http://ActionEqualsProfit.com.
Takes the time to check out what Worldprofit offers. You not only learn extensively how to market your business, but how to market yourself as well.
For Leaving a comment you will get
When YOU click and fill the form on the next page.
100% Give Away: Software Packages To Generate Massive Waves Of Traffic To Your Website
http://www.ActionEqualsProfit.com/?rd=uv82n09j
Canada's Liberal Party crushed as Michael Ignatieff takes them tohistoric defeat May 2, 2011. The real question is why they let him try....
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's note: Michael Ignatieff and I were classmates at Harvard University. We were in the same "track" together, Modern European History. Each week for a year (1969-1970) we gathered for the colloquium which enabled H. Stuart Hughes, chairman of the History Department, to scrutinize us and decide who would advance to the Ph.D. program and who would be given the terminal Master's Degree. Our class consisted of just a dozen students, or less. We came to know each other very well... He smoked gold tipped Sobranie, the Russian word for "'sovereign" (current price $55 for 200)... his cigarette always a prop in his presentation.
Count Michael.
If there were any justice in the world, Michael Georgevitch Ignatieff would be waking up this morning on his wide acres near Smolensk as Count Michael, his paternal grandfather Count Pavel Ignatieff, the Russian Minister of Education during the First World War, grandson of Princess Natasha Mestchersky. But in 1917, the acres, the grand estates and country houses, the privileges and baubles from the Tsar, even the Tsar himself were all swept away... still, you will never understand Michael Ignatieff if you do not understand that he is a Russian aristocrat to his very fingers.... and that he longs for a world that was once his... a world long ago and far away from Canada. It's all there in his 1987 book "The Russian Album", which that year won the Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction.
Born May 12, 1947
Ignatieff was born in Toronto, elder son of Russian-born Canadian diplomat (Count) George Ignatieff and his Canadian-born wife, Jessie Alison (nee Grant). His childhood was peripatetic as his father moved up the diplomatic ranks, ultimately becoming chief of staff to Prime Minister Lester Pearson. Michael Ignatieff got used to being around important people and their privileged lives. He became adept at the great game of moving up, by pleasing the influential, being in the right place at the right time, and always considering which move to make and when to make it. Every glittering prize in the world was available if you knew how to get it... and Michael Ignatieff was eager to learn...
He studied history at the University of Toronto's Trinity College (B.A., 1969) where Bob Rae was his debating partner and fourth-year roommate. (Rae went on to become Ontario's 21st premier 1990-1995 and one of the few Liberals to survive the debacle under Ignatieff.)
Restless, always in motion.
Ignatieff moved on again.... this time to Oxford University where he studied with celebrated liberal philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin about whom he would later write. Then Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he earned his PhD in 1976. Then the University of British Columbia (assistant professor from 1976 to 1978).... then senior research fellow at King's College, Cambridge until 1984. He then moved to London where he began to focus on his career as writer and journalist.
It was impressive, it was distinguished, it was rootless... and it was certainly not the standard career path of a politician who needed to understand and connect with real people and their everyday concerns. Michael Ignatieff's career was becoming as recherche as his cigarettes... rare, exquisite, far-fetched. This would have been fine... except he hankered after political office and political power... and the plaudits and esteem which only come when one is the demonstrated "People's Choice". But could he get there by writing himself into power... without submitting himself to the messy business of politics? Could he reach the top of the greasy pole (as British statesman Benjamin Disraeli called it) by being wafted there and without a drop of grease on his refined, fastidious person?
That was Michael Ignatieff's most astonishing idea of all...
Was there a precedent in the politics of Canada, Britain, or the United States of a man who went for the highest of offices without learning the craft of politics and the messy business of working with people from the grassroots up? In due course, perhaps Ignatief arrived at Woodrow Wilson, as prolific a writer and academic as Ignatieff himself, professor and then President of Princeton University.
But even Woodrow Wilson had served as elected Governor of New Jersey (1911-1913). Though Wilson's was a troubled presidency, still it was the closest precedent to hand. Michael Ignatieff meant to improve upon it... becoming Prime Minister of Canada without administrative, executive or foreign policy experience, having been elected just twice as a Member of Parliament... and without the most important thing of all: the proven ability to arouse, enthuse, lead the people.
That he should believe it is perfectly understandable; (people can after all persuade themselves about anything). That he got the leaders of the greatest of Canadian political parties to believe it is... remarkable, incredible, mad.
Yet that is precisely what happened when in 2004 three Liberal organizers, former Liberal candidate Alfred Apps, Ian Davey (son of Senator Keith Davey) and lawyer Daniel Brock traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts (where Ignatieff held a professorship at Harvard) and persuaded him to move back to Canada and consider a bid for the Liberal leadership (should Paul Martin retire) and then Prime Minister. The tailors had done their work and now the Emperor with no clothes was ready for his unique, historic journey. Paul Martin did iretire the Liberal Party leadership after the Liberal government was defeated in the January 2006 federal election... and the poobahs of the defeated party were persuaded that no experience was the best experience... that no leadership skills were the best skills to lead... and that a man who so loved and venerated Canada that he sought every opportunity to leave her... that this was the best man in the nation to be Prime Minister of a great people.
Oh! Ignatieff!
But if the leaders of the Liberal Party (who ultimately anointed Ignatieff as their unproven paladin) believed Count Michael's mythology, the people of Canada did not. They called it as they saw it, and they knew, like the unnamed boy in the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, the emperor had no clothes, or anything else except the desire to start at the top, accepting obeisance. It was one of the most fatuous of political ideas ever perpetrated. And handed unprecedented victory to Conservative Stephen Harper. And unprecedented, abject defeat to the Liberals who forgot, with Ignatieff, the very heart of their principles: that governments are of the people, by the people, for the people... and of leaders who work a lifetime to understand those people and serve them.
As for Michael Ignatieff, who presided over the Liberal's greatest, unprecedented defeat? He hinted he could be persuaded, if properly asked, to stay on as leader. No takers, there. And then he went before the nation and petulantly lambasted his opponents for questioning his attachment to Canada and his patriotism, still not understanding the rambunctious game of politics, a blood sport, not the coronation he expected. It was "their" fault Canadians were deprived of such a man as he. No doubt Count Michael will make his exhaustive case in his next book, which will be written anywhere else than the Canada he loves so much...
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Lawrence Rinke http://ActionEqualsProfit.com.
Author's note: Michael Ignatieff and I were classmates at Harvard University. We were in the same "track" together, Modern European History. Each week for a year (1969-1970) we gathered for the colloquium which enabled H. Stuart Hughes, chairman of the History Department, to scrutinize us and decide who would advance to the Ph.D. program and who would be given the terminal Master's Degree. Our class consisted of just a dozen students, or less. We came to know each other very well... He smoked gold tipped Sobranie, the Russian word for "'sovereign" (current price $55 for 200)... his cigarette always a prop in his presentation.
Count Michael.
If there were any justice in the world, Michael Georgevitch Ignatieff would be waking up this morning on his wide acres near Smolensk as Count Michael, his paternal grandfather Count Pavel Ignatieff, the Russian Minister of Education during the First World War, grandson of Princess Natasha Mestchersky. But in 1917, the acres, the grand estates and country houses, the privileges and baubles from the Tsar, even the Tsar himself were all swept away... still, you will never understand Michael Ignatieff if you do not understand that he is a Russian aristocrat to his very fingers.... and that he longs for a world that was once his... a world long ago and far away from Canada. It's all there in his 1987 book "The Russian Album", which that year won the Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction.
Born May 12, 1947
Ignatieff was born in Toronto, elder son of Russian-born Canadian diplomat (Count) George Ignatieff and his Canadian-born wife, Jessie Alison (nee Grant). His childhood was peripatetic as his father moved up the diplomatic ranks, ultimately becoming chief of staff to Prime Minister Lester Pearson. Michael Ignatieff got used to being around important people and their privileged lives. He became adept at the great game of moving up, by pleasing the influential, being in the right place at the right time, and always considering which move to make and when to make it. Every glittering prize in the world was available if you knew how to get it... and Michael Ignatieff was eager to learn...
He studied history at the University of Toronto's Trinity College (B.A., 1969) where Bob Rae was his debating partner and fourth-year roommate. (Rae went on to become Ontario's 21st premier 1990-1995 and one of the few Liberals to survive the debacle under Ignatieff.)
Restless, always in motion.
Ignatieff moved on again.... this time to Oxford University where he studied with celebrated liberal philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin about whom he would later write. Then Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he earned his PhD in 1976. Then the University of British Columbia (assistant professor from 1976 to 1978).... then senior research fellow at King's College, Cambridge until 1984. He then moved to London where he began to focus on his career as writer and journalist.
It was impressive, it was distinguished, it was rootless... and it was certainly not the standard career path of a politician who needed to understand and connect with real people and their everyday concerns. Michael Ignatieff's career was becoming as recherche as his cigarettes... rare, exquisite, far-fetched. This would have been fine... except he hankered after political office and political power... and the plaudits and esteem which only come when one is the demonstrated "People's Choice". But could he get there by writing himself into power... without submitting himself to the messy business of politics? Could he reach the top of the greasy pole (as British statesman Benjamin Disraeli called it) by being wafted there and without a drop of grease on his refined, fastidious person?
That was Michael Ignatieff's most astonishing idea of all...
Was there a precedent in the politics of Canada, Britain, or the United States of a man who went for the highest of offices without learning the craft of politics and the messy business of working with people from the grassroots up? In due course, perhaps Ignatief arrived at Woodrow Wilson, as prolific a writer and academic as Ignatieff himself, professor and then President of Princeton University.
But even Woodrow Wilson had served as elected Governor of New Jersey (1911-1913). Though Wilson's was a troubled presidency, still it was the closest precedent to hand. Michael Ignatieff meant to improve upon it... becoming Prime Minister of Canada without administrative, executive or foreign policy experience, having been elected just twice as a Member of Parliament... and without the most important thing of all: the proven ability to arouse, enthuse, lead the people.
That he should believe it is perfectly understandable; (people can after all persuade themselves about anything). That he got the leaders of the greatest of Canadian political parties to believe it is... remarkable, incredible, mad.
Yet that is precisely what happened when in 2004 three Liberal organizers, former Liberal candidate Alfred Apps, Ian Davey (son of Senator Keith Davey) and lawyer Daniel Brock traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts (where Ignatieff held a professorship at Harvard) and persuaded him to move back to Canada and consider a bid for the Liberal leadership (should Paul Martin retire) and then Prime Minister. The tailors had done their work and now the Emperor with no clothes was ready for his unique, historic journey. Paul Martin did iretire the Liberal Party leadership after the Liberal government was defeated in the January 2006 federal election... and the poobahs of the defeated party were persuaded that no experience was the best experience... that no leadership skills were the best skills to lead... and that a man who so loved and venerated Canada that he sought every opportunity to leave her... that this was the best man in the nation to be Prime Minister of a great people.
Oh! Ignatieff!
But if the leaders of the Liberal Party (who ultimately anointed Ignatieff as their unproven paladin) believed Count Michael's mythology, the people of Canada did not. They called it as they saw it, and they knew, like the unnamed boy in the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, the emperor had no clothes, or anything else except the desire to start at the top, accepting obeisance. It was one of the most fatuous of political ideas ever perpetrated. And handed unprecedented victory to Conservative Stephen Harper. And unprecedented, abject defeat to the Liberals who forgot, with Ignatieff, the very heart of their principles: that governments are of the people, by the people, for the people... and of leaders who work a lifetime to understand those people and serve them.
As for Michael Ignatieff, who presided over the Liberal's greatest, unprecedented defeat? He hinted he could be persuaded, if properly asked, to stay on as leader. No takers, there. And then he went before the nation and petulantly lambasted his opponents for questioning his attachment to Canada and his patriotism, still not understanding the rambunctious game of politics, a blood sport, not the coronation he expected. It was "their" fault Canadians were deprived of such a man as he. No doubt Count Michael will make his exhaustive case in his next book, which will be written anywhere else than the Canada he loves so much...
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Lawrence Rinke http://ActionEqualsProfit.com.
Wondering how to make a difference with your life? Then dig into this appreciation of Boston's Henry Lee and his Friends of the Public Garden.
Please read and enjoy our articles. Turn off the T.V. the radio, lock the door, and take the telephone off the hook . Give yourself a bit of quiet time to enjoy the full flavour of emotions, ideas, and inspirations you will get from these articles.
Come on in ActionEqualsprofit.com Meet and chat with the renowned Dr. Jeffrey Lant himself! He will be there at 2.15 PM EST most days,Saturday come 2 hrs. early and will be reading his latest article.
Call me at
310-618-8107
Confidential for YOU to get the 100% Give Away: Software Packages To Generate Massive Waves Of Traffic To Your Website
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBlbPw7WAqM
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Ever complain that today's media are filled with nothing but bad news and new things to worry about? Ever wish that the media published more good news?
Well today is your lucky day. There isn't a single word of bad news here... and everything you read will make you feel good. I guarantee it.
How can I proclaim all this and every good thing that follows? It's because I have the honor and high privilege of telling you the uplifting story of one of Boston's citizens...Henry Lee, a man who made not just a difference but all the difference to the enhancement of one of the great cities of the world -- Boston, Massachusetts.
Never heard of Henry Lee... no matter. If you've ever been to Boston (and, if not, you should visit as soon as you can) you have seen his handiwork... in the Public Garden and its sister parks, the Boston Common and the Commonwealth Avenue Mall. These are amongst the glories of this place... and they are such glories because of Henry Lee, the man who decided to make a difference... and did.
Born with a sterling silver spoon.
Henry Lee is a Boston Brahmin, the kind of person this iconoclastic ditty was written about:
"I'm from the city of Boston. the land of the bean and the cod where Cabots speak only to the Lowells and the Lowells speak only to God."
From "All Hail to Massachusetts", with words and music by Arthur J. Marsh, made the official state song of Massachusetts on September 3, 1966, and codified by an act of the General Court in 1981.
Born in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts (a place chock-a-block with a plethora of Brahmins including plenty of Cabots and Lowells), Henry Lee was born into a privileged world charted for him from conception.
His relations include former Massachusetts Governor Francis W. Sargent; Elliot Lee Richardson, the U.S. attorney general who stood up to the shenanigans of Richard Nixon, and Henry Lee Shattuck, a state legislator and a Boston city councilor who founded the Boston Municipal Research Bureau. All these people knew who they were... and what they must do, including the maintenance and preservation of the unique heritage of Massachusetts which was, after all, a heritage their families had originated in the first place.
Lee matriculated at Harvard (the right young men always did)... then (rather audaciously) went on to Stanford University. California, for Brahmins venturing West was the equivalent of Christopher Columbus discovering America; wills were written before embarkation and parents embraced as if for the last time. For such people Boston would always be their city, truly "the hub of the universe." (Of course, in due time the relentless waves of Irish emigrants -- including the Kennedys -- changed all that forever.)
Following Stanford Lee went into the Foreign Service serving as a diplomat in Washington and Europe. This too was a bastion for many Brahmins who required a respectable but not overly taxing career. He moved to Beacon Hill in 1958 and taught at the toney Dexter School in Brookline. Then at age 55 (he is now 86), he decided to branch out to the congenial work Brahmins do best, improving the city they will always secretly believe is theirs and must never cease to be. He had only to glance out the window and down the street from his home on Mount Vernon Street, byway of Brahmins, to see what must be done.
The degradation and dilapidation of Boston, the inglorious reality.
The proud city of Boston, fomenter of Revolution, had by the 1970s hit bottom. It looked what it was: a city decayed, disillusioned, devastated... a brutalized example of everything that was wrong with urban America. Nowhere was this distressing blight more evident than in the very parks and open spaces Lee could walk to from his house in just minutes.
What he saw was deeply distressing to the man of culture and breeding he was. Graffiti stained the statues, including the celebrated statue of Washington; the bridge over the lagoon was crumbling, and sections of the iron fence were missing. Drugs and crime were constant occurrences.
Henry Lee was persuaded to become the first chairman for the new Friends of the Public Garden and invited some friends to attend the first meeting at his home. He thought, he was told, the project wouldn't take much time... but in fact the man was now at the commencement of his 41 year career.
Tenacious, diplomatic, successful.
Lee set to work with a will; he understood that the city's financial circumstances were such that he and his organization would have to raise the necessary funds. Brahmins are excellent fund raisers for the projects they endorse and believe in; Lee was superb at the "begging" game. And at never losing sight not only of the green spaces... but of the overall environment. As such he lead the successful campaign to scale back the Park Plaza development, which would have menaced the parks. This was perhaps the single achievement he was most proud of.
Never a dime's salary.
And so, for 41 years, until just the other day in May, 2011, Henry Lee did his important work, always a gentleman, the perpetrator of an avalanche of personal notes, pertinacious, focused, the master of both grand designs and all the myriad details of his cause. He literally changed the face of Boston, now wreathed with greenery, flowers, open spaces, refreshing to the spirit, signature elements in the city's magnificent panorama.
And it all started with just one man, Henry Lee, who could have remained set in the past... but chose instead to position a notable metropolis and its first-in-the- nation green spaces for generations yet to come.
You could do something as important too.
Henry Lee, upon his retirement, left an organization of $17 million and 2,500 members.
When next you are wondering how you can make a difference in your community, look around you and select an important task, something truly important. Then invite them to your home... and commence your own journey to shaping a better world... the way this great and good man did and which you may also do.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Lawrence Rinke http://ActionEqualsProfit.com.
What’s your opinion on this?
Please leave a comment!
I hope you Enjoyed this article.
Lawrence Rinke
YOU Can have yourself over 180 Articles on YOUR Blog
Call me at
310-618-8107
http://ActionEqualsProfit.com.
Takes the time to check out what Worldprofit offers. You not only learn extensively how to market your business, but how to market yourself as well.
For Leaving a comment you will get
When YOU click and fill the form on the next page.
100% Give Away: Software Packages To Generate Massive Waves Of Traffic To Your Website
http://www.ActionEqualsProfit.com/?rd=uv82n09j
Come on in ActionEqualsprofit.com Meet and chat with the renowned Dr. Jeffrey Lant himself! He will be there at 2.15 PM EST most days,Saturday come 2 hrs. early and will be reading his latest article.
Call me at
310-618-8107
Confidential for YOU to get the 100% Give Away: Software Packages To Generate Massive Waves Of Traffic To Your Website
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bBlbPw7WAqM
by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Ever complain that today's media are filled with nothing but bad news and new things to worry about? Ever wish that the media published more good news?
Well today is your lucky day. There isn't a single word of bad news here... and everything you read will make you feel good. I guarantee it.
How can I proclaim all this and every good thing that follows? It's because I have the honor and high privilege of telling you the uplifting story of one of Boston's citizens...Henry Lee, a man who made not just a difference but all the difference to the enhancement of one of the great cities of the world -- Boston, Massachusetts.
Never heard of Henry Lee... no matter. If you've ever been to Boston (and, if not, you should visit as soon as you can) you have seen his handiwork... in the Public Garden and its sister parks, the Boston Common and the Commonwealth Avenue Mall. These are amongst the glories of this place... and they are such glories because of Henry Lee, the man who decided to make a difference... and did.
Born with a sterling silver spoon.
Henry Lee is a Boston Brahmin, the kind of person this iconoclastic ditty was written about:
"I'm from the city of Boston. the land of the bean and the cod where Cabots speak only to the Lowells and the Lowells speak only to God."
From "All Hail to Massachusetts", with words and music by Arthur J. Marsh, made the official state song of Massachusetts on September 3, 1966, and codified by an act of the General Court in 1981.
Born in Beverly Farms, Massachusetts (a place chock-a-block with a plethora of Brahmins including plenty of Cabots and Lowells), Henry Lee was born into a privileged world charted for him from conception.
His relations include former Massachusetts Governor Francis W. Sargent; Elliot Lee Richardson, the U.S. attorney general who stood up to the shenanigans of Richard Nixon, and Henry Lee Shattuck, a state legislator and a Boston city councilor who founded the Boston Municipal Research Bureau. All these people knew who they were... and what they must do, including the maintenance and preservation of the unique heritage of Massachusetts which was, after all, a heritage their families had originated in the first place.
Lee matriculated at Harvard (the right young men always did)... then (rather audaciously) went on to Stanford University. California, for Brahmins venturing West was the equivalent of Christopher Columbus discovering America; wills were written before embarkation and parents embraced as if for the last time. For such people Boston would always be their city, truly "the hub of the universe." (Of course, in due time the relentless waves of Irish emigrants -- including the Kennedys -- changed all that forever.)
Following Stanford Lee went into the Foreign Service serving as a diplomat in Washington and Europe. This too was a bastion for many Brahmins who required a respectable but not overly taxing career. He moved to Beacon Hill in 1958 and taught at the toney Dexter School in Brookline. Then at age 55 (he is now 86), he decided to branch out to the congenial work Brahmins do best, improving the city they will always secretly believe is theirs and must never cease to be. He had only to glance out the window and down the street from his home on Mount Vernon Street, byway of Brahmins, to see what must be done.
The degradation and dilapidation of Boston, the inglorious reality.
The proud city of Boston, fomenter of Revolution, had by the 1970s hit bottom. It looked what it was: a city decayed, disillusioned, devastated... a brutalized example of everything that was wrong with urban America. Nowhere was this distressing blight more evident than in the very parks and open spaces Lee could walk to from his house in just minutes.
What he saw was deeply distressing to the man of culture and breeding he was. Graffiti stained the statues, including the celebrated statue of Washington; the bridge over the lagoon was crumbling, and sections of the iron fence were missing. Drugs and crime were constant occurrences.
Henry Lee was persuaded to become the first chairman for the new Friends of the Public Garden and invited some friends to attend the first meeting at his home. He thought, he was told, the project wouldn't take much time... but in fact the man was now at the commencement of his 41 year career.
Tenacious, diplomatic, successful.
Lee set to work with a will; he understood that the city's financial circumstances were such that he and his organization would have to raise the necessary funds. Brahmins are excellent fund raisers for the projects they endorse and believe in; Lee was superb at the "begging" game. And at never losing sight not only of the green spaces... but of the overall environment. As such he lead the successful campaign to scale back the Park Plaza development, which would have menaced the parks. This was perhaps the single achievement he was most proud of.
Never a dime's salary.
And so, for 41 years, until just the other day in May, 2011, Henry Lee did his important work, always a gentleman, the perpetrator of an avalanche of personal notes, pertinacious, focused, the master of both grand designs and all the myriad details of his cause. He literally changed the face of Boston, now wreathed with greenery, flowers, open spaces, refreshing to the spirit, signature elements in the city's magnificent panorama.
And it all started with just one man, Henry Lee, who could have remained set in the past... but chose instead to position a notable metropolis and its first-in-the- nation green spaces for generations yet to come.
You could do something as important too.
Henry Lee, upon his retirement, left an organization of $17 million and 2,500 members.
When next you are wondering how you can make a difference in your community, look around you and select an important task, something truly important. Then invite them to your home... and commence your own journey to shaping a better world... the way this great and good man did and which you may also do.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Lawrence Rinke http://ActionEqualsProfit.com.
What’s your opinion on this?
Please leave a comment!
I hope you Enjoyed this article.
Lawrence Rinke
YOU Can have yourself over 180 Articles on YOUR Blog
Call me at
310-618-8107
http://ActionEqualsProfit.com.
Takes the time to check out what Worldprofit offers. You not only learn extensively how to market your business, but how to market yourself as well.
For Leaving a comment you will get
When YOU click and fill the form on the next page.
100% Give Away: Software Packages To Generate Massive Waves Of Traffic To Your Website
http://www.ActionEqualsProfit.com/?rd=uv82n09j
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