No Spec Work - Rewarding Creativity Properly

Lemmings are cute, but dumb. If you tell them to jump off a cliff, they will. Just like the people who start blogs because everyone is doing it. Guess what happens after a little while? The blogs die.

In managing a list of many Web sites, most of which are blogs, I deleted countless sites from the list because the sites and blogs no longer existed. The people ran out of steam or had no reason to start them in the first place.

How do you know when a blog is right for your business? Learn why people start blogs, how they find their niche and how blogging tools can be used for more than blogs.

Blog content is king

Some people like to read blogs, others like to read newsletters, still others like to rely on feeds and some read a few or all of them. No matter the method the information is distributed, each medium has one thing in common: content. Having a blog connects your newsletter and your business with all of these readers and delivers important content in a particular style.

I’ve been blogging since June 2000. If you review my early blog entries in meryl’s notes, you’ll notice they’re more personal. When blogs first hit the scene in the late ’90s, they were personal diaries and journals. Like the blog business, my blog has transformed from personal to business speak, although I still add personal notes here and there.

A few bloggers tend to talk about their work, their products and their little world. That might work for celebrities where fans want to know everything about them, but it doesn’t work for the average business person. Other business people want information on how to succeed and when a blog spends time hawking products offering information of no value, few people will return. The people whose products sell well are the ones who provide valuable information. Readers already know what kind of information they’re getting, so they trust that when they buy something, it will be of the same or better quality. This value must be reflected in their blog. It’s much like people who only sign up for a newsletter after first seeing an example.

Who should venture where one has not blogged before?

No one wants to be a lemming (I would hope). How do you decide whether or not to set up a blog? The answer isn’t black or white (what did you expect?). Ask these questions:

• Can you regularly update it — at least five times a week?
• Do you have something to say other than just linking to others?
• Do you read other blogs or feeds?
• Can you provide information of value to others not just to yourself?
• How large is your newsletter subscriber list?
• How many unique visitors do you get on an average day, week or month?

The big decider is whether or not you can write in the blog almost daily. The people behind the high traffic blogs post multiple times a day. Though resourceful, merely linking to other sites doesn’t give visitors much reason to make the effort to come to yours. Reading other blogs or feeds is a great way to learn how to carry a discussion. Find other blogs covering topics similar to yours and check them out. Disagree with their opinions? Write about it and explain your reasons. Cross-blog discussions are common, and that’s where trackback comes in handy.

Trackback is a blog feature. If you decide to comment on another blog posting in your blog instead of in that blog’s comments page, then you link to the conversation through the trackback link. Trackback is similar to the permalink, the permanent URL for the blog entry, but it has a different URL for copying and pasting in your blog’s trackback box.

Aside from the technical aspects of operating a blog on a daily basis, subscriber list size and Web site traffic are good indicators of what kind of reaction you’ll get when opening a blog. Starting from scratch with little traffic means you have a long road ahead and lots of work to do. There is no magic formula anyone can sell you for $97 to make your blog an overnight success. But with some perseverance and ingenuity, your blog can engage many prospects and clients.

Pick a niche

Considering there are numerous blogs out there, pick a niche topic when starting a blog for a better shot at attracting and keeping an audience. meryl’s notes focuses on three areas: webby, geeky and wordy. In reality, this is too much. What I need to do for my readers is create three separate blog entry points, so those interested in writing, newsletters and Internet marketing get nothing but the wordy entries. Those interested in Web design get the webby stuff and the technophiles receive the geeky content.

I also manage a personal blog separate from meryl’s notes. It’s about cochlear implants and deafness. This could fall under the geeky category, but it’s a personal blog and doesn’t belong in meryl’s notes. This blog is written for a different audience.

The blogging tools for both of my blogs come with syndication capabilities so those using feed readers or aggregators can read the content through the software. For an explanation of syndication and feed readers, refer to What Is This RSS, XML, RDF, and Atom Business? When sending a new issue of a newsletter, comment on it or link to it in the blog, that way the blog and feed readers will get the goods, so all three bases are covered.

Blogs in disguise use the same tools

Blogging tools aren’t just for, well, blogging. Such tools are an excellent way to help you update your Web site more often than you otherwise would. I use it to manage the list of tableless Web sites. Using blogging tools is much easier than the way I managed it before, updating the HTML files by hand. Though using a blog tool, it isn’t a blog. In this case, the blog tool has become a content management system (CMS).

Small business owners don’t have a need for the fancy and pricey CMSes out there. They find it easier to use blogging software to manage their sites or hire someone to adapt the tool for their site.

Blogs have found a place in businesses and people are finding creative ways to use them. Some companies have a blog on the intranet for communicating project status, jeopardies and metrics. They’re used for knowledge management. With information pouring in, blog tools provide a way to share, organize and process the information.

Being a follower can be good or bad. No one wants to walk off a cliff with the lemmings, but everyone wants to succeed. Best practices won’t help, since the decision to blog is based on the organization’s mission, needs and goals along with its target market’s desires and needs. A blog about lemmings? There is one, sort of. Or maybe you’d like to start your own and talk about dumb business moves.

Meryl K. Evans (www.meryl.net),
Content Maven, is the editor of eNewsletter Journal and Shavlik’s The
Remediator Security Digest. She writes columns for PC Today, InformIT,
and MarketingProfs. Contact her to get content that inspires action or
check out her blog (www.meryl.net/blog/ that’s been around since June 2000.

Hair Loss has consistently been something that both males and women have to deal with. As many clients know it can be greatly upsetting & worrying. It used to be the case that there was absolutely zilch that might be done about it, nowdays however with technology pressing forward more & futher each and every month there are masses of different choices for you to look at.

Advanced Hair Studio is brilliant. They focus in Hair Loss and masses of many diverse treatments all of many which might well be able to help you. There are many various forms of programmes available to many different clients. You will be advised on what treatment is very best for you after a consultation with one of many there many consultants who have been skilfully trained on everything. They will be able to give customers all the information & support customers need throughout your programme time with them. If you need help with please visit Hair loss today.

There are many different procedures each one designed for different types of many cases. Strand by Strand is the procedure that is low maintenance and builds up hair slowly and gradually. With the Strand by Strand method it is potentially possible to regain hair with no surgery, pain and scaring this as customers can imagine is extremely appealing to many customers. Advanced Laser Therapy is another choice that is offered to patients. Advanced Hair Studio pioneered & successfully conducted clinical trials on the combination of many the most recent laser beam technology, an FDA approved re-growth pharmaceutical, & a proven scalp and follicle treatment programme for hair loss. With this programme you can often see a change in three months, which is very fast.

There is one futher method and this one proves to be particularly popular and appropriate for oodles of clients, this is because it is in fact a treatment that you can do in the comfort of your own home. This is a programme that combines the naturally occurring herb Sereonoa Repens & also a handheld laser device & antioxidant programme which helps to thicken, strengthen and repair your hair & scalp as well as promoting hair growth and reducing hair loss.

Copyright 2005 Daniel N Brown

How many times has something good come into your life and you were not prepared to embrace it? This happens to so many people. When a special chance to do or have something great presents itself, most people will not be ready. How disappointing!

Preparedness plus chance equals success. Believing you can succeed and preparing to succeed go hand in hand. Both are an extremely vital part of winning in life. In fact, a person will not even prepare to win if he does not even believe he can. Otherwise, why would he put in all the necessary effort it takes to succeed if he really doesn’t believe he ever will?

Many people want to win in life, but their self-image limits them on how far they actually can go. Your self image is how you see yourself, and if you see yourself as a loser you will not even prepare to win. The fact is, a person will only prepare to succeed if he really and truly believes he can.

Part of preparation is seeing yourself as a winner. You cannot attract to yourself anything that is greater than the way you see yourself. Therefore, if you become, you can attract. Until you begin to think and act like the person who has the things you desire you will not attract those things.

A common misconception concerning success is that it comes from luck. How many times have you heard people say something like, “He was just in the right place at the right time” to explain away someone else’s success? It’s a myth, just like the idea of the overnight success. The chances of becoming a success due to luck are about as good as winning the lottery–50 million to 1.

When you succeed, because you prepared to succeed, others may explain it away as luck. How irritated will you be, knowing you have toiled, sweated, and teared in order to prepare for the success you enjoy, and someone says you were just lucky?

One must understand that champions aren’t made on the day of the game. That’s simply the day the world recognizes all of the preparation that took place before that day arrived. In thousands of little ways, these champions disciplined themselves to do the things that everyone else could’ve done, but didn’t.

The cheering crowds, television cameras, and reporters aren’t around when champions are made because they’re made in the early morning hours when everyone else is sleeping in just a little bit longer, and in the late evening hours when everyone else has given up for the day.

The will to succeed is obviously important, but what’s more important is the will to prepare.

Preparing to win is not doing the big things most people think. It usually isn’t the big things that will cause you to succeed in life anyway, but it’s all of the little things that you can do over and over. For example, the discipline to plan each day’s work the night before, no matter how tired you are, will have more to do with your success than any big thing you will do. Also, little things like hitting mute on the tv during commercials so you can grab a little reading time. Not a big thing, but a necessary thing in preparing to win.

Prepare to succeed by first believing that you can and then do the little necessary things required, for preparedness plus chance equals success. When the next chance to do or have something great presents itself, will you be ready? Life is way to short to be missing out!

A bad credit personal loan is a type of loan designed especially for people with bad credit record. Because, generally lenders do not provide loans to borrowers who have bad credit history. Bad credit history implies that the borrower defaulted in making payments or made late payments or simply payments terms and conditions have not been honoured by the borrower.

Now, there are lenders who offer bad credit personal loan even if you are a part owner of a property or even if you have bad credit to the extent that you missed a few payments on your current credit payments. A bad credit personal loan can also help the borrower to re-establish their credit rating.

Loan Amount & Interest Charged

Through a secured bad credit personal loan you can borrow upto 125% of the value of the asset you provided as collateral or upto £75,000, though the actual amount varies from lender to lender. The loan amount also depends upon the income level, and whether permanent source of income or temporary. Though the loan amount varies from lender to lender.

Cost of availing a bad credit personal loan, i.e. interest charged on loan again varies from lender to lender. It also depends on the profile of borrower in terms of his credit score, source of income, age etc. Therefore, key factors in interest rate are:

Variable interest rates

Monthly installment payments depend on loan amount and interest charged, therefore it is also variable.

Payment Duration

Usually duration for repayment ranges in between 5 years and 25 years. In this case, a borrower has two options:

First, to go for short duration of loan in which case the installment amount is usually higher but the hidden advantage is that the borrower can payback completely within a short span of time. In this case, cost of loan i.e. interest charged is comparatively lower.

Second, to go for longer payment duration, in which the installment amount becomes less compared to an installment for short duration loan. In this case, payment of a small sum every month becomes quite easy but such installment needs to be paid every month for a longer duration.

Use of Bad Credit Personal Loan

You have complete freedom to decide about the usage of the loan amount, once it is credited in your account. Whether you want to renovate your house or you are falling short of cash to buy a car, you can use this loan for anything and everything. In fact, at time borrowers use bad credit personal loan to pay credit card bill and reduce other debts to reduce their monthly outgoings to a more manageable amount

Steve Clark can tell you how to look better, live better and breathe better by giving you tips to improve your finances. He writes on loans. His ideas can help you rejuvenate your money. To find Personal loan UK, homeowner personal loan visit http://www.ezpersonalloansuk.co.uk

As the price of fuel continue to climb, many bill payers are burying their heads in the sand. Some homeowners however are exploring the installation of the solar panels that will allow them to channel the power of the sun to provide energy for their dwellings.

When energy prices were low, it was often difficult to justify the upfront expense of cash required to install solar panels, solar water heaters and similar equipment. The reason was simple to understand - it would simply take too long to recoup the cost of the equipment in the form of lower energy bills.

But that was then. As energy prices continue to go up, the amount of time required to recoup the upfront cost goes down. In addition, a number of state and local tax incentives make it even easier for homeowners to go solar and save money right away.

Photovoltaic systems have also come a long way. The costs of installing solar panels is still high, with a typical two kilowatt installation of OVR Solar solar panels costing around $20, 000 in most cases, but special tax incentives and long term energy savings can help homeowners recoup those upfront costs faster than ever before.

Governments around the world are increasingly willing to help. This tax savings can help eligible homeowners recoup some of the costs of installing solar panels and solar water heating systems up front, in addition to the energy savings they will enjoy down the road.

Many states also provide special tax incentives for homeowners who install eligible solar panel and solar water heating systems. The specifics of these tax rebates and tax incentives vary from state to state, but many states provide at least some level of tax relief for homeowners who install and use energy efficient systems.

The factors affecting how long it will take to break even will vary from case to case. However, as the prices for heating oil, gas and other forms of traditional energy continue to soar, so will demand for alternatives

Take the first step to energy self sufficiency with OVR Solar.

“You can’t answer the cell phone during prayers,” I said to myself. “Especially during these prayers at the hour that Christ died.”

“But this is probably an emergency, and you are a doctor as well as a priest!”

“No, it’s not right. Don’t answer it.”

Whenever I talk to myself, the dialogue is always feisty.

The phone buzzed in my pocket, unanswered, three persistent times. It could wait. The prayers would be over in just a few more minutes. The phone buzzed again. I discretely looked at it, just to see what name appeared on the screen. It was Raphael. That could mean only one thing: that she was dead.

My blood turned cold, and a shiver ran down my spine. The hougan (voodoo priest) had told this perfectly healthy young woman, just a week ago, that she would not live past the “prayers of Calvary hill.” It was in her cards. She could not live past the hour of Christ’s death, unless she drank the potion he could make to save her. Now sure enough, she was dead. As the prayers of Calvary hill were coming to their conclusion, so was she coming to hers.

Her name was Marie Louise. She and her brothers and sisters were born to impoverished Haitian cane cutters in the bitter sugar fields of the Dominican Republic. The mother and father having died, the children were thrown over the border into Haiti a dozen years ago, during one of the frequent Haitian roundups by Dominican officials. They landed in Haiti where they had never lived, where they knew no one, and where they could not even speak Creole. A Haitian social worker gathered them up and delivered them to our orphanage, where we have spent many years getting to know and love, and struggling to deal with, this complex family.

Earlier Good Friday morning, while enjoying a coffee, a few of us were getting ready to start the day. I was getting ready to go to visit a friend who is facing the huge challenge of brain cancer. Good Friday was a good day for such a visit: we were commemorating an absolutely stark reality, that was nevertheless overflowing with grace; a grace as dark as it was powerful. Our chatter was interrupted by a disturbing call. Marie Louise was very sick in Kenscoff, and needed help. Off we went. Sure enough, her condition was disastrous. It was clear to me immediately that her whole nervous system was under full scale attack. I was sure she was reeling from a poison. We did our best to resuscitate and stabilize her, and when there was nothing more we could add to her treatments, I left her in the care of Raphael. I had other sick people to see, and I also needed to be on time for the prayers at 3pm at the orphanage on the mountain. I thought Marie Louise stood a chance with our treatments. I had seen these things before. Usually there is a lot of hysteria associated with them. I underestimated this time how much was terror and how much was the physiology of poison. I didn’t underestimate in terms of treatment, but in terms of prognosis. I did not expect her to die.

In shock, I uttered the final “prayer of Calvary hill”. I had no idea what to think or what to do next. But for sure, I needed to get her body. The Sisters and children of the orphanage started to pray the rosary for Marie Louise. Alfonso and I headed to Port au Prince to find a coffin, and to bring her body home.

It was a long sad drive back up the mountain. It was late at night, and we gathered to bathe her body and dress her, and place her in the coffin. As we bathed her, I thought of Joseph of Aramathea, and the sacred body he prepared for burial, freshly taken off the cross, two millennia ago that very day. Both his corpse and ours were destroyed by jealousy and hatred. And there was no lack of blood in either case. His, from many afflicted wounds, hers from massive internal bleeding that poured out her mouth and nose as we prepared her for burial. Across the span of twenty centuries, we understood the sadness and the urgency of what Joseph had done for the dead Christ- the last possible act of kindness and respect.

Joseph had to observe the Jewish command to bury Jesus before sunset. We were supposed to observe the Catholic command not to bury Marie Louise until Monday. But we could not keep this un-embalmed body, in the tropics, and full of poisons, in an orphanage, from Friday to Monday. We had no choice but to arrange a simple burial, with prayers and without a funeral mass, on Holy Saturday morning, and that is what we did.

Timid heads of hundreds of orphan children peered into her coffin. Alfonso, with wet eyes and trembling hands, placed an image of the risen Christ into her cold hands. Susana and others who spoke a last goodbye did so with quivering and broken voices. And all of us had hearts as heavy as the heaviest lead.

We struggled to understand the story, the one that Marie Louise had herself painted. She had come to see Alfonso a week before, to explain a grave problem. She was in love with a man who already had a girlfriend and a child. She also had become pregnant by him. Even though the boyfriend insisted on her ending the pregnancy a few months earlier, there was still strong jealousy on the part of the other woman, who went to see a hougan to put a death curse on her. A different hougan, whom she sought for help, wanted $300 Haitian dollars to make a potion to protect her. Marie Louise was looking for that money.

Alfonso insisted, rightly, that God’s power is absolute, that to buy into these cures and this way of thinking is like stepping into quicksand. To stay close to the God of life, and to stay away from these evil incantations and their hypnotic power, was the only way to face them. (Good Friday is the most dramatic expression of this message imaginable.) He gave Marie Louise a cross to wear around her neck, to remind her of God’s love and power. Such discussions are almost daily occurrences in Haiti, so alive are the convictions that misfortune, illness and death have their source in a personal curse.

Two days before her fateful one, Marie Louis was at the orphanage again. A lovely dress, fresh makeup, cheerful conversation, helping in the kitchen. But before she left, she asked again for $300, which was once again denied.

Desolation of desolations. After her burial, we went to Kenscoff to try to understand more fully everything that had happened. I spoke with the boyfriend, the two girls who lived with her, with neighbors. I tried to find the hougan. I spent Easter Sunday in this dreary pursuit, only to find out that Marie Louise’s life was one of prostitution and drugs, of nightlong parties in filthy bars. Desolation of desolations. Those who filled her days and nights were nowhere to be found when she needed them. We were the only ones to try to rescue her from deadly poisons, to shed tears for her, to prepare her tenderly for burial, to commend her to the earth with prayers for her soul. Desolation of desolations. In spite of all her years with us, she never centered herself in what is true about love, but sought it in the places where, as the Bible says, Satan crouches like a lion ready to devour you if you are foolish enough to come near. Desolation of desolations. Marie Louise had come to us as child out of a nightmare, only to leave us as a young woman into a nightmare again. But this I know for sure: at five years old and again at twenty years old, we were truly home for her. May she rest in that comfort now.

Religions have always played contradictory roles in society. Some aspects are liberating and life-giving. Others are enslaving and destructive. Christianity has dealt some death-blows in her long and very human history. So has Voodoo. But Christianity is a religion that lives in the public eye, with an identifiable authorities that must take responsibility for her activity in society. Voodoo lives in the shadows, ever secretive, with never anyone to hold responsible. Christianity must continually restate her purpose and goals, ever refined by public challenge. Superstitions become replaced by convincing descriptions of mystery, and the demands of mystery on us. Maybe one day Voodoo will be forced into this most necessary dynamic.

Late that night, Good Friday, after a long tragic day, I stepped outside exactly at midnight to look at the stars. There was a wonder in the sky. The southern cross, of all things, shone like a diamond in the velvet sky, beneath clouds lit up by the full easter moon. I thought of God’s promise to Noah, after the great flood. If there could ever be a rainbow at midnight, there it was.

“Desperado, won’t you come down from your fences, Put down your defenses, and open the gate. It may be raining, but there’s a rainbow above you! You better let somebody love you Before its too late.”*

*Jackson Browne

Fr. Rick Frechette
NPH Team for Excellence in Healthcare
NPH cares for orphaned and abandoned children in Latin America and the Caribbean since 1954.
www.nph.org

Fr. Rick Frechette is the Director of the Team for Excellence in Healthcare of NPH International. NPH cares for orphaned and abandoned children in Latin America and the Caribbean since 1954. Fr. Rick works every day in the slums of Port-au-Prince, Haiti.

It’s hard to believe that this year marks the 20th anniversary of the release of the movie Witness, a film that contrasted the violent modern world with that of the peaceful Amish… “A big city cop. A small country boy. They have nothing in common…but a murder.”

Since then millions of people have watched Witness, which gained worldwide popularity due to its marketing as a romantic thriller and because it featured Harrison Ford, fresh from his starring roles in Indiana Jones and Star Wars. For many people, it was an introduction to the Amish culture, and a locale and people foreign to most people’s perceptions of America.

Now, in honor of the film’s 20th anniversary, visitors to the picturesque Lancaster, Pennsylvania countryside can learn more about the peaceful world of the Amish while visiting Witness filming locations on the Witness Movie Experience Tour, a 3-hour guided motorcoach tour which runs through November 21st. The tour allows visitors, for the first time ever, a behind-the-scenes look at the farm featured in the film, while learning about the people who made Witness such an intriguing tale.

The Witness Movie Experience Tour is the latest in a worldwide movie tourism trend. In London, for example, visitors can see the sites of Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason; Philadelphia is the location of National Treasure movie tours, and New Zealand, the home of The Lord of the Rings’ Middle Earth.

Unlike these recent films, however, two decades may have passed since you’ve seen Witness, so let me refresh your memory: the movie opens with the funeral of the husband of Rachel Lapp (Kelly McGillis), who soon takes her son, Samuel, with her on a train trip to visit her sister. The drama begins when Samuel, on his first trip to the “outside world”, witnesses a murder in Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station.

Policeman John Book (Harrison Ford), takes the boy and his mother, Rachel, to the police station for questioning. When the boy recognizes the murderer in some newspaper clippings in the police station’s trophy case, Book realizes the three murderers are cops. Wounded in an attack, Book flees with Rachel and her son to the Lapp farm in Lancaster, where the Amish elders allow Book to recuperate, unaware that the murderers are looking for him.

In real life, the Lapp’s 82-acre farm (twice as large as most Amish farms) is the home of an Amish family, and still looks just as it did during the filming of Witness, with a few exceptions: the Purple Martin bird house has been replaced with a replica, the farmhouse windows now have shutters, and a new cow barn was built in 2001 to accommodate 60 cows, whose milk is turned into Land of Lakes butter.

Nevertheless, the farmhouse’s porch swing still catches the golden afternoon sunlight as it did during the filming of Witness, and if you stand still for a moment, it’s easy to imagine Alexander Godunov (Rachel’s Amish suitor, Daniel Hochleitner) and Kelly McGillis sipping lemonade as they swing upon it in awkward silence.

The farmhouse itself is off limits, but visitors will see the summer kitchen, where grandfather lectures Samuel on violence and the value of life after the boy discovers Book’s gun in a drawer. Also, visitors will venture inside the barn, where the widowed Rachel dances with Book as they discover a mutual romantic attraction which raises serious concern within the Amish community.

To give visitors an in-depth look at the Amish way of life, the Witness Movie Experience Tour begins in historic downtown Lancaster at the Lancaster Cultural History Museum, where three floors are dedicated to “Witness to Witness: The Exhibit.” The ground floor gives a background on the Amish people, their history, and the culture of the local Amish community.

The museum’s second floor contains Witness memorabilia, including four of Kelly McGillis’ costumes from the movie, props from famous scenes such as Kelly McGillis’ blue agateware pot from the kitchen of the farmhouse, as well as dozens of international Witness movie posters.

The exhibit’s third floor features a replica of a typical Pennsylvania-German Bank Barn, similar to the one built in the movie’s spectacular barn-raising scene in which Book puts his carpentry skill to use — a skill that is Harrison Ford’s real-life talent. The barn-raising movie scene, in fact, is no Hollywood fantasy, but a realistic depiction of how the Amish actually live - with a strong degree of commitment to their neighbors and community.

This degree of commitment is also evident later in the movie when the bad guys trace Book to Rachel’s home. Book uses violence to defend himself, but it is the Amish that save the day when they use non-violence in the form of their sheer numbers and presence to end the killing.

From the museum, the tour moves to other downtown Lancaster Witness filming locations, such as the Lancaster County Courthouse parking garage, used in the scene where John Book was shot, and W.L. Zimmerman and Sons Grocery & Hardware’s front porch, from where John Book placed his phone calls to the city.

Finally, after a visit to the Witness farm, the tour takes visitors through the tranquil Lancaster County countryside, where the guide talks about the differences between the Amish culture and ours, reminding us of grandfather’s parting advice to Book, “You be careful out among them English.”

There’s a lot to see and do in Lancaster, but if you have the time, the Witness Movie Experience Tour is well worth it. It commemorates a film which points out that people of different cultures can meet and be enriched by their interaction, without having to change each other’s way of life. Perhaps if enough people realize this, the world will become a less violent place, and grandfather’s parting advice won’t be necessary.

If you go:
The Witness Movie Experience Tour is available Mondays, Fridays & Saturdays, April 1- November 21, 2005 only. Reservations must be made. Cost of the tour is $29.95 for adults and $19.95 for children 4 to 12. For tickets and information, call the PA Dutch Convention & Visitors Bureau at 1-800-723-8824, and press 1, or visit www.padutchcountry.com.

Travel writer Melody Moser’s articles and photos have appeared in publications such as The Orlando Sentinel, The AAA Touch, Arabella Romances Magazine, Connecting Solo Travel News, The Globe, and GoNomad.com; she also writes regularly for The Tourist News, a supplement to The Miami Herald. She can be reached through her travel blog at http://www.traveldreamsite.blogs.com/.

During my 35 years of counseling individuals, couples, families and business partners, I have discovered that an important purpose of our controlling behavior in our relationships is to avoid the feeling of helplessness. One of the hardest feelings to feel is helplessness. Most of us are unwilling to even know what we are and are not helpless over. Our controlling behavior toward others generally comes from our unwillingness to accept our helplessness over others’ feelings and behavior. We do not want to know that we are helpless over whether another chooses to be loving and accepting toward us or judgmental and rejecting toward us.

If we truly accepted our helplessness over others, would we continue to get angry at them? Would we continue to blame, to judge, shame, criticize? Would we continue to comply, or to be nice instead of honest? If we truly accepted our helplessness over whether others loved us and accepted us, would we work so hard to prove our worth to others?

Sometimes - because we often manage to have control over getting approval or avoiding disapproval - we may confuse approval with love and think we can have control over getting love. But love is always a gift freely given with no strings attached. We may receive attention and approval when we try to control getting love from another, but that is generally short-lived and not fulfilling.

Moving beyond our controlling behavior, as well as our core shame (the belief that we are inherently bad, inadequate, unlovable, unworthy, not good enough), happens easily and naturally once we fully accept our helplessness over others’ intention to be open or closed, loving or unloving, accepting or judgmental. Our core shame is one of our deepest, oldest false beliefs and one of our oldest protections against our feelings of helplessness. Our shame gives us the illusion of power over others: that is, we tell ourselves that if we are not being loved because we are not good enough, we can continue to strive to be good enough and then we will have control over getting the love we want. Believing in our core shame allows us to believe that we cause others to be unloving to us, that it is our fault when others are unloving because we are not good enough. It takes us out of the truth of our helplessness and into a sense of control - if only we change ourselves we can then change others. This illusion of control over other people’s feelings about us is difficult for most people to give up.

Paradoxically, accepting our helplessness over others leads us to our personal power. Once we fully accept that we cannot have control over others loving us and taking care of us, we may then finally decide to learn how to take care of our own feelings and needs.. This major step moves us out of being victims of others’ choices and into control over our own lives, which is what we do have control over. We do have control over our own intent to learn about loving ourselves and others, or protect against pain with some from of controlling behavior. You will feel incredibly empowered once you fully accept your helplessness over others. Try it! For one week, try throughout the day reminding yourself that you are helpless over others’ feelings and behavior. You will be astounded at the results!

Once you accept your helplessness over others, then lots of energy is released to take care of yourself. Many of us have been taught that taking care of ourselves is selfish. Contrary to taking care of yourself being selfish, taking care of your own feelings and needs is what personal responsibility is all about. As long as you make others responsible for your feelings of worth and lovability, you will try to control how others treat you and feel about you. As soon as you take responsibility for defining your own worth and lovability and taking care of your own feelings and needs, you move out of being a victim and into personal power.

The challenge is to accept our helplessness over others. This is often difficult, because as infants, if we were helpless over getting someone to feed us and attend to us, we would have died. Many of us went through the terror of crying and crying and no one coming to love and care for us. Many of us experienced that life-threatening experience of helplessness over getting others to take care of our needs. We became deeply terrified of the feeling of helplessness and learned to do anything we could to avoid that feeling and that situation.

The problem is that we do not realize that today we are no longer helpless over ourselves as we were as infants. We will not die of someone doesn’t attend to us. We can feed ourselves and call a friend for help if we need it. Yet many people still react to the feeling of helplessness over others as if it were a life and death situation. Many people still do anything they can to avoid feeling helpless, including controlling others or shutting out our feelings with addictive behavior. How often have you found yourself grazing in front of the refrigerator, turning on the TV, grabbing a cigarette without even realizing you were doing it? Often, this addictive behavior is a way to avoid the feeling of helplessness that may have come up in an interaction with someone, or as a way to avoid responsibility for taking care of your own feelings and needs.

The first step in moving beyond controlling and addictive behavior is to be willing to become aware of the feeling of helplessness. Once you are aware of what it feels like in your body, embrace the feeling as you would embrace a small child who is feeling scared. As you bring love to the feeling of helplessness within you rather than avoiding it with controlling and addictive behavior, you will discover that it isn’t as bad as you thought. If you are willing to open to the love that surrounds you in Spirit and bring that love inside to the part of you that feels helpless, this frightened wounded part that just wants to be loved begins to get healed. The more you practice embracing helplessness rather than avoiding it, the more you will move out of being a victim and into your personal power and ability to love yourself and others.

Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is the best-selling author and co-author of eight books, including “Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By You?” She is the co-creator of the powerful Inner Bonding healing process. Learn Inner Bonding now! Visit her web site for a FREE Inner Bonding course: www.innerbonding.com or mailto:margaret@innerbonding.com. Phone sessions available.

If you have a dog that has a problem staying in your yard, then you are probably worried about them wandering off or getting into traffic. You want your dog to be able to run freely in your yard but at the same time you don’t want them to be hurt in anyway.

A relative cheap alternative to fencing or putting your dog in a dog run is to have a professional company install an invisible fence. Depending on the size of your yard, installation can start at approximately $500. This is a small price to pay when it comes to the safety of your dog. Some electric fences that you install yourself are priced cheaper but without the professional training they are often not as affective. This can end up costing you more money in the long run to switch to professional installation.

The first thing you need to do is to find a professional installer in your area that is ASPC approved to be sure that the product is humane to your dog. Most places will come out to your home and give you a free demonstration and estimate for installation. You can show them what areas you want fenced in, including around swimming pools, the woods or just specific parts of the yard.

Once the fencing is installed, the company will mark the fencing with flags so that your dog can begin to associate the flags with the boundaries. They typically have a professional dog trainer on staff that can train your dog to know where they can and can’t go. Your dog will wear a collar that will emit a tone when they are too close to the boundaries. This way they will learn to stop when they hear the sound rather than experiencing a shock. You can request them to send you batteries throughout the year so that you won’t have to worry about the batteries running out.

The average time it takes dogs to respond to the fencing and understand their boundaries is approximately 3-4 weeks. It can take more or less time depending on the dog and how much fencing is installed in the yard. Once your dog learns the boundaries, you can remove the flags. If your dog ever crosses the boundaries, you can call the company and have them come out to retrain, often free of charge.

Safe for your dog and family, the invisible fence allows you to keep your dog in your yard without changing your landscape. It does not give your dog the harmful shocks that many electric fences can give. You can search on the internet for more information or for invisible fence companies in your area.

We breathe 22,000 times a day, inhaling 400 cubic feet of air.

We spend 80% of our time indoors where air may be no cleaner than outdoors air. A diffuser is the easiest, most effective method of dispersing essential oils without altering their fragrance and therapeutic value. Diffused oils enhance the harmony and well being of body, mind and spirit.

Aromatherapy diffusers have been around for a long time. But until now there has never been a diffuser like ESSENTIAL AIR. With it’s patented diffuser system it offers the most technically advanced method of delivering the benefits of Aromatherapy.

Engineered to reduce essential oils to droplets as tiny as one micron, the oil actually becomes part of the air you breathe. You get the traditional benefits of breathing in the aroma which follows the olfactory pathway to the brain. But, in addition because you inhale the oils themselves which travel through the resistor system to the lungs you also quickly receive an over-all physiological benefit.

Interval Timing - Researchers have demonstrated time and again that the human olfactory sense is quickly sated, switched off automatically by the brain. ESSENTIAL AIR outwits the brain with it’s own timing device - automatically turning the unit on and off at specific intervals. It catches the olfactory sense napping and reawakens it to the beneficial aromatherapy experience. An added bonus: it conserves essential oils while improving performance.

Adjustable Diffusion Regulator - provides fingertip control of vapor intensity…so the level of essential oils blended into the air may be easily increased or decreased.

Accident Proof - Great care has gone into making ESSENTIAL AIR a sturdy dependable appliance. This sleek compact design is weighted to discourage tipping or getting knocked over. Glass, (a dangerous breakage potential) is kept to a minimum. And especially important the diffuser itself has no metal parts that could crack or damage glass bottles. The essential oil containers themselves are secured in a deep well to avoid tipping or spilling.

This diffuser offers the benefits of instrument pure air filtration. This mini-but-mightly air scrubber, incorporated into the diffuser serves as an intake filter that scrubs the air clean as it enters the unit. It intercepts pollen, bacteria, dust, smoke, smog, dander and even some viruses. Tests show it to be 93% efficient at 0.01 micron. When you consider that a human hair measures 70 microns you understand why we call this our mini-but-mighty scrubber.

How does this hygienic filter provide instrument pure air to combine with your essential oils? Its unusually advantageous performance is due to the unique filter medium, a random bed or borosilicate glass fibers, which attracts the offensive particles and holds them fast. They can’t be shaken loose or washed away. Unlike H.E.P.A. which need frequent cleaning, our filters need no care. These disposable filters will operate effectively for a year or more in normal use. That comes to less than 5 cents a day for instrument pure air.

It comes equipped with a three-way switch offering a broader selection of options: 1. 5 minutes on/25 minutes off timed release, 2. continuous diffusion, or 3. off.

Gerald F. McCarthy holds a patent on the unique diffuser used in all ESSENTIAL AIR models.

Over the years McCarthy of Leyden House has accumulated seventeen patents in the field of energy and health related products. A speech pathologist by profession he was intrigued by the beneficial effects of natural healing and began searching for ways to deliver essential oils more effectively.

Visit: http://www.essential-air.com