April 2017 – Page 2 – HOMEPROFITCOACH LLC

“MAN MAY WORK FROM SUN TO SUN, BUT A CONNOISSEUR’S WORK IS NEVER DONE.”

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

It is the beginning of April. A lovely time of year here in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where I am writing you. The sun is brilliant; leaves are bursting out all over. It is going to be 82 degrees out today; it was just 30 last week.

These rapid fire changes are, of course, the norm in New England. Temperatures may drop sharply yet again, but the odds are we are now on the necessary path to deliver spring for sure.

I ought to be outside. I’m 70 now, you know, and I’m supposed to be retired. Instead I found that word almost ludicrous in the extreme. There is no rest for the weary.

One reason why is the stack of auction catalogs which I cannot quite reach by leaning backwards in my desk chair. Every day now, the best that major auction companies (and some small ones too) can offer is just about a finger’s length away. They taunt, they point, they arrange themselves in a seductive pattern on the floor, they teeter in makeshift towers which are anything but stable, and fall frequently, giving me yet another look at the bounty inside… bounty that I want.

I thought I’d write this article for you, to show you what you must do if you plan on becoming a major collector, or even an episodic superficial one. There are steps you must take. There are actions and procedures you must learn. As always, you must restrain yourself; it’s part of what being a connoisseur is all about. Focus on the best. Never be or remain satisfied with anything other than quality.

For many years now, I have regarded April, when the first major auctions take place, as the true beginning of auction season. The auction schedule is clogged for this month, May, and June. The loveliest things in the world go on the block during this period, and must sell now before the summer descends, when the unrelenting heat crushes our desire to sit inside and make learned remarks about things we probably cannot afford.

The first thing you need to know about auctions in this season or any other, is that homework is required. Collections are built through assiduous effort, constant viewing and reviewing of objects and offers, constant communication with your stable of experts, and frequent attaboys to keep your spirits up and, as they said in the Revolutionary War, to keep your powder dry.

Upon receipt, review your catalogs at once.

True connoisseurs, that is to say people who play the game better than anyone else, want information early, thorough, and precise. Thus, when a new catalog arrives (that could well be every single day), you must sit down and glance and skim every page. When you get good at this game, this review will only take 10 minutes or so.

As you skim, mark each page that contains something of potential interest. The best thing to do is when you have a little bit more time, create bookmarks by cutting up scrap paper and keep a jar full of them so you’re prepared when the catalogs arrive.

This preliminary review gives you a sense of what may become important over the next days and weeks before the auctions. The goal is not to make a decision now, it is simply to give you a bird’s eye view of everything that is coming up at the auction houses you follow.

Thanks to contemporary universal communications, you may have auctions you’re interested in in Stockholm, Vienna, Paris, London, Rome, Amsterdam, New York, and other major cities, whereas in the olden days, before the internet and computers, you probably couldn’t follow more than one auction house in one city at a time. These days it is perfectly common to follow both major auction houses (Sotheby’s, Christie’s, Dorotheum), and some localized regional houses.

Let’s be honest with each other: this is not easy to do. It takes sustained focus, and a willingness to do what is necessary so that you will not be intimidated when you look for goods in Sweden or Madrid. The worldwide communications revolution has quite clearly fundamentally altered communications, and they have made it possible to learn about, study, and acquire the lots of your highest interest. Craziness extra.

Once you have accomplished your preliminary review, consult your bank book. As I so well know, being a connoisseur with a desire to achieve a splendid collection of international importance selected from the widest variety of goods, you must follow up your preliminary review with a more thorough secondary review.

It is a wise idea to organize this review by date. Remember, when you’re dealing with many auction houses worldwide, your life will be like a popcorn machine, with new sales popping up all the time. Thus, organize your catalogs in chronological order. Don’t just mark the objects you’re interested in, mark the objects you need help with.

I can recall one instance, for example, when I was purchasing Swedish silver sugar bowls from the 18th Century and before. Some of the best silver of this kind was produced in Stockholm, which was then a major political force in Europe. The silver bowls produced in Sweden, however, did not feature elaborate family coats of arms, or other heraldic markings. I was curious, because the objects would have been so much more dramatic, at least in my opinion, with these engraved devices. But it was not the custom to engrave silver as they did in every other major European power. Chacun à son goût.

So… review all your catalogs… mark the items you are interested in… and be clear on the sales date for each catalog you’re interested in. Here is where strategy comes into play. You may see, as I often do, a lovely item on page 1, that is not quite as lovely as an item on page 6, that is not quite as lovely as an item on page 52. Connoisseurs have a constant dilemma. Should you nail down the first item in an auction, even though that may constitute all your available resources, or should you pass on the first item to get to the second, doing the exact same thing to get to the third item. This is a conundrum, a puzzle, an ongoing test of your strategic abilities.

Very few of us have unlimited resources. We must, like I have done throughout the years, work harder, research more thoroughly, and enter the auction arena with nerves of steel. In the auction game, things change with lightning speed. Items which you think you couldn’t afford all of a sudden are selling for fifty percent of what you thought they would. You have to be ready to make the appropriate move, and you must never regret it if your strategy doesn’t work out. Learn from your failures.

By the same token, when you get something that you didn’t expect to get, and you get it below the low estimate, do a happy dance around your desk and whoop it up. Napoleon Bonaparte used to say “Give me the lucky man.” The more you play this game, the luckier you will get.

This brings me to the spring silver sales now underway. I have been spending the last few days in my usual state of anguish and anxiety. All three major European auction houses are having silver sales of the exact things that I crave and cherish. Two of the companies have their silver sales on the same day… different companies, even different continents… same day. This has happened to me on other occasions, where I have one company on hold on one phone and one company on hold on the other. Complete control and clarity are essential in this situation.

Mark the lots that you most want. Do this in all the sales catalogs you have. Do not give way to over-enthusiasm, to an “I must have” attitude. No matter how rare the item you want, there will always be a rarer item coming down the pike.

When I was a graduate student at Harvard, I lived like most graduate students. That is to say, I was a man of empty pockets and unyielding dreams. If some wise acre had told me forty years ago that I would be playing this game with some of the biggest international players, I would not just have disbelieved, I would have scoffed. Such things may happen in fairy tales, but not to graduate students without a schilling in their pocket. But my dream indeed has come true.

Just this morning, I purchased an early 19th Century Venetian seascape by Giacomo Guardi (1764-1835). It is a lovely picture hitherto down on its luck, needing TLC and lots of it. Luckily, it found me, and it now has a chance of life again, and grandeur. This afternoon I’ve been working on my silver collection. Each of these numerous items is an asset. As I have said for so many years, all assets in play. Do not just sit on an asset and look at its thrilling aspects. See it not just as a stationary thing, but as an asset to leverage more. To be a connoisseur is to be not just a finder of beauteous objects, but an economic wizard, seizing a thing, twisting and turning that thing, until you have another thing, and the process takes place all over again for the rest of your life.

Musical note from Grace Jones “Art Groupie” (1981)

I’ve turned to my friend Grace Jones for a comment or two on this matter. Grace is never less than totally frank, which makes so many people squirm, knowing that they may be the next one in her sights.

“Don’t ask me any questions,
My personal life is a bore,
Admire me in glory,
An Art Groupie. That’s all.”

“I’ll never write my memoirs,
There’s nothing in my book,
The only way you see me an Art Groupie,
I’m hooked.”

And so am I.

COME TO CAMBRIDGE! BIRTHPLACE OF GREAT IDEAS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

Lifestyle Books
>
Come to Cambridge! Birthplace of great ideas that changed the world

COME TO CAMBRIDGE! BIRTHPLACE OF GREAT IDEAS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

$4.95

Of Cambridge, Harvard and the ghosts of the many diversified people who lived there.
They were experts in theology, education, trade, capitalism, literature, music… all these arts grew here in Cambridge, and at Harvard, often first, since we have always been years, if not decades ahead of the people elsewhere who foolishly make comparisons they cannot hope to win.
Folks come to visit me here in Cambridge, my place of choice. Me and all our artifacts, theories, stratagems, plans, great deeds, dreamt of then consummated… it all happens here in my neighborhood and has been happening here for hundreds of years, no end in sight. Those persons urging me to escape while the getting’s good have never of course lived in any place of such scope, brilliance, challenge, and ultimately veritas, truth.

Whatever the inconveniences (and they are not rare), these pale into insignificance by a single glance. What I see before me on days no matter what the weather, are the great people, the great ideas, the great dreams, the great challenges, the hope and spirit of a great people, everyone my neighbor.
for many years, I have been writing about my neighbors, my instructors, my friends, my lovers, my guests and visitors, and all the richness that they bring with them. I have lived here. I have grown older here. I have used the talents of people I encountered here to build enterprises of international use and merit. And in due course, I shall be buried here.
Now I invite you to amble through the following pages. I have selected a fraction of the articles I’ve written about this grand old city… what has made her… what has sustained here… what has made us proud… and the things we are still doing that will in due course make us proud again.

You will see Cambridge people of note in this book. You will learn of history that has shaped our lives and mental landscapes. I tell you about Anne Hutchinson, who despite every obstacle, brought us religious diversity and freedom of thought.

I’ve taken you to the homes of notable Cambridge people: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Dr. Charles Follen, and George and Martha Washington, to name but a few. I’ve showed you how they lived at various times, and their Cambridge connections. They were just a part of the rich legacy.

Read this book carefully; do not skim it. You see, someday if you are very lucky, you may live in Cambridge too. If you do, you will be supremely happy, just as I have been for so many years.

Digital copy in PDF and Kindle epub format.

“MY SALAD DAYS”… A SILVER BOWL, TIFFANY & CO., CIRCA 1940. IMPORTANT AMERICANA ADDED TO THE LANT COLLECTION.

4/10/2017

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant

I was in London on one of my many formative voyages, sitting in the balcony mesmerized by The Royal Shakespeare Company’s rendition of Shakespeare’s play “Anthony and Cleopatra” (1623). There was a chatty little fellow sitting right in front of me who couldn’t have been any older than 12, and his mother was on a marathon shushing expedition, trying to get her annoying darling boy to hush.

Then Cleopatra started her famous speech to Julius Caesar at the end of Act I:

“My salad days, / When I was green in judgment, cold in blood…”

Without dropping a beat, the kiddo asked his mother in a stage whisper, “Does this mean she was Caesar’s salad?” And of course, not only did the audience lose it, but the cast lost it too, and for a moment we gave way to hearty laughter… no doubt the young man was happy with his results. It certainly left a happy impression on me, for this incident took place over 40 years ago and is as clear to me today as the evening I too joined in the infectious mirth. Only in England.

Salad bowl

My mother was not a notable cook; quite the opposite. But she knew the importance of green leafy vegetables, and a host of other healthy ingredients from which she created salads that were hearty and nutritious… and which she hoped would obliterate the memory of her main courses, which were entirely forgettable, and quite possibly dangerous.

I can see the salad bowl now. It was used every night, and only rarely at mid-day. It was wood, and came with a pair of wooden tongs. It followed us on our peregrinations from Illinois to California, and over the years to many other places. There are few serving dishes which have the impact that these did.

That is why, when I became aware of this important American silver salad bowl, I gave it a good long look, which included returning to this item many times. I found it on the internet, on the 1stdibs website, which is a cornucopia of interesting things. Once such a sight catches my eye, I feel constitutionally obligated to read all the entries. 1stdibs is so large, that laudable activity is impossible. There is just too much to look at and take in.

I found myself thinking about this dazzling object, and kept saying to myself “You don’t collect American silver, you don’t collect things this late”. But I remembered what one well known collector had told me some time ago… “Never be a prisoner to your collection. Don’t just collect one kind of thing from one period, show that you are above such petty constraints. And if the object in question is quality, even though it is in a period you know nothing about, buy it, and learn. Remember, every object is a teacher. Never forget that you are a connoisseur above all else.”

Thus emboldened, I crept back to look at “my” salad bowl, as I already thought it. It was lovely. Designed by Olaf Wilford, from Tiffany & Co. New York circa 1940, it had the strong bold design of a master. This was no mere salad bowl; it was like all good art a statement by an accomplished master about his vision for the object in question.

A designer like Wilford (1894-1980) aims to seize your brain by showing you how even a common object can be turned into art, and seize your eye. Curiously, the bowl was not designed first, as one logically might suppose. No, the first objects to be designed were actually the pair of parcel-gilt silver salad servers, serving spoon and fork. They were designed in 1937 as part of a limited edition.

These were followed in 1940 by the silver salad bowl. This striking object, in the Art Deco fashion, was featured in Tiffany’s display at the House of Jewels Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair, 1939-40. Although these items were not created to be a set, they look so good together they soon became one de facto.

The bowl itself, with its tomato or pumpkin vine design (not oranges, as was mistakenly written in the original description of the item), was well liked. Thus, Tiffany decided to make a limited number of bowls and serving instruments, and did so until the early 1950’s. Thus right from the start this was a popular pattern, and it was illustrated in Jewel Stern’s “Modernism in American Silver” p. 177 fig. 8.15 and 8.16.

A closer look at the bowl and serving instruments.

The plain hemispherical bowl applied with five vertical panels, stylized tomatoes and foliage, with a conforming salad serving fork and spoon, chased on the reverse, with foliage marked on base of bowl and numbered 22888, servers marked on reverse all with star mark. Here are its dimensions: diameter 9 ½ in, 24 cm; 15 oz 4 dwt, 095g.

These three objects had the undeniable “Wow Factor”, which is hardly surprising since they were designed by a master and offered to the public by Tiffany & Co., a brand name we are all familiar with.

A few words about Tiffany & Co.

Tiffany was founded September 18th, 1837 by Charles Lewis Tiffany and John B. Young. The reason Tiffany has been so successful over time is the quality, originality, bold display, and cunning designs which cause you literally to stop and stare the way Audrey Hepburn did in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961). Even if you’re broke like Holly Golightly, Hepburn’s character, just standing in the window can transport you to a place you want to be, and with the money you’ll need to achieve your goal.

Tiffany is all about dreams, social success, and one-upsmanship. Anyone who looks at a diamond or any of the high grade Tiffany products cannot fail to be excited by them. Tiffany supplies the goods, and your imagination – and deep pockets – does the rest.

From time to time, Tiffany has deviated from its core principles, and paid the price. It is easy to see how low grade executives in Tiffany’s board room might argue strenuously about the common sense of expanding the gold Tiffany’s name to sell lesser merchandise. However, time after time, Tiffany’s has discovered that it isn’t just the name that’s so important, it’s what that name offers, and stands for.

In this connection, I read with the greatest interest and awe of some of the projects that Tiffany’s has been involved with over the years. I can mention only a few of a very great number.

For example, Tiffany & Co. was the first U.S. firm to win an award for excellence in silverware at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1867. Tiffany designed the logo for the New York Yankees in 1909. In 1887, Tiffany bought the French Crown Jewels. In 1942 Tiffany created a new design for the Congressional Medal of Honor. In 1968, First Lady Ladybird Johnson commissioned Tiffany’s to make a new set of White House china on the theme of American wildflowers, her particular interest. If the subject is quality, Tiffany & Co. is the answer.

“A pretty girl is like a melody that haunts you night and day”

As part of the 1919 “Ziegfeld Follies”, there was a famous tune by Irving Berlin, “A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody”. It describes the tormented process every collector goes through when they see something they want and must have despite all logical reasons, like: not now, you don’t have any money, you don’t need it, another one will be coming along in a minute. All such concerns are rendered meaningless when the connoisseur connects with the object of his affections, and cannot think of anything else.

“Just like the strain of a haunting refrain,
She’ll start up-on a marathon
And run around your brain.”

I have personally experienced this fateful and inconvenient summons, which overturns all of my good intentions for frugality, for saving, for going slow, for being patient, and for never going beyond your capacity. But you know as well as I do that it is the experience of going beyond, of taking the risk, of seizing the object (or the person) and making it yours, totally, unquestionably yours, that thrills you. Connoisseurs can never be attracted to the pedestrian. We crave the different, the unusual, the unique, and we go through much suffering to ensure we get them.

That is why after I had read and reread the description of these marvelous objects, I had to do what was necessary to get them, planning wisdom be damned. Your happiest moments in collecting will be those that deliver a new level of excitement.

“You can’t escape she’s in your memory.
By morning night and noon.”

So I took the plunge and acquired this item for The Lant Collection.

People ask me will I use this item… will I use any of the many silver serving dishes I’ve acquired? The answer is always a resounding “I do.” And if you think that your salad tastes the same in wood as it does in sterling silver, you need to adjust your palette… for it is impossible to live with and use a beautiful object without yourself being uplifted by the experience. This is the importance of my collection… and when you see it, you are not just experiencing the item or how it looks, but what it can do to improve your life.

“She will leave you and then come back again
A pretty girl is just like a pretty tune”

This lovely three-part set proves this again, for it is never just an implement, it is a way to deliver perfection… and that must always be the overriding goal.

N.B. I take this opportunity to thank Michael Johnson of Eiseman’s Jewels in Dallas, Texas. One of the great things about collecting is the tremendous people you meet along the way, people who know more than you do and are happy to share it. Michael Johnson is such a person. He generously made time to discuss these lovely items and provide me with photographs.

Of course he wanted to make the sale; and he did. But more importantly, we both made a new friend and a new source of valuable information. Thank you, Michael.

Hey, Internet marketing chump. Looks like you’ve been fooled again. You must like it!

Author: Howard Martell | Posted in home business

“FREE consultation ($150 value). Expert shows you how to make money online.Call (757-647-2886) 24/7 Or Skype me
homeprofitcoach NOW! Profit today!” Your success guaranteed. I’m waiting for your call RIGHT NOW! sign up for the free
EBook on list building prior to contacting me!. http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=kr2fDPDb

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.
Author’s program note. I can’t stand it another minute, Poopsie. I just cannot stand by and let you fail for even one more minute. Because today, like yesterday, and all the days before, you are going to fail; you are not going to make a single penny from that joke you call your online “business”.
Instead by day’s end when you’ve racked up another day of chump change, you’ll be worse off… a day wasted, a precious day you could have used to get ahead, now in the cosmic trash can… clueless on how to get out and make the money you say you want. Look at yourself closely in the mirror right now… that’s one poor puppy staring back at you…. pale, wan, hapless, helpless, pathetic, disgusting. And this is the guy you expect to lead the victory parade? LOL! LOL! LOL!
It’s time for your Internet marketing make-over… It’s time to own up to and grasp what you are doing (the stuff that doesn’t work) and what you must do (if you expect to have any chance of online success at all).
Let’s get started with a cool tune that pretty well summarizes the mess you’re in, the mess you’ll stay in if you don’t follow sensible advice and make a radical change.
“”Fooled Again (I Don’t Like It”)
Go to any search engine now. Find the tune and set it on the highest decibels, for you’re about to fly. Put up your collar… find those ultra cool shades you sheepishly wore just once… wear them like the symbol of insolence and impertinence they were meant to be … now move that arthritic body… for babeeeeee, you are about to astonish the world; Tom Petty and his Heartbreakers — plus one extra guy looking remarkably like… me — are about to help you out of the sad situation you just can’t seem to shake . The song is “Fooled Again (I Don’t Like It”). Recorded in (1971, it was what rock was all about… attitude… edge… in your face… don’t tread on me, maggot… stand back world and prepare to be astonished, I’ve got the ticket to ride.
Now belt out the lyrics that pretty much summarize your entire Internet experience…
“Looks like I’ve been fooled again/ Looks like I’m the fool again/ I don’t like it, I don’t like it.”
Now hear this… you’re not just singing a tune… you’re announcing the advent of the new regime… the regime where you’re a successful online marketer, not just some luckless schlepper, kick-me sign always on your back side, the guy it’s oh-so-easy to ridicule, disdain, and dismiss. You can always feel sorry for these toads, but you can never, ever respect them. And that’s why you don’t just need to scream “I don’t like it”. You’ve got to do something to turn the fiasco you call Internet marketing around… and at once!
Try these suggestions on for size.
1) STOP doing what you’re doing. It doesn’t work. Can’t work. And the silliest thing is that you ever thought it would work. The great thing about the ‘net is how easily you can test your ideas, thoughts and suppositions to see how well they work, indeed to see whether they work at all. For you see, something that doesn’t work today is not going to work tomorrow. Thus, experimentation is and must always be the order of the day, every day. If you won’t test, you won’t succeed.
2) Get trained. In my role as an Internet success counselor at Worldprofit Inc, have had occasion to train, work with, and nudge thousands of people worldwide over the last 20 years.
Nudge? What that means is not just setting the objective and teaching folks how to achieve it… but to keep each student’s nose to the grindstone, keeping them focused, accepting absolutely no excuses, including absolutely no “special pleading” where the candidate offers “reasons” why she didn’t do what she was pledged to do: following each and every step, no ifs, ands, or buts.
Your nudge is an essential part of your success team, and though I say it myself, I am the best nudge on Earth, the least easy to deceive and hide from, unrelenting, never losing sight of the goal, more determined to see you successful than absolutely anyone except your mother. You’d be exceptionally lucky to work with me, and that’s a fact.
So, I ask you. Who’s helping you set goals, brainstorm means of reaching them, reviewing results to see what worked and what didn’t, and always ensuring you stay on track? Yeah, I thought so. You’re not doing it, no one is helping you do it. You’re not focused on results, no one is helping you get focused. Thus your results are non existent, just the way they have always been. What an embarrassment! Have you got any self-respect?
3) You have no list and are not doing the consistent, strenuous work it takes to grow one. This one’s a real killer.
For the last over 40 years now I’ve been telling my students, beating it into their often amazingly resistant brains that “the list is the business, the business is the list.”
How important is your list? Say there’s a fire in your office. What would you grab first to save? Inventory? No, inventory is easily replaceable. Your computer? No worry here. Easily replaceable again. (You do back up, don’t you?) That picture of your mother-in-law; you know the one that confirms her near perfect resemblance to a rare genus of ancient lizard? (Please try to be serious.)
The correct answer, of course, is your list. It is essential, irreplaceable, unique. It’s loss would be catastrophic, a body blow from which you might never recover. And that is why “the list is the business, the business is the list.” The $64,000 question just this: What did you do today to build your list and turn it into the huge money-making tool you require to make the big bucks you say you want and haven’t got a clue how to get. Self-deception, self-deceit, self-delusion. This is what you’re specializing in and your thread-bare results give ample testament about just how successful you’ve been… and will always be. That better make you happy, because that, lamb chop, is what you’re going to get.
4) How are your copywriting skills? Can you write the words that dance and thrill, the words that make people from Alabama to Beijing jump up and shout, causing even the deadest heart to beat faster, faster, faster still? You’d better be, because otherwise you’re in for a lifetime of significance expense, since top copywriters command top dollars… the dollars that come straight out of your pocket; so sad for you but absolutely necessary if you expect to have ad copy that pulls the more lucrative response.
Of course knowing you, you’ll try to conjure the magic words yourself; anything to save a penny. But that, as you’ll quickly learn, just won’t cut it… words without the wizard’s legerdemain, without the magic, produce dismal results… and that just won’t do unless you like endless outflow and driblets of income, few and far between. This is your certain fate when you turn down demonstrated experts and attempt to do their crucial job yourself. Sucker.
5) Trying to build a money-making business off of “free”? Are you one of the hundreds of millions of would-be entrepreneurs online this very moment who is making — and every single day, too — the critical, fatal error of trying to make money off “free stuff” to be found online? If so, listen up. That is IMPOSSIBLE, can’t be done, and only wastes your time and energy. Did you hear me? The extent to which you want Internet success without reasonable investment is the extent to which you will fail, absolutely, positively, guaranteed.
Now for the real craziness. Day after futile day would-be entrepreneurs and Internet marketers enter the Live Business Center at Worldprofit.com. They are told, clearly, honestly, politely, thoroughly what they need for success… and go right out to do the EXACT reverse, ensuring failure, DOA. The Internet has empowered these sad creatures, each a candidate for spam, rip-off, certain loss and every variety of bamboozlement.
Why does this happen to so many so often with such miserable results? Because the typical ‘net entrepreneur is the very model of sloth, laziness, avarice. They want wealth without effort; magnificent results without knowing how to get them; falling victim over and over again to those who find victimizing these foolish people a piece of cake; integrity, honesty and old fashioned business standards and acumen the first to perish in such a pernicious environment; once gone, gone forever.
Must it be this way? Certainly not. Failure as much as success is a choice. Now it’s time for you to make the right decision at last.
Visit me in the Live Business Center at worldprofit.com where we work together in a giant worldwide team so that you have expert assistance 24/7/365 advising, counseling, guiding, reassuring, all accomplished in an environment of professionalism and good fellowship. This is the proven way to substantial financial wealth, a unique place online for people who have not hitherto seen such benefits, much less so fast or certain. It’s good, isn’t it, to “see you think so much of me”? What’s more, unlike Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, you’ll never be fooled again, and you’ll surely like that!

A clinical psychologist explains how Ayn Rand seduced young minds and helped turn the US into a selfish nation

Author Ayn Rand via Official Ayn Rand Facebook

DON’T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!

The ‘Atlas Shrugged’ author made selfishness heroic and caring about others weakness.

Ayn Rand’s “philosophy” is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society….To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.— Gore Vidal, 1961

Only rarely in U.S. history do writers transform us to become a more caring or less caring nation. In the 1850s, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was a strong force in making the United States a more humane nation, one that would abolish slavery of African Americans. A century later, Ayn Rand (1905-1982) helped make the United States into one of the most uncaring nations in the industrialized world, a neo-Dickensian society where healthcare is only for those who can afford it, and where young people are coerced into huge student-loan debt that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.

Rand’s impact has been widespread and deep. At the iceberg’s visible tip is the influence she’s had over major political figures who have shaped American society. In the 1950s, Ayn Rand read aloud drafts of what was later to become Atlas Shrugged to her “Collective,” Rand’s ironic nickname for her inner circle of young individualists, which included Alan Greenspan, who would serve as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board from 1987 to 2006.

In 1966, Ronald Reagan wrote in a personal letter, “Am an admirer of Ayn Rand.” Today, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) credits Rand for inspiring him to go into politics, and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) calls Atlas Shrugged his “foundation book.” Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) says Ayn Rand had a major influence on him, and his son Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) is an even bigger fan. A short list of other Rand fans includes Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas; Christopher Cox, chairman of the Security and Exchange Commission in George W. Bush’s second administration; and former South Carolina governor Mark Sanford.

But Rand’s impact on U.S. society and culture goes even deeper.

The Seduction of Nathan Blumenthal

Ayn Rand’s books such as The Virtue of Selfishness and her philosophy that celebrates self-interest and disdains altruism may well be, as Vidal assessed, “nearly perfect in its immorality.” But is Vidal right about evil? Charles Manson, who himself did not kill anyone, is the personification of evil for many of us because of his psychological success at exploiting the vulnerabilities of young people and seducing them to murder. What should we call Ayn Rand’s psychological ability to exploit the vulnerabilities of millions of young people so as to influence them not to care about anyone besides themselves?

While Greenspan (tagged “A.G.” by Rand) was the most famous name that would emerge from Rand’s Collective, the second most well-known name to emerge from the Collective was Nathaniel Branden, psychotherapist, author and “self-esteem” advocate. Before he was Nathaniel Branden, he was Nathan Blumenthal, a 14-year-old who read Rand’s The Fountainhead again and again. He later would say, “I felt hypnotized.” He describes how Rand gave him a sense that he could be powerful, that he could be a hero. He wrote one letter to his idol Rand, then a second. To his amazement, she telephoned him, and at age 20, Nathan received an invitation to Ayn Rand’s home. Shortly after, Nathan Blumenthal announced to the world that he was incorporating Rand in his new name: Nathaniel Branden. And in 1955, with Rand approaching her 50th birthday and Branden his 25th, and both in dissatisfying marriages, Ayn bedded Nathaniel.

What followed sounds straight out of Hollywood, but Rand was straight out of Hollywood, having worked for Cecil B. DeMille. Rand convened a meeting with Nathaniel, his wife Barbara (also a Collective member), and Rand’s own husband Frank. To Branden’s astonishment, Rand convinced both spouses that a time-structured affair—she and Branden were to have one afternoon and one evening a week together—was “reasonable.” Within the Collective, Rand is purported to have never lost an argument. On his trysts at Rand’s New York City apartment, Branden would sometimes shake hands with Frank before he exited. Later, all discovered that Rand’s sweet but passive husband would leave for a bar, where he began his self-destructive affair with alcohol.

By 1964, the 34-year-old Nathaniel Branden had grown tired of the now 59-year-old Ayn Rand. Still sexually dissatisfied in his marriage to Barbara and afraid to end his affair with Rand, Branden began sleeping with a married 24-year-old model, Patrecia Scott. Rand, now “the woman scorned,” called Branden to appear before the Collective, whose nickname had by now lost its irony for both Barbara and Branden. Rand’s justice was swift. She humiliated Branden and then put a curse on him: “If you have one ounce of morality left in you, an ounce of psychological health—you’ll be impotent for the next 20 years! And if you achieve potency sooner, you’ll know it’s a sign of still worse moral degradation!”

Rand completed the evening with two welt-producing slaps across Branden’s face. Finally, in a move that Stalin and Hitler would have admired, Rand also expelled poor Barbara from the Collective, declaring her treasonous because Barbara, preoccupied by her own extramarital affair, had neglected to fill Rand in soon enough on Branden’s extra-extra-marital betrayal. (If anyone doubts Alan Greenspan’s political savvy, keep in mind that he somehow stayed in Rand’s good graces even though he, fixed up by Branden with Patrecia’s twin sister, had double-dated with the outlaws.)

After being banished by Rand, Nathaniel Branden was worried that he might be assassinated by other members of the Collective, so he moved from New York to Los Angeles, where Rand fans were less fanatical. Branden established a lucrative psychotherapy practice and authored approximately 20 books, 10 of them with either “Self” or “Self-Esteem” in the title. Rand and Branden never reconciled, but he remained an admirer of her philosophy of self-interest until his recent death in December 2014.

Ayn Rand’s personal life was consistent with her philosophy of not giving a shit about anybody but herself. Rand was an ardent two-pack-a-day smoker, and when questioned about the dangers of smoking, she loved to light up with a defiant flourish and then scold her young questioners on the “unscientific and irrational nature of the statistical evidence.” After an x-ray showed that she had lung cancer, Rand quit smoking and had surgery for her cancer. Collective members explained to her that many people still smoked because they respected her and her assessment of the evidence; and that since she no longer smoked, she ought to tell them. They told her that she needn’t mention her lung cancer, that she could simply say she had reconsidered the evidence. Rand refused.

How Rand’s Philosophy Seduced Young Minds

When I was a kid, my reading included comic books and Rand’s The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. There wasn’t much difference between the comic books and Rand’s novels in terms of the simplicity of the heroes. What was different was that unlike Superman or Batman, Rand made selfishness heroic, and she made caring about others weakness.

Rand said, “Capitalism and altruism are incompatible….The choice is clear-cut: either a new morality of rational self-interest, with its consequences of freedom, justice, progress and man’s happiness on earth—or the primordial morality of altruism, with its consequences of slavery, brute force, stagnant terror and sacrificial furnaces.” For many young people, hearing that it is “moral” to care only about oneself can be intoxicating, and some get addicted to this idea for life.

I have known several people, professionally and socially, whose lives have been changed by those close to them who became infatuated with Ayn Rand. A common theme is something like this: “My ex-husband wasn’t a bad guy until he started reading Ayn Rand. Then he became a completely selfish jerk who destroyed our family, and our children no longer even talk to him.”

To wow her young admirers, Rand would often tell a story of how a smart-aleck book salesman had once challenged her to explain her philosophy while standing on one leg. She replied: “Metaphysics—objective reality. Epistemology—reason. Ethics—self-interest. Politics—capitalism.” How did that philosophy capture young minds?

Metaphysics—objective reality. Rand offered a narcotic for confused young people: complete certainty and a relief from their anxiety. Rand believed that an “objective reality” existed, and she knew exactly what that objective reality was. It included skyscrapers, industries, railroads, and ideas—at least her ideas. Rand’s objective reality did not include anxiety or sadness. Nor did it include much humor, at least the kind where one pokes fun at oneself. Rand assured her Collective that objective reality did not include Beethoven’s, Rembrandt’s, and Shakespeare’s realities—they were too gloomy and too tragic, basically buzzkillers. Rand preferred Mickey Spillane and, towards the end of her life, “Charlie’s Angels.”

Epistemology—reason. Rand’s kind of reason was a “cool-tool” to control the universe. Rand demonized Plato, and her youthful Collective members were taught to despise him. If Rand really believed that the Socratic Method described by Plato of discovering accurate definitions and clear thinking did not qualify as “reason,” why then did she regularly attempt it with her Collective? Also oddly, while Rand mocked dark moods and despair, her “reasoning” directed that Collective members should admire Dostoyevsky, whose novels are filled with dark moods and despair. A demagogue, in addition to hypnotic glibness, must also be intellectually inconsistent, sometimes boldly so. This eliminates challenges to authority by weeding out clear-thinking young people from the flock.

Ethics—self-interest. For Rand, all altruists were manipulators. What could be more seductive to kids who discerned the motives of martyr parents, Christian missionaries and U.S. foreign aiders? Her champions, Nathaniel Branden still among them, feel that Rand’s view of “self-interest” has been horribly misrepresented. For them, self-interest is her hero architect Howard Roark turning down a commission because he couldn’t do it exactly his way. Some of Rand’s novel heroes did have integrity, however, for Rand there is no struggle to discover the distinction between true integrity and childish vanity. Rand’s integrity was her vanity, and it consisted of getting as much money and control as possible, copulating with whomever she wanted regardless of who would get hurt, and her always being right. To equate one’s selfishness, vanity, and egotism with one’s integrity liberates young people from the struggle to distinguish integrity from selfishness, vanity, and egotism.

Politics—capitalism. While Rand often disparaged Soviet totalitarian collectivism, she had little to say about corporate totalitarian collectivism, as she conveniently neglected the reality that giant U.S. corporations, like the Soviet Union, do not exactly celebrate individualism, freedom, or courage. Rand was clever and hypocritical enough to know that you don’t get rich in the United States talking about compliance and conformity within corporate America. Rather, Rand gave lectures titled: “America’s Persecuted Minority: Big Business.” So, young careerist corporatists could embrace Rand’s self-styled “radical capitalism” and feel radical — radical without risk.

Rand’s Legacy

In recent years, we have entered a phase where it is apparently okay for major political figures to publicly embrace Rand despite her contempt for Christianity. In contrast, during Ayn Rand’s life, her philosophy that celebrated self-interest was a private pleasure for the 1 percent but she was a public embarrassment for them. They used her books to congratulate themselves on the morality of their selfishness, but they publicly steered clear of Rand because of her views on religion and God. Rand, for example, had stated on national television, “I am against God. I don’t approve of religion. It is a sign of a psychological weakness. I regard it as an evil.”

Actually, again inconsistent, Rand did have a God. It was herself. She said:

I am done with the monster of “we,” the word of serfdom, of plunder, of misery, falsehood and shame. And now I see the face of god, and I raise this god over the earth, this god whom men have sought since men came into being, this god who will grant them joy and peace and pride. This god, this one word: “I.”

While Harriet Beecher Stowe shamed Americans about the United States’ dehumanization of African Americans and slavery, Ayn Rand removed Americans’ guilt for being selfish and uncaring about anyone except themselves. Not only did Rand make it “moral” for the wealthy not to pay their fair share of taxes, she “liberated” millions of other Americans from caring about the suffering of others, even the suffering of their own children.

The good news is that I’ve seen ex-Rand fans grasp the damage that Rand’s philosophy has done to their lives and to then exorcize it from their psyche. Can the United States as a nation do the same thing?

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Confused About Marketing On Facebook Try This Advice Today

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Have you been told that Facebook marketing is a must for your business to survive? If you’re a bit confused here, no worries. This article will break down all there is to know about Facebook marketing.
Facilitate regular interaction with your followers so you understand their needs and interests. Make sure you notice when people make posts on your page. Many businessmen that are successful have received great marketing ideas that work from the general public. When someone posts on your page, make sure to respond to them.
Coming up with a giveaway is a wonderful idea to help your Facebook marketing campaign. Encourage new subscribers by offering free products. Let people know who won by announcing it on your profile, and use this strategy again if you wish to get additional subscribers later on.
Create a custom tab for your Facebook page. You can use custom tabs as a welcome locale for all of your new Facebook visitors. It’s a great place to promote your current offerings, products, and services. Plus, it’ll give a little personality to your Facebook page which is always a plus.
Make a group rather than a page. A group allows everyone to interact and feel like they know one another. You could also use a group and a page to get maximum benefits from Facebook marketing.
Create a contest on your Facebook page that only fans of your page can participate in. This will make them excited to come to your page. They may even tell family, friends, or co-workers, meaning you will have more visitors coming to your page. Of course, more visitors means more business!
When you utilize Facebook Offers, you are able to promote freebies and contests you’re running on your site. Set up your offer and switch it to Promoted Post via your Wall. If the offer is extra special, you can promote it to people that aren’t fans as well.
Offer something in exchange for signing up on your Facebook page. Having visitors register on your page lets you engage them in ongoing dialogue about your business. Offering them something, such as an entry in a sweepstakes, makes them more likely to register on your page and provide your business with valuable leads.
Creating content for Facebook can be tedious and frustrating. If you have a Facebook business page, you need to post new content every single day to engage your audience. Can you afford this type of time commitment? If not, use targeted ads instead to bring your message to your target audience.
Try using Facebook ads. Paid ads via Facebook can help your business because they let you target your audience in various ways. You are able to specify the gender, age group, location, and more of your audience. You can be as narrow or broad as you like when specifying their needs. Set campaign budgets and bid prices to test as many headlines, images, and ad copy as you like. If your campaign doesn’t work, you can stop it right away so that you don’t overspend on it.
Use photos in every Facebook update that you do. People love looking at photos on Facebook. The more visual a post is, the better chance it has of actually becoming a bit viral. So don’t let any opportunity to get visual pass you by, even if your trying to get a post out quickly. Take the time to make it visually great.
With all of these tips, you now are ready to tackle some Facebook marketing. Go to your Facebook account now and begin using the valuable tips you have learned. The sooner you use Facebook, the sooner you can attract customers. So, get started right now!

Howard Martell is the Owner of <a href=”http://HomeProfitCoach.com”>http://HomeProfitCoach.com</a>. Check us out anytime for marketing tips and a free subscription to our cutting edge newsletter. Check out Niche Flipper -> http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=cf4VDpsD

Build Your Social Media Marketing Expertise With These Important Pointers

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Business owners across the world have been discovering how social media marketing can help them increase the number of customers they serve. If you are ready to join them, read this article for some tips to help you understand this exciting form of marketing. You will be pleased with the results.
If you have included Twitter in your social media plan, make sure your tweets are valuable, relevant and vary in content. Send tweets that contain suggestions and informative tips that are relevant to your business. Your subscribers are more likely to maintain interest in your content when you mix these tweets in conjunction with ones that you use to promote your products and services.
If you are using social media then you will want to market by inviting all the people you know to those pages. What if they’re not going to purchase from your business? That’s fine. You won’t have to worry about that. As long as they’re inside of your network, your business will be advertised on their network. So you will receive views by simply having them around.
Be sure to link all of your social media sites to one another for the best results. Include links if you have a blog where your consumers can see you on Twitter, YouTube and also if they want to like you at Facebook. Add your blog address and Facebook link to your Twitter account. Linking all of your social media profiles together maximizes your revenue-generating potential by converting new customers.
To make sure your social marketing campaign is reaching your customers, find out where they congregate. Are many of them on Facebook or do they prefer Twitter? Depending on your niche, you might be better off looking at LinkedIn or even YouTube. Poll your customers and find out where they spend their internet hours. Pitch your tent there.
Social media is a great tool to build trust and relationships with your customers. When marketing your business on social media, you have to be honest and always communicate with your customers. Listen to what they are saying and learn from it. You are not giving up control of your business to them, but you can learn from what they are saying and adjust your business to be more consumer friendly.
You can get your followers’ attention by posting something in a format that makes reading easier. For instance, try coming with a list of top 10 tips or writing questions and answers. The visual aspect of your article will make it more appealing and your readers will be more likely to share it.
You should find different ways to interact with customers on a personal, as well as professional, level. For example, respond to other users’ notes, statuses, images and updates. Be sure to keep any conversations that you do have professional and pertaining to your business.
Things move very fast in social media, and your company will have to adapt quickly to the changes as they come. Just, a few years ago, tablet computers and smart phones did not exist in a mass-produced and publicly available form. Keep an eye on the new technology so that you are better prepared for the changes to your marketing.
If you are going to use a microblogging service, try getting as many followers as possible. Interacting with people and responding to comments on a microblogging service is much harder when compared to using social networking websites, mostly due to the number of updates that microblogging users get in their feeds. Post updates regularly and always look for new followers.
Now that you have gained a better understanding of social media marketing, you can begin to implement it into your business plans. These suggestions are certain to aid you in developing the next step as you diagram your marketing needs. Treat yourself and your customers to the fabulous world of social media.
Howard Martell is the Owner of <a href=”http://HomeProfitCoach.com”>http://HomeProfitCoach.com</a>. Check us out anytime for marketing tips and a free subscription to our cutting edge newsletter. Check out Niche Flipper -> http://www.HomeProfitCoach.com/?rd=cf4VDpsD

Ooh, I bet you’re wonderin’ how I knew.’ The president, his health care catastrophe, Mrs. Merkel, the honor of la belle France. ‘A man ain’t supposed to cry/ But these tears I can’t hold inside.

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by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.

Author’s program note. Friends and neighbors, are you perplexed, confused,baffled, and irked by the avalanche of bad news emanating from the capital of these United States? Well, join the club. We all need help sorting out this plethora of information that ranges from the usual garden variety nonsense to whole new ways to upset us and rend the body politic.In all seriousness we need a friend like “That Was the Week That Was”,a satirical television comedy program-me on BBC Television in 1962 and 1963.

It was devised, produced and directed by Ned Sherrin and presented by (Sir) David Frost, whose usual impeccable timing for delicious scandal,gossip and tittle-tattle deserted him this time.Sadly, he died just the other day (August 31), thereby missing these imperial pratfalls and hi-jinx which he loved so well and which no one knew better how to present for maximum impact than he did. How he would have savored the bumper crop of idiocies of just the last few days and the melt-down of the Right Honorable Barrack, who has descended from the heady heights of”We Have Overcome” to taking cue and counsel from Marvin Gaye’s grapevinewhere “a man ain’t supposed to cry”.TWTWTW (whose American counterpart ran on NBC from 1964 to 1965 and also featured Frost) had sharp-eyed, tone perfect fun with the best and the brightest,people we are supposed to venerate and admire but whose constant goofs and cosmic errors are just too good to pass by, no more so than in the last week, where the mistakes were hilarious, astonishing, truly awesome, slap your knee and LOL;that is until you stopped and considered who would have to pick up the pieces and carry on…. that would be you and me, the guys from the morning after the hysterical night before. With such an embarrass de richesse, where to start… there is so muchto choose from, relish, and enjoy.Scapegoats wanted.

Please apply to B. Obama, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for details.Unless you’ve been living in a cave (and maybe even then) you know that ourerst while president has nailed his tattered colors to the mast that is universal health care. It was supposed to cover millions hitherto without insurance, with benefits (if you pay close attention) ranging from astonishing to miraculous,not least being the remedy needed to resuscitate and resurrect the careers of lame duck presidents, one in particular. Problem is, even if you want this coverage(and millions do), you can’t get it at any price because the computer program that’s supposed to handle the matter is screwed up to the max. See for yourself at HealthCare.gov.”Computers are so literal.

“This is my mother’s take on computers and pretty well summarizes the Lant family’s approach to the matter. You tell these often infuriating machines what to do…and they do just that… and nothing more. Apparently Barrack’s mother didn’t tell him this and so with his complete disinterest in the annoying and boring details of everything, including his marquee program, he now finds himself in a mess that absolutely 100% of fifth graders assigned to solve the matter could handle withelegance, speed and total accuracy, without sweat or muddle. Big problems right from the start. Richard Nixon, of all people, told newly elected president Bill Clinton not to tryto reform America’s health care system (one seventh of the GNP) all at one go;instead to phase it in. Clinton, of course, being Clinton didn’t listen and did exactly what the more experienced Nixon advised against. The result was a Republican landslide in the next congressional elections and plenty of egg on his excellency’s fleshy jowls, not an edifying sight.Obama learned absolutely nothing from this disaster, more reminiscent of the suicidal charge of the Light Brigade (1854),”C’est magnifique mais c’est pas laguerre” than practical (read do-able, win-able) politics. Thus, instead of creating a model program in a medium sized state (think West Virginia, Indiana or Oregon) hewent for the whole hog, a huge mistake that is plaguing him right now.Except for arrogance and bragging rights, there was never a need to do all theuninsured in every state all at once. But there was (and still is) the need to createa system that’s simple and easy to use, which is most assuredly not what we’vegot now, a Rube Goldberg machine that promises everything and delivers nothing but chaos, confusion and embarrassment. For make no mistake about it, thepresident and his disgraceful computer system has show cased America all right;as a nation of bumblers, inept, unprepared, a brigade of “can don’t” nerds and programming “skills” no better than a joke. And this, mind, in the nation’s strongsuit, state-of-the-art technology. No wonder Obama’s poll numbers are now infree fall. Hail to the Chief.

What should he have done instead? Well, for openers, like any good business person he should have tried (and regularly, too) to order his own product, thereby helping to test and perfect the system on which he had staked so much.Of course, we now know he didn’t do that or anything like it. And so he got onopening day October 1 not kudos but confusion, outrage and fully justified attacks on his competence which have only gotten worse as the problem has exacerbated. It was a bad day for ObamaCare and the people who so need it; another black eyefor the Great Republic.What’s more, when he was told that his system wasn’t ready for an October 1 opening, he should have been sensible and postponed until he could get the desired results, KISS. Sure, there would have been gibes but they would have been as nothing when compared to what’s being said right now about him, his presidency, and his health care “system”, and not just by Tea Party nutters either.It ain’t pretty… and it is accurate.

As if this weren’t enough…As if his woes were not abundant enough October 23 the German government announced that it had received confidential information that Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone was under surveillance by US intelligence services and thatshe had phoned President Obama to deliver the strongest possible disapproval.She also cited the great and long-lasting friendship between our nations, makingit clear friends don’t spy on friends. Barrack might give lip service to this pointof view, but he’s an information freak and cannot be trusted.Thus as expected he soothingly said no surveillance had been authorized or occurred but Mrs. Merkel, who knows him well was apparently neither persuaded nor placated,an indignant wet hen closely approximating her mood and demeanor. This was not surprising given the fact that her brush with the president’s global party-line closelyfollowed another jarring story in the Le Monde newspaper. It reported that US intelligence had collected data on 70 million communications by ordinary French people in a 30-day period late last year and into January. I suspect our spooks wanted to know what every Frenchie gave and got for Christmas. French PresidentFrancois Hollande expressed his “extreme reprobation” and marched down theChamp Elysees waving the Tricolour and listening to a recorded version of Marvin Gaye’s greatest hit, “I heard it through the grapevine” (1968) on his cellphone,and this telling line, “You could have told me yourself.” Indeed. And that was the week that was. TTFN.

About the Author Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc. at

http://www.worldprofit.com, providing a wide range of online services forsmall and-home based businesses.To see Dr. Lant’s blog go to http://www.jeffreylantarticles.comDr. Lant is happy to give all readers 50,000 free guaranteedvisitors for attending his live webcast today. Visit Worldprofitfor details. Your response to this article is requ

Son of a gun. The murderous bullets of Sparks. Monday, October 21, 2013.The ineradicable shame of a great nation, knowing what must be done, unableto do it. And Mozart. who turns our tears and rage into the majesty of Redemption

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by Dr. Jeffrey Lant.

Author’s program note.

This is the story I didn’t want to write about. Didn’t want tohear
about… didn’t want to think about… didn’t want to deal with in any
way… but all to no avail. This is a story that demands the telling…
insists upon our honest rendering… and calls upon us for anger!
Outrage! Enmity! Fury! Impatience! Indignation! Ire! Resentment! Gall!
And above all for action, swift, thorough,complete, grossly overdue.It is
a tale that demands to be told with the unmitigated clarity of Mozartand
the masterpiece that carried him from the light of the life he loved unto
theunimaginable darkness of darkest death which all approach with awe,
resignation,and hope.For this universal situation which touches us all,
we need the genius of Mozart who took this great fear called death, the
great fact of life, and gave us, alwayswith God’s love, absolution; the
thing we all desire but only God may give…Thus for this article of
sharp, sickening pain and terrible loss, the more terrible because
unnecessary I give you the necessary antidote, the Requiem Mass in D
minor (K. 626), written in Vienna by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1791
butunfinished at his death in December of that year. Find it in any
search engine. Turn up the volume and be glad this work of genius,
empathy and compassioneases the universal way into the eternity into
which we all progress and forever abide.

Amen!The city of promise.The people of Sparks, Nevada, numbering 90,264
in the 2010 U.S. Census Bureaucount are the very essence of America. They
believe in God… the Great Republic…family… and their right and
responsibility to seize the imperfect present and create the always
better future. They are proud of the good life they have fashioned for
themselves since the city’s founding in 1905, transforming the previously
searing and inhospitable land called “snow clad” (“nevada”) by the
Spanish hidalgos whowere the first Europeans to tread its immensity.
Their civic motto is “It’s Happening Here!”… and so it is … for good
and now with bitterness and rue for ill.For the sad fact is an
overwhelming majority of these people of the sierras adheres,and
adamantly too, to their right to keep and bear arms and to use these
arms, therebypaying the terrible price, now regarded as the “cost of
doing business”.

In such circumstances what does it matter if a few children and their
teachers are gunned down, dying in their own blood, in their once amiable
classrooms? Yes, it’s just thecost of doing business after all; a mere
bagatelle.The facts.Before the opening bell on Monday, October 21, a
student at a Sparks, Nevada middleschool opened fire with a semi-
automatic handgun, wounding two 12-year-old boys and killing a math
teacher who was trying to protect children from their dangerous
anddetermined classmate.The still unidentified shooter then killed
himself with the gun after a rampage in frontof 20 to 30 students who had
just returned to school from a weeklong fall break. As news of the
shooting got out 150 to 200 police officers responded, including some
from as far away as 60 miles. The two wounded students were taken to
hospitalfor treatment and are now listed in stable condition. One was
shot in the shoulder,and the other was hit in the abdomen. Students from
the middle school and neighboring elementary school were evacuated to the
nearby high school, and classes were cancelled.The middle school will
remain closed for the week so that the scene of grim carnagemay be
scrubbed clean and be pristine again… as if that were even possible…
or desirable. For we do not need to forget. Instead we need to remember,
that is the thing of utmost necessity, for only memory can help us solve
this problem, now seen by many as inevitable and unsolvable, no longer a
conundrum to be unraveled but an immutable factof life in our murderous
age where there is nothing odd or even noteworthy about a 12-year-old
blowing his former friends and beloved teacher to Kingdom Come. But of
coursethis is not merely odd but a chilling abomination and profound
moral outrage.To accept evil as inevitable when it can be eradicated is
evil itself, not a fact of life, but a fact of death, mayhem, and our
descent from grace. Michael Landsberry not only knewthis, not only lived
by this but died by this. Thus he woke up Monday a math teacher…
butended both day and life an American hero, the victim not just of the
child who pulled the trigger but the larger society which enabled him to
do so, failing to act to prevent such predictable and periodic
slaughter.”Mr. Landsberry”.Just 45, a man in his prime, Michael
Landsberry was a contented man, a manrespected by his peers and grateful
community for his actions in war and peace;loved by an affectionate
spouse and even by his two step-children, a success not given to every
step parent; admired and looked up to by his eighth grade mathematics
students and by the young people he coached in soccer and basketball with
strict guidelines and an unyielding belief that while winning the game
was important, playingit with enthusiasm, integrity, heart, and honor was
the real objective. This is the trueSemper Fi and Michael Landsberry,
once a Marine, always a Marine, was its unwaveringexample and proud
ideal.Michael Landsberry, the man who survived war, only to be cut down
in the peace that is no peace.This modest and unassuming man was a
dedicated and caring leader, his gruff demeanor fooling absolutely no
one. He did his bit… more than his bit, including twotours in
Afghanistan. Thus when the pint-sized angel of death entered Landsberry’s
classroom intent on inflicting maximum pain with a gun he had so easily
taken from hisparents’ house, the good teacher did what he taught others
to do… doing the right thing, the valorous thing, the most perilous and
sublime thing; interposing his own body between gunman and his adolescent
targets. In this way did Michael Lansberry die in the most righteous
fashion of all. Thus washis bald head, which students loved to touch for
luck before a big game, dappledwith the blood of a hero. Thus did the man
who posted on his drole website his “one classroom rule and it is very
simple: ‘Thou Shall Not Annoy Mr. L’ ” expire, the most honorable of men,
the noblest of deaths and the most unnecessary for we all know what needs
to be done, don’t we, though we seem, from the very White House itself
unable to change courses, to move a single inch towards necessary
solution…Thus more children, achingly young, must die tragically…
more families must sufferand grieve their loss through the long days and
longer nights… innocence no shield… the most worthy of professions
and the most important of work affording no protection what so ever. So
much pain is sure to come, the unarguable result of accepting “businessas
usual”, convinced by nay sayers that what is is what must be, despite the
little we havedone to solve a problem which was not so very long ago
unthinkable, a challenge for the Great Republic to be sure, but surely
not too great for our collective mind and capability.Or have we indeed
sunk so low that we not only tolerate such a matter but accept it as
given, understandable, unfortunate to be sure, certain, tolerable,
tolerated, an occasion for a president… a governor… a mayor to send a
formulaic message and prattle futile generalities about “an isolated
incident”, then disengage from the matter as soon as possible, while
everyday people leave teddy bears and home made signs about love and loss
at the death scene, nothing accomplished, absolutely nothing; no progress
made, or even a beneficial discussion about what must be done, at once,
with commitments, not platitudes. Thus are we condemned to repeat this
maddening process over and over again, less consideration given to this
outrage than to the one before; less consideration given tothe next
outrage than to this one, whilst people, good people, die, along with our
high ideals once sacred guidelines for our purposeful endeavors, now
flagrant ironies mocking who we were, who we are, and the widening chasm
between these glaring, irreconcilable realities.”I fear I am writing a
requiem for myself.” Mozart, 1791.

In such an unsatisfactory, worrisome situation we need hope, we need to
believethat things can be better, that we can make them better. We need
Mozart who on the very threshold of death wrote a stirring tribute to the
glory of life and the possibilities which exist to its very last moment
before eternal repose. “I fear I am writing a requiem for myself,” he
wrote as he worked day and night on his last great labor… and so he
was… for himself, for you, for me, and for the victims of Sparks,
especially a hero named Michael Landsberry whose work at its unexpected
conclusion was as tragically incomplete as Mozart’s requiem… left for
us, the living, to finish, a matter of the utmost necessity for us and
what we owe our honored dead whose ranks are sure and unnecessarily to
grow apace if we fail to act as we have failed to act for so long.

About the Author Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit,
Inc. at http://www.worldprofit.com, providing a wide range of online
services for small and-home based businesses.To see Dr. Lant’s blog go to
http://www.jeffreylantarticles.com Dr. Lant is happy to give all readers
50,000 free guaranteedvisitors for attending his live webcast today.
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“GREEN GROW THE LILACS, ALL SPARKLING WITH DEW.” HAUNTING, EVOCATIVE, ELEGIAC, THE LILACS RETURN TO BRATTLE ST… CAMBRIDGE, MAY 7, 2011.

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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.

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