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Effective Ways In Which Businesses Are Utilizing Online Marketing
When it comes to operating in the modern business landscape, marketing online is vital. This kind of online advertising, which is also known as digital marketing, is the most effective way to let consumers know you exist. Being able to do that and to show them what you offer and why they should choose your business to spend money with is a key ingredient for business success. But why is online marketing the best way to go about it?
Target your marketing to where your customers are located
There are now over four billion internet users around the world. Of that total, it is thought that over three billion use social media regularly. When you also factor in the widespread use of smartphones to carry out common tasks like shopping online then it is obvious why your business needs to be out there and readily available.
Ways that businesses can market online
Digital marketing makes use of online channels like social media to market a business to its target audience. It is a wide-ranging sector that provides many ways to influence the consumers that you want to reach. Here are some of the major ways in which businesses are utilizing online marketing.
- E-mail marketing – this form of online marketing uses emails to communicate with new or existing customers. Although it is not new by any means, it still remains one of the most effective online ways to market your business. It is thought that for every $1 dollar invested into email marketing, businesses get a huge $44 back! That is due to the number of consumers who have email and can be effectively reached, along with email marketing not costing much in terms of resources.
- Social media marketing – we all know how big social media now is. The major players like Twitter have millions of users. This, and the fact that they are free to use, makes them one of the best online marketing tools for businesses to utilize. Posts can be scheduled in advance to save time and it can help you connect with customers on a personal level. It is also the main way in which people share information about a company or interact with it. This makes it essential for you to have a social media presence – not only to market to new customers globally but also to engage with existing ones.
- Paid search marketing – another common online marketing method that is utilized by many organizations is paid search marketing. It allows you to set up special online adverts for your business that are shown when someone searches for what you have to offer. These show up at the top of the search engine results so are superb for generating leads. As you only have to pay when someone clicks on your advert then they also give a good ROI.
- Video marketing – did you know that over 500 million hours of video are watched on YouTube each day? This shows just


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Just Rewards Dog Training delivers dog behaviour consults, one to one training and puppy and junior classes in Kirkby Lonsdale, near Kendal and the Lancashire / North Yorkshire and Cumbria borders.
Without regulation in the dog training industry, it is hard to know who to trust when choosing a trainer. Being a member of The APDT (Association of Pet Dog Trainers), means I have been assessed and approved as a trainer. I am recommended on their website (www.apdt.co.uk) and adhere to their ethos of kind, fair and effective training.
I have many years of hands-on experience with dogs and regularly attend training courses and seminars to keep up with the latest and most advanced aspects of canine behaviour and training, thereby acquiring new knowledge and practice.
Aside from dog training consultations, puppy/junior classes and running a busy dog walking business, I give regular presentations on dog behaviour and body language to new Pet Care and Dog Grooming franchisees and their employees at the Barking Mad Head Office.
My practice is situated in Kirkby Lonsdale, Cumbria.
I trained with the late Debbie Hodgkiss from Best Behaviour and Training, who had over 20 years experience in dog behaviour and training. Debbie trained with the British Veterinary Nursing Association and then at the Northern Canine Behaviour Centre. Debbie also worked with the Dogs Trust in Merseyside and was a qualified Animal Bach Practitioner, which helped many traumatised rescue dogs.
Just Rewards is based in Kirkby Lonsdale, near Kendal, Cumbria. If you have any queries, wish to make an appointment or sign on for classes, please contact Lisa:
Email: mailbox@

subset: commoncrawl


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Lakeside Union SD (Lakeside) | AR 5141 Students
Health Care And Emergencies
Emergency Contact Information
In order to facilitate contact in case of an emergency or accident, parents/guardians shall furnish the principal or designee with the information specified below:
1. Home address and telephone number
2. Parent/guardian's business address and telephone number
3. Parent/guardian's cell phone number and e-mail address, if applicable
4. Name, address, and telephone number of a relative or friend to whom the student may be released and who is authorized by the parent/guardian to care for the student in cases of emergency or when the parent/guardian cannot be reached
5. Local physician to call in case of emergency
(cf. 5021 - Noncustodial Parents)
(cf. 5141.21 - Administering Medication and Monitoring Health Conditions)
(cf. 5142 - Safety)
Consent by Caregiver
Any person 18 years of age and older who files with the district a completed caregiver's authorization affidavit for a minor district student shall have the right to consent to or refuse school-related medical care on behalf of the student. The caregiver's authorization shall be invalid if the district receives notice from the caregiver that the minor student is no longer living with the caregiver. (Family Code 6550)
(cf. 5111.1 - District Residency)
The caregiver's consent to medical care shall be superseded by any contravening decision of the parent or other person having legal custody of the student, provided that this contravening decision does not jeopardize the student's life, health, or safety. (Family Code 6550)
Automated External Defibrillators
When an automated external defibrillator (AED) is placed in the school, the principal or designee shall ensure that: (Health and Safety Code 1797.196)
1. School employees annually receive a brochure, with contents and style approved by the American Heart Association or American Red Cross, that describes the proper use of an AED
2. The American Heart Association or American Red Cross brochure or similar information is posted next to every AED
3. School employees are annually notified of the location of all AED units on school grounds
The principal shall designate the trained employees who shall be available to respond to an emergency that may involve the use of an AED during the hours of classroom instruction or when a school-sponsored activity is occurring on school grounds. (Health and Safety Code 1797.196)
Regulation LAKESIDE UNION SCHOOL DISTRICT
approved: September 17, 2012 Lakeside, California


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CrossFit contest will benefit Haiti
FRANKLIN – A Franklin teen's life-changing experience in Haiti has prompted a CrossFit contest to raise money for a shipping container to send supplies to a missionary couple's charity.
The Battle for the Box fundraiser, scheduled from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Saturday, will feature contestants lifting weights, doing pull-ups and burpees, running and more for a panel of 20 CrossFit judges.
Contestant spots sold out within weeks, but spectators will be admitted free. Donations will be accepted. CrossFit is at 1647 Mallory Lane in Franklin.
"It was all Jake's idea," said David Lewis. After his 15-year-old, Jake, came back from a trip to Haiti with the charity myLIFESpeaks, he really saw the need.
The idea gelled after Jake started CrossFit workouts in March with his dad.
"He really got creative," said David Lewis. "We didn't really have a course; we just jumped in."
"Going to Haiti last year really showed me what a need these orphans have," Jake Lewis said in a statement. "I wanted to help raise some money and thought it would be cool to work with our CrossFit group to have a fun event."
Mike and Missy Wilson, the founders of myLIFEspeaks, relocated their family to Neply, Haiti, from Franklin and need funds to ship supplies from the U.S. Transporting a large shipping container to Haiti will cost about $20,000.
"We will just continue to find ways to get to that level," said David Lewis, who plans to return to Haiti with Jake in late December.
"When Jake and his dad came to us with this idea, I immediately knew I wanted to help him," said James Hurlburt, head coach and owner of CrossFit Cool Springs, in a statement. "Our community of amazing athletes jumped on board immediately by forming teams and signing up. We are super excited to host an amazing event and raise some big money for such a worthy cause."
Donations can be made at www.battleforthebox.myevent.com, which also has all the details about the schedule of events, more information about myLIFEspeaks and CrossFit Cool Springs.
Reach Vicky Travis at 615-881-7216 and on Twitter @VTravis1.


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The Girl Who Did Everything Wrong
March 23, 2015
There's a forthcoming novel I'm genuinely excited about.
(Stark revelation: People in the literary trades often pretend to be excited when they're not. Imagine that! But in the above sentence I genuinely mean the word genuinely.)
I happened on the first chapter of this book almost two years ago, on the author's website. I gave it the first-sentence test:
Once there was a girl who did everything wrong.
Hmm: Good premise, and the tone seems right. Serious, humorous and ironic at the same time. On, then, to the first few paragraphs:
Once there was a girl who did everything wrong. Take the time in 1963 when she took part in a wade-in to desegregate a public pool in Chester, Pennsylvania. She almost drowned. She had been the only white girl in the demonstration. When the crowd took the pool by storm, she flailed and sank, and she was pulled out by a lifeguard who forcibly detained her as her Negro comrades were loaded into vans. The police refused to arrest her. They said she should go home and learn to swim.
"Did she?" Tamara asked. She was sitting in the bathtub, with her knees drawn under her chin. The tub was ancient, and the faucet leaked enough to draw a dull brown line across the porcelain.
"Eventually," Beth said. "Your daddy taught her."
So it's historical, including major political events and social conflicts. But it's mainly personal, about human beings who "flail" and look ridiculous at times and have to interpret their misadventures for their children. Okay, I was hooked.
Now that novel, Waveland by Simone Zelitch, has found its publisher, The Head and the Hand Press, and I've read the whole thing in galleys. It's about a young white woman's experiences during the Freedom Summer of 1964, and about her life afterward—working with the Movement, raising a biracial child conceived during that time, enduring the tragedies, breakups and breakdowns. It's a complicated journey with many ups and downs and sideways slides.
As soon as Beth Fine arrives in Mississippi, she finds out how dull Freedom work can be: she's assigned to shelve books and clean the floors. Eventually, though, she gets more involved in the field work, finds love and conflict in equal measure, and has her brushes with violence. When a gun under the bed is mentioned early in the book, you can be sure it will be fired at some point.
The novel jumps around in time, and scattered chapters give us three other points of view, widening our perspective on Freedom Summer, the Democratic convention of that year and the tensions pervading the Movement. Yet the book remains primarily Beth's story. As it turns out, that phrase she uses to characterize herself, "the girl who did everything wrong," is more than a joke about her social clumsiness and problems in judgment. She's a person who can't be dissuaded from doing what she feels must be done. She has a private sense—of justice, duty, love, whatever you want to call it—that impels her, and at key moments she can't resist its demands even when her brain knows she's courting disaster. At one point she quotes from Pascal: "The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know." She's stubborn, headstrong and often infuriating to the other characters. If we as readers fully engage with her, she should sometimes infuriate us too. Damn it, Beth, we want to yell, make the sensible choice! No such luck; she's not going to listen, and that's her virtue and her fault.
Simone Zelitch, as I discovered by reading her previous works, has a habit of writing provocative historical novels: The Confession of Jack Straw, about the English peasants' revolt of 1381; Louisa, about two women who roughly reenact the biblical story of Ruth in post-Holocaust Europe and Israel; Moses in Sinai, about—well, the title explains it. Except for Louisa, released by Berkley, these were small-press books, as is the new one. They deserve a big-press readership.
In her next book after Waveland, an already completed novel called Judenstaat, Zelitch tackles an imaginary past—what might have happened after World War II if the Jewish state had been carved out of Germany rather than Palestine. This novel won her an NEA fellowship, and it has recently been signed by Tor/Forge, the Macmillan imprint known mostly for sci-fi and fantasy. It'll be back to the big presses for this persistent, thought-stirring, hard-to-classify writer.
In the meantime, check out the girl who can't do anything right. She'll agitate and charm you in equal measure. If you want to order a copy before the official release date in May, The Head and the Hand Press is offering a prepublication deal.
A Pilgrimage with Hugh Nissenson
June 30, 2012
I hereby publicly confess my sins.… I shall write in plain style and tell the truth as near as I am able.
Such is the promise of Charles Wentworth at the outset of The Pilgrim, Hugh Nissenson's latest novel (Sourcebooks, 2011), and Charles keeps his word, laying out truths more severely than a fundamentalist preacher. Like Nissenson's previous works (see, e.g., my comments on My Own Ground), this book makes "unflinching" an understatement. The stern eye on human life will never blink. The Pilgrim is a wise and moving book, a finely crafted book, and not for the faint of spirit.
The year is 1623, and the life of man and woman in Plymouth Colony—and in the England that the colonists have fled—matches the famous phrase Hobbes would use 28 years later in Leviathan: "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Except that Hobbes was describing what he called the state of nature, an imaginary condition without culture or government. Nissenson often turns that philosophy on its head, revealing how much blame lies with the institutions that supposedly protect us from our base instincts.
The demands of his Puritan faith torment Charles; he agonizes over his sins and doubts his salvation. At one point, when he complains to a friend that his soul is "quiescent," the friend offers the kind of capsule life story that the novel uses several times to devastating effect:
Hook replied, "Better than poor Annie Watts in Worksop. She tormented herself day and night as to whether she be damned or saved. She could not bear not knowing, so she threw her four-month-old babe, Clyde, down a well, wherein he drowned. Said Annie, ''Tis better to know that I am damned than not to know what God plans for my soul throughout eternity.' They hanged her."
Charles will not fault religion for burdening Annie's mind or the state for executing a mentally disturbed person, nor will the author breach the form to wink at us. Rather, as the ultimate modernist, Nissenson gives us a narrator who is both reliable in his facts and constricted in his interpretation.
Wherever he roams over space and time, Nissenson immerses himself, and his readers, in the moment. In this novel he wants us to see, hear and smell the 17th-century life of these struggling souls, no matter how gruesome it may be. And there is plenty of gruesome throughout the novel. I'll forebear quoting from the explicit scenes of hangings, but as forewarning, and as a sample of the masterful way the author assembles simple details, here are a couple of passages:
[A bear baiting in the sin capital of London:]
A bear with little pink eyes pursued one of the mastiffs, while the other five dogs pursued the bear. One dog clung with his jaws to the bear's left front leg, and the bear bit him through his neck bone and got free. Another dog clung to the bear's belly, just above his private parts. The bear sat up and, with a front paw, struck the dog's left shoulder. He would not relinquish his hold. The bear ripped open the dog's breast with his front claws. I glimpsed the dog's beating heart. The drunken spectators cheered.
[An infected finger:]
The doctor came again and said, "See the thinness of skin about the wound? The abscess is ripe for opening." He sliced it with his lancet, to a great profusion of blood and pus. The inflammation became livid. Little bladders oozing green and yellow ichors spread all over the skin. The tumor subsided, and for an hour or so, I hoped for the best. Then her whole forefinger turned black.
The "plain style" that Nissenson so skillfully imitates was a deliberate attempt by the Puritans to rid their writing, especially their sermons, of the rhetorical flourishes of the Church of England and the aristocracy. Educated at Cambridge, Charles confesses to being "lewdly disposed to beauteous language," and in reaction he takes on an almost antiliterary straightforwardness. Even so, the vivid details make his account a compelling read. Here, an ugly scene made me smile because it was so perfectly described:
I alighted from my wagon at the inn named The Sign of the Bear and Ragged Staff in Charing Cross, which is in the City of Westminster, a suburb without the walls of London. The inn was crowded with plump, muddy whores, boy prostitutes, and cutthroats armed with daggers. The press of rowdy maltbugs lugged ale, even as little pigs lug at their dam's teats.
As that pig indicates, the plain style doesn't preclude an occasional homely metaphor of the sort that the Puritan preachers loved. Here is Rigdale, a would-be preacher:
"Who is close to Christ all the time? Am I? Surely not. He comes and goes from me like the tide upon the beach I once saw at Dover. At full tide, I am soaked by Him, immersed in His mercy, but then He leaves me high and dry, covered with sandy sea weed. Right now, at this moment, I am high and dry, covered with sea weed, sand, and cockle shells. Yet I have faith that the living waters—His precious blood—will wash over me again."
And, though less frequent than the horror, there are some genuinely lovely passages, especially when Charles's faith works well enough for him to appreciate Creation:
On the day following, I went to weed in the cornfield. Just before noon, as I pulled a handful of weeds from the crumbling earth, my eye caught the yellowish tassel protruding atop a red ear of corn from its sheath of pointed leaves. I peeled the leaves back an inch or two. An ant was crawling on one of the red kernels. I gazed at my gloved right hand, holding the weeds with their roots covered with soil, and the shallow hole left in the earth around the stalk. Then I digged beneath the stalk's roots. There I saw the backbone of a herring [used for fertilizer] that had rotted away.
Then my soul flowed joyfully into those elements of fecundity …
Anyone who has read this far may wonder whether the novel has a plot. It does, concerning Charles's attempt to find peace with God and himself, and as an adjunct to that quest, a godly woman to support him and ease his lust. Along the way, the reader is treated to Indian wars, the disastrous attempt to establish a new colony, Charles's family history in England and multiple side stories. The dozens of minor characters include historical ones like Miles Standish, William Brewster, Massasoit and Governor William Bradford. What stands out for me, though, are the stark images of 17th-century life, both outer and inner: the decent man straining to find peace in a human-mucked world with more abominations than beauty—and with ideologies more fanatical than rational.
We'd like to believe our world is vastly different now. Sure it is: we have antibiotics for infected fingers.
Models of Compression
June 3, 2012
Recent readings: three very different works that use compression to good advantage.
1. Larry Loebell's short play Will and the Code, just performed by F. Murray Abraham in NYC as part of Resonance Ensemble's 10th anniversary celebration.
The monologue presents one side of a telephone conversation: theatrical agent Phil O. Strait speaking to his client, Will, about changes Will needs to make in a script to accommodate the new theatrical code. It seems that Will's play features fairies, enchantment, consciousness-altering substances, a character named Puck, and worst of all, explicit lust. Will gets livid about the recommended rewrites, but Phil, a true professional, handles him smoothly. Loebell, no stranger to politically inspired theater, has posted the entire hilarious piece online at http://loebell.com/will-and-the-code/.
2. Hugh Nissenson's first novel, My Own Ground (1976), a 181-page tale of a 15-year-old orphaned immigrant, Jake, in the Lower East Side of 1912.
I first discovered Nissenson through The Tree of Life, his amazing 1985 novel of the Ohio frontier. Since then I've read Days of Awe, a tender 9/11 novel, and The Song of the Earth, a futuristic fable about a genetically engineered artist. Nissenson's books roam through time and place. He's deliberately, perhaps obsessively, innovative, so that he'll take you into what seems like a generic tale and then bend all of the conventions. Two of his major works include his own strange illustrations, supposedly created by the protagonist. Yet, through all these experiments and variations, his preoccupation with morality and violence remains constant.
In My Own Ground, Jake gets involved with protecting beautiful young Hannele, a rabbi's daughter, from the pimp who is after her; but Hannele's self-destructiveness complicates matters. Other characters include a Russian revolutionary who tries to raise Jake's political consciousness. Though there are plenty of vivid details about immigrant life on the Lower East Side, and even time for a digression or two, Nissenson compresses transitions and omits nearly all of Jake's self-reflection. For a first-person narrative there's surprisingly little of the personal in Jake's fact-driven account; author and narrator let us draw the conclusions ourselves, as in this simple description of Jake's job and his coworker:
I got eight cents for pressing a tweed jacket and a woolen skirt. The iron weighed fourteen pounds; it was one of those things you knew. I used two of them. There was always one heating up on the stove. I worked at a big table opposite Spiegel, another presser, who'd been at it for six years. His right shoulder was three inches lower than his left; the forefinger of his right hand reached his knee.
"What is it?" he asked me Wednesday afternoon. "What's the matter with you?"
I'd been staring at him. He turned a skirt without pleats inside out, spread it on his board, covered the seam with a strip of canvas, and then reached into the tin pail on his right, squeezed the water from the brown sponge and swept it up and halfway down the canvas, leaving a wet trail. It went on and on: a continuous movement of the lowered shoulder, the elongated arm, the hand wrapped in a wet rag. I saw the swollen blue veins on the inside of his wrist as he tossed the sponge back into the pail. When he picked up the iron, he grunted "Oy" under his breath, and a drop of sweat from his temple ran down the left side of his face; another hung from the tip of his nose.
On the way home, I bought a pack of Tolstoys—ten cigarettes for a nickel…
No comment on the implications of Spiegel's work, minimal transition away from the scene. Perfect. Nissenson deserves more attention as one of our best novelists; I'm eager to read his latest, The Pilgrim, set in 1622.
3. Farthest North by Todd Balf, a short digital history of Elisha Kane's disastrous 1853 Arctic voyage in search of the lost Franklin expedition of the 1840s.
As a committed armchair adventurer, I enjoyed this brief—and cheap ($1.99!)—tale of derring-do and unlikely heroes. A sickly sort from a prominent family, Kane drove himself to extraordinary feats. Balf writes some crystal-sharp prose in describing the otherworldly Arctic landscape, the jagged cliffs of ice, the myth of an Open Polar Sea to the north beyond the claustrophobic bergs. Here, though, the need for compression—the publisher's requirement, I suppose—means that Kane's background and psychology receive less development than I would have liked. I'm curious to learn more about his love affair with Maggie Fox, one of the three spiritualist Fox sisters of the mid-nineteenth century. Maggie was the one who renounced her séances as fake, and then, after Kane's death, retracted her confession and went back to conning people. I'd also like to know more about some of the subsidiary characters on the expedition, both those who survived and those who didn't. But for $1.99, I'm not complaining; Balf has done a fine job with this short-form bio-saga.
The Mystery of Alice and Her Brothers
February 2, 2012
"Henry James was drunk."
So begins an entertaining literary mystery by Paula Marantz Cohen, What Alice Knew (Sourcebooks, 2010), set in 1888 London during the rampage of Jack the Ripper. Cohen's animating conceit is that the baffled London police call in the famous American psychologist-philosopher William James for consultation. This puts William in the same city as his brother, the novelist Henry, and their sister Alice, a professional invalid, and the three collaborate in the investigation.
The notion of police employing a psychologist/spiritualist/weirdo is commonplace now, at least in fiction. On TV there's the popular series The Mentalist, among others. In print, Caleb Carr's 1994 mystery bestseller, The Alienist, sets up a team of a psychologist, a writer, and a secretary to investigate a serial killer in 1896 New York.
Cohen's basic set-up is far from original, then. But her Jameses, as eccentric as they are famous, become as psychologically interesting as the killer they track. Alternating their points of view, Cohen allows each to contribute a unique perspective to the investigation. The style is fluid, and the dialogue sparkles. Minor characters like Oscar Wilde and John Singer Sargent step in to enhance the ambiance. Sly humor undercuts the characters' pretenses, especially Henry's; the poor chubby aesthete never quite recovers from that classic opening line.
After the recent speculation on the Jameses, Cohen could have made their own relationships as lurid as the Ripper's slashings. It's to her credit, I think, that she does NOT put William in bed with Alice, Henry with the male artists' model, or Alice with her devoted live-in companion. Cohen's Jameses flout Victorian convention only in their unconventional thinking, which in itself offers plenty of sizzle for this fine novel.
A few announcements to conclude this post:
- The second installment of my story "End of the Ride" is up at The Piker Press. In place of similar annoying advertisements for the third and fourth parts, I'll direct anyone who's interested to this link to a page that should list each section as it becomes available.
- My story "MG Repairs," which came out in Carve Magazine in 2010, will be included in the magazine's 2009–2010 Anthology. Why two years late? Because editor Matthew Limpede has a sensible approach to the absurd rush of our lives. Myself, I favor setting the clock back to 1993.
- My novel The Shame of What We Are is now available as an e-book from Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Everybody who's not reading it in paperback can now not read it on a screen as well. But they'll be missing the wonderful illustrations by Tom Jackson, which come out surprisingly well in the e-book.
- "Wright has found a way to wed fragments of an iconic America to a luminously strange idiom, eerie as a tin whistle, which she uses to evoke the haunted quality of our carnal existence." So said The New Yorker about poet C. D. Wright, who will be reading on February 2 at Villanova University's Literary Festival. I love tin whistles. Complete info. about the festival, which will include William Kennedy and several other luminaries, is available here.
Historical Delvings
November 7, 2011
When I was an English major, way back before Garrison Keillor started making fun of our tribe, historical fiction was considered minor-league, pop-culture fare, beneath the notice of highbrows in my high-class department. It was OK for Homer, Crane and Tolstoy to set tales in the past—those Great Writers were already in the canon—but in Vietnam-era USA it was incumbent on serious artists to confront the muck and mire of the present day.
Having long left academia behind, I don't know exactly when that view began to change, but it must now be as archaic as Papa Hemingway's bullfighters. Doctorow, Eco, Mantel and many others have impressed the critics with fiction set far back from the present time, and today's readers, whatever their literary pretensions, seem more fascinated with Anne Boleyn's head than with any contemporary character's heart.
Cultural anthropologists may want to speculate about why so much modern fiction has taken flight from the modern. Or maybe it's obvious.
Personally I enjoy good historical novels and always have, even when under the thrall of my snooty English department. Recently I've read a couple of fine ones: The Confession of Jack Straw by Simone Zelitch (Black Heron Press, 1991) and The Girl Who Would Speak for the Dead by Paul Elwork (Putnam, 2011; an expanded version of The Tea House, published by Casperian Books in 2007).
Zelitch recreates the Peasants' Revolt of 1381, when tens of thousands of English folk marched on London to protest an onerous tax (a flat tax—Republicans take note!), a low cap on wages, and other legal shenanigans by which the rich exploited the poor. Professing loyalty to fourteen-year-old King Richard II, the rebels wanted to rid the country of his handlers and advisers, whom they took to be corrupt usurpers of power. Chants of the now-famous rhyme,
When Adam Delved and Eve Span
Who was then the Gentleman?
fostered an idealistic hope that class distinctions might be ameliorated—kind of like our yearning that Wall Street float back down toward Main Street, someday, somehow.
The rebels managed to dispatch several of the supposed usurpers, including the Archbishop of Canterbury, and they torched John of Gaunt's great Savoy Palace; yet they were eventually betrayed by the teenage king himself. Peasant leaders John Ball, Jack Straw and Wat Tyler were all apparently killed or executed. Straw, the most mythical of the three, was said to have left a "confession," reproduced in the chronicles of Thomas Walsingham; this dubious document may have been wholly invented—for, as we know all too well, it's the victors who write the history books.
Zelitch imagines for us the true, undistorted confession of Jack Straw, as dictated to his captors. Her Jack is a conflicted and dynamic figure, compelled to betray either his mentor, the half-crazed preacher John Ball, or his own crippled sister, who needs him back home. Poetic and earnest, full of folk tales and country ale, Jack is a sensuous man who drinks in both the beauty and the stench of his surroundings:
The sun rose to our backs, and we reached Maidstone by late morning. The whole town filled the square to greet us. We had to stop if only to push through the hundred who bore baskets and banners. Two women bore a proud new standard, Adam delving, Eve with spindle. Kate Tyler stood among them, some ways off, and she swung a basket full to overflowing, warm with bread and sour with cheese. Her hair was twisted back, and her face was round and white like a moon or a cheese. (p. 174)
We had to climb many a steep mount of cobbles. Townsmen call them hills. Some streamed stink like waterfalls down clefts you call a gutter. Those guts of rain and dung would overcome the deepest gutter. At odd banks of these hell-rivers the merchants hawked their pies or caps or buckles. (p. 201)
The style—lyrical, evocative, but set in those short chunky sentences like the solid clop of a peasant's boots—gives the story its unique earthy flavor. This is a strong novel and an impressive feat of recreating the past.
Paul Elwork's book is also well done, but in his case the historical setting—a country estate on the outskirts of Philadelphia in the 1920s—seems more a convenience than a structural necessity. His principal characters are a twin brother and sister, Emily and Michael, thirteen years old, who pretend they can communicate with spirits. Discovering that she can make an eerie cracking noise with her foot, Emily uses this technique to spook Michael, who at once sees the potential for duping adults in the community. Their con game of "spirit rapping" is loosely based on the real-life saga of the Fox sisters of New York state, who helped spark the spiritualist movement in the mid-1800s. Elwork shifts the story forward to the post–World War I era, when so many have perished in the war and the flu epidemic that the survivors make easy marks for a spiritualist who professes to connect with the dear departed.
Though the details from the 1920s feel authentic, the main interest here is the spiritualism itself—its motivation, its psychological effects, its sometimes tragic consequences. Elwork draws a nice contrast between Emily, who remains dubious about the play-acting, and the cynical Michael, who takes up with a professional con man. Both of these kids seem remarkably adult but believable. And if the harrowing outcome is plotted a bit awkwardly, the tale is a compelling one, drawing out buried family secrets and guilts, recollections and imaginings about the dead, plus a long-suppressed romance. The novel ends by taking advantage of its time frame to skip ahead to 1939, when the world is entering another murderous conflagration. Emily, now a semi-recluse who has studied Dr. Freud in college, reflects on "old things" and on what she has learned or failed to learn. There's a sense that some passions, dreams, mysteries, misunderstandings—the components of our Freudian underground—are best left unexplored. About her mother's erstwhile romance, Emily remarks that "as the years went by, I acquired the habit of not asking, and found myself not wanting an answer, despite my occasional curiosity."
Busara Road
September 19, 2011
My friend David Sanders, whom I mentioned in my last post—an excellent writer and all-around good guy—has started a campaign on IndieGoGo.com to support the research for his novel-in-progress, Busara Road. The novel is set in Kenya during the early years after independence—a time when David himself was there, as a child. Now he's won a prize to help him return to Kenya for a few weeks to work on the novel, meet with leading African writers, and visit the Quaker mission he remembers from childhood.
The great thing about IndieGoGo is that lots of people contribute small amounts to make the project happen. The smallest suggested donation is $10, and you can go even lower than that by clicking on "Other" in the drop-down contribution field. David has listed a variety of creative "perks" for donors, but the main reward is knowing that you gave a little bit to a good artistic cause. So please consider giving the cost of a cappuccino, at least. You'll be amazed and proud when this novel is published.
Nostalgia, Part 3: Clouds of Glory
November 2, 2010
". . . trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home . . ."
Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood" offers perhaps the strongest explanation of the types of nostalgia that I've been exploring in recent posts.
Wordsworth's poem is famous because he describes a universal sensation, the inkling that once—when?—we connected more deeply with life's mysteries. That time at the beach, holding Mom's hand, when we clambered out over the rocks—why is that scene stuck in the mind? what was it we saw or said? Or on that summer sidewalk in a far-off city, in the flickering leaf-shadows under a street lamp, we felt a stirring that seemed almost to tell us—
Uh-huh. Wherever quavers like that were tugging us, most of us never quite made the connection, and in time we got busy and ceased to think about it. That's certainly true of me. In fact, I discount most of my adolescent mysticism as the fumes of an overheated sexual furnace. And yet, when I take time to reflect, I miss feeling that way. In my notes for a recent story, I jotted that the protagonist was "yearning for yearning," that is, wishing he could once more experience the unfulfilled urges that drove him crazy as a young man.
Recently I had a chance to read a draft of Byblos, an extraordinary novel-in-progress by a friend, Miriam Seidel. It tells two stories that on the surface seem widely disparate: the burning of the great Alexandria library in the time of Caesar and Cleopatra (and, yes, those characters appear in the novel); and the personal travails of Nina, a female dot.com entrepreneur in the early twenty-first century. The modern-day plot takes Nina back to her childhood home in upstate New York, where she experiences mystical connections not only to her younger self but also to a kind of spiritual zone that ultimately connects the two plots. She realizes that, in some way, numinous sensations like these sustained her through her difficult years of growing up in a discombobulated family.
Normally I have minimal tolerance for mysticism, especially if it comes too easily (see my grumpy comments about "Suzanne" in "Nostalgia, Part 1"). But Miriam grounds her spiritual flights in a deep sensory appreciation of the earth and its creatures. At the old homestead, we get a vivid sense of the tangled trumpet vines, the pallid mushrooms, the worms, the stones, the mucky pond with its slimy frogs, the cicadas screeching in the summer heat—along with Nina's attempt to rediscover something important from her childhood that has gone missing. Heading for the pond, she rips her legs on a patch of brambles. Opening herself to all of this, she reaches out tentatively to sense the hidden links that bind the people and animals and rocks and plants together. She can't name or describe these links, but she ends up putting her sensations to use by—well, I'm not going to reveal the end of the novel.
This kind of mysticism is grounded enough, literally and figuratively, for me to appreciate, and I believe that Miriam's version is truer than Wordsworth's because it blends the ugly with the pleasant, the hostile with the welcoming, the scummy pond with the pretty trees.
Old Willie did have talent, though, and I don't mean to diss him. He's worth quoting for the final words on the subject:
There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,
The earth, and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell'd in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;—
Turn wheresoe'er I may,
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.


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Kevin Hart continues to give back to the people. He has teamed up with the United Negro College Fund to provide kids an opportunity at higher education.
The comedian's "Help From The Hart Charity" partnered up with KIPP Public Schools to give $300,000 each in scholarship donations. Their monies will be administered via the UNCF.
18 worthy students were chosen throughout Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington, D.C.. They are expected to attend 11 different historically Black colleges and universities throughout the country. Winners were selected based on academic performance and involvement in their local communities.
In a press release Kevin expressed pride regarding his involvement. "Education and knowledge are powerful. I just wanted to do my part in providing opportunities for our future leaders, especially from my Philly hometown, and show support for HBCU's. This is just the beginning; trust me when I tell you there are a lot more kids who want to go to college who don't have the money to make it happen."
On Instagram he also confirmed eight of the students hail from his home town of Philadelphia.
View this post on Instagram
Yesterday I surprised 18 #HBCU with scholarships to complete their college degrees…. major thank you to my partners @UNCF @kippschools for helping me…. you guys stepped up to the table and matched my donation and we awarded 600,000….also thank u @jessecollinsent for helping us coordinate this event…..this is just the beginning people!!!! My "Help From The Hart Charity" is about to do a lot more!!!!! #LiveLoveLaugh …..I'm also proud of the 8 Kids from Philadelphia that received these scholarships ….STAND UP PHILLY!!!!!
John Fisher, chair of the KIPP Foundation Board of Directors, also expressed his gratitude for the opportunity they are bestowing on the lucky high school students. "We are incredibly grateful to both [the] UNCF and Kevin Hart for their partnership and support to help our students thrive in college and achieve their dreams".
KIPP public charter schools are a non-profit network of college-preparatory schools educating early childhood, elementary, middle, and high school students.
The Latest:
- Floyd Mayweather's Daughter Arrested After Allegedly Stabbing NBA Youngboy's Baby Mama
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- Wellness Week: 3 Ways to Protect Your Mental Health During Lockdown
- Still Bleeding Love: Here's Photographic Evidence That Leona Lewis Got Better In Time
- Martin Luther King Jr.'s Arrest Record In Fulton County Georgia To Be Expunged
Via Page Six
Photo: WENN.com
Kevin Hart Awards High School Students HBCU Scholarships was originally published on hiphopwired.com


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Van Nguyen, OD
Houston TX
Texas State Optical
TSO Downtown805 Walker Street
Houston, TX 77002
(713) 659-0292
Astigmatism, Cataracts, Contact Lens, Diabetic Care, Dry Eye, Eyeglasses, Lasik, Lazy Eye (Amblyopia), Macular Degeneration, Myopia (Nearsightedness), Presbyopia (Blurry far or close)
Advantica, Aetna, Always Care/First Look Vision, Avesis, Benefit Planners, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Boon Chapman, Cigna, CompBenefits, EyeMed, Great West, Humana, Molina Healthcare of Texas, Multiplan, National Vision Administrators-NVA, Opticare, PHCS, Principal Financial Group, Spectera-OptumHealth, Superior Vision, UMR, United Healthcare, Vision Care Plan-VCP or Compbenefits, Vision Service Plan-VSP, WellcareDon't see your insurance? Call us (713) 659-0292
Coach, Ernest Hemingway, Gucci, Luxottica, Marchon, Safilo Team
English, Spanish, Vietnamese
A native Houstonian, Dr. Van Nguyen graduated from the University Of Houston College Of Optometry. Dr. Nguyen joined the Texas State Optical family in 2014 and is very excited to be working at the Downtown office. She has been in the Optometry Field for 10 plus years. Dr. Nguyen is a Therapeutic Optometrist and Glaucoma Specialist with special interests in Dry Eye and Ocular Surface Diseases. She enjoys educating her patients about their eyes. "Eyes are very interesting", Dr. Nguyen states, which is why she made Optometry her field of choice! She is fluent in Vietnamese and able to perform eye examinations in Spanish.
Outside of work, Dr. Nguyen thoroughly enjoys doing volunteer work, arts and crafts, baking and reading. She is also very talented at making paper flowers and crocheting. She is the youngest with two older brothers and is very family oriented. When Dr. Nguyen has free time, she loves to spend it with her niece and family.
University Of Houston College Of Optometry
Call for Appointments
(713) 659-0292
minute openings
Click to Call
TSO Downtown Houston, the offices of Dr. Van Nguyen and Dr. Danielle Richardson is conveniently located at 805 Walker St. (corner of Walker and Milam). Texas State Optical Downtown is open 6 days a week.
Virtual Office Tour


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Making stuff for the little ones has been a lot of fun and I can't wait to hear what my friends with children think of what I've made their wee ones! A project that I really enjoyed was making children's faux fur blankets because 1) it's important during these cooler days and nights and children catching a cold is definitely not something you want to happen, and 2) it's so easy to make. If you're still thinking of last minute Christmas gifts, this will be a perfect, easy and quick project to whip up in a jiffy!
Continue reading "DIY tutorial: children's Christmas faux fur blanket"


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Discover the places where Dracula could be burried….
Languages: Italian/English (for other languages please contact us)
Duration: aprox 6-8 hours
Itinerary: Bucharest – Snagov Monastery – Comana Monastery – Bucharest
In the morning meet with our guide in Bucarest, Revolution Square or we can pick up at your location.
Leave the city on the route to Snagov. Visit the Snagov Monastery, where it supposed that it would be burried Vlad Dracula.
Still do not know exactly how Vlad Dracula was killed, but the most probably hypothesis is that he was killed near Bucharest, in a battle against the Ottomans in December 1476. According to the leggends Vlad would be buried in Snagov Monastery where monks bring his body in secret. But the body found in Snagov also had his head, element wich would clash with some leggends according to wich the head of Vlad was cut, but the mistery remains as it was found also a ring with the symbol of the Order od the Dragon wich was part precisely Vlad Dracula.
Continue your journey to Comana Monastery, not far from Bucharest (40 kilometres) where the history also indicates that it would be the perfect place for Dracula's graveyard…
History tells us that the Turks came in Romania from the south, crossing the Danube, therefore it was thought that the body of Vlad Dracula were to be tried in the south of Bucharest and not in Snagov that is in the north.
In those days, is used to bury the widowers in churches or monasteries built directly to their will or in those who were nearest to the place of their death and the closest place to where presumably was killed Vlad Dracula is exactly the Comana Monastery. Archaeological research made in this monastery gave birth to a headless corpse, but still there is no certainly that the body belongs to the Count.
We will continue our tour with a short tour of Bucharest
Return to drop-off point in Revolution Square or at your location.
Prices in EURO / person
Prices in EURO / person
179 Euro – 1 person 79 Euro – 4 persons
99 Euro – 2 persons 74 Euro – 5-6 persons
89 Euro – 3 persons 69 Euro – 7-8 persons
SPECIAL OFFER – from January 5th – April 30th – SPECIAL DISCOUNT 15%
- This tour is not suitable for people with walking (stairs climbing) disabilities.
- Transport with medium size car for 2-4 persons, with minubus for 5-8 persons;
- Driver / guide english/italian specialist
Not included:
- Pick off from your location with an extra-fee of 10 euro/person.
- Other services not specified on the intinerary;
- Entrance tickets at the monuments; (15 RON-Snagov Monastery)
- Photo and video fees;
- Banking or e-payment fees
Prices specification: PRICE PER PERSON based on group size specified above. For bigger groups prices on request.


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Custom Homes at Market Farm Estates
This expansive, 15 lot community has lot sizes ranging from 1 to 19 acres. Purchasing a lot in Market Farm Estates enables you to construct your dream home, and will allow you to have enough space to build a pole building and have gardens. It's the perfect solution for anyone who needs a little elbow room, but still wants to enjoy the experience of living in a quiet, friendly neighborhood.
Market Farm Estates Is Located in Picturesque Felton, DE
Located on Hills Market Road in the small town of Felton, Delaware this 90 acre parcel is the ideal location to build your farmette and enjoy a community of neighbors who appreciate the same lifestyle you do. This picturesque Central Delaware setting is the perfect spot if you're looking to escape the hustle and bustle of city living. However, you won't have to worry about being cut off from the "real world." You can drive to the beautiful Delaware beaches in less than an hour, major shopping centers are 10 miles away, and the capital city of Dover is only 12 miles away.
Let Us Build Your Custom Market Farms Estates Farmette for You
Green Diamond Builders can turn you dream of owning a beautiful farmette into a reality. We can work with you to create a customized modular or on-site stick home floorplan that incorporates your unique design ideas — we'll even handle every phase of your construction project for you! We also have extensive experience in the design and construction of attractive and functional pole buildings that can serve as a garage, home office, storage facility and more.
Future Model Home Construction to Begin Spring 2020
Take the Next Step and Experience the Peaceful Lifestyle You've Always Wanted
There are only a limited number of lots in Market Farms Estates for sale, so be sure to act quickly before they're gone. Contact us today to take advantage of introductory lot pricing.


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Bangers - Mysterious Ways 12"
Bangers - Mysterious Ways 12"
Summer 2015 Bangers undertook a daring (stupid?) challenge to write and record an album in 48 hours. We liked the results so much that we've decided to do a limited run of one sided 12"s. I know we said it would only be available while we were recording but we're not totally embarrassed with how it turned out, so here it is for the masses.
Track Listing
- Thoughts
- Second Thoughts
- Complete Doom
- Dewey
- Last of the Big Dippers
- I Wanna Work (In Mysterious Ways)
- Why Should I
- Nerves Ending
- Mosquito
Pressing Information
300 - Yellow / Clear vinyl


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Points of Light Foundation Points of Light Foundation
Here's a sample of our volunteer opportunities:VIEW AS
Mission Statement
Take part in the Unity in the Spirit of America!
The Unity in the Spirit of America initiative enables Americans to honor those lost in the September 11th attacks by dedicating service projects in their name. Take part in, or organize, an existing USA Act volunteer project in your community.
The Unity in the Spirit of America Act, signed by President Bush on January 10, called for the Points of Light Foundation--which partnered with the Volunteer Center National Network--to identify and organize at least 5,000 volunteer service projects across the United States, each in tribute to one of the victims of the September 11 attacks.
An essential part of this initiative is the website: http://www.usa.pointsoflight.org. Participating families have provided biographical data that is the basis of the honoree database. This searchable website allows project leaders to enter information about their projects and to match those projects with victims' names or to request that a name be assigned by the Foundation.
Please visit the USA web site to see if there is an existing opportunity in your community or consider sponsoring an event.
This information
Might be out of date
Do you work for this organization?
Request administrator status and update its information!


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Signing up for credit cards through partner links earns us a commission. Terms apply to the offers listed on this page. Here's our full Advertising Policy.
Update: One or more card offers in this post are no longer available. Check our Hot Deals for the latest offers.
Folks love Chase credit cards because they have some of the most lucrative sign-up bonuses of any bank. But Chase also has the most restrictive rules for approving new applications.
So what exactly does the Chase "5/24" rule mean for you? And how might it affect your credit card application strategy?
Million Mile Secret Agent Wendy asked:
I thought the "5/24" rule only applied to Chase cards. It seems it's not like that?
The Chase "5/24" rule only excludes certain Chase credit cards. Most new credit card accounts (but not all of them!) will count toward your "5/24" limit.
Let's review what exactly the Chase "5/24" rule is and how it works.
Which Credit Cards Are Affected by the Chase "5/24" Rule?
You will have a much tougher time getting a Chase credit card application approved if you have opened 5+ new credit cards from any bank within the past 24 months. This rule applies to all of Chase's credit cards except for the following:
|Card Name
|Sign-Up Bonus
|Marriott Rewards Premier Business Credit Card
|75,000 Marriott points after you spend $3,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening
|The Hyatt Credit Card
|40,000 Hyatt points after you spend $2,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening. Plus, a $50 statement credit after your first purchase.
|British Airways Visa Signature® Card
|Up to 75,000 British Airways Avios points after you spend $10,000 on purchases in the first year of account opening
|Ritz-Carlton Rewards® Credit Card
|2 complimentary nights at any Tier 1-4 Ritz-Carlton hotel after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening
|Disney® Premier Visa® Card
|$200 statement credit after you spend $500 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening
So if you're over "5/24," you might be able to get one of the above cards. But your approval will also depend on your credit score and several other factors.
Team member Jasmin is waiting to fall under "5/24" so she can get new Chase cards. Here's how to check your status.
Which Credit Cards Do NOT Count Toward Your "5/24" Limit?
Small business credit cards from certain banks will NOT show up on your personal credit report. And those accounts will NOT count toward your "5/24" limit. Small business credit cards from the following banks will not show up on your personal credit report:
- Bank of America
- Chase
- Citi
- Wells Fargo
Because Chase small business cards do not count toward your "5/24" status, you could apply for one while you're under the limit and it won't put you over. But if you are already over the "5/24" rule, then it's likely you won't be approved for a new Chase small business credit card. The one exception to that situation is the Chase Marriott Rewards Premier Business Credit Card.
That said, whether or not you're approved for any Chase card is still up to the bank.
Bottom Line
If you've opened 5+ credit card accounts within the past 24 months, you likely won't be able to get most Chase credit cards. Although there are a few exceptions to this rule.
New personal credit card accounts from any bank will be included in your "5/24" count! But if you qualify for a small business credit card, some of them do NOT count toward the limit.
If you are looking to open a new Chase credit card, remember, this rule is not the only factor that will affect your approval chances.
Thanks for the question, Wendy!


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Konica AutoReflex A2 Seals
USCamera custom light seal kit fits the Konica AutoReflex A, A1000, A2, and T 35mm film cameras. This 5 piece foam seal kit includes lower/upper door channel seals for the camera body, camera body hinge seal, back cover door latch plate seal, and a mirror cushion.
USCamera light seal placement guide for this Konica, go here