Tsunami Blogs--You Are There!

My Trip Journal provides blogs for travelers, and sent out a release offering blogs to relief workers. We caught this account of a traveler caught on the beach in Thailand on the morning of the Big Wave..This is written by a blogger named Chan from the UK

Dec 26th ... I dragged myself out of bed around 10am and was recovering after breakfast when I noticed the sea disappear backwards away from the beach so the rocks and sand were uncovered, then out at sea we saw a huge freakin wave (about 20m - 30m in height) and basically we all stood and watched it pick up this 35ft boat and bring it towards shore. This brought the boat (about 150m out) right along in front of the resort as it was carried on this huge swell of murky water. The water was full of rubbish, tables, chairs, parts of bars etc. then it went along the beach and back out. We were all on the beach trying to grab stuff as tables, chairs, boats floated by then basically another couple of waves came ....

and when I saw one I thought "GET THE FLOCK OUTTA HERE!!" so I grabbed my camera and legged it thru the resort (about 50m to the gate) and up to the road, and when I looked back the water had stopped at the gate but there was boulders, lumps of coral, beer bottles and all sorts of debris floating in the knee-deep water by the gate.It was then that we realised some people had been trapped in the kitchen, restaurant or even in their bungalows. The chef was badly cut in many places and concussed, the owner of the resort was carried out as she had been trapped by the boat in the restaurant, many others had been dragged under the bungalows by the water and received bad cuts from the amount of debris being carried in the water.

I was on the beach up to my knees after the first wave and the force of it pulling you out was incredible!! ... all the stuff in the water simply cut you as it hit your legs due to this really strong current...... we had no news about what was happening and no warning .. many people were in their bungalows asleep and if the size of the wave that had hit Phuket had hit us ... well .... luckily no if's eh?! :-)

CNN Live with Betty and Miles

On Monday as we were driving home in the snow from Northern VT, we got a call from a producer at CNN. He wanted us for a live shot to comment on airline passenger's rights. Though we were more than two hours away, we jumped at the chance, and at 2:35 pm I found myself being miked up at the local NBC affiliate station in Chicopee. In my earpiece I could hear Betty Nguyen and Miles commenting on the terrible Tsunami and the ever lengthening number of dead. Since this wasn't the CNN Studios, I had to request that they switch the monitor over in the far corner to the show, so I could see what I was hearing from my earpiece.

"On in 90 seconds," said the booth guy from Atlanta. A very helpful woman named Amy sat by me, she let me know that the papers in my lap wouldn't be beamed out, just my head and part of my chest. When they flipped the first question at me, I was, thank God, prepared, and talked about the legal obligations of the airlines, when a flight is cancelled. Then she hit me with a question about lost luggage. Again, thanks to my crack team of researchers, Kent and Joe, I was prepared and was even able to mention the store in North Alabama where all of the unclaimed lost luggage is eventually sold off.

It was a thrill be make it on for four minutes, and our GoNOMAD page views jumped to over 8000 for that day, meaning that the little slide with "gonomad.com" worked its television magic.

Priority Shuffle

Thomas Friedman writes in the NY Times:

We face two gigantic national challenges today: One is the challenge to protect America in the wake of the new terrorist threats, which has involved us in three huge military commitments - Afghanistan, Iraq and missile defense. And the other is the challenge to strengthen American competitiveness in the wake of an expanding global economy, where more and more good jobs require higher levels of education, and those good jobs will increasingly migrate to those countries with the brainpower to do them. In the face of these two national challenges, we have an administration committed to radical tax cuts, which, one can already see, are starting to affect everything from the number of troops we can deploy in Iraq to the number of students we can properly educate at our universities. And if we stay on this course, the trade-offs are only going to get worse.

I think this guy is right on, and agree with him.

Travel Websites On the Rise

Just read this encouraging word in CNN's travel section.

Nearly one in four Americans, or 68 million Web surfers, used online travel sites in November, up 13 percent from a year earlier, said Nielsen/NetRatings.

The market research company said 23 percent of Americans and 46 percent of all active Web surfers visited a travel site during the month.
Online consumers spent $919 million on travel during November, up 11 percent from the $828 million spent a year earlier, according to the Holiday eSpending Report by Goldman Sachs, Harris Interactive and Nielsen/NetRatings.

In more local news, GoNOMAD will soon be in a brand new office at 14A Sugarloaf St, downtown South Deerfield, MA 01373. We're bricks and mortar now.

Santa's EBay Revenge

A Houston man got so mad at his three sons before the holidays that he took all of their presents and sold them on EBay. "My last name is not Scrooge," the anonymous dad told the Houston Chronicle. He plans to keep all of the emails that he got from buyers, who have bid up to $1050 so far for the video games, and show them to his sons when they have kids. "Since this has become a bit of a Christmas soapbox, we would like everyone to think about what it says about (our) society and culture when good family values and accountability are taught and it becomes worldwide news."

All is still now at just after 6:30 am on Christmas morning. I wish all of my blog readers a peaceful and fun filled holiday, and hope your 2005 is full of new and exciting possibilities. I don't think I've ever been more positive and hopeful for the year ahead!

Festivus Among Us

Last night we met a bunch of cool people at a Festivus Party in Easthampton, MA. Made popular by Seinfeld, this December 23 ritual has become popular and features a list of grievances, a single aluminum pole and an intergenerational wrestling match at its conclusion. Our host and hostess live in a cavernous house with room for what seemed liked hundreds. And they all came out, despite a monsoon like rainstorm, to enjoy copious amounts of food, a "micro brew buffet" three live bands, ping pong, two roaring fires inside and a crowded deck with blazing chiminea. CNN called our hostess and wanted to send a camera crew but traffic on I-95 stopped them from coming.

Some times it is instructive to hang out with younger folks, you learn a lot about new and different things that way. Glad we ventured out to meet them.

Traffic Control Mimes

From Boing Boing, a Directory of Wonderful Things, one of the best places in the world to check out at 4:45 am:
Mayor of Bogota uses mimes for public behavior control This is brilliant. A March article from the March 2004 Harvard University Gazette has a great profile of mayor of Bogota, Colombia. He's a former academic and has been using mimes to encourage people not to jaywalk or behave irresponsibly in public.

Another innovative idea was to use mimes to improve both traffic and citizens' behavior. Initially 20 professional mimes shadowed pedestrians who didn't follow crossing rules: A pedestrian running across the road would be tracked by a mime who mocked his every move. Mimes also poked fun at reckless drivers. The program was so popular that another 400 people were trained as mimes.

He Won't Actually Have Paris anymore...

Lloyd Groves writes in today's NY Daily News that he's done, absoutely, positively, shilling for Paris Hilton. He chronicles her shameless selfish self-absorbed life, shooting daggers like a paltry $12 tip on a $300 room service meal, and cutting to the front of a twisted and long ladie's room line at a club. And that after performing with Sean Combs in an effort to promote Vote or Die, she didn't even bother to register nor vote. Shameless hussy! And the Arkansas family she stayed with when she made her cringe-worthy reality TV show? She changed her phone number so they can't reach her any more. I hope that what comes around really does come around but don't count on it.

The New York Times is always so full of great stuff it's almost impossible to finish. My partner Cindy is always surprised when I'm still reading Wednesday's issue on Thursday morning. In that edition, there was a story about the Mongolian reindeer herders trying to keep their herdsd alive. Inbreeding and other factors have reduced the herd, and what the natives really wanted were waterproof journals so that they could keep records of how each female was doing. Along come western researchers with boxes of waterproof notebooks and a plan to test DNA of the reindeer to help keep the healthiest ones propagating via artificial insemination. Glad somebody is helping out up there in Mongolia. Lauryn Axelrod took some wonderful photos of Mongolia in her GoNOMAD article from her around the world trip.

CSS, CMS and other Mysteries

We visited with a few high tech companies this week, trying to get help with some of the mysteries of running a website. We would like to move to a Content Management System, so that we can put up our stories the way the big boys do. Newspaper and magazine sites use systems called "CMS" to pour the articles and photos into preset formats. The systems are very much like this blog, which is a gloriously simple operation. But moving to this system, like everything, is easier said than done, so we needed to visit with the gurus to find out how we can do it. Our first stop was a small office in Open Square, an rehabbed old factory building in Holyoke, MA. She was poised and confident and you can tell that she charges big bucks and is worth it.

After we watched what she has done with credit card and bank websites, we were impressed, then we toured her new space across the hall. Fourteen foot ceilings, a gleaming wide board sanded floor; a cavernous space for the absurd rent of $425 a month including utilities. WOW.

Unfortunatly, the price of her CMS was far too rich for us, so we moved on to the more Bohemian Positronic Design, in Florence, MA. We'll see what we can develop as the months move along and we move into our new storefront space in South Deerfield, MA.

CSS is a way of setting up a webpage so that you have more streamlined code and it loads faster. It stands for Cascading style sheets. Now I know you're bored, so I will close.

Coining New Words for the 00s

We found these words on the web, a derivitive no doubt of Wired Magazine's monthly list of new terms found that more accurately describe life in 2004.

1. CUBE FARM: An office filled with cubicles.
2. PRAIRIE DOGGING: When someone yells or drops something loudly in a cube farm and peoples' heads pop up over the walls to see what's going on. Also applies to applause for a promotion because there may be cake.
3.MOUSE POTATO: The on-line, wired generation's answer to the couch potato.
4. SITCOMs: Single Income, Two Children, Oppressive Mortgage. What yuppies turn into when they have children and one of them stops working to stay home with the kids or start a "home business".
5. STRESS PUPPY: A person who seems to thrive on being stressed out and whining all the time.
6. XEROX SUBSIDY: Euphemism for "liberating" free photocopies from one's workplace.
Surprise Link

Snowing blowing and cozy here at the subterranean headquarters of gonomad. We love being in the web business, 'cause we like staying home and working with the world rather than donning overcoats and snow shovels to tackle the elements. Reminds me of one of Terry Braverman's best lines....."An ATM card is as useless as a snow shovel in Myanmar."

New York Sunday Times & Howard Hughes

What a joy to once again relax with the fat and redolent New York Sunday Times. No other paper has writers with such style and class, no one can put their finger on the East Coast Pulse like the Sunday Styles section. One essay that stood out was by Katherine Tanney, in the Modern Love column. She described a scene, after a wedding, in a hotel at 3 am, with her permanent boyfriend lying on the twin bed beside her. They agree that while they are happy to celebrate other people's nuptials, such a thing will never happen between them. The cartoon artwork depicts a couple standing, kissing, while the man is sawing out a hole in the floor beneath him, creating an escape hatch. He keeps on dropping these little wedding bells hints, but she resists, and then finds herself pining for a real proposal. A fascinating and insightful read.

The other volume I'm racing through is the new biography of Howard Hughes. This is the one that has been made into the critically acclaimed new film with Leonardo de Caprio as the reclusive billionaire. So far we are still in the early '2os, with Howard financing this big budget movie called "Hells Angels" starring Jean Harlow and a cast of other stars. Hughes comes across as a cad from day one, cheating on his adoring wife, lusting after male stars, even bribing another man to let his wife have a divorce so she can be with him. Hughes also makes the movie stars nervous by filming gun fights with real bullets in the Thompson submachine guns and forcing them to film mock airplane crashes and then one of the pilots dies.

This is a fantastic if somewhat sensational bio of an intriguing personality. The book's forward about how many filmmakers have fought over the rights to film Hughes' life adds to the allure of the subject.

Google Print

Reading in Web Pro News about the latest from Google, the publishing en masse of scholarly books to the web. It is turning the indexers into the content creators....let's listen in.

Although Google Print is in the pilot stage, the future looks promising. The possibilities of having these incredible libraries literally at one's fingertips is staggering. No longer will research original text from literary masterpieces considered a daunting task. A few simple keywords will alleviate the majority of the legwork. While this may come across as common knowledge, John Battelle also give another reason to be optimistic about Google's newest endeavor, "this move clearly puts Google in the category of innovator when it comes to adding information to their index."

The books of the world have so much more to offer us than the billions of websites. So this move really signals a beginning of a daunting amount of knowledge, science and fiction to be placed at our fingertips.

Dazzling People and New Digs

We met with a dazzling young lady today, who impressed us with her poise, sophistication and earnest interest in what we do. We have long felt that GoNOMAD is a brand that people can understand and relate to, and that the potential is there to push and cultivate our brand on TV, radio and in books. This smiling sensation, Sony Stark, pulses with energy and enthusiasm and a GoNOMAD-sized level of wonder about travel and an impressive array of technical expertise. One look at her website shows she knows what she is doing and our meeting focused on how we can take this baby all the way to cruising altitude.

We envision developing a pilot for GoNOMAD TV with Sony and other brilliant minds, and bring our show to PBS or one of the many cable outlets that are looking for unique story lines about people doing exciting things. Sony has worked in TV for ten years, is an expert shooter and editor, and is perfect to spearhead this effort. We are going to continue to meet and develop strategy to make our vision something we can put on a DVD and she will join us at the Adventure Expo in NYC to soak in all of GoNOMAD's energy and get a feeling for the travel climate of 2004.

On another front, we're scoping out an office not far from our current subterranean den, which will give us a face to the public, a clean and bigger work space, and of course, all of the high speed connectivity we'll need to run the mother ship. Stay tuned, this is getting exciting!

Wither the Dolla

Travelers like us have a common fear, and it is one of those fears that comes back with a vengence and can cut both ways. I remember being in New Zealand in 2001, and savoring the beers that "only cost $4.00 NZ," since that was $2.00 US. But I also was in Austria in September 2004, and over there, the dollar was a puny 98 pound weakling against the mighty euro. Dinners were costly and so were hotel rooms. Just read a good explainer about this whole currency mess in Time Magazine. While US manufacturers are breaking records selling lots of lots to the people who benefit by using their strong Euros, those of us who visit and buy these are hammered with low value of our greenback.

Do we really Wanna Win the Lottery?

How many years will it be until the steely eyed perpetrator Scott Peterson, is put to death? Knowing California's famous recalcitrant 9th court, probably never. What was it that put this case into its OJ sized frame? Why do we care so much about every detail of this terribly sad case of a fertilizer salesman and an atractive pregnant woman?

Today lottery winners are in the news. Jack Whitaker, winner of the richest Powerball prize ever ($116 million lump sum) has been arrested three times, keeps getting into fights at strip clubs, and had $565,000 stolen out of his SUV as he watched dancers in another West Virginia club. His wife says she wished they never won the money. Another story came from a caller on the talk radio, who recounted a tale of a winner who spiraled down into drink and gambling so that he was nearly dead, and finally killed himself, with millions lost on hotel rooms, room service, and booze.

Getting Connected

Today feels like a big day for gonomad, we had some amazing contacts come in that made us feel like the pieces of the puzzle are all falling into place. We posted three new stories about such diverse subjects as Finding a Bathroom Overseas, sailing the South Pacific in a Tall Ship, and the upcoming Adventure Expo Tradeshow where we will be exhibiting in January.

An enterprising young videographer from NY State emailed us expressing interest in helping bring a video pilot or series based on GoNOMAD's stories to the major networks or cable. She comes well connected to a major network and wants to make videos for travelers and tour companies. We compared notes and discussed our interest in bringing our stories to film, since we have such an incredibly deep well of quality content. Taking GoNOMAD to our deserved peak of fame and glory will involve more than the web. We meet in Northampton later this week to discuss more of these tantalizing details.

Later this morning, we chatted with a Scottish woman who is starting up a glossy travel mag over in the UK called Trip Magazine. We are working with her on content and consulting with her to flesh out the editorial for this new publication. We are very excited about our new addition to our site, UK Airport Parking, which if it follows the pattern of US Airport Parking, should be a boon to us.

Broadway and Playboy

New York City...just like I pictured it...skyscapers and everythang...quoth the old stevie wonder song. I had a great time Wednesday taking an early morning bus down to NYC to see the broadway show 42nd St., that is billed as "a musical for those who love musicals." The huge Ford Theater on 42nd Street was packed to the top of the third balcony. The orchestra was tight and crisp, playing those 1930s songs that everyone knows..."we're in the money" and so many other great tunes.

The dancers, more than 29 men and women, beamed from the stage, as we sat only four rows from the stage. The dancing, the energy of the show, the excitement the show generates from the theme of "making the big time in the Big Apple" was palpable. What an exciting afternoon. God. Broadway is as great as ever and seeing a show like this makes your heart beat and your feet tap and all was right with the world.

Stopped by and met the ravishing head of Italian Tourism, Antonia Imperoli, at her office on Fifth Avenue. We are going to be renting a place in Urbino Italy next September, and I wanted to get some information on where to go, and how to get this all set up. Antonia, who of course knew about gonomad.com, was gracious and offered some good advice about where to stay and suggested that this little university town would be a perfect place to see the Le Marche region.

This, she said, is "the next Tuscany," largely undiscovered, beautiful rolling hills, splendid Adriatic beaches, few touristas, and inexpensive rentals. Brought back some good info and enjoyed a splendid lunch at Cafe Napolean, a french place with a $20.00 pre-theater lunch. It's always great to be in the biggest baddest city of them all.

Heard from a chap down at Playboy Magazine, they are interested in publishing something about gonomad...now to find out how to pitch this, so that the famous men's mag has a good hook.

Another Sign that Travel is Rebounding Big Time!

From the Boston Herald:
Now boarding: Airline starts Ireland trips
American Airlines is hoping to cash in on a tourism boom with a nonstop flight to Shannon, Ireland, slated for takeoff in May.

More Irish travelers are coming to Boston to take advantage of the cheap dollar while Ireland remains a popular destination for Bay State travelers, airline officials said.

``It's a place we've been looking at for a couple of years and, given the growth in the market, we felt it was time to offer the service ourselves,'' said Jim Carter, American Airlines' regional sales director.

The airline books flights to Shannon through partner Aer Lingus. That airline is expected to continue its existing flights.

``It's a sign of confidence in the travel industry,'' said Michael Quinlin, of the Boston Irish Tourism Association. ``We anticipate that two airline carriers will only increase traffic between the two areas rather than compete for a static number of passengers.''

American Airlines is modeling the service after its popular Boston-to-Manchester, England, flights that started last May. All seats on the smaller 757 planes will be sold as coach fares.

Flights will run seven days a week during peak season and five days a week the rest of the year.

The Sweet Mystery of Linking Strategy

There is no end to the emails that come forth from other website owners asking to link to them. But the game is to know which ones to PAY FOR and which ones to just delete. Recently, the talk on the web was about a scurrilous notion that Google Page Rank, those little bars that many of us notice when we go to a site, are there for appearances only, that the real scores are hidden in their algorithm. Here is a statement that is wisdom for the ages about linking, from Alexandra Search Engine Fact's newsletter...

When you want to trade links with another web site, don't look at the PageRank of that site. Instead, ask yourself: Is the web site related to your site? Would it make sense for web surfers if they linked to you and you linked to them? Could visitors of the other web site be interested in your site? If you find a web site that you would want to visit or your visitors would want to visit then link to it and ask for a link back to your site.

Dining in Downtown Hartford in Style

Hartford has never been a very impressive place, not really a place you'd think about when naming cool, hip, with-it places you'd want to be. But I had lunch today in the downtown's swankest and most posh restaurant. Max Downtown. The wine was crisp and the Nantucket scallops were sweet. The waiter was attentive and the ambience rich with possibility. Meeting with a fellow website owner, scheming and strategizing over the game plan for the months ahead. Business is fantastic, the web feels like an untethered horse, able to run and run and then, go even faster when you think it's out of steam.

Tom, the gentlemen I dined with was urbane and unfettered, a man who had figured out that he could work at home, play with his small children, and succeed wildly in a low stress web based business. He was natty in a camel hair blazer, yet relexed, tie-less. It makes things look brighter that we find so many stories like these people who are truly doing what they love.

Like the early adopters of the web have said, it has and will and continues to change everything.

Instapundit, little green footballs, free ipods

I'm catching on to the power and incredible wealth of information that pours forth from the blogger's universe...and also that people are funny about blogs. I hesitate to recommend that people read this blog but put it in my signature and secretly hope like hell someone will leave me a comment! hint hint. I discovered littlegreenfootballs when i was doing a websearch for something. This site is huge, thousands of daily vistors, and they had a whole photo gallery of the Palestinians showing how they use their kids in the terror war. Photo after photo of tiny cute little babies wearing fake suicide belts and the famous hamas green headband. Basically what these photos showed is that they are teaching a love for suicide bombing and murdering of jews from the crib. It is clear that there is not even a stigma about it, when they grow up, if they're lucky, they can die in a suicide attack. That just isn't right.

The other blog that has been getting in the face of politicians is www.instapundit.com, this one strikes right at the heart of stuff and is equally engaging. a feature in webpronews.com speculates that soon agencies will have to form special divisions just to handle getting their clients mentioned and linked in blogs. The "A" list blogs are going to have much more weight than regular ads....the other triend in advertising is giving stuff away to generate buzz and attention. Look how Oprah gave away those 275 Pontiacs, reaping a torrent of mentions and kudos, (even though the poor winner had to pay their own onerous sales tax) and now the sites that offer free ipods are exploding...i went to the site and signed up, i want my free ipod! according to wired, it is not a scam, they will give you a free one. i'm still waiting.

A 5000 foot deep cave in Mexico

Read a dispatch late last night about exploring. The latest issue of wired is edited by James Cameron, who is more of a scientist than a filmmaker, but he filmed one recently 2700 feet below the ocean. They focused on animals that thrive around vents that spew red hot water from the crust of the earth.

The article detailed another adventurer who explored this cave called Sistema Huautla outside of Mexico City that sunk down nearly 5000 feet, then went on for 20,000 more feet, amid a "sump" of water in some areas and open 10' chambers in the other. They camped there and explored the length of it, but one of them died when he ventured out alone. The leader, a crusty gent from Maryland, had to carry his dead partner back all the way to the end of the cave some 20,000 feet.

Rick Steves: Travel can mend a fractured world.

Rick Steves is a thoughtful and well respected travel writer. In fact his book Rick Steve's Italy, is the best selling travel book on the market. Which is funny because more travelers go to England than Italy, but it appears the prefer to read more about Italy. Just before the election Steves addressed how the U.S. and Americans are viewed by the rest of the world. Since he spends at least four months a year abroad, he is in a uniquely qualified position to comment. Here is his USA Today commentary, reprinted with permission on GoNOMAD.

GoNOMAD: Rick Steves: Travel can mend a fractured world.

MSNBC - Supreme Court to hear cable Internet case

MSNBC - Supreme Court to hear cable Internet case

Bloggin Questions--cleaner look vs. revenue?

Thinking about the lure of lucre vs the clean look of the blog. On our website, gonomad.com, we include many google ads, that match up with the content. this program is what has made Sergie Brin and Larry Page into billionaires, these little green ads that appear on the sides of stories and at the bottom of most newspaper's websites. intelligently matching the content of the pages with keywords purchased by advertisers. It brings in hundreds for the websites and millions for google. I've signed up and been approved but i can't yet bring myself to put google ads on this blog. it is so clean and uncluttered, this design is too nice to mess with.

I've liked the way these ads look on the gonomad pages, and always delight in how a story about Brazil will show ads for Rio hotels, and a story on how to pack a suitcase will have charming little suitcase ads next to it. The next new development we've seen is from Amazon. They've caught on to Google's content matching scheme, and now our ads for Amazon are boxes with books related to the story. Just by popping in the code and a word, we can get ads for karate for our feature on kickboxing in thailand and presumably that will sell more books since it matches the story. We sell many, many books on Amazon, but sadly, the payment per book is less than $.75 in some cases, so we don't make much. But in the internet business, little things eventually add up.

Getting Rid of Traffic signs, stoplights and curbs

Read a wise article in the most recent Wired about a new trend in traffic management. A 30-year expert in traffic patterns and management, Hans Monderman, from Holland, talks about how they removed the road markings, traffic lights and some pedestrian crossings to a dangerous intersection where four roads converge....and the result was far fewer problems, no accidents, and a generally more friendly environment for the cars and the people. The gist is that chaos = cooperation.

Bringing people closer to the road and making the roads thinner enhances the contact between driver and walker. People negotiate crossings with a nod and a hand signal, drivers go slow to guage the intentions of cyclists and walkers, simply put, people take better care when they're not told what to do all the time.

West Palm Beach FL converted some large thoroughfares into thinner two way streets, and that made people feel it was safe to walk there. More pedestrians leads to new shops, apartment buildings and higher property values. One manager's comment, "people are prisoners of their cars," and rethinking our approach to traffic is the wave of the future.

Fireside Living in Cold New England

Last night we made a fire. We used kindling we gathered out in the woods. We set a big birch log on the flames and the highly flammable white bark took off and ignited the huge piece; watching the fire made the winter chill just melt away.

There is much loveliness in drawing up close to a fire. You’d never get this in a warm place like Miami, or in LA, but here in cold New England, our fires keep the cold away, make the winter cozy and bright, and there is nothing like the smell of the wood smoke and the dancing, ever-changing flames to make a night complete and sleep come easy.

Rules of the Fire

Let no man mess with another man’s fiddling. You can fiddle as you like and no one can interfere.

You need a lot of paper to get a really good fire going. Skimping on the crumpled up newspaper is never a good idea, even when you are in a hurry ‘cause it is really cold.

Trying to use newspaper ad circulars and Time Magazine doesn’t work. Even though the glossy paper gives off cool colors, it won’t start the fire for you.

Using birch logs guarantees a merry and bright blaze. It is that white bark that burns like it is coated with gasoline. Amazing!

No matter how much more convenient they are, gas fireplaces still can’t hold a candle to a good old fashioned wood burner, with the smells, the smoke and the ever changing view and all of the fiddling you need to do to keep it alive.

The Day Job--Selling- Is Easier than it Looks

Many of us in publishing have other jobs that help pay the bills. Mine involves a skill that I've acquired over many many years, the skill and nerve to sell for a living. Selling is tough, no, that isn't really true, it's just that for most people selling stinks. They can't imagine the rejection, having to keep on going after somebody says no, having to PERSIST. That is the fun part, actually, of selling. A sale that is easy, well that is fun, and we'll take that. But the best and more rewarding sales are ones that take a long time, that require you to try, and after a while you keep trying, and you succeed.

Some times I get calls from people whom I contacted six months or a year ago. They're ready and that is what makes it satisfying. I tried, I showed them, and time went by, I might have forgotten abuot them, and they finally were ready....so they called me. Nothing is nicer than to realize that all of the seeds that you plant do come up, they just take a while.