I Cannot Believe How Grown Up She Is

Can you believe that baby has grown so? Or that she is only just barely 4 months old??

(Baby is the one on the right.)

Sunset in Seattle

As some of you know, we’re on the road again. Right now we’re up in Seattle, where I’m running our semi-annual Internet Success Makers Group workshop.
Anyways, I wanted to share this amazing view with you – this is the sunset last night from our hotel room in Seattle:

Peanut Factory Processes Peanuts

My husband brought this little gem home from his last business trip – you know, those darned lawyers ruin it for everybody:

A Response from Mother Earth News

A couple of days ago I wrote an open letter to Mother Earth News, complaining about the cigarette advertising in their magazine – a magazine I had previously considered a model of leadership for “good living”.

To their credit, at least they gave me a response, even if it wasn’t the one that I’d wanted:

“Thanks for writing.

Our many decisions regarding whether or not to accept advertising from any particular company are seldom simple. Our readers come to us for alternatives. Our advertisers, knowing this, sometimes offer â€œalternativeâ€? tools, therapies and appliances that I, personally, donâ€™t see as valuable and wouldnâ€™t, personally, purchase.

Our acid test is whether the add is, on its face, misleading offensive or exploitative. We reject advertisers on these bases regularly.

Cigarettes are harmful to people who smoke them. It states this clearly on the advertisement you mentioned. American Spirit makes only the mildest and vaguest of claims regarding how â€œnaturalâ€? the product might be. I cannot conclude that the advertisement in misleading.

The ad is, in our opinion, not offensive. However, this is the most subjective of our judgments and the one most likely to prompt a change in our position.

That leaves the question of whether cigarettes are, by their nature, exploitative. My colleagues include people who smoke, people who used to smoke but quit and people who never smoked. I respect the people in each of these groups for their decisions. Are the smokers being exploited by tobacco companies? I canâ€™t see how. They pick up and light each cigarette with the full knowledge of its effect. No one is physically incapable of quitting.

We respect our readers for their ability to make decisions of this kind and we have elected to run these legal advertisements for a legal product whose negative effects are (unlike many other productsâ€™) clearly described on the advertisements themselves. I believe the ads are, in this respect, superior to ads for automobiles with excessive horsepower; fatty, over-processed foods; and inefficient appliances.

Furthermore, obviously, these ads and all the other ads allow us to distribute important information to millions of people each year at an astonishingly low cost to the consumer.

Bryan Welch
Publisher and Editorial Director
Ogden Publications, Inc.
1503 SW 42nd St.
Topeka, KS 66609

12 North 12th Street
Suite 400
Minneapolis, MN 55403

785-274-4308
Fax: 785-274-4309

Mother Earth News, Utne Reader, Natural Home, Motorcycle Classics, Farm Collector, Gas Engine Magazine, Steam Traction, The Herb Companion, Herbs for Health, CAPPER’S, GRIT, American Life & Traditions, Brave Hearts Magazine, Good Things To Eat Magazine, Capper’s Insurance Service and Capper’s Reader Service.

www.ogdenpubs.com”

— —

P.S. If you want to tell Mother Earth News how you feel about this, you can do so here.

An Open Letter to “Mother Earth News”

Dear Mother Earth News,

I was shocked – and very *very* disappointed – to open this month’s issue and find a full page advertisement for cigarettes, of all things! I’m referring to the ad for “Natural American Spirit” cigarettes that appeared near the back of the August/September 2008 issue.

I have been a fan of Mother Earth News for more than 30 years – since the original publication of the magazine. I have turned more people on to M.E.N. than I can remember, and my husband and I have held M.E.N. up to our son as one of the few publications that is true to both the earth, and clean, honest, healthy living.

To now find you pushing *cigarettes* is so shocking to the conscience – so antithetical to all for which we believed you to stand – that it is all we can do to not cancel our subscription immediately.

However, instead we will wait for the next issue, in the dear hope that the offending – and so completely out of character – advertising will be gone.

If it isn’t, we will be, and you will have alienated and lost at least one very loyal subscribing family.

Do What You Love – Love What You Do

I found myself saying this to a friend today – I always say “do what you love, and love what you do”, but today what flowed from me somehow seemed more profound, and I felt that I should put pixel to screen, to make sure that I had it down somewhere, so here it is:

“You know you should do what you love, and love what you do, right? To truly become an expert on something you need not only the knowledge and information, but you need the passion. Then the opportunities don’t just flow to you – your very energy and enthusiasm creates them!”

Do New Yorkers Walk Fast or is Everybody Else Just Slow?

I walk quickly. I always have. I chalk it up to being a New Yorker. Because, you know, New Yorkers walk fast. We’re busy people, and we have places to go, and things to see.

Even when we aren’t in New York. (Even, in fact, when we haven’t lived in New York for many years.)

You can take the fast walker out of New York, but you can’t take the fast New York out of the walker. Or something like that.

Now here’s the thing:

All you people out on the sidewalks who aren’t from New York – all you people who walk so agonizingly sloooooowly – and you know who you are – you’re in our way!

You’re holding up traffic!

Get the heck out of the way!

Move to the right, so that we can pass you.

No..further.

The Smell of Books

I went to the library today – it was the first time that I’d been there in a few months, and when I walked in, I was immediately struck by the smell.

Now, I don’t mean that the library smelled bad. Quite the opposite.

It was the smell of books, and it was heavenly – almost heady.

There’s just something about the smell of books – it’s the smell of literature, the smell of information – it’s the smell of knowledge.

Walking down the stacks is a sensory experience to which nothing else compares. The smell of the books – the rows and rows and rows – the feel of their heft in your hands.

When I was at university, I did a research project for which I got to use original source materials. Where I went to university they had an amazing collection of old books, and when I tread – oh so lightly and in an almost euphoric state – among the stacks of the old book collection, it was like being in the presence of history itself. Books that I picked up and opened were from other centuries, and had leather bindings, gold leaf letters, and unslit pages.

I was humbled.

And they smelled divine.

Now don’t get me wrong – I really like my Kindle too.

But nothing – ever – will take the place of books.

Urgent Need for O Negative Blood Donors to Help Young Boy Scout

Here are the details on the young Boy Scout here in Colorado who desperately needs O Negative blood. He is in one of our local Boy Scout councils, and that’s how I got involved in trying to help find donors for him.

Justin was camping with his family a couple of days ago and was bitten by a Black Widow spider. When they went to the hospital they discovered his low white blood cell count, and he was diagnosed with leukemia.

Then infection set in.

Right now he is having the bone marrow test to determine what type of Leukemia he has, as well as the spinal tap to begin chemotherapy. Today is Day 0 of his treatment. The infection is “ravaging” his body and they said if they can’t get it under control within the week, they will probably lose him.

As it was told to me, antibiotics aren’t helping because antibiotics work with white blood cells and Justin has almost no white blood cells right now, which is why the desperate need for O Negative blood donors.

The hospital contacted registered blood donors (for O negative blood types) and have this week covered for donations but need people to sign up for next week and the week after that and perhaps beyond. I’m told that it takes three days to process the donation before they can give it to Justin, but they can’t keep the blood, once donated, for very long because the quality degrades – so they’ll need ongoing donations for a while.

If you or anybody you know can help, please email me here.

By the way, you can send Justin a card through the Children’s Hospital website. Just select the design you’d like to send, fill out the information, and the hospital will print it out and deliver it to Justin. You can send Justin a card here. His full name, which you need for the card, is Justin Campbell.

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