PZ the Do-Gooder Scrooge

Are You Prepared on a Job Interview to Answer the Question How Many Followers You Have on Twitter?

2009-07-05T00:25:00.000-07:00

If you're looking for a job and want to improve your chances of doing well in an interview, you need to know about the most important aspects of internet marketing today, including social media such as Twitter, blogging, article marketing and other strategies.

Check out www.TeachMeInternetBusiness.com now to learn how you can get the jump on your job competition.

-- Brought to you by Phyllis Zimbler Miller, a National Internet Business Examiner at www.InternetBizBlogger.com

New Gig as the LA Internet Business Examiner

2009-04-13T22:30:00.000-07:00

I've just accepted being the LA Internet Business Examiner at examiner.com with the commitment of writing 3-4 posts a week on this subject. While I'm very pleased about this opportunity, I took a hard look at my online commitments and realized that something had to give.

Thus I am giving up this blog in "exchange" for the examiner.com opportunity.

I won't be taking this blog down as there are several posts that are what is called "evergreen" -- not time specific. So if you happen to stumble upon this blog after today, I hope you'll check out whether there are any previous posts you'd like to read.

And I invite all of you who have faithfully followed me here to check out my new gig at examiner.com -- LA Internet Business Examiner.
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL and the co-author of the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION. She also blogs at Mrs. Lieutenant and Operation Support Jews in the Military, and she is the co-host of the BlogTalkRadio show Your Military Life. Her company Miller Mosaic LLC builds call-to-action websites for book authors and small businesses.

President Obama Establishes a White House Council on Women and Girls

2009-04-13T11:54:00.000-07:00

As a long-time feminist, this video brought tears to my eyes. It's only a few minutes long and definitely worth watching:

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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL and the co-author of the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION. She also blogs at Mrs. Lieutenant and Operation Support Jews in the Military, and she is the co-host of the BlogTalkRadio show Your Military Life. Her company Miller Mosaic LLC builds call-to-action websites for book authors and small businesses.

Reflections From the Passover Seder

2009-04-12T12:32:00.000-07:00

At the Pesach seder this year one of the guests shared her thoughts on the 10 plagues and then connected her thoughts with our world today. I'd like to give you an overview of what she said:

She pointed out that it wasn't until the 10th plague that the Israelites had to do something themselves -- they had to put lamb's blood on their doorposts. In other words, talking about leaving Egypt didn't lead to leaving Egypt. The Israelites had to first take action themselves towards their goal.

And then she said that this is the same today. That TALKING about helping to do good in the world (my note: such as feeding the hungry or donating funds to help military families in need) isn't worth anything. You have to DO something -- to act -- for your good intentions to have any value.

Very profound -- and if you've been TALKING about donating funds to a needy organization or reaching out a helping hand to a newcomer in your community or any of the myriad good deeds that we all talk about, commit yourself to ACTING on one of these projects.

It's spring now -- traditional time of rebirth. Start acting today.
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL and the co-author of the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION. She also blogs at Mrs. Lieutenant and Operation Support Jews in the Military, and she is the co-host of the BlogTalkRadio show Your Military Life. Her company Miller Mosaic LLC builds call-to-action websites for book authors and small businesses.

TV Show House Goes Further in Its Support of Mental Illness -- Spoiler Alert

2009-04-06T23:09:00.000-07:00

If you are a fan of the tv show HOUSE and haven't watched the April 6th episode, I'm warning you that there's a spoiler ahead. You've been warned.

In my February 3rd blog post "Popular TV Show HOUSE Uses Its Star Power to Support Mental Health" I applauded that the tv show has been raising a great deal of money to support the National Alliance on Mental Illness.

Tonight the show dealt with suicide and a search for the cause of that suicide. At the end of the show there was a public service announcement about what to do if you are in crisis. And then there was another announcement:

If viewers wanted to leave a message for the person who had killed himself -- they could go to www.fox.com/kutner and leave a message.

I had just written a blog post at www.FictionMarketing.com about when people act as if fictional characters are real. And my immediate reaction to the web page to leave messages for "Dr. Kutner" is that this blurring of what is fiction and what is reality has gone too far.

Yes, I cried during the show, but I was crying for the fictional character. No, I don't want to demean the death of real suicides by leaving messages for a fictional tv character.

What are your thoughts about this?
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL and the co-author of the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION. She also blogs at Mrs. Lieutenant and Operation Support Jews in the Military, and she is the co-host of the BlogTalkRadio show Your Military Life. Her company Miller Mosaic LLC builds call-to-action websites for book authors and small businesses.

Movie DUPLICITY Deserves Its Low Box Office Take

2009-04-06T16:36:00.000-07:00

The weekend domestic movie box office was reported in Daily Variety today as it is almost every Monday. FAST AND FURIOUS on its opening weekend took in $72.5 million, which was considerably more than projected and a very good opening weekend number.

In 7th place was the Julia Roberts-Clive Owen starrer DUPLICITY, which in its third weekend took in $4.3 million for a cume of $32.4.

Unfortunately my husband and I contributed to that $4.3 million.

We had gone to the film expecting it to be a comedic spy thriller, perhaps even in the vein of the classic THE LADY VANISHES. Oh, how I wish we could have vanished back home as we both sat in the theater shaking our heads. How did this movie get a greenlight and a big budget?

In my blog post at FictionMarketing.com I talk about when fictional characters are real. In the case of the movie DUPLICITY, the characters are so uninteresting that there is absolutely no risk of anyone thinking these characters are real.

And the stakes of the story? In THE LADY VANISHES the fate of the whole Allied effort might depend on the vanished lady getting safely back to England.

In DUPLICITY -- okay, I don't want to tell you to see the movie to find out the stakes. Let's just stay that it makes no difference to anyone whether Julia Roberts and Clive Owen complete their mission satisfactorily. And that's a real shame for a movie that's a comedic spy thriller.
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL and the co-author of the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION. She also blogs at Mrs. Lieutenant and Operation Support Jews in the Military, and she is the co-host of the BlogTalkRadio show Your Military Life. Her company Miller Mosaic LLC builds call-to-action websites for book authors and small businesses.

Read the Mrs. Lieutenant Blog Post About Rape

2009-04-03T09:47:00.000-07:00

Today is one of those days when I'm directing you to my Mrs. Lieutenant blog because the subject of the post -- rape -- and the actually uplifting message of the www.YourMilitaryLife.com interview of Eldonna Lewis Fernandez are topics that I want to share with my PZ the Do-Gooder Scrooge blog readers.

Read the Mrs. Lieutenant blog post now.
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL and the co-author of the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION. She also blogs at Mrs. Lieutenant and Operation Support Jews in the Military, and she is the co-host of the BlogTalkRadio show Your Military Life. Her company Miller Mosaic LLC builds call-to-action websites for book authors and small businesses.

Fiction Marketing: Using Blogging to Promote Your Novel, Memoir, Poetry or Stories

2009-04-01T09:23:00.000-07:00

FictionMarketing.com has just been launched as an experiment in using a website in conjunction with a nonfiction book proposal to attract an agent for the proposed book project. The book itself -- Marketing Your Fiction: Effective (and Frugal!) Ways to Promote Even the Hard-to-Sell Genres -- is a how-to book for writers of all types of fiction.

My younger daughter Yael built the site through our company business www.CalltoActionWebsites.com -- and my co-author of the book project, Carolyn Howard-Johnson, and I are very pleased with the site.

We're giving away a copy of the book's blogging chapter to help people who are considering starting their own blogs. I wish I'd had this chapter when I started my blogs. And Carolyn has quite a few blogs of her own. So we wrote the chapter with the information that we would have liked to have.

Visit the site now. We've just posted on the blog section an edited transcript of the tweetchat we did on Twitter yesterday evening on writing book proposals. (Carolyn sells on Amazon a 49 cents report on writing book proposals.)

And let me know what you think of the site and the concept.
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL and the co-author of the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION. She also blogs at Mrs. Lieutenant and Operation Support Jews in the Military, and she is the co-host of the BlogTalkRadio show Your Military Life. Her company Miller Mosaic LLC builds call-to-action websites for book authors and small businesses.

Brain Gyms: Now Physical Exercise Isn't Enough

2009-03-28T21:38:00.000-07:00

"The Latest in Mental Health: Working Out at the 'Brain Gym'" by Kelly Greene appeared on the front page of the March 28th Wall Street Journal. It turns out that we people over a certain age can exercise our brains as well as our bodies at gyms being set up all over the country.

While I happen to believe in the theory that exercising our brains on new material as we get older is very important, I'm not ready to sign up at a brain gym. But you may feel differently.

Form your own opinion (exercise your brain!) by reading the Journal article on brain gyms.
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL and the co-author of the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION. She also blogs at Mrs. Lieutenant and Operation Support Jews in the Military, and she is the co-host of the BlogTalkRadio show Your Military Life. Her company Miller Mosaic LLC builds call-to-action websites for book authors and small businesses.

Internet Phobia: What Behavior Are Parents Modeling for Their Children?

2009-03-26T19:17:00.000-07:00

The internet and all the myriad possibilities that accompany it are here to stay. So why do many adults think it is a badge of pride to declare "I don't do anything on the internet"?

This week I sat in the waiting room of a doctor's office explaining Twitter to a 15-year-old boy who liked my Google phone on which I was checking my Twitter account.

Out of one ear I could hear the boy's father proudly declaring to another waiting room patient how he has nothing to do with the internet and how he thinks the internet is ruining his kids' abilities to do whatever (I missed that part of the conversation).

Later I thought about what teens are learning to do and what they aren't learning to do. And I realized that Twitter actually is a very good teaching tool for learning how to write brief and to-the-point messages.

I actually revise my 140-character tweets more carefully than I revise my blog posts because those 140 characters are out there for anyone to see. Plus the message is short enough that many people actually read my tweets.

And another thing about that overheard parental conversation. What kind of behavior modeling are parents doing when they announce they've closed their minds to learning new technology?

Thus when a teen announces she's not going to undertake a new activity being pressed upon her by a parent, what "coinage" does that parent have to insist she be willing to at least try?

This last year I've spent learning internet marketing has been incredibly worthwhile -- and, yes, incredibly frustrating also when I don't immediately "get" something. But the rewards of learning new information -- of eventually "getting" a new concept -- far outweigh the frustration.

If you're one of those parents going around "bragging" that you don't use the internet, perhaps you should look at yourself in the mirror and smile -- and then ask your teen to be your guide in cyberspace.
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL and the co-author of the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION. She also blogs at Mrs. Lieutenant and Operation Support Jews in the Military, and she is the co-host of the BlogTalkRadio show Your Military Life. Her company Miller Mosaic LLC builds call-to-action websites for book authors and small businesses.

DITCHING MR. WRONG Online Book Launch March 25-28

2009-03-24T18:21:00.000-07:00

DITCHING MR. WRONG: How to End a Bad Relationship and Find Mr. Right -- by author Nicholas Aretakis -- has its online book launch March 25-28, and I'm participating in the launch.

When you buy DITCHING MR. WRONG between March 25-28 from the link below, you’ll get it at a discount and receive many gifts and bonuses, including my special report How to Use Facebook, Twitter and Other Social Media to Create Eager Buyers for Your Book -- a $14.95 value.

Check out this special offer now for DITCHING MR. WRONG.
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL and the co-author of the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION. She also blogs at Mrs. Lieutenant and Operation Support Jews in the Military, and she is the co-host of the BlogTalkRadio show Your Military Life. Her company Miller Mosaic LLC builds call-to-action websites for book authors and small businesses.

PZ the Do-Gooder Scrooge Gets a Do-Gooder Certificate of Appreciation

2009-03-23T16:47:00.001-07:00

For those of you who read this blog regularly, you know that I like to highlight people and organizations that "do good." So I was pleasantly surprised when Lindsey Brothers submitted my name for the U.S. Army Freedom Team Salute Certificate of Appreciation.

Read about my getting this Freedom Team Salute.
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL and the co-author of the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION. She also blogs at Mrs. Lieutenant and Operation Support Jews in the Military, and she is the co-host of the BlogTalkRadio show Your Military Life. Her company Miller Mosaic LLC builds call-to-action websites for book authors and small businesses.

BROTHERS AT WAR Documentary Provides a Window into the Iraq War Experience

2009-03-22T10:23:00.000-07:00

I've just viewed the documentary BROTHERS AT WAR directed by Jake Rademacher. Directed is a bit of a misnomer because what really happened is that Jake took a camera crew to Iraq to experience what two of his brothers have experienced as soldiers there.

Jake is the oldest of five brothers and two sisters, and he tried to go to West Point and wasn't accepted. Although he doesn't say so, it appears it may be because of his eyesight. But brother Isaac goes to West Point and brother Joe enlists.

And so Jake gets his own body armor and helmet and goes off with a camera crew to record his own experiences on patrol and sitting in a sniper nest.

The documentary is really a family portrait of a large family with two sons as warriors and one as the recorder of the story of those warriors. It's a story that draws you in as you learn more about the relationships in the large Rademacher clan.

I recommend seeing the documentary for both its personal look at the warriors' experiences and at the impact these experiences have on the family back home.

On March 25th Nancy Brown and I will be interviewing Jake Rademacher on our BlogTalkRadio show YourMilitaryLife.com. Listen live at 6:30 p.m. Eastern or listen afterwards to the download.
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL and the co-author of the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION. She also blogs at Mrs. Lieutenant and Operation Support Jews in the Military, and she is the co-host of the BlogTalkRadio show Your Military Life. Her company Miller Mosaic LLC builds call-to-action websites for book authors and small businesses.

Homes for Our Troops Builds Homes for Badly Wounded Veterans

2009-03-19T11:30:00.001-07:00

I just learned about Home for Our Troops through a Facebook message I got from Goli Motar. The organization has a heartwarming mission, and the fundraising effort that Goli writes about is also rather amazing.

Please read Goli's Facebook message on my Mrs. Lieutenant blog to learn more.
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL and the co-author of the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION. She also blogs at Mrs. Lieutenant and Operation Support Jews in the Military, and she is the co-host of the BlogTalkRadio show Your Military Life. Her company Miller Mosaic LLC builds call-to-action websites for book authors and small businesses.

Stress: Can Be the Culpit in Your Backache

2009-03-17T15:13:00.000-07:00

"Stress So Bad It Hurts -- Really" is the headline for Melinda Beck's article in the March 17th Wall Street Journal that explains the toll that stress can take on our physical well-being. She quotes from Christopher L. Edwards, director of the Behavioral Chronic Pain Management program at Duke University Medical Center:

Decades ago, when doctors said a condition was psychosomatic, it was the equivalent of saying it wasn't real, since there was little evidence that the body and the brain were connected. "Now, we recognize that what happens in the brain affects the body and what happens in the body affects the brain," he says. That knowledge gives us the tools to try to manage the situation, he adds.

Dr. Edwards says his pain-management program in Durham, N.C., is seeing a rise in patients amid the current economic crisis: "There's a very strong relationship between the economy and the number of out-of-control stress cases we see."

You'll have to read the article for yourself as I don't have time to add more to this blog post. I'm off to the gym with my exercise partner to relieve my own stress.

Read this Wall Street Journal article on stress now.
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL and the co-author of the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION. She also blogs at Mrs. Lieutenant and Operation Support Jews in the Military, and she is the co-host of the BlogTalkRadio show Your Military Life. Her company Miller Mosaic LLC builds call-to-action websites for book authors and small businesses.

Heifer International: Ending Hunger and Caring for the Earth

2009-03-15T11:01:00.000-07:00

Yesterday at a Bat Mitzvah the 13-year-old Bat Mitzvah girl announced that she was donating a heifer to a village in Africa to help fight poverty. And she said she was doing this through Heifer International.

I had previously heard a Bar Mitzvah boy announce that he was giving a goat to an African village through Heifer International (www.heifer.org), and I've written about this boy's Bar Mitzvah in an earlier post here. But today I wanted to share more information about this amazing organization:

Part of the extensive programs this organization runs is something called "Passing on the Gift." Here's one such story from the organization's website:

In Rwanda, Christine Makahumure showed the true meaning of passing on the gift.

In 1994 genocidal war that raked Rwanda destroyed everything Christine had. She saw her son and husband shot to death when they were caught in a crossfire. When the fighting ended, Christine was barely able to feed her daughter and parents.

But then she received a Heifer cow. The milk supplemented the family’s meager diet, and she was able to buy a small home with income from selling milk.

Christine gave her first calf to a neighbor – but she didn’t stop there. She provided money so her neighbors could build and apply for their own Heifer cow. And she adopted four war orphans and became a living example of passing on the gift.

Read more about the extraordinary activities of Heifer International.
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL and the co-author of the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION. She also blogs at Mrs. Lieutenant and Operation Support Jews in the Military, and she is the co-host of the BlogTalkRadio show Your Military Life. Her company Miller Mosaic LLC builds call-to-action websites for book authors and small businesses.

All About Business Company Brought to You From My Co-Host Nancy Brown

2009-03-11T21:30:00.000-07:00

Nancy Brown, my co-host on the BlogTalkRadio show YourMilitaryLife.com, has just started a new business called All About Business Company.

As Nancy says, "With this tough economy, all businesses need that other set of eyes to review their daily business operations. When they are cutting costs and staff, they could probably cut their operational costs easily. For example, by using newer office equipment and computer programs, they could make their staff more productive, and their staff could be utilized for other tasks."

Here's a brief video of how Nancy's new business can help your business. Or if you know of businesses who could be helped by Nancy, please send this blog post to them.

And Nancy has been so bitten by our BlogTalkRadio show that she now has a new show of her own called Business Guru Show. Check the schedule to learn from her business wisdom.
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL and the co-author of the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION. She also blogs at Mrs. Lieutenant and Operation Support Jews in the Military, and she is the co-host of the BlogTalkRadio show Your Military Life. Her company Miller Mosaic LLC builds call-to-action websites for book authors and small businesses.

PTSD: People Who Haven't Been in Combat Can Also Have This Disorder

2009-03-10T23:30:00.000-07:00

On March 10th Heather Hummert,the wife of a Purple Heart veteran and who is contributions coordinator for FamilyofaVet.com, was the guest on the BlogTalkRadio show YourMilitaryLife.com that I co-host with Nancy Brown of YourMilitary.com.

Heather spoke about her own experiences when her husband began exhibiting signs of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and how she couldn't find any information to help the families of people suffering from PTSD. She also talked about how PTSD can happen to anyone after a traumatic experience -- and that what isn't traumatic to one person can be traumatic to another.

Heather urged civilians and military personnel to recognize if someone they love is displaying signs of PTSD and to encourage that person to get help immediate.

Listen to Heather explain PTSD.
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL and the co-author of the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION. She also blogs at Mrs. Lieutenant and Operation Support Jews in the Military, and she is the co-host of the BlogTalkRadio show Your Military Life. Her company Miller Mosaic LLC builds call-to-action websites for book authors and small businesses.

Twitter Featured in The Wall Street Journal

2009-03-07T23:11:00.000-08:00

Twitter -- the micro-blogging platform of 140 characters or less and which I have often blogged about -- is getting more and more media attention.

In the March 7th Wall Street Journal, reporter Julia Angwin (@juliaangwin on Twitter) shares her tale of starting on Twitter. You can read her article now as an introduction to Twitter if I haven't already convinced you to join this free social media site.

And if you do join, follow me at @ZimblerMiller.
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL and the co-author of the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION. She also blogs at Mrs. Lieutenant and Operation Support Jews in the Military, and she is the co-host of the BlogTalkRadio show Your Military Life. Her company Miller Mosaic LLC builds call-to-action websites for book authors and small businesses.

Brad Pitt Takes the Make It Right Project to Washington

2009-03-05T18:31:00.000-08:00

Brad Pitt has played an incredible role in the rebuilding of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina with his instrumental involvement in the community organization Make It Right. On December 25th I wrote in this blog about his efforts to rebuild the devastated Lower Ninth Ward.

On March 5th the Daily Variety carried the story online "Pitt Meets Prez" -- describing Brad Pitt's visits around political Washington to garner support for Make It Right. Read the story for an update on Pitt's efforts.

To donate to Pitt's New Orleans effort, go to MakeItRightNOLA.org.

(In the Daily Variety photo above Brad Pitt is with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.)
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL and the co-author of the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION. She also blogs at Mrs. Lieutenant and Operation Support Jews in the Military, and she is the co-host of the BlogTalkRadio show Your Military Life. Her company Miller Mosaic LLC builds call-to-action websites for book authors and small businesses.

Mixblendr Launches: First Web Open Source Audo Editing and Remixing Software

2009-03-04T19:42:00.000-08:00

Mixblendr -- the first web open source audio editing and remixing software -- has just launched. I have a special interest because from afar I've watched this new application being developed:

Mixblendr is open source software that lets you create interactive music experiences on your website. Mixblendr lets you provide your users with audio tracks of your choosing, which they can remix and mashup using our powerful and easy-to-use audio application.

These remixes can then be published to a competition to be voted on by the audience of your site. Mixblendr is an all-in one solution for creating remix competitions, interactive music experiences, or online collaborations tools.

Mixblendr was founded by Sandy Parakilas and Jon Nathanson. Sandy is a musician and recording engineer who was looking for a better way to make remixes and mashups and share them with his friends. Jon was an executive at Fox Mobile Studios.

They collaborated with former Java Sound lead developer/code ninja Florian Bömers, who developed the Mixblendr audio applet, with an interface designed by Sandy.

Check out Mixblendr now.
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL and the co-author of the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION. She also blogs at Mrs. Lieutenant and Operation Support Jews in the Military, and she is the co-host of the BlogTalkRadio show Your Military Life. Her company Miller Mosaic LLC builds call-to-action websites for book authors and small businesses.

New York Times Weighs In on Internet Copyright Issue

2009-03-03T18:30:00.000-08:00

Many of us on the internet quote from other sources, giving the attribution of the source and often linking to the original article. But in the future we can be running afoul of the copyright law if we quote too much.

Unfortunately, what constitutes too much under the "fair use" statute of copyright law doesn't include a legal word limit. Bloggers and website content people are left to their own discretion.

To learn more about this subject, read Brian Stelter's March 2nd New York Times article "Copyright Challenge for Sites That Excerpt." (I'm not going to quote any of the article here -- I don't want to risk being in violation of the "fair use" statute when it comes to The New York Times.)
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Phyllis Zimbler Miller is the author of MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL and the co-author of the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION. She also blogs at Mrs. Lieutenant and Operation Support Jews in the Military, and she is the co-host of the BlogTalkRadio show Your Military Life. Her company Miller Mosaic LLC builds call-to-action websites for book authors and small businesses.

Internet Marketing: Going from the Horse and Buggy to a Horseless Carriage

2009-03-02T10:36:00.000-08:00

Internet marketing is a subject I don't usually deal with in this blog. But in the last few days I've been running up against closed mindset attitudes about this very effective marketing strategy. So I want to share some thoughts with you about the need for an open mindset about marketing in cyberspace.

Websites and web marketing have changed dramatically in the last five years, with many new applications that weren’t available then. Websites today take their cues from successful blogs, which have everything up front and immediate – no waiting for flash intros or welcome pages with a few words on a series of screens.

If people don’t like what they see instantly, they are out of there and on to the next website.

Open mind marketing rule #1: Don’t make the mistake of thinking that what was true for the internet five years ago is true today.

Don’t assume that your website from five years ago is “good enough.” Take the time and effort to find out what’s new and what’s effective in the internet marketing world of today. Don’t drive a horse and buggy when there’s a horseless carriage available.

Open mind marketing rule #2: Don’t follow every piece of advice so that you are running around in circles without making any progress.

Understand that some advice is better than others, and that not every piece of advice fits every situation. Take your time to evaluate the information you’re learning and consider what makes sense for your particular marketing project, your own available promotion time, and your strengths and weaknesses.

For example, the social networking site Twitter can be an excellent marketing tool if your personality fits the Twitter modus operandi. But there are people who get easily frustrated with trying to stay on top of various conversation threads. If you’re one of these people, utilize a social networking site that better suits your personality.

Open marketing rule #3: Be flexible. If something doesn’t work for you, be willing to admit defeat and move on to another tactic.

Just because many internet marketers say that Facebook is a great place to create relationships, if using Facebook isn’t helping you with your marketing, admit this and switch to trying something else (although don’t get rid of your Facebook account).

Of course, you can’t give up after only a few days. All of the social networking sites take time and effort to utilize them effectively. But if you’ve given Facebook several months of effort, you should probably consider finding a better site for you to connect with potential customers.

In conclusion, if you want to pave the way for a successful online marketing campaign, you must be in it for the long haul with an open mind – ready to learn new things, try new things, evaluate advice, and be flexible.

And if you want to read an excellent book about having an open mindset, read Carol Dweck's MINDSET: The New Psychology of Success.

TurnOffYourTV.Com Says Let Your Signal Die

2009-02-26T19:53:00.001-08:00

The March 2nd New Yorker has a review by Nancy Franklin of Joss Whedon's new television show DOLLHOUSE, followed by an "essay" on the push back of the change from analog to digital television.

In talking about the choices analog-set owners have to adapt to this brave new world, the article says:

There's another choice as well. Analog-set owners could follow the advice on turnoffyourtv.com: "Let your television signal die and explore the world around you Wake up out of the TV-induced stupor and enrich your life with real experiences."

I had never heard of this movement, so I checked it out. You might also want to check out turnoffyourtv.com and form your own opinions.

To me, the weirdest part of the whole brave new television world is that some people are watching a show like LOST on a huge television screen and some people are watching the same show on their phones. So who's living a more two-world experience? The characters from LOST or we ourselves?

Critiquing Art: It’s All Subjective

2009-02-24T17:11:00.001-08:00

The English novelist Ian McEwan is the subject of the New Yorker Life and Letters’ Feb 23rd article The Background Hum: Ian McEwan’s art of unease by Daniel Zalewski.

While part of the article deals with McEwan discovering at an advanced age that he has an older full brother about whom he never knew, part of the article deals with the opinions of other writers about McEwan’s novels.

In light of full disclosure, I’ve read three of his novels: AMSTERDAM, ATONEMENT (before I saw the film) and SATURDAY.

The novel SATURDAY, which takes place in the course of one day, reminds me of Barbara Vine (Ruth Rendell) novels. And also there’re the obvious hints of Virginia Woolf’s MRS. DALLOWAY (with one of the most memorable first lines in English literature: “Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself.”).

Yet for any writers or aspiring writers, the most important idea to take away from this New Yorker article is that opinions about novels, just as opinions about paintings or fashion or automobiles, are subjective. And those of us who create stories have to remember that something we write might hit a troubled chord in a reader – a troubled chord that has nothing to do with our writing – and yet turns the reader against our work.

And when that happens, we need to say to ourselves “It’s their loss,” and keep on writing.

Buy Coffee for Our Deployed Troops

2009-02-20T15:22:00.000-08:00

I was just in Borders and, while buying a book, I also bought a $10 bag of coffee that will go to deployed troops. I didn't understand how the bag would get to the troops. The Borders clerk told me it was a joint venture with SoldiersAngels.org, an organization that I support.

I went to the website and learned the story:

You can send a special message of thanks to a soldier serving far from home by purchasing a Cup of Joe for a Joe.

In more than 60 cafes overseas, Green Beans Coffee provides a welcomed moment of respite where deployed services members can relax, enjoy premium organic coffees, teas and fresh baked pastries, hear great music and for a few minutes, escape into a peaceful oasis of tranquility that brings a little bit of home with every cup of coffee served.

Your generosity, in any amount of your choosing, will help provide a much-appreciated gift of Green Beans premium coffee to a deployed armed services member. And in keeping with our commitment of service to our troops, Green Beans Coffee will contribute a portion of your purchase to charities that support soldiers and their families.

Please join Green Beans Coffee in honoring our troops. It only takes a few moments plus the spare change in your pocket to say thanks. Simply choose a purchase of any amount and we'll do the rest!

Donate any amount now to this worthwhile project.

Kiva.org Facilitates Micro-Lending in the Developing World

2009-02-19T11:01:00.000-08:00

In the recent guest blog post "Mico-Economics: How to Win the War in Afghanistan" for my Mrs. Lieutenant blog, Andrew Lubin explained how very small investments can make huge differences in Afghanistan.

Yesterday I came across the organization Kiva.org that facilitates micro-lending in the developing world. Here's the site's explanation of how it works:

Choose an Entrepreneur, Lend, Get Repaid

1) Lenders like you browse profiles of entrepreneurs in need, and choose someone to lend to. When they lend, using PayPal or their credit cards, Kiva collects the funds and then passes them along to one of our microfinance partners worldwide.

2) Kiva's microfinance partners distribute the loan funds to the selected entrepreneur. Often, our partners also provide training and other assistance to maximize the entrepreneur's chances of success.

3) Over time, the entrepreneur repays their loan. Repayment and other updates are posted on Kiva and emailed to lenders who wish to receive them.

4) When lenders get their money back, they can re-lend to someone else in need, donate their funds to Kiva (to cover operational expenses), or withdraw their funds.

Read Andrew Lubin's guest post and then check out Kiva.org to see if there's a micro-project in which you're interested in investing.

Ageism: Rearing Its Ugly Head in the World of Computers and the Web

2009-02-17T10:07:00.000-08:00

Those of you who are regular readers of this blog know that for weeks I’ve been doing posts about do-gooder projects and I haven’t had a Scrooge post in quite a while. So be warned – today I’ve switched to my Scrooge hat.

This weekend I attended a conference at which I presented about my project Operation Support Jews in the Military. At the beginning of the conference when I couldn’t write down any information, a young woman told me she had two friends planning to be Jewish chaplains in the military. I gave her my card and requested that she contact her friends to email me.

Two days later I saw her at a time when I could write down emails. I asked if she knew her friends emails and I would contact them. (I know several simple email addresses by memory if I happen to use them frequently. I thought these two people might be good friends with whom she frequently emailed.)

She looked at me, then launched into an explanation about how she and her friends don’t use manual address books (as if I do!) and instead they keep all their info on computers (and thus she didn’t have the info).

I admit to rage coursing through me. How dare she assume that I’m computer illiterate and still use a handwritten address book! She knew nothing about me, but felt confident in her opinion that, because of my grey hair, she could patiently explain the new computer world to me.

Now I also admit I’m feeling somewhat guilty for how furious I got. And, I admit, I muttered partly to myself, “I’m sure I’m more advanced on the internet than you are.” (She didn’t seem to hear.)

In analyzing why I got so furious, I have concluded it is because this is my first experience of face-to-face ageism. Perhaps some people online think this about me (my photo with my grey hair appears with all my social networking profiles), yet no one says anything to me. And if they engage with me online they soon learn that I am very advanced in my use of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogging, etc.

This weekend at the conference the Hasidic reggae performer Matisyahu performed at the conference. Before he sang the first number he announced that he was on Twitter. That evening I “followed” Matisyahu on Twitter, and the next day he “followed” me back.

Last night when I watched the most recent episode of the TV show NUMB3RS (from Friday night) there was a minor subplot of Charlie’s father starting on Facebook. I applauded this minor subplot showcasing that more and more “older” people are getting on this social network.

Now I’m finished with this rant – the first in a long time on this blog – and I hope this post helps young people understand that they should NOT assume older people are not computer and internet savvy. If anything, older people may have social networking strategies to share with young people.

Want to ask me questions about Twitter?

Volunteering Ranging from One-Day to Long-Term Commitments

2009-02-12T16:46:00.000-08:00

The February 12th Wall Street Journal had an article by Jane Hodges titled "A Virtual Matchmaker for Volunteers."

The article raised an interesting point: Some people would be happy to volunteer for a one-time project even though these same people might not be willing or able to volunteer for a long-term commitment.

How to find out about one-day or short-term volunteer opportunities? Hodges tested several free online services. Here are the ones she tested:

USA Service
VolunteerMatch
Idealist
1-800-Volunteer

She also mentioned that many organizations that need short-term assistance are indexed at the governmental program Volunteer.gov.

If you're looking for a one-day or short-term volunteer commitment, consider checking out the sites tested by Hodges. You may find just the right volunteer opportunity for you.

TV Show Grey's Anatomy Deals with PTSD

2009-02-09T15:40:00.000-08:00

I rarely send readers of this blog to my Mrs. Lieutenant blog. Yet yesterday's guest post by my younger daughter Yael covers such an important topic -- Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder -- that I do want to share her post with the readers of this blog.

Read Yael's PTSD guest post connecting Homer's THE ILIAD, Vietnam and Grey's Anatomy, and then share the post with anyone you think may be in need of this important information.

Twitter Communities Around the World on February 12th Sponsoring Clean Water

2009-02-05T11:25:00.000-08:00

Here's what this amazing worldwide event is about:

Tweet. Meet. Give.

On 12 February 2009 175+ cities around the world will be hosting Twestivals which bring together Twitter communities for an evening of fun and to raise money and awareness for charity: water.

charity: water is a non profit organization bringing clean, safe drinking water to people in developing nations by funding sustainable clean water solutions in areas of greatest need.

Join us by:

* Attending one of the events detailed on the city sites listed on this page.
* Uploading or buying music at Twestival.fm.
* Taking part in the t-shirt design competition.
* Donating to charity: water.

The Twestival is organized 100% by volunteers in cities around the world and 100% of the money raised from these events will go directly to support charity: water projects.

Read the rest of this amazing story and take part in whatever way you can. I've bought tickets for the LA event. Tweet me at @ZimblerMiller if you're going to be there too.

Popular TV Show HOUSE Uses Its Star Power to Support Mental Health

2009-02-03T14:46:00.001-08:00

The January 30th Daily Variety issue celebrated the 100th episode of the Fox drama series HOUSE. (Full disclosure – I’m a fan of the show.)

As I flipped through the several pages of the special section, I stopped at the full-page ad of the actors who play Dr. House and Dr. Foreman. Both actors were wearing a black t-shirt with the words “Normal’s Overrated” on the shirts. At the bottom of the full-page ad were these words:

Buy a T-shirt. Change a life. Purchase a T-shirt from housecharitytees.com and you will help the National Alliance on Mental Illness end mental illness and improve the lives of all who are affected.

What was this ad about? I looked for an article in the special section that would explain the ad. The article by Jon Weisman, entitled “Charity reaps benefit of skein’s support,” noted:

In October, the U.S. government passed the Mental Health Parity Act, requiring health insurance companies to evaluate mental illness on the same basis as physical illness. The law was a long-term mission of the National Alliance of Mental Illness, which “House” has dedicated itself to supporting.

I don’t know where I’ve been in these past 100 episodes, but it appears that in the second season executive producer Katie Jacobs decided “to get out in front of a charitable organization so that we could all sort of own it, feel attached to it.”

And apparently the show has been raising “hundreds of thousands of dollars for the charity, creating cast-heavy ads that have run in Seventeen and Rolling Stone as well as T-shirts that have sold online.”

If you want to be part of this very worthwhile cause, buy your Normal’s Overrated T-shirt now as proceeds go to the National Alliance on Mental Illness. I just did.

Challah for Hunger: Raising Money for Disaster Relief Through the Sale of Challah Bread

2009-01-29T22:51:00.000-08:00

I've just learned of a college project that started at one school and has now spread to several others -- Challah for Hunger.

Challah for Hunger raises awareness of and money for hunger and disaster relief through the production and sale of challah bread.

During the spring 2008 semester, the Challah for Hunger chapters (Pomona College, Scripps College, Syracuse University, University of California – Los Angeles, University of Texas at Austin, Vassar College) collectively baked more than 500 loaves of challah every week and donated a total of $20,000 to non-profit organizations providing aid directly to people who need it. Since the founding of the program in late fall 2004, Challah for Hunger has donated more than $55,000.

This is a great project and it benefits three different groups: 1) the bakers appreciate the weekly community; 2) the buyers appreciate the bread); and the 3) aid recipients appreciate the aid. A win-win-win situation.

Check out the Challah for Hunger website now to learn more.

Cyberspace Charity Auctions: Helping Your Favorite Charity

2009-01-28T19:54:00.000-08:00

The January 28th Wall Street Journal had Sue Shellenbarger's Work & Family article "Do You Want An Internship? It'll Cost you." The article is quite interesting, but I'd already known about parents buying internships for their children at school auctions.

What I didn't know about was the existence of online fundraising sites that make money for charities by holding auctions. According to The Wall Street Journal article:

CharityFolks.com, a fundraising Web site, saw a sharp rise in internships offered for sale last year at such employers as Rolling Stone, Elle magazine and Atlantic Records, says Chief Executive Kelly Fiore. Another site, CharityBuzz.com, says a one-week internship at a music-producing company sold last month for $12,000.

I looked up both these sites to see what they are about.

Charity Folks is the leading online marketplace for nonprofit fundraising, corporate cause-marketing campaigns and celebrity-driven charity initiatives. Managing hundreds of successful charity auctions since its inception, Charity Folks has raised millions for nonprofit organizations around the world, all while offering consumers highly coveted auction lots donated by today’s hottest celebrities, musicians, sports stars, high-profile personalities and top-tier brands.

At charitybuzz, we believe that cause marketing can be both effective and trend setting. Our innovative auctions reach millions on a global basis. Our growing community of bidders are driven to do well, affluent, well educated, well informed and brand loyal. Our methods ensure successful results through a focus on value to consumers, collaborative marketing and unsurpassed white-glove service.

It's a new world of fundraising in cyberspace, and you might want to check it out for your favorite charity.

French Catholic Priest Patrick Desbois Saves History Before It's Too Late

2009-01-25T14:04:00.000-08:00

The expression “do gooder” doesn’t even begin to describe the amazing task that French Catholic priest Patrick Desbois has undertaken since 2002. The task? Searching out the last remaining witnesses to the Nazi death squad murders of Jews in the former Soviet Union.

The story of this Catholic priest is told in the January 23rd Wall Street Journal article by Jordana Horn titled How Father Desbois Became a Holocaust Memory Keeper. Horn writes:

How much he has accomplished since 2002 can be seen in "The Shooting of Jews in Ukraine: Holocaust By Bullets," which runs until March 15 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York. The exhibit was created by the Memorial de la Shoah Paris in cooperation with Father Desbois's organization, Yahad in Unum (the words for "together" in Hebrew and Latin). It follows the publication last August of his book "Holocaust By Bullets" (Palgrave MacMillan).

What I found most amazing, besides Father Desbois’ self-imposed mission, is that children and adults were made to participate in the death squad shootings of the Jews. I’ve read a vast amount of first-hand accounts of the Nazi murderers as well as fictional accounts (Saul Bellow’s MR. SAMMLER’S PLANET has a scene from these death-squad shootings that I’ll never forget). Yet I had never heard that there were forced local participants and witnesses. And it is those then-children participants/witnesses who Father Desbois is searching out in order to find the unmarked mass graves of the Nazi atrocities.

As the unmarked mass graves are slowly located, one by one, and sanctified with the recitation of the Kaddish, the Jewish prayer of mourning for the dead, the cries can at last be silenced. Are we our brothers' keepers? To Father Desbois, the answer is a resounding "Yes."

Even so, I ask him: How can you bear to listen to a woman talk about when she was 14 years old and was forced to walk on corpses, between shootings, in order to pack them down in a mass grave? "I keep my faith in God," Father Desbois responds, "not in humanity."

Father Desbois wants people to contact him through his organization’s website to tell him about more mass graves and eyewitnesses.

"These were young children who were forced, in the course of one day, to fill the grave and to witness," Father Desbois said. "They heard the last words of the dead. They want to speak."

Short Story and Poetry Contests: Consider Trying Your Hand at These Fiction Forms

2009-01-22T19:56:00.000-08:00

John E. Murray, III just interviewed me about my novel MRS. LIEUTENANT for a future RamblingVerser podcast on his site Story Institute.

While checking out his site, I noticed that he’s having a poetry contest and a short story contest – both with deadlines of March 15. As it’s not so easy to find markets for poetry and short stories today, if you write this type of fiction check out the site while you have time to submit to the contests.

And if you’ve never tried your hand at poetry or short stories before, it’s never too late to take up a new creative pursuit. There’s even a section on this site with “ideas and suggestions for short stories, poems, and writing tips”.

Martin Luther King Day, Barack Obama and MRS. LIEUTENANT

2009-01-19T11:33:00.000-08:00

In honor of Martin Luther King Day and the Presidential inauguration of Barack Obama, I'm sharing with the readers of this blog the children's picture book story I wrote after the Presidential elections in November. This is a "continuation" of the story of Wendy, the African-American character in my novel MRS. LIEUTENANT that takes place in 1970:

Rosemary woke early on the morning of November 5th. Today she turned seven years old. But her mother and father hadn’t yet come into her room to wake her and sing happy birthday. She knew they had stayed up late the night before, celebrating that an African-American man had been elected President of the United States.

Rosemary slid her feet into her bunny slippers and skipped down the hall to her parents’ bedroom. Pushing open the door, she saw they were still asleep.

Rosemary took a flying leap and landed on the bed between her parents.

“Wake up! It’s my birthday!” she said.

Her mother woke up first. She smiled and kissed Rosemary. “So it is. You’re seven years old today.”

Her father pulled on the loose end of one of Rosemary’s pigtails. “You got an early special birthday present yesterday when Barack Obama won,” he said.

At breakfast Rosemary and her parents read the newspapers announcing the Presidential win. “He’s not there on his own,” her father said. “He has a lot of people who went before him to thank.”

“I know,” Rosemary said. “Martin Luther King Jr. led the fight for our rights.”

“There were others too,” her father said. “You know the story about Rosa Parks in 1955 starting the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama.”

“Were you there?” Rosemary asked her parents, who laughed at her question.

“No, honey, we’re not that old,” her mother said. “But your grandmother was just your age in 1955.”

“Did she boycott the buses too?” Rosemary asked.

“No, she lived in a different Southern state. But her parents protected her from racial prejudice.”

Rosemary frowned for a moment, trying to understand what her mother meant.

“How did they do that?”

Her mother took Rosemary’s hand. “When your grandmother comes to dinner tonight for your birthday, ask her.”

That evening Rosemary put on her favorite dress and waited near the front door for her grandmother to arrive. When her grandmother entered the house, Rosemary jumped up and down in front of her.

“Grandmama, tell me about growing up in the South. Did you have to sit at the back of the bus like Rosa Parks?”

Her grandmother shook her head, then sat down on the sofa and motioned for Rosemary to sit in her grandmother’s lap.

“Oh, Rosemary, I had a very unusual life growing up in the South. But today I’d rather tell you another story. Because next week is Veterans Day, when we honor the men and women who have served in our military forces. And you know that your grandfather was in the army during the Vietnam War.”

Rosemary nodded, although she had never known this grandfather. “What story do you want to tell me about?”

“The story when your grandfather first went on active duty in May of 1970. He was an officer and he had to attend armor school at Ft. Knox, Kentucky.”

Rosemary tugged on her grandmother’s hand. “What’s armor school?”

“Armor is tanks. An armor officer trains on leading tanks into battle.”

Her grandmother paused for a moment, brushing her hand across her eyes. Then she continued. “We had to live in a trailer because people wouldn’t rent to us. I thought I would have to spend all nine weeks alone by myself. But something funny happened.”

“What, Grandmama? What happened?”

“There was a training program for the wives too. And I got to be on the entertainment committee. There was a white woman from Chicago – she was the chair of the entertainment committee. She wrote a little play for the wives’ graduation luncheon and we got together and practiced the play.”

“Was it a good play?”

Her grandmother laughed. “Lord, I don’t know. But we had fun practicing. And it made those of us on the committee into friends.”

“Were the other women on the committee also white?”

Her grandmother nodded. “Yes, there was a Southern who didn’t much like blacks – that’s the polite word we were called in those days. And there was a Puerto Rican.”

Her grandmother looked at Rosemary. “Do you know where Puerto Rico is?”

“Yes, Grandmama. It’s in the Caribbean near Cuba.”

From the kitchen Rosemary could hear the sounds of her parents preparing her birthday dinner. She hoped they would take more time, because she wanted to hear more of her grandmother’s story.

“What happened to the other women?”

Her grandmother shook her head. “I don’t know. At the end of the nine weeks we all went to our husbands’ next duty station. But for me those nine weeks had been an amazing experience. It was the first time I had been friends with white folks. It gave me confidence that I would be okay in the white world.”

At that moment Rosemary’s mother walked into the living room. “Good evening, Mother,” Rosemary’s mother said to Rosemary’s grandmother. “I just heard what you were talking to Rosemary about.”

Rosemary’s mother stopped in front of Rosemary’s grandmother and held out a book. “I have a surprise for you even though it is Rosemary’s birthday. I’ve just read a new book that I think is about you.”

Rosemary watched her grandmother take the book and look at the cover photos of four women – one of them an African-American. “Mrs. Lieutenant: A Sharon Gold Novel by Phyllis Zimbler Miller” her grandmother read aloud. Then she turned over the book and read from the back cover:

“In the spring of 1970 four newly married young women come together at Ft. Knox, Kentucky, when their husbands go on active duty as officers in the U.S. Army.

“Different as these four women are, they have one thing in common: Their overwhelming fear that, right after these nine weeks of training, their husbands could be shipped out to Vietnam – and they could become war widows.

“Sharon is a Northern Jewish anti-war protester who fell in love with an ROTC cadet; Kim is a Southern Baptist whose husband is intensely jealous: Donna is a Puerto Rican who grew up in an enlisted man’s family; and Wendy is a Southern black whose parents have sheltered her from the brutal reality of racism in America.”

As Rosemary’s grandmother read those last words, Rosemary’s grandmother gasped. “Oh my heavens, you’re right. Someone has written our story.”

Rosemary saw the tears gathering in the corners of her grandmother’s eyes. Rosemary took her grandmother’s hand and said, “It’s okay, Grandmama. We’ve come a long way since then.”

Her grandmother smiled at her. “Yes we have.” She paused for a moment and squeezed Rosemary’s hand. “And your grandfather would be so proud of America today.”

Peace Corps Service: A Rite of Passage That Helps Others

2009-01-18T22:11:00.001-08:00

Today I attended a “bon voyage” open house for a young man who recently graduated college. Yet he wasn’t off to explore the art museums of Europe or the cheap travel in countries such as Thailand. He was off to join the Peace Corps in Nicaragua.

Those of you who were “of age” during the Vietnam War remember the Peace Corps. It was a big topic of conversation during the army draft years. Yet I haven’t heard very much about this program in recent years.

Home from the open house, I went to the Peace Corps website to read about what it’s been up to in the last 40 years.

In a January 12th press release I read:

For the third consecutive year, the University of Washington is No. 1 on the undergraduate list in the large schools category, with 104 alumni serving as Peace Corps Volunteers. The University of Colorado-Boulder has risen dramatically from sixth place last year to claim the No. 2 in the large schools category, with 102 Volunteers. Michigan State University has also risen up two spots from fifth place last year to take the No. 3 rank among the country's large schools, with 89 currently-serving Volunteers.

Michigan State is where I earned my undergraduate degree in journalism, so I was impressed to see the school so high on this list. And I have to admit I didn’t realize how active the program continues to be.

Read the entire press release to learn which colleges have produced the most volunteers since the program’s founding in 1961.

And I wish this young man, whom I’ve known his whole life, a rewarding and fulfilling experience during his 27-month commitment.

Operation Support Jews in the Military: My Newest Do-Gooder Project

2009-01-15T17:23:00.000-08:00

Over the past few months I've been contemplating how I could help with the problem of a drastic shortage of Jewish chaplains in the military. I've talked to people who are interested in helping, and people who have put up obstacles to helping.

And then on December 31 I had an epiphany. I could utilize everything I've been learning about internet marketing to start a "citizens' movement" in support of Jews in the military. And as my company Miller Mosaic, LLC was already building websites for clients, we built one for this project.

Introducing Operation Support Jews in the Military. I'm not trying to raise money -- I'm trying to raise awareness of the need for the U.S. Jewish community to support Jews in the military. This support can take a variety of avenues, from inviting Jewish personnel from nearby bases to synagogue services to providing online discounts to military personnel for Jewish products such as Shabbat candlesticks.

I hope you will consider checking out this site, and then emailing the domain name to people you know who might help to get the word out. My goal is to have the U.S. Jewish community use this site as a focal point for supporting Jews in the military.

New Movie DEFIANCE Tells the True Story of the Bielski Brothers During WWII

2009-01-12T18:44:00.000-08:00

I have been debating since I saw the movie DEFIANCE two days ago what I thought of this true story of Jewish brothers “who defied the Nazis, saved 1,200 Jews and built a village in the forest.”

This quote is from the cover of the book THE BIELSKI BROTHERS by Peter Duffy (which I have but haven’t read yet). The movie was based on the book DEFIANCE: THE BIELSKI PARTISANS by Nechama Tec.

(There’s a little confusion in reviews about how many Bielski brothers there were. The Duffy book says three, although the movie gives the three a little brother. Perhaps this is why at the end of the movie only the fate of the three brothers is given.)

On the one hand, this movie is as important storytelling as was Jon Avnet’s television movie UPRISING about the Warsaw Ghetto. Both these stories tell the world that all Jews did not go quietly to the gas chambers.

On the other hand, to me this particular version of a true story was really told as the biblical story of Esau and Jacob. And, in fact, the movie version ends when the Esau character (Liev Schreiber) and the other Jews who have been fighting with the Russian partisans return just in the nick of time to save the Jacob character (Daniel Craig) and his “sheep” from being slaughtered – approximately two years before the end of the war.

I’ve read glowing reports and not-so-glowing reports of the film. You’ll have to see the film yourself and make up your own mind.

One thing I can say about this film, it’s no SCHINDLER’S LIST.

Spirit of America Partners With Soldier in Afghanistan

2009-01-11T00:52:00.000-08:00

Something amazing has happened since I wrote a post on my Mrs. Lieutenant blog on December 23rd about a single soldier deployed in Kabul who was requesting donations of blankets to prevent Afghan children from actually freezing to death in the brutal winters.

In that post I mentioned that my husband had told me that Spirit of America was an American organization that supported efforts by U.S. personnel stationed in places like Afghanistan to help the civilian population. And I sent the blog post to Spirit of America after finding a contact email on the website.

A couple of days ago I got an email from the program director at Spirit of America saying that the organization was going to contact the soldier and send $300 worth of blankets. I was so excited that I wrote a second Mrs. Lieutenant blog post about this.

And then I got another email from the organization's executive director saying Spirit of America was increasing its donation to $1500 for blankets and the school supplies that the soldier now also requested. I have to admit my eyes filled with tears when I read this second email.

I wanted to share this generosity of Spirit of America with you, and to tell you that the soldier has now also requested gently used children's clothes. His return to the U.S. has been pushed back from April to September, so he'll be in Afghanistan longer and will have more time to help the people there.

Here's part of the email that the soldier -- Specialist Gerardo Llamas -- has just sent out to people interested in helping with his project:

I have partnered up with a great organization that is helping me get more donations as well as helping with shipping charges. You can see the ad they have posted for me here. They are great and hopefully I can reach a lot more people and make this project a huge one. I want it to make a huge difference in the lives of these people, the people of Afghanistan. If you are interested in helping by donating blankets, clothes or school supplies, you can do it directly through me, like before, or you can do it through Spirit of America.

If you would like to help this effort, please go to the Spirit of America page for this project.

Your Turn to Win: New Book by Lance Heft

2009-01-07T18:11:00.000-08:00

Today on the BlogTalkRadio show YourMilitaryLife.com -- Nancy Brown and I interviewed Lance Heft, the author of the new book "Your Turn to Win."

I can't recommend the book because I haven't read it yet. But I can recommend you listen to our 30-minute interview and consider the book yourself.

And the part of the interview that most moved me was when Lance described the breast cancer fund he recently set up to honor his fourth-grade teacher, a breast cancer survivor, because of six words she wrote on the back of his end-of-year report card. I'll give you a hint about the words -- Shakespeare put them in the mouth of a father giving advice to his son in "Hamlet."

ShowMeTheScreenplay.com Launched to Help Screenwriters and Directors

2009-01-06T13:58:00.000-08:00

ShowMeTheScreenplay.com has just been launched by my older daughter Rachel Miller (she’s @Rachmiller on Twitter) with the website built by my younger daughter Yael Miller (she’s @MillerMosaicLLC on Twitter).

The three of us are very pleased with how the site has turned out. And we’re hoping that there will be a sizable online target audience to learn insider Hollywood knowledge from Rachel.

If you know of any aspiring or just-starting-out screenwriters or directors, do send them along to check out the site.

Doubt the Movie: Questions Raised That Aren't Necessarily Answered

2009-01-03T21:25:00.000-08:00

I saw John Patrick Shanley's play "Doubt" performed in Los Angeles, and he himself adapted his play for the screen and directed the movie. I thought the play powerful, and the playwright has preserved his story in the movie he wrote and directed.

Still, the play's ending seemed much more ambiguous than the movie's ending. Perhaps Shanley felt that movie audiences needed a more settled ending than did theater audiences. Regardless of the case, the story itself -- set in a Catholic elementary school in Boston a year after the assassination of President Kennedy -- raises some interesting moral questions for all of us today.

In the absence of evidence, are we morally required to go with our "gut" in order to protect a child, even at the risk of ruining an adult's life? Or are we all liable to see what we "see" based on our own insecurities and prejudices?

If you've seen the movie or the play, leave a comment as to whether you think the head sister (played by Meryl Streep in the movie) was correct in the action she took.

And, oh yes, the actor who plays the child's mother in the movie, Viola Davis, I predict will be nominated for an Oscar in the best supporting category. When I said this to my younger daughter, she informed me that this is already being predicted by film critics. I hadn't read anything about this, but there was no doubt, as I watched Viola Davis' heartbreaking scene with Meryl Streep, that Viola Davis will be one of five names in that category when the Oscar nominations are announced.

New Year’s Day: Making Resolutions for the Coming Year

2009-01-01T10:17:00.000-08:00

Harvey Mackay’s December 30th weekly column titled “How to stay young as the years go by” had lots of good advice, perhaps to me the most important being “Keep only cheerful, positive friends.”

The following morning my business partner and I were reviewing 2008, and we realized that this was the year we had taken control of our own destinies. We had stopped waiting for people to say yes to us and instead had said yes to ourselves. My novel MRS. LIEUTENANT was published in April and her children’s picture book TOO MANY VISITORS FOR ONE LITTLE HOUSE is due out any moment. And we had started other endeavors as well.

This morning, as I reflected on the coming year, I thought of Mackay’s advice, my conversation with my business partner, and a conversation last Saturday night at a Hanukkah party. I had been talking about how Twitter can be used for business purposes, and one person just dismissed the idea out of hand. Yet another person there, an M.D., jumped up and right then hired me to come to her office Monday to get her started on Twitter.

When I went to the office Monday I first met some resistance from her assistant. I realized that her assistant was concerned that I was taking over her role as the computer expert in the office. But I’m not a computer expert. I was there to use my marketing expertise to help her boss. And by the end of the two plus hours, both boss and assistant seemed on board.

And they were definitely on board when I subsequently shared the info with them that the New York Israeli Consulate had held a “press conference” on Twitter. What’s a press conference on Twitter? It’s a way to bypass the often-biased media channels and take the info straight to the people. Twitter users asked questions in 140 characters and got answers in 140 characters. And afterwards these conversations were “enlarged” from Twitter language (for example, changing 4 to for) and put on the consulate’s blog.

I thought this was a genius idea, and apparently the doctor’s assistant thought I was “brilliant for recognizing the power of Twitter.” (The truth is that Twitter combines my two expertise areas of communication and marketing – so I’m definitely open to its power.)

And this new media, this technology, is available to all of us as we begin 2009. Only yesterday I had an epiphany about a do-gooder project that I want to undertake but could never do in the traditional way. I suddenly realized I could use all the new technology/marketing I’ve learned in the last year to do this project.

I immediately registered a domain name (after checking with my business partner as to which of three names was the best for this project) and I hope to be off and running in days. My husband isn’t convinced my plan will work, but I’m taking the chance. Because if it does work, I’ll be accomplishing something for lots of people. And that’s worth a try.

Stay tuned for a progress report on the above project. And for all of you, I wish you a year of saying yes to yourself and a year of being open to new ideas and new technology and of surrounding yourself with “cheerful, positive friends.” (Oh yes, and good health for all.)

YouTube: Benjamin Netanyahu Uses This Website to Present Israel's Position

2008-12-30T18:06:00.000-08:00

The Twisted Sisterhood Offers a New Interactive Site for Women

2008-12-30T09:55:00.000-08:00

Duchess O’Blunt – Brenda Stone (Brown) – found me on LinkedIn and sent me a message about her website TheTwistedSisterhood.com. I checked out the site and was impressed. So I asked her to write a guest post about the genesis of the site. And at the end of the blog post is a little bio I also asked her to write.

Building castles, wet t-shirt contests, dealing with scorpions, eating worms, murder mysteries, and much more – these are some of the things The Twisted Sisterhood will tell you about in the new interactive website for women. Some of these things may not SOUND like fun, but come and see for yourself the Twist we have given them.

We are a group of women who have been “Twisting it Up!” since early 2000. Our vision is to inspire clean simple fun with women all over the world – to create an online community where woman can feel free to be creative, relax and rejuvenate. We have shared some of our million dollar memories. Yours can be made with just a bit of imagination, a touch of ingenuity and a little of your time.

For seven years we talked about how together the six of us would make the perfect woman. We had everything we needed between us to start our own business. In October 2007, at our yearly B&B weekend away together, we made the decision to go for it. The website is the result. It is a far cry from the kits we were going to make and sell, but it is ultimately a much better product. Along the way we had a lot of help and encouragement.

We want women to learn to give themselves permission to have fun. The Twisted Sisterhood can help you with that in a unique way. We also want to provide as much opportunity for networking as we can in the spirit of Sisterhood. We have married those two objectives into one distinctive website with boundless opportunities. We currently have over 220 members across the globe and continue to see a steady growth. With more members, more opportunities are created.

As business women we tend to focus on growing our businesses and often neglect the one thing that makes us unique – the connections and bonds we have with our girlfriends. The vision of The Twisted Sisterhood is to inspire women to reclaim those connections. It’s vital to allow space for new friendships and maintaining those we have developed over the years (but may be neglecting). If you are up for some fun, we have just the thing for you!

The Twisted Sisterhood offers many unique opportunities. Here are some of the benefits:
• It’s free!
• It’s fun!
• It’s user-friendly

We provide an opportunity to:
• Build on your friendships with imaginative events that require little or no money
• Think outside your “circle” or “bubble” and expand the possibilities
• Share the positive, help encourage others
• Message, chat, and create new connections with other members
• Blog to your heart’s content!
• “Hold Court” (come see us to find out how)

We might not be able to transform the world, but we hope to encourage some good changes in those whose lives we touch. Join us as we share our passion for “The Twisted Sisterhood," where we take individual strands of friendship and Twist them into Sisterhood. It’s a simple concept with some big ideas initiated with little money and resulting in LOTS OF FUN. This is our way of “giving back” a bit of what we have found with each other.

My given name is Brenda meaning sword, but with The Twisted Sisterhood my persona is The Duchess O’Blunt. I am a mother of two wonderful young men and happily married to my high school sweetheart. I am very proud of all three men in my life, have had a good career in the corporate world, and have now ventured into the unknown (for me anyway) world of the internet. I have volunteered time in teaching seniors how to use computers and the internet. This has been as fulfilling for me as it has been educational for them. I love to learn, I love history, and our seniors have an abundance to teach us.

The Gift of a Goat: A Special Needs Boy Celebrates His Bar Mitzvah

2008-12-28T19:55:00.000-08:00

I attended the Bar Mitzvah of a special needs boy, and this Bar Mitzvah was a moving testament to the boy, his family and the Jewish community to which his family belongs. The rabbinical student who worked with the Bar Mitzvah boy did an amazing job of starting the service in a way that directly related to the boy and the other special needs children at the Bar Mitzvah.

A young friend of the Bar Mitzvah boy read his speech, in which we learned that he had used his money to buy a goat to help a family in Africa. Later on during the service the Bar Mitzvah boy's father said the boy would have liked to keep the goat in his own backyard. Yet it was destined to make a difference in someone else's life.

I wondered through what project or organization that the goat had been provided to a family in Africa. The Bar Mitzvah boy's mother told me the organization was Heifer International.

In FY2007, Heifer had 867 active projects in 53 countries/provinces and 28 U.S. states. Heifer projects around the world help families achieve self-reliance through the gift of livestock and training. Gifts are passed from recipient to recipient until entire communities are transformed.

Remembering that the overall sentiment of this special Bar Mitzvah was that we can all work towards going beyond our apparent abilities, I thought how appropriate this particular Bar Mitzvah tzedakah (charity) gift was -- the gift of the goat would go beyond being a simple gift to transform the life of a family and perhaps the entire village. Just as this Bar Mitzvah had gone beyond a traditional coming-of-age ritual to transform all of us privileged to witness this day.

Brad Pitt Makes It Right in New Orleans: We Can All Help

2008-12-25T00:07:00.000-08:00

The picture of Brad Pitt on the cover of the January 2009 Architectural Digest magazine caught my eye. What was he doing on the cover?

The article’s headline said it all: “Brad Pitt Makes It Right in New Orleans: After Hurricane Katrina, the Actor Breaks New Ground and Helps Rebuild the Lower Ninth Ward.”

The article describes how, in December 2006, Brad Pitt gathered a group of experts in New Orleans to figure out how to build affordable and sustainable housing for victims of Hurricane Katrina, which devastated New Orleans in late August of 2005.

One of the most-devastated areas was the African-American community of the Lower Ninth Ward (northeast of the French Quarter). By the time I toured the Lower Ninth Ward in October of 2007 it looked peaceful – grass grew in open fields and there were almost no buildings. I learned that this peaceful appearance resulted only after the destroyed homes and dead people had been removed.

Now Brad Pitt is leading the effort to build new homes in this area – homes that are eight-feet off the ground and feature rooftop escape hatches so residents won’t be trapped again if the waters rise so quickly. The article features the six houses completed in October 2008, which will be joined by 144 more in this first stage.

The Make It Right organization is seeking donations to help fund its efforts. Check out the organization’s website to learn more about this amazing rebirth story and to help the rebirth effort.

Playing Field Leveled for High School Athletes Applying to College

2008-12-24T18:19:00.000-08:00

I was very pleased to read the December 18th Wall Street Journal article “The Do-It-Yourself Athletic Scholarship” by Matthew Futterman:

Coaches and recruiters easily notice top-tier talent in big-name sports. But mid-level high-school athletes or those in lesser-known sports often pay high-priced private consultants to connect them with coaches. With fees ranging from $700 to $5,000, the system has been expensive for students and inefficient for coaches – who get scouting recommendations only on kids who can afford to pay the consultants.

Now, do-it-yourself services have emerged that allow student athletes to showcase their abilities for a fraction of the price. Aside from beRecruited.com, other sites include Prepchamps.com, TRUpreps.com (owned by CBS Corp.’s MaxPreps unit), ActiveRecruiting.com, Collegecoaches.net and SportsWorx.com. There are also numerous sport-specific sites.

This is a wonderful leveling of the playing field for high school athletes. And as a mother who a few years ago had to learn everything on her own about helping a child who wanted to participate in a particular NCAA Division 1 college sport, I can only say that this is a wonderful use of the internet.

And as I’ve said before in another context, don’t assume that the sport a teen plays in high school is not of interest to a college. Do the research to find out what colleges might be interested in that sport, and then use these online showcases to put a teen’s athletic skills in the public eye.

Support Our Troops at Holiday Times and Throughout the Year

2008-12-22T16:02:00.000-08:00

The above painting "Coming Home" is by Colonel Charles Waterhouse, the "artist in residence" for the Marine Corps and a veteran of Iwo Jima.

It's a fitting illustration for this post on showing our appreciation and support for our military personnel. Nancy Brown of YourMilitary.com and I just finished interviewing -- on our BlogTalkRadio show YourMilitaryLife -- Janel Landon, who is on the Illinois USO board of directors.

Janel reminded our audience that USO centers in airports and elsewhere are open 24 hours a day 365 days of the year. She talked about how important it is to have USO volunteers greet military personnel returning from deployment. And she reminded us that we are a nation at war.

As Janel spoke about this "welcome home" mission by the USO, I was reminded of the bitterness that a Vietnam veteran recently revealed to me. He told me that no one had greeted and thanked him at the airport when he returned from Vietnam. Instead he had been vilified -- and this wound still hurt after all these years. (Read the whole post.)

Check out USO.org to see how you can help. Or read recent posts at my blog about the needs of wounded soldiers or check out the MRS. LIEUTENANT website for organizations that support military personnel and their families.

In this holiday season and in the coming year, please remember our troops who are in harm's way protecting our country and our freedoms.

Tonight We Light the First Hanukkah Candle

2008-12-21T17:56:00.000-08:00

Tonight is the first night of the eight-day Jewish festival of Hanukkah. Rabbi Karen L. Fox and I wrote in our Jewish holiday book:

Hanukkah honors an historical event -- the struggle for religious freedom. Hanukkah commemorates a time when the ancient homeland of the Jews -- now known as Israel -- was ruled by the Greeks in the second century before the common era. The Greeks threatened to eliminate the religious faith and customs of the Jewish people.

A small band of Jews resolved to forfeit their lives if necessary to preserve their heritage. Their successful struggle against overwhelming odds determined that the Jewish people and their unique beliefs and practices would survive.

You can read more about this holiday in our book Seasons for Celebration: A Contemporary Guide to the Joys, Practices and Traditions of the Jewish Holidays.

A Jewish friend who had been raised in foster homes told me how she had mistakenly lit all eight candles the first night when she finally had her own home and could celebrate the holiday. Because of this mistake, Karen and I took pains to ensure that we gave very specific instructions on how to light the Hanukkah menorah, which holds the eight candles plus the shamash (the serving candle used to light the others).

Then one year a non-Jewish friend asked me for a menorah. I gave him the menorah, candles and a copy of SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION. Only Karen and I had forgotten to write one instruction: the candles remain burning until they burn up -- they are NOT blown out. My non-Jewish friend said a blessing after lighting the candles, and promptly blew them out as if they were birthday cake candles. So much for the "complete" instructions Karen and I thought we had written.

I’ve Seen the Future of Banking and (I Hope) It Works

2008-12-17T21:07:00.000-08:00

I found the December 17th Wall Street Journal article “Putting Your Money Where Your Mouse Is” by Joseph De Avila very interesting. The article described numerous online financial initiatives, including ones designed to help young people manage their money better.

As someone who wrote a “Money Matters” newspaper column in the ‘70s in Philadelphia, I found these new initiatives incredibly encouraging. I have always thought that basic money management should be a required course in every high school. How else do we expect people to learn about financial matters?

And I particularly enjoyed reading in the article that two of the companies discussed use Twitter to connect with their social media “communities.” I immediately went on my Twitter account and started following @Wachovia and @SmartyPig to watch how well they use Twitter to respond to questions.

Read the article and then check out some of the sites to recommend to people you know who could use this online financial assistance.

Keeping Teens Safe on Social Media Networks

2008-12-17T13:47:00.000-08:00

I’m a great supporter of social media networks such as Twitter and Facebook for business connections. Yet I understand that these places can be stalking grounds for cyberbullies who prey on insecure teens.

Sue Shellenbarger’s Work & Family column in the December 17th Wall Street Journal -- "Cyberbully Alert: Web Sites Make It Easier to Flag Trouble” -- is an excellent source of information on this subject for parents and teen educators.

The article explains the different abuse reporting systems on MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube, then concludes with this paragraph, with which I wholeheartedly agree:

Then, join the sites your child uses and learn log-in information and URLs. This will help you flag problems effectively.

Only recently I suggested this to a mother of a teen who wanted to join Facebook. The mother didn’t want to be bothered learning about this site so she told the daughter she couldn’t join Facebook. But what I wonder is whether the mother is making a major error because her daughter will probably join Facebook in secret, and the mother has given up the opportunity to police her daughter’s use of Facebook.

The article also quoted Parry Aftab, the executive director of WiredSafety.org. I hadn’t heard of this organization, so I went on the site and was impressed by the available information. If you need help dealing with cyberbullying, check out this site.

College Applications: The Paradox of Having to Write Well Even If You're a Math Major

2008-12-16T15:54:00.000-08:00

I've been contemplating the paradox of college application essays. Regardless of what your planned college major may be, if you want a good chance of getting into a top college -- besides having high SAT scores and a high GPA you have to be able to write well. Because how well an applicant writes his/her college application essays can have a significant impact on that applicant's acceptances.

Given this paradox, I'm pondering how well high school seniors are prepared to write good college application essays and how prepared they are to write good college course papers. And I'm also pondering whether, a few years from now, college applicants will not be required to write college application essays. Instead they'll submit a YouTube video answering the essay questions. Or provide their own password-protected websites.

As a writer, I find it discouraging that writing skills will become less important in the future. And that said, I'm off to do more social media networking to promote my novel MRS. LIEUTENANT.

(At 9 p.m. Eastern time tonight I'm going to be a guest on the BlogTalkRadio show Urban Literary Review. You'll be able to listen to the interview later if you can't catch the show live.)

Lt. Commander Mollie Sanders Comes to Life on the Internet

2008-12-12T11:22:00.000-08:00

My husband Mitch and I have written two screenplays about Lt. Commander Mollie Sanders, a Navy officer who has to be smarter and better than the male Navy officers with whom she serves. And because Mollie Sanders is an electronic weapons officer, she finds herself in numerous dangerous situations.

I've been developing our two screenplays and additional story material into a proposed graphic novel series. And I wanted to make this proposed series come alive off the page.

I asked my daughter Yael Miller to create a website to present the project as part of the website solution packages Miller Mosaic LLC offers individuals and small businesses.

Visit Lt. Commander Mollie Sanders to see what a terrific website Yael created to introduce Mollie's world.

And if you know any graphic novel publishers who might be interested in this project, send them the link to this website. They might just thank you for this.

Help Bring Holiday Cheer to Residents of a Nursing Home

2008-12-11T17:14:00.001-08:00

My friend Nancy Sutherland has given me the opportunity to cheer up a lonely senior citizen who may have no family visiting during the holiday season.

This is the fifth year that Nancy has brought holiday cheer through a Mary Kay community service project. This year's "Adopt-a-Grandparent" is to cheer residents of a nursing home in West Chester, Pennsylvania. I bought one of the 275 custom gift baskets she is putting together so that no one will be disappointed -- and you can buy one too.

Help Nancy bring cheer to these senior citizens by donating now.

Join Xerox in Thanking the Troops

2008-12-10T20:44:00.001-08:00

Xerox has partnered with other organizations for an innovative "thanks to the troops" email postcard program. See my MRS. LIEUTENANT blog to read about this. Then click through to send an email postcard of thanks.

SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE: A New Film About Mumbai That Should Be Seen

2008-12-09T09:46:00.000-08:00

The Fox Searchlight film SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE has an excellent chance of being nominated for Best Picture when Oscar time rolls around. And, having seen the movie, I believe the movie is deserving of such recognition.

The price of admission is well worth it for the unraveling of the mystery of how an uneducated boy living on the streets knew the answers to the questions on the television show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" -- and that's before the other compelling elements of the story are added to the mix.

Yet. as a December 12th Entertainment Weekly article points out, someone watching the movie can experience a major jolt. Suddenly on screen in the movie are scenes in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) that bring to mind similar scenes seen on the recent news coverage of the attacks in Mumbai. In fact, I found myself momentarily taken out of the movie when viewing scenes at Victoria Terminus train station or buildings that looked like they could have been the Taj Hotel.

I waited a week before seeing the movie so as to have some distance from reality before seeing this enchanting fantasy. (Be warned: While the movie has an upper ending, including an invigorating dance scene during the credits, there are also some very brutal and some very disturbing scenes. Some of these scenes unintentionally explain some of the background of what happened now in Mumbai.)

You can read the story about the disconnect between reality and the movie in Entertainment Weekly. But don't let my blog post warning or the Entertainment Weekly article stop you from seeing this movie. If you don't see this movie, you'll miss out on one of the best movies of the year -- or perhaps one of the best movies of the past few years.

Send Holiday Cards for Military Personnel, Veterans, Wounded Soldiers and Their Families

2008-12-07T13:57:00.000-08:00

Today is Sunday, December 7th. Sixty-seven years ago on Sunday, December 7, 1941, Japanese warplanes attacked Pearl Harbor, killing and wounding thousands of American troops.

Thus this is a very appropriate day for me to post about participating in a program to send holiday greeting cards to military personnel, veterans, wounded soldiers, and their families.

I learned about this program through comments on LinkedIn, a professional social media site. Some of the comments indicated that we should show support for the troops all year round, which of course I agree with. Yet today I want to share the link at Snopes.com that explains this particular program because I've just signed 20 holiday cards.

This may not be a big deal for many people, but for me it is. I don't send holiday cards, personally feeling that the money and paper spent on this can be better spent. Yet I bought a box of 20 cards and signed them all because I do feel that we need to show our appreciation for our troops and their families.

Even if you're like me and usually don't send holiday greeting cards, consider sending before December 10th HOLIDAY CARDS TO OUR TROOPS.

Twitter: Using This Social Media Platform for Business

2008-12-04T00:14:00.000-08:00

Someone whom I met on LinkedIn asked me how I use Twitter for business. I answered her in an email, and then she and I both realized I'd written a blog post.

Below is my answer to her. And I hope that, if you haven't signed up for Twitter before, you will now. And if you do, be sure to follow me -- I'm @ZimblerMiller on Twitter -- and let me know you signed up for Twitter after reading this blog post.

The trick on Twitter is two-fold:

To follow people who can help you learn more for your own business.

To follow people with whom you can have a conversation about services you offer (but not blatantly).

I use Tweetbeep.com but there are other similar aps -- it's like Google Alerts for Twitter. I get every tweet about book marketing -- then I check out the people, see who they are, and if I think that I can learn from them or they can learn from me, I follow them. (I don't automatically follow back people who follow me.)

Because of my interests, I've become joint venture partners with people on Twitter who have similar interests. @MailOurMilitary and @NancyMK and I did a fundraising campaign this summer for Operation Soldier Care on Twitter, Facebook and our three blogs plus some other sites.

You start engaging -- giving valuable info and links to valuable info (not necessarily your own) plus you can use Twitterfeed.com as I do to automatically have links to my new blog posts go on my Twitter account. I also post articles on Ezinearticles.com, which now has an automatic option that posts links to these new articles on my Twitter account when the articles are approved.

I'm visible -- trying to help people as they try to help me. It's a wonderful exchange of business ideas.

Online Novels: Susan Crealock Creates a Website Listing Books Available in Their Entirety for Free on the Internet

2008-12-03T08:24:00.001-08:00

I recently had the pleasure of coming upon the website Online Novels, which provides the titles and links of almost 500 books that can be read in their entirety online for free. The books are listed by category with brief descriptions.

I wanted to know how the creator of this website, Susan Crealock, came up with this idea, which I think is terrific. Susan very graciously agreed to tell her story of the creation of her site. Here’s Susan’s story:

I put my Online Novels site on the web just over two months ago but, in a way, its genesis dates from 1978 – long before personal computers, blogs and browsers – when I started writing a story (the words "novel" or "book" are too pretentious to describe this modest effort) for my own amusement.

Because I didn't own a typewriter, I transcribed the text longhand in a series of notebooks. And when my employer installed computer terminals in its programmers' cubicles, I started inputting the text on the company's mainframe. Certain of my anonymity, I printed copies of the chapters as I progressed, until one day when I received a printout of chapter five covered with exclamation marks and comments.

Years later one of the computer room operators confessed to me that the staff used to rip my chapters off the printer and pass them around for everyone to read! With my cover blown, it was back to writing in longhand.

When the story was close to completion, I got busy with other projects, put the manuscript in a cardboard box, and forgot about it. In 1996 my husband, two cats and I moved aboard our boat. And the box went into storage, where it remained while we wound down our data processing careers, sailed to Mexico and eventually moved to Europe.

Last year we shipped our household goods to Italy and the box caught up with me. In this past March I dug out the manuscript, went into a frenzy of rewriting and committed the text to my PC.

Anyone who works with computers knows the necessity of backing up essential data, and I'm somewhat obsessive in this respect. I printed the story, committed it to a CD, put it on a Palm PDA, and copied the text to a secondary hard drive.

One day when perusing Google I realized I could create a blog from the story, not for others to read but as the ultimate backup. Feeling like a cuckoo laying her eggs in another bird's nest, I created a private blog some time in April.

Several months later, wondering if anyone else would read it, I selected the option to make the blog available on the internet and waited for readers. And waited. With more than 100 million blogs available on the World Wide Web, it's hardly surprising mine went undetected. I needed a strategy. A bit of research turned up a number of sites that list novels available on the internet. I submitted my blog to them, and readers started trickling in.

After this preamble, I'm finally getting to the point. However grateful I was at being included in someone else's list, I didn't want to depend on others. So I decided to create a site of my own – Online Novels – and embed my story within it as one of the offerings.

Initially I felt that 75 novels was a minimum number to be credible. I wanted descriptions for the books, and the novels had to be free and complete. Since the start of the project, Online Novels – now with almost 500 entries – has taken on a life of its own, and the inclusion of my story is merely an afterthought.

The techie stuff: I use two types of tracking software, Sitemeter and Google Analytics, which complement each other. Google Analytics allows one to parse data in countless ways – it's a statistics junkie's dream – while Sitemeter provides detailed information about individual visits. The data for the blog entries themselves reside in several tables of an Access database.

Broken links are a common and annoying feature on many novel sites. I check the links of 60-80 books a day and eliminate those that are M.I.A. or no longer free. Lulu, the self-publishing company, has given me permission to link to their books as well as to use their descriptions and novel covers. This is a great source of material, but since there's no category called "free novels," ferreting out the freebies is very time consuming. Other sources are requests from authors for inclusion and queries that I send out.

Just over half of the traffic to Online Novels comes from search engines while 11 percent is direct, presumably from people bookmarking the blog, and the remainder comes from links on other sites. I can't overemphasize the importance of links, first as sources of traffic in their own right and second because Google uses a link count in determining a website's ranking. You can have the most wonderful site in the world, but if it's languishing on Google page 245 after a search, it might as well not exist.

The most enjoyable aspect of maintaining Online Novels is corresponding with many of the authors whose books are listed in my blog. Their humor and support make even the drudgery of link-checking worthwhile.

Where do I go to find a good free book on the internet? To Project Gutenberg, a priceless collection of classics. I download a book to my Palm, prop myself up in bed, set the screen to autoscroll and watch the immortal words of Conrad, Austen and Thackeray roll by. Now that is bliss!

Perry Belcher Explains Social Media for Business Purposes

2008-12-02T23:27:00.000-08:00

Christina Hills' Shopping Cart Queen blog had a great YouTube video by Perry Belcher explaining social media such as Twitter and Facebook in the context of business opportunities. The video is a deceptively simple explanation -- and one that's definitely worth the 10 minutes' running time. Enjoy!

December 1st Deadline for eMailOurMilitary Holiday Postage Campaign Needs Your Help Today

2008-11-30T13:00:00.001-08:00

December 1st is the deadline eMailOurMilitary.com set for postage donations needed to send the holiday cards and packages to deployed troops. The postage goal for this year was set at $2,500, and the total collected so far isn't even half that.

Help eMailOurMilitary.com send holiday support to deployed troops by donating to the postage campaign right now.

Donate now

Thanksgiving Day: We American Women Have Much for Which We Can Be Thankful

2008-11-27T12:12:00.000-08:00

I'd like to share with the readers of this blog what I posted today on my MRS. LIEUTENANT blog.

Are the Salem Witch Hunts Now Occurring in California?

2008-11-26T10:54:00.000-08:00

I'm all for the transparency of the internet when it's in the cause of a good deed or when a blogger can relay important information (see, for example, my Mrs. Lieutenant blog post about the USO). But I have serious concerns when the transparency leads to Salem-style witch hunts.

Apparently donors to California proposition campaigns are public record. And bloggers have published the names of those who donated to help Prop. 8 (banned same-sex marriage in California) pass.

Some anti-Prop. 8 supporters have been using this information against the donors to the campaign. And Richard Raddon, the director of the Los Angeles Film Festival, has fallen victim to the witch hunt. Raddon has resigned in the face of the pressure against him.

People's private political views are their own. And as long as these private views do not affect the job they are performing, these views should remain private and NOT be used to force someone out of a job.

Get Your Flu Shot Now! If You Need Prodding, Watch This Fun Video

2008-11-24T13:35:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Matt Rosler and his University of Pennsylvania alum website www.duelingtampons.com for alerting me to this video.

Saying Yes: Opening Up New Horizons in Your Life

2008-11-24T08:09:00.000-08:00

On my visit to Chicago this past weekend to celebrate my parents' 84th birthdays (they were born three days apart), my father gave me the book "Improv Wisdom: Don't Prepare, Just Show Up" by Patricia Ryan Madson. I read part of the book on the plane back to LA.

While I'm not sure I understand or agree with everything I've read so far, I do agree with her first of 13 maxims: "Say Yes." And I particularly agree with this because it fits the philosophy of having an open mind, which I learned about from Carol Dweck's book "Mindset: The New Psychology of Success."

Here's an exercise from Madson's book that we can all try:

For one day say yes to everything. Set your own preferences aside. Notice the results. See how often it may not be convenient or easy to do this.

Obviously, use common sense in executing this rule. If you are a diabetic and are offered a big piece of pie, you'll need to find a way to protect your health. Perhaps you can say boldly, "Yes, I'd love to have this pie to take home to my son who adores cherries."

This is an interesting exercise that I'm hoping I'll do one day this week. In the meantime, I'm continuing to follow Dweck's advice about having an open mind: I'm willing to undertake new things -- and I'm willing to fail at them -- in order to expand my knowledge. The alternative, of only doing what I'm good at, is the opposite of a growth mindset.

Local Family Decides to Forgo Expensive Presents This Year and Instead Spend Their Holiday Money on the Needy

2008-11-19T11:14:00.000-08:00

My husband received an email from a client with the subject line: Thoughts for the coming holidays …

The long email went on to describe what he and his wife, although they can well afford to spend a great deal on presents, had decided to do this year for the holidays.

I’d like to share some of his words.

Neither one of us felt quite right about the gifts we were about to embark on purchasing for our kids, our families and friends. Something feels very different about this year.

[I]f our community is feeling the pinch and concern of this economy (to whatever degree), then obviously those who are most in need are also. While this difficulty may be a daily inconvenience for some of us, others actually struggle with the issues of where to sleep at night and if they will be able feed and clothe their children. Their daily need doesn’t remain in the realm of the theoretical; it is present and frightening.

During difficult times such as these charitable giving drops and the people already living in the margins simply go unaccounted for. (There are an abundance of articles on line documenting the downturn in charitable giving and the grim holiday forecast it portends.) [We] asked each other how we can participate in the holidays in a more purposeful way. In a way that feels appropriate.

The email goes on to describe two local charities that this family will be supporting this year, and then the email concludes this way:

So rather than buy all of our friends things they don’t need, rather than buy our kids ten things instead of one or two, rather than buy each other one more unnecessary thing, we are going to break the chain and try and apply our efforts to the kids and families these two fine organizations represent. In the grand scheme it’s only a small effort. But it is our effort and we can own it. If you were considering something for our family, we would kindly ask that you redirect your kindness to either of these two organizations.

This is definitely in keeping with what Scrooge at the end of Charles Dickens’ “A Christmas Carol” did. And I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Baby Blue and Baby Pink Clothes: The Case Against Gender Stereotyping

2008-11-18T10:57:00.000-08:00

Today at the gym I saw adorable twins – a boy and a girl about 10 months old (still crawling and not yet walking). Only the way they were dressed made me see red.

The boy was dressed in blue and the girl was dressed in pink. This gender stereotyping has always driven me crazy. There have been studies done dressing a non-descript baby in one or the other of these colors and recording the different reactions people have to a “boy” baby or a “girl” baby. These studies have shown that gender stereotyping starts at a very early age.

Now I understand that there are differences in genders, important differences. But what shouldn’t be gender-specific is the encouragement young children get to try new experiences. I cringe when a parent says about a toddler – “she’s shy,” thereby reinforcing this behavior. And I strongly suspect that pink or blue clothing on babies and toddlers influences what adults say to these children.

And, yes, if the mother of the twins at the gym had dressed one child in a bright green outfit and another child in a bright yellow outfit, I might not have known the children were boy-girl twins. But did I really need to know that to appreciate how cute they looked together?

Who Should Get to Display the World's Art or Why Are the Elgin Marbles in Britian Rather Than in Greece?

2008-11-16T21:08:00.001-08:00

If any of you follow art world news, you'll know that recently there's been much news about museums having to give items back to "source" countries. In many cases these are items whose provenance (history of ownership) is not clear or not authenticated. (In other words, were the items stolen from the "source" countries?)

I'm reading a new book about this problem: "Loot: The Battle Over the Stolen Treasures of the Ancient World" by Sharon Waxman. If you're interested in knowing more about all the sides of this issue, check out this book.

THE COSBY SHOW: Barack Obama Is in This Show's Debt

2008-11-12T15:15:00.000-08:00

When my children were little we would watch THE COSBY SHOW. We loved watching the problems of this family, and we learned so much from some of the more serious episodes (like the one that taught Theo how much it cost to live on your own). Perhaps that early bond with THE COSBY SHOW explains why, when the children were in their late teens and saw the musical SOUTH PACIFIC, they didn't like it. They couldn't understand what the big deal was about the two romances -- why couldn't those couples marry?

Today on a back page of Daily Variety I found a letter to the editor from Mickey Gardner, the author of HARRY TRUMAN AND CIVIL RIGHTS: MORAL COURAGE AND POLITICAL RISKS. Although I don't discuss politics in my blogs, I wholeheartedly agree with Gardner's letter to the editor, which I found so compelling I'm reprinting it here in its entirety:

As we celebrate the election of this country's first African-American president, your readers and the creative community should take note of the fact that two people in your industry -- Marcy Carsey and Tommy Werner -- made a huge contribution more than two decades ago to making Obama's election possible. By stubbornly refusing in the early 1980s to give up their vision of a Cosby as a professional African-American role model and not the stereotypical black standup Vegas comedian that cautious network officials preferred, these two fiercely independent producers contributed mightily to the colorblind attitudes of many of today's middle-aged and younger voters who grew up on "The Cosby Show."
Obama just did not happen overnight. His ability to be elected president started back on July 26, 1948, when Harry Truman, this country's pioneering civil rights president, did the unthinkable and integrated not just the vast American military but the entire federal workforce. While Truman forced blacks and whites to work, eat and sleep alongside each other at Army camps and on Navy battleships, Marcy and Tom showed their viewers how an ordinary black family could live harmoniously with their white neighbors in a world where they all dealt with the same family issues. They shattered another taboo -- all white neighborhoods were still pervasive 25 years ago.
I hope you will take editorial note of the great contribution made by the Cosby team of independent producers who could have sold out and agreed initially to a noncontroversial Cosby and not the beloved Doctor Huxtable who became a friend and weekly visitor in millions and millions of U.S. homes.

Earthquake Drill in Los Angeles on November 13 -- Get Prepared

2008-11-11T16:42:00.001-08:00

Imagine my surprise to read on the front page of the November 11th Wall Street Journal that at 10 a.m. on November 13th Los Angeles is having a major earthquake drill.

According to the Journal article, scientists realized their harping on the need to be prepared was not being taken seriously by people. So the scientists decided to take a new tack and make a gigantic earthquake drill like a city-wide block party to encourage people to participate.

I immediately went to the website of www.shakeout.org to register and get more information. And I printed out the instructions for what to do when an earthquake hits, which apparently are different than the ones I learned years ago.

I'm also updating my emergency contact information (contact people outside California to whom everyone in the family should call in if no local phone service) and thinking about what other preparedness tasks I've let slide over the years.

If you live in Los Angeles, go register at the site. And if you don't live in Los Angeles, tell any friends or family who do that they should check out this site before Thursday.

Oh, yes, the earthquake is going to be a mock 7.8 magnitude.

Veterans Day: Take a Moment to Say Thank You to Our Men and Women

2008-11-11T08:56:00.000-08:00

As U.S. military personnel continue to fight and sustain casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan, it is only fitting that today on Veterans Day we honor the men and women past and present who fight for and protect our country.

Read my Mrs. Lieutenant blog post in honor of these men and women: http://snipurl.com/veteransday

Related Posts:

Hold and Die

His orders were to hold and die. Not hold OR die. Hold AND die. Implicit in the orders are not one, but two promises. His men would accomplish their mission against overwhelming odds. They would die while performing it. So what happens? ...

A Place for Veterans

Veterans Day is a special day when our nation stops to honor and give thanks to our military veterans and their families. But what happens when the parades are over and the yellow ribbons come down?...

Servicemen reflect on Veterans Day observances

O’Grady mentioned the men who, at the birth of the country, fought to live in a place where they could freely express their God-given rights without persecution. Because of their sacrifices, he said, “We’ve been allowed to prosper into ...

Veterans Day: Remembering a Korean War Veteran

There was a place that was dug out and it was pitch, pitch black, no moon out. They put three of us up there and we didn’t know what to expect. All three of us sat there and stared all night wondering what the crud was going to happen, ...

Marketing Books: Introducing Queens of Book Marketing

2008-11-09T09:02:00.001-08:00

When my book MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL came out in April, I knew nothing about how today's internet -- known as Web 2.0 -- could be utilized to market my book. My first published book, the Jewish holiday book SEASONS FOR CELEBRATION co-written with Rabbi Karen L. Fox, had been published in 1992. I would soon learn that 1992 was the Stone Age in terms of modern book marketing.

And I would also soon learn how much I had to learn. Which is why I've been tied to my computer since then, intensely listening to teleseminars, taking webinars, reading ebooks, reading books, and doing everything else to learn how to optimize Web 2.0 for book marketing.

I decided that other book authors who were also new to Web 2.0 shouldn't have to reinvent the wheel. I would launch a website to help them learn much more quickly what I learned the hard way.

Trumpets please! I've now launched www.queensofbookmarketing.com to provide information and resources for book marketing. The other queen besides me is my daughter Yael Miller, an award-winning playwright who is currently writing the first in a series of children's fantasy novels.

Check out www.queensofbookmarketing.com and then tell your friends. Yael and I are planning to develop an online writing community that can help writers and authors benefit from each other's experiences.

And we welcome you to follow me at www.twitter.com/ZimblerMiller and Yael at www.twitter.com/MillerMosaicLLC.

Identity Theft: Don’t Help the Crooks

2008-11-06T22:21:00.000-08:00

I got an email today supposedly from Wells Fargo security that was so clearly bogus. Every piece of personal identification from Social Security number to the PIN of the ATM card was requested. I deleted the message, but I worried whether some people might be taken in.

Just last night I friended someone on Facebook with whom I had already been in email contact. I was surprised to see that he had his month, date and year of his birth public. This is not a good idea if you want to avoid identity theft. And Facebook provides privacy settings that enable you to keep hidden the year of your birth. I emailed this person suggesting he remove the year of his birth.

I know it’s not possible to keep all personal identification safe. But, for example, when you’re on a cell phone in a public place, it’s probably not a good idea to say all the digits of your credit card aloud. If you must give your credit card number at that moment, step away from everyone within earshot.

Years ago I had a security clearance for a job with U.S. military intelligence in Munich, Germany, when my husband was an intelligence officer stationed there. I still practice some identify-protection techniques I learned at that time. For example, if I’m going to read one of my newspaper subscriptions at the car wash, I remove the visible address from the front page of the newspaper.

We can’t protect ourselves from identity theft, but we can try not to help the crooks.

Voting Today: It’s an American Duty and an American Right

2008-11-04T14:37:00.000-08:00

I hope that all of us, standing in long lines to cast our vote for the President of the United States, can temper our impatience at the lines with remembering that for much of the world this privilege to vote for the country’s leader does not exist. And even in many countries that supposedly have “free” elections, the single choice of officially sanctioned candidate doesn’t truly provide choice.

Of course, I was afraid that I was going to be stoned by the people in my own long line when a poll worker walked down the line asking for people assigned to the pink table. It turned out my address was in the pink table area. Thus at that particular moment I got to enter the polling place ahead of all the people in line in front of me.

Later today I’m invited to the home of a couple in which each spouse is voting for a different presidential candidate. The couple is calling the event a “victory party” because, no matter who wins, one-half of the couple will be happy.

And I also tweeted on Twitter that I had voted by entering #ivoted on an update. Now I can rely on the Twhirl application of Twitter to give me political news updates while I work at my computer. What a brave new world we live in!

Redroom.com Announces November Novel Writing Contest

2008-10-31T10:39:00.000-07:00

Here's an email I got from Ivory Madison, founder and CEO of redroom.com -- an author/reader website to which I belong:

Whether you’re a successful author about to miss your next book deadline, an aspiring author who’s been “meaning” to write a novel for years, or a non-writer who wants to do something crazy, have I got the month for you: November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)! I’m encouraging all of my friends and colleagues to join me and write a novel between November 1st and November 30th.

Can I Really Write a Novel in 30 Days?

Yes. Really. That’s all it takes—Stephen King does it. And, before I founded Red Room, I was a writing coach (named San Francisco magazine’s “Best Writing Coach” in 2005), when I realized that most people type about 1,000 words an hour and can write a first draft of a short novel of 50,000 words in about fifty hours.

But How Do I Win?

All it takes to “win” NaNoWriMo is for you to write a novel. Another way to win: We’ve added our own contest. Red Room will randomly select one NaNoWriMo winner of a one-hour coaching call with me after I personally review his or her manuscript for a few hours. I used to charge $2,000 for this, but it’s actually “priceless” since I don’t coach writers anymore. Now I only do it for good causes, like getting you to do some writing in November.

I Love Winning! How Do I Enter?

It’s easy to participate — just write a novel in November and blog about it on redroom.com. I look forward to finding out who’s joining me!

If you've been thinking for the longest time about writing a novel, it's time to do it! Go to www.redroom.com and join now for free and hit those computer keys! (And if you're already an author, apply to be a Red Room author.)

And if you do write a novel in November, I hope you'll check out my new website whose launch I'll be announcing in a few days -- www.queensofbookmarketing.com -- because strategic book marketing should start when the novel is finished and not when the novel is published.

Technorati Tags:
Do-Gooder Scrooge, Red Room, Ivory Madison, novel writing, novel contest, Queens of Book Marketing

Google Deal Will Bring Us Millions More Books to Add to Our Reading Pile

2008-10-29T17:27:00.000-07:00

The October 29th Wall Street Journal article by Jeffrey A Trachtenberg and Jessica E. Vascellaro announced “Google Deal Opens Web to Millions of Books.”

This deal is the result of a large settlement between Google and the publishing industry and will “make many millions of digital books available on the Web, with payments to authors and publishers for their use.”

I had mixed feelings when reading the article. As an author, I thought this sounded like a good deal to possibly have an additional revenue stream for one’s books. As a researcher, I thought this sounded like a good deal to have the contents of more books available at the click of one’s computer. As a reader, I thought “oh, no, more books to read.”

I recalled to mind a New Yorker cartoon showing a man sitting in an armchair surrounded by his bookcases. On the floor stands a single book facing the man and saying “Read me.”

Now there will be “many millions of digital books” at our fingertips saying “read me.”

Read the whole Journal story at http://snipurl.com/googlebookdeal.

Technorati Tags:
Do-Gooder Scrooge, Wall Street Journal, WSJ, Google, digital books, New Yorker

CDC Votes Unanimously to Recommend Pneumonia Shots for Ages 19-64 with Asthma

2008-10-27T16:14:00.000-07:00

At the doctor’s office today I asked the doctor about pneumonia shots for young people with asthma. (I already knew that pneumonia shots were recommended for people 65 and above.) My doctor carries his laptop from examining to examining room and here’s what he pulled up dated a few days ago:

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) voted unanimously yesterday to recommend that adults ages 19 to 64 with asthma receive pneumococcal polysaccharide vaccine (PPSV23), known as PNEUMOVAX® 23 (Pneumococcal Vaccine Polyvalent). Merck & Co., Inc. is the sole supplier of PNEUMOVAX 23 in the United States. The ACIP based this recommendation on study data that showed an increased risk of pneumococcal disease among people with asthma.

My doctor was pretty impressed that he had this info literally at his fingertips. And I was pretty impressed to have such a timely answer.

And now I’d like to pass this timely info on to you, with the hope that you will pass it on to people with asthma whom you know. We all don’t see the same news releases, so most of us depend on the kindness of friends to keep us in the loop on important info that can impact our lives. Be a good friend and pass this info along because pneumonia can be a life-and-death matter.

Here’s the link to the whole article: http://snipurl.com/pneumoniashots

Technorati Tags:
CDC, Do-Gooder Scrooge, pneumonia shots, asthma

Ode to the Lowly Quotation Mark in Literary Novels

2008-10-26T11:10:00.000-07:00

I very much enjoyed Lionel Shriver’s essay “Missing the Mark” in the October 25th Wall Street Journal. Shriver bemoaned the fact that several current literary writers have given up using quotation marks, thus making it even harder than ever to read literary fiction. He says:

According to the National Endowment for the Arts, nearly half of Americans do not read books at all, and those who do average a mere six a year. You’d think literary writers would be bending over backwards to ingratiate themselves to readers – to make their work maximally accessible, straightforward and inviting. But no.

He then goes on to give several examples of dialogue passages without quotes from bestselling authors – passages that make very little sense. In one case I thought a sentence was a description of the weather when it was actually dialogue from one of the characters.

As the author of a (non-literary) novel with quotation marks, I was upset to learn that several bestselling literary authors are making it harder for readers to enjoy novels, thus perhaps discouraging reading of all novels.

I hope that all of these authors are shown this essay by Shriver. And that they then make a pact to use quotation marks in their next novels.

And, oh yes, I love these sentences of Shriver’s:

Reading heated dialogue without quotes is like watching chase scenes in “The Bourne Supremacy” with the sound off …. Surely most readers would happily forgo “elegance” for demarcation that makes it easier to figure out who’s saying what when their eyelids are drooping during the last few pages before lights-out.

Do you have any opinion on the use of quotation marks in novels?

Technorati Tags:
Do-Gooder Scrooge, Lionel Shriver, Wall Street Journal, WSJ, literary novels

USO Revisited: Supporting Our Troops

2008-10-24T10:14:00.001-07:00

Here's how my Mrs. Lieutenant blog post begins today:

I have to admit that the first thought that comes to my mind when I think of the USO is scenes of USO-sponsored dances in World War II films. So I found the email from the USO asking for a donation particularly moving as it included the text of a letter from a wife whose husband was deployed to Iraq:

I hope you'll find the rest of the post interesting -- read it at http://mrslieutenant.blogspot.com/2008/10/uso-supporting-troops-every-wife-dreads.html.

And if you're a celebrity performer, please consider performing for our troops.

Technorati Tags:
Do-Gooder Scrooge, USO, Mrs. Lieutenant

Bike Helmets: Adults and Children Should Wear Them

2008-10-23T11:22:00.000-07:00

Have you ever noticed a young child riding a bike and wearing a bike helmet followed by an adult riding a bike WITHOUT a helmet? It always amazes me for two reasons:

• Doesn’t the adult realize what behavior he or she is modeling?

• Doesn’t the adult realize that he or she can also fall off a bike and break open his/her head?

Several years ago my father was riding a bike in Santa Monica and was hit by a car coming out of an alley. Luckily he was wearing a helmet when he was sent flying to the ground.

And it’s not just bikes. Anytime a child or adult is on anything with wheels a bike helmet should be worn. That means when on a skate board or scooter, too.
Of course, it’s important to wear the helmet correctly. It can’t be pushed back off the forehead but must come down firmly over the forehead to protect that forehead.

If unsure whether your bike helmet fits correctly, ask for guidance at a good bike shop. Or check out the info of the Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute at www.helmets.org.

You know the old saying “better safe than sorry”? When it comes to protecting your head and your life, a bike helmet should be an absolute necessity.

Technorati Tags:
Do-Gooder Scrooge, bike helmets, Bicycle Helmet Safety Institute

The Email In-Box: How Many Emails – Let Me Count the Ways

2008-10-19T23:06:00.000-07:00

Last night I deleted approximately 950 messages from one of my email accounts. Some of these messages I had clicked on and then saved for later reading. Others I hadn’t opened yet.

What made me take this drastic step? In recent days I had repeatedly reached 1000 messages, in which case my email account bounced back additional messages.

Therefore, I bit the bullet and said to myself: “You will never give your full attention to those 950 messages. Just delete them and take the risk that you’ve deleted something important.”

Most of the time I can’t understand people who don’t use email at all. Yet sometimes, such as when I force myself to delete 950 messages, I ponder how much simpler life was before the advent of email, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Friendfeed (the most recent social media platform for which I’ve signed up), etc.

In a nod to fair disclosure, I have also been unsubscribing to all the email advertisements for which I usually just click delete. I’ve decided to take the extra time to click on the unsubscribe buttons, some of which work and some of which don’t. I’m not at all sure I ever agreed to get many of these emails. So now I’ve taken the active step of getting rid of them.

Recently I got two different emails announcing a new book. Each of these emails was quite long, going on and on. I skimmed the emails, then decided to do a good deed:

I replied to these emails suggesting in each case that the person write a much shorter email with a clear headline and bullet-point benefits as to why we should act on the email. I explained that we are all so very busy that long emails are just way too much. Both people responded with thanks, so apparently PZ the Do-Gooder Scrooge didn’t step on any toes those times.

But, honestly, that’s why Twitter with a maximum of 140 characters is so great – it keeps all of our tweets short. Who’s the famous writer of the 19th Century (or 18th Century) who apologized for writing a long letter because he didn’t have time for a short letter? It’s true that I often have to rewrite my tweets to stay within 140 characters. And I’m grateful for that limitation.

If only email had a limitation of 140 characters – or I’d even settle for a limitation of 280 characters.

Technorati Tags:
Do-Gooder Scrooge, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Friendfeed

Child’s Cough Can Be Sign of Serious Health Problem

2008-10-17T14:41:00.000-07:00

I was perturbed today when I saw a reporter query about what to do when a young child gets a cough.

I couldn’t help myself. I switched to my do-gooder hat and emailed this response to the reporter:

I'm not responding to be included in the article. I just wanted to warn you (in case you don't know this) that a cough can actually be a sign of asthma and can indicate a serious health issue that, if left untreated, can lead to death.

If you want a resource on this subject, I highly recommend www.aanma.org.

I’m not arguing with the latest cough syrup recommendations for children under age four, I just want parents to understand that sometimes a cough – with no other symptoms – can actually be an indicator of a serious underlying cause. And sometimes pediatricians do not recognize this. Parents need to educate themselves in order to ensure that their children have the best medical help.

See this video for an explanation of Cough-Variant Asthma:

Technorati Tags:
Do-Gooder Scrooge, children’s coughs, www.annma.org, www.helpareporter.com, asthma

Honor a Veteran Event: Read About World War II Veteran John Savery

2008-10-16T10:43:00.000-07:00

Have you posted a description, photo or video at
http://snipurl.com/mrslieutenant to Honor a Veteran? I hope all of you will do so.

The photo above is of John Savery -- a medic in Patton’s army -- in front of Notre Dame in Paris in 1945. His daughter Loretta Savery wrote such a beautiful description on the Facebook Honor a Veteran event page about his World War II experience that I posted her description on my Mrs. Lieutenant blog.

Check out this post at http://snipurl.com/johnsavery
for an example of what you could write about a veteran you know.

And spread the word about this opportunity to Honor a Veteran.

Technorati Tags:
Do-Gooder Scrooge, John Savery, Loretta Savery, World War II, Patton’s Army, Facebook, Veterans Day

World War II Veteran: My Father Albert Zimbler

2008-10-13T12:32:00.000-07:00

As I announced in my previous post, I'm sponsoring through the Facebook group MRS. LIEUTENANT: A SHARON GOLD NOVEL the event Honor a Veteran in recognition of Veterans Day on November 11 at http://snipurl.com/mrslieutenant.

Spread the word about this event -- five people (chosen through random.org) will receive prizes for participating. I want to encourage people to Honor a Veteran.

Technorati Tags:
Do-Gooder Scrooge, Mrs. Lieutenant, Veterans Day, Facebook

Veterans Day Event on Facebook

2008-10-12T17:49:00.000-07:00

I've just created my first Facebook event -- Honor a Veteran -- in recognition of Veterans Day on November 11th (through my Mrs. Lieutenant: A Sharon Gold Novel Facebook group page).

I hope you'll add a veteran to honoor at
http://snipurl.com/mrslieutenant.

Five submitters (as chosen by random.org) will win prizes for participating in the event.

Tell your friends about this worthwhile online event.

Technorati Tags:
Do-Gooder Scrooge, Veterans Day, Facebook

Presidential Election Thoughts: Our Goal Should Be to Think of Others

2008-10-10T10:40:00.001-07:00

Presidential politics are something I don’t discuss – either in writing or in person. But yesterday, in a Yom Kippur sermon, I heard something about the Presidential election that does not come under the category of taking sides. And I want to share this thought with you:

The speaker, a well-known academic, said that in the coming year we need to look outside ourselves; we need to consider the effect of things on others. He urged us that our decision who to choose for President should also be based on the needs and concerns of others and not only on our own needs and concerns.

While he didn’t give examples, I could clearly see what he meant. For example, one candidate’s proposed tax policy might be great for us but not very good for the country as a whole. Given the times, the speaker warned us that we must think of what is often called “the big picture” rather than our miniscule part of that picture.

And there’s something else I’d like to say about the current U.S. economic situation: One of the most important things I learned in my MBA program at Wharton was how perception can actually make things happen. In other words, every time a newspaper headline blares “recession,” that headline adds to the possibility of an actual recession because people act in reaction to that headline.

While I realize that there’s very little chance of stemming the newspaper headlines screaming “recession” and therefore adding to the possibilities of a recession, I do hope that all of us can be careful about what we say in connection with the current U.S. economic situation. We should remember that perception can lead to self-fulfilling prophecies. Let’s try not to add fuel to the fire by what we say – or do.

Technorati Tags:
Do-Gooder Scrooge, U.S. economic situation, Presidential election, Wharton

Forgive Me for I Have Sinned

2008-10-08T09:38:00.000-07:00

After reading Big Tobacco’s heartfelt Yom Kippur blog post (http://snipurl.com/bigtobaccopost), I wanted to write one myself. Clearly I can’t write one as dramatic as his, so I turned to the High Holiday prayer book for the prayer that we chant repeatedly during Yom Kippur:

Here is only one sin from the long list of sins for which we publicly and repeatedly ask forgiveness:

And for the sin which we have committed before Thee in speech

How many of us are guilty of this every single day? I’m sure I must be. No, I’m not talking about the intentionally mean things we say. I’m talking about the everyday things we say carelessly or impatiently – the “take out the trash” barked commands and the “can’t you ever remember to put the remote control away” peeved outbursts.

I often read the sayings on the teabags I buy which give the advice to appreciate each moment of life. And I do believe in viewing the glass half full rather than half empty. Yet how many of us consciously work to make the glass half full?

The Wall Street Journal today (October 8th) has a front-page story about how Iraq is still dangerous for U.S. military personnel even as the country is stabilizing. Do we who are safe at home in the U.S. appreciate that Americans are risking their lives every moment for our security?

On Rosh Hashanah, as my husband neared our synagogue, he passed a Marine major in full uniform. My husband said: “Thank you for your service, sir.” The Marine said: “You’re welcome. Shana tova.” [Good New Year]

In my husband’s case he used speech in a positive way – to express gratitude for the Marine’s service to our country.

If I can only improve greatly in one area this coming year, I’d like it to be in this area of speech: To reduce the amount of negative things I say and to increase the amount of positive things I say.

What about you? In what area would you most like to improve in the coming year?

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Do-Gooder Scrooge, Yom Kippur, forgiveness, Iraq War

One Iraqi Soldier's Attempt to Fight Harder

2008-10-07T21:51:00.000-07:00

I don't usually cross-reference my three blogs. Yet a guest post on my Mrs. Lieutenant blog is so powerful that I want to share it with you.

So here's Big Tobacco's guest post from Iraq at http://snipurl.com/bigtobaccopost.

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Do-Gooder Scrooge, Big Tobacco, Iraq War

Asking Forgiveness Publicly on Facebook and Blogs

2008-10-06T16:40:00.000-07:00

A woman I’ll call Joan posted the following update on her Facebook page:

Joan is wondering how legit it is to make teshuvah [repentance] on FACEBOOK? In case it is o.k. I apologize for any time I wronged, offended, slighted, ignored, or hurt you!

In preparation for Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement, Jews ask forgiveness of people for any wrongs committed against those people during the year.

How interesting to think about extending this concept of asking forgiveness of others into the workplace. Because, although Facebook is a social media platform in which you have “friends,” in many ways the Facebook environment is more like a workplace – a place where you get together with others to achieve a mutual purpose.

And if we all carried around the sense that once a year we would have to ask forgiveness from all the people in our online and offline lives, perhaps we would be kinder to others, think more before we speak, and try harder to consider things from the other person’s point of view.

I hope that I can move closer in the coming year to achieving these goals. And I, too, publicly apologize for any wrongs or offenses that I may have committed during the past year to anyone in my online or offline life.

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Do-Gooder Scrooge, Facebook, social media platforms, forgiveness

Social Media Site TwitterMoms.Com Has Opportunities for Members

2008-10-06T14:11:00.000-07:00

Thanks to being on Twitter I just learned about the website www.twittermoms.com. Megan Calhoun, the creator of this website, has assured me that you don’t have to be on Twitter to join the social media platform TwitterMoms.com.

If you fall into the general category of this website, check it out. Through October 15 members have the opportunity to submit their products to be included in a holiday catalog. The site is also looking for people interested in being featured contributors.

And note the site’s interesting groups. I’ve already joined The Twitter Moms Book Club, and there are several other groups I’m planning to consider.

P.S. Maybe I should start the group Twitter Moms Whose Children Are Also on Twitter. Both my daughters are on Twitter as is my husband.

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Do-Gooder Scrooge, www.twittermoms.com, Twitter, social media platforms

Social Media: Are You Letting Your Best Face Shine Forth?

2008-10-02T08:40:00.000-07:00

For my blog Flipping Burgers and Beyond -- which gives advice for college applications, internships, jobs and careers -- I frequently post about social media mistakes concerning profile photos. In other words, I'm talking about the photos people use on Facebook or Twitter or other social media websites.

I just posted a new commentary on the profile photo, and since it is also a brief wrap-up of previous posts, I'd like to share this information with you.

Here's the link to the Flipping Burgers post about choosing the right photo of yourself:
http://snipurl.com/socialmediaphoto.

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Do-Gooder Scrooge, social media photos, Facebook, Twitter, Flipping Burgers and Beyond

Facebook: Join the Group INFORMATION MAVENS

2008-10-01T22:43:00.000-07:00

If you're on Facebook already, consider joining the new group I started -- Information Mavens. The idea behind the group is to share info that can help make people's lives easier. Some of the info I post on the group may also be written about here as a blog post. Yet the info on the Facebook group is only a link with a brief comment.

If you have friends on Facebook, invite them to join the group. The more people we have offering info to help others, the better we'll all be.

And if you're not on Facebook yet, consider joining it. Once you get the hang of the privacy settings and the other control options you have, I think you'll be glad you joined. Just remember NOT to post anything you wouldn't want your mother to see. (For free tips on protecting your image on Facebook, go to www.millermosaic.com).

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Do-Gooder Scrooge, Facebook, Information Mavens

World Travel One Couch at a Time

2008-09-28T21:47:00.001-07:00

A friend just told me about the site www.couchsurfing.com -- a website that facilitates strangers staying at the homes of other strangers when traveling.

My friend said his wife is obsessed, spending hours connecting to people in different groups on the site. And he and his wife have had people from all over the world staying with them. Plus he and his wife have stayed with other strangers when traveling.

I'm not advocating this website, although it is an interesting concept that you might want to check out for yourself. It's certainly a unique use of a social networking website.

Bon voyage!

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Do-Gooder Scrooge, www.couchsurfing.com, world travel

Self-Publishing: Valuable Reference Book for Comparing Companies

2008-09-27T23:28:00.000-07:00

Stacie Vander Pol, author of the new book TOP SELF PUBLISHING FIRMS, asked me to review her book for Amazon. I have just posted my five-star review there, and I wanted to mention the book here in case any of you are considering self-publishing.

There are so many self-publishing firms to choose from that it can be very hard to decide which company to use. And what I learned from Stacie's book is that, if you're not careful, instead of comparing apples to apples, you'll be comparing apples to bananas and oranges and kiwi and every other fruit that exists.

Her book's comparison chart can be an invaluable tool to a prospective author overwhelmed with choices. And her advice, particularly on the trickiness of evaluating royalties, is excellent.

If people you know are considering self-publishing, tell them about this book. They'll be glad you did.

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Do-Gooder Scrooge, Stacie Vander Pol, Top Self Publishing Firms, Amazon review

Gluten-Free Brownies and Cookies That Taste Really Good

2008-09-26T16:36:00.001-07:00

I wanted to share with you that a Los Angeles bakery whose products are gluten free (and therefore wheat free), dairy free (no casein) and kosher ships brownies and cookies throughout the United States. For those of you with food sensitivities who long for truly delicious treats, this is a place to check out. (I personally vouch for how good the treats are.)

The website is www.thesensitivebaker.com, and this could be a great place to find gifts for people who have everything -- except treats they can eat!

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Do-Gooder Scrooge, www.thesensitivebaker.com, gluten-free brownies, gluten-free cookies

Facebook: Important Basic Rules for Beginners on This Social Media Platform

2008-09-25T09:11:00.000-07:00

I’ve just started a group on Facebook called Information Mavens – a place for people to post information that can help others.

Because of this new group, I’ve “friended” two women new to Facebook, and on both their profile pages I’ve noticed some basic “errors” about which I’ve told them.

Thus I wanted to write a quick post about these plus one major “error” that many people do in order to help other people:

• Do NOT put your birth year on your profile (it is NOT required). It’s good to put your birth month and date so people can wish you happy birthday. But to protect against identify theft, leave your year off.

Your profile photo should be of you alone and a close-up so we can see what you look like. As Chris Brogan said when I heard him speak in LA yesterday, if you have a good photo of yourself on social media platforms, you can be recognized when people meet you at a live event. (If you’d like more advice on profile photos, get my free report “7 Mistakes to Avoid to Protect Your Image on Facebook” at www.millermosaic.com.)

• Privacy settings are very adjustable on Facebook – it’s up to you how much you want people to see without being your Facebook friend. To make this decision, you need to decide what your purpose is on Facebook. If, like me, you want people to know about your novel and your blogs and your online businesses, you want to let as many people as possible find out about you. (But I still don’t put my telephone number and email on my profile page.)

And here’s the fourth important point thanks to MaryPat Kavanagh (www.queenofmarketing.com) and her valuable Facebook webinars:

• With a friend request – always include a reason you are asking someone to friend you (unless it is someone you already know personally). Do NOT just click the friend request without adding a personal message. If you have a connection, say what that connection is. Or if you just like the person’s profile info, say what in the profile info attracted you to making a friend request.

Although I do want to expand my friend circle on Facebook, after learning this advice from MaryPat I usually ignore friend requests of people I don’t know who don’t write a personal comment with the friend request. I figure it’s not a real request to start a Facebook relationship but just a numbers game.

Facebook can be a wonderful venue for making friends, learning new things, and promoting your blogs and businesses. But it is NOT a magic wand. You do have to put in effort and interest in order to get a good return on your investment.

I’d love for you to friend me on Facebook if we’re not already friends. Just be sure to tell me where we “met.”

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Do-Gooder Scrooge, Facebook, www.millermosaic.com, www.queenofmarketing.com, MaryPat Kavanagh

Asthma and Allergy Advice: Check out the Website of Allergy and Asthma Network Mothers of Asthmatics

2008-09-23T19:07:00.000-07:00

This morning at Starbucks two conversations about trying to solve asthma/allergy problems of children were taking place around me. As I personally know the frustration of trying to find the answer to a child’s medical issues, I wanted to share with you here the link to the organization that made such a difference in my family’s life when my children were young.

Allergy and Asthma Network Mothers of Asthmatics can be a literal life-saver for parents who are at their wits’ end concerning their undiagnosed (or diagnosed correctly) children.

In a recent newsletter from this organization, an article brought tears to my eyes as I read the saga of a mother whose child’s doctors did not “see” that the child had classic asthma and allergy symptoms. Only when the desperate mother stopped accepting the doctors’ brush-offs did she find the medical help her child needed.

And what was most surprising in the article was that, for anyone who knows anything about asthma and allergies, the symptoms were classic. (This is in contrast to symptoms that don’t present as classic.) So why didn’t the child’s doctors notice what was going on?

Parents whose children are continually sick without any specific diagnosis must educate themselves in order to get the right medical care.

And if you’re on Facebook, join my new group Information Mavens. I’m hoping this group page will serve as a place for people to post information that can make other people’s lives easier.

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Allergy and Asthma Network Mothers of Asthmatics, Do-Gooder Scrooge, allergies, asthma, Facebook, Starbucks