Your weekly collection of positive tips, hints, and advice offered with humor, inspiration, and other goodies for anyone who is inclined to read. Guidance, mentoring, inspiration, English lessons, editing, proofreading services for entrepreneurs and online marketers.
Publisher: Mary Wilkey
Volume 10 — Issue 15 — July 13, 2010
Published every other Tuesday
Greetings, one and all! Would you believe it ... our year is half gone already. Now, don't tell me it just seems that way because I'm "getting up there." Young people are making this same observation more and more. So let's make the most of this day.
Today's issue contains a warning about something you may be using on yourself and/or your children, an update on the controversial Sheriff Joe of Maricopa County, Arizona, a neat article by Graham Burt about using email courses for outstanding marketing results, and a true story in the Inspiration section about a nearly fatal fall involving a tiny tot.
Enjoy, and I'll see you in two weeks.
--------------------------
In
Remembrance of
September 11, 2001
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If my people, which are called by my name,
shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek
my face, and turn from their wicked ways,
then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive
their sin, and will heal their land.
—2 Chronicles 7:14
Contents:
Top Sponsor
Weekly Contest
A Healthier You
Feature Article
Test Your Bible Knowledge
Today's Chuckle
Today's English Lesson
Guest Article
Inspiration
Etcetera
Top Sponsor
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Contest
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"Everywhere, I find the signature, the autograph of God,
and He will never deny His own handwriting. God has
set His tabernacle in the dewdrop as surely as in the sun.
No man can any more create the smallest flower than he could create the greatest world."
—Joseph Parker
A Healthier You
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Just what is it that America stands for?
If she stands for one thing more than another, it is for the sovereignty of self-governing people.
—Woodrow Wilson
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Maricopa County was spending approximately $18 million dollars a year on stray animals like cats and dogs. Sheriff Joe offered to take the department over, and the county supervisors said okay.
The animal shelters are now all staffed and operated by prisoners. They feed and care for the strays. Every animal in their care is taken out and walked twice daily. There are now prisoners who are experts in animal nutrition and behavior. They give great classes for anyone who'd like to adopt an animal. Sheriff Joe has literally taken stray dogs off the street, given them to the care of prisoners, and had them place in dog shows.
The best part? His budget for the entire department is now under $3 million. Teresa and I (the author of this piece) adopted a Weimaraner from a Maricopa County shelter two years ago. He was neutered and current on all shots, in great health, and even had a microchip inserted the day we got him. Cost us $78.
The prisoners get the benefit of about 28 cents an hour for working, but most would work for free, just to be out of their cells for the day. Most of the budget is for utilities, building maintenance, etc. The prisoners are paid out of the fees collected for adopted animals.
I have long wondered when the rest of the country would take a look at the way Sheriff Joe runs the jail system and copy some of his ideas. He has a huge farm, donated to the county years ago, where inmates can work, and they grow most of their own fresh vegetables and food, doing all the work and harvesting by hand.
He has a pretty good sized hog farm, which provides meat and fertilizer. It fertilizes the Christmas tree nursery, where prisoners work, and you can buy a living Christmas tree for $6-$8 for the holidays, and plant it later. We have six trees in our yard from the prison.
Yup, he was reelected last year with 83% of the vote.
Now he's in trouble with the ACLU again. He painted all his buses and vehicles with a mural that has a special hotline phone number, where you can call and report suspected illegal aliens. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement wasn't doing enough in his eyes, so he had 40 deputies trained specifically for enforcing immigration laws, started up his hotline, and bought four new buses just for hauling folks back to the border. He's kind of a "Git-R Dun" sheriff.
To those of you not familiar with Joe Arpaio, he is the Maricopa Arizona County Sheriff, and he keeps getting elected over and over again. This is one of the reasons why:
Sheriff Joe Arpaio created the "Tent City" jail.
He has jail meals down to 40 cents a serving and charges the inmates for them.
He put an end to smoking and porno magazines in the jails. He took away their weights and cut off all but "G" movies.
He started chain gangs, so the inmates could do free work on county and city projects.
Then he started chain gangs for women so he wouldn't get sued for discrimination.
He took away cable TV until he found out there was—get this—a Federal court order that REQUIRES cable TV for jails, so he hooked up the cable TV again—but only let in the Disney channel and the weather channel.
When asked why the weather channel, he replied, "So they will know how hot it's gonna be while they are working on my chain gangs.
He cut off coffee since it has zero nutritional value. When the inmates complained, he told them, "This Isn't The Ritz/Carlton. If you don't like it, don't come back."
With temperatures being even hotter than usual in Phoenix (116 degrees recently set a new record), the Associated Press Reports: "About 2,000 inmates living in a barbed-wire-surrounded tent encampment at the Maricopa County jail have been given permission to strip down to their government-issued pink boxer shorts.
On Wednesday, hundreds of men wearing boxers were either curled up on their bunk beds or chatted in the tents, which reached 138 degrees inside the week before. Many were also swathed in wet, pink towels, as sweat collected on their chests and dripped down to their pink socks.
"It feels like we are in a furnace," said James Zanzot, an inmate who has lived in the tents for one year. "It's inhumane."
Joe Arpaio, the tough-guy sheriff who created the tent city and long ago started making his prisoners wear pink and eat bologna sandwiches, is not one bit sympathetic. He said recently that he told all of the inmates: "It's 120 degrees in Iraq and our soldiers are living in tents, too, and they have to wear full battle gear, but they didn't commit any crimes, so shut your mouths!"
Way to go, Sheriff!
Maybe if all prisons were like this one there would be a lot less crime and/or repeat offenders. Criminals should be punished for their crimes—not live in luxury until it's time for their parole, only to go out and commit another crime so they can get back in to live on taxpayer money and enjoy things taxpayers can't afford to have for themselves.
Question — At the time of the census which was conducted by Moses in the first chapter of Numbers, which of the twelve tribes of Israel was the largest?
a — Judah
b — Gad
c — Asher
d — Reuben
Scroll down for the answer.
"Government is like a baby:
An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end
and no sense of responsibility at the other."
—Ronald Reagan
Today's Chuckle
The Clean-up Man
A man was part of a national wildlife preserve before he died. He loved to clean up areas for all kinds of animals, and thought he had done a lot of good in the world. So when he died, he expected to go to heaven.
He was very surprised when the angel, who told people whether they were going to heaven or hell, said, "I'm sorry, but you were sent to hell."
"Are you quite sure you haven't made mistake?" the young man asked.
"We don't make mistakes and never have." The angel replied.
So the young man went with the devil to hell.
When he got there, he thought, "What a mess! I am NOT going to be living in such a pigsty." so he started to clean the place up.
A few weeks later, the angel came down to hell to tell the young man that they indeed had made a mistake, and he was supposed to go to heaven.
"Whoa, you can't just take him! He's mine now, and this place looks great!" said the devil.
"Oh, well then, we'll just sue you!" the angel said back.
"And how the heck do you plan to do that?" taunted the devil. "We've got all the lawyers."
When I got home last night, my wife demanded that I take her someplace expensive, so I took her to a gas station ... snd then the fight started ...
Today's English Lesson
Seeing the same elementary mistakes over and over again has prompted this publisher to write an English lesson each issue. Look for some of these lessons to be repeated, because the mistakes are!
This is a repeat, but a very necessary one! It concerns the misuse of apostrophes. Apostrophes are never used with simple plurals. Very often, appallingly, more and more people—for some unknown reason—see fit to inject an apostrophe before the "s" at the end of simple plurals.
This makes absolutely no sense at all.
Apostrophes are used to pluralize dates, acronyms, and single letters, as in 1960's (1960s is also correct), GI's (GIs is also correct), two t's, etc.
Apostrophes also sometimes indicate the omission of a letter in the middle of a word, such as, "Top o' the mornin' to you!" Another example of omission is where an apostrophe appears to create a contraction, as in "you're" for "you are."
Other than the above, apostrophes have absolutely nothing to do with plurals, dear people, except in the possessive sense. An apostrophe is used to indicate a possessive, nothing more, nothing less.
Reminder: We have a reasonably priced editing/proofreading service for articles or even entire ezines. Just email: adm@elfexpressionsezine.com
"The shaft of the arrow had been feathered
with one of the eagle's own plumes. We often give our enemies the means of our own destruction."
—Aesop
Guest Article
Using Email Courses for Internet Marketing
by Graham Burt
Email courses are not surprisingly becoming an increasingly
popular way for perceptive Internet marketers to raise
awareness of their products and services. Email courses
generally contain short presentations which contain good
content for specialized topics.
In the main, these courses
are commonly offered in multiple brief segments to retain
the student's attention in the subject. This brand of
advertising serves a gainful purpose, and most of the
participants do not even come to realize that they are
subconsciously subjected to a clever marketing campaign.
This article will reveal methods of creating and
distributing an email campaign for the purposes of
marketing your business.
The formation of an online campaign as an email
course ought to start with a popular subject which relates
to your business and is likely being of interest to your
future clients. Informative email courses can on occasion
be sold for profit themselves, but if you are patient and
see the value of using the courses as marketing material,
you will more than likely be gifting these courses free of
charge in an attempt to lure potential customers to buy
your goods or services.
Deciding on the topic of your courses is extremely vital,
because it can determine the level of success that your
marketing campaign can achieve.
Consider an online
distributor of fishing equipment. This business owner may
wish to write a set of email courses on subjects such as
fly fishing, sea fishing, bait fishing, fishing venues, etc.
Each of these courses may contain a few segments
which offer distinct perspectives on the subject.
These types of courses are perfect for this topic, because they
are subjects which are likely to be of interest to the
participants of the sport.
Similarly, a legal practice
agent may opt to offer email courses on subjects such as
understanding the importance of making a will, how valuable
legal representation is when appearing in court, or when
buying or selling real estate. These are all subjects which
are likely to be of interest to the legal practice's list
of clients.
The distribution database list for email courses should consist mainly of members of your targeted market. This
can be achieved by either giving the course as a download
online, where just responsive Internet users are more than
likely to participate in the course, or just limit emailing
the course to recipients who have indicated that they show
an interest in receiving additional details relating to
your products and services and—importantly—have submitted
their personal details for this reason.
When you decide on a subject for
your email course, search out a proficient writer to write
the content. This should help to give
your transcript a more professional appearance. The writer
can support you by penning copy which is educational and
valuable to your readers, but which is also adequately written,
neat, not too long, and simple to interpret.
If your niche
subject is immensely unique, you could then supply the
writer with product reports, as well as fact-finding
materials to assure the content is instructive and precise.
Furthermore, you have to examine the content when it is
completed to be sure the information provided is accurate.
When it comes the time for distributing your email course,
it is useful to ask for feedback from the users on
completion of the course. This is entirely voluntary, but
when users reply they can provide you with helpful feedback,
which should be exceptionally useful if you propose to add
a similar marketing campaign in the future.
An autoresponder is the most widely used tool for email
distribution and is an absolute must for the serious
Internet marketer.
Graham Burt is a very experienced Internet marketer, because
he learned from the experts. It is well known that 95% of new online business
entrepreneurs fail due to a lack of knowledge.
This website http://tinyurl.com/23hgkog has ample
content provided by Internet millionaires to give anyone
wishing to be successful at Internet marketing an advantage
over most.
"Very little is needed to make a happy life."
—Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
Answer to Bible trivia:
a — Judah. At the time of the census which was conducted by Moses in the first chapter of Numbers, Judah was the largest tribe with 74,600 members.
Inspiration
The Deadly Fall
by Kristi W. Griffin
On January 12, 2000, our family saw a miracle of God! We were then in the process of building our new house; my husband and I did all the contracting ourselves, so therefore, we were at our house site "daily" for 6 months!
On this particular evening, Eric (my husband), Ericka (our four-year-old little girl), and I were all on the second floor of the house doing our normal clean-up duties. {Our 11-year-old son, Corey, was playing with a neighborhood friend.}
During the process of these cleaning duties, we were sweeping with the wide "push" broom, vacuuming the sawdust, and picking up scrap 2x4's. Eric and Ericka were in Ericka's bedroom doing the sweeping and vacuuming (Eric doing whichever one Ericka had not wanted to do at the moment), and I was about five feet away in the "balcony" area picking up the wood remnants.
As I bent over to pick up another piece of wood, I heard this "PING." You have to realize that this was just at a time the Shop Vac was not running! I knew this sounded just like a broom handle hitting the concrete slab 12 feet below us, but I didn't know why. I ran to the edge of the balcony and saw my baby Ericka unconscious on the concrete slab! {Later we concluded that Ericka had been pushing the pushbroom and backed off the edge, in between the studs of the wall, which are 12 inches apart.}
As I looked over, I screamed and flew down the stairs. As I turned the corner, Eric had jumped that 12 feet from the balcony to little Ericka's rescue. He was trying to wake her. After a seeming eternity, my baby opened her eyes, but they were both fixed in an upper left position (first sign of head trauma)! Her head just seemed to be as a newborn with no neck control! I was in total shock! I could not speak; I grabbed her from him and just held her close.
Eric ran to get the car, once on our long ride to the hospital, Eric was asking Ericka all sorts of questions, to check her mentality and awareness of her surroundings. S! he knew her name and would answer yes or no questions with yes ma'am to Eric and say, "I mean yes sir" in between her cries. After some time, she asked Eric to sing Jesus Loves Me. I began crying harder. and Eric started singing it to her ... he broke at one point, and she finished the line! Looking back, Ericka was quite alert just a few minutes after her fall. {It just seemed like eternity to us parents!}
Once at the hospital, Ericka began vomiting (second sign of head trauma). They took us immediately to begin IVs, x-rays, CT scans, MRIs, etc. They determined the right side of her head is where she landed on the concrete slab! At this point, she had a nosebleed, only from the right nostril ... we panicked once again.
After all the tests were completed, hours later, she only had a MINOR CONCUSSION! During that evening, a nurse made a comment to me after the test results: "You know, children are so resilient." I explained to her that yes, this is true regarding some things, but God—and only God—carried my baby down 12 feet to the concrete she could have shattered onto! I know of a toddler that fell from its crib (about three feet) to the carpet floor and is BLIND today! Yes, children are resilient, but let's be realistic, it was a deadly fall!
We were so very blessed to have so many relatives, friends and a wonderful church family surrounding us at this time. E-mail allowed the prayer chains to begin so quickly!
Eric and I have always been convinced that this was a grand miracle of God! First of all, the pushbroom is over 24 inches wide. It had to fall just right to get in between the 12 inch space from stud to stud ... hearing the "PING" to notify us something was wrong, just at a time the Shop Vac was off.
Secondly, the fact that the doctor said that where she hit her head, the mere cartilage on the top of her right ear, cushioned the blow enough to save her life! Thirdly, as we returned to the house site five days later, we went upstairs and saw that the rail on the balcony that Eric had jumped over was cracked horizontally the length of the board, and we realized yet again how God's hand was on all of us!
We praise God for His blessings during this time and pray He will continue to touch her in His special way!
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