This O’Reilly webcast video discusses properly setting up profiles for search on Twitter and using monitoring tools to track hot topics and phrases.

Author: social media

Social Media Basics

Every single business online must sustain itself with traffic, even if the service and goods it sells are good. A good looking and easy to navigate website won’t help a business succeed if no one is visiting it. There are lots of other ways to plug your business, but its more important to deal with web surfers who are just browsing the web for a good or service your site has. Most surfers use social media sites thanks to the fact that they give many options that include multimedia features and communication. These features make it easy to share info. It is straightforward to draw in folks in selected areas by following these tips.

Complete your Profile ( s ) before beginning

All social media sites have control panels. These control panels let users fill in different fields so the visitors get a greater understanding about who they are working with. On these internet sites one should fill the fields out honestly. The fields include personal information, personal interests, and different websites. With an internet site field you can tack on your website and its interests. The interests can then be changed into keywords that may increase your companies exposure. For every social media website you only have to fill in this information once. After filling in your basic details on a social media website you can focus on revising and updating your profile as time rolls by.

Due to the multimedia features on a few of these websites you can load videos and audio content as well as use text and pictures that spice up a profile and increase interest in you and your business. If you are associated with other websites selling their products and services, you can use their resources to add banners, videos and different graphics to your profile. Make sure you add these resources but make it simple because it isn’t straightforward to navigate a cluttered web site.

Join and play a role in groups concerned in social media.

The greatest social media sites have groups created by its users that have hundreds or perhaps thousands of folks inside them. Each group is category and theme specific. Simply join a category that fits your market or interests to help increase traffic to it. Don’t try too hard to put your self out there as if you used to be a spammer, because people generally hate spam advertising and it could get your account shut down.
Assuming you followed the directions above all you must do is increase traffic to your web profile

Create a link to your net profile.

Social media not only increases web site traffic, but also increase increases your conversion. Thanks to the interaction and personalization of the medium. With the use of profile buttons, sharing resources, and widgets offered by the network you allow the visitors to easily interact with you. If these folks are educated and entertained it can help drive up sales.

Social media selling can hugely increase your web reputation when your business first starts out.

Social media marketing also helps in dominating search engines in your local market. To find additional info find how social media marketing is archived.

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Social Media likes to write about topics related to “>social media marketing. I hope you like this aricle.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com – How To Create Your Social Media Profiles

The New York Times recently published a piece on Sugar Ray Robinson and his glory days in Harlem.  We thought it might be cool to look back over some Sugar Ray’s favorite places to hang out in Harlem. Here is an excerpt from The Times piece. Recognize any of the addresses?

There he was, cruising in his custom flamingo-pink Cadillac, or jumping behind the bar to mix drinks for the luminaries in his nightclub, Sugar Ray’s, which became a staple of New York’s social scene.

There was 940 St. Nicholas Avenue, where Robinson rented his mother a spacious apartment after he won his first big purse, $6,000, in 1941.

There was the basement of the Salem Methodist Church (2190 Adam Clayton Powell Jr.) where Robinson learned to box after moving to Harlem from Detroit at age 11.

And there was the string of buildings Robinson bought at Seventh Avenue and 124th Street where he opened Sugar Ray’s, which attracted celebrities like Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason, Nat King Cole and Elizabeth Taylor.

That's me during the creation phase of Darkness & Light - it was "very experimental"

Hello!  Jeffrey Huang here, Interactive Media Marketing Manager for Pilobolus.  I’m the person in charge of this blog, as well as Pilobolus’ Facebook and Twitter accounts.  I thought I would take a moment to write a little about myself so you, the reader, know who is posting the blog posts and answering comments.  Don’t worry, most of my time from here on out will be spent bringing you pertinent Pilobolus news and updates.  I promise.

I took up my position as Interactive Media Marketing Manager in October of this year (2009) after leaving the main touring company of Pilobolus, with whom I collaborated, traveled, and performed with for the last four years.  (It was an amazing experience – more on that in a sec.)  I’m extremely excited to help Pilobolus begin its new venture into social media.  I finally get to use my business degree and it helps me cope with my Pilobolus withdrawal symptoms.  Sometimes, in the middle of the night, when I feel extra lonely, I lean up against a wall or balance large objects on my head.  (I’m kidding.)

I’m from Seattle, Washington and although I played sports and studied music throughout my childhood, like many of the men of Pilobolus, I didn’t start dancing until college.  In 2005, upon graduating from the University of Washington with degrees in business and dance, I traveled to Durham, North Carolina to take part in the six-week American Dance Festival.  It was at ADF that I auditioned for Pilobolus and saw my first Pilobolus performance.  I remember seeing the audition notice posted at the Ark building at ADF – I had never seen Pilobolus, but I had the afternoon free and decided to go to the audition on a whim.  My background in business taught me that one should never decline a job interview, and why should auditions be any different?  At the end of the afternoon, I was among a few dancers who were asked to come to the callback audition in NYC later that summer.  I attended the callback audition and shortly thereafter (13 days to be exact) moved to Connecticut to dance with Pilobolus.  Little did I know at the time that day would be the single most influential day of my life to date.

Photo courtesy of John Kane

Over the next four years I collaborated in the creation of 7 Pilobolus works, learned nearly 20 pieces of repertory, and performed them in 450+ shows in 11 different countries.  Needless to say, it was an exhilarating experience.  But whenever people ask me about my time touring with Pilobolus, I’m always a little short on words – I don’t know how to articulate or express the high of taking a bow, exhausted, in front of thousands of people, or the surprise and delight (and sometimes guilt) of going to some really breathtaking foreign destinations, not having paid a penny of my own money for airfare.  But I’m glad that it happened and I will treasure those memories for the rest of my life.  And, oh, the stories…leave me a comment and we’ll chat.

Restaurateur-entrepreneur A D Singh is a regular on page 3s, but is not well known for all that. I met him for lunch and was pleasantly surprised

Before we’ve even sat down, at his favourite table in the corner, A D Singh has his hands on the book I’m carrying. It’s not his type, so he flips through quickly. I show him my favourite part: a fly, immaculately squashed between two pages. AD laughs, a long, slow stutter of a laugh. “Got caught reading, eh?”

Sure did. And so did AD, with less apocalyptic results. His twin brother and he are avid readers. “As kids, we used to walk around at birthday parties like this…” (He mimics holding a book up to his face.) “It’s fascinating. Your world keeps changing, and half the time we’d rather live in that world than our own reality.” The consequence? “We would read in cars, all the time, so we both got glasses really early.”

We’re sitting at the Olive in Mehrauli. Our table looks onto a leaf-dappled courtyard and it’s a pleasantly warm day. AD orders for us both — a panzanella, which is a summery Italian salad, to be followed by gnocchi, a pasta dish.

“Every night,” he continues, “especially when my wife [designer Sabina Singh] is not there and I get home to an empty house, which is about half the week, I read myself to sleep. Obviously, with LAP [his new members-only lounge in Delhi, in partnership with actor Arjun Rampal] opening, all that’s changed. Yesterday I looked at my watch at one point and it was 4:50. I said, ‘Guys, I’m out of here.’ LAP was still going on — I left.”

Recent favourite books include Alexander McCall Smith’s Mma Ramotswe series and Ashok Banker’s science-fantasyish retellings of the Ramayana. “I was just riveted,” AD says. “I thought it was a great way to take our mythology to a whole new audience.”

He’s a past master at bringing new products to new audiences. He was at the vanguard of the standalone boom in fine dining in India, starting with a coffee-and-desserts cafe and moving up the ladder to his current chain of restaurants in three cities — each one more or less different in menu and ambience.

“When I reached the stage in my life that I didn’t know where I was going,” says AD, now in his late 40s, “I left the corporate sector and joined an NGO. I enjoyed it very much and felt a great sense of ‘this is who I am’, but at that time they were paying me Rs 400-600, and I was turning 28. I was good with men, material, resources, integrity, leadership. But not only was the budget not there, there was the attitude that you have to give up everything. That’s not really what an NGO should be. An NGO should be professionally run, to professional standards, obviously with the highest integrity and deliverables.”

Things did change in the NGO world, but AD had moved on — to become an entrepreneur. “My first thought was, [it has to be] something to do with parties, and then I had a sweet tooth, and third, I lived in this place [Bandra in Mumbai] where I realised there was this market niche — to get these great desserts by the slice. So when I opened Just Desserts it was a first. It was a space of our times, a cool cafe where there were no cafes.”

Not only did AD insist on “a quality of F&B that you did not have outside a five-star”, he understood “positioning and statement”. “That’s why I brought in the concept of live jazz. I wasn’t a big jazz lover — it was a positioning. We hadn’t had live music for 20-30 years. So it worked at many levels.” With constant exposure, jazz grew to be “a big part” of AD’s life.

Likewise food. “I’m not really a gourmet,” AD says. “I didn’t know food but in the old days I started writing a weekly column for Metropolis on Sunday on new food, restaurants. That’s where I really started learning the business. When you’re press, chefs make time for you. I spent hours with some of the best chefs that we have. I still don’t have the tongue of a gourmet, but what I’m very good with is vision. I’m basically a dreamer.”

(Which explains why this avid reader wanders around with short story outlines forming in his head. He tells me one set in Goa. It certainly has potential. “Writing is damn hard work,” he says. “I’ve never really got down to it, and I don’t think I ever will.”)

Here comes the panzanella, tart and sunny. “Bon appetit,” says AD, fork already in motion. His eating is like his speaking, fluent yet deliberate. Five minutes on: “This is a variation [of panzanella] I like”. And later, about the gnocchi, with long pauses for judgement: “The gnocchi is perfect. The sauce might need a touch of salt. It’s good. Very good. Outstanding.”

He’s imperious with the waiters, without being condescending. “Boys. Boys,” he calls, gesturing for a napkin. And he doesn’t like interruption. Yet he responds, as to an equal, to callow questions from a diner at the next table about why there isn’t yet an Olive in Kolkata.

He also likes eating with his hands. This occasions a story: “I was looking for investors for a company. Some fund approached me, investment guys. So I had a meeting. It went on for an hour. I was tired and I had things on my mind, but it went quite well.” The funds came through quickly. Later AD was told why: at the mid-meeting buffet he ate with his hands. The investors’ doubts about this page-three personality — “how serious, how grounded are you” — immediately vanished.

Similarly, AD says, he won the space for his first Olive in Bandra because, unlike the other prospective tenants, AD had dreadlocks. The landlord later told him he thought “‘This guy obviously has a different headspace — he’s not the kind who’ll try to steal my property.’”

“It’s funny how these little things convince them right away,” AD says.

The little things count more now than ever now, as AD hones quality to meet the challenge of an influx of world-class chefs to India starting next year. It’s clear enough from his restaurants and his manner that he’s able to inspire a simultaneously welcoming and exacting spirit. That’s a strength, and a sign of class.

Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie (born 19 June 1947) is a British Indian novelist and essayist. He achieved notability with his second novel, Midnight’s Children (1981), which won the Booker Prize in 1981. Much of his early fiction is set on the Indian subcontinent. His style is often classified as magical realism mixed with historical fiction, and a dominant theme of his work is the story of the many connections, disruptions and migrations between the Eastern and Western world.

His fourth novel, The Satanic Verses (1988), was the center of The Satanic Verses controversy, with protests from Muslims in several countries. Some of the protests were violent, with Rushdie facing death threats and a fatwā issued by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Supreme Leader of Iran, in February 1989.

He was appointed a Knight Bachelor for “services to literature” in June 2007. He holds the rank Commandeur in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres of France. He began a five-year term as Distinguished Writer in Residence at Emory University in 2007. In May 2008 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. His latest novel is The Enchantress of Florence, published in June 2008.

Major literary work

His first novel, Grimus, a part-science fiction tale, was generally ignored by the public and literary critics. His next novel, Midnight’s Children, catapulted him to literary notability. It significantly shaped the course that Indian writing in English would follow over the next decade, and is regarded by many as one of the great books of the last 100 years. This work won the 1981 Booker Prize and, in 1993 and 2008, was awarded the Best of the Bookers as the best novel to have received the prize during its first 25 and 40 years. Midnight’s Children follows the life of a child, born at the stroke of midnight as India gained its independence, who is endowed with special powers and a connection to other children born at the dawn of a new and tumultuous age in the history of the Indian sub-continent and the birth of the modern nation of India. The character of Saleem Sinai has been compared to Rushdie.

After Midnight’s Children, Rushdie wrote Shame (1983), in which he depicts the political turmoil in Pakistan, basing his characters on Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. Shame won France’s Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger (Best Foreign Book) and was a close runner-up for the Booker Prize. Both these works of postcolonial literature are characterised by a style of magic realism and the immigrant outlook of which Rushdie is very conscious, as a member of the Indian diaspora.

Rushdie wrote a non-fiction book about Nicaragua in the 1980s, The Jaguar Smile (1987). The book has a political focus and is based on his first hand experiences and research at the scene of Sandinista political experiments.

His most controversial work, The Satanic Verses, was published in 1988 (see section below). Rushdie has published many short stories, including those collected in East, West (1994). The Moor’s Last Sigh, a family epic ranging over some 100 years of India’s history was published in 1995. The Ground Beneath Her Feet (1999) presents an alternative history of modern rock music. The song of the same name by U2 is one of many song lyrics included in the book, hence Rushdie is credited as the lyricist.

Rushdie has had a string of commercially successful and critically acclaimed novels. His 2005 novel Shalimar the Clown received, in India, the prestigious Crossword Fiction Award, and was, in Britain, a finalist for the Whitbread Book Awards. It was shortlisted for the 2007 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.

In his 2002 nonfiction collection Step Across This Line, he professes his admiration for the Italian writer Italo Calvino and the American writer Thomas Pynchon, among others. His early influences included James Joyce, Günter Grass, Jorge Luis Borges, Mikhail Bulgakov, and Lewis Carroll. Rushdie was a personal friend of Angela Carter and praised her highly in the foreword for her collection Burning your Boats.

Other Activities

He opposes the British government’s introduction of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act, something he writes about in his contribution to Free Expression Is No Offence, a collection of essays by several writers, published by Penguin in November 2005. Rushdie is a self-described atheist, and a distinguished supporter of the British Humanist Association.

In 2006, Rushdie joined the Emory University faculty as Distinguished Writer in Residence for one month a year for the next five years.^[15] Though he enjoys writing, Salman Rushdie says that he would have become an actor if his writing career had not been successful. Even from early childhood, he dreamed of appearing in Hollywood movies (which he would later realize in his frequent cameo appearances).

Rushdie includes fictional television and movie characters in some of his writings. He had a cameo appearance in the film Bridget Jones’s Diary based on the book of the same name, which is itself full of literary in-jokes. On 12 May 2006, Rushdie was a guest host on The Charlie Rose Show, where he interviewed Indo-Canadian filmmaker Deepa Mehta, whose 2005 film, Water, faced violent protests. He appears in the role of Helen Hunt’s obstetrician-gynecologist in the film adaptation (Hunt’s directorial debut) of Elinor Lipman’s novel Then She Found Me. In September 2008, and again in March 2009, he appeared as a panelist on the HBO program “Real Time With Bill Maher”.

The Satanic Verses and the fatwā

The publication of The Satanic Verses in September 1988 caused immediate controversy in the Islamic world because of what was perceived as an irreverent depiction of the prophet Muhammad. The title refers to a disputed Muslim tradition that is related in the book. According to this tradition, Muhammad (Mahound in the book) added verses (sura) to the Qur’an accepting three goddesses who used to be worshipped in Mecca as divine beings. According to the legend, Muhammad later revoked the verses, saying the devil tempted him to utter these lines to appease the Meccans (hence the “Satanic” verses). However, the narrator reveals to the reader that these disputed verses were actually from the mouth of the Archangel Gibreel. The book was banned in many countries with large Muslim communities.

On 14 February 1989, a fatwā requiring Rushdie’s execution was proclaimed on Radio Tehran by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the spiritual leader of Iran at the time, calling the book “blasphemous against Islam” (chapter IV of the book depicts the character of an Imam in exile who returns to incite revolt from the people of his country with no regard for their safety). A bounty was offered for Rushdie’s death, and he was thus forced to live under police protection for years afterward. On 7 March 1989, the United Kingdom and Iran broke diplomatic relations over the Rushdie controversy.

The publication of the book and the fatwā sparked violence around the world, with bookstores being firebombed. Muslim communities in several nations in the West held public rallies in which copies of the book were burned. Several people associated with translating or publishing the book were attacked, seriously injured, and even killed.^[16] Many more people died in riots in Third World countries.

On 24 September 1998, as a precondition to the restoration of diplomatic relations with Britain, the Iranian government, then headed by Mohammad Khatami, gave a public commitment that it would “neither support nor hinder assassination operations on Rushdie.”

Hardliners in Iran have continued to reaffirm the death sentence. In early 2005, Khomeini’s fatwā was reaffirmed by Iran’s spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in a message to Muslim pilgrims making the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Additionally, the Revolutionary Guards have declared that the death sentence on him is still valid. Iran has rejected requests to withdraw the fatwā on the basis that only the person who issued it may withdraw it, and the person who issued it – Ayatollah Khomeini – has been dead since 1989.

Rushdie has reported that he still receives a “sort of Valentine’s card” from Iran each year on 14 February letting him know the country has not forgotten the vow to kill him. He said, “It’s reached the point where it’s a piece of rhetoric rather than a real threat.” Despite the threats on Rushdie, he has publicly said that his family has never been threatened and that his mother (who lived in Pakistan during the later years of her life) even received outpourings of support.

A former bodyguard to Rushdie, Ron Evans, planned to publish a book recounting the behaviour of the author during the time he was in hiding. Evans claimed that Rushdie tried to profit financially from the fatwa and was suicidal, but Rushdie dismissed the book as a “bunch of lies” and took legal action against Ron Evans, his co-author and their publisher. On 26 August 2008 Rushdie received an apology at the High Court in London from all three parties.

Religious and political beliefs

Rushdie came from a Shi’ite Muslim family but says that he was never really religious. In 1990, in the “hope that it would reduce the threat of Muslims acting on the fatwa to kill him,” he issued a statement in which he claimed “he had renewed his Muslim faith, had repudiated the attacks on Islam in his novel and was committed to working for better understanding of the religion across the world.” But later said that he was only “pretending”.

His books often focus on the role of religion in society and conflicts between faiths and between the religious and those of no faith.

Rushdie advocates the application of higher criticism, pioneered during the late 19th century. Rushdie calls for a reform in Islam in a guest opinion piece printed in The Washington Post and The Times in mid-August 2005. Excerpts from his speech:

What is needed is a move beyond tradition, nothing less than a reform movement to bring the core concepts of Islam into the modern age, a Muslim Reformation to combat not only the jihadist ideologues but also the dusty, stifling seminaries of the traditionalists, throwing open the windows to let in much-needed fresh air. (…) It is high time, for starters, that Muslims were able to study the revelation of their religion as an event inside history, not supernaturally above it. (…) Broad-mindedness is related to tolerance; open-mindedness is the sibling of peace.

Rushdie supported the 1999 NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, leading the leftist Tariq Ali to label Rushdie and other “warrior writers” as “the belligerati’”. He was supportive of the US-led campaign to remove the Taliban in Afghanistan which began in 2001, but was a vocal critic of the 2003 war in Iraq. He has stated that while there was a “case to be made for the removal of Saddam Hussein”, US unilateral military intervention was unjustifiable.

In the wake of the ‘Danish Cartoons Affair’ in March 2006 – which many considered to be an echo of the death threats and fatwā which had followed the publication of The Satanic Verses in 1989 – Rushdie signed the manifesto ‘Together Facing the New Totalitarianism’, a statement warning of the dangers of religious extremism. The Manifesto was published in the left-leaning French weekly Charlie Hebdo in March 2006.

In 2006, Rushdie stated that he supported comments by the then-Leader of the House of Commons Jack Straw, who criticised the wearing of the niqab (a veil that covers all of the face except the eyes). Rushdie stated that his three sisters would never wear the veil. He said, “I think the battle against the veil has been a long and continuing battle against the limitation of women, so in that sense I’m completely on [Straw's] side.”

Rushdie continues to come under fire from much of the British academic establishment for his political views. The Marxist critic Terry Eagleton, a former admirer of Rushdie’s work, attacked him for his positions, saying he “cheered on the Pentagon’s criminal ventures in Iraq and Afghanistan”. However, he subsequently apologized for having misrepresented Rushdie’s views.

At an appearance at 92nd Street Y, Rushdie expressed his view on copyright when answering a question whether he had considered copyright law a barrier (or impediment) to free speech.

“No. But that’s because I write for a living, [laughs] and I have no other source of income, and I naïvely believe that stuff that I create belongs to me, and that if you want it you might have to give me some cash. [...] My view is I do this for a living. The thing wouldn’t exist if I didn’t make it and so it belongs to me and don’t steal it. You know. It’s my stuff.” — Salman Rushdie

Tony (Anthony) Guyer is the owner and operator of Forgotten Genre Productions, a skilled recording and mixing engineer with years of experience in live sound and road management. He grew up in the Lancaster area but spent a significant amount of time in Papua New Guinea, where his parents work for Wycliffe Bible Translators.

Early in his life Tony was involved in live sound productions for local Lancaster bands (Rainchildren, Jawbone Hill) and then took a series of jobs working on tours for Nashville-based acts such as The Waiting, The Normals, Big Tent Revival, and Sixpence None the Richer, for whom he worked as Road Manager.

We met Tony when he had moved back to the area and began working with Hiram Ring in 2006 to record an EP. Tony currently records/mixes local musicians/bands, works in pro-audio sales for Guitar Center, and keeps a blog (http://www.forgottengenre.com) where he catalogs and comments on current trends in recording, shares thoughts on culture, and touches on music-related topics. His advice, knowledge and abilities have been invaluable over the last few years.

Why Social Networks

I oldest became embroiled with Multiethnic Networks in 2000. At that second, I was engaged with my old companion and we had a lowercase situation an Cyberspace Bulletin Sheet.
Then – came Yahoo Groups……….wow, I mentation I was in the bailiwick ozone sheet with Groups
And the position is record………here we are today – 9 eld after I premier logged onto a Bulletin Reside to a Mecca and also the of Social Networks.
My Article today faculty be sharing with you what I fuck scholarly nigh Social Cloth. By all capital, I don’t reflect myself an practiced and I am trusty there are galore views.
I am inspired to this article because, at lowest erstwhile a day I find a telephone from a Party Textile member asking me how to Sociable Meshwork. It’s actually quite oblong, but it is not at ALL what you guess. Before I blackbeard you the pro’s and con’s – in’s and out’s, the Kudos and the Faux Pas – let’s see what Friendly System is and is not:
1. NOT strictly publicizing your playing br2. It is Exclusive almost making contacts (react I didn’t say making income for your business?) br3. You be ordered on every Cultural Web you are a share of br4. Better to be a conception of 4 networks you can rivet on instead of 40 you never somebody minute for br5. It is NOT most vindicatory swing my join out there and trust someone grabs it! (can you see me quivering my psyche?)
So, here we are……Interpersonal Scheme case!
But, ………are you Waiting?
You say, iwhat do you signify am I fit?i
Ahhhhhhhh, there lies the problem with most Gregarious Networker wanna-be’s. No system of mechanism!
Let me have you hind to a minute you had to organization to see a Hymeneals, Cocktail Lot, a Hallowe’en Recipient, Date Circle or any new sociable operate.
You go to the Party and here you are – at the Greeting – and you see HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS of fill – 99% you soul NO Clew who they are. Dependable acquainted?
What do you do? Attain up a conversation with someone session succeeding to you, someone at the strike finish, at the pledge pipage – you act……….Account Chitchat……MINGLING
What’s that……….you you didn’t move into the Salutation and shriek
I Get THIS OPPORTUNITY AND Large – amount over here and I give guide you!
You didn’t do that?
Why not?
, it was not Assign!
So – suppose of Mixer Networking the comparable – It’s a Line Organization, so to communicate.
Let’s go rearwards to the band………..how umteen you idly bill visit do you Defecation on every aspect of your experience and commercialism?
Service?
Why not?
You don’t bonk them……..and they don’t jazz you!
AH-HA! The bells are effort off now, huh?
But you do say hi, justice?
When was the parting you said, hi to a new member on a ethnical scheme without mentioning your enterprise?
and I normal Conscionable HI (no agendas)
Are you exploit this now……………………..???
O.k. – now you are intelligent to be the Living OF THE Receiver!
Spot! (Safekeeping departed from the keyboard – manoeuvre forth from the keyboard – elude ALL feelings to Noise emails and POSTS and ADS all over the area)
***NOW, it’s dimension for Support 1 to Cultural Networking…………
When you are getting primed for a gregarious role – what added to do you? Project what to assume? Gifts? You regularize deed out who is forthcoming so you mate dormy of indication if you jazz anyone. YOU Mean before you flatbottom get to the Organisation!
(are the lightbulbs off?)
Awhile I definite I was exploit to tie much party networks. I had oodles and oodles of topics I could create on and I was leaving to diary on them. Blogging creates quality – reply with Profitable cognition on a treatment creates credibleness – semiprivate, personable emails – creates credibleness.
I mentation some my personalized interests.
1. I am a wreak from domicile mom. I run a morganatic performing, I am not a rest at residence mom br2. I eff thriftyness and action money. br3. I pair Twirp br4. I jazz an Autistic progeny br5. I love animals
and so on and so forward.
So, I went to Ning.com and started to do investigate on what groups fit my interests, including enterprise. I spent hours and hours running over the Ning.com groups. If you won’t head the measure to deed out what typewrite of groups you are connexion, you somebody lost your experience! Don’t smooth pain to joint one much party mesh if you won’t the term to hit out what is deed on at the recipient
I then pioneer 10 groups I mat similar was a pair for me……………
I linked them and for heaven’s interest, fill – PUT A Salience Show OF YOU on your Attender. I don’t do playacting with your individual, I present do it with YOU.
Locomote 2 – How was anyone on these groups effort to pair ME?
O.k. – most groups individual Inform Yourself…how umpteen of you mortal posted on those links and screw never gone backrest to appear who added has posted after or before you?
I put my mortal
BLOGS – that’s appropriate folks, BLOGS. I started thinking around Blogs.
Stair 3 – The Blogs!
I wrote 8 Disunite Blogs – that had Zip to do with my individual playing.
! (I can see the guardianship over everyone’s rima! lol)
I wrote blogs that were inspirational (common a tarradiddle) – systemic subjects, etc. Not one advertised my playacting (though I did put my website at the underside of the diplomatist).
I put the Blogs excursus and didn’t job them,yet as I was Comfort in the thinking phases.
Manoeuvre 4 – Strikingness Tender
I created a Strikingness Industrialist on each of the groups and apiece salience page in radical was congruent = this created a unchanging substance about me. Comparable timbre, unvaried line, equal everything. I testament say it again – PUT A Salience Interpret OF YOU on your Strikingness Diplomat. I don’t do playacting with your offspring or you militia logo, I testament do playacting with YOU.
Stair 5- Activity!
Each day for 8 life I was a Sociable Mesh Insane.
Mundane at the Photographic moment I had a collection on all the groups I was a member of. I set it up so the blogs would communicating on a precise quantify and escort.
Almost an period after they posted – I went to all the groups to they are posted and see if there are any comments. I formulated discussions in this way
I then went onto to add comments to conversations that are already occurrence! Observation, I didn’t say I started conversations and discussions
But the assemblage be cordial and authentic. I NEVER advertised my acting in any comments………….it is not my estimate and COMPLETELY out of series to be publicizing MY sector on someone added’s treatment.
Stair 6 – Ads (here comes the corrupt tomatoes!)
Which leads me to the ever arguable of the Notice Support and Blogs.
Personally, I judge it opprobrious, and very amateurish for anyone to writer a Blazing advertizement on a Notice Surround on someone’s Salience Writer or Journal. My Salience Industrialist is MY diplomatist of advert. Reach a banknote to say hi – turn a conversation, but if you station a flag ad or links on My Comment Paries – you get unrecoverable any latent of me as a consumer of yours.
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Karp running Hilo half marathon in March

What would it take to get sedentary people out the door to start exercising?  Many people find it difficult to locate the necessary motivation to begin and stay with a regular exercise program.

     For Robert Karp the spark plug of motivation came from his annual physical checkup when it was revealed that he was overweight, had high cholesterol and elevated blood pressure.

   “In the mid 1970’s my doctor gave me some pills and told me to lose about 40 to 45 pounds,” Karp said.  “Not wanting to take pills for the rest of my life I started running.”

   Karp was in his 40’s when he realized that he would need to exercise regularly if he was to avoid all the trappings of over indulgence and the health problems associated with it. 

   Starting out was no easy task for a man that could barley run 100 yards.  “At first I could only run the distance between two telephone poles before I had to walk to catch my breath,” he said.  “Slowly I was able to increase the number of poles without slowing to catch my breath and eventually I switched to timing and increasing my running increments.”

  Before long this middle aged man was jogging for 35 minutes straight and he had even started to take his running shoes on work related trips to Oahu.  It was on Oahu, at one of his management seminars, that Karp discovered an even better way of getting into and staying in shape.

   “I was at a seminar in Makaha for a few days and there I learned that running for an hour is only part of the picture.  We were told that when running, the body will shift from burning carbohydrates to fat after about 40 minutes,” he said.

  The following morning Karp went out for a one hour run for the first time.  Since that time Karp has never gone out for less than an hour, except when doing short races.

   It didn’t happen overnight, but with a little patience and perseverance Karp’s weight came down and he was off the pills that his doctor had prescribed.  In July 1981 Karp ran his first marathon, a distance of 26.2 miles, in Hilo. 

   “My doctor was so impressed with what I was able to do that he and his wife started running,” Karp said.

   Karp grew up in West Chicago during the ‘30’s and played football and ran track while in high school.  “I ran the high hurdles in my earlier years in high school and during my senior year I earned my letter in the mile and half-mile,” he said.

    It was during his senior year of high school that Karp broke the school record for the half-mile and came within three tenths of a second of breaking the mile record.

    Karp enlisted in the Air Force in 1952 during the Korean War and got his BBA in accounting at the University of Hawaii, Manoa in 1960.

   “My working career was entirely in Hawaii and primarily in the accounting management and financial controllership in the sugar and macadamia industries,” he said.

    In the late 60’s Karp was transferred from Olokele Sugar on Kauai to Pepeekeo Sugar on the Big Island and eventually worked at Paauhau Sugar, Laupahoehoe Sugar, Hamakua Sugar and finally Ka’u Sugar.  It was in the mid 70’s working at Laupahoehoe where Karp started to run and earned his Manoa MBA.

   Eight years ago Karp was returning to Hilo from the Kona Toys for Tots Parade on his motorcycle when he got into a serious accident.

    “The last thing I could remember was rolling back on my throttle as we crossed the bridge at Papaaloa around 3 p.m.  The biker behind me said that for some reason after we started to accelerate on the bridge my head moved forward, down and to the left and I started to cross the centerline,” Karp said.

   Karp slammed his bike into the guardrail on the opposite side of the road after crossing the bridge.  An ambulance took him to Hilo Hospital where he spent the next two weeks in intensive care and the following two weeks recovering.

   To continue to exist, Karp needed two pints of blood, stitches and pins to secure his crushed left hand, two metal plates were installed to stabilize and strengthen his broken left arm above the wrist and his broken left leg above his bolted left ankle.

  There were three broken ribs, a collapsed right lung, along with scrapes and bruises almost everywhere.  Had he not been wearing his helmet his story would have ended that afternoon in November 2001.

   Karp retired in July 2007 and today this 77 year old as he continues to exercise on a regular basis.  “I’ll walk briskly for over an hour two to three times a week with an occasional two hour jaunt,” he said.

    “On those mornings that I’m not on the road I’ll do about 45 minutes of exercises such as push-ups, sit-ups, weights, toe-touching, a little stretching and HealthRider time,” he said.

   Karp will also keep an eye on what he eats, although he will eat just about everything, he controls the amount that he eats and when he eats.

    Eight years following his near death accident Karp is preparing for a half-marathon (13.1-miles) that will be hosted by the Big Island International Marathon Association in March.

    “My goal for the half-marathon is to complete the race in a reasonable time, all things considered.  When you have set definitive goals and reasonable goals you have developed a guide or map to follow for your achievement and success,” he said.

I HADN’T expected a reception, but one is waiting on Ted Tihansky and Alison Hill’s lawn. The artists and I have just strolled to their home from the Black Duck, one of two stores still open for business in what passes for a village on Monhegan Island. The sky is a robust blue, but an October wind whips over the headlands, a remnant of the rainstorm that drenched the coast the previous day. Bruised apples and yellow leaves litter the still-damp lane.

And what a strange reception it is. The guests, a half-dozen or so, are tall and scrawny, with coal-black skin reminiscent of the shriveled corpse of King Tut. Wrist-thin necks. Sagging breasts. Squinty eyes. Mouths open in laughter … or is it grief?

This is how Ted Tihansky stays fit and warm during Monhegan’s off-season. Armed with a chainsaw, he spontaneously hacks fallen trees into wraiths and bizarre animal hybrids, then tosses them into a bonfire for a good scorching.

Presenting one joyful couple leaning toward each other, heads tilted, mouths agape, Ted says, “I did these two when we got married – Alison’s first year out here – and that’s what I think was coming from my subconscious. They’re called Singing Man and Singing Woman, and I think I’m just gonna have to keep ‘em.”

The introductions continue. Here’s Skinny Man, lashed to a stockade fence by a twining wisteria, and Cobra, a snake with a profile like Marley’s ghost.  “This is me trying to get a hold of myself,” says Ted, fingertips waxing the cheek of one stressed-looking fellow. “And this woman is having a hard time. I think it’s my female side freaking out at whatever.” Surveying the whole motley lot, he adds, “I never know what I’m going to make exactly. Once I do ‘em, I go ‘uh-oh’ or ‘yaaaaay!’ They’re very powerful. Painting is my focus, but these come from a deeper level.”

Dressed in a bulky sweater and paint-spattered pants, his thinning hair pulled into a ponytail, Ted, fifty-five, declares with boyish earnestness that he will keep carving log figures until he’s made sixty-five of them.

Alison, fifty-seven, is wearing similarly splotched jeans and a ball cap pulled low so she is all blue eyes and pixie smile. The number sixty-five, she tells me later, has no significance. “Ted’s like that,” she says affectionately. “He’ll just come out and say, ‘I’m going to make sixty-five of these!’ or ‘I’m doing twenty of those!’”

Monhegan, a narrow, one-and-a-half-mile-long hulk of meadows and forest braced by glowering cliffs, has famously drawn artists for 150 years. In summer, when the island’s population hovers around 600, painters can be seen dabbing canvases atop every crag and on every lane and cove.  This time of year, though, you can count on one hand the number of artists living on island. Ted has been a year-rounder since 1999. Alison joined him two years later.  Having traveled through the seasons with a community known for reticence toward newcomers, the two have acquired an intimate knowledge of place that informs their work. They can’t help but paint the same coves, fish shacks and lobstermen, often working side by side, yet their expressions are uniquely their own.

“Both are exceptionally talented portrait artists, and there aren’t a lot of artists who do proficient and excellent portraits,” says Elizabeth Moss Civiello, whose galleries in Falmouth and Scarborough show Hill and Tihansky’s works. Once married to the son of Henry Kallem, a prominent member of the Monhegan art colony, Civiello has a particular interest in Monhegan art. “The technical aspects Ted and Alison have acquired as great portrait painters are applied to their plein air work. Portrait painting has given them the skills to capture tonal color differences in their paintings of sunsets and the ocean.”

Civiello, a former full-time Monheganite herself, first met Alison on the island ferry. “She is a very modest and lovely person,” Civiello says. “Ted also is very modest and very eclectic. He’s the stereotypical artist personality – scattered, with flashes of brilliance.”

Before Alison, Ted and I go indoors, there is one more character to meet.  Propped against the deck, he leans back from the waist, one long arm downwardly outstretched. “That’s Pulling Man,” Ted says, rooting in the vines at the figure’s feet. “Pulling Man was made from a chestnut tree at the Shining Sails inn…oh, here it is!” He plucks a skinny black arm from the tomatoes. Holding it against Pulling Man’s stump, Ted explains, “I made an error and cut it too deep, then he fell down and it broke.” (Ted’s artworks are often casualties of his kinetic work style.) “But when he’s up and leaning against something, he’s pulling. That’s important because people on Monhegan pull and push a lot.”

ONE day earlier I was aboard the Elizabeth Ann as she plowed out of the fishing village of Port Clyde into big gray rollers whisked up by wind and the previous night’s full moon. It was nigh impossible to focus on the horizon as the boat scaled one steep wave then plunged into another, flooding the bow and squirting icy seawater through the edges of the cabin door. The boat, which carries mail, freight and passengers to and from Monhegan, was on her fall schedule – one round-trip daily, down from three in summer. Come November, the wood-heated Laura B, a modified World War II army patrol boat, will make the thirteen-mile journey three times weekly, the island’s only link to the mainland until May.

Monhegan’s hemlock-covered precipices did not materialize in the heavy downpour until we were minutes from the wharf, where a small crew decked head to toe in orange oilskins got to work tying and unloading the boat. A couple of battered pickups stood ready to haul luggage for $2 a bag. Passengers set out on foot, following dirt roads edged with stacks of green and yellow wire traps, piles of fluorescent buoys and other gear peculiar to lobstering, the chief occupation of about one-third of Monhegan’s seventy full-time residents.

His first two winters on Monhegan, Ted Tihansky plied that trade as Captain Dan Murdock’s sternman. “I did it to become integrated,” he explains, sitting now with Alison in their living room-cum-gallery whose walls are covered floor to rafters with paintings. “I didn’t want to be an outsider.”

Raised in Pennsylvania coal country, he had no prior fishing experience. His job was to empty each hauled trap of unwanted crabs and fish and re-bait it with a mesh bag of rotting fish parts. Lobsters, if there were any, were tossed into a tank. “You go by that tank and – bang! — their claws go up and they got you,” Ted says, clutching his throat where a lobster latched onto him one day. “You have to scream and drop to your knees while Dan gets the pliers to put pressure on the other claw, hoping they let go. I mean, it scared me. Four in the morning. Eighteen degrees. Staying out there eleven hours.” A few times, while dropping re-baited traps from the moving boat, his legs got tangled in the lines and he was dragged toward the rails. Murdock heard his screams in the nick of time. “It would have been all over,” Ted says, wide-eyed. “How long are you going to survive down there? Seventy fathoms. It’s sick! It’s crazy!”

The experience influenced Ted’s artwork practically and inspirationally. “I was a good bait bagger – fast – and I would get ahead, so I’d scratch paintings onto scraps of wood with a bait iron.” Pieces like his  life-sized painting of two lobstermen pulling a skiff onto Fish Beach ring true, he says, because “I did this work. Dragging that skiff from low tide was about the worse thing you could think about after eleven hours of work. Lobstering hooked up with my art work, with the will to continue painting. It was an experience I had to have to see how hard anything is, whatever you do.”

Some afternoons, still wearing his reeky Grundens, he’d catch the Laura B and drive nonstop to visit his sweetheart in Newport, Rhode Island.  “He’d come into my studio totally covered in fish stuff,” Alison recalls. A longtime Newport resident, she was making her living as a portraitist, taking commissions for oils and sketching pastels at sidewalk fairs.

She inherited her mother’s gift for portraiture, but in college she’d been practical, majoring in psychology, then earning master’s degrees in art therapy and art education. Neither of these subjects figured into her first jobs, however. Hill’s admiration for strong women – her portraits of Monhegan’s female lobstermen are studies in grit and femininity – was nurtured working as a union carpenter and telephone lineman. She is serious body builder, winner of the 1986 Miss New England Natural Bodybuilding Championships. After suffering a back injury, she took up painting in earnest, studying at the Lyme Academy in Connecticut and the Art Student’s League in New York, where she attracted the attention of Deane Keller, legendary for his art courses on human anatomy. In a recommendation, Keller wrote that he’d encountered only one other student with Alison’s ability and spirit in forty-five years of teaching. (It is Ted who reveals this tidbit, prompting Alison to remark, “You’re embarrassing me!”)

It was at an art fair that Alison met Ted, who’d arrived in Newport in the late 1980s with a resume that included training at the Art Student’s League, Lyme Academy and Paier College of Art. He invigorated the local art scene by opening a gallery that heralded show openings with free concerts and plays. (He remains a Newport favorite and is represented in many private collections). He and Alison began painting together occasionally and, after a few years, friendship blossomed into romance.

In 1991, Ted received a fellowship that allowed him to travel the country and paint. His last stop, Monhegan, muse of Rockwell Kent, Edward Hopper, three generations of Wyeths and countless others, kept pulling him back, summers at first, then one winter, then another. In spring Alison came to work with Ted at the Trailing Yew, a rustic inn popular with hikers. Their tiny bedroom was furnished with one single bed and a kerosene lamp. “I was madly in love so I didn’t care,” Alison says. “I thought we’d be going back to Newport at the end of the summer. Then Ted announced he wanted to stay.”

SEVEN years later, Alison delights in the endless inspiration embodied in an island so small the din of breaking waves is inescapable. “The light is always a little different,” she says. “There is never enough time. Even when the days end at 9 o’clock, you work to the last minute because there is always something more beautiful to paint.”

She enjoys Monhegan’s rhythms – the camaraderie of many painters in summer, the introspection of winter, when she and Ted don one-piece storm suits, sling easels over their shoulders and trudge through snow to paint scenes the other artists never see. The frigid temperatures turn their palettes stiff and sticky, but they use that to advantage, the thick colors adding dimension to their paintings. “Ted is hard core, but I don’t last too long out there,” admits Alison, who regards the off-season as an opportunity to paint the stoic faces of Monhegan in her studio. Island living has allowed her to develop as a landscape artist – she renders her subjects with loose, choppy strokes, emphasizing mood and form over details – but portraits are her first love, and hers are luminous.

Hill learns about her models as much through conversation as quiet observation. “You have to get inside that person and get who they are,” she says. “I get a sense of their expressions and what’s behind their eyes.” Thus, she coaxes from the canvas not only the sure-footed stance of Angela Iancelli but something deeper as well – the inner resolve and determination of a lobster boat captain and single mother. Her perceptiveness results in family portraits that seem almost alive – a child’s shy smile, a baby’s innocent appraisal, a mother’s gaze, full of pride and unconditional love.

Like Ted, Alison eased into the tight-knit community by making herself useful. She taught art classes at the schoolhouse (enrollment: five) and served as vice president of the public library. “You don’t want to be in anybody’s face,” she says of the unwritten protocol, “but I’m like that anyway, so it was a good fit for me. I have a lot of space to do what I want.”

Ted’s work, too, has been influenced by Monhegan’s blend of intimacy and isolation and a life paced by nature in all its brutal beauty. His short, quick brush strokes have become more energetic, seeming to dance and leap upon the canvas. His landscapes in particular are drifting from impressionism toward rhythmic and soulful compositions that embody not so much Monhegan’s surface as its essence. Manana island may glow like charcoal ember under a sky seen as orange, red, purple and gray streaks. A frenzied grouping of thick white, gray and brown strokes becomes identifiable as a snow-covered road because of the sketchy figure walking upon it. (That would be Ed Donegan, the man who taught Ted the ins and outs of sterning and a favorite model for both artists.) “I have this desire to express what moves me in the moment,” Ted says. “Staying in the moment. That’s the only time I was ever happy in my life. I can’t rush anymore. I don’t want to think about what’s going to happen three hours from now. It’s this moment, the present, the now.”

Today Alison and Ted are fully embraced in Monhegan’s hug. They create and sell artworks to benefit island institutions. They accompany fellow islanders to legislative hearings  on school issues. Every Trap Day, when Monhegan lobstermen set their traps together, they help load thousands of traps onto pickups for the short jaunt to the wharf, where they unload them. “We’re mixed up in the whole deal here,” Ted says. “The school teachers are going to work. The kids are going to school. The carpenters are indoors working. The fishermen are fishing. You better get out there and do what you’re supposed to be doing too. This is what we’re supposed to be doing. We’re supposed to be painting here.”

To purchase a copy of the Down East Magazine in which this story originally appeared, visit Down East, October 2008.

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Meredith Whitney, prominent banking analyst at her self-named advisory group, should have worn a bib to protect her from the adoring drool supplied by Maria Bartiromo in a recent CNBC interview. Ms. Whitney has quickly become a banking rock star during this “Great Recession” period.  She was right at a critical juncture, and as a result she was thrust into the limelight. Much like Abby Joseph Cohen, the perma-bull Goldman Sachs strategist who gained notoriety in the late 1990s, Whitney (the perma-banking bear) will continue having difficulty living up to the lofty expectations demanded of her.

Despite the accolades, Whitney’s crystal ball has gotten cloudy in 2009. I suppose accuracy is not very important, judging by her bottom-half 2007 ranking (year of her major Citigroup call) in recommendation performance and 48%-ile ranking in the first half of 2008. Analysts, much like reporters, can avoid looking dumb by reporting the news du jour and by following the herd. Whitney has followed this formula with her continuous bearishness on the financial sector, excluding a brief but late upgrade of Goldman Sachs in July. Not only was her analysis tardy (Goldman’s stock tripled from the 2009 bottom), but her call has also underperformed the S&P 500 index since the upgrade.

Incoherent Inconsistencies

Like a bobbing and weaving wrestler (her husband John Layfield is a retired staged professional wrestler from the WWE), Whitney tries to concoct a completely mind-boggling narrative to explain her forecasts this year in the CNBC interview with Maria Bartiromo:

11/18/09 (XLF Price $14.60): “For the year, I have been at least ‘cover your shorts, go long.’ I haven’t been this bearish in a year.” (See Maria Bartiromo Interview)  

Hmm, really? Are you kidding me? Wait a second…is this the same “go long” Meredith Whitney that expressed the following?

3/17/09: (XLF: 8.55 then, 14.60 now +71% ex-dividends): “These big banks are sitting on loans that were underwritten with bad math, and the stocks are going to go down…these stocks are uninvestable.”

(Fast forward to minute 8:20 for quote above)

2/4/09 (XLF: 8.97 then, 14.60 now +63% ex-dividends): “Investors should not even consider owning banks on an equity basis” (Click here and fast forward to minute 8:10 for quote).

The schizophrenic accounting of her postures are all the more confusing given her stance that the sector was “fairly valued” in October, according to the CNBC Bartiromo interview.

Don’t get me wrong, she made an incredible bearish call on Citigroup in the fall of 2007 and was expecting blood in the streets until a massive rebound in 2009 surprised her. Investors need to be wary of prognosticators that get thrust into the limelight (see Peter Schiff article) for a single prediction. The law of large numbers virtually guarantees a new breed of extreme forecasters will be rotated into the spotlight any time there is a major shift in the market direction. I choose to follow the footsteps of Warren Buffett and stay away from the game of market timing and market forecasts. I believe James Grant from the Interest Rate Observer states it best:

“The very best investors don’t even try to forecast the future. Rather, they seize such opportunities as the present affords them.”

Meredith Whitney may be a bright banking analyst and perhaps she’ll ultimately be proven right regarding the downward banking stock price trajectories, but like all bold forecasters she must live by the crystal ball, and die by the crystal ball.

Wade W. Slome, CFA, CFP®

Plan. Invest. Prosper. 

DISCLOSURE: Sidoxia Capital Management (SCM) and its clients own certain exchange traded funds (including VFH), but currently have no direct positions in C, GS, or XLF. No information accessed through the Investing Caffeine (IC) website constitutes investment, financial, legal, tax or other advice nor is to be relied on in making an investment or other decision. Please read disclosure language on IC “Contact” page.

South African Caster Semenya

This past Wednesday, the IAAF announced that Caster Semenya is “still undergoing gender tests,” which means that one of the most talked-about stories in all of sport, since it first made headlines at the World Championships in Berlin, is still without an ending, happy or otherwise. That it is taking months to come up with a solution is a vivid illustration of the complexity of a controversy that, in the end, will have no winners.

According to Jill Geer, if the calls for sex-testing Semenya were due to something beyond just how she looks or sounds, to include knowledge of events or discussions that went on prior to Berlin, that’s another circumstance entirely.

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Story and photo by Kelli Coomes

Dawn breaks over the trees. A man with a silver head of hair looks out over his herd of cattle, gazing toward the sun as the first rays of sunshine illuminate his gruff-looking silhouette. He’s already been up and working for a few hours.

The sunlight slowly crawls across the land, like a veil being lifted from a piece of art. As the valley becomes lit, the farm comes to life. All that can be seen are acres of growing hay, a small herd of cattle, a few horses and chickens scratching the ground.

At 78, Dell Walker stands straight while surveying the work he has ahead of him. He has animals to feed, hay to haul and cattle to herd. He begins saddling his horse; his hands seem to be moving with a will of their own.

This is his family’s land. Held for generations. It borders the eastern edge of the Provo River, in the southern end of Provo, Utah. The house no longer sits on the farm. It was torn down when the farm became prosperous enough for the family to move into town. That was when Walker was only 10.

“We are a dying breed,” Walker said, his eyes sad. “Our children don’t work the land with us.”

Walker has three grown children. He has many grandkids and a few great grandchildren. None of them are interested in the land, except to sell it, Walker said. “Over my dead body.”

He’s no longer young enough to take care of all the land. A little more than a third of the farm property is now rented out. Horse owners can grow their own hay and house their horses for a monthly fee. The hay that Walker produces is used to feed his own three horses. The land is divided into multiple pastures, old-fashioned fences of chicken wire and log posts marking the boundaries.

Walker’s patch of farmland is one of the many farms that sit next to each other. Across from the paved road that runs as a border on the south edge of the farmland is a stream, and south of that, the homes of many of the farmers. A lot of the land has been sold for development projects.

“We pass on, and the kids left behind pass the land on,” said Glen Horton, who owns the land next to Walker’s. Horton is one of the lucky ones, according to many of the farmers around here. His children are farmers, too.

“It’s sad,” said Joann Walker, Dell’s wife. “We’re losing our culture as Utahns.”

Joann helps with the chickens on the farm and feeding the workers who come during haying season. She still collects fresh eggs for their meals at home, though they buy milk at the store. Milking cows are more expensive than cows for slaughter. They take their herds to auction and to the meat house.

In 78 years, Dell Walker has fought on foreign soil, worked at Geneva Steel, has fought cancer, has had two major heart surgeries and still continues working on his farm. At a young age, he lost his three middle fingers in an accident while working at Geneva Steel. “Finger and thumb are all I need,” he said with a smile.

More than five years ago, Dell Walker was diagnosed with Lymphoma cancer. “It was one of the worst days of my life,” Joann said, tears coming to her eyes at the memory. “He walked out and told me we’d be OK, and I believed him.” After two years of chemotherapy, he is in remission.

Three years before that, they found a heart murmur and he had heart surgery. It is normally something found at birth, but his had been missed. The doctors also missed it when he underwent heart surgery 15 years ago because of a major heart attack.

None of this has stopped his stride. Dell smiled and shared his secret: “Hard work and a reason for working.” He owns his house and the income from the farm is keeping him and his wife in the life they enjoy. “We’re happy,” Joann said.

Bai Xue wins the gold medal in the marathon at the World Championships

Bai Xue won both the 5000 and the 10,000 meters at the 2005 Asian Championships, and finished fourth in 10,000 m at the 2006 Junior World Championships. She finished twenty-first in the 10,000 meters at the Olympic Games.   Bai won the Beijing Marathon in 2008.

The Berlin 2009 Marathon event was Bai’s first time to take part in World Championships and only the second time to take part in an international marathon. She won the 2009 World Championships Women’s Marathon gold medal becoming the youngest woman to win the world marathon champion at the age of 20.

Bai Xue became the first Chinese athlete to win a marathon race at the World Championships. It was also the first gold medal for China in any event in Berlin, taking its medal tally to 1-1-2. And it was also the first gold in 10 years for Chinese women athletes’ at the world championships.

Bai Xue of China (L) celebrates in front of the Brandenburg Gate with compatriot Zhou Chunxiu (R) as she won in the women's marathon at the world athletics championships in Berlin August 23, 2009. Xue won with a time of 2,25.15 ahead of second placed Yoshimi Ozaki of Japan and third placed Aselefech Mergia of Ethiopia.

Her personal best times are:

• 1500 meters- 4:24.51 min (2004)
• 3000 meters- 9:16.32 min (2004)
• 5000 meters – 15:09.84 min (2007)
• 10,000 meters – 31:28.88 min (2005)
• Marathon – 2:23.27 hrs (2008)

I’m starting a blog that profiles every town called Middletown in America.