Do you want more readers for your blog?

Hey gang,

Do you want more readers for your blog? If so, I have a helpful tip to share. I have been off researching all the hottest websites, trying to learn what exactly they are doing right. Well, One of the things they do is apply to the Open Web Directory at DMOZ.

It is apparently a rather coveted thing to be accepted by DMOZ. Some folks wait several years before being accepted, and others never get accepted at all. The good news is, if you have a great site with good content, and stick to a subject matter that is not already over saturated, you might just find yourself accepted overnight.

It only takes a few minutes to apply, and is well worth it. Once your site is listed, it gets pumped out to all the major search engines on a regular basis and will drive tons of new traffic your way.

So give it a shot...we could all use a few thousand new friends.

The achievement of dreams

I once had a teacher who was a very talented commercial artist. He always said, “All my students will surpass me.” We would say “NO! NO! You have so much talent-much more than any of us!”
But ol’ Butch knew what he was talking about. All his students did go on to great success, while he remained behind.

I went to visit him years later and found him living in an old trailer behind a junk yard. I just landed a huge contract which required me to put together a team of about ten artists. I offered him a leadership position on the gig and more money than he earned that entire year.

He was a no show his first day on the job.

We met later to talk about it. I had seen him sabotage himself like this many times before.
After a long talk, we finally got to the root of the problem. Butch was scared of success. He knew how to get by. He knew how to live on the streets, and how to survive, but he did not know the first thing about complex tax returns, 1099 forms or corporate culture. He was out of his comfort zone in that world, and it frightened him. I understood, and bid him goodbye with a small gift of 100 dollars to pay his rent.

It’s been many years since that last visit with my street wise instructor, and I have met many other travelers along the road of life who remind me of him. Women who remain in abusive relationships, because that life is all they know, or think they deserve. Children from broken homes who grow up engaging in a merry go round of dysfunctional dating relationships and reliving their past; People who have dreams of building a better life, but never take action, or quit half way into a job.

It’s a strange phenomenon in human psychology how people will gravitate to the familiar, even when they know the alley they walk is nothing but a dark and painful dead end.

In a recent television biography of horror writer Stephen King, the author recounted the story of his success. He said his father was a writer too, but never rose above mediocrity, even though his work was very good. King’s mother told the boy his father lacked “stick-to-it-ivness.” He would become so discouraged by rejection, he would just drop completed projects after one rejection and move on to something else. King made a promise to himself he would not make the same mistake. After a series of over 100 rejections, his perseverance paid off. The title of the book: Carrie. A work King himself says he “didn’t think was very good.”

We all know what happened after that.

I suppose we all fall into that trap of giving up from time to time, but as for me, I am taking my cues from King. I “will not go softly into that good night” because the achievement of dreams is too much of a miracle to miss.

Homework Hurdles

"With good people, and this goes all the way back to my grandmother...she didn't tell my dad, "Now you go to the study table." No, no. She said, "I'll meet you at the study table." And that's where your good parents and you're good teachers are."

-OSU football coach Woody Hayes

Its homework time kiddies! Break out the book bags and get yer gray matter in gear.

My daughter is off to a fine start. She wrote a “letter of introduction” to her English teacher last night, (the classic “about me” and “what I did this summer” piece.) It was good. She typed it up on the computer, and brought it down for me to edit three times before printing off the final. I felt like the father in the movie "A River Runs Through it," marking up her work with my red pen, and handing it back saying "Again, and half as long."

During this exercise my son was engaged in twenty minutes of required reading. He picked a book called Halo, based on the ever popular X-Box video game. Momma is none to happy about this. The war game culture of the little boys in our neighborhood disturbs me. Sometimes I feel as if our sons are being marketed to by a secret Spartan military culture.

With his reading completed, his next task was to write a summary paragraph. Unfortunately, this did not work out so well. I asked several questions about what happened in the story, and got some pretty vague answers. So, mom got the fun duty of reading the first chapter of Halo. Holy snooze fest Batman! How in the world did this thing ever manage to get published?!!!! The entire first page is about the character SLEEPING!

Sleeping mind you! Some sort of waking up from cyber ice sleep bullishness. Roll me over and shove a pillow down my throat. No wonder my munchkin could not tell me what happened in the story.

I’m no great writer, (even though I would love to play one on T.V.) but I do know when you write a book, the first rule is to drop the reader into the action on the very first page.

Example:

Commander Kel on a mission:

Commander Kel went ballistic over the book, and immediately marched to her personal library to pull a few good examples for Private Munchkin to review.

“Here baby, read the first paragraph of this book, it’s a war story too, but written a lot better.”

(I know, War again, but ya gotta meet em where they're at, right?)

Thus my boy and I read the first page of Homer’s Iliad together. It’s more than a little above his grade level, but I think he saw my point about writing style in the example.

Then Commander Kel goes on a hunt around the house for age appropriate books he might like. I pulled six from the shelves, and he settled on Everlost by Neal Shusterman. Shusterman is a great writer. I highly recommend him.

For those of you looking for "just right books" to foster a love of reading in your child, you might want to visit The Database of Award-Winning Children's Literature (DAWC). Reference librarian Lisa Bartle put together this wonderful site with a customized search engine. You can plug in your child's age, interests, language, and even search using specific key words like "rock climbing", or "bugs," whatever your little tyke likes. Thanks to her site I now have a whole years worth of non war like ideas for age approriate books my son is sure to enjoy.

Till next time, This is Commander Kel saying "Over and Out."

Good Golly Miss Molly

Witty wonderful humorist and Political world shaker Molly Ivans has left the building folks. Ivins' was a Texas writer who used the power of her pen to stab jolting satire at people in positions of power.

"The trouble with blaming powerless people is that although it's not nearly as scary as blaming the powerful, it does miss the point."

In a 2006 speech Bill Clinton described Ivins as "good when she praised me, and painfully good when she criticized me."

Ivins called the Texas Legislature "The best free entertainment in Austin."

In a 2002 column she wrote: "Naturally, when it comes to voting, we in Texas are accustomed to discerning that fine hair's-breadth worth of difference that makes one hopeless dipstick slightly less awful than the other. But it does raise the question: Why bother?"

This story links to a video of Ivans as she points out the "phallacy" of the Texas "penial" code. The video covers the legislatures debate on dildo's, so be warned: While it is humorous, and makes a powerful point regarding prejudice, bias, and the ridiculous sense of priorities demonstrated in government, it is not suitable viewing for children or evangelicals.