Website Internet Marketing/ BestofUS

The Power of Email Marketing

2009-11-18T15:58:00.004-06:00

If your not using email to promote your business, convey information, or encourage your existing clients and patients to take action then your not taking advantage of one of the most effective marketing tools available to you today.

Here are some of the key advantages of reaching your audience through email:

Email allows you to present your message as you want to when you want to present it to your clients. Rather than wait for them to find their way to your website you are initiating the continuation and building of the relationship. You are keeping your business top of mind, which creates additional business and referrals.
Email will drive website traffic. An effective website is a vehicle for presenting the latest information about your business. You can’t assume that your clients are finding their way to your business every day, every week, or every month. A well constructed email Newsletter will bring them to your website and will directly increase your business volume.
Email is the best Return On Investment business generator. Unlike any other advertising vehicle you are able to track who reads your message, what path they follow to and from your message, and what their response is to your message. You are then able to change and massage your message to improve your results.

Building an effective email campaign

What results are you looking for?
Be specific;
I want to increase our monthly sales by 10%.
I want to get 5 new clients each month.
I want to increase this segment of my business by 25%

CREATE A COMMUNICATIONS CALENDAR FOR THE YEAR

I’m going to send out a monthly newsletter to my existing clintel. My staff will gather an email address from each of our existing clients. Our newsletter will contain news in our filed of practice, it will focus on timely product offerings and it will contain three calls to action each month.

BUILD THE “PERFECT” EMAIL

There are proven elements to a successful eNewsletter:
A short compelling subject line – your subject line can increase your open rate by 50%.
Build in links to your website – each story should present s snippet of information with the balance on your website.
Your should contain at least three calls to action; set an appointment, receive a brochure on this product, attend our upcoming seminar.
Coordinate your website with your newsletter
Too often a newsletter is sent out without a supportive website, if your website is not built to achieve your specific goals with calls to action that are easy to activate your newsletter will be just another expenditure witch produce no measurable results. Internet Solutions, Inc. 2009

TEST, Measure Results, TEST, Measure Results TEST, Measure Results!
With each newsletter sent you should be checking your analytics to determine the following:
Your Bounce Rate – how many bad email addresses do you have and who are they.
Your Open Rate – how many of your recipients opened the newsletter and how did this open rate compare with past newsletters.
Your Click Rate – how many followed the path to your website and which articles had the most click throughs.
Your Goal Achievement Rate – how many new clients did you generate, how many appointments did you set, how many referrals were generated.

Build your mailing list
If done right your monthly newsletter will become your best marketing vehicle, so the more people that you are speaking to each month the more your business will grow. Marketing is all about being top of mind when your services are needed, and there is no more effective way to stay top of mind then through a newsletter and a well constructed website.

The Future of Email Marketing
The web is a rapidly changing landscape. The biggest changes in web marketing relates to mobile marketing. How does your audience read your newsletter on that tiny screen on their cell phones? How do you incorporate social networking to make your newsletter accessible to a whole difference subset audience?

What are your options?
You can ignore the development of Internet Marketing.

You can get ahead of the curve and develop an Internet Market.

Click here for your Free Website Analysis

PageRank: Is it important?

2009-11-14T16:35:00.008-06:00

PageRank is a web page ranking system developed by Google and named after Larry Page one of Googles co founders. It’s used by Goggles Internet search engine to assign a numerical weighting to each website page on the web. The purpose of this rating is to measure the relative importance of the page within the websites category.

Proper Search Engine Optimization will provide the search engine crawlers with the necessary information to properly catagorize a website. Once a website is properly categorized where that website appears in search is dependent on the relative importance of that website to its web category.

To achieve a high PageRank your website must acquire links to other sites within your category. Each site below has achieved a level of relative importance. Page C, below will have a higher rank than page E, even though it has fewer links; the link that it does have has a much higher level of relevance then the cumulative level of relevance achieve by page E as a result of its multiple links. As a result of page A’s one incoming link and no outgoing links it’s level of relative importance is higher then those pages that have both incoming and outgoing links. Thus reciprocal links are not advisable unless the incoming link has a higher PageRank than your receiving page.

Page Rank runs from NA ( not categorized) then 0 to 10, with 10 being the highest Page Rank. Page Rank is not as important to the success of your website as proper Search Engine Optimization, but it does give you a means of monitoring the relative importance of your website.

On October 14, 2009, Google employee Susan Moskwa confirmed that the company had removed PageRank from its Webmaster Tools section. Her post said in part, "We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it’s the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true." As of the time of this post Google has not remove the Page Rank tool from it’s Webmaster Tool option available.

Some companies offer to sell high PageRank links to webmasters, but this strategy to build Page Rank should be approached with caution. It can be an effective and viable marketing strategy to buy link advertisements on content pages of quality and relevant sites to drive traffic and increase your link popularity. However, Google has publicly warned that if such sites are discovered to be selling links for the purpose of conferring Page Rank, their links will be devalued.

The Search Engine Results Page, or SERP, is the actual result returned by a search engine in response to a keyword query. This is what you see after you enter your search criteria and click on SEARCH. The SERP consists of a list of links to web pages with associated text displaying the pages title, description and URL or web address.

The SERP rank of a web page refers to the placement of the corresponding website link on the SERP, where higher placement means higher SERP rank. The SERP rank of a web page is not only a function of its Page Rank, but depends on a relatively large and continuously adjusted set of factors, commonly referred to by Internet marketers as SEO (Search Engine Optimization). SEO is aimed at achieving the highest possible SERP rank for a website or a set of web pages.
Once SEO is in place, Page Rank is achieved and website traffic is growing the next step is to implement conversion strategies that are designed to turn website visitors into new client of patients.

I choose to think of it like a retail store; you build your store in a good location, your stock your store with the best merchandise at a competitive price, the traffic comes through the door, now you have to make it easy for them to buy from you. The “easy to buy from you” are the conversion strategies.
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Your Customers Words Carry More Weight Than Yours

2009-10-20T13:27:00.007-05:00

Testimonials are critical to any website that's marketing professional services.

They provide "social proof," suggests author Robert Cialdini in his insightful social psychology book Influence: Science and Practice. This principle states we determine what's correct by reinforcing our search for what is correct for us. A testimonial is in fact a non personal referral and we all know the best source of new business is a referral. So if referrals are available through testimonials why wouldn’t you have them on every page of your website?

The day of asking your neighbor over the fence for a suggestion as to where you can obtain quality professional services has past. The pace of our society and available technology has replaced the neighbor’s advice with the internet. We regularly read of a website achieving traffic of 9 million visitors a month, this is because people tent to move in mass.

"As a rule, we make fewer mistakes by acting in accord with social evidence than by acting contrary to it" stated Cialdini. "Usually, when a lot of people are doing something, it is the right thing to do.”

The simple truth is you can present the latest technology, all your credentials, your years of experience but a testimonial from someone that is respected can sometimes more effectively persuaded people to take action.

Giving and Receiving Testimonials

It’s easy to grasp the benefit of having someone that you respect place a testimonial on your website, but have you considered tie benefit of giving a testimonial to a website? “Links”
Links are the key to website power on the internet. “He who has the most relevant back-links rises to the top of search.” You can have a perfectly Search Engine Optimized website, but if your competitor has more relevant back-links you’ll never move past them in search. So if your link is constructed properly your testimonial on someone else’s website will create a win-win exchange. It important that you understand the value of one-way links and avoid link mills; both which could cause your website more damage than value.

The web is all about “search” so your testimonial needs to be scanable to achieve maximum impact. Here are some guideline to writing effective testimonials that will convey trust, confidence and credibility.

Make It Identifiable: Use full names, identify the company when applicable, and include a date. John D. is not a full name and creates suspicion rather than credibility.

Keep It Brief: One or two specific points and a long story use your website keywords which will add to your optimization.

Speak To Their Concerns: All professions carry baggage, address that baggage in your testimonials. The baggage is the question that all prospects ask. “Do you have to wait hours to see him?” “Does she take time with you?” “How long has he been in the field?” When people are uncertain, they increasingly look to others to decide how to act.

Speak To Your Market: If your target market is woman, get testimonial from woman, if you’re going after the common man use the common man. Take your queue from the commercials that you see on TV. Cialdini noted the increased use of "average-person-on-the-street" testimonials on TV because advertisers know an effective way to sell a product to ordinary users is to demonstrate other "ordinary" people like and use it.

One Per Page: Don't use a “Testimonial Page” no one wants to read that many and no one will find it. There’s nothing wrong with having a testimonial on every page if it fits your website design.

Let Karma Work For You

Your website is built around you marketing your services yet your current clients and or patients words will carry more weight then your words on your website. Knowing this get in the habit is offering testimonials to those professionals that provide you quality service and let that link come back to you.

What others say about you can carry much more weight than your own words. Arm your website with your clients' words. It's a powerful and economical way to generate trust, credibility and sales.

Kerry J Grinkmeyer
kj@bestofUS.com

BestofUS Internet Marketing Offers Search Engine Optimization and Link Building Services

2009-10-14T14:54:00.002-05:00

Search Engine Optimization and Link Building experts generate measurable results for professionals with social media marketing campaigns and one-way link building services.

By focusing on your websites underlying quality, search engine optimization as well as using some creativity to get other websites to link to your website, one-way link building can propel a website to the top of Search. Most Internet marketing campaigns are “here today – done tomorrow efforts,” but BestofUS’s Internet Marketing services combine an optimized website a good “news hook,” in an optimized bolg post, a well-researched list of influential bloggers, and blogger outreach best practices.

In the industry there’s currently a lot of talk about how link-baiting is the best way to build back links to your website. There are several underlying characteristics of link-baiting that that make it a viable and sustainable strategy.
The key is to post a blog and or issue a press release that contains information the sheds a new light of a hot topic. As an example of two of the hottest topics to the American public today are the economy and the current debate around national health care.

Social media marketing campaigns
Let’s assume you’re a Financial Advisor and you have access to the email addresses of 500 of the top financial advisors in the United States.

You send them a survey and ask them questions about their feelings about the economy and the stock market over the next six months. Then you blog your survey results and copy all the leading bloggers in the financial markets. Your blog is part of your website, watch the links build, watch your Google Ranking climb, watch your website traffic spike. You have just established you and your website as one of the most relevant financial websites on the Internet.
If you’re a physician, or a dentist or a chiropractor take the same strategy and apply it to the national health care debate and achieve the same results.

In every profession there’s a “hot topic”, real estate, taxes, health care, the economy; if you have access to the opinions of other professionals like yourself, through an email survey you can create a “news hook” that will propel your website to the top of relevance to your industry on the Internet.

BestofUS Internet Marketing’s home website is BestofUS.com which lists over 65,000 of the best professionals in the United States.

We’ve also identified the 50 most influential bloggers within the ten professions that we list on BestofUS.com to send a release before we post our blogs or press releases.

Building One-Way Links
This type of campaign can generate more then 190 blogs posts. If the information is well documented and presented it can be picked up by news services which produce some of the most valuable relevant links on the Internet. This is the kind of campaign that can result in a Google Home Page Ranking of #4 to #5 and over 200 back links.

SEO and One-Way Link Building Services
If you are interested in learning more about BestofUS Internet Marketing Campaigns, email me and I'll follow-up with a phone call.
Kerry J Grinkmeyer kj@bestofUS.com
www.BestofUS.com

Vietnamese Internet Marketing

2009-09-28T13:48:00.002-05:00

I spent the past month in Asia (Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam). I went for a vacation but I got an education, I spent 30 days in China in 2007; the difference between China and these countries is mind boggling. I went to answer some questions that I had about the Vietnam War as well as to gather information for investment purposes. If you’re interested in my observation you can read my blog: http://bestofustravelers.blogspot.com/

I did learn something about marketing that is applicable to the Internet and how you use your website. We stayed in the Indochina Hotel in downtown Hanoi. Each morning when we came out of our hotel, there were 15 in our group, there was a lady at the curb selling a selection of hats, tee-shirts and postcards. She was there when we left in the morning and when we arrived back in the evening. It wasn’t until the second day that I realized that she was also at the temples, monuments and restaurants that we traveled to during the day; the same lady.

So on the third morning I watched her out the back window as we left the hotel and saw that she put her merchandise in the saddlebags of her scooter and followed our van where ever we went, each day she changed her selection of merchandise and varied her outfit so that most of our group didn’t realize what was happening, and each day she made sales.

This Vietnamese lady had identified her prospects, Americans, after I’m sure substantial research and she continued dripping us until we bought for four days until we left Hanoi. I’m sure if she had my email address I’d still be hearing from her.

You have a website, if it’s properly optimized you’re getting visitors, you should be giving them numerous opportunities to leave their email address behind, and you should have an email program in place to drip your message to them at least once a month. Like the lady in Vietnam on her scooter once you’ve identified your best prospects if you’re not providing them an opportunity to buy, they’ll most likely become someone else’s client tomorrow.

Unlike the lady in Vietnam you don’t have to buy a scooter and gasoline and follow your prospects around to put your message in front of them, technology will do that for you, all you need to do is write a valued message that will result in a response.

Do You Need a Blog on Your Website

2009-08-18T16:28:00.004-05:00

You’ve heard that one of the ways to improve the traffic to your website is to incorporate a blog. Before you pull out the pen and paper and start penning your first words of wisdom or share your latest piece of knowledge, take a moment and determine just what it is that you are hoping to accomplish and what you have to put in place to for your blog to achieve the results that your looking for.

Let’s start with a question does a blog attached to a company website improve the websites search rankings?

The answer is “Yes” if the blog is done right, and addresses these four issues that will improve a sites ranking whether it be additions through a blog or other parts of the site.

The blog provides you a place to regularly add relevant content to your website, and search engines love fresh content and fresh content keeps visitors coming back.

A blog provides you and opportunity to encourage back links.

A blog will help you build a community around your website. Thorough your blog you will come in contact with other people in your industry, you’ll exchange ideas, you’ll build your reputation, and you’ll develop a following of people who’ll spread the word about your posts through Linked In, Face Book, and Twitter.

Through your blog you can set up RSS feeds that will multiply your exposure which often leads to more links, which leads to higher rankings, which leads to more clients.

So, all in all a blog is an excellent part of turning a website into a marketing tool, but there are more decisions that need to be made before you start bloging.

Are you going to host your new blog on the company site or at another domain line Blogspot or Word Press?

I recommend that you host your blog on your company site, that way all the benefits tie directly to your company site; the back-links, the RSS feeds and any email addresses left behind are tied directly to your company site. Besides any blog visitor are only clicks away from where you’re doing business.

Now that the blog is on-site how where does it go and how should it be structured? You have a choice of setting up in its own folder (www.bestofus.com/blog), or a separate subdomain (www.blog.bestofus.com/).

My advice…option#1…in its own folder. This will give you better results with Google search.
Now you need bloging software to write your blog in. I currently have twelve blogs, 10 with Word Press and 2 with Blogspot. I find that I am more comfortable in Word Press and that I can add more features through their plug-ins that help be optimize my blog and build traffic.

Hold on don’t start bloging yet, here are a few tips to help you get the most out of your blog. Most these can be achieved through the plug-ins offered through Word Press.

Proper structure of your URLs/Permalinks. Each post has its own identity, some use numbers in sequence. It should look like this: (www.bestofus.com/blog/DoYouNeedaBlogOnYourWebsite)

Optimize your description, title, and Alt tags. Treat each post as another web page so that it can be easily categorized and ranked by the search crawlers.

Create a Sitemap. You need to build this and you’ll find a plug-in to help you get it in place.
Directory of your best posts. Place this directory on your Side Bar so the readers can easily find the best you have to offer.

Link to your Social Media. You should have a snippet of any new posts appear on your Linked In, and Face book pages there are a number of services that can do this for you.

You should now be ready to start bloging. You’ll want to adapt the same promotional, link building, visitor to client conversion and SEO strategies that you have in place for your company site into your blog.

Hopefully you’ll enjoy bloging, the blog will build traffic to your website and you’ll have to turn new clients away. Remember the Internet is relatively new and it is growing each day, it you jump in now you’ll be light years ahead of your competition and as it changes you’ll be in a position to adapt. The Internet is the best marketing tool you have ever been presented, don’t ignore it any longer.

How to Compare Your Online Success with Your Competition

2009-08-11T15:46:00.002-05:00

The internet is a level playing field. This means that every company has an equal opportunity to get their message found by potential customers online. In the retail world if you’re located in the ‘big mall’ you have a competitive advantage over your competition, not true on the Internet. But that also means that your site is competing head to head with your business competitors for traffic in search engines and social media. Your competitors might be generating a lot of traffic from keywords, linking sites and Search Engine Optimization that you haven't implemented. It’s easy enough, through Google Keywords, to find out how many people are searching for businesses like yours in your city every month, and you know how much business is coming in through your website. So if your website isn’t bringing you new business each month what do you have to change to get your website working for you? In this article I’m going to tell you how to find out how your website is performing compared to your competition.

How does your page ranking, inbound links & search engine rank compare to your competitors' websites?

What keywords is your competitor using to optimize his pages and achieve better results?

How does your Internet penetration compare to your competitors?

How does your page ranking, inbound links & search engine rank compare to your competitors' websites?
You need to first install a Google page rank bar onto your browser. This is a free tool provided by Google that allows you to see the page ranking of every website that you visit. It also allows you to see how many relevant links Google recognizes and when the page was last audited by Google. Follow the instructions at this link to install the Google Rank Bar. (http://www.google.com/toolbar/ie/index.html)

Once you have it installed it will show you a Page Ranking of NR (not rated) to 10. Click on the arrow to the right of the bar to find relevant links and when the page was last Cached or audited. This will give you an easy way to see how your site compares in the basics.

To compare Search Engine rankings go to www.seocentro.com. In the second box on the left side, SEO Tools, click on Rank Checker. Now enter your keyword (your profession and your city), and your domain name and your top competitors domain name. Submit

This will give you your search page rank on Google, Yahoo and Bing for the key words that you entered. The first listings will be for the map insert which Google offers, followed by the rankings of the WebPages.

What keywords is competitor using to optimize his pages and achieving better results?

Now you know who’s beating you at Internet marketing, now let’s find out how their doing it. Staying in SEOCentro, in the SEO Tools box go to Keyword Analyzer. Enter the same Keywords you used above and your domain name. These results will show you how efficiently you are using these keywords.

Now do the same thing with your competitors’ domain name.

This exercise should tell you whether your website is optimized or not; you can have a well optimized website and still not appear in the top of search if the competition has established a better penetration on the Internet. But you can’t get to the top of search no matter what your Internet penetration without good SEO.

How does your Internet penetration compare to your competitors?

Internet penetration is all about back-links and text links. Still on SEOCentro, click on Link Popularity. Enter your information and Submit. This is humbling, here your going to see all the work that goes into making a top producing website. You’ll see how many links you have over the Internet and how many the various services recognize as relevant.

If you’ve entered your competitor’s domain you’ll see how many relevant links you’re going to have to produce to compete with them for top search rankings.

Let’s look at the real world to see if getting to the top of search is worth the cost and effort. Let’s assume you’re a Personal Injury Lawyer in Boston; Google Keywords tells me that Google had 3,280 matching searches in July. Based on Google doing 67% of all search we can assume that there were 4,895 total searches last month for Personal Injury Lawyer in Boston.

Joel H. Schwartz’s website appears on the top of Google Search, he has a Page Rank of 3 and he has 85 relevant links. Joel had 4,378 visitors to his website in July; 3,333 unique visits (up from 221 in February). 34% of his search visits came from the keywords personal injury lawyer, 21.75% from car accident and 16.89% from slip and fall. Joel also got some of his traffic from his links and direct traffic.

If you’re really interested run the comparison on www.alicata.com . Arthur F. Licata’s site has a page rank of 3 and 141 relevant links (56 more then Joel) but appears on page 9 of Google Search. Do you know why?

Compare this to your business; where do you appear on search and how long does it take you get your message in front of 3,333 interested prospects?

If you’re a professional and you’d like to turn your website into a marketing tool, maybe we should talk.

Kerry J. Grinkmeyer
kj@bestofus.com
205 956 4329

How to Set and Monitor Website Goals

2009-08-07T15:33:00.003-05:00

To often businesses build a website with no real goals and objectives thought out for the site. Good goals and objectives add to the value of your business, are based on reality, and can be measured. The measuring part is the part that is most often overlooked, yet how can you know if your site is adding value to your business if you have no means of measuring its productivity and you have no one monitoring it. Here are some possible objectives for a well designed website:

• Generate names and contact information of potential clients or patients.
• Provide information for existing clients or patients.
• Disseminate timely information about your business and or industry while establishing you as an expert in your field.
• Distribute our Newsletter over the Internet thus eliminate the cost of printing and postage.
• Generate referrals by providing our Newsletter readers a means of forwarding it to a friend.

A website that doesn’t have specific objectives that are measurable suggests that the site was not well planed during its development process. This often happens when the parties involved in the development process do not have a full understanding of Internet Marketing.

Once you have a clear understand of how your website fits into your overall business plan you will need to incorporate these objectives into your site. It normally doesn’t mean a full rework of the site. Much of what needs to be added is software off the shelf that can be incorporated into your existing site.

With the objectives in place it’s important that you have a means of measuring the level of success that each objective is having. This is where you will turn to your website analytics. Your analytics watches over your website and tells you how many visitors your site had over a specified period of time, how they arrived at your site, and what they did while they were at your site.

As an example your site had 200 visitors last week; here’s some of the data your analytics will give you.

• 56% arrived from search, 20% direct (typed in your URL) and 24% by referral (from a link that you established with another website).
• The average time spent on your site was 2 minutes 43 seconds
• Your bounce rate was 33% (came and went didn’t spend any time)
• 20% of your visitors were return visitors and 80% were first time visitors.
• 23 visitors followed the link to your latest Newsletter, 3 became new registrants
• 15 visitors looked at the informational brochure you're offering, 6 visitors signed up to have it sent to them
• 12 visitors looked at the information on your upcoming seminar, 5 signed up to attend.

This is just a sampling of some of the information that is available; so what does this tell you.

• Your site is well Search Engine Optimized, your getting decent search traffic; you have a good link base that is feeding you traffic; you need to work on getting your website top of mind with your existing clients or patients. You need to build a mailing list.
• You need to beef-up your current content to get your onsite time higher.
• 33% of your visitors didn’t find what they were looking for; you need to dig deeper, did they come from Search, Direct, or Referral. The answerer will tell you what you need to change.
• You need to give your Newsletter, Brochure and Seminar better billing

A well structured website with specific measurable objectives that is properly monitored and maintained can be the most valuable marketing tool that you posses, but the truth is most small and medium businesses spend a lot of money building a pretty website get it up and running then basically forget about it because it doesn’t bring client through the door or make the phone ring. If this sounds like you, go to www.wealthenhancement.com; it’s a site with clear measurable objective, they offer you five opportunities to make connection with them on the landing page. Their website objective is “to generate new business”. Type Financial Advisor Minneapolis in your Google Search Bar, and see if you can find them. This is not by accident.

If you need help turning your website into a marketing tool we should talk.

Kerry Grinkmeyer
The Best of the US
kj@BestofUS.com
205 956 4329

How to Measure the Effectiveness of Your Website

2009-08-04T14:36:00.004-05:00

Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of Internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage.

In other words who's coming to your site, how did they get there, what did they do while they were there? Is your website achieving its goals?

The ultimate goal of web analytics is to improve the structure and layout of your site and its functioning as a marketing tool. To do this, you need to know what's working on your site and what's not. And if something isn't working, you need to understand why not and how you should begin optimizing it. In other words, you need to come away from your analysis with a list of to-do's.

Most users of website analytics read the reports without knowing what to do with them. For most people, reports seem to satisfy curiosity, "How many visitors did the site have yesterday?", more than provoke any kind of action.

Having clean data and actionable reports is one thing, but it is another matter altogether to know how to read them and respond. This articles will help you determine what to look for in your reports and how to relate what you find to your on site goals.

Start with a blank piece of paper and your computer down. Now, ask yourself, "Why did I have my website built?" "What do I want my website to add to my business plan?" "What has to happen for a site visit to be successful?" "What constitutes a visit a failure?"

Starting from this point, begin to create a list of questions. Don't even think about what reports are available yet. Just list the questions you need answers to.

Questions should be focused on your business goals and customer experiences. Rather than asking "How many visitors did we have last week?", ask "How long did the average visitor spend on the site and what pages did they view?" The first question will give you a single metric, the second will take into account the context of the pages, the keywords used to get to the page, the goals of the site, etc. In most cases your goal will be for the visitor to leave his contact information behind. Analytics should tell you what you need to change in order to improve your conversion ratio. You'll find that worthwhile questions will probably require multiple reports to answer.

Your list of questions might be short. That's okay. Your questions will change and grow in complexity as you realize the potential of your site as a marketing tool and the power of the analytics.

In practice, you should be creating lists of questions regularly. Maybe weekly. And as you answer questions, make changes and improve results you will likely replace them with other, more refined questions.

As you complete your list of questions, you still should be logged out of your analytics site. Now comes the important part, and you shouldn't let the graphs and available reports sidetrack you yet.

Now it's time to look at that list of questions and think about what elements would provide answers or clues.

It may be best to think about it anecdotally. For example, if you want to know which conversion (visitor to prospect) strategies are not performing well enough, you might imagine a potential visitor clicking on your Newsletter sign-up page. If they leave immediately,(time on page) that probably means something went wrong. It could be a disconnect between what you were offering and what your were asking for, (too much contact information). If they stay on the site but go to a different area than you expected, it may represent a failure of the conversion strategy to communicate the intended message. Think of all the scenarios that would indicate a failure.

It's important to remember here what is the goal: "To get the visitor to leave his or her contact information."

Now is the time to start matching up indicators with reports. This will vary with each site. You may decide for your site that a mixture of time on site, time on page, bounce rate and conversion rate give you an indication of the success of a particular strategy. Determining how to weight these metrics will depend on the site and the marketing goals.

As an example you might find that by beefing up current content you get more repeat visitors who are using your site as a library but your conversion ratio is going down, thus you may want to only offer snippets of content in a newsletter format and require a sign-up for a full read. You'll see this strategy used by the Wall Street Journal.

After analyzing your reports and building your strategies in this manner, you should be able to create a to-do list. If you can't, it wasn't a very useful exercise. The to-do list could include items like "Perform Brochure Mailing testing on landing page", "Offer a luncheon seminar on a hot topic", "Use more current topics on email newsletters", etc.

As you optimize your site and strategies, your questions will change. They will become more refined. As one area is perfected, other areas in need of your attention will surface. This should be a cycle of asking, optimizing and testing until your site is finally so perfect that every visitor who comes to your site can't help but ask to become your client or patient.

You are probably saying to yourself, "I don't have the time to do all this." If that's the case we may need to talk about your website and the goals that you that you would like to achieve with your website.

Kerry J. Grinkmeyer
The Best of the US
kj@BestofUS.com

How Do You Market Your Business on the Internet

2009-08-04T11:11:00.003-05:00

If you want to turn your website into a Marketing Tool these are questions that you need to be addressing, but before you do that it’s important that you gain some understanding of how the Internet works.

Imagine a huge spider crawling through out the Internet; its job is to determine what each website is all about and which are the most important. After a while this spider figures out that with over 300 billion websites he’s going to have to organize them in some manner. He decides to create categories; Financial, Medical, Shopping, etc. The spider looks for keywords, examines the site title, it’s description and its page content.

Once he gets his 300 million sites categorized he has to come up with a system of determining which of the sites in each category are the most important to the category and to the Internet overall. So he decides to give a site points for other sites linking back to it, more points for having other sites referring back to it in its content, and more points if the content on the original is updated on a regular basis thus keeping current on the subject matter of the category.

Those sites with the current content, and most relevant back links are then ranked highest and appear highest in search. That’s a simple explanation of how Internet search works.

If you build a beautiful website to promote your business and it’s not appearing on the first page of search, it’s like building a beautiful billboard and keeping it in your basement.

To find out where your website is living, type your business and location in your search bar (Orthodontist Omaha), just like someone who needed your services would do. There are usually ten listings on each page; are you on the first page? Now ask yourself, when you’re searching how deep do you go? If you’re not on the first page 80% of the searchers will not find you.

If you’re an Orthodontist in Omaha there were 1290 searches last month that you could be just what the searcher was looking for; that’s over 15,000 information searchers a year. How important to your business is it that you’re on the first page? You could pay for one of those “Sponsored Ads” on the top and right hand side of the page, which would put you on the top.

Did you see that map on the top of the page with pinpoints showing where your competitions offices are located; are you in that picture?

Do you currently know how many visitors come to your website each day and how they found you and how long they stayed? If someone does come to your website is it easy for them to get information from you? You know, get on your newsletter mailing list, or sign up for your next seminar; or do you offer anything like that on your website? Have you considered using your website to market your business?

If you could hire or train an employee to get you to the top of the page and keep you there, as well as help you turn your website into a marketing tool what would you be willing to pay them a year?

It’s all about Return on Investment (ROI); what is a new client or patient worth to you a year? How many new clients would your website have to bring on to justify a full time employee? Would you be better hiring a professional to do the work for you?

It’s easy to find out how many searches there were last month for your profession in your city, and a professional in the field of Search Engine Optimization can help you get your website to the top of the page. Today you’re probably going to find national companies, local listings, and general information site competing for first page positions. It’s not hard to displace them on a local level. If you do find one of your competitors up there you’re behind in the fastest growing segment of business marketing. Check their Google Page Ranking if it’s 5 or above you’ve got a steep hill to climb, if it’s 2 or below you can challenge them in short order.

As you’re a professional in your field you need a professional if you want to add Internet Marketing as an effective tool to market your business. Building a website is step one, build traffic to your website is step two, converting that traffic into prospect is step three, and converting those prospects into client is step four.

If you'd like to discuss turning your website into a Marketing Tool email Kerry at kj@bestofus.com.

Kerry Grinkmeyer founded BestofUS.com a web listing of the best of ten professions in the United States. He works with his listed professional to assist them in marketing their business over the Internet. You can apply to be listed on BestofUS.com at Apply To Be Listed

6 Steps To Build Your Business Using the Internet

2009-05-22T09:14:00.011-05:00

I’ve spent the past three years building and promoting BestofUS.com and SmartestofUS.com; you as a listed professional on BestofUS have hopefully benefited from the sites rise from nothing to a Google Page Ranking of 4. I’d like to share what I’ve learned and offer you some assistance in improving your presence on the Internet while helping you grow your business in your community. I’m calling it our Platinum Listing Program.

A website first needs traffic, that requires that your website appears on the first page of Google Search or any of the other major search engines. To get a first page listing requires that your site be structured and linked so that it's easily categorized by the crawlers and it's ranked as an important page within its category. This requires Search Engine Optimization, an ongoing process of controlling keywords, links and content. This being done, the second step is to build conversion methods into your site so that the site visitor can easily establish a relationship with you and your firm. If your websites not bringing you business every month why did you build it? If you'd like to discuss how we can help turn your website into your second best marketing tool drop me an email.

Kerry kj@bestofus.com

Search Engine Optimization – Best of U. S. will analysis your website for optimization of keywords, title and description for proper categorization of your website. Our SEO specialist will evaluate your website and give you a report making suggestions on how to better optimize your site. Your account manager will submit your website to qualified, quality web directories with high Google Page Rankings using an organic, methodical approach to achieve the highest possible results for your website.

Upgrade Listing – Your listing will be expanded to include all your contact information, a full bio and web link which will present you and your business as the premier professional in your city.

Press Release Distribution – Your account manager will distribute, with your assistance, four press releases to your local newspaper, and business journal. The first will be a press release announcing your inclusion in 2009 Best of U.S.

Article Marketing – Best of U.S has established professional blogs (one for each of our listed professions). You can submit and have published six articles per year of 400 to 500 words on any area relative to your profession; on the bottom of the article you will include a bio and instructions directing the reader to your website to learn more about your services. Your account manager will also place your article on our network of 10 article publishing websites with page rankings of 4 to 6. These publishing websites will publish your articles and make them available to distributors of email newsletters who are hungry for quality content. Your original articles and expertise may be exposed to hundreds of thousands or even millions of people, as well as establishing quality links back to your website.

Email Marketing - Our email marketing center makes it easy for you to build stronger relationships with your customers and prospects by regularly sending them professional-looking newsletters. You don't need any technical expertise to use our point-and-click interface. You'll be able to send up to 5,000 emails per month (more if you need) to your client and prospect lists. You can also have people sign up for your newsletter from your website; you'll get HTML code that you can use or we can set it up for you.

Lead Generation –BestofUS.com visitors will view your expanded BestofUS listing and will be able to request one, two or three forms of contact from you and your firm.
When the visitor checks this option you will be notified with all their contact information. All visitors to BestofUS.com will be preregistered with an email conformation prior to entering the site thus eliminating bogus leads and any form of spam.

If you'd like more information to the Platinum Listing Program by BestofUS.com contact me at kj@bestofus.com

Our BestofUS Blogs:

http://www.bestdoctorsofus.com/

http://www.bestdentistsofus.com/

http://www.bestfinancialadvisorsofus.com/

http://www.bestlawyersofus.com/

http://www.bestaccountantsofus.com/

http://www.bestphysicalterapistsofus.com/

http://www.beatchiropractorsofus.com/

http://www.bestrealestateagentsofus.com/

http://www.bestveterinariansofus.com/

http://www.bestmortgagebrokersofus.com/

Four Steps to Finding the Best Doctors

2009-04-24T14:43:00.000-05:00

Illness and accidents change quality of life. Recovery is all about regaining quality of life. Our ability to regain our quality of life is dependent on the quality of medical care that we receive and our ability and desire to recover. Ability and desire to recover are under our control, for the most part, the quality of medical care that we receive is in the hands of those that we choose to give us care.

In the past, we didn't have the ability to choose our care givers with any level of authority because of the lack of information that was available. We depended on the recommendations of friend, relatives and other care givers. With the introduction and expansion of the Internet our ability to make informed decisions about the quality of our health care has changed. We can now check a doctors standing with the American Medical Association, we can check on this level of education, we can check on their disciplinary records.

The medical field is changing so fast that if our doctors are not pursuing their education on a continuing basis we are virtually guaranteed that they are working without all the information relative to our condition, and thus we are getting something less then the best medical care. In the past, the likelihood of our full recovery was left to the luck of the draw; if we got a knowledgeable doctor we recovered, if we didn't we suffered and often died.

The burden thus falls to the patient to search for the best doctor and medical facility that is most qualified to provide the care that we need. Here are the steps that you should take in finding the best care for your needs.
Research your condition. This involves knowing what's ailing you. Go to Google and search your condition with the proper medical terms, and gain a full understand of what you have. This will arm you so that you can ask intelligent questions.
Ask informed questions. What is your experience with my condition? How often have you preformed this operation? What level of research have you done on my condition? Have you written any papers or given any presentations on my condition? You might think these questions are threatening, but who do you want providing you care the expert or the practitioner? If you had a valuable antique car; who would you want to work on your car?
Locate the expert. Again on Google read what the expert has written on your condition and use this information to determine if your doctor is the best doctor for your recovery. If not, contact the expert and ask him or her to review your case. The expert isn't going to be looking for business; they'll give you a true assessment of your condition and advise you on how to proceed.
Control your destiny. If your local doctor objects to your proactive action you probably have the wrong doctor. It's your life, it's your body, and ultimately it is only you that will have to live with the consequences of your decisions. Everyone else will move on.

If you'd like a starting point for finding the best doctors in your community start your search on www.BestofUS.com. This website lists the best of class in ten professions, doctors, lawyers, dentists, financial advisors, chiropractors, physical therapists, accountants, mortgage brokers, real estate agents and veterinarians. Best of the United States LLC searches for the best educated, most peer recognized, and most industry recognized authorities is each of the professions. Listed professionals cannot pay to be included on the BestofUS listing. BestofUS.com is the most complete listing of the best professionals on the Internet.

We're Stopping U.S. Drug Trade Next Monday

2009-04-02T15:23:00.004-05:00

The U.S. drug trade, whether it be from Columbia, Mexico, or the mountains of California are all about one thing and that is money; specifically, the U.S. dollar. We spend over $3 billion every year in our attempt to stop drugs from coming into our country and the trade continues to grow. It's estimated that over $1 trillion leave our country every year in payment for illegal drugs. There have been proposals to legalize some illegal drugs and tax the sale of drugs to increase the flow of taxes to government and stop parts of the illegal drug trade, but this would create a whole new set of problems.

When you have a problem the best solution is to control the problem by managing the part of the problem over which you have the most control. The element of U.S. Drug Trafficking that we have control over is the U.S. dollar, the government prints them, they guarantee them, and they dispose of them.

What if next Friday it was announced that next Monday we will be changing the color of all U.S. paper currencies from green to pink , and you had one week to present any green U.S. currency that you had in your position to your local bank for exchange into pink currency or your green currency would be of no value. You, with a valid ID, could present up to $10,000 in green currency at your local bank and receive a like amount of pink currency. Your name and Social Security number would be entered into a national database with your exchanged amount thus making it impossible for you to go from bank to bank redeeming green for pink. If you had more then $10,000 to exchange you would have to explain and verify where you got it; which could be done with your last year's tax return or other supporting paperwork. This would not affect any bank deposits, brokerage deposits, or valid business accounts.

Now let's assume you're active in the U.S. Drug Trade, you grow marijuana out in that field behind your house, and you have a spare bedroom in your home full of $20.00, $50.00 and $100.00 dollar bills totaling one million dollars. What are you going to do with all your money next week? Alternatively, a better question: the week after next when it's worthless?

What if you're a Mexican Drug Lord, and you have a truck loaded with 200 pounds of cocaine scheduled for shipment to the U.S. in two days; are you going to ship it to the U.S. or are you going to reroute it to France? How are you going to pay your suppliers now that all those one hundred dollar bills are worthless?

What if you're a street dealer, and you have $100,000 stashed under a floor board in your bedroom. You may have nine friends who are willing to go to the bank for you, but then they're going to have to tie themselves to that $10,000 and had better report it on their 1040 next April, or they might find themselves sitting across form an IRS agent.

It is estimated that 80% of the one hundred dollar bills printed in the United States make their way out of the United States within two weeks as a part of the black market trade. What if you're holding 100,000 of those one hundred bills in Columbia; what are you going to do with them?

This is the Illegal Drug Trade, part of the Black Market, controlled for the most part by organized crime. Print some pink money this month, blue next month, and purple the month after and those boys will find someone else's back yard to play in, but that's only half the opportunity. There's the Underground Economy.

The Underground Economy revolves around illegal aliens. The Underground Economy, estimated to be 10% of our GDP or $1.4 trillion are the unreported payments to the nannies, construction workers, landscapers, and others that are paid off the books. The IRS estimated that they are losing $400 million in tax revenues to the Underground Economy. It's estimated that as much as 50% of these funds are being sent back home, mostly to Mexico and South America. What would happen if next week all that money south of the boarder became worth less than toilet paper? Do you think that would have an effect on the number of illegal boarder crossings? Do you think this would open up some jobs for unemployed United States citizens? Do you think the boarder traffic would have more going south then north?

What would happen to the bank robbery or kidnapping business? Why would you rob a bank or kidnap someone if the money that you walked off with after risking your life could become worthless next Monday? Maybe instead you'd become a landscaper or construction worker.

This is a simple solution to a complex problem, and it won't be well received by some who make their living trading in drugs or employing illegal's; but it's time that we stop the flow of money out of our country and recognize that by just printing more money, we are not solving our problems. In addition we have to stop using 390 million gallons of gasoline to power our automobile habit and use the natural gas that we already own.

These are just of few of the elements of The Best of the U.S. Tax and Stimulus Program which can be found in full on my blog.

Do us a favor, copy this article and send it to our President, your Senator and Representative and ask one question. “Why aren't we changing the color of our currency next week?”

Is It Time To Pick Your New Financial Advisor?

2009-03-21T12:38:00.002-05:00

If you're like 80% of the people in the world you don't have as much in your investment accounts as you did one year ago. Whether you should change Financial Advisors or not, now is a good time to asses the performance of your current advisor and decide if it is time to make a change. I want to make it clear that I am speaking of a Financial Advisor not an Investment Advisor, there are less then 5% of the world's population that should be seeking the services of an Investment Advisor. The investment markets are not a place for most of us to turn to make money; they are a place for us to preserve the capital that we've accumulated and grow that capital at reasonable rates of return. Too many of us lost a sizable amount of our capital in the 2001 Tech Bubble only to loose more in the Sub Prime Bubble because we were working with an Investment Advisor not a Financial Advisor.

The first step in choosing your new Financial Advisor is for you to decide what you want from your advisor. Here are some suggestions:
• Help me preserve the capital I have been able to accumulate and grow it at a conservative rate of return.
• Help me to live within my means and set an investment strategy based on my needs and goals.
• Help me protect my family form the loss of my earning ability or my death.
• Help me and my family achieve our financial goals prior to retirement.
• Help me accumulate enough to enjoy a comfortable retirement.
• Help me assess my need for long term care insurance.
• Help me establish and estate plan.

Once you know what you want from your advisor you'll need to find a qualified provider. As in all professions the first qualification you need to look for is education. Your potential advisors will have a Series 6 or a Series 7 securities license as well as an insurance license and a variable products license. A Series 6 allows them to sell mutual funds and a Series 7 allows then to sell stocks, bonds, options as well as mutual funds. A Series 7 is a more in-depth course of study then the Series 6, so I'd eliminate anyone who doesn't have a Series 7 securities license.

Seventy percent of the people representing themselves as Financial Advisors stop their education beyond their licenses and their required annual continuing education credits. It's the other 30% of the advisors that you are looking for. These are the people with initials behind their names representing professional designations. At the top of this designation pecking order is the CFP (Chartered Financial Advisor) designation. A CFP is comparable to a master's degree in financial planning; it takes three years of study and at least three years of practical experience. To find a CFP in your community go to: (http://www.cfp.net/search) Other designations like the ChFC (Chartered Financial Consultant) and CLU (Chartered Life Underwriter) are focused on specific segments of the financial advisory field. These designations are comparable to Board Certifications in the medical fields, and I personally would not put my finances in the hands of anyone who doesn't take their profession seriously enough to seek all the education that is available. This search can leave you with a list of three to three hundred depending on the size of your community. I suggest that you check www.BestofUS.com, a website that lists the best of ten professions across the United States. This should help you bring your list down to a manageable number of qualified advisors.

Next go to the NASD (National Association of Securities Dealers) website and look up your short list of qualified advisors.
(http://www.finra.org/Investors/ToolsCalculators/BrokerCheck/index.htm) Here you'll be able find out your potential advisors work history, license history and if they have had any legal or disciplinary action brought against them. We've gone through some pretty tough financial times over the past ten years and a lot of good advisors have been sued, so use this information as a means of asking your potential advisors questions. “Can you tell me what these issues are about?” Now Google your short list and see what you find; you'll be surprised what you'll learn.

At this point, you need to sit down with those left on your short list. Here is a list of questions that you should ask.
• What is your approach to financial planning? If they don't address the “Help me” points above their not a Financial Advisor. If they start talking about Managed Accounts, Sector Investing, Momentum, Technical verse Fundamentals, or Option Strategies your talking to and Investment Advisor.
• What was your book of business worth on March 1, 2008 and what is your book of business worth today? Can I see supporting reports? Their going to ask to see your finances, it's fair for you to ask to see theirs and if it's down more then 25% you're in the wrong place.
• How are you paid? There are only three possible answers here; commissions, asset base compensation, or fees. Most will be a combination of the three possibilities; the one that you want to watch out for is commissions. Commissions can create a conflict of interest. Asset based compensation means as your assets grow their compensation grows or as your assets go down so does their compensation. I liked that it results in a common objective. Fees will involve special work like a financial plan or a research project relative to your specific situation, and that's fair.
• How often will we meet to review my situation? This needs to be at least twice a year.
• Tell me about yourself. How long have your been in the business? Do your have any professional designations? Have you had any legal or disciplinary action taken against you? What is your employment and education background? Have you written any books or articles that I can read? You know all the answers, just sit back and judge.

If you'll follow this process you'll find the Best Financial Planner for you. You may end up with the person that you've been using, but you now know they are qualified to provide you with the service that you need from your new Financial Advisor.

Choosing a Financial Advisor can be as important as choosing a doctor, so do your homework and then take responsibility for your decision. As in managing your health you have to take an active role in the management of your finances; stay involved and understand everything.

If you could manipulate the intelligence of your children; “Would you?”

2009-03-07T10:27:00.004-06:00

With our increasing knowledge of genes and how they predetermine who our children will become and where they will fit into society the manipulation of our children’s intelligence as well as physical abilities will become a part of choosing your partner in the future.

Intelligence is the mental capability to reason, solve problems, think abstractly, learn and understand new material, and profit from past experience. Intelligence is the primary element that determines where we fit in to society, how we will make our living, and what you social economic status will be.

History
Intelligence tests date back to the late 19th century; the works of Sir Frances Galton explored the difference in the accomplishments of generations of the English aristocracy. Alfred Binet expanded on Galton's work to develop a test to be administered to French children to assist in predicting their academic success. American psychologist, Lewis Terman modified Binet's test in the early 1900's to make it applicable for adults and establishing standards for performance relative to age. He also developed a scoring system which he called the intelligence quotient or IQ.

Today's IQ tests no longer compute scores using the IQ formula. Today's tests give a score that measures the participant's performance relative to the average performance of others of the same age who have taken the test referred to as “ratio IQ”; others are based on a mathematical transformation of a raw score on the IQ Test based on the rank of that section in a normalization sample referred to a “deviance IQ score”. Under the “deviance method” the average score is arbitrarily set at 100, thus those scoring above the average of 100 are considered more intelligent up to genius and those who score below 100 are considered less intelligent.
The two scoring methods yield similar results near the middle of the bell curve, but the older, “ratio IQs”, yielded far higher scores for the intellectually gifted — which explains how Marilyn vos Saeant achieved a “ratio IQ” score of 228, a score that is unattainable under the “deviance method” of scoring.

Recent Findings
The current consensus is that general human intelligence is based on the volume and location of gray matter tissue in the brain. It is believed that the frontal lobes, specifically the lateral prefrontal cortex, are critical for fluid intelligence. A 2006 study of 307 children which measured the size of their brain then measured verbal and non-verbal skills indicated that there is a relationship between IQ and the structure of the cortex.

Over the past 100 years, IQ scores have increased at an average rate of three IQ points per decade in most parts of the world. This has been explained by better nutrition, smaller families, better education, and heredity. It is believed that 50% to 80% of a childs intelligence is attributable to the childs parents and the genes that they passed on to the child. Studies of twins raised apart substantiate these beliefs. It had been widely believed that through education we can improve upon our intelligence, but this is often not the case. Vocabulary size, for example, is more effected by heredity than by environment even though every word that one knows has to be learned. In our society words are readily available to everyone and the number of words that we learn has more to do with our genetic predisposition to learn then the vocabulary of the people around us.

The genetic effects on intelligence increase as the child ages, starting at 20% contribution in infancy and growing to 80% in adulthood, supporting the theory that genes provide an inherent propensity to learn and and retain.

However, social economic conditions do have an effect on developed IQ. It is believed that the potential is passed within the genes but social economic conditions determine if the inherent potential is reached. Within an impoverished family up to 60% of variance in IQ can be attributed to environment while the contribution of genes is zero. On the other end of the social economic spectrum the opposite is true; family environment has little to do with IQ variance while inherited genes are the primary determining factor of IQ.

A recent study, April 2008, at the University of Michigan and Bern suggests that intelligence can be marginally altered and changed over time through the use of challenging activities thus producing changes in gene expression patterns of the brain. Musical study at a young age tends to increase the potential for full achievement of IQ potential. If this proves to be true it would be contrary to prior held beliefs about the development of intelligence.

Studies conducted in Scotland of 11,282 individuals between the 1950's and 1960's support the belief that people with higher IQ's live longer, tend to not suffer from sever depression, schizophrenia or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. More recent studies, 2004, show that tests of lower cognitive ability at a young age can serve as an early predictor of a propensity for the development of Alzheimer's and dementia in a persons later years.

Putting this all together would indicate that a childs intelligence level is primarily determined by the intelligence levels of his or her mother and father and grandparents. From that point on the child will benefit from being part of a small affluent family that feeds them well and places them in a challenging educational environment.

Once IQ is developed to its fullest potential it becomes a good predictor of success in acidemic pursuits and some career paths. IQ does have substantial influence on academic achievement, while academic achievement has little influence on future IQ scores. IQ relates well to auditory,linguistic, memory, and academic achievement levels, but is less relevant when body speed, eye-hand coordination, and hard work are needed for job performance.

IQ Scores as a predictor of future income is highly debated. It is not difficult to point to and individual or group of individuals with low IQ's yet earning extremely high incomes. This can usually be explained by some other inheritable trait that they have nourished thus maximizing that traits potential. With few exceptions it is generally agreed that it is important to have an above average IQ score to achieve above average income but highest IQ scores do not necessarily come with higher income levels. Below you'll find the average earnings of some of the career paths that might be considered and the level of education required to make entry into the career field. The incomes shown represent the average income with a deviation of 40% plus or minus for highest in the field to the lowest in the field.

Career Degree Needed Average Earningsdiv>
Banking Masters $180,000
Dentist DDS $125,000
Dermatoligest MD $225,000
Heart Surgeon MD $365,000
Orthopedic Surgeon MD $405,000
Plastic Sergeon MD $325,000
University Dean Masters $135,000
College President Masters $200,000
Attorney Intelectial Property LD $200,000
Judge LD $150,000
Areospace Engineer Bachelors $110,000
Actor Performer None $50,000
Professional Athelete None $30,000
Director of Government Affears Bachelors $115,000
Plant Manager None $125,000
Software Engineer Bachelors $110,000
Geophysicist Bachelors $145,000
Petroleum Geologist Bachelors $145,000
Airline Pilot Bachelors $110,000
Nerosurgeon MD $467,000
Small Business Owner None $258,000

Taking An Active Role in Molding An Intelligent Generation

2009-03-01T14:12:00.003-06:00

Intelligence is the mental capability to reason, solve problems, think abstractly, learn and understand new material, and profit from past experience. In tomorrows world intelligence will be increasingly important in determining where our children and grandchildren will find their place in our global society. For the past century we have measured intelligence in IQ, or Intelligence coefficient. As parents and grandparents we need to take an active role in shaping the intelligence of our current and future children and grandchildren. It is currently believed that IQ is affected by two factors; inherited genes and family environment.

History of Measuring Intelligence
Intelligence tests date back to the late 19th century; the works of Sir Frances Galton explored the difference in the accomplishments of generations of the English aristocracy. Alfred Binet expanded on Galton's work to develop a test to be administered to French children to assist in predicting their academic success. American psychologist, Lewis Terman modified Binet's test in the early 1900's to make it applicable for adults and establishing standards for performance relative to age. He also developed a scoring system which he called the intelligence quotient or
IQ.

Today's IQ tests no longer compute scores using the IQ formula. Today's tests give a score that measures the participant's performance relative to the average performance of others of the same age who have taken the test referred to as “ratio IQ” others are based on a mathematical transformation of a raw score on the IQ Test based on the rank of that section in a normalization sample referred to a “deviance IQ score”. Under the “deviance method” the average score is arbitrarily set at 100, thus those scoring above the average of 100 are considered more intelligent up to genius and those who score below 100 are considered less intelligent.
The two scoring methods yield similar results near the middle of the bell curve, but the older, “ratio IQs”, yielded far higher scores for the intellectually gifted — which explains how Marilyn vos Saeant achieved a “ratio IQ” score of 228, a score that is unattainable under the “deviance method” of scoring.

Recent Findings on Influancing Intelligence
Over the past 100 years, IQ scores have increased at an average rate of three IQ points per decade in most parts of the world. This has been explained by better nutrition, smaller families, better education, and heredity. It is believed that 50% to 70% of a childs intelligence is attributable to the childs parents and the genes that they passed on to the child. Studies of twins raise apart substantiate these beliefs.

Vocabulary size, for example, is more effected by heredity than by environment even though every word that one knows has to be learned. In our society words are readily available to everyone and the number of words that we learn has more to do with our genetic predisposition to learn then the vocabulary of the people around us.

However, social economic conditions do have an effect on developed IQ. Within an impoverished family up to 60% of variance in IQ can be attributed to environment while the contribution of genes is zero. On the other end of the social economic spectrum the opposite is true; family environment has little to do with IQ variance while inherited genes are the primary determining factor of IQ.

A recent study, April 2008, at the University of Michigan and Bern suggests that intelligence can be altered and changed over time through the use of challenging activities thus producing changes in gene expression patterns of the brain. If this proves to be true it would be contrary to prior held beliefs about the development of intelligence.

Studies conducted in Scotland of 11,282 individuals between 1950 and 1960 support the belief that people with higher IQ's live longer, tend to not suffer from sever depression, schizophrenia or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. More recent studies, 2004, show that tests of lower cognitive ability at a young age can serve as an early predictor of a propensity for the development of Alzheimer's and dementia in a persons later years.

The current consensus is that general human intelligence is based on the volume and location of gray matter tissue in the brain. It is believed that the frontal lobes, specifically the lateral prefrontal cortex, are critical for fluid intelligence. A 2006 study of 307 children which measured the size of their brain then measured verbal and non-verbal skills indicated that there is a relationship between IQ and the structure of the cortex.

An Active Role in Our Future Generations
For centuries in Eastern and Middle Eastern societies parents and grandparents have taken an active role in choosing their children's mates. In most cases this practice was followed to maintain or improve social-economic position. With our increasing understanding of the development of intelligence choosing a mate based on intelligence may become a more widespread practice in the future. In Western societies we have tended to marry those that we attend school with, work with and socialize with. We have chosen our mates based on looks, common interests , sexual attraction and compatibility. It would be wise to add IQ score to this list.

The Best of U.S. Tax Act and Stimulus Program

2009-02-27T20:16:00.010-06:00

Last year our government spent $150 billion on a Stimulus Program in an effort to increase consumer spending and hopefully bring our economy back into a growth mode. In fact consumer spending did increase by 5% in May 2008 but most of that can be attributed to escalating fuel and food prices. Those Stimulus dollars that didn’t go to fuel and food went towards flat screen TV’s or other foreign made merchandise resulting in more of our American dollars leaving our shores.

In late 2008 we that tax payers agreed to give the financial industry $700 billion to clear up their bad debt and put them in a position where they could get back into the lending business thus stimulating the economy. We now know that the $700 billion was a drop in an ocean of bad loans and the banks are still in trouble, thus unable to extend credit to others because of their own financial problems. The talk is that possibly the banks need to be nationalized which means that we the taxpayers will assume all of their self manufactured bad loans and our children and grand children will be faced with bring the U.S. banking system back to solvency.

In the past week we the taxpayers stepped forward again to fund a new recovery program with a price tag of $1 trillion. This time we are told that these funds will not go to the banks, they will go to create jobs. This is certainly something that our country needs, as jobs have been leaving our shores for decades only to be accelerated as industry, retail, sales and construction have come to a stop in the United States over the past quarter.

Over the past six months we have recognized that the financial structure of the best capitalistic system know to mankind is failing. It’s hard to understand because of its size and scope, but if you think of the problem relative to your household it’s simple. You’ve been spending more then you’ve been bringing in, you’ve been using credit like you’ve been using water; as if there was no end to the supply. Now the tap has been turned off, you lay off the gardener, the maid, and the cook. The bank is at the door and your cars have been repossessed. What do you do? You get a second job and mom goes to work. Simply put you cut your expenses and you maximize your income.

This is exactly what our government has to do. Cut all the pork out of the federal budget and raise taxes. The budget is being addressed and President Obama says he is going to raise taxes on anyone making over $250,000 per year. This is a start but will not get us out of debt; but there is a way. The Best of the U.S. Tax and Stimulus Program will increase the federal tax on gasoline by $3.00 per gallon, put a $2.00 per pack tax on cigarettes and a $1.00 per six-pack of beer and fifth of whisky. In addition we will shut down the illegal drug trade and the underground economy.

We consume 390 million gallons of gasoline per day, 50 million packs of cigarettes per day, and 21 million gallons of beer per day. In one year a $3.00 gas tax would generate $427 billion a year ($.4.7 trillion in 10 years), a $2.00 cigarette tax will generate $36 billion a year ($3.6 trillion in 10 years) and a $1.00 six-pack beer tax will generate $7.4 billion per year (7.4 trillion in 10 years). This is a total annual increase in income of $447 billion. These funds should be allocated to payoff our debt, and get our nation back on its feet. We could address, national health insurance, we could have the best schools in the world, fund renewable energy research and we could fund cancer, Parkinson’s, and stem cell research.

In conjunction with the increase in these taxes we need fund The Best of the U.S. Tax and Stimulus Program. A $150 billion program offering consumers a free U.S. made automobile that gets 36 MPG or better when they turn in their gas guzzler for destruction. This program would take 7.5 million gas guzzlers off the road reducing fuel consumption by up to 833 gallons per year per auto or 6.25 billion gallons total. This would eliminate our need for 320,512,800 barrels of oil resulting in $45 billion not leaving our country each year; thus the program investment would be recouped in just over three years. The auto replacement program represents 6% of the U.S.’s passenger cars and would reduce our nations overall fuel consumption by 4%, each year the program is in place. The Best of U.S. Tax and Stimulus Program, over 10 years, would reduce our oil consumption by 40%; we currently produce 25% of our need. With the added drilling in Anwar and the Gulf we could be producing 50% of our need within 10 years leaving less 10% needed from offshore; which we could get from Canada and Mexico. These figures do not account for the millions of Americans who would switch to more fuel efficient vehicles outside of The Best of U.S. Tax and Stimulus Program as a result of purposely pushing the price of gas up above $5.50 per gallon.

U.S. auto makers sold 17 million cars in 2007 and sold 11 million cars in 2008 resulting in the probability of bankruptcy for one or more of the three. Under The Best of U.S. Tax and Stimulus Program each manufacture would be challenged to produce a four passenger auto and a six passenger mini van that achieved 36 MPG or better. The winner of the challenge would be guaranteed the sale of 7.5 million vehicles each year of the program. With gasoline selling for over $5.50 per gallon it will be only a matter of time before we are powering our automobiles with natural gas or electricity generated by natural gas rather than coal.

The Best of the U.S. Tax and Stimulus Program will also address national health care. Today only 60% of U.S. citizens are covered by health insurance and yet our hospitals are over crowed. The current health care industry employs 14 million of us and accounts for $2.6 trillion of our gross national product. With national health care, which would provide health care for the other 40% of us, we could easily create another 5 million jobs. National health care is estimated to cost $36 million a year which could be paid for with our cigarette and beer tax. If this falls short we can put a tax on obesity by putting a federal tax on fast food.

The Best of the U.S. Tax and Stimulus Program will also address the U.S. Black Market in illegal drugs and the Underground Economy which results in over $2 trillion leaving our country each year and over $400 million in evaded taxes. By introducing a program that regularly and unannounced changes the color of U.S. currency the incentive to accumulate illegal U.S. dollars will be thwarted; the drug trade will come to a halt and the flow of human traffic across our boarders will reverse directions.

Join me in encouraging President Obama and your Senators and Representatives to adopt The Best of the U.S. Tax and Stimulus Program. Email them this post today!

Let’s take control of our economy, our energy needs and our health care; it’s easy if we have the will power to take control of our lives.

A Continuing Fight with Cancer

2009-02-21T10:49:00.002-06:00

Today my wife and I spent the day at Emory’s Crawford Long Hospital in Atlanta. This is the third time in the past six years that we have sat and waited for doctors to remove cancer from our daughter’s body. The first time in 2002 resulted in the amputation of her left foot. The last two times it’s been to remove cancer cells from her left lung. We have come to accept that we will be back in Crawford Long again, we just don’t know how soon and how often.

On one hand we feel lucky that she is getting such quality care that the cancer is being extracted before it has an opportunity to take a strong hold and take her life. I tell her that she’s lucky that she knows what’s going on in her body; most of us don’t. On the other hand we question how often and for how long can she endure major surgery and recovery.

I hear of people who say “stop with the treatment and let what is to happen to happen.” I can’t imagine they have much to live for making such a decision, but I’m not in their shoes. I ask myself, how much pain and suffering would I be willing to endure to keep living?

This ordeal has taught us a lot of lessons and opened our eyes to many inequities. The main lesson that we’ve learned over the past six years is to be proactive and to seek out and find the best of doctors and the best care. This doesn’t mean just going to any doctor, it means doing research and finding the best doctor available for the care that you or your family needs. With the internet this is a doable task. Neither best doctors nor best care would have been available if we had not had good health insurance. I read that 40% of Americans are without health insurance. I know in my heart if we had not had health insurance our daughter would be dead today, we wouldn’t know our grandson and we wouldn’t have had the past six years with them.

I don’t think that what my family has experienced is all that uncommon. The hospital is so crowded that our daughter will be spending the night in the ICU even though she is recovering well and should be moved onto the main floor, but there are no rooms available on the main floor. But only 60% of us have medical insurance, what are the other 40% doing or are they here at Crawford Long and not paying? Are they getting the preventive care that we are getting or are they merely fending off disasters?

Yet there are those among us that feel that to have a national insurance program would be wrong because it would result in a reduction in the quality of our medical care. Are we Ok with treating them for heart attackes, gun shoot wounds, and injuries; but not the progression of cancer or diabetes?

Is that to say that they are Ok with 40% of American families having to allow their daughters bodies be overrun with cancer? Can we be so selfish?

A Day at the Hospital

2009-02-20T10:59:00.003-06:00

Nita and I got Aidan up and took him to school this morning, he asked where Mommy and Daddy were and Nita told him the his Mommy and Daddy were at the hospital for Mommy's operation. Shay and Justin had been preparing him for this and it appears that to Aidan it's just another day at the office.

We met Justin in the Emory waiting room about 9:15. We got word from Dr. Miller at 10:00 AM that the operation went well and that she was in Intensive Care. “You should be able to see her is 40 minutes.” Luckily Emory has a guest wireless service so I can pass the time on the computer while Nita and Justin read.

The three of us sit in the same waiting room that we sat in eighteen months ago and ask each other. “What happened last time?” I hope this never becomes so regular that we have the procedure fresh in mind.

We were able to go into the ICU at 10:45 AM and Shannon was much better off then she was when we went through this 18 months ago. She was in less pain, or I should say she was feeling less pain. The nurse told us the there were no beds on the floor so she would be staying in the ICU for a while maybe until tomorrow.

All in all the operation went well and the recovery is progressing. Our job will become one of looking after Aidan, he’s in pre-school this morning, and keeping the house together while Justin focuses on Shannon.

It’s interesting the turns that life takes and how we adapt and how we support each other. Six months from now this will be just another memory.

Is It Important to Have a High IQ to be a Good President?

2009-02-17T19:59:00.010-06:00

The term good president is up for interpretation, so for the purpose of this article I’m going to allow the historians and presidential scholars determine what a good President is C-Span released it’s list on Presidents Day of the most popular presidents as compiled by 46 historians, placing Abraham Lincoln in first place and George W. Bush in 36th place out of our 42 past presidents. Here is a list of the top ten along with our more recent presidents and their IQ scores as reported in recent study in the Journal: Political Psychology.

1. Abraham Lincoln -145
2. George Washington – 130
3. FDR -141
4. Teddy Roosevelt -144
5. Harry Truman – 125
6. JFK -156
7. Thomas Jefferson -160
8. Dwight Eisenhower -131
9. Woodrow Wilson -148
10. Ronald Reagan – 128
11. Lyndon Johnson – 125
15. Bill Clinton – 154
18. George H. Bush – 128
22. Gerald Ford – 124
25. Jimmy Carter -149
27. Richard Nixon – 129
36. George W. Bush – 121

It appears that there is little correlation between popularity and intelligence even though the lowest IQ score and lowest in popularity is held by the same president on this list. What we do know is that the popularity numbers will change. Harry Truman, for example had a lower approval rating when he left office then George W. Bush but Harry is now ranked at number 5 in current popularity.

The numbers that I would like to see change on this list is the IQ numbers. The world has become far to complicated to have a person with an average IQ (100 to 125) running the show. There are important decisions being made that are effecting far to many people to have anyone less then a skilled chess player (IQ of 150 to 180) in the position of President of the United States.

Over the past eight years decisions about invading countries, the reductions of qualifications to purchase homes, the structures of financial instruments, and the monitoring of our financial systems have had disastrous global consequences.
We scrutinize our prospective presidents religious beliefs, prior use of drugs, marital status, sexual orientation, prior affiliations and prior experience. We dig into every aspect or their past lives but we don’t investigate their ability to make good decisions; their intelligence. For our own survival let’s make an IQ test a part of the application process for future Presidents of the United States.

Where Do You Rank Among The Smartest?

2009-02-17T09:11:00.004-06:00

Intelligence is the mental capability to reason, solve problems, think abstractly, learn and understand new material, and profit from past experience.

Intelligence tests date back to the late 19th century; the works of Sir Frances Galton explored the difference in the accomplishments of generations of the English aristocracy. Alfred Binet expanded on Galton’s work to develop a test to be administered to French children to assist in predicting their academic success. American psychologist, Lewis Terman modified Binet’s test in the early 1900’s to make it applicable for adults and establishing standards for performance relative to age. He also developed a scoring system which he called the intelligence quotient or IQ.

Today’s IQ tests no longer compute scores using the IQ formula. Today’s tests give a score that measures the participant’s performance relative to the average performance of others of the same age who have taken the test. The average score is arbitrarily set at 100, thus those scoring above the average of 100 are considered more intelligent up to genius and those who score below 100 are considered less intelligent.

The Best of the U.S., a company that recognizes professionals who have excelled in their fields of endeavor, has launched a new website SmartestofUS.com in an effort to bring focus on the importance of individual intelligence to the future of the United States economy.

“The U.S. will never again be a manufacturing nation so in order to maintain our position as a world leader we must harvest our most valuable asset, individual intelligence. We need to make an effort to recognize and promote people who are suited to make decisions that affect us all in our corporations and in our government.”

The Smartest of the U.S. IQ test is designed as a test of the participant’s ability to solve problems, make logical decisions, understand how things relate to each other, and how to come to sound conclusions. The test is not designed to measure logic skills, advanced mathematical skills, verbal skills, visualization skills and pattern recognition skills.

Each participant is then ranked against all other test participants with a SUS score. (Smartest of U.S. score) “It is our goal to get everyone in the United States to have a SUS score, just imagine how much easer it would be to choose our government leaders and corporate CEO’s.”

All Doctors, Lawyers and Financial Advisors are Not Equal

2009-02-08T18:45:00.002-06:00

All too often when we find ourselves in need of a doctor, a lawyer, a dentist, or a financial advisor we turn to the least qualified people for guidance; our family, friends and our other advisors. The fact is that in today’s world the playing field of medicine, law, and finance is changing so fast that the professional who has the good old boy reputation is not the most qualified provider of advice.

In many cases the best is not the guy with the big office and the large staffs with years experience but instead the hard worker with the most current education and information.

Having spent my career in the world of finance it became evident to me that continuing education was as important as years of experience. As we have seen in the past year investment derivatives has drastically changed the world of investments. If your broker was not well schooled and well read you sat with him or her and saw your portfolio shrink on a daily basis while being advised that our banking system is strong and this down turn will not last.

Yet if your advisor had read The Trillion Dollar Meltdown by Charles R. Morris published February, 2008, he could have given you a day by day description of what was going to happen to the investment markets over the following months. Since then the S&P 500 has lost over 35% of it value, City Group has gone from $29.00 to $4.00 per share and AIG has gone from $56.00 per share to $1.00 per share. You and your investment advisor would have understood Credit Default Swaps and how they compounded the problems of the Sub-Prime mess. You could have chosen not to participate in the past years crises.

Thankfully I did read Charles Morris’s book but got caught by a series of unqualified and uneducated doctor’s years earlier resulting in the amputation of my daughters left foot because for fifteen years her doctors misdiagnosed a cancerous tumor in her foot.

The lesson to be learned is to research your professional advice providers. Do they have professional designations, are they in good standing with their professional organizations, do they teach within their profession? In short are they current with the latest information within their field?

I was motivated by my daughter’s question: “Dad why did this happen to me, I’m a good person?” Since my retirement in June 2004 I have worked to find reason for what happened to her. I designed and built a website BestofUS in an effort to help other people avoid the mistake that we made and give some level of guidance on where to look for the best professional in the United States.

We as consumers have to take on some level responsibility for our health, our wealth, and our wellbeing. If we don’t we will continue to be victims.

How Smart Are You?

2009-01-29T08:01:00.001-06:00

We Have Cancer Again

2009-01-26T14:53:00.000-06:00

Last week we were told that Shannon had another spot on her lung, eighteen months ago the doctors delivered the same message and in July 2007 she was opened up to remove a spot of censer no bigger then your pinky finger nail. This wouldn’t be so bad except that in order to assure that there is no dripping of cancer cells the incision starts below her breast and extends under her arm and up to her shoulder blade. The scare looks like she was opened like a tin can. So it looks like Nita and I will be spending a good part of February in Atlanta looking after Aidan.

It becomes evident that different people have different ways of dealing with tragedy. Shannon and I are extremely good at computerizing whereas Nita find a need to get mad and discuss the situation, the possibilities, the ramifications, the injustice, and the all events that led up to the current situation. I think Shannon and I have a better way, we evaluate to determine what we can do to influence, we accept our position, then we deal with it step by step.

Our daughter, Shannon, has cancer; this is something that I accepted eighteen months ago. I knew that this day would come, but I had hoped it wouldn’t come this soon. My mother died of cancer when she was 30 years old. I’m confident that good doctors and the advancements in cancer research will assist Shannon in living a long healthy life. I hope we can get some longer intervals between this bad news.

I'm My Health Advocate

2009-01-15T13:45:00.001-06:00

This morning I went for my semi-annual medical check-up. Stuart, my doctor, gave me a clean bill of health then asked me if I had any concerns. I told him that I’ve been running for the past three years and I still have difficulty running any sustained distance without needing some walking recovery time. I’m talking about still having difficulty breathing even for a mile run.

We decided that I need to take a stress test and then a test to evaluate the efficiency of my heart and lungs intake of oxygen. We did a lung X-ray today and I’ll be doing the other test over the next several weeks. I did a stress test in 2004 and the administrator said, “I don’t know what you’re going to die from, but it won’t be your heart.” So I don’t think there is anything wrong.

I’m sharing this information over my blog because I’ve become aware of how important it is that I become my own advocate when it comes to my health. I tell my daughter that she’s lucky because she goes every three months and gets scanned to see if the cancer has reappeared thus she knows what’s going on in her body; most of us don’t know what’s going on until it’s to late. My father died of cancer but didn’t know he had cancer until 3 months before his death and he had been seeing his doctor regularly. He just didn’t ask the right questions and press for the right tests.

If we don’t ask the questions we can only be sure we won’t get the answers that we need.

I’ll keep you posted on what I find out.

22,451 Days and Counting

2009-01-11T12:27:00.001-06:00

Thursday Nita and I drove to Cincinnati to attend my Aunt Flo’s funeral. Aunt Flo had lived 30,021 days when she passed last Monday. She was a good Catholic, and the ceremony was fitting for her live. The priest seemed to be familiar with Flo’s life and family mentioning that she enjoyed dancing had enjoyed golf, softball in her younger years, and did a lot of volunteer work in her later years.

She did have a difficult ending to her life and from conversations with her only daughter, Sandy; I gathered that she had been in pain required extensive care in her final months. The whole event coupled with the death of my father a year ago caused me to give thought to my own life and how I would like to see it come to an end.

I’ve now lived 22,451 days and for the most part I’d say I’ve had a good life. I started thinking of my life in days about ten years ago when I attempted to make a list of the days of my life that I could remember. I discovered that at any given time I could only remember about 50 days, but if I worked on building a list I could bring about 500 days of my life to my memory. I also discovered that the days that I could remember had some similarities. They involved friends or family, they were when I tested the boundaries of my envelope of existence, they were when I laughed or cried the hardest, and they were when I experienced that ever growing allusive RUSH.

This is when I pledged to myself that I was going to attempt to gather more memorable days. Since then I’ve driven Talladega at 174 mph, I’ve rifted the Colorado River, I’ve been to China, Russia, the Galapagos, and I’ve enjoyed the people in my life more to recount a few of my resent memorable days. I really think this is and helping others gather memories is what life is all about.

I noticed that Flo’s priest didn’t mention her net worth, what kind of car she drove, or how many square feet her house was… no just dancing, softball, golf, and volunteer work… he even asked those gathered “How many of you have worn a dress made by Flo?”

I got into a discussion with my second cousin Tom Mason, about how I’d like to see my life come to and end, and I shared that I’d like to have a semi violent death. I don’t want to spend any of my life lying in my own waste; I don’t want to live days, weeks or months in pain, I don’t want to become a burden to the people that I love.

I recently read about two guys that died at the end of this years New York Marathon; they died doing something that they enjoyed. That seems to me to be the way to go. Dale Earnhardt died on the 4th turn during the 2001 Daytona 500, could it get any better.

I’ll keep pushing the edges of the envelope and I’ll keep looking for more fulfilling experiences and relationships in my life and hopefully my long term care insurance premiums will end up being a waste of money.

Monetizing My Website

2008-12-28T22:03:00.002-06:00

I’ve been spending most of my time lately researching how to monetize my online contest, www.SmartestofUS.com . Originally I had thought I could charge and entry fee and use the entry fee to finance the prize. With 3,000 daily contestants and an entry fee of $10.00 I would be able to generate a prize purse of over a million dollars. In a conversation with my lawyer about the rules of the contest she informed me that based on her experience I would need an exit clause in the rules to get me out of the obligation of the prize money. She went on to explain that in her years or experience she had never seen an online contest produce the results I would need to make my contest successful and profitable. This was contrary to all the input that I had received from the web designers, the advertising agencies, and the programmers that I had been working with for the prior two months.

As I look back I’m not sure they were misleading me or I was just hearing what I wanted to hear. I’m thankful that my lawyer was straight with me and opened my eyes before I went through the internet minefield I was preparing to enter.

So here I am with a contest written and ready to be put on line to drive traffic to my primary site www.BestofUS.com . Google search led me to http://www.quantcast.com, a site that provides a demographic analysis of 80% of the sites on the internet. I then searched for sites that offered IQ tests on the internet and found that the top listed site, IQtest.com, had average daily traffic of over 10,000 U.S. visitors. Further research on www.alexia.com confirmed the daily traffic as well as gave me a list of all the links that tied to IQtest.com. With this information I'm armed with what I need to do to equal or exceed the traffic achieved by IQ. I’ll use Elance.com to find a firm to do my SEO putting www.SmartestofUS.com in the number one position on Google, Yahoo and MSN. I’ve brought the prize down to and Apple MaxBook thus bringing the cost of the prize down to a manageable amount. I’ll personally fund the kickoff PR and advertising campaigns. IQ doesn’t advertise and doesn’t offer a prize so with these two additional features and a better layout I should be able to exceed IQ’s traffic.

My task now is to monetize the site through advertising (pay per view, pay per click, and co registration). I’ll also build a full Personal IQ Analysis which I can sell for $10.00 and offer other Smartest of U.S. merchandise which will supplement the advertising revenue.

My next task is to get the site up and running, plug in the ad revenue and see what happens. I’ll keep you posted.

Stop! Those are My Tax Dollars

2008-12-08T10:08:00.000-06:00

I have been a small business man for the past 20 years. I have found myself across the desk form a banker on numerous occasions; some asking for money to grow my business and some to ask for money to keep my business afloat during hard times. Each time the banker required me to put up my wife and my accumulated assets as a condition of securing the loan.

Today we are seeing executives coming before us, the taxpayer, asking for money to carry them through rough times, in many cases of their own making. I feel we, as taxpayers, are in a no win position; we have to keep some of them alive and running to keep our economy alive and running.

As the banker required me and my wife, the senior management teams of Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, Citi Group, Bank of America, AIG, American Express, Regions, and the many others should be required to put their estates on the line if they want to borrow our money. If they truly believe that their plan is achievable they will put up; on the other hand if they don’t believe they will be able to repay us they will leave the room.

It is time that we, the taxpayers, start gaining some control over our money, if we don’t our children and grandchildren will work their lives to pay for our mistakes and lack of fiscal responsibility.

Borrow and Give Fiscal Policy

2008-12-05T08:48:00.002-06:00

Below is a link to a video done by Fred Thompson, ex-presidential candidate. Watch it to the end and you'll gain a better understanding of where our nation is headed if we continue our current borrow and give-away fiscal policy. This was forwarded to me from my conservative friend Mike Zimmer, we have found something that agree on.

I've been a small business man for over 20 years, I've had to go to the bank and borrow money on numerous occasions; sometimes to grow my business and sometimes to keep my business afloat through hard times. On all occasions the banker asked me and Nita to co-sign the loan. In other words put everything that we had accumulated up to secure the loan.

Why aren't we, the taxpayers, demanding that the senior management team of Ford, GM, Chrysler, AIG, Citi Group, American Express, Bank of America and the many others put their estates on the line to save their companies? If they are not willing to risk their assets why should we be willing to mortgage our children's and grandchildren futures to bail them out? Put UP of Close Down!

Fred on the Economy:
http://blip.tv/file/1528079

Designing a Contest to Build Website Traffic

2008-12-03T09:58:00.004-06:00

My website is www.BestofUS.com; its theme is built around the recognition of the “Best of the US”. I started in 2006 by building a database of the best doctors, dentists, lawyers, financial advisors by searching the internet for those professionals that have displayed their commitment to their profession through furthering their education in their field, received peer group recognition or have been singled out for their work. Over the past two years our listings have grown to over 65,000 listings in 10 professions. Last year we added The Best High School Students in the US. We currently have 3,600 students listed in 8 fields of study. If your interested in my motivation for this read Shannons Story on www.BestofUS.com.

In an effort to build site traffic I have designed and built an online contest, “Searching for the Smartest of the US”. The contest program will administer a 50 question 15 minute IQ test. The questions will be randomly drawn from a data base of over 3000 questions thus guaranteeing that repeating contestants will not receive the same questions and thus gain an advantage.

Initially I wanted to offer a sizable cash prize and charge a $10 entry fee. I hired Tsan Abrahamson to write my Official Rules that would comply with the 50 state laws that deal with online contests. I hired Solar Velocity to design the landing page and the contest look as well as act as host of the contest. I learned that I could run a pay per click advertising program with a $25,000 monthly budget that would drive 2000 potential daily contestants to the site. Under this scenario the contest would generate a $1,000,000 prize purse, a sizable profit to The Best of the US, and increased BestofUS.com site traffic.

This is when I learned about conversion rate and started seriously asking, “Will 2000 people per day pay $10 to find out if they are one of the Smartest of the US?” My decision, after three weeks of investigation and research, was; “No they wouldn’t put up $10.” The risk was just too high.

Thus I have to devise a new business plan that offers the contest with no entry fee, some form of a prize (like a Smart Car), and a sponsor who will pay for the leads that I will generate. That sponsor would be someone like Phoenix University.

The motivation to participate in the contest will be a long shot at the prize and to find out “Where do you rank among the Smartest of the US?” We might even award a wall plaque to the “100 Smartest of the US”.

I’ll keep you updated on my progress.

Searching for the Smartest of the U.S.

2008-11-23T09:52:00.006-06:00

I am building a program to deliver an online contest Searching for the Smartest of the US. The ideas is driven by my website www.BestofUS.com and my desire to recognize the smart people in our country. After all we regularly recognize the Biggest Looser, the Most Eligible Bachelor, America's Got Talent, and Survivor. Why are ignoring the smart people. Can you name the last Pulitzer Prize winner?

The contest will be an annual year long event. Contestants will be invited to come to www.SmartestofUS.com,pay a $10 entry fee, take a 15 minute 40 question test to find the smartest people in the US. The winner will receive a $50,000 prize, 12 monthly winners will receive a $5,000 prize, and we'll award cash prizes down to the 1000 smartest person in the US. Over 16 million people search for online contestants and sweepstakes every month, nine million play online poker.

The questions have been written, a bank of 3000 to be drawn from, the program has been written, the designers are hard at work, and the advertising campaign is being worked on.

I want to share some of my thoughts about how to present The Smartest of the US contest in hopes that any readers will share their incite or opinions.

As I see it there are three ways that I can present my contest each with differing appeal and differing risk and reward:

1. With a fixed prize ($50,000 to winner and payout to next 1000 highest scores, an exposure of $500,000 plus). This carries a high risk; what if the revenue doesn't cover the advertising and prize cost? It carries a high appeal; able to state the prize in the ads thus pulling high traffic. How many people really think their one of the 1000 smartest so how many will enter? But then we are paying the top 1000 and the entry fee is just $10.00.

2. With a prize that is tied to the level of entire fees (sliding prize); the level of risk goes down and the exposure is just the advertising which can be stopped if the entries are not coming. The potential prize purse actually doubles if we reach our projected participation level of 2000 entries per day. The advertising copy is then limited because an inability to state a definite prize level early on, thus potentially less traffic.

3. Drop the entry fee and offer the same prize as stated in option #1, and sell the promotion up front to a Sponsor who can be tied into The Smartest of the US. (The Smart Car, Phoenix University, Apple Computer). With no entry fee a banner ad campaign could yield a daily traffic of 50,000 or more resulting in a lot of advertising impressions. If it's free most people would be interested in where they stand in a Smartest of US ranking. With a 5% conversion rate on leads it could generate 775,000 annual leads. I could show a $3.5 million value to Phoenix University, who's accustomed to paying between $25 and $60 for leads, and offer the promotion for sale at a sizable discount.

Give these options some thought and if you have any comments please share them with me.

The Mad DJ came calling

2008-11-04T11:47:00.001-06:00

Halloween came to our house again this year on October 31. Nita and I bought enough candy for 150 Trick or Teeters, just like the past three years we got about 50 goblins at our front door. Nita and I still remember the year we ran out of candy and had to turn out the lights and go to the basement and turn up the TV down there so we couldn’t hear the doorbell. We’re going to the beach for Thanksgiving so we’ll try to get rid of some of our excess there.

These are pictures of Haileigh and Emma as the entered our house. Trent and Haileigh came up with this costume that the called the “Mad DJ,” the most creative costume that I have ever seen. Then take a close look at Emma, this is an Angelina Jolie in the making.

The Best of the US

2008-11-02T15:32:00.004-06:00

I have been spending most of my time the last several weeks working on my website, www.BestofUS.com. I want to redesign the site and build it's monthly traffic. I feel that BestofUS has great potential to do good as well as generate cashflow.

The Best of The U.S.

www.BestofUS will be redesigned to have a landing page which will direct the visitor to the Professionals Page, the High School Page, and our new page which is under construction: The Smartest of US page.

The Smartest of US is a contest which we anticipating will bring us site traffic of 3000 to 5000 visitors per day. I own the URL SmartestofUS.com. The contest has the potential to generate revenue through an entry fee. The details are being worked out with our attorney.

The landing page will also offer current content consisting of RSS feeds to relative blogs and news. The site will look like WebMD.com or Wellness.com, with the flash screens directing visitors to our listing pages.

All pages need SEO, and SEM work. We need to build our web links with our 63,000 listed professionals and High School student’s social network pages.

With increased site traffic and public awareness we want to build our listing pages business plan around increased professional listing upgrades. We need to offer a monthly or annual payment plan with an automatic renewal. We currently have 63,000 professionals listed with 300 upgraded to include contact information and web link.

We need to market our Best High School Student page through FaceBook and MySpace, and support it through advertising. The page needs to turn into a Social Networking site for the Smartest Students keyed to College Admissions, Scholarships, Competitions, and Intern Opportunities.

Searching for the Smartest of U.S. (Under construction)

OverviewThe Best of the U.S. announces a year long $1 million competition to find the smartest individual in the United States. We will hold twelve monthly competitions starting January 1, 2009.

Participants will be asked to answer 50 questions online in an allotted time of 15 minutes.

Each entry will carry a $10.00 fee; contestants will be allowed to enter as often as they wish.

The 50 questions will be randomly drawn from a data base of over 4,000 questions.

Each month the top 10 scorers will qualify for the semifinals. The 10 semi-finalists will be tested in a testing center to determine the monthly winner. The monthly winner will be paid a cash prize of $10,000 and qualify as one of the 12 finalists.

The twelve finalists will be invited to a central location in February 2010 to be tested and to determine The Smartest of U.S.

The winner and 999 runner-ups will share in the $1 million purse.
Grand Prize = $100,000
1st Runner-up through 80th Runner-up = $5,000
81st Runner-up through 180th Runner-up = $1,000
181st Runner-up through 1000th Runner-up = $500

The top ten monthly competitors and their corresponding scores will be posted on the website everyday.

The top 1000 annual competitors and their scores will be posted on the website.

The competition is open to all residents of the United States 18 years of age or older.

The South Sea Bubble of 1720

2008-10-18T20:11:00.003-05:00

Michel Zimmer, a friend of mine, brought another financial crisis of the past to my attention, The South Sea Bubble of 1720. As I did my research anger swept through my brain. Could our Financial Crisis have been a reenactment of the South Seas Bubble of 1720 that almost brought the English Empire to its knees? Could this all have been as a result of our political leaders turning a blind eye because they were involved in this whole mess from the beginning? Could there be high ranking officials in our government who had a personal interest is seeing the Sub-Prime Mortgage leveraging expand to the levels that it reached?
You read what I read on Wickipedia and let me know what you think.
Click on the headline and it will take you to Wikipedia or paste this address in your brouser. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Sea_Bubble

Financial Crisis ....Thud

2008-10-17T13:54:00.002-05:00

Thud…. This feels like the bottom. Oh, we’ll see another Hedge Fund or two go down, and we’ll see some insurance companies and pensions funds tell their dirty secrets, but that news is nothing compared to: BREAKING NEWS…"THE GLOBAL ECONOMY IS FALLING". This was as bad as Chicken Little screaming…"THE SHY IS FALLING". We’ve survived both, and we will create a base and then grow from here. If you have cash, next week is the time to buy.
Now we need to focus on our next president and congress delivered to compliments of George W. Bush. Don’t blame John McCain for not giving it his best; Jesus Christ couldn’t have won as a Republican.
Let me restate: These are My Opinions.

Financial Crisis….. Proud Owner of Banks

2008-10-14T20:05:00.001-05:00

Today the US Government committed $250 billion of our tax dollars to purchase preferred shares of nine banks plus any number of others who wish to play. I think this is a good thing in light of the situation that we find ourselves in. In fact we as tax payers should make money on the deal. The problem is that we have taken a large step towards Socialism, and I fear it will not stop here. The Swap and CDO problem is not fully unwound; there are more casualties to come. The banks are rescued; next we will see insurance companies, and pension funds that need propping up not to mention the auto industry. They will have to be rescued as well and that means more tax dollars and more Socialism. The money is allocated, $700 billion, last week. What have our leaders done to us, our children and our grandchildren, and all so the fat cats could have a bigger boat, house and airplane?

Financial Crisis ….Stabilization?

2008-10-14T08:01:00.001-05:00

Monday morning the DOW open up 425 points based on the action of Great Britain’s support of its markets and banks over the weekend. This stimulated anticipation of the US government’s additional support of the US markets and banks. This all looks good but we must remember that we are in a market that is being driven by liquidation not fundamentals and technicals. I believe there are still a slew of hedge funds, mutual funds, pension funds and insurance companies who have to adjust their balance sheets to allow for the devaluation of their sub prime based investment holdings. As these assets are valued in the market place the mark to market rule requires them to write them down on their books. In order keep their asset to liability ratios in compliance with regulations and to fund growing redemptions they will need to raise cash, which will mean more liquidation. Monday ended up 938 on the DOW signaling that investors want back in feeling that we have set the bottom. I agree that we have hit the bottom but I don’t think that we are out of the woods yet, we still have bad news to come from some of our largest financial institutions. I feel this is the time to own hard assets and arga assets. I like coal, natural gas, oil, gold, and agricultural ETF’s. I also like oil companies, we have seen a 40% drop in the cost of oil and a 15% drop at the pump; someone is making the 25% difference.
Definition: LIBOR = London Inter-Bank Offer Rate. The interest rate that the banks charge each other for loans (usually in Eurodollars). This rate is applicable to the short-term international interbank market, and applies to very large loans borrowed for anywhere from one day to five years. This market allows banks with liquidity requirements to borrow quickly from other banks with surpluses, enabling banks to avoid holding excessively large amounts of their asset base as liquid assets. The LIBOR is officially fixed once a day by a small group of large London banks, but the rate changes throughout the day.

Financial Crisis - More to come

2008-10-10T15:29:00.000-05:00

The Lehman Brothers Auction that I spoke of yesterday took place today and the strike price on their debt instrument investments (COD) sold for 9.75 cents on the dollar. That means those who wrote the Credit Swaps (Insurance) owes the investors 90.25 cents on the dollar. Some assets have been sold over the past months in preparation for this and more assets will have to be sold to cover these shortages (estimated to be $60 trillion) or the writers of the swaps will go under or the investors will be left holding the empty bag. In all cases some money will have to be raised, assets sold, which will put more selling pressure on the stock market. Thus look for the markets to go lower next week. The long and short is that the $10 million package of mortgages that we spoke of yesterday is now valued at $975,000. I believe that this will cause more banks and brokerage firms to fail in the next few weeks. It will take a month or two for the dust to settle, ie… banks to close doors, the government to implement their $700 billion rescue package, and global governments to initiate a coordinated effort (this weekends G7 meeting). From there the market will have to build confidence and as it builds the market will rally. I will be putting my money in commodities, oil, coal, agribusiness, natural gas: these are things that you and I will continue to be purchased at some level as the economy regains strength. I don’t have to buy cars, heavy equipment, computers, software, or houses so I’ll stay away from consumer discretionaries. I’ll also stay away from financials; a year from now the financial industry will look very different then it dose today. I don’t know how but I don’t want to get caught in the effects of heightened government regulation which usually translates to less risk and less profits thus lower value. The world is not coming to an end, the sun will rise tomorrow, and we will get through this and come out of this crisis on the other side better then we entered. I’ll keep posting until I don’t have an opinion.

Financial Crisis...What's Next?

2008-10-09T17:35:00.003-05:00

Today we saw a 678 point drop in the DOW. The DOW has now lost 25% of its value over the past thirty days, 39% in the past year.

Why? The Global Economy has been on a credit binge for the past 40 years and this is the day of reckoning. The Sub-Prime Mortgage Crises brought our banking and investment markets into the binging thus geometrically multiplying the effects of the overall misuse of credit.

Banks lent money to unqualified borrowers to buy homes. Both buyer and lender knew that the borrower would not be able to make the payments when the favorable mortgage terms reset; but both also knew that the price of real estate was going to continue to go up and thus this would not be a problem. Waiting outside the bank were a hoard of investment bankers; CDs were paying 2.5% and this new mortgage was paying 7%, they snatched them up as fast as the bank could write them. These Investment Banks were not held to the same rules as Consumer banks; they could use borrowed money (leverage) to buy these mortgages. They could borrow short term money at 2.5% and turn it into an investment that was paying 7%. Granted there was a risk in these Sub Prime Mortgages, so the Investment Banks packaged maybe a 1000 of them together all with different degrees of risk thus diversifying the investment a CDO. Smart investors recognized this risk and asked for some assurance that if these mortgages should default they would still get their money. In rides AIG on a white horse and offers a Credit Swap, (Insurance to pay the investor if the mortgage should default) but not being called insurance it was not held to the rules of insurance (You must keep deposits on hand to pay any claims).

Over the past 60 days we have seen banks fail. Auditors came in and found that their assets on hand were out of line with their debt obligations and they were unable to raise enough capital to bring their debt to equity ratio back into line. The consumer was OK, the FDIC stepped in and made their deposits up to $100,000 good. But that other bank that lent the failed bank some short term money the week before lost its funds. This is why the global banking system has frozen-up. Banks are afraid to lend other banks any money, banks are afraid that the assets they have on their books will be devalued (The mark to market rule: and asset is worth whatever the market will pay for it today). If such a devaluation should accure they could be forced to close their doors.

Over the past 60 days we have seen Commercial Banks fail or be bought out. As the mortgages started to default investors stopped getting their 7% interest payments, they panicked and demanded their money from their broker. First the brokerage frim started liquidating their holdings to cover the demands for cash, thus putting selling pressure on the stock market and starting the slide down. Bear Sterns, Merrill Lynch and AIG were not able to keep up with the outflow of money and sought a governmental life preserver, Lehman Brother filed for bankrupsy.

That brings us to two weeks ago when AIGs Credit Swap business came out from under the rock it had been hiding under. This is when the banks, hedge funds, pension funds, insurance companies, and institutional investors learned that their Credit Swap (Insurance) had no capital to pay claims. Remember if you have a package of mortgages with a face value of $10 million on your books with insurance, its worth $10 million even with the defaults, but if there is no money to pay off the insurance…What are your mortgages worth? Last week it was announced that there would be an auction to auction off Lehman Brothers CDOs and Credit Swaps on Friday October 10, 2009…tomorrow. Remember the Mark to Market Rule. Tomorrow everyone will know what the assets they hold on their books and in their portfolios are worth. That is why the market has been in a freefall for the past eight days of trading. If hedge funds had anything of value it was being sold in fear that Monday October 13 could be too late. That $10 million package of mortgages could be worth $120,000.

Over the next 90 days our banking system and our investment markets will take a new form, as they should. It is my opinion that if you own banking and investment firm stocks you could be in for some real hurt. On the other hand if you own stock in well managed companies you will have more in your account next year at this time then you do today. When it’s all over the greedy bankers, hedge funds, brokerage firms, and speculators will be the big losers, as they should.

Berlin, Germany

2008-09-08T04:32:00.001-05:00

09/07/2008 We docked this morning in Warnemunde, a city of 8,000 founded in 1323 but did not come to life until it’s wealthy neighbors of Rostock discovered the pleasures of the sea, In the early 1900’s it was noted for it’s strictly segregated men’s and women’s beaches. Warnemunde has advanced over the past 108 years and now boasts of its beach dedicated to nude bathing. Our day started with a three hour train ride to Berlin. We caught a hop-on-hop-off bus for 12 Euro each to see the city. Our mistake; we got on a bus where the guide alternated between Germen and English description of the sights. It was hard to follow thus taking away from the city. I am glad we went to Berlin but I don’t see us coming back; it’s just another big city and the history has been changed with new construction. Over the past 100 years all the old building were either destroyed in WWII or have been replaced with new construction, many times replicating the old but still new. I found it confusing that most of the sights worth seeing were in East Berlin and not West Berlin. The history of the Gate and the Wall were interesting and did bring back memories but overall Berlin was disappointing to all of us.

Copenhagen, Denmark

2008-09-06T14:24:00.000-05:00

09/05/2008 I turned a year older today, (23,360 days alive) not to go unnoticed by Ron and Avie. While relaxing on the sun deck I was jarred to consciousness by the public announcement, “This guy is celebrating his birthday today, that’s right it’s his birthday.” Ron stood over me making his declaration to over five hundred sunning cruisers.
I took my first bicycle spinning class and I’m looking forward to my next opportunity to bring this aging body back to fighting form. The evening ended with a lobster and grouper dinner (singing waters, “Happy Birthday”, cake) again courtesy of Ron and Avie, and a 70’s musical stage production that ended with a tribute to the group Queen. They couldn’t have chosen better for Nita and me; we sang along with every word.
What a fabulous way to celebrate your birthday, (one of the days I will remember) last year we did it in China.

Copenhagen, Denmark
09/06/2008 As we moved up the Baltic Sea the weather changed from 61 and sunny to 58 rainy and overcast but cleared by noon. Nita and Avie met Lars, one of Avie’s internet students for a private day tour while Ron and I sought out the free bikes that are available around Copenhagen. It turned out that the availability of bikes was not plentiful but after two and a half hours of walking Copenhagen we did find two bikes to finish out our city exploration. We found Copenhagen to be inviting, friendly and easy to get around in with many pedestrian areas. Most notable were the Danish women, they are beautiful; blond deep tanned skin, full figured and friendly. Not being able to locate the free bikes readily we made it a point to ask for help in our search from only beautiful women. This added to our difficulty because we often found it hard to follow their instructions having spent most of our time with them admiring their “features”.
Lars met Nita and Avie and they toured the city via the double decker bus with side trips to Tivoli Park, the pedestrian shopping area and the city lakes. The NCL cruise ships all operate under a “freestyle” eating plan which gives us a choice of eleven restaurants to eat in each evening thus we are with new people every night adding to the cruising experience.

The Norwegian Jewel out of Dover England

2008-09-05T02:36:00.000-05:00

Thursday 6:30 PM we find ourselves at the Tzars dinning room; smoked salmon appetizer, leg of lamb entrée, and soufflé for desert. Exactly 24 hours have passed since we boarded our plane in Birmingham and we are now in the English Channel heading for the Baltic Sea. Those 24 hours are a blur. We did have a plane ride to London, little to no sleep, a bus ride from London to Dover, lunch and still little to no sleep.

We can’t help making comparisons between our new ship and the Royal Caribbean that took us to Spain in May. The RC was a floating luxurious Spa City, the NCL is a floating Ritz Carlton, and thus far the food is better on the NCL; then there’s the Carnival out of Mobile… it’s a NASCAR race with good food and good entertainment.

Ron survived the two plane rides, and swears that he has had his last. Our first stop will be Copenhagen, Denmark Saturday morning 8:00 AM; Friday is for relaxation and sleep.

"Let Me Buy the Sewer System"

2008-08-15T12:22:00.001-05:00

The citizens of Jefferson County should buy the Jefferson County Sewer System for $1.2 billion. The sewer system generates $115 million in annual revenue. Being a governmental utility I am confident that there are some savings that could be realized by running the system as an independent profit oriented business. The Jefferson County Sewer System is not under the jurisdiction of The Alabama Public Service Commission so a small increase in rates of 10% would not be an obstacle. That $12 million would go directly to the bottom line. It looks to me like we would own a business generating us a 5.5% return on investment and own a business free and clear valued at $1.2 billion.

Mr. Bonner has a history of a 7.5% to 11% return on investment for the RSA, so I suspect that my projections are on the conservative side.

It looks like the marketers of the sewer bonds, J.P. Morgan, and several other Wall Street Banks will be forced to make the sewer bond holders whole as City Group, Merrill Lynch, UBS, and Wachovia are being forced to do by various states attorney general. This will leave only J. P. Morgan and the other Wall Street bankers as the counties creditors. Without a clean sale the Jefferson County Sewer System will be forced into default and a receiver will be appointed; the assets of the sewer system will be tied up in court for years. J.P. Morgan and the others don’t want that and they don’t want the Jefferson County Commissioners, everyone recognizes that they are in over their heads.

There are approximately one million of us in Jefferson County. The purchase of the Jefferson County Sewer System would require and investment of $1,200 apiece. We would own a “Cash Cow”, a “monopoly”. The sewer system has just been rebuilt; it is in compliance with the Federal Clean Water Act. This is an opportunity of a lifetime, let’s go after it, let’s keep it for ourselves, let’s don’t let Mr. Bonner steal it form us.

We've Gotten Off Track

2008-07-25T11:10:00.006-05:00

One percent of the people in the US hold 40% of the nation’s wealth, while 40% of the people hold 1% of the nation’s wealth. This is the greatest imbalance of our nation’s wealth since the 1920’s. Theodore Roosevelt warned the Oil, Railroad, and Steel Barons that if they allowed the mounting imbalance of the nation’s wealth to continue we would face revolt jeopardizing Capitalism and the American way of life.

Over the past eight years middleclass incomes decreased by $2,000, expenditures on gasoline increased by $2,200, cost of health insurance increased by $363, food costs increased by $220 and mortgage payments increased by $1700; 5.2 million homeowners are facing foreclosure.

Tuesday Robert Steel, the president of Wachovia, announced the elimination of 11,000 jobs. Robert’s compensation package consist of a $1.1 million annual salary, an annual bonus of as much as $12 million, a restricted stock option valued at $10 million and a potential long-term incentive award of $15 million. (July 10 regulatory filing)

A close look at McCain and Obama’s tax plans reveal the following:

Your Annual Income McCain’s Plan Will Obama’s Plan Will
$38,000 - $66,000 Save you $319 Save you $1042
$66,000 - $112,000 Save you $1009 Save you $1290
$112,000 - $161,000 Save you $2,614 Save you $2,204
$161,000 - $227,000 Save you $4,380 Save you $27,89
$227,000 - $603,000 Save you $7,871 Save you $12
$603,000 - $2.9 million Save you $45,361 Increase Tax $115,974
Over $2.9 million Save you $269,364 Increase Tax $701,885

I think we’ve gotten off track.

Republician...Or Not

2008-07-22T09:46:00.000-05:00

The U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve are stepping in and providing liquidity through the Federal Reserve to Fanny May and Freddie Mac, two publicly traded companies that hold the liability for $5.3 trillion, half of the mortgages in the U.S. In addition President Bush is proposing that we, the taxpayers, buy stock in Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac in order to further prop up the two firms. Analysts estimate that Fanny and Freddie could incur $1.5 trillion in losses on their current holdings. This $1.5 trillion would be added to our current federal debt of $9.4 trillion then figure another $163 billion of annual deficit spending and another $600 billion on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars by the end of 2008.

Bush took office with a debt of $5.8 trillion. If you were a banker and someone brought you this kind of financial statement would you lend them any money? Could this be why the U.S dollar has lost 55% of its value over the last eight years? Oil is priced in dollars. Could this be part of the reason that gas has gone from $1.38 to $4.00 a gallon over the past eight years?
I have thought for years that I was a Republican. If John McCain is a continuation of Bush Policy I don’t think I will be able to afford to be a Republican. I’m certainly not better off then I was eight years ago, nor is our country.

A Perfect Storm

2008-07-11T13:23:00.002-05:00

General Motors and Ford are on the ropes. It’s not that they make bad cars that has put their existence in jeopardy. Over the past 55 years they have put themselves in a position that they can no longer compete with the foreign auto makers located in the U.S. General Motors currently has 145,000 employees and supports another 1.1 million retirees and dependents. Between retirees health care benefits and pensions each car cost GM $2,500 more to make then their foreign competitors. Because of antiquated factories they can’t change their production to the cars that we want as Honda and Toyota can. Thus the perfect storm has developed, their retiree costs are rising, they don’t make the cars that we want, and they can’t change fast enough. They are headed for bankruptcy.

Guess who is going to be on the hook for their retiree’s benefits. That’s right the government (Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974), in other words the tax payers, you and me. The same people who are going to have to bail out Freddie Mac and Fanny May. We, the tax payers, are already $9 trillion in debt. That number could easily double within the next twelve months as a result of these two mismanagements of Corporate America.

Please join me in demanding from Barack Obama and John McCain a comprehensive plan that addresses the banking crises, the U.S. auto industry crises, the housing crises, and our dependence on foreign oil.

Get answers before the election or shame on us.

Best of U.S. Stimulus Program

2008-06-30T10:44:00.002-05:00

Earlier this year the Bush Administration with the approval of Congress initiated a $150 billion Stimulus Program in an effort to increase consumer spending and hopefully bring our economy back into a growth mode. In fact consumer spending did increase by 5% in May 2008 but most of that can be attributed to escalating fuel and food prices. Those Stimulus dollars that are not going to fuel and food will most likely go towards flat screen TV’s or other foreign made merchandise, resulting in more of our American dollars leaving our shores.

The Best of U.S. Movement supports another Stimulus Program of $150 billion offering consumers a free U.S. made automobile that gets 36 MPG or better when they turn in their gas guzzler for destruction. This program would take 7.5 million gas guzzlers off the road reducing fuel consumption by up to 833 gallons per year per auto or 6.25 billion gallons total. This would eliminate our need for 320,512,800 barrels of oil resulting in $45 billion not leaving our country each year. The auto replacement program represents 6% of the U.S.’s passenger cars and would reduce our nations overall fuel consumption by 4%, each year the program is in place. The Best of U.S. Stimulus Program, over 5 years, would reduce our oil consumption by 20%; we currently produce 25% of our needs. With the added drilling in Anwar and the Gulf we could be producing 70% of our need within 5 years leaving less 30% needed from other sources which we could purchase from Canada and Mexico. These figures do not account for the millions of Americans who would switch to more fuel efficient vehicles outside of the Best of U.S. Stimulus Program as a result of purposely pushing the price of gas up above $7.50 per gallon. Financing of any remaining balance owed on the gas guzzler can be arranged as long as the outstanding balance is less then the value of the new car.

The program would be paid for by a $1.00 increase in the federal gas tax generating $180 billion in revenue. Another $7.5 billion would be generated from the sale of advertising space on each car for the oil company that joins in partnership with the American public to end our dependence of foreign oil. The participants in the program and all other U.S. citizens who purchase an automobile that gets 36 MPG or better will be rebated $15,000 each rear to offset the increase in federal gas tax. It is also possible that a system could be developed with the oil company partner that when a program participant filled up at one of their stations with a special credit card that the $1.00 federal tax world not be charged. This would replace the rebate.

U.S. auto makers sold 17 million cars in 2007 and are expected to sell 14 million cars in 2008 resulting in the probability of bankruptcy for one or more of the three. Under our program each manufacture would be challenged to produce a four passenger auto and a six passenger mini van that achieved 36 MPG or better. The winner of the challenge would be guaranteed the sale of 7.5 million vehicles each year of the program. Without such a program it is very possible that there will not be a U.S. auto manufacture in the near future.

Summer of '48

2008-01-31T11:05:00.000-06:00

The Summer of 1948
There was no TV so our evenings would be spent on the front porch or in the living room in front of the radio. Butch and I liked “Jack Armstrong –the All American Boy”, and as we got older “The Shadow”. Later in the evening Mom, Dad and Grandma would listen to “Jack Benny”, “Charlie McCarthy”, and the “Lux Radio Theater”. We would spend most of our evenings as a family around the radio. I’d fall asleep many nights with Dad and Grandma Talon listening to the Cincinnati Reds ball games. Mom wasn’t interested in baseball but Grandma Talon sure was, she knew every player, their averages and positions.
Then in 1948 we got our first television, a five inch black and white screen. There was nothing on most of the day other than a test pattern. At 7:00 it would light up. I remember inviting neighbors into our living room to watch “The Original Armature Hour” a show that everyone had heard on the radio for years and now there it was before our eyes. Within months we were watching “Kukla, Fran and Ollie”, followed by the “Howdy Doody Show”. Mom even bought Butch and me shirts just like Buffalo Bob wore; these became our favorite dress-up shirts.
I didn’t know my Grandfather Talon; he died before I was born. He must have done well for himself though because the house on Church Street was a nice home in its time.
During the summer the movie theater on Greenlee Avenue would show serials every Wednesday afternoon. Mom would walk Butch and me up Greenlee to the theater buy our tickets, a piece of candy and sit us down in the theater. “Now you stay here and watch the movie, I’m going to go to the grocery store and do some shopping and I’ll be back to get you when the movie is over. Do you have to go to the bathroom before I go?”
Butch and I looked so forward to Wednesday, over the years we saw all the now famous Superman, Flash Gordon, and Gene Autry serials. We’d come back the next week and the story would be continued from where it left off, always with the hero in a lurch.
Mom would pick us up and we’d walk back down Greenlee holding on to either side of Moms shopping basket.
The two girls that lived next door, the house that was six feet to the side of ours, were our main play mates from age 4 through 6. Ann, the oldest, was a little older then Butch and Mary was about a year older then me. Grandma Talon had a stone fish pond in the side yard that had large gold fish in it; somehow they lived through the winter freeze. This was off limits to me, for fear I would fall in and drown. To protect me from myself Dad had placed a piece of heavy wire over the top of the pond to make it more kid proof. One afternoon while playing tag in the back yard Mary aggressively tagged me and I fell into the pond face first. The wire did what it was designed to do but it also provided me with a substantial poke in the forehead that left a sizable scare that I would wear with pride in future years. Scars are reminders of the past.
There was also a stone arboretum in the furthest corner of the back yard. Vines had grown up the sides and over the top providing the four of us a perfect play house. One summer afternoon Ann brought an older girl, Margaret, from down on Greeley Avenue to play with us; she suggested that we play doctor and I was selected as the first patient.
“Take off your shirt and lay down on the bench,” Margaret directed me.
I removed my striped tee shirt, laid down on the bench and the operation began as the four of them diligently proceeded to work on me.
“Butch, you an I will be the doctors, and Mary and Ann are our nurses,” Margaret instructed. “Kobe you lay still and we’ll operate on you.”
Butch and Margaret probed at my belly with small sticks and Mary and Ann assisted. Having finished the operation they moved on to the next step in my examination.
“Pull down his pants and underwear,” Doctor Margaret instructed.
My pants were opened; underwear pulled down to my knees and my wiener was examined closely. It was determined that it also needed work.
Margaret leaned over me with the shaft of what we called a wheat weed in her hand. “Lie still while I fix you,” she said
Margaret secured my wiener in her left hand, pulling it up to its full length, with her thumb and fore finger she pinched the mouth of my wiener open. She placed the weed shaft into her mouth to wet it and proceeded to insert it into the mouth of my wiener as if she were threading a needle. I rose up on my elbows to get the best look at what was happening. The weed shaft entered and pricked the inside of my wiener with its end. I jerked and Margaret said, “Lay still, this is not easy,” as if this was a procedure that she had preformed often for the benefit of many six year old boys.
The pricking sensation continued not only at the weed shafts point but as its edges penetrated deeper. I started to feel like a small piece of barbed wire was being inserted into my wiener.
“Stop it that hurts,” I said.
“Of course it hurts, that’s why we have to operate on it,” Margaret explained. She moved her fingers higher up the weed shaft as if she intended to push it its full seven inch length into my wiener, and I didn’t have seven inches of soft wiener at that point of my development.
Butch, Ann and Mary looked on in wonderment while offering assurance that Margaret was doing it right.
The pain grew and I slammed my head down on the bench not able to look any longer. Margaret in full concentration pushed on. She pushed the weed shaft deeper and deeper, as the pain increased and my protests grew.
“Stop, stop,” I demanded.
Margaret looked at me with disgust, “You’re a baby, your no fun to play with.” She pulled the shaft out in one quick stroke delivering a maximum of pain and relief in one instant. The others dressed me and told me, “OK your better now the operation was a success, don’t worry about any pain it will go away.”
“Ann your next,” Margaret said.
Ann got up on the bench and we operated on her. We took off her shirt and worked on her tummy for a while then pulled down her pants to do some more work.
I bent over and looked closer, “Where’s her wiener.” I asked.
“Girl’s don’t have wieners,” Margaret said, “don’t be stupid.”
I looked at Butch to see if this was as big a surprise to him as it was to me, but he gave me a “don’t be stupid,” look.
I looked close and it looked like Ann had a sideways mouth between her legs. I didn’t want to be stupid but I need to know.
“How do girls pee if they don’t have a wiener?” I asked.
“Girls pee out of here,” Ann said pointing to her little mouth between her legs.
“How?” I asked again.
“Girls sit down to pee.” Margaret said pushing me off.
I tried to picture a girl sitting in the urinals that were in the kindergarten bathrooms at school. It must be hard.
Margaret bent over and came up with another wheat weed shaft lubricated it in her mouth as if she was preparing for another probing. I stepped in closer, I wanted to see this.
Having seen my operation and the associated pain Ann protested. “No, you’re not doing that to me.” She pushed Margaret away and got to her feet. She was quickly dressed and the doctor session ended.
We all avoided Margaret from that point on.

Charles H. Grinkmeyer

2008-01-09T11:22:00.000-06:00

Charles H Grinkmeyer
The Life of Charles H. Grinkmeyer
We move to Champaign from Cincinnati, Ohio in the winter of 1952, I was seven years old. It was Chuck and Kay, our mom and dad, and Butch, Rooney and me. I think we were a typical family of the time. We were three Catholic boys being raised by an aspiring father and mother hopeful of making a better life for their family.
Mom had not been feeling well for the last several months she was sleeping a lot and complaining of back pain which was not like Mom. There was some question as to whether or not she would be able to take care of Rooney, our baby brother, by herself. She had had her mother, Grandma Talon, to help her while we lived in Cincinnati. It had been a tough decision and there had even been some long and hard discussions among the adults about moving and leaving Rooney. Grandma Tallon didn’t want us to go but she couldn’t keep Rooney because she had to work at the hospital and she’d be by herself. Aunt Ruthie, Dad’s youngest sister, was still living at home and she could help Grandma Grinkmeyer with Rooney if it was necessary.Mom’s doctor, Dr. DeCourcy., who had delivered all three of us boys, assured Mom and Dad that the lump in her breast was nothing more then a swollen milk gland, “After all Kay, you have had three healthy boys, the lump will go away in several months and you’ll be fine.”
Mom wasn’t a frail woman; she came from strong Scottish and German stock and had been an active young woman. She loved to roller-skate before she got married and had continued to skate as often as she could after she had us boys. She was about five foot five and weighed about 120 pounds, had striking auburn hair and wore glasses to read. She was a pretty 27 year old woman and the proud mother of three boys.
Chuck and Kay saw the move to Champaign as Dad’s opportunity to advance our family. We could not live in Grandma Talon’s house forever; there were now five of us. It was decided that we would all go to Champaign, together. It would be hard leaving our friends on Church Street, but Butch and I had each other and Rooney was just one so he hadn’t made any friends yet. The center of his world was Mom.
The movers came and took our furniture two days before we were to leave; Mom put blankets and pillows on the floor where their bed used to be and all five of us slept there together on the floor for those two nights. We rolled around and laughed, we were all together. Butch and I rode on Dads back like a cowboy on a horse; I wished Mom had not packed my Gene Autrey toy gun.
Jerry was born on December 13, 1950, and came home from the hospital just before Christmas. Uncle Eddie had played Santa on Church Street that year; I hadn’t realized it was Uncle Eddie at the time. Gene Autrey had a number one hit called Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Santa had brought us a copy that we could play on the crank-up RCA Victor record player. We all decided that baby Jerry’s nose was so red that he looked like Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, thus he became known as Rooney. I don’t remember ever having so much fun as those nights on the bedroom floor.
Although Butch and I were leaving all our friends in the Saint Bernard neighborhood we were looking forward to the adventure in Champaign. After all we would be together as a family. Like most families the center of our life was our Mom. She was always there for us; her love for us three boys was abundant and readily accessible. I didn’t notice that she wasn’t feeling well I’m sure that she wanted it that way.
Chuck had taken this new job with Williamson Heating and Cooling and his new territory was in Champaign. Before Williamson Heating and Cooling, Dad had done a lot of things after he got out of the Navy. He had been a blackjack dealer over at the casino in Covington, Kentucky. He worked at the slaughterhouse owned by one of his uncle’s in downtown Cincinnati; he even was a press operator at the Beau Brummel Tie Company. Looking back at our life in Cincinnati, we were poor; I didn’t know we were poor at the time.
This move to Champaign was a real opportunity for Dad, and us, and a real tough decision considering Mom’s condition.
Butch was conceived just before Chuck went off to the Coast Guard in 1942. Chuck had met Kay at a roller rink and they had dated for several months before he got his draft notice from the Army. His buddies had told him how bad the Army was so he attempted to get into the Navy or Air Force but they couldn’t take him because he had already been ordered to report to the Army. He stumbled onto the Coast Guard recruiting office at the courthouse. The Coast Guard had not yet become a part of the Navy and was not bound under the same recruitment rules as the Air Force and Navy. He joined the Coast Guard on Friday, proposed to Kay on Saturday night and got Grandma Talons permission on Sunday. They were married the following Sunday and he was on a train to Oakland, California on Wednesday. Butch was born nine months later. Chuck moved up the ranks fast and was a sergeant teaching signal school in Oakland when he sent for Kay and Butch to join him in Oakland. He had rented one room apartment for $17.50 per month. Chuck ran the school in the afternoon, worked as a long-shore-man on the docks two to three nights a week and slept in the morning. Kay passed her time with Butch and the other military wife’s in the area. She grew to like the California weather but missed her mother and didn’t particularly like spend so much time alone while Chuck was working. Then Chuck got assigned to a ship and would be spending the next six months to a year on board. Six months after getting off that train Kay got back on the train for Cincinnati with Butch in her arms and me in her belly.
I was born on September 5, 1944 at 4:15 p.m. in Cincinnati, Ohio delivered by Doctor Giles DeCourcy. Mrs. Katherine Grinkmeyer had entered Good Samaritan Hospital on September 4, and left on September 15 with her second son. I had blond hair and blue eyes, weighed eight pounds and ten ounces, and was twenty-one inches long. Her hospital bill for my birth was $94.18. Her church had paid $74.00 and she owed $20.18. Fourteen years later I would learn that the Catholic Church had some expectations tied to that $74.00.
Mom took me to her mothers home on 514 Church Street in Saint Bernard, Ohio. Dad was on a ship and didn’t know I was born until September 24. I only have good memories of life in Saint Bernard. We didn’t have much but we lived in a working class neighborhood in Grandma Talon’s house with few expenses but fewer needs that I was aware of. Grandma Talon had a two story white clap-board house with a big fenced in back yard full of flowers, a stone fish pond and an arboretum. There was a porch across the full front of the house with a swing on one end. Inside the front door was a large foyer with steps on the right leading to three bedrooms and a bath upstairs, there was even a small kitchen in one of the bedrooms.
Down stairs the living room and dinning room were large with hardwood floors covered with area rugs. The dinning room had a large two pane window that looked directly into the neighbor’s house, where Ann and Mary lived. The neighbor’s house was no more then six feet away from the left side of our house. There was a good sized kitchen with a dinning table, a full bath and an enclosed back porch. Mom and Dad slept in what used to be the dining room, and Butch and I slept on what was the back porch on two steel cots. When Rooney came he slept in a crib next to Mom and Dads bed. I remember we didn’t have a refrigerator; we had an icebox on the back porch that the iceman used to fill twice a week with a big block of ice. On the right side of the house were steps into the cellar. Grandma kept her electric clothes washer down there and would hang our wash out on a line in the side yard.
Our world was our neighborhood, our extended family in Cincinnati and the Catholic Church. We were Catholics, being a Catholic was an important part of our life. We went to church every Sunday and prayed to Jesus and Mary the Virgin Mother. Butch and I were confirmed and our family followed all the Catholic teachings. We went to confession once a week, took communion every Sunday and never eat meat on Friday. Being a Catholic made me feel a part of something.One half of my education came from Mom and Dad and the other half came from the Catholic Church; meaning the nuns.
Both Mom and Dad’s families were all in Cincinnati. Chuck was one of five kids, the oldest son, and no one had ever left Cincinnati. Kay was one of two children and was very close to her mother. Grandma Talon was by herself. Kay her daughter, and Kay’s family were all she had left. Her husband had died some years ago and her son Jimmy had died in an automobile accident in 1940
Many of the weekends were spent with the Grinkmeyer family; aunts, uncles and cousins would go to a park somewhere, everybody would bring food, and we’d have a wonderful day together. Uncle Norb and Dad played on a baseball team; we’d all watch the game then have a cookout with our cousins. Other times Mom and Dad and Butch, and me would camp out in a tent along the river bank; we’d catch catfish and cook them over an open fire. Dad drove a Willies Jeep; it had a canvas roof and plastic side windows. It would go anywhere but was awful cold in the winter.
Grandpa Grinkmeyer was a true German, both his parents came to the U.S. when they were in their teens, and he had grown up following German ways more then American ways. I didn’t get to know him all that well. I do remember that he liked his beer. Sometimes he would take me with him down to the corner tavern and he would buy a bucket of beer. He’d let me carry the empty steel bucket down to the tavern where he would have the bartender fill it with beer, I’d guess it held about a half gallon of beer. He’d carry it back home because I might spill some and that would not be exceptable. Back on the porch, he would drink his beer from the bucket, Grandma might bring out a small glass and have a “swig”, but he would consume most of it. When he was done he would slide the bucket over to Butch and me and we would be allowed to “slurp” what was left. This never happened when Mom was around.He died at age 57, while we still lived in Saint Bernard with Grandma Talon, I suspect it had something to do with those cigarettes that he rolled with one hand and smoked all day.
Grandma Grinkmeyer was the center of the family until she died at eighty three years old. Her children were devoted to her and she was devoted to them, and she loved her grand children to death. In my eyes she never changed. She was a buxom German woman; when I was young she would hug me and I would be consumed by her breasts, she’d hold me so tight I’d have to fight for breath, while she held me there she take my feet off the ground and just shake me. I loved it.Moving to Champaign was a big change in many ways. Number 1 Patricia Court was the first house of four along one side of what used to be a farmer’s path to his hay barn. The hay barn still stood at the end of Patricia Court and would provide Butch and me with a lot of adventures over the coming year. All four houses looked exactly the same, only trimmed in a different color. Ours was number 1 Patricia Court, the first house off the paved road, trimmed in red. It was a three-bedroom, one-bath, living room and kitchen, about 600 square feet, with a gravel driveway pulling up to the back door. There were no trees, no shrubs, and weeds for grass. All around us were nicer homes made of brick with trees and grass in the yard and concrete driveways.
Our life seemed normal on Patricia Court, we had friends our age, we spent a lot of time outside, and Mom looked after Rooney, Butch and me. I don’t remember being aware that Mom was getting sicker or unable to do as much as she had in the past. Dad was developing his territory, which covered most of Illinois and some of Indiana, so he wasn’t around during the week. He got a monthly draw, and then got paid a commission check once a year for his sales of the past year, so it was important that he get off to a good start.
On the weekends Dad came home and he would play baseball with Butch and me with Rooney sitting on the ground next to him. There was no family in Champaign so the picnics and family get-to-gathers were no longer a part of our life.
Dad took Mom to the hospital at the University of Illinois because she wasn’t getting any better and her regular doctor couldn’t figure out what was wrong with her. They came home and talked over dinner; that was the first time that I heard the word cancer. I didn’t know what cancer was but I got the idea that it was something that was growing in Mom’s body. Butch, Rooney and I were sent to our room but we could hear they were talking about some kind of cancer treatment, money, looking after the boys and how long Mom would be away.Rooney was playing on the floor not aware of what was going on and how his life would change. Soon any memories that he may of had of his mother would fade, she would become someone that might be mentioned only briefly in passing conversation, but for the most part was about to exit his life for the next forty-five years.
It was scary to me, but I felt sure that Dad would see to it and Mom would make everything alright for all of us. After all that’s what mom and dad’s do.
Mom and Dad called back to Cincinnati the next day and it was decided that Rooney would go back to Cincinnati to live with Grandma Grinkmeyer until Mom got to feeling better and Butch and I would stay in Champaign. For the next several days Mom wouldn’t put Rooney down, she acted like once she sent him back to Cincinnati we would never get him back.
That weekend Dad took Rooney to Cincinnati to live with Grandma Grinkmeyer and Aunt Ruthie.
Mom went into the hospital and Dad had to continue working as well as spend time in the hospital, so Butch and I were looked after by a series of housekeepers’.
Mrs. Elkins was our typical housekeeper. She stood about 5 ft. 3 in. and came in at about 220 lbs., didn’t take a bath, at least not at our house, so had a very distinctive odor about her, something like sour milk. She was, however, a darn good cook but not much of a housekeeper. I remember Mrs. Elkins because she stuck around longer than anybody else. I suspect it was because she needed the money worst then anyone else.
“Now here are my rules while I’m looking after you. I make dinner at night and sandwiches for lunch, you eat cereal for breakfast. I keep the house clean. You two stay out of the house except to eat and sleep. I go home on Friday night and come back on Monday morning. You get your bath on Saturday when your dad is home. What happens here during the week is between us, I don’t bother your dad with what you get into, and you don’t bother your dad with what I am doing. Do you understand?”
That was how it worked to. We left the house in the morning, came by to pick up a sandwich and showed back up for a sit down dinner, left the house and came back around nine, went to our rooms and went to bed. Most nights Mrs. Elkins would be asleep on the couch or talking on the phone when we came home. On the weekends Dad went to the hospital and we were again on our own until he got home at night. Butch and I were eight and nine year’s old living on our own during the week with a place to eat and sleep.
I really didn’t know what was going on, I just knew that my Mom was sick but I figured she was getting better. I think Butch had a better idea what was going on, he seemed to be mad and getting madder. It was about this time the Butch and I started fighting a lot, and by fighting I don’t mean just words, I mean fists. There was no question that we were best of friends as well as brothers, but it seemed that I would do just about anything to irritate him and he would be more then happy to smash me in the face, or pound the breath out of my stomach. It was almost like we were starved for any expression of emotion and this was the best that we could do.
School let out for summer vacation so the next weekend Butch and I were in Cincinnati at Grandma Grinkmeyer’s house. Grandma Grinkmeyer lived in a row-house, with a driveway of the side where we would play. Her house was in the old part of Cincinnati, close to where my Grandfather worked at the Formica plant. It was one of those houses where you walked in the front door into the living room, behind it was the bedroom, behind that was the dinning room, and behind that was the kitchen, with a build on that held the bathroom. In the bedroom there was a set of steep steps that went up to two bedrooms. There was no bathroom upstairs and it wasn’t heated. The heat came from a coal fired furnace down in the basement. Aunt Ruthie and Grandma had been taking care of Rooney and now they had Butch and me as well. We spent our days with Grandma, or went swimming with our cousin Diane Mason. Her brother Tom was off studying to become a priest.
Aunt Ruthie would get off work and take us with her shopping or for a walk, but we would always end up in Saint Pious Church. Aunt Ruthie gave Butch and me each a rosary and told us, “Pray for your mom, Jesus loves you; Jesus loves your mom, pray to Jesus and his mother, The Virgin Mary, to make your mom better so that she can come home and be with you. You boys keep your rosary in your pockets so you can pray to Jesus anytime; when you get up in the morning, before you go to bed or during the day. Pray to Jesus, Jesus will make your mom better.”
Kay Talon Grinkmeyer died on July 14, 1953, she was 30 years old: I was eight years old, Butch was ten years old, and Rooney was two years old.
Butch and I had been in Cincinnati since school closed for the summer and Dad had gone back to Champaign to look after Mom in the hospital. On this particular July afternoon Butch and I were playing in the driveway and Aunt Ruthie was there looking after Rooney.Dad drove up, “hi boys,” all three of us at his feet clinging at his legs not wanting to let him go. After a few minutes, several pats on the head he went into the house leaving the three of us on the driveway with Auntie Ruthie.
He’s on the porch, three steps up, “Butch and Kobe come into the house I need to talk to you.”Aunt Ruthie stayed outside with Rooney. “He’s going to tell us when Mom is coming home and when Butch, Rooney and I are all going back to Champaign to be all together again.” I ran up the steps and followed him into the house, grabbing his leg as we moved together towards the sofa. Butch lagged behind, came through the door with his head down, and hands held together at his belly button. I looked up at Dad and his face was sad as he looked to Butch approaching us on the sofa. He reached out and turned to set him next him on his left side.
We sat on living room sofa, Dad in the center and Butch and me on either side. I remember that day as if it were yesterday. The sofa set against the side wall, it was brown and the fabric was soft, kind of fuzzy like short cropped hair on a dog. Even though it was the middle of the afternoon the lights were on the end tables and the curtains were pulled. I could hear Grandma Grinkmeyer in the kitchen and the cars going up the street outside.
There was the smell of food in the house, but then there was always the smell of food in Grandma Grinkmeyer’s house. Dad was wearing brown slacks, a sports coat and a tie; this was not his normal dress. Dad put an arm around each one of us pulled us close and said, “Boys, Mom died two days ago.”
Later while we were in the back trying to understand what had happened; inside Grandma’s house another battle was being waged in Grandma’s kitchen. Our aunts and uncles were trying to decide who was going to take who. They had figured this all out weeks ago. Uncle Norb and Aunt Flow volunteered to take Butch home with them and raise him like their son with their daughter Sandy. Uncle Eddy and Aunt Sis said they would take me and raise me with their daughter Cherry; she was just a baby and I could be her older brother. Aunt Dee and Uncle Phil would take Rooney they had one son.
Chuck said, “No, I’m going to keep my family together; I promised Kay that I would keep the boys together. I’ll be back for Butch and Kobe in a couple of weeks; I’ll be coming to get Rooney soon.”
I was lying face down in the ditch next to the culvert, preparing to make a break for the can, we were playing Kick The Can, when Dad called out, “Butch, Kobe come on the in here I have somebody that I’d like you to meet”
Butch and I ran to the front door and stepped into the living room. The living room was no bigger ten feet by twelve feet. Sitting in the armchair just inside the door was a lady. There was a table lamp next to her and the light on her made it look like she filled the whole room. Mrs. Elkins was in the kitchen looking around the corner and listening to every word.Dad was in a sports shirt and slacks, his hair combed back real neat, he had on shinny brown shoes. He was dressed to go out. Aunt Ruthie had told me that men get “slicked-up” to go out with ladies.
This lady didn’t look like any of the housekeepers that we had in the past. So I was sure this wasn’t a new housekeeper, besides Mrs. Elkins was over there watching. This lady had long thin legs, they were crossed, and her skirt let her knees show. She wore a tight flowered dress, not one of those baggy ones like the housekeepers wore. Her hair was all done up, it was dark and shiny, she wore long earrings, her cheeks were red, she wore lipstick, and she smelled good. She was smoking a cigarette, and she greeted us with a friendly smile and reached out to shake each of our hands. As she shook my hand she said, “My name is Grace Plotner, nice to meet you Kobe.”
“Boys, this is Grace Plotter, I’ve been going out with Grace for several months now. She and I are going to get married; she’ll be your new mom.
I didn’t know it at the time, and I’d probably didn’t come to realize it for many years that the lady we met that night, Grace Plotner was going to change the path that Butch and I would follow from that point on. She would do more to change the direction of my life than anyone else that I would encounter over the next fifty years. She would also provide me with the biggest disappointment in any relationship that I would have over the next fifty years.
Grace Plotner and Charles H. Grinkmeyer were married on June 6, 1954.
We never went back to Patricia Court; our new home was on Green Street. Grace Plotner, our new mom, and her mom, our new Grandma Plotner, had lived here. Grandma Plotner had to move downtown into a co-op and our new cousin Judy had moved in with her. Our new home was very different from Patricia Court. Green Street had a white picket fence around it; it had trees in the yard and well kept grass. Inside there was big furniture, carpeting on the floor, and a separate dinning room. Butch and I shared a room that was larger then our old room.
January 1956, we moved to Greencroft. This was not a normal house; this was a house of the fifties. You would recognize it as a house of the fifties if you were to see it today. It’s most outstanding feature was it’s butterfly roof. It was constructed of redwood siding and glass, a lot of glass. Chuck and Grace were making a statement, they had arrived. They were members of the Champaign Country Club, their new home was featured in the Champaign Times Sunday Home section, and Grace was driving a new pink, black and white Buick Roadmaster.
Grace had gone to the Chicago Furniture Mart and had purchase all new furniture, much of which was designed by the times most contemporary furniture designers in the country. My brothers and I now know that if we could put our hand on some of that furniture today we would have items worth $25,000 and more, but no one knows where it all went as Grace and Chuck moved over the following years.
It had been almost four years since Chuck and Grace got married and our family had been formed. Grace had taken control of the situation and Butch and I had been turned around. There was discipline, direction and respect for ourselves and others introduced into our lives. We were far from perfect, our scholastic achievement still had some short falls but we were trying.
It must have been decided in January that Grace would attempt to have a child, she was thirty eight years old and it was now or never. This was not a topic of conversation at the dinner table but the news of her pregnancy was share with the boys on late May.
“Rooney you’re going to have a little brother.” Grandma Plotner shared. She received a “well OK” look from Mom.
I was happy for her and I understood why she would want to have her own child. It was some task that she had taken on, coming into our family after the death of our mom, and raising three boys.
The pregnancy wasn’t easy for her besides her age she had some complications with her blood. She wasn’t allowed to put on any excess weight. Every afternoon for the last six months Grace would get on my bike and Butch and she would go for a half hour bike ride. At first it was funny to see her riding my English bike not knowing how to shift the gears and use the hand breaks. I got even funnier as her belly grew but she continued to ride the bike everyday, even in the rain until the day she went to the hospital.
I would say everyone was happy to see her having a baby, we were hoping for a little sister but it wasn’t to be. Steve came home ten days after being born on August 18, 1958.
Steve was a cute boy. It was obvious that he was a Plotner more then a Grinkmeyer. His hair was black, like the Plotners, not blond like his brothers. His features were long and narrow like the Plotners, not short and broad like his brothers.
We lived in Champaign until 1960, my sophomore year in high school. Chuck was offered a larger territory in Indiana so we moved to Indianapolis. This is where most of you got to know Grace and Chuck so this is where I will end my story. I wanted you to know more about Charles H. Grinkmeyer and how his life evolved. Obviously there is a lot before and after that I don’t know, and that is where I am asking for your help.
This story is posted on my blog on the internet (http://kjohng.typepad.com/secondlifeblog/). I would like you to go to my blog open my Memories section and click on Live of Charles H. Grinkmeyer. You’ll find a comments box at the end of the story. I’d like you to share your memories about Chuck, so that I might complete his life story.

Christmas 1949

2007-12-10T11:08:00.001-06:00

Christmas 1949
December 24, 1949….12:20 P.M. EST
“There’s no Santa; Mom and Dad are Santa.” Butch tells me as we build a snowman in the back yard at 514 Church Street in Saint Bernard, Ohio.
We live with Grandma Talon. Grandma Talon has a two story white clap-board house with a big fenced in back yard full of flowers during the spring and summer, a stone fish pond and an arboretum. There is a wood porch across the full front of the house with a swing on one end. Inside the front door is a large foyer with the only closet on the ground floor. There are steps on the right leading to two bedrooms and a bath upstairs, there is even a small kitchen in one of the bedrooms. This is where Grandma Talon lives. Down stairs the living room and dinning room are large with hardwood floors covered with flowered area rugs. There’s a small kitchen with a Formica top kitchen table and four chairs, a full bath and an enclosed back porch. Mom and Dad sleep in what used to be the dining room, and Butch and I sleep on an enclosed back porch on two steel cots. We all keep our hang-up clothes in the front hall closet. We don’t have a refrigerator; we have an icebox on the outside back porch off the kitchen that the Iceman fills twice a week in the summer and once a week in the winter with a big block of ice.“Yes there is a Santa Claus,” the Iceman says as he climbs the back porch with a block of ice. “Don’t listen to your brother.”
“Yah, your wrong Santa is coming tonight and he’s bringing me presents.” I shout at Butch.
Butch doesn’t say anything, not wanting to get the Iceman any further involved in his big brother revelation.
He waits until the Iceman leaves us with a jolly reassurance. “I’m sure Santa will come to see you, Merry Christmas.”
“I can prove it; I can prove that Mom and Dad are Santa.”
“No you can’t.”
“Yes, I can; come with me.” We go in the back door, through the kitchen, through Mom and Dads bedroom and into the living room. Butch climbs up on the sofa that’s against the wall and looks over the back. “Look here!”
I climb up on the sofa and look over the back. To my surprise and confusion there are six or eight Christmas presents all wrapped in pretty Christmas paper. I am speechless; I twist my body and sit on the sofa, legs dangling above the floor.
I sit looking at the decorated tree not knowing what to think. “How could this be, Mom and Dad are Santa, Christmas isn’t for real?”
Grandma Talon comes down the steps and with a harsh voice tells me to go back outside. “I have a lot of work to do to get ready for tonight’s dinner.”
The cousins come to the house and we have a big Christmas Dinner on a long table set up in what used to be the dinning room but now is Mom and Dad’s bedroom. Everyone is happy and loud. “There is more to Christmas then just Santa.”
“What’s that noise, on the roof?” Dad interrupts the loud talk. No one says anything; everyone listens and looks to the ceiling. “Thump, Thump, Thump,” a sound form the front porch.
“Kid there’s someone on our porch, go see who’s making all that noise.”
Five of us run to the door, Butch opens the door and makes a quick back step retreat. “It’s Santa! He’s huge!” He’s wearing a red suit with white trim, big black boots and bells ringing as he stepped in the door. “He’s Huge.” He has a large bag over his shoulder which I know was filled with presents. “It’s Santa, there is a Santa, he’s right her in our house. He’s huge!”
I look at Butch, he’s in shock; he’s backed against the wall staring at Santa in amazement. Santa pushes his way into the living room give a few “Ho, Ho’s”, asks if we’ve all been good, empties his bag of gifts on the floor and passes out one to each of us kids. “You kids have been so good this year that I’ve got more presents for you, I couldn’t get them all on my sleigh so I came last night and hid the rest of them over here.”
Santa walks over to the sofa and with Dad’s help moves it away from the wall, bends over and retrieved more presents.
I look at Butch. His eyes are wide and sparkling; he’s staring at Santa, his mouth hanging open, his hands fumbled with the wrapping on his present.
I lean closer. “There is a Santa Claus.”

Alone

2007-12-06T11:11:00.000-06:00

Alone
May 1954
This was going to be a great summer, Butch and I are going to get to go to camp. We'd never been on a vacation, or to camp. This year, we were going to camp, Camp Anachegie somewhere in Wisconsin. I had no idea were Wisconsin was or what camp was going to be like. I just knew I was going to camp, and I would be able to swim every day, paddle a canoe, explore the woods, and ride horses. That’s right; one of the campsites was Cowboy Camp. Each camper was assigned a horse that he rode and took care of every day. I had watched cowboys on TV, seen them in the movies, played cowboys in the yard, and now I was going to have the chance to be cowboy... for six weeks. This was going to be great for six weeks.
We had received a brochure on Camp Anachegie and Butch and I had gone over it and studied every detail. Dad had explained that he and Grace Plotner were going to get married and go on a honeymoon and Butch and I would go to camp so they could get to know each other better. This didn’t really make much sence to me but it didn’t have to “I was going to camp.”
Our journey started from Champaign, Illinois and we headed north through Illinois and up into Wisconsin. Camp Anachegie was located somewhere around Madison, Wisconsin, wherever Madison, Wisconsin was. This is probably the first time that Butch and I traveled in a car and didn't pick on each other and fight with each other. We were so excited about going to camp, hell we were just excited to go anywhere. Before the arrival of Grace Plotner, there wasn’t much money around our house so we were lucky to just have the basics. Vacations were things that other people went on, and I don’t really remember being envious or giving it much thought. We had always been active and we had each other, so there were plenty of adventures in our life, but this one was going to be special.
As we traveled north out of Illinois and into Wisconsin the cornfields were replaced by forests. There were trees everywhere, and I envisioned Camp Anachegie buried deep in the woods. Dad was driving us up to Camp Anachegie, turning around and driving back to Champaign the same day. He and Grace Plotner were getting married next week. With Butch and me at camp and Rooney in Cincinnati with Grandma Grinkmeyer, they could have six weeks to themselves.
As all young kids do, we kept asking Dad, “Are we almost there yet Dad?”, and finely somewhere north of Madison, Wisconsin he said, ” We’re almost there boys.”
About five minutes later, Dad spotted a sign, Camp Anachegie, with an arrow pointing to the right. We turned down a dirt road lined on both sides with tall green trees. The road wound up hills, down valleys, and across creeks, then as we crested a hill the forest opened up to a green pasture, and a huge sparkling blue lake surrounded by tall green and yellow trees. Situated at the edge of the lake were several buildings made of logs, and a brown sandy beach that extended across the face of the lake. It was beautiful. Better then it looked in the brochure.
Butch and I were on the edge of the backseat leaning over the front seat pointing in screaming “look at that, look at the canoes, look down there to the right there are Indian tepees.” Dad had a huge smile on his face, seeing us so excited. I’m sure my Dad was as proud as he could be seeing two of his boys about to experience a wonderful stay at camp.
We drove up to the biggest building parked the car and jumped out. Butch and I immediately ran down by the lake. There were canoes; one of them was even made out of that birch bark, like the Indians in the movies had. There were rowboats, and there was a floating raft out in the lake with a diving board on it. The lake was roped off with swimming areas and there was even a chair on stilts for the life guard to sit in. I was a real good swimmer, Dad had taught me to swim in the river when we went fishing back in Cincinnati, and then I swam in the pool when Dianne Mason, boy she was pretty, took us swimming when we stayed in Cincinnati with Grandma. I had seen the bigger kids use a diving board at the pool, maybe I’d become a diver while I was here at camp.
Dad hollered over to us, "You boys go ahead and look around, but don’t get in the water, I’m going to go in and get you registered for camp.”
Butch hollered back, "OK Dad, we’ll be right here, and we won’t go in the water.”
I ask Butch, “Where are the horses, I don’t see any horses, we will get to ride horses won’t we?”
“There probably kept somewhere else, maybe over by the tepees, don’t worry about it”.
Butch started skipping rocks across the lake, each time they’d skip; he’d count out “one, two, three.”
I picked up a rock, leaned over a little to the side like he did and threw it is hard as I could, “Kerr-plunked.” I never could get my rocks to skip.
“Who do you think lives in those Indian Te-pees over there? Do you think they’re real Indians over there?” I asked Butch knowing that he didn’t know anymore about it then I did, but I was so excited I just need to know everything right now.
“I don’t know,” he replied and skipped another rock, “one, two, three, four.”
“OK boys; come on over here”, Dad called. “I’ve got you registered, but they won’t be ready to take you to your campsites until three o’clock when all the other campers are arriving. Mrs. Elkins made some sandwiches that you can have for lunch, and wait for the other campers to arrive. I need to drive back to Champaign, I need to get back before it gets dark. You think you’ll be OK here for a couple of hours by yourself’s?”
“Sure dad, we’ll be fine, you go on. I’ll look after Kobe.” Butch assured him.
Dad slapped us on the backs, and told us to behave ourselves and have a good time, “I’ll see in six weeks.”
It was a little past twelve o’clock, so Butch and I sat down, where it looked like campers gathered for the evening campfires, and had our lunch. Butch asks me if I’d rather stayed in the Indian Village since I liked Indian so much.
“No, I think had rather be a cowboy, I hope they don’t give me one of those big horses, I’d rather have the small one, but not too small. Do you think real Indians live in those Tee-pees?”
We finished our lunch and I started running up and down the carved out bleachers that surrounded the campfire. About an hour later an older guy came over and introduced himself as Billy, one of the camp counselors. Billy was about 18 years old, red headed and a lot of freckles just like Berry back home. His head had an odd shape though, kind of flat on the sides and came to a broad point on the top. I would learn later that the other counselors called him “Canoe Head”, and it made total sense. He was a college student and he did this in the summer for college credit and he got paid he told us.
Billy explained that each village had its own counselors, and he was going to be in Cowboy Camp this week. He went on to explain that if Butch would pick up his stuff he’d helped him get settled over in Cowboy Camp and get first pick of the horses and his bunk.
“I’m going to Cowboy Camp too”, I informed Billy
“No you’re going to be in Eagles Nest”, Billy said.
“No I’m with Butch, we’re together, we’re brothers and we’re both signed up for Cowboy Camp. Our Dad just signed us up, but he had to go back to Champaign”
“No, I've got the paper’s right here, and your signed up for Eagles Nest, you have to be 10 years old to stay in Cowboy Camp, and it says here your 9 years old. So you can’t be in Cowboy’s Camp.” Billy explained. “There will be another counselor here in a few minutes to take you Eagles Nest”“Pick up your stuff Butch; I’m taking you to Cowboy Camp.”
Butch picked up his bag, looked at me and said, “You’ll be OK, maybe you can get in the Indian Village and you’ll be able to sleep in a tee-pee.”
“No, you have to be 10 years old to stay and Indian Village,” said Billy.
Butch and the counselor walked off up a small path and disappeared into the woods. As they disappeared I felt something that I had never felt before, I know now it was fear. I didn’t know that that was what it was. I just knew it didn’t feel good. I felt my face start scrunch up, and I felt tears coming into my eyes. But I couldn’t cry. I wouldn’t allow myself to cry.I sucked my lower lip in between my teeth and a bit on it, I took a deep breath, and I said to myself, “You’ll be OK; Butch said you’ll be OK.” I sat back down on the bench and kept repeating to myself ”You’ll be OK.”
“Dad said we would stay together, he expects us to stay together; Dad’s going to be mad at these people when he finds out. I wish he were here now, he’d get me into Cowboy Camp.”
About twenty minutes later, I saw another young guy approaching me he hollered out, "Are you Kobe Grinkmeyer, come with me we’re going to Eagles Nest.”
I grabbed my stuff, and followed him up the hill. He seemed so happy and glad to see me. I could feel some of the pain starting to go away. I started to believe, “I’ll be OK.”
We climbed up the hill. About halfway up, he said , “My name is Nathan, your Kobie Grinkmeyer, let me help you if you bag.” He reached down and took my bag.
Nathan looked to be a college student as well, but he looked much more like what a camp counselor should look like. He was close to six foot tall, had dark wavy hair and a good tan, and his head was round like it was suppose to be.
“You’re in the new building, and since you’re the first one here you can choose any bed you want,”There were two cinderblock buildings whit tin roofs and Nathan took me to the one on the far right. Inside, were rows of bunk beds with an open area in the center, and what look like a bathroom in the back.
“If I were you, I’d take one over here near the back so you don’t have so far walked if you go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. And I take a lower bunk, so you don’t have to climb up and down all week.”
I did as Nathan suggested, and threw my suitcase on a lower bunk. “I’m going to be here for six weeks.” I corrected Nathan.
“Six weeks, are you sure?” he asked.
“Ya, my brother and I are here for six weeks, he’s in Cowboy Camp. I was supposed to be in Cowboy Camp, so I’ll probably be moving soon.” I told him in a weakening voice. I stopped with that so as not to cry.
“Well, OK, you can just hang around here, the other campers should be arriving in about half an hour. I have to go do some things at the administrative building . But I’ll be back to check on you later. I’ll look into the Cowboy Camp mix-up.”
Nathan walked out the door, and I looked around the empty building, which looked nice enough and that feeling started to come back. I sucked in my lower lip between my teeth and bit. I opened my suitcase, took out a pair of socks, and put them up my face. They smelled like home. I took out an old T-shirt that was warn thin, Mrs. Elkins had wanted to throw it away in the rag bag, but I wouldn’t let her. I rubbed it up and down my arm, and it made me feel better. I wandered what Butch was doing now and if he missed me as much as I missed him. I started to cry, but I couldn’t cry, “Men don’t cry”. Dad had told Butch and me that when he was in the war he saw his buddies get killed right next to him and he didn’t cry. “If you don’t cry when you see your buddies killed, you don’t cry over small things” , he told us.
I bit my lip harder and didn’t cry, “Men don’t cry over small stuff, and nobody is getting killed here. Besides Nathan is looking into it for me.”
A half an hour later, the building started to fill up with other campers; just like Nathan said it would. As each group came in they would scramble for their beds, laughing and hollering, it seemed like most of them already knew each other. I later learned that they came from church groups, and school groups, and so they did know each other. Within an hour the building was full and a boy by the name of Brett took the bunk above mine.
He seemed like a nice guy, he was part of the church group and knew a lot of the other boys. He asked me my name and introduced me around the some of his friends. I put the socks and T-shirt back in the suitcase and followed Brett around.
“I was OK, just like Butch said it would be, but why didn’t he come with me to Eagles Nest? Maybe they didn’t allow 10 year olds in Eagles Nest... that must be it.”
Nathan stuck his head in the door and hollered, “Its dinner time guys, come on lets go to dinner. Follow me”There must have been 20 boys in our building so with the other building there were about 40 of us walking down the hill heading for this long narrow building that they called The Mess Hall. Inside there were long tables with plastic plates, plastic glasses and silverware. I just stayed with Brett. In the center of the table was a big medal pitcher full of what they called “bug juice”. We all got in a line that went to the front of the mess hall and these older guys put food on our plates. I just followed Brett.
Nathan explained, “There’s bug juice and the pitcher, if you want milk it’s in the machine upfront.”Brett didn’t go to get milk, so I didn’t go to get milk. I drank “bug juice”.
After dinner we fooled around in the area outside our building, climbing ropes, and running through the woods. They had a chinning bar, which I was pretty good at. I could chin myself more times then any of Brett’s friends. I started to feel like a part of the group.
As it started to get dark Nathan told us to get ready to go to campfire. “Put on a jacket, it will get cold tonight and bring your flashlights, because it will be real dark when we come back. Don’t turn your flashlights on at campfire or it will be taken away for the rest of the week.”
I rumaged through my suit case and got my metal flashlight. I had never owned a flashlight before, we always had to use someone else’s when we played kick the can. The brochure had been very clear that every camper had to bring a flash light, and I had mine. I had wanted to use it at home but Dad wouldn’t let me for fear that I would ware out the batteries, after all I was going to need it for six weeks at camp.
We all marched down to the campfire area. There must have been 100 boys there, all sitting in a big horseshoe going up 10 rows around a big campfire, it was huge. All the counselors were introduced, and each one told us about some of the things we were going to be doing over the next week. We sang songs, church songs and camping songs. Then one of the counselor’s told a ghost story. It was scary, but it was fun. I saw Butch over on the other side of the campfire with his group. They didn’t have on cowboy hats or cowboy boots that I could see, but he seemed to be having good time and so was I.
The head counselor explain that the bugle would blow at 7:30 in the morning and we were to brush your teeth and head down to the lake in our under ware and flip flops for a bath. After the bath we would go back to our camp area, get dressed and go to breakfast before the day’s activities.
Nathan gathered us together, and we headed back to Eagles Nest with our flashlights on. There was a lot a lot of laughing and kidding, mouth farts, armpit farts, and just general 10-year-old boy fun. We made our way back to our building, and Nathan told us it was time to get ready for bed. I went to the bathroom, came back got into my PJ’s and crawled in the bed. Overall, it had been a good day, more ups then downs, and in general, I felt I would be OK. Often in the distance I heard the bugle playing taps, and I thought “This is neat, this is real camp.”I fell asleep.
In the morning I was awakened by the sound of the bugle, and Nathan screaming, “Hit theDeck, it’s time to get up, on the beach in five minutes in your underwear and flip-flops for a bath.”Although I was awake, I didn’t move, I didn’t open my eyes, and I hoped I was dreaming, I hoped that I was really home on Patricia Court. “I don’t want to be at camp I thought to myself.”
“How could this have happened, I went to the bathroom before I went to bed, I didn’t drink any the water before I went to bed, I only had one glass of “bug juice”. I did just like Dad told me to do, why did this happen to me?”
I had wet the bed; I had been waiting the bed since Mom died. I even wet the bed when Butch slept with me, and he used to complain to Dad, but there was nothing I could seem to do about it. I didn’t move, I didn’t know what to do, if I got up and other boys would see my PJ’s all wet, they would smell that smell, and they would laugh at me, they wouldn’t like me anymore, it wouldn’t matter that I could do more chin-up then them. They would think I was a baby, I wet the bed like a baby.
I pushed by face deep in the pillow, “I wish that I was at home.” At least there, I know how to deal with this; Dad and Butch have grown to expect this every morning. Butch wets the bed sometimes too. I closed my eyes tight, and I asked God to take this away, this cold wet feeling, this smell that I had learned to live with at-home, but was not prepared to share with these boys. I was cold. I was wet. I was ashamed. I was alone. I was here for six weeks. Again I asked God to take it away, I didn’t pray to Jesus or Mary anymore they had let me down when it really counted, I spoke to God himself. I closed my eyes real tight and prayed, “Please God make this go away and never come back again.” Nothing happened; I was still wet and cold.
"Where was Butch, why wasn’t he here? Why wasn’t I at Cowboy Camp with him, Dad had registered us that way.”Brett poked me and said, “Kobe it’s time to get up, wake up.”
"OK", I said, “I’m getting up” and I rolled over on my back. Now my butt was wet too.
Brett moved off to the bathroom, and I quickly got out of bed, grabbed some clean underwear stuffed my PJ’s under the blankets, slipped on my flip-flops and headed for the door.
I thought to myself, “I hope they don’t smell it, I hope it dries before tonight, I hope it doesn’t happen again, tonight. God please don’t let this happen again tomorrow.”
Nathan, led us down to the beach. Although what had happened was all over me no one seemed to notice, no one seemed to smell what was on me, maybe I would be OK.
At the lakeside everyone’s stripped off their underwear, set them on top other flip-flops, grabbed a bar of soap and ran into the cold lake for their early-morning bath. It crossed my mind that maybe the reason we were doing this, was that every body wet the bed last night.
The days at Camp Anacjegie were full of fun, swimming, canoeing, nature hikes, crafts, and just plain fun. But each night after campfire I would crawl into a wet smelly bed, and hope that it would remain my secret through the end of the week. I prayed to God and my dead Mom to look over me and to not let it happen to me again tonight. It was wet in the middle of the mattress so I would try to stay to the side to avoid the wet. Each night the smell got worse and I feared that the other boys would smell it. If I can just stop drinking bug juice maybe it will stop.
On the third morning as I was coming back from the lake bath and Nathan grabbed my arm. “Come outside with me Kobie”.
“Kobie, I know you’ve got up problem and I’d like to help you with it.”
Oh no, there’s that feeling again, he knows, and he’s going to tell everyone.
“I think you and I need to take the mattress off your bed and hang it over the line behind the building and send your sheets and blankets to the laundry. We can do that when the other boys go to breakfast this morning, and it can stay our secret. Is that okay with you?”
“Yes sir, that’s okay with me.”
“Starting tonight, I’m going to wake you up around midnight and take you to the bathroom and we’ll see if that doesn’t stop this problem, is that okay with you Kobe.”
“Yes sir, that’s okay with me.”
Nathan and I waited until the last boy left building, I told Brett that I had to get something and I would catch up, so save me a seat next to him at breakfast.Nathan helped me carry the mattress out back, it smelled bad, but Nathan didn’t say anything. He gave me a cloth bag and I stuffed the sheets, blanket and my PJ’s into it. He took the bag and told me to go catch up with the other boys.
For the next six weeks Nathan or some other guy got me up every night at midnight, and I went to the bathroom . I wish I could say, that was the end of the problem, but it wasn’t . I had many more accident, but Nathan and I took care of it just as we had before. When I prayed at night I thanked God and my dead Mom for Nathan, I stopped asking for their help with my problem. I had learned those kind of prayers just don’t work like Butch has said when Mom died.
I don’t know why I had such a bed-wetting problem . I suspected had something to do with something that happened with Mom. I don’t know. At home, after camp, my bed-wetting problem continued. When I was in ninth grade Mom and Dad bought a metallic sheet that went under my regular sheet and when I’d peed an alarm would go off. It really didn’t do any good. I guess the alarm was supposed to wake me up and stop me from peeing, but instead it woke everyone else up and I had to get up and put on clean sheets before everyone went back to bed. It only lasted for about a week and then I was back to getting up each morning in a wet bed and washing my sheets.I continued to wet the bed off and on up until I went to junior high school. I would get up early each morning, strip my sheets, take then to the washing machine, and then the dryer and remake my bed all before I went to school. I became pretty good at doing laundry.
As I look back on my problem, and I suspect most kids have some kind of problem, the worst part of it was that it was my problem. I had full ownership of it, I shouldered full responsibility for it; only Nathan showed any willingness to make my problem his problem.

A Halloween Trick

2007-11-15T11:01:00.003-06:00

A Halloween Trick Remembered

We were in Italy last month and missed Halloween. Both Nita and enjoy the holiday, Nita always decorates the house and buys far to much candy for the number of kids that we get. The evening is always capped with a visit from our two grand daughters Haileigh and Emma. They come over and empty their bags on the floor and tell us about their evening and share their treats with us.
Not being home this year caused me to recall a memory of a Halloween in 1955 when I was eleven. We lived in Champaign Illinois then, a perfect time and place to grow up. There was no fear attached to letting children go out trick-or-treating on their own.
Halloween 1955:
Our class clown was Kenny, he lived several blocks from us but I didn’t get to know him until we went into sixth grade. Kenny knew no boundaries, that is to say he would do anything and worry about the consequences later. He also had the ability to draw Butch, my older brother, an me into his schemes.
Halloween that year had little to do with the traditional “Trick-or-Treating.” Halloween was an opportunity for the ultimate trick for Kenny. The week before Halloween he had taken an old pair of blue jeans and sewed a heavy shirt to the waist band. He sewed the arm and leg holes shut and stuffed his manikin with old newspaper, then he stitched a cloth bag with a ball cap sewn to it to the shirt neck for a head. Kenny, Butch, Danny and I carried our “little brother” with us as we went from house to house. About eight o'clock Kenny pulled two twenty foot pieces of rope out of his candy bag and tied one length of rope to each of “little brothers” arms.
“Come with me,” Kenny said, “this will be fun.”
We went down behind the school to a lightly traveled road where new houses were being built; there were no lights on the road. Kenny laid the manikin, “little brother”, on the side of the road and took one end of the rope across the road into the ditch where he and Danny took cover.
“Now when a car comes down the road, I’ll pull the rope hard and you hold you end of the rope loose but hold it high so “little brother” looks like he is running across the road. ‘Little brother’ will fly in front of the car and the car will hit him, we’ll stay in the ditch until the driver gets out and then we’ll grab ‘little brother’ and run and hide.” Butch and I took the other end of the rope and took cover in the ditch on the other side of the road.
For some reason, that I do not understand now, Kenny’s idea did sound like a lot of fun. We waited for several minutes then saw head lights approaching. The car approached, Kenny waited until the car was almost even with us he yelled, “Now” and pulled the rope. I stood up, held my end of the rope high and let the rope flow through my hand and “little brother” slammed into the cars front fender with a thud. I dove into the ditch.
The car came to a screeching stop and a elderly lady in a dress hurried out of the car and ran to the rear of the car to see what she had hit. I was no more then eight feet from her as she opened the car door. The interior light illuminated her face and I could see horror in her eyes. I felt that if she had shifted her focus to the ditch our eyes would meet. She ran to the body in the road ten feet behind her car. She approached “little brother” and I could hear her say, “Are you alright, I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you are you alright?” There was fear and terror in her voice; I could tell she was on the verge of tears.
Just before she reached “little brother” we all sprang out of the ditch and ran with in three feet of her snagging “little brother” and running into the darkness.
Her voice changed to rage and anger. “Dam you little son-of-a-bitch’s, you almost gave me a heart attach.”
Many years earlier back in Saint Bernard a boy in school called me a son-of–a-bitch, and I asked dad “what is a son-of-a-bitch?”
“That means that your mother is a dog,” he had informed me.
Hearing the lady call me a “son-of-a-bitch” I stopped in my tracks. Butch came back grabbed my arm and pulled me on into the darkness.
We all got better with each of the next three cars, Kenny’s timing got better. Ten feet before the care reached us Kenny yelled “Now” and “little brother” sprung into full view of the cars headlights the car hit “little brother” head on and disappeared under the car.
Each time I was within eight feet of the driver exiting their car, face fully lit, terror in their eyes. I can only now imagine what was going through those drivers’ minds seeing what they thought was a boy being hit by their car and disappearing from view as their car passed over his body. In one case the cars wheels ran over “little brother”. Each of the drivers stopped and hurried to aid what they thought was a young child lying in the middle of the road. Each time we sprung from the ditch on either side and ran down the road pulling "Little Brother" behind us and then disappearing into the darkness.
Today I fear what I would do if someone would pull this “Trick” on me.
Two head lights approached; as they drew closed I could see it was a pick-up truck. Butch manned the rope this time. “Now” Kenny screamed and “Little Brother” sprang to life, running across the street right in front of the pick-up. The trucks lights illuminated what looked like an 11 year old boy. I had not watched as closely when I was handling the rope.
The pick-up hit “Little Brother” with a thud and disappeared under the front bumper. The driver slammed on the brakes and the tires screamed. The door of the truck swung open before the truck came to a complete stop. I saw a thirty-ish man in jeans as his alligator skinned cowboy boot hit the pavement, and he saw me.
I pulled my way out of the ditch and hit the pavement running, within four strides the man had caught up with me and I was spun around as he grabbed my arm. He pulled me face to face with him and growled “You little bustard, I’ll give you a Trick that you’ll remember.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Butch running past me in the ditch. He was pulling ‘Little Brothers” rope with him. The pope caught the man about ankle high and pulled his legs out from under him and he hit the pavement hard on his butt. This freed me from his grip and I took off, faster then I had ever run in my life.
Within seconds he was back on his feet running after me. I darted up a 2X8 leading into a new house under construction, ran through the house jumped out the back door and took off across the back yard. The man was not as sure footed up the 2X8 and through the house so I was able to put some distance between us.
Once he cleared the house he started to gain on me, so I dove into a ditch, probably a septic tank field line and laid still. There was no light other then that provided by the moon and it wasn’t all that bright. I could hear him breathing heavy within five feet of my hiding place. He wandered off to the next house and I could hear his heavy boots pounding on the plywood floors. Before he returned to his truck he shouted, “You little bastard, I saw your face, I’ll hunt you down, I’ll find you,” and he disappeared into the night.
Butch, Kenny, and Danny had watched the whole thing from their hiding place on top of a mound of dirt 50 feet away. They came and pulled me out of the five foot trench that had saved me. They were even able to get me laughing about the whole nightmare. Within two minutes and we were headed back to the street in search of our next victim.
Our evil trick ended with the arrival of a police car, apparently the man in the alligator boots was true to his threat. Lucky for us we spotted the police car before he spotted us and Kenny tucked “Little Brother” under his arm and all four us ran home laughing and reliving our adventure all the way.
Looking back on my life that nights activities represent the meanest act that I have ever committed on another human being. I don’t know what ever happened to Kenny.

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2007-11-14T08:43:00.002-06:00

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Invest in China

2007-11-09T11:20:00.000-06:00

Invest in China
I spent the month of September in China and I came back with the opinion:
"Invest in China."
China is where the United States was in 1840. They are moving from an agrarian society to an industrial society. The big difference is that it took the U.S. one hundred sixty-seven years to get where we are today, China will get to the same point in less then twenty-five years. In fact it is estimated that by 2050 China's economy will be twice the size to the U. S economy.
Yesterday the World Bank's (WB) forecast for China's 2007 growth remained unchanged at 11.3 percent. China's GDP grew by 11.5 percent in the first three quarters of 2007 from the same period last year, decreasing from 11.9 percent in the second quarter but higher than 11.1 percent in the first quarter.
These figures compare to a U.S. GDP growth rate of 3.2% for 2007 YTD.
China's total retail sales grew 15.9 % year on year in the first three quarters of this year, 2.4 percentage points higher than in the same period of 2006, according to the National Bureau of Statistics(NBS). This would suggest that much of the growth of China's economy is going to satisfied the growing needs of it's population rather then stiffing the needs of it's trading partners.
It became apparent during my visit to China that the majority of the 1.5 billion people in China do not have refrigerators, can openers, cars or any of the day to day items we take for granite. China's growth is not dependent on our consumption of toys, tires and toothpaste. The slow down of our economy will have an effect on China's growth but not to the extent that many would like us to believe.
I invest in China through an Exchange Traded Fund (ETF). The trading symbol is FXI. From November 1, 2006 to November 1, 2007 the price of FXI has increased from $87 to $212 or 150%. In the last fifteen days the price has dropped to $174 or 18%, a trading correction that had been anticipated.
I see this as a long term investment of five to ten years, and the markets have presented a good buying opportunity with the current correction.
Let me know what you think.

3rd. Grade

2007-11-01T11:12:00.000-05:00

Child Abuse 1954
My third-grade teacher was Miss. Anderson, and the principal of the school was Mrs. Anderson. I don’t believe they were related, but they both did get to know me pretty well. I wasn’t really a bad kid more of a confused kid with little guidance. I think even at that age I was trying to figure out just who I was and how I fit into the world. I remain on that quest.
It was a regular practice for the first, second and third graders to spend a half hour after lunch recess each day on the gymnasium floor lying on mats, probably just to calm us down and give the teachers a break.My best friend at that time was a boy by the name of Chet Lowmeyer. Although we weren’t supposed to be talking during our rest time, Chet and I would use this time to kid around and share secrets. Chet, like me, was a pretty rough kid, but unlike me Chet was good student, and quite around most of the kids. I think it was fair to say that Howard Hooser and I were Chet’s only friends.
Butch and I wore our hair in a crew cut, Dad cut our hair and there was little harm that could be done to a crew cut with electric clippers. Chet’s hair was long and combed back like a man would wear. He looked like a young James Dean, in the movie Giant. Of course, I didn’t know who James Dean was at that time, but as I remember Chet even carried himself like James Dean did in Giant before he discovered oil on his land. Kind of shy and sheepish but observing everything. Chet carried mystery with him.Chet lived out in the country off Staley Road near the rail road tracks; I would have to say his family was poorer than ours. Chet and his little brother would walk home from school with us and sometimes I’d go out to his house for the afternoon after school. His mom was real nice, a pretty lady with long black hair, and real red lips. The Lowmeyer’s had small livestock and I would happily help Chet with his chores and we would run in the fields next to their house. Today we would call their house a shanty or a shack; they got their water from a well and they had no indoor plumbing. There was an abandoned pickup truck in the side yard that we would play in shooting out the windows with our fingers at the bad guys as we sped down the highway.
Mrs. Lowmeyer always made sure that I headed home before Chet’s dad got home. She explained that he worked hard and didn’t want a bunch of kids around the house when he got home. He wanted the place quite after a hard days work.
On this particular day, on the gym floor, Chet wasn’t kidding around, in fact he was acting quite serious, sheepish.
“Kobie, does your dad hit you?” Chet asked me in a low whisper.
“Once when Butch and I were bad, he hit us with a belt.” I told him.
“No, I mean does he hit you with his fist or his hand?” Chet asked.
“No… why does your dad hit you with his fist?” I asked.“Sometimes,” he turned his head away and was silent, and then he turned back. “Sometimes he hits my mom and when I try to stop him he hits me.”
“Why does he hit your mom?” I asked.
“He comes home from work and drinks beer. Then sometimes he gets in an argument with my mom and gets mad and hits her. She cries but he keeps hitting her, because she’s crying. I get in between them and try to stop him and he hits me.”“Does he hurt you?”Chet looked around the room to make sure that nobody was looking and raised his shirt above his pants to show me his side. I saw he was bruised badly. He unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it down to expose his shoulder and upper arm. He was bruised there as well. He pulled his shirt back up, buttoned it up and slid back down. He laid there on his mat looking me in my eyes.
I hurt for Chet; I didn’t know what to say. We lay there looking at each other, neither of us knowing what to say or what to do. His eyes looked like a dog that had been beaten by his master for something but didn’t know why. Ten-year-old boys shouldn’t have to deal with problems like this. A tear showed in Chet’s eye.
The bell rang and we were told to go back to our classroom. As I was rolling up my mat Chet leaned over and said, “Don’t tell anybody Kobe, promise.”
“I won’t, I promise.”
Several days later I was pulled out of class and taken to the principal’s office. Waiting there was Mrs. Anderson, dad, Butch and Chet’s little brother, Alan.
Mrs. Anderson spoke first. “Alan tells me the reason he has bruises on his arms and back is that when he walks home from school The Grinkmeyer Gang has been beating on him. Mr. Grinkmeyer, The Grinkmeyer Gang is how some of the children referred to your two boys.”
“Boys, is this true, have you been hitting Alan?” Dad asked.
I didn’t know what to say, I knew we hadn’t hit Alan and I had a pretty good idea as to who had, but I made a promised to Chet and I intended to keep it.
“We never touched Alan, he walks home from school with us some days, but we never touched him,” Butch told Dad and Mrs. Anderson.“Is that true Kobe?” Dad asked me.
“Dad, like Butch said we never touched Alan.”
“My boys said they never touched this boy, so as far as I’m concerned that’s the end of it,” Dad said to Mrs. Anderson in a stern voice.
“Alan, if these two boys didn’t hit you who did?” Mrs. Anderson asked Alan.
Alan was eight years old, he was confused, he was ashamed, and he was scared. He didn’t answer Mrs. Anderson; he stood looking at the floor.
“Alan, I ask your question who hit you.” Mrs. Anderson asked again.
Tears started to come to Alan eyes and he started to tremble. He wasn’t going to answer Mrs. Anderson’s question, he couldn’t. Alan knew if he did tell the beating that he had taken would be nothing compared to the beating he would get. As far as Alan was concerned it was The Grinkmeyer Gang that had done this to him.“OK you boys can go back to your classrooms and Mr. Grinkmeyer I’m sorry that I ask you to come in,” said Mrs. Anderson.
I went back to Miss. Anderson’s classroom and wanted to tell Chet what had happened but before I could he was pulled out of the classroom.
That afternoon Chet and Alan walk home from school with Butch and me. Chet told us that he told Mrs. Anderson how he and Alan had gotten the bruises. He said he was afraid to go home, he was afraid of what is dad would do to him and Alan if he found out that he had told. He explained that Mrs. Anderson had assured him that she would turn it over to the proper authorities and he and Alan would be OK. Chet wasn’t convinced, both Chet and Alan were very scared of what might happen that night.
Chet and Alan weren’t in school the next day or the rest of the week. It wasn’t until the next Monday at Chet and Alan showed back up in school. As we lay on our mats, Chet told me that the police had come that night and put is dad in handcuffs and hauled him away in the back of a police car. He told me that his mother was real mad at the police and that she screamed and cried to leave him alone, that he had done nothing wrong. They all had gone to stay with Chet’s grandmother through the weekend and they didn’t know how long they would be able to stay in their house because if their dad stayed in jail they couldn’t pay their bills.
Chet was in school for about two more weeks and then he didn’t come back. I didn’t see Chet Lowmeyer again until I entered seventh-grade and went to Edison Junior High School. He told me that his parents had gotten a divorce and is dad had moved to Chicago and his mom had married another man, who didn’t hit him or Alan. Chet had new friends and I had new friends so we didn’t see much of each other.
At ten I knew why people hit each other when they got mad; I hit my brother and other kids. But at ten I couldn’t imagine why a dad would hit his sons.What kind of man abuses his kids or allows them to be abused by anyone else? Can a kid or should a kid love a father who allows these kind of things happen? When the kid’s father is old and dying what kind of feeling should the kid feel for his father who allowed him to be abused? Where does a kid keep his feelings for the rest of his life?