This is a series of ActiveRain History Station programs using United States postage stamps as our history book.
For other programs in this series on the ActiveRain History Station, simply click here.
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On this date in 1969, Sesame Street debuted on PBS. It is the longest running children's program on television, and has been watched by 74 million people (I'm not one of the 74 million-could be why I don't know my alphabet-qwertyuiopasdfghjklzxcvbnm). Eight million people continue to tune in each week in over 120 countries.
Sesame Street offered short segments featuring puppets, animation, and live actors, a format that was immensely successful. Over the years, though, some critics have blamed the show and its use of brief segments for shrinking children's attention spans. Whatever.
Other interesting items about Sesame Street and Big Bird:
Sesame Street muppets were created by Jim Henson (1936-1990).
Because it debuted on PBS, 67% of the nation, yet 1.9 million households tuned in.
"If you can hold the attention of children, you can educate them."—author Malcolm Gladwell. This seems to be a common theme each year if you watch the various local, state, and national "Teacher of the Year" awards.
The different segments of the show were originally called "teaching commercials."
Many songs have become classics, even to the extent of being recorded by music stars: ♫ "Rubber Duckie" was written in 1970, recorded by the Bostop Pops in 1971, and became a hit in Germany in 1996. ♫ "Bein' Green" was written in 1970 and recorded by Frank Sinatra and Ray Charles. ♫ "Sing" became a hit for The Carpenters in 1973.
Sesame Street has received 118 Emmy Awards through 2009, more than any other television program.
At the end of the first season, the Educational Testing Service reported that children who watched Sesame Street regularly were 62% more likely to recognize a rectangle.
Most people think that Big Bird is a canary, but in an episode of Sesame Street Big Bird, he said he was "more of a condor." On Hollywood Squares in 1976, he said he was a lark. After 40 years, other than being old, does he know yet what kind of bird he is?
After regularly admonishing Clients, family, friends, business associates, and anyone else who would listen about regularly checking their email boxes so that I don't get bounced emails saying something like "email box full," well, I'm embarrassed to say that it has happened to me.
I have many web sites and many email addresses, but they all forward to my main email at russelraypc@aol.com. I know, I know. I've still got AOL. Yep. I've been with them since 1994 and won't be leaving anytime soon.
But my email box at AOL is never full. The worst I've had was when ActiveRain quit sending email notifications for a few days and then sent them all at one time. I had something like 172 email notifications in the space of a couple of hours.
No, it's not my AOL email box that was full, it was my primary web site email box that was full. Little did I know that even if you forward emails somewhere else, the originator of the email forwarding also keeps them. So even though I have a quota of 500 MB for my email box, which I never in my wildest dreams thought I would use, well, I opened my CPanel and found 132,839 emails that have been forwarded to me, and kept, since I created that web site back in February 2008.
Not only do I have an overload of emails, but I can't figure out how to delete them all, and neither could technical support. So my situation has been kicked up to technicals support's technical support.
Moral of this story. If you have other email addresses that are forwarding to somewhere else, check those email boxes that are being forwarded to make sure they are not full and that you are not losing business.
If you were, I think I might know what your parents were doing on November 9, 1966! LOL
This is a series of ActiveRain History Station programs using United States postage stamps as our history book.
For other programs in this series on the ActiveRain History Station, simply click here.
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The full blame for your parents doing the naughty, naughty can't be laid on their bed (or anywhere else) since on this day in 1965, the Northeast Blackout affected 30 million people in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Ontario, Canada.
In some areas, people went without electricity for up to 13½ hours. And what do YOU do when the lights go out?
According to Wikipedia,
"The cause of the failure was human error that happened days before the blackout when maintenance personnel incorrectly set a protective relay on one of the transmission lines between the Niagara generating station Sir Adam Beck and Station No. 2 in Queenston, Ontario. The safety relay, which is set to trip if the current exceeds the capacity of the transmission line, was set too low."
The misset relay caused a domino effect when it shut down, forcing electricity on to other power transmission lines and overloading them, causing them to shut down. As transmission lines shut down, power plants, with no place to send their electricity, also shut down to prevent damage. On and on and on....
Other interesting facts about the Northeast Blackout of 1965:
Many people were trapped in elevators for several hours.
Fort Erie in Ontario did not lose power because it was using older 25Hz generators rather than newer 60Hz generators.
WABC radio host Dan Ingram in New York City reported that he thought the music seemed slow. Analysis afterwards revealed that electric frequency up to six minutes before the blackout had fallen to as low as 51Hz, causing things tuned to the 60Hz frequency to run slower.
UFO reports increased over the blacked out areas.
Holyoke, Massachusetts; Hartford, Connecticut; and parts of New York City and Bergen County, New Jersey, did not lose power because they were using gas turbine power generators.
A full moon lit up the dark sky.
Only five reports of looting occurred in New York City, the lowest crime total for any night in the city's history.
Popular culture about the blackout: ♪ "Where Were You When the Lights Went out," 1968 movie ♪ "Massachusetts," a song by the Bee Gees ♪ "The Short Happy Circuit of Aunt Clara," an episode of Bewitched. ♪ "Double Identity," an episode of Quantum Leap. ♪ "Double Drick," an episode of Green Acres ♪ "Sports and Leisure," an episode of Wings
Even though episode #4 of the first season of Monk mentions one of the character's conception during the blackout, J. Richard Udry, a demographer at the University of North Carolina, did a careful statistical study of birth rates in the affected areas and found no increase. Drat. So much for the title of my post here. ☺☺☺
I was cleaning up the place while I was cooking supper and found an old Kellogg's box from Costco that Zoey the Cool Cat hasn't used in quite some time.
Remembering that I had moved a box a few weeks ago, and the simple act of relocating it piqued Zoey the Cool Cat's interest again, I decided to see if that was just a fluke, or if location really does make a difference.
So I moved the box from the garage to the bed in the home office. Following are the results of my experiment.
I posted to my blog (Developing your contact list), went to visit a past Client who is now a nursing mother, and came back to find sixty ActiveRain emails.
On a Sunday!
Must be a Featured Post.
Nope. (Drat! ☺)
Judging from the number of emails I got after my most recent post, seems I struck two nerves, a positive one with those who left comments, and a negative one with those who didn't leave comments but chose to email me instead.
Here are some of the comments I received by email:
"You're an idiot."—Short and sweet. Concise and to the point.
I can't believe a marketing/business consultant is telling realtors [sic] to drive or walk around neighborhoods and then send postcards. dumb [sic].—The word Realtors is registered by the National Association of Realtors, and while they say that you don't have to use the ® symbol, you do have to capitalize the word.
I hope your list isn't in order cause #1 should be #100.—They are not in order, but it's amazing how many homes one can sell in one's neighborhood or farm when one takes the time to get out there and actually meet one's neighbors.
That's got to be the funniest post I've read in a long time.—Laughter is the best medicine, but a good marketing plan that one adheres to persistently and consistently is the best road to success.
Why are you at Active Rain if you're still propounding snail mail?—ActiveRain should be a part of your marketing plan, but not the only part. (I had to look up the definition of "propounding" even though I understood the context, just didn't know the word -- love learning new stuff.)
I always enjoy it when I get feedback to anything that I do, and I would remind you Realtors that you are in a personal relationship industry. Buyers and Sellers are asking you to trust them when it comes to making or spending tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars, either immediately or over the course of the next thirty years with a home mortgage.
Whatever you do, and I don't know of anything that's negative as long as what you do is legal, ethical, and moral -- and two of those three are up to you to decide -- make it personal, and do it persistently and consistently. If you do, you'll see long-term success.
I'll remind you of what Warren Buffet said in the Summer of 2008 about his greatest secret for becoming the world's richest person: "If everyone is doing something, do something else." For those who don't know about his biggest acquisition this past week, he bought himself an entire railroad, the BNSF Railway. We're in the Internet age and he's buying 19th Century technology?
Think about that, and then get busy. In my next post, I'll show you how to really make another piece of 19th Century technology, snail mail, work for YOU!
This is part of a series of posts that I'm doing about Guerrilla Marketing based on the book Guerrilla Marketing Weapons, by Jay Conrad Levinson.
Previous Guerrilla Marketing posts can be accessed by clicking here.
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The very first sentence in this chapter is very telling and should be taken literally: "Do everything short of illegal activities to compile a gigantic list of people...."
I often get asked how to create a database, so following are a few of my favorite ideas that many of my Clients have had continued success with.
The first place is your own neighborhood or farming area. Walk or drive around, record the address, make notes about each house -- flowers, paint color, trees, car in the driveway, children, whatever, something that catches your attention because of your own interests or your own family. Then when you get back to the office, send them a little postcard: "Howdy, Neighbor. When I was driving down your street today, I noticed your beautiful flowers. I just wanted to let you know that I'm a Realtor right here at 1234 Penny Lane, so if you or your family, friends, and business associates have any questions about real estate or need help selling or buying a home, please let me know."
Remember to have a sign-up area on all pages of your web site, not just the home page. I would recommend against the window that pops up every time someone goes to a different page on your web site. You'll lose them after three times. Just put a link at the top and bottom of each page: "Click here to register" or "Click here to sign up for my monthly email newsletter."
Don't neglect the sphere of influence (SOI) that you already have. This SOI includes your own family, friends, and business associates, even if they were former family, former friends, or former business associates. Hopefully you didn't burn any bridges with that divorce....
Contact your favorite title company representative (TCR). Many TCRs here are only too happy to provide a list of property owners in specific zip codes, or even as detailed as specific streets. Occasionally, you'll see in these lists a note saying "DO NOT MAIL." Although there is a DO NOT CALL registry, there is no such thing as a DO NOT MAIL registry, so feel free to mail if you'd like. What I do when I find a DO NOT MAIL request, though, is revert to #1 above for that address.
This is my favorite: Carry postcards with you so that if when you strike up a conversation with someone at the grocery store, gas station, or beach, you can give them a postcard along with your business card. The postcard is simply an invitation to visit your web site, your ActiveRain blog, and mail the postcard back with their email address to sign up for your monthly email newsletter. Make sure you include the URL to your web site and your ActiveRain blog. I can't tell you how many marketing pieces I see that say, "Visit my web site/blog" and don't provide the URL.
Feel free to contribute by leaving your own idea in a comment.
This post is one of a series based on the book, Life 101: Everything We Wish We Had Learned About Life In School — But Didn't.
This book is a very powerful inspirational and self-help book without being pretentious about being powerful, inspirational, or a self-help book.
If you're interested in doing something about your life and don't have the money right now for a life coach, try this book.
There are used copies at amazon.com for pennies on the dollar.
Maybe something here, or in this series, will be the inspiration that can help you through a particularly tough day or time in your life.
Previous Life series posts can be accessed by clicking here.
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The chapter in this book about death is quite interesting, and even enlightening if one can tolerate reading about death. Therein lies the quandary.
One section is about a child's view of death since many children, if not most children, are exposed to death when grandma or granddad dies, or a favorite pet dies. Life goes from having a loving pet or family member is now a cold, silent corpse.
The more people a child asks, the more conflicting the answers might become. Perhaps only sex is cloaked in more mystery than death.
Adults cry, or withdraw from the family. Visits to the hospital. Unpleasant sights and smells. Religion provides a list of sins by which, after death, there is fire and brimstone, burning sulphur, and hell. Death must hurt. Death is terrible. I'm going to hell.
Is it any wonder that children put death on hold after their first experience? If they don't have to think about it, they won't. Just another unpleasant task that can be put off, like homework.
What kind of homework are you putting off? Analysis of your business, income, expenses, marketing, time with family? Is it time to sit down and think about things that you don't want to think about. Time to do your homework?
This is a series of ActiveRain History Station programs using United States postage stamps as our history book.
For other programs in this series on the ActiveRain History Station, simply click here.
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Since the first week in November has been election season for many decades, the next stamp and person we'll look at here is a 5¢ denomination issued in 1882 featuring James A. Garfield (1831-1881), the twentieth President of the United States:
Garfield was born in what is now Moreland Hills, Oregon. After studying at Hiram College in Ohio and Williams College in Massachusetts, he worked as a preacher, classical languages teacher, and high school principal before being admitted to the Ohio bar in 1860.
He had seven children with his wife, Lucretia Rudolph, whom he married in 1858. Unfortunately, as far as I can determine, he was also the first politician, and a Republican at that, to admit to an affair while married. His wife forgave him.
His military career saw him join the Army at the onset of the Civil War and rising quickly to the rank of Major General. He served in the House of Representatives and the Senate before being elected President.
He was the second President to be assassinated, after Abraham Lincoln. He had been in office only four months when Charles Guiteau, disgruntled over his failure to be appointed as United States Consul in Paris, France, shot Garfield in the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C.
President Garfield was passing through the station on his way to deliver a speech at his alma mater, Williams College. With him was Secretary of State James Blaine and Secretary of War Robert Todd Lincoln (Abraham Lincoln's son). The old railroad station is now the site of the West Building of the National Gallery of Art.
Although most historians consider his death an assassination, some also consider his death to be the result of medical malpractice. He died two months and seventeen days after being shot due to increasing illness from infection, blood poisoning, and bronchial pneumonia. His final cause of death was either a massive heart attack or a splenic artery anuerysm. Many historians and scientists believe that Garfield would have survived had his doctors been more capable.
Other interesting facts about James A. Garfield:
You'll always find his middle initial used because his son, James R. Garfield, was also a noted politician, serving as Secretary of the Interior under President Theodore Roosevelt.
Was a member of Delta Upsilon fraternity at Williams College.
His 199 days in office is the shortest presidential tenure, after William Henry Harrison, who died of pneumonia 31 days after taking office.
The only person to be a Representative, a Senator-elect, and a President-elect at the same time.
The only sitting member of the House of Representatives to be elected President.
Although he never served in the Senate, technically his election to the Senate at the same time as his election to the presidency also makes him the first Senator to be elected President.
John Philip Sousa led the Marine Corps Band at Garfield's Inaugural Ball.
President Garfield's only official social function made outside the White House was a visit to the Columbia Institution for the Deaf (now Gallaudet University) in May 1881.
One bullet grazed Garfield's arm while another one lodged in his body and was never found. Historians currently believe that it was lodged near his lung.
Alexander Graham Bell developed a metal detector to find the bullet but was unsuccessful because Garfield was lying on a metal bed, which were relatively rare, so its influence on the metal detector itself went undetected.
Part of Charles Guiteau's preserved brain is on display at the Mütter Museum at the College of Physicians of Philadelphia (Hmmmmm. I suppose so.) Guiteau's bones and more of his brain, along with Garfield's backbone and a couple of ribs, are kept at the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C. on the grounds of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
Garfield is buried in a huge mausoleum (at right) at Lake View Cemetary in Cleveland, Ohio.
The James A. Garfield monument in Washington, D.C., was dedicated in 1887
One of only three presidents to be survived by his mother, the other two being James K. Polk and John F. Kennedy.
The United States twice has had three Presidents in a single year: ► 1841—Martin Van Buren, William Henry Harrison, and John Tyler) ► 1881—Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur
Johnny Cash recorded a song in 1965 titled Mister Garfield (Has Been Shot Down)
Stephen Sondheim's musical Assassins includes the story of Charles Guiteau and features the song, "The Ballad of Guiteau."
The Twilight zone episode, "No Time Like The Past," revisits Garfield's assassination.
Garfield the cat is named for creator Jim Davis's grandfather, James A. Garfield Davis, who was named for the President.
Jon Stewart (yes, that Jon Stewart) portrayed Garfield in the audiobook version of Assassination Vacation, by Sarah Vowell.
Garfield, Kansas, with a population of under two hundred people (2000 Census), is named after the President.
Garfield was an active minister and elder for the Church of Christ, making him the only member of the clergy to serve as President.
Garfield is also claimed by the Disciples of Christ since the two churches didn't split until the 20th Century.
Garfield discovered a novel proof of the Pythagorean Theorem using a trapezoid in 1876.
Garfield was ambidextrous with left-handed dominance.
Garfield was a descendant of Mayflower passenger John Billington, who was convicted of murder in 1630.
Some quotes which might still be relevant in today's world: ► "The elevation of the negro race from slavery to the full rights of citizenship is the most important political change we have known since the adoption of the Constitution of 1787." ► "There can be no permanent disfranchised peasantry in the United States. Freedom can never yield its fullness of blessings so long as the law or its administration places the smallest obstacle in the pathway of any virtuous citizen." ► "The spirit should not grow old." ► "Nobody but radicals have ever accomplished anything in a great crisis." ► "If hard work is not another name for talent, it is the best possible substitute for it." ► "Be fit for more than the thing you are now doing. Let everyone know that you have a reserve in yourself; that you have more power than you are now using. If you are not too large for the place you occupy, you are too small for it." ► "[N]ine times out of ten the best thing that can happen to a young man is to be tossed overboard and compelled to sink or swim for himself." ► "The chief duty of government is to keep the peace and stand out of the sunshine of the people." ► "The lesson of history is rarely learned by the actors themselves." ► "Things don't turn up in this world until somebody turns them up." ► "All free governments are managed by the combined wisdom and folly of the people." ► "Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained." ► "The colonists were struggling not only against the armies of a great nation, but against the settled opinions of mankind; for the world did not then believe that the supreme authority of government could be safely intrusted to the guardianship of the people themselves." ► "It is the high privilege and sacred duty of those now living to educate their successors and fit them, by intelligence and virtue, for the inheritance which awaits them. In this beneficent work sections and races should be forgotten and partisanship should be unknown." ► "We may hasten or we may retard, but we can not prevent, the final reconciliation." ► "The President is the last person in the world to know what the people really want and think." (Attributed to Garfield but unsourced.) ► "A pound of pluck is worth a ton of luck."
__________ Sources:
"Garfield: A Biography," by Allan Peskin
"Dark Horse: The Surprise Election and Political Murder of James A. Garfield," by Kenneth Ackerman.
"Gangrene and Glory: Medical Care During the American Civil War," by Frank Freemon
"Assassination Vacation," by Sarah Vowell
Encyclopedia Britannica's Guide to American Presidents
Zoey the Cool Cat has been under the weather this past week, beginning last Monday.
She was not eating, nor pooping, nor cleaning herself (which she loves to do!), nor in any mood to roughhouse with me or even let me pet her.
A lot of coughing and sneezing, and no interest at all in chasing her little red ring.
All she was doing was sleeping.
I think she lost a few pounds, too.
Today, she is back to normal. She's been eating in the office, jumping up to the window sill, relaxing on the printer cleaning herself, playing with her little red ring, and letting me hold her upside down and give her a tummy rub.
I've had a busy week and only just now got to an email from my mother-in-law about the cat in Iowa that was documented as having a case of the swine flu. Symptoms are coughing, sneezing, and lethargy. Dehydration results. Hmmmm.
Some diseases are capable of being spread from humans to dogs and cats, and from dogs and cats to humans, but it's uncommon for a flu virus to jump from humans to cats.
Veterinarians are concerned about the ability of the H1N1 flu to cross species, as well as a possibility of our pets becoming vector species.
If your pets show signs of sickness, get them to a veterinarian. I didn't. I might have gotten lucky.
There is a Seattle based animal rescue site that is in need of our help. It doesn't involve a donation, just the one thing that I know you Active Rainers are very good at - snooping the internet.
The Animal Rescue Site is having trouble getting enough people to click on it daily so they can meet their quota of getting FREE FOOD donated every day to abused and neglected animals.
It takes about 30 seconds to go to their site and click on the purple box 'fund food for animals for free'. This doesn't cost you a thing.
Their corporate sponsors/advertisers use the number of daily visits to donate food to abandoned/neglected animals in exchange for advertising.
I did this myself, and thoroughly examined the site and background information of the organization prior to posting this blog.
Disclaimer: ActiveRain Corp. does not necessarily endorse the real estate agents, loan officers and brokers listed on this site. These real estate profiles, blogs and blog entries are provided here as a courtesy to our visitors to help them make an informed decision when buying or selling a house. ActiveRain Corp. takes no responsibility for the content in these profiles, that are written by the members of this community.
"If you can hold the attention of children, you can educate them."—author Malcolm Gladwell. This seems to be a common theme each year if you watch the various local, state, and national "Teacher of the Year" awards.
After regularly admonishing Clients, family, friends, business associates, and anyone else who would listen about regularly checking their email boxes so that I don't get bounced emails saying something like "email box full," well, I'm embarrassed to say that it has happened to me.
Not only do I have an overload of emails, but I can't figure out how to delete them all, and neither could technical support. So my situation has been kicked up to technicals support's technical support.
If you were, I think I might know what your parents were doing on November 9, 1966! LOL
This is a series of ActiveRain History Station programs using United States postage stamps as our history book.
"The cause of the failure was human error that happened days before the blackout when maintenance personnel incorrectly set a protective relay on one of the transmission lines between the Niagara generating station Sir Adam Beck and Station No. 2 in Queenston, Ontario. The safety relay, which is set to trip if the current exceeds the capacity of the transmission line, was set too low."
The misset relay caused a domino effect when it shut down, forcing electricity on to other power transmission lines and overloading them, causing them to shut down. As transmission lines shut down, power plants, with no place to send their electricity, also shut down to prevent damage. On and on and on....
WABC radio host Dan Ingram in New York City reported that he thought the music seemed slow. Analysis afterwards revealed that electric frequency up to six minutes before the blackout had fallen to as low as 51Hz, causing things tuned to the 60Hz frequency to run slower.
Popular culture about the blackout:
My, my, my, oh my.
I'll remind you of what Warren Buffet said in the Summer of 2008 about his greatest secret for becoming the world's richest person: "If everyone is doing something, do something else." For those who don't know about his biggest acquisition this past week, he bought himself an entire railroad, the 
This is part of a series of posts that I'm doing about Guerrilla Marketing based on the book Guerrilla Marketing Weapons, by Jay Conrad Levinson.
Previous Guerrilla Marketing posts can be accessed by 
This post is one of a series based on the book, Life 101: Everything We Wish We Had Learned About Life In School — But Didn't.
This book is a very powerful inspirational and self-help book without being pretentious about being powerful, inspirational, or a self-help book.
This is a series of ActiveRain History Station programs using United States postage stamps as our history book.
Garfield was born in what is now Moreland Hills, Oregon. After studying at Hiram College in Ohio and Williams College in Massachusetts, he worked as a preacher, classical languages teacher, and high school principal before being admitted to the Ohio bar in 1860.
He was the second President to be assassinated, after Abraham Lincoln. He had been in office only four months when Charles Guiteau, disgruntled over his failure to be appointed as United States Consul in Paris, France, shot Garfield in the Baltimore & Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C.
You'll always find his middle initial used because his son, James R. Garfield, was also a noted politician, serving as Secretary of the Interior under President Theodore Roosevelt.
Although he never served in the Senate, technically his election to the Senate at the same time as his election to the presidency also makes him the first Senator to be elected President.
Garfield is buried in a huge mausoleum (at right) at Lake View Cemetary in Cleveland, Ohio.
The Twilight zone episode, "No Time Like The Past," revisits Garfield's assassination.
Garfield was an active minister and elder for the Church of Christ, making him the only member of the clergy to serve as President.
► "The spirit should not grow old."
► "Next in importance to freedom and justice is popular education, without which neither freedom nor justice can be permanently maintained."
Zoey the Cool Cat has been under the weather this past week, beginning last Monday.
Today, she is back to normal. She's been eating in the office, jumping up to the window sill, relaxing on the printer cleaning herself, playing with her little red ring, and letting me hold her upside down and give her a tummy rub.
There is a Seattle based animal rescue site that is in need of our help. It doesn't involve a donation, just the one thing that I know you Active Rainers are very good at - snooping the internet.
;)
;)
