Thursday, December 31, 2015

Link Log for December 31

(Retrieved from Blogjob, where it went live without the benefit of those cute Blogjob "long-tailed tags" that give readers a sneak preview of a long multi-topic post...)

Still digging my way out of e-mails, some from before Christmas; answering some with links to
...and finding links in others. When will I do Twitter, Persona Paper, Live Journal, or write an actual article type post again? Categories: Food (Yum), Fun Stuff, Music, Phenology Links, Psychology, Amazon Photo Link.
Food (Yum) 
This is one recipe where you can just substitute self-rising cornmeal for self-rising flour--no need to add any exotic grains, if you can get cornmeal that's not been bioengineered to do as much damage as gluten does--and get a precise gluten-free equivalent. The banana smooths out the texture, and the oils in the banana and cornmeal allow the amount of shortening to be drastically reduced. I've made similar things as cakes, cupcakes/muffins, and even, to save electricity, as full-sized flapjacks. A banana-chocolate-cornmeal flapjack will stick if not started in a hot skillet, and scorch if the heat isn't turned down promptly, but it will flip, rise, and taste good.
Here's a simple, authentic Asian beef recipe:
Fun Stuff 
All things Icelandic interest me, and not only because I'm a knitter. It's really a country that one can believe exists, as described, only because nobody could possibly have made it up.
Music 
U.S. readers, I'm guessing you've never heard of any of these singers or any of their songs...
Phenology Link 
Even Santa Claus is getting weird weather :-) (Thanks to Steve Milloy for the link.)
Politics 
Just one link, not even from the U.S., about a general principle of politics.
Psychology 
C.S. Lewis put it more succinctly: "Aim at happiness and you will lose it. Aim at Heaven and you will get it, and happiness thrown in."
Here's a nondenominational exposition of the same idea, with an example.
And the Picture Is...
Everybody likes C.S. Lewis, right? Click on this graphic to buy the book...
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Book Review: Uncommon Wealth

(Reclaimed from Blogjob. Long-tailed tags: eagle sanctuary, nature notes, nature preserve,Virginia Nature Conservancy, Virginia tourism, Virginia wildlife,whitewater rafting in Virginia.)

A Fair Trade Book
Book Review: Uncommon Wealth
Editor: Robert M. Riordan
Date: 1999
Publisher: Falcon
ISBN: 1-56044-915-2
Length: 216 pages
Illustrations: drawings by Megan Grey Rollins
Quote: “Now it is the wild places that stand as outposts, pockets in a matrix of human habitation.”
Virginia’s Nature Conservancy sponsored Uncommon Wealth, an anthology of twenty writers’ descriptions of their favorite landscapes, most of which are of course “protected by” the Nature Conservancy.
Virginia’s three-cornered shape suggests that the essays might have been arranged in some sort of geographical progression. In what may have been a deliberate attempt to break up sectional preconceptions, the essays are instead arranged by historical perspective, classified as “New Ground,” “Old Ground,” or “Roots.” If you read them in order, you’ll be hopping around the state, going straight from the Great Dismal Swamp to the Clinch River, from the Blackwater River to the town called Blackwater.
All three corners of the state are reasonably well represented by writers who live near the places they describe...which, of course, means that there’s more about the northern corner than about the other two. Three writers describe places along the Clinch River, and four describe the southeastern corner of Virginia. One finds an eagle refuge twenty miles from the Capitol; one finds whitewater rafting in Richmond. Scott County, where I live, is represented in this book by Richard Cartwright Austin. (I had a water-damaged copy that was autographed by him.) Rural northern Virginia (along the West Virginia border) is of course represented by both Janet Lembke and Katie Letcher Lyle. Some of the other writers have published nature guides or articles in Audubon and similar magazines; some have written books on non-ecological topics, and some write for local newspapers.
Self-congratulation, a subtle form of boasting, has been part of Virginia’s stereotype for a long time. (“Never ask people where they’re from. If they’re from Virginia they’ll tell you which town; if they’re not, why embarrass them?”) Uncommon Wealth could be considered one big display of self-congratulation...but these places are, in real life, much more interesting than writers could make them. This book really is a celebration of uncommon wealth.
This is why folks in Scott County have mixed feelings about tourism as an economic venture. I think it’s fair to say that we like visitors. We like to hear about the places where they’ve been. But we don’t particularly want to be paved over with amusement parks and outlet stores, like Pigeon Forge. We want a slow, steady trickle of visitors who appreciate what we have that other places don’t have. We have three places that offer lodging to visitors (cheap motel, pricey bed & breakfast, and rustic cabins) and an assortment of places where visitors can eat, but some of us prefer the kind and number of visitors who plan to stay with people they actually know. Not, you know, crowds of tourists. Not bus loads. Our uncommon wealth is “wild.”
So are most of the places discussed in Uncommon Wealth. They’re not private homes and farms, but neither are they widely advertised or commercialized. Not everyone who lives in the nearest town or county will necessarily even know where the nature preserve, park, or refuge is. You can visit these places yourself, and it won’t cost a great deal of money to get in once you’re in the area...but you will need to know, or get to know, somebody who trusts you to take only pictures and leave only footprints. The Nature Conservancy is, of course, the place to begin making the connections you’ll need: https://www.nature.org/about-us/index.htm?intc=nature.tnav.about .
Uncommon Wealth is recommended to anyone who enjoys being outdoors and is planning to spend some leisure time in Virginia.
 It's hard to credit an anthology like this book to an author, but in this case, since each of the writers donated his or her essay to a charity, I'll stretch a point. If you send $5 per copy + $5 per package + $1 per online payment to either of the addresses at the very bottom of the screen, I'll send $1 to the Nature Conservancy. You can include as many books as will fit into one package for the same $5 shipping fee, so please feel free to check out other books discussed here.
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Wednesday, December 30, 2015

Link Log for December 30

(Reclaimed from Blogjob. "Long-tailed tags": Bubblews scam, forest restoration in India, Frugal Gracious Living Challenge,Mary McDougall recipes,organic gardening, year end news summaries for 2015.)

I've spent a good part of this day sending links to this post:

http://priscillaking.blogspot.com/2015/12/so-then-i-told-senator.html
...to people who've been asking me for money. The result has been a long Link Log. Categories: Celebrity Gossip, Education, Food (Yum), Good News, Green, News Summaries, Phenology Links, Scam (Bubblews)...
Celebrity Gossip 
This is a nasty story, but I think my own personal Nephews are old enough to know that touching any private part of anybody can be very, very dangerous...
I've been asked, "Would you still be interested in watching a new movie with Bill Cosby, even if he pleads guilty to charges of sexual assault?" I'd be less interested in watching a new movie with Bill Cosby than I was in watching his old ones, because he's older and--no way around it--less entertaining than he was for way longer than most movie stars keep their "star quality." I don't think most movie stars are good moral examples for anybody; I don't think Cosby's dangerous, now, if he ever was. But...was I still interested in the U.S. Senate, even during the years when both Senators from Massachusetts were sexual sleaze whose hands I would not have shaken? "Too bad for the Coz his last name's not Clinton," Doug Giles commented, in a post that's not linked here because the site's hard on laptops, but desktop computer users should be able to read it.
What my husband was saying in 2004 was, "You see why our students feel so bitter and burnt-out. Any time a Black person has any success, some people want to tear him down. And unfortunately some of those people are Black." Sometimes I see truth in this claim. Consider the harshness of the attacks on Cosby relative to the soft-pedalling of comparable attacks on Teddy Kennedy. Consider the way people who chortled over George H.W. Bush's saying that he and Ronald Reagan had "sex--er--setbacks" in the homophobic 1980's, and ignored Donald Trump's saying that his running as a third-party spoiler was "Not--out of the question" a few weeks ago, are dogpiling on Steve Harvey for his obviously innocent misstep. Consider the people who rush to claim that Dr. Carson's introvert personality is costing him polling points while ignoring the fact that he's consistently polled higher than the equally low-key, possibly introverted, Jeb Bush. Nobody in these United States says, and few people consciously think, "Only a White man should be considered for this job"--but many people unconsciously set the standards higher for anyone who's not a White man. And those of us who see that tendency making life harder for some of our young relatives than it is for others, as I do...yes, we do mind.
Education 
Nelson Mandela was an example of lifelong learning. While we've discussed the irrefutable charge that he learned too much, too uncritically, from Marxism...he learned from a lot of other people, too, including a great Christian thinker, Albert Luthuli.
Food (Yum) 
A healthy dessert:
McDougall recipes are here! (One topic on which I'll focus, when the Frugal Gracious Living Challenge is funded, is how quick and easy preparing these meals can be...much more fun than fighting the traffic to get into a noisy fast food joint. And much more affordable. You'll be seeing times and prices.)
For most of us, a McDougall (or Sinatra) meal is just good food. For some people, it's part of an actual medical treatment that may reverse certain disease conditions. If you are or know a nurse or other health care provider who needs continuing education credits, this link will help you get proper credit for learning more about the role of food in medicine.
Good News 
This was posted on one of the "in-house" pages at Blogjob. The blogger from India apparently didn't feel up to making a full-length original blog post out of this news story. (The "more" you can read, if the link lets you in, will be other people's comments.) He just shared the summary, as people often do when we log into Blogjob and see the prompt "What's new?", to brighten everyone's day:
"Jadov Molai Payeng from Assam created a forest of more than 1200 Acres of land in 35 years gap. He is a poor and daily labor in the farms, this village is next to Brahmaputra river. Due to its floods regularly that place was become desert type atmosphere due the heat he found the several creatures are vanishing. Then he wish to start planting trees to reduce the floods effect and he started planting and and created a real forest in his tenure and get award from Govt of India and several international organisations
Read more at https://blogjob.com/activity/#wCuxMhVB8vPfb6hd.99"
Green 
One should probably not make too much of this, because there are some practical difficulties about switching to more sustainable (and profitable) "organic" gardening/farming techniques. Land that's been poisoned will have a pest population explosion before the predator population expands back to balance, and some buyers will be concerned about how long the soil has been poison-free before they accept produce as organic. However...habit and superstition do seem to be hard-wired into humans.
News (Summary) 
Linked because I agree that Everett Piper's speech on political correctness was a "great story." A great speech. A speech worth including, along with the Gettysburg Address and "I have a dream" and "Ain't I a woman," in the list of speeches teenagers memorize and present in competitions for scholarships and cash prizes. I seriously thought of copying part of it longhand from the Kingsport Times-News and retyping it here; if youall e-mail that you haven't seen it in your own newspapers, I'll do that. If I didn't believe that the kids who kick and scream because a discussion of love makes them feel painfully guilty are capable of reading it the wrong way, my favorite line would be "It's not about you, it's about others." But we need the context to make it clear.
Here's Thomas Sowell's year-end summary:
Here's John Stossel's:
Phenology Links 
Steve Milloy shared this link, with the comment, "If it weren't for 'could' and 'might,' there would be no 'interesting climate findings.'" I'll elucidate further for a less specialized audience: The solid facts in these findings, sorted out from the conjectures, document local climate phenomena. Local warming, an indisputable fact, is rampant in the Northern Hemisphere, is making summer miserable in our cities and killing babies and seniors in "temperate zones" (like Chicago, Washington, Paris). There are things we can do to reduce local warming. How much it's contributing to global warming, or how much that matters, is still very much a matter of "could" and "might."
Scams 
Too many Bubblers have learned that this blogger from Croatia is right:
P.S.: Right...before shutting down the computer last night I promised to add a graphic. This is an Amazon Affiliate site, so the first few writers' names were linked to Amazon pages for their books. Since his name wasn't linked yesterday, what about a graphic link for John Stossel's first book?
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Book Review: The Blue Grass Seminary Girls' Vacation Adventures

(Reclaimed from Blogjob: 1910’s, Blue Grass Seminary Girls series, comically bad fiction, horse stories,stories about tough girls.)

Book Review: The Blue Grass Seminary Girls’ Vacation Adventures
Author: Carolyn Judson Burnett
Date: 1916
Publisher: A.L. Burt Company
ISBN: none (click on the picture to find it on Amazon)
Length: 252 pages
Quote: “Shirley Willing, with flaming eyes and tightly clenched hands, jumped quickly forward, and with her right hand seized the bridle of a horse that was bearing a strange boy along the road, which ran near the river.”
Whoever Carolyn Judson Burnett was (this book belongs to one of the pseudonymous series for which the A.L. Burt Company was known), she (or he) understood the general idea of building suspense. Is this moral tale for little girls really going to open with its heroine stealing a horse? The answer is...yes. Shirley might have been content to send the boy into town to warn the people that the dam has broken, but when he balks she drags him out of the saddle and rides his horse into town. Then, reunited with the friends she’s visiting (it’s not even her town), she proceeds to faint. The horse will, of course, eventually be restored to its own humans.
This is only an introduction to Shirley and the real plot of the story, which begins after Shirley’s friend Mabel goes back with her to spend the second half of spring break in Kentucky.
The Blue Grass Seminary Girls represent the first wave of twentieth-century American feminism. Created to appeal to girls who liked boys’ adventure stories, most of them are generally packing pistols, which they’re willing and able to aim at Bad Men’s heads. They can also steal a horse, or a boat, whenever the plot requires it. Around the middle of the book, while dressing like a boy, Shirley gets drafted into a gang war with rough boys who throw rocks at one another’s heads. Shirley and Mabel always rise to these tests of their mettle. Then, after the crisis, they prove their femininity by crying, fainting, or both.
Nevertheless, we’re informed on page 21 that Shirley is “a typical product” of Kentucky. A motherless daughter, she provides the moral support to keep her doting father from drinking and gambling...much. Her favorite pet is a Thoroughbred stallion called Gabriel. Only Shirley and Jimmy, the orphaned stable boy who just might be an unacknowledged brother of hers, dare to enter Gabriel’s stall. The big horse can be depended on to kick and trample any man who comes near him, which is why the villainous Mr. Jones, Mr. Willing’s horse-racing rival, can’t poison Gabriel himself but tries to get Jimmy to do it. Shirley, who can borrow Jimmy’s whole identity as easily as his clothes, gets into a variety of scrapes (including the aforementioned gang war) trying to save Jimmy from temptation. We’re told that she also does well in school, though we don’t see it in this book.
The scene that will probably seem most unlikely to most readers just could have happened. Most aggressive animals aren’t really vicious; they attack only when they feel threatened. When Mr. Jones backs horse-phobic Mabel into Gabriel’s stall, we’re told, the horse takes pity on Mabel and allows her to turn him loose, so that he can give Jones the broken ribs Jones deserves. Some horses are like that. Not many, but some.
The part I find hardest to swallow may be true to the setting too. “When is any of these people going to report this Jones to the police?” I wondered as I read. They never will. It's considered a disgrace, Burnett explains, for Kentuckians to enlist help to defend themselves. Jones, being already a liar, bully, coward, traitor, and thief, is not ashamed to whine to the police when someone gives him a well-earned punch in the nose, but the Willings have reputations to maintain. Jones is Mr. Willing’s enemy, but since the Willing estate belongs in some sense to Shirley and Gabriel too, Mr. Willing is less ashamed to let a fifteen-year-old and a horse defend him against another man than to enlist men for protection. Well, if they say so, I guess...I used to doubt old-timers’ stories of what barbarian “guerrillas” Kentuckians used to be, but I’ve not read anything about this book having been denounced as slander.
This novel is recommended to all kitsch collectors, and to horse-loving, adventure-loving girls who have a solid grip on reality. Shirley may be hard to believe, but at least she doesn’t spend her days moping around in unrequited love. There is a time in a girl’s life when Shirley’s levelheaded, sisterly attitude toward boys may make up for all the other defects of the story. If you buy books for a girl of that age, you may want to collect the whole series--there were four of them.
Although they're not Fair Trade Books, the best price I can offer on any of the "Blue Grass Girls" books is $10 per book + $5 per package (+ $1 per online payment). You could probably get all four books into one package for a total of $45. Alternatively, you could fit three or more vintage books by living writers into one package along with this one; most books sold here cost only $5 per copy, and living writers receive $1 for each copy of a secondhand book this site sells.
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Tuesday, December 29, 2015

Link Log for December 29

Categories: Charity, Food (Yuck), Politics, Virginia Legislature 2016 Sneak Preview.

Charity 

 For those who need to make a quick tax-deductible donation, a few e-friends would like to suggest some good 501(c)(3) causes:

Alex Trebek, the man with all the answers, suggests phone time for a soldier as the answer to "Best way to make a small to medium-sized tax-deductible donation." The temporary link should open a page you can use to donate as many phone cards as your tax-deduction needs indicate:



"Your gift to the USO will connect service men and women to the things they love and will demonstrate your gratitude – as a generous American supporter – for their sacrifice.

Click here to make a tax-deductible gift of $10 or more to support our selfless military members and their families before Dec. 31. Your gift will help the USO reach its 2015 goal to provide the maximum support for our service members throughout 2016, and they can’t do it without your gift now.

Thank you for doing right by our country’s bravest,

Alex Trebek"

For those who'd prefer to support medical research, the McDougalls have set up a special temporary link just for you. The McDougall Foundation supports research on the role of food choices in preventing and/or reversing disease, and btw, they e-mail out a monthly selection of delicious vegan recipes:


Food (Yuck) 

(Regular readers may skip this paragraph:) Even Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has twice failed to testify under oath because she claimed brain injuries, has admitted that labels on GMO foods might be a good idea. Maybe some people thrive on GMO food, although I have a feeling that they won't for long, and would want to seek out specific modifications; maybe there are people out there whose allergies to natural soybeans aren't triggered by GMO soy products. For sure, people like me need to be able to avoid GMO corn...specifically "Roundup-Ready" corn, "enhanced" with DNA from Escherichia coli bacteria, as distinct from BT corn, "enhanced" with DNA from Bacillus thuringiensis bacteria. I don't notice a different reaction to BT corn than I have to natural corn (I tolerate both well, in moderation) but E. coli corn literally shreds my digestive system. 

But Jeffrey Smith, who circulated the good news that Candidate Clinton supports the consumers' right to know about GMO's, adds the following Clarification:

"My sincerest apologies for not being clear in the front of my article about Hillary Clinton which could only be read in its entirety on the website.

The full article exposed Clinton's long history of being pro GMO, ties to Monsanto through close associates, and failure to grasp the simplest of truths about GM science.

Clinton's statement in favor of consumers right to know and her rejection of the Dark Act, however, may end up being helpful for those who call or lobby Democratic senators in January, trying to prevent the Senate from passing a Dark Act of their own.

Safe eating,

Jeffrey"

By "the website" he means responsibletechnology.org.

Politics 

John McAfee, as in McAfee virus protection, wants to run for President of the United States on the Libertarian Party ticket? Well...as he says, it's a chance to inject the right ideas into the debate. Rand Paul could easily be the Libertarian candidate if he weren't seriously interested in winning. It would be nice if Mr. McAfee and Senator Paul could join forces.

https://reason.com/blog/2015/12/28/anti-virus-pioneer-john-mcafee-enters-li

Virginia Legislature 2016 (Sneak Preview) 

Cheryl Chumley leaks the story of a bill, sponsored by our own Senator Carrico, that's just too good to miss. You will laugh.

http://mobile.wnd.com/2015/12/gop-moves-to-strip-democrat-governor-of-armed-security/
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Book Review: Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall

(Reclaimed from Blogspot. Tags: British history, Bulwer-Lytton Award for Bad Writing, comically bad fiction, Elizabeth I, Mary Stuart, romance novels with blind heroines.)

Book Review: Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall
Author: Charles Major
Date: 1902
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: none (but click on the picture to buy it from Amazon)
Length: 369 pages
Illustrations: drawings by Howard Chandler Christy, some tinted
Quote: “I knew by the girl’s hair that she was my cousin, Dorothy Vernon, whom I reluctantly had come to wed.”
Best known as the author of When Knighthood Was in Flower, Charles Major spun this verbose romance out of a family legend in which an heiress eloped with the son of her father’s worst enemy. This was early in the reign of Elizabeth I, when English young people were supposed to marry for love but, if they had any money, were expected to have made a dutiful effort to love the people their elders had chosen. Some families were notoriously apt to try to keep wealth within the clan by urging cousins to marry each other.
Malcolm, the narrator, has finally resigned himself to marrying Dorothy on this visit to her family’s stately home...but almost immediately he meets her friend Madge, and she meets his friend John, and without positively defying their elders both cousins immediately conspire to look for ways to marry these more interesting people instead.
Writing about real people who had lived and died long ago gave Major considerable freedom to invent adventures for them. In an afternote, pretending to criticize Malcolm as an historian, Major observes, “No other writer speaks of Mary Stuart having been at Haddon, and many chroniclers disagree with Malcolm as to the exact date of her im­prisonment in Lochleven.” Mary, Elizabeth, and the Earl of Leicester get substantial supporting roles in the story.
Although Dorothy’s elopement is a foregone conclusion, I was able to feel some suspense about the prospects for Madge, who is the kind of character some Victorian novelists would have killed off halfway through a novel. It’s pleasant to report that Major was nicer than some novelists. As Victorian heroines go, Madge is likable, and deserves the sort of ending she gets.
Major was not, of course, a good writer by the standard of any period but his own. He was capable of writing, “Ah, wondrous and glorious womanhood! If you had naught but the mother instinct to lift you above your masters by the hand of man-made laws, those masters were still unworthy,” and “What a very woman you will think I was! I, who could laugh while I ran my sword through a man’s heart, could hardly restrain my tears for pity of this beautiful blind girl.” Both of these pearls of (unfortunately authentic Tudor Period) sexist bigotry are supposed to be uttered by the same character on the same page (page 44). Even for Major this is something of a record, but he achieves a sentence worthy of a Bulwer-Lytton Memorial Award every two or three pages. His political incorrectness also reaches levels that are positively inspiring; on page 46 Malcolm exclaims, “Ah, to think that the blind can laugh,” and on pages 38 and 39 Dorothy expresses her infatuation with John’s habit of smoking cigars.
Then there are Christy’s pictures, in which Elizabethan fashions somehow transmogrify into Late Victorian fashions. For Christy, it’s clear, Madge and Dorothy were Gibson Girls at heart.
Equally anachronistic is Major’s unaccountable effort to make an Elizabethan like Malcolm write not only Victorian prose, but Victorian morality. Malcolm spends a lot of time making excuses for Dorothy. When a fictional heroine lies like a rug, has her lover put in jail on a jealous whim, and systematically insults all the social and political connections her father would have consented to her marrying, it strains credibility for anyone to make excuses for her. Dorothy is not a Nice Girl; she’s a Tudor Period girl. Rich people did that sort of thing in those days. Nobody apologized for Mary, Elizabeth, or Leicester, who treated people worse than Dorothy does in this novel, regularly. Nobody apologizes for the characters of Shakespeare.
Altogether, Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall may be best appreciated as Wonderfully Bad Fiction. I laughed. Out loud. Often.
 Although I suspect the copy I physically owned, and sold, was one of the rarer editions that are selling for more than the $10 I got out of it, more recent editions of Major's books aren't especially rare or expensive. I can sell copies like the one shown in the picture above for $5 per book + $5 per package (meaning that, if you want When Knighthood Was in Flower too, you can order both in one package and send a total of $15 to either address shown at the lower left-hand side of the screen). (If you use Paypal, add $1 per online payment, thus sending $11 for one book to me; if you use a U.S. postal money order, the post office will collect their own surcharge, thus you'd send $10 to me.) You can probably find better prices online, and, since Major no longer has any use for money, you might as well. (Keep reading, though. Don't you want to buy something from a site that will tell you when you might as well buy a book somewhere else?)
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So Then I Told the Senator...

(Reclaimed from Blogjob. Tags were Republican Party fundraising, Arthur C. Brooks’ book “The Conservative Heart", Blogjob fundraising, Frugal Gracious Living Challenge,me me me me me, wailing about poverty again.)

Don't you just love the way the Internet brings celebrities and unknown bloggers together? For the past few weeks I've been receiving e-mail solicitations to join the Republican Party. (I think of myself as a bit of a "Republican Party Reptile," albeit in different ways, and for different reasons, than P.J. O'Rourke.) This morning brought in one ascribed to Mitch McConnell, the controversial senior U.S. Senator for Kentucky. I opened it, because I usually do read e-mails from elected officials and often post them at the Blogspot...and when I saw that it was just another "join, subscribe, send money" e-mail, this is what came to mind:
"Dear Mitch, dear Reince, dear all of you celebrity and non-celebrity Republicans who've been sending out these e-mails,
I am not and have never been a member of a political party. However, I've read many Republicans' books. I'm currently just beginning Arthur C. Brooks' The Conservative Heart, in which he says that Republicans can make a better case for fiscal conservatism (and bring many TEA Parties into the fold) with a focus on opportunities, job creation, entrepreneurship, and fair compensation for work done.
I'm for it; specifically, "Priscilla King" and "Priscilla's Internet Portal" are an entrepreneurial venture whose focus is fair compensation for published writers. Fiscal conservatism is definitely one of our interests because we're the kind of undercapitalized entrepreneurs Mrs. Clinton so famously dismissed, and as an experienced professional in the prime of life who would have needed no more than 10 days' sick leave in the past 10 years, I personally am extremely tired of being told that I ought to qualify for and/or plead for food stamps rather than struggling to survive on my current lack-of-income...$200 a month? (Or less.)
Well, I'm not asking for any handouts. I'm not planning to continue struggling to survive on an income lower than what many Republicans spend on their dogs, either.
What I am proposing is that Republicans sponsor a "Frugal Gracious Living Challenge" I'm launching at Blogjob...in other words, youall pay me for something I'm willing and able to do for you.
During the year 2016, I'm proposing to write a verifiable, personal but not intimate, blog about how well it's possible to live on $1000 per month. That's well below the poverty level, well below what leftists claim people need to survive (according to their Agenda-21-inspired plans)...but I can show readers how to make $12,000 per year:
* Support special dietary needs as recommended by a doctor
* Fund unbelievable DIY home improvement and restoration projects
* Launch a 100% woman-and-minority-owned business providing services badly needed in a low-income ("Appalachian") community
* AND DONATE MONEY TO CHARITY.
Far from sitting around whining for additional handouts, I will capitalize on this $12,000. I can't guarantee immediate profits, but I can guarantee an ongoing live demonstration, six days a week, 300 to 1000 words a day, with photos, of how much $12,000 a year can do when it's unshackled from the fear that any risky investments might cut off future handouts.
It will be good.
It will be competently written.
It will be documented and verifiable.
It will include photos, maybe even audio-video clips.
It will be a fun read for both sexes and all ages.
And, if Republicans care to invest in it, I will definitely return half of any profits, or an equal share of the donations to charity, as may become applicable, to the Republican Party. And I'll blog about that, too.
Here's to a pleasant and profitable year!
Priscilla King"
(I said "100% woman-and-minority-owned." Meh. I'm a woman and my Significant Other belongs to an ethnic minority, but that's not a permanent guarantee that we'd never, ever, let a White man have a share of it...if we reach a stage where one wants to.)
But that's not all, Gentle Readers. The opportunity to sponsor this project is by no means limited to the Republican Party, nor to Republicans (I don't think it's a project Democrats would care to endorse, but they're welcome to prove me wrong). Any number can play. The important thing is that sponsors get a total of $1000 into my Paypal account for each month, so that I can stop asking people to invest in the project and start actually doing it. (Paypal allows people to pledge monthly payments, if they want to do that.)
To repeat, and emphasize: Although Paypal has provided a "donation" button on the left-hand side of the screen, which any reader with a Paypal account is encouraged to use...I don't think of funding this project as "donations." This project is for my personal profit, but it's also dedicated to the well-being of the nation. I want to help rich Americans reconsider the way they think of poverty, and "poor" Americans realize how rich they are and how well-off they can be.
I will be using this project to build a better blog. Sponsors can expect to see more about new books, new music, local attractions, farms, restaurants, and all kinds of fun stuff.
And, not only can you support the project--feel free to get something for your money. Blogjob blogs are set up with "Store" sections. I've not put a lot of virtual merchandise into my "Store" section yet; I'll be putting in more throughout the year. All profits on purchases from the "Store" go into the Frugal Gracious Living Challenge. And I'm an Amazon Affiliate; if you don't see something in the store, but you see it on Amazon, I can add it to the "Store."
For example, if you click on the image below, it will open a page you may use to buy The Conservative Heart. (It's still a new book, so please buy it new to show respect.) If you use this link to buy this book, Arthur C. Brooks gets some money, the bookseller who posted the image gets some money, and I get some money...though not much, yet. Whether you consider yourself "conservative" or not, this book is recommended:
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