About half the e-mail is still obviously "bacon" or "trash." That leaves about ten pages that need at least to be opened before they're deleted...
Here's the current update on links you use to send this web site worth-based, not merely need-based, funding:
https://www.patreon.com/user?u=4923804 ...Has not been working for a lot of people lately, including me.
https://www.freelancer.com/u/PriscillaKing ...As noted before, I'm 99% certain this is a scam site, but if one other person is willing to risk US$30, we can either force it to work, or prove it's a scam site and shut'em down
https://www.guru.com/freelancers/priscilla-king ...This site works well and is recommended, but they prefer to handle payments over US$30.
https://www.fiverr.com/priscillaking ...As noted in December, this site's become a bit weird. If you want to send just $5 or $10 on Fiverr, let me know and I'll make sure my account is "reactivated."
https://www.iwriter.com/priscillaking ...This would be a very nice little site, encouraging small payments and short easy writing jobs, if it weren't coded using "i-frames," which basically means that the local server will cause any document I send you to arrive in a shortened and scrambled form. I don't go there often for that reason. You can, however, use that site to commission a blog post or article, give detailed instructions, and preview a draft before paying. To ensure that the draft/document you get is the one I wrote, you'd need first to notify me via this web site, then to pay for the post via Iwriter, then to receive the document via e-mail.
https://www.seoclerk.com/user/PriscillaKing ...This one works as a forum; I'd love to find out how it works as a paid writing site. SEO Clerks mainly discuss search engine optimization, so I hang out there to learn more of other hack writers' tricks. Affiliated sites Word Clerks and Pixel Clerks are about writing and graphics respectively. Links encourage you to meet and chat with other Internet hacks; that's encouraged and is a great way to find lively and literate Twits, if you want to follow and be followed by people on Twitter.
Or, as always, you can e-mail this web site for a link to the correct Paypal address, or send a U.S. postal order to Boxholder, P.O. Box 322, as shown at the very bottom of the screen.
For correspondents: How do e-mails become obviously "bacon" or "trash"? Quick checklist of rules for e-mails that you want to be opened:
1. Don't ask me for money unless a thorough reading of this web site has shown you that I have more of it than you do. (This might be possible if you were in, e.g., Zambia, and I'd be moved by your plight, but I still wouldn't have money to spare.)
2. Don't be a correspondent who has asked me for money in the past.
3. Don't scream for attention with things like "Last chance" or "Everybody needs THIS for..." (Your chance that I'll be interested in reading more about bananas or ginger or gold bullion, or whatever, than I've already read, is very small; if you try to "add excitement" with a teasing headline that doesn't specify what you're ranting or raving about, that small chance drops to zero. I have a real life and don't need online "excitement." I'm attracted to concepts like calm, stable, durable, reliable, and unchanging.)
4. Don't be a source of e-mails that contain videos, big splashy graphic, or anything that could possibly slow down the smallest, oldest, puniest browser you can imagine. If you have trouble remembering what to leave out, get a $5 cell phone with a screen slit that displays about three words at one time, and open your messages (and your web site) on that. If it's annoyingly slow or fails to open, that'll show you what to take out. Messy e-mails cause correspondents as good as Townhall.com to be filed as "bacon."
5. As a general rule, just don't bother sending me videos. If you have a large list that includes some people who prefer sitting through videos to reading text, please be sure your e-mail headlines mention "video" when you mail one out, so I can move them directly to the "trash" folder (but without hard feelings about you).
6. Notify your sponsors that their ads are most likely to be noticed, by me, if they're small, text-only--like cheap classified ads in a newspaper--and located at the bottom of the text. I dislike ads that scream for attention. I occasionally read ads from people who present themselves as modest, patient, and willing to take turns.
7. Don't use any rude words or refer to any body parts in headlines. Don't use images of any body parts or disease conditions anywhere in your e-mails or on your web site. (I can stand an occasional small face image, but please don't post any eyeballs.)
8. Don't bother sending me the same content your friend is sending me. All but one of those identical e-mails will go directly to "trash"--and the other one will generally go directly to "bacon."
9. Most people who read newspapers do not read every word of every story. We scan the headlines and read the actual stories if they are of personal interest to us. Who won, what's on sale, who died, etc., is usually as much information about a news story as I need. There's no reliable rule for predicting which news stories I'll read in detail, but there is a percentage; it generally runs about 1 news story out of 20 to 25.
10. If you want me actually to read every e-mail, BE A PAYING CUSTOMER.
A few hasty random words for The Nephews...
I'm back on the job, the youngest employees at the cafe are back on the job, but Gate City appears to be about three-quarters dead. Any time people here see ice or have a need to warm up a recent-model car, they tend to feel panicky enough to want to call in sick...Someone finally at least called the cafe to order lunch. Nobody else but the policeman on duty has been inside all morning.
Even I came online late this morning, because it really is cold outside. Not colder than some of you have become accustomed to being in Pennsylvania or New England, but cold enough that the mountain stream that runs past the Cat Sanctuary had formed sheets of ice all the way across the calmer, deeper sections. I'm not one of those lifelong Southerners who wail and huddle right up against a heat source when that happens...but Samantha told me very clearly that her kitten fluff does not yet provide enough insulation for her to enjoy this weather, so Samantha has been spending single-digit days and nights in my warm room, where the temperature stays above freezing. Since she's a bouncy-pouncy kitten, she's been in a cage. And yesterday she didn't get enough time outdoors after breakfast, so she used a basin of water I'd left in her cage as a water-flush toilet, which she learned to use as a baby. This was not what I wanted to deal with after walking home in single-digit (Fahrenheit) temperatures last night...so this morning I made sure Samantha had time to leave a treat for the possum before I brought her inside.
Heather is missing. She and Samantha went missing after some idiot kids lost a pack of small beagle-mix dogs in the woods over the winter break. I found Samantha up a tree. I didn't find Heather. I can't imagine those dogs even thinking about eating her--there were six of them but only one looked much longer or taller than she is. I can imagine them meeting her close enough to a neighbor's house that she sweet-talked a neighbor into letting her shelter in the basement when that 15-degrees-below-zero (Celsius) wind started blowing; I can easily imagine any of several neighbors letting her stay in the basement until we get a thaw, which the Weather Service is not expecting to happen this week either. I have neither died nor abandoned her. If delivered to her own house while a human is there, she'll be taken indoors and petted and fussed over, and I'll reimburse you for a bag of kibble.
Heather knows she's loved and missed; neighbors should curb the urge to try to alienate her affections or conflict her loyalties. She's quiet when pleased, but past master of radiating comfort and good will. If you're falling in love with her...my mother's ill, my Significant Other's ill, what I have in the way of friends are all claiming to be "old" (whether they're even eighty yet, or even sixty yet); I do not need to lose Heather too. I can find you a beautiful, lovable cat right away. I can't guarantee a calico (the locally available cats I know to be lovable, and in search of good homes, are gray) or a polydactyl, but I can put you on the list for one, or help arrange for you to get one from Petfinder.
What became of the dogs, I don't know. I hope the idiot kids found them because, after shouting at them to leave Samantha alone, I've not seen them again. That was the day the Big Freeze blew in; I felt bad about not having a safe place to shelter them, but I don't. A shed where dogs can stay out of the wind is on my long list of home improvement projects. Maintaining solid wheelchair-accessible floors and a watertight roof come first, and restoring electricity to the older part of the house.
Cat lovers may find this story heartwarming enough to click on a link to a site that behaves badly. Briefly, someone abandoned a baby on the street in a cardboard box. I didn't try to scroll down to see where this was; even in Florida it has been cold enough recently to make that very close to murder outright. Fortunately for baby, a cat was chilly enough to crawl in to share baby's scanty body heat while it meowed loudly for help! Thanks to the cat, both cat and baby were rescued. If you click on the link embedded in this paragraph, you may see photos. I don't recommend it. I'm sticking by last year's resolution not to share links to sites that don't open quickly and readably. If it jiggles, if it rearranges itself while loading, if it shoves a huge graphic in your face before you can see the text, #ReadersRevolt .
I'm still wearing the "nice" (looking) suede boots I've worn for the last three winters. They're still too long for my feet, but, because shoe manufacturers are still obsessed with the idea of making shoes in symmetrical points rather than the shape of human feet, they're beginning to pinch; my feet slide forward in the roomy middle section and the toes have shrunk enough that my toes slip down into those pinchy little point. They're faded and the stiff, slick soles have gained some improved traction by cracking, but anyone who normally wears a size 5 and wants boots that still offer room for warm socks may request them now. Real leather boots just seem to want to be handed down.
One of my New Year's resolutions is to bring back Link Logs via Paper.li, which is a mailing service some e-friends have been using for a long time. I've not tried it since it's been one more tab to open and step to take, but I'm told it's the approved way to circulate lots of links without activating spam filters.
Another one is to resume printing Newsletters, which will summarize what I've learned from the links and be available live, via real mail, or as PDFs. Customer complaints caused me to stop printing them in link-log form; customer demand is causing me to reconsider how to print comparable amounts of information in Proper Newsletter Form, as demonstrated by the late lamented John Holt and Suzette Haden Elgin. Market demand will determine whether they'll be weekly or monthly. Pricing will depend on the size of print required but I'll try to keep them down to a dollar.
Amazon links? Why not? Holt and Elgin were very dear pen friends of my whole family's for a long time (Holt died before Elgin launched the Ozarque blog), and here are the books that made them famous:
Now I'm off to open e-mails...
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