In My Own Voice. Reading from My Collected Works Series

In this book, I take you to a place where every writer ought to go, but so few even know it exists. I am talking about reading aloud what you've written. The whole point of writing is to motivate a fellow human being, to seize their mind, their brain, their entire being, and suffuse it with your thoughts, your point of view, your unique take on the human condition, all its manifestations, and the improvements you offer. I am a fanatic about that human voice... at ensuring that it be heard, and that it do its unique work transforming a situation from A to B, and on to C. I am a fanatic in the matter of grabbing the mind, holding that mind, changing that mind. A writer's life is about struggle, pain, and the triumph of truth. What's so important about hearing prose anyway? Won't just reading it do? What is the reason why you write in the first place? Is it merely to pass a few hours in harmless endeavors? Writers can be a force for human improvement. This book is for the fighters, the dreamers, the visionaries, the people who have a better idea, and will do whatever is necessary to implement it, and achieve the broadest possible change and recognition. I have selected for my further remarks about the necessity of not just how to read your poetry but your prose aloud, five articles of my extensive composition, articles which I may have been the only person alive to read aloud, as if before the discerning auditors of the ancient coliseum, when a writer would step forward and assail the audience with the best language on Earth, the written language, brought to life by its creators and its affectionate followers. When you write, you must be in that amphitheater before those hopeful and critical crowds. You must take every skill you possess so that the auditors of your privileged audience may be touched by the fire that you bring. Now, as you ready yourself to bring the words to life, you transcend beyond mere writer, beyond a slinger of words and phrases, and you become the Messenger of God, touched by nobility and the hand of possibility. Why did the creator give us a brain, and the capacity for touching souls, and transforming situations of no merit whatsoever into our new, better realities? I'm going to, now, make sundry remarks on the five stories I have chosen for this all important point... the best prose, the best poetry, is read aloud and necessarily involves you, the reader, the performer, the enlightener. Shakespeare said, "All the world's a stage". What he meant by that was that each of us have within us the power to transform, to change, not just in picayune ways, but radical, and that this ability does not just exist here, but everywhere you bring it, in whatever format you use. If you dream for transformation, or transcendence, for the better thing that your choice language may open up to the rest of us! Your language and how you deliver it is the engine of the change you say you want. I have chosen just five articles out of my vast array, and I intend to give you some worthy instruction about what I've written, what you've read, what it all means, and how you can benefit. Let us start with a story of fortitude...

Each of us, in our individual lives, has a moment or two of epiphany. That is to say, a moment of surpassing importance and significance. Mine took place in summertime at the Downers Grove Library. My mother had begun taking me to the library very early in my life. I was voracious about stories, could never get enough of them, and was always grateful to be advised on their presentation and explanation. In this way, the librarians came to present me with readings from the great poets... people like Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg. I can well remember being told by the ladies one day that they had a present for me... and so they stationed me in a rather dark, gray room, everything cool to the touch, and turned on their latest acquisition. "I'm going out to clean the pasture spring; I'll only stop to rake the leaves away (And wait to watch the water clear, I may): I shan't be gone long. -- You come too. I'm going out to fetch the little calf That's standing by the mother. It's so young, It totters when she licks it with her tongue. I shan't be gone long. -- You come too." "The Pasture", Robert Frost (1915) I played this poem so often, each time hearing a little more of its author, the often irritated and irascible Robert Frost. I like the way he rolled those three little words: "you come too." Only he didn't pronounce it like that. Great poets have great eccentricities, and his were encapsuled in his rendering of these three words. Thus "ah you come too". It was a call to come and be sociable, come and share, come and see your neighborhood and everything in it. So powerful and so unfading were these words that when Robert Frost's Cambridge home came on the market, I almost bought it, just so that I could sit in the parlor and read my envious friends from the poet's ghost that resided there with all its poems, just for me. Now, I have the opportunity to read my own works... to you, and hope that you will hear just how personal they are, and how each one, so powerfully written, touches your heart, because that is what I aim for. This book contains five of my favorite essays... the one that I wrote when I turned 65; the one bringing you inside a great nor'easter; the one detailing the foolish hijinx of Captain Owen Honors, United States Navy; the one detailing the turbulent life of Amy Winehouse, a warning if there ever was one; and finally, one about the Andrews Sisters... three girls who kept America jumping throughout its greatest war, and reminded us what we were fighting for. I have a special word for all you young people reading these essays. You have so many media choices that you may well overlook the importance and value of hearing authors read from their own works. This is something you need to do... you need to hear what they write, in their own way, and you need to recite what they write in your own way. If you cannot do this, you will miss so much of the pleasure of both author and reader. And this special note to you library ladies: you did me such a life-changing favor so many years ago. Now, I want you to take what I have written, what I have recited here, and pass on the importance of the writers voice for the next generation, and the next after that. And now without further ado, here's the first volume in this series. Read the text along with the video, then read it again, until you are as expert in my quirks and foibles as I am myself. Dr. Jeffrey Lant From The Red Drawing Room Cambridge, Massachusetts,August 2016

I was moved to write this book after I saw a picture of one of the greatest rivers on Earth, the Colorado, It is a picture of water removed, thus life removed. It is the Colorado River, no longer God’s splendid creation, but merely a rocky water pipe, nothing but a riverbed. There are a hundred such miles at the end of the Colorado system, a hundred miles of the 1,450 mile waterway now has only the slightest memory of water, much less powerful water on a race to the great Pacific. And you think, “Where did that massive river go?” How could they there be up to a hundred feet deep, whilst here retain nothing but the memory of a majestic presence, majestic no longer, just thought-provoking, and even frightening. For we know if the giant river can lose a hundred miles, it can lose a hundred more. And if the water level has dropped and dropped again, why so it can drop yet again and more. This book is the story of water. It is the culmination of many streams of thought and information. My mother, for example, contributed the thought that one must write about big issues, issues which cannot be solved in a hour or day, but need a lifetime’s commitment. She would have been proud that I tackle, on so many occasions, the issue that is water. My father contributed a joyous obsession with America’s national parks, particularly the Grand Canyon. I was a teenager at the scoffing age when my father insisted we live up to Horace Greeley’s famous line “Go West young man, go West.” And so we did, to marvel as all marvel who approach this sinuous deity, for we know we could not have created such a spectacle ourselves. We needed massive assistance from a greater being, who gave it freely. I thank my brother, age 8 or so, for his assistance in gathering Illinois Maple seeds. We threw these tiny helicopters with abandon over the sides of the Canyon, only to discover its many ridges and ledges blocked their descent. I added my two cents too, by studying the mudflats where once the full panoply of water possibilities fertilized the landscape, now moribund. It might have been as notable as Egypt’s Nile based civilization. Civilization came to Egypt via the Nile. By contrast, civilization failed to reach the mudflats at the end of the Colorado because there was no water running there, and so there was no Valley of the Kings, no water-borne Pharaohs, nothing of greatness, except a clear understanding of the great loss that took place when water departed. Sadly, most people still do not understand the loss or its magnitude, but it affects them every single day. In this book, I take up five water based stories. What they have in common is that each features a way that water may be presented and used, so that future generations will have less to blame us about. I give you five views of water, shared with readings made especially to go along with this volume the third in my series "In My Own Voice.  Reading from My Collected Works"

“New England, you ought to be in pictures. You're wonderful to see.” a line sung by Rudy Vallee in 1934, a New Englander himself or do you know this famous line, by Daniel Webster who once traded his New Hampshire Senate seat a better one in Massachusetts? His momentous words were “I shall enter on no encomium upon Massachusetts; she needs none.” No one can produce an encomium that exalts, impresses, and conjures the magic of this place. “You ought to be in pictures”.Unsurprisingly, we often are with a steady stream of stories, poems, and plays… being our constant tribute to this grand place, so small in mileage, so grand as a place where revolution was born, and taken successfully to the people of the world to shape unto their own purposes. You'll find  five stories about New England here. The first story is an overview of the whole of the six New England states. It is written from a Massachusetts perspective, with jabs coming from this opinionated state to the other states, a state with more higher education institutions than anywhere else in the entire world. We came from nothing, across a cold grey water… we wanted freedom… we wanted God our way. We got all that, plus riches wrested from rocky soil, and the tenacious citizens that make for good, if stern, government. We have heard every nostrum, every declaration, every opinion, so many so foolish. Unrelenting as we are, we are not a land that abides fools. Avoid the temptation to become one. The second chapter of this book contains our view of physician's visits: avoid them at all costs by liberal application of apples. Like Robert Frost, who had an apple farm in New Hampshire, we all love apples, although we seem to detest everything else about the work to produce them. I have often wondered on the relationship between Puritans and apples. Though these days many people no longer believe that an apple in Eden seduced Eve.. How did a Puritan divine think when he held a loft of delicious, red, red apple. Did he quiver, thinking of Eve’s fall from grace? Or did he eat without fear or embarrassment. What do you think? Then on to plums. Apples moral standing may be compromised, but there is no compromise possible about plums. They are delicious. Every time I see a basket of plums, I become avaricious; I want them all. Moreover, I am not ashamed of my imperial tendencies. When I have a goodly basket of them in the house, I shall enjoy the riot of purple as it rolls out. I will share a story with you too about rabbits. Giving detailed information on the plight of the rabbit’s universe, the New England Cottontail. When I wrote my first article the Cottontails were collectively on death’s door. Their territory was minuscule, and dwindling by the day. But the rabbits have gathered friends, and energized the local Homo Sapiens. No one wants to see the rabbits wiped out. I tell of how we can help the much loved rabbits have a chance to live, remembering there is no greater good than saving life and enhancing it. I must include Ron Wallace story. Does the name ring any bells? For pumpkin growers it does.  Wallace eats, sleeps, and breathes pumpkins. Some grow to reach over 2,000 lbs With pumpkins there are cute little ones, and the giant ones.They are colorful. They can be turned into sinister faces. Then there's also the matter of pumpkin conspiracies. Who did smash the pumpkin on the front porch last year? What should be done with the culprit? The answer for one who adores pumpkin pie as I do... we'd have him clean out all the pumpkins and prepare them for making the pies. Now it is time to turn this marvelous book over to you. It is all about New England, the heart of America. I am an admirer of New England, and all its many manifestations contained in these six states.

I little thought, so many years ago, when I first encountered the Queen and the  royal Windsors, that I should be writing my own memoirs of my several encounters. But I am.  How did I begin my connection with the Windsor dynasty?  In just this way: to get a doctoral degree at Harvard, you must write a work of intellectual distinction, challenging existing nostrums, replacing them with new truths, found and defended by you; your topic in due course becoming your first book. Just what topic you select is closely evaluated and reviewed by your designated dissertation adviser, a poobah with enormous influence on your life. Here's where my English History Professor at Harvard, Professor Hanham now stepped in to alter my life, irrevocably, thoroughly, beneficially. He said, "Why don't you write about the formulation of the great English royal pageants. It would make a splendid book."  Thus, he handed me a subject which I have been able to dine out on for my  entire life. Millions of people worldwide have participated in the British pageants  since there were such pageants. But "real" historians disdain such frippery. It is beneath their lordly notice.  Here, however, Hanham made an astute observation about me, one for which I  probably have never given him sufficient acknowledgement or recognition.  Forgive me.   The pageants are so obvious, so ubiquitous, so universal, so wide ranging, that by definition, amongst my more snobbish colleagues at Harvard, they couldn't possibly be important.  However, Hanham was shrewd. He knew, or must have known, that I would be  the only true lyric historian in my class. It was a canny observation. So I began  my lifetime career writing about the "obvious", because it never really is.  Thus he set me on this path... The path that led to the pageants of the Windsors, their lives, their foibles, things that were happy and glorious, and  things that were not.  I accepted his challenge, and went to work at once in my usual bull-dog way,  for I am a man who does not fear hard work, so long as at the end of the day, it  produces something of real magnitude and importance. In other words, a thing  worth doing.  My first real breakthrough occurred in one of the most beautiful buildings at Christ Church, Cambridge. There, in a medieval library perfect for my imaginings, I was presented with a box of unpublished letters and documents owned by the current Marquess of Salisbury. These were the letters of his ancestor, the 3rd Marquess (1830-1903). He was Queen Victoria's Prime Minister three times. Now, thanks to these papers, I had my first sampling of truly substantive and important information. That day, I knew that I would have further encounters with the Sovereign and the  Royal Family. Thus, I set out with a will upon the task of promptly finishing my  dissertation. Out of innumerable pieces of the puzzle, I fashioned a work of two  volumes, 623 pages, presented to the Department of History, December, 1974,  and immediately accepted.  I give you, ladies and gentlemen, the opus maximus, "Queen Victoria's Golden  Jubilee, 1887". I am as proud of it today as I was proud of it then, and this work  has worn well over the years. Plus all the material for my first book "Insubstantial Pageant: Ceremony and confusion at Queen Victoria's Court " 269 pages Now, I was a Recognized Scholar. Yankee Doodle was coming to storm the palace. God save the Queen! A tale from an insider, the first American granted unique access to the Royal Archives of Windsor Castle

I wrote this book for one reason only: to help you make real money in multi-level or network marketing. Feeling skeptical? I had been the World’s Biggest Skeptic about MLM. For good reason: •I had talked to literally hundreds of people in network marketing and no one was making money; •network marketing companies rapidly came and went, all had a vacuum-like ability to suck money out of the pockets of the unsuspecting; •no network marketing company I knew ever offered a system for making money. As a result, I stayed away. But because the concept of network marketing is a solid one, namely recruiting an independent distributor who makes money both for himself and for you while recruiting other independent distributors who make money for himself and for you, I still had an interest. I was waiting for some bright person with a system for making money in MLM to come along but no one did. I had to take things in hand myself... and either prove definitely that MLM was a gigantic hoax in which virtually no one could make anything... or a viable means of making increasing amounts of income. I joined a network marketing company, Personal Wealth Systems, Inc.I had been familiar with PWS for some time thanks to the fact that it ran lead-generating cards in my card-deck. Intelligently, its president understood that people needed leads and he decided to profit from this by paying me for leads... and reselling them to his members — at prices I found ridiculously high! Other marketing systems were, however, missing. •The marketing communications offered by PWS were flaccid. They talked about the glories of the company rather than the benefits to be derived by the independent distributors; •They didn’t provide step-by-step guidelines to new distributors about what they had to do, when they had to do it, etc. they had to figure it out on their own. •Their lead-generating mechanisms were scarce and overpriced, and •they offered no telemarketing assistance of any kind. This was the norm in the industry. What they deemed important was: •Selling you high-priced and unproductive sales “literature” •Selling you a wide variety of over-priced “sales aids” •Selling you overpriced leads •Selling you overpriced “welcome kits” with product samples But giving you tried-and-true, solid, substantial, profit-making step-by-step guidelines for profiting was of no interest. They were fleecing their members! I got into network marketing and in this book I have published my findings, describing what I had learned about the process and how people can make money in it. If you’re going to make money you’re going to have to follow a system. In each chapter of this book I’ll be showing you how to establish a money machine; how to take a systematic approach to wealth building through network marketing. I’ll share with you insights and precise directions for what works... and what doesn’t. This book is not some kind of panacea. It’s not some lusty “get rich quick” pitch. It doesn’t claim that success came effortlessly... or without constant thought and tinkering. It’s claim to fame rests on one thing only: a systematic approach to network marketing wealth; that you can achieve wealth in network marketing if you are willing to follow a step-by-step system that flies in the face of the conventional industry-wide approach that has ensured failure for so many for so long.