Reflections on Harvard's 360th Commencement, May 26, 2011.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Today, for the 360th time in its exalted history, a history far older than the republic itself, Harvard will, with all the colorful paraphernalia of the Academy, send a goodly percentage of the brightest young people on earth on their way to kismet.
Some of these people will become heads of state, women too; that is why the address of Her Excellency Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, the President of the Republic of Liberia is so important.  It proves that even in territories inclement towards women, women may rise high indeed.
Some of these people will head corporations and reap billions, some of which will undoubtedly be given to Harvard in the form of very public generosities.
Some of these people will buck the capitalist trend and found worthy causes of every kind. The world has need for every one of them and the people who give up much, the better able to give more.
Others will rise high in the military, in governments of every nation on earth, in education, science, medicine, the arts... there will even be a movie star or two but, perhaps, no rap musician. Not, however, because Harvard would not welcome one; it would. Rappers, however, may demur; it's a matter of image.... and no people on earth are as stringent about image as they are.
One more category may well appear: terrorist, revolutionary. Harvard does not go out seeking such people, but Harvard has helped shape many such. Red John Reed, Bolshevik, (class of 1910 ) is buried in the Kremlin wall... a signal honor for a gentleman of Crimson. Like so many Harvard graduates he rose high, though this time for a cause most every other Harvard graduate loathed and disdained. John Reed wouldn't have cared about that; Harvard graduates are above such trivia. They know that what they do is important, even if no one else on this planet agrees. This profound conviction is part of what the graduates take away today... you can be sure of it. It is one of the best reasons for the very existence of Harvard.
Many of today's graduates will write about their Harvard experiences; I am one of them. Most will cherish happy memories and say so, fudging the truth on which Harvard prides itself and pruning things not quite happy enough. In truth, their classmates were probably never as bright as they will remember, as bright or as dedicated. The faculty never as welcoming and helpful as they will recall. And the university overall not as profoundly influential. But embroidering your Harvard past is winked at since happy memories beget handsome legacies. And there is no need to remind so many, and in print, too, that their time here was not as sun-kissed as they ardently desire it to be. You were young, vibrant, surrounded by possibilities, and you'd been marked with the most winning brand of all. Under the circumstances, the utmost joy and contentment are understandable; indeed mandatory.
There will be some of course, but just a handful who will write otherwise, telling, years from now, of painful isolation, alienation and the persistent thought that they never were, not for a moment, good enough to have gone to Harvard in the first place, that they were a fluke, a sport of nature. Perhaps. But they will write such sentiments in a ringing style, lyric, too, that shows in its careful refinement and clarity another benefit of a Harvard education.
This day, the most important day in the life of virtually every graduate, save only the day on which they were born, will start early; the ceremony commences in Harvard Yard at 9:45 a.m., but Harvard Square is awash with the camera-totting hours before, even from first light. A sign of  the times: persons unable to be present can see it all, and clearer, on the Web. There is not a one who so watches that does not wish to be in Cambridge instead... for all that they see more and better than the audience shaded by the great trees in Tercentenary Theater.
Graduates, at once shy and proud,  will move today surrounded by their personal claques, the lucky ones invited to see and venerate. Proud parents, who often dipped deep to make this happen, have been admonished, several times, to be prompt and organized. Graduates have conflicting feelings about these folks. They are grateful, of course, though never as grateful perhaps as they should be. It would not do to slight them, but, this is the last day, the very last day, they can see their classmates and friends, similarly burdened,  as they will never be again: present, accounted for, resoundingly young; friends, colleagues, lovers, too. This recognition, this sadness is palpable. The pull of the golden past, slipping away forever, against the dawning future, ardently desired... but not this day. This is why the tears fall today for this must be a bittersweet moment for all. In these precincts the past and future truly collide today, to roil emotions.  Parting is indeed such sweet sorrow... and now they truly know it.
It is now just 5 a.m., the dawn of this day of days is nigh. It is a day of memories, memories retrieved, memories born. Parents will recall memories unbeckoned of their beloved graduates and their brief lives. They will have, for themselves alone, moments poignant and keenly felt, the more so if they had, once upon a time, a Harvard Commencement of their own. Then Cambridge becomes the best it can be: an ever- renewing place of reverie and remembrance, a place where you are always welcome, for you are part of what has shaped this special place.
The trickle of early comers, seeking parking spaces more valued than gold, will soon grow into serious traffic. Ladies in hats otherwise known only at weddings and gentlemen in ties they will later shake off as gladly as a noose begin to appear as do the marked men of the day... the sheriff of the county who will ride in on white horse to declare the proceedings open; officials in their always ill-fitting cuttaways and top hats... and of course and always the brightly garbed graduates in mortar boards they never wear quite right. With their gowns a Rosetta Stone clearly indicating just where the graduates have been and where they are going, these players gather together, together to march into the ceremonies where they shall become, so the University's president will pronounce, members of the company of educated men and women.
This is what every graduate has earned... and everyone has come to hear.  And it is a marvelous thing, not just for those present but for the entire world, soon to benefit from the skills, dedications,and hard work of this renewed company, the company we all rely upon so much.
Think of these new members of this company today. They have much to accomplish and many lives to touch and improve. We must all be glad they have such a day as this to start them on their way, for they go forward for us all.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski 

Harold Camping said the world would end 6 p.m. Saturday, May 21, 2011. It didn't. It wasn't the first time, he was a false prophet. And it won't be the last!

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's note. To get into the right mood for this article, search any search engine and find the well-known gospel tune "I'm on my way (to Canaan land)". (Written by William M. Golden, 1914) . My favorite is the version by the great Mahalia Jackson.
Chances are over the last few days you've heard of a zealot named Harold Camping. He's the originator of Oakland, California based Family Radio... and he's got a bee in his bonnet for sure.
He's a man so fervently longing for the world to end, so that righteous rewards and punishments can be meted out, that he's willing to risk (over and over again) the public ridicule and mockery that inevitably follow when his specific world-ending predictions fail to occur.
Today he'll be especially busy explaining to his discombobulated flock just why he goofed on this occasion and why his absolutely precise prediction for the end of terra firma -- 6 p.m. May 21, 2011 -- was erroneous... but not, he'll aver, wrong,really.... in fact perfectly reasonable once you understand the minute horological calculations and Biblical truths he will be, today, explicating a mile a minute, without apology, embarrassment or any excuse whatsoever.
For you see, divinely appointed prophets like the egregious Camping are never, ever wrong. In Camping's case when he seems to be in error, it is rather that he, for an instant, misunderstood God and His purpose. But shortly and with prayer, God corrects his misapprehension and gives him yet again, total clarity, complete understanding, and a vision which cannot be doubted of how and when rapture will occur -- this (next) time for sure. Eternal damnation and total perdition will come to those who doubt... never mind the muddle that just occurred and the complete chaos and disruption to the lives of the disappointed True Believers who were certain today they would awake to eternal bliss in the bosom of the Lord... but instead heard nothing but the insistent assurances and renewed certainties of the prophet they trusted... the prophet who mislead them, again.
Camping's legacy: lives high jacked, disrupted, shattered without compunction or remorse.
When one is a prophet, with a speed dial to God, one has better things to think about and deal with than the tiresome, annoying but essential realities of life. Those are beneath the notice of the Elect of God. The job of such is to seize your body and soul; to prepare you for revelation, exaltation, rapture, for total immersion in eternal God. These prophets, with the stern message and visage of their ancient prototypes, are masters of agitation, fulmination, damnation and submission.
They -- and Camping is very definitely one of them -- tell a parent whose children are not believers that they shall not be together in the infinity of Paradise, because the children are on Satan's path. Prophets want total submission.... and so, obsessed by their mission, they are happy to spread fears, terrible fears, and profound anxieties, the better to achieve their objective. Believers in a household have an obligation to cause pain to those still at risk... if by so doing they can capture the soul and shepherd it to Heaven and bliss. They are under a moral obligation to do this... and they must act promptly since their leader and prophet has revealed God's specific date when personal choice ends...
And so, with the complete support of Harold Camping believing wives tell still disbelieving and unsaved husbands that they shall be separate through eternity if the husband will not submit. Day and night this argument is made, made again, insistently made, made with sincerity and profound belief, disrupting everything until it is resolved and the soul garnered....
Believing children turn the tables on non-believing parents and, speaking of eternal love and togetherness, work their will on them... and so, worn down, these parents announce, for love of child, their born-again belief. Hallelujah!
And so it goes as each family member using the potent threat of eternal loneliness and isolation, of alienation, despair, profound miseries and the unspeakable pain of Hell fire work tirelessly to capture the souls of the people they most care about. For so important are these people, that the pain Camping encourages you to give must be the greatest pain of all; you love them so and must, therefore, do everything, anything to harvest their souls. And the date, the date when you will be irrevocably placed throughout eternity is coming, coming... a God-given certainty, Prophet Camping says so... and he is a goodly man.
About Harold Camping
Harold Egbert Camping, born July 19, 1921, is a Christian radio broadcaster and president of Family Radio, a California-based religious broadcasting network that spans more than 150 outlets in the  United States as well as website. Educated at the University of California, Berkeley, he earned a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering in 1942.
Camping early saw the potential of using media to establish a ministry without walls. His first acquisition was station KEAR in San Francisco; his mission to broadcast traditional Christian Gospel to conservative Protestants. During the 1960s, Family Radio acquired six additional FM stations and seven other AM stations under guidelines established by the Federal Communications Commission (FTC).
Camping went on the air at once and made an impression with his deep, sonorous voice coupled with a slow, emphatic cadence. Right from the start he was fascinated by and often broadcast about Bible-based numerology to predict dates for the end of the world.
Central to Camping's teaching is the belief that the Bible alone and in its entirety is the Word of God, absolutely trustworthy. However, he emphasizes, this does not mean that each sentence of the Bible is to be understood only literally. Rather the meaning of individual Bible passages also need to be interpreted in the light of two factors. The first is the context of the Bible as a whole. The second is its spiritual meaning.
With these guidelines, Camping has moved step by step towards ever more radical beliefs, including his oft broadcast assertion that the date of Christ's second coming can be worked out to a precise moment of time.
He regards three factors as essential to this precise determination:
1) Jewish feast days in the Hebrew calendar, as described in the Old Testament, 2) the lunar month calendar (1 synodic month = 29.53059  days), and 3) a close approximation of the Gregorian calendar tropical year (365.24219 days, rounded to 365.2422.)
He projects these into modern times and combines the results with other information in the Bible. His predictions, based as they are on the infallible Word of God, follow as a matter of course, including both his original prediction that the Lord's return would be in 1994; then when that failed, he lay low for a while, before announcing the amended prediction that this return would be May 21, 2011 with the entire world destroyed in a fiery inferno, October 21, 2011.
Nothing that Harold Camping has predicted with such absolute assurance and ringing certainty has come to pass. But hundreds of people revere him anyway and still pay credence to what he says, no doubt his reassuring voice assisting.  But I say this unto these poor souls. Is what you are being asked to do truly what a loving God would ordain? Thus I admonish you:
"Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves". (Matthew 7:15).
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling  business books. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski <a href="http://cashgrowthunlimited.com/

'For misery, oh, oh, Cherchez la femme'. That's what Dominique Strauss-Kahn,France's prospective next president, did. See what happened next... ou la la!

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's note: Back  in 1977 a group lavishly named Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band, recorded a peppy little number called "Cherchez la femme". Its lilt and lyrics are perfect accompaniment to this article. You can find it in any search engine. Then sit back and enjoy a story you'll find yourself shaking your head about... as you tap your toes to the music, ready to jump up and dance...
Dans la nuit...
As a acute student of French history and politics, no doubt Dominique Strauss- Kahn (universally known in France as "DSK" for his initials  knows the anecdote about Philippe,  Duc d'Orleans, Regent of France (1715-1723). His mother, the dowager duchess, exasperated by his mind-blowing promiscuity (prodigious even by ancien regime standards) asked him why.... His shoulder-shrugging response? "Dans la nuit touts les chats son gris." ("In the night, all cats are gray").
Now DSK has given the French such a rollicking sexual scandal it's outraged even the most insouciant Parisian boulevadier... affronted by the crudity of the alleged event and the charges, appalling to the most style-conscious people on earth. After all, as Professor Henry Higgins noted in "My Fair Lady" "The French don't care what you do, as long as you pronounce it correctly." It seems, judging from the outrage throughout France this week, that in fact there are limits and enough is enough even in the land of ou la la.  Here are the facts...
May 14, 2011 Dominique Strauss-Kahn, leader of the International Monetary Fund, was just inches away from becoming president of France, with every public opinion poll showing him trouncing little loved incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy and taking up residence in the Elysee Palace.  What happened that night has changed everything -- for himself, for France, and for Europe.
Since the event in question took place in Manhattan (doesn't everything?) it seems appropriate to quote some lyrics from local lad Stephen Sondheim written for "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum" .(1966).
"Everybody ought to have a maid. Everybody ought to have a working girl. Everybody ought to have a lurking girl... Everybody ought to have a  menial consistently congenial."
DSK took the suggestion literally...  though Sondheim no doubt meant "a" maid, not "the" maid, a nuance perhaps lost in translation. And Sondheim most assuredly did not mean the 32 year-old chamber maid (from Senegal) who was fluffing DSK's pillows in the luxury Sofitel hotel. Close to Times Square (always the epicenter of sexual squalor and never-tell-your-wife adventures), the cost of this eye-popping suite was either $1300 per night or $3000 per night, both figures reported by Associated Press. What matter? It had more amenities than Hotel 6 and perhaps the pampered and deferred to DSK thought the maid merely one of them... Moreover, when she declined his advances, he may have thought that was part of the service for stimulating a tired 62-year-old to improved performance. He lunged... she resisted... he lunged again. Kinky.
What happened in that luxury suite is (for the moment) only surely known to just the 2 people who were there. However, the maid (who had worked to the hotel's satisfaction for three years), immediately went to the management to report the incident. She may have told DSK as much... and there was perhaps something in her eyes and manner that suggested she would do so indeed.
In any event, DSK decamped (without even stuffing his travel bag with either the high class toilette amenities beloved of hotel guests or his cell phone, which helped track him down)  ... racing to the airport for a flight to Paris... and the usual limelight and deference. The doors were being closed when...
...  New York law enforcement officials entered the plane, arresting DSK, and charging him (just 4 hours after the incident was reported) with a criminal sex act, attempted rape, and unlawful imprisonment. Then they returned him to the city where, in the police lineup (so unchic) the maid selected him as her attacker, the man from whom she had to break free and escape. It was sordid... it was outrageous... and it broke the code of "do it if you must, but never, ever get caught", something every successful politician with a roving eye needs to remember.... particularly Dominique Strauss-Kahn, whose relations with women were frequent, flagrant, and always feckless.
In 2007, for instance, Tristane Banon, a French journalist and writer, accused DSK of attempting to rape her in 2002, but she did not press charges. In 2008, an independent investigator was appointed following allegations he had had an affair with a married subordinate, Piroska Nagy. She was later made redundant and DSK helped her get another job. DSK issued a public apology for the affair. Le Journal du Dimanche dubbed him "le grand seducteur" (the Great Seducer). It was a sobriquet of distinction, not obloquy, perhaps more useful  with voters than his Legion d'Honneur.
Perhaps more importantly, DSK's employer, the International Monetary Fund's board found that his relationship with Nagy was "consensual", doing nothing more than calling his actions "regrettable" and saying they "reflected a serious error of judgement." DSK (this mere hand slapping suggested) was too intelligent, too well connected, too valuable to lose for mere sexual peccadillos.
However, when the current allegations surfaced, the IMF acted at once and decisively, appointing an acting leader, distancing themselves from their man-of-the-hour only hours before. They knew the charges were serious... and high speed exoneration wasn't going to happen. After all, DSK stood accused of jumping out of the bathroom, naked, jarring but hugely appreciated (I'm told) from an aging lothario. The alleged victim, unimpressed, had tried to fight him off as he dragged her into the salle de bain and humiliation.
All this, and the rest, outraged his IMF colleagues... as it outraged the French nation, used to sexual scandals in the highest places, but drawing the line at such behavior with servants.
As the news reached Paris, the talk was wild, often bawdy, and, given the national character, conspiratorial. What's more, given the fact he's Jewish, there were echoes of the nation's most corrosive scandal, the 19th century Dreyfus Affair when the right-wing went out of its way to cover themselves for incompetence by destroying an innocent (Jewish) army officer. Why had two right-wing media sources been the first to release the news; how had they known so fast? DSK, his loyal adherents asserted, was framed. Maybe so. It will all come out in the wash in what promises to be one of the most lurid of trials, one every exultant conservative and every disgruntled,chagrined French socialist will scrutinize with care, the nation having lost a president but gained a steamy reality show.
Whilst he's being held at Rikers Island prison in protective custody (being deemed a flight risk), DSK has time to work on his very expensive defence and connive at his release. Maybe the music and words of "Cherchez La Femme" will cheer him.... but I doubt it:
"This man has learned his lesson, oh hey Now he's alone He's got no woman and no home. For misery, oh, oh Cherchez la femme." 
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. He is also a historian and author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski <a href="http://cashgrowthunlimited.com/

New England's cottontail rabbits face extinction... if you love them, help save them.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
I had the most extraordinary experience recently when I took my nephew Kyle out to see the Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts. Built in 1770 for patriot minister William Emerson, the residents of this handsome clapboard  house literally heard the shot heard round the world on April 19, 1775.
Later, that revolution won, residents welcomed one celebrated guest after another... Bronson Alcott, Henry David Thoreau and Margaret Fuller.  Two of the most celebrated of all -- Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne both lived there for a time and both were fertile with the seminal ideas that shaped the new nation.
Emerson wrote his famous essay "Nature" in a stuffy upstairs bedroom. Hawthorne wrote a tribute to the house itself, "Mosses from an Old Manse." Both he and his wife Sophia chiseled poems for each other on the window glass using a diamond that surely symbolized a love so great it could take in its stride the massive discomfort of their chamber on the second floor, frigid in winter, insufferable in summer.
One more guest came, or rather a stream of them... and it is these guests who so startled us the other day. The Old Manse was closing for the day and the sun was dipping in the western sky.
I was walking away from the house when I turned for a last look and saw an overpowering luminescence... a spectrum of colors bathed in a light that could only be called celestial. It was a benediction... overwhelming... perplexing...
... until I realized that the epicenter of this luminescence was the heirloom vegetable garden originally planted by Thoreau in honor of the Hawthornes' wedding.  Kyle and I were being ushered off the property in high style, grandly so... by the rabbits who entered the garden as its visitors left; their ears catching the light to produce this astonishing effect... It was unexpected but no less welcome for that. It was good to see  so many of them.... and so well, though I can imagine the gardeners felt quite differently. Sadly, this brave show may well have been a swan song... especially if these rabbits were of the New England cottontail variety.
New England cottontails and their plight.
The New England cottontail (Sylvilagus transitionalis) is a species of cottontail rabbit represented by fragmented populations in areas of New England, specifically from southern Maine to southern New York. This species bears a close resemblance (so close you must analyze their fecal droppings to tell the difference) to the Eastern cottontail. It is important to know that the Eastern cottontail has done the better job of adapting to its often harsh environment; the New England cottontail, for instance, retains its brown color during the winter, the better to be seen and enjoyed by hungry coyotes and owls. This is but one of the several pressing reasons which together may presage the end of these uniquely New England residents. Here is the full litany of the woes which assail them...
Item:  Its population is in sharp decline. As recently as 1960, New England cottontails were found east of the Hudson River in New York, across all of  Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, north to southern Vermont and New Hampshire, and into southern Maine.
Today, this rabbit's range has shrunk by more than 75  percent. Its numbers are so greatly diminished that it cannot be found in Vermont and has been reduced, according to the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, to only five smaller populations throughout its historic range.
Item: Drastically reduced habitat. The New England cottontail prefers early successional forests, often called thickets, with thick and tangled vegetation. These young forests are generally less than 25 years old. Once large trees grow in a stand, the shrub layer tends to shrink, creating habitat that the cottontails no longer find suitable.
New England cottontails need a certain amount of territory to flourish. They do best on patches of habitat larger than 12 acres. Rabbits on smaller patches of  habitat deplete their food supply sooner and have to eat lower quality food, or may need to search for food in areas where there is more risk (especially in winter) of being killed by a predator.
Item: The introduction of exotic invasive species, such as multiflora rose, honeysuckle bush and autumn olive, in the last century has changed the type of habitat available to New England cottontails. These plants form the major component of many patches where cottontails can be found, and the rabbits don't like them at all.
Item: Today white-tailed deer are found in extremely high densities throughout the range of New England cottontails. Deer not only eat many of the same plants but may affect the density of many understory plants that provide thicket habitat for New England cottontails.
And so the woes pile up, one on top of the other until catastrophe looms... and swiftly so. Even their well-known prolific breeding habits, known to all, cannot save them... without our immediate assistance. Thankfully a measure of that assistance is now at hand...
Under an agreement announced in April, 2011, the New Hampshire Fish and Game Department will work with private landowners in Cheshire, Hillsborough, Merrimack, Rockingham and Strafford counties to help restore the thickets during the next 50 years. The goal is to enroll 3,000 to 5,000 acres to be managed as cottontail habitat.
The agreement in New Hampshire allows the Fish and Game Department to provide assurance to volunteering landowners that their conservation work "won't jeopardize the future use or value of the land if the species is eventually federally listed," said Steve Weber, chief of the department's wildlife division. Such federal listing as an endangered species is probable since the cottontail was listed in 2006 as a candidate under the Endangered Species Act.
Now the good people of New  Hampshire can make a start at preserving the cottontails by cutting vegetation to promote shrub development, planting seeds, controlling invasive plants, and transferring some rabbits to the newly created habitats. It is good... but is it enough... and in time?
A candid conclusion.
For thousands of years, New England cottontails were self-sufficient, thank you very much. Then we, homo sapiens, descended, spreading dislocation, disaster, death. Now the future of these silky creatures is in our hands. Surely a great nation that can put members of our species on the moon can make a few bucks available to save them and give them the little they need to survive. But will we? That is the open question that demands the right answer, for really what do a few rabbits matter in the scheme of things?
Here is the righteous answer: if we will not protect the small and meek like the cottontails, how can we be expected to do what's necessary to protect ourselves and the planet? We are all, you see, endangered together. When will we finally come to understand?
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc. , providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski <a href="http://cashgrowthunlimited.com/

'.... it's raining violets.'

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's note. Before you read this article, give yourself the right musical accompaniment, "April Showers" sung by Al Jolson. Jolson made many recordings of this famous song. The music was written by Louis Silvers, the lyrics by B. G. De Sylva; it was first sung by Jolson in the 1921 Broadway musical "Bombo".
A quick search of any search engine should yield this pip of a song with the inimitable Jolson touch that soon made him a household name. "April Showers" spurred him on his way; it will help us on ours, too.
Acres of violets... nestled amongst the trees... quiet... serene... so abundant, unforgettable by sunlight... irresistible by moonlight... attired in transient glory for the midnight visit of Titania and all her court... you fell asleep too early to see...
These are the violets of my youth... and I cannot see a single blossom without being seized by the memory of their beauty. That is why, when the spring comes and the May violets with it, I prefer to walk alone through Cambridge streets, so that when I find the patches of violets I know so well, I can allow myself the bittersweet sensation of remembrance.
A companion on these walks, so desirable so often, is de trop in violet season. Such a one would try to be congenial, amiable, a real friend. But that is not what you want when the violets come.... you want what only you can recall... the memory of youth, beauty, of endless time for squandering and of the springtime of your life, when your life was just for living, and all life's miseries and injunctions were yet to come, not present realities. The violets saw it all and smiled... for no one knew better than they how brief that season was. But they didn't share that insight with you... they knew it would come soon enough on its own. And so it did, thus closing this time in all but memory. Each violet seen is a bridgeway to that memory... and precious so.
The violets of Woodward Avenue.
Winters in the heartland of America which is Illinois, are hard, interminable, testing the fortitude of every living thing, all longing for release and the clemency of spring. By February you are desperate for relief... and while the snow may stop for an instant, the mud does not. It is everywhere, not least in the places you are sternly admonished never to track it. But the mud is more insistent upon going in with you, than you are in heeding the insistent admonition.
Out of this rich mud, the mud that feeds America and the world, come the violets in rampancy and profusion. Their job is to obliterate the despondent memories of winter... and create the moment when you, turning a corner, see  them in all their glory, catching your breath and (without even knowing) breathing a paean of pure thanks for this flicker of time, forever magnificent; now ineffably part of your soul.
Some facts about violets.
Viola is a genus of flowering plants in the violet family Violaceae, with around 400-500 species distributed around the world. Most species are found in the temperate Northern Hemisphere; however, viola species (commonly called violets, pansies, or heartsease) are also found in widely divergent areas such as Hawaii, Australasia, and the Andes in South America.
Flower colors vary in the genus, ranging from violet, as their common name suggests, through various shades of blue, yellow, white, and cream, whilst some types are bicolored, often blue and yellow. Many cultivars and hybrids have been bred in a greater spectrum of colors. Flowering is often profuse, and may last for much of the spring and summer.
Edible violets.
Violets are not only wonderful to look at; they titillate the palate in surprising ways. Violets have a delicate, sweet and sometimes peppery flavor. Before including them in your next salad, however, reaping the advantages of their abundant antioxidants, have a care. Violets are good for you; some flowers that resemble violets are not. These include spring larkspur and monkshood, which are in fact poisonous. This suggests the plot for a murder mystery suitable for "Masterpiece Theatre". Miss Honeycroft, though no longer young, was appreciated by hostesses for her wit and lively humor of a literary kind; her well-tended violets were much admired... it came as a great shock to the community when her body was found amongst them, jarring in bright red riding boots and nothing more... Kinky. Who would water the violets now?
Special warning: Be extra careful not to add African violets to that salad, even just a few. African violets, beloved of grandmothers worldwide (including mine) are so named because of their resemblance to violets, although they are not true violets and are absolutely not edible; neither are the rhizome or roots of any violets. They are poisonous to humans.
More ways to eat violets.
Violets may be sauteed like spinach and added to stir-fry vegetables. Wild violets also have a somewhat viscous texture when cooked which is used in traditional cooking as a thickener for soups and stews. But while I am sure you like a good stew so prepared... I am surer you crave the sweeter uses of violets....
Violets are a symbol of everlasting love and the enduring passion which their purple color suggests. Remember, this color, in Ancient Rome and  Byzantium, was reserved for emperors... the highest placed mortals on earth. Now swept away, you can enjoy some of their rarefied delights.
To make candied violet flowers, pick a large number of flowers and let them dry on a paper towel for a couple of hours. Beat an egg white to a froth, and color it with food coloring, if desired. Using a fine brush, carefully coat each flower with the egg white, then pour fine sugar over each. Blend the sugar in your blender to make it a finer consistency. Lay each flower on wax paper to dry, then use as a decoration for your confections when the flowers are stiff enough to move. This will impress the special one in your life. But you want more than to impress, don't you? You want to ensnare this person forever and forever passionately. Admit it. Here violets are essential.
Offer your beloved "Parma violets", a select British tablet confectionery manufactured by the Derbyshire-based company Swizzels Matlow.  For maximum effect, offer, too, a glass of Creme Yvette, made from Parma violets, the most luxurious and lush violets of all. Rarer than rare, this liqueur has not been made for decades... giving it will therefore make the desired impression... and ensure the total submission of the one you crave to distraction. Such is the enduring power of the violet, in the wild or distilled.
"So if it's raining, have no regrets, Because it it isn't raining rain you know, It's raining violets..."
Run outside now and seize them... and this moment... before they and it pass away forever, to your certain regret.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski <a href="http://cashgrowthunlimited.com/

Canada's Liberal Party crushed as Michael Ignatieff takes them to historic defeat May 2, 2011. The real question is why they let him try....

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author's note: Michael Ignatieff and I were classmates at Harvard University. We were in the same "track" together, Modern European History. Each week for a year (1969-1970) we gathered for the colloquium which enabled H. Stuart Hughes, chairman of the History Department, to scrutinize us and decide who would advance to the Ph.D. program and who would be given the terminal Master's Degree. Our class consisted of just a dozen students, or less. We came to know each other very well... He smoked gold tipped Sobranie, the Russian word for "'sovereign" (current price $55 for 200)... his cigarette always a prop in his presentation.
Count Michael.
If there were any justice in the world, Michael Georgevitch Ignatieff would be waking up this morning on his wide acres near Smolensk as Count Michael, his paternal grandfather Count Pavel Ignatieff, the Russian Minister of Education during the First World War, grandson of Princess Natasha Mestchersky.  But in 1917, the acres, the grand estates and country houses, the privileges and baubles from the Tsar, even the Tsar himself were all swept away...  still, you will never understand Michael Ignatieff if you do not understand that he is a Russian aristocrat to his very fingers.... and that he longs for a world that was once his... a world long ago and far away from Canada. It's all there in his 1987 book "The Russian Album", which that year won the Governor General's Award for Non-Fiction.
Born May 12, 1947
Ignatieff was born in Toronto, elder son of Russian-born Canadian diplomat (Count) George Ignatieff and his Canadian-born wife, Jessie Alison (nee Grant). His childhood was peripatetic as his father moved up the diplomatic ranks, ultimately becoming chief of staff to Prime Minister Lester Pearson. Michael Ignatieff got used to being around important people and their privileged lives. He became adept at the great game of moving up, by pleasing the influential, being in the right place at the right time, and always considering which move to make and when to make it. Every glittering prize in the world was available if you knew how to get it... and Michael Ignatieff was eager to learn...
He studied history at the University of Toronto's Trinity College (B.A., 1969) where Bob Rae was his debating partner and fourth-year roommate. (Rae went on to become Ontario's 21st premier 1990-1995 and one of the few Liberals to survive the debacle under Ignatieff.)
Restless, always in motion.
Ignatieff moved on again.... this time to Oxford University where he studied with celebrated liberal philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin about whom he would later write. Then Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he earned his PhD in 1976.  Then the University of British Columbia (assistant professor from 1976 to 1978).... then senior research fellow at King's College, Cambridge until 1984. He then moved to London where he began to focus on his career as writer and journalist.
It was impressive, it was distinguished, it was rootless... and it was certainly not the standard career path of a politician who needed to understand and connect with real people and their everyday concerns.  Michael Ignatieff's career was becoming as recherche as his cigarettes... rare, exquisite, far-fetched. This would have been fine... except he hankered after political office and political power... and the plaudits and esteem which only come when one is the demonstrated "People's Choice". But could he get there by writing himself into power... without submitting  himself to the messy business of politics? Could he reach the top of the greasy pole (as British statesman Benjamin Disraeli called it) by being wafted there and without a drop of grease on his refined, fastidious person?
That was Michael Ignatieff's most astonishing idea of all...
Was there a precedent in the politics of Canada, Britain, or the United States of a man who went for the highest of offices without learning the craft of politics and the messy business of working with people from the grassroots up? In due course, perhaps Ignatief arrived at Woodrow Wilson, as prolific a writer and academic as Ignatieff himself, professor and then President of Princeton University.
But even Woodrow Wilson had served as elected Governor of New Jersey (1911-1913). Though Wilson's was a troubled presidency, still it was the closest precedent  to hand. Michael Ignatieff meant to improve upon it... becoming Prime Minister of Canada without administrative, executive or foreign policy experience, having been elected just twice as a Member of Parliament... and without the most important thing of all: the proven ability to arouse, enthuse, lead the people.
That he should believe it is perfectly understandable; (people can after all persuade themselves about anything). That he got the leaders of the greatest of Canadian political parties  to believe it is... remarkable, incredible, mad.
Yet that is precisely what happened when in 2004 three Liberal organizers, former Liberal candidate Alfred Apps, Ian Davey (son of Senator Keith Davey) and lawyer Daniel Brock traveled to Cambridge, Massachusetts (where Ignatieff held a professorship at Harvard) and persuaded him to move back to Canada and consider a bid for the Liberal leadership (should Paul Martin retire) and then Prime Minister. The  tailors had done their work and now the Emperor with no clothes was ready for his unique, historic journey. Paul Martin did iretire the Liberal Party leadership after the Liberal government was defeated in the January 2006 federal election... and the poobahs of the defeated party were persuaded that no experience was the best experience... that no leadership skills were the best skills to lead... and that a man who so loved and venerated Canada that he sought every opportunity to leave her... that this was the best man in the nation to be Prime Minister of a great people.
Oh!  Ignatieff!
But if the leaders of the Liberal Party (who ultimately anointed Ignatieff as their unproven paladin) believed Count Michael's mythology, the people of Canada did not. They called it as they saw it, and they knew, like the unnamed boy in the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, the emperor had no clothes, or anything else except the desire to start at the top, accepting obeisance. It was one of the most fatuous of political ideas ever perpetrated. And handed unprecedented victory to Conservative Stephen Harper. And unprecedented, abject defeat to the Liberals who forgot, with Ignatieff,  the very heart of their principles: that governments are of the people, by the people, for the people... and of leaders who work a lifetime to understand those people and serve them.
As for Michael Ignatieff, who presided over the Liberal's greatest, unprecedented defeat? He hinted he could be persuaded, if properly asked, to stay on as leader. No takers, there. And then he went before the nation and petulantly lambasted his opponents for questioning his attachment to Canada and his patriotism, still not understanding the rambunctious game of politics, a blood sport, not the coronation he expected.  It was "their" fault Canadians were deprived of such a man as he.  No doubt Count Michael will make his exhaustive case in his next book, which will be written anywhere else than the Canada he loves so much...

About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski <a href="http://cashgrowthunlimited.com/

Osama bin Laden has been killed and we say Hallelujah!

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
I am not a violent man but I have waited, with all Americans, for the violent end to one man of consummate evil, Osama bin Laden... and now -- at long last --  his end  has come and my heart beats quicker and in gratitude to the people who have done this worthy deed and rid the world of the man whose face was the face of death.
The facts.
For years, the CIA had been monitoring an al-Qaida courier. They knew he was important because detainees told investigators he was profoundly trusted by bin Laden and might very well be living with bin Laden. Last August, as a result of monitoring this courier, intelligence officials got a break. The courier arrived at a highly fortified compound nestled in an affluent neighborhood of an affluent Pakistani town two hours outside Islamabad.
Everything about this compound suggested some nefarious purpose. It was surrounded by walls as high as 18 feet, topped with barbed wire. Two security posts were the only way in. A third-floor terrace was shielded by a seven-foot privacy wall. No phone lines or Internet cables ran to the property. The residents burned their garbage rather than put it out for collection.  Intelligence officials came to believe that this highly distinctive compound was built about 5 years ago at a cost of about one million dollars for a person of consequence in al-Qaida.. The question now was who that person of consequence might be.
Increasingly, after innumerable reviews of the compound and everything known about it, intelligence officials came to believe that the compound was bin Laden's... but for this most important of covert operations there could not be any error of any kind. Americans, they knew, had to have success, total success from this mission... and that's precisely what these officials aimed to give an aggrieved, long-suffering, and patient nation.
And so they did their important work, their painstaking work, their essential work so that when they did what they must do they would be completely successful, and Osama bin Laden would not escape yet again.
Absolute certainty required.
By mid-February, intelligence from multiple sources was clear enough to enable President Obama to "pursue an aggressive course of action." During the next two and a half months, Obama led five meetings of the National Security Council focused solely on whether bin Laden was in that compound and, if so, how to get him.
Everyone was agreed from the President on down: this time there must be complete success...
And so, first of all, just who had access to this growing body of intelligence was drastically limited. Our closest allies -- Britain, Canada, Australia, etc. -- are ordinarily in the loop... but not this time.  Too, the United States does not normally carry out ground operations inside Pakistan without collaboration from Pakistani intelligence. But this was the ultimate covert operation and what was "normal" in such matters was not good enough.
There had to be total success; everything had to be done right... the first time.
April 29, 2011. The President approved the operation to kill Osama bin Laden and the countdown to vengeance began.
For this most important of missions, Obama went with real people instead of our sophisticated Predator drones. President Obama entrusted the honor of America to some of America's finest, the elite Navy SEAL Team Six under the command of CIA Director Leon Panetta. The names of team members have not (so far) been released... but they have well and truly earned the gratitude of the nation.
A fiery end, a bullet to the head.
In the dead of night, helicopters descended out of darkness to deliver Armageddon. One can imagine the event.
The inhabitants of the compound would have awakened, drowsy and disoriented, to their worst nightmare. Coming for them, every one of them, were the deliverers of promised retribution... the representatives of a great nation delivering at last what every citizen of that nation wanted: Revenge!  Retaliation! Justice! 
Unimaginable horror scarred the night skies as, one by one, the representatives of al-Qaida fell... the courier who lead the CIA to this place... bin Laden's brother... his son... and the man of practised and unfathomable evil Osama bin Laden  himself... one blessed bullet into the brain that brought so much undeserved pain to so many.
This was the man whose hatred created, on the fateful day of September 11,  profound misery; a man who turned happy children from happy homes into orphans... a wicked man who tore wives from husbands and husbands from wives... a man who turned doting grandparents into crazed people mad with despair... asking a single question over and over again: "Why?" What had so many innocent people done to deserve so much....
And so, even as the Twin Towers fell, even as a great nation reeled and wept... the sentiment took root that the perpetrator of this great evil must be found and punished.
And that day of righteous punishment came -- May 1, 2011.
Buried according to Islamic practice and tradition.
The bodies of Osama's victims were buried in the burning debris of the once majestic towers, the very symbols of our greatest city. The bravest of the brave found these bodies and gave them the most reverential burials. We gave the remains of bin Laden the same high respect... burying him with decency and full honors, so that no one could say we treated him with the deep contempt with which he treated us. Here, as so often, we rose above... to behave with the deep decency which is the core of who we are.
An incident, not the end.
I am not, as I said, a violent man; I often wonder why we humans seem to need, even crave, so much of it. But of this I am sure: the total eradication of this man was needed, warranted, and beneficial. His misguided followers, now disoriented and dismayed, will turn the man into a martyr, but they will be wrong to do so. His twisted perspective hurts them, too, and can deliver nothing more than more infernos and more pain.
That is why we must continue to be vigilant. One bullet is not the end...  but that bullet surely marks the end of the chapter which began September 11, 2001.
It is a beautiful day here in Cambridge, Massachusetts... the kind of day that makes one glad to be alive. I intend to go, in a minute, into the sparkling air and the brilliant sunshine... to say a little prayer for the victims, our honored dead... and hope their spirits may now rest more easily, abiding forever in the Peace of God they came to know too soon.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski <a href="http://cashgrowthunlimited.com/

'It's May! It's May... That darling month when everyone throws self-control away.' May 2, 2011.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
I had quite a different thought in mind for my article today... but at about 4 a.m. a light breeze caressed me and I was overwhelmed by an astonishing chorus of birdsong, as one determined winged group answered another, each and every one of them demanding con brio that I wake up and celebrate this day... and make sure you celebrate it, too, for the true end of winter (not just some date on the calendar) is a most important thing.
So, I threw up the sash on the window and quaffed the air. There wasn't a touch of winter in it,  not a scintilla, not a particle. It was well and truly May... and, in an instant, I was back over 50 years ago where, in the breeze way, my mother was engaged in directing her young charges in the finer points of May baskets. But first...
On December 3, 1960 Lerner and Loewe's "Camelot" opened in New York with Julie Andrews and Richard Burton as  Guinevere and King Arthur. Andrews belted out a pip of a song on May... and it's utterly appropriate you let it enliven your day today. Go now to any search engine and find it, and let it be 1960 for you all over again...
"It's May! It's May! The lusty month of May! That lovely month when ev'ryone goes Blissfully astray."
The truth is, my days of going "blissfully astray" have long passed. This is not a good thing... we all need a day now and then when "wicked thoughts Merrily appear."
May 1 is tailor-made to be that day: "That gorgeous holiday When ev'ry maiden prays that her lad Will be a cad!"
For many years politics, particularly Red politics as directed by dour Russian communists whose dissipations were leaden and plodding, obscured the real purpose of May 1 and, indeed, the entire month of May. Lenin and company decreed that May's license for merriment be replaced by International Workers' Day (also known as International Labour Day).
Per usual, this determination came in a ukase from the sweat-drenched apparatchiki of Moscow... personally, I have always maintained that if the workers had been asked for their opinion on the matter they would have chosen...
""It's May, it's May, the month of  'Yes, you may' The time for every frivolous whim, proper or im-"
But that was the thing about those revolutionary Russkies: they were always telling you something, demanding something, insisting on something... the very things we throw off on May 1st... the better to let our genetic code do its thing and direct us in uninhibited may-hem.
In short,the vital sap of May has proven its prodigious strength... there will not be in Moscow today -- or perhaps anywhere -- a tedious parade featuring tractors and heroes of the falsely named republics. These parades and the grim visaged crew who invented and directed them have been toppled... and we all have regained the undisputed right to a day "depraved in every way"... and a good thing, too. It's what the workers would have chosen for themselves... if anyone had bothered to ask them. Which brings us back to the true meaning of May Day and the May days which follow....
Sacred to the feast of Beltane, Celtic start of summer.
May Day calls for a sloughing off of sober responsibilities and of the proper, serious, VIP you have become. For this day, this single day, you dance, not march, to a different drummer, this time played by the (rather sheepish) pagans who celebrate the festival of Beltane. Sadly these latter-day neo-pagans are in desperate need of experienced help. I have rarely seen a more tatterdemalion crew or folks more in need of assistance in the art of dissipation. Their current antics are not inspiring and irritate, I aver, the high panoply of Celtic deities who wince every time a foul-smelling, foul-attired Beltaniain happens by. In short, the neo-pagans are an embarrassment in need of a make-over, the better to serve the cause of excess and pleasure.
No doubt they are adversely afflicted by the shear lack of accurate information about how the good pagans of yore did dissipate. What's known about Beltane, for instance, is quite frankly not very attractive. For instance, a highlight of the event was the ever-festive bonfire created by rubbing sticks together. Related rituals included driving cattle between two fires, dancing around the fires, and burning witches in effigy, no doubt an acquired taste.
Another tradition was Beltane cakes, which would be broken into several pieces, one of which was blackened. These pieces would then be drawn by celebrants at random, the person getting the unlucky piece would face a mock execution. Perhaps it was more alluring and pleasurable if you were actually there...
Walpurgisnacht.
St. Walburga (or Walpurgis), the abbess of the monastery of Heidenheim, helped St. Boniface bring Christianity to 8th century Germany. The date of May 1 became, over time, sacred to this well-loved Christian lady, the better to obliterate a pre-existing pagan festival, again including rites to protect oneself from witchcraft. This lead, in the muddled way with such matters, to a hybrid festival in which witches were said to meet with the Devil on the eve of May 1. The night of April 30th became known as "Walpurgisnacht"... and the day following was, perhaps, given over to gratitude for having survived it.
Things were better in England...
In medieval England, folks would celebrate the start of spring by going out to the country or woods "going a-maying" by gathering greenery and flowers, the first description of this occurring in "The Court of Love" (1561). Thereafter the maypole went up... the music began... morris dancers at the ready... and a May Queen to crown with persiflage, good humor, debauchery and the certainty of a headache tomorrow. Yes, as always, the Brits know how to party...
From this tradition came my mother's May Day version. Like everywhere else in the great heartland, May 1st in Illinois meant the harsh winter was gone, gone forever. Everyone and everything breathed easier as a result; there was the promise of clemency and of sultry slower moving days. The advent to these days lay through the rich flora of midwestern America. Our home, beside a rambling creek, was incomparably beautiful at springtime, carpeted as it was with violets on every side. In the late light of day, you could believe it was God's own greenhouse.
From this incomparable soil came its harvest of beauty... tulips, lilacs, the last remaining daffodils and always the violets in unimaginable beauty and abundance...
From these my mother chose the best and directed us in how to make the May baskets... and make them just so, festooned as always by a ribbon of the brightest hue. Then, without a card, she dispatched us on the task of delivery; to be put in front of entry doors, the doorbell rung, then running fast away, never to be seen.
I asked her once why we didn't add a card, like florists do. She only smiled. I know why now... we who delivered, laughing so, were the card... and our message was unmistakable, an image of youth and laughter, running through a panorama of flowers whose very fragrance I can smell to this pristine May day.
About the Author
Harvard-educated Dr. Jeffrey Lant is CEO of Worldprofit, Inc., providing a wide range of online services for small and-home based businesses. Dr. Lant is also the author of 18 best-selling business books. Republished with author's permission by Ray Wisniewski <a href="http://cashgrowthunlimited.com/