10 Fun Things For Grandparents to Do With Their Grandchildren
By Mary Bodel
We will be grandparents for the first time in May. It is a special time for us, and it has me remembering the fun times we had with my grandmother. She was a unique woman in many ways, and I would have been the poorer without her. I would also be minus a career, as she is the first teacher I had on my path to becoming a Master Herbalist.
Some of the things on this list are from this era of my life, and others are more aligned with the things we like to do and think children would enjoy. It's fun for all ages.
Bike Rides: Feeling the wind in your face as you pedal down the road is fun at any age. Once the grandkids get the knack of it, it is fun to take them to bike paths and let them try their wings. It's easier to use a bike path because you will have less concern about them being hit by a car. They are also usually flatter, so you won't have to work quite as hard.
Christmas: While the day is obviously going to be fun, I'm referring here to the entire season, starting with Advent. I remember smelling the candy my grandmother was making along with the fresh scent of the tree. I loved to sit and watch the village under it, complete with train and train tracks. Caroling is fun, and there are many other activities you can participate in. It's great to see the wonder on the faces of the kids, too.
Cooking: The two places we would most likely find Grandma in was either her nursery/garden or the kitchen. I remember how proud I felt when she finally felt I was old enough to help. Many summer days were spent in her kitchen, canning and freezing vegetables for winter. On special occasions, Grandma made her special fried apple pies, and if we were helping, we'd get one of the first ones finished...to make sure the batch would turn out right.
Fourth of July: Grandma always had a huge party on our nation's birthday. We'd make ice cream and eat hot dogs and hamburgers. In the evening, we'd sit in her back yard and watch the fireworks display. Before they became illegal, we'd do a little lighting of our own. I especially remember playing with the sparklers.
Gardening: Every woman in our family had a garden back in those days. Many of them still do, though some of us don't have the space for it. It's a joy to see the awe kids feel when the seeds they plant begin to come up. Even if you only have a window sill, it is a fun thing to do with the kids.
Hiking: If your grandkids live in the city, this is a good way to get them out into nature. Many areas have hiking trails of varying difficulty levels. In the Mid-Atlantic, they are taking up some of the tracks and have a program called Rails to Trails. In our area, the local park department has several trails set up, some of them interlinking with county, state or federal trails.
Music: Whether you're watching them perform at church or school or you're teaching them to play your favorite instrument, this is a good bonding experience for you. Grandma never missed a performance any of us were in, and she often sang lullabies to the babies of the family. Taking them to see concerts and plays are always fun, too.
Playground: Grandma taught us to use wax paper on the slide before we went down it. We always flew down after it had been used. Grandpa would help me down from the "monkey bars," and it was always enjoyable. Find out what the amenities are at the local parks and you can have free fun for years.
Read Aloud: This was one area that Grandma couldn't do. She only had two years of schooling, and reading was something she had a hard time with. My mother read to our children and they loved it. You can share so many wonders when reading, and instill a love of it into your grandchild.
Tea Party: I always loved playing this as a child, but never more than when the tea party was real and not imaginary. When we were young, it was a pot of herbal tea to avoid giving us to much caffeine, but it was a blast. Who knew a couple of cookies and a cup of tea would bring such a lasting memory?
We're looking forward to doing these and other fun things with our new grandchild. It will be a delightful experience.
See my website: http://www.alternative-herbal-remedies.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mary_Bodel
http://EzineArticles.com/?10-Fun-Things-For-Grandparents-to-Do-With-Their-Grandchildren&id=5519838
วันพฤหัสบดีที่ 9 มกราคม พ.ศ. 2557
Cats, Creativity and the Artist's Way - Yes You Can Be Creative in Your Own Way!
Cats, Creativity and the Artist's Way - Yes You Can Be Creative in Your Own Way!
By Leslie Gebhart
Ever since I can remember, I have loved cats. I resonate with their purring, relax when watching them groom, laugh when I find them in unexpected places or poses, take photos when they are being particularly 'cute', learn from them about stretching, napping, scampering and how to have fun with whatever is in front of me. Cats rock.
Cats are awesome teachers about creativity. Once I decided I could embark along the path known as the artist's way even though I wasn't an artist, I began to see everything with fresh eyes. The snow caped mountains in the distance suddenly offered ideas for a talk, the visiting puppy's wagging tail, an idea for a presentation and the cat's way of being a template for how to lead a life in support of my (buried) creativity.
I spent a lot of years being afraid. I got really good at hiding out. I learned how to be anonymous. After playing around with the concepts I found in Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way, I realized that I don't have to be a professional to acknowledge my creativity. Doing more research and discovering SARK's work in support of the world of creativity, I finally got it that each of us is creative in our own ways no matter what we label ourselves, no matter what our career, no matter how we use our free time.
The energy of creativity is built in to each of us; we're hard wired with it and it is as unique as our fingerprint. Wow! How do you respond when you read that sentence?
For me, the first time I heard it, I resisted cuz I was pretty certain I didn't have it.
After years of training and experience in my career, however, I am absolutely convinced that it's a FACT. Yes it is. All we have to do is to be willing to say, 'yes' to it. I'm preparing a series of articles in support of your discovering your own version of your own creativity I hope you'll find them useful and I welcome feedback. Whether you are officially already on the path of the artist's way or just beginning to test the theory, you will find some tips and suggestions to make the journey more joy-filled. How 'bout that idea? Walking along the path of the artist's way with joy and ease and support!
If you are a pet owner, set aside some time to just observe how instinctively pets are creative. That little wad of paper becomes a ball, that piece of string, something to drag around and hide that paper clip a cause for leaping. If you're fortunate enough to have a cat to hold, notice how you relax and more easily go into reverie when in the resting cat's presence. It's a version of 'use what you've got'. If you're jot a pet owner, consider an outing to the dog park or the rescue shelter to connect with the specialness a domestic animal can offer to boost your energy of creativity.
You'll find immediate access to your free Special Report (12 Tested Tips on taking action to expand your creativity NOW) at http://www.theartistswaydesert.com This special report and the series of articles, Zapping Blocks to Creativity are offered by Leslie Gebhart, M.A., Professional Certified Coach who supports you to connect with your creativity no matter what your work or leisure schedule. In addition to coaching in support of creativity, she adds facilitating the book study of Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way as a highlight of her work week. http://www.theartistswaydesert.com Feel free to paste this article into your own material so long as you also maintain the author contact information as is herein. Hope you found it useful! Make it a terrific day. Yes you can!
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Leslie_Gebhart
http://EzineArticles.com/?Cats,-Creativity-and-the-Artists-Way---Yes-You-Can-Be-Creative-in-Your-Own-Way!&id=3506972
By Leslie Gebhart
Ever since I can remember, I have loved cats. I resonate with their purring, relax when watching them groom, laugh when I find them in unexpected places or poses, take photos when they are being particularly 'cute', learn from them about stretching, napping, scampering and how to have fun with whatever is in front of me. Cats rock.
Cats are awesome teachers about creativity. Once I decided I could embark along the path known as the artist's way even though I wasn't an artist, I began to see everything with fresh eyes. The snow caped mountains in the distance suddenly offered ideas for a talk, the visiting puppy's wagging tail, an idea for a presentation and the cat's way of being a template for how to lead a life in support of my (buried) creativity.
I spent a lot of years being afraid. I got really good at hiding out. I learned how to be anonymous. After playing around with the concepts I found in Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way, I realized that I don't have to be a professional to acknowledge my creativity. Doing more research and discovering SARK's work in support of the world of creativity, I finally got it that each of us is creative in our own ways no matter what we label ourselves, no matter what our career, no matter how we use our free time.
The energy of creativity is built in to each of us; we're hard wired with it and it is as unique as our fingerprint. Wow! How do you respond when you read that sentence?
For me, the first time I heard it, I resisted cuz I was pretty certain I didn't have it.
After years of training and experience in my career, however, I am absolutely convinced that it's a FACT. Yes it is. All we have to do is to be willing to say, 'yes' to it. I'm preparing a series of articles in support of your discovering your own version of your own creativity I hope you'll find them useful and I welcome feedback. Whether you are officially already on the path of the artist's way or just beginning to test the theory, you will find some tips and suggestions to make the journey more joy-filled. How 'bout that idea? Walking along the path of the artist's way with joy and ease and support!
If you are a pet owner, set aside some time to just observe how instinctively pets are creative. That little wad of paper becomes a ball, that piece of string, something to drag around and hide that paper clip a cause for leaping. If you're fortunate enough to have a cat to hold, notice how you relax and more easily go into reverie when in the resting cat's presence. It's a version of 'use what you've got'. If you're jot a pet owner, consider an outing to the dog park or the rescue shelter to connect with the specialness a domestic animal can offer to boost your energy of creativity.
You'll find immediate access to your free Special Report (12 Tested Tips on taking action to expand your creativity NOW) at http://www.theartistswaydesert.com This special report and the series of articles, Zapping Blocks to Creativity are offered by Leslie Gebhart, M.A., Professional Certified Coach who supports you to connect with your creativity no matter what your work or leisure schedule. In addition to coaching in support of creativity, she adds facilitating the book study of Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way as a highlight of her work week. http://www.theartistswaydesert.com Feel free to paste this article into your own material so long as you also maintain the author contact information as is herein. Hope you found it useful! Make it a terrific day. Yes you can!
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Leslie_Gebhart
http://EzineArticles.com/?Cats,-Creativity-and-the-Artists-Way---Yes-You-Can-Be-Creative-in-Your-Own-Way!&id=3506972
วันพุธที่ 8 มกราคม พ.ศ. 2557
Building an Herbal Medicine Cabinet For the Cold and Swine Flu Season
Building an Herbal Medicine Cabinet For the Cold and Swine Flu Season
By Pam Gersh
The headlines are blaring "swine flu." We hear the horror stories about the at-risk groups, many people don't want to get a flu shot or give it to their children. What are our choices? No one has talked about natural medicine alternatives much in this heated debate. Yet, my son just got over swine flu and I can tell you that it was not an easy experience. Was he very sick? No. Was he afraid and asking me if he was "going to die?" Yes. He ran a low-grade fever that spiked one day and he had some mild congestion. Otherwise, he slept soundly every night and recovered within a week. While he was sick, he was prescribed TamiFlu (the whole family took it). I also treated him before his illness because I knew it was coming, and I continued to treat him with herbal remedies during his illness to help the healing process along.
Like many other Americans, I have a chronic health condition (migraines), but I'm hyper-sensitive to drugs, so I don't like to take prescription drugs unless I really need them. Over the last 25 years, I have created quite a library on herbs and natural medicine out of necessity. What I now have is an herbal medicine cabinet that I use frequently to help boost my immune system. I am not a physician, but rather a layperson who has found herbal remedies that work for me and my family. Here's what I have learned and the products I use for cold and flu season.
Europeans and German Commission E
The Europeans are way ahead of us on the topic of herbal treatments where it's commonplace to use herbs and traditional medicine in a integrated approach to treat illness. Germany had an herbal equivalent of the FDA called the German Commission E which made it mandatory for all conventional drugs, medicinal plants and phytomedicines (medicines derived from plants) to be reviewed by scientific committees. Over the course of two decades, scientists, physicians and specialists from their pharmacology industry authored 1,000 scientific publications and as of 1997, the German Commission E had listed over 800 substances (mostly herbs) recommending the use and dosage for each one. You can find much of the Commission E findings in a book written by an American botanist named James A. Duke, Ph.D, called The Green Pharmacy. Duke worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture for most of his career "mapping" herbs and is considered "the world's leading authority on healing herbs."
Brand Quality is Important
Here is what I have learned from The Green Pharmacy and the many other resources I have used over the years, including advice from both traditional and alternative medical professionals, extensive reading and research on the Internet. First and foremost, brand quality is important when buying herbs. One of the best herbal brands on the market is Enzymatic Therapy. Most of the products Enzymatic Therapy makes are combined-use herbal formulas (combining two or more herbs) for specific aliments. My favorite Enzymatic Therapy product is called Air Power, an expectorant that includes guaifenesin and fenugreek. Fenugreek is the key ingredient because it boosts the effect of the guaifenesin. This product thins and loosens mucus and clears the respiratory airways. It is hands-down the best product I have ever found for bronchitis and to clear up any type of chest congestion.
The other brand I use most often is Solaray because it is a great, high-quality brand that is inexpensive, yet works really well. I use the Solaray brand for most of my other herbs, including Golden Seal which is the next staple for any medicine cabinet.
Golden Seal root is an herb used for centuries before the discovery of antibiotics. Clinical research in Germany over many years showed that Golden Seal activates special white blood cells (macrophages) that are responsible for destroying bacteria, viruses, fungi and tumor cells. So you get a one-two punch with this herb because it fights bacterial infections while building up the immune system. If you combine Air Power and Golden Seal root with AirBorne, yes the same AirBorne created by a teacher to boost your immunities, you have an arsenal that can help to combat any respiratory illness.
Anti-Virals
I was always told that if you have a virus to let it runs its course because there is not much that you can do. Not true. I found that there are many anti-viral herbs that help your body fight viruses by boosting your immunities. The best non-prescription anti-viral I have found is called Blockade. It includes ViraBlock (Elderberry) that blocks viruses from entering human cells and keeps viruses from multiplying. It begins working as soon as it hits your tongue in lozenge form. I actually cured my elderly mother of an oncoming train wreck of an illness last winter after she refused to leave her cold apartment for three days after an ice storm!
Quieting a Cough
A study published a few years ago cited research proving that over-the-counter cough medicines did nothing for a child's cough. Okay, tell us (mothers) something we did not already know. How many nights have you sat up with your sick child while they coughed until they were, well sicker? Here's the solution - Frankincense & Myrrh Cold and Flu Prevention Rubbing Oil. Remember your mother rubbing Vick's Vapor Rub on your chest and how miserable you were all night. This product is a rubbing oil that you massage into your child's feet (you can use it too). It boosts immunity; it is antibacterial and antiviral and keeps those coughs at bay all night. Miracles do happen.
Flu Remedies
I haven't had the flu since 1986. I order a homeopathic flu kit every year. You can buy these in several forms, but the one I get contains four vials and you take one single-use vial each week for four weeks and you are done. These kits are not available until mid-October because the companies are creating the formulas much the same way flu vaccines are made - with tiny traces of viruses so that your body will build up immunity to the virus and be able to fight it off. You can find these at http://www.elixirs.com I'm waiting on mine now as I sit and watch quietly while all the hysteria over the swine flu vaccine swirls around me.
Dosages
Dosage is especially important with herbs and here is where you, the consumer have to do your homework. Remember, herbs are extremely mild when compared to over-the-counter (OTC) or prescription drugs. Through many years of research I found the dosage that works for me - which is three capsules three times a day instead of the directed one to three tablets per day on most labeling. If you don't take enough the herb won't work, so ask a healthcare provider and do some research. For every other mixed-formula remedy such as the Air Power, I follow the labeling instructions because mixed-used formulas are higher in potency than single herbs. The most toxic herbs are not on the market and never have been, even in Europe. If you are taking multiple prescription medications, you must ask your doctor about any possible herb-to-drug interactions.
Are Herbs Safe?
I am frequently asked if herbs are safe. I'll let the expert, Dr. James Duke, Ph.D. speak to that with a direct quote from his book, "To benefit from using herbs, you need to have some basic background information.... This is no different from conventional medicine...First of all get the right stuff. Unless you are absolutely sure of an herb's identity, don't take it. This applies mainly to people picking herbs in the wild, of course." He goes on to say, "Most Americans assume that the pharmaceuticals their doctors prescribe are unquestionably better than herbal medicines... I've been a botanist specializing in medicinal plants for most of my 30-year career, and I've personally seen medicinal herbs successfully treat conditions that high-tech pharmaceuticals could not touch."
Why I Use Herbs
People frequently ask me "How do you know all this stuff?" I have two answers; the first is that I have always been a curious sort, and the second is because I have a chronic illness (as I mentioned earlier) I am like a dog with a bone. I searched for years for a solution and along the way I learned a lot about everything related to natural medicine. I still have the occasional migraine, but I have been able to live a much healthier life by using herbs.
And just in case you did not know, Americans spent a whopping $15 billion on herbs and supplements in 2007 (the latest statistics) but that only includes products tracked through health food stores, if you add non-traditional avenues such as grocery store and drug stores, etc., it's estimated that the herbal market is growing by a whopping 79.5 percent per year! On that note, one more piece of advice is essential - never buy your herbals product from a grocery store or drug store - the brand quality is terrible and you will waste your money.
Pam Gersh
Freelance Writer
[http://www.gershpr.com]
Resources: The Green Pharmacy by James Duke, Ph.D., The American Botanical Society, Elixirs.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Pam_Gersh
http://EzineArticles.com/?Building-an-Herbal-Medicine-Cabinet-For-the-Cold-and-Swine-Flu-Season&id=3062366
By Pam Gersh
The headlines are blaring "swine flu." We hear the horror stories about the at-risk groups, many people don't want to get a flu shot or give it to their children. What are our choices? No one has talked about natural medicine alternatives much in this heated debate. Yet, my son just got over swine flu and I can tell you that it was not an easy experience. Was he very sick? No. Was he afraid and asking me if he was "going to die?" Yes. He ran a low-grade fever that spiked one day and he had some mild congestion. Otherwise, he slept soundly every night and recovered within a week. While he was sick, he was prescribed TamiFlu (the whole family took it). I also treated him before his illness because I knew it was coming, and I continued to treat him with herbal remedies during his illness to help the healing process along.
Like many other Americans, I have a chronic health condition (migraines), but I'm hyper-sensitive to drugs, so I don't like to take prescription drugs unless I really need them. Over the last 25 years, I have created quite a library on herbs and natural medicine out of necessity. What I now have is an herbal medicine cabinet that I use frequently to help boost my immune system. I am not a physician, but rather a layperson who has found herbal remedies that work for me and my family. Here's what I have learned and the products I use for cold and flu season.
Europeans and German Commission E
The Europeans are way ahead of us on the topic of herbal treatments where it's commonplace to use herbs and traditional medicine in a integrated approach to treat illness. Germany had an herbal equivalent of the FDA called the German Commission E which made it mandatory for all conventional drugs, medicinal plants and phytomedicines (medicines derived from plants) to be reviewed by scientific committees. Over the course of two decades, scientists, physicians and specialists from their pharmacology industry authored 1,000 scientific publications and as of 1997, the German Commission E had listed over 800 substances (mostly herbs) recommending the use and dosage for each one. You can find much of the Commission E findings in a book written by an American botanist named James A. Duke, Ph.D, called The Green Pharmacy. Duke worked for the U.S. Department of Agriculture for most of his career "mapping" herbs and is considered "the world's leading authority on healing herbs."
Brand Quality is Important
Here is what I have learned from The Green Pharmacy and the many other resources I have used over the years, including advice from both traditional and alternative medical professionals, extensive reading and research on the Internet. First and foremost, brand quality is important when buying herbs. One of the best herbal brands on the market is Enzymatic Therapy. Most of the products Enzymatic Therapy makes are combined-use herbal formulas (combining two or more herbs) for specific aliments. My favorite Enzymatic Therapy product is called Air Power, an expectorant that includes guaifenesin and fenugreek. Fenugreek is the key ingredient because it boosts the effect of the guaifenesin. This product thins and loosens mucus and clears the respiratory airways. It is hands-down the best product I have ever found for bronchitis and to clear up any type of chest congestion.
The other brand I use most often is Solaray because it is a great, high-quality brand that is inexpensive, yet works really well. I use the Solaray brand for most of my other herbs, including Golden Seal which is the next staple for any medicine cabinet.
Golden Seal root is an herb used for centuries before the discovery of antibiotics. Clinical research in Germany over many years showed that Golden Seal activates special white blood cells (macrophages) that are responsible for destroying bacteria, viruses, fungi and tumor cells. So you get a one-two punch with this herb because it fights bacterial infections while building up the immune system. If you combine Air Power and Golden Seal root with AirBorne, yes the same AirBorne created by a teacher to boost your immunities, you have an arsenal that can help to combat any respiratory illness.
Anti-Virals
I was always told that if you have a virus to let it runs its course because there is not much that you can do. Not true. I found that there are many anti-viral herbs that help your body fight viruses by boosting your immunities. The best non-prescription anti-viral I have found is called Blockade. It includes ViraBlock (Elderberry) that blocks viruses from entering human cells and keeps viruses from multiplying. It begins working as soon as it hits your tongue in lozenge form. I actually cured my elderly mother of an oncoming train wreck of an illness last winter after she refused to leave her cold apartment for three days after an ice storm!
Quieting a Cough
A study published a few years ago cited research proving that over-the-counter cough medicines did nothing for a child's cough. Okay, tell us (mothers) something we did not already know. How many nights have you sat up with your sick child while they coughed until they were, well sicker? Here's the solution - Frankincense & Myrrh Cold and Flu Prevention Rubbing Oil. Remember your mother rubbing Vick's Vapor Rub on your chest and how miserable you were all night. This product is a rubbing oil that you massage into your child's feet (you can use it too). It boosts immunity; it is antibacterial and antiviral and keeps those coughs at bay all night. Miracles do happen.
Flu Remedies
I haven't had the flu since 1986. I order a homeopathic flu kit every year. You can buy these in several forms, but the one I get contains four vials and you take one single-use vial each week for four weeks and you are done. These kits are not available until mid-October because the companies are creating the formulas much the same way flu vaccines are made - with tiny traces of viruses so that your body will build up immunity to the virus and be able to fight it off. You can find these at http://www.elixirs.com I'm waiting on mine now as I sit and watch quietly while all the hysteria over the swine flu vaccine swirls around me.
Dosages
Dosage is especially important with herbs and here is where you, the consumer have to do your homework. Remember, herbs are extremely mild when compared to over-the-counter (OTC) or prescription drugs. Through many years of research I found the dosage that works for me - which is three capsules three times a day instead of the directed one to three tablets per day on most labeling. If you don't take enough the herb won't work, so ask a healthcare provider and do some research. For every other mixed-formula remedy such as the Air Power, I follow the labeling instructions because mixed-used formulas are higher in potency than single herbs. The most toxic herbs are not on the market and never have been, even in Europe. If you are taking multiple prescription medications, you must ask your doctor about any possible herb-to-drug interactions.
Are Herbs Safe?
I am frequently asked if herbs are safe. I'll let the expert, Dr. James Duke, Ph.D. speak to that with a direct quote from his book, "To benefit from using herbs, you need to have some basic background information.... This is no different from conventional medicine...First of all get the right stuff. Unless you are absolutely sure of an herb's identity, don't take it. This applies mainly to people picking herbs in the wild, of course." He goes on to say, "Most Americans assume that the pharmaceuticals their doctors prescribe are unquestionably better than herbal medicines... I've been a botanist specializing in medicinal plants for most of my 30-year career, and I've personally seen medicinal herbs successfully treat conditions that high-tech pharmaceuticals could not touch."
Why I Use Herbs
People frequently ask me "How do you know all this stuff?" I have two answers; the first is that I have always been a curious sort, and the second is because I have a chronic illness (as I mentioned earlier) I am like a dog with a bone. I searched for years for a solution and along the way I learned a lot about everything related to natural medicine. I still have the occasional migraine, but I have been able to live a much healthier life by using herbs.
And just in case you did not know, Americans spent a whopping $15 billion on herbs and supplements in 2007 (the latest statistics) but that only includes products tracked through health food stores, if you add non-traditional avenues such as grocery store and drug stores, etc., it's estimated that the herbal market is growing by a whopping 79.5 percent per year! On that note, one more piece of advice is essential - never buy your herbals product from a grocery store or drug store - the brand quality is terrible and you will waste your money.
Pam Gersh
Freelance Writer
[http://www.gershpr.com]
Resources: The Green Pharmacy by James Duke, Ph.D., The American Botanical Society, Elixirs.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Pam_Gersh
http://EzineArticles.com/?Building-an-Herbal-Medicine-Cabinet-For-the-Cold-and-Swine-Flu-Season&id=3062366
CD Music Sales Based on Album Artwork, Cover Design
CD Music Sales Based on Album Artwork, Cover Design
By Valerie Oliver
Have you ever purchased a CD solely based on the cover design, or been attracted to an artist, band, producer or record label based on their logo, poster or web site? I know I have many times
While it's true that browsing for CD's from major distributor store outlets like Towers Records has ended because people are using online music services for CD orders and individual song downloads, cover images are still being used to identify music on web sites, and some store outlets like FYE, Walmart, and others still have music sections where people browse CD's and DVDs.
Print and web design in the music industry is really about identity. What our audience, potential customer or client can expect to hear, feel, experience, or identify with is communicated visually. Although I will primarily be using CD design examples here, what I'm sharing can also apply to DVD and web design for music projects (especially with writers and performing artists making songs available for downloading on our own web sites).
I'm wearing two hats while writing this article: a songwriter and visual communications professional, so I'm writing with my feet planted in both worlds.
A talented designer understands the power of text (typography) and images, and knows how to use them creatively. The best creative professional for your project is well-trained, familiar with the industry, your audience, and makes design decisions based on accomplishing specific objectives. A primary CD design objective is selling your music to customers or music industry professionals (e.g., securing a producer, crew, record label or other distributor through a demo).
Design plays a part in purchase decisions. When browsing for CD's, we usually pick up what visually attracts us and then look at the listed songs, unless we are looking for a specific artist or title. This process is the way a person gets a feel for the CD artist, mood, and vibe; and ultimately, hopes to be satisfied that the CD delivers what the design and titles suggest.
The first time I purchased music based on the design was an album called "Sky Islands" by a group called Caldera. The album cover has a colorful picture of a volcano (caldera) erupting and I got the feeling the music by this group would erupt as powerfully as that volcano. As it turned out, the Latin-Jazz fusion album did. The cover design got me to buy it.
After that, I bought two CD's: Count Basic, "Trust Your Instincts" (see CD cover image provided), and Marilyn Scott, "Avenues of Love". What grabbed me on the Count Basic cover was the woman's face bolstered by the low cut dress she wore showcasing her significant cleavage, and a man behind her giving two major thumbs up! I wanted to be that woman.
As for Marilyn Scott, she is standing alone on a rocky shore, looking pensively at the ground, barefooted, wearing what looks like a full-length camel hair coat. The image paired with the title created an appealing pensive and serene mood, and I was stirred to buy it.
I was totally pleased with both purchases though they're quite different. Chalk up two more sales due to an energy, style, essence or visual message captured in an image that attracted me to the artist and the music.
Let the Music Take Your Mind
Music isn't defined as visual art, but sound does create mental imagery. Music videos wouldn't exist if this weren't true. One of the reasons I'm not glued to MTV or other music video networks, is that I prefer to give my mind complete freedom to conjure its own images in response to music. Music package design (CD and DVD) is a hors d'oeuvre, an invitation, and a precursor to a total sound experience-perhaps even a story or journey. When you work with a designer (or do it yourself), it's important to record the imagery in your mind to help the creative direction along. It's also good for the designer to listen to the music, so there's a healthy amount of imagery to feed the creative process. Between the two, a wealth of visual ideas will emerge.
Count the Ways
Music professionals use graphic design in specific ways and have definite ideas about what they want the designs to accomplish. Take Neil Alexander (leader for his band, Nail, and former keyboardist for The Machine, America's premier Pink Floyd tribute band).
Neil is primarily a performer/composer, but is also active in engineering, production and programming, and has P-Dog Records, an independent record label he uses to release his own discs.
He has a logo, stationery, CD packaging for his releases, packaging for a CD business card, posters to launch new releases, press releases, and a web site from which people can purchase directly. "I have always found that how CD packaging looks is a big part of its impact, its connection with the listener. Logos and other symbols can become part of the performer's identity. It is in my case. As with any business, consistent graphics help define the company's image and products for the consumer," Neil stated.
As for a strong web site, Neil had this to say: "A solid web presence is very important these days. Information (text, audio and visual) must be well organized and clearly presented. I found it desirable to hire a professional designer to put together a simple and easily navigated Web site."
Sweet Sight of Success
Use design factors to assess quality. There are well-established industry criteria for every product: logos, posters, CD's, business cards and stationery, advertising, and Web sites. To cover each one specifically in this article would take too long, so here are some main criteria to help judge a design success:
Is it unified with the content or message you are trying to get across? This creates an immediate connection and sense of belonging.
Is it unified with the content or message you are trying to get across? This creates an immediate connection and sense of belonging.
Is there an information and visual hierarchy? This means there's a focal point or image that grabs your attention first, and then your eye is led around the design in the order of what's important after seeing the main image or reading the main text.
Does the design have graphic impact? Is it distinctive or memorable? There are many CD's competing with yours for attention (lots of demos are sent out to producers, potential crew, record labels and distributors), so yours must be a major contender.
Is it appropriate for whom you want to attract and the environment in which it will be presented? A poster or CD for a country audience will not have the same look and feel presentation as for a heavy metal one.
Who can forget the strong identity between the Stones and that bright, red tongue sticking out logo? It's a very powerful example of a highly successful design. The Stones logo has graphic impact, is distinctive and memorable, and is appropriate for its rock audience.
For a web site, design and image success is measured by whether your goals for establishing the site are being met. Does it reflect your identity? Are you making sales? Is your visibility increasing? Is it easy for people to navigate and locate what they want? Are there lively and beneficial discussions or information being shared? Are people returning multiple times to your site?
Once the success criteria get established for your project, the real fun begins: designing it.
The Design Process: What To Expect
Professionals have processes to assist them creatively. There will be an initial consultation during which lots of questions are asked. Most designers use a design brief form. The questions on the form are designed to crystallize and solidify your identity and vision, so you and the designer are clear about it. Both get a copy, and sometimes you'll be asked to sign it to approve the accuracy before concept development production begins. You'll be asked to sign a contract and to return it with a retainer (a retainer is a portion of the total cost for the project that must be paid up front before any work begins).
The first thing you'll see is thumbnails (tiny sketched images) or roughs (larger hand-created or computer-generated) ideas. Thumbnails and roughs are concept development techniques. There will be anywhere from three-six (3-6) of them provided. You'll review them and choose one or two on which the designer will focus and make revisions. Once you approve a final design, it is ready to be printed. If it's a web design, it will be coded, programmed, and uploaded to the computer at the service hosting your site. You pay the balance due, and the process is complete.
Budget, Low Budget, No Budget
Pricing for different types of projects can range vastly depending upon the business structure and the length of time the business has been operating. The business can be a design studio, freelance or consultant, or a print shop franchise like Kinko's and have years of experience or be newly established in the industry. Two great resources for getting low cost bids on creating print or web graphics for you are Elance.com andiFreelance.com
I'm talking about pricing as low as $250-$500 for logos, CD's, DVD's, and web sites depending on your requirements. Most of the lowest cost design studios are located outside the U.S.
If you're interested in reviewing industry standard fees for graphic design, web design, or illustration, take a hike to Barnes and Noble bookstore and glance through the Handbook of Pricing and Ethical Guidelines published by The Graphic Artist's Guild of America. It's the creative professional's bible, and includes everything you always wanted to know about fees, contracts, copyright, and other professional issues.
The fees quoted are based on nationwide surveys distributed to creative professionals. Standard fees are not cheap. The visual communications creative field is a highly valued, for-profit industry, so fees reflect our need to make a living at what we do. When someone gives you an estimate, make sure it details every service being provided to justify the cost.
There are other options to consider that keeps costs low. A few include:
Supply your own quality photos and/or illustrations. Photography and illustration are specialties requiring additional compensation.
Personally coordinate printing and CD or other types of duplication. Our time is money so coordinating printing for your project and getting your CD duplicated will cost you more.
Barter for service. We may reduce the fee or work for exchange if something you do is of value to us.
Contact your local college or university and request a referral to a recent graduate or current senior student. There are some extremely talented young people who are eager to get client experience and build their portfolio.
Where there is a will, there is a way. Carefully consider what you want the design to convey, who you want to attract, and what you want to accomplish. A marriage between sight and sound can only have a positive impact on your career. Just one look can be the start of a relationship.
Valerie Michele Oliver
email: oliver.valerie@gmail.com
blog: http://creatorsparrot.blogspot.com/
Valerie Michele Oliver a healing artist, writer, host, producer, and the ghostwriter of Standing Naked in Rose Petals, a spiritual-inspirational-themed creative nonfiction book. She is also a representative for Zrii. Ms. Oliver won PopMatters "Superior Music Scribing Award" for 2007."
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Valerie_Oliver
http://EzineArticles.com/?CD-Music-Sales-Based-on-Album-Artwork,-Cover-Design&id=2040378
By Valerie Oliver
Have you ever purchased a CD solely based on the cover design, or been attracted to an artist, band, producer or record label based on their logo, poster or web site? I know I have many times
While it's true that browsing for CD's from major distributor store outlets like Towers Records has ended because people are using online music services for CD orders and individual song downloads, cover images are still being used to identify music on web sites, and some store outlets like FYE, Walmart, and others still have music sections where people browse CD's and DVDs.
Print and web design in the music industry is really about identity. What our audience, potential customer or client can expect to hear, feel, experience, or identify with is communicated visually. Although I will primarily be using CD design examples here, what I'm sharing can also apply to DVD and web design for music projects (especially with writers and performing artists making songs available for downloading on our own web sites).
I'm wearing two hats while writing this article: a songwriter and visual communications professional, so I'm writing with my feet planted in both worlds.
A talented designer understands the power of text (typography) and images, and knows how to use them creatively. The best creative professional for your project is well-trained, familiar with the industry, your audience, and makes design decisions based on accomplishing specific objectives. A primary CD design objective is selling your music to customers or music industry professionals (e.g., securing a producer, crew, record label or other distributor through a demo).
Design plays a part in purchase decisions. When browsing for CD's, we usually pick up what visually attracts us and then look at the listed songs, unless we are looking for a specific artist or title. This process is the way a person gets a feel for the CD artist, mood, and vibe; and ultimately, hopes to be satisfied that the CD delivers what the design and titles suggest.
The first time I purchased music based on the design was an album called "Sky Islands" by a group called Caldera. The album cover has a colorful picture of a volcano (caldera) erupting and I got the feeling the music by this group would erupt as powerfully as that volcano. As it turned out, the Latin-Jazz fusion album did. The cover design got me to buy it.
After that, I bought two CD's: Count Basic, "Trust Your Instincts" (see CD cover image provided), and Marilyn Scott, "Avenues of Love". What grabbed me on the Count Basic cover was the woman's face bolstered by the low cut dress she wore showcasing her significant cleavage, and a man behind her giving two major thumbs up! I wanted to be that woman.
As for Marilyn Scott, she is standing alone on a rocky shore, looking pensively at the ground, barefooted, wearing what looks like a full-length camel hair coat. The image paired with the title created an appealing pensive and serene mood, and I was stirred to buy it.
I was totally pleased with both purchases though they're quite different. Chalk up two more sales due to an energy, style, essence or visual message captured in an image that attracted me to the artist and the music.
Let the Music Take Your Mind
Music isn't defined as visual art, but sound does create mental imagery. Music videos wouldn't exist if this weren't true. One of the reasons I'm not glued to MTV or other music video networks, is that I prefer to give my mind complete freedom to conjure its own images in response to music. Music package design (CD and DVD) is a hors d'oeuvre, an invitation, and a precursor to a total sound experience-perhaps even a story or journey. When you work with a designer (or do it yourself), it's important to record the imagery in your mind to help the creative direction along. It's also good for the designer to listen to the music, so there's a healthy amount of imagery to feed the creative process. Between the two, a wealth of visual ideas will emerge.
Count the Ways
Music professionals use graphic design in specific ways and have definite ideas about what they want the designs to accomplish. Take Neil Alexander (leader for his band, Nail, and former keyboardist for The Machine, America's premier Pink Floyd tribute band).
Neil is primarily a performer/composer, but is also active in engineering, production and programming, and has P-Dog Records, an independent record label he uses to release his own discs.
He has a logo, stationery, CD packaging for his releases, packaging for a CD business card, posters to launch new releases, press releases, and a web site from which people can purchase directly. "I have always found that how CD packaging looks is a big part of its impact, its connection with the listener. Logos and other symbols can become part of the performer's identity. It is in my case. As with any business, consistent graphics help define the company's image and products for the consumer," Neil stated.
As for a strong web site, Neil had this to say: "A solid web presence is very important these days. Information (text, audio and visual) must be well organized and clearly presented. I found it desirable to hire a professional designer to put together a simple and easily navigated Web site."
Sweet Sight of Success
Use design factors to assess quality. There are well-established industry criteria for every product: logos, posters, CD's, business cards and stationery, advertising, and Web sites. To cover each one specifically in this article would take too long, so here are some main criteria to help judge a design success:
Is it unified with the content or message you are trying to get across? This creates an immediate connection and sense of belonging.
Is it unified with the content or message you are trying to get across? This creates an immediate connection and sense of belonging.
Is there an information and visual hierarchy? This means there's a focal point or image that grabs your attention first, and then your eye is led around the design in the order of what's important after seeing the main image or reading the main text.
Does the design have graphic impact? Is it distinctive or memorable? There are many CD's competing with yours for attention (lots of demos are sent out to producers, potential crew, record labels and distributors), so yours must be a major contender.
Is it appropriate for whom you want to attract and the environment in which it will be presented? A poster or CD for a country audience will not have the same look and feel presentation as for a heavy metal one.
Who can forget the strong identity between the Stones and that bright, red tongue sticking out logo? It's a very powerful example of a highly successful design. The Stones logo has graphic impact, is distinctive and memorable, and is appropriate for its rock audience.
For a web site, design and image success is measured by whether your goals for establishing the site are being met. Does it reflect your identity? Are you making sales? Is your visibility increasing? Is it easy for people to navigate and locate what they want? Are there lively and beneficial discussions or information being shared? Are people returning multiple times to your site?
Once the success criteria get established for your project, the real fun begins: designing it.
The Design Process: What To Expect
Professionals have processes to assist them creatively. There will be an initial consultation during which lots of questions are asked. Most designers use a design brief form. The questions on the form are designed to crystallize and solidify your identity and vision, so you and the designer are clear about it. Both get a copy, and sometimes you'll be asked to sign it to approve the accuracy before concept development production begins. You'll be asked to sign a contract and to return it with a retainer (a retainer is a portion of the total cost for the project that must be paid up front before any work begins).
The first thing you'll see is thumbnails (tiny sketched images) or roughs (larger hand-created or computer-generated) ideas. Thumbnails and roughs are concept development techniques. There will be anywhere from three-six (3-6) of them provided. You'll review them and choose one or two on which the designer will focus and make revisions. Once you approve a final design, it is ready to be printed. If it's a web design, it will be coded, programmed, and uploaded to the computer at the service hosting your site. You pay the balance due, and the process is complete.
Budget, Low Budget, No Budget
Pricing for different types of projects can range vastly depending upon the business structure and the length of time the business has been operating. The business can be a design studio, freelance or consultant, or a print shop franchise like Kinko's and have years of experience or be newly established in the industry. Two great resources for getting low cost bids on creating print or web graphics for you are Elance.com andiFreelance.com
I'm talking about pricing as low as $250-$500 for logos, CD's, DVD's, and web sites depending on your requirements. Most of the lowest cost design studios are located outside the U.S.
If you're interested in reviewing industry standard fees for graphic design, web design, or illustration, take a hike to Barnes and Noble bookstore and glance through the Handbook of Pricing and Ethical Guidelines published by The Graphic Artist's Guild of America. It's the creative professional's bible, and includes everything you always wanted to know about fees, contracts, copyright, and other professional issues.
The fees quoted are based on nationwide surveys distributed to creative professionals. Standard fees are not cheap. The visual communications creative field is a highly valued, for-profit industry, so fees reflect our need to make a living at what we do. When someone gives you an estimate, make sure it details every service being provided to justify the cost.
There are other options to consider that keeps costs low. A few include:
Supply your own quality photos and/or illustrations. Photography and illustration are specialties requiring additional compensation.
Personally coordinate printing and CD or other types of duplication. Our time is money so coordinating printing for your project and getting your CD duplicated will cost you more.
Barter for service. We may reduce the fee or work for exchange if something you do is of value to us.
Contact your local college or university and request a referral to a recent graduate or current senior student. There are some extremely talented young people who are eager to get client experience and build their portfolio.
Where there is a will, there is a way. Carefully consider what you want the design to convey, who you want to attract, and what you want to accomplish. A marriage between sight and sound can only have a positive impact on your career. Just one look can be the start of a relationship.
Valerie Michele Oliver
email: oliver.valerie@gmail.com
blog: http://creatorsparrot.blogspot.com/
Valerie Michele Oliver a healing artist, writer, host, producer, and the ghostwriter of Standing Naked in Rose Petals, a spiritual-inspirational-themed creative nonfiction book. She is also a representative for Zrii. Ms. Oliver won PopMatters "Superior Music Scribing Award" for 2007."
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Valerie_Oliver
http://EzineArticles.com/?CD-Music-Sales-Based-on-Album-Artwork,-Cover-Design&id=2040378
A Work From Home Based Business the Shocking Untold Tru
A Work From Home Based Business the Shocking Untold Truth
By Megan Vaillancourt
So you want to start a work from home based business? With the rising cost in fuel, the unsettling mortgage crisis, and the unjust economy decline many people are trading in their three piece suits and high heels to start a work from home based business. Every day people , are scouring the Internet looking for a legitimate home based business, to assist them in their quest to make money from home. The truth of the matter is wanting to work from home is not enough, although their is not an exact science to making money online, their are something's that you can do to make your business profit.
So many people jump right into an Internet Business, without understanding what it is they will need to profit. Unfortunately, the Internet sometimes leads us to believe that an opportunity is automated, and will allow us to be hands free . If you get nothing else out of this piece, please get this, their is always work to do in any opportunity in order to bring in an income. An Internet Business is no different. Bottom line if you are looking for hands free, 100% automated system, then starting a work from home based business is not for you. However, if you are someone who has a determination, work ethic, and motivation for success then you may have found your niche. But don't jump in yet their are some things that you will need in order to build your opportunity the right way.
Working from home paints a picture of the easy life. I feel obligated to tell you I love working with My Internet business because of the freedom, dress code, and yes the money. But I have learned through my quest, and training that their are things that every home based business owner must do. So get the fancy dreams out of your head and lets get down to what will really make your opportunity profit.
1.) Computer With Internet Connection - Okay this seems very basic and every one should know this right? Unfortunately I have had people that don't have a computer and want to start an Internet Business. Now with no connection, or computer this makes it difficult. I have had people that commute to and from the library to do their business task, because they have such a high desire. However, this can make things real difficult for you. Having access to Internet is really crucial to your opportunity, and should be implemented first.
2.) Private Work Space - Now I am a stay at home mom of three kids, a dog, cat, and whatever other creature my son decides to put in his pant pockets. So it can get very busy, and chaotic to say the least. However, having a work space available that you can go to when you need to do your task can make it easier for you and your family. Your family will understand when I am in my work space it is Mommy, or Daddy's time to work. Now I am not saying they may not cross that threshold, however it will make it easier to outline work time for you and them. Now, you don't need a large office space, just a section of the house that you can call your own that the family understands is set aside for to build your business.
3.) Scheduling - We all started a work from home based business to be boss free. No body breathing down your neck to tell you what time to punch in or punch out. It gives us incredible freedom. However, money doesn't grow on trees, you will need to set time up to work in order to profit. Yes I am back to the work=money formula. Sit down and write your work schedule out. For some you may have a 40 + hour work week until you make enough with your work from home based business, to quit. This becomes even more important. But make a schedule that will work for you. Whether its getting up an hour earlier, or going to bed an hour later. But setting a schedule down on paper will assist you in sticking to it rather then excusing yourself from your business responsibilities.
4.) Goal Setting - I can't tell you how important I have found this to be. Even after meeting my first money goal, I consistently change my goals and meet them. I always set out my daily goals, weekly goals and monthly goals, and then the prize at the end. This step gives us the incentive to keep bettering ourselves. But make sure to reward yourself with something when you meet your goals. Whether in 3 months you are saving for a new car, a new home, or it may be to quit your job. Make sure to follow through with your goals and when you meet your goal. It should be a daily habit to follow and track your goals setting to see what you have to do to accomplish each goal. This step is has amazing value in continued success.
5.) Marketing Circle - Many may be wondering what marketing is. This is the core, the foundation, of your work from home based business. Marketing is advertising your business, product or service. You are going to see and be faced with many different way to market your Internet Business. This is where finding a mentor, prior to finding your opportunity, is so crucial. With so many different and effective ways to market it is useful to have a knowledge and trained online coach to show you what online marketing techniques work and which ones to stay away from. The biggest misconception is that marketing takes a lot of money in order to do it the right way. This is absolutely undoubtedly not true. When executed properly their are many free online marketing strategies that will have your opportunity profiting.
6.) Online Coaching And Mentoring - I believe this is more important then the type of home based business that your partner with. It is so important to know the people that you have intentions of partnering with. Are they truly going to be able to help you. Think about it would you start a job without formal training. Of course not, why in the world would you take on a whole new career without the proper coaching. Of course gut instinct goes along way here, but your investigation on them is what should make your decision as to whether or not they will assist you in making money online. How will they help you? What interaction if any will you have with them. Testimonials, and completing a search can help identify if this mentoring is up front or not.
7.) Continued Growth - You have to get your head around continued growth. Yes, you may meet your goals in rapid time however the internet and your competition will be continual changing. Staying ahead of your industry should be a must for you. Take the time to learn the strategies and expertise to making sure that you can consistently offer new online marketing strategies.
The above seven steps are going to be the foundation of any work from home based business. Do not let anyone tell you their is no work, its all automated. Starting an Internet Business is not winning the lottery. I hate to keep drilling this in, but I passionately dislike when people are misled into believing something that just is not true. If you take and build your business off this foundation, then you can start strong. I am not telling you this is the exact seven step formula to success. But it is certainly the most important beginning steps to profiting. If you are looking to retire your three piece suit, high heels, or maybe both for a work from home based business, then build your foundation right, and keep building until you find the success you are looking for.
Megan Vaillancourt has been involved in online coaching and mentoring for top business such as My Internet Business and Passport To Wealth [http://www.PassportMentors.com]
She has organized a mentoring group called Mentors 4 U that earned the top mentoring of 2007 and are breaking records for 2008. If you are looking to learn how to profit while working from home. Don't fall for misconceptions, discover the truth first.
Call Megan directly at
802-285-2006
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Megan_Vaillancourt
http://EzineArticles.com/?A-Work-From-Home-Based-Business-the-Shocking-Untold-Truth&id=1440877
By Megan Vaillancourt
So you want to start a work from home based business? With the rising cost in fuel, the unsettling mortgage crisis, and the unjust economy decline many people are trading in their three piece suits and high heels to start a work from home based business. Every day people , are scouring the Internet looking for a legitimate home based business, to assist them in their quest to make money from home. The truth of the matter is wanting to work from home is not enough, although their is not an exact science to making money online, their are something's that you can do to make your business profit.
So many people jump right into an Internet Business, without understanding what it is they will need to profit. Unfortunately, the Internet sometimes leads us to believe that an opportunity is automated, and will allow us to be hands free . If you get nothing else out of this piece, please get this, their is always work to do in any opportunity in order to bring in an income. An Internet Business is no different. Bottom line if you are looking for hands free, 100% automated system, then starting a work from home based business is not for you. However, if you are someone who has a determination, work ethic, and motivation for success then you may have found your niche. But don't jump in yet their are some things that you will need in order to build your opportunity the right way.
Working from home paints a picture of the easy life. I feel obligated to tell you I love working with My Internet business because of the freedom, dress code, and yes the money. But I have learned through my quest, and training that their are things that every home based business owner must do. So get the fancy dreams out of your head and lets get down to what will really make your opportunity profit.
1.) Computer With Internet Connection - Okay this seems very basic and every one should know this right? Unfortunately I have had people that don't have a computer and want to start an Internet Business. Now with no connection, or computer this makes it difficult. I have had people that commute to and from the library to do their business task, because they have such a high desire. However, this can make things real difficult for you. Having access to Internet is really crucial to your opportunity, and should be implemented first.
2.) Private Work Space - Now I am a stay at home mom of three kids, a dog, cat, and whatever other creature my son decides to put in his pant pockets. So it can get very busy, and chaotic to say the least. However, having a work space available that you can go to when you need to do your task can make it easier for you and your family. Your family will understand when I am in my work space it is Mommy, or Daddy's time to work. Now I am not saying they may not cross that threshold, however it will make it easier to outline work time for you and them. Now, you don't need a large office space, just a section of the house that you can call your own that the family understands is set aside for to build your business.
3.) Scheduling - We all started a work from home based business to be boss free. No body breathing down your neck to tell you what time to punch in or punch out. It gives us incredible freedom. However, money doesn't grow on trees, you will need to set time up to work in order to profit. Yes I am back to the work=money formula. Sit down and write your work schedule out. For some you may have a 40 + hour work week until you make enough with your work from home based business, to quit. This becomes even more important. But make a schedule that will work for you. Whether its getting up an hour earlier, or going to bed an hour later. But setting a schedule down on paper will assist you in sticking to it rather then excusing yourself from your business responsibilities.
4.) Goal Setting - I can't tell you how important I have found this to be. Even after meeting my first money goal, I consistently change my goals and meet them. I always set out my daily goals, weekly goals and monthly goals, and then the prize at the end. This step gives us the incentive to keep bettering ourselves. But make sure to reward yourself with something when you meet your goals. Whether in 3 months you are saving for a new car, a new home, or it may be to quit your job. Make sure to follow through with your goals and when you meet your goal. It should be a daily habit to follow and track your goals setting to see what you have to do to accomplish each goal. This step is has amazing value in continued success.
5.) Marketing Circle - Many may be wondering what marketing is. This is the core, the foundation, of your work from home based business. Marketing is advertising your business, product or service. You are going to see and be faced with many different way to market your Internet Business. This is where finding a mentor, prior to finding your opportunity, is so crucial. With so many different and effective ways to market it is useful to have a knowledge and trained online coach to show you what online marketing techniques work and which ones to stay away from. The biggest misconception is that marketing takes a lot of money in order to do it the right way. This is absolutely undoubtedly not true. When executed properly their are many free online marketing strategies that will have your opportunity profiting.
6.) Online Coaching And Mentoring - I believe this is more important then the type of home based business that your partner with. It is so important to know the people that you have intentions of partnering with. Are they truly going to be able to help you. Think about it would you start a job without formal training. Of course not, why in the world would you take on a whole new career without the proper coaching. Of course gut instinct goes along way here, but your investigation on them is what should make your decision as to whether or not they will assist you in making money online. How will they help you? What interaction if any will you have with them. Testimonials, and completing a search can help identify if this mentoring is up front or not.
7.) Continued Growth - You have to get your head around continued growth. Yes, you may meet your goals in rapid time however the internet and your competition will be continual changing. Staying ahead of your industry should be a must for you. Take the time to learn the strategies and expertise to making sure that you can consistently offer new online marketing strategies.
The above seven steps are going to be the foundation of any work from home based business. Do not let anyone tell you their is no work, its all automated. Starting an Internet Business is not winning the lottery. I hate to keep drilling this in, but I passionately dislike when people are misled into believing something that just is not true. If you take and build your business off this foundation, then you can start strong. I am not telling you this is the exact seven step formula to success. But it is certainly the most important beginning steps to profiting. If you are looking to retire your three piece suit, high heels, or maybe both for a work from home based business, then build your foundation right, and keep building until you find the success you are looking for.
Megan Vaillancourt has been involved in online coaching and mentoring for top business such as My Internet Business and Passport To Wealth [http://www.PassportMentors.com]
She has organized a mentoring group called Mentors 4 U that earned the top mentoring of 2007 and are breaking records for 2008. If you are looking to learn how to profit while working from home. Don't fall for misconceptions, discover the truth first.
Call Megan directly at
802-285-2006
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Megan_Vaillancourt
http://EzineArticles.com/?A-Work-From-Home-Based-Business-the-Shocking-Untold-Truth&id=1440877
Finding the Right Mix in Muscle Building at 50
Finding the Right Mix in Muscle Building at 50
By Steve R Robbins
Muscle building is a continuum. There is no "end" to it. You can always build more muscle than you have. What makes this really challenging is that the process by which you efficiently build muscle changes as you move through the continuum. Beginning lifters should use different training parameters than professionals. A further complicating factor is that your body is a variable as well. How do you account for that?
For example your body type makes a huge difference in the type of training you should do. So as you can see finding that right mix becomes very difficult. This is one of the reasons that I struggle with the "Programs" that so many offer. I would never suggest that anybodies program doesn't work. Of course it did for them. That's why they offer it up to you. But with all the variables at play will they work for you? Very possibly. Or not.
The point is you have to know how muscle works, how it is built and then given your body type, goals, experience and many other things, try different techniques until you find some that work for you and that you enjoy doing. My guess is that it will be some of this and some of that.
But one of the greatest challenges you will face is the one of age. That is one variable that will stand everything else on its head. You see a professional at 30 will HAVE to train differently at 50, all else equal. Now THAT becomes challenging. When something has been working, possibly for years, doesn't anymore what are you to do? I am not talking about plateau busting, this isn't that simple.
No I am talking about the two biggest factors (possibly) in muscle building, your definition of 100% effort for a workout and your recovery time. Granted these variables change gradually but they also change dramatically. At 50 gone are the two a day splits and blasting chest 3 times a week. Actually these have been gone for a while, but you get my point. So how do you teach an old dog new tricks?
Square 1. If you've been paying attention, I am not about "programs". Knowledge is King! As I write this Greg Norman at 53 years old, is leading the British Open Golf Tournament, beating every other player in the world (except Tiger who isn't playing). This includes the best in the world that's half his age. You think Norman prepared for this event the same way he did when he was 30(and won it)? You think his routine at the event is the same now as it was then? Now he probably won't win, but he doesn't need to. He's made his point already. At his age, at this point in his career, what he needs to be successful and how he got there are DIFFERENT then when he was 30.
So how do you find the right mix in muscle building at 50? The same way you would at 30. Learn what works for you. Now.
Steve R. Robbins has been a life long fitness enthusiast. Has the distinction of being able to run a marathon and bench press twice his weight in the same day. All at the age of 50. Editor and regular contributor to http://www.MuscleandHealth.org
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Steve_R_Robbins
http://EzineArticles.com/?Finding-the-Right-Mix-in-Muscle-Building-at-50&id=1393707
By Steve R Robbins
Muscle building is a continuum. There is no "end" to it. You can always build more muscle than you have. What makes this really challenging is that the process by which you efficiently build muscle changes as you move through the continuum. Beginning lifters should use different training parameters than professionals. A further complicating factor is that your body is a variable as well. How do you account for that?
For example your body type makes a huge difference in the type of training you should do. So as you can see finding that right mix becomes very difficult. This is one of the reasons that I struggle with the "Programs" that so many offer. I would never suggest that anybodies program doesn't work. Of course it did for them. That's why they offer it up to you. But with all the variables at play will they work for you? Very possibly. Or not.
The point is you have to know how muscle works, how it is built and then given your body type, goals, experience and many other things, try different techniques until you find some that work for you and that you enjoy doing. My guess is that it will be some of this and some of that.
But one of the greatest challenges you will face is the one of age. That is one variable that will stand everything else on its head. You see a professional at 30 will HAVE to train differently at 50, all else equal. Now THAT becomes challenging. When something has been working, possibly for years, doesn't anymore what are you to do? I am not talking about plateau busting, this isn't that simple.
No I am talking about the two biggest factors (possibly) in muscle building, your definition of 100% effort for a workout and your recovery time. Granted these variables change gradually but they also change dramatically. At 50 gone are the two a day splits and blasting chest 3 times a week. Actually these have been gone for a while, but you get my point. So how do you teach an old dog new tricks?
Square 1. If you've been paying attention, I am not about "programs". Knowledge is King! As I write this Greg Norman at 53 years old, is leading the British Open Golf Tournament, beating every other player in the world (except Tiger who isn't playing). This includes the best in the world that's half his age. You think Norman prepared for this event the same way he did when he was 30(and won it)? You think his routine at the event is the same now as it was then? Now he probably won't win, but he doesn't need to. He's made his point already. At his age, at this point in his career, what he needs to be successful and how he got there are DIFFERENT then when he was 30.
So how do you find the right mix in muscle building at 50? The same way you would at 30. Learn what works for you. Now.
Steve R. Robbins has been a life long fitness enthusiast. Has the distinction of being able to run a marathon and bench press twice his weight in the same day. All at the age of 50. Editor and regular contributor to http://www.MuscleandHealth.org
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Steve_R_Robbins
http://EzineArticles.com/?Finding-the-Right-Mix-in-Muscle-Building-at-50&id=1393707
วันจันทร์ที่ 6 มกราคม พ.ศ. 2557
A Silly Gospel
A Silly Gospel
By David Servant
My last article about God's love/hate relationship with the world drew some mixed response from sincere people. Some of the questions that were asked and objections that were made were so good that I thought it would be beneficial for everyone to answer them in this month's E-Teaching. Most of the questions naturally revolved around the concept of God's hatred of sinners (rather than His mercy upon them), as that concept is so foreign to our ears. Below I've paraphrased some of those questions and objections (and added a few of my own) and then done my best to answer them.
If you did not read "God's Love/Hate Relationship with the World" it would be good to do that so you have a reference for what follows. You might also read the article before that one as well, as that is where I first introduced the topic of God's approving love and His merciful love. In those two articles, I tried to explain how God loves and doesn't love people, and my primary concern is that God's love for the unrepentant is often greatly misunderstood---to the detriment of His holiness and righteous wrath. If we misunderstand God's true character, we are likely to misunderstand the gospel.
1.) What about all that the New Testament teaches about the "father-heart of God"? Jesus called God "Father" over one-hundred times in the Gospel of John. How could our loving heavenly Father be said to hate anyone?
The answer is that God is not the Father of everyone. He is only Father of those who have repented and believed in Jesus. They, and only they, are born of His Spirit and have become His children (see 1 John 3:10). All others are spiritually children of Satan (see John 8:44, Eph. 2:1-2). Jesus referred to God as His Father, but certainly not as everyone's Father. So to say that God has a father-heart towards those who are not His children is nonsense.
We might also ask, "Because God has a father-heart, does that motivate Him to love Satan and demons?" Obviously not. Neither does God's father-heart motivate Him to love Satan's spiritual children. His love for them, as I've emphasized in my two previous articles, is a merciful love that is temporary, lasting only until they die.
I should also add that whenever a certain teaching about God is widely emphasized and becomes popular, even good teachings such as "the father-heart of God," we so easily forget or neglect aspects of God's character that Scripture emphasizes as much or even more. This has certainly been true regarding teaching about the father-heart of God. To emphasize that God loves His children is good, but to reduce God to nothing more than the equivalent of an earthly father does Him a great injustice. He is so much more. How many earthly fathers do you know who have no beginning or end, have created a universe, invented animals, reign over angels, possess infinite knowledge and power, never sin, will one day judge everyone, and are the sum of perfection?
Scripture says that God is love, but it also says that He is a consuming fire (see Heb. 12:29). Both are equally true. Paul wrote, "Behold the kindness and severity of God" (Rom. 11:22). To focus solely on one aspect of God's character while neglecting other aspects is a form of idolatry---the worship of a god of our own invention.
How many of us are at least a little bit guilty of this kind of idolatry? Take a look at your Bible. What verses have you underlined or highlighted? I'll bet they're all "good ones"! But God gave us the whole Bible. We would be better to underline every verse in the Bible, even those that plainly speak of God's hatred and abhorrence of sinners, as well as His wrath upon them. Every one of those verses is just as inspired as those we have underlined.
2.) When Jesus was on the earth, He didn't exemplify the kind of hatred for sinners that you have attributed to God.
Of course not. God's hatred of sinners is manifested primarily when His mercy for them ends. "Mercy triumphs over judgment" (Jas. 2:13), and temporary mercy temporarily triumphs over judgment.
While Jesus ministered on the earth, He related to the unrepentant in the same way that the Father is relating to them every day---with merciful love. "He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous" (Matt. 5:45). But Jesus continually warned everyone that God's mercy would one day end for the unrepentant, and then His wrath would fall. He couldn't have made it clearer that sin offends God. He spoke of sin and holiness all the time. He called people to repentance as the only way to escape sure judgment.
But wasn't Jesus called "a friend of sinners"?
He was, but I don't think we should base our understanding of Jesus on one sentence of criticism aimed at Him by self-righteous, religious hypocrites who had no concern for hell-bound sinners. They condemned Jesus only to justify themselves. They also called Jesus "Beelzebul," meaning "ruler of the demons" (see Matt. 10:45). Shall we build our understanding of Jesus on that remark by the same critical group?
Jesus indeed spent time with sinners, but He was certainly not their friend. The Bible that Jesus inspired says that anyone who is a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God (see Jas. 4:4). Jesus was not an enemy of God, and neither was He a friend of the world. They hated Him and ultimately crucified Him. Jesus Himself declared that the world hated Him because He testified that its deeds were evil (see John 7:7). That is, He preached repentance. They didn't like His message of repentance and holiness. So let us not imagine Jesus hanging around with unrepentant people, laughing at their dirty jokes and joining in their gossip. Unrepentant sinners were extremely uncomfortable around Jesus.
Did Jesus preach a message of God's universal love as we continually hear today? We would do well to ask the scribes and Pharisees, whom Jesus continually condemned, that question. Or, ask the money-changers in the temple, whom Jesus drove out with a whip, or the Syrophoenecan woman, whom Jesus initially ignored and called a dog. These all heard Jesus when His mercy was wearing a little thin.They could all give us a good sermon about Jesus' true character that would be more scriptural than what can be heard in churches where preachers make rebels feel all warm and fuzzy about God's love.
To understand the full character of Jesus, we must read His warnings of the future judgment, when He speaks of the Son of Man coming "in the glory of His Father with the holy angels" (Mark 8:38). The Jesus of the book of Revelation---who pours out His wrath and kills millions of people---is the same Jesus of the Gospels. The only difference is time. Over time, His mercy runs out. When it does, we read that sinners cower in terror at the wrath of the Lamb (see Rev. 6:6), the not-so-gentle Lamb. Is this the Jesus whom you believe in and serve? If not, you don't believe in and serve the Jesus of the Bible.
Additionally, to understand the full character of Jesus, we need to read the entire Old Testament as well, as it covers a greater period of time where we can observe God's mercy ending on numerous occasions. Jesus said, "If you've seen Me, you've seen the Father" and, "I and the Father are One" (John 14:9, 10:30). Thus, when we read about God's judgments in the Old Testament---when God kills people by the tens and hundreds of thousands---we're reading about the judgments of Jesus. He wasn't watching from the sidelines and whispering to angels, "Wow, Dad needs some anger management...He's really losing His cool today!" Jesus was just as righteously enraged at those times as His Father. His mercy had also ended.
3.) Preaching about God's love for sinners is more effective than preaching about holiness, judgment and repentance. People don't want to hear about those things. But if we preach about God's love for sinners, sinners respond. The Bible says that "it is the kindness of God that leads men to repentance."
This reveals the basic problem. It doesn't seem to matter if our message is the same as Jesus', John the Baptist's or the apostles'. Success in Christianity today is most often measured by how many come to church. Using the same marketing principles as Wal-Mart, churches cater to the customers with the hopes of gaining more. If more customers will come to church by means of telling them a message that is agreeable to them, then let's tell them what they want to hear. "That's using wisdom," church-growth specialists tell us. But that is not how to make disciples who love Jesus more than their own lives (as He required; see Luke 14:26). And true wisdom, by the way, begins with the fear of the Lord (see Prov. 9:10).
Currently, the U.S. armed forces are having a hard time finding enough recruits. What if they adopted a seeker-sensitive policy? What if they promised potential recruits that if they joined, there was nothing expected of them? Soldiers could get up in the morning whenever they wanted. They could practice training drills if they wanted to, but they had the option to watch TV instead. If war broke out, they could chose if they wanted to participate in battles or go to the beach. What would be the result?
No doubt the army's ranks would swell. But the army would no longer be an army, and it would become unfit for its task. So it is when the gospel is altered. Lowering the standards inflates Sunday attendance, but erodes discipleship and obedience. And since only those who do the will of the Father will enter heaven (according to Jesus; see Matt. 7:21), this is not the way to get people ready for their judgment.
Of course sinners would rather hear about God's love for them than God's displeasure with them or His impending judgment upon them. Of course they are more likely to join churches that don't preach against sin. That is a no-brainer. But is it right in God's eyes to accommodate them?
I'm sure that doctors would rather tell their cancer patients that they are healthy and are going to live long lives. I'm sure their patients would rather hear such diagnoses as well. But doctors tell their patients the truth hoping that they will cooperate and be cured. Likewise, preachers who really love sinners as God does will tell their audiences the truth, hoping that they will repent and be saved. Preachers of repentance are not "hate-preachers" any more than Jesus or John the Baptist were hate-preachers. Rather, it is those who preach of God's supposed fatherly love for sinners, who never mention His righteous wrath or holy hatred, who are the true "hate-preachers." They demonstrate no love at all for their audiences.They are fulfilling Paul's prediction that the last days would see a proliferation of ear-tickling preachers (see 2 Tim. 4:3). They are only sealing the doom of hell-bound people and helping Satan by spreading his lies. They are preparing more chaff for the fire. No exaggeration. And even if they justify their gospel by means of the small percentage of people who are genuinely saved when they hear it, does the accidental salvation of a few justify the deadly deception that seals the doom of thousands?
Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would convict the world "concerning sin and righteousness and judgment" (John 16:8). He does that continually, but so often the church works against Him, broadcasting a message that doesn't convict in the least. When the apostle Paul conversed with unrepentant Governor Felix, Scripture says he spoke to him of "righteousness, self-control and the judgment to come" (Acts 24:25a). Sound familiar? And the result? "Felix became frightened and said, 'Go away for the present, and when I find time I will summon you'" (Acts 24:25b). The Holy Spirit convicted Felix---he was frightened---but he didn't repent. Was Paul a failure? Would it have been better if he had talked to Felix about God's love for him, and how he could just "accept Jesus" and be saved? Perhaps he could have led Felix to Jesus...but it would have been "Vending-Machine Jesus," not Lord Jesus.
Scripture does indeed say that God's kindness leads men to repentance (see Rom. 2:4), but I would suggest reading that phrase in context. As Paul explains his gospel in the first two chapters of Romans, he begins by establishing the two foundational pillars of the gospel, humanity's sinfulness and God's holy wrath against sin (see Rom. 1:15-2:3). Only after that does he make his statement about God's kindness leading people to repentance. That statement is packed before and after with verses about God's holiness and wrath. Read for yourself:
And we know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who practice such things. But do you suppose this, O man, when you pass judgment on those who practice such things and do the same yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God,who will render to each person according to his deeds: to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life; but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation (Rom. 2:2-8, emphasis added).
Taken contextually, Paul means that when people realize how kind God has been to them in mercifully stalling His righteous wrath that they fully deserve, they repent. Just telling people that God is kind does not lead them to repentance any more than telling career criminals that judges are kind leads them to become law-abiding citizens.
This gospel that includes sin and judgment has proven to work quite well for Jesus, John the Baptist, the apostles, and countless other preachers over the past 2,000 years. It has spawned every genuine revival in history. It works today in America in thousands of churches, big ones like Times Square Church in New York City, and little ones like the house church I taught at last week in Canada. In either case, the congregations are full of true disciples of Jesus, not typical evangelicals who, as George Barna reports, are virtually indistinguishable from those who make no profession of faith.
4.) What about the Parable of the Lost Sheep? What about when Jesus wept over Jerusalem? Don't those reveal God's love for sinners?
They certainly do, and if you asked those questions, you need to go back and read what I wrote in my last article. I never said that God doesn't love sinners. I said that He loves them with an amazing merciful love, and yet from the standpoint of His approving love He hates them, just as Scripture clearly teaches. The Parable of the Lost Sheep certainly reveals something about God's merciful love toward sinners. He is merciful to pursue them. They don't deserve it.
But that parable is not the sum of all truth about God and salvation. It was spoken by Jesus to Pharisees, who didn't understand how someone who claimed to be the Messiah could spend time with sinful people (although they themselves were just as sinful as the sinners they condemned). Loving those Pharisees also with a merciful love, Jesus mercifully took time to explain to them why He spent time with other sinners besides them.
But in one of the next parables, the Parable of the Prodigal Son, spoken to the same group, Jesus revealed a little more about God's merciful love and salvation: God mercifully forgives the repentant.
And when Jesus wept over Jerusalem, His tears weren't tears of joy motivated by an approving love, but tears of mercy, as He thought about their coming judgment. His merciful love is so great. God doesn't want any to perish, but for all to come to repentance (see 2 Pet. 3:9). In light of His holiness, His merciful love for the unrepentant is astounding. But don't forget that the very same Jesus who wept over Jerusalem did nothing to stop the Roman Legions forty years later from crucifying tens of thousands of Jews who rejected Him. It was His sovereign judgment upon them (see Luke 21:22). His mercy ended and His holy hatred was revealed.
5.) The scriptures you cited about God's hatred of sinners were primarily from the Old Testament. Can you show us some from the New Testament?
As I have already stated, the Old Testament is just as much of a testament to the character of Jesus as is the New Testament. Jesus and His Father are one. God never changes (see Mal. 3:6). "Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever" (Heb. 13:8). So if God hates the unrepentant in the Old Testament, He hates them in the New just as much. And His hatred of sinners is certainly revealed all through the New Testament. In every warning of future judgment, in every description of hell by Jesus or the apostles, and in every terrible judgment foretold in the book of Revelation, God's hatred of sinners is strongly shown. Are we to think that God loves the people whom He kills and casts into hell? (Strange love indeed.) As I asked last time, Do people in hell think that God loves them? If God hates them when they are in hell (which He obviously does), when did His hatred begin for them? Are we to think that He cherished them dearly all their lives like a father does his child, and then suddenly, at their death, His attitude toward them completely changed? The answers to these questions are obvious.
The answers to these questions also show us how silly the modern "all-love" gospel has become. Without mention of sin righteousness or judgment (the three things Jesus said the Spirit would convict people of), we tell them,
"Jesus loves you dearly, more than anyone has ever loved you, like a father loves his precious child. Just invite Him into your heart."
"What will happen to me if I don't invite into my heart this Jesus who loves me so dearly?"
"Well, uh, um, well...."
"So what will happen to me if I don't invite into my heart this Jesus who loves me so dearly?"
"He will cast you into hell where you will weep and gnash your teeth as you burn in eternal flames."
Doesn't that message sound just a wee bit inconsistent?
David Servant has been serving in ministry since 1979 as a church-planter, pastor, teacher and missionary. He has taught God's Word in over fifty nations and authored many books, including The Disciple-Making Minister, which has been distributed to Christian leaders all over the world in many languages. His ministry Shepherd Serve equips pastors and Christian leaders around the world.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_Servant
http://EzineArticles.com/?A-Silly-Gospel&id=774280
By David Servant
My last article about God's love/hate relationship with the world drew some mixed response from sincere people. Some of the questions that were asked and objections that were made were so good that I thought it would be beneficial for everyone to answer them in this month's E-Teaching. Most of the questions naturally revolved around the concept of God's hatred of sinners (rather than His mercy upon them), as that concept is so foreign to our ears. Below I've paraphrased some of those questions and objections (and added a few of my own) and then done my best to answer them.
If you did not read "God's Love/Hate Relationship with the World" it would be good to do that so you have a reference for what follows. You might also read the article before that one as well, as that is where I first introduced the topic of God's approving love and His merciful love. In those two articles, I tried to explain how God loves and doesn't love people, and my primary concern is that God's love for the unrepentant is often greatly misunderstood---to the detriment of His holiness and righteous wrath. If we misunderstand God's true character, we are likely to misunderstand the gospel.
1.) What about all that the New Testament teaches about the "father-heart of God"? Jesus called God "Father" over one-hundred times in the Gospel of John. How could our loving heavenly Father be said to hate anyone?
The answer is that God is not the Father of everyone. He is only Father of those who have repented and believed in Jesus. They, and only they, are born of His Spirit and have become His children (see 1 John 3:10). All others are spiritually children of Satan (see John 8:44, Eph. 2:1-2). Jesus referred to God as His Father, but certainly not as everyone's Father. So to say that God has a father-heart towards those who are not His children is nonsense.
We might also ask, "Because God has a father-heart, does that motivate Him to love Satan and demons?" Obviously not. Neither does God's father-heart motivate Him to love Satan's spiritual children. His love for them, as I've emphasized in my two previous articles, is a merciful love that is temporary, lasting only until they die.
I should also add that whenever a certain teaching about God is widely emphasized and becomes popular, even good teachings such as "the father-heart of God," we so easily forget or neglect aspects of God's character that Scripture emphasizes as much or even more. This has certainly been true regarding teaching about the father-heart of God. To emphasize that God loves His children is good, but to reduce God to nothing more than the equivalent of an earthly father does Him a great injustice. He is so much more. How many earthly fathers do you know who have no beginning or end, have created a universe, invented animals, reign over angels, possess infinite knowledge and power, never sin, will one day judge everyone, and are the sum of perfection?
Scripture says that God is love, but it also says that He is a consuming fire (see Heb. 12:29). Both are equally true. Paul wrote, "Behold the kindness and severity of God" (Rom. 11:22). To focus solely on one aspect of God's character while neglecting other aspects is a form of idolatry---the worship of a god of our own invention.
How many of us are at least a little bit guilty of this kind of idolatry? Take a look at your Bible. What verses have you underlined or highlighted? I'll bet they're all "good ones"! But God gave us the whole Bible. We would be better to underline every verse in the Bible, even those that plainly speak of God's hatred and abhorrence of sinners, as well as His wrath upon them. Every one of those verses is just as inspired as those we have underlined.
2.) When Jesus was on the earth, He didn't exemplify the kind of hatred for sinners that you have attributed to God.
Of course not. God's hatred of sinners is manifested primarily when His mercy for them ends. "Mercy triumphs over judgment" (Jas. 2:13), and temporary mercy temporarily triumphs over judgment.
While Jesus ministered on the earth, He related to the unrepentant in the same way that the Father is relating to them every day---with merciful love. "He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous" (Matt. 5:45). But Jesus continually warned everyone that God's mercy would one day end for the unrepentant, and then His wrath would fall. He couldn't have made it clearer that sin offends God. He spoke of sin and holiness all the time. He called people to repentance as the only way to escape sure judgment.
But wasn't Jesus called "a friend of sinners"?
He was, but I don't think we should base our understanding of Jesus on one sentence of criticism aimed at Him by self-righteous, religious hypocrites who had no concern for hell-bound sinners. They condemned Jesus only to justify themselves. They also called Jesus "Beelzebul," meaning "ruler of the demons" (see Matt. 10:45). Shall we build our understanding of Jesus on that remark by the same critical group?
Jesus indeed spent time with sinners, but He was certainly not their friend. The Bible that Jesus inspired says that anyone who is a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God (see Jas. 4:4). Jesus was not an enemy of God, and neither was He a friend of the world. They hated Him and ultimately crucified Him. Jesus Himself declared that the world hated Him because He testified that its deeds were evil (see John 7:7). That is, He preached repentance. They didn't like His message of repentance and holiness. So let us not imagine Jesus hanging around with unrepentant people, laughing at their dirty jokes and joining in their gossip. Unrepentant sinners were extremely uncomfortable around Jesus.
Did Jesus preach a message of God's universal love as we continually hear today? We would do well to ask the scribes and Pharisees, whom Jesus continually condemned, that question. Or, ask the money-changers in the temple, whom Jesus drove out with a whip, or the Syrophoenecan woman, whom Jesus initially ignored and called a dog. These all heard Jesus when His mercy was wearing a little thin.They could all give us a good sermon about Jesus' true character that would be more scriptural than what can be heard in churches where preachers make rebels feel all warm and fuzzy about God's love.
To understand the full character of Jesus, we must read His warnings of the future judgment, when He speaks of the Son of Man coming "in the glory of His Father with the holy angels" (Mark 8:38). The Jesus of the book of Revelation---who pours out His wrath and kills millions of people---is the same Jesus of the Gospels. The only difference is time. Over time, His mercy runs out. When it does, we read that sinners cower in terror at the wrath of the Lamb (see Rev. 6:6), the not-so-gentle Lamb. Is this the Jesus whom you believe in and serve? If not, you don't believe in and serve the Jesus of the Bible.
Additionally, to understand the full character of Jesus, we need to read the entire Old Testament as well, as it covers a greater period of time where we can observe God's mercy ending on numerous occasions. Jesus said, "If you've seen Me, you've seen the Father" and, "I and the Father are One" (John 14:9, 10:30). Thus, when we read about God's judgments in the Old Testament---when God kills people by the tens and hundreds of thousands---we're reading about the judgments of Jesus. He wasn't watching from the sidelines and whispering to angels, "Wow, Dad needs some anger management...He's really losing His cool today!" Jesus was just as righteously enraged at those times as His Father. His mercy had also ended.
3.) Preaching about God's love for sinners is more effective than preaching about holiness, judgment and repentance. People don't want to hear about those things. But if we preach about God's love for sinners, sinners respond. The Bible says that "it is the kindness of God that leads men to repentance."
This reveals the basic problem. It doesn't seem to matter if our message is the same as Jesus', John the Baptist's or the apostles'. Success in Christianity today is most often measured by how many come to church. Using the same marketing principles as Wal-Mart, churches cater to the customers with the hopes of gaining more. If more customers will come to church by means of telling them a message that is agreeable to them, then let's tell them what they want to hear. "That's using wisdom," church-growth specialists tell us. But that is not how to make disciples who love Jesus more than their own lives (as He required; see Luke 14:26). And true wisdom, by the way, begins with the fear of the Lord (see Prov. 9:10).
Currently, the U.S. armed forces are having a hard time finding enough recruits. What if they adopted a seeker-sensitive policy? What if they promised potential recruits that if they joined, there was nothing expected of them? Soldiers could get up in the morning whenever they wanted. They could practice training drills if they wanted to, but they had the option to watch TV instead. If war broke out, they could chose if they wanted to participate in battles or go to the beach. What would be the result?
No doubt the army's ranks would swell. But the army would no longer be an army, and it would become unfit for its task. So it is when the gospel is altered. Lowering the standards inflates Sunday attendance, but erodes discipleship and obedience. And since only those who do the will of the Father will enter heaven (according to Jesus; see Matt. 7:21), this is not the way to get people ready for their judgment.
Of course sinners would rather hear about God's love for them than God's displeasure with them or His impending judgment upon them. Of course they are more likely to join churches that don't preach against sin. That is a no-brainer. But is it right in God's eyes to accommodate them?
I'm sure that doctors would rather tell their cancer patients that they are healthy and are going to live long lives. I'm sure their patients would rather hear such diagnoses as well. But doctors tell their patients the truth hoping that they will cooperate and be cured. Likewise, preachers who really love sinners as God does will tell their audiences the truth, hoping that they will repent and be saved. Preachers of repentance are not "hate-preachers" any more than Jesus or John the Baptist were hate-preachers. Rather, it is those who preach of God's supposed fatherly love for sinners, who never mention His righteous wrath or holy hatred, who are the true "hate-preachers." They demonstrate no love at all for their audiences.They are fulfilling Paul's prediction that the last days would see a proliferation of ear-tickling preachers (see 2 Tim. 4:3). They are only sealing the doom of hell-bound people and helping Satan by spreading his lies. They are preparing more chaff for the fire. No exaggeration. And even if they justify their gospel by means of the small percentage of people who are genuinely saved when they hear it, does the accidental salvation of a few justify the deadly deception that seals the doom of thousands?
Jesus said that the Holy Spirit would convict the world "concerning sin and righteousness and judgment" (John 16:8). He does that continually, but so often the church works against Him, broadcasting a message that doesn't convict in the least. When the apostle Paul conversed with unrepentant Governor Felix, Scripture says he spoke to him of "righteousness, self-control and the judgment to come" (Acts 24:25a). Sound familiar? And the result? "Felix became frightened and said, 'Go away for the present, and when I find time I will summon you'" (Acts 24:25b). The Holy Spirit convicted Felix---he was frightened---but he didn't repent. Was Paul a failure? Would it have been better if he had talked to Felix about God's love for him, and how he could just "accept Jesus" and be saved? Perhaps he could have led Felix to Jesus...but it would have been "Vending-Machine Jesus," not Lord Jesus.
Scripture does indeed say that God's kindness leads men to repentance (see Rom. 2:4), but I would suggest reading that phrase in context. As Paul explains his gospel in the first two chapters of Romans, he begins by establishing the two foundational pillars of the gospel, humanity's sinfulness and God's holy wrath against sin (see Rom. 1:15-2:3). Only after that does he make his statement about God's kindness leading people to repentance. That statement is packed before and after with verses about God's holiness and wrath. Read for yourself:
And we know that the judgment of God rightly falls upon those who practice such things. But do you suppose this, O man, when you pass judgment on those who practice such things and do the same yourself, that you will escape the judgment of God? Or do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance? But because of your stubbornness and unrepentant heart you are storing up wrath for yourself in the day of wrath and revelation of the righteous judgment of God,who will render to each person according to his deeds: to those who by perseverance in doing good seek for glory and honor and immortality, eternal life; but to those who are selfishly ambitious and do not obey the truth, but obey unrighteousness, wrath and indignation (Rom. 2:2-8, emphasis added).
Taken contextually, Paul means that when people realize how kind God has been to them in mercifully stalling His righteous wrath that they fully deserve, they repent. Just telling people that God is kind does not lead them to repentance any more than telling career criminals that judges are kind leads them to become law-abiding citizens.
This gospel that includes sin and judgment has proven to work quite well for Jesus, John the Baptist, the apostles, and countless other preachers over the past 2,000 years. It has spawned every genuine revival in history. It works today in America in thousands of churches, big ones like Times Square Church in New York City, and little ones like the house church I taught at last week in Canada. In either case, the congregations are full of true disciples of Jesus, not typical evangelicals who, as George Barna reports, are virtually indistinguishable from those who make no profession of faith.
4.) What about the Parable of the Lost Sheep? What about when Jesus wept over Jerusalem? Don't those reveal God's love for sinners?
They certainly do, and if you asked those questions, you need to go back and read what I wrote in my last article. I never said that God doesn't love sinners. I said that He loves them with an amazing merciful love, and yet from the standpoint of His approving love He hates them, just as Scripture clearly teaches. The Parable of the Lost Sheep certainly reveals something about God's merciful love toward sinners. He is merciful to pursue them. They don't deserve it.
But that parable is not the sum of all truth about God and salvation. It was spoken by Jesus to Pharisees, who didn't understand how someone who claimed to be the Messiah could spend time with sinful people (although they themselves were just as sinful as the sinners they condemned). Loving those Pharisees also with a merciful love, Jesus mercifully took time to explain to them why He spent time with other sinners besides them.
But in one of the next parables, the Parable of the Prodigal Son, spoken to the same group, Jesus revealed a little more about God's merciful love and salvation: God mercifully forgives the repentant.
And when Jesus wept over Jerusalem, His tears weren't tears of joy motivated by an approving love, but tears of mercy, as He thought about their coming judgment. His merciful love is so great. God doesn't want any to perish, but for all to come to repentance (see 2 Pet. 3:9). In light of His holiness, His merciful love for the unrepentant is astounding. But don't forget that the very same Jesus who wept over Jerusalem did nothing to stop the Roman Legions forty years later from crucifying tens of thousands of Jews who rejected Him. It was His sovereign judgment upon them (see Luke 21:22). His mercy ended and His holy hatred was revealed.
5.) The scriptures you cited about God's hatred of sinners were primarily from the Old Testament. Can you show us some from the New Testament?
As I have already stated, the Old Testament is just as much of a testament to the character of Jesus as is the New Testament. Jesus and His Father are one. God never changes (see Mal. 3:6). "Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever" (Heb. 13:8). So if God hates the unrepentant in the Old Testament, He hates them in the New just as much. And His hatred of sinners is certainly revealed all through the New Testament. In every warning of future judgment, in every description of hell by Jesus or the apostles, and in every terrible judgment foretold in the book of Revelation, God's hatred of sinners is strongly shown. Are we to think that God loves the people whom He kills and casts into hell? (Strange love indeed.) As I asked last time, Do people in hell think that God loves them? If God hates them when they are in hell (which He obviously does), when did His hatred begin for them? Are we to think that He cherished them dearly all their lives like a father does his child, and then suddenly, at their death, His attitude toward them completely changed? The answers to these questions are obvious.
The answers to these questions also show us how silly the modern "all-love" gospel has become. Without mention of sin righteousness or judgment (the three things Jesus said the Spirit would convict people of), we tell them,
"Jesus loves you dearly, more than anyone has ever loved you, like a father loves his precious child. Just invite Him into your heart."
"What will happen to me if I don't invite into my heart this Jesus who loves me so dearly?"
"Well, uh, um, well...."
"So what will happen to me if I don't invite into my heart this Jesus who loves me so dearly?"
"He will cast you into hell where you will weep and gnash your teeth as you burn in eternal flames."
Doesn't that message sound just a wee bit inconsistent?
David Servant has been serving in ministry since 1979 as a church-planter, pastor, teacher and missionary. He has taught God's Word in over fifty nations and authored many books, including The Disciple-Making Minister, which has been distributed to Christian leaders all over the world in many languages. His ministry Shepherd Serve equips pastors and Christian leaders around the world.
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Postmodernism As An Artistic Space - The Photographic World Of Chezhin The Artist
Postmodernism As An Artistic Space - The Photographic World Of Chezhin The Artist
By Mariya Sheynina
Black and white photography (and, latterly, colour photography) always emphasises the dividing line marking the intersection between time(s) and space(s), the intersection and interpenetration of today and yesterday, today and tomorrow - of my life and someone else's. It points to the event experienced by a person (someone we know or don't know, myself, just someone, nature, or society as a whole) at the moment when my attention is directed at the rectangular frame recording that which has already been and gone and which is yet present in my life just so long as I am looking at (remembering) it.
Those who turn our life, the reality of our experience, into photographic images measure it as a news reporter does, give it aesthetic order as does a film director, and 'set up' frames to 'please the eye' - just as the archivist who acts as custodian of the past. And yet sometimes subordination to the past (not to history, i.e. not to past time in the form of events) turns out to be too confining a role for the photographer and he becomes an Artist. An Artist who subordinates to himself and his will time, space, and the reality of time and space, directing the facial expressions of the main actors in his art - i.e. time (considered as a flow of passing moments) and events. In his hands the camera, negatives/positives, exhibits, and other tools of trade become instruments in the attainment of higher goals. This is how it was that at some point in his photographic career Andrey Chezhin became not a master of artistic photography or some particular genre of photography, but an artist uplifted by the coloured wings of the style of our age - that style which the critics love to slate, postmodernism.
Andrey Chezhin's reincarnation occurred in the not so distant past, against the background of historic events that had broken the consciousness of generations condemned to witness the change of course undergone by the giant ghost ship USSR-Russia as it turned from socialism to capitalism and from total paralysis of its executive structures to idiocy.
It was only natural that the consciousness of the photographer/artist-to-be should energetically throw off torpidity and slip out of its old skin. Simple recording of social reality accompanied by clicks of the camera shutter gave way to interest in staged photography and experiments with exhibits (sometimes as many as three or more). Furthermore, Chezhin needed a suitable object of investigation - complete with hands, legs, and heads etc.; and this, for lack of other candidates prepared to surrender themselves to the required extent, turned out to be the artist himself, ever obedient to and trustful of his own direction. It was at this time, at the end of the 1980s, that Chezhin's first composite works - Black Square (1988) and Red Square (1990) - made their appearance. These, of course, referred to Kazimir Malevich, a recent exhibition of whose works at the RussianMuseum had triumphantly signalled a new era in the history of art and, more specifically, the lifting of taboos on interest in various stages in the development of 20th-century art.
Black Square and Red Square are, as already noted, composite works, each being made up of four parts. They were conceived by Chezhin not as a photographic series or a frame by frame sequence, as in film, but as structural works where each part is no more than a brick supporting the overall equilibrium of the entire structure. The main character here is man. In the first case, man is depicted with a black square on his forehead/brain; in the second, he is shown taking off the fetters that bind him.
The first part of Red Square shows an individual standing upright with arms held out horizontally and legs placed wide apart. His figure is hemmed in (drawn round) at its extremities - which form the end points of a geometrical shape - by a line/rope which calls to mind Leonardo's quest for the 'golden section' in the proportions of the human body. The red square contains all the space whose contours are marked and defined by the rope-line; and the man is himself enclosed in this space. Then, in the next two parts of this work, he manages to free himself from the rope as his head, arms, and legs are liberated in turn, while, at the same time, the area of control exercised by the red square on the surface of the photograph grows progressively narrower. Finally, in the last part of this work, the rope/measure is seen lying inside he artist's workshop on a sheet of paper, within the red square. The viewer becomes a witness of how a cultural symbol - the 'red square', Malevich, Suprematism, etc. - is transformed into a sociocultural one: the man casts off the rope - which initially marks the contours of a star (head, arms, legs) - and liberates himself from the red, i.e. throws off ideology (the rope/fetters/red - a sign of danger, as we remember). The red is overcome; man is free.
It was at this time, i.e. at the end of the 1980s - to be more exact, in 1988 - that Chezhin embarked on a series of self-portraits which is unfinished to this day. The artist photographs himself - with hair, without hair, with his wife, with a ruler; photographs his hands (in Erotica); photographs himself, himself, and himself. At the same time he started working on 'types' for his series Portraits (1990) and was continuing to record social reality (material that would be used in Pairs, a series executed in 1987-1990-1997).
Chezhin's absurd, significant, and meaningless staged photographs of nameless types/characters give off a powerful, unpleasant semiphysiological sense/memory of a past age of male and female functionaries and workers stamped with the distinctive marks of the limited, if not curtailed consciousness of social invalidism. Here Chezhin's photography emphatically avoids any attempt to convey the psychological state or mood of the subject; this is photography that stands outside pyschoanalysis or psychologism, outside any expression of the 'psychical'. These are still-lifes where things (objects) are credited with neither spirit nor personal time, nor personal experience or living space or 'physiognomy'. Individuality has been ironed out, leaving only the overall characteristic grimace of types in socialist society. This is what they managed to achieve in the 70 years of Soviet rule. And Chezhin the artist here merely reflects the success enjoyed by the now deposed ideology in shaping the Soviet personality.
It is personality shaping that in my opinion is the subject of the series of works entitled Kharmsiada executed in 1995 for an exhibition called 'The absurd object. An exhibition of presents by St Petersburg artists to D. Kharms in honour of the 100th anniversary of his birthday'.
A brick face, facial features shorn off or sewn up with thread, a face transformed by a door handle or a drawing-pin: these and other pleasures associated with methods of forming 'new people' are used by Chezhin in this series to present a kind of handbook for incipient power-lovers or a diary of obedience - a warning to the 'masses', i.e. to precisely that material from which, it should be noted, all this is moulded. Man turns to plastic, Chezhin warns us, if he stops thinking and resisting the will outside him - if he forgets his own authenticity, essence, and individuality.
Especially interesting from this point of view is Chezhin's work on the creation of his epoch-making The Life of Drawing-Pins, which comprises the series Album for Drawing-Pins and The Drawing-Pin and Modernism. The drawing pin and its fellows are, as it turns out, highly convenient main characters in instances taken from daily experience/recording, absurd situations supplied by the artist and the reality that surrounds him. The unitary nature of the hero of the piece gives Chezhin unprecedented freedom to destroy individuality while setting up his own mythologised drawing-pin world, absurd to the point of recognizability, and while allowing the viewer to reach the conclusion - only partly forced upon us by Chezhin himself - that 'we are all drawing-pins, my dear sirs ... '.
Chezhin's interest in personal expressions of humanity no doubt explains the constant use he makes of the genre of self-portraiture. Here we should observe a number of different stages in the artist's study of himself as a representative of the human and natural worlds and of reality itself: generalization; reduction to a common denominator; and individualization of the image (himself). Here there is no opposition set up between 'me' and 'they'. Chezhin is not concerned with asking himself 'me or someone else?'; instead, he is out to find an answer to the problem 'me' as 'they'. He studies man viewed statically - not in action and movement, but in the movement/change of time. What is important for him is the nature of man and the human body - not anatomy or anthropology as such, but man in his different dimensions, self-knowledge, and self-realizations (whether with a ruler or with or without hair).
The self-portraits of various different years, series, and cycles contain an element of play which comes out at transitional moments involving switches between, say, action/reality, artist/man, reality/photographic reality/artistic reality/deception/the reality of the artist's desire and of his creative effort and destiny.
In all the photographs in the series Self-Portraits (1988-1997), Andrey Chezhin's face is identical: the scarcely perceptible changes escape attention - even though Chezhin slips in, among the pile of material to be examined by the viewer, versions of himself both with and without hair. This deliberate recording of something intentionally, emphatically identical puts us on edge, causes our eyes to slow and steady in their tracks ...
As Modernism and Postmodernism have developed art has frequently in one way or another confronted and dealt with issues relating to time, space, and movement as process. Man, the human body and its parts, and the face as that which expresses and contains man's essence have been recurring subjects for all kinds of artists and an object of general art discourse. But the only example that comes to mind of an artist engaging in thorough self-examination and meticulous recording of himself, his 'I', and his face as the image of that 'I' dates to the 18th century and Mr. Rembrandt's self-portraits depicting mood, grimaces, etc.
For Chezhin the human being (the 'I') is an object in changing time and changed temporal space (which is practically non-existent), where the emphasis is on paradox, e.g. on the non-obligatory, casual nature of a situation, on the one hand, and the significance of the moment recorded and its recording, on the other.
Another feature of Andrey Chezhin's interest in man (himself; the 'I' of his self-portraits) is the self-sufficient way in which, quite independently of everything external, the 'I' dissolves in a second person's world and that other person's world dissolves in the 'I' (here I could mention the three 1991 series called Your-mine, where female and male elements merge into a unified 'I'). Here the 'I' is the artist's 'I' and that of his wife. The viewer is presented with a conflict-free interpenetration of the male and that which has its beginning in woman, in nature. In Chezhin's work the self-portrait and depiction of man is an inexhaustible topic with many typical features. one other such feature is Chezhin's use of sociocultural signs and their symbolic resonances - e.g. the red square, the black square, the rope, man, a recognizable urban landscape.
Chezhin's series of self-portraits present life as a series of changes in the artist. His multi-part work of self-observation Calendar (1990-1991) depicts a series of situations/days/incidences - in other words, routine daily life, - examining the idea of temporal changes experienced by a static subject in a situation where measurement of the passing of time is veiled. These works grow in time, with time, and with the artist.
In every structure/work created by Andrey Chezhin social reality undergoes change and there is a movement from state to state, a sliding before and after, an imperceptible movement from edge to edge. The series Pairs (1987-1997), for instance, comprises sheets composed in 1997 from pairs of snap photographs taken over the period 1987-1990. Together, they form a collection of works that are sign-like and legible. Their meaning is accessible on the basis of associations and sensations as Chezhin exploits mechanisms of perception, alogism, absurdity, logic, and direct and reverse sense-formation. Take, for example, the sheet Why am I not Fond of Moscow? At the top of this piece Chezhin has placed a photographic trick - a superimposition of one of Chechulin's skyscrapers and a spreading birch tree. At the bottom, under the beautiful pattern formed by the branches of a shrub, a dead dog is seen lying on the ground. What could give a clearer or more expressive impression of the artist's lack of fondness for this city? The double denials, the absurd semantic situations, the fidelity of the image to reality, and the plastic coincidences /references: all this explodes correct, logical reasoning and judgement and finds an echo in the tonally correct way in which these pairs are perceived by the viewer. This is true of other sheets in the series too.
In his composite, multi-structure, cyclical work Transformations (1991-1997; cyclical in as much as a repetitive rhythm of beginning-end, beginning-end runs throughout) Chezhin sets up horizontal rows/films/moments. The heroes of these films are unchanging; what changes is the space around them, their surroundings, and the conditions governing the game or existence in which they are taking part. For example, Chezhin photographs the granite sphere on the spit of Vasil'evsky Island from all sides. And, seen from every side, the sphere is a sphere, but the space in which it is set changes dramatically round about - from ripples on water to architectural landscape.There could be no better illustration of Matyushin's theory of 'expanded looking'. Or take the sequence of clocks(street mechanisms/objects) photographed at particular moments in time. Here the main character is time and its attributes - dials, hands, and the structures that encase clock mechanisms. Or the subject could be seen as a film sequence: road-legs-road. And so on. In this composite work each line is a question whose resolution is possible only for the given artist; a question/problem, moreover, which is to be dealt with not so much by resolving it as by living it through. Here you will find all the eternal questions posed by art in the 20th century: identification of oneself and the world in oneself; cognition of oneself and the outside world; examination of the basic categories for constructing (and creating) the reality of one's embodiment; the main questions of life and eternity; play in accordance with the laws of existence and contexts for such play; incidentalness and regularity. Finally, this work succeeds in personifying a sense of change in time and space and in space in time.
The photographic world created by the photographer and artist Andrey Chezhin likewise has room for the art of the comic strip, for a physiognomic constructor, for St Petersburg-as-city-and-text, and for geometric studies a la Esher. This world is vast, paradoxical, sometimes alogical (from the point of view of the ordinary person) - but fascinating. It is a space that acts like a vortex: you only have to take the first step in its direction, become a little interested, and you find yourself unable to stop looking, you lose your way out as you blunder about the labyrinth of the artist's consciousness, jumping from level to level, from one series of works to another, colliding with enigmas, laws, traps set by the carefully watching artist - and you gradually come to realize that the main hero of Chezhin's works is time. Time for him is an important category by which we get to know - and record - the world. It divides into seconds, moments, instants, units of experience. Time sets like a sticky, viscous mass or flows freely like a homogeneous substance - liquid, elastic, fluid. In the Self-Portraits of 1988-1997 time is an existential substance, an attribute of history and of the historical development of society and of man as representative of this society and as a part of its culture. The artist is able to move about in time; and this becomes one of the ludic features of his work (the presence of the physical in real and non-real space; the artist's almost comic right to choose his own contemporaries - and their deeds - for himself). Likewise, he is able to impose simultaneity on events which are separated in time, as in the works Group Self-Portrait (1994) and Visiting Bulla (1994).
Time for Andrey Chezhin is expressed in specific objects. In his hands it is something with clearly marked, definite boundaries. These boundaries, though, are in the dimension not of man, but of history, in the specific time/happening of a given event in the history of this country and in abstract time in general, in the archaic, timeless, stagnant changelessness of man's presence in the world as he sets about discovering his own dimension. For Chezhin even today time is divided up into the smallest elements/units that flash past seen through a train window or on the screen of a television, computer, or other chronometric miracle of the kind that devours human time, genius, and intuition.
It is the movement of time that defines the characteristic space of Chezhin's works. In them space is real at every unit of time, but unreal, phantasmagoric, spectral at each post-unit of time-after-this-moment.
Space perceived, experienced, and recorded by equipment and man during the passing of time is in the power of the artist. This space changes at every moment of the advance of time, at every moment that this time is experienced by man, through the experiencing of this time in this space. The artist confronts the viewer not with the deformation of space, but with space that is changed over an extensive stretch of time.
There is nothing accidental in Chezhin's choice of compositional structure for his works. As a rule, they are composite structures that show man through multiplicity (e.g. Group Portrait or Transformations). The framework of these pieces is a living structure whose active influence is felt only when its various elements form a semantic, plastic link with one another. This link then becomes sensible; the elements of the structure feed and fuel one another.
Time, space, man, object, play are the perpetual engines that drive the Petersburg photographer Andrey Chezhin's interest in attaining an equilibrium in the relation between 'the external world' and'the world in oneself'. The artist uses his craft and photography as instruments. The photographer Andrey Chezhin is an artist of the end of the 20th century, the heyday of Postmodernism.
Mariya Sheynina (Terenya), member of the International Association of Art Critics (Russia)
Translated by John Nicolson
Published by http://www.amassart.com
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http://EzineArticles.com/?Postmodernism-As-An-Artistic-Space---The-Photographic-World-Of-Chezhin-The-Artist&id=764484
By Mariya Sheynina
Black and white photography (and, latterly, colour photography) always emphasises the dividing line marking the intersection between time(s) and space(s), the intersection and interpenetration of today and yesterday, today and tomorrow - of my life and someone else's. It points to the event experienced by a person (someone we know or don't know, myself, just someone, nature, or society as a whole) at the moment when my attention is directed at the rectangular frame recording that which has already been and gone and which is yet present in my life just so long as I am looking at (remembering) it.
Those who turn our life, the reality of our experience, into photographic images measure it as a news reporter does, give it aesthetic order as does a film director, and 'set up' frames to 'please the eye' - just as the archivist who acts as custodian of the past. And yet sometimes subordination to the past (not to history, i.e. not to past time in the form of events) turns out to be too confining a role for the photographer and he becomes an Artist. An Artist who subordinates to himself and his will time, space, and the reality of time and space, directing the facial expressions of the main actors in his art - i.e. time (considered as a flow of passing moments) and events. In his hands the camera, negatives/positives, exhibits, and other tools of trade become instruments in the attainment of higher goals. This is how it was that at some point in his photographic career Andrey Chezhin became not a master of artistic photography or some particular genre of photography, but an artist uplifted by the coloured wings of the style of our age - that style which the critics love to slate, postmodernism.
Andrey Chezhin's reincarnation occurred in the not so distant past, against the background of historic events that had broken the consciousness of generations condemned to witness the change of course undergone by the giant ghost ship USSR-Russia as it turned from socialism to capitalism and from total paralysis of its executive structures to idiocy.
It was only natural that the consciousness of the photographer/artist-to-be should energetically throw off torpidity and slip out of its old skin. Simple recording of social reality accompanied by clicks of the camera shutter gave way to interest in staged photography and experiments with exhibits (sometimes as many as three or more). Furthermore, Chezhin needed a suitable object of investigation - complete with hands, legs, and heads etc.; and this, for lack of other candidates prepared to surrender themselves to the required extent, turned out to be the artist himself, ever obedient to and trustful of his own direction. It was at this time, at the end of the 1980s, that Chezhin's first composite works - Black Square (1988) and Red Square (1990) - made their appearance. These, of course, referred to Kazimir Malevich, a recent exhibition of whose works at the RussianMuseum had triumphantly signalled a new era in the history of art and, more specifically, the lifting of taboos on interest in various stages in the development of 20th-century art.
Black Square and Red Square are, as already noted, composite works, each being made up of four parts. They were conceived by Chezhin not as a photographic series or a frame by frame sequence, as in film, but as structural works where each part is no more than a brick supporting the overall equilibrium of the entire structure. The main character here is man. In the first case, man is depicted with a black square on his forehead/brain; in the second, he is shown taking off the fetters that bind him.
The first part of Red Square shows an individual standing upright with arms held out horizontally and legs placed wide apart. His figure is hemmed in (drawn round) at its extremities - which form the end points of a geometrical shape - by a line/rope which calls to mind Leonardo's quest for the 'golden section' in the proportions of the human body. The red square contains all the space whose contours are marked and defined by the rope-line; and the man is himself enclosed in this space. Then, in the next two parts of this work, he manages to free himself from the rope as his head, arms, and legs are liberated in turn, while, at the same time, the area of control exercised by the red square on the surface of the photograph grows progressively narrower. Finally, in the last part of this work, the rope/measure is seen lying inside he artist's workshop on a sheet of paper, within the red square. The viewer becomes a witness of how a cultural symbol - the 'red square', Malevich, Suprematism, etc. - is transformed into a sociocultural one: the man casts off the rope - which initially marks the contours of a star (head, arms, legs) - and liberates himself from the red, i.e. throws off ideology (the rope/fetters/red - a sign of danger, as we remember). The red is overcome; man is free.
It was at this time, i.e. at the end of the 1980s - to be more exact, in 1988 - that Chezhin embarked on a series of self-portraits which is unfinished to this day. The artist photographs himself - with hair, without hair, with his wife, with a ruler; photographs his hands (in Erotica); photographs himself, himself, and himself. At the same time he started working on 'types' for his series Portraits (1990) and was continuing to record social reality (material that would be used in Pairs, a series executed in 1987-1990-1997).
Chezhin's absurd, significant, and meaningless staged photographs of nameless types/characters give off a powerful, unpleasant semiphysiological sense/memory of a past age of male and female functionaries and workers stamped with the distinctive marks of the limited, if not curtailed consciousness of social invalidism. Here Chezhin's photography emphatically avoids any attempt to convey the psychological state or mood of the subject; this is photography that stands outside pyschoanalysis or psychologism, outside any expression of the 'psychical'. These are still-lifes where things (objects) are credited with neither spirit nor personal time, nor personal experience or living space or 'physiognomy'. Individuality has been ironed out, leaving only the overall characteristic grimace of types in socialist society. This is what they managed to achieve in the 70 years of Soviet rule. And Chezhin the artist here merely reflects the success enjoyed by the now deposed ideology in shaping the Soviet personality.
It is personality shaping that in my opinion is the subject of the series of works entitled Kharmsiada executed in 1995 for an exhibition called 'The absurd object. An exhibition of presents by St Petersburg artists to D. Kharms in honour of the 100th anniversary of his birthday'.
A brick face, facial features shorn off or sewn up with thread, a face transformed by a door handle or a drawing-pin: these and other pleasures associated with methods of forming 'new people' are used by Chezhin in this series to present a kind of handbook for incipient power-lovers or a diary of obedience - a warning to the 'masses', i.e. to precisely that material from which, it should be noted, all this is moulded. Man turns to plastic, Chezhin warns us, if he stops thinking and resisting the will outside him - if he forgets his own authenticity, essence, and individuality.
Especially interesting from this point of view is Chezhin's work on the creation of his epoch-making The Life of Drawing-Pins, which comprises the series Album for Drawing-Pins and The Drawing-Pin and Modernism. The drawing pin and its fellows are, as it turns out, highly convenient main characters in instances taken from daily experience/recording, absurd situations supplied by the artist and the reality that surrounds him. The unitary nature of the hero of the piece gives Chezhin unprecedented freedom to destroy individuality while setting up his own mythologised drawing-pin world, absurd to the point of recognizability, and while allowing the viewer to reach the conclusion - only partly forced upon us by Chezhin himself - that 'we are all drawing-pins, my dear sirs ... '.
Chezhin's interest in personal expressions of humanity no doubt explains the constant use he makes of the genre of self-portraiture. Here we should observe a number of different stages in the artist's study of himself as a representative of the human and natural worlds and of reality itself: generalization; reduction to a common denominator; and individualization of the image (himself). Here there is no opposition set up between 'me' and 'they'. Chezhin is not concerned with asking himself 'me or someone else?'; instead, he is out to find an answer to the problem 'me' as 'they'. He studies man viewed statically - not in action and movement, but in the movement/change of time. What is important for him is the nature of man and the human body - not anatomy or anthropology as such, but man in his different dimensions, self-knowledge, and self-realizations (whether with a ruler or with or without hair).
The self-portraits of various different years, series, and cycles contain an element of play which comes out at transitional moments involving switches between, say, action/reality, artist/man, reality/photographic reality/artistic reality/deception/the reality of the artist's desire and of his creative effort and destiny.
In all the photographs in the series Self-Portraits (1988-1997), Andrey Chezhin's face is identical: the scarcely perceptible changes escape attention - even though Chezhin slips in, among the pile of material to be examined by the viewer, versions of himself both with and without hair. This deliberate recording of something intentionally, emphatically identical puts us on edge, causes our eyes to slow and steady in their tracks ...
As Modernism and Postmodernism have developed art has frequently in one way or another confronted and dealt with issues relating to time, space, and movement as process. Man, the human body and its parts, and the face as that which expresses and contains man's essence have been recurring subjects for all kinds of artists and an object of general art discourse. But the only example that comes to mind of an artist engaging in thorough self-examination and meticulous recording of himself, his 'I', and his face as the image of that 'I' dates to the 18th century and Mr. Rembrandt's self-portraits depicting mood, grimaces, etc.
For Chezhin the human being (the 'I') is an object in changing time and changed temporal space (which is practically non-existent), where the emphasis is on paradox, e.g. on the non-obligatory, casual nature of a situation, on the one hand, and the significance of the moment recorded and its recording, on the other.
Another feature of Andrey Chezhin's interest in man (himself; the 'I' of his self-portraits) is the self-sufficient way in which, quite independently of everything external, the 'I' dissolves in a second person's world and that other person's world dissolves in the 'I' (here I could mention the three 1991 series called Your-mine, where female and male elements merge into a unified 'I'). Here the 'I' is the artist's 'I' and that of his wife. The viewer is presented with a conflict-free interpenetration of the male and that which has its beginning in woman, in nature. In Chezhin's work the self-portrait and depiction of man is an inexhaustible topic with many typical features. one other such feature is Chezhin's use of sociocultural signs and their symbolic resonances - e.g. the red square, the black square, the rope, man, a recognizable urban landscape.
Chezhin's series of self-portraits present life as a series of changes in the artist. His multi-part work of self-observation Calendar (1990-1991) depicts a series of situations/days/incidences - in other words, routine daily life, - examining the idea of temporal changes experienced by a static subject in a situation where measurement of the passing of time is veiled. These works grow in time, with time, and with the artist.
In every structure/work created by Andrey Chezhin social reality undergoes change and there is a movement from state to state, a sliding before and after, an imperceptible movement from edge to edge. The series Pairs (1987-1997), for instance, comprises sheets composed in 1997 from pairs of snap photographs taken over the period 1987-1990. Together, they form a collection of works that are sign-like and legible. Their meaning is accessible on the basis of associations and sensations as Chezhin exploits mechanisms of perception, alogism, absurdity, logic, and direct and reverse sense-formation. Take, for example, the sheet Why am I not Fond of Moscow? At the top of this piece Chezhin has placed a photographic trick - a superimposition of one of Chechulin's skyscrapers and a spreading birch tree. At the bottom, under the beautiful pattern formed by the branches of a shrub, a dead dog is seen lying on the ground. What could give a clearer or more expressive impression of the artist's lack of fondness for this city? The double denials, the absurd semantic situations, the fidelity of the image to reality, and the plastic coincidences /references: all this explodes correct, logical reasoning and judgement and finds an echo in the tonally correct way in which these pairs are perceived by the viewer. This is true of other sheets in the series too.
In his composite, multi-structure, cyclical work Transformations (1991-1997; cyclical in as much as a repetitive rhythm of beginning-end, beginning-end runs throughout) Chezhin sets up horizontal rows/films/moments. The heroes of these films are unchanging; what changes is the space around them, their surroundings, and the conditions governing the game or existence in which they are taking part. For example, Chezhin photographs the granite sphere on the spit of Vasil'evsky Island from all sides. And, seen from every side, the sphere is a sphere, but the space in which it is set changes dramatically round about - from ripples on water to architectural landscape.There could be no better illustration of Matyushin's theory of 'expanded looking'. Or take the sequence of clocks(street mechanisms/objects) photographed at particular moments in time. Here the main character is time and its attributes - dials, hands, and the structures that encase clock mechanisms. Or the subject could be seen as a film sequence: road-legs-road. And so on. In this composite work each line is a question whose resolution is possible only for the given artist; a question/problem, moreover, which is to be dealt with not so much by resolving it as by living it through. Here you will find all the eternal questions posed by art in the 20th century: identification of oneself and the world in oneself; cognition of oneself and the outside world; examination of the basic categories for constructing (and creating) the reality of one's embodiment; the main questions of life and eternity; play in accordance with the laws of existence and contexts for such play; incidentalness and regularity. Finally, this work succeeds in personifying a sense of change in time and space and in space in time.
The photographic world created by the photographer and artist Andrey Chezhin likewise has room for the art of the comic strip, for a physiognomic constructor, for St Petersburg-as-city-and-text, and for geometric studies a la Esher. This world is vast, paradoxical, sometimes alogical (from the point of view of the ordinary person) - but fascinating. It is a space that acts like a vortex: you only have to take the first step in its direction, become a little interested, and you find yourself unable to stop looking, you lose your way out as you blunder about the labyrinth of the artist's consciousness, jumping from level to level, from one series of works to another, colliding with enigmas, laws, traps set by the carefully watching artist - and you gradually come to realize that the main hero of Chezhin's works is time. Time for him is an important category by which we get to know - and record - the world. It divides into seconds, moments, instants, units of experience. Time sets like a sticky, viscous mass or flows freely like a homogeneous substance - liquid, elastic, fluid. In the Self-Portraits of 1988-1997 time is an existential substance, an attribute of history and of the historical development of society and of man as representative of this society and as a part of its culture. The artist is able to move about in time; and this becomes one of the ludic features of his work (the presence of the physical in real and non-real space; the artist's almost comic right to choose his own contemporaries - and their deeds - for himself). Likewise, he is able to impose simultaneity on events which are separated in time, as in the works Group Self-Portrait (1994) and Visiting Bulla (1994).
Time for Andrey Chezhin is expressed in specific objects. In his hands it is something with clearly marked, definite boundaries. These boundaries, though, are in the dimension not of man, but of history, in the specific time/happening of a given event in the history of this country and in abstract time in general, in the archaic, timeless, stagnant changelessness of man's presence in the world as he sets about discovering his own dimension. For Chezhin even today time is divided up into the smallest elements/units that flash past seen through a train window or on the screen of a television, computer, or other chronometric miracle of the kind that devours human time, genius, and intuition.
It is the movement of time that defines the characteristic space of Chezhin's works. In them space is real at every unit of time, but unreal, phantasmagoric, spectral at each post-unit of time-after-this-moment.
Space perceived, experienced, and recorded by equipment and man during the passing of time is in the power of the artist. This space changes at every moment of the advance of time, at every moment that this time is experienced by man, through the experiencing of this time in this space. The artist confronts the viewer not with the deformation of space, but with space that is changed over an extensive stretch of time.
There is nothing accidental in Chezhin's choice of compositional structure for his works. As a rule, they are composite structures that show man through multiplicity (e.g. Group Portrait or Transformations). The framework of these pieces is a living structure whose active influence is felt only when its various elements form a semantic, plastic link with one another. This link then becomes sensible; the elements of the structure feed and fuel one another.
Time, space, man, object, play are the perpetual engines that drive the Petersburg photographer Andrey Chezhin's interest in attaining an equilibrium in the relation between 'the external world' and'the world in oneself'. The artist uses his craft and photography as instruments. The photographer Andrey Chezhin is an artist of the end of the 20th century, the heyday of Postmodernism.
Mariya Sheynina (Terenya), member of the International Association of Art Critics (Russia)
Translated by John Nicolson
Published by http://www.amassart.com
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Mariya_Sheynina
http://EzineArticles.com/?Postmodernism-As-An-Artistic-Space---The-Photographic-World-Of-Chezhin-The-Artist&id=764484
วันอาทิตย์ที่ 5 มกราคม พ.ศ. 2557
Inside A Box With The Thinking Woman's Crumpet Or The Art Of Derren Brown
Inside A Box With The Thinking Woman's Crumpet Or The Art Of Derren Brown
By Michelle Duffy
From the most ordinary of beginnings in the clutches of Croydon in Surrey, a young University student by the name of Derren Brown decided on a life changing career in hypnosis purely by chance. After an inspirational dip into such a 'job,' he became fascinated with psychology, illusion and magic, yet staying firm that anything to do with 'the other side of life,' as Colin Fry affectionately terms it, is a belief best left to the believers. As time went on, he delved into deeper questionable theories. Quickly learning magic, he embarked on mind reading and suggestive techniques to prove that the human mind was easily 'suggestible.' Eagerly focusing on how a person can be predictable in thought, decision and activity, Derren Brown first came to our cynical screens in the form of his first television series, 'Mind Control,' aired in 2000, which explored these possibilities.
Energetic, entertaining and dusted with characteristics of Victoriana and Music Hall, this modern day Vaudeville wonder man comes complete with a smile warm enough to melt even the most sceptical of hearts. Using humour, charm and grace, he becomes an easy focus of attention. The eyes of the gazing audience are quickly taken in by his mesmerising being, so much so that we are totally under his spell.
It was no wonder to a perplexed television audience, that these first shows gathered astonished praise and equal scepticism. When the generation of the audience and magician are the same, one can't help thinking of the mediocre Paul Daniels as a figure to compare any future talent with. Who else did we have in those days? Derren Brown is, without saying, a far cry from the sword throwing Hans Moretti and the fumblings of Mr Daniels, who used his assistant as a simple and visual distraction, so when we looked upon Derren Brown, we could only stand in disbelief. From cold sweats of a possibly fatal shot to the brain in 'Russian Roulette' (Ch4, Oct 2003) to appearing to cut off the oxygen to the brain to walk on broken glass in 'Something Wicked Comes This Way' (Ch4 Dec 29, 2006) we have witnessed pain manoeuvring illusions that have made us gasp, cower, cry, laugh and even at times, jump to the safety of behind the sofa.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
'Mind Control' Comprised of six programmes to wet a tricksters appetite, he skims the surface of a human being with such depth that he merely entices us with his unique style of 'magical' entertainment that only became apparent to his audience over the coming years. When one looks back on this, ever so primitive series of DB skills, (rather like a visually, circus paraded C.V,) it only becomes clear to us how much he has 'grown' with us over the last , now, seven years.
The programmes were shown in 2000 as follows but not in the right order of broadcast...
Powers of Suggestion...
Pinpointing a theme where upon he presents himself to us in nothing far from the style of American nut, David Blaine, he immediately captures the 'street theme' of displaying his suggestive powers over the most diversely, mutant cynics - the reluctant shopper.
A Saturday afternoon, wandering around the Whitgift Centre in Croydon has never been a mind altering experience, especially if you live close by, yet the 'off the cuff' tones of Derren Brown gently coming across the public speakers shouldn't have made any cause for alarm. Yet, whilst no one actually noticed, the man himself emerged from the top of the food hall with microphone in hand and a trusty cameraman at his side, he begins what appears to be a dull, non eventful monologue about a special offer situated by the lifts. On mentioning the lifts, he drops in a subtle comment about stopping suddenly and asking everyone interested in the offer to put their right arm up in the air on the word 'now.' Allowing the fading in of some creepy music, the shoppers stun themselves as well as each other in realising that they are all standing around with their right arms in the air.
The idea behind this suggestive persuasion is a fairly simple one; we are born into a world that his already suggestive in itself. Many mind theorists had already decided that we live in a social climate where we are 'rounded up' mentally and socially. The extremist of this would be George Orwell's 1984 and the Big Brother theory that we are 'conditioned' to think and act in a certain way that is regarded as acceptable as we are taught these structures from our surroundings. Here, the microphone is the authority, just like telling a child not to go near the oven when it's on as it is hot, a crowd of wandering shoppers are relaxed and hearing instructions subconsciously and act accordingly in their conscious world. It is known as the 'thinking in a box' theory.
Sounds easy, so what do we have as a result? A miserable afternoon around Croydon's dullest shops turns into a spectacle of wonderment and intrigue. For once locals didn't have to rely on hoodies invading Burger King for equal delight...
Seeing the Future...
In a programme aiming at the nervous sector of the sitting at home audience, DB focused on clairvoyance, but not how you and I would know it. Whilst having the ability to grab complete and utter strangers in the the middle of the street, presumably still in London, (which is not a great idea on the best of days,) he engages on a tour of how he can tell these innocuous shoppers tell about themselves that they could only know. How does he do this, well, if you can follow the last explanation, then it shouldn't be do difficult; this approach to 'mind reading' is actually a trick used by more people around us than we care to think, called 'cold reading.' No, it is not the Gas man coming round, but the simple way of asking a question and getting the right response. If it can be seen it generalist terms, one can tell someone something about themselves and wait for a physical answer; the way they respond in nervous laughter etc, acts as a strong guide as to how that person is feeling or what they do for a living....and in conclusion in this programme...?
Mr Brown is perhaps the only man alive who can stop the only happy, smiling Ethnic man in Carnaby Street who works in a police station.
Most wouldn't have cringed at being called 'shifty'....
The Art of Distraction...
A programme in which DB plays the Artful Dodger by 'fleecing' some unsuspecting chap haplessly sitting on a bench on a platform, waiting for a train. DB takes his watch, tie and wallet out of his inside pocket, all on account of handing it back to poor Anthony after the experiment had concluded.
So perhaps Channel Four might have received a few complaints when it was shown that Derren Brown managed to swindle the winning ticket out of a cashier at a dog track (probably Wimbledon) but this 'skill' had already been handed to us a century ago in the form of the Artful Dodger. Orphaned children in a Dickensian world were used by thieves to pick the pockets of wealthy gentlemen because they were small, nimble and unassuming. Although these attributes don't work well for DB, the theory is still there, by cheaply, if you like, distracting the victim with one hand and allowing him to focus his mind on something other than your thieving hand, so much can actually be achieved as being fleeced is the last thing they expect is happening to them...
Now, now, come on, hand it back...
Memories are made of this...
DB is unwisely let loose on a casino den and wins (naturally) above everyone one else at the table. How? By placing little red stickers on certain everyday objects around the room, of course!
By focusing on a room full of clutter, it should be easy to play a game of blackjack. As DB allows us to say, 'why didn't I think of that,' a few times, he shows us how you recognise objects around the room and relate them to a certain card. You do this 52 times, of course. Great, if you have 52 objects in the room that remind you instinctively of a particular card. Each time the card it used, you remove a red sticker...
Since your opponents are bound to notice you hoping about the room removing little red stickers off the Wedgwood, we get to wonder if Mr Brown is telling us how he really wins two and a half grand at the table in the space of ten minutes or is he pulling our legs?
If you could do it, would you really tell everyone else about it? So this is the thinking behind it all; He imagines the room and all the objects in it, (of course!). It is a feature in his series that shows his great skill in memory, procedure and focus on each card that it is dealt and striking it off an imaginary list. A craft that was used by the Greeks from around 82 BC...
Well, who the Hell can remember back that far..!?
Illusion or miracle...?
Again, DB stuns the English speaking world at a posh black tie party full of debutants and young conservatives with parents with too much money (or the Oxford University Ball, in other words). Perhaps on hindsight, the last person you would invite to such a shin dig would be Derren Brown especially if he has been clutching a black envelope in his hand all evening, and then suddenly asks for everyone's attention. The agreeable young Stephen Fry want to bie steps up to be blind folded, (perhaps only the second time in his life, the first being, to choose a title). DB offers the rest of the crowd to take a look at the picture from the envelope without breaking into hysterics. No noise must be given away to the blinded chap by his jolly good chums as they are then asked by DB to scream out in their minds only, the name of the picture on the card. A few sniggers are let out accidentally when they are presented with a picture of a tractor.
Although screaming in ones' mind is perhaps only a past time that us parents perfect over the years, it is still just as difficult to figure out how before un blind folded, the chap in the chair got the picture right.
On reflection, the tractor boy thought it might have been some art of suggestion before he was originally sat with black cloth over his eyes. We spend the rest of the evening, mildly pondering over how it was done, but this is what we can gather...
A little more tricky to explain, but the general reasoning is what has been labelled since the Victorian times as 'sixth sense.' A cop out, it would seem, but there is a definite common ground found in the art of thought transference and what is also known as 'cryptesthesia.' This is the basic power of transferring thought onto paper in a sealed envelope. Again, it is the power of suggestion. Hudson in 1893 said that '..when suggestion is actively and intelligently employed, it is always effective...' To write an account of what is a logical explanation for thought transference and in this case, on a wide scale where a room full of people are engaging in the same thought, is fairly unrealistic. We are all capable of powers beyond belief. As DB himself says, he doesn't claim to be anything or do anything that the rest of us can't achieve ourselves after careful study and practice.
Pain Killer...
Okay, so this one does go beyond the realms of sheer human belief. Actually turning pain on and off like a tap it something that would have come in handy during child birth, so why turn it into an art form. Surely, the switching it on should be left in the capable hands of sado masochists. Apart from being a fairly good album by Judas Priest, 'pain Killer' takes is into the cliff hanger part of the series, a little something for the audience to chew on until the next show which wouldn't be on for another year.
So, in this programme, DB gathers together four medical students which drops down to three when one of the girls, suddenly decides that she doesn't want to participate as soon as the words 'tooth ache' are mentioned, a sensible girl. Then by subtle voice and suggestive words, the two of them start to rub their jaws complaining of toothache. The understanding here being that 'pain is objective,' once the thought or the idea or the sight of blood it that, that it the point that pain is then felt....
In an instant at a slap of the DB's hand on the table, the pain is gone. A moment later, after asking permission, our two giddy med students are then shocked once more to find DB threading a needle through the other students hand who is unaware that he feels any pain. Dazed students sit in front of him wondering how the hell he did it. Meanwhile, the forth unparticipating girl is still running...perhaps not.
So the theory is? DB's answer is again simple; '...pain is subjective...' He believes that you feel pain if you can witness the point of where that pain is being felt. If a finger bleeds, you do not feel that pain until your eyes are directed to the sight of the blood pouring out. That sounds fair enough, so yet again, we are faced with that infamous power of suggestion. Not a feat that you could master in the advert break of Corrie, yet this theory, obviously from years of practice actually works. It has, at times, been proved to be of great use, especially for women experiencing fears of child birth pain. (If only I had known that six years ago, perhaps I wouldn't have bothered with gas and air,) yet surely this now proposes the question of painkillers in the form of aspirins and the like. Do they work or is it the power of suggestion in out minds that makes us believe that taking it will make the pain go away? Studies of this question crossing over the barriers of science is a conversation best left after a bottle of Jack Daniels at three in the morning...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It is sad, yet it has to be noted that this man who makes you proud to come from near Croydon has also had his fair share of broad critics since the word go. Somehow, what one reads from the severest of sceptics, seems all too complimentary rather than insulting. Brown has, and also makes a point of stating at the beginning of his shows, that '..I am often dishonest in my techniques, but always honest about my dishonesty...' thus showing that he his always willing to be open about any form of category that his audience cares to put him it. He allows us to be open with our own understandings of his illusions at the same time as he is shows us he is also open to questionable arguments. He does not ever label himself as a magician, a hypnotist or psychologist, yet if one was to describe him with these words, he would, I think, blush, and accept them as compliments.
He is whatever you wish for him to be, just the same as he allows us to be what ever he wants us to be in his company. He won't harm, insult or put anyone in a situation where they would feel threatened or uncomfortable, but if you feel the curiosity take hold a little, he will warmly welcome you to experience the delights he offers. Magical, illusionist or just plain confidence trickster, he is a warm echo from the past of how entertainers of a different century conjured up the senses and the imagination enough to make eyes light up and mouths drop open.
Let us embrace a forgotten era where men inspired us to be amazed at the feats a human mind and body could withstand, from plunging into a tank of water, chained with little way of escape to tricking you out of your last penny, it's an art that needs to be applauded, in what ever shape it shows itself in.
So, the next time Mr Blaine wants to shut himself in a box somewhere above London without food, water or any means of getting down, I suggest you watch a few re runs of David Copperfield magically making a tiger disappear on stage with his twinkling eyes and equally twinkling teeth.
Yet, if you want something that won't shock you, or make you work out where all the mirrors are, but entertain you in it's traditional sense and allow the possibility of perhaps, just for one second, believing, then please allow me put a suggestion of my own into your thoughts;
Mr Derren Brown appears on our stages across the country in another tour this year, do what I have done and buy a ticket...
Mr Brown is currently filming for Channel Four for another series scheduled for Spring this year.
He will be appearing in his one man show this year on tour. For dates, please go to his website, http://www.derrenbrown.co.uk (It is a website that also displays his intriguing and rather unusual caricatures of famous people.)
©Michelle Duffy (sam1942 ciao/dooyoo and anywhere else in cyber space)
Find some highlights of 'Mind Control' on the DVD; 'Derren Brown - Inside Your Mind,' although an actual DVD of the original series is unavailable.
DVD - amazom.com £62.
Channel Four Shop online - £19.99
Michelle is a freelance writer in the South of England and owner of the websites, [http://www.generationsounds.co.uk], http://nevermindthebloggers.bravehost.com and their successful sister, ‘Never Mind The Bloggers’ at http://paperback-writer29.tripod.com She has been writing over the two years, for five major consumer websites across the world and is one of the only two music category advisors for one website in the U.K. Her websites promote young, amateur and professional bands/artists/musicians and their fan clubs whilst also reviewing them for local and world wide promotion. She has also launched the blogs; 'The Ramblings Of An Old Rocker,' 'Bohemian Waffle,' ‘The Rhythm Rock And Blues Machine,’ ‘The Moped’s Musings,‘ ’Generation Sound Suite’ and ’Rock Cocoon.’ She is currently working on two shops selling her music styled artwork on cafepress.com.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michelle_Duffy
http://EzineArticles.com/?Inside-A-Box-With-The-Thinking-Womans-Crumpet-Or-The-Art-Of-Derren-Brown&id=412472
By Michelle Duffy
From the most ordinary of beginnings in the clutches of Croydon in Surrey, a young University student by the name of Derren Brown decided on a life changing career in hypnosis purely by chance. After an inspirational dip into such a 'job,' he became fascinated with psychology, illusion and magic, yet staying firm that anything to do with 'the other side of life,' as Colin Fry affectionately terms it, is a belief best left to the believers. As time went on, he delved into deeper questionable theories. Quickly learning magic, he embarked on mind reading and suggestive techniques to prove that the human mind was easily 'suggestible.' Eagerly focusing on how a person can be predictable in thought, decision and activity, Derren Brown first came to our cynical screens in the form of his first television series, 'Mind Control,' aired in 2000, which explored these possibilities.
Energetic, entertaining and dusted with characteristics of Victoriana and Music Hall, this modern day Vaudeville wonder man comes complete with a smile warm enough to melt even the most sceptical of hearts. Using humour, charm and grace, he becomes an easy focus of attention. The eyes of the gazing audience are quickly taken in by his mesmerising being, so much so that we are totally under his spell.
It was no wonder to a perplexed television audience, that these first shows gathered astonished praise and equal scepticism. When the generation of the audience and magician are the same, one can't help thinking of the mediocre Paul Daniels as a figure to compare any future talent with. Who else did we have in those days? Derren Brown is, without saying, a far cry from the sword throwing Hans Moretti and the fumblings of Mr Daniels, who used his assistant as a simple and visual distraction, so when we looked upon Derren Brown, we could only stand in disbelief. From cold sweats of a possibly fatal shot to the brain in 'Russian Roulette' (Ch4, Oct 2003) to appearing to cut off the oxygen to the brain to walk on broken glass in 'Something Wicked Comes This Way' (Ch4 Dec 29, 2006) we have witnessed pain manoeuvring illusions that have made us gasp, cower, cry, laugh and even at times, jump to the safety of behind the sofa.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
'Mind Control' Comprised of six programmes to wet a tricksters appetite, he skims the surface of a human being with such depth that he merely entices us with his unique style of 'magical' entertainment that only became apparent to his audience over the coming years. When one looks back on this, ever so primitive series of DB skills, (rather like a visually, circus paraded C.V,) it only becomes clear to us how much he has 'grown' with us over the last , now, seven years.
The programmes were shown in 2000 as follows but not in the right order of broadcast...
Powers of Suggestion...
Pinpointing a theme where upon he presents himself to us in nothing far from the style of American nut, David Blaine, he immediately captures the 'street theme' of displaying his suggestive powers over the most diversely, mutant cynics - the reluctant shopper.
A Saturday afternoon, wandering around the Whitgift Centre in Croydon has never been a mind altering experience, especially if you live close by, yet the 'off the cuff' tones of Derren Brown gently coming across the public speakers shouldn't have made any cause for alarm. Yet, whilst no one actually noticed, the man himself emerged from the top of the food hall with microphone in hand and a trusty cameraman at his side, he begins what appears to be a dull, non eventful monologue about a special offer situated by the lifts. On mentioning the lifts, he drops in a subtle comment about stopping suddenly and asking everyone interested in the offer to put their right arm up in the air on the word 'now.' Allowing the fading in of some creepy music, the shoppers stun themselves as well as each other in realising that they are all standing around with their right arms in the air.
The idea behind this suggestive persuasion is a fairly simple one; we are born into a world that his already suggestive in itself. Many mind theorists had already decided that we live in a social climate where we are 'rounded up' mentally and socially. The extremist of this would be George Orwell's 1984 and the Big Brother theory that we are 'conditioned' to think and act in a certain way that is regarded as acceptable as we are taught these structures from our surroundings. Here, the microphone is the authority, just like telling a child not to go near the oven when it's on as it is hot, a crowd of wandering shoppers are relaxed and hearing instructions subconsciously and act accordingly in their conscious world. It is known as the 'thinking in a box' theory.
Sounds easy, so what do we have as a result? A miserable afternoon around Croydon's dullest shops turns into a spectacle of wonderment and intrigue. For once locals didn't have to rely on hoodies invading Burger King for equal delight...
Seeing the Future...
In a programme aiming at the nervous sector of the sitting at home audience, DB focused on clairvoyance, but not how you and I would know it. Whilst having the ability to grab complete and utter strangers in the the middle of the street, presumably still in London, (which is not a great idea on the best of days,) he engages on a tour of how he can tell these innocuous shoppers tell about themselves that they could only know. How does he do this, well, if you can follow the last explanation, then it shouldn't be do difficult; this approach to 'mind reading' is actually a trick used by more people around us than we care to think, called 'cold reading.' No, it is not the Gas man coming round, but the simple way of asking a question and getting the right response. If it can be seen it generalist terms, one can tell someone something about themselves and wait for a physical answer; the way they respond in nervous laughter etc, acts as a strong guide as to how that person is feeling or what they do for a living....and in conclusion in this programme...?
Mr Brown is perhaps the only man alive who can stop the only happy, smiling Ethnic man in Carnaby Street who works in a police station.
Most wouldn't have cringed at being called 'shifty'....
The Art of Distraction...
A programme in which DB plays the Artful Dodger by 'fleecing' some unsuspecting chap haplessly sitting on a bench on a platform, waiting for a train. DB takes his watch, tie and wallet out of his inside pocket, all on account of handing it back to poor Anthony after the experiment had concluded.
So perhaps Channel Four might have received a few complaints when it was shown that Derren Brown managed to swindle the winning ticket out of a cashier at a dog track (probably Wimbledon) but this 'skill' had already been handed to us a century ago in the form of the Artful Dodger. Orphaned children in a Dickensian world were used by thieves to pick the pockets of wealthy gentlemen because they were small, nimble and unassuming. Although these attributes don't work well for DB, the theory is still there, by cheaply, if you like, distracting the victim with one hand and allowing him to focus his mind on something other than your thieving hand, so much can actually be achieved as being fleeced is the last thing they expect is happening to them...
Now, now, come on, hand it back...
Memories are made of this...
DB is unwisely let loose on a casino den and wins (naturally) above everyone one else at the table. How? By placing little red stickers on certain everyday objects around the room, of course!
By focusing on a room full of clutter, it should be easy to play a game of blackjack. As DB allows us to say, 'why didn't I think of that,' a few times, he shows us how you recognise objects around the room and relate them to a certain card. You do this 52 times, of course. Great, if you have 52 objects in the room that remind you instinctively of a particular card. Each time the card it used, you remove a red sticker...
Since your opponents are bound to notice you hoping about the room removing little red stickers off the Wedgwood, we get to wonder if Mr Brown is telling us how he really wins two and a half grand at the table in the space of ten minutes or is he pulling our legs?
If you could do it, would you really tell everyone else about it? So this is the thinking behind it all; He imagines the room and all the objects in it, (of course!). It is a feature in his series that shows his great skill in memory, procedure and focus on each card that it is dealt and striking it off an imaginary list. A craft that was used by the Greeks from around 82 BC...
Well, who the Hell can remember back that far..!?
Illusion or miracle...?
Again, DB stuns the English speaking world at a posh black tie party full of debutants and young conservatives with parents with too much money (or the Oxford University Ball, in other words). Perhaps on hindsight, the last person you would invite to such a shin dig would be Derren Brown especially if he has been clutching a black envelope in his hand all evening, and then suddenly asks for everyone's attention. The agreeable young Stephen Fry want to bie steps up to be blind folded, (perhaps only the second time in his life, the first being, to choose a title). DB offers the rest of the crowd to take a look at the picture from the envelope without breaking into hysterics. No noise must be given away to the blinded chap by his jolly good chums as they are then asked by DB to scream out in their minds only, the name of the picture on the card. A few sniggers are let out accidentally when they are presented with a picture of a tractor.
Although screaming in ones' mind is perhaps only a past time that us parents perfect over the years, it is still just as difficult to figure out how before un blind folded, the chap in the chair got the picture right.
On reflection, the tractor boy thought it might have been some art of suggestion before he was originally sat with black cloth over his eyes. We spend the rest of the evening, mildly pondering over how it was done, but this is what we can gather...
A little more tricky to explain, but the general reasoning is what has been labelled since the Victorian times as 'sixth sense.' A cop out, it would seem, but there is a definite common ground found in the art of thought transference and what is also known as 'cryptesthesia.' This is the basic power of transferring thought onto paper in a sealed envelope. Again, it is the power of suggestion. Hudson in 1893 said that '..when suggestion is actively and intelligently employed, it is always effective...' To write an account of what is a logical explanation for thought transference and in this case, on a wide scale where a room full of people are engaging in the same thought, is fairly unrealistic. We are all capable of powers beyond belief. As DB himself says, he doesn't claim to be anything or do anything that the rest of us can't achieve ourselves after careful study and practice.
Pain Killer...
Okay, so this one does go beyond the realms of sheer human belief. Actually turning pain on and off like a tap it something that would have come in handy during child birth, so why turn it into an art form. Surely, the switching it on should be left in the capable hands of sado masochists. Apart from being a fairly good album by Judas Priest, 'pain Killer' takes is into the cliff hanger part of the series, a little something for the audience to chew on until the next show which wouldn't be on for another year.
So, in this programme, DB gathers together four medical students which drops down to three when one of the girls, suddenly decides that she doesn't want to participate as soon as the words 'tooth ache' are mentioned, a sensible girl. Then by subtle voice and suggestive words, the two of them start to rub their jaws complaining of toothache. The understanding here being that 'pain is objective,' once the thought or the idea or the sight of blood it that, that it the point that pain is then felt....
In an instant at a slap of the DB's hand on the table, the pain is gone. A moment later, after asking permission, our two giddy med students are then shocked once more to find DB threading a needle through the other students hand who is unaware that he feels any pain. Dazed students sit in front of him wondering how the hell he did it. Meanwhile, the forth unparticipating girl is still running...perhaps not.
So the theory is? DB's answer is again simple; '...pain is subjective...' He believes that you feel pain if you can witness the point of where that pain is being felt. If a finger bleeds, you do not feel that pain until your eyes are directed to the sight of the blood pouring out. That sounds fair enough, so yet again, we are faced with that infamous power of suggestion. Not a feat that you could master in the advert break of Corrie, yet this theory, obviously from years of practice actually works. It has, at times, been proved to be of great use, especially for women experiencing fears of child birth pain. (If only I had known that six years ago, perhaps I wouldn't have bothered with gas and air,) yet surely this now proposes the question of painkillers in the form of aspirins and the like. Do they work or is it the power of suggestion in out minds that makes us believe that taking it will make the pain go away? Studies of this question crossing over the barriers of science is a conversation best left after a bottle of Jack Daniels at three in the morning...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It is sad, yet it has to be noted that this man who makes you proud to come from near Croydon has also had his fair share of broad critics since the word go. Somehow, what one reads from the severest of sceptics, seems all too complimentary rather than insulting. Brown has, and also makes a point of stating at the beginning of his shows, that '..I am often dishonest in my techniques, but always honest about my dishonesty...' thus showing that he his always willing to be open about any form of category that his audience cares to put him it. He allows us to be open with our own understandings of his illusions at the same time as he is shows us he is also open to questionable arguments. He does not ever label himself as a magician, a hypnotist or psychologist, yet if one was to describe him with these words, he would, I think, blush, and accept them as compliments.
He is whatever you wish for him to be, just the same as he allows us to be what ever he wants us to be in his company. He won't harm, insult or put anyone in a situation where they would feel threatened or uncomfortable, but if you feel the curiosity take hold a little, he will warmly welcome you to experience the delights he offers. Magical, illusionist or just plain confidence trickster, he is a warm echo from the past of how entertainers of a different century conjured up the senses and the imagination enough to make eyes light up and mouths drop open.
Let us embrace a forgotten era where men inspired us to be amazed at the feats a human mind and body could withstand, from plunging into a tank of water, chained with little way of escape to tricking you out of your last penny, it's an art that needs to be applauded, in what ever shape it shows itself in.
So, the next time Mr Blaine wants to shut himself in a box somewhere above London without food, water or any means of getting down, I suggest you watch a few re runs of David Copperfield magically making a tiger disappear on stage with his twinkling eyes and equally twinkling teeth.
Yet, if you want something that won't shock you, or make you work out where all the mirrors are, but entertain you in it's traditional sense and allow the possibility of perhaps, just for one second, believing, then please allow me put a suggestion of my own into your thoughts;
Mr Derren Brown appears on our stages across the country in another tour this year, do what I have done and buy a ticket...
Mr Brown is currently filming for Channel Four for another series scheduled for Spring this year.
He will be appearing in his one man show this year on tour. For dates, please go to his website, http://www.derrenbrown.co.uk (It is a website that also displays his intriguing and rather unusual caricatures of famous people.)
©Michelle Duffy (sam1942 ciao/dooyoo and anywhere else in cyber space)
Find some highlights of 'Mind Control' on the DVD; 'Derren Brown - Inside Your Mind,' although an actual DVD of the original series is unavailable.
DVD - amazom.com £62.
Channel Four Shop online - £19.99
Michelle is a freelance writer in the South of England and owner of the websites, [http://www.generationsounds.co.uk], http://nevermindthebloggers.bravehost.com and their successful sister, ‘Never Mind The Bloggers’ at http://paperback-writer29.tripod.com She has been writing over the two years, for five major consumer websites across the world and is one of the only two music category advisors for one website in the U.K. Her websites promote young, amateur and professional bands/artists/musicians and their fan clubs whilst also reviewing them for local and world wide promotion. She has also launched the blogs; 'The Ramblings Of An Old Rocker,' 'Bohemian Waffle,' ‘The Rhythm Rock And Blues Machine,’ ‘The Moped’s Musings,‘ ’Generation Sound Suite’ and ’Rock Cocoon.’ She is currently working on two shops selling her music styled artwork on cafepress.com.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michelle_Duffy
http://EzineArticles.com/?Inside-A-Box-With-The-Thinking-Womans-Crumpet-Or-The-Art-Of-Derren-Brown&id=412472
A Review of the Cambridge Business Academy
A Review of the Cambridge Business Academy
By Michael J Mcgonigle
A Cambridge Business Academy review couldn't possibly begin without taking a look at its founder and CEO Kevin Potts. Kevin is a relative newcomer to the world of internet marketing having only made his first online sale a little over two years ago. However even though he has only been in the business for a short space of time he has achieved a great deal and looks set to go and achieve a whole lot more. In only two years he has gone from a humble pastor's salary to being the head of a business with a multi-million pound turnover and more than 60 full time members of staff.
Before he started his career as an internet marketer Kevin was a full time Minister of Religion for the Cambridge Community Church which is why he can sometimes be seen wearing a dog collar in some of his training videos and tutorials. Kevin made his first online sale in September 2008 and shortly after that he founded the Cambridge Business Academy to help identify and train the next generation of online entrepreneurs. Since then it has grown rapidly and it now has more than 20,000 students from countries all around the world.
So what does the CBA do and how can it help you? The CBA is the perfect place to go to if you are a novice to the world of internet marketing and want clear, precise information on how to start your home based business. Membership of the CBA allows students to gain access to hundreds of training videos and tutorials, exclusive products which they can use to kick start their business and the help and guidance of a world class team of experts.
This is one of the things that separates the CBA from other training and mentoring programs on the net.
Kevin has assembled a team of experts to provide help and advice on just about any subject you can think of that is related to internet marketing. These include people such as Paul Lynch who is a world renowned SEO expert, copywriter Chris and the direct marketing duo Louise and Mark. The wealth of knowledge that these people are able to provide is invaluable to anyone who is just getting started and even to the more experienced who wish to learn and understand the finer points of internet marketing.
The testimonials page on the Cambridge Business Academy website is full of glowing recommendations from students of the CBA and from some of the best known and respected figures in the world of internet marketing. When you have people such as Russell Brunson, Chris Farrell and Tim Lowe taking the time to make videos for your testimonials page, you know you are doing something right.
The Cambridge Business Academy is a must for anyone who is serious about making money online. For only $50 a month it will teach you everything you need to know about setting up and running your own home based business and free you from the 9-5 grind.
Michael Mcgonigle is a copywriter and reviewer for [http://howtodoseo.com/].
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_J_Mcgonigle
http://EzineArticles.com/?A-Review-of-the-Cambridge-Business-Academy&id=4642401
By Michael J Mcgonigle
A Cambridge Business Academy review couldn't possibly begin without taking a look at its founder and CEO Kevin Potts. Kevin is a relative newcomer to the world of internet marketing having only made his first online sale a little over two years ago. However even though he has only been in the business for a short space of time he has achieved a great deal and looks set to go and achieve a whole lot more. In only two years he has gone from a humble pastor's salary to being the head of a business with a multi-million pound turnover and more than 60 full time members of staff.
Before he started his career as an internet marketer Kevin was a full time Minister of Religion for the Cambridge Community Church which is why he can sometimes be seen wearing a dog collar in some of his training videos and tutorials. Kevin made his first online sale in September 2008 and shortly after that he founded the Cambridge Business Academy to help identify and train the next generation of online entrepreneurs. Since then it has grown rapidly and it now has more than 20,000 students from countries all around the world.
So what does the CBA do and how can it help you? The CBA is the perfect place to go to if you are a novice to the world of internet marketing and want clear, precise information on how to start your home based business. Membership of the CBA allows students to gain access to hundreds of training videos and tutorials, exclusive products which they can use to kick start their business and the help and guidance of a world class team of experts.
This is one of the things that separates the CBA from other training and mentoring programs on the net.
Kevin has assembled a team of experts to provide help and advice on just about any subject you can think of that is related to internet marketing. These include people such as Paul Lynch who is a world renowned SEO expert, copywriter Chris and the direct marketing duo Louise and Mark. The wealth of knowledge that these people are able to provide is invaluable to anyone who is just getting started and even to the more experienced who wish to learn and understand the finer points of internet marketing.
The testimonials page on the Cambridge Business Academy website is full of glowing recommendations from students of the CBA and from some of the best known and respected figures in the world of internet marketing. When you have people such as Russell Brunson, Chris Farrell and Tim Lowe taking the time to make videos for your testimonials page, you know you are doing something right.
The Cambridge Business Academy is a must for anyone who is serious about making money online. For only $50 a month it will teach you everything you need to know about setting up and running your own home based business and free you from the 9-5 grind.
Michael Mcgonigle is a copywriter and reviewer for [http://howtodoseo.com/].
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Michael_J_Mcgonigle
http://EzineArticles.com/?A-Review-of-the-Cambridge-Business-Academy&id=4642401
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