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Links: Happy 234th Birthday, America Edition

Friday, July 2nd, 2010 at 11:34 AM Category: Books, Life Tips, Links, Marketing, Meryl's Notes Blog, Writing 1 comment

4th of July Bits and Pieces…

20070704 boys Links: Happy 234th Birthday, America Edition

4th of July in 2007

Shirts. Grandma (my mother) loved to buy Old Navy Independence Day shirts for the grandkids (my kiddos). I don’t know how many we have, but they came in handy two years ago. My second child had a little thing going with a teacher one year where he’d earn points for wearing an American flag shirt. One time, he wore at least three them to have fun with his teacher. This isn’t the kind of kid who likes school — quite the opposite. It warmed my heart to see him having fun with a teacher like that. I also have a daughter — the oldest of the three — but never got a pic of her in a flag shirt. She was usually away at camp.

20040704 boys Links: Happy 234th Birthday, America Edition

4th of July in 2004

Living in DC. Living in Washington, DC had one cool benefit — July 4th. Husband and I didn’t fight the traffic or try to go to the Independence Day celebration on the capitol lawn. Instead, we went to a special spot next to the Anacostia River and caught the fireworks there. No traffic. I lived in DC the year that Patti LuPone did the show — man, I would’ve loved to see her in person. Me + crowd = disaster.

Traditions. On 4th of Julys while growing up, my family went to a good friend’s house with a huge backyard, swimming pool and gazebo. Sadly, my family doesn’t have any Independence Day traditions. Our town has a parade every year, but kids don’t care to go. We went once and that was that. At least, we experienced it.

To celebrate our country’s 234th, we’ll probably grill some food, swim and go to a parking lot that has a good view of the fireworks without the traffic.

Cool Mental Floss factoids:

“AEGILOPS is the longest English word spelled in alphabetical order. In a sentence: ‘Wow, the letters in Aegilops are in ABC order!’” It’s a genus of plants.
“In a 2003 Deloitte survey on business speak, ‘leverage’ was voted the most hated word, followed by ‘bandwidth’ & ‘touch base.’ I always try to find other words to use besides “leverage” and those aren’t great options either — “maximize” and “make the most of.” Ick.

LOTS of links this week since many folks are taking a long weekend.

Brain food…

Ask Not What Your Novel Can Do For You: Fabulous tips for authors on blog tours. [Link: Elizabeth Craig]
Features and Benefits Are So 2009. Sell To Driving Emotion: I love the hole / drill analogy. This tells me I need to finish reading Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion [Amazon affiliate link]. Keep getting busy with book club books.
Memoir Tip: Lose the Play-by-Play: Superb advice. It is hard to avoid I did this, then this even if you tell it like a story. [Link: Jane Friedman]
Summer Reading Picks from various authors: Not your usual or expected reading list from Harvard Business Review. I read Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning [Amazon affiliate link] in college. Maybe it’d have more meaning today as I’m older and not facing a thousand pages of required reading per week. Of course, I have Brenda Ueland’s If You Want to Write [Amazon affiliate link], but haven’t read it yet. And of course, a newly revised edition came out in May after I got my copy.
50 Things You Can Control Right Now: We experience days when something throws a wrench in our plans that we think our lives are spiraling out of our control. This is a great list to review whenever you feel this way. [Link: Susan Fletcher] And 50 Things to Love About Life That Are Free.
57 Power Words for Writing Brilliant Headlines: Organized by theme, too.