Abject Terror + A Bluff = New Confidence

Lori Widmer’ recent post at Words on the Page, Worthwhile Tip: Stop Apologizing , encourages writers to stop doubting themselves.

It reminded me of something totally unrelated to writing, but an event that may well have given me the self-confidence to try anything. I left a comment on Lori’s post but decided to share the story here as well.

I was the first person in my family to go to college, and I was in a work-study program to help pay for my education. I was assigned to the library, and when I showed up to find out what my job would be, the librarian took me into a tiny office. “Your application said you took typing,” she said. “You’ll type the catalog cards for us.”

There was a problem, however—and I’m really dating myself now! The small high school I attended owned only one electric typewriter. We each got to type on it once during the year; the rest of the time, we used the old manual typewriters. We didn’t even get to turn on the electric—the teacher turned it on for us and just let us type a few paragraphs.

As you’ve probably figured out, the typewriter in the library was an electric. I immediately panicked. I saw myself being kicked out of school because I couldn’t do the job, humiliating myself and dashing my family’s dreams of having a member with a college education.

I took a deep breath and asked, “Do you have a manual for this machine? I’m not familiar with this model, and I’d like to read up on it to save time when I start.”

The librarian handed me the book that held the secrets to this challenging piece of equipment. I took it back to my dorm room and read it, re-read it, and studied it. The next day, I reported to work and turned on that typewriter just as if I’d done a hundred times before.

I don’t know if the librarian ever realized I didn’t know what I was doing. She never gave any indication she did, and in a few months, she started giving me the most complicated jobs in the library. She was also the faculty secretary and even had me type the minutes and correspondence for the faculty.

After that, I realized I could do a lot more than I gave myself credit for. To this day, when someone asks if I can do something, I say, “Of course.” Then I go figure out how to do it.

photo credit: alexkerhead

Happy New Year

May the Lord richly bless you and your loved ones in the coming year.

May your eyes be filled with beauty, your ears with music, your heart with love, your days with light, and your life with joy.

In spite of whatever challenges you face, may you always experience the peace of the Lord that passes all understanding.

photo credit: Lighthelper Offline due to heavy workload!

Christmas Gift and Christmas Memories

Merry Christmas!

I hope the Advent readings posted here daily are giving you a moment of quiet devotion in the midst of the busy days preparing for Christmas.

To experience similar moments after Advent is past, download my Christmas gift to you: Scripture/prayer cards that you can print on your computer printer. Print on both sides of card stock or business card forms, and cut into individual cards with a Scripture on one side and a prayer on the other.

And take some time to sit with a cup of coffee or tea and remember past Christmases and special times with family. My Christmas memories may help give your own memories a boost.

Christmas Gift-Giving

Jesus is the reason for the season. Christmas is celebrating the coming of Christ to earth as a tiny babe in a manger to give us all eternal life. That should always be our focus.

However, gift-giving has long been part of our Christmas traditions. The Wise Men worshipped and gave gifts to the Christ Child. The tradition of Santa Claus came from Saint Nicholas, a bishop known for giving gifts to the poor.

Giving gifts to family and friends is a way to show our love for them. Our gifts don’t have to be lavish or expensive. In fact, the best gifts are often simple and inexpensive.

• Coupons that can be redeemed for babysitting, shopping, running errands, or other chores can be a real treat for a busy mom, an individual with limitations that make those chores difficult, or anyone who enjoys being pampered.
• Volunteering together to help with a charity toy drive or a party for disadvantaged children can create special Christmas memories for everyone involved.
• Recipients cherish handmade gifts and value the time and effort the giver puts into creating the gift.
• When you buy gifts, choose them to match the recipient’s interests, even if the cost is low and the gift isn’t a typical choice. The purpose isn’t to impress people with how much money you spend or how glamorous the gift is. The purpose is to show your love and give pleasure to someone you care about.

Of course, I may be just a tad biased, but I can’t think of a better gift than a book. Choosing a title and genre that appeals to the reader on your list demonstrates that you pay attention to their interests. For suggestions on great books (she said modestly), visit these pages of my Web site:

• My books—books I’ve written
• My clients’ books—books I’ve edited for clients
• My guests’ books—books I’ve reviewed or by authors I’ve interviewed

If you don’t find the perfect book there, you can also find information about great books at the following sites:

• Books We Love—promotional site for authors of books is all genres and formats, with a contest going on now
• Goodreads—reader community with reviews and ratings from readers
• Nothing Binding—site featuring independent authors of books in all genres
• Book Hitch—search engine for books of all kinds

You can find equally wonderful gifts for people on your list with interests other than reading. What does he love to do? What is her favorite indulgence? What would smiles on their faces? When you can answer those questions, gift-giving is made easy.

Don’t forget to download my gift to you: Scripture/prayer cards that have a Bible verse on one side and a prayer on the other. You can download a PDF file and print the cards on your own computer printer. Reading one of the cards can create a brief moment of devotion in a busy day.

Wishing you a blessed and joyous Christmas!

photo credit: wolfsavard

Good Luck and a Good Memory

I listened to a voice mail message earlier this week. A man gave his name, then said, “Please call me at your earliest convenience at the main office of the electric coop.” He ended with his phone number.

As a trustee and the secretary/treasurer of a trust my parents established to keep the small family farm intact after their deaths, I pay all the bills. Had I forgotten to pay the rural electrical cooperative that supplied electricity to the farm? That had never happened before, but one time I made a mistake in recording the meter reading. Now the coop reads the meter, so it couldn’t be that.

This certainly wasn’t the time to have the power turned off. We’re in the midst of a severe drought, and just a few weeks ago, the water level had dropped so low that the pump couldn’t reach it. Our tenant farmer had to haul water for the cattle for a couple of days until the well was repaired. It took another forty feet of pipe and several hundred dollars to get the well pumping again.

I’m conscientious about paying bills, so it’s unlikely I missed a payment, but what else could he be calling about? I told myself to quit trying to guess what the man wanted and just return the call and find out.

As soon as I identified myself, he said, “Congratulations! You’re the winner of the $250 electrical credit from the proxy drawing at the annual meeting.” The coop must have a certain percentage of its members vote at the annual meeting so the office mails out proxy ballots for members who can’t attend in person to mail in.

“Wow!” I responded. “I didn’t even pay close enough attention to realize there was going to be a drawing, so this is really a surprise.”

The coop representative said, “We didn’t announce it. The drawing was a surprise to everyone.” He explained that the credit had already been applied to our account, and we won’t need to make another payment until the credit is used up.

This surprise win reminded me of something that happened when I was in elementary school. The hardware store in the little town nearest to our family’s farm held a drawing. To enter, customers had to fill out a form with their contact information and their choice of prize. The store would give either a freezer or an evaporative cooler to the winner of the drawing. No one we knew had air conditioning in our rural area in the 1950s. We thought a window unit that cooled by evaporation of water, commonly called a swamp cooler, was air conditioning. All of us kids were excited about the possibility of winning an air conditioner.

But when Daddy filled out the form, he put the checkmark in the top box, which was a freezer. “Daddy,” we protested. “We already have a deep freeze! We want an air conditioner.”

“It doesn’t make any difference what I put,” he answered. “We’re not going to win anyway.”

He was wrong. He won—a freezer. I’m sure he didn’t even consider asking to change the prize. Daddy never wanted to rock the boat. I suspect he thought a freezer was a better prize anyway. A large family with cattle to butcher and garden crops to harvest could easily use two freezers. A swamp cooler in one window in one room wouldn’t make much difference in the big, old rambling farmhouse.

For a long time, we kids whined, “But we wanted an air conditioner.”

photo credit: p-duke

Comments, Spam, and Comment Spam

Is it just me or is it getting harder to separate legitimate comments from spam comments?

Often legitimate comments are easy to identify. They add relevant  insights, new information, or another opinion on the topic of the post, and they are posted under the commenter’s full name (or least a nickname). Sometimes they simply affirm the commenter’s agreement or encouragement to the blogger, but they clearly show the commenter is responding to a specific post. Occasionally, a few words that agree or encourage without specifically mentioning the topic are readily recognized as legitimate because the commenter is a regular reader who has left comments before.

Many spam comments are just as easy to identify. They promote pills, porn, or propoganda; are frequently posted using a keyword instead of a name; and may have several links in the body of the comment.

Then there are the ones in the gray area.

The comment may be relevant to the topic but be posted by a keyword instead of a person. I always remind commenters that with KeywordLuv, they can use both their name and keywords. Then I can address them as a real person, and they still get their keyword link. I would much rather chat with John Smith from Dayton Used Cars than with Dayton Used Cars. I can’t help envisioning a used car typing the comment, and I can’t get excited about carrying on a conversation with a used car or insurance or a dentist or … whatever. Note: as of 8/31/09, I changed my comment policy and automatically mark as spam any comment left with keywords only and no name.

Other times the comment may be left by a commenter who uses a name but without responding directly the topic of the post.“Great post,” “I agree,” “Thanks for sharing,” and similar sentiments may be sincere, but they are also the kind of comments left by robots or by humans who haven’t taken the time to read the content of the post. If the person has commented before, I tend to give them the benefit of the doubt. However, comments of this nature from first-time commenters are treated as spam.

The spam comments that offend me the most are the ones that plagiarize as well as spam. These may be fairly easy to catch on recent posts but can slip through when left on old posts. My first experience with this was a single comment left on an old post. The comment added insight on the topic of the post, so I approved it. The next day, I had more than a dozen comments from the same “person.” The comments were posted immediately—comments are held for moderation only for the first comment. When I started responding to the comments, as I do to every comment, I recognized one of the comments as something I’d heard before. Reading the earlier comments revealed that the new comment was a repeat of a comment left months ago by someone else. That discovery led me to review every single comment left by this spammer, and every one proved to be copied from an earlier comment. I deleted all the comments and blacklisted the spammer, but that taught me to check more closely on comments on older posts.

Since then, I’ve found this happening frequently. Some are creative enough to take a sentence from each of three or four different comments so their comment isn’t identical to any other comment but is identical to parts of several different comments. Worse, some of the spam comments take material directly from the post itself. They have the nerve to leave me a comment composed of my words in the post they are commenting on!

The spam comments that puzzle me the most are the ones that are nothing but question marks, sometimes a few, sometimes hundreds. My only guess as to why anyone would do this is to get a comment past moderation with the expectation of lots more spamming with links included in future comments.

Other than spam, the only comments I don’t approve fall into one of two categories:

• Comments that are disrespectful of my beliefs and values. Respectful disagreement is allowed; rudeness or disrespect of me, my readers/commenters, my faith, our country or troops, or my values is not allowed.
• Comments that link to sites that I don’t consider appropriate for a Christian audience, such as blogs on how to enhance body parts, sites that denigrate people or values, and risque entertainment. Occasionally I may approve the comment but delete the link, but usually I delete the comment. 

I love comments and encourage them with DoFollow, CommentLuv, KeywordLuv, and other plugins designed to make the commenting experience easy and fun and to reward them with links that help with SEO. I visit the site of every person who leaves a comment here and often subscribe to their blogs as well. I reply to every single comment, and I thank commenters monthly for being part of the community.  

Too bad that spammers make moderating and responding to comments more of a challenge for me and all bloggers.

Are you finding it more difficult to sort out spam from legitimate comments?

Wishing You a Blessed 2009

As we begin a new year, I thank you for reading and commenting on my blog, for buying and reading my book, for working with you on your writing and editing projects.

I wish each of you a blessed 2009, a year of health, happiness, and success. And when your blessings are interspersed with trials and tribulations, may you enjoy the peace that passes understanding as you become stronger and wiser.

Happy New Year 2009!

ALMIGHTY God, who alone gavest us the breath of life, and alone canst keep alive in us the holy desires thou dost impart; We beseech thee, for thy compassion’s sake, to sanctify all our thoughts and endeavours; that in the coming year we may neither begin an action without a pure intention nor continue it without thy blessing. And grant that, having the eyes of the mind opened to behold things invisible and unseen, we may in heart be inspired by thy wisdom, and in work be upheld by thy strength, and in the end be accepted of thee as thy faithful servants; through Jesus Christ our Saviour. Amen.

Christmas Memories

Karen Swim’s post I Gave at the Office started me thinking about past Christmases. Karen wrote about obligatory office gift-giving and offered several excellent alternatives. 

I’ve worked alone for a dozen years or so now so I don’t deal with these issues. But when I owned an interior landscape company, we always had a dinner for our employees and their families. We set up tables in the warehouse, so obviously it was a casual affair. Everyone brought a dish, and  we had a good time relaxing together and getting to know everyone’s spouses and kids.

We also gave the employees a chance to volunteer together to distribute toys to needy children. The Elf Louise Project  was started in 1969 by a college student who collected toys for 13 families. Now the charity delivers toys to more than 20,000 children in about 6,000 families with the help of nearly 5,000 volunteers.

Employees of our interior landscape company who wanted to participate signed up to join a company Elf Louise team. Our company usually fielded several 3-man teams at different times during the holiday season.

One person was assigned to be Santa—the organization provided a Santa suit. One was the driver who had to stay with the car at all times, and the third was the elf responsible for navigating and keeping track of which kid got what toy.

We were given safety warnings, such as never park in a position where we couldn’t make a fast getaway, because many of the homes we delivered toys to were in high-crime neighborhoods. One night the team I was with ended up on a dead-end street. As we were leaving, a carload of rough-looking teenagers pulled in front of us and screeched to a stop. All four doors were thrown open and what looked like a gang of youths jumped out and ran over to our car.

We sat there frantically trying to figure a way out. The boys ran up to the window, yelling, “Santa! Santa! Santa!” We gave them candy from Santa’s bag—Elf Louise provided lots of candy to give away to the kids not on Santa’s list who inevitably showed up when Santa arrived. All our candy that night went to the “gang” of tough-looking guys, who grinned and high-fived each other and said, “Thanks, Santa!” Then they jumped back in their car and drove away.

Experiences like that are worth more than any gifts we could exchange with coworkers.

That memory sparked a memory of another Santa experience.

photo credit: Philms

When I was a member of a local organization for women business owners, we wanted to do something for the Battered Women’s Shelter for Christmas. Our contact told us they had lots of gifts and parties already donated for Shelter residents, but they had just started a program to help women and their children transition to life on their own. Women who had been placed in jobs and moved into apartments needed Christmas presents for their children. We volunteered to host a party and give gifts to those families. That first year there were only 12 families with about 20 children in the program. A church near the Shelter provided space, and the Shelter gave us a list of families, including the names and ages of the children. We solicited donations for the gifts, and half a dozen of us planned the party.

One of our members had played Santa for other organizations and offered to wear her Santa suit to the party. As I was preparing to go to the party, on impulse I picked up my Polaroid camera. I didn’t have any film, so Santa and I stopped at a drugstore on the way to the church. It was quite a sight to see Santa walk through the store—kids materialized from everywhere and followed Santa like kids in the story followed the Pied Piper.

We got to the church, decorated the room, and set up refreshments. As the families arrived, they were quiet and reserved. The kids looked at Santa but shyly clung to their mothers. We had to encourage them to help themselves to cookies and punch, but once the kids had the refreshments in their hands, they grinned between bites and inched a little closer to Santa.

We told the children to sit on Santa’s lap to get their presents and have their picture taken. They hesitated, but the lure of all the gifts stacked beside Santa finally pulled them forward. The children sat on Santa’s lap and received their gifts. I took a picture of each child, then invited the mothers to join all their children for a family photo. They smiled and shook their heads. I couldn’t understand why they wouldn’t want a picture until one mother shyly asked, “How much does it cost?” They thought we were going to make them pay for the pictures, and when we said they were free, they hurried over to stand beside Santa with their children. Several of the mothers had tears in their eyes and said, “This is the first picture I’ve ever had with my children.” 

We gave a gift to each mother and some food items for the families. When no one made any move to open the gifts, I said, “Don’t you want to open your presents?” The mothers gave me a puzzled look and one said, “Oh no, we want the kids to have the gifts on Christmas morning. These are the only presents they’ll get.”

We thought we were making the families’ Christmas a little brighter. In fact, we were giving them the only Christmas they would have. And my impulsive grabbing of my Polaroid camera resulted in one of the best gifts of all.

Through the years, the program grew to the point that the last time we hosted the party (shortly before the women business owners’ organization dissolved), there were about 300 families and 700 or 800 children. We had dozens of volunteers instead of the original half dozen, tons of donated food, and gifts for every child and every mother. I knew to invite the mothers and children to have their pictures taken for free, and we expected that the families would head to the bus stop with bags of unopened gifts so they would have presents to open on Christmas Day.

Participating in these annual parties made me appreciate anew my childhood. When I was growing up, we didn’t have many material goods, but we always had a joyous Christmas. My parents told me that when I was in the first grade or so, I begged for a dollhouse for Christmas. That dollhouse was far beyond Santa’s budget, and my parents felt so bad that they couldn’t give me what I wanted. They saved up and gave me the dolhouse the next Christmas. By that time, I was no longer interested and seldom played with it. I don’t remember any of that—obviously I wasn’t traumatized by being deprived of the dollhouse the year I wanted it so desperately, but it made such a deep impression on my parents that they mentioned it for years afterward.

Daddy always built our Christmas tree. He chopped down several soapbush trees on the farm. He used the largest and most shapely one as the base, then he filled in with branches from the others bushes to make a huge tree. Unlike traditional Christmas trees, it was almost round. Then he loaded it down with lights and decorations and dotted snow (made from whipped Ivory Snow soap) on the branches. I’ve never seen another tree that looked anything like Daddy’s Christmas trees. You can get a glimpse of it in this family photo of my parents and their grown children. Christmas meant lots of family, food, faith, and love.

Christmas is quieter for us now. My parents are gone, and the rest of the family is scattered. Jack and I will go to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve and have  dinner on Christmas Day with my sister and her friend at a local restaurant. The next day, we’ll all get together with my brother and his family from Phoenix, who will spend Christmas Day with my sister-in-law’s family.

There are fewer people than when my parents were alive, but we’ll still have plenty of food, faith, and love. We’ll still remember the reason for Christmas—to celebrate the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, who came that we might have eternal life.

Merry Christmas!

Spam Again …

photo credit: Gauravonomics

For some strange reason, I had a few spam-free days when I moved my blog from a subdirectory to the main directory of my Web site. In the previous two years, Akismet had caught 97,000+ spam comments. Then for a day or two i had zero spam comments!

Then the spam started coming again—a trickle, a stream, a river, a flood. Now, a month later, Akismet has caught 10,000+ spam comments. 10,000 in one month! During the same time, I’ve had about 500 legitimate comments—20 spam comments for every real comment.

The bulk of the spam can be classified as porn, pills, and plagiarism …

Porn: Ads about perverted sex are wasted on a person who openly expresses her Christian faith and values on the blog.

Pills: If the pill purveyors only knew of the adverse reactions I’ve had from prescription medicine they’re trying to sell without prescriptions, they would know there’s nothing for them here.

Plagiarism: Perhaps the thing that amazes me the most are those spammers who plagiarize earlier comments—or even my post! At first, these were hard to catch because they showed up on old posts with lots of comments. But now I’m getting comments that repeat a sentence from my post within minutes of posting.

Thank heavens for Akismet. I’ve been checking comments in spam to look for legitimate comments. A few of my regular commenters end up in spam—I don’t know why, but I try to catch them. But skimming through hundreds of spam comments each day is time-consuming and very unpleasant, and I may stop doing it. If your comment doesn’t appear, e-mail me and I’ll look for it. Otherwise, I may miss it.

Can anyone explain to me why in the world spammers spam?

Comment Spam, Do Follow, Keyword Names, and You

I’m pleased with the number of insightful comments this blog gets, and I appreciate comments from diverse readers from around the world.

As my comment policy specifies, first-time comments are moderated; after the first comment is approved, future comments from that person are not subject to moderation. In theory, at least. Recently Akismet, which generally does an excellent job of catching spam and not blocking legitimate comments, has blocked comments from regular commenters. I usually delete spam comments without looking at them, so it’s possible that some valuable comments have slipped through and been deleted. If you have commented before and your comment doesn’t appear immediately, e-mail me.

If you haven’t commented before, your comment won’t appear until I have approved it. If your comment hasn’t appeared within 24 hours, you can contact me.

However, if you leave a comment that says “great post,” “now there are more reasons than ever to comment,” or any other comment that doesn’t even indicate you’ve read the post, expect it to be deleted. The first time, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and delete the comment; if it happens again, the comment will be marked spam and any other comments you leave will go into spam.

This blog is a Do Follow blog, which encourages comments. It also attracts spammers. If you come here to comment because you want a link that search engines will follow, I’m happy to have you … IF you read the post before you comment and leave a comment that says something. If the comment is so generic it doesn’t relate to the post … that’s a different story.

The most egregious case of inappropriate commenting started with a comment I approved. The comment related to the post, and I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary so I approved it. The next day that person left about 15 comments—all of which posted immediately because the previous comment had been approved. The first comment I read sounded familiar so I read through all the comments on that post, only to discover that a comment left by another person had been copied. I checked all the comments, and all were duplicates of other comments. The comments were made on older posts with a lot of comments to make it more difficult to catch. Since they were copied from relevant comments, they were appropriate for the post and seemed like legitimate comments. In fact, they were legitimate comments from the original commenter—but plagiarized by the spammer. I marked all the comments, including the first one (which had also been copied though I didn’t recognize at first), as spam. So now we have spam and plagairism in the same comment!

Commenters we bloggers love. Spammers are not welcome.

I do appreciate all legitimate comments, and I reply to every comment. I like to address the commenter by name, but I won’t address someone as California Liposuction or Timbuktu Real Estate. I will approve and reply to the comment, but I’d much rather respond to Susie of California Liposuction or John @ Timbuktu Real Estate. Note: This policy has been changed. Now I automatically send comments with keywords only in the name field to spam. Including keywords with your name is fine—you get a keyword link, and I know I’m replying to a real person. I have a hard time relating to Fat-Burning Miracle.

If you are a blogger, what is your comment policy? If you comment on blogs, what do you think of my comment policy? How do you feel about using keywords rather than names?

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