E-Zine Street
Volume 4, # 3 The Service Professionals Resource - December 12, 2007 - $2.95

AVE-A-NEWS

Mark's Monthly Mentoring is coming in January 2008. Stay tuned for details.
'Tis the season to be jolly. There is so much happening in December:

Judi is a career expert and prior to starting VisionQuest, she was a search consultant for 20 years in the contingency and retained markets. She has owned her own recruiting firm and successfully assisted numerous repeat clients in hiring at all levels of management. Judi now educates job seekers on what the candidate selection process is all about, so that they not only learn how to successfully present, package, and sell themselves, but also ensure that they not stepping into a miserable job. Her training has resulted in many of her clients finding their perfect job after long periods of frustration or no activity.

Road Improvements

Why I Devour Biographies!

As the story goes, a wise and seasoned history professor was in the hallway of a military academy, recruiting the freshman plebes to sign up for his class.

One brash young man asked, "Why should I sign up for your class?"

Pausing, the professor leaned forward and asked with a smile, "Ever burn your hand?"

Surprised by the question, the youngster replied louder than necessary, "Yes, who hasn't?"

Lowering his voice, the professor all but whispered, "Did it hurt?"

Incredulous, the plebe answered, "Of course!"

Now in complete command of the conversation, the professor added, "Would you ever do it again, on purpose?"

Still on the defensive, the freshman replied, "No!"

Smiling, the professor concluded, "That is why we must study history!"

Many historians consider Winston Churchill to be the greatest man of the twentieth century. In his biographical masterpiece, William Manchester wrote, "He was a genius without judgment. His views, once formed, were immutable. He had a hundred-horsepower brain. He wrote fifty-six books, half of them on war and warriors. As a writer, he was a reporter, a biographer, a novelist, a critic, essayist, and historian."

When Churchill was asked why he read so much history, he quoted McCauley, "The greater the distance back you go in history, the farther you may see into the future."

• Churchill loved books and wrote of them:

• If you cannot read all your books, at the very least handle them, peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on the shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you will at least know where they are. Let them be your friends, let them at any rate be your acquaintances.

• A forty-five-minute speech takes eight hours to prepare. However, if you want me to talk all day, I can begin now!

• So little time, so much to achieve.

• It is my only ambition to be the master of the spoken word.
  

He was a terrible student-a dud in the classroom-at some of the finest schools in England. While his performance was poor in most examinations, he was top of the class in the areas he loved: history, English, and all things military. An autodidactic pattern formed in the difficult times of his youth, and, in his own time and on his own terms, he became the most learned statesman of the last century. He began by reading five papers a day at 13 years of age and continued that commitment his entire life.

Jim Carrey is said to be passionate about the History Channel's biographies and watches them while he runs on the treadmill. In the documentary Comedian, Jerry Seinfeld went to the New York Public Library's video archives to study old Richard Pryor concert films, in order to understand his unique style and pioneering content.

You might be asking "Why study history?" Fair enough. Here are three good reasons to study history:

• Inspiration. I never fail to get jazzed after reading a good biography. As Anthony Hopkins said to Alex Baldwin's sleazy character in the suspenseful and enlightening movie, The Edge, "What one man can, another can!" How true.

• Education. It will shift your awareness and paradigms about what is possible for you.

• It will provide signposts to achieving your goals and models and mentors to follow.

Will and Ariel Durant were a history-writing team. For 50 years, they dedicated their marriage and working lives to studying and writing about history: Jesus, Napoleon, Caesar (the Roman ruler, not the salad), to name a few. On his seventy-fifth birthday, Will and Ariel asked themselves what a lifetime of research had taught them and wrote an amazing little book entitled Lessons of History.

I need to buy a copy for my boys. It's a must-read for any serious student of the human condition, and the best part about their achievement? It's a "bathroom book", only 120 pages long!

Here is my short list of favorite biographies and histories:

• The Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant
  

• Seven Pillars of Wisdom: A Triumph by T. E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia and advisor to Churchill)
  

• The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris
  

• Fantastic: The Life of Arnold Schwarzenegger by Laurence Leamer
  

• Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's by Ray Kroc
  

• Pour Your Heart Into It by Howard Schulz, founder of Starbucks
  

• 700 Sundays by Billy Crystal, the number of Sundays he had with his father in this bittersweet autobiography
  

• A Lotus Grows in the Mud by Goldie Hawn
  

• Dutch: A Memoir of Ronald Reagan by Edmund Morris
  

• The Last Lion: Winston Churchill Visions of Glory 1874-1932 by William Manchester, and the definitive biography of Sir Winston Spencer Churchill

Maybe this plebe needs to sign up for a history class? Nah! However, I do know what I want for Christmas; Manchester's other book about Churchill. Hand me a cigar.

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Bits and Pieces from My Journal

Fairbanks, Alaska is the site for college basketball's BP Top of the World Classic. While working away on my laptop in the lobby of the Princess Hotel, I met a fascinating man. He is a retired electrical parts representative, and former trainer and consultant, named Duane Olberg. He lives in my hometown and, as it turns out, I went to high school with his daughters. He was in town to watch Portland State's coach, Ken Bone, do his magic. He was explaining to me in detail his magnificent mission trips to Africa, and then he handed me his card:

Ambassador for
God & Son
Doing business with folks for over 2,000 years.
Paying eternal dividends.

He is still a rep. He just has a different boss now!

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My flight home from Alaska was November 19. It was also my fiftieth birthday and I had received the best present yet. The University of Alaska at Fairbanks men's basketball team upset Pac-10 team Oregon State University 62 to 60. The significance of their win lies in the fact that UAF is a Division Two school, while OSU is Division One. The boys played their hearts out for new coach Clemon Johnson. They left nothing on the floor. Colin was a force on the boards and the anchor on defense, playing 37 minutes of a 40-minute game. He was exhausted, but with a Cheshire-Cat grin. Watching him sign autographs and receive pats on the back from the hometown crowd, I thought of one of Teddy Roosevelt's speech:

It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.

Gazing out the window at the snow-capped peaks of the Alaskan landscape, I reflected upon the long weekend and the ups and downs of college basketball (UAF went 1-2); it was the best birthday weekend that I could recall. Shifting gears, I asked myself what I had learned in 50 years. The pen began to move on its own. Here are seven from a list of over 100 hard-learned lessons:

Now back to where we started. Study history. Read biographies of great men and women. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, "The further you go back in history, the easier the future is to see."

So that's where that came from!
"Christmas Lights"

One for the road
This months best reads are:

Watch "The Road" Buddy!
Check out my movie list to make you Laugh, Cry, and Think.
Matteson Avenue has an archive of all the e-zines of past.
Launch new goals this year.
Laugh more this year.

Learn more this year by reading a book a month on the Reading List.
Leave a legacy this year - Freedom From Fear Forever has a great message!

The Wire's Conduit
This month's Wire Conduit is about Christmas lights. I got the bug two years ago after seeing the infamous video by Carson Williams. This is my story.

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