Heidi Taylor Fleischbein on April 1, 2012 played at the Spreckels Organ Pavilion before a large crowd of guests including Dr. Carol Williams and San Diego City District 6 Councilmember, Lorie Zapf.

April 1, 2012

It was an exciting opportunity for Heidi to perform on the Spreckels Organ, the world’s largest outdoor pipe organ donated to the City of San Diego in 1914 for the Panama-California Exposition by John D. and Adolph Spreckels. This unique organ contains 4,530 pipes ranging in length from the size of a pencil to 32 feet and is housed in an ornate vaulted structure with highly embellished gables. Since 1917, San Diego has had a civic organist, who performs free weekly Sunday concerts.

Heidi was invited to perform by Dr. Carol Williams, the current San Diego Civic Organist and Artistic Director of the Spreckels Organ Society in San Diego, California since 2001.

Dr. Carol Williams has been impressed by the many instruments that Heidi plays, and at the request of Dr. Williams was asked to also demonstrate her ability to play the violin.

Heidi performs: “Prelude in C Major” and “Prelude in A Minor” by J.S. Bach.

E aster is God’s promise, which His Son came to fulfill

A promise of eternal life for all who seek His will

S eason of the budding trees, the lily in its glory

T he greening hills, the daffodils, the holy Easter story

E aster is the joy of spring, God’s gift and triumph, too

R eminding us of Jesus’ love in which we’re born anew

We need to keep all hope alive with our courage…

To Believe

Jacqueline Marie “Jackie” Evancho  was born April 9, 2000 and is an American child singer described as a classical crossover artist.   In 2010, at the age of 10, she gained wide popularity with her performances in the fifth season of the America’s Got Talent (AGT) competition, finishing in second place.  Evancho impressed composer David Foster who included her in his concerts beginning in 2009.  Foster later produced Evancho’s album, Dream With Me, and subsequent PBS special for the television series, Great Performances.  Evancho also performed in front of U.S. President Barack Obama at the 2010 National Christmas Tree lighting in Washington, D.C.

TO BELIEVE

Before I lay me down to rest
I ask the Lord one small request
I know I have all I could need
But this prayer is not for me
Too many people on this day
Don’t have a peaceful place to stay
Let all fighting cease that your children may see peace
Wipe their tears of sorrow away

(chorus)
To believe in a day
When hunger and war will pass away
To have the hope amidst despair
That every sparrow’s counted
That you hear each cry and listen to each prayer

Let me try always to believe
That we can hear the hearts that grieve
Please help us not ignore
The anguished cries of the poor
Or their pain will never leave

(chorus )
To believe in a day
When hunger and war will pass away
To have the hope amidst despair
That every sparrow’s counted
That you hear each cry and listen to each prayer

(spoken prayer)
Father, as you see, I’m just a child
And there’s so much to understand
But if Your Grace should surround me
Then I’ll do the best I can
I promise, I’ll do the very best I can

(chorus plus)
To believe in a day
When hunger and war will pass away
To have the hope amidst despair
That every sparrow’s counted
That you hear each cry and listen to each Prayer
{Hear each cry and listen to each prayer}
Help us do Your will oh Father
In the name of all that’s true
And we’ll see in one another
The loving image of You

Facebook Changes March 2012

Facebook announced last  week, changes that will significantly affect the layout and the functionality of your Fan Pages.  The Facebook changes to Business Fan Pages should be a concern for all  people using Facebook for marketing promotion.  After the end of the month all visitors will land by default on the new Timeline style page. And unfortunately, this change is not optional.

Facebook will be switching all Business Pages to the new framework on 30 March 2012 and you won’t have an option to revert back to the old layout.

A Summary of the seven (7) important Facebook changes:

1. 850px wide COVER PHOTO will replace the old Profile Image but may NOT contain the following:
• Price or purchase information, such as “40% off”
• “Download it at our website”.
• Contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your Page’s About section.
• References to user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site features.
• Calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends”.
2. One of the most disappointing 2012 Facebook changes – old Welcome Tabs/Landing Pages that used to show by default to new visitors will not work  as before. The pages will still work, but they will now be placed among other applications under the large COVER PHOTO. Only 4 Tabs will be visible.
3. Reveal Tabs will not work as before.
4. Photos, Likes and all Apps/Tabs will move from the left-hand side Menu to clickable Icons placed directly below the cover photo. Photos will show in the first spot, but you will be able to change the order of everything else.
5. You can now PIN your favourite post/update to the top or highlight it to draw attention to it. Great for any important announcements.
6. FAN PAGE MESSAGES – Now your Fans will be able to contact you directly instead of just posting on the wall.
7. New Administration panel – You will be able to keep track of your activity on your Page from the admin panel, respond when people write on your Page timeline, and view your latest insights (visitor statistics).  Additionally, in March, new admin controls will be released. This will let you set different permissions for each page admin.

Four (4) implications to consider about the Facebook changes of 2012 on your business fan pages

• Your carefully crafted branding will disappear, you will need to start from scratch.
• Your Apps Default Landing Tabs (Welcome Pages) will be gone, Reveal Tabs will be gone gone , so lead collection will become a bit harder.
• Advertising on the Cover photo will not be permitted, so your advertising and branding will have to become far more subtle.
• The new Timeline will be far more visual, so you will have to become better friends with your graphic designer.

Visit Facebook Blog to learn more about the upcoming Facebook changes.

Pre-empt the Facebook changes and get your new Facebook branding ready.

To learn more about Facebook branding and Facebook Marketing, and how Cliff will help you be ready for the change.

Receive a FREE, no obligation quotation for adding branding to your Facebook Page and help  with your Facebook Marketing.  Call Cliff and ask questions! Prepare your thoughts and questions before calling to get the most from this event.  He generously and freely gives the first hour of consultation:

Toll Free: 888-260-2909

Mailing address:

5663 Balboa Avenue
Suite 428
San Diego, California 92111

Email Address:

Cliff @ GoCliff dot com

Chet Baker, a recommended trumpet horn player for Cliff to learn from.  Here is one of Charlie Walker’s favorite tunes done by Chet Baker, “So What” by Mile Davis:

Until recently, Cliff has been playing the “So What” song on guitar with the Bass part being done by the lead guitar to a funk rock Bass back beat.

I thank Michael Rhodes (a high school acquaintance)  for sharing the photo of the oak tree bark. It reminds me of the BIG oak tree in Grandma Margie’s backyard in Sacramento where we would visit and swing using a tire-on-a-rope hanging down from a large branch. The tree was so BIG that it cast enormous shade out over the lawn on hot summer days. We would play, the noise of children, until the cool of the night. There were acres of fields around the few farm houses where Grandma lived in Sacramento, and part of it was fenced off to keep in a few cattle and a bull. Chickens would scamper around the property, and usually nest to lay eggs in a wall of bamboo grown to block the north winds. Today, that old oak tree still stands, even after the fire of 1967 that burned down Grandma’s home and took out the bamboo. Most of the acres around that tree have succumbed to one form or another of property development, but that tree still stands as a memory of days gone by when kids played in the safety and comfort of its shade. On occasion, every few years, I go visit the old property to look for that tree, to remember how things have changed, and in 2009 it was still there looking as strong and reliable as ever. I pray it will be there next time I drop by to visit, to remember, because it encourages me to stay strong and endure the changes for the sake of those who are watching.

Here is a message for active, professional musicians who know the importance of frequently promoting themselves and their gigs. Consider for a moment, www.SoundCloud.com … it is interesting. But, I’m beginning to think that more musicians should try promoting their song samples using Traffic Geyser www.trafficgeyser.com because the musician can have one central marketing distribution point like www.Reverbnation.com which provides a great assortment of marketing tools, and use the Traffic Geyser to post samples of song clips to many audio / video / ipod / text distribution channels while having all those channel posts point with back-links to the central promotion site. This is a very good way to get high page rank and have one central promotional marketing site from which you can convert interested music consumers into buying customers. Think about it… check it out… give me call and chat it up!

While it is good to consider the well-being need of others leading to their care where and when society can, there must be critical discernment regarding the character of a sluggard (laziness, mediocrity and incompetence) whose influence on society must be limited and contained.  Undeserved bailouts are NOT the best response from society toward those who choose to be lazy and incompetent:

Let society assist (and bailout in times of disaster not caused by incompetence) those who choose to apply themselves through their proactive  demonstration of self-discipline, self-restraint and self-government in their effort to be competent according to their age, skill, health and willingness to re-educate and learn more about how to contribute toward improving and serving society!

Special thanks to Mr. Mat at Deheasa Charter school for bringing this to my attention when we were sharing about how to teach our children political principles and precepts.

Related articles

• They aren’t just lazy and greedy… they’re actually stupid and often incompetent [RealSteveHolmes Seven yrs on Ecademy] (ecademy.com)

I pray that Part II and Part III of the movie, Atlas Shrugged, does promptly get made and shown to the public, as soon as possible.  While I could never make myself read this book back in the early 70’s when it was introduced to me, I had to read that old book with its old, crisp yellow pages after seeing the movie Part I.  I read the last 10-pages of Part I in the book to make the connection where the first of the three movies stopped with Wyatt’s Flame, and I couldn’t put down the book for the next week through the holidays.  Since having just read the book, it has helped me with words that reflect the character types that I can clearly discern within today’s American society, and I have been using these words to encourage anyone who will give me a listen to watch the Part I movie for it great drama, and then I encourage them to get the book and read it.  Why?  Because in the context of the political times in which we all live today, Atlas Shrugged clearly communicates the nature and major attributes of three character types: Producers (people with a nature of industry, ingenuity, invention, and creation); Looters (people with a nature to extract from Producers the wealth and prosperity made by people with  industrious nature, using the methods of a Looter such as political manipulation to engineer a social order by laws, fear and guns, i.e. Many people with only a government job; they are nice people but they are not a Producer’s friend); and Moochers (people with a nature of laziness, lacking a motivation of industry, sometimes called a sluggard in biblical terms).  And when Looters and Moochers collaborate through the form of “Democratic Government, i.e. popular vote (versus the other government forms: Anarchy, Republic, Democracy, Oligarchy, Monarchy) for their perceived “good”, then the popular vote of combined Looters and Moochers will drive the Producers into legal and financial slavery. I believe the making of Part II and Part III of Atlas Shrugged the movie could very well teach viewers the valuable meaning of being a people of industry working for a common good within the state of a government Republic, for the people, by the people, based on self-government, self-discipline and self-restraint.   We are the Republic of theUnited States of America, but we have forgotten who we are and how we should behave.  Now is the time for a national revival of industrious character, and the complete trilogy of Atlas Shrugged the movie is a timely tool to help us all remember what this means.

The following speech text may very well be the greatest written presentation ever submitted in support of the free market and capitalism.  It has taken me more than 30-years to get around to reading the book that contained this text, and I will not forget reading this laying in bed and not being able to put it down. After reading this I proceeded to lay and rest contemplating the significance of the speech in the context of my own life as a self-employed entrepreneur.  Every core value and principle I have worked so hard by in order to have a successful family businesses is described when reading this speech  from Atlas Shrugged.

I couldn’t make myself read the book in 1974, but this year in the closing month of 2011, I rented a copy of the DVD “Atlas Shrugged” (part I) and the viewing fully captured my interest by the drama of which the movie only covers the first third of the book.  Since the viewing, I have returned to my old 1974 copy of Atlas Shrugged and have not been able to stay away from reading it.

Because of the times in which we live with the obvious radio and TV news that demonstrates the pending conflict between industrialist entreprenuers and world wide governments whose full intent is to social engineer a global economy, it is highly recommened that  everyone read Atlas Shrugged.  With no regard to what your world view point may be, Ayn Rand was an incredible writer and philosopher who has masterfully prepared a text of political fiction drama that comes close to describing the events we read and hear about in today’s news.  After watching the movie, reading Atlas Shrugged became one of my 2011 goals before the year end.

This is now my favorite response to the question / statement: “[is] money [is] the root of all evil..”

“So you think that money is the root of all evil?” said Francisco d’Anconia. “Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil?

“When you accept money in payment for your effort, you do so only on the conviction that you will exchange it for the product of the effort of others. It is not the moochers or the looters who give value to money. Not an ocean of tears not all the guns in the world can transform those pieces of paper in your wallet into the bread you will need to survive tomorrow. Those pieces of paper, which should have been gold, are a token of honor–your claim upon the energy of the men who produce. Your wallet is your statement of hope that somewhere in the world around you there are men who will not default on that moral principle which is the root of money, Is this what you consider evil?

“Have you ever looked for the root of production? Take a look at an electric generator and dare tell yourself that it was created by the muscular effort of unthinking brutes. Try to grow a seed of wheat without the knowledge left to you by men who had to discover it for the first time. Try to obtain your food by means of nothing but physical motions–and you’ll learn that man’s mind is the root of all the goods produced and of all the wealth that has ever existed on earth.

“But you say that money is made by the strong at the expense of the weak? What strength do you mean? It is not the strength of guns or muscles. Wealth is the product of man’s capacity to think. Then is money made by the man who invents a motor at the expense of those who did not invent it? Is money made by the intelligent at the expense of the fools? By the able at the expense of the incompetent? By the ambitious at the expense of the lazy? Money is made–before it can be looted or mooched–made by the effort of every honest man, each to the extent of his ability. An honest man is one who knows that he can’t consume more than he has produced.’

“To trade by means of money is the code of the men of good will. Money rests on the axiom that every man is the owner of his mind and his effort. Money allows no power to prescribe the value of your effort except the voluntary choice of the man who is willing to trade you his effort in return. Money permits you to obtain for your goods and your labor that which they are worth to the men who buy them, but no more. Money permits no deals except those to mutual benefit by the unforced judgment of the traders. Money demands of you the recognition that men must work for their own benefit, not for their own injury, for their gain, not their loss–the recognition that they are not beasts of burden, born to carry the weight of your misery–that you must offer them values, not wounds–that the common bond among men is not the exchange of suffering, but the exchange of goods. Money demands that you sell, not your weakness to men’s stupidity, but your talent to their reason; it demands that you buy, not the shoddiest they offer, but the best that your money can find. And when men live by trade–with reason, not force, as their final arbiter–it is the best product that wins, the best performance, the man of best judgment and highest ability–and the degree of a man’s productiveness is the degree of his reward. This is the code of existence whose tool and symbol is money. Is this what you consider evil?

“But money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver. It will give you the means for the satisfaction of your desires, but it will not provide you with desires. Money is the scourge of the men who attempt to reverse the law of causality–the men who seek to replace the mind by seizing the products of the mind.

“Money will not purchase happiness for the man who has no concept of what he wants: money will not give him a code of values, if he’s evaded the knowledge of what to value, and it will not provide him with a purpose, if he’s evaded the choice of what to seek. Money will not buy intelligence for the fool, or admiration for the coward, or respect for the incompetent. The man who attempts to purchase the brains of his superiors to serve him, with his money replacing his judgment, ends up by becoming the victim of his inferiors. The men of intelligence desert him, but the cheats and the frauds come flocking to him, drawn by a law which he has not discovered: that no man may be smaller than his money. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

“Only the man who does not need it, is fit to inherit wealth–the man who would make his own fortune no matter where he started. If an heir is equal to his money, it serves him; if not, it destroys him. But you look on and you cry that money corrupted him. Did it? Or did he corrupt his money? Do not envy a worthless heir; his wealth is not yours and you would have done no better with it. Do not think that it should have been distributed among you; loading the world with fifty parasites instead of one, would not bring back the dead virtue which was the fortune. Money is a living power that dies without its root. Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it. Is this the reason why you call it evil?

“Money is your means of survival. The verdict you pronounce upon the source of your livelihood is the verdict you pronounce upon your life. If the source is corrupt, you have damned your own existence. Did you get your money by fraud? By pandering to men’s vices or men’s stupidity? By catering to fools, in the hope of getting more than your ability deserves? By lowering your standards? By doing work you despise for purchasers you scorn? If so, then your money will not give you a moment’s or a penny’s worth of joy. Then all the things you buy will become, not a tribute to you, but a reproach; not an achievement, but a reminder of shame. Then you’ll scream that money is evil. Evil, because it would not pinch-hit for your self-respect? Evil, because it would not let you enjoy your depravity? Is this the root of your hatred of money?

“Money will always remain an effect and refuse to replace you as the cause. Money is the product of virtue, but it will not give you virtue and it will not redeem your vices. Money will not give you the unearned, neither in matter nor in spirit. Is this the root of your hatred of money?

“Or did you say it’s the love of money that’s the root of all evil? To love a thing is to know and love its nature. To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men. It’s the person who would sell his soul for a nickel, who is loudest in proclaiming his hatred of money–and he has good reason to hate it. The lovers of money are willing to work for it. They know they are able to deserve it.

“Let me give you a tip on a clue to men’s characters: the man who damns money has obtained it dishonorably; the man who respects it has earned it.

“Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil. That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter. So long as men live together on earth and need means to deal with one another–their only substitute, if they abandon money, is the muzzle of a gun.

“But money demands of you the highest virtues, if you wish to make it or to keep it. Men who have no courage, pride or self-esteem, men who have no moral sense of their right to their money and are not willing to defend it as they defend their life, men who apologize for being rich–will not remain rich for long. They are the natural bait for the swarms of looters that stay under rocks for centuries, but come crawling out at the first smell of a man who begs to be forgiven for the guilt of owning wealth. They will hasten to relieve him of the guilt–and of his life, as he deserves.

“Then you will see the rise of the men of the double standard–the men who live by force, yet count on those who live by trade to create the value of their looted money–the men who are the hitchhikers of virtue. In a moral society, these are the criminals, and the statutes are written to protect you against them. But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law–men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims–then money becomes its creators’ avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they’ve passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.

“Do you wish to know whether that day is coming? Watch money. Money is the barometer of a society’s virtue. When you see that trading is done, not by consent, but by compulsion–when you see that in order to produce, you need to obtain permission from men who produce nothing–when you see that money is flowing to those who deal, not in goods, but in favors–when you see that men get richer by graft and by pull than by work, and your laws don’t protect you against them, but protect them against you–when you see corruption being rewarded and honesty becoming a self-sacrifice–you may know that your society is doomed. Money is so noble a medium that is does not compete with guns and it does not make terms with brutality. It will not permit a country to survive as half-property, half-loot.

“Whenever destroyers appear among men, they start by destroying money, for money is men’s protection and the base of a moral existence. Destroyers seize gold and leave to its owners a counterfeit pile of paper. This kills all objective standards and delivers men into the arbitrary power of an arbitrary setter of values. Gold was an objective value, an equivalent of wealth produced. Paper is a mortgage on wealth that does not exist, backed by a gun aimed at those who are expected to produce it. Paper is a check drawn by legal looters upon an account which is not theirs: upon the virtue of the victims. Watch for the day when it bounces, marked, ‘Account overdrawn.’

“When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, ‘Who is destroying the world? You are.

“You stand in the midst of the greatest achievements of the greatest productive civilization and you wonder why it’s crumbling around you, while you’re damning its life-blood–money. You look upon money as the savages did before you, and you wonder why the jungle is creeping back to the edge of your cities. Throughout men’s history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, deprived of honor. That phrase about the evil of money, which you mouth with such righteous recklessness, comes from a time when wealth was produced by the labor of slaves–slaves who repeated the motions once discovered by somebody’s mind and left unimproved for centuries. So long as production was ruled by force, and wealth was obtained by conquest, there was little to conquer, Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers–as industrialists.

“To the glory of mankind, there was, for the first and only time in history, a country of money–and I have no higher, more reverent tribute to pay to America, for this means: a country of reason, justice, freedom, production, achievement. For the first time, man’s mind and money were set free, and there were no fortunes-by-conquest, but only fortunes-by-work, and instead of swordsmen and slaves, there appeared the real maker of wealth, the greatest worker, the highest type of human being–the self-made man–the American industrialist.

“If you ask me to name the proudest distinction of Americans, I would choose–because it contains all the others–the fact that they were the people who created the phrase ‘to make money.’ No other language or nation had ever used these words before; men had always thought of wealth as a static quantity–to be seized, begged, inherited, shared, looted or obtained as a favor. Americans were the first to understand that wealth has to be created. The words ‘to make money’ hold the essence of human morality.

“Yet these were the words for which Americans were denounced by the rotted cultures of the looters’ continents. Now the looters’ credo has brought you to regard your proudest achievements as a hallmark of shame, your prosperity as guilt, your greatest men, the industrialists, as blackguards, and your magnificent factories as the product and property of muscular labor, the labor of whip-driven slaves, like the pyramids of Egypt. The rotter who simpers that he sees no difference between the power of the dollar and the power of the whip, ought to learn the difference on his own hide– as, I think, he will.

“Until and unless you discover that money is the root of all good, you ask for your own destruction. When money ceases to be the tool by which men deal with one another, then men become the tools of men. Blood, whips and guns–or dollars. Take your choice–there is no other–and your time is running out.”

This was gleaned as an excerpt from Atlas Shrugged, © Copyright, 1957, by Ayn Rand.

Ayn Rand

Russian born American novelist Ayn Rand is author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead and is originator of the philosophy of Objectivism. You can learn more about her life and philosophy at the website of the Ayn Rand Institute.

Thought Provoking Comments

1. The real quote from the New Testament,1 Timothy 6:10, is “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.” It is often misquoted, apparently by Ayn Rand, as well. Although her points about money are well taken, the real quote does not require the same moral defense. It refers to the preoccupation with obtaining wealth for wealth’s sake.
2. There is absolutely no way that the product of hard work can be evil. That’s an incomprehensible lie taught by those who want to condition the masses to accept being fleeced as a virtue. This lie is obviously many, MANY centuries old. The idea that you must sacrifice the fruits of your labors to another party without your consent is slavery. It’s also very suspicious that the most highly revered religious books demand these types of sacrifices and threatens the worst punishment imaginable to those who refuse to submit. Charity is not charity when it is forced physically or emotionally through undeserved guilt. A person must be free NOT to give away the fruits of their labors – without guilt – otherwise they become a victim.
3. The REAL evil is the scheming of those who wish to steal the product of your labors without consensually trading something that they also worked to produce. The invention of paper money was undoubtedly the greatest fraud in history. It can be (and is) created in massive quantities – unearned – by the banking cartel and then given to a government in exchange for a mortgage on the future labor of entire countries of people.
4. Paper “money” is definitely evil, but real money (gold, silver or other commodities) is the best tool ever created by man for fair and honest trade between honorable individuals.

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