The Cathartic Chaos of Camping

The Cathartic Chaos of Camping
By Henson Ray, of Henson’s Hell

First of all, I am very honored to be here today, to share with you some of the tragic highlights of my outdoor experiences. Unlike Matt, who seems to excel in everything athletic and adventurous, my journeys with nature have not always been so inspiring. Don’t get me wrong, I love being outdoors. I just don’t think the outdoors always loves me.

(Editor's Note: Oh really? Check out Matt's Adventures Gone Wrong after you finish Henson's Guest Post for a story of the almost tragic and ultimately the inspriational.)

The one consistent outdoor experience I still take part in today is the art of camping. Now some may argue that camping is not an art at all, but I disagree. If you’ve ever been to some of the campgrounds I’ve seen, there are definitely creative liberties being taken with regard to traditional camp décor. (But I digress…)

My earliest experiences with camping can be traced back to my youth, when I would camp out in my backyard, using an official army tent my Grandfather had given me. He’d been a rider in the Pony Express (or so he claimed), and this was one of those original antique two-man pup tents. (Very warm at night, very hot in the morning.)


Camping Under the Stars
On weekends, we would set the tent up in the backyard and sleep in it overnight. (Or most of the night, anyway…. Okay, maybe only a few hours, but we always started with the best of intentions.) It was a big treat to be able to sleep outdoors, under the stars, with nothing between us and the elements. Or the wild bears. Or dangerous killers who just escaped from the mental institution. Because camping was never complete until we’d scared ourselves half to death with ghost stories and horror tales. So by the time midnight came around, we were usually back inside, sleeping safely in our comfortable beds. To me, camping was only fun until you actually had to sleep. Then the reality of a cold hard ground, and a not too comfy sleeping bag made dumping the elements in favor of a soft warm bed very, very appealing.

Years would pass before my camping experiences would leave the safety of my own backyard. For when I was a teenager, my family began a series of summer sojourns northward to Canada, to take advantage of cheap vacation destinations and even cheaper camping accommodations. We drove there in my father’s van, which had two backseats that folded down to form a bed. That’s where my parents slept, while I slept outside in the pup tent. Somehow it didn’t seem fair; especially on those cold Canadian summer nights when it feels like winter. If ever the temperature threatened to dip below freezing, my parents would kindly let me out of my cage…er, I mean tent…and I was allowed to join them in the warmth of the van.


Henson cooking over the camp stove, having delusions of Michelangelo's David.
Once, on a camping trip somewhere in Canada, we arrived late and had to set up our campsite in the dark. The only available campsite was in a huge thicket of grass, which looked like it could house all kinds of horrible creatures, including Big Foot if he were so inclined to hide there. So while I tried to set the tent up in the dark, in the high grass, my mother and father worked on creating another culinary masterpiece out of macaroni and tuna fish. You guessed it, Tuna Casserole. Which is pretty easy to make in one pot. The problem was, we had an overwhelming amount of moth activity in the area, and within minutes were literally infiltrated by an entire swarm…or a school…or whatever you call a surprise attack by a group of flying insects.


Swarm of Giant Attack Moths
At first, we tried a counter attack by spraying them with anything in an aerosol can. I guess we figured it didn’t matter what we sprayed at them, as long as it hit the target. (I’m sure Pam must have some kind of ingredient that can kill a moth, right?) Anyway, after a while they moved on to another camp site and we were finally left alone to eat our dinner. Only one problem--by the time the casserole was actually scooped out from the pot, we weren’t really sure about the ingredients any more. Though my mom had done her best to cover the pot during the moth invasion, she couldn’t absolutely guarantee that some moths hadn’t made it into the mix. And sure enough, the rest of the meal was spent picking out questionable items from the casserole, little of which we could see in the dimming light of our single battery-operated lantern. So much for a pleasant meal under the stars.

After high school, I gave the pup tent away and moved on to better accommodations, none of which were outdoors. It wasn’t until four years ago, when a sense of nostalgia drove me to buy a new tent and camping gear that I finally reconnected with my life in nature. Thinking I might like to try camping again at least once, I soon found myself falling in love with the experience all over again. But this time, in a different way. Now, camping wasn’t about having fun in the backyard, or finding a cheap alternative to the local Holiday Inn; camping was about something bigger. It was a way for me to get out of my head for a day or two, and out of the stress and strain of everyday life, to commune with nature and to become whole again. Today, camping is more cathartic than chaotic, and I enjoy every minute of it. If I can, I try to get away at least three or four times during the summer; it’s even better than going to a spa. (Okay, maybe not a spa. But definitely better than going to a seedy motel.)

So in conclusion, I would like to thank Matt again for allowing me to take up some of his space with my ramblings. If you have similar camping stories you would like to share, feel free to impart them below.

Editor's Note: Thank you Henson for contributing this awesome Guest Post to MTMD. Your experiences were very entertaining. And I second Henson here as well: please share your camp stories in the comments below. And maybe, if there's enough public support, next time we can hear about Henson's experiences at the seedy motel he mentioned. Something tells me that just might be a little more interesting! ;-)

Thanks again, my friend!

Please be sure to visit Henson's Hell and It Happened In Plainfield: A Humorous Online Mystery.

Thanks for reading.

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Mom's Greatest Hits

Today is the day we honor our Mothers. And contrary to the way the saying goes, as it turns it, it might be Mother, not Father, who knew best:

1. Wash your hands. Washing your hands is one of the best ways to prevent illness and stop the spread of germs, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Be sure to cleanse thoroughly with water as hot as you can stand it and soap for at least 20 seconds every time.


2. Button up. How many times did your mom tell you to button your coat or zip up your jacket as a kid? She had a good reason: Cold weather stresses the immune system, making you more susceptible to infection.


3. Eat your vegetables. Numerous studies have confirmed that a diet rich in vegetables can strengthen your immune system and reduce your risk of developing heart disease, stroke, obesity, diabetes, and even some cancers.


4. Turn off the TV. Studies have shown that there's a direct link between TV watching and low literacy rates, obesity, and a sedentary lifestyle. Some experts also believe that TV promotes violent behavior and high-risk activities.


5. Stop touching your face. Not only does touching your face increase your risk of getting sick; it can also lead to acne, no matter how old you are. When you touch your face, the bacteria on your hands transfers to the new surface. From there, bacteria settle in your pores and create blemishes.


6. Eat your breakfast. Eating a healthy breakfast boosts your metabolism and helps to maintain a healthy body weight. In addition, a 2005 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that women who ate breakfast every day had significantly lower LDL and total cholesterol levels than women who skipped it.


7. Go to bed. It's important to go to bed at a reasonable time, maintain a constant sleep cycle, and get at least seven or eight hours of shuteye each night. Getting the proper amount of sleep helps you maintain a healthy body weight, while sleep deprivation can result in irritability, dangerous driving, and a higher disease risk.


8. Wear sunscreen. Remember, any amount of suntanning represents skin damage on the cellular level and, over time, could result in cancerous tumors. For this reason, experts recommend avoiding UV exposure completely during high-intensity hours and, if you must expose your skin to the sun, using a broad-spectrum sunscreen with an SPF of at least 15.


9. Practice safe sex. Remember those embarrassing sex talks? Your mom wasn't trying to humiliate you—she was trying to protect you. Remember, there's still no cure for AIDS, and sexually transmitted diseases can cause pelvic pain, infertility, urinary problems, and neurological complications.


10. Just say no. Each year, illegal drugs cause about 10,000 deaths in the United States, and drunk driving accounts for another 16,000. Tobacco-related diseases, including heart disease and lung cancer, kill 450,000 Americans each year.

History of Mother's Day
In the United States, Mother's Day was loosely inspired by the British day and was imported by social activist Julia Ward Howe after the American Civil War. However, it was intended as a call to unite women against war. In 1870, Julia Howe wrote the Mother's Day Proclamation as a call for peace and disarmament. Howe failed in her attempt to get formal recognition of a Mother's Day for Peace. Her idea was influenced by Ann Jarvis, a young Appalachian homemaker who, starting in 1858, had attempted to improve sanitation through what she called Mothers' Work Days. Jarvis organized women throughout the Civil War to work for better sanitary conditions for both sides, and in 1868 she began work to reconcile Union and Confederate neighbors.

When Jarvis died in 1907, her daughter, Anna Jarvis, started the crusade to found a memorial day for women. The first such Mother's Day was celebrated in Grafton, West Virginia, on 10 May 1908, in the church where the elder Ann Jarvis had taught Sunday School. Originally the Andrews Methodist Episcopal Church, this building is now the International Mother's Day Shrine (a National Historic Landmark). From there, the custom caught on — spreading eventually to 45 states. The holiday was declared officially by some states beginning in 1912. In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother's Day as a day for American citizens to show the flag in honor of those mothers whose sons had died in war.

Nine years after the first official Mother's Day, commercialization of the U.S. holiday became so rampant that Anna Jarvis herself became a major opponent of what the holiday had become. Mother's Day continues to this day to be one of the most commercially successful U.S. occasions. According to the National Restaurant Association, Mother's Day is now the most popular day of the year to dine out at a restaurant in the United States.

For example, according to IBISWorld, Americans will spend approximately $2.6 billion on flowers, $1.53 billion on pampering gifts — like spa treatments — and another $68 million on greeting cards for Mother's Day. Mother's Day will generate about 7.8% of the US jewelry industry's annual revenue this year, and Americans are expected to spend close to $3.51 billion in 2008 on dining out for Mother's Day, with brunch and dinner being the most popular dining out options.

And for those of us hundreds of miles away from our Moms, maybe a nice blog proclamation in addition to what should be arriving in the mail will work as well.

Happy Mother's Day, Mom! I love you!


Thanks for reading.

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EntreCard Love, Facts, & Friends: Tips to Make it Work for You

I have just completed one month of participation with the Blog Traffic Generation Tool EntreCard, and I have been exceptionally pleased. After just one month using EntreCard, my blog traffic is up, my Alexa and Technorati Ranks are up, I have a Google Page Rank of 4, yada, yada, yada. But more importantly, I'm having fun blogging again. I've made some awesome new friends, I've participated in some lively debates, and I've had the chance to collaborate with other bloggers all over the world.

My purpose in writing this post is to share with you what I have learned and to help you make EntreCard work for you by sharing some insights with you. So if you use EntreCard, I hope you'll read this. But first, I want to share some love. The following awesome people with great blogs are those that have dropped the most EntreCards on my blog in the last 30 Days:

Simon in Australia hasn't missed a day dropping on MTMD

• 1. 32 Card Drops. How he did this I don't know! Vivid Lamp.


• 2. 30 Card Drops. On The Bricks.


• 3. 27 Card Drops. 60 Were Enough.


• 4. 26 Card Drops. Roxiticus Desperate Housewives.


• 5. 25 Card Drops. Absolutely Mom's.


• 5. 25 Card Drops. Is a mans world.


• 5. 25 Card Drops. Juliana's World.


• 5. 25 Card Drops. New York Nitty-Gritty.


• 9. 23 Card Drops. Sourkandy.


• 10. 22 Card Drops. Margie and Edna's Basement.

DROP AND RUN and DROPPING POLICIES
After one month of dropping 150-250 cards a day, I've come across a lot of posts complaining about the phemenomen known as the "Drop and Run." These are EntreCard users who drop their card and go on to another site without reading or commenting on the site they've dropped on. My response to these complainers, with no disrespect intended, is just to get over yourself. Seriously. Card Dropping takes time. It generally takes two-three hours to drop 150-250 cards. That's a significant amount of time every day. I don't think there are many people, unless blogging is their full time profession, who can spend that amount of time, read every new post, comment on every post, and write their own posts while fitting in their lives somewhere else in the day.

I admit it, I Drop and Run. I have no choice. I have limited access to highspeed internet, so I'm pretty much confined to dropping before I go into work, while I'm on lunch break from work, or after my work for the day is done. Dropping is a serious time committment. However, that doesn't mean that I don't read the posts. The trick is to catch the eye of the card dropper.

CATCH THE EYE

The ways you make card droppers stop and look at your blog are very simple:

• Keep your content fresh, update your blog every day or every other day. Nothing makes me want to drop and run more than a blog that hasn't been updated in a week or more.


• Use Eye-catching graphics. I can't emphasize this enough. My most popular posts are my Almost Wordless Wednesday posts because I open the posts with eye-catching, beautiful, and dramatic graphics. If all you're feeding your readers is text, they're less likely to stay around long enough to find the content that interests them.


• Create interesting content. There are so many blogs that make posts whining or complaining about something. Their health, blog traffic sites like EntreCard, their alexa rank. To be honest, nobody really cares. If your blog is a personal blog diary and you have a loyal readership, most of your readers will care that you're not feeling well. But Card droppers won't. So if you must write about your sickness, don't do it in a whiny way about how horrible you feel. Do some research. If you have the flu, find images of the flu virus, find maps of the disease spread. Talk about how the flu mutates every year and write about how the health organizations guess at what vaccines will work for the strains and how they determine that. That stuff is interesting. The fact that you have the flu and that you feel horrible is not.


• Clean up your blog! I can't emphasize this enough. Blogs that are covered with every widget and button and blog award known to man or woman, ads everywhere, sidebars that don't load correctly because images in them are too wide, music that autoplays.... All this stuff slows down load time and makes it harder to find your content--which is why a visitor will want to stick around and read your blog. Organize your sidebars, and eliminate anything that really isn't essential. I mean really, do I need to see a sidebar that takes up my whole screen showing me where your last 20 readers came from geographically and from what IP address or link referrer? I really don't because as a reader, I don't care.

If you catch my eye, whether it be a snappy headline, a beautiful graphic, or a great page layout, I promise you I'll pause from my dropping and take a look around. More importantly, most others will too.

RECIPROCITY, MY DROPPING HABITS and POLICY
Some people that I have had conversations with also wonder why people drop on their site infrequently or in spurts or why they stop dropping altogether. Having discussed what catches my eye, I now want to cover briefly the insights I've learned about how people drop their entrecards, and specifically, how I drop mine. Because some sites I do drop on every day, but for most others, I'm less regular.

Basically, dropping cards for me, as I've already stated, has to be arranged around my time, mostly during the day, when I'm not working. I'm a reciprocal kind of guy. If you drop on me, I'm usually going to drop on you. But not always. The way I go about dropping is this:

• First, when I first log on to entrecard, I go to my dashboard. Every entrecard that is currently at the top of my screen I will drop on right then. I will drop on all those cards, from left to right, and I will follow every entrecard on each of those sites until I run into a dead end: a card being advertised I've already dropped on, or one I have chosen not to drop on because of how long the page takes to load, or one in which I've decided I just don't like the blog.


• Second, after that, I will drop on every single one of the advertisers for my widget currently in the cue. They're advertising on my site, it's only fair that I drop on them. Maybe I'll want to learn more about them and read their blogs. My advertisers usually become favorites.


• Third, I will click on the statistics tab, and click on all of the blogs listed as the most frequent card droppers on my site (The top 10 I recognized at the top of this post.), then I will click on all those sites listed that I had advertised on that generated the most clicks to my site, and finally, I'll click on the last box in the category that shows the greatest cost per click value yield.

By this time, I've probably already dropped cards on 75-150 blogs.

• Lastly, the end of my blogging day is the most fun for me. I save all my favorites for last--the blogs I have favorite on my EntreCard page, or the blogs I have linked to on my sidebar, or the blog communities I have joined--such as Red Hot Drops.
  
  
  I click on my dashboard, and go to my favorites, and then I drop on each and every one of them depending on my time available. I'll either hit these blogs every day, or at the least, every other day--depending on how they usually update their sites.

So if you want me to drop on you, and drop on you regularly--be one of the Top 10 Droppers on my site as reported by EntreCard statistics, Advertise on my site, Generate a lot of traffic to my site when I advertise on yours, promote my blog and give me a reason to link to you directly, or simply become one of my favorites. It's that simple.

FUN STUFF: MAKING FRIENDS AND BUILDING A LOYAL READERSHIP


Bree, or Roxy--she answers to both--at Roxiticus Desperate Housewives, Matt at Matt-Speak, Henson Ray at Henson's Hell and my friend from Nova Scotia at Sizzling Popcorn.com have all become my best blogging friends because of comments I left on their posts, recommendations I wrote for their blogs on EntreCard, or both.

It's easy to make friends in the blogosphere. If you read something that interests you, comment on the post. If you see something that catches your eye, comment. If someone advertises on your EntreCard widget, send them an EntreCard message thanking them. If someone has formed a blog promotion community, see if it's right for you and decide if you should join. It's like your mother always said: If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say it at all (or write it), and if you do have something nice to say, shout it with a great barbaric yalp from the rooftop of the world. (Yeah, Whitman is one of my favorite poets.)

Roxy and I read each other's blogs every day, comment on each other's posts, have running discussions in the comments section on our blogs and on others on whom we've commented on, and we vote for each other in Battle of the Blogs on another blog promotion site Blog Explosion.

Matt and I get into great discussions and debates, our posts have sparked ideas resulting in other posts on each other's blogs, and we're looking at collaborating on another project together.

Henson Ray just wrote the first guest post I've hosted on my site in two years, and it's awesome. It'll be up Monday morning and I really hope you'll all spend a few minutes to read it. It's very insightful, but mostly it's f*cking hilarious as Henson reminisces about some early camping experiences.

And my as yet nameless friend from Sizzling Popcorn will be collaborating, Siskel and Ebert/Ebert and Roeper style on a movie review for the upcoming film: The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian. The movie comes out Friday. Look for our review late Friday night or early Saturday.

See, these are the things you need to do to build your blogging community. You need to comment, you need to interact, you need to drop cards, you need to engage other bloggers. You can wish for traffic and hope that people will find you through your EntreCard, but don't expect a lot of results. EntreCard is a tool. And like every tool that works, it has to be used and you have to expend some elbow grease using it.

So in conclusion: Drop on the blogs that drop on you. They will become loyal droppers and should stick around to read your blog. Clean up your blog to attract the eye of casual browsers and droppers. Comment, comment, comment on posts that interest you and that you admire or blogs that you like. People love compliments, so always be positive. It's okay to disagree in a comment, but be respectful and keep it objective. It's never personal, or at least it shouldn't be.

I hope this post is at least informative for those of you reading it. If it helps just one of you, writing it has been more than worth my time. And I want to extend a sincere thanks to the bloggers who drop on me religiously, who accept my ads on their widgets, who generate traffic to my site, and whom I hope, are becoming regular readers and fans of MTMD. Thank you, my friends.

And thanks for reading.

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Tibetan-Chinese Team Summit Everest with Olympic Torch

As reported on MTMD earlier, a Chinese team was attempting to summit Mt. Everest with the Olympic Torch. On Thursday, that team took the Olympic flame to the top of the world in a spectacular feat dreamed up to underscore China's ambitions for the Beijing games.

The climbers could be heard struggling for breath in a live television broadcast as five torchbearers each shuffled a few feet before passing on the flame to the next person. A colorful Tibetan prayer flag lined the path and fluttered in the wind. The final torchbearer, a Tibetan woman named Cering Wangmo, stood silently on the peak with her torch while other team members unfurled small Chinese and Olympic flags. They then clustered together, cheering "We made it," and "Beijing welcomes you."


"One World, One Dream," team captain Nyima Cering yelled as his torch was lit, repeating the slogan for the Beijing Olympics. "We have lit the torch on top of the world," another climber said. The stop at the top of Everest was meant to be the highlight of the Beijing Olympics torch relay. China has billed the Beijing Olympics as a glorious showcase of its rapid development from impoverished agrarian nation to industrial powerhouse.

But the Everest relay has been criticized from the outset because of China's often harsh rule over Tibet - where the mountain is located on the border with Nepal - and it drew even more intense scrutiny after Tibetans across western China erupted in anti-government protests in March. Organizers still hoped that the dramatic image of the torch atop Everest would counter some of the damaging publicity from protests that marred the international leg of the torch relay. (See The Politicization of the Beijing Olympics.)

Tibetan activists continue to accuse Beijing of using the climb to reassert its control over Tibet. China says it has ruled Tibet for centuries, although many Tibetans say their homeland was essentially an independent state for most of that time.


Politics aside, taking the torch to Everest's peak and broadcasting it live was a major technological feat and accomplishment. China's state broadcaster CCTV spent heavily to build a television studio at base camp and to construct transmission points at four camps on the mountain face. The team used torches designed by rocket scientists to take the flame along the final icy incline leading to the peak of Mount Everest. Fueled by propane, the flame burned brightly in the frigid, windy, oxygen-thin Himalayan air thanks to technology that keeps rocket motors burning in the upper reaches of the atmosphere, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. The flame was carried most of the way in a special metal canister. As the team neared the summit, they used a wand to pass the flame to the torch.

The Everest flame is separate from the main Olympic torch, which on Thursday was on the opposite side of China, in the southeastern province of Guangdong, the heart of Chinese manufacturing. The main torch was not taken up Everest because a delay due to bad weather would have thrown the schedule off for the whole relay. The main flame will cross every region and province of China, returning to Beijing on Aug. 6, two days ahead of the opening ceremony.

The 19-member final assault team was comprised of both ethnic Han Chinese and Tibetan members, underscoring another government theme - ethnic unity. Significantly, the team captain and the final torchbearer were both Tibetans.

Thanks for reading.

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100 Most Influential of the Last 100 Years

Time Magazine last week released it's list of the World's 100 Most Influential People. With any list, there is a lot of subjectivity and varying methodologies for inclusion. (For a great discussion on the merits of this list, please visit my friend Matt over at Matt-Speak.) While I agree with many names on this list, the majority of them I don't. So, being the arrogant and opinionated individualist that I am, I decided to compile my own list of the 100 Most Influential over the last 100 years.

Feel free to comment and tell me which names you agree with and which names you think I must have been out of my mind to include. ;-)

• ABBA: I'm totally serious. Though they haven't been together for 25 years, they are more popular than ever thanks to no less than 20 tribute bands performing around the world right now; Hollywood (Muriel's Wedding, Priscilla: Queen of the Desert, Ugly Betty, The Office), and the respect and influence their peers have given and acknowledged over time (U2, Phil Collins, Marshall Crenshaw, John Lennon, John Lord of Deep Purple and more). Not to mention that juggernaut of a jukebox musical called Mamma Mia! which has raked in over $2 billion and seen by more than 30 million people worldwide and which will take the world by storm in 2008 thanks to the movie being released July 18th starring Meryl Streep.
  The thing about ABBA that appeals to so many is that their music is generally happy. Who can listen to Dancing Queen for five seconds and not begin to smile? In the 1970s, with Vietnam, Watergate and rising energy prices, the world needed to escape, if only for a little while. In the last decade, with the Iraq War, the faltering economy and rising energy prices, the world needs to escape again, if only for a little while. ABBA music and Mamma Mia! provide that escape with their feel-good rhythms and infectious melodies. Oh, and the 360 million albums they sold while they were together still ranks third behind only Elvis Presley and The Beatles, who are also on this list.


• Anthony, Susan B.: credited with gaining women the right to vote in the U.S.


• Ball, Lucille and Desi Arnaz: perhaps the funniest comedic pair ever to grace television; I Love Lucy is still on the air more than 50 years later. But more than that, they innovated a 3 camera system for broadcasting television, and were the first to record their shows on tape. Their television company, Desilu, is also famous for being the studio to produce another series some of you might have heard of as well: Star Trek.


• Bannister, Roger: the first human being to run a mile in under four minutes.


• The Beatles: the greatest group of all time, mostly because they were the first rock group. Their lyrics were sometimes hokey, but their music was always original, groundbreaking, and has proved to stand the test of time. They were major influences in almost every other musical act that came after them, including ABBA.


• The Bee Gees: along with ABBA, Olivia Newton-John, Andy Gibb, Donna Summer, Kris Kristofferson and Earth Wind and Fire performed at the charity concert at the United Nations in 1979: "Music for UNICEF". At this concert, each artist donated the royalties in perpetuity of one of their songs to UNICEF. This was well before the "Band-Aid" and "We Are The World" charity events. The Bee Gees are also inextricably linked to Saturday Night Fever and the Disco Era, having written, performed, or both most of the recognizable hits of that genre.


• Begin, Menachem: Prime Minister of Israel, and along with Anwar Sadat of Egypt, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize for working towards peace in the Middle East.


• Bin Laden, Osama: makes this list in infamy for his abililty to spread terror throughout the world.


• Birdseye, Clarence: founder of the modern frozen foods industry.


• Brower, David: Longtime environmentalist and leader of the Sierra Club.


• Cameron, James: filmmaker. Titanic is still the highest grossing film of all time and has received more Oscars than any other film, excepting The Return of the Kingwhich is tied with Titanic. Cameron is also known for other, smaller films, such as Terminator.


• Carson, Rachel: with her groundbreaking book Silent Spring, Rachel Carson almost single-handedly launched the modern environmental movement. Earth Day was soon created following the publishing of this book.


• Churchill, Winston: Prime Minister of Britain during World War II.


• Clinton, Hillary: In addition to her life-long advocacy in support of children, Hillary Clinton made history in 2008 as the first legitamate female candidate for President of the United States.


• Comaneci, Nadia: with her string of 10s in gynastics under direction of her coach Bela Karoyli for Romania at the Montreal Olympics in 1976; Nadia changed women's gymnastics forever.


• Couric, Katie: the first woman to anchor the storied CBS Evening News.


• Cronkite, Walter: following in the footsteps of Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite is a journalistic legend and longtime anchor of the CBS Evening News.


• Cruise, Tom: still arguably the most popular actor in Hollywood history.


• The Dalai Lama: Spiritual Leader of the Tibetan people and main figure humanizing the Human Rights struggles in China.


• Disney, Walt: in addition to Mickey Mouse, the films we have all adored as children, the creator of DisneyLand and DisneyWorld; Walt was a humanitarian as well.


• The Dixie Chicks: Grammy winning country music stars who stood up to the Bush Administration following the beginning of the Iraq War. Following their unpopular convictions at the time, they incurred great personal costs, death threats, and more--including harassment by the US Government; and have been vindicated by time.


• Einstein, Albert: King of Physics.


• Elizabeth II, Queen of England: Perhaps the longest-serving monarch presiding over her country during the period of greatest change the world has ever seen.


• Fleming, Alexander: Discoverer of Penicillin.


• Fleming, Peggy: America's first true Ice Princess and Olympic Gold Medalist in Ladies Figure Skating.


• Ford, Henry: Fine-tuned assembly-line production and put America to work


• Gandhi: Non-violent resistance.


• Gates, Bill and Steve Jobs: Creators/Innovators of MS-DOS, the disk operating system of PCs which is the underpining behind Windows; and the GUI (graphical user interface) which was the initial uniqueness of the Mac and Apple Computers. Where would we be right now without our personal computers?


• Gordon, Doug, Jamie McEwan, Tom McEwan, Roger Zbel and Wick Walker: Although you've never heard of any of them, they are the ones responsible for first descent of the Tsang Po River--the whitewater equivalent of Mt. Everest.


• Gore, Al: Nobel Prize Winner, advocate for the environmental movement, and world statesman. Wouldn't it be interesting if Al Gore were drafted at the Democratic Convention to be the Democratic Nominee for President of the United States?


• Hamill, Dorothy: Olympic Gold Medalist in Ladies Figure Skating in 1976, Dorothy was everywhere with her "Short and Sassy" Hairdo, the Hamill Camel, nad the spokeswoman for Campbell Soup.


• Hamilton, Laird: Big Wave Surfer, Model, Fitness Guru.


• Hawking, Stephen: Physicist primarily known for his theories in cosmology and quantum gravity.


• Hefner, Hugh: Founder of Playboy, created an empire, and through his publication helped to inform about and liberalize sex and sexuality.


• Hemingway, Ernest: Nobel and Pulitizer Prize-winning American Novelist, Short Story Writer and Journalist.


• Herzl, Theodor: Wrote an essay entitled The Jewish State, which became the rationale for and put in motion the creation of the State of Israel.


• Hillary, Sir Edmund and Tenzing Norgay: First to Summit Mt. Everest.


• Hitler, Adolph: Very inspiring dictator with dreams of creating a superior race while conducting genocide: most famously the Jewish Holocaust, but with an equal number of non-Jews as well. If any good can come from Adolph Hitler's life, he should be kept in the front of everyone's mind as an example of the need to be wary of inspirational speech.


• Jackson, Michael: The King of Pop.


• The Kennedy Family: The closest the United States has ever come to having its own Royal Family, this one family has probably had more influence in American Political, Social, and Literary life than any other.


• Korbut, Olga: Before there was Nadia, there was Olga: the darling of the 1972 Munich Olympic Games for her Uneven Bars Routine.


• Krakauer, Jon: author of Into The Wild and Into Thin Air, Krakauer is the preeminent outdoors writer of our time.


• Kroc, Ray: though not the founder of McDonald's, he made them what they are.


• Kwan, Michelle: Perhaps the most accomplished ladies figure skater of all time, Michelle Kwan dominated the World Figure Skating scene for 13 years, and although she never won the Olympic Gold Medal, with her five World Championships and nine US Championships, and her grace, elegance, humility and true love and respect for the sport, Michelle Kwan has probably influenced more young girls than any other sports champion.


• Leinweber, Ruth: My Debate Coach, Honors Lit, World Lit and AP English Teacher. We all have had one or two special teachers that have been major influences in our lives. Ruth Leinweber was mine, and she makes this list as a representative of her profession which shapes the lives of every generation in ways we can only imagine.


• Lombardi, Vince: Legendary Football Coach who spoke on what it takes to win.


• Lucas, George: "May the force be with you," creator of Star Wars.


• Luther King, Jr., Martin: Pivotal leader of the American Civil Rights movement.


• Madonna: Master of Reinvention, Unabashed opponent of hypocrisy and double-standards, particularly as they pertain to sexual and religious mores, one of the greatest female recording acts of all time--acknowledging her influence by ABBA with the 2006 global hit Hung Up, which is primarily a sampling of the ABBA hit Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!


• Mandela, Nelson: Former President of South Africa, anti-apartheid activist and leader of the African National Congress.


• Meir, Golda, one of the founders of the state of isarel and its 4th Prime Minister. She was also only the third woman to ever be a Prime Minister or President of any country, and the first woman in the world to do so without a relative being head of state.


• Mom and Dad: No one influences anyone more so than our parents. Without any teaching, without any training, without any guidebook, our parents collectively have the power to create the world we hope for, or to destroy it. No group is more important.


• Morrison, Toni: Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-Winning American Novelist.


• Muir, John: Founder of the Sierra Club.


• Murphy Brown: As the only fictional character on this list, Murphy Brown--played by Candice Bergen--actively engaged Dan Quayle--then Vice President of the United States--over the issue of deciding to have a baby out of wedlock and be a single-mother. Dan Quayle actually sent a stuffed animal to the fictional Murphy Brown. The writers of Murphy Brown skewered Dan Quayle unrelentlingly, and undoubtedly contributed to the failure of George Herbert Walker Bush being re-elected President of the United States.


• Murrow, Edward R.: Murrow set the standard of modern television journalism, beginning the storied era of the CBS Evening News by taking on McCarthy in the 1950s.


• NASA: The Moon Landing, Voyager, Galileo, Cassini, the Mars Rovers, Satellite Communication, and all the applied space sciences that effect our lives in countless ways every single day. Nuff said.


• Navratilova, Martina: Not only the greatest tennis player, male or female that has ever lived with more championships than anyone else; Martina Navartilova is a courageous leader who defected from Czechoslovakia to the United States in defiance of the Iron Curtain, gained US Citizenship, came out of the closet as a lesbian at great personal cost when it was not "popular" or "acceptable" to do so, and then later, in protest of Bush Administration policies, regained her Czech Republic citizenship. Martina Navratilova is a great athlete and a great human believing following her own personal convictions and is a role model for us all.


• Newton-John, Olivia: Loved all around the world for her performance as Sandy in Grease, a participant in the Concert for UNICEF, breast cancer survivor and spokesperson; Olivia Newton-John helped kick-start the fitness movement with one of the biggest hit songs of all time in 1981: Physical, and has been a leading activist for environmental issues throughout her long career.


• Nobel, Alfred: the inventor of both Dynamite and the Nobel Peace Prize.


• O’Connor, Sandra Day: Not just the first female Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, but for the better part of three decades, Sandra Day O'Connor balanced the court in it's decisions and held swing votes keeping the court from swinging either too far to the left or to the right.


• Oppenheimer, Robert: The father of the Atom Bomb.


• Owens, Jesse: an African American track and field athlete. He participated in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, where he achieved international fame by winning four gold medals: one each in the 100 meters, the 200 meters, the long jump, and as part of the 4x100 meter relay team--much to the consternation of Adolph Hitler and his ideas of African Americans being an "inferior" race.


• Parks, Rosa: By her simple refusal to give up her bus seat to a white man, Rosa Parks made international news and helped put an end to segregation in America.


• Pele: widely regarded as the greatest soccer player of all time.


• Picasso, Pablo: Groundbreaking artist and founder of the Cubist movement.


• Presley, Elvis: The King of Rock n Roll. No other performer in music has as much influence in the industry. From his many blockbuster movies to his swiveling hips on the Ed Sullivan Show, Elvis was a performer the likes of which we'll probably never see again.


• Rather, Dan: Followed where Cronkite left off on the CBS Evening News.


• Reagan, Ronald: The "Cowboy President," Ronald Reagan hugged us as a nation following the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger shortly after lift-off, and was in the right place at the right time to help end the Cold War for good with his challenges to Mikail Gorbachev to "tear down that wall,". Not only was the Berlin Wall torn down, Gorbachev put into place a program known as perestroika, which eventually led to the break-up of the Soviet Union and changed Europe forever.


• Redfield, John: author of The Celestine Prophecy which was pretty much the beginning of the golden age of new-age and pseudo-religious literature.


• Regret, Genuine Risk, Winning Colors: Before women were allowed to vote and Susan B. Anthony proved victorious, in 1915 Regret became the first filly to win the Kentucky Derby, proving once and for all that the girls can compete with the boys. In the 134 years of the Kentucky Derby, only three fillies have ever won: Regret, Genuine Risk in 1980, and Winning Colors in 1988. Last Saturday, the latest filly to attempt this feat, Eight Belles, finished second and moments later collapsed with two shattered ankles.


• Retton, Mary-Lou: The first American Woman to win the All-Around Gold Medal in Olympic gymnastics. Like Nadia, Mary-Lou was coached by Bela Karolyi.


• Rockne, Knute: an American football player and is regarded as one of the greatest coaches in college football history. The legend around the "Gipper" only enhances the storied history of the Notre Dame football program.


• The Roosevelts, Eleanor and Franklin Delano: FDR was the only 4-term President of the United States. Following his last term in office, a constitutional amendment was passed to limit Presidents to just two terms. Through his public works programs, FDR worked dilligently to bring the US out of the Great Depression. Eleanor Roosevelt, as First Lady of the United States, supported the New Deal policies of her husband and assumed a role as an advocate for civil rights. After her husband's death in 1945, she continued to be an internationally prominent author and speaker for the New Deal coalition.


• Rowlings, J.K.: The author of the Harry Potter series, perhaps the greatest achievement in children's literature of all time.


• Rudolph, Wilma: Inspirational Olympic Gold Medalist. Wilma Rudolph overcame the crippling of her legs from polio to win three gold medals in track and field in the 1960 Rome Olympic Games.


• Russert, Tim: Perhaps the most respected journalist on the air today, Tim Russert is the host of Meet the Press, a frequent Presidential Debate Moderator, and author.


• Sadat, Anwar, along with Menachem Begin, Sadat shared the Nobel Peace Prize for the Camp David Accords. He was assassinated shortly afterwards.


• Sagan, Carl: Cosmologist and philosopher, his favorite phrase was "Billions and billions...."


• Salk, Jonas: Inventor of the Polio Vaccine.


• Schembechler, Bo: Legendary football coach of the University of Michigan, Bo ranks among the greatest coaches of all time and led what is still the winningest football program in all of college football.


• Sinatra, Frank: Old blue eyes. Before Elvis Presley and the Beatles, there was Frank Sinatra.


• Spencer, Lady Diana: World Humanitarian, she was larger than life.


• Spielberg, Stephen: Schindler's List, E.T., Munich, Indiana Jones.


• Spitz, Mark: Still the first and only winner of 7 Gold Medals in a single Olympic Games, Mark Spitz won gold for the U.S. in swimming at the 1972 Munich Games. As an American Jew, Mark Spitz competed despite the risk to his personal safety while the Israeli team had been taken hostage and assassinated.


• Stalin, Joseph: like Hitler, responible for the genocide of 20 million human beings, but unlike Hitler, Stalin happened to be on the United State's side at the time.


• Steinam, Gloria: Leader of the Femininst Movement in the U.S.


• Streep, Meryl: Perhaps the greatest actor that has ever lived, with more Oscar Nominations than anyone else in history. See her this summer in Mamma Mia!: the movie version of the global smash musical based on the songs of ABBA.


• Tolkien, J.R.R.: He gave us The Lord of the Rings, the greatest science fiction/fantasy trilogy ever written.


• Truman, Harry: Thankfully to this day, the only human being who ever had to command the use of the atomic bomb, and by doing so, ended World War II.


• Twain, Mark: or Samuel Clemens, but better known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American humorist, satirist, lecturer and writer. Twain is most noted for his novels Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, which has since been called the Great American Novel, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. He is also known for his quotations. During his lifetime, Twain became a friend to presidents, artists, industrialists and European royalty. Twain enjoyed immense public popularity, and his keen wit and incisive satire earned him praise from both critics and peers. American author William Faulkner called Twain "the father of American literature."


• Weber, Sir Andrew Lloyd: Along with Tim Rice, Weber invented the Rock Opera with Jesus Christ, Superstar and changed the course of musical theater with his other groundbreaking productions of Evita, Starlight Express, Cats, Joseph, and The Phantom of the Opera.


• White, E. B.: Before there was Harry Potter, there was Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, and The Trumpet of the Swan.


• Winfrey, Oprah: When Oprah talks, people listen and spend their money.


• Woods, Tiger: The greatest golfer of all time, and is now more and more regarded as teh greatest athlete of all time.


• Woodward and Bernstein: Exposed the Watergate tapes and put an end to the Presidency of Richard Milhouse Nixon.


• Wright Brothers: Well, I guess you could say that without them, the airlines wouldn't be going bankrupt right now; nor would there be almost instanteous spreads of deadly diseases around the world; but neither of those characterizations would be fair. Air travel has shrunk the planet. No invention, except the internet, has contributed more to the evolution of a truly global society, for better or for worse.


• Yamaguchi, Kristi: Last on my list, and not least, Kristi Yamaguchi, Olympic Gold Medalist in Ladies Figure Skating was the last true American Ice Princess prior to Michelle Kwan. She was a role model for young girls the same way Michelle Kwan was with her grace and class and humility; and now she is entertaining again as the favorite to win Season Six of Dancing with the Stars; and she is inspiring again a whole new audience with her grace and class and humility in tact.

Thanks for reading.

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