We’re in the August Dog Days, which at our house are the August Pussycat Days. Our tortoiseshell cat Tivoli stays out all night and half the day. Days, we see her sleeping outside in the heat and humidity of my herb bed, on her back, all four feet in the air. We have no idea what she does at night. She comes in, morning and evening, to tank up on food. Then she stretches out on her side on the carpet – looking about ten feet long – with her tail curled above her. The curl means she is pleased indeed with life. She will therefore favor us with a nap, stretched out on the pathway between kitchen and living room.

     As a human in Virginia, I find the August Dog Days a good time to stay indoors, where our faithful air conditioner labors day and night, and I labor on the newsletter.

     This issue has treasures for seniors, items 5 through 9.

     Plus we have much good stuff for writers, items 10 through 18. Actually, some of it is better than good. If only I’d had access to this information when I began my writing career at the age of 62, I’d have been saved so much trauma. If you know a writer who doesn’t get Tour the Sites, PLEASE ask him or her to put “tourthesites.com” into the computer address box and click on the August 15 issue of the newsletter.

     Janette Blackwell

----Table Of Contents----

1. Funny Cats Video
2. Feeling Droopy?
3. You Can Do A Lot With A Moose
4. Don’t Mess With Grandma!
5. Why Andy Rooney Prefers Older Women
6. Knees Wearing Out?
7. Uncle Sam Loves Mom And Dad
8. That Old AARP Again
9. No, No, Not A Nursing Home!
10. How To Find The Right Word
11. How To Write With Style
12. How To Eliminate Writer’s Block
13. How To Write A Successful Blog
14. How To Write A Really Rotten Novel
15. How To Take Advantage Of A Writer
16. How To Encourage A Writer
17. How To Help A Freelance Writer
18. How To Help A Self-Publishing Writer

1. FUNNY CATS VIDEO

     YOUTUBE.COM has quite a few “funny cat” videos: 42,600 the last time I checked. I think the non-YouTube video listed below is the best of the lot. Hope you like it too.

http://dailymotion.alice.it/it/cluster/animals/featured/video/x19bkr_cats-its-oh-so-quiet

2. FEELING DROOPY?

     To dump that droop, watch and listen to this speed painting of a moose. Four minutes, 25 seconds, nice moose. No better looking than your average moose, but how much can you do with a moose?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pL3flxa-QNQ

3. YOU CAN DO A LOT WITH A MOOSE

     Actually you can do a lot with a moose if you bring it up from babyhood. This Finnish family did, resulting in an amazing video.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Qztl8SGjd_Y

4. DON’T MESS WITH GRANDMA!

     Click below for a great senior moment:

http://www.tomsjokes.com/en/pics/116072037322103.html

5. WHY ANDY ROONEY PREFERS OLDER WOMEN

     I don’t always care for Andy’s spiels, but here he shows splendid good taste and intelligence. The fact that I am an older woman has, of course, nothing to do with my opinion.

http://www.vivaconsulting.com/wellness/28value.html

6. KNEES WEARING OUT?

     If your knees are giving you twinges, you may wonder if exercise will make things worse. Here’s an authority’s opinion:

     “Other than traumatic injury, Dr. Vetter notes, very few activities are actually harmful to the knees. ‘Even with running, with all the pounding up and down, there is not a single study that shows running is particularly damaging to the knees,’ she says. ‘As long as you’re keeping active and keeping your legs healthy and strong, and you’re doing that by running, that’s fine.’”

     Click below for the whole article. If you scroll down the article to “Avoiding Injury,” you’ll find valuable recommendations by the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons.

http://healthlink.mcw.edu/article/1031002271.html

7. UNCLE SAM LOVES MOM AND DAD

     If you’re a U.S. senior, your government wants you to be happy. Really. You are, after all, a taxpayer, and seniors vote regularly too. The “voting regularly” part being by far the most important political attribute of seniors. I know: I’ve worked on Capitol Hill. I hear people who should know better say that “by the time I retire, the Social Security system will have collapsed.” Nonsense. The Social Security system will change over time, of course, but it will collapse only if all the people on social security quit voting. And, while a few of us forget to vote now and then, most of us remember just fine.

     Click below for a site where Uncle Sam shows his love for Mom and Dad:

http://www.usa.gov/Topics/Seniors.shtml

8. THAT OLD AARP AGAIN

     If I mention the AARP a lot, it’s because their site has so many resources for seniors. They have a lot of the material on the government site above, PLUS much else. For example, here’s a treasure, called, prosaically, “INTERNET RESOURCES.” Please don’t despise it for its lack of pizzaz. Just check it out. For example, under “Finding Community Services,” you’ll see, “Free Or Low Cost Services By State.” And “Additional Support In My Own Home.” Is that good stuff or what?

http://www.aarp.org/internetresources/

9. NO, NO, NOT A NURSING HOME!

     A nursing home is everyone’s dread, but now there’s a movement to change them in profound ways. Nursing home residents say they want to decide “how and when they use the phone or leave a facility for visits, who their roommate is, what food they eat, and what time they wake up and go to bed.” Sounds impossible, but maybe it isn’t. There are now nursing homes where you can “forget hospital hallways and double rooms with flimsy privacy curtains. Some cutting-edge homes have living rooms, country kitchens, private bedrooms and baths -- available to all residents, including those on Medicaid.” (Emphasis mine.) Read about it at:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/11/AR2007061101926.html

     And here’s more, about a nursing home that has had a “culture change,” breaking it into small units where snacks are always available and refrigerator raiding is encouraged:

http://www.culturechangenow.com/stories/mh_roger.html

     I just hope they get these culture changes in place before I land in one and want some watermelon for a midnight snack.

10. HOW TO FIND THE RIGHT WORD

     ANSWERS.COM used to be a nice little site where I could get the spelling, pronunciation, and linguistic origin of a word. It kept adding stuff, and I couldn’t find pronunciations anymore. Answers.com and I had grown apart. I took it out of my bookmarks list.

     Turns out we needed counseling, not a divorce. At the top of its entrance page it lists many options. Click on “Reference,” and find half a dozen kinds of encyclopedia, including the U.S. Foreign Policy Encyclopedia and the Mideast History Encyclopedia. Plus antonyms, world chronology, and on and on. Click on “Words,” and you’ll find several kinds of dictionary, Roget’s Thesaurus, AND word pronunciation and linguistic origins. See, we needed counseling, not a divorce. Let it strut its stuff at

http://www.answers.com/

     BIG HUGE THESAURUS does one of the few things Roget’s Thesaurus doesn’t: it gives you words that rhyme and words that, as they put it, “sound alike.” If you write poetry that rhymes, you’ll love it. It also gives you ideas for blog posts and story plots. The plots are really strange, but maybe they’d start your brain cells to moving, I don’t know. Try it at

http://words.bighugelabs.com/

     And what do I have bookmarked now? DICTIONARY.COM, where I can immediately find a word’s spelling, pronunciation and linguistic origins, no fooling around. It also has Roget’s Thesaurus if I click on “Thesaurus.”

http://dictionary.reference.com/

11. HOW TO WRITE WITH STYLE

     Kurt Vonnegut was a jim-dandy writer. He was so good that two websites have his advice on writing. The advice is different on each website, and it’s all valuable. Here’s the first site:

http://www.americanstate.org/vonnegut.html

     And here’s a longer message from Vonnegut:

http://www.harmonize.com/probe/aids/manual/style.htm

12. HOW TO ELIMINATE WRITER’S BLOCK

     I’ve never tried this technique, as I never get writer’s block (my hapless e-mail correspondents will testify to that). The technique does, however, sound like it would work:

http://www.copywriting1.com/2007/03/eliminate-writers-block-forever.html

13. HOW TO WRITE A SUCCESSFUL BLOG

     PUREBLOGGING.COM is devoted to your blogging success. And, like many online sites, it offers so much a person can get lost. Try scrolling down to the categories in the righthand column called “Popular Articles” and “Recent Articles.” I think you’ll find some good information there.

http://www.pureblogging.com/

14. HOW TO WRITE A REALLY ROTTEN NOVEL

     And now POEWAR.COM tells us how and why we should write something really rotten:

     “Do you want to write a novel? Most people try to write a good novel and fail. Dare to be different. Try writing a bad novel instead. If you finish, you will have either succeeded in writing a bad novel or failed and written a good novel. It’s a win/win situation.” POEWAR.COM then gives enlightening hints on how to write something truly miserable.

http://www.poewar.com/want-to-write-a-bad-novel-heres-how

15. HOW TO TAKE ADVANTAGE OF A WRITER

     The Internet has a number of sites that claim to pay writers for their services but pay pitifully little. For example, on a writers’ forum one person was asked whether AssociatedContent.com paid its writers. She said she’d been posting things on it for two weeks and had been paid sixty cents. She did not appear to be discouraged by this. As she would probably be quick to point out, she was “getting experience.” And “getting her name out there.” And a number of would-be writers say they are “having fun.”

     So, whatever floats your boat. But I think you should know what you’re getting into before you waste a lot of time on it.

     TRIOND.COM has now joined ASSOCIATEDCONTENT.COM and HELIUM.COM in paying pennies to writers for hours of hard work. To do a check, put “about Triond.com” or “about Helium.com” into the Google search box. The first few items will be propaganda from the site itself. After that you get into the nitty gritty.

http://www.triond.com/

     AND THEN THERE’S PUBLISH AMERICA. PublishAmerica is in a class by itself when it comes to wrecking the lives of authors. It says it’s a “traditional publisher.” Don’t believe it. Put “about PublishAmerica” into the Google search box and see for yourself. Or simply click on the Absolute Write forum below:

http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10211

16. HOW TO ENCOURAGE A WRITER

     AUTHOR-ME.COM is a new site to me, but, when I checked into it, I found nothing but good reports. As PushSearch.com says, it is “a support group for writers in search of publishers. Offers many on-line works and opportunities to obtain manuscript critiques. Chat and articles about writing.” I see quite a bit for Christian writers, and something I’ve never found before: encouragement for African writers and many things by them, including a prizewinning story.

http://author-me.com/

     STEVE WEBER sells books about selling books, and I would imagine they’re good books too. He does more than that, though. His blog has free, valuable information about selling and plugging your book. Check it out at:

http://weberbooks.com/

17. HOW TO HELP A FREELANCE WRITER

     If you are a professional writer who wants to be paid as a professional, WRITERSWEEKLY.COM is the place to go. In her free newsletter, Angela Hoy lists real, honest freelance writing jobs. She also warns of the online Bottom Feeders who try to take advantage of freelance writers. There’s a bunch, and she’ll be happy to tell you who they are. She’ll also tell you about publishers who don’t do right by the authors they publish.

     WRITERS WEEKLY is a writers’ treasure.

http://writersweekly.com/

18. HOW TO HELP A SELF-PUBLISHING WRITER

     LULU.COM is tops: I’ve mentioned Lulu before and I’ll mention it again. Lulu.com is an online treasure that will produce your self-published book without up-front fees. But don’t take my word for it. Put “about Lulu.com” into the Google search box and read all about it.

http://www.lulu.com/

MISSED SOME ISSUES?

     Have I got a solution for you! Now that we are using a frame for each issue, you can just look over to your left and find all the back issues nicely set out. Simply click on the ones you missed. That means too that if your e-mail service provider gets sticky and decides that Tour the Sites is spam (it is NOT spam), you can foil it and find the newsletter at this address.

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WARNING!

     If your e-mail box sometimes gets full, you are in danger of falling off the subscription list of Tour the Sites. Not because I want to lose you, but because, if your box is full when I send out a newsletter, you are automatically kicked off the list. I don't like that policy, but I don't have any say. If you change your e-mail address or get a new kind of spam filter, you may also fall off. So do keep an eye on your newsletters, which should arrive around the first and fifteenth of each month. If you haven't gotten one for a month, let me know and I'll be happy to put you back on the mailing list. Because I'd really hate to lose you.

Janette
Newsletter@tourthesites.com

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© Copyright 2007 Janette G. Blackwell. All rights reserved. You may copy and use portions of this newsletter for noncommercial, personal use only. You may forward a copy to someone else as long as the copyright notice is included. Any other use of the materials in this newsletter without prior written permission is prohibited.