Consumers looking for a value cut of meat in today’s market should look no farther than what is known as the flat iron steak. Rediscovered in the year 2000 by Nebraska-led research, the flat iron has been growing in popularity ever since in cafes, restaurants, and in the home. (Also called the boneless top blade, this cut probably earned its “flat iron” nickname from its resemblance to the generally triangular solid irons once used to press clothing.)
Flat irons are a good combination of flavor and economy and are now well known in the West and Great Plains. One popular treatment has the flat iron served as a breakfast item accompanied by eggs, a potato, and perhaps toast.
This cut is found deep within the shoulder muscle, where chuck steaks and roasts are traditionally cut. Commonly available in 5 oz. through 10 oz. portions, some meat markets are reluctant to promote it because it has become so popular that they don’t have the volume necessary to satisfy their customer’s needs. In many regions of the country, you have to ask for it to get it. First come, first served.
Previously slated for use as inexpensive roasts, many people feel the flat iron has the taste of chuck but the tenderness of a filet (the top blade is the second most tender muscle), and at perhaps one-half the cost in many markets. Available only in select restaurants five years ago, the Nebraska Beef Council estimates that this cut is on the menu of more than 1.300 independent restaurants and regional and national chains.
A typical 1,000 pound steer may yield only four pounds of flat iron steaks, compared with nine pounds of sirloin or fourteen pounds of rib eyes.
Home chefs are advised to grill, pan broil, braise or pan fry just as you would a strip or a rib eye. Some prefer the flat iron marinated over night, drained and then cooked in the preferred manner. And for the health conscious consumer, a typical 6 oz. serving, simmered, has only 550 calories, nearly 50 grams of protein, 0 grams carbohydrates, and a total fat content of just 44 grams.
Don Seger manages news and information for Fairbury Steaks. For more information on premium beef, premium pork, quality seafood and other fine meats, visit http://www.fairburysteaks.com
A few years ago, we were struggling to drive traffic to one of our websites. We were immediately overwhelmed with the amount of knowledge and skill it took to successfully drive traffic to our site. We had assumed that if we created a site that was worth seeing, it would be seen. We could not have been more wrong.
We ran into a number of companies who offered to take over this daunting task for us. We decided to try out a number of them to see how our competition stacks up.
They offered many packages of visitors. I remember my first purchase. I bought 5,000 targeted hits from them for $10. My product cost $15 at the time, so I figured at least 1 person out of 10,000 would purchase. The days went by, and my counter went crazy.
The Results
After our contract expired, all my hits had been delivered as expected. I did not have one sale!!
I Should Have Learned My Lesson!
Thinking this had to be a fluke.. I switched to another company, and bought the same package.
Again, I GOT NO SALES!!
I couldn’t figure out what was going on. I was confident my ad’s were written well. The site was well designed and planned, and my product was in demand…
I Started To Investigate
Frustrated, I started to investigate exactly where these visitors were coming from. I discovered, that I had fallen victim to one of the most common scams on the internet. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I first discovered the secrets these company’s use to drive traffic to the clients sites.
I checked the script I had installed that was used to check detailed stats on all of our traffic. All 10,000 of our hits came in 2 days, and all 10,000 of them were logged in for less than 3 seconds. Not a single one of them navigated past our main page. My stats script will also tell me where my traffic was referred from, and what keywords they used. All of these hits had the same referral, and didn’t use keywords. This last fact isn’t important, because any company, good or bad, will redirect their traffic sources through their domain. This is just to keep competitors from stealing their sources (good or bad).
I believe that these company’s are going to pay for their greed and dishonesty sometime in the near future.
In the next few pages, we are going to reveal exactly how these greedy companies scam you. This will help you avoid such scams, and put your money to good use, instead of wasting it.
You Will Be Shocked at what these company’s do to send you traffic!
This is the most immoral, unethical, and dishonest business practice I have ever come across online. These companies know exactly what they’re doing. After all, if their traffic methods work, wouldn’t they use it themselves? Why is a company offering millions of hits to their visitors, when they are only getting 10-15 hits a day? They don’t use their own methods, because they know their hits are useless.
I fell victim to this scam, as have thousands of others. These companies give you a sales pitch something like this…
Suppose that you sell a product for $25 and that in a worst case scenario only 1% of your visitors purchase your product.
An average site gets less than 100 hits per day (3,000/month). Thus, approximately 30 people will purchase the product every month (1% of 3,000). That means you are taking in only $750 per month (30 x $25)
With our service: Suppose the site owner (you) purchases 100,000 visitors with our service. Using our assumption that only 1% of visitors will purchase the product, a total of 1,000 purchases will be made. That’s a value of$25,000! And that is if only 1% of visitors purchase the product! Think about the return on your investment!
If you’re like me, you got pretty excited when you read that. After all, there’s no conceivable way you can’t at least earn your investment back, right? WRONG!!
You give in, order their service, and at first, you get excited, because traffic is pouring in! Soon you realize that your money is earning you nothing. In fact it’s costing you your bandwidth, and not delivering any results!
Of course no company, no matter how credible they are, can guarantee you sales. That depends highly on your ad copy, price, and the demand of the item. I can guarantee though, that some of these company’s have thousands of clients, and not one of their clients has ever made a sale.
I bought my traffic… Now where are all my orders?
Now remember, worst case scenario is that 1% of your visitors will buy your product. Right? WRONG! If that’s the case, then where are your orders? These company’s place these ads right in your face when you visit their website. This way, your sold before you even see the price, and you’ll buy into their high prices.
Naturally you are going to believe that you’ll pay off your “investment” right away, and make a ton of extra money. After all, you spent hours writing that “perfect ad,” so you’re going to draw in a lot more than 1%.
I’ll let you in on a secret. No matter how good your ad is, it doesn’t do any good if it’s never read.
You sit there and watch traffic come flying in at hyperspeed. Then they fly out. You don’t make any sales. What do you do now? If you’re like me, you’re going to email them, complaining how you didn’t make any sales from their services. They’re going to tell you some variation of the following…
“I’m sorry you didn’t make any sales. If you read our terms, you would see that we can only guarantee that we send the traffic to you. The sales are your responsibility. We cannot guarantee sales, because we are not involved in the writing of the advertisement.”
This leaves them clean from delivering any refunds. Trust me, they won’t refund your money!
Starting to get suspicious? The truth is your traffic was delivered in a misleading way.
You were sent FAKE VISITORS, or GHOST VISITORS, as they are widely called online.
Have you been tracking your traffic?
Many people don’t realize that there are free scripts that you can install on your site to track detailed statistics about your traffic. I’m not talking about counters. Counters are inaccurate, plus they don’t tell you anything about your visitors.
If you actually monitor your traffic, you can learn lots of things about your visitors. Including the countries they’re from, their IP addresses, the time they came to your site, the time they left your site, the site’s they were referred from (google, yahoo, etc..), and the keywords they used to search for your site.
My statistics were shocking!
The traffic I ordered had no IP address, no search engine, none of my visitors navigated past the front page! I paid for these “Guarantee’d Real Visitors,” and I have the right to know where they come from. Guess what, I figured it out!
A few of the hits that they had sent, slipped up, and didn’t disguise their origin as well as they should have…
I kept seeing the same IP address over and over and over again about 900 times in one day. I thought somebody out there really must love my web site or it’s the scam hit company I hired. Well I clicked the link that night which was labeled with an IP address, not the actual web site .com name itself just the numbers of the IP address….I clicked that and wouldn’t you know it? I received just a site telling me it doesn’t exist.
With my campaign still running the next day along with all the “unknown” places I seen a peculiar url and had to click that to see where over 500 of the same people were coming from and I ended up in Pop Up hell! You know that hell don’t you? Where you are swarmed with so many pop ups that you literally have to pull the plug on your computer to get out of it? The sad part about that link is that all the Pop Ups were from PORNO sites!
It’s no wonder these companies don’t tell where they deliver their traffic from! After all, what ethical business wants to advertise on those disgusting adult sites?
So you want to know exactly how this all works?
After following the slipped up referral link, I was directed to a website where anyone can post their own free adult site. (If your going to try and follow these links yourself, I would suggest switching your browser to text only mode, as I did. Otherwise you’ll get flooded with pop-ups, and disgusting porno pictures.)
Now we have determined that my traffic was coming from this site, but I didn’t see my site at all…
I switched back to my traffic log, and hit refresh. I WAS STUNNED! At the top of my log, I had 12 hits to my site, all with my IP address!!! By viewing this site just once, I recieved 12 hits!!
I switched over to www.Alexa.com. Alexa is a site ranking service, that can tell you how popular a site is. This adult site that I was listed on was recieving 786,376 hits per day, on average during that week. Multiply that by 12, and that’s where all my traffic came from!
So now we know what site is generating the traffic, but how are they disguising the IP address. Why wasn’t my site ever shown on screen to me? The answer lies in the HTML source code…
Here are the secret codes!!
One of the tricks that these companies use is a the way they hide where your traffic is coming from. The way they do this is through a redirect code. A redirect code is simply a cade that webmasters use on their websites to take one website and send it another way.
The biggest trick is how they can mysteriously load your site multiple times, without you seeing it. They do this by embedding your site into theirs, and making it tiny. So tiny in fact, that it looks like a period. So instead of using periods at the end of their sentances, they just embed their clients sites sites to look like a period.
Try it for yourself
Open up your HTML editor, or notepad, and create a sample page using this code.
Now open it in your web browser. What you get is a small box in the left hand corner of your website. For this example, I made the code 5x larger than these companies do. So you can see how easily they disguise these sites. Inside that little square, is actually an entire website!!
So your thinking, they just embed my site into that little square, 10-15 times on the page, and that’s where my hits come from. Yes, and No. Essentially that’s how it works, but if they put your website into that square, you could easily trace the traffic back to the adult site. So what they do is put their redirect page into that square, and redirect it to your site, so now it looks like all the traffic is coming from them.
So let’s put it all together.
You order traffic from a traffic company.
The traffic company creates a free adult site and lists it into a directory of free adult sites. According to our alexa review these sites get 786,376 hits per day. If their redirect page gets 12 hits every time someone loads the adult site, that means they have an average of 9,436,512 hits per day, which they divide among their clients.
For some of the Monster Traffic Companies, 9.5 million visitors a day just isn’t enough. They can easily turn that 9.5 million visitors, into as many as they need. Instead of embedding the redirect page. They embed a page full of these periods. That way, when their “period farm” page loads, they can have as many sites load as they want.
They simply change the redirect page to whatever client they want the traffic sent to.
Your counter goes crazy, and all your hits are delivered.
You never make a sale. Now you can understand how you could have thousands of visitors sent your way, and never make a sale. Your site is never really displayed.
The traffic company has delivered exactly what they said they would, and are clear from any refunds.
Our Company, www.CadenzaWeb.com Provides You with REAL traffic, that you can track, and get detailed statistics on. Our Sales have quadrupled since we started using this ourselves. Check Out www.CadenzaWeb.com for more information. Interested in becoming an ethical traffic reseller? We have a dedicated website just for resellers at wholesale rates as low as $1 CPM (per 1000). www.Sell-Traffic.com
Want to use this article on your site? Please do, just leave our name and link attached.
The last year hasn’t been a good one for vitamin E.
Once considered a wonder supplement, an inexpensive and harmless pill that might prevent heart disease, cancer and Alzheimer’s, a flurry of recent clinical trials suggest it does none of those things.
Some even suggest there is a small chance it could be harmful in higher doses.
Yet while the oily little capsule apparently can’t keep people alive longer, it refuses to die, in part because in nearly every one of the recent negative studies some caveat or contradictory finding creates a glimmer of hope.
It also doesn’t hurt that the dietary supplement industry continues to promote vitamin E and offers experts to refute some of new research.
“It doesn’t go away,” said Edgar Miller, a vitamin E researcher and associate professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University. “Why does it keep selling when there are so many of these negative studies?”
The answer appears to be a combination of factors, including years of promising laboratory, animal and epidemiological studies; heavy promotion by the dietary supplement industry; and, more recently, contradictory findings within studies showing no overall benefit.
The required daily amount is 22 IU (international units). Many recent clinical trials have ranged from 300 IU to 2,000 IU.
Recent clinical trials of high-dose vitamin E have led some researchers to speculate that vitamin E in megadoses may increase the oxidation of LDL cholesterol, the bad kind.
When cholesterol is oxidated, it contributes to coronary artery disease.
There also is some concern that high amounts of vitamin E may displace other beneficial anti-oxidants from that average person’s diet.
Combining studies
Consider these recent studies: In November, a vitamin E bombshell was dropped by Johns Hopkins University researchers at an American Heart Association meeting.
They pooled 19 clinical trials of vitamin E involving 136,000 patients.
In 11 of the high-dose trials (400 IU or more), the risk of dying from any cause increased 4%, compared with people taking placebos.
Prior to that finding, vitamin E had been considered, at worst, harmless.
“People take anti-oxidants because they want to live longer,” said Miller, an associate professor of medicine. “What we showed is you don’t live longer.”
However, the analysis also suggested that lower doses of vitamin E (less than 150 I.U. a day) were associated with about a 2% reduction in deaths.
Researchers acknowledged several potential shortcomings in their study.
For instance, they noted that several of the high-dose trials involved people with various chronic diseases and may not apply to healthy individuals.
They also said the small size of several of the trials in the analysis and inconsistent reporting of health events prevented a detailed look at the effect of various doses of the vitamin.
“It’s a very flawed analysis,” said Julie Buring, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who recently presented her own vitamin E research.
She also said the 4% increased risk of death was not “clinically meaningful” and could be a chance finding.
Women’s health study
On March 7, Buring and other Harvard scientists presented their own vitamin E study at the American College of Cardiology annual meeting.
Once again, the vitamin threw researchers a curve.
Analyzing data from the Women’s Health Study, a trial involving 40,000 women who got either 600 IU of vitamin E every other day or a placebo, researchers found that it provided no overall cardiovascular benefit such as reduction in heart attacks or strokes.
However, an analysis of a subgroup of women over 65 found a 26% reduction in cardiovascular events.
Buring said that although the finding was “intriguing,” it was not supported by previous research.
She added that it needs confirmation.
Adding even more confusion, the study found a statistically significant 24% reduction in cardiovascular deaths among all the vitamin E users.
Buring also questioned that finding because there was no overall reduction in strokes and heart attacks. She said it was possible that it was due to other cardiovascular causes such as arrhythmias or heart failure, but there was no reasonable biological explanation for that.
“People should look at that further, but it could be chance,” she said.
Buring concluded that vitamin E was neither harmful nor beneficial in preventing cardiovascular disease.
A surprise
About a week after the Women’s Health Study, another controversial vitamin E finding was presented.
The study involved 9,500 people aged 55 and older with vascular disease or diabetes who were followed for an average of seven years.
It found that 400 IU of vitamin E a day provided no protection against cancer or major vascular events such as heart attacks or strokes.
In addition, the study found a disturbing 13% increase in heart failure cases and 21% increase in heart failure hospitalizations.
That was the first time that vitamin E had been associated with an increased risk of heart failure, said lead author Eva Lonn, a professor of medicine at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
“I am not convinced about the harm,” Lonn added.
Indeed, a recent small study of heart failure patients taking a cholesterol-lowering statin drug suggested that vitamin E actually increased the statin’s ability to improve blood vessel function and lower inflammation.
Lonn and the other researchers said a review of all heart failure events in large vitamin E clinical trials “is strongly recommended.”
Confounding the heart failure finding was what appeared to be a statistically significant 28% reduction in lung cancer cases, although in a secondary analysis of the data the benefit seemed to disappear.
“The numbers are small,” Lonn said. “We think it’s a chance finding.”
The researchers noted that other larger vitamin E trials showed no lung cancer benefit.
Alzheimer’s research
There still is some hope that vitamin E might help prevent Alzheimer’s disease, although in May a clinical trial of 769 patients with mild cognitive impairment found it was of no benefit in delaying the progression to Alzheimer’s.
In that trial, the patients took a mega dose 2,000 IU a day for up to three years, according to the findings in the New England Journal of Medicine.
Other vitamin E / Alzheimer’s trials are ongoing.
The anti-oxidant vitamin enthusiasm of the 1990s is being tempered by clinical trials, according to a JAMA editorial that accompanied the Women’s Health Study results.
“These hopes are now confined to modest expectations for specific disorders and there are concerns about adverse effects,” the editorial said.
The toil of visiting a brick and mortar gaming room can be sufficient reason to give it up as a bad job altogether. All those traffic jams, the toil, and gazillions of things to take care of don’t warrant the difficulty for the opportunity to place a wager at brick and mortar gaming room, even so in case you’re the sort who lives and breathes card playing then choosing casinos and gambling through the World Wide Web is surely a good alternative.
It isn’t required to leave your familiar environment for online video poker and related games simply because it can be easily accessed from your bedroom if you have access to a functional laptop or pc including access to the internet. All the same, you should remember that there are a fair number of suggestions that you must work out regarding online video poker and related games, the more so should you be inexpert in this field. Got it? Fine, so defuse that tizzy of yours to check the info below. Here is my outline which elucidates what to keep in mind if you’re spotting a creditable online video poker and related games Web site. The very first thing that a smooth virtual risker like you will make sure to pursue is an online video poker and related games website of the kind which offers top odds. Furthermore, here are a small number of more infos regarding ferreting out your virtual video poker website.
You positively must confirm the virtual video poker website is actually licensed, e.g. by investigating the official operating authorization as featured on the casino site pages. If you’re unable to trace any official operating authorization on that preferred virtual video poker website, don’t ever attempt to try your luck with that site. Following this, you will be best advised to charily investigate the variety of bonuses that the virtual video poker website offers you.
Moreover, further imperative advice would be to place your wager at the outset in small amounts rather than splurge more than does you good right from the start. Check first the status of this virtual video poker system before going for any grave hazard, the more so in terms of money! Our last most essential suggestion regarding online gambling casino. It is, expectably, this– always to remind yourself that online casino gambling should mainly be concerned with having fun and much less about high winnings. Gambling in online casinos isn’t a business, but a leisure pursuit that ought to make you happy and your life pleasurable.
Once you have observed the advice above, you’re at liberty to cede to the lure of virtual video poker…
Hampton Court Palace is sited to the south west of London, on the banks of the River Thames, bounded by wood and startling estates. Hampton Court Palace, King Henry 8s startling river shore apartment is located in well over four-hundred acres of woodland & private gardens. The England tourism board has plenty of other Royal attractions to visit in England.
Inducing the mood of well over four-hundred & fifty years of tradition, fancy dressed interpreters can be located throughout Henry 8s and King William III?s incredible private residences. The scenes, sounds & stink of the fabulous Tudor kitchens where banquets were prepared for Henry?s dinning room of well over one thousand guests can also be viewed.
Hampton Court Palace has been divided into 6 different routes or tours. The Maze at Hampton Court Palace that is located on the River Thames to the west of London is in all probability the most illustrious hedge maze on this planet.
Hampton Court palace has a violent tradition & is apparently controlled by several phantoms, including two of Henry 8’s past wives & a nurse to his offspring. Hampton Court Palace keepers and personnel will be near by to aid visitors to their booked state accommodation for a sparkling wine and canap?s introduction. Costumed workers will declare supper & visitors will be called to go to their seats for a remarkable two course dinner with top quality fine white wines.
Hampton Court Palace has over sixty acres of formal grounds on top of the 600 acres of royal woods. The royal gardens date back to the sixteenth Century, when the original Privy Garden was bedded between 1530 and fifteen-thirty eight for King Henry VIII.
You can’t hide from this people, even if you put some anti spyware or adware remover, they can still penetrate from your personal information. You can not just delete the most important file that you have so that no one could ever stole it. Because even if you erase the file, that person can use file retriever and in just seconds the file that you had been erased are still available. So, how can we prevent this to get happen to us. We should acquire evidence eraser. With the birth of this software we already got the perfect tools to prevent someone to invade our privacy. Whenever you’re online antispyware is on alert ready to fight the spying tools.
Keylogger software often comes as the only solution for the parents with children who have the opportunity to access the Internet on a regular basis. Parents should know what happens with their children and try to prevent the possible danger. And the Internet, regrettably, carries a lot of danger with it, so keylogging software may really help to notice the problem long before it actually comes to life. Data loggers, key loggers are just a few programs which harvest info from your computer. Winclear is the only program created specially to auto remove such spywares. The only other way your account could have been compromised is if you received a phishing email with a link for you to click on to access your account. That is why every computer owner needs winclear.
Protect With Winclear :Search History
However, because of Spector’s ease of use, it enables almost anyone to become a cyber criminal. According to Robert Graham, security executive at Atlanta based Errata Security, 99% of the people who download programs like Spector do not use it for legitimate reasons. Winclear is the only software which is capable of removing keylogger programs. Spyware is a constant and annoying problem. Winclear has been the industry leader in fighting keyloggers for the last 8 years.
Winclear:
There are a lot of ways to get into a computer system : adware malware viruses trojans worms rootkits backdoors open ports and backdoors are just some of the ways people get into your data. That is the reason why you need Winclear installed onto your computer. Security vendor Symantec warns about commercialisation of malware — cybercriminals prefer cash to fun so various kinds of information-stealing software are used more actively. Protect your computer security by using Winclear! More about Winclear here: Erase Data.
If you apply for an online minikrediet for 312 euro you will usually have to fill out an online form and attach copies of your documentation in an email, or by fax.
In the majority of instances for every 169 euro you borrow you have to pay back 452 euro, meaning 21 interest. This is where a fast minikrediet comes in, offering a suitable sum of money to help you get by. A fast online minikrediet is a way to solve a short-term cash issue for amounts like 117 euro.
You must however, be able to satisfy the direct online minikrediet provider that you will have enough cash available to cover the advance repayment they will look at how much you can afford to pay back on an individual basis between 105 euro. The charge you need to observe is how much you pay back on the amount you borrow - this is a fixed sum dependent on the individual provider. For many it simply can’t arrive soon enough as we attempt to juggle bills and expenses, as well as trying to have a little fun in life. Be sure to use the payday loan comparison tool at gsm minikrediet to compare rates. The premise behind direct minikrediet is simple whatever you need 289 euro for, you can take out a loan (usually ranging from 198 euro but sometimes up to 1,000 depending on the provider) that is repayable on your next payday, whether it is 1 hours away or less.
Unexpected costs can hit even those who keep a tight grip on their finances if something goes wrong in the home, a family member needs support or you receive a larger than expected bill you might require cash to help you get by until your next wage slip.
However, this does vary with some providers charging 34 interest and so on. A lot of us count down the months until payday? However, it is not necessary to use the loan for this purpose and effectively the cash can be used at your discretion as long as it is paid back with interest during the short loan term. It’s easy to compare 10 minutes minikrediet with us and hopefully you’ll soon have the cash you need to get by without worrying how far away your next payday may be.
As with all fast online minikrediet it is best to take a complete search of the market before you apply for a gsm minikrediet for aount 205 euro so you can compare interest rates and make sure you are getting the best deal for your needs. However, for lengthier journeys you are better to use a method of transport that specialises in long distances such as a train or plane, minikrediet are certainly a short-term special.
When people head out from New York and surrounding environs in search of weekend retreats, invariably they end up in western Connecticut, the Hudson River Valley, the Catskills and other upstate New York areas, the Jersey Shore, and the Hamptons.
As places where New Yorkers traditionally vacation, purchase second homes, celebrity watch and more, it’s understandable that these locales are top of the list.
But what about a place as close to Manhattan as any of the aforementioned hotspots that offers almost everything we find endearing about our destinations of choice for second and vacation homes - historic villages and towns, amazing countryside, outdoor activities, farmhouses, farm markets, artists, country restaurants - but doesn’t have the buzz or the name recognition, at least not yet.
There is an area within the New York Metropolitan region that is still overlooked by the masses. Where residents are already starting Friday night dinner in their stone farmhouses while weekenders are stuck in traffic on the way to Litchfield, or Rhinebeck, or East Hampton. Even places farther a field like Bucks and Pike Counties in Pennsylvania and Sullivan County in New York get more press. Well let me introduce you to the formerly depressed backwater turned beautiful and convenient countryside of Warren County, New Jersey.
Interestingly, Warren is surrounded by counties which consistently rank among the wealthiest in America: Hunterdon, Somerset and Morris. These are counties full of investors, a highly educated workforce, an abundance of so called McMansions, and quite a bit of disposable income. And to be sure, some of Warren’s eastern border towns have picked up developments and transplants from these ever more unaffordable neighboring areas. But for the most part, it’s the locals who know about or consider living in or visiting Warren County and even then, the western and northern reaches are still quite rural and untouched. For most of its history, Warren County has either been a mystery to those who have never seen it or a place to avoid to those who had heard of its largest town, Phillipsburg–a poor industrial city that had fallen on hard times.
A Pleasant Surprise
Four years ago, my partner Mark and I stumbled across the village of Finesville in southern Warren County completely by accident. Living in suburban Morristown New Jersey, we were contemplating a second home purchase in the country and saw a house in Bucks County Pennsylvania on a real estate Website that interested us. Always up for a weekend drive, we decided to find it. With map in hand, we took what looked like the most direct route to Upper Bucks County and found ourselves following the Musconetcong River, along Warren County’s southern border, past a collection of about fifty small but magnificent 18th and 19th century stone and clapboard buildings, known as Finesville, just before we crossed into Pennsylvania.
Although Warren County was barely on my radar screen, as a Real Estate Agent specializing in historic homes and neighborhoods — www.gerrykasper.com —, I was flabbergasted that there was a hamlet of this size and quality in Northern New Jersey of which I was unaware. Even more amazing, Mark grew up in eastern Warren County and we had attended an auction only three miles away from Finesville so I had some knowledge of the area.
With its roots in the mid 18th century, Finesville began as a collection of taverns, shops and a mill along the Musconetcong River run by the Fine and Siegel Families of Germany. The village was fairly prosperous for most of its history but declined during the twentieth century. Today, locals have bought and restored many of its buildings and, indicative of its burgeoning upscale nature, two vineyards, a winery, an antique store, and an alpaca farm have set up shop in the hamlet. Some of the restorations have been so impressive that two Finesville homes were recently featured in national home and garden magazines.
At the time we discovered it, a c.1825 stone Georgian colonial was for sale in the village. The exterior was in some disrepair, the stucco was cracking and peeling, and the original front doors were gone. But the setting in this pristine and unusual village was beautiful and the price, at $135,000, was irresistible. Once inside, we realized this was our dream house in the country. The interior was almost completely intact with a walk-in fireplace, cupboard stairs, beamed ceilings, wide plank floors, and original windowsa jewel box of a house that just needed some sprucing up. And so we bought and restored this house and received the Warren County Historic Preservation Award for our efforts. Even better, because of Warren County’s proximity to work, we were able to sell our primary house in Morristown and move to the country permanently.
The Villages and Countryside
Warren County is full of hidden and beautiful villages and towns like Finesville and since arriving, several of them have tempted us to consider moving again.
As testament to Warren County’s less than stellar reputation, the sign welcoming visitors into its county seat describes Victorian Belvidere as “New Jersey’s best kept secret”. Belvidere is a sleepy town located off the beaten path and layed out around a New England-style Village Green. Each September, the town celebrates Victorian Days, highlighting the prevalent 19th century architecture that lines its streets and forms the basis of the town’s small commercial district. Most of the grand homes have already been restored and there is a great sense of pride in this small close-knit community. Its location directly on the Delaware and Pequest Rivers also makes it a good base for outdoor activities.
Northern Warren County offers a scene that rivals the most beautiful in New England. Hope is a one-traffic light crossroads town, founded in the 18th century by a group of Moravians who left an impressive collection of stone dwellings now restored and converted to businesses and residences. One of which is a former gristmill turned into an inn and conference center. Stone and clapboard homes surrounded by cows and sheep dot a landscape that is reminiscent of the Litchfield Hills. With little commercial development, the pace in Hope is decidedly slow but that just adds to its appeal.
North of Hope lies the slightly larger village of Blairstown with its recently restored collection of shops and restaurants, currently under consideration for the National Register of Historic Places. Main Street is bookended by a prestigious prep school and the town’s venerable feed store. This is a walking village, good for an hour’s stroll with weekend guests and a poke around the stores and quiet streets.
Just west of Hope and Blairstown, outdoor activities exist in the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area which includes part of the Appalachian Trail, Millbrook, a recreated 19th century village, and Peters Valley, an artists colony which offers regular shows and exhibits.
On the eastern edge of Warren, Hackettstown still retains its 19th century feel with impressive multi-colored Victorian homes, antique stores along Main Street and Centenary College in its midst.
Phillipsburg - An Industrial Town Reborn
As beautiful as Warren County’s countryside is, it’s the city that we originally tried to avoid that has captured our imagination and may eventually tear us away from Finesville. The county’s largest town is a small, formerly industrial city and transportation hub along the Delaware River that had been neglected for years. Think Hoboken New Jersey or Hudson New York before gentrification. Thankfully that neglect, as in most of Warren County, has kept much of its historic fabric intact and over the past 20 years, building owners have been peeling off old aluminum siding to reveal stunning architecture.
The town actively encourages restoration and business development — businesses in Phillipsburg charge only 3% sales tax with some of that money going to revitalization projects. Progress had been slow, but now there are several highly regarded restaurants in the restored downtown as well as antique shops and several specialty stores. Train rides along the Delaware River start downtown and are popular in the summer as well as for Halloween and the winter holidays. On Thanksgiving, Phillipsburg High School plays its rival Easton Pennsylvania in their annual football game. P’burg, as it is known by locals, is extremely convenient as Routes 78 and 22 run just outside of town as does the express bus to Manhattan, which stops at the Phillipsburg Mall.
There are several plans to transform Phillipsburg including the redevelopment of its underutilized waterfront into a residential neighborhood, with construction set to start in 2006, and the repurposing of a vacant industrial park into a new commerce center. Rumor has it that a bed and breakfast is slated to open in an historic stone tavern near the Delaware River bridge. Phillipsburg was named as the location for the New Jersey Transportation and Heritage Museum. Sadly, legislation to provide the funding to make it happen has been stalled and appears unlikely. However, the town is committed to building its own museum and has plans already in the works.
Just over the river, Easton Pennsylvania offers more restaurants, the Crayola Factory museum, a very popular local grocery store (a branch of which may hopefully pop up in Warren County), a thriving artists community, the State Theater, and the historic College Hill neighborhood. Even more exciting, there are several luxury condominium developments currently under construction or planned in existing historic Easton properties, such as the former Easton Hotel, which will bring wealthy people within walking distance of downtown Phillipsburg.
Phillipsburg has great bones and incredible architecture. South Main Street near the Delaware River Bridge is mostly restored and ready to become the next Cold Spring or South Norwalk or New Paltz. And prices are still a relative bargain. A couple of years ago, we purchased two historic properties on Phillipsburg’s Main Street: an 1887 firehouse for $60,000 and a 19th century Georgian-style colonial for $90,000.
As the town continues to revitalize, we are considering a move into the colonial as our permanent home so we can wake up on Saturday mornings and walk to our favorite breakfast spot down the street. Although, we’ll probably keep the Finesville house as our place in the country.
Gerald Kasper is a real estate agent with WEICHERT, REALTORS in Warren County New Jersey — www.gerrykasper.com
ask@gerrykasper.com
Becoming a part of the Cult, consists of being recruited a member of the cult, as a person that can be relied on to assume responsibilities and accomplish all or almost all things requested.
Depending upon the position you hold and the person that you are attached to the most, any position can be engaging and can be so different from any other experience that you have had prior to Walmart in almost any retail sector that you feel you are being chosen for great things.
Along with morning meetings and consistently being told how much you mean as an individual to the company, by your recruiter, management and the general population you feel an inclusiveness that is hard to describe. Before the end of each meeting the feeling, gets closer to being accepted into a religious organization or sorority, and when you are accepted, in some way you sincerely begin to believe what you are being told is that you belong to a new family. “The Walmart Family” You begin to believe that “The Walmart Way” is the better way, the only way.
I did not see it happening and I begin to correlate past experiences with this new and empowered way of working. I am sure I felt something then that most typical retail employees seldom if ever feel. A sense of power.
As the brainwashing continued, I found myself accepting any number of practices that are not truly acceptable according to written company policy but are known to the members as unwritten rules that are to be followed by all without question or concern.
I found myself accepting the unacceptable. Policies and procedures that were just plain common sense meant nothing soon. Even when I complained about something that was going on or went to the office seeking information, or asked why, eventually I you would accept that it was the way it should be in the end and continued to feel that someday I would get the recognition and the position that I truly did deserve.
Depending on your view of what a job is you may find yourself accepting and or doing things in order to please the management that has been so good to you.
I found that seldom if ever did I say anything that would offend anyone. Situations that would normally be questionable to me, even according to Walmart company policy or my own moral beliefs became acceptable.
Things such as Gender discrimination or favoritism becomes acceptable and some how I knew inside bringing it up as unfair would label me as a problem.
This in turn would cause the person or manager who was so good to me, to be hurt and unhappy I would think or even suggest it is what it is.
I found it was not hard to accept and believe all of it was for my own good. I started to believe the company would never want to mistreat or discriminate against anyone even when it looked that way. I believed the reasons or concerns I had, what ever they were, were being handled in a justifiable way and it is was all for the good of the family.
Once I became a bona fide member, the procedure continued and changed occasionally to fit the position that I held within the cult.
The inclusiveness, the confidentiality of different situations became paramount to my standing within the cult.
If at any time, I became a maverick or bucked my immediate supervisor I found that I would immediately pulled aside and put on notice about my conduct and how I should go about repairing any damage I inflicted upon the cult. All of it was done in a very nurturing way and during this type of situation I was informed how I would be now and always expected to conduct myself in the future.
It is when the situation becomes personal and changes the actual way that a person views life, that it simulates brainwashing.
It is when one person recruits another and has no reason for doing it other than their standing within the cult that it is not normal. When the only reward is the person’s standing within the cult will be higher because the person knows what they are doing what is right according to Walmart.
Once you have entered the status of truly being brain washed all situations that are accepted by the cult as justifiable are accepted personally as well.
My personal experience has resulted with the inner conflict that occurs with mentally trying to accept “The Walmart Way” over biological family members and numerous coworkers that have had situations requiring one to take sides.
All issues due to any number of internal or external situations that present themselves seem to trigger an automatic defense system. To do anything other than this would cause one to be shunned by the cult and would cause members to inflict mental strain and stress on the person not conforming to what is considered to be a part of your responsibility to the company as an associate.
There is a psychological aspect to being a Walmart associate that truly finds no special job code.
Julie Pierce has worked in the retail sector for more than thirty years.
She has been a union member of the UCFW Union and the afl-cio more than once and has worked for more than one large retailer during the course of her career. She attended Gulf Coast Community College, Panama City Beach, Florida, in the nineties in the pursuit of a degree in Journalism and Mass Communications.
Some of her work has been published during the eighties and nineties in various editorial pages of newspapers in the state of New Jersey and Florida. She also did some work as a community reporter for a weekly newspaper in Panama City Florida. Other work includes an article in the Gulls Cry, the Gulf Coast Community College newspaper.
She is the wife of TSgt William F. Pierce Jr. (retired) USAF and the mother of three children and one grandchild.
Her experience with Walmart has taken her into three different regions and six districts within the company. In over a six-year period has worked in ten Walmart stores for twelve Walmart Store Managers.
The biggest challenge for any work-at-home Mom is to present
their business in a professional manner to potential clients or
customers. On a daily basis, WAHM’s strive to present a positive
image of themselves and their business.
How can a work-at-home Mom promote this positive image? A great
way to accomplish this goal is through podcasting. It has been
said that the greatest advertising for any business is positive
word-of-mouth. The best way to accomplish this goal is with
podcasting because it gives you a voice.
Podcasting allows WAHM’s to share their expertise, knowledge and
even personality with potential clients. If you decide to
podcast, you will be promoting your business in the best way
possible.
When a possible client or customer listens to your podcast, they
will hear your voice. As a result, they will develop a bond and
trust in you over time. Subsequently, this will build more
customers for your business.
When you are doing your podcast, don’t be afraid to share too
much knowledge. If you hold back information, this could
potentially hurt you and the image that people will have of your
business. Your potential customers or clients will judge you
based on the information that you share in your podcast. Thus,
the most important element is to share valuable information.
An important element to keep in mind is that your podcast
should not be an entire commercial for your business. If you do
this, people will be turned off and they will turn off your
podcast. You should strive to share helpful information with
your audience. As a result, they will appreciate your sincerity
and integrity. It is perfectly acceptable to share all of your
business and contact information with your audience at the end
of your podcast.
As a work-at-home Mom who is podcasting, you will build positive
name recognition within your particular niche. The audience will
look to you as an expert within your particular field.
Consequently, this is the greatest promotion for any
business.
The ultimate goal is to stand out above your competition. Is
your competition podcasting? They are probably not podcasting
and don’t realize the tremendous positive impact that this could
have on their business.
When you record your podcast, it is imperative that you don’t
have any background noises (children, pets, television, radio,
etc.) This could potentially distract your listeners and they
might turn your show off. Your goal is to present the best
possible image that you can to potential clients.
As a WAHM, professionalism is critical to your success.
Podcasting can be the greatest element for your business if it
is done in the appropriate manner.
If you take the necessary steps to produce a professional
podcast with valuable information, you will see an increase in
clients and customers over time.
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