You always hear that you need to reach people on as many levels as you possibly can…so, I’ve added audio to my website to better communicate beyond just the written word and images.
By going to my homepage at corkgraham.com you’ll be able to listen me to tell you about all my websites and specials! All you have to do is click the play button. And, when you sign up for the FREE STUFF, you’ll be able to continue playing the message.
Monday, April 24, 2006
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Cork's Photo Gallery is UP, UP and AWAY!
Greetings!
Been mad at work marketing my photos of the 'ole' days, and just wanted to make sure you had a chance to take a look at them before my next post. They're residing here: www.corkincombat.com
Chat with you in a few days!
Slainte,
Cork
Been mad at work marketing my photos of the 'ole' days, and just wanted to make sure you had a chance to take a look at them before my next post. They're residing here: www.corkincombat.com
Chat with you in a few days!
Slainte,
Cork
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
COWARDICE BE DAMNED!
How often have you been cheated of SOMETHING GRAND or someone you really wanted just because you turned tail and ran...
…changing your mind, convincing yourself that you really didn’t want it, that dream, in the first place?
Everyday I meet people going through their day:
looking at those with whom they want to be…
daydreaming about that new job…
wishing on that new home…
visualizing on that vacation…
And then there’s the opportunity:
--she’s in the aisle right next to you!
--he’s walking your way!
--you see the listing just like you would have written for your dream home!
--a friend is leaving on a trip to the very vacation hotspot you read hungrily about…and says there’s one seat left!
…and you do nothing…
EXCEPT:
think to yourself that the one you were dreaming about wasn’t really the one you wanted
…that you need to keep working at that job you’ve been slaving away at for just a little longer
…that it’s not the right time to buy a home right now
…that you just don’t have the time or money to take that trip
…that you’ll take that trip…next…year…
And you know what it all boils down to?
COWARDICE!
NO WAY, you say!
I really didn’t make my right choice for that perfect mate…I do need to build my reputation first at work…and on and on…
But here’s the clincher: it’s actually a NORMAL reaction…
Everyone is genetically predisposed to running when they should stand and fight…you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have that genetically and behaviorally imprinted into your psyche.
Or, in other words: you’re the black bear and not the grizzly.
There’s only one reason the last recorded grizzly bear was sighted in the wilds of California was 1922, while at this very moment California has one of the largest black bear populations in the world: black bears 90 percent of the time run when confronted with a danger, while grizzlies will likely charge!
Charging a Pomo California Native only armed with a stick bow, is quite different from going after an armed Spaniard or as the last one did, an armed rancher in Northern California: as long as the ball had enough powder behind it and shooter had wits about him to make a good shot, the griz always ended up with the short end of the confrontation.
And back to a human interpretation: governments and institutions love followers and do their best to weed out those that give lip and or start revolutions.
But, do you know where the human equivalent of the grizzly actually does well, not only well, but PHENOMENALLY well?
In business!
Successful CEOs, multi-million dollar sales copywriters, and gawd awfully rich entrepreneurs are those who fought the ingrained urge of flight and do well because of their grizzly tendencies…
Now here’s the beauty of life that I so enjoy about LIFE: it’s all yin and yang, light and dark and while, yes, humans are setup for flight, they also have that OPPOSITE OF COWARDICE genetically ingrained: BRAVERY and COURAGE!
The BRAVERY to realize that a dream can’t be left to others to give them—that only one responsible to YOUR HAPPINESS and JOY is YOU!
The COURAGE to stop complaining about what’s wrong with the scene before you and to MAKE IT THE WORLD YOU DESIRE!
…If you’re poor and broke, you MAKE MONEY!
…If you’re lonely, you MAKE INTRODUCTIONS!
…If you’re bored, you MAKE IT EXCITING!
…If you want to travel, you GET ON THE PLANE!
--What you DON’T do is MAKE EXCUSES!
Take for example my new friend, Myles O’Reilly from Dublin, a man whom I was drawn to immediately, not only for his embracing charm, but a great gift of the Blarney, but also that he had so many life adventures that only hinted at his zest for life
…could it have been that like so many who have learned to appreciate life through the spiritually edifying, yet heart-wrenching, experiences of losing two relatives, murdered by the British Army and Secret Service in their own pub in Belfast (March 7, 1977, or a brother to a couple thugs in Puerto Rico, who killed him for his watch?
…Or, a death of friend that reminded me of the loss of my own cousin in Ecuador, to whom I dedicated in memoriam The Bamboo Chest: 12,000 feet to the ground when his chute didn’t open…
Myles O'Reilly and Robin (yes, the Robin from the Epilogue of The Bamboo Chest)
For whatever reason, it’s the courage and bravery that pushed Myles to not only do missionary work in Goa, India, become a promoter of such musicians as Van Morrison, Donovan, and thrive as the builder and owner of San Francisco’s Best Irish Pub: O’Reilly’s Irish Pub!
But here’s the challenge, you get profoundly successful like Myles and certain boobytraps of taking on new challenges suddenly start appearing bigger and more pronounced than they were when you’re starting from scratch, ones that most would think were removed and destroyed with the first ventures turned to gold: fears of failure mainly…
…will we come in on time?
…will the public clamor for our gift or turn their attentions to something, or someone else?
…or as Myles said, “My, GOD, I’ve just found myself $7 Million in DEBT!!”
I reminded him that Donald Trump was somewhere $1.8 Billion in the hole: the question is good debt, or bad debt?
When I bought a new Dodge Ram 2500, on LEASE of all things—that was BAAAAAAD debt!
Owning many billions worth of real estate for the loan of $1.8 Billion is VERY GOOD debt…
A HIGH CLASS IRISH PUB and RESTAURANT that is PACKED BY 7:30 p.m. on a Saturday evening for $7 Million is EXCELLENT DEBT!!!
I looked around Myles’ NEW ESTABLISHMENT O’Reilly’s Holy Grail on Polk Street in what used to be the old Mayes House, opened in 1867 and had Jack London as one of its patrons…
There were the stained glass windows Myles had purchased from the church and boarding school, Belcamp College…the Greco on the back wall, and…
The final fact that completely blew me away: EVERYTHING in was what the ORIGINAL MAYES OYSTER HOUSE was REMODELED!
Not one bit, even the ceiling was raised from its original height…
Most importantly, I looked around the bar and the separate dinning room, how packed it was, how many of the people in the bar were actually enjoying an expertly poured drink in wait for their reserved table…it was that packed by 7:30…that I had to pat Myles on the back and say, “$7 Million in debt…CONGRATULATIONS!”
But, I didn’t have to wait until 7:30 p.m. to know that O’Reilly’s Holy Grail is well on its way to becoming one of San Francisco’s MUST VISIT watering-holes and restaurants…
I’ll let you in on a secret, so secret that many aren’t even aware of how and why this works: if you want to know if the chef is worth his or her salt, try their desserts first!
Robin and the GREAT restaurant indicator...
And when it’s a crème brulee (or a Tiramisu at an Italian restaurant) you’ll know in a pinch whether the rest of the food’s going to be good, whether a place DESERVES your REPEAT PATRONAGE…
A well-prepared crème brulee:
A fragrance of vanilla and sweetness rises up to your nostrils immediately after you break the burnt sugar The eggs flan is soft, silky and without any grit or lumpiness—if you’ve got one that reminds you of a Mexican custard flan, pay the check and run to do not walk to the nearest exit! The burnt sugar is cold—they caramelized the sugar awhile ago and didn’t have the descency to give you the personal attention any good cook or chef would offer by at least flaming the granulated sugar immediately before serving Finally, a dessert, it's like the ending of a book...it needs to make sense and will color your memory of the whole event long after you're done...
So, why the crème brulee to test: it’s too darned easy to make a bad one—and every reason for a bad one, reflects a lack of attention to detail!
It’s one of the reasons next to being brave and courageous that has led to THE RICH JERK doing MUCH BETTER in sales, and low returns, than The Rich Dummy …something I will go much further into in my next piece…
NEXT TIME:
Like the song by Tina Turner asks, “What’s love got to do with it?”
Well, I’m going to tell you...namely what makes people take hold and move from the public norm of taking life like a dinghy in a tossed sea, to moving through all chop like a freighter piloted by a captain headed for TREASURE ISLAND!
…changing your mind, convincing yourself that you really didn’t want it, that dream, in the first place?
Everyday I meet people going through their day:
looking at those with whom they want to be…
daydreaming about that new job…
wishing on that new home…
visualizing on that vacation…
And then there’s the opportunity:
--she’s in the aisle right next to you!
--he’s walking your way!
--you see the listing just like you would have written for your dream home!
--a friend is leaving on a trip to the very vacation hotspot you read hungrily about…and says there’s one seat left!
…and you do nothing…
EXCEPT:
think to yourself that the one you were dreaming about wasn’t really the one you wanted
…that you need to keep working at that job you’ve been slaving away at for just a little longer
…that it’s not the right time to buy a home right now
…that you just don’t have the time or money to take that trip
…that you’ll take that trip…next…year…
And you know what it all boils down to?
COWARDICE!
NO WAY, you say!
I really didn’t make my right choice for that perfect mate…I do need to build my reputation first at work…and on and on…
But here’s the clincher: it’s actually a NORMAL reaction…
Everyone is genetically predisposed to running when they should stand and fight…you wouldn’t be here if you didn’t have that genetically and behaviorally imprinted into your psyche.
Or, in other words: you’re the black bear and not the grizzly.
There’s only one reason the last recorded grizzly bear was sighted in the wilds of California was 1922, while at this very moment California has one of the largest black bear populations in the world: black bears 90 percent of the time run when confronted with a danger, while grizzlies will likely charge!
Charging a Pomo California Native only armed with a stick bow, is quite different from going after an armed Spaniard or as the last one did, an armed rancher in Northern California: as long as the ball had enough powder behind it and shooter had wits about him to make a good shot, the griz always ended up with the short end of the confrontation.
And back to a human interpretation: governments and institutions love followers and do their best to weed out those that give lip and or start revolutions.
But, do you know where the human equivalent of the grizzly actually does well, not only well, but PHENOMENALLY well?
In business!
Successful CEOs, multi-million dollar sales copywriters, and gawd awfully rich entrepreneurs are those who fought the ingrained urge of flight and do well because of their grizzly tendencies…
Now here’s the beauty of life that I so enjoy about LIFE: it’s all yin and yang, light and dark and while, yes, humans are setup for flight, they also have that OPPOSITE OF COWARDICE genetically ingrained: BRAVERY and COURAGE!
The BRAVERY to realize that a dream can’t be left to others to give them—that only one responsible to YOUR HAPPINESS and JOY is YOU!
The COURAGE to stop complaining about what’s wrong with the scene before you and to MAKE IT THE WORLD YOU DESIRE!
…If you’re poor and broke, you MAKE MONEY!
…If you’re lonely, you MAKE INTRODUCTIONS!
…If you’re bored, you MAKE IT EXCITING!
…If you want to travel, you GET ON THE PLANE!
--What you DON’T do is MAKE EXCUSES!
Take for example my new friend, Myles O’Reilly from Dublin, a man whom I was drawn to immediately, not only for his embracing charm, but a great gift of the Blarney, but also that he had so many life adventures that only hinted at his zest for life
…could it have been that like so many who have learned to appreciate life through the spiritually edifying, yet heart-wrenching, experiences of losing two relatives, murdered by the British Army and Secret Service in their own pub in Belfast (March 7, 1977, or a brother to a couple thugs in Puerto Rico, who killed him for his watch?
…Or, a death of friend that reminded me of the loss of my own cousin in Ecuador, to whom I dedicated in memoriam The Bamboo Chest: 12,000 feet to the ground when his chute didn’t open…
Myles O'Reilly and Robin (yes, the Robin from the Epilogue of The Bamboo Chest)
For whatever reason, it’s the courage and bravery that pushed Myles to not only do missionary work in Goa, India, become a promoter of such musicians as Van Morrison, Donovan, and thrive as the builder and owner of San Francisco’s Best Irish Pub: O’Reilly’s Irish Pub!
But here’s the challenge, you get profoundly successful like Myles and certain boobytraps of taking on new challenges suddenly start appearing bigger and more pronounced than they were when you’re starting from scratch, ones that most would think were removed and destroyed with the first ventures turned to gold: fears of failure mainly…
…will we come in on time?
…will the public clamor for our gift or turn their attentions to something, or someone else?
…or as Myles said, “My, GOD, I’ve just found myself $7 Million in DEBT!!”
I reminded him that Donald Trump was somewhere $1.8 Billion in the hole: the question is good debt, or bad debt?
When I bought a new Dodge Ram 2500, on LEASE of all things—that was BAAAAAAD debt!
Owning many billions worth of real estate for the loan of $1.8 Billion is VERY GOOD debt…
A HIGH CLASS IRISH PUB and RESTAURANT that is PACKED BY 7:30 p.m. on a Saturday evening for $7 Million is EXCELLENT DEBT!!!
I looked around Myles’ NEW ESTABLISHMENT O’Reilly’s Holy Grail on Polk Street in what used to be the old Mayes House, opened in 1867 and had Jack London as one of its patrons…
There were the stained glass windows Myles had purchased from the church and boarding school, Belcamp College…the Greco on the back wall, and…
The final fact that completely blew me away: EVERYTHING in was what the ORIGINAL MAYES OYSTER HOUSE was REMODELED!
Not one bit, even the ceiling was raised from its original height…
Most importantly, I looked around the bar and the separate dinning room, how packed it was, how many of the people in the bar were actually enjoying an expertly poured drink in wait for their reserved table…it was that packed by 7:30…that I had to pat Myles on the back and say, “$7 Million in debt…CONGRATULATIONS!”
But, I didn’t have to wait until 7:30 p.m. to know that O’Reilly’s Holy Grail is well on its way to becoming one of San Francisco’s MUST VISIT watering-holes and restaurants…
I’ll let you in on a secret, so secret that many aren’t even aware of how and why this works: if you want to know if the chef is worth his or her salt, try their desserts first!
Robin and the GREAT restaurant indicator...
And when it’s a crème brulee (or a Tiramisu at an Italian restaurant) you’ll know in a pinch whether the rest of the food’s going to be good, whether a place DESERVES your REPEAT PATRONAGE…
A well-prepared crème brulee:
So, why the crème brulee to test: it’s too darned easy to make a bad one—and every reason for a bad one, reflects a lack of attention to detail!
It’s one of the reasons next to being brave and courageous that has led to THE RICH JERK doing MUCH BETTER in sales, and low returns, than The Rich Dummy …something I will go much further into in my next piece…
NEXT TIME:
Like the song by Tina Turner asks, “What’s love got to do with it?”
Well, I’m going to tell you...namely what makes people take hold and move from the public norm of taking life like a dinghy in a tossed sea, to moving through all chop like a freighter piloted by a captain headed for TREASURE ISLAND!
Monday, January 09, 2006
WHO ELSE WANTS MORE MONEY from WRITING?
Wow! So many e-mails wanting to know why I had a taken such a hiatus and when would I return to fill them in on what I promised last….
You never know how much you’re missed until you disappear for a while! :)
Well, for those of you who were paying attention: the book signing in DC with Joe Galloway was fantastic—we garnered $10,000 in donations for Viet-American survivors of Katrina and a new Vietnamese Cultural Center in the Washington DC area…not bad for only 13 signed paperbacks of The Bamboo Chest and 3 hardcovers of We Were Soldiers Once... and Young (albiet Joe’s were not only signed by him but also General Moore, who was played by Mel Gibson in the movie)!
The fundraiser was held in a fantastic Chinese restaurant in the area. Here’s a photo of me, Joe, Don Duong, from WWS, Green Dragon, and Three Seasons, and who will be playing my interrogator/translator, Chan Le, in the movie based on The Bamboo Chest, and the fundraiser organizer, Lien Tran. Behind us is one of the most famous singers in the Vietnamese and Vietnamese-American community: Thu Phuong…she had to defect from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam the same year as Don: Don because he was in Green Dragon and WWSO, and Thu because she was working on a recording deal in L.A. and Hanoi was afraid she wasn’t going to return—talk about counter-incentive!
The next day, Joe and I spent going over plans for a movie that Joe and I will be writing this fall, and I’ll be directing sometime in the coming two years…would love to tell you what it’s about, but until we’ve written it can’t say much more than…it’s a piece of history that has been lost and is such a GREAT STORY!
Here’s a portrait I really like that I took of Joe being introspective about war, combat, and unwinding with a smoke as we talked about the good-ole-bad-ole days: we not only shared time in Vietnam during a few of the same years, but also Singapore—he actually wrote a piece that saved the Raffles Hotel from Lee Kwan Yew’s demolition (Lee Kwan wanted to take down anything that reminded of the British Empire’s rule of Singapore)!
The Raffles is where the Singapore Sling was designed by a Hainanese-Chinese, called Mr. Ngiam Tong Boon, in 1910, by the way…
As I write this, Joe is in Iraq somewhere, doing a piece on their and our militaries…invited by none other than the Secretary of Defense, our man in the chow hall…Don Rummy :)
Got to love those nicknames that come up…when I was a Naval midshipman we had to know the names of all main government and military commanders, our man then was “The Friendly Ghost”, Casper Weinberg.
Anyway, if you’ve got some good thoughts and prayers, send them Joe’s way… I sure don’t want him having his butt modified by a carbomb!
…Human psychology…a very interesting study I enjoy touching on in every piece I write—and no wonder since I was a drug and alcohol rehab counselor for five years for Friendship House Association of American Indians…and understanding my own mind is the only reason after all the times I almost caught a bullet, or ended up in Davy Jones’ locker that I’m even able to be here to write you…like I like to say: knowledge is not power—knowledge and the implementation of knowledge is power…and increased survivability!
Take for example the human condition as revolves around money, wealth, CASH and how when you give people what they want, they take if for granted, but withhold even slightly and the dogs of war are unleashed to get it back…and they’ll pay whatever it takes to get it back…
Isn’t it amazing when you find out who’s really making lots of money on the Internet…and who isn’t?
If you’re like me you like to make tons of cash not just when you’re actually working but also when you’re having fun, while you’re away from the “office”…and one of the best places to do that is my own big-little copywriting laboratory—eBay.com!
On average, just tinkering and playing around—experimenting, I’ve averaged $2,500 to $3,000 a month selling stuff on eBay. I’ve sold everything from ancient whale vertebraes, curios from Southeast Asia, all the way to one of my crowning glories: a C.C. Roberts Mud Puppy Muskie lure for $299.97…
That’s $299.97 for a fishing lure!! Here’s the sales page: Cork’s MudPuppy on eBay
My great uncle probably spent about ten cents on that “puppy”!
You’ve probably heard about all these “hidden” treasures that reside in the attics, basements, and garages of you and me…but how many people are willing to look?
Before the Internet and eBay, the main option for selling such long lost goodies was an ad in a magazine, newspaper, or on TV. Now, we’re talking dollars, here, not what it costs to post at eBay: cents!
Depending on how you place your ad, you can make a mint!
So what makes eBay such a money-maker for those in the know?
These are some reasons to start:
Other than that, reward is based on a potential eBay moguls ability to convince people to visit the page, read the script and finally…
Make a Bid!
What this all leads back is to the question: do you buy logically, or emotionally…an actions that can be considered illogical.
You’ve seen it many times…
A person says they’re not going to sell for anything less than say, $20,000 for a used Volvo….
Prospective buyers come and go, not making the $20,000 the seller offers—one couple even goes as high as $18,000 in cash…
But the guy just won’t sell!
Then, another prospective buyer comes up and admires the car, a young man by the seller’s standards, really shows an appreciation not only for the car, with a strong knowledge of the importance of that model, but that the seller also understands the importance, too!
Rapport is built between the seller and the buyer, and though the seller had promised his wife that he wouldn’t sell for less than $20,000, he ends up selling to the young man for $13,000!
How could that be?
He went through at least 10 calls, five visits and five offers, four of which were well over the $13,000…
What happened?
--Right person at the right time!
And you may have also surmised correctly that while the others were only interested in the car, and were going just going for a “deal” on a machine that would get them to work and shopping, the one who finally got the Volvo was not just another potential buyer, but was also qualifying himself: he sold himself by connecting EMOTIONALLY with the seller!
Making money on eBay is pretty much the same, except rapport isn’t built by interacting verbally. Rapport is built by recognizing who would best be served by what you have to offer and then delivering thoughts, ideas, and facts to them that mesh with their understanding of the world as they see it and want to see it…
There are four main points to moving ahead of the pack:
Timing has various meanings on eBAy. There’s global timing, which means that you have an item that is in much demand at that time—either because there’s a fad, or because it’s a new version of a product with a long history: all of which are in your favor!
Timing also refers to when you place your item. One of the biggest selling products on the market now is the one by Jock Cockrum in Silent Sales Machine Hiding on eBay. He suggests listing items for bid on Sunday evenings at 7, based on the theory that Sunday evenings are the times when most people will have time to relax before the new work week and do a lot of surfing…
What I’ve learned is that I’m selling on Sunday evenings at 7, I mainly selling to other people trying to make money on eBay: and there’s nothing worse than selling to someone who’s buying your product for to make more money on it—why?
First of all, on average, because there are so many people trying it, buying and selling within the eBay world, is not as good as buying outside the circle and then selling within the arena of eBay.
The best way to do well if you must buy at eBay is finding an item that not too many people are clued into the potential price. If anything the reason to purchase on eBay to make money is to make the purchase on eBay and then sell somewhere else.
On that premise, the better way to really succeed at eBay is to purchase outside eBay and then list. Why? Like anywhere else you can make a mess of money: your money is made not at the time of sale, but at the time of purchase!
If you can get the item for incredibly low price, then the relation of expense to resale value is much better…this is one of the reasons someone like the THE RICH JERK is doing so well—he understands the real strategy about making money like Chris Carpenter with Google Adsense Words!
These are two people who know when to buy, i.e. advertising keywords, how cheaply to buy at…and when to sell and for how high in another venue. It’s a skill learned through practice and trial and error. Sometimes you sometimes you take a hit on your purchase price for the item and wrongly think you’re going to do well on the eBay sale. Then, other times you sell for not only the “buy it now” price but it’s gone in one night!
But, to get the most bang for your buck—to make money at eBay, you need good sales copywriting skills..and do you know what those are?
Getting a potential customer to read the first headline and to not stop until he or she gets to the end, fills in a higher bid, and clicks “Place Bid” or better yet..sometimes, the “Buy It Now” button.
That takes a lot of “emotional” rapport…getting across to the eBay page visitor that you are an authority on the subject or your product you’re offering, that you understanding and appreciate all that bidder is going through emotionally (the expense, and the potential joys of owning what you have to offer) and that he or she MUST buy it now, else go through the remorse of losing the bid…
And the best way to do that is tell a story!
Tell a story that puts the bidder in action using whatever you’re auctioning: have them experience all that they will experience when they have the item in their possession, remind them all they have to do is make a worthwhile bid…then emphasize that the time is short and then do it again…amazing how well that works—people really have a short attention span, especially if they’ve gone through the mental process of
It’s appalling how many potentially great sales copywriters out there write copy that gets the reader so excited about the product: feeling every emotion, every physical sensation as though it were real…then, fumble without delivering the call to action—the potential bidder just clicks another button and is gone!
And so, like I promised: you need to know about making money on without spending a single cent on a TV product on selling eBay…but if you don’t feel that is enough, then, perhaps you do need to read the FREE newsletter available here: Silent Sales Machine Hiding on eBay
Next Time:
Let me ask you, which do you think sells more copies:
….The Rich Jerk
Or… The Rich Dummy?
In the next installment I’ll tell you which one, and more importantly—why! If you make your main money convincing people to buy—either marketing or sales…or even if you’ve just got a product or service and don’t know how to get it out to your target customer—you’ll want to make sure you’re subscribed so that you don’t waste anymore money and time!
You never know how much you’re missed until you disappear for a while! :)
Well, for those of you who were paying attention: the book signing in DC with Joe Galloway was fantastic—we garnered $10,000 in donations for Viet-American survivors of Katrina and a new Vietnamese Cultural Center in the Washington DC area…not bad for only 13 signed paperbacks of The Bamboo Chest and 3 hardcovers of We Were Soldiers Once... and Young (albiet Joe’s were not only signed by him but also General Moore, who was played by Mel Gibson in the movie)!
The fundraiser was held in a fantastic Chinese restaurant in the area. Here’s a photo of me, Joe, Don Duong, from WWS, Green Dragon, and Three Seasons, and who will be playing my interrogator/translator, Chan Le, in the movie based on The Bamboo Chest, and the fundraiser organizer, Lien Tran. Behind us is one of the most famous singers in the Vietnamese and Vietnamese-American community: Thu Phuong…she had to defect from the Socialist Republic of Vietnam the same year as Don: Don because he was in Green Dragon and WWSO, and Thu because she was working on a recording deal in L.A. and Hanoi was afraid she wasn’t going to return—talk about counter-incentive!
The next day, Joe and I spent going over plans for a movie that Joe and I will be writing this fall, and I’ll be directing sometime in the coming two years…would love to tell you what it’s about, but until we’ve written it can’t say much more than…it’s a piece of history that has been lost and is such a GREAT STORY!
Here’s a portrait I really like that I took of Joe being introspective about war, combat, and unwinding with a smoke as we talked about the good-ole-bad-ole days: we not only shared time in Vietnam during a few of the same years, but also Singapore—he actually wrote a piece that saved the Raffles Hotel from Lee Kwan Yew’s demolition (Lee Kwan wanted to take down anything that reminded of the British Empire’s rule of Singapore)!
The Raffles is where the Singapore Sling was designed by a Hainanese-Chinese, called Mr. Ngiam Tong Boon, in 1910, by the way…
As I write this, Joe is in Iraq somewhere, doing a piece on their and our militaries…invited by none other than the Secretary of Defense, our man in the chow hall…Don Rummy :)
Got to love those nicknames that come up…when I was a Naval midshipman we had to know the names of all main government and military commanders, our man then was “The Friendly Ghost”, Casper Weinberg.
Anyway, if you’ve got some good thoughts and prayers, send them Joe’s way… I sure don’t want him having his butt modified by a carbomb!
…Human psychology…a very interesting study I enjoy touching on in every piece I write—and no wonder since I was a drug and alcohol rehab counselor for five years for Friendship House Association of American Indians…and understanding my own mind is the only reason after all the times I almost caught a bullet, or ended up in Davy Jones’ locker that I’m even able to be here to write you…like I like to say: knowledge is not power—knowledge and the implementation of knowledge is power…and increased survivability!
Take for example the human condition as revolves around money, wealth, CASH and how when you give people what they want, they take if for granted, but withhold even slightly and the dogs of war are unleashed to get it back…and they’ll pay whatever it takes to get it back…
Isn’t it amazing when you find out who’s really making lots of money on the Internet…and who isn’t?
If you’re like me you like to make tons of cash not just when you’re actually working but also when you’re having fun, while you’re away from the “office”…and one of the best places to do that is my own big-little copywriting laboratory—eBay.com!
On average, just tinkering and playing around—experimenting, I’ve averaged $2,500 to $3,000 a month selling stuff on eBay. I’ve sold everything from ancient whale vertebraes, curios from Southeast Asia, all the way to one of my crowning glories: a C.C. Roberts Mud Puppy Muskie lure for $299.97…
That’s $299.97 for a fishing lure!! Here’s the sales page: Cork’s MudPuppy on eBay
My great uncle probably spent about ten cents on that “puppy”!
You’ve probably heard about all these “hidden” treasures that reside in the attics, basements, and garages of you and me…but how many people are willing to look?
Before the Internet and eBay, the main option for selling such long lost goodies was an ad in a magazine, newspaper, or on TV. Now, we’re talking dollars, here, not what it costs to post at eBay: cents!
Depending on how you place your ad, you can make a mint!
So what makes eBay such a money-maker for those in the know?
These are some reasons to start:
- Large market base—millions of visitors a month…how many stores can boast that out of one location?
- Ease of use by sellers and buyers: search engines, and special searches, and photos!
- The ability for a marketer to use the most efficient tools for copywriting—font and line control!
Other than that, reward is based on a potential eBay moguls ability to convince people to visit the page, read the script and finally…
Make a Bid!
What this all leads back is to the question: do you buy logically, or emotionally…an actions that can be considered illogical.
You’ve seen it many times…
A person says they’re not going to sell for anything less than say, $20,000 for a used Volvo….
Prospective buyers come and go, not making the $20,000 the seller offers—one couple even goes as high as $18,000 in cash…
But the guy just won’t sell!
Then, another prospective buyer comes up and admires the car, a young man by the seller’s standards, really shows an appreciation not only for the car, with a strong knowledge of the importance of that model, but that the seller also understands the importance, too!
Rapport is built between the seller and the buyer, and though the seller had promised his wife that he wouldn’t sell for less than $20,000, he ends up selling to the young man for $13,000!
How could that be?
He went through at least 10 calls, five visits and five offers, four of which were well over the $13,000…
What happened?
--Right person at the right time!
And you may have also surmised correctly that while the others were only interested in the car, and were going just going for a “deal” on a machine that would get them to work and shopping, the one who finally got the Volvo was not just another potential buyer, but was also qualifying himself: he sold himself by connecting EMOTIONALLY with the seller!
Making money on eBay is pretty much the same, except rapport isn’t built by interacting verbally. Rapport is built by recognizing who would best be served by what you have to offer and then delivering thoughts, ideas, and facts to them that mesh with their understanding of the world as they see it and want to see it…
There are four main points to moving ahead of the pack:
- Timing
- Placement
- Pricing
- Description of the item that draws the highest paying bidders appropriate to the item!
Timing has various meanings on eBAy. There’s global timing, which means that you have an item that is in much demand at that time—either because there’s a fad, or because it’s a new version of a product with a long history: all of which are in your favor!
Timing also refers to when you place your item. One of the biggest selling products on the market now is the one by Jock Cockrum in Silent Sales Machine Hiding on eBay. He suggests listing items for bid on Sunday evenings at 7, based on the theory that Sunday evenings are the times when most people will have time to relax before the new work week and do a lot of surfing…
What I’ve learned is that I’m selling on Sunday evenings at 7, I mainly selling to other people trying to make money on eBay: and there’s nothing worse than selling to someone who’s buying your product for to make more money on it—why?
First of all, on average, because there are so many people trying it, buying and selling within the eBay world, is not as good as buying outside the circle and then selling within the arena of eBay.
The best way to do well if you must buy at eBay is finding an item that not too many people are clued into the potential price. If anything the reason to purchase on eBay to make money is to make the purchase on eBay and then sell somewhere else.
On that premise, the better way to really succeed at eBay is to purchase outside eBay and then list. Why? Like anywhere else you can make a mess of money: your money is made not at the time of sale, but at the time of purchase!
If you can get the item for incredibly low price, then the relation of expense to resale value is much better…this is one of the reasons someone like the THE RICH JERK is doing so well—he understands the real strategy about making money like Chris Carpenter with Google Adsense Words!
These are two people who know when to buy, i.e. advertising keywords, how cheaply to buy at…and when to sell and for how high in another venue. It’s a skill learned through practice and trial and error. Sometimes you sometimes you take a hit on your purchase price for the item and wrongly think you’re going to do well on the eBay sale. Then, other times you sell for not only the “buy it now” price but it’s gone in one night!
But, to get the most bang for your buck—to make money at eBay, you need good sales copywriting skills..and do you know what those are?
Getting a potential customer to read the first headline and to not stop until he or she gets to the end, fills in a higher bid, and clicks “Place Bid” or better yet..sometimes, the “Buy It Now” button.
That takes a lot of “emotional” rapport…getting across to the eBay page visitor that you are an authority on the subject or your product you’re offering, that you understanding and appreciate all that bidder is going through emotionally (the expense, and the potential joys of owning what you have to offer) and that he or she MUST buy it now, else go through the remorse of losing the bid…
And the best way to do that is tell a story!
Tell a story that puts the bidder in action using whatever you’re auctioning: have them experience all that they will experience when they have the item in their possession, remind them all they have to do is make a worthwhile bid…then emphasize that the time is short and then do it again…amazing how well that works—people really have a short attention span, especially if they’ve gone through the mental process of
It’s appalling how many potentially great sales copywriters out there write copy that gets the reader so excited about the product: feeling every emotion, every physical sensation as though it were real…then, fumble without delivering the call to action—the potential bidder just clicks another button and is gone!
And so, like I promised: you need to know about making money on without spending a single cent on a TV product on selling eBay…but if you don’t feel that is enough, then, perhaps you do need to read the FREE newsletter available here: Silent Sales Machine Hiding on eBay
Next Time:
Let me ask you, which do you think sells more copies:
….The Rich Jerk
Or… The Rich Dummy?
In the next installment I’ll tell you which one, and more importantly—why! If you make your main money convincing people to buy—either marketing or sales…or even if you’ve just got a product or service and don’t know how to get it out to your target customer—you’ll want to make sure you’re subscribed so that you don’t waste anymore money and time!
Thursday, October 20, 2005
THE PERSUASION EQUATION MASTER (PART II)
In a moment I’ll continue our talk on why force, anger, and hard-handed efforts at manipulation, i.e. torture, are not only are ineffective, but can remove any chance of later getting information, confessions (GITMO?), or why hard-handed persuasion tactics in sales are tactics of the amateur
…when done correctly a successful agreement occurs because of a collection of events that lead up to the goal…which almost seems to have come to fruition on its own—ah the wonders of POWER PERSUASION!
First, I need to tell you about my friend, Knight Ridder military correspondent Joe Galloway, author of the bestseller We Were Soldiers Once..And Young: Ia Drang--The Battle That Changed The War In Vietnam
Joe sent me a copy of his latest column for Knight Ridder that is so well written and poignant (a remembering and passing of the guard), titled:
Gathering for a dose of fellowship, memories among old soldiers”
If you want to know what these guys went through, you’ve got to read the book or watch the DVD!
Back to PART II:Most startling about that scene in “Platoon” was that NVA prisoner’s look of defiance…
Defiance is the response most to be avoided in any interrogation, personal interaction, or anytime you’re trying to convince or persuade: you’d be amazed how many are so willing to talk before an interrogation starts, and are so quickly to turned into allies just by letting them…without beating them on the head—physically or verbally…
If you saw the piddly, anger-filled interrogation of an Iraqi terrorista by that ning-nong LT in “Over There” last night, you know exactly what not to do in an interrogation…much less an attempt to persuade.
Would you believe that after my release from Vietnam in 1984, after getting one of those mindless office jobs, i.e. mailboy, at a stockbrokerage, I actually observed a broker yelling at a client to buy?!
Percentage-wise, hammer-handed tactics hardly ever work….and once you build a sense of defiance in your subject, you’ve lost for the very reasons that Lakhani mentions in his persuasion bible: “Persuasion: The Art of Getting What You Want”.
Back to the "Six Tenets of Persuasion" Lakhani describes in his book:
- Outcome based
- Best-Interest Focused
- Truthful
- Goal and Time Oriented
- Personal
- Ethical
Any negotiation, sale (even a piece of sales copy!)… basically every good persuasion event always starts with a detailed outcome if not on paper, then at least in your mind. All great negotiations, sales, and even an interrogation starts with an objective: closing a specific deal, completing sale, or even deciding whether you’re just after accurate information or you want much more—turn an enenmy combatant into a double-agent—all rely on your envisioned outcome.
Then, throughout the process of persuasion, you have to do a self-check to make sure that the whole event and “outcome” passes the “Best-Interest” filter: is this good for you and your subject? That may seem clear in a sales or negotiation: but an interrogation? Absolutely!
How will your subject fare during and after the successful interrogation: will he be taken out and shot ( or put through a mock-execution, as they stupidly did to me in Vietnam) or will the subject get better food, a softer bed to sleep in after being cooperative?
Remember we’re trained like this since childhood: the difference is whether we’re raised by abusive parents who actually beat a kid, or punish appropriately—in the long run, grounding is much more effective on a child than whipping (spare the rod, spoil the child is another topic way too long to get into here).
If you’ve verified the first two tenets, then the third is very easy to confirm: are you being truthful? Remember: all successful persuasion events are based on congruency. Everyone can tell in-congruency, either consciously or through subconscious reaction. If you’re untruthful and incongruent (like an insecure man trying to “act” confident in front of his woman of desire) this occurs, rapport is lost and replaced with lack of trust and ultimately defiance…
Depending on time constraints and environment you may be able to regain trust, but once you hit defiance the subject is basically lost: this is one of the reasons in law enforcement the worst one to interview either the subject or witnesses is the arresting officer—best to send investigators to the interview the list of names previously collected by officers at the scene of the arrest.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS have more importance than most people are willing to admit!
And so we’re brought back to your GOAL and TIME orientation with regards to outcome: you need to ask yourself what achieved goal within what time frame will be interpreted as a success? You need to do this BEFORE you approach the interaction!
Let’s say you’re a field interrogator in a jungle war: if the subject tells you where the boobytrap are placed around the village, and tells you within the next hour will this be a success? What if he/she tells you, but it takes two hours? Two days? Are these acceptable?
If you’re in a sales environment, what if you get the sale, but the customer can’t pay you in one payment—is this acceptable? What if she can pay the whole amount in one payment, but it’ll take one more week? Will you accept a contract to pay? Or word? These are all possible outcomes and it’s up to you to have them clear before going in, because….
Your goal and time objectives will be matched against the subjects.
Now for the hardest tenet for many, especially if you don’t take to heart first four: PERSONAL.
To this day, I still have no strong animosity to Mr. Le, one of my interrogators in Vietnam, who was also the translator. Why? He was very personable. Except for the time I tried to escape, he never hit me…unlike some of other apes. He also had a very likeable aura about him: he was after all a French language teacher at a local Saigon university…and during the war he had spent time in a South Vietnamese prison for his college demonstration participation. Once he realized I was just a kid on his first photo assignment, he softened up and was quite friendly…as much as permitted within an interrogator/political prisoner interaction.
My memory of him was recalled when I later studied one of the most effective German interrogators during WWII: master interrogator Hans Scharff at Dulag Luft. As one Allied prisoner said of him: “Hanns could probably get a confession of infidelity from a nun”
HIS SECRET?
--he treated his subjects with “RESPECT and DIGNITY”. It’s that simple…well not THAT simple, but you get the drift...
Scharff was known for many acts of kindness and looking out for the well-fare of the prisoner—how many other prisoners who were hung for their warcrimes could say that? Would you believe that many of the Allied pilots he debriefed actually became friends after the war? Now that’s a GREAT PERSUASION—though he didn’t have access to Lakhani’s book, he intuitively knew all of six of Lakhani’s “Tenets of Persuasion”!
Many of Scharff’s most productive interrogations occurred while making a leisurely stroll around one of the compounds gardens…simple conversations in deep rapport—you can’t get into rapport if you don’t give of yourself, first: being PERSONAL. Very much in contrast to the fist and boot tactics of the SS, and Stalin’s KGB, or the amateurs of Abu Ghraib for that matter. And I bet you Sen. John McCain has no interest in writing to his interrogators…
And so we arrive at the last tenet: ETHICAL
Scharff had impressive ethics and they came through in his interactions which easily helped drop the defense (defiance) posture of his subjects, and also enabled him to reach rapid rapport: substitute “being one” for rapport and you get the deep meaning of “being in rapport”. He was able to become the “head” of this “body in rapport” (his subject) leading the body to speak and deliver what he needed.
Without an ethical center, rumors would have run rampant about Scharff’s in-congruency, bringing into question his truthfulness, personability, and best-interest focus. Without a center on some form of strong ethics, Scharff would have been labeled a person simply on the make…a manipulator: he would have been forced to act out of frustration, like the other interrogators, who physically tortured their subjects to arrive at questionable results.
As everyone successful in sales and business knows: your best customer is the one you already have—break the Six Tenets and the best you can expect is a one-time sale…and worse: a BAD REPUTATION!
Man, I love Lakhani’s book!
I wish I could spend days writing about all that he has written, but it’s best to just lead you there so that you can enjoy all the rest he has…especially his “Persuasion Equation”, where he has created a solid formula that can be minimized or expanded as you so desire.
What’s better about Lakhani’s book is that thought it offers you everything you need to know about amazingly effective persuasion, it’s a book about business and personal interactions, from a sociological and psychology point of view—very powerful!
Also, definitely check out this book on Scharff:
NEXT TIME:
If you’re like me you like to make money not just when you’re actually working but also when you’re having fun…would you believe that I love to write not only for my full-time work, but also during play? Matter of fact, I use eBay to test new and innovative sales copy writing techniques. In the next installment, I’ll save you money on any TV course you might be thinking of buying on how to make money on eBAy. Until then, you can check out my play page: Cork’s eBay Page
I’ll also let you in on a NOT SO SECRET fundraiser for the Vietnamese-American community hit by the hurricanes in the Southeast: Joe Galloway, me and the actor, Don Duong, who played Lt. Col. Nguyen Huu An in “We Were Soldiers Once”, and who is signed to play my interrogator, Mr. Le, in the upcoming movie based on my memoir, will all be attending Nov. 18th in Washington D.C. Joe and I will be donating signed copies of our books to the cause!
Sunday, October 16, 2005
THE PERSUASION EQUATION MASTER (PART 1)
Flashback Central last week: I get an e-mail from my friend, fellow journalist and author, Zalin Grant (If you were in Saigon during the Tet Offensive of 1968, you’ll recognize the name). Anyway, Zalin had read my first memoir a while ago, and wanted to know what I thought about Bush preparing to veto Sen. John McCain’s torture amendment. Within that same week I was watching a re-run of Oliver Stone’s "Platoon", and my eyes keyed in on the defiant look of an NVA prisoner being slapped around during what I like to call a “Hollywood” interrogation. And finally, I’m in a wonderful interview with a man of impeccable credentials in persuasion, a best-selling author of the best business book on the fine art of persuasion…which is what an effective interrogation is really supposed to be—it helps that he’s also an ex-high-level military and DEA operator with a TOPSECRET clearance!
First, I must say that I’m confounded by Bush’s resistance: anyone who has been in the US military knows that personnel are prevented from torturing because of the Geneva Convention, and even the Army Field Manual states that torture is not only illegal, but ineffective. More importantly, signing the amendment removes another propaganda opportunity for the terrorists.
But, it’s torture's ineffectiveness that revolves around TOLERANCE that really makes me ask—have we not learned? See when the Vietnamese were torturing me, I would have said anything to get them to stop—there would have been no accuracy in anything I said. There would have been more effect in the fear of torture than in the actual beating because what we create in our minds is what we have no defense against. Like working out in a gym, we can all build tolerance against pain...
SIDE NOTE: Many of you have written to me after reading my memoir to find out if I was tortured more than I described: of course I was, but for me to mention that extra amount in the The Bamboo Chest would have been distracting and off the point of the story—I basically used the events that fit the “coming of age” and “healing PTSD” story that is “The Bamboo Chest”.
Now if I were to have written about torture and interrogation tactics which are all directed toward persuading and manipulating, then I would have included more, or done something more beneficial…reveal persuasion techniques that don’t involve torture and are light years ahead of the pack!
As a negotiation specialist hired by Fortune 500 companies and government agencies to teach the fine art of negotiation, I am always on the lookout for the latest information that can’t be ignored: such as Dave Lakhani has delivered in his brilliant collection of battle-tested ideas in “Persuasion: The Art of Getting What You Want”
Almost magical persuasion revolves not around beating someone on the head, or putting them into embarrassing positions in front of the camera as in Abu Ghraib, but in making them see the similarities, building on those similarities and showing how unlike the enemy the subject is: an effectively turned enemy can be one of your most effective allies—if for no other reason than the information they carry from the other side!
It all comes down to what Lakhani calls “Tenets of Persuasion: if you follow them you not only get what you want, but you leave the person as an ally and potential “true believer”.
Here are the "Six Tenets of Persuasion" Lakhani describes in his book:
Lakhani listed these because he wrote a book for people in dealing with people in business deals, marketing, and sales, even for just making a profoundly efficient impressions on people in day-to-day interactions, but how many of you would find that effective interrogations need these same tenets, not just for how we look to other countries, or how to do contrary only offers more fodder for the TERRORIST public relations fires?
Well as you’ve guessed this is a subject that I’ve learned not to take lightly. So, I’ve realized that I’ll have to make this a two-part series…
You can wait until the next installment to find out what’s more amazing about Lakhani’s book…how there are NEVER BEFORE PRINTED persuasion secrets that only the most effective orators, salespeople, politicians, military interrogators, and marketers know…or you could just get reading now getting his book here:
NEXT INSTALLMENT: You think you don’t need to know the skills of persuasion offered by Dave Lakhani, yet they’re used on you everyday. You think it’s only for people in sales, politics, or interrogation…but you can’t understand why your loved one can’t understand you… you’re about to get into a divorce…your team is just not getting the objectives and you’ve supposedly made them all clear…all the reasons for this will be revealed and what you can do about!
First, I must say that I’m confounded by Bush’s resistance: anyone who has been in the US military knows that personnel are prevented from torturing because of the Geneva Convention, and even the Army Field Manual states that torture is not only illegal, but ineffective. More importantly, signing the amendment removes another propaganda opportunity for the terrorists.
But, it’s torture's ineffectiveness that revolves around TOLERANCE that really makes me ask—have we not learned? See when the Vietnamese were torturing me, I would have said anything to get them to stop—there would have been no accuracy in anything I said. There would have been more effect in the fear of torture than in the actual beating because what we create in our minds is what we have no defense against. Like working out in a gym, we can all build tolerance against pain...
SIDE NOTE: Many of you have written to me after reading my memoir to find out if I was tortured more than I described: of course I was, but for me to mention that extra amount in the The Bamboo Chest would have been distracting and off the point of the story—I basically used the events that fit the “coming of age” and “healing PTSD” story that is “The Bamboo Chest”.
Now if I were to have written about torture and interrogation tactics which are all directed toward persuading and manipulating, then I would have included more, or done something more beneficial…reveal persuasion techniques that don’t involve torture and are light years ahead of the pack!
As a negotiation specialist hired by Fortune 500 companies and government agencies to teach the fine art of negotiation, I am always on the lookout for the latest information that can’t be ignored: such as Dave Lakhani has delivered in his brilliant collection of battle-tested ideas in “Persuasion: The Art of Getting What You Want”
Almost magical persuasion revolves not around beating someone on the head, or putting them into embarrassing positions in front of the camera as in Abu Ghraib, but in making them see the similarities, building on those similarities and showing how unlike the enemy the subject is: an effectively turned enemy can be one of your most effective allies—if for no other reason than the information they carry from the other side!
It all comes down to what Lakhani calls “Tenets of Persuasion: if you follow them you not only get what you want, but you leave the person as an ally and potential “true believer”.
Here are the "Six Tenets of Persuasion" Lakhani describes in his book:
- Outcome based
- Best-Interest Focused
- Truthful
- Goal and Time Oriented
- Personal
- Ethical
Lakhani listed these because he wrote a book for people in dealing with people in business deals, marketing, and sales, even for just making a profoundly efficient impressions on people in day-to-day interactions, but how many of you would find that effective interrogations need these same tenets, not just for how we look to other countries, or how to do contrary only offers more fodder for the TERRORIST public relations fires?
Well as you’ve guessed this is a subject that I’ve learned not to take lightly. So, I’ve realized that I’ll have to make this a two-part series…
You can wait until the next installment to find out what’s more amazing about Lakhani’s book…how there are NEVER BEFORE PRINTED persuasion secrets that only the most effective orators, salespeople, politicians, military interrogators, and marketers know…or you could just get reading now getting his book here:
NEXT INSTALLMENT: You think you don’t need to know the skills of persuasion offered by Dave Lakhani, yet they’re used on you everyday. You think it’s only for people in sales, politics, or interrogation…but you can’t understand why your loved one can’t understand you… you’re about to get into a divorce…your team is just not getting the objectives and you’ve supposedly made them all clear…all the reasons for this will be revealed and what you can do about!
Friday, October 14, 2005
A WEE BIT O' THE OL' COUNTRY!
In a moment I’m going to show you not only how you can make a very important decision about your family history, but also let you in on something that not only will turn a bad meal into a good one, but a good meal into the best!
Imagine my surprise when the only time in years that I’ve pulled out the old Thomson family tree was also the week I met a woman from the actual Scottish town that one side of my family comes from: Elizabeth “Lizzie” Thomson, Lizzie was born on May 25, 1851, on the old farm in Dhuloch, Kirkolm Parish, Wigtownshire, Scotland, and after traveling through Canada to the American Midwest, married my great-great-grandfather Samuel Allison Graham on June 3, 1869, in the Macksburg United Presbyterian Church, Iowa., and had a farm in Adair County.” The Descendents of Hugh Thomson, compiled by Donald C. Thomson of Stevensville, MD
Her grandfather, Hugh I, had three uncles who had been martyred during one of the persecutions in Scotland, which was one of the reasons, the Thomsons, like the Grahams (who had to leave Stirling and Dundee for Belfast and then South Carolina in time for the American Revolution), spent a lot of time in Ireland—a great number of Scots just kept moving west.
Now, Alison McQuade, who I met in San Francisco, reminded me of this back and forth between Ireland and Scotland, with the final run to the US of A. Her family is originally from Ireland, though she hails from Ayrshire, Scotland (where Hugh Thomson I first arrived back in Scotland): “a sunless place, where the moors stretch far”, but where her wee Granny McQuade prepared something so deliciously tropical—chutney!
Born in Trinidad and Tobago, and having spent 6 years in Singapore soon after independence from Great Britain, I have had a love of chutney ever since I can remember and jumped at the chance when she offered me some samples with which to experiment!
What is chutney?
As The Food Reference so well describes:
“The original chutney of India (Hindi: chatni) was usually a relish made from fresh fruits and spices. During the colonial era the British took it home (along with curry dishes) to their Island, and thence to their other colonial possessions, including South Africa and the Caribbean Islands. During this long journey the concept changed, until the commercially made mango chutney 'Major Grey's chutney' became the British standard chutney. Major Grey is a probably mythical colonial British officer who loved curries and made his own chutney to accompany them (no one has a copyright on his name - anyone can use it). These commercially made cooked chutneys are still popular in Great Britain, and are usually made of fruit (usually mangos, apples or pears), onions and raisins simmered with vinegar, brown sugar and spices for about two hours.”
Ask anyone about chutney and they always say it’s supposed to be served with Indian curry. Now, I can’t imagine enjoying a vindaloo, or tandoori without tamarind or mango chutney, but chutney goes a long further than that…especially with the numbers of chutney’s I’ve just been privy to through McQuade’s chutney product list....
I love figs fresh off the tree in our backyard and especially in chutney. That’s what I told Alison and within a week, I not only had her drop-you-on-the-floor-asking-for-more “Moray Fig and Ginger”, but also a jar of “Glasgow Spiced Apple” and “Mandarin Orange and Apricot”!
Now it’s a few days until duck season, and I’m out of wild boar, which would go well, I’m sure, with the apple chutney, but there’s fresh Columbian blacktail venison in the freezer and so after preparing my tried and true recipe I like to call Cerf aux Herbes de Provence, I matched it with the “Moray Fig and Ginger”.
First of all, if you know how to prepare good venison from field to freezer (age it a minimum of two to three days in 65 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit) there is no such meal as gamey venison. Secondly, if you pick a condiment effectively, it’s meant to not mask, but bring out the wealth of flavors already in the offering—some chutneys ARE just for curries, but then there are the others….!
You can save time by clicking on this link to get directly to Alison McQuade’s chutney page: McQuade's Celtic Chutneys
For my special recipe (works very well for bison meat): Cerf aux Herbes de Provence
I’m a strong proponent of “doing it right” by culling and butchering your own. But, if you can’t, these guys can help:
And while you’re enjoying your slices of Cerf aux Herbes de Provence, you might want to see who can do your own family tree, perhaps yourself? I guarantee you’ll meet some very interesting people if you do!
Genealogy Resources:
You Won’t Want to Miss This! (USE the RSS FEED/e-mail Links to the right to Subscribe):
TORTURE is always the question that comes up in conversation when an audience learns that I spent 11 months in a Communist re-education camp on trumped up charges of spying for the CIA: “Were you tortured?…What has your personal experience taught you about torture?” Considering the controversy of the John McCain torture amendment, in the next installment I’ll fill you in on the personal facts of torture and its effectiveness; and I’ll then introduce you to a best-selling author, ex-high level military and DEA operator with TOPSECRET clearance… a true master of persuasion, who gets paid a lot of money to help you in your business and personal interactions, making them more productive and enjoyable: and everything but torture!
Imagine my surprise when the only time in years that I’ve pulled out the old Thomson family tree was also the week I met a woman from the actual Scottish town that one side of my family comes from: Elizabeth “Lizzie” Thomson, Lizzie was born on May 25, 1851, on the old farm in Dhuloch, Kirkolm Parish, Wigtownshire, Scotland, and after traveling through Canada to the American Midwest, married my great-great-grandfather Samuel Allison Graham on June 3, 1869, in the Macksburg United Presbyterian Church, Iowa., and had a farm in Adair County.” The Descendents of Hugh Thomson, compiled by Donald C. Thomson of Stevensville, MD
Her grandfather, Hugh I, had three uncles who had been martyred during one of the persecutions in Scotland, which was one of the reasons, the Thomsons, like the Grahams (who had to leave Stirling and Dundee for Belfast and then South Carolina in time for the American Revolution), spent a lot of time in Ireland—a great number of Scots just kept moving west.
Now, Alison McQuade, who I met in San Francisco, reminded me of this back and forth between Ireland and Scotland, with the final run to the US of A. Her family is originally from Ireland, though she hails from Ayrshire, Scotland (where Hugh Thomson I first arrived back in Scotland): “a sunless place, where the moors stretch far”, but where her wee Granny McQuade prepared something so deliciously tropical—chutney!
Born in Trinidad and Tobago, and having spent 6 years in Singapore soon after independence from Great Britain, I have had a love of chutney ever since I can remember and jumped at the chance when she offered me some samples with which to experiment!
What is chutney?
As The Food Reference so well describes:
“The original chutney of India (Hindi: chatni) was usually a relish made from fresh fruits and spices. During the colonial era the British took it home (along with curry dishes) to their Island, and thence to their other colonial possessions, including South Africa and the Caribbean Islands. During this long journey the concept changed, until the commercially made mango chutney 'Major Grey's chutney' became the British standard chutney. Major Grey is a probably mythical colonial British officer who loved curries and made his own chutney to accompany them (no one has a copyright on his name - anyone can use it). These commercially made cooked chutneys are still popular in Great Britain, and are usually made of fruit (usually mangos, apples or pears), onions and raisins simmered with vinegar, brown sugar and spices for about two hours.”
Ask anyone about chutney and they always say it’s supposed to be served with Indian curry. Now, I can’t imagine enjoying a vindaloo, or tandoori without tamarind or mango chutney, but chutney goes a long further than that…especially with the numbers of chutney’s I’ve just been privy to through McQuade’s chutney product list....
I love figs fresh off the tree in our backyard and especially in chutney. That’s what I told Alison and within a week, I not only had her drop-you-on-the-floor-asking-for-more “Moray Fig and Ginger”, but also a jar of “Glasgow Spiced Apple” and “Mandarin Orange and Apricot”!
Now it’s a few days until duck season, and I’m out of wild boar, which would go well, I’m sure, with the apple chutney, but there’s fresh Columbian blacktail venison in the freezer and so after preparing my tried and true recipe I like to call Cerf aux Herbes de Provence, I matched it with the “Moray Fig and Ginger”.
First of all, if you know how to prepare good venison from field to freezer (age it a minimum of two to three days in 65 to 70 degrees Fahrenheit) there is no such meal as gamey venison. Secondly, if you pick a condiment effectively, it’s meant to not mask, but bring out the wealth of flavors already in the offering—some chutneys ARE just for curries, but then there are the others….!
You can save time by clicking on this link to get directly to Alison McQuade’s chutney page: McQuade's Celtic Chutneys
For my special recipe (works very well for bison meat): Cerf aux Herbes de Provence
I’m a strong proponent of “doing it right” by culling and butchering your own. But, if you can’t, these guys can help:
And while you’re enjoying your slices of Cerf aux Herbes de Provence, you might want to see who can do your own family tree, perhaps yourself? I guarantee you’ll meet some very interesting people if you do!
Genealogy Resources:
You Won’t Want to Miss This! (USE the RSS FEED/e-mail Links to the right to Subscribe):
TORTURE is always the question that comes up in conversation when an audience learns that I spent 11 months in a Communist re-education camp on trumped up charges of spying for the CIA: “Were you tortured?…What has your personal experience taught you about torture?” Considering the controversy of the John McCain torture amendment, in the next installment I’ll fill you in on the personal facts of torture and its effectiveness; and I’ll then introduce you to a best-selling author, ex-high level military and DEA operator with TOPSECRET clearance… a true master of persuasion, who gets paid a lot of money to help you in your business and personal interactions, making them more productive and enjoyable: and everything but torture!
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
ASHAMED TO BE ECUADORIAN because of Fabian Basabe?
I like to see how the rich and famous are interpreted by Hollywood and the E! Channel, so I when I’m burnt after a long day of writing a new book or script, or sales copy that just has to get out to the client in time, I’ll lay back on the sofa and watch what they’ve got…
That’s when I was hit by this show called “Filthy Rich”…and I thought TV had reached rock-bottom when TV shows redirected their attention from high school graduate minimums to grade school…but, I’m always learning!
If it weren’t for the ranch hands trying to teach the spoiled rich kids something that might help them get out of just being known as members of what Donald Trump so aptly labels “the Lucky Sperm Club”, I’d be really ticked: those ranch hands (the Iacovetto family who owns the Saddleback Ranch) in Colorado have sure got my respect!
The one who really gets under my skin is Fabian Basabe, Jr…why? Well, like him, I also have an Ecuadorian identity…unlike him, I wasn’t raised as a spoiled brat!
My father met my mother in Quito in 1960, when he had come back from a trip to Peru: my mother was working at the Ecuadorian equivalent of the FBI and they met when he had his fingerprints taken for his visa renewal.
Hardworking my parents, and their parents, too. Sure, the Troncosos came from Spain with a lot of money in the 1800s. But, my grandfather was into wine, women, and song and blew all the family money on cards just after WWII!
I’ve wondered if he hadn’t would life have been much easier?…Would I have had the trials I had—no! Worse, I wouldn’t have been enriched by them…
Look at Fabian Basabe: his largest claim to fame is he has a wealthy father whose dealings with the IRS are shady at best. He’s famous for having dropped out of school, well I can relate…he loves to negotiate, I can relate, too…
But, when he interacts with people, especially when he’s drunk, he’s such an ass! And I can honestly say that if he was back in Ecuador: rich or not, he wouldn’t get off so lightly—shoot, I haven’t been back in awhile because I’m a prime target for FARC guerrillas kidnapping Americans and Europeans to bankroll their war in Columbia! I can only imagine what would happen to el bebe Basabe (who reminds me of “wasabi”)….
Then, you might ask, if I revile this person who shames the name of Fabian (one of my uncles in Quito is named Fabian) why do I even sully your time and mine with him?
Well, I’m always challenging myself to find the light and dark in everyone and everything: Fabian’s light is his keen understanding of LEVERAGE!
If you do any business successfully, whatsoever…interact with people in anyway…you are either affected by or using leverage…
“No!” you may say. All I do is write, or, program, or craft beautiful things out of wood—and I say, “EVERYONE EITHER USES OR IS AFFECTED BY LEVERAGE”.
And here is how el bebe Basabe used leverage according to a quote in the Washington Post:
"I was looking for somebody to help me in a marketing capacity," says David Drucker, formerly of Morgan Stanley, who hired Basabe. "He brought me a $10 million account for a publicly traded company and he handed the account to me on a silver platter. He's very street-smart, this kid, and knows a lot more about what he's doing than people give him credit for. I'll never say a bad word about him."
Now that is LEVERAGE…and do you notice how powerful leverage can be? David Drucker’s last words say it: “I’ll never say a bad word about him.” Now I’d never want to be in the same room as el bebe, but the kid has learned to wheel and deal: just imagine what would happen if he had a scrupulous bone in body, a sense of self-respect?
What good can you do if you consciously used leverage to improve the world?
It helped me get my first job as a foreign correspondent in Bangkok, Thailand, though I had no prior training and I was only 18 years old and had just graduated high school the year before. My leverage?
I would go anywhere, anytime to get a story: and I meant it!
Sure, those of you who’ve read my memoir say it got me thrown in a Vietnamese re-education prison for 11 months; and almost got me shot in an ambush on the Mekong River up by Laos…but those stories got me leverage in getting carte blanche on new story assignments throughout Central America and beyond…well worth it—YES, international FAME and NOTORIETY can be VERY EFFECTIVE TOOLS FOR LEVERAGE!
You don’t have to risk life and limb, like me, or face, like El Bebe, but fame, notoriety, and number of other qualities and components I’ll talk about soon can work wonders for your leverage and negotiations.
And so back to the original question so many of you have written to me about after seeing El Bebe Basabe on E!: asking, “Are you ashamed?”
Of course not!
Here’s why: Uncle Fabian Troconso, M.D.; Uncle Franklin Troncoso, architectural/construction engineer; Uncle Washington Troncoso, retired director of the Ecuador National Theater; cousin Eddy, environmental engineer and consultant; cousin Yvonne (Yaici), computer programmer; and my closest, Cousin Jose “Richard” Valencia Torres, Captain in the Ecuadorian Army Special Forces, highly decorated during the war with Peru in 1995, and who fell 12,000 feet to his death in 1999 during his jump team’s practice for the December 6th Founders Day celebration. The list goes on—big families in Ecuador (does el bebe Basabe even have a sibling?)…and the list in a very good way goes on for many others who also claim Ecuadorian heritage.
Every country has bad apples: but can we learn from them…if only how not to act like a spoiled little brat?
Here’s a Washington Post Article on Wasabi, I mean Basabe
NEXT TIME: Just met a wonderful lady from the “ole country” (Scotland), actually from near where the Thomson side of my family comes from. I’ll tell you what’s so cool about her business that’ll get you licking your lips and wanting to order what she’s got for your next family ceilidh…
That’s when I was hit by this show called “Filthy Rich”…and I thought TV had reached rock-bottom when TV shows redirected their attention from high school graduate minimums to grade school…but, I’m always learning!
If it weren’t for the ranch hands trying to teach the spoiled rich kids something that might help them get out of just being known as members of what Donald Trump so aptly labels “the Lucky Sperm Club”, I’d be really ticked: those ranch hands (the Iacovetto family who owns the Saddleback Ranch) in Colorado have sure got my respect!
The one who really gets under my skin is Fabian Basabe, Jr…why? Well, like him, I also have an Ecuadorian identity…unlike him, I wasn’t raised as a spoiled brat!
My father met my mother in Quito in 1960, when he had come back from a trip to Peru: my mother was working at the Ecuadorian equivalent of the FBI and they met when he had his fingerprints taken for his visa renewal.
Hardworking my parents, and their parents, too. Sure, the Troncosos came from Spain with a lot of money in the 1800s. But, my grandfather was into wine, women, and song and blew all the family money on cards just after WWII!
I’ve wondered if he hadn’t would life have been much easier?…Would I have had the trials I had—no! Worse, I wouldn’t have been enriched by them…
Look at Fabian Basabe: his largest claim to fame is he has a wealthy father whose dealings with the IRS are shady at best. He’s famous for having dropped out of school, well I can relate…he loves to negotiate, I can relate, too…
But, when he interacts with people, especially when he’s drunk, he’s such an ass! And I can honestly say that if he was back in Ecuador: rich or not, he wouldn’t get off so lightly—shoot, I haven’t been back in awhile because I’m a prime target for FARC guerrillas kidnapping Americans and Europeans to bankroll their war in Columbia! I can only imagine what would happen to el bebe Basabe (who reminds me of “wasabi”)….
Then, you might ask, if I revile this person who shames the name of Fabian (one of my uncles in Quito is named Fabian) why do I even sully your time and mine with him?
Well, I’m always challenging myself to find the light and dark in everyone and everything: Fabian’s light is his keen understanding of LEVERAGE!
If you do any business successfully, whatsoever…interact with people in anyway…you are either affected by or using leverage…
“No!” you may say. All I do is write, or, program, or craft beautiful things out of wood—and I say, “EVERYONE EITHER USES OR IS AFFECTED BY LEVERAGE”.
And here is how el bebe Basabe used leverage according to a quote in the Washington Post:
"I was looking for somebody to help me in a marketing capacity," says David Drucker, formerly of Morgan Stanley, who hired Basabe. "He brought me a $10 million account for a publicly traded company and he handed the account to me on a silver platter. He's very street-smart, this kid, and knows a lot more about what he's doing than people give him credit for. I'll never say a bad word about him."
Now that is LEVERAGE…and do you notice how powerful leverage can be? David Drucker’s last words say it: “I’ll never say a bad word about him.” Now I’d never want to be in the same room as el bebe, but the kid has learned to wheel and deal: just imagine what would happen if he had a scrupulous bone in body, a sense of self-respect?
What good can you do if you consciously used leverage to improve the world?
It helped me get my first job as a foreign correspondent in Bangkok, Thailand, though I had no prior training and I was only 18 years old and had just graduated high school the year before. My leverage?
I would go anywhere, anytime to get a story: and I meant it!
Sure, those of you who’ve read my memoir say it got me thrown in a Vietnamese re-education prison for 11 months; and almost got me shot in an ambush on the Mekong River up by Laos…but those stories got me leverage in getting carte blanche on new story assignments throughout Central America and beyond…well worth it—YES, international FAME and NOTORIETY can be VERY EFFECTIVE TOOLS FOR LEVERAGE!
You don’t have to risk life and limb, like me, or face, like El Bebe, but fame, notoriety, and number of other qualities and components I’ll talk about soon can work wonders for your leverage and negotiations.
And so back to the original question so many of you have written to me about after seeing El Bebe Basabe on E!: asking, “Are you ashamed?”
Of course not!
Here’s why: Uncle Fabian Troconso, M.D.; Uncle Franklin Troncoso, architectural/construction engineer; Uncle Washington Troncoso, retired director of the Ecuador National Theater; cousin Eddy, environmental engineer and consultant; cousin Yvonne (Yaici), computer programmer; and my closest, Cousin Jose “Richard” Valencia Torres, Captain in the Ecuadorian Army Special Forces, highly decorated during the war with Peru in 1995, and who fell 12,000 feet to his death in 1999 during his jump team’s practice for the December 6th Founders Day celebration. The list goes on—big families in Ecuador (does el bebe Basabe even have a sibling?)…and the list in a very good way goes on for many others who also claim Ecuadorian heritage.
Every country has bad apples: but can we learn from them…if only how not to act like a spoiled little brat?
Here’s a Washington Post Article on Wasabi, I mean Basabe
NEXT TIME: Just met a wonderful lady from the “ole country” (Scotland), actually from near where the Thomson side of my family comes from. I’ll tell you what’s so cool about her business that’ll get you licking your lips and wanting to order what she’s got for your next family ceilidh…
Thursday, October 06, 2005
HOW TO SEDUCE ANY WOMAN, ANYWHERE??
What is it with "The Game"? It's this new phenomenon that has come up in the last five to ten years...where guys go out "sarging" for women. For those unaware of this you can get hint as to what's out there by reading this book: The Game by Neil Strauss
A bunch of nerds and computer geeks turn themselves into masters of seducing women. Very controversial don't you think? And then I have to ask what is the controversy? Have you noticed how in the last ten years, something that was designed to keep governments and military departments hooked up has turned into a connection for people around the world?
But at the same time this web of interaction also has led to the normal skills of interaction we normally received through practice of person-to-person, face-to-face REAL communicaiton having gone to the wayside...is it no wonder that something as historical "picking up/seducing women" has turned into a group event that doesn't just stop at the whatever group of friends you have locally...but has turned into a global event?
I think there's more to this than just a book can explain...
Slainte,
Cork
A bunch of nerds and computer geeks turn themselves into masters of seducing women. Very controversial don't you think? And then I have to ask what is the controversy? Have you noticed how in the last ten years, something that was designed to keep governments and military departments hooked up has turned into a connection for people around the world?
But at the same time this web of interaction also has led to the normal skills of interaction we normally received through practice of person-to-person, face-to-face REAL communicaiton having gone to the wayside...is it no wonder that something as historical "picking up/seducing women" has turned into a group event that doesn't just stop at the whatever group of friends you have locally...but has turned into a global event?
I think there's more to this than just a book can explain...
Slainte,
Cork
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Former-Investigator for POW/MIA Div. of the Pentagon clarifies statements about the case...
Well, it's good to know that people are actually doing searches under their names to find out what's been written. Here's an e-mail that my friend and ex-POW/MIA Division debriefer Bob Destatte asked I post to clarify a post from July awhile back:
"Please permit me to take this opportunity to respond to a note you posted on your BLOG back in July 2003 (see copy below). I serendipitously ran across the item this evening while searching for information on a separate topic.
In your note, referring to a passage in an e-mail (see copy below) that I had authored and that was posted on teamhouse.tni.net, you correctly pointed out that Rach Gia is located "...on the WEST side of Vietnam (not the east),..." In my e-mail I inadvertently and mistakenly wrote "...Rach Gia (a coastal town on the SE coast)..."
Charitably you refrained from pointing out a second typographic error in my e-mail, where I had written, "...1) the amount was far short of the $1,000,000,000.00 fine (read ransom) local authorities reportedly were trying to get from Schooley's 'associates',..."
I had intended to write "$1,000,000.00", but inadvertently added three-too-many zeros. The correct sum was one million dollars.
In your note you wrote: "And if Schooley was captured with Thais, then for sure he's still going to be in the Thai Gulf." It seemed to me that you were responding to a question posed by one of your correspondents. If that is the case, I was not able to find the question. In any event, although I am not at liberty to divulge the source of my knowledge, I can assure you that I and my office had unimpeachable knowledge of the date, location, and circumstances that Vietnamese maritime forces took Mr. Schooley and his associates into custody.
Also in your note, you wrote: "Funny that Senator Kerry went in after a drug dealer, such as Schooley..." I and some of my colleagues had urged Senator Kerry to press the Vietnamese regarding Mr. Schooley. I believe that Senator Kerry simply was trying to assist us in making a point we were trying to make with Vietnamese central authorities. His assistance proved helpful.
I knew the correct location of Rach Gia and the correct amount of the ransom Vietnamese authorities tried to extract from Mr. Schooley's colleagues. Unfortunately, my spell-checker was not able to compensate for my careless proof-reading of the factual content of my e-mail."
This was in regards to an e-mail I had read at http://teamhouse.tni.net/:
From: "Destatte, Robert J., OSD/DPMO"
Thought you might be interested in the following. You might wish to pass the following comments. The comments represent my personal views, not necessarily the views of my office. In the article Jack wrote:
QUOTE: No US citizen has been released from Vietnam since Operation Homecoming in early 1973. The ambassador/JTF has found no evidence of any US citizen being held against his will in Vietnam since then. END QUOTE
That statement, as worded, is not accurate. In fact, several American citizens have been held against their will in Vietnam since 1973. The number includes the crews and passengers of several yachts that Vietnamese coastal security forces seized and detained for varying periods up to approximately one year. One of the most unusual cases was a young American photographer named Fred Graham who accompanied a British adventurer, whose name escaped me at this moment, who was arrested in the early 1980s when they landed on an island off the southeast coast of Vietnam to search for the legendary buried treasure of the pirate Captain Kidd (no kidding). The Vietnamese detained them in various locations for approximately one year. The Vietnamese did not inform us of any of these incidents. We learned about every instance through our efforts to collect information about Vietnamese prisons to determine whether Vietnamese authorities continued to detain any American wartime captives after Operation Homecoming.
In my judgment, a significant aspect of these incidents is the manner in which they illustrate our intelligence community's ability to learn about the existence of Americans in Vietnamese prisons after the war--when Americans were in their prisons after the war. For instance, in approximately September 1987 Vietnamese coastal security forces seized a boat and its crew of one American and five or six Thais in waters off the southeast coast of Vietnam. The American, a man named Thomas Schooley, had fled the United States a step ahead of the sheriff to avoid prosecution for alleged illegal narcotics trafficking. When the Vietnamese seized him and his Thai companions, they reportedly were transporting illegal narcotics. Not surprisingly, neither Schooley's family nor his friends ever reported this arrest to U.S. authorities, and Schooley himself did not try to seek assistance from U.S. authorities. Nevertheless, through our efforts to collect information about Vietnamese prisons we knew what specific cell Schooley was in within several weeks after he was arrested. U.S. authorities passed this information to Schooley's next of kin, who not surprisingly remained reluctant to cooperate. U.S. authorities pressed Vietnamese central authorities for information about Schooley; however, Vietnamese local authorities continued to thwart those efforts for several years.
Some of Schooley's 'business associates' reportedly paid a large sum of money, reportedly in the neighborhood of $100,000.00, to local Vietnamese authorities in Rach Gia (a coastal town on the SE coast) in an attempt to gain his release. Unfortunately for Schooley, (1) the amount was far short of the $1,000,000,000.00 fine (read ransom) local authorities reportedly were trying to get from Schooley's 'associates', (2) local authorities reportedly told Schooley's associates their courier was ripped off and lost the $100,000.00 en route to VN, (3) in my opinion, the initial willingness of Schooley's associates to pay a portion of Schooley's fine (read ransom) convinced local authorities that his associates would eventually pay the "fine" if they held Schooley long enough, and (4) we did not have normal diplomatic channels for resolving what was essentially a consular matter until we opened our embassy in 1995. Schooley's associates reportedly refused to pay any additional fine (ransom). Consequently, local authorities continued to detain Schooley until late 1992 or early 1993--until shortly after Senator John Kerry, acting on information we supplied, made a surprise visit to Rach Gia to find Schooley. Local authorities hid Schooley from Senator Kerry and his central government escorts; however, a short time later the local authorities released Schooley and allowed him to depart Vietnam. Senator Kerry's visit apparently made it too risky for the locals to continue to stonewall. I heard that American and Canadian drug enforcement officials greeted Schooley when he arrived in Canada--apparently intent on resolving the matter that was left pending when Schooley departed the States a few years earlier.
In my judgment, the fact that we were able to learn about the postwar detention of Americans such as the several yacht crews, Fred Graham, Thomas Schooley, etc., despite Vietnamese refusal to inform us about these detainees or grant us access to them prior to 1995, is strong evidence that we also would have learned about the continued detention of any Americans who were captured during the war--if the Vietnamese had withheld any captives at Operation Homecoming.
Regards, Bob Destatte"
"Please permit me to take this opportunity to respond to a note you posted on your BLOG back in July 2003 (see copy below). I serendipitously ran across the item this evening while searching for information on a separate topic.
In your note, referring to a passage in an e-mail (see copy below) that I had authored and that was posted on teamhouse.tni.net, you correctly pointed out that Rach Gia is located "...on the WEST side of Vietnam (not the east),..." In my e-mail I inadvertently and mistakenly wrote "...Rach Gia (a coastal town on the SE coast)..."
Charitably you refrained from pointing out a second typographic error in my e-mail, where I had written, "...1) the amount was far short of the $1,000,000,000.00 fine (read ransom) local authorities reportedly were trying to get from Schooley's 'associates',..."
I had intended to write "$1,000,000.00", but inadvertently added three-too-many zeros. The correct sum was one million dollars.
In your note you wrote: "And if Schooley was captured with Thais, then for sure he's still going to be in the Thai Gulf." It seemed to me that you were responding to a question posed by one of your correspondents. If that is the case, I was not able to find the question. In any event, although I am not at liberty to divulge the source of my knowledge, I can assure you that I and my office had unimpeachable knowledge of the date, location, and circumstances that Vietnamese maritime forces took Mr. Schooley and his associates into custody.
Also in your note, you wrote: "Funny that Senator Kerry went in after a drug dealer, such as Schooley..." I and some of my colleagues had urged Senator Kerry to press the Vietnamese regarding Mr. Schooley. I believe that Senator Kerry simply was trying to assist us in making a point we were trying to make with Vietnamese central authorities. His assistance proved helpful.
I knew the correct location of Rach Gia and the correct amount of the ransom Vietnamese authorities tried to extract from Mr. Schooley's colleagues. Unfortunately, my spell-checker was not able to compensate for my careless proof-reading of the factual content of my e-mail."
This was in regards to an e-mail I had read at http://teamhouse.tni.net/:
From: "Destatte, Robert J., OSD/DPMO"
Thought you might be interested in the following. You might wish to pass the following comments. The comments represent my personal views, not necessarily the views of my office. In the article Jack wrote:
QUOTE: No US citizen has been released from Vietnam since Operation Homecoming in early 1973. The ambassador/JTF has found no evidence of any US citizen being held against his will in Vietnam since then. END QUOTE
That statement, as worded, is not accurate. In fact, several American citizens have been held against their will in Vietnam since 1973. The number includes the crews and passengers of several yachts that Vietnamese coastal security forces seized and detained for varying periods up to approximately one year. One of the most unusual cases was a young American photographer named Fred Graham who accompanied a British adventurer, whose name escaped me at this moment, who was arrested in the early 1980s when they landed on an island off the southeast coast of Vietnam to search for the legendary buried treasure of the pirate Captain Kidd (no kidding). The Vietnamese detained them in various locations for approximately one year. The Vietnamese did not inform us of any of these incidents. We learned about every instance through our efforts to collect information about Vietnamese prisons to determine whether Vietnamese authorities continued to detain any American wartime captives after Operation Homecoming.
In my judgment, a significant aspect of these incidents is the manner in which they illustrate our intelligence community's ability to learn about the existence of Americans in Vietnamese prisons after the war--when Americans were in their prisons after the war. For instance, in approximately September 1987 Vietnamese coastal security forces seized a boat and its crew of one American and five or six Thais in waters off the southeast coast of Vietnam. The American, a man named Thomas Schooley, had fled the United States a step ahead of the sheriff to avoid prosecution for alleged illegal narcotics trafficking. When the Vietnamese seized him and his Thai companions, they reportedly were transporting illegal narcotics. Not surprisingly, neither Schooley's family nor his friends ever reported this arrest to U.S. authorities, and Schooley himself did not try to seek assistance from U.S. authorities. Nevertheless, through our efforts to collect information about Vietnamese prisons we knew what specific cell Schooley was in within several weeks after he was arrested. U.S. authorities passed this information to Schooley's next of kin, who not surprisingly remained reluctant to cooperate. U.S. authorities pressed Vietnamese central authorities for information about Schooley; however, Vietnamese local authorities continued to thwart those efforts for several years.
Some of Schooley's 'business associates' reportedly paid a large sum of money, reportedly in the neighborhood of $100,000.00, to local Vietnamese authorities in Rach Gia (a coastal town on the SE coast) in an attempt to gain his release. Unfortunately for Schooley, (1) the amount was far short of the $1,000,000,000.00 fine (read ransom) local authorities reportedly were trying to get from Schooley's 'associates', (2) local authorities reportedly told Schooley's associates their courier was ripped off and lost the $100,000.00 en route to VN, (3) in my opinion, the initial willingness of Schooley's associates to pay a portion of Schooley's fine (read ransom) convinced local authorities that his associates would eventually pay the "fine" if they held Schooley long enough, and (4) we did not have normal diplomatic channels for resolving what was essentially a consular matter until we opened our embassy in 1995. Schooley's associates reportedly refused to pay any additional fine (ransom). Consequently, local authorities continued to detain Schooley until late 1992 or early 1993--until shortly after Senator John Kerry, acting on information we supplied, made a surprise visit to Rach Gia to find Schooley. Local authorities hid Schooley from Senator Kerry and his central government escorts; however, a short time later the local authorities released Schooley and allowed him to depart Vietnam. Senator Kerry's visit apparently made it too risky for the locals to continue to stonewall. I heard that American and Canadian drug enforcement officials greeted Schooley when he arrived in Canada--apparently intent on resolving the matter that was left pending when Schooley departed the States a few years earlier.
In my judgment, the fact that we were able to learn about the postwar detention of Americans such as the several yacht crews, Fred Graham, Thomas Schooley, etc., despite Vietnamese refusal to inform us about these detainees or grant us access to them prior to 1995, is strong evidence that we also would have learned about the continued detention of any Americans who were captured during the war--if the Vietnamese had withheld any captives at Operation Homecoming.
Regards, Bob Destatte"
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
CORK GRAHAM on San Francisco's KFOG and KNBR Radio!
Radio interviews are fun! When given a choice I always prefer to come into the studio:
http://kfog.com/MorningShow/default.asp
KNBR actually has a link to our recording which was on the 1st:
http://www.knbr.com/morningshow/
Just right click on my name, then "save as" and play from your computer.
http://kfog.com/MorningShow/default.asp
KNBR actually has a link to our recording which was on the 1st:
http://www.knbr.com/morningshow/
Just right click on my name, then "save as" and play from your computer.
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
GRASS ROOTS MARKETING TURNS "THE BAMBOO CHEST" INTO BESTSELLER!
Dear Faithful Reader,
Thank you for all your book purchase support!
LINK: The BAMBOO CHEST
There's a lot to be said about grass-roots marketing
Have you seen "The Bamboo Chest" at Amazon.com? In the TOP 100 SELLERS at Amazon.com and rising!! Who says you have get picked up by Random House or Viking to get anywhere in the publishing world?? Power to the PEOPLE!
Slainte,
Cork
Thank you for all your book purchase support!
LINK: The BAMBOO CHEST
There's a lot to be said about grass-roots marketing
Have you seen "The Bamboo Chest" at Amazon.com? In the TOP 100 SELLERS at Amazon.com and rising!! Who says you have get picked up by Random House or Viking to get anywhere in the publishing world?? Power to the PEOPLE!
Slainte,
Cork
Thursday, September 02, 2004
ABC Radio in DETROIT INTERVIEWS CORK ABOUT KERRY/BUSH CONTROVERSY
If you missed my interview on WJR/ABC Radio in Detroit, MI, you can listen to it by clicking the interview link in the popover at http://www.bamboochest.com This time the interview was about the Bush/Kerry Vietnam controversy and how this is one of the best opportunities for the United States to heal over the memory of Vietnam in 20 years, the lsat time being the American MIA turmoil of the early 1980s.
Slainte,
Cork
Slainte,
Cork
Monday, August 16, 2004
DIVING BUDDY'S HEAD BIT OFF BY GREAT WHITE SHARK
There I was all happy and excited that I was about to do another radio interview and then while waiting and listening through my handset to the show what do I hear but that a fellow freediver had been killed by Mr. Grey.
Well, I typed in sfgate.com to read more and was horrified to learn that he was a diving buddy! I'm still in shock. I'm in shock because he was a friend and because I was planning on going on this dive with him Sunday: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2004/08/16/shark16.DTL
Randy Fry, 50, will be deeply missed not only for his good cheer and livening up a dive, but for all that he had done for the Recreational Fishing Alliance in California. My deepest condolences to his fiance, too. . .
Slainte,
Cork
Well, I typed in sfgate.com to read more and was horrified to learn that he was a diving buddy! I'm still in shock. I'm in shock because he was a friend and because I was planning on going on this dive with him Sunday: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/gate/archive/2004/08/16/shark16.DTL
Randy Fry, 50, will be deeply missed not only for his good cheer and livening up a dive, but for all that he had done for the Recreational Fishing Alliance in California. My deepest condolences to his fiance, too. . .
Slainte,
Cork
Thursday, July 15, 2004
CORK GRAHAM OFFERS SPECIAL TO IRAQ AND AFGHANISTAN VETERANS, AND SERVICEMEN AND WOMEN
Got family or friends serving in overseas? Well, I remember what it was like when I was stuck in a Vietnamese prison and later when I was on some base hidden in the jungles of Central America, wishing I had something worthwhile to read.
So, I've just created a special offer for anyone who has a loved one serving in the military. Yes, I'm offering limited editions of my book "The Bamboo Chest: An Adventure in Healing the Trauma of War" to those who come to the webpage: For OUR TROOPS Special OFFER 50% OFF!
Thought it very appropriate, especially considering what my memoir is about, and what the servicemen and women will have confronting them when they get back. . .something only one who has been there can really understand. . .so few do. . .Thank God for the opportunity for those who need to, to write. . .
So, I've just created a special offer for anyone who has a loved one serving in the military. Yes, I'm offering limited editions of my book "The Bamboo Chest: An Adventure in Healing the Trauma of War" to those who come to the webpage: For OUR TROOPS Special OFFER 50% OFF!
Thought it very appropriate, especially considering what my memoir is about, and what the servicemen and women will have confronting them when they get back. . .something only one who has been there can really understand. . .so few do. . .Thank God for the opportunity for those who need to, to write. . .
Friday, July 09, 2004
THE BAMBOO CHEST GETS 5 STAR REVIEWS!
My memoir/adventure narrative, The Bamboo Chest: An Adventure in Healing the Trauma of War, is available at amazon.com! And getting great reviews: gotta love those five stars!
Tuesday, August 05, 2003
FUDCOURT LIVES!
Ever find yourself with some money to spare, but with not a clue as to where to spend it on food?
My girlfriend, Robin, and I are often caught up in that dilemma. But these days whenever I need to find a great place to try, or a place to stay away from, I go over to Fudcourt to see what's new with the gang culinary exploits: http://www.fudcourt.com/index.html
With a such a selection of restaurants and pretty good photos of what's on the menu, I thought you might like to know about it, too!
And they're not just in the San Francisco Bay Area. They also have in field reporters all over the world!
Check 'em out. They're free, but you might want to support them with a purchase of one of their collectibles--the site is a labor of love, i.e. they don't get paid to do the great technical and critical job they do!
And if you're in the mood for GREAT Vietnamese food, check out the piece I did for them when I was a guest judge: http://www.fudcourt.com/newlois.html
Know of great place to eat? Contact them--perhaps you'll be invited to be guest judge, too!
Fudcourt--By the People, for the People!
My girlfriend, Robin, and I are often caught up in that dilemma. But these days whenever I need to find a great place to try, or a place to stay away from, I go over to Fudcourt to see what's new with the gang culinary exploits: http://www.fudcourt.com/index.html
With a such a selection of restaurants and pretty good photos of what's on the menu, I thought you might like to know about it, too!
And they're not just in the San Francisco Bay Area. They also have in field reporters all over the world!
Check 'em out. They're free, but you might want to support them with a purchase of one of their collectibles--the site is a labor of love, i.e. they don't get paid to do the great technical and critical job they do!
And if you're in the mood for GREAT Vietnamese food, check out the piece I did for them when I was a guest judge: http://www.fudcourt.com/newlois.html
Know of great place to eat? Contact them--perhaps you'll be invited to be guest judge, too!
Fudcourt--By the People, for the People!
Thursday, July 31, 2003
Well, sure helps to make sure of your references--always!
I just had a chance to reread that e-mail from Bob DeStatte and just had to say: Bob, what are you saying?!
Rach Gia is a coastal town on the WEST side of Vietnam (not the east), just south east of the Cambodia border town of Ha Tien. And if Schooley was captured with Thais, then for sure he's still going to be in the Thai Gulf.
Funny that Senator Kerry went in after a drug dealer, such as Schooley was. And $100,000 ransoming and bribing?! Yep, Vietnam was still at it's old piracy business, LOL!
For me my ransom was $10,000, but I wasn't being backed by drug lords like Schooley. :)
Slainte,
Cork
I just had a chance to reread that e-mail from Bob DeStatte and just had to say: Bob, what are you saying?!
Rach Gia is a coastal town on the WEST side of Vietnam (not the east), just south east of the Cambodia border town of Ha Tien. And if Schooley was captured with Thais, then for sure he's still going to be in the Thai Gulf.
Funny that Senator Kerry went in after a drug dealer, such as Schooley was. And $100,000 ransoming and bribing?! Yep, Vietnam was still at it's old piracy business, LOL!
For me my ransom was $10,000, but I wasn't being backed by drug lords like Schooley. :)
Slainte,
Cork
Wednesday, July 30, 2003
Hola!
It's always interesting to see how your websites rate in the search engine race: especially when your income revolves around how many times people come to your site or sign up for your freebies like FREE products, success courses and ezines.
Now, I have a number of sites, some active, some not, most just idle, waiting for the right time.
Then I've got ones where I make my direct money from, such as my success and marketing coaching site: http://www.successshaman.com.
But, I also have a site that's just a portal to my histories and futures, like the site you're on right now.
All of them need to be called up appropriately and within an acceptable number of pages on search engines.
Now, to get your ranking up, you first have to get a really good idea of where you stand--outside of the no-brainer of watching your bank account grow at an amazing rate. You start by putting in a number of values in the larger search engines and see where you pop up.
Well, today, I typed in a number of search strings:
1. "cork graham"
2. "cork graham vietnam"
3. "cork graham success coaching"
4. "fred graham vietnam"
5. "cork graham political prisoner"
6. "cork graham writer"
7. "cork graham hypnotist"
8. "cork graham photojournalist"
9. "cork graham corpsman"
10. "cork graham navy seals"
Both in Yahoo.com and google.com
And I got pretty much what I expected, but then I went through a few levels on the "fred graham vietnam" page:
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=fred+graham+vietnam&ei=UTF-8&fr=fp-top
The flash from the past was "destatte" link, which takes you here: http://teamhouse.tni.net/destatte.htm
Bob DeStatte was one of the Pentagon's POW/MIA Division investigators who debriefed me when I was released.
For clarification, the Brit's name was Richard Knight, a comedy actor-turned treasure hunter I met one murky night in Pattaya, Thailand, in 1983: 1 day before he was planning to make the voyage to Vietnam for Captain Kidd's treasure. I kid you not! I love that pun--fits so perfectly, LOL!
BTW why do I go by Cork Graham instead of Fred Graham? Well, aside there being too many Freds in my family, in 1991 I was brought into an extended Ogalala family, and as sign of respect them, I use their nickname for me as my first name and when I write my books, I use "Frederick 'Cork' Graham".
So, what's in a name, I ask you?
What's does your name bring up when you type it up in Google or Yahoo, or any search engine? The results may surprise you!
Slainte,
Cork
************
The CASH MIND MAGNET™
www.successshaman.com
************
It's always interesting to see how your websites rate in the search engine race: especially when your income revolves around how many times people come to your site or sign up for your freebies like FREE products, success courses and ezines.
Now, I have a number of sites, some active, some not, most just idle, waiting for the right time.
Then I've got ones where I make my direct money from, such as my success and marketing coaching site: http://www.successshaman.com.
But, I also have a site that's just a portal to my histories and futures, like the site you're on right now.
All of them need to be called up appropriately and within an acceptable number of pages on search engines.
Now, to get your ranking up, you first have to get a really good idea of where you stand--outside of the no-brainer of watching your bank account grow at an amazing rate. You start by putting in a number of values in the larger search engines and see where you pop up.
Well, today, I typed in a number of search strings:
1. "cork graham"
2. "cork graham vietnam"
3. "cork graham success coaching"
4. "fred graham vietnam"
5. "cork graham political prisoner"
6. "cork graham writer"
7. "cork graham hypnotist"
8. "cork graham photojournalist"
9. "cork graham corpsman"
10. "cork graham navy seals"
Both in Yahoo.com and google.com
And I got pretty much what I expected, but then I went through a few levels on the "fred graham vietnam" page:
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=fred+graham+vietnam&ei=UTF-8&fr=fp-top
The flash from the past was "destatte" link, which takes you here: http://teamhouse.tni.net/destatte.htm
Bob DeStatte was one of the Pentagon's POW/MIA Division investigators who debriefed me when I was released.
For clarification, the Brit's name was Richard Knight, a comedy actor-turned treasure hunter I met one murky night in Pattaya, Thailand, in 1983: 1 day before he was planning to make the voyage to Vietnam for Captain Kidd's treasure. I kid you not! I love that pun--fits so perfectly, LOL!
BTW why do I go by Cork Graham instead of Fred Graham? Well, aside there being too many Freds in my family, in 1991 I was brought into an extended Ogalala family, and as sign of respect them, I use their nickname for me as my first name and when I write my books, I use "Frederick 'Cork' Graham".
So, what's in a name, I ask you?
What's does your name bring up when you type it up in Google or Yahoo, or any search engine? The results may surprise you!
Slainte,
Cork
************
The CASH MIND MAGNET™
www.successshaman.com
************
Tuesday, July 29, 2003
San Francisco used to be known as THE capital of Film Noir. Robert Mitchum, Joan Crawford, they all made movies about the crime and mystery of San Francisco here during the 1940s and 1950s: a time that many consider the prime of the City by the Bay!
Bringing it all back in live entertainment is my friend, Hal Savage, in his well-written four one-act plays, produced by Cynthia Gregory: A Savage Eye Production noted as a “Homage to Film Noir Private Eyes, Perps, and Dames!”
The show’s website is here for full look at the plays: http://home.mindspring.com/~savage-eye/
They’ll be playing from July 24th to August 16th 2003
Thursdays, Fridays & Saturdays at 8 PM
Sundays at 5 PM
The Phoenix Theatre
414 Mason Street Suite 601
San Francisco CA
My girlfriend Robin Hale is doing the lighting and sound, so if you’re in San Francisco, enjoy the show and say hello!
Slainte,
Cork
***********
The CASH MIND MAGNET™
www.successshaman.com
***********
Bringing it all back in live entertainment is my friend, Hal Savage, in his well-written four one-act plays, produced by Cynthia Gregory: A Savage Eye Production noted as a “Homage to Film Noir Private Eyes, Perps, and Dames!”
The show’s website is here for full look at the plays: http://home.mindspring.com/~savage-eye/
They’ll be playing from July 24th to August 16th 2003
Thursdays, Fridays & Saturdays at 8 PM
Sundays at 5 PM
The Phoenix Theatre
414 Mason Street Suite 601
San Francisco CA
My girlfriend Robin Hale is doing the lighting and sound, so if you’re in San Francisco, enjoy the show and say hello!
Slainte,
Cork
***********
The CASH MIND MAGNET™
www.successshaman.com
***********
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