I just came back from a day-long seminar with Dr. Roy Martina title, “Reclaim Your Power and Restore Your Health” organized by Ode Magazine. You may want to see it, they make the video available online for a fee at odenow.com.  Did I ever mention I loved Ode Magazine? It was… fun, and a bit mysterious. Aware of tricks that can be played on you (typically, a con man can talk to your right side of the brain and get anything from you), I realized from Roy Martina’s experiences that one could basically con himself to eliminate all the barriers he accumulates when he’s little. In my case, I’m aware that my parents and grandparents installed many fears in me before I could just dismiss them as what old people keep saying. It can go very deep. So the recipes may include methods you wouldn’t want to get close to (like cutting karmic links with the UV sword of the angel Michael?), but in fact what you’re doing is ask your left brain to move …

This was written in response to Linda Leith’s Article “Bias against Women Writers? Heresy from a Fledging Publisher” I write today to throw in my 2 cents – indeed for what it’s worth – about how, or why men seem to dominate in the publishing world. It’s a dangerous area, I think, because I am definitely not an authority on the subject, only an observer. Perhaps I write about it today, because recently I opened old files of stories I had abandoned, finding the critique it had received from another writer. As constructive as he had tried to be, he had used words that spoke to me of my failure to produce a perfect piece. This time, years later, the words no longer had that effect. They were about the story, and I no longer were attached to the long hours I had spent on it. I happily started rewriting the story yesterday. What does that mean in relation to the gender domination issue? I want to avoid the stereotypes that people of my generation …

Part 1 – Debit, Credit, or Cash? Small merchants (a cafe, and a small grocery store) on my street will not take debit or credit cards if you buy for less than $5. That’s because they’ll loose money on the transaction (i.e. what they have to pay the bank is well above their profit margin). This morning I asked the man at the cafe what the transaction cost was. He said it was $0.65 or thereabout, which surprised me because it was higher than I thought. It’s higher than, say, Paypal, because they have to set up the devices there at the register. So my recommendation here is: avoid using cards whenever you can, especially at small independent merchants. Help them survive. That is less the case for big chain stores that just want you to be hooked, and set their prices to afford a higher margin. They may even be more concerned about taking cash because they’re easily the target for robberies and petty thefts. In that way, airlines stopped taking cash just because …