ADVERTISE  FOREVER in

"The Happy Rooster's Guide to

effective KEYWORD Success"

Effective keywords are the absolutely most important tool for selling on eBay.  Yet over and over, I see people using lame, useless, ineffective titles -- many even mispelled! -- that do not sell.  So, I decided that the next ebook in my "Happy Rooster" series will be on how to choose and effectively use keywords in your title lines and descriptions.  I want to help my readers maximize their success on the electronic superhighway instead of getting lost on some "back road" somewhere!

You are probably asking yourself:  Just how much could a person write on this topic, anyway? The answer is: A LOT!!!  It's not only a matter of title lines, it's a matter of marketing strategy, too. You need to learn to think the way your customers shop. You need to understand how the search engines work. And you need to know about the excellent but not-so-well-known tools that eBay gives you for researching today's hottest keywords. 

All this and MORE will be covered in this ebook.  Like my previous ebooks in the "Happy Rooster" series, it will be illustrated with full-color screen shots, real-life examples (both good & bad!), my own personal "war stories," humor and MORE!!!  My ebooks are REAL writing, not a bunch of hyperlinks to more products on the Net like some people sell.   And, like my previous ebooks, I expect this to be around eBay for a very long time!

You can be part of it -- for years to come!  How???

Buy an advertisement space NOW for only $6.13!

Just go to my store for further info -- you'll find it featured in a promo box on the homepage! 

Only 25 spaces are being offered and 7 are gone already

so ACT NOW!!!

The molting season for most birds is pretty much over, and so is my spending spree on feathers -- at least for a while.  Now I'm busy sorting and listing from all the wonderful lots I got from my own birds and my growing network of cruelty-free sources.   Last year I had only chicken & goose feathers to offer.  This year I've also got peacock, macaw, parrot, cockatiel, & guinea hen, with domestic finch coming soon.  Below are only a few samples of my selection, with more listings going up every day.  If you want feathers from happy, well-treated birds, then my store is your best most reliable source!  No birds were harmed in obtaining ANY feather you see for sale in The Happy Rooster Store!
 

Hanukkah is not a “Jewish Christmas,” even though it comes at the same time of the year. 

Rather, it is more like the Fourth of July – a celebration of freedom from tyrants.

In the second century B.C.E. (Before the Common Era), the Greek Empire ruled the Middle East. The Jews had welcomed the Greeks under Alexander the Great, who was tolerant of the various cultures he ruled ruled.  But then, around 157 B.C.E., there arose an emperor named Antiochus Epiphanes, whose name means “God made Manifest” – and he did indeed believe himself to be a god.  Antiochus ordered his statue to be erected and worshipped in every temple throughout the empire.

          Most peoples of the time, being polytheistic pagans, did not object to adding one more god to their pantheons.  They erected the Emperor’s statue, made the requested sacrifices to it, then went their own way as before.  For the Jews, however, this decree was a major crisis.  The Torah forbids worshipping any image, and especially an image of the human form.  This emperor was not a god, whatever his delusions might tell him.  To worship him would be an act of idolatry.  And so the Jews refused.

          Antiochus sent in troops to force these “stiff-necked” Jews to bend to his will.  Some did, out of fear.  But others preferred physical death to spiritual destruction.  Things came to a head when Mattathias (Mattiyahu in Hebrew), the High Priest at the time, seized a sword and slew the Greek emissary.  With a cry of “Whoever is for the Lord, follow me!” he and his band of zealots headed for the hills.  The battle for religious freedom had begun.

          It was never a war with armies lining up on the battlefield.  It was more like a guerilla war – dare I say insurgency? – that lasted about three years.   During this time,  Judah Maccabee, whose name means “The Hammer,” rose to leadership, and his followers became known as Maccabees.   They attacked Greek soldiers in the towns and villages, ambushed them along the roads, and generally weakened the Greek hold on the people and the land.   The war ended with the taking of Jerusalem by the Maccabees.

          Upon entering the Holy Temple, the Maccabees found it in ruins.  The beautiful gold Menorah, crafted under Moses’ direction in the wilderness, was gone.  So the Maccabees removed the points from their spears and made a makeshift menorah from the shafts – literally turning weapons of war into vehicles for light.  

There was only enough consecrated lamp oil to burn for one day.  The rest had been defiled or destroyed by the Greeks.   The Jews decided to light the menorah anyway and, miraculously, the single bottle of oil lasted eight days while new oil was being pressed and prepared.

Thus began the festival of Hanukkah.  The Talmudic rabbis, well aware of the dangers of militarism, played down the battles and did not even mention Judah Maccabee by name in their commentaries.  They focused on the Miracle of the Oil, attributing the victory to God and not man.   The traditional prayerbook contains this passage:

“…You [God] delivered the mighty into the hands of the few, the impure into the hands of the pure, the wicked into the hands of the righteous, and the wanton sinners into the hands of those who occupy themselves with your Torah.  You made a great and holy Name for Yourself in Your world, and brought about a great deliverance and redemption for Your people to this very day.  Then your children entered the shrine of Your House, cleansed Your Temple, kindled lights in Your holy courtyards, and instituted these eight days of Hanukkah to give thanks to Your great Name.”

Over the years, other customs grew up around the holiday, such as eating foods fried in oil, and playing Dreydel, a children’s game that had been used to secretly teach Jewish children the Hebrew alphabet when the Greeks had forced them assimilate and learn Greek.   Children were traditionally given coins to play this game – the forerunners of the foil-wrapped chocolate “Hanukkah Gelt” [Yiddish for “money”] that is sold today.  

What about presents?  In Eastern Europe, Hanukkah money was only for small children, much the same as Halloween candy is for kids.  But, in  20^th-century America, with the pressure of Christmas commercialism, Jewish families began giving more presents to both children and adults.  Hence the misconception that Hanukkah is a sort of “Jewish Christmas.”

          The 20^th century saw another major change:  A shift in focus from “The Miracle of the Oil” toward celebrating the victory of the Maccabees.  This shift had already begun in the late 19th century, but was accelerated with the founding of the state of Israel in 1948.   During the 1980s, the Lubavitcher Hasidim began defining the holiday as a “Festival of Freedom” in order to justify erecting huge menorahs on public government property.  Some Jews objected to this, offended by seeing their Hanukkah symbols sitting in the snow next to Nativity scenes and Santa Clauses.  Other Jews saw nothing wrong with decking the halls in blue, white, and gold.

And so, the battle against assimilation continues.  Hanukkah has become a time to stand up and be counted as a Jew, refusing to bow to the dominant culture’s demands.   Exactly how we stand up may vary, but all agree it’s a time to renew our dedication to serving only the one true God.  “Dedication” – the literal meaning of “Hanukkah.”

OK, I'm probably going to get flamed for this and usually I stay out of the controversies, but it is now "THE SEASON when we Jews, even the most secularized ones among us, are suddenly accosted with our "differentness."  So rather than explain this over and over ad nauseum, here it is ONCE:

I am a rabbi, a VERY religious man, but I am against prayer in public school and you know why?  Because it is an attempt to cram Jesus down the throats of Jewish children.  I'm old enough to remember prayer in schools in the 1950s when we Jews always felt put upon and made to feel "different" and "not good enough" and "Scrooges" or worse.  (The first time I ever heard the name Jesus was on the playground being beaten up as a "Christ killer."  Abused in the name of Jesus... such "brotherly love"...)

I got yelled at by the teacher because I did not fold my hands and close my eyes during the morning prayer.  When I said, "But Jews do NOT pray that way"  I got sent to the principal's office.  But it is true -- the "praying hands" posture is Christian body language.  Jews pray standing or sitting erect with eyes open and we sway back and forth -- something else I was told not to do in class.  And oh yeah -- I got kicked out of choir because I would not actually sing the name of Jesus or "born is the king of Israel" in the Christmas program because I do not believe in those words.   (Why couldn't they just let me lip-synch???)

My original photo, "Brotherly Love Cats," which some of you saw a while back on my blog, is a semi-finalist in the annual picture.com photo contest and will be published in their annual photography book!   You can see this pic and rate it from 1-10 at:

http://picture.com/display.asp?ID=2432316"

Check it out and if you like it, please vote!  And if you REALLY like it, you can order items there with the photo printed on them (yes, I get a commission.) 

Below are links to more of my animal photos you can buy in my store for immediate download, plus some opportuinities to spay, neuter, and/or feed some cats:

Neat cloud formation looks like a dragon sailing on a lake of fire in a Minnesota sunrise.   I took this on November 13 at dawn and right now I'm using it for the wallpaper on my desktop.  With the icons along the bottom & sides, it works very well.  And of course, it's a nice piece of photographic art in its own right.  Buy a full-sized download of this pic in my store (minus the watermark, of course!) for only $1.80.  Check out my other sky shots, too.  I am truly blessed with a wonderful view of the Eastern sky -- and it's never the same sky twice!

Today's New York Times carried this strange article...

"Sunny days! The earliest episodes of “Sesame Street” are available on digital video! Break out some Keebler products, fire up the DVD player and prepare for the exquisite pleasure-pain of top-shelf nostalgia.

"Just don’t bring the children. According to an earnest warning on Volumes 1 and 2, “Sesame Street: Old School” is adults-only: “These early ‘Sesame Street’ episodes are intended for grown-ups, and may not suit the needs of today’s preschool child...."

(For the rest of this article, goto:  http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/magazine/18wwln-medium-t.html)

Cant find free-run feathers in Europe?  I've got 'em here across the Pond and I'll gladly to you! 

Ever since the bird flu scare, more and more places in Europe are outlawing free-run & backyard poultry  (a pretty stupid thing to do, since the H5N1 bird flu virus came from Chinese factory farms with sloppy biocontrol habits -- not migrating wild birds. In fact, the bird flu spread east-to-west along the highway shipping routes, NOT north to south along the migration routes ---but that's another story -- read more here).  

The result is that cruelty-free feathers are hard to find in Europe. But rest assured, every feather I sell here in the USA is naturally she by my own happy birds or from birds I know are well-cared for.   So check them out -- and if you need something that isn't listed in my store, just ask me!