Filed under: Green Issues
It doesn’t seem to stop raining this June, and now I even seem to have a touch of the flu (normally a March or November pastime.) What to make of it all?
1) On the theory that lemons can be turned into lemonade, I have placed a green plastic bucket on my building’s roof in Chelsea. What can I get out of that? Well, it occurred to me that I could water a small veggie plot (planted in a large planter or clay pots), and provide myself with truly organic, healthy food for the summer. Home-grown tomatoes seem particularly appealing right now. So do strawberries!
The flavor is gone from these treasures in all stores, it seems, so they can be safely shipped. “No one told the breeder that flavor was important to the consumer, so they left it out” (according to Dr. Bruce Chassy of the FDA Food Advisory Committee, quoted in Metro, 6/18/09.) I yearn for the Jersey Belle strawberries of my childhood that our neighbor grew around the Fourth of July; or even the beefsteak tomatoes I could get at farmers’ markets in New Jersey when I lived there in the ‘80s.
2) As a kid (eons ago, it seems!) my dad built us a tiny summer cottage with a system to collect rainwater from the roof into a large tank for washing. (We carried out drinking water in another tank from the village 5 miles away, or filled it at friends’ houses.) We also found that fresh, soft rainwater made fabulous coffee! We took great care not to waste it, watering the cedars we had planted to the north and west of the cottage as a future windbreak with our dishwashing, body-washing, clothes-washing and toothbrushing water after use. Those seedlings are now over 50 feet high and growing!
3) You could use the water you catch to water indoor plants, too (I’m not sure about what comes down with rainwater here in the city: but you could try a soft-water bath and see how that works out!) Save enough, and you can wash down the sidewalk in front of your building; clean your “tar beach”; or scrub your own floors. You could wash a car or give it to the super for the hall floors.
4) Think of the water you could save in the reservoirs in the Catskills! (I don’t know what that comes to now in dollars; but given the extreme water shortages in most of the Western USA, it will be a fortune in a very few years.)
5) At the end of the day, you would have a totally new respect for rainwater, and might even begin to enjoy taking walks in the gentler showers we also are experiencing. If you take a camera with you, you will also find that wet objects have more intense colors than dry, sunlit ones, and that your photos (especially of plants in the parks) will have more contrast and vividness than you thought you could achieve.
As a former Chicagoan, I miss the drama of tornado season, and the (very rare) thunderstorm here is still a big treat for me. There are so many shapes lightning can take! Also, if you count “1Mississippis” or “1elephants” (for seconds), you can determine how many miles away the storm is. (It’s about one mile for each second between the flash and the thunder.)
6) The shoe stores are featuring fabulous “wellies”, and if you indulge in these colorful boots — plus a fabric-rose-bordered umbrella like mine, (incidentally available for $19.95 at www.signals.com) — you can really have fun splashing through puddles and defying the thunder, just as you did when you were a kid.
If you have other ideas, please feel free to contact me at e-mail (below), and I will post comments on my blog.
Yippee!
Let it pour, let it pour, let it pour!!
— Nancy L. Hoffmann
TomatoDesign.Net
In the Red? We $ee Green!
T: 212.691.1445
E: nancy@tomatodesign.net
URL: http://tomatodesign.net
Filed under: The Environment
TomatoDesign.Net is proud to announce our NEW page of GREEN LINKS: 40+ of the finest green American businesses, featuring high quality, eco-friendly, fair-trade products and services:
http://tomatodesign.net/greenlinks.html
This month’s features:
• Jalima Coffee: The best-tasting coffee in the world! (And I’m not prejudiced!) All the proceeds from their fair-trade products go back to the farmers in Chiapas, Mexico (where I used to live and drive a jeep as a wetback for the Mex. government, in the Selva Lacadona jungle!) For more information, go to: http://www.jalimacoffee.com/index2.html.
• Holy Creations: Superb Palestinian olive oils, made the old-fashioned way, in Nablus. They also feature exquisite olive-wood carvings: both products at a fraction of what you’d expect to pay for such high quality. For more information on their fair-trade and eco-friendly products, go to: http://holycreations.com/.
To get in on the action, contact us at: nancy@tomatodesign.net
Filed under: Marketing Your Business
This article appeared in my e-mail, courtesy of Debbie LaChusa. Enjoy!
“When marketing online, one of the first rules is to set up a system on your website that enables you to build a relationship with new prospects, vs. trying to sell to them on their first visit.
To do this, you offer visitors the chance to get a “free gift” from you in exchange for their name and email address.
This is nothing new, and it’s always the very first marketing strategy I work on with my clients. We set up a lead generation system on their website so they can build a list of their ideal clients. This way they have a solid foundation to build a strong, long-lived business on.
But one of the first challenges they often face is getting people to their website so they can then get them onto their list.
Now there are lots of ways to drive traffic to your website, but we want to make sure we’re driving qualified traffic – that is, ideal clients, not just any Tom, Dick or Harry!
Here are 10 quick & easy ways to attract your ideal clients:
1. Article Marketing
Write articles in your area of expertise and post them on online article directories likewww.ezinearticles.com. This positions you as an expert and drives people who are interested in your topic to your website.
2. Teleseminars
Do teleseminars for other people’s list. Find other solo-professionals with the kind of clients you are seeking, and offer to teach a free class for their audience.
3. Joint Ventures
Find other solo-professionals serving your ideal clients and find ways to partner, promote each other, or even feature each others articles in your newsletters.
4. Reciprocal Links
Find other websites that your ideal clients would be interested in and post links to them on your website. Then ask those websites to return the favor.
5. PRWeb
Publicize your business by posting a press release on www.prweb.com. This gets the word out about you and drives people who are interested in learning more to your website.
6. Social Networking
Network with other solo-professionals on sites such as Facebook. This is a great way to share what you’re up to and connect with potential joint venture partners.
7. Google Adwords
Buy your way onto page 1 of the search engine results for your top keywords and start driving traffic to your site immediately.
8. Advertise in Other E-zines
Find e-zines that reach your ideal clients and if they sell advertising, buy an ad and promote your free gift to build your list.
9. Affiliate Programs
Use a shopping cart system like www.10stepcart.com with a built-in affiliate module to enable your happy clients to get paid for spreading the word and promoting you.
10. Offline Networking
Don’t forget about good old fashioned networking events and conferences. Attend them on a regular basis and hand out business cards with a call-to-action for your free gift on the back.
If you’re not getting all the traffic you want to your website, pick 3-4 of these activities and start implementing them right away. If you do them consistently, you’ll see your traffic and list start to grow and you’ll be on your way to building a solid foundation for your business.”
© Copyright 2009 Debbie LaChusa
Debbie LaChusa created 10stepmarketing to help solo-professionals and small business owners market their own businesses more successfully. Debbie believes creating a marketing plan is the first step in building a successful business. Don’t have a marketing plan? You can get a marketing plan template to help you create one when you subscribe to “The 10stepmarketing E-zine” at http://www.10stepmarketing.com.
Filed under: TechnoNews
Regarding the story (below) of 9/14/08: The article happened! Crain’s “Workforce Management” Magazine published an article on 10/06/08 about the co-working event that happened in my loft! The link is http://www.workforce.com , and here is a photo of page 8, featuring me / upper left (hooray!) and my loft [click on image to enlarge for reading]:
Filed under: TechnoNews
On Friday, 9/19/08, NYWICI Matrix Award-winner Arianna Huffington gave the Keynote “address” (which was really an interview) at the Web 2.0 Conference at the NYC Javits Center. To view the entire interview with Tim O’Reilly (O’Reilly Media, Inc.), go to: http://blip.tv/file/1279644
The Huffington Post, which the “old boys” said could never succeed, is now the #1 blog — with 1/2 the traffic of the Washington Post — and growing by leaps and bounds. Arianna said she was attracted to the web by its “obsessive/compulsive” nature: follow your passions, and you can make a difference.
Her mission at The Huff Post is to bring together 3 things:
1) To be a news aggregator with an attitude, airing a specific point of view;
2) To provide a platform for over 2,000 bloggers, some of whom wouldn’t otherwise have their own blog;
3) To build community: her readers leave comments in a continuing dialogue with the writers. This has proved more successful for her than for other news media. For example, she might feature a headline and a couple of sentences pointing to an article in the NY Times. While the NY Times might not get any reaction on their article, The HP’s readers often provide 500 (or more!) comments on Arianna’s site.
Conservative bloggers have failed: talk radio is their medium. (Radio proved itself to be ideal for fascism in the Second World War.) Progressives thrive on the web: she calls them natural “blowhards”. The web is self-correcting: no one tolerates untruth, and commentators never hesitate to respond to apparent misinformation.
At The Huff Post, blog writers seek to publish the truth backed up by actual facts: the idea that news can be “objective” is often sadly misleading, according to Ms. Huffington. Not all issues have 2 sides: for example, she firmly believes the earth is NOT flat, global warming is man-made, and so on. As Iraq is “the greatest foreign policy disaster in the history of the United States”, she wants to keep it front and center, even as other news media have moved on. The violence is continuing and we have achieved no “victory”, as the Bush camp would have us believe. We have let the Sarah Palin soap opera distract us, even while “Rome burns”, and this keeps us from dealing with the truly important issues.
The HP’s home offices are located above Dean and DeLuca, at 560 Broadway, NYC. The Administrative and Advertising teams are on the 3rd floor; while the Editorial and Tech teams are on the 4th. Additonally, The Huffington Post has 30 human moderators working 24/7 to edit “vile attacks” and keep the discussion from being undermined. This process in no way slows down the publication process; after all, it’s only 1% of 1% of readers who are likely to cause problems.
As for the $85-billion AIG bailout, Arianna pointed out that Wall Street has always gone with the illusion that “unregulated free markets bring public good”. Obviously, that hasn’t worked. The message the Bush administration is sending America (and the world) is that “if you’re big enough, you won’t be allowed to fail”. “Small” people can go down in flames, apparently, as are the millions of home owners who are losing their property. This is NOT what America is about!
Regarding the election, Obama is a brilliant user of the web, and wouldn’t even be a candidate without it. He maintains an open platform, not just the party line: his supporters can argue his positions. (Polls are very faulty, as they typically call land lines, and cell users are left out of the debate.) On the web, the community pushes their representatives to do the right thing. Citizen journalists are creating another platform.
The next big thing we need to consider is how to “unplug and recharge”. Sleep deprivation has driven us crazy: we seriously need joy in our lives! Some conventions provide spaces for yoga, naps and relaxation, so the presenters and attendees don’t burn out. Tim O’Reilly personally splits wood to “recharge”; Arianna sleeps, does yoga, meditates or hikes.
And there you have it!
— Nancy L. Hoffmann
TomatoDesign.Net
URL: http://tomatodesign.net
For the full discussion the site (again) is:
Filed under: Greetings from the Big Tomato!
TomatoDesign.Net is a FULL-SERVICE Design and Development firm, with over two decades’ expertise in Branding, Marketing and Advertising solutions. Most importantly, we partner with green and eco-friendly vendors and clients!
Our PRINT services include magazine Advertising (and Copywriting), Branding, and Collateral (brochures, direct mail, flyers, DVD and CD wraps, posters, packaging, newsletters, catalogs, etc.), among other traditional services.
ONLINE, we provide powerful Development and E-Commerce tools, Content creation and management, Banner ads, Flash and gif animations, and state-of-the-art Websites, as well as Search Engine Optimization, to ensure that you are really OUT there once you are UP there.
• We are actively seeking “green” and eco-friendly clients.
• View our other business blog: Printing Tips & Tricks. And check us out in OPRAH Magazine!
Filed under: Why the Tomato??
TomatoDesign was born in New Jersey 23 years ago; and, due to the intense rivalry between NJ and NYC, Nancy Hoffmann created “The Big Tomato” vis-à-vis New York’s “Big Apple” as her logo — and it stuck!
3 years ago, New Jersey officially adopted the tomato as the “State Vegetable” (it is a fruit, but was legistated into a vegetable state, as it were, in the 1890s, for marketing purposes).
Now, when you bite into one of those fabulous Jersey Beefsteak tomatoes, just think of TomatoDesign.Net!
Filed under: The Environment
Today is October 15th, and this is Blog Action Day: we are supposed to write about environmental issues, and I’m barely making it in time!
On my site I feature the “Green Tomato Award”, at http://tomatodesign.net/greentomatoaward.html. Here you can learn about 3 of my favorite clients whom TomatoDesign is singling out for having made a real contribution to the planet, human life, and (yes) even Global Warming, as we all know and love it.
Check it out!
Concern for the environment has been a real issue in my family, ever since my parents tried to build a “green” commune on the Door Peninsula of Wisconsin in 1940. Wisconsin, under the aegis of Aldo Leopold, has been in forefront of this battle since the 1930s and before, so it wasn’t an accident that they bought the land for their lifetime experiment there.
I strongly urge you to Google Aldo Leopold, as well as Loren Eiseley and Rachel Carson, if you haven’t yet had the pleasure of reading their wonderful books.
Happy Environment Action Day!
Filed under: TechnoNews, Uncategorized | Tags: The Workplace of the Future
My Loft: The New Workplace?
Friday saw a group of about 15-20 freelancers wander in and out of my loft between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. We all came from different backgrounds, but we all had one thing in common: we were participating in a “jelly.” The idea of co-working isn’t new; but the peripatetic nature of this kind of sharing is. We meet at least once a month, each time in a different location. We make sure wi-fi is available, and we bring out laptops. Each of us works on a different project, but as we learn more about each other, we are also networking, as well.
The 2 bedrooms were co-opted as impromptu phone booths for conference and client calls, which worked out very well, as cell phones did not disturb the others. Some people stepped out into the hall, or strolled along 23rd Street, as an alternative method of phoning/exercising/eating.
Although San Francisco and Boston aren’t strangers to the jelly, we are the only one in Manhattan (there may be one in Brooklyn, also.) The invitation is sent in advance by e-mail (our group currently has 500+ members), and is limited to a certain number on a first-to-RSVP basis.
One of the early-birds Friday was Jessica Marquez of Crain’s “Workforce Management.” She interviewed us separately and together, and will do a feature article (with sleepy photos) for the publication. Another unusual event took place at the end of the jelly, when Nichelle Stephens returned from a client meeting uptown with a magnum of lovely brut “vin champagnois” [aka "champagne" — see below]. Needless to say, the remaining 9 people toasted each other in style!
Another of the participants, Todd Sundsted, is writing a book on the workplace of the future, and thus was both working and doing research by participating. He found a desk my father had made and happily attached himself to it for the duration: there were quite of number of original and creative seating arrangements made during the day.
There was even a large skateboard parked in the dining area. Ken Smith, a C++ programmer, was only in town for the weekend, and took advantage of the jelly to utilize the informal workspace. Apart from the fact that no one showed up in jammies, it was an altogether improvisational — yet very productive — event.
The jelly is certainly the trend of the future, as more and more people work from home or in a freelance capacity. Even some with normal full-time jobs took time to work with us, as they had tasks that could be remotely accomplished.
If you would like to get more information or to join up, contact Tony Bacigalupo at jelly@tonybacigalupo.com . And come “jell out” with us!
— Nancy L. Hoffmann
TomatoDesign.Net
URL: http://tomatodesign.net
Filed under: What happened to fun??
My roommate, Brigitte, and her friend, Alix, had a bake sale to raise cash today, January 2. Here are the photos of their enterprise (they had fun, but nearly froze their noses!) They also made a decent profit, considering that it was late on a very frigid Saturday afternoon.
It’s my turn next! Anyone want to join me?
Here come$ the money!
Customers (at left) eye the goods, while Brigitte (L) and Alix (R) prepare to grab their dough
The goods!
Filed under: Uncategorized
As we head into 2009, the “Bernie Madoff Fire Sales” continue (see image above), and pretty well sum up the greed and financial meltdown of 2008. So much to change; so little time.
We are also up to our eyeballs in yet another Middle Eastern war, where (in W. B. Yeats’ words) “ignorant armies clash by night.”
I have just taken on a wonderful new client, a Palestinian-American who sells fabulous olive oils, intricate wood carvings, and other goods at excellent prices [see his beautiful site: http://holycreations.com]. He lives, of all places, in a small town in NW Wisconsin, with an office in nearby Minneapolis, MN. Surrounded by deer hunters, he’s managed to blend reasonably well by being (in the past) a cop, among other occupations.
Now you’d think his major problems would come from the Israelis when he travels to Palestine to buy his goods (and he has had a couple of brushes with them.) But the real problem seems to be New York Americans!
For example, he recently imported 10,000 bottles of top-grade extra-virgin olive oil and had it in a warehouse in Minnesota. Somehow, a customs office from NYC managed to show up on his doorstep, informing him he “couldn’t sell” his oil, because it had the word “Palestine” on the label, a country that “doesn’t exist” (according to the official.)
Abe protested: Palestine had been recognized by everyone — including Israel — since the Oslo Accords. However, the man was adamant.
When Abe asked what would happen if he didn’t change the 10,000 labels, the guy told him they would confiscate the shipment and send it back to “where it came from.”
“How could you?” Abe sensibly asked. “Palestine doesn’t exist!”
At this, the official became very threatening. So Abe and his friends held a “relabelling party” and changed all 10,000 labels to exclude the forbidden word.
How can we move into 2009 with this kind of ignorance running our government behind the scenes? And how can we avoid future wars in the Mideast if we don’t work hand in hand with these people, learning who they are and what the overwhelming majority of them really want (i.e., peace and prosperity, even as we do)?
Apart from this, we have to work together as Americans to get around the stupidity that seems to be victimizing all of us. Dr. Phil just had a program on amnesiacs, for example, and one of the men said he had contacted Social Security explaining he didn’t really know who he was in the past; but that he had been cleared by the FBI and was ready to work. When he asked for a new SSN, he was told that he could only get one if he claimed to be an illegal alien! As his accent has been solidly identified as being from the Indianapolis area, there’s no way he can regain his civil rights as long as he insists he is American!
I have stories of my own which, if space permitted, would demonstrate that the US government has arranged for me to die in the street, no matter what I do, unless I immigrate to another country and renounce my US citizenship. Yes, they are truly working for all of us!
However, that said, we can make a difference in this new century and this new presidency, and perhaps even turn around some of the circumstances that have made the past 8 years so terribly destructive for our country and our people.
I am looking forward to finding new ways to do business and new ways to provide us with carbon-free energy, as well as boost up others who want to get on their feet and build successful businesses and careers.
Let’s do it! This could be the year we really come together!
Filed under: What happened to fun??
Aquent got off to an early start Thursday with a knock-out Halloween party, complete with spiderwebs, a DJ and great food. Here are some of the costumes (including Yours Truly as a Devil-ess):
The A&M Twins
Space-whatsis
Devil-ess
Hanged nurse
Ghostbusters
Ghostbusters2
Spray those bats with Raid!!
Filed under: What happened to fun??
Me in Red & Black
Friday night (10/24) was the best night I could ever imagine: and all thanks to Brenda! She got me a gig at a terrific party at Cipriani Wall Street, whereby we could eat fabulous food, drink as much champagne as we wanted, AND get paid $200 an hour (for 4 hours) for doing quick portraits of the people at the party. What a great way to meet wonderful people from every conceivable corner of the earth!
Brenda and Steve were in the “Blue Zone”; Zito and I had the “Red Zone”. We each had our own “living statue” watching as we furiously scribbled away. There were shadow dancers, sand artists, and character actors who impersonated “artists”. Famous paintings were projected on the ceiling, and a giant palette with crossed brushes was at the door. There was a lively band and lots of dancing (the statues were briefly replaced by dancers on pedestals to get everyone going.) And, of course, there was US! The photos below tell the story:
2 "Statues"
Artist Actors
Swedish Couple
English Model
Blonde2
Shadow Players
My Station
"My" Statue
Ceiling Dome
Steve & Brenda
Chandelier
Steve @Work
Filed under: What happened to fun??
![The Traveling [whatsis]](http://tomatogreening.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/brenda_bataclanptg1.jpg "brenda_bataclanptg1")
Brenda and the Traveling Whatsis . . .
My good buddy (and former boss) Brenda Kato is pictured here in the NYC PA Bus Station, holding a painting by Bren Bataclan. He travels around the world leaving these in conspicuous places with the intention of giving them away to people who will love them. His characters are eccentric (literally!): featuring one large and one small eye.
Brenda has happily installed hers in her painting studio.
For more about this painter spreading happiness worldwide, go to: http://bataclan.com/
This is me networking with my hands . . .
at an event hosted by Jeff Pulver (not pictured), another happy world traveller. He lives in NYC and hosted a networking breakfast for fun people (mainly of a “techie” bent) on 9/10/08 at Friend of a Farmer in Gramercy. In 2008 he travelled the world, hosting over 30 breakfasts in 17 cities in 3 countries. He must really be jet-lagged by now!
Again: why not have fun when you are working? And especially when you’re not?
Keep up the good fun!
