The Blogfather

'Twas the Night AFTER Christmas

Twas the night AFTER Christmas and all through Cape Cod,
The natives were friendly - that's exceedingly odd.
No stockings were hung anywhere with great care,
'Cause Cape women don't wear 'em, just long underwear.

The children were texting and playing with their Wiis,
So long we were worried that their noses might freeze.
And me in my Snuggie and Pat in her cap,
Were cuddled alone as she crawled on my lap.

When a noise in the drive make me check what it was,
In case of a visit from our friendly, local fuzz.
Away to the window I flew like a flash,
Tore open the shutters and threw out my "stash"

The moon was the hue of a old, seasick lizard,
Which one might expect 'cause we just had a blizzard.
When, what to my baggy, old eyes should appear,
But a drunken next door neighbor stumbling home with a beer.

Which just goes to show in this holiday confusion.
A wise man shouldn't jump to an erroneous conclusion.
And my New Year's Resolution concerning this bloggerel,
Is a promise to lay off any more of this doggerel.Mr. Ed was written by Walter R. Brooks, not a relative.
Zaftig means a woman having a full rounded figure, pleasingly plump.

This (on right) is what a Ned Sonntag dream girl looks like - click on her cute little belly button.

Jews and Christmas - Who are the real Christians today?

It's time to recall who Jesus really was and what he  looked like
He didn't shout "Ho, ho, ho," but more likely "Oy, oy, oy"

Here's looking at you Jesus: On left is a forensic reconstruction of a 1st century Jewish face
and Jesus on right as depicted by white Anglo Saxons 2,000 years later.

By Walter Brooks

My favorite Jewish Santa is Paul Rifkin who represents the ideals of a first century Jew named Jesus.
But with him it's not "Ho, ho, Ho." It's "Oy, oy, oy."

Paul in 1967 when he REALLY looked like Jesus.
Growing up in lily-white, upscale Litchfield County Connecticut, I was even then confused by the image of Jesus Christ as depicted in my Congregational Church like the photo on the right above.

I had an inkling that a first century Jew probably didn't look like he was hired for the job by Ingmar Bergman from Swedish central casting.

Later after I left the isolated womb of Woodbury, I heard at prep school the antisemitic rantings of some fellow students, and it began to dawn on my innocent mind, that many Christians were decided unchristian in their beliefs.

I had been taught in Sunday School that the historical Jesus was against corporate greed - remember the the story of him throwing the money-changers out of the temple in Jerusalem - and his attitude about tolerance, as when he said, "Let him that is without sin among you first cast the stone."

Who's birthday is it again?

Lest I be accused of more hypocrisy than usual, let me assure the reader that I love the idea of gift-giving, a yuletide tree and the rest.

But I also know that the historical Jesus would be appalled at today's excess. After all, it's a birthday party for Jesus, not a month-long sales event we celebrate today.

So who are the real Christ-like Christians today?

These are the characteristic required;

• Selflessness - being willing to sacrifice your time and even your life for the good of your fellow men and women.

• Altruism - doing things for no personal gain, giving to others.
• Pacifism - Turning the other cheek.

Many will not agree with me, but I think I just described the "Occupy" folks both here on Cape Cod and across America today.

And maybe it's also those Muslims willing to die for freedom in Syria.

That's why our Christmas homepage photo is of my favorite Jew, Paul Rifkin.

But with Paul it's not "Ho, ho, ho." It's "Oy, Oy, Oy."

Photo sources: This image of Jesus around 30 A.D. on the left above was made for a BBC program broadcast during Easter week in 2001. It was created by a production team which took into consideration medical, archaeological, geographical and artistic evidence from the time Jesus lived in what is today called Israel.

We are celebrating
Jesus Birthday, aren't we?Since Jewish heads are very different today compared to 2000 years ago, the team looked for a Jewish skull from the first century found near Jerusalem.

Using a plaster cast of the skull discovered from that era, forensic medical artist Richard Neave from the University of Manchester began to reconstruct the face by building up layers of clay to represent muscle, fat and skin. Details such as the hair were decided by considering the hair of men in the Middle East, which tends to be thick, dark and curly, together with hairstyles current in the time Jesus lived.

Not  your average Black Jewish face, and he wasn't Scandinavian

Dark-skinned pictures of Jesus have been known from the earliest times. The first picture on this page is a painting from the 1960s, artist and source unknown.In 2004, Jesus was voted greatest black icon of all time by the New Nation newspaper, which prompted a debate about Jesus’ skin color.

“Despite the common depictions in Western cultures of Jesus as a blond, blue-eyed hippy looking man, all reasonable evidence points to the fact that Jesus could not have been of Scandinavian extraction and certainly was a brotha of color,” said the newspaper.

The debate is not new. Throughout the last century, black theologians argued that showing Jesus as a white-skinned European is not only historically inaccurate, but profoundly alienating for non-Europeans.

Some 20 million Africans were taken as slaves to the New World by Europeans between the 16th and 19th centuries, and images of a white Jesus reinforce the idea that Christianity is a “white man’s religion”.

And Christmas is really Jesus' Birthday, not a month-long sales event, right?

A guaranteed way to get new customers

Everything I know about getting new customers I learned from clients

   Phil Barone who founded the Mill Stores taught me the only guaranteed rule to get new business.

When the fish are all gone, you need another pond

By Walter Brooks

After many decades in marketing including giving countless lectures at media conventions all overAmerica advising peers on how to do their selling and promotion, I must admit that the only foolproof method I discovered for attracting new customers was given to me by one of my clients right here on Cape Cod.

"The money is always out there
   - only the pockets change."It was from Phil Barone who started the chain of successful unfinished furniture stores called Mill Stores  in Harwich many years ago.

I used to call on Phil when I worked for several different newspapers and magazines starting with The Cape Codder in the 1970s, MPG Communications in the 1980s, and for my own Best Read Guides in the 1990s both here and elsewhere in New England.

When I was working for a newspaper, Phil would buy pages of advertising for a year or two, then stop using whatever newspaper I happened to be working for at the time.

Phil grew from one store in Harwich to 14 in the region, see locations here.After several years and a couple newspaper jobs, I started Best Read Guide, but this time Phil kept running ads long after the usual period, so I asked him why.

Phil's "new customer" theory - it works

Phil told me that every newspaper he advertised in had a "static" number of readers, in other words, he was reaching the same potential customers with each ad, so after a while he had sold unfinished furniture to everyone possible in that newspaper's readership, and vacation magazines like Best Read Guide have new readers every edition.

Since Phil always used a coupon or other device to test results, he was able to move on to another publication or medium as the results began to diminish.

That was then - This is now!

If that was true back during the glory days of the newspaper industry, think how more true it is today when newspapers on Cape Cod and elsewhere have half the circulations and market penetration they had in the past, see graph below.

Cape Cod's local daily has dropped from over 60,000 daily circulation to 46,000, and the weeklies have fared as badly. While the daily's circulation dropped by 14,000, over 35,000 new residents have moved to the Cape, which translates into their "market penetration" being half of what it was two decades ago.

Newspaper readership has fallen for the last three decades, and today only 15 percent of Americans under the age of forty still read a daily newspaper. That was 85 percent in 1940.

Then this Spring online news readership went ahead of newspapers.

You probably know why this paradigm shift occurred - it was caused by the meteoric growth of the internet and the explosion and ease of using online shopping on newssites like the ones on eCape.com. See the poll results which showed over half our readers shopping online or a combination of bricks and clicks.

The World is Flat - and so is Cape Cod - The Good News and Bad News

Most Popular Posts

Police and Fire News - 64,257 views
Cape & Islands News - 63,007 views
EXTRA... - 55,295 views
Cape Cod Court Reports - 23,485 views
Cape Cod History - 22,047 views.The good news for businesses which promote on the web is that online advertising costs but a fraction of the cost of print, and online is the only form of advertising which has completely traceable results for them as well.

Couple this with the fact portals or newssites like this one are on a significant growth track adding new readership by double digits every year. An example is the real-time list of readerships shown on the right side of our homepage called "Most Popular Posts."

The bad news is that newssites like this one are stuck at "what the market will bear", and advertising rates for web portals cannot rise to anything near the levels of print, while providing better results for clients, until there is further deterioration of the print industry and marketers are more aware of the added values of online marketing.

If you are one of those businesspeople who are reluctant to move into the future, consider this warning from that famous news-hen Clare Booth Luce, "The money is always out there - only the pockets change."

Newspapers continue their 20 year drop in circulation

This 20-year view shows a steady slide in paid circulation.  Daily circulation, which stood at 62.3 million in 1990, fell to 43.4 million in 2010, a decline of 30%. Sunday circulation held up slightly better, falling from 62.6 million in 1990 to 46.2 million last year, off 26%.