What Does Sane Nationalism Look Like?

In a 29 December 1988 Universal House of Justice letter addressed to the Followers of Baha’u’llah in the United States of America, they wrote: The extraordinary capacities of the American nation, as well as the superb stewardship of the Bahá’í community within it, have repeatedly been extolled in the writings of our Faith. In His Tablets and utterances, ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, the Center of the Covenant, projected a compelling vision of the world-embracing prospects of that richly endowed country. “The American nation,” He averred, “is equipped and empowered to accomplish that which will adorn the pages of history, to become the envy of the world, and be blest in both the East and the West for the triumph of its people.” In another assertion addressed to the Bahá’í community itself, He uttered words of transcendent importance: “… your mission,” He affirmed, “is unspeakably glorious. Should success crown your enterprise, America will assuredly evolve into a center from which waves of spiritual power will emanate, and the throne of the Kingdom of God will, in the plenitude of its majesty and glory, be firmly established.”

   Any appearance of greatness in any nation devolves upon the abilities, talents and above all, the goals, of its peoples and leaders. Americans are hard workers, with some of the longest working hours of any developed nation. They are generous in the extreme to worthy causes and support other nations as well with aid. America has problems though, some deep like institutionalized prejudice, and a narrow view of world affairs outside its own borders. Yet American values of peace and prosperity are shared the world over, and traditionally America has upheld the rights of democracy and of freedom of expression in religion and speech to name a few. Americans are rightfully proud of those ideals.

   In America, civil leaders at all levels, local, state and federal, are democratically elected by secret ballot in a majority two-party system firmly entrenched. Those of us here just endured an election cycle full of name-calling, fact-bending, and some outright slurs on candidates of the other party. This occurred on both sides. It is debilitating for any rational person to watch or hear and not doubt the qualities of any would-be leader to govern effectively and justly. It is not acceptable and has to change.

   One hotly contested election was in 1960, between Republican candidate Richard Nixon and Democrat John F. Kennedy. I remember being 10-years-old watching their debate on our small-screen  black and white TV, live. As voting results poured in on Tuesday, November 8, I listened with my Mom to Walter Conkrite until the late hours when a narrow victory was accorded to JFK. It was the first time all 50 states had participated.

   President Kennedy was assassinated by a rifleman three years later in Dallas while riding in a motorcade with his wife Jackie and Texas Governor John Connolly and his wife. In some ways the country still mourns his untimely and cruel death.

   The following is an excerpt from the speech he planned to give the night he was fatally shot:

   Finally, I said in Lubbock [Texas] in 1960, as I said in every other speech in this State, that if Lyndon Johnson and I were elected, we would get this country moving again. That pledge has been fulfilled. In nearly every field of national activity, this country is moving again — and Texas is moving with it. From public works to public health, wherever Government programs operate, the past 3 years have seen a new burst of action and progress — in Texas and all over America. We have stepped up the fight against crime and slums and poverty in our cities, against the pollution of our streams, against unemployment in our industry, and against waste in the Federal Government. We have built hospitals and clinics and nursing homes. We have launched a broad new attack on mental illness and mental retardation. We have initiated the training of more physicians and dentists. We have provided 4 times as much housing for our elderly citizens, and we have increased benefits for those on social security.

   Almost everywhere we look, the story is the same. In Latin America, in Africa, in Asia, in the councils of the world and in the jungles of far-off nations, there is now renewed confidence in our country and our convictions.

   For this country is moving and it must not stop. It cannot stop. For this is a time for courage and a time for challenge. Neither conformity nor complacency will do. Neither the fanatics nor the faint-hearted are needed. And our duty as a party is not to our party alone, but to the Nation, and, indeed, to all mankind. Our duty is not merely the preservation of political power but the preservation of peace and freedom.

   So let us not be petty when our cause is so great. Let us not quarrel amongst ourselves when our Nation’s future is at stake. Let us stand together with renewed confidence in our cause–united in our heritage of the past and our hopes for the future — and determined that this land we love shall lead all mankind into new frontiers of peace and abundance.

Transcript excerpt from John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum

CreateSpace: Great for new self-publishers

I first used CreateSpace (CS) in 2012-2013 to self-publish my 6x9 book Episodes:a poetic memoir, about living and overcoming in public my bipolar disease. Of course, no one can overcome it completely, but one can live an almost normal life assuming they take their medications without fail, and there are new drugs out every day. Another key component is having consistent support and love, and my longsuffering wife Janet stuck by me in my worst periods.

What's great about CreateSpace is its Interior Reviewer Tool, where you upload your MS-Word or PDF manuscript (use PDF - it's faster), and see it exactly as printed in your sized book. It highlights errors, mostly surrounding margins and resolution questions, easily solved when you know the ins and outs of Microsoft Word. MS-Word is where you should write your manuscript. It's versatile etc and takes practice to understand its features, but once you do the process is straightforward.

Continue to fine tune your MS-Word manuscript until perfect and Interior Reviewer is clean, then ask for a proof copy to be sent to you (cost about $9-10 including shipping). ALWAYS GET A HARD COPY PROOF and review it carefully for text and formatting errors once you receive it.

Now, this presumes you have a cover. CS has grown over the years and now has Cover Creator to make your own. This is much easier than my first cover where a friend had to take my shadow photograph, integrate it with the background and back cover and spine, and size it all himself. You can now upload your front cover picture or photo, and your back cover Bio picture yourself, and lay it all out, choosing from Cover Creator's format choices. CS does all the proper sizing, including barcode (ISBN) placement, for you - you just follow the layout guides you've chosen.

Or, you can go to a freelancer or media company and pay to have your cover created and sized properly, then upload it to CS. Your choice. I needed to keep costs low. On my second book of 100 short essays titled Solving the World's Titanic Struggles: Answers from Baha'i Philosophy and Spirituality, I did it all myself -- manuscript, editing, CS Interior Reviewer corrections, and CS Cover Creator to produce the front, spine, and back of the book. After receiving two hardcopy proofs, I finished my last manuscript edit in Word, created a PDF, uploaded it to Interior Reviewer, checked every page carefully, fine-tuned my cover, selected all 4 Distribution Channels, and approved the proof online. Four days later the 340-page book was available for $12.99 on Amazon. It looks great and I'm very happy with it.

My daughter-in-law Rachel Richards published her bout with anorexia, called Hungry for Life also on CreateSpace, with artwork help from my son Jesse. It's now sold over 7,000 copies in book form and ebook form and it's only been available six months. With my publishing company, ABLiA Media, I helped a client go thru the whole process, from manuscript editing through CreateSpace publication of The Man Who Never Slept (author Robert Quinn), and all worked beautifully with that too.

CS has its disadvantages. The FAQs and Forum are very sketchy as far as answers to questions, and they don't cover many. But if you can find their phone number for technical assistance, the reps are all very helpful and will solve your issues.

The Importance of Formatting Your Ms-Word Manuscripts

There are many, many websites, mostly blogs (short articles and essays) for writers to learn from and hone their art and their craft. One I subscribe to is The Write Life, full of tips in five categories, Freelancing, Blogging, Marketing, Craft and Publishing. Just about all of its blogs are helpful, informative and well-written, on specific topics all serious writers should assimilate.

   I recently shared an important article of theirs with my writing classes titled How to Format a Book: 10 Tips Your Editor Wants You to Know. You can find the full article at https://thewritelife.com/how-to-format-a-book/

   I'd like to share my take on what they wrote:

Note: The article itself lists specific MS-Word commands to perform some functions discussed. I will not be sharing those. Go to their site.

   First, if you are a serious writer and are going to a publisher or are going to self-publish, you must go thru an editor first. There are many kinds, for example, line, copy and content editors. In my editing business I mix elements of all three. Most professional editors are paid by the word, say 2-cents, or page, anywhere from $3 up; the average is $6.00 per page. You as a writer must understand how critically necessary good editing is to your manuscript(s), and keep that in mind as you shell out the cash and receive back their page reviews and edits.

   But whether you are self-publishing or were lucky enough to be picked up by a publishing house, besides writing a great story, going thru the editing, revision and polishing processes, there’s one othe process you must constantly be aware of and learn to do automatically. That is formatting every page, every chapter, the book, properly and correctly.

   It’s not enough to write a great story. If it is formatted badly it will turn off the reader.

   Here’s where the 10 tips come in:

1.       Always use black, 12 points, Times New Roman or another common font for 99% of the text. I use Calibri for all my books and articles and I’ve never had a complaint after all these years of someone’s PC or laptop not seeing it. Our PCs have at least 500 fonts, so inserting words here and there for them to stand out is fine, just don’t overdo it.

2.       Use the standard page size for the book you want to publish. We start out with all words documents as 8.5x11 page size, but unless you have a coffee table book, most likely that will not be the size of your work once published. I self-publish all tracebacks, in 6x9 size, for example. So one way or the other, either type it all 8.5x11 and make it smaller later (much more work), or type the pages in the size you intend to publish from the get-go. This is important because a 6x9 page line holds fewer words than an 8.5x11 page, and vice versa. How those words appear on the page is critical to the presentation of your book and the ease in which the reader can follow the text.

3.       Text should be fully justified end-to-end on every page. Most books are fully justified. It’s just plain easier for the eyes to follow.

4.       These days only use a single space after a period, not two as you might have been taught when younger. Any publisher, wanting to conserve page space for example, will insist on this. The important thing is to be consistent.

5.       In drafts only, used double-spaced lines. A finished manuscript is never double spaced, only single-spaced.

6.       Indent all paragraphs by .5 (a half-inch), EXCEPT the first paragraph of the chapter or of a new scene (which follows a line space). Every point, .1 is a character space. If .5 is too much for you, set your paragraph indents to something less. But no less than .3 is what I recommend. It should never be more than .5.

7.       Search thru books in your genre and see how they are formatted and follow their general rules. Don’t make up your own unless you are already a wildly popular author with a large fan buying base. Then do whatever you want.

8.       Learn how to use MS-Word Page Breaks and Section Breaks. This takes some skill. Pay attention. Especially if you don’t want page numbers on the Front Matter of your book, and want the first numbered page to start later.

9.       Learn how to set format and footers and set page numbers correctly. See also #8 above.

10.   Do not send chapter(s) to an editor; rather send the whole manuscript. The editor will use Word’s “Track Changes” to edit your document as well as to insert Comments. When you get it back it will be redlined. It’s then up to you to accept or reject those suggested changes and to implement them in your final manuscript or not. As an editor myself, all I can say is thanks to Microsoft for these features.

   My additional Tips: Train yourself in MS-Word. Pay for a course if necessary. And use these rules for every document you type until they become ingrained and automatic. You are doing yourself and your editor a huge favor.

   Besides, do you really want to spend your money for an editor to format your pages when you should be doing it anyway?

   Save your money and learn how to do it well.

Readers expect no less.

Important to Note When Copyrights Expire

I think, for me at least, one of the hardest tasks I have as a nonfiction writer is 1) doing good research, and 2) getting permissions to use quotations and excerpts in my books.
   #1 is easier than the second. Facts are facts, and they ARE NOT COPYRIGHTED. Nor can they be under copyright law. Of course when stating facts, how you state them is all important, for if you plagiarize copy and long phrases and excerpts with a fact or two thrown in, well, that doesn't count. Rephrasing and restating is always safer.
   #2 is much harder. There are no industry standards in the published world for how you can obtain permission to use a quotation or excerpt from a news article, magazine or book. None.
   It's up to the publisher and author to make that process either extremely easy or extremely hard. Mostly it's extremely hard finding access to them in the first place. Some big publishers have permission departments that work well, again, if you can find out how to contact them. I went thru Simon & Schuster for permission to copy and publish 3,000 words from Stephen King's book On Writing. They had a contract and a fee. The contract was good, the fee of $6.00 per copy for the 30 copies of the 14-pages of excerpts I distributed to my writing classes was not that great for my pocketbook, but it was something I wanted to do.
   And it would seem actual permission departments are few. So it's a catch as one can proposition getting permission.
   That brings me full circle to knowing copyright expirations so that you can cite quotations easily and even recklessly. 
   Here's the skinny: It's complicated.
1. For most works it's the term of the author's life plus 70 years. So Dickens and Shakespeare are safe to quote. However, the source you use to quote from is probably copyrighted, and your Bibliography should show that.
2. the exception is that any works published after January 1, 1978 when copyright laws changed, is that any such work created after 2002 will not expire until 2047. You and I will be dead by then, so use of any of that material freely is out of the question. One must ask for permission to use anything. Note: Song lyrics are jealously guarded by that industry, so don't even go there unless you want to be sued or go to court.
3. Works that were created before 1978 and published with a proper copyright notice before 1923 are now in the public domain. That's what you can site freely from, works in the "public domain." BUT BUT BUT you must check to see if the copyright was renewed before just using it in your book. Go to www.copyrigght.gov/records/index.html to check. 

Bottom line: Go to Lolly Gasaway's rules summary at www.unc.edu/~uncling/public-d.htm to double-check what I've told you here.

Believe, me, neither you nor I have the time, money or patience to be hit with a suit of any kind over the use of someone else's words or writing.

Spend the time necessary and do your research. Great writing stems from great research under all conditions.

If you've had any horror stories, please share them in the Comments below. I'd be interested to know how it worked out.