Posted: 23 Feb 2010 02:03 PM PST

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Artful Parent blogger Jean Van't Hul writes the following about an Asheville-area Waldorf preschool:

Rachel (Rae) Patton and Joy Black are two shining lights who started our local Waldorf preschool -- Dandelion Hill. Join me as I ask both teachers about Waldorf early education and the Waldorf approach to art.

JEAN: What defines a Waldorf preschool/kindergarten? What sets it apart from other early childhood education philosophies?

RAE: A Waldorf early childhood classroom is intended to be an extension of the home. The first seven years of life the child is still in a dreamy state of mind. It is our intention to provide a gentle, nurturing place for them to awaken to this earthly plane. Formal education does not begin until first grade.

Click here for the complete story from our WNC LINC partner The Artful Parent.

About WNC LINC

WNC LINC stands for Western North Carolina Local Information Cooperative. Citizen-Times LINC partners include:

- Asheville Citizen-Times (www.CITIZEN-TIMES.com)

- UNC Asheville student newspaper The Blue Banner (www.thebluebanner.net)

- The Artful Parent blog (www.artfulparent.typepad.com)

- Montford Neighborhood Association web site (www.Montford.org)

- Ask Asheville (www.askasheville.com)

- The Southern Highland Reader (www.thesouthernhighlandreader.com)

WNC LINC is made possible by a grant by J-Lab, The Institute for Interactive Journalism.

For more details, visit www.CITIZEN-TIMES.com/LINC.

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Rivermont Collegiate will host a No Erasers! - Quad Cities Onlines

Posted: 23 Feb 2010 01:56 PM PST

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Press release submitted by Brittany Marietta

EXPLORE A UNIQUE APPROACH FOR LITTLE LEARNERS!

Discover a unique style of learning! Rivermont Collegiate will host a No Erasers! First Grade Open House Tuesday, March 2nd at 6:30 p.m. Interested families are invited to a presentation and conversation with First Grade Teacher Kathy Topalian about Rivermont's "No Erasers" approach, where students learn from their errors. This informal setting is the perfect opportunity to watch your child interact with "Mrs. T" and learn more about the Rivermont philosophy! Families are also invited to tour the Rivermont campus with Cindy Murray, Director of Admissions, who will be on hand to answer questions about Rivermont's philosophy, values, programs, and facilities.

Rivermont Collegiate provides an academically rigorous yet nurturing environment, where students develop skills and attitudes that provide the foundation for future learning. Our gifted faculty provides students with the tools to pursue knowledge independently and take intellectual and artistic risks, while small class sizes ensure each child receives direction and feedback. Come explore our approach!

For additional information on Rivermont Collegiate or Tuesday's No Erasers! First Grade Open House, contact Cindy Murray at (563) 359-1366 ext. 302 or murray@rvmt.org. This event is free and open to the public.

Rivermont Collegiate is the Quad Cities' only private, independent, non-sectarian PS-12th grade college preparatory school.

Annie Jennings PR Presents How To Create A Successful Business - Must ... - PRLog (free press release)

Posted: 23 Feb 2010 05:13 AM PST

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PR Log (Press Release) – Feb 23, 2010 – Who wants to be successful in business?

If you do, keep in mind your future rests on your principles. It all comes down to this, put your clients first and profit will be yours. But if you put the bottom line first, clients will not be yours.

So ask yourself, which is better? I bet Toyota wished they did this before their quality crisis.

The secrets of business success lie in rock solid principles of clients being able to know, love and trust you and by creating a powerful promotion and publicity strategy for your business. Your clients and customers want to know your name, they certainly want you to have a good reputation and they want to feel like their money is well spent when they do business with you. They want to trust that you will deliver the outcome they are purchasing and you will stand behind your product.

Want more business success tips? Plenty of free resources at http://www.anniejenningspr.com

To create a business model where everyone seems to know your name, be sure to stay visible to your market. You can write articles for your local paper, sponsor community events, buy advertising, initiate an internet marketing campaign, get your business listing online, build a website for your community. The idea is to be seen everywhere.

Treat each client fairly and with respect. You will soon earn a reputation of being a good solid business. Never underestimate the power of word of mouth both good and bad. The more your clients love you because of their great experience with you, the more people they will tell. When they are asked about working with you or buying your products they will have great things to say about you.

Lots of real client success stories at http://www.anniejenningspr.com/publicitypro.htm. You will love the stories and you can learn lots of success strategies directly from our clients who have turned their investment into profit for their business.

However, the reserve is true with a bad experience. You can be sure they will tell everyone about the horrible thing that happened to them. So, take good care of your customers and be sure every aspect of your business model supports treating your customers like royalty.

Never say one thing and do another. Keep your advertising and marketing grounded in educating and helping your clients or customers make the best choice for themselves. No one likes to be sold "at", it makes them distrust the entire product or business. Respect your client and customer base, don't make any statements you can't back up, treat clients like gold and stay consistent.

One mistake many businesses make is they start a marketing or outreach campaign and then stop, they start again and then stop. This sends a varied messages to your market and they will never know when you will be there and when you will not.

Remember, visit http://www.anniejenningspr.com for a tremendous selection of business and publicity resources. Then call me if you think I can help you achieve your dreams!

Create a business with products and services in non-stop demand. Your business will enjoy substantial success if your clients know, love and trust you. Always put the customer or client ahead of anything else and guarantee your service and product.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Stocks Value Investing Legends Are Buying - Motley Fool

Posted: 23 Feb 2010 12:58 PM PST

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Recs

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Scraping together enough coin to win the annual luncheon auction with Warren Buffet probably lies beyond most investors' means. Last year's winning bidder forked over $1.68 million for the privilege (all of which went to charity).

Still, many investors would love the chance to chow down with Buffett and pick his brain on his investment philosophy and stocks he's considering buying. They'd probably love to do so for many other value investing legends, too.

Feast or famine
Perhaps we can't break bread with the greats, but we can peek at their stock ideas through their SEC filings. Here, we'll pore over the reports of some of the top investors and see which stocks they've chosen as their best investments. We'll then check in with Motley Fool CAPS members to see whether they agree.

Obviously, there are a few caveats to a strategy of piggybacking on the masters:

There's a delay from when the stocks were bought and when they file their paperwork. If they were a good deal back then, are they still a good deal today? Have they sold out since?
These legends may be hot investors now, but that can change in an instant. Bill Miller was a wunderkind for beating the market 15 years in a row -- then he went cold for three. He came back in 2009, but we don't know what 2010 will bring.

Contrary to popular opinion
That's why we say you'll need to do further research, but with those points in mind, let's take a look at Mohnish Pabrai, the managing partner of Pabrai Investment Funds, whose funds have about $500 million in assets under management. Pabrai is a well-known value investor in the vein of Warren Buffett and Charlie Munger, looking for special situations and companies that possess "moat-based" competitive advantages. Pabrai, who also once won the Buffett luncheon auction, is the author of two investing books, including the bestseller The Dhando Investor.

Monish Pabrai's investing philosophy can be deceptively simple, and is best represented by the concept of "heads, I win; tails, I don't lose too much." Buffetologists can see the wisdom in that ideal as it's similar to the Oracle staying within his own circle of competence.

"I don't try to jump over 7-foot hurdles: I look for 1-foot hurdles that I can step over."

Fund: Pabrai Investment Funds
No. of Stocks Owned: 16
Top 5 Holdings: PotashCorp (NYSE: POT), Teck Resources (NYSE: TCK), Harvest Natural Resources (NYSE: HNR), Brookfield Properties (NYSE: BPO), Fairfax Financial
Top Sectors: Basic Materials, Industrials, Consumer Staples

Pabrai maintains a highly focused portfolio, much like Buffett operated when he first began. The three companies below represent completely new additions to Pabrai's portfolio at the time of the filing, and were the largest purchases relative to the size of the portfolio.

Stock	Avg. Price	Recent Price	% Chg	CAPS Rating
CapitalSource (NYSE: CSE)	$3.67	$5.44	48.4%	*****
Terex (NYSE: TEX)	$21.85	$20.54	(6.0%)	*****
Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC)	$28.27	$28.01	(0.9%)	***

Source: SEC filings.

Naturally, we encourage you to look closer at these stocks before you even consider buying. You can get low-priced appliances in the dent-and-ding section of your home-remodeling superstore, but their quality might not be so good. Same thing here: Make sure there's nothing seriously wrong with the company before you plug it into your own portfolio.

Price is what you pay
Last week, we highlighted Steve Mandel at Lone Pine Capital, who also picked Wells Fargo as a bank worth holding. Warren Buffett also recently increased his stake in Wells Fargo. In that light, Pabrai's entrance probably isn't surprising. The relatively little churn in his account also shows a strong influence from Buffett.

Pabrai's purchase of specialized commercial finance outfit CapitalSource is an interesting addition, however. Late last year it announced it was selling virtually all of its long-term care facilities for $860 million to pay down its debt. That should help earnings near-term and solve some liquidity issues.

Investors also remain confident in its ability to persevere, with 96% of the nearly 2,000 CAPS members rating the financing specialist indicating they think it ill outperform the broad market averages. Highly rated CAPS All-Star member jc09058 keeps an eye on CapitalSource's long-term recovery:

Despite the financial meltdown, I feel that this company has managed it's resources fairly well and hopefully, has resolved all issues resulting from the the sub-prime mess. I do expect that any turn around will be long and the share price will take some time to reflect that. A wait and see.

Value is what you get
It pays to start your own research on these stocks on Motley Fool CAPS. Read a company's financial reports, scrutinize key data and charts, and examine the comments your fellow investors have made, all from a stock's CAPS page.

Sign up today for the completely free service, and tell us whether these stocks are as good a value as these investing legends think they are.

Five Filters featured article: Chilcot Inquiry. Available tools: PDF Newspaper, Full Text RSS, Term Extraction.

Philosophy

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

“2 preschool teachers discuss Waldorf philosophy - Asheville Citizen-Times” plus 3 more

“2 preschool teachers discuss Waldorf philosophy - Asheville Citizen-Times” plus 3 more

About WNC LINC

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