Hollee Chadwick

First of all, Educate America is a real company. Martha Benson, is not with Educate America – she just copied info from their site.

I answered a job posting on David Eide’s Sunoasis Job Network for a writing position:

Writer needed

Educate! America

Educate America is about to start a blog column on our website and

requires a blog writer to hire and also a writer for our upcoming

magazine. If interested, contact me at marthabenson@live.com.

Salary:

$30/page

Apply by Email:

marthabenson@live.com

Benson wrote back to me almost immediately – hired me, sort of, sent me a form that just asked my address:

Holle,

Educate America is a nonprofit federation that pre-screens and certifies high quality national charities working in the area of education. We present these charities to potential givers in fund drives at work and on the web.

Educate America! is a registered 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organization and we are about to add a blog page to our website which is the main reason why we are seeking a writer. As stated on the job description, we will be paying $25/page and we need to know if that is ok by you.

Attached to this email is a form which i will like you to fill and sign, it serves as an agreement between us and you.

Thanks

Martha Benson

No social security info, no other type of contract was sent, which is normally how I do business. The next email I got was this:

Holle,

Presently, we have different tropical issues which are:

1) Education

2) Peace and Security

3) World Order

4) Rule of Law

5) Women and Development

6) Child Right

7) Democracy and Good Government

Interfaith Dialogue

9) Human Rights Education

I will like to know which of the above issues you can write about, five pages/$125.

Kindly get back to me soonest.

Martha

I wrote back asking for page length, etc., and she answered this:

Hollee,

The length will Consist of 225 words per page and you are submitting five pages, style will  be a magazine article, audience are teenagers and adult cummunity, will prefer if the articles are informative, persuasive and fictional. You will be submiting your article via email (Attached), there will be an editor to proof read you article before it is published, 5 articles before every second week of the month. The payment will be sent out exactly the second week of the month.

Thanks

Martha

Then I got this email:

Hollee,

It has come to my attention that our sponsors have decided to make an advance payment for 3 month which will come in total of $1875 and your check will be sent directly to the mailing address fill in the form i sent to you.

Due to our agreement in the form which is you will be paid the exact amount of work done at the 2nd week of every month, i will want you to deduct the agreed amount of $625 and send the rest back to Educate America and subsequently payment will be sent to you as you keep writing for Educate America.

Thanks

Martha

Someone called me yesterday from a scam alert company and warned me about this company. I told him I already knew about it and had received no money from them as yet. The number he called from says Reveal Unknown 1-161-996-6025. How he got my phone number and other info, I have no clue.

So today, I get a UPS delivery from Salty Supply Inc., 100 Candace Dr. #104, Maitland Florida 32751 UPS acct # 6EA572. Inside are two money orders drawn on BB&T Bank, both in the amount of $990. I called the bank’s headquarters. They traced the numbers to a $20 MO and $292 MO already cashed in a month or two ago.

I also received two emails from Martha Benson today:

As stated in the previous email, our sponsor has signed out your check and it has been sent as promised. You will be receiving the check today, it will be delivered by UPS and you can cash it out at your bank. You will be deducting the amount owe you by Educate America for the articles you have written and send the rest to our printing press in China through Western Union who are printing your article on EDUCATE AMERICA magazine as we speak and the excess fund will be needed to ship the magazines back to the United States. You will be entitled to 12 copies of the magazine which will be autographed by me and the Editor in Chief.

This is the printing press information for the Western Union:

RECEIVER’S NAME: LI PING BU

CITY: GUANGXI

PROVINCE: NANNING

COUNTRY: CHINA

I await your email with the Western Union information.

I will appreciate it if you can give me a notification when your check arrives.

Thanks

Martha

I wrote and said the money orders had arrived and she wrote back and asked me to send the money to the address in the prior email.

It turns out Martha C. Benson, in all actuality, died on April 10, 2010 and worked with charities, one of which was Educate America.

I am a Christmas baby.Actually, I am a “was due on Christmas Day, but arrived four days earlier on the darkest and shortest day of the year” baby. December 21st. Never mind the year. My father reminds me of this fact—the dark day thing—as often as possible. I think he means “dark” in the spiritual, not literal, sense of the word.I was still dubbed “Hollee,” despite my lack of timing. (Yes, it is spelled correctly. The two e’s have something to do with my great-uncle Lee—my mom is Beverlee, there’s firstborn Kimberlee, then me, Hollee.)

Anyway, as all Christmas babies will tell you, as far as the number of gifts received goes, my birthdays were sometimes lacking. Never forgotten, mind you. Remember, my dad gets a kick out of that dark day phenomenon. Okay. If truth be told, and all whining aside, all five of us kids had pretty slim birthdays.

Times were tough.

Most 40+ year-olds I’ve met have their own tales of a near-poverty childhood—newspapers in shoes, trudging miles to school in six feet of snow, etc.  

None of it really happened. We’ve just inherited the childhood stories of our own parents, who inherited them from their parents and on and on ad infinitum. I figured this out when I heard my brother tell his four daughters about having to weave his own clothes from fig leaves.As fate would have it, my middle child was born three days after Christmas, 1979.I felt the first “creature stirrings” of labor on Christmas Day. The clatter of my little “reindeer’s hooves” didn’t hit full stride until December 28th. Then, WHOOMPH—she appeared. (I won’t use the chimney analogy here—I have my pride.)

Oh, you should have seen her, my new daughter, Amanda Rachel. She was chubby-cheeked, red, and roaring. Her tightly clenched fists were vivid reminders of the in-utero thrashing she gave me every night while I was trying to sleep. She frowned up at me, set her mouth in a grim line, and, I swear, blamed me that she’d missed Christmas Day.

But we rejoiced over her, regaled her with praise, showered her with gifts, filled her bed—and her head—with elves, reindeer, snowmen, and Santa. And by the time she was a day old she didn’t remember she’d missed the “big day.”

She blossomed into a roly-poly, curly-haired, laughing baby who filled everyone with delight. Her older sister, Sarah, (older by only 17 months!) doted on her, dragged her around, and showed her the ropes.

Amanda was my “big day” that year. Her birthday is my “big day” every year. That frowning, tight-lipped, fist-clenching newborn must have known then what I could not—she would grow to face serious physical and developmental problems and emotional hardships no child should ever have to endure.

And endure she did—and does.

And still she fills me with delight and joy and wonder and peace. And pride. She turns 26 this year—December 28, 2005.Amanda is my best Christmas ever. Every year.

I am a city girl. I love the city lifestyle—the theater, the opera, the symphony, the museums, bookstores, libraries, and Starbucks. I love the culture, the diversity, the pace, and the shopping—gotta love the shopping.

But for right now, I live in the country—in this quiet, laid-back, farming community. I have a 14 year-old daughter who loves the country, loves her school, loves her friends, and wants to be close to her dad—a country boy.

And she loves the county fair.

For all intents and purposes, this year was my first experience with a county fair. I’ve been to renaissance fairs, book fairs, Forest Fair Mall, etc., but not a county fair.

It’s opened up a whole new world for me. A strange and foreign world.

Some aspects of the fair I probably would have preferred missing out on—like the animal excrement—or to put it plainly—the poo.

I’ve seen, and stepped in, enough horse, cow, pig, and goat poo during the last week to last me a lifetime.

I was sent by the local newspaper to cover the Open Dairy Show on a miserable, rainy day.

I think the managing editor chose this as my baptism in fire, as it were, because in some twisted way he thought it was funny to send a lactose-intolerant, vegetarian to cover a dairy cow judging. He doesn’t admit to this.

And something was up with these cows.

There was a conspiracy of sorts among them—a bovine vendetta against me for my digestive woes with milk the likes of which have not been seen on “The Sopranos.”

Since I was there to also take pictures, I stood near the podium during the judging. Inevitably, everytime one of those hardworking 4-H kids—some half the size of Bessie, by the way—wrangled the cow by me—the animal lifted its tail and, um, how do I put this?—relieved itself.

I’m not talking tinkling here. I mean the cow saved up its feed for a week and deposited the “leftovers” mere inches from my feet. And, I swear, turned and smiled coquettishly at me.

The first few times it happened, I expected the spectators to burst out laughing at the expression on my face.

But nothing! No guffaws, no finger pointing—not even a discreet chuckle! So I figured, “Okay, ignore the poo, and move out of the line of fire.”

Well, it didn’t matter where I stood—the cow found me. I think there was a memo circulated that morning in the barn, passed from Holstein to Guernsey to Ayrshire: “When you see the red-headed city chick wearing the khakis and $190 boots—let ‘er rip.”

The dairy judge did discreetly cover the “waste product” with the pine shavings spread out on the floor, which was, commendably, quite gentlemanly of him. But what they don’t tell you is that poo covered with pine shavings, though invisible to the naked eye, when stepped on as one is walking through the barn in search of cute cow pictures, explodes like a land mine, throwing poo and pine shavings six feet in the air.

I would have worn trout-waders if someone had just warned me. (Note to managing editor.)

And what was even worse than the overabundance of cow ca-ca? At one point I asked the superintendent of the show, “Are all these cows girl cows?”

As if udders weren’t evidence enough.

To his credit, he didn’t miss a beat, and just replied, “Yes’m, they are.”

But I know what he was thinking: “Boy they raise ‘em dumb in the city.”

In my defense, in the city sometimes you can’t tell males from females, what with gender confusion, cross-dressing, and all. How was I to know cows don’t do that? It’s not like I’m on intimate terms with any of them. Or I wasn’t until they started going potty in front of me.

And frankly, the pigs were no better. They acted, well, piggy. And crouching down in front of a humongous hog saying, “Pretty piggy” is an open invitation to a head-butt in the kneecap.

I learned my lesson before I encountered the goats though. And I figured out just in time not to walk behind a horse.

I do have a suggestion. In the city, when you’re walking your dog, you’re expected to carry a pooper-scooper and plastic bags, and clean up after your four-legged companion when he or she does his business.

Perhaps this might be a good idea at the fair. It would only require the use of a bulldozer and a number of 33 gallon trash bags, but it would be greatly appreciated, I’m sure, by a few of us transplanted city folks.