THE Cambridge Connection - Episode 41

Well, I’m going to be sure to look it up. Maybe I’ll tell you. Oh, if I’m good. If you’re good. org, okay?

Perfect. All right, what do you got? Well, I do a bruschetta grilled chicken. Oh. Yes, I love it.

I love it. Very, very simple. It’s just... I don’t really measure when I cook, but I will give you the measurements. So for the chicken marinade, you’re going to do four tablespoons of extra virgin olive oil, a juice of a lemon, salt, pepper, some Italian seasonings, dried oregano.

You just kind of marinate the chicken in that and grill it. The best part, though, is the bruschetta part. Okay. So I love bruschetta. I love...

I have a garden full of fresh herbs, so obviously basil. You have to have the fresh basil. Love basil. Oh my God. And I also grow Roma tomatoes.

So I have my main ingredient for my bruschetta, basil, Roman tomatoes. You want to do a little bit of garlic, some olive oil in that, and also balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. Mix it together. Once the chicken is grilled, you just simply top it with the bruschetta mix. Voila.

Okay. Is the bread important on what kind of bread it is? No, no, no. We’re not doing bread. We’re doing it over chicken.

Oh. Oh, you’re going healthy. Yeah. Oh. Yes.

Yes. Well, that’s boring. You know what bread does to you? It sure does. And speaking of that, obviously, I’m sure you’re going to make that and people are going to love it.

Teasing the guest and break

I will do the same. I’m looking forward to our Independence Weekend. Yes. Interestingly enough, this show is about financial wellness and financial empowerment. We’re going to have our guest on the other side, William Henry from First Light Facts, which is a newsletter with all kinds of fun things.

So we’re going to take a quick break. We’ll be right back with the Cambridge Connection. Inflation is pushing family finances to the brink. Don’t let that happen to you. Call 1-800-CAMBRIDGE.

Introducing William Henry and First Light Facts

Find out how to pay your bills in full while saving money in the process. Take control of your debt before it starts controlling you. Welcome back, everyone. This is the Cambridge Connection. I’m your host, Gordon Oliver, with my co-pilot, Tina Marie, and it is a pleasure to introduce our special guest, William Henry from Volunteer Insurance Services Association and First Light Facts.

William, how are you today? I’m doing great. Thanks for having me with you. Welcome, William. Yeah, what’s up?

We’re really, really happy to have you. First of all, can you tell our listeners a little bit about yourself? Yes. I am with Volunteer Insurance Services Association, and part of what I do is provide the content or create the content for First Light Facts. We started that publication in September of 2020 as a counterweight to all the negative news that was coming out of the political campaign season.

I guess you can make the case that the need is just as great now for a counterweight like that. Absolutely. Our first readers were our customers. That’s the nonprofit organizations that purchase our volunteer insurance. But frequently in First Light Facts, we encourage readers to refer their friends and family to it so anyone can subscribe free, and at this point, over 10 percent of our readers are people who are not our customers but were referred to us by readers who enjoy First Light Facts.

I’m a subscriber, and I share the newsletter all the time because it’s so fun to read a publication about so many different things. Positive things. Yeah. We cover a variety of topics. I guess if we had a North Star, you might call it Jeopardy.

If you’re a fan of the Jeopardy TV show, you probably would enjoy First Light Facts. We do a lot of history, particularly facts that you probably didn’t learn in school, animals, the entertainment industry, and candy. We always get back to candy frequently. I noticed that. It was donuts.

I saw donuts recently, too. I thought it was a candy. Yes. But if all of us share anything in common, or most of us, candy is probably the common denominator. So we go there a lot.

Yeah. And between Jeopardy and, I would think, Trivial Pursuit, this newsletter lines up to inform you about all kinds of information. So I’m sure you would be surprised if you were playing either one of those games or on that show. Probably some of this information would come up in some of those questions. Right.

We try to entertain and inform. And if we’re really hitting our marks, we do both in the same edition. And our goal is to provide readers something that they’re probably going to want to share with someone else. We’ll say, hey, did you know whatever the topic might be? Yeah.

And it’s all done in a read of about two minutes. So we don’t take too much of someone’s day. Yeah. You know, there’s a lot of talk about mental health. We’ve had guests on this program about mental health.

And again, the tagline, first light facts, starting your day in a positive way. I think it’s fun to have this show up in your inbox first thing in the morning to do this quick read with your coffee to get your day started right. Right. m. Eastern time, four days a week is when we publish.

And where can we actually sign up for that? com. There’s a sign up form. Anyone can start a free subscription. That’s awesome.

Independence Day history and heroes

We’re embarking on Independence Day. So. Are you releasing any of the First Light Facts newsletters about Independence Day in the next couple of days? We’re going to do one on two presidents who died, both on July 4. We’re going to do that.

In the past, we’ve covered a lot of American heroes who are associated with Independence Day. For example, John Hancock, whose signature is so prominent on the declaration, many people might not know that he was hassled by the British authorities and charged with smuggling. He unloaded cargo without paying taxes for it. Hancock had a large import-export business that he had inherited from his uncle. And at his trial, he was represented by a future president, John Adams.

Adams was able to get the charges against Hancock dropped. Our legal system at work, right? Right. Speaking of John Adams, we did a series on the greatest trial lawyers in American history and featured him because he volunteered to defend the British soldiers who had fired into the crowd and killed some people in what became known as the Boston Massacre of 1770. Even though Adams was a patriot and a leader in breaking away from Britain, he wanted to be sure that the British soldiers’ rights were upheld at trial.

He made the case that they had been provoked into shooting and won acquittal for all but two of them. And the charges for those two were reduced to manslaughter. As first offenders, their sentence was not prison, it was to have a brand burned onto their thumbs. And this is where, yeah, no kidding. And also in politics, right?

I believe John Adams was not very popular for taking that on. Is that correct? That’s correct. Yeah. He stood on his principles.

And then yet he had to work with the rest of the founders to find common ground, right? To establish the Declaration of Independence. That’s right. He did. There’s another hero of the American Revolution we did an edition on, and that’s Sybil Ludington.

Sybil was 16 years old, living in present-day Putnam County, New York, which is not far from Danbury, Connecticut. And she got on her horse on April 26, 1777, when word came that the British were marching on Danbury and the Continental Army storehouse there. So she rode all through the night, raising the local militia through a driving rain, by the way, so that the militia did not get to Danbury in time to save the storehouse, but they did harry the British all the way back to Long Island Sound. So we did an edition on Sybil. 16, yeah, riding her horse all through the night through the driving rain.

Wow, that is, as you look back on history, there’s some amazing things we don’t recognize in our lives at the moment, the things we have that make things convenient, right? I know 16-year-olds that don’t know how to ride bikes, let alone a horse. I don’t think she was wearing a helmet either. Oh, the helmet laws weren’t in effect back then. Well, you know, Independence Day is very special.

Obviously, you know, it comes at a great time in the summer for everybody to be celebrating on holiday, on vacation, etc. And to bring, you know, just some awareness of information on this show about a very special holiday like that is important to us because it’s a great day for America. And I think what we can do is we’ll take a quick break, William, and when we get back, we’ll talk a little bit more about other topics and other things that First Light Facts does, their partnership with the sponsor of the show, Cambridge Credit Council, and we’ll talk a little bit about that as well. All right. Thank you.

Show milestones and podcast plug

You got it. We’ll take a quick break. We’ll be right back. This is The Cambridge Connection. Well, Tina Marie, here we are, already in our mid-30s.

Have you checked your license lately? You’re a far cry from being in your mid-30s. No, no, not me. Our show, The Cambridge Connection. We’re already more than halfway through our first year of great guests and need-to-know topics.

Oh, I thought you were talking about your age. Well, that would take a lot longer than we have in this message, but what only takes a moment to share is that if you miss any of our shows on Saturdays on WHMP, don’t worry. com, click on podcasts, and all of our shows are listed there. Plus, listeners can find us on all the podcast sites where they listen to their favorite podcast. Well, when I get home, I’m going to listen to my favorite episode.

And what’s that? You know, the one with me in it. Ha! Welcome back, everyone. This is The Cambridge Connection.

Other holidays and newsletter features

I’m your host, Gordon Oliver, here with my co-pilot, Tina Marie. And on this show, Tina, we navigate financial wellness and empowerment. And today, obviously, in our opening, we talked about credit scores with First Light Facts. We have our special guest here, William Henry, from the newsletter, First Light Facts. So, William, I know First Light Facts celebrates some other holidays with information as well.

Yeah, it seems like we’re getting a really good history lesson now, but, William, curious, what other holidays are you guys big on? We’re big on all American holidays, especially Halloween and Valentine’s Day, because ... Candy? Those are great opportunities to ... That’s right.

Those are great opportunities to talk about candy, one of our favorite subjects. And then at Thanksgiving, we gave a history of the fork. And the fact that back in colonial days, the clergy was very distrustful of the fork. People were accustomed to eating their food with a spoon in one hand and their fingers in the other hand. We ...

That’s how I eat, William. That’s not the right way? Well, I guess to each his or her own. Well, we learn something new every day, Gordon. It took the fork a while to gain acceptance, believe it or not.

We explained the tradition of not wearing white after Labor Day. And then for the 4th of July, we explained why blue is the most difficult color to create for fireworks. Hold on. Can I just interrupt real quick? Can we go back to not wearing white after Labor Day?

I think a lot of women want to know the answer to that. What is the reason for that? Well, it started with the people in New York who had the most money and the most command of fashion, at least in their own minds, deciding that two wardrobes would distinguish them from the people who were not as well off. So they had their summer whites, and then they had the darks for the rest of the year. But they also liked to make the rules.

So they were able to tell who was in their circle simply by what they were wearing before Labor Day and after Labor Day. I mean, there are other explanations, too. In the fall, when the rain starts to come, you don’t want your whites getting muddy. But Coco Chanel bucked the trend. She said, I don’t approve of all this, and I’m going to wear white all year round.

Wow, interesting. Wow. OK. And then you said blue for fireworks is the most difficult color? Yes.

It involves the use of copper, and the ignition temperature has to be just right for copper to ignite. Having a dark blue background, the night sky, also complicates the matters. So yeah, we did an edition on why blue is the hardest color to get. Then we did one a couple of days ago about how to protect your dogs and cats who might be scared of fireworks. Should I ever get on any of these game shows, you are the friend I will phone, for sure.

I’ll be your lifeline. Yeah, please. All right, so I know First Light Facts has a feature called the second page of the resume. That’s right. Little known skills or accomplishments of well-known people.

For example, many people might not know that President Gerald Ford earned some extra money as a model and as Yale University’s boxing coach when he was in Yale Law School. We also do a lot of quizzes because we have a great regard for the intelligence of our readers. S. history, world geography, matching uncommon words with their definitions just to check your vocabulary. We do music, movies, lots of other topics.

We do interesting things that animals carry on as part of the routine to take care of themselves. We like to celebrate great inventions, including those that came about by accident. For example, the slinky was a result of a naval engineer’s work on how to stabilize sensitive instruments on ships. We went back to the history of Tasty Cakes in Philadelphia and how they used to become part of factory workers’ lunches and sold in corner stores only. The history of diners, which many of us love.

The electric guitar, Leo Fender. All these things that have become part of what’s available for us to enjoy here in America. I must confess, when I got the slinky edition, I did post it with the video to the Ace Ventura when he was at the ashram watching the slinky go down the steps. So I did share it. I just put a little spin on it.

Well that’s good to know. The slinky is still manufactured. It’s changed ownership many times of its company, but you can still find the ones that are real steel, not plastic. I remember when I was a kid working it down the stairs. I remember doing it.

A spring, a spring, a marvelous spring. Everyone knows it’s slinky. All right. Yes. Tina Marie’s audition.

American heroes, villains, and practical tips

American Idol, here you come. All right. So what about some Americans that did some great things for the country? Well, how about Juanita Moody? S.

intelligence officer, worked her way up through the ranks. And when 1962 came, her intelligence that was provided to President Kennedy gave him the information he needed in order to negotiate with Khrushchev and resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis. She came from a small town in North Carolina, the oldest of several children. There was no running water or plumbing in her house, but she was able to get a college degree and then travel to the intelligence community of the United States and did great work. We also do some villains, not just heroes, but villains.

We covered Black Bart. He was a 19th century California stagecoach robber, and he would sometimes leave bad poems at the site of his robberies. And when he was caught and he went to prison, when he got out, he was asked if he was going to go back to robbery. And he said, no, my days of crime are over. Then another reporter said, well, are you going to write any more poems?

And he said, didn’t you just hear what I said? My days of crime are over. Black Bart. Wow. Again, I didn’t know.

I didn’t either. That’s awesome. We like to do some practical tips to make your life better, how to start a fire if you need one to survive. Oh, my goodness. We were just trying to do that the other night in the backyard on our fire pit.

Yeah. Help us out there. Yeah. There are many ways to do that with just using common, ordinary household materials. We talked about how to defrost your windshield efficiently, how to retrieve something that you dropped down a storm drain.

See, what you have to do is once you subscribe to First Light Facts, don’t ever miss an edition because that could be exactly what you need. m. every day. And I quickly glance over it to get the information. And you’re absolutely right.

The topics vary. And what’s even great about it, my attention span is not great. So I read books like James Patterson because they’re like three page chapters. So this newsletter is amazing because you get a ton of information in a really short clip. That’s good to know.

Very gratifying. Yes, sir. So obviously, again, this show is about financial wellness, wisdom, empowerment. And we help our listeners navigate this financial wellness through all kinds of information. We’ve had guests about cryptocurrency on.

Newsletter partnership with Cambridge Credit

We’ve had guests talking about the economy because obviously things aren’t that great there. For an employee or a HR director or a business that might be listening, you partnered with the sponsor of this show, Cambridge Credit Counseling, to help direct some of your clients and family members and friends to a trusted source if they are struggling financially. Yes, it’s very sad but true that so many people are upside down in their personal finances. It happens gradually, then they get to a point where they’re overwhelmed, they don’t know what to do. So we were very proud to partner with Cambridge so that we can direct readers of First Light Facts as well as customers of Volunteers Insurance Service to Cambridge to get assistance, to get a plan going, to understand their circumstances and find a practical way to get back to, I think you used the phrase, financial wellness.

I like that. Managing debt and get out of their problem. And one thing at Cambridge Credit is we want to stress you’re not alone. And the fact that you do put this out there for consumers is fabulous because there are people that just don’t know where to turn. And yeah, we’re here to help you as an individual.

What I also liked about the opening, we talked about the credit score version of First Light Facts and you had resources, which is the National Foundation for Credit Counseling, which I know Cambridge Credit is a member of, The Simple Dollar, Card Ratings, Club Thrifty. So in the newsletter, you put resources for people to go to, to get more information or more areas for assistance if needed. Yes, and although we devote many of our topics in First Light Facts to jeopardy type subjects, we also look forward to having occasionally a... piece about managing debt or financial wellness provided by Cambridge that will get our readers attention as well. Can you please tell our listeners again how they can sign up for First Light Facts and if they want past editions, how they can get past editions of the newsletter?

com. You’ll see a sign-up form at the bottom of the page. Once you complete that and submit it, you’ll start receiving First Light Facts four days a week. We’re not going to follow up with you to try to sell you anything. We just want to inform and entertain.

Farewell to guest and newsletter promo

And one more thing before I let you go, and we can’t thank you enough for coming on the show and sharing this information, I think we have to consider a name change for you to William Henrypedia. Are you willing to consider that? I would wear it well. I think so too, William. Yes, you would, my friend.

Listen, thank you again for joining us. We really appreciate having you as our guest today. I look forward to my next First Light Facts newsletter in my inbox and we’ll talk to you soon. Yes, this was a lot of fun. All right.

A lot of fun. Happy Independence Day to you and all of your listeners. Enjoy the candy. Same to you, my friend. All right.

All right, this is Gordon Oliver with The Cambridge Connection. Are you a trivia person? Do you love to learn cool facts that others don’t know? Then you need a free subscription to First Light Facts. First Light Facts is an entertaining and informative two-minute read sent to your email four mornings a week and published by the Volunteers Insurance Service Association.

Topics include little-known facts about heroes, known and unknown, to surprising things animals do or how curiosity or mere accidents have led to great discoveries. First Light Facts will test your knowledge and explain things you’ve always wondered about. And then there’s candy. That’s right. Candy is a frequent topic on First Light Facts.

com and sign up today so you, too, can be in the know. Welcome back, everyone, to The Cambridge Connection. I’m your host, Gordon Oliver, here with my co-pilot, Tina William-Henry from First Light Facts. Just, I want to see him on a game show, actually. That was a lot of fun.

Credit score notes and show close

Yes, that was a lot of fun. He just seems like he has a lot of information. And to pull off a newsletter like First Light Facts, you’ve got to do your research, you’ve got to know the content. Just amazing stuff. Yeah.

I was actually researching it and I saw something that he had on there, the four considerations that might not be obvious for your credit score. You might know something about that. It definitely caught my eye. And one of the considerations is it’s not an indicator of wealth. People think their credit score, the higher their score means the more money they make.

Not at all. Credit scores indicate how you manage your debt, not how much debt you actually have. And there’s so much confusion around credit score. You have to do your research there, too, on really understanding how it will impact you when you make decisions. Absolutely.

Another point is a high score is good, up to a point. A score above 800, obviously, excellent score. But it’s really no better than 760. So that’s something to always take into consideration. 760 is a fabulous score for securing the lowest available mortgage interest rates.

No better than 720 for the best score. Well, I’ll tell you what I am thinking. That’s great information. But I’m thinking chicken bruschetta right now. I really am.

I’m thinking of that ingredient. Unfortunately, I’m going to post that newsletter and we’re going to post our recipes on our social media. And unfortunately, it’s time to close the show. With that, a quote, to achieve what 1% of the world’s population has, you must be willing to do what only 1% dares to do, hard work and perseverance of highest order, Minaj Arora. A huge thank you to Leah and Lisa, our producers.

As you can see, like William Henrypedia, we have great experts on the horizon. m. com and click on podcasts or you can listen to the show where you listen to your favorite podcasts. Once again, be part of the conversation. org or feel free to call 1-800-CAMBRIDGE.