EASY READING CULTURE OF LIFE NEWS: SOCIAL STRESSES DUE TO DEPRESSION « Culture of Life News 2
The many stresses and financial difficulties are leading to crimes, suicides and general chaos. Most people cope with difficulties but the higher up society’s ladder we climb, the harder it is to cope with loss of power or financial comforts. Here in NY, we have several recent examples. One of the saddest parts of all this is how children are being viciously abused or murdered by frustrated parents.
This first story had tongues clicking in NYC:
PARK AVE. LAWYER MADLYN PRIMOFF DITCHES KIDS: COPS – New York Post
Primoff was driving the kids home to the family’s $2 million spread in Scarsdale Sunday evening when they started acting up. But instead of threatening to dump them at the side of the road and then biting her lip, Primoff actually went through with the unthinkable — dropping them off in downtown White Plains, three miles from home, and driving off, cops said.
It was unknown if either of the girls had their cellphones with them. According to the police report, the 12-year-old managed to catch up with the car, and Primoff let her back in, but left the 10-year-old behind.
A good Samaritan found the girl, who was visibly upset about losing her mom, bought her an ice cream, and called cops. Shortly afterward, Primoff called the Scarsdale police from home to report that her daughter was missing. Cops told her to go to the White Plains Police Headquarters, where she was arrested….
Madlyn Primoff — who specializes in reorganizing troubled companies — graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University and got her law degree from Columbia. Richard, 47, is an attorney for the Securities and Exchange Commission and got his law degree from Harvard.
The mother probably didn’t realized how badly unhinged she has become. Her job is to interact with frantic people who are going bankrupt. Reorganizing troubled companies usually means destroying select lives by downsizing and firing people all over the place. It is not accidental that the word ‘executive’ and ‘execute’ means both carrying out or giving orders and killing people.
Who knows what dreams Primoff had when she was a young student! I’m sure there was a lot of idealism. But then, the money is in the ‘execute’ side of the ledger and she moved into that field so she could live in a $2 million mansion. There is a barrier between being motherly and being despotic. If one chooses the despot role at work, it is hard to shed it at home and replace it with a loving and forgiving mother role.
Traditionally, men left the mothering role to mothers but today, we are all asked to both mother and be the father at work. And it is possible to be both and to switch gears. But it is hard to do. And if one is overworked or stressed out by work, keeping this out of the domestic side is harder. Men who are unable to cope with failure can’t keep it out. Nor can mothers.
Ms. Primoff now has to make some life changes. This was a warning to her, the mothering side is collapsing. She can’t be a high-powered lawyer in Manhattan and a mother in Scarsdale at the same time. Also notice how she is married to an SEC lawyer while she works the other side of the street just like the Madoff daughter managed to do. I would suggest there is some conflict of interests here.
COPS: HUSBAND KILLED WIFE, DAUGHTERS IN MD. HOTEL SLAY – New York Post
A Long Island man beat and choked his wife and two daughters – then committed suicide – following a violent afternoon at a Maryland hotel, authorities said today. Baltimore County police said that 59-year-old William Parente of Garden City, killed his wife, 58-year-old Betty, and their daughters, 19-year-old Stephanie and 11-year-old Catherine, in their room at the Sheraton Baltimore North on Sunday….
The revelations about the manner in which the Parente family died came as the FBI said that it has begun an investigation of William Parente’s investment dealings, Newsday reported today on its Web site. The feds said the probe was launched following numerous complaints from investors to police.
Another financier goes totally insane. This guy probably couldn’t believe his great fortune during the boom years as he ran in and out of the Cave of Wealth and Death and got richer this way. But when things went bad, he wasn’t honest about losses. Instead, he tried to float his business by breaking the law.
Like Madoff, he thought, if only he could shift money in clever ways, none of his clients would figure out, he was a cheat. But now, everyone is very, very understandably suspicious and demanding an accounting. This is normal in all downturns. Credulity shifts instantly into suspicion. There are some types like Donald Trump who can lie without blinking an eye. But most people collapse when confronted with their own messes.
Some bite the bullet and pay the price honestly which means, going to court, paying restitution and confessing one’s crimes in public. After doing this, people are often given a second chance in life. I have worked with cons who had to go through this process and it isn’t half as painful as anticipated.
Executive at Freddie Mac Is Found Dead
Regulators with the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Justice Department have been interviewing Freddie Mac officials about possible accounting violations and other topics, the company disclosed in March, though it is not known if Mr. Kellermann was one of those interviewed.
The company recently disclosed in a public filing that in September it received a federal grand jury subpoena seeking documents concerning the company’s accounting, disclosure and corporate-governance practices. The investigation is being overseen by the United States attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia, which declined to comment on the case. Freddie Mac has said it was “cooperating fully in these matters.” A spokesman said the company knew of no connection between the death and regulatory inquiries.
One of the problems with being in charge of something is being in charge of something. Before this happens, people think, this is a piece of cake and they collect pay checks that are bigger and bigger and they live in nicer and nicer homes and feel all good. But the need for vigilance grows.
We see all the time how people who foresee these things, get shoved out the door. This has happened to me twice in my life. People hate bad news, want good news. When bad news has to be dealt with, the first impulse is to ignore it. The second, to pass it off to someone else. This game of hot potato can get quite nasty. What seems to be a promotion might be really a push off a cliff. What looks like a new opportunity ends up being an opportunity to be a scape goat.
Already, conspiracy people want to think of all sorts of things to explain all this but the simple fact is, some people are pushed into positions they can’t handle and this is rather deliberate because organizations seeking to not be accounted properly or to not be organized correctly will promote ONLY people who are incompetent or spineless. Anyone who marches into a meeting with a sheath of papers, graphs, charts and a written agenda to push for major changes is….as I VERY WELL KNOW, out the door, fast!
This man was not a changer or a pushy person who was going to pry open all treasure chests and all systems. Instead, he was the designated scapegoat who would be grilled by others. Poor man, I feel kind of sorry for him but—-NOT TOO SORRY. This is because I know why he was promoted up and up and up and why people like myself are kicked to the curb. This is, in a way, our revenge.
Second family murder-suicide in week – world | Stuff.co.nz
Maryland was already dealing with a similar tragedy when word of the Parentes’ deaths began to spread. Sometime late Thursday night or Friday morning, a father in the northwestern Maryland city of Frederick fatally shot his wife and their three young children, police said.
The father, Christopher A. Wood, 34, then shot himself. Police revealed Tuesday that the family was having extreme financial problems.
An analysis by the Violence Policy Center in Washington, found an average of nine or 10 murder-suicides a week. But familicides – in which both parents and all their children are killed – generally happen only happen two or three times every six months, said Kristen Rand, legislative director for the center, a nonprofit gun-control advocacy group.
“They were so rare that we didn’t really bother to count them as a separate category,” Rand said. But in the last few months, she said, “there’s a clear rash” of such killings.
They can be tied to the recession, said Richard Gelles, dean of the School of Social Policy and Practice at the University of Pennsylvania.
I had to hospitalize my husband today which is why this story is very late. He is brain damaged from work due to the incompetence of his bosses. He won his court cases but this is no joy, he would far, far rather be normal and be working. Most people prefer to work, it gives meaning to life, shape to one’s day and has rhythm. For the first 6 years of my husband’s illness, we had to have him on suicide watch. I had to quit working and if I went anywhere, I had to find someone to sit with him. Still do, actually.
But he is, after 15 years, still very much alive! Tomorrow is the anniversary of him nearly dying at work and he can’t tolerate this at home so he goes to the hospital. But most people don’t look enough for help and they can’t get help, anyway, because they think they are sane, not crazy. The very first step towards mental balance is to admit, one is insane. I think everyone is insane. We just try to muck along as best we can.
But during hard times, people who are crazy go crazier. Since we are all crazy to begin with, this leads to total meltdown in many people who can’t cope with the concept of being unable to cope. Some go into total despair and kill not only themselves but everyone. Beating their children to death, shooting them, drowning them, etc. The psychotic need to torment loved ones is due to the death wish being in bed with love. They come from the same place in the brain.
The man was lying fully clothed on the bed in his apartment in Osaka. He looked peaceful, as if asleep. His skin was dark gray. He’d been lying there for about a month, but no one had missed him. The doctors who performed the autopsy were astonished to find that his stomach was almost empty. The man had starved to death.
The refrigerator in his apartment was also empty. There were a few coins in a tin can, not even enough to pay for a meal. Job search magazines were scattered on the floor, as well as an application form on which the man had entered his work experience.
The news about this unemployed man who had starved to death in Osaka came as a shock to the world’s second-largest industrialized nation. His extreme case made the Japanese realize how poorly equipped their social welfare system is for the consequences of the global financial crisis.
What made the starving case so shocking is that he was not a lonely old man, but a 49-year-old computer specialist with an apparent will to work. Until the spring of 2007 he’d worked in a bank as a dispatcher. He was forced to quit his job for health reasons, but when he was able to return to work, he could no longer find a job….
Otherwise, Japan clings to the rituals of daily life, as armies of commuters, patient as ever, crowd into overfilled subways. Many of these corporate samurai no longer have jobs. They leave their apartments in the morning, pretending to go about their routines, hoping to hide the shame of unemployment from families and neighbors.
Internet cafés across Japan are filled with job seekers, many out-of-work former contract workers. They were the first to go when the crisis erupted; they were dismissed by the thousands. In many cases, losing their jobs meant losing the rooms they occupied in company-owned apartment buildings.
Takayuki Umeshita, 41, lost his job as a welder a few months ago. Now he camps out at an Internet café in Tokyo, looking for a new job, and even sleeping in a rented cubicle. The café resembles a homeless shelter, complete with shower and hot water to make instant noodles. Umeshita, who keeps his few belongings in a blue bag, is willing to accept almost any job. But without a permanent address, he says, his prospects are dim. “It’s a vicious circle.”
Suicide is a huge force in Japan. Few kill entire families. Most do it to themselves. They do have a social suicidal force, too, where people do it in groups. Depressed societies tend towards suicide. Suicide is trained into people, it is a cultural trait. For example, in the Muslim world, people who are angry and depressed are suicide bombers.
One man, in the US, shot his dying mother and then went on a rampage, shooting a number of total strangers and then shot himself. In NY, an immigrant went crazy and shot other immigrants and then, himself. Going out in a blaze of ignominy has been celebrated in the movies and things in movies always end up intruding on real life. Just like we see many movies where the hero tortures a ‘bad guy’ and gets really valuable information which he then uses to be an even bigger hero. So we endorse torture.
We can’t escape ‘entertainment’ and put it in a box. It becomes part of us and expresses itself in our own actions, unconsciously or deliberately.
Daily Express | UK News :: Sir Fred could lose his knighthood
One of Westminster’s most senior backbench MPs said he believed Whitehall officials were considering whether to deprive the disgraced banker of his honour awarded in 2004.
Honours system officials refused to disclose whether the case was being considered by the Forfeiture Committee when they were grilled by the influential Public Administration Committee….Almost 70 MPs have signed a Commons motion calling for Sir Fred – who refused to give up his £700,000-a-year pension from the failed Royal Bank of Scotland which he headed – to lose the right to call himself Sir.
He is fortunate. In the old days, he would have had his head chopped off by the queen for mucking up the kingdom’s finances.
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Ohhhh!!! Stress and depression lead to many problems!!!!
http://www.sonireka.wordpress.com
I’m just worried about what business problems these people know about that we don’t. Because it is driving them to choose death rather than actually face it.
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It doesn’t bode well for us.
During the late 70’s recession my father could not get a job and we lived in a garret.
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He finally got a job as a clerk-typist and he declined when they eventually tried to promote him.
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He told me that he used to tell people, ‘don’t blame me, I left it like I found it’.
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We would go feed his friends’ horse on weekends. He tied up the horse with a tiny chain outside the stall.
I said, ‘Dad, that isn’t going to work. That horse can easily break that chain. He said, ‘yes, but the horse doesn’t know that’.
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Another time I asked him, ‘but dad, isn’t money just paper?’
I’ve watched a couple of old Godzilla movies this week, and noticed how both films had roles played by gangsters and thieves (by the people NOT in rubber suits). The connection they want you to draw is obvious. One of the consequences of war (giant monsters destroying the cities), is that society breaks down into violent lawlessness.
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The social stress of uncertainty causes some people to lose their minds. Also, the dysfunctiona influence of violent, corrupt governments has a direct and negative influence on the behavior of individual citizens. The term for that is Cycle of Abuse. Furthermore, there are all the thousands and thousands of soldiers whose minds we are poisoning with daily violence in these endless wars. When they return to civilian life, they are bound to be sources of private wars on our own soil. History is filled with warnings about what happens when we go down this path: Pandora’s Box, Frankenstein’s monster, Godzilla…
I can not imagine taking my own life for any reason whatsoever. I love my life and I am enjoying it. It is beyond my comprehension that someone would kill themselves and others because of loosing their job, position, or wealth. Wealth is not important. It comes, it goes, it is not guaranteed, and life is not defined by it. If these people had been in tune with what matters in life, perhaps they would still be here today. I think people who are at the top of the ladder will have a harder fall than those of us at the bottom.
Mr. Kellermann is stressed, everyone is stressed, particularly the gnomes since majority of major banks are bankrupt
For the smaller banks / credit unions make sure whoever got the money on tap do not do a runner and become “lost” in the Bermudas with your money.
Of course they do this how else are they going to come up with the trillions’ interest to pay sovereign creditors?
Looks like the gubment won’t welch China’s trillions, but yours
In Soviet America the debtor is YOU!
kookies’
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http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7gqts_immortal-tyrants-graspop-2008_music
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i got 10 fingers got’ 2 crossed
Elaine, a couple of weeks ago, when I became aware that this sort of violence was ramping up, I came across a bunch of Gerald Celente You-Tube videos. He’s coined a new trademark line for what he calls, “The Crash of ’09,” and the line is this: “When people lose everything, and they have nothing left to lose, people lose it. This line is a very apt description of all these crazy suicides, homicides and even familicides.
“My friends, we live in the greatest nation in the history of the world. I hope you’ll join with me as we try to change it.”
- Barack Obama
The Peter Principle is well known: “In a Hierarchy Every Employee Tends to Rise to His Level of Incompetence”! And the “Septic Tank Principle elaborates: “An organization resembles a septic tank, the big chunks always rise to the top”!
The book will be re-issued in honor of its 40th anniversary. Don’t miss it!
projection. unconscious transfer of feeling….psychology the unconscious ascription of a personal thought, feeling, or impulse, especially one considered undesirable, to somebody else
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what was it cc said? “come, death, and snatch me from disgrace!”
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and my feelings? why do people always feel they have to reinvent the wheel. nothing has changed. nothing is new. so work hard and learn your lessons! lessons! lessons! and shut up and take the pain. and what did janis sing? freedoms just another word for nothing left to lose….heh. hitting bottom is liberating actually. man up!
actually, fetters are the only reason i am still alive….but i would never take anyone with me. and i am not depressed or angry or insane, not in the least! reality has never been so close and so clear! i just still haven’t got how the baby jesus loves all of us yet….dead seeds and all. and i don’t much believe in “medication” either. mind your mind and what will be will. you can take it. then not insanity, not fantasy, not nothing, not no hope. remember this is absolutely true. hitting bottom is probably the best thing that can happen to anyone….if they can cope. good luck to us all. i happily did my really, really hard manual labor for 9 hours today and it was a wonderful day. and i don’t have to. heh. i am rich in things i can’t spend. take care all.
Elaine:
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You are so right about all of this…and I do have a lot of sympathy for wives and children, but not too much for deluded, arrogant people who made their wealth by taking excessive advantage of others…and then when they lose, they can’t handle the failure.
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Someone once told me that as long as you pick yourself up and keep going, you will never be a failure…and I’ve discovered that to be true…and the person who has never made a misstep and brought failure upon himself or herself hasn’t done very much in life…and knows little about real living….talking about the silver spoon crowd…minds filled with arrogance and their pockets filled with money they did very little to earn.
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I once was in a masters level philosophy class with a Brit who had graduated from a mediocre English college and then came to the US and married into an industrialist family…his wealthy wife was one of the plainest poor women I’ve ever met…neither face, personality or body was attractive at all. Anyway, the old professor asked us if we would take advantage of someone for no apparent reason at all…and I answered that I would not unless I had a compelling need to do so…like feeding my family or shelter or so on….anyway Mr. Brit snorted at me “well, boy, you’ll never have any real money then”….and I answered that it just isn’t in my nature to look for a way to take advantage of every person I meet. He replied that he saw nothing wrong with attempting to get the upper hand and come out on top in all human interactions.
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And this is a basic difference between those who have a lot of wealth and those who don’t…and the British guy is probably right, but if everyone had his attitude, this world would be a hell of an evil place…bad enough now, but would be much worse.
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You said:
“What seems to be a promotion might be really a push off a cliff. What looks like a new opportunity ends up being an opportunity to be a scape goat.”
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This is the standard joke on any factory floor….that the person who is lazy, incompetent and stupid usually gets promoted to a supervisory position…also known as a straw boss…and the managers let him or her be the bad guy,the pusher,…and then these managers can come off as mild mannered and concerned about worker welfare…when, in reality, they are the force behind the pusher’s arrogance and impossible demands…It’s an old system.
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And these pushers actually see themselves as superior to those they supervise…and they are often too stupid to know that they are being used and abused more than the workers they supervise.
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When I was a child, dad worked in a furniture factory for awhile…When he went to his boss and asked for a pay raise, his boss snorted that he liked to keep his workers a little lean so they would show up for work on Monday mornings….and this dude was a slave driver, according to dad….and then one day the SOB straw boss had a heart attack and died right there on the factory floor…and dad lived to be 85 years old,and died in his own bed surrounded by loving family…and 400 people came to pay respects at his funeral…so I ask…who won that game of life?
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Elaine, I’m sorry to hear about your husband. I had a younger brother who was ill for his entire life and died at age 27…and I know how difficult dealing with this is for the long term….and I admire you for your loyalty to your husband.
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And, as far as sanity is concerned…I agree with you. I have a daughter who suffers from chronic depression, but keeps going, works every day as a college administrative assistant and is now 2/3 through her masters degree…and I’ve seen her very low one time..and wondered if she would make it back, but she did, and is now struggling on with her life…and I’m proud as hell of her..and she’s a really good and loving person…worth more than many other people I know.
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Psychiatric and psychological labels do have some legitimate uses in treating serious mental problems,but,in my humble opinion, they are overused to the extreme…, especially by non-professionals who don’t know what the hell they are talking about.
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A family story:
Daughter was three years old when we discovered that she might be a little different. We were riding around with family one Sunday afternoon and she began reading signs and billboards along the road…and family asked her to read more and more difficult signs and she clearly read every single one. When we came home that evening, I asked her to read lines from several different books..and she read them as clearly as an adult. Then, I pulled down my inorganic chemistry textbook from the shelf and asked her to read a very complex two line paragraph from it…and she did so very easily…and this spooked the hell out of me.
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However, when she went to school, her reading comprehension was supposedly a bit below standard…but then we discovered that she had dyslexia. I’ve since concluded that somehow, she might have been reading my thoughts as I read this or that book or the thoughts of family members as they questioned her about those billboards and signs when she was three.
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Now, daughter is normal or above in reading comprehension except for dyslexia…and her intelligence level is very high as evidenced by the complex papers she writes and has me proofread occasionally.
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So, who knows what magic and mysteries the human mind holds or its potential to see a little further than normal now and then.
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As far as injuries at work, I once was required to refract a boiler in a factory where I worked for a short time. It was a long weekend and the boss came to me and told me that he had a good paying overtime job for me. At that time, there were no asbestos warnings in the news and media, but I’m sure the maintenance people were well aware of the dangers. Anyway, I wasn’t in maintenance, but the boss offered me this good paying overtime job so I took it in my ignorance. I came to work on Saturday morning and was met by the maintenance supervisor who had a bucket of wet putty. I had to craw inside the boiler and use my hands to smear the putty into holes in the asbestos lining of the boiler. After giving me my instructions, the supervisor disappeared….I later discovered that the factory tricked new employees into doing this extremely dangerous job and only asked them to do it once, and the putty I was smearing was asbestos mixed with water….they knew perfectly well the dangers of asbestos, but didn’t care…and provided no safety equipment either.
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I have a collection of numbers for law firms who advertise their ability to sue for workplace injuries…and I’ve instructed my family to sue the hell out of this corporation,which is still around, if I ever come down with lung cancer…and that has been many many years ago, but I still think about my ignorance..and how these cynical industrialists were willing to take advantage of it.
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I had some thoughts about these suicides as I read the article.
Humans often operate in fear. Fear of doing this or that, fear of taking a chance, fear of learning new things. Fear of poverty, fear of losing love or wealth or security.
One of the first things I learned in Vietnam was that nothing is certain, and we have absolutely no guarantee that anything will work out the way we want even a few minutes from now, much less for the long run. A young sergeant came in and bunked right beside me….then decided to slip away in a Jeep and spend the night with a girl he had met….the next day they found the Jeep full of bullet holes and him lying dead in the seat…and I had only met the guy a week earlier.
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Alexandr Solzhenitsyn wrote (and I paraphrase because I can’t remember the exact quote)
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Believeing that we can control our fate is useless…and all of that we think we know, our security and the life that we cherish with all of our being can vanish in one fell moment and be gone forever… it is the moment that we know now that is important.
And I think we can believe that Solzhentisyn knew what he was talking about. Once a heroic Captian in the Red Army, he was sent to eight years in the gulags and then exile and then again became a hero of Russia..and never gave up the fight until nature ended it for him.
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I think the mistake these suicides make is continually narrowing their focus and options. I can ride down any road and see opportunity and work that needs doing…and someone who will pay me for doing this work….If I knock on ten doors and pass out business cards, one person will usually call me back eventually.
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The only advice I will give anyone is to learn, learn, learn,anything that interests you and look, look, look for opportunity…and put your fears aside and dive in…and never be too proud to get your hands dirty and swallow that foolish pride…and by all means expand your mind and spread your vision…there’s a big old world out there..lots of work to be done…and challenges to be met….and just talk to someone and ask them if they need some help.
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One time I was short of cash for something I wanted to buy. We had an ice storm that Friday night..breaking down trees and power lines. I threw a chainsaw in the back of my pickup and dressed warmly and hit the streets…I made a couple of hundred bucks before dark…just cutting up downed trees and limbs so homeowners could move them out of their yards….all you gotta do is just ask when there is a pressing need.
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When I retired from teaching, it was a bit scary…old guys don’t get hired..so I looked around and discovered logging..and it was one of the most wonderful jobs I’ve ever done, happiest time of my life…big chainsaw (Jonsored timber saw)diesel loader, log truck…macho real man work…ahhhhhh!!!! Grrrrrr! After putting up with all of the silly, ninny, priggish shit a teacher has to endure for so many years….Just great to be an axman…and as we suffer, we can also discover that life is so very wonderful too…just have to dive in and see what happens.
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Our darkest prisons are in our own minds when we lock out the light.
david the best music to me was the magnificent viet nam era music. or the olde tyme country music before FM radio….before country went “professional” a generation or more ago. or the soggy bottom boys. or the big bands in world war 2. or that great song from the movie shrek. “i want a hero” or whatever. god. books and music made my time go by really fast looking at it all….while the world turned and burned. people who do that to their families are not “crazy” necessairly so much as they are caught rigidly believing in something that never was, and they can no longer kid themselves anymore. and there is not anything left to them that they know. but hitting bottom, that is good for the soul….if you can cope….if you can let go of what wasn’t true in the first place.
by god i ran my jonsored for hours today david! cutting big posts out of my hedge tree line. some of those posts must have weighed 500 pounds! my 22 year old son stopped by after work and picked the heavy ones up for me and we dropped them off where i will set them this summer. there is something satisfying about physical work. i spend several hours educating myself every day, and then go do work i can’t hire anyone else to do anymore. and i feel good. salute!
Hi OH:
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So you know what I mean about the Jonsored and the physical stuff…cleanses the soul..and puts everything in perspective.
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What kind of posts? Cedar?
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Yes, for those who come to expect so much…perfection in themselves and in life, its gonna be a big comedown…and will test them to the limit…and when you see one of them flipping burgers or working construction (if there is any), you can chuckle under your breath, but also admire the ones who hit bottom,and have the guts to start the climb back up…takes guts and that is something a person can admire.
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OH, you are right. If they survive the fall, and climb back….they will know a thing or two..and that is what makes real people.
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Love the old stuff too…before they polished it too much.
Old country is great….and liked the big bands too.
“The very first step towards mental balance is to admit, one is insane”.
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I remember having this enlightening experience in my late 20`s.
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It took me 20 years to find my way out of it on my own (I didn`t trust anybody).
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Since then, I have been able to make myself useful to the people close to me.
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I`m still a bit slow though, (sometimes I don`t notice the difference between a Pegasus and a Unicorn!)
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Thanks Elaine and everyone else, for these wonderful discussions, which I think are unique.
“The very first step towards mental balance is to admit, one is insane. I think everyone is insane.”
This is why we have the Scientologists here to save us.
Human beings in this age live in a kind of dark ages. I am convinced that in 333 years, our decedents will look back at the human race as barbaric, spiritually empty, unenlightened, ignorant, misguided and delusional.
Bubba, I agree. These must be the dark ages, because Don Quixote is thriving. We meet him all the time, kleppering through the forums, outraged that the fairy tales about justice, truth and honour are being openly trampled into the dust. If you challenge the giant windmills of power you will be beaten, and if you attempt to prevent the militaristic herds of sheep from mingling you will be beaten AND sleep in a field AND have no dinner! etc.
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I would prefer to be a decent fool than a complete asshole. Remember that the alternative to resistance is to be a slave.
Great posts, all!
BTW, I do not think you are slow, but rather deliberate. You will find your path. You will walk it. You will change. Believe it.
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@Simon: everyone is stressed because they insist on following the party line until it hangs them. People with Phd.’s from Harvard, Cornell, Columbia etc. may be intelligent but not necessarily smart. Smartness is dictated by your actions. To quote my idol, Forrest, “Stupid is as stupid does.”
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BTW, Aso’s rating just went up 20+% (he was way below 10% in Feb)for throwing beaucoup bucks at money starved Japanese, and playing the Nokor missile card. Now the mutt is getting cocky and considering calling for elections before the tide subsides. We watch with contained cynicism.
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@MMC: I prefer the movie “300″, they all die in the end but fighting for what they believe in and causing Xerxes to question his belief in his “flawed godliness”. He felt pain. The assholes running the show today need to feel pain, to remind them that there is no free lunch if you want to be a ‘god” (with a very small “g”).
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@Ed-M: when people have nothing left to loose, they are truly free. Whether they realize that or not is dependent on their sense of values and E.Q. Ask Elaine, she knows what I talk about.
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People have generally one of two dispositions when it comes to life, there are the Control freaks and the Flow guys. Flow guys will always have a better disposition and capacity to handle crisis, and live happier lives than Control freaks. Trust me. Their attitude also allows them to have a good relationship with their Maker.
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@seraphim: there are gamblers and there are players. The gambler is driven by greed, even with a million in winnings on the table in front of him, he will continue to play until he eventually looses. A player on the other hand will stand up the minute he makes his mark. A player is ahead of the game. The key is contentment, something very difficult to master in a world of millions of distractions. This is why people eventually become incompetent, they don’t know when enough is enough.
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@OH: hey amigo, still asking the right questions. Unfortunately, history only proves mankind NEVER, EVER, LEARNS anything. Just the props change. Difference between Pax Romana and Pax Americana are just the props, catapult vs. ICBM. All the rest, society, religion, all the same.
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Why is this? Real change comes from within. Be the change you want to see, or if you cannot change the world, change yourself. Reinvent yourself. It’s all about perception, buddy. You said hitting bottom is liberating, well, it sets you free from your bondage to things you thought were important but were not. Things are not important, people are. Relationships with people. With God. The rest is fluff.
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Honest hard work is great for mind and body, but service to one’s fellowman without compensation makes you understand the brotherhood of man and brings one closer to God. These are important actions that guarantee one a better future.
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@David: just a suggestion re your daughter, have you ever considered Neurobion shots? It’s a high dose of Vitamin B1-6-12 given intramuscularly, nothing else. They also have tablets but not as effective. It helps fix chronic depression, also depression caused by alcoholism or drug abuse. I have seen this work wonders on people. One shot a day, by 2-5 days (depending on level and cause of depression) they are bright as sunshine and normal. Not popular in the West because it cuts into the big pharma Zoloft, anti-depressives pie, not to mention the psychiatric profession.
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Suicide is the worst thing a human being can inflict on himself. Straight to Hell, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Real ignorance in motion that. Our destiny is predetermined by our previous actions, consider this, while we were enjoying ourselves smoking and drinking, for example, oblivious to inhaling cancer activating smoke in our lungs, and chugging cancer activating alcohol into our liver, we had a blast and didn’t give a shit, so why question the outcome now? You paid for pain with pleasure, up front. Enjoy the ride, its most definitely intelligence enhancing, even if most won’t admit it. In the end, we all find out that DENIAL is a bitch with a very big bite.
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@Rowan: just being a regular on this blog is admission enough that I am insane! Or mentally unbalanced? LOL. We are in good company without a doubt, eh?! At least we are awake.
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My view is that focus and balance are paramount in life. Your life’s focus dictates your disposition to a great degree. While balance allows you to harmoniously integrate your direction or chosen path with your social responsibilities. At the end of the day its not what you did for your country, family, church, school, or company that you take with you, but what you did for yourself. A slave only knows his Master; all Masters began as slaves. So we work to become Masters. Of ourselves, and when we succeed, only then are we truly free.
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@bubba: what is sanity? The state of having a normal healthy mind. And how is that achieved? Through a lucid, focused and not confused mind. A focused mind, the antithesis of the multitasking mind, which BTW is extremely overrated. The control freaks keep the rats running after a myriad of “things” to keep them from focusing on reality, while they themselves are very focused, mind on the game. It’s been that way from the beginning and will never change. The degree of pain felt by one is dependent on what level of the food chain your on.
And here we have the flipside of the depressed Wall Streeters, you know, the arrogant not so smart ones who still don’t get it. This will get not only a few few of you pissed off: Read. The Wail of the 1% @ http://tinyurl.com/dnedo6
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In the same manner that intelligence does not always equate to smartness, it most certainly in many instances can equate to unconscionable and heartless. Think velociraptor in human form.
The moment of surprised disbelief has arrived: “Kellermann, 41, was found by Fairfax County Police after being called to his home in Hunter Mill estates in the Reston, VA area Wednesday morning… there were “no signs of foul play. It’s under investigation. Police were called at 4:49 a.m.,” Fairfax County Police Public Information Officer Lucy Caldwell told AHN Media in a telephone interview. Although Caldwell told AHN that police have not yet released the identity of the person who called them, she did confirm to AHN that there were other people present in the house at the time of the death and that there was a gun and a gunshot wound.” http://tinyurl.com/dl7gus
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Okay, so dying of a gunshot wound in the presence of other people is not considered foul play. Then neither should is saying the man was found hanging with his hands tied behind his back with a shot to the head. But then we are just playing with words ans are not very articulate in the English language, right?
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My comment: its clear whomever did this wanted to send a very clear and strong message, otherwise the man would have simply vansihed. The game now is to figure out WHO the message was for.
David, listen to me VERY CAREFULLY: your daughter is probably a wonderful member of this peculiar tribe my whole family belongs to: the Asberger’s Syndrome group.
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My son, for example, could barely talk when he was 3 years old. He got an Apple computer and instantly began writing long messages to everyone! He wrote it all phonetically, of course. His IQ is at near-genius level but his social make-up is always 5 years behind ‘normal’ children.
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I was less than three when I began to read. I comprehended things ‘in whole form’ before I broke it down into parts and learned each, more painfully. Your daughter’s flood of comprehension was ‘mindless’ in that she probably didn’t attach any meaning to what she was reading but rather, did comprehend these things as entities, not thought processes.
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I should write about how an Asberger child sees the world. Except it is rather painful to do. Heh. Also, long ago, people worried about genius children and there was this rule to NOT TEACH THEM UNTIL THEY WERE OLDER to preserve their physical and mental health. I wonder. Perhaps, this was a correct way to deal with it.
thank you all. why didn’t i have this to read and understand a lifetime ago i demand to know! david, “hedge” is a tree where i live. a horrible messy tree. it is a wood that usually is all twisty and has thorns but simply will not rot for a century when cut and put in the ground for fence posts. maybe not 500 pound posts, but lots of 300 and 400 pound posts betcha!
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imho, super achievers started out really, really working hard to please the authority and the system (i.e. school when young) they completely desperately identify with to get ahead….and (just going by a member of my own family) become absolutely heartless with no compassion towards “others” who are not identified with their own superior race and “education” and occupation and interests and superior genetic breeding community. but as their “reality” becomes deformed and twisted, so do their minds. as CK said, “irony” is especially appreciated with age….and now it seems, NOT being especially popular with your teachers and not being a good soldier and not being a good team-member and not being completely sold on “boosterism” turns out to be a good thing now. heh. rowan, you are …. there is nothing wrong with none of you. you too bubba. heh. despite wanting to kill them all. cc you might be a good minister to the little owned common folk. seriously.
in other words, after all these years, it turns out it wasn’t all “me” that was wrong….it may very well turn out it was what our owners were and are doing that was wrong….and only an amoral animal would be part of their world. BUT, if things go bad, it is going to be very dangerous to be identified in our owners minds as being part of what is ruining THEIR WORLD. and as i have tried to point out many times, our owners also own our police and military officers and our minders too.
Still haven’t heard from Josh. This dawn, I lost contact while he was talking to the cops in DC.
Thanks Elaine: I’ve been working at the studio today and just came in, but I’ll research Asberger’s Syndrome right now….She’s a unique person and things click in a different way for her most of the time, but she is very bright, loving and wonderful.
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OH:
What you are telling me about hedge reminds me of a gnarled type of wood we call locust…has a yellowish greenish pulp wood under the bark and an almost black or very dark brown heart wood that is as hard as stone…and the posts made from this wood will outlast whoever puts them in the ground…Oh, and it has large pods with seeds reminds you somewhat of a very large bean pod…and I think it does have something similar to thorns on it too.
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One other terrible wood we have here in NC is hackberry…ugliest tree you can imagine…gnarled.and rough in every way and difficult to cut and clean up and get out of your pastures…and birds spread the seeds everywhere…and the wood has no use whatsoever except for paper pulp, but it is so difficult to cut and limb that most loggers just let it go.
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Right now, sweet gum is selling pretty well…it is easy to cut and mill and is used for railroad crossties…and railroads are expanding and upgrading in anticipation of a leaner future for autos…so they are buying crossties now.
I have one pretty crooked wild cherry log right now, and some tulip popular logs.
We are doing all finish trim of son’s recording studio in tulip popular I cut and processed myself…and with a dark stain, popular is very pretty…I sawed some large cedar into 3/4 inch boards and then planed them down to 1/2 inch thick and then used a round edge bit to round both edges on a router table..and then finish nailed them to the solid wood studio doors..and the combination is beautiful…gives a rich, rustic look, very macho like a lodge..ideal for a recording studio live room.
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Well, better go and get to researching.
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Thanks again Elaine…hope your husband is doing ok.
I cut crooked cherry in slices and it makes wonderful medieval-style trim. If you use a saw mill pair of grips that are 2 feet tall with teeth to hold down the limb, you can cut it even if it goes up and down a great deal.
Oh, I talked to the staff this evening. He is going through tests for the next three days but we are all very optimistic.