Linda Z

Hahahah Geo., sounds like I was working in the wrong department!! I always noticed that the Way Builders seemed to get a lot of slack on the mandatory meeting law. I was jealous. I think I'm retrospectively jealous even today. Hey, as a native Oregonian, I must say I've grown to love Ohio. :P--> I didn't like New Knoxville at first, but I made some good friends there among the locals, and it grew on me. I regretted moving from New Knoxville more than I regretting leaving staff.

Just Thinking asked, in the "When's the last time wayfers were genreally happy" thread, about what conditions were like being on staff. In a nutshell: It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. I think in many ways the answer is as varied as it would be to the question "How were conditions 'on the field'?" It depended on who your bosses were, when you were there, and how much crap you were willing to take (or not) :)-->. The best of times: --Feeling I was doing something that truly helped "move the Word." --New Knoxville--I grew to love the place. --Friends and co-workers. There were some putzes, but the place was a magnet for so many fantastic, smart, fun, loving people. --VPW would do things like shut down the place and tell us all to take the rest of the day off and go play in the snow. --We had dances and plays and concerts in our own "back yard." Granted, after a while the concerts were mostly Branded (God love 'em. They were great, but I could only take so much country music) and the "Way Chorus Choir" (eeek, flashbacks of forced church attendance in my childhood). When my son graduated from HS, HQ put on a big graduation party for all the staff members' graduating kids. Acts 29 played and everyone made a big fuss over the kids...it was wonderful. There were other good times, but those are some highlights. The worst: --We worked a lot of hours at times--not always, I'll admit. I didn't mind when I had a good boss and felt I was doing it for the "good of the ministry." I'd done the same when I'd worked for the LA Free Press in the late 60s, only for LOTS less money. --> Later, under RFR's domain, the long hours were drudgery--actually, every work day had become drudgery under her thumb. Her legalism was beyond belief, and it was smothering me (and many others). Here are a few examples: --We had to sign out to go the to bathroom. (Don W, thank God, put an end to that after there was damn near a mutiny in the dept.) --We were chastised if, God forbid, we ever had to take a sick day (where was our believing?!?). But I didn't experience this my first two years there at all--it was just under RFR. --RFR forbade me in no uncertain terms to leave work a half-day early at the start of my vacation once to pick up my sick son from college. I shoulda decked her. :D--> --One night during a mandatory PFAL class for our dept., I had a bad reaction to an antibiotic I was taking. I had to drive myself to the hospital while in anaphylactic shock because it was far more important for our dept. to sit through a session of PFAL for the 100th time than to help a sister in need who obviously hadn't been "believing God." I think, next to Rosalie's legalism, what I hated most throughout the almost 4 years I was there were the meetings. We had staff meetings. Corps meetings. Department meetings. "Work Twig" meetings. We hosted meetings for people from the field. We had Sun a.m. fellowship and Sunday night service. All were mandatory. Even lunch was a damn mandatory meeting. (But it depended on your dept. coordinator whether it was enforced. Trust me, RFR was an enforcer.) People reacted differently to conditions at HQ, just like they did to conditions on the field. Me? I left. Both.

I don't know about all wayfers, but I had a great time in twi from 72 to 76. There was a minor bump in the road in 77 when HQ sent a wet-behind-the-ears, Craig-wannabe, control-freak interim 6th Corps guy to "coordinate" the fellowships on our side of town. No biggie for me--I just quit going to fellowships until right before he left. :D--> From 78 to 82 there were ups and downs for me, twi-wise. I had a blast in the Family Corps for the most part (78-79 to 80-81). Bob M was, to me, fair and loving back then, and I really loved/enjoyed almost all the people I was with in the Family Corps and the 7th and 9th who spent time there in Indiana. The year after I graduated was horrid. I was asked to go to a town and do a Twig Area near where I'd been out WOW on my interim year. I'm surprised they even asked me, rather than just telling me I was going. But they did and, like an idiot (anything to "move the Word," y'know), I reluctantly agreed. In a nutshell, it was a Spandex-wearin', fancy-car-drivin', makeup-wearin', money-obsessed steel town, and I was standing there in my Corps sweats with no makeup and no money, thinking wtf have I gotten myself into? The short version is that I never should have been given that assignment. It was not made by revelation. It was one of the worst places to send a single mom who had to support herself and child, and I couldn't have been more different from the twi people in the area. The harder I tried, the more frustrated and hurt I became (and I'm sure, obnoxious). Next stop, HQ. That's what I'd wanted all along, to be on staff and do my part and work hard for God and live happily ever after. Ha. First shock: Imogene A. yelling at us in our first orientation meeting during Corps week, telling us twi wasn't our mother and we had a week to find housing--of course while at the same time working our a$$es off to get ready for ROA. I thought, "Whoa! This is IT? This is the place I've longed to be???" Despite that harsh eye opener (and others) regarding the "pillars of the church" of twi, my first couple years there (82-83 to 83-84) were, for the most part, wonderful. I was oblivious to any sexual shenanigans and had a fun, competent boss and great co-workers and friends. I avoided the Imogenes of the place as much as possible and stuck with my friends who weren't afraid to call $hit $hit instead of Shinola. Life was good. I'd long since realized that I wasn't living in Utopia and that everyone there wasn't loving and kind, but overall, I liked it except for all the freekin' meetings! All that changed in 85. RFR took over our dept. and it was fun no more for this kid. I don't do well with legalism, and she doled it out in huge quantities. Getting a close-up look at her in action made me realize that there were LOTS of decisions VP and the top dogs of twi made that weren't by revelation. One of his greatest failings, IMO, was poor judgment in giving people positions they had no business being in. For me it was downhill from there. I quit my job in the spring of '86. A week after I left, Chris Gearshift delivered POP. There was nothing but turmoil from then on. Accusations and counter-accusations and power struggles. Are you loyal to twi? Are you following G##r? Do you want to follow JAL (or any one of an endless parade of other ex-twi big names)? So the short answer is: I was happy 72-76, absent (I was with Jesus :)-->) half of 76 and almost half of 77, generally happy 78-81, miserable 81-82, generally happy 82-84, and 84-89--forget about it. :)-->

Geo. said, "The real world is a lot harsher a taskmaster than WayWorld...." You obviously never worked for Rosalie. :D--> My exact words when I first announced that I was quitting staff in '86 were: "I wouldn't take this $hit out in the 'world' and I'm sure as hell not taking it here."

OK, before this one gets too out of hand, with people imagining some sort of dark and evil Satanic rite, I'll describe everything I can remember about my experience with the summer school/Way Corps "initiation." Besides experiencing the "initiation" myself, I knew lots of people who had this prank pulled on them at various times, and none of them ever took it as a serious "ritual" or claimed to have been genuinely frightened by it until now, in this thread. I'm not saying this to defend twi or any of its leaders. I'm saying it because I think it's important to stick to the facts if our words about the real abuses, of which there were plenty, are going to have any credibility. This initiation "ritual" was a joke. At least as it was presented to us at Rome City, there was no way to interpret it as anything BUT a joke, from start to finish. It reminded me of a summer camp prank, only those on the receiving end were all adults. This was not something children participated in. It started out with an announcement during the day, that there was going to be a campfire out on "Uncle Harry Hill" (a small hill on the Rome City campus). The announcement was delivered in such a tongue-in-cheek way that you couldn't help but know some hilarity was going to ensue later that night. Whoever announced it (I think it was VPW, but it might have been Del Duncan--can't remember for sure. Both were there and both participated.) The announcement was delivered in a silly, melodramatic way, accompanied by snickers from the "elder Corps" and summer school "vets." We gathered out on the hill around the campfire, and out of the shadows came Gary C. of the Research Dept., who happened to be there teaching a class, Del Duncan, and VPW, in robes. They weren't all wearing black robes. I think two of them had on their clergy robes and one, if I recall correctly, was wearing a makeshift robe made of burlap. They were all three trying to act and sound serious, but they were suppressing laughter. I vaguely recall that they were going around the campfire chanting, and I do remember that they were still trying to keep from laughing. Those of us sitting around the campfire were cackling, because they all looked so silly. (Knowing VP's authoritarian bent, I'm quite sure if this had been some sort of dark, secret ritual for real, our a$$es would have been grass for laughing. Instead, he was laughing along with us. They handed each of us a tiny piece of Johnny Jump-Up root...it's a plant that grows wild in the Midwest (and maybe all over the U.S., for all I know, but I remember it being in the woods in Ohio as I was growing up). At an appointed time, they said we were to chew up the little morsel and swallow it. And yes, it was hot--on par with a jalapeno peppter, I'd say, but it was a very small piece. We were told that we would now be "officially" members of the Way Corps and that we were sworn to secrecy (more snickers barely hidden) about the initiation. The perpetrators of the hoax just waited to see the look of surprise on people's faces when they bit into the piece of root and then broke into peals of laughter when they saw the faces we were making. No one said "gotcha," per se, but that was the drift of the close of the "ceremony." We could argue, I suppose, about how "mean" it was for those three men to trick us like that, but most of the people I talked to walking back to the building thought it was very funny. Gary C, being the ostensibly serious guy that he was, at least to us students who didn't know him well and only saw him in that light, was particularly hilarious trying to look so ominous. The hoaxers told us not to drink water afterward, because it would just spread the oil from the root and make the hot taste linger. Someone (probably someone used to eating hot peppers) told me and my friends to eat some bread. We did, and the hot sensation went away pretty quickly. I'm surprised that anyone could have taken this seriously. (But honestly, I can't tell if Evan is serious about how scary it was or if he's just being humorous.) Some people got ticked off about getting tricked into eating something hot without expecting it, but most of the people I knew thought it was a hoot.

This must be after my time (graduated in '81). When I was in rez we used the same ministry-produced books everyone else had.

Let's be honest, simon. Thome would look best in a pair of overalls. But I loved him. I never believed he'd leave us. *sniff*

"...ever since I made note of those Cleveland Indians, they have gone into a nosedive." Ok, Lifty, no more making note of them, 'k? I was wondering what sent 'em to hell in a handbasket. I miss our young, excited players of the mid-90s, anyway, so I don't go to games or watch them on TV as much as I did back then. Even though they always broke my heart in the end, they seemed so enthusiastic that it was fun anyway. Then all of them left. Even Jim Thome, the loveable goober from Chicago with the pulled-up socks. His exit really surprised me. It's business, I guess, but I don't like them moving all around just when you think you've gotten to know 'em. God bless Omar. At least he stuck with us. By the way, did we win last night? When I flipped past the game, they had a pretty good lead--too often a sure sign of impending defeat for the Tribe. I was afraid to watch. Do I sound cynical? Well, I've been a fan off and on since I watched them on a black & white TV in the 50s with my grandpa. "Next year" is our motto around here. (And let's don't even talk about football.) Being an Indians fan is sorta like being in an abusive marriage. You make excuses, you forgive, you love anyway. How loooooooooooooong will this go on? :D-->

Cynic said, "I was pretty much loaded to pursue, flush out, lay out and spend time humiliating some unrestrained and conscienceless Socinian bear who had entered a Trinitarian camp and began carrying off from the identity of an apologetic ministry." I guess you showed them. Surely you were born in the wrong era, Cynic. You would have been handy to have around during The Inquisition...or perhaps smoking out witches would have been more to your taste. Oh, and I've been meaning to ask you: Is that a hickey on your neck?

Welcome to a wonderful family, sweet little Layne. You don't know them very well yet, but you'll soon find out they're loving and fun and giving and smart and all the good things a little girl could want in a family. I knew your mommy when she was only a few years older than you are now. She'll be a terrific mommy, and if she picked out your daddy, I know he'll be terrific, too! Oooooh, and that Grandma and Grandpa...hold onto your teeny, tiny hat, little darlin', and get ready to be spoiled!! Congrats Danny, and love to you and the new Grandma and Mommy and Daddy! Lots of Love, Linda

Those are some excellent points, CC. I never really thought about how few people have even seen the Corps Chalet to know how large and luxurious it is. And I'm sure they think all the "nasty rumors" about Rosie and Donna are hearsay from "bitter cop-outs" and that Donna is a victim in all this. What I don't get is why there are still any longtime staffers still at HQ, because they know what the Chalet is like and they've heard DM's accusative rants--if she still comes out of hiding to rant in the dining room like she used to.

When I first read this thread I thought, "Why wish on DM the same grief that twi caused others to suffer? After all, perpetuating a stupid twi 'law' that devastated so many couples won't undo the harm it did to others." But the more I thought about this, the more I realized that unless she has a major change of heart and behavior, Donna does deserve to feel the sting of the consequences of her part in the twi fiasco. Not only did she know what was going on with her husband's adultery, I'd be willing to bet she and RFR helped to make it happen. By the time LCM was made prez, Donna was already plenty cozy with RFR and they were pulling lots of strings behind the scenes. And her buddy RFR was badmouthing LCM behind his back. I heard it with my own ears. Donna's suffered? Her kids probably have, and that's a shame, because their parents' BS was certainly none of their doing. But Donna? I don't think so. First, I don't think she gave a rat's backside what LCM did with other women--it kept him out of her hair. And second, I'll betcha DM hasn't suffered nearly as much as the parents of a certain lovely, sweet, accomplished young woman did when DM announced to the entire twi world that their beautiful daughter's death in a horrible plane crash was their fault. Suffered? Nah, she hasn't suffered when you compare the comfort she's living in with the horrible circumstances she helped put a lot of good people into. Anyone worried about Donna's suffering ought to listen to that tape where she trashed A & N P about their daughter's death once or twice and remember what she became, not what she might have seemed to be 25 or 30 years ago.

Exsie: Hahahahahahahahahahaahahahaha! Peeing rock. Gives "See you at the rock" a whole new meaning. Take heart, Chas, they all catch on eventually. For my son, I'm convinced it was just stubbornness, because the day he made up his mind, that was it. Not one accident of either kind from that day forward, day or night. He was 3. I'd been trying and trying to potty train him, and then one day my babysitter--a very wise and wonderful woman--told him as she changed his diaper, "You know, you're getting to be a big boy. I shouldn't have to be doing this." That same night, a friend of mine was visiting and she changed his diaper and told him the same thing. He said, "Okay." And the diapers went bye bye. On a similar note, my youngest nephew (who would kill me if he knew I was posting this) took so long to get weaned from the boob that we joked that he'd have to take my sister to school with him.

Danny, I thought of a bag of lemons that turned into a pitcher of lemonade for me, but I didn't have time to post about it when you first asked. When I heard Rosalie Rivenbark was taking over the department I was working in at HQ, I cringed. This could NOT be a good thing. However, seeing her in action up close WAS a good thing, because it planted the seeds for my departure from HQ and ultimately from twi. Seeing how RFR lied, manipulated people, and tried to control every aspect of their lives got me questioning why in the world VPW would put such a woman in charge of even one other person, much less Way Publications, University of Life, and Way Productions. A big hmmmmmm. One year under her reign of humiliation and legalism was enough for me, and I began to make my way out the door. But I needed some of those hearing lessons, too! Although I tried to quit after one year under the queen of mean, I got guilted into staying another year. Thank God, that next "year" only lasted 7 months, because when I caught her lying to and about me in a big way, I gave my notice for real and quit. When I left there I was pretty weary in heart and mind from all the crap I'd put up with and had seen others endure, and I didn't even try to get a job in publishing. I didn't think I could. My previous experience with writing and editing had been years earlier, pre-twi, and I didn't figure my 3 years and 7 months in Way Pub would throw open any doors for me. I went to work as a waitress in a hotel dining room. Nothing wrong with waitressing. I'd done it before and I enjoyed it, but I knew I didn't want to do it forever. Then one day an opportunity to freelance full-time for a huge, nationally known publisher fell into my lap. I didn't even know they had a division in Cleveland! It was a temporary assignment, but it was something to add to my resume, I figured. It turned out that I enjoyed the heck out of that job, and it ended up being a huge stepping stone to even better things. Long story short, during the 18 years since I put the OSC building and RFR's fake grin in my rear-view mirror, God has kept opening bigger and better doors for me. Not only do I have a good-paying job in publishing, but one that I enjoy and where I'm respected. And it looks like they're going to let me cut down to 20 hours a week and keep my health insurance when I semiretire in a little over 3 years--a goal I've had for a while. The lemons served by RFR were hard to swallow at the time, but God threw in the sugar and the pure, cool water. The lemonade tastes great, and I'm so thankful! Love you Danny, and I'm praying that you'll have to buy a new refrigerator to hold all the lemonade coming your way!

Danny! I'm so sorry your leg got broken, but I love your attitude! Great post. Love you, Linda

Thanks for your honesty, Shelly, and welcome back to GS, how ever long you might stay. :)-->I've missed your insights around here! As for AA, NA, etc., hey, whatever works is a good thing! They might not be everyone's cup of tea, but 12-step programs have helped an awful lot of people beat their addictions.

herbie: As in more bang for the buck?? Or if successful in said practice, I guess it'd be more Bangs for the Bang family.

Welcome soon-to-come poster! Not to pick nits, but an exclamation point was called a bang long before Unix days. It's also an old printer's/typesetter's slang for that punctuation. GS trivia!

Geo!! I've beeen to Howl at the Moon. I went there on my first trip to New Orleans, and it was one of the most enjoyable nights I had there. I'm sure that was way before Suz's son worked there, but I would have loved to see him...drats! Small world. There was a blues singer named Rooster performing there...I have his cassette still. A maker of Mardi Gras masks from deep in the bayou did his best to teach me the Cajun aaaaayeeeeeee yell. Fun memories. PMosh, I'll answer your question with a question: "Where in Atlanta can you find a street with the word "peach" in its name? New Orleans is so much fun that I concluded pretty quickly I could never live there. I'd be way too distracted to work! I used to know a guy from New Orleans who, when I asked him where to go for good food said, "It's everywhere. You won't find bad food in New Orleans." I put his endorsement to the test when I ate in a cafeteria at the airport because I didn't have time before I left for there. Best red beans & rice I've ever had. If the airport food is good, just imagine how it is in restaurants! And the music. Wow. I listened to street musicans there who were 100 times better than some pros I've spent big concert bucks to see. Just one word of caution (advice I got from locals when I asked directions while walking down the street in the French Quarter): Don't wander off the beaten path at night, and if someone offers to show you the way instead of just explaining directions, don't go...it's a common ruse to set you up for a mugging. There are dusty little used book stores, unique shops all over...much to do.

Present company excluded, a few people I knew who took Momentus had an "I'm soooooo spiritual" attitude as they proclaimed, "I got so much out of it. But it's not for everyone, you know...a lot of people just couldn't handle it." Like I said at the beginning, I'm not saying or implying that about anyone in this thread. It's based on my face-to-face discussions with Momentus "grads" or whatever you call 'em. I never had any desire to take it when it was all the buzz among ex-Wayfers...just wasn't remotely interested.

Garth, as you probably saw, I started by quoting back your two posts. Then I decided, who cares? It always annoys me when people quote others and don't say who they're quoting. Then, when it looks like they're quoting me when they're not, it's even more annoying.

You're missing my point, Garth. Whatever.

Hahahahaha, Evan. My son thinks it's cool that I took him to a Jimi Hendrix concert when he was 2, so I guess that makes my son cooler than yours. heh HEH! (And a heck of a lot older!)

Garth: It would be really nice if, when quoting, you'd state whom you're quoting instead of addressing me and then quoting someone else's words through your entire post. I appreciate the tone of Sir's posts, but I didn't write them and I don't agree with every word, so please don't make it look as if they're mine, okay? Believe it or not, I'm not that concerned about LLPOF. I don't know him from a dust bunny under my bed. I neither love that dust bunny nor hate it. It's just there. :)--> I'm much more concerned about those of you who've been around here for a long time...i.e., how a stranger, very possibly just trolling for a reaction, can get you so upset. Long Gone, I'm not chiding anyone. I'm saying, "There but for the grace of God go a whole bunch of us, so why get so worked up over LLPOF's posts and call him names?" I didn't bring up the Samaritan. I'm not out to "save" LLPOF, because I firmly believe that people get out of mindsets like his when they're good and ready. I simply don't see the need to crucify him just because he came here boldly declaring what many people here once thought. Some people sound as if he's at their back door with a bloody axe in his hand. I'll ask my original question another way: What's LLPOF going to do, trick you into believing again that VPW's an upstanding guy? Convince you that every word he spoke was straight from the lips of God? No, I didn't think so. So what's the big threat?

Rascal, I don't see anyone here "making excuses for" LLPOF. I can gather enough from his posts to know I disagree with him, but certainly not enough to surmise that he's a "religious puke" as you so delicately put it. When you were still in or newly out, you never spouted the company line? Your past posts would indicate otherwise. And would being pounced upon ala LCM have changed your mind?