Galen

Shellon Fockler-North- "July 21, 1923" My grandmother [Orah] taught during 1910 - 1925'ish. Then one year the school's boys got out of control so my grand-father [Homer] took over the school house. The process of 'taking over the school' he marched in there with a switch and began whipping every child who was not quietly doing their school work. He scuffled with one boy and broke his arm. But once he established himself running the school, he was successful. [it upset my father to this day that Homer was never reprimanded by their community for breaking that boy’s arm]. I got the impression from Orah that getting a good whipping at school was the only thing that saved most children from getting a far more severe whipping at home [after running out their schoolmarm]. "... seventy-five ($75) dollars per month" They told us, that some families did contribute money but that it was used to purchase supplies. Their primary 'revenue' from teaching was meat, beans, coffee, eggs, etc. "1. Not to get married..." Orah was teaching as a single spinster, though she got permission to court and marry so long as it all happened, while school was out over the summer [between planting and harvest]. "3. To be home between the hours of 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. unless she is in attendance at a school function." Orah was required to attend church, and to be a member of a church. She could go out at night to church services and socials. "4. Not to loiter downtown in ice cream parlors." Of course, you don’t want no loose women. "7. Not to drink beer, wine, or whiskey. The contract becomes null and void immediately if the teacher is found drinking beer, wine, or whiskey." LOL Homer and his buddies made a little shine on the side sometimes. Orah had a recipe for making Kailua from the shine. Orah’s church ladies used the Kailua in their coffee. So they were not 'seen' drinking anything but coffee. She continued this into her 90s, and taught Bonnie to make Kailua. "9. Not to dress in bright colors." Vanity is an evil and not allowed in any church in those days. "10. Not to dye her hair." Same, got to watch out for vanity you know. "12. Not to wear dresses more than two inches above the ankle." Lewd poets wrote about the exposed ankle of women and the vices luring therein. "14. Not to use face powder, mascara, or paint the lips." Same. You might get a kick out of the Homeschool curriculum that we have used with our children. Being a Mennonite curriculum, it pretty much expects the same level of sobriety and decency. :-)

We never had those kinds of problems with the MFRs in California, nor in Scotland, nor in Washington. Just that once in Ct. :-)

That time it was a 'couple', soon after they had moved in he quit working to go onto un-employment then she got pregnant. As soon as she was pregnant was when they stopped paying. They were getting couched from their parents. and they knew that here in Ct a woman with child or pregnant is treated differently by the courts. So each for court appearance the boy friend would go stay with friends, and she would be in tears that her boyfriend had left her. A single 'mom' is a landlord's nightmare. Returning home from the courthouse, he would be there in their apartment. It was all a setup. We strongly felt that they were 'plotting' with the help of their parents, so I tapped the phone lines and was able to at least anticipate some of their plots. One night the boyfriend went outside with a hammer and a tin pie pan. He sat down of the ground between his car and mine, and began pounding on the tin pie pan. His parents were in a parked car across the street with a camera and a cell phone ready to call the cops. they wanted me to comeout yelling at him, about beating on my car, so they could take pictures and call the police on me. However having heard all about their plan via our phone-tap, I never stepped outside. I did call the police though. They questioned him and sent him into his apartment. Fortunately at the time I was working as an MP, and had just recently done some phone-tapping for my job. It is also fortunate that 'something' some eiry feeling caused me to strongly suspect that they were about to do some harm against me, which caused me to setup the phone tap in our building. Obviously it might not have been legal enough to bve presented as evidence in a court, but it helped keep me out of trouble.

Laleo- "Galen, speaking of renters (forgive me, Long Gone), I'm sort of tossing around the idea of buying another house, and using this one as a rental. Or maybe the other one. I mean, as an investment, our house, modest though it is, has appreciated in value much faster than any of our other small investments, so I'm thinking that we might do well to buy another one. Maybe. My husband is no Mr. Fixit, and I'm even less so. Has it been worth it to you? How much of a headache is it to be a landlord?" I will upset people with this. But you asked: 1. a single family home will cost X [mortgage, insurance, sewage, repairs, maintenance], you will never be able to charge X for rent. It will not happen 95% of the time. It is a rarity that the going rate of rents in an area will match X. What does this mean? To rent out a single Family Residence [sFR] will lose money. 2. To be a landlord, you must be a handy-man, or be willing to learn to be handy. If everytime a toilet stops, or a roof leaks, or a furnace mis-fires, or a water heater needs a new thermo-couple; if your calling a repairman then your in the red. That repairman's $85/hour is going to eat up your $50/month 'profit' very quickly. 3. We do MFRs [Multi-Family Residences]. 2 units worth of income to cover the mortgage, and at least a third unit so you have money left over each month for sewage, and insurance bills. MFRs cost less than the same exact square-footage in a SFR would cost. Once a building has been used for 'rental' it's market value drops a lot. Also rents depreciate, so on the books their value is less, if you sale it later for a marked up value, then your taxable profit is more, thus you pay more in taxes but dont clear any more. 4. We set our rent at 80% of the average going rents in the area. Normally when talking to banks, or realtors, or rental management offices; the industry expects each unit to be empty 20% - 30% of the year. Whatever you imagine your Gross to be immediately subtract 20% - 30%, just to match how everyone else does business. We dont do that. We set our rents lower, and then we rarely have an empty unit. If someone does need to leave, they often bring their freinds by asking if their freinds can move in the same day they move out. Our problem has been usually in getting each unit to be empty for a week, so we can clean and re-paint them. If someone's rent is low, they know it. Everytime they talk to their friends and neighbors, they are reminded of how low their rent is, what a good deal they got. It goes a long way in tenant relations. 5. We have always bought run-down slums. I keep a clipboard with a list of what repairs I am making. If I go around each month, I show each tenant my lsit of planned repairs. I ask them if there is anything else they would like added onto my list. I ask them which of those items they wnat to see done first. I beleive that this 'empower's the tenants and makes them feel like they have control over their building. I tell them that I can only make one repair this month, you chose which one. They love it. 6. My parents taught me, long ago, when a renter does go bad. Once you finally decide that he has to go. Cut your loses quick. Go get a month's rent in cash, and offer them: "Look your leaving. You know it, I know it. You can milk this out for months while I do the legal stuff, and you will never get a decent refferal from me. Or right here I have one month's rent in cash. I will give you this money cash, on Friday, if this apartment is empty. I dont care where you go, you find a place, but this money will be yours." This tactic works everytime. Once we had to go the full 8 months trying to evict a couple, wow what a mess. They had stopped paying rent. They admitted that they were never going to pay anymore rent. They told the court. But it still took 8 months. And the court kept setting up mediators to meet with us, to set-up negotiations, to work-out how they were going to stay the apartment. What finally did get them out was, I paid them to leave. We never did get the courts to assist in evicting that one couple. Hundreds of dollars in court fees, and court appearances, and this and that... 7. On the other hand, there is no better investment. We buy them with no-money-down, we move in and collect the first month's rent before the first mortgage payment falls due. We live in the buildings ourselves for 'free'. Their tax write-off fully shelters all income that I ever make. [well, I need to clarify that one. Since 1985, Bonnie and my incomes together have never been enough to overcome the tax-sheltering of our MFRs. We have had years where our gross was pretty good, but the tax shelter of the MFRs had always covered us from taxation]. We get 30-year mortgages, to arrange the lowest possible monthly payments. You never know when a transmission will blow-out or some other stupid emergency is going to happen, so keeping our budget as free as possible helps. Then most months when no emergency does happen, we make an extra principle payment of around $200. Play with a mortgage calculator and that seperate principle payment is getting real good interest. The last time, we worked it out we were getting 16% on that money. Granted it is the only time that any of our money goes to the mortgage. After all mortgage paymetns are what rental money is made for. Does that help? Of all the things that various leaders of TWI gave us grief over, they never did say anything negative about us collecting MFRs, and owning our own homes. :-)

I would not mind flying naked. But I do know that some folks are upset by it. I dont normally hang-out in my birthday suit, but on subs I did commonly walk between my bunkroom and the showers wearing sandals and a towel [the towel hanging around my neck that is] and it did commonly upset people. I mean really now, it was not like I was totaly without, I did wear sandals and afterall I had my towel draped around my neck, but some guys just get bothered by such a sight. :-)

Trefor Heywood: "... the American Civil Liberties Union ... hardly qualifies for the definition of terrorists." It all depends on your definition of 'terrorism', which by the way is a fairly new word and a fairly new concept for our culture. "I have to agree that terrorism can indeed be state sponsored." Often it is. "... Total War can be like that but hopefully it has always been started by the other side and the "good guys" drop it as soon as they can." True. but historically many of the 'good guys' [usually read as the winners], during those wars also used behind the lines infiltrators to poison water-supplies, destroy bridges, disrupt civil infrastructures, etc. All of which we have done, all of which your culture has done; but by today's definition could well be considered 'terrorism'. "... For decades we experienced terrorism in Northern Ireland and also on the UK mainland and yet the US allowed terrorists to go to the US on fund raising campaigns." Again the definition of 'terrorism' comes into play. Many have felt that civil fighting, political instability, and religous disputes do not make for terrorism. We as a culture have many who would tend to side with the Irish. [Again why did you levy a poll tax against them if not to .... them off? but that is just one small example from among the hundreds of things that the Brits have done to humiliate and destroy the Irish culture. Or at least so they say] :-) And as in many other arenas, we allow non-profit groups to exist and raise money, so they can back-door that money to other groups that are far more extreme. By allowing freedom of speach and freedom to congregate, this happens. We have known and recognized for many years that Greenpeace has funded Earth-First, and while we hunt down earth-first members to stop their fire-bombings, tree-spiking, and money-wrenching; we freely allow Greenpeace to raise money for them. Some would insist that Greenpeace is a terrorist group. I even attended a school where such opinions were taught. But until prosecutors can gather concrete evidence, we give them the benefit of doubt and assume them to be innocent.

alfakat: "invite still open, Galen...come anytime we are having one, schedule very open to cancellation due to the folks around here and what is happening in their lives at the moment." Thanks, next time I travel your way, I may give you a call. "I am truly sorry you never met one person who partook in the corps program you could see anything good in... makes me wonder why you still have so much respect fer vic and piffle cuz the kork was vic's baby, ALL THE WAY..." In perspective. So were the over-whelming majority of fellowships. With the possible exceptin of sometime later when things had changed to the point where most fellowships did envolve WC. In my travels, I never saw that. It certainly remains a possibility that at some point the WC had managed to take over an actual majority of fellowships. I would only be glad that I did not witness such. In my ever so limited time 'in' The Way Ministry, in those oh so few fellowships, I would have to say that most were very loving and kind and minstered to everyone's needs. Anything could be prayed for, Any PFAL grad who had been doing some study on his own, was welcome to share his study. And things were generally great. I dont see why you need to be reminded of this, others have stated this as well. No doubt to someone 'on assignment', going into an area, they likely drove right on past many sucessful fellowships, on their way to the limb office. Drove right by them, not knowing about them, not caring, and not disturbing them. Which was fine with us. So there is room for differing opinions and differing observations. I would go into an area, call HQ for the limb's number, call that Limb and ask for the closest fellowship, call the Twig, and go to that local Twig. So my exposure to WC, often times would only be limited to those short phone calls. The rest of the time in an area, would be with beleivers. And often such times were great. Every Joe Blow Beleiver Twig Coordinator was just also a product of VPW, PFAL and TWI's teachings. Did they all become nazi's? Certainly not. Well, or not immediately, not on their own. If they did become micro-managing sex-fiends [and I am sure that many did, as the years went by], it seems that such happened from their exposure to WC. Do I say this from personal experience? NO. Rather from reading GS Cafe. It would certainly appear that from the experiences of everyone here on GS, a person's first exposure to TWI was the best, and as the years went by it got dragged down. Whether you joined in 1970, or in 1975, or in 1980, or in 1985, or in 1990, etc. As more and more local positions around the country were filled with the ever growing WC personnel [booting into M&A those who had previously held those positions] many fellowships got worse.

Belle: "I never had the class, but, Galen, I'm wondering what value you find in the class given what I've learned about it from on here. Do you think TWI quit showing it just because veepee was in it or do you think that it was too blatant in their position on sex, marriage and what's "normal"?" As has been stated previously many times, we run PFAL classes for our home-fellowships. So we have no issues with running any of the old Way MInistry classes in our home fellowships, just as we did when we were still 'in'. We ran fellowships, for years, at each location that we were stationed. the Way Ministry flaking out, should have no substantial influence on me and my stnd with my Heavenly Father. On GS there has been a great deal of discussion about what was, or what was not IN CF&S. Truly it had been so long since I had taken it that i did not really recall what was in it. But GS saw many debates and arguements over the class' content. I mentioned that our fellowship would likely be willing to view the class again to see exactly what is in the class. Since people here on GS seem to not be in argeement on it's content. A copy of CF&S showed up in my mail-box, and thought about it for a long time, then finally we began. Yes, I agree, that since you have never sat through the class, yet you have heard a great deal about it from GS, and you have likely formed a strong opinion about it. All from disagreeing memorys from so many who really dont remember exactly what was on it. And favoured very highly from everyone's other opinions of the man who teaches CF&S. I know that this sounds insulting. I do not intend to insult anyone, but this is what has happened. Our memorys are old, and foggy. After much discussion on the topic, it is hard not to be influenced by our collective reasonings of how horrible everyone insists that VPW was. :-)

That is odd. In the version that we have: segment #8 is about following after society verses biblical cutures, the heart of ministering to others, renewed mind, slang terms, language barriers, and likemindedness. segment #11 is finishing male anatomy, Female anatomy, 'fleshly pillow', a lot of detail about ovarys, eggs, sperm, and fertilization. :-)

Ooops, Eric has pulled duty this weekend. I asked about it, as he should be shipping out Monday. Come to find out, the other unit needed some many billets to be filled so they had sent out a notice to surrounding units for volunteers. Since Eric had missed his unit's last movement, they had 'strongly suggested' that he would be on the list and shipping out with that other unit this coming Monday to fill the billet. But before his unit had 'volunteered' him, others from other units had already filled the empty billet. So Eric is not going right now. [big exhale for his parents]. But get this, everyone who did volunteer quickly were guys whose units had also recently returned. To fill an empty slot in one unit, other returning soldiers from other units are 'competing' or 'jumping' for the chance to fill the slot. It amazes me, at how apidly these kids want to jump into the thick of it. It was the same during Desert Storm, I assure you. Eric is a welder, so anytime that a unit needs a welder they can be calling his unit for the possibility of getting him. In either case, his vest arrived today. Which is great as now I get my vest back. And he is ready to ship out whenever needed with his own vest. :-)

What about 'Colloidal Silver' ? Anyone?

bump

WordWolf: " ... The 2-women-have-sex-with-a-dog video was not in the AC most people took- it was part of the CHRISTIAN FAMILY AND SEX class, of which an entire segment seemed to center around the students learning all the slang words for sex and body parts, and was taught by Mr "overabundance of brains and brawn." " We are going through CF&S currently. Of it's 15 segment we are currently on 12. So far we have not seen that scene. Any idea of what segment it is in? I do realize that different versions of CF&S went out, just like PFAL. So trhere will always be some item that one guy remembers that is not among what everyone else has access to.

But that was the method of how almost all fellowships were done. Was that supposed to be done by Revelation? I have led many twigs, and coordinated the prayers as such. I went around the room, and tried to give everyone a chance to pray. I dont recall any of their getting in my face, that could have had anything to do with revelation. There were times where someone 'finked' on me. Or else it was because I was simply not complying with the corporate image. Once I had a muzzle-laoding rifle [that I had built, and that I used weekly] hanging on the wall up over the front door in our living room. I was 'reproved' for it, as it might frighten people coming into my home. Most of the time that someone tried to get in my face, it was always over their desire to force me to go WOW or WC. Recruitment!!! "G-d told me that He wants you to go WOW, now why are you refusing to do God's Will in your life"? Was a common phrase that I heard at annual limb meetings. It never occured to me that revelation was involved, I always called them on it and I made a point of publicaly showing everyone within ear shot of how they were twisting things. Why would G-d tell you anything, if He has not told me first. Straight PFAL, shut them down everytime. :-)

sharon: "Is there a fund to donate money to for the body armor? Plmk." I have no idea, if there is or not. I have never heard of one. I would seriously contact the units based in your area and ask them. [in the Navy each command has a 'Command-Master-Cheif' that focuses on quality of life issues, and personnel Welfare and safety types of issues. I dont know what they call that function in the Army, or for the part-timers. I think the Marines call that function a 'Gunny-sargaent'] When you buy this stuff, some units buy it in bulk [small, medium, large sizes] but having worn those, I assure you that for long hours of use wearing a set that is tailored to your body is entirely different. A system of 6 measurements taken by two different people at different sittings really gives a comfortable fit. As somene who has had a wear a vest for long hours; It does make a huge difference to wear the correct size. In America there are for example two Police Officer Unions; I am a member of the F.O.P. We raise money to purchase officers their first vest. The other union raises money to purchase officers their first weapon. So in some jurisdictions [where both unions are present] Brand new Police officers can be presented with their first vest and weapon by the unions. When the Government buys they get a group discount, when a individual servicememeber or a PO buys he gets the same discount, when a civilian buys he pays almost twice as much. So it is better for someone with a uniform to do the purchasing. We still collect the food coupons and send them overseas as well. And another thing, a friend [he was coming to our home for diners and Bible-studys] and he needed to make a trip cross country for medical treatment. We were able to use our air-miles [that we had accumulated on our Credit Card] to fly him both ways for his treatments. This is another area where everyone could give, but there does not seem to be any good center point to coordinate such. Now that we have done it once, we were thinking about contacting a Shrine Children's Hospital, to see about getting our names onto their list to help transport disabled children with our airmiles. There are many areas wherein a person can give to help. "You and your wife sound like wonderful people, (not real sure about Dr. Pepper and Malibu) if u ever get to my neck of the woods I would be honored to have you and yours for dinner." Thank you for the invite. :-)

It is not the worst possible thing either. ... I dont see that military service as a huge need for apprehension. :-) [Edited by me to remove something that I said that was a bit too harsh, I apologize to anyone who read it and may have been offended.]

outofdafog: "I have always felt that anyone who could kill another person was insane. It seems in today's world we just make excuses for the criminals instead of standing up and for the victims...." I beg to disagree. Not everyone who kills another person is a criminal. Is everyone who kills another insane? I dont know. From where I stand, it certainly does seem to have some effect on the 'killer's mental state. Within the context of 'Criminal killers': I would certainly think that many of them could well be insane, or drug effected. There is a huge difference between 'criminal killers' and the rest of the crowd of 'killers'. I truly dont think that most non-criminal killers are insane. Though again some do go into therapy. I also see distinctions among those 'criminal killers. I have always felt badly for those who kill according to their orders or their duty, and yet were convicted of murder, those are the 'killer's that are really given a bad rap by our society. :-)

I think that is discussing this topic it is very easy for us to try and stuff Our Heavenly Father into a small box. I cannot dictate how or what He does. I do believe that anyone who worships Him, and listens and attempts to do what His Word says; does stand some chance of seeing His Creator operating within him. When any church [or in this case TWI], comes up with some goofy policy [the Our Father has no intention of energizing], does that preclude Him from helping in other cases or in other issues? No I don’t think so. I think that many Roman Catholic believers, and Baptist Believers, or Mennonites, etc; can on one hand be doing things that their denomination says which are contrary to Our Lord’s Will; and yet in some other area of their lives, when they work to bless the Body or when whatever, then I be think that Our Creator does have the option of energizing them as He sees fit. None of us are perfect in our faith. Yet even though as diversified as ‘Christians’ are miracles do show up. I think the He helps us sometimes despite what we believe. I think that we far too often try to stuff Him into a box, to conform to our own ideas. I idea that we as believers would receive ‘incriminating evidence about fellow believers, is one area that I truly doubt that Our Lord would support. If we said receiving information about how to help us, how to heal us, how to bless another believer, than fine I could go along with that. But where do we see the idea that Our Father would want anyone of us ‘snooping’ on another believer and learning another believer’s secrets? Unless somehow those secrets were harmful to the Body, or it was in the context of helping / healing / ministering. Oakspear- DEBT: I see that He does not really want us in too much debt, it simply is not a wise thing to do. It does tend to make us into slaves. We can not just drops everything and walk away. His only real ‘Law’ about it though is ‘Usury’ which focuses on what rate of interest you charge to fellow believers. We can freely charge any rate to non-believers, but we must be better, nicer to those within the household. Lying about how much you sold a house for, and withholding a portion, is different as it was never required of them to sale their second house in the first place, it was never required of them to give all proceeds to the body, they were saying this purely for vanity. Wyteduv- TIME SCHEDULING: Again I find to difficult to imagine under what circumstances Our Lord would want to even get into that mess. I could envision a situation like: Eli and Samuel. Where people’s hearts was to truly help others and to minister to their needs, and perhaps for one man to see how another is living his life, to help him to learn to walk closer to Heaven. But I think that would be entirely dependant upon each person’s heart. Dmiller- “ . . . there were times in my life, that folks in twi did a few miraculous things for me (and I knew they had no idea what they were doing -- unless it was by rev).” I have been there too. “By the same token -- I was able to do the same for others -- and I did not have a clue either.” Bless you. “God's revelation works -- despite the fact that you are in a cult” That is my point. Belle- “I have no doubts that many people in TWI … had real good relationships with God and were able to heal, help, receive revelation and do all kinds of wonderful things to help people.” That is what I experienced, though very rarely from WC-grads. “I KNOW that no one in my area was receiving revelation because of my activities and things that, IF they were really working for God, God would have told them.” It was simply none of their business, what you were doing. I must say, that when we did see stuff happening that was super-natural, often it was when we did not expect it. And many times, it was answering prayers that I personally did not really expect to be answered.

SafariVista: "Do the members of this 'group' have open meetings somewhere?" "I'd like to know more about this..." Did you wish to join? "What is it about America that we allow FREEDOM to groups that do harm?" In theory someone who does 'harm' must be caught, charged and tried by a jury BEFORE sentenced. Many groups are considered or thought to do 'harm'. I am not a member of NAMBLA, nor anything like it. However I am a member of a fraternity, of which I routinely see and hear people saying terrible things. Blaming about ever calamity of our society on, but for as many years as I have been a member, I have yet to see any proof, or even any hint, of wrong doing. Yet in our society there have been times when my fraternity has been prosecuted. The nazi's were really afraid of them, and placed a very high bounty on each member of my frat they could find. I read where recently in a church cemetary, a minister noticed that many of his grave stones had fraternal symbols on them. He was so angered, he convinced much of the congregation that such evil should be destroyed. They dug-up, exhumed some of those interned and destroyed many monuments and headstones; before they were stopped. Come to find out some of their deacons were members, all the founders of the church had been members, and all previous ministers had been members. But the automatic persecution that the minister had set upon had already done much damage. I do not like what NAMBLA seems to propound. But I like the idea that they are free to gather, free to peacefully discuss, and hopefully deal with their issues. Many have fought for those rights. Many have died when those rights were denied. "It seems that this group is just as demeted as the KKK!" I am not a Klansman either, too much red in my hair to be allwowed membership ;-) But I dont mind that they share our right to gather peacefully. :-)

And here I thought that we were supposed to do it in this order: First the panty-hose, Then the chocolate bars, Then the nuke. [Get the women running out into the streets, then the kids, then vaporize them.] Just kidding folks. :-) [That is what we used to say was inside the 'empty' warheads. Dozens of missiles, with hundreds of pay-loads; but not all pay-loads carry nukes. Some are empty just to foul up the air and add confusion to an enemy's radar and get them to waste some of their anti-missile resources. So we would say that the emptys are filled with pany-hose and chocolate bars.]

Jim: "I think that for those of us that are in our 50's, we did grow up in a marginally disfunctional envronment. Our parents had been children during the depression, teens during WWII and adults during Korea and Vietnam. They had a lot on their minds and sometimes being there to mentor and coach the kids was a low priority." That is a good point. Both of sets of my Grandparents lost their farms during the dustbowl/depression. The "Grapes of Wrath" was the theme of their lifes for many years. My parents were early teens when it began, and they both came of 'age' as migrant farm workers. WWII helped a lot with ammo factorys employing everyone who was not asian. My elder siblings were the first generation to attend Public Grade schools, but they also traveled through out each summer picking berrys, grapes and nuts for a living. Two of my brothers were drafted during Vietnam. "My dad's work kept him away from home most of the time. When he was home, it usually meant punishment for me, for some infraction my mom informed him of. My mom was the best with 0-5 year olds. Just the best. But she never really understood kids older than that." My father worked construction and it was the entire focus of his life until the day he was served with his divorce. And yes that was largely his role in the home. My earliest memory is of being 'spanked' by him, using a shovel. But being on a farm, he more commonly used horse-whips, or a wooden block-and-tackle, or other various farm implements to beat the children with [at my mother's direction]. "So what do I make of it. They did the best they could with what they had and what the standards of the day were. We always had good food and warm clothes and working bikes." True. "Did I do better with my kid? Yeah, a lot better. But I only had one and they had 3. And I have an excellent memory and tried not to make too many of the same mistakes that I remembered them making." Wow, good point. All four of my grandparents were each among sibling groups of 11 - 15. I am among 6 siblings. Bonnie and I had one and adopted one, so we will have raised 2. "When I think of my parents, I'm a little comforted by what I heard VPW once say: "If your parents are so bad, how come you turned out so good?" By G-d's Grace. :-) Very good points Jim.

2life: "DAMN. Lets see-- a 20 year old who needs his very own personalized BODY ARMOR. THAT has to be every mothers friggin nightmare!!!!!... and in good consciense we send these kids off?" Well, maybe I just see things differently. To me personally, I do not wish to step into a career where I will carry a loaded weapon and be expected to return fire at an agressor, without also wearing body armor. And personally when I say "Body Armor", I do not mean a 45 pound flak-jacket this is government issue [guaranted to stop flying debri]. I mean a 8 pound vest under my uniform that is guaranteed to stop bullets. After I finished my first tour doing 'Law Enforcement' [where a buddy of ours and fellowship member, took two bullets in his back while he was standing guard duty on a gate], Bonnie became insistant that I wear body-armor anytime that I am armed. And to make Bonnie 'happy' I have. Everytime that I am required to be armed, I am also armored. No thanks to the Navy. :-) As for his mother, she comes down stairs and about everyday now to share her feelings and vent her concerns. She's great. In fact as I sit here and type this post, I just got off the telephone from ordering Eric's body Armor. By the way if anyone else needs such I will plug: "Second Chance Body Armor" as being the best. I have worn it for years, and I have known men who took rounds while wearing it and they are still alive.

Now if I can just convince Eric to quit the part-time junk, and to go career. As a part-timer, he only gets medical coverage while he is on active-duty, and his pay is based on how much time he serves each month. Generally a part-timer has to serve for 40 years to qualify to the retirement, and even then they do actually get the pension or benefits until after they turn 65. As an active-duty servicemember he would get full medical/dental, shopping privledges, free space 'A' travel, a 20 year pension, and either free or heavily subsidized college tuition for all courses he attends. Plus most of all that for life. But for now he is jsut a kid, he wont see the real value of it, until he is older. :-)

Thanks all. We have learned that we get along best with my family when we keep 3000 miles between us, and call them once or twice a year. My mother has a computer [one of the grandkids gave it to her], but growing up during the depression she is afraid that turning it on will run up the electric bill. So she does not do e-mail. My Father's current wife, does e-mail us about every week. She even came to Italy and visited us there. She trys hard to get him to like us. :-)