Oakspear

Allan: You read the posts again The problem that the "The Rationalist Society" (you make that sound like an insult <_< ) has with the whole scenario is not that the Devil became evil by his free will, but that he now is unable to exercise that free will to be other than evil.

johniam: We were in a small town as well. Sidney, Nebraska for 6 months, population about 5,000, Kearney, a college town for the rest, closer to 20,000. During my own WOW year (1980-81) there wasn't much of a dropout rate. One Corps couple left about a month in, but everybody else in Nebraska stuck with it. About half were in a WOWvet program the next year, and all of them stuck it out. I didn't have much to do with WOW's again until the last year of the WOW program (1993-94?). Lincoln and Omaha each started out with 4 families of four people each. I believe that by the end of the year there were a total of three WOW families, a couple with 5 people absorbed from other groups. If I remember correctly there were four people, 2 couples, who were gone within a month. One family in Lincoln lost 3 out of 4 people. Every time we saw the WOW's there were less of them.

Gabriel is described as delivering messages, but I don't recall where the bible says that he is the leader of all the messenger engels as TWI taught, I don't believe that he is described as an archangel. Michael is decribed in at least one place as an archangel, but does that make him the leader of all the angel wariors? satanism: http://www.religioustolerance.org/satanism.htm

I've heard of 8-string basses - I believe Geezer Butler of Black Sabbath played one when I saw them in 1977 - it looked like the strings were doubled sorta like a 12-string guitar - but nine strings - holy crap! Do you need to have an extra knuckle added to get your fingers around the neck on those things? (I don't know why I haven't joined in on this thread before)

In the Old Testament you barely hear about the devil. "The Serpent" is mentioned in Genesis and is not heard from again except in a few places. In Job "Satan" appears to be one of God's poker buddies or something, with access to God's presence. Ezekiel mentions a "Lucifer" (translated from halal, shining one, I think) which may or may not be referring to Satan. Wierwille (and others) have taught that Satan is referred to indirectly throughout the OT, but IMHO this is a supposition. Wierwille on occassion would announce that a usage of "lord" was refferring to "the lord of this world", when "lord" was translated from jehovah, which clearly means God. IMHO the invention an adversary to God was influenced by some of the dualistic religions, and a need to theologically justify the existance of evil. The rebellion in heaven doesn't make sense to me either. Did Satan not know that God was all-powerful? What exactly was he trying to do? make himself all powerful? When you think about it, it doesn't make much sense, does it? Generally Wiccans and other pagans do not believe in a central personification of evil, or an ultimate source of all evil. We don't deny that evil exists, or even that there are malign spirits, but I have never heard of a Wiccan or other pagan who believes in "The Devil".

Let me clarify something: that's not a real schedule, but in order to get your 20 hours of work and 48 hours of witnessing in, you're committing 12 hours a day to those 2 items alone, if you sleep only 6 1/2 hours, then you have only 5 1/2 hours for everything else in your day including cooking, eating, showering, getting from point A to point B, studying da Word, etc. The "schedule" was meant to illustrate how impossible it was to really do the program. Three of us in our group worked closer to 30 hours per week. I worked in a nursing home for about half the year and worked 7 days on and seven days off; the way the schedule was written I would have four 8-hour days one week, and 3 the next, but the days off from week one would be Thursdat, Friday, Saturday, and the next week Sunday - Wednesday...sweet! Our fearless leader couldn't keep a job. At one point he got a "job" putting in a lawn for our landlord in exchange for reduced rent. What he really did was sleep late, smoke cigarettes, and hit on the wives of guys who were in jail over in the trailer court, or go over to other belivers' to watch t.v. When the landlord found out he demanded a refund of all the months of rent reduction that he had given us. Since our leader was now out of work, the other 3 of us had to come up with the money. All along, since the rent reduction was considered his share of the family fund, we were giving him money for cigarettes and other incidentals out of the family fund, since he wasn't actually getting a paycheck. Double wammy. We witnessed when we felt like it, which became virtually "never" as the year drew to a close.

Pastorius was a sad case...tragic and unnecessary death. His bass playing was smoother than most, more melodic (I'm listening to one of his solo albums as I type). Clarke I believe did a lot to bring the bass out of the "back row", partly by his use of bass-like instruments like the piccollo bass, tenor bass and other "bassoids". I pretty sure that these were all 4-string instruments played in the same style as a bass, but with different, usually higher, tunings. I'm a sucker for innovative bass though. the late Mark Sandman of Morphine had a stable of bass-like instruments including 1-string and 2-string "basses", as well as a guitar-bass hybrid called a "tritar"...very minimalist. 6-string bass is often fun, Jack Bruce is well-known for his 6-string playing, but Joe Perry of Aerosmith used to occassionally overdub one in their early days. John Jordon, formerly with Chris Duarte, currently working for Kinky Friedman plays a custom-made 7-string bass. I have no idea how its tuned.

As I recall WOW's were supposed to Witness 48 hours per week Work a part-time job 20-30 hours per week Be up by 7:00am and in bed by midnight Take one day off from work and witnessing How did we fit that in? This means 4 - 5 hours of work per day and 8 hours of witnessing, 6 days a week! Wake up at 6:30am - "study the Word" and speak in tongues for a 1/2 hour 7:00 - 7:30: shower & eat a quick breakfast 8:00am - 12 noon: work (assuming a 20-hour workweek, five days per week Noon - 1:00pm: Go home, eat lunch 1:00 - 5:00pm: witness 5:00 - 6:30pm: cook dinner, eat and wash dishes 6:30 - 10:30pm: witness (4 hours in the afternoon, 4 hours at night) 10:30 - 11:00pm: family meeting You now have a whole hour to yourself before being in bed by midnight. What about twig nights? This adds an extra hour in there. That either cuts out your "free" time, or you don't eat. This hypothetical schedule leaves one day (let's say Saturday) where you don't have to work or witness so that you can do laundry, call your parents, write letters, or just screw around. Of course if you were running a class, or some Limb event was happening, or some big leader showed up, there went your day off. Did anybody actually do this schedule? I sure as heck didn't witness 8 hours per day. At best I witnessed for an hour or two in the afternoon. Since we all worked different schedules, we witnessed solo a lot of the time, or hung out with some of the non-WOW wayfers, messing around and calling it witnessing. In the evening we sometimes did door-to-door, but more often some of us hung out at the bar, while our coordinator found somebody with a television to "undershepherd".

Our company supports an annual fundraiser at the local Children's Zoo called "Boo at the Zoo". We man a booth and give out treats to the ravening hordes! Two years ago I dressed in a cow costume, complete with rubber udders. I was shocked ;) shocked I tell you, at the number of "soccer moms" who wanted to play with those udders :wub: We'll also participate ina ritual circle in homor of Samhain, but that will probably be on the Saturday following. I'm trying to come up with a scary costume to wear while giving out candy to the trick-or-treaters.

Didn't know about the scholarship...very cool. Musically, many bassists stand on Clark's shoulders.

Liked Mclaughlin during Mahavishnu. Saw him live at My Father's Place, I think it was, in Manhattan in 1980 with a "believer" who worked for a record company. It was an "unplugged" show, just John & another guy on acoustic guitars. Ravi Shankar opened. Return to Forever, plus solos of all the guys in it, especially Stanley Clark; Weather Report, and Jon-Luc Ponty

I've got quite a bit of Yardbirds at home...good stuffI was a deejay for about 7 years at a community radio station (translation: no commercials, no money, a lot of volunteers) - we snobbishly referred to ourselves a programmers, rather than deejays. la-tee-dah, doncha know. I started out just hanging out at the station during a midnight - 4am blues show every Thursday night, trying to learn the equipment and do PSA and SPA's. One night the programmer fell asleep due to heavy on-air drinking and I took over. Blues was my specialty; I did a show called Shadesof Blue for most of my tenure, focussing on comparisons between original blues and their later cover version or ripoffs. I had a jazz fusion show for a while, as well as a short-lived "surf guitar" program. For about 6 months I had a 6AM variety program where I played some Way productions now and again. One of the other relatively well known folks that I interviewed was Matt "Guitar" Murphy. He sat down next to me during a break that stretched on and on and on....Fueled by one too many shots of Jack Daniels I asked him when the f--- he was going to get back stage. To this day I'm not sure how I avoided an foot whoopin' after getting the look that I got. But he said "Who the f--- are you?" - I replied that I was one on the f---ers who apid $10 to see him PLAY. He looked me over, downed his drink, and walked up to the stage and started his last set. After the show he came back, shook my hand and remarked that I had "some set of balls" to talk to him like that. I told him that I was a programmer for a local radio station, would he like to do an interview? Amazingly, he agreed, but he was leaving town first thing in the morning. So we bought some "supplies" from the bartender, walked over to the station, unlocked the studio, and recorded an interview. Our station engineer had to spend a lot of time cleaning it up!

We just ditched the coven that we were assocaited with, so I'm not sure what we'll be doing. Our company participates in a "Boo at the Zoo" fundaraiser; I usually dress up as a wizard or something with a prominant pentagram around my neck Reikilady will be doing tarot raedings at a halloween aprty; I may go and help I may howl at the moon at some point

When I interviewed Clarke all that I could think of was that the guy had class. He just oozed it! Our program director had just woken me up to come down and do an interview that she had set up with Clarke and some of his bandmates. They showed up at about 8am, straight from the bus after driving all night, hadn't even been to the hotel. Clarke had two guys in his band who were launching solo careers and he was trying to promote them, as well as his own band, so he stayed pretty low key, letting the other guys talk. Neither of these guys was particularly articulate, and they had been up all night driving, so it was not exactly good radio. On a break, Clarke suggested that I talk to his bass player about his days playing with Luther Allison, hinting that there were some good stories to be had. After the break I broached the subject, but all that I got was "yeah, I played for Luther Allison". I got a couple of free tickets to the show that night, and had a great conversation with Clarke and some of his sidemen over breakfast...should've brought a tape recorder to the diner!

Well, thanks at least for coming back. No offense meant you say, but offense was given. You probably don't know how often someone pops up here on the forums telling us to "get over it", or takes us to task for speaking negatives...blah, blah, blah.

I've not gotten Beckology, but have a good chunk of his stuff: both albums with Rod Stewart & Ronnie Wood, the "Orange" album with the 2nd Jeff Beck Group, Wired, Blow By Blow, Guitar Shop, There & Back, Who Else?, and the live album with The Jan Hammer Group, as well as BB&A. What I love about Beck is that he pretty much would reinvent himself every couple of albums. Quite a bit of musical variety. You can even hear him sing (sort of) on a few tunes on the Truth bonus tracks "Talleyman" and "Hi-Ho Silver Lining". Come to think of it, one or both might be on Beckology too

I interviewed Clarke once in my deejay days.

happy belated b'day my neighbor-to-the-south

How many vegans do you know? Enough to make your statement meaningful?

That's funny There were so many hooops to jump through, so many forms to fill out. I was a Twig Coordinator through some of this. We had to talk to "our people" every day to find out how many contacts, how many phone numbers, how many follow-ups, how many brought to Twig... One guy I just knew was making up numbers, but I dutifully reported them anyway. During the first year that the Corps were on full-time salary, our BC's were ordered to witness for something like three hours every day (maybe more, I forget). they were also instructed to take some of us civilians with them to "teach us" how to witness. Now at this time we had a goodly number of "old timers" who had taken the PFAL class in 1970 - 75, who had been WOW, been around in the days of incredible growth in the early 70's, had run classes and signed up dozens for PFAL. People who knew how to witness. But they had to be taught I went on one of thse excursions. We were in a Target or a Wal-Mart or something. Mr. BC was real agressive until we ran into a Mormon family. Not to be out-witnessed by the likes of us, Mr. Mormon started witnessing back! :o Finally Mr. BC, frustrated at his lack of success literally yelled at the top of his voice, "You are INSANE" at the Mormons.

Warren...where you at? Anything to say? Or just another drive-by poster?

Hey Bramble, doing anything special for Samhain?

You asked how vegan beliefs survived before synthetic material. <_<

Nato: Out in the non-WD world, it wasn't much different during those years. Our Way Corps leaders focussed a lot on "confront-the-illogic-of-the-world" witnessing as well. We had a "plan" to witness to literally every household in this city of 200,000+ in a year. I think that if every adult wayfer went out twice a week for about 3 hours it was actually possible. We all had our maps, with a master map at the BC's house with areas covered marked in ble or something. We started to hit snags right away. We started with apartment complexes, but had to go back repeatedly when a majority of the people didn't answer their doors. the official answer was that God knew from the foundation of the world that we would be witnessing that night, so if people weren't home it was because they wouldn't have wanted the Word anyway. :blink: :blink: :blink: :blink: :blink:

Cotton makes good clothing.