krys

I wouldn't be anticipating any fruit from this organization. There's not enough "oomph" left.

skyrider: waysider: Then. they were held above the heads of the rest of us as examples that we should strive after. Whenever we took a mis-step or our footing slipped, we were subject to the same face melting they also learned "from the masters".

Once you have seen and felt and are really familiar with the Original, it's not too difficult to spot the fake.

and you are absolutely correct excathy

I agree that all that etiquette stuff while you're trying to eat was sometimes a royal PITA - - BUT I loved it when we got to "Roll Away". Singing that almost always changed my mood!

Rottie, this is how we did it. I was never corps, but they taught me and a few others to do it when there weren't enough corps present. After a while I got pretty good at it, but some of the Corps that came into our area got bent out of shape if any non-Corps person did some things.Do you smell a little arrogance????? We would get a piece of string longer than the length of the bank of chairs from front to back. We'd get all the chairs set up in rows as best we could with our eye. Then we'd take the string, one holding in the front row and the other in the back row and put the end of the string on the top of the center crown of the back of the chair. We'd pull the string taught. If the string was tight and touched the same place on both chairs, we would move over to the next set. We worked from the center out. I'm sure there were other things they would have to do at hq and in very large hotels where there were banks or sets of chairs. Truth be told, we learned that some of the places we rented to have meetings had chairs that were so old and in such poor condition that there was no way to line them up with string. We would just have to do the best we could by eye.

I felt fear plenty of times.....and I had to swallow it and pretend because it was fear of them. I don't think I'm the only one. Usually it was worst when a leader type would say..."I want to see you after the meeting". There are other things that would set it off too. One of my friends used to worry herself sick, or nearly so, if she let herself think about whether she was doing whatever it was that she was supposed to be doing well enough.....did she meet the standard.

Like Stepford folks?

I would also like you to describe this in more detail. To this day, I have never heard of an "Economical aspect" but the way you first laid it out, it seems to make sense so I would love it if you'd write more on this.

have you figured it out now, excathy? Sure you have......they sent you....because they didn't even know where to begin. I'm glad I finally understand this, but it would have been helpful to have some understanding of it before!

I eventually settled on a Win7. I have plenty of new programs to learn and I thought that that was enough for now. I just bought the box as I want to keep my large monitor too. I don't think it's quite as large as yours, but it suits me fine. I got a "discount" to spend on any other Dell product at the time of purchase and I now have a 1 terabyte external hard drive so I can keep good backups. A friend got something similar so we'll shoot backup packages to each other. Having backups in the same place as the computer that holds it. As long as the file(s) have nice secure passwords, it's okay that she had them. I'm glad I started moving, migrating etc when I did as XP won't be supported after April 8. That's what I was running.

I knew more than most did....that's not bragging, is it. But what I learned was correct and taught by the minister of my church when I was young. In NYC in those days, you could be released from school at 2 o'clock (1 hour early) to go to religious education. Our church was only 2 blocks from school so we went. If you were in 7th or 8th grade, the minister taught the class. He instilled all kinds of knowledge, ethics, and other necessary Christian things. We were in a fundamental Dutch Reformed Church. I may not have learned a lot of Bible, but I did learn a lot of 1st century church. People took care of one another. The Minister lacked for nothing. When one of the members of the Consistory (local governing body) noticed that his car was looking shoddy, he spoke to the rest of the Consistory privately and in a few months they provided a brand new car for him. They sold the old one and paid the balance on the new one out of their own pockets....not the church offerings. It wasn't demanded, in fact, it was a total surprise. As long as the other auto worked, there was no reason to dispose of it. My home church put twi to shame.

Kit is right to be thankful for all of those folks. I'm glad they were around to show me the truth. Lots of people were hurt in those old days, including me. But many of you were also...no crying over spilled milk. There's no crying in baseball and cults either.

They need what you have to give, but they don't know it yet. I don't understand the math anymore....but a 0 slope is a slope and it has the definition which is 0 (zero) I don't understand how you can have anything "undefined".....but in math you can do that. You can have a slope which you can't give a definition to.....that would be an undefined slope. There is a difference. Can you give them a visual with, for example, a file folder. Hold it in several positions and ask simple questions...does this have a positive slope....a negative slope....a zero slope. Maybe if you showed it to them that way they would understand and make the connection. Ham, you are doing such a good job. The students you're getting aren't prepared well enough for you because of the watering down of all kinds of education. Sometimes they are taught right out of the book, which isn't necessarily bad, except if the teacher cannot provide additional samples.

They probably line them up with string too.

I've been thinking about this quite a bit. I went looking for 3 people and found 1 and another one of those found me. Some one found me but I wasn't really into going to church with her (an off shoot twig). I didn't go looking for a lot of folks that I knew. I guess I just didn't have anything in common with them except twi business. I guess the same is true of me with them. I used to feel bad about that. It lasted about 3 days and everything was fine.

For what it's worth, Ham....it's not you. I know quite a few folks in these environs and only one contacted me directly. That individual wanted me to go back with her. "You could get your 30 year certificate" she said excitedly. There were a couple of others who called and invited me to lunch, but that's ttheir thing. It never was - - even before when were were all involved up to our chins, Life is so much better now that I can pick my friends and also now that I can decide how to spend my time.

Well - - when you're Mr. Linder, I guess you can do anything you want. Seriously - - who would somebody report your offences to???

I don't agree that the article is rubbish. It's discussing 80% of the population. We, who investigate other things, and start other businesses don't belong in that 80%. We can't apply that to those of us here. If we're around and taking a regular part in these discussions, we're not that 80%. Think about it and give yourself credit. We may have a dozen such individuals still growing and investigating in the later periods of their lives. Those who aren't using their brains much aren't thinking much about anything, least of all the remains of a crazy cult in Ohio! Twinky just look at the average Joe's who sit on their cans and watch soccer and football each weekend. Steve is thriving on his Masters studies and Ham took on and passed through difficult math courses to get a degree in his 50's and I remember some of the things he shared with us as he did that. We are not wooses! Check your neighboars.....look at the average guy or gal in the supermarket and you';ll not find stellar brain power the way you find it here. We are a unique collection - - not you average guys. I think we all are champions.

Hooliganism such as this works wonders to draw members of a group more tightly to each other in the group making the whole group stronger. But that was not what the powers that be wanted. The more closely together you stuck....the harder to boot one of you out lest the others stick up for him more loudly.

Something that really did bug me, however, were those individuals who took my money and never wrote back. I didn't expect everyone to be all on the money every month. I always was willing to cut them a little slack. But part of the deal was that the individuals were supposed to write back and release something. Maybe it was part of a teaching...or maybe just a principle they saw live for the first time. But those who thought they were just too good to write to li'l old me......That made me unhappy.

I was told that not everybody could make it through the Corps program......so it never bothered me if somebody didn't finish. I always gave them kudos for giving it a shot!

My new definition of success is Out of twi!

It's fascinating. I don't understand it all either because I didn't take the time to read and study (internalize) any of the qualities as they were laid out. When I was young, I used to think that everybody was different. Lately, over the past decade and a half, I've come to see that that isn't so. People are more alike than I'd thought. Placing them in groups such as this dynamic makes it easier to categorize. I'm not sure that there are only 3 dimensions, but that certainly stands for now.

I've been thinking a lot about her and the situation since I posted that. I have to admit, there was a lazy streak in there. It was just too easy to follow what somebody else said because it was familiar. But the last time I saw her before that time that we reconnected was about 12 years earlier. She appeared to age 25 years or more during that time. Her eyes were dull and she was too. I guess it's really true that you become what you look at.