Lifted Up

Kevlar's and Rascal's "lunatic" assertion referred to LCM, but there is obviously a connection being made with the subject of this thread. Now that brings up an interesting point. Is a lunatic...an insane or mentally ill person...subject to the death penalty? Such a person presumably (and legally I guess) Does not really know that what he is doing is wrong. Or, are we simply using the "lunatic" label too freely?

Yea, thanks Oak, though I dont't think anyone was thinking that, being involved in TWI, I didn't know about the book of Acts. The reason I brought up the home fellowship thing is that there seems a tendency by many to treat anyone who does something the way it is/was done in TWI as hooked or "waybrained" or something like that, whether or not it is the standard or accepted way of doing something. The funniest example...to me anyway...I can think of right now is the recent "5 x 3" card thread. I have seen TWI knocked for non-standard language..."opportunity" vs/ "problem", word changes from the standard in several songs, etc. So, when they use something that's standard language, such as "3 x 5" cards, we have to dowhat we accuse them of doing...change the language to "5 x 3" cards, because suddenly it is the standard terminology that has become "waybrained". I don't want to downgrade Oak's response, because I think there is a some respect of me there. :) I dont want to get off much on this in this thread, but I know how much easier it is to respect someone you know as a real person and not just an anonymous handle...and in this case, Oak and I have actually met.

Right, so if someone prefers home fellowships, that doesnt mean they prefer them because they are afraid of an abomination.

Maybe not all prefer home fellowships for the "reasons" given in this statement. Maybe some (such as WhiteDove) are not "clinging" at all but have tried both and prefer the home fellowships over churches. I don't think TWI invented home fellowships. In fact I know they didn't...My wife's family in the old U.S.S.R certainly had them. Now maybe some prefer that route out of habit from TWI life because they feel comfortable in such a setting. That can be the same reason for some going to churches. Before TWI I think it was mine. It certainly allowed me to hide pretty well.

Back in TWI at Indy, my branch leader once had us each pick two verses, write them down, then he would construct his teaching as he picked each verse. One could always argue that he was showing his versatility or teaching ability, but I do know we were all listening since we were each involved.

Yea, remembrances can be overdone. But there is nothing wrong with it, as long as we keep it in perspective. Even if we do that, around GS it is hard to publically remember something good without being chopped to bits. There are those who like to belittle someone else's good memories, no matter how much we listen to or acknowledge those who tell about their not so good times.

In fact...the latest information available in the currect early morning advisory has the storm strengthening rapidly and shifts the forecast path quite a bit to the north and east from the previous forecast...taking it over Florida by Thursday or Friday...first sending it into the eastern Gulf of Mexico, then curving it into Florida from the west.

Fox news, which has had an attachment to a certain large private weather service, which I once worked for many moons ago, is already treating this storm as if it were a category 3 drawing a bead on New Orleans. It is as if, if it happens again, they want to be able to say "you heard it here first"...while if the storm fizzles, or hots somewhere far from New Orleans, they will fall back on "we didnt say for sure it was going to hit there." But, watching their broadcast, one can get the impression that this is just about what they are saying. The idea is not a strange one in any private business...to convince the customer, or potential customer, that you are doing a better job. Where lives and property are at stake, I would stick with the forecasters at the National Hurricane Center, who are answerable of course for their work, but who do not waste their efforts trying to convince their listeners how well they did. Of course, in this case, they also have the most tools to work with, such as direct contact with hurricane hunter information, the best assortment of computer models, etc.

We were always tops...but as far as the thread at the top, yea. And those 9th corps can get a little sensitive about the being on top thing, since they like to be so blabby.

or..... My old Indy and lightbearers buddy Phil Colvin, aka General Patton, and I singing a duet to get one of three extra leftover sandwiches for lunch on a stay at the Texas farm. And me stumbling in the dark into the wrong porta john in the middle of the night, and of course getting an unexpected visit.

Peg, my e-mail is still the same, and you should find it on my profile, if you want to go beyond public chatting. In the meantime, another memory... We went on that camping trip in March 1978. The one wherewe did that freedom exercise. Well, we are all set for a night of outdoor snoozing...tents up and all. My two person tent was coed BTW. At one point during the evening lightning starts popping in the northeastern sky. Jack Wilson, who is leading the group, asks me (the professional expert) what it was, and I told him it looked like heavy thunderstorms. Suddenly he takes charge, orders camp to break up, and we hike to this empty farm place where we holed up for a couple days from lightning, rain, and snow. We just made it to safe shelter as the first drops fell, which quickly turned into a deluge. The next day, during a temporary weather break, we organized into teams and slaughtered and cooked our chickens. In that barn, where we all had to hole up in plain sight of each other to snooze, fellow 8th corps and Way C. of E. choir tenor John Zika announced to the group aloud that he was going to change his pants. When asked why he announced it, he said simply, "So those who want to turn away can do so, and those who want to look can look. I dont think anyone turned away...or stared. We were too tired at that point to extend much effort at anything.

Hi Peg.....again... Not to try to do a sweep right now, but I'll mention one tidbit...One day I was working hard on the famous stripping crew...and through my chance remark of where I spent my school years, I discovered that Steve and Cindy Roberts had later gone to the same high school I spent four years at...which school (Groveton) was later dissolved in massive reorganization.

Well, then, one for the road while you're out of control and cant watch out for that floss... -----------========~~~~~~~~~~~~~ TTTRRRIIIIIPPPPPP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Something just dawned on me when I saw RR's name as being on GS tonight. How true it is that there are things that can be worse than physical pain. I think a lot of them involve freedom. In this case the freedom to be mobile and do things for yourself(and others), but I can think of other examples as well. Someone could be thinking, well, what if that physical pain were carried to an extreme degree? Maybe a good point, but the same can be said of other things. To avoid going off in a tangent, I will refrain from elaborating. I am sure most others, if they agree, can think of plenty of examples. In this light, we can be even happier for RR. Maybe, in reciprocation, a little like that big smile he gave me (I bet he doesn't remember) after I gave a certain recitation at a corps meeting. ( I remember too much). BTW thanks David for taking the time to put the actual post on the thread, instead of just my lousy link.

??? Dont get what you are saying...as I see your other post above. As far as having it all together better than the others, one should not that in the great expansion of corps numbers during that time, we were actually relatively small. Smaller than the 6th, 7th, 9th, and 10th I know. Of course before the 6th they were much smaller. You never hear much about the earlier ones as a unit, though...just individuals who were there. I actuall started the 5th corps thread because my first branch leader was 5th, and you can see how far that has gone. As for the 9th, which icon os hte blabby icon? Always talking so much, you can't tell what (if anything) are the important things being said.

I noticed the same thing some time ago when I tried to steal some milestone post on the 9th corpse thread.

If I'm not being too pretentious about having this right, maybe I'd better shoot one out now,; after tomorrow night I may be offline a couple days. If I was wrong, ignore me. "See? Now we ain't arrested." The actor who uttered this line had quite a career as an actor and a singer. Yet despite his prominence, he wasn't the biggest star of this flick.

Okay, I'm gracious...Simon didn't want it, so why don't you grab post number 100 on the 8th corps thread. You are hereby invited. And don't say it's like an invitation to swim in a shark tank. Fellowshipper, you do have a good idea hear....(yawn)...maybee I coulldd ttrryyyzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

That's more like it. An old fart flick (and broadway hit)... Hello Dolly

Thanks for the response. I really would like to get a response from some others on that, particularly any other corps. I am talking about if there was anything like that in the corps besides just what VPW told LCM. Of course, I would like to get a resonse to my other question as well, but I am afraid with the trust issue I may not get any further there than I have before. I may have seen/experienced that attitude. It probably wouldnt belong on the same page as most stuff talked about on this thread. But together with other evidence, it may have been a symptom... Unfortunately, besides your response, I havent received any others. I cant even get flamed as you have been just a touch, heh heh. Maybe a symptom of the times, but I just got dumped in chat too.

I didn't start the thread, but you are probably right in your assesment. Not that expecting to accomplish it; there is that trust issue on both sides. Also, as I noted, grudgingly wont' cut it. As Paw has said, it has to be up to the victim to choose to tell it. And, contrary to what some may think, it wouldnt necessarily have to be full of fine details. So here we have an old timer...older than me. I got started in late 1975...with an interim 5th corps branch leader BTW. You evidently had a good idea of what the attitude toward sex was in TWI at that time. I will confibe my questions for now to one I posed earlier. Did you ever hear anything about the idea that corps (or anyone else) had to be "loosened up" sexually? Wordwolf and some others have recently mentiond something about VPW telling LCM he had to "loosen up". presumably with the idea that it meant lossening up sexually. Did you ever hear of this attitude back in the "old days"??

I sure hear that mentiond a lot lately...if it were YOUR daughter... (which I have BTW)... The obvious assumption is that any victim here would have as much right to protection and believability as my daughter would have. Well, look at it this way...would YOU believe your daughter more than an anonymous nameless person you knew of only online? I certainly would. About anything. Time and time again I hear people say, they know someone personally who had gone through the hell of abuse, or they have talked with someone personally; therefore they know it is true. They know it happened as was told BECAUSE they know the person, the victim, yet they expect everyone else to accept it by second hand and indirect accounts, by people just talking about it...basically by faith if you will. Then it becomes law on GS, and someone gets their head bit off or hand slapped or worse because they start a thread like this. My mission in learning more about this subject...should I choose to accept it...is to narrow that gap. I did that...with some success...back in my early Waydale days over 6 years ago...although it didn't involve VPW in those cases. Some other oldies might remember the poster with whom I had some particularly informative contact, if I were to mention the poster's handle. It is so very true that nobody owes me anything, and that is the way it should be. Besides, grudgingly given testimony isn't worth, well, you know. I've heard people say...okay, I've seen people "say" that they don't care whether others believe them or not. Well, then, so be it.

You're right, that is not what she said. But in practice it becomes what she said, and I'll tell you why. Dot's point is that when a victim comes forward to tell her story of being sexually abused, it is often chopped down, picked apart, belittled, etc. by someone...or maybe by several someones. So, when it comes to telling her story, she can't trust some people not to turn it into an even bigger personal hurt. My point is, it then becomes, she can't trust anyone, because she doesn't know who can be trusted. Remember, this is the internet, and if that is the only way most of us know each other, she has good reason not to trust anyone. Thus the responses like some I have gotten in trying to learn more, like the "you wouldn't believe personal first hand testimony even if you had it" answer I mentioned in my previous post. The fact that somewill chop up her story translates in effect to I am one of them...because she doesn't know me well enough to trust me more than the others. And, that's understandable. But I am subject to the same problem of trust when it comes to believing what an anonymous poster punches out over the net. That leads me to another piece of Tom's post I want to quote, so pardon this continuation in my next post...

...and the information that is shared, of course. Internet is not a good way to get to know someone or to to trust someone to the point of believing what they say. It may be a good way to communicate with someone you already know, and it may even be a good start in some cases to mett someone if you can get to know them better by other means. But to use it as the sole means of knowing about someone can be dangerous.

I guess this has pretty much come to be the standard response to queries, whether they be honest or not. In fact, it assumes prettty much that there are no honest queries. Goin back to Paw's classification of "non-victims", "...and there are those who want to understand but don't quite understand the dynamics of the situation". Since this was the only classification he gave which sounded even halfways favorable, my questionis, what dynamics? I mean, I took plenty of dynamics in college, but it applied to meteorology and not sexual abuse. If it is a simple statement that non victims cannot understand what a victim has gone through, well, accepted. But with the above statements, and several others, including Wordwolf's recent post, and some things I was told in a private message, it seems more like a message that there is no one who really wants to understand if they haven't already accepted. Linda and Paw are hardly the only people who I have seen state or imply that they know the sexual abuse happened because they personally know or have personally talked with victims. (See the opening of Linda Z's "Why some don't get the sexual abuse stories" thread I referred to yesterday). Yet everyone else seems expected to accept second or third hand and/or anonymous accounts on the internet without question, by the same people who would probably be very suspicious (as I was) if their doughter (or son) were asked to travel out of town to spend time with someone they had only met in cybersoace. That leaves no one, evidently, who does not accept everything that is said on faith, who is honestly seeking to know and who is ready to accept what they learn. Dot's statements above look, well, very true. But in applying them, it seems that , for example, "someone would say the picture was altered" becomes "everyone would say...", and I guess I should resign myself to that being understandable. I suppose someone who has been hurt doesn't have a basis to trust me more than tjose who have given hurtful responses when they don't know me any better. Thus the response I got, I guess, from another long time poster...one of the few GSers in fact with whom I have had personal contact (on the phone in this case), in response to an inquiry about getting personal first hand testimony, that I woul have to believe the second hand and anonymous accounts, because if I had personal testimony, "you wouldn't believe it anyway". Which is why we are starting to get posts that say, basically, "what has been posted over the years is all you're going to get; find it and dig it out yourself, you are not going to get any more". And they key is , I guess, that if someone's been deeply hurt, they're probably not going to care whether I believe it or not, so why hurt themselves further to satisfy the queries of someone they dont know and from their view is probably going to hurt them more. Understood. But frustrating.