Thats right ....... thanks for the recollection Paw ........ it was via cel phone while we were all in chat.
Didn't we have a boot button in that chatroom where if someone was hostile or down right vulgar we could boot them. If they had like three boots they were out of there for a day or so compeletely and could not return?
I remember booting someone along with two others booting at the same time ...... this guy was a real pervert and he disappeared ......... it was great we were able to make him go because he was a predator.
Would appreciate you filling my brain in with the correct info ........ its been so many years and I was going thru cancer at that time so a few days in there were fuzzy.
I like a lot this Site. Thank you for your work and for your time. It helps me a lot. But I want to know why you do not do actualizations of the front page? For example the news of Mrs Wierwille death. :D
Let’s take a quick trip backwards about 8-10 years earlier.
The Internet, which had been gaining popularity for years, was now the stomping ground for followers of the Way as well as exway. I had first gotten “online” in the late 80’s and got on the “world wide web” in the early 90’s.
I spent many hours looking for any info on the Way. I had been out long enough to look and see what had happened. My searches came up empty, but then the searches weren’t at all like “Google.” Every year or so, I would do a search and not find a thing.
I was happy with my life sans PFAL and The Way. But I had many questions that had never been answered. I had seen brief glimpses of the sexual abuse. I always thought that it was an individual problem and had NO idea that it was systemic.
In the late 90’s, I found Trancenet. It was hard to follow and very chaotic. I didn’t get involved, just read some and lost interest. About a year later, I did my annual search and that yielded, Waydale. This site had some testicular fortitude. I read the site quite a bit for a few weeks. I had no idea about the forums. Then one day I saw the forums, once I clicked that button, my life would take a strange new twist.
Orange Cat, Larry the naked lawyer, a dentist, Karl and some guy named extwi were amongst the characters lurking in this forum. I was not familiar with “forums” and found them similar to newsgroups but more linear. I enjoyed the banter going on. I had no idea how long this group had interacted, but they had this common bond, The Way International. Some of them were “corps”, that was scary. I had found that members of the Corps were “cliquish” I read and enjoyed with no intention to post.
Extwi would reply to requests or questions in a matter of minutes. My first impression was that he had way too much time on his hands. He ran a tight ship. I liked the format and thought that it could have many useful applications (I was on the cutting edge, but on an old blade -- ezboard had 1000’s of boards from Wicca to Baldness cures already up)
I read the forums every day. I was being updated on the status of TWI. No more Emporia, No more Rome City and NO MORE Rock of Ages! PFAL is replaced by WAP; no more green, it is replaced by RED. I was intrigued by the players and the changes.
In a matter of a few weeks, Pawtucket would be born....
Wow, Paw. In those early days, I wasn't evey aware of the Internet, but was hearing a lot of this stuff third hand from the networking that we had going, "live" from people who we kept in contact with scattered all over the country over the years. Now some of them are here as posters (Alfakat, Radar, NoLongerLurking (or working, for that matter), Suz, etc.) and we've reconnected, but I love hearing how this place came to be.
I continued reading the Waydale site on a daily basis. I saw that there was a systemic problem with the Way. The Bible was not so much the Word of God as it was becoming a means to justify morally despicable actions. Multiple tiers of privilege existed and the corruption was greater as you looked higher on the tiers. The Way was not a special group with the hand of God protecting it. It was a corporate business. God wasn’t even on the board.
I was at a point in my life that I was generally happy. I had dealt with some demons of my own. I was content. I never liked content. I had goals and dreams that hadn’t been realized and I examined them; purged the unrealistic and sought some new ones. Reading Waydale was bringing up a lot of anger in me.
I wondered what had happened to a number of old friends in the way. One girl, in particular, that I had absolutely lost track of was on my mind to reconnect. Waydale had started a “friend finder” forum. I wanted to put her name in the forum. This meant that I had to register. I didn’t want to use my real name. When I knew this girl, Pam, I was the only person from Pawtucket, so I thought that would be a good name to use. I posted in the friend finder forum and within about a week, I was connected to her. She was in North Carolina.
I then tracked down two other friends from RI. Low and behold, they were in North Carolina also. Well I decided that I would take some time off and fly over to see them later that year.
During the interim, I started posting on Waydale. And somewhere in this time, I got involved with “The Billboard Project”
Wow Paw - GS was one of those job that if you don't do it you have no idea!! I came from WayDale to GS and had a lot of trouble with my computer for some reason. And you were so patient and nice in helping me get up and running. Who knew!
I used to come to GS a whole lot but I'm only able to come every once in a while now but I am still blessed that it is here for me to come to.
Thanks so much for everything you've done and continue to do for all of us. And thanks for sharing all the stuff you are - it's really nice to know.
I too thought I had gotten over twi in my time too. I left twi in 1986. I looked year after year for anything on twi on the web. I found WayDale and was shocked what had happened in twi. It stirred up a lot of emotions and I have never ever had one nice thing to say about twi ever since and never will.
I signed up at GSC while WD was still up and running. All the action was at WD. Very heavily moderated as it had to be because of the lawsuite. Well after the lawsuite was over and waydale closed down I came to GSC. I really did not like it at all. I liked the heavy moderation as WD had and its' one purpose. It took me awhile to get used to the more free flowing here at GSC and I got used to it and really began to enjoy GSC. I went away for a couple of years and would check in every once in a while to see if there was any breaking news. GSC had become my link to twi and the going ons'. That was all I needed for that 2 years I was not active on the boards.
I am back on posting. For how long? I don't know. I do know that when I want to see what is happening with twi I can always return to GSC. GSC is such a great place where many different ideas are exchanged and it all seems to work.
I happened across Waydale about a month or two before it closed down so if I haven't publicly thanked you for gs, I'll do it now. THANKS for a truly caring and theraputic site. It showed me where I still needed to get free--and that was in a lot of areas.
Thanks for caring and persevering enough to stick with it and us. The therapy has been priceless!
I honestly can’t say who originally had the idea for putting up a billboard. I believe that it started as a topic in the Waydale forums. The concept was simple, the execution wasn’t.
Jimextwi was putting together an exway site and the billboard was going to have that site’s URL on the billboard. I know that Waydale didn’t want to be involved, alhough the site was gracious enough to let the discussion remain. Redeemed and Dagoo were getting involved as was Jeff, the air force guy. We were still thinking of something short and clever that would catch an innie’s attention. This went on for what seemed like months. Daggoo was doing graphics almost within a day of a new idea. She, rightfully so, got frustrated and too busy to pump out all these graphics.
Monies were being collected and the project was realistically going to go from concept to a billboard. Jim contacted the billboard people. (one thing we hadn’t considered was that New Knoxville wasn’t known for billboards save the ones that TWI put up for themselves.) There was one billboard available that was right at an exit heading right into NK. (igotout, what route was that?)
Somewhere in this time frame, I think, pamsandiego arrived at Waydale.
I took over the graphics, Daggoo gave me some graphics to work with on the billboard. We went through bunches of ideas. Frustration, as I recall, was mounting also. There was no accounting for the money, which I will just say became a lesson learned. That aside, we agreed to get this thing up.
I am not sure who came up with what we finally used, my leaning is to credit pamsandiego. The final “slogan” was “YOUR DOUBTS, Are Real & Reasonable” Everyone thought that would catch attention. So I did some mockups for everyone’s approval.
Jim put up some content on the website, www.exwayworld.com, so that they would have a place to go to if they tried to access the URL. The site was in it’s infancy, so we had a link to Waydale at the site also. I believe there was a link to Jim’s Yahoo site.
I took my vacation the week the billboard went up to North Carolina. The billboard went up on a Friday in the afternoon. Just in time for Sunday night services? Within 12 hours the site had been hit with graffiti. New Knoxville is not known for it’s graffiti problem. They painted over the URL.
Within 13 hours, everyone and their cousins was asking on the forums, “why did you put the URL so low on the billboard?” LOL
The billboard was up for over a month. There wasn’t a scientific way to find out if it “worked”. The project became legendary, but not for the intended reasons. No tangible results.
Leap forward about 3-4 years. I met up with an old friend. She had been in my twig, many moons earlier. I went to her apartment to meet her son and daughter. I arrived just as a fellowship was ending. We caught up on each others lives. During the evening, I told her about Greasespot (Not something I usually do) She was not familiar with it. I told her about the billboard project and her eyes lit up as did some of the others in the room.
She then proceeded to tell me about a girl that went to her fellowship, but wasn’t there that evening. This girl and some family members had left in the past 2 years and what got them thinking about leaving was this billboard that read, “Your doubts are real and reasonable” Well I don’t tear up while drinking coffee, but I did that night. The billboard DID have some tangible results.
Here is a picture of the billboard right after it went up.
wow! that's the first time i've heard of the billboard!! i have chills - well done, and kudoos to those who had the gumption to accomplish it. i'm so glad you had a picture to post too - what great graphics!
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nellie
just a little nudge...
you're such a good story teller! looking forward to the next installment!
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Digitalis
Thats right ....... thanks for the recollection Paw ........ it was via cel phone while we were all in chat.
Didn't we have a boot button in that chatroom where if someone was hostile or down right vulgar we could boot them. If they had like three boots they were out of there for a day or so compeletely and could not return?
I remember booting someone along with two others booting at the same time ...... this guy was a real pervert and he disappeared ......... it was great we were able to make him go because he was a predator.
Would appreciate you filling my brain in with the correct info ........ its been so many years and I was going thru cancer at that time so a few days in there were fuzzy.
More story would be great,
Digi
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themex
Paw
I like a lot this Site. Thank you for your work and for your time. It helps me a lot. But I want to know why you do not do actualizations of the front page? For example the news of Mrs Wierwille death. :D
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pawtucket
Let’s take a quick trip backwards about 8-10 years earlier.
The Internet, which had been gaining popularity for years, was now the stomping ground for followers of the Way as well as exway. I had first gotten “online” in the late 80’s and got on the “world wide web” in the early 90’s.
I spent many hours looking for any info on the Way. I had been out long enough to look and see what had happened. My searches came up empty, but then the searches weren’t at all like “Google.” Every year or so, I would do a search and not find a thing.
I was happy with my life sans PFAL and The Way. But I had many questions that had never been answered. I had seen brief glimpses of the sexual abuse. I always thought that it was an individual problem and had NO idea that it was systemic.
In the late 90’s, I found Trancenet. It was hard to follow and very chaotic. I didn’t get involved, just read some and lost interest. About a year later, I did my annual search and that yielded, Waydale. This site had some testicular fortitude. I read the site quite a bit for a few weeks. I had no idea about the forums. Then one day I saw the forums, once I clicked that button, my life would take a strange new twist.
Orange Cat, Larry the naked lawyer, a dentist, Karl and some guy named extwi were amongst the characters lurking in this forum. I was not familiar with “forums” and found them similar to newsgroups but more linear. I enjoyed the banter going on. I had no idea how long this group had interacted, but they had this common bond, The Way International. Some of them were “corps”, that was scary. I had found that members of the Corps were “cliquish” I read and enjoyed with no intention to post.
Extwi would reply to requests or questions in a matter of minutes. My first impression was that he had way too much time on his hands. He ran a tight ship. I liked the format and thought that it could have many useful applications (I was on the cutting edge, but on an old blade -- ezboard had 1000’s of boards from Wicca to Baldness cures already up)
I read the forums every day. I was being updated on the status of TWI. No more Emporia, No more Rome City and NO MORE Rock of Ages! PFAL is replaced by WAP; no more green, it is replaced by RED. I was intrigued by the players and the changes.
In a matter of a few weeks, Pawtucket would be born....
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dmiller
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jardinero
Wow, Paw. In those early days, I wasn't evey aware of the Internet, but was hearing a lot of this stuff third hand from the networking that we had going, "live" from people who we kept in contact with scattered all over the country over the years. Now some of them are here as posters (Alfakat, Radar, NoLongerLurking (or working, for that matter), Suz, etc.) and we've reconnected, but I love hearing how this place came to be.
Keep it coming, darlin! Great stories!
J.
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dmiller
Geez -- I got my first computer in mid 2003.
It was given to me, and I remember wondering ---
"What the *H* is this thing good for?????"
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HAPe4me
Back to the top with this.
We are enjoying this Paw, more more!
~HAP
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pawtucket
I continued reading the Waydale site on a daily basis. I saw that there was a systemic problem with the Way. The Bible was not so much the Word of God as it was becoming a means to justify morally despicable actions. Multiple tiers of privilege existed and the corruption was greater as you looked higher on the tiers. The Way was not a special group with the hand of God protecting it. It was a corporate business. God wasn’t even on the board.
I was at a point in my life that I was generally happy. I had dealt with some demons of my own. I was content. I never liked content. I had goals and dreams that hadn’t been realized and I examined them; purged the unrealistic and sought some new ones. Reading Waydale was bringing up a lot of anger in me.
I wondered what had happened to a number of old friends in the way. One girl, in particular, that I had absolutely lost track of was on my mind to reconnect. Waydale had started a “friend finder” forum. I wanted to put her name in the forum. This meant that I had to register. I didn’t want to use my real name. When I knew this girl, Pam, I was the only person from Pawtucket, so I thought that would be a good name to use. I posted in the friend finder forum and within about a week, I was connected to her. She was in North Carolina.
I then tracked down two other friends from RI. Low and behold, they were in North Carolina also. Well I decided that I would take some time off and fly over to see them later that year.
During the interim, I started posting on Waydale. And somewhere in this time, I got involved with “The Billboard Project”
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nellie
hmmm...the "billboard project".... wonder what THAT could be....
(i'm really enjoying this paw - thanks!)
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dmiller
:)
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likeaneagle
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Edi
I used to come to GS a whole lot but I'm only able to come every once in a while now but I am still blessed that it is here for me to come to.
Thanks so much for everything you've done and continue to do for all of us. And thanks for sharing all the stuff you are - it's really nice to know.
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TheHighWay
Paw... thanks so much for sharing your story!!!!
Some of these things I knew, from being on WayDale the last year it was up, but much I did not.
Keep it coming!!
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justloafing
I too thought I had gotten over twi in my time too. I left twi in 1986. I looked year after year for anything on twi on the web. I found WayDale and was shocked what had happened in twi. It stirred up a lot of emotions and I have never ever had one nice thing to say about twi ever since and never will.
I signed up at GSC while WD was still up and running. All the action was at WD. Very heavily moderated as it had to be because of the lawsuite. Well after the lawsuite was over and waydale closed down I came to GSC. I really did not like it at all. I liked the heavy moderation as WD had and its' one purpose. It took me awhile to get used to the more free flowing here at GSC and I got used to it and really began to enjoy GSC. I went away for a couple of years and would check in every once in a while to see if there was any breaking news. GSC had become my link to twi and the going ons'. That was all I needed for that 2 years I was not active on the boards.
I am back on posting. For how long? I don't know. I do know that when I want to see what is happening with twi I can always return to GSC. GSC is such a great place where many different ideas are exchanged and it all seems to work.
Thanks Paw for an awsome site.
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nellie
bumping this back up to the top, 'cause paw - it's hump day. two days left in this week in which you promised another installment!
gotta feed your adoring public, doncha know!
hugs
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GT
Flashback:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010201090700/...sespotcafe.com/
Images don't load well but....
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waterbuffalo
Paw, I LOVE those ads! Wow! So, cool!
I happened across Waydale about a month or two before it closed down so if I haven't publicly thanked you for gs, I'll do it now. THANKS for a truly caring and theraputic site. It showed me where I still needed to get free--and that was in a lot of areas.
Thanks for caring and persevering enough to stick with it and us. The therapy has been priceless!
wb
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pawtucket
The Billboard project
I honestly can’t say who originally had the idea for putting up a billboard. I believe that it started as a topic in the Waydale forums. The concept was simple, the execution wasn’t.
Jimextwi was putting together an exway site and the billboard was going to have that site’s URL on the billboard. I know that Waydale didn’t want to be involved, alhough the site was gracious enough to let the discussion remain. Redeemed and Dagoo were getting involved as was Jeff, the air force guy. We were still thinking of something short and clever that would catch an innie’s attention. This went on for what seemed like months. Daggoo was doing graphics almost within a day of a new idea. She, rightfully so, got frustrated and too busy to pump out all these graphics.
Monies were being collected and the project was realistically going to go from concept to a billboard. Jim contacted the billboard people. (one thing we hadn’t considered was that New Knoxville wasn’t known for billboards save the ones that TWI put up for themselves.) There was one billboard available that was right at an exit heading right into NK. (igotout, what route was that?)
Somewhere in this time frame, I think, pamsandiego arrived at Waydale.
I took over the graphics, Daggoo gave me some graphics to work with on the billboard. We went through bunches of ideas. Frustration, as I recall, was mounting also. There was no accounting for the money, which I will just say became a lesson learned. That aside, we agreed to get this thing up.
I am not sure who came up with what we finally used, my leaning is to credit pamsandiego. The final “slogan” was “YOUR DOUBTS, Are Real & Reasonable” Everyone thought that would catch attention. So I did some mockups for everyone’s approval.
Jim put up some content on the website, www.exwayworld.com, so that they would have a place to go to if they tried to access the URL. The site was in it’s infancy, so we had a link to Waydale at the site also. I believe there was a link to Jim’s Yahoo site.
I took my vacation the week the billboard went up to North Carolina. The billboard went up on a Friday in the afternoon. Just in time for Sunday night services? Within 12 hours the site had been hit with graffiti. New Knoxville is not known for it’s graffiti problem. They painted over the URL.
Within 13 hours, everyone and their cousins was asking on the forums, “why did you put the URL so low on the billboard?” LOL
The billboard was up for over a month. There wasn’t a scientific way to find out if it “worked”. The project became legendary, but not for the intended reasons. No tangible results.
Leap forward about 3-4 years. I met up with an old friend. She had been in my twig, many moons earlier. I went to her apartment to meet her son and daughter. I arrived just as a fellowship was ending. We caught up on each others lives. During the evening, I told her about Greasespot (Not something I usually do) She was not familiar with it. I told her about the billboard project and her eyes lit up as did some of the others in the room.
She then proceeded to tell me about a girl that went to her fellowship, but wasn’t there that evening. This girl and some family members had left in the past 2 years and what got them thinking about leaving was this billboard that read, “Your doubts are real and reasonable” Well I don’t tear up while drinking coffee, but I did that night. The billboard DID have some tangible results.
Here is a picture of the billboard right after it went up.
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themex
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topoftheworld
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Shellon
That was one of the biggest
to twi wasn't it?
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nellie
wow! that's the first time i've heard of the billboard!! i have chills - well done, and kudoos to those who had the gumption to accomplish it. i'm so glad you had a picture to post too - what great graphics!
...and then what happened paw? ;)
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krys
I remember the billboard! I'm glad it helped someone.
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