portrait of a girl and her dog.
(a true story by terry edwin walstrom).
her name was cheryl ann draper and she was about 11 years old the day she begged her daddy, who worked at a gas station, to let her go with him to work.
Very nicely written, I can see these people in my mind, you brought them alive.
I buy and sell antiques, I love finding old photos and speculating about the lives they might have led. I sometimes make up stories about them, sometimes I do a collage art project inspired by them.
during the proceedings of australian royal commission, as many of you, i also took time to share with the office of mr stewart, my thoughts and perspective on what what being said and not said by the witness elders on the stand.
within a day a received a reply from office of angus stewart thanking and appreciating the insight from those on the "inside".
yesterday i received a further email that my correspondence was passed on to case study 29 (jehovah's witnesses) team for their consideration.. it sounds like they are taking all our collective experience and knowledge into account as the commission continues its work..
http://www.people.com/article/vester-lee-flanagan-bryce-willams-the-man-who-allegedly-shot-3-people-live-tv.
people magazine: who was vester lee flanagan, the man who allegedly shot 3 people on live tv?.
born in 1973 in oakland, california, to vester and betty flanagan, he was raised as a strict jehovah's witness.
It's impossible to know how much his Jehovah's Witness upbringing contributed to his issues, it's probably a mixture of both his his upbringing and his bi-polar condition. If he was bi-polar it's likely he would have had issues no matter what his upbringing, but being raised in a doomsday cult can't have helped any that's for sure. The Watchtower engages in very extreme, black and white thinking, not a good thing for people with mental health issues. Perhaps early intervention with a good diagnosis and treatment could have helped, but of course that is discouraged in the religion. We will probably never know what could have prevented this tragedy if anything.
I worked with a woman who had this condition, it was heartbreaking watching her decent into madness. She become more and more manic, decorating her cubicle with plants pictures and rugs, just stuff everywhere, then she photocopied all her poetry, diary, doodles and musings of the last twenty years and gave a copy to everyone in the building, over 100 people, then sent a long email to everyone she knew, including higher ups, listing the many problems of her team and the many failings of her manager. She also had an affair with a married man and nearly destroyed his marriage. It was hard seeing a smart, beautiful woman fall apart, she finally went into depression and never came back.
few realize just how wicked some of the most revered people in history were.
helen keeler (1880 to 1968) was a wolf in sheep's clothing, no hero.
keller was a communist.
This Signs of Satan thing I found on plime.com just now amuses the hell out of me.
If you think Miss Keller’s hand sign is just a coincidence, then you are truly gullible. If you were deaf, and wanted to develop a hand sign to tell someone that you love them, what would it be? A hand over the heart would be reasonable. There is no way that any reasonable person would develop the hand sign that Keller invented, paralleling an existing hand salute to Satan. The above photo is one of Ozzy Osbourne’s Rock-n-Roll album covers. It is abundantly clear to see that Keller’s hand sign praises the Devil.
Oh, I have to admit, the sheer volume of fake research into this is totally astounding. The creators of this site found a lot of pictures of people waving the “I love you” hand sign around and mixed in a lot of pictures of people doing the horn salute thing that sports fans, metal-heads and some satanists have co-opted.
I don’t think Helen Keller invented the love sign. I don’t think the creators of this site know anything about her. I don’t think the creators know much about sign language either.
It’s interesting how the same gesture can mean different things to different people. In Spain, Portugal and Italy, for example, the “Hook’em Horns” sign is a sexual insult aimed at men thought to be adulterers. Plus, the love sign is also a curse of some sort in Italy, according to wiki.
There’s never just one meaning for anything. Hell, even the Nazi swastikastarted off better. It used to be a symbol for good luck. Good luck using it for that now.
share with us memories of the bizarre, funny, strange, what you hated, what you miss...we all have them.
(question..why the big to do between terms- convention and assembly .
Hey, get a room you two.
i am still attending the kh, i actually recently became aware of the ttatt, what i believed came as a huge surprised for me, i wasn't raised as a jw and have been for about 15 years.
i have always been a very open minded individual all my life always seeing both sides of any situation with logic and common sense and so i believe discovering all of the doctrines i have been taught sense 16 years of age, wasn't extremely hard for me to realize in my heart it was a lie.
well it was me discovering the watchtower society being a ngo member of the un nations for 10 years, after that the snowball just got bigger for me.
few realize just how wicked some of the most revered people in history were.
helen keeler (1880 to 1968) was a wolf in sheep's clothing, no hero.
keller was a communist.
Helen Keller was a socialist, not a communist. She was passionate about workers rights because she was shocked to learn many people became blind due to industrial and work conditions and lack of safety and regulations at the time. She was not alone in her views, many people were interested in workers rights at the time. On paper, socialism seemed like a good thing, history had yet to prove that it didn't work and would result in people losing their individual rights. It's ridiculous to judge people of a hundred years ago by our standards today and what we know now. J. Edgar Hoover was a paranoid nut case, having him keep a file on you meant nothing.
The Satan worshiping angle is pure nonsense, not only untrue, but silly. Please do more research before posting fake internet stories.
interesting article about a small religious cult in chicago.
a man who grew up in the cult and suffered abuse set about to make a documentary about the religion.
he didn't set out to make it about sex abuse, but in interviewing people he found out a lot of people had been molested as well.
Interesting article about a small religious cult in Chicago. A man who grew up in the cult and suffered abuse set about to make a documentary about the religion. He didn't set out to make it about sex abuse, but in interviewing people he found out a lot of people had been molested as well. He was isolated and shunned for making an accusation.
Interesting in the comments section some people are still trying to minimize the abuse and pretend he was exaggerating. It seems to be like the JWs, if it didn't happen to you, it couldn't have happened to anyone else.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/jessehyde/bringing-down-americas-happiest-christian-cult-842#.qtmyWXdpzr
when i was an elder in the 80s, a 16 year old baptized jw girl had confessed that at school during lunch a boy kissed her and touched her privates over her dress.
the circuit overseer was in town and we told him of the situation and he called the society and then told us that mother said we were not allowed to conduct the funeral in the kingdom hall or anywhere else with the threat of removing us and being dealt with judicially if we disobeyed.
the mother who is about 79 years old comes once a year to talk to my mom about the situation.
That is truly a tragedy for everyone involved. How can anyone think this organization has God's blessing when they are so lacking in love, the thing that Jesus said would be the mark of his true followers?
Of course we were all conditioned to think this callous indifference was needed discipline, and the rank and file were kept ignorant of how cruel they could be. The organization was good at making you think black was white.
