Personally, I did not suffer greatly in my Bethel experience, although there were some rough patches. Greg had gone ahead by a few years and prepared a house for me. I was already considered a token Bethelite because of frequent visits on weekends (yes, I could afford to fly up for the weekend and buy all the beer). As Greg mentioned, Bert Schroeder accepted him as a second son, and I also benefited by simple proximity besides being a namesake.
Back in Missouri, I was sick of pioneering and was totally depressed, even though my business was doing quite well. I was beginning to tire of my pioneer partners in the congregation and was ready for a complete overhaul emotionally/intellectually/spiritually. Bethel was perfect for me. New York was energetic and I was soon accepted into a group of liberal intellectuals/scholars right from the start.
My newboy instructor was R. Lengtat. Because of Greg, RL later let me participate in a bible study in his room which included my brother and his roommate. He was always wary of me because of my newfound enthusiasm for fresh ideas, which he thought would find their way back to himself through the wrong channels.
I was actually reading the Bible for the first time in my life and now the questions started. I was a raised a JW and had never deliberately read whole books of the Bible. Every new Bethelite is required to read the Bible cover to cover in his first year. This requirement would be the start of some eye-opening information and would soon change my world view as a JW. Did I mention I was developing a collection of Bible commentaries by worldly authors? My biggest supplier of these books was Ciro Alicino. But not too much time would pass when being a liberal thinking JW was not fun any more. There were the thought police, and then the requirements of the religion were becoming difficult to manage with my new beliefs about christianity. I was beginning a non-doctrinal phase.
I finally left Bethel and my next move to becoming an inactive and invisible JW was not a difficult decision, and actually not too hard to do living in NYC. A couple address changes and you're free of the elder calls/visits. Now all the impositions of guilt by others would go away.... and they did.
Warren
wschroeder
JoinedPosts by wschroeder
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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wschroeder
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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wschroeder
Greg says: Betty Botter (aka GS) is my true literary hero. I like to repeat the following to myself (5 times, fast):
Betty Botter bought a bit of bitter butter. But, said Betty Botter, if I use this bitter butter, it will make my batter bitter. So Betty Botter bought a bit of better butter and it made her batter better.
Sam and the savages is still one of my personal faves.
Too much factory air conditioning and UV Glass... I think. Back to the gatherer brother!
I will add some comments made earlier about the bindery basketball and softball teams. Actually, they were my 2 favorite sports, and being on the gatherer with some tall black brothers I was in good company for a lunchtime bball game. One of the overseers of the gatherer was Ollie. Intelligent (and he knew it) and a mouth that never quit, which made him irritating, if not obnoxious. We became good friends after a rough start with each other. Before court trashtalk found its way into sports, he had long before invented and perfected it.
Then there were the spanish-speaking brothers on the bindery floors. Their game was softball. Their overseer was a married brother, whose wife's brother was the soon to be infamous Drew Wasko. The overseer was built like a short football player and ran the NY Marathon each year in something like 3 hours.
While I was pretty good at the game of softball there was one brother, built low to the ground, who could pitch the fastest ball I'd ever seen. If you hit the ball, it was quite by accident I think.
All of this activity was usually a daily event at the factory in good weather. There were a couple concrete courts and a concrete ballfield between the factory buildings and the Fort Greene projects a few blocks away. Midwest whitebread soon learned the ways of city sports and quickly noted that there were no heroes sliding into home plate.
It was usually a big deal to skip lunch to play ball, since that was one of the better meals of the day, and then there was no more food until late afternoon. The evening meal was usually a bit boring for many reasons. So everyone had their tupperware which they begged into the hands of a buddy and stuff with goodies from the lunch tables. You were expected to reciprocate the favor at some point.... Bethelites never forget a favor owed.
As we were all monetarily poor at Bethel, the social interaction of Bethelites and shared resources is still a marvel when you think about it. It has to be one of the blessings of youth and survive on nothing. -
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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wschroeder
I see a couple recent posters who are less than pleased with the discourse/tenor of this thread. I don't understand how you expect to change the context and re-paint my life at Bethel.... that's something that JW's try to do. I thought it was my story.
I often laugh at the movie scenes when the boss says "you're fired", and the employee retorts, "you can't fire me because I quit". It's about the control, whether of the boss, or the employee.
Some exJW's seem to have issues because they lost control.... and they can't seem to find it back after many years. Seems like a lot of wasted time considering the options. -
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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Tom,
I invited my brother to jump in here while all the fun stuff is going on. You will want to contact him personally to find CS. It seems that you and he reached the same point in your spiritual journies. Interesting.....
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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wschroeder
Wow.... I think Zeugma is now indelibly edited into that cavity in the right side of my head. Just need a few more things to keep filling it in.
Speaking of Potassium, weren't they the descendents of Potassius.... or was that the Potassiad? How's my greek?
Cheers,
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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Tom wrote: The press was belching out lots of smoke, which was illegal, and the EPA was trying to catch us, so we were running the press at night so the Society wouldn't get caught polluting and have to pay a big fine.
I got involved in a meeting not long after the dryers were installed on the Harris presses. The gas fumes were polluting and it was my understanding (no verification of this folks) that they were caught by the EPA. We received these large drawings of catalytic converters. You can guess what was the new priority project for the department. -
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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Randy asks: (did you have a nickname, fess up!)
I was the invisible 6'5" Bethelite who worked the whole factory and wandered the pressroom often.
I was deliberately isolated for 3 years. Only one of the 20 or more electricians, (?firstname) Guerrero, from San Antonio, remained my friend and biggest advocate within the department. He was also the smartest electrician (next to me :-) ). He always had a nickname for me, but none that I can remember now..... sorry. When my situation flipped and I had my own work area. On a daily basis he never failed to walk over to my table and put his arm around my shoulder, shake his head sadly, and then smile really big. That's a friend...
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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wschroeder
There is always one person, or more in some cases, that cannot keep a decent level of decorum when drinking. There was an actual incident that made the local Brooklyn Heights paper that involved a whole group of drunken Bethelites, including at least one being arrested by police.
The WTS owned a brownstone on Orange street where a brother, his wife, and children, were being housed. They were often seen at the meals in the Towers dining rooms. This brother was a computer expert with IBM and was part of getting the new MEPS system working on the new IBM computers recently acquired.
When this family moved out, the house became the residence of some Bethelites. I don't know how that was all decided, because one might have guessed it would be passed to a "heavy" and his wife. Seems that the new tenants decided to throw a party, which got out of hand, and one or more of those there got louder and more obnoxious than the neighbors could bear. Apparently, the police were summoned, nobody responded due to the noise. It took a while and the end result was at least one arrest.
An announcement of the incident was made at the breakfast microphone. Soon Bethel was a few members shorter from that point. This episode was so different from the typical announcements of group dismissals (usually for homosexuality) that the whole event stayed the buzz for a while, especially since many of us were reminded every time we walked by the house going to the factory.
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Warren Schroeder from Bethel on Freddy, Kline and the apostate books!
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What a riot Randy...!!!!!
This is the first I've seen these.
When I arrived to work in the factory, or maybe it was Bethel, we were told to do our jobs and not make recommendations for changes. Bethel was already a well-oiled and efficient machine with much smarter people at the helm.
The first thing I was told when I started making recommendations to my overseers in the factory electrical dept. was that things had run very smoothly until that time, and under the auspices of those much more qualified, and I needed to have more experience and seniority before I my recommendations would be taken seriously. 6 months later I would get an important call and a dramatic shift would take place in how I operated within the department. 6 months after that point they began saving a lot more money.
Apostate knowhow was the sublimation of Bethel from within in more ways than might be imagined.
Randy and Tom,
Were you there when the new 4-color Hantscho press(es) arrived. Also, were you part of the process to convert all the MAN presses to offset? This was a conversion project to make 2 MAN letterpress into 1 MAN offset. Also, some new 4 color Hiedelbergs started showing themselves.
In 81-82 they bought a new high speed burst binder and tried to connect it to the WOODHOE (through the floor). I think the integration was a major flop. At the time I was developing a barcode reader for the new highspeed gatherer, that not only would read marks at the folds to "know" if the signature was in the correct bin and not inverted, but also read the collated signatures to check for correct order and kick out bad combos without shutting down the machine.
The presses were already producing "burst" sheets to allow glue flow at the folds. I was already having meetings to discuss the extra printing marks necessary at the creases, but soon I decided I was pretty bored of Bethel at this point and would leave in some months. With most of my confidants gone, and only a huge influx of newboys to deal with. It was like starting over and at the same time the "chill" was in effect. It was very risky to think out loud.
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A Critique of GB Anthony Morriss 2007 Convention Talk - Barb Anderson
by Dogpatch ina painstaking satire/critique of gb anthony morriss 2007 convention talk, .
http://www.freeminds.org/women/morris2007.htm.
they keep following the lamb no matter where he goes".
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wschroeder
Pretty clear why JW's are enthusiastically bored to tears. At least when Freddy was around you could always hear a "new truth" at the summer assemblies.