Posts by GrreatTeacher

10

Unitarian Universalist: Anyone Familiar?

by Darkknight757 in

i hope you are all doing well.. has anyone had an encounter with a unitarian universalist?

my wife has a friend who invited us to their church a few years ago.

we never went lol.

GrreatTeacher

Yes. I had a short foray into Unitarian Universalist land about 15 years ago.

In short, they are very liberal Christians to the point that they're not exclusively Christian or even religious.

It's mostly a feel good meeting place for agnostics who still like the the comfort and ritual of meeting together at "church."

The one I visited a few times had Christian groups, Jewish groups, and pagan groups meeting separately. There was a feel good generically inspirational service on Sunday mornings as well as children's Sunday School.

I only met one person I knew there. After the meeting I saw my sister! We had both left the witnesses a few years earlier. I think it was an obvious step down from JWism to non attendance.

I now don't feel the need to go to any services and am rather atheistic. I think there was an element of buying in to societal expectations that "good people go to church."

I'm beyond that now and enjoy my relaxing Sunday mornings at home snoozing in and making homemade pancakes.

18

Child pornography should NOT be automatically handled by a judicial committee

by pistolpete in

new information added to the "shepherd the flock elder's book" .

they have updated their policy on viewing child pornography.. from a congregation standpoint it is not viewed as child sex abuse and is something that should not be automatically handled by a judicial committee.

it states that a person viewing child pornography should be strongly counseled.

GrreatTeacher

Yes, call Legal.

Disgusting.

I'm a mandated reporter. That means I must make the report myself. I can tell the guidance counselor or principal, but I have to make an official report myself, regardless of what they say.

I don't know how those elders justify it to themselves when Legal says not to report and they follow that bad advice.

31

I have come to the conclusion that a lot of JWs don't care if the end is near.

by mickbobcat in

i was in the cult for years about 40. fourth gen born in cult member or for me ex cult member.

i have seen so many cult members who don't seem to really care if the end is near or not.

they are much more concerned with the idea that this is their social network and they need and or want it just the way it is.

GrreatTeacher

It's not about Covid at this point.

If Zoom meetings caused them to lose too much money, they'd be right back to meeting in person.

Likely, Zoom has reduced expenses for physical buildings, and they have managed to convince enough people to continue their regular donations online so that they are doing even better financially.

I expect more Kingdom Hall selloffs. They might keep some assembly halls for megachurch style meetings periodically for extra donations.

Watchtower is interested in money, money, money. How to spin it doctrinally is a minor consideration.

I'm sure any of us old timers could come up with two good sounding Watchtower articles easily, one FOR going back to in person meetings and one AGAINST.

Anyone have 20 minutes and want to give it a try?

23

TRICKY WORDS and why not to use them

by Terry in

jw
friends

tricky words .

perfectly good words go unused in writing and speaking.

their meaning isn't clear and the eye is 'tricked' by similarity to other words or sounds.. .

GrreatTeacher

Another one:

It's PREROGATIVE not PEROGATIVE.

I'll retain my PREROGATIVE to silently judge you on your grammar.

And, dear God, if one more person starts a sentence with "Me and my friend," I think I'll have a stroke.

You cannot start a sentence with "me." Everyone actually knows this because you never hear people say, "Me went to the store."

But, SOMEHOW, when you add your friend in, it's suddenly okay? "Me and my friend went to the store?" No! "Me" is only used at the end of a sentence ( loosely speaking, it's an objective pronoun) as in, "The clerk told ME that the store was closing soon."

The beginning of the sentence pronoun is, "I." "I went to the store."

Also, when speaking of yourself and others, you don't mention yourself first. It should be, "My friend and I went to the store."

I hate, hate, hate this elemental piece of grammar mistake. And, I even hear some teachers using it. I can correct my students, but I can't correct other teachers.

Since when do we not even care about basic grammar?!?

PS Runner up: "Gonna." Many people use this in casual speech and I don't have a problem with that.

But, the number of newscasters on TV, who should be speaking Standard English, who say, "gonna" instead of "going to" is mindblowing in the US. Listen carefully and count how many times this happens. Local news, national news, all of them. And usually they're reading teleprompters which likely have "going to" spelled out properly and yet it gets read as "gonna." This is not a writing problem, but a speech problem.

Seriously, watch multiple newscasts and count the numbers. It's actually shocking.

23

TRICKY WORDS and why not to use them

by Terry in

jw
friends

tricky words .

perfectly good words go unused in writing and speaking.

their meaning isn't clear and the eye is 'tricked' by similarity to other words or sounds.. .

GrreatTeacher

The confusion of WEARY and WARY drives me crazy.

If you're WEARY of something, you're tired of it.

If you're WARY of something, you're unsure and distrustful of it.

Also, TENET vs. TENANT:

A TENET is a belief or principle, e.g. pacifism is a tenet of Quakerism.

A TENANT is an individual who rents and lives in a property. "The tenant moved in after paying a security deposit and two months' rent."

You don't hear this one much, but it's jarring when you do hear it incorrectly: INTER vs. INTERN.

People are INTERRED in a grave. An INTERN is a person who trains in a new job temporarily to gain experience, with or without pay.

To speak about the dead guy who's "interned here" always makes me wonder whether he'll come back to life after his graveyard "internship" is up!

17

The Crazy World of Online Deliveries

by Simon in

jw
friends

you order something online, and get the notification it's been shipped.. "ooh look, it's only coming from 500 miles away and there's a major route from there to here.

i bet it'll be put on a truck or maybe a train and here in a day or two.

great!".

GrreatTeacher

Well robins are cute with their red breast and everything, but carrier pigeons are better for long distance travel.😜

17

The Crazy World of Online Deliveries

by Simon in

jw
friends

you order something online, and get the notification it's been shipped.. "ooh look, it's only coming from 500 miles away and there's a major route from there to here.

i bet it'll be put on a truck or maybe a train and here in a day or two.

great!".

GrreatTeacher

Ha ha! That's good.

Boxing Day: when the box is left leaning against the door and you trip, fall, and get a black eye when leaving the house

Virginia Creeper: when the box is left behind the potted plants so as to not be visible from the street and you only find it when pulling weeds

Sing and Fling: when the Amazon driver pulls right up next to your front door so as to not miss the song he's listening to and throws the package out the window in the direction of your porch a la the paper boy. ( Caught that happening to the house next door, so I opened my side window and waved, and he backed right down the driveway real quick! )

FedeXtravaganza: when the FedEx truck, the UPS truck and the Amazon truck are making deliveries to immediate neighbors and there's not enough parking on the street. Once a school bus was added in the mix as it stopped to drop off the little girl next door. All traffic stopped and they just couldn't figure out how to do all their deliveries without blocking the street

Naked Delivery: UPS has run out of brown trucks so have rented a Hertz rental van in plain white of course. Amazon shows up in an unmarked brown Toyota Highlander.

"I shipped my pants!": what one yells triumphantly after completing an online order

There must be more.

17

The Crazy World of Online Deliveries

by Simon in

jw
friends

you order something online, and get the notification it's been shipped.. "ooh look, it's only coming from 500 miles away and there's a major route from there to here.

i bet it'll be put on a truck or maybe a train and here in a day or two.

great!".

GrreatTeacher

Yeah it does.

Also the notification that it's been delivered and then another notification stating that it's still 500 miles away.

Why even text me? I'll just check the front porch once a day like I do for the regular mail delivery.

Other craziness: I order about a half dozen things from one retailer. They each come separately!

I can't even try to fathom what kind of algorithm could be responsible for this.

7

Portrait of a Girl and Her Dog

by Terry in

jw
friends

portrait of a girl and her dog.

her name was cheryl ann draper and she was about 11 years old the day she begged her daddy to let her go with him to work at the gas station.

he had never let her come along before; no matter how many times she pleaded.

GrreatTeacher

I'm one of the least emotional persons on the planet, but I do feel emotion when you write, Terry.

Photos are so quotidian now. It's hard to explain to younger people how much time and patience and expectation went into carefully curating 27 photos that you couldn't see until the big reveal many weeks later.

Finally getting that stack of photos was so exciting, all the moreso because of The Big Wait.

8

Anyone have this happen?

by mickbobcat in

my wife and i went to a restaurant we go to a few times a year.

we waited for a bit but not horrible to get our drinks and food.

the place was busy but not people waiting in line for a mile to get in busy.

GrreatTeacher

I've always paid cash. If nobody came in a timely manner, we just throw cash on the table, get up and leave. Like Carla says, getting up to leave gets their attention and the waitstaff will immediately go grab the cash.

This was standard operation about 20 years ago. Even with attentive staff. Just throw $40 on the table, tell the waiter that the extra is for them and leave. Never used to wait to be "checked out."

Even today if we use a debit card, we always tip in cash and give it directly to the waiter. Weird things can happen to digital tips like never making it to the actual server.