Film Review: The River, by Jean Renoir

Film Review: The River, by Jean Renoir
The River is one of my all time favorite films. I saw bits of it several times on the late late show in my younger days. It always struck me as a "neat film" but I could never find out the title or see the whole thing. Recently I found it and watched and it has now become one of my most favorites. I give is 5 starts on my netflix rating and I only give 5 starts to my absolute favorites such Bergman's The Seventh Seal. The River is a strange film directed by Jean Renoir. Renoir was a great director, and son of the famous Painter. The first time I saw the river I had no idea who made it. I came to respect Renoir, years before I  knew about the River. Probably his most famous works are Rules of the Game, and Grand Illusion both "must sees" for anyone who pretends to a good knowledge of film as an art form. These were made in the 1930s when Renoir was at the top of his game, one of the true  greats of cinema in Europe. The River, on the other hand, was made in 1950 released in 1951. By this time Renoir had been ruined in Hollywood and was no longer commercially viable as a director. He was searching for a story that would put him over again. He found a review of the novel The River by Rumer Godden whose major work is probalby Black Narcissus. The River is a true story, the story of  Godden growing up in Bengal. 

Renoir bought the rights to the novel but had no money. No famous American actor would do it. No one wanted to shoot in India, technicolor had never been used in India. This was the first color film made in India it almost didn't get made due to the limitation on shooting in color in a  place with no real film making infrastructure set up to deal with technicolor. Yet the film turned out to be called one of the greatest uses of color in all of film history, on a par with The Red Shoes for its use of color. It's also Renoir's first color film. He just happened to connect with a Florist who wanted to make a movie in India and was interested in that story. The producer knew nothing of film making but had the money and did not have the rights to the film he wanted to do. Renoir had the knowledge and the film rights. They got together.

It's a female coming of age myth, but it transcends that. It's about a girl growing up and experiencing her first crush, unrequited of course, which catapults her out of childhood and gives her her first taste of being an adult. It's a love triangle with four parts, does "love rectangle" make sense? Three young girls are in love with a soldier who comes to India from the war, having lost his leg, to live with his cousin because he's alienated form his native America. The Cousin is Scottish as are the other two families. As the narrator (the adult voice of the youngest girl of the triangle, Harriet) says, "in the war he was a hero, after the war is forgotten he's just a man with one leg." The Cousin is the father of one of the girls who vies for his attention (Melanie played by professional Indian dancer Radha). She's not really as serious as the other two (he is her cousin). The other two are Valerie (Adrienne Corri), the oldest (16) and most well developed who is now a young woman and very beautiful with flaming red hair, and the youngest (14) Harriet ("Harry") (Patricia Walters). Harriet's family lives in India in order to manage a jute factory. Jute is a fibrous plant made into rope and also paper. The two neighbor girls belong to families that are also involved in Jute production and all three families are wealthy the standards of the community, although not extravagantly so.

Argument from the Sublime: Good is Sublmie and Evil is a Fall

 


 As I watched tv late the other night I saw one of those Christian stations where they show scenes of nature and play chruch music and you just sit there memorized by the beauty. Then they had a commentary by a guy I like named Paul Williams (not the short blond pudgy song writer of the 70s). This would be the worship network's own Paul Williams. About the only Christian Television I watch, those 'creation spaces.' Williams is about the only Christian talking head I like listening to on Christian tv. He had a little thing about the beauty of nature point beyond themselves to some greater reality because he feels there must be "someone to thank for it all." This reminded me of a God argument on my list I rarely use, no. 9 "argument from the sublime." My argument is a lot more sophisticated than Williams little one liner, but basically hints at the same idea. I was also reminded it of it's corollary and wondered if I could answer it. The corollary: The ugly evil horrible things in nature must also point beyond themselves. Do we also have God to thank for the bad things? If so how do we square that with Christian theology, and if not, why not? The myth of the fall? That opens another can of worms, in the from of "why wold God allow he fall." These are of course perinial questions I've known them all my life, I don't imagine I've solved them and I'm sure they will be around as long as humanity is around.


The other Paul Williams

 The answer that I would tentatively take to the question of the fall must be understood against the background of my argument from sublime. It's ot argument from beauty per se but form the sublime which is somewhat different. The sublime can be either beautiful or terrible, horrible, ugly, monsters, catastrophic. Sublime does not mean "good." It means something beyond, far beyond our understanding or our limits. In the sense of the "terrible sublime" 9/11 was sublime. The Holocaust was sublime. These things totally transcend our limits, our capacity to understand and the framework we keep for the real. The good and the beautiful can surely be sublime as well. the Sunset is  the beautiful sublime, Mother Teresa is the good sublime. To that extent the sublime itself sort of answers the issue of can we infer from evil that we have one to thank for that too? Of course there is always the answer that yes we do have one to blame for evil but it's not God.  On the other hand since this will lead to the issue "isn't God more powerful why couldn't he stop satan," then we can't really just stop there. We need a transcendent overall answer that incorporates the whole.

The answer is, tentatively, that the sublime, being either beautiful or terrible points to a reality beyond the natural, the mundane. It points to a meaning beyond the world and beyond itself, beyond the things that make up the sublime of the moment. We get a sense of the overall profound nature of being and the ground and depth of being. We don't necessarily have a theological answer all wrapped up and ready to go but we can infer one. The sublime is not in itself a fall but evil is. That is to say, evil can surely be sublime, such as the Holocaust, but the evil aspects are not the same kind of thing that the good aspects of subliminal are, they are a fall from the good. How do we know they are a fall? Consider the creative and giving nature of being, love, the good. These are aspects that go together. Goodness is creative it's building it's not destructive, healing is not destroying. There's a sense in which destroying is part of work of healing and building, but in that sense it's not the evil aspects of destruction. The evil aspect is it's pointless non creative part of destruction, such as the Holocaust or 9/11.

Being, in itself the basic thing that it is to be is not to cease being not to destroy or take away but a positive force of being there, a standing firm a sense of giving. Being creates more being. Weather biological organizers, viruses, germs, evolution all the basic forces that enable prolongation of life are also creative of life. Being is giving out and leads to more being. Evil is a falling away from this standpoint of being there and healing and building and giving. Evil is a pointless taking away, destruction. Thus evil is a departure form the original, a falling away from the basic footing of the good or of being. Evil moves toward non being. Evil destructive, it creates no being, it is moving toward a loss of being. Thus the evil aspects have an element that is more than just the terrible sublime but also the pointless falling away form the sublime. That means we resisting tagging God with the responsibility for evil. Evil is moving in a direction away form God and from what God is and God does. Evil is a falling away.

St. Augustine said evil is the absence of the good. Evil is not a valid thing or a positive force is the absence of something. Like atheism is the absence of a belief, evil is the absence of the good. It's a falling away. It's not something God does it's something moves away form God. It's the putting away of God's love and God's presence and being without God. Evil is the absence of God. Now I will present my argument form the sublime and then tie it all up at the end. 





Argument from The Sublime.

A. Aesthetic and Sublime clues to transcendence.

It always used to sound so stupid to me when people would say "O, look at the beautiful sun set, how can people deny that there's a God? (my Mother used to say that). Than after becoming a Christian I saw a really great sunset one day, the sky decked out in orange, pink, Gold, peach, cobalt, cerillian, and all punctuated by the most delicate suffering strips. It suddenly occurred to me why anyone would think that. Because we are the type of beings that are capable of appreciating beauty. It is not merely that aesthetic apprehension is beyond the ability of a dead random universe to produce, but that it spurs us to consider higher things. We realize from the appreciation of these things, art, music, poetry, literature, nature, that there is a realm of the sublime which transcends the mundane world of reductionism. I don't necessarily mean a supernatural realm--it could be a "realm" of our emergent qualities. But the fact that we can appreicate these things indicates that there is more to reality than merely the realm of science, technology, and the that to which reality is reduced by technocratic natrualists who can't appreciate higher possbilities.

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

"Sublime" refers to an aesthetic value in which the primary factor is the presence or suggestion of transcendent vastness or greatness, as of power, heroism, extent in space or time. It differs from greatness or grandeur in that these are as such capable of being completely grasped or measured. By contrast, the sublime, while in one aspect apprehended and grasped as a whole, is felt as transcending our normal standards of measurement or achievement. Two elements are emphasized in varying degree by different writers, and probably varying in different observers: (1) a certain baffling of our faculty with feeling of limitation akin to awe and veneration; (2) a stimulation of our abilities and elevation of the self in sympathy with its object.

That all people, given the right exposure, can appreciate the sublime, beauty in nature and art, in such a way as to seek some realm beyond that of the mudane physical is a direct implication that something more exists to be found. While this is not a proof of God in and of itself, it might be logica to infur from this sense of transcendence that reality is more than just the physical realm, and therefore, even though this is a highly subjective notion, if one finds that God satisfies this urge best of all, than God is probably the object of our longings for the sublime.

Peter Suber's Infinite Reflections
All college address at ST. John's College in Oct. 96
published St John's Review XLIV 2 (1998) 1-59
The Sublimity of the Infinite

"I am profoundly grateful that understanding infinity does not deprive it of its majesty. If the infinite were only interesting because of the paradoxes it generates, and the absorbing academic issues raised by the need to resolve them, then it would not be studied any more than self-reference, a prolific but more pedestrian engine of paradox. But the infinite is also majestic, one might say infinitely majestic."

"An hour under a clear sky at night, looking up, gives some sense of this. The depth of space is a wild blue yonder, not a true, perceived infinity.[Note 34] But it inspires contemplation of the true infinite, and the slightest brush with that idea is breath-taking, invigorating, expanding, lifting, calming, but also agitating, alluring, but also distant and magnificently indifferent. One reason to study mathematics is that you can get these feelings in broad daylight or indoors."

"There are many ways to become precise about these feelings, and many ways to praise and honor the infinite. I'd like to use Kant's term: it is sublime."[Note 35]

Peter Suber's Infinite Reflections
All college address at ST. John's College in Oct. 96
published St John's Review XLIV 2 (1998) 1-59

"Just for comparison, Cantor had a different set of numinous feelings about the infinite. He was not only a great mathematician, but a very religious man and by some standards a mystic. Yet his mysticism was supported by his mathematics, which to him was at least as strong an argument for the mathematics as for the mysticism.[Note 36] Apart from claiming divine inspiration for his work, we don't know exactly what spiritual views he linked to his mathematics, but his theorems[Note 37] give support to the following. Measured in meters, we are tiny specks compared to the universe at large. But measured in dimensionless points, we are as large as the universe: a proper subset, but one with the same cardinality as the whole. Similarly, measured in meters, we may be off in a corner of the universe. But measured in points, the distance is equally great in all directions, whether universe is finite or infinite; that puts us in the center, wherever we are. Measured in days, our lives are insignificant hiccups in the expanse of past and future time. But measured in points of time, our lives are as long as universe is old. We are as small as we seem, but simultaneously, by a most reasonable measure, co-extensive with the totality of being in both space and time. This is truly (as Blake put it) "[t]o see the world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower, hold infinity in the palm of your hand and eternity in an hour."[Note 38]

B. How do we get from the Sublime to God?

The first step is realizing we are the kind of beings who can appreciate the sublime. This appreiciation, though culturally bound, and though it is an aquired taste, stems form our basic nature as personally aware centers of consciousness. This is espeicially true in the way that art makes us think of transcendence. Why should the cold universe be able to produce centers of conscious awareness from dead matter? The structure for awareness must exist in the universe, and since the object of our awareness seems to be a longing for the sublime we can infurr that the answers lies in the sublime, in God.

 Sublime as Co-determinate of Transcendent Reality.

The Internet Encyclopedia of Philsophy
James McCosh writting of Archibold Alison's theories
on the Sublime

"The conclusion, therefore, in which I wish to rest is, that the beauty and sublimity which is felt in the various appearances of matter are finally to be ascribed to their expression of mind; or to their being, either directly or indirectly, the signs of those qualities of mind, which are fitted, by the constitution of our nature, to affect us with pleasing or interesting emotion." There is a singular mixture of truth and error in this statement: truth, in tracing all beauty and sublimity to the expression of mind; but error, in placing it in qualities which raise emotion according to our constitution. Beauty, and sublimity are not the same as the true and the good; but they are the expression and the signs of the true and the good, suggested by the objects that evidently participate in them." {316}

 God is co-determinate of Transcendence.

If there is a higher reality there must be something real about it. To transcend the world is to obtain something of some higher realm. But an empty higher realm is meaningless. Since we are the kind of beings who can percieve the trasncendent we must have been created in such as way that we are capable of understanding the transcendent. If beauty is a sign of the good than the sublime must be a sign of the source of the good. Since we are personally conscious beings capable of reading the transcendent in a sunset we must have been created by a conscious being who is cabable of putting it there.

C) Objection answered.

All The basic objections deal with reducing the phenominon to some naturalistic explaination and naturalizing it.

1) Fear , Terror and beauty.

The skeptic might argue that the sublime is merely the resut of feeling overwhealed by the huge or awed by the beautiful and is therefore merely a stemulous response.

Internet Encyclopedia of Philsophy

http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/s/sublime.htm

"The element of magnitude in beauty was noted by Aristotle, and given by him a prominent place in tragedy. But the earliest extant determination of the sublime as a distinct conception is in the treatise ascribed to Longinus, but now supposed to be of earlier date (first century C.E.). In modern philosophy, it was given special prominence by Edmund Burke in his Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful (1756) and Henry Home in his Elements of Criticism who sought a psychological and physiological explanation. According to Burke, it is caused by a "mode of terror or pain," and is contrasted with the beautiful (rather than being part of the beautiful). Kant also distinguished it as a separate category form beauty, making it apply properly only to the mind, not to the object, and giving it a peculiar moral effect in opposing "the interests of sense." He distinguished a mathematical sublime of extension in space or time, and a dynamic of power. Most subsequent writers on aesthetics tend to bring the sublime within the beautiful in the broader sense insofar as its aesthetic quality is closely related to that of beauty."

a) Can view sublime in saftey.

Suber:

"As long as we are physically safe when viewing the sublime immensity, Kant argues, it helps us know our moral dignity and nonphysical invulnerability undiminished, even accentuated, by our forceful acknowledgment of our physical smallness and frailty."[Note 42]

b) Can't be reduced to any one of these elments.

  Clearlythe sublime is not reducible to just fear, terror, or beauty. If so, why would these three (really two) very different things bring on the same response? And again this is missing the mark. The real question is why are we the sort of beings who can experience this sense? Animals in nature navigate to a large extent by pattern recognition. We should not be surprised to find that we did evolve a sense of the sublime, we are after all physical creates and we evolved. On the other hand why would be evolve such a highhanded sense of it? And moreover, since it is not reducible to any one of these things, but may be triggered by them (as well as by mathematics and abstractions) than it is transcendent in itself beyond any of these reductionist accounts.

2) Pattern recognition.

Of course the reductionists will tell us that beauty and aesthetics began as some form of communication, it helped us determine who to mate with and how to avoid posion berries or something. To take that line is merely silly. It simpley reduces these things to less than they are. If we catch a glipse of the sublime we do understand that "something is afoot in the universe" (uh, Godwise).

a) Not reduceable to immensity or beauty.

The Recognition of certain states of being, or tensions produced by being dwarfed in immensity bring on the sublime.
Peter Suber's Infinite Reflections
All college address at ST. John's College in Oct. 96
published St John's Review XLIV 2 (1998) 1-59

"Kant's theory of the sublime does not rest on these Cantorian theorems. His chief thesis for our purposes is that, "That is sublime in comparison with which everything else is small."[Note 39] Clearly the infinitely large is a perfect fit for this definition.[Note 40]

"The sublime is not an easy notion, and the best approach to it may be via negativa, showing how it differs from something familiar, the beautiful. Sticking only to those differences which bear most on the sublimity of the infinite, Kant says that the beautiful concerns a bounded object while the sublime object can be unbounded; the beautiful is compatible with charms while the sublime is not; the beautiful attracts the mind while the sublime both attracts and repels it; and the beautiful "seems as it were predetermined for our power of judgment" while the sublime is "incommensurate with our power of exhibition, and as it were violent to our imagination, and yet we judge it all the more sublime for that."[Note 41]

"The infinitely large meets these criteria almost by design. The infinitely large is unbounded, incommensurate with our powers of imagination, and to engage and satisfy us it no more needs charm than spring water needs sugar. It is so large that some of its proper subsets are just as large, a property shared by no finite magnitude."

"What triggers the feeling of the sublime most is immensity. Immensity in turn makes us feel a tension between two aspects of ourselves. On the one hand it makes us feel the inadequacy of our senses and imagination. On the other it makes us feel that there is more to us than senses and imagination, whose adequacy cannot be brought into question by immensity, no matter how spectacular or infinite. This second dimension of ourselves is not conception but moral vocation. While physically the immensity dwarfs us into insignificance, this very fact highlights that within us which is not dwarfed.
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philsophy James McCosh writting of Archibold Alison's theories
on the Sublime


"But there is a higher element than all this in beauty; an element seen by Plato and by those who have so far caught his spirit,-- such as, Augustine, Cousin, MacVicar, and Ruskin, but commonly overlooked by men of science and the upholders {315} of the association theory. The mere sensations or perceptions called forth by the presence of harmonious sounds, colors, and proportional forms, is not the main ingredient in the lovely and the grand. Beauty, after all, lies essentially in the ideas evoked. I hold by an association theory on this subject. But the ideas entitled to be called aesthetic should be of mind, and the higher forms of mind, intellectual and moral. There was, therefore, grand truth in the speculation of Plato, that beauty consists in the bounding of the waste, in the formation of order out of chaos; or, in other words, in harmony and proportion. There was truth in the theory of Augustine, that beauty consists ill order and design; and in that of Hutcheson, that it consists in unity with variety. Alison had, at times, a glimpse of this truth, but then lost sight of it. He speaks with favor of the doctrine held by Reid, that matter is not beautiful in itself, but derives its beauty from the expression of mind; he holds it true, so far as the qualities of matter are immediate signs of the powers or capacities of mind, and in so far as they are signs of those affections or dispositions of mind which we love, or with which we are formed to sympathize. He thus sums up his views: "

b) Therefore, not reduceable to patterns.

"The idea in the pattern recognition argument is that patterns that trigger the sense of the sublime key us in to the feelings of fear or beauty that we have experinced in the past and almost hypnotically cerate the sense of awe. Nevertheless the concept is comlpex and cannot be reduced to merely a sring of patterns. This argument makes sense in thinking of music or visual effects, but form the sense of aloneness in nature or the night sky we are reaction to more than juat pattern recognition. IT can also affect us with new pattterns or with non -physical phenomena such as mathematics."

3) Chemical determinism.

a) Functionalist can't make good on their claims.

The brain/mind reductionists that try to say that consciousness is nothing more than chemicals in the brain (brain function) are simpley missing the point. Here is a long (I mean really long long long) boring dry but excellently scientific article showing that these guys are no where near figuring out what consciousness is, and that the complexity of the brain is still so vast we can look in wonderment at the sunset and dream of trasncendent possibilities, and commune with nature and sense God's reality without fear that we are nothing more than an accidently produced batch of neurons chemicals. Lantz Miller (who is not a Christian and it not a religious article) The Hard Sell of Human Consciousness (part I).
(See also the answers below on Consciousness argument which draw upon Miller's work)

b) Reduction loses phenomena.

To reduce the sublime to mere chemical determinism or brian functionalism loses the phenomena. When we try to analyze or disect the sublime we lose the charictoristics that trigger it. These attempts merely ignore what is being experienced.

4) Evolutionary function.

One of the major arguments is that we appreciate beauty as an evolutionary function so that we will seek out the better mates and have good genes. But this is super reductionism that ignores all kinds of phenomena. I do not get horny looking at sunset s or studying set theory, I do sense the sublime on those occassions. The sublime is a value added proposition and there is basically no reason for it in evolution.

More on Wednesday.

Annoucement for Atheist Watch

This is just a quick announcement. In the past I have posted hap hazardly but from now on I'll be posting every MWF. Please look for new posts on those days. This friday I have a good one respoinding to artical by an atheist talking head who has lied about a study and gotten his facts from doubious sources. He is

Hrafnkell Haraldsson From the Politicus USA blog 

responding to his article "Some Hard Truths about Prayer and Crime."

My Second Testimony part 2:

Me



Looking back on it things actually were better after we left the house. At the time, however, we couldn't see that. Then it seemed like the end. We were scared, we were homeless, we couldn't find an apartment because we had "financial leper" on our credit. Since 9/11 getting an apartment in Dallas was next to impossible. When I first moved away form my parents and went to New Mexico back in 80, no one cared who I was or what my credit was. I gave them money they gave me an apartment. By 2006, however, in Dallas, it was next to impossible even if your credit was good. It really seemed like the end. I began saying "I am dead, I died, they just haven't told the corpse to lay down yet." I also began to say "God has cursed me." "God loves to crush his own guys, this is what I get for caring about my parents." You know I was practicing for the glee club. I was a tower of faith. We did find an apartment, we had a couple of thousand dollars from the guy who bought the house (because he was a Christian he said) even though the mortgage company actually makes them promise not to help the victim, not to give more than the mortgage price in a short sale. It's set up so the the victim losing the house can't get anything for his/her hard earned ears of struggle to buy the house. He bought the furniture and car and then let us keep them.

One of the main things that was crushing was that our relatives wouldn't take us in . My sister would say "I love you, but I don't want you living with me." I would say "but the alternative is we will die in the gutter." She would say "trust God, God wont let that happen." I would mock that all the way back to Dallas (she lived near Dallas--Tarrant county). "I love you but don't bother my life with little things like dying in the gutter." I called every single person I know not one single one of them was willing to either save the house or give us a place to live. Even people who I knew had the bread would not part with it. No one will put their life off to help you save yours. That's what got me. Nevertheless I wouldn't do that either. We took in a homeless guy once, he was someone we knew, a friend of the family. It was as total disaster. There needs to be government help. Individuals just don't have the resources. Everyone is on the brink anyway.

We got an apartment, but the only one would get was in a little town wedged between Farmers Branch and Dallas, called "Addison." It was a roach infested dump filled with drug trafficking. I don't say that just because it looked like the kind of place that would have drug dealing. It was little subtle signs like a vile of crystal meth we found  on the ground as we moved in. The time a guy stood outside our little semi-patio looking up to the balcony of the apartment above us, speaking in a false whisper but really shouting "Hey, there's a cop sitting in the parking lot! Hide the stuff!" The other guy shouting back "shut up! get out of here!" Other clues like the time I was sitting in the semi-patio so I was hidden by a wall that was about chest high if I stood, these four guys stood on just the other side, not knowing I was there, and saying things like "do you have the stuff?" "Yes, do you have the bread?" The real give away was the knife fight in front of the door. We thought they were knocking on our door, it was actually one guy banging the other's head into the door. When it was over the crowd dispersed (entertainment in the ghetto, big crowd, Saturday night at the fights). I was sitting behind that wall again and the cops were on the other side looking around and one said "where's the bat? He dropped it over here" the other one said "you have got to stop losing evidence."

We would drive all over town looking for jobs. We spent our days frantically looking, vision of death in the gutter not knowing what the future held. Everything went wrong. You know looking for work is the worst. Every step of the way thirty years of Christianity went down the drain and I was saying "God has cursed me. I am going to die in the gutter!" By night I was "super apologist!" Able to leap to tall conclusions in a single assumption. By day I was this quivering mass of whining, "why did you do this to me?" "why don't you like me anymore?" By night I counseled atheists about God's love, while calling them names of course, by day I was not buying a word of my own crap.  I still believed in God but I was scared, humiliated, angry, resentful and really wasn't seeing God's work in my life in a positive way at all right then. My legs were getting worse. I couldn't afford to bandage them. The reaction of other Christians to my need for bandages was not conducive to feelings of God's love. They were stingy bastards who found infinite and sanctimonious excuses not to help. One guy, who had been a "real friend" on the net told me he would help then never sent any money. I asked him "I haven't banged in days" he said "you are talking food out of my children's mouths!" So why did you say you would help? Why didn't you just say "I can't afford it?" Then at least I wouldn't be let down?

My legs had gotten to the point that I big infections all over them. There spots that were totally dark purple. The specialist wouldn't see me anymore because I couldn't pay him. I was trying to care for them myself based upon what he had taught me. The skin was very thin and was always breaking. The blood would dry and stick the bandages to my skin, I would pull off more skin in bandaging, bleed profusely and my legs looked like raw meat. We have a friend, the brother of our best friend we know since first grade. We look him into the apartment for a time because he was homeless. He saw me bandaging my legs, this guy is tough, he's had fights as an adult a lot, he prides himself on being a tough he-man type, when he saw my legs he went "O my God!" turned his head, was visibly shaken and teared up. In those late hours when I was bandage, and it hurt like hell to pull the skin off, hold ice and paper towel on it for a long time, I would just wail. I would shout "why have you done this to me!" I would drive around town distributing job applications and so forth (which would never been answered) shouting "YOU ARE A LIAR!" I would shout mockingly "I've never seen the righteous forsaken or his seed begging for break, hey liar, I'm begging for bread! CAN"T YOU SEE that?? You are a Liar/! why did you curse me!??" I am not proud of that. We had God's help every step of the way. Ray would take Arie (the dog) for a walk at 2am because he couldn't stand being shut up in the little apartment after being raised in a great backyard. I would go along to make sure none of the druggies got them. Nothing ever happened. Even just having a place a live was a blessing. I would not focus on that. All I could see was what I'd lost, and what wasn't working, the fear the resentment. I would think about the wonderful education I had and how the person I spent a life time training to be was dead. I would never be what I tried to be. My life was really over and what I got for giving it up to help my parents was the gutter. I tried to use my knowledge on the net atheists would just say "you are a liar you never went to graduate school." I couldn't even have the compensation of knowing what I spent years studying. Or they would go "well IF YOU DID GO TO GRADATE SCHOOL" like as if to imply I know you are lying."

Still early on after moving into the apartment. I would put myself to sleep at night thinking of killing myself. It made me feel better for a time because I realized I really didn't want to go on with life. I felt good thinking it would all be over. Once day I just had enough. The money, the stress the problems and I just decided to do it then. I had planned to do it at 3am because no one would notice if I went to the old house, which was standing vacant, put the car in the garage and just sit there with the motor ruing, if I was lucky I could listen to the radio and get some classical music on the way out. Probably my mind worked to force me to stop the nonsense but I decided to do it then it was still day light. I drove over there telling myself this is it. I left our sister's number for my brother, let her deal with him for a while. I knew he would end up in a mental institution the rest of his life, he still had his court case that would probably put him there anyway. Got to the old house and I'll be damned if a cop wasn't sitting in front of it. Just sitting there. I don't know why. I drove around a bit and he's still there. So I drove back tot he apartment. I thought "an atheist would just brush that off, just a coincidence although for 36 years cops did not just sit there for no reason, but I whatever it doesn't matter. I'm going to see this as an act of God." It occurred to me I could see this either way, I could all my problems either way. I could think God cursed me or apply the spiritual knowledge I already had instead of acting like a jerk. So said what do I have? I'm alive. I said "thank you God that I am still alive." After that every morning I would thank God I'm still alive and add a couple of extra things as they became apparent, "thank you that I'm still alive and thank you for giving us a place to live." Then I began to focus upon what God gave us. What new things in our lives were better? What was the relief from the anguish we had been under?

My brother was still facing going to prison because he "assaulted" that cop! That was still hanging over us. I was signed up to do substitute teaching they never called. They had 700 people more than they needed. I don't even know how we got by money wise. I know it was struggle I know my sister helped us a lot but I don't know how we made it because we had no money, the 2000$ was gone by then. I am forgetting the exact order of things. I prayed like crazy for my brother to get off. it was the democrats. They new Dem DA who came in started an innocence project and he's gotten a huge number of people way over 20 who were in prison and innocent released by using DNA and re opening the cases. He told our lawyer that my brother's arrest was a sham and absurd. The Farmers Branch cops arrested and beat him up, but Dallas county was prosecuting it. Farmer's Branch, these are the geniuses who tired ot make English the official language, make it illegal to put Spanish on signs (so taco places would have to advertise "Mexican sandwich." They also tried to institute their own immigration policy. At that time they were in international news as a world wide symbol of stupidity, that's where I spent 36 years of my lie, I could tell you stories about stupid when men in Texas you would not believe.  The new Dem DA reduced the charge to misdemeanor (dropped the assault charge) and the judge gave him time served. Meaning the three days he spent in jail in the first place served as his jail time so he was out, he was off, he was free. We had cleaned him up,the girls helped, got some new threads, he spoke ot the judge he was very polite. This was while I would shouting "you are liar" and all that.



Somehow I was just able to resist all the sugar, grease and pre packed crap. I don't know how. I never could before. I think I had learned about nutrition and whole calories and that knowledge game me the motivation I didn't have before. The concept of not dieting, not counting calories but just eating the right stuff and not eating any pre packaged crap helped. As my nutrition bot better my thinking got better. My mood improved. I began to enjoy certain aspects of the apartment, even though  it was  roach infested dump. At a certain before we left the old house I prayed that "God send a rich christian on the net to see Doxa and  support that as a ministry so we can make ends meet." I really believed that at the time. My sister came over and she was going to pay for us. This was not long after the "attempted suicide." I realize it was not an attempt it was drama, it was me being a hysterical dramatic ninny and my mind forced me to do it in the day time so I would be clearly cognizant of what a stupid thing it was to do. I told my sister prayed "God please send a stranger to Joe to show him that you still love him and that you haven't' cursed him. Show him that you still have things for him to do and his knowledge and schooling is not useless." The next day my brother and I went to a fast food place which has an outside patio we can sit there for hours and drink coffee and smoke. Every morning we left Arnie at a friend's house and went to look for jobs and then went to that place to just drink coffee.

I was standing in the line waiting to get the food and coffee, this guy comes up and just stares at me like he wants something  but was afraid to speak. I go "can I help you?" He says "God told me to tell you something." I go "O really? he loves me and has a plan for my life right?" He says "God has not cursed you. He does love you he did not curse you, he still has things for you to do, he will make use of your knowledge and the things you have learned, your life is not over, it is not a waste the things you have learned are not a  waste." I said "really?" "your knowledge and schooling is not useless." He said the exact words of my sister's prayer. Everyone in the line was squirming around and pretending not to notice. The girl behind the counter was crying openly. The guy gave me 20 bucks and said "have a good meal." At first I thought he just thought I look homeless and he thinks he's witnessing. He said the exact words my sister prayed. Now don't' even bother saying I remember them right because I did. I said to God in myself "O you got my attention, I've been a jerk." In the days that followed I prayed out in my little semi-patio and left God's presence like in the early days and the deep pervasive love. I knew the ideas I had been having about God being impersonal were crap. I knew it was crap to think God cursed me and that I wasn't being faithful. I wasn't trusting God. Then God spoke to me in my mind and heart and said "learn to trust me." I was saying "you are trustworthy. I'm not but you are."

There was a guy I met on the net. He became known to me through the various apologetically connections I have on the net, and I first became aware of him right after I prayed "send a rich Christian to fund Doxa." Fund me is what that means. This guy at this point after the "turning point" began funding Doxa. He is rich enough. He wasn't sending us millions, he sent a small amount every week, just barely enough for groceries each week. It was a God send. We were barely getting by but we were getting buy. Then we got emergency food stamps that was the  good times. We had enough food and I bout all nutrition, no crap. There as another guy who just up and sent us money it was exactly the amount we needed at that time. He had no way of knowing. I thanked him but I didn't ask for more. He sent more latter it was the exact amount we needed then. Three times that happened. Latter he began sending regular amounts. Eventually the regular funding stopped but for a time there that's what kept us alive. I began trying to get readers of this blog to contribute enough to pay for my bandages. That was a joke. If I had had to rely on that to live we would have been dead a long time ago. Some people did send stuff. That was amazing too, but rarely. Only a hand full of times did anyone send anything. One time the brakes began going out on the car. They made a grinding noise and the car would barely stop. A guy had just send $ 300 dollars on the blog that was the most I ever got on it. Took the car in , $300 brake job!

I did get a job eventually. It was market research. They didn't have stead work, it was part time but it put some food on the table. It was great going to work in the morning, earning my own money. I felt independent and alive, I praised God all the way to work every day and said "O am I sick of this stupid job" all the way home! I was still glad to have it. I loved every minute I worked there, in spite of a lot of aggravation.

We had a flood in the apartment and ruined a bunch of our books. Books mean a lot to people who lived in their minds as much as we died. They were trophies, symbols of our youthful aspirations, of the lives we lost, the dreams we had as young men. It hurt to lose those books. I would have lsot my comic books if I hadn't kept them in plastic bags. The carpet acted like a sponge and the water went from room to room through the carpet. I didn't think of that. I thought "those books are safe in the bedroom the food is in the kitchen." The carpet and the boxes just sucked it up and ruined probalby a quarter of our books. By this time I was praising God for everything and made trusting God a daily project. All my old virtual knowledge came back to me. How I had been through this poverty survival thing in New Mexico years before. I have some fond memories of that place because of Arnie.

Arnie, the little black and tan coon hound,  was like our child. He had white where most black and tan's have tan; his beard which developed after he was three years old and a white blase on his chest and white tips on his paws. The rest was all jet black. He was a sweet little pup he loved everyone. He was super happy, a high energy dog. He was so intelligent. he milked his cuteness. He actually had a sense of performance. He gave little shows for my parents. They would put their chairs out and watch him. He would do back flips, no one taught him he just did it. He would play with stuff and when they would go in he would stop. When someone would come out he would go into his reunite again. The apartment was bursting with life. It was like the apartment complex on Hitchcock's Rear Window. Kids out playing and teaming with life. A guy always barbecued in front of his own apartment all the time. Big crowds would gather around him. The dog broke the ice. We would lead Arnie out to go, we took him everywhere. He had become a world traveler dog going all over the city with us. Or we would deposit him in our friend's backyard, it was a great backyard we called it "the wonder park." We would go back to pick him up at evening  after looking for jobs. He would was a like a kid getting out o school. when he saw us coming he would start digging and eating dirt. Then he would do his little dance, then line up the gate waiting to be leashed and taken home. When we got back after dark he was super glad to see us as though he had been afraid we would not come back. Get home in the evening the kids are out of school the apart courtyard was packed with kids, so noise and they all flocked to Arnie. "El Pero!" They were all Little Spanish kids. Very few Gringos in the apartments. They would pet him. The barbaque guy thought he was lucky because of the white on him was not tan which is more common for his breed. We became "el hombres del pero" the guys with the dog.

At one point the apartments sold, they began evicting everyone who so they could tear them down. They didn't count on us. We had a lawyer who would work for free because he was a our friend. They made the mistake of putting up a notice saying "you have 24 hours to vacate." That is against the law in Texas. Our attorney didn't mind driving over and telling them this. He also didn't mind suing the paints off them. We didn't sue them. Instead they let us stay. For several months we were the only one's in the whole complex. It was wired. It was like living in a ghost town. Eventually they let some move back in and we had a few neighbors. They did say we had one year to live there then they would tear it down. So we planned to go and we looked for houses to rent and other apartments. We looked all over that part of Dallas. No one would rent to us because Ray had been arrested. They didn't read far enough to see how it turned out. The practice since 9/11 you just don't rent to anyone wh has any sort of trouble. We looked at every rent house in North Dallas. It was impossible. We were going to have to live with our sister. We didn't want that. She didn't want that. We shamed her into it but we still didn't want to do it. I decided this time I was going to trust God. I was going to have the faith I didn't have before. I did. I stuck to it. I was saying it every day "God came through before a thousand times in my life he will come through again."

One day as we were driving around looking, we were combing the worst places and even then couldn't find one, that little voice in my gut, my heart, whatever, said "go back to the house you looked at that needed foundation." I wasn't going to because of the foundation problem, Ray said "lets go back to that one." When he said that I knew in my gut we should. We drove over there even though it seemed impossible. Even we passed on it because we could never afford to pay for the foundation repair. To was for sale for $40,000 and the payments would be 400$ a month. We could afford that. That was less then the apart we were renting. We could pay for that with just Ray's SSI. But we didn't have $5000 down, we had foreclosure on our credit and we didn't have money for foundation. Got over to it and the moment we drove up a woman was coming out. The  house clearly had been fixed up, it has been several months since we saw it. It had a "for rent" sign. I said "has the foundation been fixed?" She said yes. I asked how much, she told me. I said "you got renters." As it turns out the landlady was a lawyer, she knew our lawyer and she knew about how police treat people and she knew enough to read the entire arrest report and saw that the charged had been reduced. The rent was the cheapest in all of North Dallas. We could actually afford it. We got to move into this really wondefful house.

Its' small but it's laid out with a floor plan that is designed to make small seem big. High ceilings, circular flood plan so you go around and come back where you came in. it has a small back yard just big enough for Arnie. We still took him to his wonder park which he loved. He also loved his little back yard. Where I used to sit on the semi-patio where all I could see was another apartment and a small patch of sky, now I had a nice sized patio with a back yard and an expansive view of the sky One thing I love doing is sitting out there and watching the planes fly. I love to watch planes fly. I have always loved to watch planes fly. Now I have vast expansive view. The house has sky lights at the top of the high ceiling so the sunlight in the morning falls upon the other wall and it looks really beautiful. I began writing my book a couple of months after we moved in and Arnie would lay in the corner and watch every time I wrote. I thought of him as a little fury co-author. when we first moved in I found  tenis ball and I though it for him to fetch. He brings it back. I though it again, he brings it back. I thew it again, he looks at me like "I jsut brought that to you." I did it again he takes it, digs a little hole and puts it in and shoves dirt with his nose and stomps on it.  I never could find it either.

Every time we would drive he would be in the back seat. Ray would get out to put gas in or something and Arnie would start pushing my shoulder with his nose. We played this little game I would doge and he would wait and I would settle back and he would nose me. Then I would put my hand up as if to pat myself on the back he would rest his nose on my shoulder and I would rub it. Ray would get back in the would jump back as if ti say "don't let him see our little game" He never nosed me while I was driving. He knew! He lived in the "Arnie house" for ten months. In his time, he was 15, he shriveled up with cancer and eventually died. We tried to make his last days as happy for him as we could. His last time i the wonder park was hear braking. He couldn't run anymore but he walked all around in his old ritual of "saying hello the yard." Even when he was first 15 he was still full of energy and he would run all over the wonder park looking and inspecting every nook when he first got there as though he was saying hello to the yard. He is there now. We put him in the wonder park one last time and marked the place with bricks so he can always be i his wonder park. Our friend who owns it says she sometimes hears the sounds he used to make when saying hello to the yard. Sometimes at night she hears him barking. I think she said that because she knew we want to hear it.

We are still in the Arnie house. The firs few months here were beautiful. I was thinking God for everything all the time and praying all the time. The exuberance had dried up a bit and the problems are still part of our lives. I still trust God and am working all the time to learn to trust. it's a life long project. The major lesson is this: God was faithful to me even when I was not faithful to him. I was calling him a lair and shouting at him and I said worse than that. I called him a monster and told him he loved to hurt people. He didn't care, he's heard it all. I didn't shame God into helping me, he was working to help me anyway, I only held up the process and made it take longer by not trusting and not looking to seek the spiritual instead of freaking out because things didn't look good. Easy to forget, we walk by faith and not by sight. That means its' going to look grim. That doesn't mean anything you just have to trust God. Cultivate your spiritual relationship with God. Cultivate our inner life! It's a life long project, work on it every day.

PS: I should point out that others helped us here and there. There was a woman I knew but had not seen in a  long time who gave us a lot of money on a couple of occasions. I swallowed by pride (what little I still had) and asked. She paid for me to go the doctor when I thought I had skin cancer. I'm very grateful to all who helped us I know they were sent by God. I know that my sister and her daughter didn't refuse to take us in because they don't care. They weren't being scared to death and they had faith God would help us, I didn't. It's not like they never helped us. They helped us a lot.

My Second Testimony

My brother sitting amid the refuse
of our lives.

My first testimony is about how I found Jesus and got born again. That was in 1979. The second testimony is about how the Lord pulled me out of despair when I lost my house and my career, that was in 2006-2008. Last time I talked about losing my house, that was a political rant. Now I'm going to talk about the effect that process had no me, this is a religious rant. I'm stepping out of the role of "intellectual" in order to give a good old fashioned testimony.  My point here is that God is faithful even when we are not.

I was living a wonderful life back in 1998 as a Ph.D. student working on my doctorate in history of ideas. I was a fine student too (4.0 for five years--that means all "A"). My professors seemed impressed with my abilities, other studies said things like "I thought you got your Masters degree form U. of Chicago" when they found it it was really from Southern Methodist U. in Dallas. SMU is a fine school but it's not U. of C. I was publishing an academic journal that was making waves and getting noticed. My major scholars in the field contributed to it and took notice of it. One of the distributors wanted to sign a deal with us to put our journal in several major libraries around the country, it was a major step in the right direction for an academic career. Then my father had a major heart attack on the day before Christmas eve 1997. My brother and I began caring for him when he came back from the rehab center. Just a couple of months into that my mother began to exhibit symptoms of Alzheimer's. She thought it was 1968 and we were at our old house back when I was a kid.  From that point on for the next three years my brother and I were living with them and taking care of them 24/7. We had to be there in the house for them most of the time, it was like being in jail. I changed their diapers, did everything for them,  and fought with other crazy relatives.

There's no way to describe that process to someone who has not been through it. It's not just anguish it's a totally giving up of your life for those you love. Some people urged me to "save myself" and put them in a nursing home. I was not going to put them in a nursing him when 60% of Texas homes were charged with abusing patients.  I knew I was giving up my career and we had to put the journal to bed and never got to publish it again (we did squeeze out a 2002 issue). I had no idea how true it was that I was giving my life. I gave up not only my career but also who I was and my relationship with all other people. I lost everything. I would do it again to care for my parents because I loved them more than anything. Nevertheless, it did mean  loosing it all, for keeps. Family members who are not involved in direct daily care can't possibly understand what you are going through, they don't help you, they think they are doing a great deal when all they do is make a bigger mess. They become suspicious and wont give you money, complain that you are not taking care of them correctly even though they know nothing about doing it. when a certain relative would get upset over something like my father falling down, it's gotta be my fault, don't trust me to talk to his doctor, don't trust me to give his pills. I say "Ok then you take over. I'll go to work and you stay here and care for him. "O no no! I have a job I'm not lazy like you I have a job to go to." So who is going to take care of him? Put him in a  nursing home. "I can't do that to him." "So be content to just do this all the time, but do a better job of it." I would follow my mother all over the neighborhood to make sure she didn't wonder off. We kept the front door locked, but in case of fire she could go into the back yard. Then she would wonder all over the place so I would go with her. To avoid fighting I would just patently watch and make sure nothing happened to her. Once some guy two blacks away came out of his house and found us sitting on his front lawn at 2:00am. I had to explain, he called the cops. Everyone in the neighborhood came to know and they all put up with it, "that guy and his mother are in my back yard, just let them sit there."

There was also a time she came into my room (before the nursing home) and spoke in a low guttural voice, booming male voice, not hers saying "I am not your mother!" I was astounded and in shock. The booming voice said "Do you want to fight?" She began walking resolutely toward me. She came up to a few feet, totally flabbergasted I said "I rebuke you in the name of Jesus." She stopped with a jerk, blinked, and in her own voice see said "can I go to the bathroom now?" This was just the sort of thing that happened all the time in that period. I was  surrounded by nuts and angry relatives with no way out for three years. When my father first had his big heart attack he was dead for 11 minutes in the hospital. While he was dead I was at home dreaming, I had gone to sleep praying over the Pope's midnight mass. I dreamed that the Pope and my father came to me and the Pope said "he will be alright." Woke up fully expecting to hear he died in the night, not knowing that he had, and that he came back to life. When we went to the hospital the whole Intensive care ward was abuzz with "the miracle." The doctor said "I have never used the term Miracle in my practice before but this had to be a miracle." There was another time when he was at home during the convalescent period, he was in and out of the ER all the time. It was our regular hand out. He had a heart attack and stroke in the living room. EM guys came, hooked him up to devices to monitor  his vital signs. We laid hands on him and prayed. Suddenly all the EM guys go "wow! that's not supposed to happen." They saw his vitals change on the screens. Suddenly he was ok no sign of what had been wrong. They just literally saw him being healed through the equipment. One was really alarmed going "that's not supposed to happen!"

After three years of hell, anguish, and imprisonment (that's how I discovered message boards--attempted to escape through the net) they both got so bad we just couldn't go on. We put them in a nursing home. After two weeks in that nursing home my father died. He had been praying for three years "I don't want to live in the 21st century." He died the last day of the 20th century, the very last day of the century, of the millennium. He also died on the same day as the father of a friend for whom I had also been praying and was in the CADRE (the little apologetic group I started). Her father also did not want to live in this century. My mother died in 2002. She was already an experienced visitor to heaven going there three and four times a week. She even got the name of one of her great grandmothers right, although we never knew that woman's name until I did genealogy, and that was well after her mind was gone, so in other words there was no way she could have know it. She claimed to have met the woman in heaven in her weekly jaunts up there to see my father.

My brother and I began the painful process of rebuilding our lives, living in parents house. We felt alone and used up, burned out. I never gave up on school during the three years I cared for my parents. That whole time I had been learning French for the doctoral exam. I was so focused on career and ideas that I totally neglected the practical matters of my life, and so burned up my hours so I could only be a TA one more semester.  It was good to be out of the house and working again, although barely getting by. The house began to fall apart around us. I didn't have the skills to keep it up myself. I answered an advertisement on the internet and applied for home impoverishment loan. What I got instead, without even knowing it, was a second mortgage on a house that was already paid for. We needed the help, the roof leaked and we already had a part of the bathroom ceiling caving in  and chunks of the living room ceiling ready to go.

After that last semester of being a teaching assistant the agonizing job search began. I could not get a "real" job, you know the kind that pays actual money in large enough sums to actually pay all your bills. I found little jobs teaching community college but that paid pea nuts. I did substitute teaching but every other unemployed academic type in Dallas also heard of substitute teaching and the school system had 700 more applicants than they needed. So I was rarely called.  I was too old to be hired. No one could believe that I was still in school at my age, they were not impressed by an academic journal they had no idea that it was an impressive thing. They didn't know what a Ph.D. was and they had no concept that it meant I was extremely bright. None of that mattered to anyone. As far as the job world was concerned I had no skills, no experience and was over the hill. The major thing I had done for a living besides teaching was market research. I looked for that but Market research is extremely dependent upon a good economy. This was between 2002 and 2008 so the economy was bad, and going south.  Those years talking care of Mom and Dad took it all out of me. I was supposed to be writing my dissertation. I spent a year just sitting in a chair smoking and drinking coffee and fantasizing about my college years in debate and posting on message boards (trading name calling with atheists),secretly reading pornography (I'm a guy, sorry to disillusion you), never even thought about my dissertation. I was spent. I was totally burned out. I was extremely depressed, mourning my parents angry as hell at what had happened and how no one really got in there and helped like they all said they would.

Between 2002 (mother's death May 6) and 2004

The battle to save the house came up at the same time my presence in the Ph.D. program was being questioned by the administration. Spring of 2005. I was trying to get with it and get the thing finished. I was writing on it. The basis upon which my presence in the program was questioned was that it had taken so long and I wasn't making satisfactory progress. Well I shouldn't wonder, I was burned out. When the foreclosure stuff started and I had to scramble to find legal stuff on what it all meant I had how to fight it, extremely time concussing and useless, I had to once again shelve the dissertation. I jus couldn't let the house go because we owned it outright, my parents had it paid for. We had not missed a payment, suddenly the payments were three times what they were supposed to be. I was kicked out of the Ph.D. program summer 2005. The basis for it was my chairman quite. No one else to work with. His quitting had to so with maneuvering by the Dean who wanted me out. The basic reason was just once I had to work full time to care for my parents that was really end. Had I been able to focus on just school in that period I would have finished before the Dean started that stuff. As I say I would do it again. I chose my parent's welfare because that wa sthe most important thing to me. I also knew in so doing I was losing everything, and I did. I lost my parents, my career, my home, my chance to ever be anything, and I also lost the person I was and the person I wanted to be.

To complicate matters the very day the real battle of the house began the battle to save Buba also began. I had just been on the net and had he first  rays of false hope promising me house-saviors who lied and would be no help at all, but I was happy I thought we would win. My brother two women who were sisters and friends of ours went to eat to celibate our deception. At the time we thought we were celebrating saving the house. On the way we were stopped for a minor traffic violation, the tail light. My brother was driving and he didn't know his license was suspended because he didn't pay his insurance. They made him get out of the car, I was frantic to deal with them in his place but they weren't going to let me. They had no idea of his special condition (he's insane). He was afraid and pushed them saying "I don't want to get in the car!" They were arresting him for the DL. He knew better than to push a cop but his fear took over. They knocked him on the ground and beat the living fu out of him. He had blood coming down his face. They charged him with assaulting an officer because he was pushing them. Big assault, but hey Adam 12 these guys were not. We spent a couple of years fighting that with several frantic visits  down town to the big red monster jail house with all the drug dealers. Tried to bail him out, we had to put the house up for bail, even though it's in danger of foreclosure. He could have gone to prison. Now I had more frantic phone calls this time to find a lawyer who would work for free. In addition to the daily grind call after to call to lying house thieves who claimed to help people. Tons and tons of little bs lies to check on and figure out all of it useless but I was not yet to know for certain so I could not just give up. I did learn fast there is no saving the house, give it up. We got him a free lawyer through contacts with one of your old political cronies from the Central America movement.

From summer 05 to August of 06 we fought to save the house. From Nov 05 to August 06  we were in the auction. Month after month our house was in the Auction,it was supposed to sell and we would pray and at the last minute it would come out. They took it out because there was a cloud on the Title.  Without meaning to we created a cloud on the title and thus we kept bouncing in and out of the auction. I don't know if that's what really saved it or not. All I know is everyone said it was a miracle. One guy told me that "lat night in Fort Worth there was a real estate seminar in which your was used as an example and they said it was totally unbelievable how many times it was in and out of the auction. Every time they were sure they had fixed the title and it would ready to go, out it would come. A couple of those times we found buyers and they were going to buy it right up to the last minute, then pulle out. One guy pulled out with six hours to go, it should have been impossible to get a buyer and we found one and had it taken out, the buyer backed out. So the house was ping ponging around for a year in and out of the auctions.

In the mean time the house had fallen into further ruin. It was dirty, it was falling apart, got a new roof, but that was the only thing going for it. The air conditioner went out and in Texas in the summer that's a disaster. The dog was covered with flies. We had a fly infestation, thousands of flies in the house. I tried all the conventional weapons against flies to no avail. At the time my legs began to show signs of venous ulcer disease so that's when I was introduced to bandaging my legs. We were starving, being helped by my sister and living on my brother's SSI.  That only lasted a summer it was horrible. We got rid of them by accident. I left a bucket of warm soapy water sitting around I was using it to try and clean the flood. Over night the flies all went into it and died. We had a garage sale to get rid of all the junk so we could travel light. We piled stuff in the yard and no one bought anything. We left the stuff in the yard for the whole summer, no one bought anything. We would be sitting out in chairs in the middle of the front yard of in the drive way, with a little table to put our coffee's on, talking away like nothing is wrong right in the front yard. We would do this because we felt like our lives were over and we were just waiting to die in the gutter.

When one is in foreclosure the only thing that can be done is to sell your house. You can't sell it and get money for it because it's worthless, it's being foreclosed. There are all of these blood sucking leaches who want to make you think they are helping you, in reality they will give you nothing for your house; and that's supposed to be a big favor. I am going to take your house off your hands for nothing, you lose all equity, and it's a huge favor to you! What you get is not being foreclosed so your credit is not ruined and you can find another place to live (if you are lucky). All the equity and everything you put into it gone, forget it. Say good guy to the worth of the house. They are doing you such a favor! they get it for the price of the mortgage and you get not to be a financial leper, although pretty much ruined in every other way. Praise God the guy who finally came along who was really willing to buy it gave us 5,000$ over and above the mortgage so we could move on and get a place. He was a Christian that's why he did that. We had people all over the place praying for us. Everyone real estate person who had herd the story is amazed at the way were saved for so long. In the end we had to leave.

 When the sheriff's deputies come to make sure you leave your home they take all your stuff and through it out on the curb in front of the house for everyone to see. You look at the pile you see encyclopedia's your father bought you when you were seven, your old teddy bear, pictures of your grandmother, story books you loved a kid, can openers, swizzle sticks, whatever, all piled on the curb as garbage and you are not allowed to get it. The guy we sold the house to had his men clean it all out so the sheriff's men never got there. Thus we were able to sift through our pile of garbage but we left tons of things I wish we had, old sentimental things. In the final analysis however it's all garbage, it's all junk. It's going in the dumpster when I die no one will care. We might as well have just laid down in the pile, our lives are just trash to be thrown out.

We finally decided to go in August 2006 because we find this guy who was willing to give us a little bread. We moved into poor person hotel and we at least had no fly and air conditioning (that was the summer of the flies and though they were mostly killed there were still some and it was still hot--they mostly bothered the dog). We got into that place and the little dog was so happy to be cool and not covered with flies , did a little dance, he jumped up on the couch and licked my face, buried his head into my lap and looked like he was dying ecstatic. We stayed there a couple of weeks. They tired to rip us off and steal our stuff. We go it back they said if we ever were on their property again they would call the cops. All of this because I was two hours late paying the rent. We sat in the restaurant next door right by their office and every time they came out we would go "Hey we're here! do something about it!" At this point we were homeless. We lived in our car with your little dog and parked it at a friend's house. We spent a few night sleeping in her driveway in the car or in her backyard.

this is getting long so I'll finish it on Friday.

Time to speak out: We Need More Shovels!

PBS program "Need to Know"(see full show here) centers on the jobless problem; it highlights several examples of people losing homes in forclosure due to unemployment, and shows how they got in that spot; also features discussion with former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich and others. This is an excellent program. Joining Reich is Sara Horowitz, founder and CEO of the Freelancers Union,she has a lot of valuable insight as well.

This episode is very important to me personally becuase I was employed for 2 years, when I did get a job I couldn't make ends meet because it paid chicken feed and hardly had any work. I also lost my house in foreclosure which  a whole saga in itself. I will touch on that latter. Right now it's important to summarize what I got out of the show, but I urge you to watch the episode because the whole things is there (see the link above--and here). Horowitz points out that the social safety net we have is a hold over from the 1930s. It's not geared to modern life and it's not adequate. As Reich points out a third of the work force is independent contractors and thus not qualified for unemployment insurance or age/race/sex discrimination protection. The real question how did we get in a situation where so many people went into independent contradicting and just forgot about the safety net? We have the Republicans to thank for that. I know you don't want to hear it, but we do.

In the early 80's the Reagan administration set us on a course to dismantle the Roosevelt New Deal structure still in place, they harped upon the idea that government spending was the worst thing in the world. The reason you are not rich right now is because the government is taking your taxes. If you would just vote in Republicans so you get tax breaks you wont need social security and medicare and all the government spending because (1) you are have that vast fortune in tax money you pay out; (2) you will invest 401k and get rich from the market (3) the market will go up and up and up as long as you vote republican. This message appeals to people's greed. Many wanted to believe it so they just refuse to accept economics facts. There was another time in history when people thought the market would save them. That's essentially what Reagan and both Bushes preached, the market will save us. The Market will always go up and if you play ball our way you will be rich. That time was the 1920's and that philosophy created the great depression.

All of the examples of unemployed people losing their homes on the Need To Know show are people who were well off, hard workers, ran their own businesses. The allure of being one's own boss and get right from the ground up is just a big propaganda stunt becuase now all of those people are about about to go homeless on the street. Why did this happen? Because they moved out from under the safety net loured by the false promise of being rich by being independent. Regan busted the unions, read about the Hormel strike of the 80s. Read about union local P9 in that strike. Union power was taken apart at the seems with the promise that you don't need unions you need the market and no taxes and opportunity to get Rich that republicans will give you. It's a ridiculous dream becasue capitalism is based upon boom and bust. If there is a boom there has to be a bust. The Republicans have propaganda lines about "you just need to prepare for it." There is no way to prepare for the kind of shenanigans the Bushes unread upon America.One weakness in my view with Horowitz' contribution to the Need to Know interview, she takes a more moderate line than Reich and says "learn to prepare for the down times." Sure do that, but it wont help.

We just had a crisis where the whole banking system almost unraveled. Obama infused money into the system to save it but in the mayley it was totally forgotten that Bush started that the process of bailing out the banks. I've talked to several people who refused to even believe that Bush began the bank bail out but it's true and it's common knowledge. What happened was all the talking heads began criticizing Obama for bailing out the banks and everyone just associated with him. Talking heads went on talk shows saying "we should have let the banks fail" they say that so they could blame Obama. He's bad, he did so wrong by starting the bank bail out, he's a sap (even he didn't start it). Banks are businesses so businesses should fail if they are bad. Guess who would suffer if the banks failed? Do you think the Bushes would suffer/ No, you would. You would die. How would it be if tomorrow your money was worthless? You are out of food, how do you get more? No one will take a check. Cash is worth anything becasue no banking system left.  There's no way to trust the market when the whole banking system is going under. Look at the dominoes. Let's go back to the first domino in the process that led to the near collapse.



The first domino was the housing crisis this has been acknowledge time and time again. We had a bubble economy in the 90s with the rise of internet businesses. One of the major businesses that works great with the net is real estate. The idea of "flipping houses" became the rage. Anyone with some spare cash could buy a house for peanuts spend a little fixing it up and make a bundle. Lot's of people made bundles. The problem is so many people began doing that that people weren't even buying houses to live in anymore they began buying houses they couldn't pay for (when everyone and his dog tries to guy houses with no money down because fancy seminars all over the country say that's how you get rich--everyone wants to be rich) there's no money going around. Soon the banks realized they could get a lot of money by making it easier for people to buy houses. They began allowing "stated income" instead of documented proof of income. So all one had to do was say "I make X$" that's stated and that was fine. They began selling houses to people. Now here is where the story breaks down.

Bush wanted us to believe that all the people who bought houses were lazy poor people who didn't work and didn't try to pay for them. They wanted us to believe the real problem was the people who bought the houses. The press has gone along with this by not telling the truth about the house stealing scam that mortgage companies ran. It's must easier to just blame the evicted after all the paper work supports the claims that they are at fault. After all the banks and mortgage companies do the paperwork. When you are trying to keep form being out the street and dying in the gutter you don't have time or mental resources to worry about your paper work. The truth is the attorneys general in most states have sued the major mortgage counterspies and not just for giving bad loans but for predatory lending, that means they were stealing houses! The company that stole our house was shut down for preditory lending but it was a couple of years too late to help us.

One of things they did to us was obviously designed to be a scam so I'm sure it got a lot of others. The media wont touch it. I've tried to get local reporters to talk about it they wont go near it. Here's the tact they used to steal my house. I had lived with my parents for three years while they died. I took care of them and basically gave up my Ph.D to care for them 24/7. The house was paid for. But the roof literally was caving in. I saw "we think you are an idiot" montage company ( that wasn't the real name but it should have been) on the net I got a home improvement loan. They promises six month lea way if you miss a payment, they would help get a job if I lost mine, all sorts of garbage (the BS piling higher and higher) none of which they meant. I never missed a payment because my parents taught me if the house is dark becasue you can't pay the bills and if you are starving in it  it's still worth it because its better to starve in a dark house than in a dark gutter. I made sure we never missed a house payment. We were doing fine. Nevertheless, at the closing they said "you need to pay the taxes." They didn't tell me "we are going to pay them today." That was the trick. I went down their in my own good time found they had been paid. In the mean time they sold the debt to Mussolini mortgage.  They said 'we have to recoup our huge loss ($200) of paying your taxes" so they raised the house payment three times what it was.

When I  called good old "we think you are an idiot" mortgage company and they said "we sold the debt" so much for all those great promises of help! I said "well let me me pay half now and half next month in addition to next months payment." O no! that will never do! House stealing tactic no 2, the rolling snow ball of debt. If you miss a pay you owe two payments. You can't pay late. I got three payments behind before I gave up totally trying to pay. Then went to through  hell for a year trying to find help. I canted all kinds of  people will kinds of lying bull shit about 'we help people in foreclosure." no they don't! No one does. Once you get that point it's gone. Your house is gone. It almost never works to try and save it. The deck is stacked against you. The laws are set up to make house stealing easy. Hey that's what Regan and Bush did for us. This was 2006 that we actually moved out. We had six years of the guy who stole the election in 2000, remember him? the man who got to be President but lost the popular vote? He helped arrange the laws so that anyone in foreclosure is dead meat. Now I agree that Obama hasn't done anything to fix this. But that is not the same as saying the Republicans will fix it. The Republicans caused it. It's in line with their philosophy of law of the jungle. The garage you about how you going to get by paying fewer taxes and the market always going up is predicated upon clinging over the backs of others. My parents lived through the Great Depression. They knew Republicans do! They taught me the only way to survive a depression is people working together. The Republicans want you to believe that all you need is yourself and your tax money then you are supposed to think of other people as undeserving vermin who too lazy to work and don't deserve your help.

Guess what? now you have no safety. when it's your turn to go into the gutter then you become the piece of shit and the republicans can' wait to murder you.



It took Bush eight years to screw up the country in such a way that we had a depression and the banking industry almost collapsed. Obama hasn't even had two full years and yet people are just livid that he hasn't solved everything. The insurance industries unless a hoard of louts shouting and beating people up because they suddenly realized the old lie we loved to bleieve about the tax money wont be told anymore. We can't have that. I have to have my illusion that I can get rich by paying less in taxes. They saw that Obama was of a certain persuasion (let's just say they saw his "true colors") and they realized he was going to spend tax money on health care they become "mad as hell and we are not going stop  lying anymore." The bull shit keeps piling up. They destroyed the Gulf of Mexico then lie that the oil went away magically, find it hasn't (when did you expect?) so it's Obama's fault because he didn't clean it all up.

I agree Obama has dropped the ball a couple of times. He's thrown a couple of interceptions. Don't let murderess of the poor take back Congress. Those people are not your friends. they do not want you to be rich. They need you to believe their lies, and they are stacking the Bull shit higher. But they don't want you to be rich. They want you to live in a jungle and root for survive and kill your fellow man in a vain attempt to make it, even though the jungle is loaded with hazard set to trap you. The way to survive a depression is to band together. We need a safety net, the market cannot always go up. The market based on boom and bust!




Reagan, Bush Sr, Bush Jr between them had 20 years to screw things up. We had eight years of respite with Clinton and things were pretty good, he reduced the deficit, no republican every did that. The republicans are lying to you when they say government spending is the problem. Even Clinton wasn't able to make real progress because they hounded him every step of the way. Now Obama has only had 2 years to fix it up and he had to focus most of that on the lies they told about health care.

The Big Republican Argument

The Republicans have one big argument this time. They say we are so deeply in hock because of the stimulus package and the health care bill (don't forget bailing out the banks). They quote the stats and they say we can't possibly grow out of it. So they want you to think that if you vote dem it wont do any good becuase nothing the dems do short of dismantling all publish welfare and aid programs and going to totally to the law of jungle will help. Of course we are supposed to believe that the Reps will do something to make it all better. They will feed your feeling that it will be all better by telling you the old lies you love to hear, "you can get rich if we you have to pay so much on those mean old taxes, if you let me get richer I'll help you get rich."

If that's going to happen why didn't it work last time? Why didn't the real estate scam make you rich? why did you lose what you had from listening to Bush if that will really work? Is it true that we can't grow out of the problems? Why would that be true? The said Clinton couldn't reduce the deficit and he virtually emanated it. They are assuming health care wont bring down costs and it will, they are assuming there's no multiplier effect to public employment and there is, there's even a multiplier effect to health  care. So all the money spent on the health care will generate more money in the private sector.

Policy Matters Ohio

There is no evidence of a tradeoff between the size of states’ public sectors and
private sector growth. Across all states, the average state and local government
share of total GSP showed a positive association with private sector GSP growth
per capita in the 1990-1997 period, and no association in the 1997-2004 period.

• There is no evidence of a tradeoff between public sector growth rates and
private sector growth. Across all states, increases in state and local government
GSP per capita showed a positive association with changes in private output in
both the 1990-1997 and 1997-2004 periods.

• States with expanding public sectors experienced more rapid private sector
growth, on average, than did states that reduced their public sectors. This result
occurred in both the 1990-1997 and 1997-2004 periods. States with expanding
public sectors had private sector growth, on average, of 19.6 percent in the earlier
period and 16.9 percent in the latter period. States with shrinking public sectors
had private sector growth, on average, of 11.6 percent in the earlier period and
11.7 percent in the latter period.

• Ohio’s private sector grew faster than its public sector over the 1990 to 2004
period. This trend occurred even in the latter half of the time period, when the
state experienced a recession and a weak recovery. From 1997 to 2004, Ohio’s
state and local government GSP per capita increased by 6.4 percent, while private
sector GSP per capita increased by 10.5 percent. As a consequence, the public
sector’s share of Ohio’s economy declined over time.

These results have important implications for state fiscal policy. Ohio will not receive
economic rewards for arbitrarily restraining its public sector, nor will our economy be
punished if the state budget exceeds the new 3.5 percent annual spending limit. Cutting
back on essential public services will not stimulate economic growth. Policy debates
should not juxtapose the needs of Ohio’s residents for education, transportation, health
care, and law enforcement with private sector economic performance. In order to have a
meaningful discussion about our future, we must break the grip of this false dichotomy.

They want you to think Obama has failed because he spent a lot of money and that's the ultimate sin. Bush began the bank bail out, we had to have the stimulus package, and we really need to spend more. They want you to think that because it cost a lot and the unemployment  is still high. It didn't do any good so putting them in will magically make it all better. It wont make it better and they had no other solution. Their only solution is the law of the jungle and that's what got us here. Every single depression has been preceded by a real estate boom. Every real estate boom has been followed by a depression. The law of jungle is a lie. The market can't keep going up and up, it thrives  boom and bust.

Go out there and vote now. Don't wait for the election  go vote early. Vote Democrat even if you guy is a yellow dog, vote for him. Don't listen to the hysterical tea cup illiterates.  Vote democrat. Most of those tea cup guys can't even read. Go to the Dem hq and do phone banks, call your heighbors and tell them you rare voting Dem. Get a bumper sticker, pass out literature door to door. We have to get busy and work together to have this place then we can get some more shovels and start getting rid of this bull shit the Reps have been piling up.