Jun 02 2007
This is Not the Life I Ordered
By Michael Goodspeed
6/3/07
Every man with the smallest inklings of humility and courage is forever discovering new things about himself. The self-images we cultivate through arrogance and ignorance are easily exposed in the harsh light of life experience. One may think himself a hero or genius or saint, but all too often, these grandiose self-analyses are born of egoic delusion rather than objective reality.
When one’s false pride has fallen and his ego stands defenseless and trembling, therein lays the greatest opportunity for self-discovery. One can either wait for the ego to re-inflate and again retreat to its comforting shelter, or one can leap head-first into the cavernous abyss that the ego once filled. The latter is the action advised by some of history’s great spiritual teachers, but the former is the one preferred by almost all of humankind.
We only do the really serious introspection when we have no choice, when we’re at life’s bottom. Stripped of every flattering self-concept, one is given an unobstructed glimpse of his own soul. The key is to not flinch when this mirror is held to your face. It is even more advisable that you not shatter it and cut your own throat with the broken shards.
I recently had an opportunity to both engage in and witness in others some brutally honest soul analysis. Whether it’s ugly or beautiful, cowardly or courageous, loving or hateful, all the soul can do is tell the truth of itself. Mine, like everyone’s, wants desperately to know love and joy and peace, but it is badly stunned by trauma, heartache,and loneliness. Mostly, it is barely aware of its own existence, let alone its inherent greatness. This also describes the soul of Chuck, a homeless man I met a few weeks ago on the streets of Las Vegas.
I went to Las Vegas with the intention of investigating the city’s homelessness crisis from a first-hand perspective. I was going to live on the streets for two weeks, with no money in my pocket and only utilizing the resources available to the homeless. I arrived on May6th, 2007, after a 30 hour Greyhound bus ride. The first evening was frightening and disorienting. I was exhausted, and for hours, I asked anyone who might be helpful — mostly security guards and police officers — where I could find a shelter for a night’s sleep. But each gave contradictory directions, and most admitted that they didn’t know the location of a single shelter.
I had not slept for two days, and my brain felt mutilated. I decided that my best bet for an evening of rest would be the outdoors. I caught a bus to nearby Henderson and slept in an open field in an industrial area. I worried that this trip just outside of Vegas’ city limits might constitute a violation of the experiment’s terms and integrity. But then I reminded myself that I was sleeping in a field and things were bad enough as they were.
After a few hours of fitful sleep, I caught a bus back to downtown Vegas and restarted my search for homeless services. A few blocks from the Fremont district, a hooker approached me and asked if I wanted a “date.” I told her I was broke and asked her for directions. She did so and proceeded to give me the 101 on being homeless in Vegas:
“Don’t ever walk around without money in your pocket. The police will arrest you for vagrancy. And don’t sit at a bus stop without taking a bus. Don’t stand in one place for too long, and don’t ever try to sleep in a park or in front of a building. And always have your ID on you, or they’ll put you in jail.”
I was concerned about these possibilities going into the project, particularly since the Las Vegas police were already interested in me. I had announced my project in an essay a week prior, and two days before I took the trip, police in Beaverton, Oregon visited my home at the behest of the LVMPD. I was a bit horrified at the prospect of being jailed and would do my absolute best to avoid it.
Following the hooker’s directions, I took a right down Main St. and headed toward a cluster of homeless services and shelters. On the way, I passed a badly disheveled elderly man lying sprawled and unconscious in the dirt. Held in his right hand was a pristine Holy Bible, a “gift” freely given to homeless men and women all across the United States. Upon seeing this tragic and poignant sight, my first thought was, I wish I had my camera — the image would have made great “art,” and I might have been able to sell it to a newspaper or magazine.
Self-discovery number one on my homeless journey: I am not nearly as compassionate or empathetic as I had imagined.
I spotted what l thought was a group of good Samaritans erecting a mini-campsite for the homeless off of a sidewalk, and I approached them and asked for directions. They informed me that they were homeless, and invited me into their “camp.” There were four men in total, 3 of whom were Hawaiian — an elderly man named “Uncle Dave,” his nephew Mark, and a diminutive man whose name I’ve already forgotten. And there was Chuck, a 49 year-old bespectacled white man who immediately began offering me helpful guidance. He offered to show me the various shelters that offered meals and beds, and I accepted.
Chuck looked a great deal older than this years — I would have guessed him to be in his early to mid 60’s. He explained this by describing himself as “a straight up alkie” (alcoholic). Indeed, Chuck placed no blame for his unhappy circumstances on anyone but himself. He told me, “Mike, if I won a million dollars, within 5 minutes I would have a meth pipe in one hand, a beer in the other, and my (bleep) in a hooker’s mouth.” As we walked, he gave me a brief overview of his past. He said that he had earned a decent living as a casino dealer in Reno, but that drug and alcohol addictions had drained all his money and destroyed his ability to work. He had been homeless in Vegas for the previous three months, and it was the lowest he had ever been in his life. Twice, he had been badly beaten and nearly killed by street gangs. He said that he didn’t believe he would be alive if he was still homeless at the end of the year.
Our first meal of the day was an early lunch at a shelter whose name I have either forgotten or never caught. (Lesson number two on my homeless journey: I am a writer and not a journalist — I am far more concerned with the existential wanderings of my own psyche than I am with gathering objective data.) The food was plentiful, and, not surprisingly, not very good. It was bland soup and cheese pasta and all the white bread and rolls you could eat. I found that I was extremely thirsty and tried to load up on water, but it tasted the way tap water always tastes in hot desert towns — murky and gritty. Since I didn’t have money to buy bottled water, I hoped that the dirty tap water would sufficiently hydrate me for the next two weeks.
As the hour approached noon, I noticed with some alarm that the sun was already having an effect on me. The heat in the desert southwest has a different quality than what I am used to in Oregon. Even when it’s not terribly hot, the solar radiation seems to act like a microwave, cooking your organs from the outside in. I asked Chuck how he had managed to live for the past three months under such an intense sun, and he claimed that his body had simply grown accustomed to it.
We headed back to the makeshift “camp,” which was essentially a big tarp and blankets held aloft by shopping carts. I had enjoyed perhaps ten minutes of shade when a police unit drove by and instructed us to remove the cover. I was dumbfounded and asked Chuck for an explanation. He said that the police always insisted that the tarp remain down until at least 4:30 in the afternoon. Whether they were worried about some nefarious activities occurring under the tarp or they were trying to kill us, I don’t know.
Since the sun had already become unbearable, we needed to find shelter elsewhere. Chuck told me that the only place where we could legally take refuge was a shaded outdoor area offered at the Salvation Army. This, I was told, was by far the most dangerous of all the shelters, and I was advised to never attempt to go there by myself. Chuck claimed that in just the previous two weeks, there had been a total of 6 stabbings (including three murders) and one rape.
One of the many crappy things about homelessness is the lines — you have to stand in them for long, long periods of time to get whatever you need. The line outside the Salvation Army was exceptionally long, and I passed the time by visually scanning the many countenances in the crowd. I immediately noticed someone who seemed profoundly out of place. She was a beautiful young blonde girl, surely no more than 19 or 20, with the clean-cut features of a prom queen or cheerleader. She seemed to be alone and stared straight down at the ground with a peculiar, slanted smile on her face. Given the shelter’s reputation, it seemed like an awfully dangerous environment for an attractive young woman to be on her own. I pointed the girl out to Chuck and asked if he knew her story.
“That’s Kimberly. Don’t ever try to talk to her or look her directly in the eye. She’s a ’spitter.’ One time, I asked her if she was OK, and she spit in my face and tried to kick me in the balls.”
Chuck went on to explain the girl’s generally accepted back-story. Supposedly, her husband was a crack dealer who had a falling out with a competitor, and repaid his “debt” by offering his wife as currency. For several hellish nights, the girl was tied up, raped and defiled in unimaginable ways by a horde of gangsters and druggies. The brutalization so traumatized her that her mind shut down and just vacated reality. Now she was alone and psychotic, living in the shelter’s “psychiatric” unit, receiving medication but surely not getting any better. True or not, I have no idea.
But that’s the way it is with every homeless person — they are not automatons or ghosts or ghouls or shadows. They’re human beings and each has a story.
When we finally made it to the outdoor sanctuary, Chuck and I sat down and he began ascribing a brief biography to each individual. There was Kathy, a rowdy and perpetually drunk ex-Marine who purportedly still did some kind of nebulous “freelance” work out at Nellis Air Force Base (when I asked her for a description of this work, she told me to go f*** myself.) There was an elderly and functionally nameless man who had supposedly not changed a single item of clothing for the last three years. There was a gangster named either “Blue” or “Boo” with the most terrifying countenance I had ever seen — every one of his front “teeth” had been transformed into a four-inch metal shank. According to Chuck, the man had spent upwards of ten grand on this bizarre dental procedure, the purpose of which was known only to him.
I would have liked to have remained in the shade until the sun went down, but Uncle Dave joined us drunk and out of his mind. He immediately wore out his welcome when he screamed at the top of his lungs, “De la Hoya lost! F*ck all the Mexicans!” Since perhaps four dozen Mexican men were within earshot, Chuck and I decided to leave the sanctuary post haste.
We headed back to the “camp,” and I was happy to see that the tarp had been reinstated, hopefully for the remainder of the day. A bottle of “Night Train,” which along with Thunderbird ranks as the top “bum wine,” was being passed around. For “politeness” sake, I took a sip, and as a lifelong non-drinker I was surprised that it didn’t taste too terrible. But it didn’t help my emerging headache and nausea, and I was growing more thirsty by the minute.
I told Chuck about my dehydration, and he offered to fetch me a jug of water from the tap at the Salvation Army. I laid down under the tarp and stared for a while at the cars passing by. I noticed a number of drivers smiling, laughing, and pointing at the camp in apparent contempt. It occurred to me that these monkeys were so disconnected from reality it was almost unbelievable. To take pleasure in another person’s misfortune is always an indication of mental illness, and these folks didn’t seem to realize how close they themselves might be to homelessness. They could lose hold of an addiction, get laid off, miss a couple of paychecks, maybe get the boot from a domestic partner. And without a loved one to help them in their time of need…what would happen? They would be in the exact same mess as the people they were mocking.
Chuck returned with the water as promised, but most of it disappeared into the Hawaiians before I got my hands on it. Uncle Dave received the lion’s share, since he was sporting a bloody nose as the result of his impolitic comments at the Salvation Army. I again wondered how I was going to stay hydrated for two weeks in the desert environment and resolved to earn some money through day labor to keep water in ready supply.
Around 2 PM, Chuck told me it was time for another meal. It dawned on me that staying fed and hydrated while homeless in Vegas was itself going to be a full-time job. The meals served at the shelters were offered during normal working hours — in other words, anyone who works is going to have to go without eating until he or she gets paid. To make matters worse, without a car or even money for bus fare, the only mode of transport is walking. And I was quickly learning that this entails a very serious physical price in the desert heat.
After another long wait in a long line under the hot burning sun, I ate another crappy meal of starch and cheese and gritty tap water. Afterwards, Chuck took me to a day labor office and I signed up with them. I also signed a paper stating my availability for landscaping work. Unsurprisingly, not everyone is eager to work outdoors for eight straight hours in 105 degree heat, but hard, physical, outdoor drudgery is the kind of work one gets through day labor outfits. I wondered what it would be like to be 65 years old and homeless in Vegas — the outrageous heat, the lack of shelter, the necessity of earning money through physical exertion. Since I was beginning to feel 65, it didn’t take much wondering at all.
We made our way back to camp at around 4:30, and incredibly, Chuck told me it was almost time for yet another meal — my third in less than 6 hours. According to Chuck, most of the shelters only served one meal a day, so the only way to get three squares was to visit each of them. I wasn’t looking forward to any more time under the sun, but I knew I needed to eat and drink. Chuck then offered me the alternative of going to a makeshift “picnic” under a bridge. He said that a local church offered this service once a week and provided such meals as Chinese food, pizza, and various “take-out.” I seriously doubted my tolerance for any more of the shelters’ cheese pasta or mystery meat, so I happily agreed.
Shortly into our walk, we came across a towering homeless man who was having a very animated conversation with himself. I thought he looked a bit like Christopher Lloyd in his Back to the Future role. Ordinarily, I steer a bit clear of the overtly insane, but I noticed that his T-shirt was emblazoned with an interesting phrase. It read, “This Is Not the Life I Ordered!” The sentiment seemed more jovial than embittered, and I could see in the man’s eye a glint of genuine humor underneath (or perhaps within) the craziness. I walked directly toward him, gave him a thumbs up, and said, “I like your shirt, man.” He returned my smile and simply said, “Yeah.”
At that moment, the T-shirt’s maxim seemed like the most profound teaching I had ever encountered. Think about it. It’s not as if anyone has ever set out to intentionally suffer. And we don’t ruin our own lives out of “sinfulness” or “evil” or “badness.” We are each of us doing the absolute best that we can in a culture and a world that lives in direct opposition to the truth. Some of us have had our bodies and brains and souls damaged by circumstances completely beyond our control. And others are continually harmed by the inevitable consequences of their own bad choices, but even these individuals are doing their best and are thus deserving of compassion.
Who among us feels that his life is the one that he “ordered?” Nothing turns out the way that we plan. When you’re young you have a million strategies for a perfect little life, but as you get older, your choices become evermore narrow. Your identity in the world is firmly entrenched, your personality is set, and indeed, your very consciousness is growing dimmer and dimmer. It’s a myth that people improve with age — most become caricatures until they finally submit to their own worst inclinations — the addictions, the prejudices, the neuroses, the obsessions.
I walked with Chuck and expressed some of these thoughts to him. He commiserated, but insisted that he was not yet ready to throw in the towel. “This is not the end of me, Mike. I’m gonna get back on my feet, and when I do, I sure as hell won’t take things for granted like I did before.” I then reminded Chuck of what he said he would do if he won a million dollars. He just laughed and took a pull from his cigarette.
When we finally arrived at the “picnic” after nearly an hour of wandering (”under a bridge somewhere” is not the most helpful direction in a big city), my throat was parched and my head was pounding. I was able to drink a couple of bottles of water, but I was dismayed to see a line of roughly a hundred people awaiting the promise of a meal. Chuck believed that the front of the line was located where a sermon was being performed. Unfortunately, this turned out to be false — it was in fact the END of the line. We endured the boring and soul-numbing sermon for nothing, and when it finally came our turn to be served, the best of the pickings were long gone. I felt physically ill when I saw our remaining food choices — cheese pasta, cheese sandwiches, Pepsi, and Chee-tos. I forced down the soft drink, begged another bottle of water, and said a prayer that I wouldn’t wretch my stomach’s rancid contents.
We got back to the camp at around 7:45 or 8 PM, and the sun was mercifully all but a memory. I lied down and tried to ignore the throbbing in my head and turning of my stomach. The ever-helpful Chuck offered me more Night Train and cigarettes and even some pot, all of which I politely declined. I dozed off thinking of nothing but that T-shirt and its world-weary axiom.
At around midnight, I woke up and instantly knew that I was going to vomit. With knees buckling, I very slowly stood and began shuffling up the street away from the camp. My headache had grown from a dull throb to a full-blown migraine, an electric spike shoving through the base of my skull. I doubled over and coughed and hacked a dry heave for maybe thirty seconds. Every wretch made my headache more agonizing, so I was enormously relieved when an ungodly eruption of pasta and goulash spewed from my mouth onto the Vegas sidewalk.
It occurred to me that there was a very real chance I might be dying — sunstroke, dehydration, or food poisoning seemed the likeliest culprits. With all of the bemusement I could muster, I sort of chuckled at my own meekness — it had taken less than 36 hours for Sin City to almost kill me. Even those who had advised against my experiment conceded that I might last at least a few days. Interestingly, my body had not been damaged by an attack from a homeless person, as many people had warned. Indeed, I had felt no anxiety whatsoever in their presence. It was the natural elements of the city itself — and the ultra harsh circumstances intentionally inflicted by city officials, led by Mayor Oscar Goodman — that did me in.
I took my cell phone from my pocket and dialed 9-1-1. I wasn’t sure if this action was going to mark the end of my experiment, but I felt that I needed some immediate medical attention.
An ambulance came and took me to The Valley hospital. After about 30 minutes, I vomited again, to which the attending nurse commented, “Hmm…That looks like the stew they serve downtown.” For some reason, I didn’t want the guy to know that I was living as a homeless person, so I told him I had eaten dinner at the buffet line at Circus Circus (a very plausible lie).
Unsurprisingly, the physician who attended me insisted that I needed some expensive tests, beginning with a CAT scan. I agreed to this simply because I thought it might give me an opportunity to catch a few minutes of sleep. The physician then stated that he thought I might be having an aneurysm, and he needed to perform a procedure called a lumbar puncture (or a spinal tap). I don’t know much medical jargon, but any procedure with the word “lumbar” in it sounds way too f*cking expensive. I told him I felt certain that I was dehydrated and not having an aneurysm, and he responded that I knew no such thing. I then asked if I had the legal right to leave the hospital, to which he replied, “Yes, but you have to sign a waiver stating that you are leaving against medical advice.” I signed the waiver and walked out of the hospital at around 4 AM.
I’ve done some catastrophically stupid things in my life, but leaving the hospital in the sad shape I was in is at the top of the list. And the fact that I had no idea where I was and didn’t know how to get back to the camp made matters worse. For the first time in my life, my body was so depleted that I felt unable to simply put one foot in front of the other. It was like trying to walk underwater. My throat burned from vomit and my head felt like a canoe. Shit.
I took out my cell and called my parents. They agreed to Western Union me some cash, but they’d be unable to do so until 10 AM. I realized what this meant — I would have to shamble up and down the Vegas streets in a state near death for the next 6 hours.
And that’s what I did. I tried asking for directions back to the camp, but I was too exhausted to walk for more than a couple of minutes at a time. I found a bus stop that offered a little bit of shade, but as soon as the sun came up, its glare beat directly down on my head. I found it nearly impossible to stay awake, but every now and then, I would see a police car drive by and I would snap my head to full attention. I remembered the hooker’s comment that the cops would arrest anyone who loitered at a bus stop. I had no money in my pockets, so according to Vegas law; my very presence on the streets was a crime. I began to feel real terror that I might get arrested, a scenario only slightly more appealing to me than physical death.
Until perhaps 8 AM, I would sit at the bus stop until the bus arrived, stand and lurch a few steps away, then return after the bus had left. I felt desperately in need of water, so I staggered over to the nearest casino/hotel, hoping against hope that my uneven gate would not lead to an arrest for public drunkenness.
Inside the casino, I asked one of the porters if they had a Western Union, and much to my relief, he said yes. But unfortunately, a casino is only a hospitable environment to those who are spending money. I had none and couldn’t just sit and stare at a slot machine to kill time. So I walked into a bathroom with the intention of hiding in a stall for a couple of hours.
After drinking countless handfuls of water from the tap, I sat miserably on the toilet and drifted in and out of consciousness. The bathroom was equipped with a PA system which blasted an inane assortment of bad 80’s tunes by bands like Huey Lewis and the News and Air Supply. When you’re squatting and slowly dying on a toilet in a Vegas casino, a song like “Hip to be Square” seems sadly appropriate. I wished for cyanide capsules almost as badly as I wished for a 60 ounce Big Gulp.
After maybe an hour, I was jarred from my stupor by a loud pounding on the stall door followed by a deep voice that bellowed, “Security!” I guess that someone found it a little suspicious that the same pair of shoes could be seen in the stall for an hour without so much as a flush (this makes sense — the function of a bathroom is, you do your business and you leave). I opened the door, and this big burly behemoth with real alarm on his face asked me, “What’s the problem, sir?” I felt certain that I was about to be arrested, so I used the truth as my only defense.
“I’m waiting for a Western Union, man, and I can’t wait in the lobby. You have to spend money to be out there, and I don’t have any.”
He responded that I couldn’t just sit on the toilet. Apparently, it frightens people too much.
Much to my surprise, I was allowed to walk from the bathroom a free man. The Western Union was not going to open until 10, so my challenge was to exist in the casino for almost an hour without getting the boot for not spending money. I sat in front of a slot machine and punched at buttons while trying to stare attentively at the screen. I counted the minutes in my head and tried not to look as wasted as I felt. I hoped that when the Western Union opened I would be coherent enough to communicate intelligibly with the agent. The minutes passed and I kept stabbing stupidly at the slot machine buttons.
With legs filled with cement and acid, I staggered to the gated booth that I hoped might hold my salvation. The woman behind the counter looked at me and shook her head. “We don’t open until 10.” I looked at the clock on the wall behind her and it said 10:07. In a moment of blind and irrational panic, I wondered if she meant 10 PM rather than 10 AM. I watched her walk back and forth shuffling papers and stapling things and looking busy for the next few minutes. Finally, with the mercy of Mother Mary herself, this stupid yet wonderful lady asked me for my business, and I could have wept with joy.
I got enough money for a motel room, where I would wait until my sister (who — thank the love of Christ — lives in a small town a few hours away) could come and pick me up. It is with no shame I admit that without the loving assistance of my family, I might well have died on the streets of Sin City. For the record, I am 31 years old and in excellent physical shape — I don’t smoke or drink, I eat a healthy diet, and I’ve been a devoted marathon runner for the last 17 years. I knew that Vegas was a tough place to be homeless, but my God — less than 36 hours, and I was at death’s door and crying to my mammy and pappy for help.
Going into the experiment, I had been communicating with a reporter for the Las Vegas Sun newspaper named Tim Pratt. When he learned of my experiment’s premature and pathetic end, Pratt insisted that it might still make for a good story. After all, the reason I almost died is because I had no money, minimal resources, and was trapped in a viciously hot climate. In other words, I was in EXACTLY the same boat as the approximately 12,000 homeless human beings who live in Las Vegas year round. 36 hours, and I was almost dead. Imagine trying 36 days, or 36 weeks, or 36 months, as many have.
As an interesting footnote, Pratt informed me that roughly 40 percent of all homeless in Vegas have no valid ID whatsoever. This prevents them from getting work and even receiving many essential services. I experienced the horror of this first hand — I lost my birth certificate in Vegas, and while trying to get some temporary work while staying with my sister in Arizona, I found that no one would hire me, since I had only one form of ID. I don’t casually use the term “police state” to describe America, but the first rule of any police state is, don’t go anywhere without your papers.
Synchronistically, as I write this, I am a couple of days from returning to Vegas under much happier circumstances, to attend a scientific conference. It is with little fondness that I remember my hellish two days on the city’s unforgiving streets. But I would give
anything to again encounter that lanky crazy fellow with the funny, sad, and oh-so-true axiom on his T-shirt.
“This is not the life I ordered.”
It’s not the one I ordered either. But I have to believe that my order still matters. Self-discovery number whatever on my homeless journey: our choices ALWAYS matter. No matter how bleak or hopeless or unforgiving our circumstances, there must be meaning in choosing wisely rather than poorly. Alternatively, life is truly without purpose and God a sadistic madman. Our choices have to matter. Always. In the gutter, on a battlefield, right up to the moment of death.
If nothing else, I want my order to be a true one. I no longer ask for a “better life” — no force in the universe exists that can provide it for us. Rather, I want the ability to choose correctly, now and forever. Sanity. Rationality. Integrity. Love. These are the gifts I want for myself, because they ARE the road to a better life. In this moment, this is the life I order.
Michael Goodspeed can be contacted at
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Trillions for war, more financial breaks for the rich are the concern of the self appointed powers that occupy Washington D.C.. What a sad country we live in.
Man, all I hear on these blogs is people whining about this or that and doing nothing! The home of the brave is clearly the home of the consumerist coward. Time for—just a beginning—some moster demonstrations to show Bush, Reid, Peolosi and all the rest of the usurping scoundrels that business as usual—literally—wont be allowed. The individualist, calvinist ethos of this nation has inured us to seeing poverty as an “inevitable” part of life, side by side with enormous, obscene wealth. It’s got to stop. And watch how the Churches do practically shinola.
Millions of Americans homeless, yet plenty of billions for Israel and wars. Only Israel benefits from these endless Middle East wars. Iraq is the beginning. As we commit war-crimes in Baghdad, the US gov’t commits treason at home by opening mail, eliminating habeas corpus, using the judiciary to steal private lands, banning books like “America Deceived” from Amazon and Wikipedia, conducting warrantless wiretaps and engaging in illegal wars on behalf of AIPAC’s ‘money-men’. Soon, another US false-flag operation will occur (sinking of an Aircraft Carrier by Mossad) and the US will invade Iran.. Then we’ll invade Syria, then Saudi Arabia, then Lebanon (again) then ….
American homeless, get in line behind Israel.
Final link (before Google Books bends to gov’t demands and censors the title):
America Deceived (book)
“egoic” is not a word… no offense meant … egotistical maybe?
I did not really have time to read this today, but I got caught up in the picture and title, and I am greatly benefited for spending the time I really didn’t have to read it. I spent 10 hours in a Greyhound bus station in Tampa, Florida two weeks ago because I was confused and didn’t know where to go. Those 10 hours seemed like 10 days. Pulling my luggage around, one knapsack tied to another. Avoiding the incredibly creepy and menacing people at the bus station. Sitting outside for 30 minutes, inside for 30 minutes. It was horrible and now I’m working a job for embarrassingly low pay, but anything but the bus station. This story of homelessness was fascinating.
Actually, egoic is a word. Check out www.egoic.com
In 1984, the real estate market crashed in Alaska. The airline I worked for was bought out. My husband was cheating on me and I filed for divorce. The people who bought my house on an non-qualifying assumable loan left the state. Which meant I re-assumed the loan and since I didn’t have an income, the bank foreclosured on the house. I was 30 years old with a 6-year old son. My husband never paid child support, in fact, he left me with all his outstandings loans. (A do-it-yourself divorce cost less than $200 back then - I couldn’t afford a divorce attorney.)
Needless to say, welfare turned me down because I had ‘too many assets’. Ha. Long story but I ended up in Seattle living out of my car, ‘gave’ my son to my ex-husband, not having enough money to feed or house him, and found a temporary job typing for a financial firm. I took showers when offered by some people I met at the local laundromat. I paid them $5 a shower. That was risky business in itself. Three months later I found a cheap apartment to rent.
Now I was a single woman and poor at that and people in society treated me like yesterday’s garbage. The cops constantly stopped me because I couldn’t afford to get the studs off my winter tires. One cop asked why I didn’t have my ‘boyfriend’ (non-existent), take the studs off the tires. He was ready to assault me but I did some elusive talking and he left me alone but with a $250 ticket. I considered myself lucky. I couldn’t even get a single gas credit car and my car broke down constantly.
Here’s the moral. I worked very hard all my life, starting work at 12 years old in the music industry (before child labor laws really kicked in). Then the airline industry . All gone in a single year. It can happen to anyone in America. This is reality. Boy did I get a wake-up call - I lived it. My family ignored my calls for help. It was unbelievable - a living, freakin’ nightmare.
OK, happy ending. Ready to take my own life after 4 years of this misery, I met a man who took one look at my existence, and basically ‘rescued’ me. Otherwise, I would be dead, no doubt about it. My son eventually joined the military to get away from his father and the poverty. This is why most kids join the military. It’s not patriotism folks.
The elite/Illumanati wish to cull 80% of the population. That’s you and me. And they do it through finances, wars, vaccines, illegal immigration, yada yada. CAPITAL LETTERS - THE GOVERNMENT DOESN’T CARE ONE IOTA ABOUT US!! Once you realize that (YOYO - you’re on your own) you will start making preparations. I was lucky - countless others are not.
BTW, Las Vegas sucks. Been there, done that.
It must be a REQUIREMENT for ANY politico running for office (local, state, federal), to participate in this ‘experiment’ - to live on the streets in their districts without money, for two weeks (a month?). That would cull the wheat from the chaff.
Faux tough-guys like Duuhbya wouldn’t last an hour.
The homeless problem is growing all over the world. As more and more now people learn to live in near poverty on the American continent, the few who are very wealthy become more so like never before , thanks to politicians. Corporate donors, wholesale buyers that are trying to corner the market by taking out the little guy, they who want to blend the NWO nowall work for one another just so they can feed at the troph and keep their heads held high ,at the same time - look down on the little people who keep them in power. It’s a feeding frenzy now cause they are going for broke with their plans of one world government suicide mission, it’s all or nothing for these twisted minds of pure evil. I really do believe the day will come when politiicans all around the world will lose their power over the masses and run not for power and corrupt government, but for their very lives.
Wow. Having felt as though I was on the precipice, not unlike Jo, the narrative that Michael describes is worse than even what I was afraid of happening. You are a brave man to have followed through, and courageous. A first hand perspective into what sounds like pure hell on earth says so much. Much more than any bureaucrat sitting behind a desk twiddling numbers and making statements behind a podium. I don’t know if your experience and words will change anything within The Structure, but I have posted this on my blog to make sure my friends read about it. Perhaps, just maybe, it will help at least one person. It certainly touched a nerve in me. Thank you.
May the rest of your journeys be safe!
D.
This story truly held my attention from start to finish, but I must say I wouldn’t want to try something like this out for myself.
Being homeless is awful, and it goes to show you that even a person as educated, healthy, and skilled as the author, as well as skilled in “making personal choices”, stands less of a chance on the streets than a person who has been forced to learn to survive in them…in short the homeless have to beg, and hope that is his/her greatest personal talent. I think I gathered that much from 20+ years of growing up in NY, and watching homeless people trying to survive - it’s beg or bust for them.
In the end, it seems without a financial safety net there is no chance of being “saved” as the author proved by phoning his parents for help - There is no shame in it. People who are far better off than the homeless are forced to phone their family for help all the time.
In addition, people of means have a generally wider scope to make mistakes in. For every 1 mistake a person with limited means makes, a person with abundant means can probably afford to make 500 mistakes.
It is true, life has to do somewhat with personal choice, but it has more to do with luck, or inherited wealth, and all it’s cumulative effects. For some reason the wealthy tend to find luck much easier being they are surrounded by abundance - it’s just the laws of probability at work. If you walk down Madison Ave all day, you have a far better chance of finding a wallet filled with money, than you do in a housing project. That’s not to say rich people can’t fall from grace but there are statistics which show class mobility, and you find in them, that the rich rarely fall more than a few rungs down on the “ladder of prosperity”
Capitalism is for the birds…no offence to birds. I don’t wish the cold, or the heat of the “free-market” upon my worst enemy.
While I was putting myself through college, I became homeless. I was 3,000 miles from home and had been in an accident that took me from my job and caused me to loose my tiny apartment. I had friends couches to sleep on for awhile but eventually that welcome wore out and I was on the street. I was going to a very expensive school in Philadelphia with a cast on my arm and no where to live and nothing to eat. So I can trully imagine the horror of being homeless in a place like Vegas. Mr. Goodspeed had alot of guts to attempt this anywhere in the United States. Our own government has abandoned it’s own people for a war that has no rhyme or reason. Thank you sir for bringing this issue into the light.
quote: “For the record, I am 31 years old and in excellent physical shape — I don’t smoke or drink, I eat a healthy diet, and I’ve been a devoted marathon runner for the last 17 years. I knew that Vegas was a tough place to be homeless, but my God — less than 36 hours, and I was at death’s door and crying to my mammy and pappy for help.”
Y’know what, Mike? You are a lightweight. An all too typical yuppie. I’m guessing that you work for Intel or one of their spinoffs in the Beaverton area and your experience of real life has been high school, college, then a corporate job.
This story just made me laugh and shake my head. You honestly have no clue about survival and no experience surviving. Like most yuppies, you think that running around the track with sweatpants on or “working out” at the gym means being in shape. No, man. If you had gotten that day labor job working landscaping you would have found out what being in shape is. The first thing that you obviously don’t have is mental toughness. You didn’t make it 36 hours, you made it about what, 18 hours before you called 911 on your pathetic cellphone to have an ambulance come save your sorry ass. Please excuse the blunt language, but I think it’s called for.
It is just utterly amazing how far below survival level you are, and yet you think that you are “normal” and in ” excellent physical shape” or something. You are just the average American “pussy” with no sexual connotations attached, more like a spoiled fat housecat. You weren’t smart enough to search out a discarded water bottle or two in the trash and fill them up at a faucet? You were going to take day labor so you could buy bottled water? In the middle of the first afternoon you had others bring you water because you were suffering so and weren’t smart enough or tough enough to go find it yourself? Or to find shade on your own? Ever notice that little flat spot at the top of the concrete embankment below a freeway overpass, or the thick landscaping bushes behind some gas stations?
Oh my, you thought you were going to die cause you felt sick and vomited. Very unlikely that you would have died if you had just thrown up and then gone back to your spot and gone to sleep. Just sheer cowardice, it appears. Also extremely ignorant, it you don’t even know enough to not overeat or chug too much water while getting used to a hotter climate. It’s quite likely that you would survive several days with no food or water, but you had to live out your little TV fantasy that you were gonna die! (that last word pronounced with a sneering downward inflection).
Well here’s a little wake-up call for you: the new world order corporate fatsos aren’t about to relent because of your pretend suffering or the real poverty and suffering of others. Your whole “lifestyle”, even Beaverton, Oregon, is going to get hit real hard and you have seen nothing yet. You played at being homeless for a day and it wasn’t much fun, and from the sounds of it you didn’t learn a thing except how to whine. Question: Do you think that it will be significantly easier to survive in NW Oregon than Las Vegas when TSHTF? Why do you think those homeless people stay in Vegas? It’s because it is warm, man. Try your homeless game in the rain and snow. The last time the fat cats decided to pull the plug on the US was when they took all of the gold, back in the early 1930s. At that time there was still a manufacturing base in the US, and still a lot of family farms, plus people who knew how to do things like fix a pair of shoes or grow a garden or raise, butcher, and cook a chicken or a rabbit. All gone, now. Bye bye.
Pathetic. You and about 200 million or so other American pantywaists who have never gone hungry a day in their lives. I do wish you good fortune; you will need it.
By the way, I’m 55 years old, I smoke and drink, and apparently I’m in better shape than you have ever been physically and especially mentally. I’m typing this from South America. In January of this year I had to spend five days in hiding in a thorn tree and cactus desert in the tropics because of unexpected developments. It was around 100 degrees every day and all I had was a pair of shorts, a t-shirt, and plastic flip-flops on my feet. And a water bottle. I did OK, lost a little weight and got a good tan. When I got out of the desert I had to spend a few nights sleeping at a construction site. A few days later I holed up in a five star hotel. Wouldn’t have missed the experience for the world. It never crossed my mind that I wouldn’t make it. I don’t think that any of that should make me special, it’s just the things I have chosen to learn and experience in this life.
You got a tiny taste of the brave new world awaiting on the horizon, maybe starting tomorrow. Things are not getting better in the US, and they are not going to. Next time you may not have a cell phone in your pocket or someone to got fetch water for you because you feel faint.
Lastly, a piece of advice, not necessarily for you because you didn’t ask for it, but for anyone else who might read this: knowledge protects. The old Boy Scout manual is a good place to start. The old one, not the new one.
Best of luck, y’all. We’ll call some sort of survivors meeting in about six years.
My job in life is to manage my own life the best I can. Everything else is extraneous.
The problem is that no one is really putting the pieces together. It ISN’T millions/billions/trillions for war. It is trillions for war profiteers. This phony war was planned long before 9/11, and it’s sole purpose was to enrich Dick Cheney’s old cronies. There was no “higher purpose” despite the fact that that is how they sold it to Mr. Bush. It is simply that Mr. Bush is not the brightest bulb in the box, and he is very trusting of those he has chosen to work with. He is the catspaw. And too proud to have the integrity to say,” I screwed up”.
And I have to agree w/ m.astera we have become a soft race. And are getting softer (if we have the money to afford it). Our stupidity and apathy as a citizens is what allowed this to happen. And I agree with him that there will be a reckoning.
See you at the survivors meeting
m.astera,
I read your post top to bottom, and I’m still trying to figure out the basis for your contempt against the author of this piece. You seem to be challenging his toughness and resolve, but you seem to have missed the point completely. He went to Las Vegas with no money and no resources and no back-up plan. It’s not hard to envision how someone could dehydrate or suffer sunstroke and almost die in 36 hours there. I’ve been to Vegas many times, including the meanest areas (Fremont District in particular is bad), and I cannot recall ever once seeing a public drinking fountain or public bathroom. So with no money, where was he supposed to get water? From a cactus?
I appreciate the author’s apparent candor, self-effacing approacgh, and courage in attempting such a dangerous and ill-advised venture in the first place.
Alan, he had a backup plan. The backup plan was the cell phone and the parents, which he invoked at the first sign of problems. If he was even marginally serious he would have seen there would be problems and decided in advance how to deal with them. It sounds like he had no plan beyond bailing out, which not only doesn’t say much about his toughness, it doesn’t say much for his intelligence either.
It would have been a lot more “intelligent” to do a practice run in downtown Portland OR. Plenty of homeless people there.
It’s not really an indictment of him, just of his general class of yuppie pansies. He thought he would take an adventure vacation and write about it and become special, no doubt, but decided he didn’t like the adventure. He missed out on the education part, except finding out that he didn’t like it. That’s as far as his insight went.
You may think I’m kidding about what’s coming down the pike, but I assure you I’m not, and people like Michael Goodspeed are not likely to make it. This is a free-will universe, and he’s made his choice. And by the way, there are no public drinking fountains in South American deserts, either, or anyone to send for water. Knowledge protects.
We all take from a “story” whatever we can. I’m surprised that you seem to ignore the quality in the piece, of which is there is much, in my opinion. You refer to the author as a “yuppie pansie,” but do you know his income, lifestyle, or personal values? I’ve read his articles on Rense.com, and have even writtem him an email or two in the past (which he responded to), and he seems particularly ANTI-yuppy, IMpO. You say that he quit because “he didn’t like it.” No,if I’m reading correctly he quit because he was vomiting on a sidewalk. That makes him a pansie? I’m surely a pansie too, in your book, so I certainly hope I never fall subject to your personal judgment.
I’m white-collar, and if you met me, you’d probably think I was a “yuppy.” What do you think is coming down the pike that I have no chance of surviving? I’d like to know, so I can begin to work on correcting my “pansieness.” The electricity went out? Oh no! How do I light this match? Perhaps I should ask Mortimar, my black butler.
BTW, on the subject of Vegas, I don’t know if this comment is relevant to this discussion or not, but I’ve known a number of people who work in the Casino industry. ALL agree that Vegas was a better place to live and work when it was run and owned by the mob. All of them say that the mob treated them like family, but the big Corporate world of Steve Wynn does not. OK, I understand why you seem to hate white-collar people and call us/them pansies. But we aren’t all identical, any more than hippies and luddites are all the same.
I might be taking this too personally, but m.astera, I am offended by your condemning tone toward TENS of MILLIONS of Americans. In fact, you and I probably see eye to eye on a lot of social and economic issues, but any possibility of convergence is destroyed once you start calling names and using abusive stereotypes. Why is a “yuppie” more “soft” than the unfortunate at the lower end of the economic spectrum?
Do you claim to know what I’ve done to get where I am in terms of career and money? Maybe I’ve worked harder than you. Maybe I’ve suffered more than you. Maybe I’ve faced challenges the likes of which you’ve never dreamed.
I know this is off the topic of homelessness, but there is a reason why I take this personally. In 2003, at the age of 32, I was going through a major career change, re-locating, and I applied for an internship at a small eco-village. This appealed to me on many levels, partly because the rent was low and my immediate financial situation was going to be uncertain, but also because I am personally eco-conscious and wanted to experience and contribute to the growth of an eco-community. But my application was rejected with no consideration, because they were only accepting residents who worked in the “arts” (music, writing, painting, etc.) and/or gardening, farming, or horticulture. Basically, they just assumed that I must be worthless since my training and education are focused more directly on making MONEY. I would think the very fact that I was applying for an internship at an eco-community proved by itself that I’m not just interested in money. But they were too biased and judgmental to see it that way.
My point is, if something terrible is “coming down the pike,” why exclude anyone from a possible solution? I haven’t done anything to deserve being excluded. I want to find an answer as much as you. So please don’t be so quick to label and condemn on the basis of appearances.
Hello Alan-
I do appreciate your sincerity and that you have taken the time and effort to continue the discussion. You have, however, made some unwarranted assumptions about me. My viewpoint should not be taken as judgmental, please, but rather as realistic. Let me clarify.
If I call a thief a thief or a liar a liar, that is not a judgment, it is a statement of fact. A judgment would be to say that it is bad or evil to be a thief or liar. If I characterize Mr. Goodspeed as a yuppie pansy and say that he is below survival level, I am not necessarily inferring that as bad or evil. Hopefully it is a choice that he has made with full knowledge and informed consent, although I think that unlikely. I think it much more likely that he, and you, have made choices based on incomplete information, societal pressures, and engineered propaganda that is admittedly almost overwhelming. Almost overwhelming.
Let me give an example: A herd of cattle that has spent it’s life in a fenced pasture with hay and water provided, a flock of chickens that has been raised in cages, neither population would be expected to have a high percentage of survivors when suddenly confronted with wilderness and predators. However, neither cows nor chickens have much intelligence, or potential to learn, or much power of discernment. Human beings have an enormous potential for all of these qualities, including the ability to realize that they are being kept in a fenced paddock or a chicken factory. Humans today also have access to unprecedented amounts of information, skills, and experiences, if they choose to take advantage of them.
If one of the postulated cows manages to stake out the shady spot in the pasture on hot days, and is clever or aggressive enough to shove its way to the front at feeding time, that cow will likely do better than the other cows. In pastured cow society, that may be quite sufficient and all that can be expected. I expect a little more of humans.
The American society in which you have lived is the pasture, and its goals are pasture goals. I hope you realize that this is not a far-fetched analogy, but a very close one. Unlike cows, though, some people have realized that they are being fenced in a pasture and raised as domestic animals, and a smaller amount have chosen to do something about it, be that escape from the pasture or the pursuit of other goals beyond the shady spot and first place at the feed trough.
Carrying my analogy a bit further, one could characterize the homeless and those living in abject poverty as cows that aren’t very good at the pasture game.
OK, enough of that for now. As I pointed out in my first post, I see the writer as having missed the learning being offered to him in his experience in Las Vegas, and in my second post I pointed out why:
” He thought he would take an adventure vacation and write about it and become special, no doubt, but decided he didn’t like the adventure. He missed out on the education part, except finding out that he didn’t like it. That’s as far as his insight went.”
The operative words there are “take an adventure vacation and write about it and become special.” Poor motives, in my view. I am attributing them to him based on what I read, but I do so from experience. Becoming special is one of the main goals of the pasture.
It might be useful here to define what I mean by “yuppie”. I am using the term to categorize those whose existence is based on appearances. They define themselves by what they own and have more than by what they do, although generally they will avoid any sort of productive physical labor. Physical activity is acceptable only if it is non-productive, e.g. riding a bicycle around while wearing spandex is OK, but actually riding a bicycle to get to work is not OK unless everyone at work is aware that the yuppie has a BMW at home. A yuppie will take classes in something like “how to build a log cabin” but when it comes to building the cabin they will hire the job out. A yuppie will take a class in organic gardening, but hire someone to build raised beds and would never actually grow a garden to feed their family. It is all based on appearances, and these appearances must be entirely acceptable to the mainstream hypnotic programming of the societal media. All of this is easily traced back in history to the prerogatives of the aristocratic and priesthood class; it is basically the mimicking of sociopathic parasite behavior, i.e. those who work and produce are slaves of and less than those who don’t. Yuppies base their life on consumption and acquisition of material goods and appearances. Modern abundance of cheap energy and efficient manufacturing have made this level of consumption available to a larger segment of society. In the presence of highly efficient psychological programming methods, and the absence of any true spiritual knowledge or connection, it has become the ruling paradigm of modern society, and it comes in all flavors, the American middle class yuppie being simply the most obvious and egregious example. If you find the term “middle class” slightly irritating, I rest my case.
I don’t doubt that Michael Goodspeed has his heart in the right place, that he is compassionate and cares about others. Nor do I think he is a highly successful yuppie, or he would not have had to call his parents to bail him out or live at his sister’s house for a while. But: he did not go into the experience with the right attitude to get the most from it, and as I pointed out, all he seems to have learned is that he didn’t like it, along with perhaps some insight into the street people he interacted with briefly. I will point out here that many of those homeless street people are where they are from choice, and they undoubtedly have a lot more freedom than most working drones.
Let me address a couple of your other points. You wrote:
“Do you claim to know what I’ve done to get where I am in terms of career and money? Maybe I’ve worked harder than you. Maybe I’ve suffered more than you. Maybe I’ve faced challenges the likes of which you’ve never dreamed.”
Here you are making more assumptions that are unwarranted, as you know nothing about me beyond the little I wrote. I have been largely self-employed since age eighteen, mostly as a craftsman and designer, although I’ve also owned and/or managed some rather large manufacturing operations, and even spent some time as regional sales manager for a large publisher. I have raised three children, and my oldest daughter is presently a PhD candidate.
One does not make a go of it in the US as a designer and craftsman or raise three children without a modicum of hard work and suffering. My goal, though, has never been money, as I realized early on that that was, shall we say, a pasture-oriented goal. The one worthwhile thing that money can buy me in today’s world is freedom, so I’ve put more effort in that direction.
As I noted in the first post, I’m writing from South America. I am here because I see that it is about time for the owners of the cattle herd and the chicken flock to send them both to slaughter and I’m not interested in that experience. Money won’t help there, I fear, unless one has a whole lot more money and connections than you are likely to have. What do you own, free and clear, that the government and/or the bankers couldn’t take if they chose to? I submit that the one thing they can’t take is knowledge.
It appears to me that you may have missed the learning from your experience applying for an internship at the eco-village. If you are truly interested in that sort of thing, as I am, perhaps you should consider gaining the knowledge that would make you valuable to a community like that, or figure out what you do know that could be valuable to them.
I’m rambling on here, but enjoying it, so bear with me. It’s four a.m. on this Caribbean island with tropical breezes coming in the window and I have plenty of coffee.
Last summer I was called in to help a friend, call him Jim, who was building a barn in the Pacific Northwest. Jim is a career schoolteacher and a true yuppie, and in true yuppie fashion this barn was not actually to be used to house animals or feed. Also, he didn’t actually know the first thing about building a barn and didn’t want to learn, but he liked to pretend. He hired a barn-building company to erect the basic structure, and I was there to see it done right and get it finished. A month before the main frame and roof were to go up he sent out invitations to his yuppie friends to come to the barn raising, with music and food to be provided afterwards. On the day of the barn raising, the barn-building company sent a large crew who were there at dawn. Jim’s friends drifted in starting around mid-morning. None of them brought any tools or any knowledge. Literally zero. Nor were they particularly interested in helping, and forget about learning. They were there to watch and talk and drink a few beers and say they had been to a barn raising. A few helped carry some boards, that’s about it. Meanwhile the barn crew and I got the main posts and frame up and the roof on; a long, hot August day, and at the end of it there was a barn, a big one, with little or no help from the Jim’s friends.
As evening approached, the work wound down and the food and beer came out. The barn-builders stayed to drink a beer and eat a burger, but they were bushed, one could tell they felt out of place in that crowd, and soon left. I stuck around and socialized and ended up talking to a woman from the Portland area who worked as a nurse. The conversation turned to things like gardening and homesteading and the economy, and what would happen if there was an economic collapse in the US and people had to form self-sufficient communities in order to survive. I opined that any candidate who showed up at such a community wanting in had better have something to offer in the way of skills. Her reaction was much like your statement above:
“But my application was rejected with no consideration, because they were only accepting residents who worked in the “arts” (music, writing, painting, etc.) and/or gardening, farming, or horticulture. Basically, they just assumed that I must be worthless since my training and education are focused more directly on making MONEY. I would think the very fact that I was applying for an internship at an eco-community proved by itself that I’m not just interested in money. But they were too biased and judgmental to see it that way.”
In a survival situation, Alan, one had better have some skills to offer. I don’t know what your training and education are for making money, but in a survival situation there are no corporate stocks to invest in nor anything to buy with money. Once there is such as thing as an established community, there is a place for trade and barter, but the basis of an “economy” is the monetization of raw materials. Any sort of derivatives or investments are a long way down the pike. Shoes and turnips and a roof that doesn’t leak come first.
So, here’s what I see happening in the US: The majority of our manufacturing capability has been sent offshore, we don’t make shoes anymore, or anything else. Most of the family farms are gone and the corporate giants that are left grow poisoned food that lacks nutrients. The majority of Americans know little or nothing about how to feed, clothe, or shelter themselves, or how to obtain water or stay warm. Since the dot-com bust of the late ’90s, where a good portion of America’s wealth was siphoned off, there has been a pyramid game called the housing bubble, which has peaked and is now set to siphon off the rest of the accumulated wealth of the country. At the same time, the criminal element in control of government has destroyed all of the good will that may have been built up over the past 200 years. Our military has been wasted and demoralized, so there is no ability to defend the country from any sort of threat. There are at least twenty million illegal aliens scrambling for any job and willing to work for less than living wages. That’s a start. From my research, this all appears quite deliberate and the well-engineered results of a plan that has been in progress since at least the 1770s. Now it’s harvest time.
Meanwhile, from what I can gather from the on-line news, the American people are talking about Paris Hilton and global carbon dioxide, or expecting Jesus. Dumdedumdum. I hope you realize that those barbed-wire-surrounded FEMA camps built to house millions of people are not a joke? None of this is a joke. The US has been hypnotized, lied to, and robbed blind. It’s uh-oh time.
And finally, to your last point:
“My point is, if something terrible is “coming down the pike,” why exclude anyone from a possible solution? I haven’t done anything to deserve being excluded. I want to find an answer as much as you.”
Really? What would you be willing to risk or do to find an answer? It’s pretty comfortable inside the paddock, as long as the big truck doesn’t show up today.
I don’t exclude anyone from a possible solution. I have spent the last twenty-five years attempting to wake people up. It just finally got so bad that I couldn’t see the sense in staying there waiting for the trap to snap. Where I am now is far from perfect; the whole world is a mess; but at least I feel a little more free. I still care a lot about America. It’s my home, where my friends and family are, and I don’t want these bad things to happen to it or them, but I’m real tired of wasting my breath and I don’t want to end up behind barbed wire.
It’s not all doom and gloom. I actually see a very wonderful future for this planet, and I believe that when one is surrounded with things that aren’t working, one had best put one’s time and energy into things that do work. It is obvious to me that little is being accomplished by marching in the streets, signing petitions, writing letters to the editor, or electing a different group of power-hungry psychopaths. There’s a project that I’ve been working on for seven years that will make a difference, and now it’s a matter of education and getting the word out. The subject is nutrition, truly sustainable agriculture, and hard science. Although the ideas aren’t entirely new, you have not heard of it, and that very fact, with all of the alternatives being floated about, should tell you something. In our present world, alternatives of real significance get buried, which is why you are given, for instance, solar and wind power, ethanol and biodiesel, but hear nothing of Moray or Tesla. The same is true in agriculture and nutrition: organic gardening, bio-dynamic agriculture, the soil/food web, vitamins and herbs are all valuable but relatively harmless puzzle pieces that pose little threat to the rulers. There’s not much glamor in agriculture and soil science, but what I’m talking about actually works and is not based on faith or dogma, and that’s where I’m putting my time, money, and energy. If you or others reading this would like to continue the discussion, email me.
Michael is 100% right, I feel that his is a man who has preached too long to the deaf and one can get a little direct when thats happened for a long time. Its time to step up, take responsibility for yourself, for your family,your neighbourhood, your country and mankind as best you can. Get some gold and silver tucked away, learn a skill, make friends who will stand with you no matter what, clean up your act and start to help others