TrueTomHarley

In the end, the analogy of swatting flies is spot-on. You do it for a variety of reasons - to demonstrate your technique, and because you hate flies. You do not imagine that in so doing you are eradicating flies. In fact, one must be careful not to trigger a local brother's illustration: "Kill one fly, and 50 come to the funeral." It works for me.

In CLAM material last night, bans in Nicaragua and Zaire were discussed in back-to-back paragraphs. In one case, it was challenged and overturned promptly. In another, the Branch chose to ride it out for 7 years before mounting a challenge. The reason? It is not explained. That would entail analyzing reports received from the respective traveling overseers regularly reporting to them, and the feel of hundreds of mature ones sniffing out the current lay of the land, sniffing which way the wind is blowing. The Branch has sources. They are not merely shooting in the dark. Like any driver anywhere, they are in position to see more than do the passengers. Imagine if participants here were to haggle over those countries. Surely, they would follow the same pattern they would follow here. Making up the facts they do not know, which is almost all of them, they would launch inflammatory accusations as readily as Serena Williams launches tennis balls. “At that point the Branch Committee had to make a weighty decision,” the Kingdom Rules book says. Nasty participants like @Micah Ongwho would pee their pants if called upon to make a weighty decision do not hesitate to condemn those who do. They have no clue how to build anything. They live only to destroy. Even @James Thomas Rook Jr., of whom one vainly hopes better things will emerge, pours gasoline on the fire, though he is qualified to put it out. ‘It can only be racism,’ he charges, telling us of white, brown, and black people. JTR, who goes livid when the Western media, motivated solely by hatred of the man, declare Trump a racist, resorts to exactly the same tactics in dealing with the ones he hates. The one person who knows anything, @JW Insider, because he rubbed shoulders with all concerned, says ‘Look, nothing is impossible, but racism is the last motivation one should imagine.’ No matter. To vicious persons, character assassins at heart, for whom slander goes down as smoothly as fine wine, knowing only there is a target they must destroy, it only interferes to have someone who knows what they are talking about.

You are falling down on the job (though I may not have read everything) You have not carried on about birthdays nor miracle wheat.

They said nothing of the sort. The 'Bible reading' they speak of is in quotes. It denotes a Bible reading in which a person goes orgasmic over a few formula texts and ignores the greater context.

and enters his front door, and hollers "Honey? I'm home!" "and when I can, I even take spiders outside, so they do not go hungry" I can understand this, too.

"Not that we are the masters over your faith, but we are fellow workers for your joy..." 2 Corinthians 1:24. The verse was discussed but a week or two ago, presented by the very ones you accuse of trying to monopolize persons' relationship with God. You apparently do not believe your own statement, judging by what you say two paragraphs later. Just why are you here?

I have not found that to be true. Have you found it to be that way? I have not found that to be true, either. It is only the conclusions the Christian organization has reached that you object to, not the means of reaching it. An almost universal element of mind control is that the target is separated from all that is familiar. In the year or so it takes to qualify for baptism, the prospective Witness is 95% in the same surroundings he has always been in, at home, at work, among those with whom he is familiar. He goes to two JW meetings a week and has a personal home Bible study. How does that stack up against, say - college, which is never presented as mind-control but which serves to plant many a foreign notion into the mind of emerging graduates? College, where students are completely separated 24/7 from all that is familiar - made to live in dormitories. Don't misunderstand. The point here is not to down college. The point is to show that your allegations of Watchtower mind-control are juvenile nonsense. Fortunately, I have never been asked to.

Unfortunately, I missed them all. Would they have done Mike Hammer proud?

I believe I do understand this. He possibly was not unlike you, only he died having made peace with leadership of the congregation. His name is spoken of gingerly by some. He was in and out a time or two, I think, but ended up in. About the time I wrote the tomsheepandgoats.com posts, I wrote him, having read a few of his books just prior. But I had only an address found online somewhere - it came back undeliverable. Shortly afterwards, I heard he had died. You cannot but love his lines. Such as, (not a direct quote) "[such and such] may be my last book. I can't sit for eight hours anymore. My rear end gets sore."

Finally, Finally, Finally I may be able to relate to JTR on something. Was it? "I snapped the side of the rod across his jaw and laid the flesh open to the bone. I pounded his teeth back into his mouth with the end of the barrel ... and I took my own damn time about kicking him in the face. He smashed into the door and lay there bubbling. So I kicked him again and he stopped bubbling."

One can never say that God is not using other groups of people. Some he is using as toilet paper. I rarely view any apostate source because hatred skews objectivity. It is like expecting CNN to give the lowdown on Trump, or Breitbart to do the same on Obama. At most, you say "Alright, just what 'fact' do these liars think they have uncovered?" Usually it is better to skip it entirely and wait for something from an impartial source. A sound byte with no context, followed by reams of cherrypicked quotes? It reveals the mind of a 10 year old. These are exactly the same idiots who insist the Gospels are full of contradictions because they are too infantile (or deceitful) to realize the effects of time, perspective, purpose, and audience. The entire Bible is rife with contractions to persons of similar intellect, and especially ill motive.

The reason I wrote about Mickey more than I ever intended to is that, the more I learned about him, the more I thought he would make such a cool Grandpa. He had that irresistible combination that typified so many old-time Witnesses of the previous generation: an unfailing good nature - he liked people, plus and absolute lack of pretense. I put him in the Tom Irregardless book, too. It was Ivor E. Tower's (George Chryssides) favorite part: “My favourite part of the book was the parody of Mickey Spillane near the end, where Tom Harley envisages a house-to-house publisher acting like one of Spillane’s macho characters. For those who don’t know, Spillane was a novelist whose books were renowned for their sex and violence, until Spillane converted to become a Jehovah’s Witness in 1951 – a decision that drastically changed his writing style." On Twitter, I follow his wife, who was much younger than Mickey. She is intensely political and a strong supporter of a certain blond politician who is in the news a lot. (she says Mickey was that way, too)

This is outrageous! It is an ad hominem attack. I strongly discourage tactics like this. I have also heard allegations that some sign in a k a by another name. It is not right to do this.

Actually, I think that few do. Most shoot from the hip. I do it myself. de Vienne and Shultz's book is a chronicle for posterity. This is a here today, gone tomorrow thread. Unsurprisingly to participants here, I notified the author about this thread. Perhaps surprisingly to some, she remarked she had no interest in commenting, and made no further statement. Just because you can debate does not mean you do it at every opportunity, as though it were the essence of life - especially when it is with ones who have already demonstrated that they have minds like concrete - all mixed up and firmly set.

Participation here has a long last jarred my conscience to write the review I promised. I left this one with Amazon today: This book resonated with me. I once lived within 100 yards (but also 100 years) of Nelson H Barbour’s Church of the Strangers. The tiny gazettes of the tiny towns surrounding Rochester, New York, from which the authors extract quotes as readily as a child extracts popcorn from the bag, vanished ages ago, and even some of the towns with them. Others have been assimilated into Greater Rochester. These are the days when ‘many would rove about,’ as Daniel 12:4 states, free to explore biblical doctrines, free from the disapproving gaze of national European churches that they left not that many decades ago. C.T. Russell, ‘founder’ of Jehovah’s Witnesses, emerges as the main character by sheer force of output, but nobody of that era is ignored, both individuals the authors came to regard as likeable and those otherwise. These are serious, no-nonsense researchers who dismiss Wikipedia as an “online ‘encyclopedia’ of doubtful worth.” Potential for disaster abounds, the shoals are treacherous here because most who have written of Russell and crew have beliefs, and in most cases their beliefs dictate their scholarship. The authors make no such blunders. As to religious motive, or who had God’s blessing, they don’t go there. “I question everything including commonly believed ‘facts,’” the co-author says. “many of those proved absolutely true. Some proved false.” It is clear that she savors separating the sheep from the goats and she thanks with gusto those who helped her in her quest. The Watchtower organization cooperated to a degree with this book but ultimately declined to comment on it. The authors speculate it is because they are ‘incurious about their own history.’ As a practicing Witness today, I would agree with that. It is a ‘look forward, not backward’ type of thing. Broad strokes are enough when it comes to the past. Though I relish the detail exhaustively researched here, I am essentially that way, too. No matter. It serves as a reference work – and there are none better, IMO – even for the “incurious.” ‘A Separate Identity’ is a work I highly recommend. Having reviewed their work, can I depend upon them to review mine? Will they, better yet, mentor me as a new author - show me the ropes? I'm not holding my breath. They have already said they would not do it, before I unconditionally said I would review theirs. They display little taste for the light style of writing that is mine, and none whatsoever for the zany. The few times I have corresponded with de Vienne, she answers me one word for every ten of mine. I think they even groused about Smashwords.

At first glance, it is not a bad answer. However, it 'works for me' in the same way an actual bus works for me. I arrive at my destination, which I will not do in a timely way, and likely not at all, if I walk. Knowing this, even if I choose to get off the bus, I do not hang out at the bus terminal haranguing boarding passengers about getting on board, I would have a screw loose to do that. It is not as though the driver does not have a notable record of where he has driven, sights he has seen, deeds he has done.

If people carry on too much about this stuff, I begin to wonder about their grasp of the Bible. Do they imagine that a competent Governing Body would prove Jesus wrong - would make the world love us? Do they imagine that the wicked thing people would lyingly say about us (Matthew 5:11) would be: “well, um, I mean….they woke me up when I was trying to sleep?” If it is not Jehovah’s Witnesses who are described by this verse, who is it? Who else, attempting to do the work Jesus did, is “everywhere spoken against?”

You go berserk like William Shatner on the Twilight Zone plane, positively losing it on a flight no one else had any problem with.

Forgive me for this. It is not to say anything about you. But some things strike me as too stupid to try to get my head around. It is no more than 'blindly following' the bus driver. I could have walked, but I am smarter to take the bus. Having done so, I do not feel I have to sit behind him and critique his every decision. Much less, having already left the bus, shouting as with a bullhorn at the passengers remaining. What is your interest in doing so?

If there is one thing all should be able to agree upon, it is that nobody can tell Stephen Lett about gestures. He wrote the book. Look, I shouldn't comment on this topic because I am only barely paying attention. But why would not the following common sense point apply? If the ring truly represented anything sinister, he would simply remove it and leave it in his locker before doing the broadcast, so as not to get guys like you going.

With a view toward reviewing her work, I am reading the most exhaustive and scholarly treatment of the Russell era that I am aware of (and it is only volume 1) https://www.amazon.com/Separate-Identity-Organizational-Readers-1870-1887/dp/1304969401 I have never seen such detail. It holds special interest for me as I live in Rochester, and was once withing 100 yards (but also 100 years) of Nelson Barbour. There are frequent mention of towns around where I live - some have merged into Rochester, some have grown, some have disappeared. I follow the author on Twitter. She tweets excitedly with her coauthor about some tiny little mini-fact that she or he has confirmed. We have briefly corresponded. I tried (I think unsuccessfully) to get her to review my book and ended up volunteering to review hers. It deserves weeks of pondering and I just don't have that time, but no matter. Because I have the history I get the flavor of it quickly. Even so, those devoted enough to meaningfully contribute to this thread (which I am not) will get more out of it than me. These days, plenty of people take a factoid or two and spin God only knows what out of it. You can't get away with it with these authors. Their research is exhaustive.

It played out for me not in precisely that way. But it did play out. From what I can see, not many make it though this system of things with elegance. It's enough to get through it with greater things intact. It is generally that way in the non-Witness world as well. Those that get through it seldom do it 'in style,' as someone or other once said. When I see the various prices people have paid, I'm glad I did not have to pay them.

On a morning when Kingdom Hall attendance was extremely thin - some were off in seldom worked territory, some were at the foreign language circuit assembly - I whispered to the Watchtower conductor: "Did the friends think you were giving the talk today?" "You're a piece of work!" he shot back.

I would imagine this would be a hindsight assessment. Similar to 'perpetual students' in academia, perpetual soldiers in military, even perpetual jailbirds in the prison system. I could easily have been the first two, and, say if I was strangle some folks here, the third, as well. And had I gone to Bethel, I could have become the theocratic variety. I am not like Davey the Kid, who relished the challenge. The nitty-gritty of 'cutting it' in this system of things is a huge pain in the rear for me ... I just like to do what I like to do, irresepective of whether it pays or not. Of course, all this is from the human point of view. What of the JWB brother who said we should not say 'he'll do all right; he has a marketable skill - what if one doesn't?' Instead, it should be said: 'he'll do all right; Jehovah will provide for one who puts his will first.' But it is irresistably human to say the first. Even now, when the bills are paid and the kids are gone and I can indulge some hobbies, I say 'I am on the road to becoming a best selling author. The trouble is, I am not very far along on that road.' (no thanks to @The Librarian(

Say - how did @The Librarianend up in charge of the Bethel library? (the helpless harried hen)