TrueTomHarley

Oh, for crying out loud!
Never have I seen such endless passages of scripture poured down the drain to no use.
I might believe your stated motive if you did not tirelessly present yourself as one of the true anointed (or perhaps the true anointed) and pounce upon the slightest reference to the priesthood to showcase yourself. Sheesh. Outside of Jehovah’s Witnesses, few even know what anointed is.

You ridiculous woman!
Did he said he was going to do it himself, or is it not rather his expression of faith that God is going to replace human rule of the earth with his kingdom?

Trump himself passed them out in our congregation.
[No, I’m kidding—there will always be someone to take it seriously] 
And if there was anything hush-hush about the program, that never reached my ears. I posted both here and on my own blog of it.
https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2020/05/produce-from-the-usdaisnt-that-nice.html
In our service group, when an elderly sister remarked on how the brothers had bought this food, the one with oversight told her it was not they—they were just distributing—it was a government program that they had signed on to.
I do get the concern, (not of Witness, for she just wants to deride her rivals) but of the ones who originated her source material, that maybe there is someone who needs the food more. And that certainly could be. The part where Bro Hendricks says ‘we advised those who received packages not to turn them down’ and later presents the rationale that they will be inclined to underestimate their own burden—“downplaying any private struggles with food insecurity”—I can see that, too. (My wife and I are not destitute, but we are retired and we do live off social security—living modestly as Witnesses do, so that the stipend is far from huge) I responded the same way that Hendricks suggested some might respond: there will be others who need it more—and we were told that if that is the case, we could share with neighbors and others. I know of ones who have done this. How many? No idea. People of faith tend to take to heart Jesus’ counsel to not let the right hand know what the left is doing and not to blow a trumpet in front of them whenever they give. At some point you have to put faith in the “little people” to do what is right.
Since JWs are the lowest income group of all faiths (and Witness sneers over that too, no doubt), even if aid went no further than they and their immediate associates, it would hardly be a travesty. But, as indicated, they were encouraged to share if they felt there were others who could benefit more.
The trick is finding these ones. The solution of leaving it up to the individual to share with cases that he/she personally knows of is probably as efficient as any, and It may be the most efficient. If you are poor, you will likely live in a poor neighborhood, and will know of serious cases of need. If you are a Witness not poor, you will know of some who are, because Witnesses are a tightly knit community, and can find out about such hard cases through them in the event that none are in your immediate area.
Witness’s concern is only to slam JWs, but the tone of the article is irreligious in general, and whatever potential abuses of USDA rules it describes are not those of Jehovah’s Witnesses, even of such lesser charges as swapping the government logo for a religious one. The box we received plainly said ‘Farmers to Families—USDA.’ (and I am glad I took a picture of it for my prior post, because you know that Witness would not mention it)
Those church outfits will have to speak for themselves, and I noticed that some had no comment, in contrast to Hendricks, who did. Still, doesn’t jealousy account for much of the article’s tone, that communities of faith are motivated to have effective distribution channels that far outstrip those of non-faith, those purely secular? Says the article: “Many food banks and other nonprofits have complained that they’re incurring significant, unexpected expenses related to storage and last-mile delivery.” Not to be unfeeling, but whose fault is that? 
Faith, love of brother, and love of neighbor has moved ones of the JW organization to overcome these “unexpected expenses related to storage and last-mile delivery.” The packages I’ve received have been delivered directly to my door, and I have indeed shared some with others who were not recipients. JWs thus set an example showing secular outfits how it can be done. All those outfits need to do is find similar selfless people.
Of course, they do have some. I’ve nothing but praise for secular food relief organizations. But they don’t have such selfless ones in anywhere near the abundance as does the Witness faith-based community, and that is why massive lines have accompanied some distributions—one wonders if in some cases the aid received is not offset by the cost of gasoline in retrieving it. 
In the early days of the pandemic, before monitory relief came from the government that temporarily took the pressure off many, I wrote a check to one of these food banks. I don’t like the idea of people going hungry. I wanted to give, and I did so. Yet, as I did so, I had to come to grips with the certain knowledge that inefficiencies built into such programs would dilute my contribution. It pains me that this is the case. I wish it were not. I wish they could draw upon enough people in the overall community to solve distribution issues—it’s produce, after all—it can’t sit around forever. At heart, the issue is that non-faith does not move people to be selfless to the same extent as does faith, and the article seems to me an expression of jealousy that such is the case. Is it so shocking that that when people of faith give they want to call attention to what implanted that generous spirit within them? The article appears even to have even political overtones, complaining at the perceived shortfalls of a Trump administration program.
Of course, if there are abuses of the system, then someone ought lower the boom on whoever is committing them. “Saving” people in the parking lot, soliciting donations for the program, offering prayer sessions as a condition, things that Witnesses do not do, does sound as though it might violate the spirit or even letter of the program. And are parishioners poor to start with, as JWs in the aggregate are, or are some well-off? All proper matters to look at, it seems. But at present, this looks to me like another article—I have seen many—that highlights the abuses of some churches and by headline suggests that Jehovah’s Witnesses are the worst of them, even though Witnesses steer clear of such shenanigans.
I wouldn’t know just what is the case with “Heather,” whose complaint triggered this article. But I reflect back upon when I was working in a group home that hired a new assistant manager. In short order, I began to feel some heat, and in time I went to the house manager about it. “For some reason, I think she is trying to get me fired,” I told her. The manager thought that unlikely. She asked me why that would be, and I truthfully told her I didn’t know. But I then mentioned that it turns out she and I know hundreds of people in common, for she was once a member of my faith. “Oh,” the manager said, and instantly her tone changed. She said no more, I said no more, and I heard no more, until a week or two later that that asst manager had been discharged. The hostility of some ex-JWs is hard to fathom.
 

Happened in our service group too. Some older ones thought the same, but it was explained to them. Our congregation received a total of 50 boxes and all were distributed promptly by assigned brothers and volunteers.
Happened here too. No one wants to waste food. If the box contained half a dozen ears of corn on the cob and you had just bought an armful, the logical thing is to give them away to others who might not have any.
I wouldn't know either, but it does sound like she has a chip on her shoulder, as you insinuate.

He didn't make it up. It's all in the Bible as you very well know.
2 Thessalonians 1:7-9
7  But you who suffer tribulation will be given relief along with us at the revelation of the Lord Jesus from heaven with his powerful angels  8  in a flaming fire, as he brings vengeance on those who do not know God and those who do not obey the good news about our Lord Jesus. 9  These very ones will undergo the judicial punishment of everlasting destruction from before the Lord and from the glory of his strength.
 
 

You ridiculous woman!
Did he said he was going to do it himself, or is it not rather his expression of faith that God is going to replace human rule of the earth with his kingdom?

Trump himself passed them out in our congregation.
[No, I’m kidding—there will always be someone to take it seriously] 
And if there was anything hush-hush about the program, that never reached my ears. I posted both here and on my own blog of it.
https://www.tomsheepandgoats.com/2020/05/produce-from-the-usdaisnt-that-nice.html
In our service group, when an elderly sister remarked on how the brothers had bought this food, the one with oversight told her it was not they—they were just distributing—it was a government program that they had signed on to.
I do get the concern, (not of Witness, for she just wants to deride her rivals) but of the ones who originated her source material, that maybe there is someone who needs the food more. And that certainly could be. The part where Bro Hendricks says ‘we advised those who received packages not to turn them down’ and later presents the rationale that they will be inclined to underestimate their own burden—“downplaying any private struggles with food insecurity”—I can see that, too. (My wife and I are not destitute, but we are retired and we do live off social security—living modestly as Witnesses do, so that the stipend is far from huge) I responded the same way that Hendricks suggested some might respond: there will be others who need it more—and we were told that if that is the case, we could share with neighbors and others. I know of ones who have done this. How many? No idea. People of faith tend to take to heart Jesus’ counsel to not let the right hand know what the left is doing and not to blow a trumpet in front of them whenever they give. At some point you have to put faith in the “little people” to do what is right.
Since JWs are the lowest income group of all faiths (and Witness sneers over that too, no doubt), even if aid went no further than they and their immediate associates, it would hardly be a travesty. But, as indicated, they were encouraged to share if they felt there were others who could benefit more.
The trick is finding these ones. The solution of leaving it up to the individual to share with cases that he/she personally knows of is probably as efficient as any, and It may be the most efficient. If you are poor, you will likely live in a poor neighborhood, and will know of serious cases of need. If you are a Witness not poor, you will know of some who are, because Witnesses are a tightly knit community, and can find out about such hard cases through them in the event that none are in your immediate area.
Witness’s concern is only to slam JWs, but the tone of the article is irreligious in general, and whatever potential abuses of USDA rules it describes are not those of Jehovah’s Witnesses, even of such lesser charges as swapping the government logo for a religious one. The box we received plainly said ‘Farmers to Families—USDA.’ (and I am glad I took a picture of it for my prior post, because you know that Witness would not mention it)
Those church outfits will have to speak for themselves, and I noticed that some had no comment, in contrast to Hendricks, who did. Still, doesn’t jealousy account for much of the article’s tone, that communities of faith are motivated to have effective distribution channels that far outstrip those of non-faith, those purely secular? Says the article: “Many food banks and other nonprofits have complained that they’re incurring significant, unexpected expenses related to storage and last-mile delivery.” Not to be unfeeling, but whose fault is that? 
Faith, love of brother, and love of neighbor has moved ones of the JW organization to overcome these “unexpected expenses related to storage and last-mile delivery.” The packages I’ve received have been delivered directly to my door, and I have indeed shared some with others who were not recipients. JWs thus set an example showing secular outfits how it can be done. All those outfits need to do is find similar selfless people.
Of course, they do have some. I’ve nothing but praise for secular food relief organizations. But they don’t have such selfless ones in anywhere near the abundance as does the Witness faith-based community, and that is why massive lines have accompanied some distributions—one wonders if in some cases the aid received is not offset by the cost of gasoline in retrieving it. 
In the early days of the pandemic, before monitory relief came from the government that temporarily took the pressure off many, I wrote a check to one of these food banks. I don’t like the idea of people going hungry. I wanted to give, and I did so. Yet, as I did so, I had to come to grips with the certain knowledge that inefficiencies built into such programs would dilute my contribution. It pains me that this is the case. I wish it were not. I wish they could draw upon enough people in the overall community to solve distribution issues—it’s produce, after all—it can’t sit around forever. At heart, the issue is that non-faith does not move people to be selfless to the same extent as does faith, and the article seems to me an expression of jealousy that such is the case. Is it so shocking that that when people of faith give they want to call attention to what implanted that generous spirit within them? The article appears even to have even political overtones, complaining at the perceived shortfalls of a Trump administration program.
Of course, if there are abuses of the system, then someone ought lower the boom on whoever is committing them. “Saving” people in the parking lot, soliciting donations for the program, offering prayer sessions as a condition, things that Witnesses do not do, does sound as though it might violate the spirit or even letter of the program. And are parishioners poor to start with, as JWs in the aggregate are, or are some well-off? All proper matters to look at, it seems. But at present, this looks to me like another article—I have seen many—that highlights the abuses of some churches and by headline suggests that Jehovah’s Witnesses are the worst of them, even though Witnesses steer clear of such shenanigans.
I wouldn’t know just what is the case with “Heather,” whose complaint triggered this article. But I reflect back upon when I was working in a group home that hired a new assistant manager. In short order, I began to feel some heat, and in time I went to the house manager about it. “For some reason, I think she is trying to get me fired,” I told her. The manager thought that unlikely. She asked me why that would be, and I truthfully told her I didn’t know. But I then mentioned that it turns out she and I know hundreds of people in common, for she was once a member of my faith. “Oh,” the manager said, and instantly her tone changed. She said no more, I said no more, and I heard no more, until a week or two later that that asst manager had been discharged. The hostility of some ex-JWs is hard to fathom.
 

The guy who wrote The Graduate—the book, not the movie—gave away all the money he made from writing it. He bought a house with his one-time movie rights. He gave it away within weeks—he would give three away during his lifetime—a lifetime that ended July 2020, He was 81.
The movie ‘The Graduate’ was a sensation—the highest grossing film of 1967, with seven academy award nominations. It is fussed over to this day for capturing the “alienation of modern youth”—though they are not so modern anymore, have long since put their alienation behind them, and many have done quite well for themselves, thank you very much. Many ultimately chose the life of plastic that the Graduate protagonist rejected.
But not author Charles Webb and his wife. Several times they came into money, and each time they would give it away. The Graduate movie is ranked the 17th greatest American film of all time by the American Film Institute; the “coming of age story is indeed one for the ages,” gushes Rotten Tomatoes. Webb didn’t make a dime off it and didn’t want to. He wouldn’t even do book signings—they were “a sin against decency.”
What kind of a guy does this? Many times he received windfalls. Each time he gave it away. “Mercifully I wasn’t written into [the Graduate movie] deal,” he told the AP. “Nobody understands why I felt so relieved, but I count my longevity to not being swept into that. My wife and I have done a lot of things we wouldn’t have done if we were rich people. ... I would have been counting my money instead of educating my children.”
He’s not kidding about educating his children. He and his wife Fred—she took that name so as to identify with a group of men named Fred afflicted with low self-esteem (you’re guess is as good as mine)—pulled their two children from school. They homeschooled. This resonates with me because I did the same, only mine were not pulled out—they never saw the inside of a school other than an experimental 6th grade, after which both chose to homeschool again. 
Homeschooling wasn’t legal when Webbs did it. It was when we did, even if a little dicey—there were always unpredictable hoops to jump through. Once, the school district turned down my curriculum plan on the basis of, of all things, a weak music curriculum. The kids were enrolled in Suzuki violin, for crying out loud! I went to the library, copied and submitted some gobbledygook from a music textbook, and they were as happy as pigs in mud.
A set of older friends in another jurisdiction were constantly harassed over their homeschooling—much more so than us. Yet my pal later reflected on his younger kids that were homeschooled vs his older ones that were not, and observed that the those of the first batch were far better at interacting with all factions of the community. Pretty much the same experience here—not that we had the contrast but we did have the experience of kids who readily mixed with all ages—whereas when I was in grade school, those kids in even one grade up might have been on another planet, to say nothing of adults. “I had no idea that there were so many stupid people,” said my son in complete innocence after he enrolled in the community college at age 16 and began his second experience in the classroom. 
The Webbs moved around a lot, sometimes camping, sometimes living out of a Volkswagen bus. Oldest son John called that part of his education “unschooling.” I know what unschooling is, too. We did it at times. It is simply a less rigid homeschooling, with more forbearance for letting youngsters pursue their own interests. I’d love to speak with these two kids—now adults. How did they turn out? “Not a lot of people picked up on it, but the title of ‘The Graduate’ was supposed to convey it was about education,” Webb told some reporter in 2006. He wasn’t keen on the mainstream model.
Meanwhile, he and/or his artist wife did stints at KMart, picked fruit, cleaned houses. “When you run out of money, it’s a purifying experience,” he said. Besides the VW bus, they lived in motels, trailer parks, even a nudist colony—they managed that place during their tenure. They named their dog ‘Mrs. Robinson.’
Now, these two were not Jehovah’s Witnesses. I don’t want to imply that they were. (Have JWs ever preached in a nudist colony?) Yet we have so many people who have renounced financial comfort so as to “have a greater share in the ministry” that when I see it elsewhere, it resonates no less than the homeschooling. I count as a friend today someone whose pursuit of a full-time ministry within Jehovah’s Witnesses triggered estrangement from his unbelieving oil baron family. “Look, Eric! Texas tea!” I call his attention to any gas station that we pass. 
The book that became the movie is not autobiographical. “I got interested in the wife of a good friend of my parents and ... [realized] it might be better to write about it than to do it,” he told the online publication Thoughtcat in 2006. Yet much of it was his life—his remoteness from his wealthy connected parents, for example, along with their world that he found so superficial. His relationship with his heart specialist dad was “reasonably bad,” he said, and with his socialite mom, he “was always looking for crumbs of approval.” He had figured he might get a considerable number of those crumbs with the publication of his book, for she was an avid reader who might boast “My son is an author!” but he didn’t—probably the skewering of her lifestyle had something to do with it. 
Still, whether you give up every dime or not—you don’t have to do it just for the sake of doing it. The ministry of the apostle Paul caused him to know both “how to have an abundance and how to do without.” (Philippians 4:12) He knew and was comfortable in both places. This fellow was good at doing without, but he seems to have panicked at having an abundance. Sometimes you have to renounce your past. Sometimes in doing so, you swing too far the other way. 
Maybe it was a starving artist kind of thing. He even made a cliche over it: “The penniless author has always been the stereotype that works for me. . . . When in doubt, be down and out.” But not for any romantic reason—he pushed back at that notion. “We hope to make the point that the creative process is really a defense mechanism on the part of artists — that creativity is not a romantic notion.” It’s not like he would recommend it to others, or maybe even to himself. It is more like he felt driven to it, half against his will. I think of how so many comedians developed and honed their comedy as a means of defendIng themselves from school-age bullies. There is even a video that suggests that.
A character from one of his other books—he wrote eight—an alcoholic painter, says: “What’s important for me is that I keep doing it, keep painting, and hold on to that feeling which goes along with putting the paint of the canvas,” he wrote. “It’s all I have and all I need.” This, too, resonates with me, a fellow who imagines himself a writer—and inherits the pluses along with the minuses.
“Lots of people momentarily embrace the idea of leaving the rat race, like the characters in The Graduate,” said one obit writer. “Mr. Webb [and his wife] did it, with all the consequences it entailed. If they regretted the choice, they did not say so.” And, “Webb has such an easygoing charm about him, such a friendly and sincere presence,” another wrote years prior. This also resonates with me, who—no, that is going too far. In the dog park I constantly have to apologize for my dog, who gets grouchy in his old age, “just like me.”
As though to get in the final word, the condensed obituary in TheWeek Magazine read: “The Graduate author who ran from success” Did he? Or is it that they can only imagine their own definition of success there at TheWeek?

Oops sorry that was meant to be a laugh not a thanks 😊 

As it turns out, I have been assigned the #4 talk this week on how Paul described certain fellows few have heard of as “a strengthening aid” to him, as one taking the lead in the work at the time.
Whether I can use you as a modern-day example is dubious.

No, that is not a problem at all. None of the items of baptism are affected.
If the map changes because roads have been added or deleted, do you burn the city down?
You are so silly, John.

Well, I am not sure that I would go that far:
”Rabbi, is there a prayer for the czar?”
”A prayer for the czar? Of course: May.........God.......bless.......the.........czar—and keep him far away from us!”
Just trying to scratch out a little tune, here, without breaking my back.

I have just one word of advice for you: “Plastics,” said the parent’s comfortable friend to Benjamin Braddock. Plastics—the new growth field in 1967, the year The Graduate movie came out—just as computers and then the internet would be to succeeding generations. Plastics—a graduate could make a killing in it.
But Ben didn’t want any career advice just then. Just out of college, with no goals at all, the only thing he knew is that he wanted no part of the phony monied world that had been his upbringing. He lolled around aimless at his folks’ upper crust home that year and ended up in an affair with his mom’s socialite friend—her idea, not his. “Mrs. Robinson, are you trying to seduce me?” is a line from the movie that has endured.
It is the same Mrs. Robinson that Simon and Garfunkel sung about. Mike Nichols, film director had been after Paul Simon to write news songs for the movie and he didn’t want to do it—he was busy. Finally he said that he did have this song kicking around about times past and Joe DiMaggio and Mrs. Roosevelt, and the director said he’d take it! Just change Roosevelt to Robinson and he had a deal.
This explains why baseball great Joe DiMaggio blew a gasket when he heard his name in the song—so says the Ken Burns documentary Baseball. Who are those hippy long-hairs to drag him into their immoral movie that had nothing to do with him?! Joe was a traditional type of guy. Others in baseball just barely calmed him down with the plea that, while the mention may not have had any context, it was a compliment.
That line about going into plastics is another line that endures. At what point did ‘plastic’ come to stand for an entire world of materialism devoid of deeper values? It couldn’t have been just then in 1967. The plastic revolution of consumption was just getting underway. 
Yet if fits so well with an NPR report of 53 years later—of September 2020. There has never been any meaningful recycling of plastic! Ten percent is all that has ever been reused—tops. And the industry knew it all along! Recycled plastic doesn’t hold up well, is expensive to make, whereas new plastic is cheap. But with environmentalism sweeping the globe, that is the last thing people wanted to hear, so they weren’t told that. They were told that those recycling numbers within triangles on every plastic item meant something, and earth-friendly people the world over—I do it myself—sort out all their plastic for recycling bins. Waste Management sends the truck by a second time to pick it up.
It doesn’t mean a thing. It all gets buried—all but 10%. For me personally this would have been fine ammo—better than the ammo that I did use—when I was kicking back at some atheist deriding Witnesses for preaching about God’s kingdom whereas they could be rolling up their sleeves to help with saving the planet! Look, we’ve nothing against saving the planet, I told him, and when there are recycling laws on the books Jehovah’s Witnesses no doubt obey  them more closely than most because they are good at obeying laws—they don’t figure that each new law is a line drawn in the sand that they have to cross in order to prove their courage. Yeah—they love cooperating in this regard, but it’s a little stupid to think they are saving the planet when, in one gigantic industry blunder, millions of gallons of oil can destroy the entire seashore. The BP gulf oil spill had just occurred and President Obama spouted tough talk about “kicking asses” over it. 
It was a great retort to the anti-religion humanist, but the worldwide plastic recycling scam would have been even better. Can someone look this fellow up for me? I’ll run this new one by him. “Look, I'm all for local clean-up-the-park days. Same with clean-up-the-roadside days,” I said. No one of Jehovah’s Witnesses will ever speak against them. In fact, in Russia, Witnesses do clean up the public parks—or at least they did before the ban. I didn’t know that at the time, but when I found out I included that tidbit in Dear Mr. Putin - Jehovah’s Witnesses Write Russia. 
“In Russia, congregations do it all the time,” Anton Chivchalov told me—the one who keeps an eye on the current persecution in that land. “Most congregations do it. It has become a custom for them. Parks are more or less okay, other people clean them too, but still there is garbage to clean, and sometimes the authorities just lack enough workers, so there may be tons of garbage at times. We clean not only parks, but any public areas. We usually ask the city administration to assign some areas for us to clean.”
I speculated within Dear Mr. Putin on how it must make a great backdrop for informal conversations on God’s purpose to make the earth a paradise. Do Witnesses still do it, with police guarding them to make sure no one talks about God? I’ll have to ask Chivchalov. Still, even as they did it, they did not imagine that they were negating the verse of how humans will be “ruining the earth” when God intervenes—ruining it, not saving it, and the NPR story that the emperor wore no clothes despite his loud voice—he recycles hardly any plastic at all despite telling people he does so they will not feel bad about buying plastic and will buy more—was an perfect case in point.
And young Benjamin Braddock, the aimless college grad of the movie, knew it instinctively—that the world his parents’s generation wanted to thrust him into was plastic—promising 100% and delivering 10%. ‘He probably went into plastics after all and did very well for himself,’ said some cynical commentator on the movie—so many of that generation sold out, as they do in all generations. Be that as it may, the author of the book The Graduate did not sell out—he died penniless in 2020, after a lifetime of giving away assets. More on him later.
 

I have just one word of advice for you: “Plastics,” said the parent’s comfortable friend to Benjamin Braddock. Plastics—the new growth field in 1967, the year The Graduate movie came out—just as computers and then the internet would be to succeeding generations. Plastics—a graduate could make a killing in it.
But Ben didn’t want any career advice just then. Just out of college, with no goals at all, the only thing he knew is that he wanted no part of the phony monied world that had been his upbringing. He lolled around aimless at his folks’ upper crust home that year and ended up in an affair with his mom’s socialite friend—her idea, not his. “Mrs. Robinson, are you trying to seduce me?” is a line from the movie that has endured.
It is the same Mrs. Robinson that Simon and Garfunkel sung about. Mike Nichols, film director had been after Paul Simon to write news songs for the movie and he didn’t want to do it—he was busy. Finally he said that he did have this song kicking around about times past and Joe DiMaggio and Mrs. Roosevelt, and the director said he’d take it! Just change Roosevelt to Robinson and he had a deal.
This explains why baseball great Joe DiMaggio blew a gasket when he heard his name in the song—so says the Ken Burns documentary Baseball. Who are those hippy long-hairs to drag him into their immoral movie that had nothing to do with him?! Joe was a traditional type of guy. Others in baseball just barely calmed him down with the plea that, while the mention may not have had any context, it was a compliment.
That line about going into plastics is another line that endures. At what point did ‘plastic’ come to stand for an entire world of materialism devoid of deeper values? It couldn’t have been just then in 1967. The plastic revolution of consumption was just getting underway. 
Yet if fits so well with an NPR report of 53 years later—of September 2020. There has never been any meaningful recycling of plastic! Ten percent is all that has ever been reused—tops. And the industry knew it all along! Recycled plastic doesn’t hold up well, is expensive to make, whereas new plastic is cheap. But with environmentalism sweeping the globe, that is the last thing people wanted to hear, so they weren’t told that. They were told that those recycling numbers within triangles on every plastic item meant something, and earth-friendly people the world over—I do it myself—sort out all their plastic for recycling bins. Waste Management sends the truck by a second time to pick it up.
It doesn’t mean a thing. It all gets buried—all but 10%. For me personally this would have been fine ammo—better than the ammo that I did use—when I was kicking back at some atheist deriding Witnesses for preaching about God’s kingdom whereas they could be rolling up their sleeves to help with saving the planet! Look, we’ve nothing against saving the planet, I told him, and when there are recycling laws on the books Jehovah’s Witnesses no doubt obey  them more closely than most because they are good at obeying laws—they don’t figure that each new law is a line drawn in the sand that they have to cross in order to prove their courage. Yeah—they love cooperating in this regard, but it’s a little stupid to think they are saving the planet when, in one gigantic industry blunder, millions of gallons of oil can destroy the entire seashore. The BP gulf oil spill had just occurred and President Obama spouted tough talk about “kicking asses” over it. 
It was a great retort to the anti-religion humanist, but the worldwide plastic recycling scam would have been even better. Can someone look this fellow up for me? I’ll run this new one by him. “Look, I'm all for local clean-up-the-park days. Same with clean-up-the-roadside days,” I said. No one of Jehovah’s Witnesses will ever speak against them. In fact, in Russia, Witnesses do clean up the public parks—or at least they did before the ban. I didn’t know that at the time, but when I found out I included that tidbit in Dear Mr. Putin - Jehovah’s Witnesses Write Russia. 
“In Russia, congregations do it all the time,” Anton Chivchalov told me—the one who keeps an eye on the current persecution in that land. “Most congregations do it. It has become a custom for them. Parks are more or less okay, other people clean them too, but still there is garbage to clean, and sometimes the authorities just lack enough workers, so there may be tons of garbage at times. We clean not only parks, but any public areas. We usually ask the city administration to assign some areas for us to clean.”
I speculated within Dear Mr. Putin on how it must make a great backdrop for informal conversations on God’s purpose to make the earth a paradise. Do Witnesses still do it, with police guarding them to make sure no one talks about God? I’ll have to ask Chivchalov. Still, even as they did it, they did not imagine that they were negating the verse of how humans will be “ruining the earth” when God intervenes—ruining it, not saving it, and the NPR story that the emperor wore no clothes despite his loud voice—he recycles hardly any plastic at all despite telling people he does so they will not feel bad about buying plastic and will buy more—was an perfect case in point.
And young Benjamin Braddock, the aimless college grad of the movie, knew it instinctively—that the world his parents’s generation wanted to thrust him into was plastic—promising 100% and delivering 10%. ‘He probably went into plastics after all and did very well for himself,’ said some cynical commentator on the movie—so many of that generation sold out, as they do in all generations. Be that as it may, the author of the book The Graduate did not sell out—he died penniless in 2020, after a lifetime of giving away assets. More on him later.
 

I can recall saying in talks that if the first time the entire world was concurrently at war does not fulfill Matt 24:7, what does?
(“For nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be food shortages and earthquakes in one place after another.”)
And if the greatest pestilence in history by death count, the Spanish flu, does not fulfill Luke 21:10, what does?
(“Nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be great earthquakes, and in one place after another food shortages and pestilences...”)
HG Wells said something in his Outline of History, about record-setting famine in Russia just afterwards and I used to throw that in, too, with the same question.
Only earthquakes were not included, and there was an article in the early 2000’s I think in which WT cited geologic surveys that earthquakes have been fairly constant through the centuries, are not notably on the increase, and they did not challenge it, though they did say that it is not really the Richter scale that is going to cut it with people today, but the effect upon populations, which is on the increase simply because population is on the increase.
And then Matthew 24:8 could be quoted: “All these things are a beginning of pangs of distress.“ Things start off with a bang, but we are still in for a long haul. Other things would transpire, the only good one being the preaching of the good news earth wide, “and then the end will come.”
 

Historians of the future will be asked which quarter of 2020 did they specialize in.
Quarter 1: Pandemic appears out of nowhere and spreads throughout the globe within weeks. Society goes into lockdown. Stock markets plunge. Massive unemployment begins.
Quarter 2: People get fed up with lockdown. Churches defy them. College students and the young in general defy them. Police shootings prompt major protests in the streets. Renewed spikes in Covid 19 cases.
Quarter 3: Protests escalate to riots. Pro and anti Trump people fight each other in the streets. Some killings, Huge property damage. Record-setting fires burn throughout western states, destroying entire communities, the smoke dims Eastern skies. GOP and Democrats decline to help unemployed as they did initially, preferring to blame each other Instead for the suffering that ensues.
Quarter 4: The election. Never has been seen such incivility of opponents. Trump’s enemies proclaim he will not leave if he loses and will have to be dragged out of the White House. Hillary tells Democrats to, under no circumstances, concede a loss come Election Day. Social unrest intensifies. Only about one third of Americans say they will take a vaccine whenever one is produced. Serious talk of civil war is heard.
Just for starters.
Nothing to see here, people. Move along, now. Why, from the days of our forefathers, all things continue exactly as from creation’s beginning.
You do?

Don’t worry. Be happy! Turn that frown upside down!
In every life we have some trouble
But when you worry you make it double
Don't worry, be happy
Don't worry, be happy now don't worry
(Ooh, ooh ooh ooh oo-ooh ooh oo-ooh) be happy
(Ooh, ooh ooh ooh oo-ooh ooh oo-ooh) don't worry, be happy
(Ooh, ooh ooh ooh oo-ooh ooh oo-ooh) don't worry
(Ooh, ooh ooh ooh oo-ooh ooh oo-ooh) be happy
(Ooh, ooh ooh ooh oo-ooh ooh oo-ooh) don't worry, be happy Maybe that will be the next year text

Historians of the future will be asked which quarter of 2020 did they specialize in.
Quarter 1: Pandemic appears out of nowhere and spreads throughout the globe within weeks. Society goes into lockdown. Stock markets plunge. Massive unemployment begins.
Quarter 2: People get fed up with lockdown. Churches defy them. College students and the young in general defy them. Police shootings prompt major protests in the streets. Renewed spikes in Covid 19 cases.
Quarter 3: Protests escalate to riots. Pro and anti Trump people fight each other in the streets. Some killings, Huge property damage. Record-setting fires burn throughout western states, destroying entire communities, the smoke dims Eastern skies. GOP and Democrats decline to help unemployed as they did initially, preferring to blame each other Instead for the suffering that ensues.
Quarter 4: The election. Never has been seen such incivility of opponents. Trump’s enemies proclaim he will not leave if he loses and will have to be dragged out of the White House. Hillary tells Democrats to, under no circumstances, concede a loss come Election Day. Social unrest intensifies. Only about one third of Americans say they will take a vaccine whenever one is produced. Serious talk of civil war is heard.
Just for starters.
Nothing to see here, people. Move along, now. Why, from the days of our forefathers, all things continue exactly as from creation’s beginning.
You do?

Historians of the future will be asked which quarter of 2020 did they specialize in.
Quarter 1: Pandemic appears out of nowhere and spreads throughout the globe within weeks. Society goes into lockdown. Stock markets plunge. Massive unemployment begins.
Quarter 2: People get fed up with lockdown. Churches defy them. College students and the young in general defy them. Police shootings prompt major protests in the streets. Renewed spikes in Covid 19 cases.
Quarter 3: Protests escalate to riots. Pro and anti Trump people fight each other in the streets. Some killings, Huge property damage. Record-setting fires burn throughout western states, destroying entire communities, the smoke dims Eastern skies. GOP and Democrats decline to help unemployed as they did initially, preferring to blame each other Instead for the suffering that ensues.
Quarter 4: The election. Never has been seen such incivility of opponents. Trump’s enemies proclaim he will not leave if he loses and will have to be dragged out of the White House. Hillary tells Democrats to, under no circumstances, concede a loss come Election Day. Social unrest intensifies. Only about one third of Americans say they will take a vaccine whenever one is produced. Serious talk of civil war is heard.
Just for starters.
Nothing to see here, people. Move along, now. Why, from the days of our forefathers, all things continue exactly as from creation’s beginning.
You do?

“In my letter I wrote you to stop keeping company with sexually immoral people, not meaning entirely with the sexually immoral people of this world or the greedy people or extortioners or idolaters. Otherwise, you would actually have to get out of the world.” Paul has to clarify who he was speaking about, because, obviously it was not possible to “get out of the world.”
Today it is! If you follow government advisories and go just a tiny nudge further, you all but have! And nobody saw it coming! Nobody foresaw a pandemic, and in case anyone did, no one foresaw how it would give ample opportunity to get out of the world.
Let’s get @Kosonengoing on this. We all know that 4J is nuts, denouncing that even if they brush their teeth at Bethel, those choppers are not really clean because it was not guided by holy spirit. Yes, holy spirit doesn’t direct every tiny little thing they do. But neither am I willing to send it out to pasture. Could holy spirit have something to do with this unexpected opportunity to “get out of the world?” What does Kos think?
One of our elders is very much given to spotting sentences from the Watchtower and reading extra meaning into them that may or may not be there. He was all excited when they commented on the uber-violent entertainment of today, that maybe it is preparing the hearts of non-worshippers for when “each one will lift up his hand against his brother”—pumping them up with an affinity for gore.
And now here we are just a few years down the road and people seriously discuss the possibility of civil war in the United States! And they are fighting it out right now in several US cities!
In the United States! The last time there was talk of civil war in the United States was during the Civil War! Now there is that talk again, with society splitting into two factions that hate each other‘s guts. No matter who wins the election in November, the other side is not going to accept it.
It is more than a joke when it is said: “Future historians will be asked: ‘What quarter of 2020 did you specialize in?’” They didn’t say it about 2019, 2018, or any other year in memory. There is something distinct, groundbreaking, and equally disasterous in each quarter. Factions do not trust one another. The population does not agree on “what the science says” or whether they should follow it regardless of what it says. It doesn’t agree on anything. As Pew uncovered, not only do they not agree on how to act in light of the facts, but they don’t agree on what the facts are. Factions can’t stand each  other and do all they can to demonize the other side.
Current happenings are entirely in harmony with how God has said he “will incite Egyptians against Egyptians, and they will fight one another, each against his brother and his neighbor.” It seems like a very appropriate time to “get out of the world” to the extent possible, and now current events and the organization’s example make it possible to a greater extent that even Paul’s day. It also seems like an appropriate time to lay off criticism for anyone saying we’re in the last of the last days.

I actually did no more than scan it. It wasn’t forwarded specifically to me, but it was thrown out there by someone I know and have regard for.
This is a little like how after I watch a movie, I will say to my wife how I intend to read some reviews to see if I liked it or not.

I’m not doing nothing until we reach the last of the last of the last days. Why inconvenience myself unnecessarily? It’s the same as when over the years the pioneer hour requirement is progressively lowered, then such a thing as ‘auxiliary pioneering’ is concocted, then the hour requirement for them is over time lowered, then it is even devised how to lower it still more during months of special activity. “I’m holding out for 15,” I tell people when I’m feeling punchy.
I forgive it all. It may sound a little clunky, but I forgive it. I even recommend it—or at least acquiesce to it.
“Soon we’ll be away from here—step on the gas and wipe that tear away!” That’s what the GB does. They step on the gas. They don’t sit in stuffy boardrooms discussing schematics of the car. The hop in the driver’s seat and drive that sucker! It is not an armchair activity for them. It is a participation sport, and they are not afraid to push pedal to the medal.
It is a little like Carl Jung after the Holocaust, his values shaken to the core, because he observed it and read a lot about it, and so he completely misses the meaning of Job as he takes shots at God in ‘Answer to Job.’ Jehovah’s Witnesses, on the other hand, didn’t observe it. They didn’t read up on it. They endured it. They lived through it. They were sent to the camps well before the far more numerous Jews, and their integrity saw them though. 
So it is that the GB today are doers to match their prowess as thinkers, maybe even outrunning it at times, convinced the latter will catch up. Do they counsel obedience for others? They are that way themselves. They obey first, then they think it through more thoroughly afterwards. Should this result in a clunky expression from time to time, so be it. They are not afraid to go all-in, and I so prefer them to the bland people of this system who must hedge everything they do.
Nor am I not going to be forewarned by it. I’m not about to let my ‘sophistication’ cause me to miss out. They deal with and want to counter the opposite view: “Why, from the days of our forefathers, all things are continuing as at Creation’s beginning!” People are rocked by unheard of calamities today—and yet in no time at all they have adapted to them and accepted whatever is the latest as ‘just one [more] of those things.‘ The urge to sleep is strong. Even 4Jah, saying whatever he has to in order to insult his former faith, not noticing when it contradicts what he has just said, scares us all with ‘Only five years more till the true-anointed appears and brings the end!’ and now sings “Que sera, sera’ no last of the last for me!”

On the World News Media Forum?  

“In my letter I wrote you to stop keeping company with sexually immoral people, not meaning entirely with the sexually immoral people of this world or the greedy people or extortioners or idolaters. Otherwise, you would actually have to get out of the world.” Paul has to clarify who he was speaking about, because, obviously it was not possible to “get out of the world.”
Today it is! If you follow government advisories and go just a tiny nudge further, you all but have! And nobody saw it coming! Nobody foresaw a pandemic, and in case anyone did, no one foresaw how it would give ample opportunity to get out of the world.
Let’s get @Kosonengoing on this. We all know that 4J is nuts, denouncing that even if they brush their teeth at Bethel, those choppers are not really clean because it was not guided by holy spirit. Yes, holy spirit doesn’t direct every tiny little thing they do. But neither am I willing to send it out to pasture. Could holy spirit have something to do with this unexpected opportunity to “get out of the world?” What does Kos think?
One of our elders is very much given to spotting sentences from the Watchtower and reading extra meaning into them that may or may not be there. He was all excited when they commented on the uber-violent entertainment of today, that maybe it is preparing the hearts of non-worshippers for when “each one will lift up his hand against his brother”—pumping them up with an affinity for gore.
And now here we are just a few years down the road and people seriously discuss the possibility of civil war in the United States! And they are fighting it out right now in several US cities!
In the United States! The last time there was talk of civil war in the United States was during the Civil War! Now there is that talk again, with society splitting into two factions that hate each other‘s guts. No matter who wins the election in November, the other side is not going to accept it.
It is more than a joke when it is said: “Future historians will be asked: ‘What quarter of 2020 did you specialize in?’” They didn’t say it about 2019, 2018, or any other year in memory. There is something distinct, groundbreaking, and equally disasterous in each quarter. Factions do not trust one another. The population does not agree on “what the science says” or whether they should follow it regardless of what it says. It doesn’t agree on anything. As Pew uncovered, not only do they not agree on how to act in light of the facts, but they don’t agree on what the facts are. Factions can’t stand each  other and do all they can to demonize the other side.
Current happenings are entirely in harmony with how God has said he “will incite Egyptians against Egyptians, and they will fight one another, each against his brother and his neighbor.” It seems like a very appropriate time to “get out of the world” to the extent possible, and now current events and the organization’s example make it possible to a greater extent that even Paul’s day. It also seems like an appropriate time to lay off criticism for anyone saying we’re in the last of the last days.

I suppose the word "misleading" is what I balk at.
Miriam Webster defines this as: "to lead in a wrong direction or into a mistaken action or belief often by deliberate deceit"
I do not think this is the case in respect of the last days or any portion thereof. I think there have been and are speculative expectations regarding the proximity of Jehovah's intervention and that some get carried along with them, embroidering them even. But not all have, or are, even now. An "are we there yet?" mindset is not  that peculiar among humans who are expecting good things to happen. It is just a consequence of impatience and and a bit of tangible reward focus thrown in.
People who need and want to give up smoking tobacco may be reinforced in this by monetary or health considerations, even peer pressure. The more noble reasons of being undefiled and whole-souled before Jehovah may take time to get their proper place in motivation. But who cares?.... as long as they put the filthy habit behind them.
So if people do more for Jehovah due to an exaggerated spur of expectation... who cares? Everybody wins in the end. Right motive takes time to develop as Paul made clear at Php. 3:15 and 1Cor. 9:17.
And for those who now feel they gave up too much for too little in their serving Jehovah? Perhaps a little more meditating on what Jehovah and Jesus gave up for them, and what exactly they gave it up for would not go amiss.