TrueTomHarley

You dim and bitter bulb that sucks away light, if money was the object, the org would not continually advise young ones to tone it down, stay low-key, put Jehovah first over riches, and so forth! I mean, it’s the whole theme of this thread, which you ignore just to hurl an insult-bomb when you sense an opening..
On another day, you’ll be lambasting them for encouraging young people to be window cleaners whereas they should be chasing career and making money!

(Repeated the same comment accidentally. I wish the software would allow you to delete, as it once did.)
Probably the old hen wants a paper trail in case Billy the Kid or someone starts going off the rails again.

(Repeated the same comment accidentally. I wish the software would allow you to delete, as it once did.)
Probably the old hen wants a paper trail in case Billy the Kid or someone starts going off the rails again.

You dim and bitter bulb that sucks away light, if money was the object, the org would not continually advise young ones to tone it down, stay low-key, put Jehovah first over riches, and so forth! I mean, it’s the whole theme of this thread, which you ignore just to hurl an insult-bomb when you sense an opening..
On another day, you’ll be lambasting them for encouraging young people to be window cleaners whereas they should be chasing career and making money!

You dim and bitter bulb that sucks away light, if money was the object, the org would not continually advise young ones to tone it down, stay low-key, put Jehovah first over riches, and so forth! I mean, it’s the whole theme of this thread, which you ignore just to hurl an insult-bomb when you sense an opening..
On another day, you’ll be lambasting them for encouraging young people to be window cleaners whereas they should be chasing career and making money!

That George should be scolded. Her remarks of support for George are relevant to the discussion. To me she said:
“Yes, live quietly and myob! Very judgemental I would say. I don't care whose a famous Jehovah's witness and who isn't. I happen to know that Brother Benson has taken time from his busy schedule to donate time doing specific songs that are original songs... As for Brother Nelson, yes, he was desperately trying to get off drugs. He had a bad hip and lived in constant pain. I was addicted at one time as well, thanks to a quack doctor. I am friends with someone on the inside of the music industry..Chazz Dixon. He sister called me before the news media went nuts!  Prince never wanted to go public with his issue and others were afraid too! But I do know that your books sound like more gossip then facts.. You can cause divisions within the congregations . Satan is just loving this! I no long want any association with you Tom.”

I thought I had logged into Instagram by mistake.

That George should be scolded. Her remarks of support for George are relevant to the discussion. To me she said:
“Yes, live quietly and myob! Very judgemental I would say. I don't care whose a famous Jehovah's witness and who isn't. I happen to know that Brother Benson has taken time from his busy schedule to donate time doing specific songs that are original songs... As for Brother Nelson, yes, he was desperately trying to get off drugs. He had a bad hip and lived in constant pain. I was addicted at one time as well, thanks to a quack doctor. I am friends with someone on the inside of the music industry..Chazz Dixon. He sister called me before the news media went nuts!  Prince never wanted to go public with his issue and others were afraid too! But I do know that your books sound like more gossip then facts.. You can cause divisions within the congregations . Satan is just loving this! I no long want any association with you Tom.”

Yikes! Well THAT certainly backfired! Some firebrand of a sister saw my post on FB, read only the preview portion, took @Arauna’s sentiments for mine, and chewed me out royal! She also said my books are crap (not her word) and unfollowed me!
And here I’ve tried so hard to be the JW successor to Mickey Spitlane, who famously declared that he would never introduce a character who drank cognac or wore a mustache since he didn’t know how to spell those words.
Never again will I tangle with Arauna.. 

Should it matter? My sister knows a former band player from the "Sly and The Family Stones." She's gone door to door with him. I figure, to each their own in this case. Some apostles gave up their high positions to serve. The point there is, they were the first. Their evangelizing was different. 
If anyone can balance theirs lives to serve God in the proper manner, then no one should be critical of their bothers. That just shows envy and jealousy. 
If one becomes high profile. Not shaming the name of God would be a high priority. I remember, when "Prince" praised Jehovah in a ceremony he attended. President Obama was there, I think. Meantime, he found time to go door to door. But then, he died of a drug overdose.

A retired nurse.

I thought I had logged into Instagram by mistake.

I’ve spiffed it up, renamed you, and have put some of it on my own blog, as the first of a multi-part series. The succeeding parts I’ll put here first, however. And if you’re kind enough to say your hubby enjoyed the post, I guess I should tell @pudgy that my wife loved the cartoon about why you shouldn’t be drunk when adopting a dog.
Alas, the post has earned you one or two ‘MYOB’ responses. Not to worry, though. I’ll run interference for you. I respect you for the courage to say something you know is going to be unpopular.

I’ve spiffed it up, renamed you, and have put some of it on my own blog, as the first of a multi-part series. The succeeding parts I’ll put here first, however. And if you’re kind enough to say your hubby enjoyed the post, I guess I should tell @pudgy that my wife loved the cartoon about why you shouldn’t be drunk when adopting a dog.
Alas, the post has earned you one or two ‘MYOB’ responses. Not to worry, though. I’ll run interference for you. I respect you for the courage to say something you know is going to be unpopular.

Understood
Trouble is, it’s not in the nature of young people to be cautious. ‘The beauty of young men is their power,’ the verse says, not their caution. This doesn’t mean you are not right in the bulk of what you say. I think you are.
Yes
Yes. What you say is both true and well=motivated. You have stated matters well. 
It’s just that those of creative bent, who may not excel in more practical gifts, are always being urged to tone it down, stay low key, keep their talents under a basket—whereas if your talents lay in putting down carpet, you would be honored in the highest places. Understand, it’s not the honor that is sought—it is the ability to move about freely.
There are brothers who are craftsmen, who truly excel at their field, and are highly sought after. One of them locally is snapped up by a Fortune 500 company that puts him on their private jet and flies him to their various facilities, treating him like royalty. Nobody ever dreams it is an improper tending to his career or that he is unhealthily inflating his ego.
My quip for the longest time has been ‘if it pays, I’m not good at it. If I’m good at it, it doesn’t pay.’
’How come you never taught me practical things?’ I said to my aged dad, who was handy. ‘I did,’ the amiable fellow said, long removed from his former taciturn days. ‘You just weren’t paying attention that day.’
I think he fell for the mantra then in vogue, ‘to get a good job, get a good education.’ You can always hire people to do that lesser stuff for you.
I have what I need. I don’t complain. I do let off steam from time to time, but that’s like the Eastern European man who went to the police to assure them that the political views of his parrot were not his.

I enjoyed your posting so much - even read it to my husband,

Understood
Trouble is, it’s not in the nature of young people to be cautious. ‘The beauty of young men is their power,’ the verse says, not their caution. This doesn’t mean you are not right in the bulk of what you say. I think you are.
Yes
Yes. What you say is both true and well=motivated. You have stated matters well. 
It’s just that those of creative bent, who may not excel in more practical gifts, are always being urged to tone it down, stay low key, keep their talents under a basket—whereas if your talents lay in putting down carpet, you would be honored in the highest places. Understand, it’s not the honor that is sought—it is the ability to move about freely.
There are brothers who are craftsmen, who truly excel at their field, and are highly sought after. One of them locally is snapped up by a Fortune 500 company that puts him on their private jet and flies him to their various facilities, treating him like royalty. Nobody ever dreams it is an improper tending to his career or that he is unhealthily inflating his ego.
My quip for the longest time has been ‘if it pays, I’m not good at it. If I’m good at it, it doesn’t pay.’
’How come you never taught me practical things?’ I said to my aged dad, who was handy. ‘I did,’ the amiable fellow said, long removed from his former taciturn days. ‘You just weren’t paying attention that day.’
I think he fell for the mantra then in vogue, ‘to get a good job, get a good education.’ You can always hire people to do that lesser stuff for you.
I have what I need. I don’t complain. I do let off steam from time to time, but that’s like the Eastern European man who went to the police to assure them that the political views of his parrot were not his.

Uh oh,

I would not assume that he is not. Time was when upon coming across someone like him one would say that he has his own special territory, one that others have little contact with. 
As to income, who is to say he does not put it to very good use? The angels may sing out, “Another nickel from Harley!” at the end of the month, but it is guys like (perhaps) Benson who provide most of the practical fuel.
On the other hand, “Have you beheld a man skillful in his work? Before kings is where he will station himself; he will not station himself before commonplace men.” Do these ones all grovel around in sackcloth? These days ordinary  publishers are given counsel not to let spiritual gifts go to their head. 
I would not conclude just from his work that he has an inflated ego. If he does, he has plenty of company in ones who haven’t separated ego from bring their gift to the altar.
In the mid-seventies, rumors swirled that Glen Campbell had become a Witness. The rumors were untrue. He hadn’t. However, one of his band members had and proceeded to talk Bible so much that an exasperated Glen forbade all discussion of religion during working hours. Who is to say that George is not doing the same before people who cannot tell him to shut up? He’s to quit this gig in order to write letters? Given the restricted forms of ministry available today, it’s even more understandable he would choose to continue what he does.
There is an account of Larry Graham and Prince talking faith backstage. Suddenly there was a lull in the program, and Prince said, “Oh—I think I’m supposed to be out there now.”

You might like the story of a young brother I knew who would respond to a certain overinterested party intent on ‘encouragement’ with the short reply, “1 Thessalonians 4:11.”
The bro intent on encouragement said he didn’t know that verse. ‘Look it up,’ was the reply.
The next day that brother, who was also a modest man, approached to say, “You’re a pretty good teacher.”
I see @Araunais not backing down. She seldom does. It’s the prerogative of we old people who have seen a lot and think we have something to say, who see young people chomping down on cotton candy, imagining it substantial, and would warn them that it’s not. And it certainly is true that those who ‘reach for the stars’ come to spiritual ruin far more often than not. So I will tell her a story that spins things her way.
The story was told at LeRoy’s funeral that he, as a young black man in the Deep South, was invited to play along as one of B.B. King’s band members. His son confirmed it. He declined the offer, on the basis of family and spirituality, and went on to make his living on the railroad instead. He came up from the South in his later years to my neck of the woods. For a time we served together on the same BOE. He was outspoken, even occasionally outrageous in things he would say, but always genuine, and universally appreciated. In time, he stepped down as an elder. I even helped persuade him that it would be a good thing, that he had done it all, and should go out ‘on top,’ not when his faculties were starting to decline and people would start to say bad things about him. He was true to the faith till his death and would frequently get together and jam with brothers young enough to be his grandsons. 
I used to tell him that, should I die before him, I wanted him to give my funeral talk. Whoa, that would be a beaut! “Hee hee hee,’ I could picture him rumbling in his deep roguish and jocular voice, “that Tom Harley was a good ol boy, but he’s deead now, D-E-A-D!”
I don’t know. Maybe George is being a bad boy. Arauna thinks the Librarian (that old hen) points to him with a ‘Look! A celebrity! And he’s one of ours!’ type of admiration. Who knows? Maybe she has. Is it really so that having celebrities onboard somehow buttresses your cause? Some of the silliest people on earth are celebrities—all of them, really, except our guys, and we only have a handful. Serena doesn’t even count, because it doesn’t appear she was ever baptized and she has gone on record saying (now that she has a daughter) she means to get serious about the faith she was raised in. We will see what comes to pass. I have a chapter in TTvtA on the brouhaha surrounding that statement..
I agree with Arauna that George is not the one to emulate. But it seems we do damage when we become too insistent that everyone must be ‘an example.’ Leave the fellow in peace and appreciate him for whatever gifts he has. Here we put the constantly repeated ‘Do not compare yourself with one another’ counsel in a setting that we usually don’t put it in, though it applies nonetheless. Alas it is human nature that we will do exactly that.
Growing up, I took one of those psychological tests in which you answer all sorts of nosy questions and are rewarded with indications of what vocation you would be best suited for. Being raised suburban in a non-Witness home, I imagined results would point me to some nice secure field, the sort in keeping with the saying then in vogue, “To get a good job, get a good education.” My dad, raised on the farm, used the GI bill to put himself through engineering school after WWII and took a job with the local utility, figuring that since everyone requires heat and electric, no job could be more secure. People raised during the Depression came to highly value security. 
Instead of similar recommendations, results were that I should be an a) music performer, or (slightly lower priority, but still head and shoulders above anything else) a b) youth counselor. I’ve never done either of those things, but I have come close enough to satisfy both urges. Public speaking (and now blogging) is not so different than music performing. Shepherding (and now writing) is not so different than youth counseling. 
So I have a thing for creative people. And I don’t like  to see them dismissed as ones ‘trying to make a name for themselves.’ or persons incessantly in quest of satisfying their ‘big egos.’ I don’t think that has to be the case at all, though it can be.

Though it has nothing to do with anything, I’m on a roll and can’t stop:
Employees could be crude at the power company, though my dad was not one of them. “I just wasn’t prepared,” said one brother who started working there as a young man, “for one of those guys to grab me from behind and another to pull my pants down,” a common hazing for new employees.
This brother came to know my dad, sometimes traveling to the nuclear plant where my dad had been promoted. Nuclear technology was then brand new and this is among the oldest plants in the country. He told me that tour guides would lead visitors through the plant. In on the joke, an employee would walk by staggering and drooling, muttering nonsense. “Don’t mind him,” the guide would say. “He’s one of the earliest here and absorbed a little too much radiation.” 
Another story our brother, now retired, told was of newcomers and laborers from General Maintenance being advised that the invisible radiation hangs around at the 3 foot level, but if you stay below that, you’’d be okay. They would walk about and work all day, even carrying heavy gear, in a crouched over position.
Here were jokesters satisfying their ‘big egos,’ though perhaps not making ‘a great name for themselves.’ Or perhaps they were. Our brother remembers these donkeys decades later.

I know of dozens of similar things. The word “ego” was never thought of by anyone.  Some involved jokes … some pranks with gasoline.🦴🦴🦴🦴

Though it has nothing to do with anything, I’m on a roll and can’t stop:
Employees could be crude at the power company, though my dad was not one of them. “I just wasn’t prepared,” said one brother who started working there as a young man, “for one of those guys to grab me from behind and another to pull my pants down,” a common hazing for new employees.
This brother came to know my dad, sometimes traveling to the nuclear plant where my dad had been promoted. Nuclear technology was then brand new and this is among the oldest plants in the country. He told me that tour guides would lead visitors through the plant. In on the joke, an employee would walk by staggering and drooling, muttering nonsense. “Don’t mind him,” the guide would say. “He’s one of the earliest here and absorbed a little too much radiation.” 
Another story our brother, now retired, told was of newcomers and laborers from General Maintenance being advised that the invisible radiation hangs around at the 3 foot level, but if you stay below that, you’’d be okay. They would walk about and work all day, even carrying heavy gear, in a crouched over position.
Here were jokesters satisfying their ‘big egos,’ though perhaps not making ‘a great name for themselves.’ Or perhaps they were. Our brother remembers these donkeys decades later.

You might like the story of a young brother I knew who would respond to a certain overinterested party intent on ‘encouragement’ with the short reply, “1 Thessalonians 4:11.”
The bro intent on encouragement said he didn’t know that verse. ‘Look it up,’ was the reply.
The next day that brother, who was also a modest man, approached to say, “You’re a pretty good teacher.”
I see @Araunais not backing down. She seldom does. It’s the prerogative of we old people who have seen a lot and think we have something to say, who see young people chomping down on cotton candy, imagining it substantial, and would warn them that it’s not. And it certainly is true that those who ‘reach for the stars’ come to spiritual ruin far more often than not. So I will tell her a story that spins things her way.
The story was told at LeRoy’s funeral that he, as a young black man in the Deep South, was invited to play along as one of B.B. King’s band members. His son confirmed it. He declined the offer, on the basis of family and spirituality, and went on to make his living on the railroad instead. He came up from the South in his later years to my neck of the woods. For a time we served together on the same BOE. He was outspoken, even occasionally outrageous in things he would say, but always genuine, and universally appreciated. In time, he stepped down as an elder. I even helped persuade him that it would be a good thing, that he had done it all, and should go out ‘on top,’ not when his faculties were starting to decline and people would start to say bad things about him. He was true to the faith till his death and would frequently get together and jam with brothers young enough to be his grandsons. 
I used to tell him that, should I die before him, I wanted him to give my funeral talk. Whoa, that would be a beaut! “Hee hee hee,’ I could picture him rumbling in his deep roguish and jocular voice, “that Tom Harley was a good ol boy, but he’s deead now, D-E-A-D!”
I don’t know. Maybe George is being a bad boy. Arauna thinks the Librarian (that old hen) points to him with a ‘Look! A celebrity! And he’s one of ours!’ type of admiration. Who knows? Maybe she has. Is it really so that having celebrities onboard somehow buttresses your cause? Some of the silliest people on earth are celebrities—all of them, really, except our guys, and we only have a handful. Serena doesn’t even count, because it doesn’t appear she was ever baptized and she has gone on record saying (now that she has a daughter) she means to get serious about the faith she was raised in. We will see what comes to pass. I have a chapter in TTvtA on the brouhaha surrounding that statement..
I agree with Arauna that George is not the one to emulate. But it seems we do damage when we become too insistent that everyone must be ‘an example.’ Leave the fellow in peace and appreciate him for whatever gifts he has. Here we put the constantly repeated ‘Do not compare yourself with one another’ counsel in a setting that we usually don’t put it in, though it applies nonetheless. Alas it is human nature that we will do exactly that.
Growing up, I took one of those psychological tests in which you answer all sorts of nosy questions and are rewarded with indications of what vocation you would be best suited for. Being raised suburban in a non-Witness home, I imagined results would point me to some nice secure field, the sort in keeping with the saying then in vogue, “To get a good job, get a good education.” My dad, raised on the farm, used the GI bill to put himself through engineering school after WWII and took a job with the local utility, figuring that since everyone requires heat and electric, no job could be more secure. People raised during the Depression came to highly value security. 
Instead of similar recommendations, results were that I should be an a) music performer, or (slightly lower priority, but still head and shoulders above anything else) a b) youth counselor. I’ve never done either of those things, but I have come close enough to satisfy both urges. Public speaking (and now blogging) is not so different than music performing. Shepherding (and now writing) is not so different than youth counseling. 
So I have a thing for creative people. And I don’t like  to see them dismissed as ones ‘trying to make a name for themselves.’ or persons incessantly in quest of satisfying their ‘big egos.’ I don’t think that has to be the case at all, though it can be.