We live in a hard, wild, unconverted world, where religious fanatics and even non-religious fanatics, are out to bring as much destruction to the USA as is possible.
The recent movie "Act of Valor" was based on true facts.
It is about the men who are specially trained (to be super human in many ways, like holding your breath under water for 2 minutes with no air-bubbles coming forth) to search out the bad guys, to rescue our people, to protect the USA from the destruction many fanatics would like to rain down on the people of the USA.
War and killing is a horrible thing, but it is the reality of our world. This movie is dedicated to the men who lay their lives down each time they are sent out to fight the enemy.
On the mere human scope I must say I admire men who are willing to die for what they believe they have been called to do in this physical life - in this case protect the people of the USA.
Most of these men the general population will never know, for that is one side of their work, to remain in the dark, unknown.
It is not a pleasant movie to watch as such, for it is the sad reality of real life, that goes on in our world of deception and fanatics, who are constantly trying to figure out ways to kill and injure more and more people in the USA.
It makes you pray even harder for God's Kingdom to come to earth, where there will be no more wars, nations will learn war no more, and the Eternal says, "They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my Holy mountain."
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
USA Mid-West Hit by Massive Tornados
The Mid-West of the USA is frequently hit by tornados, but this one at the end of February was unusual in that it/they was way more powerful for this time of the year, and it indeed seemed to target homes and towns and malls.....a dozen or so have been killed.
Was this directly from the hand of the Lord, or just a result of the crazy upside-down weather that North America is facing more and more.
Well.....the passage of Amos 4:1-13 is still in the Bible, you can read it and draw your own conclusion on this recent powerful hurricane to hit the USA.
Certainly one thing is clear .... God does ALLOW this to happen, and more and more His protective hand is taken away from us.
The Lord God Almighty would like us to take these horrible disasters to the heart, I mean to the deep down heart, to lead us back to REAL REPENTANCE!!
As a nation the USA (and the Western world) will NOT repent, we have gone too far over the line of secularism and throwing God and the Bible out of the window and out of our way of life.
BUT YOU as an individual can TURN and SEEK the Lord while He may be found. You can start to read the Bible. You can go at this time in freedom to my website and LEARN all about the Eternal, salvation, and the Kingdom of God. While it is light the truths of the Almighty can be found, before the day comes when the light of truth will not be freely found. It is written that God says the day is coming when there will be a famine in the land, not of food, but of hearing the word of God.
..........
Was this directly from the hand of the Lord, or just a result of the crazy upside-down weather that North America is facing more and more.
Well.....the passage of Amos 4:1-13 is still in the Bible, you can read it and draw your own conclusion on this recent powerful hurricane to hit the USA.
Certainly one thing is clear .... God does ALLOW this to happen, and more and more His protective hand is taken away from us.
The Lord God Almighty would like us to take these horrible disasters to the heart, I mean to the deep down heart, to lead us back to REAL REPENTANCE!!
As a nation the USA (and the Western world) will NOT repent, we have gone too far over the line of secularism and throwing God and the Bible out of the window and out of our way of life.
BUT YOU as an individual can TURN and SEEK the Lord while He may be found. You can start to read the Bible. You can go at this time in freedom to my website and LEARN all about the Eternal, salvation, and the Kingdom of God. While it is light the truths of the Almighty can be found, before the day comes when the light of truth will not be freely found. It is written that God says the day is coming when there will be a famine in the land, not of food, but of hearing the word of God.
..........
Steve Jobs - Regular Guy
I was not going to give any more from the book "Steve Jobs" by Isaacson, but to be fair I need to give some of the human side of Steve that made him a regular guy in many ways.
There will be very few of the next generation that will ever read about Steve Jobs, certainly a few of the few will ever go to the trouble of locating the book "Steve Jobs" by Isaacson and reading all 571 pages of the book on this gifted and in many ways "brilliant" minded man.
STEVE JOBS - A REGULAR GUY
Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word
In 1982, when he was still working on the Macintosh, Jobs met the
famed folksinger Joan Baez through her sister Mimi Farina, who
headed a charity that was trying to get donations of computers
for prisons. A few weeks later he and Baez had lunch in
Cupertino. "I wasn't expecting a lot, but she was really smart
and funny," he recalled. At the time, he was nearing the end of
his relationship with Barbara Jasinski. They had vacationed in
Hawaii, shared a house in the Santa Cruz mountains, and even gone
to one of Baez's concerts together. As his relationship with
Jasinski flamed out, Jobs began getting more serious with Baez.
He was twenty-seven and Baez was forty-one, but for a few years
they had a romance. "It turned into a serious relationship
between two accidental friends who became lovers," Jobs recalled
in a somewhat wistful tone.
Elizabeth Holmes, Jobs's friend from Reed College, believed that
one of the reasons he went out with Baez-other than the fact that
she was beautiful and funny and talented-was that she had once
been the lover of Bob Dylan. "Steve loved that connection to
Dylan," she later said. Baez and Dylan had been lovers in the
early 1960s, and they toured as friends after that, including
with the Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975. (Jobs had the bootlegs of
those concerts.)
When she met Jobs, Baez had a fourteen-year-old son, Gabriel,
from her marriage to the antiwar activist David Harris. At lunch
she told Jobs she was trying to teach Gabe how to type. "You mean
on a typewriter?" Jobs asked. When she said yes, he replied, "But
a typewriter is antiquated."
"If a typewriter is antiquated, what does that make me?" she
asked. There was an awkward pause. As Baez later told me, "As
soon as I said it, I realized the answer was so obvious. The
question just hung in the air. I was just horrified."
Much to the astonishment of the Macintosh team, Jobs burst into
the office one day with Baez and showed her the prototype of the
Macintosh. They were dumbfounded that he would reveal the
computer to an outsider, given his obsession with secrecy, but
they were even more blown away to be in the presence of Joan
Baez. He gave Gabe an Apple 11, and he later gave Baez a
Macintosh. On visits Jobs would show off the features he liked.
"He was sweet and patient, but he was so advanced in his
knowledge that he had trouble teaching me," she recalled.
He was a sudden multimillionaire; she was a world-famous
celebrity, but sweetly down-to-earth and not all that wealthy.
She didn't know what to make of him then, and still found him
puzzling when she talked about him almost thirty years later. At
one dinner early in their relationship, Jobs started talking
about Ralph Lauren and his Polo Shop, which she admitted she had
never visited. "There's a beautiful red dress there that would be
perfect for you," he said, and then drove her to the store in the
Stanford Mall. Baez recalled, "I said to myself, far out,
terrific, I'm with one of the world's richest men and he wants me
to have this beautiful dress." When they got to the store, Jobs
bought a handful of shirts for himself and showed her the red
dress. "You ought to buy it," he said. She was a little
surprised, and told him she couldn't really afford it. He said
nothing, and they left. "Wouldn't you think if someone had talked
like that the whole evening, that they were going to get it for
you?" she asked me, seeming genuinely puzzled about the incident.
"The mystery of the red dress is in your hands. I felt a bit
strange about it." He would give her computers, but not a dress,
and when he brought her flowers he made sure to say they were
left over from an event in the office. "He was both romantic and
afraid to be romantic," she said.
When he was working on the NeXT computer, he went to Baez's house
in Woodside to show her how well it could produce music. "He had
it play a Brahms quartet, and he told me eventually computers
would sound better than humans playing it, even get the innuendo
and the cadences better," Baez recalled. She was revolted by the
idea. "He was working himself up into a fervor of delight while I
was shrinking into a rage and thinking, How could you defile
music like that?"
Jobs would confide in Debi Coleman and Joanna Hoffman about his
relationship with Baez and worry about whether he could marry
someone who had a teenage son and was probably past the point of
wanting to have more children. "At times he would belittle her as
being an 'issues' singer and not a true 'political' singer like
Dylan," said Hoffman. "She was a strong woman, and he wanted to
show he was in control. Plus, he always said he wanted to have a
family, and with her he knew that he wouldn't."
And so, after about three years, they ended their romance and
drifted into becoming just friends. "I thought I was in love with
her, but I really just liked her a lot," he later said. "We
weren't destined to be together. I wanted kids, and she didn't
want any more." In her 1989 memoir, Baez wrote about her breakup
with her husband and why she never remarried: "I belonged alone,
which is how I have been since then, with occasional
interruptions that are mostly picnics." She did add a nice
acknowledgment at the end of the book to "Steve Jobs for forcing
me to use a word processor by putting one in my kitchen."
Finding Joanne and Mona
When Jobs was thirty-one, a year after his ouster from Apple, his
mother Clara, who was a smoker, was stricken with lung cancer. He
spent time by her deathbed, talking to her in ways he had rarely
done in the past and asking some questions he had refrained from
raising before. "When you and Dad got married, were you a
virgin?" he asked. It was hard for her to talk, but she forced a
smile. That's when she told him that she had been married before,
to a man who never made it back from the war. She also filled in
some of the details of how she and Paul Jobs had come to adopt
him.
Soon after that, Jobs succeeded in tracking down the woman who
had put him up for adoption. His quiet quest to find her had
begun in the early 1980s, when he hired a detective who had
failed to come up with anything. Then Jobs noticed the name of a
San Francisco doctor on his birth certificate. "He was in the
phone book, so I gave him a call," Jobs recalled. The doctor was
no help. He claimed that his records had been destroyed in a
fire. That was not true. In fact, right after Jobs called, the
doctor wrote a letter, sealed it in an envelope, and wrote on it,
"To be delivered to Steve Jobs on my death." When he died a short
time later, his widow sent the letter to Jobs. In it, the doctor
explained that his mother had been an unmarried graduate student
from Wisconsin named Joanne Schieble.
It took another few weeks and the work of another detective to
track her down. After giving him up, Joanne had married his
biological father, Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, and they had
another child, Mona. Jandali abandoned them five years later, and
Joanne married a colorful ice-skating instructor, George Simpson.
That marriage didn't last long either, and in 1970 she began a
meandering journey that took her and Mona (both of them now using
the last name Simpson) to Los Angeles.
Jobs had been reluctant to let Paul and Clara, whom he considered
his real parents, know about his search for his birth mother.
With a sensitivity that was unusual for him, and which showed the
deep affection he felt for his parents, he worried that they
might be offended. So he never contacted Joanne Simpson until
after Clara Jobs died in early 1986. "I never wanted them to feel
like I didn't consider them my parents, because they were totally
my parents," he recalled. "I loved them so much that I never
wanted them to know of my search, and I even had reporters keep
it quiet when any of them found out." When Clara died, he decided
to tell Paul Jobs, who was perfectly comfortable and said he
didn't mind at all if Steve made contact with his biological
mother.
So one day Jobs called Joanne Simpson, said who he was, and
arranged to come down to Los Angeles to meet her. He later
claimed it was mainly out of curiosity. "I believe in environment
more than heredity in determining your traits, but still you have
to wonder a little about your biological roots," he said. He also
wanted to reassure Joanne that what she had done was all right.
"I wanted to meet my biological mother mostly to see if she was
okay and to thank her, because I'm glad I didn't end up as an
abortion. She was twenty-three and she went through a lot to have
me."
Joanne was overcome with emotion when Jobs arrived at her Los
Angeles house. She knew he was famous and rich, but she wasn't
exactly sure why. She immediately began to pour out her emotions.
She had been pressured to sign the papers putting him up for
adoption, she said, and did so only when told that he was happy
in the house of his new parents. She had always missed him and
suffered about what she had done. She apologized over and over,
even as Jobs kept reassuring her that he understood, and that
things had turned out just fine.
Once she calmed down, she told Jobs that he had a full sister,
Mona Simpson, who was then an aspiring novelist in Manhattan. She
had never told Mona that she had a brother, and that day she
broke the news, or at least part of it, by telephone. "You have a
brother, and he's wonderful, and he's famous, and I'm going to
bring him to New York so you can meet him," she said. Mona was in
the throes of finishing a novel about her mother and their
peregrination from Wisconsin to Los Angeles, Anywhere but Here.
Those who've read it will not be surprised that Joanne was
somewhat quirky in the way she imparted to Mona the news about
her brother. She refused to say who he was-only that he had been
poor, had gotten rich, was good-looking and famous, had long dark
hair, and lived in California. Mona then worked at the Paris
Review, George Plimpton's literary journal housed on the ground
floor of his townhouse near Manhattan's East River. She and her
coworkers began a guessing game on who her brother might be. John
Travolta? That was one of the favorite guesses. Other actors were
also hot prospects. At one point someone did toss out a guess
that "maybe it's one of those guys who started Apple computer,"
but no one could recall their names.
The meeting occurred in the lobby of the St. Regis Hotel. "He was
totally straightforward and lovely, just a normal and sweet guy,"
Mona recalled. They all sat and talked for a few minutes, then he
took his sister for a long walk, just the two of them. Jobs was
thrilled to find that he had a sibling who was so similar to him.
They were both intense in their artistry, observant of their
surroundings, and sensitive yet strongwilled. When they went to
dinner together, they noticed the same architectural details and
talked about them excitedly afterward. "My sister's a writer!" he
exulted to colleagues at Apple when he found out.
When Plimpton threw a party for Anywhere but Here in late 1986,
Jobs flew to New York to accompany Mona to it. They grew
increasingly close, though their friendship had the complexities
that might be expected, considering who they were and how they
had come together. "Mona was not completely thrilled at first to
have me in her life and have her mother so emotionally
affectionate toward me," he later said. "As we got to know each
other, we became really good friends, and she is my family. I
don't know what I'd do without her. I can't imagine a better
sister. My adopted sister, Patty, and I were never close." Mona
likewise developed a deep affection for him, and at times could
be very protective, although she would later write an edgy novel
about him, A Regular Guy, that described his quirks with
discomforting accuracy.
One of the few things they would argue about was her clothes. She
dressed like a struggling novelist, and he would berate her for
not wearing clothes that were "fetching enough." At one point his
comments so annoyed her that she wrote him a letter: "I am a
young writer, and this is my life, and I'm not trying to be a
model anyway." He didn't answer. But shortly after, a box arrived
from the store of Issey Miyake, the Japanese fashion designer
whose stark and technology-influenced style made him one of
Jobs's favorites. "He'd gone shopping for me," she later said,
"and he'd picked out great things, exactly my size, in flattering
colors." There was one pantsuit that he had particularly liked,
and the shipment included three of them, all identical. "I still
remember those first suits I sent Mona," he said. "They were
linen pants and tops in a pale grayish green that looked
beautiful with her reddish hair."
The Lost Father
In the meantime, Mona Simpson had been trying to track down their
father, who had wandered off when she was five. Through Ken
Auletta and Nick Pileggi, prominent Manhattan writers, she was
introduced to a retired New York cop who had formed his own
detective agency. "I paid him what little money I had," Simpson
recalled, but the search was unsuccessful. Then she met another
private eye in California, who was able to find an address for
Abdulfattah Jandali in Sacramento through a Department of Motor
Vehicles search. Simpson told her brother and flew out from New
York to see the man who was apparently their father.
Jobs had no interest in meeting him. "He didn't treat me well,"
he later explained. "I don't hold anything against him-I'm happy
to be alive. But what bothers me most is that he didn't treat
Mona well. He abandoned her." Jobs himself had abandoned his own
illegitimate daughter, Lisa, and now was trying to restore their
relationship, but that complexity did not soften his feelings
toward Jandali. Simpson went to Sacramento alone.
"It was very intense," Simpson recalled. She found her father
working in a small restaurant. He seemed happy to see her, yet
oddly passive about the entire situation. They talked for a few
hours, and he recounted that, after he left Wisconsin, he had
drifted away from teaching and gotten into the restaurant
business.
Jobs had asked Simpson not to mention him, so she didn't. But at
one point her father casually remarked that he and her mother had
had another baby, a boy, before she had been born. "What happened
to him?" she asked. He replied, "We'll never see that baby again.
That baby's gone." Simpson recoiled but said nothing.
An even more astonishing revelation occurred when Jandali was
describing the previous restaurants that he had run. There had
been some nice ones, he insisted, fancier than the Sacramento
joint they were then sitting in. He told her, somewhat
emotionally, that he wished she could have seen him when he was
managing a Mediterranean restaurant north of San Jose. "That was
a wonderful place," he said. "All of the successful technology
people used to come there. Even Steve Jobs." Simpson was stunned.
"Oh, yeah, he used to come in, and he was a sweet guy, and a big
tipper," her father added. Mona was able to refrain from blurting
out, Steve jobs is your son!
When the visit was over, she called jobs surreptitiously from the
pay phone at the restaurant and arranged to meet him at the
Espresso Roma cafe in Berkeley. Adding to the personal and family
drama, he brought along Lisa, now in grade school, who lived with
her mother, Chrisann. When they all arrived at the cafe, it was
close to 10 p.m., and Simpson poured forth the tale. Jobs was
understandably astonished when she mentioned the restaurant near
San Jose. He could recall being there and even meeting the man
who was his biological father. "It was amazing," he later said of
the revelation. "I had been to that restaurant a few times, and I
remember meeting the owner. He was Syrian. Balding. We shook
hands."
Nevertheless Jobs still had no desire to see him. "I was a
wealthy man by then, and I didn't trust him not to try to
blackmail me or go to the press about it," he recalled. "I asked
Mona not to tell him about me."
She never did, but years later Jandali saw his relationship to
Jobs mentioned online. (A blogger noticed that Simpson had listed
Jandali as her father in a reference book and figured out he must
be Jobs's father as well.) By then Jandali was married for a
fourth time and working as a food and beverage manager at the
Boomtown Resort and Casino just west of Reno, Nevada. When he
brought his new wife, Roscille, to visit Simpson in 2006, he
raised the topic. "What is this thing about Steve Jobs?" he
asked. She confirmed the story, but added that she thought Jobs
had no interest in meeting him. Jandali seemed to accept that.
"My father is thoughtful and a beautiful storyteller, but he is
very, very passive," Simpson said. "He never contacted Steve."
Simpson turned her search for Jandali into a basis for her second
novel, The Lost Father, published in 1992. (Jobs convinced Paul
Rand, the designer who did the NeXT logo, to design the cover,
but accord ing to Simpson, "It was God-awful and we never used
it.") She also tracked down various members of the Jandali
family, in Horns and in America, and in 2011 was writing a novel
about her Syrian roots. The Syrian ambassador in Washington threw
a dinner for her that included a cousin and his wife who then
lived in Florida and had flown up for the occasion.
Simpson assumed that Jobs would eventually meet Jandali, but as
time went on he showed even less interest. In 2010, when Jobs and
his son, Reed, went to a birthday dinner for Simpson at her Los
Ange les house, Reed spent some time looking at pictures of his
biological grandfather, but Jobs ignored them. Nor did he seem to
care about his Syrian heritage. When the Middle East would come
up in conversation, the topic did not engage him or evoke his
typical strong opinions, even after Syria was swept up in the
2011 Arab Spring uprisings. "I don't think anybody really knows
what we should be doing over there," he said when I asked whether
the Obama administration should be intervening more in Egypt,
Libya, and Syria. "You're fucked if you do and you're fucked if
you don't."
Jobs did retain a friendly relationship with his biological
mother, Joanne Simpson. Over the years she and Mona would often
spend Christmas at Jobs's house. The visits could be sweet, but
also emotionally draining. Joanne would sometimes break into
tears, say how much she had loved him, and apologize for giving
him up. It turned out all right, Jobs would reassure her. As he
told her one Christmas, "Don't worry. I had a great childhood. I
turned out okay."
Lisa
Lisa Brennan, however, did not have a great childhood. When she
was young, her father almost never came to see her. "I didn't
want to be a father, so I wasn't," Jobs later said, with only a
touch of remorse in his voice. Yet occasionally he felt the tug.
One day, when Lisa was three, Jobs was driving near the house he
had bought for her and Chrisann, and he decided to stop. Lisa
didn't know who he was. He sat on the doorstep, not venturing
inside, and talked to Chrisann. The scene was repeated once or
twice a year. Jobs would come by unannounced, talk a little bit
about Lisa's school options or other issues, then drive off in
his Mercedes.
But by the time Lisa turned eight, in 1986, the visits were
occurring more frequently. Jobs was no longer immersed in the
grueling push to create the Macintosh or in the subsequent power
struggles with Sculley. He was at NeXT, which was calmer,
friendlier, and headquartered in Palo Alto, near where Chrisann
and Lisa lived. In addition, by the time she was in third grade,
it was clear that Lisa was a smart and artistic kid, who had
already been singled out by her teachers for her writing ability.
She was spunky and high-spirited and had a little of her father's
defiant attitude. She also looked a bit like him, with arched
eyebrows and a faintly Middle Eastern angularity. One day, to the
surprise of his colleagues, he brought her by the office. As she
turned cartwheels in the corridor, she squealed, "Look at me!"
Avie Tevanian, a lanky and gregarious engineer at NeXT who had
become Jobs's friend, remembers that every now and then, when
they were going out to dinner, they would stop by Chrisann's
house to pick up Lisa. "He was very sweet to her," Tevanian
recalled. "He was a vegetarian, and so was Chrisann, but she
wasn't. He was fine with that. He suggested she order chicken,
and she did."
Eating chicken became her little indulgence as she shuttled
between two parents who were vegetarians with a spiritual regard
for natural foods. "We bought our groceries-our puntarella,
quinoa, celeriac, carob-covered nuts - in yeasty-smelling stores
where the women didn't dye their hair," she later wrote about her
time with her mother. "But we sometimes tasted foreign treats. A
few times we bought a hot, seasoned chicken from a gourmet shop
with rows and rows of chickens turning on spits, and ate it in
the car from the foil-lined paper bag with our fingers." Her
father, whose dietary fixations came in fanatic waves, was more
fastidious about what he ate. She watched him spit out a mouthful
of soup one day after learning that it contained butter. After
loosening up a bit while at Apple, he was back to being a strict
vegan. Even at a young age Lisa began to realize his diet
obsessions reflected a life philosophy, one in which asceticism
and minimalism could heighten subsequent sensations. "He believed
that great harvests came from arid sources, pleasure from
restraint," she noted. "He knew the equations that most people
didn't know: Things led to their opposites."
In a similar way, the absence and coldness of her father made his
occasional moments of warmth so much more intensely gratifying.
"I didn't live with him, but he would stop by our house some
days, a deity among us for a few tingling moments or hours," she
recalled. Lisa soon became interesting enough that he would take
walks with her. He would also go rollerblading with her on the
quiet streets of old Palo Alto, often stopping at the houses of
Joanna Hoffman and Andy Hertzfeld. The first time he brought her
around to see Hoffman, he just knocked on the door and announced,
"This is Lisa." Hoffman knew right away. "It was obvious she was
his daughter," she told me. "Nobody has that jaw. It's a
signature jaw." Hoffman, who suffered from not knowing her own
divorced father until she was ten, encouraged Jobs to be a better
father. He followed her advice, and later thanked her for it.
Once he took Lisa on a business trip to Tokyo, and they stayed at
the sleek and businesslike Okura Hotel. At the elegant downstairs
sushi bar, Jobs ordered large trays of unagi sushi, a dish he
loved so much that he allowed the warm cooked eel to pass muster
as vegetarian. The pieces were coated with fine salt or a thin
sweet sauce, and Lisa remembered later how they dissolved in her
mouth. So, too, did the distance between them. As she later
wrote, "It was the first time I'd felt, with him, so relaxed and
content, over those trays of meat; the excess, the permission and
warmth after the cold salads, meant a once inaccessible space had
opened. He was less rigid with himself, even human under the
great ceilings with the little chairs, with the meat, and me."
But it was not always sweetness and light. Jobs was as mercurial
with Lisa as he was with almost everyone, cycling between embrace
and abandonment. On one visit he would be playful; on the next he
would be cold; often he was not there at all. "She was always
unsure of their relationship," according to Hertzfeld. "I went to
a birthday party of hers, and Steve was supposed to come, and he
was very, very, late. She got extremely anxious and disappointed.
But when he finally did come, she totally lit up."
Lisa learned to be temperamental in return. Over the years their
relationship would be a roller coaster, with each of the low
points elongated by their shared stubbornness. After a
falling-out, they could go for months not speaking to each other.
Neither one was good at reaching out, apologizing, or making the
effort to heal, even when he was wrestling with repeated health
problems. One day in the fall of 2010 he was wistfully going
through a box of old snapshots with me, and paused over one that
showed him visiting Lisa when she was young. "I probably didn't
go over there enough," he said. Since he had not spoken to her
all that year, I asked if he might want to reach out to her with
a call or email. He looked at me blankly for a moment, then went
back to riffling through other old photographs.
The Romantic
When it came to women, jobs could be deeply romantic. He tended
to fall in love dramatically, share with friends every up and
down of a relationship, and pine in public whenever he was away
from his current girlfriend. In the summer of 1983 he went to a
small dinner party in Silicon Valley with Joan Baez and sat next
to an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania named
Jennifer Egan, who was not quite sure who he was. By then he and
Baez had realized that they weren't destined to be forever young
together, and jobs found himself fascinated by Egan, who was
working on a San Francisco weekly during her summer vacation. He
tracked her down, gave her a call, and took her to Cafe
Jacqueline, a little bistro near Telegraph Hill that specialized
in vegetarian souffles.
They dated for a year, and Jobs often flew east to visit her. At
a Boston Macworld event, he told a large gathering how much in
love he was and thus needed to rush out to catch a plane for
Philadelphia to see his girlfriend. The audience was enchanted.
When he was visiting New York, she would take the train up to
stay with him at the Carlyle or at Jay Chiat's Upper East Side
apartment, and they would eat at Cafe Luxembourg, visit
(repeatedly) the apartment in the San Remo he was planning to
remodel, and go to movies or (once at least) the opera.
He and Egan also spoke for hours on the phone many nights. One
topic they wrestled with was his belief, which came from his
Buddhist studies, that it was important to avoid attachment to
material objects. Our consumer desires are unhealthy, he told
her, and to attain enlightenment you need to develop a life of
nonattachment and nonmaterialism. He even sent her a tape of
Kobun Chino, his Zen teacher, lecturing about the problems caused
by craving and obtaining things. Egan pushed back. Wasn't he
defying that philosophy, she asked, by making computers and other
products that people coveted? "He was irritated by the dichotomy,
and we had exuberant debates about it," Egan recalled.
In the end Jobs's pride in the objects he made overcame his
sensibility that people should eschew being attached to such
possessions. When the Macintosh came out in January 1984, Egan
was staying at her mother's apartment in San Francisco during her
winter break from Penn. Her mother's dinner guests were
astonished one night when Steve Jobs - suddenly very famous -
appeared at the door carrying a freshly boxed Macintosh and
proceeded to Egan's bedroom to set it up.
Jobs told Egan, as he had a few other friends, about his
premonition that he would not live a long life. That was why he
was driven and impatient, he confided. "He felt a sense of
urgency about all he wanted to get done," Egan later said. Their
relationship tapered off by the fall of 1984, when Egan made it
clear that she was still far too young to think of getting
married.
Shortly after that, just as the turmoil with Sculley was
beginning to build at Apple in early 1985, Jobs was heading to a
meeting when he stopped at the office of a guy who was working
with the Apple Foundation, which helped get computers to
nonprofit organizations. Sitting in his office was a lithe, very
blond woman who combined a hippie aura of natural purity with the
solid sensibilities of a computer consultant. Her name was Tina
Redse. "She was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen," Jobs
recalled.
He called her the next day and asked her to dinner. She said no,
that she was living with a boyfriend. A few days later he took
her on a walk to a nearby park and again asked her out, and this
time she told her boyfriend that she wanted to go. She was very
honest and open. After dinner she started to cry because she knew
her life was about to be disrupted. And it was. Within a few
months she had moved into the unfurnished mansion in Woodside.
"She was the first person I was truly in love with," Jobs later
said. "We had a very deep connection. I don't know that anyone
will ever understand me better than she did."
Redse came from a troubled family, and Jobs shared with her his
own pain about being put up for adoption. "We were both wounded
from our childhood," Redse recalled. "He said to me that we were
misfits, which is why we belonged together." They were physically
passionate and prone to public displays of affection; their
make-out sessions in the NeXT lobby are well remembered by
employees. So too were their fights, which occurred at movie
theaters and in front of visitors to Woodside. Yet he constantly
praised her purity and naturalness. As the well-grounded Joanna
Hoffman pointed out when discussing Jobs's infatuation with the
otherworldly Redse, "Steve had a tendency to look at
vulnerabilities and neuroses and turn them into spiritual
attributes."
When he was being eased out at Apple in 1985, Redse traveled with
him in Europe, where he was salving his wounds. Standing on a
bridge over the Seine one evening, they bandied about the idea,
more romantic than serious, of just staying in France, maybe
settling down, perhaps indefinitely. Redse was eager, but Jobs
didn't want to. He was burned but still ambitious. "I am a
reflection of what I do," he told her. She recalled their Paris
moment in a poignant email she sent to him twenty-five years
later, after they had gone their separate ways but retained their
spiritual connection:
We were on a bridge in Paris in the summer of 1985. It was
overcast. We leaned against the smooth stone rail and stared at
the green water rolling on below. Your world had cleaved and then
it paused, waiting to rearrange itself around whatever you chose
next. I wanted to run away from what had come before. I tried to
convince you to begin a new life with me in Paris, to shed our
former selves and let something else course through us. I wanted
us to crawl through that black chasm of your broken world and
emerge, anonymous and new, in simple lives where I could cook you
simple dinners and we could be together every day, like children
playing a sweet game with no purpose save the game itself. I like
to think you considered it before you laughed and said "What
could I do? I've made myself unemployable." I like to think that
in that moment's hesitation before our bold futures reclaimed us,
we lived that simple life together all the way into our peaceful
old ages, with a brood of grandchildren around us on a farm in
the south of France, quietly going about our days, warm and
complete like loaves of fresh bread, our small world filled with
the aroma of patience and familiarity.
The relationship lurched up and down for five years. Redse hated
living in his sparsely furnished Woodside house. Jobs had hired a
hip young couple, who had once worked at Chez Panisse, as
housekeepers and vegetarian cooks, and they made her feel like an
interloper. She would occasionally move out to an apartment of
her own in Palo Alto, especially after one of her torrential
arguments with Jobs. "Neglect is a form of abuse," she once
scrawled on the wall of the hallway to their bedroom. She was
entranced by him, but she was also baffled by how uncaring he
could be. She would later recall how incredibly painful it was to
be in love with someone so self-centered. Caring deeply about
someone who seemed incapable of caring was a particular kind of
hell that she wouldn't wish on anyone, she said.
They were different in so many ways. "On the spectrum of cruel to
kind, they are close to the opposite poles," Hertzfeld later
said. Redse's kindness was manifest in ways large and small; she
always gave money to street people, she volunteered to help those
who (like her father) were afflicted with mental illness, and she
took care to make Lisa and even Chrisann feel comfortable with
her. More than anyone, she helped persuade Jobs to spend more
time with Lisa. But she lacked Jobs's ambition and drive. The
ethereal quality that made her seem so spiritual to Jobs also
made it hard for them to stay on the same wavelength. "Their
relationship was incredibly tempestuous," said Hertzfeld.
"Because of both of their characters, they would have lots and
lots of fights."
They also had a basic philosophical difference about whether
aesthetic tastes were fundamentally individual, as Redse
believed, or universal and could be taught, as Jobs believed. She
accused him of being too influenced by the Bauhaus movement.
"Steve believed it was our job to teach people aesthetics, to
teach people what they should like," she recalled. "I don't share
that perspective. I believe when we listen deeply, both within
ourselves and to each other, we are able to allow what's innate
and true to emerge."
When they were together for a long stretch, things did not work
out well. But when they were apart, Jobs would pine for her.
Finally, in the summer of 1989, he asked her to marry him. She
couldn't do it. It would drive her crazy, she told friends. She
had grown up in a volatile household, and her relationship with
Jobs bore too many similarities to that environment. They were
opposites who attracted, she said, but the combination was too
combustible. "I could not have been a good wife to 'Steve Jobs,'
the icon," she later explained. "I would have sucked at it on
many levels. In our personal interactions, I couldn't abide his
unkindness. I didn't want to hurt him, yet I didn't want to stand
by and watch him hurt other people either. It was painful and
exhausting."
After they broke up, Redse helped found OpenMind, a mental health
resource network in California. She happened to read in a psy-
chiatric manual about Narcissistic Personality Disorder and
decided that Jobs perfectly met the criteria. "It fits so well
and explained so much of what we had struggled with, that I
realized expecting him to be nicer or less self-centered was like
expecting a blind man to see," she said. "It also explained some
of the choices he'd made about his daughter Lisa at that time. I
think the issue is empathy - the capacity for empathy is
lacking."
Redse later married, had two children, and then divorced. Every
now and then Jobs would openly pine for her, even after he was
happily married. And when he began his battle with cancer, she
got in touch again to give support. She became very emotional
whenever she recalled their relationship. "Though our values
clashed and made it impossible for us to have the relationship we
once hoped for," she told me, "the care and love I felt for him
decades ago has continued." Similarly, Jobs suddenly started to
cry one afternoon as he sat in his living room reminiscing about
her. "She was one of the purest people I've ever known," he said,
tears rolling down his cheeks. "There was something spiritual
about her and spiritual about the connection we had." He said he
always regretted that they could not make it work, and he knew
that she had such regrets as well. But it was not meant to be. On
that they both agreed.
..........
There will be very few of the next generation that will ever read about Steve Jobs, certainly a few of the few will ever go to the trouble of locating the book "Steve Jobs" by Isaacson and reading all 571 pages of the book on this gifted and in many ways "brilliant" minded man.
STEVE JOBS - A REGULAR GUY
Love Is Just a Four-Letter Word
In 1982, when he was still working on the Macintosh, Jobs met the
famed folksinger Joan Baez through her sister Mimi Farina, who
headed a charity that was trying to get donations of computers
for prisons. A few weeks later he and Baez had lunch in
Cupertino. "I wasn't expecting a lot, but she was really smart
and funny," he recalled. At the time, he was nearing the end of
his relationship with Barbara Jasinski. They had vacationed in
Hawaii, shared a house in the Santa Cruz mountains, and even gone
to one of Baez's concerts together. As his relationship with
Jasinski flamed out, Jobs began getting more serious with Baez.
He was twenty-seven and Baez was forty-one, but for a few years
they had a romance. "It turned into a serious relationship
between two accidental friends who became lovers," Jobs recalled
in a somewhat wistful tone.
Elizabeth Holmes, Jobs's friend from Reed College, believed that
one of the reasons he went out with Baez-other than the fact that
she was beautiful and funny and talented-was that she had once
been the lover of Bob Dylan. "Steve loved that connection to
Dylan," she later said. Baez and Dylan had been lovers in the
early 1960s, and they toured as friends after that, including
with the Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975. (Jobs had the bootlegs of
those concerts.)
When she met Jobs, Baez had a fourteen-year-old son, Gabriel,
from her marriage to the antiwar activist David Harris. At lunch
she told Jobs she was trying to teach Gabe how to type. "You mean
on a typewriter?" Jobs asked. When she said yes, he replied, "But
a typewriter is antiquated."
"If a typewriter is antiquated, what does that make me?" she
asked. There was an awkward pause. As Baez later told me, "As
soon as I said it, I realized the answer was so obvious. The
question just hung in the air. I was just horrified."
Much to the astonishment of the Macintosh team, Jobs burst into
the office one day with Baez and showed her the prototype of the
Macintosh. They were dumbfounded that he would reveal the
computer to an outsider, given his obsession with secrecy, but
they were even more blown away to be in the presence of Joan
Baez. He gave Gabe an Apple 11, and he later gave Baez a
Macintosh. On visits Jobs would show off the features he liked.
"He was sweet and patient, but he was so advanced in his
knowledge that he had trouble teaching me," she recalled.
He was a sudden multimillionaire; she was a world-famous
celebrity, but sweetly down-to-earth and not all that wealthy.
She didn't know what to make of him then, and still found him
puzzling when she talked about him almost thirty years later. At
one dinner early in their relationship, Jobs started talking
about Ralph Lauren and his Polo Shop, which she admitted she had
never visited. "There's a beautiful red dress there that would be
perfect for you," he said, and then drove her to the store in the
Stanford Mall. Baez recalled, "I said to myself, far out,
terrific, I'm with one of the world's richest men and he wants me
to have this beautiful dress." When they got to the store, Jobs
bought a handful of shirts for himself and showed her the red
dress. "You ought to buy it," he said. She was a little
surprised, and told him she couldn't really afford it. He said
nothing, and they left. "Wouldn't you think if someone had talked
like that the whole evening, that they were going to get it for
you?" she asked me, seeming genuinely puzzled about the incident.
"The mystery of the red dress is in your hands. I felt a bit
strange about it." He would give her computers, but not a dress,
and when he brought her flowers he made sure to say they were
left over from an event in the office. "He was both romantic and
afraid to be romantic," she said.
When he was working on the NeXT computer, he went to Baez's house
in Woodside to show her how well it could produce music. "He had
it play a Brahms quartet, and he told me eventually computers
would sound better than humans playing it, even get the innuendo
and the cadences better," Baez recalled. She was revolted by the
idea. "He was working himself up into a fervor of delight while I
was shrinking into a rage and thinking, How could you defile
music like that?"
Jobs would confide in Debi Coleman and Joanna Hoffman about his
relationship with Baez and worry about whether he could marry
someone who had a teenage son and was probably past the point of
wanting to have more children. "At times he would belittle her as
being an 'issues' singer and not a true 'political' singer like
Dylan," said Hoffman. "She was a strong woman, and he wanted to
show he was in control. Plus, he always said he wanted to have a
family, and with her he knew that he wouldn't."
And so, after about three years, they ended their romance and
drifted into becoming just friends. "I thought I was in love with
her, but I really just liked her a lot," he later said. "We
weren't destined to be together. I wanted kids, and she didn't
want any more." In her 1989 memoir, Baez wrote about her breakup
with her husband and why she never remarried: "I belonged alone,
which is how I have been since then, with occasional
interruptions that are mostly picnics." She did add a nice
acknowledgment at the end of the book to "Steve Jobs for forcing
me to use a word processor by putting one in my kitchen."
Finding Joanne and Mona
When Jobs was thirty-one, a year after his ouster from Apple, his
mother Clara, who was a smoker, was stricken with lung cancer. He
spent time by her deathbed, talking to her in ways he had rarely
done in the past and asking some questions he had refrained from
raising before. "When you and Dad got married, were you a
virgin?" he asked. It was hard for her to talk, but she forced a
smile. That's when she told him that she had been married before,
to a man who never made it back from the war. She also filled in
some of the details of how she and Paul Jobs had come to adopt
him.
Soon after that, Jobs succeeded in tracking down the woman who
had put him up for adoption. His quiet quest to find her had
begun in the early 1980s, when he hired a detective who had
failed to come up with anything. Then Jobs noticed the name of a
San Francisco doctor on his birth certificate. "He was in the
phone book, so I gave him a call," Jobs recalled. The doctor was
no help. He claimed that his records had been destroyed in a
fire. That was not true. In fact, right after Jobs called, the
doctor wrote a letter, sealed it in an envelope, and wrote on it,
"To be delivered to Steve Jobs on my death." When he died a short
time later, his widow sent the letter to Jobs. In it, the doctor
explained that his mother had been an unmarried graduate student
from Wisconsin named Joanne Schieble.
It took another few weeks and the work of another detective to
track her down. After giving him up, Joanne had married his
biological father, Abdulfattah "John" Jandali, and they had
another child, Mona. Jandali abandoned them five years later, and
Joanne married a colorful ice-skating instructor, George Simpson.
That marriage didn't last long either, and in 1970 she began a
meandering journey that took her and Mona (both of them now using
the last name Simpson) to Los Angeles.
Jobs had been reluctant to let Paul and Clara, whom he considered
his real parents, know about his search for his birth mother.
With a sensitivity that was unusual for him, and which showed the
deep affection he felt for his parents, he worried that they
might be offended. So he never contacted Joanne Simpson until
after Clara Jobs died in early 1986. "I never wanted them to feel
like I didn't consider them my parents, because they were totally
my parents," he recalled. "I loved them so much that I never
wanted them to know of my search, and I even had reporters keep
it quiet when any of them found out." When Clara died, he decided
to tell Paul Jobs, who was perfectly comfortable and said he
didn't mind at all if Steve made contact with his biological
mother.
So one day Jobs called Joanne Simpson, said who he was, and
arranged to come down to Los Angeles to meet her. He later
claimed it was mainly out of curiosity. "I believe in environment
more than heredity in determining your traits, but still you have
to wonder a little about your biological roots," he said. He also
wanted to reassure Joanne that what she had done was all right.
"I wanted to meet my biological mother mostly to see if she was
okay and to thank her, because I'm glad I didn't end up as an
abortion. She was twenty-three and she went through a lot to have
me."
Joanne was overcome with emotion when Jobs arrived at her Los
Angeles house. She knew he was famous and rich, but she wasn't
exactly sure why. She immediately began to pour out her emotions.
She had been pressured to sign the papers putting him up for
adoption, she said, and did so only when told that he was happy
in the house of his new parents. She had always missed him and
suffered about what she had done. She apologized over and over,
even as Jobs kept reassuring her that he understood, and that
things had turned out just fine.
Once she calmed down, she told Jobs that he had a full sister,
Mona Simpson, who was then an aspiring novelist in Manhattan. She
had never told Mona that she had a brother, and that day she
broke the news, or at least part of it, by telephone. "You have a
brother, and he's wonderful, and he's famous, and I'm going to
bring him to New York so you can meet him," she said. Mona was in
the throes of finishing a novel about her mother and their
peregrination from Wisconsin to Los Angeles, Anywhere but Here.
Those who've read it will not be surprised that Joanne was
somewhat quirky in the way she imparted to Mona the news about
her brother. She refused to say who he was-only that he had been
poor, had gotten rich, was good-looking and famous, had long dark
hair, and lived in California. Mona then worked at the Paris
Review, George Plimpton's literary journal housed on the ground
floor of his townhouse near Manhattan's East River. She and her
coworkers began a guessing game on who her brother might be. John
Travolta? That was one of the favorite guesses. Other actors were
also hot prospects. At one point someone did toss out a guess
that "maybe it's one of those guys who started Apple computer,"
but no one could recall their names.
The meeting occurred in the lobby of the St. Regis Hotel. "He was
totally straightforward and lovely, just a normal and sweet guy,"
Mona recalled. They all sat and talked for a few minutes, then he
took his sister for a long walk, just the two of them. Jobs was
thrilled to find that he had a sibling who was so similar to him.
They were both intense in their artistry, observant of their
surroundings, and sensitive yet strongwilled. When they went to
dinner together, they noticed the same architectural details and
talked about them excitedly afterward. "My sister's a writer!" he
exulted to colleagues at Apple when he found out.
When Plimpton threw a party for Anywhere but Here in late 1986,
Jobs flew to New York to accompany Mona to it. They grew
increasingly close, though their friendship had the complexities
that might be expected, considering who they were and how they
had come together. "Mona was not completely thrilled at first to
have me in her life and have her mother so emotionally
affectionate toward me," he later said. "As we got to know each
other, we became really good friends, and she is my family. I
don't know what I'd do without her. I can't imagine a better
sister. My adopted sister, Patty, and I were never close." Mona
likewise developed a deep affection for him, and at times could
be very protective, although she would later write an edgy novel
about him, A Regular Guy, that described his quirks with
discomforting accuracy.
One of the few things they would argue about was her clothes. She
dressed like a struggling novelist, and he would berate her for
not wearing clothes that were "fetching enough." At one point his
comments so annoyed her that she wrote him a letter: "I am a
young writer, and this is my life, and I'm not trying to be a
model anyway." He didn't answer. But shortly after, a box arrived
from the store of Issey Miyake, the Japanese fashion designer
whose stark and technology-influenced style made him one of
Jobs's favorites. "He'd gone shopping for me," she later said,
"and he'd picked out great things, exactly my size, in flattering
colors." There was one pantsuit that he had particularly liked,
and the shipment included three of them, all identical. "I still
remember those first suits I sent Mona," he said. "They were
linen pants and tops in a pale grayish green that looked
beautiful with her reddish hair."
The Lost Father
In the meantime, Mona Simpson had been trying to track down their
father, who had wandered off when she was five. Through Ken
Auletta and Nick Pileggi, prominent Manhattan writers, she was
introduced to a retired New York cop who had formed his own
detective agency. "I paid him what little money I had," Simpson
recalled, but the search was unsuccessful. Then she met another
private eye in California, who was able to find an address for
Abdulfattah Jandali in Sacramento through a Department of Motor
Vehicles search. Simpson told her brother and flew out from New
York to see the man who was apparently their father.
Jobs had no interest in meeting him. "He didn't treat me well,"
he later explained. "I don't hold anything against him-I'm happy
to be alive. But what bothers me most is that he didn't treat
Mona well. He abandoned her." Jobs himself had abandoned his own
illegitimate daughter, Lisa, and now was trying to restore their
relationship, but that complexity did not soften his feelings
toward Jandali. Simpson went to Sacramento alone.
"It was very intense," Simpson recalled. She found her father
working in a small restaurant. He seemed happy to see her, yet
oddly passive about the entire situation. They talked for a few
hours, and he recounted that, after he left Wisconsin, he had
drifted away from teaching and gotten into the restaurant
business.
Jobs had asked Simpson not to mention him, so she didn't. But at
one point her father casually remarked that he and her mother had
had another baby, a boy, before she had been born. "What happened
to him?" she asked. He replied, "We'll never see that baby again.
That baby's gone." Simpson recoiled but said nothing.
An even more astonishing revelation occurred when Jandali was
describing the previous restaurants that he had run. There had
been some nice ones, he insisted, fancier than the Sacramento
joint they were then sitting in. He told her, somewhat
emotionally, that he wished she could have seen him when he was
managing a Mediterranean restaurant north of San Jose. "That was
a wonderful place," he said. "All of the successful technology
people used to come there. Even Steve Jobs." Simpson was stunned.
"Oh, yeah, he used to come in, and he was a sweet guy, and a big
tipper," her father added. Mona was able to refrain from blurting
out, Steve jobs is your son!
When the visit was over, she called jobs surreptitiously from the
pay phone at the restaurant and arranged to meet him at the
Espresso Roma cafe in Berkeley. Adding to the personal and family
drama, he brought along Lisa, now in grade school, who lived with
her mother, Chrisann. When they all arrived at the cafe, it was
close to 10 p.m., and Simpson poured forth the tale. Jobs was
understandably astonished when she mentioned the restaurant near
San Jose. He could recall being there and even meeting the man
who was his biological father. "It was amazing," he later said of
the revelation. "I had been to that restaurant a few times, and I
remember meeting the owner. He was Syrian. Balding. We shook
hands."
Nevertheless Jobs still had no desire to see him. "I was a
wealthy man by then, and I didn't trust him not to try to
blackmail me or go to the press about it," he recalled. "I asked
Mona not to tell him about me."
She never did, but years later Jandali saw his relationship to
Jobs mentioned online. (A blogger noticed that Simpson had listed
Jandali as her father in a reference book and figured out he must
be Jobs's father as well.) By then Jandali was married for a
fourth time and working as a food and beverage manager at the
Boomtown Resort and Casino just west of Reno, Nevada. When he
brought his new wife, Roscille, to visit Simpson in 2006, he
raised the topic. "What is this thing about Steve Jobs?" he
asked. She confirmed the story, but added that she thought Jobs
had no interest in meeting him. Jandali seemed to accept that.
"My father is thoughtful and a beautiful storyteller, but he is
very, very passive," Simpson said. "He never contacted Steve."
Simpson turned her search for Jandali into a basis for her second
novel, The Lost Father, published in 1992. (Jobs convinced Paul
Rand, the designer who did the NeXT logo, to design the cover,
but accord ing to Simpson, "It was God-awful and we never used
it.") She also tracked down various members of the Jandali
family, in Horns and in America, and in 2011 was writing a novel
about her Syrian roots. The Syrian ambassador in Washington threw
a dinner for her that included a cousin and his wife who then
lived in Florida and had flown up for the occasion.
Simpson assumed that Jobs would eventually meet Jandali, but as
time went on he showed even less interest. In 2010, when Jobs and
his son, Reed, went to a birthday dinner for Simpson at her Los
Ange les house, Reed spent some time looking at pictures of his
biological grandfather, but Jobs ignored them. Nor did he seem to
care about his Syrian heritage. When the Middle East would come
up in conversation, the topic did not engage him or evoke his
typical strong opinions, even after Syria was swept up in the
2011 Arab Spring uprisings. "I don't think anybody really knows
what we should be doing over there," he said when I asked whether
the Obama administration should be intervening more in Egypt,
Libya, and Syria. "You're fucked if you do and you're fucked if
you don't."
Jobs did retain a friendly relationship with his biological
mother, Joanne Simpson. Over the years she and Mona would often
spend Christmas at Jobs's house. The visits could be sweet, but
also emotionally draining. Joanne would sometimes break into
tears, say how much she had loved him, and apologize for giving
him up. It turned out all right, Jobs would reassure her. As he
told her one Christmas, "Don't worry. I had a great childhood. I
turned out okay."
Lisa
Lisa Brennan, however, did not have a great childhood. When she
was young, her father almost never came to see her. "I didn't
want to be a father, so I wasn't," Jobs later said, with only a
touch of remorse in his voice. Yet occasionally he felt the tug.
One day, when Lisa was three, Jobs was driving near the house he
had bought for her and Chrisann, and he decided to stop. Lisa
didn't know who he was. He sat on the doorstep, not venturing
inside, and talked to Chrisann. The scene was repeated once or
twice a year. Jobs would come by unannounced, talk a little bit
about Lisa's school options or other issues, then drive off in
his Mercedes.
But by the time Lisa turned eight, in 1986, the visits were
occurring more frequently. Jobs was no longer immersed in the
grueling push to create the Macintosh or in the subsequent power
struggles with Sculley. He was at NeXT, which was calmer,
friendlier, and headquartered in Palo Alto, near where Chrisann
and Lisa lived. In addition, by the time she was in third grade,
it was clear that Lisa was a smart and artistic kid, who had
already been singled out by her teachers for her writing ability.
She was spunky and high-spirited and had a little of her father's
defiant attitude. She also looked a bit like him, with arched
eyebrows and a faintly Middle Eastern angularity. One day, to the
surprise of his colleagues, he brought her by the office. As she
turned cartwheels in the corridor, she squealed, "Look at me!"
Avie Tevanian, a lanky and gregarious engineer at NeXT who had
become Jobs's friend, remembers that every now and then, when
they were going out to dinner, they would stop by Chrisann's
house to pick up Lisa. "He was very sweet to her," Tevanian
recalled. "He was a vegetarian, and so was Chrisann, but she
wasn't. He was fine with that. He suggested she order chicken,
and she did."
Eating chicken became her little indulgence as she shuttled
between two parents who were vegetarians with a spiritual regard
for natural foods. "We bought our groceries-our puntarella,
quinoa, celeriac, carob-covered nuts - in yeasty-smelling stores
where the women didn't dye their hair," she later wrote about her
time with her mother. "But we sometimes tasted foreign treats. A
few times we bought a hot, seasoned chicken from a gourmet shop
with rows and rows of chickens turning on spits, and ate it in
the car from the foil-lined paper bag with our fingers." Her
father, whose dietary fixations came in fanatic waves, was more
fastidious about what he ate. She watched him spit out a mouthful
of soup one day after learning that it contained butter. After
loosening up a bit while at Apple, he was back to being a strict
vegan. Even at a young age Lisa began to realize his diet
obsessions reflected a life philosophy, one in which asceticism
and minimalism could heighten subsequent sensations. "He believed
that great harvests came from arid sources, pleasure from
restraint," she noted. "He knew the equations that most people
didn't know: Things led to their opposites."
In a similar way, the absence and coldness of her father made his
occasional moments of warmth so much more intensely gratifying.
"I didn't live with him, but he would stop by our house some
days, a deity among us for a few tingling moments or hours," she
recalled. Lisa soon became interesting enough that he would take
walks with her. He would also go rollerblading with her on the
quiet streets of old Palo Alto, often stopping at the houses of
Joanna Hoffman and Andy Hertzfeld. The first time he brought her
around to see Hoffman, he just knocked on the door and announced,
"This is Lisa." Hoffman knew right away. "It was obvious she was
his daughter," she told me. "Nobody has that jaw. It's a
signature jaw." Hoffman, who suffered from not knowing her own
divorced father until she was ten, encouraged Jobs to be a better
father. He followed her advice, and later thanked her for it.
Once he took Lisa on a business trip to Tokyo, and they stayed at
the sleek and businesslike Okura Hotel. At the elegant downstairs
sushi bar, Jobs ordered large trays of unagi sushi, a dish he
loved so much that he allowed the warm cooked eel to pass muster
as vegetarian. The pieces were coated with fine salt or a thin
sweet sauce, and Lisa remembered later how they dissolved in her
mouth. So, too, did the distance between them. As she later
wrote, "It was the first time I'd felt, with him, so relaxed and
content, over those trays of meat; the excess, the permission and
warmth after the cold salads, meant a once inaccessible space had
opened. He was less rigid with himself, even human under the
great ceilings with the little chairs, with the meat, and me."
But it was not always sweetness and light. Jobs was as mercurial
with Lisa as he was with almost everyone, cycling between embrace
and abandonment. On one visit he would be playful; on the next he
would be cold; often he was not there at all. "She was always
unsure of their relationship," according to Hertzfeld. "I went to
a birthday party of hers, and Steve was supposed to come, and he
was very, very, late. She got extremely anxious and disappointed.
But when he finally did come, she totally lit up."
Lisa learned to be temperamental in return. Over the years their
relationship would be a roller coaster, with each of the low
points elongated by their shared stubbornness. After a
falling-out, they could go for months not speaking to each other.
Neither one was good at reaching out, apologizing, or making the
effort to heal, even when he was wrestling with repeated health
problems. One day in the fall of 2010 he was wistfully going
through a box of old snapshots with me, and paused over one that
showed him visiting Lisa when she was young. "I probably didn't
go over there enough," he said. Since he had not spoken to her
all that year, I asked if he might want to reach out to her with
a call or email. He looked at me blankly for a moment, then went
back to riffling through other old photographs.
The Romantic
When it came to women, jobs could be deeply romantic. He tended
to fall in love dramatically, share with friends every up and
down of a relationship, and pine in public whenever he was away
from his current girlfriend. In the summer of 1983 he went to a
small dinner party in Silicon Valley with Joan Baez and sat next
to an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania named
Jennifer Egan, who was not quite sure who he was. By then he and
Baez had realized that they weren't destined to be forever young
together, and jobs found himself fascinated by Egan, who was
working on a San Francisco weekly during her summer vacation. He
tracked her down, gave her a call, and took her to Cafe
Jacqueline, a little bistro near Telegraph Hill that specialized
in vegetarian souffles.
They dated for a year, and Jobs often flew east to visit her. At
a Boston Macworld event, he told a large gathering how much in
love he was and thus needed to rush out to catch a plane for
Philadelphia to see his girlfriend. The audience was enchanted.
When he was visiting New York, she would take the train up to
stay with him at the Carlyle or at Jay Chiat's Upper East Side
apartment, and they would eat at Cafe Luxembourg, visit
(repeatedly) the apartment in the San Remo he was planning to
remodel, and go to movies or (once at least) the opera.
He and Egan also spoke for hours on the phone many nights. One
topic they wrestled with was his belief, which came from his
Buddhist studies, that it was important to avoid attachment to
material objects. Our consumer desires are unhealthy, he told
her, and to attain enlightenment you need to develop a life of
nonattachment and nonmaterialism. He even sent her a tape of
Kobun Chino, his Zen teacher, lecturing about the problems caused
by craving and obtaining things. Egan pushed back. Wasn't he
defying that philosophy, she asked, by making computers and other
products that people coveted? "He was irritated by the dichotomy,
and we had exuberant debates about it," Egan recalled.
In the end Jobs's pride in the objects he made overcame his
sensibility that people should eschew being attached to such
possessions. When the Macintosh came out in January 1984, Egan
was staying at her mother's apartment in San Francisco during her
winter break from Penn. Her mother's dinner guests were
astonished one night when Steve Jobs - suddenly very famous -
appeared at the door carrying a freshly boxed Macintosh and
proceeded to Egan's bedroom to set it up.
Jobs told Egan, as he had a few other friends, about his
premonition that he would not live a long life. That was why he
was driven and impatient, he confided. "He felt a sense of
urgency about all he wanted to get done," Egan later said. Their
relationship tapered off by the fall of 1984, when Egan made it
clear that she was still far too young to think of getting
married.
Shortly after that, just as the turmoil with Sculley was
beginning to build at Apple in early 1985, Jobs was heading to a
meeting when he stopped at the office of a guy who was working
with the Apple Foundation, which helped get computers to
nonprofit organizations. Sitting in his office was a lithe, very
blond woman who combined a hippie aura of natural purity with the
solid sensibilities of a computer consultant. Her name was Tina
Redse. "She was the most beautiful woman I'd ever seen," Jobs
recalled.
He called her the next day and asked her to dinner. She said no,
that she was living with a boyfriend. A few days later he took
her on a walk to a nearby park and again asked her out, and this
time she told her boyfriend that she wanted to go. She was very
honest and open. After dinner she started to cry because she knew
her life was about to be disrupted. And it was. Within a few
months she had moved into the unfurnished mansion in Woodside.
"She was the first person I was truly in love with," Jobs later
said. "We had a very deep connection. I don't know that anyone
will ever understand me better than she did."
Redse came from a troubled family, and Jobs shared with her his
own pain about being put up for adoption. "We were both wounded
from our childhood," Redse recalled. "He said to me that we were
misfits, which is why we belonged together." They were physically
passionate and prone to public displays of affection; their
make-out sessions in the NeXT lobby are well remembered by
employees. So too were their fights, which occurred at movie
theaters and in front of visitors to Woodside. Yet he constantly
praised her purity and naturalness. As the well-grounded Joanna
Hoffman pointed out when discussing Jobs's infatuation with the
otherworldly Redse, "Steve had a tendency to look at
vulnerabilities and neuroses and turn them into spiritual
attributes."
When he was being eased out at Apple in 1985, Redse traveled with
him in Europe, where he was salving his wounds. Standing on a
bridge over the Seine one evening, they bandied about the idea,
more romantic than serious, of just staying in France, maybe
settling down, perhaps indefinitely. Redse was eager, but Jobs
didn't want to. He was burned but still ambitious. "I am a
reflection of what I do," he told her. She recalled their Paris
moment in a poignant email she sent to him twenty-five years
later, after they had gone their separate ways but retained their
spiritual connection:
We were on a bridge in Paris in the summer of 1985. It was
overcast. We leaned against the smooth stone rail and stared at
the green water rolling on below. Your world had cleaved and then
it paused, waiting to rearrange itself around whatever you chose
next. I wanted to run away from what had come before. I tried to
convince you to begin a new life with me in Paris, to shed our
former selves and let something else course through us. I wanted
us to crawl through that black chasm of your broken world and
emerge, anonymous and new, in simple lives where I could cook you
simple dinners and we could be together every day, like children
playing a sweet game with no purpose save the game itself. I like
to think you considered it before you laughed and said "What
could I do? I've made myself unemployable." I like to think that
in that moment's hesitation before our bold futures reclaimed us,
we lived that simple life together all the way into our peaceful
old ages, with a brood of grandchildren around us on a farm in
the south of France, quietly going about our days, warm and
complete like loaves of fresh bread, our small world filled with
the aroma of patience and familiarity.
The relationship lurched up and down for five years. Redse hated
living in his sparsely furnished Woodside house. Jobs had hired a
hip young couple, who had once worked at Chez Panisse, as
housekeepers and vegetarian cooks, and they made her feel like an
interloper. She would occasionally move out to an apartment of
her own in Palo Alto, especially after one of her torrential
arguments with Jobs. "Neglect is a form of abuse," she once
scrawled on the wall of the hallway to their bedroom. She was
entranced by him, but she was also baffled by how uncaring he
could be. She would later recall how incredibly painful it was to
be in love with someone so self-centered. Caring deeply about
someone who seemed incapable of caring was a particular kind of
hell that she wouldn't wish on anyone, she said.
They were different in so many ways. "On the spectrum of cruel to
kind, they are close to the opposite poles," Hertzfeld later
said. Redse's kindness was manifest in ways large and small; she
always gave money to street people, she volunteered to help those
who (like her father) were afflicted with mental illness, and she
took care to make Lisa and even Chrisann feel comfortable with
her. More than anyone, she helped persuade Jobs to spend more
time with Lisa. But she lacked Jobs's ambition and drive. The
ethereal quality that made her seem so spiritual to Jobs also
made it hard for them to stay on the same wavelength. "Their
relationship was incredibly tempestuous," said Hertzfeld.
"Because of both of their characters, they would have lots and
lots of fights."
They also had a basic philosophical difference about whether
aesthetic tastes were fundamentally individual, as Redse
believed, or universal and could be taught, as Jobs believed. She
accused him of being too influenced by the Bauhaus movement.
"Steve believed it was our job to teach people aesthetics, to
teach people what they should like," she recalled. "I don't share
that perspective. I believe when we listen deeply, both within
ourselves and to each other, we are able to allow what's innate
and true to emerge."
When they were together for a long stretch, things did not work
out well. But when they were apart, Jobs would pine for her.
Finally, in the summer of 1989, he asked her to marry him. She
couldn't do it. It would drive her crazy, she told friends. She
had grown up in a volatile household, and her relationship with
Jobs bore too many similarities to that environment. They were
opposites who attracted, she said, but the combination was too
combustible. "I could not have been a good wife to 'Steve Jobs,'
the icon," she later explained. "I would have sucked at it on
many levels. In our personal interactions, I couldn't abide his
unkindness. I didn't want to hurt him, yet I didn't want to stand
by and watch him hurt other people either. It was painful and
exhausting."
After they broke up, Redse helped found OpenMind, a mental health
resource network in California. She happened to read in a psy-
chiatric manual about Narcissistic Personality Disorder and
decided that Jobs perfectly met the criteria. "It fits so well
and explained so much of what we had struggled with, that I
realized expecting him to be nicer or less self-centered was like
expecting a blind man to see," she said. "It also explained some
of the choices he'd made about his daughter Lisa at that time. I
think the issue is empathy - the capacity for empathy is
lacking."
Redse later married, had two children, and then divorced. Every
now and then Jobs would openly pine for her, even after he was
happily married. And when he began his battle with cancer, she
got in touch again to give support. She became very emotional
whenever she recalled their relationship. "Though our values
clashed and made it impossible for us to have the relationship we
once hoped for," she told me, "the care and love I felt for him
decades ago has continued." Similarly, Jobs suddenly started to
cry one afternoon as he sat in his living room reminiscing about
her. "She was one of the purest people I've ever known," he said,
tears rolling down his cheeks. "There was something spiritual
about her and spiritual about the connection we had." He said he
always regretted that they could not make it work, and he knew
that she had such regrets as well. But it was not meant to be. On
that they both agreed.
..........
Monday, February 27, 2012
GONE!!
No not gone away anywhere......it's about the recent movie called "GONE" - A GOOD SUSPENSE overall.
Not the greatest in suspense or any of the modern special effects, but nice to get away from those special effects at times and go back to the old regular "thriller" type movies. So I'll give it an "okay" sticker. I did enjoy it as a thriller. And it has no bad language or profanity.
.........
Not the greatest in suspense or any of the modern special effects, but nice to get away from those special effects at times and go back to the old regular "thriller" type movies. So I'll give it an "okay" sticker. I did enjoy it as a thriller. And it has no bad language or profanity.
.........
BACK!! SDA CHURCH!!
SAFELY BACK from a 4 and 1/2 day visit with my Dad - 92 in August. He's about an 8 hour car drive West of me in Kelowna, B.C. But I went by plane - 45 minutes.
And now since his stroke in early December he's in Sutherland Hills Rest Home - 24/7 care.
He's doing very well, mainly in a wheel chair now, but still has a very good long time memory, way back into his childhood. But the short time memory is up and down; he'll remember I said something yesterday but could have forgotten what he had for breakfast when I talk to him in the afternoon.
But general health is very good. And his spirit is fine, enjoys listening to Connie Francis and Vera Lynn with head-phones on. Many thing he can do for himself, so overall for nearly 92 he's good.
..........
Now while out there I decided to visit one of the Seventh Day Adventist churches in Kelowna, and see if they had made any progress ... FORWARD.
NOPE they had not ... gone backwards if anything.
THREE THINGS I'LL TALK ABOUT.
1. Announcement was made that they were getting together to whatever, and sing, with The Roman Catholic church for "World Day of Prayer" coming up. So practicing together with them etc.
Now the SDA church teach correctly that the RC church is the Whore Babylon Mystery Religion of the book of Revelation, and so she is. Now read 1 Cor.10:15-22 (which I've recently covered on my Youtube (1horsesrcool). Clearly the true saints and true Church of God cannot participate and eat from the table of demons. Yes strong language I use .... the RC church and MANY, MOST, of its teachings are from demons - false and in error, but enough truth to DECEIVE over ONE BILLION people on earth - 1 in 6/7 people today on earth are Roman Catholics.
The apostle Paul would never participate with anything alongside the RC church or its Protestant daughters. The true saints of God cannot participate in the things from the table of the demons. I have individual friends in my line of work and play that are RC or Protestant, but working with them in "church" work is NOT what the people of God will do.....can not be, just can not be.
See my expounding of this section of 1 Corinthians on my Youtube - 1horsesrcool.
The SDA church allows women to come to the front and give prayers. Nope....should not be, not during "church service." See what Paul said in 1 Timothy 2:8. Now the word "man" in Greek here, is NEVER used in the NT for "female" or "woman" - so it literally does mean MALE! Outside of a church service, there is no such regulation. So Paul MUST BE here talking about a church service.
You need to study my studies on "Church Government" on my website and the studies of the role of women in the church. I expound that subject in great detail in those many studies, and the studies of the late Dr.Samule Bacchiocchi.
Point number 3 where the SDA church is WAY OFF TRACK is their use of Ellen G. White. And sure enough the younger minister last Sabbath, quoted from E.G. White. Now the SDA church is growing old - not that many young people in their churches any more. So what does this SDA minister do. He speaks about staying true to their basic foundational doctrines, and quotes from Ellen White that they should do that, that departing from their original foundational doctrines would happen. So it's a whole DECEPTION from way back to the middle of the 1800s and Ellen White. Ellen White is teaching them that their foundational doctrines are the inspired word of God. NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH!! But as long as SDA preachers get up and teach this crap....on and on will go their entrapment in deception, and they will never grow in grace and knowledge; they will never come to see their errors and SOME are HUGE ERRORS!
SO MUCH FOR THE SDA church today.....joining in, in worship stuff with the RC and Protestant churches and "got to stay with Ellen White" whom they say was "inspired of the Lord" and hence their original doctrines are inspired. It's a bunch of BS folks.
If YOU are an SDA member you need to get your eyes off the 50 odd books Ellen White wrote and get your eyes in the Bible. You need to study the Bible like never before, and come to see the errors of Ellen White. You need to be willing, with an open mind, to study the studies on my website and get to the real RESTITUTION of all things that are right and correct from God's Word the Bible. The SDA church has MANY ERRORS, So for SDA members it's time to open your eyes, stop thinking you are rich and in need of nothing. You yourself admit you are the Laodicean church of Revelation 3, hence get some eye-ointment on your spiritual eyes and WAKE UP TO SEE CLEARLY YOUR SINS AND ERRORS.
WILL YOU HAVE THE DESIRE AND LOVE OF THE TRUTH TO DO SO? GOD CALLS OUT, JESUS CALLS OUT, FOR YOU TO REPENT, OR YOUR CANDLE STICK HE WILL COME AND REMOVE.
..........
And now since his stroke in early December he's in Sutherland Hills Rest Home - 24/7 care.
He's doing very well, mainly in a wheel chair now, but still has a very good long time memory, way back into his childhood. But the short time memory is up and down; he'll remember I said something yesterday but could have forgotten what he had for breakfast when I talk to him in the afternoon.
But general health is very good. And his spirit is fine, enjoys listening to Connie Francis and Vera Lynn with head-phones on. Many thing he can do for himself, so overall for nearly 92 he's good.
..........
Now while out there I decided to visit one of the Seventh Day Adventist churches in Kelowna, and see if they had made any progress ... FORWARD.
NOPE they had not ... gone backwards if anything.
THREE THINGS I'LL TALK ABOUT.
1. Announcement was made that they were getting together to whatever, and sing, with The Roman Catholic church for "World Day of Prayer" coming up. So practicing together with them etc.
Now the SDA church teach correctly that the RC church is the Whore Babylon Mystery Religion of the book of Revelation, and so she is. Now read 1 Cor.10:15-22 (which I've recently covered on my Youtube (1horsesrcool). Clearly the true saints and true Church of God cannot participate and eat from the table of demons. Yes strong language I use .... the RC church and MANY, MOST, of its teachings are from demons - false and in error, but enough truth to DECEIVE over ONE BILLION people on earth - 1 in 6/7 people today on earth are Roman Catholics.
The apostle Paul would never participate with anything alongside the RC church or its Protestant daughters. The true saints of God cannot participate in the things from the table of the demons. I have individual friends in my line of work and play that are RC or Protestant, but working with them in "church" work is NOT what the people of God will do.....can not be, just can not be.
See my expounding of this section of 1 Corinthians on my Youtube - 1horsesrcool.
The SDA church allows women to come to the front and give prayers. Nope....should not be, not during "church service." See what Paul said in 1 Timothy 2:8. Now the word "man" in Greek here, is NEVER used in the NT for "female" or "woman" - so it literally does mean MALE! Outside of a church service, there is no such regulation. So Paul MUST BE here talking about a church service.
You need to study my studies on "Church Government" on my website and the studies of the role of women in the church. I expound that subject in great detail in those many studies, and the studies of the late Dr.Samule Bacchiocchi.
Point number 3 where the SDA church is WAY OFF TRACK is their use of Ellen G. White. And sure enough the younger minister last Sabbath, quoted from E.G. White. Now the SDA church is growing old - not that many young people in their churches any more. So what does this SDA minister do. He speaks about staying true to their basic foundational doctrines, and quotes from Ellen White that they should do that, that departing from their original foundational doctrines would happen. So it's a whole DECEPTION from way back to the middle of the 1800s and Ellen White. Ellen White is teaching them that their foundational doctrines are the inspired word of God. NOTHING COULD BE FURTHER FROM THE TRUTH!! But as long as SDA preachers get up and teach this crap....on and on will go their entrapment in deception, and they will never grow in grace and knowledge; they will never come to see their errors and SOME are HUGE ERRORS!
SO MUCH FOR THE SDA church today.....joining in, in worship stuff with the RC and Protestant churches and "got to stay with Ellen White" whom they say was "inspired of the Lord" and hence their original doctrines are inspired. It's a bunch of BS folks.
If YOU are an SDA member you need to get your eyes off the 50 odd books Ellen White wrote and get your eyes in the Bible. You need to study the Bible like never before, and come to see the errors of Ellen White. You need to be willing, with an open mind, to study the studies on my website and get to the real RESTITUTION of all things that are right and correct from God's Word the Bible. The SDA church has MANY ERRORS, So for SDA members it's time to open your eyes, stop thinking you are rich and in need of nothing. You yourself admit you are the Laodicean church of Revelation 3, hence get some eye-ointment on your spiritual eyes and WAKE UP TO SEE CLEARLY YOUR SINS AND ERRORS.
WILL YOU HAVE THE DESIRE AND LOVE OF THE TRUTH TO DO SO? GOD CALLS OUT, JESUS CALLS OUT, FOR YOU TO REPENT, OR YOUR CANDLE STICK HE WILL COME AND REMOVE.
..........
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Visiting my Dad
From now the 22nd to the 26th of February I'll be away visiting my Dad in his new 24/7 facility in Kelowna, B.C.
YOU WILL NOT HEAR FROM ME UNTIL THE EVENING OF THE 26TH.
Keith
YOU WILL NOT HEAR FROM ME UNTIL THE EVENING OF THE 26TH.
Keith
Sunday, February 19, 2012
Still the sad facts in the USA
The Sunday evening famous 60 MINUTES program just had the first part on the sad facts that in the USA there is still 38 THOUSAND a WEEK, who have run out of unemployment checks - their on food stamps, and often have to count on friends or relatives for physical survival, a roof over their heads and etc.
These are people who have been out of work for 2 or 3 years. These often the educated, College, University educated people. These are often people in their middle age, having had good responsible jobs for years.
There has come about since 2008 an organization called "Platform to Employment" started from donations and company sponsored money. It is to help these people change their mind-set, which after 2 or 3 years without work, hearing no,no,no, all the time, have become depressed, often loosing confidence in themselves, thinking they are failures.
Trying to put myself into the shoes of people out of work after years of happy successful work, and having a difficult time getting back into the working world, I can see it must be depressing and take the upbeat confidence out of a person.
Platform to Employment organization is having great results in giving back to people the confidence and power of mind to know they are still the person they once were (when working successfully) and many from this course have found work. The Platform to Employment cannot promise people a job after taking their course, but it at least brings people back to the realization they are still the person they once were. And in this situation of the USA trying to move back to where it was before 2008, is still a fine platform for people to be on.
..........
60 MINUTES also brought out a "smash between the eyes" on the Drug Industry and anti-depressant drugs by ... well this one guy, who kinda started the hit on them, and others agreeing. Britain looking into it all has changed their National Health System on the matter.
Bottom of the line - all the anti-depressant drugs may only have a decent effect on the VERY serious depressed people. Well it is best you look at the clip of it all on the Internet and the 60 MINUTE program, to see it all for yourself. All these "investigative" programs you can find on the world-wide web - just "Google" 60 MINUTES.
..........
These are people who have been out of work for 2 or 3 years. These often the educated, College, University educated people. These are often people in their middle age, having had good responsible jobs for years.
There has come about since 2008 an organization called "Platform to Employment" started from donations and company sponsored money. It is to help these people change their mind-set, which after 2 or 3 years without work, hearing no,no,no, all the time, have become depressed, often loosing confidence in themselves, thinking they are failures.
Trying to put myself into the shoes of people out of work after years of happy successful work, and having a difficult time getting back into the working world, I can see it must be depressing and take the upbeat confidence out of a person.
Platform to Employment organization is having great results in giving back to people the confidence and power of mind to know they are still the person they once were (when working successfully) and many from this course have found work. The Platform to Employment cannot promise people a job after taking their course, but it at least brings people back to the realization they are still the person they once were. And in this situation of the USA trying to move back to where it was before 2008, is still a fine platform for people to be on.
..........
60 MINUTES also brought out a "smash between the eyes" on the Drug Industry and anti-depressant drugs by ... well this one guy, who kinda started the hit on them, and others agreeing. Britain looking into it all has changed their National Health System on the matter.
Bottom of the line - all the anti-depressant drugs may only have a decent effect on the VERY serious depressed people. Well it is best you look at the clip of it all on the Internet and the 60 MINUTE program, to see it all for yourself. All these "investigative" programs you can find on the world-wide web - just "Google" 60 MINUTES.
..........
Until He Comes
From "Acts" magazine - NOvember/December 2011 - a publication of
The General Council Church of God (Seventh Day), Meridian, ID.
USA.
Until He Comes
by Eva June Narber
Should we witness truth? Should we hide ourselves away and wait
for His return? Should we be doing something special? For nearly
two thousand years, followers of the Messiah of scripture, Jesus
Christ, have waited anxiously for His return, some in relative
isolation, forgotten by the pages of history, and others,
actively testifying scriptural truth in a world that had all but
forgotten the historical truth, and instead, clung to the
counterfeit Christ who did not focus on repentance and walking in
newness of life in scriptural truth.
The first issue involves the group of Christians who try to
isolate themselves from society in a variety of ways. Some choose
to homeschool their children and then the children end up living
at home well into their adult years until they, form their own
family unit and then they too, isolate themselves from society at
large. While I think homeschooling is a noble endeavor, it should
never be undertaken just to isolate a child from reality as that
child must grow up and become a productive, working member of
society. Another form of isolation tends to be those who refuse
to work in contemporary society, as they feel that that can lead
to spiritual issues, and it is better for them to live off of
social welfare, their families or in some cases the church they
attend. Is social isolation of entire families exactly what
Christ had in mind for His followers? When Jesus spoke again to
the people, he said, "1 am the light of the world. Whoever
follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light
of life" John 8:12 NIV.
When a person walks in Christ and scriptural truth, they are the
light of the world. As we read in John 8:12, we can never walk in
dark ness because God's light, HIS TRUTH, is in us. This stands
as a testimony: There is no excuse for not working and being
involved in society in a normal fashion to earn ones own living
("Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider its ways, and be wise!"
Proverbs 6:6 NIV and "For six days, work is to be done..." Exodus
35:2 NIV), to serve in the community, and in the school system to
make it better for everyone.
Hiding oneself and one's family is much like burying a talent and
hoping to protect it.
"Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, 1
knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not
sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed: And I was
afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou
hast that is thine. His lord answered and said unto him, Thou
wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that 1 reap where 1
sowed not, and gather where 1 have not strawed: Thou oughtest
therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my
coming 1 should have received mine own with usury. Take therefore
the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents"
Matthew 25:24-28 KJV.
Of course, I have heard numerous sermons that elaborate that this
is not talking about real physical participation in life, but
just spiritual gifts. Are not physical activities where spiritual
fruit is manifested as witnesses to society at large? Whether the
person is a third grade child at school testifying Christ through
being a model student, or a modern day worker performing at
his/her best, or a senior citizen leading an art project at a
senior living facility, all these people are actively doing
something in their daily lives in the normal environment one
would expect to find a human of their age. This running away and
hiding from society or isolating oneself from all aspects of
modern life is nothing more than a cowardly justification for not
being a LIVING SACRIFICE to serve the high heavens. Permit me to
pose a question: What would please Satan more: a person out
witnessing scriptural truth through word and deed to influence
others to repent and turn to Christ, or one who is hidding away
in his/her own home, concerned ONLY about his/her own salvation?
I think the only logical answer is it may irritate the devil when
any Christian lives a righteous life, but it must ROCK HIS WORLD
into fits of anger when a servant of Jesus Christ is out doing
what Christ himself did! The reason is simple. The more who hear
the truth that Christ is Lord, that the Bible is truth and it is
meant to be consulted, read, and lived by today, and that Christ
is soon coming back to rule this world forever: It spreads the
truth and more people have the chance of coming to the Truth.
Words and ideas are powerful, but a living, breathing, witness is
a thousand times more powerful in spiritual witnessing because
seeing is believing!
"Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of
wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have
been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body
to him as instruments of righteousness"
Romans 6:13 NIV.
"...to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles with the
priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the
Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified
by the Holy Spirit"
Romans 15:16 NIV.
We must use our lives, our bodies, our influences to further
God's will on earth in every way at our individual disposal.
"As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life
worthy of the calling you have received" Ephesians 4:1 NIV. It is
scripturally prophesized that all followers of Christ would do
greater works than even Christ did. Some falsely believe this was
just the original apostles, but it was to continue until Christ
returns as each generation produces new people that must hear,
learn, and implement the truth of scripture.
"...He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do
also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto
my Father" John 14:12 KJV.
While all people may not have the same opportunity, everyone has
SOME opportunity. For some, it will be living a productive life
active at a job, in the community, in the public schools, or in
the churches. Some may have a more powerful job to do as did
Isaiah.
"CRY aloud, spare not, and lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and
shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their
sins" Isaiah 58:1 KJV.
Everyone should strive to make society a better place NOW, not
just wait for the Kingdom. Consider the words of Proverbs. Some
people may be in a position to influence and help through
starting or participating in nonprofit organizations, in making
or changing laws, in civil and community life.
"Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the
rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly;
defend the rights of the poor and needy" Proverbs 31:8-9 NIV.
Sometimes women are condemned for leaving their household duties,
yet in Proverbs 31:18a, she sees that her trading is profitable,
(trading requires a business enterprise). Modern households often
have women doing a variety of professional endeavors. I am
saddened by the continual negativity that is generated at women
who are actively living productive, professional lives. How often
do people forget that some women have no family, and function in
society the equivalent of any man in terms of professional
occupation: home buying, paying of bills, physical
responsibilities and active participation in the community? An
example that recently came to my attention is that of a
middle-aged woman who openly refused to work, believing falsely
that society (via welfare) and the church should provide for her
needs and wants, as God did not send her a husband. Even the most
conservative interpretation of Proverbs 31 shows a woman actively
working from sunrise to sundown supplying her household's needs.
And if that household is just one person, there still are
important responsibilities that must be met, including financial.
Can any church logically and fiscally accept the responsibility
of providing for its members who refuse to work for whatever
reasons? Of course, those who are elderly and truly disabled are
not included in this analysis.
Following are verses from Proverbs 31 followed with my commentary
in parenthesis for a modern equivalent to the verse.
Proverbs 31:13-27 NIV
:13- She selects wool and flax and works with eager hands. (Sews,
crafts)
:14- She is like the merchant ships, bringing her food from afar.
(Cooking, merchandizing)
:15- She gets up while it is still dark, she provides food for
her family (Meets all financial and physical needs of her
household) and portions for her servant girls. (She has servants
or employees)
:16- She considers a field and buys it; (Business, real estate,
and commerce) out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.
(Business of her own creation: manages it, works it, controls it)
:17- She sets about her work vigorously; her arms are strong for
her tasks. (Executive implementation, strong body perhaps
involved with regular exercise and health-conscious lifestyle)
:18- She sees that her trading is profitable, (Economics,
accounting, bookkeeping, financial records) and her lamp does not
go out at night. (Not slothful)
:19- In her hand she holds the distaff and grasps the spindle
with her fingers.
:20- She opens her arms to the poor (Charitable in the community,
the nonprofit) and extends her hands to the needy. (Volunteers in
the community)
:21- When it snows, she has no fear for her household; for all of
them are clothed in scarlet. (Dresses well by the given society's
standards)
:22- She makes coverings for her bed; (Well decorated, designed,
and maintained home) she is clothed in fine linen and purple.
:23- Her husband is respected at the city gate, (Husband is
involved in community affairs, politics, school boards, civil
government as well as perhaps committees) where he takes his seat
among the elders of the land. (Politics, leader in society)
:24- She makes linen garments and sells them, (Business
enterprise) and supplies the merchants with sashes. (Social
inaction, business networking, supply and demand, trade)
:25- She is clothed with strength and dignity; (Confidence, well
spoken, articulate) she can laugh at the days to come.
:26- She speaks with wisdom, (Well educated, public speaking
trained,) and faithful instruction is on her tongue.
:27- She watches over the affairs of her household and does not
eat the bread of idleness. (Does not expect others to provide for
her when she can do for herself)
FAITH IN ACTION REQUIRES A HUMAN TO BE INVOLVED WITH LIFE!
As believers, we want to encourage each other. Perhaps we can
truly influence only ourselves and our immediate family, but any
positive influence we can have to inspire people to be doers--not
just speakers of the Word, to be active and positively involved
with life, and to use each vital resource as a teaching
instrument, surely the rest can be nothing but positive. Sadly,
through several online communities, I constantly see people
stagnating spiritually and physically because they just lock
themselves away from society, thinking that this is what Jesus
Christ expects. The saddest fact is, in spite of such attempts at
isolation to preserve their Christian faith, it slowly corrodes
it away. Faith is like a river that must constantly flow and move
or else it will stagnate and fester. Faith in action requires a
human to be involved with life. Otherwise, why did God create a
vibrant world in which we are to interact? If such were the case,
creating a pod in which we just grew like peas and were zapped
with scriptural knowledge would have sufficed. But that is not
what the Creator did. He has allowed each generation of believers
to be engaged with, interact with, and live within whatever
generation they were born. Although we have the most challenging
of environments in which to live and witness, we also have the
most incredible resources at our disposal, including literally
international communication at a click of a computer mouse.
Let's be engaged and full participants in life while living and
teaching every word of scripture as a living witness, and a
living sacrifice to the Heavenly Father and the soon coming King
of kings, Our savior, Jesus Christ.
...........
"June Narber resides in Chapel Hill, NC. She is the 2011 Interim
President for the Bible Sabbath Association. She is an ESL
instructor at an area college, a freelance writer and runs a
small tutoring company called Everything English. She holds a BA
degree in theology, a Masters Degree in International Development
and is currently working toward a PhD in education. Scripture
quoted was from the KJV or the NIV as noted.
The General Council Church of God (Seventh Day), Meridian, ID.
USA.
Until He Comes
by Eva June Narber
Should we witness truth? Should we hide ourselves away and wait
for His return? Should we be doing something special? For nearly
two thousand years, followers of the Messiah of scripture, Jesus
Christ, have waited anxiously for His return, some in relative
isolation, forgotten by the pages of history, and others,
actively testifying scriptural truth in a world that had all but
forgotten the historical truth, and instead, clung to the
counterfeit Christ who did not focus on repentance and walking in
newness of life in scriptural truth.
The first issue involves the group of Christians who try to
isolate themselves from society in a variety of ways. Some choose
to homeschool their children and then the children end up living
at home well into their adult years until they, form their own
family unit and then they too, isolate themselves from society at
large. While I think homeschooling is a noble endeavor, it should
never be undertaken just to isolate a child from reality as that
child must grow up and become a productive, working member of
society. Another form of isolation tends to be those who refuse
to work in contemporary society, as they feel that that can lead
to spiritual issues, and it is better for them to live off of
social welfare, their families or in some cases the church they
attend. Is social isolation of entire families exactly what
Christ had in mind for His followers? When Jesus spoke again to
the people, he said, "1 am the light of the world. Whoever
follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light
of life" John 8:12 NIV.
When a person walks in Christ and scriptural truth, they are the
light of the world. As we read in John 8:12, we can never walk in
dark ness because God's light, HIS TRUTH, is in us. This stands
as a testimony: There is no excuse for not working and being
involved in society in a normal fashion to earn ones own living
("Go to the ant, thou sluggard; consider its ways, and be wise!"
Proverbs 6:6 NIV and "For six days, work is to be done..." Exodus
35:2 NIV), to serve in the community, and in the school system to
make it better for everyone.
Hiding oneself and one's family is much like burying a talent and
hoping to protect it.
"Then he which had received the one talent came and said, Lord, 1
knew thee that thou art an hard man, reaping where thou hast not
sown, and gathering where thou hast not strawed: And I was
afraid, and went and hid thy talent in the earth: lo, there thou
hast that is thine. His lord answered and said unto him, Thou
wicked and slothful servant, thou knewest that 1 reap where 1
sowed not, and gather where 1 have not strawed: Thou oughtest
therefore to have put my money to the exchangers, and then at my
coming 1 should have received mine own with usury. Take therefore
the talent from him, and give it unto him which hath ten talents"
Matthew 25:24-28 KJV.
Of course, I have heard numerous sermons that elaborate that this
is not talking about real physical participation in life, but
just spiritual gifts. Are not physical activities where spiritual
fruit is manifested as witnesses to society at large? Whether the
person is a third grade child at school testifying Christ through
being a model student, or a modern day worker performing at
his/her best, or a senior citizen leading an art project at a
senior living facility, all these people are actively doing
something in their daily lives in the normal environment one
would expect to find a human of their age. This running away and
hiding from society or isolating oneself from all aspects of
modern life is nothing more than a cowardly justification for not
being a LIVING SACRIFICE to serve the high heavens. Permit me to
pose a question: What would please Satan more: a person out
witnessing scriptural truth through word and deed to influence
others to repent and turn to Christ, or one who is hidding away
in his/her own home, concerned ONLY about his/her own salvation?
I think the only logical answer is it may irritate the devil when
any Christian lives a righteous life, but it must ROCK HIS WORLD
into fits of anger when a servant of Jesus Christ is out doing
what Christ himself did! The reason is simple. The more who hear
the truth that Christ is Lord, that the Bible is truth and it is
meant to be consulted, read, and lived by today, and that Christ
is soon coming back to rule this world forever: It spreads the
truth and more people have the chance of coming to the Truth.
Words and ideas are powerful, but a living, breathing, witness is
a thousand times more powerful in spiritual witnessing because
seeing is believing!
"Do not offer the parts of your body to sin, as instruments of
wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God, as those who have
been brought from death to life; and offer the parts of your body
to him as instruments of righteousness"
Romans 6:13 NIV.
"...to be a minister of Christ Jesus to the Gentiles with the
priestly duty of proclaiming the gospel of God, so that the
Gentiles might become an offering acceptable to God, sanctified
by the Holy Spirit"
Romans 15:16 NIV.
We must use our lives, our bodies, our influences to further
God's will on earth in every way at our individual disposal.
"As a prisoner for the Lord, then, I urge you to live a life
worthy of the calling you have received" Ephesians 4:1 NIV. It is
scripturally prophesized that all followers of Christ would do
greater works than even Christ did. Some falsely believe this was
just the original apostles, but it was to continue until Christ
returns as each generation produces new people that must hear,
learn, and implement the truth of scripture.
"...He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do
also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto
my Father" John 14:12 KJV.
While all people may not have the same opportunity, everyone has
SOME opportunity. For some, it will be living a productive life
active at a job, in the community, in the public schools, or in
the churches. Some may have a more powerful job to do as did
Isaiah.
"CRY aloud, spare not, and lift up thy voice like a trumpet, and
shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their
sins" Isaiah 58:1 KJV.
Everyone should strive to make society a better place NOW, not
just wait for the Kingdom. Consider the words of Proverbs. Some
people may be in a position to influence and help through
starting or participating in nonprofit organizations, in making
or changing laws, in civil and community life.
"Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the
rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly;
defend the rights of the poor and needy" Proverbs 31:8-9 NIV.
Sometimes women are condemned for leaving their household duties,
yet in Proverbs 31:18a, she sees that her trading is profitable,
(trading requires a business enterprise). Modern households often
have women doing a variety of professional endeavors. I am
saddened by the continual negativity that is generated at women
who are actively living productive, professional lives. How often
do people forget that some women have no family, and function in
society the equivalent of any man in terms of professional
occupation: home buying, paying of bills, physical
responsibilities and active participation in the community? An
example that recently came to my attention is that of a
middle-aged woman who openly refused to work, believing falsely
that society (via welfare) and the church should provide for her
needs and wants, as God did not send her a husband. Even the most
conservative interpretation of Proverbs 31 shows a woman actively
working from sunrise to sundown supplying her household's needs.
And if that household is just one person, there still are
important responsibilities that must be met, including financial.
Can any church logically and fiscally accept the responsibility
of providing for its members who refuse to work for whatever
reasons? Of course, those who are elderly and truly disabled are
not included in this analysis.
Following are verses from Proverbs 31 followed with my commentary
in parenthesis for a modern equivalent to the verse.
Proverbs 31:13-27 NIV
:13- She selects wool and flax and works with eager hands. (Sews,
crafts)
:14- She is like the merchant ships, bringing her food from afar.
(Cooking, merchandizing)
:15- She gets up while it is still dark, she provides food for
her family (Meets all financial and physical needs of her
household) and portions for her servant girls. (She has servants
or employees)
:16- She considers a field and buys it; (Business, real estate,
and commerce) out of her earnings she plants a vineyard.
(Business of her own creation: manages it, works it, controls it)
:17- She sets about her work vigorously; her arms are strong for
her tasks. (Executive implementation, strong body perhaps
involved with regular exercise and health-conscious lifestyle)
:18- She sees that her trading is profitable, (Economics,
accounting, bookkeeping, financial records) and her lamp does not
go out at night. (Not slothful)
:19- In her hand she holds the distaff and grasps the spindle
with her fingers.
:20- She opens her arms to the poor (Charitable in the community,
the nonprofit) and extends her hands to the needy. (Volunteers in
the community)
:21- When it snows, she has no fear for her household; for all of
them are clothed in scarlet. (Dresses well by the given society's
standards)
:22- She makes coverings for her bed; (Well decorated, designed,
and maintained home) she is clothed in fine linen and purple.
:23- Her husband is respected at the city gate, (Husband is
involved in community affairs, politics, school boards, civil
government as well as perhaps committees) where he takes his seat
among the elders of the land. (Politics, leader in society)
:24- She makes linen garments and sells them, (Business
enterprise) and supplies the merchants with sashes. (Social
inaction, business networking, supply and demand, trade)
:25- She is clothed with strength and dignity; (Confidence, well
spoken, articulate) she can laugh at the days to come.
:26- She speaks with wisdom, (Well educated, public speaking
trained,) and faithful instruction is on her tongue.
:27- She watches over the affairs of her household and does not
eat the bread of idleness. (Does not expect others to provide for
her when she can do for herself)
FAITH IN ACTION REQUIRES A HUMAN TO BE INVOLVED WITH LIFE!
As believers, we want to encourage each other. Perhaps we can
truly influence only ourselves and our immediate family, but any
positive influence we can have to inspire people to be doers--not
just speakers of the Word, to be active and positively involved
with life, and to use each vital resource as a teaching
instrument, surely the rest can be nothing but positive. Sadly,
through several online communities, I constantly see people
stagnating spiritually and physically because they just lock
themselves away from society, thinking that this is what Jesus
Christ expects. The saddest fact is, in spite of such attempts at
isolation to preserve their Christian faith, it slowly corrodes
it away. Faith is like a river that must constantly flow and move
or else it will stagnate and fester. Faith in action requires a
human to be involved with life. Otherwise, why did God create a
vibrant world in which we are to interact? If such were the case,
creating a pod in which we just grew like peas and were zapped
with scriptural knowledge would have sufficed. But that is not
what the Creator did. He has allowed each generation of believers
to be engaged with, interact with, and live within whatever
generation they were born. Although we have the most challenging
of environments in which to live and witness, we also have the
most incredible resources at our disposal, including literally
international communication at a click of a computer mouse.
Let's be engaged and full participants in life while living and
teaching every word of scripture as a living witness, and a
living sacrifice to the Heavenly Father and the soon coming King
of kings, Our savior, Jesus Christ.
...........
"June Narber resides in Chapel Hill, NC. She is the 2011 Interim
President for the Bible Sabbath Association. She is an ESL
instructor at an area college, a freelance writer and runs a
small tutoring company called Everything English. She holds a BA
degree in theology, a Masters Degree in International Development
and is currently working toward a PhD in education. Scripture
quoted was from the KJV or the NIV as noted.
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Kevin Costner on Whitney Houston
Just finished watching Kevin Costner's speech at the memorial service for Whitney Houston.
Well if anyone was wondering he told us that he like Whitney grew up in a "baptist" church.
He told us the funny situation of Whitney's "screen test" for the movie "The Bodyguard" - the make-up melting and running down her face under the bright hot lights, and how they had to stop, but how shed was the right female to play the part, It was her first acting role and indeed she was the right female, absolutely the right one - she was terrific in that part. Kevin said many men could have played his part, but she was the only one for the girl in that movie.
Kevin, as would be expected from churches like the Baptist church, and well all Roman Catholic and Protestant churches for that matter, Whitney has been escorted by myriads of angels to God in heaven, who would say "How did I create something so wonderful" and that she would be singing in His presence and would do "just fine" (she doubted herself in being cast in that movie with Kevin).
Welllll.....yes God's creations are wonderful, all of them, and I'm sure He does not have to wonder about it. Yes He does have a great plan for ALL human beings who have ever been conceived. That plan is expounded for you on my website under a study called "A Christian's Destiny."
NO, Whitney is NOT up in heaven singing before the Father. No we do NOT have an automatic immortal soul that either goes to heaven or hell at death. No the good works of Whitney did not out number the bad works, and so she qualified to be in heaven. No, none of these things make Whitney "up in heaven."
The truth of the matter is Whitney Houston was not CALLED in this lifer time. She was NOT called and chosen to be a true saint of the Lord. All of her religious upbringing and talents and her fall into a life style of drugs and alcohol abuse, does not mean anything for salvation in this lifetime she had. She was not called to salvation....she was blinded to God's real truth....BUT that does NOT mean she will not have a chance for salvation. She like many BILLIONS before her, from the beginning, will ONE DAY be RAISED TO PHYSICAL LIFE AGAIN, and have a full, open, chance of finding real salvation and eternal life in the family or Kingdom of God.
YOU need to go on my website and study my studies called "The Great White Throne Judgment" and "Called and Chosen - When?"
They will give you the good news from your Bible, of the plan of salvation that God the Father is working out here below. All will in the Father's time, have a chance to accept Jesus as Savior and walk the straight and narrow path to eternal life.
Whitney Houston lies ASLEEP in death for now, until the dawn of the GREAT WHITE THRONE JUDGMENT DAY, and the blessing of a new physical life and being shown the true light of the Word of God, and the power of the Spirit of God to walk in the way of the Lord, and so into eternal life.
Praise be to the Father and Christ Jesus. Wonderful indeed are the ways of God!
..........
Well if anyone was wondering he told us that he like Whitney grew up in a "baptist" church.
He told us the funny situation of Whitney's "screen test" for the movie "The Bodyguard" - the make-up melting and running down her face under the bright hot lights, and how they had to stop, but how shed was the right female to play the part, It was her first acting role and indeed she was the right female, absolutely the right one - she was terrific in that part. Kevin said many men could have played his part, but she was the only one for the girl in that movie.
Kevin, as would be expected from churches like the Baptist church, and well all Roman Catholic and Protestant churches for that matter, Whitney has been escorted by myriads of angels to God in heaven, who would say "How did I create something so wonderful" and that she would be singing in His presence and would do "just fine" (she doubted herself in being cast in that movie with Kevin).
Welllll.....yes God's creations are wonderful, all of them, and I'm sure He does not have to wonder about it. Yes He does have a great plan for ALL human beings who have ever been conceived. That plan is expounded for you on my website under a study called "A Christian's Destiny."
NO, Whitney is NOT up in heaven singing before the Father. No we do NOT have an automatic immortal soul that either goes to heaven or hell at death. No the good works of Whitney did not out number the bad works, and so she qualified to be in heaven. No, none of these things make Whitney "up in heaven."
The truth of the matter is Whitney Houston was not CALLED in this lifer time. She was NOT called and chosen to be a true saint of the Lord. All of her religious upbringing and talents and her fall into a life style of drugs and alcohol abuse, does not mean anything for salvation in this lifetime she had. She was not called to salvation....she was blinded to God's real truth....BUT that does NOT mean she will not have a chance for salvation. She like many BILLIONS before her, from the beginning, will ONE DAY be RAISED TO PHYSICAL LIFE AGAIN, and have a full, open, chance of finding real salvation and eternal life in the family or Kingdom of God.
YOU need to go on my website and study my studies called "The Great White Throne Judgment" and "Called and Chosen - When?"
They will give you the good news from your Bible, of the plan of salvation that God the Father is working out here below. All will in the Father's time, have a chance to accept Jesus as Savior and walk the straight and narrow path to eternal life.
Whitney Houston lies ASLEEP in death for now, until the dawn of the GREAT WHITE THRONE JUDGMENT DAY, and the blessing of a new physical life and being shown the true light of the Word of God, and the power of the Spirit of God to walk in the way of the Lord, and so into eternal life.
Praise be to the Father and Christ Jesus. Wonderful indeed are the ways of God!
..........
Memorial Service for Whitney Houston
I have just watched the main part of the memorial service for Whitney Houston.
Naturally family and close friends want to remember Whitney as their "church girl" - the little girl that grew up in their church.
I watched and listened to the preacher. I'm not a fan of how some of the "preachers" (black or white) preach - their voice inflections and dramatics. But points of his message were good: 1. There is a purpose for each human being on earth. 2. God does not want in the overall, anyone to be "broke" as we think of being broke in physical ways. 3. We are to PRIORITIZE our lives. Put first things first.
He read Jesus' words in the last part of Matthew 6. We are to seek the Kingdom of God first AND His RIGHTEOUSNESS!!
He said no more.
It should be clear in looking at the life of Whitney Houston that after her fame and fortune, somehow she lost sight of seeking first God's Kingdom and His righteousness. She was they say, trying to make a "comeback" both in her life and her singing. For whatever or however she did not make it, but her life ended before she was able to walk fully down the "comeback road."
I have done an 11 minute sermonette on all of this.
You can find it on my Youtube - 1horsesrcool
It is under "The book of 1 Corinthians #15"
Normally I would not be saying much if anything about an "entertainment star" and their death. But with Whitney I am because she did have this huge background of growing up in "the church" and the family and "church friends" doing the memorial service made it abundantly clear that Whitney was "their church girl" - they wanted to tell the world, make it clear to the world, Whitney was one of them - a "church girl." Hence it is fitting for me to comment about her life and how that even growing up in the church does not mean you cannot fall away into a life style that is far from "the church" and the ideals of God's way of life, Jesus' way of life, as given to us in the Bible.
..........
Naturally family and close friends want to remember Whitney as their "church girl" - the little girl that grew up in their church.
I watched and listened to the preacher. I'm not a fan of how some of the "preachers" (black or white) preach - their voice inflections and dramatics. But points of his message were good: 1. There is a purpose for each human being on earth. 2. God does not want in the overall, anyone to be "broke" as we think of being broke in physical ways. 3. We are to PRIORITIZE our lives. Put first things first.
He read Jesus' words in the last part of Matthew 6. We are to seek the Kingdom of God first AND His RIGHTEOUSNESS!!
He said no more.
It should be clear in looking at the life of Whitney Houston that after her fame and fortune, somehow she lost sight of seeking first God's Kingdom and His righteousness. She was they say, trying to make a "comeback" both in her life and her singing. For whatever or however she did not make it, but her life ended before she was able to walk fully down the "comeback road."
I have done an 11 minute sermonette on all of this.
You can find it on my Youtube - 1horsesrcool
It is under "The book of 1 Corinthians #15"
Normally I would not be saying much if anything about an "entertainment star" and their death. But with Whitney I am because she did have this huge background of growing up in "the church" and the family and "church friends" doing the memorial service made it abundantly clear that Whitney was "their church girl" - they wanted to tell the world, make it clear to the world, Whitney was one of them - a "church girl." Hence it is fitting for me to comment about her life and how that even growing up in the church does not mean you cannot fall away into a life style that is far from "the church" and the ideals of God's way of life, Jesus' way of life, as given to us in the Bible.
..........
Friday, February 17, 2012
Secret and Lies of BOY SCOUTS (USA and Canada)!
I grew up in the Boy Scouts ... "Cubs" first and at a certain age "The Scouts." This was in England in the late 1940s and into the late 1950s.
The Cubs and Scouts I belonged to was a "church" run one. And I guess back in those years, at least in England, it was pretty "safe" from sexual problems - Scout leaders .... well you know what, taking advantage sexually with young boys. I certainly never heard anything about those kinds of leaders, I mean it was a basic time of innocence back then when we as young boys in the "cubs" and "scouts" never even knew shuch things, never heard such things, never knew such men existed. Looking back I'm hoping "never knew" was because it did not exist in those years.
I'll never know if it did or did not. All I experienced in the "Boy Scouts" was superb education, fun, great camping trips, indoor and outdoor sports, and many things we learnt.
Fast forward a few decades and go to North America - the USA and Canada. Well apparently there were many "men wanting boys" by this time - enough that both countries had "files" on the pedophiles. But apparently both the North and South Boy Scout organizations "policed themselves" and nothing was handed over to the real police. One Canadian pedophile guy was able to go after being caught by the Boy Scouts of the USA, back to Canada and do it all over again in Canada.
The Canadian investigative program "The Fifth Estate" last October revealed all this on the CBC National TV. Then the Boy Scouts of Canada, through their younger "head guy" announced a "very sorry" statement on Youtube, but then this man went on to say, the Canadian Scout group never kept secrets from the police. Well investigative "Fifth Estate" went to work once more, and found that such was NOT the case at all, and that back in the 1970s Boy Scouts of Canada did NOT AUTOMATICALLY inform the police about the pedophiles they found within their organization. The young "head fellow" was being told it was this way, and he then admitted before the camera of "Fifth Estate" that they were correct and he was incorrect. He was relatively the young new "head" of Boy Scouts Canada, hence was not really in the full know of what its policy was back in the 1970s.
It was hard to see the emotional stress that grown men today are still having to fight and the effect it is still having on them, because they were abused as boys by men they trusted.
Sad, sad, all the way around, that such would happen in an all boys organization, that for me and my experience was nothing but good and positive. It will all probably give parents second thoughts about having their boys join the Boy Scouts. It is such a different world today than when I was a boy ..... signs of the the end times, where Jesus said "evil shall abound, and the love of many shall max cold" - the true love - the correct love - would go cold.
I'm sure Mr. Powell when he started Boy Scouts never dreamed in his wildest dream that it could become a haven for pedophiles, but such is the evil today ... sad, sad indeed.
......
The Cubs and Scouts I belonged to was a "church" run one. And I guess back in those years, at least in England, it was pretty "safe" from sexual problems - Scout leaders .... well you know what, taking advantage sexually with young boys. I certainly never heard anything about those kinds of leaders, I mean it was a basic time of innocence back then when we as young boys in the "cubs" and "scouts" never even knew shuch things, never heard such things, never knew such men existed. Looking back I'm hoping "never knew" was because it did not exist in those years.
I'll never know if it did or did not. All I experienced in the "Boy Scouts" was superb education, fun, great camping trips, indoor and outdoor sports, and many things we learnt.
Fast forward a few decades and go to North America - the USA and Canada. Well apparently there were many "men wanting boys" by this time - enough that both countries had "files" on the pedophiles. But apparently both the North and South Boy Scout organizations "policed themselves" and nothing was handed over to the real police. One Canadian pedophile guy was able to go after being caught by the Boy Scouts of the USA, back to Canada and do it all over again in Canada.
The Canadian investigative program "The Fifth Estate" last October revealed all this on the CBC National TV. Then the Boy Scouts of Canada, through their younger "head guy" announced a "very sorry" statement on Youtube, but then this man went on to say, the Canadian Scout group never kept secrets from the police. Well investigative "Fifth Estate" went to work once more, and found that such was NOT the case at all, and that back in the 1970s Boy Scouts of Canada did NOT AUTOMATICALLY inform the police about the pedophiles they found within their organization. The young "head fellow" was being told it was this way, and he then admitted before the camera of "Fifth Estate" that they were correct and he was incorrect. He was relatively the young new "head" of Boy Scouts Canada, hence was not really in the full know of what its policy was back in the 1970s.
It was hard to see the emotional stress that grown men today are still having to fight and the effect it is still having on them, because they were abused as boys by men they trusted.
Sad, sad, all the way around, that such would happen in an all boys organization, that for me and my experience was nothing but good and positive. It will all probably give parents second thoughts about having their boys join the Boy Scouts. It is such a different world today than when I was a boy ..... signs of the the end times, where Jesus said "evil shall abound, and the love of many shall max cold" - the true love - the correct love - would go cold.
I'm sure Mr. Powell when he started Boy Scouts never dreamed in his wildest dream that it could become a haven for pedophiles, but such is the evil today ... sad, sad indeed.
......
Denmark BURNING up!
The Danish people produce more per person of garbage than any other country in Europe!
But they also are the leaders in garbage BURN-UP!
BBC just had a fine program on Denmark and how it burns-up it's garbage, to produce heat and electricity for thousands and thousands of homes.
When BBC asked Denmark why other countries were not following in their steps, and proven burning (for 40 years now) .... they answered they did not know why, and found it very strange indeed.
Yes they have many huge "burning plants" that can burn up their garbage at such a heat to produce the heat and electricity for their homes - the science is there and Denmark finds is strange that other countries are not doing as they are doing, very little of their garbage goes into land-fills.
Denmark has an industry to take dead cars etc. and extract all it can from them to re-use.
Very informative program with Denmark being a world leader in the re-use of garbage and have very very little going into land fills.
......
BBC also had this evening a ten minute blog on the political fuss the Russians are having over Putin wanting to run again in the coming National vote. Many, more and more, are calling, with some justice, that Putin and his political party are corrupt and more corrupt, giving some interviews and examples of corruption towards the poor and the rich....going at it in different ways with the poor and the rich, but the end is corruption. It will be interesting indeed to see how the people vote, but then the vote maybe corrupted as well.
......
Gas prices (for cars etc.) has reached close to $4 a gallon in the USA - Canada is already over $4 a gallon. Here in Alberta (the oil and gas capital of Canada) it is about $4.25 a gallon, though the Canadian gallon is larger than the USA gallon. Alberta is the lowest price in Canada. The slow move by North America into "electric" cars ... well ... it could be that this price for car gas will never come down. One "expert" in the USA said we could see by the summer $5 per gallon. So North America is feeling a little as to how the European people have felt for a long time now - their price per gallon is way above $5.
......
Today Pakistan and Iran were embrasing - it's a BILLIONS of dollars trade agreement.
The many nations of the West are uneasy over this new "friendly union" between Pakistan and Iran ..... well not understanding Bible prophecy I guess the West would be uneasy at this latest move by the two countries.
......
But they also are the leaders in garbage BURN-UP!
BBC just had a fine program on Denmark and how it burns-up it's garbage, to produce heat and electricity for thousands and thousands of homes.
When BBC asked Denmark why other countries were not following in their steps, and proven burning (for 40 years now) .... they answered they did not know why, and found it very strange indeed.
Yes they have many huge "burning plants" that can burn up their garbage at such a heat to produce the heat and electricity for their homes - the science is there and Denmark finds is strange that other countries are not doing as they are doing, very little of their garbage goes into land-fills.
Denmark has an industry to take dead cars etc. and extract all it can from them to re-use.
Very informative program with Denmark being a world leader in the re-use of garbage and have very very little going into land fills.
......
BBC also had this evening a ten minute blog on the political fuss the Russians are having over Putin wanting to run again in the coming National vote. Many, more and more, are calling, with some justice, that Putin and his political party are corrupt and more corrupt, giving some interviews and examples of corruption towards the poor and the rich....going at it in different ways with the poor and the rich, but the end is corruption. It will be interesting indeed to see how the people vote, but then the vote maybe corrupted as well.
......
Gas prices (for cars etc.) has reached close to $4 a gallon in the USA - Canada is already over $4 a gallon. Here in Alberta (the oil and gas capital of Canada) it is about $4.25 a gallon, though the Canadian gallon is larger than the USA gallon. Alberta is the lowest price in Canada. The slow move by North America into "electric" cars ... well ... it could be that this price for car gas will never come down. One "expert" in the USA said we could see by the summer $5 per gallon. So North America is feeling a little as to how the European people have felt for a long time now - their price per gallon is way above $5.
......
Today Pakistan and Iran were embrasing - it's a BILLIONS of dollars trade agreement.
The many nations of the West are uneasy over this new "friendly union" between Pakistan and Iran ..... well not understanding Bible prophecy I guess the West would be uneasy at this latest move by the two countries.
......
USA - MOVING!
GM has come flying back....$7 THOUSAND dollars going to each Union Memeber ... yes GM is back and so it would seem are all the USA car companies - we remember Ford never did ask for any bail-out money.
Jobs are coming back, but yes still a ways to go, but the indications are it is happening, though some experts tells us it will be a few more years yet .... as long as the present rate continues to move up.
Tax breaks will continue for the people of the USA .... President Obama got the vote for it.
Same sex marriage is slowly moving into the USA, even though the Governor of New Jersey blocked it today. The facts....younger ones voting for it, older ones against it ... only a matter of time, and the younger ones will rule the country. The nation continues to move in the direction of more sin and corruption, as far as the Word of God is concerned.
Ah a new stat: asking the USA people which is their favorite country besides the USA ..... 96 percent say CANADA. And I think that should be the way it is. Canada and the USA have a HUGE tie together after the border lines were finally formed after the 1812-14 war. And being brother people it should be natural that we both like each other. Up until 9/11 our border was the longest and freest border in the world. Over the last 50 years of travelling in the USA dozens upon dozens of times and living in Florida for 3 and 1/2 years, I found the average USA person no different than the average Canadian person..... indeed clearly showing we are brother peoples. We are each others biggest TRADING partners, and entertainment partners. Yes it is real nice to know the USA people and the Canadian people instinctively know we are brother people, and being right next to each other we should love each other more than any other country.
..........
Jobs are coming back, but yes still a ways to go, but the indications are it is happening, though some experts tells us it will be a few more years yet .... as long as the present rate continues to move up.
Tax breaks will continue for the people of the USA .... President Obama got the vote for it.
Same sex marriage is slowly moving into the USA, even though the Governor of New Jersey blocked it today. The facts....younger ones voting for it, older ones against it ... only a matter of time, and the younger ones will rule the country. The nation continues to move in the direction of more sin and corruption, as far as the Word of God is concerned.
Ah a new stat: asking the USA people which is their favorite country besides the USA ..... 96 percent say CANADA. And I think that should be the way it is. Canada and the USA have a HUGE tie together after the border lines were finally formed after the 1812-14 war. And being brother people it should be natural that we both like each other. Up until 9/11 our border was the longest and freest border in the world. Over the last 50 years of travelling in the USA dozens upon dozens of times and living in Florida for 3 and 1/2 years, I found the average USA person no different than the average Canadian person..... indeed clearly showing we are brother peoples. We are each others biggest TRADING partners, and entertainment partners. Yes it is real nice to know the USA people and the Canadian people instinctively know we are brother people, and being right next to each other we should love each other more than any other country.
..........
Lady's FACE UP !
Especially for the women!
The Magic of Microcurrent
by Dr. Perricone
I am a huge fan of microcurrent treatments, which should be used
regularly as a component of a healthful beauty regimen.
Microcurrent is widely available in spas as well as in a new
handheld machine that delivers wonderful benefits to the skin
(see Resources section). As it is as easy to perform as applying
your daily makeup, microcurrent is the perfect home treatment
that can be done in a few minutes each day. The results are
cumulative-in other words, they get better and better, just as
going to the gym on a regular basis improves your body's muscle
tone. A simple ten-minute daily regimen that alternates among the
chin, cheeks, eyes, and forehead provides each area with optimal
benefits.
Unlike exfoliating machines and other products, which can damage
the skin over time, there are no long-term adverse effects
associated with microcurrent. In fact, microcurrent is extremely
therapeutic.
Once available only in spas, this treatment can be done at home.
There is no difference between the power used in a home care
system and that used in a professional machine. Microcurrent
utilizes a subsensory electric current to reeducate the facial
muscles while improving both the tone and the texture of the
skin. The process diminishes the appearance of lines and wrinkles
and produces a natural lift without the use of surgery or other
invasive methods. When combined with powerful anti-inflammatory
topicals and substances that help reverse the damage caused by
aging, poor diet, stress, and the environment, it is a very
holistic and natural approach to eliminating many of the
unwelcome signs of aging.
Microcurrent facial treatments have been available in spas since
the 1980s. They have been extremely popular in Europe and are now
gaining ground in the United States as spas seek to attract the
Botox consumer. The current catchphrase in the spa world is
"results-oriented treatments." This represents a shift away from
facials that pamper but do little to create meaningful
improvement in a client's appearance, and it is an alternative to
the minimally invasive medical treatments that have come to
dominate the market in the last few years.
Minimally invasive medical treatments have grown dramatically in
popularity since 2000 and have become a socially acceptable
method of addressing the signs of aging. The attractions of these
types of treatments are:
* The immediate and natural results they produce
* Their relative safety
* The fact that they can be done quickly via injection and
without surgery
* Their affordability as compared with surgical procedures
The most popular among these minimally invasive procedures are
Botox and hyaluronic acid fillers. Botox is botulinum toxin, a
neurotoxic protein that works to relax the contraction of muscles
by blocking nerve impulses. The result is muscles that can no
longer contract, so the wrinkles they produce relax and soften.
Hyaluronic acid treatments (marketed under trade names such as
Restylane and Juvederm) consist of injections of a hyaluronic
acid gel into the dermis. Once administered, the gel joins to the
dermal tissue and begins to bind the water molecules, which
softens lines and smoothes out wrinkles. According to the
American Society of Plastic Surgeons, its members performed more
than five million Botox treatments in 2008 at an average price of
$391 and more than one million hyaluronic acid filler injections
at an average price of $578. Botox treatments have increased by
537 percent since 2000, and minimally invasive procedures have
increased by 5 percent as a category over the last year despite
some of the worst economic conditions in recent memory.
A somewhat alarming trend is that both women and men feel driven
to start serious (and often very costly) surgical procedures at a
younger and younger age. New fillers designed to plump up facial
lines are being rushed to market and intensively advertised. The
use of neurotoxins (neuro for "nerve," toxin for "poison") that
paralyze muscles to smooth out wrinkles and expression lines is
counterintuitive. When we lose muscle mass and tone, we lose the
youthful contours of our face and body. The ultimate weak muscle
is one that is paralyzed. That fact should lead one to conclude
that paralyzing the muscles in the face may not be the best
strategy for achieving a youthful look over the years that
follow. Though these products offer a quick fix, what will be the
long-term result?
I believe that there will always be a place for a wide variety of
procedures, both surgical and nonsurgical, but I do not believe
that the future of youthful-looking skin lies in an acceleration
of invasive treatments, injectible fillers, neurotoxins, or
radical surgery. Great breakthroughs are being made in which safe
yet genuinely transformative methodologies not only help restore
damaged, aging skin to youthful suppleness but reinvigorate the
entire body as well. Microcurrent is a key player in this
movement.
The new "Botox standard" of immediate results has challenged
traditional spas as they look to fill the demand for these types
of services while staying nonmedical. The result has been a
movement on the part of spas to a combination of more
cosmeceutical skin care products and the use of more advanced
aesthetic equipment in their treatments. Microcurrent treatments
are uniquely suitable because they are nonmedical and create
improvements in the client's appearance that cannot be achieved
by any of the medical procedures currently being offered.
There are great medical procedures for removing pigmentated spots
by means of laser, addressing wrinkles by filling them in or
freezing the underlying muscle, and taking care of sagging skin
by pulling it tighter through surgery. None of these procedures
improves the underlying facial muscles. These muscles are unique
in that they are attached to the skin, whereas other muscles are
attached to the bones by tendons, so they have a profound impact
on our appearance. As we age, the muscles in our face give in to
the effects of gravity and underuse by drooping and causing a
saggy appearance. Other muscles of the face-those on the forehead
and around the eyes, for examplebecome contracted due to overuse
and cause lines and wrinkles. Improving the underlying facial
musculature has a direct impact on youthful appearance.
Microcurrent is unique in its ability to improve the muscles of
the face to create a more youthful and toned appearance through a
process that has come to be known as a nonsurgical face-lift. The
treatments work on the muscles of the face through a combination
of manual manipulation and biostimulation. Manual manipulation of
the muscle is achieved through the use of two probes that gently
massage the muscle along its origin and insertion points. The
origin point of the muscle is the bone and the insertion point is
where the muscle connects to the skin. Stimulating the muscle
fibers at the origin and insertion points of the muscles involved
gently coaxes them to stretch or shorten with no pain to the
client. An atrophied muscle can be shortened and toned. A muscle
in contraction can be stretched. This process, known as muscle
reeducation, is the cornerstone of microcurrent facial
treatments. The two-hand design allows the user to manipulate the
muscle along these points while stimulating the entire length
with microcurrent. Simply applying microcurrent to the face in a
static manner will have the same biostimulation effects on the
tissue but will lack the muscle reeducation benefits found in the
proper treatments. This is an easy, pain-free treatment with
long-lasting visible results-unlike the so-called quick fixes.
While mechanical stimulation of the muscle can be achieved
through massage, microcurrent generates profound results through
the simultaneous biostimulation of the muscle and surrounding
tissue. One of the most notable benefits of microcurrent is its
ability to improve the production of ATP, the chemical fuel in
muscles that provides the energy they require to hold their
position after being manipulated. As we learned in chapter 3, ATP
is the primary energy currency in the body and powers virtually
every activity of the cell and organism. Studies have shown that
the application of microcurrent can increase the production of
ATP by an astounding 500 percent. Microcurrent also helps correct
the alignment of the muscle by communicating with the Golgi
tendon organ (GTO). The GTO is a type of proprioceptor, a special
nerve ending in the muscles and tendons and other organs that
respond to stimuli regarding the position and movement of the
body, that provides information about changes in muscle tension.
At the same time that microcurrent works on the muscles, it also
stimulates the underlying processes involved in promoting healthy
skin. Specifically, its low levels of electricity have been shown
to increase:
* Membrane active transport, critical to delivering nutrients
intracellularly and exporting metabolic wastes extracellularly
* Protein synthesis, vital for tissue repair and regeneration
* Collagen production and thickness
* Elastin production
* Circulation
Microcurrent treatments are uniquely suited to a home care
regimen because they produce immediate results that continue to
improve with subsequent treatments. The ongoing improvement
experienced with the application of these treatments has to do
with the continued improvements in the underlying processes that
keep the skin healthy, such as circulation and the production of
collagen and elastin, as well as the continued improvements in
ATP production.
It helps to view microcurrent treatments in the same way we view
exercising the body. People who go to the gym and exercise once
may see an improvement in the appearance of their muscles, but in
a short period of time the results will go away if the muscles
are not exercised again. On the other hand, someone who exercises
consistently for a year can take a month off without losing the
benefits achieved. Consistency is key.
This same principle applies to microcurrent treatments. Initially
treatments should be performed in a series, followed by regular
maintenance treatments. The first time a microcurrent treatment
is done, the ATP in the muscles will be increased and then return
to baseline levels shortly afterward. If ATP production is
stimulated by another treatment shortly after the first, the
levels remain high. The more treatments that are performed, the
longer the ATP will remain stored in the muscle. Since ATP can be
stockpiled and stored, treatment results are cumulative and
become more effective as the series progresses. As the baseline
ATP levels increase, the muscles will hold their tone longer.
Microcurrent is an extremely low level of electricity that mimics
the electricity that naturally flows through our body. The
primary function of microcurrent treatments is to stimulate the
body's own healing processes to improve the skin and muscles of
the face. The results are both natural and predictable, because
the treatments work to restore the natural contours of our face
and work within our own facial structure. The benefit of this is
that the treatments will never produce a "bad face-lift" result.
The effects will mimic your younger facial contours naturally,
while increasing skin radiance thanks to increased blood
circulation. Microcurrent, by definition, is one millionth of an
amp of electricity. This extremely low level of electricity
generally causes little to no sensation when applied to the face.
Typical sensations may include a metallic taste in the mouth,
lights flashing in the eyes, small muscle twitches when working
around the eyes, and a tapping sensation felt on the back of the
head when working on the forehead. One benefit of microcurrent
treatments is an increase in blood flow to the area, which can
appear as a slight reddening of the treated areas that typically
goes away within a few minutes.
Most people experience results after a single microcurrent
session, whether it is a softening of fine lines, a raising of
the eyebrows, or even a profound lift to the cheeks. The
treatment is great for any skin type, and recent research has
shown that 100 percent of the people who tried a series of
treatments reported seeing an improvement in their appearance.
The best results are seen after a series of microcurrent
treatments is performed, with treatment frequency averaging four
times per week for a month.
For some people the term "microcurrent muscle stimulation"
conjures up an image of electrodes attached to the face with the
muscles contorting under the stimulation of a strong electrical
current. Microcurrent is actually a very small amount of
electricity applied to the facial muscles through probes that
massage the muscles into a more natural position. The process is
extremely comfortable, and there is no visible muscle
contraction. In fact, the currents generally create little to no
sensation at all.
Microcurrent treatments are ideal for home use because:
* Microcurrent is pain-free and very relaxing.
* The best results are achieved over time with regular
treatments.
* The technique is simple and easy to perform while looking in
the mirror.
* Quick ten-minute treatments may be performed to spottreat
problem areas.
* The treatment presents very few risks, even when compared with
other home care products.
* Immediate results mean you can perform a treatment prior to a
special occasion for a quick lift.
* Treatments can be performed daily. The results are natural and
predictable. Spa treatments can be expensive.
Microcurrent benefits include:
* Production of ATP Production of elastin Production of collagen
* Tissue oxygenation Increased blood circulation Ion exchange
* Absorption of nutrients Elimination of waste products
Types of Microcurrent Treatments
EYES
The eyes are surrounded by a network of fine, narrow muscles that
can become contracted and cause wrinkles from overuse.
Microcurrent treatments stretch the lines at the corners of the
eyes to reduce their appearance while lifting the eyebrow area.
The muscles that cause the lines between the eyes are also
treated in a stretching motion to help them release, while the
muscles directly under the eyes are contracted to reduce sagging
while firming the skin.
FOREHEAD
The vertical muscles that support the skin of the forehead have
the primary function of lifting the eyebrows and are also used
when a view is distant or dim. When these muscles are overused,
they become shorter and create deep wrinkles. Microcurrent
treatment of this area is used to stimulate the blood vessels for
proper irrigation of the epidermis and to release the fontalis
muscles from spasm to soften horizontal lines across the
forehead.
CREASES AROUND THE MOUTH
The muscles that form the area around the mouth generally work in
a downward fashion that can form vertical creases around the
mouth. With microcurrent the muscles can be worked in an upward
direction that lifts the area and progressively reduces wrinkles.
SAGGING CHIN
Chewing works the muscles in the jaw but does not stimulate the
ones that correct sagging in the chin. The muscles tend to become
elongated from underuse, causing the area to droop or sag.
Microcurrent treatments cause these muscles to contract and
tighten up any slackness under the chin. The effects are even
more dramatic when combined with a new treatment called topical
"Sub-D," which helps to rapidly firm the chin and jawline.
COMPLEXION
Regular use of microcurrent improves the underlying processes
that support healthy skin, including collagen and elastin
production, circulation of oxygenated blood, and the exchange of
nutrients and waste products within the cells.
We have discussed rejuvenation from the outside by the use of
Cold Plasma and microcurrent. We will now turn our attention to
special foods and nutrients that are known to heal and restore,
helping you to stay Forever Young.
..........
NOTE:
* It would be wise to stay away from all the "quick" fixes like
"botox" - "surgery" - too much risk and some women have paid the
penalty.
* Correct diet is very important.
* Rest - sleep and relaxation is important.
* Stress free life, or as little stress as possible is impostant.
* Facial creams have come a long long way today in the space-age
21st century.
* A tip from "Mr. Health and Strength" man - Charles Atlas - in
his old course that is ever good - blow out your cheeks and pull
back the head to strengthen the muscles in your face and neck -
goes a long way to counter "drupy skin."
Keith Hunt
......
The Magic of Microcurrent
by Dr. Perricone
I am a huge fan of microcurrent treatments, which should be used
regularly as a component of a healthful beauty regimen.
Microcurrent is widely available in spas as well as in a new
handheld machine that delivers wonderful benefits to the skin
(see Resources section). As it is as easy to perform as applying
your daily makeup, microcurrent is the perfect home treatment
that can be done in a few minutes each day. The results are
cumulative-in other words, they get better and better, just as
going to the gym on a regular basis improves your body's muscle
tone. A simple ten-minute daily regimen that alternates among the
chin, cheeks, eyes, and forehead provides each area with optimal
benefits.
Unlike exfoliating machines and other products, which can damage
the skin over time, there are no long-term adverse effects
associated with microcurrent. In fact, microcurrent is extremely
therapeutic.
Once available only in spas, this treatment can be done at home.
There is no difference between the power used in a home care
system and that used in a professional machine. Microcurrent
utilizes a subsensory electric current to reeducate the facial
muscles while improving both the tone and the texture of the
skin. The process diminishes the appearance of lines and wrinkles
and produces a natural lift without the use of surgery or other
invasive methods. When combined with powerful anti-inflammatory
topicals and substances that help reverse the damage caused by
aging, poor diet, stress, and the environment, it is a very
holistic and natural approach to eliminating many of the
unwelcome signs of aging.
Microcurrent facial treatments have been available in spas since
the 1980s. They have been extremely popular in Europe and are now
gaining ground in the United States as spas seek to attract the
Botox consumer. The current catchphrase in the spa world is
"results-oriented treatments." This represents a shift away from
facials that pamper but do little to create meaningful
improvement in a client's appearance, and it is an alternative to
the minimally invasive medical treatments that have come to
dominate the market in the last few years.
Minimally invasive medical treatments have grown dramatically in
popularity since 2000 and have become a socially acceptable
method of addressing the signs of aging. The attractions of these
types of treatments are:
* The immediate and natural results they produce
* Their relative safety
* The fact that they can be done quickly via injection and
without surgery
* Their affordability as compared with surgical procedures
The most popular among these minimally invasive procedures are
Botox and hyaluronic acid fillers. Botox is botulinum toxin, a
neurotoxic protein that works to relax the contraction of muscles
by blocking nerve impulses. The result is muscles that can no
longer contract, so the wrinkles they produce relax and soften.
Hyaluronic acid treatments (marketed under trade names such as
Restylane and Juvederm) consist of injections of a hyaluronic
acid gel into the dermis. Once administered, the gel joins to the
dermal tissue and begins to bind the water molecules, which
softens lines and smoothes out wrinkles. According to the
American Society of Plastic Surgeons, its members performed more
than five million Botox treatments in 2008 at an average price of
$391 and more than one million hyaluronic acid filler injections
at an average price of $578. Botox treatments have increased by
537 percent since 2000, and minimally invasive procedures have
increased by 5 percent as a category over the last year despite
some of the worst economic conditions in recent memory.
A somewhat alarming trend is that both women and men feel driven
to start serious (and often very costly) surgical procedures at a
younger and younger age. New fillers designed to plump up facial
lines are being rushed to market and intensively advertised. The
use of neurotoxins (neuro for "nerve," toxin for "poison") that
paralyze muscles to smooth out wrinkles and expression lines is
counterintuitive. When we lose muscle mass and tone, we lose the
youthful contours of our face and body. The ultimate weak muscle
is one that is paralyzed. That fact should lead one to conclude
that paralyzing the muscles in the face may not be the best
strategy for achieving a youthful look over the years that
follow. Though these products offer a quick fix, what will be the
long-term result?
I believe that there will always be a place for a wide variety of
procedures, both surgical and nonsurgical, but I do not believe
that the future of youthful-looking skin lies in an acceleration
of invasive treatments, injectible fillers, neurotoxins, or
radical surgery. Great breakthroughs are being made in which safe
yet genuinely transformative methodologies not only help restore
damaged, aging skin to youthful suppleness but reinvigorate the
entire body as well. Microcurrent is a key player in this
movement.
The new "Botox standard" of immediate results has challenged
traditional spas as they look to fill the demand for these types
of services while staying nonmedical. The result has been a
movement on the part of spas to a combination of more
cosmeceutical skin care products and the use of more advanced
aesthetic equipment in their treatments. Microcurrent treatments
are uniquely suitable because they are nonmedical and create
improvements in the client's appearance that cannot be achieved
by any of the medical procedures currently being offered.
There are great medical procedures for removing pigmentated spots
by means of laser, addressing wrinkles by filling them in or
freezing the underlying muscle, and taking care of sagging skin
by pulling it tighter through surgery. None of these procedures
improves the underlying facial muscles. These muscles are unique
in that they are attached to the skin, whereas other muscles are
attached to the bones by tendons, so they have a profound impact
on our appearance. As we age, the muscles in our face give in to
the effects of gravity and underuse by drooping and causing a
saggy appearance. Other muscles of the face-those on the forehead
and around the eyes, for examplebecome contracted due to overuse
and cause lines and wrinkles. Improving the underlying facial
musculature has a direct impact on youthful appearance.
Microcurrent is unique in its ability to improve the muscles of
the face to create a more youthful and toned appearance through a
process that has come to be known as a nonsurgical face-lift. The
treatments work on the muscles of the face through a combination
of manual manipulation and biostimulation. Manual manipulation of
the muscle is achieved through the use of two probes that gently
massage the muscle along its origin and insertion points. The
origin point of the muscle is the bone and the insertion point is
where the muscle connects to the skin. Stimulating the muscle
fibers at the origin and insertion points of the muscles involved
gently coaxes them to stretch or shorten with no pain to the
client. An atrophied muscle can be shortened and toned. A muscle
in contraction can be stretched. This process, known as muscle
reeducation, is the cornerstone of microcurrent facial
treatments. The two-hand design allows the user to manipulate the
muscle along these points while stimulating the entire length
with microcurrent. Simply applying microcurrent to the face in a
static manner will have the same biostimulation effects on the
tissue but will lack the muscle reeducation benefits found in the
proper treatments. This is an easy, pain-free treatment with
long-lasting visible results-unlike the so-called quick fixes.
While mechanical stimulation of the muscle can be achieved
through massage, microcurrent generates profound results through
the simultaneous biostimulation of the muscle and surrounding
tissue. One of the most notable benefits of microcurrent is its
ability to improve the production of ATP, the chemical fuel in
muscles that provides the energy they require to hold their
position after being manipulated. As we learned in chapter 3, ATP
is the primary energy currency in the body and powers virtually
every activity of the cell and organism. Studies have shown that
the application of microcurrent can increase the production of
ATP by an astounding 500 percent. Microcurrent also helps correct
the alignment of the muscle by communicating with the Golgi
tendon organ (GTO). The GTO is a type of proprioceptor, a special
nerve ending in the muscles and tendons and other organs that
respond to stimuli regarding the position and movement of the
body, that provides information about changes in muscle tension.
At the same time that microcurrent works on the muscles, it also
stimulates the underlying processes involved in promoting healthy
skin. Specifically, its low levels of electricity have been shown
to increase:
* Membrane active transport, critical to delivering nutrients
intracellularly and exporting metabolic wastes extracellularly
* Protein synthesis, vital for tissue repair and regeneration
* Collagen production and thickness
* Elastin production
* Circulation
Microcurrent treatments are uniquely suited to a home care
regimen because they produce immediate results that continue to
improve with subsequent treatments. The ongoing improvement
experienced with the application of these treatments has to do
with the continued improvements in the underlying processes that
keep the skin healthy, such as circulation and the production of
collagen and elastin, as well as the continued improvements in
ATP production.
It helps to view microcurrent treatments in the same way we view
exercising the body. People who go to the gym and exercise once
may see an improvement in the appearance of their muscles, but in
a short period of time the results will go away if the muscles
are not exercised again. On the other hand, someone who exercises
consistently for a year can take a month off without losing the
benefits achieved. Consistency is key.
This same principle applies to microcurrent treatments. Initially
treatments should be performed in a series, followed by regular
maintenance treatments. The first time a microcurrent treatment
is done, the ATP in the muscles will be increased and then return
to baseline levels shortly afterward. If ATP production is
stimulated by another treatment shortly after the first, the
levels remain high. The more treatments that are performed, the
longer the ATP will remain stored in the muscle. Since ATP can be
stockpiled and stored, treatment results are cumulative and
become more effective as the series progresses. As the baseline
ATP levels increase, the muscles will hold their tone longer.
Microcurrent is an extremely low level of electricity that mimics
the electricity that naturally flows through our body. The
primary function of microcurrent treatments is to stimulate the
body's own healing processes to improve the skin and muscles of
the face. The results are both natural and predictable, because
the treatments work to restore the natural contours of our face
and work within our own facial structure. The benefit of this is
that the treatments will never produce a "bad face-lift" result.
The effects will mimic your younger facial contours naturally,
while increasing skin radiance thanks to increased blood
circulation. Microcurrent, by definition, is one millionth of an
amp of electricity. This extremely low level of electricity
generally causes little to no sensation when applied to the face.
Typical sensations may include a metallic taste in the mouth,
lights flashing in the eyes, small muscle twitches when working
around the eyes, and a tapping sensation felt on the back of the
head when working on the forehead. One benefit of microcurrent
treatments is an increase in blood flow to the area, which can
appear as a slight reddening of the treated areas that typically
goes away within a few minutes.
Most people experience results after a single microcurrent
session, whether it is a softening of fine lines, a raising of
the eyebrows, or even a profound lift to the cheeks. The
treatment is great for any skin type, and recent research has
shown that 100 percent of the people who tried a series of
treatments reported seeing an improvement in their appearance.
The best results are seen after a series of microcurrent
treatments is performed, with treatment frequency averaging four
times per week for a month.
For some people the term "microcurrent muscle stimulation"
conjures up an image of electrodes attached to the face with the
muscles contorting under the stimulation of a strong electrical
current. Microcurrent is actually a very small amount of
electricity applied to the facial muscles through probes that
massage the muscles into a more natural position. The process is
extremely comfortable, and there is no visible muscle
contraction. In fact, the currents generally create little to no
sensation at all.
Microcurrent treatments are ideal for home use because:
* Microcurrent is pain-free and very relaxing.
* The best results are achieved over time with regular
treatments.
* The technique is simple and easy to perform while looking in
the mirror.
* Quick ten-minute treatments may be performed to spottreat
problem areas.
* The treatment presents very few risks, even when compared with
other home care products.
* Immediate results mean you can perform a treatment prior to a
special occasion for a quick lift.
* Treatments can be performed daily. The results are natural and
predictable. Spa treatments can be expensive.
Microcurrent benefits include:
* Production of ATP Production of elastin Production of collagen
* Tissue oxygenation Increased blood circulation Ion exchange
* Absorption of nutrients Elimination of waste products
Types of Microcurrent Treatments
EYES
The eyes are surrounded by a network of fine, narrow muscles that
can become contracted and cause wrinkles from overuse.
Microcurrent treatments stretch the lines at the corners of the
eyes to reduce their appearance while lifting the eyebrow area.
The muscles that cause the lines between the eyes are also
treated in a stretching motion to help them release, while the
muscles directly under the eyes are contracted to reduce sagging
while firming the skin.
FOREHEAD
The vertical muscles that support the skin of the forehead have
the primary function of lifting the eyebrows and are also used
when a view is distant or dim. When these muscles are overused,
they become shorter and create deep wrinkles. Microcurrent
treatment of this area is used to stimulate the blood vessels for
proper irrigation of the epidermis and to release the fontalis
muscles from spasm to soften horizontal lines across the
forehead.
CREASES AROUND THE MOUTH
The muscles that form the area around the mouth generally work in
a downward fashion that can form vertical creases around the
mouth. With microcurrent the muscles can be worked in an upward
direction that lifts the area and progressively reduces wrinkles.
SAGGING CHIN
Chewing works the muscles in the jaw but does not stimulate the
ones that correct sagging in the chin. The muscles tend to become
elongated from underuse, causing the area to droop or sag.
Microcurrent treatments cause these muscles to contract and
tighten up any slackness under the chin. The effects are even
more dramatic when combined with a new treatment called topical
"Sub-D," which helps to rapidly firm the chin and jawline.
COMPLEXION
Regular use of microcurrent improves the underlying processes
that support healthy skin, including collagen and elastin
production, circulation of oxygenated blood, and the exchange of
nutrients and waste products within the cells.
We have discussed rejuvenation from the outside by the use of
Cold Plasma and microcurrent. We will now turn our attention to
special foods and nutrients that are known to heal and restore,
helping you to stay Forever Young.
..........
NOTE:
* It would be wise to stay away from all the "quick" fixes like
"botox" - "surgery" - too much risk and some women have paid the
penalty.
* Correct diet is very important.
* Rest - sleep and relaxation is important.
* Stress free life, or as little stress as possible is impostant.
* Facial creams have come a long long way today in the space-age
21st century.
* A tip from "Mr. Health and Strength" man - Charles Atlas - in
his old course that is ever good - blow out your cheeks and pull
back the head to strengthen the muscles in your face and neck -
goes a long way to counter "drupy skin."
Keith Hunt
......
Monday, February 13, 2012
The Bodyguard - Whitney's life .... kinda
Just re-watch the movie "The Bodyguard" done in 1992. The "specials" very interesting. Kevin Costner wanted to do the movie, had much to say in the flow of it, and it was he who wanted Whitney Houston to be the "famous singing gal" he was to be hired to protect. It was Kevin who gave Whitney her start in movies. She asked the director if she should go for acting lessons before starting to shoot the movie; he said no way, that was the worst thing she could do. Well Kevin, Whitney said was always humming and singing to himself....she helped him with his singing and he helped her with her acting. The Director said the "chemistry" between the two of them was terrific.
So Whitney was 28 - pretty and sure did a fine acting job. Oh that famous song also came from the movie "I Will Always Love You" - certainly a great song for Whitney to sing, and was a hit all over the world, they say it was actually a bigger hit outside the USA than in the USA. Well I guess she will always be remembered with that song.
Whitney played a self-centered head strong naive pop singer, that was going with the crowd, following the gang we shall say - singing, parties, boos. She finally gets a real serious scare, crazy fans going wild over her. Kevin rescues her being her bodyguard. The next day he's going to quit, she says she was really scared and needed him. She says, "I will do anything you say."
They do fall in love in the movie, but their lives are too different for it to ever work.
I thought .... Whitney you were 28 at this time, you should have found a man strong enough and right enough, for you to have said to him, "I will do anything you say." A man who could have loved her and guided her as the bodyguard in the movie was doing. She needed that kind of man and that kind of love, and if she had found that, she would not have crashed her life in the way she did after 1992, to end it all 20 years later after trashing herself into a shadow of the young woman she was at age 28.
What a WASTE! My Readers Digest thesaurus gives in part under "waste" - throw away, fritter away, use up fruitlessly, burn up, deplete, devour, misuse, misapply, destroy, spoil, wreck, pillage, wither, crumble, decay.
What indeed a decayed life Whitney got into after age 28. Grew up in the "church" - obviously she never turned to the Bible for help, obviously it would seem nobody was there to strongly help her, if they tried, she never took them too serious. She obviously never found that true bodyguard to love and protect her as in the movie she was part of.
Sad tale - much like Elvis in many ways, only he threw away his lovely bodyguard wife, till she had to leave him to his own drug indicted world that killed him also in the end.
Whoever you are reading this - an average Joe or Jane or someone famous in a small way or big way, take all this as one BIG LESSON, and do not let it happen to YOU!
..........
So Whitney was 28 - pretty and sure did a fine acting job. Oh that famous song also came from the movie "I Will Always Love You" - certainly a great song for Whitney to sing, and was a hit all over the world, they say it was actually a bigger hit outside the USA than in the USA. Well I guess she will always be remembered with that song.
Whitney played a self-centered head strong naive pop singer, that was going with the crowd, following the gang we shall say - singing, parties, boos. She finally gets a real serious scare, crazy fans going wild over her. Kevin rescues her being her bodyguard. The next day he's going to quit, she says she was really scared and needed him. She says, "I will do anything you say."
They do fall in love in the movie, but their lives are too different for it to ever work.
I thought .... Whitney you were 28 at this time, you should have found a man strong enough and right enough, for you to have said to him, "I will do anything you say." A man who could have loved her and guided her as the bodyguard in the movie was doing. She needed that kind of man and that kind of love, and if she had found that, she would not have crashed her life in the way she did after 1992, to end it all 20 years later after trashing herself into a shadow of the young woman she was at age 28.
What a WASTE! My Readers Digest thesaurus gives in part under "waste" - throw away, fritter away, use up fruitlessly, burn up, deplete, devour, misuse, misapply, destroy, spoil, wreck, pillage, wither, crumble, decay.
What indeed a decayed life Whitney got into after age 28. Grew up in the "church" - obviously she never turned to the Bible for help, obviously it would seem nobody was there to strongly help her, if they tried, she never took them too serious. She obviously never found that true bodyguard to love and protect her as in the movie she was part of.
Sad tale - much like Elvis in many ways, only he threw away his lovely bodyguard wife, till she had to leave him to his own drug indicted world that killed him also in the end.
Whoever you are reading this - an average Joe or Jane or someone famous in a small way or big way, take all this as one BIG LESSON, and do not let it happen to YOU!
..........
Sunday, February 12, 2012
Denzel Washington does it again!
The new movie by Denzel, like "The Book of Eli" delivers a thundering beat of rawness in "Safe House," but without any foul language or profanity. The showing at the theater I went to was pretty full. Danzel seems to be able to draw the crowds.
A good story plot....yes raw violence, but at least no foul language or profanity.
A good movie for its kind of movie type.
......
Just looking at my copy of "The Bodyguard" with Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner - my it was way back in 1992 - that is 20 years ago. How time flies, and nope did not follow Whitney's whatever after that; nope did not realize what her life had gone like. I do not read the tabloids, don't even take the time to look at them. I obviously missed the interviews she had with people and admitting her crash to the bottom in her life. I'll probably go and watch that "Bodyguard" movie and feel how sad for someone so pretty and talented to trash her life away.
......
A good story plot....yes raw violence, but at least no foul language or profanity.
A good movie for its kind of movie type.
......
Just looking at my copy of "The Bodyguard" with Whitney Houston and Kevin Costner - my it was way back in 1992 - that is 20 years ago. How time flies, and nope did not follow Whitney's whatever after that; nope did not realize what her life had gone like. I do not read the tabloids, don't even take the time to look at them. I obviously missed the interviews she had with people and admitting her crash to the bottom in her life. I'll probably go and watch that "Bodyguard" movie and feel how sad for someone so pretty and talented to trash her life away.
......
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)