Monthly Archives: November 2013

* The Twelve Steps

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THE TWELVE STEPS OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol — that our lives had become unmanageable.

2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.

9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.

10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

Copyright A.A. World Services, Inc.

(Reblogged 04/20/17.)
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* Alcoholism basics

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(A message I sent family on 26 April 2006.)

Disease, or sin?

To the best of my knowledge, the “disease theory of alcoholism” began with Dr. Robert Silkworth, at the time of St. Thomas Hospital in Akron, Ohio, coincident with the beginnings of A.A. “Dr. Bob” referred to the condition as an “allergy”; for whatever reason, these folks’ bodies respond to this substance differently than others’ do.

This theory and its ramifications are, today, largely taken for granted throughout the scientific world. Whatever the disease’s cause, behavioral strategies are needed, too, if the subject is to manage the disease and live a normal life. The same is just as true of diabetes or near-sightedness or hay fever.

The competing view, that drinking problems reflect sin or some kind of moral deficiency, still has its grip on the popular mind. The predicaments that problem drinkers create for themselves and for others, are bad enough in and of themselves without the added burden of this stigma. My late father insisted until his last lucid day, that it was all a question of “will power.” I remember visiting Mom at home sometime prior to 1990, and finding on the bookshelf different books by Hazen G. Werner, an Ohio Methodist bishop whom my father fervently admired, and finding certain passages that my father had marked wherein the author discounted the disease theory and blamed it all instead on, as it were, sin. I shook my head at the untold, needless damage such words do.
Continue reading * Alcoholism basics →

* Trayvon Martin

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But for the racial aspect, the Trayvon Martin case would not be noticed.

I admit being less concerned about him than about the dozens of other teens who are gunned down every month across the country for no better reason and by people of their own race. Someone will object that a black perpetrator would have been arrested. I answer that an arrest and prison term won’t bring back the dead.

(Originally posted 04/16/12 at Trojan Horse Productions.  Reblogged 04/06/17.)

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* Tea Party porn? Michele Bachmann’s puzzling blog

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11/13/13 I googled “Ted Williams the homeless blogger” to see if “First of all …” would appear. I didn’t find it, but I did find “Ted Williams: Criminal / Liberal Homeless Sensation!,” Michele Bachmann’s mean-spirited(*) post on the same subject.

She has a puzzling blog.

If you click on the “POPULAR POSTS” tab, there is a very extensive post about Stacy Keibler, copying the whole Wikipedia article about her and full of racy photos and videos.

There are similar voyeuristic posts about Gisele Bundchen, Jenny McCarthy, Zoe Saldana, Eva Mendes and others.

The Tea Party agenda appears to be broader than I’d supposed.

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(*)“Mean-spirited” is a characterization, and a term I will not normally allow myself to use on The William Tell Show. I have just now broken my own rules by using it here. The policy and reasons for it will become clearer once I post Free Speech Handbook on this site. For the moment, one may consult my resume.

(Reblogged 03/30/17.)

* Kansas prisoners get the granny treatment

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Steve Hartman’s “On the Road” segment for the CBS Evening News, 11/01/13:

Kan. prisoners get the granny treatment

Here is a practical example of how brightening the “divine spark” within people can effect redemption or transformation.

(Reblogged 03/23/17.)

* Unexpected research results

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(Originally posted 04/14/12 at Trojan Horse Productions.)

I mean to include in my audition audio files, a telling of the story of the Trojan horse — or Trojan War. I’ve wanted to conclude that telling, with the story of how the man who discovered the modern location of the actual ancient Troy, supposedly did so based on information he saw in a dream. To verify my information, yesterday I read portions of the book Finding the Walls of Troy, by Susan Hueck Allen. I did not find exactly what I was looking for.

I had already learned in researching this previously, some years ago, that Heinrich Schliemann was a multi-dimensional genius. Tracking down the specific story I was after looked to become something of a needle in a haystack. The man wrote more than 80,000 letters — equivalent to ten a day, every day, for 29 years. One wonders how he had time to do anything else. He also kept diaries in 11 languages. He was also a consummate liar and shameless self-promoter, who re-wrote the stories of his life and his discoveries, as he went on, from day to day.

The specific site that proved to be that of the ancient Troy, he did not find wholly by himself. It was first suggested to him by another explorer, one Frank Carter. The two men happened to share the conviction that wherever the site was, it would be exactly as Homer described it in the Iliad. However, the story that Schliemann first saw it himself in a dream, appears now to have been as mythical as anything else about Troy; as mythical as the myth he himself created of his own life.

(Reblogged 03/16/17.)

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* The healing powers of a drug store cashier

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(From an April 2010 e-mail to my family:)

Dad was still in good health back in ’83-85, when I became so deeply interested in spiritual healing. He maintained a pragmatic skepticism about it throughout; in essence, “What’s the use? We’re all going to die anyway.”

I recalled that Monday night 12/07/09 on my way home from Rite Aid, where I’d had to go buy a few things. I was having pretty severe pain in lower left abdomen, after having had several “difficult” eliminations earlier in the day. I took the pain for infection-inflamed ureter; later concluded I was passing a stone. Long time since I’d passed a stone. Long time by my standards, that is.

The state I was in at that hour, I was inclined to cancel all appointments and errands for the next day, and plan to spend all day Tuesday flat on my back in bed. With pain like this, you can’t do much more than just stare into space and feel miserable.

I would recall one author’s answer to Dad’s argument; Lawrence Althouse is the guy’s name. He said the sheer alleviation of pain — without opiates — is justification enough for the practice of spiritual healing. Pain occasions loss of productivity, as just described. It also stresses relationships; with any less self-control as to these things than I’ve learned in the past few years, had anyone crossed my path the wrong way on that trip home, I might well have snapped at the person.

That’s not something you want to do in the ghetto. Especially at night.

There are other was to effect spiritual healing, besides prayer.

Just being nice to people, as opposed to choosing, say, to inject needless pain (“static”) into their world — that’s one.

Crystal happened to wait on me at the Rite Aid; she’s my favorite clerk, and I’d not seen her in months. Damn if she didn’t smile at me and give me a cheery greeting as soon as I came in the door.

Damn if my pain didn’t go away — completely — for some time, later after I got home, as I recalled that encounter. “Spiritual” — healing — indeed.

Every word can work good or ill. My choice; your choice.

(Reblogged 03/02/17.)
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* Tehran rally shakes fist at America and outreach

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Tehran rally shakes fist at America and outreach

Something struck me in the TV footage of this 11/04/13 demonstration, perhaps given the fact that it’s a challenge for me to buy coffee at McDonald’s.

This was not spontaneous. There was some big money behind it. Someone paid for the big effigies/pictures of Obama; for the American flags that got burned; for the signs, including a mural that read “Down with America” in English. Someone organized the presence of the tens of thousands; someone called them out, saying be at this place at this time.

Who?

What does this say about demonstrations we see in this country?

Previous pertinent post: Will the real Malala please stand up?

(Reblogged 02/16/17.)

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