My3Cents

The money would be the least of my worries. I would scramble like crazy because they don't show a history of keeping their word when they decide it's not in their personal interest to do so and most of the "word" they give is not legally binding.

Which is why, in my (never) humble opinion, they won't ever liquidate. They'll keep "controling the money and spending it on the things they "need" to keep the "ministry" going. It won't matter how many followers they have as long as it looks legit enough that they're not accused of taking the bucks for personal gain. With a reasonable (not even a good) investment return, with the low cost of living in Ohio and the poor wages they pay people, they should be able to make it a looonnnnggg time on that money.

Yes the guy was a moron. Stupid and emotionally unstable. Not a great combination. However the way's decline wasn't all due to martindale. Times were changing - it wasn't hip anymore to live a poor, shiftless life in search of "spritual things". People were growing up and concerned with a more stable life style. Even vpw's charisma was not as attractive in his later days. I don't know the date that the numbers actually started declining but I'm guessing it was a lot earlier than when craig took over.

Jason, can you say more about that. I like to set up a C: for Windows and applications and a D: for documents, data and files like that. Sometimes and E: or even F: for keeping data from one company separate from the rest. I'd actually like a distinct partition for applications that was not the same as the windows partition. That would make it easier to keep preference settings etc. But some applications insist on being on the C: drive or others install some of their dlls to the windows drive that I haven't bothered. How do you do it?

Depends what you mean by "at the same time." A computer multi-tasks by rapidly switching what it does between one open window or task and the next. Usually it's so much faster than a person's ability to interact with it (like typing) that it appears to be doing things simultaneously. I don't believe for a minute that the human brain is as limited as a computer. But the MIND is not the brain so that adds another level of complextity. I read somewhere about hypnosis that may be relevant. Turns out if you hypnotize someone and tell them their mother is Mr. Jones they will see and interact with mom as if she were him. Then if Mr. Jones walks in the room they won't have any problem with them both being the same person. So the mind must be able to do something like hold two thoughts at the same time. I know a person can hold multiple emotions toward the same thing at the same time. Often when someone dies we feel sad, angry and even relieved all at once.

I use Goldmine ver 5.5 (not the latest version) and was told there was a problem with it using SP2 so it makes me very nervous. Has anyone had experience with that?

Thanks for that. Earnest Angley's place in Akron was (I believe) an inspiration to vpw. I went there with about 5 others doing research into how they built their TV studio back when the way was aquiring TV equipment.

Do you mind sharing the details of the fraud involved? Just curious.

It was an exercise in paranoia - not catcup's but the way's. Way leadership in general and lcm in particular were always paranoid. How else to justify all the failures they had but because the "enemy" was out to thwart them at every turn. One time at corps week (must have been the late 1970s) vpw had Bob Richards come to speak. Richards had been a big time athlete and got his picture on a wheaties box and everything (true). He spoke to us some very basic motivation 101 speech but his real purpose was to promote his mutli-level marketing scheme as a way for corps on the field to make money. [sidebar - the way was always trying out different MLM schemes back then. Amwya, Steed, etc thinking there must be an easier way for god's folk on the field to make money than to actually work]. Anyway, Richards schmoozed w/ VPW at the meeting and at lunch and them was never heard from (or mentioned) again. I was told [hearsay I know but I believe it] that vpw mentioned matter of factly that the FBI was trying to shut him down and had undercover agents at the Rock of Ages to do it. This certainly is consistent with other stuff he told the corps - just that we didn't see it as a reason to run like hell.

Probably. You can't just sue someone because you put in hard work and they got all the cash. You can't sue because you're no longer welcome on property they bought with your gift. Remember a tithe is legally a gift. A gift is different from a payment. There are promises and strings attached to a payment - you can sue if those promises aren't met in a fraudulent way. But not for a gift. You can't sue someone because you thought you were doing god's work and now you don't think that anymore - even if they had a big hand in helping you decide to think that. You can sue someone for mistreating an employee (which I presume was the basis for the Allen and Parker suits). You can sue someone for actual fraud in a business deal. I believe years ago a guy in a wheel chair sued for being promised that if he tithed he would be healed. Don't know the legal basis or details of that suit. The legal system is not set up to compensate for every moral wrong or emotional hurt that people do to each other. Sorry but that's not what it's for. You have to deal with that stuff in other ways.

Some bosses at the place were not mean like the others but the whole place was terribly mis-managed. Here's my experience on staff - it was actually a lot of fun for me but great insight into how poorly managed the place was. After I had been out of the way corps for a year, vpw asked me to come on staff at hq as assistant to Mrs. Owens. She was the registrar for the advanced class. She had 2 assistants and herself working on this. The whole job could have been done by 1 part timer. Plus she refused to use the computer system in any meaningful way. Now vpw's idea was that I would be groomed to take over her slot. But his son Don was working there (can't remember if he was on the board yet or not) and he had another guy picked out for that position - Nik Maxson. Seems logical to me that the head honcho and his underling (Don) would discuss this BEFORE bringing someone off the "field" to a staff position. Especially since all the real "work" of the organization happened on the field. But NO. So as it turns out, thank god Don prevailed and I didn't stay in that position. I understand Nik is still there and am so glad I'm not in his shoes. In fact I was relieved in mid-year [probably due to the fact that I didn't get along well with Mrs O.] and I was asked what I wanted to do for the rest of the year. I asked if I could work way builders and get a bit of experience in the building trades. They had me doing a little bit of everything. But I was never trained. I put a bunch of electrical outlets in the OSC building and after I'd done many many of them with out any training or supervision, someone just happened to see how I was doing it and it was not up to code. OOPs. Did they re-do them? nope. As one point I talked to Art Poling, the head of the department about the disorganization. He apparently had experience in managing these kinds of jobs but was not allowed to impliment systems that most organizations use because it impossed too much discipline on the people above. He told me of change orders made on a whim that wasted tons of money and time, and later had to be un-changed because they weren't thought through enough. Seemed a common occurance. At one point I heard later that Howard Allen asked that all spending over $50 be approved by him. I thought, if he can't train people well enough, and has nothing better to do with his time than oversee that kind of stuff, he really is in the wrong job. Just my 2 cents. This was in 1978 or so.

The problem is that the condition that causes one to need such a patch also makes it impossible for them to realize they need it.

Thanks John. It does load faster. However I get 3 error messages when it's trying to load. If I click OK on them it loads fine. It's looking for annots.api, multimedia.api, escript plugin Do you know if there's a way to keep it from looking for those, or do I need to move them back to the plugins directory?

I've lived in lots of places (hey I was in the way you know) and seen lots of falls. Even in places where the leaves turn colors there is nothing to compare with the brilliance of New England. Columbus Day weekend is the perfect time to visit in Massachusets or southern VT / NH if any of you are so inclined. The only thing I've seen that compares to it is the mountians of Colorado where the aspen trees all turn the same color and are set off against the evergreens. That is amazing too.

You mean LCM wears Victoria Secret? WOW!

I never knew JC, or Mohammed, or Moses but I can tell you more of the people I know that are intolerant, destructive and self-serving are believers of one sort or another. It seems a belief in god or the afterlife or righteousness allows some (not all) to allow themselves to be vile in the here and now. Your question was about motives. I do believe that for many, their conscious motives and the effects of their lives are not always the same.

I was in the 5th corps when lightbearers started. There was some book about a christian school in England (if memory serves) and part of their training was to leave the school for 2 weeks with a small bit of money. They were told to go around doing good for people and to "believe" for their food and housing to be met. They were not allowed to ask for stuff. They were expected to return to the school with the same amount of money that they left with. This was copied by vpw and became light bearers. However the part about doing good for people morphed into putting together a PFAL class. After all, what better good could you do for anyone. Eventually I think light bearers were assigned to stay with local believers so there went the part about not asking for food and shelter as well. The kicker was we were supposed to sign up enough people for a class in those 2 weeks or be out of the corps. I know a lot of groups that didn't get classes together. Many more who only added the last few students to a class the locals had almost together and yet I don't know anyone kicked out of the corps for their performance on lightbearers. Says a lot about the integrity of the program.

Even if the answers to all this were a very sincere and truthful YES I wouldn't go back. I just have no interest in the bible and god stuff anymore.

I recently found a program called SetBrowser that forces changes in the registry to assign the default browser - apparently it does it more strongly than Mozilla does when it sets itself as the default. So that's working now. As for switching to Mozilla Mail or whatever it's called. Can you edit the subject line of an email after you've recieved it? I have a work around for doing that in OE and won't switch unless you can do it in the new one. THANKS

First I have to say it's kind of ironic that I get some of the best computer help from this forum. Thanks to all. I have started using Mozilla (in large part due to many of your comments). It was/is working fine but when I clicked on a link in email (I use Outlook Express) the link would open in MyIE2 not Mozilla. So I removed MyIE2 and rebooted. Now when I click on that link - nothing! Mozilla is my default browser. Any ideas?

Still looking for slideshow software? Check out this review from PC Magazine.

Of course not George. Everybody read the lable. Why else would you buy that stuff? In fact the label made a lot more sense after you smoked a bit of the soap!!

I don't know the circumstances of their leaving HQ. But after they did they ended up in Navato California. This was 1980 or 81 I believe. They were in my branch or area or whatever it was called. Perhaps they are still there and in the phone book. I have no idea.

Here's my 2 cents (and one for inflation). As I understand it, a state government may give a school the authority to grant a degree. But a different organization (a regional one I believe) grants accredidation. That accredidation is what determines if the degree is worth anything as far as other colleges are concerned. When the way bought the college at Emporia it had accredidation. They tried to buy it in such a manner that the legal entity (and hence the accredidation) would remain consistent - just the ownership and members of the board would change. This didn't happen and they lost the accredidation when the ownership changed. I believe they were misled by the sellers or their lawyers about it's possibility. A year or two later they applied to the regional organization. They were visited, and inspected and were turned down. Part of the goal FYI, was because the GI bill paid tuition at accredited colleges for veterans, they wanted some of that money for veterans who entered the way corps. When they bought the Indiana campus - which was a monestary (not a college) before they bought it - it turned out that the state of Indiana allowed almost anybody to give a "degree". So they started doing that. Accredidation was never even considered at that place to my knowledge so the degree was worthless in the eyes of anyone who knows anything about the college. Kind of like being mentioned in those Who's Who books that you pay to get your name in. This is the kind of "recognition" that made sense to weirwille - after all, he got his degree from a paper mill and rode the title "Doctor" as long as he could.

Two very different situations, Oldie. When VPW did it there wasn't a whole lot of money to build other places. And the change of title didn't mean much since he still had all the control over the property he had before. I'm sure it was to his financial benefit tax wise. So in practice he never lost anything by the transaction. He gained by whatever tax advantage there was and he gained big time by being able to say "I don't own anyting - gave it all to the great cause." That made a big impression on a lot of folks at the time. Rosie, on the other hand, would not benefit from being able to say that - noone cares anymore. And she probably would have a lot to loose by giving up her house. Net worth, control, the possibility (however slight) of being outsted, and the "rank" that it signifies that she's special - she has her own (big) place. Even Donna at the Corps Chalet doesn't OWN the place. A lot of this is speculation on my part - take it for what it's worth.