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Beautiful, with a Beauty Unknown on this Earth

Romeo Montague was a romantic idealist and tragic hero who is well-known from William Shakespeare’s, “Romeo and Juliet.” He considers himself compelled to do evil by his nostalgia for an unrealizable good, and while exploring love, youth and human nature, Romeo meets with a tragic fate.  Likewise, Satan rises against his Creator because the latter employed force to subjugate him. “Who reason hath equal’d,” says Milton’s Satan, “force hath made supreme above his equals.” Divine violence is thus explicitly condemned. The rebel flees from this aggressive and unworthy God, “Farthest from him is best,” and reigns over all the forces hostile to the divine order. The Prince of Darkness has only chosen this path because good is a notion defined and utilized by God for unjust purposes. Even innocence irritates the Rebel in so far as it implies being duped. This “dark spirit of evil who is enraged by innocence” creates a human injustice parallel to divine injustice. Since violence is at the root of all creation, deliberate violence shall be its answer. The fact that there is an excess of despair adds to the causes of despair and brings rebellion to that state of indignant frustration which follows the long experience of injustice and where the distinction between good and evil finally disappears. Vigny’s Satan can no longer find in good or evil any pleasure nor of the sorrow that he causes take the measure. This defines nihilism and authorizes murder. Murder, in fact, is on the way to becoming acceptable. It is enough to compare Lucifer of the painters of the Middle Ages with the Satan of the romantics. An adolescent “young, sad, charming” (Vigny) replaces the horned beast. Beautiful, with a beauty unknown on this Earth” (Lermontov), solitary and powerful, unhappy and scornful, he is offhand even in oppression. #RandolphHarris 1 of 17

However, his excuse is sorrow. “Who here,” says Milton’s Satan, “Will envy whom the highest place…condemns to greatest share of endless pain.” So many injustices suffered, a sorrow so unrelieved, justify every excess. The rebel therefore allows himself certain advantage. Murder, of course, is not recommended for its own sake. However, it is implicit in the value—supreme for the romantic—attached to frenzy. Frenzy is the reverse of boredom: Lorenzaccio dreams of Han of Iceland. Exquisite sensibilities evoke the elementary furies of the beast. The Byronic hero, incapable of love suffers endlessly. He is solitary, languid, his condition exhausts him. If he wants to feel alive, it must be in the terrible exaltation of a brief and destructive actions. To love someone whom one will never see again is to give a cry of exaltation of as one perishes in the flames of passion. One lives only in and for the moment, in order to achieve “the brief and vivid union of a tempestuous heart untied to the tempest” (Lermontov). The threat of mortality which hangs over us makes everything abortive. Only the cry of anguish can bring us to life; exaltation takes the place of truth. To this extent the apocalypse becomes an absolute value in which everything is confounded—love and death, conscience and culpability. In a chaotic Universe no other life exists but that of the abyss where, according to Alfred Le Poittevin, human beings come “trembling with rage and exulting in their crimes” to curse the Creator. The intoxication of frenzy and, ultimately, some suitable crime reveal in a moment the whole meaning of life. Without exactly advocating crime, the romantics insist on paying homage to a basic system of privileges which they illustrate with the conventional images of the outlaw, the criminal with the heart of gold, and the kind brigand. Their works are bathed in blood and shrouded in mystery. #RandolphHarris 2 of 17

The soul is delivered, at a minimum expenditure, of its most hideous desires—desires that a later generation will assuage in extermination camps. Of course, these works are also a challenge to the society of the times. However, romanticism, at the source of its inspiration, is chiefly concerned with defying moral and divine law. That is why its most original creation is not, primarily, the revolutionary, but, logically enough, the dandy. Logically, because this obstinate persistence in Satanism can only be justified by the endless affirmation of injustice and, to a certain extent, by its consolidation. Pain, at this stage, is acceptable only on condition that it is incurable. The rebel chooses the metaphysic of inevitable evil, which is expressed in the literature of damnation from which we have not yet escaped. “I was conscious of my power and I was conscious of my chains” (Petrus Borel). However, these chains are valuable objects. Without them it would be necessary to prove, or to exercise, this power which, after all, one is not very sure of having. It is only too easy to end up by becoming a government employee in Algiers, and Prometheus, like the above-mentioned Borel, will devote the rest of his days to closing the cabarets and reforming morals in the colonies. All the same, every poet to be received into the fold must be damned. Charles Lassailly, the same who planned a philosophic novel, Robespierre and Jesus Christ, never went to bed without uttering several fervent blasphemies to give himself courage. Rebellion puts on mourning and exhibits itself for public admiration. Much more than the cult of the individual, romanticism inaugurates the cult of the “character.” It is at this point that it is logical. No longer hoping for the rule or the unity of God, determined to take up arms against an antagonistic destiny, anxious to preserve everything of which the living are still capable in a World dedicated to death, romantic rebellion looked for a solution in the attitude that it itself assumed. #RandolphHarris 3 of 17

The attitude assembled, in aesthetic unity, all mankind who were in the hands of fate and about to be destroyed by divine violence. The human being who is condemned to death is, at least, magnificent before he disappears, and his magnificence is his justification. It is an established fact, the only one that can be thrown in the petrified face of the God of hate. The impassive rebel does not flinch before the eyes of God. “Nothing,” says Milton, “will change this determined mind, this high disdain born of an offended conscience.” Everything is drawn or rushes toward the void, but even though man is humiliated, he is obstinate and at least preserves his pride. A baroque romantic, discovered by Raymond Queneau, claims that the aim of all intellectual life is to become God. This romantic is really a little ahead of his time. The aim, at that time, was only to equal God and remain on His level. He is not destroyed, but by incessant effort He is refused any act of submission. Dandyism is a degraded form of asceticism. The dandy creates his own unity by aesthetic means. However, it is an aesthetic of singularity and of negation. “To love and die before a mirror”: that, according to Baudelaire, was the dandy’s slogan. It is indeed a coherent slogan. The dandy, is by occupation, always in opposition. He can only exist by defiance. Up to now man derived his coherence from his Creator. However, from the moment that he consecrates his rupture with Him, he finds himself delivered over to the fleeting moment, to the passing days, and to wasted sensibility. Therefore, he must take himself in hand. #RandolphHarris 4 of 17

The dandy rallies his forces and creates unity for himself by the very violence of his refusal. Profligate, like all people without a rule of life, he is coherent as an actor. However, an actor implies a public; the dandy can only play a part by setting himself up in opposition. He can only be sure of his own existence by finding it in the expression of others’ faces. Other people are his mirror. A mirror that quickly becomes clouded, it is true, since human capacity for attention is limited. It must be ceaselessly stimulated, spurred on by provocation. The dandy, therefore, is always compelled to astonish. Singularity is his vocation, excess his way to perfection. Perpetually incomplete, always on the fringe of things, he compels others to create him, while denying their values. He plays at life because he is unable to live. He plays at it until he dies, expect for the moments when he is alone and without a mirror. For the dandy, to be alone is not to exist. The romantics talked so grandly about solitude only because it was their real horror, the one thing they could not bear. Their rebellion thrusts its roots deep, but from the Abbe Prevost’s Cleveland up to the time of the Dadaists—including the frenetics of 1830 and Baudelaire and the decadents of 1880—more than a century of rebellion was completely glutted by the audacities of “eccentricity.” If they were all able to talk of unhappiness, it is because they despaired of ever being able to conquer it, except in futile parodies, and because they instinctively felt that it remained their sole excuse and their real claim to nobility. That is why the heritage of romanticism was not claimed by Victor Hugo, the epitome of France, but by Baudelair and Lacenaire, the poets of crime. “Everything in this world exudes crime,” says Baudelaire, “the newspaper, the walls, and the face of man.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 17

The conflict we see going on in this World is a conflict that too often goes on in all of us. It is a battle between the way things are and the way they “ought to be.” People move to rich and expensive communities to escape the problems of the World. Early in life, many develop some firm notions of the way things ought to be. Going with those notions, people set about the task of making them look that way. As long as their conditions in life conformed to these notions, they are able to be happy. However, when things change and are no longer the way they feel they ought to be, their problems begin. One of the problems most people have is their inability (or at least unwillingness) to admit that things are not all right. They prefer to live with the illusion that they are. Yet living with this illusion takes a heavy toll on people, physically and psychologically. An important aspect of the concept of being is that it is “now-oriented.” Being implies being in the here and now, in this moment, with things just the way they are. You can think about the way things used to be or wish that they be different in the future. However, you can only be—here and now—with things as they actually exist. When people refuse to admit that things are not all right, they are refusing to be with them exactly the way they are. They are trying to impose their own notions upon reality. This effort is doomed to failure because the unalterable fact of life is that things are the way they are. They are not the way they once were and they are not the way they are going to be—but they certainly are the way they are. A man’s refusal to accept this does not change anything. At most, his refusal just changes the way they look. Then a problem arises when people by choice or necessity choose to ignore the dysfunction and start taking medication to cope with life. This can put one in danger because they are turning off their senses and boosting their serotonin to help project an image of peace, happiness, and normalcy. However, it may leave them open to become victims of crime because they are not really being. It is important to see the World as it is and take action to better manage situations. The acceptance that things are the way they are is an act of surrender. When you see that things are the way they are and that there is nothing you can do to make them different, you give in to them. This does not mean that you do not have the power to change things in the future. This simply means that you do not have the power to change the way things are right now. All you can do, is just be with things the way they are. All you can do is surrender to being. #RandolphHarris 6 of 17

For a long time, many men do not allow themselves to do this. They are more concerned with trying to make things the way they ought to be—a futile effort, at least in the context of right now. There are two phrases which can guide us in allowing being to happen. One is “Let go and let be,” and the other is “You do not always have to do something.” Doing is an attempt to change things, which is all right when the situation is mainly external. However, when the situation is internal, it requires the use of an inner process which does not respond to external effort. With the inner process, results are obtained by feeling, and feeling takes place within: in the heart, the soul, the guts, call it what you will. Thinking is a more indirect way of handling reality than feeling is. Our feelings tell us when something is painful, because our feelings are hurt, directly. Our thinking explains the hurt, justifies it, rationalizes it, analyzes it. In the intellectual sphere, words—not feelings—are used. On the other hand, feelings—the subjective awareness of an emotional state—are internal directives essential for human life. They are means and ends in themselves. All pleasure and pain are perceived in the realm of feelings. Now, to tie these ideas together, being is equated with feeling. You cannot make, generate, or manufacture a feeling any more than you can make being. Feelings and being must arise spontaneously. They are involuntary. When an activity has the quality of “flow,” it belongs to being. When it has the quality of “push,” it belongs to doing. All productive activity requires doing, but creativity also requires an element of being. A healthy person, a master, finds a rhythmic balance between thinking and feeling, doing and being. If, for example, you are a secretary typing a letter for your supervisor, using shorthand notes, you are engaged in a process of doing. If you are asked to correct the sentence structure, grammar, and wording, you are also doing, but to accomplish it, you must draw from your own personal knowledge, experience and taste to create a more understandable communication. #RandolphHarris 7 of 17

If you are composing the letter yourself, taking it a step further, you are creating a communication in your own unique way and allowing the activity to become a part of your self, of who you are. This is what is known as creative endeavour. However, if you are doing the activity because you have to, because you are forced to, you are in a state of doing. If you are doing it because you enjoy the activity, you are in a state of doing and being. We are taught early in life that feelings are dangerous and that some feelings are undesirable, even taboo. Values are attached to them, both good and bad. An emotion with an intellectual element attached is, according to our definition here, a value. However, we are afraid of these values. If we give in to sadness, we are afraid we will fall into a fit of despair. We fear that in giving in to anger, we might kill someone. This is what we were taught to think. However, each emotion we are capable of expressing has a purpose and an intrinsic worth. Each is valuable, and to deny an emotion exists deprives us of the value which it can bring. When we become afraid of these values, afraid of being, we mask the fear by doing. We become busy, busy, busy so we will have less time available for feeling, being, living, contacting. We measure our lives by what we accomplish rather than by the richness of our experiences. I remember having read in the verbatim reports of the Utah Conferences on Creativity, sponsored by the National Science Foundation, that an air force testing officer reported that in their search for creative men they found that “those who get the answer without knowing how they got it are the ones we want.” The usual insistence on figuring things out first results in many things not being done because we have not got them altogether figure out first. In an education seminar a psychologist asked, “How is it that we know so much and nobody does anything?” We cannot always take credit for our “smartness.” We cannot feel proud, just happy, when things work out especially well. Many of us like the feeling of happiness better—a word that springs from another word, “happenings.” #RandolphHarris 8 of 17

When people live this way, the World seems so full of happenings. We do not always figure out how to do things first. This is just the way some people live. The following anecdote illustrates how easy it is for a Martian to understand the concept of psychological trading stamps. A woman came home from a group meeting one day where she had heard it for the first time, and explained it to her twelve-year-old son. He said, “Okay, mom, I’ll be back soon.” When he returned, he had made a small roll of perforated paper stamps and a little dispenser to hold them, together with a paper book with the pages ruled off into squares. On the first page he had written: “This page when full of stamps entitles you to one free mad, hurt, guilt, or fright, and a few of these add up to one free suffer.” He understood perfectly. If people do not spontaneously provoke you, insult you, entice you, or frighten you, then you start a game in order to make them do it. In this way you collect a free mad, hurt, guilt, or fright, and a few of these add up to one free suffer. There is another similarity between psychological trading stamps and commercial ones. They are both canceled once they are used, but people still like to talk nostalgically about the ones they turned in. They key word here is “recall.” Real people, in ordinary conversation, say, “Do you remember when…” whereas “do you recall…” is usually used in referring to trading stamps that were used up and canceled long ago. “Do you remember the good time we had in Yosemite?” is reminiscence, whereas: “Do you recall what happened at Yosemite? First you dented the fender on the BMW, and furthermore you forgot to…and then, as I recall, you…and in addition…” etcetera is a worn-out reproach which is not good for a justified anger any more. Lawyers habitually used the word “recall” rather than “remember” in the exercise of their profession, when they bring out the plaintiff’s often faded and sometimes counterfeit trading stamps to show the judge or jury. Lawyers are, in fact, philatelists, connoisseurs of psychological trading stamps; they can look over a collection, large or small, and estimate its current market value at the big redemption store in the courthouse. Crooked spouses can con each other by pulling out used or counterfeit trading stamps. Thus, Francisco discovered that his wife Angela was having an affair with her employer, and in fact, rescued her when the employer threatened her with violence. After a tempestuous scene, she thanked him and he forgave her. However, afterward, whenever he got drunk, which was often, he brought the matter up again, and there was another scene. In trading-stamp language, in the first scene he got a justified anger, she genuinely thanked him, and he generously forgave her. That was a decent settlement, and all the trading stamps were canceled. #RandolphHarris 9 of 17

However, as noted, “forgive” in practice means to put the stamps in the drawer until they are needed again, even though they have already been cashed in. In this case, Franciso pulled out the old canceled stamps every Saturday night and waved them in Angela’s face. Instead of pointing out that they had already been used, Angela would hang her head and let Francisco have another free anger. In return, she would fob off on him some counterfeit thank-you stamps. The first time she thanked him, she gave him true stamps of golden gratitude, but after that her thanks were tired and spurious, “fool’s gold” or iron pyrites, which he, in his drunken foolishness, cherished like the real thing. When he was sober, both of them could be honest and regard the matter as settled. However, when he was drinking, they became crooked with each other. He blackmailed her with phony reruns, and she paid him off in kind. Thus, the analogy between commercial and psychological trading stamps is almost perfect. Each person tends to handle both kinds in the same way, according to his upbringing. Some people are raised to cash them in and forget it. Others are taught to save them and savour them; they keep their paper stamps and gloat over them as they mount up in anticipation of the day when they will be able to cash them in for a big prize; and they deal the same way with their angers, hurts, fears, and guilts, keeping them bottled up until they have enough for a really big payoff. Still others have permission to cheat, and sue considerable ingenuity in doing so. Psychological trading stamps exist as emotional memories, which probably take the form of molecular patterns in a continual state of agitation, or electrical potentials which go round and round in a circle of Jordan curve; and neither of them is completely exhausted until there is some kind of discharge of the piled-up energy. The rate at which the configurations or the potentials decay is probably based partly on genes and partly on “early conditioning” which in our terms falls into the category of parental programing. If a person brings out the same old trading stamps again and again to exhibit to his audience, they begin to look more and more tired and shopworn, and so does the audience. #RandolphHarris 10 of 17

The new culture which emerged from the 1960s was fabricated by newly activated teenage nervous systems. These nervous systems had been printed by signals urging self-indulgence, self-discovery and self-actualization. This generation was caste-out far beyond hive limits where reputations, and at the times, bodies were placed on the lines. The first benefit of this out-caste behaviour was that college education is better today. There is a caste which benefits from anger and stirring up trouble. It is called the legal profession. Left-wing lawyers say, “Well, what’s wrong with the college students today? They are not angry as they were in the 1960s.” Well, some might say they are even more angry today. Much like in the 1960s, we have some very irritable and irritating bureaucrats running the colleges, and running the country. In the 21st Century, some college administrators, college presidents, and college professors are allowing students to be threatened and harassed on campus, and encouraging students to change their genders. They have become more tolerant of, sometimes even more supportive of abnormality, than of normalcy. Young people should enjoy a certain serenity and relaxation that is becoming impossible. People have been fighting hard to end peace and quiet. Some people say these cultural changes are phases, temporary hula hoop fads. However, they are not. You cannot go back. The culture changes of the first quarter of the 21st century is irreversible. There many aspects of this gender confusion and male gentile mutilation that did not exist before the Obama administration. I am sure no parent wants their son to chop off his private parts, and this is why so many people are upset that youth are being exposed to atypical sexuality in the classroom. They are also upset that this is a political agenda that is being hyped up by the media and celebrities. And this gentile mutilation is irreversible and will cause much unnecessary pain. It is good to accept others and protect their rights, but we also must accept boys are boys and girls are girls and teach them proper gender roles, so not to confuse them. Even young adults of legal age are still figuring themselves out and are young and impressionable so it is important that are not persuaded or convinced to make changes to their bodies that they may regret later in life. #RandolphHarris 11 of 17

Emotionality represents a heightened state of being, but use of “cold logic” with an absence of emotion may also be thought of as a heightened state. In the midst of an emotional experience, a person will show definite physiological symptoms: flushing, tremours, and increased heart rate, according to Isaacson and Hutt. However, the physiological symptoms are not necessarily different for each different emotion. Emotion may be defined as a group of organized feelings, all heightened or strengthened, either in reaction to a threat to the person (such as in anger or indignation) or in reaction to a perceived enhancement of the person, as in joy or ecstasy. Whereas the use of cool objectivity also has survival value for the person, the inhibition of emotion or the overcontrol of emotional experience is often associated with adjustment problems. The free expression of one’s feelings or emotions—as long as it is within control of the person—is considered to be a characteristic of the healthy person. A high-level state of humanness includes the opportunity for the person to express self emotionally, as freely and spontaneously as a hearty laugh, for example, and with a reasonable level of control, as in the case of an angry parent who refrains from physical punishment of a child, and who rather chooses to explain and reason with the child concerning the misbehaviour. Emotions assists life’s intensity and meaning. We are amused and we laugh; someone insults us and we become angry. A young woman has just received a proposal of marriage from the man she loves; her excitement and joy are dramatically evident. Emotion is a quality of experience and an expressive quality of action. We can speak thus of emotional experience and emotional expression. The former is emotion viewed from a phenomenological perspective, that is, from the standpoint of the person, whereas emotional expression is the way emotional experience appears to an observer. Some may still believe that caste is a fact in Nature, but man will be without that pride in social rank which has too often ended in some sort of arrogance or even cruelty to those of lower status. The refinement, manners, and culture which Jesus Christ wishes to see in a properly developed human being may be different in outer form from those which a modern Christian would wish to see, but they are not different in spirit. #RandolphHarris 12 of 17

Those who now denounce them angrily as class-marks must therefore praise grossness, crudeness, coarseness, and ignorance as ideal. And others who can see no spiritual usefulness being served by fine quality simply do not look far enough. The practice of true philosophy should reduce, or remove, coarseness of character, behaviour, and speech. He will find less and less pleasure in the chatter of society, clubs, and drawing rooms, which when it is about self, is quite inane, and when about other people, is often cruel. In this World he has to deal with people. To deal efficiently with the, he needs to understand their characters. However, to turn a blind eye towards their weaknesses will only mar this understanding and spoil this efficiency. Even where he seeks to help them, such results will only hinder is compassionate aim. The range of his goodwill excludes none, includes all. He recognizes on enemies, only unevolved men. By “good manners” is not meant “formal etiquette” although the two may often coincide. Teach elementary manners, that is, a warm smile. In a truly civilized society, courteous manners and refined tastes would be the rule. One mane can hate another man, but if the first has renounced his ego—the source of hatred—how can he continue to do so? A smile will say to others what words may fail to do, will express your basic attitude of, in Jesus’ phrase “good will unto all men.” He will in the end unfailingly draw to himself what he gives out. If hate, hate returns; if love, love returns/ We may dislike a man and disapprove of his opinions but this ought not prevent us from giving him our goodwill. If thought irritates and feeling boils, it is not enough to show an outward good temper, excellent discipline though that be. There is a tolerance which springs from mere indifference, but there is also a tolerance which springs from inner largeness of spirit. Differences between men—whether in external things or internal thinking—there must be. However, they need not become the occasion of hate between men. With enough goodwill on both sides, a compromise can usually be reached in most disputes. By refinement, I mean a quality of good breeding, either natural or acquired. The easiest way to express this feeling, described by Jesus as “goodwill unto all,” is to be courteous to all. #RandolphHarris 13 of 17

The Sacramento Fire Department delivers fire suppression, emergency medical services (EMS), technical rescue including urban search and rescue, hazardous materials mitigation, fire prevention, domestic preparedness, fire and EMS safety education, and fire investigation programs. Choosing to be a firefighter or to work in the Sacramento Fire Department means someone is dedicating their life to protecting and serving others. Frontline staff members put their lives on the line every day, and that selflessness extends outside the workplace. “It was about nine-thirty in the evening. I was getting ready to go to my job at midnight. The phone call said it was an explosion. There were some fuel storage tanks in the area, and I thought it might be one of them. I drove to the station, and some of the guys were already getting the engines out. I told them I’d go on ahead to the site in my own car. We arrived there together, and the guys hooked the engine to a hydrant. I didn’t know it was a plane crash until we got there. The only thing that was really identifiable as part of a plane was the front part of it, the cockpit area. I was kind of shocked. I didn’t know what to expect. I grabbed a fire hat off the engine, and I ran down to the scene itself. I had the line, and I put the nozzle on and was spraying the whole area. The water came down like an easy rain. It wasn’t like a major fire, like from fuel. I just found the little hot spots. Actually, all it was was bodies burning as far as I could see, the little bits of clothing that was left on them. It was dark, but I could see about a dozen bodies that were recognizable as people. I didn’t really know how many were scattered all over the place. I didn’t see that until daybreak. I felt I was in kind of a helpless situation, just knowing that nobody was going to survive. I had never seen anything like that before. I was standing there hosing the area down in a fog spray, and I didn’t hear anything. Then I thought I heard the moaning, and I shut the water off to make sure I wasn’t hearing things. It’s possible that the water squirted on the litter girl and revived her. Anyway, I heard what sounded like moaning. All I could see was a pile of rubber with a few bodies here and there, but mostly rubble. #RandolphHarris 14 of 17

“I called my partner over, and I point to the spot where I thought the moaning was coming from. I thought it was a man. I could see a guy right there. I thought it was him. Well, my partner, X, started moving things around, and I took the hose and went off, thinking that maybe somebody would survive, though it wasn’t likely. X heard the moaning, then it quit and he didn’t hear it. He checked the bodies for any sign of life. He moved things aside to get to some of them. There wasn’t much light there, and everything was black and charred. Meanwhile, I put out the rest of the fires on the bodies. X moved aside a charred airplane seat. Then he heard the moaning again and saw that it was coming from the seat he had put aside. It was upside down, and he pilled it up, and there was the little girl strapped in it. He called our EMT over, and he did a quick survey of her body to see if there were any broken bones. Then they cut her out of the seat belt, put her on a backboard, and rushed her to the hospital. There was some controversy about whether she was on the plane or a passenger in a car that was on the ground. About four or five hundred feet away was a Blazer. The thing was on fire from bumper to bumper when we got there, and there was somebody inside it. They thought she might have been a passenger in that car. They didn’t listen to us. It was an airplane seat that she was strapped into. Her mother was there, too. The little girl was facedown on top of her mother. The report was that the mother was trying to shield her from the flames. Nobody could hold onto something in the kind of impact. It may have been a freak thing that she landed on top of her mother. We didn’t want to debate anybody on that point, so we just left it at that. I was there for twenty-two hours. This was in our station area, so we were more or less a standby unit until everything was pretty much cleared up. I did a lot of walking. I couldn’t sit still. I couldn’t sleep, that’s for sure, because of the smell and the things running through my mind. We had a command post with a catering van and Red Cross wagon, giving out coffee and food. I walked back and forth to there quite a bit, but I really couldn’t eat. I don’t know how you describe a lot of burning bodies. We knew enough not to touch anything until the FAA and the other people got there in the morning. They came in and went over some of the bodies, covering them up. #RandolphHarris 15 of 17

“Three other stations were there, plus the airport fire department and other fire departments from other communities. We were scattered all over the place, squirting down the whole are. We weren’t specifically prepared for anything life this, but everybody kept their cool, saw what they had to do, and did it. We didn’t think about the plane crash until later. Everybody there did a heck of a job. We knew this sort of thing would probably happen someday, we just didn’t know where or when. It was the EMTs and the coroners who put the corpses in body bags, and then we took the body bags and put them in the coroner’s van, which took them to the temporary morgue. The smell there was unbearable. They had lain there all night, and then in the morning the sun started hitting them. Some bodies were pretty much intact, just burned real bad. But they could tell if they were male or female. Both others, all they had was just parts, like a hand or a foot or a leg. The parts were lying all over the place. My wife called my company that I wouldn’t be to work that night because of the plane crash. They marked it down as leave without pay. I think that in all the commotion, they weren’t thinking. I had to put in a grievance to get my pat. It was hard for me to talked about what I saw. I could relate to everything that was splattered all over the ground there. It kind of threw me off there for a little bit. I had recurring memories of what I did at the scene. I think the thing brought all the guys in the department closer together, since we were all in it together. They have a counseling team for this kind of traumatic situation. We had a guy come in about two weeks after a crash, a cop with thirty years behind him. He met with us to get us to talk about it. Most of the guys really didn’t want to say anything because you don’t want to talk to them if you don’t know them personally. The guy had good intentions, but unless it was somebody like your pastor, it was kind of hard to open up to him. He said it himself: he had thought he had seen it all, until he came to the crash. He said, ‘I guess I didn’t see everything.’ I guess there are guys who are still having a hard time with it. #RandolphHarris 16 of 17

We may practise goodwill untainted by selfishness towards all mankind without becoming mushily sentimental about “universal brotherhood.” The hermit who behaves rudely may be showing his individualism, as he believes, but he is also showing his lack of spirituality. Polite manners imply thought for others. Nor is his tolerance grown out of laziness. It is grown out of understanding mated to kindliness. In his upward climb, he should slowly learn to drop the emotional view of life and to replace it by the intelligent view. Thus, he will show his passage from a lower to a higher level. However, it is to be an intelligence that is serene in activity, impersonal in judgment, warm in benevolence, and intuitive in quality. There should be no room in it to hold bias or bigotry, one the other hand, or dead logic. He will not only take care not to exceed his own rights, not only be scrupulous not to invade other people’s rights, but he will even take care not to interfere with their free will. Be strong without being stubborn. Much good behaviour is thinly veneered, being the consequence of social prudence rather than personal virtue. Because of the Sacramento Fire Department, Sacramento City has been blessed with a great and noble heritage that offers a pathway to salvation. The dedicated EMTs, Fire Fighters, CHP and Police risk their lives to protect that community and keep people safe. The people of Sacramento do not underestimate the worth of emergency services. The Sacramento Fire Department has a firm adherence to a code of moral and ethical standards: Honesty, Trust, and Accountability. You can help save lives by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. It is also very important to raise your children to love America and to be patriotic. By having pride in America, and purchasing American made cars and other goods and services, we can make America a creditor nation again and ensure that this sacred land will be enjoy by your family for generations to come. Teaching children to love God and Jesus Christ will also preserve our American heritage and allow us to make sure our children are set on a path that will lead them to success and help them reserve a seat in Heaven. The Ten Commandments in the Christian Bible are a good guideline of how everyone should live. Furthermore, by respecting law and order, we will ensure the tranquility of this great nation and make sure that we are setting an exemplary example for other nations to follow. And by treating others with dignity, respect, and compassion, this will ensure that we are following the golden rule, “Do on to others as you would have them do on to you,” reports Luke 6.31. #RandolphHarris 17 of 17

Ascent at Montelena

11977 Cobble Brook Drive, Rancho Cordova, California 95742

Nothing is more important than family and having enough space to enjoy each other.

The well-thought-out Plan 4 gives growing families with young children, teens, or grandparents a place of their own and plenty of room to spend time together.

The first-floor bed and bath are perfect for the second generation, the loft gives extra space for the kids, and the den is ideal for those working from home. https://www.pulte.com/homes/california/sacramento/rancho-cordova/ascent-at-montelena-210916/plan-4-694486