
The true American Christian harbours only goodwill towards one who chooses to be his enemy, together with good wishes for the other’s well-being, and for his coming closer to the higher self, hence closer to the truth. To serve humanity is in the end to serve yourself. This follows from the working of God’s law. To forgive those who, in ignorance, sin against you, is for the same reason to forgive yourself. In the end, the heartlessly cruel punish themselves, though whether here in this life, in purgatory after death, or in some future re-embodiment is another matter. Where other persons are good but mistaken, the uttered criticism of them should be gentle; where they are well-meaning but weak, it should be cautious. For in such cases the character has what is admirable and what is blameworthy mixed up in it. The first step in dealing with one who is difficult to live with, who is irritable, impulsive, quick to take offense, explosively bad-tempered, condemnatory, and sulky is to control in yourself what you wish him to control in himself—to set an example through self-discipline, to stimulate his higher will, and to give out love. When correcting his mistakes or shortcomings, remember it is not so much what you say as how that matters. If done calmly, gently, kindly, and unemotionally, it will be effective. If not, it will arouse his ego into antagonism or resentment and fail of effect. #RandolphHarris 1 of 26

Every time he speaks to you, do not answer at once. Instead, pause collect yourself to the dangers of the situation and answer slowly, taking special pains to be more polite than circumstances call for. If you do not do this, his fault may be aroused in him immediately and you may pick it up sensitively, too; then both will display it. Remember that negative fault-finding acts as an irritant to him and as a poison to your inner relationship. Correct him by optimistic, affirmative suggestions of what to do rather than harass him with criticisms of what not to do. In short, be polite outwardly and surrender the ego inwardly. Only by first conquering the weakness inside yourself can you rightly hope that he will ever even begin to struggle against the same weakness inside himself. If he is the unfortunate victim of temperament, that is, of his ego, remember that he is a younger soul, that you are older, and check yourself. Iamblichus tells us that Pythagoreans did not punish a servant nor admonish a man during anger, but waited until they had recovered their serenity. They used a special word to signify such “self-controlled rebukes,” effecting this calmness by silence and quiet. Pythagoras himself advised that the scares and ulcers which advice sometimes cases should be minimized as much as possible: “The corrections and admonitions of the elder towards the younger should be made with much suavity of manners and great caution; also, with much solitude and tact, which makes the reproof all the more graceful and useful.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 26

If you want to improve a man, it took me along time to learn that I should not reprove him. Leave that to life itself However, then it will do so in harsher, more inconsiderate terms than those you are likely to use. Criticisms should always be balanced ones, should avoid the tendency to go to extreme or to be one-sided when revealing defects. He should not waste thought or harm others by destructively criticizing them. Instead, if his life-path forces him to deal with them and therefore to understand them exactly as they are, he will calmly and constructively, gently and impersonally, analyze them. He will see their weakness without involving himself in egotistically emotional reactions to it—unless they are compassionate recognitions of the sorrowful results it must inevitably bring. If he is to be helped, it is sometimes necessary when a man is acting stupidly, unwisely, or unethically, to speak out straightforwardly, rather than remain silent. If he has aspiration, if he is seeking self-improvement, his faults can be corrected. However, if they are concealed from him and no one tells him about their existence, they will live longer and he will suffer more for them. The fear of hurting his feelings is, in such a case, a foolish consideration. For it condones present error instead of correcting it. Yielding to this fear keeps the man imprisoned in a wrong view, where rejecting the fear might be the first step towards his liberation from it. #RandolphHarris 3 of 26

If sometimes a criticism is called for, if harsher experience is to be avoided, then let it be given by a constructive suggestion of the opposite beneficial quality only, not mentioning the actual negative one. However, if that is unlikely to be accepted and a plain warning seems the only way, then it should be uttered humbly and tactfully. In its most paralyzing form, fear expresses itself by the denial that any problem exists, or by a refusal to face the problem even after it has become apparent. Just as there are none so blind as those who will not see, so there are none so frightened as those who will not concede their fear. If it were volunteered, they cannot be helped because they do not seek help, nor would they accept it. In one case, for example, a couple came for treatment because the wife had never experienced “excitement.” It soon became evident from their personal histories that the husband had problems of his own. He was often impotent. However, that was not how he saw himself—his self-image was of a virile male, who because of fatigue or having had too much to drink, would on rare occasions be uninterested in pleasures of the flesh. It was his wife, he insisted, who could not function during pleasures of the flesh; he himself did very well, thank you. #RandolphHarris 4 of 26

His wife confirmed his description of the situation. Although this would seem to fly in the face of logic—surely, she must have been aware of his failures—the truth is that she saw his impotence as her fault and she therefore agreed with him that the problem was hers and hers alone. No effort was made to persuade the husband or wife that they both might be deceiving themselves. Instead, the husband was told during one counseling session that when he and his wife had pleasures of the flesh that night, he was to permit his wife to assume the superior position. He was given those instructions with full awareness that this variation, which ran contrary to his picture of himself as the dominant male, would put him under considerable tension and this make it unlikely that he could perform satisfactorily. The following day he reported that he had in fact failed to have any “excitement,” and he quickly explained that this happened because he had eaten to much dinner. He was reassured that this did not demean him as a man nor prove that he was incompetent with pleasures of the flesh. It did, however, demonstrate two things: that under stress he reacted as a human being, and that he was subject to occasional impotence. Once his fear of being something less than a man could be recognized for what it was—an adolescent image of the male as a athlete of pleasures of the flesh—he was relieved of the need to deny the existence of his very real problem. #RandolphHarris 5 of 26

When it occurred, he could acknowledge failure and, seeing it in perspective, he could concentrate on learning to cope with his emotional tensions. The calmer and more confident he became, the more certainly his body asserted itself—and the more readily his wife responded. She had been as much a victim of his tensions as he was. Once she was set free of that fear that she was the cause of their unhappiness with pleasures of the flesh, she was free to let a sense of physical pleasure rise to the surface of awareness and culminate naturally in “excitement.” Some couples make no attempt to deny the existence of a conflict involving pleasures of the flesh—on the contrary, they may fight openly about it—but they proceed to handle matters in ways that are just as self-defeating as total denial would be. One wife, for example, endured almost total frustration for years, furious with her husband because, as she saw it, “he didn’t know how to do ‘it’ right.” Nevertheless, she continued to engage in pleasures of the flesh whenever he made a request. “I feel used,” she admitted, “but I also feel that I’m doing my duty. He supports me and the children, and if this is what he wants, that’s what I do.” Like many women, she thought she was solving her marital problem by doing whatever could be expected of her as a wife, accepting a conventional, subservient role. However, the solution solved nothing; instead, it made a bad situation worse. #RandolphHarris 6 of 26

Over the years, her anger intensified, and her husband, who genuinely regretted his inability to be more effective with pleasures of the flesh, became increasingly impotent. Once in a while, however, he got back at his wife without being fully aware of what he was doing. When it was transparently clear that she did not want to have pleasures of the flesh but grimly agreed to it anyway, on occasions, he found himself able to prolong his performance almost indefinitely. A simpler, but no less negative, approach to pleasures of the flesh conflicts it taken by couples who use stereotypes to explain away all their difficulties. If a husband and wife cannot agree on how often to have pleasures of the flesh, for instance, empty generalizations make it easier for them to accept their differences. The wife can reassure herself that it is all her husband’s fault because, as everyone knows, “the more you give a man, the more he wants.” And her husband remains confident that his wife’s lack of enthusiasm is no reflection on him because, as everyone knows, “most women really do not have much interest in pleasures of the flesh.” Such stereotypes, incidentally, are remarkably versatile. They can be used to support opposite decisions. If most men have pleasures of the flesh on their minds almost all the time, a woman can either justify refusing her husband when she chooses to because it will make him more eager the next time—or justify obliging him as an act of kindness since he cannot help being in a state of her perpetual desire. #RandolphHarris 7 of 26

Her husband, on the other hand, can either accept her refusal as evidence of her female nature—or else if there is to be any chance of a response, he can refuse to take no for an answer since that same female nature requires a man to assert himself. False though they are, such sentiments are relied on by countless couples to suppress anxiety and to avoid having to search for the underlying source of their discontent. With this kind of sedation, some marriages can struggle along for years. Others cannot—and it is difficult to say for certain which outcome is the more unfortunate. One other ill-advised approach should be mentioned. A couple may openly acknowledge to each other that their relationship involving pleasures of the flesh is far from perfect and both agree that they want to do whatever they can to increase their pleasure. Their unity of purpose starts them in the right direction—but they immediately take a wrong turn. They pull pleasures of the flesh out of context; that is, they consider the physical act of intercourse as something in and of itself, a skill to be practiced and improved. The usual analogies are with dancing or tennis—but such comparisons are misleading. Pleasures of the flesh is not just a skill to be mastered, an activity to exercise the body, or a game to be played. At certain times and under certain circumstances, anu of these elements may dominate the total experience. However, to reduce pleasures of the flesh to a physical exchange is to strip it of richness and subtlety and, even more important, ultimately means robbing it of all emotional value. #RandolphHarris 8 of 26

Less pleasure, rather than more, is the almost certain outcome for a man and woman who make the mistake of compartmentalizing pleasures of the flesh as a physical act. As hypothetical example, and one that is not as farfetched as it might sound, consider the husband who decides that his wife’s inability to have more than one “exciting” experience is an indication that in some way she still is not totally free in the acceptance of the pleasures of her body. Since she is both a curious and suggestible person, she thinks it is a good idea when he suggests that she use something stimulating as a means of going into training, as it were, for more frequent “excitement.” As if making a helpful suggestion and not as if making an attack, to offer someone constructive criticism and to avoid its being taken as a reproof, one should phrase the sentence carefully. Criticism based on passion, anger, prejudiced bias, hatred, or ignorance is of little worth. If it is to be constructive and healthy, it must be based on fact ascertain in the way in which the scientist ascertains facts. If men are to judged at all, then they should be judged not by the understanding which others possess but by their own. The aspirant who resents being told that there is room to improve himself in a particular way, is unfit to be a disciple. If he takes a constructive helpfully meant criticism in such a way, what is the use of saying that he wants to life himself to a higher plane? A fair appraisal of anything or person should leaven appreciation with criticism. #RandolphHarris 9 of 26

One way to view yourself, you “organism,” is as a dynamic, ever-changing unit, bi-polar in its potential for expression. The picture that comes to mind is that of a teeter-totter, the child’s playground toy made up of a long board held up by a fulcrum in the middle. If you label one end “liberal,” to describe the open, uninhibited, expressive side of you and the other end “conservative” to describe the cautious, traditional, controlled side, the teeter-totter has one side that is touching the ground and the other side totally in the air. As any child knows, when the two side of the teeter-totter are balanced, it gently swings up and down, up and down, with one side counteracting the movement of the other. In the same way, when you are in balance, your teeter-totter is moving continually in dynamic interplay between your liberal and conservative potentials. One side of the teeter-totter goes up and that side comes into awareness; the needs of that side of your nature predominate. Circumstances change, and the other wide of the teeter-totter goes up. As long as you continue to live by the law of expression—expressing what you feel in your words, your behaviour, your fantasies—then you will continue to move in organismic balance. Neither the liberal nor the conservative tendencies will predominate or become fixated. #RandolphHarris 10 of 26

There are a number of ways to upset this balance. On the playground, a child can ask a friend to sit on his side of the board, this making it heavier. When that happens, the side with two children on it slams to the ground heavily and stays there. Another way is for one of the children to move closer to the middle; the change in weight causes the other side to go down and the child who moved closer stays up in the air. Note that in both cases, the result is a stoppage, a breakdown, no movement, no action, no “life.” Whether you upset the balance with external control, as with taking more weight on your side, or self-control, as with changing your position, the disruption is up to you. You must take responsibility for the situation, whether it is a situation of balance or imbalance. Responsibility in this sense means accepting that you are the cause of your own natural rhythmic balance, not depending on anyone else to establish controls for your behaviour. Thus, to say, “I will not physically hurt another because there are laws against it,” is an abdication of the responsibility. On the other hand, it is an acceptance of responsibility to say, “I am so angry, I want to hurt somebody, but I know that doing it will not make me feel less angry; besides, it is not productive and it just makes matters worse.” (Wanting to hurt someone is consider a medical or psychiatric emergency.) #RandolphHarris 11 of 26

Here the “liberal” side got an opportunity to express itself, but the “conservative” side was able to temper the expression with logic and restraint. We all have liberal and conservative sides; each side must accept the existence and role of the other. In the open acceptance and expression of both sides of your nature, you have a natural means by which to live your life with the greatest ease. This still afford you an abundance of challenges with a minimum of artificial controls imposed from without. External morality systems are artificial control devices which some of us believe are required to keep “immature” people from behaving “unwisely.” As parents and spouses, we feel the need to impose such systems on our children and mates because, deep down, we do not trust our own organismic balance and therefore cannot trust the balance of those we love. Prior to the work of scientific psychology, there is a need to find the human experience the science is to deal with. This corresponds to geologists picking up stones and paleontologist finding bones. Usually humans experience is bypassed, or squeezed into a data processable form by getting the responses of people to a protocol (id est, “answers to these questions are a measure of introversion”). The protocol may involve responses to a fixed array of lights or other equipment. The person is translated into a fixed pre-determined protocol which is then data-processable to arrive at some general statement of people. The protocol is fashioned to note certain given aspects, although many protocols do not even do this reliably or validly. #RandolphHarris 12 of 26

The individual’s life, spread though time, and different under different circumstances, is the original complete protocol. In this form it can be barely read, let alone statistically processed. Moreover, it is a protocol in its own unique language having a unique frame of reference. It is important to recognize at the outset that the phenomenology of an individual life is not scientific and only with some work can be processed into the mode of science. A human’s life I see as pre-scientific, although it may provide data for science as stones do to a geologist. I once set out to describe the World of a schizophrenic man. Much of my description consisted of quotes from the mane himself, for in some lucid moments he captured better than anyone what was happening to him. I deliberately avoided the categories of the usual case history. What was important to him went into it. For instance, the meaning of the things in his pockets was important to him. To check on the validity of this description of his World, I could but ask the subject of this schizophrenic World himself. He found it accurate except that his World fell in pieces and my description was coherent. He lacked the continuity of meaning we take for granted. There were deadly places of lostness in which he was not sure who he was, where he was, or what it all meant. To more accurately described his World, I would have to had to use a poetic form of language with horrible blank spaces—something in the mode of Joyce’s Ulysses. Validity in science is what can be commonly agreed upon. Validity in humanism is finally the subject himself. Science finds the common in varied. Phenomenology finds the varied in the common. #RandolphHarris 13 of 26

The man who offers himself to defend mankind at the same time writes: “Show me the one man who is good.” This perpetual vacillation is part of a nihilist rebellion. We rebel against the injustice done to ourselves and to mankind. However, in the moment of lucidity, when we simultaneously perceive the legitimacy of this rebellion and its futility, the frenzy of negation is extended to the very thing that we claimed to be defending. Not being able to atone for injustice by the elevation of justice, we choose to submerge it in an even greater injustice, which is finally confounded with annihilation. “The evil you have done me is too great, too great the evil I have done you, for it to be involuntary.” In order not to be overcome with self-hatred, one’s innocence must be proclaimed, an impossibly bold step for one man alone, for self-knowledge will prevent him. However, at least one can declare that everyone is innocent, though they may be treated as guilty. God is then the criminal. From the romantics to Mr. Lautreamont, there is, therefore, no real progress, except in style. Lautreamont resuscitates, once again, with a few improvements, the figure of the God of Abraham and the image of the Luciferian rebel. He places God “on a throne built of excrement, human and golden,” on which sits, “with imbecile pride, his body covered with a shroud made of unwashed sheets, he who styles himself the Creator.” “The horrible Eternal One with the features of a viper,” “the crafty bandit” who can be seem “stoking the fires in which young and old perish,” rolls drunkenly in the gutter, or seek base pleasures in the brothel. God is not dead, He has fallen. #RandolphHarris 14 of 26

Face to face with the fallen deity, Mr. Maldoror appears as a conventional cavalier in a black cloak. He is the Accursed. “Every must not witness the hideous aspect which the Supreme Being, with a smile of intense hatred, has granted me.” He has forsworn everything—“father, more, Providence, love, ideals—so as to think no longer of anything else but himself.” Racked with pride, this hero has all the illusions of the metaphysical dandy: “A face that is more than human, sad with the sadness of the Universe, beautiful as an act of suicide.” Like the romantic rebel, Mr. Maldoror, despairing of divine injustice, will take the side of evil. To cause suffering and, in causing it, to suffer, that is his lot. The Songs are veritable litanies of evil. Adolescence is the period when Jeder oscillates, or agonizes, between his script and his antiscript. He tries to follow his parents’ precepts, then rebels against them, only to find himself following their script programing. He sees the futility of that and falls back on the precepts again. By the end of his adolescence, when he graduates from college, for example, or gets out of the army, he has made some sort of decision; he either settles down and follows the precepts, or breaks away and slides downhill toward his script payoff. He is likely to continue on this chosen course until he reaches forty, when he goes through his second agony. If he has followed his parents’ precepts, he then tries to break out: he gets a divorce, quits his job, absconds with the profits, or at least dyes his hair and buys a guitar. If he has gone down with the script, he tries to reform by joining AA or going to a psychiatrist. #RandolphHarris 15 of 26

However, adolescence is the period when he first feels that he can make an autonomous choice: unfortunately, this feeling of autonomy may be part of the illusion. What he often does is merely alternate more or less violently between the precepts of the Parent in his parents, and the provocations of the Child they put forth. Teenage drug users are not necessarily rebelling against parental authority. They are rebelling against Parental slogans, but in so doing, they may simply be following the demonic come-ones, the “crazy Child,” of the very same parents. “I do not want my son drinking,” says mother as she takes a drink. If he does not drink, he is a good boy, a mama’s boy. If he does drink, he is a bad boy, but he is still a mama’s boy. “Don not let anybody up your skirt,” says father to his daughter, looking at the waitress’s skirt. Whichever way she plays it, she is still daddy’s girl. She can either shack up in high school and then reform, or remain a virgin until she is married and then have affairs later. However, somewhere in between, perhaps both the boy and the girl can make up their own minds and free themselves from their scripts and live life their own ways. Especially if they have permission to make up their own minds, and not “permission to make up your own mind (as long as you make it up my way).” Genetic intelligence is measured by the ability to move gene pools upward, angling always westward, pushing against, always being shaped by, reformed by, activated by, mutated by spin-pressure from The Future. #RandolphHarris 16 of 26

When we move down and back East across the Atlantic Ocean, the truth of the Occidental Ascendance becomes comically clear. The Greenwich time zones are in centuries. If Boston is two hundred years before Los Angeles—no accident that the current Neurological Capital of the planet has been given the high-altitude title “City of the Angels,” then surely, we see that London is four hundred years back and down. What, in truth, can we expect from England? Elizabethan Style? Repetitious tradition? Culture? Only in the sense of a class structure which penalizes new genetic intelligence’ in favour of inherited privilege. Parent-child inheritance of bureaucratic advantages always drives the superior—fatigue genes into migration. This is not a political complaint, but a neurogenetic I.Q. test. The genetically active, whether descended form the sperm-ova of prince or pauper—every gene-pool contains its princes and paupers, always migrate West. Those who rely on power remain in the Eastern capital. If England is a comic opera, what can he say about France? Paris is a museum of dusty Louis XIV grandeur. And what, in relevant charity for the past, can be said about the lessons that an intelligent terrestrial primate can learn today in Lisbon? Madrid? Rome? Athens? Cairo? Beirut? Jerusalem? There is this to be said for NATO nations. They are the most Western—the freest and smartest gene-pools of the Old Continent. #RandolphHarris 17 of 26

Examine a map of the European land mass. Colour in blue those countries which are democratic, which respect human rights, which outlaw torture, which allow any cultural or individual experimentation. You will see that the blue countries cluster nervously at the Western borders of the huge, European hemisphere. Notice as you go East, you find more government restrictions, ore centralization, more contempt for the individual, ore commitment to tradition and familial-dictatorship. To live east of Denver is to fail the intelligence test. One winter I traveled from San Diego to Buffalo and told the shivering natives, “Buffalo is an intelligence test you have failed. So you have to stay here and repeat Buffalo IA.” Can there possibly be one intelligent person left in North Ireland? Uganda? Any Ugandan with more than eight billion neurons surely has swum a river or climbed a mountain to flee from that jungle of primitive barbarism. Buffalo is an intelligence test you have failed. A sociologist or anthropologist observes that most members of a given social class or society share many emotional habits. These emotional responses differ, however, from typical emotional responses of people in other classes or societies. For example, the exposure of woman’s bosom typically arouses no erotic interest in some African tribesman, whereas it may exist a middle-class American man. #RandolphHarris 18 of 26

Part of the total socialization process—the efforts of parents, teachers, and others to mold and shape the typical personality for that society—is devoted to ensuring that the growing children acquire the appropriate emotional habits. It is desired by the society that most members of a group perceive and interpret aspects of the World in a uniform way, and react with similar emotional responses. This uniformity is achieved in part through formal education—children know that pain and fear are associated with danger, and so their elders and instructors teach them to interpret many things as dangerous. It may also be achieved less formally through experience within the family that have the effect of training most members of the society to react in a uniform way to certain classes of stimuli. He who spares the bad hurts the good. Yet the critic, who is at the same time philosophically minded, will always seek to be constructive and will only show up the bad where he can also show us the good. It is his business as a student of philosophy to be constructive. If he prepares the way for it with an offering or praise, he will make it easier to make a needful criticism. When it comes from outside criticism is rarely acceptable for it is then supposed to have a hostile motivation. Neither the spirit of genuine truth-seeking nor that of friendly constructive helpfulness will be correctly understood; they will only be misunderstood. If they are superiors or at least equals, and if they have the courage to criticize shortcomings, help in growth come also from friends. #RandolphHarris 19 of 26

For the Sacramento Fire Department, being a firefighter is an inherently human endeavor, which requires perseverance, sacrifice, and tenacity. They have to face life threatening situations daily and maintain the motivation requires to endure the physical and mental hardships and danger. The Sacramento Fire Department has a historical ethic, are loyal, possess integrity, believe that duty comes first, and provides self-less service. With a great patriotic love for American, they bear true faithful allegiance to the Constitution of the United States of America, their family, their crew, and all other beings. “We have one daughter. She is fifteen months old. If I hadn’t been injured, she wouldn’t be here. You see, the night we figure she was conceived, I looked at my work schedule and I would have been at work, and it never would have happened. This was elven months after I was injured, near the end of my leave. So, in a sense, I was glad to have been injured and to have been home that night. When I met my wife, she was working as a part-time secretary at a law firm and she was moonlighting at nice as a waitress. I stopped in at the diner on my way home, and this young lady, who was a friend of mind said, “do you want to go somewhere else to eat?” I said, “No. I like the food here. I don’t want to leave.” She said, “Ah, come on, I know this new café nearby. The food is great.” We drove over to this fancy café, and my future wife was working there, and I started talking to her. I asked her to go out to breakfast. #RandolphHarris 20 of 26

“The next morning, before going to the law firm, I picked her up and took her to my favorite diner. She was very sky and barely ate a thing. After that, I dropped her off at work. We started dating. I’d pick her up after work and we’d go to breakfast, or she’d come to the firehouse and bring me a sandwich or whatever. We dated a little over a year, then we got engaged and lived together for over eight months, and then we were married. I was already a captain at the rescue company. I don’t think she understood how dangerous it was. I wouldn’t talk about it. If I came home and had a close call, I wouldn’t say anything. I didn’t want her to know what could happen. She thought being a police officer was dangerous and that firefighting may be dangerous, but it wasn’t going to happen to her husband. I explained what a recuse company did, but she really had no idea what the fire department was about. Now she’s a real fan, she cuts pictures out of the paper, and she mounted different awards for me on the wall. She’ll listen to a scanner once in a while. Yet even today, if I mention a truck company, she’ll say, ‘Is that the one with the hose or the one with the ladders?’ She’s not working now, she’s staying home with the baby. My little baby is fascinated by my uniform. The kids in the neighborhood say, ‘Hey, Mr. X, did you go to any fires?’ I feel good about that. My mother is really proud about me being a captain. My father didn’t have a chance to see it. He died before I made lieutenant. I was listening to the home watch, and I heard an ambulance go there for a heart attack. By the time I got to the hospital, he was dead. He would have been proud. I feel good making the promotions that I have. #RandolphHarris 21 of 26

“I wouldn’t take a medical disability pension. As soon as I was injured, the guys were saying, ‘Hey, you’ve got it made. Get the heck out.’ I was like, ‘For what? What the heck am I going to do?’ I don’t want to go home and sit on my duff for the rest of my life. Why would I leave this job and go work at another job? I like this job. It’s been my life, it’s been good to me. I enjoy it, and I always look forward to doing it. I’ll keep doing it, if it doesn’t kill me. And if it does, I know that my family will be well taken care of. If I were out selling insurance and got killed in a car accident, that company is not going to look out for my family the way the city fire department does. I’ve made too many friends in here to leave. My whole life has been screwed up working the graveyard shifts. I’m having a hard time now, working a five-day week in fire prevention, because for sixteen years I hadn’t been doing it. You get used to never being off on a holiday, and it’s kind of weird now. I mean, I can tell friends and family that I’ll be there Christmas, rathe than, ‘I’m sorry, I gotta work,’ or ‘I’ve gotta leave early, I have to work tonight.’ I just enjoy the job too much to leave. When I first went to Rescue, they had a trust fund, set up by some guy years ago, supposedly to give money to victims of fire, also to children and poor people in the area. Well, I talked it over with the lawyer, and because Rescue goes citywide, we could pick anybody in the city. We would go around to different schools and pick children out, talk it over with the teachers, and have a big Christmas party for them. We would bring them over and buy a whole set of clothes, and give them toys and all. We would have a Santa Claus there. A couple of the kids kept stealing coins from our soda machine, and we’d have to smack their hands, but that was okay. #RandolphHarris 22 of 26

“The year I went and delivered the checks, and I looked around, and hell, they were doing better than I was. You could tell the mother was going to spend the money on herself. She had a Neo QLED 8K color TV, but the kids looked like ragpickers. I decided that from then on, we’d get stuff for the kids. We went to the schools, and the teachers know which kids aren’t dressed properly and who need more than others. We got the sizes from the parents, and we went out and did the shopping. Clothes were the big things. Our wives would wrap the stuff up, we got turkeys and then a hotel in our district would cook them for us, and the wives would come in and help. They would dress up as elves, and we had a guy come down from the water tower like Santa Claus. The whole firehouse did this, still do it, the decorations and everything. It made me feel good, knowing that it was the kids’ Christmas. I mean, if the kids weren’t going to get this, they weren’t going to get much.” All members of the Sacramento Fire Department are loyal, dedicated to duty, respectful, selfless, honourable, possess a great deal of integrity and display personal courage in the face of danger and adversity. You can save lives by making a donation to the Sacramento Fire Department. As a reminder, parents, pleasure teach your children love America and be patriotic citizens and to buy goods and services made in America. It is also important to respect law and order and treat your elders with respect. #RandolphHarris 23 of 26

In 2024, Americans spent $100 billion on Japanese cars. In an effort to help America pull through the massive national deficit, please buy American made cars. American made cars used to be the envy of the World and because American car brands are offering a wide range of options, from family SUVs to electric vehicles and luxury sedans, we are now seeing a resurging interest. American made cars are equal or superior to those made overseas. The Chevrolet Trax, for instance, is a well-designed, fuel efficient, and safe SUV. And as you know, there is no better car on Earth than 1950-1970s American Muscle Car. Americans make sure superior product, but we are buying things from other nations. American food imports have risen by 300 percent since 1999. American farmland declined by nearly 20 million acres between 2017 and 2022. As of 2022, there were 880.1 million acres of land dedicated to farming, compared to 900.1 million in 2017. The data shows there are now little more than 1.9 million farms in the country. Americans and American corporations spent $136 billion on food and beverages from other countries. It is a national security risk to lose American Farms and farmers. If there is a war, and most of our meat, produce, poultry, dairy, and fruit is coming from foreign counties, we stand the risk of starving. With war breaking out all over the World, in these uncertain times, it is very important to bring American farms back. We can protect American farmland and support American farmers by buying American made beef, poultry, dairy, and produce. As money flows, it influences further investment. #RandolphHarris 24 of 26

Save the land that sustains us by protecting American farmland. Once the land is built on, we lose it forever. Also, to ensure that we have farmland for future use, we need to start limiting the number of people allowed to immigrant to America. Perhaps with the immigrants we do allow into America, there needs to be a diversity program to make sure we have a populations that equally represents all races of people. If Americans continue to spend money on American products, then more need to be made to keep up the inventory. When investors notice these goods are selling, it gives them the confidence to pour more money into that local business. It shows that people want these goods made in America and pressures investors to keep these goods and services in America. The jobs stay here, the business stays in American, wages naturally increase, and more money is invested to keep up with demand. This reduces the burden on the taxpayer. When you support American businesses, that money stays in our economy and can help to reduce the national debt. The government creates debt by borrowing from businesses in the private sector or from foreign countries. It also increases the national debt by spending more than it gains in tax revenue in a fiscal year. When people shop locally, more tax money stays in the economy and goes to the government. This way, it keeps more money in our national economy and keeps more jobs located in American which also sends more taxes to the government, which can again help to reduce the national debt. #RandolphHarris 25 of 26

When you buy foreign goods, these companies usually have lighter tax loads or exemptions, meaning less money for the nation debt, plus you are helping to strengthen these foreign nations by send more money overseas. Buying American made products is also better for the environment and helps to reduce the carbon footprint because these products do not have to travel nearly as far. Furthermore, American companies and manufacturers are held to much higher standards in regard to pollution. American companies have to be more careful about air, land, and water pollution and have proper ways to dispose of waste. Moreover, please remember to respect law and order and treat your elders with the utmost dignity and kindness possible. And take your education seriously so that you will be successful in life and make your family proud. It is inborn in the human minds to wish to know. If this begins with the endless surface questions of a child’s curiosity, if it continues into deeper questions of a scientist’s probing investigation, it cannot and does not stop there. For the higher part of the mind will eventually come into unfoldment, that union of abstract reflective thought with mystical intuition, which is true intelligence, which needs and sees a view of the whole of things. And so, the knowing faculty enters the realm of philosophy. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible with liberty and justice for all. #RandolphHarris 26 of 26

The Winchester Mystery House

Experience an unforgettable journey back to the time of kings and queens with this entry ticket for The Winchester Mansion in Santa Clara, California which was the residence of Sarah L. Winchester. Take advantage of this fascinating experience. After tour, there will be time enjoy the mansion’s splendor at your own pace. You might even discover secret passages.

Please come and enjoy a delicious meal in Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, and wonder through the miles of hallways in the World’s most mysterious mansion.

For further information about tours, including group tours, weddings, school events, birthday party packages, facility rentals, and special events please visit the website: https://winchestermysteryhouse.com/

BMW’s slogan, “The Ultimate Driving Machine,” isn’t just a marketing phrase—it’s a promise. BMW cars are designed with the driver in mind, offering features like rear-wheel drive, near-perfect weight distribution, and precise steering. These elements combine to create a driving experience that is both engaging and satisfying.

For the Best Prices in Town: https://bmw.niello.com/