Although, many people think life is hard, we are less alone when we realize we are not alone. Of course, life it hard, it is supposed to be because life is a test. However, our Saviour always understands. Life being is part of the Heavenly Father’s plan. The trials we face do not mean that the plan is failing. They are part of the plan meant to help us seek God. We become more like Him when we endure patiently. Sometimes, amid our struggles and thoughts of our shortcomings, we forget the point of life’s trials: to turn us to Christ and to our Heavenly Father. “Wherefore, how great the importance to make these things known unto the inhabitants of the Earth, that they may know that there is no flesh that can dwell in the presence of God, save it be through the merits, and mercy, and grace of the Holy Messiah, who layeth down His life according to the flesh, and taketh it again by the power of the Spirit, that he may bring to pass the resurrection of the dead, being the first that should rise,” reports 2 Nephi 2.8. The Saviour knows our struggles in detail. He knows you great potential to grow in faith, hope, and charity. Heaven can give us strength and wisdom beyond our own. No matter tribulation and no matter delays in promised blessings, we can be of good cheer; for Christ has overcome the World, and we are with Him. If the Saviour was standing here today, He would express His endless love for you, His complete confidence in you. He would tell you that you, “do all things through him who strengthens me,” reports Philippians 4.13. #RandolphHarris 1 of 23
Life is sometimes hard because of manipulators. We believe that the modern manipulator has developed from our “scientific” emphases as well as from our marketplace orientation, which sees humans as things to know about, to influence, and to manipulate. Witness the presidential campaigns or any manor election to see how the electorate is analyzed and fed images designed to influence their votes based on opinion polls. The candidates are frequently advised not to reveal too much of their true selves, but to display themselves as metaphors of whatever the current poll indicates will satisfy public opinion—a televised visit to a family farm, a picture of the candidate hugging an elderly person at a retirement community. Wearing a hard hat. A military helmet. A baseball cap. A thing. Things can be dissected or manipulated without damage to their natures, but a human being is not a thing. People cannot be dissected without being destroyed; they cannot be manipulated without being harmed. Yet, the very objective of the marketplace is to achieve this “thingness” in people! In the marketplace, people are no longer persons but customers. To the sales manager, they are prospects; to the tailor they are suits; to the bond salesman they are bank accounts. Even at hair salons, where a rather intimate service is performed, the customer is a tipper. #RandolphHarris 2 of 23
All of this tends to depersonalize us and deprive us of our individuality, and we resent it. We all want particularity, but that is not what we have when we are hooked into our commercial World, where the quality of individuality is destroyed. When the con artists of the selling games cajole us with stock phrases, meaning not a bit of it, we resent it and them. We are all in the same boat. We all have the manipulative potentials we have come to resent in others. We have at our disposals a variety of manipulative actions and intentions. Sometimes we are “avoiding and withdrawing.” Sometimes “blaming and attacking.” Sometimes “pleasing and placating.” We seem different to different people and different manipulations to others. This is the reason that we cannot judge someone by another’s opinion. Too often, another’s opinion of someone is based on having seen only certain sides of that person. There is often a lot of manipulation that takes place in marriages. A man name Jason admitted to committing adultery. However, unlike many other adulterers he knows, he never has really cared for the people he has affairs with. He mostly lusts after other women, as long as he is able to like them. Jason admits that there must be more than a physical attraction for the affair to last more than once or twice, and he has never had a so-called “one-night stand.” Sometimes people are unwilling to have an affair with other people because they do not find them as attractive as their spouse. At other times, people just want to have an affair because they are in a foreign land and think it is stimulating or romantic. #RandolphHarris 3 of 23
When a person discloses that they are having an affair, it is not always about being honest and getting rid of guilt. It could be a manipulative way of trying to get their spouse to leave them. While having an affair, some people are as determined as they can be—they want out of their marriage. Getting out of a marriage does not mean that one is looking to remarry someone else, but having someone to go through a divorce with helps. Especially when children are involved, a divorce is a really very, very heavy thing. When having serial affairs, people do realize that they will never experience commitment nor peace, but they still do it. It is because they love the ballet. For a moment, one is into oneself, and all of their being is expressed. Pleasures of the flesh can also be another reason why people have affairs. Sometimes the same love style gets boring because one loses motivation and knows what to expect, and this may be the initial reason they start going elsewhere. Stimulating creativity in the bedroom is not always a possibility for everyone because there is not enough room in the house. In the act of consoling one another, some people even have affairs with their siblings as a way of releasing frustrations. Others have affairs with their adult kids. With cases of incest, from the research conducted, these people do not feel guilty about having affairs with family members. The only concerns they have are “creating a line of bleeders or idiots.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 23
Genetic distortion is a great taboo against incest. The less traumatic kinds of incest involve, first, brother and sister; and second, father and daughter. By far the most traumatic type of incest is mother-son. The last type may be the least frequent of all, as far as overt expression of pleasures of the flesh is concerned. However, a domineering, smothering type of mother is responsible for what can with some fairness be described as a psychosocial incest relationship. Males can be crippled in this situation without ever having been to bed with their mothers. As adults, they suffer from sexual dysfunction, particularly primary or secondary impotence. In terms of explicit sexual expression of incest, it is important to distinguish between single incidents and continuing relationships. These two references during the symposium to incest were of single incidents and these are either readily forgotten or relegated to the past with a minimum od distress. On the other hand, incestuous relationships that have been maintained for long periods of time and that have not been psychosocially released when physical activity is terminate, cause the greatest difficulty in later life. One other factor ought to be mentioned here. When infidelity has been absorbed into a pattern of life and when the individual has the freedom to act in accordance with private needs, it is not at all unusual to have an incestuous opportunity utilized in response to the impulse of the moment. #RandolphHarris 5 of 23
The instance given of the man with his sister, seeking solace and support in terms of his own personal insecurities and his fears of his wedding night, is quite understandable and probably not particularly traumatic for either brother or sister. Incest may seem like a far cry from where we are today in America. However, it is akin to, “Love is love.” Incest has become more prevalent in entertainment. Incest is explicitly condemned in the Old Testament and the New Testament. Leviticus 18.6 sates, “None of you shall approach any that is near of kin to him, to uncover their nakedness: I am the Lord.” In 1 Corinthias, Paul rebukes the church, saying, “It is actually reported that there is sexual immprtality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for man has his father’s wife” (Leviticus 18.8). Life is difficult for everyone. Therefore, take the trials of life and turn to Jesus Christ. He believes in us. He will strengthen us and lift our burdens. You can overcome the spiritually and emotionally exhausting plagues of the World. Despite the distractions and distortions that swirl around us, you can find true rest—meaning relief and peace—even amid your most vexing problems. Even if it is not what we wanted, to endure faithfully, it is essential to accept God’s will. What is Jesus has wavered in His commitment to do His Father’s will? His Atonement would not have become accomplished. The dead would not be resurrected. The blessings of immortality and eternal life would not be. However, Jesus did endure. He paid for all our sins and suffering and paid the price for our return to our Father. Because He endured with faith, each of us can enjoy the blessings of eternal life. #RandolphHarris 6 of 23
Expect no favourable opinion of spiritual truth from a man who looks at life through the medium of the senses alone, whose reason is enslaved by them, and whose intuition is effaced by them. To depend on feeling as a guide to truth is to depend on a truncated method which is inadequate to the task. The only complete basis for our enquiry is feeling plus reason, the only results which possess unquestionable validity are those achieved by feeling plus reason. The power of intuition alone can enable us to discriminate between the real and the unreal and it alone can eliminate all doubts by eliminating contradictions. There is no reason why itself should not be appeased. This intellectual power is not to be allowed to crush the Heaven-born intuitional sense by its sheer wight but is to be fused with it. The intellect can present opinions—some very plausible and logical, others very weighty and fact-supported. However, only the intuition can penetrate those layers after layer of spiritual experience which reveal the truth about man’s link with God. If the intellect’s workings are not warmed by the heart’s movements, it can only approach the reflected images of truth, not truth of itself. The disputations which follow the activity of intellect melt away in the harmonies which follow the upwelling of intuition. The sin of the intellectual is when he allows intellect to block intuitive feeling, to serve only the animal body or to disregard the testimony of all those who, since early antiquity, have solved the problem of being and experienced the mind at its best level. Such men may have the finest brains, the greatest erudition, but themselves remain uncorrupted by these possession. #RandolphHarris 7 of 23
The intellect is not competent to establish the existence of God, which only a higher faculty can know and consequently make any valid assertions about. However, neither is it competent to disprove the existence of God since it can disprove only those finite matters which it can deal with: God, being, infinite, is outside its reach in every way. The intellect cannot be used to ascertain the ultimate truth without becoming involved at the end in inexplicable contradictions. Some of them are: There is an ego—there is no ego. The World is real—the World is unreal. Any idea or statement about fundamental being, whether of man or cosmos, can be countered by its opposite. If not accompanied by the balancing cultivation of the intuition, the simple education of the intellect, whether as a hoarding of information or a training in reasoning, becomes mere vanity. What we need is a third point of view which shall fall into neither of these two extremes of emotional credulity or rational scepticism, whilst reconciling what is sound in both. This exists in the intuitive point of view. There is always a risk that in taking a too intellectual view of the Universe and in practising a too methodical system of yoga, the aspirant may get caught in the machinery of both intellect and method. If he is unable to extricate himself then, whatever benefit he derives from both will always be on the lower plane. The transcendental insight which he seeks will then be as elusive as ever. If he seeks guidance concerning the correct course to pursue, he can better get it from the still center of his being than from the restless chopping of his intellect. It is better to be intelligent when he is searching among ideas and doctrines than to be credulous—otherwise he may mistake human absurdity for divine mystery—but he can be so only if intuitive feeling is at work along with the reasoned thinking. #RandolphHarris 8 of 23
His own mind acts as a medium which interprets each experience, event, object. Hence it colours necessarily if unwittingly or even reshapes what is received by consciousness. And in the case of the Real, the end results for him is a paradox. He cannot know It without transcending himself. He cannot transcend himself without rising above the knower-and-known duality. Where intuitive feeling will guide him aright to his best decisions, calculating intellect will not infrequently step in with doubts or fears and rob him of them. The contribution of intellect is indispensable. However, it is not enough. It leaves a most important part of the psyche—the intuition—still untouched. Let us consider some demands: I should always be understanding, sympathetic, and helpful. I should be able to melt the heart of a criminal. Again, this is not entirely fantastic. Rare people, such as the priest in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, have achieved this spiritual power. I had a patient to whom the figure of the priest was an important symbol. She felt she should be like him. However, she did not, at this juncture, have any of the attitudes or qualities which enabled the priest to act as he did toward the criminal. She could act charitably at times because she felt that she should be charitable, but she did not feel charitable. As a matter of fact, she did not feel much of anything for anybody. She was constantly afraid least some body take advantage of her. Whenever she could not find an article, she thought it had been stolen. #RandolphHarris 9 of 23
Without being aware of it, her neurosis had made her egocentric and bent on her own advantage—all of which was covered up by a layer of compulsive humility and goodness. Was she at that time willing to see these difficulties in herself, and to work at them? Of course not. Here, too, it was a question of a blind issuing of orders which could lead only to self-deception or unfair self-criticism. In trying to account for the amazing blindness of the shoulds, we again have to leave many loose ends. This much, however, is understandable from their origin in the search for glory and their function to make oneself over into one’s idealized self: the premise on which they operate is that nothing should be, or is, impossible for oneself. If that is so, then logically, existing conditions need not be examined. This trend is most apparent in the application of demands directed toward the past. Concerning the neurotic’s childhood, it is not only important to elucidate the influences which set his neurosis going, but also to recognize his present attitudes toward the adversities of the past. These are determined less by the good or the bad done to him than by his present needs. If he has developed, for instance, a general need to be all sweetness and light, he will spread a golden haze over his childhood. If he has forced his feelings into a straight jacket, he may feel that he does love his parents because he should love them. If he generally refuses to assume responsibility for his life, he may put all the blame for all his difficulties on his parents. The vindictiveness accompanying this latter attitude, in turn, may be out in the open or repressed. #RandolphHarris 10 of 23
He may finally go to the opposite extreme, and seemingly assume an absurd amount of responsibility for himself. In this case, he may have become aware of the full impact of intimidating and cramping early influences. His conscious attitude is quite objective and plausible. He may point out, for instance, that his parents could not help behaving the way they did. The patient sometimes wonders himself why he does not feel any resentment. One of the reasons for the absence of conscious resentment is a retrospective should that interests us here. Though he is aware that what has been perpetrated on him was quite sufficient to crush anybody else, he should have come out of it unscathed. He should have had the inner strength and fortitude not to let these factors affect him. So, since they did, it proved that he was no good from the beginning. In other words, he is realistic up to a point; he would say: “Sure, that was a cesspool of hypocrisy and cruelty.” However, then, his vision becomes blurred: “Although I was helplessly exposed to this atmosphere, I should have come out of it like a lily out of a swamp.” If he could assume a matter-of-fact responsibility for his life instead of such a spurious one, he would think differently. He would admit that the early influences could not fail to mold him in an unfavourable way. And he would see that, no matter what the origin of his difficulties, they do disturb his present and future life. For this reason, he had better muster his energies to outgrown them. #RandolphHarris 11 of 23
Instead, he leaves the whole matter at the completely fantastic and futile level of his demand that he should not have bene affected. It is a sign of progress when the same patient at a later period reverses his position and rather gives himself credit for not having been entirely crushed by the early circumstances. The attitude toward childhood is not the only area in which the retrospective should operate with this deceptive counterfeit of responsibility, and the same resultant futility. One person will maintain that he should have helped his friend by voicing a frank criticism; another that he should have brought up his children without their becoming neurotic. Naturally, we all regret having failed in this or that regard. However, we can examine why we failed, and learn from it. We must also recognize that in view of the neurotic difficulties existing at the time of the “failures,” we may actually have done the best we could at that time. However, for the neurotic, to have done his best is not good enough. In some miraculous way, he should have done better. Similarly, the realization of any present shortcoming is unbearable for anybody harassed by dictatorial should. Whatever the difficulty, it must be removed quickly. How this removal is effected varies. The more a person lives in imagination, the more likely it is that he will simply spirit away the difficulty. Thus, a patent who discovered in herself a colossal drive for being the power behind the throne, and who saw how this drive had operated in her life, was convinced by the next day that this drive was now entirely a matter of the past. She should not be power ridden; so she was not. After such “improvements” occurred frequently, we realized that the drive for actual control and influence was but one expression of the magic power she possessed in her imagination. #RandolphHarris 12 of 23
Personality refers to the characteristics ways in which an individual experiences and acts in life situations. Action affects not only the external environment, but also the health of the body. A Physical-Health-Promoting Personality. The meaningful question to ask is “What regimen, what ways of behaving in the World will promote health?” The most obvious answer to this question relates to such matters as diet, rest, and sensible exercise. People who have been adequality educated in general hygiene will follow a diet that maintains health, energy, and weight; they will care for their teeth; they will sleep enough to restore their energy; and they will exercise enough to keep fit. A more subtle factor in the production and maintenance of physical health is morale, or “spirit.” Increasing evidence indicates that when persons find their loves challenging and satisfying, their bodies work better and they resist infectious illness better. Meaningful work, enjoyable leisure, love and friendship are inexpensive healthy insurance. When I was sick and spent so much time noticing what was going on in me, in both my body and mind (could I be without either one?), and tried to write about it, I struggled much too hard before I have up. Intent on my goal, I was trying to force it, instead of considering whether this goal was possible. At last, it was forced on me that the only way I could do it would be to write each aspect on a separate transparent sheet, lay all the sheets on tip of each other and hold them against the light so people could look through them. Then all they would see was muddle. And before the first sheet had been written, something in it and all the others would have changed. To have any fixed ideas about myself is nonsense: I can only notice what is going on in me now. #RandolphHarris 13 of 23
Saint-Just gives an impassioned speech in which he calls for the death of Louis XVI. He believes the king to stand in the way of the French Revolution and enlightenment ideas. The only purpose of Saint-Just’s speech is, once and for all, to block every egress for the King except the one leading to the scaffold. If, in fact, the premises of The Social Contract are accepted, this is logically inevitable. At last, after Saint-Just, “kings will flee to the desert, and nature will resume her rights.” If passed judgment on Louis XVI or if it pronounced a security measure, it was quite pointless of the Convention to vote a reservation and say that it did not intend to create a precedent. In doing so, it refused to face the consequences of its own principles and tried to camouflage, with shocking hypocrisy, its real purpose, which was to found a new form of absolutism. Jacques Roux, at least was speaking the truth of the times when he called the King Louis the Last, thus indicating that the real revolution, which had already been accomplished on the economic level, was then taking place on the philosophic plane and that it implied a twilight of the gods. Theocracy was attacked in principle in 1789 and killed in its incarnation in 1793. Brissot was right in saying: “The most solid monument to our revolution is philosophy.” On January 21, with the murder of the King-priest, was consummated what has significantly been called the passion of Luuis XVI. It is certainly a crying scandal that the public assassination of a weak but goodhearted man has significantly been called the passion of Louis XVI. #RandolphHarris 14 of 23
It is certainly a crying scandal that the public assassination of a weak but goodhearted man has been presented as a great moment in French history. That scaffold marked no climax—far from it. However, the fact remains that, by its consequences, the condemnation of the King is at the crux of our contemporary history. It symbolizes the secularization of our history and the disincarnation of the Christian God. Up to now, God played a part in history through the medium of the kings. However, His representative in history has been killed, for there is no longer a king. Therefore, there is nothing but a semblance of God, relegated to the Heaven of principles. The revolutionaries may well refer to the Gospel, but in fact they dealt a terrible blow to Christianity, from which it has not yet recovered. It really seems as if the execution of the King, followed, as we know, by hysterical scenes of suicide and madness, took place in complete awareness of what was being done. Louis XVU seems, sometimes, to have doubted his divine right, though he systematically rejected any projected legislation which threatened his faith. However, from the moment that he suspected or knew his fate, he seemed to identify himself as his language betrayed, with his divine mission, so that his language betrayed, with his divine mission, so that there would be no possible doubt that the attempt on his person was aimed at the King-Christ, the incarnation of the divinity, and not at the craven flesh of a mere man. His bedside book in the Temple was the Imitation. #RandolphHarris 15 of 23
The calmness and perfection that this man of rather average sensibility displayed during his last moments, his indifference to everything of this World, and, finally, his brief display of weakness on the solitary scaffold, so far removed from the people whose ears he had wanted to reach, while the terrible rolling of the drum drowned his voice, give us the right to imagine that it was not Capet who died, but Louis appointed by divine right, and that with him, in a certain manner, died temporal Christianity. To emphasize this sacred bond, his confessor sustained him, in his moment of weakness, by remining him of his “resemblance” to the God of Sorrows. And Louis XVI recovers himself and speaks in the language of this God: “I shall drink,” he says, “the cup to the last dregs.” Then he commits himself, trembling, into the ignoble hands of the executioner. This holds an important lesson for our future. The importance of the individual will no longer lie in the state’s domain of political power. I see them as important ethnic and cultural centers. Evolution is speeding up. The 21st Century evolution has accelerated with a rapidity that is almost impossible for us to understand. For three billion years, the intelligence of life forms on this planet grew with almost invisible acceleration. It took more than two billion years to slowly evolve the muscular technologies that propelled animals a few miles per hour and which produced the muscular force of an elephant. #RandolphHarris 16 of 23
Then, with the mechanical revolution, the curve rockers upward. The horizontal axis of is time indexed in billions of years. The vertical/energy axis can be calibrated in terms of number of inventions, energy produced and consumed mobility in terms of speed and altitude, expansions of perception—microscopic or telescopic. Whatever energy index we chart, the climb rate shot up almost vertically after 1946. The human species is riding an energy-intelligence boom that has dramatically changed our conceptions of evolution. Darwinian theories be blind natural selection are now seen as primitive chauvinism of 19th Century British imperialism. Next, consider the Genetic Highway. Here, the horizontal axis scopes the neurographic time zones—from primitive, prehistoric Africa to current California. The vertical axis is calibrated in the DNA time. The dom-species in Africa is hunter-gatherer. The Africans are thus two million years behind California—the Western Front. It is interesting to observe that Africa lacks the more civilized gene-colonies and that Europe and Russia and China lack the mammalian-primitive gene-colonies. Europe is left brain. African is right brain. The genetic wave, that in less than a century hurtled North Americans through three stages of evolution, was gleefully surfed by several Evolutionary Agents. One of the most successful was Henry Ford. In one generation, Agent Ford took a species of domesticated primates from behind horse drawn plows and poppled them into mechanical ground-vehicles constructed of steel, glass, and rubber—thus multiplying their intelligence. #RandolphHarris 17 of 23
Mr. Ford put his countrymen and countrywomen into the driver’s seat! He offered the driver’s seat—Throne of Self-Actualization—to the average working hum-ants of his gene pool. It came equipped with several self-actualizing technologies permitting neurological choice and stimulating Intelligence Increase. The steering wheel allowed individuals to select their own directional course, and to change it at will. The accelerator allowed individuals to select their speed—an Einsteinian concept, indeed. Brakes added another dimension to self-control. Gear shifts. Transmission. Self-starters. Fluid power. Dynaflow. Overdrive. Convertibles. We see the birth of a new language of self-determination. Succsing generations demanded for their bodies and their brains exactly those power-freedom—mobility characteristics that were built into our cars. As the greatest stroke of genetic public relations, Mr. Ford called his invention the automobile! This word means self-mover. Evolutionary Agents all over the galaxy smiled knowingly when the term automobile flashed out through the Van Allen Belt. Free-wheeling Americans called it the self-mover! Old World Europeans, of course, did not catch on. It was called horseless carriage in England. Coche in Spain. Carro in Mexico. Voiture in France. Meccina in Italy. The genetic implications of auto-mobile were endless. Average people could move their bodies or their brains where they wanted to go. Now that cars are starting to drive all by themselves, I guess we will go back to calling them automobiles and self-movers. The evolution of intelligence is a function of velocity and mobility. Henry Ford and his fellow agents rocketed the Genetic Intelligence Quotient of the species. When the technological primates climbed into the driver’s seat, they were soon off to the moon—carrying their automobile bodies and their automobile brains. #RandolphHarris 18 of 23
A critical part of public safety is putting knowledge to work. Skill development is an active learning process (learning by doing), and the student’s intimate involvement in the learning experience dramatically increases retention. Have you ever noticed during sports competition that the individual or team that tries first often loses? Your ability to cope with challenges of fighting fires depends greatly on your level of physical fitness. Physical fitness not only determines how well you perform in fighting fires, but also enhances your quality of life, improves your productivity, and brings about beneficial physical and mental changes. Your physical fitness benefits both the Sacramento Fire Department and you. The Sacramento Fire Department needs physically fit firefighters, and when you are fit, you are more likely to lead an enjoyable, productive life. As a member of the Sacramento Fire Department, how important is your level of physical fitness? How does your fitness affect your unit’s readiness? You are probably tired of hearing how important it is to be in great shape as a firefighter, but it is a basic truth. You do not have to be the best at everything, but you definitely need to be one of the most physically fit firefighters in your house. Morales improves when your firefighters are constantly trying to beat you in a run or weight lifting competition. When it comes to fighting fires, physical fitness is crucial. If you allow your firefighters to deploy in poor condition, you have failed them. Being physically fit out here will help the Sacramento Fire Department to bear some of the rigors of the job: less sleep, very random and increasingly changing rest patterns, extreme heat, heavy weights, to name a few. #RandolphHarris 19 of 23
Staying in shape while employed as a firefighter can be a tough task, because you often lack the time or facilities to exercise. However, solid cardiovascular fitness will make a significant different in higher elevations, and upper body and leg strength may prevent exhaustion from heavy gear in hot conditions. Your physical fitness in your ability to perform physical work, training, and other activities throughout your daily work schedule. Physical fitness is multidimensional, and—based on your goals—some will be more valuable than others. Five key components define your physical fitness: Cardiorespiratory (CR) endurance—how efficiently your body delivers oxygen and nutrients for muscular activity and transports waste from the cells. Muscular strength—the greats amount of force your muscle or muscle group can exert in a single effort. Muscular endurance—the ability of your muscle or muscle group to perform repeated movements for extended periods. Flexibility—the ability to move your joint (elbow or knee, for example) or any group of joints through their entire normal range of motion. Body composition—the amount of body fat you have un comparison with your total body mass. Improving the first three of these components will improve your body composition by decreasing your body fat. Excessive body fat detracts from other fitness measures, reduces your physical and mental performance, detracts from your appearance, and increases overall health risks. One measurement of body fate is as a percentage of total weight. Body fat standards for males ages 17-20 is 20 percent, females ages 17-20 30 percent, makes 21-27 22 percent, females 21-27 32 percent, males 28-39 24 percent, females 28-39 34 percent, males 40+ 26 percent, females 40+ 36 percent. Besides your physical fitness, you should also work to improve your motor fitness. Motor fitness—speed, agility, muscle power, eye-hand coordination, and eye-foot coordination—directly affects a firefighter’s performance. Appropriate training will improve these elements up to each firefighter’s individual potential. #RandolphHarris 20 of 23
Public safety is extremely important to the Sacramento Fire Department. It plays a major role when dealing with the community and even their families. “I have two years more to go in medical school, and right now I’m geared toward emergency medicine. I like the immediacy of it, the life-and-deathness of it and being able to make a big different quickly. A lot of medical people frown on emergency medicine because they say there is no patient follow-up, you’re not following your patient through. But for a lot of people who come through that door in life-and-death situations, you could be the most important medical person in their lives. You are the whole medical profession to them. It’s very important to me to get back into the fire service. I have to bee in a field of medicine that will allow me to do that. I sent fourteen applications to medical schools. Medical schools cut 85 percent of the applicants without seeing them. Even if you get interviewed, your chance is 25 percent or less. You wait around, and you go to the mailbox every morning. Rejection, rejection, an interview. I went to an interview at Dartmouth, which really where I wasted to go. I sat down with this gentleman in his office, and he didn’t like me from the word go. This was a medical doctor, and he was looking at my records for the first time. He said, ‘I see you are some kind of Renaissance man,’ as if that where a derogatory thing. #RandolphHarris 21 of 23
“‘I don’t think I can let a person like you into this medical school,’ he said. ‘When you make a commitment to medicine, you have to drop everything and go after that. I see that you worked as a fireman and as a paramedic all through your entire time at college.’ I tried to explain to him that the way I was raised, I learned that you have to have a commitment to your fellow man. I said that when I was in college, sometimes I was the only EMT or paramedic in the village, and that for a couple of people I made a big difference. He had the arrogance to say, ‘Come on, how many lives did you really save?’ The man had no idea of what I was all about. I got the rejection letter two weeks later. I’m in Sanford University School of Medicine. My roommate’s father is a fire marshal with twenty-two years’ experience in the Sacramento Fire Department. I remember going over to their house, and he started questioning me. ‘You come up on a house and there is nobody inside. There is fire showing in the front windows. What do you do?’ I said, ‘You go in, you get behind the fire, and you push it out the windows.’ He said, ‘Oh.’ I’m afraid I’m going to have to explain my professional life as an emergency medical man to a whole lot of people.” There is an old saying that reminds us that if we do not study and understand history, we are bound to make the same mistakes as those that have occurred in the past. It is also true that we should identify what works so we can expand and continue proven, high-quality practices. Often progress comes from trying out new, unproven ideas. We applaud all the courageous and imaginative administrators who tried and failed, but kept trying, learning from their failures, and finally succeeding. These are the unsung heroes of our time—the visionaries, risk takers, and true leaders. #RandolphHarris 22 of 23
If you are in an intersection when you see an emergency vehicle, continue through the intersection. Drive to the right as soon as it is safe and stop. Obey any direction, order, or signal given by a law enforcement officer, or a firefighter. Even if they conflict with existing signs, signals, or laws, follow their orders. When their siren or flashing lights are on, it is against the law to follow within 300 feet of any fire engine, law enforcement vehicle, ambulance, or other emergency vehicle. If you drive to the scene of a fire, collision, or other disaster, you can be arrested. When you do this, you are getting in the way of firefighters, ambulance crews, or other rescue and emergency personnel. The concept of professional courage does not always mean being as tough as nails, either. It also suggests a willingness to listen to other peoples’ problems, to go to bat for them in a tough situation and it means knowing just how far they can go. It also means being willing to tell the boss when he or she is wrong. 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. To help our firefighters, pleasure donate to the Sacramento Fire Department to ensure they have all the resources they require. 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 23 of 23
Never has there been a building so talked about. You will find The Winchester Mystery House in what was once the countryside known as “Winchester Valley,” where it has left past guests feeling a little spooked passing through certain rooms. It is well known for its reputation of being the world’s most haunted location. Do you fear the dark? Does the idea of the supernatural scare you? Do you sometimes anticipate the worst that can happen to you? Do you shiver when you read about victims of violent crime and think “that could have been me?” Does life seem insane? When you walk through the twisting hallways of The Winchester Mansion, are you apprehensive about what might be around the next corner? While standing at the door-to-nowhere, have you ever worried that life may have no meaning? Are you anxious that the next day might be your last? Do your days sometimes seem irremediably gloomy? Are you afraid of dying? We have examined your case thoroughly and think you will find the antidote for your condition at The Winchester Mystery House. A daily dose of horror is just the tonic you need. If fortifies the spirit with bracing jolts of terror. It inoculates the soul against fears that hound us all. It quickens the reflexes against life’s inhospitable surprises and tempers the imagination with thoughts unthinkable. Here you will find madmen in a variety of shapes and sizes who will help make things seem more rational. Feeling a bit self-absorbed? There is nothing like a tale of Mrs. Winchester’s hauntings to give you the right perspective.
The Winchester Estate dates back to the late 19th century, and it has a history that is packed full of legends and stories of spirits. The guided post-sunset walk takes visitors through the history of the mansion, while also offering a chance to spot some of the more well-known Winchester ghosts. There are stories of a little girl playing in the hallways and tugging at bedcovers at night and a woman in white who crosses the courtyard and passes through the walls. Lightening in colours no one can name sear across the infinite and multihued sky in jagged shards the size of which no one can conceive. Alien winds scream their impossible being in warring cacophony of notes no one can ever believe at volumes none can bear. And when the winds pick up on the fourth floor of the mansion, they make an eerie whining noise. It sounds as if everything around you is screaming. Right before a quick scratching sound, then something flares. A small spot of light glides like a firefly toward you. Another flare, then a dull yellow flow. A thin man has been said to step into the light. “Found some others out there,” is all he says before disappearing before your very eyes, and then everything is absolute darkness. Outside, the winds are said to kick up; it screams across the night. Well, maybe it is the wind. We all know the story of The Winchester Mansion.
The carpenters, who worked day and night for 36 years to build the mansion, that was once nine stories high, containing as many as 600 rooms. They knew the area was dense in spiritual energy. The hallways often possessed a great river of shadows. As these men felt a moan rising from a core of solid fear, they were so afraid that they would stand frozen for the space of one deep, shuddering breath. It was believed even the objects they could see were enemies, because they were keeping secrets. They knew, but were not telling. The cold quiet of The Winchester Mansion was a familiar song. Often, Mrs. Winchester’s guests would crough down, huddling against the floor, until help arrived. The mansion is situated over the crossing of two Ley Lines. In these areas, the veneer between the physical and spirit realms is thinner and much more permeable. This permeability and natural energy allow entities to manifest much more readily than in a normal location. Any thought or action in these areas, whether positive or negative has a much stronger and more focused effect. In the case of The Winchester Mansion decades of compounded suffering, negativity and strong emotional experiences have left a marked effect on the atmosphere in and around the mansion.
Some tour guides have heard chanting coming from outside the mansion and have heard their names being called. Others have reported seeing a woman hovering in the mansion. Many who have seen Mrs. Winchester claimed that she was “supernaturally beautiful, her skin glistens, and there’s a kind of light in her eyes that you can’t look away from.” Although her journals are sometimes vague, Mrs. Winchester experienced bizarre poltergeist activity during construction. She mentions to a friend the incredible amount of poltergeist activity that occurred during the time spent building the front of the mansion. One night, when darkness fell, the mansion was filled with eerie music like nothing Mrs. Winchester had ever heard before. Creatures from her maddest nightmares filled into the Grand Ball Room in some kind of funeral procession. She watched from the hallway, terrified of being seen yet unable to turn away. The very last thing she saw was her maid at the end of the procession, following the creatures off into the darkness. Later that night, Mrs. Winchester watched the shadows of leaves on the wall and drifted into a peaceful, safe, sleep, happy that the nuisance of her waking hours was gone. The very next day, on September 5, 1922, construction efforts were suddenly stopped when the ladders several carpenters were working from were pushed away from the wall, forcing them to jump several stories. Moments later, it was discovered that Mrs. Winchester had passed away in her sleep.
Mr. Hasen, one of Mrs. Winchester’s foremen, had written about his tools getting moved to the far corners of the room when his back was turned. Mr. Hansen was left staring in disbelief at a kaleidoscope World of shifting, flickering lights, a surfaceless void with an unimaginably distant vanishing point near which huge amorphous shapes twisted and withered in a constant fury of becoming. He had seen a hint that the matter that made up the forms of this World which everyone accepted as solid and separate was in fact all one and that only probability kept everything as it was and kept our reality apart from a multiverse of others. A solitary bead of sweat formed high on his brow and trailed a meandering pattern down his cheek and through the stubble that lay below. Although the sky was clear, the moon was but a crescent; its weak glow lit only a corner of the night ceiling. Through the darkness, beyond the curtain of trees. The mansion’s cry intruded upon his thoughts. Its shrillness disturbing him from his rapture. lost in a spell of Llanada Villa, Mr. Hansen walked slowly through the mansion. Climbing the stairs, he heard a hoarse voice whisper, “And what do you dream?” He had a moment to think, to realize, that he had never felt this way before, then the emanations flooded him, carrying him away on waves of darkness. He gave in weakly to the sensations that swept over him. As the mansion cried out again, its cry pierced the night, resounding like the cry of a thousand lost souls. That night, he went to his cold bed and dreamt of men with furlined capes and armor who became fearsome beast and tore through lines of their enemies.
Although they were paid three times the going rate, provided with medical care, subsidized groceries, and lived in Victorian cottages that were once on the estate, carpenters employed by Mrs. Winchester frequently suddenly left and did not come back, never giving a reason to their departure. However, it is suspected that the vast distances in the mansion had something to so with it. These carpenters would sometimes come to work to unfamiliar walls. After working for three hours with panic on his back, every minute having seemed like an hour, one man said, “I had been through a Hell of distance and time, indeed–and the Hell is still with me.” Wandering to the window and parting the drapes, he found it to be very late. He still felt disoriented, adrift, and threatened, but he sensed that he could he was free. With his pounding heart, he walked out into the dark mansion. There were no other carpenters present, and few caretakers. Others might be afraid of ghost, but the panic had taken care of that. If you already felt menaced for no reason, then the real dangers held no terror for you. He walked for many miles, past more rooms, libraries, and long closed rooms. Then he noticed a young woman walking on the other side of the mansion. Without thinking twice, he crossed over and joined her. They stopped, and he poured out his heart, his nameless fear. She held his hands. They agreed to meet again. However, he was left once more alone on a large room, wondering if it had been real. So he cut over to the hallway and started back. The mansion rest of the mansion was deserted, too, his steps echoing hollowly on the mahogany floor. It was dark, and only the light from the windows was visible. He could hear more than see. The panic had gotten stronger again, and he needed to return to the security, if marginal, of his home.
Gradually, he became aware of a man walking about a hundred feet behind. He himself stopped and pretended to look out the window. He wanted the man to pass him. However, the man stopped when he reached him, then went down some steps to the third floor. The man smiled, opened a bag, and offered him some Brandy. He went down and accepted. When he woke up, he was lying on his stomach, which felt warm and wet. There was no pain. However, when he tried to get up, he found that he could not. So, he crawled up the steps into the ballroom on the 4th floor. The crawling went all right, at first. However, then he became weaker. And he grew conscious of the thin red trail he was leaving behind him. The panic, suddenly and forever, was gone. It had indeed been replaced, expunged, by the reality. All that was left was a certain sadness. The mansion that has survived such a long history, is a marvel to see in person. Today, it stands four stories high, and has an estimated 160 rooms, of which 110 are open for tour. There has been some restoration over the years and ongoing maintenance. Come inside the mansion to see the priceless architecture and learn of its history. The guided tours are exquisitely led by a well prepared and enthusiastic team, who make sure that you and all guests are entertained by the great stories. 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. Even if you do not believe ghost stories, you might still get goosebumps passing through the most infamous basement. Enjoy panoramic views and discover quirky features such as secret staircases, doors that open to nowhere, stairs to the ceiling, hidden trapdoors, and other unusual features.
Please visit the online giftshop, and purchase a gift for friends and relatives as well as a special memento of The Winchester Mystery House. A variety of souvenirs and gifts are available to purchase. https://shopwinchestermysteryhouse.com/
Harris Plumbing, Heating, Air, & Electric has been in business for 30 years. How many businesses can say that? We take pride in everything we do – no matter how big or small the service call might be. We’re here to help your home be as safe and comfortable as possible for you and your family. We take that responsibility very seriously as a company. Harris will ensure you have the information you need to decide what to do next, whatever your home is facing. We’ll perform a diagnosis and detail what issues are present before starting any work. This gives you a personalized quote and service plan specific to your home’s needs – not some random quote based on the best guess. The only way we can do our best work is to make sure we handle the issues at hand. https://www.callharrisnow.com/about-us/
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Randolph Harris II International 