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Void of Faceless Faces, of Soundless Voices Lying Outside History
Identity in America is a formation highly dependent on the cultural conditions of a sedentary, middle-class society. However, the revolutionary minds of the middle-class of the nineteenth century: Jesus Christ, by telling us to love each other and not to sin; Dr. Darwin, by making man’s very humanity relative to his animal ancestry; Marx, by exposing the middle-class mind itself as class bound; and Dr. Freud, by making our ideals and our very consciousness relative to an unconscious mental life have all determined what chances we fruitfully take with it. Since then, there have been national wars, political revolutions, and moral rebellions that have shaken the traditional foundations of all human identity. If we wish to find witnesses to a radically different awareness of the relation of positive and negative identity, we only must change our historical perspective and look at the most marginalized writers in America today. For what if there is nothing in the hopes of generations past nor in the accessible resources of the contemporary community which would help to overcome the negative image held up to a member of a marginalized population by the “compact majority”? Then, so it seems, the creative individual must accept the negative identity as the very baseline of the recovery. And so, we have in our American writers, who have been marginalized in this country, the almost ritualized affirmation of inaudibility, invisibility, namelessness, facelessness—a void of faceless faces, of soundless voices lying outside history. #RandolphHarris 1 of 30
However, the responsible writers who are marginalized in America continue to write and write strongly, for fiction even in acknowledging the depth of nothingness can contribute to something akin to a collective recovery. This is a universal trend among the exploited. It is no coincidence that one of the most telling autobiographic documents of India’s liberation as a nation also bears the “negative” title Autobiography of an Unknown Indian. No wonder that in young people not included in literary reflection, such deep-seated negative identities can be reabsorbed only by a turn to militancy, if not violence. A less well-known figure than Bakunin, still more mysterious, but more significant for our purpose, Nechaiev pushed nihilism to the farthest coherent point. His thought presents practically no contradiction. He appeared, about 1866, in revolutionary intellectual circles, and died, obscurely, in January 1882. In this short space of time, he never ceased to suborn the students around him, Bakunin himself, the revolutionary refugees, and finally the guards in his prison, whom he succeeded in persuading to take part in a crazy conspiracy. When he first appears, he is already quite sure of what he thinks. If Bakunin was fascinated by him to the point of consenting to entrust him with imaginary authority, it is because he recognized in that implacable figure the type of human being that he recommended and what he, in a certain manner, would have been if he had been able to silence his heart. Nechaiev was not content with saying that one must unite with “the savage of the world of bandits, the true and unique revolutionary environment of Russia,” nor with writing once more, like Bakunin, that henceforth politics would be religion and religion politics. He made himself the cruel high priest of a desperate revolution; his most recurrent dream was to found a homicidal order that would permit him to propagate and finally enthrone the sinister divinity that he had decided to serve. #RandolphHarris 2 of 30
He not only gave dissertations on universal destruction; his originality lay in coldly claiming, for those who dedicate themselves to the revolution, an “Everything is permitted” and in permitting himself everything. “The revolutionary is a man condemned in advance. He must have neither romantic relationships nor objects to engage his feelings. He should even cast off his own name. Every part of him should be concentrated in one single passion: the revolution.” If history is, in fact, independent of all principles and composed only of a struggle between revolution and counterrevolution, there is no way out but to espouse wholeheartedly one of the two and either die or be resurrected. Nechaiev pursues this logic to the bitter end. With him, for the first time, revolution is going to be explicitly separated from love and friendship. The consequences of an arbitrary psychology set in motion by Hegel’s method can be seen, for the first time, in of minds could be accomplished in love. He would not, however, give a place in the foreground of his analysis to this “phenomenon,” which, according to him, he found “had not the strength, the patience, nor the application of the negative.” He had chosen to demonstrate human minds in blind combat, dimly groping on the sands, like crabs that finally come to grips in a fight to the death, and voluntarily abandoned the equally legitimate image of beams of light painfully searching for one another in the night and finally focusing together in a blaze of illumination. #RandolphHarris 3 of 30
Those who love, friends or lovers know that love is not only a blinding flash but also a long and painful struggle in the darkness for the realization of definitive recognition and reconciliation. After all, if virtue in the course of history is recognized by the extent to which it gives proof of patience, real love is as patient as hatred. Moreover, the demand for justice is not the only justification throughout the centuries for revolutionary passion, which is sustained by a painful insistence on universal friendship, even—and above all—in defiance of an inimical heaven. Those who die for justice, throughout history, have always been called “brothers.” Violence, for every one of them, is directed only against the enemy, in the service of the community of the oppressed. However, if the revolution is the only positive value, it has the right to claim everything—even the denunciation and therefore the sacrifice of the friend. Henceforth, violence will be directed against one and all, in the service of an abstract idea. The accession to power of the possessed had to take place so that it could be said, once and for all, that the revolution was more important than the people it wanted to save, and that friendship, which until then had transformed defeats into the semblance of victories, must be sacrificed and postponed until the still invisible day of victory. Nechaiev’s originality thus lies in justifying the violence done to one’s brother. He decided, with Bakunin, on the terms of the Catechism. However, once the latter, in a fit of mental aberration, had given him the mission of representing Russia as a European Revolutionary Union, which existed only in his imagination, Nechaiev in effect came to Russia, founded his Society of the Ax, and himself defined its regulations. #RandolphHarris 4 of 30
There we find again the secret central committee, necessary, no doubt, to any military or political action, to whom everyone must swear absolute allegiance. However, Nechaiev does more than militarize the revolution from the moment when he admits that the leaders, to govern their subordinates, have the right to employ violence and lies. Nechaiev lies, to begin with, when he claims to be a delegate of a central committee that is still nonexistent and when, to enlist certain skeptics in the action that he proposes to undertake, he describes the committee as disposing of unlimited resources. He goes still further by distinguishing between categories of revolutionaries, with those of the first category (by which he means the leaders) reserving the right to consider the rest as “expendable capital.” All the leaders in history may have thought in these terms, but they never said so. Until Nechaiev, at any rate, no revolutionary leader had dared to make this guiding principle of his conduct. Up to his time, no revolution had put at the head of its table of laws the concept that man could be a chattel. Traditionally, recruiting relied on its appeal to courage and to the spirit of self-sacrifice. Nechaiev decided that the skeptics could be terrorized or blackmailed and the believers deceived. If they were urged on systematically to perform the most dangerous deeds, even pseudo-revolutionaries could still be used. As for the oppressed, since they were going to be saved once and for all, they could be oppressed still more. What they would lose, the oppressed of the future would gain. #RandolphHarris 5 of 30
Nechaiev states, in principle, that governments must be driven to take repressive measures, that the official representatives most hated by the population must never be touched, and that finally, the secret society must employ all its resources to increase the suffering and misery of the masses. Bravery consists of attacking the whole problem of human destiny and finding its solution using the dynamic slogan and the clinical principle. The dynamic slogan of transactional and script analysis is “Think sphincter.” Their clinical principle is to observe every movement of every muscle of every patient at every moment during a group meeting. And their existential motto is “Transactional analysts are healthy, happy, rich, and brave, and get to travel all over and meet the nicest people in the world, and the same when they are home treating patients.” Script analysis is then the answer to the problem of human destiny, and tells us (alas!) that our fates are predetermined for the most part, and that free will in this respect is for most people an illusion. For example, R. Allendy points out that for everyone who faces it, the decision to commit suicide is a lonely and agonizing, and autonomous one. Yet, whatever vicissitudes it goes through in each individual case, the “rate” of suicide remains relatively constant from year to year. The only way to make (Darwinian) sense of this is to consider human destiny to be the result of parental programming, and not of individual “autonomous” decision. #RandolphHarris 6 of 30
What, then, is the responsibility of the parents? Script programming is not their “fault,” any more than an inherited defect is, such as scoliosis or clubfoot, or an inherited talent for music or mathematics. They are merely passing on the dominants and recessives they got from their parents and grandparents. The script directives are being continually reshuffled, just as the genes are, by the fact that the child requires two parents. On the other hand, the script apparatus is much more flexible than the genetic apparatus and is continually being modified by outside influences, such as life experience and the injunctions inserted by other people. It is only rarely possible to predict when or how an outsider will say or do something that alters a person’s script. It may be a casual remark accidentally overheard at a carnival or in a corridor, or it may be the result of a formal relationship such as marriage, school, or psychotherapy. It is a common observation that spouses gradually influence each other’s attitudes toward life and people, and that these changes are reflected in the tonus of their facial muscles and their gestures, so that they come to look alike. A parent who wishes to change his script so that he will not lay on his children the same directives that were laid on him should first become familiar with the Parent ego state and the Parental voices he carries around in his head, and which the children learn to “cathect” by appropriate trigger behavior. Since the parent is older and presumably wiser in some ways than his offspring, it is his duty and responsibility to control his Parental behavior. Only if he brings his Parent under the control of his Adult can he accomplish this. Beyond that, he is just as much the product of his Parental upbringing as his children are. #RandolphHarris 7 of 30
One difficulty is that children represent facsimile and immortality. When his children respond the way he does, every parent is openly or secretly delighted, even when they follow his worst characteristics. If he wishes his children to adapt to the solar system and all its ramifications better than he himself did, this delight is what he must forgo under Adult control. There is a lot of conflict in adult relationships because of competition between spouses. In our culture, women have been made so insecure about the man-woman relationship that they often compete for reasons they themselves do not understand. A woman’s competitiveness may reflect this culturally induced sense of insecurity. It may be more difficult for her, as a female, to make the perfectly rational assumptions that some men make—that, after all, it is okay to let your wife be the dominant spouse in the relationship. Perhaps if the women’s equality movement achieves its potential for social change, women will be relieved of some of this insecurity. Many think that Women’s Lib takes the whole concept of women’s place in society and turns it upside down. A lot of the roles that are called into question are biological roles. However, a lot of others are strictly social roles. These are questions that a man has to deal with when he is married to a woman who is attempting to find her own real identity—her true self, and not her sociological self. It is extremely difficult for both partners in the marriage. #RandolphHarris 8 of 30
Of course, several couples are in transition, and that is always hard on the people who are caught up in it. Sometimes, there is something about Women’s Lib that can be threatening to a man. Some men think it may be a potential for a marriage breaking up because a woman might come to see that marriage is essentially a false relationship between a man and a woman. Or that a woman may decide to do something on her own. However, the women’s movement does not necessarily mean that marriage concepts are false. Yet, it does mean that there must be a greater sense of reality between the two people in the marriage. In other words, they must make more of a marriage than just leaning on the legality of it. Consider this: if a woman is always putting herself last in the marriage, she is depriving her husband of the opportunity of saving her soul. If she is always protective of him and always gets there first, he does not have a chance! I am talking now about people who always have a pressing need to do the giving and thereby cheat themselves of the pleasure of receiving—and cheat others of their chance to experience the pleasure of giving. Culturally, this translates into the gender stereotype of the woman giving pleasure to the man. And all of us tend to think that we must be responsible for our emotions. Nothing is further from the truth. How we feel is how we feel, and no one, least of all our marriage partners, has the right to make us accountable for those feelings. We are accountable only for what we do because of those feelings. #RandolphHarris 9 of 30
You are entitled to your feelings, and it can be dangerous to ignore them, for you and others around you. You are entitled, and your partner does not have the right to interpret or evaluate or judge your feelings. On the other hand, it is your responsibility to express your feelings and thoughts as clearly as you can. Making your partner guess is asking for trouble. And the more comfortable you are in expressing those feelings and the more comfortable your partner becomes in accepting the feeling as an honest reflection of where you stand at that moment, the easier it is to communicate. Besides, many should show their self-destructive character in their very contents. As an illustration, I should like to refer to three should, all of which operate in the condition of morbid dependency and which will be elaborated in that context: I should be big enough to mind absolutely nothing that is done to me; I should be able to make her love me; and I should sacrifice absolutely everything for “love”! The combination of these three shoulds is indeed bound to perpetuate the tortures of a morbid dependency. Another frequent demand of a person is that he assume full responsibility for his relatives, friends, pupils, employees, etcetera. He should be able to solve everyone’s problems to everyone’s satisfaction. This implies that anything that goes wrong is his fault. If a friend or relative is upset for any reason, complains, criticizes, is discontented, or wants something, such a person is forced to be the helpless victim who must feel guilty and set everything right. He is, to quote a patient, like the harassed manager of a Pink Flamingo summer hotel: the guests are always right. Whether or not any of the mishaps are his fault does not matter. #RandolphHarris 10 of 30
This process is well described in a French book The Witness. The main character and his brother are out boating; the boat leaks, a storm comes up, and they are capsized. Since his brother has a badly injured leg, he cannot swim in the violent water. He is doomed to drown. The hero tries to swim ashore, supporting his brother, but soon realizes that he cannot do it. The alternatives are that both drown or that the hero saves himself alone. Clearly realizing this, he decides to save himself. However, he feels as if he were a murderer, and this is so real to him that he is convinced everybody else will regard him as a murderer. If he operates on the premise that he should be responsible in any case, his reason is of no avail and cannot be effective. To be sure, this is an extreme situation. However, the hero’s emotional response illustrates exactly what people do feel when driven by this particular should. An individual can also impose tasks upon himself which are detrimental to his whole being. A classic example of this kind of should is to be found in Dostoevski’s Crime and Punishment. Raskolnikov, in order to prove to his Napoleonic qualities, felt that he should be able to kill a human being. As Dostoevski shows us in unmistakable terms, despite Raskolnikov’s manifold resentments against the world, nothing was more distasteful to his sensitive soul than to kill. He had to beat himself into doing it. What he actually felt is expressed in a dream in which he sees a scrawny, underfed little mare forced by drunken peasants to try pull an impossibly heavy cartload. It is brutally and mercilessly whipped and finally beaten to death. Raskolnikov himself rushes to the mare in an upsurge of deep compassion. #RandolphHarris 11 of 30
This dream appeared at a time when Raskolnikov was engaged in a violent inner struggle. He felt both that he should be able to kill and that it was so utterly distasteful that he simply could not do it. In the dream, he realized the senseless cruelty with which he was beating himself into doing something that was impossible for him, as it was for the mare to pull the heavy cartload. And from the depth of his being emerged a profound compassion for himself over what he was beating himself up over, what he was doing to himself. Having thus experienced his true feelings, he felt more at one with himself after the dream and decided against the killing. However, this Napoleonic self soon afterward again got the upper hand, because at that time his real self was as helpless against it as the underfed mare was against the brutal peasants. The third factor which renders the shoulds self-destructive and which, more than others, accounts for their coerciveness, is the self-hate with which we may turn against ourselves when we violate them. Sometimes this connection is clear or can be established easily. A person has not been as all-knowing or all helpful as he feels he should be, and, as in the story The Witness, is filled with unreasoning self-reproaches. More often, he is not aware of such a violation but, seemingly out of the blue, feels low, uneasy, fatigued, anxious, or irritable. #RandolphHarris 12 of 30
Let us recall the example of the woman who was suddenly scared of the dog after having climbed to the mountain top. The sequence here was as follows: first, she experienced as a failure her sensible decision to give up the climbing—a failure in the light of a dictate telling her that she should manage everything (and which remained unconscious). Next followed her self-contempt, which likewise remained unconscious. Then came the response to her self-berating, in the form of feeling helpless and scared, the first of the emotional process that reached awareness. If she had not analyzed herself, the scare of the dog would have remained a puzzling incident, puzzling because it was disconnected from all that preceded it. In other instances, a person experiences in conscious awareness only the special ways in which he automatically protects himself from his self-hate, such as his special ways to allay anxiety (eating sprees, drinking or shopping sprees, etcetera), his feeling victimized by others (passive externalization), or irritable at others (active externalization). We all have ample opportunity to see from various viewpoints how these attempts at self-protection operate. We can usually find refuge from the world of action by taking to the world of books. Then, stress and turmoil left behind, and restfully ensconced in a chair or bed, pictured scenes may be enjoyed, or ideas received, which act like a holiday. Live in the atmosphere that great books bring, their truer and wider ideas, their finer, exalted ideals. Most men are not yet built to wait in the silence for the visitation of the spirit of truth. It must be described in words for them, by the intellect for their intellect. Conscience is acquired gradually through identification. Identification is the process of ascribing to oneself the characteristics of another (usually admired) person. As one identifies with and takes on more traits of the valued model, intrafamilial resemblances in behavior, values, gestures, attitudes, and morals are acquired. #RandolphHarris 13 of 30
Children come into the world with only the capacity to develop a conscience. They act by their momentary needs and feelings, and their parents are usually watching them closely, making moral judgments about their behavior. If they act in ways that violate the parents’ concepts of what is right, the parents will punish the children for behaving in that way. The parents appear huge, powerful, and admirable from the children’s standpoint; they want to become like the parents. To avoid punishment, to retain the parents’ love, and to acquire their wonderful attributes, children strive to become like them in many ways. They identify with their demands and expectations; these gradually become their expectations of themselves. In short, they come to forbid in themselves what their parents forbade. They come to demand of themselves what their parents demanded. They come to expect of themselves what their parents expected. In this manner, the conscience commences. We declare a bright and glorious view of God and man to all who will hear, a view revealed in illuminated by the restored light of the gospel of Jesus Christ. We testify of God’s loving goodness and of his eternal respect for each of us, for us as individual children of God and for what each of us may become. God has a plan for the benefit and blessing of us, His children. Basic to that all-important plan is our free agency. The right of choice runs like a golden thread throughout the gospel for the blessing of His children. We all existed and had our identities and our agency, long before we came to this world. #RandolphHarris 14 of 30
One central function of emotions is to enable the formation, maintenance, and negotiation of attachments and relationships and thereby to structure social life. Emotions inform our choices of who to affiliate with, distance from, praise, blame, dominate, or submit to. Admiration, a social emotion that attracts us to exemplars and motivates us to promote the virtues possessed by them, might be conceived of as the most fitting emotional response to heroes. Adolescents describe how heroes help them to do good or be a better person. However, where a young person selects a hero with dubious moral standards, this relationship may result in “bad” behavior where the young person models their behavior on an unsuitable target. Young people describe how heroes protect them from physical and psychological harm. Specifically, heroes were described as offering emotional support, social support, instrumental support, resources to develop self-efficacy, social control, and physical protection from danger. However, young people also cautioned that someone might become over-reliant on a hero, asking for help rather than taking personal responsibility. Young people believe that heroes play a role in helping them to experiment with their own sense of self and develop greater clarity about their authentic sense of self. Heroes can represent a person’s ideal self-influencing career paths and life decisions. #RandolphHarris 15 of 30
Adolescents gravitate toward heroes while navigating challenges in their own lives. Many people look at the award-winning Sacramento Fire Department as heroes. The representations of heroes and heroines represent formal elements which are used to create an affective appeal and to encourage an audience to consider the individual in question as heroic. As heroes, people are enticed by the Sacramento Fire Department because they use various forms of intensification through suspense, communication of increased danger, or heightened antagonism. Particularly effective in the view of viewing the Sacramento Fire Department as heroes is the light, radiance, and reflection they produce. Firefighters, paramedics, and EMTs stand in the spotlight and are singled out by (quasi-) divine illumination. Ancient, medieval, or early modern heroes have shining armors or they are placed in a beam of light coming from the heavens. Napoleon in Antoine-Hean Gros’ oil painting La Bataille des Pyramides (1810) is both elevated above his generals by his rearing horse, and he is placed in the center of light. The Sacramento Fire Department has these big, fancy red trucks with chrome wheels, chrome fender wall trim, and all these beautiful lights. Then the heroes get out of the truck and rush to save you from danger. The ambulances are essentially red box trucks with chrome wheels, fancy lights, and when the back doors open, bright white light glares out, and there is technology and personnel there to save your life. #RandolphHarris 16 of 30
The elevation of these heroes is displayed with lens flares to combine an aura of light and mystery, which gives the characters almost divine attributes, especially in combination with the sirens. An excess of light both singles out the heroes and partially obscures the details of their bodies because it is too bright. This popular combination between radiance and partial blinding also produces the ambivalence that is characteristic of heroes: they inspire emulation, and yet they remain inimical. The inapproachability, produced by the light or distance, contributes to the sense of awe and wonder that the heroic image of the Sacramento Fire Department inspires. The classic aesthetic trope that evokes awe in the recipient is the sublime. From the eighteenth-century aesthetic theory onwards, especially under the influence of Burke and Kant, the sublime combines the experience of terror and pleasure, the paradoxical experience of feeling at once overwhelmed and exalted, fearful and fascinated, as we are when we see the vast expanse of the ocean or a towering mountain. The experience of the sublime offers a feeling of transcendence even in a secular context and it helps us to reach beyond ourselves. The hero or heroine themselves are the source of the sublime, but also the setting contributes to the affective arrangement: Sacramento Fire Department in action in large scale, terrifying surroundings (confronted with a wall of fire in a burning building), gain a type of grandeur that is much more difficult to achieve in, let us say, a cluttered sitting room with a flowery wallpaper and lace doilies on Rudolf I King of Germany furniture. All these forms of expression are aimed at drawing attention and appealing to an audience to evoke admiration, veneration, and, ideally, imitation. These wished-for responses are evoked not through rational argument but through the engagement of the responses. #RandolphHarris 17 of 30
If you see a fire truck stopped in the street without the lights on, be very careful. Sometimes there is an emergency, and you should not pass the fire truck. It might be a good idea to safely turn around and go another way because if you hit someone and they happen to die, you could be charged with manslaughter. Sometimes fire firefighters are getting back into their vehicle, and if you pass the apparatus, you may collide with a firefighter who is on foot. Also, be sure to look at their signals; sometimes emergency vehicles are in motion, albeit slowly, and drivers try to pass them, and this could lead to a dangerous situation. Also, 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 people’s 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. #RandolphHarris 18 of 30
California is the third most expensive state in the nation. A single person making an income above $100,000 is now considered low-income in five counties in California. This distinction now applies to individuals living in Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, San Mateo, San Francisco, and Marin counties. In 37 percent of counties, a family of four living on a six-figure income is now considered low-income. In fact, Governor Gavin Newsom of Democratic controlled California, brags about being the world’s “fifth largest economy,” but it also facing a $12 billion deficit, looking to cut $747 million for state worker’s pay, pushing to keep medical insurance for illegal immigrants, but wants to cut medical for anyone who has assets over $2,000 and the state has the largest homeless population in the nation. If they are all officially counted, California has approximately 4 million homeless people. The highest home prices in the nation, the highest taxes, and the most unfriendly business regulations known to man. The average home price in California is nearly $1,000,000.00 USD, while the average salary is $96,036.00, meaning that most Californians cannot even afford to buy a home. California is having an affordability crisis. In 2025, many people in California saw their bills increase by an estimated $500 a month. This includes items such as food, automobile insurance, homeowners’ insurance, and electricity. In fact, more than 3 million people in California are facing household hardship, and more than 300,000 of them are facing eviction soon. This comes at a time when California is having a shortage of affordable housing. This is caused by nearly half a century-old laws that discourage home sales and encourage higher rents. #RandolphHarris 19 of 30
Meanwhile, China, where we are sending all our jobs and money, has more than 50 ghost cities, with 65 million vacant homes. Ghost cities are regions will housing has been overdeveloped to the point that these places are uninhabited. Because California is so hostile towards people and businesses, more than 360 companies have fled the state since 2020. Businesses like Chevron, SpaceX, Oracle, and Hewlett-Packard are among the names on that list. Also, more than 500,000 people a year are abandoning California because it is too expensive to live in, Gavin Newsom has criminalized homelessness and actually started arresting people without homes, crime is out of control, and they are losing their jobs due to companies relocating. More than 100 companies have announced layoffs in California for 2025. Intel is cutting 15,000 jobs, PayPal 2,500, and Meta has terminated 4,000 employees. California also has the highest unemployment rate in the country at 5.4 percent, while the national average is 4.1 percent. The California crisis created by Democrats is driving up home prices and mortgages, and rents all over the nation and the world, making living unaffordable for all, and advocates say the crisis is far from over. Accordingly, California has more than 3.5 million illegal immigrants. Having the Southern American boarder open and not having American farmland protected, not producing beef, poultry, fish, fruit, produce and dairy in America, and without American goods and services being our number one manufactured and selling items, America has created a dangerous and significantly elevated risks to national security, national economic security, and national public health. Some people may believe that these claims are overstated, but by not routinely monitoring Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CEVs) or other security-relevant alerts, such as the end-of-life of machinery is how the Oroville Dam Crisis occurred in 2017. #RandolphHarris 20 of 30
Other crises that have occurred due to neglect of critical infrastructure are the 2025 Palisades fires because Southern California ran out of water, when they are located next to an ocean and they could have simply created desalination plants to help with the water shortage. The water is so plentiful that it is currently eroding land and causing homes to fall into the sea. Desalination has been identified as one technology that will help solve California’s water scarcity problem. Desalination is a cost-effective technology that can transform an abundance of salt water into a reliable supply of potable, fresh water, which is a great way to fight climate change and have enough water for our region’s water requirements. Ras Al Khair, Saudi Arabia, is producing 1,036,000 meters (273,682,192) per day of desalinated water. As we see gangs fighting with federal law enforcement, states and cities refusing to honor federal laws, and politicians showing an utter disregard for the Constitution of the United States of America, anarchy is becoming increasingly common. Anarchism is a cluster of doctrines and attitudes centered on the belief that government is both harmful and unnecessary. Derived from the Greek root anarchos, meaning “without authority,” anarchism, anarchist, and anarchy are used to express both approval and disapproval. The anarchist denies man-made laws, regards property as a means of tyranny, and believes that crimes is merely the product of property and authority. #RandolphHarris 21 of 30
However, the anarchist would argue that their denial of constitutions and governments leads not to “no justice” but to the real justice inherent in the free development of human sociality—the natural inclination, when unfettered by laws, to live according to the principles and practice of mutual aid. Anarchism is also a form of treason. Treason, the crime of betraying a nation or a sovereign by acts considered dangerous to security. In English law, treason includes the levying of war against the government and the giving of aid and comfort to the monarch’s enemies. In the United States of America, treason was defined restrictively by the framers of the Constitution. Treason against the United States of America “shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them aid and comfort,” which is something that many politicians are currently guilty of. The American government should know all exploitable vulnerabilities and fix them before the situation becomes a crisis. Failure to take such mitigating actions is dangerous and significantly elevates risk to national security, national economic security, and national public health and safety. The American government must understand that significant time and resources must be invested in America. They must also encourage corporations to plan for both mitigating safety vulnerabilities in the short term and eliminating them in the long term. For instance, a company might begin by reaching out to the federal, state, or local government and requesting tax incentives to provide security to dangerous communities, to help the government repair bridges and potholes. #RandolphHarris 22 of 30
America needs an approach to eliminate safety vulnerabilities in American cities. There needs to be a road map by the end of 2025, outlining a prioritized approach to eliminate crisis situations in America. There is enough money to send aid to foreign nations, but the American government does not have enough money to care for its infrastructure, provide adequate resources, or end the affordable housing crisis. Nor is there enough money to fund other national critical functions (NCFs). These bad practices of putting America and Americans last are considered exceptionally risky, particularly to national security, national economic security, and national public health and safety. In 2024, Americans spent $100 billion on Japanese cars. As a result, the American automobile trade deficit with Japan was $39 billion. The maximum percentage of your gross income that you should earmark for a monthly mortgage payment is calculated at 28 percent, and no more than 36 percent of your gross income to all debts, including mortgage. If you take 28 percent of the median household income per home in Sacramento County, homeowners can only afford a mortgage of $2,070.23 per month. And if you take 36 percent of their gross income to all debts, including mortgage, they should be devoting no more than $2,661.72 a month to these debts. Mortgage lenders must be using some kind of sorcery to get buyers into these expensive homes. To afford one of these homes using traditional guidelines, a household would need to gross $11,280.24 per month or $135,362.88 per year, but the median household in Sacramento County is grossing $7,393.67 or $88,724.00, and that typically means two to four people in the home are working and contributing to the mortgage. #RandolphHarris 23 of 30
Home prices in Sacramento County are rivaling the Bay Area. Historically, homes in the Bay Area have been more expensive because they have higher-paying jobs, a larger population, and the Bay Area is a tourist destination. Contributing to the housing affordability crisis is Gavin Newsom, who has been lavishing illegal immigrants with taxpayer-funded resources and cash aid. The State of California has a budget deficit of $12 billion because Governor Gavin Newsom granted 700,000 illegal immigrants free health care, which costs taxpayers $3 billion annually. At the same time, Newsom cut vital programs for veterans, school children, the disabled, and the homeless. Additionally, Newsom seems to be uneducated about economics and is proposing to fast-track his plan to build a $20 billion water tunnel beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, which would eliminate environmental reviews and limit avenues for legal challenges. Gavin Newsom only cares about the environment when his policies allow him to raise taxes and restrict freedoms. To further highlight this illustration, Mexico has been causing one of America’s worst environmental disasters. Fifty million gallons a day of industrial chemicals, untreated sewage, and trash flow from Tijuana, Mexico, into southern San Diego County daily. This toxic waste has been turning up on Imperial Beach and is causing the miles of white sands to become polluted and the ocean breeze to smell of poop, which has been sickening residents and wildlife and costing San Diego millions in the form of lost tourism and health problems. The problem has been going on for more than a century. #RandolphHarris 24 of 30
However, Mexico’s pollution of California has become a severe public health crisis as the population of Tijuana has drastically increased in recent years, and the waste treatment plants are no longer usable. Some of the beaches in San Diego have been closed for more than three years, and evidence suggests that even breathing the air may be harmful, as toxic particles in the water can become airborne. Yet, even though Gavin Newsom has been governor for six years, he has not rushed into action to stop this very preventable environmental disaster. Why? Because he is not getting kickbacks from China and Mexico, not being gifted mansions and cars, and he cannot tax the struggling California taxpayers to clean up this mess. Simply, it is not profitable for him. Gavin Newsom has been a total tyrant with no regard for taxpayers and no mind for business, and he should be impeached as soon as possible. He has criminalized poverty, increased taxes, increased taxes on gas, and insurance rates so high that people are struggling to survive. In addition to Gavin Newsom’s increased gas prices starting on 1 July 2025, the war between Iran and Israel is going to further exacerbate the prices of gas and cause more inflation and economic hardship for people in California. While everyone is making war over America and who belongs here and who she belongs to, so many people forget about the people who are Indigenous to this land. Open borders have allowed hundreds of thousands of cartel operatives to infiltrate reservations across the United States of America and use the isolated lands as havens to traffic fentanyl pills and other drugs into the country without protection from federal authorities. #RandolphHarris 25 of 30
Drug cartels have been threatening the health and safety of Native American communities. The trafficking of dangerous and illegal drugs into their territories is leading to a second genocide. The overdose rate for Indigenous people is 42 percent higher than the national average. A recent bust on Montana’s Blackfeet Nation’s Tribal Reservation resulted in the seizure of more than 700,000 fentanyl pills, which was the largest bust in Montana history. Recently, the Blackfeet Nation had to declare a state of emergency after facing 17 overdoses in just one week. There are only 6.8 million Native Americans left in the world, which is 2 percent of the American population. We should be doing more to protect these proud and honorable people; they should not want for anything. People rush and give away resources to illegal immigrants, but totally disregard the Indigenous people of this land, as their race silently fades away into extinction. We must secure our borders and increase federal funding to Native American tribes so we can save this precious population. Meanwhile, Gavin Newsom has given billions of taxpayer dollars away to illegal immigrants and protected them from law enforcement, while arresting law-abiding Americans because they cannot afford to pay rent or mortgage, and the homeless shelters are unsafe, overcrowded, and have restrictions on who is allowed inside. He has also totally ignored the cartel problems on American lands. Clean air, water, land, and preserving our heritage are extremely important. #RandolphHarris 26 of 30
We cannot just allow criminals to kill off the people who are native to this land and do nothing about it. Wars have been started over governments that tax citizens without representation. Taxation without representation is what led to the American Revolution. If Gavin Newsom is not stopped, next he will euthanize the poor and sterilize the disabled. Gavin Newsom has wars and fires breaking out on the streets, but goes out of his way to arrest people who have no place to live. This monster is unfit to be governor and must never be allowed to be President of America! Stop Gavin Newsom now! Save California and impeach this unreasonable man. Meanwhile, with President Trump, we are seeing crime rates sharply decrease. President Trump just signed the “HALT Fentanyl Act” into law, which permanently classifies the narcotic as a “Schedule I drug” under the “Controlled Substances Act.” Also, President Trump recently secured $10 trillion in investments for the United States of America. Additionally, in May of 2025, the United States of America collected a record $100 billion in tariff revenue, and that number will increase to $300 billion by the end of 2025. Also, President Trump has just sealed a $550 billion deal with Japan. This means Japan will invest $550 billion in the United States of America. Furthermore, President Trump has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize for making Iran and Israel cease fire. As you can see, President Trump is creating solutions and remediating problems to protect America and the American people, while Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, is making life hard on American citizens and causing economic hardship, and totally ignoring Mexico’s polluting beaches in San Diego. If elected president for an unprecedented third term, to make housing more affordable and to offset the cost of homeowners’ insurance and auto insurance, President Trump plans to abolish property taxes. #RandolphHarris 27 of 30
Much like the land crisis in Las Vegas, we could also run out of land to farm and will not be able to grow or cultivate our own food. We can protect American farmland and support American farmers by buying American made beef, poultry, dairy, and produce. Also, country of origin labeling is very important so Americans can know where their food is coming from and can support American farmers and ranchers. As money flows, it influences further investment. Save the land that sustains us by protecting American farmland. Once the land is built on, we lose it forever. And in the future, there may be food wars. Also, to ensure that we have farmland and buildable land for future use, we need to start limiting the number of people allowed to immigrate to America. Perhaps with the immigrants we do allow into America, there needs to be a diversity program to make sure we have a population 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 America, 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. #RandolphHarris 28 of 30
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 America which also sends more taxes to the government, which can again help to reduce the national debt. When you buy foreign goods, these companies usually have lighter tax loads or exemptions, meaning less money for the national debt, plus you are helping to strengthen these foreign nations by sending 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 on pollution. American companies must 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 mind 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. #RandolphHarris 29 of 30
As you can see, President Donald Trump and his pledge to “Make America Great Again” is exactly what America needs to save the country and the American people. And yes, diversity is important, so you can see why it is also important to preserve blonde hair and blue eyes, as the people with these characteristics are becoming a minority in America. We must think before we can understand the soul’s existence; we must understand before we can realize it. The earliest beginnings of thought, as apart from instinct, when it was itself still but a lurking tendency, belong far back in primeval time. The human intellect as we find it today, so rich and developed an instrument for the consciousness of the ego, did not arrive at this fulness without a series of graduated stages. We have had plenty of scientific thinking, business thinking, and political thinking long enough, but we have had very little inspired thinking. That is the world’s need. The intellect is cradled in selfishness but runs the evolutionary track into reason, where it will one day finish at the winning-post of selflessness. As a reminder, parents, please teach your children to 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. Also, to make sure they have all the resources required, please donate to the Sacramento Fire Department to help improve our national security. “Oh, thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand between their loved home and the war’s desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause is just, and this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’ And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.” #RandolphHarris 30 of 30
President Donald J. Trump is keeping his promise to secure our borders and make America safe again. In July, Border Patrol reported just 4,399 apprehensions along our southern border—a new monthly record. That is an average of only 141 per day across nearly 2,000 miles. For the third month in a row, not a single illegal immigrant has been released into the United States. This is not just progress—it is a total reversal. Under the last administration, more than 300,000 illegal immigrants attempted to cross the border in a single month. The results speak for themselves. For the first time in at least five decades, the United States is on track to see negative net migration. Stopping illegal immigrants from entering our communities creates safer neighborhoods, protects taxpayer resources, and ensures more jobs and opportunities for American citizens. After 4 years of record-breaking illegal entries, this is the turnaround our Nation needs. President Trump will never stop fighting to end this invasion once and for all. He is working every day to secure our borders and restore the rule of law. Illegal immigrants who commit heinous crimes are being deported, loopholes are being closed, and sanctuary policies are being dismantled for good. Under the Trump Administration, America is safer and stronger than ever before. To learn more, visit www.WhiteHouse.gov.
According to locals, over a century ago, the land that houses The Winchester Mansion had been vacant forever. Then, sometime in the early afternoon of Saturday, March 13, 1886, Sheriff Angel Camilio began getting reports that a massive castle made of wood had suddenly appeared. Gables rose, towers peaked into the sky as the mansion mushroomed into a labyrinth overnight. The house’s sudden manifestation had been both disconcerting and fascinating to the community. Some felt dark curses flowing from the estate, and things moving around in the darkness. Others saw a fairytale castle glimmering in the spring sunlight. Perhaps this is why there are no records of construction, no blueprints, and no permits filed with the county. Come and see what secrets this so-called, “Winchester Mystery House” may hold.
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 Heiress Sarah L. Winchester. Take advantage of this fascinating experience. After the tour, there will be time to enjoy the mansion’s splendor at your own pace. You might even discover secret passages.
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal at Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, which once spanned 740 acres, all the way down to Stevens Creek Boulevard; wander 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/
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 for 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/
Ah, yes. The BMW 3 Series. Happy 50th birthday to the most iconic BMW ever! It is really hard to decide on a BMW model. However, the 3 series is a favorite of everyone. All the upper-class suburban families had one in the 1980s and 1990s; everyone from teenagers and housewives to executives and diplomats. Now that they are larger in size, but still sporty and luxurious, the audience has grown tremendously. These are very stylish and reliable cars, which is why BMW continues to dominate the luxury car space.
With its top ranking in Consumer Reports’ Auto Brand Report Card and consistent market share growth, BMW has demonstrated its ability to produce high-performing, reliable vehicles that meet consumer demands. BMW stands out due to its focus on driving dynamics and engineering excellence. While other luxury brands prioritize comfort and opulence, BMW is known for creating cars that are fun to drive and offer a unique connection between the driver and the machine. This is why BMW is known as the Ultimate Driving Machine. https://www.brianharrisbmw.com/
Randolph Harris San Francisco Taxation & Mergers
Building strong and lasting client relationships is crucial for a successful legal career. Many lawyers mistakenly believe that mastering legal skills alone ensures success, but law is fundamentally a service industry—our job is to solve problems through the time we sell. To build long-term relationships, attorneys must focus on three core elements: knowing their clients, understanding how their legal issues fit into a larger context, and consistently delivering exceptional service.
Randy advises clients with regard to business transition, taxable and tax deferred mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, restructuring, integrated tax planning, federal and state tax controversy resolution, and real estate transactions. Trust is the cornerstone of any client relationship. Ultimately, my clients feel they are in capable hands with someone who genuinely understands their problems and goals. https://www.jmbm.com/l-randolph-harris.html
Millhaven Homes luxury construction is our specialty. We are second to none in our ability to sacred places of hidden wishes that our clients desire. We believe that building your custom home or undertaking a major remodeling project should be an exciting and rewarding experience. Through our fully transparent process, you remain in control of every detail, from custom design selections to sustainable building materials and smart home technology integration.
Millhaven Homes offers Design + Build services for luxury homes in various styles and locations in Utah. See their portfolio of projects, services, development, and contact information. https://millhavenhomes.com/portfolio/
Anyway, it’s Too Bad You Left Teaching
Imagine a world without identification, a world in which you could not recognize people and they could not recognize you. It would take extraordinary effort to meet our human needs, both physical and emotional. To become like the Savior, everyone will need to face challenges and hardships during this life. Dealing with life’s challenges successfully requires faith in Jesus Christ and emotional resilience. Emotional resilience is: The ability to adapt to emotional challenges with courage and faith centered in Jesus Christ. Helping yourself and others to be the best you can. When needed, reaching out for additional help. Today, when the term identity refers, often, to something noisily demonstrative, to a desperate “quest,” or to an almost deliberately confused “search,” let me present two formulations which assert strongly what identity feels like when you become aware of the fact that you do undoubtedly have one. A man’s character is discernible in the mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments, there is a voice inside which speaks and says: “This is the real me!” Such an experience always includes an element of active tension, of holding my own, as it were, and trusting outward things to perform their part to make it a full harmony, but without any guaranty that they will. #RandolphHarris 1 of 20
Make it a guaranty and the attitude immediately becomes to my consciousness stagnant and stingless. Take away the guaranty, and I feel (provided I am ueberhaupt in vigorous condition) a sort of deep enthusiastic bliss, of bitter willingness to do and suffer anything…and which, although it is a mere mood or emotion to which I can give no form in words, authenticates itself to me as the deepest principle of all active and theoretic determination which I possess. Many people have bound to them a national identity (they are ashamed to admit) neither faith nor national pride, for some have always been an unbeliever and were brought up without any religion, though not without a respect for what are called the “ethical” standards of human civilization. Whenever individuals feel an inclination towards national enthusiasm, they strive to suppress it, perceiving it as harmful and wrong, alarmed by the warning examples of the people among whom they live. However, plenty of other things remain over to make the attraction of America and Americans irresistible—many obscure emotional forces, which were the more powerful the less they could be expressed in words, as well as a clear consciousness of inner identity, the safe privacy of a common mental construction. And beyond this, there is a perception that it is wrong to their American nature alone that they owned two characteristics that have become indispensable to them in the difficult course of their lives. #RandolphHarris 2 of 20
Because they are American, many people find themselves freedom from many prejudices which restrict others in the use of their intellect; and as Americans, they are prepared to join the Opposition, and to do without agreement with the “compact majority.” Trained minds of genius, of course, have a special identity and special identity problems often leading to a protracted crisis at the onset of their careers. Dr. Freud’s “consciousness of inner identity” includes a sense of bitter pride preserved by his dispersed and often despised people throughout a long history of persecution. It is anchored in a (here intellectual) gift which had victoriously emerged from the hostile limitation of opportunities. At the same time, Dr. Freud contrasts the positive identity of a fearless freedom of thinking with a negative trait in “the peoples among whom we Americans live,” namely, “prejudices which restrict others in the use of their intellect.” It dawns on us, then, that one person’s or group’s identity may be relative to another’s, and that the pride of gaining a strong identity may signify an inner emancipation from a more dominant group identity, such as that of the “compact majority.” An exquisite triumph is suggested in the claim that the same historical development which restricted the prejudiced majority in the free use of their intellect made the isolated minority sturdier in intellectual matters. #RandolphHarris 3 of 20
The need of silencing the intellect is paramount. If it is ignored in favor of the reading of endless books, or the writing of numerous notes extracted from them, the man keeps his intellect constantly active and thus prevents his mind from becoming still! What is the use of accumulating notes and books, which are outside him, when the mind which must be conquered is inside him? Each book that is read represents a stirring up of thoughts whereas what is required of him is a silencing of them. There is no limit to the number of books that can be read or notes made. Even working twenty-four hours a day, he could go on activating intellect until he died, thereby avoiding his duty in prayer. Reading is useful in the preliminary stages to convince him, to clear his doubts, and finally to tell him what to do, that is, to practice mind-stilling. However, if he does not do it, his knowledge is wasted. In this matter of reading books, we should be truly grateful for their plentitude, their helpfulness, and their variety. And for those interested in the American scholastic modes of classic thought, they make readily available teachings, ideas, and traditions which not so long ago were available only to the few who were wealthy enough or brave enough to make the long journey to unique, remote lands. Certainly, reading is not enough and the work should not stop with it; there is need to go inwards by way of prayer and thus turn theory into practice. However, the very fact that texts were composed thousands of years ago and that they have been written continuously ever since shows that there is a real need for them. They can and do help seekers. #RandolphHarris 4 of 20
The will of other peoples has no rights, for it is the people who represent the will [of the Spirit] who dominate the world. Bakunin saw the State as the incarnation of crime. “The smallest and most inoffensive State is still criminal in its dreams.” Therefore, revolution is the incarnation of good. This struggle, which surpasses politics, is also the struggle of Luciferian principles against the divine principle. Bakunin explicitly reintroduces into rebellious action one of the themes of romantic rebellion. Proudhon had already decreed that God is Evil and exclaimed: “Come, Satan, victim of the calumnies of kings and of the petty-minded!” Bakunin also gives a glimpse of the broader implications of a political rebellion: “Evil is satanic rebellion against divine authority, a rebellion in which we see, nevertheless, the fruitful seed of every form of human emancipation.” Like the Fraticelli of fourteenth-century Bohemia, revolutionary socialists today use this phrase as a password: “In the name of him to whom a great wrong has been done.” The struggle against creation will therefore be without mercy and ethics, and the only salvation lies in extermination. “The passion for destruction is a creative passion.” Bakunin’s burning words about the revolution of 1848 in his Confession vehemently proclaim this pleasure in destruction. “A feast without beginning and without end,” he says. In fact, for him as for all who are oppressed, the revolution is a feast, in the religious sense of the world. #RandolphHarris 5 of 20
Here we are reminded of the French anarchist Coeurderoy, who, in his book Hurrah, or the Cossack Revolution, summoned the hordes of the north to lay waste to the whole world. He also wanted to “apply the torch to my father’s house” and proclaimed that the only hope lay in the human deluge and chaos. Rebellion is grasped, throughout these manifestations, in its pure state, in its biological truth. That is why Bakunin, with exceptional perspicacity, was the only one of his period to declare war on science, the idol of his contemporaries. Against every abstract idea, he pleaded for the cause of the complete man, completely identified with his rebellion. If he glorifies the brigand leader of the peasant rising, if he chooses to model himself on Stenka Razin and Pugachev, it is because these men fought, without either doctrine or principle, for an ideal of pure freedom. Bakunin introduces into the midst of revolution the naked principle of rebellion. “The tempest and life, that is what we need. A new world, without laws, and consequently free.” However, is a world without laws a free world? That is the question posed by every rebellion. If the question were to be asked of Bakunin, the answer would not be in doubt. Even though he was opposed in all circumstances, and with the most extreme lucidity, to authoritarian socialism, yet from the moment when he himself begins to define the society of the future, he does so—without being at all concerned about the contradiction—in terms of a dictatorship. #RandolphHarris 6 of 20
The statutes of the International Fraternity (1864-7), which Bakunin edited himself, already establish the absolute subordination of the individual to the central committee, during the period of action. It is the same for the period that followed the revolution. He hoped to see in liberated Russia “a strong dictatorial power…a power supported by partisans, enlightened by their advice, fortified by their free collaboration, but which would be limited by nothing and by no one.” Bakunin contributed as much as his enemy Marx and Leninist doctrine. The dream of the revolutionary Slav empire, moreover, as Bakunin conjurers it up before the Czar, is the same, down to the last detail of its frontiers, as that realized by Stalin. Coming from man wise enough to say that the essential driving force of Czarist Russia was fear and who rejected the Marxist theory of party dictatorship, these conceptions may seem contradictory. However, this contradiction demonstrates that the origins of authoritarian doctrines are partially nihilistic. Pisarev justifies Bakunin. Certainly, the latter wanted total freedom; but he hoped to realize it through total destruction. To destroy everything is to pledge oneself to building without foundations, and then to holding up the walls with one’s hands. He who rejects the entire past, without keeping any part of it which could serve to breathe life into the revolution, condemns himself to finding justification only in the future and, in the meantime, to entrusting the police with the task of justifying the provisional state of affairs. #RandolphHarris 7 of 20
Bakunin proclaims dictatorship, not despite his desire for destruction, but by it. Nothing could turn him from this path since his ethical values had also been dissolved in the crucible of total negation. In his openly obsequious Confession to the Czar, which he wrote to gain his freedom, he spectacularly introduces the double game into revolutionary politics. With his Catechism of a Revolutionary, which he probably drafted in Switzerland, with the help of Nechaiev, he voices, even though he denies it later, the political cynicism that will never cease to weigh on the revolutionary movement and which Nechaiev himself has so provocatively illustrated. Bakunin reminds me a lot of former President Obama, which, if it is not clear, also had the agenda of achieving freedom through total destruction. Obama had also lost his ethics and made a mockery of America and was determined to drive it into bankruptcy with the flood of social programs, environmental agendas, and by allowing an invasion of illegal immigrants. His policies were further carried out by his henchmen, former President Biden, former Vice President Kamala, and Governor Gavin Newsom. The power and tenacity of self-hate is astounding in their redirect and policies. When trying to account for its depth, we must realize that the rage of the proud self for feeling humiliated and held down at every step by the actual self. We must also consider the ultimate impotence of this rage. For, much as the neurotic may try to regard himself as a disembodied spirit, he is dependent on the actual self for being and hence for attaining glory. If he were to kill the hated self, he must at the same time kill the glorious self, as Dorian Gray did when slashing to pieces the picture expressing his degradation. #RandolphHarris 8 of 20
On the one hand, this dependency, as a rule, prevents these megalomaniacs from suicide. If it were not for this dependency, suicide would be the logical outcome of self-hate. Suicide is a comparatively rare occurrence, and it results from a combination of factors, among which self-hate is but one. Conversely, the very dependency makes self-hate all the crueler and merciless, as is the case in any powerless rage. Furthermore, self-hate is not only a result of self-glorification but also serves to maintain it. More precisely, it serves the drive to actualize the idealized self and to find a full integration on that exalted level by eliminating conflicting elements. The very condemnation of imperfection confirms the godlike standards with which the person identifies himself. We can observe this function of self-hate in analysis. When we uncover the patient’s self-hate, we may naively expect that he will be eager to get rid of it. Sometimes such a healthy response does occur. More often, his response is divided. He cannot help recognizing the formidable burden and danger of self-hate, but he may feel it even more dangerous to rebel against the yoke. He may plead in the most plausible terms the validity of high standards and the danger of becoming lax through greater tolerance toward self. Or he may gradually reveal his conviction that he fully deserves the contempt with which he treats himself, which indicates that he is not yet able to accept himself on any lesser terms than those of his arrogant standards. #RandolphHarris 9 of 20
The neurotic has no feeling for himself. There must first be some sympathy for the suffering self, some experiencing of this suffering, before the recognition of beating himself down can set in motion a constructive move. Or, to take another aspect, there must first be some owning up to the existence of his wishes before the realization of self-frustration can start to disquiet or even to interest him. Enormous amounts of information can be compressed elegantly into this drawing. If we look at the script matrices, the problem derives from the parental directives and the decisive patterns of behavior, the script theme, the “noise” or foreground confusion, which is made doubly difficult because not only the person himself, but all the people around him, contribute as much as they possibly can to these distractions. This tends to conceal the steps leading up to the script’s payoff, the happy or tragic ending, which in the language of biologists is the “final display.” In other words, people take great pains to conceal their scripts from themselves and others. This is only natural. To return to a previous metaphor, a man sitting in front of a player piano and moving his fingers under the illusion that he is making the music himself does not want somebody telling him to look inside the piano, and the audience, which is enjoying the spectacle, does not want it either. This is why many democrats and several republicans are content being angry at the world and blaming other people for creating their happiness and success. #RandolphHarris 10 of 20
Many of these people are alcoholics, addicts, and sociopaths. These all have third-degree, hard, tragic scripts called “harmartic” scripts. These harmatic scripts deal with harsh injunctions from a “crazy child,” in the adult, but it can also be extended to include seductions and provocations, as well as injunctions that seem to come from the mature person inside of the adult, rather than from the adult’s crazy inner child. People with good scripts may be interested in script analysis only in an academic way, unless they are going to be therapists. However, with patients, to get them well, it is necessary to dissect out the directives in as pure a form as possible, and drawing an accurate script matrix is a useful tool in planning. The most likely way to elicit the information for filling in the script matrix is to ask the patient the following four questions: What was your parents’ favorite slogan or precept? This will give the key to the antiscript. What kind of life did your parents lead? This will be best answered by a long association with the patient. Whatever his parents taught him to do, he will do again, and the pattern will give him his ordinary social character: “He’s a heavy drinker,” “She’s a sexy young lady.” What is your Parental Prohibition? This is the most important single question for understanding the behavior for the patient and for planning the decisive intervention that will free him to love more fully. Since his symptoms are a substitute for the prohibited act, and a protest it, as demonstrated by Dr. Freud, freedom from the prohibition will also tend to cure his symptoms. #RandolphHarris 11 of 20
It takes experience and subtlety to pick out the decisive parental injunction from the “background noise.” The most reliable clues are offered by the fourth question, What did you have to do to make your parents smile or chuckle? This gives the come-on, which is the alternative to the prohibited behavior. The prohibition in the case of alcoholics is “Don’t think!” and that drinking heavily is one program for not thinking. The absence of thinking is well shown in the drinking platitudes common among alcoholic players and their sympathizers and even more so by the ones they foist on each other in alcoholic group therapy (the same concepts also apply to people who use marijuana). What all this says is that alcoholics are not real people and should not be treated like real people, which is not true. Heroin is even more addictive and sinister than alcohol, and Synanon has proved that heroin addicts are real people. The real person emerges in both cases after the alcohol or heroin addict cuts off the seductive voices in his head, which are urging him to continue his habit, reinforced in due time by physical demands. It appears that tranquilizers and phenothiazines are effective partly because they smother the parental voices that keep the child in the adult agitated or confuse him with their “Don’ts” and “Ha Ha’s.” The most forceful script during directives are presented during the family drama, which in some respects reinforces what the parents have been saying, and in others demonstrates that they are hypocritical imposters. It is these scenes that bring home the most poignant way what the parents want the child to learn about his script. And it should be remembered that loudly spoken words have just as profound and enduring an effect as so-called “nonverbal communication.” #RandolphHarris 12 of 20
How can it be bad to love? It is not bad to love. Yet, there can be subtle distortions of this basic dimension of human experience that make love just another trick in the bag of manipulation. Consider the story of Arthus, who decided at some point in his life that his self was not sufficient to deal with conflict. He would do just about anything to avoid it. Out of his fear, he became a “pleaser and placater.” He exaggerated his loving feelings, wanted everyone to be happy, and tried heroically to meet everyone’s needs. His emotional stance became so habitual that Arthur found himself nodding his head in agreement with everything anyone said. However, the manipulative paradox was that Arthur seldom really listened to what anyone was saying. The act of appearing to be loving and agreeable distorted his true caring. And Arthur was in a continual state of dissatisfaction. He never seemed to get sufficiently loving responses from others. No one seemed to care about his needs. On occasion, he would even encounter hostile opposition from others, no matter how much loving energy he expended on them. “Life isn’t fair,” he thought to himself. “I’ve never done anything against anyone else, so why should anyone be so rotten to me?” In his frustration, the usually super-nice Arthur would have occasional, unexplained outbursts of unreasonable anger. The story of his life was simple: Whatever he did, he did so that people would love him. #RandolphHarris 13 of 20
Arthur hated the boredom and discipline of school, but to please his parents and to avoid conflict with them, he studied hard, made A’s, and graduated with his honors. His father died when Arthur was in his late teens. Wanting more than ever to please his mother, Arthur went to college. She wanted him to be a teacher, but he wanted to be a sculptor. “A sculptor?” she wailed when he told her of his dream. “Whoever heard of such a thing? Look in the want ads. In all of the state, is anybody looking for sculptors? It’s teachers, teachers, they’re crying for. The work is clean; it’s honest; it’s professional. Be a good boy, Arthur. Be a teacher.” He became a teacher, reasoning that he could study his art in college and teach it when he finished, pleasing himself and his mother at the same time. Conflict would be avoided. The plan might have worked, except for one thing: He hated teaching. He found school more boring as a teacher than he ever had as a student. The pay was poor, and after a full day of dragging himself through the work he hated, Arthur had little enthusiasm for pursuing his art. Besides sculpture, Arthur had a talent for drawing, so he quit teaching and took a job as an illustrator in an advertising agency. Soon, he was an art director with his own office, secretary, and printed business cards. One Saturday, he took his mother to his office to show her how well he was doing. She was impressed by the big desk and the carpeting, but said, “Anyway, it’s too bad you left teaching. There, you were a professional.” #RandolphHarris 14 of 20
So, he went back to college and earned a degree in architecture. The field promised everything he (and his mother) wanted: a chance to work with shapes, structures, and real materials, and most of all, the status of a “professional.” His mother would surely be proud. Arthur had married and had a good job and income, but for Arthur, everything seemed wrong, drastically wrong. He was thirty-two years old and in good health, yet he felt that his life was over. He had grown too fond of the wine he drank in ever-larger amounts each evening. He found a certain amount of satisfaction in his work, but there was no joy in it, no life. He began to feel that he had been cheated. “Please, people,” he had believed, “and they will love you.” “Don’t fight and argue with others,” he maintained, “and they will love you.” “Love is the key to happiness,” he thought. Arthur went out of his way to please people. He loaned people money. He helped them in business. Arthur was a nice guy. Yet, for all his willingness to please, to love and be loved, Arthur was miserable. Arthur finally went into group psychotherapy. His wife had urged him to try it. So long as a man gets all his ideas from experience gained through the body, alone, so long may he pardonably accept the belief in materialism. However, as soon as he begins to get them from thinking alone—and the difference cannot be properly grasped until he has practiced prayer sufficiently and successfully—so soon will he see the falsity of this belief. #RandolphHarris 15 of 20
Conscience is the act of judging one’s experience and action, comparing them to the standards of an idealized self. Conscience has been likened to a “still small voice,” and it has been described as our imaginative view of how we would like to be and how we believe we ought to be. The standards of conscience, in terms of which persons condemn or approve their conduct, are usually based upon the laws and customs of the society within which they have been reared. Seen from a sociological viewpoint, conscience—our capacity to make the moral judgments of our conduct—is one of the “agencies” for social control. The necessity for controlling behavior through social pressure, or through threats of imprisonment or violence, is decreased when people have acquired a conscience. Conscience plays an important role in the development of neurotic and psychotic illnesses. Moreover, conformity to some moral standards can sometimes force a person to live in ways that are joyless and that endanger the person’s physical health. “For behold, the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil; wherefore, I show unto you the way to judge; for everything which inviteth to do good, and to persuade to believe in Christ, is sent forth by the power and gift of Christ; wherefore ye may know with a perfect knowledge it is of God,” report Moroni 7.16. “Men are instructed sufficiently that they know good from evil,” reports 2 Nephi 2.5. The light of Christ is in all men, and this faculty is called conscience. The possession of it makes us responsible beings. Like other faculties, our consciences may be deadened through sin or misuse. #RandolphHarris 16 of 20
General awareness plays a significant role in promoting heroic behavior. Awareness and presence help individuals tap into the power of the moment and recognize situations that call for heroic action, such as helping others in need or standing up for noble principles. By being attuned to their surroundings and the well-being of humanity, the award-winning Sacramento Fire Department can use their heroic consciousness to act courageously and selflessly in the face of challenges, contributing to the betterment of their communities and the world. Many heroes possess a broad awareness of the world and its history. They understand the context of their actions and the implications of their choices on a global or historical scale. Global and historical awareness is a vital part of the consciousness of the members of the Sacramento Fire Department, as it connects them to the broader human experiences across time and geography. It fosters a sense of empathy, understanding, and responsibility, allowing firefighters, EMTs, and paramedics to recognize the collective impact of history and current global events on their lives and the well-being of humanity. They have superior thinking skills, reasoning, problem-solving abilities, memories, and cognitive processes that occur within their minds. It involves the capacity to process information, form beliefs, and make decisions. #RandolphHarris 17 of 20
One of the most important positions to fill in the command system at a growing or significant incident is the position of the incident safety officer (ISO). The ISO is a member of the command staff who reports directly to the incident commander and assists in observations and evaluations of scene safety. The IOS ensures that the actions of the crews match the strategic decision of the incident action plan (IAP) and that feedback and recommendations are communicated to command. Maintaining incident scene accountability means utilizing a system of all crews on a fireground at a given time. This can be accomplished in different ways, and no system is dramatically better than any other. The key to effective accountability is to ensure that every member of the department complies with the policies and that companies and commanders continually practice with the system. This is true whether the system is simply dog tags in a coffee can or a computerized barcode scanning and tracking system. If its rules are not followed, no system is effective. The system must also be able to identify when a member is unaccounted for, usually through a personal accountability report (PAR). PARs can be called for at specific time intervals, fire control benchmarks, or when there is a change in strategies. All emergency response agencies must have some method of tracking the name, location, and function of all members in a hot zone, along with a method to periodically ensure that all are accounted for. #RandolphHarris 18 of 20
“You get suspicious when people tell you that they want to fight fires to serve humanity. Helping people is a by-product. After you are a firefighter for a while, it becomes instinct in any situation to help people, because that is what you have been trained to do. I don’t think most of us get involved in the fire department for that motive. We do it because we love the Sacramento Fire Department and we love firefighting. The more time you spend in journalism, the more you realize that there are times when you can be fooled. I’m wary of it. You tend to be skeptical because you know you are capable of being misled. I don’t know about firefighters, it depends on what their experience in firefighting has been. I think that firefighters who have been on busy, hard-working companies probably get wiser than those who have been in slower places. A busy fire company is a lot like a combat outfit in the military service. The more you see, the more you learn. It also shapes your attitude. I’ve noticed that the busier a fire company is, the happier it is, the fewer discipline problems you have, the closer bond you have between the firemen themselves. The more action a fire company gets, the better it gets, the better feeling it has about itself. It’s an interesting phenomenon. #RandolphHarris 19 of 20
“There have been times, twice in my life, when I stayed away from the fire department for a period because I had seen more than I could handle. Once when I was around nineteen or twenty, I saw too many things happening that I couldn’t cope with. I stayed away from more than a year. It wasn’t the victims themselves as it was the families. Seeing them shook me up pretty bad, but gradually I got back at it and was able to endure being a source of support. Having empathy is good, but never let it overcome you. Then, after my first son was born, I became very sensitive to parenthood and my responsibilities to my child. But I couldn’t stay away from the fire department, and eventually I had to go back because something was missing from my life. Everyone acknowledges that being a firefighter is a dangerous thing. You have to learn to accept it and to use your head as much as you can. You realize that there are certain situations that you cannot control. Everybody gets hurt at some point. If you go to enough fires, sooner or later, you’re going to take your share of bumps and bruises. But I have always loved the actual firefighting. The feeling of being a part of this team and of being challenged. I also love the firehouse, the tension that always exists because the bell could ring at any minute. I feel a sense of duty to people. It’s a responsibility that comes with being born into this world. The Sacramento Fire Department helps people in times of need. We were put in this place to help the community out; it’s just who we are. We are just ordinary people trying to help.” #RandolphHarris 20 of 20
According to locals, over a century ago, the land that houses The Winchester Mansion had been vacant forever. Then, sometime in the early afternoon of Saturday, March 13, 1886, Sheriff Angel Camilio began getting reports that a massive castle made of wood had suddenly appeared. Gables rose, towers peaked into the sky as the mansion mushroomed into a labyrinth overnight. The house’s sudden manifestation had been both disconcerting and fascinating to the community. Some felt dark curses flowing from the estate, and things moving around in the darkness. Others saw a fairytale castle glimmering in the spring sunlight. Perhaps this is why there are no records of construction, no blueprints, and no permits filed with the county. Come and see what secrets this so-called, “Winchester Mystery House” may hold.
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 Heiress Sarah L. Winchester. Take advantage of this fascinating experience. After the tour, there will be time to enjoy the mansion’s splendor at your own pace. You might even discover secret passages.
Please come and enjoy a delicious meal at Sarah’s Café, stroll along the paths of the beautiful Victorian gardens, which once spanned 740 acres, all the way down to Stevens Creek Boulevard; wander 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/
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/
Cresleigh Bluffs at Plumas Ranch
Plumas Lake, CA | from the mid $400’s
Now Selling!
1067 Tiburon Way, Plumas Lake, CA 95961
Welcome to Residence Four at Cresleigh Bluffs, a thoughtfully designed two story home featuring four bedrooms, three bathrooms, and a flexible floor plan suited for today’s lifestyle.
The main floor offers a private bedroom and full bathroom, ideal for guests or multigenerational living.
Alongside an open concept kitchen, dining area, and great room that create a warm and inviting space for entertaining or relaxing.
Upstairs, enjoy a versatile loft perfect for a home office, playroom, or additional lounge, along with three more bedrooms including a spacious primary suite and a conveniently located laundry room.
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I’ve Got a Secret!
According to Dr. Freud, “One day, in retrospect, the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.” Many of us know the story of Cinderella, and those who do understand she struggled with being a victim of abuse and manipulation, and all most losing the man she loved to her abusers. There are many interesting features in the story of Cinderella. First, the cast is much larger than it appears at first sight. In order of appearance, the persons are as follows: Father, Stepmother, Daughter A, Daughter B, Cinderella, (Mother), Godmother, (Coachman, Footmen), (People at the ball), Prince, King, (Queen), (Guards), A Gentleman, Two Lords. This comprises nine principal characters, a few silent parts, and one-liners, and lots of extras. The most interesting thing about the cast is that almost all of them are crooked. Another feature is the clarity of the switches, which is common to most stories intended for children. Cinderella starts out as an O.K. person, the becomes first a Victim, later a teasing Persecutor, and finally a Rescuer. The stepmother and her daughters are changed from Persecutors into Victims, much more so in the German “Ashenputtel” version, where the two stepsisters cut off parts of their feet to make the slipper fit. The story also introduces the other two classical roles, as found in the “Alcoholic” game. The connection in this case is played by the godmother, who supplies Cinderella with what she needs, while the Patsies are the lord who were chosen to marry the wicked sisters. #RandolphHarris 1 of 28
Let us now consider the scripts of the people involved. It takes a little time to realize how many of the characters have their scripts revealed in this apparently simple tale. 1. Cinderella. She has a happy childhood, but then must suffer until a certain event happens. The crucial scenes, however, are times structured: she can enjoy herself as much as she pleases until the stroke of midnight, and then she must return to her former state. Cinderella apparently avoided the temptation to play, “Ain’t it Awful,” even with her father, and is simply a melancholy, forlorn figure until the action begins with the ball. Then she plays, “Try and Catch Me” with the Prunce, and later, with a scripty smile, “I’ve Got a Secret” with her sisters. The climax comes with a smashing game of, “Now She Tells Us,” as Cinderella, with a teasing laugh, gets the payoff for the winning script. 2. Father. Father’s script calls for him to lose his first wife and then cast off his daughter and marry a bossy (and presumably frigid) woman who will make him and her suffer. However, he has a trick up his sleeve, as we shall soon see. 3. Stepmother. She has a loser’s script. She, too, plays, “Now She Tells Me,” seducing the fathers into marrying her and then revealing her true, wicked self immediately after the wedding. She lives through her daughters, and hopes to get a princely payoff for them from her mean behavior, but ends up the loser. #RandolphHarris 2 of 28
The Stepsisters. Their counterscripts are based on their mother’s precept, “Take care of yourself first and do not give a sucker an even break,” but the outcome is based on the injunction “Do not succeed.” Since that is also the script injunction for their mother, it was evidently transmitted from their grandparents. They play a hard game of “Schlemiel,” first getting Cinderella (or Cinderarse, as they called her) thoroughly messed up, and then apologizing and obtaining her forgiveness. Godmother. She is the most interesting of all the characters. What were her motives in outfitting Cinderella for the ball? Why did she not just have a nice talk with her and comfort her, instead of sending her out into all the glitter? The situation was that stepmother and stepsisters were gone for the evening, and only Cinderella and her father were left in the house. Why was godmother so anxious to get rid of Cinderella? What was going on “back at the ranch,” where godmother and father were alone for the evening, while everyone else was away at the ball? Her telling Cinderella not to stay after midnight was a good way to insure that she would be then first to get home. This avoided the risk of the other females finding godmother there, since Cinderella’s approach gave her waring to take off in good time. From a cynical point of view, the whole story sounds like a setup to allow father and godmother to spend the evening together. #RandolphHarris 3 of 28
The Prince. The Prince was a jerk, and no doubt got what he deserved after he was married. He lets the girl get away twice in a row without getting any clue as to her identity. Then, he is unable to catch her in a foot race, even though she is limping along with only one shoe. Instead of finding her himself, he sends a friend to do the job for him. Finally, he marries this girl of dubious upbringing and questionable family less than a week after he meets her. Despite the superficial impression that he wins her, all this points to a loser’s script. 7. The King. The King has an eye for the girls, and is a bit of a blabbermouth. Nor does he protect his son from his own impulsiveness. 8. The Gentleman. He is the straightest of all the characters in the story. Instead of being sloppy or supercilious, and laughing at Cinderella, as her sisters were going to do, he gets his job done with a fine sense of justice. Nor does he run off with Cinderella himself, as a lesser man might have done, but brings her safely to his employer. He is honest, efficient, and conscientious. 9. The two lords, of course, are patsies to allow themselves to be married off to two very uncool girls, whom they know nothing about, having only met them on their wedding day. The important thing is that all these characters can be picked out in real life. Here, for example, is the story of Cinderella. #RandolphHarris 4 of 28
Ella’s parents got divorced when she was little, and she stayed with her mother. Shortly afterward, her father remarried. He had two daughters by his second wife, who was jealous of Ella when she came to visit, and begrudged the money her father sent for her support. A few years later, her mother also remarried, and then Ella had to go live with her father because her mother and new stepfather were more interested in drinking than in taking care of her. Ella was not at all happy in her new home because her stepmother made it clear that she did not like her, and her father did little to protect her. She always had the last choice in everything, and her sisters teased her. She grew up very shy and had few dates when she was a teenager, while her sister led an active social life in which she was not invited to share. Ella had one advantage, however. She knew something the other did not know. Her father had a mistress, a divorcee named Linda, with a majestic and ultra exclusive BMW Speed Top automobile, who wore very expensive hippie-type necklaces. Ella and Linda secretly became good friends, and used to have long talks about their problems with dad. In fact, Linda gave Ella advice about many different things, and was like a godmother to her. She was particularly concerned because Ella did not have much of a social life. #RandolphHarris 5 of 28
One afternoon Linda said: “Your mother is away, and your sisters are going out on dates, so why do you not go out, too? It is no fun sitting at home all by yourself. I will lend you my car and some clothes, and you can go to the Rock-and-Roll Ballroom where there are lots of boys you can meet. Come over to my place about six and we will eat and I will fix you up.” Ella figured Linda and her father were going to spend the evening together, and she agreed. Linda thought Ella looked very nice all dressed up. “Do not hurry back,” she said, as she handed Ella the keys to her beautiful car. At the dance, Ella met a nice boy named Roland, and started to go out with him. However, a poor guitar-player friend of his was much more interested in Ella than he was, and soon she was going out secretly with Prince, the guitar-player. She did not want Prince to call at her house because she knew her mother would not approve of his unkempt appearance, so Roland would come pick her up with his date and then they would meet Prince and the four of them would go somewhere together. Meanwhile, her father and stepmother and sisters thought she was dating Roland, and Ella and he had lots of fun over that. Prince was not poor. He came from a well-to-do family and had a good education, but he wanted to make it on his own as an entertainer. He began to get more and more famous. #RandolphHarris 6 of 28
After he was well known, he and Ella decided to tell her family the real story before they found out from someone else. It came as a complete surprise to her siters, who adored Prince’s records, and they were very jealous when Ella announced that she had won such a rich prize for a husband. However, she did not bear them any grudge for their ill-treatment, and often got them free tickets to Prince’s concerts. She even introduced them to some of his square friends. As followers of Jesus Christ, we should live peacefully with others who do not share our values or accept the teachings upon which they are based. In the concluding days of His mortal ministry, Jesus gave His disciples what He called, “a new commandment,” reports John 13.34. Repeated three times, that commandment was simple but difficult: “Love one another, as I have loved you,” reports John 15.12. The teaching to love one another had been a central teaching of the Savior’s ministry. One which Cinderella did master. The second great commandment was “love thy neighbour as thyself,” reports Matthew 22.39. Jesus even taught, “Love your enemies,” reports Matthew 5.44. However, the commandment to love others as He had loved His flock was to His disciples—and is to us—a challenge that was unique. Love is the very essence of the gospel and Jesus Christ is our Exemplar. His life was a legacy of love. Cinderella certain understood the gospel and practiced it in her life. #RandolphHarris 7 of 28
Why is it so difficult to have Christlike love for one another? It is difficult because we must live among those who do not share our beliefs and values and covenant obligations. In His great Intercessory Prayer, offered just before His Crucifixion, Jesus Christ prayed for His followers: “I have given them thy word; and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world,” reports John 17.14. Then, to the Father He pleaded, “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from the evil,” reports John 17.15. We are to live in the World but not be of the world. We must live in the world because, as Jesus Christ taught in a parable, His kingdom is ” like leaven,” whose function is to raise the whole mass by its influence (see Luke 13.21; Matthew 13.33; see also 1 Corinthians 5.6-8). If they associate only with those who share their values, His followers cannot do that. However, the important message is not to be influenced by people whose way are not godly. Therefore, if you are not strong enough to withstand peer pressure, stay away from those who might lead you astray from the ways of the Lord. If we love Him, the Savior taught the we will Keep his commandments (see John14.15). Even as we seek to be meek and to avoid contention, we must not compromise or dilute out commitment to the truths we understand. We must not surrender our positions or our values. Jesus Christ and the covenants we have made inevitably cast us as combatants in the eternal contest between truth and error. There is no middle ground in that contest. #RandolphHarris 8 of 28
Hegel affirms that in so far as death is the common ground of man and animal, it is by accepting death and even by inviting it that the former differentiates himself from the latter. At the heart of this primordial struggle for recognition, man is thus identified with violent death. The mystic slogan “Die and become what you are” is taken up once more by Hegel, But, “Become what you are” gives place to “Become what you so far are not.” This primitive and passionate desire for recognition, which is confused with the will to exist, can be satisfied only by a recognition of all by all, which will mark the termination of history. The existence that Hegelian consciousness seeks to obtain is born in the hard-won glory of collective approval. It is not beside the point to note that, in the thought which will inspire our revolutions, the supreme good does not coincide with existence, but with an arbitrary facsimile. The entire history of mankind is, in any case, nothing but a prolonged fight to the death for the conquest of universal prestige and absolute power. It is, in its essence, imperialist. We are far from the gentle savage of the eighteenth century and from the Social Contact. In the sound and fury of the passing centuries, each separate consciousness, to ensure its own existence, must henceforth desire the death of others. Moreover, this relentless tragedy is absurd, since, in the event of one consciousness being bestowed, the victorious consciousness is not recognized as such, in that it cannot be victorious in the eyes of something that no longer exists. In fact, it is there the philosophy of appearances reaches its limits. #RandolphHarris 9 of 28
No human reality would therefore have been engendered, if, thanks to a propensity that can be considered fortunate for Hegel’s system, there had not existed, from the beginning of time, two kinds of consciousness, one of which has not the courage to renounce life and is therefore willing to recognize the other kind of consciousness without being recognized itself in return. It consents, in short, to being considered as an object. This type of consciousness, which, to preserve its animal existence, renounces independent life, is the consciousness of the slave. The type of consciousness which by being recognized achieves independence is that of the master. They are distinguished one from the other at the moment when they clash and when one submits to the other. The dilemma at this stage is not to be free or to die, but to kill or to enslave. This dilemma will resound throughout the course of history, though at this moment its absurdity has not yet been resolved. In contrast, a core relationship is contact between two individuals who express and reveal themselves to each other openly and honestly, appreciating and accepting each other as they truly are and trusting in the abilities and goodwill of each other. A core relationship can be longstanding—a husband and wife, a parent and child, close friends, business partners—or it can be briefer and more casual—a clerk at the supermarket and a customer, co-workers, parents of children who play together. Any possible encounter between two people can have the characteristic of a core relationship. #RandolphHarris 10 of 28
Have you ever met someone, had a conversation, then moved on, probably never to see that person again, but you felt good about yourself and about that person? Felt that you had received something wonderful and had given something wonderful? If so, you have had a core-to-core relationship, however brief, with another individual. One or both of you revealed yourselves honestly and openly, appreciated and accepted each other as you truly are, and trusted each other’s abilities and goodwill. By comparison, superficial relationships can be found as readily in longstanding contacts—such as with husbands and wives, parents, and children—as in more casual interactions. The characteristics of superficial relationships are unawareness, control, deception, distrust, criticism, and petty competitiveness. Manipulators take a lot of time and expend a great deal of energy on superficial relationships. They cultivate them, make them happen. And when they go home at night, they are too tired even to be civil to those they should be closest to, their families. We believe that core-to-core relationships do not always take time and energy, but that they do take the willingness to be aware, honest, trusting, accepting, and appreciative. The enhancement of self and others in such relationships is beyond measure. When all is said and done, the home is the ideal forum for teaching the gospel of Jesus Christ. The scripture speak of the role of parents—that it is their duty to teach their children, “the doctrine of repentance, faith in Christ the Son of the living God, and of baptism and the gift of the Holy Ghost,” reports Doctrine and Covenants 68.25. #RandolphHarris 11 of 28
The success of the gospel cannot—and should not—be attributed solely to its undeniable capacity to titillate the imagination. It also signals the existence of a widespread need for information, an understandable and almost insatiable public curiosity about the varies of expression, a subject, which recently is being locked away in a shroud by public censorship. With the public abandonment of prescribed rules based on a theological concept of virtue and sin, everyone is now forced to seek out the gospel or to fashion a private set of moral and ethical values which, it is hoped, will sustain him over the years. If unable to achieve an effectively life by basing his conduct on the commandments of the Word, he must sift through words by millions in newspapers, magazines, and books, seeking some insight into his own nature. He must learn to distinguish fact from fiction, blueprint from daydream, reason from rationalization. This is difficult to do when society no longer honors God and His choice land of America. This brings into play a fundamental paradox. The pleasure of being alive depends to a considerable degree on an individual’s ability to include both the unknown and to have the security of the known to give him the confidence he needs to try something different than he has attempted in the past. We want precise understanding and exact description of every science and do not abandon our demand even when the more delicate matter of a method of spiritual illumination is in question. “The humility which can say, “I do not know” is a first step to the confidence which can day, “This is a fact.” If they begin to question, deeply question, then even the simplest statement brings them into difficulties whose existence, previously, they had never suspected. #RandolphHarris 12 of 28
Men learn best because they concentrate best in a quiet, unruffled atmosphere. This requires a secluded site, tall buildings, and high enclosing walls, peaceful laws, and tree-bordered walks. Most Western people dislike abstract generalities: They prefer concrete facts. They believe in first appearances rather than in second views. Against such a tendency truth must struggle bravely for survival. If Westerns were more balanced, they would realize they could keep their facts and their first views—nobody asks them to disregard the practical and the apparent—but they could also have the abstract and the long view, thus achieving balance, and with it, truth. The dept and width of his research must equal the depth and width of his reflection. Where are the answers to men’s questions? He must elicit them for himself one by one. There is little harm in putting into the mind ideas above its level. At worst, they may bore it, but at best they might expand it. Quite often, when a truth or a judgment is carried to extremes, it loses some, or much, or all its validity. If we have sought for truth in directions which have yielded negative results, it is time to take a new direction. A man whose cultural rise has depended upon self-education alone deserves praise and admiration for his effort. Nevertheless, he would have done better to seek also a formal education. This would complete and elevate what he has learnt by himself by providing him with higher standards, competent instruction, and well-tested knowledge or by affording personal help with questions, uncertainty, and problems. #RandolphHarris 13 of 28
He must be frank with himself and know what he does not understand and what he does and not accept mere opinion for solid fact. It may be hard, a rough stony obstructed path, for the common man to find his way into philosophy, but the tension is well worthwhile. He must expand his mind, but there are moments of relief, of joyful discovery, or encouraging perception. Before you can get clear expression of meaning, you must get a clear mind. You must nurture a tendency toward sharply defined thoughts and exactitude of understanding. You must give definite shape to the inchoate ideas which float through your mind like clouds, and thus arrive at complete possession of your subject. Wherever they are shown to be out of harmony with the facts of life, ee will not consciously refuse to readjust his views. If such questions have never entered their minds, it is hardly likely that the answers completely will. Correct thinking may annihilate superstitions and uncover deceptions, but unbalanced thinking may create new ones. The mind needs a long training in truthful thinking into which the ego does not obtrude itself before the hidden reality begins to respond. This uprooting of old familiar but fallacious beliefs discourages some person but encourages others. #RandolphHarris 14 of 28
Public safety and emergency preparedness is essential. The award-winning Sacramento Fire Department must have sufficient trained personnel available to respond to a fire at any hour of the day, every day of the year. Staffing issues affect all fire departments—career departments, combination departments, and other essential departments. It is especially important to ensure that enough responders are always available, particularly during the day. In the past, when many worked in or near the communities where they lived the fire department’s response time was not an issue. Today, however, many people have super commutes and work longer hours, so the number of people available to respond during the day may be limited. Many fire departments, however, have full-time fire fighters during daytime hours to ensure sufficient personnel are available to respond to an incident. In 1992, Congress created the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation to lead a nationwide effort to remember the U.S. fallen fire fighters. In the years since then, this foundation has expanded its programs to sponsor the annual National Fallen Firefighters Memorial Weekend, offer support programs for family members and other survivors, award scholarships to fire service members’ survivors, and work to prevent line-of-duty injuries and deaths. Safety is the highest priority. Ensuring a safe working environment for the members of the fire service is undertaken by several professional organizations and various regulation, standards, and procedures. #RandolphHarris 15 of 28
Effective organization requires both leaders and followers. In the Sacramento Fire Department, fast and effective decision making requires leadership and teamwork. When fighting a fire, there can be no hesitation about who is leading and who is following. Rank takes away guesswork about who oversees what, so leaders and other team members can do their jobs. In fact, it is there the philosophy of appearances reaches its limits. The disciplined exercise of the Sacramento Fire Department’s exercise of customers and courtesies is a clear indicator of the morale and leadership of that organization. It also indicates their ability to function under stress as a team of professionals bound by a warrior ethos and mutual respect. “Being with the Sacramento Fire Department has changed my life. I’m a little more committed to helping people. It’s good being in the fire department, it makes you more responsible. I really never thought I would be a family person, but I am now. A lot has to do with the fire department. You’re always training, so your mind is steadily working. It’s not like a dead end. You’ve always got to move forward and take one day at a time. If an accident happens, we have to respond to it, make sure everybody is all right, and do everything we can. If people are upset, you try to calm them down. The job makes you take charge of things. #RandolphHarris 16 of 28
“This one guy I know was disturbed because his lieutenant had gotten killed, and he felt guilty about it. He asked me what did I do to get over it. My heart went out to him. I told him I really did not do anything, but my family was behind me, and the guys that I work with were behind me 100 percent. But I got the impression that his guys kind of dogged him and blamed him, like he didn’t wait and he didn’t do enough to save the lieutenant. He was totally upset. I told him that in my case I felt I did everything I could, but there wasn’t much I could have done. So I told him he shouldn’t take that weight on himself. When the guys you work with don’t believe in you, that could be a problem. Being a survivor, I don’t know if God was telling me to ‘change your life, young man.’ I have changed, I’ve mellowed. He’s been excellent to me, God has. That’s why I’m here now.” The ordinary man makes a hasty judgement of the matter, or follows his personal wishes, but truth requires a deep well-considered examination. If the capacity to comprehend philosophy is not inborn, then it can be slowly acquired by anyone who thinks it worth the effort. If so many seekers do not find truth pure and unadulterated, but only its impure adulterated variety, it is because their way has been blocked by self-serving partisans interested only in triumph for their own group, position, or argument, their own prejudice, attraction, or bias. Discovery of truth requires not only a willingness to take in the facts which serve one side of a case, but also to refrain from ignoring or belittling those which serve the other side. It is not in an atmosphere of favouritism or hostility that truth appears, but in a deep calm bereft of egoistic urges. This is why some sort of preparation for it is necessary, some kind of training. #RandolphHarris 17 of 28
If you see a fire truck stopped in the street without the lights on, be very careful. Sometimes there is an emergency and you should not pass the fire truck. It might be a good idea to safely turn around and go another way because if you hit someone and they happen to die, you could be charged with manslaughter. Sometimes fire fighters are getting back into their vehicle and if you pass the apparatus, you may collide with a firefighter who is on foot. Also, be sure to look at their signals, sometimes emergency vehicles are in motions, albeit, slowly, and drivers try to pass them, and this could lead to a dangerous situation. Also, 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. #RandolphHarris 18 of 28
California is the third most expensive state in the nation. A single person making an income above $100,000 is now consider low-income in five counties in California. This distinction now applies to individuals living in Santa Cruze, Santa Clara, San Mateo, San Francisco, and Marin counties. In 37 percent of counties, a family of four living on a six-figure income is now considered low-income. In fact, Governor Gavin Newsom of Democratic controlled California, brags about being the world’s “fifth largest economy,” but it also facing a $12 billion deficit, looking to cut $747 million for state worker’s pay, pushing to keep medical insurance for illegal immigrants, but wants to cut medical for anyone who has assets over $2,000 and the state has the largest homeless population in the nation. If they are all officially counted, California has approximately 4 million homeless people. The highest home prices in the nation, the highest taxes and the most unfriendly business regulations known to man. The average home price in California is nearly $1,000,000.00 USD, while the average salary is $96,036.00, meaning that most Californians cannot even afford to buy a home. California is having an affordability crisis. In 2025, many people in California saw their bills increase by an estimated $500 a month. This includes things like food, automobile insurance, homeowner’s insurance, electricity. In fact, more than 3 million people in California are facing household hardship, and more than 300,000 of them are facing eviction soon. This comes at a time when California is having a shortage of affordable housing. This is caused by nearly half a century’s old laws that discourage homes sales and encourage higher rents. Meanwhile, China, where we are sending all of our jobs and money has more than 50 ghost cities. Ghost cities are regions will housing has been overdeveloped to the point that these places are uninhabited. Because California is so hostile towards people and businesses, more than 360 companies have fled the state since 2020. Businesses like Chevron, SpaceX, Oracle, and Hewlett Packard are amongst the names on that list. #RandolphHarris 19 of 28
Also, more than 500,000 people a year are abandoning California because it is too expensive to live in, Gavin Newsom has criminalized homelessness and actually started arresting people without homes, crime is out of control, and they are losing their jobs due to companies relocating. More than 100 companies have announced layoffs in California for 2025. Intel is cutting 15,000 jobs, PayPal 2,500 and Meta has terminated 4,000 employees. The California crisis created by Democrats is driving up home prices and mortgages and rents all over the nation and the world, making living unaffordable for all, and advocates say the crisis is far from over. Accordingly, California has more than 3.5 million illegal immigrants. Having the Southern American boarder open and not having American farmland protected, not producing beef, poultry, fish, fruit, produce and dairy in America, and without American goods and services being our number one manufactured and selling items, America has created a dangerous and significantly elevated risks to national security, national economic security, and national public health. Some people may believe that these claims are overstated, but by not routinely monitoring Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CEVs) or other security relevant alerts, such as end-of-life of machinery is how the Oroville Dam Crisis occurred in 2017. Other crises that have occurred due to neglect of critical infrastructure is the 2025 Palisades fires because Southern California ran out of water, when they are located next to an ocean and they could have simply created desalinating plants to help with the water shortage. The water is so plentiful that it is currently eroding land and causing homes to fall into the sea. #RandolphHarris 20 of 28
The American government should know all exploitable vulnerabilities and fix them prior to the situation becoming a crisis. Failure to take such mitigating actions is dangerous and significantly elevates risk to national security, national economic security, and national public health and safety. The American government must understand that significant time and resources must be invested in America. They must also encourage corporations to plan for both mitigating safety vulnerabilities in the short term and eliminating them in the long term. For instance, a company might begin by reaching out to the federal, state or local government and requesting tax incentives to provide security to dangerous communities, to help the government repair bridges and potholes. America needs an approach to eliminate safety vulnerabilities in American cities. There needs to be a road map by the end of 2025, outlining a prioritized approach to eliminate crisis situations in America. There is enough money to send aid to foreign nations, but the American government does not have enough money to care their infrastructure, provide adequate resources, nor end the affordable housing crisis. Nor is there enough money to fund other national critical functions (NCFs). These bad practices of putting America and Americans last is considered exceptionally risky, particularly to national security, national economic security, and national public health and safety. In 2024, Americans spent $100 billion on Japanese cars. #RandolphHarris 21 of 28
The American government should know all exploitable vulnerabilities and fix them prior to the situation becoming a crisis. Failure to take such mitigating actions is dangerous and significantly elevates risk to national security, national economic security, and national public health and safety. The American government must understand that significant time and resources must be invested in America. They must also encourage corporations to plan for both mitigating safety vulnerabilities in the short term and eliminating them in the long term. For instance, a company might begin by reaching out to the federal, state or local government and requesting tax incentives to provide security to dangerous communities, to help the government repair bridges and potholes. America needs an approach to eliminate safety vulnerabilities in American cities. There needs to be a road map by the end of 2025, outlining a prioritized approach to eliminate crisis situations in America. There is enough money to send aid to foreign nations, but the American government does not have enough money to care their infrastructure, provide adequate resources, nor end the affordable housing crisis. Nor is there enough money to fund other national critical functions (NCFs). These bad practices of putting America and Americans last is considered exceptionally risky, particularly to national security, national economic security, and national public health and safety. In 2024, Americans spent $100 billion on Japanese cars. #RandolphHarris 22 of 28
Additionally, with inflation rates at an all-time high, American being in an unofficial recession for about a decade, all insurance in California is becoming unaffordable. State Farm has received an approval for an emergency rate increase, which was approved by the California Insurance Commissioner, to stabilize the market and protect policyholders. Starting 1 June 2025, homeowners will see an average of 17 percent increase, rental dwellings will see an increase of 38 percent, and Condo owners will see a rate increase of 15 percents. These rate increases are due to the distressed caused by the recent wildfires, which accumulated over $7 billion in claims. Furthermore, in 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 1107, also known as the Protection California Drivers Act, into law which increases the minimum auto lability limits for bodily injury to $30,000 per person and $60,000 per accident. Senate Bill 1107 also increased the minimum liability limits for property damage to $15,000 per accident and the DMV deposit for uninsured drivers to $75,000. The bill went into effect on January 1, 2025. This means that drivers with existing policies with lower limits will renew at the new minimum limits on or after January 1, 2025, and insurance premiums could increase by as much as 54 percent. America is in a state of crisis right now because of mismanagement by democrats. With the median household income in Sacramento County being $88,724 and a 4-bedroom 2.5-bathroom Cresleigh home costing $798,059, how are people able to afford homes? Because an $800,000 home with a one percent downpayment of $8,000, 30-year fixed loan at 4.176 percent interest comes with a monthly mortgage payment of $4,241. #RandolphHarris 23 of 28
The maximum percentage of your gross income that you should earmark for a monthly mortgage payment is calculated at 28 percent, and no more than 36 percent of your gross income to all debts, including mortgage. If you take 28 percent of the median household income per home in Sacramento County, homeowners can only afford a mortgage of $2,070.23 per month. And if you take 36 percent of their gross income to all debts, including mortgage, they should be devoting no more than $2,661.72 a month to these debts. Mortgage lenders must be using some kind of sorcery to get buyers into these expensive homes. To afford one of these homes using traditional guidelines, a household would need to gross $11,280.24 per month or $135,362.88 per year, but the median household in Sacramento County is grossing $7,393.67 or $88,724.00 and that typically means two to four people in the home are working and contributing to the mortgage. Prices in Sacramento County are actually rivaling the Bay Area, and the Bay Aera is so expensive because they have more higher paying jobs and is a tourist destination. And with the State of California being in a budget deficit of $12 billion, Governor Gavin Newsom Granted 700,000 illegal immigrants free health care at a cost to taxpayers of $3 billion annually, while cutting vital programs for veterans, school children, the disabled and the homeless, and is proposing to fast-track his plan to build a $20 billion water tunnel beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta by eliminating environmental reviews and limit avenues for legal challenges. Gavin Newsom only cares about the environment when his policies allow him to raise taxes and restrict freedoms. #RandolphHarris 24 of 28
In fact, Mexico has been causing one of America’s worst environmental disasters. Fifty million gallon a day of industrial chemicals, untreated sewage, and trash flow from Tijuana, Mexico, into southern San Diego County daily. This toxic waste has been turning up on Imperial Beach, and is causing the miles of white sands to become polluted and the ocean breeze to smell of poop, which has been sickening residents and wildlife and costing San Diego millions in the form of lost tourism and health problems. The problem has been going on for more than a century. However, it has become a public health crisis as the population of Tijuana has drastically increased, in recent years, and the waste treatment plants have no longer usable. The beach has been closed for more than three years, and evidence suggests that even breathing the air may be harmful, as toxic particles in the water can become airborne. Yet, even though Gavin Newsom has been governor for six years, he has not rushed into action to stop this very preventable environmental disaster. Why? Because he is not getting kickbacks from China and Mexico, not being gifted mansions and cars, and he cannot tax the struggling California taxpayers to clean up this mess. Simply, it is not profitable for him. Gavin Newsom has been a total tyrant with no regard for taxpayers and does not have a mind for business and should be impeached as soon as possible. He has criminalized poverty, increased taxes and insurance rates so high that people are struggling to survive and has given billions of taxpayer dollars away to illegal immigrants and protected them from law enforcement, while arresting law abiding Americans because they cannot afford to pay rent or mortgage and the homeless shelters are unsafe, overcrowded and have restrictions on who is allowed inside. Wars have been started over governments who tax citizens without representation. Taxation without representation is what led to the American Revolution. If Gavin Newsom is not stopped, next he will euthanize the poor and sterilize the disabled. This monster is unfit to be governor and must never be allowed to be President of America! Stop Gavin Newsom now! Save California and impeach this unreasonable man. #RandolphHarris 25 of 28
Meanwhile, with President Trump, we are seeing crime rates sharply decrease, and he recently secured $10 trillion in investments. Additionally, in May of 2025m the United States of America collected a record $22.3 billion in tariff revenue. If elected president for an unprecedented third term, to make housing more affordable and to offset the cost of homeowner’s insurance and auto insurance, President Trump plans to abolish property taxes. Much like the land crisis in Las Vegas, we could also run out of land to farm and will not be able to grow or cultivate our own food. We can protect American farmland and support American farmers by buying American made beef, poultry, dairy, and produce. Also, country of origin labeling is very important so Americans can know where their food is coming from and have the ability to support American farmers and ranchers. As money flows, it influences further investment. Save the land that sustains us by protecting American farmland. Once the land is built on, we lose it forever. And in the future, there may be food wars. Also, to ensure that we have farmland and buildable land 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 population 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. #RandolphHarris 26 of 28
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. 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 on pollution. American companies must 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. #RandolphHarris 27 of 28
As you can see, President Donald Trump and his pledge to “Make America Great Again,” is exactly what America needs to save the country and the American people. And yes, diversity is important, so you can see why it is also important to preserve blonde hair and blue eyes as the people with these characteristics are becoming a minority in America. We must think before we can understand the soul’s existence; we must understand before we can realize it. The earliest beginnings of thought, as apart from instinct, when it was itself still but a lurking tendency, belong far back in primeval time. The human intellect as we find it today, so rich and developed an instrument for the consciousness of the ego, did not arrived at this fulness without a series of graduated stages. We have had plenty of scientific thinking, business thinking, and political thinking long enough, but we have had very little inspired thinking. That is the world’s need. The intellect is cradled in selfishness but runs the evolutionary track into reason where it will one day finish at the winning-post of selflessness. 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. “Oh, thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand between their loved home and the war’s desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, and this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’ And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.” #RandolphHarris 28 of 28
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 Heiress 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/
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/
We wish to express our gratitude to our families, ancestors, spirits, and friends and to our many associates and clients, whose lives touched our lives and whose ideas helped us to grow. We would also like to thank our employees and care takers for putting the technical ideas of this estate into conversational style, and we are, of course, extremely thank to all of our patrons for helping to keep the legacy of the Winchester Family alive. The Winchester Mystery House is full of surprises. What was your favorite, “Oooh!” moment during your visit at the mansion? (And for those of you who still have to check it off your bucket list… we will hopefully see you soon.) https://winchestermysteryhouse.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/
BMW continues to dominate the luxury car space. With its top ranking in Consumer Reports’ Auto Brand Report Card and consistent market share growth, BMW has demonstrated its ability to produce high-performing, reliable vehicles that meet consumer demands.
BMW stands out due to its focus on driving dynamics and engineering excellence. While other luxury brands prioritize comfort and opulence, BMW is known for creating cars that are fun to drive and offer a unique connection between the driver and the machine. https://www.brianharrisbmw.com/
Randolph Harris San Francisco Taxation & Mergers
Randy advises clients with regard to business transition, taxable and tax deferred mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, restructuring, integrated tax planning, federal and state tax controversy resolution, and real estate transactions. https://www.jmbm.com/l-randolph-harris.html
Cresleigh Bluffs at Plumas Ranch
Plumas Lake, CA | from the mid $400’s
Now Selling!
Welcome to Cresleigh Bluffs, the newest home community in Plumas Ranch!
Nestled in the heart of Plumas Lake, CA, Cresleigh Bluffs offers three distinct single story floor plans designed with efficiency and practicality in mind.
Home design is made easy with expertly crafted design packages exclusive to Cresleigh Bluffs. Choose from a variety of packages made to fit your taste and budget. Contact our dedicated sales associates to learn more. PlumasRanch@cresleigh.com
Sign up for our interest list today to stay up to date on community information. https://cresleigh.com/cresleigh-bluffs-at-plumas-ranch/move-in-ready-homesite-2/
The Little Glass Slipper—To Thyself be Enough!
According to Dr. Freud, “The founder of civilization was the first human who hurled an insult instead of a stone.” For the script analyst, the story of Cinderella has everything. It includes a large variety of interlocking scripts, innumerable nooks, and crannies where delightful new discoveries can be made, and millions of real-life counterparts for every role. Cinderella in this country usually means, “The Little Glass Slipper.” This is a translation of the French version of Charles Samber in 1729. In his dedication to the Countess of Granville, Mr. Samber makes it clear that he understands very well the scripty influence of such stories. He says that Plato “desires Children might suck in those Fables with their Milk, and recommends it to Nurses to teach them to ‘em.” Perrault’s Morals to the tale of “Cinderilla” were, of course, Parental Precepts. “But that thing, which we call good grace, exceeds by far a handsome face; its charms by far surpass the other, and this was what her good Godmother bestow’d on Cinderella fair, whom she instructed with such care, and gave her such a graceful mien, that she became thereby a Queen.” The last three lines describe the Parental pattern which Cinderella received from her godmother. If the child is ever to amount to anything, Perrault also draws a second moral, which stresses the need for permission. #RandolphHarris 1 of 33
“A great advantage ‘tis, no doubt, to man, to have wit, courage, birth, good sense and brain…but none of these rich graces from above, in your advancement in the world will prove of any use, if Godsires make delay, or Godmothers your merit to display.” Mr. Samber’s translation was slightly changed by Andre Lang for his Blue Fairy Book, which is one of the most popular fairytale books read to and by children, and that is whence they get their first picture of Cinderella. In this kindly French version, Cinderella forgives her two stepsisters, and finds rich husbands for them. Grimm’s Fairy Tales, which are also very popular in this country, contains the German version, called “Ashenputtel.” This is a bloody tale ending with the sisters’ eyes being systematically pecked out by doves. Cinderella stories are found in many other nations. With this background, we are ready to consider a Martian view of Cinderella, patterned after Perrault, which is the version most English-speaking children have in mind, and discuss the various scripts involved, many of which will be easily recognizable in real life. What Martian and real life tell us, as in the case of Little Red Riding Hood, is something very important: what happens to the characters after the book story ends. #RandolphHarris 2 of 33
According to Perrault, there was once upon a time a gentleman who married for his second wife a widow, the proudest and most haughty woman that ever was known. (No doubt, as is usually the case with such brides, she was also frigid.) She had two daughters who were exactly like her in all things. He also had a daughter by his first wife who was good and sweet, which she took from her mother, who was the best creature in the world. As soon as the wedding was over, the stepmother began to treat Cinderella most cruelly. She could not bear the qualities of this pretty girl because they made her own daughters so much the more hated and despised. The poor girl bore all patiently, and dared not tell her father, who would have rattled her off, for his wife governed him entirely. When the girl had done her work, she used to go into the chimney corner and sit down upon the cinders, so they called her Cinderarse, or, more politely, Cinderella. Now it happened that the King’s son gave a ball, and invited all persons of quality to it, including the two sisters. Cinderella helped them to do their hair and get dressed. Meanwhile, they teased her because she was not invited, and she agreed that such a glamorous occasion was not for the likes of her. After they left, she started to cry. However, her fairy godmother came along and promised that she should go, too. She instructed Cinderella: “Go into the garden and bring me a pumpkin.” She then scooped out the pumpkin and turned it into a golden coach. There were mice for horses, a rat for a fat jolly coachman with fine whiskers, and lizards for footmen. Cinderella got a fine dress to wear, and jewels, and little glass slippers. Her godmother warned her not to stay at the ball after the clock struck twelve. #RandolphHarris 3 of 33
Cinderella made a sensation at the dance. The Prince gave her the most honorable place, and the King himself, old as he was, could not help looking at her, and whispering about her to the Queen. At a quarter to twelve, she left. When her sisters came home, she pretended that she had been asleep. They told her about the beautiful strange Princess. Cinderella smiled, and said: “Oh, she must be very handsome indeed. How I would like to see her! Lend me some of your clothes, so I can go there tomorrow night.” However, they said they would not lend their clothes to such a Cinderarse, and Cinderella was glad, because she would not have known what to do if they had agreed. The next night, Cinderella was having such a good time that she forgot to leave until the clock started to strike twelve. As soon as she heard it, she jumped up and fled, nimble as a deer. The Prince chased her, but he could not catch hold of her, even though in her haste, she lost one of her glass slippers, which the Prince took up very carefully. A few days later, the Prince caused it to be proclaimed, by sound of trumpet, that he would marry her whose foot this slipper would just fit. He sent men around to try the slipper on all the women in the kingdom. After the two sisters had tried to thrust their feet into it without success, Cinderella, who knew the slipper, said laughing: “Let me try it.” Her sisters laughed, too, and began to make fun of her. #RandolphHarris 4 of 33
The gentleman who was sent to try the slipper said that he had orders to let every body do so. He told Cinderella to sit down, and found that the slipper fitted her as if it had been made of wax. The astonishment her two sisters were in was very great; but much greater when Cinderella pulled out of her pocket the other slipper and put it upon her foot. Then her godmother came in, and with her wand changed Cinderella’s clothes into rich and magnificent garments. When they saw that she was the beautiful Princess, the two sisters threw themselves at her feet and said: “Sorry,” whereupon Cinderella embraced them and forgave them. Then she was taken to the Prince, and a few days later, her married her. Cinderella gave her two sisters lodgings in the palace, and married them the same day to two great lords of the court. As with Cinderella’s forgiveness to her sisters, this is an actualizing relationship. An actualizing relationship between two people takes place when one person relates to another core-to-core. By “core,” we mean the one’s inner range of potentials. This inner core may also be called one’s real self. Through expressing a variety of passive and active potentials, such as caring and assertiveness, actualizers open paths for the spontaneous “understanding” of themselves and others. Very good friends, as we know, are said to communicate sensitivity to each other. This is contact. If their relationship is core-to-core, a wife may communicate with her husband with as little as a smile or a sigh. #RandolphHarris 5 of 33
Cinderella, being a good Mormon, knew her sisters did not understand what they were doing and that she should show them the love of God. To forgive is a divine attribute. It is to pardon or excuse someone from blame for an offense or misdeed. The scriptures refer to forgives in two ways. The Lord commands us to repent of our sins and seek His forgiveness. He also commands us to forgive those who offend or hurt us. “The Lord is longsuffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression,” reports Numbers 14.18. Contact is shown as the touching of two inner cores of actualizing potentials, which we call core-to-core contact. In contrast, manipulation is shown as distant interaction between the outer rings, the surface of each personality. This we call role-to-role manipulation. The manipulative relationship is not intimate, but distant. Contact is a form of loving or trusting another person in a relationship of closeness. Manipulation is a relationship of distance, a withdrawal to less personal or intense forms of communication. Core-to-core contact is based on the truth of each self, whereas role-to-role manipulation is based to some extent on deceit and mistrust. Daniel Defoe’s novel Moll Flanders provides an extreme example of role-to-role manipulation. It seems that Moll, the impoverished heroine of the novel, wishes to contact a man of wealth, any man of wealth, for the purpose of matrimony. To attract such a man, she plays, of course, the role of a wealthy young woman. It seems that a young man, currently out of funds, wishes to contact a woman of wealth, also for the purpose of matrimony. He plays the role of a wealthy young man. You guessed it. They find each other and marry, each certain the other can pay the debts they incurred in creating their wealthy roles. Each is justifiably disillusioned. #RandolphHarris 6 of 33
Core-to-core contact is not a permanent state. Indeed, it is a fragile thing to be developed at each meeting between two individuals. It develops when at least one of the persons can be freely expressive rather than calculatedly impressive—honestly expressive of self rather than deceitful. It also facilitated when at least one of the parties is willing to really listen to the other person and to respond to the other person’s statements and feelings accurately. In a way, being real is catching. If you can present yourself wholly, with both your strengths and weaknesses, with both your assertiveness and lovability, you will in time be able to break down the guardedness, defensiveness, and deceit of the other person. You will have begun to create the fertile ground for a truly core-to-core relationship. However, a core-to-core relationship is not easy to sustain. Manipulators fear vulnerability, fear being exposed or judged. They are afraid that sustained contact with another will reveal a dimension of themselves that they have so far denied or refused to see. True personal contact involves emotional risk. However, the manipulator chooses to avoid risk by attempting to control those around him or her. Consider the case of a father and his fourteen-year-old daughter, discussing whether she can go on a chaperoned, co-ed weekend camping trip. “Now way will I allow you to go!” says the father. “I won’t permit it!” “But, Dad, I’ve been looking forward to it for weeks,” his daughter says. #RandolphHarris 7 of 33
“Absolutely not!” repeats the father, exerting dominance. He avoids saying what is really on his mind: his concern that the girl will experiment with pleasures of the flesh during the weekend. In his zeal to be a good, competent father, which he secretly fears he is not, he resorts to controlling rather than contacting. His wife, having overhead the argument and intuitively sensing his unspoken concern, later tells him, “You needn’t worry that she’ll get into trouble. If you would let yourself be closer to her, you’d know that; you’d know the kind young woman she is.” At this point, the conversation might open a vital and valuable discussion between the parents, for this father truly wants to be closer to his daughter. The trouble is that he is afraid of expressing that sense of caring. There can be many reasons for his fear. Perhaps—to cite one possibility—he was so controlled as a child by his mother that he draws away from the risk of closeness with any woman, or with women in general. All the man can do, then, is turn the charge back upon his wife, shouting: “You’re the one who’s not close to her!” Rather than get into a core-to-core conversation about his feelings, which might reveal his fear of caring for his daughter, the father changes the topic. To avoid a discussion of feelings, he diverts the conversation to a safely “intellectual” topic: “Her school grades are not that great, you know. She could use this weekend to stay home and study.” Instead of trying to see the situation from the girl’s point of view, the man denies his core-caring as he might express it were he able to be in contact with her. #RandolphHarris 8 of 33
Consider the bank loan officer. She felt so insecure about her competence that she hid behind a persona of officiousness and super-efficiency. No one could get close to her. If they thought they would have to deal with her and her cold, controlled manner, customers, no matter how desperate for a loan, would delay applying. One day, however, she felt so overwhelmed with paperwork and so isolated that she uttered the unspeakable to a customer: “I can’t seem to get on top of anything today. I’ll probably be here until midnight, trying to catch up.” To her surprise, the customer smiled at her and said, “Gee. I know what you mean. I’ve been feeling that way, too. Only it’s going to take me about a year!” The barrier dropped, and the two women were able to chat amiably. Risking being herself brought the loan officers an unexpected response. Instead of being judged, as she had feared, she was understood. And her customers felt understood as well. A short, but real, core-to-core contact was made. Manipulators must control everything—themselves, others, even conversations. They choose the topics. They evaluate rather than appreciate. They try to convince others, rather than exchange ideas with others. Or they limit themselves to safe “small talk.” In many people, generalities such as the weather might be a prelude to contact, but in manipulators, often, they are only a means of avoiding personal contact. #RandolphHarris 9 of 33
There are several ways to seek to control communication. By denying that he is communicating. “I think you should apologize to him, but it is not my place to tell you.” (He has said it but at the same time denies that he has.) By denying the message itself. “Oh, forget it; I guess it wasn’t important.” Or she insists the message is misunderstood: “You did not get the point.” By denying that the message is communicated to another person. “I was just talking to myself…just thinking out loud…” By denying the context or situation. “You always make fun of men” (referring to the past)/ “You will think that I am silly” (referring to the future). In both examples, he avoids dealing with the person now. Peer Gynt may serve as a famous illustration from literature. He does not make much of his existing assets, his great intelligence, the spirit of adventure, and vitality. However, he is proud of the one thing he is not, “of being himself,” Actually, he is—in his mind—not himself but his idealized self, with unlimited “freedom” and unlimited powers. (He has lifted his boundless egocentricity to the dignity of a life philosophy with his maxim “To thyself be true,” which—as Ibsen points out—is a glorification of “To thyself be enough.” There are many Peer Gynts among our patients, anxious to preserve their illustrations of being a saint, a mastermind, of having absolute poise, etcetera; and they feel as if they would lose their “individuality” if they budged an inch from these estimates of themselves. #RandolphHarris 10 of 33
Imagination itself may become of supreme value, regardless of the use to which it is put, since it allows its bearer to look down with contempt on the drab and pedestrian people who are concerned with truth. The patient of course would not say “truth” but would speak in vague terms of “reality.” One patient for instance, whose claims were so grandiose as to expect the world to be at his service, at first took a clear stand toward this claim, calling it absurd and even degrading. However, the next day he had retrieved his pride: the claims were now a “magnificent mental creation.” The true meaning of irrational claims had submerged and pride in imagination was triumphant. More frequently, pride is not specifically attached to imagination but to all mental processes: intellect, reason, and will power as well. The infinite powers the neurotic ascribes to himself are, after all, powers of the mind. No wonder, then, that he is fascinated by it and proud of it. The idealized image is a product of his imagination. However, this is not something that is created overnight. Incessant work of intellect and imagination, most of it unconscious, goes into maintaining the private fictious world through rationalizations, justifications, externalizations, reconciling irreconcilables—in short, through finding ways to make things appear different from what they are. The more a person is alienated from himself, the more his mind becomes a supreme reality. (“A person has no existence apart from my thought: I have no existence apart from my thought.”) Like the Lady of Shalott, he cannot see the reality directly but only through a mirror. #RandolphHarris 11 of 33
More accurately: he sees in the mirror only his thoughts about the world and himself. This is why the pride in intellect, or rather in the supremacy of the mind, is not restricted to those engaged in intellectual pursuits but is a regular occurrence in all neurosis. Pride also is invested in faculties and prerogatives to which the neurotic feels entitled. Thus, he may be proud of an illusive invulnerability which, on the physical plane, means never to incur illness or any physical damage and, on the psychic side never to feel hurt. Another may be proud of good luck, of being the “darling of the gods.” It is a matter of pride then not to fall ill in a malaria district, to win in gambling, or to have fair weather for an excursion. It is indeed a matter of pride in all neuroses to asset one’s claims effectively. If they can manipulate others into lending them money, running their errands, giving them medical treatment without charge, those who feel entitled to get something for nothing, feel proud of being granted “snow flake rights.” If a protégé of their does not follow a piece of advice immediately, or if he does something on his own initiative without having asked their advice first, those feeling entitled to manage other people’s lives, experience is as a blow to their pride. Still, some feel entitled to exoneration as soon as they indicate that they are in some distress. If they can elicit sympathy and forgiveness and they feel offended, if the other person remains critical, they are proud. #RandolphHarris 12 of 33
The neurotic’s pride in measuring up to this inner dictate may on the surface look more substantial, but it is in fact just as rickety as other kinds of pride since it is inevitably interwoven with pretenses. The mother who is proud of being the perfect mother usually is so in her imagination only. The person who is proud of his unique honesty may not tell obvious lies but is usually pervaded by unconscious and semiconscious dishonesties. Those who are proud of their unselfishness may not be openly demanding but will impose upon others through their helplessness and suffering, besides mistaking their taboos on shoulds themselves may have a merely subjective merit in that they serve neurotic purposes but no objective value. Thus, for instance, the neurotic purposes but no objective value. Thus, for instance, the neurotic may be proud of not asking and not accepting any help even though it would be more sensible to do so—a problem well known in social work. Some may be proud of driving a hard bargain, others of never bargaining at all—depending on whether they must always be on the winning side or should never be out for their own advantage. Lastly, it may be merely the very loftiness and severity of the compulsive standards that are invested with pride. The fact of knowing “the good” and “the evil” makes them godlike, just as the serpent promised it would to Adam and Eve. #RandolphHarris 13 of 33
A neurotic person’s very high standards make him feel that he is a moral wonder to be proud of, regardless of how he is and behaves. He may have recognized in analysis his ravaging hunger for prestige, his poor sense of truth, his vindictiveness; but all of that does not make him any humbler or make him feel any less a superior moral being. To him, these actual flaws do not count. His pride is not in being moral, but in knowing how he should be. Even though temporarily, he may have recognized the futility of his self-reproaches, or even at times, have been terrified at their viciousness, he still may not relent in his demands on self. If he suffers, what does it matter, after all? Is not his suffering another proof of his superior moral sensibilities? Hence, to sustain this pride seems worth the price. It is not enough to be a collector of other men’s ideas. He must also be an original generator of his own. He must go into the pure silence to think independently, to analyze problems and consider them for himself, and to pray for enlightenment. Unless one is prepared to part with a wrong habit of thinking, unless one is willing to eradicate all limited conceptions which blur clear-sightedness, unless, in short, one is willing to reorient the mental outlook completely, it will never be possible to penetrate the world illusion. The student of philosophy must enforce in his own mind the clear difference between views based on wishful thinking, and views based on adequate knowledge and comprehensive understanding. #RandolphHarris 14 of 33
Before it can search for truth, the mind must be set free: otherwise, it merely seeks either the confirmation or rejection of previously held ideas, systems, opinions, and creeds. It is not enough to express your willingness to learn. You must also be willing to unlearn. It his possible, and must become his object, to develop a completely impartial intellect. It is one thing to have caught a vague notion in the mind, and another to think it out and make it intelligible. The philosophical student, having thoroughly scrutinized the bases of his outlook and attitude, reveals his wisdom and humility by confessing ignorance where he cannot claim knowledge. It is then always possible for him to learn something here. However, the undeveloped or undisciplined mind is not ashamed to make a pretense of knowledge where, in fact, there is none. It is too much to expect that his mind can understand what is quite beyond it; but when repeated, the effort tends to “stretch” the mind’s capacity. It is not enough to acknowledge his misjudgments. He ought also to enquire into the defective qualities which led him into making them. The father he travels from egocentric existence, the clearer and straighter will be his thinking. If the man who utters it is only half-literate, if his statement is ungrammatical, his words are mispronounced, and his voice stutters irritatingly, be willing to accept a truth. If the truth is expressed impeccably and enriched by a fine culture, it is usually more enjoyable, however. #RandolphHarris 15 of 33
Animals, according to Hegel, have an immediate knowledge of the exterior world, a perception of the self, but not the knowledge of self, which distinguishes man. The latter is only really born now when he becomes aware of himself as a rational being. Therefore, his essential characteristic is self-consciousness. Consciousness of self, to be affirmed, must distinguish itself from what it is not. Man is a creature who, to affirm his existence and his difference, denies. What distinguishes consciousness of self from the world of nature is not the simple act of contemplation by which it identifies itself with the exterior world and finds oblivion, but the desire it can feel regarding the world. This desire re-establishes its identity when it demonstrates that the exterior world consists of what it does not possess, but which nevertheless exists, and of what it would like to exist but which no longer does. Consciousness of self is, therefore, of necessity, desire. However, to exist, it must be satisfied, and it can only be satisfied by the gratification of its desire. It, therefore, acts to gratify itself and, in so doing, it denies and suppresses its means of gratification. It is the epitome of negation. To act is to destroy to give birth to the spiritual reality of consciousness. However, to destroy an object unconsciously, as meat is destroyed, for example, in the act of eating, is a purely animal activity. To consumer is not yet to become conscious. #RandolphHarris 16 of 33
Desire for consciousness must be directed toward something other than unconscious nature. The only thing in the world that is distinct from nature is, precisely, self-consciousness. Therefore, desire must be centered upon another form of desire; self-consciousness must be gratified by another form of self-consciousness. If he limits himself to subsisting like an animal, man is not recognized—and does not recognize himself—as a man. He must be acknowledged by other men. All consciousness is, basically, the desire to be recognized and proclaimed as such by other consciousnesses. It is others who beget us. Only in association do we receive a human value, as distinct from an animal. In that the supreme value for the animal is the preservation of life, consciousness should raise itself above the level of that instinct, to achieve human value. It should be capable of risking its life. To be recognized by another consciousness, man should be ready to risk his life and to accept the chance of death. Fundamental human relations are thus relations of pure prestige, a perpetual struggle, to the death, for recognition of one human being by another. The man who puts up a barrier of egoistic prejudices or superiority complexes cannot hope to penetrate the secret circle of truth-knowing. Only he who is ready, tentatively, to shift his intellectual standpoint for that of another is at all likely to be admitted into the sacred treasure house of wisdom. We must now shelve a single fundamental but awkward question. The sanctity of truth is inviolable. #RandolphHarris 17 of 33
The award-winning Sacramento Fire Department must be able to identify hazards and understand how to rectify those hazards. Many fire departments offer to conduct fire and life safety surveys in private dwellings. These surveys identify fire and life safety hazards and provide the occupants with recommendations on how to make their home safer. During a fire and life safety, the Sacramento Fire Department is on the lookout for potential fire hazards and nonfire safety hazards. Poisoning, slip and fall hazards, drownings, burns, and toppling furniture are all common causes of injuries in the home. Simple precautions can prevent some of these emergencies: Pools must be properly enclosed. Furniture, televisions, and appliances must be properly secured to prevent tip overs. Medicines and chemicals must be stored properly where children and pets cannot access them. Stairs and balconies should have handrails and guards. Domestic hot water temperature should not exceed 120 degrees Fahrenheit (49 degrees Celsius. During the survey, fire fighters will point out hazards, explain the reasons for making recommendations, and answer any questions the occupants may have. They always look for fire protection equipment, such as smoke alarms, carbon monoxide alarms, and fire extinguishers. Fire fighters will make sure that there are working smoke alarms on each floor, in the corridor outside each sleeping area, and in each bedroom. Some fire departments install one or more some alarms at no cost in any dwelling that lacks this important protection. Their goal is to educate the occupant about common fire hazards. #RandolphHarris 18 of 33
The Sacramento Fire Department will stress the importance of keeping ignition sources away from combustible materials and keeping bedroom doors closed to limit fire growth and spread. It is especially important for them to discuss the risk of children playing with lighters and matches, leaving food cooking on the stove unattended, and storing combustibles such as towels, potholders, and cooking oils too close to the stove. Many fires have resulted from someone inadvertently turning on the wrong burner and igniting something that was left on the stovetop. Everything in the kitchen should be equipped with an ABC-rated fire extinguisher. If the room contains a fireplace, a wood stove, or a portable heater, ensure that no combustible materials are stored nearby. A fireplace should have a screen to keep sparks and hot embers from escaping. If solid fuels are used, the chimney or flue pipe should be professionally inspected at least once a year. It is also important for home occupants to keep up good housekeeping and to clear junk out of garages, basements, and storage areas. Furnaces and water heaters that operate with an open flame are often located in a basement or garage; they can ignite flammable materials that are stored too close to them. Storage of gasoline and other flammable substances is a major concern because an open flame or pilot light can easily ignite flammable vapors. Gasoline and other flammable liquids should be stored only in approved containers and in outside storage areas or outbuildings. Propane tanks, such as those used in gas grills, should also be store outside or in outbuildings. Small quantities of flammable and combustible liquids (such as paint, thinners, varnishes, and cleaning fluids) should be stored in closed metal containers away from heat sources. Oily or greasy rags should also be stored in closed metal containers. It is recommended that homeowners maintain fully charged fire extinguishers in basements and garages. #RandolphHarris 19 of 33
Furthermore, it is generally not safe to smoke cigarettes or marijuana in the garage. Secondhand smoke exposure: Garages, even with the door open, may not be adequately ventilated. Secondhand smoke contains harmful chemicals that can affect anyone present, including children. Carbon monoxide risk: Burning cigarettes produce carbon monoxide, a colorless, odorless, and potentially deadly gas. While a single cigarette is unlikely to cause immediate danger, smoking repeatedly or for prolonged periods in a poorly ventilated space could lead to carbon monoxide buildup. Fire hazard: Garages often contain flammable materials like gasoline, paint, solvents, and chemicals. Smoking increases the risk of igniting these materials, leading to a fire. Smoking materials (like marijuana or cigarettes) are a leading cause of residential fires. And it is absolutely not safe to store gasoline without a cap in your garage because gasoline is highly flammable: both the liquid and its vapors are easily ignited. Vapors are dangerous: gasoline vapors are heavier than air and can travel along the floor, accumulating in low areas like a garage. Evaporation and deterioration: leaving the container open allows the gasoline to evaporate, losing its volatile components and becoming less effective. It also increases the risk of water contamination. Health hazards: exposure to gasoline fumes can also pose health risks. #RandolphHarris 20 of 33
The Four Tenets of the Warrior Ethos: always place the mission first. Never accept defeat. Never quit. Never leave a fallen member of the fire department. While all citizens hold beliefs and values that bring our nation together, the Sacramento fire fighters, paramedics, and EMTs must take action to protect the nation. The four tenets of the Warrior Ethos provide the motivation for that action, motivation built on comradeship that the Warrior Ethos creates. Because of that comradeship, members of the Sacramento Fire Department sever for each other, as well as for the nation and for their beliefs. Time and again you see that members of the Sacramento Fire Department would rather die than let their community and the nation down. It is their job as leaders to ensure that their unit has the final ingredients necessary for victory. They train and lead their team to become a competent, confident, flexible, and adaptable team—a team imbued with the Warrior Ethos. The Warrior Ethos is the Sacramento Fire Department’s commitment to overcome all obstacles. It reflects a selfless dedication to the nation, mission, unit, and their fellow team members. They develop and maintain this attitude through discipline, rigorous training, learning, and embodying the award-winning values of the Sacramento Fire Department, and recognizing that as a fire fighter, paramedic, or EMT, they represent the future of Sacramento’s proud heritage. “As to the danger, I believe that when it’s your time to go, it’s your time go. I’m not looking forward to the day I’m gone, but just lived day to day. I don’t dwell on the possibility of this happening, because it breaks your concentration. If you start worrying about every job you go on, you clutter your mind and you cloud your thinking. #RandolphHarris 21 of 33
You just have to say, ‘I’m going in there to do my job, and I’m going from this point to that point, and I have these things to do.’ You have to keep your priorities in order, you know what you have to do, you know what the goal is, and just work to complete that goal. Then afterwards you can say, ‘That building was shaky, or that fire was really coming up our backs.’ I mean, you can think about the dangers afterwards, but you can’t let that stuff cloud your thinking. You have to understand that they are there, and you’ve got to be aware of them. You can’t get careless or reckless, you have to be aware of what’s going on around you at all times. But don’t be so aware of them that you’re going to worry anout something that really isn’t something to worry about. You just go in, do what you have to do, and you’re done. I live one day at a time, stay in top health, and do it as it comes along. Firefighting is a business like any other business, it’s a career for me. The only thing to do now is to eventually move up the ladder, advancing to different positions—lieutenant, captain, whatever—set my wheels in motion for my future. I could stay a firefighter with the Sacramento Fire Department for my whole career, there’s nothing wrong with that. I could be content with that. I’ll plan my future as I move along.” If it is not to degenerate into mere mental effervescence, thinking must move at every step with rigid rationality. #RandolphHarris 22 of 33
If you see a fire truck stopped in the street without the lights on, be very careful. Sometimes there is an emergency situation and you should not pass the fire truck. It might be a good idea to safely turn around and go another way. Sometimes fire fighters are getting back into their vehicle and if you pass the apparatus, you may collide with a firefighter who is on foot. Also, be sure to look at their signals, sometimes emergency vehicles are in motions, albeit, slowly, and drivers try to pass them, and this could lead to a dangerous situation. Also, 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. #RandolphHarris 23 of 33
California is the third most expensive state in the nation. A single person making an income above $100,000 is now consider low-income in five counties in California. This distinction now applies to individuals living in Santa Cruze, Santa Clara, San Mateo, San Francisco, and Marin counties. In 37 percent of counties, a family of four living on a six-figure income is now considered low-income. In fact, Governor Gavin Newsom of Democratic controlled California, brags about being the world’s “fifth largest economy,” but it also facing a $12 billion deficit, looking to cut $747 million for state worker’s pay, pushing to keep medical insurance for illegal immigrants, but wants to cut medical for anyone who has assets over $2,000 and the state has the largest homeless population in the nation. If they are all officially counted, California has approximately 4 million homeless people. The highest home prices in the nation, the highest taxes and the most unfriendly business regulations known to man. The average home price in California is nearly $1,000,000.00 USD, while the average salary is $96,036.00, meaning that most Californians cannot even afford to buy a home. California is having an affordability crisis. In 2025, many people in California saw their bills increase by an estimated $500 a month. This includes things like food, automobile insurance, homeowner’s insurance, electricity. In fact, more than 3 million people in California are facing household hardship, and more than 300,000 of them are facing eviction soon. This comes at a time when California is having a shortage of affordable housing. This is caused by nearly half a century’s old laws that discourage homes sales and encourage higher rents. Meanwhile, China, where we are sending all of our jobs and money has more than 50 ghost cities. Ghost cities are regions will housing has been overdeveloped to the point that these places are uninhabited. Because California is so hostile towards people and businesses, more than 360 companies have fled the state since 2020. Businesses like Chevron, SpaceX, Oracle, and Hewlett Packard are amongst the names on that list. #RandolphHarris 24 of 33
Also, more than 500,000 people a year are abandoning California because it is too expensive to live in, Gavin Newsom has criminalized homelessness and actually started arresting people without homes, crime is out of control, and they are losing their jobs due to companies relocating. More than 100 companies have announced layoffs in California for 2025. Intel is cutting 15,000 jobs, PayPal 2,500 and Meta has terminated 4,000 employees. The California crisis created by Democrats is driving up home prices and mortgages and rents all over the nation and the world, making living unaffordable for all, and advocates say the crisis is far from over. Accordingly, California has more than 3.5 million illegal immigrants. Having the Southern American boarder open and not having American farmland protected, not producing beef, poultry, fish, fruit, produce and dairy in America, and without American goods and services being our number one manufactured and selling items, America has created a dangerous and significantly elevated risks to national security, national economic security, and national public health. Some people may believe that these claims are overstated, but by not routinely monitoring Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CEVs) or other security relevant alerts, such as end-of-life of machinery is how the Oroville Dam Crisis occurred in 2017. Other crises that have occurred due to neglect of critical infrastructure is the 2025 Palisades fires because Southern California ran out of water, when they are located next to an ocean and they could have simply created desalinating plants to help with the water shortage. The water is so plentiful that it is currently eroding land and causing homes to fall into the sea. #RandolphHarris 25 of 33
The American government should know all exploitable vulnerabilities and fix them prior to the situation becoming a crisis. Failure to take such mitigating actions is dangerous and significantly elevates risk to national security, national economic security, and national public health and safety. The American government must understand that significant time and resources must be invested in America. They must also encourage corporations to plan for both mitigating safety vulnerabilities in the short term and eliminating them in the long term. For instance, a company might begin by reaching out to the federal, state or local government and requesting tax incentives to provide security to dangerous communities, to help the government repair bridges and potholes. America needs an approach to eliminate safety vulnerabilities in American cities. There needs to be a road map by the end of 2025, outlining a prioritized approach to eliminate crisis situations in America. There is enough money to send aid to foreign nations, but the American government does not have enough money to care their infrastructure, provide adequate resources, nor end the affordable housing crisis. Nor is there enough money to fund other national critical functions (NCFs). These bad practices of putting America and Americans last is considered exceptionally risky, particularly to national security, national economic security, and national public health and safety. In 2024, Americans spent $100 billion on Japanese cars. #RandolphHarris 26 of 33
The American government should know all exploitable vulnerabilities and fix them prior to the situation becoming a crisis. Failure to take such mitigating actions is dangerous and significantly elevates risk to national security, national economic security, and national public health and safety. The American government must understand that significant time and resources must be invested in America. They must also encourage corporations to plan for both mitigating safety vulnerabilities in the short term and eliminating them in the long term. For instance, a company might begin by reaching out to the federal, state or local government and requesting tax incentives to provide security to dangerous communities, to help the government repair bridges and potholes. America needs an approach to eliminate safety vulnerabilities in American cities. There needs to be a road map by the end of 2025, outlining a prioritized approach to eliminate crisis situations in America. There is enough money to send aid to foreign nations, but the American government does not have enough money to care their infrastructure, provide adequate resources, nor end the affordable housing crisis. Nor is there enough money to fund other national critical functions (NCFs). These bad practices of putting America and Americans last is considered exceptionally risky, particularly to national security, national economic security, and national public health and safety. In 2024, Americans spent $100 billion on Japanese cars. #RandolphHarris 27 of 33
Additionally, with inflation rates at an all-time high, American being in an unofficial recession for about a decade, all insurance in California is becoming unaffordable. State Farm has received an approval for an emergency rate increase, which was approved by the California Insurance Commissioner, to stabilize the market and protect policyholders. Starting 1 June 2025, homeowners will see an average of 17 percent increase, rental dwellings will see an increase of 38 percent, and Condo owners will see a rate increase of 15 percent. These rate increases are due to the distressed caused by the recent wildfires, which accumulated over $7 billion in claims. Furthermore, in 2022, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Senate Bill 1107, also known as the Protection California Drivers Act, into law which increases the minimum auto lability limits for bodily injury to $30,000 per person and $60,000 per accident. Senate Bill 1107 also increased the minimum liability limits for property damage to $15,000 per accident and the DMV deposit for uninsured drivers to $75,000. The bill went into effect on January 1, 2025. This means that drivers with existing policies with lower limits will renew at the new minimum limits on or after January 1, 2025, and insurance premiums could increase by as much as 54 percent. America is in a state of crisis right now because of mismanagement by democrats. With the median household income in Sacramento County being $88,724 and a 4-bedroom 2.5-bathroom Cresleigh home costing $798,059, how are people able to afford homes? Because an $800,000 home with a one percent downpayment of $8,000, 30-year fixed loan at 4.176 percent interest comes with a monthly mortgage payment of $4,241. #RandolphHarris 28 of 33
The maximum percentage of your gross income that you should earmark for a monthly mortgage payment is calculated at 28 percent, and no more than 36 percent of your gross income to all debts, including mortgage. If you take 28 percent of the median household income per home in Sacramento County, homeowners can only afford a mortgage of $2,070.23 per month. And if you take 36 percent of their gross income to all debts, including mortgage, they should be devoting no more than $2,661.72 a month to these debts. Mortgage lenders must be using some kind of sorcery to get buyers into these expensive homes. To afford one of these homes using traditional guidelines, a household would need to gross $11,280.24 per month or $135,362.88 per year, but the median household in Sacramento County is grossing $7,393.67 or $88,724.00 and that typically means two to four people in the home are working and contributing to the mortgage. Prices in Sacramento County are actually rivaling the Bay Area, and the Bay Aera is so expensive because they have more higher paying jobs and is a tourist destination. And with the State of California being in a budget deficit of $12 billion, Governor Gavin Newsom Granted 700,000 illegal immigrants free health care at a cost to taxpayers of $3 billion annually, while cutting vital programs for veterans, school children, the disabled and the homeless, and is proposing to fast-track his plan to build a $20 billion water tunnel beneath the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta by eliminating environmental reviews and limit avenues for legal challenges. Gavin Newsom only cares about the environment when his policies allow him to raise taxes and restrict freedoms. #RandolphHarris 29 of 33
In fact, Mexico has been causing one of America’s worst environmental disasters. Fifty million gallon a day of industrial chemicals, untreated sewage, and trash flow from Tijuana, Mexico, into southern San Diego County daily. This toxic waste has been turning up on Imperial Beach, and is causing the miles of white sands to become polluted and the ocean breeze to smell of poop, which has been sickening residents and wildlife and costing San Diego millions in the form of lost tourism and health problems. The problem has been going on for more than a century. However, it has become a public health crisis as the population of Tijuana has drastically increased, in recent years, and the waste treatment plants have no longer usable. The beach has been closed for more than three years, and evidence suggests that even breathing the air may be harmful, as toxic particles in the water can become airborne. Yet, even though Gavin Newsom has been governor for six years, he has not rushed into action to stop this very preventable environmental disaster. Why? Because he is not getting kickbacks from China and Mexico, not being gifted mansions and cars, and he cannot tax the struggling California taxpayers to clean up this mess. Simply, it is not profitable for him. Gavin Newsom has been a total tyrant with no regard for taxpayers and does not have a mind for business and should be impeached as soon as possible. He has criminalized poverty, increased taxes and insurance rates so high that people are struggling to survive and has given billions of taxpayer dollars away to illegal immigrants and protected them from law enforcement, while arresting law abiding Americans because they cannot afford to pay rent or mortgage and the homeless shelters are unsafe, overcrowded and have restrictions on who is allowed inside. Wars have been started over governments who tax citizens without representation. Taxation without representation is what led to the American Revolution. If Gavin Newsom is not stopped, next he will euthanize the poor and sterilize the disabled. This monster is unfit to be governor and must never be allowed to be President of America! Stop Gavin Newsom now! Save California and impeach this unreasonable man. #RandolphHarris 30 of 33
Meanwhile, with President Trump, we are seeing crime rates sharply decrease, and he recently secured $10 trillion in investments. If elected president for an unprecedented third term, to make housing more affordable and to offset the cost of homeowner’s insurance and auto insurance, President Trump plans to abolish property taxes. Much like the land crisis in Las Vegas, we could also run out of land to farm and will not be able to grow or cultivate our own food. We can protect American farmland and support American farmers by buying American made beef, poultry, dairy, and produce. Also, country of origin labeling is very important so Americans can know where their food is coming from and have the ability to support American farmers and ranchers. As money flows, it influences further investment. Save the land that sustains us by protecting American farmland. Once the land is built on, we lose it forever. And in the future, there may be food wars. Also, to ensure that we have farmland and buildable land 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 population 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. #RandolphHarris 31 of 33
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. 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. #RandolphHarris 32 of 33
As you can see, President Donald Trump and his pledge to “Make America Great Again,” is exactly what America needs to save the country and the American people. And yes, diversity is important, so you can see why it is also important to preserve blonde hair and blue eyes as the people with these characteristics are becoming a minority in America. We must think before we can understand the soul’s existence; we must understand before we can realize it. The earliest beginnings of thought, as apart from instinct, when it was itself still but a lurking tendency, belong far back in primeval time. The human intellect as we find it today, so rich and developed an instrument for the consciousness of the ego, did not arrived at this fulness without a series of graduated stages. We have had plenty of scientific thinking, business thinking, and political thinking long enough, but we have had very little inspired thinking. That is the world’s need. The intellect is cradled in selfishness but runs the evolutionary track into reason where it will one day finish at the winning-post of selflessness. 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. “Oh, thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand between their loved home and the war’s desolation! Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n-rescued land Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation! Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, and this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’ And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave.” #RandolphHarris 33 of 33
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 Heiress 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/
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/
We wish to express our gratitude to our families, ancestors, spirits, and friends and to our many associates and clients, whose lives touched our lives and whose ideas helped us to grow. We would also like to thank our employees and care takers for putting the technical ideas of this estate into conversational style, and we are, of course, extremely thank to all of our patrons for helping to keep the legacy of the Winchester Family alive. The Winchester Mystery House is full of surprises. What was your favorite, “Oooh!” moment during your visit at the mansion? (And for those of you who still have to check it off your bucket list… we will hopefully see you soon.) https://winchestermysteryhouse.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/
BMW continues to dominate the luxury car space. With its top ranking in Consumer Reports’ Auto Brand Report Card and consistent market share growth, BMW has demonstrated its ability to produce high-performing, reliable vehicles that meet consumer demands.
BMW stands out due to its focus on driving dynamics and engineering excellence. While other luxury brands prioritize comfort and opulence, BMW is known for creating cars that are fun to drive and offer a unique connection between the driver and the machine. https://www.brianharrisbmw.com/
Randolph Harris San Francisco Taxation & Mergers
Randy advises clients with regard to business transition, taxable and tax deferred mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, restructuring, integrated tax planning, federal and state tax controversy resolution, and real estate transactions. https://www.jmbm.com/l-randolph-harris.html
Pulte Homes Ascent at Montelena
11977 Cobble Brook Drive, Rancho Cordova, California 95742
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These two-story single-family homes feature Life Tested® floor plans, smart home features, energy-efficient construction, and modern architecture. Prices start at $625,990 and up for a single family home, with 2,526-2,973 square feet. https://www.pulte.com/homes/california/sacramento/rancho-cordova/ascent-at-montelena-210916
At the Altar, in Front of God, You Promised to Love Me Forever!
With each of us, there is a process of change taking place from within. It requires no conscious effort. It is called growth. Goethe observes that, “Man is like a plant, he grows. He is not a sculpture, made from the outside.” Yet the emphasis of many parents, teachers and behaviourists has been on “shaping up,” molding from the outside. This is manipulation. One can manipulate from the outside, but growth comes from the inside. And the growth process requires surrender. From our earliest childhood, we are taught to do; we are taught that goals are more important than experience. How, then, can we change? I believe change occurs when we learn to trust our deepest feelings and discovery our natural rhythm. To trust our deepest feelings means to surrender to a growth process within ourselves. To discover our natural rhythm is to become one with the growth processes of nature: the seasons, the tides, the rhythm of each day and night. These two interlocking processes are inherent in the nature of life and are known as the “growing edge.” We see it in nature; always vitality seems to be nestling deep within the heart of a dying plant. A kind of oak tree comes to mind. You have seen it. The leaves turn yellow and die, but they stay on the tree all winter. The wind, the storm, the sleet, the snow, nothing is able to dislodge these dead leaves from the apparently dead branches. #RandolphHarris 1 of 22
The business of the tree during the long winter is to hold on to these dead leaves. Then there begins to be a stirring deep within the heart of the tree. The expression of life reveals itself. Its function is no longer that of holding on to the dead leaves. It turns them loose. They fall off. In the place, buds begin to come. What wind, storm, hail, sleet, ice could not do during the long winter, now comes to pass very quietly because of the vitality inherent in the tree. In the growth of our lives, the same thing happens. As ten-year-olds, we know all things that happen to us are only the beginning. In our teen years, we know a new ripeness for many things, but also are aware that still other things will not be available to us under our twenties and thirties. Then in our thirties and forties, we must develop a new awareness that the wine of youth often grows turbid. The morning of life is for the development of the individual and for conquests: to do. The afternoon of life is for the development of wisdom: to be. The first quarter of life is when we are a problem for others. In the second and third quarters, conscious problems are ours. In extreme old age, we are again a problem for others. By the time of the third quarter, I believe we must make meaning and purpose paramount in order to live out our lives happily and healthily. #RandolphHarris 2 of 22
In the past, we talked about a case study involving Trish. One of Trish’s problems revolved around the idea of commitment. To Trish, commitment is a feeling of conviction that a relationship will last through conflict and differences. Masters and Johnson (The Pleasure Bond) stress that there is a difference between a commitment of obligation and a commitment of concern. A commitment of obligation implies that you have to remain married because of your promise to do so; a commitment of concern implies, not that you feel compelled to meet the obligation but that you feel impelled to. By impelled, I mean that you have a conviction, deeply rooted in yourself, that comes from a core belief in the relationship. This strong belief gives rise to a feeling of confidence in the relationship and impels you to do what it takes to make it work, rather than abandoning it at the first sign of difficulty. Commitment then, is a feeling of confidence, not of obligation. From a logical standpoint, commitment as promise is impossible. Since all individuals are constantly changing, how can one logically promise to feel a certain way ten years from now? However, based on feelings of love and confidence, people can deeply believe in the process of maintaining a marriage through on-going resolution of conflicts. This requires facing the daily problems of life and trusting in the process of mutual sharing of feelings. #RandolphHarris 3 of 22
While it is ridiculous to say, “I promise to love you forever,” it is productive to say, “I love you now and I believe in this relationship. I commit to you that in the future I will do what it takes to make the relationship work, as long as we both shall love one another and want to be with one another.” Trish was so hung up on the promise, she refused to accept the possibility that her husband might want to leave her for good because she believed that it would destroy the marriage, and children. Also, because her husband made this promise to love her forever, at the altar, in front of God. Trish tried to make her husband feel differently than he did. However, with the help of therapy, she soon learned she could go nowhere with that. She eventually accepted his leaving, and he did not have to defend himself. This left him free to explore his reasons for leaving and perhaps his reasons for not leaving. The point is, is Trish’s husband is going to change, the change must come from within, not from Trish’s manipulation of him. If change comes, it will come out of just such a free, give-and-take atmosphere. However, Trish was only able to create this atmosphere by surrendering to the way things are. As a manipulator, Trish exaggerates her support at the expense of the opposite value, criticalness. Support and criticalness constitute a polarity such as the strength and weakness we often see in people struggling with life situations. #RandolphHarris 4 of 22
When a relationship is not working out and one person wants to make it work, that individual needs to become more judgelike, not in the legal sense, but in the sense that there is a nonlegal system of justice which will reward and punish their spouses’ actions regardless of what the person wanting the relationship to work out might do. The values of support and criticalness then synthesize into appreciation of differences, a value Trish can say, “I love our home and children and marriage, but I can see that you do not. I feel sorry for you. You are throwing away a good thing and you might regret it one day. Still, it is not up to me to make you regret it. It is up to me to live my life and it is up to you to live yours.” Notice that this surrender, when it comes, is a nonact. It does not involve doing anything. It just involved accepting the way things are and being with them. One day, Trish’s husband may indeed regret his decision. However, the regret will come from inside himself. And Trish will have accomplished what she wanted without doing anything at all, simply by surrendering to being. As of now, Trish’s situation is still unresolved. She was able to have a conversation with her husband similar to the last bit of role playing she did in therapy. They are not yet divorced, nor is he back with the family. Trish is more comfortable with the thought of a divorce now, though she still does not want it. She is continuing in therapy. #RandolphHarris 5 of 22
Trish’s husband is wondering if leaving his family permanently is such a good idea after all. If he too joined a therapy group, Trish thought it might help. So far, her efforts in that direction have been in vain. However, she is not pressing it. There is danger that those who begin by being spiritually insensitive may end by becoming spiritually offensive. He should bestow an intellectual sympathy on all, even though he cannot bestow an emotional sympathy. If you can go to a man you greatly dislike and remember that he, too, will one day discover his spiritual identity and express a finer, more loveable self, it will be easier to be calm, patient, just, and at ease with him. The relationships which develop between him and other people become a further channel for expressing what he had of this understanding, this peace, this self-control. He cannot meet hatred with hatred, but only with resignation. His answer to enmity is to condone it. His attitude to opposition is to be tolerant. Those who are not deceived by the fictitious good-fellowship of saloons and taverns may find his calm cool presence more truly cordial than those who seek emotional displays. It is not a virtue but a weakness to be unable to stand up for your own rights or to be unable to rightly say “No!” or to submit to being bored by someone you want to get away from. #RandolphHarris 6 of 22
His actions will affect those with him, his dislike or hatred may provoke theirs, his kindness may create kindly reactions from them. A man needs to be careful in such matters. It is not easy for any man who has the ideal of living by truth. He will find himself forced to talk little, to cultivate a reticent manner and follow hos own way of life. Bad-mannered children become so partly because of their parents’ failure to correct them, which may be through having has similar parents themselves. And where this is shown by the child pointing out and ridiculing a stranger, neighbour, schoolchild, or foreigner because of his different or unusual appearance, clothes, and so on, it is also cruel. Do not expect nobler actions or higher motives from any man than experience suggests you should expect. Crime, which is the law of nature, singularly fails to appear distinguishes. Lacenaire, the first of the gentleman criminals, exploits it effectively; Baudelaire displays less tenacity, but is a genius. He creates the garden of evil where crime figures only as one of the rarer species. Terror itself becomes an exquisite sensation and a collector’s item. “Not only would I be happy to be a victim, but I would even hate being an executioner in order to feel the revolution from both sides.” Even Baudelair’s conformity has the odor of crime. If he chose Maistre as his master, it is to the extent that this conservative goes to extremes and centers his doctrine on death and on the executioner. “The real saint,” Baudelaire pretends to think, “is he who flogs and kills people for their own good.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 22
His argument will be heard. A race of real saints is beginning to spread over the Earth for the purpose of confirming these curious conclusions about rebellion. However, Baudelaire, despite his satanic arsenal, his taste for Sade, his blasphemies, remains too much of a theologian to be a proper rebel. His real drama, which made him the greatest poet of his time, was something else. Baudelaire can be mentioned here only to the extent that he was the most profound theoretician of dandyism and gave definite form to one of the conclusions of romantic revolt. Romanticism demonstrates, in fact, that rebellion is part and parcel of dandyism: one of its objectives is appearances. In it conventional forms, dandyism admits a nostalgia for ethics. It is only honour degraded as a point of honour. However, at the same time it inaugurates an aesthetic which is still valid in out World, an aesthetic of solitary creators, who are obstinate rivals of a God they condemn. From romanticism onward, the artist’s task will not only be to create a World, or to exalt beauty for its own sake, but also to define an attitude. Thus, the artist becomes a model and offers himself as an example: art is his ethic. With him begins the age of the directors of conscious. When the dandies fail to commit suicide or do not go mad, they make a career and pursue prosperity. Even when, like Vigny, they exclaim that they are going to retire into silence, their silence is piercing. #RandolphHarris 8 of 22
However, at the very heart of romanticism, the sterility of this attitude becomes apparent to a few rebels who provide a transitional type between the eccentrics (or the Incredible) and our revolutionary adventurers. Between the times of the eighteenth-century, Byron and Shelley are already fighting, though only ostensibly, from freedom. They also expose themselves, but in another way. Rebellion gradually leaves the World of appearances for the World of action, where it will completely commit itself. The French students in 1830 and the Russian Decembrists will then appear as the purest incarnations of a rebellion which is at first solitary and which then tries, though sacrifice, to find the path to solidarity. However, inversely, the taste for the apocalypse and life of frenzy will reappear among present-day revolutionaries. The endless series of treason trials, the terrible game played out between the judge and the accused, the elaborate staging of cross-examinations, sometimes lead us to believe that there is a tragic resemblance to the old subterfuge by which the romantic rebel, in refusing to be what he was, provisionally condemned himself to a make-believe World in the desperate hope of achieving a more profound existence. Whoever cultivates goodwill to others will inevitably throw out whatever ill will he encounter in himself towards particular persons. For as goodwill grows in a broad generous way so ill will dies in a personal way. #RandolphHarris 9 of 22
Childhood illusions have mainly to do with rewards for being good and punishments for being bad. Good means mainly not being angry (“Temper, temper!) or sexy (“Nasty, nasty!) but it is all right to be frightened or ashamed. That is, Jeder is not supposed to express either his “instinct for self-preservation,” whose expression can be quite satisfying, or his “instinct for preservation of the species,” whose expression can be very pleasurable even at an early age; but he is allowed to have as many unsatisfying, unpleasant feelings as he wishes. There are many systems which make formal rules about rewards and punishments. Besides legal systems, which exist everywhere, there are religious and ideological ones. Half the World are “true believers” (about one billion Christians and half a billion Moslems) for whom the rules regarding afterlife are most important. The “heathen” half are judged during their earthly sojourns by local gods or by their national governments. For the script analysts, however, the most important codes are the informal, hidden ones which are peculiar to each family. For small children, there is usually some sort of Santa Clause who is watching their behaviour and keeping the accounts. However, he is for the “little kids,” and “big kids” do not believe in him, at least not in Santa Claus as a man in a masquerade costume who comes on a certain day of the year. #RandolphHarris 10 of 22
In fact, not believing in that kind of Satan Clause is what separates big kids from the little ones, along with the knowledge of where babies come from. However, big kids, and grownups too, have their own versions of Santa, each one different. Some grownups are more interested in Santa Claus’s family than in Santa himself, and firmly believe that if they behave properly, they will sooner or later have their chance with either his son, Prince Charming, or his daughter Snegurotchka, the Snow-Maiden, or even with Missis, Mrs. Menopause. In fact, most people spend their lives waiting for Santa Claus, or for some member of his family. And then there is his opposite number down below. Where Santa himself is a jolly man in a red suit who comes from the North Pole brining gifts, his opposite number is a grim man in a black cloak who comes from the South Pole carrying a scythe, and his name is Death. Thus, the human race is split during later childhood into the Life Crowd, who will spend their lives waiting for Santa Claus, and the Death Crowd, who will spend their lives waiting for Death. These are the basic illusions on which all scripts are based: that either Santa Claus will some eventually bringing gifts for the winners, or Death will come eventually and solve all the problems for the losers. Thus, the first question to ask about illusions is: “Are you waiting for Santa Claus, or Death?” #RandolphHarris 11 of 22
However, before the Final Gift (immortality) or the Final Solution (death), there are meanwhile others. Santa can bestow a winning lottery ticket, a life pension, or prolonged youth. Death can bestow a permanent disability, a cessation of desire for pleasures of the flesh, or premature old age, each of which relieves the person of some of his duties. For example, women in the Death Crowd are convinced that menopause will offer succor and surcease: that all desires for pleasures of the flesh will vanish, to be replaced by hot flashes and melancholia which will excuse them forevermore from living. This sad myth, that Mrs. Menopause will rescue them, is living. This sad myth, that Mrs. Menopause will recuse them, is titled “Wooden Ovaries” in the language of script analysis. Some me also grab for this with “Wooden Testicles,” the myth of the male menopause. Every script is based on some such illusion, and it is the grievous but necessary task of script analysis to undermine it, hence the blunt titles which get this done with the most dispatch and the shortest pain. The transactional importance of the illusion is that it provides a cause, and a reason for saving up trading stamps. Thus, people who are waiting for Santa Claus will save either compliments to show how good they have been, or “suffers” of various kinds to arouse his compassion, while those who are waiting for death will save guilt or futility stamps to show that they are worthy of him or will welcome him with gratitude. However, any kind of stamp may be offered to either Santa Claus or Death in the hope that with clever salesmanship the desired merchandise will be forthcoming. #RandolphHarris 12 of 22
The illusion, then, has to do with the store where the trading stamps are turned in, and there are two different stores, each with different rules. By doing enough good, or enduring enough suffer, Jeder can collect enough gold or brown stamps to turn in on a free gift from Santa’s Store. By collecting enough guilts or futilities, he can get a free gift from the Death Shop. Actually, Santa and Death do not actually run stores. They are more like itinerant peddlers. Jeder has to wait for Santa or Death to come, and he never knows when they will. That is why he must save his trading stamps and always have them ready, because if he misses his opportunity when Santa or Death does pass by, he never knows when he will get another chance. If he is saving cheerios, then he must think optimistically at all times, because if he relaxes even for a moment, that might be the very moment of Santa’s arrival. Similarly, if he is saving suffers, he must not risk every looking happy because if Santa catches him off guard, he will have lost his opportunity. It is the same people in the Death Crowd. They cannot afford to risk even a single moment free of guilt or futility, for that might be the very moment of Death’s visit, and then they would be condemned to live until the next round, which might be—well, only death knows how long the suspense might have to continue. #RandolphHarris 13 of 22
The notion of self-directed brain change did not exist in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It was necessary to turn people on to this option. Evolutionary Agents were robot-programmed to perform this activation role, sending a futique signal to nervous systems. If they are ready for it, if the time is right and the signal is precise—ZAP! The new circuits will activate! People will open up like flowers in May—which is what happened in the 1960s. Remember this notion of bodily awareness was a predom-species concept in the 1950s. Before 1960 hive wisdom held that the body was an instrument designed for reproductive purposes. Sure, you were allowed to jump up and down on each other on Saturday night for breeding purposes—instinctual sperm-egg exchange. The notion of intelligent pleasure, hedonic engineering, bodily self-direction, didn’t exist. The notions of consciousness raising and body awareness and personal growth did not exist. Of course, you know what happened. Since the 1960s, the consciousness-pleasure hedonic-intelligence business has become the largest industry in the country. The Great American Consumer Society has co-opted the notion of “feel good.” And that is a step forward. Nothing is wrong with hedonic consumerism. It was bound to happen. It is a stage, of course. New ideas always get watered down and vulgarized. In every gene-pool, every caste is going to pick up on new energies. So, let us face the amusing fact. The self-directed pleasure business has become an American obsession. #RandolphHarris 14 of 22
There is an enormous hedonic industry in this country which did not exist in the 1950s. We have water beds, satin sheets, diets, health foods, electric cars, stereo equipment, Internet, body shops, and more. We have yoga, massage, body building and martial arts. We have gurus, swamis and personal trainers. We have personal development and self-growth. Girl Scout Troops runs off twice a week to have consciousness raising episodes at the junior high school. Huge sums of money are involved. We spend more than $250,000,00—a quarter of a billion dollars annually—for the rolling papers and more than six billion for marijuana. For hundred million dollars are spent on jogging paraphernalia. The self-indulgent, self-improvement pleasure industry—entertainment, travel, recreation, sensual stimulation, aesthetics, style and fashion—is the largest business in America. The business of Uncle Sam has become self-actualization pleasure. There is no authoritative catalogue of emotional experience. Furthermore, there is precise differentiation of the physiological expression of emotion. Physiological psychologists have difficult naming the emotional experience that a person is undergoing when their only data are markings on a polygraph that depict alterations in autonomic nervous system activity. #RandolphHarris 15 of 22
In psychology’s earliest days, emotion was an awkward concept for behavioural scientists to define and accept. The effort tended toward minimizing the subject, considering it a part of the motivation process, and most of all, boiling down emotions to as few as possible. In 1919, Watson, the grand old man of behaviourism, suggested the existence of only three emotions in the infant—fear, joy, and lust. In the years following, the direction of the profession may be seen in that Bridges (1932) proposed just one response: undifferentiated excitement, a concept that matches the lack of differentiation in physiological symptomology characteristic of almost all emotions. Clinicians, counselors, and others who have dealt intimately with emotions and whose task it often is to help people understand their own emotional responses very accurately and specifically, do differentiate a far richer spectrum of emotions in the human. The complexity of emotions as seen by the humanists are numerous. Optimistic emotions include things like joy, ecstasy, pride, enchanted, warm-hearted, and more. Pessimistic emotions include feeling low, fear, lustful, anxiety and more. From time to time, humanists have pointed out that most psychology textbook, when they do give any space to emotions, concentrate largely on the negative emotions such as hate and depression. #RandolphHarris 16 of 22
The mission of the Sacramento Fire Department is to serve their community by preventing emergencies through education and inspection Minimizing injury, death, and property destruction due to fire, natural disaster and other emergencies while providing timely and effective emergency medical services. “In California we have what we call the Santa Ana winds, usually in August and September, where the winds come off the desert and bring a real dry heat all the way across the coast. I had my six-moth probationary test coming up, and I was studying all the time. I was with Engine X. This particular afternoon a young guy was flying a kite southeast of town and the kite caught on some high wires, causing an arc that jumped to the heavy brush and started a fire. So they dispatched the Forest Service and nearby unit, leaving us to protect our part of the city. We looked out our back door and watched the fire grow, we listened to the radio traffic, and finally we were dispatched. On the way to the fire, I was sitting in the jump seat behind the driver. The fire was in a hilly area, with roads winding around and up and down the hills, an awkward place to fight a fire. Our assignment was to go up this narrow little road. The second house on the left was on fire. A police lived there with his wife and two children. We couldn’t do much about the house. All we could do was make sure they got out. We did that. Then we went up to the next house. There were houses all over the place beginning to burn. #RandolphHarris 17 of 22
“With some difficulty we backed into the driveway next door. I was with Captain Y and Engineer Z. There was a Chevy pickup in the driveway and a great big eucalyptus tree in the back. We pulled off a 150-foot preconnect and went to fight the fire. The house was on the side of a bank. The lower part of the bank was covered with brush, and that was all burning. The upper part of the bank was also covered with brush, and that was all burning, and the big eucalyptus tree was on fire. I noticed the house was preheating, and white smoke was beginning to pump out of it. There wasn’t really any fire yet, but I knew it was about to burst. A very unusual thing happened to me at that point. I had been in forest fires before, and you normally have 21 percent oxygen in the air. But here the fire was so widespread around us that it was consuming the oxygen in the air and we couldn’t breathe. We had bandannas on our faces, but they were just filtering the smoke, not giving us oxygen. The captain and Z went across the lawn toward the house, and I lost track of them. I went back to the rig and grabbed a Scott air pack, and just about at that time the engine sucked an ember down the air intake, which burned the engine out, killed the pump, and prevented us from having any water. The hose in back of the truck was totally burned out, and I think the tires were, too. The three of us were in an open air oven. We had fire above us, below us and to the sides. #RandolphHarris 18 of 22
“We were in a little spot right in the middle of the backyard. I figured there were other people in the same situation or worse, and that we were basically on our own. Funny, but my main concern during this whole time was passing my probationary test. I was dedicated! So after I rejoined the other two, we all got into our fire tents. I think it was a miracle that we happened to be in a spot where there was a pocket of breathable air. I believe the Lord sent an angel down to protect us. There was so much fire around us. We shared the Scott pack, but it really wasn’t that important. One of the things that helped me was something I learned in the Forest Service, which is, always carry some chewing gum with you. It helps keep some of the moisture in your mouth, otherwise you get real dry, then you get smoke and embers in your eyes and it’s real uncomfortable. We lay beneath our tents then for about forty minutes and listened to the fire popping all around us. We also listened to the radio traffic to see if anybody has any emergencies as bad as we had, and in fact they didn’t. So we called for some help, for someone to come up to us. And Engine A and Squad A did try to come up to us. The driver of the engine got out, but the fire was so hot that he had to get right back in the engine. It was impossible for them to come through with hose lines and rescue us, because there was just too much fire and heat. #RandolphHarris 19 of 22
Usually brush fires pass over fairly quickly, but there was a lot of heavy brush which burned for a longer while, and, of course, there were all the buildings on fire around us. I noticed afterwards that the windshield of the pickup truck was just a clump of glass. It has melted. While we were lying in our tents, we communicated with each other. We had the option of either staying where we were or taking a chance on running out through the brush and getting away. The captain convinced us that our best bet was to stay there, and so we did. There were other fire companies in similar situations, but their engines hadn’t burned out, so that when they opened up the nozzle and water came out, they could put their faces close to the nozzle and breathe the cooler air with oxygen in it. I kept lifting my tent and looking around. The heat only twenty feet from us was probably about 900 degrees, but to me the heat wasn’t the problem, it was the lack of oxygen. It was difficult to breathe. And then there was the house. I remember looking at the house one time, and then, about twenty minutes later, the entire house was gone. All that was left was the chimney. It was like jumping from one scene to another in a movie. It was amazing. While I was lying there, I thought, “If this is it, then this it is.” I’m not a quitter, but I knew that we were on our own and that nobody in the while area could do anything for us. #RandolphHarris 20 of 22
“I figured there were probably people in worse situations than we were. I prayed. I have a strong faith, and I believe that the Lord provided a little pocket of oxygen for us to breathe, the fire consumed everything else. I knew that death was potentially nearby, as it is in a lot of the situations that we see. But I do appreciate life, and we all have a great concern for safety. Finally, after forty minutes or so, the fire had passed over and settled down a little bit. The guys from the bottom made another attempt to get to us, and they got the pump going, but they were still not able to reach us. The ones who did finally reach us came over the top from the other side of the hill. They knew we were still alive, because we had kept in radio contact and given them updates of our situation. When we got out, the fire was still going on. I would have stayed and gone through the whole thing, but during this time I had somehow cut my left eye. I don’t know how, but I had scratched the cornea pretty good, and it got to the point where it bothered me so bad, I couldn’t concentrate, and I couldn’t do anything to get relief for it. So they took me to the hospital, where they cleaned out my eyes, put in some medicine, and packed both of them. Actually they were more concerned about the black in my lungs. I had inhaled some smoke, which is common. So they cleared out the black stuff. I didn’t get to finish the whole fire. It stopped burning a couple of hours later, and that was it. History. #RandolphHarris 21 of 22
“And to think that it all started from a little spark from a guy flying his kite! In all, that fire consumed 270 homes, and I don’t think any lives were lost!” The Sacramento Fire Department provides professional life safety, property protection, and disaster preparedness services. They achieve this through extensive fire prevention and safety education efforts, along with quick and effective responses to emergencies. You can save lives by donating to the Sacramento Fire Department. Also, it is absolutely important to raise your children to love America and to be patriotic citizens. By loving God and Jesus Christ, we can keep America a cohesive country. By supporting our local businesses by buying American cars, and other goods and services produced by Americans, this will stimulate our economy and help produce more high paying jobs in America. It is also important to respect law and order. As God loving citizen, we make it a goal to treat our elders with dignity, care, reverence, patience and empathy so that we may continue to be blessed by God. 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. “My country, ‘tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing; land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrims’ pride, from every mountain side let freedom ring. Our fathers’ God, to Thee, Author of liberty, to Thee I sing; long may our land be bright, with freedom’s holy light; protect us by Thy might, Great God, our King.” #RandolphHarris 22 of 22
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We Shall Always be Glad to See You
Drawn curtains blocked the sunlight. A single candle lit the cavernous entryway—an art gallery nearly forty feet long. Mahogany panels covering much of the walls added their own soberness. Marble busts of 13 Roman Emperors mounted on pedestals, two historic series of pre-Gobelin tapestries woven in 1640 for Louis III to present to Cardinal Barberine of Rome populated a side room. The draperies were green silk damask and blue velvet, the furniture of Louis XV gilded oak, the paintings signed by van Gough, Boch, Embiricos, Moueix, Geffen. In the half-light of my own home, I came face to face with an apparition, a man, with thin white, grizzled hair hanging like seaweed, frightened eyes the colour of crystal blue. His cheeks were hallow; although well-knit and well-proportioned his black attired figure, indefinitely grim. At first, I was alarmed. He looked like somebody who had risen from the grave. I am a very private person and the locals hereabouts would like nothing better than to have stories of “ghosties” and poltergeists up at The Winchester Mansion to giggle over. And God knows that the country rag would make of it. Up the wide mahogany staircase I preceded, shading the chamber candle with my hand, to protect it from the currents of bone chilling air. In such a rambling place, the spirits found plenty of room to disport themselves in. I conducted myself through a maze of rooms, and a labyrinth of passages, to the Hall of Fires where the fires were blazing. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
The sumptuous fires were composed of a bushel of coal, wood enough to build a small cottage, piled halfway up the chimney, and roaring and crackling like the sound of thunder. This was comfortable. I sat in a big armchair against the wall for about an hour, holding Zip on my lap. He was tense and I was frustrated, for a sense of personal guilt was growing. I had insisted on building this house and bringing him into it. When my bones warmed, I went to bed but not to sleep. I lay awake and thought of my youthful days when I had been a wife and a mother. Until the untimely deaths of my infant daughter and my beloved husband, I had not realized how much I had rejected certain rigid orthodox beliefs. Inexplicably, something seemed to lurch within, an abrupt sagging of mood that left me strangely wearied. I wondered at my own unease. The tranquility of this hour is the tranquility of death. Nonetheless I had lived in two haunted houses. In one of them, a Dutch Colonial, had bore the reputation of being haunted. Much like Llanada Villa, it had a score of mysterious bedrooms which were never used. After a few tears shed, I covered myself up warm, and fell asleep. Upon awakening, slowly waving shadows waved on from the heavy trees. Coming down from the ninth floor, I passed the servants quarters. The mirror-paneled walls hid mysterious doors, which opened to an entire suite of rooms. Perhaps these doors were hidden out of whimsy, perhaps with an eye toward security. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
One of my fondest rooms was the library, warmed by a fireplace from a sixteenth-century castle in Germany, decorated with a tiger rug at the near and a bear rug at the front end, with armed knights standing guard as anions. The mantel was carved with a scene of rural revelry, with a Shepherdess, a bagpiper, and dancing men. The ceiling was of carved French mahogany from the 1500s, the room contained three stained-glass windows freed from a thirteenth-century abbey in Belgium. The library also featured the finest European furnishings. Its thousands of volumes included Juan Ruiz, Venerable Bede, Julian of Norwich, Mechthild of Magdeburg, Hildegard of Bingen, Layamon, Boethius, Heinrich Kramer, and Jacob Sprenger. With the contagion downs stairs, I sat in the morning room listening when I heard strange noises, which chilled my blood. There was suspicion and fear among us. The servants were always ready to go off with hair triggers. The year was dying early, the leaves were falling fast, it was a cold day. However, there was a coldness about Llanada Villa which only in part was to do with the shift in season. In certain rooms and corridors there was a darkness of air, in others a sense of emptiness because they had not been used nor entered in years. Zip grumbled somewhere in the shadows, but did not show himself. In the basement, the cellar which contained filled wine racks. It was with a mild sense of relief that I left the cellar to walk through the kitchen and scullery out onto the garden terrace. This was a fine place for a haunting. If one believed in such things. Looking out at the gardens, enjoying how magnificently laid out in formal yet interesting lines and curves, I breathed in deeply. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
The was a cold, creepy feeling running up my spine. I expected something profound, maybe something deeply moving, an insight into the spiritual World on the other side of my own life. Descending a short flight of steps, the stone path before me branched off in three directions around the flower beds. I continued along the center path. Reflecting on how it is only when we begin to understand what is going on inside our own minds that we will discover some answers to the paranormal. I reached a knee-high wall, which encompassed a large ornamental pond, almost a miniature lake, full of water lilies. Before my eyes was a girl. She looked past me at the pond almost as if it had come as a shock to her eyes. However, there was something queer in her movement as she backed away. I blinked and it was moments before I realised that I was back in one of the mansion’s rooms, and looking up at the figure of a man, someone who had his back turned toward me. There was something wrong with this vision, for it had wavered before me as if…as if I were watching him through water. There were moving fronds around me, reeds shifting like loose tentacles. Two naked arms reached for me, slender, pearl-white limbs, fingers clawed. And even though they stretched toward me, these arms were bloodless. They were dead things. Suddenly, an air of profound peace invaded the dwelling. I entered the hallway with a vague, uneasy consciousness of unfitness and treachery. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
I switched the light off, and the door to the landing of the second-floor staircase was open. Just on that sport, I suddenly heard crashing noises as if somebody were rolling down. I was terrified. As soon as I switched the light back on, it stopped. There was nothing on the stairs. I sat on the chair for a moment, then decided it was my nerves, and turned the light off again. Immediately, the same noise returned, even louder. There was no mistaking the origin of the noises this time. They came from the stairs in front of the room. Wondering if this had anything to do with the terribly frigid area on the back of the staircase, I switched on the light again and they stopped. Before climbing into bed, I left the lights burning the rest of the night. I finally fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. The next morning was a clam day. I was lying in bed, enjoying from my window the sense of winter beauty and repose; a bright sky above, and the quiet estate before me. In this state I was gladdened by hearing footsteps, which I took to be those of the housemaid Hilda, approaching the chamber door. The visitor knocked and entered. The foot of the bed was toward the door, and the curtains at the foot, notwithstanding the season, were drawn to prevent any draught. The housemaid parted them and looked upon me. Her gaze was earnest and destitute of its usual cheerfulness, and she spoke not a word. I had a curious sense that I was looking upon some unknown, ethereal World which might vanish. “My dear Hilda,” I said, “how glad I am to see you! Come round to the bedside, I wish to have some talk with you.” #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
She closed the curtains, as if complying; but instead of doing so, to my astonishment, I heard her leave the room, close the door behind her, and begin to descend the stairs. Greatly amazed, I hastily rang, and when the butler appeared I bade him call the housemaid back. The butler replied that he had not seen her enter the house. However, I insisted, saying, “She was here but this instant, run! Quick! Call her back!” The butler hurried away, but, after a time, returned, saying that he could learn nothing of her anywhere; nor had anyone in or about the house seen her either enter or depart. This strangeness of this circumstance struck me forcibly. While I lay pondering on it, I heard a sudden running and excited talk in the garden. I listened; it increased, though up to that time the estate had been profoundly still; and I became convinced that something unusual had occurred. Again, I rang the bell, to enquire about the cause of the disturbance. This time it was the scullery maid who answered it. “Oh, Mrs. Winchester, it was nothing particular,” she said, “some trifling affair.” Finally, however, my alarm and earnest entreaties drew from my servants the terrible truth that my housemaid had just been stabbed at the market and killed on the spot. There then follows a detailed account of the events in which Hilda Howitt lost her life. So great was the respect entertained for her, and such a deep impression of her tragic end, that the bell in the belfry tolled on this day. Comparing the circumstances and the extant time at which end occurred, the fact was substantiated that the apparition presented itself to me almost instantly after she had received the fatal stroke. At sunset, I sat at my desk and gazed dreamily at the Observational Tower, and that shimmering spire crowned complex of rooms in the distance of the labyrinth which provoked my fancy. Now and then, I was trained my eyes on the spectral, unreachable World of my estate; picking out individual roofs and chimneys and steeples, and speculating upon the bizarre and curious mysteries that we have created. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
My house seemed somehow alien, fabulous, and linked to the unreal, intangible marvels of the Spirit World. It stood out with especial distinctness at certain hours of the day, and at sunset the great tower and tapering steeple loomed blackly against the glowing sky. Some believed that my home was built of stone and had withstood more than a century or more of storms. Around the towers and belfry, when the delicate leaves came out on the garden boughs, they World was filled with a new beauty. Plodding though the endless halls, I felt I was within a long-known, unreachable World beyond the mists. And presently I noted the strange, faces of the drifting shadows, and foreign sounds over wafting specular music. Nowhere could I find a familiar room among the six hundred in existence. I half fancied that Llanda Villa was a view of a dream-World never trod by living human feet. Now and then a carpenter or housemaid came in sight, but never the ones I sought. As I climbed higher, the regions of my home seemed stranger and stranger, with bewildering mazes of brooding hallways leading eternally off hither and tither. Faces within my house had a look of fear which they tried to hide. Upon entering a turret, I saw a boy being placed under a large wicker basket of conical shape, and a hooded woman stabbed through and through by the fakir with a long sword that pierced from side to side. Screams of pain followed each thrust, and the weapon was discerned to be covered with flesh blood. The cries grow fainter and at length cease altogether. Then the juggler uttering cries and incantations dances rough the basket, which she suddenly removes, and no sigh of the child is seen, no rent in the wickerwork, no stain on the steel. However, in a few seconds the boy, unharmed and laughing, spears running forward from some distant spot. “We shall always be glad to see you,” the boy said. The crowd began to quiet down to whispers, now, for the stillness and gloom of the place oppressed their spirits. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
The Winchester Mystery House
Wizards of medieval times, upon certain special days will with great ceremony appear in the temples, which are always thronged on these occasions, and whilst their disciples howl and shriek out invocations, they suddenly throw aside their robes and with a sharp knife seem to rip open their stomachs from top to bottom, whilst blood pours from the gaping wound. The worshippers, lashed to frenzy, fall prostrate before them and grovel frantically upon the floor. The wizard appears to scatter his blood over them, and after some five minutes he passes his hands rapidly over the wound, which instantly disappears, not leaving even the trace of a scar. The operator is noticed to be overcome with intense weariness, but otherwise all is well. Those who have seen this hideous spectacle assure us that it cannot be explained by any hallucination or legerdemain, and that only solution which remains is to attribute it to the glamour cast over the deluded crowd by the power of discarnate evil intelligences. The portentous growth of Spiritism, which within a generation passed beyond the limits of a popular and mountebank movement and challenged the serious attention and expert inquiry of the whole scientific and philosophical World, furnishes us with examples of many extraordinary phenomena, both physical and psychical, and these, in spite of the most meticulous and accurate investigation, are simply inexplicable by any natural and normal means.
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/
All Was Not as it Seemed
Late in the evening of Thursday May 1, 1890, the atmosphere of the mansion was eerie and certainly encouraged fearful impressions. The panic-stricken housemaid, Florence Farr, cried out, “fetch a doctor, fetch the constable!” As everyone watched in suspense, my heart was pounding, sending curtains of dread through me. Eliphas Levi was lying in bed with his throat cut. Mr. Hansen told me that it had been a suicide. He presented me with a note that was in Mr. Levi’s handwriting which stated: “I abandon myself wholly to thy power and I put myself in thy hands, acknowledging no other god; and this sense thy art my god. We say to the Devil that we acknowledge him as our master, our god, our creator. The Devil told me he was my God, and that I should serve and worship him.” However, when the coroner Aurther Philipp arrived, he said that the carpenter had been murdered. His throat cut so deeply that he was practically decapitated. There appeared to be no motive. The apartment of which he was in had to doors in it; the one opening into a passage, and the other leading into the Oxford Bedroom: there were no means of entering the sitting room but from the passage, and no other egress from the bedroom except through the sitting room; so that any person passing into the bedroom must have remained there, unless he returned by the way he entered. “This is horrid,” I said. “It is unspeakable that such a tragedy could happen. Who would want to butcher him in his sleep?” My eye happened to glance from the scene toward the door that opened into the passage, and I observed a tall, youth, of about twenty years of age, whose appearance was that of extreme emaciation, standing beside it. Struck with the appearance of a perfect stranger, I immediately turned to Mr. Hansen, who was standing near me, and directed his attention to the guest who had thus strangely captured my attention. As soon as Mr. Hansen’s eyes turned towards the mysterious visitor, his countenance became strangle agitated. “Mrs. Winchester, I see no one,” said John Hansen. “I have heard of a man being pale as death, but I have never seen a living face assume the appearance of a corpse.” #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
As I looked silently at the form before us, perceiving the agitation of Mr. Hansen, I felt no inclination to address it—as I looked silently upon the figure, it proceeded slowly into the adjoining apartment and, in the act of passing us, cast its eyes with a somewhat melancholy expression on Mr. Hansen. The oppressing of this extraordinary presence was no sooner removed than Mr. Hansen, seizing me by the arm, and drawing a deep breath, muttering in a low and almost inaudible voice, “Great God!” By that time, I was not sure. Maybe I had been working too hard and needed rest. Perhaps I had only imagined the apparition. However, I never had been possessed of an overactive imagination. I was a practical person, used to dealing with facts and figures. Then I thought again of the door to the chamber, could someone beside the maid have walked by us without anyone seeing? I was completely confused. No one could find much to say about a suspect. And I was too busy with my own chaotic thoughts. I certainly had been convinced that an intruder was in the house. But if so, where did he go? Why the mystery? I did not want to discuss it further at the moment for it would only make me unduly nervous. The following afternoon came, and waned to the twilight. The Santa Clara Valley mourned. Public prayers had been offered up, and many and many a private prayer that had the petitioner’s whole heart in it; but still no good news came. As details of the murder emerged, fears grew that it might have been done by something not of this World. If my guest were not safe on my palatable, exclusive estate, who could be? The 1890s in California were nervous times, teaming with immigrants, the unemployed, renegades, and vengeful spirits. #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
I resolved not to mention the occurrence to anyone, and persuaded myself that I had been imposed upon by some artifice, but I could neither account for the reasons nor suspect the author, nor conceive the means of execution; I was content to imagine anything possible, rather than admit the possibility of a supernatural appearance. However, though I had attempted these stratagems of self-delusion, I could not help expressing my solicitude with respect to the apparition I had seen or imagined to have seen; my frequent mention of my fears awakened the curiosity of the servants, and eventually betrayed me into a declaration of the circumstances which I had in vain determined to conceal. The destiny of the souls slain by the Winchester Rifle had become an object of universal and painful interest to the servants. It was clear that my mind was filled with thoughts that manifestly pained, bewildered and oppressed me: I drew near the fireplace and, learning my head on the mantelpiece, said in a low voice “my house is haunted.” I was under the impression that I certainly saw a spirit pass so mysteriously through the apartment. For a moment, I felt a twinge of apprehension, but it soon passed. The next morning, in the bright light of day, I had begun to doubt the reality of my impression. Everything had to have a logical explanation and I felt I would find one in this instance. Besides, so many were captivated by the aura that surrounded my imposing ancestral mansion. I took a sip of tea, washing away the sour debris in one swallow. There, you devils, I said in my mind, enough of your arrogance; now go about your business and keep this tired old blood flowing. I thanked the housemaid with a smile, then looked across the table at Daisy who was glumly eating an egg and anchovy salad. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
“Aunt Sarah, you’re miles away,” Daisy’s voice interrupted. I blinked. “I am sorry. My mind wanders too much these days.” “Not unusual for a medium.” “Our thoughts need direction.” “Not all the time. This is lunch, remember. You can relax.” “Like you?” I gently chided. “When was the last time you completely relaxed, Daisy?” Daisy looked genuinely puzzled. “Aunt Sarah, you know I have no problem with that at all.” Daisy sliced egg and began to eat. “Incidentally, I think the case of Eliphas is one that might prove interesting—it could be a genuine haunting. I just hope you handle it correctly.” Picking up my knife and fork, I learned forward. “Are you worried?” I asked. Daisy smiled distractedly. “Not as much as I used to be.” “Now what does that imply? Does it mean you believe Llanada Villa is haunted?” “It is common knowledge that your home is haunted, Aunt Sarah. Why should it be a secret?” I tasted my fish and refrained from adding salt. “It is an unusual thing to acknowledge,” I said after a while. “I am surprised that you openly admit it.” “I didn’t say I had.” “Then—” “Aunt Sarah, you can sometimes be too absorbed in the cynicism of others to allow much for to let the truth develop.” “Or too absorbed in my work,” I suggested. “It more or less amounts to the same thing.” I pondered Daisy’s response. “I see what you mean…I have an active prejudice against all things spiritual.” Smiling, Daisy reached over and touched my arm. “It is nothing personal, Aunt Sarah. You are sensitive and sincere. I think the spirits appreciate the comfort you give to the bereaved in your home. It is the outrageous charlatans that I despise, the kind who gossip and spread deceptions for their own profit. You’re different, Aunt Sarah. I really believe you help people and spirits. You have balance. We need people with honest skepticism to give the supernatural credibility.” #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
There was a sparkle in my eyes, “And Daisy, when every instinct tells you otherwise, I know how often you accept the logical.” Daisy laughed and acknowledged my point with a raised cup. She sipped the tea, then resumed her half-hearted attack on the salad. I was uncomfortable, though I was reluctant to admit it. I had never admired her more. Daisy was a clam, unexcitable person who created scarcely a ripple on the smooth pond of family existence as she moved serenely through her busy days. “I love you, Daisy.” The hiring and keeping of servants were a persistent topic of discussion. Turnover rates were high, disasters frequent, and I got used to constantly being on the look out for good recommendations from friends. While valets are given the responsibility of being confidants and agents of their masters’ most unguarded moments, of their most secret habits, the servants themselves were rarely equal to the task being subject to errant judgement, aggravated by an unperfect education. The honour of having my niece live with me was such a blessing. When we got home, one pleasant late spring evening, with the sun lighting the art-glass windows on the first floor, the house was quiet. I saw the figure of a woman in the doorway of the dinning room, walking down the hall, and through the curtain, and I heard footsteps in conjunction with it. I thought it was the housemaid, Florence, and I called to her. I was hanging a picture in the dining room at the time. No answer. I was getting annoyed and called her several times over, but there was no response. Finally, she answered from the second floor—she had not been downstairs at all. I walked in the hall and there was no one there. The woman I saw had on a long shirt, and she had hair on top of her head, and she was slender. Florence is not very tall, but she does wear dark clothes. It was a perfect solid figure I saw—nothing nebulous or transparent. The front door had been latched securely and Daisy was in her bedroom. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
Later in the year, Daisy met a woman on the stairway—that is, the stairway leading to the third floor. It was around Thanksgiving time. There was a party that evening, and she mistook the woman for a guest who had somehow remained behind after all the other guests had gone home. Daisy passed her going up while she was coming down, and she walked into her room, which Daisy thought was odd, so she went back to ask if she could help her, but there was not anyone there. I took a good look at the upstairs. No one could have gotten out of the house quickly. The stairs were narrow and difficult to negotiate, and the back stairs, in the servant’s half of the house, are even more difficult. Anyone descending them rapidly was likely to slip and fall. As I lay rigid upon that strange upstairs bed—lay there fully dressed, I became broad awake; but a kind of obscure paralysis nevertheless kept me inert till long after the last echoes of sounds died away. I heard the wooden, deliberate ticking of the ancient Connecticut clock somewhere far below, and at last made out the irregular snoring of a sleep. Just what to think or what to do was more than I could decide. After all, what had I heard beyond things which pervious information might have led me to expect. Had I not known that unknown spirits were now freely admitted to Llanada Villa? No doubt Daisy had been surprised by an unexpected visit from them. Yet something in that fragmentary discourse had chilled me immeasurably, raised the most grotesque and horrible doubts, and made me wish fervently that I might wake up and prove everything a dream. I think my subconscious mind must have caught something which my consciousness has not yet recognised. The peaceful snoring below seemed to cast ridicule on all my suddenly intensified fears. Did those beings mean to engulf us because we have come to know too much? Something, my instinct told me, was terribly wrong. All was not as it seemed. #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
At last, I felt able to act, and stretched myself vigorously to regain command of my body. Arising with a caution more impulsive than deliberate, I started downstairs. In my nervousness, I kept my ivory gripped revolver clutched in my right hand. As I half tiptoed down the creaking stairs to the lower hall, I could hear the sleeper more plainly, and noticed that he must be in the room on my left. On my right was the gaping blackness of the library in which I had heard voices. Pushing open the unlatched door of the living room, I traced a path toward the source of the snoring, and finally saw the sleepers face. The sorrowful sight presented itself in the dim twilight. With a sudden and dreadful sinking at the heart, I saw that it was none other than the late Eliphas Levi. He lay stretched upon the floor, dead, with his throat cut, bleeding, with his face close to the crack of the door, as if his longing eyes had been fixed, to the latest moment, upon the light and the cheer of the free World outside. I was touched, for I knew by my own experience how this wretch had suffered. The air seemed to shake and shimmer as I had never seen it: and as I looked, I began to feel something of a waviness and confusion in my brain. I looked away hastily. Just what the real situation was, I could not determine; but common sense told me that the safest thing was to find out as much as possible before arousing anybody. The Devil can deceive and trick the senses so that a head may appear to be cut off and blood to flow, when in truth no such thing is taking place. Regaining the hall, I silently closed and latched the living room door after me. As I turned around, I was startled to see a hideous black figure—working slowly along the hallway, looking from side to side. I was at my wits end. I screamed. In the still air the sound carried. #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
The Winchester Mystery House
The existence of evil discarnate intelligences having being orthodoxly established, a realm which owns one chief, and it is reasonable to suppose, many hierarchies, a kingdom that is at continual warfare with all that is good, ever striving to do evil and bring man into bondage; it is obvious that if he be so determined, man will be able in some way or another to get into touch with this dark shadow World, and however rare such a connection may be it is, at least possible. It is this connection with its consequences, conditions, and attendant circumstances, that is known as Witchcraft. After God Himself hath spoke of magicians and sorcerers, what infidel dare doubt that they exist? To deny the possibility, nay, actual existence of Witchcraft and Sorcery, is at once flatly to contradict the revealed Word of God in various passages both of the Old and New Testament; and the thing itself is a truth to which every Nation in the World hath in its turn borne testimony, either by examples seemingly well attested, or by prohibitory laws, which at least suppose the possibility of commerce with evil spirits. Even the ultra-cautions—I had almost said sceptical—Father Thurston acknowledges: “In the face of Holy Scripture and the teaching of the Fathers and theologians the abstract possibility of a pact with the Devil and of diabolical interference in human affairs can hardly be denied.” Plainly, a man who not only firmly believes in a Power of evil but also that this Power can and does meddle with and mar human affections and human destinies, may invoke and devote himself to this Power, may give up his will thereunto, may as this Power to accomplish his wishes and ends, and so succeed in persuading himself that he has entered into a mysterious contract with evil whose slave and servant he is become.
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/
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/
We Should Get Back to the House
There was a sound like the faintest, far-off shout. My eyes opened and uncertainty surfaced with the wakefulness. The rhythmic knocking of hammers and crisp slicing and the saws vanquished the lingering pleasantness of my reverie. My head ached dully. All I could recall was marvelous vista in its Victorian grandeur and splendor. I was flying over it, not at a height, my flying was not so assured, but a meter or two off the ground, flying at a joyful, terrifying velocity, as a glided hither and tither. However, with one false movement the magic would end in dreadful fall. I sighed with relief as I reached for my bed jacket and settled in a chair on the opposite side of the bureau. I looked in the mirror and saw my face breaking into a warm smile. Shuffling papers, I retrieved an appointment book which had been buried. There were two sitting scheduled for me this afternoon. A widow, freshly made, and a young couple who wanted their son’s death confirmed. Would you believe he was reported missing at the Tournament of Roses during winter? The poor dears—so many days of uncertainty. They wanted me to locate his spirit. As I pushed back my chair and summoned the chambermaid to bind my hair and prepare my state-of-the-art shower, I shivered as a frigid air breezed through my chamber. #RandolphHarris 1 of 7
My attire for the day was simple: a long coat, slim fitting, curving in gently at the waist, hardly swelling at all over my bosom; the shoulder padding was squarish but by no means exaggerated, the collar was tight around my neck. The young couple greeted me in my blue seance room. I gestured for them to sit down. “Move closer. We must hold hands.” Matthias and Anneliese Hulsmann obliged. It was of course a dark seance. “Are we ready?” I asked, taking my place among the couple. They nodded and we all clasped hands. “Before we contact the spirits, we must clear our heads of all pessimism,” I said. Taking a deep breath and with a soft voice, I began. I was influenced to offer up a brief petition that our assembling might enable us to receive a full measure of spiritual gifts; that I might thereby become more fitted to do the Lord’s work and shew forth His great Love to the World. In a brief time, I exclaimed, “Oh! There is an angel—it is Uriel, and he will soon make his presence known.” We then heard the rustling of large wings, which ceased after a time. After which, there was a gentleman standing between Matthias and Anneliese. He was singing and accompanying himself on a harp. “Happy are those who find love in the Father’s breast. Like the wandering dove who found no repose on Earth around, they can to their Ark repair and enjoy it ever there. Enlarge not to my hunger, or I’m caught in trammels of perverse deliciousness. No, on, that shall not be: thee will I bless, and bid a long adieu.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 7
After that, a deep rumbling shook the floor. I was able to describe Erich to the bereaved with great accuracy, and then I was told to by the angel to say, “Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he will sustain thee: His arm will uphold thee, so deep that the waters shall not cover thee.” With a deep sigh, the couple closed their eyes in an act of surrender. After Uriel spoke, Erich Hulsmann came through. “Oh Erich. My dear Erich are you here?” I called out. “It’s I. It’s Erich.” “You parents are here, and they miss you dearly. You became lost at the Tournament of Roses. My dear child, have you passed through the veil?” “I am not dead. I’m alive. I feel an effort is being made to raise me, but you must not speak to me, nor touch me.” The darkness being complete, we could not see how much he was raised, but he spoke occasionally, and his voice sounded very much above us. As he lowered to place, we could see his feet above the level of the table. Mrs. Hulsmann’s handkerchief with then drawn to her eyes. “Sorry, so sorry,” Mr. Hulsmann cried. We were then desired to have light for the remainder of the seance. Mr. and Mrs. Hulsman saw a figure behind me whom they described very clearly. He had on a white linen suit with gold buttons. Mrs. Hulsmann then told me to ask Erich about his grandmother. “Erich my dear,” I said, “is your grandmother, who loved you so, well?” “As much as ever,” he replied. #RandolphHarris 3 of 7
Then his father called his name. Erich nodded toward his father with a veined face, as he walked through the door into the halls of Llanada Villa. As we concluded the seance with the Lord’s prayer, the table rose from the floor, and slammed back down. Our chair fell backward, and the room went pitch black. Several Indians in white clothes became visible. The word “Light” became visible on the ceiling. When again in darkness, a voice called out to us, “We have crowned you all with blessing that you may do the Lord’s work on this Earth.” Mr. and Mrs. Hulsmann were struck with tears. They received the answer they were looking for, but could not understand why their son was angry and could not speak further with them. As they were leaving the room, Mrs. Hulsmann saw a spectral white dove fly through the door and a real feather fell into her hand. Mr. Hulsmann recalled that he made a promise that he had not fulfilled. In a very gentle voice, Mrs. Hulsmann said, “I will never forget you.” Some delicious perfume was sprinkled upon us. I bid them goodbye, as their carriage rode away. The house and grounds were exerting a terrific emotional pull, and I was falling under a spell from the past that I had never felt before. It was foreign to my usual manner of thinking that I could not even speak. I locked the front door and went into the library. As I looked up, a dark shape was looming over my head in the moonlight. #RandolphHarris 4 of 7
Then I made my way back upstairs to the Daisy Bedroom as fast as I safely could. It was then that I heard the door-to-nowhere open and perceived approaching footsteps. “Who’s there?” I called out. There was no answer, and I was annoyed. Although my housemaids were in other wings of the house—I was sure that one of them had come in and was playing a trick on me. I lit a candle. I could see no one. Yet the door-to-nowhere, I was so sure had been closed was now open—and beyond it only darkness. The candle flickered and died. Then I heard footsteps coming from the door, passing by me, and then going down the stairs. Hastily, I ran into the hallway, and turned on the light, but there was no one there. “Antonia,” I questioned tentatively. “Hanne?” Silence. After a few tense seconds, I heard the footsteps start to mount the stairs and I knew then that there were not the footsteps of either woman. They were unmistakably, the footsteps of a child. I stepped forward and could have reached through the railings and grasped his ankle as he passed, but if my life depended on it, I could not have moved my hand to do so. The area in which I was standing was suddenly icy cold. #RandolphHarris 5 of 7
“Who are you?” I yelled. At least I thought I was yelling, but no voice could be heard, as when one tries to scream in a nightmare. I was not too sure that I was not having one, either. I reached the newel post and felt the mahogany—cold and solid—beneath my hand. I had to be awake! I yelled again. My challenges went unanswered. There was not the slightest change in the rhythm of the footsteps as they continued their steady climb back up the stairs. I stood betwixt, as I heard them in the upper hall. They went on up to the third floor. I heard a door softly close, and all was silent. I finally moved…fast. I stumbled into a room. True, I had seen nothing by candlelight nor by gasolier in the dark hall, but a heavy concentrated beam most certainly would have shown a boy on the stairs. Was it Erich? Was he now a spirit coming to live in my house? This had been my impression. I walked upstairs and went into the room where the door had closed and found it empty. Then I inspected several miles of the house and tested all the doors leading to the outside. They were securely locked, and the housemaids were fast asleep. Upon descending upon the first floor, I found the butler in the servants’ quarters. “Did you notice anything unusual?” I asked Rainer. “Did you see anyone walking through the house?” “Of course not, Mrs. Winchester,” he replied a little impatiently. “But I did hear some sort of disturbance. A volley of noises broke out throughout the entire house.” #RandolphHarris 6 of 7
Rainer described the noises as “banging, thumping, the whole place shaking.” Zip was shut up in the library, while Rainer took refuge in the breakroom. “Zip whined in terror as the noises increased in volume and in violence. Then suddenly the noises ceased,” he said. Later that night, I was in the Crystal Bedroom with my precious Zip. For no reason, he began to bristle up his hair, and bark at something. I looked up and saw the boy in his white linen suit, with about half of his figure passing through the slightly opened door. I ran to the door. There was no one there. Rainer was going about his usual business and had seen nothing. Some weeks after this, my house became extremely haunted, especially above the stairs, so that I was forced to stay in the lower rooms, there was such a throwing of things up and down, of bats through the windows, and putting all in disorder. A little while after the, a window on the first floor flew open, and in came a bat which inflamed Rainer with a more eager desire to see what the matter was. The keen desire of discovering the cheat made him venture by himself into that room. Into which, when he came, he saw the bedding, chairs, tables, candlesticks, and bed-staves, and all the furniture, rudely scattered on the floor, but, upon search, found no mortal in the room. In the coming days, while at the market, curious people overheard him saying to the grocer, “There is something more than ordinary in the business of the Winchester mansion. It is not womanish fear or superstition that so affrighted the mistress of the house. The house is haunted in all the rooms, upper and lower, that the staff does not stay for a long time.” #RandolphHarris 7 of 7
The Winchester Mystery House
After years of working at The Winchester Mystery House, one of the caretakers reported that he was contacted by Mrs. Winchester. The dreams in which Mrs. Winchester appeared to him were getting increasingly lively, and he wanted to go on record with the information thus received. According to him, Mrs. Winchester poured his heart out to the young man, incredible though this seemed on the face of it. The gist of it was a request to go to “the blue room” and find certain papers in a metal box. “This will prove my innocence. I have not harmed a soul. There is written proof. Notarized sworn statements from my staff written October 5, 1922, or 1923.” The message was specific enough, but the papers of course were long since gone. The blue room would be the Blue Seance Room. The restless spirit of the late Mrs. Winchester had evidently decided to be heard once more. At the same time, he was approached by the Society for Psychical Research for an enquiry into his nocturnal impressions.
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/
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/
The Most Dangerous Job in the World
Evil must die ultimately as the weaker element, in the struggle with good. The persistence of force, manifested in the forms of matter and motion, is the stuff of human inquiry, the material with which philosophy must build. Everywhere in the Universe man observes the incessant redistribution of matter and motion, rhythmically apportioned between evolution and dissolution. Evolution is the progressive integration of matter accompanied by dissipation of motion; dissolution is the disorganization of matter accompanied by the absorption of motion. The life process is essentially evolutionary, embodying a continuous change from incoherent homogeneity, illustrated by the lowly protozoa, to coherent heterogeneity, manifested in man and the higher animals. From the persistence of force, anything which is homogeneous is inherently unstable, since the different effects of persistent force upon its various parts must cause differences to arise in their future development. Thus the homogeneous will inevitably develop into the heterogeneous. Here is the key to Universal evolution. This progress from homogeneity to heterogeneity–in the formation of the Earth from a nebular mass, in the evolution of higher, complex species from lower and simpler ones, in the embryological development of the individual from a uniform mass of cells, in the growth of the human mind, and in progress of human societies–is the principle at work in everything man can know. #RandolphHarris 1 of 18
No amount of description, regardless of how carefully it is presented, can convey an adequate impression of exactly what is involved in the process of reaching an understanding of oneself. The grown-up individual is not a child, and to talk about the child in him, or “his” unconsciousness, is using a topological language which does not do justice to the complexity of the facts. The neurotic, grown-up individual is an alienated human being; he does not feel strong, he is frightened and inhibited because he does not experience himself as the subject onto whom he projects all his own human qualities: his love, intelligence, courage, etcetera. By submitting to this object of transference, he feels in touch with this own qualities; he feels strong, wise, courageous, and secure. This mechanism, idolatric worship of an object, based on the fact of the individual’s alienation, is the central dynamism of transference, that which gives transference its strength and intensity. The less alienated person may also transfer some of his infantile experience to another persons, but there would be little intensity in it. The alienated individual, in search for and in need of an idol, finds the analyst and usually endows him with the qualities of his father and mother as the two powerful persons he knew as a child. Thus the content of transference is usually related to infantile patterns while its intensity is the result of the individual’s alienation. Needless to add that the transference phenomenon is not restricted to the analytic situation. It is to be found in all forms of idolization of authority figure, in political, religious, and social life. #RandolphHarris 2 of 18
Transference is not only the phenomenon of psychopathology which can be understood as an expression of alienation. Indeed, it is not accidental that alien, in French and alienado in Spanish, are older words for the psychotic, and the English “alienist” refers to a doctor who cares for the insane, the absolutely alienated person. Alienation as a sickness of the self can be considered to be the core of the psychopathology of modern man even in those forms which are less extreme than psychosis. Some clinical examples may serve to illustrate the process. The most frequent and obvious case of alienation is perhaps the false “great love.” A man has fallen enthusiastically in love with a woman; after she had responded at first, she is beset by increasing doubts and breaks off the relationship. He is overcome by a depression which brings him close to suicide. Life, he feels, has no more meaning to him. Consciously he explains the situation as a logical result of what happened. He believes that for the first time he has experienced what real love is, that with this woman, and only with her, could be experience love and happiness. If she leaves him, there will never be anyone else who can arouse the same response in him. Losing her, so he feels, he has lost his one chance to love. Hence it is better to die. #RandolphHarris 3 of 18
While all this is convincing to himself, his friends may ask some questions: Why is it that a man who thus far seemed less capable of loving than the average person is now so completely in love he seems to be unwilling to make any concessions, to give up certain demands which conflict with those of the woman he loves? Why is it that while he spears of his loss, he mainly speaks relatively little interest in the feelings of the woman he loves so much? If one speaks to the unhappy man himself, at greater length, one need not be surprised to hear him in fact as if he had left his heart with the girl he lost. If he can understand the meaning of his own statement, he can understand that his predicament is one of alienation. He never was capable of loving actively, of leaving the magic circle of his own ego, and of reaching out to becoming one with another human being. What he did was to transfer his longings for love to the girl and to feel that being with her he experiences his “loving” when he really experiences only the illusion of loving. The more he endows her not only with his longing for love but also for aliveness, happiness, and so on, the poorer he becomes, and the emptier he feels if he is separated from her. When actually he had made the woman into an idol, the goddess of love, and believed that by being united with her he experienced love, he was under the illusion of loving. #RandolphHarris 4 of 18
He had been able to initiate a response in her but he had not been able to overcome his own inner muteness. Losing her is not, as he thinks, losing the person he loves, but losing himself as a potentially loving person. Alienation of thought is not different from alienation of the heart. Often one believes he was thought through something, that his idea is the result of his own thinking activity; the fact is that he has transferred his brain to the idols of public opinion, the newspapers, the government or a political leader. He believes that they express his thoughts while in reality he accepts their thoughts as his own, because he has chosen them as his idols, his gods of wisdom and knowledge. Precisely for this reason he is dependent on his idols and incapable of giving up his worship. He is their slave because he has deposited his brain with them. An involuntary and in a deeper sense unwarranted dependency upon another person is a problem known to nearly everyone. Most of us deal with one or another aspect of it at one or another period of our lives, often not truly recognizing its existence and screening it instead behind such exquisite terms as “love” or “loyalty.” This dependency is so frequently because it seems to be a convenient and promising solution for many troubles we all have. It puts grave obstacles, however, in the way of our becoming mature, strong, independent people; and its promise of happiness is mostly fictitious. #RandolphHarris 5 of 18
Therefore a delving into some of its unconscious implications may be interesting and helpful, even apart from the question of self-analysis to anyone who regards self-reliance and good relationships with others as desirable goals. After several months of not very productive efforts at self-analysis Clare awoke one Sunday morning with an intense irritation at an author who failed to keep his promise to send an article for the magazine she edited. This was the second time he had left her in the lurch. It was intolerable that people should be so unreliable. Soon after it struck her that her anger was out of proportion. The whole matter was scarcely of sufficient importance to wake her up at five in the morning. The mere recognition of a discrepancy between anger and alleged provocation made her see the real reason for the anger. The real reason also concerned unreliability, but in a matter more close to her heart. Her friend Peter, who had been out of town on business, had not returned for the weekend as he had promised. To be exact, he had not given a definite promise, but he had said that he would probably be back by Saturday. He was never definite in anything, she told herself; he always aroused her hopes and then disappointed her. The fatigue she had felt the night before, which she had attributed to having worked too hard, must have been a reaction to her disappointment. #RandolphHarris 6 of 18
She had hoped for an evening with Peter, and then, when he did not show up, she had gone to a movie instead. She could never make engagements because Peter hated to make definite dates in advance. The result was that she left as many evenings free as she possibly could, always harbouring the disquieting thought, would he or would he not be with her? While thinking of this situation two memories occurred to her simultaneously. One was an incident that her friend Eileen had told her years before. Eileen, during a passionate but rather unhappy relationship with a man, had fallen seriously ill with pneumonia. When she recovered from the fever she found to her surprise that her feelings for the man had died. He tried to continue the relationship, but he no longer meant anything to her. Clare’s other memory concerned a particular scene in a novel, a scene that had deeply impressed her when she was an adolescent. The first husband of the novel’s heroine returned from war, expecting to find his wife overjoyed at his return. Actually the marriage had been torn by conflicts. During the husband’s absence the wife’s feelings had changed. She did not look forward to his coming. He had become a stranger to her. All she felt was indignation that he could be so presumptuous as to expect love just because he chose to want her–as if she and her feelings did not count at all. #RandolphHarris 7 of 18
Clare could not help realizing that these two associations pointed to a wish to be able to break away from Peter, a wish that she referred to the momentary anger. However, she argued, I would never do it because I love him too much. With that thought ths fell asleep again. Clare made a correct interpretation of her anger when she saw it as caused by Peter rather than by the author, and her interpretation of the two associations was right. However, despite this correctness the interpretations, as it were, lacked depth. There was no feeling whatever for the force of the resentment she harboured against Peter. Consequently she regarded the whole outburst as only a transient grievance, and thus discarded much too lightly the wish to tear loose from him. Retrospectively it is clear that at that time she was far too dependent on Peter to dare to recognize either resentment or a wish for separation. However, she had not the slightest awareness of any dependency. She ascribed the apparent ease with which she overcame the anger to her “love” for her friend. This is a good example of the fact that one will get no more out of association than one can stand at the time, even though, as in this instance, they speak an almost unmistakable language. Clare’s basic resistance against the import of her associations explains why she did not raise certain questions that they suggested. #RandolphHarris 8 of 18
It is significant, for example, that both of them, while connoting a general way a wish to break off, indicated a very special form of breaking off: in both instances the woman’s feelings faded out while the man still wanted her. This was the only ending of a painful relationship that Clare could visualize. To break away from Peter on her own initiative was unthinkable because of her dependency upon him. The idea that he could break away from her would have aroused sheer panic though there are good reasons to infer that she felt deep down that he did not really want her while she hung on to him. Her anxiety on this score was so deep that it took ger considerable time to realize the mere fact that she was afraid. It was so great that even when she discovered her fear of desertion, she still closed her eyes to the rather obvious fact that Peter wanted a separation. In thinking of incidents in which the woman herself was in a position to reject the man Clare revealed not only a wish to be free but also a desire for revenge, both deeply buried and both referring to a bondage which was itself unrecognized. Here lies the connection between beauty and truth. Beauty is not the opposite of the “ugly,” but of the “false”; it is the sensory statement of the suchness of a thing or a person. #RandolphHarris 9 of 18
To create beauty presupposes a state of mind in which one has emptied oneself in order to fill oneself with what one portrays so that one becomes it. “Beautiful” and “ugly” are merely conventional categories which vary from culture to culture. A good example of our failure to comprehend beauty is the average person’s tendency to cite a “sunset” as an example of the beautiful, as if rain or fog were not just as beautiful, although sometimes less pleasant for the body. All great art is by its very essence in conflict with society with which it coexists. It expressed the truth about existence regardless of whether this truth serves or hinders the survival purposes of a given society. All great art is revolutionary because it touches upon the reality of man and questions the reality of the various transitory forms of human society. Even an artist who is a political reactionary is more revolutionary–if he is a great artist–than the artists of “socialist realism” who only mirror the particular form of their society with its contradictions. It is an astonish fact that art has not been forbidden throughout history by the powers that were and are. There are perhaps several reasons for this. One is that without art man is starved and perhaps not even useful for the practical purposes of his society. #RandolphHarris 10 of 18
Another is that by his particular form and perfection of the great artist was an “outsider” and hence while he stimulated and gave life, he was not dangerous because he did not translate his art into political terms. Besides that, art usually reached only the educated or politically less dangerous classes of society. The artists have been the court jesters of all past history. They were permitted to say the truth because they presented it in its particular but socially restricted artistic form. A self-initiated process of learning to be free is composed of movement from as well as movement toward. From being persons driven by inner forces they do not understand, fearful and distrustful of these deeper feelings and of themselves, living by values they have taken over from others, they move significantly. They move toward being persons who accept and even enjoy their own feelings, who value and trust the deeper layers of their nature, who find strength in being their own uniqueness, who live by values they experience. This learning, this movement, enables them to live as more individuated, more creative, more responsive, and more responsible persons. People are often sharply away of such directions in themselves, as they move with fearfulness toward being freely themselves. #RandolphHarris 11 of 18
It is a painful paradox of civilization that so many of our major discoveries seem to contribute almost equally to the solution of one problem and the creation of another. Dynamite is perhaps the most often noted example, but there are many others. Our discoveries seems to extricate us from an old set of limitations only to burden us with new frustrations. Happily, there seems to be a period of relatively unadulterated enjoyment of each new technological advance. However, sooner or later, its “fringe” limitations come to equal or even surpass its benefits. Thanks to the invention of the Ultimate Driving Machine we have had a marvelous mobility and a great expansion of our “living space,” and now we have an increasingly serious problem of what to do with out cars when they are not in use. Discovery of nuclear fission may have helped to end one way, but now we are threatened by a way of total annihilation. The industrial revolution which enormously increased the supply of goods has been augmented by scientific advances in the twenty-first century that threaten to poison the air we breathe, pollute the water we drink and the food we eat. Automation of industry has made possible better control of processes and more efficient production with fewer workers, and it is as yet uncertain whether we shall be able successfully to absorb the displaced and unneeded labour force as our industries become increasingly places of auto-facture rather than manufacture. #RandolphHarris 12 of 18
Medical science and modern technology have added significantly to longevity. Each year our population receives a sizable increment of persons who have been retired from the productive community and who may live another five or ten years; we find we must cope directly with the problem of supplying meaning to these “golden years.” In light of the ageless struggles to maintain and extend biological life against the assaults of famine and pestilence, in light of the individual struggle to protect health and preserve life, it is a poignant paradox that we must search out ways to help the retired warrior to cope with a life that is now secure, comfortable, and certain. It is an important fact to which all psychotherapists should be fully sensitive that for very many persons when the steadily recurrent daily problems of work–of earning, of building, of planning, of saving–are over, the problem of meaning comes promptly pressingly to the fore. Enjoyment of existence does not come naturally to the person whose earlier life has given neither time nor stimulus to question ultimate purpose or to explore for meanings that superscribe the orientation provided by inescapable basic demands for effort. Thus, paradoxically, each new freedom brings the possibility of new entrapments. We may wonder whether the pace of discovery may soon achieve so many solutions that the problems created by those solutions will surpass our problem-solving capacities! #RandolphHarris 13 of 18
At any place along the road of life, one may turn one’s back on ignorant habits and seek to create better ones. If society find him an odd creature, if it laughs at his peculiarities of belief or frowns at his departures from convention, then he must not blame society. He must accept the situation as inescapable and submit to its unpleasantness as being better than the littleness of surrender. The quest is carried on always under silent and continual pressure. The earnest aspirant will strive to love well where formerly he lived ill, will keep looking for better ideals. As if it were enforced by outside authority, few are ready to impose such a discipline upon themselves; but if they applied what they know, many more could to a little better. Some temptations come on slowly, but others suddenly and before he fully realizes what is happening to him. Whatever the way they come–and this depends partly on his personal temperament, partly on the nature of the temptation–he should prepare himself in advance by fortifying the weaker places in his character. The negative quality can be rubbed away gradually by brining counter qualities into the field against it. He is expected to put forth the effort needed to dispel a negative emotion or to destroy a negative thought, since such will not go away of itself. #RandolphHarris 14 of 18
When the mind is sufficiently purified, it receives intuitions more easily and nurtures aspirations more warmly. Tread firmly on negative thoughts, eject them from the mind as soon as they appear, and give them no chance to grow. Spite, envy, moroseness, despondency and denigrating criticism should all be denied entry. A prompt and decisive “No!” to the suggestion or impulse as soon as it appears, prevents it from gathering strength and becoming uncontrollable. The quickness with which an impulse moves him to action may hide its beginning in him. However, the moment is there: by self-training it may be perceived in time, and inhibition or control applied with more and more success. His intellectual clarity must be deep and his emotional tolerance broad. It is always a pity when thinkers are not equal to their own thoughts. The gain of building an equable character and evenness of mind is not only a spiritual one, it is also a contribution to person happiness. He will not agree to act under threat. Every such attempt to intimidate him makes him only more determined to resist it and to reject the desired action. The power which man spends in the passions and emotions of his lower nature will, when governed and directed upward in aspiration to his higher nature, give him the knowledge and bliss of the Overself. #RandolphHarris 15 of 18
It is not enough to follow a wholesome diet and a healthy way of life. The seeker after a better existence must match with these advanced his thoughts and emotion. By focusing national attention on the numbers and needs of the thousands of patients who suffer incapacitating emotional illness, the mental health movement has served to arouse attention and to mobilize efforts in their behalf. It has won increased expenditures to provide better facilities, more personnel, more and better treatment for the hospitalized patient. It has stimulated the founding of clinics so that milder disturbances may come to early diagnosis and it has encouraged the provision of resources for early outpatient therapy so that developing symptoms can be halted in their first stages and prevented from progression into complete disruption of the personality. The mental health movement has achieved a significant increase in public enlightenment in regard to mental illness. There has been a reduction in the older attitudes of fear and distrust of the mentally ill. Each year fewer and fewer persons remain who hold to an archaic attitude of shame toward any implication of mental illness in themselves or their families. The public has been effectively educated to recognize symptoms of personality disorder and has been encouraged to seek professional consultation for emotional problems. #RandolphHarris 16 of 18
One has to live for praise and blame, not for other people, but for one’s higher self. As we will see, being a firefighter is a lot of responsibility. “As soon as I got out of high school, I put in my application to the Sacramento Fire Department. The written exam was easy. The physical exam was challenging. I knew it was very demanding because my brother had gone through it three years earlier. I was a short, stocky kid, only five-eight. But I knew how to train, and I trained harder than anybody else. All I did was run stairs. I did well on the tests, but there were about twelve hundred people taking the test, and I was kind of downhearted. I heard the results the same day I was taking my final exam for my EMT classes. I was flying high, I was ecstatic, it was a lifelong dream come true for me. But it was scary, too. My dad had never talked to me about the job until I put my application in. Then he was telling me, it’s the most dangerous job in the World, you’ve got to watch yourself, every day you go to work you could get killed. I know that now. We had a grass fire in our backyard, and my wife got to talking to a couple of the firefighters out there. She had heard me talking about wanting to join the fire department. And one of the firemen said, ‘Yeah, we’re looking for a couple of guys here.’ It just kind of went from there. #RandolphHarris 17 of 18
“I put in an application at City Hall, and about a week later they called me. There wasn’t any kind of written test. I tool the physical, and a small oral test there with the captain. The first thing he asked me was how my driving record was. He wanted to know if I had points on my license or any kind of bad record. If I did, there would have been almost no kind of chance of my getting on. To me it was a chance to serve the community.” The Sacramento Fire Department works hard and risks their lives everyday to protect us. Please be kind and make a donation to the Sacramento Fire Department. 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. Do you desire life and seek length of days? Then keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from deceit. Depart from evil and do good, seek peace and pursue it. Keep the commandment of your father, and forsake not the teaching of your mother. Keep them continually in your heart so that they may lead you in the right path. When you lie down, they shall watch over you, and when you awaken, they shall talk with you. For the commandment is a lamp, yea, the Word of God is a light. Get knowkedge and understanding; turn not away from wisdom. #RandolphHarris 18 of 18
The Winchester Mystery House
A series of remarkable occurrences, which caused great excitement, are said to have taken place in September 1888 at The Winchester Mystery House. As dusk was closing in, Mrs. Winchester was about to get ready for tea. The cups and saucer had been arranged on the table, and one of them fell to the floor and smashed. Of course Mrs. Winchester was a little surprised at this; but directly afterwards when she saw the table partially turned over, apparently without being touched, and all the cups fall, she was thoroughly frightened. A small timepiece which stood on the mantelshelf was thrown on the floor. As a servant was getting a number of articles out of the house, a large kitchen table followed him to the door, and it would have probably gone further if the width of the door would have allowed it. Meanwhile things in the parlour continued the same course. Mrs. Winchester’s volume of the Pilgrim’s Progress came flying though the parlour door and out to the walk opposite the front door; whence, after laying there a short time, it jumped up on the windowsill! To this very day, mysterious affairs take place at The Winchester Mystery House.
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/
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/
Much Was Forbidden Knowledge
It was a grim winter’s night and rain pelted the windows. Horses clacked slowly along the cobblestone roads. There was a perpetual teasing wind from below like departing spirits of the dead. I had dinner in the Venetian Dinning Room in front of the fireplace. The windows suddenly lit up, and a few instants later there was a crash of thunder from outside. A sword that had previously hung on the wall, clearly was suspended in the middle of the room with its point towards me. About a minute later, it fell to the ground with a loud noise. The great candles in the hall were burning down to their sockets. One by one they spluttered out. A ghostly, flickering light fell upon the floor. As I pressed forward, I became conscious that my way was haunted by invisible existences whom I could not definitely figure to my mind. From among the walls on either side, I caught broken and incoherent whispers in a strange tongue which I partly understood. It was now nightfall, yet the interminable labyrinth was lit with a wan glimmer having no point of diffusion, for in its mysterious lamination nothing cast a shadow. A shallow pool in a depression on the floor, as from mop water, met my eye with a crimson gleam. I stopped and plunged my hand into it. It stained my fingers; it was blood! Blood, I then observed, was about me everywhere. It was spattered everywhere. Defiling the furniture, and blood dripped like dew from the ceiling. All this I observed with a terror which seemed not incompatible with the fulfillment of a natural expectation. #RandolphHarris 1 of 8
To the menaces and mysteries of my home my surrounding consciousness was an added horror. So frightful was the situation—the mysterious light burned with so silent and awful a menace that my home took on a melancholy or baleful character, so openly my sight conspired against my peace; from overhead and all about came so audible and startling whispers and the sighs of creatures so obviously not of Earth—that I could endure it no longer. On approaching the Morning Room, I noticed that a light was on and the door open, although I distinctly remembered having left it shut. I walked into the room pushed aside the heavy draperies at the entrance to the room itself, and stopped in amazement. In the middle of the room, a single lamp plainly revealed a stranger behind the large chair; the man wore a tall black hat and a dark billowing velvet coat. In the light from the hearth his probing eyes glowed red. He possessed a face so cadaverous and death-mask-like, that it set me screaming! I could not detect even the faintest whiff of a soul. Lightning flashed again, and I learned forward to hear his words over the loud thunder. His voice broken, it seemed, into an infinite multitude of unfamiliar sounds, went babbling and stammering away into the distant reaches of the mansion, died into silence, and all was before. Standing under one of the gaslights in the mansion, he said: “I will not submit unheard. There may be powers that are not malignant traveling through this accursed spiritual fortress. I shall leave them record and an appeal. I shall relate my wrong, the persecutions that I endure—I, a helpless mortal.” #RandolphHarris 2 of 8
The man then walked off toward the dark room at the other end of the hall. Then I realized my visitor had dissolved into thin air. There was no one in the dark room. The door was securely locked. The skylight, 150 feet above ground, could not very well have served as an escape route to anyone human. I thought more about the mysterious forces…“How can this be happening to me! I deserve better for God’s sake! I am innocent for God’s sake! Dear God help me to restore all that I have lost. Make us happy again, make us ourselves again, raise my daughter and husband from the dead, snatched by supreme ghouls from the crypts, and return them to our home and make the name of Winchester a name of pride.” The thought of being lost in utter darkness without my loved ones amidst this mysterious labyrinth World of nightmares. A further flash of thunder seemed to split the Heavens wide open. From the open space in the narrow corridor, a glow was coming from the door on my right. In a moment I had reached it and was standing in the secret library, trembling with relief, and watching the sputterings of the lamp which had brought me to safety. Then I noticed a small door at the father end of the room, and clamed myself enough to approach it and examine the crude-sign chiseled above. It was only a symbol, but it filled me with vague spiritual dread. Outside, the night sky was riven yet again by a dart of lighting. The large roof windows of the attic shook in their frames as the gale beat at them. I took a deep breath and raised my lamp higher. A wave of nameless fright rolled out to meet me, but I yielded to no whim and deferred to no intuition. There was nothing alive here to harm me. #RandolphHarris 3 of 8
Although the room had no furniture save a table, and a single chair, I deciphered a huge pentagram in the center of the floor, with a plain circle about three feet wide half way between this and each corner. In one of these four circles, near where a black robe had been flung carelessly thrown on the floor. Connecting stairs and a secret rest room had long been walked up in the many structural changes in the mansion. Only the window of the walled-up room was still visible from the outside. It was in this area that I felt that restless spirits were trapped. Walled in like demons sleeping through the day and close to the premises for roaming through the night. I allowed myself to rest for half an hour, listening to the thunder roar and thump in the Heavens above. The flickering light of the lamps made the room seem almost as if it were malevolently alive. Another thunderbolt crashed across the Heavens, and I screamed of fear. As the echoes of my scream died away, I leaned forward in my chair, watching the shadows floating in front of my eyes. There was no need to tell all the dismal and horrid thoughts that flitted through my head as I ran. When I made it to the Observational Tower, I clambered to the top as quick as I could to take breath and look out upon my estate if by chance I would see anything. However, a moment’s rest I must have. I had run a mile through my home at least. Nothing whatever was visible ahead of me, and I was just turning to go down to the main part of the house, when I heard what I can only call a laugh: and if you can understand what I mean by a breathless, a lungless laugh, you have it; but I do not suppose that you can. #RandolphHarris 4 of 8
It came from below, and swerved through the halls. That was enough. I walked down the stairs. There was a carpenter at the bottom. You do not need to be told that he was dead. His tracks showed that he had run along the hallway, had turned sharp round the zig zag stairs, and, small doubt of it, must have dashed straight into the wall, and his teeth and jaws were broken to bits. I only glanced over his face. At the same moment, suddenly I felt another presence in the room, and I could not breathe anymore. Zip started to bark and insist that I follow him out of the room. I distinctly felt someone there. I went straight up to my room. I had my bath, and went and lay down on my bed, and slept for about ten minutes. It was as quiet, as quiet as only a country house can be. Soon I was in a deep trance on the other side. I saw things and people the ordinary eye could not perceive. I was walking around. There was a man lying dead in the middle of the room. Small nose, not too much hair in front. There was a plant near him. He came here to die. He was here to find a place to rest. He usually stays in the Crystal Bedroom. With the fern. By the bed. I broke out of trance and had facial stiffness, as well as pain in the shoulder. The curtains of my bed were violently agitated, accompanied with a loud and almost indescribable motion of rings. However, the curtain, four in number, to prevent their motion, were tied up, each in one large knot. Every curtain in the bed was agitated, and the knots thrown and whirled about with such rapidity that it would have been unpleasant to be within the sphere of their action. This lasted about two minutes, as if it were a wild beast seeking freedom. I also heard footsteps walking by me and around me, and was, also, conscious of candles burning near me, but could see nothing. #RandolphHarris 5 of 8
A low, wild pal of laughter broke out at a measureless distance away; I paused a moment, and rappings started; I suddenly opened the door, with a candle in my hand, yet I swear I could see nothing. I have been in one of the rooms which has a large modern wind, when, from the noises, knockings, blows on the bed, and rattling of the curtains, I really did begin to think the whole chamber was falling in. And growing ever louder, the laugher seemed approaching ever nearer; a soulless, heartless, and unjoyous laughter, like that of the loon; a laugh which culminated in an unearthly shout close at hand, then died away by slow gradations, as if the accursed being that uttered it had withdrawn over the verge of the World whence it had come. However, I felt that this was not so. A strange sensation began slowly to take possession of my body and my mind. I could not have said which, if any, of my sense was affected; I felt it rather as a conscious—a mysterious mental assurance of some overpowering presence—some supernatural malevolence different in kind from the invisible existences that swarmed about me, and superior to them in power. I knew that it had uttered that hideous laugh. And now it seemed to be approaching me; from what direction I did not know—dared not conjecture. All my former fears were forgotten or merged in the gigantic terror that now held me in thrall. Powerless to cry out, I found myself staring into the sharply draw white face and blank, dead eyes of a phantom. #RandolphHarris 6 of 8
The darkness filled me. Whatever my thoughts had been, they so possessed me that I observed not the lapse of time. I came to my senses an unknown time later to find myself in a brightly lit room with a pleasant fragrance. Someone was wiping my forehead with a damp cloth. For a few minutes, I simply enjoyed the sensation, not thinking about the terror I had experienced, but the memories flooded back. Confused thoughts and troubled emotions ran through my mind. “Wh-Where am I?” “Mrs. Winchester, you’re in the new east wing of your home.” Now I recognized the voice. “Uta!” I said. “But how did I…?” “I found you,” said Uta. “I hadn’t seen you for days, and was worried about you, so the day after the great storm I scoured the mansion looking for you. You were lying in a mass of blood and broken glass and rainwater. I…” Uta paused momentarily, clearly still upset from the experience—“I thought you were dead.” A little later I felt a warm spoon against my lips and instinctively opened my mouth to let a little of the soup dibble in. Under Uta’s care, I slowly regained my health, but it was another ten days before I was well enough to make my way around the garden. When I reached the Daisy Bedroom, I paused for a moment and looked around. From here there was no sign that anything at all unusual had taken place thirteen nights ago. #RandolphHarris 7 of 8
I began to climb the stairs, feeling in my pocket for the key. At the door to no-to-nowhere, I forced myself to calm down, taking several deep, measured breaths before putting the key in the lock. Suddenly there was a terrible, godless wail from the pits whose inhuman cadences rose, and feel rhythmically in the distance through the darkness. “What on Earth was that?” I exclaimed. Then a huge hand grabbed me. The door swung open with a creak, and I saw a ghost standing there. A woman appeared, she had long blonde hair, was wearing a long white night dress, was frail and ethereal, old age had rendered her thin and somehow tired. And yet, her eyes had an unusual bright sparkle in them that belied her frail and aged appearance. She walked very softly through the threshold of the door and sat down inside. She put her hand on her forehead and said, “Will you please help me? A looter has taken my tombstone, and now my soul is unable to find rest.” The bewildering character of the swirling flood of spirits caused confused thoughts and troubled emotions to run through my mind. I sighed and relaxed slightly. I turned around to reach for a lamp. My back was not turned for more than a second. However, when I looked up at my mysterious visitor, the lady was gone. I quickly walked down the hallway, everything was suffused with a soft, red glow in which I then saw my own shadow projected before me. Ceaseless buffetings of a most tempestuous wind made me feel weary. #RandolphHarris 8 of 8
If you live in New Haven Connecticut, you are well aware of the hell and brimstone variety preaching, and are bound to hear about the devil now and again. To some people, the devil is real, and they will give you an argument filled with fervour and Bible quotations to prove that he exists. Mrs. Winchester had a beautiful face like a mask. A porcelain-cosmetic mask. Mrs. Winchester was not one of those who were impressed by demonic outbursts, however, and she could not care less whether there was a devil or not. She had grown up in a well-to-do family and spent her adult years in the World of business. At age nineteen, she met and married Mr. William Wirt Winchester, and they had a short, but happy life together. There was one child, and at first, no problems, and no difficulties whatever. She was always active in her husband’s manufacturing business. After she gave birth to her first child, Annie Winchester, Mr. Winchester decided to slow down, it was just as well that she started to enjoy life a little more fully, until tragedy struck.
Back in her early years, Mrs. Winchester had what are now called ESP (extra sensory perception) experiences. When she talked to a person, she would frequently know what that person would answer before the words were actually spoken. It scared the young girl, but she refused to think about it. Her parents’ home was a thirty-room mansion in a good section of New Haven. It was just a pleasant house without any history whatever of either violence or unhappiness. And yet, frequently she would hear strange rappings at night, raps that did not come from the pipes or other natural sources. Whenever she heard those noises, she would simply turn to the wall and pretend she did not hear them, but in her heart, she knew they were there. Then one-night, young Sarah was awakened from a deep sleep by the feeling of a presence in her room. She sat up in bed and looked out. There, right in front of her bed, was the kneeling figure of a man with extremely dark eyes and a pale face. She thought that he was from another time or place. After rubbing her eyes, Sarah looked again, but the apparition was gone.
Before long, Sarah had accepted the phenomenon as simply a dream, but again she knew this was not so, and she was merely accommodating her sense of logic. However, what had the stranger been? Surely, the house was not haunted. Besides, she did not believe in ghosts. Young Sarah had no idea that this was the beginning of the accursed invasion from beyond. Six weeks later, she had another supernormal experience. Again alone in her parents home, with all the doors locked, she saw a strange man. Quickly she reached for a candle to examine her visitor, but he had vanished. From the day on, Mrs. Winchester heard strange noises, frequent banging about the mansion, and uncanny feelings and chills in certain areas of the hose. On one occasion, Mrs. Winchester clearly heard someone coming up the stairs leading up to the attic. She went to see who it was, but no one came. The steps were those of an unseen man! Mrs. Winchester had no idea who the ghost could be. She was reluctant to discuss her experiences with other people let they think her mad, yet she was healthy and realistic and was quite sure of her memories.
As many know, after the death of her new born daughter and husband, Mrs. Winchester moved to Santa Clara Valley and spent nearly 40 years, of non-stop construction, building one of the most beautiful and complex mansions in the World. It is possible that some ghost followed her, and others manifested because she was born with extra sensory perception (ESP). After her death, two serious young men went to stay in the house to see if what they were saying about the Winchester Mansion was true. They had sleeping bags and stayed up in one of the attics. It was a chilly December night in 1931, and everything seemed just right for ghost. Would they be lucky in their quest? They did not have to wait long to find out. “As soon as we entered the room, we heard strange noises on the roof They were indistinct and could have been animals, I thought at first. We went off to sleep until my partner woke me up hurriedly around three in the morning. I distinctly heard human footstep on the roof. They slid down the side to a lower level and then to the ground where they could be heard walking in leaves and into the night. Nothing could be seen from the window and there was nobody up on the roof. We were the only ones in the house that night, so it surely must have been ghosts.” After a while, a gruff man’s voice was heard: “Get out…get out of my house.” There were additional requests for the two men to get out of his house. And finally, they left. Evidently the ghosts did not approve the sale of the house by Mrs. Winchester’s executors, but wanted it to stay in her family. Perhaps that is why it remains unoccupied by humans.
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/
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/
Randolph Harris II International 