The higher up the pace number, the worse it gets. High school American History might be the most effed up stuff ever that isn't in a Wisdom Booklet which is saying a lot considering the pro-slavery sentiment of Bob Jones and Veritas by Doug Wilson. This stuff in the paces is always in cartoon form so it looks innocent. Most parents do not take the time to read the cartoons or the content. They just look at the scores on self-tests and tests. There is an A.C.E. school around the corner from us. The parents have NO idea what that crap contains. 10th grade English, "Why did Susie and Roy (or whatever his name was) die in the car crash?" Because they were losers. Not joking. That is the correct answer in the answer key. If you wonder why they were losers, it was because they went to public school so naturally were always troublemakers in the cartoons. Brainwashing 101.

Beautiful!

Cute!

They don't like to be branded as racist, because bad PR. But to be honest, what I saw was a lot of active discouragement of minorities from participating. There was a definite undercurrent of bigotry. There was serious bigotry in the Wisdom Booklets back in the 80's and 90's. I haven seen more recent ones so I do not know if has changed. A.C.E. paces were profoundly racist. In the cartoons, the Christian kids ACE (named for the organization) and the rest of the kids attended an all white Christian school. There was a separate Christian school for the VERY FEW token minority students, and in the cartoons, white children did not mix with the children from the minority school very often at all. Every student of the white school had a Biblical name or Biblical character trait name. Minority children had traditional, white names. And then there was the public school students, two kids who in the paces were ALWAYS in trouble. They were the bad kids, and instead of questions about the subject material, math, English, whatever, the students were asked questions like, 'Why are the children of the public school bad people?" Answers from the reading included a lot of things from outside the will of god, demon possession, godless society, movies, t.v., rock music, hearts of rebellion, satanic worshippers, you name it. It was designed to brainwash kids into believing that white fundamentalists are god's chosen people, and minority Christians are the "lesser thans" bringing up the rear with everyone else, everyone who didn't believe the same, didn't follow the legalism, had a one way ticket to hell. PACES went hand in hand with IBLP. It was the approved curriculum prior to the development of Wisdom Booklets, and because Wisdom Booklets didn't always keep kids busy enough, PACES were the add on "curriculum". Some of the egregiously awful stuff included the teaching on the Trail of Tears. That though it was sad (and really, they never once called it out as truly heinous and morally reprehensible), god used it for good and hundreds of thousands of Indians (yes, this is the term used so apparently they were not aware of the existence of the country of India 🙄), became saved due to the witness of good Christians along the way. This is the kind of horrific drivel and brain washing in A.C.E. it is deep, very deep. Leaving Fundamentalism has done a rather large deep dive into it since though A.C.E. is IBLP adjacent, they were two separate organizations. That said. Even PACES were not as far down the rabbit hole as Wisdom Booklets. Good grief. Paces did actually teach the humans were made of living cells. Wisdom Booklets teach that hands are made of non living atoms, and the body has three hearts. The crazy is so bad, it makes me sound like a delusional dingbat to even describe it. All that to say, the organization while not skinhead or anything like that really was aimed at preserving White Protestantism, fundamental, puritanical white protestant culture and return America to some sort of 1800's perceived glory land.

Sickening. I don't know what else to say.

Epic! 😂😂😂😂😂

I can tell you what was wrong with them since I was forced to listen to this crap, read it, regurgitate it. You probably habe figured it out. But I will clarify the exact IBLP regulations on it for those that might be wondering. 1. Lace with no lining showing off skin below the collarbone. At A.C.E. as well as Gothard events, girls and women were siphoned off to a staged area where they were judged on their clothing. A.C.E. allowed grown ass men to ogle the teenage girls, and leer at them, and then pronounce what was wrong. Same at the Advanced Training Seminar until they got so big they couldn't manage it. Then they had to stop that crazy because with whole stadiums of women and girls, it couldn't be done. A.C.E. conventions modeled heavily on Gothard kept it up since these were so much smaller. Women, sucked into this horror show and eager to prove how perfect they were, were allowed to touch you with their hands to determine if your neckline was more than 2 finger widths below your collarbone. Then they got on the floor and looked up your skirt to see if you were wearing any "sexy " undegarments and to see if there was any chance your slip might fall down below your hem line and be seen. You had to spin 3 times, slowly in front of the panel of demented weasels in order to be determined modest enough or not, and that included colors. Then you had to kneel on the floor to show that your hem not only touched but fell into crumples of excess fabric so it was long enough without them having to get a yardstick. No matter how modest by their standards, you were immodest if you had on a striking color like fuchsia or a dramatic fabric like satin or lace or orange or some dumb other mental distress they managed to manufacture. So parents spent gobs of money on the dowdiest, frumpiest, worst dower things they could find, and replacing underwear, bras, whatever they thought MIGHT upset the powers that be. Boys were only checked to see that they were wearing dress pants, not jeans, and had their ties on straight, and they got to watch us girls being turned inside out which meant we got bullied and sexually harassed about it later. 2. Bold print, long necklace. Men will be bucks in rut if you draw attention to your chest with a long necklace or a bold print. They can't help themselves, even if you look like Little House on the Prairie Revisited. 3. Pilgrim panel is long enough to flop against the boobs. This will make men think of boobs. Men are so beyond fragile mentally, it staggers the imagination with this group. And yet in charge! 🙄😠 4. A slit will cause a man to run out and visit a prostitute. Yes. This is in the seminars too. Technically, the skirt would not have been long enough to ensure the knee would never show. 5. Big bow flops on the girlfriends making men think about the boobs. Skirt not long enough. 6. Patterned hose. Draws attention to legs. Men will run out and have an affair if they see patterned hose, or so we were told. LOL, when I got married, I wore beautiful embroidered hose, and made sure my parents' Gothard loving A.C.E. peddaling demented pastor could see my leg while adjusting the garter I was wearing. I didn't want one of those things nor did I want to throw a bouquet. The traditions that these rituals are taken from are quite disturbing, but my parents were so @#$%&%$ awful.about our wedding and the planning of it, that we just let them have their way on some things since hos parents really wanted us to have a big church wedding instead of tiny, no drills ceremony in the chapel at the college from which we had graduated. It gets worse. There are cartoons of little girls representing what looks like a typical 7 and 8 year old in which the little girl's totally appropriate dress is just above the knee, and students are encouraged to squeal to their parents about being defrauded so their parents can go reem out the child's mother for letting her child outgrow the dress and cause men to sin. At no time does it appear that anyone stopped to think, "If a dude can't see a child's knee without wanting to commit a crime, then maybe we should lock that dude up!" But then, they truly do not believe that any abuse perpetuated against a child or a female in particular, is a crime. They do not believe in any punishment for it. Mark said we needed to watch the whole series this afternoon because he felt it would bother me all weekend let hanging and would be hard to put out of mind for the wedding. He had a Shrek kind of thinking. 'Better out than in!" I reluctantly did it, and surprisingly, did well compared to that first episode yesterday. He knows me so well. More thoughts later.

The Amy hate comes from things she had done that you don't probably know about. She runs off at the mouth on her social media and it is disgusting. Some of her posts she actually demonstrated disappointment that Josh had NOT molested her because Jill and Jessa got so much attention for it, and she said she asked Josh why he didn't choose to molest her? She flirted with him in very disgusting ways while the cameras rolled on his wedding day. She claims to have been with them and had no privacy because of the show, but she and Deanna were only contracted for just a few minutes each week. She divulged, online, very private things about Jill, things she should never have shared. She claims that JB and Michelle were exploiting their kids for money, and she does the EXACT same thing with her son Daxton which she uses to sell and peddle products online as an "influencer". She is not remotely careful with his privacy or his safety. She had been caught in very unethical business practices. There is a reason that a lot of people would like Amy to be quiet, and why she has been nicknamed Famy. But you would have to know about her through the businesses she has run, through her social media, and how she had behaved in her community to know why she is not liked. As for the threat to Derick, I believe it was spearheaded by JB and was Josh who did it. Josh was the one who already knew about burner phones and the inability to trace them. If police had come to JB, he could easily throw his son under the bus. " Are you going to believe me, a former elected representative of Arkansas and a family friend of Mike Huckabee? Or my son who is already a known and confirmed child molester?"

Potential sex addiction. Not to the act itself or to the excitement of clandestine meetings, but to the adrenal rush of other men paying her the attention. The fact that she ended it and then went back to it is a red flag to me. Addicts are willing to destroy their lives in order to get that fix. She needs proper psychiatric care and counseling. Sex addiction is hard. Harder I think to address than substance abuse which is pretty darn bad. But, it seems like we have some decent programs to help with that which have some success like Alcoholics Anonymous, inpatient rehab and detox, etc. It seems like since sex is such a messed up topic in America, not as many programs for sex addicts exist, many communities having none. Addictions are often the self medication for depression and for buying trauma. So the place to start would be there, and then hope something specific for this can be found that she is willing to do.

I do not think Liberty U is a bastion of conservative Baptist theology. That is just the perception of so many Baptists at least in my area. I found that the average person who sends their 18 year old to Liberty is NOT particularly well informed about the place. In our rural area/county, there are five Baptist churches. One IFB, the rest mostly just Southern Baptist type though denominationally independent. When these folks put their kids' graduation announcements in the newspaper, a nearly all encompassing local tradition, the IFB church if the kids are announcing college attendance, are nearly exclusively sending them to Bob Jones or Pensacola. Everyone else? Liberty, Liberty, Liberty, Liberty....absolutely amazing. Never a state school or other parochial college in the bunch. I am always bewildered. If they educated themselves about it, and found out it isn't what they think it is, they would probably save themselves a lot of money and send them to Bob Jones or Pensacola. It always makes me scratch my head. So much debt for NOT what they think they are getting. I am sure some of this is regional though. I would guess that people living closer to the institution would view it differently than they do here. Hyles Anderson and even Moody, though close proximity, are virtual unknowns here.

So I feel better today. I need to go work on flowers, however, I do feel up to at least articulating some of my thoughts. In one of the clips, Gothard said to the throngs of people that IBLP has the answer for EVERY issue a family faces. This is the reason christians flocked to it. They wanted a recipe for Shiny, Happy People families. Follow the recipe, god will bless. It was, like nothing new under the sun, the same old same old prosperity gospel repacked in a new kind of Twinkie wrapper for mass consumption. It is exactly what drew my father figure to it. My brother had gotten his high school girlfriend pregnant, and my father took this as the ultimate insult to the family, to his success as a father, to his faith, to the church, to his reputation (bingo, bullseye, the number one concern for sure), and he wanted a recipe card, a step by step don't need to think about it, just do, of how to make sure I didn't go "off the rails", and my baby sister would become the perfect little christian. He swallowed that hook, line, and sinker. Father figure had always had an authoritarian attitude, something he kept in check for my entire childhood up to that point because my mother was.not.having.it. as she was raised with a very loving, gentle, kind, compassionate father. So having not had this as my " normal", you can imagine the trauma of going to a three day seminar with him and a bunch of fundies, and coming back with a monster. It was like a light switch flipped. Most of my trauma was actually related to this night and day, Dr. Jeckyl, Mr. Hyde overnight transformation. To be honest, I am shocked that episode one reduced me to tears. It has been years. Oh so very many years since I have had any experience of talking about or hearing anyone talk about Gothard and IBLP that evoked such an emotional response. Just about the time you think you are over it, I guess WHAMMO. My sister's trauma is entirely different. She was born when I was 13, and just as our father figure embraced this @##$%%&$$#@ crap. So she never knew the side of him that my brother and I grew up with. She never knew a happy home of a gentle, loving dad who delighted in his family, worked tirelessly for us, helped out mom whenever he could, didn't exhibit misogyny and anger constantly, didn't rage, didn't scream hell fire and brimstone at little kids. She never knew a father who did not BEAT his child. Not once in my childhood had my father ever laid a hand on me or my brother in anger, for punishment. As a matter of fact, his own father had been so physically abuse, that my father had injuries from the beatings, permanent scars, damaged muscle. He was, until Gothard, determined to NEVER discipline us beyond taking away a toy or a privilege, or giving us a stern look or word. He left pretty much everything from household rules and chores to what happened if we messed up, entirely to my mom who was successfully raised by parents that did not abuse, did not hit, did not spank, didn't even yell. But once convinced by Gothard that his kids were going to hell because he, the man, the god given authority of the family had abdicated his responsibilites, he took that mantle up, and in a quest to make sure my sister was instantly, perfectly obedient like Bill Gothard and Michael Pearl said she had to be, he put a paint stick in every room, carried one in his pocket every days and from the age of 18 months to age 3, I don't think there was a single day that my sister was NOT beat on the backs of her little legs for failure to instantly obey commands. At age 3 when she began throwing up from stress everyday 5 minutes before his usual arrival home from work, and would hide in her room and begin to cry, my mom threatened to divorce him if he hit her again, and my grandparents threatened to contact the police. That ended it. He didn't want to be divorced, and he knew his folks (my grandfather had changed A LOT and greatly regretted being an abuser, tried to make amends) would help her financially, even let us live with them. So he stopped. He was still verbally atrocious, but he quit the smacking her all the damn time. However, it had taken its toll. She has has a life long panic, anxiety condition since then, and in adulthood that constant fight or flight syndrome rearing it's ugly head over seemingly innocent triggers fragged her adrenal glands and nearly killed her. And all of that. Every last bit of that came flooding back on me last night like a tidal wave of grief. You will note that I have referred to him as father figure. This is a defense mechanism I developed in my teen years in IBLP. I could not think of him as dad, because Jeckyl dad had been a pretty great dad. Hyde dad was awful and I grew to hate him. Later in my twenties we reconciled a bit, and I didn't have to do that dichotomy in order to relate to him, to relate to my own experiences and memories. But damn it all. It is back now. I could edit and make myself sound more normal and just call him dad. However, I think for those who do not understand just how damaging the cult is, it is better if I leave it, some raw honesty about what it did to me, and how I perceived what happened to me, to my brother, to my sister. It may take me a while in my head to drop the father figure, cold reference to him. That said, it could be worse. I have had periods in my life in which I referred to him as my male, DNA donor. So ya. Worse. There is worse. I felt Jill's pain in every word. It was my sister's pain. The pain of a child who instinctively wants unconditional love, approval, kindness, gentleness, and instead received a childhood of abuse, neglect, emotional and mental oppression, and living in fear of "sinners in the hands of an angry god", children in the hands of parents following a demented narcissistic, man-god. Every man, even Jim Holt who makes himself out like he wasn't like JimBob and was so heart broken over Josh, angry at JimBob and Michelle, is an abuser if they are following IBLP. It is a requirement. As said on the show, it makes monsters and predators with access to a plethora of prey. What you all may not know is that his son Sam and his wife, Bobeye, have restraining orders against Jim Holt. His trial on domestic abuse, appears according to documents to be centered on something or things he did to Sam, starts soon. So that evil s.o.b. went on Amazon to pretend to be this good and decent person, so gut wrenched at what Josh did and his parents offering it up, not getting help, making the victims suck it up, and all the while, like a good Bill Gothard following man of the house, he is an abusive sh#t. That tracks. I literally do not know anyone who parents went beyond the basic seminar and got into ATI, and really followed that man-god, who didn't have an abusive father before it was over with. No one. It is in my estimation a 100% or near 100% effective program for creating sicko, rage monsters.

I think in Bobye's limited, IBLP world, the only thing they know is " Billy Graham went to school there" so they truly believe her characterization of the school. She doesn't have enough experience to realize this. When she and her husband speak, I still hear "sheltered, naive, no experience outside their own church" people yammering. And if they knew anything at all, they would know that conservative Baptists have three "Ivies". Liberty U, Penscola Christian College, and Bob Jones U. Slightly less strict Baptists often send their kids to Cedar bills and Grove. But, since they have been steeped in IBLP, and education is a no no. They do not even know where Wheaton falls on the spectrum, and that theologically, it is exponentially " not baptist", philosophically more aligned with C.S. Lewis and similar.

With our first, it was a bag of potato chips. She was born at 12:18 am, and I had not eaten since 8 am the day before. The hospital kitchen was closed, and the nurses said they could not provide any food before it opened at 7 am. Mark had a bag of chips with him that he had not eaten. There were no restaurants in the area open at that time of night. 2-4th, totally different hospital, different state. The maternity floor had a full size fridge stocked with all kinds of healthy, lovely things for moms. The CNM's were in charge of deciding what to keep. During labor, I was given all kinds of juice, broths, popsicles, and toast. After birth, I had a chicken broth and rice soup, toast, and applesauce. When it was clear that my digestive track was online and okay with that, they produced some string cheese, baked potato with sour cream, and microwave steamed vegetable. After that, I ordered from the hospital menu. That hospital also gave parents a nice, well prepared celebratory dinner when we were ready. So we had rack of lamb, roasted carrots, mushroom rissoto, and salads.

First long island iced tea consumed. Alcohol was definitely appropriate. Sigh. I have thoughts. But, even though I have healed so much, it still felt very, very visceral. I can't do a second episode tonight. I also am not yet ready to discuss my thoughts tonight or answer questions. I will try to pull it together soon. I do have a wedding to prepare for, dear honorary daughter and fiance`. I may not watch episode 2 until next week so that I don't get into some sort of funk going into what should be a lovely celebration of two people we love very much.

Not really. I like looking at photos and videos of them, but I do not miss the littles. I was not a baby, little person kind of mom. I felt like a lot of time I was just surviving those years, not enjoying it. I began really enjoying them when they got older so what I miss is not having middle school and high schoolers in the house. I like my grandkids a LOT because I can spend time with them, shake 'em up, spoil 'em, and hand them back! And I am not exhausted by full time parenting of little people. However, I did recently have a bout of that with Dd and her high risk pregnancy followed by baby T being born six weeks premature and in the NICU for almost four weeks. I was privileged to be able to be there for them, homeschool my eldest grandson, care for our three year old grandson, and run their household. But it took a round right out of me. I took a break for the month of March after T came home from the hospital, and my mom went. Then I spent a week with them again in April. I won't be with them again until August, and am ready for that long break form the hectic life of demanding little humans.

Way back when we only had three kids, we attended a church where nearly all the couples had two kids and did not intend on having more, with just a few who had three. We didn't announce anything when I was pregnant with our fourth, but eventually folks figured it out, and we got a lot of intrusive, nasty comments. I became very adept at saying in quite a snotty, impatient voice that made it clear that the commenter the they needed to clam up, "I didn't ask your opinion about my life, so keep it to yourself." After several people had been on the receiving end of that, the gossips in the church made sure everyone knew to steer clear of us. So I am a big fan of shutting down the nonsense with some stern comebacks. I also do not think pregnancies are public business. Parents should not feel compelled to make announcements and accept comments on their choice to procreate or not procreate. It is entirely up to them. Too many people are busy bodies about this kind of thing. So I really do vote for telling people to stick it!

Guilty.as.charged.

Wow! I am just in love with this!

Genius! 😁

Okay, ours doesn't. But states are different. In ours, credits expire quickly when drops out of college. So they don't count. But again, every state is different. My bad.

Well, if she isn't up to EMT basic, she probably needs to avoid several areas of nursing including E.R. work. The EMT+ folks, full paramedics, do a lot worse patient care than then the basics. BSRN work is pretty darn tough. I know a lot of CNA's who thought they couldn't manage EMT work but could manage nursing, went to college for nursing, and found out that was more than they could handle emotionally. So if she can't handle EMT basic which in Michigan at least means they are not working on ALS rigs or if they are, only driving while two paramedics do the patient care, she really can't handle BSRN work. Just think of what the hospital staffs dealt with during covid. It was like a war zone. Beaumont hospital here in Michigan had body bags stacked to the ceilings in multiple waiting rooms.

St Louis has Gateway Arch National Park. There is a nice visitor center, a museum of the Arch some nice walkways, not really hiking just nice walks, and an old courthouse it commemorates the Louisiana Purchase, the slavery debate, and the Dred Scott Case. It doesn't take more than two hours to do unless you want to ride to the arch, and that would require advance tickets. Currently, it is entrance fee free if memory serves, but you will need to confirm that. There are also river cruises available on the area, and the jazz is great of you like that sort of thing. Jazz St. Louis Club is fun.

This is peak season for Rocky Mountain National Park. Due to a record number of visitors the past few years, and overworked staff, they now require timed entry tickets. There is no general admission at the moment. So even if you have a park pass, you cannot enter without a timed, entry ticket which tells you when you can arrive, and when you must leave. Even with those, it is a 30-45 minute wait to get in so it is tricky. You will need to go online to see if they even have any available. Some parks with timed entry requirements are already sold out for the season.

Okay, so: The tomatoes are finally beginning to perk. The cherry tomatoes are the only ones growing though. The hydrometer with the phone censor came, and we have discovered that the PH is 3.5, and tomatoes want 6 - 6.5. I have sprinkled small amounts of wood ash in the tomato bed, and since it was finally time to water (the 90°/32°C having finally dried up the excessive moisture in the beds), watered last night at dusk. We will wait a few days, test the PH, and then go from there. We now need to do this for the papers which have literally not grown at all. Tiny, and they have been transplanted in the beds since May 9. They want 6.5-7 PH so I need to work gently at getting it up so I don't fry their roots by doing too much at once. I am also going to give them some pelletized, composted chicken manure, a tbsp sprinkled around each plant and then water. The basil is making a come back. My house plant basil is prolific. So I think I need to harvest some of the indoor leaves and dry them. I am not using it up fast enough when I cook. I will give it to my son who loves to make spaghetti sauce. Oregano is looking good. Carrots are almost tall enough to thin. We have our first pea blossom! I am excited about that. The broccoli are just happy, happy campers and growing like crazy. Eggplant are doing okay, not any kind of crazy growth, but slow and steady. Green beans are deader than dead. I am trying to decide if I should seed again at this time or give up on that idea. We are having some pretty odd weather, and I don't like my odds of getting them to germinate. The celery is happy and growing. I have to find out how to know when it is ready to harvest. My honey crisp apple tree never blossomed. 😭😭😭 But the Courtland or whatever it is that we put in for cross pollination has a TON of baby apples. So I am going to have apples to dehydrate. I just hope everyone likes the flavor of these. Our family is honey crisp spoiled I am afraid. Despite the frost, the grapevine is trying to make a com back and has new, very green leaves. We have not had rain since May 7, so I am going to give it a good watering tonight. The apple trees have deep roots so I have not been worried. But Mark was. He gave them each a five gallon drink last night. It isn't as bad as it was. But I also am trying not to dare to hope.

I am so sorry! This sucks.