sanfords

So last winter the snow destroyed my little tarb-based covering for my boat next to my house.

So I decided to add a carport.

Then I poured cement to make a nice place to put my boat on.

Then I needed to extend the driveway to properly get my boat in and out.

So here are the pix!

I simply have to share this story.

 

Last spring I gave each of the 6 graduating students of the school where my children attend, two real silver dollars.  I did this because it represented what I thought were true values instilled in them at this private classical christian school.

 

Well, this last week, my son told me that one of the girls in his class cashed in her two dollars at the bank for... you guessed it... two plain paper dollars.

 

It's sad, really pathetic, that this girl didn't know the difference in value between an irredemable paper note and a solid ounce of pure .999 fine silver.

 

It really takes me back and makes me want to discuss this with the board and principle of the school.  People just don't know what the difference is between money and credit anymore.  People just aren't being taught, even at some of our best private schools.

 

Well, maybe this financial collapse will teach us a lesson to remember.

 

Though I slam the Zeitgeist Addendum movie in my previous blog, the first hour of that film is actually an excellent introduction to modern ecconomics and I highly recommend the first half of that movie.

Zeitgeist Addendum presents the viewer with lots of shocking and frank information about our current money system.  It shows how this system uses economic hit men, Jackals and ultimately the US military to force nations to surrender their resources to the multinational corporations.  It talks a bit about how all governments use money, profit and competition to drive humans to work and presents the idea that this system is evil and doesn't work.

so far so good...

Then they use the idea of this greedy, money driven system to make this totally unsupported assertion:

"People are not by nature greedy - the system makes them this way."

This is right out of the mouth of Marx.  Marxian theory states that people's actions are controlled by their environment and controlling the money and means of production allows the state to create the proper environment to produce the utopian "dictatorship of the proletariat".

The movie gives absolutely ZERO reasons why this assertion should be true - and it is patently false.  Human's, by nature, are sinful.  Don't believe me?  Just watch two 2 year-olds playing together.  Throw a toy between them and count the seconds before each is yelling "mine"!  The idea that humans are not naturally greedy, it’s the system that makes them so, is absolute nonsense.  It was humans that made this system - ie: the evil of the system came from people - where else could it have come from?

With this errant assertion the movie takes the viewer down the utopian path to self destruction.  It explores the "Venus" project which asserts that with sufficient technology, abundance can destroy the need for money and greed.  This assertion is also patently false.  Abundance does not avert greed - how many of the bad guys we are trying to dethrone (and throughout history) were born with a silver spoon in their mouths with every need and desire fulfilled instantly?

The assertion that abundance averts greed nullifies the very true maxim "Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely".

Then the movie goes on to call work a curse.  Work is a blessing - it existed in Eden before the fall.  Work gives people purpose.  A workplace without people is lonely and ultimately results in low productivity of the worker.  People are creatures of relationship.  They do best working and living in community.  This is why the assertion that machines will keep replacing people till there is no more work is false - people need work and purpose.  Eternal leisure without purpose would drive people mad with sadness.  As problems are solved by technology there will always appear new problems to conquer and people will enjoy working on those problems to give themselves purpose in life.  It is when evil men force monopolies on the rest and suppress the paradigm shifts we were meant to have that purpose is driven out of work and despair of work results.

The movie then describes us as "emergent" which is another name for "evolving".  Evolution is a notion that has no supporting evidence either in inorganic or organic evolution.  It is not repeatable or observed anywhere.  Even social evolution lacks supporting evidence in the light of history which constantly repeats itself.  The only advancements that we have apparently made over time are with technology - but still, there exist ancient structures and artifacts that imply that our technology many very well not be the most advanced in history and thus may debunk even that notion.  Evolution is not science it is a religion because it requires unsubstantiated faith to believe.

From this unsubstantiated "faith" in emergence comes our "jump" to a new creature and society also based on faith.

It then specifically attacks "religion" and specifically Christianity and all its derivatives  It brings up the arguments presented in the original Zeitgeist that many other religions have a "savior" that was "crucified", resurrected etc.  These "facts" are strongly refuted by the Zeitgeist Debunked movie.  Note that these movies don't have bibliographies so you can't check their facts easily and if the authors lie about one aspect of the movie - can the rest have much credibility?

The movie also asserts the oversimplified idea that "all religions" are bad.
All religions ARE BAD IF:
 - they are invented by man
 - they attempt to reach God or perfection by the works or standards of man
 - they propagate themselves over truth, justice and love which describe the nature of the true God.
This is because if God be God, there is no way man does anything to reach God - the creature is never greater than the creator.
The only "religion" that differs from all the others is true Christianity.
Christianity has a bad rap largely because of institutions (Created by Man) that use true Christianity as their mask for their own agendas.  Examples include the Catholic Church, Jehovah Witnesses, Mormons, Cults, and just about any denomination that claims anything of its rules supersedes the word or spirit of God.

True Christianity is different from man-made religions because:
- It has historical evidence as far back as you can go that supports scripture.
- It has a historical figure and event - the resurrection - that irrefutably testifies of itself conquering death.
- The scripture contains prophecy and hidden codes to confirm its authenticity and accuracy and supernatural origin.
- It asserts that all other religions are wrong.
- It presents a clear moral code that no man can meet, yet all men instinctively know is righteous - the code is in our hearts.
- Its doctrines present a God that is incomprehensible to man - both One and Three in nature, outside time and creation, infinite in power, understanding, mercy, and perfect in every way and NOT like us (though we were made in His image).
- It's scripture exceeds all rational attempts at full explanation yet yields to rational scrutiny in its self-consistency and testifies to it's truth by blessing all peoples and nations that adopt its ideas into its society.

The problem is not money or the system.  The problem is dishonest money and sinful people.  If we had honest money and a truly righteous moral standard kept by all people, the elite and corporations could not hold onto their monopolies of resources.  Humans, when motivated to do honest work, change the rules of the game of competition by creating paradigm shifts making today's rich, tomorrow's history.

To get to this true utopia, all men must surrender their pride to the rule of God.  They must acknowledge their fundamental need for God to live and then live accordingly, submitting all things to the rule of God - who is Truth, Love, and Faithfulness.  We must acknowledge and repent of our sins.

Without this surrender man can not live without the state, without money, without competition, without sin, without death.

This movie is inventing a religion based on the concepts of evolution and marxian materialism.  Any system which says it will "provide for everyone and everyone will  be free" is self contradictory.  A free man is free because he can provide for himself and chose to be wrong and suffer the consequences - the proposed system of this movie does not allow that.
Further, if you analyze the tenants of the faith being peddled by this movie you will find it to be fully Gnostic in its ideas - it is not new.

Finally it ends with the very lie Satan used against Eve - "You are everything"  - you shall be as God.

This is candy coated poison of the worst kind and is sweeping our world as the new false religion of the beast and anti-christ are rapidly being foisted onto this generation of self deception - a lie so well told that it "might even fool the very elect of God".

So ends our second trip down to the Santa Cruz area to liquidate the estate of Joyce and Carl Holstrom.

We spent much time on our first visit in July with some helpful young men and nearly finished phase I of the project which was to simply unearth all the burried treasures in this multi-building 3 acre estate and sort it.  In two weeks with all that help, we only got about 80% of that done.

The collage below best describes that time:

Now that was exhausting!

 

But this time we came to complete phase I and do a yard sale to liquidate all this stuff.

Carl had an imense amount of stuff:  14 cars, 4 tractors, 100s of screwdrivers, wrenches, plyers, cutters, hammers, and other hand tools, dozens of tool boxes, dozens of dril bits, milling bits, micrometers, and other fancy instruments, drill presses, band saws, table saws, electric drills, vacume cleaners, etc.

It was as if he could never throw anything away.  Multiple sets of the same thing, many times, unopened from the store.  Enough oil to fill a garage, oil filters enough to fill a bedroom, paints to fill two truckloads, lamps by the dozens, furnature, brake pads, engine blocks, etc. etc.

 

The sadest thing is that the only evidence we found of his faith was a single picture of Jesus on the livingroom wall.

This couple never had children and she died of uterin cancer and he died of prostrate cancer - I guess if you don't use it you lose it.

I estimate that if we had spent a year sorting and doing the ebay thing we would have made about $300,000 on the stuff alone.  As it was, I think we sold about enough to cover our expenses.

Much of what they saved, they saved for so long that even though the stuff was state-of-the-art when it was new, the technology advances whiped out their value even when kept in great condiditon.  They saved stuff to their own hurt.

What was more revealing was the fact that Carl accepted a large gift from his sister as a donation because she thought he was poor!

They had dozens of bank accounts - one account showed over $70,000 in interest in one year - they didn't need gifts to get by!

 

It was sad to think of what Carl would have thought as we were liquidating his stuff for pennies on the dollar.

 

It was also revealing in dealing with the people who came to buy stuff at the yard sale.  Some had very clever techniques of asking the price for several items, then bundling them together to get a discount price, then removing items that cost the most to try to obtain a new lower price and then buying the removed items at another yet reduced price.  I asked one buyer "hey what do you want - everything for free?" and he replied "sure!".

There was certainly little respect for the life these tools and items that represented the life of Carl.

Much of Carl's best stuff was pilfered out of his home long before we ever saw it and we believe much of that theft was done by Carl's "Best Friends" who lived with him in one of his many homes on the property.  Somehow, after Carl died, his friends saw his stuff as theirs and had no qualms in taking them.

As we would question them about the disappearance of things we clearly knew Carl had, the story would change with each rendition and eventually, things would "reappear" as they admitted to finding some things "just now" in the other room.  But as the evidence mounted and they were presented with the distinct possibility of an investigation by the authorities, they quickly saw it convenient to move out of state immediately.

 

On the second day of the yard sale, many items simply disappeared.  We simply were too busy to watch what everyone was doing.  We had to make sure our own suff and anything we wanted to keep was locked up somewhere.  By the end of the yard sale there were barely enough tools left to maintain the property.  We should have thought to separate out a minimum set of tools for ourselves before starting the sale.

 

Another interesting thing was the appearance of all kinds of interesting characters who offered to clean everything up for us for free if they could just take the profit from the scrap.  Then these individuals would appear the next day and work like dogs all day to remove all of the most valueable scrap, never to return to take the rest of the stuff they had promised to haul off for us.

 

The hasmat removal was a bit of a nightmare as well.  I personally hauled off about 60 tires.  At first I heard I could dump these at the dump for free but then I learned that I needed a manifest for each load (so I would not be arrested for illegal hauling of more than 5 tires at a time) and I would have to pay the dump $3 for each tire.  It seems there is this guy that determines if your particular cleanup is worthy of charitable consideration or not.  Since Carl had collected all this stuff, it was decided that his heirs should properly pay the cost for his collection removal - a debt somehow owed by them to society for his sins.  I later found that a local tire store would take them for $2 each so I hauled them there.  Luckily I had a canopy on my truck so I wouldn't be hassled by the police for hauling them 15 at a time instead of 5.  A few days later one buyer confessed to me that he told the dump that the tires he had were not really on his property - he was just trying to be a good sumaratin and clean up the mess around him - he got the free disposal deal because he had a good lie. 

Taking paint out was a similar hassle.  You could only dump 15 gallons of paint at a time and had to show proof of your address.  When I told the hasmat guy at the dump that I had at least another 120 gallons more to dump he said I had to use a professional waste disposal hauling company to do it.  They would not accept the materials.  He said I would be under tremendouls liability for trying to haul that much paint at once and shouldn't even try this myself.

I called a company and they estimated it would cost me about $1500 to haul what I had.  On the day they were to come and take the stuff away I called in to ask them when they thought they would get there - the phone receptionist simply laughed.  Later that day an enterprising man arrived and offed to haul it all off to his house for $1000 and he would remove it a bit at a time (he had "friends" at the dump you see).  Later when I asked him for a receipt he thought he would do me a "favor" by offering to make the receipt out for more than what I actually paid him!  I simply explained that I don't work that way.

The hasmat company finally arrived the next day with very little to take away.

We still awiat there testing of some subceiling tile we think could have asbestos in it.  It sounds like if it does, we could have a very large bill on our hands to dispose of it properly.

 

So now Carl and Joyce's homes are empty and most of the stuff is gone and we can soon sell the estate property itself.  Carl had enough wealth to travel the world or give much to those in need.  Instead he and his wife pursued more and more things and money and died alone in their home and thievs and rust took the rest.

This is in such contrast to the recent death of Wally Caruthers with a funeral of over 3000 in attendance and a witness of a life lived for others and a legacy for his family.  He didn't horde, lie or cheat anyone yet he had much more than Carl could have ever stored.  He had treasure in heaven.

This is not to say that Carl cheated or lied but he was a collector to his own hurt.

 

Well, that was an exhausting ordeal and one I am glad is now done done done as far as I am concerned!

It's interesting that the spaces people didn't put religion as one of the categories for a blog entry.  Seems like a big omission.

So last night I visited a friend who was holding a little meeting showing part of Chuck Missler's series on Genesis.

Now Chuck is an interesting kind of guy.

He's a techie and a believer.  He loves physics - so thusly, I love listening to him.

Anyway, I just have to give a plug for this series which you can find here.

Lots of cool things to learn besides the obvious that you find in Genesis.