As we live we accumulate memories … just last night I recounted to a grandson how, in falling out of a mostly-beached raft on a river, I accidentally hooked my foot inside his tee shirt. I fell backward into the water while he was launched backwards on the other side of the raft. I felt terrible. He does not remember the event, so we agreed, no harm, no foul.
I have, like all of us, an accumulation of moments that have stayed with me over time. For the vast majority of my time here, I have no recall. I remember standing in a circle of neighborhood boys and on suggestion of one of the bolder ones, we all whipped out our dicks for comparison. Boys are like that. How did I compare? I ain’t telling, and that’s my final word. Take that any way you like, hee hee hee.
So I was young, maybe ten years of age, and I, two of my brothers and our mother went on a thousand-mile journey to visit relatives in Milwaukee from Billings, Montana. While there, a guy who was in medical school in Chicago came to join us for the return trip. He was, I now see in the mirror, high on speed. He did most of the driving, never tiring.
On another occasion, my brother, who was studying for the priesthood, spoke (out of school, I later realized) about a peculiar Catholic program called “The Search.” I participated in this exercise after high school. In it a group of tender-aged kids gather for a weekend in a place where there are no cots or bedding, and go from room to room, gathering and interacting. For most of it we are counseled in Catholic doctrines, and for part of the exercise a priest comes along and we all confess our sins.
I spent most of my time with Ron, and the two of us mostly had the giggles. Ron is still around, and is a delightful man. He made a career in banking, one of two I have met over the years who occupy slots in that profession based mostly on personality.
That got me through that weekend, where we emerged from our sessions in sleep-deprived states to be greeted by former participants in a large and happy gathering that involved hugging and acceptance. It was a very good feeling, which for me did not last.
My brother candidly assessed the program that day, which he had occasionally supervised. He said the objective was sleep deprivation. In that state, he said, kids will believe anything they are told. It was a brainwashing exercise, though he did not use that word. I think he thought good intentions justified subtle manipulation. Catholics, after all, are taught to be a flock, and are taught to be proud to be thought of as sheep.
My brother entered the priesthood and had a successful career, and I never heard him mention the Search program again. To be clear, however, I rarely heard him speak. Even as I went through a Search, the effects did not linger in a positive manner. I grew to resent the intrusion into my brain, as they were not trying to save so much as control me. Much is made of priestly abuse of kids, most of it overblown (for its own purpose). This particular intrusion, which still goes on, is exempt from criticism.
My brother died in 2011, and I was counseled in my grief by Father John Dimpke, still alive I think, and probably retired. We spoke at length, as two of my brothers died within a month. As you might imagine, I have an active mind, and had long before rejected Catholicism. I was never rude, as John is a nice man, but I took to heart his assessment: “The problem with you, Mark, is that you think too much.”
That’s how they view us. That was the whole point of our Catholic educations, to prevent thinking, and in that sense, it makes sense. And to bring this post around to complete a circle, the guy who was high as a kite and who drove us from Wisconsin to Montana without sleep was in medical school, and was undergoing brainwashing. People imagine that doctors in training have to ingest huge quantities of material, and indeed they do. They don’t use most of that knowledge, as time relegates it to past practices supplanted by more modern ones.
But that was never the point. They were selected for medical training because they were bright, and were then brainwashed by means of sleep deprivation. If you wonder why doctors 1) think they are gods, and 2) believe in nonsense, it is because they were inoculated with both attitudes while in training. Training involves hours of study and lack of sleep. As a result you will not meet a doctor who does not profess the religion of viruses and bacteria as disease-causing agents because part of their rigorous indoctrination is rote memorization of the various types of bugs. The remedies for nonexistent viruses and harmless bacteria is, of course, a regimen of petroleum-based drugs. These remedies all have many effects, some of which are classified as “side”. Most of those effects are benign, some beneficial, and many harmful.
I have known so many people who in their senior years, if they make it that far, take a wide range of drugs, many prescribed to counteract the effects of others. Doctors are not trained in health care, but rather drug management. It’s all they know. It’s how they were educated, excuse me, I mean … brainwashed.That’s why med school is a factory based on lack of sleep as a control mechanism. It works with religion. Why not medicine too?
In 1794 Captain George Vancouver sailed to Icy Strait. He found it choked with ice, and what was to become Glacier Bay was barely noticeable. The ice was more than 4,000 feet thick, up to 20 miles wide in places, and extended more than 100 miles to the St. Elias Mountain Range. In 1889 John Muir found that the ice had retreated 48 miles up the bay and by 1916 the Grand Pacific Glacier had retreated 65 miles from Glacier Bay’s mouth. This rapid retreat is found only here in Southeast Alaska. Scientists have been studying the phenomena hoping to learn how glacial activity affects climate change.
I attended Catholic schools for the first 12 years of my life. The first eight years were taught by Dominican nuns, with one lay teacher covering second grade. Our school was one block away from the church, so that you can imagine frequent trips there for various ceremonies, like confession, stations of the cross, or just weekday mass. Weekends consisted of Saturday, a free day, and Sunday, at least part of which had to be used to attend church under penalty of mortal sin and eternal damnation if we failed. Unless we had a good excuse. However, going fishing, playing baseball with the neighborhood kids, or even reading a book were not considered good excuses. There were no good excuses, really, save deathly illness, or perhaps death.
Piece of Mindful 