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Introduction / Statistics from my life in the Order / My first life chronology / The Order: Ecumenical / Phase I: Emerging Generation & Order Youth / Photos, art & artifacts
- I never lived with my 3 brothers as youth after my first grade. I only lived with my parents, off and on, a total of 9 ½ years until I completed 6th grade and they gave approval to have me join the other Order Youth in going through the Junior High and High School Order youth programs.
- Besides my parents, I had a total of 6 sets of successive legal guardians.
- I moved between cities 17 times - spending 3 months or more and not knowing where I was going next.
- I changed schools 10 times - including a year of correspondence courses.
- I lived in 5 countries (Malaysia, Singapore, U.S.A., Venezuela and Brazil) and visited another 5 (Norway, Philippines, Hong Kong, Japan, Canada.)
- When I was six, I was sent to my first six week Order Summer camp that became the one of the most traumatic experiences I have ever had and set the stage for what was to come. I was physically and mentally abused almost daily, punished for wetting the bed or shitting in my pants when I had diarrhea. Almost the entire camp came down with Shigella, a dangerous and contagious bacteria disease and we had to be quarantined by the Health Department.
- When I was young, an adolescent male roommate, who was at least 6 years older, sexually manipulated me. I never told anyone about this until I was 21. I became hyper sexual and acted inappropriately (Voyeurism, touching with out consent, trying to entice girls to kiss me) with girls my age and younger until I was 12. I am ashamed of what my actions may have done to cause any emotional pain to those who were already in pain
- I became romantically and sexually active when I was 14 and had 9 intimate partners (not always leading to intercourse) before I graduated high school and a total of 13 by the end of my First Life. Alcohol and drugs fueled many of my relationships and intimacies with girls in the Order during High School. I am ashamed for some of the ways that I acted insensitively and cruelly resulting in hurt, and that I did not start wearing condoms until I was 18 (I was a stupid fuck.)
- I began my road to alcoholism and addiction when I was 10. I was using drugs and alcohol regularly by the time I was 14. By the time I was 16 I had I tried LSD, psilocybin, cocaine, amphetamines, barbiturates, and narcotic painkillers. I was smoking cigarettes daily and drinking lots of alcohol as well. At 17, For my own personal use on a 3 week trip, I smuggled a 1/4 ounce of marijuana from the U.S. to Japan to Malaysia to Singapore to the Philippines and got back to the U.S with 2 joints. (I was a stupid fuck.)
- I began my work life when I was 12 years old in 7th Grade and had worked 14 jobs and positions - some simultaneously - by my high school graduation. Some of the Order work assignments I had during my Junior High years certainly violated child labor laws and felt like slave labor.
- I was arrested for the first time, including having 4 police officers nervously pointing their guns at me, when I was 12 for riding in a stolen car at 2:30 a.m. 2 days before Christmas while visiting my grandfather in San Angelo Texas. I was also arrested for public intoxication when I was 16. I was detained by police and faced possible arrest two other times and almost a third. Three of those interactions with law enforcement occurred while I was under the influence of LSD. (I was a stupid fuck.)
- When I was a Junior, after an alcohol related car crash while I was passed out in the back seat, I was in the hospital for three weeks with broken orbit around my right eye and jaw. I became addicted to Codeine, which combined with my increasing use of alcohol left me teetering on the edge of madness and serious depression. I quite school for 6 months and was moved twice by the4 Order.
- I began to contemplate suicide when I was 12 in 7th grade and it was always in the background of my consciousness until I was a Junior. I survived my adolescent and teenage years while dealing with feelings of neglect, abandonment, confusion, grief, depression, addiction and thoughts of suicide.
- I was saved by: the right final set of Order Guardians, Order kid friends including my best friend and life mentor Bruce, and falling in love when I was 17 - I thought I had been in love before but that was just young infatuation. I mark our long distance relationship, which continued on and off until I was 22, as the beginning and end of my transition into adulthood. While it ended abruptly and painfully I was finally set free to enter into the next phase of my continuing adventurous life.
- Broke my right arm twice (re-breaking while still in a cast once), my left arm and wrist once (re-breaking while still in a cast again), as well as my jaw and the bone Orbit around my right eye.
- Helped organize and lead 4 Youth Leadership Forums (2 in Brazil and 2 in Kansas City.) I also helped organize and facilitate two national Order Youth Symposiums when we brought as many of the Order youth in the U.S. together for 2 days of workshops to plan the Order Youth Program priorities and of course, our ongoing parties.
- I had never lived anywhere longer than 2 years before arriving in Kansas City when I was 17. Kansas City was the first Religious House where I had a room of my own.
- I began working as a fry cook at 17. At 19, I was the youngest assistant chef in the Annie's Santa Fe restaurant chain history. I had helped open a brand new Raphael's restaurant in Memphis and managed a kitchen with 30 employees for a little over a year when I was 20, when I had a dream of owning my own restaurant by the time I was 30. When I was 21 I realized that I did not know anyone in the restaurant business who was not addicted to alcohol, drugs or sex, and truly happy and there had to be a better way to live.
Music:
- My first cassette tape in 1975 was the Beetles "Let It Be." It is also my favorite Beetles album.
- In 75 & early 76, I fantasized that every song Karen Carpenter sang was for me and that I was Engelbert Humperdinck singing back.
- In 1976 my dad bought me tickets to see Blood Sweat and Tears with my friends at the Kuala Lumpur Hilton Hotel but while doing the soundcheck, they blew the electricity out for the whole hotel taking more than 24 hours to fix. We got a refund.
- In 1977 I practiced slow dancing and making out with my pillow to Kiss's "Beth."
- My Student House years were highlighted by Earth, Wind & Fire, The Commodores, Led Zepplin, Peter Frampton, Styx and the Bee Gees.
- In 1978, while living without electricity in Brazil, we only had Jim Croche, Roberta Flack, The Eagles, REO Speedwagon, and Lynard Skynnard to listen to on our battery cassette player over and over again.
- My first concert in 1979 was 38 Special, Head East, and Blue Oyster Cult.
- My favorite concerts in the 80s were Chicago in Chicago and The Who in St. Louis - for the first of an endless round of farewell tours.
- In 1980 I would sing to Lover Boy's "Turn Me Loose" and Areo Smith's "Dream On" while prancing around in front of my mirror.
- During the summer of 1982 I was in an air band named Ray, Beans & the Nerds.
- My teenage years were most defined by the music of Pink Floyd.
- My favorite artist in 1986 at the end of my First Life was Suzanne Vega.
Movies:
- As a young child, my favorite movies were "The Sound of Music" and "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang."
- At 6 the entire Order Campus, including children, went to see "Little Big Man," and I felt traumatized by seeing the brutal and senseless massacre of Native Americans in.
- By the time I was 7, James Bond was my hero and role model for what a man is supposed to be like.
- In 1977, when the Exorcist was making another round of the drive ins, I got puking drunk with two cousins on Shlitz Tall Boys in the alley outside of a Dallas drive-in showing that movie. The next week my grandfather took me, when I asked, to see it at the drive-in San Angelo, but he drove us off in a huff of disgust when the 12 year old girl started masterbating with a crucifix.
- As a teenager "Quest for fire" and "Altered States" were influential movies.
Misc.
- I remember being woken up in the middle of the night so I could see the first Moon landing and walk in 1969 when I was 4.
- My first political memory is Richard Nixon's resignation speech on T.V.
- The first political hero I had was Jimmy Carter after I saw him speak in Chicago in 1976 campaign. I lost all that respect for him when he reinstated the draft registration for males.
- I never registered for the draft as I was supposed to upon turning 18.
- I apathetically did not vote in the 1984 election when I was first eligible, if I had I would have voted for Mondale and Ferraro.
- I instinctively never liked Reagan, without understanding all of his policies but still I was still naively shocked when my mostly black high school class erupted in cheers when they heard he had been shot. Later, I understood that the black communities and schools felt under attack.
- My favorite foods growing up were chicken fried rice and mutton curry; as a teenager it was anything fast food; as a young adult it was Mexican.
Between 1987 and 2017:
I worked _____ jobs for ______ companies and organizations.
I was arrested around 30 times, until 2001, and risked arrest many more times for nonviolent resistance to the nuclear arms race as well as the environmental justice for the Indigenous Americans who's land is most affected by government nuclear projects and dumps.
I hitchhiked more then 17,000 miles by 2000, mostly I was voluntarily homeless and lived out of my backpack. I inherited my mothers car in 2001 and began to collect more stuff to fit in it.
I walked more then 1200 miles for Peace, Environmental Justice and nuclear disarmament by the end of 2002.
I was completely silent for 100 days over the course of 3 years while I was involved with the Vippassana Meditation Society.
I visited ____ hotsprings _____ times.
Brushes with celebrities:
(1986) Served Christmas dinner standing next to Gerlado Rivera to around 1,000 homeless friends 3 blocks from the U.S. Capitol building.
(1989) Was on stage with Stevie Wonder and his band for about 10 minutes at the Housing Now rally after walking from New York to DC with 400 homeless friends.
(1991) Helped write a personal letter and put together a fundraising packet to the Jimmie and Roselyn Carter Foundation and received a personal note from President Carter apologizing but saying that while he supported our goals, the foundation was unable to provide financial support and he wished us success!
(1992) Talked with Peter Tork from the Monkeys for about 15 minutes while I was doing back stage security at the 100th Monkey Concert while Ritchie Havens was onstage jamming out "Freedom."
(1995) Wrote a personal letter to Barbara Streisand, Ed Asner and Ed Begely Jr and a few others trying to raise money for our fledging Shundahai Network. The only response was from Ed Begeley Jr. with a handwritten card saying "keep up the good work! with a $100 check.
(1997) Picked up Bonnie Raitt, Emily and Amy of the Indigo Girls, John Trudell, Jackson Brown, and Graham Nash from the Las Vegas airport in a beat up 16 passenger van for a press conference and concert to stop the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Dump that I had helped organize and provide logistics for. (I accidentally left John Trudell at the airport and had to race back to pick him up apologizing profusely. He just smiled and got in.)
(1999) Tried to get arrested with Martin Sheen at a protest against the U.S. Army's School of America - they refused to arrest anyone and let us hangout on the road blocking the main entrance for a few hours until we got hungry and left.
(1999) Helped organize a speaking event at the University of Nevada Las Vegas for Ralph Nader who was introduced by Corbin Harney.
(2000) I did get arrested with Martin Sheen and 500 other friends at around 12:30 am on Y2K at the gates to the Nevada Nuclear Test Site.