Chloe and stuff

Here's our Chloe chilling on her favorite spot on her fave couch. She can only lie there for a few minutes before she feels the need to flop on her back and shimmy up and down the couch, grunting and snarfling loudly the entire time. She does this until all the pillows are knocked to the floor. Then she will lie back down in her spot and nap.

There’s been a local minister, Brad Goodrich, who’s been appearing in the papers lately, as his lifelong dishonesty has finally come to light. He’s bilked many people out of their money, so he could continue to live an upscale, unearned lifestyle. It makes me laugh a lot, because I could have predicted this exact outcome for him (and basically did) back when we attended the same church and nightmarish “school”. He was shallow, lazy, stupid, arrogant and ridiculously vain back in high school. He was so vapid, in fact, that I’ve spent the last decade wondering how the hell he was able to fool so many (equally vapid?) folks into believing that he was remotely qualified to be their minister and lead them anywhere. Even in the teen years, he was smarmy enough that you felt you needed to shower after speaking with him, and it has only gotten worse through the years.

I’m also curious as to how his followers were able to convince themselves that hoarding money and spending so much so visibly was following a single one of the tenants of the Jesus they claim to follow. Sheeple are sheeple, I guess, and none of them are known for their blazing intelligence, curiosity, independent thinking or insightfulness.


My parents are some of the few of the “chosen” who actually believe the lies and work tirelessly to be the best Christians they can. I watched my parents give to others, even when they really didn’t have it to give at all, over and over again. They never told anyone else, and I probably wasn’t even aware of all they did. They have been there to talk for hours, give rides, provide encouragement & support (financial and emotional), and help out in any way they could figure out, even for those they didn’t know well or particularly like. In short, despite the fact that I don’t believe in or agree with any of their Christian beliefs, they are among very, very few who consciously try to “walk the walk” rather than just “talk the talk”. Having seen their example, it’s very easy for me to look at other “christians” and notice their hypocrisy and lack of walking the walk.

More on my parents, because I feel I have to make it very clear that they are not and never were the type of people I’m describing. Particularly in light of the next anecdote I’m going to share. I want to say right up front that unlike the majority of members in their church, my parents were not racist, nor would they tolerate racism. They were ahead of their time, in comparison to those around them who were similar in age, socioeconomic background, and religion. Neither of my parents were raised to believe in racial equality, so it’s even more surprising that they would have developed, let alone spoken out about their egalitarian beliefs. I’m fairly certain that they were the only regular members of that (quite large, at the time) church who were not completely opposed to and disgusted by interracial marriage.
So throughout the 70’s and 80’s, the youth group in the church of my childhood (nightmares), frequently had little fundraisers—pretty typical stuff. There was one special fundraiser that they had every year for many years, and I still can’t believe the majority of the church felt it was a great idea. Here we go: They had a slave auction. It was called that—“Slave Auction”.

Really. The teens in the youth group were brought up onto the stage and auctioned off to the highest bidder, in authentic slave auctioning style of course, who could then put the teens to work for an entire day, in any way they chose. I remember the teens dressing up in “slave attire” for at least one of the auctions, though I don’t recall if this was done every year. I also have no recollection of what I was wearing when I was auctioned off, so I don’t know if there was slave attire that year or not.

I only remember participating in it for one year. Once I hit 14-15, I wanted nothing to do with church or youth groups. (Unfortunately, I replaced it with drugs & alcohol, which in retrospect, I still think was a more productive, and better way to spend my time!) The year I participated, I and several other teens were purchased by Brad-the-bilker’s mother, also arrogant and materialistic. It was a very hot day, and we worked very hard. I had never worked so long or hard physically before. Among oh-so-many tasks we had to complete, one that took forever was polishing her exhaustive silverware collection. That polishing cream reeks! It was preferable to the straight ammonia she had us cleaning with, though. It was a horrible day that I will always remember.

I know it was the 80’s but seriously, not a single adult in a church with over 200 members (and from 200-500 attendees at the time) thought perhaps the notion of a slave auction was in poor taste? Not one of these pinnacles of love and kindness could come up with a less offensive notion? Not one of them thought that perhaps if there was a god/jesus, they would be horrified at the idea of making light of one of the uglier, more painful events in history.

I had forgotten entirely about the slave auction, but when I was reading the latest Brad article in the paper, it just popped into my head. I have so few memories of that time, but it becomes apparent to me that I haven’t lost the memories, just suppressed them, because I have nothing but bad feelings associated with that entire period of my life. The brain is odd, because they come back at the oddest times.

Occurrences like that make me even more curious about the functioning of the brain and memory. I’ve run into Brad & family around town many times throughout the years and even read other recent articles about his situation in the newspaper. Why was it then, that that particular article, at that particular time, stimulated the neural path that restored a slave auction memory into my head so randomly? I feel driven to discover the exact mechanism by which certain random memories are retrieved like that. I’m still hoping that this will be better understood within my lifetime! The brain is an incredibly fascinating organ!