BULLYING

by Don Brian

BULLYING BOOGEYMEN and BOOGEYWOMEN -- Much has been said and publicized in recent times about bullying. The emphasis has been primarily on children bullying children and adults encouraging children to bully other children. However, adults are bullying adults. The system is bullying citizens; The United States corporatocracies (oligarchy, plutocracy, 1%ers) are bullying elected officials (Either do as they say or you will not get money or backing to get re-elected.) In addition, our elected officials are members of the corporatocracy and/or are puppets of the corporatocracy. One way or the other they are owned lock, stock, and barrel by the corporatocracy. For their own well-being and club membership they dare not do anything, aside from flourishes of rhetoric, to counter the goals of the corporatocracy. Even if 99% of the people were to protest, the 1% would still be fully in the saddle and marching on to maintain control over the world disorder. It is no contest. The bottom line is that the system (the corporate hit men) are always finding boogeymen and bogeywomen  to harm as a way of distracting the masses via brainwashing techniques with money they have viciously extracted from the masses. A few examples of the boogey parade, by the  greedy kleptocracy deference monsters include the following perpetuated  ghosts of the imagination:  War on Terror; War on Drugs;War on Marijuana; War on Waco; War on Aaron Swartz; War on Kent State; War on Julian Assange; War on Bradley Manning; et al.

anmen Square Massacre

How many Tiananmen Squares and Timothy McVeighs will be spawned here in the USA by the ongoing cruel terror foisted upon freedom loving innocent Americans? How many more backs and spirits will be broken by the cannibalistic system until the shackled rage spills out? How do the USA operatives have any credibility or moral standing to criticize regimes in their handling of citizen outrage over corruption in other countries, such as when the Tiananmen Square Massacre, like the Kent State Massacre, occurred? Will the slaughters and bullying ever stop?

SANDER DEPARTED. IT IS TIME FOR YOU TO ARRIVE.

Sander Houk, the Bennington College (Vermont) intern, has now been gone for more than a week. Now that he is not here I am lost. I depended upon him to guide me every step of the way in respect to understanding and using Twitter, the Blog, Facebook, the Websites, book construction and publishing as well as the internet in general, and much more in respect to establishing an intentional community called SALT (Senior Activists Living Together) and connecting with courageous activists, some quite renowned, who may turn the world upsidedown and then straighten it out.

ADVOCATES out there, are you interested in truly enacting a TRANSITION from the old stodgy, selfish, power-seeking, greedy ways of the OLD GUARD cliques to a peaceful world focused on great thoughts, uplifting music, moving art, and harmony? If you are a TRANSITION person bring your precious humanity and intellect to SALT today so that we can forge a great tomorrow. Let's do it, and let's clone SALT over and over again once we get it just right.

Now, SALT needs others to come and fill the void left by Sander Houk.  SALT needs organized individuals with pure hearts and deep love for good people with a mission to eradicate the influence of hypocrites and evil, and feed the hungry.

I need SALT residents, interns, and volunteers who can drill some more working knowledge into my 74-year-old (as of February 25th) crawl space resting on my neck so that I can better serve others. Come and be my inspiration and model to emulate so that my brief time left on this earth can be a period of TRANSITION and fulfillment as I am surrounded by those who will perpetuate SALT.

Envision the changes you would like to bring about to make SALT, our country, and the world a positive force. SALT must help others realize their dreams of unforeseen equal opportunities and happiness. We must do all we can to choke out the bad weeds. The proliferation of lives collectively invested in the well-being of ALL people everywhere will do just that.

Let's lose ourselves by finding others to nourish. Let's get invested in a self-sustaining ecosystem. Let's find ways to make life less expensive by being smarter about how we use and share resources.

Inch by inch surmounting our challenges can be a cinch. Help us influence public policy and resource allocation decisions.

We need ADVOCATES who know how to use social media to facilitate collective action by organizing and developing media campaigns, public speaking events, research publications, internet communications, lobbying efforts, and protest and/or support gatherings.

SALT is all about social justice ADVOCACY. System and political change is long overdue from the ground up. All systems are broken. Now is the time to restructure everything for the better. The power structure of politics, government, and business is simply fetid. Let us construct a just society. The way policy is administered in this country and around the world is in stark contrast to what constitutes fairness and justice for all. The political and bureaucratic systems here and around the world are thwarting rather than responding to the needs of the people. Our systems are not transparent, and they are exclusive rather than inclusive. Our government is not accountable to the citizens. We have to make it ACCOUNTABLE.

Come to SALT  and lead the way to compel the government to change so that the needs and aspirations of the people are the focus, rather than the narrow demands of the CORPORATOCRACY.

The make-up of the decision makers (crony deference figures) has to change. Come and IGNITE SALT! Let's get the job done now! Become the human resources we need to secure other resources we need to develop and perpetuate SALT.

VOLUNTEERS AND INTERNS NEEDED

SALT needs volunteers and interns to help move heavy items, such as a large resolite wrestling mat used for exercise, construction materials to be burned or recycled, and heavy materials that need to be moved for various purposes. Volunteers and interns are needed to help address every factor and circumstance relevant to the successful operation of SALT and the development and maintenance of the physical plants. Volunteers and interns are needed to help write grants and revise mission statements, goals, and objectives, do research, help transcribe audio tapes, do investigative reporting, and help write books on various subjects on which data and records are already available to be organized and put into book volumes for publication. Some of these researched topics include the following: the whistle-blower as the worst kind of criminal in America; the fitness for duty examination scheme; the brain washed and the brain washers; lack of recourse for fraud victims involving home repair and other scams; myths and immunities involving so-called experts and expert witnesses; abounding amd prevailing conspiracies in every public and private operation and institution;  history of horrid institutional abuses and welfare department atrocities; infantile autism; the criminal mind; fear of the system; liar for hire practices; nursing home atrocities; medicare and health care services incompetencies and overhaul recommendations; drastic practical service cost reductions across the board; training of professors and instructors to meet practical realities; educational specialties and redundancies evaluated; educational practices and failings; willful and planned political societal exploitation, dwarfism, and containment for personal gain and criminal engagement; what influences political decisions and legislation; what influences legal decisions and the interpretation of law and rendered punishment; redesigning government and governmental accountability; alarming inadequacies of the legal system involving police, lawyers, judges, correctional systems, and the law; the role of status, greed, power, jealousies, cliques and deference abdications in respect to societal ills; the role of the vicious religious in maintaining, escalating. and provoking hatred, profiling, and scape-goating; the ever presence of bullying and intimidation at all levels of our society; the gap between rhetoric and actuality; the unaccountability factor, waste, politics, and the money trail; and the increasing escalation of the prevalence and encouragement of bias, discrimination, and demeaning behavior; who helps if people don't help each other, neighbors don't help, colleagues don't help, unions don't help, corporations don't help, the police don't help, the lawyers don't help, elected officials don't help, the government doesn't help, the clergy don't help, the laws don't help, and no one in the system helps?

SALT Needs Energy Czar

SALT is spending significantly more than a thousand dollars each month just for utilities because the buildings are in need of proper insulation and other modifications so that these buildings can be heated and cooled for less cost. There should be grants and options available for receiving assistance to reduce the cost and waste of fuel and energy. SALT needs the assistance of individuals who are willing to be involved as activists engaged in securing assistance for addressing these and other energy related problems, including the development of self-sustaining energy projects. SALT is in need of innovative energy saving and energy producing projects to make the interior and exterior environments safer and healthier in respect to all buildings and environments at the Linesville farm and the Meadville facilities. Residents, interns and volunteers will be welcomed to study and address these issues.

TOURING A NEIGHBOR'S FARM

Hi out there,"

Sander Houk and Don Brian visited a farm with a beautiful new barn and an anaerobic digester near the SALT (Senior Activists Living Together) farm in Linseville, PA. Join us. Surely you can muster up enought get-up-and-go to to check us out with yous thoughts, inspirations, and talents. We need  people who are willing to do good, productive, and resourceful things to advance our society in small ways and large. Help us build a Field of Deams. If you come we will build it.  Don't be timid. Come with your talents! Help us! Come for a visit! Come to stay! Just don't delay! Here are some pictures of our farm tour today:

 

Sander Houk (right) gets a good explanation from Don Bortnick about how milk is cooled. 

 

Sander Houk and Don Bortnick in front of the building that houses the engine fueled by the anaerobic digesters at the Bortnick Dairy Farm in Conneautville, PA near the SALT (Senior Activists Living Together) farm a few miles away in Linesville, PA

 

 

Don Brian (left) with Don Bortnick with the anaerobic digester in the background

 

 

 

 Excess gas produced by the anaerobic digesters being burned as seen by the flames in the background

 

 

 

One of the anaerobic digestors on the Bortnick dairy farm near the Linesville, PA SALT (Senior Activists Living Together) farm.

 

 

January 25

We sit here this evening as Don plunges into his first volume, (presently titled) Autism and the Deference Syndrome: When the System Becomes Sinister. Don has been playing with a downloaded program, BookSmart, to self-publish his life's work. His excitement boils over and he's going on 30 pages just within the last few days, and about 20 other ideas for the next volumes. But we need to actually get writing. Lynnell and her workers (Don and Sander) need to find grants to apply for to make SALT energy efficient, make the program legal, and find people to work over the summer beyond the few we have volunteered already. We need more people. We need more funds. We need to get things moving. These last three weeks made us sure that this program is more than possible, marketable, and that people love the idea, but we need more than that. We need your help. We cannot have a revolution alone.

January 18

In life we are constantly moving into a new phase. Knowing how, where, and when to do this as gracefully as possible is not usually accomplished without experiencing anxiety and growing pains.

One way or another we all depend upon one another even though it is not all that easy to always get along. We all have a need to be happy, independent, and contented, while realizing that aloneness constitutes loneliness. Joyfulness in concert with the company of others leads to a longer, healthier life. People are social interactive and interdependent beings who collectively thrive by being united, engaged, and supportively observant of one another.

We here at SALT believe that there are countless individuals who have worked in environments that made them uncomfortable because of the unfair and unjust practices observed. We know right from wrong and we are not content to look the other way. We are also not content to leave a broken system, which also breaks hearts and people, unfixed for the next generation. Just to observe problems and injustices and not take action to be part of the solution is a wasted life. We are going to leave this life whether we wasted it or used it.

We have observed countless fraudulent and unethical business and service practices. Because of our observations we have something to constructively offer. We can serve one another in many ways just by being around, caring, contributing good will and merriment, and orchestrating interesting things to do and see. We can delay or cancel the necessity of assuming life in an assisted living facility or a nursing home. We can be a benefit to each other and those in every generation if we make the effort to keep ourselves healthy, active, and alert.

We have skills that will serve us well as we simply collectively strive for the truth. We deserve to live in an environment where our well-being will be respected and protected. If we can be objective and open-minded we will provide a model for others to emulate.

There is an overwhelming need for us to be investigative reporters who maintain newsletters and other publications that mandate that the system be more accountable, more effective, and just, relative to cost and unbiased performance. We need ethnic, social, cultural, talent, and skill diversity. We need ethical caring people who represent a wide range of occupations, professions, hobbies, and interests. We need to be flexible. We will have plenty of time to get rigid after we die.

Since we have an ongoing bed and breakfast, potentially interested individuals can visit us and interact with us on as many occasions as they desire before deciding whether they would like to come for a short term trial experience, a longer stay, or a permanent residence. The website address for the B&B is http://wynkenblynkennod.com .

Peace and solidarity,

Don

January 16

Sander Houk prepared a Chinese dinner for us at the Linesville farm tonight. We watched a documentary titled Guns, Germs, and Steel. Don charged up the Massey Ferguson tractor and the Thomas Skid Steer, took many pictures inside and outside of the pole barn, including carpentry and electrical work recently done there. Don also removed a load of wood and steel (door, trim, scrap wood, bed frame, etc.) from the Suburban and stored it in the pole barn. Don, Lynnell, and Sander have mainly been working on SALT projects and ideas for developing and marketing SALT overall. Lynnell finally got around to taking down the Christmas tree today. Sander was making some pleasant sounds on his mandolin this evening.

We were all saddened today by the news of the suicide death of Aaron Swartz. This represents a miscarriage of justice and a reprehensible move on the part of MIT and the U.S. Attorney Generals Office. This 26-year-old man was not a felon. He was not a criminal. He was terrorized and abused by his own government. He was actually providing a commendable service to ordinary Americans. The big ruthless and bullying agents of the system (the partnership of government and corporate evil) have struck again and slaughtered an innocent lamb. Do you really wonder why this nation has so little credibility when it comes to human decency? When are we going to join hands and demand an end to citizen abuse by the system?

A canned letter

We here at SALT know that many of you are very busy making this world more informed and more just. We know that you have many important options to consider, in terms of participation or promotion.  but I hope SALT might interest you and that you will take the time and make the effort to investigate us further.

My name is Aleksander "Sander" Houk and I am a Bennington College student working with a couple (named Don and Lynnell Brian) to start a commune in Pennsylvania. Here at SALT we want to start an alternative living/shared housing arrangement for diverse senior activists. It will be used to support the Occupy movement and act as its own strain of direct action activists who want to uncover the ills of our politico-economic system. It will be an environmentally sustainable community where all members will be encouraged to pursue their own interests, continue their work outside, build something here, and come and go as desired. There will be a gym, a dining hall, a library, a publishing house, a yoga barn, a green house, an organic garden, and other facilities. Decisions will be made collectively through direct consensus and any conflicts that may arise between members will be resolved through mediation. This last week we have been working to collaborate with #Occupy organizers, and activist artists. Also, I will be meeting shortly with Noam Chomsky. If you would like to hear more, or join us, please do not hesitate to contact us. It would be greatly appreciated, especially given the profound work all of you have done and continue to do every day of the week.

About Lynnell

"Growing up an only child in a small extended family in Meadville, PA  I learned to entertain myself and work alone.  However, much of my time was focused on lessons of one kind or another.  I took several different instrumental lessons, a variety of dance lessons, and classes at the YWCA  while at the same time  attending to the academics of public school.  Thus most of my interaction with peers was in a controlled setting.   In high school I was active in choral groups, thespian performances, sports, and church youth groups.

I graduated from Allegheny College, a small liberal arts school, with a BS in psychology and continued an extra year after graduating to earn my Pennsylvania elementary teaching certificate.  I then taught school for two years before marrying my husband.  We recently celebrated our 45th wedding anniversary.  We both entered graduate school at IUP during our first year of marriage.  I was in a master's level program studying to become a guidance counselor, and he was in doctoral level program in psychology and school curriculum and administration.

During this time we became the proud parents of our only son. He will soon be 40 and lives in NYC.  Over the next 5 years we made several moves living in Baltimore, MD, Meadville, State College, Huntingdon, and Pittsburgh,PA; Ashtabula and Rock Creek, OH; and back to Meadville.  During this same short five-year period my husband and I started a state-licensed private school and training center for autistic children and adults.  Here I worked as a therapist and teacher.  I continued my graduate studies at Edinboro with an emphasis in Special Education.  With my new study concentration and  experience I returned to the public school classroom as a tutor and full-time special education teacher in Ohio.  After 26+ years in this position I retired from teaching.  It had been a challenging but very rewarding assignment.  Watching those frustrated young students experience the joy of learning and success, despite all of the obstacles that they faced in a system that not only did not meet their needs but failed to make accommodations, made my efforts worthwhile.

Even before I made my decision to retire from a career in teaching I had launched myself into a new enterprise.  I opened a bed and breakfast.  This new endeavor requires that I wear many hats at once to keep Wynken, Blynken, and Nod up and running.  With only Don (my husband) and I on staff we must try to be bookkeeper, banker, baker, landscaper, launderer, housekeeper, consierge, and more.  The B&B has allowed us to meet hundreds of wonderful people who have come as guests and left as friends over the past dozen or so years.

Now the next chapter in my life is a vision on the horizon.  I want to create a "family" of unrelated seniors who can share their talents and tasks while living in shared housing. Members will hopefully encourage each other to live a healthy lifestyle as well as adhere to a healthy diet.  Together we may be able to enrich our own daily experiences while contributing to a more just and promising world.  I believe that as we age we still have much to give to others and to society as a whole.  However,  so much that we cannot accomplish single-handedly can be managed with ease with just a couple extra hands or insights.  I hope we can see this vision become a reality."

-Lynnell Brian January, 8th 2013