Tag Archives: Amazon books

Is It Time To Finally Outlaw Extreme Religious Shunning?

April 18, 2023 The Silo Leave a comment

In an issue of The Watchtower magazine from a few years ago, no doubt was left as to how Jehovah’s Witnesses should treat family members who have been “disfellowshipped,” or ex-communicated, from the religion. “Really, what your beloved family member needs to see is your resolute stance to put Jehovah above everything else – including the family bond,” warns the magazine on page 16, before asserting, “Do not look for excuses to associate with a disfellowshipped family member, for example, through e-mail.”

Shunning.

Jehovah’s Witness is not the only religion that calls upon its followers to ostracize anyone who leaves the faith. Described as psychological torture by University of California-Davis Professor Almerindo E. Ojeda, such social rejection is used in the United States by Anabaptists (the Amish, Mennonites, Hutterites), Scientology, and the Baha’i Faith, among others.

Some contemporary evangelical Protestant churches have renewed the practice of shunning, as in the case of a 71-year-old former Sunday school teacher who was arrested on trespassing charges after questioning her pastor’s authority.

The practice can have devastating consequences.

In 2011, Eric Reeder was disfellowshipped from the Jehovah’s Witnesses after sustaining injuries in a motorcycle accident that led to a blood transfusion – a medical treatment prohibited by the religion. His family subsequently shunned him in accordance with the faith’s rules.

Eric posted about his predicament in an online forum for ex-Witnesses in August of that year, admitting, “The only thing I am really going to miss is my folks … my dad is a hardcore elder and has told me he will no longer be able to speak to me 100% of the time.” In April 2012 he wrote that he was “still not used to my parents totally shunning me …” before adding, “It’s so hard … nobody should have to lose their parents twice.” By the end of September, Eric was found dead at age 51. He had killed himself.

Nobody can be certain what dark thoughts were swirling through Eric’s mind when he took his own life, or what finally drove him to such a desperate act. But we do know that in the preceding months, Eric was deeply tormented by the ostracism inflicted on him by members of his family.

While The Watchtower Society, the name of the legal entity used by Jehovah’s Witnesses, proudly publishes annual statistics related to its worldwide evangelism work, there are no official figures for those who are shunned, and no way to confirm how many of these former members, like Eric, feel desperate enough to take their own lives. However, one can find a great deal of anecdotal evidence on Internet forums frequented by Ex-Witnesses. One well-known researcher, Terri O’Sullivan, reported that being shunned worsens one’s mood within 60 seconds.

Ex- witness Richard E. Kelly is the Managing Director of AAWA and the author of Growing Up in Mama’s Club: A Childhood Perspective of Jehovah’s Witnesses.

In the absence of any popular or political impetus to address the issue of religion-incited shunning, I am proud to be part of an organization that dares to face it head on. Advocates for Awareness of Watchtower Abuses (AAWA) has been established to educate the world via its website (www.aawa.co) about some of Watchtower’s most shocking practices.

While these are often pardoned in the name of religious freedom, there are instances where governments have successfully sanctioned extreme shunning:

“The Jewish tradition frequently confronted this issue in the many Eastern European communities where the government outlawed the use of excommunication and shunning. Not surprisingly, when confronted with significant governmentally imposed sanctions against this practice, the Jewish authorities ceased using exclusion as a method of community formation or maintenance,” states an article by Michael J. Broyde, academic director of Emory University’s Law and Religion Program.

My colleagues and I believe that the shunning of relatives and friends represents mental and emotional abuse. Modern society must no longer allow Watchtower to promote this barbarous practice through printed word or otherwise. For the Silo Richard E. Kelly.

Vintage

Clairtone Canada Stereo Equipment Was Art-like

November 30, 2022 The Silo 2 Comments

The Art of Clairtone: The Making of a Design Icon, 1958-1971 is a fully illustrated stylish look back at the stereo story behind a Canadian design icon. This handsome hardcover is by Nina Munk and Rachel Gotlieb and is available on Amazon.

“At its peak in the 1960s, Clairtone Sound Corporation was one of the most admired companies in the field of electronics. Founded by Peter Munk and David Gilmour in Toronto, Canada, Clairtone made the wildly modern Project G hi-fi system and, later, the G-TV. The commercial, shot in July 1967 by famous Canadian cinematographer Frank Spiess, was produced by Young & Rubicam. It features Munk and Gilmour, then in their 30s, at a studio in Toronto and includes footage from Clairtone’s infamous factory in Stellarton, Nova Scotia.” east19thstreet via YouTube

For a decade, in the 1960s, Clairtone Sound Corporation captured the spirit of the times: sophisticated, cosmopolitan, liberated. From its modern oiled-walnut and teak stereos to its minimalist logos and promotional materials, Clairtone produced a powerful and enduring body of design work. Founded in 1958 by two young Canadians, Peter Munk and David Gilmour, Clairtone quickly became known for its iconic designs and masterful advertising campaigns.

Its acclaimed Project G stereo, with its space-age styling, epitomized the Swinging Sixties. Famously, Hugh Hefner owned a Project G. So did Frank Sinatra.

Oscar Peterson affirmed that his music sounded as good on a G as it did live.In 1967, suggesting how deeply Clairtone’s G series had come to be identified with popular culture, the G2 appeared in The Graduate with Dustin Hoffman and Anne Bancroft.

With 250 illustrations, including previously unpublished drawings, rare film stills, confidential memorandums, and original photography, The Art of Clairtone is a candid and in-depth look at the company’s skyrocketing success — and sensational collapse. Through the recollections of those who knew Clairtone best, from its founders to its designers, engineers, and salesmen, and with comments from Karim Rashid, Douglas Coupland, Tyler Brûlé, and Bruce Mau, among others, this elegant book, published on the 50th anniversary of Clairtone’s launch, celebrates an iconoclastic company that once seemed to represent the promise of Canada.

Hardcover: 176 pages
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0771065078
ISBN-13: 978-0771065071

Featured Image- vornadoblog.blogspot.com

Supplemental- Caring for Oiled Walnut Wood (Table) http://www.doityourself.com/forum/furniture-wood-cabinetry-finishing/371338-best-oil-care-oiled-walnut-slab-table.html

Culture

What Dog Breeders Don’t Tell And Trainers Don’t Teach

August 31, 2022 The Silo 1 Comment

Could You Lose Your Homeowner’s Insurance Because of Your Dog?

In many years, dog bites accounted for more than one-third of all homeowner’s insurance liability claims in the United States, according to the Insurance Information Institute and State Farm. In Canada numbers are not readily available but there is a strong chance we are not far behind.

“Those claims can be financially hard on the homeowners and tragic for the dogs, which is especially troublesome when you know that bites aren’t a ‘bad dog’ problem – they’re a human ignorance problem,” says Melissa Berryman, a dog bite specialist who designed and teaches a safety and liability class for dog owners. She’s the author of “People Training for Good Dogs: What Breeders Don’t Tell You and Trainers Don’t Teach”.

“In all of my years as an animal control officer, I’ve never come across an incident with a dog that was not preventable,” she says. If we look back a decade during an especially peak period, there were 360,000 nonfatal dog bite injuries treated in emergency rooms in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease control, with claims totaling into the hundreds of millions of dollars.

“Regardless of provocation, dog owners are largely held liable and see their insurance canceled or their premiums increased. To be reinstated premiums can go up and insurance companies often require them to get rid of the dog. And, often, that means the dog is euthanized.”

Here's a look at some of the contents inside Melissa's book. CP — Here’s a look at some of the contents inside Melissa’s book. CP

Pet owners can prevent this common and unnecessary tragedy by understanding a dog’s perspective and acting accordingly.

She offers five tips to reduce dog bite incidents:

• Remember, dogs aren’t trying to protect a home when they react negatively to strangers or visitors: Dogs place no value on your home, car, or the valuables they might contain. When they’re in a home or car, they are trapped in an enclosed area and will respond to perceived threats with an automatic fight-or-flight response. It is the owner’s responsibility to train dogs to calmly signal someone’s approach and then to assert authority over the situation.

• Consider your dog’s “rank”: Dogs have superior/subordinate relationships similar to the military. Rank of family and guests dictates a dog’s behavior towards them. A high-ranking dog, a “general,” won’t tolerate insubordinate behavior from a perceived low ranking “private’’ child or guest. Bites often occur when human “privates” try to take food or toys away, hug or pull a “general” type dog by the collar off of furniture.

• Yelling can exacerbate a dog’s agitation: Your dog doesn’t know you’ve ordered pizza, so when the delivery person arrives, your dog is agitated by the threat at the door and starts barking. When you yell at your dog to stop barking, he interprets this as agitation on your part; he understands tone, not language. That only increases a dog’s anxiety and vulnerability. When the door opens, the dog bites because it thinks you and he are both feeling threatened and you’re both going to attack the threat. It’s best to happily reassure your dog when someone arrives and leave the greeting of guests to you, and not the dog.

• How you treat strangers influences how your dog treats them: Dogs respond to their owners’ behavior, which gives them signals about whether or not a situation is safe. When the dog’s owner meets a stranger and interacts formally with that stranger, as many of us do, dogs can view this as the behavior of foes, or as apprehension, such as that of prey. Owners holding leashes tightly unwittingly place their dog in the dangerous fight stance of the fight or flight response. It’s best to relax and act like a friend when meeting strangers, which will elicit a friendly response from a dog.

“Dogs react based on their pack positions, the handling ability of their owners and the situation and context,” she says. “People have the power to recognize this and redirect the interaction to that of friends.”

The cover of Melissa Berryman's book. — The cover of Melissa Berryman’s book.

By understanding and respecting how dogs’ instincts and natural behaviors differ from ours, dog owners can prevent bites and insurance headaches, Berryman says.

A Massachusetts animal control officer for nearly ten years, Melissa Berryman is a national dog bite consultant who founded the Dog Owner Education and Community Safety Council and works with communities ,rescue groups, dog owners and bite victims. For the Silo, Ginny Grimsley.

Culture

Change Your Life And Connect To Higher Realms

May 7, 2021 The Silo 1 Comment

Aleya Dao was a successful alternative health practitioner undergoing a sound healing session herself when she had one of those extraordinary ascents into an entirely expanded level of cosmic consciousness. And what she discovered in those few minutes and the days and years afterward, was how ready her Higher Self, her Body Deva and an array of personal multidimensional Team members were to help her overcome her own perceived shortcomings, destructive habits and life’s speedbumps. She decided on change. The woman she is today is not the woman she was then–and she gives full credit to the Higher Realms for helping her evolve to the happy and fulfilled trailblazing spiritual teacher, healer and author that she has become.

In her astonishing and powerful book, Seven Cups of Consciousness: Change Your Life by Connecting to the Higher Realms (New World Library), Aleya offers a direct manual on how to engage with the higher dimensions to advance your own evolution–to create a life filled with happiness and purpose, always connected with a divine and perfect aspect of yourself, protected and guided by a loving angelic presence. She shows how this kind of life becomes possible when we learn to consciously connect at the spiritual level with higher dimensions.

“When you explore your inner realms, along with the higher dimensions, your life will change in amazing ways,” writes Aleya, a sound healer, Doctor of Oriental Medicine, acupuncturist and spiritual guide for 20 years in the Southwest. She practiced in Telluride, CO, before moving to Santa Barbara, CA where she currently serves an international clientele. “The basic idea is that all your work is done at a level higher than your physical reality. There are aspects of you that exist in higher dimensions, at the spiritual level. I call these parts of you your energy self or your Higher Self.”

Seven Cups of Consciousness offers step-by-step practical guidance for reaching beyond one’s limited physical experience and energetically opening to the guidance and support of multidimensional resources.

Her book outlines specific processes built around “cups of consciousness” that are designed to give readers access to the energetic realm and the innumerable resources it contains. “The physical realm is only one of many. You are a multidimensional being expressing yourself in multiple dimensions,” writes Aleya. “You are never alone. Using your angelic resources can assist you in enormous ways.”

Just as a cup of coffee or tea helps you wake up in the morning, Aleya promises readers that sipping from the “cups of consciousness” she offers will help them awaken to higher levels of consciousness and energetic support:

First Cup – You Live in a Multidimensional Reality
Second Cup – You Are Never Alone
Third Cup – You Can Change Your Inner World
Fourth Cup – Your Challenges Can Help You Grow
Fifth Cup – Your Body Is a Nature Spirit
Sixth Cup – You Have Soul’s Wisdom
Seventh Cup – You Are Perfect

Aleya has created energetic practices designed to help readers release old patterns and gain access to a higher consciousness for each of the seven cups. Links to eleven powerful downloadable audio meditations that guide readers through these processes are also included.

Become acquainted with your own River of Light, adjacent to the front of your spinal cord
Dialogue with your Team to resolve old “stuff” that keeps you mired in lack, limitation, real world problems and broken romances
Communicate with your Body Deva, the nature spirit that is embodied as your physical self
Begin living a multidimensional life, so that you solve problems from a vantage point that you cannot by living a 2D existence
Enable your Higher Self, Team and Body Deva to support you in living a life that is fully expressed with joy, fulfillment, purpose, self-love and even romance!

“The key lies in your ability to focus on your inner world, using your imagination and intent as a way to connect to other dimensions,” writes Aleya. “You will learn that your real power comes from within and from beyond. As you develop these tools, your consciousness will evolve, your challenges will transform, and a deep inner peace and empowerment will bloom.”

Culture

Alten’s Book VOSTOK Warned President Obama Against UFO Investigation?

January 21, 2020 The Silo 1 Comment

Vostok By Steve Alten Rebel Press February 17, 2015 ISBN-10: 1681020009 ISBN-13: 978-1681020006 — Vostok
By Steve Alten
Rebel Press
February 17, 2015
ISBN-10: 1681020009
ISBN-13: 978-1681020006

What is it about the idea of UFOs that makes people nervous? While there have been many documented incidents over the years (with no other logical explanation), the government still won’t discuss it – and even pilots rarely report sightings for fear of losing their job. Steve Alten, New York Times bestselling author, isn’t afraid to talk about it. In fact, he weaves classified information on UFOs throughout his latest riveting book, Vostok.

In 2015, Obama Advisor John Podesta revealed that his biggest regret since leaving office was “keeping the UFO issue a secret.” Now, a shocking book by NY Times bestselling author Steve Alten, has blown the lid off those secrets. The author’s source – Steven M. Greer, M.D., the world’s foremost authority on Extraterrestrial Intelligence (ETI) and the same person who provided the extensive briefing to John Podesta on UFOs shortly after President Obama took office in 2009.

Dr. Greer, an emergency room physician who left his medical career to dedicate his life to disclosing the truth about UFOs, also briefed James Woolsey, President Clinton’s first CIA director, along with the heads of the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Head of Intelligence Joint Staff, members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and a select number of Congressmen.

Best-selling author Steve Alten incorporated over thirty hours of private interviews with Dr. Greer into the storyline of Vostok (Rebel Press). Fans of thrillers will be drawn into the story – Vostok is a very real 15 million-year-old sub-glacial lake located beneath two-and-a-half miles of ice in East Antarctica. Incredibly, there is also a magnetic anomaly inside the lake that has baffled experts as to what it could be. Three scientists are selected to venture into this underwater realm in a submersible. What they discover will keep readers frantically turning pages…

But Vostok is much more. The thriller exposes a secret transnational Cabal which draws an estimated $80 billion Black Ops budget from US taxpayers with no congressional oversight. Made up of bankers, oil oligarchs, and members of the military industrial complex, the Cabal has used its influence to improperly seize over 5,100 US patents, many for new energy devices that would replace fossil fuels. As a result, clean free energy systems that would literally transform the planet (and the dominant U.S. macro-economy) have been black-shelved, their inventors threatened… and worse.

According to the author and his source, “presidents Clinton and Obama were both ‘warned off’ pursuing their UFO investigations; Clinton when CIA Director William Colby was murdered after he decided to cross the powers-that-be, and Obama on his trip to Norway to accept his Nobel Peace Prize when a Scaler weapon blast (an ET technology reverse-engineered decades ago) caused the Oslo night sky to light up with a blue spiral.” Vostok names names, along with the locations of super secret military bases where ARVs (Alien Reproduction Vehicles) are harbored and may one day be used in the ultimate false flag event.

Yes, truth is stranger…and far scarier…than fiction.

Supplemental- BBC’s The Lost World of Lake Vostok

Purchase VOSTOK E-book from Amazon

Art

Vision Quest Poetry Inspired By Spirit And Landscape Of Scotland

October 12, 2018 The Silo 1 Comment

In her youth, Wendy E. Slater found her greatest gift of expression in poetry- and then went dormant. Years later, on a trip to Scotland, the fount reopened. She had been through a crucible of chronic illness that forever changed her, launching Slater on a quest for meaning and life reexamination. That quest opened a gateway into self-healing that resulted in 20 volumes of simmering, soul-searing and spiritual poetry that deftly points humankind toward a new awareness of our Oneness with all humanity, nature, the cosmos and the divinity.

Slater’s breathtaking dive into self-scouring, cleansing and finally transcendence offers hope for all who have been pulled down by the forces of self-blame, self-judgment and self-sabotage. The beauty of her soothing words and healing revelations clears the way for a new path to life-altering Unity, emerging from the alienation of separation.

Her awakening journey began first in the 1980’a where as a student studying science, she became increasingly aware of the inter-connectedness of all things. Struck down by an undiagnosed chronic illness in 1991 that incapacitated her for five years, she turned to alternative healing techniques when allopathic medicine failed her. This widely ranging exploration of holistic health and spiritual practices opened her eyes to a new way of being, brought forth consistently by healers from all societies and eras- an existence without “the false archetype of perfection.”

Says Slater, today a gifted alternative healer herself: “When blame and self-judgment are transformed, healed and cease to be, we have reawakened without myth, the mythos, of separation.”

It was on that one heart-opening trip to Scotland in 2001, that the poetry coalescing inside of her during that healing period began to pour forth. In subsequent trips to spiritually enriched landscapes, the words found their way to paper. Slater calls her work “Vision Quest” Poetry.

Into the Hearth, Poems-Volume 14, is actually the first of her volumes to reach publication. And it is already a widely-acclaimed Amazon.com #1 Bestseller:

“This is a very dangerous book of songs. You will find yourself overwhelmed, engulfed, and swept away into the very intimate heart fire of Wendy Slater, the feminine heart fire of love, and in the end you will be left in ashes, totally in love without any object whatsoever, yearning for more.: ~ John A. Perks, Author of “The Mahasiddha and His Idiot Servant,” Ven. Seonaidh Perks, Celtic Buddhist lineage

“Wendy E. Slater is that breed of poets who open our eyes, our hearts, and our minds with a warm arm around the shoulder, a sympathetic and empathic delivery that instantly binds the reader to her. These poems, quite simply, are eloquent, not only because they are offered with a desire to invite us to join her on the path to enhanced perception of the world and our place in it, but also because she manages to infuse that sense of spiritual respect that is so often absent in contemporary poetry.” ~Grady Harp, Amazon’s Hall of Fame, a Top 100 Amazon reviewer.

In the Hearth by Wendy E. Slater is available from Amazon.com and also on Kindle. To learn more about “Vision Quest” Poetry visit Traduka.com

Culture

Mediocrity Prevents A Peoples Revolution Against Publishing Giants

June 28, 2018 The Silo Leave a comment

The world is full of writers but has this led to the rise of mediocrity? image: philosophyslam.org

When I was growing up, I imagined being a novelist meant I would write for a living. This is not always the case. There is a darker side to the writing and publishing profession, even more disturbing than the constant criticism, rejection and pirating of e-books. We’re not all dedicating our lives to the manipulation of words for entertainment value. Most habitual readers I know don’t realize that gone are the days when writers were intellectuals and academics spending their whole lives with their nose in a book. In 2013 every other person I meet online claims to be a writer, many of them bestselling authors at that.

A writer in this decade is an everyman. You probably know one yourself because anybody can claim the tag now. They could be writing e-books, blogs or letters to the editor of a newspaper to supplement their income, but the fact remains that if you are trying to make a living from writing, your time will mostly be spent promoting and networking, and networking means you’ll come across the type of people who will inspire you to write a murder mystery just so you can make them the victim.

Life just might be creative literature...or at least a series of punctuation marks CP — Life just might be creative literature…or at least a series of punctuation marks

What’s brought about this change in the profession? I’m not one of those intellectuals or academics, so I can’t say. I am a person who has had a series of dead-end jobs but naively dedicated the last twelve years of her life to the craft of creative writing, making numerous sacrifices to find fulfillment. To me it’s a vocation rather than a career or hobby because no matter what I do I can’t stop writing. I mentally plot the story of job interviews during the event to cope with the pressure. When my husband had a stroke, I imagined the blood clot that caused it as a series of ellipses in our lives, whereas the birth of my son was an exclamation mark. People I don’t like have faces like twisty question marks and any bad luck I have is merely a comma. I ceased to become part of my own reality a long time ago. It verges on mental illness. This is not particular to a writer in the 21st Century and could be said of anyone so obsessive about the craft at any time.

Now there are so many would-be writers, there is no people’s revolution against the publishing giants, despite what many independent authors, including myself, have thought and said in the past couple of years. There are hundreds like me to whom writing is like breathing but thousands of bandwagon jumpers who rush out book after book then market them in questionable ways. I even had one man send me private messages on Twitter every day for almost a year in an attempt to get reviews for each book his wife has written – a total of twenty three in the last two years.

"Tractor beam" - Dr. Evil — “Tractor beam” – Dr. Evil

I self published through choice, without knocking on agents’ doors because I knew my novel was too contemporary to wait and within a few years would be dated. Self publishing is what the majority of wannabes do but it tars us all with that opportunist brush. The Internet is awash with distinctly average literature written on a whim by someone who never had ambitions to be a writer and was bored one day so self published on one of the many websites that allow you to do so without a book deal. I suspect many of them aren’t even readers.

Stories of people who have written twenty or more titles over the course of a few months and sold hundreds of thousands of copies both impress me and rile me in equal measure because despite having spent years working at it, as an independent writer without a publishing deal and only Amazon et al behind me, we are all on the same level. For the Silo, Lacey Dearie.

Culture

Poll Showed 56% Of Our Neighbors In America Believes In Devil

December 30, 2017 The Silo Leave a comment

Against a backdrop of horrific crimes and devastating natural disasters, 56 percent of Americans surveyed believe in the devil, 53 percent believe in hell and 43 percent believe in hell as “a place of suffering and punishment where people go after they die,” according to a poll of 1,218 Americans conducted over Memorial Day weekend back in 2013.

Hey Devil- no cheating! image: dumc.my — Image: dumc.my

The survey also found that Americans don’t hold God responsible for these tragedies with 86 percent believing natural disasters such as the Oklahoma tornado and Hurricane Sandy are a function of nature. Sixty-one percent believe recent terror and crime episodes, such as the London terrorist attack, the Cleveland kidnapping/imprisonments and the Sandy Hook massacre are caused by “the evil in people’s hearts” rather than “divine retribution.”

Equal numbers of respondents (38 percent) believe that people who commit violent criminal acts go to hell, as well as those who don’t ask God’s forgiveness for their sins before they die. More than 61 percent believe they’re going to heaven, while less than 2 percent believe they will go to hell.

Ominously subtitled- "What is to come" Ryden cuts right to the chase with a Premonition preface that begins: "All my life I've seen the spiritual realm. I see Angels, and Saints, and other supernatural Beings. I see the souls of dead people." CP — Ominously subtitled- “What is to come” Ryden cuts right to the chase with a Premonition preface that begins: “All my life I’ve seen the spiritual realm. I see Angels, and Saints, and other supernatural Beings. I see the souls of dead people.”

Commissioned by the True Life in God Foundation (TLIG), www.tlig.com, established by international humanitarian Vassula Ryden (author of the bestseller Heaven is Real But So Is Hell; released in March 2013), the poll was conducted online from May 23-27, 2013 among 1,218 Americans age 18 and older with a margin of error of +/-2.9%. Respondents were equally split (50 percent) between male and female.

The new survey shows that while a majority of Americans still believe in hell (54 percent), the number is declining. A 2008 Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life / US Religious Landscape Survey showed that 59 percent of Americans believed in hell, and an earlier Pew study reported that 71percent believed in hell as of 2001.

Other key findings include:

• 62 percent believe in heaven and think they are going there.

• 44 percent believe in hell as “a place of suffering and punishment where some people go after they die;”

• The 56 percent overall belief in the existence of the devil and 53% belief in hell was consistent across all the four survey age groups;

• With regard to what causes evil in the world, i.e., the Boston Marathon bombings, Sandy Hook school shooting and 9/11, older respondents (45-60) say people are evil while younger respondents (18-29) say people are sick;

• 41 percent identify the devil as “Satan the fallen angel who rebelled against God and now tempts humans to do the same;”

• 47 percent believe heaven is “God’s dwelling place” while 44 percent believe heaven is “a spiritual dimension where good people go when they die.”

The True Life in God Foundation conducted the survey to help Americans explore the existence and causes of evil in the world. The foundation commissioned Survey Monkey, one of the leading polling companies in America, to survey a cross-section of Americans from every age group, region, ethnicity, religion and household income.

The survey follows the release of Heaven Is Real But So Is Hell , which hit No. 1 on Barnes & Noble online, as well as No. 1 in Christian Orthodoxy on Amazon.[ following its March 16, 2013 release CP] The book details Vassula Ryden’s spiritual journey in which she received visions of heaven, hell, demons and angels, and the battle between good and evil in the world.

Vassula cautions skeptics who scoff at the existence of the devil: “The devil’s most powerful tool is convincing us that he – and hell – do not exist. He works subtly and silently, feeding our doubts and inadequacies, sowing dissension and creating chaos and confusion in our lives. Evil is real, and we have to know how to respond to it.”

Crossroads(1986) Guitar duel between the Devil’s guitarist (Steve Vai) and Juilliard trained “Lightning Boy” (Ralph Macchio)

Vassula believes prayer, forgiveness, reconciliation and service to others are the main tools to overcome the forces of evil.

About True Life In God Foundation

Founded by International author and humanitarian Vassula Ryden, is an international non-profit organization that funds 25 Beth Myriam homes serving the poor in six countries. A Greek Orthodox Christian, Ryden has more than 1 million followers on social media, and has spoken to millions of people in 80 countries, including more than 500,000 in the Philippines alone. An internationally-acclaimed advocate for peace and unity, Ryden was twice awarded Bangladesh’s 2003 Gold Medal Peace Prize for her work in religious tolerance and aid to the poor. She has been endorsed by many government and religious leaders, and has met with leaders at the United Nations, the World Council of Churches and the Vatican, including Pope Francis and his two predecessors. Ryden advocates “unity in diversity” between Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox Christians, and reconciliation between all world religions. For more information visit: www.tlig.com. GG

Supplemental- What Canadians are believing- http://www.canadianmennonite.org/articles/heaven-trumps-hell-canadian-poll

Reviews

Canadian Authors Released Book Chronicling Time Traveler John Titor II

August 30, 2016 The Silo 1 Comment

This is an entertaining article 😉 The United States spends millions of dollars every year covering up something they say doesn’t exist – Extraterrestrials. In fact, the U.S. military not only recognizes three alien species but for nearly 70 years has been working with the Greys, the Reptilians and the Tall Whites under signed treaties. America also has diplomatic relations with the Anunnaki.

But the cover-up goes even deeper.

The U.S. military has the capability of time travel using interstellar spacecraft capable of flying faster than the speed of light.

Based at Area 51, John Titor II began travelling through time on missions for a highly-secretive arm of the U.S. Air Force in 1979 and served as commander of the 177th Time Travel Division from the years 2030 to 2036.

His life story is told for the first time in “Disclosed:Chronicles of John Titor II” – a new book co-written by Canadian authors Bob Mitchell and Jason Quitt.

“In return for allowing the Greys, the Reptilians and the Tall Whites to have hidden bases on Earth with unlimited access to resources – and the U.S. never revealing to the public they exist – the ETs have provided black technology to the military beyond anybody’s wildest imagination,” Titor II said.

Titor II reveals the hidden truths behind humanity’s biggest cover-ups.

These include;

The existence of at least two different off-world colonies.
The U.S. military has a fighting force of thousands of genetically-engineered cloned super soldiers.
Who really killed President John F Kennedy?
Our timeline has been changed without us knowing it.
Humanity’s extinction and Earth’s inevitable environmental Armageddon.

Mitchell, Quitt and John Titor II will discuss their mind blowing book for the first time on Coast to Coast with George Noory on Sept. 1, the same day it goes on sale on Amazon. .

“Once you read this book you will never look at the world the same way again,” author Bob Mitchell said. “Parts of it scared the hell out of me, especially when John revealed what our future will be like.”

“Disclosed has the potential to shake up the entire conspiracy/UFO world,” author Jason Quitt said. “People all over the world are demanding disclosure. This bookwill push the boundaries.

Disclosed:Chronicles of John Titor II is a perfect follow the international sensation “Forbidden Knowledge–Revelations of a multi-dimensional time traveler,” which was co-written by Mitchell and Quitt and released in March 2016.

“It’s important to understand that John Titor II isn’t the John Titor, who suddenly popped up on the Internet in 2000 claiming to be a time traveler with so many outlandish predictions,” Mitchell said. “In our new book, John Titor II doesn’t make predictions. He has experienced what has and is about to happen.”.

“John Titor II is the real deal,” Quitt said..

Although no longer time traveling, John Titor II continues to consult with the Department of Defense. He lives in a heavily-secured compound with 24-hour security in southern California. For the Silo, Sigmund George Smith.

Music from the Future. Click me. — Click me.

Comics

WW2 Graphic Novel KATUSHA goes daily in free WEBCOMIC debut

March 6, 2015 The Silo Leave a comment

Garth Ennis: “Wayne Vansant has done a magnificent job with these first two volumes of Katusha.”

Wayne Vansant’s epic war story KATUSHA, GIRL SOLDIER OF THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR is being made available to read for free at www.katushagirlsoldier.com. KATUSHA (according to babynology.com, Katusha is a dimunitive form of Russian Ekaterina and Yekaterina, meaning “little pure one”. Katusha is also a famed Russian war song written shortly before World War II) tells the story of a farm girl from Ukraine who becomes a Red Army tank commander during World War II.A coming-of-age story told against the backdrop of the bloodiest conflict in human history, the 1941-1945 Eastern Front between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, KATUSHA is created by writer/artist Wayne Vansant (Marvel’s THE NAM, Zenith’s Graphic Histories series). Inspired by the experiences of thousands of women who served in the Red Army as pilots, snipers, tank drivers, and other roles, it forms a sprawling epic that will total three volumes and over five-hundred pages upon completion.

The first two graphic novels in the series, KATUSHA BOOK ONE: EDGE OF DARKNESS and KATUSHA BOOK TWO: THE SHAKING OF THE EARTH are currently available in digital and print format from Grand Design Publishing. The webcomic version of KATUSHA will serialize both, adding a new page every day, with BOOK ONE completing in June and BOOK TWO completing at the end of 2015. The third and final volume, expected in print in mid-2015, will begin serialization in January 2016.

One of Vansant's previous works, The 'Nam was an innovative and truly seminal comic. — One of Vansant’s previous works, The ‘Nam was an innovative and truly seminal comic.

KATUSHA has received praise from critics and comics professionals. History magazine Armchair General Magazine included KATUSHA in its “Stuff We Like” column. Pat Mills, writer of the legendary British war comics series CHARLIE’S WAR has praised Katusha for dealing with a chapter in history that’s been overlooked in the West. Garth Ennis, writer of PREACHER and WAR STORIES (which includes THE NIGHT WITCHES, a story about Soviet women pilots) said of Katusha, “It’s great to see the story of the Soviet women tankers kept alive. Wayne Vansant has done a magnificent job with these first two volumes of Katusha; I look forward to reading more”. Print editions are now available from Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com and other online retailers. Ebook editions are available to consumers through ComicsPlus, Google Play, Kindle, and (soon) Comixology, and to libraries though Overdrive and iVerse.

Wayne Vansant and a blowup of his new work-in-progress: Katusha

KATUSHA BOOK ONE opens with young Katusha’s graduation from her tenth and final year of school. The next morning, Sunday June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany invades the Soviet Union. The young woman and her family escape to the forests to begin a partisan war against the German occupiers. In KATUSHA BOOK TWO, Katusha and her sister Milla join the Red Army and are sent to tank school. Trained to operate the mighty T-34, Katusha fights from countryside to cities and learns the steep price to pay for victory.

Vansant has chronicled history in comics format since 1986. He was the primary artist for Marvel’s acclaimed Vietnam War title, THE ‘NAM, and he has recently returned to historical fiction with his three-volume series KATUSHA, an epic of the eastern front of World War II. He has researched, written, and illustrated many non-fiction graphic novels on subjects including the Korean War, Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglas, and the Battle of Antietam. Since 2013 Vansant has released six non-fiction graphic novels through Zenith Publishing. Vansant is a native of Georgia and served in the United States Navy during the Vietnam War era.

Culture

Hole Up And Create Is Best Advice For Aspiring Writers

June 5, 2014 The Silo 1 Comment

"Do it for the love of it. Ignore the scary things you read about book publishing industry. In fact, don’t read news at all. They will only distract you from writing. Hole up and create." Ksenia Anske — “Do it for the love of it. Ignore the scary things you read about book
publishing industry. In fact, don’t read news at all. They will only distract you
from writing. Hole up and create.” Ksenia Anske

For aspiring writers- I thought very hard about what to write, and decided to settle on a little advice for aspiring writers. Because if you’re one of those hopefuls, you might get scared too easily and give up. The world of book publishing is changing. It looks frightening. The big publishers are fighting for survival, buying off little companies, merging, you name it. Why? Because big companies like Amazon made it possible for anyone to publish a book.

And the world of indie books is growing. I can imagine any starting writer look at this, get the scare of her life and run and hide, and give up on her dream. Because how can you possibly make it? Moreover, how can you possibly make a living? It’s harder than ever to get through to agents. It’s very intimidating to try to self-publish, with all these scary things to be done: finding an editor, a book cover designer, a text formatter, figuring out how the online uploading tools work, promoting your book once it’s published. If you have any kind of embonpoint in any part of your body, metaphorically speaking, it’s enough to lose it, and your brains too. Just by reading this you’re probably already getting scared. There is no way you will make it, is there? There is.

Let’s for a second imagine that none of this exists. Let’s think that writing a book is something you always wanted to do. Not to make a lot of money. Not to become rich and famous. Not to flaunt it into your former classmates faces at your high school reunion. None of it. Let’s imagine you simply always wanted to write a book because you have a story to tell. It’s bursting out of you. You can’t help it. Like a chronic tosspot with this irresistible draw toward alcohol, you simply can’t hold yourself back. May I say something to you? I might not have enough credibility, or clout, or whatever you want to call it. I have only started writing full time 2 years ago and have self-published only 4 novels so far, but I’ve

Ksenia Anske- "writer in bloom" CP — Ksenia Anske

been never happier in my life. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I saw a doctor. I started writing for therapy, and never in the million years did I think anyone would be interested in reading my writing. But people do! People read my books! Can you imagine? I still can’t. I still pinch myself. It’s a miracle. There is a lesson I learned from it, and I keep shouting it at every corner. I want to shout it here, to you, so that you will hear me. It’s very simple. You can do the same.

Don’t be intimidated by the amount of books already published (I know I am, still). Don’t worry about making a living (I know I am, still). Don’t even think about wether or not anyone will read your books (I think about it, too). That doesn’t really matter. What matters is, while you write your book, you get a high which no other drug can give you. You are so happy. When you hold your finished book in your hands, the only other experience that can be compared to it is maybe that of holding your child in your hands for the first time. It is your child. It’s your story. You did it. Funny enough, if you write it for yourself, you’re more likely to find readers. If you forget about the business of book writing and think about the art of book writing, you will produce something extraordinary.

The Writers Retreat inspired by the garden retreats of two literary greats – Virginia Woolf and George Bernard Shaw – whose properties are under the care of the Trust. - See more at: http://www.scottsofthrapstonblog.co.uk/2012/06/a-magical-connection/#sthash.xvVzvEtp.dpuf — The Writers Retreat inspired by the garden retreats of two literary greats – Virginia Woolf and George Bernard Shaw – whose properties are under the care of the Trust. – See more at: http://www.scottsofthrapstonblog.co.uk/2012/06/a-magical-connection/#sthash.xvVzvEtp.dpuf

Know what it is? You will make yourself a little happier, and with that you will make people around you a little happier, and with that you will make the world around you a little happier. Now, imagine what happens when you write your second book, and your third, and your fourth. Do it for the love of it. Ignore the scary things you read about book publishing industry. In fact, don’t read news at all. They will only distract you from writing. Hole up and create. Pour your everything into it, do it so well, that people will want to see what the deal is about. It’s what happened to me, still happening. It’s what will happen to you. So go ahead, write that book. You know you want to. You know you can. I know you can. The rest will happen on its own. For the Silo, Ksenia Anske.

Reviews

Window Fishing Or The Night We Caught Beatlemania

January 14, 2014 The Silo Leave a comment

A Silo Canuck Book Review

I’ve never particularly been a Beatle’s fan. I like some of their songs. I like a number of them very much, but if I was asked the now proverbial question, “The Beatles or The Rolling Stones?” I would probably say, Oh, I don’t know, maybe The Who? The body of work of Mark Knopfler. Massive Attack were massive for me.

But I was not a child of the sixties, “an age of assassins,” John B. Lee writes in his poignant and powerfully executed preface, when “[o]ur childhood martyred almost all the heroes that we’d had.” John F. Kennedy. Robert F. Kennedy. Martin Luther King (Malcolm X, not mentioned but later, yes). “The list is overlong,” Lee says. “It will not end.” I understand more fully than ever these life-shattering moments, for Americans and Canadians alike; for so many Across the Universe . Into this near death of hope came The Beatles. The Beatles came to America, came on a Sunday night in January 1964 to The Ed Sullivan show and, and as Lee exclaims with no exclamation mark, “sang my life awake.”

It’s not a perfect looking book. Yet as I read, the grainy cover photo (by an unknown photographer) of four dapper mop-tops fishing out the window of their Seattle hotel—they literally weren’t allowed to leave—starts to resonate. It’s imperfection could be viewed as integral, evoking a time in music when moments of “perfect imperfection,” as Michael Shatte calls them in his essay, were more common in pop; “happy accidents” which would not be tolerated in this era of hyper-produced top-forty songs, when singers voices are routinely, digitally “auto-tuned” in the studio, and we get used to being disappointed when we hear them live. Then there’s lip-synching. I don’t need to go on. There is great music being made by great musicians right now. But that’s not what we’re here to talk about. This is about a particular moment in pop-music history, in cultural history, and many of the moments that followed.

The book is selected and edited by John B. Lee, a Canadian poet and writer who has published more than fifty books and received over 70 prestigious awards for his work. If you haven’t heard of him don’t feel too bad. He tells me openly there is little money in poetry, reminding me it’s not about that anyway. If it was it probably wouldn’t be poetry.

If you haven’t read him it might be time to start: his verse and prose catch the beauty of rural life, farm life, family life, hockey, human sexuality—life. Just Google him. He’s from home, you know. Right around here, right around me, the Poet Laureate of Brantford, Ontario and Norfolk County, home as well to Alexander Graham Bell and Wayne Gretzky, a poet of sport. Like McEnroe was one of the poets of my youth, making tennis beautiful, thrilling, creative; revolutionary. How I tried to emulate him…

Window Fishing is about a time of Revolution, evolutions in culture, and about growing up in the thick of it all. I wasn’t here yet, but as I read this book I learn. It is a literary volume. The cover photo and torn ticket stub on the back page are its only images. Or are they? Because black words on white paper are also images. And the book’s words, artistically rendered, conjure images as well as ideas. It is poetry, and prose poetry, and personal essays; fine writing by a collection of fine writers.

I learn that for most of the men, who were boys then, pubescent, the Beatles were all about music: musical discovery, even ecstasy. And style too. There was style.

For the women who write about the phenomenon of Beatlemania, there was music too. Absolutely. But there was something else. Something profound: the awakening of sexuality. Even a kind of love. Suddenly I understand all the screaming and crying, the fainting. For emerging, young (straight) women, the Beatles were more than musical. They were also beautiful. Sexy. As Susan Whelehan puts it in her essay: “John. He was mine and I was his…I was going to be his FOREVER. And I am.”

While many parents of the day may have dismissed The Fab Four at first as a silly “boy-band,” we might say now, shaking their longish (for the time), round hair-cuts—singing “Ooooo!” and “Yeah Yeah Yeah!”—fact is from the beginning The Beatles were always at the very least competent, and obviously compelling, musicians. Writes Honey Novick in her probing, poetic essay: “You could actually dance to their music.” And we know they became more and more sophisticated as they progressed through their careers, eventually making challenging, often satisfying real art-music, the way Radiohead did for me in my 20’s.

All this beautiful literature about The Beatles and the 1960’s has inspired me to listen, finally, seriously, to the music. Even if you thought, at the time, “Yeah Yeah Yeah” was just bubblegum for kids, consider the lyrics. One friend to another: “You think you lost your love/Well I saw her yesterday. She says it’s you she’s thinkin’ of/And she told me what to say: She says she loves you.” She loves you man. Yeah! (Yeah! Yeah!). What more is there to celebrate? Ecstatically.

If you were there, or if you want to learn, or if you care about music or culture or the 1960’s or just literature, embrace the “perfect imperfection” of this unique and potent book. Some of the poems made me close my eyes and shut the pages. To savour, digest. Bruce Meyer made me cry. I was 8 years old when Lennon was shot. Assassinated. It made no impact on me then. I wasn’t really there yet. The book put me there, as close as I can ever come. For the Silo, Alan Gibson.

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