2 Weeks of Struggles and Victories

It's been a long two weeks since I last posted here, and much has happened.

The week before Easter, I was informed by my doctor that my constant fatigue could be the result of sleep apnea, I will have a sleep study Monday night, and he said that if this is sleep apnea, I need to lose close to 100 pounds in order to get the symptoms to possibly die down enough to no longer need a machine like a C-PAP machine.

Easter Sunday, I went to leave my house to go to the Unitarian church I am a part of, and heard a constant thumping sound, and quickly turned around after about a block to go back home, realized I had a flat tire, both front tires were too far gone to be driving on anyway, so I replaced them both.

Then this past Tuesday, the Psychos returned. Yes, the two from The Confrontation that I can't even bring myself to call my parents, because they don't deserve it. I was setting up a new lawnmower I bought in my garage when I heard "Happy Horse", my Black Lab/hound mix barking for a few minutes as though there was something he saw at the front of the house.

I heard a woman later at the back fence talking to Happy Horse and petting him, I looked out, and it's Mrs. Sociopath. I close the door to the garage and lock it. I called Granite City's police dispatch, and told the officers about The Confrontation, and that because of their attempted assault back in December, I would not come out of the garage until the officer arrived.

Despite telling the officers that showed up about how disappointed I was that the officer from The Confrontation didn't even ask me if I wanted them arrested, one of the two officers simply told them to leave and not show up or contact me again, took down my information, and had asked what had been going on before, then left filing no police report, and no arrests.

I was frustrated with the lack of response from the police department, and I knew how much good an internal complaint would do (none), so I went to Madison County's courthouse to try to file a restraining order. I was referred to a case worker for a local legal aid group that helps file the order.

She told me to fill out everything that had happened, all abuse and harassment, on the record or not. Despite listing this incident and The Confrontation (which both had law enforcement as witnesses to them), being forced off medication for depression, and being barricaded in the house and threatened with violence if I tried to leave, the judge sent a deputy to tell me (they don't even let people filing for restraining orders sit in the court room), that they felt there "wasn't enough grounds" for a restraining order.

I felt so defeated and frustrated that for a while, I considered going public with my story, under my name, trying to contact local media if any outlet would pick it up and embarrass either Granite City or Madison County into doing the right thing. I was talking to some online friends about it, and I was shocked at the response I got from the author and activist M. Dolon Hickmon, the writer of 13:24.

He went first to Granite City's mayor, then their police chief, demanding answers from them as to why nothing had been done, telling them that he would start making complaints to Madison County's state attorney's office (a state attorney is Illinois' equivalent of a county prosecutor/District Attorney), and Illinois State Police about their failure to do their job.

Finally, Someone Who Understands What I Am Talking About....

Some days, something happens to me as a blogger, that makes me think that all this time and energy I put into the blog each week is really worth it.

Recently, I posted a guest post from Jonny Scaramanga, creator of the blog Leaving Fundamentalism, about the A.C.E curriculum we both grew up with.

This past week, a comment was made on that post from someone else who personally experienced this atrocious curriculum as a child/teen. Here's what she had to say. Lana is a blogger (author of My Musing Corner), and a cult survivor, her parents were followers of the Bill Gothard/ATI branch of the Independent Fundamental Baptist organization.

Read the full comment here, she talks about where ACE fails in 28 different ways, it's a great read, you can read the comment in it's entirety on the post, or I've made it into a document on Google Drive, for ease of reading,  you can read it in that format here.

The Google document is accessible to anyone, no Google log in required. I'm only including some of the objections from her 28 point list here in this post, because the list, plus my comments would make for what could be the longest post I've ever published on the blog:


1. "You leave out one word of a Bible verse, and its five points off a test. "

She's right about points docked off of tests for failing to remember a Bible verse. In each book (the books are known as "PACE's"), there's a verse that they tell you to learn, and try to help you remember it with various exercises throughout the book, such as segments where the verse is given to you with words missing, and you must fill in the blanks. 

I don't know how it went in her home schooling family, but in the A.C.E school I was in until the 5th grade, the teacher would dock points for misspellings, no matter how minor, my mom was more flexible about that.

10. "The dinosaur and evolution comments are laughable." 

Jonny's aforementioned guest post talks about one of the ridiculous claims regarding creationism vs. evolution. ACE claims that a creature pulled from the ocean in 1977 of the coast of New Zealand could be a species of dinosaur. The creature was actually an animal called a basking shark. The confusion was cleared up in 1978, yet an ACE book published in 1989 was still claiming this. 

ACE also claims that the Lock Ness monster exists and is a type of dinosaur called a plesiosaur. (I wish I was joking about this)

12. "There are racist comments in there."

It's Been A Wild Ride For Me As A Blogger This Week

This week has been a wild one for the blog, with plenty of surprises, ups and downs, and there's been a lot for me to keep with. A guest post of mine was published, I've received a guest post submission, a request for an interview, and some backlash to a post I wrote several weeks ago.

All that in just 3 day's time.....

First, I'll start out with the published guest post. Jonny Scaramanga of the popular blog Leaving Fundamentalism, published a guest post I submitted. It was much the typical fare that you would come to expect on my blog.

 I went more in detail about the private school I attended that was a part of the Independent Fundamental Baptist network. I must have forgotten to include my title when I e-mailed it to him, I had originally titled it "Jumping On Cassettes", after a bizarre experience with the pastor who owned the school (read more about that in the guest post. It was a "life story" post that continued on with more about my home schooling past, and about the road that led me to become an agnostic.

 It was a great honor to write for his blog, he was raised up with the same fundamentalist curriculum I was, Accelerated Christian Education. If you have the time, I would highly encourage you to read a guest post he wrote for my blog, about his own personal experience with this system. It was a great guest post, and a great insight into this awful curriculum.

That very same morning (Monday). I also got a big surprise. I had wrote a guest post for Laughing In Purgatory that was a response to an article by Libby Anne of the Patheos blog Love Joy Feminism. Well, Libby Anne found that post of mine, and responded to it on her blog Monday.

A few things I learned from that experience:

1. Always beware of the tone of anything you write, my post took a somewhat accusatory tone towards Libby Anne, which wasn't what I intended.

2. When talking about a controversial topic, even if the post is meant to be a rant/discuss your personal feelings, always back up the post with links/quotes, people will expect it, even though you just intended for the post to be a rant.

3. Be prepared for backlash. The response wasn't as bad as I expected it to be, and Libby Anne, much to her credit, was rather civil, both in the post, and in a conversation I had with her by e-mail (I respect that about her and her writing, her blog is one of my favorite blogs).

Speaking of Laughing In Purgatory, which is where that original post of mine was posted, the author of that blog, Andrew Hall is back to bring some of his great satire to my blog. I've just received a new proposed guest post from him, I'm reading it now, and it will probably be published on Friday or Saturday.

The last time he sent in a guest post for this blog, it was a great success, and well received by readers. Read that post, Scholar Awarded Templeton Prize for Proving Jesus' Virgin Birth. There were some hidden jokes in that post, for instance, do you know who the man in the picture of "Dr. Mountebank", actually is?

Finally, I've been invited to be a part of the atheist blogger interview series on the blog Deity Shmeity. The blog author, "Grundy", has some great bloggers in that series that have responded to his request for interviews, blogger i have a lot of  respect for, like Vjack of Atheist Revolution, and Hermant Metha of The Friendly Atheist.

I'm honored to be invited to be a part of this project. I can't say for sure when this will be published, it all depends in part, on how soon I can get around to writing my responses to his questions (I've already received them in an e-mail).

It's been a wild week, for sure, it's the most excitement I've had as a blogger in quite a long time...

I'm Back! (and so are some of my favorite blog series)

Hey, finally back from vacation, and I've noticed that one of my favorite blog series has returned. "Latebloomer" of Past Tense, Present Progressive has written part 3 of her criticism of fundamentalist author Reb Bradley's awful book "Child Training Tips". Not many people have heard of this book, but it sums up all of the most harmful aspects of raising children with a fundamentalist mindset. My family had never read his book, or even heard of him, but some things he has said, I have heard my mother express about raising children, verbatim. Part 3 in the series, "A Parent who Tries to Change Hearts and Minds Through Spanking" is the conclusion of the series. Read Part 1, and Part 2 if you have not already thorough my previous post on my favorite bloggers.

Another great blog is Leaving Fundamentalism, by British musician, teacher, and former Christian, Jonny Scaramanga. He constantly rails against the Accelerated Christian Education (A.C.E) curriculum that he (and yours truly) was raised with. I saw a post recently about how their European division, Christian Education Europe, has been embarrassed by a former employee exposing their dirty secrets, read about it here.