Witnesses of the Past

Some D.C. Old-timers recall the Depression years and remember scarcity, love and sharing, and the advantage of living on a farm...

Mein Herren: Schiff und Rogers

Peter Schiff in the Wall Street Journal

Jim Rogers on Bloomberg News



China and The United States joined at the hip...



U.S. Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, "One lesson that I have clearly learned,” said Mr. Paulson, sitting beneath his Chinese watercolor, “You don’t get dramatic change, or reform, or action unless there is a crisis.”

Our treasury secretary's words validate Naomi Klein's thesis and book "The Shock Doctrine". It talks about how the government uses these crises to implement measures that would never go through otherwise. Can anyone say Patriot Act or Banker Bailout?

Here we go again...NAU

Barack Obama, as likeable, charismatic, and intelligent as he obviously is, happens to be a puppet for the interests that elevated him to the world stage. Once there, his talent took over to win the election.

In spite of this however, the ties that bind him are still in place. In this video piece, Lou Dobbs gives evidence to show that "the new boss is beginning to look like the old boss."

A Safe Harbor

With power back at home after 9 days without, we are now visiting family and preparing for Christmas, which gives me a little more time to read and blog.

This morning, I have been catching up on over a month of writings of Patrick J. Buchanan. You can read his column at drudgereport.com or humanevents.com. It usually comes out twice a week, and boy is it spot on.

Here, he talks about the economic future for the United States...

"We are headed either for default on our debts and bankruptcy as a nation, or something less honorable: a quiet cheapening of the debts we have incurred by inflating and destroying the dollar, robbing our creditors of what we owe them and robbing our own people of the value of what they have earned. And so it has come to this."

That is called devaluation, and that is why we need to own some gold. When the dollar collapses, whatever you owe in dollars becomes less, but whatever you hold in dollars to pay it does, too!

However, if you have some gold or silver (the latter very cheap by the way at less than $11 an ounce), you will continue to hold value while everything else is devalued. Remember that throughout recorded history, people have always gone to the safe harbor of gold when their assets were under threat.

For more on this, visit the magnificent Peter Schiff of Euro-Pacific Capital at europac.net. Here is something I just read there...

In 1934, facing a depression President Roosevelt first confiscated gold from every American. Then, he unilaterally devalued the U.S. dollar by 75 percent against gold.

At a stroke, FDR wiped out 75 percent of the dollar denominated debt of the U.S. Treasury.

As both President-Elect Obama and Fed chairman Bernanke are students of FDR, we face the real possibility of a massive devaluation of the U.S. dollar against gold in 2009.

For a more in depth analysis of our financial problems and the inherent dangers they pose for the U.S. economy and U.S. dollar denominated investments, read Peter Schiff’s new book "Crash Proof: How to Profit from the Coming Economic Collapse."

Day 7 - Where is our Power?

I love being the Athol Road Agrarian! I always wanted to homestead, to survive, to live in nature and according to its rhythms...

Well, today the rubber hits the road. We are in Day 7 of a major power outage in Central and Western Massachusetts. At one point 500,000 homes were without power. Now there are about 10,000 - and we are one of them.

We had the distinction of being in the final 64 "dark" homes in our town. National Grid has brought in crews from around the nation, and it still isn't enough. So, it makes you realize man's limitations. I have been discovering several of my own lately.

Yet, no matter my own deficiencies, this holiday episode has been just a confirmation to me of how delicately held our modern lifestyle is in America and the Western world.

Soon, we will all be facing the tough conditions that the masses in the "undeveloped" world have been living in for millenia. Just as at Babel, man has sought to build a society that could stand apart from God, and soon we will see the result of its failure on all fronts.

I don't have much more time left. I need to get some more wood, water, matches, candles, and a little grub to last us through the stormy, snowy weekend. We expect a foot throughout the day today and tomorrow morning with another storm to follow on Sunday.

This is the kind of stuff that I always imagined living in the New England woods, and although I am not really excited about it at the moment, I know that it is God's preparation for me and my family.

Does that mean we have to like the stiff medicine? I would say not, but I am thankful that our lives, both spiritual and physical, are in His hands. I am powerless, but I keep on keeping on. I know he will not forsake us!

We are supposed to be with family celebrating Christmas and singing in a performance of Robert Shaw's Many Moods of Christmas tomorrow. We were supposed to be there two days ago. But we can't leave our house without power to keep the utilities from freezing up over the next frigid week.

My family is really down about being stuck here and missing out on all the fun, especially my little girl. She keeps asking about the electricity and when can we go to Grandma's...

Last night she shared a children's story that she had heard in church one Sabbath. The moral of the story was that sometimes bad things happen to us and that we should trust in God because it means he has something better for us, even though we don't know the what or when.

I told her that is what having faith is all about, and if all our trials over this last week produced such an understanding in her, then it is all more than worth it, and I welcome more trials (as Peter says in the Bible), for they all work together for good...

But we are missing being with our family and friend desperately! Yet, we have to hold on to Jesus' promise to his disciples, "But Ye Shall Receive Power...!" Acts 1:8

He Told Us So...

U.S. Economy - The Philosopher's Stone

Dry Run

I am at the office for the first time since Thursday when a pretty nasty ice storm hit Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Upstate New York. Entire towns have been blacked out. Hundreds of roads are impassable due to downed trees. My friend and neighbor, Ron, had to drive 40 miles to find a gas station with power. I gave him what little gas I had, and he just made it on fumes...

A tree limb took out the power line to our house about 4:30 a.m on Friday. We are the last house on the line. Downline they have power, but we are at the end of the waiting list now because National Grid will not dedicate a team for just one house yet.

The water rush took out half of our driveway, and our basement wall sprung a leak about an inch in diameter through which "un chorrazo de agua" filled our basement with quite a bit of cold groundwater. Fortunately, I got to it before the flooding overwhelmed the woodstove. After the initial panicking in the dark, we got it under control with the kids happily bailing water in their rainboots, and the floor was pretty much dry within an hour. I plugged the hole with hydraulic cement once it dried up. That was a family bonding experience.... no pun intended.

On Sabbath, Ron's wife,Terry, said this was a dry run for the Time of Trouble. I think she has a point. I guess I really didn't realize how dependent we all are on machines and systems controlled by other people and organizations...

We are surviving well, though in spite of some inconveniences. We are warm, dry and together. We praise the Lord and humbly request our power back! In the meantime, we thank God for our woodstove, generator, and well. These supply our basic needs. The last couple of nights have been neat because everything is off except for candles and our shortwave radio. In short, we haven't abandoned the old homestead!

The whole experience has been rather interesting, particularly meeting our neighbors, sharing, and helping each other out. It also reminds me of an article I read and posted on my blog recently. I suppose the bottom line is that we were not as prepared as we could/should have been, and yet we are better off than most. So, we praise the Lord! Even though our lives are in God's hands, we are really thinking how to prepare in every phase of life for something more severe to come in the future. (Check out this blog for more on that.)

I remember a conversation with a friend about a year ago. She told me in disgust that I was thinking and living like we were in the Time of Trouble. I thought perhaps I was too being too pessimistic. The night before last, she showed up (also with no power at home) saying that this situation is a preparation for the Time of Trouble... So..., let's dust off the old Great Controversies, everybody!

This storm is one for the record books, too. Locals have never seen anything like this. Trees down everywhere and nobody has power up in the woods... Route 2 East looked like an ice tree tunnel.

See a Slideshow

By the way, Atlantic Union College has been sheltering the local community. We have local area residents staying in the dorms and eating in the cafe. It's a wonderful way to get reintroduced to the community and excellent PR, if I say so myself!

Country Folks Can Survive! - Hank Williams, Jr.

I've Created a Monster!

These are a couple of my Spanish students going all the way with their own version of La Bamba. Check out Justin's loco guitar licks! Juliana is a riot as well!

America's Cities: The Coming Crisis

"...Thine alabaster cities gleam undimmed by human tears..." America, the Beautiful

I have been following Back to Enoch Ministries for a little while now. They preach an out of the cities message. Here is a preview of the DVD they are working on in this effort. It is called America's Cities: The Coming Crisis. I pray they complete it soon because there are many who need to know...

To learn more, go here.

"The time has come, when, as God opens the way, families should move out of the cities."

Ellen G. White, Adventist Home (p. 139), 1903

Days of Wine and Roses

1896 poem "Vitae Summa Brevis Spem Nos Vetet Incohare Longam" by the English writer Ernest Dowson (1867-1900):[2]

They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate;
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.

Soviet Lessons

Being newly knowledgeable on some things Slavic, I read the most incredible future scenario by a man named Dmitri Orlov. He is Russian and witnessed the complete collapse of the Soviet system. He warns that a similar fate awaits American consumerist, Capitalist culture.

Why does this seem to go against everything we were ever taught?

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news (as though we didn't instinctively know), but this is the cold, hard reality that is staring us in the face. There is no way around it, I fear. As a Christian, it really leaves us no other option than to hide ourselves in Christ and proclaim the message of Jesus' soon coming of Revelation 14.

The Five Stages of Collapse