On this date in history...

At a glance, they are your normal typical people that you see every day.  But in the days that would follow January 13, 1978, God would call upon them to show extraordinary courage, patience and love.

On this date in 1978 I left prison behind for the very last time.  I was a habitual criminal. I was first sent to Audy Home at the age of 14 on December 31, 1958.  In the next 19 years, 17 1/2 of those were spent in jails, reformatories and prisons. It was understandable when upon my release the United States Parole Board stated, "There is no reasonable probability that you will ever live at liberty without violating the law." 

This is not a treatise on the existence of God nor one on the power of God to change people's lives.  This is my humble tribute to this group known as God's Promises of Reba Place Fellowship, for their unrelenting patience and love from then until now which enabled me to overcome the obstacles that had continuously beset me over the course of my life.

Let me introduce them to you.  On the far left is Charlotte Oda with her two children below her, Loraine and Bjorn.  Behind Charlotte is (and they are all 'dear friends) Lindy Combs, next to Charlotte is Cindy Warner Baker, next comes Maurine Chesley and in front of her, her son Nathan Chesley. Behind Maurine is Dave Baer and next to Dave is Dennis Chesley, Maurine's husband. In front of Dennis, is Gaye Hurtig, and next to Gaye is Judy Hullings Kalina.  I am the last to the right.

I mentioned last week a child's book, "It's So Nice To Have A Wolf Around The House."  God's Promises is a household, not just a small group of people.  Except for Lindy Combs (who lived behind our apartment building) everyone lived together in a converted living arrangement in four apartments.  Reba Place Fellowship was a communal church straight out of the 2nd Chapter of Acts where everyone shared together their possessions and lived out of a common treasury.  There were 16 small groups, many of them living in similar households with equal number of members.  Minus a wolf of course.

I can hear your voices howling (bad pun John) in the night, "Wait a minute!!!, We see 5 single women and 3 small children, 1 man, and 1 couple, and 1 wolf.  You can't do that!!!"  "Me thinks you protest to much"  I've heard it often said and moreso from scripture, God's ways are not our ways.  He removed any impure thought from even entering my mind.  The ladies were precious to me and even more precious to Him.

Where's Mary?

Mary was also a member of Reba Place Fellowship living in another household.  Mary arrived at Reba in 1975.  While yet in prison I maintained a correspondence with her but there was no relationship between us.  With no where to go upon my release I had been transferred to the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Chicago to enable me to develop contacts when I was released for the purpose of finding housing and employment.

I arrived at the MCC on August 17th, 1977.  Mary's birthday is August 20th and I relished the visit I had with her that day.  Over the next 4 months I developed a correspondence with several members of Reba Place Fellowship and even some members came to visit.  This was new to me because for the most part I never received visits from anybody during my years in prison.  Upon the  arrival of Christmas Eve, God's Promises showed up.  This was more than heart-touching. I had met Dennis Chesley on a couple of other occasions, but this was the first time I had met the 'household'  Maurine Chesley, Charlotte Oda, and Judy Hullings, along with the children showed up on Christmas Eve.  I was speechless because they surprised me.  Before they left Maurine asked me what I was doing the next day, Christmas Day.  'Let's see, let me check my schedule.  This time I had that sense that they would again board Chicago's El and come to visit on Christmas Day.


None of the people in God's Promises knew me at all, even Mary, only knew me from when I was at the U. S. Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Mo. Nor, as far as I knew then, did anybody have the slightest expertise in relating to or working with people coming out of prison.  Dennis and Maurine had had a previous acquaintance with Mary and even Maurine had been a roommate with Mary some years earlier in Lake Forest, Il when they were both teachers.

{Lindy Combs and Judy Kalina exchanging pleasantries at a church function}

I heard it through the grapevine that some thought it might be better if I were in a household populated by more men then the present situation I was in. That might not have had the same outcome.  Men, even Christian men, would have bucked up and wanting to prove that they weren't afraid of the 'big bad wolf'  would not have been as considerate to my circumstances. Besides, this wasn't an experiment to see if it would work.  It was a commitment  that each member of the household agreed too.  I don't even remember any of the women even asking what I had been to prison for, nor how long I had been there. 

Welcome to Morning  Coffee News...

 

I have been working hard to establish what I am calling my new approach to writing on the web.  As mentioned elsewhere it's not exactly 'new'.  I've tried this before 'blogging' but I haven't tried it this year.

I recalled yesterday that I use to have a blog called Morning Coffee News under a different server.  I learned that the company went out of business, therefore the moniker was available.  Blog names, unlike domain names are not under the restrictive guidelines for use but if some other person has such a name why would you want to compete for its use. 

Why Blogging and Why Now...

All things considered, what with the limitations of my health, writing is the one frontier that can afford me revenue.  I can't just stick my toes in the water, I have to immerse my entire efforts and become more disciplined and defined as a writer.  At 69 I don't have a lot of time and can ill afford to play around.  This of course means more blogging and less Facebooking.

With the advancements of technology, what is available to writers to get your message out there is unbelievable.  With a tweek here and there in setting up your blog, with the click of a button you can send your writing around the world or just to your email list or the public and yes, even Facebook.  I have been on Facebook since 2009.  Over the past several months I have been removing past posts.  I find it unbelievable that I posted that much stuff.  I need to convert that much time and effort to making some money at this and not just wiling away my time.

 


The Mentor Connection

I know more than a few people personally who are unemployed or underemployed, the job market has changed drastically since I was out there in the work force.  The economy is in dire straits for that reason alone, not to mention that the rules have changed in hiring practices, (part-time with no benefits).  People need to get more like the 'country boys' because country boys can survive.  People need to get more self-sufficient and not tied to the 9 to 5 work routine.   That has been true for awhile now but even more necessary with each passing year.  A few years ago I founded and incorporated a non-profit called The Mentor Connection.  The Mentor Connection's purpose was to teach life skills, job readiness and job searching skills to the hard core unemployed.  I had everything in place to help a fair number of people at very little start-up costs.  My church provided me with an office and room for teaching classes and the only thing I needed was a piddling little grant of about $30,000 from the city of Evanston.

When the city denied our application for funds I gathered myself together and challanged my alderman who voted against our request and ran against her in the next election for a seat on the City Council.  To the community at large I am still Jack Thomson when it comes to my background, but I have never let that hold me back.

I include all this history to show that I do have the verve and skill necessary to bring something to fruition.  Every step, be it successful or not is a teaching lesson.  The clock is ticking...

Creating A Blog On Blogger

Here are 89 Life Hacks that will Make your Day

The above link is very beneficial and goes well with Country Boys Can Survive.

This is a lot more difficult than they suggested. I could go as is but there are questions that I didn't know existed especially in the layout of the design. There must be 20 questions that I wasn't prepared to answer. Since this is a trial run I suppose I shouldn't be to worried if I mess up.  

Working on embedding a video and found this that I loaded from back when we had a 20 inch snowfall a couple of years or so ago. Let's watch it because I forgot what's in there. And like Nancy Pelosi scammed the nation awhile back "We have to pass the bill to find out what's in the bill."  When the country settled for this idiocy I knew we were already in the 'hand basket.'

You didn't think history would repeat itself did you?  The above video is from a couple of years ago but if you walked that same route around the block that was in the video NOW, this is exactly how it looks.  At the end of the video you'll see a bunch of videos to select from on Youtube, and if you look for the picture of me and Mary and Sara Groves family, you'll have the Ballad of Jack Thomson.  Also remember this is just a formatting session we're doing here for my newest blog Here We Go Again, and here we go.

This next Video is Hank Williams Jr., number Country Boys Can Survive and the question I am wondering is does Duck Dynasty play it on their show?  I cancelled most of cable from my comcast service because I was paying for way more than I was interested in and hadn't seen the show until my daughter gave me a box set of shows for Christmas.