Gorby’s Little Craft Kits

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Can you pick me out  in photo? Craft Session at Camp Woodland, August 25, 1955. You can order the book “Downtown Community School” from Gateways Books & Tapes.

Kids had such a transformative experience working with adults in the Craft Classes at Camp Woodland and Downtown Community School under the direction of Norman Studer during the 1950s, and when families worked together on simple craft projects and craft shows, it was like a bunch of gluons had suddenly bonded the family members into a blended and harmonious unity, and that’s exactly what’s needed in this world of pain.

I’m designing an entire LINE of metal-embossing kits, and I’ll tell you why — the new EK cutter is a piece of crap, although it does admittedly do the job, but it does it with four massive crimps in the sides, which eventually will roll out with pressure and persistence, but the additional effort makes the thing too time-expensive for the marketplace.

So I decided to set up a craft supply “factory” where I either make or encourage and teach others to make little circular foil bits for sale to embossers everywhere.

We’re making embossings that can actually be used in jewelry mountings, because our sizes correspond to the mountings without modification. We’re among the very few who make embossings on round foil disks. Continue reading

Exploiting Your Weaknesses

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Artist’s Conception of the small town of  Summershire in my latest adventure videogame, “The Portal Game”, due for release this year.

Weakness takes you down, makes your legs unsteady, on the verge of collapse, your ribcage quivers and shakes uncontrollably, and your back aches with the pain of just being there. You can barely move enough to bring yourself to your desk chair, and turn on your computer and left-mouse click the desktop graphic to invoke the Diablo 2 Expansion Pack game engine, but somehow you manage it and sit back to admire your effort.

You invoke the character you intend to run on this session, hoping your utter weakness and helplessness and despair don’t spill over into the game environment to bring sudden death to your Avatar, but you know that you’re just not up to the task, and you’re  unable to make those “good moves” that saves the life of your Avatar time after time, but tonight, you’re feeling so damn punk that you doubt your ability to destroy the enemy creatures.

One secret to handling the weakness and despair and inability to focus is to CREATE A PURPOSE for yourself to accomplish in THIS SESSION.

Don’t try to make it too complex or difficult. It should be an easily attainable goal, some end result that you can see and feel and sense, and yet isn’t too far out of reach.

What you want to create for yourself tonight is a specific and easily reached “Attainable Goal”.

Sometimes the Attainable Goal is the next quest, sometimes the next Experience Level or a higher specific Experience Level that you feel you can attain in the time you have available for this particular gaming session.

The SETTING OF THE GAMING SESSION GOAL is the singlemost important action you will take in Spiritual Gaming Rehab. Continue reading

Spiritual Rehab Clinics

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8 and 10 hour gaming sessions work wonders on your Essential Self.

Why do you go to church, synagogue, temple, gathering, circle or group therapy? You go because your spirit is sick, tired, wandering alone, helplessly crumbling under the crushing heel that grinds you down into the mindless tedium, organic pain, mental overwhelm, personal habits, addictions and money worries of daily life.

Want fast, fast, fast relief?

Nothing could be simpler, but you don’t heal the body, you heal the spirit. Spiritual Healing can be achieved through a number of different ways, one of which is intensive video gaming in the right environment doing the right things and accomplishing the right goals in the right way, all of which is contained in the personal training program.

What is the personal training program? Continue reading

Devastation Strikes

We’re all used to devastating catastrophic events in our lives; well, we’re having two of them here right now.

First is, my 25 year old Chrysler New Yorker (the only car my back will tolerate riding in at all, even for short drives to doctor or dentist) needs to go into the shop once again, with more evidence of aging. It’s had a number of breakdowns lately, all involving having to be rescued from a highway roadside.

Last week we made the local papers; we got a new fuel pump, which got my elderly vehicle going again after coming to a dead halt in the middle of nowhere the previous Friday, my watercolor teaching class day. We were getting gas after the class, when all of a sudden, the old gasket gave way, and we were sitting on top of an enormous gasoline storage tank below the pavement, on which we were sitting, helpless, in a huge 30 foot wide puddle of gasoline just waiting for a lit cigarette butt.

We were right next door to the fire station, and within 60 seconds, there were a bunch of guys in yellow slickers screaming to get out of the car, don’t slam the door, don’t try to take anything out with us, and to be careful not to make a spark!

Within half an hour, it was safe to remove our groceries and get out of the way of the tow truck guys, who were assisted by the firemen.

Okay, so after a third tow — we’re getting to know the towing guys by name — we had the 25 year old gasket replaced. But you’ll probably have already guessed what happened next…

I thought it would be good if our mechanic went through the whole car to see if anything else needed doing… so we brought it limping in.

Turns out that there’s a lot of stuff, small but important stuff, that needs doing on a car this old — think of it as a vintage or antique car — so, virtually all the power steering stuff, brakes, shocks, front axle leaks, air conditioner compressor blew up, plus some other stuff that involves rubber seals, hoses and such — all of which are easily destroyed by polluted atmosphere — well, those are pretty far gone after a quarter century.

Continue reading