For wordslinger: Some insight into why humanity has religion. And it came from a yard sale no less.

Last Saturday morning at a yard sale,  a little homemade item caught my eye.  The seller (a young woman in her 20's) had painted a quote on a little canvas.  I picked it up and asked her the price.  She said "a dollar" and then asked me with the most endearing smile if I knew what the quote was all about.  This is the little canvas now hanging on the wall in my courtyard...



I told her no,  I was not familiar with the quote.  And then she told me the source of it.  Said it was written during World War 2 on the wall of a Nazi concentration camp.  When I got it home I plugged the quote into google to try to learn more about it.  Learned it was written by a Jew on the wall of a cellar in the Cologne concentration camp.  And this is the entire writing...

I believe in the sun
even when it is not shining
And I believe in love,
even when there’s no one there.
And I believe in God,
even when he is silent.

I believe through any trial,
there is always a way
But sometimes in this suffering
and hopeless despair
My heart cries for shelter,
to know someone’s there
But a voice rises within me, saying hold on
my child, I’ll give you strength,
I’ll give you hope. Just stay a little while.

I believe in the sun
even when it is not shining
And I believe in love
even when there’s no one there
But I believe in God
even when he is silent
I believe through any trial
there is always a way.

May there someday be sunshine
May there someday be happiness
May there someday be love
May there someday be peace

Here's a little added bonus to try to help me make the case for this.  Also coming from my yard sale experiences.
I recently bought some CD's and one was a Don Williams album.  I found this track on it...



Please don't misinterpret any of this as me becoming religious because that hasn't happened and will not happen even though I'm now blessed with terminal cancer.  And by that I mean religious in the conventional sense of the term.  I have an entirely different perspective.  One that I've attempted to convey in posts in the past with not much success so I have now given up on that.  lol
This is simply an attempt to help explain why so many do have religion.

I have been getting rid of "stuff", and you seem hell bent on collecting more. I do not get my daughter and her garage sale addiction, but she excuses the same as getting "deals" on really cool outfits for the girls......her husband just shakes his head as the basement is full of her "stuff", and she has to plan her own garage sale a couple times of year to free up space........I think of rats running on wheels in a cage......just got to run. My wife and I just shake our heads as to what we did wrong to make our daughter an otherwise intelligent independent woman into a hoarder.

Honest work. What's wrong with that? I know several people who make good money, barter, and give to the poor through their garage sale "addiction."

I thought for sure you would have a story about your own garage sale experiences that top everyone else's!

I have never gone to a garage sale, and my wife and crazed daughter once had a moving sale. I go to equipment auctions about once a year to buy equipment which I use on projects, but this is the purchase of tools. They always at an equipment auction have tables filled with junk which I am always amazed that people pack into this area. I have a friends wife who has an antique shop who is mentally ill with this hoarding drive. She has filled her house and her husband has literally moved to the attic to find living space, and when her mother died, she inherited her mother's house and did not sell it or rent, rather she has filled that house to the rafters with stuff. My friend is a devout catholic who would have divorced her after the kids moved out, but for religious reasons sticks it out. When you walk into their home there is this path to the kitchen as the dining room table has stuff piled to the lighting fixture.

When I talk with her she will openly admits that she has a serious problem, but she is unable to sell stuff. I asked my friend on her business of 15 years how has she done........she has lost money each and every year and has almost exhausted their savings from his employment buying this stuff. I hope my daughter can break this addiction, but she now has friends asking her to set up their garage sales. It is alien to me. I do not get it. There are few material things which have ever meant anything to me. In hindsight the new schwinn bike my parents bought me in second grade, and was the only bike I ever owned was the only thing material I ever got truly excited about. The rest is mostly useless stuff which clutters life.

The folks I know who do well with garage sales do not have this issue of hoarding. It's a business for them.

If your daughter is setting up sales for folks, sounds like she has a good business plan. Is she charging for her consultations?

Bob, I like the sign. Most certainly from the context perspective of the writer.

SheWrites wrote:Bob, I like the sign.  Most certainly from the context perspective of the writer.

Thanks, I thought it to be pretty cool too.

The point of the movie Pearl Harbor is not about living in Hawaii. Hawaii just happens to be the backdrop for the story.
Likewise the point of this thread is not about yard sales.

But if we must turn it into into a referendum on going to yard sales and hoarding which is a legitimate topic for discussion, I'm not sure attacking this purchase of a little (about a foot square in size) canvas for a dollar would make a good argument. Although I admit Donald Trump might think so. lol

Don't get me wrong,  I have no problem with anything being off-topic in any thread I post.  I actually relish any conversation a thread might elicit be it on the topic or off the topic.  I'm as guilty as anyone for going off topic.
And since my first two posts are all I needed to say about the thread topic,  I'll now go off-topic as well.  

The other day a poll was published which revealed Hillary Clinton was now leading in the polls in Georgia.
This morning a poll revealed that Trump is still slightly ahead in Florida.
So what's significant about this you might ask?

The lion's share of Florida's residents do not live in what is known as "lower alabama" and "the redneck riviera" (the Florida panhandle).  
Less than a million people live in the entire Florida panhandle.
The remaining 19 million live in northeast,  central and southern Florida.

A very large portion of that 19 million residents are transplants from northern states.  Which is not the case with Georgia.

So let's go over this again.  Clinton is now ahead in Georgia.  Trump is still ahead in Florida.  lol

Bob wrote:Don't get me wrong,  I have no problem with anything being off-topic in any thread I post.  I actually relish any conversation a thread might elicit be it on the topic or off the topic.  I'm as guilty as anyone for going off topic.
And since my first two posts are all I needed to say about the thread topic,  I'll now go off-topic as well.  

The other day a poll was published which revealed Hillary Clinton was now leading in the polls in Georgia.
This morning a poll revealed that Trump is still slightly ahead in Florida.
So what's significant about this you might ask?

The lion's share of Florida's residents do not live in what is known as "lower alabama" and "the redneck riviera" (the Florida panhandle).  
Less than a million people live in the entire Florida panhandle.
The remaining 19 million live in northeast,  central and southern Florida.

A very large portion of that 19 million residents are transplants from northern states.  Which is not the case with Georgia.

So let's go over this again.  Clinton is now ahead in Georgia.  Trump is still ahead in Florida.  lol

You're a good thinker, Bob. Go Tigers!

SheWrites wrote: Go Tigers!  

Actually I was a part of the Pensacola High Tigers football program.  
I picked up a few bucks each weekend for beer money by parking cars at the stadium before the games.  lol

Bob wrote:

SheWrites wrote: Go Tigers!  

Actually I was a part of the Pensacola High Tigers football program.  
I picked up a few bucks each weekend for beer money by parking cars at the stadium before the games.  lol

I don't recall paying to park. Did you have a scam going on?

SheWrites wrote:

I don't recall paying to park.  Did you have a scam going on?  

Parking was free. The small parking crew got paid for directing the cars into the parking spaces. I think the pay was five bucks, maybe a little more, don't remember for sure. But in 1966 five or ten bucks bought more than it does today.
If I remember right, the minimum wage back then was $1.50/hr or something like that. I think that's what I was paid for bagging groceries. But of course back then bagboys made more on tips than wages. Sometimes considerably more.

Bob wrote:

SheWrites wrote:

I don't recall paying to park.  Did you have a scam going on?  

Parking was free.  The small parking crew got paid for directing the cars into the parking spaces.  I think the pay was five bucks,  maybe a little more, don't remember for sure.  But in 1966 five or ten bucks bought more than it does today.
If I remember right,  the minimum wage back then was $1.50/hr or something like that.  I think that's what I was paid for bagging groceries.  But of course back then bagboys made more on tips than wages.  Sometimes considerably more.  

In 1975 I made $1 an hour babysitting. Then my first real job in 1980 paid $4.20 an hour. Quickly made way to $7.50 an hour and received nice bonuses. My apartment rent was $260/month. Yay for the early 80s.

SheWrites wrote:
Then my first real job in 1980 paid $4.20 an hour.   Quickly made way to $7.50 an hour and received nice bonuses. My apartment rent was $260/month.  Yay for the early 80s.  

By the time I finished college I was already engaged in self-employment. So never got the big wages like $7.50/hr. I think 2 or 3 bucks an hour was the highest wage I ever received as an employee. lol

By the time I finished college I was already engaged in self-employment. So never got the big wages like $7.50/hr. I think 2 or 3 bucks an hour was the highest wage I ever received as an employee. lol



Let me see if I have your resume, parking cars at high school football games, bagging groceries, and working with vending machines making 2 or 3 bucks an hour, and then self employed selling juke boxes..........I must say that is an interesting resume which explains why you dislike Mexicans and Muslims. It does show America is the land of opportunity.

2seaoat wrote:

Let me see if I have your resume, parking cars at high school football games, bagging groceries, and working with vending machines making 2 or 3 bucks an hour, and then self employed selling juke boxes..........I must say that is an interesting resume which explains why you dislike Mexicans and Muslims.  It does show America is the land of opportunity.

My pre-self employment "resume" is a lot more than just that.

The ones I can remember...

Babysitting
Bagging Groceries
Working in the kitchen at the Piknik Drive-in on the beach
Dishwasher at the Angus Steak Ranch
Diver's helper on a salvage barge in the bay
rock musician
"runner" for a local lawyer
telephone solicitor for Perdido Bay Country Club
working on a crew that made the lines in the navy helicopter landing fields
The first "broiler chef" at Red Lobster
and many more that I've now forgotten

As I think about it, some of those jobs probably did pay something higher than 2 or 3 bucks/hour. It's just now been so long I can't remember.
I do remember that working the music gigs earned me about 50 bucks a night and sometimes more.

It was later during self-employment that I owned and operated a route of coin operated game machines, not vending machines.
And that didn't pay me $2 or 3 dollars an hour. During the height of that period, one Ms. Pacman took in $800 weekly (with me getting half that and the location owner getting the other half) and at one point my route had about 50 machines on location.
Since the coin-operated machines were doing the work for me, that allowed me to also be in the business of searching for, restoring and re-selling antique jukeboxes, slot machines, pinball machines, arcade games etc. which was my passion in life.
What I earned from self-employment allowed me to retire from everything at 57.
So that's pretty much my resume.

For you to repeat over and over and over and over that I "dislike Mexicans" or any other nationality, race or ethnic group, is no different than listening to Donald Trump repeat over and over and over and over again that "Hillary is a crook" or that "Obama was not born in the U.S." Which is why I keeping pointing out the many ways you two are very alike.

The only thing you got right in that post is that I definitely do not like the muslim religion.
And this is just one little example of why that is...

http://www.thewrap.com/blame-the-orlando-shooters-anti-gay-dad/

2seaoat, you remind me of an old arcade game called Whack-A-Mole.
You just keep popping up with your bullshit about me and you keep getting smacked down. I think you must be some sort of masochist.
But Whack-A-Mole was always a fun game for the player so don't let me discourage you. lol

No Bob....I really do love you. I am just very disappointed in the hate you show for some folks, and I have ragged on you probably more than I should to make you think. I really do need to lay off, but I have no tolerance for hate.

My resume:
paperboy
lawn cutting/shoveling snow
caddie
golf ball shagging with a bowling bag taking the balls back to Pro giving lesson
dishwasher
bus boy
meter reader
foundry worker
landscaping
auto dealer maintenance
pottery kiln janitor
adult film work
bartender
machinist tapered roller bearings
machinist ball bearings
Manufacturing engineering method studies
MRP system implementation
Inventory and production control
forecasting modeling
First self employed business
title company part owner
Real estate broker
mortgage loan broker
partner in industrial lot development
developer
second business owner
third business owner
semi retired from business one

I guess I loved the work

Let me say one thing about the muslim religion and this also applies to the judeo-christian religion.

The word "religion" as used in the topic for this thread does not mean going to a church service or sending money to jim baker or some goofy old ancient crap that puts down homosexuals and women and justifies all the horrible archaic stuff in those religious texts.

"Religion" as I'm using the term describes something personal.  Not that.