Author: Stephanie Shepard

I stumbled onto this Reddit thread Workers of Reddit, what is the most disturbing thing your company does and gets away with?  It is eye opening commentary about wide spread corrupt business practices. This is the sad condition of business in America. I would advise people not to be a consumer at ANY failing corporate business in the near future. The Retail Death Rattle will take down employees and customers alike.

1.  The company I used to work for has successfully lobbied for the right to extend credit to consumers. This is essentially the right to create money – or at least the fiction of money. They now make a huge amount of their money on financial services – things like interest and late fees – and have the right to lend at extortionate rates. In doing so, they’ve engaged in irresponsible speculation on a global scale, ultimately destabilizing the world economy and leaving millions of people destitute.

Introducing Austin Brown with the influence of the old days of Motown. His music has been stuck in my head for weeks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwCFHmU_RFM

Everything wrong with our economy in just one article. Funny how you will not read this on any MSM outlet in America. It is sad I have to get my financial news from Al-jazeera. There is no hiding the results of this corporate hoarding. Money has to be distributed into local economies to create jobs and infrastructure.

From Al-Jazeera America

by David Cay Johnston @DavidCayJ

By: Stephanie Shepard

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks…will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered…. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.”

Thomas Jefferson in the debate over the Re-charter of the Bank Bill (1809)

Imagine you work at a bank. Your job is to evaluate new loan applicants. You review their credit history, calculate their finances, all to ensure the bank gets repaid. Some loan applicants want to start a business, others want to borrow for a mortgage. Most of your potential borrows have a job, a credit history, and savings. You determine the risks and approve those who meet the bank’s lending criteria.

Now imagine an 18 year old applies for a loan to go to college. They show you their 4.0 GPA. They provide a list of their extra curricular activities. They provide letters of recommendation from their volunteer work. They show you their SAT scores and their ACT scores. They prove they are a team player and goal oriented. They tell you their dream is to become a Veterinarian.

Of the two types of borrowers who should get a loan? Of the two types of borrowers who is guaranteed a loan? Of the two types of borrowers who will repay the loan?

The Federal Reserve has been cooking the books regarding student loan debt. Trying to paint a pretty picture of only a 9.5% delinquency rate. The Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently published its Quarterly Report on Household Debt and Credit.

According to credit.com this is a sham:

“The report highlights the fact that loan-payment delinquency rates continue to improve (i.e. decline). On average, a little over 7% of all outstanding consumer debt obligations are in some stage of delinquency (30 or more days past due), and roughly 70% of those are seriously so (90 or more days past due).

The executive summary also notes that student loan balances that are 90 or more days past due represent 11.5% of the total outstanding. Sure, it’s a troubling metric. But when the FRBNY juxtaposes that amount with the 9.5% of comparably delinquent (and equally uncollateralized) credit card debt, it doesn’t seem so out of whack—until you dig a little deeper.

Unlike credit card balances, not all outstanding student loans are due at any given moment in time. In fact, of the approximately $1.2 trillion of education debt that’s currently on the books, only about half that amount is actually amortizing (the other half pertains to loans for students who are still in school).

So the 11.5% is really closer to 23% because the total amount of delinquent loans should be divided by $600 billion instead of $1.2 trillion. What’s more, these are just the loans that are 90-plus days past due. What of the debts that are 30 or 60 days late? Curiously, that data is nowhere to be found, except for a strong clue in the back of the report.”

Without lending standards the student loan market is getting worse. The Federal Reserve’s easy money policies have created hyperinflation in the market:

“The size of the average student loan in 2005 was $17,233. By 2012 the average U.S. student loan debt climbed to $27,253–a 58% increase in just seven years, according to FICO.”

The perfect storm is brewing in the student loan market. For the bubble to continue, there needs to be a continuous increase of  Millennials enrolling in college. The numbers are not there. The Millennial generation’s population peak is nearly out of their undergraduate years.

No monopoly here, move along. Today I turned on my T.V. and noticed a scrambled signal (I don’t subscribe for any cable, only free local channels). After doing a quick channel scan it is revealed that all channels will now require a special Comcast box to view local and public channels. I have posted two stories below. One from Computerworld about the changes and another from Politico about congress being bought off to push this merger through.

Computerworld – If the Federal Communications Commission allows Comcast to buy Time Warner Cable, you can kiss any dreams of truly high-speed access to an open Internet goodbye. The Internet will be a far poorer place. And Comcast will be a far richer company.

There’s already little broadband competition in the U.S., and this deal will all but kill it. Susan Crawford, a professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and a visiting professor at Harvard Law School who has studied broadband competition, is a harsh critic of the proposed buyout. In an article for Bloomberg, she writes, “The reason this deal is scary is that for the vast majority of businesses in 19 of the 20 largest metropolitan areas in the country, their only choice for a high-capacity wired connection will be Comcast.”

With little or no competition, Comcast will have little reason to increase the speed or lower the cost of broadband. And we need faster, cheaper broadband; the U.S. lags behind many countries in both areas. Akamai says that the average broadband speed in the U.S. is 7.4Mbps, only eighth in the world. And at an average price of $6.14 per Mbps, our broadband access is one of the most expensive in the developed world.

Comcast has already begun introducing broadband data caps, charging higher rates when those caps are exceeded. With the reduction in competition that will ensue from a Time Warner buyout, those caps won’t go away.

When Comcast purchased NBCUniversal, it signed a consent decree with the FCC to adhere to Net neutrality, but only until 2017. After that, Comcast is free to do what it wants. Without any real competition able to offer customers an alternative, what chance is there that Comcast will stick to that agreement a minute longer than it has to?

I keep saying “if” this buyout goes through, but it’s practically in the bag. Comcast has spread its tentacles deep into Washington’s power centers. Meredith Attwell Baker, a onetime FCC commissioner who voted to approve Comcast’s merger with NBCUniversal, is now a Comcast lobbyist. The New York Times reports that Comcast spent $18 million on lobbying in 2013 alone, that Comcast CEO Brian Roberts has golfed with President Obama and that Obama has visited Roberts’ home on Martha’s Vineyard. David Cohen, who heads Comcast’s relationship with government regulators, has been a big Obama fundraiser, once hosting an event at his home that raised $1.2 million. Cohen was also recently a guest at a White House state dinner for French President Francois Hollande.

Still, the deal isn’t done yet. Luckily in this case, the wheels of government grind slowly, and it could take up to a year before the FCC rules on it. It’s a year that opponents should use to do everything they can to stop it.

Preston Gralla is a Computerworld.com contributing editor and the author of more than 35 books, including How the Internet Works (Que, 2006).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMChhrmUe3o

CEO: ” Blah, blah, blah…Bear market, bull market, farmers market. I could give two shits about the recession going Uranus. “

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hkmno7nNWTg

By: SAH

Well folks, I haven’t been hanging around here much because after my divorce I decided to jump off the doom ship and join a multinational corporation. I decided to stop hating the 1%, and now have a firm plan to work my way up there over the next 5 years. I abandoned some of my long held values, have put my kids in the care of private school educators, and am now officially “the man of the family.”

I work with mostly Boomers (yet again, with 80 million of them ahead of me, this has been a life long issue). I work my ass off, they mostly glare at me all day long. Why? Because I work at breakneck efficiency to kick their asses at the job we do. Many of them have been cushy in the corporation or similar competitors for 20-30 years or more. They are complacent, and just coasting along on the fact that they raised their children to be dullards and imbeciles who are unemployable. They can be fat, tired, sick, grumpy, and mediocre because that is still better than so many of the brats they raised.

But you know what pisses Boomers the fuck off worse than anything? When a youngster comes in with intelligence, work ethic, health, energy, youth, and bulldog tenacity — and then works circles around them with utter competence. They glare at me all day long because I can spell, write coherently, do math in my head, go above and beyond on every task, come in early, stay late, and my body is still firm and toned with a BMI under 22, and although I am in my mid 30s I appear to be a millennial in my late 20s. They hate my fucking guts because I remind them that they are old…. And I am making them soil their Depends because they fear there are others like me. And there are!

I had an angry post-menopausal Boomer woman at work tell me that 20 years ago she was the immediate supervisor of our big corporate boss, back when he was a fresh faced mid-20s newbie, then she glared at me. This big boss is firmly a GenXer in his mid-40s, but he worked circles around a bunch of Boomers and made the company a whole lot of money and he moved up to be in charge of our entire regional division. In my particular office, the manager is in his 30s, he is my age and the immediate boss to all these Boomers and me. He started out in my position in an office out East, worked his ass off, made the corporation a whole lot of money and transferred in order to get promoted.

Is it possible for Gen Xers and Millennials to succeed? As individuals, hell yes – corporations want youth, tenacity and talent. As a group, probably not, because as a whole group a lot of us are pessimistic lazy fuckers who can’t do basic things or stick to something long enough to succeed. So far, I am finding that businesses want to get as much work out of you and make as much money off of your employment as possible… While spending the least amount on you in benefits. (Fancy that, they are trying to generate profits). When they recruit a rare Gen Xer or Millennial who can kick ass, they are all over us like white on rice, and want to keep you at their company into the future. We don’t have gout, goiters, Hep C, hip replacement surgeries, 55 prescription meds, we need less sick time and less health care, we aren’t vested yet so we don’t get a bunch of matching funds from the company into the old 401k, we came into the company after all the cushy shit the Boomers were promised when they started out. In short, we cost the company less, and if we work our asses off and sacrifice our family and personal time, we can make them a lot more money than tired, sick old farts can. Plus we can help the old Boomers figure out how to use their company iPads and iPhones, and diagnose and fix wifi network problems in the office without having to call India. Corporations WANT us, and would love to ditch the expensive buckets of decay that have occupied the same desks for decades… They just can’t find 10s of millions of us with the basic skills, and more importantly the will, to get in and get busy. But those who do are coveted and courted. I fucking love it. I smile and work my ass off and am as cheerful and helpful around the office as can be – because I know that at least a couple of the Boomers go home and cry and worry about getting canned because I do good work.

I will say to all the other Gen Xers and Millennials who are sick of the Boomer hegemony of America… Go kick their asses. Take their fucking jobs. Out perform them, out produce them, get promoted above them and watch them grimace and drop like flies from combo stress/obesity caused coronaries. It’s amazingly cathartic.

(CNN) Pontiac, Michigan — For years, the payments went out of the woman’s bank account.

Nobody batted an eyelid. Bills were paid. And life went on as normal in the quiet neighborhood of Pontiac, Michigan.

Neighbors didn’t notice anything unusual. The woman traveled a lot, they said, and kept to herself. One of them mowed her grass to keep things looking tidy.

At some point, her bank account ran dry. The bills stopped being paid.

After its warnings went unanswered, the bank holding the mortgage foreclosed on the house, a common occurrence in a region hit hard by economic woes.

Still, nobody noticed what had happened inside the house. Nobody wondered out loud what had become of the owner.

Not until this week, when a worker sent by the bank to repair a hole in the roof made a grisly discovery.

The woman’s mummified body was sitting in the back seat of her car, parked in the garage. The key was halfway in the ignition.

Authorities say they believe the woman died at least six years ago. They’re still trying to figure out what happened.

“I’ve been doing this 37 years. Never seen anything like this before,” said Undersheriff Mike McCabe of Oakland County, just outside Detroit.

Rarely heard from

The woman, who the sheriff’s office believes to be Pia Farrenkopf, paid her bills from her bank account through auto-pay, according to McCabe. If she were still alive, Oakland County Sheriff Michael Bouchard said, Farrenkopf would be 49 years old.

Neighbors said they didn’t know much about the woman, describing her as of German descent.

“She really kept to herself. We never really heard anything from her,” neighbor Caitlyn Talbot told CNN affiliate WXYZ.

Talbot said she wasn’t aware of anyone having seen the woman, who traveled a lot, in about six years.

“She was probably there for a couple of days, then she’d leave for a week, then she’d come back. Then she’d leave for a month and come back,” Talbot said.

McCabe says neighbors chalked up the woman’s absences to her returning to Germany for long periods of time.

According to the sheriff, Farrenkopf’s employer last saw her in September 2008.

Despite years without a living owner, the house was never broken into, Talbot said. And McCabe said one of the neighbors cut the grass for years.

Authorities told WXYZ that the house appears to have black mold inside, and that detectives entered the building Thursday wearing hazardous material suits.

Bouchard, the county sheriff, said Friday that there were few outward signs of anything awry. Her mail didn’t pile up, since the post office was collecting it. And nothing inside in her home or car pointed to a cause of death.

“Nothing remarkable (was) found in the home,” the sheriff said.

Cause of death undetermined

Police were dispatched to the house for a welfare check in 2007 after a neighbor reported not having seen the owner in a while. After seeing no signs of anything amiss, police went on their way, McCabe said.

While authorities believe the body is that of Farrenkopf, they will rely on dental records to positively identify her. Farrenkopf’s estranged sister has been contacted, according to the undersheriff.

Authorities are awaiting for a toxicology report, which will take four to six weeks, before determining the cause of death. The medical examiner found no signs of trauma to the body, McCabe said.

Dr. Bernardino Pacris, the county deputy medical examiner who conducted the autopsy, told the Detroit Free Press that the woman’s skin was still intact, but that the internal organs had decomposed.

Bouchard, the country sheriff, noted that her body was inside a closed vehicle inside a closed garage — and, thus, not exposed to outside air or other factors that might contribute to decomposition.

Pacris told the newspaper that during the mummification process, skin develops a parchment-like consistency and leathery texture. Finding a body in such a condition is unusual, he said, but “once in a while, we see this.”

By: Stephanie Shepard

www.timeofcalamity.com

Is it possible for the internet to over extend itself? Are there constraints to the internet? Is there such a thing as digital over expansion? Is there going to come a time where we will overload the internet with too information of our own peril? How much information and digital economy can the human brain comprehend?

We speak of collapse in the sense of economic and warfare. Have we ever truly considered if there is a breaking point pertaining to the internet? Most will testify to its unlimited information. But is there any real world value to the internet? People certainly are not getting smarter or more well informed. We have basically handed our lives over to people who can control us with our own personal information.

Since the rise of the internet we have become fools detached from the basic principle of value. Many will spend an exhausted amount of income to stay connected. Without any promise of returned real world value. Our disconnection to the earth, our family, our friends, and our income is becoming obvious. Is there a point when people give up on the internet?

Millennials Are Taking Over The Internet, Not The Economy

Millennials graduating high school and college are faced with a drastically different job market than their elders. There is no sending a simple resume to a company nor filling out a paper job application. Now it is an insane mental minefield of HR hurdles combined with social networking sites. Got a LinkedIn account? How many “connections” do you have? Got a Facebook account? How many “friends” do you have? Got a Twitter account? Who is “following” you? What online certifications do you have? Do you know C+++? What apps have do you have? Do you know how to type?

Then comes the potential employee questionaire. What would you do if your boss asked you to lie? What would you do if you witnessed two employees arguing? What would be the best way to resolve conflict between employees? Have you ever lied? Have you ever used drugs? Have you ever knowingly or unknowingly broke the law? Do you think drugs should legal? Are you a smoker? Do you smoke cigarettes? Do you eat red meat? Do you know the pledge of allegiance? Have you ever been fired? Have you ever left the work force? What were your reasons for leaving the work force? Are you a fast learner? Can you code a website, fight ninjas, and cook a Filet Mignon in under 15 minutes? Who do think will get voted off American Idol this week?

The job market has swayed from “help wanted” and ” no positions available” to “Always taking applications”. Every business in America is always taking applications to pull off the facade of employment opportunities. The real truth is the pool of available work is shrinking. More businesses are closing or downsizing. Leaving only part-time low wage jobs that could be performed with less than a high school education. Even those jobs require an excessive amount of hoops to jump through and a call back time of a month.

We have distanced ourselves so far away from real production and profit we don’t realize there is no longer a productive or profitable economy. There is the illusion of a real world economy. Backed by the few on the top and Wall Street “gains” to testify to a functioning economy.  What is robbing our economy further is the distance between Millennials and real jobs. Now it is 4-5 years in college then wasted time to build up a network and work numerous internships.  The debt black hole of productive means keeps sucking away. Burying the Millennials further into the debtors wasteland. Right behind them are Baby Boomers and Generation Xers that have been sold the lie “You need more education”. If you are a young Boomer or older Gen X you have been sold this lie you need to go further into debt. You need more education to get out of the middle management rat race.

There is No Currency

We no longer have enough legal tender for everybody. This goes beyond what the Fathers deemed as legal tender. This is more extreme then gold or stock value. We have no currency at all. We have a digital representation of a currency backed by absolutely nothing. If deflation hits, we are absolutely screwed. Apparently Warren Buffet is worth billions. Apparently his company Berkshire Hathaway is worth billions. I say “Prove it”. There is not enough printed U.S. dollars in circulation to back up Warren’s billions. There is not enough printed currency to back up any value of Wall Street and Shareholders.  Oprah Winfrey and Bill Gates are billionaire? Let them prove it to us. Let them show us their real wealth. It isn’t there.

Today’s modern billionaire and corporate monopoly elites are nothing more than equity hoarders. Equity does not equal cash. It does not equal gold. It does not represent value. It is just a word backed by nothing. The greatest offenders are equity groups. A collection of revolving digital representation of currency, circulating in a computer system, held by a group of equity hoarders. They spent their lives building equity. Trillions of numbers representing equity with no cash printed to back their claims.

The money in the bank does not exist. While the “bank runs” were happening in Cyprus many people freaked out they could not get their EU dollars, not even considering their money never existed in the first place. There was only so much money in those ATMs, with long lines around the block, of people withdrawing EU cash. The reason the banks shaved some off the top was to prop up their equity. Our bailouts of our banks served the same purpose. It was not to “save” these banks, it was to hide their non-functional purpose. Without cash there is no money. Without a house title there is no mortgage. Without proof of a loan there is no student debt crisis.

Without equity hoarders our system would have already stabilized and the dust of none value would have settled. We would have real value tied to home properties. We would have real value tied to wages. We would have real value of food, oil, and automobiles. We would not have a Trillion dollar mortgage on the Millennials futures because the money never existed in the first place. There would be no Trillion dollar credit card deb,t and those lending the debt would be out of business, as well as their products of debt.

The Baby Boomers Paid into the System

The Baby Boomer generation is taking the brunt of this manipulation. As they should be sittin’ on their front porches,  playin’ canasta, and sippin’ sweet tea; instead they are still debt slaves to billionaire hoarders. Their wealth will never be enough to retire. The finish line will be pushed further out of reach. Even if they are able to collect a Social Security check at the age of 65, their work and contributions would have been in vain. They paid into a system that no longer exists. They paid real cash, from real labor, into a system that turned on them.

Most of the wealth they made in their prime earning years of the late 1990’s and 2000’s never even touched their hands. If they were lucky they were able to work full time . Their wages were direct deposited into their bank accounts, 401ks, Roth IRAs, and taxes were automatically deducted. They were shown paper and computer spread sheets of these transfers. Proof of wealth existence. They then payed their mortgages, second mortgages, auto loans, and their credit card debts. What was left over could either be withdrawn from their accounts in cash or be used to purchase goods with a swipe of a card. They could automatically transfer anything else into a savings account attached to their checking account.

In the past 20 years very little cash has passed into earners hands. Yet, somehow there has been rampant inflation. This is because the billionaire and equity hoarders have shoved their fake currency into the stock market and commodities market. There is very little U.S. dollars backing these stock gains. There is very little U.S. dollars backing mortgages, auto loans, credit card debt, or student loans. The 1% has no clothes, how long before the 99% realizes it is not their fault.

Today I was browsing around Buzzfeed.com and found this fun little quiz.

This week, a 26-year-old college graduate was viscerally rejected by a seasoned marketing professional in Cleveland, Ohio. The graduate had simply sent a Linkedin request, hoping to network with people in Cleveland before moving there. The response she received was representative of the brick wall many millennials face trying to land jobs after graduating.

“You are quite young and green on how business connections work with senior professionals. Apparently you have heard that I produce a Job Bank, and decided it would be stunningly helpful for your career prospects if I shared my 960+ LinkedIn connections with you – a total stranger who has nothing to offer me,” Kelly Blazek wrote. “Your invite to connect is inappropriate, beneficial only to you, and tacky.”

From senior year of high school throughout college, millennials are told to network. Linkedin is a networking social media site that aims to do just that. To reach out to a job bank marketing specialist was a step in the right direction to stand out among the thousands of millennials competing for dozens of jobs in their fields.

Blazek came off as arrogant and resentful of a younger generation that she believes is reducing professionalism in her field.

That couldn’t be further from the truth. The generational gap is apparent in the language alone. Calling a millennial “young” and “green” is telling a spade that it is a spade.

Millennials are aware of their lack of experience. Every job application asks for experience, and people have struggled to build a resume worthy of a career job for years. Yet, people like Blazek aren’t willing to give millennials a chance at earning experience.

Thus, millennials are left to grasp at straws and reach out any way they can. Saddled with an average of $30,000 in student loan debt, sending a request on Linkedin is hardly a drastic, unprofessional action.

Instead, it shows that the graduate researched the area and found out who the power players were. She went above and beyond browsing job sites and lumping her college resume in with those thousands of others. She went straight to the source and simply asked to network.

Later in her rejection letter, Blazek made a point to call the millennial entitled. On a post about students lobbying for more funding for higher education, an AL.com commenter said millennials are looking for handouts. Perhaps some are, but the majority are not.

Figuring in inflation, $30,000 in 1970 is worth $180,000 today with 4.5 percent annual inflation and 517 percent total inflation. To the baby boomers that graduated in the 70s, it must be staggering to imagine graduating with six figures in debt attached to your ankles.

Trying to make a salary decent enough to live on and pay back those student loans makes a Linkedin request seem like small potatoes, doesn’t it?

Where some people would cry entitlement, millennials would call it desperation.

CONTINUE READING>>>

I decided since the entitlement stereotype of Millennials is here to stay, I better embrace it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=elhOc5O1Rbw

Folsom Lake July 20,2011                                                                      Folsom Lake January 16, 2014

The terrible severity of California’s drought is strikingly obvious these side-by-side images of Folsom Lake, a reservoir near Sacramento. On July 20, 2011, the lake was at 97% of its total capacity, according to NASA. On Jan. 16, 2014, the lake had dipped drastically to only 17% of its total capacity. At that time, water levels were so low that it exposed the remains of a Gold-Era-era mining town flooded in the 1950s.

Nearly half-a-million people get their water from Folsom Lake, which flows to the American River. In January, as the river and other major reservoirs dried up, California Gov. Jerry Brown declared a drought emergency and called for voluntary conservation measures.

A lack of precipitation from October through December of last year has “intensified the deficit that had developed during the previous two water years,” NOAA said.

Much-needed rain storms in early February brought limited relief to the Folsom lake, but it remained at less than one-third of what the water storage should be for the time of year, a spokesman for the California Department of Water Resources told The Sacramento Bee.

On Feb. 25, Folsom was at 30% of its total capacity, although the historical average for this date is 54%.

NASA announced on Tuesday that it was partnering with the water resources department to conduct satellite studies that would help California officials better manage the drought by assessing the state’s freshwater resources. That includes “improving estimates of precipitation, water stored in winter snowpack, and changes in groundwater resources,” NASA said in a statement.

The Climate Prediction Center, which issued its latest seasonal drought outlook on Feb. 20, says that the drought will continue and likely worsen in parts of California, the Southwest, and the southern Rockies through March.

Can I vote for Tommy Chong to be the Grey Champion? Anyone? Well, at least I now why SSS is always so pissed off about weed. Pot heads are taking over his golf course.

Aaron Clarey of Captain Capitalism breaks down the MyRA.

I have posted on The Burning Platform a story in the past about The Bath School Disaster. My Aunt and Uncle were survivors who were fortunate not to be on the side of the building that didn’t detonate.  Years ago I read my Aunt’s personal account of that day in the book “The Bath School Disaster” by Monty J. Ellsworth. Only recently I found a copy of her essay online. I have read her essay numerous times over the years, it is one of the few personal accounts of this tragedy.  She was fifteen years old and in the ninth grade the morning of the bombing. 

By: Martha Hintz

THE school buses brought us to school at the usual time but not half as many pupils were there because they were exempt from their final examinations.

The day could not have been more beautiful with its spring freshness and a glorious sunshine which at once encouraged us to master our work, rejoicing and struggling with thoughts of despair.

Peals of childish laughter rang out as the little children ran outdoors with their playmates to romp and roam on and about the school yard before the bell of order rang. Little did their young minds, as the rest of ours, fancy their destiny was at hand. Ah, could they realize that perhaps in a half an hour they would rest in eternity with their playmates hearing the sweet songs of angels as they met them at the gates of Heaven.

The bell rang; boys and girls assembled and began their work more eagerly than ever to obtain the highest mark possible.

In the assembly room which I was in, our superintendent, Mr. Huyck, and Mr. Flory, manual training teacher, were giving examinations to one of their classes when at a quarter of ten a loud crash was heard, shaking the assembly and threatening it with the falling of plaster and lights overhead and raising us, a terror stricken group of pupils, out of our seats with violence. We began to run screaming and crying in the same breath, some running for the door while others made for the windows. Mr. Huyck called us together and ordered several of the older boys after a ladder, who were already on the roof with Mr. Flory and leaped a distance of fourteen feet to the ground. I was thankful that I saw my brother and knew he was safe.

We could see through the door of the assembly room where the blast had done its fatal work most. Yet, we could not imagine how this could have occurred.

Ladders had been secured and we were helped out of the windows by some bystanders and boys nearby. Mr. Huyck stayed until he saw everyone of us out safe.

From every direction we could see people coming, some running at their utmost speed, and others driving machines, both hoping and praying that their children or friends were not among the dead.

Men who had already gathered were clearing away the wreckage and pulling out one child after another. This was the most horrible spectacle one could ever witness, truly on the face of the earth, one could not have seen anything more piteous, or shameful than the scene which lay before our eyes.

One of our teachers who had been fortunate enough to escape from her classroom was with several other girls and I at the time of the second explosion. We were going toward the front of the building when it occurred and, thinking it was the school again, we ran from the place as fast as we possibly could. We knew not what had caused this, but bewildered yet from the first explosion and caring not only to get out in the open country where peace reigned, out and away from those heart-breaking scenes which burdened our minds. As we arrived at the oil station we saw a great fire toward the west, “What could it be?” we asked of one another and “Hark!” “What was that tinkling noise which became more distinct every moment?” “It’s the relief from Lansing, I’ll bet,” said one of our group. Truly, we rejoiced for a moment as we saw a line of cars and ambulances coming at full speed toward Bath.

We were picked up by a few of our friends and taken to a home nearby only to learn that the mother had lost her little daughter. We tried to comfort her but our efforts were all in vain, she only wept more bitterly with sorrow and moaned for her lost one.

Not until we were taken back to Bath did we hear what caused the disaster nor the death of Mr. Huyck and Miss Weatherby. It seemed unbelievable but was not the whole thing like a hideous dream?

Cars came, more and more, ambulances were loading and carrying away the injured, and lying covered up in a row upon the school yard lay they who moved no more.

As we gazed at the mournful picture, my brother came and said he was going home. I bid my friends good-bye who stood nearby and turned to my teacher and gave her a word of farewell and thus we parted.

As we made our way homeward the well-known passage came and lo, how true it was, “He will never forsake thee.”