Sanitarium Archives - Free-Man's Perspective

ROSC 21: Roll It Up and Move Along

Once you know a storm is coming, the only sensible actions are to either protect yourself or to get out of the way. And so it has become time to roll up the Jay’s Bar show and move along. If we simply vanish from view now, there won’t be much in the way of targets to destroy.

None of us, however, are about to deny ourselves: what we are, what we love. We’re still going to live our lives our way. But neither do any of us want to be locked into cages; that helps no one, save self-righteous enforcers. (About whom I can’t help remembering a line from Jesus: Whoever kills you will think he’s doing God a service.) And so we’ll simply change tactics and survive into another day.

The Crypto House looks like it wasn’t connected to this storm, so as long as none of us from the bar make things worse, they should be fine. But Esther will have to avoid the sanitarium for some time. (She and young Johnny have moved in together.)

The kids running the seminars face a harder issue. I’ve talked to them about this and they’re divided. Some want to just sell videos on the darknet and be done with it, while others want to keep going, albeit more carefully… doing it the underground way. I suspect that various of them will take each of those paths.

And what of Mike, our exchange operator in Poland, who is in the enforcers’ sights? Well, I’m as sure as I can be that his friends will warn him to move along. The Polish government is far too close to the US government; they’d pick him up in a minute if asked.

Personally, I hope he gets far away from the Western enforcement sphere (maybe to Southeast Asia). And that he winds down or sells his business, waits for the statute of limitations to expire, then comes back home for a visit. His record will be marked, but so long as he colors mostly inside the lines, they’ll probably leave him alone.

As for myself, I will cease reporting this story. This is my last dispatch.

But this is the closing of a chapter, not the closing of a movement. These kids have broken out of the status quo and have been exposed to the life of adventure. They won’t just give it up.

I’ve warned them, of course, about dealing with such storms: that you must not only be smart about it, but you must have a “why” for what you do. You need a larger reason than “to make money” or “because it’s cool.” If you don’t, the first wave of tribulation is likely to wash you away.

Nonetheless, some small number of us will suffer for moving the world into a better day. It has happened innumerable times in the past, and it’s already happened this time… and it more than likely will happen again. We’re moving out of an archaic and barbaric era and into a humane and open era… and that won’t happen without resistance; people addicted to status, power, and control will fight it.

But I do think I’ve shown these young people how to turn the odds in their favor, which was my mission from the beginning.

Further, I’m convinced that this will spread. As I was working on this article a quote from the psychologist Carl Jung came to mind:

[M]an doesn’t permit, forever, his nullification.

Man does allow himself to be nullified for a time. And this has been seen in the status quo world over several generations: in the docile compliance of the factory model, in the forced grouping and conditioning of government schooling, in the modern West’s automated obedience to authority… no matter how badly authority screws up.

But that’s changing now. My young friends are no longer happy being nullified. They could live on government handouts if they wanted – everyone in their generation knows how, after all – but they don’t want to be null beings, housed and fed by a monster state until they die. They want to be alive and self-determinant. They’ll take the blame for their errors and the credit for their successes.

This mindset, which is spreading, will eventually break up the old, archaic regime and bring something better into the world.

To wrap everything up, I went by Jay’s yesterday, to give Michele the news. He understood very well – half a dozen of his customers have been run over by the feds in recent years – but I think he’ll miss us. He very much respected that we were helping disabled people.

As I bade him goodbye for a while (I’ll still stop in occasionally), he smiled. He obviously had something on his mind, and so I waited for him to let it out. And it didn’t take long.

“You’ll be back with a new group in another 20 years, Professor?”

We both laughed.

“God willing, Michele,” I replied as I turned to leave… “God willing.”

* * * * *

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There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.

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* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

ROSC 17: The Rise of the Elderly

Under the mindset of the factory era, old people were expected to move quietly to the side after they stopped working. From there they were to quietly dote on grandchildren, then get sick and die. That, however, has changed.

For one thing, people are living longer and retaining their health into advanced ages. Also, old people never really were fit to be pushed off the stage. Certainly old people tend to slow down, but “slower” is a long way from “no movement at all.” Old people are more than capable of many things, and they frequently have piles of massively valuable experience.

Anyway, what we learned as the sanitarium (and now Crypto House) opened back up last week, was that Esther and the sanitarium refugees have been busy. While they were away, they spread their new ideas to at least three different old folks’ homes. Contrary to the system’s assumptions, the people there – or at least a decent percentage of them – don’t want to disengage from the world, and they do want to continue making an impact in it. Three cars full of such people have visited the sanitarium/Crypto House this past week, and more are expected.

On top of that, the Swedes (wonderful people) are settling in, and the Bitcoin Bus family is slated to stay at the house for a month. As a bonus, the musicians (a few will remain in an extra room for a while) are going to put on weekly concerts in the factory parking lot next door once weather permits. The factory manager ended up being a pretty cool guy, and he thinks his workers will enjoy it after the last shift on Friday. The cops will probably find some permit violation to shut it down with (or rather, their bosses will… God forbid someone might have fun without paying them first), but the manager is game for it as long as the musicians are.

So, lots of good things are happening. But I’m straying from my main subject: the old folks.

Old and Smart Go Together Really Well

The status quo system we all grew up in made a major error by ignoring the abilities of old people. These are people who spent long decades developing important skills. To simply ignore that was ridiculous. Worse, the assumption that they should be moved to the side has been encoded in laws for Social Security, health care, professional regulation, business insurance policies, and more. The legacy system forcibly ejects old people from the pool of the productive.

In the crypto-world, however, they can do whatever they want, and no one need ever even know their age. There are many in the old-age homes who take comfort in filling the role assigned to them by the status quo, and we really have nothing to offer them. But we’re finding a pretty strong percentage of oldsters who don’t want to tread water for 10 or 20 years and then die. They may not want to work full days or weeks, but they do want to work… they don’t want to give up being productive until they need to.

I’ve talked with only five or 10 of these people so far, but here are the things I know they’re up to:

An elderly lawyer has taken up online arbitration work on the Open Bazaar system.
Three sets of old ladies are setting up to work as sales agents for anonymous buyers, working through Open Bazaar. They’ll wear cop-type body cameras and drive from one estate sale or garage sale to another, taking live bids from remote purchasers. They already have a dozen or more customers lined up.
Two retired engineers and a retired programmer have just acquired their first customer for anonymous drone delivery. Their drones (they have two at the moment) are being programmed with a set of maps, GPS, and a memory system using ephemeral key encryption. And so, a client enters his or her address, which goes directly to the drone, which verifies it to be within its flight radius. But it does not share those details with anyone else. The “Tech Elders” team (that’s what they’re calling themselves) then attaches whatever goods are to be delivered (within a specified weight limit) and sends the machine on its way. They are never told where it will go. Once the delivery is completed, the keys that encrypted the address are automatically dropped from the system. It is known that the drone delivered something somewhere, but only the purchaser knows where.
Two friends of friends who really are past their ability to do much have offered their postal addresses for deliveries. If something forbidden gets delivered, what are the enforcers going to do, put them on trial? They’d hardly be considered fit for trial, they’d have no information to give up, and by the time a trial could be arranged, they’d likely have checked out anyway.

All of this will be done behind walls of cryptography. A variety of cryptocurrencies will be used (Bitcoin will mainly be a settlement currency between the other currencies), all communications will be encrypted, and only pseudonyms will be used. But for customer comfort with pseudonyms, they’re using realistic names (Sean W. Thornton, for example) rather than the purposely quirky names we used in the old days of crypto-anarchy.

The Purpose of It All

The entry of the old folks really made me happy. The deep purpose here isn’t to make money or even to escape tyranny. Rather, it’s to help life function in the world. And these old folks still have life in them. They should be able to use it any way they wish to. Crypto gives that to them.

More next time.

* * * * *

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There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.

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* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

ROSC 13: Time to Have Fun Again

Last Wednesday was my day to reorient myself. I end up doing that from time to time, and I think it’s essential, given the complexity and pressures of modern life… and very certainly so, given the complexities of a non-standard life.

Immediately I focused on the messes of the sanitarium and the “superfluous” people I had lent my time to. I don’t regret it of course – it was the right thing to do and may end up keeping a few people from deep trouble – but it quickly became a double-scoop of drama, the kind of thing that can raise your blood pressure unhealthily.

But as soon as I descended toward gloom over these things, I remembered a wise old friend from many years ago. And I knew that if he were present, our conversation would go like this:

“These things you’re worried about, do you need to do them for the money?”

“No.”

“For your family?”

“No.”

“Then either find a way to enjoy them or quit.”

And while this advice is a bit simplistic – there are situations that deserve effort and risk even though they’re neither fun nor profitable – my friend makes a good point.

“Then I’ll make it fun,” I said aloud.

And so that’s what I’ll be doing from now on. I’ve spent far too much of my life dour and scowling. I’ve worked hard to recognize the big picture, and if you can see the whole panorama over time, including the payoffs, things become fun again.

So, as I walked into our meeting at Jays on Thursday, I was feeling happy about what lay before us. Everyone else was a bit sullen. But as I recounted what I’d been thinking, they pulled out of their funk at least a little.

“The people of the sanitarium,” I told them, “will fight their battles, split up, and then continue forward. Or not. Once the trauma is over, we’ll help those who wish to continue.”

They slowly nodded their heads.

“And what about Mike?” one of them asked.

“Mike made a conscious choice. He’s doing what he feels is necessary, and whether he’s right or wrong, he’s acting upon his own mind and his own will. Just by itself that’s a very positive thing. I do, however, think he’ll be gone for a while. Have any of you heard from him?”

They had all heard from him, as it turned out.

“He’s leaving the country,” was the universal response, “within the next week.”

“Remember,” I said, “gone for a while is not the same as gone forever. Life is long and things do change.”

They nodded their heads again, and then several of their faces brightened and they began discussing their businesses: what was working, what wasn’t, and what they wanted to try next. I just listened.

But before I get lost in those details, I want to tell you about the old lawyer’s response to Mike. Surprisingly, he copied the entire email to me. In it, he never answered any of Mike’s questions. What he did, weirdly enough, was tell him a story about O.J. Simpson. Here’s the core of that email:

Everybody knows that when O.J. Simpson was accused of murdering his wife, F. Lee Bailey and Johnnie Cochran and a host of other lawyers defended him. But what is forgotten is that for a few brief moments before he was arrested, he had another lawyer, famous in Hollywood: Howard Weitzman.

I believe that O.J. ran to Weitzman and told him what he’d done and asked for his help. Weitzman was perfectly capable of handling the defense team. But what he would have been unable to overcome was an admission of guilt. So, he told O.J. to never tell another soul, even his lawyers, that he did it. Then Weitzman passed him off to Johnny Cochran.

Cochran and Bailey are about the smartest lawyers going, and there is no way they didn’t suspect the guilt of their client. But if O.J. had told them he was guilty, they could never have put him on the stand. Those are the rules. In the end they didn’t, but it was not because they couldn’t.

O.J. used a disposable lawyer to find out how to deal with another lawyer. I don’t know where he got the idea, but I’ve seen other people do the same thing: Set up an appointment. Use a pen name. Pay cash for the consult. Ask every question they can think of. Suggest every “What if?” Always, it’s their cousin who needs help. Ask for the exact laws the situation impacts on. Ask about penalties for getting caught. Ask about law enforcement tricks.

For better or worse, this is what saved O.J.

I found the whole thing immensely interesting… and clever.

As I’ve been recounting this, however, I’ve received three emails on the sanitarium. It looks like the split is nearly complete. I’ll give you the details next time.

* * * * *

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There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.

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* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

ROSC 10: Truth at the Sanitarium

Last week young Esther asked me back to the sanitarium and told me that the people there “wanted to talk.” I was reasonably sure that the meeting was prompted by Dora’s cancer diagnosis – she seemed to be important to the rest of them, making her passing a turning point – but I also gathered from Esther’s expression that they had more on their minds.

And so I did two things that I’ve learned to do over the years in demanding situations.

First – and I learned this from taking tests – rather than obsessing on the facts I might be expected to know, I focused on getting myself in the best possible condition to face the situation. Whatever was going to happen, I would be the central instrument in it, and so I prepared myself first and foremost: good sleep, a nourishing but not heavy meal several hours prior, and so on.

Second – and I learned this one from doing radio shows – I focused my mind, not on knowledge, but on loving the people I’d be addressing.

(If you find yourself stepping into a demanding situation, please try these two things. They work.)

“We Need to Know Why”

They sat me at the head of the dining room table, which was pulled so far toward the wall that I was almost against it. Then they all came in and sat, filling up the remaining spaces at the table and then the open space at the other end of the room. Everyone in the sanitarium was there.

Dora spoke for all of them.

“Look,” she said, “we’re about to ask you some hard questions, and you probably won’t like it, but we need answers, and you’re our best chance at getting them.”

I made myself focus on my own operations and on loving them. I nodded my understanding.

“We need to know – really know – why this happened to us. Why are we ugly and deformed? We know that some other people have suffered worse, and we can understand the words, “We just got unlucky,” but that’s not enough! This is us; we suffer through this every day, and will, every day, till we die…

“So, we want you to make sense of this for us. And I think you can.”

Two thoughts slid through my mind – helluva a job you stepped into and I’m less sure about this than I am that 2 plus 2 equals 4 – but they only slid through; they didn’t seize the mechanism.

“Okay,” I said, I’ll tell you what I think, flat out.”

They sat back and waited. And I waited too; I could feel things forming in me, but I still didn’t know what I’d say. When I opened my mouth this is what came out:

“You’re quite correct that the things that happened to you were accidents, but that’s never going to be satisfying until you have an overview that supports it,” I said.

“And right now you’re struggling within the old model of God… So are the atheists,” I added. “They base their anger upon the same model.

“And so, here’s the big thing: There was a creator, but there is no “omnipotent God” as people imagine him, controlling everything that happens in the world. That much is clear from the condition of the world and it’s also implied fairly well in the Bible… religious people just don’t see it because their theologies come first.”

I paused to let the words sink in.

“And so we can drop the dark imaginings that are tied to that structure – that someone didn’t care enough about us and that he cared about other people more. That whole model is simply wrong. Those ideas were based upon distortions.”

I paused again for a few beats.

“Now, let me give you something further. We’re all at an early stage of development – even the best of us. We’re not ready to even imagine what our final state might be. Really, we’re not terribly far past crawling out of our holes and making sense of light and dark.

“But… the seed of our advanced state – whatever it may be – is already in us. As Moses said, we don’t have to send someone into the heavens or into a far country to get it for us and bring it to us. It’s in us already.

“And it’s in you – as unfortunately as your bodies may be formed – equally as much as it’s in anyone else.”

Then I knew I was done and I stopped. In my younger days I would have been tempted to elucidate on the theme, but I’ve learned to simply shut up. It’s better.

Seeing tear-filled eyes I was grateful that I was able to do this job. And so we sat in silence for some time.

I’ll tell you next time what happened afterward.

* * * * *

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I just finished reading The Breaking Dawn and found it to be one of the most thought-provoking, amazing books I have ever read… It will be hard to read another book now that I’ve read this book… I want everyone to read it.
Such a tour de force, so many ideas. And I am amazed at the courage to write such a book, that challenges so many people’s conceptions.
There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.

Get it at Amazon ($18.95) or on Kindle: ($5.99)

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

ROSC 7: The Cloaked Life

The Thursday after my visit to the sanitarium, I showed up early to the TCM lunch at Jay’s Bar. I brought a legal pad and a pen, sat down, and started making notes.
“You look serious this time, Professor.”
I looked up to see Michele handing me a lunch menu.
“Yeah, I picked up another hard problem, and I want the team to help me with it.”
Michele laughed. “I remember you biting off a lot of hard problems before.”
He couldn’t have been more than a teenager the last time I hung out in the back room with the cypherpunks, but he was right. I had always been a sucker for a hot new project.
I laughed too. “I hate to admit it, Michele, but you’re right. I did. I’ve pretty well gotten over that, but I couldn’t turn away from this one. It’s for people who are pretty badly disabled.”
“You and this group are doing something to help those people?” he asked.
“We are, at least as well as we can.”
Just then a couple sat at the bar and his busboy showed up. He turned to go, but before he did, he said, “I’m very glad you do that.”
Soon the group assembled and I explained my problem: that I had a group of people who, because of their infirmities (or disabilities, or whatever their conditions should be called) couldn’t conduct business the usual way and needed to do it entirely in the digital realm.
“They shouldn’t use their real names,” Nikos was quick to say. “Regardless of what they’re doing. There are a lot of feds skulking around these days, and they can make anyone look like a crook if they want to.”
We all nodded our heads in agreement, and I added, “Yeah, that’s their plan. Pseudonyms only.”
“Good,” Nikos said, adding, “And they have to use encryption… all the time… as a default.”
And that set the table into a near uproar, both of agreement and of disgust with the lack of reason on the darknet.
Johnny’s was the voice I noticed most. He said, “Did you see the details of the dark market takedown last month?”
“What about it?” a couple of them asked.
“The feds pulled more than 10,000 unencrypted emails from the system. Unencrypted, while buying drugs! What the hell were these people thinking? There’s some kind of brain virus at work here.” Then he turned to me. “You have to make them use encryption, and if they don’t, you refuse to teach them. Anything else would be crazy.”
I wrote Thunderbird, GPG and Enigmail on my pad and underlined it twice. Then I turned to Esther, whom I knew would be critical in this. “Do you know how to use these tools?”
“No, not really,” she said.
“All right then; this is step number one. Nothing else happens until everyone is using encryption on a daily basis. It’s not hard, but they have to do it. Without encryption, nothing happens.”
Johnny turned to Esther and said, “I can teach you.”
She agreed.
I had been wondering if Johnny was sweet on Esther, and this convinced me. I hope things can work out between them. And they should; pairing off is simply what young men and women do if you get out of their way and let them. We’re all awkward about it, but it happens nonetheless.
Then Jordan, one of the newer people to our group, jumped in.
“And they must never trust Tor nodes. I’m convinced that the feds run most of them.”
“Of that I’m sure,” I added. “Several years ago – right about the time they went after Silk Road – the number of Tor nodes doubled in a month. That’s when the feds ramped up their search techniques. For a one-time in and out, Tor is probably okay, but to run an ongoing service is asking for trouble. If you get big enough for them to focus on you, they will find you.”
“I2P is better,” Jordan added. “At least the new version that’s in C++, not Java. It requires you to use a command line, but that’s only hard if you think it’s hard.”
I explained to everyone, and especially to Esther, who was doing a nice job of taking notes, that the Invisible Internet Project (properly, I²P) was like Tor, only better and not overrun by feds. It’s the new darknet of choice.
Then Jordan, with surprising elegance for a young man, turned to address Esther and Johnny together. “If you want to set it up, just bring a laptop to one of these lunches and I’ll help; the new version still requires configuration. They’ll make it smoother eventually, but you shouldn’t wait for that.”
They thanked him, and I thought that this was enough techie stuff for the day. So, when the food arrived and the conversation shifted, I backed off and let it.
More next time.

* * * * *

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I just finished reading The Breaking Dawn and found it to be one of the most thought-provoking, amazing books I have ever read… It will be hard to read another book now that I’ve read this book… I want everyone to read it.
Such a tour de force, so many ideas. And I am amazed at the courage to write such a book, that challenges so many people’s conceptions.
There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.

Get it at Amazon ($18.95) or on Kindle: ($5.99)

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

ROSC 6: Rise of the Scarred People

In the back room of the sanitarium, young Esther showed me a handmade plaque, about the size of a typical award plaque, which it may have been originally.
“Everyone here has gone through this,” she said. “Even me.”
I’m pretty well used to dark things (having read lots of nasty history), but this was a dark perspective that was new and slightly jarring. It read:

This is where scarred and rejected people live. Go away and don’t embarrass us any further. We’re not pretty like you and we never will be. We don’t have money and we don’t have power and we know we never will. We are the rejects of the world, and it’s your obligation to leave us alone. Don’t try to make yourself feel good by soothing us – it doesn’t help. And don’t try to make us prosperous and happy like you – we can’t do it and we don’t want to be reminded.

I didn’t know how to respond, so I simply said, “I’m sorry.”
Esther nodded.
But I still had her words in my ears, We’ve all gone through this. And “going through” implies coming out the other side,
“But this is no longer entirely true, is it?”
“Partly,” she said, “but no, not entirely.”
“Like your mom’s story?” I asked. “Wrung out with loss and anger but realizing that you’re still here… and that what’s inside can still operate?”
She smiled halfway. “Yes,” she said. “Not as crisp and clean as you say it, but mostly.”
“Mostly” is a good start, I thought.
A few minutes later I found myself at a large dining room table with most of the sanitarium’s residents. Esther’s mom, Dora, explained what they wanted.
“We want to run businesses from right here in our home and never have to go to banks and other offices. I don’t want to walk down the street and have people looking down at me and comparing themselves to me, which I know is what they do. Can we do that with these new cryptocurrencies?”
“The short answer, Dora, is that yes, you can. But you should know that it’s kind of hard, and a few parts are of questionable legality… not ’cause they’re bad in any real way, but because the governments haven’t a clue what to do with these things and they tend to lash out wildly from time to time. When someone’s frustrated and angry, and if all they own is a whip, they tend to get malicious with it.”
Dora thought for a moment, then responded, “When you say ‘hard,’ what do you mean?”
“I mean that part of it will be slow and plodding, not that it requires you to write computer programs or anything like that.”
“We can do that,” she said. (This would have been the time when I might have smirked were I her, but her face never flinched. It seemed that she had trained herself not to smile, which I found painfully sad.) “We have plenty of time on our hands.”
“Okay,” I said, “then you should be able to do it. There will be the occasional false start and all the usual difficulties of business… and you’ll be limited to the cyrpto-economy, which is still developing… but you can do it.”
This time I saw just a little bit of light in Dora’s face, and just as fast I told myself that I could not – no matter what – allow myself to subvert that tiny sprout of happiness.
“Will you tell us how to do this?” she asked.
“I will, Dora, but what I’m really going to do is to teach you how to learn about all this stuff. In fairly short order, you guys will know more than I do.”
Her face began to turn suspicious and I remembered the plaque: Don’t try to make yourselves feel good by soothing us, so I jumped right back into the conversation.
“And I’m serious about that. I know the broad outlines and I can tell you where to go, but I’m not up on the new tricks. I no longer have time for that.”
Dora seemed to be content.
I explained that my time was limited but that I could stop by their place the following week and get them started. I took a look at their computer equipment and their internet connection and advised some upgrades. They said they’d take care of them.
So now I have to teach a group of people how to conduct business purely in the digital economy – no banks, no offices, and so on. Plenty of people do that already, but I’m not one of them. So, I just bit off yet more learning. Thankfully, I have cool friends.
More next time.

* * * * *

A book that generates comments like these, from actual readers, might be worth your time:

I just finished reading The Breaking Dawn and found it to be one of the most thought-provoking, amazing books I have ever read… It will be hard to read another book now that I’ve read this book… I want everyone to read it.
Such a tour de force, so many ideas. And I am amazed at the courage to write such a book, that challenges so many people’s conceptions.
There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.

Get it at Amazon ($18.95) or on Kindle: ($5.99)

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Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com

ROSC 5: The Late, Great Chester Cruz

I found the Mueller Sanitarium for the Chronically Ill a few blocks from a place I worked back in the 1980s. It sits almost by itself, at least if you don’t count parking lots, and only a block or so from a rapid transit train. It’s tucked in between a middle class neighborhood and a small industrial park. The building itself is an old brick six-flat, apparently in good condition, and the sanitarium sign in front is almost discrete. It’s easy to see as you approach the building but was clearly not designed to attract attention.
I walked up the stairs with some trepidation. While I have experience with lots of unusual things, deformed people are not my specialty, and it seems that most of us are instinctively turned away from such sights. I honestly don’t think any kind of hatred is involved, or even devaluation per se; it’s just that those things strike us as very wrong. Humans – in our deep instincts it seems – are supposed to be healthy, attractive creatures.
But I had prepared myself along the way, and I was confident that I was ready. I rang the bell and within a few seconds Esther appeared. She welcomed me in and guided me to their “front room,” where I couldn’t help seeing a large portrait hanging, painted fairly well in oils.
“That’s the man who founded this place,” she said. “Chester Cruz. He died when I was very young, so I’m not sure if I really remember him or not, but we all owe him the effective portions of our lives.”
Just then, two old men walked in. They seemed half afraid of my reaction and half happy to meet me.
“You wrote the article on tortured children?” one of them asked.
The man had a badly withered right arm and a twisted torso. He walked with difficulty.
“Yes,” I said, “I did.”
He extended his left hand to me and I shook it.
“Thank you,” he added.
“It was my pleasure, sir. I felt I needed to. Those children deserved to be defended.”
Then I looked at the other man. I had to stop myself from gasping, not because of how he looked, but because I thought I knew him. I have, however, learned not to trust my poker face too well and so I spoke quickly.
“I think I know you… or rather… I used to see you.”
He smiled. Even through a badly damaged and poorly repaired face (this man had obviously been through some horrible accident), I could tell. And by this time, I was no longer concerned about my expressions.
“Back in the 1990s, did you used to walk down the alley between Wabash and State in the very early morning, going north from 11^th Street?”
He smiled again. “Yes I did,” he said. “I used to work at the police headquarters there, from 11 at night till four in the morning. They tucked me away in the repair garage, but they kept me on till retirement.”
I had seen this man when I lived on 9^th Street and parked on State. When I got up very early in the morning, as I did occasionally, he would appear in the alley like a character in an old film noir movie: his collar pulled up and a fedora pulled down over his face, sticking to the shadows underneath the elevated train tracks. I’ve been tempted several times to write a story about him or at least to include him in a novel. It just never worked out.
I shortly met four other residents, and I’ll get to their commercial efforts next time, but first I want to tell you about the founder of the sanitarium, Chester Cruz.
Cruz was a hunchbacked lawyer. In most cases of this condition (kyphosis), the curvature of the spine doesn’t change over time. But in a small percentage, one of whom was Chester, it gets worse, to the point where it’s almost completely debilitating.
As a young lawyer, Chester looked like he had a bad back or some type of injury. He got tailored suits and covered it up fairly well. And since he was very bright and very motivated, he did quite well in the practice of law.
As time passed, however, Chester’s condition became much worse, to the point where his appearance was a distraction in court. The firm moved him to office work (at the same rate of pay), but Chester’s days were clearly numbered. He could barely stand with his head up after a while. And so, while he still could, he gathered his money, pulled some political favors, and created the sanitarium, securing a permanent tax exemption for it.
Eventually he left the law firm, which, to their immense credit, provided the sanitarium with annual donations through the rest of Chester’s lifetime and several years beyond. The donations stopped only when the firm was purchased by a mega-firm and reorganized.
Chester lived at the sanitarium for the last 14 years of his life, brought people who “needed to be there,” arranged for psychologists to visit regularly (he forced them to wear lab coats to maintain the appearance of a clinic), and created the model of voluntary cooperation that they still maintain.

More to Come

Next time I’ll tell you about their dealings with the outside world, and especially their current difficulties.

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Such a tour de force, so many ideas. And I am amazed at the courage to write such a book, that challenges so many people’s conceptions.
There were so many points where it was hard to read, I was so choked up.
Holy moly! I was familiar with most of the themes presented in A Lodging of Wayfaring Men, but I am still trying to wrap my head around the concepts you presented at the end of this one.

Get it at Amazon ($18.95) or on Kindle: ($5.99)

* * * * *

Paul Rosenberg
www.freemansperspective.com