Who were you in your past life?

@DanielChristensen How completely amazing! I love everything about this, thanks so much for sharing! I wish I had such specific and clear memories of what I believe was my past life. Even if you remember tragedy, you're blessed my friend.

Even if it was only a dream,(which I tend to doubt) it was incredibly insightful.

@Quakertrucker I love that your desired former incarnation would be someone whose purpose was so important and amazing. I am ashamed to say I know nothing about Bill Haywood, but I love to learn and I promise I'll educate myself. Also, I think that part of my 'belief' about reincarnation stems from a desire to believe it's true.

@Angelfire21

There are more books, dissertations, movies, and the like written on the IWW than any other union. I started to say "American union" but that would have been limiting because the IWW considered - hell, still does for that matter - a union of the world rather than of national boundaries.

As mentioned, there are books on the union itself; on some of their struggles - the Ludlow Massacre, the Triangle Fire, the Paterson Strike; on some of their founders and members - Big Bill Haywood, Mother Jones, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn (the so called Rebel Girl - there is a great book on her by that name); and on their poet bard - Joe Hill.

There are many good films and documentaries on the IWW. One of the best is "Matewan" (note: possible spelling error there), a true story of the struggle to unionize mines in West Virginia.

Another good source of information is music. Utah Phillips was a well-respected folk and labor singer - as well as being a card-carrying member of the IWW.

I hope you enjoy reading; you've set yourself up for it!

The IWW is still an active - though diminished - union. It's headquarters is once again in Chicago - where it was founded in 1905 - and its webpage is iww.org.

Finally, when I turned 65, I decided it was time to get some tattoos - my skin had already sagged at that it was going to. Over the course of the next year and a half I got five tattoos - and shut down the operation after that.

The third tattoo I got was a design favored by the union and surrounded by one of their mottos: "An injury to one is an injury to all!"

I am enclosing a photo of the tattoo. The number under the design is my membership number.

[image]
I wish you success in your search - for this or for whatever grasps your imagination.

Peace,

Quakertrucker

@Quakertrucker I love the tattoo and I love the meaning behind and thank you SO much for all the info. I was on Wikipedia wading through information and realized that you are so right, there's a wealth of knowledge to be had about this incredibly important history. I know it's not exactly the same, but my husband is a welder and we know a little something about working hard for your lifestyle and having to fight for fair wages and rights.

I have so much respect for you and will definitely check out the book you mentioned; I love to read almost as much as I love to talk :P

@Angelfire21 it was really vivid. The past life session started with her telling me to imagine I’m floating in white space, then imagining I’m walking into a Forrest that ends with a beach which led to a door in the middle of the ocean. When I stepped through the door I was transformed into my past life...this was several years ago so I don’t remember everything but I do remember alternating from observation and actually walking as my past life self.

@Insomniac100 I have got to do this at some point in my life. I have to know if my sense about what I might have been is even remotely true! I love that of all the things you remembered during this session, your wife was one <3

Romantic enough to be a novel my friend.

@Angelfire21 haha thank you

@DollyLand A horse trainer? Cool and very specific. Who told you this in Sedona AZ? I'm totally curious!

@muffinman No, I totally agree. I consider myself an agnostic Christian, was raised Catholic and yet I still believe or maybe the author in me wants to believe; but whose to say that's not enough?

We will be romanticists together.

@Angelfire21 think i might offer encouragement in your endeavor … if you wish to forage through a forest … or even walk downtown on early sunday morning. that silhouette is yesterday's shadow.

@MsAnnThropy A history buff and a vampire, I'm impressed and fascinated haha... I was expecting at least ONE Madam Lalaurie but maybe not everyone knows their historical, female serial killers like we do :P <3

@JRVanguard People like me would never survive college without people like you and for that, I thank you <3

@Angelfire21 Aww you’re a sweetie pie😊

@JRVanguard

I just saw the repartee between you and Angelfire21 back in January, and I, like you, have always loved to play with MATH. I guess that I am a little slow on the uptake.

I agree with her that understanding a love of MATH is simple. Some people love cosmography and cosmology, some love physics, some love politics, some love psychology, some love genetics, etc., and some love MATH!

Actually, all of these other disciplines depend on an understanding of - if not a love of - MATH. Really, almost all knowledge depends to a greater, or lesser, degree on MATH.

Long before there were calculators, I used to love to figure out the distance to the nearest star. Alpha Centauri, we were told then, was the closest star - before it was recognized to actually be 3 stars (A, B, and Proxima Centauri). I did it with paper and pencil, and made sure to use 365 1/4 days for a year to account for Leap Year - although even this is not exact since years divisible evenly by 400 are not Leap Years.

Around 4th grade, I discovered the Quadratic Equation, and delighted in deriving it from the basic equation, (I don’t know how to type exponents on a keypad, so I will simply spell it out): aX(squared) + bX + c = 0. I did that every couple years for a long time.

And, I love playing with pi. I wrote a comment on the “I Love Pi Day” group site explaining that the proper time - as well as date - to enjoy your pie is 59 minutes and 26 seconds after 3 PM on March 14.

I also suggested that the proper pie to enjoy might be a “Transparent Pie” - an actual Southern or Appalachian dessert - since it is a contrast with pi itself which is imponderable.

I also love the concept of “squaring the circle”. In one sense, it is easy; in another larger sense, it is impossible. It is similar to the question they ask students in school: If you stand some distance - say 10 feet from a wall - and move half the distance to the wall, then half of that distance, then half of that distance, ... , ad infinitum, when will you reach the wall?

My father had a masters in Metalurgical and Chemical Engineering, and taught some basis introductory classes. Early on in the class, he would pose this question to the students: If you are driving along a two mile course and want to average 60 miles per hour over the full course, if you drove 30 miles per hour for the first mile, how fast do you need to go for the second mile?

Let me know your answer. By the way, most of the students got the answer wrong because they went for the simple apparent answer. He just wanted to show them that life or science or math is not always as easy as it appears at first glance.

My dad taught me this problem when I was in 3rd or 4th grade.

Around the same time, he was trying to teach his oldest child (I was the second child) - my 6 year older sister - about imaginary and complex numbers. She just threw up her hands in despair and failed her MATH class. Seeing that I was engrossed, he taught me instead.

I started college in Electrical Engineering - with an obvious heavy concentration in MATH and science - but switched to secondary education my Junior year, and taught MATH and science at an American School in San Jose, Costa Rica, before returning to the States to attend law school.

Then, in a story much too long for this post, I became a mover/truck driver - an occupation at which I was employed for 40 years.

It was great hearing about your love of MATH.

By the way, since the original question of these posts was what hustorical figure would you like to have been in a previous life, I will give an answer suited to a love of MATH. I would love to have been Diophantus since his 3rd century book, “Arithmetica” gave name to an entire branch of MATH.

Quakertrucker

@SW-User I often think that based on luck, I must have been a Roman soldier or something. Part of a great big history that fascinates me, probably committed horrible atrocities on the tribes of the ancient world and as punishment... I was born a 6 foot woman.

@chrisCA Me too, both the good and the bad. I have often thought my past life was somewhere, someone in Rome and while I'm a woman now - I get the weird sense that I was a man before. #maybeI'mjustcrazy

@Angelfire21 Anything is possible. Rome has had a major influence on our modern world. You have to see it in the context of those times.

@Angelfire21 What I've seen in my dreams. Not just seen, but lived, felt, known, smelt, tasted. You know what they did to me? The Indians? Well during the actual fight I got clocked on the head and when they found that I wasn't quite dead they burned me alive.

@Allelse I try to remain pretty neutral on most subjects and I don't mean any offense by this, but it doesn't surprise me that this is the end one of Custer's Men would meet considering the atrocities committed by early Brit-American's on the Natives in what we now call the U.S.

But this is fascinating, thanks for sharing!

@Angelfire21 No complaints from me on that one, though the Indians weren't exactly saints either. But it was a mess! And things like that always are. Two group of sods who were divided by geography for thousands of years meet up and guess what happens? War, death, atrocity and genocide.