Fresh blood

[Tony Stark]

Awe,, I wish somebody would cut my nails and hair for me. But my woman left me. Poor guys ::boohoo::

I give money for church organs in the hope the organ music will distract the congregation's attention from the rest of the service.
--Andrew Carnegie, Scottish-born American industrialist and philanthropist

[Ican'tTalktoYou]

Trust me, no one cut my hair and/or nails that day or any other day I was there.

It is so weird talking about this stuff to people who were there.

The night I spoke to my sister about the seed (referencing my first post), she asked me if the seed helped me at all.  I stopped and really thought about my answer.  I said yes and no.  Their philosophy on life at the seed and life after the seed certainly didn't.  Even the medication thing, like my head would pop off if I ever took cough medicine with codeine in it.  "Call and check with us before you take any medication"...yeah right.

The only thing they did was isolate me from my friends for so long, and tell my parents that if I ever started hanging around them again I was a druggie, that I was afraid to contact anyone.  So I lost touch.  It's really sad.  I have no childhood friends.

My husband just got home from a business trip and I told him about the forum.  He couldn't believe it, as it happened so long ago.  I told him that some things in your life stay with you even if you don't want them too.  If I could blot that time from my memories I probably would.

Most of the people that I knew back then are fine, married with kids, mortgages and jobs.  A few are completely screwed and in jail or dead, but I think you'd find that in any group of people.

I saw that staff guy's name in another post.  Robert Chun (sp?), he's the one that used to hammer me all the time in group.  I would rather have been cleaning toilets that sit in with him.

It's funny, one time when I was 19 or 20, me and a friend were driving by the seed.  I said I wanted to stop and tell the staff to @#$& off.  I couldn't even pull the car into the parking lot.  My heart was racing and I felt like I couldn't breathe.  I just took off.  I guess I clucked like a chicken.

[cleveland]

Hi, I am glad you found this site too. I was in the Seed from '79 to '85, first in Cleveland than on SR 84. I stayed around a long time as an 'oldcomer,' finally leaving when I realized nothing was ever going to change for me unless I took back control over my life. When you said you have no childhood friends, that struck me. I lost contact with everyone from high school thru my freshman year at college, because they were all 'druggies.' from my family I became estranged. I had to reinvent myself at 26 and go on from there. I still mourn the loss of my late teens and 20s. I guess in someways the trauma of dislocating my life was 'valuable,' in that I certainly learned a lot, but at a very high cost. Oddly enough, I can't help feeling some fondness form my seed years and the people I spent time with there, and thru this forum I've come into contact with a few people I knew. Welcome.

[GregFL]

girls had their hair cut in what my sister described as a "pixie" style. It was almost a unisexual cut. They were also stripped of all their makeup and cute clothes,adopted the crude language of the seed and didn't wear any perfume or cologne and were therefore stripped of their femininity.  

This was in my opinion worse than what us guys had to do, which was merely wear our hair in a universally bad style similar to all other seedlings  and wear jeans and mostly white tee shirts or seed shirts.  Our "uniform" per see didn't address our sexuality the way the girls were forced to.

[marshall]

Wow. No perfume either? I guess I was never close enough to a seed 'chick' (a term I still find absurd and demeaning to women) to even notice. Guys weren't allowed facial hair either. This obviosly wasn't an issue for younger guys. The months I spent on my program are about the only time since I was 13 that I haven't at least worn a mustache. I remember being suspicious of the few oldtimers that had facial hair. I thought they must be at least partially full of sh*t.

I recall a staff member getting a really short haircut once and saying that he felt much more 'manly' and that this was a really manly haircut. There were definite images to which seed males and females had to conform. It's like they were trying to turn the clock back to the happy-days 50's in many ways.

[cleveland]

When I was there blue jeans were also suspect. Staff members wore polyester 'slacks' with a golf shirt and matching socks, like Art. Staff women wore the female version of this in pastel colors. AS an oldcomer, the jeans ban was somewhat relaxed but you definitely couldn't wear anything 'cool' which at the time would have been ripped, patched or faded jeans.

Cool tennis shoes like Adidas or Nikes were out too. The only staff member with facial hair finally shaved it off to beg acclaim in the group.

Standards of 'manly' and 'feminine' were very much in the 1950 mold - clean-shaven, short,neat hair, simple clothing - and we were expected to be polite, too, unless interacting with a 'druggie.' Then you could tell them to fuck off.
And then "I love you!"

[GregFL]

trying to match art´s dress style didn´t happen until much later when the seed got smaller and yes, even stranger.

[Ican'tTalktoYou]

I did like some of the people that I met there; however, I didn't form any lasting bonds with anyone.  I didn't really trust anyone.  I definitely thought the staff had their collective heads up their asses. When I was able to take newcomers home with me I tried to make things fun and lighthearted at home.

Some places I lived as a newcomer never let up.  It was 10 to 10 at the seed, and then from the time I got home until I went to sleep and the same in the morning until I arrived at the seed. It was torture.

I remember I had a newcomer named Kyle (sp?) that tried to run in middle of the night.  She accidentally broke the window and oddly enough, I though someone was trying to break in (sleepy brain) and I jumped up and grabbed her and pulled her toward me to keep the nebulous burglar from getting her.  When I realized what was happening it actually hurt my feelings that she tried to run away.  But she was obviously running from the seed and not me personally.

My first day I had on a tight shirt, very short shorts, flip flops and my bathing suit underneath because I was going to skip school and go to the beach.  I got dirty looks when they took me out to the group, and the first time I got stood up (which didn't take long) you best believe that was a major topic of conversation.  I was obviously a whore and playing games with guys.  It's as if they didn't know what kinds of clothes department stores were selling.  To me, I just looked like everyone else at home.

Did anyone else here have to write those damn papers every night?  Or were they doing it to me to make me nuts??  I made a bonfire when I got home and burned them all. :flame:

I remember hearing that the staff members had been junkies and I was very suspect of that fact, even then.  Does anyone know if it was it true or not?

[marshall]

Yes IcantTalktoYou, everyone had to write those papers...moral inventories. At least they were still required when I was there in 76-77. Maybe Cleveland can tell us whether the practice continued in later years. I think I still have a few notebooks full of that stuff in my closet. When I read them now I feel embarrased and slightly nauseated. The 'voices' of the staff / group became my own interior superego....which I think was the general idea. That the mind-control be internalized so that we imagined it was all freely embraced. I was extremely harsh with myself in those pages

BTW, welcome to the forum. The first night I found this forum, I was so disturbed by the memories that it evoked that I was unable to sleep at all. This was followed by several nights of nightmares about being back there. The seed is dead, but apparently lots of knock-offs survive to this day.

[cleveland]

Yup, everybody did moral inventories. Somebody transcribed theirs on this site! Scroll thru and read...

[GregFL]

everyone had to write their "moral inventories" every night, not just you, and the stories of staff being junkies, well some of them maybe but everyone (probably even including you) exagerated their drug "problem".

[Anonymous]

On 2005-01-20 09:46:00, GregFL wrote:

"girls had their hair cut in what my sister described as a "pixie" style. It was almost a unisexual cut. They were also stripped of all their makeup and cute clothes,adopted the crude language of the seed and didn't wear any perfume or cologne and were therefore stripped of their femininity.  

It was 'suggested' I cut my hair and did not.  It was armpit length when I came in.  I did however decide a few months later to get it cut to shoulder length (easier to take care of).  Yeah, I was a KID who should not have been wearing makeup and revealing clothes, i.e., blouses unbuttoned to here, low-rise jeans showing my belly, going braless, etc.  Stripped of my femininity??  I wasn't quite mature enough to understand what that meant at the time, I WAS A KID!! If anything, they taught me to respect myself and my body.  :wave:

[Anonymous]

On 2005-01-20 18:17:00, Anonymous wrote:

It was 'suggested' I cut my hair and did not.  It was armpit length when I came in.  I did however decide a few months later to get it cut to shoulder length (easier to take care of).  Yeah, I was a KID who should not have been wearing makeup and revealing clothes, i.e., blouses unbuttoned to here, low-rise jeans showing my belly, going braless, etc.  Stripped of my femininity??  I wasn't quite mature enough to understand what that meant at the time, I WAS A KID!! If anything, they taught me to respect myself and my body.  :wave: "

If you were old enough to wear a bra then you were old enough to have some sense of femininity.  It is an inherent part of your psychological identity.  For that to be stripped as it was forming was not healthy.

I swear sometimes I really think that parents freak out when they find out that their kid actually has a mind, body and spirit of their own.  It's scary, I know, but our job is to GUIDE our kids through that time period in life.  Our job is NOT to mold them into some image of what we want them to be.  They're going to do outrageous things.  They're going to wear outrageous clothes.  They're going to get piercings or dye their hair weird colors or wear all black or whatever. They're going to try drugs.  They're going to drink.  It's ALL GOING TO HAPPEN AT SOME POINT OR ANOTHER.  It's the start of the process of cutting the apron strings.  Our job is to help them merge into adult responsibilities and privileges with a sense that they balance each other out.  It's like the condom/abstinence thing.  I talked to my kids about sex, explained all the reasons why I thought they should wait until they were really ready, the dangers......all the stuff you're supposed to say.  BUT....I also said...look, if you ARE going to go out and do it, here's a package of condoms.  Same thing with the entire package of growing up.  You KNOW they're going to do stupid, irrational, dangerous, moronic things.  It's a part of growing up.  Helping them find a right balance between finding their own autonomy and keeping themselves alive and relatively healthy is my job.

[Ican'tTalktoYou]

Ah! I just figured out the exact year I got incarcerated at the seed.  It was 1973.  I remember hearing the following new song on the radio all the time at my foster family's house:

Stuck inside these four walls, sent inside forever,
Never seeing no one nice again like you,
Mama you, mama you.
If I ever get out of here,
Thought of giving it all away
To a registered charity.
All I need is a pint a day
If I ever get out of here.

Good Ol' Paul McCartney and also Midnight at the Oasis was on all the time.

Wanting everyone to look and act the same reeeeally inspires creativity and individuality also.  Very healthy to be automatons.

[truthjunkie]

Hi all....I found this site quite by accident, I was searching info on the Hal Marchman Act a few days ago and have been lurking here ever since!  I can't seem to quit reading this stuff.  I still haven't remembered much more about it than this;  it must have been 1972, I think I was at 2 different locations, the first seemed like maybe a huge tent?  I remember the names, Art, Libby.  There was a stage? with a very brightly painted toilet on it maybe it was pink, and although I don't have a specific memory of it being used, I don't think it was a good thing.  The second location seems like it was on a busy, but desolate highway, it was some sort of loading dock,abandoned, concrete wharehouse type place.  I remember my mom suppying me with cartons of cigarettes, probably her own guilt for putting me there.  I asked her questions about it yesterday and her memory is vague but she took me out? or let me quit? because she said she didn't think it was right that they made you stand up in front of everybody and tell what a stupid, worthless asshole you are.  I do remember being very afraid at school (sunrise middle?) to talk to my freinds because they had people watching you and would tell, I can't remember what would happen if you did.  I have no concept in time of how long I was there.