John Denver wouldn't want you to call his death an "accident".

[LoZoccolo]

John Denver was a student of est, and one of the teachings of est is that you are responsible for whatever happens to you. An example they give is that if you get run over by a train, you are the asshole who put yourself on the tracks. They actually used that word "asshole" a lot in their teachings.

So to John Denver: nice going, asshole. You crashed your plane and it's all your fault.

[LaurenG]

1. What the heck made you think of John Denver?

:shrug:

[LoZoccolo]

5. I had heard that John Denver was into est.

Along with Yoko Ono and other people.

[Deja Q]

2. John Denver was a suicidal l00ney t00n, nothing more.

He sung COUNTRY MUSIC, no less!

[nashbridges]

4. With all due respect to the man's memory

John Denver's music didn't have enough balls to be considered country. I'm not exactly sure what you'd call it.

[LoZoccolo]

6. That is peculiar.

After he started studying est, he wanted to be an est teacher, which would mean he might have ended up calling people assholes in front of the group.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

8. I'd call it 1960's

Colorado hippy schmaltz. I love it.

[Deja Q]

12. Judging by your pithy commentary, it must then be called

crap.

[nashbridges]

47. Oh calm down, I don't like country, either

But John Denver music? Not really country, not really pop, so what is it? I call it Mom music, because my mother loves him, but obviously that isn't a genre. I wouldn't call it crap, either. But it definitely can be categorized as "unusual."

Maybe "sensitive-nature-loving-peaceful-mood-tunes"? I don't know. But country, it isn't. It's like calling Shania Twain country, when she's really a pop artist.

John Denver was a perfectly great man, and in every interview I've seen with him he comes off as a genuine article, but he's never come off as country.

[henslee]

37. Annie's song is a very beautiful song.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

3. Just one of those random

out of nowhere John Denver thoughts, huh?

Happens all the time to me.


Take me home.....country roads....to the place....I belooooooong...


da da da da
da da da da

country rooooads, da da da

[LoZoccolo]

7. He actually started writing songs about est.

I don't think he directly called anyone an asshole in a song though.

[TOhioLiberal]

14. Gee...

Not calling people asshole or anything, but he did diss my Town once...ever heard of 'Saturday Night in Toledo Ohio'? :rofl:

[Lex]

16. "I spent a week there in one night."

Or something like that?

[TOhioLiberal]

50. Yep...

...that's the one. Although I don't know if he wrote it or not...:shrug:

[ScreamingMeemie]

57. is like being nowhere at all....

All through the day...as the hours rush by...you sit in the park and you watch the grass die...

Oh, but after the sunset, the dusk and the twilight...when shadows of night start to fall...they roll up the streets precisely at 10 and people who live there are not seen again.


I can sing every John Denver song by heart. We've gone through a brazillian copies of it. With Due respect, Randy Sparks wrote that song. ;)

[TOhioLiberal]

62. Legend has it...

...that he was not exactly popular around here until he apologized for that song. Don't know how true that is...:shrug:

[ScreamingMeemie]

64. Hey, better he made fun of you than someplace say...like...Milwaukee.

;)

[Lex]

9. He truly enjoyed flying experimental aircraft. He knew the risks.

This plane was an experimental aircraft.

His father was a WWII pilot and John Denver loved flying too.

Why does this make him an asshole?

[LoZoccolo]

27. Because the plane crash was his fault according to his philosophy.

I don't know why they call you an asshole for that, but imagine he is laying in the wreckage upset at what just happened. Since it's his fault that he's upset, he would have to call himself an asshole for doing that to himself, according to est.

[EFerrari]

10. He must be clear by now and this thread won't bother him n/t

[GoddessOfGuinness]

17. Clear is a Scientology thing...

Or is it EST, too?

[EFerrari]

20. You won't believe this, lol, but EST is a rip off of Scientology.

Talk about your mutts. :hi:

[GoddessOfGuinness]

25. Oh my gosh...I'm so confused!

I think I need to read some L. Ron Hubbard...quickly!

[EFerrari]

35. Erhardt was a Scientologist who fell out with "Ron" and went on

to line his own pockets, like a good capitalist.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

38. Well that explains why all the ESTies I knew in college

were as glassy-eyed as all the Scientologists I knew...

[EFerrari]

40. Bingo. n/t

[Wcross]

11. I think that, as a pilot he wouldn't call it an accident either.

He took off in an aircraft which had inadequate fuel in one tank and a fuel switch that was in a poor location. He was also unfamiliar with the aircraft which led to his inability to switch tanks. He also forgot to fly the aircraft during the emergency.
John Denver would agree with you. He killed himself.

I enjoyed some of his music, country roads is a good song. I really have a hard time understanding why you would call him an "asshole". Did he offend you in some way? It seems awfully unfair to attack a dead person as they can not defend themselves.

Shame on you.

[LoZoccolo]

28. I am not calling him that...

...so much as I'm remembering him as he would want to be remembered.

He wanted to be an est teacher, which would probably want amount to him calling other people assholes during a seminar they paid for.

[Wcross]

48. I thought he was a good guy and was too hasty in his defense.

I apologize for not getting the point of your post. (I just got off a 12 hour shift at the tire factory-whew!) I don't know anything about this "est" thing and from your comments I really wouldn't want to.(thanks for the heads up on it though!)

Damn- now I am going to have to look into est just to satisfy my curiosity!

[LoZoccolo]

53. I guess John Denver repudiated est later.

See post #31.

[Gregorian]

13. Noooooo! I spent years trying to forget about est.

Est was the beginning of the end for me.

I guess I was so uninspired to do something useful with my time that I dedicated it to est.

I agree with their philosophy. Bush could use a little responsibility. But for a young kid, it was the wrong thing.

Waaa. I want to die. Est fucked my life up. Oh, wait, I mean I fucked my life up. :)


edit- had to add lots of o's to make it sound like I was falling into an endless pit. Sort of like what John Denver did.

[EFerrari]

18. I was at my sister in law's for dinner one night and she asked me

to create a chair.

That's when I knew.

:rofl:

[Gregorian]

29. Hey there!

I am guessing that's est for imagine a chair?

Oh, I made it as far as being a helper for the big meetings. I can't even remember what they were called. And one night I stayed up all night and got to the session four minutes late. I got a personal meeting with Ted Long the head honcho. One of Werners buddies. That was my last experience. God, I have totally blacked out years of my life. Maybe it just comes with being almost fifty. But then, some things are worth forgetting.

I think we need an est thread.

[EFerrari]

33. I flirted with Scientology for a few months. Like an idiot

I thought they really had a philosophy going and not a protection racket.

Ah, youth.

:hi:

[LoZoccolo]

36. I have a question about the teachers getting pissed.

Couldn't you just turn around and blame it on them, or rather, accuse them of blaming you for what is their responsibility (you showing up late)?

[Gregorian]

43. I can't answer that. But it would seem so.

They were detail Nazi's. Everything had to be exact. Precise. In order to preserve the "safety" of the training session.
You're asking someone to remember something he probably didn't understand even back then.
I think it's time for me to do some research. But yes, it would make sense that it was their own fault for letting me get involved. After all, I was just a young stoner who partied all night. Very likely to be late.
Things just didn't add up with the EST seminars.
It was more than likely a means of income for several key members. I think Werner ended up in Switzerland racing cars.

[Gregorian]

51. Found this- seems you are on to something.

Responsibility assumption formed an important part of the est curriculum: however, critics charge that responsibility operated only in one direction, from the top down -- est Forum Leaders and Erhard himself tending towards autocratic shows of discipline.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhard_Seminars_Training

[LoZoccolo]

55. That's interesting.

I knew someone who got into Landmark, which is a descendant of est, and I had known about it previously, and he was trying to get people to go to some free seminar. I told him all this stuff I knew about it (he was surprised) and basically turned him down, but every now and then I wonder what would have happened if I could have thought of some really neat prank to pull on the instructors like start acting like one of them back at them. Like you always think of what to say later.

[LoZoccolo]

56. Also, I had first heard about it...

...in the book Fire in the Valley about the early microcomputer industry. There was a company called IMSAI which was basically on track to put out a serious desktop business computer in the late seventies, before the IBM PC. A bunch of the salespeople were into est and were doing things like selling more than could be reliably produced and creating pressure to get computers out the door which hadn't been adequately engineered and tested and it ended up a big disaster of a company which could have been very successful had they realistically approached their parameters rather than ignoring them.

[Gregorian]

60. Wow. Your post just took me on a journey.

IMSAI. I grew up around the people who started the computer revolution. I was there. The surpluses, the computer clubs. I even spent my youth programming really early computers.

I suppose this doesn't mean much to a lot of people. But it's nostalgic for me. I still have bins full of the surplus stuff I got in the Bay Area.

[LoZoccolo]

30. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to upset you.

I hope I did not trigger something bad.

[Gregorian]

34. Naw. It's all in jest.

Pun intended.

Est was just the catalyst.

[Lex]

15. Denver also helped create the Artic Natural Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

You know, the one we don't want drilled in now?

And he gave a lot of time and money to conservation and environmental causes.

Whatever you think about his music, it had a lot imagery in it from nature and respecting nature.

[bertha katzenengel]

19. "Asshole?"

:eyes:

[Rich Hunt]

21. EST??

Really? I know little about that.

I do know that there are a number of cults that believe this.

It's some people's way of convincing themselves that
everything in this world is 'controllable' or 'manageable'.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

22. Why do we bash dead people

that did their best to make the world a better place?

Leave John Denver alone. Let's bash Bu$h instead.

[graywarrior]

23. He was also a macro whacko

[Redstone]

24. I wonder if the last words that ran through his mind were

"Sunshine on the water..."

Redstone

[DemoTex]

26. At one point, John Denver owned a Lear 35A. He was type-rated in Lears.

I know one of his FlightSafety, Inc., Learjet instructors that told me Denver was quite good in the Lear 35 simulator. That speaks volumes to me, a former Learjet pilot. The Lear (and I flew the Learjet models 25B, 35A, 45, 55, 55C, and 60) can be quite the squirrelly bastard. Especially when operated near the infamous coffin-corner (the high-altitude convergence of low-speed and high-speed buffet boundaries).

http://www.avweb.com/other/ntsb9905.html


Lear 35A

[Gregorian]

32. Wow, interesting ntsb report.

I almost had a similar situation over the San Francisco bay one time. Ran out of fuel in the right tank, had to flip over to the left tank and pump by hand. All the while the bay was sitting there looming, and several other aircraft were in the immediate vicinity.

I've got a North American Bronco AV-10 in my future, hopefully.

[DemoTex]

45. Tank-switching is good fuel-management dicipline.

It keeps the fuel status in the loop. But it is fraught with peril! The Cessna O-1 Birddog required tank-switching.

[Gregorian]

49. I was in a Bonanza V model

I know someone who flies a Long Easy. He's 83!

That report said it was the difficult possition of the fuel selector that caused him to lose control. Sounds like the engine died and he was too low to recover. But he wasn't drunk like I had heard.

[DemoTex]

59. Yep, I can picture it ..

You lean down to the fuel cock by your left leg, switch tanks, and come back up to an "unusual" attitude. Spin, crash, burn.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

31. Actually Denver rejected everything he got from est several years

after doing the programs and basically died a drunk

[GoddessOfGuinness]

39. What a shame...

He had a pretty voice.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

41. He was quite talented

just never beat the drink

[Lex]

42. I admired his conservationism and environmentalism.

Plus, I liked his music--I was a pre-teen who wanted desperately to be able to play the guitar like him.

But anyway, there is a PBS show about Denver and his work on securing the Artic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska that is a really nice program.

[GoddessOfGuinness]

52. I recently played

a memorial/benefit concert with some of the members of his band.
The audience loved it...raised huge amounts of $$ for their cause.

I guess there's this human tendency to gloat over the weaknesses of those who are talented and successful; and I can't say I'm immune to it...I sure do love to hear about Dumbyass's woes. Maybe we just need occasional confirmation of the fact that money isn't everything.
Still, John Denver's life just seems so innocuous compared to Nixon or Reagan and the misery they bestowed on people without seeming to care.

Sometimes I loved his songs; and sometimes I loathed them, because they were played to DEATH on the airwaves. But regardless of what I might have thought of his music at any given time, his music made people happy, and he seemed to enjoy making his audience feel good. I can't take any pleasure from his human frailty.

[nothingshocksmeanymore]

54. Love him or hate him..the guy was prolific

[LoZoccolo]

44. Oh really? I take this all back then.

He wasn't an asshole after all.

[bmbmd]

46. His music gave me joy in my youth.

And it gives me joy today. Think I'll go listen to him some.

[Blue-Jay]

58. John Denver sold more records than Oasis.

In case you were wondering.

[LoZoccolo]

61. They've massaged those numbers.

I know which ones you're talking about, and if you look back to the source, you'll find that they massaged those numbers.

[ZombieNixon]

63. You forgot...

"score one for Oasis". Fallin' down on the job, man! :D