Safe at Home 4: Where the thread names change, but the Arndts stay the same

[Lurky]

I'm pretty impressed that *something* has happened in Arndt-land....  does this merit sending up the FJ batsignal, to tell our sistren?  (Only in Arndt-land (or Maxhell, I guess0 would a group of grown-up men moving 2km away be seen as exciting news!)

[Suz8710]

I haven’t had a chance to listen to Pastor Rick, but this past weekend was supposed to be the big 40th celebration for Rick & Cathy as well as an open house weekend for the prayer group folks.  They did post this on their FamTeam FB. No snark, the boys’ talents continue to impress me, it’s just sad they are so tied to the family business, family prayer group, family hobbies, family family family....

[Petronella]

8 hours ago, Suz8710 said:

I haven’t had a chance to listen to Pastor Rick, but this past weekend was supposed to be the big 40th celebration for Rick & Cathy as well as an open house weekend for the prayer group folks.  They did post this on their FamTeam FB. No snark, the boys’ talents continue to impress me, it’s just sad they are so tied to the family business, family prayer group, family hobbies, family family family....

Don't some of them want their own anniversary celebrations one day? I JUST DON'T GET how they don't seem to notice the disconnect: Family is the most important thing! But don't you dare have your own family!

[JermajestyDuggar]

13 hours ago, Suz8710 said:

I haven’t had a chance to listen to Pastor Rick, but this past weekend was supposed to be the big 40th celebration for Rick & Cathy as well as an open house weekend for the prayer group folks.  They did post this on their FamTeam FB. No snark, the boys’ talents continue to impress me, it’s just sad they are so tied to the family business, family prayer group, family hobbies, family family family....

Just imagine what they could accomplish with some more freedom! 

[Howl]

So some of the boys are splitting off to form their own...monastery? I wonder if there will be rules about who, external to the hive, gets to visit? Will penguin sheets be de rigeur?  Who determines bed times and when to get up?  Will one man boi be formally appointed Rick's representative?

[socalrules]

On 5/2/2019 at 8:47 AM, AnywhereButHere said:

 

But back to the thread drift... I love Tana French! I have her two latest sitting on my nightstand. I don't want to start them, because then I'll have to finish them, and then I'll be sad that they're done. That doesn't sound too obsessively weird - right?  The Likeness and Broken Harbor are tied for my favorites, but all of the others run a close second. There aren't any that I didn't love.

I will never forgive Tana French for not resolving Into the Woods. I even read some of her other books hoping for an update. 

[Ticklish]

I love Tana French and The Likeness is my favorite! In the Woods and The Secret Place (the one about the boarding school) were my least favorite- the latter because I didn't get the magic stuff that was going on in it and it seemed really jarring to throw that in compared to the rest of her books. 

I really hope for more updates about which Arndts are moving. I really don't understand how not one of these men wants a wife and kids of their own. Rick seems batty enough not to care, but Cathy really doesn't want grandchildren? In a religion that is all about having children? It's weird. 15-20 years ago it may not have seemed so odd to have them still living at home, but if I was single and met one of the Arndt boys (let's say Paul), I'd be very put off by finding out that not only does he still live at home at 39 but that every single one of his adult brothers does too. And then when you get into the weirdness of the birthday cake in the parents bedroom...let's just say there would be no second date and he would become an anecdote I'd tell when people talk about worst first dates. 

[JenniferJuniper]

Cathy loves babies so I'm sure she would love a bunch of grandkids.  

My hypothesis as to why Rick doesn't care about the next generation?  The Arndts aren't quiverfull in the way so many of the families out here are.  Cathy had a bunch of those kids before Rick broke from the Catholic church, so I'm sure it was a combo of Cathy wanting a large family like the one she grew up in and them disdaining birth control as good Catholics.

A large part of the quiverfull movement is based on (mostly white) evangelicals wanting to become a big enough demographic that they can become an important political force in the coming years and decades. (assuming most of the next generations follow the rules).  

Rick Arndt cares not a whit about the long term future of anyone but himself.  He's in his sixties and his youngest two are still in their teens.  As long as whatever he's done to his kids continues to work, he's positioned to be supported by his kids for the next 20 or even 30 years.  Grandkids shramkids.  He knows he'd never be able to control them the way he's controlled his own kids.  Daughters-in-law!  Bleh!

[lilith]

6 hours ago, JenniferJuniper said:

Cathy loves babies so I'm sure she would love a bunch of grandkids.  

My hypothesis as to why Rick doesn't care about the next generation?  The Arndts aren't quiverfull in the way so many of the families out here are.  Cathy had a bunch of those kids before Rick broke from the Catholic church, so I'm sure it was a combo of Cathy wanting a large family like the one she grew up in and them disdaining birth control as good Catholics.

A large part of the quiverfull movement is based on (mostly white) evangelicals wanting to become a big enough demographic that they can become an important political force in the coming years and decades. (assuming most of the next generations follow the rules).  

Rick Arndt cares not a whit about the long term future of anyone but himself.  He's in his sixties and his youngest two are still in their teens.  As long as whatever he's done to his kids continues to work, he's positioned to be supported by his kids for the next 20 or even 30 years.  Grandkids shramkids.  He knows he'd never be able to control them the way he's controlled his own kids.  Daughters-in-law!  Bleh!

I don’t know, Rick has been pretty politically involved in the past, especially for anti choice and small government (except when they’re reaching into women’s wombs) Republicans. I can see the political ideals of Dominionism appealing to him a lot, but apparently not enough to loosen his control on a single Rickling.

[Beermeet]

On 4/23/2019 at 7:38 AM, Petronella said:

Hmmm. Close as the crow flies, but depends if the roads connect easily. From the roads pictured here, looks like they’d have to drive a long way around. (Unless there’s an unmarked dirt road connection?)

 

Omg! Your comment reminded me of something my dad said to my husband and I when wondering how far a off road path was near where he lives, in the mountains.  He said " 5 minutes ". We were like What? That's definitely a 20 min drive, at least ". His reply: Well, as the crow flies".  Ok, pop, let's go by that cause we are crows and all!  We use that all the time now!  In every situation we can!  Hahahaha ?

Edited May 6, 2019 by Beermeet
Reasons :/

[JenniferJuniper]

13 minutes ago, lilith said:

I don’t know, Rick has been pretty politically involved in the past, especially for anti choice and small government (except when they’re reaching into women’s wombs) Republicans. I can see the political ideals of Dominionism appealing to him a lot, but apparently not enough to loosen his control on a single Rickling.

He does have his opinions. He yaps a lot about abortion and he definitely doesn't want his manboys being forced to photograph the gays getting married, but no Arndt actually gets involved with anything outside the family home or businesses.   No mission trips, no charity work, no volunteering to help unmarried pregnant girls to steer them from abortions.   They (mercifully) don't protest at abortion clinics or get involved with local politics.   

I think Rick is a full-blown narcissist who loves the idea of getting attention for his "ministry" but there actually is no ministry at all.  It's all about Rick and each of his 15 immediate family members being at his beck and call.  I don't think he deep down gives much of a shit about anything else.  

[Howl]

You forgot Vine Valley, Rick's raison d'être, or at least it's the one thing that makes Rick seem like a grand visionary instead of a useless layabout and (past) relentless impregnator. 

[HerNameIsBuffy]

23 minutes ago, Howl said:

You forgot Vine Valley, Rick's raison d'être, or at least it's the one thing that makes Rick seem like a grand visionary instead of a useless layabout and (past) relentless impregnator. 

Relentless impregnantor made me laugh out loud and when asked what was funny I realized there is no fucking way to explain this to normal people.

Ngl I am taking off work the day after the VV premiere because I’ll need to recover after finally experiencing something for which I’ve waited so long.

i will pay money to watch that.

[GreyhoundFan]

4 hours ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

Ngl I am taking off work the day after the VV premiere because I’ll need to recover after finally experiencing something for which I’ve waited so long.

i will pay money to watch that.

Maybe Rick will authorize a special FJ preview!

[AliceInFundyland]

21 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Maybe Rick will authorize a special FJ preview!

It's a bit sad but he'd probably get a tidy little sum. And we aren't supposed to support these things. We're horrible.

ETA: Maybe we could make a contribution to a Save the Penguin fund! (Where FJ and the Arndts collide)

Edited May 8, 2019 by AliceInFundyland

[HerNameIsBuffy]

8 minutes ago, AliceInFundyland said:

And we aren't supposed to support these things. We're horrible.

Generally I'd agree with you but Vine Valley?  No shame, let me get my wallet.

(so better not come out until after I move ....but as soon as I have disposable income again it's all Rick's for the premiere.

[JenniferJuniper]

37 minutes ago, HerNameIsBuffy said:

Generally I'd agree with you but Vine Valley?  No shame, let me get my wallet.

(so better not come out until after I move ....but as soon as I have disposable income again it's all Rick's for the premiere.

Yeah, I'd pay big bucks to watch all 576 + installments of Vine Valley.  

I started to type "Big Valley" by mistake.  The TV show from the '60's starring Miss Barbara Stanwyck who ran a homestead with an iron fist.  A homestead filled with mostly adult male children who never strayed too far from home and who never had girlfriends for more than one episode. 

A coincidence I'm sure?   And while Vine Valley will have better production values than the Big Valley did, the menfolk in the Big Valley were finer specimens than the Arndts.   Very nice.  (sorry,  Luke!)

[Petronella]

I have found something! The original "Winter on the Mountain" manuscript on which Vine Valley is based. It used to be up on the Arndt website (and was in fact discussed a tiny bit on FJ), but was taken down. I have found it on the Wayback Machine.

I have mixed feelings about this because it's very, very normal for one to look back on one's early work and realise it isn't as polished as you'd thought at the time. I wouldn't want someone pulling up old work of mine and mocking it, especially if I've already acknowledged its issues by making it unavailable. But, they're still working on Vine Valley, and I think this manuscript can give more insight into the intended story of the current filming. So, in that light, I'm reading it.

It's not well-written, but I'm not going to make fun of that. I teach creative writing and mocking someone's honest attempt is not a road I want to go down. What I will do is summarise the story:

Chapter 1: December 12th, upstate New York. Rick is in a cabin in a snowstorm with an injured leg. There's food and firewood, but no means of communication. He has just begun a sabbatical from his university teaching job to write a book (a very sudden sabbatical that he seems to have decided on just a few days before), and no one is expecting to hear from him for a year. He was on his way to Canada but only got this far before his accident.

He finds a Bible, and reflects on his atheism. Or, rather, he reflects on his not-Christianess, which is not quite the same thing--I would have been interested to get his point of view on what he actually does believe/think/want. He recalls a childhood allergic reaction to a bee sting which his grandmother had prayed away, and wonders why he doesn't believe more. He summarises his perfectionism and intellectualism.

He's writing all this down in the cabin. For someone with "two or three months" worth of food in the pantry and a cosy fire in the fireplace, he seems awfully convinced that he's going to die.

Chapter 2: Saturday. He writes more, assuming the pages will be found with his body. He recalls last night, while his bus to Canada was refuelling, going for a walk, DELIBERATELY abandoning the bus, even telling the driver he wasn't coming back. He recalls a 1972 trip to Canada that had cemented his "turning his back on God" and going full academic, full liberal, leading to two PhD degrees.

(This is where he starts to sometimes mix up first person and third person, and I assume he tried the writing it both ways and missed a few changes going from one to the other.) More memories: he went for a walk in the forest last night, came across a train, and "in rebellion against all of the societal and professional restraints" boarded a boxcar (?? Can one still do that sort of thing?), which he rode for two hours then randomly hopped off when it slowed, so not at a destination. Also it had started to snow. Also he wasn't dressed for the weather, and is wearing tennis shoes. At no point is his urge to run away into the wilderness properly explained. It actually could be interesting to write a character who feels compelled to make such decisions, but the urge is not justified except as a vague kind of rebellion. I get rebellion, but cold and dark are motivating in the other direction. He was already escaping into solitude to a hotel reservation in Canada, so the diversion into the wilderness is annoyingly insufficiently justified, psychologically.

After an hour or so of walking, including icy boulders and the pawprint of a big cat, he fell badly, hence the injured leg. He cried out to Jesus, who saved him from a falling tree and led him to the cabin.

In the cabin: the fire gets low and he worries about further wood. He collects branches from outside (not sure how with his bad leg) but they're too wet to burn. He's cold. He tries calling for help; no answer.

Chapter 3: Still Saturday. He dreams that he's a kid and Jesus is playing a guessing game with him which he loses. Then Jesus offers to trade his own win for our protagonist's loss. Then our protagonist wakes up and discovers the fire is almost out. He realises that he can just pull up floorboards and burn them, which saves him. (I'm worried that eventually pulling up the whole floor would be 1) awfully difficult, and 2) might lead to more cold coming up from below than you get from the fire, but I'm not a survival-type person.) He calls the revived fire a miracle, and hears distant bells, presumably church bells. 

Chapter 4: Sunday. He tries to orient himself using the sunrise. He eats stale cereal. His thigh is infected and he has a fever. He thinks about scripture. He walks around outside, I suppose trying to find civilisation? No success. He comes back and puts more floor on the fire. He summarises his situation and decides to go outside again, thinking going out in the dark will help him to discern distant lights. That's not a horrible point, actually.

He ends up in a cave, unable to walk. He uses the Bible he found as kindling.

Chapter 5: Monday. A comfy fire in the cave. Wait, he says he didn't burn the Bible pages after all, and that that's what saved him. Cryptic. He sets out to convince himself that recent events aren't evidence of God.

Chapter 6: Still Monday. Now revealing why he didn't burn the Bible pages and what he did instead: Ah, as he opened the book to tear out a page it fell open to a verse about healing and his infection spontaneously healed. Then he found railroad beams in the cave and burned those instead.

Then: a woman's voice! And small, dainty footsteps in the snow! He followed the footprints for a while then went back to the cabin.

Chapter 7: Short reflection on the recent miracles.

So there you have it! The ur-text of Vine Valley! I must say, it's a very internal piece, so would be difficult to express in film (though this can be conquered, like in "127 Hours"). I wonder what Rick's added since. I wonder what he's changed.

 

 

 

Edited May 8, 2019 by Petronella

[CTRLZero]

Thanks, @Petronella, this is so interesting.  I especially noticed how the theme of healing pops up through the script.  I wonder if he witnessed (or believes he witnessed) some healing miracle at some point in his young life and is now reflecting on that subject again as he ages. 

[Petronella]

31 minutes ago, CTRLZero said:

Thanks, @Petronella, this is so interesting.  I especially noticed how the theme of healing pops up through the script.  I wonder if he witnessed (or believes he witnessed) some healing miracle at some point in his young life and is now reflecting on that subject again as he ages. 

I wonder too if he sees this intellectual atheist as who he would have been if he hadn't gone Christian as a young man. Sort of what his life would be if his commitment/conversion happened around fifty instead of around twenty.

I notice that fundies/evangelicals will often romanticize how successful and amazing they would have been as non-Christians, to emphasise how much they gave up to follow Christ. In Rick's case, his atheist alter-ego has two PhDs and several published books. Interesting.

Edited May 8, 2019 by Petronella

[gustava]

49 minutes ago, Petronella said:

At no point is his urge to run away into the wilderness properly explained. It actually could be interesting to write a character who feels compelled to make such decisions,

See "Into the Wild" by John Krakauer.

[Petronella]

10 minutes ago, gustava said:

See "Into the Wild" by John Krakauer.

I too like Krakauer's work. My understanding with that one is that he kept knowledge of family abuse private at the sister's request, and the story is much fuller when that aspect is considered too.

As for Rick's story here, there are two "wildernesses" to me: a metaphorical one in the sudden sabbatical, and then the literal one he runs away into. The first one makes reasonable sense to me: the urge to reevaluate his life, sort out his thoughts in a new book, take a break from the university routine. But the literal running away into the woods is much less explicable. He's already running away from his everyday life; why run away from the bus taking him to his escape?

Even if he was just enchanted by the beauty of the woods and stupidly/romantically thought he'd like to sleep under the stars (in winter?? without a tent/sleeping bag?), why get on the train? Then why get off the train? If he was my student I would ask him what the character's vision of the night going right was. As it is, I have no idea at all what the character was intending before things went wrong with the fall.

 

[Flossie]

It's a pretty well-known trope.  Rick wanted his character to start off for a destination and not make it there.  If he'd gotten to Canada, his family and friends would have a place to start with when they went looking for him after he didn't come back or check in at the appointed time.  By having him suddenly divert from his plans, he could have his character end up somewhere where no one would think to look for him.  Then, when he got into trouble, his character would know that he's well and truly alone.  No one is going to come find him.  An excellent time to find God.

Rick stumbles when he can't find a believable reason for his character to change his plans.  He can't have the bus crash, because rescuers would be looking for him right away once it was found that one of the passengers on the bus isn't on the wreckage.  Unless that passenger had a good reason for not wanting to be found after the bus crash, like if he was on the lam for some crime, the only other plausible reason would be if he had a head injury.  He didn't know who he was or why he was there, he only felt that he needed to get away so he hops a train.  Then his head injury makes him jump off the train in some unspecified location because who expects rational thought from someone with a head injury?  But then, if Rick used the head injury theme, it would dilute characters sudden conversion to religion, even though it would explain his behavior at the cabin.

It sounds like Rick had the bare bones of a story worked out, but realized that it was lacking in the believability department.  But he really wants to tell the story, and he really doesn't want to work.  So he got his kids to support the family while he fritters away his time filming and waiting for inspiration from God to come and help him flesh out the story.  I don't think he wants it to be considered the fantasy work of and eccentric nitwit, he wants it to be a stirring tale of a lost sole who went looking for meaning and found he was looking for God.  Then he could properly rewarded by having his wounds healed and a fair maiden dropped into his lap.

[Carm_88]

I was in Peggy's Cove last summer. Dear god, imagine finding the Arndts there. I probably would have been far too excited! 

The man boys are moving out! That is fascinating. I'm shocked that Rick and Cathy are allowing it. Does it mean things are changing? Probably not. But they moved out of the house! That's huge! 

[HerNameIsBuffy]

Wasn’t sure if I was gonna take lunch today but holy crap I have reading to do!

and I love you @Petronella for not mocking writing skills so I can enjoy without feeling icky.