"Draining The Swamp": An Interactive GAME Of Personal And Collective Transformation

How we transform the Dark Side at New Horizons and guide you on the adventure of a lifetime!

Whatever is wrong in Washington, you/we don’t need to keep it going! 

“Draining The Swamp” Is One Of New Horizons Unique Interactive Games

Based on “old” New Horizons "signature" program --

The Truth or Dare GAME

(originally the “Discount Derby” as created by Martin G. Groder, M.D.)

“Draining The Swamp” is an interactive game based on more than fifty years of New Horizons evolving community development principles and practices to create the most up-to-date group dynamic  strategies.

Do you believe that our Congressional representatives ought to --

• Learn how to work cooperatively with one another, at least to some degree;
• Learn how to establish some degree of win-win intention on behalf of American citizens;
• Find elegant solutions to the collective challenges facing our nation?

If these ideals make sense to you, are you willing to develop the necessary skills, to practice, in your own life, what you preach?

If you believe as we do, that greater unity is a way to a healthier future -- then New Horizons “Draining The Swamp” interactive game is a great place for you to start taking some next steps!

The objective of New Horizons this “Draining The Swamp” GAME is to help participants clear away personal cobwebs that obscure the clarity needed for people to solve small and large social problems. “Draining The Swamp” aids players in developing enhanced communication and conflict resolving skills to help move beyond power struggles and abuses. It also facilitates participant’s development of strengthened community bonds.  

Our “Draining The Swamp GAME” might even assist some folks in developing artfulness in helping to reweave the fabric of our society and politics?

Date: TBA 
Next Day Long Program 

New Horizons Harpers Ferry Retreat Center

Bring snacks and a bag lunch. Stay for potluck dinner and campfire storytelling.

Space will be limited! 

Register early!

Fee: Donations encouraged. $100 suggested or --

Pledge time, talent or treasures to ---

New Horizons Coffee House Conversations Project

Contact: Anastasia 240.409.5347
Email: SuperSleuthDSW

On Why Presidents Lie And Some People Believe Them

Originally posted on Anastasia The Storyteller

Because I had just recently removed myself from the D.C. fast track; or the swamp as it is being called today. Because I still had friends in key places in Washington who were deeply connected to the center of Washington society and politics, including Watergate.

Because the Watergate break-in had occurred and Richard Nixon was being investigated by the Watergate Commission as he appeared culpable. Because the hearings were being televised and people, including me were drawn to watching. Because I was a captive audience lying in a hospital bed waiting for a cornea transplant and had nothing to do other than watch these trials. And, because I saw people around me seeming to believe Richard Nixon while my unsophisticated gut told me not to.

This is why I took on my very first super sleuthing adventure. Because I was in my first year of clinical training as a Transactional Analyst, I could analyze the transactions going on in this drama with my newly developing analytical skills. It was an intriguing exercise for a budding clinician. 

I needed to know how the president of the United States of America could lie to the American people – and -- how so many of his constituents could seem to believe him. 

(Many decades later I would discover that this pass timing activity of mine had much deeper roots in my own personal history. But that came later.)

So I dug in and I dug in further and further until I developed a passion for searching out truth and developed a great deal of understanding and expertise in handling these issues -- 

• How the president of the United States of America can lie to the American people;
• How so many of his constituents can seem to believe him;
• What to do when the Dark Side of society and politics gets really bad, beyond the Pale.

These days I feel a particular imperative to share what I learned and what I have come to know out of my decades of investigating the Dark Side of society and politics in the U.S.A.. I want you to hear the stories I have to tell about my adventures having to do with this and on the subject above itself. 

I want you to tell me back your stories of Dark Side encounters and how you may have transcended or transformed them to a higher good. We absolutely must do this kind of coming together. Storytelling is one of the best ways possible to pass forward the wisdom of the ages on such things!

Let us join together, now, in telling our stories!

When I saw Alec Baldwin last Saturday, again impersonating Donald Trump – and – his play-acting devotees on Saturday Night Live, depicting believers of what many of us see as the dangerous manipulations of innocent people by Trump and team, my heart hurt and my gut wrenched. The faces of those actors called up memories for me of the disbelief and confusion people felt when Nixon’s behavior negated the esteem and trust people had placed in him. I felt sick.

Today, this anguish comes out of me in the form of my wanting to urge you to use me now! 

More than ever, after my forty plus years of building my life’s work and my life’s passion for sorting out the ills of Watergate -- and -- doing my best to deter their being repeated, I have discovered how to move past such transgressions, or at least cope with them. 

Whether these ills have to do with the Dark Side of politics, corporate manipulations, street violence, domestic violence or child abuse, let us to talk to one another and learn from one another, NOW!

Right now, coping may be the best we can do. That and activism. Other than these there seems little else to do these days to set things right in our nation.

So please do use me! I am one of your national treasures.  Perhaps we are all that for one another.

You might be asking “What the hell is going on here?” and “What are we supposed to do with this?”

I don’t have all the answers. But I do have quite a few where these particular questions are concerned. 

At the top of my list of answers is that we must hang together, now, more than ever to pull ourselves together as one nation, looking out each for each other.

Storytelling can get us started!

With love for humanity in all its frailty,

Anastasia The Storyteller