It was the summer of 2003. I was a history major taking summer courses at the University of Oregon, and like the bad student I was, I spent a lot of time skipping class and wandering around campus. One of my favorite hiding places was the book labyrinth called the Knight Library. It was at the library that my interest in Peoples Temple re-emerged. Since I was a teenager, I had a very real interest in the story of Jim Jones and Jonestown. Like many, I had never bothered to dig deeper into the standard account passed down over the years. I\u2019m talking of course about the \u201cbrainwashed crazies kill themselves at the command of their crazy cult leader\u201d storyline that has dominated the world view since 1978.<\/p>\n
At the library I came across a book on Peoples Temple, one I had not seen before. As I read it, I found myself asking questions that had no immediate answer. The historian in me began to take over, and I decided to be proactive about getting some answers. I stumbled upon this website during an internet search, and emailed Fielding McGehee with some questions. Those initial emails turned into phone conversations, and those phone conversations turned into real discussions. What resulted was my introduction to a new perspective on the history of Peoples Temple and the Jonestown tragedy.<\/p>\n
In the three years since my quest for more information began, I have dedicated more time, energy, and effort to the pursuit of knowledge about PT than I ever have spent on even the biggest college related project. To be honest, I don\u2019t remember much of the 2003-2004 school year except<\/i> that my body was sometimes in class, but my mind was always on PT. I truly existed within a \u201cJonestown vortex\u201d for a while. But the three years have gone by and I am still here, still struggling to grasp it all. My perspective has changed and now I see the human side of Peoples Temple. However, that hasn\u2019t made the story of PT easier to comprehend. In fact it has made it all the harder. After spending a considerable amount of time studying and examining PT\/Jonestown and<\/i> myself, I have come to a place where I can make the connection, where I can face the reality of Jonestown, where I can embrace the human side of PT. In other words, I get it. And that\u2019s where things get hard.<\/p>\n
It is easy for most people to swallow the traditional story of PT\/Jonestown because that way, they can more easily distance themselves from the humanity, the reality of it all. Most people cannot compute the very realness of 900+ deaths because they cannot relate to \u201cthose crazy cultists.\u201d They see one side and they go with it because it\u2019s simple to understand and they don\u2019t have to think about it.<\/p>\n
Well, I\u2019ve thought about it\u2026 too much. There are some mornings and some nights where I lay awake for hours thinking, \u201cMy God\u2026\u201d, and I can\u2019t shake the vision of those terrible aerial photographs of Jonestown. There are days when I wish I never knew anything about PT\/JTown, when I want to quit all this and move on. I get angry, sad, frustrated, and I just want it all to go away.<\/p>\n
Then the reality check happens. I understand that what I feel is nothing<\/i> like what the surviving community feels. I\u2019m just some dummy with a computer and too much free time. And if I\u2019ve come to this place where it hurts to think about the reality of Jonestown, what of those people with the real connection to it all? It literally makes my head spin. Think about it \u2026 900+ people \u2026 gone. People who loved and who were loved. People who ate together, slept together, worked together, cried together, rejoiced together. People who had admirable goals \u2026 to build a community free of sexism, racism, ageism. Yet they are gone away and tragically so. It is truly hurtful to think about.<\/p>\n
I ask myself, \u201cDo you really want to spend another three years digging, thinking, examining, and reflecting on this stuff?\u201d I don\u2019t know that I want to, but I\u2019m sure I will. And I know I\u2019ll have those days when I want to sign off this project for good. But in the end, if I didn\u2019t feel this way, then I wouldn\u2019t be a human being with a soul and a heart.<\/p>\n
(Josef Dieckman has written extensively about both the so-called death tape (Q 042<\/a>) and the \u201cday after\u201d tape (Q 875<\/a>). His complete collection of writings for <\/i>the jonestown report may be found here<\/a>. He may be reached at josefdieckman@yahoo.com<\/i><\/a>.)<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was the summer of 2003. I was a history major taking summer courses at the University of Oregon, and like the bad student I was, I spent a lot of time skipping class and wandering around campus. One of my favorite hiding places was the book labyrinth called the Knight Library. It was at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"parent":32001,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-31970","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31970"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":93172,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/31970\/revisions\/93172"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/32001"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jonestown.sdsu.edu\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}