WWW.RIDESIDE.NET

BoH, Chippy and I went to see the JONESTOWN film last night. A fantastic film. They have a lot of videotape of the last 24 hours, and even an audiotape of the last speech Jones made while people had alreday started to kill their own babies (transcript here.) I had previously read the Deborah Layton true crime book "Seductive Poison," in which she chronicles being part of Jones' inner circle. There is a lot more detail in the book, but all from her hindsighted position of "the whole thing was scary and awful." It seems like the inner circle people were the most unhappy, because they knew what a paranoid freak Jones was. But what about the others? The videotape showed people SO HAPPY, celebrating and singing and dancing the night before all 900 of them died. REALLY eerie. Especially heart wrenching were the interviews with survivors, including Jim Jones Jr., a black man. One of the women (a survivor, even!), to this day thinks the settlement was heaven on earth, even though all of her friends and relatives are dead. Worth watching, if you're into that kind of thing.