The strangest part is drinking and bathing in urine. Got to admit, not for me either.

But we all do things that others would find strange, don’t you think?

Being a vegan, people really are perplexed that I’m a vegan. “Where do you get your protein?”, I’m sincerely asked. Though being a vegan for 20 years, not only am I considered in excellent health by current medical standards, my response is, “I’m withering away”.

For me, doing something radical, would be going to McDonald’s and eating a hamburger happy meal.

For him, radical would be to give appreciation on Memorial Day to our men who’ve died that allows him to spread his ignorance of anti-government.

Let’s say $10,000 for me. Net.

Yes it’s great that he survives in $10 a day, but it’s simply not sane just because yo want it.

I am proud to call myself a friend of Don’s. Don has the human qualities that most of us have been robbed of: he has time, lots of time, to talk to people. He has a deep attention span, is not checking his watch, answering his cell phone, or interrupting you because he can’t listen. Don gives everyone he comes in contact with his full, undivided attention.

Don loves his life and wants for nothing. He eats healthy raw food, and lots of it, spends time with the large number of folks who visit him, everyday; answers letters, writes to prisoners, goes to peace demonstrations.

Don is an example of how life used to be. We think we are ‘connected’ because we have a cell phone, car, computer, DVD player. In truth, this keeps us far from people, far from nature and far from the center of life. Don is at the center. He’s closer to the heartbeat of life than any of us.

I find him to be serious, peaceful, and extremely generous.

Mother Teresa said the United States has the worst poverty of any country. It has the poverty of loneliness. Don Schrader lives in poverty and is surrounded by wonderful people. He has real wealth.

Dakota only has a population of 450 but has an extremely high level of homosexuals. His school has a least 4 there. It might have something to do with it.

Totally deranged.

I bet he is healthy than any of us, and polluting least than any of us, and consuming far less than any of us. He is doing least harm to this planet and to all creatures in this world. Every time I see a SUV, I think of what is coming out of the tail pipe in the rear end.

Cannot tell from the reading if he is gay or a supporter, except for this aspect, he is doing great.

There are many people in this world who live like this, because they have no choice. What is remarkable is, he is living in a country where he has a choice. If every one did some thing like this, we would have a healthy planet with no wars, no pollution, and only Love & Peace.

About using urine to bathe … urine, when it’s fresh, is considered a highly concentrated cleaning agent & sanitary wash. The US Army Survival Manual states that if sanitary water is unavailable for cleaning a wound, then fresh urine is a great alternative. The contaminants that come out of your urine are usually bio-organic in nature (IE: natural byproducts of your bodily functions), and have been neutralized by your body to be safe. The low ammonia concentration and high saline content helps sterilize wounds greatly and effectively. The hormones, like DHEA, that come out as a waste leftover byproduct in urine can help speed healing in the wound. Bathing in urine, albeit smelly, is sanitary and can help fend off insects (mosquitoes especially) as well as wild animals (if you were prancing around in the woods). Again, that doesn’t help some folks with the “ick” factor.

On his religious re-birth … it sounds like he started out on a false path for his spiritual needs, becoming a preacher bound by a societal religion. Later, he freed himself from it, found his true nature and sexuality, and has become more at one with himself than most folks will ever be with themselves. Being comfortable with oneself is a path to enlightenment. I think that makes him more of a holy man and spiritual person than some of these folks that try to stick with main-stream religious doctrine. Afterall, he could have stuck with it, hiding his true self, and perhaps become a child molester later on when his true self felt un-resolved and pent up. We have sort of created these specific ways to do things in life, and when someone goes off the beaten path, they tend to get looked down upon. However, it seems by giving up lots, he’s gained more, from the personal freedom to the spiritual enlightenment. I used to live in Albuquerque, but I never heard or seen this guy. But Albuquerque would be the kind of place that would both love (due to more hippy college kids) and loathe (due to a seedier, working-class element of folks that hate their lives) for what he is and what he’s doing.

Jenn, I wonder if your friends know that you think they are immoral because they are gay and/or bi. You cannot be serious that you are really friends with them when you think their lifestyle is abhorrent. Try telling them your true colors and see how friendly they are then. Get over yourself.

[...] thought this was a remarkable story: Extreme Personal Finance: America on $10 a Day Not the way I would live, [...]

Is he gay? Yes, outspokenly so. Is he a pedophile? Just post a link for me, some shred of proof…that’s all I need.

He has a reputation in Albuquerque for being a rabble-rouser and an oddball, but not a law breaker.

sounds like a paid-up member of NAMBLA

pedophilia is not admirable, whether the target is same-sex or opposite-sex

Until I met the guy I would have been the first to dismiss him as a crackpot, but nearly every thing he does has a clear rationale lurking behind it.

i tip my hat to you, sir Don Schrader.

also, as another commenter noted somewhere above, there are many monastic of variouus tradaitions who regularly drink urine as part of a health regime, the Golden medicine. i personally don’t practice this (yet?), but i understand the ‘juice’ first in the morning is best – after a long night’s rest.

i have had personal experience from monk friends who also use urine as a nasal wash, snortinig it up the nose, to help clean out for allergies. this does work as a nat’l antibiotic and as well given that urine is perfectly at body temerature, it doesn’t sting when inhaled throuugh the nasal passage – of couorse, you then smell pee for awhile, but for serious allergen sufferers like myslef, a much better alternative.

while i don’t see the prupose of bathing in it, i guess if you’re living ini the arid desert of NM, that may be another matter; each has to do as thie own, given differing cicumstances.

“…a tax resistor…I would feel like I was getting a handout.”

is pretty absurd. But, it is typical of human nature to want to find fault in others’ efforts, even if those efforts are somewhat Herculean.

The urine thing? Not that big a deal to me. I had a friend experiment with not bathing at all in highschool. Bathing every day — even in urine — big plus + + +

I too lived on very little in college — about $600/month, or $3600/year. My rent was $295, and I could only eat what I could buy in bulk. Sometimes I miss those days…

Whether or not anyone agrees with Don and his convictions, the fact that he actually lives them is certainly to be admired. How many people cry about the environment but drive BMWs? The world is full of well-meaning hypocrites.

I can’t imagine living without a/c now, but I lived in the tropics without it for 3 years — the healthiest of my life. Perhaps someday we’ll look back and think Don was the smart one, and we were the “mentally disturbed individual[s]“.

As for me, I’m resisting the rising price of bread by making my own…

[...] Extreme Personal Finance: America On $10 A Day [...]

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2005/pdf/hist.pdf

Bush’s budget request was $481.4 billion for FY 2008, and is also seeking an additional $141.7 billion in supplemental funding for 2008 for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just that total alone is $622 billion dollars on defense. That totals 21% of the entire 2008 federal budget!

living in poverty as getting a handout?? that’s Rich.

Where’d you get those numbers? I can’t find anything that gets anywhere near them. The OMB says the estimated ’08 military budget is about $450 billion dollars, out of a total budget of $2.7 trillion (http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2005/pdf/hist.pdf) I calculate that to be about 17%. Even the wikipedia disagrees with you (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_States), saying that 2007 costs were about $626 billion or about 3.7% of GDP. Compare this to Saudi Arabia’s 10% of GDP, or North Korea’s 22% of GDP or China’s 4%.

Sorry, as much as I’d like to see some of that funding redirected to other areas, you aren’t helping your case by providing such misleading and incorrect numbers.