Striking Out Alone

The picture is of me in 1927

My memory goes back to the first important event in my life. When I was five, I decided to see the world. The cops found me two miles from home sitting on my tricycle chatting with a yard man. My poor mother, who never knew me, upon my return was in tears

When I was six, my father admonished me for putting the puppy he brought home on my slide. He mistook it for cruelty to a helpless animal. That stuck with me. It made me feel very badly about myself.

Talk about cruelty to helpless animals, when I was seven, an older neighborhood bully punched me and gave me a nose-bleed. My father was sitting on the porch when it happened. I went in the bathroom to wash off the blood. My father told me I should have fought like a man. My father had a penchant for making me feel bad.

I remember sitting on the porch waiting for my father to come home from work. He usually didn't appear. He preferred drinking and gambling to his family. It stuck with me for many years that I was not as good as other people.

When I was a child, I had a vivid imagination. There was a large elm tree in our yard. It was an easy tree to climb. I used to climb up high in the branches, listen to the katydids, and dream all sorts of Walter Mitty type adventures.

My mother enjoyed the horse races at Arlington Downs. During the racing season, a train left a nearby station every day for Arlington Downs. Not that I enjoyed the races, I went along for the train ride. My mother asked me to pick a horse. I picked a long shot that won. Once again, I asked for a bicycle, and got the usual answer. "Not now, we can't afford a bicycle." The biggest thrill of my young life was when I got a bicycle for Christmas. I was eight at the time.

I was riding my new bicycle down the street and looking down at my feet on the pedals when I ran into the back of my father's car. I went over the handlebars. Somehow my head was jammed between the bumper and car. I screamed for help. My mother ran out. She found a pipe and sprang the bumper out. My mother was always there for me. I can't say the same for my father.

My father bought a boat, an outboard motor, and camping equipment. He said he was going to take up fishing. Yea, right! When I was 10, while my mother was grocery shopping, I took his outboard motor apart and put it back together. I laid newspapers over a chair arm and fastened the motor to the arm so I could start it. I wanted to be sure I'd put it back together right. My mother arrived, and smelling the fumes, questioned me. Come to think of it, never once do I recall either my father or mother asking me what I thought. In fact, they told me I asked too many questions.

Well, here is what I think. My father took me on a camping trip, along with several of his buddies. While he and his buddies drank and gambled, I fished with the one who enjoyed fishing. Both of us came down with malaria fever, and not one of the drinkers. My father should not have taken me with him. As usual, he paid no attention to me.

My mother caught me with my mouth over the gas jet in my bedroom. In those days, we heated the house with gas stoves. She screamed. I explained to her that gas is lighter than air. I was filling a balloon. The gas pressure was not enough so I was taking mouth fulls of gas and blowing it into a balloon. My poor mother! She was protective, but she never knew me. She was married to a man who never should have married.

In 1939, when I was 14, my father bought a new Pontiac and we drove from Dallas to San Francisco to see the World's Fair. My mother and two sisters caught the train in Flagstaff, Arizona. My older sister was car sick a lot of the time. My father and I drove to Reno, where he hit the silver dollar jackpot. On the way from Reno to San Francisco, my father stopping along the way for beers (Never in his 94 years did he admit that he was an alcoholic), he asked me to take over. I had my driver's license. When he came to at sunup, we were crossing the Oakland Bay Bridge.

My parents had given me a religious book informing me that if I even thought about sex, I was committing a mortal sin. If I "spilled my seed on the ground" I was a sinner. I'd started having wet dreams. Seeing stains on my sheets, my mother told my father, who asked me if I was masturbating. During our trip to the West, I had to sleep with my father. I hated it. What if I had a wet dream!

A lot of good that religious book did. There was no way I could not think about sex. I thought about it all the time. If I was going to hell, I might as well have fun while I could. I lost my virginity at fourteen. The next day was Easter Sunday. I was seated between my mother and sister during the sermon, with a vision of God above frowning on me.

We lived in an affluent neighborhood. I was ashamed of my father. I dreaded anyone finding out that he spent his leisure time in beer joints. I was sixteen when all of my friends were invited to a rich girl's father's ranch. I wasn't invited, I guess, because I felt different. For one thing, I was different in that I preferred dating the girls that put out. I took the cap off the steering wheel and placed a pack of condoms underneath it. It fell off, and the condoms in my mother's lap. She told my father. He lectured me, finishing with, "At least, you are responsible enough to use protection." This was as close as he ever came to a compliment.

To be continued

The picture is a fractal, a mathematically put together picture that illustrates synchronicity.

I woke up today absolutely astounded, thinking about the day I decided to write the story of my life, July 30, 2008, the day Siona tells in her blog how to make what happened to me happen to you. Upon my announcement that I was  going to write the story of my life, Siona's comment: "Oh wonderful . . . This will be an incredible gift."

From my discouraging background to utter disillusionment at age 49, from a new beginning at the very bottom to everything I ever dreamed, Siona and I have the honor of helping us shape a vision of our collective future. I'm here to take you on a step by step accounting of how it all came together for me.

I wondered what significance August 1, 2008 might have, the day I started my story. There was a total solar eclipse along a narrow band of the earth's surface in Northern Canada, Greenland, central Russia, Mongolia, and China.

I was born in September 1925, the month and year Werner Heisenberg launched the new age, including the atom bomb, with his uncertainty principle, later to be called matrix mechanics, and finally quantum mechanics.

Siona is our synchronicity coordinator. Synchronicity, groups of events that occur in a meaningful manner. As associated with harmony and symmetry, Pythagoras, the father of mathematics, called it the music of the spheres, so it is all a matter of timing. Quantum mechanics makes us aware that nature has her secrets but that indirectly we can know how it all comes together. It is a matter of mind over matter.  Our minds exist in state without bounds.

To continue with my story,  The Making of New Age Man,  Chapter 1, "Striking Out Alone," 

I had my ranch vacation with a not so rich friend. Bill's father worked for a rich oil man who owned a large ranch near Sweetwater, Texas. Bill and I took a bus to Sweetwater and a ranch hand drove us to the ranch.  We had to work for our keep. The foreman told us we would be working dipping sheep. The smell was atrocious. After one day of that, I asked if I could ride the fences to check on breaks, like some of the hands. I was asked to show that I could ride a horse. I mounted. The foreman swatted the horse's rear. It started bucking and then ran as fast as it could go. I pulled so hard on the reins that one broke and I lost hold of the other.  I left the horse and landed in a cactus patch.

We were permitted to use a 1937 12 cylinder Lincoln Zephyr to drive to San Angelo-to scout for girls that put out, what else? What would the human race do without us? It was an 80 mile straight shot. It didn't take us long to get there at 110 m.p.h. After our two weeks on the ranch, we hitchhiked back to Dallas.
 

I'd lost interest in my rich friends, and their activities. I wasn't into social butterflying. Howard remained my friend. His mother was divorced. She worked as a cashier in a movie theater. Howard made me laugh. He made me feel like I was somebody.

My father was one of General Pershing's 100 heros during World War I, "a roll of valor that stirs the blood," wrote the Saturday Evening Post. "Lieutenant Smith had no thought for his own safety when it was a question of saving his men." He won the Distinguished Service Cross. I was sixteen when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, only 24 years after World War I ended. Surely, we can do better than heros with no thought for their own safety.

When I was seventeen, I applied as a pre-aviation air cadet. I was required to take a physical and written test. I was accepted and proudly wore my pre-aviation pin to school. I could see myself flying into the wild blue yonder behind a 1,000 horsepower Rolls Royce engine. Not exactly the thing war heros think., but Lieutenant Smith had a family and had no thought for anyone but himself.

Speaking of engines, I had overhauled my father's 1937 Ford engine. In a manner of speaking, he had given me the car. I'd burned out the rod inserts racing. I replaced the cluster gear in the transmission, which I had stripped in a race on the highway. I did the damage. I did the repairs. With the car running again, my father took it back. He'd never given it to me in the first place.

My father was a cynic. His philosophy was always think the worst; then you are never disappointed. I guess this was his way of teaching me. We have to give him credit for being cynical. A lot of things make no sense at all, especially war.

To be continued

Striking Out Alone

My parents gave me a lot of freedom to do my thing. As the result, it was three weeks until high school graduation day when I decided to go to Easyway Grill for a barbeque sandwich and beer. My next class was trigonometry. My trig teacher smelled the beer and sent me to the principle's office. I was expelled. I went home and told my mother. One thing I can say about my mother, she took up for me. When I was in the fourth grade, my teacher slapped me. My mother was on her like you would not believe.

Keep in mind my hero father who risked his own life to protect his troops.  Upon hearing that I'd been expelled, he forbid my mother from going to the school authority in my behalf. Instead, I received a letter, which, strangely, I still have.  It starts with "My Dear Boy, When we have everything given to us, we are apt to take these things for granted." Then he gets into obedience. "When men never learn to obey, we have to put them away in penitentiaries so they will not interfere with those who are obeying, striving, building and securing these wonderful things to hand on down . . ." And then, "God gives us this lesson of obedience in the very beginning of this world. Adam came with absolutely nothing, and God gave him the garden of Eden, gave him everything a man needed, if he would do but one thing, and that was to obey."

Then he got into "those sore heads" who will not play the game, and get "nothing out of these great blessings that are bestowed upon us." And then this: "Now, I am supposed to call your teacher but I do not know what to say to him. You are nearly a man, you are no longer a little child. I cannot punish you as I did when you were a little child. All I can do now is to give you advice. You are going to have to make peace with your teacher yourself. . . First, you must seriously consider all these things, then get your mind in the proper attitude and place yourself under the authority of your school . . ." 

There you have it from this World War I hero, who had no defense for his own self-serving life. Like I've said, my father had a penchant for making me feel badly about myself. I was given freedom, and, from as far back as my memory goes, my father, on a guilt trip himself, the opposite from risking his own life to protect the troops, expected me to defend myself. 

I had gone to the Gulf coast with Bob, his older brother, and the family maid. My school's superintendent had rented the cabin next to our's. We sat on our screened porch and drink beer with Superintendent Walters. He was a really nice man.  I made an appointment with Mr. Walters and went into his office eating my humble pie. Then I told Mr. Walters that I had enlisted and would soon be fighting for our liberties. The Army Air Force required that I produce three letters of recommendation. I asked Mr. Walters for a letter of recommendation. Mr. Walkers put me back in school and wrote this: "In my opinion, he is well capable of doing good work in our Armed Services." My doctor wrote, "I have known Joseph W. Smith, Jr. since childhood. In my opinion, he is a young man of high morals, intelligent and dependable." Mr. Johnson, a neighbor, wrote, "I have known Joseph W. Smith, Jr. for several years and have seen him grow to be a fine young man, with no bad habits."

Yes, I was given a lot of freedom, and my World War I hero father never known to have said a good word for his son, left me on the one hand, fiercely independent, on the other insecure.

With this background, this rebel without a cause, on October 12, 1943, less than a month after I turned eighteen, climbed aboard a bus for Shepherd Field, Texas. I was there for a month of basic infantry training, after which I was to attend a college for five months, prior to my air cadet training.

After the month of infantry basic, I was told I'd be going through the month's training again, the beginning of a long line of broken promises, which added to my lack of faith in authorities.  With Christmas approaching, and I was scheduled to kitchen police duty on Christmas day, in self defense, I started thinking about how to be home for Christmas. The Red Cross provided for emergency leave. I telephoned my parents with my plan to be home. My father's shop equipment was stored in the garage. He was going to take up making things. Yea, right, the same as he was going to take up fishing.  His leisure time was spent drinking and gambling.  My plan was that I had a wood working business prior to going into the service. As my parents were moving, I needed leave to dispose of my wood working equipment. The first part was true. They were moving to an apartment and there would not be room to  store the equipment.  A Red Cross agent visited my parents. I was granted leave. My buddies wanted to know why I was leaving. I told them my grandmother died and I was given leave to attend her funeral.

To be Continued

Striking Out Alone

The picture is at a school I attended in Japan .  I'm standing at the extreme left.

I went through a third month of infantry basic training and then told the program I was in had ended. I was reassigned to aircraft mechanics school at Keesler Field near Biloxi, Mississippi and given a 10 delay in route. By the time I arrived, the school had closed.

There was nothing to do but to sent me to England for reassignment. I landed in Liverpool in January 1944. I was given my choice: truck driver, military police, or clerk typist. I chose clerk typist. The first thing I typed in my high school typing class, I recall, was: "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country." So, here was I, ready to serve my country, as yet nothing to do.

I was sent to an advanced navigation school at Bovington. I spent a year, rather than typing, drinking "mild and bitters" in English pubs, and making out with English girls.

After I'd been in England a year, I was eligible for a 10 day furlough. I picked Aberdeen, Scotland. What fun it was! I was the only guy under sixty, and all those deprived girls. As it turned out, for my year in England my service was servicing women. Hardy a reason to be in the armed services.

Upon my return, I was told I'd been selected to be an officer's orderly. The officers in  the advanced navigation school needed me to make their beds and sweep their floors. That did it! I short sheeted some beds and dumped butt cans on the floors. Then I stalked into the base commanding officer's office and let him know my problem. I was a rebel without a cause. I demanded to be returned to the States and sent to aviation cadet training, as promised.

That outburst got me a rifle and combat boots; that is, British hobnail boots. They didn't have any American combat boots with Neoprene soles. For the fourth time, I went through 30 days of infantry basic training in England, with 30 pounds of extra weight my consumption of beer had added.

I crossed the Rhine River on a pontoon bridge and spent the night in the cellar of a factory building. Three German shells whizzed over, one killing a replacement not 50 feet from me. The following day in late March, or maybe early April, I joined the 97^th Division, 303^rd Regiment, 3^rd Battalion, Company K, at the time a few miles south of Dusseldorf. The 97th had just arrived from the States. The 303rd Regiment, from the other side of the Rhine, had pulverized the Nazi defense that got the guy next to me killed.

On my first night in Company K, I was ordered to patrol the area around a school building where my platoon was billeted. I was clopping on my hobnails on cobble stone streets. You would think they would have known when they issued hobnail boots to me that the Germans wore hobnail boots and Americans wore Neoprene sole boots. But, no, my own troops opened fire on me. I yelled obscenities and the firing ceased. I made another demand, American combat boots or I went no further. My demand was met, but not without snide remarks from my macho sergeant from the deep South.

I walked into Dusseldorf in American combat boots a size too big. Not a shot was fired. The streets were lined with cheering slave laborers. I walked into Gestapo Headquarters with my platoon, where we spent the night. There was a motor pool. I spotted a neat 1937 Ford convertible with the key in the ignition. A buddy and I decided to take a spin. We drove by a wine cellar. People were carrying buckets of wine. We asked a couple of frauleins if they would like us to drive them to wherever they were going. They jumped in and we drove them home. They invited us in. All of this was strictly forbidden and could have gotten us court marshaled, in which case we would have lost 6 months of our pay. Why didn't we realize that chance we were taking? We could have been killed. The family spoke English. They were happy to see us and war over for them. Neither the American people nor the German people caused the war.

There was a German machinegun nest on top of a hill. In payment for my combat boots, my M-l rifle had been taken from me and a heavy BAR handed to me, thanks to my Georgia cracker sergeant who insisted on calling me "fly-boy." My sergeant placed himself behind me as we charged up the hill. That extra 30 pounds, plus a BAR made it tough for me to keep up. Bullets were popping in my ears. It didn't help a bit to have my sergeant screaming at me.

What was left of Nazi resistence was on the run, with General Patton hot on their heels. We took thousands of Germans prisoner. In payment for putting me there, I took a watch from one. It was small enough payment. I was witness to the execution of one Nazi, as he approached with his hands up. He looked to be at least 70 years old. Some of the prisoners were children. There is nothing as impressive as seeing with your own eyes, wandering walking skelletons released from the Nazi death camps. I was only 19, and learning that war turns us into animals. I laugh about the way the American news media and some politicians criticize our military men for their brutality. They don't know what war is.

The war with Nazi Germany ended in early May, at least officially, with Field Marshal von Kesselring's declaration that his Seventh Army would never surrender. We were on the Czech border three days after the official end of the war when we were strafed by a German fighter plane.

The 97^th Division was the last into combat and the first out. My company was lined up on the road and told to take off our clothes and leave them laying on the pavement. It was the first time my clothing had been off for over two months. Czech girls were on hand to witness we fine young specimens of manhood. A trailer was parked on the road with doors on each end. A flexible pipe drew water out of a creek. It was heated and pumped through pipes to shower heads lining the walls of the trailer. We started walking. At the door, we were handed bars of soap and walked through the water to the other end where we were handed towels. Continuing to walk as we dried ourselves, there were piles of clean clothing waiting for us to pick through for the right size.

After bathing and putting on clean clothing, we were loaded into trucks and carried to a waiting train. I climbed in a box car which might have carried Jews to Nazi death camps. I was four days in that box car. The tracks were barely usable. The train never moved faster than 20 miles per hour. At La Harvie, France, we climbed down from the boxcars and walked up the gangplank of a waiting troopship.

We were jammed like sardines into compartments with berths stacked four high and not two feet between the rows. The ship that carried me to England was outfitted by the British. We were housed in spacious compartments with hammocks on pulleys, and pulled up to the ceiling when we were not sleeping. I made an investigation and found a room reserved for non-commissioned officers with an unused berth. There was ample space and even a bathroom. I moved in. The non-coms, to no avail, tried to stop me. I got away with it.

We were the first troop ship to arrive in the Port of New York. There was a tickertape parade. I was on a train heading for big D for 30 days leave. On my first night home, I was having a coke with my girlfriend at a drive-in. A jeep drove up to the side of the car. An M.P. ordered me out. He told me I was in violation of the 10 p.m. curfew. It made no difference to him that I was just back from Germany and didn't know about the curfew. I spent the night in the Dallas City jail with the drunks. Three cheers for the Red, White, and Blue!

During WW II it was hard to buy a seat on a train, and even harder to get on a Pullman car. I was to rejoin my outfit in Greensboro, N.C. The 97^th was mostly composed of white folks of the South. I was able to buy a seat on a Pullman car when my train arrived in Memphis. The Pullman car didn't materialize and I didn't get my refund.

With the Greensboro rendevous completed, we loaded on troop trains for Tacoma, Washington. My Georgia cracker sergeant called for volunteers for the baggage detail, with the promise of a seat on a Pullman car. I volunteered. My sergeant lied. I was ordered into a stacked like cord wood troop carrier. Mine had a flat wheel that vibrated all the way to Tacoma. I should mention that we stopped in Atlanta. I lined up at a station restaurant, behind a black soldier. The restaurant management refused to allow him to enter. What were we fighting for? I don't think we knew.

I'd already been overseas 16 months. I was half-a-point short of not having to go to the Pacific. I walked up the gangplank of a Liberty Ship with troops that had spent three months overseas, and why? Because I refused to be an officer's orderly. This was payment for those good times I had with the girls in combat zone Z.

I marched into a forward hold with the usual crowded stacks of berths. Two days out we ran into foul weather. A Liberty Ship is no place to be in foul weather, especially in the forward hold. Everyone was seasick. I waited the storm out in a vestibule, with seas crashing over the bow.

One realizes in the service of one's country what it means to take orders without question. It galled me to look in portholes, while I waited in a chow line, at officers seated at white linen covered tables eating steak and chatting with the nurses on board. While we ate caned corned beef hash out of our mess kits, standing at long tables, our officers were served by orderlies. There was this pleasant memory, though. I socked my Georgia cracker sergeant. I gave him something by which he could remember me and got away with it. I never saw the guy again after I disembarked.

I guess you might call this nice, too. While I was on the good ship General Hershey, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki, and one on Hiroshima, too, frying a few hundred thousand Japanese citizens. Like I say, war makes animals. Pretty gross, but nice for me, as it were. I was out there in the Pacific Ocean heading for a rendevous, off Leyte in the Phillippines, with other shiploads of troops for the specif purpose of landing on the beaches of Japan's Honshu.

The atomic bombs were too much for Japan's war lords. They threw in the towel. The first troop ship to arrive did a beach landing. Lucky me. I was on the second ship to arrive. We sailed into Japan's Yokohama Harbor, tied to a dock, disembarked, and boarded a train. Just think what an education this nineteen year-old was getting! I was seeing the world and getting paid for doing it.

And what a world this is! I was shocked to see an old hag stop by my window, drop her drawers, and urinate on the tracks. The Japanese think nothing of men, women, and children bathing in the nude in a common pool. Yet they were refined and courteous to me. I was made M.P. in the town of Urawa 30 miles north of Tokyo. We had an office in the police station. The town's mayor invited me to dinner. We males sat on the floor around a table, the women serving us.

I was assigned to guard a Japanese government warehouse. U.S. Army officers kept inspecting the contents and walking out with bolts of parachute silk. Why not I? I helped myself to several bolts and mailed them home. The lifting of the silk made the Japanese newspapers. An investigation was started. Not one of the thieving officers were court marshaled. Some of my buddies were not so fortunate.

I bummed a ride to town with my lieutenant. We hit a bump and several packs of cigarettes appeared that had been hidden by his raincoat, which was rolled up between the jeep seats. I'd been told that our cigarette rations were not being delivered. Come to find out, our officers were selling them to the Japanese at $2 per pack. You could buy sex from a beautiful Japanese girl for a pack of American cigarettes. I know because that's where my cigarettes were going. The way I see it, It was actually a good thing. I got sex experimentation out of my system before, not after I married. I never cheated on my wife.

I arrived at Ft. Bliss, Texas in March 1946 and was honorably discharged on March 14. My nightmares after the war were not of the horrors of the war but of being taken back into the service. I'm natively a lover, not a fighter.

In gratitude for the sacrifice I'd made (in taking orders from U.S. army officers) the American people paid for my college education. I lived at home with my parents and attended Southern Methodist University. A formal education was not really for me. I was a mediocre student. However, I made the highest grade on my final in a class of over 200 in Geology. I enjoyed Geology. I did poorly in English. However, I took an interest in writing my term theme. I paid a tutor to coach me. I spent an inordinate amount of time on that theme. My teacher gave me an F. When I asked her why, her answer was that I didn't write it. She presumed wrongly, but would not be convinced that she had grossly wronged me. Consequently, I flunked English.

In my youth, I lacked self confidence. I took the path of least resistence and missed my calling. My father offered me a way to make good money. He was in the lumber business as a commission representative of Kirby Lumber Corp. He had been with Kirby during the Great Depression when Kirby Lumber Company went into receivership. The Santa Fe Railroad, being the biggest creditor, took over the management of Kirby. The new management took my father off of his salary and paid him a commission on the lumber he sold. He told me he never went one month not earning more. By the time he was put on a commission, he didn't have any competition to speak of. With all his faults, my father was a shrewd businessman.

An architect friend of my father's asked him for advice on lumber prices. He was bidding on government housing for the homeless. My father told him Kirby had a warehouse full of pine flooring they would sell very cheap. The architect designed housing built entirely of pine flooring and won the bid. It's ironic. The homeless got a roof over their heads and my father made a killing.

Think about this: My father gave my mother $10 every Monday morning to pay the week's expenses. She paid a maid $3 per week, plus car fare and "toten" privileges. Back in those days, we didn't have all the modern conveniences. For instance, the grocery store sold live chickens. You picked the chicken you wanted. A clerk would put it in a sack with its head sticking out and tie a string around the sack. At the check out counter the chicken was weighed. You had the job of wringing its neck, plucking, and gutting it. We had an icebox. The iceman delivered ice in a wagon. The maid washed our clothing in a tub and scrub board, and hung it on a clothes line to dry.

Think about this: We didn't have government entitlements, nor an enormous national debt, nor did anyone but the very rich pay income tax. America's cornerstone was the family. My mother never worked. She was always there for me. Not only did my father take care of his own family, but also financially helped out his widowed sister-in-law's family. My father didn't like his mother-in-law. Nevertheless, he allowed her and my grandfather to live with us after they ran out of money.

Actually, there was no valid reason for the Great Depression. It ended during World War II. The government borrowed the money to build a war machine, which put everyone to work. Borrowed money made for a good economy. Instead of the government putting a few of the jobless to work building tables and fire pits in national forests during the Great Depression, why didn't government build a super highway system and a modern railroad system to carry the freight. Think of the fuel savings. America's Great Depression is responsible for world depression and the rise of Hitler. The government gave us entitlements, which have run the national debt to the sky. The nation is borrowed to the hilt. The economy is on its way down. We're on the brink of Armageddon. It's time we learn that we can't depend on authority. We've got to look within for answers.

At any rate, back to the story of my life, for whatever it is worth. After the war, small lumber mills sprang up in East Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas. The problem was that most were not on railroads. They depended on trucks to haul their products to market. Keep in mind that the Santa Fe Railroad managed Kirby, and the Texas Railroad Commission was in charge of issuing hauling for hire permits in Texas. You can understand why none were being issued.

A permit was not required to haul your own product. My father's proposal to me was to finance a truck for me to haul lumber. We would own the lumber. I liked the idea and the money was good. You can imagine that Kirby Lumber Corporation did not like the idea of their sales rep trucking lumber.

After two years of hauling lumber to the huge Dallas market, my father had four trucks. I was in charge of the trucking operation. I was also selling lumber and earning a profit on my sales. In today's dollars and confiscatory taxation, I earned a hundred thousand dollar annual income. Kirby Lumber Corporation took a back seat.

The IRS showed up with the claim that we were hauling lumber for hire. Therefore, we owed transportation tax, which had been imposed during WW II and never taken off the books. For evidence, the IRS had a number of Interstate Commerce Commission cases where businesses were hauling their own products yet were fined for hauling for hire. It didn't make sense. I investigated and found that in every instance, the fines were imposed against businesses that not only hauled their own product but back hauled for hire. I told the IRS to go jump in the lake.

We were hiring a trucker with a permit to haul for hire from Silsbee, Texas, from Kirby's mill there. Kirby sicced the State on us. The State claimed that the trucker was not licensed to haul from Kirby. I went to the Dallas Times Herald with the story. An article appeared. That was the end of Kirby and the State's claim.

Our trucks were delivering lumber straight to the large jobs. Some dealers were willing to take a low markup on direct shipments. Others had a dog in the manger attitude. We had lots of enemies. New ideas are not well received. Most people hate change. When the automobile came on the scene, it put buggy whip manufacturers out of business. I recall reading about a law that forced automobile owners to have a lantern carrying man trot ahead of the automobile after dark.

The building boom ended. Without prior notice to me, my father closed his office, let the office help go, and moved his office to his home. He had it made. He planned to spend time traveling and to let me work his trade for him. He would split the profit with me. I took a job as truck salesman. Before I went to work on my new job, my father decided to retire and turn the business over to me. I opened an office, hired help, and prospered. With nothing to do, and he couldn't drive because his cataract operation left him with glasses that didn't give him peripheral vision, my father at a loss of what to do, made me his whipping boy.

I never appreciated what my father did for me-so he thought. It haunted me. Going back to the early 1950s, I'd reached the age and income level I wanted to marry and have a family. I'd considered marrying Amy and then changed my mind. I'd met a girl on a weekend lark and shacked up with her. Amy never let me sleep with her. Amy spoke with my mother, who admonished me to tell Amy I was not interested in continuing with our relationship. I couldn't bring myself to do it. I married Amy. Can you believe this? Amy didn't let me sleep with her on our wedding night. Every time I made a sexual advance, Amy had a list of complaints. Amy said I embarrassed her. I was struggling with myself to leave Amy when she announced that she was pregnant. Two months after Susan was born, Amy was pregnant with Julie. Four months after Julie was born, Amy was pregnant with Megan. It was unbelievable. We were not having sex more than once, maybe twice a month if I was lucky.

Amy didn't love me. She blamed it on me. For thirteen years, I suffered a miserably lonely marriage for the sake of my children. Dorothy had already appeared when the day came that I was not going to take Amy's abuse any longer. I'd been having coffee with Dorothy and her co-workers in the building's cafeteria where Dorothy worked. Several months after we met, knowing I was sweet on her, Dorothy announced to me that she was engaged to be married to someone in South America. She was keeping me in reserve. I quit seeing Dorothy, but I could not get her off my mind.

I left Amy. She was a basket case. It was sad, disgusting, outrageous. What was it with people? No way could I please them. They wanted to use and abuse me. I was fed up with it. It was time that I started thinking about myself.

Our divorce trial was pending when Dorothy walked up to my car as I parked. She'd been waiting for me. Dorothy informed me that her engagement was off. We didn't date until the divorce was final. After the divorce, we immediately became intimate, and what a difference! Dorothy was everything I could want. Although I'd had some misgivings about Dorothy-she seemed cunning-my life was shaping up. All I wanted was someone to love and be loved back.

Striking Out Alone

Dorothy wanted our own children. I was opposed. She had an eight-year-old boy by a former marriage. I had my three girls. Big trouble awaited me over children. Shortly after we married, my three girls visited us. My youngest daughter went out to the car well ahead of the rest of us and seated herself in the front seat. Dorothy told her to get in the back. She said she wanted to sit next to her dad. Dorothy grabbed Megan's arm and pulled her out of the car. My blood boiled. Dorothy was possessive. Dorothy showed favoritism for her son. Howard visited his father on the weekends. My daughters visited us. Dorothy gave my daughters lots of choirs to do. She fined them a quarter if they didn't put their things away. She didn't fine Howard, nor did she give Howard as many choirs to do.  There were angry confrontations over the favoritism being shown, to no avail.

Amy's bitterness toward me made it much worse. For instance, she did not allow my girls to visit me during Christmas holidays. Amy allowed my daughters to smoke pot. She moved into a bad neighborhood and took in a homosexual male roomer. I tried to get custody of my girls and was turned down.

Dorothy decided to quit taking birth control pills. They gave her headaches. It wasn't long until she was pregnant with Robert. I was happy about it but I had an operation to be sure there were no more children.

Every time Robert cried, Dorothy picked him up. She spent half of her waking hours holding Robert, and complaining that I didn't take an interest in my son. I didn't agree. One day, Dorothy angrily handed Robert to me, saying, "here, you hold him. You are his father." He started kicking and screaming. I put him on the floor. He started pounding his head on the floor. I put him in his baby bed. He shrieked and kicked until his mother picked him up. Consciously or unconsciously, Dorothy was possessing our son and there was nothing I could do.

The child issue merely showed Dorothy up for what she was. It was not long after we married that I found there was no sharing a life with Dorothy. She had possessed her first husband. She called him a spineless worm. She would laugh at the way he begged for her to come back to him. I was onto her game. Dorothy picked the wrong guy to castrate. She knew it. I knew I'd gone from the frying pan into the fire. Dorothy was a loser and there was no way to stop her.

Bad matters grew worse. What if your rich uncle started passing out money-borrowed money-to people he thought needed the money? Would you think he had gone whacko? In an attempt to curb double digit inflation, the result of government passing out borrowed money to a growing number of government entitled, the Nixon Administration imposed price controls, with political implications. There are always political implications in everything government does. The Nixon Administration favored the biggest producers of lumber and penalized the small producers. The Nixon Administration's price controls put most of the small fry out of the lumber manufacturing business, or forced them to sell to the big corporations. The same as Dorothy, government was in the game of possessing people.

The big lumber producers were also in the retail lumber business. The price was regulated according to the level of distribution. If an independent retailer wanted to purchase lumber from the big corporation, he had to buy it at the retail level, while the corporation's own retail outlet sold the lumber to the independent dealer's trade at the price the independent competitor paid. Independent lumber dealers were forced out of business. I spoke with Nixon administration officials about the gross unfairness of price controls, to no avail. The Nixon Administration let large corporations take over lumber distribution. Since I depended on small lumber mills and independent retailers, the government put me out of business. You didn't read the worst about the Nixon Administration in the newspaper. Nixon, following in the footsteps of Roosevelt, sold the American people out big time.

What is government but people with the authority to regulate? Would that not be attractive to control freaks, like Amy and Dorothy? Birds of a feather flock together. All of this I mention was contributing to my transformation. I was moving from an unsure, immature self toward the adult I was meant to be.

I'd owned the land on which we built our home before Dorothy and I were married. With my lumber business on the rocks, I was forced to sell land to cover living costs. The land I sold went for double the price I paid for it, thanks to government caused double digit inflation. Due to double digit inflation, the dollar would buy half as much. I made zero gain, yet I was expected to pay a capital gain tax of 25 percent of non-existent profit. First, they put me out of business and now they were picking my bones. I was fed up with my second marriage, the government, and the American voter.

Dorothy thought I ought to see a psychiatrist. She had no idea of where she was taking her life, and her family's life. It was Dorothy's type who were responsible for cost of living increases to those receiving government entitlements, her type that charged me 25 percent capital gains tax when I didn't profit a dime.  Instead taking from the rich and giving to the poor, Dorothy's type were taking Dorothy to the cleaners. It was Dorothy's type who were killing the goose that laid the golden egg. 

With Dorothy for a wife, I was no longer a rebel without a cause. The handwriting was on the wall. I went to a second hand law book store looking for a way to be heard in a meaningful way in a meaningful place. I purchased for one dollar an essay, The "Higher Law" Background of American Constitutional Law, written by law professor Edward S. Corwin and copyrighted in 1928, before judicial activists shredded the Constitution. We're now under a judicial dictatorship. The essay I bought for a dollar, even if it explained the law, was useless. Any lawyer will tell you that no U.S. Court will hear a case that claims the income tax confiscatory and unconstitutional.

I'd had a bigger than life calling. Call me the pursuer of lost causes. At the time, there was growing fear of a taxpayer revolt. IRS public relations officials were getting their stories published of the nutcake tax protester cases when I wrote a letter to President Reagan's Attorney General, William B. Saxbe, claiming the capital gains tax was confiscatory and unconstitutional. Reagan had implied as much. His lawless attorney general forwarded my letter to my Director of Internal Revenue, who ordered an IRS audit.

Hoping to find some way to tax me more for daring to claim that the government was unconstitutional, the IRS spent a full week auditing my business and personal records. Sadly, a taxpayer does not have the constitutional protection that an international terrorist gets nowadays.

Taxpayers are automatically guilty until the IRS is proven wrong, the lying IRS protected by a lawless attorney general---and people like Dorothy, the after-me-you-come-first type. The taxpayer doesn't have the chance of a snowball in hell.  My friends, remember this is a government of the people, by the people, for the people.  Control freaks are in charge of your lives.

When the IRS auditor finished, with no proof whatever, he'd found that I had not reported $5,000 of income. He'd used a two dollar pocket calculator to add up my year-long records, a pocket calculator I can't use to reconcile my bank statement. This IRS official, with the power to put me on the street in the name of tax, didn't have a scrap of paper to show me. Furthermore, this so-called IRS auditor maintained that I owed the full amount of the capital gains tax, claiming that I received more than 29 percent of the payment on the land I sold in the year of the sale. This IRS official was a 21 year-old student at North Texas University working for the IRS part time to pay his tuition.

I received 29 percent on the land payment in the year of the sale. The buyer mailed the second year payment on December 29 of the year of the sale, but from Iran. This part time flukey for the status quo refused to accept that evidence as proof that I didn't receive the money in the year of the sale, even though the deposit was made in the middle of January of the following year.

The IRS had absolutely nothing upon which to base a claim. But it was up to me to prove the IRS wrong in court, against the American establishment. I received an assessment of tax, penalty, and interest. The IRS called me about it. I told them I had no intention of paying any part of the assessment. They requested a meeting. "Why a meeting," said I? I told the caller I'd meet with them in the U.S. Tax Court. I never paid the assessment and I never heard from the IRS again. For shame! 

But back to Dorothy, the one who needed a shrink, now that I was of no further use to her. Dorothy's good life with me was not looking peachy anymore. I suspected she was plotting. She was having long, private conversations with Howard. She was spending most of her time away from home and refusing to tell me what she was doing.

Something Dorothy had said to me a long time back came to mind. Dorothy told me that when she wanted the wall to come tumbling down, she would pull a brick out here and a brick out there. The jig was up for Dorothy. I told Howard that I expected him to have the yard mowed when I returned. I didn't expect him to mow the yard. He was not doing any of the work around the place. It was during summer vacation. Instead of mowing the yard, Howard, with his mother's permission, went swimming with some friends. Dorothy got her brick in the face. I told Howard's mother that if Howard was going to live in my house he was going to obey my orders, adding that if that was not agreed to by his mother, Howard would have to go live with his father, reminding Dorothy that Howard's father was in contempt of a court order. (He was not paying his child support. Dorothy refused to force him to pay.)
 

When I woke up the next morning, Dorothy, the two boys, and the dog were gone. In a snit, Dorothy went to live with her mother-while she got her ducks lined up. I'd beaten her to the draw. A week later Dorothy called to tell me she was coming home. I told Dorothy that our marriage was over. Although she didn't say it, as far as Dorothy was concerned, our marriage was over. Advised by a lawyer, Dorothy came home to claim as much of the property as she could. 

The bickering over who got what started. Dorothy was not satisfied to take the house, the barn, and five acres of land, giving me the remaining ten acres of unimproved land. Dorothy was not satisfied with the lion's share. But suddenly Dorothy agreed to settle with me, I presumed on the advice of an attorney. We went to a real estate lawyer, who drew up the property settlement agreement and Dorothy signed it.  I was free to go.  I planned to purchase a live-aboard sailboat and cruise the Bahamas when my land sold.

Striking Out Alone

They say that nothing is coincidental. There is a reason for everything. My ruling planet is Uranus. Astrologers say that when Uranus transits to a position opposing itself, when I was in my forties, the pressure was on for change. Prior to my departure at age 49, I was having a repeating dream of flying on the back of a giant bird through a narrow, winding canyon, terrified. I couldn't see around the bends.

Little did I know what was taking place in my life. I was born in September, 1925, the month and year a German physicist, Werner Heisenberg, published his uncertainty principle, the launching of matrix mechanics, later known as quantum mechanics, the study of the smallest excitations of matter, subatomic particles. Matrix, the point from which something else originates-like the matrix that makes computer language, which makes the printed words you are now reading-if you want to know how something works, you take it apart and examine the parts.

Quantum physicist Murray Gell-Mann said, "Quantum mechanics is that mysterious, confusing discipline, which none of us really understands but which we know how to use." Quantum physicist Richard Feynman adds, "I think I can safely say that no one understands quantum mechanics. . . Do not keep asking yourself, if you can possibly avoid it, ‘but how can it be like that?' . . .Nobody knows how it can be like that."

Nobody understands quantum mechanics who allows only the makeup of the physical universe. If you think you are all meat, naturally, you would not understand quantum mechanics. Werner Heisenberg later became Hitler's atomic bomb builder. Welcome to the New Age. We are leaving the ages of meatheads.

Einstein reduced the physical world to E=MC ²: energy equals mass time speed squared. Energy is what makes things go, but I'm more than meat. The molecule transcends the state of awareness of the atom. The cell transcends the state of awareness of the molecule, the quantum mind transcends the state of awareness of the cell. My conscious awareness exists in a state without boundary. I set the limits of my awareness.

A child of the New Age, the Age of Aquarius, I was born at 4:21 p.m. C.S.T, September 17, 1925 in Houston, Texas. Astrologers say the sun rose on me in the sign of Aquarius, the symbol of which is the water-bearer to humanity. My rising sign is the part I show the world. My natal sign is Virgo. Astrologer James Redfield, the author of the Celestine Prophecy, sent me an audio tape of my astrological makeup. Said Redfield:

"We are going to take a look at two key aspects of your astrological data, your Sun sign and your Moon sign. "We are going to talk about them archetypically. The emotional issue is pointed out by your Moon sign-how this feels as you go through life-talk about your Sun sign-again archetypically-how you naturally uplift people, to give you some good information as you try to find out what your spiritual mission is."

"We have a new image of what it means to be a human being, how to think of ourselves as growing, evaluating, understanding, that we can connect with our God-self energy. You grow in a Virgo way. Virgo is that part of us that is oriented toward conscientious work. At first unconsciously-and everyone has a different way of reacting-the object is to bring into consciousness the reactions and determine whether or not the reaction is mature or immature-when we can step back and look at our higher self, when need becomes strength."

"The Vigo ego integration with higher self, and the higher self perspective is going to be defined along the lines of the Virgo archetype, which is, of course, our need for organization: to be effective, to be conscientious about making things better."

"We all start at immature levels of ego functions. We have a sense of security based on how much we feel in charge of our lives. We want to keep the idea that things are going fine. We have goals we want to achieve. We need to manipulate things to keep everything just right. We need to keep this allusion for security purposes. If new information comes in, we can act defensively. We don't want information that rocks the boat."

"What happens is that this allusion, based on security control, has to shift to our inner connection, our God-self force that gives us a sense of well being no matter what's going on out there. We have to make that opening on the inside."

"As you get in touch with your inner energy and start to get in touch with your higher self, you will be guided into how to find that true work expression. It will be shown to you intuitively. This becomes the way you uplift everyone who comes into your life. When you evolve into your higher self you energize those who cross your path. This becomes your greatest talent."

When I received this tape from Redfield years ago, it meant little to me, but what is it but fragments of the self we discard that we may be free?

Nor is it a thought I leave behind me, but a heart made sweet with hunger and with thirst.

Yet I cannot tarry longer. The sea that calls all things unto her calls me, and I must embark.

Kalil Gibran.

Welcome to my world. When I was born, Saturn was in favorable aspect with Pluto. I was blessed with recondite consciousness, blessed with the ability to understand the laws by which the subtle forces of the universe are organized-a child of the New Age, here with a sense of destiny, a karmic mission I must fulfill.

So is the microcosm, so is the macrocosm, from the smallest excitations of matter, from the aspects of matter-subatomic particles to the universe-that frightening moment in perpetuity above mentioned was more than an omen of a coming change; it was the beginning of my transformation.

Dorothy's and my idea of building our home on my land was to enjoy peaceful surroundings. We lived in the incorporated township of Flower Mound, Texas, a 38 square mile stretch of rolling hills, part of which was wooded. Flower Mound was 25 miles northwest of Dallas and due to become another bedroom community. Near us was the Edward Marcus ranch. Mr. Marcus was the chairman of the board of Nieman Marcus. Marcus was a dreamer, a really sweet man. He had a vision of making Flower Mound a new town, like Columbia Maryland and Reston, Virginia. Marcus and Associates spent millions planning Flower Mound New Town. HUD put up money. I was all for it. Marcus bought several of his supporters airline tickets to visit Columbia and Reston. He paid for our hotel rooms, paid for our meals. You could not ask for a better place to live than in a new town, and I mean rich or poor. Such planning I've never seen.

There was opposition to Flower Mound New Town. There are always those who oppose any change for one reason or another, and usually for the wrong reasons. One of the outspoken opponents was the local septic tank cleaner. HUD had put up the money to build the most modern sewage disposal plant in the nation.

The septic tank cleaner and a few of his buddies, who were cashing in on crooked politics in Denton County-they were selling the unclaimed stolen property the country had confiscated for a profit-Denton County known for given thieves a place to hide stolen property, known for selling illegal drugs it confiscated, with the county attorney's blessing. The septic tank cleaner, without an election, was given the OK to replace Flower Mound's elected mayor. The "mayor" ordered Flower Mound New Town shut down. Good old boy government won. Progress went down the tube.

Marcus and associates refused to get involved, but agreed to financially support the citizens of Flower Mound. I called some supporters of the New Town together to discuss what to do. We decided to take the mayor and his cronies to court, with the financial support of Marcus and associates. We were unable to get a county judge to hear our case. We got a judge from a neighboring county.

On the day of the hearing the Denton County court house was packed. The "mayor" and a couple of thugs walked up to me. While the two held my arms to my sides, the mayor grabbed my necktie and proceeded to choke me. My friends came to my rescue. The visiting judge refused to hear the case. Shortly afterward, Marcus died of a heart attack.

Texas was celebrating her bicentennial celebration by rewriting her constitution. Concerned citizens were permitted to speak at Texas judiciary hearings in the State Capital in Austin. In memory of Marcus and his dream, I asked to speak and was accepted.

The hearing was held in the old supreme court in the capital building. The room was packed with students, reporters, and lawyers. I was last to speak. The hearing room was vacant when my name was called. A member of the judiciary committee requested permission to speak. He told the committee that I had a personal beef with the county attorney. He said the hearing was not for citizens with personal problems with county officials. The chair asked me what I had to say. Satisfied with my answer, the chair told me to proceed. I gave the committee the facts of the case.

I have a letter signed by L. DeWitt Hale, Chairman of the Texas Judiciary Committee, with this letterhead: "The Texas Constitutional Convention," the letter stating as follows:

"On behalf of the Judiciary Committee of Texas Constitutional Convention 1974, I wish to express deep appreciation for your appearance before the Committee and for your thoughtful and timely remarks concerning the Texas judiciary."

"You have made a distinct contribution to the work of the Committee and to the improvement of the Texas judiciary, for which the people of Texas are in your debt."

Senator Hale appointed me to a committee to study the county attorney situation in Texas. He informed me that Denton County's population had grown enough to elect a district attorney. I spoke with a local lawyer I knew. My lawyer friend ran for District Attorney and won. He replaced Denton County's corrupt county attorney. I'd had my bigger than life calling. I was soaring with eagles.

To be continued

Striking Out Alone

I was soaring with eagles, but not in the world of those who knew me. I was a little man with nutty notions. I deserted my responsibilities and went to sea.

For better or for worse, I never lived my life by the rules of society. None of my accumulation was of any importance. My business enterprise was history. My marriage was on the rocks. My home was a millstone around my neck. "To love money is to know and love the fact that money is the creation of the best power within you, and your passkey to trade your effort for the effort of the best among men," wrote Ayn Rand. To love a thing is to know and love it's nature. Money will not buy happiness. I was not looking for a way to make money.

"All things must change to something new, something strange," wrote Longfellow.

I took a vocational guidance test. The test showed that the sense of adventure was as strong in me as in an eighteen-year-old. Adventure charmed me when I was five. I set out on my tricycle to see the world. I was 49 and excited about a life at sea.

I sold the stock I owned prior to our marriage. It was not part of the property settlement agreement. I told Dorothy I'd give her my new address in Florida and she could mail the check to me. I would only take $500 out of the checking account to pay for the expenses I incurred prior to receipt of the check. It was agreed that I would take the old car and leave the new car for her. I made out our joint income tax and signed it. Dorothy was to sign it and mail in a check for the tax we owed.

A smiling Dorothy wished me well, loaded the two boys and the dog in the new car and headed for the cabin she badgered me into buying in Arkansas. I packed and left my Flower Mound home for the last time, by coincidence, Good Friday, 1975. I stopped on the county road in front of our spread for a last look and thought how little it all meant now.

I arrived in Miami on Easter Sunday for a new lease on life. My plan was to find a temporary job, preferably in a boatyard. I imagined how people who knew me would take it. It didn't matter where I wasn't known.

Writing my life experiences allows me to rant and rave, but there is more to it. You don't really think that one should just write about the good things in his life, do you? Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit. We know good and evil. How can we know what's good if we don't know what's bad? First the bad news on how my new life began.

I found a job in a boatyard on my third phone call. I was to work in the boatyard marina filling gas tanks part of the time, part of the time doing security guard work. I found an efficiency apartment. By the time I paid the first month's rent in advance, I had little money left. I telephoned Dorothy and gave her my address so she could mail my check for the sale of the stock to me. She didn't tell me, but she had forged my name on the check and deposited it in her account. By the time I got my first paycheck, my gas gauge was on empty and I was missing meals.

I was shocked when I looked at the amount of my pay check. I had never been a wage earner. When I filled out the form, being as I was single with no dependents, and I didn't know that I could allow myself, my employer had withheld 22 percent of my meager pay for Uncle Sam.

My car was running badly. I replaced the carburetor. I had talked my landlord into waiting a couple of weeks for his deposit money. I didn't have it. When it came time to pay my rent, I didn't have the money. It was my night for security guard duty. It was past midnight when I arrived at my pad. The lock on the door had been changed. Imagine how you would feel. For the moment, I was homeless. I went across the street to the payphone and telephoned the police. Two hours later I had the new key. There is a legal procedure the landlord must go through to lock a tenant out.

Two days after being locked out, I received a phone call from the real estate attorney who drew up our property settlement agreement. By chance, he had seen Dorothy in court. He went in to find out what she was doing there and found that she was getting our property settlement agreement repudiated. She told the judge she signed it after I shook my fist in her face. I would have to return, hire a divorce lawyer and go to trial.

Dorothy had filed a separate income tax form, paid half of the tax, and sent in the joint return I left with my signature on it. The IRS assessed me the full tax, penalty and interest. I knew nothing until I received the bill. After I returned, I found out what happened.

I had filed a net operating loss carry back form with the IRS. The IRS owed me four times the amount of tax they claimed I owed. I filed a petition in the U.S. Tax Court. The IRS applied my refund money to their erroneous assessment for tax, penalty and interest, and froze the balance. They told me I'd have to withdraw my petition to the tax court, accept their erroneous assessment, and they would then refund whatever was left over. Knowing me, you don't think I was going to do nothing, do you?.

I'm not an accredited legal expert, but an individual with certain rights that open the courts to me.

The United States is currently of the legal opinion that in the present constitutional scheme of things there is an absolute bar to taxpayer suits challenging the validity of federal spending programs. Flast v. Cohen, 392U.S.83 at 98.

You can't logically separate taxing and spending but the government and courts do. When the U.S. Court of Appeals, in Acker v. Commissioner, in 1947, decided that taxes, although high, were not confiscatory, one would take that to mean until such time that taxes were confiscatory. Should family income percentage be the criteria or should the individual's income be the criteria used to make the determination? The government conveniently uses family income as the criteria.

There was no way my after tax income could provide me with a minimum existence. Although federal spending programs are putting taxpayers on the street, as in my case, the taxpayer is powerless to challenge federal spending. Any lawyer will tell you there is not a court in the nation that will hear a case based on the right to place your existence ahead of tax.

My lawyer got me living costs from Dorothy. While I awaited the trial, by chance, I ran into a professional astrologer at a Parents Without Partners get-together. I'd not been into astrology, but with the uncertainty of my life I hired him to create my astrological chart. All he needed from me to tell him about my characteristics and the events of my life was the time and place of my birth.

A few days later he called to make an appointment. The first thing he said was, "It must have been like a sack of cement falling on your head." Then he talked about the fact that my chart's configurations were similar to the world's most popular psychics. I didn't consider myself psychic. Had I have known who I was and what I was about, I would not have taken the path of least resistence. Unfortunately, it was after the fact that I learned. Thankful am I that I learned.

It was comforting to learn that the planets were lined up right for my success at the divorce trial.

At the trial, Dorothy had as her witness my former secretary, who testified that I abused Dorothy's son, Howard. Dorothy told the court that I was a drug addict, not mentioning that the doctor had me on sleeping pills. Dorothy had our housekeeper as a witness. The question was: Did Mr. Smith abuse Howard? The housekeeper looked at me and said, "no, he did not as far as I know."

Dorothy told the court that I had deserted my family and planned to go to sea. She would not have any way to force me to pay child support. The court should award her all of the property.

My lawyer had subpoenaed our friend, a lawyer. He was asked if Dorothy had gone to him about divorcing me. He admitted that she had. This was after Dorothy left in a snit with the two boys and the dog. The lawyer admitted that it was he who advised Dorothy to return home if she expected to do well in the division of the property.

Keeping in mind that the property settlement agreement gave Dorothy the lion's share of the property, and that she had asked the court to repudiate the agreement, the court took the position that since I owned the land prior to the improvements, and that state law required it, the land and improvements would go to me. I guess the court thought I deserved more when it allowed Dorothy to repudiate our agreement.

Dorothy got 30 days to vacate my property. The court gave Dorothy custody of our son. Finding that I was unemployed, the court gave Dorothy $300 per month in child support.

The reason I'd offered Dorothy 5 acres of land and the improvements was because she was going to raise my child. I was leaving him, and one of the main reasons was my bad experience with my first wife after the divorce. She was also possessive.

I offered Dorothy the opportunity to accept the terms of the property settlement agreement, except that she would have to purchase my 10 acres and pay me in cash my estimated value of it. She could borrow the money by mortgaging her property. Dorothy told me she was going to appeal.

When she found out that she would have to place a bond in the amount of the intended appeal, Dorothy was forced to accept my offer. She was not smiling when her lawyer handed me the cashier's check. Coincidentally, my astrologer told me that in my chart was a "part of fortune" that read out that people who deceitfully use me wind up paying.

By the way, my divorce lawyer later became District Attorney and did away with good-old-boy government. Wherever he was, poor Edward Marcus smiled. You don't think I was going to let the IRS get away with its fraud, do you? . Do you remember the story of Noah's Ark? Noah knew beforehand that the Lord was going to destroy the world. Today it is the United States that is going to destroy the world.

With the cash to buy my dream boat, in November 1975-who would have thought it-I was on my way back to Florida. I escaped before the IRS seized my check. Yea, a little man with nutty notions.

 

Striking Out Alone

Illustrating America's obvious lacking, the breaking news is that presidential candidate John Edwards, who capitalized on family values, was unfaithful to his cancer-ill wife. At the same time, China, host of the Summer Olympics, opened with the greatest show of all times, displaying suburb discipline and man's achievement.

In North Palm Beach, Florida, I found my dream boat, a 37 foot live-aboard sloop still on the factory floor. The builder was also a chartering agent. The deal was that I would pay 75 percent of the cost. The boat builder would collect the balance in chartering fees. Bold Venture was commissioned and docked behind the boat builder's home on a canal in North Palm Beach. I had barely finished supplying the boat when two experienced sailors appeared wanting to charter Bold Venture. I told them I wanted some time on my new boat. They invited me to come along.

On Easter Sunday, 1975, my new life commenced. On Christmas Eve, 1975, after taking care of those who would have, in cold-blood, shot me down, those who wanted what was mine talking to themselves, we set sail for the Bahamas Banks. I was paid while I learned off-shore cruising.

We sailed to the Bahamas Abacos, said to be one of the finest cruising areas in the world. My charterers had agreed to sail back to Florida. Instead, they spent the full two weeks in the Abacos and caught a plane back. The weather was fine. I sailed from Elbow Cay to Green Turtle Cay and anchored for the night. The next morning, I set out for West End on Grand Bahama Island. At noon a front moved through. I anchored off a small cay. The bottom was grass. My Danforth anchor wouldn't bite. I dropped my heavier plow anchor. It didn't hold. I tried to keep the boat from drifting with the engine. One of the anchor lines drifted under the boat and fouled in the propellor shaft, killing the engine. As luck would have it, the anchor at the end of that line grabbed, pulling the boat around stern to the wind. With seas crashing over the transom filling the cockpit, there was nothing to do but go below and wait out the blow.

The next morning, with the temperature in the fifties, I dived in and cut the line loose, holding the end and tying it to the boarding ladder until I got aboard. I took the cut line and pulled it in until the boat was over the anchor, thus releasing it. I pulled in the anchor. The boat swung bow to the wind. The Dallas Cowboys were playing the Miami Dolphins in the Super Bowl that day. I listened to the game on my radio. The next morning I set sail for West End, spent the night in a marina and sailed the 50 fifty miles across the Gulf Stream to Lake Worth Inlet at Palm Beach. My chartering agent wanted to know why it took me so long. He had a charterer waiting.

I rented a room in a house with five women. My harem cooked for me and did my laundry. I did the yard work and maintenance.

I met Martha in a singles bar and asked her to go for an offshore day-sail with me. We were approaching Lake Worth Inlet when I thought I heard cries for help. I didn't see anyone in my field glasses. We thought I'd heard the wind in the shrouds. I sailed on but something forced me to come about and sail in the direction from which I heard the cries. I sailed straight to three scuba divers, who, caught in a current, were miles from their dive boat. It was dusk when I pulled them into the boat. Strange that I never heard from the scuba divers again. Martha and I never talked about it. What can we say? Was it God? Yea, right! There is no explanation.

Martha had a friend who was a Palm Beach society reporter. I was invited to escort Martha and her friend to one of those Palm Beach society bashes. Martha told me to dress informally. I didn't know that in Palm Beach, informal means a dark blue business suit.

In a lineup of chauffeur-driven Rolls Royces and Bentleys-in my 10 year-old yellow Cougar-I stepped out wearing a black rayon shirt with large pink and white flowers. I wore a bright blue polyester leisure suit.

Uniformed maids picking up and a butler at the door, white jacketed servers with trays of champagne, social butterflies flitting about, the old dowager blue bloods quietly taking in all in, the Palm Beach Sunday morning "Shiny Sheet" is where you want to get your picture.

I ignored the dress code. It meant I was probably filthy rich. People came to me asking questions. I told the gospel truth. I was a retired businessman living on my yacht. The photographers took pictures of Martha and I. We appeared on the Shiny Sheet as Mr. & Mrs. Gotrocks and the Gotrocks our guests. The captions were reversed. And to think, it had only been a year since I was locked out of my apartment for non-payment of rent.

It took four months to pay the 25 percent I owned in chartering fees. Martha and I went for a cruise in the Bahamas. When we returned, I docked at the marina across the street from her condo and moved in with her. I made arrangement with four local boat owners to charter their boats for a fee and became a chartering agent. I placed an ad in Yachting.

Four Germans chartered Bold Venture for a month. They paid me to sail the boat to Nasua and to sail it back. During this period, Martha and I drove to Key West for a weekend. While there, we met a sailing couple. They had sailed their boat from Corpus Christi to Miami. The husband was a colonel in the Air Force. He had been transferred from Corpus to Holmstead Air Force Base south of Miami. We invited the couple to sail back from Nassau with us.

We met in Nassau, boarded Bold Venture, and set sail for Florida, anchoring for the night off a small cay on the Banks. The weather was squally. The next morning the sky was leaden and the sea flat. We ran on the diesel engine. There was just enough wind to keep the fumes moving with us. We ran on the engine all day. At sunset,  we shut down the engine and hoisted the sails. We left the Banks and moved into that stretch of ocean separating Florida from the Bahama Banks. Due to the north moving Gulf Stream, I set a course 20 degrees south of a true course.

Shortly before my watch was to commence at two a.m., the colonel's wife awakened me to say a storm was approaching. I put on my foul weather gear and went topside. I line of lightning filled clouds stretched from horizon to horizon. I rolled in the headsail and took the wheel. The wind hit and over we went, rail under the water. I headed into the wind. It shifted and my main almost backed, which could have demasted us. I fell off and the rail went under. I brought us into the wind enough to get the rail out of the water, most of the wind spilling out of the mainsail, the boat shuttering from the flapping sail. Drops of water on my face were like stinging bees. I couldn't look up. I steered by the slope of the deck. The girls were below rolling around on the cabin floor, vomiting. The colonel was hanging onto the stern rail for dear life.

I went into a trance. I sensed a rhythm. I was anticipating the boat's movements. My hand on the wheel was that of an orchestra conductor. The tension left me.

At daybreak, the worst of the storm to the east, I was heading north into 30 seas. With the Gulf Stream moving north, we must have been far to the north of our destination. I headed west.

A couple of hours after daybreak I spotted smokestacks. They turned out to me those of Florida Power and Light a mile south of our inlet. Impossible! We arrived at my estimated time of arrival.

There were breakers completely across our inlet. I was exhausted. My crew was in worse shape than I. Something told me to go for it. Seas were breaking on both sides. The stern went up. We slid down a giant sea that never broke into the inlet. My crew hugged and kissed me. They said it was a miracle that we were alive and safe.

Counting the three scuba divers' lives, my crew's lives, and my own, that's seven lives I saved. I had a bigger than life calling. I departed and went to sea. When everything should have gone wrong for me, everything went right. In November 1975, I broke free and went my own way. In 2008, if life could be any better, I don't know how. There is a lot I need to say. Yea, I'm a little man with nutty ideas.

Next, Chapter 2, "Finding a Mate"

The universe begins with the pairing of atoms. All "things" in nature are cyclic. The state of conscious awareness is creative. When God said, in Genesis 1:26, "Let us make man in our image," he made us the creators of our world.

The numbers 1 through 9 are representative of universal principles-1, the striking out, 2, the pairing, the plus, the male, the minus, the female, the ancient Chinese called it the yin and yang.

The ancient native Americans occupying what is now northern California and southern Oregon believed that the god of the above world lived on top of Mr. Shasta in northern California; the god of the underworld lived under Mt. Mazama in southern Oregon. In a battle of these gods, Skell, the god of the above world, caused Mt. Mazama to collapse on Llao's underworld.

Volcanic eruptions grew Mt. Mazama to around 10,000 feet in a half million years. Glaciers grooved the sides of the mountain during the last ice age, leaving U-shaped valleys on Mazama's slopes. Glaciation had all but ended when cataclysmic eruptions took place around 4860 B.C. Glowing avalanches of pyroclastic material filled the glacial valleys to the brim. It is estimated that 18 cubic miles of material blew out of the top of the mountain. The enormous void below caused the top to collapse. After the cataclysmic event, 3,500 feet of the original mountain was gone. The cauldron left filled with precipitation.

Precipitation began it's erosion process, this time in streams that cut V-shaped canyons through the soft pumice that filled the glaciated valleys, finally to the original valley floors. From a calamity beyond imagination, we appreciate Crater Lake as one of nature's most beautiful works. This illustrates how nature works for us. After a calamity, hope and renewal.

I got this from my dictionary under the definition of Phoenix. A fabulous bird that after a life of five or six centuries immolates itself on a pyre and rises from the ashes to begin a new cycle of years: often an emblem of immortality or of reborn idealism or hope; a person or thing that has been restored after suffering calamity or apparent annihilation.

Joseph Campbell, in his Hero with a Thousand Faces points out that with the hero there is always a sequence of action. Campbell came to his conclusion by following the lessons taught in stories the world over in many periods of history. When Campbell was asked why so many hero stories in mythology, he responded: "Because that's worth writing about. A hero gives himself to something bigger than himself."

Mazama Campground lies below the rim of the cauldron at the 6,000 foot level. In the summer of 2002, Karen and I pitched our tent in a grove of large hemlocks. A few feet from our tent a trail took us to the canyon floor and Anne Creek, named for Annie Gaines of nearby Ft. Klammath who descended the thousand feet from the rim to the lake on October 9, 1865, the first white woman to feel the tingle of the lake's icy water. Looking up, we saw the 250 feet of pumice and the V-shaped valley Anne Creek formed.

Thunder resonated through the mountains. A shower sent us to bed early. I awakened before dawn. As it grew lighter, the forest taking on color and depth, the stars disappearing and the sky turning blue, the resiliency of the moment struck me. My life vibrant, in harmony with nature, this was a moment to treasure.

Yet the timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness,

And knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream,

And that which sings and contemplates in you is still dwelling,

Within the bounds of that moment which scattered the stars into space.

Kahlil Gibran.

This moment in perpetuity, merely a passing scene-what we are and are making-as much as the gods, as much as the stars, we are permanent. The ancient sages of India left us this thought:

As is the microcosm, so is the macrocosm.

As is the atom, so is the universe.

As is the human body, so is the cosmic body.

As is the human mind, so is the cosmic mind.

What we are, and are making, from the beginning of our lives to the end of time-we exist in an eternal state-here for a time, there for a time. While nature has her secrets, indirectly, we can know our purpose. What a life mine has been!

My first date with my soul mate, Karen, was a hike to Multnomah falls near Portland, Oregon. On May 18, 1980, Karen and I sat on a log on the trail chatting. I thought her comment strange. She said she wanted our's to be a platonic relationship. At that moment, we saw a black column climbing to the heavens. We hastened back to the car, turned on the radio, and learned that Mt. St. Helens had erupted.

During the calamity my life had become in 1973, I gave myself a bigger than life calling. There followed a sequence of action. Speaking of Karen's strange statement: "I want our's to be a platonic relationship"-in 1980-in 1997 a friend did a computer generated compatibility check on our relationship, based on the positions of the planets. Under Your Relationship with Karen, "The platonic thing was there from the start, and there is a sense of the brotherly and sisterly between you. Even if lovers, you will always be first and foremost, good friends." Could this all be coincidence? The circumstances say otherwise.

My astrologer, in reading the configuration of my astrological chart, said that I was not one to take center stage, but someone whose common sense ideas would be influential with everyone with whom I was in touch. The only gold I seek in writing The Making of New Age Man (as long as the taxpayers continue to pay for my good life) is the gold that comes from the "golden rule:" do unto others that which you would have them do unto you. The golden rule has worked wonderfully well in mine and Karen's marriage. What a shame! It could have worked in my first three marriages.

To continue with the story of my life, Martha was not happy with our living together out of wedlock. It was fine on my boat but not in her condo. After all, she was the bookkeeper for a Catholic monastery. Father Killian was a frequent dinner guest. After my two divorces, the institution of marriage meant nothing to me, nor did romantic love. (This was my thinking a year after departure from my old life.) My relationship with Martha, for the most part, was pleasant enough. Out of convenience, I agreed to marry Martha.

I decided that boat chartering was not a good idea. I had no control over the other owner's boats I was chartering. There were lots of problems. I decided to go back to the lumber business and the place to do it was Portland, Oregon, the lumber capital of the world. Martha put her condo up for sale; I put Bold Venture up for sale. We headed for Portland in August 1977. I found a job as a lumber trader, essentially what I'd been doing in my own business. Martha found a bookkeeping job. Martha's and my relationship started getting less than pleasant. For one thing, Martha resented having to work. My former wives didn't work. She expected me to provide her with a grand style of living. She wanted furs and diamonds like my former wives received from me.

Actually, Martha knew I didn't love her. It never occurred to Martha that she didn't love me. Martha was another control freak. Knowing she forced our marriage, and knowing me, when Martha found out that she had an inherited eye problem that could leave her blind, the full truth hit her. I came home from work and Martha was gone. I never saw her again. She went home to Missouri to be with her family.

The interesting thing about it all is the timing-why Martha came to her conclusion when she did. It questions whether there was not a deeper reason for Martha's departure, whether there is not something about us we do not yet know.

One thing about Martha, she was an excellent cook. I'd gained 30 pounds. I enjoyed dancing. Add this to the sequence of events. During my time in Miami, when I didn't have a pot or a window, one evening I took a walk. A block down the street I saw "The Golden Key Club" sign. Curious, I climbed a flight of stairs. It was a dance club. The hostess invited me in. Gathered around the dance floor were around 30 aging women. Half a dozen dance instructors were all they had. I asked the hostess if I could dance with them. I really wasn't into dancing, but those women were marvelous dancers. I was invited to come back. I kept coming back. Those aging women taught me to really enjoy dancing.

Two weeks after Martha departed, I was at Portland's Greenwood Inn singles bar dancing. In walked Karen with a girlfriend. Here we are with a Joseph Campbell sequence of events. Did I go to sea to recreate myself? Was I brought to Portland for a job or to ask Karen for a dance? The moment our hands touched, I felt Karen's warmth. Was our meeting meant to be?

The music was too fast. I asked Karen to join me for a drink. The last thing I wanted at that time was another woman. I was there to dance, not to add calories. It was like talking with an old friend I'd not seen for a long time. The girlfriend soon left. We talked until closing time. Since Karen came in the friend's car, I drove her home and made a date with her to go on a hike to Multnomah Falls, of course with the thought to take off weight, or so I thought.

Since Karen already had plans to spend time in eastern Oregon, the date was set for May 18, 1980, two weeks away. On one day I was ready to call off our date. I didn't want another relationship. Karen had only recently divorced her husband. She had four grown children. None of this was good. For another thing, I needed lots of time to think over being involved with another woman. The next day I couldn't wait to see Karen again. She was different. I felt that I could trust Karen. I knew better than to trust someone I'd just met. I vacillated between the two positions. How I felt this way about Karen, I don't know to this day. It's inexplicable. I let my intuition be the guide.

My astrologer said, "somewhat detached unless you find yourself truly in love, in which case you will be unreserved and totally committed." He didn't set an age limit. I was 55 years old. I'd been wrong to think that romantic love is for the young. It is for is for the young at heart.

A couple of months after Karen and I met, I flew to Texas to visit my son. While there, Dorothy, wife number two, asked me to join her for lunch at a hotel. At lunch, she suggested that we take a room and discuss getting back together again. Had Karen not appeared when she did, I might have fallen victim again to a woman who was not meant for me.

On my return from Texas, Karen met me at airport. I hugged and kissed her, tears streaming down my cheeks. I'd changed from the self that departed my old life in 1975. I'd been reborn at sea, and now my reward. Karen and I were on our way to a beautiful life together.

Finding a mate

Jovita of the Ivory Coast in Africa found me on the Internet. She languishes in a refugee camp in Dakar Senegal. She says it is like being in prison. She wants to know about my life. I'll try to make it worth her time. Jovita is a figment of someone's imagination, someone who is out to cash in on anyone who is out to get rich quick. I hope those who read my life story realize that we can make our lives a prison. We can make our lives good.

It is little wonder that my first three marriages were to possessive women. Sociologist Robert K. Merton wrote in Social Theory and Social Structure, "The self-fulfilling prophecy is, in the beginning, a false definition of the situation evoking a new behavior which makes the original false conception come true." I grew up in a home where there was little love and understanding. I didn't feel as good as other people. I was rebellious, a rebel without a cause. Actually, I'd made myself easy prey for those who are not inwardly secure.

A reminder from astrologer James Redfield: "We all start at immature levels of ego functions. We have a sense of security based on how much we feel in charge of our lives. We want to keep the idea that things are going fine. We have goals we want to achieve. We need to manipulate things to keep everything just right. We need to keep this allusion for security purposes. If new information comes in, we can act defensively. We don't want information that rocks the boat."

My rebirth started with my bigger than life calling, when I found a cause higher than myself. It happened in my forties. Beginning with my birth, Uranus had transited half way around the sun, to a position opposing itself. So is the macrocosm, so is the microcosm, so am I, if that is my choice. Uranus opposing itself meant that I would be under pressure to change my life. I departed my old life on Good Friday, arriving in Miami on Easter Sunday, symbolic of rebirth. In mythology, rebirth means after the calamity, hope and renewal.

Were there no movement, there would be on universe. There is a beginning and end of all "things." There is movement in our state of awareness, but the state remains. My movement was in opposition of those stigmatizing rules and regulations that make us easy to control. I began a rebel without a cause and emerged captain of my ship.

It takes a first step in a thousand mile journey. In my first chapter, I struck out alone. My chapter 2 is about finding a mate. Otherwise, the universe would have remained isolated atoms. After I found my true self, I found my soul mate.. "Chance favors the prepared mind," asserted Louis Pasteur. Karen and I soon became lovers, in Karen's words, with a "platonic relationship." We were the best of friends because we were lovers-not only in our physical parts; what distinguishes we humans from other life forms is spiritual union. I was legally married to my first three wives. I'm spiritually married to Karen. A millionaire friend of mine once told me he would give every cent he had to have someone like Karen for his wife.

I returned from Flower Mound, Texas, my home before my rebirth, to Portland-to my best friend and lover. We drove to my downtown home, my fifteenth floor condo. I arose early and prepared a champagne breakfast, awakened my sleeping beauty, and we sat sipping champagne at a table in front of my curvilinear glass wall overlooking the Willamette River, including a view of Mt. Hood's glistening white peak with a deep blue background. It was a glorious morning, but my main focus of attention was on Karen's amber eyes. I saw in them the woman of my dreams.

I'd held a surprise for this moment. For my second week of vacation, I'd charted a sailboat for a week on Puget Sound. Karen was thrilled. We packed and headed for Seattle, spending the night on our chartered boat tied to the dock.

On our first day out, beating into a brisk wind, the boat laid over, Karen sitting on the high side, cold salt spray in her face, I asked how she liked it. Karen turned, red nosed, and blurted, "I love it." Somehow, I knew she would.

We anchored for the night with other boats in 30 feet with a gravel bottom, which required letting out a lot of anchor line. I let out all we had, knowing if there was a wind shift we would collide with other boats. I was up several times during the night checking things out. At around 3 a.m., I heard, "Ahoy! We're going to bump." I fired up the engine and sent Karen forward to bring in the anchor line. When we were a safe distance from the other boat, I pulled in the anchor and we set sail for Seattle.

At sunrise, Mount Rainier lit up above the lights of Seattle sparkling in the distance. It was quite a spectacle. We silently slipped into the harbor. I instructed Karen. She was to be on the bow holding a docking line cleated to the boat. I would nose up to the dock. She would step onto the dock while I brought the aft in, Karen feeding out line as needed. I would secure the aft and then the bow to the dock.

Karen put one foot on the dock, her legs splitting apart as the bow moved away from the dock. Karen was lucky. A hand grabbed her's and pulled her onto the dock, saving her from a plunge into the icy water.

We breakfasted at the café on the dock and were off again, this time for that long finger of ocean, Hood Canal, cutting its way deep into the Olympic Peninsula's forested slopes. We anchored for the night in Squamish Harbor, quite away from it all. I pulled out my guitar and started plucking. Karen made the drinks. It had taken me fifty-five years, but by looking within for my answers I departed the calamity my old life had become. My astrological chart said a partner would be the most important thing in my life. I'd finally made it to my path of destiny. What a life this has been!

Our hikes turned into camping trips. Karen and I loved getting back to nature. It was a gloomy, dripping Saturday in Portland. We headed for Mt. Hood's Lost Lake with our camping gear. Once we gained Mt. Hood's slope, we were above Portland's drizzle in bright sunshine. A bee flew in the open window and stung Karen on the rear. I'm allergic to bee sting. My doctor had told me, if I could, to suck the venom out. I told Karen what my doctor said. With Karen laying on her stomach on the car seat, giggling, I was bending over her, with the door open, sucking out the venom when two horsemen appeared behind me. I got in the car and drove off, Karen looking at me with a wry smile. Finally she said, "You Crazy Guggenheim."

We pitched our tent at Lost Lake. The next morning I ventured out to make coffee on our Coleman stove. Our neighbor, "talking lady," started talking non-stop. I wasn't in the mood. I retreated into the tent. After a while, I peeped out. She was nowhere to be seen. I went for the coffee. She reappeared, talking. I retreated into the tent with mine and Karen's coffee. After coffee, we folded our tent, loaded the car and went down the road to a picnic table, took out the stove and skillet and cooked breakfast. A trail leading away from the picnic site led us into a forest of enormous Douglas Firs, shafts of sunlight lighting bright red sumac. We found a mossy place and laid on our backs looking up at the branches high above swishing in the breeze. In spite of the fact that I'd returned to the greatest nation on earth, those were the days of wine and roses.

A divorce court gave Martha her furniture-I had none-and half of the condo. It gave me the Lincoln and my shotgun. I'd used the shotgun to discourage movers who had entered the condo a couple days after Martha's departure, while I was at work. Fortunately, nothing had been removed when I appeared. I changed the lock on the door.

I didn't have the money to buy Martha's half so I sold the condo and paid Martha her half. When I picked up my check, I found that the IRS had grabbed $2,552, pursuant to a tax lien I didn't know anything about. I found out that the IRS had taken the money in violation of a U.S. Tax Court order. The IRS had been holding my rightful refund money. On the day of my trial in tax court, the IRS handed the court an amendment to its claim. It corrected my frozen tax refund. The IRS had also charged me double the tax I owed for 1974. The court ordered the IRS to correct that mistake.

The tax court was not authorized to address IRS treachery. I appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, calling the income tax unconstitutional confiscation of property. The IRS response was the $2,552 grab. I guess that was supposed to tell me my bigger than life calling was futile, and if not that, the Court of Appeals wrote, "Despite the fact that the amount of taxes owed by the taxpayer may well be less than the amount the United States must spend to collect that amount, this is a case in which the excess should be expended to validate once more the legitimacy of the federal income tax." You understand, this is the greatest nation on earth. It can do no wrong.

When I filed my 1980 tax return, this "Crazy Guggenheim" deducted the $2,552 the IRS snatched, and wrote a petition for a Writ of Certiorari, which I filed it in the Supreme Court of the United States, which the Supreme Court denied. What more did I need to convince me that I was in La La Land?

Well, here is more. I was a lumber trader. I bought from lumber manufacturers I, or some other trader in our office, sold  in carload quantities to buyers all over the United States. The reason my company could stay in business and I could not remain in my own business came out. In Canada, the railroads gave my company a cut of the revenue they received from stateside destinations.

The IRS informed my boss that it was going to garnish my pay. My boss took a dim view on my fight against income taxes. He lived in the greatest nation of all times. At the time, the nation was experiencing double digit inflation. Mortgage rates were 15 percent. Home building was considerably off. The stateside lumber mills I'd been buying from were closed.

In the United States, the government takes bids on timber. The price on timber was too high, the lumber market too low, thanks to the prices Canadian mills were making in the United States. In Canada, the price the government sets on timber is based on the lumber market. My boss would not give me any of the Canadian mills the other traders were buying from. My group of lumber traders didn't deal very much with U.S. lumber mills. Most of its profit came from Canadian railroads. What other choice did I have? I quit. At least the IRS didn't garnish my pay. The greatest nation in the world would have to connive some other way to make me pay for taking it to task.

When my condo sold, Karen invited me to move in with her. Her ex found out about it. He tried to get out of paying alimony. In a hearing, Karen told the court that I was her bodyguard, giving the court hard evidence that her ex had broken in and beaten her. His lawyer had to remove him from the courtroom. There was a battle going on with Karen's children. The father had disowned them. Karen was in a daze and depending on tranquilizers. I was the odd man out, and now jobless.

Karen's ex owned half of her home, but the court had given it to Karen to live in. We didn't need a four bedroom home. We sold it. We didn't need Karen's ex's alimony. Karen didn't need the scene I've described anymore than I needed the scene I was in when I departed. On our last night in Portland, we slept in our sleeping bags on the floor of Karen's former home. On the first day of the rest of our lives, we hit the road for Florida and a new boating adventure.

To be continued

Finding a Mate

The above picture is of Bold Venture II

We humans observe far more than any other life form on the planet. That much is obvious-that is, to clear thinking people. But there is far more to observe, I think, than is being observed. We're preoccupied, too managed by the mundane to realize the miracle of our lives. I placed myself in full charge of my life when I cut loose and went to sea. I experienced miracles. I wonder what this world would be were we all in full charge of our lives.

The beauty in writing the story of my life here is that we are a community of people wanting to change the world-with similar thoughts. When I decided to write the story of my life, Siona commented that it would be an incredible gift. More than to my readers, the gift is to me. Since joining Zaadz, the Gaia Community's encouragement has brought me to express my thoughts in a way that I'm discovering evermore about me.

In order to master one's life, it is necessary to be consciously aware that everything we see and touch is, was, and will always be observed. You have observed that when I struck out alone it was likely that everything was going to go wrong. Everything went right. The same double digit inflation that caused my own business to fail caused me to lose my job in Portland. You observed that when my own business failed, so did my marriage. I had the wrong woman. At least when I lost my job, I had the right woman. Karen and I have remained together through thick and thin.

As you read the making of Karen's and my life together, you will find Murphy's Law involved: if anything can go wrong it will. Frankly, I don't have the answer. Perhaps we will find the answer.

When I left my life at sea, and my boat chartering business in favor of a renewal of my lumber career, I'd thought about sailing to the Virgin Islands where boat chartering is big business. Now that I was without a job, the idea of boat chartering was back, with the added thought of video taping the places boat charterers go and selling the tapes to boat charterers. They could make copies to send to their prospects.

With the thought that Karen ought to be away from her past, the same as I when I departed in 1975, in 1981, and my video taping idea, Karen and I departed for a new boating adventure in the Caribbean.

We headed for Salt Lake City, the first leg of our trip to South Florida. All the way to Salt Lake City Karen repeated, "I can't believe I'm doing this." Karen wanted to fly to the Virgins, charter a boat, and check things out. I didn't want to spend the money. At Salt Lake City, she finally believed she was doing this. As we climbed the western slope of the Rocky Mountains, Karen was singing the bear went over the mountain.

In Denver we visited my daughter and family. In Dallas, Karen met my two sisters, my mother and father, and my son. In Austin, Karen met my two daughters and two grandchildren. We dined the the famous Antoine's in New Orleans' French Quarter, ending our 3,000 mile journey in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, in the middle of August. Welcome to South Florida's summer steam bath. Karen was most impressed by the palm trees.

We rented a small one bedroom furnished apartment 3 blocks from the ocean and unloaded the small U-haul. We'd brought along the household things we'd need on the boat we planned to buy. Karen brought along her sewing machine. She sewed together three duffle bags that came in handy.

I started my search for a suitable boat. I took Karen to look at one. She left saying she was not going to live on a boat. I couldn't believe her. It was too hot, she said. I couldn't convince her that when we were on the ocean it wouldn't be too hot. I found another bigger boat. It was tied up on Biscayne Bay. I had the broker open the boat before we arrived. There was a cool breeze off of the Bay. Karen decided she could live on that boat.

I found a boat dealer who owned a boat chartering operation in the Virgins and bought our boat, a new one like the one Karen said she could live on, a 38 foot Morgan. The dealer took off $4,000 for being allowed to show our boat in the up and coming Ft. Lauderdale Boat Show. The dealer also gave me his 25 percent cut on the equipment I purchased. He also agreed to let me present my video taping plan to his chartering league. I got approval. They would buy my tapes subject to their review of them.

Karen and I were walking on the beach. I mentioned that since we both had money in the boat, it would be complicated if anything happened. Marriage had never been mentioned. I mentioned it. We were married and got wills made. Our new boat was being commissioned in a boat yard. Our reception was in the cockpit, the couple on the boat next to our's our guests. We killed a bottle of champagne and took them to dinner.

After the last night of the boat show, Karen and I boarded Bold Venture II, motored up the canal to a slough, dropped our hook, and went to bed. I heard water entering the boat. The hose on the engine that drew sea water to cool it had come loose. I noted that the switch for the bilge pump was turned off. By morning, we'd have been on the bottom of the slough.

The boat dealer asked that I video tape our boat under sail. He hired a model to go along. I boarded the dealer's powerboat with my camera.. Karen, the model, and a boat hand boarded our boat. I taped our boat under sail. In those days the recorder was separate from the camera. It hung from a shoulder strap with a cable attached to the camera. I had a long cable so I wouldn't have to carry the heavy recorder. Moisture got in the connections. The tape was no good.

Karen and I had moved our stuff aboard. Our boat was our only home. We motored down a canal to Port Everglades, planning to sail out of the inlet into the ocean. Port Everglades is as far as we got. The engine seized. We radioed the Coast Guard for help. They sent the "Power Squadron's" boat. They tossed me a line and towed me to a marina. We did a U-turn on the canal and lined up with a fuel dock. The captain of the tow boat reversed his propeller and stopped, with our plow anchor on our bow pedestal heading for his transom. A dock hand grabbed the line I tossed him and quickly made several turns on a piling. We stopped inches before plowing into the tow boat. The Power Squadron handed me a brochure inviting me to join, with this statement: "You can learn a lot about seamanship in the Power Squadron.."

I hired a tug to pull us to a boat repair yard. Our engine was removed and disassembled. Nothing wrong in the engine. They removed the transmission. It didn't have any oil in it. We sat in a boatyard under a bridge with an iron grating growling at us all day and night. On day fifteen on our new home, once again we were underway. I motored up Florida's "Gold Coast." I wanted Karen to see where the cream of the world lived. We spent the night anchored off Peanut Island adjacent to the Lake Worth Inlet.

On day sixteen, in strong wind-too much for our large genoa-I'd hanked on the storm sail. With the seas coming in and the tide going out, we were in extremely steep seas at the mouth of the inlet. I didn't have the storm sail pulled up tight enough. It's foot left the hook on the deck. Still attached to the halyard, it flew out flapping like a giant wounded bird. After we were out of the inlet, I left Karen on the wheel and went to the bounding bow, lowered the halyard and pulled in the sail.

Exhausted  from the effort I'd put out, Karen was frantic when I returned to the cockpit. What would she have done, she asked me, if I went overboard. "Don't worry about it," said I. "Would you please fetch me a cold beer?" When she returned, I was slouched behind the wheel, steering with my foot. That made her mad.

We headed south along the coast toward Ft. Lauderdale's Port Everglades on the engine, the wind too close to the nose to sail. I left the main up to stabilize us. After a while, I noticed the Bimini top jiggling. Upon investigation, I found the boom resting on it. Following the boom to the mast, I saw that the gooseneck had broken, the part that holds the boom to the mast. I lowed the mainsail and lashed the boom.

We arrived at the Port Everglades inlet after dark and motored up a canal to a slough we had in mind. Karen aimed a powerful hand held search light at the channel markers. Without thinking, she turned to say something, shining the light in my eyes. There were unpleasant words. We dropped our hook in the slough. Karen made the drinks and we sat silently sipping. After a time, Karen broke the silence with this crack: "Let's take the for sale sign off of the car and hang it on the boat."

We were definitely not ready to set sail for the Virgins. Besides Karen's reemerging doubts, it would be good to take a shakedown cruise to the Bahamas, return to Florida, and take care of anything that went wrong. It would give Karen a chance to enjoy offshore cruising. There's nothing to compare with the exhilaration of sailing with good wind on the bounding main.  It sets you free. Hopefully, we would not encounter the less than pleasant scattered experiences on my first Bold Venture. But, in any event, they all worked out O.K.

Christmas Eve arrived. Karen was missing her family. We were preparing to sail to West End on Grand Bahama Island, hurrying to get through the draw bridges before they closed for the afternoon traffic. As we rounded the turn into the canal, I remembered I forgot Karen's Christmas present. I left it in the trunk of the car. I offered to go back but Karen insisted that we go on, and pouted all the way down the canal. Give me another "F" for foul-up.

We pulled up to a fuel dock and topped off. The wedding reception guests I earlier mentioned, Jack and Jean Simmons, who lived nearby, came by to wish us a bon voyage. It was after dark when we departed. Once away from the lights of the city, the stars came out to great us. Karen turned in. It had been six years to the day that I set sail for West End on my first Bold Venture. What lay ahead for Karen and I? As I looked to the heavens, I wondered. Being out there on the ocean-just the two of us-was awesome. Surely there was purpose in our adventure.

To be continued

Social Interaction

The picture is of Karen at Georgetown in the Exumas.

I can't tell you how much I appreciate not being forced to deal with the public, now that I'm retired. I've moved away from the crime of the big city, the noise pollution, the oppressive officials with the power to make like miserable.

"Rebel Without a Cause" comes from James Dean's film by that name in 1995. It expresses a rift between generations. In 1973, this rebel without a cause found his cause you've been reading. The rift in generations is bringing forth a new world order. A more innovative individual is in the order of the day. Everything is in divine order.

There is a change in the wind. Old laws are being torn to shreds; new rules are being made. Optimization is out. Everything you have learned is the road to failure. Do the same job better and better and be let go. My two remaining daughters, the oldest deceased, were both recently let go, not because they were not doing their jobs well, but because of the fracturing of businesses. One of my daughters has started her own counseling service. The other is a Montessori school teacher, something she enjoys more than the money she was making in her old job.

Curious things are happening in the Gaia Community. It is not more the less the value, the more members added, the more the value. More makes more. We're not islands unto ourselves. Big change is on the way, but some things never change. I don't fall for the vogue. The vogue is leading the gullible up a creek. Gaia Community member JM writes, "I searched for the oldest young man on Gaia and met Joseph Smith. At 82 he is the youngest of my friends. He is more active and more concerned than most of us about the way the system works or does not."

I was taught to think of myself as a well oiled part of a machine, silently doing my thing with precision, while the machine, a megalomonster, sucked the life out of me. I took charge of my life and found the right mate for me. Now we're into social interaction.

On Christmas morning, 1981, Karen and I tied up at a marina in West End, Grand Bahama Island, the same as I had done Christmas morning, 1975. A lot had happened in the interim, for the most part good.

My slumbers at the marina in West End were disturbed by loud yelling from the neighboring slip. While pulling in, a swift current had taken the boat into barnacled pilings. The captain was yelling to his first mate, his wife. I lent a hand. That evening, "Chicken Wing Charlie," I called him, invited us to have Tang, vodka, and chicken wings, his usual happy hour treat.

Our new-found friends were heading for Harbor Island, where they owned a home. They invited us to sail with them and celebrate the New Year at their island home. At one time, Harbor Island was the capital of the Bahamas. Our sailing friends owned a three story stone mansion built before the Civil War. Our New Year's Eve dinner was by candle light. The island generator was down. The new was the old at that New Year's celebration.

We sailed back to Great Abaco Island, from one Bahama bank to another, in heavy seas. The weather was foul. We anchored on Cherokee Sound, with very little protection. We named that anchorage Rock and Roll Harbor. The next morning, we sailed for Man-O-War Cay, one of several in the barrier reef that runs parallel with Great Abaco Island. Between the barrier reef and Great Abaco is a body of protected water known as one of the best areas in the world for cruising.

Just off the west end of Man-O-War is a narrow cut through the reef. We didn't see it until we were abreast of it. The water is crystal clear. Rocks 10 feet down look like they were three feet down. We drew five feet. The tide was running swiftly in. I held my breath as we shot trough the cut.

The first time on this sound was on a charter boat with Dorothy, my second wife. She asked to be put ashore-frightened the boat was going to tip over. I hired a boy to sail with me. The second time was with charterers on my first Bold Venture, the third time with Martha, my third wife, and now with Karen, my fourth wife on Bold Venture II. I headed for the peppermint stick stripped light house, which marked the entrance to a protected harbor off Elbow Cay. Hopetown, my favorite place in the Bahamas, became Karen's favorite place. Narrow concrete streets are lined with brightly colored wooden houses and abundant flowers. We lunched pool-side under palms, overlooking a stretch of white sand bordering an emerald ocean, at Hopetown Harbor Lodge.

Our next anchorage was at Man-O-War, known for boat building, also for delicious Bahamian bread. From Man-O-War, we sailed across the sound to Marsh Harbor, the commercial center, on Great Abaco. We grocery shopped and topped off our fuel tank. Then on to Green Turtle Cay, the island where I charted the first time.

From Green Turtle we headed back to West End. Along the way porpoise entertained us. The sail from West End to Lake Worth Inlet was that exhilarating sail on the bounding main I earlier mentioned. Under a cloudless sky, the ocean indigo blue, we were on a reach, the best for sailing, the wind steady at 20 knots. We sat comfortably in our cockpit on autopilot, protected from spray by the plastic windshield snapped to the Bimini top. We made the 50 mile crossing in record time and spent the afternoon relaxed, at anchor at Peanut Island, watching sailboats coming and going.

This completed our shakedown cruise. Bold Venture II performed without a problem.

I had electric refrigeration installed. We stored groceries in all available space. We were ready to set sail for the Virgins. Our Harbor Island friends had talked me out of my original plan, which Karen never liked. I'd made arrangements with a boat captain who delivered charter boats to the Virgins. I was going to fly Karen down. The captain's way was to sail 400 miles due East from Florida and than head south to the Virgins. This way we'd be on a reach in the trade winds. It meant a week at sea.

Our Harbor Island friends convinced us that we shouldn't miss the island hoping route. We'd be heading into the trade winds and running on our engine, but anchoring every night. It was against my better judgement. Karen was all for that idea.

In early February 1982, we cast off for the Virgins, first sailing to Nassau. We docked at a marina near a huge pile of stinking conch shells. We left a.s.a.p., crossing the "Yellow Bank" to No-Name Cay, anchored and enjoyed a spectacular sunset. Sailors know those little puffy clouds that make beautiful sunsets mean foul weather is on the way.

We remained at anchor two days waiting for the blow to end. Allen Cay was in sight. We anchored offshore and dinghyed in. A hoard of large lizards leaped out of the weeds and charged us. We ran for our lives and shoved off. Another boat anchored near us. We watched with interest as the occupants dinghyed in and stepped ashore. The lizards, called Iguana, came charging out of the weeds.. Our neighbors stood there waiting for them and fed them bread. We dinghyed back in with a loaf of stale bread.

At Staniel Cay, we discovered some boats at anchor at a cave opening into the ocean. People were swimming into the cave wearing snorkeling gear. Karen doesn't like her face in the water. I swam in and viewed the beautiful rock formations, excitedly reporting to Karen what I'd seen. She put on snorkeling gear and we swam in. A grunt doesn't sound that appetizing. We were fishing for supper at Staniel Cay. Grunts are delicious. Every time we hooked a grunt we watched a large bull shark take the fish off the line.

In early March we sailed into Elizabeth Harbor and Georgetown on the southernmost island in the Exumas. On huge Elizabeth Harbor, there were at least 300 boats at anchor, some coming back, some going to the Caribbean. We anchored in front of the Peace and Plenty Club where there were washers and driers we could use. We'd wondered why everyone was hanging their clothing in the rigging to dry until we used the driers. It would take all day to dry your clothes and cost a fortune.

Everyone on Elizabeth Harbor set their VHF radios on channel 6 and listen to the chat. If someone says something of interest you want to further discuss, you ask the party to switch to another channel.

A well-shaped young lady on a nearby boat appeared on her deck in the nude to sun bathe. Karen saw me looking at her and asked I was getting my eyes full. Interestingly, three guys from three different directions were swimming for her boat. The girl went below and reappeared in a bikini. She dived in and they swam away. I wondered what that was all about.

We met a couple on a boat anchored near us. The four of us motored out and anchored to watch the famous Georgetown Yacht Races. On another occasion, we went fishing with our neighbors. Karen caught a four foot barracuda.

We were waiting for the wind to lay, in March, the windiest month of the year. The next island hop was 25 miles into the wind. The thought occurred me to sail back to Florida. I grew impatient. I could not wait any longer. Our boat came with a three-bladed propellor. We had the power to buck the seas. We headed into the wind for Crooked Island. We made it O.K. but used a lot of fuel. We anchored on the lea side, near the northwest tip.

The next day we sailed around the tip and down the east side of the island, anchoring at Clarencetown. I had lashed a couple of five gallon cans of fuel to the deck, which I dumped in the tank and took the dinghy over to the fuel dock to refill them. The water at the fuel dock was too shallow to carry our boat. The fuel tank took one of those cans. I didn't refill that can. The chart showed another fuel dock between Clarencetown and South Caicos.

The hops between islands were getting greater and the wind as strong as ever. A neighboring sailboat at Clarencetown decided to go no further, my second warning. It turned out that the next fuel was on the other side of the island and no way to get there.   We were at anchor when a neighor radiod us, after dark, that he had received a distress call from a boat  that hit a reef and sank.   I agreed to go with the other boat in seach in the morning.  We found the boat on her side half submerged, the three occupants in a dingy tied to the stern.  Another warning to turn back.

I should have used my own good judgment and hired the boat captain instead of island hopping to the Virgins, but no, we sailed on to North Caicos. I figured we had enough fuel left to make the fuel dock at South Caicos.

We had to cross the treacherous Caicos banks, which was spotted with "boilers," small reefs coming straight up from 30 feet to just below the surface. They could be seen when the sun was high. You didn't dare sail after 4 p.m. We got under way at 3a.m., with plenty of time to get across the Caicos Bank. We bucked the strongest wind yet, arriving at the cut in the barrier reef three hours later than I'd expected. I'd hoped to sail across the Bank. No such luck. The wind was too close to the nose to make enough headway to get across before the deadline. We ran on the engine.

The fuel gage showed between a quarter of a tank and empty when we ran out of fuel at close to 4 p.m., 30 minutes from being off the bank and able to sail to South Caicos. I'd made a fatal mistake in not refilling the five gallon can at Clarancetown.

We could have dropped our anchor where we were, but there was a lot of sea. I decided to sail over to the lee side of a nearby small cay. The cay was farther than I thought. We were moving too fast. I tried to furl the headsail. The roller was fouled. I went forward to free it. Karen yelled that we were in the antlers of a reef. We banged one. I yelled to come about. We didn't make it. We banged another and another. If I'd had an engine, we could have backed off. I tried to lay the boat over and sail off and only succeeded in getting us further on the reef, with the tide going out.

I radiod for help. A fishing boat captain at South Caicos answered me. I described where we were. He came out with his crew. It was after dark when he arrived. We were taking a pounding. The boat was leaking but the bilge pump was handling it. I tied my docking lines together and some other line and floated our dingy downwind to the fishing vessel. They tied a large towline to the dinghy and I pulled it back. I secured the tow line to our mast. The fishing boat started pulling but the tow line was fouled in the reef. A crew member dived in and freed it.

Crashing and banging, we were pulled free. Two thirds of our rudder was missing. The captain of the fishing boat suggested that we come back in the morning. He needed to fuel up before pulling us in. I was afraid the battery would run down, the bilge pump would stop, and the boat would sink.

It was with the warning that if it looked like he was running too low on fuel to continue towing us the captain would cut us loose and leave us on our own in a wild sea with two thirds of our rudder missing. I must have been out of my mind. I took the chance.

The astrological report I had done in 1975, soon after my departure, said, "Once you have started out on a project, even if it appears it is going to be unsuccessful, you have a tendency to continue to go on. You have a great deal of willpower on the positive side. Be sure it is to your advantage to see a project through, because Saturn in Scorpio can make you see a project through to the bitter end."

As luck would have it, we made it to South Caicos. A makeshift cradle was built on the beach. A huge walking crane picked Bold Venture II out of the water and sat her in the cradle. There were fiberglass people on the island. We could have gotten a new rudder flown down in three days. We were insured. The insurance company turned down our plan.

I went to several lawyers. None wanted the case. I learned that maritime law allowed the insurer unlimited time to do something. Karen wanted to go back to Portland. I couldn't leave until I found a solution. A lawyer advised me to spend the money out of my pocket to repair the boat and then sue the insurer. Karen didn't go for the idea.

Two months went by. The fishing boat captain called to say our boat had been stripped and the island government was going to tow the hull out to sea and sink it. At that point, a lawyer took our case. We were told he would sue the insurer for a total loss, our expenses, and his fee.  Had I have left the boat to sink instead of towing her, we'd have had a case. Had I have let the island government take our boat to sea and sink her, we'd have had a case.

A few days after informing us, our lawyer  told us that the insurer agreed to bring the boat back, if possible. They would not pay our expenses, nor for any of our personal property taken from the boat, nor attorney fees. Our lawyer wanted $5,000. I rejected the offer.

Our lawyer went to court, on "irreconcilable differences," and got awarded $3,200 for his time. The court gave me 30 days to find another lawyer. I hired a second lawyer. He wanted $1,500 up front to take the case. He didn't show up for the first hearing. The court gave me 30 days to find another lawyer. The Florida Bar told me that my lawyer did nothing that violated their code of ethics. I couldn't find a lawyer to sue a fellow lawyer. I hired a third lawyer who took the case to court. The jury asked if it could award us expenses. The judge wrote "no" on their written request. My third lawyer charged $6,500.

We got the boat back, repaired, 15 months after we ran aground. By that time, we were working in West Palm Beach to make ends meet. We sold the boat. If I'd have heeded my astrological chart, if I'd listened to my own good judgement, I'd have saved myself and Karen a lot of grief. If a frog had wings, it wouldn't bump its bottom when it hops. I was left to deal with my burden of guilt.

Social Interaction

On my first sea adventure, I spent my time on the Bahama banks. It didn't require a long ocean voyage. I was in a popular cruising area. I had detailed charts. Sailing to the Virgins was quite different. Since sailing to the Virgins involved buying a sat-nav, at the time costing $6,000, it made sense to hire a boat captain who made his living sailing charter boats to the Virgins. He would have a sat-nav. Besides, Karen was not the person to take on a week long sea voyage.

A long ocean voyage was not what Karen wanted. Out there days from land, how did I know I wouldn't be caught in a storm? I chose pleasure over logic. Although my better judgment told me that it was risky to continue on the island hopping route, I literally threw caution to the wind and ended on the rocks.

It is one thing to go out on a limb for the fruit and another to be a dare devil. I can't tell you the times I've chosen pleasure over good judgement, but this time the stakes were high. I rolled the dice and lost. I was not prepared to accept the end of the boating adventure. I continued with an impossible dream, just as my astrologer warned, to the bitter end.

After we got Bold Venture II back, we docked her at a downtown marina and moved aboard. It saved having to pay rent for a place to live. We sold the boat. What next? I had my video equipment. I took it with me on the flight back to Florida. I thought about becoming a boat broker and using my video equipment to sell boats. None of the boat brokers were interested. I decided to go to real estate school and became a Realtor Associate.

Being as I was A Realtor Associate, we found a suitable home at a bargain price. I was paid a commission. I'd planned on investing the boat money in rental property. I applied for a G.I. loan, which required nothing down. My loan application was turned down. The IRS had a tax lien against me. I telephoned the Tax Division of the U. S. Department of Justice and informed them that I had a tax count order that made the IRS tax claim invalid. The tax lien was removed. The loan went through.

I found a ten unit apartment complex listed that I liked and bought it, receiving a commission, and then ceased being a Realtor Associate. It didn't take long to decide the real estate business was not for me. One must be civic minded, a joiner, develop a "circle of influence." I'm a non-conformist.

I ran a display ad in the Yellow Pages and became Action Video Productions, my specialty, weddings. My low price got me jobs. After I learned the business, I bought more advanced equipment and raised my price. I video taped a Palm Beach charity ball. The Palm Beachers started hiring me. At one Palm Beach party I taped, a nude model, painted gold from head to toe, laying prone on the dining table, with goodies placed around her, had the guys standing around chomping and making wisecracks. The giver of that party came to a Halloween party dressed as a cat, wearing high Patton leather boots. She called herself "Puss and Boots." I taped the Palm Beach Debutante Ball. I was placed on a stand above and behind the band. My stand collapsed and I fell on the band, tripod, camera, and all. One wealthy Palm Beach lady went to Bangladesh with her camera and came back with pictures she had me make into a video production, and voiced over her comments. Her purpose was to raise money for the poorest people on earth. An advertising agent hired me to video in house sales tapes for his clients. A yacht builder hired me to video tape the sea trials of multimillion dollar yachts from a helicopter. The owner of Fantome, a large schooner formerly owned by British royalty, hired me to spend a week long cruise video taping the activities of his passengers. It was interesting, creative work. I remained Action Video Productions 12 years. Unfortunately, most of my profits went into equipment.

I also managed and kept up my rental property. I hated dealing with tenants. A year after I bought the rental property, Congress decided that commercial investors should not get the tax break they were getting. Commercial property prices are based on the income the property produces, not the cost. The big commercial property investors had little on none of their own money in their properties. They were incorporated, which meant their personal wealth was protected. With the tax break gone, the value of commercial property started falling. The big investors let the banks have their properties, who were government insured. The government sold the properties, in many cases, back to the original investors at bargain basement prices. It caused a 20 percent drop in the price of commercial property, which happened to be the amount of money I put down on my commercial property. There went our boat money. Oh! And removing the tax break on commercial property ended costing the taxpayers $500 billion.

Drugs moved into the neighborhood causing my rental income to drop. Due to large claims on hurricane damage, my insurance cost doubled. My property taxes tripled. My roof needed to be replaced. The parking lot needed work. The air conditioning units needed to be replaced. Had I sold the property, I could not have gotten more than half what I paid for it, and a bank loan to pay far in access of what I received. The allowance of accelerated depreciation meant that I would have a large tax bill to pay. I was broke. I let the bank have my rental property.

Unfortunately, Karen was the breadwinner in our family. While we were in the process of going broke, the property tax on our modest two bedroom home climbed from $450 per year to $2,200 per year, based on the value of the Mediterranean homes in our neighborhood. The young and wealthy were paying high prices for them. I went to the clerk of the county court for a copy of Donald Trump's lawsuit. He was suing the county property appraiser. I copied Trump's lawsuit and filed my lawsuit in the country court. My property tax was cut in half.

There was a water bottling plant on the street north of my residential street, which moved in after we bought our home. It ran two shifts. The noise was intolerable. I asked for a city inspector to monitor the noise. The city inspector parked his car in front of the bottling plant and walked around the corner to our back yard with a noise meter. As you can imagine, there was not any noise while he was there. The bottling plant had installed a large noisy compressor outside the building. I checked up and found that a permit had not been issued for the compressor. I continued making it as hard as I could on the bottling plant, with the city against me all the time. In the end, the bottling plant, after spending a ton of money on lawyers to fight me, moved.

The owner of a movie theater on the commercial street north of our street bought the water bottling plant. I found that he planned on making it into a 400 seat nightclub with seven off street parking spaces. I wrote up a petition and got 300 signatures on it. The city bought the property from the theater owner and sold it for an art museum.

I was appointed as my neighborhood's representative on a citizen's committee dealing with airport noise. The flight paths had been changed to send much of the air traffic over our neighborhood-much too much. (The airport was only a mile away.) I was the only member on the committee seriously affected by the noise. During a meeting, a Federal Aviation official spoke. I accused him of lying. My county commissioner removed me.

We endured lousy government in West Palm Beach. We were broken into three times during our seventeen years there. Our car was stolen out of our driveway. I was mugged in my own front yard in the middle of the afternoon. They caught the guy. He was a drug addict. He had already served 10 years for attempted murder. His criminal record was long. He got two years. West Palm Beach had the highest crime in the nation and the most forgiving judges.

While in West Palm Beach, I filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court against the IRS. It was the third time. The first two complaints were dismissed. This time the District Court decided to hear me. The Department of Justice immediately admitted that the IRS had wrongfully assessed me. The Court ordered the money seized be refunded with interest.

Here's a Palm Beach Post story of what followed. Monday, December 1, 1986

By Joe Brogan, Palm Beach Post Staff WriterWEST PALM BEACH-Joseph W. Smith Jr. is convinced he'll never have any peace as long as he's a taxpayer and the Internal Revenue Service exists.

He's driven by an 11-year feud with the IRS over what turned out to be erroneous assessments on his 1973 and 1974 federal income tax returns.

The problems started in 1975 when his return was audited. The IRS twice collected the money, twice returned it with interest after Smith filed suit, and then again tried to collect the money this month-despite a federal court order that said Smith didn't owe the IRS anything.

Holger Euringer, IRS public relations officer in Jacksonville, said last week that the agency had been wrong all along and that Smith soon would receive a letter of apology from the IRS district director.

"We did make numerous mistakes in the collection procedures," Euringer said. "We're very sorry and we apologize. We did not intend in any way to harass or intimidate him, but I can see why he might have that impression." Court documents, IRS letters and Smith's files tell a chilling story of IRS bumbling that began in 1975 when the agency disagreed with Smith on how much he owed in 1973 and 1974 taxes.

After the audit, the IRS said Smith owed $1,408 in back taxes in addition to what he had paid. Smith disagreed, so the IRS took out the money he was owed in rebates as a result of business losses in other years.

Smith filed suit, but the government kept the money until just before his 1978 hearing in U.S. Tax Court, when IRS officials admitted the assessment was inaccurate, according to court records.

The IRS said its error was caused by confusion over what Smith and his ex-wife individually owed in 1974, the year they were divorced. The court ruled that he owed only $640 for 1974, and the rest of the assessment was refunded to him. The court also said Smith had been overcharged $300 in 1973, and ordered a refund.

During the three years it took to get his suit settled, Smith said , the IRS improperly held $5,000 it owed him because of business-related operating loss rebates.

Euringer said the IRS is not allowed to withhold refunds pending the outcome of court cases unless the total amount is applied to taxes owed.

"If what he's saying is correct, we were wrong," he said.

Then, in 1980, the IRS took a second look at Smith's 1973 and 1974 tax returns and said he owed $2,556 plus interest. The IRS took the money out of the proceeds from the sale of a condominium in Portland, OR. . . .

In 1983, Smith filed suit in U.S. District Court in West Palm Beach to get the money back. But before the case could go to trial, according to documents from the tax division of the U.S. Justice Department, the division declared the $2,556 assessment a wrongful levy.

Kayla Lettow, a tax auditor with the examination section of the agency's Problems Resolution Office, said last week that the assessment was dropped because Oregon IRS revenue officer W. J. Manderfield incorrectly analyzed Smith's tax liability.

So on Nov.28, 1984, Smith signed an agreement with Justice in which he dropped the suit in exchange for a refund of the $2,556, plus $1,675 in interest.

Smith said he waited for months, however, and no check came. So he reopened his suit. On March 11, 1985, U.S. District Court Judge James C. Paine ordered the IRS to pay up in 30 days.

Smith received a check for $4,231 on April 12, 1985, five months after the deal was made and just one day before the government would have been in contempt of Paine's order. . . .

But on October 23, 1986, he said, an IRS revenue agent came to his door demanding that he pay $3,130 in assessment, interest and penalties owed on his1974 taxes. He said the agent told him the IRS mistakenly had refunded the money.

Action wasn't long in coming. On Nov. 5, the IRS issued a notice to Barnett Bank of Palm Beach saying it wanted the $960 in Smith's bank account because he owed $961.70 on his 1974 return. Euringer said the Nov. 5 bank account levy was a mistake.

The IRS took our grocery money and house payment. The IRS had already put me on the street in 1975, in an out-and-out fraud, which was sanctioned by America's system of justice. This is not the last time the IRS fraudulently attacked us-all because I dared to write the Attorney General of the United States that the income tax was unconstitutional confiscation of property. Uncle Sam is a mindless juggernaut. I've since been declared a disabled veteran of World War II.

Born for Justice

Uncle Sam is our Yankee Doodle Dandy doing a tap dance around our rights. You have lived with me through my youth, my departure and seeking a new life, finding the right mate, and social intereaction.  You have read herein my feeling that my father never had a good thing to say about me. My father was living his life through me. He was a World War I hero, an officer who put his men's safety before his own, but he got a monkey on his back and couldn't get it off. He forced me to look within for my answers.

Change is revving up but we Americans are politically in neutral this election year. We've got a do-nothing Congress. Since Sen. Obama, an authority who wants to be president of the United States, is so open to change, his advisors would do well of advise him we're not here because we're here, nor here to learn from our fathers. We are not here to appease. The establishment lives in the authoritarian past. We're heading for the Battle of Armageddon. We must all use our native intelligence or the ancient prophets will be right.

I went though my younger life almost totally wrapped up in the moment-that is, my problems and solutions. A permanent answer escaped me because I addressed only symptoms.

We're taught to be objective. Impossible! We're not hive creatures. It hasn't been relatively long since the planet Earth was the center of the universe, nor relatively long since the fastest man could move was on horseback Who would have thought a hundred years ago that man would be on the moon in the twentieth century? Do people know whether we're afoot or horseback? I don't think so.

You have read that I was on hand when history was being made in Flower Mound, Texas. A few forward thinking businessmen had a vision of making Flower Mound a New Town like Columbia, Maryland and Reston, Virginia. Edward Marcus and Associates spent millions planning Flower Mound New Town. While the town's people sat silently by, corrupt, power-seeking frauds closed down Flower Mound New Town. We've being programmed to be mindless automatons.

Back to my story, the bank had taken possession of my rental property. I'd ceased doing video productions. My hearing was getting bad as a result of my World War II combat experience. My doctor said I was a candidate for open heart surgery. Karen had been diagnosed with cancer.

The IRS pays no attention to our rights or the law. The IRS has never been audited. It has the unlimited right to make mistakes.  A special IRS branch in Detroit, Michigan, whose sole purpose was to nail tax protesters, received the information that Karen was filing "exempt." These specially appointed keystone cops mailed Karen a six page questionnaire. It did not have the required OMB number on it. The form had not been officially approved. It was illegal.

Those illegal Detroit cops got in touch with the Portland, Oregon IRS. We'd been living in West Palm Beach, Florida fourteen years. Karen and I had been filing a joint tax return each of those years.

The Portland IRS mailed Karen a request for information about her income-to her former Oregon address, Karen's address before we were married, the request with her former name, Karen Meredith. The form was returned to the IRS by the U. S. Post Office. An IRS search found Karen with a different Social Security number and a different name. Tax protesters use different Social Security numbers and different names. If you look like a duck and walk like a duck, you are a duck. It was a case of gotcha. No further questions were necessary in the case of the IRS, but let anyone dare say a religion is enough to make you a terrorist suspect. We don't allow racial profiling.  We're four flushers.

The expedience in tax collection is no different in principle than the former expedience in allowing slavery.  The United States of America has never been what it is cracked up to be.

Karen's former employer in Portland, we discovered, had mistakenly given the IRS the wrong Social Security number.  Once again, the IRS was mistaken.

But the IRS sent Karen Meredith a letter at Karen Smith's West Palm Beach address stating that she owed Uncle Sam over $35,000 in unpaid tax. The letter stated that the IRS could seize our bank account, or any other property in payment of the tax debt, including our home. Understand that is the law.  You are guilty until you prove yourself innocent. If you think the IRS would not have seized our home without further investigation, you don't know federal bureaucrats.  Those keystone cops thought they had Karen dead to rights.

I telephoned the IRS's Portland branch, the same branch where IRS agent Manderfeld mistakenly seized my property when I sold my condo in Portland 15 years earlier. His name was mentioned in the Palm Beach Post story of my experience with the IRS. I got nowhere with Manderfeld when I spoke with him, and nowhere with the bureaucrat with whom I spoke about Karen's tax liability.

The IRS instructed Karen's employer to withhold 15 percent of her wages. Karen's employer informed Karen the IRS was in the process of seizing all of her wages. I filed a complaint in the U.S. District Court in Karen's name. It was dismissed.

I went to my congressman's office in West Palm Beach. The case was transferred to the Ft. Lauderdale IRS problem resolution office. An agent in Ft Lauderdale wrote Karen to contact the Portland office again and be nice. Being nice was to no avail. I went back to my congressman's office with the Ft. Lauderdale agent's letter. Once again, the Ft. Lauderdale office was notified to take the case.

This time the Ft. Lauderdale IRS asked for copies of our last five years' tax returns.  That was all it took, folks.  Case closed, accept for this slap in the face.  The 15 percent of  Karen's wages would continue to be withheld.  I asked by what authority. The code authority the IRS gave me was for government employees. Karen didn't work for the government.  We filed for a tax refund. When the tax refund didn't come, I went back to my congressman's office. It finally arrived six months late.  

Is the IRS a servant of the people?  The United States of America, the most powerful government in the world, has given itself the unquestionable authority to take everything we, the people, have. This made the third time the IRS threatened to put me on the street, or perhaps send me to my grave.

For an undeniable fact, Congress has legalized a hoard of bandits. With a dumbed down population-we can't be heard in a meaningful way in a meaningful place-we're compensated by getting government entitlements. What if the Smiths outnumber the Jones? The Smiths can vote the Jones out of existence. Is this what we want, or is it what the authorities want?  Don't talk about my World War II sacrifice. Talk about the current sacrifice of American  rights.  We belong to the United States. 

With the IRS ordeal over in the fall of 1993, Karen and I suffered the consequences. I was 68 and suffering angina pain, Karen 59, she underwent an operation for cancer in 1994. Talk about that. For shame!

As soon as Karen was able to travel, I took the cash out of the box I'd hidden under the tool shed. We went to the Smokies for a week. We made plans for our future. Karen would work until she was 62. Her Social Security payments started in January 1999. She worked three months without penalty. I spent my time remodeling our kitchen, painted the house inside and out, and did a lot of landscaping. All of it cost $6,500. I sold our home for $42,000 more than a Realtor was able to get a year earlier, which offer I turned down, and I didn't have to pay a Realtor a commission. We sold a lot of our accumulation and Karen's pension money added more. From a start of next to nothing in 1993, with the IRS threatening to grab our home and put us on the street, in the spring of 1999 we had enough to do what we planned.

Julie was like a daughter, and still is. Parting is such sweet sorrow, wrote Shakespear. It describes our feeling as we bid our best friend farewell and climbed aboard a jetliner for Portland, Oregon on April Fool's Day, 1999. It was goodby to the IRS, and all the excess baggage that went with the IRS. The prodigal son returned. My guilt trip was over. I was back on track.

Before the end of April, we were parked in our new 34 foot fifth wheel coach in Blue River, Oregon. Not to mention the removal of stressful lives, relieved of house payments, property tax, high insurance, and withholding tax, we could live in our small but comfortable apartment on wheels and travel for less than we could live conventionally.

The law is harmonious with nature. "We are born for justice," wrote the Roman judge Cicero, the father of modern law, "and right is not the mere arbitrary construction of opinion, but an institution of nature." The U. S. bureaucracy doesn't recognize that law is not for utility's sake. The law transcends expediency. The law is the foundation of liberty to which we are enslaved that we may be free. Karen and I were as free as birds. We planned to travel a couple of years, at the same time looking for a place to land far away from the asphalt jungle,  a place where we could spend our retirement in peace.

Next, Chapter V, Freedom

Freedom

One thing about writing about my life, I'm never at a loss for words, and what my readers report keeps me going. You've read about my bold venture at age five, a tricycle ride to see the world. It proved that my destiny would be an eventful life. You've read about when Uranus, my ruling planet, opposed its position in its path around the sun, from my birth into my forties. I was pressured to make a change. I named my boat Bold Venture, and set sail. I departed from the norm. You've read about when I was age fifty-seven, when I set sail on Bold Venture II. We are now at age seventy-three. Full time RVing was one more departure from the norm. They say a rolling stone gathers no moss. No, I didn't gather moss, nor much in physical assets. It wasn't meant to be. You've got to go out on a limb to get to the fruit. From my beginning, I was destined to be a free spirit.

When I came up with the idea of full time RVing, Karen jumped on the idea like a mockingbird on a June bug. Full time RVing may not be for everyone, but I had the right mate. Full time RVing was a dream come true. I was back in my element. In Blue River, Oregon, we started our adventure walking the numerous trails. Before our adventure, I couldn't walk a block without experiencing chest pain. After a year of getting back to the call of the wild, I was climbing mountains without chest pain. Stress was a thing of the past. My body cells rejoiced. I felt and looked ten years younger, and Karen as well. With Karen and I, it was mind over matter. However, I'd like to mention that if you are of a mind to full time RV it helps if you and your mate are two peas in a pod. But hey! Even if you aren't, on occasion, getting back to nature is something we all ought to do. It's good for the soul.

After our month in Blue River, we hooked up our movable condo and ginned on down to Grand Canyon, Zion National Park, Bryce Canyon National Park, and Capital Reef National Park-on our way to southwestern Colorado where be spent the summer. We purchased a "golden oldie card" from the U.S. Forest Service-for ten bucks our free pass for life into the national parks, and half price to camp. How else but in an RV can you have all the comforts of home (our coach was self-contained), in your own familiar home, in magnificent scenery for seven dollars a night?

You haven't lived until you've taken Utah's "hogback" route to Colorado. With our thirty-four foot fifth wheel behind, in order to keep its wheels on our side of the center stripe on the curves I had to get so close to the edge of a 3,000 foot drop that it looked like we were airborne. The scenery was marvelous, but Karen fully occupied herself with her knitting.

We spent our summer in southwestern Colorado, in some of the Rocky Mountain's best scenery. I worked fifty hours a month mowing grass and doing maintenance work in our RV park for free hookups. We drove the pickup to nearby Transfer Park, near Durango. In my early thirties, when I had a family and a job in the lumber business in Dallas working with my father, I rented a large tent and drove my wife, Amy, and three girls, ages four, five, and six, to Transfer Park.

I'd been going to Transfer Park with Amy several years in the hot summer to fly fish for a week. We farmed out the children. Amy would read while I fished. We set up our tent on the bank of the Florida River. Just above, the river went into a canyon. I went up-river to fly fish. It started raining, and then to hail. I climbed under a ledge and remained in a deluge for an hour, during which time the river was rising. I climbed up a wash, in the process breaking my expensive fly rod. At the top I found myself in dense forest. I spent the balance of the day battling my way back to our camp and got lost. I walked into Transfer Park at dusk finding my family huddled in a corner of the tent that remained standing. The wind had blown it down.  I spent the balace of our camping trip with my girls. They really enjoyed camping, and I wouldn't have traded fishing for the experience.

Claimed to be the most scenic drive in America, and it was magnificent, Karen and I drove our pickup from Durango to Silverton, to Uray, to Telluride, to Dolores, and back to Durango, on the way camping for the night. There were no stakes for the tent. Luckily I'd brought the hatchet. I made stakes and we set up the tent. The skillet  was also left behind. We ate corn chips for supper. In the morning, I stepped on my glasses. With one lense missing, I saw double. Karen drove us back to Durango, stopping in Dolores for breakfast.

For the most part, our free summer vacation in Colorado was marvelous. After the aspen had turned golden, we departed, headed for Brownsville, Texas, on its southern tip. The above picture is of the Gulf of Mexico at the end of the road. Turn right on the beach and drive a ways. You are at the mouth of the Rio Grande, shallow enough to walk across. It separates the U.S. and Mexico. All we saw was lots of birds.

We drove to a border crossing at Progreso, Mexico, I presume meaning progress in Spanish. We were greeted with begging children, street vendors, and numerous dental offices. North Americans were going to Mexico for cheap dental work. I bought a straw hat for $3.00 and a bottle of rum for half price. We North Americans pay for our sins. At the border, I paid the difference in duty. It's wrong to say that in the U.S. there is a separation church and state.

We went to Brownsville for jobs for both Karen and I, I found in an RV park. The jobs were not what they were represented to be. After a month in Brownsville, we left for good. I will say the zoo in Brownsville was great. There was this orangutan laying on his stomach looking at me with soulful eyes, its long arm outstretched as if he was begging for a handout. A baby gorilla wearing a diaper was behind a glass wall in a gorilla crib, looking at me fiercely, clinched fist pounding the glass. A lot about our distant relatives reminds me of people.

We pulled our home on wheels to Austin, where my daughter and family lived. I found a full time job at Home Depot. Texas is not noted for its scenery, but April in Hill Country west of Austin, with its fields of bluebonnets, is hard to beat for scenery. Austin is a nice city. Nearby San Antonio is very picturesque. Had it not been for the stock market crash in early 2000 we'd have left Austin with as much as we started.

We left Austin on May 3, 2000 and parked at a state park on the south shore of Grapevine Lake. The north shore bordered Flower Mound, my home until the spring of 1975. I'd built in Flower Mound in 1965. I left the big city for a life in the country. In the interim, Flower Mound had changed from country to city.

In 1927, when my family moved from Houston to Dallas, when I was age two, the population of Dallas was one-forth of what it was in the year 2000. I was shocked at how downtown Dallas had changed. It had the look of a movie version of a city of the future. I hadn't been around for 25 years. In my honor, my younger sister of two held a family reunion.

Our next stop was Denver, on our way to the Pacific Northwest, for a visit with my youngest daughter and her family. We'd spent 17 years in West Palm Beach, one of the nation's crime centers, had retired from stress filled lives in favor of moving about like gypsies. We had begun in Portland, Karen's home, had lived in the wonders of the Southwest, visited the southernmost point in the United States, had gotten a taste of Mexico, spent the winter with my daughter and her family in Austin, visited with my family in the Dallas area, and planned to visit my daughter in Colorado. We were spiritually rejuvenated and physically ten years younger. Not a bad trade, would you say?

To be continued

Freedom

Starting in Blue River, Oregon in our new home on wheels, to the natural wonders of the Southwest, to the Gulf of Mexico and Texas, my home state, back to Pacific North West, and the best it has in scenery, in a great loop we found a place we could call home in Shady Cove, Oregon. The following slide show is a pictorial review, my daughter and the "House Band" providing the music background.

Joe plays his keyboard and sings to his lover.

I look at these videos and marvel. Karen's and my RV adventure is what the doctor should have ordered. We are not supposed to go through life living by the numbers and when we run out of steam leave it to others. Karen and I are living the best years of our lives.

Why are so many bent on self destruction? They are in the darkness of a polluted environment. Karen's and my body cells escaped by the skin of their teeth. Who says it isn't mind over matter? Ten years after hitting the road we are younger that when the departed in mind and body.

More to come

Freedom

Following up on the above pictorial review of our travels, after Texas, we drove to Denver to visit with my daughter and family. From there it was on to the Tetons and Yellowstone, where we spent 10 days. Yellowstone National Park, the first national park in the world, and one of the largest with over 2 million acres, was voted in by Congress in 1872, and immediately became popular.

We watched Old Faithful spew steaming water high into the air, then walked through the adjacent thermal field of bubbling pools. Sitting in a rocker in front of the giant fireplace in Old Faithful Inn, with an ice cream cone, I read that construction was started in 1903 and continued through the long, cold winter. It was completed before the park opened for the season in 1904. We were impressed by the building's twisted log supports. It took 500 tons of locally quarried rock to build the massive fireplace. On it hangs a gigantic clock wrought by a blacksmith on the site. The original building, containing 140 rooms, was claimed to be the largest all log hotel in existence.

While on our way to Glacier National Park, out of Choteau, Montana a few miles, at the "dinosaur digs" a tour guide told us about the earth's history 80 million years ago. We saw enormous dinosaur leg bones partially exposed. Imagine animals with 15 foot legs. Nature knew she made a mistake. When you see what's going on today, it's something to think about

We parked in St. Mary Campground in Glacier National Park, near the east gate and spent a week. Going-to-the-Sun-road in Glacier is a spectacular drive. We had to stop on the road while a road crew blasted five hundred feet above the road and scraped the fallen rocks off the road, entertained by mountain goats. Nice of them, wasn't it?

When you are retired, and all the time you want enjoy the places you visit, an RV is the way to go. After Glacier, we spent a couple of weeks in the Whitefish, Montana area, in national forest campgrounds, six days in a site and one day in an RV park to grocery shop, dump the waste water, charge up the batteries on the park's power, and then back to a campground at a fourth the price per day.

The little we spent over our Social Security, we made back doing odd jobs along the way. And suffice it to say, it's hardly camping when you roll off a queen size Select Comfort mattress in the morning for a warm shower. We had a storage tank for fresh water, a tank for sink and shower water, and a tank for toilet water. We had gas central heat and electric air conditioning when hooked to an RV park's power. We had electric or gas refrigeration, electric or gas hot water heater. In our view, for what we gypsies were getting for the money spent, it was well worth the sacrifice of space.

From Whitefish, we drove to Banff, Alberta, and then to Jasper. The hundred plus mile trip between Banff and Jasper took us five days. We were in some of the most spectacular mountain scenery to be found anywhere, parked every night in a national park. At Waterfowl Lake, the view out of our fifth wheel's rear picture window was enough to make you feel like you had died and gone to Heaven. We walked on a glacier, the Columbia Ice Field, which feeds the Athabasca River, which empties in the Arctic Ocean. We were awed by a mighty waterfall on the Athabasca. In the campground at Jasper, we saw bears nibbling berries. Elk wandered around the park. Wild sheep grazed along the highway. We saw a moose eating aquatic plants in a lake.

After Jasper, we made our way through the western mountains of British Columbia, and northen Washington's North Cascades National Park, on our way to the Olympic Peninsula, where we parked in rain forests of 250 foot tall trees. We visited Bremerton, noted for ship building. A mothball fleet of World War II naval vessels resides at Bremerton, including the famous aircraft carrier Midway. We toured the destroyer U.S.S. Turner Joy, now owned by the city. Nearby Poulsbo is Norwegian. We lunched there. If you are in the area be sure to take in the Naval Undersea Museum.

Picturesque Port Gamble, the former home of Pope and Talbot, lumber manufacturers-the company still owns and maintains the town-held special significance for us. Looking across Hood Canal, we saw Squamish Harbor, which brought back our memory of anchoring there twenty years before on a charter boat. That's where I discovered that love was for the young at heart.

Port Angeles is on Strait of Juan de Fuca. We planned on taking the ferry across to Vancouver island. It was too expensive. We opted for Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic mountains, and Hoh Rain Forest, which boasts 300 foot tall Sitka Spruce trees.

From the Olympic Peninsula down to Portland, Oregon, we spent a month visiting Karen's family. Julie, our best friend-our surrogate daughter-flew out from Florida for a visit.

We'd planned on spending our winter in southern Arizona. We headed south, and over to the northern California coast, where we visited Redwood National Park and walked through the biggest and oldest living things on earth. Near the Park, we took a dirt road down a steep drop to the ocean. There was a trail we wanted to walk. A large herd of elk was grazing on the tall grass. We walked a couple of miles up the coast and cut across to the beach after the tall grass. Laying on the sand, we were lulled to sleep by the sound of the surf. We must have slept an hour. The sun had set when we made it back to the car.

Driving south on U.S. 101, south of Eureka a few miles, we took a byway through dairy country and wandered into the nineteenth century town of Ferndale, lunching on hot chicken wings and draft beer in the nineteenth century bar in the nineteenth century inn.

We cut across the coastal range heading for Redding but were blocked by an overturned tanker truck on the highway. We spent the night in "Skunk Point Campground" and met a Canadian living in a camper on a pickup. He advised against southern Arizona. He'd been there. His advice was Prescott, Arizona for the winter.

As luck would have it, we found a place in an RV park on the side of a mountain near Prescott. The site had been reserved but cancelled. Our picture window gave us a view of the valley below. We parked during one of those glorious Arizona sunsets. Karen's comment: "This is heaven!" Jerome, on the way to Sedona, is an ancient mining town on the side of a mountain. Now a tourist attraction, we stopped and had the best pizza I've ever eaten. Sedona's attractive adobe buildings, backed by enormous red, pink and white rocks, offers something of a mystery: the "vortexes." The Sedona-Oak Canyon area was sacred to the Indians. The vortexes, so it is told, emit energy-and different kinds in different locations, some feminine, some masculine. We loved the five months we spent in the Prescott area.

I found a part time job for Karen working in an RV park office in Shady Cove, Oregon. The job started in April and ended in November. Karen would work three days a week. On the way to Shady Cove, we detoured to Hoover Dam. We crossed the dam, parked the trailer at Canyon Trail RV Park in Boulder City, unhooked and drove the truck back to Hoover Dam for the tour. Roosevelt named it Boulder Dam. He didn't give Hoover credit for putting people to work during the Great Depression. Hoover dam's workers were paid a whopping $4.00 per day, four times the going rate. Serving the electric power needs of 1.3 million people, besides the electric power, Hoover Dam provides flood control and irrigation. Lake Mead is a favorite recreational area. Can you blame Roosevelt for renaming it Boulder Dam?

In Las Vegas and pulled into Sam's Town RV Park for the night. A free shuttle bus took us to "The Strip." We gambled away all four quarters in my pocket, and then enjoyed delicious Mexican dinners and Margaritas seated next to a sure-nuff canal, serenaded by flamboyantly dressed gondoliers. The whole place is under roof and air conditioned. The ceiling high above appears as blue sky with little puffy clouds in the evening after the sun goes down.

On the way out of Las Vegas, Karen navigating, we burned a half tank of fuel making wrong turns. We spent a night in an orange grove in blossom on the way. In Shady Cove, we found a home. Karen was asked to remain for the winter. We remained in Shady Cove, parked on the Rogue River, four years, Karen working part time in the RV park's office. We spent another two years in the area after Karen quit her job.

With nothing better to do, I started writing my memoirs in April 2001. In August 2008, I'm still writing. Today's story is more personally involved and better received, I think, because it is unique. It's the natural thing when you think about your life as much as I have. We may think alike in some ways, but even as close as Karen and I are, we're two unique individuals sharing our lives together. Karen is much more individual oriented than I. I'm more into the big picture. Karen used to say I was on another plan. She felt left out. Not anymore. I've had an influence on her.

When I'm not writing, for one thing, I enjoy playing the keyboard. It's better to create music yourself than to listen to other people's creations. Like writing, the more you do it the better you get, and the more you enjoy it. Across the road from our RV park in Shady Cove, Karen and went to an antique auto show. Combing my "Golden Oldies" with antique autos, I've made a slide presentation for your listening and viewing pleasure.

To be Continued

Abstract Imaging

We each exist in a state of circumstances beyond our control. Our body cells live in a state of circumstances beyond their control, as do the molecules within, as do the atoms within, as do the subatomic particles within. Externally, we exist in an out of control universe, with exploding stars. A big rock could fall from the heavens and end all life on Earth.

Time waits for no subatomic particle, nor any man. Cutting edge science now finds that choice exists in subatomic particles. Choice is our's as individuals, and as societies. We are not here because we are here. The above description of the state of circumstances leads to only one logical conclusion: universal choice; otherwise, we wouldn't be here.

Given this case, how do we humans fit in the overall scheme of things? We come equipped to observe far more than any other life form on the planet. It is the individual's choice of how much he observes. The more he observes, the more his choices. By observing, we've the choice of flying to the moon or blowing ourselves up. One might say we chose to eat the forbidden fruit and now we've the choice of making man as powerful as the gods or history written in the rocks.

Applying the above mentioned scenario, it is interesting that there was a sharp drop in readers of The Making of New Age Man when in Chapter V, "Freedom," I wrote about RVing with Karen and Joe. It may be that most don't like the transitory life. Trans" is a prefix meaning across, or through, denoting movement. Transformation means to change in nature, the process by which deep structures are converted to surface structures. Sorry, folks, but that's where we are. You either move with the tide of change or sink to the bottom.

When I read the history of man, my view is that over the ages we've been led to this point by an authoritarian world bent on controlling us. That control now threatens to make the biblical prophecy come true: we are not long for this world.

Now for the good news. The scientific understanding that gives authority the power to blow us to hell has now crossed the bridge of new understanding. Along with the physical makeup of the universe is universal consciousness. Nothing could exist without it.

If you want to know how something works, you take it apart and examine the parts. That's what science has done, and is doing. Until the late 1950s, science believed that all matter was composed of electrons, protons, and neutrons, and even believed they could not be split into anything smaller. Powerful particle accelerators required a new model of the atom.

In 1964, American physicists Murray Gell-Mann and George Zweig developed a theory of particle physics that proposed quarks as the building blocks of protons and neutrons, borrowing the word from James Joyce's novel, Finnegans Wake, which contains the phrase, "three quarks for Muster Mark."

To give you an idea of what the future holds, nobody knows what we're looking at, but most of the progress being made in science is being made in quantum physics. There were only two types of quarks to describe the proton and neutron: the "up quark" and the "down quark." However, at the same time of the arrival of the quark, physicists discovered new elementary particles, including kaons, which they called "strange." The explanation of these particles required a third type of quark, so physicists named it the "strange quark" to make three quarks for Muster Mark-the up quark, the down quark and the strange quark.

They used the three-quark model through the 1970s to learn about the internal structure of the proton. These experiments supported the existence of quarks and gluons inside protons, but they had not yet actually been discovered. In 1970, they predicted the existence of a fourth quark, called the "charm quark." Thus, a particle containing the charm quark, the second-generation partner of the strange quark, alas, came the discovery in 1975 of a third-generation "lepton," another building block of matter, which led scientists to predict the existence of a third generation of quarks. The "bottom quark" came along in 1977.

Pioneer Enrico Fermi's name lives on in the Enrico Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory at Batavia, Illinois, which houses machinery that stands 3 stories tall and weighs about 5,000 tons. Four-hundred-fifty physicists coordinate their efforts around the Fermilab, which houses an accelerator big enough to build the energy required to see a "top quark."

Where were you while all of this scientific understanding took place?  It is more than likely that you were living routine lives, not willing to take any chances, leaving well enough alone.  

In February 1995, the discovery of the theorized "top quark" was a big day for quantum physicists. The top quark, an essential in the construction of matter, was a giant step forward. This quark, which no longer exists in nature, played an essential roll in the primordial past. In the world of particle physics that even quantum physicists don't fully understand, this elusive giant (about the size of a gold atom) is extremely short-lived, but held to be of great importance to matter's early construction. The top quark, the "top kick" of the atom's organization, came along after physicists had struggled for considerable time to fill a hole in the standard model they envisioned for atoms. Knowing what controls atoms, a standard model predicting that three generations of quarks should exist, each one containing two different quarks.

Where are we now? Walter Bagenot, a British economist, asserted: "It is often said that men are ruled by their imaginations; but it would be truer to say they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations." Man does not bow to his failure to recognize a child's boundless imagination.  For shame!  It means giving us the usual one-suit-fits-all lead.

During our RVing lives, we read signs in the national forest advising us not to feed the animals. We don't have the good sense not feed humans.  Men, the same as animals, become dependent.  If I'm any judge of what's going on now, we will become less oriented to the material things in life, more in tune with universal consciousness. But I can only speak for myself. My life keeps getting better and better.

to be continued

Abstract Imaging

On July 30, 2008, I started The Making of New Age Man with, "Thanks to Gaia Community's support, I've decided to write the story of my life. I've learned a lot about my life's destiny in writing these blogs. They are an intro to The Making of New Age Man. Many thanks. May peace be with you."

Comments-

Siona: "Oh, wonderful... this will be such an incredible gift!"

Abundantlife: "Abolutely amazing expansion and growth through love's inspiration."

Mamakat: "I am collecting your posts as you write them, Joe. I am honored and awed by your gift. Thank you for sharing this with us."

The pleasure is mine. It is amazing how my thoughts come to mind.

While in the West water continues to seek its level, Communist China rising toward economic dominance-while the world is going socialistic-the individual is being forced to look within for the answers to personal security. It's a one on one opportunity on which the Gaia Community is in a position to capitalize-to go out on a limb for the fruit, says my life story.

To summarize how I got where I am (if life could get any better, I don't know how) when my immature life ended, "like a sack of cement falling on your head," said my astrologer, I unconsciously started reinventing myself. I was under unknown guidance from the moment I felt a bigger than life calling. At that time, I was having a repeating dream of flying on the back of a giant bird through a narrow, winding canyon, terrified. I couldn't see around the bends.

My spiritual guidance was there, although I didn't know it,  when I departed into unknown territory. I left my old life with no regrets, in fact, looking forward to an exciting adventure. Little did I know just how exciting it would be. I've been living a charmed life. The Gaia Community is giving me the opportunity to tell it like it happened.

Something is going on in the Gaia Community we need to know, my good friends. There is synchronicity among us. If we take advantage of the tools provided, we know. My awareness is growing exponentially. It is a combination of writing blogs and reading others that connect with my tags. I find myself making more sense, and others telling me. It all works together. The incredible gift to which Siona referred had its birth with my bigger than life calling, ending with my effort here to serve all.

When I'm not writing or gardening, I get a lift out of playing my keyboard and singing. There's a catchy tune I enjoy. The words start with:

Are you giving the world a smile,

Helping lesson someone's dreary mile.

Do you greet the world with song,

as through life you pass along,

Cheering those you may meet along life's way.

It is said that it takes a first step in a thousand mile journey. We have relived the first steps in my thousand mile journey. One astute reader wrote that I'm the youngest man he knows. The longer I write The Making of New Age Man, the younger I become, and the more I enjoy the effort. The rewards can be great. We've many more steps to take in gaining control of our lives.

In April, 2001, Karen and I found a home in Shady Cove, Oregon, and Karen a part time job in the office of our RV park. The real life travel adventure in The Making of New Age Man may have been over, but with nothing better to do with my time, I decided to write my memoirs.

A biology professor at Tulane University, Julian Huxley, in his essay, The Future of Man, stated our increasing purpose with, "Man's exploration and control of external nature has outdone his exploration and control of his own nature." When I think back on my life, it isn't enough that the atomic bomb played a role-it gave an authoritarian world the power to end all life on the planet-the genetic altering of plants and livestock is bound to end in a genetically altered human.

What do we know about altering our genetics? Biologist Robert J. Bradbury finds the genome's sequencing progress written in four letters in the DNA alphabet-A for adenine, C for cytosine, G for guanine, and T for thymine. Linked together to form DNA, genes, the words of the DNA language, "a complete and accurate DNA sequence representing the genetic blueprint and product in the book of life, as well a practical utility." So what! What rubbish! The genetics of a fly are not a lot different than the human blueprint. When I asked a genetics expert from whence the code, he said, "We don't get into that." We don't know what the results will be of a genetically engineered human. One thing for sure, not everyone will be genetically engineered.

It is downright scary. It isn't enough that we Americans have lost control of the fruits of our labor. We are under the control of a federal judiciary that has outlawed the idea of one nation under God. We better learn what God really is, folks. Don't forget that the U.S. Supreme Court sanctioned black slavery.

We will soon be cloning healthy organs. Healthy individuals today might live a hundred and fifty years. Hey, I'm healthy! All the more reason for concern. Thinking young is thinking in the future. Coincidentally, astrology tells me, according to Jeanne Avery in her book, The Rising Sign: "Aquarius is the sign of the water-bearer to humanity. When this sign is on the ascendant," as in my case, "the individual has a unique approach to life that makes him somehow ‘different' from other people. He may have a most unusual personality, or be so far ahead of his time that he is accused of being eccentric."

Which comes first, the chicken or the egg? Take your choice, the genetics experts or the thoughts of this eccentric. Each strand of DNA in our bodies consists of three billion base pairs of genetic information. How could DNA be undirected? It isn't religious to believe we are the making of man. However, a federal court ruled that any idea of intelligent design is religious and therefore a separate issue. My friends, it can't be taught in school, by order of the federal judiciary, that we are here by intelligent design.

Is O'Reilly looking out for you? Is Obama? I don't think so. You've got to look out for yourself. It isn't a pretty picture. If we accept as law that we are not here by intelligent design, in your future look for the Nazi dream come true. It fits like a hand in a glove. I repeat: "Man's greatness that does not bow is his failure to recognize a child's boundless imagination, unfortunately, means giving the usual one-suit-fits-all lead." It, therefore, behooves us to learn who we are and why we are here. The incredible gift is that there is no better way than the Gaia Community's way.

As a musician, I'm consciously aware of harmony. When I observe a sea shell, I'm consciously aware of symmetry in nature, qualities that have no time and place. Consciousness is a perception. If the brain perceives, nobody knows where. I don't think about breathing. We are created to think beyond the end of our noses. I'm consciously aware of the Gaia Community's synchronicity.

Currently, I'm drawing on my past experiences in my life story, The Making of New Age Man. I'm blogging it. The story of my life begins when I was five, when I set out on my tricycle to see the world. Man's greatness that does not bow is his failure to recognize a child's boundless imagination. I've seen a lot of the world in my 82 years. I've been putting it down in snapshots of my life, in many ways archetypical.

Today my thoughts are on Chapter VII, The Desire for Harmony. I haven't got it together yet.

The Desire for Harmony

The above is a  mathematically generated  graphic in in a computer called a fractal.

St. Augustine wondered about this: "People travel to wonder at the height of mountains, at the huge waves of the sea, at the long courses of rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and they pass by themselves without wondering." Not me. I wonder about the nature of reality. We need to turn the outside in. You are not up to speed today if your awareness doesn't include the world of the very small. The pieces are telling me there is much we don't know about the way it all comes together. St. Augustine asserted: Distinguish the ages, and the Scriptures harmonize. First, I want to talk about harmony and symmetry.

Creating music gives me a lift. There is a lot more to it than we know. We are created with conscious awareness potential far beyond any other life form on the planet. I've traveled extensively in the Pacific Northwest, awed by nature's majesty. Is a mole? Those pests are eating the roots of my flowers.

I'm created to feel pleasure in the beauty of nature. I can't tell you how much my life was changed by choosing nature's beauty over the asphalt jungle. In creating a model of the human being, one needs to be aware that he exists in a state of conscious awareness, and unlimited. There is no better way than getting back to nature.

My traveling days have ended. I'm now on a journey of ideas, which I'm passing on for whatever worth they may be. I've a child's imagination. I see a bridge between science and the human spirit. I see our purpose in life increasing. I see it as our responsibility to learn more about how it all comes together. We are the keepers of this rare speck in the universe. It supports life as we know it in a hostile to life universe. It is our sanctuary, a billions to one shot.

I've been writing my thoughts down the first thing every morning for years. I used to think about the things I now write about and then forget them. Now I can refer back. It is amazing how it comes together. There are no coincidences, my friends. We are here for an increasing purpose.

As I've pointed out, the "top quark" no longer exists in nature. While it played an essential roll in the primordial past, held to be of great importance to matter's early construction, the "top kick" of the atom's organization came along after physicists had struggled for considerable time to fill a hole in the standard model they envisioned for atoms.

Basic to quantum mechanics, the study of the smallest excitations of a quantized wave or field, as distinguished from classical mechanics, what does it mean when the basic building block of the universe, the atom, looks different every time an observer looks at it? Werner Heisenberg, the father of quantum mechanics, published a scientific paper in September 1925, in which he wrote about the uncertainty principle. I recall the date because I was born in September 1925. Quantum mechanics is the launching of the new age; that is, the Age of Aquarius, the symbol of which is the water-bearer, and my astrological "rising sign."

I repeat this from the ancient sages of India:

As is the microcosm, so is the macrocosm.

As is the atom, so is the universe.

As is the human body, so is the cosmic body.

As is the human mind, so is the cosmic mind.

Einstein calculated that every "thing" can be reduced to vibrations. Speaking for classical physics, if it can be mathematically proven, it is a scientifically acceptable fact. Pythagoras, the father of mathematics, by the way a musician, imagined "music of the spheres." With my imagination, I make a connection between things as vibrations, and harmony and symmetry, as well as numbers to explain it. Pythagoras, also an astrologer, equated numbers as human characteristics, figures as the aspects of matter. Not in classical physics. No way, Jose! Let me ask this: Why is circumstantial evidence enough to put a man in prison for life and in classical physics you've got to have the smoking gun? For that matter why is it necessary to have a physical place called Heaven? Hey folks! It is time that we grow up. We  literally can't live in the past.

As a musician, I know the C above middle C has double the vibrations, which connects with the doubling process in the forming of a human being. If we use our imaginations, the doubling process involves discrete numbers-and, the quantum mechanics of reality construction. Distinguish quantum mechanics from classical mechanics.

You don't need a smoking gun. You need a human mind to interrelate matter with consciousness.

Let me explain polarized fractal geometric discrete numbers. From atoms, to the earth, to the sun, to the galaxies, each possessing its own energy field, and every "thing" in a self-replicating universe, we can make a logarithmic model of the universe with numbers.

In that low "C" on a piano vibrates 32 times per second, the next "C" up the scale vibrates at 64 times per second, and the next "C" up the scale at 128 times per second, illustrating the doubling process, and the "C" with 256 vibrations per second harmonizing with an "A" with 432 vibrations per second, and with an "E" with 162 vibrations per second, harmony in nature is represented by numbers, and encompasses a doubling process. Low C, 3+2=5, 5 being the discrete number, and so on, a vibration's numbers doubled coming out as a repeating discrete numbers sequence,1-2-4-8-7-5, you've got a mathematical means of creating graphical evidence of harmony and symmetry, and even graphic evidence of DNA's code.

The brain understands sound. It transfers harmony to a soothing emotion, thus transforming us into creatures with superior sensitivity to nature and her higher laws.

To be Continued

The Desire for Harmony

The thoughts I'm transmitting to you are indirect, from my growing conscious awareness to an organized sequence of events-exclusively, my reality-and yet part of the universe's consciousness (along with the rest of us). What who-done-it is more filled with intrigue than our real life experiences? Life holds no threat to me because after my bigger than life calling my life fell under the control of infinite organizing power. I've been living a charmed life. Life doesn't get any better!

The ancients perceived of connecting heaven's dots to give me my characteristics. The cutting edge of science perceives of particles being the characteristics of matter. But no, classical physics can't perceive of the two being connected. Why is that? I'll tell you. The authorities find it to their advantage to compartmentalize. By order of the judge of the universe, the U.S. District Court, we're not here by intelligent design, while in the three major religions of the world you and I can't know God without God's earthly vicars. Quite naturally, classical science limits itself to Newton's laws of motion, and what have we got: a three ring circus.  If we listen to external authority, we become trained animals.

From a magazine ad I responded to, Widening Horizons sent me a numerology report. Under "Your Mid-Life Concern with Freedom:"

"Sometime in the middle of your life, probably between the ages of thirty-five and fifty, you're apt to begin thinking about how free you would like to feel. You probably haven't been too concerned with freedom-or the lack of freedom-before, but current circumstances may bring it to your attention. There may be significant change in one of the major stabilizing factors in your life-the end of a marriage or business, for instance, or the passing of a parent. There may be a new potential for freedom because of important financial gains or perhaps, the abandonment of self-imposed responsibilities. Whatever the reason, it wouldn't be surprising if you start to change some of your attitudes and actions related to freedom because of this mid-life appraisal."

Read the exactly as stated above in my life story.  How could that be?  At mid-life, I was on a collision course with the "obamable" establishment (and now it's here big time).  My business was on the rocks, as was my marriage.  How did I go from that  sorry existence to the good life?

I wouldn't have had the courage to cut my umbilical cord with the past had I not had "my bigger than life calling."  Uranus, my ruling planet, brought me the energy and opportunity for growth and change.  Says astrologer Jeanne Avery, this energy "can be to blast us out of the rut we're in."  She maintains that you've got to go out on a limb for the fruit.

I ran into Hans Decoz on the Internet. From the date of my birth, my name, and a few other details, he made an absolutely correct analysis of me, as follows:

Life Path: "Your entire life exists as a potential that has been prepared for. Joe, you have ultimate freedom to do with your life as you like: To fulfill its potential completely, or to make some smaller version of yourself. It all depends upon your effort and commitment. You make the decisions to fulfill, to whatever extent, the potential life that exists within you. That is your choice. In this sense, the possible you is implicit during the moment of your birth."

Life Path is 25/7: "Joe, you are the searcher and the seeker of the truth. You have a clear and compelling sense of yourself as a spiritual being. As a result, your life path is devoted to investigations into the unknown, and finding the answers to the mysteries of life. You are well-equipped to handle your task. You possess a fine mind; you are an analytical thinker, capable of great concentration and theoretical insight. You enjoy research, and putting the pieces of an intellectual puzzle together. Once you have enough pieces in place, you are capable of highly creative insight and practical solutions to problems."

Expression: "Your Expression number reveals your physical and mental constitution, the orientation or goal of your life. Some numerologists refer to this number as the Destiny, because it represents a lifelong target at which you are aiming. You work at fulfilling this potential every day of your life. Thus, the Expression number reveals your inner goal, the person you aim to be."

Your Expression is 16/7:  "Joe, you are gifted with an analytical mind and an enormous appetite for the answers to life's hidden questions. You have a strong interest in exploring scientific matters, philosophy, and even mysticism. You possess clarity and persistence in your search for truth. You can be a great researcher, educator, and philosopher. You are driven by a desire for knowledge and truth. You must learn to discriminate between illusion and reality, but you are well equipped for this task. Your fine mind offers you insight into the veiled mysteries of life. You also possess a considerable amount of perspective. Somewhere inside you, you are aware of a peaceful place that you call upon during difficult times. Joe, you need time to be by yourself. Too much social interaction causes you stress. You need your privacy and a place that can be shut off from the hustle and bustle of life."

Beginning with particles, we find in quantum physics that reality's mystery can be answered, but only indirectly. Under Heisenberg's "uncertainty principle," you can know where a particle is between points A and B. You can know its speed. You can't know both speed and location at the same time, Nature has hidden secrets.

Think of coming down from outer space, first seeing the whole world, then the oceans and land masses, to landing and seeing the world we live in. The rest is imagination By indirectly connecting the microcosmic to the real world we know, quantum physics is discovering the reality of the big picture; say I, by indirectly connecting the big picture to me. From an infinite possibility dimension, science now adds a probability wave. From infinite possibility, to probability, finally, we humans, replicas of universal consciousness, make reality-mine, your's, and everyone else's.

So here I am, folks, "shut off form the hustle and bustle of life," exactly as predicted. It is amazing when you think about it. For someone like me who knew what it was like to not have love, and to live every day of his life in discord, it is truly a miracle to now know love. My life story as like those movie stories. It isn't true to life, not as we know it. There is a lot we don't know.

The years of mind search tells me there is much more to us than we know, but it is a do-it-yourself task to learn the truth of who you are and what you are about. Of one thing I'm certain, you are not natively here to bring about discord. That's what earthly authorities do against us. Nature equips us to live together in peace and harmony.

Nature in a great many ways demonstrates harmony and symmetry, as is seen in the non-local tapestry called world lines. Tachyons are hypothetical subatomic particles that travel faster than the speed of light. A lot that is hypothetical becomes real. In keeping with ancient philosophy, and more lately quantum jump philosophy, it is believed by some people that at the time a soul begins to experience life as an independent entity a field of energy known as the Akashic Record is created to record every thought, word, intent, emotion, and deed generated by that soul. The Akashic Record is supposed to mold and shape levels of human consciousness-to educate, to transform the individual-and as we interact and learn from the data that has already been accumulated, to embody an ever-changing array of possible futures. The cutting edge scientific theory is that we make our reality. Anything is possible.

Quoting from The Astrologer's Handbook by Francis Sakoian and Louis S. Acker, "This trine (Saturn trine Pluto, a trine in my astrological chart) gives the natives the ability to understand the laws by which subtle forces are organized, enabling them to use these laws consciously or unconsciously. . . They are able to work slowly and make fundamental and irrevocable changes in their own and other's lives. Often there is a sense of destiny or a peculiar karmic mission which they must fulfill."

Are we going in circles, or struggling to attain a higher end? Do you know you have the power of God in you? I think you do. Your world is moving toward expanded communion and other levels of existence.

To be continued

The Desire for Harmony

In my July 9^th post, "A Message to World Changers," I wrote, "We have no idea of the power that lies within us," and finished that piece with a James Allen quote, "that mind is the master weaver, both of the inner garment of character and outer garment of circumstance, and that they may have hitherto woven in ignorance and pain they may now weave in enlightenment and happiness."

We are the lords of our own well-being. "My fruit is better than gold" (Proverbs 8:19), "that I may cause those who love me to inherit substance" (Proverbs 8:21). Is "I" not you and I? Rather than in Heaven, God lives in our hearts and souls. Earthly authorities don't give. Their's is fools gold. They are stealing the "I" in you and I and giving the substance of life to themselves.

How can you who have read about my two years of cruising in the Bermuda Triangle say that I have not rescued others; that God has not rescued me? No, you don't read my story; you read stories of lost lives. Oh ye of little faith! What faith is higher than faith in self? Does God not live in us? God helps those who help themselves.

A doubting Thomas Gaia member I asked to be my friend wrote back, "What can I do for you?" For you doubters, James Redfield, author of The Celestine Prophecy, in an astrological reading on me, on an audio tape, said, "As you get in touch with your inner energy and start to get in touch with your higher self, you will be guided into how to find that true work expression. It will be shown to you intuitively. This becomes the way you uplift everyone who comes into your life. When you evolve into your higher self you energize those who cross your path. This becomes your greatest talent."

We don't know why, but the stars are not lying about me. It all fits like a hand in a glove. I imagine that it isn't the stars. They are merely moving in obedience to a higher order than any of us know. It is utterly impossible that we could be accidents of nature, that life as we know it could be possible in a hostile universe without a force from beyond our limited understanding of the physical universe.

It's not that we don't have lots of evidence of the makeup of the universe. Quantum physicist Evan Harris Walker, in The Physics of Consciousness, informs us:

"Beginning with the myths of and superstitions of antiquity, we have followed a path of discovery into the modern age of scientific understanding, and we helped to open the door to new reams of science. . . We first see that objective reality is a flawed and incomplete conception of reality. We find that what we had thought was an independent and objective physical world is in fact contingent on the observer, on our combined consciousness, in a most basic way."

Pythagoras, said to be the father of modern mathematics, studied under Egyptian priests. He is remembered for his theorem, the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. Quantum physicist Walker, from his study of the microcosmic, wrote in The Physics of Consciousness, "Look again at the three-squares in Figure 8.1. What we have constructed is the standard figure from the Pythagorean theorem. . . Thus we have a simple graphical way of showing how many photons (in any time interval) will pass through a pair of Polaroid filters at any angle-and also how many will be stopped."

Walker is writing about his Bell's theorem experiment. He informs us that photons instantaneously communicate, and furthermore, communicate, once connected, no matter if separated by light years. It is an indisputable fact. It doesn't question Einstein's proof that the ultimate speed limit is the speed of light. It merely make the statement that there is more than the physical universe to consider.

It has been offered as a possible explanation for disappearing aircraft and ships that time warps exist in the Bermuda Triangle. I found myself where I could not possibly have been. I was in a storm. I should have been far to the north of my destination. Instead I was at my destination at my estimated time of arrival. Not all ships disappear in time warps. You just read about those that mysteriously disappear.

On one occasion during my time at sea, I mentally picked up on three scuba divers who got caught in an ocean current and were miles from their dive boat. I sailed straight to them. Since there is no explanation, we don't talk about it. We call it anecdotal-based on incidental observation rather than on systematic evaluation. And why this? It has to do with epistemology, a branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature , methods, and limits of human knowledge.

What have I been telling you? The authorities compartmentalize. I tell you that your conscious awareness is without limits. I tell you that you've got to look within for your answers. I saved three lives by a power in me. What else but the consciousness of the universe working in me? Why me? During a very tough period in my life, I had a bigger than life calling. My wife thought I needed to see a shrink. She had no faith in me. It changed my life for the better. I don't know about her life. She is history. I have someone who has faith in me. Presently, I'm one of you. Take me or leave me.

Einstein quipped that the most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is incomprehensible. Why is that? The physical sciences don't answer the deeper, more fundamental questions my mind addresses. First, understand that my mind isn't in my brain. It is a total waste of time to try to comprehend the universe with a mind in the brain idea. The aim here isn't to degrade mind to meathead, but to account for our state of mental awareness. Science knows precious little about our mentality because it is not physical. It can't be measured and weighed.

Imagine being mindless. Nothing would exist. Imagine a single mind in the universe. What if there was only one computer? It would serve no purpose. We possess conscious awareness. Our purpose depends on how consciously aware we are. We have the right and responsibility to ask why our mentality asks why it exists. And who should we ask? The establishment has paradigm limitations. The pressure is building for a great change. 

Change  is going to come with a zap: everything you've been taught will be null and void.

It has not been long, thanks to the medieval church, since the earth was the center of the universe. At Galileo's trial, Cardinal Bellarmine was heard to say, "To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous as to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin." This reminds me that the science of the past is now being confronted with quantum physics latest punch in the nose-consciousness. It is now accepted by the cutting edge as part of the mix. The classical guys remain with no way of explaining consciousness, so what do they do? They try to do the medieval thing, with a materialist's twist: we remain at the center of the universe. O.K., guys, have it your way. "A Gaia Story" hits the bulls-eye.
 

A curious thing will happen when you are in the driver's seat. You will start connecting with others. In the vastly upscaled future, you play the primary role. You are the value. Things will play a secondary role.

The "obamable" bigfoot authority is history. Limiting yourself to the world around you, living in the Pisces past, will leave you in a cloud of dust. Assume that your mind, your most sacred property, not your surroundings, is at the center of all things, and that you are connected with the super consciousness of the universe to some degree, and the degree is your choice. When you trash your paradigm limitations, when you open your mind to new ideas, you will start putting the pieces together. You'll soon be riding on the crest of the wave of the new reality sweeping across the land. You, the individual, will be empowered.  I can only speak for myself, but since joining the Gaia Community I feel connected. Were  this that I write not so in my case, I would not be writing the story of my life.

To be continued

Recondite Consciousness

Recondite consciousness, that force of movement in nature that put me here at this particular time was determined by Saturn, the learning planet being in its most favorable alignment with Pluto, the planet that disrupts. My qualifications are told by Francis Sakoian and Louis S. Acker in The Astrologer's Handbook. Recondite consciousness, not easily understood, abstruse, esoteric, requiring special knowledge-and incomprehensible to those without special understanding-as you read the events in my life, you find them leading me to my path of destiny.

"This trine gives the natives the ability to understand the laws by which subtle forces are organized, enabling them to use these laws consciously or unconsciously. It favors those who work in such fields as physics, the occult, magic, astrology, or systems of meditations. . ."

"They are able to work slowly and make fundamental and irrevocable changes in their own and others' lives. Often there is a sense of destiny or a peculiar karmic mission which they must fulfill."

The man hundreds of millions call their savior was crucified. Jesus, who lived 2,000 years ago, a vagabond who held to none of the trappings of society, did not have a dime to his name. With zero authority, Jesus turned over the money changers' tables in the temple. The authorities depended on the money changers for their lush existence. Not one of his followers would acknowledge that they even knew him. When they were given the choice of Jesus or a murderer, the people chose to nail Jesus to a cross.  History records that Jesus Christ and Christianity were placed on a pedestal, a political move made by Rome's eastern empire ruler, Constantine.

To tell you the truth, not one of my associates, or family, would read one page of the story of my life. I'm living a charmed life, but those who know me would wonder why. I don't appear to be Prince Charming. There is nothing about me that appears to be outstanding. You can read how far I got in my legal challenge on confiscatory taxation. When the truth was printed on the Palm Beach Post about the lawless IRS, not one finger was lifted, not one person spoke to me about it. No book publisher would spend ten cents of their money publishing my life story. It figures. Notwithstanding Jesus, who so many think of as their personal redeemer, we are all prone to take our lives for granted, and live as mere cogs in the wheel. We note that the meek have yet to inherit the earth.

I'm living a charmed life, but nobody who knows me knows why. In reading about my life, you will find that in early life I missed my calling. You will find that at mid-life I had a bigger than life calling. In my early life, two marriages failed and my business ended on the rocks-50 years and failure to accomplish what I set out to do in life. That's what the people who knew me knew. The only people reading my life story are a few Gaia community members. They are inspired and they inspire me.

Neither my father or mother knew me. My sisters didn't know me. The kids I knew in school saw me as a misfit and I acted the part. Those who knew me thought I'd flipped when I departed.  I imagine the same applied to Jesus when set out on his mission in life.

When Jesus was asked if he thought of himself as king of the Jews, he said his kingdom was in Heaven. Jesus was the self-described son of God. The star gazers who predicted Jesus were not present at Jesus' trial. I'm the person above described by Sakioan and Acker, however, how do I explain it to an audience that doesn't know about the subtle workings of the universe?

To make a story interesting, one needs to make it intriguing, however, only as far as paradigm limitations allows the audience to go. It's quite a challenge. There is so much about the subtle workings of the universe we choose to ignore.

As we approach the speed of light, time slows and lengths shorten. Just take it for granted. It is mathematically proven. Since light travels at 670,000,000 miles per hour, and we can't actually travel at anywhere near that speed, the differences in time and space are negligible at our speeds.

Light travels in the time-space consortium in waves. Unlike water waves, light waves have no medium in which to travel. There is a lot about light that doesn't fit the mold we know. Were it possible to travel at the speed of light, time would stand still and length would shrink to nothing. So, where does that leave your consciousness? It is infinite; it is boundless in a universe that is more than meets the eye.

Another fact about light that doesn't fit the mold, of which the cutting edge of science is aware, when observed, light waves change to a stream of particles, or photons. Another thing, called Planck's Constant, light always comes in identical units of action, or energy, by name, photons, the thing-in-itself, the physical reality, but never directly experienced.  Classical physics wants no part of anything that is indirect. We can wonder why.  If the universe was the clockworks classical physics says it is,  something  would have gummed up the works not long after it started.

The cutting edge has grown to know that time and space are not the absolute reality. For a scientifically proven fact, there is a non-local force beyond the force of gravity and electromagnetism. Don't confuse it with the religious notion; It is natural law. The cutting edge has learned that subatomic particles, the aspects of matter, exist in a state of infinite possibility.

The light we see, a quality of a deeper reality, lies beyond our senses. It takes recondite consciousness to delve deeper into this mystery. By examination of the aspects of matter, quantum physics is bringing us ever closer to our inner consciousness and to the state of infinite possibilities, where mind and matter mix to make our reality.

Considering that nature's movements have placed me here with an understanding of the subtle workings of the universe, the interesting thing to me about my birth is the timing. I was born in September 1925, in the month and year Werner Heisenberg published a scientific paper describing the uncertainty principle, the beginning of quantum mechanics and a deeper understanding of the way the universe is put together, and more importantly, that consciousness is fundamental to existence.

Everything happens for a reason.  I'm here for "a peculiar karmic destiny which they must fulfill." If you can believe in faith in your fathers, you can believe in yourself.  In biologist Julian Huxley's words, "Man's exploration and control of external nature has outdone his exploration and control of his own nature,"  which says to me we're living in bygone times.

At the moment of my birth, the sun rose on Aquarius, the water-bearer to humanity. What causes state selection? The state of consciousness arises out of quantum mechanical interactions in the mind. This is the most crucial time in mankind's existence. We better quit putting a mindless motherland ahead of the individual's mind.

Water, the elixir of life, the organizer when life on this planet began, played a role in the reorganizing of my life. I emerged from my two years at sea the captain of my ship. The new age is turning the old age under, planting a new crop of ideas. Dr. Masaru Emoto discovered that frozen water crystals respond to music by forming beautiful designs, and that the words, "thank you" form crystals similar to music; and that the word "fool" malformed and fragmented crystals the same as heavy-metal music.

Do you realize that our water planet is in precisely the right location for life as we know it, and that we're a billions to one shot in the universe? The Bible opens with, "And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion. It's literally a matter of life and death.

The moral of a story is brought out by picking a scapegoat. Sorry to have to say this, folks. What I must tell you will offend many. The intelligentsia, a term borrowed from the Soviet Union, is composed of intellectuals, judges, teachers, politicians, social groups, and what have you, people in America with visions of a better world who have placed themselves in positions of power and engage in the dissemination of wealth. As I write, they are gathered in a convention to shout hoorays and  hallejulias for their great and glorious contributions to mankind.
 
They tell the world they are for the working people. In the story of my life, you read of taking from the poor to give to the poor. While I was not able to pay my rent on my after tax pay and was locked out, down the street there was a food stamp line a mile long.  The hand passing out the taxpayer's money is quicker than the eye.  Actually, the intelligentsia can be traced far back in the history of man, to any time when the above named intellectual remedies give us love of the motherland over the common sense of the individual. Why has the intelligentsia not informed you of these realities I mention?   No, I don't think we understand the message Jesus left us.

We who observe now emerge as the co-creators of reality. So what does all of this tell us? As you read the story of my life, you will understand why I say "the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry," from John Steinbeck's book, who also wrote The Grapes of Wrath, the experiences of Okie bindle stiffs during the Great Depression. Is there any question about it? 

The difference in my positions on everything and the intelligentsia's positions is that I don't have a great formal education. I've never held a title. I've made a lot of mistakes. I've learned from experience. Steinbeck's depression day stories, and my account of government deceitfully sucking the life out millions of the working poor in confiscatory taxation, tells us that we need to look within for our answers, not to the intelligentsia's depression day remedies. We cannot live in the past. The intelligentsia is giving us a bum steer. It is time that we start looking within for our answers.

to be continued.

Recondite Consciousness

Democrats call Republicans frauds. It's the pot calling the kettle black. I listened to Hillary Clinton's speech to the Democratic National Convention of 2008. She was enthusiastically in support of everything Democrats have stood for since Roosevelt, namely, taxing the rich and giving to the poor.

The poorest fifty percent in America, those earning $30,000 or less per year, pay only three percent of the tax burden. Figures don't lie but liars figure. When I was a single wage earner in 1975, earning barely over the minimum wage, my employer withheld from my meager pay for federal taxes on income, including Social Security tax, twenty-two percent. I didn't take any deductions on my federal withholding tax form.

While I was a minimum paid wage earner in Miami, Florida in 1975, the U. S. Internal Revenue Service erroneously assessed me and illegally froze my tax refund. I'd challenged the tax as unconstitutional. I've copied a Palm Beach Post story  I wrote in my Chapter III cont1. It tells about 11 years of IRS "mistakes" against this pauper. After the story was printed, there was not one comment made nor was any investigation made. I sent a copy of the story to Senator Bob Graham, a Democrat. He mailed me a government report stating that the IRS is permitted to use "draconian" means in income tax collection. Hillary Clinton's speech clearly says Democrats are lying frauds.

We can understand why the depression day homeless, driven from their farms by drought, unable to find jobs, were helpless, and why the American people voted for the intelligentsia's remedies. But World War II ended the depression. The so called Victory Tax, to help pay for the war, became federal withholding tax after the war. The horse was out of the gate. America has been going to war ever since. We're at war now, a war that is likely to grow into the Battle of Armageddon. Taxes are involved big time.

Trained by the intelligentsia's answers since the Great Depression to depend on society rather than the individual, the masses, like mindless jellyfish on the tides, depend on lying frauds. All of this I write readily comes to mind. Years back I started writing my thoughts down first thing in the morning. It has given me recondite consciousness. New doors are opening.

Since retiring, I've made an attempt to write the story of my life. The more I write the more that connects. I'm connecting with others, and they with others in our Gaia community. 

It is national suicide to allow ourselves to be bled white with taxes.  Taxes buy the means of ending all life on the planet. With one-on-one communication, only one percent of the world's population with the will to do what I and others in the Gaia community are doing could save our world from annihilation. Will we have the will?

The aspects of matter, aspects in the alignments of planets, dimension of infinite possibility, observation, recondite consciousness, making new age man, universal service, born with my sun rising on Aquarius, the same as the United States of America, after reading the story of my life, would you say the parts connect?

P. S. "Will" (my tag word today).  "The most distinctive mark of a cultured mind is the ability to take another's point of view; to put one's self in another's place, and see life and its problems from a point of view different from one's own. To be willing to test a new idea; to be able to live on the edge of difference in all matters intellectually; to examine without heat the burning question of the day; to have imaginative sympathy, openness and flexibility of mind, steadiness and poise of feeling, cool calmness of judgment, is to haveculture," says A..H. Fairchild. 

P.S. I connected with my obituary today. The Muslim, Farzad, agreed with me. "God lives in all of us, and those aware of it will ultiately bring lasting peace to the world. "  We are moving forward. I connnected with  DL Zeta today.

Universal Service

The astonishing thing about my life is that the stars predicted how I could live it to the fullest extent, those dots in the heavens from which the ancients traced pictures. The stars were directed and I know how. The cutting edge of science tells me.

Starting with the beginning of my time here on Earth, coincidentally at the birth of the scientific understanding of how it all comes together, in quantum mechanics, in my life story you learn about my nature and early life experiences. You learn that at mid-life, as  transiting Uranus, from the time of my birth predicted, you learn that I made a drastic change in my life. I went to sea for two years on a sailboat I named Bold Venture. You learn that while I was at sea miracles took place. I not only saved my own life but the lives of six others.

While at sea-where there was no one to help me-I emerged captain of my ship. At last, I knew who I was. The most amazing part of the experience was that with no external help I learned to love myself and God within me. After I became a God-self, low and behold, I found a mate (my fourth) to love and to be loved. For the first time, I became spiritually united with my mate. It is all there in writing for you-my charmed life. Mine is a story of how, on my very own, I made it so; that is, with God's help. Could my life be an accident of nature?

"It is possible to go ‘behind the scenes' of your physical life to create change. It is inside the world of spirit where you step free of physical limitations and discover your spiritual destiny. Your spiritual destiny is not "fixed" in terms of physical limitations. The only given in spiritual "predestination" is the infinite and unlimited nature of your being. Once you discover your spiritual destiny, you can begin to make the life you were born to live a part of your present moment. Whatever exists within your present moment naturally extends into both your past and your future." DL Zeta.  How does she know? How do I know?

So where does my charmed life leave me now. Numerologists Faith Javane and Dusty Bunker, in Numerology and The Divine Triangle, write that the number 9 represents selflessness and compassion. "Encompassing a love for all, it desires to apply its energy to universal service. It bestows an impersonal but just view of life, one that is generous, benevolent and patient. This is the artist and thinker who has developed skills through the preceding cycles and is now ready to share his or her knowledge with the rest of the world." This is where I am now in Chapter IX.

Universal Service

My change didn't start that great. I was working in a boatyard at near minimum pay. The withholding tax took twenty-two percent of my pay. I couldn't pay my rent and was locked out of my one-room apartment. At that very time, the IRS had erroneously assessed me and had frozen my tax refund. I was out of site and out of mind.  Down the street from my apartment was a mile long food stamp line. My government opposed me every step of the way during my working years. This was the legacy that Roosevelt left us. What is this change Obama, in his acceptance speech, told us he is going to make. He told us that he belongs to the party of Roosevelt.

Obama told about how his mother and grandmother sacrificed so that he could have the best of chances in life. Said Obama, we are free to be what we want to be but we cannot do it by ourselves, stating that we are our brother's keeper.

Obama promised that if elected he would cut taxes for 95 percent of the American people. He promised to see that every child had an opportunity to be educated, even with a college education. He promised to see that every American would receive the best of health care. Obama said that we will have to take responsibility for our lives, following that he is going to see to it that fathers pay for their children's keep.

If elected, Obama is going to make America independent of Midde-East oil. He is going to tap our natural gas supply, get us safe nuclear power, get us clean burning coal. He is going to get us better pay, get us family leave, save Social Security. Obama is going to turn water into wine if elected. The wealthy are going to pay the bill.

According to Obama, we are at a crucial time in history. According to cultural historian, Richard Tarnas, in Cosmos and Psyche, after a 30 year study of astrology and patterns of human history relative to "hard-aspect" outer planetary alignments, actual historical events, such as the French Revolution and the hippie-movement of the 1960s in the U.S., in fact, going all the way back to Attila the Hun's invasion of Rome, great disruptions have exactly matched these hard-aspect outer planetary alignments. The next hard aspect of the outer planets will start in November 2008 and last four years. Whoever is elected, we, the American people, are heading into treacherous water. My question: do we need a caretaker government to guide us or our own God-selves? America's elected officials are the very best at dividing both sides against the middle. A house divided will not long stand.

When I set out to remake my life, everyone I knew was against me. They felt that I deserved whatever sorry fate I met, especially my government. Can Obama's promises match what I've done for myself?

In the story of my life you read that while at sea-where there was no one to help me-I emerged captain of my ship. I came out of the experience knowing who I was. The most amazing part of the experience was that with no external help I learned to love myself and God within me. After I became a God-self, low and behold, I found a mate to love and to be loved. For the first time-I'd been married three times before-I became spiritually united with my mate. My charmed life is there for you in the story of my life. Mine is a story of how, on my very own, I made it through my trials, that is, with God's help.

Obama was appalled that America would allow veterans to sleep on the street. He said he was going to help veterans. I'm now age eighty-two, and in Chapter IX, "Universal Service." I'm out of sight, out of mind to all but a few Gaia friends. I can only speak for myself. My life is good in spite of the rotten things my government did against this pauper. By the way, I'm a veteran of World War II my government lawlessly put on the street. Now that I'm declared unable to work due to a war related injury, the same government lends a helping hand. Clearly, mine and your government's left hand doesn't know what its right hand is doing. Politicians have glib tongues, and Obama's tongue is one of the glibbest to ever appear. Pathetically, Obama's supporters at the Democratic national convention were teary-eyed over all that their hero was going to do for them. For shame!

Universal Service

After being informed by the Democrats at their 2008 presidential convention that they intend on taking us back to tax the rich, give to the poor, a new ray of hope appears in the otherwise boring 2008 presidential campaign, Alaska's governor Sara Palin, Republican McCain's announcement of his vice presidential running mate. This is exciting. Who knows, she might be a bright light in the fading light of Washington, D.C. for a long time to come.

If I enjoy the mountains and you enjoy the sea, since neither the mountains nor the sea impose their wills on us, there is nothing offensive about our differences of opinion. Why do I get the feeling that I've become a leper? It offends me to have another's will imposed on me, such as taking the fruits of my labor by law in order to give another his or her due.

At their convention, Democrats were singing, "We Are Family." That's what Obama and the Democrats are about, isn't it? During his acceptance speech there were a lot of tears of joy when Obama said he was going to be America's head of the house and decide who would receive what. Your silence is deafening.

Obama says, If you're walking down the right path and you're willing to keep walking, eventually you'll make progress.

Obama says, It took a lot of blood, sweat and tears to get to where we are today, but we have just begun. Today we begin in earnest the work of making sure that the world we leave our children is just a little bit better than the one we inhabit today.

Obama says, In the end, ... that's what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism, or do we participate in a politics of hope?

Obama speaks platitudes, and then gives us his ideas of what those platitudes mean.

Are you one of Obama's family members in need? Is it because you are mentally or physically handicapped? Is it because you have not had an equal opportunity? Or is it because you've had bad luck, something beyond your control? What would that help you need be? In the national forests, there are signs that advise us not to feed the animals. We know animals that depend on handouts lose the ability to cope.

We've got Obama who millions know and adore. A handful know me and what I'm about. I'm a dandelion puff. Obama is a juggernaut. Why listen to me? The scientific fact is that the slightest movement of air can either become a tornado or prevent one. This is proven to be basic law. It is called the chaos theory.

Edward Lorenz, a meteorologist, was working on weather predictions. He had a computer set up with two logarithmic curves and wanted to see a particular sequence again. To save time, he started in the middle of the sequence, entering a number off of his printout and left his computer to run. When he came back an hour later, the sequence had evolved differently. Instead of the same curve as before, it diverged, ending wildly different from the original.

It should have worked. He should have gotten a sequence very close to the original sequence. Eventually, he figured out what happened. The amount of difference in the starting points of the two logarithmic curves on his computer was so small, as far as air movement is concerned, that it was comparable to a butterfly flapping its wings. A giant force is building in momentum. It is going to blow away Roosevelt's legacy.

Little by little, the number of Obama family members needing help is growing, as is the number of votes, as do the needs of his family members grow. Obama wants to help veterans. More power to him. I'm being paid for the sacrifice I made, not only in World War II, but during every single day that I worked for my keep. The least I can do is to warn America's youth of what to expect. The best thing we could do for our children is to faze out government entitlements and put the individual back in the driver's seat.

"Do we participate in the politics of cynicism, or do we participate in a politics of hope," says Obama. Is it cynicism to mention concern about the cost of helping out the growing number in Obama's family, as well as their growing needs, or is it thinking in practical terms? Like I say, Obama has an outstandingly glib tongue, but he could not be sincere. No way, no how is Obama going to give ninety-five percent of the American people a tax cut. America's national debt is now $9,632,000,000,000, and growing by leaps and bounds. The debt service alone is enough to allow every American family a new home.

The United States is a growing juggernaut mindlessly wiping out the American people's independence. Does America have an executive branch, a legislative branch, and a Supreme Court that balances the power? The American people now have a Supreme Court that rules by today's needs, not by the U.S. Constitution's original intention, but by the seat of its pants. Roosevelt changed the Constitution when he asserted, "While it isn't written in the Constitution, nevertheless, it is the inherent duty of the Federal Government to keep its citizens from starvation." He pressured the Supreme Court into going along with his massive individual grants in aid programs by threats of doubling the number of justices on the bench, whom he would hand pick.

No, Obama doesn't offer the world freedom. Obama says he is of the party of Roosevelt's depression day remedies. He offers the world an oppressive totalitarian dictatorship. I'm a personal witness of the results. It doesn't matter to the U. S. Supreme Court that the IRS lawlessly put me on the street. It dismissed me without comment. It didn't matter to Obama's Democrat colleague, Senator Bob Graham, or any other Member of Congress I contacted, including Senator Edward Kennedy, that the IRS lawlessly confiscated this entry level worker's property.  I was one of Amercia's working poor the president didn't know existed. Since Obama is a bird of the feather, one can assume it doesn't matter to Obama.

Yes, Obama is for change, and now you know the change he wants. It is all clearly revealed in the story of my life what Obama's wants. Little by little, Roosevelt's family is growing. A president Obama, who thinks of himself as the head of the American family, empowered to help out the members he feels in need of his help, of course with your sweat, what hope would there be for you? Would you not want to be one of Obama's family, after being stripped of your means of coping? Of course you would. What better way to make you feel hopelessly in need of Obama's help than to let you know that to protest your taxes would be absolutely futile? Read my life story. It could get you in more trouble than you could imagine with the IRS to protest. Would you not keep your mouth shut? Not a single soul came to my defense back when it happened, nor at the present when I report what happened.

At the time the IRS lawlessly put me on the street, with impunity, the news was full of nut cases, some going to prison. How does this that Obama offers differ from the Soviet Union? It is simply a matter of time that I will be permitted to write my experiences. My friends, Obama's appeal is malarkey. He is another tinhorn politician, a pied piper out to rob you of your fundametal rights.

There is Obama's way and my way. Obama's way is based on his education in a northeastern school of higher learning, one of those schools pumping out people who have the idea that they are better qualified to disseminate the wealth of the nation. They conjure up a better world in their minds and then force all the pieces to fit. The Soviet Union was led by the same type of ego maniac. My way is based on personal experience.

I'm here with a message of universal importance. We must look within for our answers, lest we end history written in the rocks.

Universal Service

In 1928, law professor Edward S. Corwin's The "Higher Law" Background of American Constitutional Law was published. Coincidentally, shortly after I had my bigger that life calling in 1973, I happened upon Professor Corwin's book in a secondhand lawbook store. I paid one dollar for it. It has been worth a hundred times its weight in gold. It gave me a legal footing on which to base my claim against the United States.

When you compare the present position of the northeast's intelligentsia, of which Obama is a product, the change is amazing. Professor Corwin, born of old New England stock, was called to Princeton University by President Woodrow Wilson in 1905 to teach constitutional government.

Something astounding happened to change the ideas of constitutional government Professor Corwin laid out in his book, the Great Depression and the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. I was eight at the time. My family, along with millions of other families, listened to Roosevelt's "Fireside Chats." My father pasted an "NRA" sticker on the back window of his car. NRA stood for the National Industrial Recovery Act, individual grants in aid.

With a third of America's workforce jobless, Professor Corwin's idea of constitutional government didn't fit with the needs of the time. Roosevelt's answer of massive grants of individual aid didn't fit with accepted doctrine. Roosevelt forced the Supreme Court to accept his remedies by threatening to double the number of justices on the bench and hand pick the added members. The ship of state would have otherwise sailed on without giving a helping hand to millions of drowning people. The idea that we must interpret the law in light of today's needs gave the Supreme Court justices the idea that the law is what they say it is. Those egomaniacs have the power to make it stick, at least those of the Roosevelt mind set. They have become an oppressive dictatorship. I'm in support of women's right to choose. I'm in support of my right to choose, but come on, folks! Obama is in full support of those legal dictators on the bench and against those justices who give me any rights at all. Birds of a feather flock together. Those fools Obama supports are relics of the past and ought to be ridden out of office on a rail.

World War II ended the Great Depression by giving everyone a job. What a pity it took a war. In any event, when I came home from World War II, America's economy was booming. I was soon living the life of Riley. The tax on my income was relatively low.

The Victory Tax, made law during World War II to help pay for the cost of the war, was kept. It is now Federal Payroll Tax, a significant part of the worker's income he never sees, and unfortunately, can't use to pay his rent or put food on his table.

Over the years, those individual grants in aid, now called entitlements, have skyrocketed, as have payroll taxes, as has the national debt, as has government's control over the economy, as has government's control over the individual. When you read the story of my life, you read about how Roosevelt's legacy put this entry level worker on the street in 1975, by taxing me so much that I could not pay my rent and was locked out of my one room apartment. You read about how the United States gave the IRS the authority to ignore the tax code, to confiscate my property. You read about how America's judiciary looked the other way. You read that your representatives in Congress ignored me. In other words, you read that might makes right. I don't have a constitution that protects my rights, not since the Supreme Court allowed for individual grants in aid.

Obama repeatedly says that he will adhere to Roosevelt's legacy if elected. Obviously, Roosevelt's legacy is wrong today. The "Higher Law" dates back to antiquity, to our archetype, to a being of vastly greater conscious awareness than any other life form on this planet. Coincidentally, the cutting edge of science is lined up with antiquity's ideas of the Higher Law. In keeping with the Higher Law, you find when you read the story of my life that it parallels the 9 cycles the ancients gave us in our development, staring with striking out alone and ending with the desire to be of universal service. Actually, I did strike out alone after my bigger than life calling in 1973. In 2008, I can say that if life gets any better I don't know how. I've been fighting the United States every step of the way.

Isn't it ironic that the United States, through entitlements, has given me a fine home, the same United States that put this pauper on the street? What does that tell you about the United States? Is it worthy of your trust? Millions of deserving citizens are falling through cracks in the law. Besides the makers and keepers of the law, numerous federal fiefdoms are making the law to make it easy on themselves. A federal juggernaut is systematically destroying America's freedom.

When the cat is away the mice will play. Would you advise me to look the other way, just sit back and enjoy my good life, ask no questions and get no lies? If I were to let the good times roll and let the future take care of itself, I would be telling myself that I don't deserve my present good life.

With Obama's agenda, he would have to possess the gift of oratory to have any chance at all of being elected president. The Democrats are banking on McCain's lack of charisma putting the Democrats in the winners' circle. While McCain sort of turns me off, and I wasn't going to vote at all, in listening to Obama and McCain, I believe McCain is sincerely for America's best interests. He will get my vote.


To be continued