"I of my own knowledge…"

Empires are not created — and do not decline — in a day or two. Neither are free republics lost so quickly. It takes time. Years ago, in going through old journals, I found this poem copied out, by Archibald MacLeish, titled “Conversation in a Belfry,” from Ten Conversations,  written post-Watergate. Each passing year only goes to show how truly he saw.

Conversation in a Belfry

Centennial bell that will not ring,

Tell me why your iron tongue

Rusts in the rain, your mouth is dumb.

Why are you silent, bell?

                                                  For shame.

You are not shamed.

                                            Not I but you.

We? With all we’ve done and do?

We’ve ruled ourselves two hundred years.

No name on earth is proud as ours.

It was your fathers’ pride that ruled:

Their sons are tricked and lied to, fooled

As Lincoln said no people could be –

All of them – always – for their good!

But still we’re free. Ring out, O ring!

What man is free when fraud is king?

Our souls are ours: our minds our own.

While someone listens on the telephone?

This is John Adams’ holy land…

John Adams would have seen you damned!

When Jefferson’s immortal word…

Jefferson’s immortal word

Is yet to hear. It will be heard

But not by those who sell his soul.

You ring now, bell.

                                        I toll, I toll.

The funny-looking guy on the right-hand side of the photo is me sometime in the early 1970s, complete with long sideburns, a thick long  mop of hair,  and a  frame that now by comparison appears skeletally thin. The man I’m standing next to is my father. March 6, 2012 makes 27 years since he left us, age 70, less than five years older than I am now.

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This 1.5 minute clip is wonderful! Not, at all, a self-consciously “inspirational” clip, but if it doesn’t set up your day, I don’t know why, maybe you’re dead.

http://www.wimp.com/flybird/

If the download falls behind the play, just pause it a few seconds. (I go back to the beginning and start again.) Truly wonderful, via wimp.com

A friend sent this to me, and for the first few seconds, the slow pace, and the piano, and even the child’s voice, tempted me in impatience to go elsewhere.

Glad I didn’t.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4Zodh2siHI&feature=player_embedded

Ever since I appeared on Coast to Coast AM on June 1, I have been looking in at Amazon to see the size and duration of any boost in sales attributable to the show. I’m interested not only in The Cosmic Internet, but my earlier books, as well: The Sphere and the Hologram, Muddy Tracks, Babe in the Woods, and Messenger. (A sixth book, Chasing Smallwood, isn’t listed with Amazon.)

As you no doubt know, the lower the number, the better a book is selling. As I learned years ago when I was with Hampton Roads, though, the fact that a book falls even hundreds of thousands in the rankings doesn’t mean you sold more than a couple of books! Anyway, it’s sort of fascinating to watch. One thing, clearly, that one appearance gave a strong boost to my other books.

My good and long-time friend Rich Spees of Spees Design sent me an email this morning at 6, when he was sure that the influx of site visitors from the Coast to Coast AM program had been handled without incident. He said, in part :

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This is just a reminder that I will be the featured guest on George Noory’s Coast to Coast AM show:

Eastern ….. 2 a.m. – 5 a.m. Wednesday June 1

Central ….. 1 a.m. – 4 a.m. Wednesday June 1

Mountain ….. midnight  - 3 a.m. Wednesday June 1

Pacific ….. 11 p.m. Tuesday May 31 – 2 a.m. Wednesday June 1

Tune in to see if I can put together a coherent sentence at 2 a.m.

So here I am in what might be described as Day 21 of the Unpacking  Hostage Crisis.

Well, okay, not that bad.  With the extensive and artistic help of my friend Nancy, I have managed to bring my new lodgings into not only livable, but actually quite pleasing, shape. And in record time, too. The initial phase that seemed like it was taking forever actually took less than a week. Everything after that has been a matter of refinement:  sorting 13 bookcases of books into alphabetical order by author within subject, for instance. Try that on a day when you have nothing better to do.

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As of   Sunday February 27, 2011. after nearly 13 years on what we call The New Land (the grounds near The Monroe Institute in rural Virginia), I will begin a new life in Charlottesville. Once the process got started, it went pretty quickly. A month ago, I knew  I wanted to move, but hadn’t yet begun looking.

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All done.

After a short but intense bit of work, I finished the book. Yesterday I turned in my manuscript to Bob Friedman, who is going to publish it next Spring as part of his Rainbow Ridge Books line with Square One publishing company.

Tentatively, I’m calling it Accessing the Cosmic Internet. May or may not wind up with that title, but that’s the best I’ve come up with so far.

If you’ve read some of the transmissions from the guys that I have posted here, you will have a general idea of the nature and intent of the book. It’s my attempt to put together some of the information the guys have given me, to show how the universe works. In fact, our tentative subtitle is A Guide to How the Universe Works.

Oh, there will be more for me to do before the book is out, of course. There always is. Bob as editor will have some thoughts on it, and, after a while, I’ll re-read it and see how I feel about it – see if there are glaring gaps, or afterthoughts, or whatever. And I’ll need to put together the beginnings of an index.

But for the moment, I’m done, and I can look around and tend to the things I’ve been letting stack up. In a couple of days, hopefully I will be able to start posting regularly once again. It certainly has been a while!