Back to the Futurist.

(This work is still in progress... Please forgive its length, inaccuracies and grammar.)

“Things that may be impossible today may some day become possible.” Things like creating programmable artificial life that can change the course of the history of Earth are now possible, at least in theory. Dr. Michio Kaku, a pioneering Theoretical Physicist specializing in String Field Theory, is an acute anachronism, simultaneously clairvoyant. With his flowing white mane, Kaku is a media lion, a darling sensation, willing to be interviewed by anybody on virtually any topic as long as he can impart his pet theories and anecdotes during dialogue.

Michio reminds me of a former mentor who said frequently, “Stop me if you’ve heard this before.” and wondered if he had already told the story or joke. Actually, I had but I rarely slammed on his brakes. No matter what, this bald wonder always added something new that I had never heard before or since. Kaku is a lot like George except for the hair.

Things may still be impossible to achieve today that may have been possible in the past instead of the future if the right string were plucked or the past was a little different from what is remembered. We stand tapping our foot waiting for some part of the past or the future to become the present as we struggle with the concept of time itself.

Born during an electrical storm July 10th 1856 at the stroke of midnight the ‘mad scientist’ Nikola Tesla would prove to be a phenomenal futurist. By 1882, in his mind and in a dirt schematic, Tesla had already invented the induction electric motor as an employee of Continental Edison Company in Paris. Some say this happened in Belgrade even before he went to Paris but somehow, somewhere he determined Alternating Current and opposing magnetic fields in a whirling unison produced a better way to convert energy into work.

Tesla’s letter of recommendation from his supervisor Charles Batchelor to Edison read: “I know two great men and you are one of them. This young man is the other.” Nikola Tesla, the young electrical engineer and inventor in 1884 crossed the Atlantic to work closer to his nemesis the virtuoso scientific genius Edison. He had just four cents left in his pocket when he saw the Statue of Liberty.

Edison recognized Nikola’s immense faculty and grew to rely on Tesla. Thomas Alva, holder of 1093 patents, although not all truly his own, still more than any other man, offered Tesla $50,000 to do something he himself had been unable or too busy to do… redesign Edison's inefficient motor and generators so Edison, the entrepreneur and company could net even vaster profits. When Tesla asked for payment for his work, Edison replied, "Tesla, you don't understand our American Humor." It was not unusual for Edison to break his word to those creating ‘his genius’ when he personally profited. General Electric continues this tradition; it gobbles up by purchase or larceny intellectual property of others that it can leverage.

Since Tesla who only made $18 per week working for Edison could do math, he realized it would take 53 years to earn what he had been promised and was not forthcoming. To Tesla there was nothing funny about it. He refused a diminutive raise to $25 per week; instead immediately he resigned.

Edison stole one too many ideas. His greed caused this valuable employee to leave with a chip on his shoulder that would come back to haunt Edison, Edison General Electric and the corporate structure of that time. It would not take long.

In 1886 after digging ditches for his old boss Edison so that he could continue to eat; Tesla founded his own company, Tesla Electric Light & Manufacturing. He was awarded the patents in 1888 for his electric induction motor and worked on his Alternating Current Polyphase System.

In 1892 Tesla’s ‘Shadow graphs’ led the way for X-Ray technology three years before it was ‘rediscovered’ by Willhelm Roentgen. Once again this trend haunted him and continued to recur throughout his life; the logical consequence of Tesla’s thinking became the basis for someone else’s invention. Nikola did not sweat the small stuff.

Tesla’s Polyphase System allowed transmission of alternating current electricity over long distances. With the support of George Westinghouse and his Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company (a direct competitor to Edison) the two began collaborating and in 1893 Tesla and Westinghouse provided AC to power the marvel of lights for the Chicago's World’s Fair Columbian Exposition. Edison forbade the use of his ‘Edison's patented light bulbs’ so Tesla developed a new style of light. The first shots were fired; the war ensued.

Guglielmo Marconi in 1895 transmitted a radio signal outside Villa Griffone in Pontecchio, Italy over a hill the distance of almost a mile. He had beaten Tesla to the punch with the first wireless radio transmission even though Marconi’s triumph was based upon what was later determined to be seventeen Tesla patents and the work of many others. It did not matter; it was Marconi that was awarded the 1909 Nobel Prize in Physics for that first transmission and the one across the Atlantic and he shared it with Karl Ferdinand Braun “in recognition of their contributions to the development of wireless telegraphy". There was nothing for Tesla but another war.

Marconi’s public demonstration was good enough for the US government to recognize Marconi as the inventor of radio. This is akin to turning in someone else’s homework before they had a chance. Wiki (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guglielmo_Marconi) says: “Marconi did not discover any new and revolutionary principle in his wireless-telegraph system, but rather he assembled and improved a number of components, unified and adapted them to his system.” Just like Edison, Marconi made something commercial of something theoretical.

Tesla’s lifetime works were destroyed by fire (also in 1895) when his laboratory burned. Tesla had previously demonstrated a “Wireless Transmitter/Receiver System” in St. Louis TWO YEARS before Marconi had made his transmission. Nikola now not only had to prove his concepts and ownership but all of his documentation and research papers were lost in the inferno, all of them. Tesla was devastated but with a photographic memory he reconstructed and continued on. Tesla filed for the basic Radio Patent in 1897. The controversy over who indeed invented the radio would continue longer than Nikola did.

Niagara Falls was harnessed and its power converted to electricity for the city of Buffalo for northwestern New York industry in 1896. Later it was used for the 1901 Pan-American Exposition. Tesla’s concepts, in direct opposition to Edison’s effective monopoly of DC power transmission (that required a power generating plant to keep voltage constant on almost every corner or at a minimum every mile), were now used to get electricity from Point A to Point B. Immediately, the ‘War of the Currents’ commenced. This was the beginning of the end for Direct Current as a transportation vehicle for public electricity. No longer would the sun be blocked out by the large size and tremendous number of shielded copper wires; we rewired in AC. The theory of opposites working together in unison within a system for a common end is the basis for much of Tesla’s genius. Obviously, the competitive spirit also fanned his flames.

The sore loser Edison engineered an electric chair, electrocuted animals and persuaded the state of New York to use ‘Sparky’ to execute a prisoner to demonstrate the danger of alternating current. Edison dubbed the use of AC for electrocutions “Westinghousing” after Tesla’s primary accomplice and collaborator. Although they won the war, both Westinghouse and Tesla were almost broke.

Tesla gave Westinghouse a break and released the company from contract forfeiting some AC motor royalties in 1897. This saved Westinghouse from the threat of bankruptcy that was partly due to his backing the installation of ‘The Grid’ using Alternating Current to transmit electricity. Later in the financial panic of 1907, Tesla again saved Westinghouse. Tesla gave up his Westinghouse royalties on every induction motor, valued at over $12,000,000 and any future share of the certain continuing fortune to insure that mankind would benefit. He wrote: “Money does not represent such a value as men before placed on it. All my money has been invested in experiments which I have made new discoveries enabling mankind to have a little easier life.” Nikola bet his money on the future and his ability to generate new and more imperative discoveries. These grandiose financial blunders further indeed characterize Tesla’s mad scientist legacy.

It is because of Westinghouse but more particularly Tesla that we don’t have more huge wires crisscrossing America carrying electrical current than we already do. Tesla’s wisdom and inventive spirit might have insured that we would need none of those towers and wires today. In his lab he proved the viability of wireless transmission of electricity but never had a chance to work out all of the bugs. Far back in 1894 (before the fire) using the Tesla Coil, Nikola generated 1,000,000 volts and achieved 16 foot discharges in his New York City lab.

In 1899 he headed toward the mountains to Colorado Springs to continue research on the wireless transmission of messages and also electrical power. He investigated the earth’s ‘telluric currents’ via transverse and longitudinal waves (from the Latin tellūs, "earth", telluric current is an electric current moving underground or through the sea, caused by human activity and natural causes; these currents are extremely low frequency travelling large areas near the surface of Earth). The Earth itself is the conductor. Nikola sent millions of volts as far away as 135 feet with no conductor like copper wire. Tesla wrote, "the inferiority of the induction method would appear immense as compared with the disturbed charge of ground and air method."

He transmitted extremely low frequencies between the Earth’s surface and the ionosphere and also through the ground. Tesla engaged in research of long distance power transmission through the ‘Tesla Effect’. Tesla had demonstrated back in 1891 “the transmission of electrical energy without wires”. The ‘Tesla Effect’ (named in honor of Tesla) is a term for an application of this type of electrical conduction (that is, the movement of energy through space and matter, not just the production of voltage across a conductor). Nikola used longitudinal waves to transfer energy to receiving devices and sent electrostatic forces through natural media across a conductor situated in the changing magnetic flux and transferred power to a conducting receiving device. Very basically he lit up light bulbs that were not screwed into a socket or in a lamp that was plugged in.

Although Tesla claimed in his Colorado Spring Lab he had produced 135,000,000 volts (which would still be the highest voltage ever achieved) and also that he lit 200 incandescent bulbs 26 miles away with wireless power, we are still wired into the grid. If he was able to do this then, more than a century ago; why hasn’t this happened in the developed world or especially in the third world where it could be even more beneficial?

He was getting a little too ‘far out’ when he reported unusual signals that he thought may have been evidence of extraterrestrial radio communications coming from Mars or Venus. It was a far too much for his neighbors and even the scientific community. By January 1900 he moved out and his lab was torn down. What could be salvaged was sold to pay of his debts.

In 1900 - 1903, Nikola almost ‘bilked’ J. Pierpont Morgan and other investors with his Wardenclyffe “Transmitter” Laboratory out of more than their original $150,000 seed money. Since Morgan was banker for American Telephone & Telegraph, International Telephone & Telegraph, Western Union, United Corp., and many other electrical utilities it is more probable he was putting his money on the horse that could provide radio transmission capabilities not yet discovered or exploited rather than someone who could provide free electricity to the world. Marconi conquered the Atlantic during the construction of Wardenclyffe.

The Wardenclyffe tower topped with a huge metal Tesla Coil, loomed 187 feet tall, with its 68 foot circumference dome. A shaft beneath the tower went 120 feet deep into the ground. Sixteen iron pipes were placed end to end, making another 300 additional feet deep so that the machine as Tesla put it could "have a grip on the earth so the whole of this globe can quiver." Extremely low frequency ‘telluric currents’ of Earth could be transceived at this depth. Atmospheric conditions would not interfere while he still experimented on wireless telecommunications. Wardenclyffe also was intended for commercial trans-Atlantic wireless telephony and broadcasting including news, music and even pictures.

Whether this facility was for sending and receiving radio messages as its primary mission, or if wireless electrical energy transmission was its real objective remains to be determined. But Morgan thought that one of the primary purposes of Wardenclyffe in fact was the wireless power transmission and that was not what he had signed on for. Marconi had already succeeded so he refused to further bankroll Tesla or his work any longer.

Wireless energy around the world was certainly one of Nikola’s motivations. His Tesla Coil that topped the tower was like a giant electrical pump or heart, a transformer that increased power through a magical conversion and was able to fill entire buildings and for Nikola, hopefully the Earth, with high voltage electricity. He dreamt that people only had to receive the power to utilize it. He started the project to make the whole world a wall plug. It is a shame Eiffel did not build Tesla’s tower so it could remain as an architectural marvel instead of being torn down during World War II because people did not realize the scientific miracle it was.

This became a very bad period for Tesla. He ran out of the money he so disdained and couldn’t pay his workers. He was forced to close this lab. Worse, the U.S. Patent Office decided on some of the patent applications and Guglielmo Marconi was issued the patents for radio! It has been reported (although the names of nominees are never publicly announced) that Tesla refused the Nobel Prize in 1912 because it was to be shared with Edison. The medal and cash prize would have helped his situation at the time. Nikola did ultimately accept the Edison Medal in 1917 but had to be prevailed upon to agree to that.

Tesla was a soothsayer. He, like Kaku was popular with the media because he had as much to say as we have much to hear. Tesla, a lifetime ago wrote a 1931 Article for The New York Times on “Our Future Mode of Power”. As he looked into the future, he penned, “If we use fuel to get our power, we are living on our capital and exhausting it rapidly. This method is barbarous and wantonly wasteful and will have to be stopped in the interest of coming generations.” This futurist from our past foresaw the exhaustion of our nonrenewable resources and studied, patented and urged the exploitation of the endless sources of power including radiant, cosmic rays and geothermal power. “All that is necessary is to find an economic and speedy way of sinking deep shafts to tap into this enormous geothermal energy.” Tesla was not only defining the path; he attempted to construct it for all. He did much on his own with many successes and failures. One of his greatest catastrophes was his financial ineptitude that caused him to stop and restart so many times.

The same year Tesla began his litigated ‘Patent War’ with Marconi, he signed over the deed to Wardenclyffe to the owner of the Waldorf Astoria to again attempt to pay off his debts. It was no where near enough. In 1916 he filed bankruptcy. The next year, seventeen years before the invention of radar it was Tesla who proposed using the reflection of radio waves bouncing off objects to determine their position and speed if moving. Although municipalities are now thankful for the cash infusion the radar gun generates from speeding tickets, Tesla still did not worship the almighty dollar. He suffered for his naïveté and contempt for money. He continued to let others pirate his smaller ideas while he concentrated on the more substantial ones.

Tesla was fluent in eight languages, a genuine savant suffering from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. He had had a nervous breakdown in Serbia even before he began his formal advanced education, his career or emigration to help Edison.

Nikola was obsessed with the trinity of three. He was ecstatic as long as something was divisible by three. Like Howard Hughes, Nikola was also mysophobic and fastidious about cleanliness and hygiene. He used a handkerchief only once. Both exceptionally brilliant men had an irrational fear of germs and constantly washed their hands.

Tesla was exceedingly passionate about pigeons. He fed them in the park; he nursed them back to health in his roll top desk and outside of the hotel room where he lived in his old age. He fed and talked to them; he even called one of them his ‘wife’ and claimed when she died his inventive fortitude left him. He remained celibate preferring to put his energies into research and theory instead of relationships. Not overtly adroit in his people skills he entertained many well heeled friends and rubbed elbows in the highest circles of society, but in his heart he was a loner. He warred with both Edison and Marconi throughout life for their theft of his ideas. Others who did the same thing he disregarded.

Individually, Edison and Marconi had a smaller impact on our future than people credit them with. Granted, both were geniuses; each provided great advances for mankind. They were fabulous inventors, engineers and administrators. However, if they were not able to utilize and capitalize other’s ideas, their contributions would have been far less significant. Many who allied themselves with Edison and Marconi, those who did the grunt work, have been forgotten by history, their patents gobbled up by the masters of industry.

Teleportation was envisioned as a natural extension of Tesla’s labors and fertile mind. Using the Transporter to ‘Beam me up Scottie’ was not only because the shuttlecraft wasn’t ready for prime time. It was the way to keep Star Trek on the air by enabling the crew to visit planets and get home to the Enterprise more cheaply at least as far as television production was concerned. Gene Roddenberry or his assistants might have thought of this on their own but they certainly were not the first to do that either. Tesla posited that if sound and electricity could be transported wirelessly why not matter itself?

Tesla dedicated his life to research and discovery that would improve the life of man. He not only operated on remote control, he in fact actually invented it in 1898. Thanks to Nikola we can now spend nights on the couch arguing over the clicker.

In the Time Magazine article “Science: Damn Good Man” July 25, 1927, Tesla states. ". . . You will be able to go anywhere in the world—to the mountain top over-looking your farm, to the Arctic or to the desert—and set up a little equipment that will give you heat to cook with and light to read by. This will be carried in a satchel not as big as the ordinary suitcase.” Of course we are still waiting. He could conceptualize it and talk about it but doing it was now beyond his grasp.

In 1931, eighteen years before Michio Kaku was born, Tesla was the honored at age 75 by Time Magazine. One week that year, like Mahatma Gandhi, Hitler, Charlie Chaplin and others, he was on the cover. On his birthday, which the article celebrated, he received kudos from more than 70 colossals of science and engineering including Albert Einstein although Nikola claimed to have done the math to prove Einstein wrong. The full text of the Time article is at: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,742063,00.html.

It took until 1935 for the Court of Claims to invalidate 15 of 16 of Marconi’s patents. Tesla had already started to move into his future and was becoming a simple curiosity. In 1943 Nikola Tesla was dead of heart failure. He died alone in room 3327 (its number divisible by three) of Manhattan's Hotel Governor Clinton, on January 7th, penniless. That same year the Supreme Court further invalided many of Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi's patents for the radio and radio equipment. It gave credit to Tesla based on the large amount of his work and ideas that predated Marconi’s work; ideas that Marconi used for ‘his invention’. The patents were now Tesla’s and in Tesla’s future, 1944, a future that he could not see beyond his grave, the hammer fell; the case was finally settled in the U.S. Supreme Court, another war that Tesla ultimately won.

His Obituary in the Time Magazine on January 18, 1943 issue expended more copy on his loony eccentric behavior than his immense gifts to the world: “Died. Nikola Tesla, 86, "electrical wizard," inventor of the Tesla transformer, the Tesla induction motor, discoverer of the rotary magnetic field principle; in Manhattan. Croat-born, he came to the U.S. in 1884, worked briefly for Thomas Alva Edison, became a great electrical inventor on his own. In his old age he holed up in hotel rooms, became an urban hermit, taped his doors and windows and tried to keep the room at a 90° temperature, had his vegetables boiled two hours, wiggled his toes several hundred times every night to "tone up." He also announced that he had discovered a death ray capable of killing a million men, had been in touch with Mars. Once he figured he would live to be 135 but changed his mind when Prohibition died, boosted the figure to 150.”

After Nikola’s death the FBI and the Office of Alien Property (even though Tesla was a US citizen since 1891) raided his 3327 hotel room to confiscate his research papers. It was almost a decade later, in 1952 that the United States eventually released them to Tesla’s nephew. Bill Gates does not own them; the majority (if not all) are now housed in a museum in Belgrade, Serbia dedicated to Nikola Tesla’s dream and accomplishments for the sake of mankind. This man shook the Earth with his visions, experiments and partly by his insanity.

The Strategic Defense Initiative (Regan’s ‘Star Wars’) is another logical extension of Tesla’s fertile mind; his death ray in action. Did this idea come from the papers long held and studied by our government? Nikola was not the only one capable of black thoughts. Tesla’s obvious insanity makes him the mad scientist incarnate.

Nikola Tesla’s vision helped create the twentieth century. He is still shaping our future as we know or optimistically, will know how it. We wait to see how much his ideas will affect the twenty-first. Although he accomplished wireless transmission of electrical power long ago, we are still wondering how it can be done and why there are still power poles everywhere we look. Has their removal not happened because our corporate world has not figured how to profit by wireless transmission of electricity?

In 1898, Tesla devised something now used in over 600 million cars, the “electrical Igniter for Gas Engines” – the automobile ignition system.   However, Hybrid cars would not even be possible had the idea of induction motors and how opposites work together permeated Tesla’s brain. A bunch of geeks in California are banking with their new best friend Toyota on huge financial success based on some ideas more than a century old that were not theirs. Their ground breaking mode of transportation is powered by an induction motor from electricity stored in batteries fed from the grid Tesla engineered but would have surely replaced by now. The ‘Tesla’ can fly but it is earthbound because it has to stop to plug in and charge the batteries. If Nikola had performed his magic and free electricity was available to the ends of the earth the need for the extra weight of the batteries and nightly charges would be a thing of the past instead of our wonderful future.

Modern scientists are working on engineering artificial or genetically modified life. Introducing new life forms into our environment is responsible for possibilities that maybe should be left undone or impossible. Kaku talks about the disaster of the ‘Killer Bee’ and the many other catastrophic species relocation events. The outcome of genetic tinkering could be even more perilous; copyrighted genetic food could leave more than a bad taste in our mouths. Corporate genetic fiddlers and life engineers have a lot of clout, some with results that won’t be realized for generations. It’s the “Anything for a Buck” theory of the corporate world.

Like the upstart Nikola Tesla against the corporate goliath Edison we need competition and new futuristic innovative ideas to deal with some of our global crises. We will benefit from that as long as time is not wasted in the litigation and dilly-dallying. We need the reason of people like Kaku to put some of these things in perspective for us. As theories become practice we must have theorists to explain some ramifications of our decisions. How these things in the future will affect our future, and even how those things in our present will change our future; these things are complicated.

On a news interview Kaku said something prophetic that portends possible bad result. “You can not recall a life form.” Attempts to gerrymander the environment can have disastrous results. Sitting on our butts can leave us driving around with hundreds of pounds of batteries in our trunk or under our floor.

We might have to stop a blind progression toward Soylent Green. “Why, in my day, you could buy meat anywhere! Eggs they had, real butter! Fresh lettuce in the stores.” People can now accurately say also: real meat, real eggs and real lettuce.

“Det. Thorn: It's people. Soylent Green is made out of people. They're making our food out of people. Next thing they'll be breeding us like cattle for food. You've gotta tell them. You've gotta tell them!
Hatcher: I promise, Tiger. I promise. I'll tell the exchange.
Det. Thorn: You tell everybody. Listen to me, Hatcher. You've gotta tell them! Soylent Green is people! We've gotta stop them somehow!”

It’s not just about the food, the global warming or some other potential Earth disasters. Energy and matter might seem simply as different components that magically can convert back and forth by the speed of light squared… E=mc2. The equals sign signifies only a relationship between the two. We do not need the speed of light to convert fuel into a Carbon Dioxide surplus, just a gasoline or diesel auto or a coal powered power plant.

Tesla had his favorite pigeons and talked to the animals… But did Nikola actually listen to or talk with aliens? Nikola really slipped up when he revealed he listened to aliens. He was discredited. This is a concrete example of what Kaku tried to explain in the guillotine joke analogy with the priest, lawyer and finally the theoretical physicist who was stupid enough to point out “the rope is stuck in the pulley.” Know when to keep your mouth shut. We also need to know when to scream bloody murder. It is time to put it in gear.

I have only met one genuine genius futurist in my lifetime. He left Earth a decade ago this month. What is left of FM2030 now lies carefully cryogenically sealed in scaldingly hot Arizona in a liquid nitrogen bath. He trusts that in his future he can return to see what he missed in his past. I’d like to be around to have another vegetarian meal with him with real lettuce.

Michio Kaku, our theoretical physicist futurist also said, ultimately making a connection to terrorists, “And what is the Internet. The Internet is the beginning of a Type 1 telephone system. That is all it is. And so, this transition is perhaps most important transition of all time. Some people don’t want it. They fear this transition because this transition is to a planetary civilization tolerant of many cultures.” Michio is really getting into the future when he starts talking about different stages of planetary civilizations. Others would prefer to keep our future our past.

“The world was not prepared for it. It was too far ahead of its time. But the same laws will prevail in the end and make it a triumphal success.” Nikola Tesla. That applies only if we start playing the game by the rules.

If we had Tesla’s wireless power transmission or maybe even the wireless networks that could span miles and miles through the air or through the Earth (the technology exists to do this) things would certainly be different. Part of our present would already be our past. We could all be futurists.

The time is now. The future is now. We don’t have to be a theoretical Physicist to see this handwriting on the wall. Corporate profits or the manipulation of the application of technology only to insure them cannot prevent what will happen eventually. I’d rather not wait. Populate the goat cells with programmable DNA and turn them loose on the Gulf oil spill if it will help and is not a danger to us. How much worse can that be than millions of gallons of dispersant?

“Let the future tell the truth and evaluate each one according to their work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine." And, "The opinion of the world does not affect me. I have placed as the real values in my life what follows when I am dead." Nikola Tesla. I wish Tesla was cryogenically sealed and we could crack his vault and let him loose.

For the conspiracy theorists, remember to look up in the sky for a Droid Predator Drone. It is the failure of the future if it forgets its past. “Stop me if you’ve heard this before.”

© 07.29.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg

The Future is Tomorrow

Today we attempt to complete work and prepare for its arrival.

© 07.29.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg

Sweet Dreams.

. Not even one of the "About 7,280,000 results (0.54 seconds)" from Google found the first reference to “Sweet Dreams” that immediately comes to mind. Bedtime, from the times in footie pajamas to the last time I saw her… Every nite when we went to bed, Rosie would reiterate Sweet Dreams. If mom was around when I went to bed I would hear her say it with the sincerity only a loving mother has for her children.


Mom is no longer around and there are too many things on the nightly news that make it difficult if not impossible. Those sweet dreams are fewer and farther apart. I was more than mildly disappointed when I found the website Extreme Dream Training with Laurie Santos. It is much more a corporate and personal coaching site than anything to do with training to enable sweet dreams. There is an “Extreme Dreamzine” that people can subscribe to there for those interested but again it was not what I was looking for.


Not discouraged I continued to search for ways to improve my dream life not really needing Laurie’s touch to enhance my personal or corporate future. A different result located “The Academy of Dreams” that “runs regular dream training courses, workshops and dream groups on the many different aspects and perspectives of a dream, so that you can reflect on the impact of your dream-world upon your waking life.” 


There is http://www.dreamtraining.co.uk/index.php which has many links that are a nightmare and do not work including: "HOME," "COURSES", "LEARNING ZONE", "NEWS", "EMPLOYERS", "CONTACT" and a few invisible ones on its Navigation Bar.




BINGO! http://www.consciousdreaming.com/lucid-dreaming-software.htm touts “Not only will you have access to a state-of-the-art dream training program, but you will also gain lifetime access to the member's only website…” People can purchase dream training software: “The program is available on CD-ROM for $35.00. The full version is also available as a download for the special low discount price of $24.00.” Another link to this site provided useful information: http://consciousdreaming.com/lucid-dreaming/how-to-lucid-dream.htm. This was just what I needed. Since it is “Bird’s Lucid Dreaming Website”, ‘Bird’ provides a wealth of information on “Lucid Dreaming - The Six Basic Steps” on this page. ‘Bird’ expounds further upon the steps in the software version.

There is a “Reality Check” link that warns to “Use At Your Own Risk”. It is right below the body of text:

“ CHECK YOUR MINDSTATE:

BASIC TIP: The Button and/or Light Switch REALITY CHECK

When you are dreaming, it is common for switches and buttons to malfunction. A light switch may or may not turn on the lights in a dream room. One way to determine if you are dreaming is to test buttons, switches and control knobs to see if they always do what they are intended to do. You can use the REALITY CHECK button below to test if you are dreaming. If it does not work, you may be dreaming.

That was sufficient challenge for me. After clicking on the Button repeatedly and getting no forward I realized there was no link. It was a cruel ruse.  I must already be dreaming or reality checking does not work for people who are not asleep.

I decided to have a honeyed cup of Sleepy Time, listen to the Eurythmics and think of mom.





“Sweet Dreams are made of this…” You can sing along if you remember.


I reached one goal which is a sweet dream: in my “Searchable Blog Copy.doc” file which includes all of the posts I have written since I started this blog; I finally hit two hundred pages. DakotaDawg is quite proud of our accomplishment. I better wish her Sweet Dreams.

© 07.28.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg

Censorship… ShutUp!

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In the Realm of the Censors, From the Coliseum to Capitol Hill
by Peter Walsh (Originally published in the February 1991 issue of Boston Review http://www.bostonreview.net/BR16.1/walsh.html - full text)
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On one of the most famous censors of all times the author makes this observation which very much sounds like something borrowed directly from Livy’s mind if not from his writing:
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“Despite his moral conservatism, Cato, like many conservatives today, was very much a man of his times. Cato’s values were agrarian, yet he made a comfortable fortune in the rapidly developing international economy as a capitalist and money-lender. At a time when Greek art and ideas were flooding into Rome from newly conquered territories, Cato was vociferously anti-Greek, yet not above spicing his speeches with phrases cribbed from Greek orators. He refused to acknowledge the achievements of other Romans in his books, yet sang his own praises loudly.”
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Interesting and historically important as that is to the entire subject of censorship especially as it relates to one of the most famous elected censors of all times; this was not really what I had in mind when I first thought it would be good to grandstand on the concept and practice of censorship. It does make a valid point as even censors frequently are self serving whether successful or not in their censorship.


The online http://www.thefreedictionary.com/censorship definition also provided little of what I originally intended to talk about:
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“cen•sor•ship (s n s r-sh p ) n.
1. The act, process, or practice of censoring.
2. The office or authority of a Roman censor.
3. Psychology Prevention of disturbing or painful thoughts or feelings from reaching consciousness except in a disguised form.”


Since Mr. Reardon taught that it was a poor definition that used the word defined in the definition; the above is therefore pretty lame with the exception of #3 which also was far from what I formerly had in mind. After a Google or two #3 seems more apt. Almost like making a right hand turn from the left hand turn lane; or what is so wrong with Left on Red After Stop?


Exactly how #3 is done is a matter of much conjecture, none of which I really give a hoot about. With practice of Eastern Meditation one can completely master Psychological censorship, that or some excellent repression.


For me what #3 is all about is falling asleep. A thought keeps bouncing around the brain. Nothing like having a bee in the bonnet when rest is needed! Mental pinball. REM sleep initiation tactics developed and deployed to vanquish these disturbing or painful thoughts or feelings from reaching consciousness (even in a disguised form) sometimes are not successful.


Unconsciousness is what is desired. Olive Oyl can not smack me on the forehead with her cast iron frying pan like Brutus. Total censorship is the only way to clear the mind, that or some kind of drugs. Drugs or the frying pan may be more expedient but both leave the brain addled the next time consciousness is desired.


Little children are taught to pray before bed. I’ve tried it along with countless other measures. The simplest thing is to read a book. Not an unusually great book... but a book that at least causes me to turn the pages rather than set it aside in disgust.

These thoughts are not David Richard Berkowitz “Son of Sam” dog commands but sometimes quite as insistent. They become extremely evil when they finally degenerate into that long train of thought about what is keeping the Sand Man from making his nightly visit. This contemplation then becomes an endless loop.

If the book is not working it is time for a redirect. A trip to the bathroom, refrigerator or sink usually works the charm. A stubbed toe in the dark replaces the previously playing loop with the new one that includes much pain and throbbing.


Then it really seems time for a greater quantity of drugs than would have been needed in the first place… or, the cast iron frying pan.

Sometimes music will fill my head. I can lullaby myself to sleep. Of course as I sing along somewhere the needle invariably hits that one scratch... the hiccup, blank place or a pause in the memory banks where some lyric is not recalled. In case that happens again, I apologize for this:




With the words written down the next time that damn song won’t get out of my head; like little children I am praying for the love of God, that if ABBA does somehow invade my neural network, it is not being sung my Meryl Streep and especially Pierce Brosnan.


At that point it really would be time for a much huger quantity of drugs. Forsaking all else, the cast iron frying pan.




Swedish Nightmare! Please! Censorship… ShutUp! I can’t believe I was sleeping all this time.

© 07.28.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg

Tuesday Morning Afternoon

.

Everything is backwards,
Stuck in my own past.

Tuesday Afternoon by the Moody Blues

Tuesday afternoon,
I'm just beginning to see, now I'm on my way
It doesn't matter to me, chasing the clouds away.
Something, calls to me,
The trees are drawing me near, I've got to find out why?
Those gentle voices I hear, explain it all with a sigh.
I'm looking at myself reflections of my mind,
It's just the kind of day to leave myself behind.
So gently swaying through the fairyland of love,
If you'll just come with me you'll see the beauty of

Tuesday afternoon, Tuesday afternoon.

Tuesday, afternoon,
I'm just beginning to see, now I'm on my way.
It doesn't matter to me, chasing the clouds away.
Something, calls to me,
The trees are drawing me near, I've got to find out why?
Those gentle voices I hear, explain it all with a sigh.

Sometimes, when you’ve heard it all before,
 It is pure poetry.
.

“Beauty I'd always missed with these eyes before.
Just what the truth is, I can't say anymore…”

“Senior citizens
Wish they were young…”


I will not look back and lament; time is not static.
Day follows nite, sun chasing moon, not until long it’s Tuesday Afternoon.
It's no illusion.


Cycle will repeat for us to open our hearts and eyes to enjoy.
For the knights in white satin it’s always Tuesday afternoon.

Soon.

© 07.27.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg

The Butterfly Fairy

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It was a heartbeat in life when butterflies chased the sweet aroma among flowers throbbing in sunlight and yearned for a little of the sweet ambrosia. The summer sun moved later in the afternoon as it skidded toward the horizon. The butterflies’ fervor and the sun’s more southern daily path marked shortening days and longer nights after the solstice.


Like a tourist it flew south where it would stay until winter expired; the fall hiccup to gain an hour but small consolation. Day after abridged day the winter solstice approached when earth again can right itself after it wanders past its chilly equinox. It can not fall over, our big blue gyroscope.


This four-dimensionalism of the space time continuum confounded me in Mr. Williams’ elementary school science class and too frequently left my cognizant equilibrium.




The concept of time belies the theory that it is something static.


We live in the past attempting to conquer it. We devise things as great as Stonehenge in an attempt to measure it. We use time to gauge things. We attempt to bend it and constantly measure it. We want or fear its future.


Time is the one thing that binds all things together. Nowhere is there a lack of time although time exists in ways other than as perceived. Time is not before, during or after. Time is not necessarily when something happened. That science questions the existence of time is unconscionable. Time is what enables existence.


We long for a time machine to ask Dali about the Persistence of Time. Oh tenacious Time.




“In days gone by there was a land where the nights were always dark, and the sky spread over it like a black cloth, for there the moon never rose, and no star shone in the gloom.” This is a Grimm beginning, not the end. The moon keeps us company when the sun hides.




The black swallowtail dips against the sunset as the Monarch starts her long flight across the gulf.  But for the moon it would be a long night.


Hans Christian Andersen wrote: "Just living is not enough" said the butterfly fairy, "one must have sunshine, freedom and a little flower." Sunshine is the key to life. In its absence the moon will just have to do.





“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” C. S. Lewis… the time is now, Butterfly Fairy. The time is now.




Play it again Sam.

© 07.26.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg

Damn Yankees!

.

The year before we became damn Yankees we were aliens to our soon to be new neighbors. Although we lived in that foreign country way up north called the United States we might as well have come from Andromeda. Disdain was even greater than for the Canadians of Toronto that lived in the small motels next to the beach under maple leaf flags during high season. Frogs from Quebec were slightly more hated, only barely.

Yankees came to Florida for Spring Training. More Yankees lolled on the beaches or hung around at the Miami Sea Aquarium, Crandon Park Zoo or Parrot Jungle. Sheet white and lobster colored tourists oohed and aahed. Solarcaine Aerosol Spray commercials flooded the airwaves as Seminoles wrestled alligators in dirt pits, out west close to the Everglades. There was a small tribe of blondes that escaped the wrath of Andrew Jackson and made a living succumbing petite cold-blooded vertebrates.

Yankees spent money and bought bitter oranges out of season. Kids shook snow globes upside down filled with silver glitter. Tightfisted tips were left at local restaurants. Peacocks strutted near the trinket stores at the groves full of souvenirs with gold tags printed in black brush script: Made in Japan.

When vacations were over, Yankees loaded their sunburned kids into the cars or got on airplanes to leave. Some packed into the Silver Meteor that flew on tracks headed north. Mercifully, they left the land of citrus, swamps and tourist traps.


Yankees stayed in pink and turquoise neon outlined motels within sight of the breakers. Yankees finally went home when they ran out of money.

Damn Yankees never went home. Damn Yankees moved into the neighborhood. A constant Cracker calamity was Damn Yankees never went home unless it was next door or down the street.

Damn Yankees called all local residents Crackers. They did not delete… instead they added expletives, using the term nasally with an unconditional disdain. Most did not realize or appreciate the origin of the term. Few cared; less even knew why Crackers were Crackers.

The name Florida Cracker predated the Civil War. Crackers used bullwhips to herd the cattle that fed the Rebels. In central Florida these former Kissimmee Cowboys are presently Disneyworld workers. Crackers are proud of their heritage even if their boss is now a rodent. 

Some old neighborhoods in South Florida still had houses not made of concrete blocks with jalousie windows; the architectural blight of this nauseous 50’s and 60’s invasion. Virtually every new dwelling had chalk stucco over the concrete block. White concrete roof tiles covered revoltingly similar floor plans. Houses sat on postage stamp lots book matched so bedrooms were not next to neighbor’s driveways, barely enough room to walk between the houses with a lawnmower.

Most Cracker Compounds were out west between US441 (State Road 7) and the sea of grass… the land of the mosquitoes, cows and biting flies. ‘Heart pine’ clapboards, floors and interior walls defined these tin roofed antiquities. They had real porches and there was no sheetrock or terrazzo inside. Everything except sinks, tubs and toilets was made from wood. ‘Heart pine’ and cypress were the treated wood of their time. Termites could not chew the sap laden pine. Cypress must have tasted like fast food. Wall clocks and tables were made out of slabs of cypress knees. Wrought iron boot scrapers were anchored next to the path ready to trip the unsuspecting visitors.

Cracker houses lasted generation after generation. They sometimes leaned but refused to fall until they were pushed over by sleazy developers eager to turn birthright into greenbacks. Streets carved into the pastures or groves, lined up east to west. Avenues went north to south in some perverted OCD urban blue graph paper symmetry.

Each Cracker house sat nested in its own grove of native shade trees. Family farms held on until the invasion from the north overtook them. Downtown Cracker houses appeared out of place on immense lots among the white stucco ranch houses standing eave to eave all geometrically arranged to face the same direction as the others looking for their ranches.


In town Cracker houses were doomed too. Like Sherman the attack of the Damn Yankees could not be turned back. City center bastions fell to bull dozers instead of fire and cannonballs. Rape and pillage of local heritage continued at an ominous rate. Miniature palm trees, circular drives, landscaping and pavement crowded out the Crackers.


Smallish hereditary plats became shuffleboard courts; larger ones, memorial parks. The Damn Yankees were not dying anywhere near quickly enough. If a Cracker house was close enough to the ocean and the estate big enough it became a small motel to bleed the Yankees and transfuse the locals. When the invasion reached its height these small pastel paradises were grabbed up by other greedy developers smelling of Old Spice and Brylcreem. Concrete dust choked the few locals left as motor courts fell like dominos to make room for the condos. 

The sound and sight of a sunrise breaking wave; the confluence of light, sound and beauty became alien to all but the most affluent. More and more Damn Yankees poured in from the north to ride in the elevators and drink martinis on eyebrow balconies. From the south the prosperous and more fortunate Cubans assailed both Crackers and Damn Yankees. Escaping Castro communism was more important than who their neighbors were.

More condos were built and streets torn up for infrastructure. Some old cracker compounds became sewerage treatment plants. The rest of the crap was just pumped into the ocean to flow north with the Gulf Stream in place of the Damn Yankees who would not go home. It was all effluent to the Florida Cracker.

I left for college. When I finally ended up in Tallahassee I realized that history does indeed repeat itself. Like the Cubans I had become a Damn Yankee even though I came from far south.

Around the capital city it does not matter if one is born elsewhere and moves here when less than a month old... the Obituary (if the papers are still around then) will read: “Originally from…”.


The Damned Yankee is just inferred.

© 07.26.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg

Gee, It’s Natalie Dee!

.
A friend I never met introduced me to someone else I haven’t met either. In the day of the Interweb that isn’t so unusual. People are searching for dates and mates everyday in every way.

Sometimes I forget more than I remember. Hitting my head on an open cabinet door doesn’t help and Google took me where I had not really intended to go. I will just go with it.




http://www.nataliedee.com/

Thinking of something to type and post everyday is not that difficult. It is thinking of something to type that is worth posting everyday that is.

Today I am going to give any readers a break and more amusement than would be available here if I continue to type.  Despite encouragement, DakotaDawg did not do anything truly special today.

Natalie Dee has stuff on the interweb that is over seven years old. It is her blog… a history of what she was thinking about in cartoons instead of straight text. Her portal is http://www.nataliedee.com/. From there it is possible to view every cartoon she has posted with a few clicks of the button on the right links.

If you get bored with the artist you can always go back and ...


http://www.nataliedee.com/







© 07.24.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg

Public Service Announcement.

.
Never could imagine a PSA in or as a rap. Now there is evidence it can be done. In the world of art, music and the internet that translates to must and all things are possible and should be expected.

While worrying about the status of our newest Tropical Storm; Bonnie (that bad girl headed into the gulf for the bull’s eye on the oil slick) I did a Google starting with Public Service. Google thought it knew what I was looking for before I did. Google then started offering some of its best guesses. Finally, Announcement - Who’d a thunk? 

As soon as I got the p typed into the text search box things came fast and furious. I know that the first recommendation was the ‘P’ string that I search most often for: my grocery store Publix Supermarkets. 

Hitting the ‘u’ next insured something that others might suspect could pop up as one of the tem additional recommendations could not rear its ugly head. It got me scratching mine though. Strictly in the spirit of research; with a deft swipe at the BACKSPACE key, I went back to the p and then typed in an o and than an r. Since I never made that particular search, the most searched for thing on the internet was never one of Lettermen’s Top Ten.

Google will not give up until conjecture is completely hopeless. It speculates and offers a different Top Ten with every keystroke until the only thing left is what is typed.

Getting back to the task at hand I qwertied ‘Pub’. It was a magic ten for ten on grocery store suppositions. Then, I entered the ‘L’ and for some unknown reason the odds dropped for the food market making it only nine out of ten. Adding the ‘i’ until I had completed ‘Publi’ did not change the odds… nine of the ten recommendations still for my grocery store. It kept pushing a paying advertiser off on me as who I most likely wanted to know about right up until I hit the ‘c’. The grocery was blown into oblivion.

Even hitting the space bar modified what I might need to know. Even adding the s brought no relief. Then the e brought the jackpot: Public Service Announcement. It took nine keystrokes total.

Seven more keystrokes before Mr. Google started recommending different aspects of PSA to investigate more thoroughly in the order they appeared:
“public service announcement About 5,010,000 results (0.65 seconds)”
“public service announcement About 254,000 results (0.57 seconds)”
“public service announcement lyrics About 676,000 results (0.80 seconds)”
“public service announcement ideas About 964,000 results (0.32 seconds)”
“public service announcement topics About 1,250,000 results (0.39 seconds)”
“public service announcement videos About 1,400,000 results (0.47 seconds)”
“public service announcement template About 140,000 results (0.42 seconds)”
“public service announcement samples About 102,000 results (0.50 seconds)”
“public service announcement format About 2,280,000 results (0.50 seconds)”
“public service announcement smoking About 171,000 results (0.41 seconds)”

 
I have no idea why I might have selected the lyrics option. I just did. Thinking back, I was looking for the standard lyric intro for Public Service Announcements. FAIL, oh mighty Obi-Wan! Instead there were sites that had the lyrics of a Rapper named JAY-Z. Others highlighted some pretty filthy lyrics by Eminem. I skipped Eminem ‘cause it sounds too much like something mom used to do to me when I was constipated. I went straight for Jay-Z.




“PSA Texting while Driving U.K. Ad [HD]” is 4:16 I don’t want to experience again. I did not find any PSA’s warning me to bend over and kiss my ass goodbye so the threat of a nuclear attack must have lessened.

“Speak to your kids about Cooties before Cooties speaks to them first.”

This Is a must see for every parent and child to prevent heartache.

The “Office public service announcements” yielded little except 6:27 of life that will never be recovered… never.

“David Lynch's Public Service Announcement” is 1:01 of New York City, littering and rats - none of which I am all that fond of. I recommend skipping it. There is a lot on YouTube that is taking up valuable bandwidth and yielding little in return.

There is a lot on the internet taking up valuable bandwidth and yielding little in return.


Touché.

This Public Service Announcement has been brought to you by steven d philbrick, SR+ and DakotaDawg.

© 07.23.2010

Grandma had Blue Hair.

.
I went to Atlanta to visit my aunt and uncle. It was a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. My cousins came to the homestead and those that had familied up went home with spouses and kids after dinner was consumed as soon as it was polite.

The main dinner table conversation was my younger cousin’s shockingly purple hair. Not just a shade of purple... every hair on her head was scandalously ablaze. Jeannie was taller than either my aunt or uncle but that was not the reason they did not see eye to eye on this.

Although she had not lived at home for years and had never taken any guff, in the glow of the 'cool white' fluorescent kitchen lights she just sat there as they dished it out. My favorite uncle mentioned how purple her hair was as if this was some kind of news to her. It wasn’t.

At dinner Jim mentioned the shade at least five times; after dinner that number was squared. Jeannie decided not to joust and asked me to go to a club with her.


Except for the ultraviolet fluorescent electromagnetic radiation highlighting people’s dandruff; the only other light was the small beam from the flashlight of the bouncer checking ID’s. As UV eradicated all the microorganisms I wasn’t sure if it was giving me sunburn or making me sterile. I really did not want to know. Jeannie’s aura of independence glowered back in a bright luminous amethyst. If was as if she had turned a geode inside out and put it on like a retro swim cap with dark Crayola vivid violet rubber flowers.

Everything glowed including the trash on the concrete floor.   Nothing compared to Jeannie's hair. It filled the room and she knew everyone in the dump. This was one of Hotlanta's scorching hot spots.

She asked me if I wanted a drink and surprised me when she shelled out for it after having paid my cover. We cooled off near the bar with internally illuminated gin and tonics. I hollered out for the second time: "Thanx!"


Rednecks in tight jeans and western boots stared. Their boyfriends did too. Phosphorescent wannaBee's persistently checked her out.

I hollered to her that her hair was a real hit. She replied simply giving me the exaggerated Rolleyes: “Especially with dad.”


After a couple of songs I gathered enough stamina to holler over the band again. “Yup.”


“I don’t get what the big deal is!”  she bellowed back.

Then she popped off one of those once in a lifetime quotes:
“Grandma had blue hair and she wasn’t even in the band!”

And the girl with the amethyst hair, even though she danced till dawn for them; she wasn’t in the band either.

© 07.22.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg

Hurricane Grandma!

.

Nothing was as loud as the travelers' palm crashing against the front porch of the house. A close second though were the swooshing limbs of the leviathan ficus trees in the front and back yards. Massive roots hung down like mooring anchors from their limbs to keep them from tumbling over in the sand and being swept down the street. The parimutuel payoff on the bet for show was the thunderous snoring coming from the end of the long hall to my parents’ bedroom. Herm had a day off of work. Dad loved a good nap.

Rosie had cracked the windows in kitchen, opposite from the bedroom on the lee side of the house so the pressure of the storm or Herm’s snoring would not build up inside and blow the roof off. It was something we had been told by one of our South Florida ‘Cracker’ neighbors.

My grandmother slumped on the couch; her blue hair looked like it had been outside in the tropical cyclone. She did not move from the couch in the living room and did circles around her pink rosary. Every time she passed a Hail Mary bead she mumbled “I can’t believe Herman is sleeping. I can’t believe Herman is sleeping.” I can’t remember if the Our Father’s caused three repetitions but it seemed so.

It had been four years since Grandma last came and stayed with us. That visit we had still been up north, the year before we became damn Yankees. I wondered if every time Grandma visited she would be accompanied by a hurricane.

Jane was not a big fan of flying.  This was the first time she dared fly south from Long Island to see how transplanted New Yorkers were getting along down in Pompano Beach.

Donna rolled in right after Grandma in Huntington Beach. I was not sure if that was coincidental or by design. Long Island had never had a visitor like Donna in my lifetime and probably since the British chased the colonials across rivers to New Jersey. There was a lot of howling when Donna knocked at our door. The eye passed right over us and she destroyed Rosie’s favorite weeping willow tree. It was left a bare mess, mostly a stalk, a few limbs and lots of weeping.

Donna messed with South Florida too. For a couple of years after we moved we still saw some of her double whammy. The end of my favorite fishing pier in Deerfield Beach still had not been repaired four years later. It jutted into the ocean, like Grandpa’s index finger cut off at the second knuckle. Now Cleo would send the rest of the deck boards and railings out to the Gulf Stream for a trip north.
Ah yes, Cleo. She was a real bitch! Blame Grandma.  I think it was the first and only time I ever heard her swear. According to the Sun Sentinel and the WCKT weather reports this bad girl was supposed to pass over fifty miles offshore and she was weakening. Ha. Like when it is pouring out and the weatherman can’t see out the window he does not have. If Cleo had passed on the other side of Bahamas instead of right up Dixie Highway four blocks west of us then we would have been on the ‘weak side’ of the storm. Instead of having a walk in the park with a lot of rain from a weakening storm; we had the eye passing right over our house.

It was a well defined eye. Donna’s had been more blustery and I did not hear Annie or Willie Nelson singing as it went overhead. Cleo defied all predictions as far as we were concerned and for awhile it was clear and sunny with no wind at all. We went outside and the neighborhood was a wreck. There was enough water to float a small yacht. It looked like fall up north on our ‘high ground’ except all the leaves were shiny green. Pompano Beach, Florida has an average elevation of 3.67 feet above sea level and I think the 21 feet above sea level is at the top of the water tower.

Grandma got off the couch and came out to the once carport now front screened in porch. Some of the screens were still there but if you were looking for protection from the mosquitoes inside the house was a better bet. She held the palm of her hand to her forehead and just kept shaking her head. Herm was still asleep in the bed. Gram wanted us to come back in since somehow she knew that the beautiful weather was about to change despite the double rainbow. 

Mom closed the windows on the west side of the house and cracked a couple on the east side because Donna and Sandy’s mother told her that is what she was supposed to do if the eye went over us. It was one of the few times they spoke when we lived across the street from them. Before the storm Rosie had also filled the bath tubs with water after she cleaned them with Clorox again on the advice of our Cracker neighbor. She told us we would need water to drink in case the main broke or the city water got contaminated. She told us to fill some buckets and containers for flushing the toilets, anything we could find. This is something they often forget even in modern hurricane preparedness pamphlets.

Cleo finally headed north and out of town. We were glad to see her go but anxious to examine what was left in her wake. We found some smaller limbs from others’ trees in our yard but none of ours. Mom would not let us out in the yard; she was worried we would get worms if we walked barefoot in the standing water. Dad said we would not go to school the next day since they probably didn’t have any power. He made as much food as we could eat on the barbeque grill. Everything from the fridge and freezer was in Styrofoam coolers.

Supposedly Cleo after she passed Haiti and went over Cuba weakened to a tropical storm. Also, it also barely reached hurricane strength when it hit Florida. It must have been the eye wall and some tornadoes around it that we experienced late in August 1964. When we rode our bikes up to Cypress Plaza one block west of the house the next day after cleaning up, every parking lot light was bent over to the ground; long steel I-beams blown over like straw.








After dinner that night Grandma asked dad, “Herm, how could you sleep through that storm.”

Dad replied, “I guess I was just tired.”


I used to joke with some of my friends that if mom had left the windows closed on the Cypress Plaza side of the house maybe dad’s snoring wouldn’t have blown over all of those light poles.


Grandma went home after the airport opened back up. I know she made one more trip to Florida before she died. I was away at college. Joanne learned the secret and recipe for making Irish Soda Bread.

I don’t think Grandma’s visit was during hurricane season. Cleo already had taught her that lesson.


Hurricane Donna was not the reason my family left Long Island and turned into damned Yankees. I sometimes wonder what my girlfriend of the time is doing… Nancy Wright; what a name. But there is always that other one. The one before Nancy, the one I snuck that first adolescent kiss from as we danced to that song and hurricane named for her.




© 07.21.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg

Fish Tales!

.

Before anyone started recording lies but most especially since the beginning of recorded history, hunters and fisherman spun tales of great conquests. They told them about themselves. They told them about others. Normally there was at least some basis in fact. Minnows became sea monsters. Sea monsters got even bigger. Seals and Manatees became mermaids.  Have you ever seen a Manatee?  It must have taken an OD of grog or mead for some of these elaborate exaggerations to become so wide spread. Guttenberg became prime enabler for authors and editors who saw a way to make a buck.


“Fish, I love you and respect you very much. But I will kill you dead before this day ends.”

I read that Hemmingway book and “Cherry Orchid” the summer of my freshman year as part of my assigned reading list. It was because these two works had the fewest number of pages that they went to the top of the list. I have no idea why I read “Mutiny on the Bounty” because I could have just gone and seen the movie like all the other students who did their book reports that fall on that colossal tome. In reality they recapped the movie.  It was obvious our English teacher saw the flick.  He definitely did not read the book. I wanted to call him and the student ‘readers’ on it but it was the day of don’t stir the pot and ratting out a fellow student was the lowest of low.

Midshipman Roger Byam said: “To the voyage of the Bounty. Still waters of the great golden sea. Flying fish like streaks of silver, and mermaids that sing in the night. The Southern Cross and all the stars on the other side of the world.” If he wasn’t telling an outright lie he was certainly stretching the truth a bit.


There was that time I skipped church. Stretching the truth was not going to help a bit. I had to resort to the time honored lie. Rosie was not convinced or impressed.

I woke late and ran out of the house to make the earliest mass before the Liturgy of the Eucharist and the Consecration had started so that it would be ‘official’. I thought everyone was still asleep. I was wrong.

After doing what I loved to do best I realized that mass would already be over and I better high tail it home or there would be hell to pay. I skidded into the driveway in the old Tan Turd, jumped out and ran into the bedroom and changed clothes. I shot past the family sitting in the living room dressed in their Sunday best and jumped back in that worn out Chevrolet Biscayne station wagon and raced back to the spillway.


I was too late. The monster was gone.

It would not have been as much of a tragedy except when I had left the scene of the crime to go home and change, that huge glistening snook was flopping on the bank, temporarily in the custody of a migrant family. At least that was the plan… temporarily.

Like Hemmingway stolen story of Santiago that, from the moment I hooked the snook I thought "I have never seen or heard of such a fish. But I must kill him.” I did not worry about the slaying; I was too involved in the catching. There were no sharks in the canal below the spillway and I did not think that fish was “not as intelligent as we who kill them”. I was not the one with treble hooks in my mouth. I had lost many fish nowhere near the size of the missing monster. Now I had lost yet another.

I fished for a while longer but had to go home to clean up to go to work, another aspect of the Sabbath that I ignored because I was earning money for college tuition. I did not hook another fish despite flogging the water cast after fruitless cast.

Mom, dad and the girls were eating scrambled eggs when I came through the door. Rose’s first question: “Did you catch anything?” was answered with my first Lie: “No.” Her second question: “What was the Gospel?” brought the second lie… “I got there right after the Gospel.” Her third question was immediately followed by an astute observation: “Were they serving fish at mass?… you smelled a little fishy after church when you rushed in to change." I knew my goose was cooked even if the snook wouldn’t be broiled at our casa. 

I gave it up; everything, including the migrant vegetable harvesting family disappearing with my prize. They were eating my snook like the giant shark devoured the evidence of Santiago’s guilt for killing the Marlin. It was God’s punishment.

I hoped a small amount of sympathy might moderate the punishment that was sure to follow. I did my best not to embellish. I used tides and the open spillway as mitigating factors in my sinful negligence. Mom had heard enough fish stories not to take the bait.

“They beat me, Manolin," he said. "They truly beat me."

"He didn't beat you. Not the fish."

"No. Truly. It was afterwards."


“A Thousand Hours of Hell For One Moment of Love!” Mixed metaphors: “I think the great DiMaggio would be proud of me today.”

Mom, not so much… I thought at the time that I would truly be The Old Man and the Sea by the time mom let me out of the house with a fishing rod.


When I climbed in the Tan Turd I saw the tackle box and the poles in the back and thanked God I had not taken them out of the car. I put them in the closet when I got to work.

I would become more spiritual and read the gospel the next time I went fishing. I did not want to have to lie to mom again.

Minor embellishment makes a good fishing tale better.  You can read the book or watch the movie... just don't lie on the book report.


© 07.20.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg

Father Christopher Collins: Passionate Passionist.

.

Thanks again Google for helping me find something that was in my memory banks but not so much. It took a quite bit to find where in the cloud that part of my brain was held hostage. I finally located it.

CC&S was written all over my freshman English Composition paper, an introduction of one of my best and most severe teachers. Father Christopher took no mercy on any student at Holy Family Seminary, least of all me. His handout included a full page of code. Sp meant misspelling. CC&S was combine, condense and subordinate. Every time there was some error in a composition it would bear his red Bic scribbling across the offending mistake. CC&S were paired with brackets outlining the particularly offensive text. My papers usually started and ended with brackets with lots of CC&S’s in between.

Our first class was dedicated to that handout that had that purple mimeograph smell to it. It was a list of code and the explanation of the rules of how our mentor would grade. While everyone was huffing the paper Father Christopher explained: “Either you get better or you fail”. It was that simple.

It did not matter if you were Charles Lamb or Adeline Virginia Woolf, although if you were Ms. Woolf you would not be allowed in the class in the first place. For us naïve college seminarian freshmen we had not a clue. It would have been best if we first submitted our worst ever writing sample for our first assignment. I did not know that.

I thought I was spectacular. I got an A- on my first paper, only slightly worse than best. I bragged about it to my classmates and got lots of slaps on the back. Hubris was my first mistake in Father Christopher’s English Composition class. Other blunders of equal proportion would eclipse it as I sailed from almost perfect instantaneously through the solid B on the second paper, then a C, C-, subsequently a D and then the dreaded F.


I could not believe it, an F. The only time I had ever gotten an F was when Father Dennehy caught me saying something to Bob Saglime during a World History test. Bob asked me the answer to #17. I whispered back for him to look it up. I bit the bullet and did not rat Saglime out. It took me all semester to raise my average back to passing for being stupid enough to be a smart ass instead of keeping my mouth shut.

My steady progression to “not worthy of even reading” happened although I was certain I was getting better. I met with Father Christopher to avoid settling into the tenth level of hell. I was hoping he would provide some insight. He did. His advice was follow his advice. Get better.

I advised Father Christopher that he had no advice only criticism. Even with my mimeographed Enigma Key I could only determine what was wrong. There were no instructions on how to make it better or even better, right. He looked at me as if I were speaking Hochdeutsch. Then he told me that if I looked at all of my papers it was obvious that I continued to make the same mistakes paper after paper, paragraph after paragraph and sentence after sentence… the dreaded WinDoze green underline. The one when right clicked simply states fragmented grammar (consider revising). Father Christopher’s dreaded red CC&S.

I was supposed to be the student he said. I needed to learn how to learn. If I could not figure out how to stop stuttering like an imbecile then I deserved no more than an F. The odd thing was Father Christopher had a bit of a stutter himself. It was one of the things he knew we mimicked.

He made his point abundantly clear. It was not that my ideas or writing were THAT terrible. It was only terrible because I was not improving. His original point was either get better or fail. Nothing had changed.

Father Christopher had other special rules that were enforced with priestly diligence. ‘guy’ was never to be used in any sentence unless it was someone named Guy or it was used in a conversation and was cited with parenthesis. If someone slipped up and wrote the word guy in any other context the penalty was to identify ten other words that could be used in its place and write them all down with the unabridged definition of each word.

Intentional misspellings were allowed as long as they were underlined and in quotes. Unintentional misspellings brought an automatic drop of one letter grade per misspelling. So I could improve from an F to a D by eliminating one misspelling per paper and I would not have to turn in the misspelled words spelled correctly with their unabridged definitions written ten times for every mistake. That was at least a start.

I had been living in Florida and our last assignment of the semester was write a Christmas story. It hadn’t even snowed at Holy Family Seminary in West Hartford Connecticut. Writing about palm trees and sandy beaches was not going to pull my ass from the fire. I had to do something drastic.

Before the days of personal computing the closest thing I had to a word processor was a Sears portable typewriter in its molded plastic case. I had no Google. I did the best thing I could. I went to the library and checked out Robert Frost and anything I could find that was fiction, descriptive, narrative and available. Oh, and it was something about snow. I decided to make my paper “Christmas through the eyes of a St. Bernard.” I thought introducing the idea of a saint in the title couldn’t hurt. I even spent time crawling around on all fours near the Christmas tree to gain a perspective. The correct narrative style and adjectives were  important elements of the grade. It would have helped to have DakotaDawg around to help with further research.

Thankfully three days before the paper was due it snowed. And it snowed and snowed and it snowed. I hadn’t seen snow in more than five years. Some of the descriptive terms used by the poets and authors started making a little sense. I came up with the term schrunched. Although I did not have WinDoze Spell and Grammar Checker I was certain it did not appear in the unabridged dictionary so I underlined it and put it in “parens” as I pounded the keys with two index fingers and then back spaced and held down the shift key while I deftly cut a black edged incision through the paper.

Father Christopher gave me a B-. He then settled on a C for the semester. Among all of my grades in college I am proudest of that C. The second semester Father Christopher and I disagreed whether I deserved a B+ or and A- but he prevailed. I still think it was the A-.


Get better or fail. It is not rocket surgery. It is one of the reasons I am persisting in this. I want to improve as a writer... I am shooting for a solid A.


“Father Christopher Collins, C.P., St. Paul of the Cross Province (1909-1988)

[April 6, 1988]

Born Michael D. Collins on April 12, 1909 in the Bronx, New York, he was the son of Michael and Mary Dineen. He professed his Passionist vows on August 15, 1929. His religious name was Christopher. He was ordained on May 30, 1936. He graduated from The Catholic University of America and went on for more studies at Laval University, Quebec, Canada. Father Collins was a professor at Holy Cross Seminary, Dunkirk, New York and the Passionist Junior College, West Hartford, Connecticut. In both places he was also the Dean of Studies. When the Passionist seminary system came to an end he became a preacher. He also wrote a Current Fact and Comment column each month for Sign Magazine and was province archivist. In September 1979 he joined the retreat house staff in Riverdale, New York.”


Chris, there is a lot missing from your story.

© 07.19.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg

You have been assimilated.

.
I realized after writing the Wednesday, July 14, 2010 blog “Fact or Fiction?” blog on how mom came up with the names of the kids that I was already one of the Borg. Being born into a Catholic family insured that collective consciousness.

One benefit is that at least a couple of the Borg are reading the blog. In my global consciousness I feel they need to stay attached. All the prodding cannot hurt readership either and in my mind’s eye I see my sisters rolling on the floor clutching their heads like Captain Jean-Luc Picard.

Not only are we interconnected by genetics we also share other things from our parents and ancestors like our names.

Margaret wrote me a response to my email inquiry about her sainthood. It turns out she always had a middle name and it is Elizabeth. This is probably why we call her MiMi all the time and proof of my aging memory. She wrote: “Mom had a grandmother and great grandmother named Margaret and Elizabeth.” Not to mention our great aunt Elizabeth.

Rita typed on her virtual keyboard: “I am not sure of the exact story concerning my naming process. One was that I was named for mom's cousin, Rita. Another, probably a teasing of Dad, was that his favorite actress was Rita Hayworth, and with my semi-auburn colored hair, I reminded him of her and should be named for her. The second story is less likely than the first to me but it does sound like a cute tease and is possible, just not too probable, I think.” I did not know I was related to anyone with the last name ‘Sent from my iPad’.

Joanne ‘Proof of her Borgness’ chimed in on each name: “One of mom's favorite cousins was her cousin Rita Potter in CT. I believe Rita is named for her.

Margaret was named for the saint's day on which she was born. The two names Margaret and Elizabeth are both family names as well.
Mom's story regarding my own name was not especially consistent. I think it is hard to deny that I might be named for Grandma Philbrick whose name was Ernestina Johanna Hoffman, aka "Tiny" to her buds. Many cultures also use the same initial letter, so the J of my name could be for Jane, but mom never told me that. Jews, for example, believe it is bad luck to name a baby for someone, so they use the same initial letter to honor the grandparent, parent, or family member they intend to honor.” (Jane was Rosie’s mom.)

“Michael, mom often said, was named for Michael the Archangel. That's not bad. I heard that story many times, too many to count. I am not certain, but I think Dad took the name Michael when he converted.

Steven Douglas was the famous orator who ran against Lincoln. Mom did have a very good background in history. Did he spell his name the same way?

These are the versions of naming stories I heard as a child. Doubtless, there are many stories in the naked city. Good luck with rounding them all up.”

Her second note was: “The Rita "Lauren" is more probably for Lawrence, the baby who died a few days after birth than for G-pa. My assumption was always that the baby was named for G-pa, which probably came before the two of them went to war.” I had completely forgotten that connection.

Being part of the collective has helped because part of my brain that is not stored on my computer is supported by the family Borg. There are problems associated with the hive… Rita’s iPad is becoming an electronic body part. Joanne has her Kindle connected thru an umbilical cord. My laptop is permanently attached between my knees and waist. My nieces and nephews stick their hands into the tumbling weightless black diamond with the hole in it. They are magically converted into Droids, Borgs with one of their mechanical hands wrapped around their smartphone.

This may lead to some horrible dreams.

Lt. Commander Data pipes in: The Borg are extremely computer-dependent. A systems failure will destroy them… Population approximately nine billion, all Borg.


Steve:  I can’t begin to imagine what it would be like to be an only child.


Captain Jean-Luc Picard: A few years ago I was captured by the Borg. I was assimilated into their collective. I was part of their hive mind. Every piece of my individuality erased. I was part of them.
Admiral Satie: Tell me, Captain, have you completely recovered from your experience with the Borg?


Borg Queen: Are you offering yourself to us?
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: Offering myself...? That's it, I remember now! It wasn't enough that you assimilate me... I had to give myself freely to the Borg. To you!
Borg Queen: You flatter yourself! I've overseen the assimilation of countless millions. You were no different!
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: You're lying. You wanted more than just another Borg drone. You wanted a human being with a mind of his own, who could bridge the gulf between humanity and the Borg! You wanted a counterpart! But I resisted. I fought you.
Borg Queen: You can't begin to imagine the life you denied yourself.


Steve: Jean-Luc must have been an only child.

Captain Jean-Luc Picard: I've accessed a Borg neuroprocessor and I've discovered what they're trying to do. They're transforming the deflector dish into an interplexing beacon.
Lieutenant Hawk: "Interplexing"?
Joanne ‘Proof of her Borgness’: Didn’t you review your vocabulary words?
Nieces and Nephews: We were too busy texting to get to them. MEH
Steve: Couldn’t you at least wait until after desert?
Nieces and Nephews: Each Texting madly like synchronized swimmers: KPC AMAP
Joanne ‘Proof of her Borgness’: Give them ten minutes and they can master the most complicated piece of electronics… but give them ten vocabulary words…

Nieces and Nephews: Each Texting madly like synchronized swimmers: RME (Rolling my eyes)

Captain Jean-Luc Picard: It's a subspace transmitter. If they activate the beacon, they'll be able to establish a link with the Borg living in this century.
Dr. Beverly Crusher: But in the 21st century, the Borg are still in the Delta quadrant.
Rita Lauren: Bev, where the heck have you been? The Borg are everywhere. Don’t you own an iPad yet?  Why don't you Google it?
Saint MiMi: I want a DroidX too but I am on the wrong network. I heard there are none left anyway.
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: They'll send reinforcements. Humanity will be an easy target. Attack the Earth in the past to assimilate the future.

Michael the Archangel: We shall drive the Borg to the Netherworld! I will not let their technology rule my life.
Steve: I really want an iTouch with the same capabilities as the White iPhone4, except available and I wouldn’t have to worry about an antenna problem if I only used WiFi.

Rita Lauren: My iPad does not have a camera and I don’t miss it. His most Royal Borgness Steve Jobs told me I did not need a camera because I could use my iPhone if I did.


The Borg Queen Rosie: Locutus...
Captain Jean-Luc Picard: I am Locutus of Borg. Resistance is futile.

Michael the Archangel: AWHFY

DakotaDawg: Do they make smartphones in Hochdeutsch?.

Nieces and Nephews: Each Texting madly like synchronized swimmers: LNT

DakotaDawg: 14AA41 BBFN CYT


The Borg Queen Rosie: You have been assimilated.
© 07.18.2010 steven d philbrick SR+ DakotaDawg