Welcome to The Mystical Underground

Here’s a peculiar story from Jane Clifford, a healer in Wales, who encountered another healer in a strange location.

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I was in a town across the mountains that I visit often with a dear friend & we had 20 minutes to spare after lunch before her dental appointment. So` I mentioned a second hand furniture place very near where we were parked that is fun to poke around in and where I have been before. Its a real shack, grubby and chaotic, but in amongst the tat there are real finds, the profits support a local church.

Outside it was a blackboard and in wobbly writing it said, ‘Prophecy and healing.’ I had a chat with a man serving in there about furniture and asked him about the healing and prophecy and where it happened, to which he replied, “Here!”

He explained that a guy called Richard did it, so I asked about the prophecy. He said, “If Richard gets a message from the Lord for you whilst he is doing the healing, he passes it on.”

I said I would like to try it, so he called Richard from the back of the shop and to my astonishment it was going to take place right where I was standing in the shop.I asked my companion if she would like to try it but  she was too shy. But she told me to go ahead and sat down nearby.

Richard was a big tall South African guy. He stood facing me and took both of my hands in his. “You are a healer, ” he said immediately. “And the Lord wants to use you as an instrument of his healing.” I confirmed that I am a healer. He continued: “You don’t attend a church, but you have the Lord in your heart.”

I agreed.

He asked what I wanted to heal and I replied lately that my arthritis has been very painful. So he asked if I know that bitterness, anger and the need to forgive are a component of arthritis. I replied that I did know that. (We have also just had the coldest winter for 60 years, which is another component).

So he asked if I had any forgiveness issues and I said that I do, because my sister has stolen hundreds of thousands from my elderly mother without her knowledge and I had been working on the forgiveness for some time and reached compassion for my sister. But then she stole more money, and I am back to zero again. So I understand I have more forgiving to do. I said I also have severe back problem with collapsed discs.

Then he started  talking to the Lord to assist me in forgiveness and to re-align my  spine and ease my pain. I would not have been surprised to hear a few praise the Lords and all that happy-clappy stuff. But I could tell he is a medium and clairaudient, a genuine one.

Then he asked if I minded if the other guy ( who runs the second-hand store) placed his hand over my lower back, and I agreed. As Richard is praying for my spine I definitely felt something going on there. Then it was done! He said the forgiveness issue will be worked on overnight.

The arthritis has eased considerably. My back is more comfortable and I actually fully expect to be in a better place with the sister stuff  by morning.

Well, the Lord sure does work in mysterious ways! Its the last place one would expect to find healing or prophecy, but there it was!

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We wonder how many people go to that second-hand furniture store for healings and prophecy. Not only was the sign amazing, but the healer was actually there…as if waiting for Jane.

I wrote this shortly after The Hanged Man became an e-book, finding a second life in digital form. It was published by Kensington Books in the mid-90s, the first book I did with editor Kate Duffy.  I kept pushing it back and back, and then received an email from David Wilson at Crossroad that on Aprilo 11-12, he would be offering it free. I glanced at the date I had pushed it back to – and there it was, the synchronicity. It was on the dashboard for April 11. So there’s the synchro. And here’s the story:

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As a writer, I’m in awe of novelists who can sustain a character over multiple books and not lose their readers.

J.K. Rowling did it with Harry Potter. Suzanne Collins  did it with Katniss in her Hunger Games trilogy, Sue Grafton has done it with Kinsey – who is now up to – what is it? V? W? – well, most of the alphabet.  George R.R. Martin has done this not with just one character, but with an entire canvas of characters in Game of Thrones. Philip Pullman achieved it in his Dark Materials trilogy. Jeff Lindsay has done it with his Dexter books. Nora Roberts achieves it with any number of her 100 plus books. John D MacDonald did it with Travis McGee. Rob nailed it with his Native American Will Lansa and with his depictions of Indiana Jones. There are many other writers who have done this, too, but these are the ones who come immediately to mind.

There’s some sort of alchemy that happens between the writer and the character in such series. Boundaries between self and character vanish. The writers’ emotions, worldview, and concerns become those of the character – and vice versa. Now, there are writing instructors and pundits, agents and editors who will tell you this isn’t so,  that it’s all about the writers’ talent and dedication and opportunities. While that’s certainly true, it’s not the full story.

Stephen King calls it “dreaming awake.” It’s a  state of consciousness that novelists enter into when they are fully plugged in to what they’re writing. An altered state of consciousness, in other words, a kind of creative meditation that produces the unexpected plot twist, the strangeness of a situation or condition, the emotional resonance that captures the reader, for whatever reason. It’s also how synchronicity comes into play, as it did when Edgar Allan Poe  wrote his unfinished sea adventure novel, The Narrative of Arthur Conan Pym, which described a fictive event that subsequently happened 47 years later.

In my experience, series characters are not easy to sustain. I did ten books on a married couple, Quin and Mike McCleary,  who plied their private eye trade in Miami. By the tenth book, I was so irritated by my agent and editor telling me how the books should be written, that they shouldn’t have any metaphysical stuff at all, that I killed off Mike and intended to bring him back as a ghost.  That didn’t happen. I changed publishers – and agents and there was never an 11th book.

I did four books for Ballantine as Alison Drake in a series that featured a single female cop on the fictional island of Tango Key. I liked Aline, I liked her life, the way she thought. I liked that she loved her partner, Kincaid, even though he was gone for long periods of time because he had a nomadic heart. She and that series gave me Tango Key,  a fictional island 12 miles west of Key West that I have returned to time and again – in my fiction, in my imagination. I think, if I ever retire, it’s where I’ll live. It’s where I put Mira Morales in the four books after The Hanged Man.

Shaped like a cat’s head with very irregular proportions, Tango Key is a mystery even unto itself. Connected to Key West by a 12-mile bridge, an engineering marvel, the island has hills, cliffs, a history, and a mystical undercurrent that fits who I am. Just about anything is possible on Tango Key. Mira Morales, a single mother, owner of a successful bookstore,  a psychic, knows it better than most.

It has  taken me a long time to figure which of my characters I would stick through for 26 books, as Grafton will apparently do. And for me, it won’t be Mira. She lives on in her own alternative universe and the reason she does is because Category Five  there’s a single paragraph that hurt the book’s sales. It was encompassed in a conversation between Sheppard, Mira’s FBI lover, and Nadine her grandmother, about real life, how the George W Bush administration had taken us to unspeakable places. That was in 2005, when the U.S. was as seriously polarized as it is now.

I remember running across an online review by someone who said, Let’s sink this book,  this left-leaning travesty.  Or something to that effect, and cited that particular paragraph/conversation in the book. I thought, Huh?   

So the series ended a book later, with Cold As Death. I’ve written other novels and books since then, but oddly, seven years later, Mira sticks with me.  She steps periodically into my dreams, she crept into Esperanza,  she’s my buddy in crazy times. So the other night  I played around with ideas for a new novel.  I had been proofing The Hanged Man and Black Water, the first two books in the Mira Morales series that Crossroad is bringing out in digital format  with a far better cover than what Kensington had. And  I suddenly thought Mira might be  my Kinsey Milhone, my Harry Potter, my Katniss, my Will Lansa.

And just as suddenly knew I didn’t want to go backward. I love Mira and her world, but s a writer I’ve moved beyond her. Other ideas are simmering. I’ll have to see where it all goes. Even if a novelist lives in complete isolation, he or she is never alone. The characters they have created crowd in, whispering, demanding, cajoling:  C’mon, make me real.

We have now done eleven radio shows/podcasts for Aliens in the Backyard.  It started on February 4, the day the book was released, with a three-hour Coast to Coast interview with George Noory. For us, that interview occurred between 2-5 AM. Even for me, a night owl, this was a long stretch in the darkest part of the night, when my brain really wanted to just curl up and go to sleep.

But there was something strangely appropriate about talking about aliens, synchronicity, encounters and abductions at this dark time of the night. (The radio links are all in the page heading at the top of the blog, under news, radio etc.) Our most recent show, with William Morgan and Douglas Bolles of  42 Minutes– the guys responsible for The Sync books- was great fun. The link takes you directly to the show.

What we’ve discovered is an alternate universe in which every facet of the paranormal – aliens, Big Foot, ghosts, reincarnation, remote viewing, synchronicity, telepathy, time travel, UFOs, whatever – is discussed in an open-minded way. The people who host these radio shows and podcasts are like so many of us – curious about and fascinated by unexplained mysteries. Like us, they are trying to piece together many parts of a baffling puzzle about the nature of reality. They are knowledgeable, well-read, and their questions are often insightful, even profound.

After some of these shows, Rob and I talk about this alternate reality out there in the virtual world – a territory that is an entity unto itself, unfiltered and uncensored.  Most of these shows don’t have commercials. They aren’t sponsored by corporations. They aren’t sponsored by anyone except the host or hosts who are doing the show, often through Skype. These hosts are like you and me. They have a burning desire to undertand and that desire is what drives the show. In a way I don’t quite grasp yet, synchronicity seems to act as a cohesive element that binds together the many facets of this puzzle.

Perhaps physicist David Bohm pegged it when he talked about the implicate and explicate order. The implicate order is the primal soup of the universe from which everything, perhaps even time, unfolds. The explicate order is what we all experience in our daily lives, the challenges and contrasts and triumphs, what we see, taste, touch, smell, feel, hear. Or, to put it another way, the implicate order is Jung’s collective unconscious or Indra’s net or six degrees of separation, the ways in which we are all connected. Synchronicity, then could be its manifestation, the way this implicate order speaks to us as the implicate unfolds into the explicate, our daily lives.

When we are asked to explain what we think the abduction phenomenon is, or how synchronicity fits into it,  there’s usually a brief silence. Rob and I look at each other. You first, I whisper – or he whispers that to me. The bottom line is that we don’t know. No one knows.

What we do seem to know is that an expanded awareness   is engaged in synchroncity. Time and space  become more malleable.  In abductions the same thing appears to be true. Perhaps we are all Hansels and  Gretels in the great dark woods, trying to follow a path of bread crumbs back home, back to the status quo. But suppose we don’t find our way back home? Suppose we follow some divergent path, into an unfamiliar place? What then? Who do we become in that new place? What do we believe? How do our experiences change?  Does our reality change?

If you follow this train of thought long enough and far enough, you end up beside Fox Muldur and Scully – the truth is out there,  somewhere. Or you end up inside The Matrix with Keenu Reeves. Or you end up where we do, at our kitchen table, the questions piling up like dirty dishes in the sink.   Our paradigm is in flux, redefining itself, and all of us are the transitionals who are trying to integrate the old with the new.

And that, ultimately, is the tricky thing here, the place where we all scatter to our separate corners to mull, discuss, absorb. And here, we encounter the ultimate bottom lines: Who or what are we really? What’s the truth? Is there a single indisputable truth about any of it?

And then suddenly I am 18 again, wondering about these same questions, and I speak to that younger self:  Enough already. It’s many years up the road. Figure it out, okay? Then pass it along, please.

When Aliens in the Backyard came out, we contacted a number of radio shows and podcasts. Radio and podcasts are a great venue for publicity.  One of them was Joe Montaldo at ICAR.  We never heard back, but several weeks later, we received an email from Jim O’Connell from Xperiencers , of the John E. Mack Institute.

Dear Trish,

 It’s come to our attention that you’re interested in speaking with knowledgeable alien encounter researchers who may be able to assist you. Our Xperiencers team collaborates on some cases with Joe Montaldo’s ICAR group and your case was one that was handed off for evaluation and or investigation.

 Our Xperiencers team is staffed with people that are living with ongoing alien encounters, so we understand what you’re going through and know best how to help you find understanding, peace and purpose from your extraterrestrial encounters.

I wrote back and explained I’m an author, not an abductee,  and that Rob and I had written a book about encounters, abductions and synchronicity. Jim and I started corresponding.

Jim started Xperiencers and now has a team composed of individuals who investigate encounters.  The group was endorsed by the Mack Institute board of directors, and a contract was generated by Mack’s son, Danny, which cemented the two organizations together.   They currently have a reality TV show in development.  Jim graciously consented to an interview for our bookazine on UFOs, and we’re posting part of it here.

This organization is unique in that the investigators are themselves experiencers. Their philosophy is similar to that of John Mack’s, that  these encounters are positive. Other researchers – Dr. Jacobs and Budd Hopkins, for instance – believe that encounters are overwhelmingly negative.

You use the term Xperiencers.  Could you explain the range of experiences covered by the term ?

 Xperiencers is derived from the word experiencers used by Dr. John Mack.  I decided to drop the “e” and allow “X” to represent the unknown as is done in solving common equations.  The unknown elements that our Xperiencers team will solve can be any of the following:

• Unexplained marks, scars or rashes.
• Missing time.
• Hearing voices or messages.
• Visits from non-human beings.
• Newly discovered abilities.
• Time-shifting.
• Newly developed phobias.
• Feeling the need to save the planet/human-race.
• Searching for hybrid children
• Understanding that there is no government cover up, but rather an alien cover up.
• Sightings of UFOs, glowing orbs, etc.

(image by Kesara)

 What is your take on the abduction experience? Do you see it as a positive or negative experience or something in between?

The term alien-abduction reflects the mindset of those people who feel they’ve been taken against their will and were violated in some fashion by some alien beings.  On the other hand, there are those calling themselves “contactees” or “experiencers,” which indicates they consider themselves willing participants in the extraterrestrial phenomenon.  This second group also believes they may have agreed to their off-world contact before incarnating here on planet Earth and feel they have some important mission to fulfill.

I’m not sure that there is any real difference between the abductees and experiencers except for the way in which they process trauma and difficulty in their lives.  Being an optimist or pessimist determines whether your glass is half-full or half-empty, but I do believe that experiencers look at the glass and say, I know why the glass is there and it’s because I wanted something left to drink on my journey.

Each day I get out of bed and do all I can to understand this mysterious relationship and gauge its impact on my life and those around me.  So far, it’s made me a better person and exposed me to amazing experiences, so I remain open to contact, no matter what we call it.

What other types of beings – besides Grays – have experiencers encountered?

 For those involved in ongoing encounters, a diversity of alien beings begins to emerge in the fabric of their contacts and I present a short list:

• Reptilian
• Short Blues
• Bird men
• Insect or Mantis
• Pleiadian  or Nordics
• Dog heads or Anubis

(illustration by David Chace)

(image by David Chace)

What have your experiences and research revealed about the nature of consciousness?

We’ve learned that for the most part, humans are asleep and their connection to the cosmos has been severed.  Mankind has been conditioned to accept only what they’re told and to shut off the inner antennae that receives the most important signals.   This is why, in this politically-correct world, the one group feels it’s still okay to assault and humiliate those claiming close encounters.  Experiencers are people who’ve abandoned the confines of religion and mainstream politics, to embrace spirituality and karma.  We are experiencing an awakening and I believe we’re meant to serve as an example for the world to follow.

In a couple of days,  we’ll take a look at how Xperiencers investigate encounters. You can get in touch with Jim through the Xperiencer website.

A note on the illustrations:

The images in this post are done by Christine (Kesara) Dennett and researcher David Chace. “Kesara has been illustrating for investigators, witnesses, and documentaries since 1986. Like a police sketch artist, Kesara creates illustrations from actual events and descriptions from eye witnesses. All the art in this website is from actual events! To this day new reports are shared around the world. Kesara is updating and adding to her collection everyday.” And her art is for sale. You’ll see more of it in the next post.

I was going to end the post there, but the word count came to 911. So I decided to add a personal note: if I saw this mantis creature, I probably wouldn’t be alive to talk about it.

We like to  plug other authors who write about synchronicity. That’s the case with Randi G. Fine, a radio talk show host in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and ‘relationship dependency’ counselor. She’s also an author and her new book, Awaken from Life: Lessons for Discovering your Personal Truths, includes an interesting chapter on synchronicity. She suggests that the amount of synchronicity that you attract into your life is proportional to your own level of awareness.

Here’s an excerpt.

Synchronicities occur much more regularly than most of us are aware. They often go unnoticed because the signs represented to us tend to be symbolic in nature and need deciphering.

Often we find that the timing of these messages, people, and things relate directly to current issues in our lives or information that we are presently in need of.

Think about your life and the amazing ways that things have come together for you: the chance meetings with people that reveal just the information you had been looking for; the trip you took to a foreign country where you ran into someone you knew; the song that came on the radio at the exact time that you needed to hear those words; the book given to you by a friend that sent you on a life-altering spiritual quest; that certain number that pops up wherever you go; or the person you ran into that offered the healing solution to your illness.

Each day we attract “meaningful coincidences” that are there to give us direction. The amount of synchronicities we personally attract is proportionate to our level of conscious awareness. The more attention we pay to these awe-inspiring “coincidences,” the more frequently they will occur.

Whether believer or skeptic we have all experienced these seemingly random occurrences that seem too improbable to be chalked up to just chance. Coincidence or synchronicity, both fascinating phenomena, are uncanny and appear unexpectedly.

How many times have you heard someone say, “There are no coincidences, in response to one of these baffling occurrences? Perhaps you even use the phrase yourself.

To understand why these incidents are not coincidental you must first understand what a coincidence is. Coincidences are experiences where two events coincide that have no relationship to each other. Some sort of pattern or connection associated with the coincidental experiences can be derived, but an obvious explanation for their occurrence cannot be found.

There are skeptics who say that these phenomena are coincidental; that a connection between the experience and one’s reality is merely illusory or selective perception.

Statisticians fall into the skeptic category. They believe that these types of occurrences are not phenomena at all—just manifestations of the law of averages. They say that coincidences are inevitable; with five billion people on the planet there is a reasonable probability that unlikely circumstances of this nature will happen. To quote mathematician John Allen Paulos, “The most astonishingly incredible coincidence imaginable would be the complete absence of all coincidences.”

There are those who follow the supernatural theory of synchronicities but offer different, spiritually based explanations on the matter. They attribute these experiences to karma, fate, or destiny. Some say the experiences come from angels or spirit guides showing us signs that guide us in the direction of our soul’s purpose.

None of these explanations are inaccurate. All these facets of spirituality and supernatural activity are likely to factor into the occurrence of synchronicities.

We recognize a number of spiritual occurrences through our intuition. Those of us who are open and receptive to embracing faith based realities tend to be most in touch with our intuitive, inner knowing perceptions. By paying attention to our inner guidance, we are more likely to know what we are seeking and can more easily recognize the signs that direct us to it. It is our acceptance of intangible realities that allows us to recognize the many synchronistic occurrences that happen to us.

Intuition and synchronicity are interconnected in such a way that it is hard to distinguish where one stops and the other begins. The more synchronicities one notices the more intuitive one becomes; the more intuitive one is the more synchronicities they are likely to recognize. The more awareness one has of his intuition and the synchronistic occurrences happening around him, the stronger his connection to universal energy and knowledge becomes.

Think of synchronicities as communications from the Universe that are there to keep you aligned with your purpose. These signs are indications that your inner world is in sync with your outer world.

The more you believe in the miraculous nature of synchronicities, the more you will notice and experience them. By developing an awareness of the many synchronicities that occur in your life, you will gain the understanding that everything that happens in your life happens for a reason, whether or not the reason reveals itself at the time. You will awaken your spiritual journey and find your life flowing in wonderful ways.

Synchronicities are awe-inspiring, though not all of them play out the way you may hope for. As you experience more synchronicities in your life, try to keep a positive attitude, especially when you are confronted with a seemingly negative outcome. Do not despair. A negative outcome is often put before you as a tool for learning and growing, and may ultimately lead to a positive outcome.

It is important to remember that every event in your life, whether positive or negative has a greater purpose. A lesson that does not turn out the way you would like it to, is simply a lesson that turned out the way it was supposed to. Make it a practice to accept the natural flow of life.

In times of uncertainty, disquietude, and transition synchronicities give us direction. They guide us as we spiritually evolve in the physical world. They are signposts, sometimes subtle sometimes obvious, showing us the most direct route to take, the easiest path to follow, to fulfill the purpose we are here for. They put us in the right place at the right time to cross paths with others who have meaningful messages for us.

We all have stories of how we met the loves of our lives or our best friends, found a new career or the perfect job, began a spiritual path or met the perfect spiritual leader, and discovered we had an illness or unlocked the mystery of an elusive ailment. In more cases than not, a synchronistic experience was involved in that life changing event.

My life story, as told in my memoir Fine…ly, was a series of synchronistic events that led me through a significant amount of pain and adversity, but ultimately delivered me to a place of serenity and joy.

The same can be true for you. By awakening to synchronicities, having patience, and trusting the perfect guidance of the Universe, you will fulfill your purpose for being here.

Be mindful of what happens around you. Through this conscious awareness you will ultimately achieve the loving, peaceful quest of your soul.

In the UFO bookazine we’re working on, we’ve got a chapter on mass sightings. Here’s info on  one of the most credible.

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November 7, 2006 was a gray, overcast day in Chicago, with temps around fifty degrees. Around four p.m CST, a ramp employee at Chicago O’Hare International was pushing back United Airlines Flight 446 from Gate C17 and spotted a UFO about 1,500 feet overhead. The employee alerted the flight crew and someone on board reputedly snapped digital photos of the object.

The object was disc-shaped, a dark gray, metallic color,  about 22-28 feet across, and hovered over Gate C17 for at least five minutes before it accelerated at such an enormous speed that it literally punched a hole in the cloud cover so that blue sky was visible.  It was witnessed by pilots, mechanics,  and senior managers from United Airlines. Air traffic controllers had a conversation about the sighting, which was later released through a Freedom of Information request by the Chicago Tribune. Hundreds of ordinary citizens saw it. It was, after all, rush hour in Chicago.

Initially, the FAA was mum. And United Airlines denied that any of their employees had reported seeing the disc. Then, on New Year’s Day 2007, Chicago Tribune reporter Jon Hilkevitch, who covers transportation for the newspaper, ran a front page story about the sighting at O’Hare. His lead had come from Peter Davenport of the National UFO Reporting Center, who had received two written reports from witnesses at O’Hare and had posted them on the organization’s website.

Hilkevitch’s story garnered worldwide attention. He interviewed witnesses – credible witnesses, those who are trained to determine that an object is an airplane and not something else. And they were unanimous in their belief that the object they saw was not an airplane. They all said the disc was soundless, that it hovered over the United terminal for about five minutes,  and that when it shot away, it punched a hole in the sky.

He was approached by researchers from major universities, hungry for information who had been stonewalled by the government agencies. He had been asked to appear on every major news channel, the media was hungry for whatever he had to say.  In leaked footage before an interview on January 1, 2007 with the local CLTV news, Hilkevitch mentioned that United had now reversed their stance and admitted that employees had reported the sightings to them.

But the FAA was sticking to their explanation: It’s a weather phenomenon and they made it clear they wouldn’t investigate any further.

Major media outlets covered this story – MSNBC, ABC, CBS, CNN. Unfortunately, the guy we liked back then – Keith Olbermann – invited astronomer Derrick Pitts of the Franklin Institute to give his take on the event and Pitts basically wrote off the sightings to “holiday cheer.” Gary Tuchman of CNN interviewed “Joe,” a United Airlines employee whose face was shadowed. He said he had worked at O’Hare for awhile, described what he’d said, and stated it was not an airplane not like anything he had ever seen.

The problem, of course, is that none of the mainstream media boys knew how to approach this story.

Leslie Kean, journalist and author of UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Official Go on the Record, revisited the case in her book.  “The safety concerns of the United employees with regards to this incursion of restricted airspace were apparently of no concern to the FAA, which is tasked to protect our airspace and aircraft.”

In the video at the top of the post, Kean goes on to dismantle the FAA’s weather phenomenon theory. This woman was Budd Hopkins’ partner toward the end of his life and she knows her stuff. Her book is fascinating. And because she sticks to witnesses that the mainstream considers to be “reputable” – pilots, military personnel, aviation experts – it’s difficult to discount her basic premise: “In the meantime, to many observers of these patterns of denial, the official dereliction of duty regarding credible UFO reports remains almost as incomprehensible as the flying discs themselves.”

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Every time I thought I found a video of this sighting, I received a message that the video had been removed by You Tube. I ran across one photo taken from Olbermann’s brief mention of this event, but it’s not too clear. So, in the end, we are left with more questions. And my question is this: If you’re going to hover above one of this country’s busiest airports, why not just land? It’s an airport, dude. Air traffic control will guide you in.

Note: Good ole Mercury retro played havoc with our radio interview on March 10. Dia finally recorded it – rather than doing it live – and posted it on You Tube. (This post was written before Merc went direct on March 17).

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Our daughter is a true movie aficionado. Mention a movie, an actor or actress, and she can recite verse and chapter and IMDB history. So whenever she comes home for a visit, we end up watching a lot of movies we have missed. One of these was Game Change, a 2012 film based on the book of the same name. It follows John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, from his selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate to their ultimate defeat in the general election.

Julianne Moore plays Palin in this film and she looks so much like Palin, has her voice and mannerisms so perfected, that for a moment when she first appeared on screen, I thought she was Palin. Steve Schmidt, who was McCain’s main advisor during the file, is played by Woody Harrelson, one of those actors whose face you recognize, even if you can’t exactly place him in movies.

Harrelson is  terrific in everything he does and as Schmidt, now an MSNBC contributor (on the moderate Republican side), you understand exactly what he went through trying to educate Palin so that she would be up to snuff on interviews, with speeches, in the public. Ed Harris, who needs no intro,  plays a bewildered McCain who wanted to “do something daring,” something that fit his image as a maverick.

So when his advisors suggested Palin as a running mate, an obscure governor from Alaska who was good-looking and went against party politics on her stance about oil companies and Alaska drilling, McCain followed their advice. The film is interspersed with actual news clips. There’s the famous  Palin/Couric interview, where it’s obvious that Palin’s foreign policy experience rests on her claim that she can see  Russia from her front porch. We also see clips of the VP debate between Biden and Palin.

I came away from this film feeling sort of sorry for Palin,  who apparently didn’t understand the kind of maelstrom into which she would be drawn. But what I felt most of all was gratitude that the McCain/Palin ticket didn’t win. To me, it seems like one of those alternate offshoots of history, that maybe there is a place where these two won and, well, no telling what sort of horrors might be occurring there now.

I mean, really. McCain as prez – we’d be at war with any country who didn’t agree with us on every talking point, and Palin would be urging all of us to retire in Alaska. I’m so deeply grateful that era is over. That’s what I brought away from this movie. That and an appreciation for superb acting and a respect for that adage about how if you don’t grasp your own history, you are doomed to repeat it.

Yuck.