Death of the Gulf?

Posted on May 24, 2010 by Trish and Rob

The geyser of oil gushing from 5,000 feet beneath the gulf appears to be getting worse by the day. According to an article in the Times Online UK, there’s far more oil spewing into the gulf than BP has admitted.

Reporter Frank Pope took a sports fishing boat out into the gulf to take a closer look. On board with him was  a marine toxicologist from the Marine Environmental Research Institute, Susan Shaw. They traveled 18 miles out into the gulf, into a restricted zone. Pope says they saw only two cleanup vessels out of the 1,150 that are supposedly on site – one was broken down and the other boat was towing it. Overhead was a dispersant-spraying aircraft. The stink, even 18 miles out, was horrendous.

“Oil has been prevented from reaching the surface by dispersants injected into the flow some 5,000 ft below,” Pope wrote, “but is spreading through the midwater in vast, dilute plumes.”

Pope and Dr. Shaw donned wet suits and snorkels, coated their exposed skin in Vaseline, and slipped into the water. They went down 12 meters – about 36 feet. Among the specks of sludge, Pope wrote, “…are those of a different hue. These are wisps of drifting plankton, the eggs and larvae of fish and the microscopic plants and animals that form the base of almost all marine food webs. Any plankton-eating fish would now have trouble distinguishing food from poison, let alone the larger filter-feeders…  Here, just a few feet beneath the surface, a much bigger disaster is unfolding in slow motion.”

Pope’s companion, Dr. Shaw, summed up this unimaginable catastrophe: “The situation in the water column is horrible all the way down. Combined with the dispersants, the toxic effects of the oil will be far worse for sea life. It’s death in the ocean from the top to the bottom.”

 So far, BP is still in charge of the cleanup. As one commentator said, that’s like putting the murderer in charge of the investigation.
 ***
Sadly, all the scientific forecasts and psychic predictions that we’ve heard over the past 25-30 years are coming true. Both natural and man-made disasters  are taking their tolls. Now, if a hurricane sweeps through the Gulf of Mexico, of course the disaster will be compounded. Astonishingly, there was only enough oil in the Gulf for one year of consumption in the U.S., and no guarantee that it would be sold here. Yet, we were willing to take the chance of destroying an ocean.

 There are better and cleaner sources of energy available that need to be developed. The universe is abundant, and off course, so is energy. But we are focused on one particular dwindling resource. It’s mankind’s limited thinking that keeps us addicted to oil as the major energy source and not the lack of possibilities to fuel the world, and do it cleanly…and greenly.

Posted in oil spill | 40 Comments

Billboard Man

Posted on May 24, 2010 by Trish and Rob

Over the past year, Adele Aldridge has sent us several interesting synchronicities that we’ve posted. However, one of the best, a very personal tale, that we call Billboard Man, was saved for the book. We’d told Adele that a couple of her stories had made it into the book, but didn’t tell her which ones. So it was interesting what happened the day her copy of the book arrived. We’ll let her tell the story.
***

A rushed note to tell you that my copy of The 7 Secrets of Synchronicity just landed in my mail box. I will review it on my blog as soon as I get a chance to read it.

Of course I immediately had to skip to the parts where my synchronicity stories are mentioned to see what you used.

So now, in the short while that I have your book in my hands, I have to report another possible synchronicity. The day is cloudy and a bit muggy here, making me sleepy after doing a lot of work. This afternoon, before the book arrived, I was compelled to lay down and fell into a deep sleep. 

Whenever that kind of sleep overtakes me in the daytime, my sleep is deeper than when I sleep at night. I came out of it not knowing where I was for a moment and recalling that I was dreaming about J—–, a man I have not laid eyes on for twenty years. I thought, “Uuuummmm, WHAT?!” I don’t even remember the content, just the presence. A little later I got my mail and your book and read the part about how I spit at the man on the billboard and then met nine years later. Same man from this afternoon’s dream!

So, perhaps this is not a synchronicity but merely my unconscious realizing that your book was in the mail to me and that story might be in it. Still . . . interesting. And weird.

The other thing that struck me in just reading that section about me and Mr. Billboard is that I have a different take on my own synchronicity than you do, in terms of the feelings involved. I don’t know if I should write about that as part of the review or make it a separate discussion. Maybe making it separate would be better because that way I can write about your book twice.

My take on my Billboard man has to do with my experience with dreams. I am reluctant to go into that on my I Ching Meditations blog because dreams are a big subject in themselves, and one of my top interests along with the I Ching and art. 
***
Well, we think it’s a synchronicity, especially since we never posted that story. We would tell the whole story here–it’s quite startling–but no…we’ll just say you can find this one on pages 35-37 of the book. 😉
***
ADDENDUM
Adele tells me that I posted the wrong Winston Man. Here’s the poster of the man who affected her so strongly…and the man she later met…and much more. From our perspective, he looks like a typical polo player and winter resident of our village.


Posted in Adele aldridge, Billboard man, dreams | 3 Comments

Copp’s Hill Burial Ground

Posted on May 23, 2010 by Trish and Rob

One of the best things about blogging is the comments people make.  On this blog, it usually means the comment is a synchronicity story. I enjoyed this story from glimmer . The players are: incredible odds, a graveyard, a name.

The graveyard is  known as the Copp’s Hill Burying Ground, and as glimmer pointed out in her synchronicity, it’s the second oldest in Boston. It dates back to 1659 and is named after William Copp, who once owned the land. Thousands of artisans, crafts people and merchants are buried here.

On the Snowhill Street side of this cemetery are thousands of unmarked graves of African Americans who lived in the “New Guinea” area at the base of the hill. The most interesting residents, at least to me, are the Mather family of ministers – you know, the guys involved in the Salem witch trials, the inquisitors who believed in employing various torture techniques to determine whether you were a witch.At any rate, the synchro makes you wonder how often these kinds of things happen in old graveyards.
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I was in Boston, being given a tour by my husband’s good friend. I was telling him about my ancestors, saying “we’re mostly southerners, but a ship was blown off course in a storm during the colonial days and a bunch of C’s ended up in this area.” Something like that.

I had never been to Boston. We were in the second oldest graveyard there, the one overlooking the harbor. As I told him this story, I looked down to see a small gravestone with the words “Elijah C…. 1800 and something” the C was my last name. Not a usual last name, at all. This was obviously an ancestor.

We could not believe it. My husband’s friend has added this story and the grave to his little tour!
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This could be one of those trickster synchros – a bit bizarre, but trickster nonetheless!

Posted in graveyards, names, odds | 12 Comments

The Man in Her Bedroom

Posted on May 22, 2010 by Trish and Rob

Lisa Pembleton is a horse person who spent the past winter living in her camper, about a mile from us, parked next to the barn where her horse was stabled. She’s in her early 20s and hopes to be an Olympic equestrian.

She drove to Wellington, Florida in her camper with her cat Sylvester. Behind her, she pulled a trailer with her two horses, Jubal and Geno. Like a lot of these wealthy kids, who hang out here in the winter, she spent her days riding and her nights with friends or in her camper, checking on her horses from time to time.

In early February, Lisa had a dream of a guy coming into her camper in the middle of the night, waking her and saying he was in an accident and needed a phone. Instead of her cell phone, she reached for her mace and told the man to get out.

One week later, it happened. When she awoke to find the man in her bedroom, he said he’d just been in an ‘end of the world’ accident and needed to use her phone. But Lisa didn’t mace him. She handed him her cell and he called his girlfriend, then 911 to report the accident. Lisa, who seems very religious, and writes about going to church on her blog, was glad it didn’t happen exactly like the dream. “By God’s grace my response was different.” She added: “The only thing I regret is while I was with him for about half hour, before the authorities came, I never prayed with him.”

Now when I explain who the man is and what he did, you might think, “The hell with praying with him. You should’ve maced him like you did in the dream.” You be the judge.

The man who came into her bedroom that night is Wellington polo mongul John Goodman. He was very drunk and had just killed a new college graduate coming home from Orlando for his sister’s birthday. Goodman drove his Bentley through a stop sign, slammed into Scott Wilson’s Honda, flipping it over and over and into a canal where Wilson drowned.

Apparently, too inebriated to try to save Wilson, Goodman fled the scene and found Lisa Pendleton. He told authorities that Lisa gave him an alcoholic beverage to calm his nerves. But Lisa doesn’t drink.

So you would expect that Goodman would’ve been arrested on the spot like any other person who commits vehicular homicide while intoxicated. Nope. Goodman, a billionaire from Texas, kept walking.  You see, he has some influence around here. He owns the Palm Beach International Polo Club, –a state-of-the-art facility and the world center of winter polo. His adjacent estate is so large that people sometimes mistakenly drive into it looking for the polo stadium.

The polo facility and the estate are located about a mile from the site of the accident. Over the past weeks, we’ve driven numerous times past the crash site and always noticed the stand of wreaths and flowered crosses near the canal where Scott Wilson died, a reminder of not only the accident but that Goodman was still free.

The Palm Beach Post published regular updates on the case and questioned why Goodman hadn’t been charged. But Goodman’s luck ran out this week. On May 20, more than three months after the accident, he was arrested and charged with DUI manslaughter and vehicular homicide. He walked a few hours later on a $100,000 bond.

More details have emerged. Before the 1:30 a.m. accident, Goodman reportedly had been drinking at a restaurant called the Player’s Club.We know the place. It’s located less than half a mile from our house, closer than any restaurant. But Trish and I have only been there two or three time in ten years. It’s very expensive, very exclusive. How exclusive? You have to pay $10,000 a year for a good table in the upstairs dining and disco area. Lesser tables cost two grand a year. Peons can stand up for free and listen to the music. We’ve never gone to the disco, standing or sitting. We’ve eaten lunch there once, dinner another time. The food was excellent. The prices were eye-popping.

But back to Lisa Pendleton. She recently wrote on her blog: “By the way, I did not get scared at all, that is God’s peace.”

A friend responded, “Wow! I am so excited about all the doors God is opening for you!…Obviously God thinks it is very important. How awesome that He prepared you.”

We wonder what Scott Wilson’s mom thinks about  that. She sees doors closing, the sky falling, and her son, who was about Lisa’s age, in a grave.

Is there a disparity in this country about how justice is administered? You bet. If your son or daughter or you yourself had slammed into Scott’s car, causing it to plunge into a canal, causing Scott to drown, and your blood alcohol level was through the roof and you fled the scene, where would you be tonight? Not out on a six-figure bond. You’d be sitting in a jail cell, bond denied, awaiting trial.

Posted in around town, dreams, polo | 13 Comments

First comments on the book!

Posted on May 21, 2010 by Trish and Rob

Even though the official pub date for The 7 Secrets of Synchronicity is  June 1, some readers are already finding copies from both Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. Robert Larson, who has a story in chapter one, called The Three Roberts, is anxious to get the book, but said he’s determined to wait until it is available from Garrison Keillor’s Common Good Books. (I think it’s already there.)

Meanwhile, here are the first comments we’ve received. One from author Teri Patrick, the other from NYT best-selling novelist Nancy Pickard. Thanks!


A fresh and fascinating expedition into the most provocative and hopeful possibilities of consciousness.  I couldn’t put it down or stop thinking about it.  Written in clear, lucid, and entertaining style, it’s a great companion to take along on the trail where magic morphs into meaning.

– Nancy Pickard

More than Secrets!, May 20, 2010

This review is from: The 7 Secrets of Synchronicity: Your Guide to Finding Meaning in Signs Big and Small (Hardcover)

What is synchronicity?
It can work for you to help you create a life full of wonder and personal power.
Start with:
THE 7 SECRETS OF SYNCHRONICITY
– your guide to finding Meaning in Signs, Big and Small

Trish and Rob MacGregor have collected rich stories from people in all walks of life who pay attention to signs and coincidences that matter to them. The book is informative and personable as it weaves many stories with philosophies and practical steps to enhance synchronicity in our days. To do so makes living life so much more fun and poignant.

What’s awesome about this book is how it includes history, literature, science, technology, nature, and politics with stories of bicycles, t-shirts, jams, pets and TV shows. All these connect through synchronicity to reveal a greater connection in our world that is often unnoticed. This books shows the reader how to notice, and why it truly matters.
 +++
Okay, enough self-promotion. It’s word-of-mouth from here on, guys.

Posted in Uncategorized | 13 Comments

The uncanny 11:11

Posted on May 21, 2010 by Trish and Rob

We thought we’d posted enough 11:11 synchronicities  and wouldn’t be going there for awhile, but then along came a startling story by Jane Clifford of Wales. So here we are taking exit 11 again on The Synchronicity Highway. (That’s the working title of our second synchronicity book, BTW.)
***

When my Dad was dying we met as a family in a cottage on a beach so he could be by the sea for the last time. I spent 3 days there. The morning I was leaving my departure was delayed waiting for my niece so I could say goodbye. Finally I jumped in my car to leave,glanced at the clock as I started the engine and it was 11:11. I stayed with a friend that night to break my journey home,he delayed my departure the next morning,as I started the car it was 11:11.

I was fairly weary when I got home after my journey,in bed that night glanced at the clock,yep 11:11 again! Next morning slept in late,woke with a start looked at the clock & yep 11:11 again!  I have heard among other things that an awareness of 11:11 precedes a shift in consciousness; certainly as Dad approached his death I was  undergoing a shift in my understanding and consciousness.The 11:11 thing has happened intermittently since then. Also,  10:10 and sometimes 01.01.

Just a quick clock story too. I have had a modern battery driven wall clock a fake antique look with a pendulum below which has never worked in the 23 years I have had this clock. Twice a year the clock is removed from the wall for the equinox time change and put back, the pendulum never worked. In March it was lifted down to change the time to GMT, the pendulum has been going ever since! I think it’s my Dad who died last October, he liked things to work properly. Yesterday my son and I were talking about him and the ticking of this clock got so loud we could hear it in the next room! Later we went to a spiritualist meeting and he gave us messages through the medium. He didn’t  say anything about the clock but I have a feeling he might when he gets a chance. The extra loud ticking lasted a couple of hours, but it back to  normal today, and the pendulum is still working.

Does anyone out there have stories of clocks stopping or starting connected with deaths in the family?

Posted in 11s, death | 21 Comments

The Swan and the Cormorant

Posted on May 20, 2010 by Trish and Rob

This story came from Robin Yaklin, who sent it after reading  our post on Nancy Pickard. It’s one of those synchronicities that illustrates the power of a vision that may not come to pass tomorrow or even next month, but perhaps years from now. It also addresses something else we’ve discussed on this blog – birds as messengers.

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 Something went pop in my head and then came the pain like the devil slowly inserted a knife.  Pressing my hands on either side of my head, I rested my forehead on my desk and prayed God would make it stop. And, then it did, suddenly like it had come. 
A note card lay open with half a sentence composed. I kept looking at it, waiting for the pain to resume.  Nothing happened so I began again on the note.  I came to the word ‘and’.  I could not get the correct order of the letters in that simple word.  Then began the dizziness.  Long story shortened, medical referrals were made until I ended up with a neurologist and a prescription for anti-drepressants.  I didn’t like the medication.  No, I hated it.  I complained repeatedly.  No one listened. 
Acupuncture was a last resort.  During a treatment I had two visions.  First a round bubble shape, brilliantly red, with white outlining a swan’s wings.  The wings were stretched out as though the bird would take flight.  Beautiful.  I wanted it to last, but it faded and another image came – this time, the cross section of a brain.  I knew it was my brain.  It was divided crosswise so that it had four quadrants.  The front two were blue as well as the back left.  Only the right back section was red.  The acupuncturist, an internist from China, was troubled and he suggested I follow-up on this since, in Traditional Chinese Medicine, blue means stasis. “Just a hunch,” he said.
I didn’t know what to do.  I had to think these visions over.  A few weeks went by.  Driving home one day from an appointment with the unyielding neurologist, in tears, I resolved to take this into my own hands.  This was hell.  I called a friend who has MS and she listened and came to the same conclusion I had—find a new neurologist.  She offered hers and I pursued getting an appointment. 
The second opinion neurologist was friends with the former neurologist and a bit testy about my questioning her.  He demanded I reveal her diagnosis.  I refused and demanded back that he begin his analysis with a fresh perspective.  We glared at each other.  He wanted to know what tests she had performed.  I said, “None.”  He announced that I needed blood work and other tests to eliminate easily determined diagnoses.  This made sense.  I was willing to do it, but his tone bothered me.  His announcement was like a challenge, like he wanted to see if his long list of to-do’s would discourage me.  Maybe I’d go away, dontchaknow.  Last on his list was an MRI of the brain.
The phone call:  “Put everything down.  Don’t lift even a purse or grocery sack.  I don’t want to hear you went mall walking for four hours.  You can walk your hall to the bathroom and that’s about it.  Your have aneurysms.  Call these surgeons.”  I had five little lethal bubbles.  Pardon the pun, if I say it was breath-taking.
Four surgeries were needed.  In a crazy attempt to make believe life was still normal, my husband and I would go to the grocery store each night before the surgery and stock up for my homecoming.  I think we were making believe there would be a homecoming.  By our house is a lake.  The night before the first surgery, a beautiful swan settled on it.  A few days later, he was gone.  He did this each night before the operations.  Who could help saying, “I get the message, God.”  I bought a silver charm and hung it around me neck. 
During the last surgery, I had a very small stroke, but a stroke, nonetheless.  I’m a writer.  My language skills were affected.  The beautiful Persian carpet on our floor became a towel because that was the only word I could access for it.  There were other problems.  I was still dizzy.  Typing floundered.  Handwriting stopped.  My right side was weaker.  Healing has taken years.  I’m almost fully recovered and, as a reward, I signed up for BONI – Breakout Novel Intensive, a writers’ retreat/workshop.

My hotel room had a view of the river and some rocks on which a cormorant sat.  One sunny windy day, he splashed around in the water, then hopped onto the rocks and spread his wings–glistening, beautiful, powerful wings exactly in the shape of my vision.
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I think the sighting of this cormorant bodes well for Robin’s full recovery. 

Posted in healing, visions | 10 Comments

Blanche Lincoln’s Synchro

Posted on May 19, 2010 by Trish and Rob

This is one of those curious global synchros that so often occur in politics. It concerns the Democratic senator from Arkansas.

Some background on this woman. She’s been a senator since  2003. Before that, she served in the House of Representatives. She is considered a centrist Democrat, but her voting record on issues important to progressives suggests she has the heart of a Republican. Her recent voting record, in fact, may be why she is scrambling tonight in the Arkansas primary.

So today, primary day (May 18) in Arkansas, she goes to her polling station to vote – and has to cast a provisional ballot because she has requested an absentee ballot that she failed to fill out. As soon as I heard this, I felt that the primary wasn’t going to end well for Blanche. Sure enough, she failed to win the majority of votes in the primary and now faces a three-week fight with Lt. Governor Bill Halter for her party’s nomination. The runoff will occur on June 8.

The symbolism spoke clearly:  absentee ballot, provisional ballot, runoff. So I’m going to make a prediction here: unless something major shifts in Lincoln’s psyche – like she actually is transformed into a politician who supports progressive ideals – she’s going to lose the primary. As a politician, in these divisive times, it simply isn’t possible to play both sides anymore and come out on top. You have to take a stance, one side or the other.

Posted in blanche lincoln, global, politics | 13 Comments

Another 6 Degrees of Separation

Posted on May 18, 2010 by Trish and Rob

For the past few weeks, we’ve been taking Noah, our rambunctious Golden Retriever, to doggie training with a wonderful woman named Madison. The training is conducted at her home, usually with two other goldens. Today, it was just Noah and Jake and during doggie play time in Madison’s backyard, the humans stood around talking.

Madison and Jessie, Jake’s owner, were talking about Madison’s hunt for a publisher for her book on dog training. I overheard her mention how so many publishers won’t even look at unagented material and I remarked that finding an agent is often more difficult that finding a publisher.

“Yeah, even when you have a connection,” Madison said, and stabbed her thumb toward Jessie. “His cousin owns one of the biggest literary agencies in New York.”

“Which agency?” I asked Jessie.

“Writers’ House.”

I exclaimed, “You’re kidding. Who’s your cousin?”

“Al Zuckerman,” he replied.

My jaw dropped. Al sold our synchronicity book and has represented me since 1994. What are the odds?

Jessie was as astounded as we were. We tried to trace the six degrees of separation, with Madison as the connector. It goes something like this:

Rob met Madison through yoga.

Jessie got his golden from the same rescue organization where we got Noah, and called Madison out of the blue, inquiring about the cost of dog training.

Madison has one cost for private training and another for class training, done with a group of dogs. Jessie opted for class training, but there wasn’t any class at the time and Madison gave him the class rate. Her husband chided her for not charging what she’s worth.  Her response? “You never know why people enter your life. I just had a feeling. Then it turns out his cousin owns Writers House and I was looking for an agent for my book.” Again, what are the odds?

Another funny layer of synchronicity is found in names. Our previous golden retriever was named Jessie.

Posted in Al Zuckerman, cousins, dogs, writers house | 17 Comments

Six bits of synchronicity

Posted on May 17, 2010 by Trish and Rob

This heart-warming little synchro-tale comes from Mike Clelland, whose hidden experience blog  usually focuses on UFOs and aliens. But the only possible alien connection in this tale are the ones from south of the border. Interestingly, the evening before Mike’s story arrived, I mentioned in passing that we hadn’t heard from Mike Clelland  in a while, and Trish responded: “Watch, now we will.” Right she was.

 (If you’re not familiar with the term ‘six bits’ in the title, it means 75 cents.)

***

I teach winter camping for an outdoor school in the Northern Rockies. After a two-week course, it’s nice to get the stink out of the down sleeping bag. This is no casual undertaking. A negative 40 degree winter bag is huge, and it only fits in the biggest washing machine at the Laundromat, and it takes forever to dry.

I was at the local Laundromat on the main street in my little town. Stuck there with that down bag in the dryer. I would open the door, feel the dampness and add another quarter.

It was a quiet day, and I was sharing the Laundromat with a family of Mexican immigrants. The young couple had a few kids running around, they didn’t seem to speak any English, so all I could do is periodically smile at them.

The set up of these big industrial dryers is a little bit awkwardly, one is on top of the other, and there are two sets of buttons that control the two units unit. I was using the bottom, and the Mexican family had the dryer on top. I added a quarter, and I realized it was the WRONG slot. I had just mistakenly given the family an extra seven minutes of time.

No biggie. But, I somehow manged to do this two more times. I just “gave” the Mexican family 75 cents. Why was I so confused about using a dryer?

I wasn’t interested in asking the family for my money, that seemed silly. At the same time, I went through all kinds of weird liberal guilt about what I had done. I played it out in my head, had I just altruistically helped these poor people? Wasn’t it a nice, that I – the privileged white American – could be so selfless. I immediately recognized how pathetic and useless that avenue of thinking was, and I just dismissed the whole thing.

Not too long later, the sleeping bag was dry, and I left.

From the Laundromat, I went directly to the local Grocery store. I got what I needed and stood in line at the check out with my few items.

As I inched forward in the line, I noticed the checkout girl. The strange thing was, in my head, I immediately announced to myself, “She’s an angel!”

I was awestruck.

She was young and extremely pretty. She had dark hair and dark eyes, and I assumed she was Mexican. As she helped the customers ahead of me in line, she was quiet and smiling. There was something so radiant and pleasant about her, and the silent way she went about her job, that it left me genuinely touched.

I get up to the cash register, she rings up the few things on the conveyor belt, and I pull out my wallet to pay.

But, I didn’t have enough cash. She shows me the total, and I realize I am exactly 75 cents short. I was embarrassed and said I would return an item to the shelf. She didn’t speak, she casually pantomimed to me not to worry. Then she reached under the counter separating us, and she pulled up her purse. She dug through it, pulled out a little change purse, and calmly counted out three quarters and put them in the cash register. She smiled, I thanked her, and walked away.

I have never seen her before or since.

As I review this event from a few years later, the thing that impresses me is the life lesson, that I needed in my life, right then.

I had been through a lot of difficult emotional stuff in the previous years, a lot of isolation and depression. It’s sad to admit but something as normal as people being nice to me would induce anxiety, I felt like I wasn’t “worthy” to receive kindness. Even simple things would be challenging. I wouldn’t let friends buy me lunch, or if someone complimented some job I had done, I would awkwardly find a way to deny their praise.

But, on this day in the grocery store, the very lovely cashier did something nice, and the weird synchronicity seemed to disarm me to the point where I smiled (truly smiled!) said an honest thank you – and moved on.

Since that day, I feel like I’ve been really good at saying thank you. And that was a really important hurdle in my life.

Posted in angels, gratitude | 15 Comments