Copper and the Rainbow

Posted on December 27, 2016 by Trish and Rob

copper

One day in 2007, our neighbor, Annette, brought home an orange tabby kitten she named Copper. That’s him in the fountain. About a week later, she brought us an orange tabby kitten that she’d found somewhere. We named him Simba.

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Copper had copper colored eyes and Simba’s are green. Otherwise, they were hard to tell apart, particularly at dusk or when one of them darted into the house in search of catnip or treats. Or if were laying on the floor together.

copper-and-simba

Over the years, Copper dropped by frequently for visits. He knew we always have catnip and treats. Quite often, Simba and Copper were on our front porch, sunning themselves together, and when I came out, they would indulge in catnip and treats like a couple of siblings. What can I say, these enjoyed getting high together.

Copper was accepting of everyone. He wasn’t ever afraid of Noah, who is many times his size, or of Megan’s dog, Nika. And he lived with two dogs. Whenever Annette and her family go away for vacations or a long weekend, I take care of her animals – and vice versa. Copper usually followed me out the door when I left and then would come over to our place to visit. His roaming area was the yards of our two houses, which are side by side.

This afternoon, Rob was coming home from Publix and saw a bunch of kids on bikes by the side of the road, across the street from Annette’s house. She was just coming out her front door. He knew something had happened, but couldn’t see anything because the kids blocked his view. He came hurrying into the house and shouted, “I think something happened to Copper.”

I ran outside and saw Annette on her knees on the grass, sobbing hysterically and huddled over Copper’s body. I raced over to her and started crying, too. His body was still warm, so it had happened within the last several minutes. Annette picked him up, cradling him like a baby, both of us weeping, and we walked across the street to her place and went into her bedroom.

She sat in a rocking chair with Copper’s body in her lap, and I hurried into her utility room for a towel. Megan, who is home for the holidays, came over and we rifled through gift boxes for one in which Copper could be buried. We found one and when Annette set him inside it, I sprinkled catnip over it.

There is something so terribly raw and painful about losing a beloved pet this way. But awhile later, I was taking the dogs to the dog park and saw the most incredible rainbow and snapped a photo of it.

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I called Annette and told her to hurry outside to see it. Megan and Rob were on their way to the garage to pick  up her car and she took a picture of it, too, and texted it to Annette: Copper is saying hi! That rainbow symbolized hope.

 This evening, Annette came by and asked if it would be okay if they buried Copper between our two houses. We decided on a spot under the tree he used to climb to get to our roof.Here he is, doing cat-aerobics!

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Other neighbors turned out to help dig the grave and to say their good-byes.

RIP, Copper. You are already missed!

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A cluster synchro & spirit contact

Posted on December 26, 2016 by Trish and Rob

 

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On December 23, my mother, Rose Marie, would have been a hundred years old. I was thinking about her as I was putting away groceries and emptying the dish washer that day. I picked up a clear glass coffee mug from the dish washer and wondered where it had come from. I noticed writing on it and since it was a bit hard to read, I held it up to the light and saw my mother’s name on it. In the photo, it’s hard to read, too!

Wow, I thought, a hello from my mother!

A few minutes later, Rob came into the kitchen to fix himself a glass of water with a dash of apple cider vinegar that he drinks because of the beneficial acids. It helps with weight loss, lowers cholesterol and blood sugar levels, and improves symptoms of diabetes. I was telling him what had just happened with the mug and he looked at me, his eyes wide, and started laughing.

In one hand he held the mug with my mother’s name on it and in the other hand, he held the bottle of apple cider vinegar. The label reads: BRAGG organic –raw, unfiltered- apple cider vinegar with The ‘Mother.’

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 It’s as if my mother wanted to be sure I got the message. Thanks, Mom! Message delivered and received!

 

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How Santa Delivers Presents Everywhere

Posted on December 24, 2016 by Trish and Rob

 

This is blogger Mike Perry‘s answer to Santa’s speedy deliveries!

From Mike:

How does he do it? How does Father Christmas (Santa Claus) manage to deliver to all of the children around the world, who believe in him? That’s about 700 million children! Also, how the heck does he get all of the presents down the chimney? As a child my mother used to tell me Santa had a special pill that made him small. but I never really bought her theory.

Now though, we have an answer! Dr Katy Sheen from Exeter University has an explanation based on Einstein’s theory of relativity.

The doctor started out by calculating how fast Father Christmas would have to travel by working out the number of households likely to celebrate Christmas around the world and the number of children likely to be in them. She eventually decided that Santa would have to travel at about 10 million kilometres per hour to deliver presents to every child expected to celebrate Christmas in 31 hours, taking into account different time zones.

That all sounds like quite a problem but, by Santa going so fast – according to Einstein – objects travelling at such a speed would become compressed in size. Therefore Santa would shrink! So he’d be able to pop down all of the chimneys. with all of those presents, without any difficulty.

Santa can make his deliveries without being seen because light waves get squashed at such high speeds. He would also change from red to green, appearing as a rainbow-coloured blur. At his top speed, he would become invisible to the human eye. So that’s why we never see him.

Einstein’s theory could also explain why Father Christmas appears not to have aged – relativity means time slows when an object moves at high speeds.

All very good you may say, but how does Santa travel so fast? Dr. Sheen explains, “How does Santa manage to reach these phenomenal speeds? Well that’s magic! However, he would certainly need a lot of fuel – so don’t forget his glass of sherry, a mince pie or two and some carrots for the reindeer!

The magic  abounds!

 

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How Does Sensing the Future Work?

Posted on December 23, 2016 by Trish and Rob

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From Sensing the Future – available on January 10, 2017

Rather than “seeing” actual future events, people who sense the future may be anticipating events that might unfold. That’s a concept expressed by physicist David Bohm in a conversation with author Michael Talbot.

Bohm was quoted as saying: “When people dream of accidents correctly and do not take the plane or ship, it is not the actual future that they were seeing. It was merely something in the present which is implicate and moving toward making that future. In fact, the future they saw differed from the actual future because they altered it. Therefore I think it’s more plausible to say, if these phenomena exist, there’s an anticipation of the future in the implicate order in the present.” Bohm referred to the implicate or hidden order as nonlocal reality and our everyday world at local reality.

In Synchronicity: The Inner Path of Leadership, Joseph Jaworski describes the impact that a chance meeting with Bohm had on his dream of creating a training program for visionary leadership that focused on serving others. During a four-hour conversation with the physicist, Bohm told him, “You cannot think of existence as local . . . Your self is actually the whole of mankind. That’s the idea of implicate order—that everything is enfolded in everything. The entire past is enfolded in each of us in a very subtle way. If you reach deeply into yourself, you are reaching into the very essence of mankind.”

Think about that for a moment. It means that any time you’re engaged in something that prompts you to look within, to delve into your own psyche, your own consciousness, you’re diving into that primal soup, that collective, where we’re all connected.

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White Crows: The Bigger Picture in Novels

Posted on December 21, 2016 by Trish and Rob

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One of the challenges of writing a novel – or any book – is answering a single question: what’s the bigger picture?

Sometimes, this question is answered in surprising ways – by one of your characters, for instance, who does or says something 200 pages into what you’ve written that twists the plot in a new direction. Right then,  you realize OMG, this is where my novel really starts.

In May, I woke up one morning with an idea for a new novel and got about 75 pages into it when I realized I was approaching it all wrong. So I took the character who made me realize this and wrote a 15,000-word short story that I submitted to a science fiction magazine. It was rejected. Even though the editor was intrigued by the premise, he rejected the story because he felt the ending was rushed (true) and that the story was actually part of something longer (true). But that story provided me with the backbone, the larger picture, of White Crows.

The title comes from the quote by William James: If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black, you mustn’t seek to show that no crows are; it is enough if you prove one single crow to be white.

Once I had the larger picture, it took me about four months to write the first draft. Now it’s with my agent, who will want revisions, fine-tuning.  Here’s the larger picture, which you discover as the story unfolds:

Since 2001, thousands of people worldwide have had encounters with mysterious ocean lights. Seventy-five percent of these individuals die with 48 hours, but the survivors develop extraordinary abilities. As a result, the government created an agency BAP – Bureau of Anomalous Phenomenon – to study the survivors. BAP began abducting some of them, now known as white crows, and imprisoning them at facilities known as the Farms, like Gitmo in terms of dark and terrible cruelties, but pristine and beautiful in appearance, like country estates.

It quickly became apparent that the survivors’ abilities were so dangerous they had to kept drugged and the memories of their lives before had to be wiped clean. Every prisoner was assigned a new name and through isolation and torture, survivors were whipped into compliance.

Those who fell in line were recruited to BAP’s special task teams that worked with other federal agencies in tracking down terrorists, murderers, missing children. Others were recruited for more nefarious purposes – to nab survivors of the encounters with the mysterious ocean lights, gather foreign intelligence, eliminate enemies.

In 2016, fifteen years after the advent of BAP and the Farms, the government is still clueless about the origin of the ocean lights or why these white crows have been endowed with such extraordinary powers.  Various theories have been put forward – that the lights are a result of global warming, an unknown virus or bacteria, a weapon created by a foreign enemy, or extraterrestrial. Nothing has been proven and now BAP is more interested in using the white crows for their own agenda. As far as BAP can determine, the ocean light encounters ended in January 2008.

But in May 2016, the escape of two prisoners from the Farm outside of Gainesville, Florida, changes everything. This is their story. Here’s chapter 1:

white-crows-chap1

 

 

 

 

 

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The Arrival

Posted on December 20, 2016 by Trish and Rob

So many people had recommended this movie that we finally went to see it. The Arrival may be one of the most cerebral and visionary movies I’ve ever seen.

The summary, from IMDB: “When mysterious spacecraft touch down across the globe, an elite team – led by expert linguist Louise Banks – is brought together to investigate. As mankind teeters on the verge of global war, Banks and the team race against time for answers – and to find them, she will take a chance that could threaten her life, and quite possibly humanity.”

Actually, that summary doesn’t do the film justice. The way the movie is filmed is tricky, brilliant, a red herring in itself. It moves between the present, where Louise Banks (Amy Adams) and a theoretical physicist, Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) are struggling to establish communication with these aliens, while what we’re led to believe is the past, where Banks’s daughter is dying of a rare form of cancer, is also a red herring.

But – and here’s a spoiler – what Banks is seeing is the future. The gift she receives from these aliens is precognition – sensing the future – something we didn’t realize when we went to see the movie. At one point, Banks is remembering something her daughter, Hannah, asked her, and she tells her that her scientist father is better equipped to answer that question. This line is a big clue about the larger picture of what’s happening in the communication with the aliens.

Their language is holistic, non-linear, universal in that it doesn’t perceive time as divided into past, present, future, but as a continuous flow.

The movie is based on a short story by Ted Chiang and the screenwriter’s journey in translating the story to film is fascinating. It took him a decade to get it made.  Instead of pursuing what the studios were demanding – aliens land, big shoot-em-up, humans win – Eric Heisserer followed his own artistic vision and it paid off. This movie is one to savor and see again. And again.

I downloaded the collection of Chiang’s short stories – 15 of them which have won multiple awards – and love the one on which the movie is based. But I think Heisserer took that story and totally transformed it into a masterpiece.

 

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What If…

Posted on December 19, 2016 by Trish and Rob

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Mercury, the trickster planet of communication,  turns retrograde today in Capricorn, the sign of power, government, the establishment. The electoral college also counts their votes today. Could be bedlam, folks. If so, let’s hope it’s bedlam that veers away from the scenario depicted in What If…

 

January 2014

Senior Editor

Hernando Rodriguez

Star Books

 Dear Mr. Rodriguez,

My agent suggested that I write you about the protagonist in my newest Dystopian political thriller, What If… The character is a complete original. I believe he’ll appeal to readers who are looking for something totally fresh and different, something other than Jason Bourne and that hackneyed James Bond.

He’s a businessman who has never held a political office and yet, he runs for president. That’s fine; anyone can run for president. My protagonist is a con man who had a popular TV show and knows how to manipulate facts, how to tap into anger and fuel hatred and divisiveness. He has been accused of being a sexual predator by a dozen women, charges he denies. He promises to build a wall between the U.S. and Mexico to keep out illegal immigrants whom he refers to as murderers, rapists, and thieves.

He promises a ban on all Muslims from entering the U.S., says he will nominate Supreme Court judges who will overturn Roe V Wade, and oh, yes, he promises to jail his opponent. His wife – #3 – is an immigrant who posed nude for some magazine. He refuses to release his tax returns. He loves Putin. He’s a blatant racist, misogynist, liar, and narcissist and the media gives him so much free air time that he actually becomes a presidential candidate.

I think this character will set the standard for a new type of Dystopian thriller. I’ve attached a sample chapter.

Best,

Amy Lenox

February 2014

 Dear Amy,

 This is the worst idea I’ve ever read for a Dystopian thriller.

 Jose Rodriguez

March 2014

 Dear Amy,

This character is completely out of the realm of possibility and strikes me as an anti-hero, not anyone the public would care to read about.

 Michelle Fenmore

Editor

Gotham Publishing

 June 7, 2014

 Dear Amy,

 This protagonist, sample chapter, and story line have possibilities. Can you make him a bit more twisted? Give me some more detail?

 Pete Connor

Acquisitions Editor

Blueprint Books

June 8, 2014

 Dear Mr. Connor,

Thank you for your interest. More twisted? Sure. He wins the election two years from now, a tectonic shock to every pundit and pollster and reasonable person in America. Before he’s inaugurated, the intel community reveals that the election was hacked by the Russians. But my protagonist doesn’t read Intel briefings because, you know, “I’m a smart guy.” He thinks the intelligence community is never right – after all, he points out, they said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and he never did – and that they are acting out of partisan politics. He conveniently forgets that it was Dick Cheney who claimed Saddam had such weapons.

Every day, he makes blunders that would bury another candidate, that would lead to impeachment before the president-elect had even taken office. But my protagonist is immune and goes on a gratitude tour, as though the campaign is still in full swing. He appoints cabinet members that are racists, Wall Street cronies, war mongers, idiots who intend to gut the safety nets of Medicare and Social Security. In other words, they target an entire generation of Baby Boomers who depend on those programs. Many of these Boomers are the ones who demonstrated against Vietnam, fought for equal rights for minorities and women, and no one is more shocked than my protagonist when these Boomers take up arms and start a new revolution.

Amy

July 2014

Dear Amy,

 Okay, I’m intrigued. Where does this new Boomer revolution begin? What happens? What are the specifics? What does your protagonist do about it? Does he jail journalists and protesters? Does he create camps for immigrants, rowdy Boomers, and anyone who disagrees with him?

 Thanks,

Pete

 July 2014

 Dear Pete,

My protagonist starts making lists of government employees who have come out in favor of policies he’s against. Climate change. The right of a woman to choose. The right to health care, a vote that counts, relief from crippling college debt, a livable living wage….

In other words, the lists are how he begins implementing some of Hitler’s tactics. And yes, these tactics include camps – for illegal immigrants and other minorities, the LGBT community, for journalists and all citizens who skewer him. In less than a year after his election, this businessman turns democracy upside down and inside out. Yet, the media continues to normalize him and many of them do it so they don’t end up in camps. He has decimated the American economy, the unemployment rate rises to a staggering double digits. The number of homeless in America has soared into the millions.

His supporters, of course, insist he isn’t doing this, that the media is twisting the facts.

December 2014

 Dear Amy,

I submitted your full manuscript to our committee. They love the book, but they find your Dystopian world disturbing. I regret that I must pass on this one.

 Best wishes,

Pete

July 22, 2016

 Dear Amy,

 Holy shit. Your protagonist just accepted the nomination. Is your novel still available? We can bring it out immediately as an ebook.

July 25, 2016

 Dear Pete,

It’s already an ebook and has sold about 15 copies. My family and I have moved to Costa Rica. Even though the people here think our politics are nuts, they like Americans. They have universal health care. The people are friendly and kind. He’s going to win in November and if I were you, I would move elsewhere. Anywhere. I hear that Nova Scotia is offering refuge to Americans. Just get out now before he’s inaugurated.

November 8, 2016

 Hi Amy,

 My wife is hysterical tonight. My God, how did you know? We put our house on the market last month and have two offers. We’re accepting one of those offers in the morning. My parents moved last month to Spain. How is this happening?

 November 10, 2016

 Hi Pete,

 The how is irrelevant. Just get out before January 20.

May 2, 2017

 Amy, we made it out. We’re in Barcelona. Heard from a colleague today that our publishing house was closed down, that several progressive news channels were taken off the air, that progressive magazines and websites and blogs have folded, that internment camps are burgeoning. Roe v Wade is expected to be overturned soon.

 May 4, 2017

Hey Pete, we’re okay. Costa Rica is on the ring of fire and we’ve had a few quakes recently, but nothing serious. These quakes are nothing compared to what’s happening at home. My heart is breaking. The Dems are too weak and divided to be of any use at all. I hear the Boomers are fighting the good fight. Unfortunately, I think it all came too late. I hope I’m wrong. Here’s my blog URL: www.fightingon.com We each do what we can, from wherever we are.

October 2017

 From The Washington Post

 Today, the president issued extradition orders for every American citizen who left the country between July 1, 2016 and the present. “These people are terrorists who threaten the Homeland,” he said in a statement to CNN.

 

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Astrologer Alex Miller & the 2016 Election

Posted on December 17, 2016 by Trish and Rob

blackhole

One of the most interesting and savvy astrologers I have run across in recent years is Alex Miller, who specializes in asteroids. I first became aware of him when I read a piece he wrote for The Mountain Astrologer that was unlike anything I’d ever read about any facet of astrology.

I got in touch with Alex, told Whitley Strieber about him, and Alex appeared on Strieber’s radio show, Dreamland in 2014. For some years now, he has been posting regularly on Day Keeper Journal, an astrology website with some fascinating articles.

This evening, I found Alex’s final piece for the site, about the results of the 2016 election. Since most astrologers, including Alex, were wrong in their predictions about who would win, Alex’s article is a fascinating look into where he thinks astrologers went wrong. It’s also a sobering reflection of where we stand as a society, a country, and a global community now that Trump is president-elect. Take a look.

I’m sorry to see him leave Day Keeper. His knowledge is unique and in a Trump presidency, we need this insights.

Alex also has a terrific ebook available on Kindle, featured at the top of this post.

 

 

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A Precog About a Book on Precognition

Posted on December 15, 2016 by Trish and Rob

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A week ago, Rob remarked that he hoped our copies of Sensing the Future (available for pre-order from Amazon) arrived before we started doing radio shows. The shows, I said, won’t be starting until after Mercury turns direct on January 8, 2017, and the book will be available on January 3.

“But book publications can be delayed,” he replied.

I thought about that for awhile. In more than 30 years as writers, I couldn’t think of a single instance where a book we had sold had its publication delayed. Publishers tend to have their publication lists set up well in advance. I asked Rob why he’d said that and he explained that the publisher of Beyond the Bermuda Triangle, had told him its publication might be delayed. It’s supposed to come out in July 2017.

Then, the next day, I received an email from Will Kiester, the publisher at Page Street who bought Sensing the Future. Apparently the printer, RR Donelley (now called LSC Communications) got behind in their printing and three of Page Street’s books, including ours, are going to be delayed a week, until January 10, 2017.

As I wrote Will, this is actually terrific news. Mercury – the planet of communication – will be retrograde from  December 19, 2016 to January 8, 2017, so a pub date on January 10 means the book will be issued under more more favorable conditions. We will be on Coast to Coast with George Noory on January 9, and the other radio shows we’ve scheduled all happen after that!

So Rob’s precog about our book on precognition turned out to be correct and may be something of a trickster. Ha-ha, MacGregors. What do you think of this one?

PS  This evening I was fiddling around with Instagram, looking for posts on precognition and the first one I clicked was this one. 

It turns out to be of  the publisher, Will Kiester, holding up a cover of Sensing the Future.  Synchro!

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This Mercury retrograde begins in Capricorn, slips back into Sagittarius on January 4-5, depending on where you live, and turns direct in that sign on January 8. I recommend that people follow the three Rs for these retro periods: reconsider, revise, review. Don’t start anything new, don’t submit stuff to agents etc., don’t make travel plans or buy electronics – unless you don’t mind if your travel plans change or standing in line on December 26, waiting to return Christmas gifts you bought.

And, since the electors meet on the 19th  to count their votes for the 2016 election, there could be some confusion!

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A Coconut Synchro

Posted on December 13, 2016 by Trish and Rob

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We recently posted about the prevalence of media-related synchronicities that were highlighted by Bernard Beitman on the Psychology Today website. Less common, I suspect, are nature synchros. Have you had one?

Here’s mine. I was in our backyard, which is a semi-landscaped jungle. A wooden fence separates our yard from our neighbors. About five feet from the fence, our neighbor has a coconut palm, and on this particular day I noticed a coconut had fallen just inside the fence.

I picked it up, shook it, and knew that I had half a glass, about four ounces of pure coconut water. I stood back on the sidewalk about 15 feet from the tree and looked up to the bunches of ripe coconuts. I thought if one more fell on this side of the fence I would have a full glass of coconut water.

I turned, walked to the gate that opened to the front yard and as I did so, I heard a thump. I turned around and there was a coconut not only inside the fence, but it had bounced and rolled all the way to the sidewalk right where I had been standing!

I suppose if I’d stayed there, instead of walking away, it might’ve landed right at my feet or on my feet. If the coconut had struck me, then I guess the nature synchro would’ve pivoted into the trickster mode. You want a coconut…take this!

As it turned out, my glass of coconut water wasn’t half full or half empty…It was full. Thanks to the synchronized coconut.

 

 

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