Nutshell

Posted on July 3, 2017 by Trish and Rob

 

Every so often, I head over to our local Barnes and Noble and cruise the aisles, checking out new books. If the book has an interesting cover,  I pick it up, read the back cover or the inside flap for a synopsis of the story. If this captures my interest, I turn to the first page and read it. If it seizes me, I buy the book. This is true whether I’m familiar with the author or not.

This is what happened with Ian McEwan’s novel Nutshell, published in 2016. I bought the paperback version, which came out in May. Here’s the first line:

So here I am, upside down in a woman. Okay, that seized me. I knew from the back cover copy that the novel was written from a fetus’s point of view. He goes on: Arms patiently crossed, waiting, waiting, and wondering who I’m in, what I’m in for. My eyes close nostalgically when I remember how I once drifted in my translucent water bag, floated dreamily in the bubble of my thoughts through my private ocean in slow motion somersaults, colliding gently against the transparent bounds of my confinement, the confiding membrane that vibrated with, even as it muffled, the voices of conspirators in a vile enterprise.

I already knew from the back cover copy that the fetus’s mother is planning on murdering his father. And this fetus knows it. Nutshell is one of the most unusual novels I’ve ever read. The premise is brilliant, but what’s really startling, though, is that McEwan’s creativity extends beyond his gender, into what it’s like for a woman to be pregnant and what it may be like for that in vitro soul, crammed into this tiny space of the womb.

One of the most innovative scenes and laugh out loud scenes happens when mom imbibes more than 3 glasses of wine and the fetus lets you in on what he knows about  the types of wine. It’s speculative fiction at its best.

 

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Exceptional Art

Posted on July 1, 2017 by Trish and Rob

I’m a huge fan of this young woman’s art. She happens to be our daughter, Megan, and over the past four years, Rob and I have witnessed how her talent has expanded, how her palette of color has deepened. The painting above is part of a series of wave paintings she did. I love this one so much I used it for my business card.

Here was my birthday present this year, our beloved dogs, Nika and Noah:

Here’s the painting she did of just Noah:

One of the local restaurants in Orlando invited Megan to set up during a festival. She painted one of the swans on Lake Eola:

Another wave:

On her website, you can see other pet portraits, people portraits, waves, wildlife.

This ability wasn’t inherited from either of us. Our paintings, rendered at her Paint Nite classes, are too pathetic to even post!

 

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A Synchro video

Posted on June 30, 2017 by Trish and Rob

Here’s an interesting take on synchronicity, playing with the idea that you can create synchronicities, i.e., such as desiring to meet a new friend and that person appears. But he explains the nature of that relationship will be related to the nature of your mind-set when you send out the request.

It starts out a bit slow, but is well worth watching.

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Oddball Synchros

Posted on June 28, 2017 by Trish and Rob

It seems that nearly every day, we experience oddball synchros. They aren’t game changers, aren’t particularly powerful or memorable except that they seem to say, Okay, you’re in the flow, keep moving.

 For instance, tonight Rob and I and the dogs went to dinner at an Italian place we like because we can sit outside on the wide deck with Noah and Nika. Shortly after we’d sat down for a dinner for two, Rob dropped his phone and a Groupon popped up for a local restaurant that read: Dinner for two. I wanted to snap a photo of it, but Rob already had gone into the Groupon already, so I lost my proof!

Earlier today, Rob gave me a list of people whose stories we used in our spirit contact book that comes out this summer. The publisher wants permission slips from everyone whose stories we use, something we haven’t encountered until this year. I started emailing the individuals and the only person who answered was Dennie Gooding, a clairvoyant who lives in California, whom we haven’t spoken to in years.

In 2009, she was hired by a Palm Beach County cop to investigate a cold case that Rob and I had been involved with back in the mid 1980s. We wrote about the synchros concerning the Christie Luna case. Now, thanks to Dennie, there’s more info about that case that we’ll be posting soon.

Then the third oddball synchro. It involves cats. Since 2007, we’ve had an orange tabby cat, Simba. (picture at top of post). Our neighbors owned Copper, an orange tabby cat.

They were the same age. Same color. The difference between them was subtle: Simba has green eyes, Copper’s were amber. They often hung out together, getting high on the catnip I put out for them.  I can’t say that Copper and Simba were best buds, but they sure enjoyed getting high together.

In late December 2016, Copper was hit by a car in our neighborhood and we buried him between our two houses and had a beautiful dusk ceremony for him. This evening, when I whistled for Simba to come in, I found him rolling around on Copper’s grave. Something he has done before. Why there? The front yard offers other ample opportunities for rolling around in grass. Is he drawn to Copper’s spirit? My sense – anthropomorphism and all – is that he misses Copper, misses those evenings on the front sidewalk, the two of them rolling around in mounds of catnip, purring with contentment, sharing a moment of feline camaraderie.

Sometimes, these oddball synchros lead to larger synchros. And sometimes they don’t and are simply woven into daily life, their message simple, pure: Hello, I’m here. Your ally, friend, cheerleader. Now let’s get on with the work. It’s almost as if synchronicity is just checking in, confirming its existence.

 

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Trump and House of Cards

Posted on June 27, 2017 by Trish and Rob

 

This Netflix original series first aired on February 1, 2013 and stars Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright. Rob and I have watched most of the seasons since then and now the series is in its fifth season. It’s a fascinating look inside the corruption of American politics, with Spacey as Francis “Frank” Underwood, a corrupt Democratic Congressman from South Carolina, and then a corrupt Democratic president. At times, it’s difficult to decide who is more corrupt and amoral – Spacey, his wife, Claire, or his creepy aide, Doug Stamper, played by Michael Kelly.

At the end of last season, it was apparent that the show’s writers believed that Hillary Clinton would win the 2016 election, so the episodes were written with that in mind. The Underwoods finagled events and circumstances that allowed Claire to run for the VP slot while her husband campaigned for re-election. Imagine it. A husband and wife team running the country. Both are ruthlessly power hungry, have an open marriage, and their relationship is so dysfunctional that Freud would have a field day with them.

In earlier episodes, we discovered that Underwood is bisexual. Claire eventually takes a lover, her speechwriter, and he actually moves into the White House. In one strange scene this season, Tom Yates (played by Paul Sparks) asks what will happen if Underwood dies and she become President. “Will that make me First Concubine?”

It was tonight’s episode, though, that pretty much ended my fascination with the show. Election night. Will the Underwoods win or will a young governor, Will Conway, win the election? The Underwoods are awaiting election results in the White House’s private theater, watching Double Indemnity, an election ritual for them. There is no love between these two, only a symbiotic relationship that feeds off their mutual lust for power.

As I sat there, I thought about how stupid the Underwood’s relationship is. They lead separate lives, don’t sleep together, and the only thing they have in common is their hunger for power and the fact that they are mirror reflections of each other. Why was I wasting an hour of my time watching something that could be a day in the trump White House? Thgere’s enough of that 24/7 on the news.

Frank Underwood and trump share an appalling egocentrism and belief that they can act with impunity. Underwood doesn’t tweet as much as trump does, but he’s just as evil. He may not overtly express trump’s disdain for women, minorities, climate change, the poor, disabled and the elderly, but it’s implied with his every action. If I’m going to spend an hour out of my day watching a TV show, then give me escape – like Netflix’s paranormal series, Sense 8.  Or their family drama Bloodline, filmed in the Florida Keys. Or their homage to the 1980s, Stranger Things. I don’t give a damn what happens to the Underwoods anymore. Who needs it when the media covers the nightmare reality show of the trump presidency 24/7?

 

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Clairvoyants or Magicians?

Posted on June 25, 2017 by Trish and Rob

Take a look at this you tube video. Regardless of whether these two are clairvoyants or magicians, their performance is impressive.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93vtNc_T3W0&app=desktop

 

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Broken Foot Synchro Saga

Posted on June 23, 2017 by Trish and Rob

A couple of weeks ago, we posted about our daughter’s broken foot – a case for universal health care. After a week in a splint, she finally got her cast on June 7. Before the orthopedic surgeon approved the cast, he went through his spiel about the possible ramifications of just getting the cast – possible early onset of arthritis, persistent pain, loss of flexibility in the foot. Megan nodded. “I’ll take the risk.”

So, Megan chose the color she wanted and the cast went on. The surgeon said she should come back in 4 weeks, they would take X-rays and if the bone was healed, she would be fitted with a boot. Since her foot had been in a splint for 10 days, he counted that time. It’s her right foot and that means she can’t drive until she learns to do so with her left foot. She has a knee scooter that makes it easier to get around her house and helps with dog-walking. We did some of that while I was there and I admire Megan’s tenacity. It’s awkward on a knee scooter, particularly with dogs that are high energy, but she did great.

I stayed another day to help her out with wine walk, an Orlando event that occurs every second Thursday a month. Customers pay $10 for the walk and make their way from bars to restaurants to shop for refills. Megan sets up her pet portraits on the porch of a dog bakery, Wolfgang’s, so she has a built-in audience and she usually gets commissions from wine walk. Here are the pet wine glasses she does – Nika and Noah, my birthday present!

Getting there entails a short drive, getting out the scooter, going up a driveway and three steps to the porch, then setting up her table and pet portraits, all without her placing any pressure on her broken foot. Challenging. She collects email addresses that she enters into a raffle and the winner wins  a free pet wine glass.

The evening went well. Her foot didn’t hurt, felt more stable in the cast, but she still worried about whether she’d made the right decision. So the universe provided her with a confirmation synchro. And this one is incredible. She went out afterward with a friend and later texted me a photo of her and her friend sitting with four orthopedic surgeons (residents), all of whom looked at her foot X rays on her phone, and concurred she’d made the right choice – a cast versus surgery.

Okay, so what are the odds on this one?

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Ione MacGregor, RIP

Posted on June 19, 2017 by Trish and Rob

This photo was taken around 1995 or 1996, when Megan was 6 or 7 years old. We were traveling with Rob’s parents in Minnesota, taking a ferry across one of the 10,000 lakes, and we can’t recall which lake it was. But I think this photos captures the MacGregor spirit – Megan standing behind the other two generations.

Today at 2:03 p.m., central time, Rob’s mom, Ione MacGregor, passed on.

For the last 13 or 14 months, Ione had been in an assisted living facility in Minneapolis, suffering from dementia, heart problems, and a host of other ailments. She would have been 92 on November 18, and for months had been telling Rob and his sister, Sandy, that she just wanted to die. Her husband, Don, Rob’s dad, died 20 years ago, in 1997, and over the years, Ione had several contacts with him that she told Rob about and that we’ve written about in various books.

I didn’t know Ione well. She was a Scorpio, the most secretive and psychic of all the sun signs, and whenever I was with her, I felt she knew and sensed things that were beyond my ability to see. I always enjoyed the times we visited her in Minneapolis. She had a wry sense of humor and she, like Rob’s dad, was a big reader, an avid fan of our books and of any other books we sent her. Until her late 80s, she was quite self-sufficient, living in the home where Rob had grown up. Then she began hearing and seeing things that weren’t there, and it got to the point where she started calling police about the voices in her basement.

Fortunately, after her husband passed, she wasn’t entirely alone. She met Sal, who had recently lost his wife, through a bereavement group, and they were together for several years. She was with Sal when he died from cancer.

As with most pivotal turning points – death being the biggie – there are some stunning synchronicities associated with Ione’s passing. She died 17 years to the day that my mother did, almost to the hour. My mother passed at around 5 PM June 15, 2000. Ione died around 2 pm EDT on June 15, 2017.

At the time Rob heard about his mom’s death, we were sitting out on the porch and he was talking to his sister. The two dogs, Noah and Nika, were outside by the pool and suddenly, a tremendous gust of wind blew through the yard. It whipped trees back and forth, lifted leaves that swirled through the air, the dogs freaked and hurried back onto the porch. Then the air returned to normal, just overcast and hot.

My God, I thought. Was that Rob ‘s mom? As soon as he hung up with his sister, he said the same thing. Ione had a cat that moved to the assisted living facility with her and when she got too sick to care for it, Rob’s sister took the cat in. Early this afternoon, the cat, Sandy said, went all quiet and still, “almost like she knew what was happening.”

So, thank you, Ione, for giving birth to your wonderful son, and may your afterlife journey be filled with all the happiness that these last few years lacked. And please, don’t rest in peace. I hope you and Don and Sal are rabble rousers over there!

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We won’t be posting for several days. We’ll be in Minneapolis, helping Sandy and her partner move Ione’s things out of the assisted living facility. But if there are some synchros that point to spirit contact, as I suspect there will be, we’ll post about them.

 

 

 

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Cuba and Trump

Posted on June 17, 2017 by Trish and Rob

In 2014, Obama signed an executive order that loosened travel for Americans to Cuba. In February of this year, we took advantage of that policy.  The tickets from Fort Lauderdale to Havana cost, on Jet  Blue,  $150 apiece, round trip, with an additional $50 apiece for the visa. The flight took a total of 33 minutes. We booked our lodging online, through airbnb, and had a four-bedroom, four-bath apartment that costs us $40 a night apiece. In all, the trip probably cost each of us about $600 for a ticket, lodging, food etc. The island is fantastic, the people are wonderful, and the entire trip was one of the highlights of my life.

Today in Miami’s Little Havana, Trump rolled back Obama’s executive order with one of his own that tightens those travel restrictions so that Americans will no longer be able to travel as freely as we did in February. In fact, you will probably have to go with an educational group, which means you can’t travel on your own around the island and, of course, the price is going to be well beyond what we paid.

street in Habana Vieja

Lunch en route to the interior

A cigar maker at a tobacco plantation

Trump, playing to a tiny core of his supposed base in Little Havana, said, “…we must ensure that U.S. funds are not channeled to a regime that has failed to meet the most basic requirements of a free and just society.”

Really? What about the Phililpines? Egypt? What about Saudi Arabia, where the “most basic human requirements of a free and just society” are denied to nearly everyone except the royal family, and are denied in particular to women? Trump doesn’t have any problem with countries like this.

This part of his edict is especially heinous. It’s from The Huffington Post:

“The Trump administration is stepping up requirements on those sorts of trips, requiring a full-time schedule of activities that “enhance contact with the Cuban people, support civil society in Cuba, or promote the Cuban people’s independence from Cuban authorities, and that the travel must result in a meaningful interaction between the traveler” and Cubans, according to the draft. Travelers to Cuba will have to keep detailed records of all their financial transactions in the country for five years to make available to the Treasury Department if requested.

“The president is also directing the Treasury secretary to regularly audit Cuba travel to make sure U.S. travelers are following the rules on avoiding GAESA-linked transactions. Anyone who travels to Cuba, however, might be able to stay at an Airbnb or eat at an independent restaurant, although that interpretation is not clearly spelled out in the draft order. But those who go to the island under a U.S. license will need to keep strict notes proving they’re complying with the new executive order – or face fines.”

Our 4 days in Cuba were all about interacting with the Cuban people and culture and we didn’t need a U.S. govennment authorized educational group government to do it. This edict of trump’s is as brainless as everything else he has done since January 20. Sure, impose the American embargo again and watch as  the Chinese and Russians move in and do business there.

Trump can’t be gone too soon for me and my hope is that his entire administration is thrown out with him. Every single one of them is corrupt to the core and every Republican who falls into line with him and fails to speak up should be voted out in 2018.

Art that represents the Cuban spirit!

Cuba, si!!

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Beyond Strange

Posted on June 15, 2017 by Trish and Rob

Strange things sometimes happen to ordinary people as they go about their everyday lives.

Two men are stalked across a golf course by a seemingly sentient bank of fog.

A veterinarian comes face-to-face with strange interdimensional creatures.

A young couple walk into the past.

A former police officer travels out of body to a vast mansion in another reality.

Alien abductions, hauntings, psychokinetic powers, and more populate the pages of Beyond Strange. The stories we’ve picked—sent to us over the years—are astonishing by any reckoning and address a fundamental issue: the existence of a more expansive reality beyond the one we ordinarily experience.

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This book is a varied collection of the most unusual and bizarre incidents we’ve researched over the years. Right now, it’s an ebook, but a print book is coming soon!

 

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