A 5-point plan

Posted on November 10, 2016 by Trish and Rob
US filmmaker Michael Moore speaks with members of the media as he arrives at the IFC Theater before the debut of a surprise documentary about Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump titled "TrumpLand" in New York on October 18, 2016. / AFP / KENA BETANCUR (Photo credit should read KENA BETANCUR/AFP/Getty Images)

US filmmaker Michael Moore speaks with members of the media as he arrives at the IFC Theater before the debut of a surprise documentary about Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump titled “TrumpLand” in New York on October 18, 2016. / AFP / KENA BETANCUR (Photo credit should read KENA BETANCUR/AFP/Getty Images)

Michael Moore’s 5-point plan for the morning after the election – and many mornings after:

Morning After To-Do List:

1. Take over the Democratic Party and return it to the people. They have failed us miserably.

2. Fire all pundits, predictors, pollsters and anyone else in the media who had a narrative they wouldn’t let go of and refused to listen to or acknowledge what was really going on. Those same bloviators will now tell us we must “heal the divide” and “come together.” They will pull more hooey like that out of their ass in the days to come. Turn them off.

3. Any Democratic member of Congress who didn’t wake up this morning ready to fight, resist and obstruct in the way Republicans did against President Obama every day for eight full years must step out of the way and let those of us who know the score lead the way in stopping the meanness and the madness that’s about to begin.

4. Everyone must stop saying they are “stunned” and “shocked.” What you mean to say is that you were in a bubble and weren’t paying attention to your fellow Americans and their despair. YEARS of being neglected by both parties, the anger and the need for revenge against the system only grew. Along came a TV star they liked whose plan was to destroy both parties and tell them all “You’re fired!” Trump’s victory is no surprise. He was never a joke. Treating him as one only strengthened him. He is both a creature and a creation of the media and the media will never own that.

5. You must say this sentence to everyone you meet today: “HILLARY CLINTON WON THE POPULAR VOTE!” The MAJORITY of our fellow Americans preferred Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Period. Fact. If you woke up this morning thinking you live in an effed-up country, you don’t. The majority of your fellow Americans wanted Hillary, not Trump. The only reason he’s president is because of an arcane, insane 18th-century idea called the Electoral College. Until we change that, we’ll continue to have presidents we didn’t elect and didn’t want. You live in a country where a majority of its citizens have said they believe there’s climate change, they believe women should be paid the same as men, they want a debt-free college education, they don’t want us invading countries, they want a raise in the minimum wage and they want a single-payer true universal health care system. None of that has changed. We live in a country where the majority agree with the “liberal” position. We just lack the liberal leadership to make that happen

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The Comparison

Posted on November 9, 2016 by Trish and Rob

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Which Universe Will It Be?

Posted on November 8, 2016 by Trish and Rob

PS Well, here we are. This is how Nazi Germany started. The Nazi movement was built on hatred,  that hatred took root, Hitler became a dictator, and the people who chilled about it – Jews, minorities – ended up in camps and more than 6 million of them were exterminated. This isn’t just an election; it’s a profound insight into the American psyche.  With everything Trump represents and the way the map is shaking out,  it looks as if the republicans control all 3 branches of government.

Fascism. After 8 years of W. Bush, Cheney, and  that gang, I don’t think I can live under this type of government. Costa Rica is looking like a more viable alternative.

 

 

Trumplandia?

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Or Clintonlandia?

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We’ll have a clearer picture (maybe) at 9 p.m. when the voting booths close on the east coast.

Trumplandia:

We’re going to make America great again. We’ll repeal Obamacare. The system is rigged. I know how to make a deal. We’ll build a wall. She’s fat, she’s ugly, all those women are lying. The Mexicans are  rapists, thieves, we’ll deport all 11 million of them. I was against the war in Iraq – but I love war.

Clintonlandia:

He’s unfit to be president. I apologized for using a private server for those emails and wouldn’t do it again. I didn’t send any classified emails over my private server. We’ll raise the minimum wage, make college affordable to everyone. And, (borrowing from Bernie Sanders) Wealth can’t continue going to just the one percent.

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We are presented with two distinct universes and paradigms, two candidates who have the lowest favorability ratings ever, and with two independent candidates who never even got a chance to participate in the debates.

Bernielandia

It’s no secret that we were/are Bernie supporters. If he had been the Democratic candidate, Trump would have been choking on dust by now. But he was derailed by the Clinton machine in the primaries and here we are, folks.

On the radio shows I’ve been doing for the Biggest Book of Horoscopes Ever, everyone has asked: What’s your take on the election? So at the end of September I did a post on it. The Dems should hold the White House, but if they do, the Repubs take it back in 2020.

This election, like that of Obama in 2008, is part of a paradigm shift. But the direction of that shift is questionable until after election night.

For  those of you who feel it doesn’t matter who wins, who think these things are decided by the Illuminati or a cabal or whoever, consider this: politics infiltrates every area of your life. From the health choices you’re allowed to make to the foods you buy and eat, to the schools your kids attend to the way your bank deals with you money, elections matter.

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Cubs and the mystery of 108

Posted on November 6, 2016 by Trish and Rob

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When I teach meditation workshops, we often repeat chants, such as Sa Ta Na Ma (Birth, Life, Death, Rebirth) 108 times. The number is sacred in yoga philosophy and Hinduism. I wrote a blog post about the number here a few years back.

It  also figures prominently in some astronomical calculations. For example, the  diameter of the sun is 108 times the diameter of the Earth. The average distance between the Earth and the Sun is 108 times  the sun’s diameter.  The average distance from the Earth to the Moon is 238,800 miles, about 108 times  the moon’s diameter.

Now comes the World Champion Cubs, who won the World Series for the first time in 108 years.   Baseball is a game of numbers so it’s not surprising that someone found this incredible cluster of 108s related to the Cubs. Thanks to Don Evon, who gathered this curious cluster.

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There are 108 stitches in a baseball, designed by the Cubs first manager and ace pitcher A.G. Spalding, whose Chicago office was originally located at 108 W. Madison Street.

• The left and right field corners at Wrigley Field — are 108 meters from home plate.

• The Ricketts family, which owns the Cubs, has located their main business — TD Ameritrade — on 108th street in Omaha, Nebraska.

• The number 108 is a sacred number in yoga. and Cubs pitcher Jake Arrieta does yoga 6 days a week.

• Cubs win the World Series in the 1990 J.J. Abrams film “Taking Care of Business,” which is 108 minutes long.

• Cubs win the World Series in the 1989 film “Back To The Future Part II,” which is 108 minutes long.

• On 10/8 in 1945 Billy Goat Tavern owner William Sianis, who placed a curse on the Cubs for not letting his goat enter Wrigley Field, sent Cubs owner P.K. Wrigley a telegram stating, “Who smells now?” after a Cubs loss.

• Wrigley Field was built on land that once housed a church and a seminary, and 108 is considered a holy number in many religions.

• The Emil Verban Society is named after a three-season player with the Cubs, whose batting average in his last season in 1950 with the team was only .108.

The last time the Cubs won a World Series game was 10/8 in 1945.

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Beyond the Cubs, beyond baseball, it could be that 108 is key to our being and our relationship to the cosmos. A quote from Manoj Chalam: “The ratio of 108 may be the key to finding planets hospitable to life outside of our solar system, just look toward this same size and distance relationship,” .

 

 

 

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Amendments on Florida Ballot

Posted on November 5, 2016 by Trish and Rob

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Two of the amendments on the Florida ballot are important. One is about solar power and is worded in such a way that it’s deceptive. FPL and the corporate greedy guys wrote it so that it sounded like yes, yes, vote yes! But it’s actually an amendment that penalizes people who opt for solar panels, in a state where the sun shines almost daily. Unfortunately, when we voted by mail, there wasn’t much info about this amendment and we voted yes,. That’s how cleverly this amendment is written. Vote NO if you live in this state. We have since told everyone we know what this amendment is really about.

The other amendment concerns the medical marijuana law. This amendment was also on the 2012 ballot and lost. Even though it won by more than 50 percent in that year, it required 60 percent and didn’t make it. But this year, maybe. And my sense is that if it makes it onto the balltot, then on November 9, clinics are going to be inundated by patients seeking relief from insomnia, stress, and anxiety over this election.

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Those on the losing side will be so ticked off they’ll need weed to calm their nerves.

If I had understood the benefits of weed for Parkinson’s patients when my dad was alive and living with us, I would have had him smoking this stuff daily.

As a woman who grew up during the 60s, I already understand the benefits of weed for spurring creativity, for accessing other dimensions of reality, for being able to communicate with all the invisible realms that visionary Terrence McKenna wrote about in his books. Marijuana may enable us to communicate with other realms – inner and outer – in ways that help us to redefine who we are, where we are, and where we are headed as a species, a collective.

It doesn’t belong in the same class of drugs as heroine. It’s benign and induces  a sleepy introverted state that doesn’t even approach a drug like ambien, prescribed for sleep deprived individuals, who  often end up doing things they don’t recall, like driving cars. That doesn’t happen with weed.

Vote yes on this amendment. Let’s join the rest of the rest of the world on this.

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Animals as Spirit Messengers

Posted on November 4, 2016 by Trish and Rob

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Recently, I was listening to an Abraham/Hicks CD that was recorded during a workshop in Seattle. During these conferences, people in the audience are called upon to occupy the “hot seat,” where they can interact one-on-one with Abraham, the consortium of spirits that Esther Hicks channels. At this conference, a young man who was an animal lover was called first.

The story he told is a mind-blowing instance of spirit contact. The man’s father had recently died and he’d gone to his father’s grave to pay his respects. While he was standing there, he felt something wet and warm on the back of his leg and looked back. A small black poodle sat there, staring up at him. The man petted and talked to the dog and wondered where the owner was.

Just then, a woman’s voice called out, “Augie, Augie, where are you?”

Surprise and awe tore through the man. His father’s name was Augie. He and the woman talked for a few minutes. She was at the cemetery, visiting the grave of her son, who had died several weeks earlier, on the same day as the man’s father.

Fast forward ten years. The man and a friend were in a sidewalk café and a black poodle came up to him. “Wouldn’t it be weird if this dog’s name is Augie?” he said to his friend, and reached down to look at the dog’s tag. The name on the tag was Junior – his father’s nickname.

Now, seriously, what are the odds of both of these instances, ten years apart? Black poodles both times whose names related to the man’s deceased father.

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Back in the day…

Posted on November 2, 2016 by Trish and Rob

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I was recently interviewed for an Indiana Jones fan magazine – they never give up on Indy – and while reading over the copy I noticed my answer to one question provided a nice capsule of the start of both mine and Trish’s writing career. It also contained a powerful synchronicity that played a major role that triggered the publication of Trish’s first novel. Oddly enough it involves the first episode of Miami Vice. Here’s my comments.

Indymag: I assume in the late ‘80s both Trish and yourself were working toward publishing books. Tell us about this period and the development of your first novel Crystal Skull?

Rob: After we quit our jobs, we began writing magazine articles. We were selling them, but the pay was low and slow. After four to five months we were broke. We both took part-time jobs. I think that was 1984-85. I worked at a weekly newspaper and Trish taught English as a second language at night at Fort Lauderdale High School. After about a year, she sold her first novel, In Shadow. I’d read the manuscript after we met and suggested a few changes. She made them and it sold on the twenty-fifth submission. The novel was about two Miami detectives, one white, one black, and they were investigating a case involving designer drugs and murder. The editor who bought it read it after watching the premiere of Miami Vice. The coincidence of the novel and TV show was so uncanny that he bought the book. He was the same editor who a couple of years later assigned us to write The Making of Miami Vice, which was a lot of fun.

After Miami Vice, I started getting assignments to adapt scripts into novels. After two such novels for a television series called Private Eye by Anthony Yerkovich,—the creator of Miami Vice—I got the opportunity to adapt the script of The Last Crusade. I was also working on my first novel, Crystal Skull, a metaphysical/archaeological mystery about the reunion of two ancient crystal skulls. I wrote three drafts before my agent submitted the novel for publication. The first editor who read it bought it.

 

 

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The Witch of Wellington

Posted on October 31, 2016 by Trish and Rob

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I suppose every town and city has its urban legends. Our town’s urban legend was “the witch of Wellington,” a tall woman always dressed in black, wearing high platform shoes, with her long hair arranged on top of her head.

I first recall seeing her shortly after we moved here in June 2000. My daughter, then in middle school, and I were driving to Barnes and Noble, I think it was, and Megan suddenly pointed at this pedestrian moving along the sidewalk. “Mom, who is that?”

She was thin, wearing a long black dress and was probably six feet tall because of the platform shoes she wore. The sleeves of her dress were long, right down to the wrists, and she wore what looked like a black stocking cap. It was summer, really hot, a time of year when people here wear shorts, sandals, t-shirts. She walked slowly, deliberately, her head bowed, as though she was deep in contemplation about something.

I later learned that people referred to her as “the witch of Wellington.” She was a total mystery. No one seemed to know anything about her. But speculations abounded – that she was an eccentric artist, a famous person traveling incognito, a former spy, in the witness protection program.

In those early years, we saw her frequently, often on the same stretch of road that runs for several miles. I wondered about her, who she was, why she dressed the way she did, what her story was. Once, around 2005 or 2006, I saw her at our local grocery store, where everyone gawked as she moved slowly through the aisles in that black dress, those platform shoes, that stocking cap, selecting this or that from the shelves.

Another time, I was just leaving our gym and there she was, walking toward me with that same measured pace, in those incredibly high platform shoes that would ruin my feet in about two seconds. It must have been 90 degrees that day, but she was dressed the same. Her long black dress looked like it was made of wool.

A few years later, I was at the mall and was pretty sure that the woman coming toward me was the witch of Wellington – but she wasn’t wearing her black dress, stocking cap, or platform shoes. She was dressed in slacks and a cotton shirt and walked with a pronounced hunch, her gray hair piled in a bun on top of her head,. She moved as though she were in pain. She looked ill.

About a year later, I saw her waiting at a bus stop, an old woman in ordinary clothes using a walker.

On September 30 of this year, I received a text message from Karin, a friend and long-time Wellington resident.

Did you read that the “Witch of Wellington” passed away? So sad. She was the granddaughter of Levi Strauss…

Sure enough, the Palm Beach Post had done a piece on her death. Her name was Ray Suzan Strauss, and she had passed away on September 1 from an apparent heart attack. She was 86. She had lived in Los Angeles for years, where she was known as Lava Lady.

And yes, she was the granddaughter of Levi Strauss, the guy who started the denim company of the same name. Her home in LA is now on the market for $1.7 million, she owned property here in Wellington, but chose to live without electricity. She is survived by two daughters.

The mystery of who she was is solved. But the deeper mystery is not. Who was she really? She has been described as a solitary soul, sweet and friendly, but essentially a loner. No question that she was an iconic, mysterious figure for years in LA and then here in our town. But what is it that prompts a person to live in this sweltering heat without electricity? To walk for miles as she did in her black dress and stocking cap and platform shoes? What went through her head?

We’ll never know. Some people pass through life and leave their mark in strange, mysterious ways. They are archetypes of the unknown and the unknowable whose presence touches us with a kind of magical wonder that can be summed up in three words: Who are you?

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Happy Halloween!

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Just in Time for Halloween

Posted on October 30, 2016 by Trish and Rob

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Thrills and chills and stuff to keep you up on Halloween!

If you’re captivated by the spookiness of Halloween, when the veils between worlds are the thinnest, then BUMP IN THE NIGHT offers you the chance to explore the realm of ghosts and spirits and even alien encounters any day of the year.

Do the dead speak to us? Do they offer guidance? Do our deceased loved ones drop by for visits? What about poltergeists? Do angels have wings? Mediums are touted for their abilities to communicate with the dead, but can anyone make contact? Where do aliens fit into the picture, and are they somehow related to the dead? What about alien abductions? Do they really happen?

Real life stories of haunted houses, phantom ships, and spirit contact nudge us to ponder the mystery of life after death. BUMP IN THE NIGHT relates a variety of tales of the paranormal, including ones that have taken place on the sets of famous horror films. The book even touches on celebrities who have seen ghosts, and former celebrities who are ghosts! In addition, the book includes a bonus: a dramatic preview of Aliens Light: The Better Side of Contact.

 

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A Dog’s Purpose

Posted on October 29, 2016 by Trish and Rob

When I first read this book, I was blown away. I mean, c’mon, this is about reincarnation from a dog’s point of view. And now it’s a movie, to be released on January 27, 2017. I’m already in line! And the dog’s first life is- yes! – that of a Golden Retriever!

 

 

 

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