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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OUFOs – a video

Posted on June 13, 2017 by Trish and Rob

What’s an OUFO, you wonder? Not a typo, it stands for organic unidentified flying objects. This 12-minute video from the Puerto Rican corner of the Bermuda Triangle is fascinating. The documentary is serious and well done. The objects are unusual in appearance and move extremely fast. They don’t look like any known aircraft, including drones, or typical saucer or triangular-shaped UFOs.

What’s interesting to me (Rob) from a synchronicity perspective is that the same day a UFO researcher sent me this video on Facebook messenger I did a Skype interview with a producer in Los Angeles, who is involved in the planning stages of a Bermuda Triangle TV series. I wrote about this earlier this year, because of the oddity that two production companies came up with the same idea and both contacted me within a couple days of each other. I guess if your name is on the cover of a book about the Bermuda Triangle, you’re considered an expert.

One of the questions the producer asked me was whether I knew of any recent UFO stories related to the Bermuda Triangle. I told him I didn’t think so, but actually this video was already in my Messenger in-box. I’d glanced at it briefly, but hadn’t  opened it because I had the Skype appointment coming up.

But I’m glad I got around to it. It’s worth watching.

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The Giver

Posted on June 11, 2017 by Trish and Rob

This is an older post from 2014, updated.  It seems even more relevant now. An interesting fact: the book has 9,500 reviews on Amazon and still has a four and a half star rating.

If  you haven’t read Lois Lowry’s book The Giver, then do yourself a favor. Download it for a few bucks. Buy the hard copy. You won’t regret it. This book, published in 1993, is one of those dystopian novels where the world is laid out through the eyes of a single character – a young boy named Jonas.

His world is fairly bleak. He lives with his parents- non-genetic parents, parents who were chosen for him when he was an infant – and a sister, who was chosen the same way. His father is a Nurturer, who tends to the Newborns in the community, and his mother is a judge who keeps track of the various infractions committed by community residents. The power mongers are on the council and their decisions are binding, iron-clad.

With each birthday, children in the community receive certain gifts- Nines receive a bike. Twelves receive their “assignment” for life. Everything in this community is monitored for the degree of sameness the residents exhibit. Jonas, at his twelfth birthday, is assigned the position of Receiver, an important and enigmatic position that places him in the internship of The Giver, the man who holds the community memories.

Our daughter recently read this book for the first time and called when she finished it. “Oh my God. I cried at the end of this. We have to go see the movie the next time I come home. I’m blown away by this book.”

The movie? This was the first I’d heard of it. “Who’s in it?”

“Jeff Bridges plays the Giver and Meryll Streep is the elder on the council.”

I Googled it. The reviews weren’t great. But anything with Bridges or Streep  is good enough for me. So when Megan came home for the weekend before her 25th birthday, she, Rob and I went to see The Giver.

For more than 90 minutes, I sat in this darkened theater completely enthralled. I had re-read the book before Megan came home, so it would be fresh in my mind. I realized that what had satisfied me twenty years ago when I’d read it had left me wanting this time, dissatisfied with the ending. But in the movie, that dissatisfaction vanished.

Movies provide various viewpoints and some of the most poignant scenes are those between Bridges as the Giver and Jonas as the Receiver. We come to realize that after whatever cataclysmic event changed things, the status quo (Council of elders) chose sameness over diversity. Through an unexplained technology and genetic engineering, they somehow erased the collective memories of the very emotions that make us human – love, passion, sensuality, sexuality, pain, sadness, grief, triumph, the tragedy of wars and their horrors.

Bridges is terrific as The Giver. His own daughter was selected as a Receiver a decade ago but as she was given the memories, she couldn’t stand it and asked to be “released.” And this word, released, has a precise meaning in this society of precise vocabulary.

In the movie, in the moment when Jonas actually understands and sees – through video – what this word actually means, is a powerful turning point. Jonas watches his dad – the nurturer- insert a syringe into the head of an identical twin whose weight isn’t up to snuff. His father doesn’t seem to understand that he is killing the twin.

In so many ways, the ending of the movie surpasses the book’s ending. This may be due to the fact that we see the moment when Jonas reaches the boundary of memories – and moves beyond it. Once he’s beyond it, the people of the community experience the return of memories of love and hate, war and peace, all the emotions that make us human.

Lois Lowry, as a writer, a novelist, set these ideas into motion. But Hollywood ran with them and made them real in a dynamic, visceral sense, And I haven’t even mentioned the character who is pivotal to the second plot point in the story, an infant named Gabriel…

You’re in for a treat with this one.

 

 

 

 

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Stuff that mysteriously disappears

Posted on June 9, 2017 by Trish and Rob

During our 17 years in our house, objects have mysteriously disappeared – a $100 bill, a treasured momento, a piece of jewelry, a favorite book. I’m not sure that disappearing books count since we have so many books, but there have been a lot of things that were visible and present one day, and gone the next. We wrote about this back in 2011, but then it concerned the spirit connected to a Tibetan singing bowl.

I think these disappearances are all along the same idea as socks that mysteriously vanish in the clothes dryer.

The most recent object is a t-shirt, the one in the above image. I bought it back in February for our Cuba trip. Lightweight cotton, white, perfect for tropical weather in Cuba or South Florida. The only time I wore it in Cuba was on the day we returned from our trip. Into the washer it went with a big load of laundry on February 28, the day we got back.

After that, I never saw it again. I thought it might have gotten mixed in with Rob’s clothes, but he went through his drawers and didn’t find it. I searched my closet, thinking I might have hung it in with my slacks. Nope. I knew I’d worn it back to the U.S., into our house, that it had gone into the laundry. Had it ended up with cleaning rags? In a bag for Good Will? Nope, nope, nope. In April, I gave up looking for it and found the same shirt discounted on Chico’s website. I bought it.

Then, tonight, June 4, I returned from Orlando and found it on top of a wicker laundry basket in the cabana bathroom. I sometimes leave gym shorts on top of the basket to toss into the wash, but in the past 4 months, I’ve never seen this shirt there. Now here it was.

I hurried to our bedroom. I had been unpacking my suitcase to do laundry and the second Chic Happens t-shirt was there. I ran back to the cabana bathroom to make sure I wasn’t losing my mind. Nope. Two identical t-shirts.

I figure there are several possible explanations – dementia, a slip into another dimension of reality,  or a trickster. If the latter, it’s a spirit trickster, perhaps the spirit of the monk who owned that singing bowl I bought for Rob as a Christmas present six years ago. If it’s the result of a slippage or bleed through from a different reality, then how does that work, exactly?

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Happy B-Day, Trish

Posted on June 7, 2017 by Trish and Rob

Our artistic friend, Dwane Elmore, has a way with birthday cards. And a good sense of humor. This year, he combined both of ours together, even though they are in adjacent astrological signs. Love the rating he applies to Beyond Strange.

 

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A Case for Universal Health Care

Posted on June 5, 2017 by Trish and Rob

On the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, our daughter Megan texted us a picture of her foot. She was in Cocoa Beach with friends and had injured her foot while skim boarding. A risky sport. Not something I would try, but hey, Megan is a lot younger.

Given the pain she was experiencing and the swelling, she felt her foot was broken. I told her I would be in Orlando the next day and we would get her to a clinic. Sunday morning a friend drove her to a walk-in clinic where, for $299, they took X-rays and put her foot in a splint and advised her to see an orthopedic specialist as soon as possible. Up until last year, she had health insurance. It lapsed in January and she didn’t renew it because she figured trump would annihilate the Affordable Care Act that was enacted during the Obama administration.

By the time I arrived, Megan had sent the X rays to several friends in the medical field. The consensus? A cast for 4 weeks, a boot for another 4 weeks. Here’s where it gets synchronistic. Her roommate, Alex, sells metal plates, bolts and nuts, and joint replacements to orthopedic docs. His brother is a medical resident specializing in foot and ankle injuries. One of her friends is an ER doc. Another friend, Evan, is a physical therapist who showed the X-ray to a doc he works with.

We drove over to an emergency room and were told they didn’t do casts. She had to see an orthopedic. Since it was a long weekend, we had to wait until Tuesday, when we went to an orthopedic walk-in clinic.  Big mistake. These clinics are in the surgery business. For $250, they took X rays and saw a PA – physician’s assistant – who was one of the rudest and most condescending individuals I’ve ever met.

Nope, this injury requires surgery, gotta have it done, otherwise she’s going to have arthritis in that foot at the age of 40. That’s it? we asked. Arthritis? Hey, she doesn’t have insurance. And suddenly, his attitude was like, Hey, you don’t question me. I’m the authority here. She needs surgery. He scheduled her for an appointment the next day with the orthopedic surgeon upstairs.

We left the place in a state of near shock. This kind of surgery costs between 30-40 grand without insurance.

The next day, we saw the orthopedic surgeon for another $250. I liked the man. He was forthright, honest. Usually, we treat this injury with surgery. But in the days before metal plate and nuts and bolts, he added, we treated it with a cast. What’s the worst case scenario if we opt for the cast? we asked.

Well, she won’t lose her leg or anything. Arthritis in the ankle later in life, maybe a loss of flexibility in that ankle, but maybe none of that.   He recommended she return in a week, on June 7, after the swelling had gone down, for a cast. He added that the surgery is very expensive, but there are payment plans and we should talk to his clerk. So we did.

She said the surgical center was the most expensive part if Megan opted for surgery – they asked for everything up front. She promised to call Megan by Friday with a breakdown of costs.

No one called.

She’s going for the cast.

Megan is self-employed. Three part-time jobs. Dog walker (tough to do if your foot is broken), art teacher (have to teach with your broken foot resting on a knee scooter) and artist.

So far, this journey has cost nearly $800. By the time the cast is put on, we’re looking at $1000. For a broken fibia.

Why should anyone have to make choices like this based solely on economics? Bernie Sanders had it right – single payer health care, Medicare for all. It should be a right, not a privilege reserved for the wealthy who can afford the 30 or 40 grand for the surgery. Why are we the only country in the industrialized world without universal health care?

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Dean Radin’s Synchro

Posted on June 4, 2017 by Trish and Rob

We posted this in 2014, then I ran across it again tonight on another website. It remains one of the best synchronicities I’ve heard of. I think it illustrates how focused  intentions and desires create what Radin refers to as a “gravitational pull” that brings people and events together.

 

 

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