Winter: it’s the season that goes on as long as you can possibly endure it* … and then it goes on a while longer.
Apparently the Bradford Pear trees up the street from me have not gotten the memo and there is going to a spring after all.
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*apologies to anybody in California digging out from under twelve feet of snow, it hasn’t been nearly that bad here in middle Tennessee)
OK, this might actually be some kind of big deal.
A few months ago, I wrote about going out to Los Angeles to spend an afternoon with Jesse Michels about the Townsend Brown bio.
This evening, Jesse announced the video on YouTube with this:
I spent six years researching this story between 2003 and 2009, and another dozen-plus years just thinking about it until the book was published last year. But Jesse Michels has been deep-diving into the larger, longer story of unexplained phenomena, unorthodox science and invisible frontiers for a quite a while. I am duly impressed (if not downright in awe) of how he explores the connections between my work and the countless layers of coverup and conspiracy theories that have hovered on the edge of human consciousness and popular culture for decades if not centuries and millennia.
The whole epic production runs almost two hours, but if you’ve got even the slightest interest in “WTF is going on out there?” then by all means, avail yourself to the entire thing:
Also, hats off to Jan Lunquist, who latched on to the Townsend Brown saga near the end of what we call “The Before Times,” the period from 2003-2009 before I set the book aside for more than a dozen years. Jan has kept the bit between her teeth, has doggedly stayed on top of the TTB story and reports on countless connections she has found between Brown and other off-the-books tales. She is featured quite prominently in Jesse’s video and fills a lot of the gaps in my own investigations.
Money shot (well, for my money): “Townsend Brown is Nikola Tesla meets the Dos Equis guy.”
With the release of this video – even more than the book – I think Townsend Brown is about to find a place in the discussion, and I am pleased that it’s about to become more of a ‘crowd’ effort than my solitary, two-decades pilgrimage.
In the unlikely event that you are seeing all this for the first time, you can find The Man Who Mastered Gravity on Amazon.com.
And I’ll leave you with this quote from Jesse near the end of the video:
“The smartest people are working on the dumbest problems.”
Ya think?
Well kids, I’m at it again.
It’s actually been a couple of months since I recorded this. The producers took their time adding some visual effects to the YouTube version above, and it was finally unleashed on the world today (Thurs Jan 18 ’24).
FWIW, I’m working on with a ‘virtual assistant’ – would you believed based in Pakistan? – who is pitching me for more podcast conversations like this. If you care to read the pitch, find it here.
Better yet, if you host a podcast, contact us here.
And if you just want to listen to the audio-only version of the podcast, you can find that here:
Thank you for your time and attention.
Deb Leinart has been my therapist for the past couple of years.
She says a lot of smart stuff.
This struck me as particularly relevant after my grim week of ‘the holidays.’
Ho Ho Ho.
As seen above a trendy restaurant in Sausalito, CA, just after the holidays sometime in the mid-or-late 1970s.
And yes, I did wake up on Tuesday, January 2nd, thinking, “thank god that’s all over with for another year…”
Hey Kids!
I guess I should post something before the year ends.
Let’s start with this:
No wonder we’re confused.
Recently, a new email correspondent told me about an exchange she’d had with her daughter, who was pissed that Mom didn’t want to drive several hours (in each direction) to participate in a preconceived notion of some idealized holiday festivities. The story triggered me, and in reply I started pounding out some things I think a lot of people think about this time of year but nobody actually says.
When has that ever stopped me?
Herewith an excerpt from my reply:
To say I have mixed feelings about “The Holidays” would be a bit of an understatement (that, actually was a massive bit of understatement). I think I rather resent the whole “hey, let’s top the year off with a quasi-fascist forced march of of the Christmas Industrial Complex that starts every year right after Halloween (before, even).
Got any money left? We’ll take that now, and it will be so. much. FUN!!! Fa la la la la!
Just in case somebody doesn’t get the message, we will play the same dozen “Christmas tunes” that you have now heard a dozen million times on every sound system (i.e. shitty speakers) in every establishment you enter from now until sometime in January. Gotta stop in the bathroom? Well deck the goddammed halls – it’s not safe there, either.
Are we having fun yet?? Ba-rumpa-bum-bum!
And then the whole family thing. Given my own family history (dead father, pre-fabricated step-family), I have a dim view of the whole concept*. And judging from your story about your daughter, I think all of those misgivings are validated.
I encourage you to wonder only one thing, and that is how you could have raised a daughter so insensitive and unforgiving (so much for ‘the Christmas Spirit!). And since I gather you are divorced from her father, we can surmise that whatever genetic disposition makes your daughter that way she got from him. Feel better now?
Also… I dunno what’s in the air this year, but a lot of the people I know seem to be experiencing ‘early on-set SAD’ (Seasonal Affected Disorder)**. I’m hearing of a lot of fatigue from people who are ready to call it a day around 8PM because by then it’s been dark for three hours.
And, given the state of the world during this ‘joyous time’ it’s a wonder any of us has the strength to get out of bed.
And who thought it was a good idea to schedule all this stuff for the one time of year when the weather mostly sucks and there is no place to park at the mall??
Wake me when it’s over. April will be soon enough.
I dunno if any of that made my pen-pal feel any better. It sure made me feel better….
And speaking of April: Can somebody please explain to me why we turn on “daylight savings time” when the days are getting longer – and turn it off when the days are getting shorter? Who thought that was a good idea?
Nor do I understand why the ‘shortest day of the year’ – today’s Winter Solstice – is only the first day of actual winter. Why doesn’t the shortest day come in the the middle of winter? There must he something I don’t understand about planetary orbits and the Earth’s axis. I’m sure they explained it that day I wasn’t paying attention in school (which, of course, could have been any day I was in school).
Here’s the thing about winter: it goes on for as long as you can possibly take it. And then it goes on even longer. Hell, I had enough of the-cold-and-dark-before-5PM about two weeks ago – i.e. two weeks before actual winter even started. I am not looking forward to February.
Nevertheless, I have my own small way of observing (fending off?) the season: Despite all the preceding ‘bah humbug’, I put up lights on my house every year.
It’s beginning to look a lot like… winter!
But please understand, these are not “Christmas” lights. These are Winter Lights.
I don’t just put them up for ‘the holidays.’ I put my lights on the house the day that we shifted from Daylight Savings to Standard time. This year it was November 5th. And I’m gonna leave ’em up*** until Daylight Savings starts again on March 10th, 2024 (even though winter is not officially over for another ten days).
Oh. And. Speaking of “Christmas music,” you might be surprised to learn that there are actually a whole TWO “Christmas tunes” that I think are worthy of your time and attention – especially since, by and large, they get very little time in the retail rotation.
So please, take a few minutes to avail yourselves:
First, this (truly!) timeless classic by Bing Crosby and… wait for it… David Bowie!
And then, what I consider, truly, my favorite Song of the Season:
“And so this is Christmas, and what have you done…?”
Well I wrote this blog post. And a few others. And published a couple of books. Does that count?
Maybe I’ll do better next year.
But then, that’s what I say every year.
Actually, I think that’s what everybody says every year.
So y’all have a Merry Ho Ho and a Happy Ha Ha, and I’ll hope to see you at the next roundup.
*
I’ll leave you all some snaps from back in the day when Christmas was still fun – because it was the 1950s, and cuz we wuz the kids!
For more about the electric trains, read Harvey and the Lionel Trains
*
Addendum 231222:
After reading the above my sister wrote to remind me that she’s the only member of the original ‘nuclear (that term seems oddly apt now) family still living, and provided this photo from one of our Christmases in Florida with the Grandparents:
Christmas in Florida, ca. 1955.
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*Family: a gathering of humans that we would have nothing to do with were we not ‘related’ to them. Any exceptions only prove the point.
**Not to be confused with SADS, which sounds really serious, but could also be triggered this by time of year.
*** Actually, I take down the little spiral Christmas tree lights in January, and just leave the “winter” lights on the house until spring.
Stolen from This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow (aka Dan Perkins) which can be found each week at Daily Kos (which I am surprised to discover is still a thing).
Yeah, I know. It’s been a while.
And it seems like all of my missives start that way.
If I’m going to stay in touch with the people on my ‘Dunbar List‘ (aka ‘in lieu of Facebook etc.’) I should probably write/post more often, because by the time I do get around to it so much water has passed under the bridge that whatever I finally post turns into a flood.
I’m actually writing from a restaurant on Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood, LA CA.
Friday was the first time I’ve been on a plane since before the pandemic.
I flew out here to do an interview with Jesse Michels, host of the ‘American Alchemy’ YouTube channel. Jesse has been a true champion of The Man Who Mastered Gravity and has a keen sense of how that story fits into the larger narrative of the… unexplained. Back in September Jesse posted a two-hour documentary featuring exclusive interviews with David Grusch, the former intelligence officer who testified before Congress last summer about UFOs, crashed flying saucers, recovered alien ‘biologics,’ reverse-engineered technology, government cover ups, etc. You know, the usual stuff. Read More
… but this seems to be my destiny in this life.
(what follows is the reading I did at Richard Hull’s High Energy Amateur Science (HEAS) gathering in Richmond, VA on October 7, 2023. If you don’t care to read the whole thing, here’s an audio recording I made with my iPhone (no promises re: the quality). Photo above by David Rosignoli.
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Tonight’s reading is in two parts.
Part 1 is the Foreword to the 2023 Edition of The Boy Who Invented Television:
“It’s an odd mission… but this seems to be my destiny in this life.”
I tossed that line off to a friend in March 2023.
At the time I was nearing the release of my second book, The Man Who Mastered Gravity – the biography of a mercurial figure named Thomas Townsend Brown. That book is now available from booksellers worldwide.
Some guys fly to the moon. Some guys start a company and make a billion bucks. Some guys become doctors or lawyers – that’s what my parents always expected of me. Some guys become auto mechanics, bakers, candlestick makers or Indian chiefs.
Some guys become writers and publish dozens of books.
And some guys… well, so far I’ve written/published two books.
It has only taken me fifty years.
Nobody is ever going to accuse me of being prolific.
Any questions?
