a ratical life:   manifesting "rat haus reality"
        In the summer of 1993 mosaic was something people were beginning to rave about at work. Peter Broadwell had been talking with me and said, "you shood check it out -- it's perfect for you." It took more than just a few months for me to finally understand what he meant and begin to grasp what all it offered for such an information ferret with librarianistic tendencies like myself.
        When sgi.talk.ratical begin, i started pumping stuff into it and, by extension into various newsgroups on the net. i had become connected with the two creators of the misc.activism.progressive newsgroup when its antecedent, the activ-l mailing list was born and played a small roll in the formation of map. This was when the fact of U.S. complicity with and support of its proxy death-squad government in El Salvador was assuming more visible proportions in alternative news reports.
        Back in UCSC daze (1984 or so) Paul Hansen had turned me on to Mae Brussell and her weekly radio show, "World Watchers". i listened avidly to her every week and was deeply impressed with her formidable grasp of names and the web of relationships between the people she talked about. In 1987 the Christic Institute Case shifted into high gear and i was extremely interested in the links and associations of people that Mae had been talking about for years now coming up in Dan Sheehan's articulation of more of the history of the 20th century covert government of these here United States.
        Mae contracted cancer and died in 1988. i had met and come to know life-long friend Tom Davis who had been in the book biz for decades and was Mae's book source, as well as a first first-generation JFK assassination researcher in his own right. Thru Tom i met life-long friend John Judge. John flew out from Washington DC where he was living and he and Tom went to visit Mae in her last daze to determine what to do with her 25 year archive/library collection. It was decided that John wood move out here and set up the Mae Brussell Research Center (MBRC) in Santa Cruz. i tried to help out getting the center launched.
        In the fall of '88 i obtained copies from Tom of a series of 19 articles on the CIA and the Vietnam Era from 1945 to 1964, written by Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty from 1985 to 1987, and published in Freedom magazine. Tom loaned me his personal copies for those issues he did not have extras of and i proceeded to cut-and-paste xeroxes of the complete series -- minus the headers, footers and ads -- into a "reader"-type format on 8 1/2 by 11 inch paper. i wanted to make and share copies of this series with people as i felt the author's insights and perspective were extraordinarily significant, given that he himself had taken part in helping to create and operate U.S. Air Force logistical support of U.S. Government clandestine operations world-wide from 1955 to the end of 1963.
        John had grown up in DC and had known Fletcher for a long time. At the end of 1988 i met Fletcher myself thru John. John had told him of my just-completed project of making a reader from his articles. After their conversation John recounted how Fletcher had been intrigued that someone was so interested in his articles that they wood spend the time putting them into a cleaned up format. We then began to correspond directly and he agreed to my request to come to Virginia and interview him. We spent five days together at his home in May, 1989. The interview fell out into three distinct parts:   Fletcher's 23 years service in the Air Force from 1941 to 1963 (i wanted to get as much context of his own years in the service to provide more background of his own qualifications for the books and articles he'd authored) -- three 90 minute tapes, his 1973 book, The Secret Team, The CIA and its Allies in Control of the United States and the World -- three 90 minute tapes , and the assassination of President Kennedy and the existence of the High Cabal -- one 90 and one 60 minute tape.
        i had already become exceedingly familiar with the contents of the Freedom articles. i then spent a significant portion of time in the months prior to our interview meticulously studying The Secret Team and taking copious notes. i wanted to be as well-versed in the intricacies of this book as i felt i already was with the Freedom articles. The time in preparation was exceedingly well-spent. When i was with him we discussed many subjects in preparation to actually turning on the tape recorder and travelling thru the years.
        Afterwards i did a first-pass transcription of most of the recordings and was helped with a few of the tapes by a woman who was a long-time World Watchers listener and MBRC volunteer. Fletcher then completed his own hand-edits of all the written transcripts in 1993. In recent months i have finally begun to work on these in preparation for publication thru rat haus reality press as a paperbound book as well to provide the text in its entirety on rat haus reality in the "Topics on the National Security States of America" section. The working title is Understanding Special Operations and Their Impact on the Vietnam Era. Already included in this location are hyperlinked copies of the two complete books and sixteen articles on the JFK assassination and the rise and maturation of elements of the National Security State control apparatus which i pumped out onto talk.ratical and the net in 1992.
        In the fall of that year i switched my focus to working up a "Series on the Nuclear Establishment:   Deadliest addiction of all" which i began to post in the middle of November. i never finished working up all i had listed in that introductory post, but i did succeed in sending out 48 of the titles, including transcripts of speeches, out-of-print books, articles and testimonies.
        i had been concerned about nuclear pollution of the biosphere and the gene pool since hearing tapes of Dr. Rosalie Bertell from The Other Americas Radio. i had come across her book No Immediate Danger, Prognosis for a Radioactive Earth in 1986 and my interest and concern deepened. The murder of the Kennedys and government-by-unaccountability-and-deception was one thing. But i came to see the radioactive contamination of Earth as an even more lethal sort of covert activity. Oliver Stone's JFK movie came out at the end of 1992 and as "Man X", Fletcher's name became much more well-known in the public lexicon.
        But in January of 1993 i came across some interviews that changed my own sense of priorities with life. i had ordered two tapes of David Bohm and two of Krishnamurti from the New Dimensions Radio catalog. In 1991 i had read and been very struck with Joseph Chilton Pearce's Evolution's End, Claiming the Potential of Our Intelligence which he had dedicated to David Bohm. Listening to these 4 interviews i found my own previous personal involvement in studying topics like the national security state or even the threat to all life from radioactive contamination was preempted by something that felt far more fundamental -- even though one cood argue that there is nothing more important than averting the possible premature end of all life on Earth.
        Yet as i listened more and more to Krishnamurti and David Bohm i came to feel as if i was re-engaging something that had been dormant inside since i was very young. Evolution's End touched upon it but is was only with K and Bohm i felt the fuller impact of a rekindled sense of the infinite and unknown that is one of the hallmarks of being that children have not yet learned how to "turn off" or shut down. i began reading books by K, starting with Freedom From the Known.
        In the next five months the strident, vociferous ratitor found his own presumptions falling ever more quickly away and the urge to speak outwardly became a deeper desire to listen inwardly. i wrote five posts only sent on to talk.ratical but not out to the net-at-large. The fifth one, "Krishnamurti on Contradiction," shared the fact that "i now see the anger and rage i channeled into suspicion, then condemnation, and finally rejection of external, impersonal authority embodied in ``the state,'' was actually a ``safer'' means to express my feelings about a much more potent and fearsome authority:   my own father."
        With this post i had arrived at the end of the era of pumping gobs of stuff out to the net. i spent about a year-and-a-half reading many books and listening to many tapes of Krishnamurti as well as of David Bohm -- particularly the dialogues he facilitated in Ojai from 1986 after K's death until his own in 1992. The recordings of these dialogues have provided a whole new level seeing some of my own inner dynamics of self-deception and how it operates. These recordings, along with K's understanding that The Only Revolution is the revolution within, have provided some of the most illuminating enquiries into the nature of being i have encountered in life.
        The single most lasting effect exposure to these two people has provided is the understanding that one has to find out for oneself the nature of one's own being and the world one is alive within and part of. We are raised to look to another to tell us what to do, or how to do whatever. In doing so, we cut ourselves off from the source of inner wisdom we were born with and which is our greatest guide and mentor. No one else can possibly read and understand the book of life each of us is better than our own selves. Learning to re-awaken to and engage this inner source of intelligence is fundamental to our own self actualization.
        In every moment we create the reality we experience by choosing how we interpret what we perceive. What we fail to grasp is that we choose the way we interpret what we apprehend. If we think there is no hope, that is our reality. If we sense we are powerless, it is what we are. And if we truly see the fact that we are soley response-able for the way we choose to interpret what we perceive, then we change the world in ways otherwise unimaginable. The only thing we can change is ourselves. In changing oneself, one changes the world. This is the only revolution possible.

        It was sometime in late 1991 or early 1992 that michele lord (who today goes by the name of rebecca) and i began conversing in e-mail after seeing each other's posts on Gary Trujillo's Native Net mailing list. At some point we began talking on the fown and in 1995 she came and lived here for a period while she was embarking on major life changes and setting out anew on her own. So it was that once i finally understood the implications about what Peter had meant regarding hyper-linked publishing on the net, i had already amassed a large amount of content to put out there for others to consider. rebecca and i slowly but steadily moved into a mutual collaborative endeavor that became rat haus reality, ratical branch.
        At this point we are poised to more actively pursue the "business" angle as we need to start making more profit than the expenses i've accrued in initiating this web haus as part of rat haus reality press. We soon will start housing some "clients" who will be laying down their web-stakes in the ratical domain and i hope to have Understanding Special Operations published before the year is out.

        The life i've been given has been filled with uncountable blessings. This rat-bio is an attempt to articulate some of these gifts, the primary source of which has been my fam'blee and all the friends i've met along the way. i recently enjoyed an evening's dinner with another dear friend, Hiram Clawson, whom i have not seen enuff of in recent years. We met at the time the activ-l mailing list was launched and have paralleled each other in similar journeying formerly without and these years much more within. Hiram has been all over the Earth witnessing and photographing eclipses. That night he showed the slides and photogs of the Lunar Eclipse from last September 26 which i had the very good fortune to tag along with him on up at the foot of Loma Prieta peak where he once more engaged his array of cameras and collected a mass of visuals including the following three.

       

        That evening was my first experience of seeing a lunar eclipse. It was made more special by being in such seasoned company and learning from Hiram a smattering of what he's experienced and seen about these occulations of the earth and the moon by SOL's gaze. To have been born on the day Luna was full seems to have imparted a quality of the energy she embodies. There is a curiosity and source of glow within that lights up this life i have been given. Since 1983 i have found the urge from within to "just become expansive" an exceedingly potent credo. Not a system;   rather an understanding of the intelligence of life and the fact of its unknown infinite mystery.

        i am eternally grateful for all the company of others i've been expanded by and learned from on the journey i've been taking in this human overcoat. Recently the books of Laurens van der Post have enhanced my travels in a way similar to Krishnamurti and David Bohm. i can't recommend strongly enuff the single tale, encompassed by two books -- A Story Like the Wind and its sequel, A Far Off Place -- for anyone who likewise yearns for a re-kindled awareness of our common heritage as children of our Gaian mother, this Earth who spawned us and all life exploring itself thru eons here. It has renewed within something of that rich sense of "being at home anywhere in the universe, by instant right of the fact that one is a child of it and the life it lit on earth." [A Far Off Place, p. 271]