The Stanley family, which takes its name from Stoneleigh in Staffordshire, England, began life not as earls, kingmakers, or possessors of castles, chapels, islands, but as local power.

It starts with a patch of land.

Then a name. Then a marriage. Then another marriage.

Then a battle.

Then someone else’s crown.

The Stanleys descend from the Audley line—Adam de Aldithley, later anglicized to Audley, who arrived with two sons from Normandy in 1066 with William the Conqueror.

Provided land by the new king, the Audleys married into the Stanleys and eventually produced the branch that would rise through Cheshire and Lancashire into the higher machinery of English power.

Their genius was not conquest. It was positioning.

The Stanleys had a remarkable instinct for being close enough to power to benefit from it, but not so close that, when power changed hands, their own heads rolled into a basket.

This talent reached its grandest expression in Sir John Stanley, who married Isabel de Lathom, heiress to the Lathom estates.

Thus did the Lathom inheritance—seat, lands, eagle, child, ghosts, and all—pass into Stanley hands.

My previous excursion into family mythology concerned Oskatel, the supposed illegitimate son of Sir Thomas Lathom, allegedly introduced to the household by way of an eagle, a baby, a tree—and a wife expected not to ask too many questions.

Lathom, not far from Liverpool, became one of their great northern power centers.

From there, the family rose.

And rose.

And rose.

By the 15th century, the Stanleys were a force in the northwest. They held offices, lands, men, influence, and that most valuable commodity in unstable times: options.

During the Wars of the Roses, England became a long-running family dispute conducted with banners, blades, and theology.

Lancaster. York. Repeat until exhausted.

In this bloody chess match, Thomas Stanley played one of the finest waiting games in English history.

He married well.

First Eleanor Neville, connecting himself to the Yorkist establishment.

Then Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry Tudor, thereby placing himself within whispering distance of the Lancastrian claim.

When Richard III seized the throne, Stanley remained outwardly loyal.

Outwardly being the key word.

Richard knew enough to distrust him. He held Stanley’s son, Lord Strange, as hostage against paternal good behavior.

The trouble was that Thomas Stanley regarded such hostage-taking as… inconvenient.

At Bosworth in 1485, as Richard III and Henry Tudor prepared to settle England’s future by the usual method—killing each other’s supporters until God revealed His preference—Stanley waited.

His brother, Sir William Stanley, was at his side.

There is a special kind of power in not moving.

Armies clashed. Men died.

Richard fought with suicidal bravery.

And the Stanleys watched.

Then the Stanley brothers made their move.

Their intervention turned the battle.

Richard III was killed.

Henry Tudor became Henry VII.

It was Thomas who picked up Richard III’s crown, which had rolled under a bush, and capped it on Henry’s head.

Thomas Stanley, married to Henry’s mother, had backed the winning horse without entirely appearing to have backed anything until backing meant victory.

This is not cowardice.

This is advanced survival.

After Bosworth, Thomas Stanley was created Earl of Derby. His wife, Margaret Beaufort, became the King Mother, one of the most formidable women in English history: pious, calculating, intelligent.

The Stanley family, already powerful, was now fused to the Tudor reign.

They were no longer merely northern magnates. They were kingmakers.

The title “Derby” belonged to the family’s Lancashire power base: West Derby, Knowsley, Lathom, and that world of marsh, manor, chapel, and command from which they operated like hereditary regional viceroys.

But power, being power, rarely remains tidy.

Sir William Stanley—the brother whose military intervention had helped Henry VII win the throne—was later executed for treason after being implicated in the Perkin Warbeck affair, a challenge to Henry VII’s reign.

There is a lesson here.

Help make a king, he may reward you.

Go against him, he may remove your head.

Thomas Stanley, 1st Earl of Derby, died at Lathom in 1504, having survived the Wars of the Roses, Richard III, Henry VII, shifting loyalties, family intrigues, and a lifetime in which most politically active men were eventually shortened.

His grandson, Thomas Stanley, became the 2nd Earl of Derby.

And around 1500, at Lathom, he founded what became Lathom Park Chapel.

A place of prayer, memory, dynasty, and negotiated salvation.

Which is to say: a spiritual insurance policy built by a family that understood risk.

Lathom Park Chapel still stands, modest but stubborn, dedicated to St. John the Divine.

It is surviving fragment of a millenium: Lathom House, the Stanleys, the Earls of Derby, the aftermath of Bosworth, the absorption of the Lathoms, and the long lineage of a family that learned how to convert marriage into land, land into influence, and influence into titles.

The Stanley motto is Sans Changer.

It is ironic. Because the Stanleys changed constantly.

They changed sides. Changed tactics. Changed marriages. Changed monarchs.

Changed the fate of England.

But perhaps the motto does not mean they never changed position.

Perhaps it means they never changed purpose.

Survival. Advancement. Dominion. Continuity.

From Stoneleigh to Lathom.

Lathom to Bosworth.

Bosworth to the Tudors.

From family crest to pub sign.

From eagle and child to chapel stone.

Some families inherit silver. Some inherit land.

Mine appears to have inherited a talent for strategic ambiguity.

This appeared in the Santa Barbara News-Press seven years ago.

From the time he was a little boy, in the 1920s, he collected postage stamps.

And when he grew older and went off to war, along with most others of his generation, he continued to collect stamps wherever in the world he happened to be, and mailed them home to his parents and sister for adding to his collection.

My uncle’s other passion was flying.

On the night of 29 February 1944, at the tender age of 21, my uncle flew a B-24 Liberator on a mission over Burma.

His plane got hit by anti-aircraft fire.

My uncle ordered the crew to bail out and most of them did, sailing by parachute to the ground. They were captured by Japanese soldiers and held as POWs for the duration of World War II.

Because two of his crewmen were wounded, Flight Lieutenant Edward James Douglas Stanley chose to stay at the controls of his plane, hoping to crash-land them to safety.

But the plane disappeared and was believed to have crashed near Rangoon.

My mother was only 18 when her brother was reported missing in action. Every week she wrote letters to The War Office and the Royal Air Force begging for information.

They never answered her, and she resolved that none of her three sons would ever go to war if she had anything to say about it.

Refusing to give up hope, my grandmother kept my uncle’s possessions—including the skin of a python he discovered slithering inside his tent when based in India—lest her son return.

In the mid-1990s, a decade after my grandmother died, someone who had extensively researched my uncle’s doomed flight contacted me. He primarily wanted to know what had become of my uncle’s family but also wanted to share his findings, which, while detailed, did not pinpoint the remains of my missing uncle though confirmed that he had most certainly perished.

What this fellow really wanted most, he told me after we became acquainted, was to organize a memorial service at St. Clement Danes, the RAF church. I assisted with both moral and financial support and the result was a poignant Service of Celebration and Thanksgiving attended by my mother (and father), for whom, after more than half-a-century, it was a kind of closure.

Later that day, my mother gifted me with her brother’s stamp collection.

Three years ago, I visited London as part of a mystical journey I’ve been on and I asked a muse who guided me during part of that trip to take me on an adventure by subway, ideally to some part of the British capital I’d never been before.

At Green Park tube station, our starting point, she led me to an eastbound platform, onto a train, off a train, onto another, and joked about going to the end of the line and getting lost in Epping Forest, which would have been fine by me.

But that’s not what happened.

She chose for us to alight at Chancery Lane—not 200 yards from St. Clement Danes, the RAF church—and ascend to Lincoln’s Inn, where the law was born six centuries ago.

Two symbols (messages from the universe) immediately caught my attention: A prominent old clock set into bricks and mortar (now’s the time, it said to me)…

…and a prominent weathervane (follow the wind)…

…and soon—at the muse’s invitation—I was inside the round Temple Church, a place of worship built in 1195 by the Knights Templar, a medieval order created to protect Christian pilgrims and which also invented the West’s first banking system.

Prominently engraved upon Temple Church’s marble floor:

Climbing the spiral stairs to an upper gallery I noticed they were decorated with ornate tiles depicting Pegasus, the mythical winged “horse of muses” that symbolizes the harnessing of magic in the material world.

And then, outside Temple Church, this mythical horse was everywhere around us: a bar relief on a wall, a medallion on a gate, a metal sculpture, even a café called Pegasus—the running theme of a neighborhood chosen by the muse.

Pegasus was the “nose-art” nickname of the B-24 Liberator my uncle flew.

My mother also gave me my uncle’s python skin, which I took to a master bookbinder for crafting into journals I’ve been saving for the cross-country road trip I’ve yet to take.

Snakes, because they shed and grow a new skin, symbolize renewal.

Renewal is what happens after wars end, the dead are counted and people try to move forward with their lives, as painful as that may be if a loved one has been lost.

My muse walked me to the Golden Jubilee Bridge.

“I’m leaving you now,” she said. “Cross the bridge.”

And I did, leaving me to muse the symbolism of bridges: progress, unity—and a spiritual “crossing over” to the other side.

And so, on Memorial Day, I’m thinking of the uncle I never met.

And saying a prayer for those who, in the service of their country, crossed over so that others could renew their lives in freedom.

My 27x great-grandfather, Sir Thomas Lathom, whose daughter married into the family of Sir John Stanley, is credited with one of medieval England’s more inventive public relations exercises.

Namely: explaining away an illegitimate son by blaming an eagle.

That being the 14th century, one could not hire a crisis manager, issue a vague statement about “private family matters,” and retreat to another country until the scandal passed.

One needed imagination.

According to old Lancashire legend, Sir Thomas—a lord of Lathom, advancing in years and increasingly aware that dynasties prefer males—found himself with a problem.

His lawful wife had produced daughters.

But no son.

At which point, according to lore, Sir Thomas solved the matter the old-fashioned way: by acquiring one elsewhere.

The mother is named as Mary Oskatel, described euphemistically by one account as the object of a “love intrigue,” which sounds more mysteriously elegant than medieval mistress.

She bore Sir Thomas a son.

Now came the awkward part.

How does one introduce an illegitimate infant into the household without Lady Lathom asking the sort of questions wives have been asking since the invention of… well, mistresses?

The answer, apparently, was… wildlife.

A trusted servant was allegedly brought into the conspiracy. Together, the pair devised what they judged the most plausible explanation.

They knew an eagle nested in a remote corner of the estate.

So the baby—well-fed, nicely dressed, carefully supervised—was placed beneath the nesting tree.

Then Sir Thomas and his unsuspecting wife conveniently took a walk in that direction.

Cue crying infant. Cue astonished servants.

Cue much theatrical amazement.

Good heavens! A child!

Near the eagle’s nest!

Clearly the Almighty has arranged delivery.

The child was taken in, adopted, and named Oskatel Lathom (which rather gives away the plot, since naming your miracle baby after his biological mother suggests some sloppiness in execution).

Still, apparently nobody pressed the issue.

Here is where it gets better.

The child, Oskatel, was reportedly raised as heir.

Until Sir Thomas, near death, suffered a fit of conscience.

At which point he handed the principal estate not to miracle baby Oskatel, but to his legitimate daughter Isabel, whose marriage carried the Lathom fortunes into the Stanley dynasty.

Which is a fairly brutal plot twist.

“Welcome to the family, son. Uh, but not entirely.”

Oskatel was not cut loose. He received land around Irlam and Urmston—and founded his own respectable branch of the family.

But the kingdom went elsewhere, to the Stanleys—and ultimately Knowsley Hall in Lancashire, the seat of the Earl of Derby.

The famous Eagle and Child crest—seen on pubs across England, including Oxford’s famed Inklings haunt—is often incorporated into the Stanley crest.

Having spent a good chunk of my life pulling ruses while doing investigative journalism and counterintelligence, I now realize my behavior was innate.

It came from the Lathom gene pool.

On Sunday I celebrated John Michell for more than a half-century ahead of the curve on UFOs.

Today is about why this English philosopher-mystic believed modern civilization suffered from a peculiar form of blindness.

A lack of perception.

To Michell, earlier civilizations inhabited a world saturated with meaning:
sacred landscapes, symbolic architecture, pilgrimage routes, cosmic geometry,
ritual, myth, seasonal cycles, and a living relationship between humanity and the natural world.

Modernity replaced this with: traffic engineering, commercial zoning, industrial efficiency, and fluorescent-lit nihilism.

The modern world became functional, yes.

But also spiritually anesthetized.

Michell did not reject science.

He rejected reductionism. The assumption that reality consists only of what can be measured, monetized, photographed, or engineered.

This made him appear eccentric in the late twentieth century.

Today, he looks prophetic.

Modern people increasingly report: disconnection, meaninglessness, psychological fragmentation, technological exhaustion, and a persistent sense that something essential has been lost beneath modern life.

Michell would have said: of course—civilization severed itself from sacred space, ritual, pilgrimage. From participation in the cosmos itself.

Ancient people, Michell believed, did not merely observe the world. They corresponded with it.

A mountain was not just geology. A cathedral was not merely construction. A stone circle was not primitive engineering.

Places possessed symbolic and spiritual gravity.

Modernity calls this superstition.

Yet modern civilization increasingly produces human beings wealthy in information but starving for meaning.

This helps explain why people instinctively continue searching for meditation,
psychedelics, retreats, ancient wisdom, and experiences capable of transcending ordinary perception.

The hunger never disappeared.

Michell’s real subject was never flying saucers or ley lines.

It was enchantment.

And maybe how modern civilization accidentally destroyed humanity’s ability to experience it.

“The three orange pages document a pre-concert interview with Elton by student journalist Robert Eringer.”

Elton John concert in London school gym in 1973

All my days have been good.

But if there’s such a thing as the good old days… man, to be back in high school in London… the Hard Rock Cafe when it was just a one-off burger joint, Holstein lager at the pub tucked into St. John’s Wood tube station, Panzer’s deli when you needed a stateside fix of Hershey kisses ‘cos you weren’t getting the real thing from gals at Marylebone High Street pubs…

My best buddy in the whole world is my four-and-a-half-year-old grandson and what he likes most is to take short road trips with me somewhere fun and interesting, so off we go-go-go.

I call him “my little guy” and “my buddy” and sometimes “The Dude” and I love that he’s cuddly and affectionate and lightly touched by autism, which I look upon as a blessing—as if kissed by an angel.

Today, we’re heading for Los Angeles, a city where I lived when I was his age.

I help The Dude into the car and buckle him into his child seat and power up an iPad to ensure his contentment during a ninety-minute ride from the American Riviera.

My little guy giggles with delight as he battles dinosaurs that eruct comical side effects from his screen. Dinosaurs are his passion. He has plush dinosaurs, hard plastic ones, some that roar and light up. He knows more names than I ever did—Raptors, Spinosaurus, Pteranodon, and his favorite, Indominus Rex.

“Are we almost there?” he asks forty minutes in, not whining, just curious.

I point to the Conejo Grade ahead. “See those mountains up ahead? We’re going to zoom right over them!”

His eyes widen in delight. “Zoom over them?”

I love his sense of wonder—the way he absorbs everything and hands it back to me with a new twist.

I tackle the incline with ferocity, zigzagging past sluggish cars. The Dude cheers me on before refocusing on the colorful dinosaurs that dance across his screen.

Approaching the city, traffic thickens.

“Almost there,” I say.

Soon we ramp off, cruising city streets. He looks around with gusto, repeating my words with merriment. “City streets!”

We arrive at Farmer’s Market, a place near and dear to my own childhood. It hasn’t changed much in sixty years.

Passing the pie maker’s near the entrance, I lift him up to the large picture window so he can watch bakers knead dough, fill tins and slide them into ovens.

He stares, mesmerized, before tugging at my sleeve. “Pizza?”

Of course. That’s why we’re here. Patsy D’Amore’s—the best pizza of my childhood.

My little guy doesn’t just eat pizza. He has a love affair with it.

I watch him bite into pepperoni, cheese and tomato sauce, his bedroom eyes savoring the flavors. He eats solely, deliberately.

Afterward, we stop at Bob’s Donuts for dessert. I already know his choice: a pink-frosted donut with rainbow sprinkles. (When I ask The Dude his favorite color, he always responds, “Rainbow.”)

Back at our table, he licks the frosting off first, leaving the rest for sparrows that gather boldly near our feet.

He loves animals—especially dogs. He has a sixth sense about them, a warmth that draws them in. They snuggle into him, lick his face, and roll onto their backs, refusing to leave his aura of happiness, of genuine love and affection.

After lunch, we walk to an old wishing well.

As a boy, I marveled at the coins shimmering at the bottom, wishing I could scoop them up and keep them.

I hoist my little buddy onto the stone rim, hand him a quarter, and say, “Make a wish and toss it in.”

He thinks carefully, his dreamy eyes serious.

“I wish I were alive.”

I chuckle. “But you are!”

But he only smiles as the coin disappears into the water.

And like most little boys he is already on to the next thing. In this case, the market’s toy store.

Eagerly, his little legs keep up with my adult stride as we weave around stands that sell nuts, stands that sell fruit, stands that sell chocolate, and produce, and so on, until we reach… Toyland!

My buddy is in his element now, and he knows precisely what he’s looking for: Dinosaurs.

It does not take him long to identify his prize: A plastic cylinder filled with different colored miniature dinosaurs.

Once in his custody, he spills this collection onto a picnic table and sets them up, one group facing the other in preparation for battle, all the while sucking a blue Tootsie Pop I chose for him at a candy stand.

At some point, and I have no idea how it happens, I turn around and my buddy is gone. His toy dinosaurs remain on the table but he is nowhere to be seen. I jump up, panic-stricken, looking around in all directions, a sea of people around me, but no little guy.

I take a few steps, peer down an aisle, nothing, a few steps the other way, calling out to him, in normal voice at first, then louder, and louder still.

And just when I think I’ve lost him, I hear from beneath the table where we’d be sitting, “Here I am,” with a joyous laugh. And I’m so relieved I could cry.

By the time we’re driving home, The Dude is tired. The passing scenery lulls him to sleep. His toy dinosaurs rest beside him.

Nearing home, it is time to plan dinner.

The only type of food my buddy likes besides pepperoni pizza is chicken nuggets and noodles. We settle on the latter, and after he’s eaten he tells me I make the best noodles ever.

I have my routine in the evening, a couple glasses of wine with friends at a nearby restaurant. It pulls at my heartstrings when my little guy tugs at my leg, begging me not to leave. And then, this ritual over, he waves at me through a window as I depart, blows me a kiss goodbye.

He’s waiting for me, of course, when I return.

“Papa?” He is standing at the top of the stairs, and when he knows it’s me, he comes sliding down, literally, by the seat of his pants.

Bedtime.

Which means anything but sleep for my little guy.

“Let’s fight!” he shouts, with boundless energy, grabbing a pillow.

We launch into a wild pillow fight.. He giggles when he lands one smack across my face, and I stagger back dramatically, bouncing off the wall like a cartoon character.

Then we build a tent from blankets, casting imaginary fishing poles over the side of the bed.

A fish bites! He nearly tumbles overboard.

We grill our pretend fish over a pretend campfire, only to be visited by a baby bear—and then its angry mother.

We throw the cub back and hide in our tent, huddled together until the danger passes.

By this time, my little guy is thirsty.

I twist the cap of bottled water and hand it to him and he raises it to his mouth and drinks with sound effects—glug, glug, glug—that make me laugh, and he says, “What are you laughing at?” and this makes me laugh even more.

Finally, with my energy ebbing (while his still flows), it is time for a bedtime story.

“Five minutes,” he says. (Everything is always five minutes with my little guy.)

“Okay, five more minutes.”

And so, it’s five more minutes of horsing around before we lay down for a story, more a dialog about a business project we’ve been devising between us in the preceding weeks: Our own restaurant, the Dino Dinery. The theme, of course, is dinosaurs, and we are in the process of refining our menu.

T-Rex T-bone steak

Raptor Tails in Spinosaurus sauce

Pterodactyl wings in Stegosaurus sauce

Brontosaurus Burgers

Triceratops Tri-Tip Sandwich

Pisanosaurus pepperoni pizza

My little buddy has a great sense of humor, and we laugh with every new menu item.

After going through it a few times, my little guy turns on his side, and then he turns back to face me. “Will you be here when I wake up in the morning, Papa?”

“Of course,” I say.

I ask him if he is ready for the Sandman to visit.

He says no, he doesn’t want any Sandman to come, that he’s going to keep his eyes open, as long as possible, to keep the Sandman away.

“Wait, Papa,” he says suddenly, sitting bolt upright. “The nose.” He jumps up to rub the nose of a wooden cigar store Indian—a ritual I once told him would keep bad dreams away.

Finally, he lies down, eyes heavy.

“Will you be here when I wake up, Papa?”

“Of course,” I whisper as his eyelids slowly dip… lower, lower, lower… until they close and my little buddy is fast asleep.

⁂

Most mornings, he wakes up before me, placing his face inches from mine.

But today, I wake first.

He is curled against my back, and I turn to look at him—to study his thick black hair and delicate sleeping face.

But all I find is a pillow beneath the covers.

I sit up. Look around. No little guy.

I check the hallway. The living room.

“Hey, buddy,” I call. “Say, ‘Here I am!’”

Silence.

I check the garden door. Still locked. He must be hiding. I look around but cannot find him anywhere.

“Say, ‘Here I am!’” I repeat, expecting a giggle.

Still nothing.

A voice comes from upstairs.

“Who are you talking to?”

“My buddy,” I say. “Is he up there with you?”

“What are you talking about?”

I smile. A game. He must be tucked with her, giggling at my confusion.

I head upstairs. My daughter is sitting up in bed, bewildered.

“He’s not with you?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “Who?”

“Your son. My grandson.”

She blinks. Her voice softens. “Dad… I don’t have a son.”

A silence expands between us.

I feel a strange, suffocating weight in my chest.

“What are you talking about?” I whisper.

She speaks slowly, gently. “How old is he, Dad?”

“Four-and-a-half,” I say without hesitation.

She shakes her head slowly. “Would’ve been. Don’t you remember?”

And then, I do.

I remember the car ride to LA, five years ago.

I remember the doctor’s office.

I remember the choice we made,

A little voice echoes in my mind.

Papa, where are you?

⁂

In March 2012, my 18 year-old daughter sat in a doctor’s office, four-months pregnant.

The obstetrician scribbled a name and number on a notepad and slid it across the desk—a late-term abortion clinic in Los Angeles. A solution. A way out.

We did not go that route.

Five months later, my daughter gave birth to a beautiful baby boy.

Today, I cannot imagine life without him—his laughter, his wonder, the warmth of his small hand in mind.

How would I feel now if we had made a different choice?

If I had paid to erase from existence this happy boy, this affectionate soul—my own flesh and blood, my very precious grandson?

With New Year’s upon us, we reminisce by reviewing the news of the last 12 months and by singing Auld Lang Syne.

But we also look to the future, as in resolutions to better our lives.

Which renders New Year’s Eve a marker of time, a divider between yesterday and tomorrow; time that we measure month-to-month with a calendar—and hour-to-hour with a clock or a wristwatch.

The instrument we use for the latter can be almost as precious as time itself, which is not only shorter than we think but passes faster and faster the older we get.

How is that possible?

Because time is relative.

Meaning?

The year between age four and five is one-fifth of your life. But the year between age 49 and 50 is one fiftieth of your life.

One year measured against 49 years goes a lot faster than one measured against four years.

That is why time during childhood seems to have taken so much longer than, say, during our 50s.

Timepieces

I’ve got some fancy wristwatches but the only one that consistently tells me the truth is a Benrus Citation my father bought in 1948 and impulsively handed to me on my 24th birthday in 1978 when he was 54. By then he had worn it for 30 years. He died precisely 30 years later just twelve days shy of my turning 54.

I’ve always had a thing for watches. If my parents had bought me the simple Timex I’d coveted from J.J. Newberry when I was seven, my enthusiasm and love for horology might have been satiated.

Instead, come Christmas, Santa Claus brought me a wristwatch from Akron, a cheap import shop that existed in the 1960s; a watch that probably cost more than the Timex but stopped ticking after a few hours. My uncle, visiting on Christmas day, removed and disassembled the movement with a view toward reassembly—and I never saw it again.

When I first started making some money in 1974, a buddy of mine turned up in London with a new Omega wrapped around his wrist. I was much taken by this battery-powered timepiece that hummed like a tuning fork. I saved up money for such a purchase, around 65 pounds ($130), no small sum then, especially for me, struggling on a shoestring to run Tricky Dick’s Coffee House (my own creation, a spinoff from the family business). For maybe 20 pounds more I could have purchased—and almost did—a Rolex Submariner.

Stupidly, I opted for the Omega’s novel hum. Little did I know about the art of movements and complications vs. quartz and battery imposters. Not to mention blue chip purveyors and future investment.

The Rolex Submariner has since appreciated a hundred times its 1974 price-tag.

The Omega? A few years later I traded it to a Vietnamese ex-paratrooper for the camouflage pullover he wore while battling the Viet Cong.

Eventually needing a new watch, the best I could afford was a stainless-steel blue-faced number with steel bracelet from Tudor, a company owned by Rolex and known as its poor little sister. I wore it (and still have it) till the day, on my 24th birthday, my father handed me his Benrus, which for me was the grand prize.

Franck & Louis

Thirteen years later, I became a regular visitor to Geneva—the watch-making capital of the world—due to my work for a private-sector intelligence client who lived in the town I dubbed “Serene City.” There, billboards and shopfronts were full of horological masterpieces, driving me nuts and impelling me to believe that though my father’s watch was my most treasured possession I still needed to choose my own, as if to branch out and establish independence, my own identity.

And though I was drawn to the simple but elegant and very thin classic Cartier Tank, I opted for a Cintree Curvex timepiece by newcomer Franck Muller, the Genva-based self-proclaimed “Master of Complications.”

This I wore proudly for several years but, after living in the Principality of Monaco (the second of three Monaco incarnations), and tiring of all things glamorously material, I returned my father’s old Benrus to my wrist.

Then came Christmas 1995 in Washington D.C. and the grand opening of a Cartier Boutique just minutes by foot from my new home in Chevy Chase Village. My wife gifted me with the Tank, which was conceived during World War One by Louis Cartier for warriors (especially tank commanders) who had neither time nor a third hand to pluck a watch from their pocket. The French Renault FT-17 tank was Louis’ design inspiration.

The classic beauty, simplicity, and lightness of this timepiece, coupled with a crocodile strap, captured my gaze and wouldn’t let go whenever I consulted it for knowing the time.

A few years later, while in London’s Burlington Arcade, I happened upon a Rolex Prince, the prized “doctor’s watch” (with a separate seconds dial) acclaimed by some as the most beautiful timepiece ever created. Rolex produced these gems in the late 1920s through the early 1930s in steel, silver, or gold. Their top-of-the-line was a “tiger-stripe” of yellow and white gold. (I’d first seen one at the flagship Ralph Lauren Polo shop on Madison Avenue in New York City.)

My search took a while, but in June 2002, at a shop specializing in high-end vintage watches on London’s Portobello Road, I purchased—for a king’s ransom—a tiger-striped Rolex Prince, circa 1930, a gift to myself after a) landing a job as intelligence adviser to Prince Albert of Monaco and b) profiting on the newly-launched euro’s exchange rate against the dollar.

Most sane people keep valuable possessions like this in a vault. But I didn’t buy this timepiece to lock away; I wore it throughout my five-and-a-year stint as the prince’s spymaster. And when I got my wings burned from flying too close to the sun, both the real prince and the timepiece lost their luster.

And so I returned, as I always do, to my father’s Benrus.

Patek

For years, I’d dabbled with the idea of purchasing a timepiece produced by Patek Phillipe, the world’s premier watchmaker.

Four decades ago, after my grandmother passed, I almost used the five-grand she left me to purchase (in her memory) the classic Patek Calatrava, a straightforward model known as the “banker’s watch.”

But when the time came to take the plunge, the more I researched new and pre-owned Patek timepieces, the loftier my sights became, ultimately jumping to their “Grand Complications,” namely, their Perpetual Calendar and—more particularly—a discontinued model called Retrograde, which, after some due diligence, I purchased at a good price.

Rather than hoarding cold cash as numbers on a financial statement, I’d rather enjoy money in the form of a spectacular work of art. Not to lock in a safe. But to carry on my wrist, admire the craftsmanship that went into its creation—and, more important, to remind myself that not only is time short, it is precious.

There is no finer family heirloom for handing down to children or grandchildren than an elegant gold mechanical watch.

“You never actually own a Patek,” goes their trademark mantra, “you merely look after it for the next generation.”

And with two grandsons, it is simply a matter for impermanent me to match personality with style so that, eventually, each may celebrate—with a fine timepiece— the passage of minutes and hours on this earthly plane while coming to understand that time is the most valuable thing they will ever have.

History likes to pretend wars begin when leaders announce them.

They don’t.

They begin when ordinary people comply.

And every so often, they don’t, bless their souls.

The Christmas Truce of 1914 is a profound example. Men climbed out of trenches, sang carols, buried their dead, kicked a football around.

It was unique. But not isolated.

It was part of a lineage of moments when leaders issued the call to arms—and the call failed.

The French Army, 1917

After years of being fed into machine guns by men with maps and theories, half the French Army mutinied. They didn’t run. They didn’t defect. They simply refused to attack.

They would defend France, they said.
They would not die for stupidity.

Generals called it cowardice.
Historians call it experience.

The war continued—but the lie got exposed.

Russia, Same Year

The Tsar demanded continued war.

The Provisional Government demanded continued war.

The soldiers stopped listening.

They laid down rifles.
They went home.
They dissolved the army by walking away from it.

The Russian Revolution didn’t end the war.
The refusal did.

Vietnam, 1960s–70s

The president spoke solemnly about communists rolling up on our shores.

Draft notices arrived.

And hundreds of thousands said no.

Some burned draft cards. Some fled. Some went to prison.

The refusal didn’t look heroic. It looked inconvenient. Bureaucratically catastrophic.

You can fight a war abroad.
You can’t fight your own population at the induction center forever.

The war bled out—not just on the battlefield, but at the threshold.

East Germany, 1989

Leaders ordered soldiers to defend the Wall.

The soldiers hesitated.

They didn’t fire.
They didn’t charge.
They didn’t obey.

The Wall fell because no one was willing to kill for it anymore.

This is what power fears most—not rebellion, but indifference backed by refusal.

Portugal, 1974

Officers were ordered to suppress dissent. Instead, they turned their guns downward. Civilians put carnations in rifle barrels.

A dictatorship collapsed without a firefight.

No speeches.
Just a shared understanding that the order was illegitimate.

South Africa, 1980s

White conscripts were expected to enforce apartheid at gunpoint.

Thousands refused.

They chose jail, exile, disgrace—anything but pulling the trigger.

Apartheid didn’t fall because it was overthrown.
It fell because repression dried up.

These moments share a pattern.

Leaders command participation.

Wars are not machines. They are franchises.
They require buy-in.

And buy-in can fail.

This is why the Christmas Truce of 1914 still matters.

Not because it was peaceful.
Not because it was beautiful.

But because it exposed the mechanism.

For one night, the maintenance stopped.

No one pulled the trigger.
No one advanced.
No one obeyed.

And the war—briefly—didn’t know what to do.

Power hates these moments because they reveal a dangerous truth:
It is administered.

Hatred is not automatic.
It is trained.

Killing is not destiny.
It is a job, and like any job, it can be declined.

History doesn’t like to linger on refusal. It prefers victories, defeats, martyrs.

Refusal is awkward. It doesn’t fit monuments.

But it is the most subversive act available to ordinary people.

Not rebellion.
Not heroics.

Just not showing up.

Christmas Eve, December 1914

They were five months into The War to End All Wars.

Trenches were no longer temporary.
Mud was shelter.
Fear, routine.

Men slept standing.
Ate without tasting.
Listened for death the way farmers listen for rain.

The ground between them was called No Man’s Land—a changing number of yards drawn in blood.

They were young.
Not heroes.
Not monsters.

Just boys taught to advance and kill.

Christmas arrived unnoticed.

Another night.

Another watch.

Another ration that tasted of metal.

And then—
something crossed the dark.

A sound.

Not a command.
Not a shout.

A song.

Stille Nacht.

It rose unsteadily, as if it knew it did not belong.

On the other side, rifles lifted.

Anything gentle in this war was assumed to be a lie.

A trick.

A way to die.

But the singing did not falter.

From the opposite trench, a voice answered.

Then another.

Silent night.

The melody drifted over wire, over shell holes, over bodies not yet buried.

Men lifted their heads.

Someone laughed—surprised, like he had forgotten how.

Someone else cried and did not bother hiding it.

For weeks, the only light had been explosions.

Now, candles appeared along the German line.

Small flames cupped in hands.

A Christmas tree followed.

Then another.

Hands rose above the trenches.

Not in surrender.
In greeting.

One man climbed out.
Then another.

Boots touched No Man’s Land. And were not punished for it.

They met in the middle—awkward, grinning, unsure what to do with their hands.

Gestures replaced language.

Smiles did the rest.

Cigarettes were offered.
Chocolate. Buttons. Badges.

Photographs shown.

People waiting somewhere else.

They gathered the dead.

Men who had tried to kill one another hours earlier bent together, lifting bodies, speaking names when they knew them, remaining silent when they didn’t.

Prayers were said in German and English and Latin.

A football appeared.

No lines.
No referee.

Just frozen ground torn by shells and a ball that refused allegiance.

They kicked.

Slipped.

Laughed.

⁂

When morning came, officers arrived.

Binoculars scanned the damage—not to the trenches, but to discipline.

This was not how wars were meant to function.

The machinery depended on distance.

Depended on the enemy remaining hated.

Depended on orders followed.

No fraternization.
No pauses.
No mercy without authorization.

The war corrected itself.

The trenches deepened.
The guns grew heavier.

Mustard gas would come.

The Christmas truce did not end the war.
It did not save a generation.

But it exposed a truth.

Hatred is not automatic.
killing requires maintenance.

Peace is not an abstraction.
It is an action.

It begins when one man steps into the open
and another decides not to pull the trigger.

Paul Cardall: Silent Night

Like many others of her generation, my maternal grandmother’s life was shaped by two world wars. She met her husband, an Englishman, during The War to End All Wars—and lost her only son to the war after that.

Nan was Armenian, born in Istanbul—or “Constance,” as she called it. Her family was spared from the Turkish genocide because her father, Azarik Kalfayan, was a master craftsman of fine rugs, known as “Kalfayans.”

The Turks viewed Armenians as extinct-able. But, alas, good rug-makers were not. So the Emperor provided Azarik with a dispensation—a “Get-out-of-genocide-alive card,” more formally known as a Certificate of Personal Satisfaction.

Nan’s parents did not care for the notion of an English occupier as a son-in-law. Edward Stanley and his fellow British soldiers frequented the necktie shop where my grandmother, Adrine, worked. Many of them tried to win her heart by purchasing more neckties than they needed.

My grandfather won.

When her parents forbade the match, Nan threatened to join a convent and become a nun if not permitted to marry the man she loved. Her parents relented.

But this did not prevent a similar situation in England, where the couple soon settled.

Pop’s family treated Nan like a second-class relative, a half-notch above a wog.

Intolerance was all the rage back then.

My uncle was born, followed by my mom.

I would never meet my Uncle Edward. His passion was flying. When World War II began, he joined the Royal Air Force, captained a bomber and perished over Burma. My uncle could have bailed out along with other crew members who lived to tell their POW stories. However, an injured crewman could not bail, so my uncle chose to remain at the controls of his wounded plane, hoping to land it safely.

The depths of emotional trauma that result from losing a son surely transcend language. Perhaps it was at this juncture that Nan first tottered near the edge.

My uncle was considered MIA; his body never found.

But Nan refused to give up hope that he was alive somewhere.

A boardwalk clairvoyant once told her he was living on a deserted tropical island.

Uncle Edward’s other passion was stamp-collecting and she kept his album safely tucked away for his return. But he never returned and now it belongs to me. (Some suggest I get this collection appraised. However, I refuse to demean it with a numeric value.)

My mother wrote weekly letters to the RAF and the War Office requesting updates.

They never replied.

From then on, my mother, with three sons, had this attitude about war: If you throw one, they ain’t going.

We didn’t.

And I say the same to my grandsons: If our leaders want to fight, they lead the charge. Otherwise, no deal.

My mother met my father through World War II. (But for WWI and WWII—and all its misery—I would not be here.)

My dad was a GI stationed in London.

He met my mom at a dancehall in Potters Bar, a suburb where my mother grew up.

Their romance survived several separations, first, when my dad shipped to Paris. And then at war’s end, when he shipped back to the Bronx.

He returned to England to marry my mom—and shipped her back with him to New York City.

My older brother was born two years later. Then Nan and Pops moved to New York to be near their daughter and her family.

My father wanted to be an actor. He was a cast member of Mister Roberts on Broadway, performing alongside Henry Fonda. But it wasn’t happening fast enough for him and he had a wife and child to support. Plus he was plagued by tinnitus. So he put his family and all their belongings into a car and drove cross-country to California, believing a change of scenery might help. That’s where they had me.

Nan and Pops stayed behind in New York, and visited at least once.

When I was about four, Pops got sick. And because I was a cuddly, clingy toddler, my mom took me with her to visit him. It was a long trip, ten hours by propeller plane followed by landing in Baltimore due to bad weather, a train to New York City.

Somehow, I‘d gotten it into my kid’s brain that New York was full of bears. So I’d awaken early in Nan’s apartment, listening for bears, worrying.

We visited Pops in hospital. He played and joked with me while in a recliner bed.

Nan took me to a park while my mother spent time with her father; her final visit with him, I think.

My mother went out one night and I was frightened she would not return, that the bears would get her. I cried and was overjoyed when she returned with a present for me: Plastic Martians.

Stomach cancer defeated Pops.

My mother flew out for his funeral and returned to West Hollywood with Nan, ushering in a new era with my grandmother as built-in babysitter.

Standing on a swivel chair to dust a high shelf, Nan fell and broke her arm. She called for help and, when my mother got there, we boys right behind, Nan called her for smelling salts, a small glass jar with green goop she kept on her dressing table. I ran to get it; Nan took a whiff, came round. Then I took a whiff—and nearly passed out.

Nan’s arm was set in a plaster cast for about six weeks, after which she resumed her household chores. One such task was washing dishes after dinner. And one of mine, which I alternated with my younger brother (who got out of everything), was to dry the cutlery. I’d ask Nan questions and she’d tell me stories about when she first met Pops.

The first time I smoked a cigarette—at age 12—was after seeing the movie Casino Royale with friends. I had to tell someone. I told Nan while drying cutlery. She laughed, especially when I told her the brand: Bull Durham. That’s what Pops had smoked when she first met him.

It was sometime in 1968, when I was 14, that Nan first showed signs of paranoia. By then she had her own apartment nearby and was spending too much time alone. So she dreamt up an unknown terminal illness for herself, a symptom of which, she believed, was a strange odor. None of us could smell any such thing. But this only made her suspicious that we were part of a plot, hatched by her doctor, to keep it secret from her.

Next, she began to believe microscopic bugs were infesting her.

“See, here’s one!” she’d holler.

My brother and I put it under a magnifying glass only to find a particle of grit or dead skin.

In the summer of ’69, my family traveled to London for what was supposed to be a three-week summer vacation. But when the return flight arrived in LA, we weren’t on it. Only my dad, who returned to sell our house and ship out the furniture. Nan didn’t know we weren’t coming back until, after setting the table for dinner, my father walked through the door without us.

The house got sold and Nan was left on her own, with no car since she never drove. My older brother remained in LA, at college, and he’d stop in to visit Nan.

Without a loving family nearby to keep her mind at least partly anchored, her mental health deteriorated. Left on her own, Nan decided she wasn’t terminally ill after all. No. She concluded that there was an elaborate plot underway to kill her. Slowly.

Nan believed that while she was asleep one night, they planted a metallic device inside her stomach. Actual surgery, right there in her bedroom. Then they commandeered the apartment above hers and installed a giant magnet to control her movements.

I never figured out who they were, but I gather it had something to do with the Turks. Maybe she believed they were still trying to make Armenians extinct.

Arrangements were made for Nan to join us in London. I was part of the family delegation that met when she flew into Gatwick Airport. Nan was ecstatic. She laughed deliriously about how she’d put at least 30 people out of work by pulling a Houdini; laughing about how they were scratching their heads wondering where she went. In a somber tone, she related how, only one week earlier, the side panels of a large truck were opened on the street in front of her apartment to release a cloud of poisonous gas, and it was a miracle she was able to close her windows in time to thwart the attack.

In London, all was well. For a few weeks. Then one day Nan announced they had managed to track her down, had now arrived—madder than ever before—to finish the job. To accomplish their mission, they had commandeered several neighboring houses.

The scenario, as her tormented mind fantasized, took a mean turn: She now believed we were part of the plot. We had to be, she un-reasoned, since we were so willing to stand by and do nothing while they aimed ultraviolet radioactive beams through her bedroom window. We all tried, of course, to convince her otherwise. But she refused to believe that her mind was making this up. After all, she’d point out, she’d seen movies about this kind of thing. Movies like Gaslight.

To “prove” her point, Nan pointed out a streetlamp that glowed purple, different from the others (probably a recharge). She protected herself from such invasive tactics by sticking hundreds of pins and needles into her curtains—to “deflect the rays,” she said.

As relations with the family worsened, Nan would not come down for dinner but locked herself in her room. My mother would leave meals outside her door, but they went uneaten, presumably, to her thinking, poisoned. Instead, she would wait until everyone was asleep, then slip down two flights of stairs to the kitchen for cheese and crackers.

No one in the family wanted Nan to be committed to a mental health facility. But after a long six months, hoping in vain for her to snap out of it, there was no choice.

The family physician was summoned one afternoon to see for himself and make a determination. Nan was lured from the bedroom. She took one look at Dr. Cohen in the living room and bolted for the stairs. The good doctor had been hitherto reluctant to section her, but now he was convinced, and Nan was dispatched to Friern Barnet Hospital.

Next day my mother and I went to visit her. She was dressed in a cream-colored hospital gown and, when she saw us, begged us to take her home. She said everyone there was crazy, including her roommate, a black woman who practiced voodoo.

We visited Nan every week. She became more calm and at ease with her surroundings with each new visit. She even made friends—something Nan rarely did in the outside world.

I was fascinated by the patients during my visits. I felt drawn to them. I wanted to stage a concert at the American School in London and donate the proceeds to Friern Barnet. However, my mother was aghast at such a notion because of the stigma back then attached to mind challenges.

Nan was tested with various meds. And zapped once with electroshock therapy. Can you imagine, strapping down and zapping with electricity someone who believed she’d been targeted by people who wanted to zap her? It boggles the mind.

After a few months, Nan was allowed home for weekend visits. And then one day she got discharged and came home for good.

Only once did Nan acknowledge her lapse from sanity. At the height of Nan’s paranoia, my brother wagered her five pounds sterling that she was imagining the conspiracy against her. One day, not long after she returned from Friern Barnet, Nan wordlessly pulled a five pound note from her purse and handed it to my brother.

Nan thereafter lived a quiet, unobtrusive existence of medication and television soap operas.

Through the day, she sat herself in a living room armchair and watched me—watched us all—come and go at a quick pace. To where, I have no idea any more. Wherever it was, it matters less than the stillness and silence she found. She once said, “You’re always in a hurry.” And she was right. I was always on the go, go, go, not understanding the importance of stillness and silence.

I could have, should have, stopped in my tracks, slowed down, sat upon the chair next to my grandmother, and asked, “How are you doing today, Nan?”

But what matters now is… she isn’t here, and no, I can’t. And I sure wish I had another chance to make that right.

We boys grew up, married, had kids and lived nearby. Our wives grew to love Nan, and we all stopped by frequently to visit her. Nan’s most memorable line during this era was, “Cup of tea?” She brewed the finest cup in the world.

My daughter, as soon as she could talk, dubbed her “Big Nan,” and the name stuck. Soon, all of Nan’s great grandchildren called her Big Nan. And Big Nan’s eyes would twinkle whenever any of them were around. She would brew the toddlers mild tea and sneak them extra chocolate chip cookies.

I was always moving to and fro, crossing the Atlantic and back again, living on both sides. But Nan was constant, an anchor in my life. She was always home to welcome me with a cup of tea no matter where I had been or for how long. I’d walk in, jet-lagged and exhausted from flying coach and inhaling second-hand smoke, put down my bags.

And Nan would say, “Cup of tea?”

Then one day I hightailed out of London to set up a new life in the USA, a self-imposed exile after earning parole from my family’s business.

I didn’t think for one moment I’d never see Big Nan again. She was 85 and strong as an ox. No one doubted she’d outlive her Uncle James, who lasted over a century. (Those Armenian genes….)

We hugged near the front door, taxi waiting, a kiss on each cheek.

And Nan blurted, with uncharacteristic emotion, “I’ll miss you!” And as she said goodbye to my wife, and to my daughter, she looked ready to do something I’d never seen her do before: She looked like she was going to cry.

⁂

When the clanging of the telephone woke me at 6 a.m., I picked up the receiver with a sense of foreboding. The satellite static crackled during the two seconds it used to take for a trans-Atlantic call to connect.

And then my brother’s voice. His words came slow. “I’ve got some really bad news.” He paused a beat. “Nan died.”

I returned to London for her funeral and slept in my old room in my parents’ house. Returning home did not feel the same without Nan there, offering a cup of tea.

I couldn’t sleep but lay on my bed, gazing out the window at the purplish night sky. Then I saw something I’d never seen before, something I had always yearned to witness: A shooting star.

Synchronistically, only two weeks before, browsing a book at Bhodi Tree in West Hollywood, I read that a shooting star signifies the death of a grandparent.

I’ll always believe what I saw in the sky was Nan’s farewell.

I grew up celebrating Christmas and I’m not trading it for “winter holidays” or anything else.

Greet me with “Happy Hannukah” or “Happy Kwanzaa” or “Happy Holidays” or whatever makes you feel good, fine with me, glad you are enjoying the Yuletide season. But I’m sticking with “Merry Christmas!”

For me this is a cultural, not religious thing. I did some Sunday schooling at a Unitarian church but discovered spirituality much later in life.

Much more important to me as a child were Christmas trees and frosty snowmen and carols vibrating from the hi-fi radio and nighttime drives around other neighborhoods to see twinkly displays of Christmas lights but most especially Santa Claus on a sleigh with reindeer led by a red-nosed Rudolph flying above the intersection of Wilshire Boulevard & Beverly Drive.

Lugging home an evergreen from Ralphs supermarket was a big deal—and an even bigger deal for my father who braved stinging pine needles to strand it with colored lights that, back then, were rather temperamental. (If one went out, they all did.)

Thereafter, all family members participated in the ritual of adorning the tree with glass ornaments, silvery tinsel, a Nativity scene beneath and a silver star on top. It was a warm and fuzzy family experience celebrated with hot cocoa and marshmallows in festive mugs and much good cheer.

I still have the red and white stocking I hung over the fireplace as a kid and, even though it is frayed and beat up, I bring it out annually. Just looking at it makes me feel like a happy eight-year-old.

Christmas Eve was a very special affair with friends dropping by and, for we kids, excited anticipation about the impending arrival, once we were asleep, of St. Nick, for whom we set out a note and cookies.

There was simply nothing better as a child than the thrill of rounding a corner into the living room early Christmas morning to find a stocking loaded beyond the brim with chocolate and candy canes and small gifts and, under the tree, dozens upon dozens of beautifully wrapped and ribboned presents for my two brothers and me.

Now the reality.

The Birthdate of Jesus

The latest calculation about when Jesus of Nazareth was born—based on the starry sky above—puts that calendar date around mid-June or October or even early spring, depending on the exact year of his birth, which is also in contention but believed to be sometime between 2 and 7 BCE/BC.

An article in the Royal Astronomical Society’s quarterly states, “Astronomical and historical evidence suggests that the Star of Bethlehem was a comet which was visible in 5 BC and described in ancient Chinese records. The evidence points to Jesus being born in the period 5 BC March 9-May 4th.”

So why do we celebrate the birth of Jesus on the 25th of December?

Answer: The first Christian Roman Emperor Constantine, in the year 336, chose this date as a means of coopting the pagan festival of Yule, on Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, a celebration that continues for 12 days (hence the 12 days of Christmas) filled with gift giving and spiritual reflection, merriment and feasts, symbolizing a rebirth of the sun (into longer days) and, by extension, new beginnings, meaning an opportunity to welcome a “new year” free of unwanted bad habits (what we now call New Year resolutions).

As for Christ’s mass, the word “mass” derives from the Latin “missa,” which means “sent.” Together, Christmas means “The Christ Jesus has been sent to God” and those who take part in a “mass” are thereafter sent into the world as beacons of light.

This is where we get a wee bit controversial, none of which is meant to demean anyone’s religious beliefs or negate celebration.

The Missing Years of Jesus

During his “17 missing years” (between the age of 12 and 29), Jesus, whose birth name was Yeshua aka Joshua or Issa, was in Alexandria, Egypt (some say Kashmir) where He was drawn to Eastern influences and tutored by Zen masters. This is where Yeshua adopted a Buddhist perspective. Even the Holy Trinity (mind, body, spirit) derives from Buddhist philosophy (gut, heart, brain).

Upon returning to Galilee and Jerusalem, Yeshua espoused what He had learned while abroad, beliefs that were totally new to the inhabitants of his homeland:

· Have a spiritual existence.

· Have a relationship with nature and the natural world.

· Live by communal values.

· Be psychologically secure and creative.

Yeshua taught that the kingdom of God is about mindfulness (a Buddhist precept) and he urged his followers to focus on the now.

Yeshua did not preach salvation reward versus punishment; He did not preach heaven or hell.

On the contrary and, unlike the Temple, Yeshua promoted joyousness through awareness of the moment.

Yeshua preached the principles of living in the now, depicting everyone (not just Himself) as a son (or daughter) of God (the universe). And He repeatedly pointed out that people do not need clergy or temples to enjoy a direct relationship with the universal truth or infinite spirit.

In fact, Yeshua eschewed clergy, idolization, and temples. Instead, He favored prayer, contemplation, and meditation outdoors in nature, not among fellow worshippers but in solitude, steadfastly avoiding temples and, within them, the hierarchies of organized religion, which He perceived to be corrupt.

Poet and philosopher Khalil Gibran put it best: “Jesus was not here to teach the people to build magnificent churches and temples… he came to make the human heart a temple, and the soul an altar, and the mind a priest.”

Yeshua did not preach virtuousness or a moral code or the memorizing of dogma (a word deriving from the Greek “dokien,” which means “think” or “feel good”). He did not try to “save” but to heal; part shaman, part master-therapist.

Yeshua stood up to deeply entrenched and very corrupt political and religious power structures.

They retaliated by having Yeshua mocked, tortured, and crucified.

It was the Greek orthodox disciples of Yeshua who created a new religion— Christianity— changed His name to Jesus and added The Christ, meaning, “anointment with olive oil to become a Messiah.”

The legends/gospels that followed became partly based on the Buddha-inspired pronouncements of their savior (even though Yeshua did not believe in idolization), along with metaphorical mythology to promote this burgeoning offshoot of Judaism and recruit pagans into their rank and file.

The cross became a symbol of resurrection and, as an instrument of torture, represents surrender to suffering—and also the surrendering of the ego to consciousness in its purest form.

The real message from Yeshua: We are all sons (and daughters) of God.

Yeshua advocated communion with nature and discovering the peace, silence, and stillness everyone can find once they become aware of their inner chattering monkey and learn how to observe, neutralize, and coexist with it, thus awakening to the divine within us all and discovering our inner godliness.

Nineteenth-century American philosophers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau discovered, embraced, and wrote about the Eastern Influence and the tenets of Buddhism.

A century later, self-styled philosopher-entertainer Alan Watts and poet Allen Ginsberg, along with a handful of other Westerners, rediscovered Eastern influences and, beginning in the early 1960s, midwifed meditation and mindfulness (along with mind-expanding drugs) into Western culture.

Having read and studied this in depth I realize—should anyone ask if I believe in God—I’m probably a theosophical omnist with a bent toward Christian mysticism and the unfiltered tenets of Buddha.

Add to that my understanding of life’s purpose: Through self-evolution to awaken to consciousness and accept the mysteries we are too limited to understand; to connect with the natural world around us and live fully in the moment; to find out what you are good at and help other people with what you are good at; to live the best life possible and show gratitude.

Which means in some mystical, non-traditional way, one might say I found Jesus.

And I found Jesus so truly that sometimes, to my bewilderment, the thought of Him brings a tear to my eye.

Entheogens

Another significant element to the link between religion and Christmas is mind-expanding drugs.

New research suggests that every mystical vision in history, starting with those in ancient Greece who attended “The Mysteries” of Eleusis (the world’s first spiritual capital), were likely the result of entheogens, i.e., mind-opening substances such as magic mushrooms, ayahuasca (DMT), peyote (mescaline) or ergot (a fungus associated with rye bread and grain, from which LSD is synthesized).

Some historians believe that the sacramental beverage at Eleusis was laced with Claviceps, the fungus ergot.

Socrates, Plutarch, Plato, and Aristotle all walked a road called The Sacred Way from Athens to Eleusis to take part in the annual vision-manifesting rituals.

More astonishingly, new evidence suggests that the first Holy Communion at The Last Supper was comprised of wine and bread (the “blood and body” of Jesus) infused with psychoactive ingredients, most likely fly agaric, otherwise known as magic-mushrooms.

The Aramaic word manna, as used by Jesus, means “bread from heaven.”

This was perhaps how Jesus opened the eyes of his disciples, as promised—and from which they were reborn through mystical visions. When Jesus said, “I am here to give sight to the blind,” some believe it was a metaphor for opening one’s mind.

Or, put another way by French novelist Marcel Proust: “The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.”

When St. Paul was just plain Saul, hunting down and prosecuting disciples of Jesus, he either wittingly or unwittingly OD’d on an entheogen to the point where he went blind for three days—typical of a massive overdose—and believed he had experienced a vision from Jesus.

Thus, converted, he became one of Christianity’s most important figures. Indeed, had Saul not experienced such a vision, the cult of “The Christ” in Greece may never have evolved into the world’s largest religion.

The “doors of perception,” as writer and philosopher Aldous Huxley put it (a term borrowed from eighteenth century British visionary William Blake and later adopted by Jim Morrison for his band, The Doors), are not—in his opinion—opened by cathedrals, priests, hymns, or books. They are opened, he wrote, by entheogens, thus generating God within.

In Huxley’s view, communion with God means taking an entheogen; that entheogens in their various forms are the common denominator for all visionaries and the birth of all religions and modern cults.

His point being: One cannot “learn” about God; one must “experience” God through visions.

History’s Best Kept Secret?

In his book The Immortality Key, author Brian Muraresku takes the reader on a rollercoaster ride through history and demonstrates that entheogens have always been a part of the visionary/mystical process, used by peoples throughout the world (who had no contact with one another) to utilize their own indigenous herbs, plants, or fungi for mystical experiences.

Muraresku points out that The Establishment (organized religion in cahoots with government) has striven for 16 centuries to keep this secret, denouncing these rites as “witchcraft” (women or “witches” were in charge of apothecaries and kykeons) to consolidate their own power over populations by preventing the average person from experiencing mystical visions.

So very many people—especially women (mothers and daughters, passing down kykeon recipes)—were tortured and brutally executed by the powers that be (the Inquisition, for example) as a means of concealing the truth about the Eucharist and, by eliminating that magic portal, preventing a direct connection between man and God/the universe.

Until then, Muraresku writes, Paleo Christians kept visionary communion flourishing for the first four centuries CE until the year 392 when Roman Emperor Theodosius desecrated and destroyed the Eleusis sanctuaries, essentially declaring the first “war on drugs.”

From then on, writes James Oroc in The New Psychedelic Revolution, “The Christianity that evolved in Europe had no obvious entheogenic influences at all, and our spiritual life became dependent on obedience, fasting, and prayer… This situation only changed in 1897 when mescaline became the first synthesized psychedelic [from the peyote cactus].”

The Christmas Connection

But what does any of this have to do with Christmas, Santa Claus, and flying reindeer?

A lot.

The common denominator, writes Jerry and Julie Brown in The Psychedelic Gospels, would be the agaric (magic) mushroom, to which reindeer are drawn and provides them “shamanic flight.”

And this: Santa’s red and white costume mimics the magic mushroom.

“It is generally believed that the whole ‘Santa Claus’ myth is a folkloric tradition of shamanic travel,” says Carl Ruck, a professor of classical studies at Boston University, “and that reindeer are notorious for liking to eat these mushrooms and become inebriated on them.”

Continues Professor Ruck: “Santa is the personification of the mushroom’s spirit.”

Moreover, indigenous Arctic peoples celebrated Winter Solstice with agaric mushrooms, hanging them (as ornaments) from the branches of pine trees (beneath which the red-capped mushroom grew) or wrapping them in socks (stockings) over a fire to dry them out.

Consumption of the mushrooms thereafter brought everyone a feeling of merriment, good tidings, and great joy.

Merry Christmas!

Tom Turkey gobbled with his friends in the farmyard where they all lived. They gobbled about who had the prettiest feathers. They gobbled about the quality of birdseed. But mostly they gobbled about how lucky they were not to be chickens.

Chickens, all turkeys knew, were cowards. Sure, chickens crossed the street, but nobody ever knew why—and chickens probably didn’t know why either. Dumb chickens! But the main reason these turkeys believed they were lucky not to be chickens was because chickens were bred by humans to be eaten as food. Or they were forced to lay eggs that would be soft-boiled, hard-boiled, poached, fried or scrambled.

A large rooster named Rufus overheard the turkeys gobbling as he sauntered by, pecking corn kernels. “Ha!” the rooster clucked. “You’ll all get yours. Thanksgiving is coming soon.”

“Thanksgiving?” gobbled Tom Turkey.

“Uh-huh,” Rufus clucked, in a language only fowl could understand. “I can tell by the leaves, cluck-cluck. They’ve turned orange and yellow, cluck-cluck, and they’re falling from the trees.”

“But what is Thanksgiving?” asked Tom Turkey.

“When all the leaves have fallen, and the trees are bare,” clucked Rufus, “Thanksgiving will be here. And when that happens—ha!—fried chicken is NOT on the menu.”

“N-n-no?” gobbled Tom. “Then what? Pork chops?”

Rufus clucked with laughter. “Try again, gobble-face.”

Something about this rooster’s cockiness worried Tom. “You m-m-mean...?” he gulped.

“Ma-ma-ma… you got it, butterball,” clucked Rufus. “Stuffed and oven-roasted turkey!” And with that the rooster eructed a triumphant “cock-a-doodle-doo,” then moseyed off clucking with delight.

“Did you hear that?” gobbled Tom, addressing the other galliforms goofing off. “What are we gonna do, g-g-guys?”

The turkeys glanced around nervously, shaking their snoods. It was obvious that the trees would be barren of leaves in just a matter of days.

“Let’s go see Ted Turkey,” said one of Tom’s friends. “He’ll know what to do.”

Ted was the toughest turkey on the farm. And this old bird was reputed to be the smartest too.

The young turks surrounded Ted, and Tom conveyed what Rufus Rooster told them about Thanksgiving.

“R-R-Rufus is trying to scare us, isn’t he?” Tom’s eyes begged.

For a long moment, Ted was silent. “No,” he gobbled. “What that rude rooster told you is true. You will all be eaten at Thanksgiving,” he said bluntly. “Sorry,” he added.

The turkeys were gobble-less.

It was Tom who finally found his gobbler. “B-b-b-b-b-but... but you’re still here, Ted.”

Ted flapped his wings. “Darn right, I am. I’m too tough to eat.”

“Can’t we t-t-toughen up like you?” asked Tom.

“Too late,” gobbled Ted. “Thanksgiving is almost here and you birds are tender as can be. The only question is, how those humans will prepare you.”

Tom puzzled this. “P-P-Prepare us? What are the ch-ch-choices?”

“Ch-ch-choices?” Ted squawked with laughter. “You don’t get no ch-ch-choices. The humans decide preparation.”

“Preparation?” Tom implored.

“Chances are, oven roast turkey, stuffed with chestnuts,” said Ted. “A side of cranberry sauce. Or maybe smoked turkey breast and mashed potatoes covered in a gravy of giblets.”

“G-g-giblets?” asked Tom.

“Internal turkey organs,” gobbled Ted. “Liver and kidneys, mostly.”

Tom gasped.

A few of the youngest turkeys started to cry.

“Or could you wind up as turkey salad sandwiches.” Ted cocked his head. “And I even hear they’re making turkey pastrami these days. And turkey dogs. And turkey burgers. And turkey bacon. There’s been a swing away from cattle.”

“What about t-t-turkey soup?” asked Tom.

Ted Turkey considered this. “Yep. I s’pose that’s a possibility.”

“If I’m going to end up on d-d-dinner,” gobbled Tom. “I want to be t-t-turkey soup.”

Ted gobbled with mirth. “I told you turkeys already, you can’t decide nothing. Whether you get roasted, fried, boiled, broiled, barbequed, smoked, micro-waved or souped, you have no say, no way.” And with that, Ted flapped off, gobbling gaily about Christmas.

“What’s C-C-Christmas?” asked Tom.

Ted called back, “You won’t need to know.”

A few days before Thanksgiving the trucks arrived.

Word had already gobbled round the farmyard about the meaning of trucks.

What trucks meant was this: It was time to flap your wings and scram.

Because trucks were there to take all the tender, terrified turkeys to the abattoir—a fancy French word for slaughterhouse.

Alas, a high fence surrounded the turkeys so scramming was not an option.

Rufus Rooster watched in glee as all the turkeys—all—except tough Ted Turkey—were rounded up and shepherded aboard the trucks, which drove off in a convoy.

Tom was squashed in tight with all the other turkeys and no space to even turn around.

All he could think about was this: If I’m going to become someone’s meal, I want to be turkey soup, even though all the other turkeys laughed when he talked about that.

But the turkeys were all crying, not laughing, when they drew near the abattoir. The smell of poultry death hung thick and fowl in the air. Tom tried to hold his breath to stifle his fear.

The truck in which Tom was riding ground to a halt. Its back doors swung open and, one by one, each turkey was grabbed and hung by its feet from a metal shackle. These were attached to a moving rail that carried upside-down turkeys to the stunning tank. Here, the turkeys were dunked headfirst into electrified water that knocked most of them out cold. The lucky turkeys did not wake up in time for the next step: A throat slashing by a mechanical blade. This allowed the turkeys to bleed to death, “humanely,” before reaching a tank of boiling water.

Fortunately for Tom, his turkey soul had already departed to turkey heaven by the time he reached the boiling tank. And good thing too, since processing came next. And no self-respecting turkey soul would want to stick around for processing.

Some turkeys were blast-frozen whole. These butterballs would end up stuffed and roasted.

Other turkeys were carved up with a large knife and packaged into parts, including giblets.

Tom was tossed into a giant cauldron with carrots and celery and spices, left to simmer, then canned and dispatched to a supermarket.

Tom Turkey’s wish had come true. He was turkey soup.

The moral of this story: Relax, don’t worry, sometimes everything turns out just fine.

And say a prayer for the turkey that gave up its life so that you may be nourished to live another day and perpetuate the cycle of life.

This is the story of a ring.

A simple piece of jewelry that has journeyed through time, connecting the lives of men (and a woman) who wore it spanning a century-and-a-half.

The origin of this gold and amethyst ring remains a mystery, though one may safely say it was crafted around the mid-1800s. That’s because it makes its first appearance against the backdrop of the U.S. Civil War, a turbulent period when Union and Confederate soldiers faced off in brutal bloody battles that pitched friends against friends and family members against family members.

The toll of this war was staggering. It claimed the lives of over one million soldiers and left countless others wounded and scarred, physically and emotionally.

In fact, more American lives were lost during the U.S. Civil War than in World War I, World War II, Vietnam and Korea all put together. Yet despite the thunder of cannons and the fury of battle, the single biggest killer was not the battlefield but within the human body itself: dysentery.

Some of the fiercest fighting occurred through five days in mid-December of 1862 during the Battle of Fredericksburg, which resulted in a grim Union retreat across the ice-cold Rappahannock River in Virginia. (“Seeing the elephant,” is what soldiers on both sides called battle, on the basis that Americans killing Americans was, for them, an extraordinary and unsettling sight.)

It is in the aftermath of that blood-soaked battle, in early 1863, that our story begins.

As the cries of the wounded faded (if etched forever) into memory, the “bluebellies” and “graybacks” found themselves entrenched on opposite sides of the Rappahannock. These warriors, a stone’s throw apart, faced each other while each side’s commanders were determined to hold their troops at bay in a stalemate that lasted for months.

That river, once a tranquil natural boundary, now served as a somber demarcation line that bitterly divided a nation.

Until something very strange happened; something too peculiar to find mentioned in the many histories written about that devastating war—and much too uncomfortable for those who held the reins of command.

For in defiance of the prevailing animosity, a bond formed between foes; an unsanctioned truce that endured for weeks without authorization from high-ranking officers.

Indeed, infantrymen on both sides, those who bore the gravest burden of that cruel conflict, blatantly ignored the “ordinances” imposed upon them by Union and Confederate generals alike who were horrified by news that troops under their command were… “fraternizing.”

A little context: In the midst of the Civil War, coffee from the North, and tobacco from the South, became highly sought after commodities. So, in a peculiar twist of irony, these simple pleasures were swapped between soldiers from opposing sides until that dark elixir flowed southward while the fragrant aroma of tobacco wafted north.

Alongside these transactions was another currency of exchange: Newspapers from either side of the Mason-Dixon Line. Each nation pushed propaganda that suited their wartime narratives. But now mere infantrymen could seek some semblance of truth by balancing both accounts—and by reading between the lines.

The fraternizers continued their peaceful interaction, trading jokes, singing songs and trading things one side had in abundance and the other did not—a precious respite from the violence and the killing of one another that had previously consumed their lives.

Perhaps on some level these soldiers understood they were expendable pawns dispatched to do the perilous bidding of political and military masters, of generals with lofty ambitions and monumental egos; understood they were sent into battles that exacted a heavy toll, sacrificing a generation of Americans.

Certainly, these “fraternizing” soldiers realized they had more in common with one another than with distant generals who ordered them to kill.

As Union soldier Francis Strickland wrote, summarizing the shared sentiments of both sides: “We would bring Lincoln and they would bring Jeff Davis and meet in the river and let them fight it out and let the soldiers go home.”

On one of these daring, prohibited trading excursions, John Bennett, a Union soldier, wore a distinctive gold amethyst ring that had come into his possession.

Whether he’d stumbled upon this ring on the blood-soaked battlefield, or had removed it from the finger of a fallen soldier, is unknown. In any case, finders-keepers, a minor spoil of war.

This was a chunky ring, its gem a rectangular block of amethyst devoid of any intricate faceting or cutting. It snugly fit onto Bennett’s middle finger and he wore it on his right hand. Truth be known, it was the perfect ring for hand-to-hand combat when no other weapon was available.

As Bennett and his fellow Yankees shot the breeze (instead of people) with their southern opposites, a soldier of the Confederacy named Thomas Roberts recognized the ring Bennett wore—most certainly one of a kind—as having belonged to his best friend. There was no animosity, no resentment, soldiers on both sides having already come to terms with the complexities of war, of the battlefield, and the haphazard distribution of personal effects with the understanding that finders were indeed keepers.

But Roberts felt compelled to tell a gut-wrenching story, as he knew it, about his fellow soldier and buddy, who had once proudly worn that 15 carat gold-and-amethyst heirloom. It had been a wedding gift to the soldier’s father, who later suffered a fatal heart attack upon learning that both his sons had been conscripted to fight in a war that divided the nation.

The ring passed first to the man’s elder son, one of the first soldiers killed—at the Battle of Bull Run—in July of 1861. A buddy retrieved it and, when personal effects were returned to the bereaved family, the ring got handed down to the surviving son, the soldier who’d recently met his fate—death by bayonet—on the battlefield at Fredericksburg.

This tragic story pulled at Bennett’s heartstrings. He on the spot removed the amethyst ring from his finger, handed it to Roberts, and requested that it be returned to the soldier’s grieving mother.

Roberts sought to compensate for the cherished heirloom with an extra tranche of tobacco, but Bennett would not have it, steadfastly refusing to barter the solace of a mother who had endured unthinkable loss.

Thomas Roberts kept the ring safe in a leather belt pouch, which he never let out of his sight, and returned to his hometown, minus one leg, painfully amputated by a field doctor after the Battle of Chancellorsville.

Back home, he discovered that his buddy’s mother had passed, most likely from a broken heart having lost her husband and two sons to a war that enriched uniform manufacturers, undertakers, and embalmers, but mostly financial speculators like the Wall Street investment firm J.P. Morgan.

So Roberts placed the ring on the middle finger of his left hand and wore it in memoriam of lost buddies. He treasured that ring his whole life, and it was a long one, since he lived to the age of 88.

As he grew older, Roberts watched with incredulity as the country for which he’d fought turned its back on the saloon he’d opened upon returning from the war. He had to shutter his saloon, along with his livelihood, when Prohibition was legislated into law. (This was the 1920s version of political correctness, undone when Prohibition was repealed in 1933.)

Roberts’ grandson, Jed, was a teenager when World War I erupted and, though it looked unlikely that the USA world enter a violent squabble between ruling members of an extended European royal family, President Woodrow Wilson reneged on his promise of neutrality and dispatched his “doughboys” to assist the Allies in the struggle against the Central Powers.

Caught up in the patriotic fervor of “the war to end all wars,” Jed, despite his grandfather’s objection, signed up and shipped out.

The night before Jed’s departure for the Western Front, his grandfather presented him with the amethyst ring, a gift intended to serve as a lucky talisman for returning home safely, as Roberts had (albeit minus a leg).

But fate had other plans. Plans that deprived Roberts from ever seeing the ring or his grandson again.

The Meuse-Argonne Offensive (in northeastern France), where 26,000 soldiers were killed, saw to that, as the purge of another generation was underway.

Jed’s boyhood buddy, serving in the same division, hugged him, and begged him not to die. But that’s what Jed did, right there and then, on a cold, muddy, blood-saturated battlefield.

So his buddy, James, tenderly removed the amethyst ring from Jed’s finger and quickly slipped it onto his own. Having survived the battle, and the rest of World War I, James kept the ring as his own—and felt bad about the rest of his life.

He felt especially bad when he had to pawn the ring just to put food on the table after the stock market crashed in October 1929 and he lost his life savings. Or maybe it was his just desserts for keeping the ring.

Let down by the American Dream, like Thomas Roberts before him, James eventually shot himself with his wartime Model 1905 Springfield rifle.

The amethyst ring was by now cursed.

Cursed by war, by death; cursed by humanity at its worst. Or maybe humanity just doing its thing.

The ring sat in that pawnshop throughout the depressed 1930s.

It was eventually purchased by a man named William Stratton, who had played a significant role in manipulating stock prices prior to the crash and had liquidated his investments shortly before the economy collapsed. Stratton bought the ring as a graduation gift for his son, Bill Stratton, Jr., who was nearing the end of his studies at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

Eighteen months later, in December 1941, the Japanese Imperial Navy launched a massive surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, sending shockwaves across the nation and thrusting the United States into World War II, despite President Franklin’s 1940 campaign promise to keep America out of the war while secretly determined to find a “back door” for getting involved.

Feeling a deep sense of duty, Bill Stratton, Jr. enlisted in the U.S. Army, was assigned the rank of First Lieutenant and deployed to the European Theater of Operations to confront Nazi forces.

Again, those who profited from the Second World War, in addition to the copper barons (whose companies produced a much needed metal for weapon production), were Wall Street firms such as J.P. Morgan, which financed the war effort, along with defense contractors including Boeing, General Motors, and Ford.

Alas, young Bill Stratton lost his life in early January 1945 at the densely wooded Ardennes region of Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany in the grueling Battle of the Bulge, the deadliest single battle for American troops—and where 19,000 of them perished.

Billy, who was gay, had developed a deep bond with fellow soldier Joseph Reynolds, to whom he bequeathed, should he die on the battlefield, his most cherished possession, the amethyst ring he wore.

Back home in Chicago after the war, Joe Reynolds grieved the loss of Billy and treasured the amethyst ring.

But when Joe’s younger brother, David, got fired up about serving his country after North Korean forces, backed by the Soviet Union and China, launched a surprise invasion on South Korea, he gave David his ring, believing it was the amethyst that had safeguarded his own life during several brutal battles and, ultimately, allowed him to return home safely when World War II came to an end.

But Joe had misunderstood the haunting curse attached to this amulet.

On the night of September 6-7, 1950, David’s 1st Marine Division found itself ensnared in a treacherous battle near the Naktong River, as North Korean forces launched a relentless assault. In the confusion of darkness and fog of war, a tragic misfortune befell the American troops. For in a grave error, U.S. artillery units inadvertently unleashed a devastating barrage upon their own positions, an unfortunate incident of “friendly fire” that resulted in numerous casualties, young David among them.

Again, those who made big money while young men lost their lives were defense contractors, including Lockheed, Northrup, and Boeing. And also the usual financial institutions and companies that manufactured weapons.

(You beginning to see how this works…?)

David’s personal effects, among them the amethyst ring, found their way back to Joe, who had settled into a reclusive existence, concealing his authentic identity as a gay man from the outside world.

Unable to wear a ring that, in his revised perspective, had taken out the love of his life, Billy, and his younger brother, David, Joe scoured antique markets until he found the right inlaid wooden box. In it, he placed the amethyst ring along with a handwritten note that poignantly described the torments of war this ring had witnessed, along with his own personal torment.

You see, Joe’s knowledge of the horrors of modern warfare extended far beyond his experiences in the European Theater. His expertise as an electrical engineer had earned him a place in a top secret military assignment, prompting a transfer from Europe in the early spring of 1945 to the desolate landscapes of New Mexico.

A few months later, on 16 July 1945, Joe stood witness to a momentous and chilling event that took place in the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico: The detonation of the first atomic bomb, codenamed Trinity.

At the relatively young age of 41, Joe succumbed to leukemia, a merciless cancer of the blood that had likely taken root due to his being exposed to hazardous radiation from Trinity.

The solemn duty of sorting through Joe’s possessions landed in the hands of his nephew, Daniel Mitchell, the only child of Joe’s sister, Sarah. As Daniel uncovered the wooden box containing an amethyst ring and the accompanying handwritten note, he found himself deeply moved by the revelation of his uncle’s hidden truth, as well as the solemn legacy attached to the ring.

Daniel had the distinction of being among the pioneering members of the Peace Corps when it was inaugurated on March 1st, 1961. On the very day he joined up, David removed the amethyst ring from its wooden box and, with a sense of purpose and irony, placed it on his finger, determined to transform the ring’s destiny from one associated with war to a symbol of peace.

In 1962, when the first wave of Peace Corps volunteers landed in South Vietnam, Daniel Mitchell was among them. They were involved in activities related to education, public health, agriculture, and community development. Daniel found himself in a remote village, devoting his energies to enhancing the health and overall welfare of the local populace.

The primitive living conditions and constant exposure to tropical diseases exacted a toll on Daniel’s own immune system. One day he fell gravely ill. Unfortunately, the nearest medical facility equipped to provide specialized care was a considerable distance away. Daniel’s condition worsened during the journey, and it was with heavy hearts that his companions witnessed his passing.

Daniel’s personal belongings, among them the amethyst ring, were returned to his grieving parents, John and Sarah Mitchell. To them the ring became a cherished memento, symbolizing their son’s commitment to making a positive impact on the world. They placed the ring inside a special keepsake box with a photograph of Daniel at work in Vietnam, making a difference, along with his Peace Corps service medal.

Two decades passed. And then one day the Mitchells’ house was burgled while they were away on vacation. The unknown thief made off with a cachet of valuables, among them, the treasured amethyst ring.

The thief, never caught, needed money for his drug addiction. He sold it for cheap to a local jeweler, who quickly fenced it to an antique store in Berkeley Springs, West Virginia.

That is where Margaret Johnson, on a leisurely day trip from McLean, Virginia, happened upon the ring. Quite delighted by her “lucky” find, she added it to her growing collection of antique jewelry and historical artifacts.

Margaret was so taken by the ring, she occasionally wore it on her forefinger, and decided to bring it with her on a business trip to Beirut. Margaret’s business was intelligence, and she lived just down the road from her office in Langley, Virginia, where she served on the Middle East Desk at the headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Margaret had been concerned about her upcoming trip to the Lebanese capital, her first time abroad—and her anxiety is what compelled her to take along the amethyst ring, which she perceived as a lucky talisman and guardian angel to ensure her safety.

But tragedy struck on 18 April 1983 when a suicide bomber launched a devastating attack on the U.S. Embassy in Beirut.

Sixty-three souls were lost that day, among them, Margaret Johnson.

The amethyst ring, still firmly affixed to Margaret’s finger, though not connected to a hand, was uncovered by an FBI special agent, part of a forensics team tasked to sift through rubble at the embassy crime scene.

The ring was sent back to Washington, D.C., cataloged, traced and eventually returned to Margaret Johnson’s grieving parents. However, the tragic loss of their only daughter was too painful for them to bear, and the ring, a reminder of her misfortune, was too painful for them to keep,

So the Johnsons donated their late daughter’s ring to a fundraising auction at the private high school in Potomac, Maryland, that Margaret had so happily attended.

The winning bid for the ring was placed by Richard Anderson, whose son, Andrew, was in his final year at the same school.

Andrew was a shy, sensitive student with an introspective nature during his high school years. Following graduation, he spent a couple years in college before dropping out. He was in the midst of trying to find himself when 9/11 happened.

Driven by a surge of patriotic fervor, Andrew allowed himself to be recruited by the U.S. Marines and, soon after, found himself serving within the ranks of the 1st battalion, 23rd marines. It wasn’t long before this battalion got deployed to action.

Their mission?

The invasion of Iraq with the purported goal of eliminating weapons of mass destruction—weapons that, it would later be revealed, Iraq did not possess. The intelligence findings that had preceded their mission had been artfully, and perhaps intentionally, misconstrued by political leaders who were determined to engage in military confrontation.

Did it matter to them that thousands of young American lives would be snuffed out?

Apparently not.

The company that profited most from this war—to the tune of $39.5 billion dollars—was Halliburton, whose former chairman, Dick Cheney, as Vice President of the United States, orchestrated the war on Iraq.

Stationed in Fallujah, Andrew was tasked with clearing buildings that had been identified as insurgent strongholds, in an area known for intense urban warfare. At one such building, Andrew was first through the door—and cut down by intense enemy fire. His comrades provided medical aid and evacuated Andrew from the building. But the severity of his injuries proved overwhelming.

As had been the fate of others before him who ‘d worn the amethyst ring, Andrew was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery.

Let us pause here for a moment to honor those mentioned above. And to consider the heartache their untimely deaths caused parents, spouses, children, and friends.

Today, I find myself in possession of the amethyst ring.

It was an inheritance bestowed upon me by the mother of a college acquaintance whose life was tragically cut short at a tender age. I don’t know what I did to deserve it, other than comforting a mother who’d lost her only son with the occasional phone call on Thanksgiving and Christmas.

But life is like that.

This ring is locked away in a safe place, not worn, and never going to war again.

I know better than to gift it to one of my grandsons—or to anyone else.

My advice to them—and to everyone—is simple: Never, ever sign up for a war, no matter what patriotic pap is preached by politicians.

Because unless our nation’s political and military leaders are prepared to personally lead troops into battle (along with sending their own children or grandchildren into the fray), my advice to everyone is just say no and don’t give it a second thought.

Never make your lives expendable—in the guise of nationalism or religion—for satisfying the hubris of narcissists and the greed of compatriots who would profit from the blood shed by those who represent the future of their country.

The amethyst ring, to the best of my ability, will be kept locked away and will never again grace the finger of a young innocent whose leaders so willingly and callously (and sometimes erroneously) send our youth to be slaughtered in foreign lands just to bolster the corrupt foreign regimes they endorse.

There is no glory in war.

Only horror.

And now onto Veteran’s Day, also known as Armistice Day, which was created when the so-called “war to end all wars” came to an end on the 11th minute of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month after 9,700,000 military personnel and 10,000,000 civilians were killed.

Far too many veterans have been left disillusioned by this nation, whose citizenry are too often ungrateful to those who made unspeakable sacrifices, having relinquished their limbs or their sanity so that Americans might sleep sounder at night.

Should you encounter a veteran today, or any day, extend a warm embrace as a token of gratitude for their willingness to step into the harrowing abyss on your behalf.

And if that veteran you meet happens to be among the homeless, a sadly common plight in these tragic times, consider dipping into your wallet and offering a meal. If their preference leans toward a pack of cigarettes and a pint of whisky, so be it, don’t hesitate to provide small comforts for easing their pain.

Above all, be respectful.

Each and every veteran who has borne the weight of war deserves a measure of your esteem far beyond the politicians and bureaucrats who sheltered themselves behind desks while issuing orders for yet wider and ever-bloodier conflicts.

Note: While the amethyst ring in my possession genuinely dates from the U.S. Civil War, the story I crafted around this heirloom is a work of fiction based on factual wartime battles.

When Harry S Truman was President of the United States he was famous for having said, “If you want a friend in Washington, get a dog.”

This statement can be applied to just any geographic locations. A canine’s love is unconditional. They are the angels of the universe.

Lulu, my chihuahua and spiritual adviser, was literally handed off to me as I left a bar 16 years ago this month. One moment she’s in the arms of Queen Barb, who’d rescued her from a large litter in the wine valley and was temporarily looking after her, the next moment, this tiny pup, not much larger than a rat, was pressing against my midsection.

I got behind the steering wheel of my car and she proceeded to gnaw away at my knuckles, as if to say, Who are you and where the hell do you think you’re taking me?

I drove her around the corner to my house, expecting this situation to be a joke that would be remedied next day when I returned her to Barb. Little did I know this feisty chihuahua would be bloodying my knuckles for the next three months.

Unable to access the keys in my pocket after pulling into the driveway because my hands were full of Italian takeout and pooch, I rang the doorbell. Both my daughters, expecting pizza and pasta, squealed with delight when they opened the door and beheld our surprise dinner guest.

Two other family dogs, so-called chihuahuas without pedigree (one turned out to be a miniature huskie, the other, part skunk), became frenzied with excitement over their unexpected brethren, who fiercely objected to their entreaties and held her own with snarls and sharp teeth.

My reward for scooping her up to assist an escape from her predicament was a new series of punctures on my knuckles.

My daughters implored me to keep her—at least for a short while.

A short while turned into a long while. And even after three months I remained indifferent to the chihuahua we named Lulu, though she refused to answer to her name. So when she got sick and refused to eat or leave her bed, I was indifferent to her plight, assuming she’d get over it. It was my mother who intervened the day after Christmas and insisted I take her to a vet.

The only veterinary hospital open for emergencies over the holidays was 30 minutes away in Ventura. And so, with Lulu cuddled quietly on my lap (no knuckle gnarling), we drove there and waited four long hours while the vet conducted a series of tests. It was serious. Due to whatever bug she’d picked up, Lulu had become severely dehydrated.

Ultimately, all the vet could do was shoot her full of water until she had a large hump on her back like a camel.

“Shall I leave her with you overnight?” I asked, feeling bad and striving for the best care possible.

They shrugged. “Won’t matter. She’ll either make it through the night or she won’t.”

That stunned me.

I drove Lulu home. Next morning she was still alive—and even up and about. She had survived.

And something interesting happened. To us both. Understanding, it seemed, that her life had been spared, Lulu’s aggressive disposition toward me—toward life in general—changed completely.

No more gnawing and bloodying my hands. She was suddenly appreciative of the life she was living.

And I, reflecting her appreciation, found a place deep in my heart for her.

Lulu has enjoyed several lives since then. We almost lost her on two occasions to bee stings.

Her response to getting stung the first time was to crawl off and die somewhere. I looked everywhere and finally found her panting heavily under bushes in a secluded far off corner of the garden. I rushed her to the vet for a shot of Benadryl.

And then there was the mudslide in the. early hours of January 9th, 2018, when she’d disappeared for several hours, presumed buried.

From my post on the mudslide:

One canine, having instinctively made a beeline up the stairs mottled in mud, was accounted for; the other was not. Armed with a flashlight, which quickly muddied and died, I waded through cold, slimy and debris-filled mud into the den looking for Lulu. I thought I could hear her whimpering.

Twice, I descended into the mud to search for her. After a short rest I returned a third time, climbing over furniture, holding onto hope I would find her, in the process not realizing that my legs were being shredded by sharp debris: mostly parts of trees or broken glass. At one point I lost my footing, slipped and became almost entirely submerged, just barely able to keep my head from going under. Had that happened, I would surely not be telling this story.

Ultimately, I returned upstairs empty-handed and full of sorrow, believing poor Lulu had been buried alive in her doggie bed beneath three feet of mud, maybe never knew what hit her.

As dawn broke, the rescuers returned, ready to evacuate all of us. They entered from two parts of the house, axing their way in.

One of them hollered, "You have a little dog?"

"Yes," I hollered back. “He’s here upstairs."

"No, down here."

I could hardly believe my ears. “A little tan dog?”

“Got it in my arms.”

I had been grieving the loss of Lulu, certain she was gone forever. She’d somehow scampered onto one of the chairs or sofas wedged up against the walls. Somehow, being reunited with her made everything all right.

Eighteen months ago Lulu joined me on a cross-country road trip, partly as a nod to John Steinbeck and his classic Travels with Charley, and partly because I would never think of leaving her behind.

Lulu was the perfect travel companion: No agenda, aside from sniffing, doing biz, and two square meals a day. As for baggage: A doggie bed, fleece blanket and portable water dish. Oh, and a bag of Jack Link’s Original Beef Jerky. (She wouldn’t go near a meal unless it was flecked with jerky.)

Lulu was already elderly by then—almost 15.

Since then, she’s been on two other lengthy road trips, one the Oregon, the other to Wyoming—the latter, earlier this summer.

In the end, it was old age that claimed Lulu. She was deaf, mostly blind from cataracts, and suffering from bad teeth and tummy issues. Once feisty, in her final days hurting, frightened, and vulnerable.

With a lump in my throat tear in my eye, and a final stroll on Butterfly Beach, the time had come to part.

Farewell, my spiritual adviser and road trip companion.

There’s nothing quite like London on a sunny day—especially in late August, when the streets are calm, the light lingers, and the days are long.

And no finer city in which to party with my mother, where she was born in Putney, 100 years ago.

Morning begins with brunch at the Sunday Farmers’ Market in Marylebone: a scallop, bacon, and truffle sandwich savored amid a hustle-bustle of flowers, fresh fruit, and fragrant produce.

Next, we head to Saint Etheldreda’s in Farringdon for a Latin choir mass, its famed stained glass casting a kaleidoscopic glow.

Then a meandering stroll—from Covert Garden through charming Soho and into elegant Mayfair…

And finally to “Happy” Hampstead, where the birthday bash begins: a gathering rich in warmth and laughter, a banquet crafted by master chefs, flowing champagne—and most of all, my mother—surrounded by her proliferating progeny of sons, daughters-in-law, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Oh, and yes—there was even a letter of congratulations from the King and Queen.

Excerpted from Unstuck—a nonfiction work-in-progress about spiritual road tripping.

It starts like this:

If there is a recurring sub-theme in this text it is Mark Twain, the spiritual mentor of the Clubhouse on Wheels (COW) and my road trip journeys.

My first road trip in the COW was to Angels Camp in the Sierra Nevada mountains where a young Sam Clemens went “slinking” to escape humiliation after a newspaper story went wrong and, while drinking in a bar, overheard a story about a jumping frog that he wrote up as The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.

Its publication many months later in the New York Saturday Press put him on the map as a humorist and a speaker.

And then driving with my friend Curt through the American heartland we rolled into Missouri where Clemens was born.

A couple years later I visited the gothic castle Sam built in Hartford when that city teemed not with insurance executives (worse than used car salesmen) but with writers and publishers.

This is the house where Clemens spent his happiest days until his favorite daughter Susy died here at the tender age of 24 from spinal meningitis.

Sam was in Britain when that happened, resting after a worldwide lecture tour he’d undertaken to buy himself out of bankruptcy. That’s where he learned losing all your money is not the worst thing that can happen in life.

On this dank New England day I seat myself on a porch among ethereal traces of Sam and his family, a gloomy estate encapsulated by a soulless city of actuaries and underwriters, before wandering around a museum gift shop with all the usual trinkets and trash.

Onward we roll, into Massachusetts, spilling into Lowell, the birthplace of Jack Kerouac whose 1957 book On the Road was my early inspiration.

Five years earlier I’d wandered Denver with Van Stein looking for Jack’s ghost.

I pictured myself in a Denver bar that night, with all the gang, and in their eyes I would be strange and ragged and like the Prophet who has walked across the land to bring the dark Word, and the only Word I had was "Wow!" (On the Road)

A week after that, the artist and I ventured to San Francisco’s North Beach to visit City Lights Bookstore where Kerouac and the Beats congregated, especially across the alley inside Vesuvio, a landmark bar where they drank.

And now here I am in Jack’s hometown (“a Lowell point,” wits my friend Howard, gawking glumly at the grim city streets), better known these days for boarded-up diners, tattoo parlors and addiction problems—like so many small towns across the country 25 years into the 21st century.

Lowell is also where Kerouac’s bones rest eternal beneath a simple gravestone in Edson Cemetery on Lincoln between Seventh and Eight, littered with items left by pilgrims: a Jack Daniel’s miniature, a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon, a shot glass emblazoned with Jesus, a lot of pens. I leave a wooden nickel, good for a free beer at the bar I once owned.

But now, like Kerouac himself, a ghost.

A more recent memorial wall nearby is engraved with this inscription: “The Road is Life.”

Meaning: Enjoy the ride; the destination for everyone is the same.

Jack’s 30 Writing Tips:

This column appeared in the Santa Barbara News-Press in November 2022.

Only Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., the author of mostly satirical and darkly humorous novels including Slaughterhouse-Five, has the best answer I ever heard about why you can’t go home: 

“Where is home?  It’s Indianapolis when I was nine years old.  I had a brother and a sister, a cat and a dog and a mother and a father and uncles and aunts.  And there’s no way I can get there again.”

Vonnegut is why I became a writer and he became a writer because of Mark Twain, and both believed as Humanists that the universe is a crock and that humanity, said Vonnegut, “is here just to fart around.” 

It was my friend and author T.C. Boyle, when we ran into one another at a Colorado airport as I was on the rebound from looking up Hunter S. Thompson’s ghost in Woody Creek, who suggested I seek Vonnegut’s spirit at the Red Key Tavern, Kurt’s local hangout in Indianapolis and maybe where he found the inspiration to write my favorite fiction book in high school, The Sirens of Titan, about which I scribbled on Thanksgiving Day 27 November 1972, “Wow, that Vonnegut book is so weird.  It is one of the best books I’ve ever read… unbelievably fantastic… I’d sure love to have a discussion with Vonnegut someday.”

The Sirens of Titan awakened me to reading and thinking and learning.

One is Doubles

Just five days after penning that journal entry in ’72, I awoke from a dream with the phrase “one is doubles, one is doubles, one is doubles” reverberating within my skull, and, in my mind (according to my journal), I attributed “one is doubles” to Vonnegut, who was supposed to appear at the American School in London and speak to my creative writing class, an event I greatly anticipated and felt hugely let down when he failed to appear. I’d wanted to ask him the meaning of “one is doubles.”  (The principal’s staff whispered that he’d been distracted by his mistress that dark drizzly day or hungover and perhaps seeing… double.)

Our paths (Vonnegut’s and mine) crossed twice, fleetingly, about ten years apart.  

The first time, in New York City, took place in 1988 after I’d lunched at a French brasserie with Doubleday editorial bigwig David Gernert and, as he and I stood outside Jean Lafitte on West 58th Street wrapping up our book publishing discussion, I looked left toward Avenue of the Americas and observed a familiar-looking figure weaving on the pavement toward us.

Is that…? I thought to myself.  “Is that Kurt Vonnegut?” I vocalized to Gernert while motioning with my eyes.

He turned and studied the zombie-like figure and replied, “Yeah.”

As Kurt neared I discerned his eyes were low and glazed with booze, and since his footing was unsure I whispered to Gernert, “I think he’s drunk.”

Although David was a seasoned editor who worked with some of the best-known authors of the time, he was as awed as I by Vonnegut’s proximity to us.  

I should have said something to Kurt and with hindsight I know exactly what: “May I buy you a drink?”  We might have gone into Jean Lafitte and at its bar gotten to the bottom of “one is doubles.”

The second time our paths crossed was at Crown Super Store in McLean, Virginia where Mr. Vonnegut appeared on 25 October 1997 to sign copies of his final book, Timequake.  

Upon entering, I discovered that a queue to reach him snaked around three aisles and realized there was no point joining it because the time allocated for this event would soon expire and Kurt’s temperament would not allow him to stay a second longer than commitment required. So I stood and watched him from a distance.  He was animated that day and smiled affably for the occasional snapshot taken by a fan.

Turtle Bay

A few years after Vonnegut died, in 2007, I was on a journey from The Exorcist steps in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. to Salem, Massachusetts chasing the devil with my artist friend and, after dropping in on Edgar Allan Poe’s gravesite in Baltimore, we decided on impulse to overnight in Manhattan and look up Vonnegut’s haunts.  

We began by visiting Kurt’s last home at 228 East 48th Street, a brownstone in a neighborhood called Turtle Bay where he lived for a couple decades and where he died a few days after tripping on his dog’s leash and tumbling down the steps.

Vonnegut would walk Flour every day to nearby Dag Hammarskjold Plaza and sit upon a favorite bench to smoke cigarettes, read newspapers, watch humanity fart around and stare inward hoping not to be recognized. (All he needed to do was shave his signature mustache… but perhaps he secretly liked being noticed.)

After visiting the park we searched for Kurt’s favorite restaurant armed only with a few clues provided by an old British newspaper interview:  Italian, Second Avenue, walking distance from his brownstone, a Ralph Steadman drawing on the wall. 

Pescatore seemed right but it was Spanish. The maître d’ pointed me to Lasagna, corner of 50th Street and Second Avenue.

Standing in the doorway I could not see a Steadman drawing, but as I turned to leave a swarthy man tapped my shoulder and said, “This is the place—he came here every day, lunch and dinner.”

It was uncanny that he knew my mission.  

“But where is the Steadman drawing?” 

“We re-did the place a couple of years ago.  It’s in the back office.”

“What did Vonnegut drink?”

“Dewar’s on the rocks.”

“Do it.”  

And I ordered his favorite meal:  a Caesar salad and linguine with clam sauce. 

From Vonnegut’s favorite table against the wall the artist and I surveyed the scene.   “We should ask to see the cartoon,” he said.

Five seconds later, before we had a chance to ask, the manager reappeared with the Steadman drawing, which turned out to be a caricature of Vonnegut himself.  

“Usually, he would come on his own,” the manager told us.  “And he’d sit by the bar, back to the wall.  If anyone tried to approach he would raise both hands close to his face and wave them away.”

We ate solemnly in a kind of séance seeking Vonnegut’s presence.

After dinner we returned to Kurt’s brownstone in the dark. As we stood outside his final home, it became clear his spirit wanted nothing to do with a pair of scruffy adventurers and he did not appear in any way, shape or form.

Death had not changed this Humanist’s desire to be left alone.

London

Fast-forward four years when I fly to London with my buddy Curt.

Arriving at the Cavendish Hotel on Jermyn Street my mind boggles when Curt steps from the elevator to claim his room, 1111, which, with a space in the middle, pops from the door (directly across from the elevator) as 11 11, an image that solves my 45 year-old “one is doubles” dream riddle.

In my own room I excitedly consult several websites and learn that 11:11 is a sign of awakening “a key to unlock the subconscious mind” with a message to “be more aware than usual because a spiritual presence is reaching out.”

Indy

A couple of years after that, on a road trip with friends that landed me in Nashville, I realized that Indianapolis was not far away and decided to leave the group and solo north for my pilgrimage to Vonnegut’s hometown. 

I tried my luck finding a car and driver through a local cab company, wishing to avoid the car rental rigmarole:  Ninety bucks an hour both ways, figure a grand. I said to the gal, “That’s ridiculous.  Isn’t there anyone who’ll do it for a fair price?”

She apologized, no.

A couple minutes later a text came in: “Hello I just spoke to you… how much were you thinking?  And when? I may know someone...”

Someone turned out to be herself and we negotiated an agreeable price. 

Nashville (my nickname for the driver) was pleasant and efficient and we zoomed northward toward autumn, mercury falling, rainclouds gathering.  A glittery fairy that looked like Tinkerbelle dangled from Nashville’s rearview mirror…

…so I knew I was in good hands as we ripped past Abe Lincoln’s birthplace in Hodgenville, Kentucky and Hunter S. Thompson’s in Louisville—and four hours later rounded into the forecourt of the old Severin Hotel, built by Kurt Vonnegut’s grandfather, Bernard, who shaped the Indianapolis skyline with his landmark architecture.

I dumped my bags and we carried on to Red Key Tavern, Kurt’s old hangout.

We discovered it wouldn’t be open till four o’clock and there was no time to waste so we rolled back toward the city center and passed Crown Cemetery where the Vonnegut clan is buried, all except Kurt whose whereabouts remain a mystery though I suspect his ashes were spread near his tribe.  

I’d read about this graveyard but hadn’t placed it on my itinerary, yet here it was anyway and Nashville, sharing the spirit of my adventure, glided her vehicle through the gateway. And so, on this gray moody day, we cruised the Vonnegut family’s final neighborhood.  

Kurt Vonnegut Museum & Library

Downtown Indianapolis was quiet on Sunday and Vonnegut’s tidy memorial library was even quieter, Nashville and I its only visitors.  

On display: Vonnegut’s electric typewriter, reading glasses and his last pack of Pall Malls (found hidden on a bookshelf after his death).  

Thereafter Nashville dropped me at the Severin and I launched solo to Bluebeard, a restaurant named after one of Vonnegut’s novels and whose decor featured vintage typewriters and hence is not overdone as a theme but subtle and discreet, an emphasis on what emanates from the kitchen: the best Caesar salad I’ve ever eaten and one dollar apiece “pink” oysters on the half-shell.  

Finishing up, I realized I was not done, that I must revisit Red Key Tavern while open—and even better in the dark.

Not 30 minutes later, I’m sitting at the long bar nursing pale ale and coaxing Kurt’s spirit to manifest. 

After draining my glass I aim for Vonnegut’s childhood homestead nearby and alight from the cab into darkness and quietude.  

The house is vacant and lonely and, I gather, haunted by Vonnegut and his siblings.  

I didn’t know this for certain until next morning when I lightened my pitch-black digital photographs to reveal a single orb hanging between tree branches… and then… another photo with three distinct orbs hanging around the front yard, checking me out.  

I smiled. Kurt Vonnegut had found a way after all to get back home with his siblings.

Happy 102nd birthday, Kurt, born on 11/11… or… “one is doubles.”

This is reposted from the Santa Barbara News-Press (May 2019).

From the time he was a little boy, in the 1920s, he collected postage stamps.

And when he grew older and went off to war, along with most others of his generation, he continued to collect stamps wherever in the world he happened to be, and mailed them home to his parents and sister for adding to his collection.

My uncle’s other passion was flying.

On the night of 29 February 1944, at the tender age of 21, my uncle flew a B-24 Liberator on a mission over Burma.

His plane got hit by anti-aircraft fire.

My uncle ordered the crew to bail out and most of them did, sailing by parachute to the ground. They were captured by Japanese soldiers and held as POWs for the duration of World War II.

Because two of his crewmen were wounded, Flight Lieutenant Edward James Douglas Stanley chose to stay at the controls of his plane, hoping to crash-land them to safety.

But the plane disappeared and was believed to have crashed near Rangoon.

My mother was only 18 when her brother was reported missing in action.  Every week she wrote letters to The War Office and the Royal Air Force begging for information.   

They never answered her, and she resolved that none of her three sons would ever go to war if she had anything to say about it.

Refusing to give up hope, my grandmother kept my uncle’s possessions—including the skin of a python he discovered slithering inside his tent when based in India—lest her son return.   

In the mid-1990s, a decade after my grandmother died, someone who had extensively researched my uncle’s doomed flight contacted me.  He primarily wanted to know what had become of my uncle’s family but also wanted to share his findings, which, while detailed, did not pinpoint the remains of my missing uncle though confirmed that he had most certainly perished.

What this fellow really wanted most, he told me after we became acquainted, was to organize a memorial service at St. Clement Danes, the RAF church. I assisted with both moral and financial support and the result was a poignant Service of Celebration and Thanksgiving attended by my mother (and father), for whom, after more than half-a-century, it was a kind of closure.         

Later that day, my mother gifted me with her brother’s stamp collection.

Three years ago, I visited London as part of a mystical journey I’ve been on and I asked a muse who guided me during part of that trip to take me on an adventure by subway, ideally to some part of the British capital I’d never been before.

At Green Park tube station, our starting point, she led me to an eastbound platform, onto a train, off a train, onto another, and joked about going to the end of the line and getting lost in Epping Forest, which would have been fine by me.

But that’s not what happened.

She chose for us to alight at Chancery Lane—not 200 yards from St. Clement Danes, the RAF church—and ascend to Lincoln’s Inn, where the law was born six centuries ago.

Two symbols (messages from the universe) immediately caught my attention: A prominent old clock set into bricks and mortar (now’s the time, it said to me)…

…and a prominent weathervane (follow the wind)…

…and soon—at the muse’s invitation—I was inside the round Temple Church, a place of worship built in 1195 by the Knights Templar, a medieval order created to protect Christian pilgrims and which also invented the West’s first banking system.

Prominently engraved upon Temple Church’s marble floor: 

Climbing the spiral stairs to an upper gallery I noticed they were decorated with ornate tiles depicting Pegasus, the mythical winged “horse of muses” that symbolizes the harnessing of magic in the material world.  

And then, outside Temple Church, this mythical horse was everywhere around us:  a bar relief on a wall, a medallion on a gate, a metal sculpture, even a café called Pegasus—the running theme of a neighborhood chosen by the muse.

Pegasus was the “nose-art” nickname of the B-24 Liberator my uncle flew.

My mother also gave me my uncle’s python skin, which I took to a master bookbinder for crafting into journals.

Snakes, because they shed and grow a new skin, symbolize renewal.

Renewal is what happens after wars end, the dead are counted and people try to move forward with their lives, as painful as that may be if a loved one has been lost.

My muse walked me to the Golden Jubilee Bridge.

“I’m leaving you now,” she said.  “Cross the bridge.” 

And I did, leaving me to muse the symbolism of bridges: progress, unity—and a spiritual “crossing over” to the other side.

And so, on Memorial Day, I’m thinking of the uncle I never met.

And saying a prayer for those who, in the service of their country, crossed over so that others could renew their lives in freedom.

This column, about losing a best friend, was published in the Santa Barbara News-Press on 3 April 2022.

It is never easy to put your dog down. Whatever the illness, whatever age, your canine companion is the soul who loves and trusts you more than any other in the world, unconditionally.

Don’t believe me?

Lock your spouse (or some other human being) and your dog in a closet overnight. When you let them out next morning, who’s happy to see you?

Reilly (Ace of Spies) was supposed to be a chihuahua—or at least that’s what the pet store (long gone) in Malibu Mart billed him to be. 

I told my daughter, then 12, as we drove from Montecito to Malibu almost 16 years ago, we would return home with a canine only if it truly seemed the right fit, don’t be disappointed if that doesn’t happen.

However, it was clear the moment we walked through the door that Reilly was not only our dog, but had actually been awaiting our arrival, his head swinging back and forth as we entered, his facial features brightening as if to say, “What took you?”

He was born (according to his papers) a couple months earlier in Oklahoma, presumably trucked to California, which might explain his lifelong nervousness about taking road trips.

Reilly was tiny, like a chihuahua, though his markings suggested he might be part raccoon, part weasel, maybe part bat.

As he grew out of puppyhood, he also grew larger. In fact, it took me over ten years to figure out his true breed, mostly because I’d never known of its existence: Miniature Siberian Husky.

He possessed astonishing eyes, awed by all who crossed paths with him.  And, while dogs won’t usually look you in the eye, Reilly could hold a steady eye gaze. In fact, I learned from him the art of the eyeball lock, along with living fully in the moment, as dogs naturally do.

“Ace of Spies”

Wily Reilly was named after the so called “Ace of Spies,” Sidney Rosenblum, whose motto was “Trust No One” and who was executed by the Bolsheviks after getting tricked into trusting a bogus anti-Soviet organization called, of all things, “The Trust.”

(I was in the midst of wrapping up a five-year stint as spymaster to Prince Albert II of Monaco, so the spy biz was very much part of my psyche.)

Although a very gentle soul, who greeted any newcomer with a tail wag and an actual smile, Reilly could be vicious if he felt threatened and, in his doggy mind, those who threatened him were veterinarians. He bit at least one, others refused to take him as a patient—and about ten years ago I stopped taking him for checkups altogether on the basis that he would henceforth live his life out his way, without vets—and if he developed some illness or other, well, we’d allow him his Christian Scientist beliefs. No more vaccines, teeth cleanings, nothing.

In fact, despite the absence of regular medical care, Reilly surpassed the expected 14-15 year-range associated with his breed.

But, sure enough, as he eclipsed that higher mark, Reilly began to fail. For a start, he would no longer (or could no longer) jump up on a chair or couch. Probably arthritic legs. And then, about six months ago, his back legs began to shake, a palsy of some kind. Reilly seemed bewildered, not understanding old age, but also bordering on canine cognitive decline, a genuine syndrome akin to dementia.  Pretty soon his legs would simply collapse beneath him and he’d struggle to remain his composure, seemingly embarrassed if we were watching, trying his best to maintain. Meantime, he could no longer hear much of anything beyond a shout.

Clearly, Reilly was in discomfort and dying. But now, bereft of his presence, the above only seems like a host of excuses for me to do what I would have preferred not to do.

I honestly did not think Reilly would make it through last Christmas, though he did.

My big hope was that I would not have to put him down; that one morning I would enter the room where he slept and find that he had peacefully transcended into permanent slumber.

But the days and weeks went on and, soon, Reilly could no longer go outside for a walk.  He wanted to.  He tried. But—so un-Reilly—just a few steps out the door, he would turn around and shuffle back inside.

I consulted a local vet who told me about a mobile unit that comes to your home to euthanize. It seemed the right way to go because had I taken him to the vet’s, he would likely go nuts. Literally. His last time at the vet’s, years earlier, his eyeballs practically popped from their sockets as he burst blood vessels in his eyes.

The End Nears

The vet recommended a medication called Gabapentin as a sedative, to be provided before the mobile unit’s arrival.

For his last supper, a family member went to Vons and bought a filet mignon steak, which he cooked rare and fed to Reilly, who enjoyed every bite—then two hours later upchucked the whole meal, completely undigested.

We wanted to take Reilly to Butterfly, which he loved and was once the fastest dog on that beach, outrunning everything on legs (to hell with their leash ordinance).

But just being picked up for placement in the car had become too painful for Reilly and it seemed to me if we put him through such an ordeal it would be to make us feel better, not Reilly.

So instead, we lavished him with love and affection and treats and the hours passed slowly until the mobile unit pulled up outside.

With Covid still a concern (to some), we set Reilly’s bed outside on a patio in the open air.

Reilly, wily to the end, sensed something was up (the Gabapentin had hardly any effect on him), a fact confirmed by the arrival of a pair of women suited in protective clothing, armed with a bag of un-speakables.

First step is an opioid injection to tranquilize.

For this a muzzle was needed because Reilly became agitated.

I’m convinced he knew what was going on; what was going to happen. His survival instinct was so strong there was no way he would give up the ghost without a tussle, God bless him.

After my first attempt at trying to slip the muzzle around his snout, he let out an almost human howl, which to my ears sounded like, “Aww, please don’t do this.”

It broke my heart.  It is broken still. Thinking about it now, putting this experience into perspective, into the written word, my eyes fill with tears.

]The first injection did its work. Reilly was now resigned to his fate and, in any case, paralyzed to do anything more about it, his tongue hanging limply from his mouth.

Five minutes later, another hot of opioid. He seemed already gone when that took hold, his eyes placid, perhaps unable to move. 

And then the lethal serum, injected into a shaved part of his lower leg.

A poignant moment ensued as Lulu, our genuine chihuahua, drew up nose-to-nose to sniff her brother, a final farewell. (I would include this pic but it is just too sad.)

As the poison coursed through his system, Reilly took his last few breaths.

And then he was gone. 

And with him, a piece of my heart that can never be replaced.

Update: Yesterday I finally released Reilly’s spirit to the beach he loved so much.

This column was published in the Santa Barbara News-Press on 25 July 2021.

8 January 2018

I got into bed that Monday evening and saw an extraordinary image on the ceiling over me.  I tried to find the source of projection that might somehow explain its inexplicable presence but could find nothing.  So, I grabbed my camera and snapped a photo, which I soon forgot given the dramatic events that would take place a few hours later. 

Those in the mandatory evacuation zone had departed for hotels; most of those, like myself, who were merely in the warning zone, chose to remain in their homes, weary from having evacuated for ten days a month earlier due to the Thomas Fire that blew upward from Ventura and rained ashes down upon us.

At about 3:45 a.m. I lay awake, listening to the rain that pounded on my roof.  Suddenly the earth began to shudder. This thought occurred to me:  On top of a torrential rain storm on the heels of a recent wildfire, are we now having an earthquake? Only in California…

I slipped out of bed, took a few steps to the French doors facing north toward the mountains and pushed the curtains aside. Astonishingly, an avalanche of muddy water was rushing down my garden straight at me, illuminated by a surreal night sky aglow in orange and yellow.

This was a real-life disaster movie a la Indiana Jones. (I wish I’d been wearing his costume).

I quickly turned and, within several steps, dirty water smashed through the doors behind me.  Within seconds I was knee-deep in cold, slimy mud.

I grabbed my five-year old grandson, who had been camping out with me, handed him off to his mother, my younger daughter, who moments earlier had awakened and looked out her upper floor window and seen, as had I, what looked to be an apocalypse poised to consume us.  Furry critters below (she later told me) frantically raced in all directions and up trees in their mostly futile attempt to escape a cataclysmic mud-and-debris-slide-in-progress.

All this was happening in the darkness of night, no lights to switch on due to a power outage, amid bursts of lightning and thunder punctuating the eerie orange glow, which I later learned had been caused by a gas explosion that blew up several houses and took lives.

We were lucky to have an upper floor suite in our home; many ranch-style houses in our neighborhood that were similarly invaded by mud did not. 

Moments later, another flow of mud and debris burst through the glass doors on the other side of our house, into the open-plan kitchen/living room, launching furniture in all directions and lodging sofas and stuffed armchairs and tables into the oddest place.

We were not at ground zero. We were at double ground zero. Two flows merged into one.

Dressed only in boxer shorts and a pair of Merrell Jungle Mocs I'd somehow managed to slip around my feet, I stood dazed and disbelieving, waist deep in mud and sludge.

One canine, having instinctively made a beeline up the stairs mottled in mud, was accounted for; the other was not. Armed with a flashlight, which quickly muddied and died, I waded through cold, slimy and debris-filled mud into the den looking for Lulu.  I thought I could hear her whimpering.  When the whimpers went silent I returned to the mud-filled foyer to try to open the front door, a presumed escape for my family members and me.

Of course, the heavy door would not budge as the rising, thickening mud pressured it to remain shut. And good thing, because in my muddled thinking (and having no idea what was out there), trying to leave the house would have been the dumbest move of all—and quite likely fatal.  Had I managed to open the door, the resulting high-pressure flow of mud would have taken me to join a 15-foot river of debris and carry me a quarter mile to Interstate 101, by then transformed into a lake—or further beyond, to the ocean. (A friend of mine, I later learned, suffered this horrifying fate—along with many others—for doing just that. She was identified only by her fingerprints.)

Instead, I returned to the den to try to find Lulu.

After a short rest upstairs, I returned a third time, climbing over furniture, holding onto hope I would find her, in the process not realizing that my legs were being shredded by sharp debris: mostly parts of trees or broken glass.  At one point I lost my footing, slipped and became almost entirely submerged, just barely able to keep my head from going under.  Had that happened, I would surely not be telling this story.

My grandson, all of five years old, was smarter than I; every time I descended for another search he tearfully cried out, “Don’t go down there!”  

But I just had to try to find my dear little chihuahua.

Ultimately, I returned upstairs empty-handed and full of sorrow, believing poor Lulu had been buried alive in her doggie bed beneath three feet of mud, maybe never knew what hit her.  

Coated in the gooey stuff from head to toe, I got into the dark shower and turned a faucet. No water. No power. Nothing.

My daughter phoned 911 and found their switchboard operator somewhat discombobulated—and inundated with emergency calls like ours.

I called two buddies. They immediately rallied (4:20 a.m. by then) and tried to reach us, getting only as far as Coast Village Road, the commercial thoroughfare, itself flooded and muddy.  Gaining access to Olive Mill Road was impossible, they discovered, because it was no longer a road but instead part river and part obstacle course, full of boulders and fallen trees—and central to many of the fatalities that occurred.

Their presence was a blessing because they informed emergency crews already on the scene where precisely we were trapped, far more effective than a 911 call.  Though at this juncture no one could reach us.

The good news:  No new mud surges; just that awful rosy-yellow glow in the sky that made no sense.

The bad:  Looking from the upstairs balcony onto the yard below, I saw only devastation as far as the eye could see.  Many of my favorite trees, including a 50-foot pine, were no longer standing. (One had rocketed into the garage.) Also: Though it did not occur to me at the time, there was a risk of the house collapsing due to due pressure from mud against the structure. And also the possibility of explosion and fire from ruptured natural gas lines.

 RESCUED

A rescue crew on foot eventually arrived and called up to us.  Ascertaining we were not in need of immediate medical assistance they trudged off to tend to life threatening emergencies on our lane, promising to return for us.  Cries for help could be heard, followed by the sound of jackhammers and chainsaws as rescuers (including a scuba diver) went to work freeing those trapped beneath trees and walls and caved-in roofs.

The Johnson family, our next-door neighbors, appeared—somewhat surreally—in our forecourt, which was relatively free of mud because my house acted as a buffer; had taken the hit from behind and kept the mud inside.  They hollered up to me, asking if they could remain on our forecourt until the rescue team returns.  I hollered back instructing them to access our garage, and the apartment over it (higher ground), which they did.

Augie Johnson had just pulled a toddler from beneath a car.  The toddler had been swept from about a mile upstream and become mangled in debris.  Augie handed him off to a fire chief who appeared on the scene, removed mud from the toddler’s mouth and got him breathing.

As dawn broke, the rescuers returned, ready to evacuate all of us. They entered from two parts of the house, axing their way in.   

One of them hollered, "You have a little dog?"

"Yes," I hollered back.  “He’s here upstairs."

"No, down here."

I could hardly believe my ears.  “A little tan dog?”

“Got it in my arms.”

I had been grieving the loss of Lulu, certain she was gone forever.  She’d somehow scampered onto one of the chairs or sofas wedged up against the walls.  Somehow, being reunited with her made everything all right.

But there was no time to celebrate Lulu’s presence, we had to move fast; the rescue team needed to get us out and get on with evacuating others.  They quickly configured our safest route, broke through an exterior window-door in a room less effected by the mud flow and led our procession of family members and pets into a wasteland.

What would normally have been a 30-second walk down a country lane to a main road took a harrowing 15 minutes as we negotiated waist-deep pools of mud, downed trees, boulders—a zigzag path through unrecognizable terrain; past my neighbor’s wreck of a house.  

The river of mud from Olive Mill Road had by then emptied into what used to be Interstate 101, transforming that vital artery into a deep crater lake.  

We were greeted by a slew of heavy-duty vehicles, lights flashing, engines humming; and by overwhelmed rescue workers, who helped us into the backseat of a firetruck.  

About ten minutes later a flatbed cattle truck carrying survivors like us pulled up alongside.  Hoisted up, we joined them, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, shivering in the morning chill, everyone covered in mud from head to toe, including a woman suffering from flu.

The vehicle lurched and rolled south on Olive Mill, leaving everyone aboard wide-eyed and aghast at the devastation around us.  A long stretch of ranch houses on the east side of the road had been ripped from their foundations, walls down, roofs collapsed; we could see clear through every house.  Cars, trucks and minivans had been pushed into hedges and wrapped around trees.  

A strong smell of natural gas filled our nostrils as new survivors were led from the remnants of their homes to join us.  For the first time, it dawned on me that we were in the midst of a major natural disaster, a true life-and-death situation. 

The vehicle stopped twice more to collect survivors that we managed to squeeze within the confines of the flatbed, along with their very grateful, very muddied pets.  Dogs that hitherto loathed one other, who ferociously faced off at fences, were too shocked to defend turf they no longer had and, in a bout of canine compassion, appeared happy to reacquaint themselves with one another. 

You made it out, too? Whew—what a night!

To avoid flooding and obstacles, the flatbed truck took various detours, finally grinding to a halt at the strip mall off Coast Village Road just before Montecito Mart.

A latte would have been nice.  

But, alackaday, on this dark, wet and very muddy morn, even Starbucks was closed.

A few days later, I purchased a new laptop and uploaded photos from my camera.

I’d forgotten all about the pics I’d snapped of the image on my ceiling the night before the mudslide.

But now, there it was on my screen.