The Chinese Menu of Truthiness

Christian and Islamic Endtime prophecies are often so vague that people can interpret them in widely disparate ways. This theme runs throughout the Revelation trilogy . These prophetic seers in effect claim to know the mind of God i.e. Truth with a Capital T. However, scripture also teaches us that human beings are fallible and may just, from time to time, edit the voice of God, Allah, or whomever, to suit their purposes. The characters in the Revelation trilogy , for various reasons, pick prophecies, aphorisms, and truths from a sort of Chinese menu -- the essence of what Steven Colbert labeled truthiness.

This week, the South Carolina government provided a parable of this process. In the state's brief to the Supreme Court opposing same-sex marriage, they have taken an 'originalist' argument that the 14th Amendment clearly allowed discrimination against married women should the states choose to do so. Because the 14th Amendment provided African-American males with the right to own property and contract with whomever they wished, but did not provide the same rights to females of any ancestry, it clearly left to the states the rights to determine marital rights. For the record, the South Carolina Attorney General has made it clear the state does not plan to deprive women of property rights they currently have. He just wants you to know that doing so would not be unconstitutional.

At least one Supreme Court justice has made this argument before. Justice Antonin Scalia, in an interview with California Lawyer made the statement "The only issue is whether it prohibits it. It doesn't. Nobody ever thought that that's what it meant. Nobody ever voted for that. If the current society wants to outlaw discrimination by sex, hey we have things called legislatures, and they enact things called laws."

I argue to be consistent with that argument, let's do the same with the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment does not guarantee Freedom of Religion to any religion that did not exist in 1787. Similarly, the Right to Bear Arms enshrined in the Second Amendment does not include any weapon that was manufactured after Constitutional ratification. Under the Seventh Amendment all civil trials involving more than $20 must be held before a jury. The Eighth Amendment prohibits excessive bail, let's use 1787 values for that as well.

Running the Apocalyptic Numbers

Ever since mankind learned to count, it seems, we have asked numbers to tell us more than how many cows we had in a field. We have in many instances asked them to tell us the future, as if the numbers themselves held some insight into future events or even God.

Numbers, like letters, are symbols. Some numeric symbols take on a meaning all their own. Consider the number 666. It is the mark of the beast from Revelation, a symbol of evil, of man trying to be God. Let's forget for the moment that some Revelation translations use the number 616, it's just not as sexy. The number 666 in various forms seems to have a grip on the Christian imagination.

When a South Carolina boater, the aptly named Louis Jordan, recently claimed to have been rescued after 66 days at sea spent largely reading End Times prophecies, it seemed to tick all the apocalyptic boxes. Some skeptics considered it a little too convenient. Newspapers consistently described him as more "robust" than one would expect a person who survived on rain water, fish and kelp for 66 days to be.According to his story, his boat capsized, but remained afloat. He therefore could get into the boat for shelter from the sun, hence his lack of sunburn or even decent tan. Commenters on the story were already taking bets on when the saved sailor would become a "fisher of men."

The number 6, however, does not have an apocalyptic monopoly. According to another article, a mystic Rabbi in Southern Israel is obsessing over the number 4. He has noted the Blood Moon Tetrad where the blood moons in 2014 and 2015 occurred on Sukkoth and Passover in each year with a solar eclipse in between. Blood moons are lunar eclipses. The Rabbi Amran Vaknin, according to the story, claims that the four blood moons with the 2015 Passover lunar eclipse lasting four minutes and 44 seconds on 4/4/15 means that Jews should pray to repent because the 44th President will bring blood upon Israel.

Time for a deep breath. First, the Jewish calendar is a lunar calendar. While the lunar eclipses lining up on the holidays is an unusual event, the phase of the moon is not. It's designed that way. Secondly, the 4/4/15 date is taken from a solar calendar known as the Gregorian calendar or civil calendar. Thou shalt not mix calendars for cheap prophetic thrills.

Finally, as in a previous post, the facts seem a little thin. A search for Rabbi Amran Vaknin seems to indicate that the man came fully blown into existence on or about March 25 of this year. All the articles are almost verbatim recountings of blood moon warnings spiced with hints that a coming messiah will undo all the damage that evil Barack Obama has done. The article claims the Rabbi foretold the Gaza Flotilla and other recent events in Israel, but the modern day's excuse for research, Googling, does not reveal any mention of the good Rabbi before last month. Sadly, he has been accurately prophesying in isolation.

Of course all this coincides with the Iranian nuclear deal. Perhaps all the blood moon hype comes from the Book of Netanyahu.

I understand people want to sell books . So do I. But my books are fiction speculating about how people would react if they believed they were in the End Times. If you find a kernel of truth in them, great. That's what novels are supposed to do. Don't look to them for facts.

Invisible White Privilege

A few weeks ago a YouTube video surfaced showing two University of Oklahoma white frat boys leading a song that pledged to keep their fraternity racially pure even if it meant lynching a few students. The University moved quickly to close the fraternity's chapter and expel those involved.

The video and its contents did not surprise me. What struck me was that the young men in the video were only 19-years-old, yet they held sway over other students' futures. They possessed what I call invisible white privilege. Invisible to those who possess it, that is, seen by those who do not.

While I have been unable to find a study that places a dollar value on fraternity membership, it is most likely very high. A look among the country's leaders and you will find few who have not emerged from Greek Life with valuable contacts that helped them ascend the ladder to power. One study posits that only two US Presidents since 1825 were not members of fraternities (I actually doubt this because the Military Academies do not have fraternities and two presidents, Andrew Johnson and Harry Truman did not attend college). Still, the number is likely high and the study's more rigorous elements showed a high correlation between fraternity membership and prestigous jobs. In short, fraternities are deeply woven into the mechanics of upward mobility. Blocking someone because of race exhibits the worst traits of the old boy network.

The Oklahoma video comes shortly after the U.S. Department of Justice's report on Ferguson, Missouri. The two events show clear evidence that keeping poor people poor, whether out of prejudice or greed, is a working business/governing model in the U.S. Factor in the student loan industry, the judicial-industrial complex, and the plethora of businesses that benefit from poverty and the decline in upward mobility over the last four decades is no surprise.

The subject of class and race have provided much fertile ground for writing projects. Currently, along with my wife and partner, Anniken Davenport, I am developing a book proposal for a non-fiction book, tentatively titled, The Business of Poverty in which we hope to explore the various interests who benefit from perpetuating poverty. Anniken is also writing a dystopian novel that follows the exploitation curve into the future entitled Labor Force. To get a feel for the novel, check out the Labor Force novel blog.

Finally, a short story I wrote recently attempts to address invisible white privilege in its native habitat, the southern gated community. The story, entitled Lovely People, is now being considered by several magazines for publication.

The Southern gated community is a post-civil rights era phenomenon. As cities became more integrated, upper middle class whites moved to the suburbs. When the suburbs started integrating, the gated community filled the need of the paranoid well-to-do.

Lovely People is an homage of sorts to Flannery O'Connor. I firmly believe that if she were alive today, she would be writing about gated communities. In her staunch Catholicism, Flannery referred to the South as a Christ-haunted land. Her stories exaggerate and ridicule the hot, emotionally-driven fundamentalism so popular in the South. While those elements remain, I would posit that Nat Turner's ghost also haunts the South and his specter has built more gated communities than the carpenter from Nazareth.

The Power of Myth

A recent article circulating around the Internet claims that Christian missionaries rescued a wounded Jihadist whom they took for dead. He miraculously awoke several hours later and claimed God had sent him to hell where all his sins including the beheadings he carried out were shown to him. He repented and was sent back to earth where he converted to Christianity a few days later.

The story ticks all the boxes: selfless Christian missionaries, an epiphany at the gates of hell, and salvation through conversion to Christianity. Unfortunately, I've found it difficult to verify any details associated with the story. The wounded Jihadist was allegedly picked up by missionaries from the Saint Dominican Catholic Presbytery of Ayyash. A search for the Saint Dominican Catholic Presbytery of Ayyash only produces multiple copies of this story. In other words, no Internet site independently lists this organization. I even searched the vatican site and found no mention of this supposedly Catholic mission.

To get down in the weeds on this, the term presbytery describes an architectural portion of a church (the area around the altar) or the house where a parish priest lives. A search for Ayyash does not reveal a place as the title would indicate, but rather is a popular Arabic name meaning bread seller. Further the grammar is wrong. The Dominican order takes its name from Saint Dominic, therefore the name should be Saint Dominic Catholic, etc., not Saint Dominican. Don't believe me, just ask Pope Franciscan.

If a story is too good to be true, it probably is. The story is almost verbatim one I heard in the 70s where an ex-US special forces was struck by lightning and forced to relive all the killings he committed in Vietnam. He repented and changed his life. Same story, different details.

One of the themes the Revelation trilogy is how susceptible we can be to deeply engrained myths. When events seem to reinforce those myths, it provides a sort of comfort. Of course, that means that those who manipulate events to conform to those myths may have for less than pure motives.

Eyes Wide Open Heading for the Abyss

When I began work on Revelation 11 two years ago, I thought it was a pretty straight forward story centered around a group of people who either genuinely believed or claimed to believe for their own reasons that we were in the endtimes. I explored this from a purely Christian point of view. Near the end of writing the book, I decided to throw a curve into the mix and have the second witness be a Muslim.

As I began to look for a historical or scriptural basis for this assumption, I found that Islam has a parallel eschatology to the Christian narrative. Most Islamic endtime prophecies are contained in the Hadith. A one-eyed leader called, Masih ad-Dajjal, is the Islamic version of the Anti-Christ. Both religions point to a climactic battle in the Middle East. For Christians this is Armageddon and for Muslims it is Dabiq. As I explained in my previous post, Dabiq is generally considered to be the hamlet of Murj-al-Dabiq that sits just across the border from Iraq in Syria

The Hadith claims that Jesus (Isa) returns to earth to "break the cross" -- meaning He explains that Islam is the one true religion. This may simply be the Islamic version of "from whence He shall come to judge the living and the dead."

The parallels seem to have taken on a life of their own in the last two years. Islamic State leaders and fighters apparently believe they are and should be fulfilling the endtimes prophecies--in effect dragging the world toward a climactic battle between Islam and what the Hadith calls the "army of Rome." Under Islamic prophecy, the battle cannot take place until the Caliphate is re-established. Islamic State leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, claims to be the new Caliph.

According to a recent Atlantic article, a legitimate Caliph requires three things to fulfill the prophecy, "being a Muslim adult man of Quraysh descent; exhibiting moral probity and physical and mental integrity; and having ’amr, or authority." Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is of Quraysh decent, the tribe to which Mohammed belonged. He claims the second requirement, but the article notes there is more to the third requirement than meets the eye. To have "authority" in the sense the prophecy indicates, the Caliph must rule territory and hold the authority over the people living there by enacting and enforcing Sharia law. Islamic State fighters currently control or operate freely in an area larger than the United Kingdom.

Thousands of young Islamic men and women have traveled to the "Caliphate" from Europe and around the world to join the jihad. What is it about this ideology they find so appealing? The article quotes George Orwell when he was asked a similar question about Nazi fanaticism. Orwell describe Fascism as "psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life … Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people “I offer you a good time,” Hitler has said to them, “I offer you struggle, danger, and death,” and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet … We ought not to underrate its emotional appeal."

You say Armageddon, I say Dabek

Think Christians have a monopoly on the apocalypse? Not really. In the sequel to Revelation 11, tentatively titled, “Continuing Revelation”, I touch upon some Islamic prophecies that dovetail with Christian eschatology. However, events may be overtaking my story.

Some Quranic teachings say that Islamic warriors will square off against Christians at the city of Dabek (also known as Dabiq) in an apocalyptic battle. Dabek is generally considered to be the modern day Syrian hamlet of Murj Dabek.

Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS or ISIL) head, Abu Al-Baghdadi, set his sights on the town of about 4,000 because he apparently subscribes to the Islamic doomsday prophecy. Currently, forces loyal to Syrian President Assad hold the hamlet.

Al-Baghdadi places such importance on Dabek or Dabiq that he has named the official ISIS publication Dabiq. In its initial issue, Dabiq contains 50 plus vivid color photographs showing the organization’s military successes in an attempt to build an aura of inevitability to its mission. Like its other slick media presentations, Dabiq, is equal parts propaganda and recruiting tool.

The Dabek prophecy predicts that the Islamic forces will destroy both the forces of “Constantinople” and “Rome”, referring to the two early branches of Christianity, the Eastern Orthodox and Roman Catholic. In Islamic prophecy, Jesus (Issa ibn Maryam) descends from heaven near Damascus to lead the Islamic forces and “break the cross” a term meaning Christ will reveal Islam to be the one true religion.

Both Christian and Islamic prophecies foretell the two witnesses mentioned in Revelation 11 and both claim their appearance foreshadows the return of Christ. The question ISIS raises is the same one I pose in all three of the novels. Are these events fulfillment of prophecy or are individuals choosing actions that mimic prophecy to develop a following while pursuing their own agenda? Of course, some of them could just be crazy. We won’t know until either the Second Coming, or the end of the books.

End Times and the Class Divide

Fitzgerald observed that the “rich are very different”, apparently so are the poor. Of course, one person’s different is another’s normal depending on where you sit on the socio-economic ladder. A recent Upshot Article in the New York Times examined how Google searches vary by geographic location and by extension socio-economic status. The study suggests that the well-off want to know about digital cameras while the poor obsess about the Antichrist.

Specifically, the study looked at what searches correlated with what the researchers deemed the hardest places to live in the country and the easiest. The study employed a six-factor index (education, household income, unemployment, disability, life expectancy, and obesity) to determine the difficulty of life in each county in the country.

The top ten highest correlated searches to the hardest places to live include “antichrist”, “the antichrist”, “rapture”, and “about hell”. Apparently, where life is hard, people like their religion hard as well. Admittedly, a search for “rapture” may indicate an escapist fantasy but it also has a dark side. Those left behind will go through the “tribulation”—an ironic analogy to the divide between rich and poor.

At its heart, tales of the endtimes are ghost stories, albeit “Holy Ghost” stories. Fearing something that is not real, or cannot be proved to be real can be a diversion from a very real life of grinding poverty. It also suggests that fate or “God’s will” plays a part in one’s station in life. In some ways, accepting the “God’s will” argument parallels the final stage of grief, acceptance. But what happens when the hopeless suddenly have hope?

Revelation 11-First in the Revelation Trilogy is set in a small Central Pennsylvania mining town where the coal and iron veins have been exhausted. The people who remain eke out a living by commuting long distances or running marginal small businesses. When a mega-church set up in an old high school broadcasting fire and brimstone to the world via satellite starts pumping money into the local economy, the residents are all too willing to believe their long-awaited salvation is at hand. Whether it is or not is the story’s essential mystery.

Through a Glass Darkly

Many religious texts begin with the assumption that humans and God are separated, that humans feel for and stumble toward God in spiritual darkness. In Judeo-Christian theology light is often a metaphor for God. For example, Jesus proclaimed himself to be “the light of the world.”

The description parallels mental illness or at least deep dysfunction where the individual stumbles somewhat blindly through life. Often those observing can identify the individual’s self-limiting false perceptions, but telling the individual brings about no change. The change must come from within when the individual’s perception changes to accept reality. For example, anyone can tell a person engaging in addictive behavior that things will be better if he or she stops, but the addict will continue the destructive behavior most likely until death or "hitting bottom".

In literature, this irony, where the reader knows what is needed for salvation and character will not acknowledge it, creates tension that propels the story along its narrative arc. Because many of us have observed or experienced self-destructive behavior, the story is at once a mystery and familiar.

I have experimented throughout Revelation 11 and its sequels with characters being a part of something they don’t completely understand (the human condition?). Some characters conclude that we are living in the end times and the events occurring before them are unfolding Biblical prophecy. Others see only the events, not the prophetic context. For them, believing in prophecy requires too large a step of faith. Are they wise or foolish? What are the consequences of guessing wrong?

The apostle Paul said, “We see through a glass darkly and then face to face.” In Revelation 11, everyone sees “through the glass darkly” even if they believe they are seeing “face to face.”

The Flameless Burning of Books

My friend Trog Davis recently posted a blog entitled, The New American Oligarchy in which he worries that Amazon winning the right to operate the U.S. Intelligence Community’s cloud computing system may have unintended consequences. Davis raises questions about firewalls between data Amazon the retailer possesses and data Amazon, the spy-world cloud-computing operator, will have.

Amazon’s technological prowess is great. Its system for selling everything from e-books to shoes is a digital age marvel. The Amazon distribution system is superior to virtually all other retailers including Walmart and they have patented various e-commerce processes such as the one-click purchase. Although it sells many items, Amazon is at heart a technology company and that technical expertise clearly attracted the intelligence community.

So what does Amazon know and what will it learn? Currently, e-books make up approximately 30% of all book sales according to Forbes Magazine. Amazon’s Kindle e-books account for about 65% of those sales. Amazon’s effect on brick and mortar bookstores has been dramatic. Only half as many bookstores exist today than did 20 years ago. Amazon is by far the largest seller of used books in the country and because it tracks all those book purchases, it has more data on reading habits than anyone.

Knowing what books we read is only part of the story. Already some e-books can communicate with their creator, i.e. Amazon and other e-book publishers. They will know where you stopped reading, what portions you re-read, underlined, or highlighted. Kindle e-books even tell Amazon when you read. Some e-book publishers have announced plans to share this data with writers who can then write to the data. You like particular items in a fight scene, re-read it a couple times and you will see a similar scene in other books in the genre. Highlight a kinky sex act in your erotica and it will start the next porno craze.

Authors “writing to the data” is not the end of the world. Democracy will survive bad fiction, but not the limiting of ideas. Ray Bradbury’s classicFahrenheit 451 pondered a world where firemen burned books to keep the population quiescent while the rest of the populations watched vacuous program after program on “the wall”. The wall allowed the powers that be to watch citizens as they watched the wall.

Bradbury’s vision is chillingly close to fulfillment. Ubiquitous cell phones track our movements, while we blithely exchange grumpy cat pictures on Facebook. Our tweets detail our interests 140 characters at a time--all fodder for the “intellicloud” Davis speaks of.

So how easy would it be to burn books in such a world? Well, Amazon already has loner programs that delete your Kindle e-book after 30 days. Bothersome books could disappear with a keystroke.

End of Days

The HBO show, The Leftovers, based on Tom Perrotta’s novel, portrays a post-mass disappearance world struggling to understand this rapture-like event’s meaning. In previous decades, we have seen the Antichrist coming of age movies in The Omen series. In the 1970s, Hal Lindsey’s Late, Great Planet Earth and later books cast modern political events against a background of Biblical prophecy. The apocalypse never seems to lose its appeal.

In writing my novel Revelation 11, I’ve come across stories of people believing they were one of the two witnesses mentioned in Revelation 11 or the Antichrist himself. Of course, this is only the Christian side of the equation. Islamic eschatology also foretells Christ’s return, but with a different twist. Jesus returns to “break the cross”, a term used to mean that Jesus proclaims Islam to be the only true religion and Mohammed the prophet of God. For all I know there are adherents to Islam who believe they will play a role in the end times as well.

I cannot doubt the sincerity of people who believe they are destined to play a role in the Second Coming. My novel examines what happens when these people believe their time has come. My skeptic protagonist, Trog Davis, outwardly wants to have no part of it. When another character, Joe Stoner, asks him, “How would you act if you truly believed we were living the fulfillment of Biblical prophecy?” Trog realizes the people he is dealing with have a totally different view of reality.

So why is the apocalypse so fascinating? First, we know it is possible in some form. We have evidence of mass extinctions throughout the planet’s history and can conceive that humans can go the way of the dodo bird. The baby boom generation grew up knowing that nuclear weapons could easily lay waste to the planet. ‘Doomsday weapons’ was the quaint moniker for them before ‘weapons of mass destruction’ became the fashionable term. Now we face threats of environmental pollution and global warming. Jesus himself claimed divine intervention would be necessary to prevent humans from killing themselves— "Unless those days had been cut short, no life would have been saved; but for the sake of the elect those days will be cut short.” (Matthew 24:22)

Finally, the apocalypse fascinates because it is the ultimate conspiracy theory. Someone, supernatural or human, knows what is going to happen, and the rest of us are along for the ride. We will need a hero to get to the truth. However, unlikely a hero he may be, Trog Davis may just be the guy for the job.

Building a Character

In my last post, I discussed the use of psychedelic drugs in the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD. A fascinating video featuring the late Dr. Richard Rockefeller, provides a great background on PTSD, how it affects those who have it and those around them, and how therapists treat the condition.

A key theme in the sequel to Revelation 11, tentatively entitled, Continuing Revelation, is the main character's reaction to the stress-inducing events described in Revelation 11. Dr. Rockefeller's description of PTSD gave me a roadmap for continuing to build the character of Ben "Trog" Davis.

Dr. Rockefeller noted that while many of us experience, post-traumatic stress, it only becomes a disorder when the brain fails to move the traumatic memory out of the amygdala, which largely processes current ongoing events, into the parts of the brain that store memories. He explained that PTSD sufferers continue to experience the trauma as an ongoing event. They literally see and experience the trauma again seeing the people and objects present at the original event as if it were occurring at that moment.

While virtually everyone experiences post-traumatic stress, not everyone develops PTSD. Dr. Rockefeller explained that those who had suppressed memories from childhood stress are more likely to develop PTSD as an adult. So soldiers who survive the same IED attack in battle may have very different reactions to the event based on their prior experiences.

To treat PTSD, therapists must get back to that underlying trauma and allow the individual to process it into memory. LSD, ecstasy, and other medications that break down the walls harboring these suppressed memories allow the PTSD sufferer to explore their painful past in a safe environment.

Of course, to a novelist safe is boring. Trog will not be safe. The drugs the therapists give him may reveal more truth than he can handle. The intervention he needs may come from agents of God, Satan, or humans. Trog will have to judge whether what he sees is real or not. He may suffer from supernaturally induced PTSD.

Looking Back, Looking Forward

I read obituaries. Specifically, I read the New York Times obituaries. These obituaries of famous people either remind me of long forgotten events or introduce me, posthumously, to fascinating people with whom I had been unfamiliar. Dr. Richard Rockefeller, sadly, fell into the latter category.

The famous name grabbed my attention, but his life’s story proved far more interesting than I would have guessed. Dr. Rockefeller was David Rockefeller’s son making him the great-grandson of the family scion John D. Rockefeller. Last week, Dr. Rockefeller took off in his single-engine Piper Meridian in dense fog and crashed into trees not far beyond the Westchester County, New York Airport runway.

In his 65 years, Dr. Rockefeller advised and oversaw many of his family’s philanthropic efforts and was one of the guiding forces behind Doctors Without Borders. Almost as a footnote, the obituary mentioned he spent his later years working on treatments for those suffering from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder or PTSD.

A day later I was researching the sequel to Revelation 11. I plan to put Ben “Trog” Davis, the protagonist, through some serious trauma, as if a running gun battle, false imprisonment, and two concussions in Revelation 11 weren’t enough. In particular, I was researching the use of ‘psychedelic’ drugs to treat PTSD.

In the 1950s, Bill Wilson, founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, claimed that LSD could provide the “ego reduction [that] makes the influx of God’s grace possible”. British psychotherapist, Ronald Sandison coined the term psycholitic therapy, which is the use of low to medium doses of psychedelic drugs, repeatedly at intervals of 1–2 weeks. Psycholitic, Sandison claimed, meant “soul dissolving”. For a novel where the protagonist must determine whether or not his troubles result from human conflict or spiritual warfare, these references were invaluable.

The final piece of the puzzle occurred when I went on the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies website and found a video featuring Dr. Richard Rockefeller discussing the use of MDMA or “ecstasy” for treating PTSD. “Trog” doesn’t know it yet, but he is about to have his consciousness expanded. If any of you are friends with Ben on Facebook , don’t let him know what the future holds. He is blissfully unaware of what God and Satan have in store for him.

Haunted by Kennedy

I was five years-old when President Kennedy was assassinated. Even at that young age, I knew something fundamental had changed. The memories remain very real.

Experts tell us that memories are not really archived in our brains, but rather rebuilt each time we reach for them. We overlay them with other detail enhancing some details, deleting others and ultimately placing the memories in context. So memories from childhood have been reconstructed countless times. I can only wonder how different my current recollections are from their originals.

One such memory of an event occurring just weeks after the assassination served as the basis for a chapter in my upcoming novel, Revelation 11. On a cold December day I played outside on our swing set. Looking up, I saw what looked like a black figure standing on a cloud looking down at me. What began as curiosity, turned to fear as I watched this strange apparition for several minutes. Ultimately, I ran inside, but never told my parents or my brother about the event until years later. To this day, I don't know why.

The event's fictional version appears below to give you a foretaste of the novel. It will be published in time for Easter 2014.

December 1963

Epiphany

“Who is the president now, mommy?” Ben Davis asked.

“President Johnson.” She replied.

He had asked the same question each day for two weeks as if changing presidents could now be a daily occurrence. The five-year-old had come in from playing for lunch two Fridays before to see his mother crying in front of the television. He remembered looking at the screen and seeing a large room filled with people moving back and forth in confusion. The announcer had said the room was the luncheon that President Kennedy was going to address, but he had been assassinated.

“What does assassinated mean, mommy?”

“It’s when someone important is killed.”

A large, black man crossed the screen in a white server’s coat. The tears streamed down his face. Ben had never seen a grown man cry like that.

Over the next days, images of death flooded the TV screen-the President’s body in state, the funeral cortege, the burial at Arlington.

In the gray days that followed, angst fed the nation’s subconscious. Even children like Ben knew something was different as a pall fell over the nation with the first days of winter. He heard stories that psychics had predicted the assassination, that a family received a message on Ouija board reading, “Thank you for praying for me while I was in purgatory.”

“What’s purgatory, mommy?”

“It’s something Catholics believe in. You don’t need to worry about it.”

“Was President Kennedy a Catholic?”

“Yes, he was.”

“So he has to worry about purgatory, right?”

Even at this age, he could tell when his mother was uncomfortable with a question. “That’s hard to say. Why don’t you go out and play on the swings until dinner?”

Ben bundled up against the cold, gray day. Dark, low clouds floated by against the lighter gray matte above them. He swung on the swings, watched the sky begin to succumb to the winter evening’s gloom. A small dark spot near one of the low, gray clouds caught his eye for a moment, then disappeared behind in the swirling vapor.

He continued to swing and look around the neighborhood to see if any of his friends were out playing. But this was the Cumberland Valley's appointed dinner hour and they were all crowded into the identical postwar crackerbox rancher eat-in kitchens.

His mother always saw the local custom of eating dinner precisely at five o’clock as peculiar. As a point of pride, and to accommodate his father, Jeff Sr.’s habit of having a few drinks before coming home, Ben’s family ate at 6—6:30, whenever, but never at five. Most likely, it would get dark before dinner and his mother would call him in.

He could just barely make out the sun’s position over the western mountains through the gray. He stood up to push off and swing as high as possible, pointing his toes and throwing his head back to look at the sky above him. The dark spot hovered above him in the clouds. Planting his feet to stop the swing, he stared up. More clearly defined now, the spot had a distinctive shape; a head, shoulders, and body apparently standing on the cloud. Long flowing hair crowned the robed figure. The fading light glinted off the suggestion of an eyebrow. Its face appeared to be looking down directly at him. To Ben, the figure looked like the silhouette of Jesus, the face subsumed in shadow.

The dark Christ moved as the cloud moved. What Ben imagined to be the face continued to gaze at him. He looked around his neighborhood. No one was out. All the dutiful diners safely huddled in their homes.
The more Ben identified the form’s distinct features, the more curiosity gave way to fear. He wanted to tell someone, anyone …or at least not be alone. But the five o’clock suburban dinner communion trumped all, even a heavenly figure standing on a cloud. Ben took one last look across the haunted landscape, saw no one, and ran inside to the light and warmth of home.

The End is Near

Wow! Has it really been since March that I posted something? Well, time flies when you're busy.

Revelation 11, my first novel, is complete and is off to the editor. I would describe it as Deliverance meets the The Da Vinci Code. I've tried to capture the concept of a man who views himself as civilized being thrust into a primitive world and forced to make difficult choices. Deliverance is essentially a retelling of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. The main character in Revelation 11 is Trog Davis, a hard-living Harrisburg reporter, who is assigned to cover a gruesome murder in isolated Shade Gap, Pennsylvania. So rather than the navigating Cahulawassee or Congo rivers, Davis traverses the Pennsylvania mountains via the PA turnpike's tunnels, each moving him farther from civilization.

Davis soon discovers that the dead minister was a childhood friend of his who had told him years before that he was one of the two witnesses identified in Chapter 11 of the Book of Revelation. Before he even arrives in Shade Gap, he learns that the minister's megachurch also believes he is one of the witnesses and will rise from the dead in three and a half-days.

Trog tries to sift through Biblical prophecy and present day murder clues to find the truth. But the truth can be elusive, especially when Trog looks inward.

Work, Work, Work

Here is an update on various writing projects I have on tap. A revised version of In the Shadow of Midnight: Daedalus-a tale of Savannah will be released in early April. It will include photographs and some of the blog postings I've done explaining the backstory. Around the same time, my first novel, Revelation 11 will be published by Valhalla Press. It will be in Kindle format to start and others will be added later. FYI, Kindle formats work on all PCs and MACs. You can download and read even if you do not have a Kindle reader.

I plan to begin work on a second novel almost immediately entitled SNUF. It is more of a science fiction dystopian story of a man whose job it is to permanently delete files from computers around the world. SNUF stands for Specially Noted Unrecoverable File-the code his corporate bosses use to identify those bits of information targeted for destruction.

I also plan to get significant work in on a story called Militia's Mischief, which is also the name of an online video game favored by right-wing extremists in the novel. They use the game to launder money and illegally move weapons to trouble spots around the world. The protagonist is a novelist who starts out investigating the game, makes a few outrageous posts and then finds himself the target of several different government investigations. Despite the fact that he is quite liberal, the right-wing media adopts him as a hero. The complications ensue.

This should keep me busy the rest of the year.

Musings on Death

It is winter and I am thinking of death. The Northeastern winter is a punishment to be endured. No longer the magical season of snow, it has been globally warmed and weather channeled into slush storms and wind chills. Beauteous snowstorms and winter wonderlands belong to the past, having escaped to the north ahead of onrushing greenhouse gases.

This year, the season’s first snowman has thawed and refrozen into a dirty, hardened gray ice pile in the brown grass. We’ve plucked the hat from the corpse and thrown out its carrot nose lest the decay metaphor take on a nasty olfactory component.

Two winters ago, my mother died. She had asked for a funeral at a defunct chapel to be performed by a now retired minister. As the arrangements were made as best as they could, the weeks dragged on. We grieved in suspended animation until time could be pried from everyone’s schedule to meet, grieve and remember.

The experience made me decide two things. First, I always thought I would be cremated, but you don’t get off that easy. I’m going into the ground with whatever I have left and you better bury me before I start to stink. Secondly, I’m going to have an old fashioned Irish wake. The drinks are on me, or more precisely my life insurance proceeds. So if I mean anything to you, drop whatever you’re doing, get to my wake, and attend my funeral. I’m working on an efficient way to let everyone know I’ve died. I think Facebook should create some way to simply change your status to dead.

Regardless of how you are informed, here’s my point, if you can’t make it on three or four days notice, I wasn’t that important to you and I don’t want you drinking my booze even if I’m dead at the time.

I may sound bitter, but I’m doing this for all of you. Come party, drink, reminisce, laugh, cry, and then get back to living.

Twisted Metal, Altered Perspectives

I recently visited Savannah…again. One of the trip’s purposes was to take pictures of various sites mentioned in my story In the Shadow of Midnight: Daedalus-a tale of Savannah. The pictures will be included as bonus material in an upcoming second edition.

In early October, I drove to Savannah’s beautiful Bonaventure Cemetery to find Robert, Tina and Wahl Stoddard’s graves. Stopping at the administrative building, I entered their names in the automated search kiosk, which then printed a map showing the graves’ location.

I’d been to Bonaventure several times before, but mainly visited the more tourist centric graves. Johnny Mercer is buried next to his wife and mother. Each marker is inscribed with one of his song lyrics.

Pulitzer winning poet, Conrad Aiken’s grave is a bench. During his many trips to his parents’ grave at Bonaventure, he would drink martinis while looking at their markers, each with the same day of death—the day at age nine when he responded to two gunshots in the family living room. His father had shot his mother and then himself. Aiken went to live in Massachusetts with family members. From there he went to Harvard where he and classmate T.S. Eliot compared and clashed over each other’s couplets.

The moss-draped trees filter the sunlight falling on the sand and pebble lanes. Low granite blocks border the six-grave family plots. Following the map, I follow the path toward the Wilmington River. Reading each family name until I find the Wahl plot that belonged to Tina’s family. Bob and Tina’s joint gravestone with Wahl’s marker just in front of it were all decorated. My trip was shortly after both death anniversaries—Bob and Tina in late September and Wahl’s just a few days before in October.

Decorative pebbles anchored the flowers on both stones, but Wahl’s grave also had a rusted piece of curved metal artistically arranged as a border for the flower display. As I speculated on its significance (a symbol of the car he died in or even a piece of it? Did he like metal music?), I began to think that more people than just the Stoddards and their friends may have perspectives on their tragic story.

What about the two friends Wahl picked up that tragic day, Carolyn Alexander and David Womack? Once in the car with Wahl, they were doomed by the love of speed he inherited from his father. As sad as Wahl’s death and the subsequent disintegration of Bob and Tina’s lives were, surely the pain in those families would have been bitter as well.

As I said, I’ve been to Bonaventure before. It is an incredibly beautiful place. The sounds of singing birds, the light, and the salt breeze have always left me with a sense of peace before—not this time. Ultimately, what makes a story is conflict. Conflicts leave winners and losers in their wake. This story had no winners, save the reader who heeds the cautionary tale’s lessons and the writer who learns to look for different perspectives.

The writer operates at a peculiar crossroads where time and place and eternity somehow meet. His problem is to find that location. -Flannery O'Connor

More reflections on Midnight

An earlier posting on the Valhalla Press blog revealed how I came to write "In the Shadow of Midnight, Daedalus: A tale of Savannah". In September 2005, we vacationed in Savannah renting a condo on East Broad Street in the city's Trustees' Garden district. On one brutally hot afternoon, we decided to nap in the comfort of our condo's industrial strength air conditioning. We awoke to the sight of four police cruisers, an ambulance and a hearse pulling two bodies out of the building across the street.

We later learned the deceased were Bob and Tina Stoddard, a couple who lived on the edge of Savannah's elite described in John Berendt's story Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. Bob and Tina were opposites in many ways. Bob was the adopted son of a Florida salesman. Tina met Bob just as he was leaving the U.S. Air Force where he had served as pilot. Speed fascinated Bob, after hanging up his wings, he took up running and racing cars.

Tina Wahl Stoddard's Savannah pedigree ran deep-the Wahls listed among the city's most prominent citizens dating back to antebellum times. The family's affluence allowed her to study cooking in France and ballet. Bob, the adopted son, no doubt longed for the sense of identity Tina's extensive family history provided. Tina fell hard for Bob's fast-talking, fast-moving persona.

Bob was always the life of the party while Tina catered it. Bob's signature line was "Have a drink, be somebody." The line, a freudian slip really, was at once both illuminating and pathetic. The rootless man who struggled to understand his own identity, obtain one through marriage, and build an outsize personality tells his guests to "be somebody".

Bob could easily be dismissed as shallow. His need to "be somebody", especially to his son and his wife, led to disastrous consequences. In writing the story, I tried not to judge Bob too harshly because I think fate punished him far harder than he deserved.

The story narrative compares Bob to Ovid's Daedalus to demonstrate the story's timelessness. Had I wished to paint him in an American context, I could have portrayed him as a real life Gatsby. They both attempted to build an identity while struggling to achieve a caricature of American success only to lose themselves in the process. On this Fourth of July, I hold up Bob Stoddard as a facet of the complex American dream, a dark facet that measures a person's worth only by his monetary success or family connections. Bob Stoddard longed for both and fell disastrously short.

Cell Service, and Bellyaching

Recently, I took a trip to Shade Gap, Pennsylvania, the setting for my upcoming novel Revelation 11, to pick up those little details that give stories their texture. I chose Shade Gap as the novel’s setting because of its overall spookiness. A sign on Route 522 cites 18th Century settlers referring to the area in a narrow gap between two mountains as “The Shadow of Death”. 

Shade Gap’s lone claim to national fame occurred in 1966 when a mental patient and self-styled “mountain man”, William Hollenbaugh kidnapped seventeen-year-old Peggy Ann Bradnick setting off the largest manhunt in Pennsylvania history up to that time. Thus, it has all the necessary trappings of the Southern gothic novel, a curse, grotesques, and I’m tossing in a religious cult and a gruesome murder for good measure. 

At this point, I’ve written about 40% of the novel. In one key scene, the protagonist must use his cell phone to record a conversation and e-mail it. When I tried to reenact this feat, I found that I had no cell service. The mountains not only choke off the light, but phone service as well. Guess that scene needs rewriting. 

Undaunted, I set out to meet some locals. Restaurants are great places to catch slices of life and hear local accents and expressions. Since it was Sunday, all restaurants in Shade Gap were closed so I went up the road to Orbisonia and its conjoined twin of a town, Richmond Furnace. Orbisonia’s dining choices consist of the Pizza Star restaurant, that’s it. 

Inside, I witnessed a multi-generational, bilingual family drama. The shop owner, a balding man in his 50s, moved back and forth between the kitchen where his son and daughter worked, and the dining room where his parents sat. The family outnumbered the three paying guests. When the owner sat with his parents, he held his head in his hands and spoke Italian in hushed tones. His father dosed across the table only to be periodically awakened when the mother barked some command to the kitchen in Italian. One of the children would respond quickly to each summons with her glasses, drink or whatever “Nonna” wanted. 

At one point, the daughter complained about some issue in the kitchen. The owner raised his head from his hands jumped up and yelled, “What are ya bellyachin’ about?” Bingo. “Bellyachin’”, I hadn’t heard that term in ages. Rest assured, someone will be ‘bellyachin’ in this novel.

A Personal Epiphany

Having now, foolishly perhaps, styled myself as a Southern writer, I must grapple with what that means. I furthered my education by watching the American Masters episode on Harper Lee. To Kill a Mockingbird addressed an overwhelming American truth by exposing the ways we deal with, avoid, dance around, and occasionally confront race.

I identify with Southern writers due to stylistic similarities and a fascination with the human and spiritual landscapes writers like Flannery O’Connor and Carson McCullers paint with their words and characters.  Harper Lee painted with a more realistic world compared with O’Connor’s and McCuller’s more impressionistic renderings. So much so that throughout the American Masters episode the words ‘clear’ and ‘clarity’ almost became a refrain.

Twice during the show, speakers referred to the Southern Tribe. My membership in that tribe may be suspect. It is certainly tangential at best, but tied in through two parallel connections. I’ve lived in Central Pennsylvania most of my life. Two primary groups settled the area: German immigrants and the Scotch-Irish. The typical journey, sometimes occurring over generations, consisted of arriving at either Philadelphia or Baltimore, moving westward to the mountains and then, usually drawn by cheaper land prices, following them southward. This migration populated the more elevated portions of Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky, the Carolinas, Georgia and Alabama splashing out of the mountains like so much alluvial soil upon Gulf Coast’s plain. So Central Pennsylvania culture is simple an early mutation of what evolved in the South. The main difference being that these European settlers used African slaves to farm those fertile fields.

A scan of the Southern Writer’s pantheon reveals a preponderance of Irish surnames and therein lays another connection. My Irish ancestry with its mystery, secrets, isolation and alienation reflects the worlds evoked by Southern writers.

No Southern or Irish story is complete without an epiphany, a moment where a person sees their shortcomings in such stark relief, they can no longer be denied. I experienced such an epiphany during the show.

Although I claim to be a Southern writer in style, my birth twelve miles north of the Mason-Dixon line to decidedly Northern parents at the height of the Civil Rights Movement imbued me with significant anti-Southern prejudices. As the show discussed how differently people reacted to To Kill a Mockingbird, I smugly listened to Diane McWhorter, author of Carry Me Home : Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution, describe her journey from certainty that Tom Robinson would be acquitted to being moved to tears following his conviction and death. She then thought, “What would my father think if he saw me crying for a black man?”

Then a square-faced man with a sculpted mane of silver hair and a voice as smooth as butter wearing a conservative blue suit filled the screen describing his experiences during the Civil Rights era. Based on his appearance, voice, and attire, I felt an instant dislike and fully expected to hear him spew some racist diatribe. The Reverend Thomas Lane Butts both disappointed and shamed me as he reflected on his support for integration and resulting conflicts with the Mobile, Alabama KKK. I, too, had falsely judged a man based on his outward appearance. In a Flannery O’Connor story, this epiphany would be a step toward redemption. I hope it is for me.