The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe by June Bae

CHRONICLES of GRIZZLY JOE (or)

The Ravings of a Mad Man & What Pisses Him Off!

by The Irreverent Reverend J. H. “Grizzly Joe” Goldstein

This book is dedicated to my Mother

toby goldstein 1920 –1995

“To Know Her, Was To Love Her”

design credits art director adam vohlidka designer june bae front cover illustration Yoko Hayashi V. back cover illustration adam vohlidka illustrators tony colletti adam vohlidka eun lim

MY dictionary defines a “rant” as a noun meaning (1.) “a violent, loud, or extravagant speech”, or, (2.) “any story told by Uncle Joel” That’s me…good ‘ol Uncle “Grizzly Joe”… but my friends just call me “Grizz”…so feel free. I’ve never been able to tell a story by quickly getting to the point. Where’s the fun in that? These are some of my favorite “rants”. “Res ipsa loquitur…” “The Thing Speaks For Itself!”

Table of Rants 1. The History of Western Civilization, Bullshit and the Gigantic Man Up in the Sky. 2. There Are Things Far Worse Than Dying. 3. Who Gets to Swim in the Gene Pool? 4. Don’t Jerk Me Around… I Know What You’re Talkin’ about. 5. Kill’em All and Let God Sort It Out. 6. UFO’s, Alien Abductions, Cattle Mutilations, Crop Circles, Bigfoot, Angels, The Loch Ness Monster, Ghosts, The Monster in Your Closet, etc., etc., etc.. 7. Human Cloning is Easy…Parenting is Hard. 8. Stupid Juice. 9. Will Somebody Please Teach Me Something I Can Use! 10. Lights, Camera, Action – At The Twilight’s Last Gleaming of Our Inalienable Rights. 11. What Single Invention Would the World Be Better Off Without? 12. Follow the Leader…The Idiocy of The World’s Oldest Game. 13. Hijacked on the Information Superhighway, or As I Like to Call It: the Insidious New Technological Eavesdropping & Reconnaissance of Nationwide Electronic Transmissions 14. What the World Needs Now is a Mother’s Love. 15. The Enemy is “Us”. 16. Does God Exist? Sure, why not? 17. Does Intelligent Life Exists Elsewhere in the Universe? 18. It’s All Small Stuff & Life’s Too Short To Worry Much. 19. Dying is Easy, I’ve Done It a Thousand Times. 20. The United States Government, UFO’s, You, Me & Everybody

Table of “Rant-less” Rants: (The Lovers’ Tree Poems) 1. The Lovers’ Tree 2. A Journey To Lhasa 3. The Old Harbor Light 4. …And This Too Shall Pass 5. The Animal Rebellion 6. Infatuation 7. It’s Really Just An Illusion 8. The Legacy Of Cain 9. The Keys To My Memories 10. Upon Mount Olympus 11. Hubris 12. There Are Two Words 13. Life Is A Bowl… 14. What He Cherished Most 15. When First I Saw A Ship 16. When Will You Finally Come Home To Me 17. Upon My Neighbor’s Fence 18. Crisscrossing America 19. Leftovers 20. Daddy Get Up 21. I Cannot Be Your Dragon Slayer 22. I Have No Time Today 23. Something We All Have In Common 24. Come Along And Dance With Me 25. Everything You Need To Know 26. Graceful Aging? 27. Portent Pretense 28. The Rogue Confesses 29. A Sonnet (for Tammy, Candy, Shadow, King & Maggie) 30. God’s Wrath Is Undiminished 31. A Young Soldier’s Ghost Laments 32. The Rose To The Thorn 33. Tumbleweed 34. The Brief History Of The Palatine 35. Fewer Words Could Have Been Spoken 36. Wishing Well 37. Within This Shell… 38. Some Things Will Never Change 39. An Old Mariner’s Admonitory 40. September 11th, 2001 (There, But For The Grace Of God, Go I)

The History of Western Civilization… Bullshit and the Gigantic Man Up in the Sky i’m the “black sheep” of the family; the one family member who escaped the bonds of New York “Jew-dom” and headed for other pastures…not greener, just “other”. I was getting ready to tell you about the “dark and stormy” November night way back in 1950 when I was born, but that wasn’t a really good day for me…my mother wasn’t terribly thrilled either. So, I decided to reset the odometer on my own personal “way back machine” just a tad further. So, how DID it all begin…? Ah, I remember now…The Book of Genesis! Wait…before you stop reading for fear of some cockamamie proselytizing, allow me to explain. I’m Jewish, we don’t go there. Believe in any imaginary friend that makes you happy; “it’s none of my beeswax” as the saying goes. I have my own problems. If you think growing up Jewish in post-WWII America was easy you’ve been woefully misinformed. It was a giant pain-in-the-ass. Not hard; just really annoying. It was a long and drawn out, tedious and guilt ridden, stumbling journey through a mundane middleclass American childhood. So cut me some slack! I have, maybe, one good nerve left in my entire body after a half century plus of living the “Jewish-American Dream”. So, go along with me on this The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

one…okay? Now don’t get me wrong, I love the Jewish people, some of my best friends were Jewish, and, as far as I know, still are. Everyone of my relatives were pretty much Jewish too. Heck, I grew-up sharing a bedroom with my sister…and she’s Jewish! No, my problem wasn’t that I have anything against Jews, my problem back then with Judaism was Christmas; or rather, the lack thereof. Christmas-time was a bitch! I know you think you’ve heard this rant before, Jews whining about how they never got presents during Christmas, but its true. What a rip-off. While the Christian kids got all kinds of great stuff, not to mention a whole week of vacation to play with all that really terrific shit, I got to watch TV commercials about all the great shit I had no earthly chance of getting. At school, I was Elmer’s-gluing different colored macaroni and glitter on green-painted paper plates (the Elementary school equivalent of a Christmas wreath), and singing “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”, but at home…nothing. I remember when I was six, or maybe seven, getting caught using “Glass Wax” Christmas stencils to make those “delightfully festive” candy canes, snowmen and angels on our living room windows. That did not play well with my father. When I was young, my father was the most Jewish person I knew. There was God, Moses, then my father, in that order. I was pretty sure that Moses was more Jewish than him, but I wasn’t certain about God. The Christian kids laid claim to Him too. So I thought God went both ways. Yep, I figured God definitely had to be a bi-“sect”-ual. It was years before I learned the correct spelling of that word, and even more years before I found out what it actually meant. In the 50’s such things weren’t part of polite conversation. I grew up thinking bisexuals were hermaphrodites, like earthworms, they could screw themselves. Like I said, I wasn’t certain about God, but I gave Him top billing as a matter of courtesy. I’ve always been very respectful toward old people; and you just can’t get any older than God….right? (Sorry…Pop, I had to go with God as the 10

What the hell did I know about God anyways other than the fact that he could “smite” you whenever you pissed him off, and that He is a deadringer for Charlton Heston, and, of course, he’s gigantic and up in the sky somewhere. Needless to say, my Dad wasn’t overwhelmed by my stenciled Christmas decorations; his reaction to my apparent wayward Christian leanings, on a scale of one to ten, wasn’t even not a rational number. You would have thought that I had been caught kissing the Pope’s pinky ring. I wasn’t sure how, but I knew I had defiled the “Jew-ness” of our home; and that’s about as close as I ever came to celebrating Christmas when I was a kid. I figured my parents were way too Jewish to convert just so I could get presents, and besides, it was a well known fact that Santa Claus had some kind of “anti-Jew” radar on his sled. And we didn’t have a chimney either. Jews did not have chimneys. At least not New York City Jews. Chimneys and foreskins. Nope, Jews just simply didn’t have the one, or get to keep the other; but that’s a whole different part of this story. More about that later… Where was I? Oh, right, I remember now…Genesis…what a crock! For years I was under the impression that Adam and Eve, the Garden of Eden, Noah and the Flood and all the other “Bible Stories” were things that the Christian kids believed in. It wasn’t my fault I couldn’t understand the Hebrew language. (Okay, maybe it was…I’ll give you that one.) Even though after school every Monday thru Thursday from the age of seven until I was thirteen I went to “Rabbi Berstein’s Hebrew School”, I somehow managed to never learn a single word of the “lingua franca” of my people. To this day I have no idea how I pulled that one off. Not a single, solitary word. The only thing I can really remember about Hebrew school was the smell. It smelled great. Rabbi Berstein lived above the tiny “garage-converted-to-a-shul” and everyday the Rabbi’s wife was busy cooking dinner just in time for me to sit there, downstairs, salivating like some Pavlovian canine from the magnificently aromatic “whatever-the-hell-she-was-cooking”. (Hey…I was a fat little kid…food was my favorite form of entertainment; food, and horror movies on TV.) Say what you will about my people, but Jewish women, they really know how to cook. And I don’t mean some wussy, namby-pamby cooking either. No green-Jello molds studded with tiny marshmallows. Jewish women The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

specialize in that “stick-to-your-ribs” type of food. Solid food. Food that has some serious consequences to it. I’m talking the kind of stuff that goes straight to your coronary arteries. And, they can bake up a storm, too. Old world style; strictly from scratch. Breads and cakes with names that non-Jews can’t pronounce. None of that “instant-from-a-package-just-addwater” Duncan Hines crap either. Back to Genesis…what a crock! The really interesting thing about how the Book of Genesis begins, once you get past the illusory language and the illogical “Disney-like” images that should sound utterly ridiculous to any conscious adult; once you look at the essence of what is being said, putting aside “blind” faith so that you may “see”, there is a basic hidden fundamental truth to be discovered. A single thread of the real truth begins “in the beginning” and runs all the way through the Old Testament. Those “Genesis” stories, by the way, come from the Bronze Age, or something like that; they’re old…that’s all you need to know. And, those people had about as much literary talent as artistic talent. Need I remind everyone that every cave drawing you ever saw looks like it belongs on the refrigerator in the home of a really retarded kid. The “Literary Arts”, much like graphic arts wasn’t a big thing back then. To put it mildly, if literary and artistic talent were food, the human race would have starved to death in the stone age. By the way, how come the Serpent in the Garden of Eden was allowed to speak. You realize, in the whole Bible, that the only animal that ever spoke was the Serpent; and, if you were to believe the story literally, he was a hell-of-a-lot sharper than Eve…and more articulate too. Cartoons always anthropomorphically depict that snake as some kind of a sneaky, slimy weasel of a guy, hiding behind a tree, wearing a trench coat, with the collar turned up and sporting a Fedora pulled down over his eyes, and “beguiling” Eve with some silky smooth words, in a Brooklyn accent, like “Psst! Little girlie…ya’ like fruit? Could I interest you, purrrhaps, in a nice apple?” How come that snake had that inside information anyway? He knew what he was doing, and what would happen. How come God let him 12

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get away with being so mean-spirited. If Eve had just said, “flake off you sleaze” a lot of trouble – I mean A LOT of trouble – could have been avoided. When God got wind of what was going on between that snake and the girl, He made the snake slither around on its belly…forever; but He didn’t say anything about that “gift for gab”. Nowhere does it say that the snake’s vocal skills were taken away. So…where are all the talking snakes? So, there I was, sitting in Prof. Spanato’s “The Bible as Literature” class at the State University of New York at Buffalo. It’s the early fall of 1970. It’s an easy “A” in a truly laid back English elective (during the warm weather we were meeting outside under a tree…damn hippies), when I realized that Genesis had the correct order of things. No one was there to witness it, the beginning of the beginning that is, and modern man had only recently, relatively speaking, figured out the scientifically appropriate, and logically tolerable, sequence of events. I was a biology major attending college away from home on a tuitionand-room-only “New York State Regents’ College Scholarship” scholarship. My family sent me the money to buy food and books. I was taking this course along with “17th & 18th Century English Poetry”, and eight credits of another “free ride” they called “independent study”. For those credits, I was writing a book of untitled poetry with photographs serving as the “visual” title. The book was called “Weary Faces: A Study in Poetry and Photographs”. It was all very “artsy-fartsy”. Girls loved hearing about the book I was writing; they loved reading my poetry, too. (Hey…I was a normal, healthy red-blooded nineteen year old…a guy has needs…nevermind.) Independent studies were part of those experimental education programs that were permeating throughout collegiate America during the days of “Hippy-dom”. More about that later…back to Genesis. Those early stories all come from the folklore the ancient Hebrews used to entertain themselves with over a warm glass of goat’s milk while sitting around a camel-dung-fueled-desert campfire, way back when no one was around who could read or write or set off the “bullshit” alarm; yet these “genesis” legends had the damn sequence right. How did they manage that one? The appropriate answer for that question is… “God only knows!” Pagan cultures have formed their religious mythology around a whole The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

host of nonsensical creation stories. They were, and still are, all bullshit. Even the ancient Greeks, who, for the most part, were a fairly savvy bunch of thinkers, didn’t have the creation sequence along the modern day scientific timeline. These nomadic, Bedouin goat herders were telling the story in the correct sequence for two millennia before, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were born. There it is then, that thread of truth to be found in the beginning of the beginning. First the “null and void”, which pretty much sums up the condition of things in the nascent Universe, then the “let there be light” Big Bang happened. Then all that firmament started getting firmer as the things started to coalesce into the first stars; in opposition to the Law of Entropy which suggests that that shouldn’t have happened. Then there was water, then dry land, then the Sun and the Moon and Stars. Plants started to grow; which changed the atmosphere so the oxygen breathers could appear. Then the animals came, and, then Man “to hold dominion over it all”. A busy “week” even for a god…no? So much for the beginning of the beginning, and that’s only the first page…of Genesis, I mean… Like I said, “What a crock!” but, with a thread of truth running straight through it. And, Ladies and Gentlemen, of the Judeo-Christian Ethic, that thread binds us ALL together. You know many more Jews than you might think… ALL Christians are Jews. Allow me to offer a “window” into an overmedicated mind…Jesus, much like myself (except for that being the Son of God part) was a nice Jewish boy, too. He lived and died a Jew. His Mom, Dad and step-Dad were Jews. In fact, if not for his “Jew-ness”, the Roman’s wouldn’t have wanted to “knock him off”. It was a simple political assassination. A matter of expediency. He was a rabble-rouser. A problem for the other Jews who were just trying to find a way to live in the Roman Empire without getting stomped on constantly.  Judas turned him into the Romans who were looking to kill him; but the Romans did the deed. Jesus wasn’t trying to start a new religion; more like a new political party. As far as I can see, from my “cogitations”, Christ was more like…well…Ralph Nader. When Jesus died, he had no idea what was going to go on in his wake (pun intended). However, the “christians”, his group of followers, continued to 14

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be practicing Jews after he was gone from this earth. Hold that thought, it gets important… Skipping ahead a tad…from the ashes of the fallen Roman Empire, around the year 600  A.D., grew the “Holy” Roman Empire. A whole new deal politically, but basically those who were turning back to the “old” monotheistic religion based upon the “Septuagint”, a Greek translation of the Old Testament made in the third century B.C.. Basically, it’s what the Hebrews call the “TORAH” which simply means “the teachings” or “the instructions” or a manual...or what we’ve come to know of as a “book”. It was the instruction manual for following “The Law” set down by Moses from “God”. And, it came wrapped in a 5-part story called “The Books of Moses”, or, “the Pentateuch” which, loosely translated from the Greek, means “vessel”. Those rules, by the way, The Ten Comandments, ARE REALLY IMPORTANT, so keep that in mind because they weren’t made up on the fly – so to speak – either. So, if you don’t want to get “smitten” by an angry God, someday in the not too distant future, learn them! Anyways, 600 hundred years is a very long time. Way back then there were a minimum of people who could read and write ANYTHING. Many Hebrews, separated geographically, adopted new traditions based upon the edicts of the “new and improved” version of the Roman Empire. The new politics of the Holy Roman Empire, with its mixture of new and old Hebrew traditions, grew into a theocratic dictatorship called Roman Catholicism. (That’s why the Pope wears a “yarmulke” or skull cap, and why, in church, Christians say Amen, and in a synagogue Jews say – in phonetic Hebrew –“OR-MEIN”, etc.) Still basically Jews who prayed to Jehovah, but were followers of the teachings of Jesus...the rank and file membership of that political group he was trying to start when the Romans put that idea on “pause” with the crucifixion. After nearly a thousand years of a constant self-governing, self-evolving theocratic political domination over the “western” world, headed originally by a succession of popes, but based still upon the “Law” as handed down first starting with the “Giving of the Law” in the Book of Exodus and continued into the next Book, Leviticus. “Protestantism” Christianity was born as a new political party within that theocracy. Protestants were The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

“protesting” against the political structure, with its new fangled ways of praying to Jevovah…which was still basically Judaism…basically, just not outwardly and easily apparent, but basically. Martin Luther began the Protestant Reformation with the publication of his Ninety-Five Theses on October 31, 1517, just like Christ intended with his Teachings, as a new political party within the “Holy” Roman Empire. Nearly all Protestants trace their history back to Luther in one way or another. We all, in Western Civilization, stem from that group of slaves, conquered – once before – and living in the ancient Egyptian Empire, discovered by an alien culture (UFO guys) and “CHOSEN” by them to be the beginning of a new type of civilization. A civilization based upon the rules of social order that were learned by their alien culture to be the best basis for a peaceful and just society. It may have taken the aliens thousands of years to come up with what was handed down through Moses at Mt. Sinai…and they gave it to us with only one string attached…they intended for their “Laws” to survive, unchanged, throughout the ages…which they have. Jehovah was an alien leader and Moses worked for the alien people. He was probably one of the early hybrids, which we KNOW Jesus WAS because it was “GOD”, Jehovah, that fathered him…just ask his mom, Mary; that young woman who was abducted by aliens around the year 5 B.C. and turned up pregnant though she never “KNEW” a man. A statement that is absolutely true, to her credit. Any geneticist worth his salt will tell you, always use virgins for crossing breeding experiments I remember getting up at 4 A.M., when I was taking Human Genetics in college, so that I could isolate the newly emerging Drosophila females (that’s “fruit flies” to you non science majors) before the boy flies had their way with them. Yep! The aliens most likely used a form of artificial insemination of a alien-genetically-altered human egg. Perhaps they used some type of gene splicing to hybridize their DNA and ours…perhaps. The aliens successfully, but not entirely effectively, managed to get their “Laws” or “instructions” to survive, though; and to have a major part of, if not all of, earth’s inhabitants to follow those “gifted” guidelines. Those who do are known as JEWS by the way…you remember…the Hebrew 16

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people! Where was I? Oh, that’s right,…I remember now Genesis…what a crock! And – Don’t believe ANYTHING the government says either. They lie like leg-less dogs. They can’t help themselves really, their scared. You would be too if you had the faintest inkling of what scares them. UFO’s are real. It’s just this simple, if the government told you what I’m about to tell you, your first reaction would be, “Holy shit! You can’t tell this to everyone, they’d all freak-out and “shit-a-brick.” More about that later…

–from “death be not proud” by john donne

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There are Things Far Worse Than Dying… i usually find myself embroiled in deep, even controversial conversations with total strangers when I’m left on my own in any public setting. Talking and swapping ideas with others is one of the best ways of passing time. Airplanes are one of my favorite venues to engage in this wholly unintentional pastime. Every now and then the subject matter tends to be “fringe” like aliens visiting the earth, or whether “there is a God”; you know, the stuff that casual conversations are supposed to avoid. So there I was, sitting next to the window in the coach section of an American Airline’s 727 as it was descending in preparation to land at O’Hare Airport in Chicago. I don’t remember what time of the year it was, only that it was early in the morning on a beautifully clear day. I was returning from New York to my home in Los Angeles. O’Hare is the “hub” for American Air, so I generally had to change planes there; this day was no different. Next to me, in the middle of the three seats, sat a young black gentlemen. We were both about the same age (or so it seemed), both in our early thirties. Yet, other than the typical niceties, such as “Good Morning” and “How’s it goin’, we didn’t share any conversation up to that point. He was listening to a Sony Walkman and I was busy reading the in-flight magazine. 18

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I had just put my reading material away, and lifted my tray back into its “upright position” in anticipation of our landing. My eyes turned toward the window and I began to watch the ground grow closer as the plane descended. Generally, I’m a afraid of heights, but not when I’m in a plane 35,000 feet above the ground. My fears don’t return until the man-made ground features become distinguishable again; and so it was this particular morning. While I’m looking down, suddenly, from somewhere beneath the belly of our plane, another plane came into view as it crossed our path. Literally, it took my breath away. I was looking down at the top of another jet liner close enough to see the rivets on its wings. Fortunately I didn’t need to go to the bathroom because this close call was a bowel emptying event. With a loud increase in engine speed, the plane I was in angled itself skyward again and started to climb away from the interloper. It wouldn’t have mattered though. The other plane came from beneath and behind and would have certainly hit us if it was so inclined. I turned toward the young black fellow with a, “…did you see that,” look on my face and a “Holy Shit!” on my lips, but I realized he had. His eyes were as wide open as one can manage without them popping right out of his head. Before I could say anything intelligible, the Captain’s voice broke the turbulent silence. “This is your Captain,” his words were as nonchalant as a person commenting on the weather while clipping their toenails, “it seems that someone needs to land ahead of us…so we’ll just go around one more time and then land.” It was only a minute or so before my seat mate and I were instant friends and discussing a subject as appropriate as “Death”. Euphemistically, it is “death with dignity”; clinically we call it euthanasia; legally it can be, at worst, “premeditated murder”, at best, “assisted suicide”; but in the common vernacular it has always been the coup d’grau, or “mercy killing”. Regardless of the particular vocabulary employed to mask this harsh reality, it is the willful act of deliberately ending, or assisting to bring about the end of, a person’s life, at their personal request and direction by word, gesture, or pre-written authority, for the utterly altruistic purpose The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

of easing their pain and suffering in their final days. In my (humble) opinion, the American people are as schizophrenic in their approach to this issue, as they are to the constitutional issue of separation of church and state, which, I believe, plays an important role here. Were you to scratch away at the legal “patina”, and break down the moral “facade”, you invariably expose the hidden Judeo-Christian religious basis for denying this (sinful) right of “self-determination”, or rather, “self-extermination,” to the individual. Imposing the taboos dictated by one’s orthodoxy and ecclesiastical morality upon another citizen in our free society was specifically denied to the Federal and State governments by the constitution through the Establishment Clause which separated church and state forever in our country. And, although our society has come to terms with aborting pregnancies, regardless of the outcries from the clergy, “We, The People” cannot condone the premature taking of a life that no longer possesses a future, other than to wait in pain for death…the dichotomy, contradiction, irony and hypocrisy are absolutely stunning. To avoid the appearance of religious bias, and utilizing instead the all too often heard argument of not wanting to approach too near any legal/ philosophical/ethical slipp ery s lope that may somehow get out of hand; politicians, falsely assured by hubris that their actions to prevent the use of euthanasia are inherently correct, the youthful, still vigorous, robust legislators, prosecutors, Judges, etc., foolishly ignore the obvious fact that in “short order” their time too will come. They too might prefer, indeed, cry out for, the personal control to choose when and how they “…go gently into that goodnight.” For each of us, a reckoning awaits; and, ultimately, we all must face our own mortality. Held sacrosanct, however, like some forbidden fruit, is the choice of method and moment. Although there is seemingly no end to the acceptable death-defying antics engaged in by the healthy that routinely end in tragedy. From rock climbing to shark feeding, from “The Flying Walendas” to “Evil Knivel”, their pursuits of happiness are not stymied by legal issues in20

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hibiting their near suicidal activities. If you jump off a hundred foot ladder for no apparent reason, you’re said to have deliberately killed yourself; if you were aiming for a glass of water, your death was just an accident from a stunt that had gone awry. (What a world!) The truly fortunate among us go to sleep one night never to awake. While others, their fate is met quickly in a sudden flash of lightening, or an equally sudden and violent crash of man and machine. Still, there are the misfortunate multitude of others who will linger at the precipice of an elusive end for a long, drawn-out and painfully protracted length of time. People who shall, and do, endure excruciating pain heaped upon by unbearable misery and commingled with an abrogation of their personal dignity. They are imprisoned by our repressive retrogressive system of jurisprudence no less than any convicted felon; yet, all they may have ever done wrong is get sick or get old. In the absence of judge and jury, and lacking the commission of any crime, they are stripped of their inalienable rights to “liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, they are hopelessly incarcerated, for life, within their own afflicted, withered, wretched bodies. And of those who would by way of compassionate, empathic understanding assist the tortured tormented dying to carry out their personal wishes for a peaceful, pain free, and only slightly, premature demise., we have rewarded their tender and affectionate ministrations with criminal charges and imprisonment. Society refuses to amend its laws to afford mankind the same rights we allow to our pets and livestock. It is, quite simply put, ILLEGAL, to bring to an end intractable pain, insufferable wretchedness and the unendurable loss of one’s dignity… Shakespeare was right…, “What fools these mortals be!”

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Who Gets to Swim in the Gene Pool… middle island is a small town in suffolk county, n.y. I was 22 in 1973 when I married JoAnn and settled into a new life in a one bedroom “condo” in an utterly bucolic setting next to the diminutive “Artist Lake”. She was a LPN (Licensed Practical Nurse), and I was a Medical Laboratory Technologist. We both were working nights in a somewhat quaint country hospital named after Capt. John T. Chandler, an old seafaring captain that had once been a local denizen of that picturesque sailing community on Long Island’s north shore, called, Port Jefferson. My partner, Larry E., and I worked the midnight thru 8 A.M. shift in the hospital’s lab. Larry was a tall, good-looking Black man who attended a local college during the day, studied Kung-Fu and sported a robust “Afro” hair style with some pre-mature graying that highlighted his 24 year old head. We had become very close friends over the few years that we labored together. We were truly a team. We were the “Night Shift”. So, there I was, just finishing an argument with a “floor nurse” over a report that I had sent to her nurse’s station about a new admission. I had reported the presence of “Trichomonas vaginalis” in the patient’s urine sample. “Trich” is an unmistakable, rather active little parasite that “flagellates” itself quickly around in the microscope’s field when examining urine 23

sediment for whatever clinically significant “stuff” might be present. Ninety-nine percent of the time it’s only found in a female’s urine, but it is capable of infecting men as well (same genus: trichomonas, but a different specie: hominus…actually it’s the same little bug, but the name changes with the sex of the patient). In this instance, the patient’s first name happened to be “Vivian”, so I had made the mistake of writing “Trichomonas present” on the lab slip that held the notations for a Routine Urinalysis. It seems the patient was from the West Indies where, apparently, Vivian is a man’s name…who knew! So, I blew it with the correct specie name, but the tiny critters were there nonetheless. Now everyone in the hospital knows that the laboratory is staffed by the closest you can come to a scientist in a non-research oriented hospital. When it comes to pure science, on the intangible ladder of scientifically knowledgeable employees, the regular floor nurse is on a much lower rung, somewhere, perhaps, right above the Hospital Chaplain. I had just returned from the 3rd floor with an “Atlas of Parasitology” tucked under my arm. A floor nurse had actually laughed at my blunder over the phone suggesting that I had tested the wrong sample, or even worse, didn’t “know-my-assfrom-a-hole-in-the-wall” in general. What nonsense; the unadulterated audacity of the woman! So I felt honor bound to prove her wrong by showing her full-color pictures of the “beast” in a textbook. Every laboratory I’ve ever worked in had a small library of laboratory oriented textbooks…mostly to settle arguments. Larry was standing in the back corner of the laboratory motioning to me as I entered. Yep…that was a joint in his hand. Occasionally, he and I would indulge ourselves in a “puff-or-two” during the boring wee hours of the early morning. We would go into the chemical mixing room with its powerful “fume hood” where he and I would sit on the counter top with our upper bodies inside the “not-quite-closed” contraption, flip on the exhaust fan and…well…get stoned! Laboratory work is much more interesting (and relaxing) with a mild buzz on. One particular night we fell into a deep discussion about how we both lucked out and never got our asses drafted into the Army. (The Vietnam war hadn’t ended yet but neither of us ever got that “Greetings” letter from 24

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Uncle Sam.) The conversation soon turned to the science behind warfare and the unspoken effects that that much killing must be having on the overall make-up of the human race. We concluded the following: We do it with our cattle. We do it with our crops. We do it with our “beasts of burden”, our wildlife, our Beagles and our Bloodhounds. Man has imposed his will and applied his knowledge of selective breeding to isolate the most desirable genetic traits in thousands of species of “flora and fauna” since long before Gregor Mendel ever introduced the first hybrid Pea plant to his admiring public. How sadly ironic then, is the typical expression of revulsion people exhibit at the thought of practicing “Eugenics”; of consciously and purposely attempting to mettle with the human race in an effort to “selectively” breed people of a “higher caliber”. Decent heads shake in shocked rejection of the very idea; the concept smacks of the “Master Race” dogma perniciously spewed by hooded bigots. That is why, no contrived satire of humanity’s foibles could ever surpass the lunacy of the reality by which humankind has victimized itself through the millennia with the most “unnatural” selection process deliberately contrived. Civilization’s own selective breeding program has a name - “Warfare”; and an agenda seemingly hell-bent on debilitating the specie. It makes no sense…in fact, it’s so diametrically opposed to any good sense, as to appear darkly intentional, if not, outright diabolical. What are “armies”, after all? Are they not the rank and file of our finest group of human specimens. Only the fittest males, the young and healthy, the most robust, alert, agile and physically well formed, all in their sexual prime…the much sought after “…few good men.” The very criteria used to include and exclude individuals from military service, all but guarantees degradation of the human genetic stock through a self-imposed, highly selective, “psuedo” mass extinction of superior quality male human beings. I feel consummately certain that Darwin himself would agree with that statement. If you are crazy, you cannot serve. If you are a criminal, they don’t want you. Seven feet tall; no way. Four feet tall; I think not. Congenitally blind, The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

deaf, lame, infirm, diseased, abnormal, or simply too stupid to be trusted with a weapon; you cannot go either. And, as though to insure that only the poorest genetic material flourishes…in the last century or two, we’ve begun to use medical science to screen out the somewhat misbegotten and slightly ill-conceived, while flagrantly dismissing the simple wisdom in the cliché, “Like father, like son.” What infinite harm will be the legacy of the hundreds of wars, thousands of battles, and countless millions of deaths? How have we altered our biological destiny? Only time will tell what natural chastisement awaits our race for having - with the greatest of care - carelessly culled the best from the world’s societies, and allowed them to be whipped into a murderous frenzy by older males who no longer risk themselves in battle. Young soldiers are but the fool-hearty fodder for the cannons of Kings and despots; vibrant, new growth, cultivated by every nation of man, raised up only to be razed down like so much ‘hay before the scythe’. And, as they are placed under the “sod”, they take with them nature’s best biological intentions to improve the human race.

J. H. Goldstein

In my (humble) opinion:

Don’t Jerk Me Around… I Went to Law School, I Know What You’re Talkin’ About something very strange is afoot. I’m not certain how it all began, or when, but we’ve become a society that masks important issues behind carefully crafted facades, creating “monikers” that change an old familiar thing into something no longer easily recognizable. Like morphing Richard Nixon’s “Silent Majority” into Jerry Fallwell’s “Moral Majority”. Or changing the abundantly fair “Estate Tax” into the much maligned “Death Tax” so it may be disposed of against the best interest of the people as a whole. The marketplace of consumer products has long been the greatest offender; with freshly designed packaging masquerading as something substantially changed from its original form. This foolishness is well known… Frequently, (all too frequently) we’re being offered a tired old product in a more attractive, yet, comfortably familiar manner. No great harm done when this “name game” is played to suggest that a laundry detergent, long known for what it can and cannot do, is elevated to the position of an entirely “New and Improved” product because it’s now “lemon scented”. Generally, we’ve learned to see past this thinly veiled prevarication and the The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

relatively benign attempt to deceive us. Often we appreciate this for what it is; a blatant, somewhat laughable, and wholly obvious commercial ruse usually cloaked in the guise of progress or recent scientific advancement. But what of the more cunning and insidious practice that alters critically grave issues by deliberately masking them with semantic contrivances which have been deliberately applied for the sole purpose of having us accept as palatable, if not down right desirable, a previously taboo practice normally looked upon as wrongful and repulsive. I’m speaking now of the hitherto disdained and appropriately despised practice of intentional feticide; the act of terminating a pregnancy by killing an embryo while still in the womb…or, more commonly and less clinically, abortion. I’m not commenting here about the right or wrong of the practice, nor am I promoting my viewpoint on this argument; I’ll keep that opinion to myself. Here, I speak only of the mental and emotional fast-footed, side-stepping our society has engaged in over the use of the two popular phrases “Pro Choice” and “Pro Life”. Each a perennially praiseworthy selection…no? After all, in a free society, who wouldn’t throw themselves fully behind the notion of “choice”, specifically, the personal freedom to choose something that greatly affects the individual making that choice. Equally, what man, or woman (in their right mind) wouldn’t whole-heartedly stand behind “life” (as opposed to its alternative) as an issue. And therein lies the preplanned perplexity of this shrewdly camouflaged dilemma. Are you against free choice…are you against life itself…what are you in favor of? If we pause, for the briefest possible moment, to inwardly reflect upon what it is that we are actually discussing, we run head long into the reason for the deception. To save ourselves from the excruciating anguish of admitting to “baby killing”, we’ve allowed the entrance into to the common vernacular of a truly non-descriptive term for an abominable act. To ‘placate” our guilt ridden consciences for allowing, condoning and/or committing the unconscionable act of premeditated homicide against the most defenseless of all humankind, the embryo in utero, we’ve enshrouded this despicable act inside a most revered term usually reserved for questions of freedom… our most precious of all rights. 30

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It’s not the “killing” part that offends our sensibilities, for we certainly have no problem with calling a weed killer or a bug killer what it is. We have no difficulty with killing the enemy, or killing cancer, or killing one’s self, or killing one’s chances or killing some time. We seldom flinch when we hear that someone is about to kill the lights or kill a drink. We can even tolerate the party poopers among us who we casually call killjoys…but we seem to have a problem with killing babies. Whether or not you are an advocate of legalized abortion, should we not all be advocates for the simplicity of plain speech when making difficult decisions? When you interfere with the normal progression and natural outcome of a pregnancy, so that a viable embryo will no longer continue to mature, and that “spark of life” is forever extinguished, you are, of course, making a “choice”; you are choosing to KILL A BABY. That is not an attack or an accusation – it’s simply the fact of the matter and deserves to be recognized as such…a human being, an unborn baby, that, but for the fact that its no longer alive, would have someday laughed, and cried, and worked, and played, and watched the sun set, and felt rain on their face as it fell from the sky, would have known joy and sorrow, and every other one of the thousands of experiences you’ve shared with the rest of humanity. It also would have an opinion about its impending termination…if it could speak. Perhaps it would strenuously lobby its parents to allow it to live. Unfortunately, the innocent-unborn cannot call the police for protection, or file a wrongful death suit against a society that would condone such actions. So, at the very least, let’s all call it what it IS… If you can’t handle that, maybe there’s a reason why…but that’s just my (humble) opinion, and an opinion is just self-expression: then again, we don’t have a major problem with trying to kill that either. Quite frankly…I’m “Pro-Truth”.

The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

Kill Them All and Let God Sort It Out! it was the first baseball game which michael and i saw live. He was only seven years old, so that would make it the summer of 1992, or there about. It was at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, California. I have no earthly idea who was playing…suffice it to say it was the Anaheim Angels against nine other guys from…well…somewhere. I was never much of a sports fan, folks…but that’s another story. The “boy” and I were living in Aliso Viejo, at that time, a beautiful upscale community in Orange County, California about two miles from Laguna Beach and the Pacific Ocean. A friend of mine from work, Mike Q., had purchased a brand new condominium and asked if Michael and I would like to split it with him and share the costs. I had broken up with Yvonne, my son’s mom, about a year before, and continued to live in our little apartment with Michael after she moved out. I hated the neighborhood we were living in with its high crime rate, street traffic and gang influence, so I jumped at the chance to move Michael and myself into a brand new area with a far superior overall environment. I was working as a Senior Associate in Steroid Chemistry at Nichol’s Institute, a large clinical laboratory in San Juan Capistrano, another Orange County community. The transition would position us closer to my work, as well, The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

so we made the move. Back to that Baseball game. It was a night game which ran into extra innings. Our “housemate”, Mike, was with us; we were sitting high up in the “nose bleed” section of the bleachers. It was the eleventh inning. Yep!, it was one those games. Every now and then Baseball games just won’t seem to end. I needed to use the restroom and asked Mike to keep an eye on my sweet, little “Cherub”. So, naturally, when I returned my son was nowhere to be found. My boy, my only son – indeed my only child - has always been looking to send me to an early grave…at least that’s how it felt every now and then when he didn’t do whatever it was I told him to do. Mike just looked at me like a “deer-in-the-headlights” when I asked in a voice already an octave above human hearing, “Where’s Michael!” “He went running after you…didn’t he catch up with you,” he said as the blood drained from both of our faces. Together we went tearing out of the bleachers toward the Men’s Room…my son was no where to be found. We started to look for him just as the game ended, just as a human flood began to pour out of every exit…I was suddenly thrust into a maddening stampede of people as I scanned the crowd in a frenzy to find a skinny, little, 4 ft. tall, eight year old that I had grown fond of. It wasn’t any more than a minute, or any less than an eternity, before I heard Michael’s voice calling “Daddy” from deep within the mass of people. It could have been the Pope, the President and all their relatives and it wouldn’t have stopped the head-long dash that I made into that crowd that day. I swept my son up into my arms, turned toward Mike, handed him the still bewildered boy, and, right there in front of Mr. & Mrs. John Q. Public, and their kids, proceeded to throw up a large Coca-cola, two “foot-long” hot dogs, with mustard and sauerkraut, and a giant salted pretzel. It wasn’t pretty. Nerves do that to me every now and then. To add insult to injury, someone yelled out, “Fuckin’ drunk” after I let it fly. Hey, I love that kid and would have probably missed him if I couldn’t find him again! (Damn kids…whew!) I was thinking about that baseball game after I saw another “Amber Alert” on the TV news. In recent months the American public has been shocked and outraged 34

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by a number of crimes that seem unconscionable to the rational mind. Children abducted from the seemingly safe haven of their bedrooms and their front yards only to be found later, molested and murdered in horrific manners; or, perhaps even worse, not found at all. The newspapers are saturated with stories of young men murdering their pregnant wives, people keeping children chained up until they die of starvation, and other despicable acts. A short time ago, a duet of misanthropes “sniper-ed” a savage, homicidal rampage across America, culminating in a succession of senseless killings that held captive an entire section of our country; while we all watched and waited in bewildered disbelief for their apprehension. All of these events, a mere trickle in the ever present torrent of such crimes that torment our society year after year. It leaves the silent lawabiding majority of us cowering in fear while asking the simplest of all questions, “WHY?” Or even the more fitting question, “How can we prevent these atrocities from happening?” In my (humble) opinion, the answer lies in the forgotten objective of capital punishment; to scare the living shit out of people! Had the framers of the Constitution, our Founding Fathers, envisioned a world where such crimes would be committed on a frequently reoccurring basis, they would never have “quill-ed” such an abstract, obtuse, open to “debate and interpretation”, phrase such as “No Cruel and Unusual Punishment”; a simple phrase which seems to have rendered impotent our system of jurisprudence to provide the American people any respite from these abhorrent acts. We’ve lost sight of the intent of capital punishment, which is to provide more for deterrence than discipline; particularly for the most hideously heinous misdeeds which might afflict our society. Capital punishment was never meant to merely expeditiously eliminate from the community of men those who would transgress against us in these monstrous, appalling ways. Its fundamental purpose must always be two-fold: to be a more frightening termination of life for the wrongdoer than mere euthanization by lethal injection, behind closed doors, away from the public’s “eye”, and, more importantly, to demonstrate in an open communal fashion to The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

any other would be offenders what happens to people that commit these acts. It doesn’t require a “brain surgeon” to appreciate that if capital punishment was designed to be grotesque, excruciatingly painful, drawn-out and public, the wicked, depraved monsters that live among us would ponder long and hard over their possible punishment, and would probably be too terrified to contemplate, let alone commit, their crimes. Without trying to sicken my audience, its safe to say that the more “primitive”, more torturous, more uncivilized methods of execution were by far more effective in achieving this end (no pun intended) than the sterile methods used today. Capital punishment was supposed to provide a terrifying example of what will happen if you wantonly kill…it was supposed to be witnessed by all of us…it was supposed to be (literally) more scary than hell! Simply put. It was supposed to be the fitting end for a certain easily understandable wrong…the taking of another’s life. As I mentioned earlier in this book. Though killing was specially sanctioned against by God himself. “Thou shalt not kill”; even God realized that some people “…just needed killin’” – who – those who killed others…”an eye for an eye…a life for a life” wasn’t just a suggestion…it is a fundamental rule of social order originally introduced at Mt. Sinai. God may have also stated that “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord.” I don’t know where he said that, but I’ve always heard that objection somewhere in “capital punishment” discussions. I believe it’s God’s intention that we follow the rules in the order given. Let God wreak all the vengeance he wants, but if the sub-human scum that would abduct a child, rape and kill them is still alive after God has had ample opportunity to take his vengeance…well, we know what we have to do…the answer is in the instruction manual. And, If you are at a loss for what method to use to carry out such a sentence, and want to know how these people should be dealt with, what methods should be applied to bring about the demise of such “cruel and unusual” murderers…just ask the parents of any child that has been abducted, tortured and killed. This is a special issue with the ol’ Grizz, I 36

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truly believe that certain crimes transcend our laudable intention to merely maintain an ordered society; that they, in fact, merit a unique punishment. This is one of them. Whatever simple and quick, or grotesquely protracted method of execution THE CHILD’s PARENTS come up with is just fine by me. Letting the parents dispatch the evil scum straight to hell…well I don’t have a problem with that…no…not one problem with that at all. Heck, if the parents want it that way, I’d show it on pay-per-view cable channel and give the proceeds to the family. WHEW! …I really needed to get THAT one off my chest. Come on people, what are we doing with this stuff. Our legal system has forgotten why we make laws…it’s to protect people, to serve the common good. When it can’t do that for the murdered child, at least the parents won’t need years of therapy. That kind of well deserved revenge could be likened to a form of emotional “Ex-Lax”. After what they have been through, the child’s parents are often filled with toxic emotions that we leave within them to fester. It’s unnatural to let them live on without exacting some revenge… God knows that. Five minutes alone with the child’s murderer, without any criminal consequences, will clear the grief-stricken parents’ emotional colon of all the “shit” they’re carrying around. That’s my (humble) opinion…take it for what its worth.

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UFOâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Alien Abductions Cattle Mutilations Crop Circles Bigfoot Angels The Loch Ness Monster Ghosts The Monster in your Closet etc. etc. etc.

The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

Okay…I know this isn’t going to make me any really “close” friends, but I was abducted by aliens when I was about fifteen years old. Scoff if you will. It definitely “may” have happened. Okay…I’m not entirely sure. I have no proof, if that’s what it takes to be believed. No unfamiliar scars were ever suddenly discovered; no insidious little implants have been found. Okay…whatever, so don’t believe me, but something did happen one night and it has forever altered my viewpoint. Back in 1965 (it could have been 1966), I awoke in the middle of the night and was completely paralyzed. Wait…don’t bother saying the words “sleep paralysis” or the tongue twisting, “hypnogogic hallucination”, because I’ve heard it all before. I’ve seen all of the movies and all of the “not-quite-believable” TV programs about UFO’s, “close encounters” and alien abductions. I am very well versed in all of that popular tripe. Heck…I could be a “tripe-ologist”. I know most of the names of the perennial players on the “Ufology” (I just love that word) scene: Betty & Barney Hill, Dr. J. Alan Hynek, Stanton Friedman, Whitley Strieber, Dr. John Mack, Bob Lazar. You give me a name, and I’ll tell you why you shouldn’t buy a used car from that person; if you understand where I’m coming from! Where was I…ah, right…so, there I was lying face down on my pillow. I’m wide awake, and I can’t move a muscle, and I’m terror stricken. Not only couldn’t I move, but I was seized by an overwhelming feeling that someone was standing next to my bed staring down at me. With all my might I tried to turnover; I wanted to defend myself, but I simply could not move. Then I think I fell back to sleep because I had the sensation of waking up again. My position hadn’t changed. I still felt like someone was there in my room, but now I was totally relaxed. The uncontrollable fear was gone. I’m relaxed and feeling like something had changed…but what?. I can still feel the sweat drenched pillow against my cheek to this day. Next thing I knew it was morning and I was waking up yet one more time that night. It was a busy night…and I would never feel quite the same about the world, but I didn’t know it then. When I told my Dad about what happened, he decided to change the “Mezuzah” that was nailed up in the corner of my bedroom doorframe. Jews hang them in their doorways to 40

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ward off “evil spirits”; kind of a do not enter sign for ghosts and incubi and the like. That’s my Dad…Jewish to the core. He still doesn’t believe in the existence of “flying saucers”, but ghosts he has no problem with…ghosts are real. And, Mezuzah’s can lose their “potency” if you paint over them too many times. Is it any wonder that I believe in “little grey men”? Whether they are the products of fertile imaginations, the wild ramblings of crazed and tortured minds or the genuine article, people, from every culture and of every color, plain ordinary people, from primitive aborigines to pedestrian city dwellers, people just like you and I, since the beginnings of the human record until the present, people have been scared witless by the things they’ve seen. Not all of us, undoubtedly, have been conscripted by these chance encounters into these hapless groups of penuriously ignored individuals whose misfortune it was to bear witness to the queer, weird and curious. But their numbers are sufficient to have canonized several of these “paranormal” subjects into a permanent anecdotal annotation of our collective post-primitive myths and legends; a sought of cross-cultural panoply of the spooky, or, a “Hall of Fame of the Strange and Inexplicable”, if you will. And I am not about to add fuel to the fire of differing opinions regarding the existence of any of these things by interjecting my half-baked opinion into that mix… But, in my (humble) opinion, I’m interminably delighted that these things inhabit our concerted consciousness and cultures. Accounts of freakish oddities, unusual occurrences, and mis-created teratoids add a touch of the mystical and magical to children’s lives…even big children like me. To be spellbound with a delicious excitement about what lurks around the next corner, or what may gruesomely skulk through the mist-filled woods at twilight, or what might use the cover of night to shroud its hideous face, is the sweet pinch of ‘fear of the unknown’ that young people, regardless of their chronological age, need in their world. These are the things that make children seek out the security of their beds and blankets and brothers and sisters, and tremble with an exquisite anticipatory apprehension while listening to each creak and squeal that resonates through The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

their homes at night. They are the fodder for thousands of chilled spines under thousands of goose-bumped skins; and for the sudden adrenaline rush behind puerile screams while gathered around a blazing mid-summer campfire. It is also the juvenescent refusal of humankind to stop believing in the unbelievable, no matter how much of the natural universe he has reduced to a mathematical logic. It is the most pubescent side of our secretive selves that has always insisted that things really don’t stay the same when the lights are turned off. I believe that the opportunity to “enjoy” the tingling awe and chilling wonderment of the unexplainable is the birthright of every child. I hope people keep on seeing these things…but my greatest hope is that they never discover what these things are; or what will the next generation of children hide under the covers from! By the way, everything mentioned in the title of this rant does exist, except the “Monster in Your Closet”…it’s really under your bed…Goodnight, now - sleep well!

J. H. Goldstein

The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

J. H. Goldstein

Human Cloning Is Easy…Parenting is Not It’s fall, and my son Michael and I have just moved to the very small, very rural and deliberately rustic, City of Big Bear Lake, in southern California’s San Bernardino Mountains. With a grand total of about 15,000 or so year round residents that little alpine, part-time ski resort, full-time tourist trap is a “city” the same way Taco Bell is authentic Mexican cuisine. Quaint, yes, charming, somewhat, but metropolis…I think not! It took a while to reach this conclusion, but that beautiful, secluded hamlet, a mile and a half up in the sky, and thirty-eight ground miles from anything that resembles an actual “city”, was provincial, parochial, and down right scary…that is if you find “Neo-fascism” scary. Remember, I’m Jewish. Michael and I, and the other twelve Jews living up there were critically outnumbered. The problem was that I was a “New York City” Jew…kinda’ uppity for that neck of the woods. I actually had the unmitigated gall to complain about my son being called a “kike” in school…silly me. Relocating there turned out to be a serious mistake; but that’s a WHOLE other story… I had been raising Michael, for the most part, by myself in Orange County, California. His Mom had him on weekends and holidays; that is until “HE” decided it was time for a change. The rift between us began with a typical, “parent’s-will-versus-child’s-won’t” falling out over his The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

school work. Michael never loved school. The year before, when he was twelve, my darling child had approached his 7th grade education with all the enthusiasm of a vegetarian working in a meat packing plant; it was as though he really didn’t have a vested interest in his work product, and what’s more, he summarily informed me that that “type” of labor just didn’t suit him. This time the argument, if memory serves me, was over his Science Fair Project, or rather his unwillingness to produce one. Science Fair projects are such a huge waste of time. Most kids have no intention of being scientists. Why do the schools support this silliness by making participation mandatory? Often, the students’ half-hearted effort only spells a senseless death for some unsuspecting bugs or hapless rodents; or results in a mess when the “papier-mâché” volcano goes “super-nova”. Children aren’t forced to publicly humiliate themselves in other subjects. In Music Appreciation, Art, Physical Education and Math classes, those teachers have the good sense not to force children to display their talents side by side for all the parents to come and see. Thank God, because Michael’s best subject in those early years was “Lunch”; that, and “entertaining the troops”. He loves to tell jokes. He loves to laugh. I hate to admit it, but up until that year I virtually did the science project for him. Parents are such pushovers sometimes. You don’t want the world to think your child is incapable of killing things, in the interest of science that is, so you kill the critter yourself. Or even worse, you send your third grader into school with some home-made experiment that Jonas Salk couldn’t come up with, while deluding yourself in the belief that no one will notice that he, or she, had gotten some help. That year, however, there would be no Science Fair Project. Michael had just turned thirteen and felt the need, apparently, to rebel against the repressive system which kept him unfairly subjugated and enslaved under the evil rule of “Dad”. The poor downtrodden little fella’ needed a break from me and decided he would try vacationing in the “Land-o’-Mom”. So it was decided, over a few phone calls, and a great deal of anxiety and exasperation, that Michael would give living with his mother a field trial. Just in time too, the project was due in a couple of days… What a self-inflicted “pain-in-the-ass” parenting can be sometimes. In a 46

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world where you get some enjoyment out of the “manufacturing process”, at least there is an explanation of how you managed to come by your kids. If science is successful, which it will be someday in the future, lovemaking to actually make children may, very well, become…”passé”. Things are certainly moving in that direction…its a “brave new world” out there these days. It’s a world in which children may soon only need one parent; and that parent will be biologically the sibling of their own child… whose grandparents are biologically the parents…are you confused yet? Well, your bewilderment is nothing compared to the perplexity that the cloned child will experience…or will be felt by the society that must accommodate these new-sprung curiosities. We’ve yet to completely comprehend the ultimate ramifications of such intrusions into nature’s mechanisms. Never before in the annals of animal biology has the world known the inconceivable; the truly “motherless” and “fatherless” child. It begs the old question that Samuel Morse chose as his first transmission by telegraph, “What hath God wrought?” Metaphorically speaking, we’re forever wandering along some mythical beach, encountering one corked bottle after another. And inside of each has been a genie who has pled for its freedom. Begging us, making mendacious promises that later it will not keep. Again and again we’ve let that treacherous phantom fool us into liberating him…only to come to rue the day we did. We discovered gun powder, first using it to celebrate the new year, then proceeded to exterminate untold millions of people. We’ve replaced the horse with the automobile and polluted the planet instead of fertilizing it as we ambled along. We’ve replaced workers with automation, creating the droves of idle unemployed, and throwing self-sufficiency and craftsmanship to the wind. We’ve split the atom and unleashed the world’s greatest terror. Experience should enable us to recognize the same kind of mistake when we are about to make it again…but, oh well! I’m afraid that that’s a false hope for mankind. It seems we’re doomed to suffer the consequences of our own misplaced genius…again. It is my (humble) opinion that fools do rush in where wise men fear to tread; and, its not progress when a cannibal uses a knife and fork!

The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

“Stupid Juice” i can’t help making this observation, and I know I’m not alone when I discuss this next one. Just ask any Cop or Paramedic if the following description rings true. “With expensive rubber being laid down in two smoking rows on the asphalt, his front end tilted up and straining against the near destructive torque; the sporty import responded to the lead-footed acceleration and careened pointlessly down the street. Pitching forward at the last moment as the braking force is applied…skidding to a somewhat controlled stop. After a brief few seconds the light changes back to green, and the car lurches forward with a “jack-rabbit” pulse of sudden sound and movement. And, again the black stripes are left on the roadway as the driver’s engine gulps needless amounts of gas.” What’s wrong with this young man: is it an emergency?…No! Is he late for an appointment?…Not this time! Is he experiencing a seizure while driving? Does he need a bathroom immediately? Has he left something important undone?…No, No, and, I think not! This young man in my little story is driving under the influence of a highly dangerous, chemically induced aggression. At eighteen years of age his circulating levels of Testosterone are as high as they ever will be during The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

his life. “Oh, so, he’s taking out that aggression on the car, then?”…Nope!... wrong again. He’s strutting his stuff like a Peacock spreading its tail feathers for the Peahens, and the roaring of his engine is the mating call. “Testosterone…Yes…Testosterone…a strange chemical from another epoch…that makes you think you’re able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, that you’re more powerful than a locomotive, that you’re faster than a speeding bullet and, of course, you’re able to bend steel in your bare hands.” (sound familiar?). Well, these are but a few of the scores of different ways to injure and kill themselves which have been attempted by this pathetic creature; this Young Adult Male. (Y.A.M. for short, but not only because of the acronym…but more because of the potato-headed thought patterns caused by “Testoxification”.) In my (humble) opinion, these “testoholics” are behind a large portion of what is wrong with the human race. They’re at the heart of any aggressive behavior between men and other men, from fist fights to gang violence to World Wars; and they can be found in abundance wherever men compete with other men. This “testoxification” can cause men to be unfaithful to their wives, as they answer nature’s ‘call-of-the-wild’ and try to provide stud service for an entire heard of females; and it causes both public and domestic violence, as they try to prove their masculinity by beating up someone…anyone. It’s important to note that communities of eunuchs probably don’t do anything rowdy. When mixed with a couple of other ingredients, such as Ethyl Alcohol and Adrenaline, these YAM’s have been known to invent activities like Drag Racing, Bungee Jumping, Base Diving, Dwarf Bowling, Flatulence Ignition, and, yes, even Competitive Vomiting (not for volume, only distance!). Pity them! For they are victims. They cannot control their reckless behavior because of this vile substance’s hold on them. It is the “monkeyon-their-back” that makes them want to buy a monkey that can actually ride on their back, or a Boa Constrictor, or a Python, or any other weird creature that will frighten the “bejeezes” out of most people. Not too long ago, this problem of “Testosterone Abuse” was the subject of a major motion picture; a documentary really, that clearly pointed out the senseless extremes these poor, wretched, crazed individuals will go to 50

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when their brains are swimming in this demon “stupid juice”… Have you seen “Jack Ass: The Movie”? …I rest my case!

The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

Will Somebody Please… Teach Me Something I Can Use! law school turned out to be an elaborate lark; just something to do with my time for a while. I wasn’t anal retentive enough to actually become an attorney… It’s the fall of 1995. For a large chunk of the last year I had been riveted to my TV screen watching the “O.J. Simpson (double) Murder Trial & Daytime Soap Opera” play itself out in “sometimes-tedious/sometimesinteresting” daily doses of “Live-courtroom-drama”. And, everyday, I would oblige those around me to listen to “MY” analysis of the days events. I was continuously droning on about this and that; it was a stupefying didactic, and mind-numbingly pedantic, daily rant. Who said what about whatever? Was the evidence planted? Were there undiscovered perpetrators that had gotten away Scot free? Could “good ‘ol” O.J. Simpson actually have committed such despicable acts? He was one of the good guys in American culture. At its end, I still couldn’t say for sure if he was guilty…and that meant reasonable doubt still existed. The verdict, I felt, was “legally” appropriate. No one should ever be thrown into prison unless the evidence is incontrovertible, and it wasn’t in “OJ’s” case…period! 52

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When that trial finally came to a close it left a void in my otherwise agonizingly humdrum existence. The OJ proceedings were like heroin, and I had become seriously addicted to “the Law”. I was not working at that time, and had been spending much of my days catering after Michael’s needs and watching TV. An accident at work in 1991 had left me with a disabling injury that triggered a “Social Security Disability Award” because I was no longer able to maintain “substantial gainful employment” by working as a Med. Tech; my only profession for nearly a quarter century. This addiction to the law, though, had to somehow be addressed. Words like “testimony” and “forensic” would dance about in my head like “sugar plum fairies” from a “Nutcracker” rendition; “affidavit” and “exculpatory” sent chills up my spine. I needed an I.V. drip of “legalese” to make it through the day. I was watching “The People’s Court” and “Divorce Court” with a completely new enthusiasm, but couldn’t get a powerful enough “fix.” I was ready to sue someone just so I could be part of that world of “motions” and “depositions”. It wasn’t long before my girlfriend at that time, Linda S., had gotten her fill of my imaginary armchair litigiousness. “So,” I can still remember her words, “why don’t you go to Law School?” Heck, I didn’t have an answer that suited me. After all, I certainly had the time, and the government would be guaranteeing the money through federal student loans; and I was certainly as smart as Johnny Cochran, OJ’s lawyer. I was so heavily addicted to courtroom “jargon” and legal “dicta” already…why not go to law school? I was 44 years old and needed a new career path…hmmm…law school…why not? There was a reason “Why not?”, but I didn’t realize it then. Before anyone could say “Habeas corpus”, I was making arrangements to take the LSAT (Law School Admissions Test). If I didn’t get a high enough grade there, I wouldn’t be able to get into a school. Somewhere in the back of my mind I figured that that was going to put an end to this nonsense of me being a lawyer. Law school isn’t something you start just for fun, just to have something to do. To satisfy a whim or to occupy your time one should take up model airplane building, amateur tattooing or some other hobby, not go to law school. I wasn’t sure if I still had what it takes to do The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

that much studying. Let’s call a “spade a spade”, I never liked to study. “Like father, like son”…Michael picked up some of my worst traits! So, naturally, I sailed through that examination…stoned on some excellent home-grown “sensimilla” that I smoked in my car on the way to the test just to make sure I had “NO” chance of passing. So much for plan “A”. Damn I.Q., I always had a “knack” for test taking, and an ego-driven reflex to give the correct answer if I knew it. It’s how I managed to get my college scholarship years before, and how I scored the highest in the written part of the 1984 “Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Examination”…more about that later… So, there I was, sitting in Prof. Mohr’s “Contracts I” class, when I put my hand up to make a comment about something I had just heard him say. Prof. Mohr and I would have made a good comedy team. Whenever he called on me, the two of us invariably created some kind of comic relief for the rest of the class. We were about the same age and just seemed to get along. Contracts can be as dry as a bread and paper sandwich. Our exchanges were a welcome diversion from the routine that always got the “crowd” going; we played off each other like “Abbott and Costello”. Anyway, the class seemed to enjoy it…oh well…I guess you had to be there. Where was I, ah, I remember…my hand was in the air because I had a sudden revelation. “Sir, “ I spoke out in my most formal voice, “I am 44 years old. I was born and raised in these United States, and have been the recipient of a standard, garden variety public education, and I had no idea that my merely saying “yes” to a bonfide offer binds me to a contract instantly. Why wasn’t I taught that in high school?” He looked at me over his half-rim reading glasses and replied,“Why, indeed!” Our educational system is entrusted with the rather sober mandate of providing a foundation of knowledge upon which a citizen can be expected to build their entire life. What, beyond the basic structure of our constitution, and a few very high profile court cases, do our high schools teach us about the law of the land? Who teaches us to read and understand a contract? No one…why is that? And, what of the common “torts”: assault and battery, false imprisonment, trespass against property and chattels, and conversion (theft), who teaches us about those things? The answer 54

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is…no one! We’re all acquainted with basic First Aid until the doctor arrives, (…CPR, The Heimlich maneuver, tourniquets, temporary splints, cooling a burn, etc.), but what of that basic legal aid we need until we can secure an attorney? (…cooperate with the Police, keep your mouth shut, don’t sign any statements, etc.) Why isn’t a fundamental understanding of the law part of a high school education. I was forced to take four years of a foreign language (I picked Spanish…and learned it every bit as thoroughly as I did Hebrew), but not one day of basic law. You leave high school at eighteen, the age of majority, an adult without any legal training that “the ignorance of which” turns out to be “no excuse for” after you’ve broken the law. You’re told nothing about the legal ramifications of marriage and divorce. No guidance in real estate matters. Not even a word about your parental rights and obligations. The closest you get to anything of the sought is Driver’s Education. Forget about knowing what a felony is, or what constitutes a misdemeanor? No mention of probate or defamation or slander? You’re not even taken into a Law library and taught how to access this information for yourself. Is it any wonder that lawyers are as mistrusted as auto mechanics? In my (humble) opinion we are all “set up” by our society to become victims of our own lack of knowledge of the laws under which we live. Perhaps many of the more than nearly two million people incarcerated in America’s prisons could have avoided whatever put them there if our schools paid as much attention to the common law as they do to the Byzantine Empire, the Treaty of Ghent, Geoffrey Chaucer, the Normans and the Saxons, the name of Darwin’s ship, the Battle of Hastings, etc., etc., etc., etc., et It certainly appears to be another “darkly diabolical” situation. It’s as though the legal system has become such a massive industry that society needs to guarantee a steady flow of future customers or the nation’s economy will be negatively impacted. There ought’a be a law! Sitting there in that “Contracts” class, back in 1995, at the ripe old age of 44, I came to the stunning conclusion that you have to go to law school just to keep yourself out of trouble. The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

Lights, Camera, Action… At the Twilight’s Last Gleaming of Our Inalienable Rights! have you noticed them? They’re all around us; increasing in numbers by leaps and bounds; decreasing in size at a truly alarming pace. Cameras – video cameras – all around us, capturing everything that you’re doing in their presence. Tiny tireless sentries; some so small and easily hidden that they are being surreptitiously implanted in some unique and unusual places to spy on us. Clocks, Smoke Detectors, children’s stuffed animals, lipstick containers, pens, cigarette packs, artificial wax fruit; miniscule, full color cameras with sound. Nearly undetectable, with wireless transmitters sending purloined images back to an unseen video screen or recorder. Its enough to make the hypochondriacal, paranoid, and to make the true paranoids among us redefine the substance of their neuroses. It’s time to catch up with our concerns about the direction in which this country is heading, and learn the real meaning of, “I feel like people are always watching me.” We may soon see a time when Psychologists will first respond to that statement, not with a, “Why do you feel that way?”, but rather, with a far more direct, “They are…so, what’s the problem?” The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

Stop at an average intersection in this or any other major city in America, and look up…on top of the street lights or traffic signal pylons…and there they are. Pointing in the four directions of travel: watching, monitoring, waiting for motorists’ minor infractions, or true “anti-citizens” to commit crimes. In every store, every school (from pre-schools to University campuses), every building, public and private, airports, train and bus stations, hospitals and hotels; staring back at you from most bank ATM machines, they’re keeping an “eye” on everyone and everything that happens to cross their path. Through the front windshield of every Police Cruiser there is now a video camera; placed there to be an independent, “third party” witness to the sometimes nefarious, sometimes hilarious, comportment of every foolish, feeble, fiendish, flustered, or clearly intoxicated, driver they chance upon. All this coupled now with acutely sophisticated computer technology that can analyze facial features and match a person’s face in a single video frame, against an enormous data bank of enemies of the state, I mean, criminals, in a virtual instant. In my (humble) opinion…our “free” society, seemingly at a level somewhere below the threshold of conscious perception, has apparently accepted government interference, inspection, inquisition, surveillance and control on an unprecedented scale; even more bizarre is that we have ostensibly demanded this. (The events of Sept. 11, 2001, notwithstanding.) And where the constabularies’ official jurisdictions might end, private security interests are watching us instead. As though we were asleep, only to have awakened one day as characters in a science fiction novel; and these cameras appeared suddenly by some treacherously subtle process that robbed us in the night, of our freedom. Just as if we were lulled by a disembodied monotone voice repeating subliminal assurances that these cameras would help protect us, we’ve fallen into a state of compliant somnambulation that opens one’s mind to suggestions; and while entranced, there instilled into us all has been the flawed belief that “a little loss of freedom is a good thing”. For only those who are doing wrong need fear the camera’s ubiquitous, omnipresent, pervading gaze. 58

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What lunacy! It leaves one pondering what the hell Patrick Henry was referring to when he cried out for “death” were “liberty” not close at hand. He certainly didn’t mean, “…give me liberty, but you can hide like a thief and watch my every move.” Where the hell is Thomas Jefferson when you really need him!

The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

What Single Invention Would the World Be Better Off Without? we have forsaken the founding fathers of this country if we are prepared to allow our technology to usurp our freedom from being watched like wayward children. Suddenly, we’re told to harbor no false expectations of privacy when in public. It seems the anti-stalking laws that have been put into place over the years excluded the government from their effects. Like a modern metaphorical Pandora, we’ve haplessly unleashed an unnatural self-actualizing, self-fulfilling prophecy upon ourselves; we’ve opened a previously allegorical door and have, in a tactile, palpable, visible reality, begun to travel down an Orwellian path. We’ve thrown the proverbial “baby out with the bath water” and inequitably traded away the freedom to be left alone for the intrusiveness of being “monitored”. We’ve surreptitiously surrendered the right to be at peace in our anonymity, if that’s what we’ve chosen for ourselves. We’ve initiated the frivolous squander of two of the inalienable rights the founding fathers wanted most for us… those of liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Why the “pursuit of happiness” also… you might ask? Well…if we have lost the one, we will certainly have lost the other! 60

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The War in Vietnam shaped the psyche of millions of young American men during the ten years that this country was “embroiled in that quagmire”. That’s a favorite way political pundits like refer to the U.S. military’s involvement in the southeast Asian conflict that snuffed out 58,202 American lives, and well over a million Vietnamese. How many more were permanently maimed on both sides is a number that cannot be easily discerned; but it is considerably larger than the total dead. Whether by dumb luck or divine providence, I was never asked to don the khaki uniform of the unwillingly conscripted and march off to meet my fate in some soggy rice paddy half a world away. For those of us who remember those scary times, the lottery once had an entirely different connotation; back then, lottery winners were those whose numbers were not chosen first. It was by a national lottery, that began December 1, 1969, that your birth date (day & month) was thrown into a drum with the other 365 possible birthdates. A second drum held the sequence of numbers from 1–366. The day of the year was withdrawn from the first, thoroughly mixed, drum, then a sequence number was withdrawn from the other drum. Together they indicated what position all birthdates will occupy on that year’s list. My birthday was number 146 that year, my nineteenth year. I was in the crosshairs of Uncle Sam’s “draft” gun, but never got “asked to attend” my own execution. Thank God! A friend of mine from high school, with the unlikely name of Stuart Sunshine (…I kid you not) had the misfortune to have been born on September 14th, the number one day chosen. We had all separated and went our own way to different colleges; I never did find out what happen to him after he “won” the lottery…so to speak. When I think about warfare and how we “earthlings” go about it, my blood first runs cold over the callous indifference we show toward our fellow human beings and then turns hot with anger over those who would profit from the material consumption necessitated by our misdirected aggression. Highest on the list of malfeasants are those who have advanced the horrendous technology for killing. Weapons inventors and manufacturers may very well be a necessary evil, but they are evil, make no mistake about it. To think that today, 30 years after the U.S. pulled out of Vietnam The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

people are still being killed by what had been left in that conflict’s wake makes me despair over what seems to be mankind’s unfortunate choice of direction for its future. So, what is the single invention that the world would be better off had it not been invented? Simply picking some weapon would be too easy; any weapon would be an easy target. The invention, however, must have no redeeming qualities at all. No medical benefits from splitting the atom and no protection from wild animals, or hunting of food, from the guns which have killed so many people. No positive advantage at all; no “good” that must be weighed in the balance against the “bad”. That was the restriction I placed on my choice. It must be exclusively the Devil’s “plaything”, and none other. There must be a subconscious dialectic that steers reasoning, because, reluctantly, I did have to settle upon a “weapon”. Actually two weapons, both of which satisfied the basic requirement, and then some: Neither had absolutely any redeeming value whatsoever. Their negative attributes have a global reach, and their use and effects are so unconscionable as to elevate these vile contrivances to the top of the “dung” heap of mankind’s fiendish follies. The “things” of which I speak are the Land Mine, and (military strength) defoliants (like Agent Orange, Dioxin, etc.) that strip whole healthy forests of their vegetation. Yet, having to choose one, though I am equally moved to anger by each for their separate asinine qualities, as well as, the “signature-like” damage they produce, I believe that high-energy explosive devices, designed to be buried and forgotten in farms and fields, jungles and forests the world over, just to lie-in-wait for years, often decades, until some poor unsuspecting soul stumbles over it…this is a particularly worthless addition to the domain of man’s most reprehensible and viciously conceived ideas. According to statistics published on the internet by the International Committee of the Red Cross, there are more than 100 million land mines still buried all over the world; existing long after the conflicts have ended. The same figures by the ICRC, indicate that approximately every 22 minutes 62

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a land mine explodes, killing or maiming over 26,000 people each year. Most victims are not the “enemy” soldiers they were intended for, but rather women and children who happen to live in these areas that were once war zones. To add further insult to injury (no pun intended), many of these places where land mines harm people are “off the beaten path”, rural areas that generally have little, if any, access to emergency medical care. This unfortunate fact only serves to produce additional deaths from otherwise treatable trauma and severe mutilation of those who do survive – but without proper medical attention. I can’t see any room for debate on the “pro” side of this issue. The world would simply have been better off without these deadly, surreptitious surprises. It wouldn’t have necessarily changed the prosecution or outcome of any war to not have had land mines. Nor would the world be much better off if they didn’t exist. The world would still be suffering the ubiquitous nuclear threat that has stalked us like a hungry cat from Alamogordo to Hiroshima to Nagasaki, to back home again. Surely, there are thousands of “things” that we would have been better off if they were never invented. This time I chose land mines…next time it might be my bathroom scale. I can see NO redeeming value in that nasty little invention. Each morning it just mocks me, and then lays there motionless, with its magnified smile fixed on “zero”, all day and all night, waiting to mock me again tomorrow! Yesterday morning I stepped on the bathroom scale, and the damn thing hasn’t stopped spinning yet. Last week I stepped on, and it spun around so fast it started to smoke…I swear it’s mocking me, and I know it’s been lying to me, too!

The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

Follow the Leader– The Idiocy of the World’s Oldest Game i grew up in flushing, new york in an apartment complex called, “Arrowbrook Gardens”. Arrowbrook, at that time, was a sprawling array of attached, two story, red-brick buildings which overlooked the southern most of the “twin lakes” in Flushing Meadows Park. Today, Flushing Meadows’ claim to fame resides in its internationally famous tennis games; back then the area was a still emerging suburban location in the shadow of New York City. On a clear day, from our apartment, you could just make out the top half of the Empire State Building on Manhattan Island way off in the distance. I was eleven years old in the summer of 1962 when the park was being readied to host the 1964 World’s Fair. All the construction was taking place at the far end of the northern lake, at the old site of the 1939 World’s Fair. I can’t remember when the last “World’s Fair” has been held, but, I suppose, in a world that is anything but fair they are no longer appropriate. When I was very young, my father and I often fished for Carp “downby-the-lake”. For some reason that has never really been made clear to me, Carp (Cyprinus carpio) was my father’s fish of choice. We “went” for Carp in freshwater; Fluke or Flounder in saltwater. I grew up thinking that those The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

three types of critters where somehow “kosher” fish, I mean, because Jews were allowed to the eat them. The other fish in the lakes and ocean, I supposed, must have been the “tref”, or “non-kosher”, fish because we never seemed to want to catch “them”. “Smoked Whitefish”, “Baked Salmon” and “Solid White Tuna in Vegetable Oil”, were okay too. I figured they were atheists; who knew? I was just a stupid kid trying to make sense of it all… Those lakes weren’t filled with your ordinary Carp either, these fish were the exotic looking Koi. Into those lakes had been released fish that had occupied the artificial lily ponds of the Japanese Gardens Exhibit that was part of the ’39 Fair. When the big event was over, all the Koi were simply set free.. When I went fishing as a youngster with my Dad, literally sitting beneath the shade of a Weeping Willow tree, it wasn’t uncommon to haul in a 5 pound “goldfish”, or one that had orange and white blotches. Left to their own devices of breeding and growing, they had gotten very big. I suppose they’re still there, in those lakes many fish generations later. A Carp by any other name is still a Carp. Where was I? Ah, I remember, it was the summer of 1962 and me and three or four other kids from the neighborhood went bicycle riding in and among the construction sites where the new fair was going up. The City had already constructed a walkway that arched over the Long Island Expressway, connecting the two halves of the “Fair grounds” that were divided by that thoroughfare. We had stopped on that overpass because Tommy L., one of my friends, had gotten a great idea the day before…wouldn’t it be fun to drop water balloons on the passing cars. Have you ever noticed that dangerous stupidity in kids follows the domino effect. One gets a stupid idea and soon each of his friends can be expected to have fallen under the same flawed impression that the idea was a “Good One”. And, I was always a very supportive friend; who was I not to think this or that wasn’t a really great idea. I wasn’t even the oldest, Tommy was. Tommy was already twelve. So each of us were “packing” a fully loaded water balloon that day. When we got to the spot., we let Tommy take the first shot and drop the first balloon. The rest of us were too scared to go first, and, after all, it was his idea. 66

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I suppose had we known about “Murphy’s Law” way back then we wouldn’t ever had let that whole water balloon idea off the drawing table. And everyone knew Tommy was nuts (except his parents….parents are always the last to know!). Tommy actually went ahead and singled out a guy in a convertible as his victim. Who just happened to be an off-duty cop. I’m going to jump ahead here just a tad. No need to discuss the gory details of my father’s reaction to the fact that his 11 year old son was brought home by the police. Suffice it to say…his displeasure was demonstrably evident. When he became rational again, my father asked me “The Question” that fathers have asked their sons for generations “I suppose if your friends jumped off the roof you would too?” Silly – isn’t it? My guess is that boys hear it more than girls…Attempting to justify your actions by pointing out that it was not your idea seldom works. (That’s the Nuremberg Defense, it didn’t go over too well there either.) Depending on the gravity of your mischief, and the temperament of your parent, that familiar, illustrative query, which is intended to instruct by use of an overly simplified analogy, may be screamed at you by a raving lunatic seized by overwhelming frustration – who happens to look very much like one of your parents! Often, the rhetorical is followed by this sincere interrogatory, usually “spoken” at an octave somewhat higher than the first: “What the ‘hell’ were you thinking?” There were times when I thought my Dad’s head would explode waiting for my answer; I half-imagined that someday I was going to be ducking his eyeballs as they popped at me like a “double serve” in ping pong. Though that never happened, he would often become quietly catatonic as his rage subsided, but not before he got in a short lecture I call, “the Lemming story”…I hated the Lemming story! Comparing my friends and I to those mindless little rodents (Lemmus lemmus) rushing hell bent for suicide behind their leader toward a watery death in the Norwegian surf. The Lemming story, however, always made me think, not so much of my own foolish behavior, but of the much bigger picture. It would serve to inflame my nagging curiosity about why millions of people allow their futures and their fortunes to rest in the hands of one single person. The annals of man chronicle only a few thousand notable names of those The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

who have shaped world politics for the countless hundreds of millions of anonymous humans just wishing to be left alone to live in peace. And, to the melancholy chagrin of all decent men, history is also punctuated by the more ruthless figures - the “infamous” - that have had the capacity to harm and enslave large portions of the world’s people. (e.g. Attila the Hun, Genghis Khan, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Ivan the Terrible, Napoleon Bonaparte, Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse Tung…just to name a few!) From Clan leaders to Pharaohs, from Conquerors to Kings, and from Emperors to Dictators: each, in their own time and place, having the power of life and death over their countrymen, and over those they’d conquered. Men who’s megalomania was fed by their absolute power; elevating themselves, in their own minds, to God’s equal. Why do people follow these wackos? When the panorama of death and destruction caused by WWII is surveyed, it strains the very fabric of logic to know that only one man was at the heart of the torment in Europe: Hitler, and one other in the Pacific: Tojo, yet an entire world was at war. What compels the hundreds of millions of people to follow a “madman”; to kill and die for a psychotic’s demented ambitions? People are basically good…aren’t they? Contemplate, for a moment, what is happening in the Middle East. Two men, George Bush and Saddam Hussein, have caused the deaths of ‘whoknows-how-many’ soldiers and civilians. And let’s not even mention the deranged, half-pint, leader of North Korea, who, by the way, needs a good hair cut, not Nuclear weapons; who knows what this one man will cause to transpire. In my (humble) opinion: Wars are arguments between a few individuals who have become warped by power; they are not disputes between entire populations. We shouldn’t allow the propaganda to convince us that it’s really a clash of cultures. We shouldn’t allow ourselves to be persuaded and coerced into following our leaders. If not for this flaw in the nature of man, wars could never happen. So, when our leaders order us into battle, we should first ask ourselves: “What the hell am I thinking?” 68

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Hijacked on the Information Superhighway, or as I like to Call It: the Insidious New Technological Eavesdropping & Reconnaissance of Nationwide Electronic Transmissions i finally relented and bought my first computer. It’s 1994, Michael and I are living in Laguna Niguel in southern California, and it’s Christmas. (I had long since started to “celebrate” Christmas with the rest of America.) Twenty-one hundred dollars for something I had no real idea what I was going to do with, and, what’s worse, I had no idea how to operate it either…but there it was in all its immense “cream colored” glory. Sixty-four “K” of RAM running Windows 3.1…ah, what a difference a mere decade can make. Over two thousand dollars for an “idiot” box compared to today’s machines with a hundred times the power at quarter of the price. “Built-in-Obsolescence”, thy name is America! There was hardly any room left on my desk to do so much as write a check, but that didn’t matter. I had taken my first steps toward the unknown. This was the “future” come to visit me, and I was ready. It was sometime during the first weeks of ownership of the “Beige Beast” when I discovered “America On-Line” (AOL) with its interactive “chat 70

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rooms” assembling hundreds of nameless, faceless, voiceless “users” into an eclectic array of “discussion” groups. There was a chat room for every conceivable topic. So,“boys-being-boys”, one evening with my friend John S. looking over my shoulder, I “entered” a chat room for lesbians looking for other lesbians. Using the new handle, or screen name of “ByteMeSoft”, I adopted the persona of a young woman on-line looking for a friend. It was, and still is, easier to find someone to have a reasonable dialogue with if you are “gay”. I really wasn’t looking for a homosexual conversationalist with whom I could “chew the fat”. And, I certainly had no moral objections to lesbians…heck, I like girls, too; so I guessed, at the very least, that we would have that in common. Besides, they were females…I wasn’t online to “talk” to guys. The rooms for heterosexuals were crowded with rude and vulgar guys saying obscene things to women…not my “thing”, so I came up with “Christine” the first name of my new “cyber-alter-ego”. It was all John’s fault! I’ll make a long story short. My new “girl-friend” Gabriella, wasn’t very understanding when she finally guessed I was a guy. Don’t judge me too harshly, I’ve never done anything like that before or since. If “idle hands” are the “Devil’s plaything”, computers are like putting “power tools” in those hands. The INTERNET may have its benefits, but truth in advertising isn’t its strong point. “The I-N-T-E-R-N-E-T,” close your eyes and whisper it slowly while thinking of a “Terminator” Movie, or a “James Bond” flick; it sounds positively evil, doesn’t it? Yet we’ve welcomed this technology with the same naive child-like trust that the early Native Americans welcomed the first Europeans; before cholera, typhoid, and smallpox epidemics ravished their peoples, before syphilis and drunkenness. Before they realized that their new guests had no respect for the land, and certainly before the genocide, the “ethnic cleansing” if you will, that nearly wiped them out. We had hardly become comfortable, as a society, with the personal computer in every home when this added technology was thrust upon us. It was as though we were the lucky recipients of some “two-for-one” deal that no one expected; making us that much more eager to grab the The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

“freebie” and say “Thanks.” Though it’s hardly free; as we all have learned. A new monthly utility has come into being, getting “on-line” costs money – AOL fees, ISP fees, Cable Ethernet fees, etc.. Millions of us have already “wired” ourselves to this costly, incalculably vast matrix of connections with the lethargic compliance of someone only half awake and considerably less aware. This “internet” that we have all become so cozy with is ostensibly the long heralded implied promise of the Information Age being realized. Or is it something else entirely? Our interconnectivity, whatever its ultimate purpose, seems, however, to be a “fait accompli”. I don’t see it any longer as a choice we can make…and that’s scary too. In my (humble) opinion there are still greater unknown costs to be paid for this “virtual” connectivity that spans geographic, geo-political and socio-economic borders at the instantaneous speed of electrons; and, generally, affords its users the cloak of anonymity which allows for a “truly free” sharing of ideas. As though what the world lacked was the ability for every Tom, Dick and Harry to add his, or her, “two cents” into the global mix on every conceivable subject. It’s a true liberation of thought and word though…both good and bad. Estimates place the number of web pages concerning pornography and other facets of human sexuality at somewhere between one-quarter and one-third of the entire Internet content. There are more sites which embrace hatred and bigotry than there are sites devoted to charities or religion. Prescription drugs of all types are available with “virtual” physician consultations, or “virtually” no doctor’s oversight at all (…the pun was completely intended). And, periodically, there’s still the errant news of some gullible teenage runaway having been “cyber-seduced” by a pedophile. The internet has also created a blossoming business boom in the illegal trading of personal information, and has provided the technology behind a wholly new expression, and equally novel criminal enterprise…“Identity Theft”. Maybe my apprehension over the “Internet” and all it suggests is a normal reaction to something new and overwhelming, perhaps it’s even a sign of a more deep seated irrational fear that is bred by the aging process. Is it a healthy skepticism or an unfounded paranoia? Am I crazy or just cautious? 72

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Well, I think I should go and read about my condition online and find out for sure.

What the World Needs Now is a Mother’s Love the chinese have a saying, or rather a condemnation, that is commonly hurled, I suppose, at an enemy, “May you live in interesting times!” The point, of course, being that the more “interesting” the times, the more dangerous and unsettled those times may certainly be. Even a cursory survey of history readily reveals that most times have been all too interesting…if you grasp my meaning. What concerns me the most about the times you and I are living through, is that they are becoming too “darn” interesting. “Man’s inhumanity to man” has not changed one iota since primitive times, nor has mankind (as an entity in and of itself) outgrown its perennial, pre-pubescent need to throw tantrums and act childish, rather than strive to live in peace with their neighbors. Then it occurred to me…it was obvious…why hadn’t I (we) recognized this before? I’d be willing to bet that Laura Bush and “Mrs.” Saddam Hussein would have both wanted to do away with Weapons of Mass Destruction. And they certainly wouldn’t have wanted a war over the damn thing…they’re mothers…mothers never want to see young men die in battle. Oh sure, there were women like Indira Gandhi, Golda Meier, Margaret Thatcher, who might have had to order military action, and place soldiers in harm’s way…but that’s only because they were dealing with other world leaders 74

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who were men. In my (humble) opinion, it’s time to turn the world’s affairs over to the women. Men, listen up now, it’s time to face facts, we had our chance, we had at least five thousand years to get it right and we couldn’t. Has there ever been a war between two nations who were both ruled exclusively by women? I don’t know either; but it’s a darn good question! Let’s admit it guys…we suck at getting along with each other; we don’t like to compromise, we like to have it OUR way. Ya’ know how we are, “Its my way or the highway!” The girls are much better at those gentler kinds of “let’s all be nice and get along” type of things, especially the Moms. They would see to it that children all over the world got fed, and had clean clothes to wear…and shoes, that they took their medicine, washed behind their ears, used a napkin and went to school everyday. They’d probably make it a world where everyone shares their cookies, finishes their milk, plays nice together, and takes a nap when we get cranky…as men often do! Personally, I think it’s “man”-kind’s only hope for long term survival. Make every world leader and every legislator in every country a Mom, or even better, a Grandma, and watch nuclear weapons disappear, along with world hunger and foolish conflicts that cause their sons and grandsons to fight and die…. Think about it guys…we could all go fishing while the girls straighten out our mess, and make the world the “homey” place it was meant to be… sounds good to me!

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The Enemy is “Us” It was late in the evening and I was sitting on my bed studying for my “Child & Adolescent Psychology” final when a commotion out in the hallway broke my concentration. Paul M., the guy that occupied the room across the hall from me, had his door wide open and a few people were gathered together looking at something out his window. It’s now the late spring of 1970 and I’m living on the 9th floor of Tower Hall, an all boys dormitory on the campus at the State University of New York at Buffalo. The people in Paul’s room, all of whom I knew, seemed pretty agitated. I needed a break from studying by that time. Besides, I was absolutely certain that I would never need to know about the inner workings of the minds of “Children & Adolescents”; I was certain I would never have a rug-rat to chase around after. (Oh, well – Man plans and God laughs!) Later on in my life I supposed that I had learned more from that course than I had thought, I never had to “use-my-hand” on Michael while I was raising him…except for the time I slapped him across the face for being blatantly disrespectful to me and his mother. It was purely a reflex action. If I had it to do over again…well…I’d do the same thing! He was being a brat! And, despite the way my son tells that story, I didn’t hit him that hard…did I mention that my people do “guilt” very well. Jews The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

are like travel agents for those wishing to go on a “Guilt Trips”. We are professionals at that “business”…where was I? Ah, I remember, right… I walked into Paul’s room amid cries of “Holy Shit!!!” and “Did You SEE That!!!, and at least one “No ‘Effin’ Way”, from the ex-seminary student “Brother Larry” who had a room on the floor above us. I was standing behind Paul on my tip-toes trying to get a look at “whatever-the-hell-it-was” that was so damn interesting, when I caught sight of what appeared to be one of the campus police cars turned over on it roof and engulfed in flames. I don’t remember what words actually came out of my mouth, but the summer before I had driven a gypsy cab in Manhattan and my repertoire of swear words had changed significantly…and for the worse…so I know I had to have made an appropriate comment. Out in front of the Student Union building, on the broad white-marble steps which lead up to its brass-framed-glass doors there were several Buffalo City Police Officers wearing their “riot gear” and flailing about with their night sticks, beating the crap out of several dozen students. I hadn’t been listening to any radios or watching the lounge TV in days, and a college can feel as isolated as a “Shangri-La” when you’re living on campus, so I had no idea why this was taking place. I soon learned that half a world away, President Nixon had expanded the war in Vietnam by sending B-52’s to bomb enemy positions across the border in Cambodia. That night’s ruckus was an impromptu anti-War demonstration that just sprung up in the student center and spilled out onto campus once the students had worked themselves up to a frenzy. That kind of stuff was happening quite a bit back then, all over the country. Next thing I knew I’m on the elevator heading down with at least another ten people to get a closer look at the goings on.. The elevator door opened to the

sounds of tear gas canisters being fired from police

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launchers. Only we didn’t know that yet. No…we idiots from the boys dorm spilled out of our building right into a cloud of the acrid gas. In less than a minute I was heading back up on the same elevator, hacking and choking, my eyes awash in tears, and my face burning from the massive amount of gas we encountered. The next morning four hundred of Buffalo’s “finest”, wearing their full combat regalia, had occupied the campus to put down the riot that had continued well after I was “convinced” not to any longer participate. The Chancellor of the University ended that semester early sending everybody living in the dormitories home. I never did have to take that psychology final. All the finals were cancelled. I got an “B” in the class. That was enough. That damn War overshadowed everybody’s lives in its final years...to this day I still have two anti-War posters: one says “War is not healthy for children and other living things”, and the other says, “We have met the Enemy, and the Enemy is Us.”, spoken by Walt Kelly through his comic strip persona “Pogo” while referring to the widely held conclusion that man is his own worst enemy. Having risen to the top of nature’s food chain through the use of his superior intellect, opposable thumb and ability to, conceive of, and use tools and weapons, mankind for the most part is free from predation by other species. But, Homo sapiens, this “thinking man” is also idiopathically idiosyncratic, and given to several morbid predispositions; one of which is to prey upon his own kind, while another is to prey upon his own self. These inherent traits, these counterproductive characteristics which cause man to work harder to guarantee his own demise than he does to insure his survival, above all other negative qualities found within this breed of evolved primate, is at the zenith of all things that threaten him. What a truly strange and twisted animal is this “man”, this “naked” ape who moved out of the trees onto the ground, and into caves, only to become the master of his domain so that he could cut down those trees, hewn the wood to build his homes…so that he might once again live in the “trees”. Though somewhat quirky and amusing, this behavior clearly demonstrates the potential of this creature to have built a new “Eden” from The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

the world he was cast into. Driven by the simple primitive urge of curiosity and interpreted by this new addition to nature’s chaos, the “forebrain”, he has plied discovery upon discovery and invention upon invention until his understanding of both the infinite and the infinitesimal could produce a world filled with today’s modern wonders: from the heavier-than-air machines that pulse and power themselves through our skies, to the almost microscopic “chips” that guide and control them, man has acutely demonstrated his ability to tap every facet of nature’s resources and shape it for his own purpose. But, as man has traveled this endless road of progress, he has taken numerous detours, only to have sullied himself in the muddy, unpaved earth down many a “wrong turn.” Whether its purpose is to provide the means to bring about his own individual destruction, the causation of which could be anything from his poisons to his penchant for toxic behavior, or whether to provide a means for the wholesale slaughter of populations through the use of the same science that could free him from an innumerable list of woes, he has somehow “ill-willed” the creation of a world that threatens to annihilate itself. No other creature before us has ever occupied this small planet with a greater or more vigorous disregard for its own kind, or, for the stewardship of the Earth itself, than has humankind. We’ve left our “mark”, or rather our “stain”, in the form of junk yards and oil spills and smog and acid rain and nuclear waste dumps. We are the “pox” that has plagued this earth and left pockmarks in the form of strip mines and bomb craters and places no longer radioactively “safe” for any living thing…other than the cockroach, perhaps! (The cockroach is surprisingly unaffected by ionizing radiation…I knew you wanted to know that so I shared it with you.) We have “Chernobyl-ed” and “Three Mile Island-ed” ourselves to the brink of extermination. Our history is the history of the wars in which we have engaged; we have “Cain and Abel-ed” ourselves in larger and larger numbers with the passage of the centuries. We have so unevenly disseminated the wealth and bounty of this world that some cultures worry as much about obesity and their “Botox” treatable wrinkles, as do other cultures concern themselves over their own hopelessness and starvation. 80

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We have become so “topsy-turvy-ed” and “lop-sided” in every aspect of our concerted existence, that we reward and revere those who play games by far more than we do those who produce food, clothing or shelter. That man is his own worst enemy, as well as the enemy of all other life on earth is without a doubt. That man is the greatest threat that he must overcome to insure his own long term survival has become clearly apparent, particularly in the last half-century. In a world that has (or had?) the potential to be a true paradise, we’ve shown, once again, that we, taken as a whole, still deserve to be evicted by God from Eden (if I might wax spiritual for a moment)…its incredible to think that all this “Knowledge of Good and Evil” may have been “forbidden” out of God’s wisdom and not his selfishness, and, by His wish to protect us from ourselves… Look at what we’ve done with that all that purloined knowledge.

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Does God Exist? Sure, Why Not? Outside the window of my “Genetics” classroom I could see the Connetquot River flowing slowly by in the shadow of Dowling College on Long Island. It was the summer of 1974; less than a month before the embattled Richard Nixon would capitulate to the will of the American People and resign his office as President. After a two year hiatus, I had returned to a small private college near home to complete the credits I needed for my Bachelor’s degree in Biology. The turmoil and hysteria which had been generated by the Vietnam War had created a flood of “counter-productive” activities which, on a personal level, eroded away the footings of my educational aspirations. Before those anti-War protests began at the State University of New York at Buffalo, I had already found myself affiliated with one of the two campus newspapers. As an extracurricular activity, I was working for “`ethos” as their Literary Arts Editor at the time “all-hell-broke-loose” on campus (…not that it’s important here, but the other newspaper, our rival, was called “The Spectrum”). A couple of days after our campus erupted in violence, four college students were “inadvertently” gunned down by National Guardsmen who had been called out to quell the riots at Kent State University in Ohio. Though the nationwide riots had been ignited The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

in response to the War’s expansion, what we all didn’t know at the time was that we were witnessing the “beginning-of-the-end” of that much maligned, and unfortunately futile, conflict. During the year that followed that upheaval, I gravitated away from my science studies and began to write both anti-War poetry and prose for the newspaper; I was one of their “part-time” photojournalists as well. Later that year the managing editor of `ethos made me the paper’s official “Poet-in-Residence”. I had my own weekly page dedicated to poetry, called “Anthology”. Like I said in an earlier rant, it was all very “artsy-fartsy”. I was a biology major turned “HIPPY”; beads, beard, bell bottoms and long hair. I had a head band with a “Peace” symbol on it, and I wore a simple copper bracelet with the name of a Corporal James M. on it…a soldier that had been “killed-in-action” in Vietnam. Those wrist bands were a big thing back then, a lot of people had them. Yep, I was a “draft-card-burning-potsmoking-anti-war-protesting” hippy and I wore the uniform to prove it. Where was I…? Ah, right, “Genetics”. I can still remember the feeling of being awe struck over the whole process while sitting in that little classroom. It seemed so inconceivable that all that copious amount genetic information could be packed into such a “microscopic” dot. Even for the most “dyed-in-the-wool” evolutionist, it is difficult to look at this exquisite genetic process without seeing the “signature” of a “designer” in the whole thing. Anyone who doesn’t has merely studied Genetics with the “eye” of a scientist, but not the “heart” of a poet; I’ve always felt that I processed both. There are several scientific realities to which I have been enlightened during the course of my existence that have demanded the consummate use of my imagination and my “willing suspension of disbelief”; as well as, a “pupil’s” wholehearted faith in the veracity of the “educator’s” information. Genetics is so extraordinarily exquisite in its form, function and complexity that to accept it as reality requires a parsimoniously juvenile ability to accept the inconceivable. There appears to be a deliberate design to the “chemistry-of-life”; to the chemistry of DNA and of protein synthesis. To think that such an intricate process could have been the result of serendipitous happenstance is to 84

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believe in the truly impossible. Mind you, I didn’t say “God” created the whole process, only that there is the undeniable impression that it all came about from a plan. It seems so very filled with “intention”! I am offering here my (very humble) opinion about whether or not God exists. I intend not to engage in any personally biased proselytizing; nor shall I even briefly insinuate that I, or anyone else for that matter, knows what God’s name might be (ie. Jehovah, Allah, Vishnu, Zeus, etc.) I simply proffer here my position regarding the evidence of a Creator; not what the Supreme Being’s religion is. Religion, after all, is the worship of a God (or Gods), and is mutually exclusive from His (or Her…or Their!) existence. Besides, the recognition of one’s deity by the performance of ritual or by one’s dedication to prayer, whatever form that may take, benefits only the devotee and by no means poses any substantive proof that a “higher power” exists. Faith in God is faith in the unknown bred from the fear of that same unknown…I have no problem with any of that. “To each, his own…” as they say. Focus your attention, for a moment, on any period at the end of any sentence on this page. That “dot” could easily contain hundreds of copies of a person’s Deoxyribonucleic Acid. Room enough for an entire individual’s genome, and then some. In a space far smaller than that tiny visible speck lies encoded ALL the information needed to build a human being from scratch! It’s very difficult to accept while looking at that little ink spot and trying to conceptualize the microscopic chromosomes spontaneously unraveling and replicating over and over again until it has constructed, of its own volition and by its own direction, a “you” or an “I”. To willingly embrace the intellectual acceptance of the “genetic-basis-of-life” at the virtually invisible molecular level, makes an acknowledgement of the “Tooth Fairy’s” existence seem inherently rational. As if that entire schema wasn’t difficult enough to absorb, consider now the reality of being stuck, by some unseen, and yet to be adequately understood, force, to the outer surface of a gigantic round, wet, rock; floating weightlessly in the essentially limitless void of space. Rotating for billions of years on its invisible geometric axis, and following a virtually The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

unchanging path around an enormously larger sphere of fusing hydrogen gas molecules that have been “burning” even longer solely from the gravitational compression of its internal atomic nuclei. (Whew!) And, if that’s believable, consider this…some 15 billion years ago, all the matter in the universe came into being suddenly when an infinitesimally small and incredibly dense point in a vastly immense perfect vacuum suddenly exploded. Now… think of that tiny “dot” on this page again and what IT represents, and think of that insignificant point in space from which the “Big Bang” originated…and try to genuinely convince yourself that it all happened from unguided coincidence. Is there a creator behind these creations? A designer behind this design? A whole Universe constructed without an architect’s plan? Does God exist? From this evidence ONLY, any logical contemplation or meaningful deliberation must lead one to conclude that He must exist; in as much as the alternative, that of mere happenstance at the core of the “Grand Design”, seems too improbable to merit serious consideration. However…whether or not He is remotely concerned with the colossal cacophony of heartfelt prayer that erupts from this spot in His universe just before the Powerball Lottery drawing …is a whole other matter!

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Does Intelligent Life Exist Elsewhere in The Universe? In 1978 I had divorced JoAnn after five years of marriage. It’s now late August in 1981 and my girlfriend, Lynn, and I have just crossed over into Utah heading west on I-70 from Colorado. We’re riding in an over-loaded 1969 Buick LeSabre sedan that was painted with dull “black primer” paint only. We had decided upon this move across country between the time I finished the needed “body” work on the car and its final painting. Except for the chrome bumpers and, of course, the windows, the damn thing didn’t reflect any light. At night, with its lights off, parked on a road’s shoulder away from city lights, it was a “black hole”. To make extra room for that trip, I had mounted the spare tire on the outside of the trunk lid and covered it with a “bright-white-vinyl-tire-cover”; the type usually seen on the back of RV’s. Picture it in your mind…the car was a sight to behold! Put a set of reflective yellow “New York State” plates on both ends, and a Jew behind the wheel, and you could imagine how much I wanted to get out of “middle America” as quickly as I could. Every time we left the safety of the interstate for food, or gas, or a motel room, we attracted 88

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unwanted attention; and that familiar tune from the movie “Deliverance” played in the back of my mind…you know, “Dueling Banjos”. To make matters a bit worse, Lynn was a very attractive young woman, so I had to contend with “eighteen wheelers” blowing there air-horns at us every now and then…okay…maybe not at us. Damn truckers! It was the most “out-of-my-neighborhood-behind-enemy-lines” that I ever felt in my life. Our destination was California, and for some reason I had always felt at home there…you know…like I belonged. At least I knew there were lots of Jews there. Out in “God’s country” Utah, where we were at the moment, I wasn’t sure what kind of people were around. It was about one o’clock in the morning. We had “gassed up” the “Black Beast” and had left the town of Green River about a half hour earlier when we passed a sign that read “Rest Area Ahead”. We were just pulling off the interstate and entering the rest area when I first noticed the bright light streaming down from “something” in the sky. It looked like a spotlight on the bottom of a police helicopter…but different. I brought the car to a complete stop, and Lynn and I just watched this very strange looking sight. I still get chills when I think about it. The light didn’t spread out the way a spotlight would, instead it came straight down like a thick white column. There couldn’t have been more than a quarter mile between the “whatever-it-was” and the rest area. I shut off the car’s lights and engine, and we just sat there in that nearly empty parking lot and watched in utter silence. It was the oddest thing I have ever seen. There was no movement, and no sound; just the light coming from a point in the air, but there wasn’t any object that we could discern against the black, starlit sky. No plane, no blimp, no radio antenna tower, no flying saucer, only the bright white column of light that seemed to start several hundred feet in the air and project to the ground. The only other car stopped at that rest area was a pick-up truck with a camper. It’s lights were all off. We supposed its occupants were sound asleep, which added a quiet “creepiness” to the moment for some inexplicable reason. We decided to keep driving rather than get out of the car right there and then. Suddenly, the light just “clicked-off” like someone, or something, flipped The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

a switch. I KNOW we’re not alone in the Universe. I had my beliefs confirmed way back years before when I was “abducted” in the middle of the night, but this was the only thing I ever actually witnessed that qualifies as a close encounter. We didn’t stop driving until we needed gas again about a hundred and fifty miles further down the highway. In 1584, (well before my time, thank you) the Italian philosopher, Giordano Bruno published his De l’Infinito Universo e Mondi, (translation: On the Infinite Universe and Worlds), in which he perilously argued that the universe was infinite, that it contained an infinite number of worlds, and that these are all inhabited by intelligent beings. As a reward for his enlightened assessment of the cosmos, his unselfish willingness to “share” his novel opinion with others, and his principled steadfastness regarding the issue of any possible “recantation” of his stated beliefs, the Catholic Church had Bruno “burned-at-the-stake” for heresy in the year 1600. Fortunately, the ageless debate as to whether or not our “little blue marble”, teaming with life, is a singular oddity in the vast universe has become substantially less incendiary over the course of the last four centuries. Yet, still, a considerable majority of the 6 billion “intelligent” inhabitants of this incredibly insignificant ball of matter we call Earth, voraciously cling to the same phlegmatic, homocentric dogma, the contradiction of which, ignited the ire of Bruno’s rather intemperate contemporaries. It is only our flawed arrogance that leads us to the short-sighted conclusion that our world is the sole repository of life in the entire Universe, and, it’s our demanding theologies that sustain this narrow certitude. The more empirical disciplines of modern science, however, are beginning to accumulate crucial evidence that might imply an alternate reality. Since 1995, men can no longer stare longingly into the black reaches of the night sky and wonder if somewhere out there unseen planets are whirling their way around any of the “alien suns” that we call stars. Employing a recently developed technique that looks for the telltale wobble of a star that’s locked in a “gravitational dance” with some enigmatic partner, astronomers have detected more than 100 extra solar worlds; and even several stars that have multiple planet “systems” circling them, not unlike 90

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our Sun. Science is beginning to come to grips with the fact that the unfortunate Giordano Bruno may be proven right after all. For it seems that the development of planets from the coalescence of the materials in spinning accretion discs, from which stars are born, may very well be the norm, and not the exception. If this is so, then one can readily deduce that Bruno’s “infinite worlds” are no longer a matter of heretical fantasy, but rather, a matter of verifiable fact. And, with an almost miraculous coincidence, nearly every star that has been measured in this manner, has, thus far, revealed at least one planetary companion. Coupled with the recently acquired understanding that amino acids, the building blocks of DNA, have been discovered within the icy shower that streams away from comets, and the organic chemistry of life appears to be a tenacious, self-actualizing, self directing system, that might be as ubiquitous as planet formation, it requires, even from the most diehard skeptics, only the smallest leap of faith to imagine a virtually limitless number of civilizations waiting to let us know that we are not alone. There is a fundamental logic that has always implored mankind to recognize the perversion in any philosophy that insists that our small planet, orbiting a rather ordinary star, in a rather ordinary galaxy, is the exclusive reservoir of intelligent life. Actually, if that were indeed the fact of the matter, then the rules which constrain and guide the cosmos would not be homogeneously applied throughout…and this, we already have come to appreciate, is not the case. It is my (humble) opinion that, not only are we not alone, but we may someday have to acknowledge that we are a somewhat ordinary, mundane, “run-of-the-mill” variety of sentient being in the “great scheme of things”…I suspect, even down right boring!

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It’s All Small Stuff & Life’s Too Short To Worry Much A friend of mine was murdered when he and I were both nineteen. I was home from college on Spring Break in 1970 when I got the phone call from Bryce’s father informing me of what had transpired, and asking me if I would be a pall-bearer. Naturally, I assented without hesitation, but the news hadn’t fully been absorbed yet while his Dad and I spoke over the phone. I didn’t know it then, but it would be years before I was able to stop thinking of Bryce as still “out-there-somewhere”, living a life and getting old along with the rest of us. I had three close friends when I was growing up. The four of us were inseparable through Junior High School and High School. Michael S., Larry H. (though we always called him Lorrie), Bryce L. and myself did everything together as one group. But when we all went off to college, we went in four different directions. Bryce, the smartest of our little quartet, went the furthest from New York City, and home. He was accepted by the University of California at Berkley. Somehow I always felt that that’s why he was killed. He traveled too far away from the old neighborhood and the “enemy” got to him when his buddies were no where to be found. If the other three of us were there with him, I felt, whatever happened wouldn’t The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

have happened. Someplace inside me I still harbor that nagging distorted conviction. Bryce had been stabbed to death while at school over a “drug” deal gone awry. Apparently he had started smoking and selling pot after our little group had separated; and he owed somebody money that wasn’t paid back. His older brother, Mark, filled us in with the details of the whole mess when we gathered together for the funeral. Michael and Lorrie had also been called to help carry Bryce to his final resting place. For the rest of my life I’ve always had thoughts of Bryce pop into my mind from time to time. As I aged through my thirties and forties, and now, well into my fifties, I’ve often thought about Bryce’s unchanging age. Fate had cut short his days. When we placed him in his grave it was as a young man. Bryce did not get old with the rest of us. Bryce is, and would be, forever nineteen.. When the three us of drove away from the cemetery that day in April, many years ago, we were singing “Danny Boy” for Bryce. It was a tune he had whistled all the time. We all thought he was probably watching us and smiling…and whistling along with us. Over the years I’ve grown much more philosophical about death and dying (don’t we all!). I often thought about how short life is even if you could manage to make it to one hundred. The whole damn thing is still WAY too short. Like most people that walk this earth with me, I’ve always wished to know one thing: From the beginning of time immemorial, until that time when time itself is no more, is this the only time we have? A single human life span is not unlike a single punctuation mark in a single book in a enormous library; miniscule when measured against the near immortality of a mountain, and infinitesimally small compared to the immortality of the cosmos. Yet, from the depth of a “senseless” oblivion it may be our only respite; the only “moment” afforded each of us to bear witness to the immense majesty of creation. To each of us comes this personal “age of awareness”, a short period to be sentient, to be cognizant, to throw our hats into the ring of the collective consciousness and say, “I think, therefore, I am!” What an absolutely unadulterated shame then to have used this fleeting instant poorly. To have 94

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squandered our existence on transitory inconsequentials, to have been passionlessly consumed by the mundane, to have allowed precious days to be forever purloined by pathetically pointless preoccupations, is a detestable transgression that we commit upon ourselves. “Don’t sweat the small stuff, and its ALL small stuff,” is a piece of valuable advice followed by an essentially accurate assessment of the importance of nearly all day to day activities. Don’t be compulsively driven to comply with society’s arbitrary, ill-conceived, trivial demands to fill out that form, wait on that line, or get those payments mailed off. Never forget to first, “…stop and smell the roses”; to take pause from the miserable grind to consider the great mysteries of the Universe. Granted, many temporal concerns are (falsely) imbued with significance and importance, and they deceitfully solicit our focused attention. As much as they might deserve some quantity of regard if for no other reason than to get along in society, remember, they are but the synthetic part of living. Contrivances designed to bring civilized order to society; but make no mistake, there is nothing natural or necessary about them. The seemingly endless rules that man has constructed have come and gone with the prevailing political winds. Nature ignores these man-made pandects, tenets, and dogma, and remains unmoved by their passing authority. Man had walked the earth for over a million years guided only by a handful of natural laws: the requirements to drink, and eat, and procreate; all of which function under one universal principle: “Survival”. Beyond that, it is mankind’s governments that have been making the rules for about three thousand years; and those rules have little, if nothing, to do with “Why we are here.” They are, however, the origin of the misery and strife that have plagued “civilized” living. The rules to which nature adheres are primordial, and intrinsic to our biology, and once satisfied, nature is willing to have us spend the rest of our time gazing into the heavens and contemplating the meaning of life. In my (humble) opinion, our first responsibility should be to ourselves, and to the search for that simple elusive truth, “Why am I here?” Also, to that second elusive truth, “Why is life so short?”

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Dying is Easy… I’ve Done It a Thousand Times Some time ago, I realized that my personal opinion concerning what happens to us “after-death” is a somewhat unusual, if not an entirely different point of view than most people espouse. My opinion is a distillation of the myriad of philosophies, religious and otherwise, to which I have been exposed during my brief five and a half decades of life. I also realized that I have rested my belief system upon several concrete fundamentals which, by virtue of my still very limited education, I know to be true. To do justice to what I believe, I feel it necessary to explain in detail why I have reached the conclusion which I have; so, please bear with me as I guide you along the rather convoluted path my reasoning follows… If the origin of consciousness resides within the body, as is generally believed, then with the death of the body/brain system should come the oblivion of eternal senselessness. However, if the evolutionary imperatives that drive biology are truly a function of the “trial and error” randomness of arbitrary mutation – primarily directed by the simplicity of necessity – then consciousness is more likely to be an external phenomenon which transcends biological death. In the light of the well established rules of The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

Darwinian evolution the inference would be that this latter scenario is more likely to be the case than the former. Nothing about biology suggests that living organisms are intended to do any but two things: survive and procreate. It is in the advancement of these ends that all biological systems find their purpose for coming into being. Only in response to a pre-existing natural phenomena are new biological features added to the roster of sensory faculties which have evolved in any species. The fundamental principle which drives this process is the cornerstone of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Charles Darwin reasoned that, “the variations that prove helpful to a plant or an animal in its struggle for existence are those which better enable it to survive and reproduce. These favorable variations are thus transmitted to the offspring of the survivors and spread to the entire species over successive generations.” Therefore, one may infer that, due to the existence of light did the ability to sense it evolve; having been created through random mutation, the sense survived and improved. Out of a simple ability to distinguish light from dark, grew eyesight. Acutely accurate eyesight aids both survival and procreation. Each time, by pure chance, when a random genetic alteration causes a change that helps the organism reach its original pair of intended purposes, that new biological system develops, and, through the eons of time it is constantly being refined by more random changes. Each change applying the “Darwinian evaluation” just mentioned to test its own efficacy. So, similarly, the movement of gas molecules from the motion of objects existed, and once a mutation to detect it occurred, it clearly benefited the organism, therefore it persisted and was refined into hearing. Thus, the sense of smell, responding to molecules free floating in the air around us is another example; so is the ability to distinguish ambient temperature, to sense tactile pressure against a body part, to balance the body upright against gravity, and all the rest of biology’s “environmental detection systems”. None of the existing senses would have developed without that stimulus that they are designed to detect having already existed. And so, too, it is with our consciousness… 98

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Being “aware” of the environment has developed into consciousness of self. Self awareness, however, is merely an extension of the more recently evolved human forebrain’s ability to sense the “universal” consciousness that already exists externally. If not for “consciousness-as-a-stimuli”, the brain’s ability to be self-aware would not have developed. Much like light and sound, consciousness originates outside the biological entity. It is as immemorial and substance-less as time. It is, at once, both nebulous and predictable a phenomenon as light; which is neither particle nor wave, yet both. The human brain does not create consciousness anymore than eyes create the light they sense, or ears, the sounds they hear. Consciousness, then, is a purely external “thing” which human brains have developed the ability to detect. Conversely, unconsciousness, simply put, is the inability to sense consciousness, and is physiologically linked with the concurrent loss of the other senses. When deeply unconscious, animals do not see, nor do they hear, feel, or taste; nor can they maintain balance by feeling gravity, measure the passage of time, or feel emotional and/or physical pain. With all of the foregoing having been said, let us now consider death and the after-death conundrum… The 17th century French philosopher and mathematician, René Descartes’ concept of, “I Think, Therefore, I Am” is not at all an accurate statement. In my (humble, very humble, indeed) opinion, it should actually be, “I Think, Therefore, I Think I am.” There is only one consciousness, as there is only one time, and all sentient, intelligent animals share it. It was here when the Big Bang took place, and will persist long after the universe has expanded and cooled, or contracted and collapsed inward. No organism creates consciousness; biology and physiology create the impression of individual self-awareness. Which means that each separate, individual “consciousness of self” is quite illusory. Furthermore, consciousness, being external from the body, is not affected by the death of any individual body. Perhaps eventually, through the arcane studies of the cosmologist or the quantum mathematician, the dimensionality of consciousness will some day be expressed in the language of hard science, but for now, one thing appears certain to me…consciousness is like light and sound, which conThe Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

tinues to exist after the biological entity that detects it ceases to function. After the body dies, individuality dies with it, but not consciousness itself. The ability to be self aware still exists after death...the ability, not the capability. To be capable of a new self-awareness requires a rebirth, or re-creation, of a suitable biological entity to provide the sensory illusion that that individual is, once again, alive. That potential for rebirth and a new self-awareness is also as immemorial as time. The only thing subject to change is the interval between these incarnations. When it will happen again is not important to know because during the “afterlife” sensation ceases while waiting for self-awareness to “restart” or “recommence”. And “restart” it shall because our individual self-awareness is one of the infinity of all possible naturally occurring self-aware entities. Stay with me on this one…we’re going for a little side trip here…. In as much as all infinities are equal, all things quantified as infinite, though they may be sub-sets of the whole, are still equally infinite. (You can check that one out with your neighborhood mathematician!) An example of how infinity changes things is demonstrated by considering the following: There is an infinity of positive whole numbers, which is comprised of the two obvious subsets “Odd” and “Even” whole numbers. The two subsets are infinities as well, yet, when they are added back together, they still only equal an single infinity. This notion of infinity describes the entire underlying fundamental reality that drives reincarnation. To understand the repetitive nature of our self-awareness, consider the analogy of falling snow. What is the likelihood of a single, tiny snowflake, falling from 20,000 feet, landing on top of another snowflake during a snowstorm covering a thousand square miles. At first glance it appears abundantly unlikely - virtually impossible; and if we acknowledge that it can at all occur, we see it as a “once-in-a-trillion” event. Yet, without the requisite “infinity” of snow flakes (snowfalls have a finite number of snowflakes) we see the snowflakes pile up inch upon inch, foot upon foot, leaving no exposed area free from the storm’s full accumulation. Theoretically, an infinite number of snowflakes will create a blanket of snow infinitely deep over an infinite area. Each individual 100

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original snowflake will have an infinite number of snowflakes fall upon it. The conclusion that is reached when all of the foregoing hypotheses are combined is the following: “anything” that exists or occurs, even once, during an eternity of time, is then, by definition, a subset of the infinity of “all” things that can exist or occur; once again, all subsets of an infinity are equally infinite. Therefore, once having demonstrated that our individual self-awareness is one among all possible permutations of natural events by having come into being, each of us will “happen” over and over again an infinite number of times; regardless of what at first appears to be a less than accommodating statistical likelihood of the random reoccurrence. In short, then, to answer the question: “What happens when you die?”… well…you eventually become self-aware…again and again and again...ad infinatum….its only a matter of the arbitrarily random intervals between reincarnations. And, trust me, after every lifetime, after each successive incarnation, we probably enjoy the rest! Personally, I like the analogy of the Boxing Match for this last one…life begins with the ringing bell, the fighter battles through a round, bell rings, fighter rests, bell rings, next round starts, and so on. Our immortality is much akin to a boxing match with an infinite number of rounds, each round is a lifetime…we fight, we rest, we fight again… Our essence, our soul if you will, is immortal because it is a sub-set of the infinity of souls, ergo, it too is infinite.

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THE UNITED STATES, UFO’s, YOU, ME & EVERYBODY At the end of Rant One, at the beginning of this book, I promised to tell you something that will scare you. It’s what scares your government. Let’s call this rant the reward for reading this far into my book; sought of the “prize” in a box of “Cracker Jacks”. It’s what the “real” United States Government knows about UFO’s. If I were to tell you how I came about the information I’m about to tell you, you wouldn’t believe a word I have to say. Most likely, you won’t believe it anyway, which is a shame because it is the truth…and you need to know it! The government officials (Senators, Congressmen, etc.) that you think are running things in Washington are only in charge of the ordinary, day to day operations of this country. At the core of all that government business is a carefully selected group of men, a secret group, a “shadow government”, which is at the head of the Central Intelligence Agency (…indeed, well above it’s publicly acknowledged Director). This small cabal, if you will, maintains first person communication with the “aliens”, (or more accurately, the “God” which the Bible discusses in Exodus)…and those “secret government officials” represent, not just the United States, but the The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

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Earth in its entirety! The quotation which opened this Rant was voiced by the then President of the United States in a carefully drafted speech before the representatives from nearly every nation on earth. It is one of five similar remarks made during the Reagan presidency. Remarks in which the “Leader of the Free World” alludes to that exact “hypothetical” scenario during public speeches. (Read it again, and then check out the other quotes on the internet.) Keep in mind that Ronald Reagan was most probably already suffering the effects of Alzheimer’s Disease while still in office. He may have simply forgotten his “oath” of secrecy and that whole “National Security Act” nonsense when he made those remarks. He was making indirect references to the actual truth regarding the alien presence here on earth. Ronald Reagan, “The Great Communicator” was, to be sure, communicating with the world in those unusually candid statements. Being aware of the truth regarding Extraterrestrial Biological Entities (EBE’s) and their presence here on earth, Reagan was deliberately exposing some of that closely guarded secret to the global community. It is no accident that after Reagan left office he spent his remaining years carefully tucked away from the public eye, because of the nature of his disease, he could no longer be relied upon to maintain his silence. He was too well protected by a phalanx of Secret Service agents to have been disposed of the way that Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal was on May 22, 1949 when his reliability came into question. Forrestal was one of the original members of President Truman’s clandestine “Majority Agency Joint Intelligence Committee (MAJIC) created to investigate this alien issue after the 1947 Roswell crash. The original 12 members had the codename: “Majestic-12”. Under the Eisenhower Administration the original group was expanded into the “Jason Society” or the Jason Scholars. (Check out James Forrestal’s “suicide”, Majestic-12, and the “Jason Society” on the internet.) The most public person who is, and has been for the past twenty years, the chief guardian of this information about the alien involvement here on earth, is George. H. W. Bush, the 41st president. Bush was the head of the CIA prior to becoming the Vice-President under Reagan, and then becoming President. It is no small coincidence that among the twelve members of that committee 104

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was a scientist named Vannevar Bush., indubitably a blood relation to G.H.W. Bush – the father Bush. (Check this out on the internet, too.). A “Bush” has been involved with the U.S. / Alien connection since 1947. That such an alternate reality exists is no longer a matter of supposition to the avid UFO devotee. Since the days of President Reagan’s administration, more and more information has leaked out of the National Archives regarding what the government knows with respect to our “cosmic” visitors; some because of the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA), some because of clandestine information releases through covert channels. And some through eyewitness testimony whose credibility is so high that, were the subject matter different, they could convict Mother Teresa of mass murder. Seek out the television or print interviews with Bob Lazar, the engineer that worked on captured alien craft at Papoose Lake (S4), in the Nevada Desert Wastelands near the infamous Area 51. Listen to him and tell me if he’s “just-blowin’-air-up-your-butt”, or if he is the most believable person you’ve ever listened to telling an unbelievable story. Since the early 1940’s, before the much publicized and popularized “Roswell, New Mexico, incident”, the U.S. government was already actively attempting to “reverse engineer” crashed extraterrestrial spacecraft. Referring, now, to a craft found in the south-west U.S. in 1941, Franklin Roosevelt had ordered, in a 1942 memo to the then Secretary of War, Henry Stemson, that every effort be made to determine if (in Roosevelt’s words) a “super weapon of war” could be derived from this newly acquired technology. In the mid-1940’s Joseph Stalin issued a mandate to the KGB to acquire whatever information they could concerning what, if anything, the U.S. has learned from these “unearthly” machines. These memos are now part of the public record. All of this very sensitive material indicating the military’s interest in these matters was given the highest security classification nearly SIXTY years ago, and it’s all STILL classified! That which has been released to the public has been done through furtive transfers of classified material. The other government documents released from the U.S. sanctioned project’s known as “Sign”, Grudge”, and “Blue Book” were poppycock to The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

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make the people feel like fools for thinking that these objects which were violating U.S. airspace were nothing but birds or Swamp gas or ectoplasmic balls of some kind of shit….WHAT A CROCK!!! To deceive the public, and sequester the truth, the U.S. Government pays out your hard earned tax dollars to have those exposed documents “debunked” by government agents masquerading as “skeptical” scientists. Only in the United States are news stories regarding UFO’s treated with disdain and scientism. EVERY other country on Earth reports these stories to the public when they happen. And they happen everyday. Most governments have already acknowledged that they have been seriously investigating these matters for decades. The French Government did a comprehensive report regarding UFO’s known as the “COMETA” Report. After 10 years, this report is still not available in English. (Check that out for yourself on the internet. As well as the government releases regarding this UFO subject from England, France, Belgium, the old Soviet Union, Japan, Mexico, and many others…even in Communist China this phenomenon is being securitized .) WAKE UP!, our “free press” is nothing of the kind, it has a price after all…our news is carefully censored under threat by the authority of the secretive Jason Society Leadership. Believe nothing of what your government tells you…like I already warned you, they lie like legless dogs – they have no choice but to lie. Our government sees it as its job to protect all of us from the terrible truth. Such people cannot be trusted to set aside their controlling self-interests. Power, after all, corrupts, and absolute power, corrupts absolutely. This subject has placed enormous power into the hands of a few who are no better that you or I at decision making. So they have kept the secret very close to themselves through the years right up to this moment. During WWII, keeping secrets was one’s patriotic duty, the general population eagerly accepted and understood the need for military secrecy. (“Lose Lips, Sink Ships!) After WWII, when the UFO issue “blossomed” and sightings by trained observers increased, the government began an active campaign of “dis-information” (i.e.- deliberate misidentification of these objects as natural phenomena, and ridicule and persecution of 106

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those who claimed to see them). They used the lessons learned from the “Manhattan Project” to shroud the truth of the matter from the public. The protection of the “secret” became the responsibility of President Truman’s newly formed Central Intelligence Agency. (It’s no mere coincidence that the July 8th., 1947 recovery of the crashed “saucer” in Roswell occurred less than a month before the 1947 birth of the CIA.) Additionally, government officials with the “need-to-know” about these matters were barred from speaking. Making any disclosure regarding the alien presence here on Earth was, and still is, a “criminally punishable” breech of National Security, further serving to seal the lips of any would-be whistleblowers. However, in more recent years, a number of government employees who have long since retired, and were facing their “last round-up”, have come forward to give interviews about what has really been going on since the 1940’s. Men such as Maj. Jesse Marcel, Sr., who was present in Roswell at the crash site, Col. Philip Corso, the retired NSC official who at one time was responsible for protecting this “alien” secret and disseminating that other worldly technology throughout American industry, and Sgt./Maj. Robert Dean who was assigned to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in the 1960’s and became privy to the “secret”. But the real “smoking gun” was released surreptitiously in 1999 when a number of documents “surfaced” through the efforts of an anonymous “insider”. One document is a “briefing paper” used by the CIA to bring President Eisenhower up-to-date on the matter when he entered office. But the most telling document is known as “SOM-01-1”, a Special Operations Manual used by the CIA and the Military to direct the proper handling of these craft and their occupants. This “manual”, along with the briefing paper have been scrutinized by document experts to determine their authenticity. Studying everything from the paper to the ink, they examined typefaces, watermarks, the verifiable authenticity of rubber stamp imprints, and every other possible indicator of a hoax…and none could be found. The determination of these experts would be accepted in a court of law if this were any other less unbelievable subject. (The “SOM-01-1” is too large to reprint here, but is easily accessed on the internet…anyone can read the uncensored and persuasive truth about The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

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what’s really been going on these last sixty years.) However, none of what I said so far is that “truth” that I promised you… all of the foregoing information has been readily available in books and “documentaries” about the UFO phenomenon for years. What you need to know is what I’m about to tell you… The human race has been involved in a social experiment which had begun about 3,500 years ago. We are not alone, and have not been alone since the time when the Hebrews were captives under the Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt. There are several different alien civilizations that have a vested interest in the Planet Earth. Only one is a benefactor, and at least one is a potential threat, or would be adversary. Released to become a separate and “gratefully obedient” group for the experiment to be carried out, the Ancient Hebrews were guided far away from the influences of other groups of human beings. After “forty years” of travel deep into the Sinai Desert, far from the eyes of other civilizations, the experiment commenced with the handing down of “The Law” at Mount Sinai. The importance of the Bible lies, not in its rambling prose and redacted dicta which fills the book to over-flowing, but in its substantive contents. Its purpose is to preserve the commandments until we are socially mature enough to join the other planets who trade amongst themselves in this small part of this galaxy. The first books of the Bible, the five Books of Moses, the Pentatuch (the “VESSEL”) are actually the repository of the rules that we must follow, and the story of how we received them. Forget about all the religious “hohuspokus”; those “books” tell us about the history of the intervention on Earth by a race of beings from another “solar” system at a time when mankind was ignorant of science and governed by the dictatorial whims of other, equally ignorant, men. Forgive me, but I am so very certain that the Bible is basically a UFO story that I sometimes forget that to most people its a Holy Book; and that not everyone shares my passion.  Forget that nonsense…what a crock…the Bible is an intricately woven tapestry, a whole cloth, with that single thread of truth running thorough it. Were it only an average novel, we would have called that thread “The 108

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Theme”. It’s hard to find…but it’s there if you take the time and look carefully with an open mind. I wanted to point out to you that Christian and Jew are irrelevant titles... it is the following of the story in the Septuagint as a religious document which forms the foundation of Western Civilization that binds us together. The mandate from God...that alien guy I spoke of...was that we follow his rules exactly as he  instructed Moses to instruct us. The Hebrews were charged with the responsibility of maintaining those original instructions intact. Which they have. That’s why they are said to be “The Chosen People.” (The words in the Torah have survived unchanged since ancient times. To insure that is so, each new copy of that scroll is handwritten, slowly… painfully slowly pen–stroke by laborious pen-stroke.) Moses was the very first Rabbi; the first instructor of those alien instructions. Jesus was another instructor, another Rabbi, that was sent about 1400 years later to re-iterate and renew that original mandate. Jesus supplied the “booster shot” mankind needed to preserve the teaching of “The Law.” We are all waiting for the return of the alien people that first appeared to the trembling horde of Hebrews huddled at the base of Mt. Sinai that fateful day in antiquity when we were given “THE LAW”.  We are all Jews, and will be judged by the aliens when they decide to reveal themselves and their millennia old intervention, not for how “religious” we are, but rather, how well we have kept those Commandments. That is “the Law” of their society; and they will require us to follow those rules. The rapture may very well take place...but the different symbols that you and I wear around our necks will not be the test of who will be “protected from harm”...only whether you are following those original instructions at the time will those humans find themselves under the protection of the original “Alien Social Scientist” who began the experiment back in Sinai. And one more piece of information you need to know is this: You may feel that you, and I, and the rest of humankind, owns title to parts of this planet…we don’t.! Long before mankind crawled out of the caves in which he huddled, a race of beings from elsewhere discovered this patient with it’s abundant natural resources, abundance of water, located in what The Chronicles of Grizzly Joe

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the planetary scientists have called the “Goldilocks Zone” where a planet resides at the right distance from its star to have liquid water, and they made claim to it in its entirety. And it’s not as though they want it back, they never lost it! We are no more then an Ant farm that somebody else owns. It doesn’t matter what the “tiny Ant Government” does on a day to day basis…because the Ant Farm belongs to someone else.

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