The Ojai Post

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who are we, distinct personalities? who is Goddess Moon, who our global body SoverAnia? which of the seven billion personas of SoverAnia do you best reflect today, 2 August 2009? which of those of our Ojai Valley, Goddess Moon, a small fraction, yet whole reflection of the totalities of SoverAnia and Garden Earth?

who were you forty years ago? who were you yesterday?

and today, are you/we become past tense already?

this evolution seems that quickening,

our stories refining ...

back to 1969 and the blurry snapshot of the past -- here is a story that's never been told --

sitting on top fence-rail, center in red-plad shirt, is my father -- who a month later died in an arranged automobile accident, an hour short of midnight when his life insurance policy would have run out. others in the photo, now also past on include grandfather and grandmother, his parents, who taught me most of what I know about wilderness homesteading, foresting, orcharding, cooking, and nature in general.

mom took that photo. the life insurance policy carried her and me, and my two sisters and two brothers, for several years while we and the 1970s evolved/revolved together in the unwinding and intertwining which saw our collective eviction of Dick Nixon from the White House, and (seemingly) the US military from IndoChina.

in Ojai, in Goddess Moon, it wasn't too different from the 1960s -- where we went for walks or bicycle rides most evenings, and many days, and in that way shared with our neighbors and met up with, in my case, our 'buddies'.

the personalities I remember best, from the 1960s/70s Ojai Valley? family, buddies? whom did we rendezvous with at the abandoned train station at the end of South Fulton Street? climb those old Ojai Pepper trees with? meet after dinner, under the Oaks at Palomar and Chico, in the Arbolada -- for a night's nature walk up Foothill, and on up Stewart Canyon?

were the local young boys as 'contumacious' then, as the local old boys are now?

I remember one Ojai episode, it would have been in 1964/65, fourth grade at Ojai Elementary. that year my best friend Michael and his family moved to Ojai from Los Angeles, where I had been born nine years earlier. the local boys took to Michael as they always did, pushing and bullying and harassing whenever they got a chance. I had received the same treatment years earlier, so knew the routine intimately. you might think Michael's experience would have been more moderate than mine, given that he had me to stand beside him -- but as it was, perhaps, that just amplified the situation.

I don't recall that my Ojai-welcoming bullies Jerry and Lawrence were on the scene any longer, but I do seem to remember Andy, Chad and others somewhat bruisedly/vividly. after weeks of the boys in class 'getting to know each other' through their fighting and name-calling, it finally developed to the point where (nearly) equal numbers of classmates were supporting/protecting Mike, as there were those doing the bullying.

it finally broke during recess in the schoolyard one day -- when an all-out melee/fight erupted between ALL the boys in the class, running hither and thither across the quad tackling or beating each other -- and was ended quite completely, and unforgettably, when the fifth grade and sixth grade boys made a mockery of it, by (literally) rolling every one of us, all the fourth grade class boys. [I got my licks in on Carlos, and maybe one or two others of smaller/slower/weaker stature.]

and the teachers just looked the other way, or ignored us, as if to say "you all earned it".

[and with that, for our class, the bullying ended.]

many years later, after graduating from Nordhoff, Michael went on to UC Davis and Stanford to become a solid-state physicist. my other best mates, Whit and Tim, went onto Stanford etc and UCSD etc respectively. Whit becoming an MD, and Tim a social scientist. I took a long road, from College of the Siskiyous to UC Berkeley, MIT and Harvard, and finally Stanford. before Stanford, while interning in the California State Senate, I wrote the US/Intl Space Station legislation and coordinated it's nationwide lobby. while at Stanford I researched/uncovered/proved/discovered the electromagnetic (magic, consciousness) structure of creation, of the electron and proton. later, at Waikato University in New Zealand, I started FireShips Intl and published the Spaceplane Equation, the X49 design, and the Structure of the Atomic Nucleus.

I've yet to follow through on any of my superluminal (living) starship concepts ...

and that's a wholly 'true story', truly a story, wherein the names may or may not have been changed. (it's all a little blurry.)

and none of us were innocent ...