Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
18th Serialized Excerpt, 4/12/14
CHAPTER SNAPSHOT #2
Snapshots of Clara’s Daily Life: Fourteen Octobers, 1963 – 2017
October, 1968
-
Age and Living Circumstances/Location:
9th-grader in Roanne Junior High School, Missouri; living in Bayonne, suburb of large city in family home with her: father, Isaac; mother, Rose; older brother, Thomas; and, two younger sisters, Cassie, 8, and Violet, 3; and, a dog.
One boyfriend, ongoing since beginning of 8th grade, and many local friends from school, Camp Cedar and same Sunday School as earlier.
-
Writing:
stories, articles, songs, poetry (poem selected as winner and published in Missouri’s Youth Writes).
-
Books:
Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke; More than Human, Theodore Sturgeon; Pilgrimmage: The Book of the People, Zenna Henderson; Sword of Aldones, Marion Zimmer Bradley; The Time Machine, Jules Verne.
-
Music on the Radio:
“Hey, Jude,” The Beatles; “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay,” Otis Redding; “Bend Me, Shape Me,” The American Breed; “Born to be Wild,” Steppenworlf; “Build Ne Up, Buttercup,” The Foundation; “Can’t Take My Eyes off You,” Andy Williams; “Chain of Fools,” Aretha Franklin; “Do You Know the Way to San José,” Dionne Warwick; “Hello, I Love You,” The Doors; “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” Iron Butterfly; “MacArthur Park,” Richard Harris; “Mrs. Robinson,” and the Bookends album, Simon & Garfunkle; Piece of My Heart,” Big Brother & The Holding Company (Janis Joplin); “Stoned Soul Picnic,” The Fifth Dimension; “Sunshine of Your Love,” Cream (Eric Clapton); “The Weight,” The Band (Bob Dylan); “Young Girl,” Gary Puckett and The Union Gap; Bonnie Raitt; Linda Rondstadt; Bob Dylan; Peter, Paul & Mary; Little Stevie Wonder.
-
Popular Songs in Sheet Music:
“I’ve Gotta Be Me,” (sung by Sammy Davis, Jr.); “The Look of Love,” Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66; “Eli’s Coming,” Laura Nyro; “For The Good Times,” Kris Kristofferson (sung by Rita Coolidge); “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” Burt Bacharach & Hal David (sung by Dionne Warwick)’ music from Cabaret (Kander & Ebb), Hair! (Jerome Ragni, James Rado), Man of La Mancha ( Joel Darion, Dale Wasserman); Yellow Submarine (The Beatles).
-
Activities:
► Taking Honors classes, including Spanish
► Cheerleader
► Member of chorus and selected for performance ensemble
► Taking weekly piano lessons; wins 2nd place at regional classical piano competition for ages 12 – 14.
► Attending Jewish religious classes every Sunday morning (Sunday School) (under duress); wins engraved Bible in essay competition
► Playing outdoors, tennis, softball, soccer, field hockey
► Indoors, competing on balance beam/gymnastics
► In summers, bike riding; waterskiing, canoeing, Israeli folk dancing, swimming at Camp Cedar (Jewish residential camp, Lake of the Ozarks) and local outdoor pool
ESPE: For junior high school, Clara tells me, her 7th-grade year is pretty awful. She has braces on her teeth, her hair is curly when having straight hair is fashionable, she is slightly overweight, she has no boyfriend, she is in all Honors classes with almost none of her former friends. This school serves students from five other elementary schools, so it is quite large and most of the people and the entire set up are unfamiliar to Clara.
Each student is assigned a 9th-grader as a “Big Sister/Brother” for the first month or so. Clara gets one of the cheerleaders as her Big Sister. One Friday, which are “game days” for football in the fall, Clara immediately timults herself as a cheerleader: she sees herself walking down the hall, laughing and talking with her friends while wearing her uniform, just as she sees her Big Sister, Cindy, doing on that Friday between classes. It is the first time Clara is aware of timulting something about her “future” which turns out to occur.
After losing the extra weight during 7th grade and having a very successful summer at Camp Cedar, Clara is set for a change. At the beginning of 8th grade, Clara gets the braces off, she learns to straighten her hair, makes some new friends. Her social life changes to the point that she becomes “popular” and a leader, again.
Clara says she gets a “great” boyfriend with whom she “goes steady” through all of 8th and half of 9th grade, when they break up amicably because they’re “both tired of each other,” she tells me.
Near the end of 8th grade, Clara practices for months so that she and nineteen other girls are nominated by adults (from “try-outs” of over fifty girls) to be voted on as cheerleaders in the election for class officers and other positions.
Clara, with seven others, is elected to be a cheerleader. As one of the leaders of her class, Clara also ran for “Pep Club” President. Clara cultivates many friends in order to get selected by the committee to be a finalist and elected by the students.
Her popularity ensures that she is elected to both positions. However, the Principal makes her choose between these rather than allowing her to be both.
Viewing being a cheerleader as the pinnacle of female achievement for that era and since she already timults that outcome two years before this, Clara chooses to be a 9th-grade cheerleader. Bonus: one of her friends, her “opponent,” becomes Pep Club President.
However, Clara tells me, “After learning all the cheers and being so excited to be elected, turns out that being a cheerleader is usually quite boring for me because I don’t actually like or care about team sports. Joke is on me.”
“I continue to want the status and there are not many routes to status for girls in 1968 in Missouri public schools. We aren’t allowed to run for President of the Student Council or our Class. Secretary; for ‘higher office,’ is the top slot we can run for, and only Pep Club is considered appropriate for a girl to lead. But, Pep Club is hardly the same thing as those other two, which actually have governing functions. Plus, sitting around in meetings seems much less interesting than going on buses with the team and being the center of attention as a cheerleader. I am a Leo, after all! These experiences help build up the feminist in me, as they do for Gloria Steinem, Robin Morgan and many other second-wave feminists, all cheerleaders!”
What happens when Clara gets to high school?
Clara explains: “Although the entire squad of us tries out for the sophomore squad, which is to be at the high school in which we will be combined with the other junior high school for tenth, eleventh and twelfth grades, only one of our school’s squad (not I) along with seven out of the eight cheerleaders of the other junior high school’s squad become the cheerleaders selected by the panel of adults. There is no election since the two 9th-grades’ students don’t know each other, yet.”
“Patently unfair,” Clara says to me, “but, not being selected to continue being a cheerleader is the best thing that ever happens to my personal development. I become more involved in debate, chess, theater, music, books and writing. These are much better choices for me. I become a ‘hippie-intellectual’ instead of a ‘jockette.’ Since I am very good in school, this is a more comfortable role. I can get excellent grades and make a better, more suitable group of friends in my honors classes than I can ‘on the field,’ so that is what I do in high school.”
Here is a poem Clara writes (after studying Julius Caesar in English class) about her feelings and experiences during and after this social transition. Clara goes from occupying the “popular” slot due to being a cheerleader to becoming involved in “cool stuff” due to her other (forced) choices. The “insider” becomes a different kind of “insider,” almost an “outsider,” but this time, mostly by choice.
Clara wants me to remind everyone that she makes no claims to being a great poet. However, it is significant to note that this and another poem she writes in 10th grade are submitted by her English teacher to a state contest. The other poem wins the Missouri’s Youth Writes competition and is published in the state students’ literary magazine in 1970, which is Clara’s first publishing credit.
Clara says: “It’s quite funny to me that I am first published as a poet, since I think my poetry is mostly mediocre to horrible.”
The poem is written on blue, lined spiral notebook paper (the left edge where it is removed from the notebook is ripped in spots) in cursive writing.
*********************************
Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.
4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.
On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.
#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING
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18th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
18th Serialized Excerpt, 4/12/14
CHAPTER SNAPSHOT #2
Snapshots of Clara’s Daily Life: Fourteen Octobers, 1963 – 2017
October, 1968
-
Age and Living Circumstances/Location:
9th-grader in Roanne Junior High School, Missouri; living in Bayonne, suburb of large city in family home with her: father, Isaac; mother, Rose; older brother, Thomas; and, two younger sisters, Cassie, 8, and Violet, 3; and, a dog.
One boyfriend, ongoing since beginning of 8th grade, and many local friends from school, Camp Cedar and same Sunday School as earlier.
-
Writing:
stories, articles, songs, poetry (poem selected as winner and published in Missouri’s Youth Writes).
-
Books:
Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke; More than Human, Theodore Sturgeon; Pilgrimmage: The Book of the People, Zenna Henderson; Sword of Aldones, Marion Zimmer Bradley; The Time Machine, Jules Verne.
-
Music on the Radio:
“Hey, Jude,” The Beatles; “(Sittin’ on) The Dock of the Bay,” Otis Redding; “Bend Me, Shape Me,” The American Breed; “Born to be Wild,” Steppenworlf; “Build Ne Up, Buttercup,” The Foundation; “Can’t Take My Eyes off You,” Andy Williams; “Chain of Fools,” Aretha Franklin; “Do You Know the Way to San José,” Dionne Warwick; “Hello, I Love You,” The Doors; “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” Iron Butterfly; “MacArthur Park,” Richard Harris; “Mrs. Robinson,” and the Bookends album, Simon & Garfunkle; Piece of My Heart,” Big Brother & The Holding Company (Janis Joplin); “Stoned Soul Picnic,” The Fifth Dimension; “Sunshine of Your Love,” Cream (Eric Clapton); “The Weight,” The Band (Bob Dylan); “Young Girl,” Gary Puckett and The Union Gap; Bonnie Raitt; Linda Rondstadt; Bob Dylan; Peter, Paul & Mary; Little Stevie Wonder.
-
Popular Songs in Sheet Music:
“I’ve Gotta Be Me,” (sung by Sammy Davis, Jr.); “The Look of Love,” Sergio Mendes and Brasil 66; “Eli’s Coming,” Laura Nyro; “For The Good Times,” Kris Kristofferson (sung by Rita Coolidge); “I’ll Never Fall in Love Again,” Burt Bacharach & Hal David (sung by Dionne Warwick)’ music from Cabaret (Kander & Ebb), Hair! (Jerome Ragni, James Rado), Man of La Mancha ( Joel Darion, Dale Wasserman); Yellow Submarine (The Beatles).
-
Activities:
► Taking Honors classes, including Spanish
► Cheerleader
► Member of chorus and selected for performance ensemble
► Taking weekly piano lessons; wins 2nd place at regional classical piano competition for ages 12 – 14.
► Attending Jewish religious classes every Sunday morning (Sunday School) (under duress); wins engraved Bible in essay competition
► Playing outdoors, tennis, softball, soccer, field hockey
► Indoors, competing on balance beam/gymnastics
► In summers, bike riding; waterskiing, canoeing, Israeli folk dancing, swimming at Camp Cedar (Jewish residential camp, Lake of the Ozarks) and local outdoor pool
ESPE: For junior high school, Clara tells me, her 7th-grade year is pretty awful. She has braces on her teeth, her hair is curly when having straight hair is fashionable, she is slightly overweight, she has no boyfriend, she is in all Honors classes with almost none of her former friends. This school serves students from five other elementary schools, so it is quite large and most of the people and the entire set up are unfamiliar to Clara.
Each student is assigned a 9th-grader as a “Big Sister/Brother” for the first month or so. Clara gets one of the cheerleaders as her Big Sister. One Friday, which are “game days” for football in the fall, Clara immediately timults herself as a cheerleader: she sees herself walking down the hall, laughing and talking with her friends while wearing her uniform, just as she sees her Big Sister, Cindy, doing on that Friday between classes. It is the first time Clara is aware of timulting something about her “future” which turns out to occur.
After losing the extra weight during 7th grade and having a very successful summer at Camp Cedar, Clara is set for a change. At the beginning of 8th grade, Clara gets the braces off, she learns to straighten her hair, makes some new friends. Her social life changes to the point that she becomes “popular” and a leader, again.
Clara says she gets a “great” boyfriend with whom she “goes steady” through all of 8th and half of 9th grade, when they break up amicably because they’re “both tired of each other,” she tells me.
Near the end of 8th grade, Clara practices for months so that she and nineteen other girls are nominated by adults (from “try-outs” of over fifty girls) to be voted on as cheerleaders in the election for class officers and other positions.
Clara, with seven others, is elected to be a cheerleader. As one of the leaders of her class, Clara also ran for “Pep Club” President. Clara cultivates many friends in order to get selected by the committee to be a finalist and elected by the students.
Her popularity ensures that she is elected to both positions. However, the Principal makes her choose between these rather than allowing her to be both.
Viewing being a cheerleader as the pinnacle of female achievement for that era and since she already timults that outcome two years before this, Clara chooses to be a 9th-grade cheerleader. Bonus: one of her friends, her “opponent,” becomes Pep Club President.
However, Clara tells me, “After learning all the cheers and being so excited to be elected, turns out that being a cheerleader is usually quite boring for me because I don’t actually like or care about team sports. Joke is on me.”
“I continue to want the status and there are not many routes to status for girls in 1968 in Missouri public schools. We aren’t allowed to run for President of the Student Council or our Class. Secretary; for ‘higher office,’ is the top slot we can run for, and only Pep Club is considered appropriate for a girl to lead. But, Pep Club is hardly the same thing as those other two, which actually have governing functions. Plus, sitting around in meetings seems much less interesting than going on buses with the team and being the center of attention as a cheerleader. I am a Leo, after all! These experiences help build up the feminist in me, as they do for Gloria Steinem, Robin Morgan and many other second-wave feminists, all cheerleaders!”
What happens when Clara gets to high school?
Clara explains: “Although the entire squad of us tries out for the sophomore squad, which is to be at the high school in which we will be combined with the other junior high school for tenth, eleventh and twelfth grades, only one of our school’s squad (not I) along with seven out of the eight cheerleaders of the other junior high school’s squad become the cheerleaders selected by the panel of adults. There is no election since the two 9th-grades’ students don’t know each other, yet.”
“Patently unfair,” Clara says to me, “but, not being selected to continue being a cheerleader is the best thing that ever happens to my personal development. I become more involved in debate, chess, theater, music, books and writing. These are much better choices for me. I become a ‘hippie-intellectual’ instead of a ‘jockette.’ Since I am very good in school, this is a more comfortable role. I can get excellent grades and make a better, more suitable group of friends in my honors classes than I can ‘on the field,’ so that is what I do in high school.”
Here is a poem Clara writes (after studying Julius Caesar in English class) about her feelings and experiences during and after this social transition. Clara goes from occupying the “popular” slot due to being a cheerleader to becoming involved in “cool stuff” due to her other (forced) choices. The “insider” becomes a different kind of “insider,” almost an “outsider,” but this time, mostly by choice.
Clara wants me to remind everyone that she makes no claims to being a great poet. However, it is significant to note that this and another poem she writes in 10th grade are submitted by her English teacher to a state contest. The other poem wins the Missouri’s Youth Writes competition and is published in the state students’ literary magazine in 1970, which is Clara’s first publishing credit.
Clara says: “It’s quite funny to me that I am first published as a poet, since I think my poetry is mostly mediocre to horrible.”
The poem is written on blue, lined spiral notebook paper (the left edge where it is removed from the notebook is ripped in spots) in cursive writing.
*********************************
Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.
4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.
On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.
#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING
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Contests, indie projects, news and more…
Something here for almost everyone!
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Must see Documentary!!!~Tenzin Palmo | Tsem Rinpoche
#AniTenzinPalmo I read both of her books and truly admire this trail-blazing, Western (UK) Tibetan Buddhist nun. Watch this when you have an hour and be inspired! http://www.tsemrinpoche.com/tsem-tulku-rinpoche/videos/tenzin-palmo-cave-in-the-snow.html
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Novel Writing Competitions 2014
Worth keeping, but take note: several competitions listed are already closed for 2014, so save for next year! Good luck, everyone!
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Branding Oneself, by Angelia Vernon Menchan
What do you think, authors and bloggers How do you brand yourself?
I met Author Angelia Vernon Menchan through the
RAVE REVIEWS BOOK CLUB
, and she has kindly offered to share a guest post here, regarding the all-important brand concept. So, here it is:
“I created a brand once I became an author quite by chance. I was encouraged to start a blog and within a very short period of time I became known as a positive speaker and motivator.
How did that brand tie in to my work?
I always have a theme of overcoming or using mentors in anything I write. I write fiction, non-fiction, women’s fiction and YA fiction, as such it was easy to promote my books with who I had become known as.
Making sure your brand isn’t tarnished.
This is tricky because we all have a tendency to vent, particularly via social media. Be very careful about that because if you are writing books about faith…
View original post 174 more words
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RRBC Spotlight Author Angelia Vernon Menchan
Haven’t had a chance to read this, myself, due to a recent accident and intensive writing prior to that, but we do want to support fellow authors! Please share!
(Please join me in welcoming this week’s Rave Reviews Book Club SPOTLIGHT AUTHOR Angelia Vernon Menchan!)
*****
SOUL TIES: BE CAREFUL WHO YOU BED AND WED…
by Angelia Vernon Menchan
Chapter One
Two Years Earlier…
Walking into the nightclub, Fletcher Mitchell could feel the pulsing music. He had decided to attend graduate school at USC and was enjoying the left coast. He was an east coast man in his blood but after breaking up with his longtime girlfriend he needed distance. Los Angeles was a long way from North Florida. After graduating from the University of North Florida he had worked for a few years at United Parcel Service because they had paid his tuition. The management training program was good but he wanted more. When USC accepted him and his company provided him with a transfer that paid more, he was all in. The company had found him a…
View original post 1,188 more words
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What are the Four Major Upsides and Downsides of #Paranormal #Presentiment?
How does someone with no small measure of psychic ability and numerous accurate “previews” of the future incur so many injuries? I’ll tell you, exactly.
After several days of intensive foreboding and weeks of a feeling of impending doom, last Sunday night I walked into a restaurant and tripped over an unseen hazard that partially blocked the entryway. I went flying parallel to the ground, smashing face-first into the wall beneath the ordering/pick-up counter, breaking my nose, injuring my forehead, incurring a concussion and numerous impact injuries, including whiplash.
Many negative results, obviously, which I am still recovering from, but one positive one: the sensations of ominousness that had been hanging around and inside me for weeks were gone.
How does that all work, exactly?
My definition of presentiment includes: prescience, precognition, premonition, which, taken together, translate into vague or specific feelings, knowledge, images, words, or other sensations of the future for oneself and/or others.
Key problem with the kind of presentiment I had been experiencing: VAGUENESS. Meaning, nonspecific: No details, images, words, dates, times, locations, circumstances; not even a list of who’s involved or who’s to be negatively affected.
I developed the following list, the Four Major Upsides and Downsides of #Paranormal #Presentiment, to explain my precise predicament.
UPSIDES
1. Time for advance planning.
For me, this meant I did a lot of cooking/shopping for food, laundry, blog posts, writing/editing and other tasks much more in advance than usual so that when I became mostly incapacitated, “life went on.”
Image from scottsactingtips.blogspot.com
2. Emotional preparation .
Even as I was literally facing disaster, I wasn’t surprised, emotionally shocked or refusing to acknowledge the extent of my injuries. I immediately understood, as soon as I went flying, that “this was it.” Fortunately, I was remained conscious. Because I had been “warned,” I was not in denial. Therefore, I was able to make several key decisions with a clear head that helped me later.
3. Advance warnings for self and others.
See #numbers 1 & 2, above. Also, I had followed my intuition and cleared my schedule for this week without knowing exactly why. Having almost no obligations during the first crucial week of recuperation left me with less stress, aiding recovery.
4. Possible avoidance of the worst aspects by being especially cautious and observant.
In the weeks immediately prior to this accident, I had had three near-misses on the road, including having a tree branch fall just in front of my car during a bad storm (but I was able to swerve around it since I was going very slowly) and several other small mishaps that could have been a lot worse had I not been exceedingly cautious already.
DOWNSIDES
1. Vague premonitions of doom and general senses of tension and foreboding cause elevated stress levels for indeterminate periods of time.
Human bodies do not do well with chronic stress. Mine has had way too much from actual stress as well as perceived or anticipated stress: not recommended.
2. Focusing on the negative can cause undue paranoia and suspicion.
When I have this strong sense of impending disaster, I get very jumpy, especially when I have no idea the scope, timing, location, cause or target. Everyone is a bad driver, every rumble of a truck sounds like an earthquake (I live in California on a fault line), every airplane overhead sounds as if it might be flying too low (I live under the flight paths of two major and one minor airport), every passerby might be a mugger… you get the idea. Nischt gut.
3. Intensive self-referentialism and self-absorption to the point of unhealthy obsession does no one any good, ever.
Did you know there is a serious mental illness diagnosis consisting of a person having the unshakable belief that everything is a sign, message or communication meant just for him/her, like the character played by Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind? Also, it is antithetical to Buddhism to spend much time focusing on oneself, which is a temporary embodiment of an illusory existence, at best. Try sitting around believing that disaster is about to strike while trying to meditate: bad plan.
4. Once any negative circumstance arises, one may relax prematurely and then lose special cautiousness just when it’s most needed.
Three small mishaps had already occurred, however (stubbed my toe very badly at the pool; cut my finger when a knife slipped; hit my foot on the edge of the shower/tub enclosure). After the third one, I made the mistake of believing I had encountered all the negativity associated with this premonition. I did not see nor did I expect the floor obstacles in the restaurant. Hence, the face-plant.
Image from weirdaustralia.com
Perhaps, next time, I won’t believe the doom warnings have been fully heeded until the presentiment actually passes.
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What are the Four Major Upsides and Downsides of #Paranormal #Presentiment?
How does someone with no small measure of psychic ability and numerous accurate “previews” of the future incur so many injuries? I’ll tell you, exactly.
After several days of intensive foreboding and weeks of a feeling of impending doom, last Sunday night I walked into a restaurant and tripped over an unseen hazard that partially blocked the entryway. I went flying parallel to the ground, smashing face-first into the wall beneath the ordering/pick-up counter, breaking my nose, injuring my forehead, incurring a concussion and numerous impact injuries, including whiplash.
Many negative results, obviously, which I am still recovering from, but one positive one: the sensations of ominousness that had been hanging around and inside me for weeks were gone.
How does that all work, exactly?
My definition of presentiment includes: prescience, precognition, premonition, which, taken together, translate into vague or specific feelings, knowledge, images, words, or other sensations of the future for oneself and/or others.
Key problem with the kind of presentiment I had been experiencing: VAGUENESS. Meaning, nonspecific: No details, images, words, dates, times, locations, circumstances; not even a list of who’s involved or who’s to be negatively affected.
I developed the following list, the Four Major Upsides and Downsides of #Paranormal #Presentiment, to explain my precise predicament.
UPSIDES
1. Time for advance planning.
For me, this meant I did a lot of cooking/shopping for food, laundry, blog posts, writing/editing and other tasks much more in advance than usual so that when I became mostly incapacitated, “life went on.”
Image from scottsactingtips.blogspot.com
2. Emotional preparation .
Even as I was literally facing disaster, I wasn’t surprised, emotionally shocked or refusing to acknowledge the extent of my injuries. I immediately understood, as soon as I went flying, that “this was it.” Fortunately, I was remained conscious. Because I had been “warned,” I was not in denial. Therefore, I was able to make several key decisions with a clear head that helped me later.
3. Advance warnings for self and others.
See #numbers 1 & 2, above. Also, I had followed my intuition and cleared my schedule for this week without knowing exactly why. Having almost no obligations during the first crucial week of recuperation left me with less stress, aiding recovery.
4. Possible avoidance of the worst aspects by being especially cautious and observant.
In the weeks immediately prior to this accident, I had had three near-misses on the road, including having a tree branch fall just in front of my car during a bad storm (but I was able to swerve around it since I was going very slowly) and several other small mishaps that could have been a lot worse had I not been exceedingly cautious already.
DOWNSIDES
1. Vague premonitions of doom and general senses of tension and foreboding cause elevated stress levels for indeterminate periods of time.
Human bodies do not do well with chronic stress. Mine has had way too much from actual stress as well as perceived or anticipated stress: not recommended.
2. Focusing on the negative can cause undue paranoia and suspicion.
When I have this strong sense of impending disaster, I get very jumpy, especially when I have no idea the scope, timing, location, cause or target. Everyone is a bad driver, every rumble of a truck sounds like an earthquake (I live in California on a fault line), every airplane overhead sounds as if it might be flying too low (I live under the flight paths of two major and one minor airport), every passerby might be a mugger… you get the idea. Nischt gut.
3. Intensive self-referentialism and self-absorption to the point of unhealthy obsession does no one any good, ever.
Did you know there is a serious mental illness diagnosis consisting of a person having the unshakable belief that everything is a sign, message or communication meant just for him/her, like the character played by Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind? Also, it is antithetical to Buddhism to spend much time focusing on oneself, which is a temporary embodiment of an illusory existence, at best. Try sitting around believing that disaster is about to strike while trying to meditate: bad plan.
4. Once any negative circumstance arises, one may relax prematurely and then lose special cautiousness just when it’s most needed.
Three small mishaps had already occurred, however (stubbed my toe very badly at the pool; cut my finger when a knife slipped; hit my foot on the edge of the shower/tub enclosure). After the third one, I made the mistake of believing I had encountered all the negativity associated with this premonition. I did not see nor did I expect the floor obstacles in the restaurant. Hence, the face-plant.
Image from weirdaustralia.com
Perhaps, next time, I won’t believe the doom warnings have been fully heeded until the presentiment actually passes.
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Brain ‘15-second delay’ shields us from hallucinogenic experience
Oh, goody. I now have a new excuse for being less than accurate. Please tell my son.
……………. “It actually means that what we do see is, in fact, a mixture of past and present. According to the research, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, stability is attained at the expense of accuracy.”……….
To read the full article go to
http://www.redicecreations.com/article.php?id=29722
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17th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
17th Serialized Excerpt, 4/10/14
CHAPTER TWO
Leah Iris, 29, Niece of Clara Branon, Ph.D., Chief Communicator
Interview Date: May 26, 2018
10 Questions for Clara Branon’s Niece:
the Transition, 5 Years Later
(continued)
9. How do your friends, family, sig other feel about your aunt as the CC and how does this affect your own relationships?
LEAH: Here’s the story of how I meet Josh. It shows some of the ways things are going during the Transition for my family.
********
Zephyr and Kayla aren’t ever going to get married and then they change their minds. I’m not sure why. They already have Kendall, so it’s not about the parenting-marriagebond. Anyway, we’re all—my giganza family—invited.
At large family events we do several things: eat, play and make music, laugh, talk and play games (all at once, usually). As the cousins all get older, we usually play cards with the older adults, definitely Hearts.
If any of us brings a newbie, like, a new sig other or spouse, they can opt out once, but, after that, they HAVE to play Hearts. It’s required. The Hearts games are a kind of trial-by-fire for joining our clan.
At someone’s Bar/Bat Mitzvah, that’s part of the teen’s new status. You can’t play until you’re about 13; it’s that heavy! It’s a kind of initiation-hazing ritual-inclusion thing. When we play Hearts, many cry. Always from laughter, and sometimes from being freaked out at how mean we all get. Or, being on the losing end of a vicious pass or strategy. Usually, no outsiders are invited to play: no random guests or friends, just family and sigs.
I’m at the wedding weekend in old New Hampshire, where they and Zephyr’s dad live, Zef is born and grows up, Aunt Clara lives while Zef is growing up. Summer there is beautiful and I’m glad to be there.
The wedding is on Sunday, but we do things all weekend since people come from far away. I’m noticing this one guy I don’t know who keeps appearing but doesn’t talk to me. Very appealing, to me, somehow.
During meals, I make sure I sit where I can see him. For “down” time—no scheduled thing happening—I look to see what group he’s hanging with and nonchalantly join on the fringes. Or, if I’m already in a group, I notice he drifts over to it. We’re like non-acquainted, exopod dolphins, swimming closer and closer to one another, playing and eating in the same area, but no direct contact.
Lots of smiles, some eye contact (he has amazing, green eyes), electric charges abound. No words. I find myself wanting to rub against him the way a dolphin would do to signal interest in being friends or starting to play, but I restrain myself. I also have the urge to try whistling and squeaking, just because, but I don’t know he could answer me, so I do not do it.
Josh says later he wishes I do these things! I don’t realize at the time that he is a Cetacean specialist and through my unconscious use of some of my Excellent Skills, I’m tuning into this affinity we share.
I don’t ask anyone who he is. I’m enjoying the “dance,” we’re engaged in, which is pleasantly and intriguingly intensifying from Friday to Saturday. Saturday, late afternoon, when we’re getting together for the third or fourth Hearts game of the weekend, when it peaks.
People are setting up the large outdoor table, counting and shuffling cards, talking, laughing, organizing who’s playing and making sure the cards are set up right, removing 2s, doubling the decks, etc., for however many are playing. We’re about to start. All available and eligible in the family are at the table. That’s about a dozen for this particular game.
We’re watching my brother and my mother share the dealing when this guy I am hyper aware of comes over and asks if he can play. Nice chutzpah [audacity, courage, Yiddish].
Zephyr and Kayla look at him, at each other, then at me and say “Yeah! Sure!”
Aunt Clara gives him the eye and asks, “Josh: are you sure you want to do this, now, today?”
She is deliberately daring him. Why? His name is “Josh.” I like that name.
My mom, still dealing, says: “No way; family only!”
A few others murmur their opinions, mostly “no,” a few “next game, maybe.”
Aunt Clara holds up one hand, looks at me, at me, and says: “It’s up to you, Leah.”
Why me? But I nod. It is up to me. I accept that.
CeeCee, my mom, my aunt Violet, Zephyr smile in a way that makes the butterflies in my stomach wake up and start flying around chaotically.
Oh, oh.
The dealing is over but no one moves to take their cards or push the hands out to us. I count silently: fourteen. There is one extra hand. Shit!
Everything stops, then. No one talks or laughs, which is a minor miracle in my family. I swear, even the breezes stop blowing and the birds stop singing for a couple of seconds. I know that’s not likely, but that’s how it seems to me. Time strrrr-etch-es out and slows down, you know?
Josh looks at me and I look at him.
I know.
And, I can tell, he knows.
Given the way ES run in this family, most of us know.
So I, being somewhat an introvert (I know, not obvious, but I am), and a bit wary, blurt out: “But, who are you?”
Josh comes closer to me, gets down on one knee so that he’s eye-level with me, extends one hand to hold mine, and says, “I’m your sig, Leah. I’m Josh.”
All the breath whooshes out of me as if I am a balloon letting go. Then, I can’t breathe right. I’m hot, I’m shivering, I’m dizzy. I stare at him, at his wonderful, interesting face, at his hand holding mine with his beautifully tapered fingers, at his clear, green eyes.
I can feel everyone staring at us, waiting for me to respond. I reclaim my hand. Why does this look and feel like a marriage proposal? We just spoke for the first time!
I reach across the table and grab my cards, trying to make the game start. I look wildly at everyone, but no one is meeting my eyes. I could ignore him, but I am drawn back, against my will, to stare into his eyes. I’m speechless.
I’m so hot and my face is so red I’m sure I am about to catch fire or something. Then, right after I put them into my hands, my cards explode all over the table. Everyone but I and this guy gasps.
I am sure Zephyr has something to do with that trick. I turn to glare at him. He smiles sweetly at me. The picture of fake innocence. I may have to hurt him.
But, I am paralyzed. I stare at the scattered cards and can’t pick any up.
Josh is able to move easily.
Why is that? What’s wrong with me?
He takes both my hands, since I no longer have any cards in either.
Josh says, “Whenever you’re ready, let me in.”
So, Zephyr, being Zephyr, says: “‘Not by the hair of my chinny, chin, chin!'”
We all burst out laughing which takes the pressure off a lot.
I breathe. Once, twice, three times. I look over at Josh. He’s so patient, so kind, so right for me. Why am I resisting?
This has been coming all weekend. Carpe Diem!
“OK. Fine. You’re in.” I say it fake huffily, as if I object, but no one, including me, is the least bit fooled.
I pat the chair that suddenly snaps into place right beside me (Zef’s work, again) and say, “Deal Josh in.”
Caleb snaps the extra hand over to Josh’s place at the table.
Everyone else puts their cards down and applauds. The silence broken, everyone is now talking, laughing, smiling at or groaning about their cards.
Josh plops into the chair, smiles at me, picks up his cards and starts arranging them as if he’s always been here, at our Hearts game.
Maybe he has. CeeCee winks at me. Sheesh. She hears that.
I lean over to squeeze Josh’s shoulder. “Welcome,” I say, more warmly.
He leans into me but keeps arranging his cards.
Oh. It’s like that, is it? Game on!
And, that’s it. Josh is in. In every way. We play Hearts. We start being together. He’s a great dancer, too.
********
LEAH: The rest is, well, private. [laughs].
10. What else do you want to tell us about your experiences of Clara as the CC or the Transition?
LEAH: I can add one important thing: Aunt Clara is the best choice Earthers could have. I know not everyone understands that, so let me explain.
She is off-the-charts in honesty, courage, integrity up the whazzoo. She is dedicated to benefiting all beings—the Buddhist thing, you know? Those all contribute, but most important, Aunt Clara has a humongous heart. She is fiercely protective and loving when she takes anyone or anything on.
Earthers are lucky she took us on. For sure.
*********************************
Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.
4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.
On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.
#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING
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17th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
17th Serialized Excerpt, 4/10/14
CHAPTER TWO
Leah Iris, 29, Niece of Clara Branon, Ph.D., Chief Communicator
Interview Date: May 26, 2018
10 Questions for Clara Branon’s Niece:
the Transition, 5 Years Later
(continued)
9. How do your friends, family, sig other feel about your aunt as the CC and how does this affect your own relationships?
LEAH: Here’s the story of how I meet Josh. It shows some of the ways things are going during the Transition for my family.
********
Zephyr and Kayla aren’t ever going to get married and then they change their minds. I’m not sure why. They already have Kendall, so it’s not about the parenting-marriagebond. Anyway, we’re all—my giganza family—invited.
At large family events we do several things: eat, play and make music, laugh, talk and play games (all at once, usually). As the cousins all get older, we usually play cards with the older adults, definitely Hearts.
If any of us brings a newbie, like, a new sig other or spouse, they can opt out once, but, after that, they HAVE to play Hearts. It’s required. The Hearts games are a kind of trial-by-fire for joining our clan.
At someone’s Bar/Bat Mitzvah, that’s part of the teen’s new status. You can’t play until you’re about 13; it’s that heavy! It’s a kind of initiation-hazing ritual-inclusion thing. When we play Hearts, many cry. Always from laughter, and sometimes from being freaked out at how mean we all get. Or, being on the losing end of a vicious pass or strategy. Usually, no outsiders are invited to play: no random guests or friends, just family and sigs.
I’m at the wedding weekend in old New Hampshire, where they and Zephyr’s dad live, Zef is born and grows up, Aunt Clara lives while Zef is growing up. Summer there is beautiful and I’m glad to be there.
The wedding is on Sunday, but we do things all weekend since people come from far away. I’m noticing this one guy I don’t know who keeps appearing but doesn’t talk to me. Very appealing, to me, somehow.
During meals, I make sure I sit where I can see him. For “down” time—no scheduled thing happening—I look to see what group he’s hanging with and nonchalantly join on the fringes. Or, if I’m already in a group, I notice he drifts over to it. We’re like non-acquainted, exopod dolphins, swimming closer and closer to one another, playing and eating in the same area, but no direct contact.
Lots of smiles, some eye contact (he has amazing, green eyes), electric charges abound. No words. I find myself wanting to rub against him the way a dolphin would do to signal interest in being friends or starting to play, but I restrain myself. I also have the urge to try whistling and squeaking, just because, but I don’t know he could answer me, so I do not do it.
Josh says later he wishes I do these things! I don’t realize at the time that he is a Cetacean specialist and through my unconscious use of some of my Excellent Skills, I’m tuning into this affinity we share.
I don’t ask anyone who he is. I’m enjoying the “dance,” we’re engaged in, which is pleasantly and intriguingly intensifying from Friday to Saturday. Saturday, late afternoon, when we’re getting together for the third or fourth Hearts game of the weekend, when it peaks.
People are setting up the large outdoor table, counting and shuffling cards, talking, laughing, organizing who’s playing and making sure the cards are set up right, removing 2s, doubling the decks, etc., for however many are playing. We’re about to start. All available and eligible in the family are at the table. That’s about a dozen for this particular game.
We’re watching my brother and my mother share the dealing when this guy I am hyper aware of comes over and asks if he can play. Nice chutzpah [audacity, courage, Yiddish].
Zephyr and Kayla look at him, at each other, then at me and say “Yeah! Sure!”
Aunt Clara gives him the eye and asks, “Josh: are you sure you want to do this, now, today?”
She is deliberately daring him. Why? His name is “Josh.” I like that name.
My mom, still dealing, says: “No way; family only!”
A few others murmur their opinions, mostly “no,” a few “next game, maybe.”
Aunt Clara holds up one hand, looks at me, at me, and says: “It’s up to you, Leah.”
Why me? But I nod. It is up to me. I accept that.
CeeCee, my mom, my aunt Violet, Zephyr smile in a way that makes the butterflies in my stomach wake up and start flying around chaotically.
Oh, oh.
The dealing is over but no one moves to take their cards or push the hands out to us. I count silently: fourteen. There is one extra hand. Shit!
Everything stops, then. No one talks or laughs, which is a minor miracle in my family. I swear, even the breezes stop blowing and the birds stop singing for a couple of seconds. I know that’s not likely, but that’s how it seems to me. Time strrrr-etch-es out and slows down, you know?
Josh looks at me and I look at him.
I know.
And, I can tell, he knows.
Given the way ES run in this family, most of us know.
So I, being somewhat an introvert (I know, not obvious, but I am), and a bit wary, blurt out: “But, who are you?”
Josh comes closer to me, gets down on one knee so that he’s eye-level with me, extends one hand to hold mine, and says, “I’m your sig, Leah. I’m Josh.”
All the breath whooshes out of me as if I am a balloon letting go. Then, I can’t breathe right. I’m hot, I’m shivering, I’m dizzy. I stare at him, at his wonderful, interesting face, at his hand holding mine with his beautifully tapered fingers, at his clear, green eyes.
I can feel everyone staring at us, waiting for me to respond. I reclaim my hand. Why does this look and feel like a marriage proposal? We just spoke for the first time!
I reach across the table and grab my cards, trying to make the game start. I look wildly at everyone, but no one is meeting my eyes. I could ignore him, but I am drawn back, against my will, to stare into his eyes. I’m speechless.
I’m so hot and my face is so red I’m sure I am about to catch fire or something. Then, right after I put them into my hands, my cards explode all over the table. Everyone but I and this guy gasps.
I am sure Zephyr has something to do with that trick. I turn to glare at him. He smiles sweetly at me. The picture of fake innocence. I may have to hurt him.
But, I am paralyzed. I stare at the scattered cards and can’t pick any up.
Josh is able to move easily.
Why is that? What’s wrong with me?
He takes both my hands, since I no longer have any cards in either.
Josh says, “Whenever you’re ready, let me in.”
So, Zephyr, being Zephyr, says: “‘Not by the hair of my chinny, chin, chin!'”
We all burst out laughing which takes the pressure off a lot.
I breathe. Once, twice, three times. I look over at Josh. He’s so patient, so kind, so right for me. Why am I resisting?
This has been coming all weekend. Carpe Diem!
“OK. Fine. You’re in.” I say it fake huffily, as if I object, but no one, including me, is the least bit fooled.
I pat the chair that suddenly snaps into place right beside me (Zef’s work, again) and say, “Deal Josh in.”
Caleb snaps the extra hand over to Josh’s place at the table.
Everyone else puts their cards down and applauds. The silence broken, everyone is now talking, laughing, smiling at or groaning about their cards.
Josh plops into the chair, smiles at me, picks up his cards and starts arranging them as if he’s always been here, at our Hearts game.
Maybe he has. CeeCee winks at me. Sheesh. She hears that.
I lean over to squeeze Josh’s shoulder. “Welcome,” I say, more warmly.
He leans into me but keeps arranging his cards.
Oh. It’s like that, is it? Game on!
And, that’s it. Josh is in. In every way. We play Hearts. We start being together. He’s a great dancer, too.
********
LEAH: The rest is, well, private. [laughs].
10. What else do you want to tell us about your experiences of Clara as the CC or the Transition?
LEAH: I can add one important thing: Aunt Clara is the best choice Earthers could have. I know not everyone understands that, so let me explain.
She is off-the-charts in honesty, courage, integrity up the whazzoo. She is dedicated to benefiting all beings—the Buddhist thing, you know? Those all contribute, but most important, Aunt Clara has a humongous heart. She is fiercely protective and loving when she takes anyone or anything on.
Earthers are lucky she took us on. For sure.
*********************************
Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.
4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.
On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.
#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING
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Spiritual Phenomena Exist in Other Dimensions Says Astronomer
What do we think of this? “Spiritual phenomena” “exist” in “other dimensions.” Hmmmm.
To read the article go to
http://redicecreations.com/article.php?id=29696
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16th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
16th Serialized Excerpt, 4/8/14
CHAPTER TWO
Leah Iris, 29, Niece of Clara Branon, Ph.D., Chief Communicator
Interview Date: May 26, 2018
10 Questions for Clara Branon’s Niece:
the Transition, 5 Years Later
(continued)
5. How do you feel about Clara’s role when it starts? How are you affected immediately?
LEAH: Let’s see. How do I feel, not what do I think? OK. I feel kind of proud. I mean, my aunt is now the most important person on the planet. Right? That’s amazing! [laughs] And, yet, somehow, not as surprising as it might be. [laughs]
What does that make me, besides her very proud niece? Besieged.
Immediately, I have to change my cell number and make all my online and personal privacy settings more stringent because I am getting a zillion calls and messages from media people, almost as many as Zephyr (we compare). My boss starts saying I’m “out for the day” when I’m right there. The paparazzi can’t reach Aunt Clara because Espe is handling all that, but the rest of our family: we’re on our own.
Since I have a different last name (and I don’t even use mine), I’m not as battered by media contacts as Zephyr or any of the Ackermans are, but they do find me and my brothers pretty fast, through my being one of the main online posters, or through my mom, I guess (not that she gives me up; the ‘razzi always keep digging).
We all decide not to give out any interviews because we learn that, if one of us does, we’re all doomed. That refusal is your suggestion, E: Thanks! You are brilliant about all that. Precisely right.
Once media ghouls believe we won’t talk to them, they go away. Eventually. Bigger news stories than our reactions are happening, anyway, with the Transition issues, the Qings and ReInvolvements, and then the psi Wars, so relatives of the CC move lower on the ‘razzi’s priority list. Zephyr and the rest of us are “up” again when everyone gets Tinted, but that’s all right.
Then, I meet Josh, oh, about two years APC [APC, After Public Contact], and my life changes even more! We meet at Zephyr and Kayla’s wedding. So cool. Okay that I tell our meeting story later today, right?
[See Question # 10 for story.]
6. How do you feel about Clara’s role, now, 5 years later? How does her role affect you now?
LEAH: It’s funny. Not funny-“ha ha” but funny-peculiar. There are many months lately when I do not think about the MWC or Aunt Clara’s role or any of the larger goings on. Josh and I are involved with our jobs, our friends, each other, our family members as people, not as CC network nodes. Does that make sense?
Then, something will come on a vid or over the ‘net and we’re drawn into it, tractor beam on full speed. Occasionally, when I’m talking or having vid calls with Aunt Clara, she gets a visit from one of The Band and we all talk for a while. That’s cool.
I think, because of Josh’s work with the cetaceans and other marine beings, we’re invited to go to Janis—Diana’s planet any time we want. We plan to go this year or next. He probably would not be on the fast track for interplanetary travel if he works in some other field. Also, if he and I never meet Janis—Diana, we probably do not get to go as soon, either. So, being related to the CC can be useful!
During the height of the psi Wars, there is a lot of talk about assigning me and my brothers, our mom and everyone in Aunt Clara’s family protective OSes. She always has them, of course. And, Zephyr and Kayla, now Kendall, do for a while. And G-ma Rose. And, Moran’s family. We seem to have some for a while, but it’s kind of hush-hush. I really cannot remember what that is like, now. I think only Aunt Clara. you, Epifanio, Zephyr and his family have protection, these days. Right?
Mostly, I see Aunt Clara and my mom—that entire generation of women—as incredible role models. I hope to be like them as I get older. They’re awesome! So courageous, so innovative, so, well, uniquely themselves. [laughs]
7. Which of the MWC members or other species visitors do you have contact with? How and why, and how is that for you?
LEAH: Angelina, Meryl and I are good friends early on because of Aunt Clara. Then, Josh, a marine biologist and Cetacean Communicator before we even meet, introduces me to more cetaceans who become our friends. I already know ASL [American Sign Language] and Hebrew, so learning CetSS [Cetacean Sound-Sign] and PrimS [Primate Sign] aren’t horribly hard for me. I’m not as good a swimmer as Josh and many others, so the body language and positional parts of CetSS are like baby talk when I do it, but we manage.
Do you know how many spoken languages (not English), like Navajo, Mandarin and other Chinese dialects are tonal, so every inflection and pitch change makes and alters the meaning? Body position, directionality and angles are like that in CetSS, especially when the speaker is completely submerged. With our newer OPTS (thanks, Jessica!), which fit almost like a second-skin, humans underwater are completely visible and flexible enough, but I am such a klutz. I make hilarious clumsiness-induced blunders that Josh and I spend time rectifying regularly.
I feel that it’s more respectful and fun to attempt to speak with each being in something closer to their languages. I like the challenge! I always have the fish when I falter. Cetaceans are very forgiving, which is great. Some things just don’t translate well, even with the fish, and then add in my inadvertently mixed-signal comms and we’re often in confusion and amusement.
At first, I don’t know how we’ll be friends, exactly, given our different environments, but it gradually unfolds, mostly because of the tech: OPTS, iD and the fish are crucial. We message, we exchange info, we meet up in person when we can, and we use the interspecies versions of social media networking sites, which are ‘way cool. We joke about calling the Cetacean-Cephalopod-Pinniped site “Snoutbook,” but it does not catch on. Wonder why? [laughs]
The CHAT (Cetacean Hearing and Telemetry) humans create right BPC morphs into the sono-picto-graph machine which becomes the co-locating use of the fish: so amazingly cool. Wanna hear my name as whistled by Angelina? [I nod. Leah whistles a high-pitched, long note followed by 3 short blasts, laughs].
For Aunt Clara and Josh, interspecies interactions are a combo of professional and personal; for me, just personal. It’s important to me to know them as individuals, not for any “cause” or job. We play, we talk, we share our lives, as any friends do. It’s species-ist to assume otherwise, right?
8. What transforms your life more: your ifish [Interspecies Communication System], your iD [Individual Access Devices Interface], or travel to other planets/moons? How?
LEAH: I was so hopped to leave Wikijism behind and use my iD all the time. It’s is so much better than anything we have BPC! Josh and I are considering getting the implant iDs soon. Before we go off-p again, for sure. I never go anywhere without my fish, since we often interact with non-humans and humans who speak languages better than English for the purposes we’re engaged in that day. We aren’t regular off-p travelers, yet, but plan to be, soon.
I can’t say which is more important in general, but, for me, definitely the fish. I’m constantly communicating. [laugh]
*********************************
Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.
4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.
On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.
#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING
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16th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
16th Serialized Excerpt, 4/8/14
CHAPTER TWO
Leah Iris, 29, Niece of Clara Branon, Ph.D., Chief Communicator
Interview Date: May 26, 2018
10 Questions for Clara Branon’s Niece:
the Transition, 5 Years Later
(continued)
5. How do you feel about Clara’s role when it starts? How are you affected immediately?
LEAH: Let’s see. How do I feel, not what do I think? OK. I feel kind of proud. I mean, my aunt is now the most important person on the planet. Right? That’s amazing! [laughs] And, yet, somehow, not as surprising as it might be. [laughs]
What does that make me, besides her very proud niece? Besieged.
Immediately, I have to change my cell number and make all my online and personal privacy settings more stringent because I am getting a zillion calls and messages from media people, almost as many as Zephyr (we compare). My boss starts saying I’m “out for the day” when I’m right there. The paparazzi can’t reach Aunt Clara because Espe is handling all that, but the rest of our family: we’re on our own.
Since I have a different last name (and I don’t even use mine), I’m not as battered by media contacts as Zephyr or any of the Ackermans are, but they do find me and my brothers pretty fast, through my being one of the main online posters, or through my mom, I guess (not that she gives me up; the ‘razzi always keep digging).
We all decide not to give out any interviews because we learn that, if one of us does, we’re all doomed. That refusal is your suggestion, E: Thanks! You are brilliant about all that. Precisely right.
Once media ghouls believe we won’t talk to them, they go away. Eventually. Bigger news stories than our reactions are happening, anyway, with the Transition issues, the Qings and ReInvolvements, and then the psi Wars, so relatives of the CC move lower on the ‘razzi’s priority list. Zephyr and the rest of us are “up” again when everyone gets Tinted, but that’s all right.
Then, I meet Josh, oh, about two years APC [APC, After Public Contact], and my life changes even more! We meet at Zephyr and Kayla’s wedding. So cool. Okay that I tell our meeting story later today, right?
[See Question # 10 for story.]
6. How do you feel about Clara’s role, now, 5 years later? How does her role affect you now?
LEAH: It’s funny. Not funny-“ha ha” but funny-peculiar. There are many months lately when I do not think about the MWC or Aunt Clara’s role or any of the larger goings on. Josh and I are involved with our jobs, our friends, each other, our family members as people, not as CC network nodes. Does that make sense?
Then, something will come on a vid or over the ‘net and we’re drawn into it, tractor beam on full speed. Occasionally, when I’m talking or having vid calls with Aunt Clara, she gets a visit from one of The Band and we all talk for a while. That’s cool.
I think, because of Josh’s work with the cetaceans and other marine beings, we’re invited to go to Janis—Diana’s planet any time we want. We plan to go this year or next. He probably would not be on the fast track for interplanetary travel if he works in some other field. Also, if he and I never meet Janis—Diana, we probably do not get to go as soon, either. So, being related to the CC can be useful!
During the height of the psi Wars, there is a lot of talk about assigning me and my brothers, our mom and everyone in Aunt Clara’s family protective OSes. She always has them, of course. And, Zephyr and Kayla, now Kendall, do for a while. And G-ma Rose. And, Moran’s family. We seem to have some for a while, but it’s kind of hush-hush. I really cannot remember what that is like, now. I think only Aunt Clara. you, Epifanio, Zephyr and his family have protection, these days. Right?
Mostly, I see Aunt Clara and my mom—that entire generation of women—as incredible role models. I hope to be like them as I get older. They’re awesome! So courageous, so innovative, so, well, uniquely themselves. [laughs]
7. Which of the MWC members or other species visitors do you have contact with? How and why, and how is that for you?
LEAH: Angelina, Meryl and I are good friends early on because of Aunt Clara. Then, Josh, a marine biologist and Cetacean Communicator before we even meet, introduces me to more cetaceans who become our friends. I already know ASL [American Sign Language] and Hebrew, so learning CetSS [Cetacean Sound-Sign] and PrimS [Primate Sign] aren’t horribly hard for me. I’m not as good a swimmer as Josh and many others, so the body language and positional parts of CetSS are like baby talk when I do it, but we manage.
Do you know how many spoken languages (not English), like Navajo, Mandarin and other Chinese dialects are tonal, so every inflection and pitch change makes and alters the meaning? Body position, directionality and angles are like that in CetSS, especially when the speaker is completely submerged. With our newer OPTS (thanks, Jessica!), which fit almost like a second-skin, humans underwater are completely visible and flexible enough, but I am such a klutz. I make hilarious clumsiness-induced blunders that Josh and I spend time rectifying regularly.
I feel that it’s more respectful and fun to attempt to speak with each being in something closer to their languages. I like the challenge! I always have the fish when I falter. Cetaceans are very forgiving, which is great. Some things just don’t translate well, even with the fish, and then add in my inadvertently mixed-signal comms and we’re often in confusion and amusement.
At first, I don’t know how we’ll be friends, exactly, given our different environments, but it gradually unfolds, mostly because of the tech: OPTS, iD and the fish are crucial. We message, we exchange info, we meet up in person when we can, and we use the interspecies versions of social media networking sites, which are ‘way cool. We joke about calling the Cetacean-Cephalopod-Pinniped site “Snoutbook,” but it does not catch on. Wonder why? [laughs]
The CHAT (Cetacean Hearing and Telemetry) humans create right BPC morphs into the sono-picto-graph machine which becomes the co-locating use of the fish: so amazingly cool. Wanna hear my name as whistled by Angelina? [I nod. Leah whistles a high-pitched, long note followed by 3 short blasts, laughs].
For Aunt Clara and Josh, interspecies interactions are a combo of professional and personal; for me, just personal. It’s important to me to know them as individuals, not for any “cause” or job. We play, we talk, we share our lives, as any friends do. It’s species-ist to assume otherwise, right?
8. What transforms your life more: your ifish [Interspecies Communication System], your iD [Individual Access Devices Interface], or travel to other planets/moons? How?
LEAH: I was so hopped to leave Wikijism behind and use my iD all the time. It’s is so much better than anything we have BPC! Josh and I are considering getting the implant iDs soon. Before we go off-p again, for sure. I never go anywhere without my fish, since we often interact with non-humans and humans who speak languages better than English for the purposes we’re engaged in that day. We aren’t regular off-p travelers, yet, but plan to be, soon.
I can’t say which is more important in general, but, for me, definitely the fish. I’m constantly communicating. [laugh]
*********************************
Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.
4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.
On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.
#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING
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15th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
15th Serialized Excerpt, 4/7/14
CHAPTER TWO
Leah Iris, 29, Niece of Clara Branon, Ph.D., Chief Communicator
Interview Date: May 26, 2018
10 Questions for Clara Branon’s Niece:
the Transition, 5 Years Later
1. How old are you when the Transition begins, winter, 2013, and how old are you now?
LEAH: I am 24 when the five MWC holos first come to Earth to work with my Aunt Clara, and I’m 29, now. Since we’re each five years apart in my family, my brother, Caleb, is 24 and younger brother, Aaron is 19 [interviews with them and another nephew of Clara’s, Gabriel, are in CHAPTER THREE]. My boyfriend, Josh Lasky, and I are recently together (about three years, now), so he isn’t with me when the Transition begins.
2. What is your favorite part of the changes since the Transition? Why?
LEAH: Well, as my aunt Clara and everyone else who knows me knows, I’m a geek and proud of it [laughs]. Let my freak flag fly! So, Access, my iD, the fish, my cousin-Jessica-designed OPTS (totally stylin’), all the other new tech, the gadgets, toys, space and time travel components, the whole confirmation of the multiverse moment: LOVE! Also, I’m kind of a music geek: the pieces that combine non-humans with humans are the BEST! Especially, Angelina [Cetacean Leader, Bottle-Nosed Dolphin, South Pacific near former Guam] and her pod’s co-creations with Zephyr: amazing!
Also, I am very impressed with the respectful, pretty much nonviolent ways the MWC manages the Fraggers and Trenchers. That is, if you do not consider involuntary ReInvolvement or forced Qing to be violent, which I do not. The alternatives are much worse.
Having Moran and a bunch of my friends in the OSes and OSOps who are eligible to be Psi-Warriors, Levels 6 and above to fight Trenchers, especially the Psi-Defiers, is quite fine. I’m glad that “fight” takes on a different meaning in these contexts, one that is involves less physical violence and more mental competitions. I am a fan of Qing, for sure. And, dueling psi is kind of astonishing, really. I’m only at Level 2 in my ESP training, but that’s OK; I’m so busy [laughs]!
3. What Transition changes have been the hardest or least favorite for you, and why?
LEAH: Well, it’s no secret that some of my other cousins and relatives have a very hard time with the Transition; Aunt Clara talks about that a lot. I know some of Aunt Clara’s acquaintances and friends try to mitigate the damage and help people along, as does she, but, still…. Many people are unable to cope.
Although I do not agree with most of them nor miss them, exactly, it seems kind of harsh that so many get Qed or forcibly ReInvolved, you know? I mean, these hapless souls are sort of innocent, in a weird way. Born at the wrong time, in the wrong place, and then handle it all so badly. Can’t help it, really. Products of their times, cultures, religions.
Thought prisons are the worst and the hardest to break out of. I know a lot about that. I have many years of dealing with my self-esteem and empowerment issues that inform and form me.
Here is the main question: How can Fraggers refuse to believe what’s right in front of them? Seriously? Things are better APC. It’s obvious.
It’s kind of a happy accident that I—that some of us—are inherently better prepared, more open and ready for these revelations and changes than others. Comic-Con fans like me, it turns out, are especially well-suited to the MWC era, right? [laughs]
Once everyone knows about Aunt Clara and that I’m her niece (because of Facebook, for one), the ways my friends are “sorted out” is also kind of difficult. Some turn out not to be such good friends and we part ways. I’m fine with that, now. A few of those losses are surprising and hurt at the time, though. Other friends and new ones really come through, liking me for me and not for my relation to the CC. Josh is one of those, and I’m so grateful!
4. Where are you and what are you doing when you find out about the Many Worlds Collective and that your aunt is the liaison/Chief Communicator?
LEAH: I don’t want to answer that, since some of what I know I am not supposed to know as early as I know it and I don’t want to get anyone into trouble. [laughs] Let’s just say that I hear about all this more than once, from more than one of my relatives, and leave it at that. I don’t tell anyone else until we’re all allowed to, though. No leaks from me. They choose to tell me a bit early so I could try to help some of those that need it.
I do try, but….[long pause] Best I could do.
Probably more than where or when I find out, you want to know how finding out affects me, right? Let’s talk about that.
I’m not as surprised as I expect myself to be, which I know sounds kind of strange, but hear me out. My Aunt Clara is not ordinary. [laughs] We all know that. [laughs] From as early as I can remember, my mom—Cassandra—and others in our family all acknowledge Aunt Clara’s uniqueness and not always favorably. [laughs]
But, Aunt Clara and I have a special bond. She and I connect many times as I’m growing up and after I am on my own. On purpose, not only because there is a family event: we talk, we message, I teach her to make vid calls, I do things for her, she helps me think about stuff—like that. We enjoy each other, even though we’re not so much alike, she and I. And, I trust her.
So, when Aunt Clara tells me something in a serious tone, I listen carefully (because sometimes she’s just being silly or playing on her weirdness, as a joke). When she and my mom tell me the same things and if I hear about it again from Zephyr and another person I trust, I believe it. Have to.
My finding out doesn’t exactly happen that way, but you see where I’m going with this? When she means to be, Aunt Clara is a trustworthy source of information, so my shock turns quickly to curiosity, then certainty. I do not spend much time in disbelief the way some people do.
I think that’s the reason I adjust more quickly. I can believe Aunt Clara and go from there. I’m all: “What does this mean?” and “What do we do now?” not, “Is it true?” See?
Aunt Clara’s very practical, so she’s direct, factual and helpful. She tells me exactly what our joining the MWC means and what to do, so I relax. As long as I have a plan, I’m fine. [laughs]
That’s one thing she and I have in common: we’re very organized. I’m a bit OCD and she’s just O, she says. [laughs] [Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Obsessed]
First thing I hear is that I’m not—we’re not—in danger. Check. The rest is easy, after we establish that. [laughs]
*********************************
Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.
4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.
On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.
#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING
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15th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
15th Serialized Excerpt, 4/7/14
CHAPTER TWO
Leah Iris, 29, Niece of Clara Branon, Ph.D., Chief Communicator
Interview Date: May 26, 2018
10 Questions for Clara Branon’s Niece:
the Transition, 5 Years Later
1. How old are you when the Transition begins, winter, 2013, and how old are you now?
LEAH: I am 24 when the five MWC holos first come to Earth to work with my Aunt Clara, and I’m 29, now. Since we’re each five years apart in my family, my brother, Caleb, is 24 and younger brother, Aaron is 19 [interviews with them and another nephew of Clara’s, Gabriel, are in CHAPTER THREE]. My boyfriend, Josh Lasky, and I are recently together (about three years, now), so he isn’t with me when the Transition begins.
2. What is your favorite part of the changes since the Transition? Why?
LEAH: Well, as my aunt Clara and everyone else who knows me knows, I’m a geek and proud of it [laughs]. Let my freak flag fly! So, Access, my iD, the fish, my cousin-Jessica-designed OPTS (totally stylin’), all the other new tech, the gadgets, toys, space and time travel components, the whole confirmation of the multiverse moment: LOVE! Also, I’m kind of a music geek: the pieces that combine non-humans with humans are the BEST! Especially, Angelina [Cetacean Leader, Bottle-Nosed Dolphin, South Pacific near former Guam] and her pod’s co-creations with Zephyr: amazing!
Also, I am very impressed with the respectful, pretty much nonviolent ways the MWC manages the Fraggers and Trenchers. That is, if you do not consider involuntary ReInvolvement or forced Qing to be violent, which I do not. The alternatives are much worse.
Having Moran and a bunch of my friends in the OSes and OSOps who are eligible to be Psi-Warriors, Levels 6 and above to fight Trenchers, especially the Psi-Defiers, is quite fine. I’m glad that “fight” takes on a different meaning in these contexts, one that is involves less physical violence and more mental competitions. I am a fan of Qing, for sure. And, dueling psi is kind of astonishing, really. I’m only at Level 2 in my ESP training, but that’s OK; I’m so busy [laughs]!
3. What Transition changes have been the hardest or least favorite for you, and why?
LEAH: Well, it’s no secret that some of my other cousins and relatives have a very hard time with the Transition; Aunt Clara talks about that a lot. I know some of Aunt Clara’s acquaintances and friends try to mitigate the damage and help people along, as does she, but, still…. Many people are unable to cope.
Although I do not agree with most of them nor miss them, exactly, it seems kind of harsh that so many get Qed or forcibly ReInvolved, you know? I mean, these hapless souls are sort of innocent, in a weird way. Born at the wrong time, in the wrong place, and then handle it all so badly. Can’t help it, really. Products of their times, cultures, religions.
Thought prisons are the worst and the hardest to break out of. I know a lot about that. I have many years of dealing with my self-esteem and empowerment issues that inform and form me.
Here is the main question: How can Fraggers refuse to believe what’s right in front of them? Seriously? Things are better APC. It’s obvious.
It’s kind of a happy accident that I—that some of us—are inherently better prepared, more open and ready for these revelations and changes than others. Comic-Con fans like me, it turns out, are especially well-suited to the MWC era, right? [laughs]
Once everyone knows about Aunt Clara and that I’m her niece (because of Facebook, for one), the ways my friends are “sorted out” is also kind of difficult. Some turn out not to be such good friends and we part ways. I’m fine with that, now. A few of those losses are surprising and hurt at the time, though. Other friends and new ones really come through, liking me for me and not for my relation to the CC. Josh is one of those, and I’m so grateful!
4. Where are you and what are you doing when you find out about the Many Worlds Collective and that your aunt is the liaison/Chief Communicator?
LEAH: I don’t want to answer that, since some of what I know I am not supposed to know as early as I know it and I don’t want to get anyone into trouble. [laughs] Let’s just say that I hear about all this more than once, from more than one of my relatives, and leave it at that. I don’t tell anyone else until we’re all allowed to, though. No leaks from me. They choose to tell me a bit early so I could try to help some of those that need it.
I do try, but….[long pause] Best I could do.
Probably more than where or when I find out, you want to know how finding out affects me, right? Let’s talk about that.
I’m not as surprised as I expect myself to be, which I know sounds kind of strange, but hear me out. My Aunt Clara is not ordinary. [laughs] We all know that. [laughs] From as early as I can remember, my mom—Cassandra—and others in our family all acknowledge Aunt Clara’s uniqueness and not always favorably. [laughs]
But, Aunt Clara and I have a special bond. She and I connect many times as I’m growing up and after I am on my own. On purpose, not only because there is a family event: we talk, we message, I teach her to make vid calls, I do things for her, she helps me think about stuff—like that. We enjoy each other, even though we’re not so much alike, she and I. And, I trust her.
So, when Aunt Clara tells me something in a serious tone, I listen carefully (because sometimes she’s just being silly or playing on her weirdness, as a joke). When she and my mom tell me the same things and if I hear about it again from Zephyr and another person I trust, I believe it. Have to.
My finding out doesn’t exactly happen that way, but you see where I’m going with this? When she means to be, Aunt Clara is a trustworthy source of information, so my shock turns quickly to curiosity, then certainty. I do not spend much time in disbelief the way some people do.
I think that’s the reason I adjust more quickly. I can believe Aunt Clara and go from there. I’m all: “What does this mean?” and “What do we do now?” not, “Is it true?” See?
Aunt Clara’s very practical, so she’s direct, factual and helpful. She tells me exactly what our joining the MWC means and what to do, so I relax. As long as I have a plan, I’m fine. [laughs]
That’s one thing she and I have in common: we’re very organized. I’m a bit OCD and she’s just O, she says. [laughs] [Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and Obsessed]
First thing I hear is that I’m not—we’re not—in danger. Check. The rest is easy, after we establish that. [laughs]
*********************************
Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.
4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.
On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.
#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING
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18 Things Highly Creative People Do Differently
I resemble most of these.
“…psychologically speaking, creative personality types are difficult to pin down, largely because they’re complex, paradoxical and tend to avoid habit or routine. And it’s not just a stereotype of the “tortured artist” — artists really may be more complicated people. Research has suggested that creativity involves the coming together of a multitude of traits, behaviors and social influences in a single person.
“It’s actually hard for creative people to know themselves because the creative self is more complex than the non-creative self,” Scott Barry Kaufman, a psychologist at New York University who has spent years researching creativity, told The Huffington Post. “The things that stand out the most are the paradoxes of the creative self … Imaginative people have messier minds.”
While there’s no “typical” creative type, there are some tell-tale characteristics and behaviors of highly creative people. Here are 18 things they do differently.”
Read article here – 18…
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The History and Future of the Universe in Four Minutes
Very cool! #Multiverse R us!
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14th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
14th Serialized Excerpt, 4/4/14
CHAPTER INTERLUDE TWO
Chief of the Psi-Warriors, OverSeer and covert special Operations agents, Moran Ackerman:
My Stories of the Transition
(continued)
I am re-reading the description of Level 3. Burns? Frostbite? Deep wounds? What??? I ‘path Aunt Clara: “I can’t do this. I’m not cut out for pain. Get someone else. I can quit, can’t I?”
Aunt Clara knows where I am and says she’s coming to see me, ‘pathing, sternly while she is on her way over, “That’s more than one. You are now in arrears for three days of kvetches, Moran. Want to go for four?”
I look up at the end of her remonstration to see her standing in front of me. How does she get here so fast?
“No, Aunt Clara. I’m serious.” I say, aloud, wincing at the sound of my own whining, but I am somehow compelled. “I can’t do this. I’m a baby. Truly. Liora can tell you. Agam and Lavi can tell you. Hell, Orna can tell you: I’m a wimp. Really. I get teary when I get a paper cut.” I wave one finger around, demonstrating the way it makes me feel, wiping pretend tears away with my other hand.
She is unmoved.
Led appears *POP* and hovers over to me. “What seems to be the problem, here, Moran Ackerman?”
Just Led’s appearing and calling me by my full name makes me stand up straighter, suck in my gut and pull it together. “Nothing, Sir. I mean, Led. I mean, I’m fine. Just having a moment with my aunt.”
Led hovers over to Clara. They exchange some information silently.
I don’t catch it, which I’m sure is intentional on their part.
Aunt Clara turns to me, “Moran, we think it’s best if you and don’t see each other so often for a while. Somehow you allow yourself to feel weaker or show your doubts more around me, which is not helpful to you or to your training. Probably a family thing.”
I take that in, feeling as if she’s punched me in the stomach. Not see her? She’s my only family here, most of the time. I am hit with a wave of homesickness and despair. I sit there, feeling it, then look up at her.
“You’re right. I see that, now. I agree.” I have no idea where this type of inner strength and brutal honesty come from, but the correctness of this plan permeates me completely.
“I hate it, so it must be right.” I grudgingly agree.
I give Aunt Clara a rueful smile: this formula is well known to meditators, personal growth mavens and therapists. She and I face this paradox often. Our strongest resistance and fears are sparked when we face exactly what our next steps have to be. Certain kinds of “no” actually mean “absolutely yes” when we’re talking to ourselves.
Aunt Clara steps toward me and envelops me in a very loving, long hug. “I’m so proud of you, Moran. You are perfectly suited for this. We are sure.”
I appreciate her hug and even more, her confidence in me. “Thanks, CeeCee. I won’t let you down.”
Led says, “No, you won’t, Moran Ackerman. You lead Earthers quite well.”
“Okay, then. Let’s get this party started,” I say.
Smiling, excited and filled with stomach-sucking dread, I turn away from them to walk into the Level 3 classroom.
******
I start to feel very rushed during these next trainings because things are heating up “outside.” More Fraggers are becoming Trenchers,which means the kvetchers [outspoken complainers, Yiddish] are becoming a politically organized resistance movement, no longer content with venting.
Trenchers are organizing to protest Earth’s membership in the MWC, to “throw off the yoke of alien invasion by any means necessary,” according to their websites. I feel quite worried and accelerate my practice sessions. I don’t timult, yet, but I can sense the impending conflicts, nonetheless.
Led tells me that this is all “typical.”
But I am increasingly worried because Mick shows me, via Access, that many orbs have psi Wars during their Ts. I ask them how the Trenchers learn anything like my lessons in psi from ESP training when none of them is included?
One day, Led explains.
Aunt Clara and I are called in via vid call to speak together with The Band in April, 2013. I remember it vividly because this is the first time I hear that I am supposed to not only become one of but to lead the Psi-Warriors. The most I lead up to that point is my class of twenty 7th-graders!
*******
“I am in no way suited for such a difficult role and unimaginable amount of responsibility! Please, find someone better! I’m merely a beginner. Surely you have someone with psi talent and training you can use from off-p?” I am kind of shouting, but who wouldn’t?
“Can’t I assume leadership later, like, in about five years or something? You have all these experienced OSes here. Can’t we use one or more of them? I feel intense internal opposition about becoming something I’m not. Worse, I would be having all these people, all these beings—the entire damned planet—depending on me. This can’t be right.” I’m beginning to feel lightheaded from hyperventilating. I take several deep, slow, calming breaths.
Led intones: “The leader of each Member’s Psi-Warriors, when one is needed, must be of the dominant species from that orb. Furthermore, s/he must be a close relative of the CC. We try many other variations and none is as effective. Name recognition, early acceptance of unusual traits and Excellent Skills, close contact and guidance from the MWC: these are all important to the success of the leader of the Transition OverSeers’ defense squadron.”
Why isn’t this Zephyr’s role? Why isn’t he being trained to lead the PWs and OSes?
Before I can voice these questions, Led interrupts.
“In addition,” Led inserts, “anyone who actually wants this job, who feels comfortable assuming this kind of leadership role, is prohibited from attaining it.”
Realization dawns slowly, but I get it, now. “Oh. It’s just like what’s happening with all the new global government leaders: everyone who volunteers, who runs for election or wants to be in charge, is refused. Anyone competent and good-hearted who could be leaders are the ones who are invited and trained.”
Led bounces in his YES mode.
Aunt Clara chimes in to reassure me: “You are supervised in Access contact and telepathically engaged at all times, same as I am. You will never be ‘alone,’ as you conceive of it, ever again. You don’t even have to send a ‘Bat signal’ to get help!”
I take a moment to let that sink in. Never alone again?
Now, I’m used to it. But, then, it’s a shocking concept.
I look at Aunt Clara, who is looking at me with sympathy and understanding. Oh. I get it. She’s already like that, with the MWC. Always in contact, whether she likes it or not. Her life must seem to be out of her control.
Mine is about to become eerily similar. Tell me again why this isn’t this a job for Zef?
Hearing me, Ringo cuts in. “Your cousin, Zephyr, has other roles to play in the Transition and is already engaged in them. Furthermore, experience shows us that the Psi-Warrior leader cannot be a member of the CC’s immediate family because that causes the CC to be too distracted to perform the CC duties during psi conflicts.”
Battles. Fights. People and ETs with some weird-ass weapons I can’t imagine, yet, killing and hurting each other. A war. I can’t lead a war! I’m a rabbi, a middle-school teacher!
I start to object, but again, I am not fast enough.
Led seems as if he’s trying to reassuring, here: “You receive specialized, accelerated ESP training already. We add, today, your specialized InKC [pronounced InKayCee], your Inner Knowing Center, Access training. InKC gives you some measure of privacy.”
Mick adds,”More importantly, InKC Access also enhances your ability to connect directly with everything you learn, know, and are capable of at every moment as circumstances demand without having to make an Access request.”
Aunt Clara chimes in: “InKC is great. I believe it’s saved what sanity I can claim to have. For most ESP trainees, it’s Level 8-A, but for us, it’s NOW.”
I am not even close to being sufficiently reassured.
We are all quiet for a few moments.
This is too weird, even after everything I already know.
Hearing my internal distress, again, Ringo intercedes by reminding me: “Isn’t there a great tradition of Jewish scholar-fighters?”
I nod. I breathe that in. This is HaShem’s will for me. I nod to acquiesce, with quite a bit of trepidation. Even Noah is afraid, but he builds the Ark.
I finally find my voice. “How does InKC training work?” I realize I am sidestepping my misgivings, but I can’t talk about them all, yet.
“We now show you,” Led says, somewhat gently, for him.
I look to Aunt Clara. She is already getting into meditation posture on her chair.
I mimic her, but on the cushion I use on the rug. Without further prompting, I begin the deep breathing and calming exercises that precede all ESP training sessions.
Within a few minutes, I feel the familiar heat in each of my energy centers, especially in my heart chakra [energy center, Sanskrit]. I continue breathing, eyes half-closed, turning my mind to focus on my breath. In, out, in, out.
I feel the tingle that signals a lesson is beginning. I always feel it first in my hands. Aunt Clara tells me another time she feels it first on the back of her neck.
I hear Mick’s voice, in my mind, directing us: “Allow your attention to flow through all of your energy channels evenly and without constraint. Keep the breathing steady. Release the bonds of the outer shell and join in oneness.”
Time and space expand as the multiverse timelines converge, separate, reconverge, merging into one. I no longer feel my limbs, my skin, my weight. My sense of the room I’m in fades as well. So far, all very familiar and somewhat, well, blissful. I should do this more.
Mick continues, still ‘pathing: “Now, increase the pressure from within your heart energy center so that you are expanding its presence in your chest. Let it fill the entire cavity.”
This is new. How do I do that? Suddenly my chest fills with sparkling, buzzing electricity. Energy is also zinging up and down all of my central and auxiliary channels with more speed and heat. Whoa, there, Sparky! I slow it down a little, but keep it strong by directing my attention to it, pushing the current while harnessing it at the same time.
Mick’s voice resumes in my mind: “Refocus your attention back to the center of your heart energy. Breathe into it. Consider that it is a kind of doorway. Visualize it, seek its opening and enter through that door. You will find yourself in a chamber of your own design, outfitted exactly as you need, each time you enter. Here, you are safe, fully knowledgeable, reconstituted and restored as needed. Find your resting place, your refueling station. All your information Access points are also within this chamber.”
Wow. This is so cool! My chamber is kind of like an Israeli Talmudic library and study room that also has a large couch, a small table with water and food, soft lighting, complete silence. Pictures of Liora and Orna are on the shelves.
I immediately feel happy, safe, at home. I want to come here frequently. I want to stay here.
Again, hearing me, Led responds. “Now that you establish your InKC, make this journey at least once per day exactly as we just have. Familiarity is the key.”
“Does the InKC change each time I visit?” I ask aloud. “You say something about the chamber’s changing each time we come. How does that work?”
Led makes the bubble sound that I recognize as laughter and also speaks aloud: “It’s all in your mind, Moran. Of course it can change, instantly.”
Oh. Right. I return my attention to the chamber and push the energy to make a tablet computer appear on the table. Snap. There it is. Immediately. “Sweet. I can use this!” I say, happily.
******
During the rest of the Level 3 ESP training and all my previous Levels’ practice sessions, I come to my InKC often, more than once a day. I find I heal faster, learn more quickly, feel refreshed sooner and remember lessons more reliably with many visits. I understand better each week the reason for its name.
It takes many months for me to get good enough at ES Levels 1, 2 and 3 and Health/Healing [8-B] since these are fundamental. Meanwhile, using my InKC becomes automatic and essential.
“Outside,” things are getting crazy in Trencher-ville, spawning the Psi-Defiers at the end of the summer, 2013. My training really speeds up after that.
More OSes come every week to be part of our PWs from all over the MWC membership. I get to train with each of them, individually and in groups. They know before arriving that I am going to lead us as soon as I’m ready, so they all pitch in to encourage, test, demo, model: they are amazing.
I’m not at liberty to say much more about the exact training I get, but I’ll share what I can with a story here and there.
*********************************
Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.
4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.
On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.
#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING
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14th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
14th Serialized Excerpt, 4/4/14
CHAPTER INTERLUDE TWO
Chief of the Psi-Warriors, OverSeer and covert special Operations agents, Moran Ackerman:
My Stories of the Transition
(continued)
I am re-reading the description of Level 3. Burns? Frostbite? Deep wounds? What??? I ‘path Aunt Clara: “I can’t do this. I’m not cut out for pain. Get someone else. I can quit, can’t I?”
Aunt Clara knows where I am and says she’s coming to see me, ‘pathing, sternly while she is on her way over, “That’s more than one. You are now in arrears for three days of kvetches, Moran. Want to go for four?”
I look up at the end of her remonstration to see her standing in front of me. How does she get here so fast?
“No, Aunt Clara. I’m serious.” I say, aloud, wincing at the sound of my own whining, but I am somehow compelled. “I can’t do this. I’m a baby. Truly. Liora can tell you. Agam and Lavi can tell you. Hell, Orna can tell you: I’m a wimp. Really. I get teary when I get a paper cut.” I wave one finger around, demonstrating the way it makes me feel, wiping pretend tears away with my other hand.
She is unmoved.
Led appears *POP* and hovers over to me. “What seems to be the problem, here, Moran Ackerman?”
Just Led’s appearing and calling me by my full name makes me stand up straighter, suck in my gut and pull it together. “Nothing, Sir. I mean, Led. I mean, I’m fine. Just having a moment with my aunt.”
Led hovers over to Clara. They exchange some information silently.
I don’t catch it, which I’m sure is intentional on their part.
Aunt Clara turns to me, “Moran, we think it’s best if you and don’t see each other so often for a while. Somehow you allow yourself to feel weaker or show your doubts more around me, which is not helpful to you or to your training. Probably a family thing.”
I take that in, feeling as if she’s punched me in the stomach. Not see her? She’s my only family here, most of the time. I am hit with a wave of homesickness and despair. I sit there, feeling it, then look up at her.
“You’re right. I see that, now. I agree.” I have no idea where this type of inner strength and brutal honesty come from, but the correctness of this plan permeates me completely.
“I hate it, so it must be right.” I grudgingly agree.
I give Aunt Clara a rueful smile: this formula is well known to meditators, personal growth mavens and therapists. She and I face this paradox often. Our strongest resistance and fears are sparked when we face exactly what our next steps have to be. Certain kinds of “no” actually mean “absolutely yes” when we’re talking to ourselves.
Aunt Clara steps toward me and envelops me in a very loving, long hug. “I’m so proud of you, Moran. You are perfectly suited for this. We are sure.”
I appreciate her hug and even more, her confidence in me. “Thanks, CeeCee. I won’t let you down.”
Led says, “No, you won’t, Moran Ackerman. You lead Earthers quite well.”
“Okay, then. Let’s get this party started,” I say.
Smiling, excited and filled with stomach-sucking dread, I turn away from them to walk into the Level 3 classroom.
******
I start to feel very rushed during these next trainings because things are heating up “outside.” More Fraggers are becoming Trenchers,which means the kvetchers [outspoken complainers, Yiddish] are becoming a politically organized resistance movement, no longer content with venting.
Trenchers are organizing to protest Earth’s membership in the MWC, to “throw off the yoke of alien invasion by any means necessary,” according to their websites. I feel quite worried and accelerate my practice sessions. I don’t timult, yet, but I can sense the impending conflicts, nonetheless.
Led tells me that this is all “typical.”
But I am increasingly worried because Mick shows me, via Access, that many orbs have psi Wars during their Ts. I ask them how the Trenchers learn anything like my lessons in psi from ESP training when none of them is included?
One day, Led explains.
Aunt Clara and I are called in via vid call to speak together with The Band in April, 2013. I remember it vividly because this is the first time I hear that I am supposed to not only become one of but to lead the Psi-Warriors. The most I lead up to that point is my class of twenty 7th-graders!
*******
“I am in no way suited for such a difficult role and unimaginable amount of responsibility! Please, find someone better! I’m merely a beginner. Surely you have someone with psi talent and training you can use from off-p?” I am kind of shouting, but who wouldn’t?
“Can’t I assume leadership later, like, in about five years or something? You have all these experienced OSes here. Can’t we use one or more of them? I feel intense internal opposition about becoming something I’m not. Worse, I would be having all these people, all these beings—the entire damned planet—depending on me. This can’t be right.” I’m beginning to feel lightheaded from hyperventilating. I take several deep, slow, calming breaths.
Led intones: “The leader of each Member’s Psi-Warriors, when one is needed, must be of the dominant species from that orb. Furthermore, s/he must be a close relative of the CC. We try many other variations and none is as effective. Name recognition, early acceptance of unusual traits and Excellent Skills, close contact and guidance from the MWC: these are all important to the success of the leader of the Transition OverSeers’ defense squadron.”
Why isn’t this Zephyr’s role? Why isn’t he being trained to lead the PWs and OSes?
Before I can voice these questions, Led interrupts.
“In addition,” Led inserts, “anyone who actually wants this job, who feels comfortable assuming this kind of leadership role, is prohibited from attaining it.”
Realization dawns slowly, but I get it, now. “Oh. It’s just like what’s happening with all the new global government leaders: everyone who volunteers, who runs for election or wants to be in charge, is refused. Anyone competent and good-hearted who could be leaders are the ones who are invited and trained.”
Led bounces in his YES mode.
Aunt Clara chimes in to reassure me: “You are supervised in Access contact and telepathically engaged at all times, same as I am. You will never be ‘alone,’ as you conceive of it, ever again. You don’t even have to send a ‘Bat signal’ to get help!”
I take a moment to let that sink in. Never alone again?
Now, I’m used to it. But, then, it’s a shocking concept.
I look at Aunt Clara, who is looking at me with sympathy and understanding. Oh. I get it. She’s already like that, with the MWC. Always in contact, whether she likes it or not. Her life must seem to be out of her control.
Mine is about to become eerily similar. Tell me again why this isn’t this a job for Zef?
Hearing me, Ringo cuts in. “Your cousin, Zephyr, has other roles to play in the Transition and is already engaged in them. Furthermore, experience shows us that the Psi-Warrior leader cannot be a member of the CC’s immediate family because that causes the CC to be too distracted to perform the CC duties during psi conflicts.”
Battles. Fights. People and ETs with some weird-ass weapons I can’t imagine, yet, killing and hurting each other. A war. I can’t lead a war! I’m a rabbi, a middle-school teacher!
I start to object, but again, I am not fast enough.
Led seems as if he’s trying to reassuring, here: “You receive specialized, accelerated ESP training already. We add, today, your specialized InKC [pronounced InKayCee], your Inner Knowing Center, Access training. InKC gives you some measure of privacy.”
Mick adds,”More importantly, InKC Access also enhances your ability to connect directly with everything you learn, know, and are capable of at every moment as circumstances demand without having to make an Access request.”
Aunt Clara chimes in: “InKC is great. I believe it’s saved what sanity I can claim to have. For most ESP trainees, it’s Level 8-A, but for us, it’s NOW.”
I am not even close to being sufficiently reassured.
We are all quiet for a few moments.
This is too weird, even after everything I already know.
Hearing my internal distress, again, Ringo intercedes by reminding me: “Isn’t there a great tradition of Jewish scholar-fighters?”
I nod. I breathe that in. This is HaShem’s will for me. I nod to acquiesce, with quite a bit of trepidation. Even Noah is afraid, but he builds the Ark.
I finally find my voice. “How does InKC training work?” I realize I am sidestepping my misgivings, but I can’t talk about them all, yet.
“We now show you,” Led says, somewhat gently, for him.
I look to Aunt Clara. She is already getting into meditation posture on her chair.
I mimic her, but on the cushion I use on the rug. Without further prompting, I begin the deep breathing and calming exercises that precede all ESP training sessions.
Within a few minutes, I feel the familiar heat in each of my energy centers, especially in my heart chakra [energy center, Sanskrit]. I continue breathing, eyes half-closed, turning my mind to focus on my breath. In, out, in, out.
I feel the tingle that signals a lesson is beginning. I always feel it first in my hands. Aunt Clara tells me another time she feels it first on the back of her neck.
I hear Mick’s voice, in my mind, directing us: “Allow your attention to flow through all of your energy channels evenly and without constraint. Keep the breathing steady. Release the bonds of the outer shell and join in oneness.”
Time and space expand as the multiverse timelines converge, separate, reconverge, merging into one. I no longer feel my limbs, my skin, my weight. My sense of the room I’m in fades as well. So far, all very familiar and somewhat, well, blissful. I should do this more.
Mick continues, still ‘pathing: “Now, increase the pressure from within your heart energy center so that you are expanding its presence in your chest. Let it fill the entire cavity.”
This is new. How do I do that? Suddenly my chest fills with sparkling, buzzing electricity. Energy is also zinging up and down all of my central and auxiliary channels with more speed and heat. Whoa, there, Sparky! I slow it down a little, but keep it strong by directing my attention to it, pushing the current while harnessing it at the same time.
Mick’s voice resumes in my mind: “Refocus your attention back to the center of your heart energy. Breathe into it. Consider that it is a kind of doorway. Visualize it, seek its opening and enter through that door. You will find yourself in a chamber of your own design, outfitted exactly as you need, each time you enter. Here, you are safe, fully knowledgeable, reconstituted and restored as needed. Find your resting place, your refueling station. All your information Access points are also within this chamber.”
Wow. This is so cool! My chamber is kind of like an Israeli Talmudic library and study room that also has a large couch, a small table with water and food, soft lighting, complete silence. Pictures of Liora and Orna are on the shelves.
I immediately feel happy, safe, at home. I want to come here frequently. I want to stay here.
Again, hearing me, Led responds. “Now that you establish your InKC, make this journey at least once per day exactly as we just have. Familiarity is the key.”
“Does the InKC change each time I visit?” I ask aloud. “You say something about the chamber’s changing each time we come. How does that work?”
Led makes the bubble sound that I recognize as laughter and also speaks aloud: “It’s all in your mind, Moran. Of course it can change, instantly.”
Oh. Right. I return my attention to the chamber and push the energy to make a tablet computer appear on the table. Snap. There it is. Immediately. “Sweet. I can use this!” I say, happily.
******
During the rest of the Level 3 ESP training and all my previous Levels’ practice sessions, I come to my InKC often, more than once a day. I find I heal faster, learn more quickly, feel refreshed sooner and remember lessons more reliably with many visits. I understand better each week the reason for its name.
It takes many months for me to get good enough at ES Levels 1, 2 and 3 and Health/Healing [8-B] since these are fundamental. Meanwhile, using my InKC becomes automatic and essential.
“Outside,” things are getting crazy in Trencher-ville, spawning the Psi-Defiers at the end of the summer, 2013. My training really speeds up after that.
More OSes come every week to be part of our PWs from all over the MWC membership. I get to train with each of them, individually and in groups. They know before arriving that I am going to lead us as soon as I’m ready, so they all pitch in to encourage, test, demo, model: they are amazing.
I’m not at liberty to say much more about the exact training I get, but I’ll share what I can with a story here and there.
*********************************
Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.
4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.
On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.
#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING
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Syfy picks up Wil Wheaton’s ‘Talk Soup’ for geeks’
Very cool!
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Another 4-Star Review for #ThisChangesEverything, Vol. I, #TheSpannersSeries
4-Star Review of
This Changes Everything, Volume I, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
“As I started reading this book I was extremely confused. The initial writing style is uniquely jumbled and somewhat difficult to follow. However, I believe that this is somewhat intentional based on the first concept initiated within the story—everything happens all at once. Time is not linear, but expansive. Once I understood that this was one of the major messages being shared within the book (note, I do not believe that sharing this will be giving a spoiler as it’s pretty clear within the first 25 pages) the strange manner in which the story, itself, as written, makes perfect sense.
“Although I do not predict this story will become a mainstream success, it will definitely appear to a certain subset who have an interest in discussing the possibilities of linear time and alien interaction with what Sally Ember has labeled as ‘Earthers.’
“The concepts that the author discusses certainly align with some of my own beliefs and, perhaps, this is what kept me turning the page to see the direction in which the story would lead. By page 36, I was glad that I did. It was around this time that I started to enjoy the spin the author put on past events, giving them flavor that played well into her vision of the purposes of past alien encounters.
“I will say that what I enjoyed the most about the book was the main character’s interaction with both ‘The Band’ and her fellow humans. The interactions gave ground to the underlying plot, taking it from something akin to a research paper and back to the world of storytelling. I especially liked the fact that not all of her family is receptive to the sudden announcement of the other world visitors and her realization that, perhaps, she’d best prepare some of these people for the publication of her visits to the world at large.
“Because I did have some problems following the timeline off and on throughout the book, I’m unable to give it a solid five-star rating. However, I will say that very rarely do I finish a 248-page novel in the course of two days and that, even more importantly, I’m curious to see where the author takes this series in the next installment. This speaks volumes as to Ms. Ember’s writing skills and ability to keep her readers interested in her content.”
posted by: riyanj | Jan 23, 2014 | LIBRARY THING
http://www.librarything.com/work/14662907/book/106564730
Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Available wherever ebooks are sold. Buy links, more reviews, interviews and excerpts from Volume II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, starting March 16, on http://www.sallyember.com
Volume II is in pre-orders via Smashwords, iBooks, Kobo and nook for 50% off @$1.99, 4/18/14 – 6/8/14 and releases 6/9/14 @$3.99 on those sites plus Amazon and everywhere.
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13th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
13th Serialized Excerpt, 4/2/14
CHAPTER INTERLUDE TWO
Chief of the Psi-Warriors, OverSeer and covert special Operations agents, Moran Ackerman:
My Stories of the Transition
MORAN: Where are we? Oh, ESP Levels 1 & 2 and how it all begins.
I banish Orna today; I don’t want her to hear these next parts, yet. My classes with Aunt Clara take a detour after Level 2, to fast-track me into OS training.
They tell me that the psi wars are coming soon and I have to be ready. At that time, I only have the vaguest idea what psi wars could involve, but I do know that, whatever they are, I’m not ready. I still feel like a rabbi, a teacher, not any kind of warrior or chief, that’s for sure.
“There are layers of transformation,” Aunt Clara explains. “We are like artichokes. It takes a while to get to our hearts. There is an entire prickly choke to get through, first.”
“Well,” I respond, “this artichoke needs more garlic-lemon-butter sauce.”
I don’t even know what I mean by that ridiculous answer, but it makes us laugh, which is good. There are too many solemn moments and I need to laugh. Regularly. People who know me know that.
There are things I need to learn right away that a CC doesn’t and vice-versa for an OS because of the drastically different nature of our roles. The way I understand it is: the CCs on every MWC member orb have to learn every part of the ESP training, and often become the main instructor for many parts, but OSes do not learn them all, just the ones we need.
There is no standard sequence since everyone comes in with different talents and strengths, also. After Level 2, we don’t share the same order or gaps within the OS trainings.
Because some parts are specialized and because Earth’s Trenchers are moving faster in protests and their own psi resistance training than on some other members’ planets, Ringo and Mick bring in off-p OSes from Earth-like planets to train with and become OSes with me here, starting in June of 2013.
That is freaky, let me tell you. Well, there’s a lot I can’t tell you, so I’ll go with what I can say.
OSes, obviously, have to learn all the physical protection and deflection components in the ES right away. We also have to learn how to heal ourselves and others which has a foundation about self-control of the bodily kind. That all comes from self-control of the mental kind.
I think that’s where the Trenchers can meet or even exceed us, in physical prowess and in mental self-control. Many of them become Psi-Defiers because they have experience and prior training, unlike me, in the military or civilian police forces.
All of our ESP training is rooted in using our minds, but at first I don’t know that. I think I’m going to be in some kind of boot camp with push-ups and sit-ups, obstacle courses and ropes, crawling around on my belly carrying an Uzi and stuff like that. I picture the Israeli Army’s training camps and set myself to endure that kind of physical challenge. Not so.
First of all, the only weapons OSes have are mentally engaged. We actually do not carry anything with us except plasticuff restraints that are Skills-tamper-proof (from off-p, at first, of course) and a kind of taser-like tool. Both of these serve to dampen or eliminate the opponent’s use of psi skills. The nano-technology to create and manufacture this type of equipment is not available on Earth until way into 2014, but we need it by the end of the summer of 2013 and are glad to have it.
The model of OSes we use means we don’t even have standard uniforms. OSes each get a colored wrist band that doubles as our iD and fish until we get our implants. Then, we keep wearing the bands for the public to be able to identify us, but that’s about it. From a distance, or when we wear long sleeves or OPTS [for when we’re underwater, at high altitudes or off-p], no one knows we’re OSes unless they have strong psi themselves.
At first, I just go along. But when the Fraggers start organizing and the Trenchers emerge as their military branch, complete with those that has psi skills who become the Defiers, I wish we could be more prominent as OSes.
I tell The Band that Earthers need the OSes to be protectors, to be a class apart, to be easily recognizable and spotted from a distance. But, Led tells me that all the MWC member orbs adjust during their Transitions to the unparalleled natures, functions and appearances of the various OSes. I have to believe them. They do have tens of thousands of years of experience. I sheket [be quiet, Hebrew].
Learning to sheket is, apparently, key to this entire training, which is based in meditation and other types of mind-taming and -control, similar to Tibetan Buddhist practices, Aunt Clara finds out.
She crows about the ESP-Buddhism connection at my expense, many times. I tell her she has too much pride. She sticks out her tongue at me. She does.
But, exactly when her gloating is at its worst, Led comes out with this: “Moran, you are eligible and suitable to this intensive training because of your capacity to concentrate due to your rabbinic training, Talmudic studies and daily davening [chanted liturgies and prayers, Hebrew]. These are quite similar to many of Clara’s Tibetan Buddhist practices. Then, your natural affinity to psi, as an Ackerman, clinches your readiness.”
Aunt Clara is gape-mouthed at this revelation! Snap!
In fact, the next crop of ESP training recruits come from many mystical sectors of Earth’s humans. The list of early OS trainees is like a who’s who in mystical Earthers. We have Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns; advanced students in Kabbalah and Talmudic Jewish studies; Hmong Ntxiv Neej (Tee-Neng); mystical Sufis; South and Central American/Mexican Curanderos; Cuban Santeras; Zulu Sangomas; Pacific Islander Kahunas; Sikkim Jhakris; Alaskan and Canadian Angakot; and, other indigenous Shamans from around the globe. These come from Australia (Kadjis), Native American tribes (mostly Lakota Sioux, Hopi and Navajo), Siberian Samans—the originators for the term “Shamans”—and many others I know nothing about before my ESP training.
The energy levels and conversations in the dining hall, walkways and between classes would blow your mind, literally. I am both exhilarated and terrified.
I’m supposed to end up leading this crew?!? How? Why me? I teach middle schoolers, I keep telling The Band. They ignore my kvetching [complaining, Yiddish]. Just as well.
Aunt Clara and I make a pact: we each get one complaint or moment of self-doubt a day. That’s it. We are strict about it, too. We hold each other accountable. By the end of our lessons in Level 2, we can find out, easily, if either of us cheats. So, we don’t.
This limit on internal griping helps keep me from completely freaking out. I treasure my one kvetch some days, believe me, but knowing I only get one means I don’t spend most of the day indulging my fears or doubts.
Sometimes I save my one kvetch for my daily call to Liora, which also helps me enormously. Li is the best. She truly is. More about her later.
According to the structures and levels of ESP training, all human Earthers, even those with advanced powers and skills in their own traditions, are unevenly educated and lack key components, but none of us lacks the same ones. So, our instructors take us into our own chavrutas, one-on-one, even before we enter Level 1 and then for any Level or section we each need tutoring for along the way. We Access to fill in our gaps.
Once the ESP training facilities can accommodate and physically include cetaceans, cephalopods, pinnipeds, elephants and large primates instead of working with them remotely (as Aunt Clara and I do for our first few months, prior to the establishment of The Campus), we discover that most of the individuals in these capable species actually have fewer psi gaps than humans! Radical.
When we get far enough into mind control lessons we move into the body stuff, which I think is going to be harder for me than some people. I’m not much of a sports guy, not like my dad or Agam. Lavi and I are both more mental and musical kinds of people.
I’m kind of nervous about entering Level 3 lessons. That’s an understatement of massive proportions. I’m ready to puke the morning of my first class.
ESP Training Level 3, BODILY CONTROL, includes: Withstanding Responses to Pain, Withstanding Extremes of Temperature, Controlling Changes in Bodily Functions, and Alternate Sleeping/Resting states. Concurrently with this, I get right into ESP Training Level 8-B, HEALTH & HEALING, because I need to do the Self-Monitoring & Self-Healing when my attempts to “Withstand” and exert control involve significant numbers of burns, frostbite, deep wounds and exhaustion, at first. This Level also includes Medical Diagnoses as well as Close & Remote Healing for others, but I learn those a bit later. Here is what happens, the first day.
*********************************
Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.
4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.
On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.
#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING
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13th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
13th Serialized Excerpt, 4/2/14
CHAPTER INTERLUDE TWO
Chief of the Psi-Warriors, OverSeer and covert special Operations agents, Moran Ackerman:
My Stories of the Transition
MORAN: Where are we? Oh, ESP Levels 1 & 2 and how it all begins.
I banish Orna today; I don’t want her to hear these next parts, yet. My classes with Aunt Clara take a detour after Level 2, to fast-track me into OS training.
They tell me that the psi wars are coming soon and I have to be ready. At that time, I only have the vaguest idea what psi wars could involve, but I do know that, whatever they are, I’m not ready. I still feel like a rabbi, a teacher, not any kind of warrior or chief, that’s for sure.
“There are layers of transformation,” Aunt Clara explains. “We are like artichokes. It takes a while to get to our hearts. There is an entire prickly choke to get through, first.”
“Well,” I respond, “this artichoke needs more garlic-lemon-butter sauce.”
I don’t even know what I mean by that ridiculous answer, but it makes us laugh, which is good. There are too many solemn moments and I need to laugh. Regularly. People who know me know that.
There are things I need to learn right away that a CC doesn’t and vice-versa for an OS because of the drastically different nature of our roles. The way I understand it is: the CCs on every MWC member orb have to learn every part of the ESP training, and often become the main instructor for many parts, but OSes do not learn them all, just the ones we need.
There is no standard sequence since everyone comes in with different talents and strengths, also. After Level 2, we don’t share the same order or gaps within the OS trainings.
Because some parts are specialized and because Earth’s Trenchers are moving faster in protests and their own psi resistance training than on some other members’ planets, Ringo and Mick bring in off-p OSes from Earth-like planets to train with and become OSes with me here, starting in June of 2013.
That is freaky, let me tell you. Well, there’s a lot I can’t tell you, so I’ll go with what I can say.
OSes, obviously, have to learn all the physical protection and deflection components in the ES right away. We also have to learn how to heal ourselves and others which has a foundation about self-control of the bodily kind. That all comes from self-control of the mental kind.
I think that’s where the Trenchers can meet or even exceed us, in physical prowess and in mental self-control. Many of them become Psi-Defiers because they have experience and prior training, unlike me, in the military or civilian police forces.
All of our ESP training is rooted in using our minds, but at first I don’t know that. I think I’m going to be in some kind of boot camp with push-ups and sit-ups, obstacle courses and ropes, crawling around on my belly carrying an Uzi and stuff like that. I picture the Israeli Army’s training camps and set myself to endure that kind of physical challenge. Not so.
First of all, the only weapons OSes have are mentally engaged. We actually do not carry anything with us except plasticuff restraints that are Skills-tamper-proof (from off-p, at first, of course) and a kind of taser-like tool. Both of these serve to dampen or eliminate the opponent’s use of psi skills. The nano-technology to create and manufacture this type of equipment is not available on Earth until way into 2014, but we need it by the end of the summer of 2013 and are glad to have it.
The model of OSes we use means we don’t even have standard uniforms. OSes each get a colored wrist band that doubles as our iD and fish until we get our implants. Then, we keep wearing the bands for the public to be able to identify us, but that’s about it. From a distance, or when we wear long sleeves or OPTS [for when we’re underwater, at high altitudes or off-p], no one knows we’re OSes unless they have strong psi themselves.
At first, I just go along. But when the Fraggers start organizing and the Trenchers emerge as their military branch, complete with those that has psi skills who become the Defiers, I wish we could be more prominent as OSes.
I tell The Band that Earthers need the OSes to be protectors, to be a class apart, to be easily recognizable and spotted from a distance. But, Led tells me that all the MWC member orbs adjust during their Transitions to the unparalleled natures, functions and appearances of the various OSes. I have to believe them. They do have tens of thousands of years of experience. I sheket [be quiet, Hebrew].
Learning to sheket is, apparently, key to this entire training, which is based in meditation and other types of mind-taming and -control, similar to Tibetan Buddhist practices, Aunt Clara finds out.
She crows about the ESP-Buddhism connection at my expense, many times. I tell her she has too much pride. She sticks out her tongue at me. She does.
But, exactly when her gloating is at its worst, Led comes out with this: “Moran, you are eligible and suitable to this intensive training because of your capacity to concentrate due to your rabbinic training, Talmudic studies and daily davening [chanted liturgies and prayers, Hebrew]. These are quite similar to many of Clara’s Tibetan Buddhist practices. Then, your natural affinity to psi, as an Ackerman, clinches your readiness.”
Aunt Clara is gape-mouthed at this revelation! Snap!
In fact, the next crop of ESP training recruits come from many mystical sectors of Earth’s humans. The list of early OS trainees is like a who’s who in mystical Earthers. We have Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns; advanced students in Kabbalah and Talmudic Jewish studies; Hmong Ntxiv Neej (Tee-Neng); mystical Sufis; South and Central American/Mexican Curanderos; Cuban Santeras; Zulu Sangomas; Pacific Islander Kahunas; Sikkim Jhakris; Alaskan and Canadian Angakot; and, other indigenous Shamans from around the globe. These come from Australia (Kadjis), Native American tribes (mostly Lakota Sioux, Hopi and Navajo), Siberian Samans—the originators for the term “Shamans”—and many others I know nothing about before my ESP training.
The energy levels and conversations in the dining hall, walkways and between classes would blow your mind, literally. I am both exhilarated and terrified.
I’m supposed to end up leading this crew?!? How? Why me? I teach middle schoolers, I keep telling The Band. They ignore my kvetching [complaining, Yiddish]. Just as well.
Aunt Clara and I make a pact: we each get one complaint or moment of self-doubt a day. That’s it. We are strict about it, too. We hold each other accountable. By the end of our lessons in Level 2, we can find out, easily, if either of us cheats. So, we don’t.
This limit on internal griping helps keep me from completely freaking out. I treasure my one kvetch some days, believe me, but knowing I only get one means I don’t spend most of the day indulging my fears or doubts.
Sometimes I save my one kvetch for my daily call to Liora, which also helps me enormously. Li is the best. She truly is. More about her later.
According to the structures and levels of ESP training, all human Earthers, even those with advanced powers and skills in their own traditions, are unevenly educated and lack key components, but none of us lacks the same ones. So, our instructors take us into our own chavrutas, one-on-one, even before we enter Level 1 and then for any Level or section we each need tutoring for along the way. We Access to fill in our gaps.
Once the ESP training facilities can accommodate and physically include cetaceans, cephalopods, pinnipeds, elephants and large primates instead of working with them remotely (as Aunt Clara and I do for our first few months, prior to the establishment of The Campus), we discover that most of the individuals in these capable species actually have fewer psi gaps than humans! Radical.
When we get far enough into mind control lessons we move into the body stuff, which I think is going to be harder for me than some people. I’m not much of a sports guy, not like my dad or Agam. Lavi and I are both more mental and musical kinds of people.
I’m kind of nervous about entering Level 3 lessons. That’s an understatement of massive proportions. I’m ready to puke the morning of my first class.
ESP Training Level 3, BODILY CONTROL, includes: Withstanding Responses to Pain, Withstanding Extremes of Temperature, Controlling Changes in Bodily Functions, and Alternate Sleeping/Resting states. Concurrently with this, I get right into ESP Training Level 8-B, HEALTH & HEALING, because I need to do the Self-Monitoring & Self-Healing when my attempts to “Withstand” and exert control involve significant numbers of burns, frostbite, deep wounds and exhaustion, at first. This Level also includes Medical Diagnoses as well as Close & Remote Healing for others, but I learn those a bit later. Here is what happens, the first day.
*********************************
Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.
4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.
On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.
#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING
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#COVER #REVEAL! #THISCHANGESMYFAMILY&MYLIFEFOREVER, Vol II, #THESPANNERSSERIES
#COVER #REVEAL!
This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, Volume II, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D., is graced by the excellent, creative cover art by Aidana WillowRaven http://WillowRaven.weebly.com for both the cover and the logo!
Excerpts starting 3/16/14 – 4/17/14 and all pre-order and buy links, reviews, interviews and more on http://www.sallyember.com and on Authonomy.com and Wattpad.com
Pre-orders @$1.99 (50% off) 4/18/14 – 6/8/14 via Smashwords, nook, iBooks, and Kobo only
On sale everywhere ebooks are sold: 6/9/14 @$3.99
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#TheAuthorsShow #Interview with Sci-Fi Author, #SallyEmber: April 1 ONLY!
Tune in any time today (24 hours) for 
#TheAuthorsShow #Interview with #SallyEmber by Don McCauley.
Use the link, below, to go to the ON AIR list. The list is near the bottom, center, of the site.
Choose “This Changes Everything, Sally Ember” on their list of Author Interviews(don’t go to YouTube since this is just an audio, not video interview).
Click on the title, then click the arrow (PLAY) on the website’s player. It’s about 15 minutes long.
SHARE! Thanks.
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12th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014
12th Serialized Excerpt, 3/31/14
CHAPTER SNAPSHOT #1
Snapshots of Clara’s Daily Life: Fourteen Octobers, 1963 – 2017
October, 1963
(continued)
I am a little over seven years old. My younger sister, Cassie, is a year-and-a-half. In Bayonne in those days, pediatricians still make “house calls,” meaning, our mother calls when we are sick or she has no way to get to the doctor’s office (in those days, most families in our suburban neighborhoods either have only one car or their mothers don’t even know how to drive). The doctor then comes before or after office hours to our house to check on or treat one of us.
On this day, right before I leave for school, my mom tells me that the doctor is coming to give Cassie a check-up because she’s been coughing a lot. I think my mom tells me this because our house is right across the street from the school and she knows I can see it from the playground.
“When you see the doctor’s car in our driveway,” she tells me, “you will know the reason he’s here and not come running home, scared that something bad has happened.”
I’m walking through the hallways just before the morning bell rings for us to signal the end of before-school morning recess, telling us to go to our classrooms, when I am hit with a physical pain in my butt, on my hip. It feels as if I have been stabbed by something sharp. I look around, but there’s no one and nothing there but me.
I stagger and almost fall into a small staircase next to the stage in the cafeteria/gymnasium. It is so narrow I can put my arms on each wall as I stumble down the few stairs, limping from the pain in my hip.
My vision of the stairs blurs as I “see” my baby sister on my bed and not in her crib. She is crying. The doctor stands over her, our mother next to her, soothing her. The doctor then puts an empty syringe (a “shot”) into a small container which he puts into his black doctor’s bag.
The doctor just gave my sister a shot. Why does my hip hurt? What is happening?
I lurch into the office at the bottom of the stairs, which belongs to the gym teacher, and blurt out: “My sister got a shot and my hip hurts.”
The gym teacher, startled, looks up to see me almost falling over and reaches out one hand to steady me.”What?” she asks me.”Clara, what are you talking about? What’s wrong with your hip?”
I start to cry.”It hurts. It hurts. Tell him to stop.”
“Who, Clara? Who is hurting you?”
Suddenly, the pain stops, my vision clears, and I see where I am.
I shake my head and look at the teacher.”What?” I ask her.”What happened?”
“You tell me!” she demands.
“I saw my sister getting a shot from the doctor. He’s at our house. It hurt, but now it’s fine. I have to go. The bell rang. My hip doesn’t hurt at all anymore.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?” she looks at me intently.
“I feel fine, now. See ya.”
I bounce out of her office and run up the stairs. I walk extra slowly past the principal’s office, sneak around the corner, then race to my classroom as the second bell rings. I throw myself into my seat.
“Made it,” I announce, to no one in particular, panting.
My second-grade teacher, not a nice woman, remarks,”Clara, if you are late to school you have no one to blame but yourself. You live closer than anyone else.”
“Right!” I say, falsely bright.
I lift my desk’s flip-up top to get my pencil, but really so the teacher can’t see my face. I grimace, rolling my eyes at my best friend, Paula, sitting next to me, and stick out my tongue insolently at my teacher, safe behind the wooden barrier from her mean eyes.
Paula grins at me from behind her now-raised desk, rolling her eyes, too.
Class begins and I almost forget about the entire thing.
*******
ESPE: Do you continue to have physically empathic reactions every time you timult?
CLARA: After that experience, I can only recall a few other times when I feel what others are feeling, physically or emotionally, during a timult. I usually get situational concepts or ongoing thoughts more than sensations or feelings of others.
Plus, I figure out on my own how to shield and re-direct fairly soon after this incident. I have to.
Even though I am not a full-blown empath, when a person in a timulted scene is a family member or close to me emotionally, I can still sometimes get empathic bleed-through, feeling their physical or emotional states briefly. My ESP training helps me keep the altered experiences and bleed-through to a minimum in terms of both duration and intensity, now. When I am younger, though, timulting is often problematic.
I also sometimes get empathic contact when I’m intentionally pre-cogging and accidentally, during dreams. In fact, empathic contact and the concomitant sensations are often my first clues that I’m having a pre-cognitive experience. More about pre-cogging in later Octobers in this Volume, all right?
ESPE: Sure. What else do want people to know about your elementary school years?
CLARA: About my being a feminist before I even know that word.
******
The part of my family that lives in Bayonne and near there are on my father’s side: his parents, his mother’s parents, his sister and her new husband, his mother’s brother and family, his mother’s single sister. We see them quite often.
I become an advocate for girls’ equal rights in my family and because of this school and its misogynistic policies. The need for this type of advocacy is all part of the era of my upbringing, unfortunately.
To anchor you younger ones: women my mothers’ age are the first generation of women who grow up with the right to vote in the USA, but women still can’t get credit, loans, property or inherit in their own names in many states until the 1970s. Even these “privileges” are accorded only to white women, remember: African-Americans of both sexes don’t get the “right” to vote until the late 1960s, when I’m in junior high school).
Men “own” their wives and can beat them up, rape them, force them to do whatever they want and the laws upholds these “rights.” Parents also “own” their children; child abuse, incest, neglect and abandonment are commonplace in some communities and there are no laws protecting the children.
There is an incident at our Reform Jewish Temple when I am four years old that is imprinted forever. In the great scheme of injustices and harmful moments, this one is not the greatest or worst by any means, even for me. But, it is pivotal in my feminist awakening.
I do not remember what holiday is being celebrated, just the incident.
We are all there, this aforementioned family of my father’s, along with my parents and my older brother. At one point in the service, my great-grandfather (my grandmother‘s father), my grandfather, my father and my brother are called up onto the pulpit (the small stage in the front of the congregation) to have their photos taken and be honored as “The Four Generations.”
I am furious. In my understanding, the “four generations” members being honored should have been this group: my great-grandparents, my grandmother as their daughter with her sister, my great aunt; my father and his sister; my brother and me. These are the four generations present today in our family, all of us.
Makes more sense, right? I suggest this, but my mother shushes me. She says, as if this explains it all,”Only men are allowed up there.”
I get angrier, especially when my brother senses my jealousy and smirks at me from the pulpit. I stick my tongue out at him. Well? I’m four!
Thus catalyzed, I am sensitized to sexism without having a word for it. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that I am enraged a few years later when I encounter our elementary school’s sexist policies. For instance, there are no girls allowed on the so-called “Safety Patrol,” which infuriates me. I complain about it starting in 4th grade even though the Patrol boys aren’t selected until 5th- and 6th-grade years. I get nowhere.
I am pleased to report that, by the time Cassie comes along, five years later, girls in her class are allowed to be in this elite group. By then, selection is solely based on academic performance. I know that’s also a specious winnowing tool, but it purports to be “gender-neutral.”
Why do I militate to be “on Patrol”? Because it’s VERY COOL! On the days they’re officially “on duty,” the Patrol Boys get to wear a sash and a badge, which look very grown-up. While “on Patrol,” they get to come to class late every morning and leave early every afternoon in order to help the adult crossing guards at the intersections. This “important” work involves herding most of the students to where we’re already going, anyway. They also walk the kindergartners in and out of school for fire drills and situate them for air raid drills.
It’s not the tasks I envy; it’s the status. And, my prime motivation is the general principle of fairness.
(Yes, we have nuclear bomb air raid drills: we are told to hide under our wooden desks or whatever is nearby. The “Cold War” is in full swing while I’m at this school.)
More to be enraged about are the sexism and impracticality which dominate the school clothes rules. We do not have uniforms, but strict policies: girls are not allowed to wear pants or shorts. We have to wear skirts or dresses to school, every day.
Imagine climbing all over the “monkey-bars” (“jungle gym”), doing gymnastics, playing sports and sprinting around in dresses and skirts? We have no gym uniforms until junior high school, either, so we have physical educational games and activities in our regular clothes. Climbing ropes in skirts? Really? Skirts/ dresses really do not function well for active, sports-inclined girls, which many of us are.
As a work-around, passed down from some older girls, my friends and I wear shorts under our skirts every day or long pants in the winter. It’s so ridiculous and also infuriating. We protect our modesty and privacy (no one can see our underpants when we’re climbing or running around) but the double layers are bulky, slowing us down while making us uncomfortable and too hot in the warmer weather. I hate these rules and argue constantly to change them.
Also, my first “civil disobedience” nonviolent resistance leadership actions occur because of this. In fifth grade, I am 10 years old. That spring, as soon as the warm weather comes and we go outside for recess, I get on the playground and take my skirt off, hanging it on a less-used horizontal bar. I wear just my shirt and shorts, same as every day when I get home and all summer.
Many of my friends see me and do the same. We hoot and holler, running around, climbing freely, having a great time, daring the playground supervisors to send us to the Principal’s Office, but they studiously ignore us. When the bell rings, we put our skirts back on and go back to class, triumphant. Small victories.
***********
CLARA: Even odder, we go from this strict, sexist dress code in 1963 to no dress code at all by 1969. More about that later.
ESPE: You become an advocate for girls, you know you can timult, you write stories and songs, you get up to reading over 100 books in one year, and others see you as either a leader or rabble-rouser, all before you’re out of elementary school?
CLARA: Yes. I don’t even see myself as unusual, yet.
ESPE: That’s the weirdest part!
*********************************
Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.
4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.
On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.
#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING
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12th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014
12th Serialized Excerpt, 3/31/14
CHAPTER SNAPSHOT #1
Snapshots of Clara’s Daily Life: Fourteen Octobers, 1963 – 2017
October, 1963
(continued)
I am a little over seven years old. My younger sister, Cassie, is a year-and-a-half. In Bayonne in those days, pediatricians still make “house calls,” meaning, our mother calls when we are sick or she has no way to get to the doctor’s office (in those days, most families in our suburban neighborhoods either have only one car or their mothers don’t even know how to drive). The doctor then comes before or after office hours to our house to check on or treat one of us.
On this day, right before I leave for school, my mom tells me that the doctor is coming to give Cassie a check-up because she’s been coughing a lot. I think my mom tells me this because our house is right across the street from the school and she knows I can see it from the playground.
“When you see the doctor’s car in our driveway,” she tells me, “you will know the reason he’s here and not come running home, scared that something bad has happened.”
I’m walking through the hallways just before the morning bell rings for us to signal the end of before-school morning recess, telling us to go to our classrooms, when I am hit with a physical pain in my butt, on my hip. It feels as if I have been stabbed by something sharp. I look around, but there’s no one and nothing there but me.
I stagger and almost fall into a small staircase next to the stage in the cafeteria/gymnasium. It is so narrow I can put my arms on each wall as I stumble down the few stairs, limping from the pain in my hip.
My vision of the stairs blurs as I “see” my baby sister on my bed and not in her crib. She is crying. The doctor stands over her, our mother next to her, soothing her. The doctor then puts an empty syringe (a “shot”) into a small container which he puts into his black doctor’s bag.
The doctor just gave my sister a shot. Why does my hip hurt? What is happening?
I lurch into the office at the bottom of the stairs, which belongs to the gym teacher, and blurt out: “My sister got a shot and my hip hurts.”
The gym teacher, startled, looks up to see me almost falling over and reaches out one hand to steady me.”What?” she asks me.”Clara, what are you talking about? What’s wrong with your hip?”
I start to cry.”It hurts. It hurts. Tell him to stop.”
“Who, Clara? Who is hurting you?”
Suddenly, the pain stops, my vision clears, and I see where I am.
I shake my head and look at the teacher.”What?” I ask her.”What happened?”
“You tell me!” she demands.
“I saw my sister getting a shot from the doctor. He’s at our house. It hurt, but now it’s fine. I have to go. The bell rang. My hip doesn’t hurt at all anymore.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?” she looks at me intently.
“I feel fine, now. See ya.”
I bounce out of her office and run up the stairs. I walk extra slowly past the principal’s office, sneak around the corner, then race to my classroom as the second bell rings. I throw myself into my seat.
“Made it,” I announce, to no one in particular, panting.
My second-grade teacher, not a nice woman, remarks,”Clara, if you are late to school you have no one to blame but yourself. You live closer than anyone else.”
“Right!” I say, falsely bright.
I lift my desk’s flip-up top to get my pencil, but really so the teacher can’t see my face. I grimace, rolling my eyes at my best friend, Paula, sitting next to me, and stick out my tongue insolently at my teacher, safe behind the wooden barrier from her mean eyes.
Paula grins at me from behind her now-raised desk, rolling her eyes, too.
Class begins and I almost forget about the entire thing.
*******
ESPE: Do you continue to have physically empathic reactions every time you timult?
CLARA: After that experience, I can only recall a few other times when I feel what others are feeling, physically or emotionally, during a timult. I usually get situational concepts or ongoing thoughts more than sensations or feelings of others.
Plus, I figure out on my own how to shield and re-direct fairly soon after this incident. I have to.
Even though I am not a full-blown empath, when a person in a timulted scene is a family member or close to me emotionally, I can still sometimes get empathic bleed-through, feeling their physical or emotional states briefly. My ESP training helps me keep the altered experiences and bleed-through to a minimum in terms of both duration and intensity, now. When I am younger, though, timulting is often problematic.
I also sometimes get empathic contact when I’m intentionally pre-cogging and accidentally, during dreams. In fact, empathic contact and the concomitant sensations are often my first clues that I’m having a pre-cognitive experience. More about pre-cogging in later Octobers in this Volume, all right?
ESPE: Sure. What else do want people to know about your elementary school years?
CLARA: About my being a feminist before I even know that word.
******
The part of my family that lives in Bayonne and near there are on my father’s side: his parents, his mother’s parents, his sister and her new husband, his mother’s brother and family, his mother’s single sister. We see them quite often.
I become an advocate for girls’ equal rights in my family and because of this school and its misogynistic policies. The need for this type of advocacy is all part of the era of my upbringing, unfortunately.
To anchor you younger ones: women my mothers’ age are the first generation of women who grow up with the right to vote in the USA, but women still can’t get credit, loans, property or inherit in their own names in many states until the 1970s. Even these “privileges” are accorded only to white women, remember: African-Americans of both sexes don’t get the “right” to vote until the late 1960s, when I’m in junior high school).
Men “own” their wives and can beat them up, rape them, force them to do whatever they want and the laws upholds these “rights.” Parents also “own” their children; child abuse, incest, neglect and abandonment are commonplace in some communities and there are no laws protecting the children.
There is an incident at our Reform Jewish Temple when I am four years old that is imprinted forever. In the great scheme of injustices and harmful moments, this one is not the greatest or worst by any means, even for me. But, it is pivotal in my feminist awakening.
I do not remember what holiday is being celebrated, just the incident.
We are all there, this aforementioned family of my father’s, along with my parents and my older brother. At one point in the service, my great-grandfather (my grandmother‘s father), my grandfather, my father and my brother are called up onto the pulpit (the small stage in the front of the congregation) to have their photos taken and be honored as “The Four Generations.”
I am furious. In my understanding, the “four generations” members being honored should have been this group: my great-grandparents, my grandmother as their daughter with her sister, my great aunt; my father and his sister; my brother and me. These are the four generations present today in our family, all of us.
Makes more sense, right? I suggest this, but my mother shushes me. She says, as if this explains it all,”Only men are allowed up there.”
I get angrier, especially when my brother senses my jealousy and smirks at me from the pulpit. I stick my tongue out at him. Well? I’m four!
Thus catalyzed, I am sensitized to sexism without having a word for it. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that I am enraged a few years later when I encounter our elementary school’s sexist policies. For instance, there are no girls allowed on the so-called “Safety Patrol,” which infuriates me. I complain about it starting in 4th grade even though the Patrol boys aren’t selected until 5th- and 6th-grade years. I get nowhere.
I am pleased to report that, by the time Cassie comes along, five years later, girls in her class are allowed to be in this elite group. By then, selection is solely based on academic performance. I know that’s also a specious winnowing tool, but it purports to be “gender-neutral.”
Why do I militate to be “on Patrol”? Because it’s VERY COOL! On the days they’re officially “on duty,” the Patrol Boys get to wear a sash and a badge, which look very grown-up. While “on Patrol,” they get to come to class late every morning and leave early every afternoon in order to help the adult crossing guards at the intersections. This “important” work involves herding most of the students to where we’re already going, anyway. They also walk the kindergartners in and out of school for fire drills and situate them for air raid drills.
It’s not the tasks I envy; it’s the status. And, my prime motivation is the general principle of fairness.
(Yes, we have nuclear bomb air raid drills: we are told to hide under our wooden desks or whatever is nearby. The “Cold War” is in full swing while I’m at this school.)
More to be enraged about are the sexism and impracticality which dominate the school clothes rules. We do not have uniforms, but strict policies: girls are not allowed to wear pants or shorts. We have to wear skirts or dresses to school, every day.
Imagine climbing all over the “monkey-bars” (“jungle gym”), doing gymnastics, playing sports and sprinting around in dresses and skirts? We have no gym uniforms until junior high school, either, so we have physical educational games and activities in our regular clothes. Climbing ropes in skirts? Really? Skirts/ dresses really do not function well for active, sports-inclined girls, which many of us are.
As a work-around, passed down from some older girls, my friends and I wear shorts under our skirts every day or long pants in the winter. It’s so ridiculous and also infuriating. We protect our modesty and privacy (no one can see our underpants when we’re climbing or running around) but the double layers are bulky, slowing us down while making us uncomfortable and too hot in the warmer weather. I hate these rules and argue constantly to change them.
Also, my first “civil disobedience” nonviolent resistance leadership actions occur because of this. In fifth grade, I am 10 years old. That spring, as soon as the warm weather comes and we go outside for recess, I get on the playground and take my skirt off, hanging it on a less-used horizontal bar. I wear just my shirt and shorts, same as every day when I get home and all summer.
Many of my friends see me and do the same. We hoot and holler, running around, climbing freely, having a great time, daring the playground supervisors to send us to the Principal’s Office, but they studiously ignore us. When the bell rings, we put our skirts back on and go back to class, triumphant. Small victories.
***********
CLARA: Even odder, we go from this strict, sexist dress code in 1963 to no dress code at all by 1969. More about that later.
ESPE: You become an advocate for girls, you know you can timult, you write stories and songs, you get up to reading over 100 books in one year, and others see you as either a leader or rabble-rouser, all before you’re out of elementary school?
CLARA: Yes. I don’t even see myself as unusual, yet.
ESPE: That’s the weirdest part!
*********************************
Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.
4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.
On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.
#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING
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4 stars! #BookReview #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING by Nick LeVar, Free World Authors
4-STAR Review of
This Changes Everything, Volume I, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
from Nick LeVar, Founder, Free World Authors, HIGHLIGHTS here (full review link, below)
“Being a sci-fi fan, I look forward to, and enjoy, fictional worlds that are not real, but are real, and events that have not happened, but could happen, and maybe they have happened, and we just don’t know it, yet. Confused enough? Good, because This Changes Everything is not for the fan of simplistic work. And I mean that as a compliment to the author.”
“This Changes Everything challenged my sense of convention.”
“In the first paragraph, Sally immediately piqued my interest by enticing questions. Who is visiting Clara? Are they dangerous? Are they even human? Why don’t they speak when she asks questions? Getting the reader to wonder what they hell is going on is a good way to keep the pages turning. Score.”
“I got the sense that I was in the world as an Earther, feeling what Clara felt, seeing what she saw, and hearing what she heard. The world itself should become another character, and when I can experience the story rather than read it, the author will draw smiles from me.”
“Somewhere in the past, authors have gotten the bright idea to rehash other authors’ stories that have already found success. While borrowing is, in itself, a form of art, I appreciate creativity. This Changes Everything fits the bill. In it, Sally references major events in human history. But that’s not the creative part… I’ll put it this way, you will finish the book wondering what part aliens may have played in the Challenger explosion or the NSA’s invasion of our rights to privacy!”
“If you’re looking for a book that you can skim, then stick to Twilight. If you appreciate a story that reads like the author took her time and was unafraid to challenge what you think you know about story structure, then give This Changes Everything a go. I think you’ll be impressed!”
“4 Stars ”
http://freeworldauthors.com/this-changes-everything/.html
Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Available wherever ebooks are sold. Buy links, more reviews, interviews and excerpts from Volume II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, starting March 16, on http://www.sallyember.com
Volume II is in pre-orders via Smashwords, iBooks, Kobo and nook for 50% off @$1.99, 4/18/14 – 6/8/14 and releases 6/9/14 @$3.99 on those sites plus Amazon and everywhere.
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“I write like Ursula K. Le Guin”! Couldn’t have been more honored!
I took the “Who is the author whose writing mine is most like?” test by pasting about one page from Chapter One, Volume III, This Is/Is Not The Way I Thought Things Would Change, my work-in-progress of The Spanners Series.
I couldn’t be more thrilled, honored, pleased. http://www.sallyember.com for excerpts from Volumes I & II, reviews of Vol I, interviews, more.
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Services Which Make Your Blog Easy to Follow
More great info for #bloggers
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What is Nagging for Book Sales, What is Marketing? The Difference…
Great site, evidenced by this and many other excellent posts for #writers.
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The Cloud People Dance at #sallyember.com
“Some nights, with only the trees and mountains to greet them, the cloud people rise up slowly from the horizon and dance.”
The start of my new children’s picture book? A story a character tells in a volume of The Spanners Series?
from http://wide-wallpapers.net
Follow this blog, stay tuned and find out. http://www.sallyember.com
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11th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014
11th Serialized Excerpt, 3/28/14
CHAPTER SNAPSHOT #1
Snapshots of Clara’s Daily Life: Fourteen Octobers, 1963 – 2017
October, 1963
-
Age and Living Circumstances/Location:
Fourth-grader, age 9, in Bayonne Elementary School, Missouri; living in Bayonne, suburb of large, midwestern USA city in family home with her: father, Isaac; mother, Rose; older brother, Thomas, 10; younger sister, Cassie, 3; and, a dog.
Many local friends from school, some who live further away from the family’s Reform Jewish Temple and Camp Cedar (residential summer camp run by the local Jewish Community Center).
-
Writing:
stories, articles, songs, poetry (published in school and camp newsletters).
-
Favorite Books:
Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, Robert Heinlein; A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L’Engle; The Door in the Wall, Marguerite de Angeli; Charlotte’s Web, E.B. White; The Borrowers, Mary Norton; The Bronze Bow, Elizabeth George Speare; Danny Dunn series, Raymond Abrashkin and Jay Williams; Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series, Betty MacDonald; Miss Pickerell Goes to Mars, Ellen McGregor; The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, Eleanor Cameron.
-
Music on the Radio:
“Love Me Do,” “She Loves You,” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” The Beatles; “It’s My Party,” Lesley Gore; “Be My Baby,” The Ronettes; “He’s So Fine,” The Chiffons; “If I Had a Hammer,” Trini Lopez; “I Only Want to Be With You,” Dusty Springfield; “Surfer Girl” and “Surfin’ USA,” The Beach Boys; “Up on the Roof,” The Drifters; “Wipeout,” The Surfaris; Elvis Presley; Patty Duke; Roy Orbison.
-
Popular Songs Available in Sheet Music:
“Anyone Who Had a Heart” and other songs by Burt Bacharach & Hal David (sung by Dionne Warwick); “Charade,” Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini (sung by Andy Williams); instrumental music reconfigured for beginning and intermediate players of solo piano by many popular composers.
-
Activities:
► Attending (under duress) Jewish religious education services and classes most Sunday mornings (“Sunday School”) during the school year.
► Reading constantly (see above).
► Taking weekly piano lessons and practicing regularly; winning prizes in regional classical piano competitions, ages 9 – 11.
► Playing outdoors a lot, climbing trees, playing hide-and-go-seek, going to play at the elementary school’s “jungle-gym” and playgrounds for kickball, softball, tennis, soccer, field hockey, sprinting, and indoors for balance beam/gymnastics.
► Also, bike riding; waterskiing, canoeing, Israeli folk dancing, swimming, sailing at Camp Cedar (Jewish residential camp, Lake of the Ozarks) and local outdoor pool in the summer.
ESPE: Clara asks me to include some stories and poems she is “guilty of writing when younger” (her words, not mine). She asks that I put each one in the closest year for the October of each of these sections.
Here is her first (and only) fairy tale, dated May 11, 1964. It’s written in pencil, on yellowing, manila-colored, lined paper, in cursive writing. At the top, next to her name and the date, she writes “9 years old” and across the top she prints “DON’T THROW AWAY!!!” Guess she keeps what she tells herself to keep!
“Princess Why” by Clara Ackerman, 9 years old
May 11, 1964
Not so very long ago, in a far-off land, lived a princess called Princess Why. She got this name because the very first and only word that she had ever uttered was “Why?”
The good Queen Falina had given birth to twin daughters, but the evil witch, Zweezy, had drugged the Queen and her husband, the kind King Loten, and had stolen one of the baby twin princesses away. When the good Queen and the kind King awoke from their enchanted sleep, neither of them remembered that there really had been two babies. They now only saw one baby princess, and one was all they now had.
Zweezy, although a very cruel witch, was nonetheless not very smart. She had not remembered to drug the other baby or the royal dog, Kays, and they had both seen Zweezy carry out the terrible kidnapping with their very own eyes.
When the baby princess, who still lived with her parents, was very small, she managed to say her first and only word, “Why?” From then on, she was destined to be called Princess Why.
The word she had spoken was meant to ask: “Why didn’t Mother stop Sister from being stolen?” “Why has Sister been taken away from us?” “Why isn’t Sister back with us, yet?”
For fifteen long years, the good Queen Falina and the kind King Loten ruled their kingdom wisely and well. Princess Why grew older and more beautiful, but she never said anything but “Why?” She grew more and more weak and sickly as she tried so desperately to tell her royal parents all that had really happened on that awful day. She tried very hard, but all she could say was “Why?”
She became very ill, and would have certainly died, but the royal nurse, Vetina, consulted the sickness god, Wade, and the Princess remained alive. For many months, she lingered on the verge of certain death, only able to stay alive by the chants Vetina did at the Princess’ bedside.
One day, Princess Why managed to sit up by her window and look weakly out into the royal garden. She watched Kays, the royal dog, romping and playing with the rabbits and the squirrels. While chasing a rabbit, Kays happened to follow it through a hole in the royal garden wall. As he ran around outside the palace grounds and into the village streets, who should he meet but the evil witch, Zweezy, the very same Zweezy who had taken Princess Why’s twin so many years before!
Kays being a good and loyal royal dog and remembering how he had seen Zweezy do the terrible deed with his very own eyes, pounced upon Zweezy. He tore her to pieces before she could even open her evil mouth to cast a spell on him!
Just then, a strange thing occurred. There was a great rumbling sound throughout the kingdom. Suddenly, in her room, Princess Why screamed and there before her stood her long-lost twin! Both were fair and kind as well as beautiful, and now both could speak and both were well.
The good Queen Fatina and the kind King Loten rejoiced to have both their daughters safe again, and proclaimed the day to be a royal holiday in honor of their daughters’ good luck and good health. They had a Royal Banquet, and at the new Christening, the two Princesses were given the beautiful names of Princess Faya and Princess Fosa.
In the years ahead, both Princess Faya and Princess Fosa would marry and have children and would always be kind and good to all. They especially made sure that Kays, the good and faithful royal dog, and all his pups, lived their lives as comfortably as royal dogs could.
The End
CLARA: It holds up rather well, all things considered, I think.
ESPE: If you say so.
CLARA: I have a comma problem then, same as now.
ESPE: Yes, you do.
CLARA: I suppose someone could analyze this to tedium. Let’s not.
ESPE: Fine with me.
CLARA: How about if I tell another story, my first memory of timulting?
ESPE: Good idea. In fact, I think the more you put in here which helps to explain the ways that your early life experiences and qualities contribute to your being selected to be Chief Communicator, the more easily we can justify spending the time on this Volume. There are hundreds of hours involved interviewing you, interviewing all your nieces, nephews, your son, me. And, you pay me a lot.
CLARA: All right. Your point is taken. Here we go.
*********************************
Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.
4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.
On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.
#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING
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11th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014
11th Serialized Excerpt, 3/28/14
CHAPTER SNAPSHOT #1
Snapshots of Clara’s Daily Life: Fourteen Octobers, 1963 – 2017
October, 1963
-
Age and Living Circumstances/Location:
Fourth-grader, age 9, in Bayonne Elementary School, Missouri; living in Bayonne, suburb of large, midwestern USA city in family home with her: father, Isaac; mother, Rose; older brother, Thomas, 10; younger sister, Cassie, 3; and, a dog.
Many local friends from school, some who live further away from the family’s Reform Jewish Temple and Camp Cedar (residential summer camp run by the local Jewish Community Center).
-
Writing:
stories, articles, songs, poetry (published in school and camp newsletters).
-
Favorite Books:
Have Spacesuit, Will Travel, Robert Heinlein; A Wrinkle in Time, Madeline L’Engle; The Door in the Wall, Marguerite de Angeli; Charlotte’s Web, E.B. White; The Borrowers, Mary Norton; The Bronze Bow, Elizabeth George Speare; Danny Dunn series, Raymond Abrashkin and Jay Williams; Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle series, Betty MacDonald; Miss Pickerell Goes to Mars, Ellen McGregor; The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet, Eleanor Cameron.
-
Music on the Radio:
“Love Me Do,” “She Loves You,” and “I Want to Hold Your Hand,” The Beatles; “It’s My Party,” Lesley Gore; “Be My Baby,” The Ronettes; “He’s So Fine,” The Chiffons; “If I Had a Hammer,” Trini Lopez; “I Only Want to Be With You,” Dusty Springfield; “Surfer Girl” and “Surfin’ USA,” The Beach Boys; “Up on the Roof,” The Drifters; “Wipeout,” The Surfaris; Elvis Presley; Patty Duke; Roy Orbison.
-
Popular Songs Available in Sheet Music:
“Anyone Who Had a Heart” and other songs by Burt Bacharach & Hal David (sung by Dionne Warwick); “Charade,” Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini (sung by Andy Williams); instrumental music reconfigured for beginning and intermediate players of solo piano by many popular composers.
-
Activities:
► Attending (under duress) Jewish religious education services and classes most Sunday mornings (“Sunday School”) during the school year.
► Reading constantly (see above).
► Taking weekly piano lessons and practicing regularly; winning prizes in regional classical piano competitions, ages 9 – 11.
► Playing outdoors a lot, climbing trees, playing hide-and-go-seek, going to play at the elementary school’s “jungle-gym” and playgrounds for kickball, softball, tennis, soccer, field hockey, sprinting, and indoors for balance beam/gymnastics.
► Also, bike riding; waterskiing, canoeing, Israeli folk dancing, swimming, sailing at Camp Cedar (Jewish residential camp, Lake of the Ozarks) and local outdoor pool in the summer.
ESPE: Clara asks me to include some stories and poems she is “guilty of writing when younger” (her words, not mine). She asks that I put each one in the closest year for the October of each of these sections.
Here is her first (and only) fairy tale, dated May 11, 1964. It’s written in pencil, on yellowing, manila-colored, lined paper, in cursive writing. At the top, next to her name and the date, she writes “9 years old” and across the top she prints “DON’T THROW AWAY!!!” Guess she keeps what she tells herself to keep!
“Princess Why” by Clara Ackerman, 9 years old
May 11, 1964
Not so very long ago, in a far-off land, lived a princess called Princess Why. She got this name because the very first and only word that she had ever uttered was “Why?”
The good Queen Falina had given birth to twin daughters, but the evil witch, Zweezy, had drugged the Queen and her husband, the kind King Loten, and had stolen one of the baby twin princesses away. When the good Queen and the kind King awoke from their enchanted sleep, neither of them remembered that there really had been two babies. They now only saw one baby princess, and one was all they now had.
Zweezy, although a very cruel witch, was nonetheless not very smart. She had not remembered to drug the other baby or the royal dog, Kays, and they had both seen Zweezy carry out the terrible kidnapping with their very own eyes.
When the baby princess, who still lived with her parents, was very small, she managed to say her first and only word, “Why?” From then on, she was destined to be called Princess Why.
The word she had spoken was meant to ask: “Why didn’t Mother stop Sister from being stolen?” “Why has Sister been taken away from us?” “Why isn’t Sister back with us, yet?”
For fifteen long years, the good Queen Falina and the kind King Loten ruled their kingdom wisely and well. Princess Why grew older and more beautiful, but she never said anything but “Why?” She grew more and more weak and sickly as she tried so desperately to tell her royal parents all that had really happened on that awful day. She tried very hard, but all she could say was “Why?”
She became very ill, and would have certainly died, but the royal nurse, Vetina, consulted the sickness god, Wade, and the Princess remained alive. For many months, she lingered on the verge of certain death, only able to stay alive by the chants Vetina did at the Princess’ bedside.
One day, Princess Why managed to sit up by her window and look weakly out into the royal garden. She watched Kays, the royal dog, romping and playing with the rabbits and the squirrels. While chasing a rabbit, Kays happened to follow it through a hole in the royal garden wall. As he ran around outside the palace grounds and into the village streets, who should he meet but the evil witch, Zweezy, the very same Zweezy who had taken Princess Why’s twin so many years before!
Kays being a good and loyal royal dog and remembering how he had seen Zweezy do the terrible deed with his very own eyes, pounced upon Zweezy. He tore her to pieces before she could even open her evil mouth to cast a spell on him!
Just then, a strange thing occurred. There was a great rumbling sound throughout the kingdom. Suddenly, in her room, Princess Why screamed and there before her stood her long-lost twin! Both were fair and kind as well as beautiful, and now both could speak and both were well.
The good Queen Fatina and the kind King Loten rejoiced to have both their daughters safe again, and proclaimed the day to be a royal holiday in honor of their daughters’ good luck and good health. They had a Royal Banquet, and at the new Christening, the two Princesses were given the beautiful names of Princess Faya and Princess Fosa.
In the years ahead, both Princess Faya and Princess Fosa would marry and have children and would always be kind and good to all. They especially made sure that Kays, the good and faithful royal dog, and all his pups, lived their lives as comfortably as royal dogs could.
The End
CLARA: It holds up rather well, all things considered, I think.
ESPE: If you say so.
CLARA: I have a comma problem then, same as now.
ESPE: Yes, you do.
CLARA: I suppose someone could analyze this to tedium. Let’s not.
ESPE: Fine with me.
CLARA: How about if I tell another story, my first memory of timulting?
ESPE: Good idea. In fact, I think the more you put in here which helps to explain the ways that your early life experiences and qualities contribute to your being selected to be Chief Communicator, the more easily we can justify spending the time on this Volume. There are hundreds of hours involved interviewing you, interviewing all your nieces, nephews, your son, me. And, you pay me a lot.
CLARA: All right. Your point is taken. Here we go.
*********************************
Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.
4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.
On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.
#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING
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10th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014
10th Serialized Excerpt, 3/28/14
CHAPTER ONE
Zephyr Branon, 38, only child of
Clara Branon, Ph.D., Chief Communicator
(continued)
7. Which of the MWC members or other species visitors do you have contact with? How and why, and how is that for you?
ZEPHYR: Again, I’m in a unique position. The Band delegates are kind of like relatives to me, at this point, like uncles and aunts, almost. Not that I see them often, but I hear about them a lot and I have been “with” them many times, as holos and off-p. I am one of the first non-OS trainees, adults, to be enrolled in ESP [Excellent/Extraordinary Skills Program] training, so Mick and I are quite close, I think, since he runs it.
When Kayla, Kendall and I move to California, right near The Campus, in the summer of 2015, that is right before The Campus has its big blow-out celebration for my mom’s birthday. So, we’re here for that. Things heat up, so to speak, right after that regarding the psi Wars and lots of other stuff.
What I mean by that is, my family and I are spending a lot more time being directly involved in MWC activities and with things at The Campus now that we’re so close.
And, Espe, well, you’re like a sister. Right, E? You call me a lot, we hang out, we email and text.
When you have trouble understanding my mom, I am the translator. I think part of it is that we’re the same age, so we get each other. I often have to explain you to my mom as well.
[We both laugh.]
ZEPHYR: Plus, you and Kayla are great friends. Sometimes I think you and Kayla get together so you can vent about the Branons. I don’t blame you!
Of The Band, I think Mick and I are the most “in tune,” since he’s the main tech guy and he also, like me, is very into music. But, I really enjoy the pairPartners [Janis—Diana], and since Kayla is a dancer, they groove with each other very well, too.
When I want to know more about how my mom’s doing or feeling: I ask Janis—Diana.
When I have questions about protocol or Re-sets, issues or politics, Led is my man.
For the ESP training “insider” stuff, like cheats and shortcuts, I go to Ringo. Ringo also knows a lot about what’s happening back on the IGC [InterGalactic Council] mainframe, so to speak, so for up-to-the-minute news about Exchanges, innovations and such, I ask Mick or Ringo.
Most Earthers have to use their iDs, but because I’m, well, me, I have special Access to each of them, directly, you know, telepathically. Only Moran, my mom and I have that, I think. Or, maybe, Epifanio does. I don’t ask him about this, actually.
You can’t ‘path The Band, right E?
ESPE: I cannot. They can ‘path me, though. Usually, they don’t.
ZEPHYR: As far as communicating with other Earthers, especially non-humans, that depends on what I’m doing, I guess, and where I and they are at any given time. Some of the Primates make music with me. The best are the cephalopods, especially some of the Octopuses. They are remarkable!
I get together with musically inclined off-worlders at every Music Exchange. I record some of that, which is so cool. With music, we don’t even need to use the fish [Interspecies Communication System]. Tell listeners/readers to check out my music site, OK? [zephyrbranonmusic.mwcw]
8. What transforms your life more: your fish [Interspecies Communication System], your iD [Individual Access Devices Interface], or travel to other planets/moons? How?
ZEPHYR: Obviously, I love my iD and use it constantly. I love the way my iD has a wireless hook-up to my music players, both at home and when I’m out, so I can get music from ANYWHERE, any time. That is sweet.
I use the fish a lot when I travel or am out in nature. We use it at home to talk with our cat and dog, but not often as an ordinary translator. With telepathy, once I’m at Level 2 solidly, I can understand most species on Earth or off-p, one-on-one, without the fish.
Interplanetary and intergalactic travel are the most amazing addition to our lives that anyone could imagine, and I am still humbled and excited every time I get to go out. I never get tired of that and hope to make many more off-p trips. I want to bring my family on some, too.
We don’t do that, yet, although Kayla goes out and we make one trip together, also. Got to bring the kids, right? It’s what families do on a family vacation, like going to the Grand Canyon or whatever, only infinitely more cool.
As far as transforming my life…that’s harder to see, for me. I’m sure my life is transformed, and not only on the surface, but how to explain that?
I can’t imagine my life without it, all of it. Timulting isn’t my thing.
We change every day, every minute. How, specifically, does the Transition change me…? I’ll have to get back to you on that.
My dad has a hard time with some of it, like many people his age—he’s ten years older than my mom, so almost 70 when she starts being the CC. They talk a lot, which I think helps, at first, but then she gets so busy she doesn’t check in as often, and he’s kind of a hermit-type.
I think my dad is kind of awed and mystified, but he is that a lot, anyway, about many things and people. He’s a Sufi. A mystic. He whirls. Like they do in Turkey. With the big hat and skirt with metal in the hem. Ever see him do that?
[Yes.]
I zoom in on him a lot these days, and I worry too much, probably. Try to imagine: my dad is one of the oldest Spanners, born in 1944. What he’s lived through, the changes he’s seen! I can’t really grok it, myself.
It’s harder for him after we move here, so I visit him a lot. That’s another thing I appreciate: off-p travel methods work on-p as well, so getting to and from, say, old California to old New Hampshire: just a thought and a movement away. No TJ needed, either!
9. How do your friends, family, wife and children feel about your mom as the CC and how does this affect your own relationships?
ZEPHYR: If you want to know how Kayla feels, you best ask her. Kendall has no clue, since she’s not even two. To Kendall, the famous Chief Communicator is just my mom and her grandmother.
My friends are mostly jealous. Completely.
Some of them say things like: “We’re so NOT surprised that your mom is doing this; she’s always been…unusual.” They’re right, of course. My mom is always the one who is way over in the red zone on the Strange Meter compared to my friends’ moms. Good strange, though, not awful strange.
I feel kind of badly when friends ask me stuff and I’m not allowed to say, but they understand, by now. I am allowed to talk to Kayla about things that I can’t talk to anyone else about (I get permission, and so does my mom, early on), and also, to my dad. My mom also talks directly with my dad, so that’s cool.
I don’t know what my dad tells his brother and sister; my grandparents on that side are dead already before the changes set in (my grandfather is dead almost ten years before; my grandmother is already demented and then dies early into the Transition), so, in a way, that’s good, or this would kill them, for sure. They never liked my mom.
I think this would be a lot harder without those permissions, though. That would suck. I know about that a little since I am not allowed to say anything to Kayla or my dad until December, when I know since October, in 2012. Those two months last FOREVER.
Once I am able to talk with them, though, especially Kayla, everything is much easier. She really helps me adjust to the “fame.” I am not expecting that. I blame my mom; she doesn’t put my fame problems in Volume I, which is the only one I see BPC [Before Public Contact]! [laughter]
I do have questions I can’t ask her. Here is one exchange I can share in which I ask some key questions.
********
During one of my ESP training sessions, I ask Mick: “Why does the MWC only come to one member of the dominant species on each member orb to be the Liaison for Transition and after that? Isn’t that a lot of pressure on that one being, their family and friends?”
Mick replies: “Every time we try working with more than one being as Liaison, we have to do extensive Re-sets. This happens on my planet, my CeeCee tells me [The Chief Communicator on Mick’s planet is a relative of his, like an uncle].”
“Problems are two-fold,” he continues. “One, consistency of information dissemination; two, reliability of witnesses.”
I start to ask a follow-up, but Mick’s on a roll, as he often is: “As soon as you have more than one individual telling any story, you run into contradictions and disparities. These widen out the further you go from each individual until the distortions are unacceptable. It’s like your game of ‘telephone,’ yes?”
I nod. I see the problem clearly as he describes it. I know he can tell I understand, because he nods and says: “So, one Transition, one Liaison. Information flows in a straight line from the MWC to the Liaison, from the Chief Communicator via her media contact to the orbs’ inhabitants. Works best. Protocol, now.”
I believe him.
Mick then gives me a nodding gesture with his headpiece and says,”You are our second choice.”
I feel as if he punches me in the gut with that. No way! I could never…
Then, Mick makes his laughing noise.
Whew! Just kidding!
***************
Sick sense of humor. Gotta love that.
I do wonder who else is on their short list, though? No pun intended, Little Mom.
10. What else do you want to tell us about your experiences of Clara as the CC or the Transition?
ZEPHYR: When I am a kid, my mom and dad raise me to be different from mainstream people in about a hundred ways. For example, they really talk with me from a very young age and still do. They and all their friends raise kids the way they raised me, communication-wise. For a while, I don’t know how different I and my peers in this community are.
Then, at about fourteen, I go out “into the world,” away from the private, Waldorf-education-“bubble,” away from our hippie community, into public schools, cities, etc. I am amazed at how different I am from those teens and how far my families in our community are from those families. Values, lifestyles, attitudes, sex and relationships, personal choices, money use, decision-making processes, dealing with emotions, clothing, music, reading materials (that we read for fun at all!), cable TV vs. NPR [National Public Radio]: countless differences that, one at a time, don’t seem significant, but add them all up and we are worlds apart.
Being an adult seems to be more of that same experience: I still see a huge disparity between me and most people, even guys my age “Western” Earth societies. Kayla agrees: I am Clara’s son and it shows.
There is one guy I feel a kinship with, even though we’ve never met: Matt Damon. When I’m a kid, my mom tells me about this feminist researcher on gender roles who writes about her son who wants to wear barrettes in his long hair to keep it out of his face. Since I have long hair (my choice) from age three to sixteen, I am interested. She goes on. This writer explains how much crap the school teachers and others give them, but she and her son were quite happy with his choices. This writer/researcher/mom produces several books about masculinity, raising sons, war toys and other topics in the category of feminist parenting that are dear to my mother’s heart.
Who is that feminist parenting icon? You guessed it: Matt’s mom [Nancy Carlsson-Paige]. I know, if we ever get to talk, we find we have a lot in common.
With who my mom is and her being CeeCee, I feel unique, but this feeling is not unfamiliar, you see? For example, I can cook, do laundry, balance checkbooks, play with kids, plan a schedule, hold a job, manage my life, deal with emotions, communicate clearly (even though I do yell a lot for a while), all by the age of 16. We know people, especially men my age NOW, who can’t do most of those things.
Kayla says I am “the only man she’s ever known who… ” Fill in the blank, with about ten useful or appealing (to her) characteristics or behaviors. Her parents don’t know quite what to do with me or my mom, even now, five years later.
Kayla’s parents are nice, mainstream, good people. That’s the thing. Regular. I don’t mean commonplace or average, just, well, ordinary. Not unusual in any large ways. They are unique, of course; everyone is. But, you know what I mean? They blend.
My mom, even before she is CC, says about herself: “I’m so far from the mainstream, I can’t even hear the river running.”
So, imagine coming from a mainstream upbringing and marrying into this family? Holy shit! I hand it to Kayla: she’s courageous! I tell her, all the time. She laughs at me. In a nice way. With hugs.
Kayla and her parents are offered a trip out with me about two years ago, when Kayla is only a few months pregnant, to go to one of the Exchanges (Cultural collaborations) on Led’s planet, Gliese 581 d. Kayla says “yes” and she does go.
She really tries to talk her parents into coming, but they can’t wrap their minds around it. Won’t come. And, they’re younger than my mom, so it’s not age that’s making them less flexible, less open to change.
Also, Kayla’s parents seem kind of spooked by the whole ESP training and are uncomfortable around me in new ways once I’m in the Program. I think they believe I’m reading their minds or controlling Kayla or something. Sheesh.
Transition and its opportunities are not for everyone to embrace equally.
Me? Mostly, I love it all. And, I love my mom.
I feel very lucky, all around.
Are we done?
This is fun, E. Thanks.
[hugs]
*********************************
Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.
4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.
On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.
#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING
Share this: CounterSocial
10th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014
10th Serialized Excerpt, 3/28/14
CHAPTER ONE
Zephyr Branon, 38, only child of
Clara Branon, Ph.D., Chief Communicator
(continued)
7. Which of the MWC members or other species visitors do you have contact with? How and why, and how is that for you?
ZEPHYR: Again, I’m in a unique position. The Band delegates are kind of like relatives to me, at this point, like uncles and aunts, almost. Not that I see them often, but I hear about them a lot and I have been “with” them many times, as holos and off-p. I am one of the first non-OS trainees, adults, to be enrolled in ESP [Excellent/Extraordinary Skills Program] training, so Mick and I are quite close, I think, since he runs it.
When Kayla, Kendall and I move to California, right near The Campus, in the summer of 2015, that is right before The Campus has its big blow-out celebration for my mom’s birthday. So, we’re here for that. Things heat up, so to speak, right after that regarding the psi Wars and lots of other stuff.
What I mean by that is, my family and I are spending a lot more time being directly involved in MWC activities and with things at The Campus now that we’re so close.
And, Espe, well, you’re like a sister. Right, E? You call me a lot, we hang out, we email and text.
When you have trouble understanding my mom, I am the translator. I think part of it is that we’re the same age, so we get each other. I often have to explain you to my mom as well.
[We both laugh.]
ZEPHYR: Plus, you and Kayla are great friends. Sometimes I think you and Kayla get together so you can vent about the Branons. I don’t blame you!
Of The Band, I think Mick and I are the most “in tune,” since he’s the main tech guy and he also, like me, is very into music. But, I really enjoy the pairPartners [Janis—Diana], and since Kayla is a dancer, they groove with each other very well, too.
When I want to know more about how my mom’s doing or feeling: I ask Janis—Diana.
When I have questions about protocol or Re-sets, issues or politics, Led is my man.
For the ESP training “insider” stuff, like cheats and shortcuts, I go to Ringo. Ringo also knows a lot about what’s happening back on the IGC [InterGalactic Council] mainframe, so to speak, so for up-to-the-minute news about Exchanges, innovations and such, I ask Mick or Ringo.
Most Earthers have to use their iDs, but because I’m, well, me, I have special Access to each of them, directly, you know, telepathically. Only Moran, my mom and I have that, I think. Or, maybe, Epifanio does. I don’t ask him about this, actually.
You can’t ‘path The Band, right E?
ESPE: I cannot. They can ‘path me, though. Usually, they don’t.
ZEPHYR: As far as communicating with other Earthers, especially non-humans, that depends on what I’m doing, I guess, and where I and they are at any given time. Some of the Primates make music with me. The best are the cephalopods, especially some of the Octopuses. They are remarkable!
I get together with musically inclined off-worlders at every Music Exchange. I record some of that, which is so cool. With music, we don’t even need to use the fish [Interspecies Communication System]. Tell listeners/readers to check out my music site, OK? [zephyrbranonmusic.mwcw]
8. What transforms your life more: your fish [Interspecies Communication System], your iD [Individual Access Devices Interface], or travel to other planets/moons? How?
ZEPHYR: Obviously, I love my iD and use it constantly. I love the way my iD has a wireless hook-up to my music players, both at home and when I’m out, so I can get music from ANYWHERE, any time. That is sweet.
I use the fish a lot when I travel or am out in nature. We use it at home to talk with our cat and dog, but not often as an ordinary translator. With telepathy, once I’m at Level 2 solidly, I can understand most species on Earth or off-p, one-on-one, without the fish.
Interplanetary and intergalactic travel are the most amazing addition to our lives that anyone could imagine, and I am still humbled and excited every time I get to go out. I never get tired of that and hope to make many more off-p trips. I want to bring my family on some, too.
We don’t do that, yet, although Kayla goes out and we make one trip together, also. Got to bring the kids, right? It’s what families do on a family vacation, like going to the Grand Canyon or whatever, only infinitely more cool.
As far as transforming my life…that’s harder to see, for me. I’m sure my life is transformed, and not only on the surface, but how to explain that?
I can’t imagine my life without it, all of it. Timulting isn’t my thing.
We change every day, every minute. How, specifically, does the Transition change me…? I’ll have to get back to you on that.
My dad has a hard time with some of it, like many people his age—he’s ten years older than my mom, so almost 70 when she starts being the CC. They talk a lot, which I think helps, at first, but then she gets so busy she doesn’t check in as often, and he’s kind of a hermit-type.
I think my dad is kind of awed and mystified, but he is that a lot, anyway, about many things and people. He’s a Sufi. A mystic. He whirls. Like they do in Turkey. With the big hat and skirt with metal in the hem. Ever see him do that?
[Yes.]
I zoom in on him a lot these days, and I worry too much, probably. Try to imagine: my dad is one of the oldest Spanners, born in 1944. What he’s lived through, the changes he’s seen! I can’t really grok it, myself.
It’s harder for him after we move here, so I visit him a lot. That’s another thing I appreciate: off-p travel methods work on-p as well, so getting to and from, say, old California to old New Hampshire: just a thought and a movement away. No TJ needed, either!
9. How do your friends, family, wife and children feel about your mom as the CC and how does this affect your own relationships?
ZEPHYR: If you want to know how Kayla feels, you best ask her. Kendall has no clue, since she’s not even two. To Kendall, the famous Chief Communicator is just my mom and her grandmother.
My friends are mostly jealous. Completely.
Some of them say things like: “We’re so NOT surprised that your mom is doing this; she’s always been…unusual.” They’re right, of course. My mom is always the one who is way over in the red zone on the Strange Meter compared to my friends’ moms. Good strange, though, not awful strange.
I feel kind of badly when friends ask me stuff and I’m not allowed to say, but they understand, by now. I am allowed to talk to Kayla about things that I can’t talk to anyone else about (I get permission, and so does my mom, early on), and also, to my dad. My mom also talks directly with my dad, so that’s cool.
I don’t know what my dad tells his brother and sister; my grandparents on that side are dead already before the changes set in (my grandfather is dead almost ten years before; my grandmother is already demented and then dies early into the Transition), so, in a way, that’s good, or this would kill them, for sure. They never liked my mom.
I think this would be a lot harder without those permissions, though. That would suck. I know about that a little since I am not allowed to say anything to Kayla or my dad until December, when I know since October, in 2012. Those two months last FOREVER.
Once I am able to talk with them, though, especially Kayla, everything is much easier. She really helps me adjust to the “fame.” I am not expecting that. I blame my mom; she doesn’t put my fame problems in Volume I, which is the only one I see BPC [Before Public Contact]! [laughter]
I do have questions I can’t ask her. Here is one exchange I can share in which I ask some key questions.
********
During one of my ESP training sessions, I ask Mick: “Why does the MWC only come to one member of the dominant species on each member orb to be the Liaison for Transition and after that? Isn’t that a lot of pressure on that one being, their family and friends?”
Mick replies: “Every time we try working with more than one being as Liaison, we have to do extensive Re-sets. This happens on my planet, my CeeCee tells me [The Chief Communicator on Mick’s planet is a relative of his, like an uncle].”
“Problems are two-fold,” he continues. “One, consistency of information dissemination; two, reliability of witnesses.”
I start to ask a follow-up, but Mick’s on a roll, as he often is: “As soon as you have more than one individual telling any story, you run into contradictions and disparities. These widen out the further you go from each individual until the distortions are unacceptable. It’s like your game of ‘telephone,’ yes?”
I nod. I see the problem clearly as he describes it. I know he can tell I understand, because he nods and says: “So, one Transition, one Liaison. Information flows in a straight line from the MWC to the Liaison, from the Chief Communicator via her media contact to the orbs’ inhabitants. Works best. Protocol, now.”
I believe him.
Mick then gives me a nodding gesture with his headpiece and says,”You are our second choice.”
I feel as if he punches me in the gut with that. No way! I could never…
Then, Mick makes his laughing noise.
Whew! Just kidding!
***************
Sick sense of humor. Gotta love that.
I do wonder who else is on their short list, though? No pun intended, Little Mom.
10. What else do you want to tell us about your experiences of Clara as the CC or the Transition?
ZEPHYR: When I am a kid, my mom and dad raise me to be different from mainstream people in about a hundred ways. For example, they really talk with me from a very young age and still do. They and all their friends raise kids the way they raised me, communication-wise. For a while, I don’t know how different I and my peers in this community are.
Then, at about fourteen, I go out “into the world,” away from the private, Waldorf-education-“bubble,” away from our hippie community, into public schools, cities, etc. I am amazed at how different I am from those teens and how far my families in our community are from those families. Values, lifestyles, attitudes, sex and relationships, personal choices, money use, decision-making processes, dealing with emotions, clothing, music, reading materials (that we read for fun at all!), cable TV vs. NPR [National Public Radio]: countless differences that, one at a time, don’t seem significant, but add them all up and we are worlds apart.
Being an adult seems to be more of that same experience: I still see a huge disparity between me and most people, even guys my age “Western” Earth societies. Kayla agrees: I am Clara’s son and it shows.
There is one guy I feel a kinship with, even though we’ve never met: Matt Damon. When I’m a kid, my mom tells me about this feminist researcher on gender roles who writes about her son who wants to wear barrettes in his long hair to keep it out of his face. Since I have long hair (my choice) from age three to sixteen, I am interested. She goes on. This writer explains how much crap the school teachers and others give them, but she and her son were quite happy with his choices. This writer/researcher/mom produces several books about masculinity, raising sons, war toys and other topics in the category of feminist parenting that are dear to my mother’s heart.
Who is that feminist parenting icon? You guessed it: Matt’s mom [Nancy Carlsson-Paige]. I know, if we ever get to talk, we find we have a lot in common.
With who my mom is and her being CeeCee, I feel unique, but this feeling is not unfamiliar, you see? For example, I can cook, do laundry, balance checkbooks, play with kids, plan a schedule, hold a job, manage my life, deal with emotions, communicate clearly (even though I do yell a lot for a while), all by the age of 16. We know people, especially men my age NOW, who can’t do most of those things.
Kayla says I am “the only man she’s ever known who… ” Fill in the blank, with about ten useful or appealing (to her) characteristics or behaviors. Her parents don’t know quite what to do with me or my mom, even now, five years later.
Kayla’s parents are nice, mainstream, good people. That’s the thing. Regular. I don’t mean commonplace or average, just, well, ordinary. Not unusual in any large ways. They are unique, of course; everyone is. But, you know what I mean? They blend.
My mom, even before she is CC, says about herself: “I’m so far from the mainstream, I can’t even hear the river running.”
So, imagine coming from a mainstream upbringing and marrying into this family? Holy shit! I hand it to Kayla: she’s courageous! I tell her, all the time. She laughs at me. In a nice way. With hugs.
Kayla and her parents are offered a trip out with me about two years ago, when Kayla is only a few months pregnant, to go to one of the Exchanges (Cultural collaborations) on Led’s planet, Gliese 581 d. Kayla says “yes” and she does go.
She really tries to talk her parents into coming, but they can’t wrap their minds around it. Won’t come. And, they’re younger than my mom, so it’s not age that’s making them less flexible, less open to change.
Also, Kayla’s parents seem kind of spooked by the whole ESP training and are uncomfortable around me in new ways once I’m in the Program. I think they believe I’m reading their minds or controlling Kayla or something. Sheesh.
Transition and its opportunities are not for everyone to embrace equally.
Me? Mostly, I love it all. And, I love my mom.
I feel very lucky, all around.
Are we done?
This is fun, E. Thanks.
[hugs]
*********************************
Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.
4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.
On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.
#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING
Share this: CounterSocial
9th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014
9th Serialized Excerpt, 3/26/14
CHAPTER ONE
Zephyr Branon, 38, only child of
Clara Branon, Ph.D., Chief Communicator
(continued)
4. Where are you and what are you doing when you find out about the Many Worlds Collective and that your mom is the liaison/Chief Communicator?
ZEPHYR: My reaction is not the same as anyone else’s because my mom starts sending me the “story” as if she’s writing science fiction novels, in February, 2012. I have a feeling, knowing my mom, that a lot of it is true or about to be true. I don’t say anything like that, at first.
But, when things start happening for her and Espe and for her and Epifanio, just as she writes, I ask her about the rest.
So, around October, 2012, she tells me the MWC are actually coming. I get about a two-months’ head start on most people, about a year to get mentally ready.
I’m all in favor of it. Membership in the MWC, I mean. Earth really needs help. No question.
I know how my mom explains it but I still do not understand why they choose her, of over seven billion humans and all the other, in my mind, more obvious choices among Earthers who could have been chosen. Why not one of the dolphins, for example? No offense, Mom.
But, I’m getting used to it and glad she is CC, in some ways. I get some really cool tips,”toys,” experiences and privileges as the CC’s only child that no one else gets.
5. How do you feel about Clara’s role when it starts? How are you affected immediately?
ZEPHYR: I think I previously answer this. Move on.
Oh, all right.
I feel downright special.
There. Happy, now?
[I nod.]
ZEPHYR: OK, wait. There is one thing. Some people I know start to treat me differently. The way I could compare it might be this: if I had won the lottery, certain people would come out of nowhere and claim to be my friend, but they just want money.
In that vein, some people I haven’t talked to or don’t know well are suddenly going on and on about what “good friends” we are. Some of them go on the media and talk about knowing me and my mom, being at our house when I was growing up, being my girlfriend or best friend, or hers, and stuff like that. When it’s true, I don’t mind. But, some of them are actually lying or wildly exaggerating and that burns me.
My mom convinces me to let them be, so I do. I just don’t get the point: are they that desperate for attention? What tools.
Something else occurs to me, right now, though: I’m glad I’m already with Kayla before all this happens, or I might never know why she’s really into me, right?
In the department of stalkerville: even though our relationship is long-term, committed, monogamous, and known to the public, I still get invitations, sexual and personal, almost every month or so, from some whack-job or another. My mom’s security team collects them; I don’t even read them. Every now and then, my mom or Moran or one of the other OSes tells me to BOLO [Be On the Look Out] for some of these “fans.” When they have show me what these oddballs write to me so I can recognize their “signatures,” I am appalled. That is some crazy shit.
6. How do you feel about Clara’s role, now, 5 years later? How does her role affect you now?
ZEPHYR: I will add to what I say before this question that I am very proud of my mom. I think she’s doing an amazing job. Really. I am a very strong critic, usually, especially of my parents. [laughs] She says if I think she’s doing “all right,” she must be doing great.
Sometimes we have disagreements about what to do, when to do it. She calls me her “best informal informant.” She comes to me quite often, especially when things are going down that affect those my age or younger.
Because of her hearing loss, we have hilarious misunderstandings. Once, recently, I tell her the reason she can’t hear me is that her ears are too far from her head. We both laugh about that for quite a while. Another time, because of her mis-hearing me, we go ’round and ’round and don’t get anywhere in our conversation. Exasperated, I say that talking to her is like talking to a bicycle. That sends us into gales of laughter for another few minutes. So it goes.
My aunt Violet, being so much younger than my mom and not at all hard of hearing, says talking to my mom is like using the auto-correct feature in early cell phones: many ridiculous messages transpire.
It’s a lot like that when my mom and I talk, because of the randomly occurring hearing loss effects. She hears some things perfectly clearly and others very garbled, but she doesn’t know how garbled until we talk about it.
I tell her: “Mom. Get a hearing aid.”
She answers omething along the lines of: “When they make better ones, I do.”
Another age-related problem: increasingly silly texts are sent when my mom doesn’t wear her reading glasses when she’s typing or reading her texts. In 2015, when she gets her personally-adjustable, digital hearing aids and corneal transplants, we all breathe sighs of relief, across the multiverse.
The hearing aids amplify only what she needs exactly as much as she needs, which is what she is holding out for all along. She knows they’re coming so she won’t put up with the substandard ones before 2015. We all suffer.
On a good note, she knows when she needs help and asks for it. My mom consults with me, some of my cousins and some of her younger friends for tech help and to discuss how current policy discussions might be perceived or impact non-Spanners (people around my age and younger). Most often, she talks to me and Epifanio for informal feedback or ideas.
The CC has all these advisors, contacts, others—you know—for formal consultations.
And, you, Espe. You’re great!
*********************************
Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.
4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.
On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.
#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING
Share this: CounterSocial
9th Serialized Excerpt: Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Vol. II, This Changes My Family and My Life Forever, The Spanners Series, by Sally Ember, Ed.D.
Cover and logo art by Willowraven.
Cover reveal for Volume II: April 15, 2014
9th Serialized Excerpt, 3/26/14
CHAPTER ONE
Zephyr Branon, 38, only child of
Clara Branon, Ph.D., Chief Communicator
(continued)
4. Where are you and what are you doing when you find out about the Many Worlds Collective and that your mom is the liaison/Chief Communicator?
ZEPHYR: My reaction is not the same as anyone else’s because my mom starts sending me the “story” as if she’s writing science fiction novels, in February, 2012. I have a feeling, knowing my mom, that a lot of it is true or about to be true. I don’t say anything like that, at first.
But, when things start happening for her and Espe and for her and Epifanio, just as she writes, I ask her about the rest.
So, around October, 2012, she tells me the MWC are actually coming. I get about a two-months’ head start on most people, about a year to get mentally ready.
I’m all in favor of it. Membership in the MWC, I mean. Earth really needs help. No question.
I know how my mom explains it but I still do not understand why they choose her, of over seven billion humans and all the other, in my mind, more obvious choices among Earthers who could have been chosen. Why not one of the dolphins, for example? No offense, Mom.
But, I’m getting used to it and glad she is CC, in some ways. I get some really cool tips,”toys,” experiences and privileges as the CC’s only child that no one else gets.
5. How do you feel about Clara’s role when it starts? How are you affected immediately?
ZEPHYR: I think I previously answer this. Move on.
Oh, all right.
I feel downright special.
There. Happy, now?
[I nod.]
ZEPHYR: OK, wait. There is one thing. Some people I know start to treat me differently. The way I could compare it might be this: if I had won the lottery, certain people would come out of nowhere and claim to be my friend, but they just want money.
In that vein, some people I haven’t talked to or don’t know well are suddenly going on and on about what “good friends” we are. Some of them go on the media and talk about knowing me and my mom, being at our house when I was growing up, being my girlfriend or best friend, or hers, and stuff like that. When it’s true, I don’t mind. But, some of them are actually lying or wildly exaggerating and that burns me.
My mom convinces me to let them be, so I do. I just don’t get the point: are they that desperate for attention? What tools.
Something else occurs to me, right now, though: I’m glad I’m already with Kayla before all this happens, or I might never know why she’s really into me, right?
In the department of stalkerville: even though our relationship is long-term, committed, monogamous, and known to the public, I still get invitations, sexual and personal, almost every month or so, from some whack-job or another. My mom’s security team collects them; I don’t even read them. Every now and then, my mom or Moran or one of the other OSes tells me to BOLO [Be On the Look Out] for some of these “fans.” When they have show me what these oddballs write to me so I can recognize their “signatures,” I am appalled. That is some crazy shit.
6. How do you feel about Clara’s role, now, 5 years later? How does her role affect you now?
ZEPHYR: I will add to what I say before this question that I am very proud of my mom. I think she’s doing an amazing job. Really. I am a very strong critic, usually, especially of my parents. [laughs] She says if I think she’s doing “all right,” she must be doing great.
Sometimes we have disagreements about what to do, when to do it. She calls me her “best informal informant.” She comes to me quite often, especially when things are going down that affect those my age or younger.
Because of her hearing loss, we have hilarious misunderstandings. Once, recently, I tell her the reason she can’t hear me is that her ears are too far from her head. We both laugh about that for quite a while. Another time, because of her mis-hearing me, we go ’round and ’round and don’t get anywhere in our conversation. Exasperated, I say that talking to her is like talking to a bicycle. That sends us into gales of laughter for another few minutes. So it goes.
My aunt Violet, being so much younger than my mom and not at all hard of hearing, says talking to my mom is like using the auto-correct feature in early cell phones: many ridiculous messages transpire.
It’s a lot like that when my mom and I talk, because of the randomly occurring hearing loss effects. She hears some things perfectly clearly and others very garbled, but she doesn’t know how garbled until we talk about it.
I tell her: “Mom. Get a hearing aid.”
She answers omething along the lines of: “When they make better ones, I do.”
Another age-related problem: increasingly silly texts are sent when my mom doesn’t wear her reading glasses when she’s typing or reading her texts. In 2015, when she gets her personally-adjustable, digital hearing aids and corneal transplants, we all breathe sighs of relief, across the multiverse.
The hearing aids amplify only what she needs exactly as much as she needs, which is what she is holding out for all along. She knows they’re coming so she won’t put up with the substandard ones before 2015. We all suffer.
On a good note, she knows when she needs help and asks for it. My mom consults with me, some of my cousins and some of her younger friends for tech help and to discuss how current policy discussions might be perceived or impact non-Spanners (people around my age and younger). Most often, she talks to me and Epifanio for informal feedback or ideas.
The CC has all these advisors, contacts, others—you know—for formal consultations.
And, you, Espe. You’re great!
*********************************
Stay tuned on Sally’s blogs on WordPress (which has all links) and Tumblr, and on The Spanners Series‘ pages on Facebook and Google+, for each of the upcoming Excerpts from Volume II from March 16 – April 18, about one/day.
4/18/14, Volume II becomes available for Pre-orders via Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks and nook for half-price: @$1.99, through June 8, 2014.
On 6/9/14, Vol. II goes LIVE everywhere ebooks are sold for $3.99.
#THESPANNERSSERIES #THISCHANGESMYFAMILYANDMYLIFEFOREVER #THISCHANGESEVERYTHING
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Sally Ember, Ed.D. 
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