My gratitude is far greater than words can express … but I will try:

 

Thank you Sister Isidore and Father Fulgence, for teaching me to read and spell and to enjoy the stories from the Bible, to help me understand the soap opera that started fifty-thousand years ago.

 

Thank you Father Dunn for telling me to continue my work and save my hard-earned money to buy a new Bible, then giving the Bible to me for free.  Thank you for marrying a nun and moving away.  Can't imagine a better example of Christian love.  When you said, "The Bible is free."  I knew what that meant.  I studied it, and then I was free because I saw that Jesus was free. 

 

Thank you, Ms Eaton and Mr Baker, Mr Palermo, Mr Kish, and Principal Mr Bowes.  Thank you Ms Wanstall and Ms Schlaline and Mr Burr, and others from McKinley School please forgive me for gaps in my memories.  Thank you Mr Launer and Mr Pickett, Mr Bell, Mr Harrity.  Thank you Mr Harrity again for supportive attention and guidance, for the papers covered in red marks, the patience and implying that I did have something worthwhile to say.  You were a father to me.  Thank you Mr Peterson and Mr Wile and so many friends at Andrew Warde High School.  Thank you Patrick Woods and Dick Bernard, and the Tunxis Hill Boys and Sergeant Murphy.  Thank you Fairfield (Connecticut) Department of Parks and Recreation. (Fairfield, CT public schools 1955-1962)

 

Advice along the way:

Thank you Mother, for telling me:  "You have to work."  I have to work.

 

Thank you, Mr Launer, for telling me:  "It is not a question of what you want to do; it's a question of what must be done."

 

Thank you, Mr Harrity, for telling me:  "You have to discipline yourself; you have to budget your time."  I have spent a great deal of time budgeting my time.  There is always a shortage of time, even though I came to the conclusion, at some time, that time is actually a fiction of consciousness.  Want to have fun with a simple puzzle?  Try to say something about time without counting a cyclical event.  So, if you find that time is the counting of cyclical events, then counting time is something we do, but not something that exists independent of us.  See "Time Works" on my jmanimas.com web site.

 

Thank you, Brandeis University, for choosing me to be a Christian student that might succeed in a school full of studious American Jews, all devoted to a professional career and pleasing their grandparents and contributing to the health, justice and new knowledge that we cannot have in excess.  I am sorry I did not go to the deep South in 1963 because I hated American apartheid, but I am also profoundly glad that I had the presence of mind not to go because I believed I would have been killed for sure.  Looking back, I can see that I would have been killed for sure.  I would not have allowed myself to be abused by cruel and stupid men wearing uniforms of authority. 

 

I did not go to see the War in Vietnam either – very bad reviews.

 

Thank you, Mr Barker, Instructor in Humanities at Brandeis, who told us:  "Precision is the essence of truth."  That is precisely true.  I have been focused on precision ever since.  The thing about precision is that it would be infinite, except for the smallest possible particle.  So, the material universe exists because it is infinite outward, but finite inward.  Or, it is infinite in one direction.  If there were no smallest possible particle, the universe would be made out of nothing, which we cannot measure because, as we all know, lots of nothing is not more than a little nothing.

 

Thank you, A. S. for telling me, "You have friends in your head."  That was true, and always was, and still is.  Friends in one's head can be loyal, safe, constructive, better than the friends who are on the outside looking for opportunities for themselves all the time.  My friends in my head kept telling me that I could accomplish something.  Just keep trying.  Don't despair.  Don't give up.  Even though the world will give you a statue and a million dollars if you add a new artificial flavor to macaroni and cheese, you should keep looking for something more meaningful than a "new flavor."  There is something more important than a new flavor.  You may not get a statue, or a dime, if you add something truly important to the world, but your friends in your head will appreciate you.  We live for you because you live for us.  Here is the key to spiritual success: When you are growing up, the most important person to talk to is yourself.  Get acquainted.

 

Thank you, Mr Louis Pavoni, landscaper, philosopher, who told me:  "That's what you believe, Johnny, because that's what they told you."  I already knew that, but it was good for me to know that you knew it too.  I have always worked on believing what I taught myself, by listening to those who spoke the truth.  I have always believed that if you are making a list of skills that you need to survive in this world, skill number one is that you need to be good at distinguishing between good advice and bad advice.  This skill is not terribly hard to learn.  Usually, after following bad advice once or twice, you improve dramatically.

 

So then I came to Vermont, to be with the spirit of Robert Frost and the trees and the mountains, and chose my different path in the woods.  While disguised as a normal person of average statistical character, I searched for the Secret of Life in the Universe.  This looks like a foolish thing to do, until you find it.

 

Cannot thank enough the brave explorers who hacked their way through the labyrinths and mazes of distorted history and bad science:  Peter Tompkins, John Anthony West, Christopher Dunn, J. Douglas Kenyon, Erich von Daniken, Barry Fell, Christopher Knight, Robert Lomas, Elaine Morgan, Charles Piazzi Smyth, Immanuel Velikovsky, Nigel Calder, Eric Lerner, John Mack, Charles Hummel, Guy Murchie, James Gleick, Fred Hoyle, Herbert Klein, C. D. B. Bryan, Whitley Striber, Walter Sullivan, Alan Watts, Ivan Sanderson, John Taylor, R. T. Rundle Clark, Budd Hopkins, John G. Fuller, and R. A. Schwaller de Lubicz.  And, many others listed in my research bibliography.  A special thanks to Graham Hancock.  I would like to thank my mother, Marie Antoinette Mure, a woman who understood history, both personal and cosmic history.  The Mure name came with a family from Sicily, but a suspicious family, because "Mure" is a French word that means "Blackberry."  Who doesn't like blackberries?  Except, there was a time that the Sicilians did not like the French, regardless of their pies.

 

If you are new to the cheerful hobby of exploring history and how it is written, distorted, and shredded by liars and manipulators, a good publication for beginners is the magazine entitled Atlantis Rising.  At the time of this writing, the History Channel, Smithsonian Channel, and Gaia all help to challenge the unlikely history promoted by academics.  Humans fight many battles and one of the best and the biggest is the ongoing battle to determine what really happened and why.  We do not fight this battle in the midst of overwhelming noise and commotion.  We fight this battle at home or in a library, usually alone, unknown, looking for the clue that will bust the case wide open.  All historians are detectives, and some of them risk their lives to find the truth, not by exposing themselves only to a risk of physical harm, but by exposing themselves to the risk of being ignored.  History reveals that people are accustomed to ignoring history.   But maybe you will enjoy the history of "pi exactly."  Use your fingers to search for Pythagoras, and Hiram Abiff and the meaning of "number."  Do you like dancers, wild music?  If you do, you will love history.  …  Thank you God, who gives me the information I need to survive, and maybe thrive.  Maybe not even die.  Maybe the universe is an endless party, and I never have to leave the party.  Just rest from time to time.  Restore myself for the endless party.  History is the endless party.  You can change it.  It is easy to change history.  Move.  Have a thought.  That's it.  The history of the world just changed.