mystory – JamesCarvin

Curriculum Vitae

I haven’t updated my resumé much because I haven’t planned on applying for work anywhere for a few decades. I’m drawing Social Security now. I don’t plan to retire until I’m a centenarian though. I’m still as much of an entrepreneur “wannabe” as ever and I come with a background that deserves some explanation. So, I’ll offer a curriculum vitae, blended in with some explanatory detail, to help you make sense of it.

Before I start, I don’t want it to look like I’m too good to work a regular day job. I actually love hard work. The last three jobs I had were for trucking companies. I took a two year hiatus from obligations at home after my sister and brother died, and saw the country for the first time – from an eighteen wheeler. I got caught up on my bills at that time and had a good cry. I’ve had many jobs throughout my lifetime.

James Carvin, over 25,000 five star rides.

You may know that my wife, Lisa, stayed home while I was trucking. Thirteen years into our thirty plus years of marriage, she had a stroke that left her paralyzed in her left side. As her caregiver through the years, it wasn’t easy leaving home six weeks at a time, but my business plans weren’t working out and Uber and Lyft were wearing out my vehicles. I’d been seeking funding to get some apps I’d designed built -Vois Technologies. I was unable to pay the developers without funds. I was unable to obtain funds without developers. Click here to see the many Vois projects I have in store down the road.

I’ve pivoted a lot in my life. The “Ghost Machine” is an example of one of the projects I worked to get off the ground. Those were the years from 1998 through 2013. In the case of the Ghost Machine, I had some of my own money to begin it with at the turn of the Millennium, and again by 2013 but again, the project was never funded – not by any third party. Just me. And that wasn’t enough. Click here to read about the decades I spent working on the Ghost Machine and learn what it was.

As much as I’ve wanted to be an entrepreneur all my days, I’ve had a few strikes against me. My education was in the wrong field. I didn’t have money. I didn’t have a team of helpers. I learned things the hard way, mostly as an adult. I had advantages when I was very young. My father was a wealthy business man. I was white. I was a man. I had privileges. My father encouraged me to be a musician and I graduated from the University of South Carolina with a music composition degree in 1980. That was right when he started to lose his money.

If Dad had lived longer and not gone bankrupt, he would have likely invested in my music studio. I wouldn’t have had to pay for and operate it by myself. I worked in banking a few years and then took a job at the Postal Service and invested in music and recording equipment with what I could save or get on credit. Dad encouraged me to become a Catholic priest. I enrolled at St. Vincent de Paul Seminary 1982-1986. He wanted me to write some beautiful new church music. I was up for that. But I had no orchestra to play it and no venue to earn from it, nor did the thought occur to me to profit from religion. So I led worship in some churches and groups for a while and that was about it. No major recordings ever came from my little back door studio, called Wisdom Studios. I thought maybe when I finally did retire, I could put some time into music again. I set my mind on retirement at a very young age for that reason.

I was serious about religion, enough to forge my own path. My mother wanted me to be Presbyterian, like her. My dad wanted me to be Catholic, like him. A girlfriend I had wanted me to be Hindu, like her. I read a lot about each. I learned to meditate, and then I learned to pray the Catholic way. And when I met another gal I liked, she taught me to be charismatic, like her. Then when I finally did get married in 1990, my wife wanted me to be Pentecostal, like her. I just kept reading, and wherever people seemed to be right, I grew. From 1991-1995 I completed my masters degree at St. Michael Academy of Eschatology. Their accreditation was with something like the Kentucky School of Accreditation. It was an Orthodox Seminary in a controversial jurisdiction, led by a controversial bishop. Not many people have masters degrees in eschatology, for whatever that’s worth. Neither do they have mission letters from bishops commanding them to preach the message of Elijah to Protestants.

How did that happen? I was very open-minded about Biblical interpretation. I asked questions and rarely condemned the other side in any setting. Perhaps I seemed too Protestant for my Orthodox bishop to consider me for a mission within Orthodoxy. If I had supported one institutional view or another, I might be able to use that degree to get a regular job. I was open to Biblical criticism. I was the kind of person that might give Bart Erhman and the documentary hypothesis a chance. The only place something like that would serve is in liberal academia. I also loved and taught first through third century Christian history as an adjunct professor at the seminary.

Whatever, the right interpretation of the Bible may be, or of other Scriptures, I had developed through the years a different approach to theology, which I came to call “Pamalogy.” Pamalogy is more of a philosophical system than a religion. It is based on logic, rather than text or tradition. Pamalogy is not to be confused with “Palmology” – which is the reading of palms. It has nothing to do with that. Pamalogy is the philosophy of awesomeness, or “awesomeology.” What would it mean to maximize awesomeness?

This is not a treatise on Pamalogy. I’ll simply say here that there are two sides to that question. On the one hand, it means doing the best we can with what we know we have. For instance, it would be good to have a world full of art, free of suffering, made sustainable for abundance, enjoyable, full of love, respect and justice and so on. On the other hand, it means something beyond what we do. It is the best of all possibilities. That type of maximized awesomeness is a God-sized aweseomeness. It is divine perfection. For perfection in the divine sense to be real, no good possibility can be lacking. No bad possibility can be part of it. It requires as many Universes as that takes – a multiverse. Nothing in reality adds to maximized awesomeness that maximized awesomeness does not possess of itself already. God contains a Multiverse.

James Carvin wearing a Pamalogy top hat surrounded by lanterns and moonlight. — James Carvin wearing a Pamalogist’s Thinking Cap

An astronomy is a Universe. A “Poly Astronomy” is a Multiverse. Pamalogy is short for “Poly Astronomically Maximized Awesomeology.” For awesomeness to be maximized in divine perfection, it has to be poly astronomical. Otherwise, every good possibility will not exist within it. Note that I did not say astrological. I said astronomical. Pamalogy is not astrology. Pamalogy is not palm reading. Neither one. It is the philosophy of awesomeness. It believes that for awesomeness to be maximized, in the divine sense, it has to be poly astronomical. Pamalogy is poly astronomically maximized awesomeology.

There a lot of people who think that perfection is possible without a Multiverse. A Pamalogist thinks a Multiverse is a necessary truth. I won’t explain what logic brings us to that conclusion right here. Suffice it to say for now that given the fact that I had developed a philosophical system, I put some thought into what I should do about it. To be realistic, who cares about philosophy nowadays? I risk losing a reader’s attention just telling you about it.

But there was something I discovered. I found Poly Astronomically Maximized Awesomeness to be much more than a thought exercise. It was a source of encouragement to live by and dwell on. It oriented my worship. It helped me confront my challenges. It helped me cope when considering loss. It gave me a sense of what I was and why I was here. And finally, after thinking on it at great length, it gave me a vision for the Pamalogy Society.

I have to keep this brief. The two sides of what it means to maximize awesomeness I call the metaphysical and the axiological. People tend to be set in their ways when it comes to metaphysics. They have their religion. They don’t care to hear the opinions of others. Maybe a few do. That’s all. That’s why providing details about Pamalogy as theology is a low priority. For now, my focus is on the axiological side. “Axiology” is the philosophy of what is worth doing or having. “Axios” is the Greek word for “worthy.” Philosophers break axiology down into ethics (what is right or wrong) and aesthetics (what is beautiful).

To maximize awesomeness in the sphere of axiology is to seek to maximize beauty and goodness in the world. How would anyone go about that? Well, I don’t know how you would answer that question, but I can tell you a bit more about my own journey and what I want to do in founding the Pamalogy Society but before I do, I need to take a step back.

In 1981, I took a job as a Savings Counselor at a savings bank. Musicians were supposed to be good at math and I was. But it was precisely because I was good at math, and because I was a creative person, that instead of appreciating the bank, I quickly realized it epitomized a certain inefficiency we have in our present economic system. We spend a great deal of time exchanging pieces of paper and altering balances in accounts, but none of that work at counting what we have and moving our accounts from place to place or instrument to instrument produces any direct value. It creates no music. It produces no album. You can’t eat it. You can’t drive it. You can’t wear it. It doesn’t give you a massage. It doesn’t build a house you can sleep in. It doesn’t deliver your groceries. All those things, including being served a quick burger and fries, would be direct products or services. Nothing at the bank is that.

Now you may be saying that the widgets and services you can buy with your money are a good thing to have more of, and that is true. If you can increase your money, then you can buy more of that stuff. But the money itself is not a direct value. There were ten people working at the branch office of the bank I spent forty hours a week working in. Combined, that was 400 hours of human work wasted every week, not creating any direct service or product. I then took an inventory of various types of businesses, counted their employees, separated types of jobs that did produce direct products or services from those that don’t, and estimated that less than 30% of workers in America directly produce any actual goods or services.

Well, this was interesting. My father was not only Catholic, he was a Ronald Reagan supporting conservative. He and I had some differences of opinion about all of this. I estimated that if there was no such thing called money, or anything else to exchange, if we simply gave our time to producing goods and services directly, we could increase our productivity by 230%. We could give everything away to whomever had need for free. We also wouldn’t have to worry about the federal deficit, because there would be no such thing as money. And we wouldn’t need banks. We could just cancel all debts.

Dad equated my idea with Communism. Dad’s world was very different than mine. The cold war was still going strong. Soviet expansionism seemed like a real threat. Dreams of a society without any form of currency or exchange always turned into tragedy. Property owners were violently overthrown. Socialist countries never enjoyed abundance.

Dad supported Ronald Reagan in 1976 and was instrumental in raising funds from Palm Beachers in 1980. — My father supporting Ronald Reagan in 1980.

I was never a Marxist. Apparently, Marx looked forward to the end of belief in God. Apparently, Russian and Chinese Communists thought that belief in God was a form of insanity. Marx had ruined my idea with a philosophy of revolution that called on the working class to hate the owner class. I couldn’t see, at that time, how we could peacefully transition to a money-free society the way the Soviets and their proteges were doing it. Dad also made the point that people need incentives to work, or they won’t. I wondered whether that might be offset by the 230% increase in productivity that would result, but the deal-breaker for me was the violence of Communist revolution. I wanted no part in it.

Then there was the bureaucracy. How do you determine what the people need? And the paper. We didn’t have computers to manage this back then. How would we manage it? Those were the days before the Internet. But when the Internet did come around, another idea formed in my head. It solved all of these problems. I called it the Human Availability and Needs Database System (HANDS).

Flow Chart for Privilege Building — How to build privilege with the HAND System in order to obtain property, goods and services. There is an elaborate system of checks and balances assuring a flourishing system.

The HANDS community members would join a web site. Then they would vote on what types of jobs that produce direct goods and services. Their vote would determine what was the most vital and in demand. They would just tell the system what they needed and what jobs they were capable of doing. The incentive to work at jobs that were in high demand would come from the desire for privileges – comparative luxuries. The members would consider types of products and services that might be considered luxuries and vote on what level of privilege should be required to have access to them. For instance, it would be a luxury to live in a rare property on the ocean. It would be a luxury to have three cars for a family of two. It would be a luxury to go to a fine restaurant every night. Luxuries are scaled from 1-100 by voters this way. Things that were hard to produce or limited in quantity, would be obtainable only to those who did work that was vital and in high demand. Together, the HANDS community would decide upon and create a many tiered system of privileges that could be earned by choosing specific types of work that produced direct goods or services. It might be considered an equal opportunity multi-class system.

It would all remain theoretical until the day came that there were enough members in the community to support an actual resource-based economy, where they could contribute their own means of production and resources and then they would sign an agreement of commitment to launch it on a certain date. The computer network and algorithms would eliminate the bureaucracy. Rights and privileges would be earned as determined by the people. Money would no longer be an object of stress for the many in lack. Resources would be managed sustainably.

Okay. So, who cares? Why, in sketching a Curriculum Vitae, am I telling you all this? Well, I think it is important for people who might consider doing business with me to know who I am. I might hold some conservative views but I’m not a libertarian. Just as my religious perspectives are unique to me, so are my economic and political ideas. Ready for the next item on my resumé? I ran for president of the United States in 2016 as a write-in candidate.

VisionaryPartyLogo — The Restoration Party Mascot

I didn’t get on the ballot, so none of the votes for me were officially counted, but I wasn’t trying to win. I was trying to bring attention to the Manifesto I wrote for a new political party, the Restoration Party, and I achieved that objective. I was featured in the Tallahassee Democrat as the Uber driver running for POTUS. I estimate I got about 200 votes from people fed up with the Democrat and Republican parties both getting us into endless wars, not getting the budget under control, and not dealing with a very dirty bureaucracy that was serving itself, and not we, the people. Donald Trump seems to have agreed with many of my ideas about political corruption and media corruption. He took a ride on the same massive populist movement that I sensed existed, but obviously, he is no supporter of a money-free economic system, like me. He might call that socialism.

Subsequently, a lot happened. Trump was accused of having ties to Russia. He was accused of being a racist. His supporters were accused of being white supremacists. These were interesting accusations. I noticed how politically charged the news had become. It was very emotional. People weren’t being reasonable. BLM and Antifa rose up. Fact-checkers started telling us what to think on Facebook. Twitter, YouTube and Google suppressed opinion that they opposed, claiming it was for public safety. Finally, Trump supporters insisted that the 2020 election was stolen while predictable media outlets insisted there was absolutely no truth to those kinds of allegations, culminating in the events of January 6th, 2021.

I began by asking about maximizing awesomeness. In the real world, we are dealing with a sick political system, one that needs to be repaired. If we are going to suppress news because it doesn’t square with fact-checks, what have we done to fact-check the fact-checkers to be sure that the fact-check organizations are not merely serving political agendas? What is to stop the Poynter Institute from corruption and government influence? Many of the fact-checks concern elections. If a majority of the American population has lost faith in the news, in fact-checking, and in electronic voting systems, then I am likely to see the very type of violence in the 2020s that I wanted to avoid in the 1980s. Violence is not awesome. The restoration of truth and trust – that would be awesome. A restoration to better journalism – that would be awesome.

For this reason, I think the first endeavor the Pamalogy Society should support is a fair way to fact-check, fact-checks. I’ve invented a platform for this called the CounterChecker and I’m seeking funding for it at this time. But to avoid the old problem of not having funds to develop my invention, this time I’m taking a different approach. This time, I will seek grants and donations from individuals, corporations and foundations to the Pamalogy Society for the development of the CounterChecker, as an incubator. The Pamalogy Society will continue to raise funds for worthy projects and its first target is the world of journalism.

Diagram of HAND System — The CounterChecker will serve as a plugin widget for numerous News Sources

There’s some method to all of this in terms of the maximization of awesomeness. Better journalism means the creation of platforms of communication for the Pamalogy Society itself as a founding sponsor. Founder level privileges on media platforms will serve to help future projects that the Pamalogy Society supports. I believe this method of raising funds and creating platforms of communication will be a good mix. I expect the Pamalogy Society to have its 501(c)(3) status very soon.

I am doing this while finishing up yet another degree. I’ve been attending Arizona State University and should have my degree in Interdisciplinary Studies, with concentrations in Organizational Leadership and Philosophy by December 2022, at the current pace. Last semester, I had my professor review the business plan I’d written for the CounterChecker for a directed study course for credit. I would love to Zoom with interested parties as I begin this endeavor, to share what I’m having the developers create. I’m looking for a diverse board of directors. I don’t want political agreement on the board.

Personally, some think I’m far to the left. Others think, because I’ve defended Donald Trump on some issues, that I’m far to the right. My personal political perspectives are as wide as the ocean, but that is irrelevant.

One of the unique features of the CounterChecker is that it will depend on disagreement to make it work. I may have had disagreements with my father growing up, but much of what he said was highly valuable to me and stays with me to this day. We need to surround ourselves with people who have very different views than our own. The CounterChecker itself works by posing ideologically different teams against one another. There’s no better critic than someone who is literally debating you. These will be deliberately oppositional teams of about ten to twelve countercheckers each – one team on the left and another on the right – fact-checking one another’s fact-checks and counter-checks. It will achieve a level of depth and comprehensiveness that fact-checking does not currently provide. It will restore trust in fact-checking as a whole through its thoroughly dialectical approach. I consider it vital to fixing a presently very broken system.

P10. Cosmic Rubbernecking

James Carvin has a certain super power designed for loving you. Elastic Man is just part of the story.

Now that I’ve started from the middle and worked backwards and brought things to the present in multiples of seven, I’m all finished telling the story of my life. It remains that I should explain a dream that I had last night.

In the dream, I was the entire Universe and I was reflecting on myself through cosmic rubbernecking. Rubbernecking is the tendency we have to slow down so we can see things better. This happens on highways whenever anything unusual has happened. It sometimes brings traffic to a complete stop. This is the kind of dream a driver who thinks a lot will have.

Maybe it's time to wake up and smell the coffee. Are you ready to travel through time? — Maybe it’s time to wake up and smell the coffee. Are you ready to travel through time?

Before telling you my dream, let me pause a moment to mention that I included SUPER CHRIS in the My Story section of this blog for a reason. When you have a moment, whether before or after you read this, get out your headphones and grab a cup of coffee. Really focus on SUPER CHRIS. St. Christopher, as the patron saint of travelers, knows all about rubber necking. And this dream, just like that video, is a metaphor. Think poetry. So take another sip of that coffee. I have some thoughts to share on the meaning of life.

NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has trained its razor-sharp eye on one of the universe's most stately and photogenic galaxies, the Sombrero galaxy, Messier 104 (M104). The galaxy's hallmark is a brilliant — NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope catches, the Sombrero galaxy, Messier 104 (M104).

In this dream, I was the Universe, as I was saying. And what happened in this dream, is that I kept seeing myself in various places along the strands of timelines that I had, which were neurally connected to myself as the Universe, each telling a story, all connected to the whole. I discovered in this dream that examining any one part of any story of my life, always involved rubbernecking from the whole, which operates at quantum speed.

Peering deep into the early Universe, this picturesque parallel field observation from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveals thousands of colourful galaxies swimming in the inky blackness of space. A few foreground stars from our own galaxy, the Milky Way, are also visible. In October 2013 Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) and Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) began observing this portion of sky as part of the Frontier Fields programme. This spectacular skyscape was captured during the study of the giant galaxy cluster Abell 2744, otherwise known as Pandora’s Box. While one of Hubble’s cameras concentrated on Abell 2744, the other camera viewed this adjacent patch of sky near to the cluster. Containing countless galaxies of various ages, shapes and sizes, this parallel field observation is nearly as deep as the Hubble Ultra-Deep Field. In addition to showcasing the stunning beauty of the deep Universe in incredible detail, this parallel field — when compared to other deep fields — will help astronomers understand how similar the Universe looks in different directions — The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope reveals thousands of colourful galaxies swimming in the inky blackness of space. A few foreground stars from our own galaxy, the Milky Way, are also visible.

One analogy is the body. Just as focusing on any one sensation in the body, requires concentration, as the brain directs its attention to what it considers important among its many signals always coming in, and involves multiple neural cells in the process, so does the whole Universe rubberneck a bit, in order to stop and hear the story of its individual parts.

It isn’t just the fantasy of a dream. There is a scientific side to this. Quantum speed is omnipresent for the whole. And since time and space are in a continuum, quantum speed accesses any and all points of time for every strand of truth-story simultaneously, but in order for any parts of this story to be appreciated for all that they are, cosmic rubbernecking takes place.

Rubbernecking involves multiple vehicles on the road just as consciousness involves multiple cells in the body. Or is it the other way around? It doesn’t matter. This is a metaphor. Is as does. Does as is.

This new image of the spiral galaxy NGC 3521 from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is not out of focus. Instead, the galaxy itself has a soft, woolly appearance as it a member of a class of galaxies known as flocculent spirals. Like other flocculent galaxies, NGC 3521 lacks the clearly defined, arcing structure to its spiral arms that shows up in galaxies such as Messier 101, which are called grand design spirals. In flocculent spirals, fluffy patches of stars and dust show up here and there throughout their discs. Sometimes the tufts of stars are arranged in a generally spiralling form, as with NGC 3521, but illuminated star-filled regions can also appear as short or discontinuous spiral arms. About 30 percent of galaxies share NGC 3521's patchiness, while approximately 10 percent have their star-forming regions wound into grand design spirals. NGC 3521 is located almost 40 million light-years away in the constellation of Leo (The Lion). The British astronomer William Herschel discovered the object in 1784. Through backyard telescopes, NGC 3521 can have a glowing, rounded appearance, giving rise to its nickname, the Bubble Galaxy. — The spiral galaxy NGC 3521 from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is not out of focus. In flocculent spirals, fluffy patches of stars and dust show up here and there throughout their discs. That’s how I feel today. Flocculent.

Quantum speed is the one thing that is greater than the speed of light, including the speed of light squared. It doesn’t actually travel. It unifies the whole through the fields that pertain to the whole. The interconnectedness of its entangled particles is the glue that unites the entire Universe despite the fact that it is accelerating its expansion well beyond the point that we can’t see the majority of its light and have no molecular ability to see the majority of our own Universe.

The icon of the Holy Dormition is one that depicts Christ in front of Door, which is the doorway to the Uncreated Light, which is God Himself. Here He receives Mary in the resurrection. Have you woken from your sleep? — The icon of the Holy Dormition is one that depicts Christ in front of the Door, which is the doorway to the Uncreated Light, which is God Himself. Here He receives Mary in the resurrection. Have you woken from your sleep?

The Bible says that the heavens are declaring the glory of God. Here you have it. God’s light is beyond the ability to see in our visible horizon as molecular beings ground by gravity to a small quarter of the endless whole. The ancients depict God as the Son standing in a doorway of darkness because He is the “Uncreated Light.” They were describing the Quantum Jesus of the heavens’ declaration but just didn’t know about quantum theory yet. But I’ll stop and observe the parallel. Can you do this with me?

Hubble plus interpretation can lead anywhere

It’s not that Jesus is the entanglement. Goodness knows. Entangled particles and quantum fields are the least of the omniscient imagination of the totality of abstract truth. As amazing as they may seem to us as new things a few particle physicists have come to appreciate, an innumerable number of other unifying fields could be made to occur from absolute nothingness, as well.

Having considered all possibilities, what quantum formulas would the totality of truth, independent of any creation, understand and utilize in order to maximize awesomeness? I explained this in SUPER CHRIS. It’s the core principal of foundational cosmostrophy. And it solves the unification problem for all things as first axiom while scientists hope in vain to discover its formula and can’t even get past the fact that observation obscures the results.

Clearly an exponentially expanding Universe is a part of that. It’s what cosmologists are observing. One thing after another that they find continues to affirm the first cosmostrophic axiom. The purpose of life is the maximization of awesomeness. And the cosmologists have noticed cosmic rubbernecking too. For some reason, there is a connection between observing experiments and the results. Look it up. Why does the double slot experiment produce the results that it does? Why is consciousness connected to particle physics? Because two mysteries are better than one? No. Because the double slot experiment is showing them that observation is affecting results.

The Andromeda Galaxy is the closest to our own Milky Way. Possibilities are endless. Andromeda has hundreds of millions of stars all with their solar system stories.

The observation about observation is perhaps “telling.” To appreciate any one moment of beauty maximized awesomeness has, cosmic rubbernecking is involved. On many levels it may not be required but in this dream it was the way of things and one way or another, there is definitely a difference in speed, a quantum difference. But the Universe as a whole doesn’t necessarily see itself in motion. The motion is just a dimension or aspect of what it is. In order to examine its own magnificence, it transcends time.

And so that’s what happened in my dream. First I would be with the whole Universe, outside of any moment. And then the Universe would slow me down and bring me to one moment or other in my life. It did so because those moments were beautiful and worth enjoying in the midst of its own total glory.

The larger galaxy in the UGC 1810 - UGC 1813 pair has a mass that is about five times that of the smaller galaxy. Both are so vast. How are we connected? You and I? — The larger galaxy in the UGC 1810 – UGC 1813 pair has a mass that is about five times that of the smaller galaxy. Both are so vast. How are we connected? You and I?

This it did for me, as me. But as itself, it is a total doing as total being, so I would project that it involves every you too. It may well be that individual parts can’t comprehend the whole but that doesn’t mean that the whole can’t comprehend the individual parts. And I was involved in that comprehension. You are too, in the paths you observe. And if I can see your beauty, I don’t know whether it will be through my own eyes or those of the whole. Does it matter? I simply ask the whole to show me.

Because you matter. And it would be awesome if I could know the beautiful parts of you. Wouldn’t it be? Yes, it would.

So then I woke up. Having slowed down. Having backed up. Having advanced forward. Having returned. Having revisited. I was awake. And I thought of you.

Axiom number one: If it is awesome, it will be.

Therefore, I will be with you and know you in all of your glory.

P.9 Every Seven Years

James Carvin with his brand new tricycle, Christmas 1961. The boots were my older brother’s hand-me-downs. Nothing about me was cool. But when I learned to ride a two wheeler. THAT was a major break through!

7×1
I didn’t set out in life to be a driver but I’ll admit I enjoy it. I remember the day I learned to ride a bike. Suddenly my world multiplied. I was seven. I rode that bike all the way past two friends’ houses and back. What liberation! And I had a meaning of life moment. I theorized at that young age that every seven years there would be a total break through. That bike was a symbol of breaking on through to the other side. I don’t know why my mind thinks on profound things when my body is in motion. It just does. From the age of seven this has held true. Somewhere in the wings there may have been someone who gave me the idea that every seven years a human person will experience some major mind and life shift that elevates them to a new plateau. But I don’t remember them saying it. This thought may have been entirely my own.

The Cougar after my Mom knocked down two palm trees with it. She broke her nose but was otherwise unharmed.

7×2
Driving cars didn’t happen until I was fifteen, so the seven year theory had to be stretched, unless we include non-driving type changes like … puberty. Yes, discovering sexuality. That can change a life view. Who would question it? Mom’s Cougar was the first car I drove. It turned out to be a miracle car. She survived a horrible accident taking Valium when she was going through menopause. My search for ladies would have to start in my Dad’s Cadillac, before I wrecked it. Sorry Dad. The hormones did it. It was New Years. I was the classic inexperienced driver out on Amateur Night. It’s a good thing nobody was killed. But no. That was just a driving lesson in the School of Hard Knocks. Puberty began a journey of imagination that couldn’t help but disappoint. Dad’s ever visible magazine rack of Playboy and Hustler made that a certainty. It also left me clueless as to what the female gender actually was. My sister wasn’t telling me. She had her own problems. My mother waited way too long to talk about it and her only words of advice were issued at the worst time, with her head popping in the door during an episode of Gilligan’s Island. Wait until I’m married to have sex? Yeah, right mom. Can I please watch the show. MaryAnn’s about to come on.

The music school, McMaster College at the University of South Carolina on a cloudy day.

7×3
Every seven years … let me think back. At twenty one I graduated from college. I often think back on that day as the day my song started. I had been a music composition major. My “song” was my life and it was being composed by God. It was fitting somehow, that my parents had come up to South Carolina to hear my my greatest accomplishment – trombone sonata, only to have two major mishaps happen simultaneously. First, in the business of packing, I had somehow lost my music portfolio. Not only did this contain all the music I had written while at college; it also contained the conductor part for the trio that needed to be performed that day. Second, none of the other musicians showed up for the performance, which then had to be canceled. College kids these days. Imagine them skipping out on something they’d get no credit for during exam week while everyone was packing up and going home. My parents, who maintained the belief that I had never practiced with these musicians in the first place and that I was a liar, had to hear a different tune entirely and thus my song began. And it seems to have been some tune about a career search, but I can’t tell you for sure at this point because it hasn’t been performed in its entirety yet.

New Car and new job at Fidelity Federal Savings Bank Delray Beach, now PNC.

A career search began and it was a humbling one. I parked cars, and delivered news papers but my first real job was at a bank. If it weren’t for the women there, I would have hated that job. It was at that time that I realized I wasn’t producing any real goods and services. As I saw it, forty hours out of every week, plus an hour to and from work daily, were being completely wasted, just so I could earn $5/hour. There was no way I was going to stay in such an industry for life. I reflected on what an incredible waste of human effort the entire banking industry was – all the saving of money: its little deposits and withdrawals and switching accounts. Not one good or service was made by them. I considered the number of buildings in the world that were dedicated to doing nothing more than exchanging values – the stock market, the insurance business, the entire financial sector – all a waste of human effort.

Four of my companions at Fidelity Federal Savings Bank — Some of my companions at Fidelity Federal Savings Bank. It was a new branch at the time. Plenty of free time to chat with the ladies or read.

And then there was the unnecessary stuff associated with our financial system that made life very annoying – sales, advertising, commercials. Every human effort dedicated to all this nonsense could be re-purposed into something that directly created some widget or food item or service, or clothing that actually made life nicer for people. It was the stuff money buys and is used for. It was part of Marx’s theory but I knew nothing of it. I’d never read the Communist Manifesto. I wasn’t feeling like an exploited worker. That wasn’t it. And when I gradually learned about it, there were good reasons I found not to embrace Communism so I never did. We were in the middle of a cold war at the time. Reagan was on the rise. Communism only meant one thing to me – war. I invented the HAND System instead. No labor tension or revolution was required but I had no inclination to start it at the time. I was just figuring out who I was and what I believed in and I didn’t have a computer science degree. I believed in God and just years after that I became a Christian, allowing that Jesus could have been God incarnate. The first church actually used something like the HAND System. Then I started to learn who I was but it was a long road. My conversion from monotheism to Jesus follower didn’t occur at one of those pivotal 7 year marks. What landed there was a new song, a song that led to the revelation of a new economic paradigm – maybe something we’ll see after Jesus returns.

St Vincent de Paul Regional Seminary. I attended the lay program from 1982-1986.

7×4
At twenty eight, I had been kicked out of the Catholic seminary I’d been attending at night while working as a letter carrier by day. Did I say “kicked out”? Not exactly. I had an A average but had no intention of becoming a priest and had enrolled in their lay program. I suspect the problem was that I had become privy to some corruption of a political nature behind the scenes. I disapproved of the support I was finding for liberation theology there and I let my Social Justice teacher know about it. I was also critical of the bishops’ statement on the economy. Except for abortion, the Catholic Church was starting to seem like a wing of the Democratic Party.

It wasn’t just that I was a politically moderate man who was easily influenced by a conservative father who had supported Ronald Reagan before it was popular to do so. Dad’s opinions were to be considered. He was a smart man and I respected him but he didn’t dictate what I thought. The problem at the seminary was that sometimes I was confrontational. I was received with open arms when I first entered the seminary and spoke idealistically of asynalagonomy, a thing Dad strongly opposed, but when I exposed the Mary Knoll nuns for shipping guns to the Sandinistas out loud in class one day, it became clear I could be trouble. Suddenly, no courses were available to fill in the last few hours I needed to complete my post graduate degree. A course in Marriage and Sexuality did become available a year later but my final exam was lost by the teacher after I placed it on his desk with his other papers. When I noticed the incomplete after getting my report card in the mail, my guidance counselor told me I had taken too long to complete my matriculation and no longer qualified as a student. That is to say, I was forced out. That was a hard year. It was the year I broke up with my second fiancee. The content of the course as I lost my place at the seminary and lost my fiancee at the same time was painful but started a new chapter of my life. In my mind the next major breakthrough was going to be matrimony. But marriage was eluding me. I consoled myself through service in ministry as I went through a waiting period. I acquired more equipment for my music studio and for my library of theology with the money I saved by not getting married and in my enthusiasm, took on a bit of credit card debt – not smart.

The baptism of Jonathan David Carvin. There were reports of angels stirring up the pool at the little house church at the St. Michael Academy College of Eschatology on Washington Road.

7×5
Despite some financial handicaps, by the age of thirty five I had found the wife I had been looking for and was on my way to having my first child. The wedding had been quite the theological statement on the meaning of the sacrament, which was all the more powerful, as I saw it, due to the fact that we had diverse religious backgrounds. We thought a lot about unity and the meaning of different people coming together to love one another until death. A Catholic priest came, thanks to a dispensation from the bishop, to a wedding held at Maranatha Church of God. A charismatic Southern Baptist pastor who’d lived with me for a time led the ceremony with the other two. Because it was ecumenical, we didn’t have mass – just the wedding. But none of that was on the seven year mark. What landed on thirty five was the birth of my son, Jonathan. To come up with a solution between Catholicism and Pentecostal Protestantism, we’d found Orthodoxy and indeed, when we married yet again in the Eastern Orthodox Church, I was thirty five years of age.

Our ecumenical wedding was led by three clergymen from Pentecostal to Baptist to Catholic. A few years later we married AGAIN in an Orthodox Church in the less controversial Antiochian jurisdiction. Clearly, I was after all the blessings I could get. Still together with Lisa Carvin despite many trials, after all these years!

But our first encounter with Orthodox Christianity was unusual. We connected with a Ukrainian group, under a bishop that thought he had the spirit of Elijah, as one of the two end time witnesses. It wasn’t exactly your standard fare Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Reports of miracles were continuous there. If I were to describe my thirty fifth year in just one word, it wouldn’t just be “matrimony.” It would be “Elijah.” I took an intense interest in eschatology. I completed my degree and taught at this self-proclaimed Elijah’s College of Eschatology, St. Michael Academy.

Letter from bishop commissioning James Carvin to broadcast the Elijah Message to the body of Christ.

At the age of thirty five, I left the college with a degree and a mission, which I could only ponder the meaning of. Just about the time I was married yet again in the Orthodox Church through a less controversial jurisdiction of it, the Antiochian, the Ukranian autocephalous bishop (don’t ask me what that means; it’s complicated) sent me out, granting me my Masters Degree in Eschatology, saying it would be my mission to preach in the spirit of Elijah – not to the Orthodox but to the Protestants. His seminary had been perceived as a diploma mill. Its accreditation was with the Kentucky School of Accreditation, or something like that. He didn’t think highly of academia. He just wanted to raise up prophets and send them out, who would carry with them what the Lord had shared with him. As I saw it it was all a very tragic irony. The sectarianism of the Orthodox generally, which I oppose, was epitomized in this Elijah bishop who broke all the rules. But it wasn’t the same sectarianism as the “legitimate” Orthodox. Instead of saying anyone who wasn’t Eastern Orthodox was outside of the body of Christ as the more traditional would often say, he had been “playing nice” with the popes and the Anglicans. His sectarianism was spelled out in coming against any Protestants who didn’t recognize the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist and “hated Mary.” He had all sorts of medals and knighthoods and letters from popes. But it seemed like he was the more hateful one.

Elijah depicted at the Rila Orthodox Monastery of Bulgaria

I was commissioned to broadcast his message but I wasn’t buying it. The only part I was sold on was Elijah. Not that he was Elijah but that he wasn’t Elijah. What fascinated me was belief in the actual Elijah. I wanted to know who who Elijah really was. I really wanted to know what was going to take place before the Lord returns. And I really believed that the role of Elijah, as described in the Bible, was that of restoring the church in preparation for the Lord’s return. To my mind, anyone who was not a part of that ministry or movement, was not listening to God because they were not working for the restoration of the church. Now, of course, restoration is not a concept that works well with the Orthodox any more than it does with the Roman Catholics. They’re convinced in their own minds that the gates of hell can’t prevail against the church. So therefore, the church can never stand in need of restoration. It’s a matter that we should all consider very carefully if we care to be prepared when the Lord returns. The real message of Elijah, whatever that actually ultimately would be – this was something I would gladly take to the Protestants, or anywhere else it might be received – if only I could fully grasp what it was myself. So I prayed on it. And I have never stopped asking to receive it. So should we all. So that’s what came down at the age of thirty five.

A holy fire was ignited in a place of prayer. What appeared to be a darkened image of the Madonna was emblazoned onto my wall by the fire above the prayer table, leaning over my brother’s ashes as if she was holding them, praying over them.

7×6
At forty two I became an Internet superstar but it was short lived. My father and oldest brother, Chickie, had died shortly after I was sent away by the bishop. After his death, I heard in a vision my father saying, “total marketing.” Dad had been the author of the “total marketing concept” (TMC), at the Allied Chemical Corporation, where he was a VP of Sales for their Chemstrand division. In this very vivid vision that I had while standing in prayer he was telling me to market totally. I knew he would have wanted me to preach the Gospel on the Internet. Dad and I were very close. And it fit in with the bishop’s command to broadcast the message of Elijah. I still wasn’t sure what that message was but the vision was accompanied by certain unusual events at the music studio-library, where I kept his ashes with Chickie’s on a filing cabinet, that had become a very sacred place for prayer and where I had been praying at the time that the vision occurred. I won’t go into what the unusual events were here. It deserves a whole chapter all by itself. But there was a mysterious fire that emblazoned what appeared to be an image of the Virgin Mary into my wall. And I was listening carefully to what the Lord might be saying at that time. I wanted to understand.

It was in the midst of much intensive prayer for wisdom and discernment at that time, that the Ghost Machine concept was born. It was conceived as a web site that would become a better search engine and morph one day, when mobile technology became available, for playing a game that would reward users with Ghost Bucks if they “found ghosts.” It would be set up in a way where the “ghosts” would be real historical people – icons. We’d call them “ghosticons.” It would be educational and entertaining – “edutainment.”

Use the ghost machine's finder to plan your ghost hunting all day long every day so you can earn Ghost Bucks! — Use the ghost machine’s finder to plan your ghost hunting all day long every day so you can earn Ghost Bucks!

People would learn about history as they hunted for ghosts and got paid for doing it. It was an elaborate plan. The more they gave to charity, the more Ghost Bucks they could earn as they found ghosts planted in places of business for them to find. The businesses would pay for extra customers at specified, usually slow hours. I would hyperlink from the ghosts to their browser to a world of information that was entertaining. The Ghost Bucks would be redeemable for US dollars for anyone who wanted to cash them out at any time. But mobile technology was a long way off and the search engine was enough of a hurdle to get over for a man without a budget or career experience or a team of helpers. The miracles though … the fire … the dreams … the prayer. These were enough to push me to take a leap of faith. It was premature leap, but it started an important chapter of my life. It made me know loss. The initial 5% reach of all Internet users we found out about through Web Trends in July 2000 had been encouraging but without money, there was no way to buy equipment to keep it going. We were getting more than four hits per second but couldn’t sustain it.

The Ghost Machine is like a cross between Pokemon Go and BitCoin. If you see a ghost in the room. Don't just stand there. Shake your phone! — The Ghost Machine is like a cross between Pokemon Go and BitCoin. If you see a ghost in the room. Don’t just stand there. Shake your phone!

That was forty two. I was working from home in my pajamas. If only I had money. If only I had a team. I didn’t just learn loss that year. I learned what entrepreneurs need to turn visions into reality. It was an expensive education. I don’t regret it though. I just want to make the vision a reality. So I’m still looking for help. As the years passed, mobile technology became an increasing reality and I started to design for it. I continued to build up the Ghostidex full of potential Ghosticons. In my search for help, I revealed as much as I could without spoiling the surprise. We focused on celebrities that had recently passed away so we could introduce the concept of icons. I wrote letters to Rome and Constantinople hoping I could get the church’s support to popularize the saints that would be included in the Ghostidex. I haven’t given up but I do understand that churches tend to be set in their ways. Did I mention that I had a business plan? But a plan is nothing without a team. And without a team angels take no interest. The value is in the execution of an idea. Not in the concept. Who is on your team? And who will be on your team if you have no angel dollars to attract them with? There is a certain miracle that has to happen that brings everyone to the table at the same time. And it doesn’t cut out the founder. Remember me?

7×7
At the age of forty two, 5% of of all Internet users had visited the ghostsurfers.com web site. At the age of forty nine, I was still trying to figure out how to attract both a team and angel dollars to a polished concept. It was horribly disappointing but I knew that it wasn’t failing because it was the wrong idea. What I had seen with so much clarity in the ghost machine was something that was just too far ahead of its time. God was using that time to prepare me for leadership. He was using my pain.

I attracted some high calibur team prospects to build the ghost machine in 2007 but everyone follows the money. Pictured here, Marty Fisher and his wife Georgie, Lisa, me, JYQ, Caesar and Mark Laymon. I was aiming for a Steve Jobs look here. — I attracted some high caliber team prospects to build the ghost machine in 2007 but everyone follows the money. Pictured: Marty Fisher and his wife Georgie, Lisa, me, JYQ, Caesar and Mark Laymon. I was aiming for a Steve Jobs look here.

This isn’t hard to understand. Think of what year I’m talking about. I was forty nine in 2007. Pokemon Go and Bitcoin were words people had still never heard of. Imagine trying to explain these things before they existed. Giving an elevator pitch was no easy task. Facebook was just starting to take the place of MySpace. Google had just put the final nails on the coffin of Yahoo and AOL. Me, I was driving for Yellow Cab and then I ran into a guy who saw the entrepreneurial spirit in me. He promised he would invest in the Ghost Machine if I would help him with his own invention – a shopping cart washing machine. I got to know him as a full time driver when he was doing well with his own company. Unfortunately, he had lost his license due to drunk driving. That’s why he needed a driver. But worse, he drove with a suspended license. And a wily character who wanted to steel his technology had a policeman stop him while he was moving his car in the parking lot one day. After postponing his hearing as long as he could, his poor judgment earned him some time in jail and just enough time away from his company to ultimately lose control of it.

I wasn't just a full time cheuffeur. I landed my first trucking job. Here I am towing a shopping cart washing machine with an F450. — I wasn’t just a full time chauffeur. I landed my first trucking job. Here I am towing a shopping cart washing machine with an F450. I also served as a web strategist.

But I was in his office at that time, in addition to driving for him, helping him build traffic to his web site through a news magazine for the supermarket industry I had created called Supermarket Green News. Back in those days, web sites were easier to get attention for without much investment and what I was doing for him was helping him attract industry executives so he kept paying me even after he was in jail. But the money ran out. His BOD had a coup d’ etat, which I was well aware of. And as a witness, when he returned from jail after three months to find his company was no longer his, stolen by henchmen of the famous ponzi schemer, Scott Rothstein, he was left standing in a long line of people that Rothstein, now in protective custody, was being sued by. I knew my cart washer friend would never get justice but I couldn’t just abandon him, knowing he had been robbed. Even if he wasn’t the most likable character, he was still in the right. And he surrounded himself daily with people who promised to invest in his company. But they led him around. It was always, if they will, I will too. Nobody wanted to jump in first to actually invest.

The Supermarket Green News logo

They dicked him around. This is something not many understand. CEOs for start ups get dicked around. They are always told they need just one more thing. There’s always just one more thing. And then it’s another. Who the hell cuts a check for a start up? So at forty nine, the new threshold was … the big dick. You can’t really start anything new. It was like satan himself was sticking his tongue out at me.

And with satan, when one thing goes wrong, everything must go wrong. Not getting paid left me hunting for other revenue. It was a great time to get back together again with the Elijah bishop and offer to put his college’s web courses online. Back on the road again for Yellow Cab as well, my usual taxi clients – addicts, strippers, prostitutes – were carrying on. Lisa was not happy as I confessed some of what happened. It was a mistake to be so open but I didn’t like secrets. I’d overcome porn addiction years back. I wanted accountability. If somebody took their clothes off in the cab I was able to act professionally thanks to that commitment but when she got a call to come pick me up on Blue Heron Blvd because my Yellow Cab van had been completely shot up by bullets in a drug deal gone badly, she was fed up. And then there was her own struggle with her stroke affected sexuality. Really any of it served as an excuse to drink what little money we had away and leave me for another man she had loved before we ever met. Yeah, that was forty nine. That was the 2007’s. It wasn’t enough to lose a fortune. I had to lose everything, even her.

We still managed to have some good times after Lisa's stroke even when we had no money. Hardship is bad. God is better. — We still managed to have some good times after Lisa’s stroke even when we had no money. Hardship is bad. God is better.

Maybe that was the thread that ties all this together – matrimony, or the struggle thereof. It would be a very sad and pointless story but then another miracle happened. She came back. She came back and I forgave her. She was repentant. I’ve put some thought into it and do you want to know what I think? I think that matrimony and the message of Elijah are one and the same. Preparing the way of the Lord … what is that? It’s preparation of the bride of Christ in repentance. Matrimony is a shadow of that union. It strips both the husband and wife of all pretension. And when the two witnesses preach in the last days, aren’t they dressed in sackcloth and ashes? Aren’t they repentant as they measure the temple? Look it up and see. It’s in the eleventh chapter of Revelation.

So let’s wrap this up. I’ll admit that I can be naive enough to dick around but I believed her. I know repentance when I see it. I could sense the miracle happening and I wasn’t going to stifle it by ending the marriage even if there was valid reason. My only doubts were about me. Could I be strong enough to forgive? Theory is one thing. Practice is another. And try as we did, reconciliation didn’t make life wonderful again. The hurt needed healing and we were just as broke as ever – even more so. Life’s stresses continued. Lisa had been paralyzed from a stroke in 2003, no special seven year time, a year after losing her job at the Palm Beach County Convention and Visitors Bureau. She started drinking afterwards, spending money we didn’t have and then the cheating. A year after her stroke, my sister was also paralyzed from a stroke, still in that same difficult stretch of time. But we reconciled. And that was that. It was a rough patch and there was nothing easy about it – just that long hard part there in the middle of yet another seven year stretch. So what about my seven year theory? Forty nine passed. What about fifty six? Did anything new happen? Or did it just keep raining?

Life in the nursing home. Who is there to love them? Who becomes family when family leaves them?

7×8
Maybe there’s nothing to it. What happened at fifty six is I moved to Tallahassee because my sister’s husband abandoned her because he couldn’t take the celibacy that came with having a wife who was paralyzed from a stroke even worse than Lisa’s. At least my sister, Corinne, hadn’t cheated on my brother-in-law. But she was in a nursing home, alone, abandoned. At fifty six I became a caregiver. I knew I had to move to Tallahassee and focus on my family. I put all my entrepreneurial ideas on a low burner and closed the distance between us all – my wife, my sister and my older brother too. He’d become a recovering crack addict. I knew I wouldn’t have many more years to see him. And it wasn’t easy. I was dying financially until Uber became a reality in Florida. If you are going to be an entrepreneur, you’ve got to have some form of income while you work your concept. Uber was perfect for that. And it didn’t involve friending people of the night just to get regular clientele. The passenger prospects were out at night, alright. But the system’s dispatch actually provided a fair volume of trips and I didn’t have to pay rent for a cab every week. I could drive my personal car. I could make my own hours.

Are you on the outside looking in? We have an app for that! — What I’m thinking about while I drive. Meeting family obligations doesn’t make vision disappear. Let’s talk about my inventions.

But Tallahassee is seasonal. It’s a college town. So in the summer time, I was left scurrying for income. That’s why I took the lending job I hated so much. Uber made it possible for me to quit in the fall. But it wasn’t enough. Summer of 2016 was really hard and summer of 2017 was even harder. I looked for jobs I could do and still take care of my family but wasn’t finding anything that made sense except driving jobs and the ones that paid most were those that required a CDL. 7×9 anyone?

I drive an eighteen wheeler now. And I'm seeing my the people I love everywhere I turn. Maybe that's a good thing. — I drive an eighteen wheeler now. And I’m seeing the people I love everywhere I turn. That’s not a bad thing.

So in the summer of 2017, I went to a CDL school and now I’m driving an eighteen wheeler – something I couldn’t do while my brother and my sister were still alive – something that doesn’t work very well nevertheless because Lisa is still very high maintenance. But within another year, my initial contract will be up and I should be able to find a daily route to run. And in the meantime, I’m going to drive and I’m going to think a lot while I drive. Because that’s what I do. I’ve been shut up. But I won’t be silenced. I’ve thought long and hard about what it is and the message of Elijah will be broadcast. Maybe it will happen when I’m sixty three. Maybe it’s already happening. Would you like to hear some “ghost stories”?

P.8: Double Vision

On this page I will begin to show you how to unfuck the world without resorting to violence. Let's do this. — On this page I will begin to show you how to unfuck the world without resorting to violence. Let’s do this.

I’ve provided enough background in this MyStory series for now. Today, page 8, we jump ahead to the present. I used the word “asynalagonomy” on page 7 without explaining what it means. I told you about my Dad and I learned some things from him but incentivized asynalagonomy was not one of those things. What on earth was I thinking in 1982? My agreement with Dad was only partial and the valid points he made all resided dialectically within an anteasynalagonomic reality my father had no awareness of.

BUT WE NEED DEFINITIONS

I’m glad that there are only a handful of people who can pronounce “asynalagonomy” correctly. It takes a little practice. An even harder word is “anteasynalagonomy.” The fact that these words are hard to pronounce means they won’t be shared much and that gives me the opportunity to control what people think of them. This is strategic for me. I recognize that we live in a day when the meaning of many words shifts from month to month because of the tools of mass communication. Look up the word on Google and it turns the reader to this web site. That took some doing. Let it be.

Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews get ready to sing Supercalifragilisticexpialadocious. Long words can have a delicate beauty.

I’ve defined it elsewhere here and I’m happy to help out on the meaning and pronunciation any time. “Ante” means “before.” “Synalagonomy” means a trade-based economy. The prefix “a” means “not.” So the word asynalagonomy means “an economy that is not based on trade” and anteasynalagonomy all put together means “the time before a tradeless economy,” or more specifically, “the economy of the time before a tradeless economy.” It means now.

So that’s the meaning. Now let’s practice the pronunciation.

“Ante” sounds like what you do before you play a hand of poker. You ante up.
“a” as in “asynalagonomy” uses the hard “a” sound as in “grape” or “ate.” The hard “a” sound is practical. Soft “a” as in apple is technically acceptable but much harder to garble out, so not recommended.
“synalagwn” is the root of this word. It comes from the Greek word for trade. Greek is an inflective language, so it is normal to change out the end of root words with all sorts of variables. That being the case, we don’t need to retain the hard “o” sound (as in “own”) just because the root is from the hard Greek omega rather than the soft Greek omicron. We can pronounce it like “on” as in “economy.”
“gonomy” rhymes with “economy.” I won’t go into the Greek here. You can ask an etymologist about the word economy. “Nomy” means laws or rules.

Now repeat this a few times until you’re comfortable with it …

ante a synalagonomy.
ante a synalagonomy.
ante a synalagonomy.

The five preliminary smooth stones the Restoration Party will throw at the monster of corruption in American government - unless support comes too late. — The five preliminary smooth stones the Restoration Party will throw at the monster of corruption in American government – unless support comes too late.

So prior to the total collapse of the sociocapitalist world, which I see as forthcoming if no one heeds my warnings and the Restoration Party is not supported, we have anteasynalagonomy. And after the total collapse of the sociocapitalist world, either we will have asynalagonomy, (hopefully an incentivized form of it), or we will have total anarchy. This last statement comprises the essence of my book, The Restoration Party Manifesto: Pre and Post Apocalyptic Solutions for the Future.

Having some limited control over how these words are used, thanks to my extreme lack of present popularity, allows me all the time I need to build an entire vision around them with all sorts of necessary distinctions. This I find essential in preparing for the collapse of modern civilization lest bad versions of the same solution pop up, as they so often do, and destroy the benefit of the thirty six years I’ve spent contemplating that future time. Most crucial, it is essential that an effective asynalagonomy be incentivized.

But that is a future world and a significant portion of those few who have been told about it, doubt it will ever happen. Even if they can envision such a collapse, they see different types of reboots – very dark ones, where the rich continue to live off the sweat of an even less empowered poor and where a US military steps in to assist them. So fine. That’s why we need Solution B Units as described in the book. As I see it, we are living in an anteasynalagonomic world, and anyone else is free to ignore the fact or disbelieve it. Well that sucks. As for me, I believe in putting life jackets and lifeboats on economies that look like they’re on the same course as the Titanic.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to convey what one sees from a mountain top, when all they have ever known is the valley. They must be taken up the mountain step by step themselves.

I have to have double vision. One is what I see. Another is what others see. One is our future reality. Another is our present reality. People are taught to see as they do from a very young age. I can’t just give them my vision. I’ve climbed a mountain and what I’ve seen from there is very different than what people who’ve always stayed in the valley imagine. I have to lead them through some very hard places to get them to see what I’ve seen. It’s a step by step process.

We learn the system at a very young age. We are not taught to think outside of that system.

When we were children we played board games. Each game had its own rules. There was Monopoly, Life, Risk, Stratego, BattleShip, Chess and Checkers. They were all based on things we can readily understand – war, competition and capitalism. Other games, Trivial Pursuit, Detective and Operation introduced other facets of our world while card games taught us how to calculate. We are wired from childhood for a world that is competitive, that has sad realities. Some people lose. I can’t keep up with the modern gaming world. I imagine its the same. There are roll playing games and there are action games. I’m probably a fool for letting my son play Grand Theft Auto but there have been plenty of opportunities for me to point out that killing people and stealing their cars is wrong. Organized crime is bad. I’d rather he learn that in the cyber world. He also loves his Batman games. He obviously gets the point.

The content and basis of all those games is entirely the stuff of an anteasynalagonomy, where health care costs are rising out of control, where our enemies are increasing, where our annual budget deficits are impossible to balance, where a majority of the population has a negative net worth, where crime is a constant, where I find myself sorting out the best tax and health care policies for a new political party, seeing that the five dominant parties all fail.

To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.

I carry two separate visions. One for the future. One for now. It’s not too late to avert an economic apocalypse. But we need to mobilize the Restoration Party very quickly if we are to do so. So for the future vision, read all about incentivized asynalagonomy. It’s where things go if the world keeps ignoring my warnings, treating me like a ghost. To heed the warnings, consider moving your membership over to a new political party, the Restoration Party. Today we talk about tax reform and in my next blog we’ll cover health care reform. I find it far less promising given the difficulty of getting the Restoration Party revved up before it is too late but for now we are in full anteasynalagonomy mode. And here I will remind my readers once again that Restoration Party membership absolutely does not require any knowledge of or belief in incentivized asynalagonomy. In every situation, the Restoration Party is all about the here and now because the people the government is being restored to know and dwell in the here and now. Generally, their minds do not dwell in the future, like mine does, but they do have a profound sense of what is right. So on with the here and now.

FUNDING GOVERNMENT SOCIOCAPITALISTICALLY

In an incentivized asynalagonomy there is no such thing as tax of any form but in the American anteasynalagonomy we need the Restoration Party to step up with a tax policy consistent with its broad mission of restoring government to the people as public service. It is time we talked about it.

Now we get to talk about the tax policy the Restoration Party will fight for over the next few years. It doesn’t make for the most interesting blog unless you are an economist but I’ll give it a summary whirl in layman’s terms. This will require some background. There are several popular proposals out there for tax reform. All of them have simplicity in mind. Everyone agrees the tax code is too complicated. Everyone also agrees that tax loopholes are unfair.

Let’s look at the reasons the tax code is complicated and unfair. First, it is historical. Changing it requires taking what you already have and making additions, by writing new code, or deleting them, by repealing law. It’s not so hard. In theory, it could be done with one comprehensive bill, but the tax code is so long that it is impractical to have one bill that simplifies everything. Congress won’t have time to review it in any given session.

Second, there is a long standing habit of using taxation to incentivize behavior. We incentivize home ownership by allowing tax deductions on interest expense. We incentive charitable giving by allowing deductions for giving to charity. We incentivize farming by offering credits for purchasing farm equipment. The list goes on endlessly. I’d be the last person to complain about providing incentive. But the result is that there is a very long list of such incentives – so long, in fact, that there are many incentives that are more than incentives. They are loopholes. Loopholes provide ways for people and companies to avoid paying tax at all even though they are earning plenty of profit.

There are a variety of reasons the tax code is long, full of loopholes and very unfair.

Third, there is systemic corruption. Lawmakers, knowing that tax code is complex and nobody with a loud voice is watching, have the liberty to squeeze both pork and gristle into bills that pass because its better to have a little smudge in a bill that gets passed and has lots of otherwise good stuff, than to have no good stuff at all. That shit needs to be removed but few people have the patience or interest. They love complaining about Wall Street getting wealthy while the working class are exploited but they don’t have the energy to do what is required to change anything. Tax code is boring. They’d rather party in the streets.

Fourth, there are pay offs. The reason pork goes into bills is political favor. Political favor doesn’t just come from constituents. It comes from lobbyists and corporations who fund political campaigns through Super PACs. This is really all the same as point three but it deserves a mention because systemic corruption is the way evil politics works and that is something the Restoration Party will confront head on continually. It is not a matter of representatives actually helping out their voter bases. Their focus is on the jobs they can get personally after their term is up, on the deals they can make under the table, and on raising funds and political support for their next campaign. It’s all about them.

There are twenty two lobbyists for each member of congress. Do you think that complicates tax code at all? Do you think it represents voters?

Failure to actually do anything about this has resulted in a very long tax code full of loopholes that ignores the cries of voters. It will keep getting more and more complicated and increasingly unfair, and even longer despite constant complaints about these very facts. The result is the clear need for a restoration of our government back to the American people, so that it represents the voters, and not just the few who know how to manipulate the system. Specifically, those few are the very wealthy, who can afford to pay smart tax accountants and attorneys. The result is we need some force to come and correct the problem that has thus far not existed. That force is the Restoration Party.

But what about the Libertarian Party? What about the flat tax? What about the fair tax? What about the neutral tax?

Don’t be confused by ploys. The neutral tax is … neutral … and reduces or eliminates the IRS while putting the burden of collection on the states. I have no ought about that. I rather like the idea but the flat tax and fair tax, while they may propose simplicity, both fail miserably. They are creations of libertarians. Libertarians are not knights in shining armor. They are just another set of bad guys. Heed my warning on this. Restorationists agree with them on smaller government but not on free market economics and morality.

Gary Johnson, Libertarian candidate for President of the United States 2016

The Restoration Party demands fiscal responsibility and won’t ignore the burden of the national debt but its objective is not to bolster the wealthy, as it secretly is for Libertarians. Our goal in seeking smaller government is to protect the American people from the oppression of taxation and the impotency of government when government lacks proper funding. A flat tax doesn’t generate enough revenue at 10% or at 20% to eliminate any debt. It doesn’t even balance a budget. Gary Johnson is popular right now and he wants to employ the Fair Tax. It amazes me that the American people are falling for this just because they are so unhappy with their current choice of the lesser of two evils.

WHY THE FAIR TAX IS UNFAIR

The "fair" tax is not only not fair, it is suicidal. — The “fair” tax is not only not fair, it is suicidal.

The “fair” tax starts with a national sales tax of about 30% that sells itself as 23% using some inclusive pricing trickery that I won’t get into but the number doesn’t matter, as I will explain below. The larger problem is something that it recognizes and readily admits. It has a problem of taxing the poor unfairly and it knows this. Quite simply, the poor spend all their money and the wealthy don’t. Since the “fair tax” is a sales tax, they are taxed on all their income. The wealthy don’t. The wealthy save most of their money so they wind up not only not paying the up to 70% Bernie Sanders would have pushed for, but something close to 0%, depending on how wealthy they are. The wealthier they are, the lower the proportion of their spending is to their net worth. That means they pay a lower percentage of their income than the poor do.

Fair Tax supporters understand that this is unfair to the poor so they made a concession with something called, “prebates.” Prebates are an odd thing coming from Libertarians, as they would amount to the most massive welfare dole out in American history. The reason I call the whole thing a “ploy” is that the dole out not only applies to the poor, but everybody gets a prebate, including your neighborhood billionaire. Pretty much, the prebate is a government hand out that amounts to the amount of money a person needs to spend in a year in order to survive. Or that’s the theory anyway.

Pages of tax rules keep increasing year after year.

Great. We can all survive. Except that the disaster that follows is that the fair tax disincentivizes spending. The more you spend, the greater your tax. The only way for the Middle Class to save any money is by resisting spending. The only way the poor can survive is by resisting spending. Spending is sort of vital for the survival of businesses. Supposedly, this is made up for by not “double” taxing businesses on the wholesale level. Supposedly, prices go down because raw materials and the cost of labor become cheaper. After all, businesses no longer pay out social security or payroll tax. Their only job in the tax collection process is collecting sales tax from customers.

The big losers with the fair tax are the middle class. Anyone who lives pay check to pay check has to spend all their money, not just those under the poverty line. The middle class gets to watch the rich get richer since they don’t spend all their money, while they can’t escape their middle class status no matter how hard they try. If there was ever a tax proposal that represented capitalist exploitation it is the so called “fair” tax. It is a ruse for the poor with its prebate. In actuality, it profits the uber wealthy, removing almost all taxation from them entirely.

Trickle down economics could be tested on a state by state basis. Many Restorations will oppose it. Others may support it.

Well, if you are a believer in the power of trickle down economics, then great. That’s how to turn on the spigot. As a matter of fact, I have no complaint about that theory myself. I have long advocated that any money saved by capitalist pigs goes into investments because that’s how they grow their money. I have never wavered from pointing out that ultimately all investments fall back to producing goods and services that require labor or equipment and that means jobs. I see that as inescapable. My opinion and support of trickle down economics has never changed.

However, capitalist exploitation is not about trickle down. It works in other ways. I see big box companies capitalizing on and encouraging shitty job markets so they can pay minimum wage. I see them quickly turn to part-time-only hiring in order to avoid paying health benefits. I see Wall Street recognizing that and doing something even more dastardly than quantitative easing to suck the blood out of workers. They literally want to make sure that there is always a certain volume of unemployed so they can pay less in labor. They will pay off politicians to make sure there are always at least 7% unemployed.

Stock holders are not likely to see their continual attempts to keep wages and benefits down as a matter of exploitation. That they would deliberately work to keep unemployment rates high just to create an employers market should really not be so hard to understand.

The old 7%, I mean. They were happy to shift the calculation of the unemployment rate so that what used to be called 17% is now called 5%. When I say 7%, I’m referring to the old 7%. Bring the unemployment rate down below the old 7% and it creates a job seeker’s market. A job seeker’s market is when there are many jobs available and not enough potential employees available seeking them to fill the positions. It becomes too expensive to do business when that happens. Service suffers. In a job seekers’ market, some companies can’t even do business because they can’t find the right employees to stay competitive. They may even have to go out of business.

Forget trickle down economics. Unemployment manipulation is where the real capitalist exploitation is. But that’s another subject. For now let’s examine the fair tax.

There are other perks. The fair tax helps employees by eliminating social security and medicare deductions. It doesn’t matter how many exemptions they have. The only withholding will be for voluntary medical plans, retirement plans and other voluntary employee benefits. I’ve got to be fair about saying this. That’s a major plus for the fair tax. The poor working stiff may pay far more than the uber wealthy proportionately, but dang, they do get a boost in the form of what feels like an initial raise, and they won’t be complaining when they receive those prebates either.

The path to economic responsibility is a service to the American people that the people must demand. Responsible tax policy is essential for achieving it.

How slick. How insidious. This plan will fail if ever implemented for lack of adequate revenue in an era of prebate fueled hyper-inflation. The problem is not actually on the economy side. It is on the government spending side. Allow me to explain. Let’s start by highlighting some of the other positives in this plan.

First, inflation is not something you complain about when you hold all the comodities and real estate, which is what companies and wealthy people do. Make no mistake, the uber wealthy get uber wealthier with this “fair tax.” They enjoy a free ride on inflation and free themselves of the burden of being taxed all at the same time. Now I have no complaint about people becoming trillionaires. My only concern with that is the way trillionaires push their political weight around and turn countries into plutocracies. But that is a discussion for another day. For now, I should at least point out that knowing this, you can be sure of who it is who is pushing for this type of tax plan.

Second, there is the rest of us. The way the fair tax is designed, everybody expects inflation, because the prices are supposed to increase. That’s exactly what the tax is. It’s worked into the price of everything you buy. You’ve got your prebate subsidizing it. So just don’t buy so much.

Well there’s an interesting conundrum. Buying slows down, and that forces prices down. Money supply increases and that pushes prices up. Which is it? It’s a balance. So I’m going to list here on the positive side that the fair tax is not so inflationary as one might first think. However, saying so requires I temper that by noting that neither does it speed up the economy up. If there is a “balance,” then there is also sluggish growth. So on to the negatives.

The problem with the rich getting richer is not that the rich get richer, it is with the poor getting poorer and the middle class becoming poor with them. With rare exception, neither the poor nor the working class will be able to jump over the canyon to become wealthy. The middle class will become poverty class a heck of a lot more easily. Unless the basic problem of too much unemployment is solved, they will remain one misstep away from the even more inescapable poor house, one job loss, one auto accident, one illness – even just a short term illness.

The fair tax enhances this problem with even more incentive for corruption. Once you boost the existing plutocracy with even more cash, you guarantee the continued corruption of the government. This will ensure that the unemployment rate remains above the old 7% so that there is never a job seekers’ market. In short, the companies fair well, but the poor and the middle class are screwed. This may be something the Libertarians in our midst support, but it is nothing the average American should buy into.

The top half of income earners contribute 97% of all tax revenues. The fair tax is suicidal because it would suddenly eliminate 97% of revenue.

But you may not appreciate or believe in that so let me assure you it gets much worse. As I mentioned, this is a revenue problem. The reality is that the rich presently pay the majority of America’s taxes. That money suddenly doesn’t appear in our tax coffers. The fair tax suddenly shuts off the spigot to the vast majority of its current revenue source – taxes paid by the wealthy. And if that isn’t enough, it also stops taxing corporations. There is no way to make up for this sudden loss and yet maintain a flat tax rate other than to tax the poor and middle class still more. How? By increasing the national sales tax rate. After all, the national sales tax is its only source of revenue – unless … it doesn’t repeal the 16th amendment within the required seven years.

I forgot to mention that. The Fair Tax proposes to eliminate the IRS by repealing the 16th amendment. Repealing amendments isn’t so easy in a partisan world. Let’s be realistic about this. Fair Tax majority support is already fluky. Assuming that after seven years, the IRS comes back and starts recomplicating this, we’ll have both a rapidly escalating national sales tax and the existing mess we’re already complaining about at the same time. Isn’t that wonderful?

THE ESCALATING PREBATE

Did I say “escalating”? Yes, I did … because of the cost of the prebates. These start out at say, $25,000 for a family of four, and the cost of living in a state is not a consideration, (which is certainly unfair). Then, since more money needs to be raised and taxes will increase, the cost of living goes up. The prebate is based on the cost of living. Therefore, the prebate also must increase. The price of products on the shelves that the poor and middle class have to spend all their money on keeps increasing along with the prebate amounts. The prebate amount keeps increasing with higher and higher tax rates. In each case, it is never the wealthy who pay for it. It is always the poor and middle class. And these are made happy by the morphine shots they get that we call prebates. The trick is to keep everybody comfortably numb.

The pot then begins to boil with the poor and middle class unaware that they can jump out of it. At a certain point, the national sales tax rate reaches 100%. This is inclusively calculated, so a product that costs $1.00 on the shelf, gets a 100% or $2 price. No problem. The prebate pays for it. This still doesn’t produce enough income for the government, so the rate then becomes 200%, or 300% and so on. The price of the product on the shelf doubles or triples accordingly every few months or years. Unfortunately, it is not the business that is controlling the price at that point. It is the government. If people can’t afford it and buying slows down, the price can only be reduced with the loss of government revenue. That means the national sales tax rate must increase still more and with it the prebate amount. The circle never ends.

The result is an inflation that does not benefit the wealthy. It merely slows down the economy. So what are we doing with responsible fiscal budgeting here? We are creating a crisis. We begin by paying out the prebate in advance. This is where it gets its name. It’s paid out so that the people can afford the extra cost of stuff. Paying it out in advance is fine for the public, but not for the government, which needs to live within its means. The government doesn’t have the cash to do that unless it goes farther into debt. Yes, the government too can have cash flow problems.

The prebate amount keeps increasing so this problem doesn’t go away. It only escalates. The result is that the government eventually shuts down. Good grief. We were losing money with the current tax system because of loopholes for the wealthy. The fair tax takes the current pin hole sized loop holes and turns them into one big rip in the balloon. Just say “no” to the fair tax. It’s not just unfair. It is suicidal.

THE RESTORATION PARTY TAX POLICY

So enough about the Fair Tax. The Flat Tax is no better. It just doesn’t offer prebates or try to mess with the 16th amendment. Let’s move on to the tax policy of the Restoration Party. What do I actually recommmend?

I said that I liked the neutral tax. Like other tax programs, the neutral tax seeks to abolish the IRS. There is nothing simple about the neutral tax though. It sells itself as simplistic but in fact, I should state up front that it is likely to be far more complex. Its complexity comes from allowing each state to determine its own tax methods. What that does is it creates fifty separate tax codes – one for each state.

It is up to each state how simple or complicated they want to make their revenue generation. The neutral tax says nothing about how to scale revenue between the rich and the poor or what deductions and credits to allow or for what purposes. It allows states the flexibility to build tax revenue code that is in their own best interest, which is something their own voters can determine.

It will be the general policy of the Restoration Party that it is the Federal government’s role to serve the states, just as it is the role of each state to serve its residents. Government is for and by the people. The guiding principle of the Restoration Party is restoring public service to the people, by the people, for the people. That means on every level. The role of the Federal government is no different and its tax policy fits in with that consistent view.

My personal view on this matter is not entirely important. What matters is the opinions of the people in each state. A state that wants to attract the presence of the uber wealthy, may want a Fair Tax code. Then again, its residents may strongly object. One thing the neutral tax does by bringing power back to the states is it takes it out of the hands of the plutocrats in Washington. That does not, however, take it out of the hands of the plutocrats in their state. A much closer attention to local politics can be expected and it won’t be dictated by a news feed controlled by national TV. That could get interesting.

My own state of Florida has no state income tax. Our government gets its revenue primarily from travel and hospitality. Our state sales tax is comparatively low. It was 5% when I grew up and has now crept up to 7%. Property taxes are quite low also and there is a homestead exemption here to encourage people to move here. That raises property values, which raises property tax revenue but no where near as much as a simple increase in property tax rates would.

The richest 62 people have more net worth than the poorest 50%. Taxing their wealth is simple and solves the problem. But it is politically incorrect to even suggest that. Hmmm. I wonder why.

I personally am a believer in real estate property tax and another type of property tax, a stock and bond property tax. I’m all for the elimination of income tax. But it is property tax I would personally advocate. But that’s just me. Other Restoration Party members might vehemently disagree. The rich may not buy much stuff but they do purchase assets. If you want to tax them, then forget their income. That disincentivizes business growth. Tax their assets instead, starting with their real estate. Sure they’ll squeal and complain, but that’s where the money is. It’s not in the pockets of the poor and the working class who live from paycheck to paycheck.

That’s my opinion and I’m sticking to it. But neither is that the policy of the Restoration Party. I always separate the two. The Party itself let’s each state decide. As such, it makes sense for each state Restoration Party to support the neutral tax. Beyond this, it cries out for a restoration of public service to the people. That means breaking up monopolies and divorcing government from the wealthy few. As such, it is likely that measures separating the wealthy from governmennt influence would be taken. Raising property taxes, and especially stock and bond taxes, would not be inconsistent with that aim.

Simplicity can also be served. I don’t want to undersell this. An asset tax is better, in my opinion, than a capital gains tax. Eliminate a capital gains tax and replace it with an asset tax. I recognize this requires repealing a clause in an amendment. Parties are better suited for making such changes than Acts and bills are in themselves. Excellent change takes time.

Simplicity is also served in a practical way. States have smaller bureaucracies. They tend to live within their means better than the Federal Government does. They know better than to make their tax laws hopelessly complex. The harder that is, the more tax collectors they will need. They can’t afford more tax collectors and auditors. Elimination of tax loopholes is in their best interest. Simplicity follows and each state handles it, all while maintaining incentives that make sense for each state.

Now that is policy that I think belongs on the Restoration Party platform. It’s two visions. One for me and one for the party. This one is for the here and now. And there you have it.

P.7: About Dad

It was nice moving back home living with my parents after I finished my bachelor’s degree. My friendship with my father had always been about my accomplishments prior to that – qualifying for the Olympics, hitting it big with a jazz combo. But I wasn’t good enough at either one of those things. I won’t fault him for his enthusiasm or encouragement but there shouldn’t have been any talk about any Olympics and given my personal limits it was somewhat misguided. I had a four year scholarship in diving and it’s helpful to set goals. I dove against Greg Louganis and all the best but I wasn’t nearly talented enough to be an Olympian and the big dream continually put in front of me by his words ultimately left me feeling I had disappointed him. Coming home and living in the house a few years helped build our relationship on more solid ground.

That home was a place called Eden Road, in Palm Beach. Charley Carvin achieved a measure of success in life. Many would say I grew up in a privileged family but such advantage has its limits and it isn’t what many people think it is. In 1966 we moved just three or four houses away from the Kennedy family on the shore of Palm Beach. Dad’s father, Charley Carvin Sr., had taught him the textile business and been quite a personality in New York. Dad rode on his success but he took risks. He was a salesman and a marketing man, who smoked cigarettes and enjoyed two martini lunches, and had a trophy wife, in the style of the fictional Mad Man, Don Draper, living in a mansion in Rye.

Charles Carvin and Jonathan Winters. The name of this Indian character may never be recovered.

Dad always had stories to tell and they were always larger than life. We always had to check with Aunt Barbara to see which parts were true and where the exaggeration fit in. I’d have loved to have known what actually caused him to resign as VP of Allied Chemical’s Chemstran division. Aunt Barbara affirmed he was Jonathan Winters’ AA partner. The great comedian lived across the pond from us. Alcohol was likely part of it. But did he get fired because of his drinking? It’s nothing he ever hinted at with me. He liked me thinking of him as a superhero. People ask what class is – it’s a mother who throughout a lifetime has nothing but positive things to say about your father, yet never once lied. She was better looking than Betty Draper and she had more class too.

When I got home from college, Dad and I would talk about business and politics every night as we watched the MacNeil-Lehrer Report. The concept of “Country Club Republican” was something that hit home. Dad had been a member of sixty different golf clubs – one of the perks of his old job. Richard Nixon stayed at the house next door to ours when he campaigned in Florida and Dad was a big donor who leveraged his relationships on the island. Ronald Reagan was like the Messiah’s messenger for Dad, and then later Rush Limbaugh. But Limbaugh and Trump became Palm Beach powers after Dad lost his prominence. He had this in common with Trump – they had both received flack from the Town of Palm Beach for starting clubs that were ethnically inclusive. Dad had bought the Palm Beach Pier, which had been condemned for disrepair. He was trying to build an underwater restaurant there. But Palm Beach didn’t want black people walking across the bridge to fish over the ocean.

West Palm Beach is known for its racial divide. The disparity between rich and poor there, the workers and the wealthy, forced the distinction between class and classiness. Perceptions of snootiness, noses high in the air, seemed imaginary to me growing up. None of my friends ever did that, so far as I can remember, but obviously there was ethnic separation being imposed by the decision makers. The Jews had their club and the gentiles had theirs. The two did not mix. Blacks were not allowed on the island without permission at all. I can’t imagine what it must have been like for my friends, Kyle Boynton, or Beau and Kim Darden. To me their blackness was a cool thing.

They were just friends, the token black kids at Palm Beach Public School. Nobody had taught me to hate anybody. Their parents must have been wealthy to get there though. I know Boon Darden Sr. was Chief of the Riviera Beach Police. I never gave any thought to how out of place they may have felt. Girls were all I could think about at the time. Then desegregation brought busloads of black children to the island. Some of these kids were unfriendly. My brother got mugged. The days of Christmas parties at the Darden’s house were over. The new black kids clicked up and stayed separate. It was their comfort zone. I don’t blame them. But now I look back and think about what they probably thought about us. We were no longer people. We were the rich. And they didn’t want us in their neighborhoods. Racial division went two ways.

Nancy Lowry was our nanny. She was born on a slave plantation three years after the emancipation proclamation. Her parents chose to stay on the plantation in Georgia because the owner, Judge Bivens, was kind.

Privilege may mean naivety but it doesn’t mean hate. We weren’t just privileged. We were fortunate. Dad’s Dad, Pop Pop, was no wealthy kid. He was just a hard worker. Naturally, I have to sort out the exaggeration here, but as I understand it, his father, a bartender, had sent him packing out to San Francisco to live with his Uncle Joe because he was the son of a former wife. It is speculated he may not have been legitimate. His Uncle Joe was a cab driver who was later shot in the back of the head. None of that stopped Charley Sr. from moving up in the world. He moved back to Philadelphia and started at the bottom at Murphy textiles and ultimately won the affection of both father and daughter. When you marry into it you’re not earning all your money so I won’t make the claim he achieved the American dream through savings and hard work alone.

No. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that savings and hard work are elusive as hell when it comes to achieving the American dream. Anything going wrong with your health along the way can destroy the entire effort. One accident can lead to a downward spiral. We’re all just one fatal misstep away from failure. And if we manage not to screw everything up while remaining free of misfortune, there’s a certain tipping point for wealth that creates security. At that point you can let your portfolio managers limit your risk. Your interest and dividends will be enough to live on. If enough generations pass while your savings keep working for you and your children, you become a “blue blood.”

Dad loved to play cards. We played a lot of poker.

It’s like royalty. You don’t have to be an entrepreneur. But that’s what Dad was. He was a gambler. He was desperate to make it to the top so he could maintain and improve on the lifestyle of his father. Pop Pop was an adventurous and talented guy, but not a gambler. Dad was there, so close to that financial safety zone – but not quite all the way to blue blood freedom. In getting to know Dad, I hadn’t yet learned these distinctions. His great business acumen had been presented to me as a matter of experience and certainty – not foolish risk. But the ugly truth was this. After he resigned from Allied he was free to make his own fortune. He bought a seat belt manufacturing plant. He gambled on what to him looked like a sure thing. And he lost.

Dad's luck ran out about the age of fifty one. — Dad’s luck ran out about the age of fifty one.

My father’s loss was my gain. I could easily have been handed a kingdom. I know that’s what he wanted. Instead, I saw and came to know and understand the life of an entrepreneur. And that is something more valuable than an MBA. I also came to realize there are two very different types of people living in Palm Beach. There are those who will never know the type of struggle and lack of security Dad knew. And then there are people like Dad. There are many on the island who don’t ask questions about money. They are simple people who make friends and enjoy living there while it lasts. And then there are the people who know you’re looking for a loan. You become a pariah when your cash runs short. You have to hide that fact for as long as you can when it happens.

Dad was a motivator. If you wanted him to notice you, you had to be part of the excitement he lived on.

I no longer serve as a loan representative. It’s an unethical business that was eating away at my soul but I’ll never forget the hardship cases I heard every day. Everybody had a story leading up to why they were desperate enough to borrow money from me at rates above 30%. It was mostly car repairs, health problems, lost jobs, evictions. Occasionally it was family members borrowing their own money to care for their loved ones. I respect sacrificial giving. But there is nothing I understand better than the struggle of the entrepreneur. Some would call me still wet behind the ears looking for $20-40,000 to start a business. Then they would tell me about their current debt and income. I knew they weren’t getting any loan. What they needed was an investor.

The Ballad of Little Cloud - Written to the Tune of House of the Rising Sun — The Ballad of Little Cloud – Written to the Tune of House of the Rising Sun

And then there was the woman who had gotten herself into business but failed. People have no sympathy for failing entrepreneurs. They are angry at them for spending their money foolishly. Banks can’t loan them money – too much risk. I may have been one of the only people on this planet qualified to offer comfort to a woman like that. Entrepreneurs have to borrow money from friends and family to get a start. Friends and family may loan you money for a business once, but seldom twice. You’ve got to show them a return on their investment the first time around. You can’t have a better idea down the road. It doesn’t work. If you fail, you don’t just lose your savings. You lose your family and friends.

Happily It's Carvin - The More Colorful Marketing Man — Happily It’s Carvin – The More Colorful Marketing Man

The serial entrepreneur knows nothing in this world other than how to have a dream and make it happen. The risk they take when they attempt to live out their dream involves the loss of everything that matters most. It’s not just the money. It’s the relationships. It can take a lifetime to gain back forgiveness and respect – most never offer it. Those who suffer from substance abuse addictions enjoy far more understanding than failed entrepreneurs. And yet if you look at the memes on the Internet – one after the other encourages entrepreneurs to never give up. Never giving up is the core mantra. Imagine a world where addicts are encouraged to never give up on their drug induced euphoria. That’s what it’s like for entrepreneurs. They can’t escape how they are wired. They are told to get real jobs by those who think real jobs are what normal people do – people who save their money, pay their insurance, and live within their means. Such talk comes from the same people who reject the term “living wage.” On principle, you should be able to earn $2 dollars a day and your family should be just fine. It doesn’t matter that living within your means means being homeless.

Dad didn't say exactly what happened at Allied. He just kept this ash tray on his desk. It seemed to explain things. — Dad didn’t say exactly what happened at Allied. He just kept this ash tray on his desk. It seemed to explain things.

What a very different world the entrepreneur lives in compared to the corporate mogul, who calls himself an entrepreneur. The mogul is really just a portfolio manager. Even the venture capitalist is all about valuating businesses and mitigating risks. Passion for a dream is a distraction. The angel investor comes to save the entrepreneur’s day but is otherwise known as a shark. If you want cash to run a business – go to your family and friends. If you run out of family and friends to borrow from because you’ve failed once, produce a miracle. Produce a miracle because that is what is expected of the superheros we call entrepreneurs. The moguls take the name. The sharks live on the blood of real entrepreneurs.

The Carvin family at Eden Road. The two oldest brothers are not pictured here.

Who is the true “serial entrepreneur”? Is it the person who has dreams they can’t give up on even if they fail? Is it the person who reinvents it and keeps coming back? Or is it the one who is lucky enough to pick more than one good start up to risk some of his spare money on? I mean no disrespect to the investor but the true serial entrepreneur is the one with the passion so great that he puts everything he has into it. Anyone worthy of the name “entrepreneur” will come back to life after everybody thought they were dead. There was a brief time when Dad had enough money to be the portfolio manager type but he threw everything he had into his big bets. The company owner takes on the risk. That’s why they reap the rewards if they succeed.

three story underwater restaurant off Worth Avenue in Palm Beach. Palm Beach refused to rebuild the pier. The Council didn't even want Jews mixing with gentiles. — Dad wanted to build a three story underwater restaurant off Worth Avenue in Palm Beach. Palm Beach refused to rebuild the pier. The Council didn’t even want Jews mixing with gentiles.

It was good to learn this from Dad as we watched the news every night. Crossfire came on next. And it’s an irony. He knew the stress his business put him through and saw that I wanted to own my own business too. He’d encouraged me to get into music and to dive against impossible odds. And then he did what he could to discourage me from going into business. He wanted to spare me the heart ache. I was a savings counselor at a Savings and Loan. You could get a T30 Certificate of Deposit and earn 18%. Before his bankruptcy, Dad was paying out over 30% on the money he was borrowing to keep his business afloat. I saw it ripping him apart. Somehow several years later he managed to pay off the IRS and sell the house on Eden Road. Working at a bank was about as interesting to me as watching grass grow.

It wasn't about where the bathrooms were to be located. The Town rejected the new Pier proposal because they didn't want a Piers. A pier would attract black people to the island. — It wasn’t about where the bathrooms were to be located. The Town rejected the new Palm Beach Pier proposal because they didn’t want any pier. A pier would attract black people to the island.

Donald Trump and Rush Limbaugh moved onto the island right around when we moved off. Now that was exciting. Trump turned Meriwether Post’s house into a country club. Corinne used to babysit for Timmy Griffin there and I had had a few peeks. As Dad’s health kept heading south, his stories kept coming in. He was jealous of Trump’s bankruptcies, him and Jud Kasuba. “If you’re going to have a bankruptcy,” he would say to me, “fail so big the banks have to bail you out.”

As he embraced his failure, Dad’s stories grew more spiritual. He was Catholic and he wanted me to be a priest. He couldn’t tell me this, lest I lose respect for him, but to his mind it was essential in business to “sell the customer what they need, not what they want.” It was one of the eight slogans in his Total Marketing Concept. The customer may not really need it. But you have to believe they do if you’re going to market your product. Enthusiasm and excitement. That’s what really matters. He knew my sense of ethics would never swallow that. I was all about delivering what you promise. He was right.

That was Dad’s dirty little secret. He preached Republican libertarianism and introduced me to Walter Williams. But he knew the ways of this world and there was a disconnect between the supposed positive morality of free market capitalism and the world he knew as a marketing man. Sales wasn’t about selling people what they want. It was about showing them they need what you want them to want. If that meant dealing in excitement to sell an illusion, so be it. When a person buys an illusion it isn’t a fair exchange of values. It is one person robbing another. Dad saw I had my mom’s innocence in a world full of guile. He wanted to keep it that way.

Dad had the trophy wife in Rye. Draper was a VP hired at Allied the same week Dad was. Don Draper was fictional but Dad did chain smoke, take the train to Mamaroneck and do martini lunches

But Dad was not going to be able to stop me. He set me in motion to think globally when he taught me to think like an Olympic champion. And when he talked about my future in music, it wasn’t just so I could play to my children. Success was defined by the names of well known musicians. It didn’t matter if I lacked sufficient talent, or not. There was no such thing as half-way in the world Dad showed me. Nightly political discussions magnified this because together what we talked about was how to fix the world. Dad was very animated in his opinion. He sold what the world needs to his believing son. If you hate Ronald Reagan for whatever reason, just pretend he was a Democrat. It makes no difference. Dad built up in me a fire for changing things. We had a vision for a better world. And when he did that, it wasn’t something he could put out.

Then came 1982. I didn’t go to the Catholic Seminary to be a parish priest. I went as a layman wanting to lead laymen. I had been working at the Savings and Loan for two years at that point and had just taken a job with the US Postal Service. I moved into a town home and it’s probably a good thing I moved out of Dad’s house because it was while working at the S&L that it suddenly dawned on me that capitalism was the problem rather than the solution. I had a job that involved nothing but shifting people’s money around. I wasn’t producing any real goods or services that tangibly improved anyone’s quality of life. It occurred to me that the vast majority of jobs were actually like that, including Dad’s marketing job at Allied. It was a horrible waste of human effort. I could be making widgets with my hands or serving tables or fixing toilets and accomplishing more with my time. Delivering mail was liberating. Part of it was bills but another part was nice letters and packages.

People used to write letters.

Everything was larger than life with Charley Carvin. Scanners and printers even started behaving oddly as if to send messages from beyond the grave.

That was when the concept of an incentivized asynalagonomy came to me. I entered that seminary with this on my mind, and surprisingly, my idea for a money-less economy was very well received and I quickly found myself being introduced to a cadre of Marxists at the Catholic Regional Seminary.

But my favor with them was very short-lived thanks to the influence of my Dad. Coming home with a report of them met with all the reasons Ronald Reagan was needed so badly. My mom, a Presbyterian, was relieved to hear of the Catholic Communists. Perhaps it would dissolve some of my Dad’s criticism of her pastor for preaching unilateral disarmament at a time when what was needed more than ever was a total commitment to the policy of Mutually Assured Destruction. But Dad’s Catholic faith had blinders to such fair criticism. God’s special providence was on the Catholic Church. He would stand on the idea that the gates of hell couldn’t prevail against it. The problem of Communism at the Seminary was going to go away just like all heresies do over time.

Dad was very serious about his business. If you are going to do it, you're all in. — Dad was very serious about his business. If you are going to do it, you’re all in.

Maybe the Communists would but not the Democrats. They were at the Seminary to stay. And by 1986, the Boland Amendment was preventing funding of anti-Communist efforts in Latin America. Ollie North was raising funds in ways that got Reagan in trouble and a not so well remembered guy, Sam Hall, an Olympic diver turned counter-terrorist became my new role model. Dad brought me back around full swing cleaning the seminary of its heretical liberation theology. I even found evidence that the MaryKnoll sisters were shipping guns to the Sandinistas. Well, that certainly wasn’t very peaceful. And it wasn’t something I should have shown my Social Justice teacher, a Trotskyite. The Seminary no longer offered the classes necessary for me to complete my Masters in Theology degree after that. Well at least they wouldn’t ship me off to some parish assignment in the middle of nowhere as they were known to do with their controversial priests. I’d accept the incompleted degree as the price for my freedom to actually change the world. Youth is such a beautiful thing. You can do anything.

Charley was instrumental in moving Allied Chemical to the Time Square Building and he was honored for it. The printer glitched and stretched out the story.

So here are just a few closing thoughts for this page in my story. First, I am not my father. I listed to my father. I considered the Republican Party and became familiar with Libertarian ideology. I accepted the trickle down theory as axiomatic for capitalist paradigms and could see how government had done nothing but destroy my father’s hopes and dreams. I was never a Communist. Those people believe in revolution. Violence is inefficient. Communism is even more inefficient than incentivized tradeless economies are efficient.

We were just a bunch of kids who wanted to fish. Dad didn't want the racists on the island stopping us. — We were just a bunch of kids who wanted to fish. Dad didn’t want the racists on the island stopping us.

And the whole capitalist thing? My dad’s example was proof positive that it takes money to make money. A key trick to capitalism is capital. The large corporation has distinct advantages over the individual. Being a shareholder is not being an entrepreneur. It is taking a free ride on a system the way a surfer takes a free ride on a wave if they are lucky to be positioned for doing it at the right time. It’s not like a corporate board doesn’t have some input. A surfer has to have some instinct and experience and has to paddle and have balance. Even a portfolio holder needs that much skill. But entrepreneurship is dead in America if that’s all it is anymore. Is entrepreneurship dead? My family hates my Dad’s failure. They hate my failure.

The Eight Principles of the Total Marketing Concept

And what about the Communist thing? Incentivized asynalagonomy understands that Communism fails because the people have no incentive to work. They can’t even call anything their own. Socialism and Communism have never achieved more than state Capitalism. They’ve never been asynalagonomies, much less incentivized ones. There is nothing in common between them. Communism is an illusion. And the idiots of this world are trying to force it on us through violent revolution. Or they were. Even the MaryKnoll nuns have helped them. It’s just one more raw marketing deal in this world.

And what people need, not what they want, is incentivized asynalagonomy. “The duller the product the greater the prospects for success,” my Dad used to say. That’s well and good, Dad. But you’ve got to have a marketing organization if you want total marketing. I haven’t given up on the idea this can’t be done without cash. Just show me how to find my partners.

P.6: Curricular Interests

Stepping back and forward one more day in the life of, I bring you to my educational pursuits. I am a constant student.

Archimandrite Father Eusebius Stephanou, founder of the Brotherhood of St. Symeon the New Theologian. May his memory be eternal.

I also cry at movies when they have a very high impact. A close friend of mine recently passed away. He founded the Brotherhood of St. Symeon the New Theologian. I had been a supporter of his for years and for a time was on the Board of Directors. The ministry was controversial within the Orthodox Church and in some ways I was critical but the late Archimandrite Eusebius Stephanou occasionally published some of my writing, wondered at my insight, and whenever I saw him he would always lament that there weren’t enough wealthy patrons to support me in a ministry of writing, though I was a layman.

The brothers would read from the writings of St. Symeon the New Theologian and discuss them regularly. St. Symeon was all about tears. The type of tears St. Symeon described are those that happen when there is close engagement in a profound theological love relationship. They are not just tears of joy. They embrace every Christian mystery.

St. Symeon the New Theologian said that we should not let a single day pass that we do not shed tears of repentance

People cry at movies because of a close engagement in a drama. I’m convinced that it is a gift of imagination they have that causes them to emote this way. It is a form of empathy. The healthy body is designed to relate to others, to experience with others, through active engagement of the mind and heart, in a participation between their knowledge of their own experience and what they understand and can relate to in the experience of another.

Not everyone has the gift of tears. Not everyone is an empath but those who are are often thought a little strange by those who are not. For Symeon, continual tears were the appropriate result of a healthy relationship with and in Christ. He did not talk just of agape love, a higher cerebral love divorced from the body. He spoke of divine eros, a love relationship with God that produced a continuous flow of tears. These were not just tears of joy for Symeon. They were tears of profound communion. I’ll spare you the special theological terms behind it, reserving those for my Cosmostrophy page, where I feel more at liberty to discuss my religion.

The reason I am blogging here in My Story is so you can know who the founder of the Restoration Party is and better understand the values I would like it to embrace. It is an elaborate way to share where I am coming from. It will provide some context for the proposals, viewpoints and mission reflected in the Restoration Party Manifesto that I am in the midst of writing as I continue to blog.

The harder the conflict the greater the triumph - George Washington — The harder the conflict the greater the triumph – George Washington

I do realize that political enemies will come along and take the things I say out of context so that I may be misrepresented. It’s the way of the world. Blogging here provides a simple way to access the whole picture and acquire my personal understanding of the truth. I am a Christian but I am not on the Christian right. I am Orthodox but I am a critic of Orthodoxy and of Christianity as a whole. I am associated with the Brotherhood of St. Symeon the New Theologian but have complex views when it comes to charismatic movements.

To contract new debts is not the way to pay old ones - George Washington — To contract new debts is not the way to pay old ones – George Washington

And the truth is that, like St. Symeon, I am a man of many tears. When other people hurt, I hurt with them. When they rejoice, I rejoice with them. This week, I had approximately 300 loan requests. Of those, approximately 90 cars had broken down, 80 jobs had been lost, 5 husbands had died, 2 wives, 3 sons, 4 had cancer, 11 had spouses with cancer, 7 fatal accidents, some lost all they had through law suits, others gave all that they had caring for their elderly parents, 20 cars in tow, 14 on the verge of repossession, 120 had moving expenses, about 40 moves were simultaneous with cars breaking down. It was like I was reliving my own life again through them, and all like me, were broke enough to have no credit or savings sufficient to handle the impact. They were all desperate enough to call me, knowing they would pay sky high interest rates. There were also 4 weddings and about 20 vacations. It’s not all bad until you see they can’t actually afford these things.

James and Chickie Carvin at the Group Home where Chickie stayed in Lake Worth. Chickie holds up a flower he grew himself in the garden there.

One of my last calls was a girl living in a group home. My brother had lived in a group home like that. She had Down Syndrome like him. It hadn’t occurred to me that the Internet would ever become accessible to Down Syndrome people living in group homes but here she was trying to get a loan to pay for her $330 medical bill. Her medical bill was all of $1.33 greater than her social security check. I get paid commission and it was my job to upsell her while I issued her the $500 loan she needed for the $1.33 expense. A better loan rep than myself would have sold her a credit monitoring service for $39/month and credit repair for $99/month, both of which she qualified for, as she neither knew her credit scores nor had good credit. Had I been a fiction writer, I would never have thought of such a scene. The reality is something I will never be able to remove from my mind.

What this situation does to an empath with a conscience is it prompts passion. It makes me want to fix a seriously screwed up system before it dries up my tears, numbing me with the repetitious sales pitch that drags my soul to hell. When I previously mentioned my work made me cry, some of my friends contacted me because they were concerned about me. They needn’t worry. I’m not suffering from depression and I’ve never had a suicidal thought in my life. It’s when the tears stop that I start wondering what is wrong with me. It’s when a person doesn’t care that the disease becomes evident. As we consider reality, there shouldn’t be a dry eye in the house. But we are sick.

Father Eusebius Stephanou welcomes Orthodox Christians to the Brotherhood of St. Symeon the New Theologian.

The Orthodox like to distance St. Symeon from the charismatic movement. They think Pentecostalism is demonic and believe he can only be understood in a monastic context. After all, he was an abbot and there is little evidence he spoke in tongues or conducted healing services as he promised material blessings in exchange for faith gifts.

And speaking of demons, the Orthodox view spiritual warfare very differently. The devil is spoken of and his demons but defeating them is largely a matter of overcoming passion. It’s passion that is the enemy. Orthodox exorcism is all about overcoming fleshly passion, which is one reason the tears of St. Symeon are anything but Pentecostal. They view Pentecostalism as a carnal replacement for genuine spirituality. Their fasts are not viewed as entreaties to God so much as exercises in overcoming desire. It is all about discipline. The mind removed from the things of this world is freed up to contemplate the things of the next.

John Climacus - the Ladder of Divine Ascent. The role of the demon is to distract and tempt with sin so that divine love is unknown. — John Climacus – the Ladder of Divine Ascent. The role of the demon is to distract and tempt with sin so that divine love is unknown.

The role of the demon in the life of a Christian is that of an annoyance. They are sent by a master of folly to distract and drag down a spiritual aspirant who for lack of discipline willfully engages in their temptations. Whereas the Pentecostal will offer verbal incantations against the demons and suppose these have rendered spiritual victory, the Orthodox finds victory only at the end of life’s journey in a soul that has climbed to spiritual heights in his own liberation from passion. It is not as though there is no passion. It is a passionate dispassion that evolves as he comes to grow in his love for Christ and by that is the devil defeated.

In the meantime, all that happens in life happens in the permissive will of God, who permits the demons to tempt man in various ways. Destruction and loss are like that. We get too attached to things. We need to realize who we really are. And with that in mind, I will proceed with my story.

I was a music composition major when I was in college. I chose it because I had a strong sense of calling to be a writer. Actually, what I wanted was to be a movie producer – an interactive movie producer -but I had to take things one step at a time and wait for the technology to evolve. It was the music that reached the soul so I thought I would start there. I had a sense that I should write something that would change the world for the better – that media was capable of affecting people in positive ways. I wanted that to happen. It was a realization I had my junior year and it wasn’t a bad one. Prior to that I’d been in it for the wrong reasons. I was seeking admiration.

Quartal and Quintal Harmony - a Flute Sonata by Paul Hindemith — Quartal and Quintal Harmony – a Flute Sonata by Paul Hindemith

In the 1970’s the University of South Carolina music department placed much emphasis on the avant-garde. It was futuristic. Every music course pointed forward through history and asked what would come next. I wrote a paper at that time on a forthcoming digital age and purchased my first synthesizer in the hope of developing it. I was no prolific writer back then. I was new at the craft but I managed to work up a portfolio at that time, which included some symphonic works, string quartets, jazz combo pieces, madrigals, canons, some counterpoint for piano, background music for poetry readings, some polytonal polyrythmic stuff in honor of Charles Ives and a trombone trio sonata in the quartal style of Hindemith.

Some of these works, including the first movement of the last, were performed at Seminar and received quite nicely there and then on my final day of school, the final performance of my trio sonata was scheduled so that my parents, who were driving up from South Florida to take me home, could hear it.

I was excited about the future and the lessons I had learned. I had learned about John Cage – a man who used elements of chance in music, and Charles Ives, who saw music three dimensionally, and sought to portray reality by music as he walked through a park on the Fourth of July. They had taught me to look at the interaction of the world itself as part of the music. I had also studied Indian music and learned to see music as a message from God. I had learned to look around me and find music in everything and even to see everything as music. I had learned to appreciate and came to believe in God as a master orchestrator of all, making music out of chance, simplifying the complex in ways that united in a single epic story.

The night before the trio sonata I was on the verge of telling my parents about all of these things. I wanted them to be excited with me and feel my time at USC had been well spent.

But that wasn’t meant to be. In the juggle of packing my things, I had somehow lost my entire music portfolio. I frantically searched my apartment, doubling back through my suit cases and opening up trash bags. I darted over to my locker at the music building and even went to the stadium, where the jazz band rehearsed. Nothing. I then showed up to the performance and the other two players failed to come. There sat waiting my parents and my music teacher.

College students. Finals week. Who would have expected them to show up to something they got no credit for? I should have known better – and they had their parts with them. They had taken them with them to practice. My parents were convinced that no trio sonata had ever been written and that I was lying to them. Fortunately, my composition teacher came and assured them he had seen it with his own eyes. He passed me, knowing I had done the work, but the thirteen hour drive back home was an uncomfortable one and I had no portfolio to build on. Suddenly my future looked very bleak. I took a job at a Savings and Loan.

When God orchestrates, he also conducts. He does so without impeding freedom. What seems random to us is foreknown and brought to a perfect climax.

I have no regrets about my lost portfolio. There was one thing I understood. That event was merely the opening movement of a larger orchestration piece. I stopped to hear the sound of it. I was enjoying how the story, told polysymphonically in the form of all events, was unfolding. I respected the writer. I was drawn to a masterpiece in the making. It was as if the music, as if a song, was just starting with my journey back to South Florida with my father and mom.

My academic career didn’t end there but I will point out here that each new chapter of my life has begun with a sort of tragic ending involving loss. In the music business we are taught to observe and analyze form. We know that the ending of a piece by Beethoven is going to have a significant build up. The end is not really the end just yet. It gets better and when it is complete it leaves the listener fully satisfied. It’s like great sex that way, with climax upon climax in one final long and wonderful climax.

Destruction is rarely the end. It typically signals a new beginning.

That’s how I’d like my life to be. I’d like it to end with perfect satisfaction. I believe the orchestrator of all things has that planned. I’ve seen the patterns the way I see the themes and motifs of Beethoven finales long before their recapitulation. A good ending is set up from the beginning. Destruction and loss are little more than doorways to new chapters in the book of life.

I’ll tell you about the pursuit of my Master’s Degree on another page. That also involved gainful loss and that will be a theme here. I told you about the salmon and the ant on page five. It is a story of loss and rebuilding. All of this will lead up to Chapter Eight of the Restoration Party Manifesto. Our country is about to suffer very great loss.

That is sad but I am not a sad man nor do I glory in anyone’s loss. Never in my life have I ever desired loss and I do not desire it for this country. That is why I have been doing everything I know how to persuade others to implement Solution A, as outlined in Chapter Two of the Manifesto, as also the subsequent chapters I am presently working on. I am not a passive aggressive type who would sabotage himself just to live out some sense of unworthiness and neither do I want that for America.

God can bring beauty out of ashes. We need to be reminded of this.

No, I believe my losses have been a part of the orchestrator’s curriculum. They are there to teach me to teach others that we can rebuild and that when we do rebuild we can build even better than we were first building. There is a storm coming and we are about to experience very great loss. I have referred to it as an apocalypse. It is that bad. I am going to write some songs and in them I will spell out the path to reconstruction. We will be without electricity and government, but maybe enough of us will remember the songs, that these little curricular interests of mine will be shared. We will rebuild. We will get through this. God willing, I will provide a road map to restoration and we will follow it.