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Nothing to Fear, but Fear, and…

Kevin Coolidge

Keep calm and carry on. There’s nothing to fear here, or at least that’s the official position of the government. “The flesh-eating living dead don’t actually exist”, said a spokesman for the Centers for Disease Control. “The CDC does not know of a virus or condition that would reanimate the dead, or one that would present zombie-like symptoms.”

I don’t know about you, but when a government agency feels the need to give official reassurance, I’m inclined to trust my own infestation plan, and cold-forged steel. Sure, your house has its own victory garden, you have plywood pre-cut for the windows, and you spent your vacation money on a water filtration system, but sometimes you have to leave the house.

I never leave home without my emergency kit. It contains a roll of duct tape, ten feet of rope, a sturdy knife, two quarts of water, two packages of beef jerky, some dried fruit, a can of bacon, towels, an extra shirt, and small crowbar – just right for cracking skulls, or prying off face biters – and, of course, a napalm fed flame-thrower. It’s good to be prepared.

Unfortunately, after reading John Dies @ the End by David Wong, I learned that a zombie apocalypse is actually the best-case scenario. It’s too late for me. I’ve read the book. I’m in the game. I’m under the eye. I know about Korrok, about the invasion, about the future. It’s too late for me. I didn’t have the chance to say no. You still do.

If you make the right choice and stop reading the column here, I’ll have a much harder time explaining how to fight off the otherworldly invasion that threatens to enslave humanity. I’m sorry to have involved you in this, but as you read about the terrible events in John Dies @ the End, and the Dark Age the world will enter as a result, please keep in mind that NONE OF THIS IS MY FAULT.

It all started one day when I called David Wong and his best friend John. No, not their real names. You might want to change yours. I did. These aren’t the guys to call if you need a carburetor rebuilt. These guys have a unique specialty. My sister’s old boyfriend has been harassing her. He won’t leave her alone. Anyone else would call the police, but the real problem is that the boyfriend’s been dead for months.

Have you ever seen movement out of the corner of your eye, turn, and nothing is there? Ever seen a cat at the top of the stairs, only to remember you don’t have a cat? You’ve always known there’s something else out there, and now there’s proof, but don’t say I ever warned you. We all die at the end…

Courage, the lack of fear? Or the ability to face it? Email me at from_my_shelf@yahoo.com and let me know. Miss a past column? Visit http://frommyshelf.blogspot.com and see all our past columns. Looking for a bright, cheerful book with a happy ending? Look no further than “Hobo Finds A Home”, a children’s book about a cat who finds a home. Guaranteed free of interdimensional aliens, or fleeting shadows…

Congratulations, and Good Luck

Kevin Coolidge


It’s graduation time. Congratulations and good luck. You’re going to need it, because it’s all down hill from here. Some of your worse days lie ahead. No job, few prospects. Sure, you can debate the finer points of free will versus determinism, but I’m in a hurry and I want you to make sure you give me the right order. Your mom wanted you to be a doctor or a lawyer, and meet a nice girl. Your dad worked overtime so you wouldn't have to take a year off. No, you had to see the world. Backpack through Europe, and move into the basement. Welcome to the real world.

I hate commencement speeches…enthusiastic, inspiring, and boring. I don’t even remember the speaker at my graduation, or the extraordinary tidbits of wisdom imparted. I know graduation is supposed to be a happy event. You are young and ripe with promise. You are the future. I just thought you should know that future is going to hold periods of grinding self-doubt and failure.

I might have remembered my speaker if he was as refreshingly honest as Charles Wheelan. Charles teaches economics at Dartmouth College and is the author of the best-selling Naked Economics. One of his first jobs out of college was writing speeches for the governor of Maine. So when asked to give a speech during Commencement weekend at Dartmouth College in June of 2011, he was determined not to give a saccharine, conventional graduation-type speech.

But what to say? Commencement is a time of excitement and promise, but also anxiety and self-doubt. There were things that Charles had wished someone had told him, and that gave him the insight he needed to write the speech. He would tell the Class of 2011 what he wished someone had told the Class of 1988. Some unconventional advice that he hoped would prepare them for the rough patches ahead.

From that idea, a speech was born: Five Things No Commencement Speaker Has Ever Said. Among those things were assurance that the time spent in fraternity basements was well spent. No he doesn’t mean the drinking games, but the time you spent playing intramural sports, or just lounging with friends on an autumn day. Sure, there was work you could be doing—and there always will be. That is the point.

A speaker is supposed to tell you to aspire to greatness. But Charles wants to make sure that first you don’t use your prodigious talents to mess the world up, because we have plenty of smart people doing that already. He reminds us that “changing the world” also includes things like designing sub-prime mortgages that people won’t understand. Sometimes you don’t need to cure cancer; just don’t spread it.

You don’t have to be great. Just be solid. Don’t worry about what you aren’t certain you can deliver. Focus on doing what you know you can. If you are in business, trying to be great will make you avoid risk. If you are in politics, trying to be great will make you resistant to compromise.

Being great involves a little luck and being consistent. You can’t make it happen by working more or trying harder. Of course, the irony is that the less you think about being great, the more likely it is to happen. And if it doesn’t, there’s nothing wrong with being solid.

Charles speech was well received, and when the transcript of the speech began bouncing around the Internet, he realized that the themes he had touched upon struck a chord. His speech became the book 10 ½ Things No Commencement Speaker Has Ever Said. It’s not the greatest book ever written, but it’s good advice, funny, and solid, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Good luck and congratulations to the Class of 2012…

Congratulations? Or good luck? Why not both? Email me at from_my_shelf@yahoo.com Miss a past column? You can catch up at http://frommyshelf.blogspot.com Hobo the cat graduated from the school of hard knocks and you can read his story in “Hobo Finds A Home” Yeah, there can be rough patches, doesn’t mean there can’t be a happy ending…

The Children’s Poet

Kevin Coolidge

I lie in bed. The wind howls. I feel the cold, dark breath of it. I cannot sleep. I toss aside my soft, warm blanket, and step on something cold and hard. I swear silently, so I don’t wake my wife. She’s wrestled with sleep and finally lost. I bend to retrieve a small, metal car. I can’t stop the tears. I can’t erase the memories. There will be no sleep for me tonight. Perhaps, not for a very long time…

Depression, anxiety, lack of sleep--losing a child is a horrific experience no parent should have to face. You don’t get over the loss. You may never accept it, but you may find ways to cope with it the best you can.

During one sleepless night when a mourning father needed to finish a poem for a publishing deadline, he drew upon that grief. He then wrote the poignant and moving poem called Little Boy Blue.

The poem told the story of a father longing for his little son who had died. The verses contained remembrances of his lost children, his own lost childhood, his lost parents, and even his own toys from childhood that his absentee-father had sent him for Christmas.

The rusted toy soldier and dusty little toy dog soon became universal symbols for anyone mourning a lost child, and more than any other poem, Little Boy Blue helped establish the father as a respected poet and a significant American writer of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. That grieving father was Eugene Field.

Few people today know anything about Eugene Field, the poet or the man, or the stories behind his poems. In The Doorstep Orphan: Eugene Field and a Trilogy of His Best Loved Poems, written by Dr. Jean A. Lukesh, we get an examination of Field’s short life, as well as an image of the man, the poet, and the loving father.

He often idealized childhood, as his own was filled with tragedy and insecurity. Field was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1850. He was the second of six children, but four of his brothers and sisters died in infancy. In 1856, when he was just six and his brother Roswell was five, their mother and their new baby sister both died. His father was prominent lawyer and never remarried. He loved his sons but could spend very little time with them. He sent them to be with guardians, passed along for someone else to raise, essentially a “doorstep orphan”.

It’s ironic that this “doorstep orphan” became the beloved poet of childhood. His poems were filled with his own memories and feelings, and if you know his poems, you know the man. You may remember pieces of his poems from your own childhood, and even a century later they still sing to the hearts of readers. I too remember. I remember standing on the Green in Wellsboro Pennsylvania, listening to the gurgle of a fountain, and imagining sailing off in a wooden shoe on a wave of dew…

The gingham dog? Or the calico cat? Email me at from_my_shelf@yahoo.com and let me know. Miss a past column? Read them all at http://frommyshelf.blogspot.com Hobo favors the calico cat, because his best friend Gypsy is a real life calico…

What Do You Want to Do Before You Die?

Kevin Coolidge

The only thing certain in life may be death and taxes, but I don’t have to die every year. Yes, time to write Uncle Sam a check. What would I do with that money? Pay down my mortgage? Paint my bathroom? Sensible, practical and boring…why not take guitar lessons so I can play a searing rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, or visit the Yukon, so I can prospect for gold and wrestle grizzlies? I might have to pay taxes every year, but one of these years, it will be my last.

That’s right. I’m going to die. It might not be tomorrow, or next year, or it may be this week, which would be terribly inconvenient. I’m booked solid, and taking a dirt nap is not on the list. I’m a busy guy, but sometimes I stop and ask myself, “what do I really want to do before I die?”

Things need done. The garage needs cleaned, and bills need paid, but if I were to die tomorrow, would it really matter if the refrigerator was defrosted? The pace of life can drag us down and rob us of ambition. Maybe you have settled for mediocrity when what you really want is to shine, if only for a moment.

If nothing were impossible, what would you do? Rappel down Mount Rushmore? Fall in love again? Host Saturday Night Live? Dreaming can be fun, but dreams can seem too hard, too distant, and just too damn impossible. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed. It’s easy to be buried.

Four friends felt lost and detached. Wanting more out of life, but not knowing where to look. Their search clouded by reality television, advertising overload, and political sound bites. Where were they supposed to look? They couldn’t just talk about the things they wanted to do. It was time to take action. They decided they actually had to do these things.

“Kiss Rachel McAdams, lead a parade, throw a first pitch at a major league baseball game….” They made a list of 100 things to do before they died, and began the journey to uncover their buried lives. For each item knocked off the list, they promised to help a stranger experience something they had long dreamed of—a way to balance the karma equation. All they needed was a name…The Buried Life.

After a summer of hard work and scrounging, it was time to take to the road. Kissing the Stanley Cup, riding a bull, sending a message in a bottle—each new accomplishment came with the intoxicating rush that made them believe anything was possible. Helping hand out chicken wings, giving a cab driver the rush of skydiving, and getting some kids to a rock concert. It was the first time they had truly helped someone and it felt good.

More than seventy-five items later, Jonnie Penn, Dave Lingwood, Duncan Penn, and Ben Nemtin have helped strangers, given speeches, visited schools, and raised enough money from sponsors to travel six thousand miles. If four guys with a list, a ’77 Dodge Coachman RV, and passion can make it this far, imagine what we could accomplish together? What do you want to do before you die? You can read about The Buried Life, their adventures, and how many of the people they have met have answered that question in What Do You Want To Do Before You Die? Or you can grab a shovel. Dig deep. Get inspired. Make your list, and live your dreams…

Go gentle into the good night? Or rage against the dying of the light? Email me at frommyshelf@epix.net and let me know. Miss a past column? You still have time to catch up at http://frommyshelf.blogspot.com before the final curtain call. Hobo wants to hit the New York Times bestseller list! Help make his dream come true: buy ‘Hobo Finds a Home’…

Down Came the Rain... 1972

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“Mommy, why are those envelopes so wrinkled and brown?”

I already knew the answer, but I liked to hear her tell the stories behind the things in the baby memory book she’d made for me.

“Right after you were born, there was a huge storm called Hurricane Agnes. Pennsylvania and New York got a terrible amount of rain in a really short time, causing huge floods. I had just brought you home from the hospital, and all of our friends and family were sending us cards to congratulate us, but a lot of the post offices were flooded, and the letters and cards got wet. These particular envelopes came from Elmira, New York, where I grew up.”

“I’m glad you didn’t name me Agnes, Mommy!”

She laughed. “Well, you are a force to be reckoned with, but they decided to retire the name ‘Agnes’ after all the damage this hurricane did. There will never be another Atlantic hurricane named Agnes.”

Looking through Kirk House’s new book, The 1972 Flood in New York’s Southern Tier, reminds me of these early history lessons from my mother – my history, our community history, and a pivotal time in the history of the Twin Tiers. House’s book is another fine example of local history, captured by Arcadia Publishing’s ‘Images of America’ series. Although House’s book focuses on the flood damage and recovery efforts in the Southern Tier of New York, those of us in the Northern Tier of Pennsylvania will also get a lot out of perusing these photos and reading over the facts he’s collected.

Obviously, I grew up hearing about ‘The Flood of ‘72’, since Agnes and I were born that month, and I still learned some information which astounded me. I also feel some resolution, learning the reasons and hearing the explanations for the damage descending on this area the way it did. As House explains in one of the first captions in the book, “The Conhocton, Canisteo, and Tioga Rivers … have their confluence and form the Chemung where Corning meets Painted Post. In the early morning hours of June 23, 1972, all three tributaries crested at that point pretty much simultaneously.” It was Steuben County’s own Perfect Storm. At the height of the flooding, the Allegheny River in Pennsylvania rose nearly 7 inches every hour. Forty miles north of Corning, the waters of Keuka Lake rose an unprecedented three feet in less than 48 hours.

The dangerous and most damaging part of the flooding, however, was not merely from the levels of water, but from the speed and force of the rushing waters, which moved hundreds of houses and stores right off their foundations. Photo after photo in The 1972 Flood… shows cars flattened by houses that have come to rest on top of them, cars and houses wedged under some bridges, while other bridges have collapsed into piles of broken beams and twisted metal.

Agnes was America’s costliest mainland hurricane as of its date, forty years ago, causing over $700 million damage in New York State alone. Thousands of businesses were destroyed – some small ones never to recover. Bob Rockwell, of Rockwell’s Department Store on Market Street in Corning, spent the night in his store on June 22, only to watch over $250,000 of his stock float out by the morning. At the Corning Hospital, Dr. Jack O’Neill finished an emergency surgery, knee-deep in water, by flashlight, before the last evacuations were complete. In Elmira, flood waters covered nearly all of St. Joseph’s Hospital. Of the 40,000 residents in Elmira, 20,000 became homeless when Agnes and her flood waters took over the city.

As appalling as these stories are, it is heartening to look at photos of all the people who pitched in to help. Certainly, the National Guard and the Red Cross and other relief organizations were there. Perhaps more important to the natives of the Southern Tier was the presence and commitment of Corning Glass. The largest employer in the area, the Corning Glass facilities were also hard hit by the floods. As House points out, they could have decided to cut their losses and leave the area altogether. Instead, the Corning officials “quickly determined … that they would not only stay in Corning, but also take a leading role in rebuilding the region.”

Many from the Northern Tier of Pennsylvania have their own stories of tragedy and triumph from this time, and the help that came from leading industries and agencies in our area, paralleling those told in House’s book, but those are for another book….

Bacon, A Love Story

Kevin Coolidge

The Mega Millions lottery game on Friday night was a record-breaking 640 million dollars. The bad news is that I didn’t win…the good news is that I won’t be hearing from relatives and friends I didn’t know I had. Still it’s unfortunate. I so wanted to use my wealth to abolish hunger, and to breed better bacon. Using genetic engineering, I planned on improving “the other white meat” and not only fulfilling Earth’s growing protein requirements, but ushering in a new era of peace and prosperity for all.

Someone beat me to it. The most common American swine breeds were the Yorkshire, Berkshire, Hampshire, Chester White, and Spotted, but companies specializing in swine genetics have merged the best of the top breeds to create hybrid pigs. These “super pigs” are less prone to disease, produce more piglets per litter, are leaner, and result in a more consistent product. All to produce the world’s most perfect meat…bacon!

Americans consume more than 1.7 billion pounds of bacon a year, and bacon sales are rising as a result of added flavors—such as maple and jalapeno. America’s addiction is growing more intense. Just check out the increased use of bacon to accompany other foods. You probably had bacon this week. Maybe you’re eating bacon right now. After all, fifty-three percent of households report having bacon on hand at all times.

But the increase in sales is attributed more to restaurants. Sixty-two percent of restaurants now have bacon on the menu, and not just for breakfast. Bacon is on sandwiches, pizzas, and salads. Bacon is available at your favorite greasy spoon and in the best four star establishments. Bacon: it’s more than a meat; it’s a flavor.

It’s also becoming a part of pop culture. Bacon gumballs, bacon bandages, bacon wallets, gummy bacon, even canned bacon. You can purchase specialty bacon, find countless recipes that feature bacon, enjoy bacon scented candles, and find countless people who are not afraid to express their undying passion for cured pork belly.

I love the seductive taste of bacon. The delightful smell tantalizes me as it is sizzling, but I admit to taking bacon for granted. After all, humans have been consuming pork for thousands of years. Pigs even accompanied Columbus to the New World, but the power of pork has a long history. From the early domestication by the Chinese to the genetically modified porkers rolling out the large-scale farms in Iowa.

It’s salty, smoky and sweet, and it makes everything better. There’s a bacon renaissance sweeping the country and you can join the movement or get out of the way. In her book, Bacon: A Love Story, popular bacon blogger Heather Lauer serves us a tasty dish of fun facts and explores how bacon finds its way to your skillet, and what to do with it when it gets there.

Everyone seems to be talking about bacon these days: from specialty bacon raised on acorns, and hickory smoked on site from the best little farms in Kentucky, to the high profile chefs who incorporate this meat candy into their menus in innovative ways—including bacon bloody Marys and bacon brownies. Yes, bacon has evolved way beyond the initial role of food preservation. Why? Theories abound, but it’s obvious. Bacon is the best meat ever…

Crispy? Or Chewy? Email me at from_my_shelf@yahoo.com and let me know. For my secret marriage of bacon, eggs, and Monterey Jack cheese on a sourdough biscuit be sure to visit http://frommyshelf.blogspot.com Yeah, you can catch up on past columns too. Don’t forget bacon when it comes time for that special gift. Roses fade, but bacon is forever…

Who You Gonna Call?

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Victoria Laurie’s “Ghost Hunter” series is for a new generation interested in the paranormal, for people more familiar with TV’s “Ghost Hunters” and “Most Haunted” rather than the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man and possessed card catalogs.

M.J. Holliday can trace her ancestors back to the famous “Doc” Holliday of America’s Old West… and she can talk to him, too. When M.J. (Mary Jane) was growing up in Valdosta, Georgia, she knew exactly when her mom finally succumbed to the cancer she’d been fighting for years. Her mom appeared to her while she and her best friend, Gilley Gillespie, were playing Barbies on Gilley’s back porch. Gilley knew even then that he was gay; M.J. knew, even before her mom came to her, looking healthy and at peace, that she could communicate with the spirit world. Both Gilley and M.J. had been branded as weird kids at their small school, so they stuck together and defended each other.

When Gilley the computer geek won a scholarship to M.I.T. in Boston, M.J. moved to New England with him, rather than stay in Valdosta where everyone – even her dad and her brother – looked at her with either pity or suspicion or both. M.J. worked odd jobs in Boston until one night, Gilley convinced her to do a “reading” for a classmate who had recently lost a family member. A new business was born: in the beginning, M.J. acted as a medium for people wishing to communicate with a deceased loved one, but eventually, Gilley came on board with all his techie knowledge and toys so that the two of them could do “ghost busts.” People would hire M.J. and Gilley if they had inherited a property that came with things that go bump in the night. They were hired to research and clear the grounds of a boarding school when new construction seemed to disturb old spirits. They cleared sites of murders and suicides, old hotels and hospitals. In one book, Ghouls Just Haunt to Have Fun, the two went on a TV show, talking with people about their possibly “possessed” objects, when a producer hoped to launch a show that combined ‘Antiques Roadshow’ and ‘America’s Most Haunted.’

Gilley researches the historical background of a job and monitors M.J.’s progress on a site, setting up electromagnetic sensors, night vision cameras, and all kinds of other new-fangled ghost-hunting technology. M.J. tries to connect with whatever lingering spirits are causing havoc, attempting to convince them to cross over to the next plane of existence. With particularly nasty spirits who have no intention of leaving, M.J. must find their ‘portal’ and nail it closed with strongly magnetized spikes. This containment system certainly requires a lot fewer special effects than 1984 in New York City, and there’s no need to worry about crossing the streams of your proton packs.

The “Ghost Hunter” books bring together the best of cozy mystery series and popular fascination with the paranormal. Just like any good cozy mystery series, author Victoria Laurie and her team of PR folks have come up with puns so bad they’re great as titles, beginning with What’s a Ghoul to Do? Mysteries usually fall into two main categories: either the main character(s) are professional police or detectives, or they aren’t. When the main characters aren’t police, this is more often the realm of the cozy mystery, but it can become implausible after a few books in the series, that this non-professional somehow ends up in the thick of all these murders. Many cozy mystery authors get around this by making their main character somehow related to a professional, perhaps the spouse or sister of a detective. Nevertheless, it gets to the point where you, as the reader, can’t believe how any more people could die in the town where this main character lives. Laurie has found several clever ways around this, making Gilley and M.J. professionals, but not police, giving them valid reasons to be in new places where murders may have taken place.

With Gilley and M.J.’s jobs, Laurie offers her readers contemporary characters and interesting settings, friendship with the occasional side dish of romance, some metaphysical ideas to chew on, and a few goosebumps along the way. Think of it as a grown-up ‘Scooby Doo’ where the ghosts are real, the technology is top-notch, and the good guys always get to the bottom of the mystery before the last page is turned. If you’re often glued to episodes of police procedurals or ghost hunting on your television, “tune in” to a series you can enjoy even if the lights go out.

When things go bump in the night, who you gonna call to bump right back? Call in Hobo and his team of bibliophiles to help you research right, and don’t get caught alone….

Write What You Like

Kevin Coolidge


Every beginning writer asks, “What should I write?” The answer most often given is write what you know. This advice often leads to terrible stories in which nothing interesting ever happens. What if Mark Twain only wrote what he knew? He would never have written A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, because I’m pretty sure that he never did find that portal to medieval England.

Better advice, according to Austin Kleon, author of Steal like an Artist, is to write what you enjoy. He recounts seeing the movie, Jurassic Park, when he was just ten years old. The dinosaurs, the excitement, the velociraptors shredding the big game hunter to tasty kibble—He loved it!

Austin couldn’t wait for a sequel. He ran home and typed one out. He didn’t know it at the time, but what he wrote is called fan fiction. Fan fiction is fictional stories based on characters that already exist and created by other writers. Writers influence writers. We are drawn to certain stories because they inspire us. Make us think. All fiction, in essence, is fan fiction.

Write the kind of story you enjoy the best. Write the story you want to read. When you are at a loss of what to write, just ask yourself, “What would make a better story?” Think about your favorite stories and favorite authors. What did they miss? What could have been better? If they were still alive, what would they be writing today?

Steal someone else’s idea? How about producing something original? A beginning writer may stare into the abyss, but a good writer can’t wait for the abyss to stare back. Nothing comes from nowhere, and nothing is completely original. So embrace influence.

You will not become a good writer without some foundation in technique. Without being exposed to the possibilities of language. Learn to add suspense to your story by following Stephen King. Pick up your pacing by keeping sentences lean like Ernest Hemingway. Produce and push yourself to your limits like Philip K. Dick by using copious amounts of amphetamines.*

The goal is not to become a clone. The goal is to enjoy writing by reading the authors you enjoy reading. Learn their secrets, explore your own style, and find your own unique voice.

How do you be creative? Always be reading. Where do you get ideas? Copy your favorite passages. How do you begin to write? By searching. The answers are simple. You write. Write what? Write anything. Don’t wait until you know who you are to get started…

*This column does not recommend you take amphetamines like Dick, though an occasional espresso might be justified. It should be remembered that your favorite writers are human too: Phillip K. Dick wrote science fiction at a time when it did not pay very well. Though an excellent writer, and brilliant man, he felt the need to produce more material. Dick often suffered from paranoia and schizophrenia and his writing reflected this. Almost a dozen of his short stories and novels have beeen produced into Hollywood movies. Unfortunately, he died impoverished as a relatively young man. Hemingway self medicated with alcohol and ultimately committed suicide, and King has more demons than those he puts to paper. We can learn from the masters of fiction by copying their style, but we don’t have to adopt all their behaviors.

Write what you know? Or know what you like? Drop me an email at from_my_shelf@yahoo.com. Miss a past column? You know you want to catch up at http://frommyshelf.blogspot.com. Hobo the cat wrote a children’s book about what he knew. His journey to what he wanted…a better life.

Into Thin Air

Kevin Coolidge

I find myself missing him. Folks might have known him as Lefty, on account he lost half of his right hand during the war, but to me he was always just the big, jovial guy I called Uncle Chuck. Quick with a joke, and slow to anger, but he’d suddenly grow serious and quiet when I asked about his hand. I had to know. I couldn’t help but stare. I’d never seen anything like it.

It wasn’t just that Chuck was Dad’s oldest brother, but still looked like his old Navy photos. I’d hear people crack jokes about bargains with the devil. He was a grownup, and that made him old to me. His hand, it was just short of where his knuckles should be, and sometimes I swear I could see fingers twitching, but they were never there. I miss him. He’s not dead. He’s just gone, at least for now…

On July 22, 1943, a secret experiment by the U.S. Navy attempted to cloak the USS Eldridge. Their goal was to make the destroyer escort undetectable to enemy radar. The science said it might be accomplished with the use of large electrical generators to bend light around the ship, making it invisible.

During the first test, a “greenish fog” surrounded the ship and rendered the Eldridge almost completely invisible. Many of the crew complained of nausea, and when the ship reappeared, some sailors were embedded in the metal structures of the ship. One sailor is said to have had his hand embedded in the steel hull.

The experiment was altered, and on October 28, 1943, the objective was solely to make the Eldridge invisible to radar. When the equipment was turned on, she vanished in a flash of blue light and teleported to Norfolk, Virginia – over 200 miles away. When she disappeared she was in full view of the SS Andrew Furuseth in the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. Many of the crew suffered severe side effects—such as mental disorders—or simply vanished.

Of course the U.S. Navy maintains no such experiment occurred. It contradicts the laws of physics. There isn’t actually a Unified Field Theory, at least not one that exists in the textbooks. Though it’s rumored that Nikola Tesla had completed one shortly before his death earlier in January of 1943, we may never know. The United States Alien Property Custodian impounded his papers, even though Tesla was a naturalized citizen.

Is the Philadelphia Experiment a far-reaching conspiracy? Does the U.S. government control the weather with HAARP? Did NASA hide evidence of a face on Mars? You don’t have to be a conspiracy theorist to enjoy the books by Jon E. Lewis, a writer and a historian.

We live in an age of conspiracy and cover-up. Was it a lone shooter on that grassy knoll? Was princess Diana murdered? Who is the war on terror really against? Jon E. Lewis explores these questions in The Mammoth Book of Cover-ups and the follow up, The Mammoth Book of Conspiracies. Some of these theories skirt along the edge of madness and some raise real issues about the abuse of power.

Don’t believe everything you are told. Search for the facts. Question everything. The truth is really out there, and so is my Uncle Chuck…

Men in Black? Bible Code? Or are you just being paranoid? Miss a past column? There’s no conspiracy here. Seek the answers and past columns at our blog http://frommyshelf.blogspot.com Be sure to catch Hobo’s new book on the massive dog cover up called “Man’s Best Friend or Canine Killer?” Be sure to buy it before you bring home that cute puppy…