Rich Flanders's Blog, page 2

''The UFO of God'' by Chris Bledsoe

I didn’t want this tale to end. I grew to love Chris Bledsoe, his family, and the mystical, often beneficent encounters that are a regular occurrence in their lives. I feel privileged to write about it.

You don’t have to be religious, or a believer in God, to want to read this mind-bending account of a North Carolina working man’s very real encounters with UAP (unidentified anomalous phenomena) and NHI (nonhuman intelligence) over the past 15 years. In fact, being open is a necessary attribute for taking in a tale that plays at the edges of our ‘’reality.’’

Efforts to understand the anamolous phenomena that increasingly seem be entering our world these days are accelerating, as we hear in reports of whistleblowers, Congressional Hearings, and more and more frequent encounters with UAP around the globe. Among the most spectacular ongoing UAP/NHI events are those occurring in and around Chris Bledsoe, his family and home.

Beginning in 2007 in an encounter with three globe-shaped UAP’s, 4 hours of missing time, the subsequent healing of his advanced Crohn’s disease, and continuing down the years with visitations by glowing, healing ‘’orbs'' and appearances by ‘’The Lady,’’ the story of '’UFO of God’’ is an enthralling account of interactions with wondrous anomalous phenomena, often witnessed and well documented.

Consequently, Chris is being studied by some of the keenest scientific minds in our defense, intelligence and military branches of government, and the events are being taken with the utmost seriousness. At the same time, it is becoming increasingly clear that our current physics and scientific models are unable to adequately address such events. Events that are impossible…yet ongoing.

As an experiencer, I would highlight this landmark book in any inquiry into UAP/NHI. Along with Ross Coulthart’s ‘’In Plain Sight,’’ Steven Greer’s ‘’Unacknowledged,’’ Diana Pasulka's ‘’American Cosmic,'' Kelly Chase’s ‘’’The UFO Rabbit Hole'’’ and Whitley Streiber’s ‘’Them,'' Chris Bledsoe’s ‘’UFO of God’’ triggers the expansion of mind required to grapple with the new frontiers in consciousness we are now being confronted with.


Rich Flanders, author of ‘’UNDER THE GREAT ELM - A Life of Luck & Wonder''

richflandersmusic.com

''The Salt Path, '' by Raynor Winn

A sudden, simultaneous loss of livelihood, home and health, leaves a couple destitute in body and spirit. With nothing left, they stoically strike out into the unknown and set out to walk England’s 650 mile South West Coast Path, backpacks inadequaetely filled, souls bared. The memoir is gritty in details of the tribulations of an impoverished couple trying to wild camp, and unflinchingly honest in capturing their emotional struggles. Open to whatever the Path may bring, hoping to find a new beginning along the way, they embark on a classic, real life ‘’hero’s journey.'' and in the end, after surmounting monumental challenges on the Path, they find themselves and a new life.

Maybe it’s the American in me, but the unending succession of poor choices and disappointments that pervade their trek often made for a dreary and tedious read, almost eclipsing the couple's triumphant moments. But then, near the end, the whole journey is spectacularly reaffirmed in passages like,

‘’I was no longer striving, fighting to change the unchangeable, not clenching in anxiety at the life we’d been unable to hold on to….A new season had crept into me, a softer season of acceptance. Burned by the sun, driven in by the storms, I could feel the sky, the earth, the water and revel in being part of the elements without a chasm of pain opening at the thought of the loss of our place within it all. I was part of the whole. I didn’t need to own a patch of land to make that so. I could stand in the wind and I was the wind, the rain, the sea; it was all me, and I was nothing within it. The core of me wasn’t lost. Translucent, elusive, but there and growing stronger with every headland.’'

This is a story that inspires hope in the face of impossible loss, and for that reason alone is finding popularity. Just don’t count on a lot of laughs reading it.


Rich Flanders, author of ''Under the Great Elm - A Life of Luck & Wonder;'

''IN PLAIN SIGHT''

''In Plain Sight: A fascinating investigation into UFOs and alien encounters from an award-winning journalist, fully updated and revised new edition for 2023''
by Ross Coulthart
131682370
Rich Flanders's review Aug 03, 2023

The first whistleblowers, now protected by law, have come forward to testify in Congress regarding ‘’UAP’’ (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, formerly called ‘’UFO’s’’) and ‘’NHI’’ (Non Human Intelligence). Their explosive and historic revelations have sent shockwaves through government:

*We are not alone - UAP are common in our skies, though not often reported.
*Craft of non human origin have been recovered, including ‘’biologics,’’ i.e. nonhuman bodies
*These craft are being reverse engineered.
*There has been a massive coverup of covert programs around this matter for approximately 80 years.

Against these mind-bending revelations, books like ‘’In Plain Sight’’ are of special importance. Meticulously researched by author Ross Coulthart, a multi-award winning investigative Australian journalist, this is the go-to book, the one to start with in any exploration into the enigma of UAP's. Humanity is crossing a new frontier, and books that guide and orient us are invaluable. Ready or not, we are being challenged to question, expand and reassemble our basic ideas about Reality. We are facing undeniable, scientifically documented phenomena that defy our understanding of physics and cause us to question our place in the cosmos.

‘’In Plain Sight’’ speeds along like a nonstop thriller, one stunning incident following another. From the 1947 Roswell event through the encounters of the 50’s and the massive Washington DC flyover in 1952, from the triangular crafts over Belgium and the Hudson Valley in the 80’s up through the recently photographed tic-tac shaped craft near the Nimitz aircraft carrier a few years ago, this is not just ‘'the story of the century,’’ it is the most important story in history.

What does it portend for humanity? What is the agenda of our visitors? Is there promise of new, planet saving technologies from their non-polluting, zero point, anti-gravitic, ‘’free energy’' propulsion systems?

Illuminating and enthralling, ’'In Plain Sight’’ gets us up to speed. Additionally, I can recommend a brand new publication: ‘’Unveiling the Enigma - A UAP Digest for Curious Minds.’' This is an extremely helpful primer on this vast subject, as well as an update on current developments. Subscribe at https://wttafriend.substack.com

Truly, ‘’There is more between heaven and earth, Horatio, than is dreamt of in your philosophy.’’ - Hamlet


Rich Flanders, author of ‘’Under The Great Elm - A Life of Luck & Wonder’’

''BARKSKINS,'' By Annie Proulx

While this novel is not explicitly about climate collapse, it fires our awareness to five alarms. Through Annie Proulx’s inimitable skills, we inhabit characters of two clashing cultures, and in a narrative that rolls seamlessly across 400 years on this continent, we viscerally experience the day to day, step by step march into planetary peril. We are not just reading about the apocalyptic destruction of our forests. Through the shamanic magic of Proulx’s prose we participate in the carnage, until by those last fateful pages we grasp more deeply than ever before that the survival of life on our planet hangs in our choice between two radically different outlooks. Have we already traveled too far off the road not taken?

It is one thing to read about the native peoples that inhabited the eastern shores of the Americas, it is another to live amongst them, see the world through their eyes, feel their inseparable connection with the Earth. It is one thing to read about the European advneturers who clambered onto these shores and set about ‘’clearing’’ the land for ‘’settlements.’’ It is another to reside inside them, to see and feel the impending, implacable confrontation of worlds. The short stories and novels of Annie Proulx are always riveting, her characters achingly alive and vivid. Here, she holds us in her spell for over 700 pages, then plunges us into those last, brief, pivotal chapters.

An artist makes us feel. No textbook, no lecture, no commentary has the transformative power of art. We know intellectually of the disastrous meeting of indigenous and white cultures through the centuries, of the eradication of native peoples and domination by the white inaders. We read of the destruction of the forests and the accompanying decline of the earth’s ecosystems. We have been warned of the melting ice. The genus of Annie Proulx’s novel is that we’re not just reading of critical events and fateful decisions, we're experiencing them in a delicous 713 page feast. It’s a harrowing, transformative journey that sears beneath intellectual knowing, where we finally come to a new and trembling understanding of the crisis of our lives, the survival of life on this planet.

If anything is going to awaken sufficient emotion to galannize humans into action, it is art such as this.

This book will punch a hole in your wall. it is a genuine Earthshaker. Better read it.

Rich Flanders
''UNDER THE GREAT ELM - A Life of Luck & Wonder''
www.richflandersmusic.com

FINDING THE MOTHER TREE...

You will never see a forest - or a patch of ground or sweep of water - the same way again. You will cherish it. ‘’FINDING THE MOTHER TREE - Discovering the Wisdom of the Forest’’ takes our awareness of the precious web of life to a fine tuning. This is a book that explodes our deeply ingrained delusion of separateness from Nature once and for all and, with breathtaking beauty, guides us into the family of all life forms.

Films like ‘’Avatar’’’and novels like Richard Powers’ ''The Overstory’’ have brought the book's illuminations to millions. In its revolutionary revelations, I believe this book ranks with pivotal earlier classics like ‘’The Sea Around Us’’ and ‘’Silent Spring,’’ by Rachel Carson. While at times I found it a bit of a chore getting through all the detailed scientific experiments, Suzanne Simard writes like a novelist. At several points during the narrative I found myself gasping at the miraculous intelligence and compassion of the ‘’tree people’’ as they care for and communicate not only with their direct ‘’offspring’’ but with the extended family of plants and trees of all types around them, exchanging just the right cocktails of water and nutrients through delicate, intricate fungal and root systems, imparting guidance, warning of infestation, preparing for drought, behaving for all intents and purposes like Mothers, like families... like thinking, feeling, sentient beings. Make way in consciousness for more relatives.

The ancient Native American tenet - ‘’We are all related…two-legged, four-legged, feathered, finned, furred, those that crawl in the earth and those that grow from it’’ - has never been more prescient. We now ignore the eternal wisdom of Nature at our mortal peril.

Be grateful this is a bestseller.

Essential reading.

''Butcher's Crossing'' and The Western

There have been fine novels about the Old West, many of which have become classics of Americana and rank with the best literature of our age. Some are lyrical, with a hue of mystery and legend, like Jack Schaefer’s ’’Shane.’’ Others are epics spun with fine realism, like Alan LeMay’s ‘’The Searchers,’’ Larry McMurtry’s ‘’Lonesome Dove,’’ A. B. Guthrie’s ‘’The Big Sky’’ and ‘’The Way West,’’ and Milton Lott’s ‘’The Last Hunt.’’ With brilliant use of the language of the time, Charles Portis’ ''True Grit’’ plunges us into the rugged, real West and the irony of a distinctly nonromantic hero. Oakley Hall’s ‘’Warlock'’ attempts to resolve one of the iconic legends of the West, his Olympian figures clashing over the rule of law. Mary Doria Russell’s ‘’Doc’’ and ‘’Epitaph’’ paint a startling and provocative new pictrure of the Earp/Holliday saga. There are the classic short stories of Dorothy M. Johnson, and Walter Van Tilburgh Clark’s riveting study of justice and character, ‘’The Ox-Bow Incident,’’ is timeless.

Set all these, and any vestigial romantic visions of the Old West, aside for a moment. While nothing can ever erase the indelible beauty of ‘’The BIg Sky’’ or ‘’The Searchers’’ or any of the aforementioned books, a relatively little known masterpiece, ’‘’Butcher’s Crossing’’ by John Williams, blows the Western horizon wide open and expands our understanding of America. Written in 1960, ‘’Butcher’s Crossing’’ might just as well have been written yesterday. It obliterates the innocent dream of a new dawn on a far frontier that persists, sometimes disastrously, under the American psyche.

A fateful tale of a brutal buffalo hunt, ‘’Butcher’s Crossing’' is not really a ‘’western’’ at all, but a deconstruction of the deep-rooted American myth of the young man setting out to find himself in the pristine romance of the West. Exploding comforting myths of the West can be upsetting, so deeply engrained are our feelings of the West from books and films, but ultimately such a confrontation is therapeutic, as splashes of cold reality often are. Facing the ‘’shadow’’ is essential to growth and well being. When an assumption of impervious innocence arrogantly underlies a culture and remains unexamined, tragedy can result. The extermination of the buffalo, the treatment of native and nonwhite Americans, the debacle of Viet Nam….emanate from an unquestioned moral superiority that often not only discounts people who are different from us, but Nature itself. In this sense, ‘’Butcher’s Crossing’’ is balm for the American soul, albeit a strong and bitter one to take. It is a book that deepens our understanding and appreciation not only for the people of a time and place, but for ourselves.

In its unrelenting realism, the book cuts away any fanciful conceptions of life in the West that have been in our psyches since the tales of Zane Grey. What emerges is a fresh, immediate experience of how it was. The focus is unrermitingly on painstaking details, the smell of the air, the feel of the dust, the sound of the oxen’s hooves, the twining of a rope, the heat and sweat, the foreboding silence that pervades day and night in the wilderness. And as the forces of nature close in, the tension of the unspoken words of the men - Andrew the idealistic, eastern greenhorn and Miller the dark, hulking mountain man - is nearly overwhelming.

The dream of the golden West, captured in many fine novels, will live on, but ‘''Butcher’s Crossing’’ shows us the consequences of the unexamined life, the pursuit of the dream of innocence without the leavening of self-awareness, and a longer view.

''Butcher’s Crossing’’ is fine literature first, a ‘'western’’’ second, and an essential read.

''Demon Copperhead''

I have loved all of Barbara Kingsolver's books, especially ''Prodigal Summer,'' with its ecological overtones, and ''Unsheltered.'' Not long into this book you realize you've lost track of time and are turning pages unconsciously. You've been expertly caught and held by a writer with the shamanic gift of inhabiting, or being inhabited by, the people of her story and the culture they emerged from. You realize that you're being swept up in a hot bestseller and reading literature at the same time. What a rare treat that is.

Even so, ''Demon Copperhead'' may not be a book for everyone; living through disaster after harrowing disaster for several hundred pages can be depressing. But because we come to know the characters so well, and care so deeply about them, we are hooked, no matter how dark and fated their journey.

As in all great tales, light breaks through toward the end, and reading ''Demon Copperhead'' is an enriching, enlightening experience, deepening our world. Five stars seems hardly adequate..

AN ENTHRALLING JOURNEY OF ENLIGHTENMENT - ''CANDLES ON THE GANGES'' - Peter E. Upton

In unconsolable grief, unable to accept the finality of the tragic death of his seven year old son, Michael, the author sets out on a journey through England and the farthest reaches of India seeking to bridge the worlds and reconnect with his son. It is a journey that will lead him deep into the Unexplained and the ''eternal mysteries.’’ In the fervent drive and purity of his quest, and through transformativve encounters with seers and teachers along the way, his own latent powers of healing and second sight open up.

The book is a page turner that carrries the reader along like the Ganges itself. The author’s vivid descriptions provide readers with the most tangible and immediate experiences of what are called ‘’esoteric'' phenomena as we are ever likely to get. Life-altering revelations burst brightly into flower at every few pages.

‘’…There is something like a psychic fuse that prevents us from seeing, hearing and participating in other worlds and other realities that interpenetrate with this one. Sudden shock or tragedy has the power to blow this psychic fuse and open the person up to a whole new dimension of reality; a dimension where thought has the power to affect material objects.’’ - page 28

One of the qualities that make this book so engaging is the author’s ability to render ‘’occult’’ phenomena, such as mediumship and the laying on of hands, into clear, clean prose that seamlessly merges the ‘’spiritual’’ with advanced physics, providing us with passages that could serve as chapters in a much-needed scientific textbook on esoteric phenomena.

As discoveries in physics are constantly revealing, ‘'reality'' has many realms. ‘’In my Father’s House are many mansions.’’

With the closing lines of this book I was brought to tears, but not just from the striking final words. The story uncannilly echoes my own tale, ‘'Under The Great Elm - A Life of Luck & Wonder,’’ a kind of sister book to Upton’s. ‘’Candles on the Ganges’’ reaffirmed my experiences with the phenomenon of synchronicities, the life force in all things, animate or inanimate, and the illusion of ‘’death.''

A triumphant journey of the heart, this book will bring comfort and hope to those grieving the loss of loved ones. Thank you, Peter, for taking us along on your impassioned, deeply honest, beautifully written odyssey to contact a lost son, along the way providing us with armchair enlightenment and a clearer understanding of the ‘’nature of reality.’’
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MIKE NICHOLS - A Life

When you pick up ‘’MIKE NICHOLS - A Life’’ by Mark Harris, you may soon find it hard to put down. The biography is one of the most deeply penetrating probes into the creative process I’ve ever read and a must read for anyone in the creative arts. Fellow performers and directors will be riveted, and musicians, dancers, writers will all be deeply rewarded, but by no means is the book’s appeal limited to performing artists. As swift and enthralling as a fine novel, the story is on a vast human scale that engages any reader.

Exploring the life of Mike Nichols illuminates characteristics that are universally true of artists and the artistic process. Watching Nichols’ work on a film or play, Harris captures the dynamics of the creative process. We witness the fleeting, ineffable, intuitive flashes that shaped such memorable films as The Graduate, Silkwood, Who's Afraid of VIrginia Woolf, Angels in America, The Birdcage, and stage triumphs like Barefoot in the Park, Streamers, The Odd Couple, The Real Thing, Death of a Salesman, and his Evenings with Elaine May.

The story takes on another level of meaning for those of us whose lives in theatre paralleled Nichols’ career. Throughout the book are people and moments that personally touch the trajectory of our own performing lives through some of those years.

The narrative is not always pleasant, delving deep into the often dark labyrinth of Nichols’ mind, but thanks to Harris' unflinching exploration, one of the seminal artists of 20th century theatre and film is fully captured.

Reading this book is to grow harrowingly close to the heart and soul of Mike Nichols, and as you come to the last pages you feel the full impact of how deeply he entered our lives. His departure becomes a devastating personal loss. I can’t think of a greater tribute to an individual, or a book, than that.

This is one of the most rewarding, absorbing, and beautifully written biographies I’ve ever read, or expect to read.

Rich Flanders
richflandersmusic.com

''Education of a Wandering Man''

What a fresh drink of water! I felt at times like we were having a conversation. Straight and true as a Comanche arrow, Louis L'Amour's memoir is a headlong dive into adventure, as thrilling as ''Hondo,'' or any of his novels. The book struck some deep chords in me, as I've just written a book of my own odyssey, in ways closely reminiscent of L'Amour's. As he spins out true tales of finding his way in the world as a merchant seaman in Asian seas, wielding a pickaxe in an Arizona mine, or picking up a dollar or two as a bare knuckle boxer in little towns across the West, it is his thirst for knowledge and love of books that predominates. I have never known or heard of anyone who has read more books, or who has a greater thirst for knowledge, and he complements each of his adventures with references to the classics, as well as lesser known histories and books of reference. From his voluminous reading, as much as from his harrowing adventures, L'Amour became an ''educated''man in the truest sense of the word, with not even a high school education. ''We are, finally, all wanderers in search of knowledge. Most of us hold the dream of becoming something better than we are, something larger, richer, in some way more important to the world and ourselves. Too often, the way taken is the wrong way, with too much emphasis on what we want to have, rather than what we wish to become.'' I love this book. It already feels like an old friend, a companion of the heart, and just as rare. (