Rich Hoffman's Blog, page 401

A New X-Wing: Capitalism helps a ‘Force for Change’ benefit the world

Charity is only a bad thing when the altruism involved masks other behavior designed to win social favor instead of genuinely using productive excess to help those suffering from stifled freedom.  The Star Wars: Force for Change initiative, linked below, is one of the good ones.  The intent is to bring the benefits of capitalism to the far reaches of planet earth, and that is wonderful.  There are many children suffering under countries with poor political philosophies or economic systems that do not capture the natural innovation of their inhabitants—but instead stifles them needlessly.  Force for Change is intended to use the excess of capitalism created by the mythology of Star Wars into actually making people’s lives better which is something everyone should emphatically support.  And as usual, J.J. Abrams has provided a teaser of the new movie, Episode VII in a final week push to drive up the numbers.

 

http://forceforchange.starwars.com/

The new ship looks like a classic Z-95 Headhunter from the pre-years of the X-Wing fighter seen in the original trilogy.  But the claims are that it is a new kind of updated X-Wing—whatever the case it looks fantastic and is proof that the crew working on the new Star Wars film is going to extraordinary measures to produce something wonderful.   The clever presentation of the Force for Change material during the production of Star Wars hints at the level of creativity emerging from the endeavor and is truly something to be excited about.

It will be hard to avoid this new Star Wars movie once it is released—so news from it is important to everyone, even those who are not dedicated fans of the series.  Star Wars is a direct creation of capitalism and without it there would not be a Force for Change initiative and a number of other charities which trickle off the mythology that takes place “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.”  Certainly under no socialist government could Star Wars have been made, and it is particularly under socialist style governments that many of the children the Force for Change is attempting to help.  England is hardly a bastion of capitalism, but they are also directly benefiting from the production of Star Wars being shot in their country—in England over a billion pounds of wealth was created by production companies filming in and around London—Star Wars among the most notable and Abu Dhabi has seen an increase by 19% in hotel reservations from fans all over the world traveling to the left behind film sites to visit the location of the Episode VII props.  Without a story nothing would be shot in London or Abu Dhabi and without that story meaning anything to anybody, there would be no desire to pay money to buy plane tickets to fly to such places just to take pictures of what was left behind during the creation process.

And that is what J.J. Abrams is doing in his Force for Change videos; he is using the props created for the film—which will be seen by hundreds of millions of people the world over.  The film may generate $1 billion in global revenue just in the first two weeks—which is astonishing.  It will likely go on to make several billion more dollars dwarfing anything previously done by any film anywhere, because the buildup is so intense.  But on top of that Walmart, Target, and anywhere Star Wars toys are sold will see sharp increases in profit.  Fast-food tie-ins will dramatically increase their sales with promotional campaigns.  And the Disney Parks will also see spikes in attendance and interest in their new property from t-shirts to DVD sales.  J.J. Abrams knowing all this is using the props from the film already used to tell the story as a way to help some kids suffering from the lack of creativity their economies have imprisoned them to—and that is a wonderful thing.

Star Wars is capitalism at its best and is something worthy of support not just of the product itself—but the spillover it has which helps feed and clothe many millions who otherwise would not have the opportunity.  Because of Star Wars, there is a Force for Change—and the nature of that change is one of depravity to fulfillment through investment driven by passion for the subject matter.  And in that regard it is very exciting to see a new ship from a future Star Wars film.  I’m sure Fantasy Flight Games is already making plans to have it in their miniatures game which is so much fun.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com  

Arkham Horror: How to play the game and why!

Dear reader, it should be by now well documented that the things I write about here seldom have anything less than monumental significance to the stage play of life.  For my regular readers you will find the expected observed truths about the rest of the world laced within this article so it should not be expected that this is purely for entertainment or instruction on how to play a difficult, rules heavy role-playing game called Arkham Horror.  The things that excite me are often categorized this way.  Even the things I consider leisure fall into this summation.  When I get a sense that something has some sort of metaphorical significance I become obsessed with plunging into its depths—and this holds true if the target is the literary works of James Joyce or some phantom relic from the past lost to time and space.  CLICK HERE to review.  In that regard I have made my affection for Fantasy Flight Games well known—it is a gaming company that was brought to my life through family members bridging my love of mythology with a need for adventure—and I have found with them a wealth of creativity and new ways of modern storytelling.  One game in particular is of the type that I have to thank the owner of Nostalgic Ink and my grandson for putting before me.  It was just the kind of thing I was searching for and has brought to my life a joy in discovery that nurtures my imagination and for that I am extremely grateful.  Also of note I am placing throughout this article the instructional videos of Ricky Royal from the YouTube channel Box of Delights who poured an extreme amount of love into the creation of the following “how to” videos.  By watching these videos he explains many of the rules and way to play Arkham Horror.  I used these videos to get started and to make the decision to purchase the game.  They are long, but very complete and well worth watching.  The result is that my wife and I bought Arkham Horror on a Friday afternoon and did not stop playing it until midnight on the following Sunday.   We were one turn away from closing the final gate when one of the characters I was playing was plunged into Time and Space letting the monster Azathoth loose to destroy the world.  I was so frustrated that I wanted to put my fist through our kitchen table because we had worked very hard to position the game for a victory.  But circumstances being what they were—time ran out—as it often does even when the best of hopes are the fuel behind endeavor.

We had played several games over the weekend and most of them ended with losses—the game is far from easy.  In fact, it could be said to reflect life all too accurately even though the subject matter is about monsters and attacks upon mankind from other dimensions.  I find the subject matter to be more accurate than a daily read of USA Today and ultimately more rewarding for the soul even in disappointing losses where all the best layed plans fall apart in the end. For a game it reminds me of Jumanji the old game from the Robin Williams movie—Arkham Horror not only takes place in the streets of the classic horror writer H.P. Lovecraft, it carries players into other dimensional planes of reality such as the City of the Great Race, the Great Hall of Celeano, R’lyeh, the Plateau of Leng and Yuggoth.  It is often there that terrible things happen if players forget to adjust their lore or luck rating to deal with the type of things that typically happen during the “Other World Encounters” phase.  Sometimes even if players do adjust their settings terrible things will happen anyway—just as they often do in real life so it is the task of the players to adjust and recover attempting to suppress obstacles with tenacity even when the situation feels hopeless.

The terror of the game comes not so much from the monsters which flood the game constantly throughout from each round as the Doom Track edges ever closer to the end where the Mythos Monsters present themselves from centuries of slumber to destroy the world and everyone in it, it comes from the lack of certainty that one has about what happens next—the constant feeling that the floor could drop out from under everyone at any moment.  In this way Arkham Horror is like walking through a commercial haunted house that is dark and smoke-filled not knowing what might happen around the next corner.  Visitors know that the monsters cannot harm them—but the terror comes from not knowing what’s coming next.  In Arkham Horror the game designers obviously took great pleasure in making every stack of cards and every move a potential failure with very little rewards given to players.

The rules of the game are vast.  On its surface all things about Arkham Horror look simple, the game board looks not so much different from a Monopoly board, but this is very misleading.  The game is layered with meaning and small printed text that takes the level of game play very detailed destinations.  There is no way to just pick up the rule book and begin playing even for experienced Dungeon and Dragon players.  The mechanics are very similar, but the depth must be understood before proper game play is even possible.  For instance, particularly helpful items that will help win the game are Elder Signs which can be purchased from the Curiositie Shoppe as a “unique item.”  Those cards are the most powerful in the game because they not only seal gates without having to spend clue tokens, but they take their seal off the Doom Track for the Ancient One holding off its arrival as a destroyer of the world.  Other very helpful tips are alleys which can be recruited down at the boarding house, blessings which can be found at the church and Magick spells which can be purchased at Ye Olde Magick Shoppe that can hold off terrible Mythos cards revealing rituals.  Combat weapons are purchased at the General Store as common items.  It helps to have a couple of pistols to increase combat points up over +6 to +7 with buffed applications above and beyond the amount of fight on the character sheets.  The reason is that each time a player encounters a monster—which is unavoidable—a horror check must be performed with “will” and will is connected directly to “fight.”  So in order to have a high will typically it will cost fight and to beat a monster, both are needed. So the fight needs to come from weapons, not the skill bar as much as possible.

I think for me the most compelling, and terrifying aspect of the game is the “sanity” cost of certain tasks whether it be losing a horror check, casting spells—which often cost sanity—or random things that happen to characters that scare them into losing their mind.  I am used to health points, and Arkham Horror has a standard health measure which is called “stamina” but balancing that out with the general mental health of the players is something unique.  When the mind gets too beat up during the game sanity can be restored at the asylum—two dollars will completely restore mental capacity or a swig of a whiskey bottle will give a +1 boost.  But the game takes place during prohibition so there are times that the police come and arrest anybody caught with whiskey in their possession—so it is dangerous to have such things.

Hearing all this it might be wondered why anybody would want to play the game at all.  That is where things get interesting in a very satisfying way.  In spite of the horror nature of the game, it is actually an adventure game nicely mixing genres in a way that Poltergeist the movie did.  As I was going through the characters I was very pleased to find a card named Monterey Jack who happens to be an archaeologist and has the fixed possessions of a bull whip and a .38 revolver—identical to Indiana Jones the film character.  The game makers at Fantasy Flight know what makes a good adventure story and no matter how great Indiana Jones was, he still ended up tied to a pole during the opening of the Lost Ark, he was cursed by poisoned blood, burnt, tortured, and had spells of voodoo cast against him.  He was captured many times and jailed and designated for execution by the Nazis and all this happened in just three classic movies.  Arkham Horror is the kind of terror that was found in an Indiana Jones film and the best way to play the game is to roll with the punches and just keep getting back up and trying to win.  Some of the best moments in Arkham Horror come from the characters running into clues from ancient secrets or stealing treasure away from terrible creatures deep in a slumber from some dimensional rift.  Needless to say, my favorite character is Monterey Jack, the bull whip gives a plus one to a combat check but if you miss, you can use the whip to role again.   So of course I have to play that character!  It seems Monterey Jack was made by Fantasy Flight Games just for me.

The Indiana Jones films were inspired by old Saturday morning serials from the 30s, and 40s and those serials were inspired by the kind of publications that H.P. Lovecraft wrote for—the pulp magazines so popular in the 1920s and 30s.  Indiana Jones was not original in the sense that he sprang from the mind of George Lucas but was rather a tribute to the kind of movies and stories he enjoyed as a kid. So it is only fitting that the makers of Arkham Horror paid tribute to Indiana Jones who was a product of the original H.P. Lovecraft stories.  The game we see today started in the 80s as a different version of role-playing game similar to Dungeons and Dragons designed by Richard Launius called Call of Cthulhu.  By 2005 Fantasy Flight Games purchased the rights and brought the game up to a level seen presently.  There is a lot of love poured into the presentation that would have taken many hundreds of hours of game development and input by people who simply love all these genres, Indiana Jones, the literary works of H.P. Lovecraft and movies like Poltergeist.  Arkham Horror is a very story driven game that looks like players lose more than they win.  What is most intriguing is that you do not play against other players so much as you play against the Ancient One’s reemergence with the world from an awakened slumber.  Players work together to fight the Ancient One and all its minions—and up to eight players can participate.  The best way to perform this task is to trade items that other players might need like spells, or weapons in the streets of Arkham.  To do this, items can be passed to other players as long as both players are in a street location and they are not in a combat phase with a monster.

About the Ancient One, there isn’t just one, but many.  Of course the primary is Cthulhu but others include the Nyarlathotep, the Yig, Hastur and the Yog-Sothoth.  To make matters even worse each mythos monster has its own worshippers among the land of the living.  For instance, the Yog-Sothoth worshippers have powerful magical abilities giving cultists a combat rating of -1.  Or the Sub-Niggurath worshippers have babies that roam the game board and all are given the “Endless” ability when fighting in combat.  This means that players who kill these creatures cannot collect their hides to sell for money or items as a trophy—but are returned to the monster pool only to be drawn again when a gate opens.  Reading through some of the text reminded me of the many real life attempts by Alistair Crowley and the Masonic rituals particularly on display at the Denver International Airport to appease unseen spirits to invoke supernatural benefit to their attempts at success in life.  Many people are willing to trade their souls for successful help by spiritual aid and in Arkham Horror this is reflected in the sanity meter.  There are many in the real world that clearly do trade away their sanity for a chance at victory even if it calls for the invocation of unseen forces.   Arkham Horror deals with these types of things making it all too reflective or a reality we all know too much about—making this game even scarier because it dares to name an avoided truth.

It has been a long time since my wife and I played a board game all weekend long, but with Arkham Horror the depth was such that it was not hard.  Before we knew it, 14 hours flew by on a Saturday and the sun had set.  We resumed on a Sunday only to see the day fly by as well and midnight was indicated by the hands on a clock.  Arkham Horror is like reading a great novel that you share with other people.  Afterwards win or lose there is a feeling of an adventure that had just been embarked upon.  Other players have complained that Arkham Horror feels too much like a hopeless enterprise because it is difficult to win and like the H.P. Lovecraft stories, bad things happen to the characters and no matter how smart or good you are at playing the game—there is a sense of fate that must fall in your favor to even have a chance at victory.  But that too is reflective of life—all you can really do is position yourself for success and if bad things happen, you have to get up and try again even if you are cursed or find yourself driven insane or even lost between planes of reality.  The adventure of life must trudge on or the world will be consumed by the evil, vile, intentions of an Ancient One striving to claim its hold on all of existence and everyone in it.

Arkham Horror is a fabulous game that is not just mere entertainment meant to pass time away, it is an experience that gives back much just by playing.   It is well designed and certainly does what it set out to do—which is provoke thought.  The random mechanics are not so overpowering that victory is impossible, it is just treacherously difficult like climbing a tall mountain, or running in a marathon.  Playing Arkham Horror will never be the same game twice, but it will always be something that requires attention and care to detail.  It is something that I’d call remarkable for what it does just like the game itself—working on many different levels.  I am very pleased that my buddy at Nostalgic Ink pointed me to the game.  I have spoken on more than one occasion about these gaming stores and how they are palaces of mythology with only one purpose in mind—feeding the mind of the curious.  Stupid people do not wonder into stores like Nostalgic Ink to buy games like Arkham Horror.  Lazy people would avoid the place like a plague. But in that store are treasures of really previously unimagined consequences, and they are popular enough to have a store of their own now instead of being an underground fad like Call of Cthulhu was for so many years previously.  I have often looked at wonder at the games on the shelf in places like Nostalgic Ink and Yottaquest in Mt. Healthy, Ohio and wondered how or why those games are so popular with this newer generation.  Granted, Arkham Horror even among hard-core gamers is a difficult game—but after playing it, I clearly see the appeal and am a fan.

Rich Hoffman www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com 

A Temple of Hope: The Ghost Ship photographic journey

My family had a good laugh when the lunatic feminists in my home school district addicted to tax money accused me of being sexist.  The terminology clearly didn’t fit.   I raised two daughters and never gave them the indication of submission to anybody for any reason under any circumstances.  They are more technically liberated women than even the most rabid progressive feminist and it is quite a joy to watch them grow up and flower into everything that they feel inclined to develop about themselves.   However, it was very rewarding to see how one of them who is a professional photographer viewed a day we recently spent together.  She is pictured below on the bow of the Cincinnati Ghost Ship and can read her point of view at the following link.

http://adventuringphotographer.wordpress.com/2014/07/16/the-cincinnati-ghost-ship/

She has been an adult for long enough now to display her skills many times over and I haven’t been disappointed.  She is first and foremost an artist that wishes to embody all the elements I introduced to her as a child and it is wonderful to see all those elements come together into the person she is.  As I was raising her I never directly tried to shape her personality into something I would approve of, but simply removed the social shackles that often prevent the development of a mind properly.  My interest has never been social roles as society defined them, but as an individual does—so my parenting style was always focused on allowing my children to be exactly who they uniquely are—even in spite of my wishes—which I always made sure to contain.  When someone decides to become an artist of some type they leave themselves vulnerable to interpretation as their efforts are impossible to disguise.  What an artist produces becomes the culmination of their internal philosophy, which in my daughter’s case can be seen in the video below.

 

 

The day was not intended to be so monumental.  She and I have done that kind of thing many times.  As a little girl she trudged through many denser places, caves, trees, lakes and even confronted sometimes hostile inhabitants.  The standard equipment has always been a part of our life, satchels, loose clothing for easy climbing, hats to keep spiders and small rodents out of our hair, and my whips for climbing and diverting away hostile encounters.  Oddly enough on this trip to the Cincinnati Ghost Ship as an artist her natural focus was on most of those things which I take for granted as just part of everyday life.  As a photographer she brought them to the surface in a way that told me much of how she sees me—which is more beneficial to me than her.

Videography is a new skill she is adding to her arsenal.  She has been to film festivals with me several times and has met professionals who make movies—and has seen many artistic efforts from behind a lens.  So she has seen all the tricks and knows that there isn’t any way to hide her soul.  The way a camera operator and video director lights their subject, the focal point, the movement of the camera, and the way a piece is edited together ultimately reveals everything that there is to know about the artist behind the effort.  So her shot selection and ability to tell a story with moving pictures was very revealing regarding the kind of young woman she has become, and was a real treasure.  I didn’t know that at the beginning of our little adventure that I would come away with more than she did.

As the video was shot, we typically did not stop and pose for pictures.  We just did our thing and turned on the camera to capture footage as we were doing it.  The adventure always comes first; the attempt to document it is second which makes the job of a filmmaker more difficult.  Some things that show up in the video that were actually not filmed was the nice lunch she and I had at McDonald’s just prior to visiting the Ghost Ship.  Usually when she and I get together the rest of the family is with us, so she has been deprived of craved personal time with me.  Upon hitting the exit that would take us to the Ghost Ship off the highway the fuel light came on indicating that we were about to run out of gas.  So I turned around and got some gas down in Lawrenceburg before getting back into the hills of Northern Kentucky on an empty tank.   We were in the right area so I felt confident that time was on our side.  Getting gas was a little bit of an adventure so we decided to go ahead and grab a bite to eat before getting back into the woods.  The two of us had a Sausage McMuffin with Egg each—which the last time she had breakfast at McDonald’s with me was during a trip back from Florida the previous year so that breakfast tasted much better on the cusp of such an adventure.

As we sat and ate, and caught up on all the things we typically talk about, we looked over topographical maps of the area and contemplated strategies for getting there.  It turned out to be much easier than I anticipated which was nice considering that we had some really expensive camera equipment.  We were dressed to wade into the water and board the vessel if need be.  I typically carry with me a 12’ bull whip for those types of occasions.  I also typically have my rope bag that has 150’ of rope along with climbing gear, but that wouldn’t be needed for this.  The whip will get a person up small climbs most effectively.  I always have on my hip a whip holster that my friend Gery Deer designed especially for me.  I use it each year in the bull whip fast draw competition and when I walk around the house practicing.  It is designed for smaller whips but the 12’ whip can fit in it.  So that is what appeared in the video.  I didn’t know my daughter focused some of her shots on things like my whip and satchel, but they were nice bits of context from the adventure that surprised me.

When she was old enough to sit still I raised her on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and each night when she went to sleep, she played the Raiders of the Lost Ark soundtrack and let it go on repeat throughout the night.  She had a healthy childhood filled with the yearning for adventure, likely due to the kind of material she had from her first conscious moments.  Our interest didn’t stop there; we actually expected to live that life to a certain degree and she has so far her entire life.  So our outing to the Ghost Ship was simply a reflection of who we were.  But watching her video of it, it was clear that there was some Indiana Jones in there—which makes sense.  Indiana Jones to me is one of the most wonderful characters ever created for film.  He can get dirty with the best of them then turn around and be among the most scholarly.  He reads, he’s smart, and he’s fearless—but better yet, he’s tenacious.  I knew what I wanted to be as a man when I saw Indiana Jones swing into the Temple of Doom and steal the Shankara Stones from the skull on the sacrificial altar.  To a large degree I do live that life as a man.  The film was a fun movie filled with comic book antics, but the substance of the story is something that both my daughter and I have carried with us every day of my life and hers.

After we explored the vessel, dripping with sweet, I was pulling bugs off my hat and we decided to go back to McDonald’s for lunch to cool off.  We looked at our footage and talked about what we saw and as we were sitting there I thought about the many times that I had shown her the Temple of Doom movie and realized that we were living that life.  One moment we were knee-deep in adventure, the next integrating the boon of our discoveries with the civilized world—sitting in the corner with my cut up cloths and sweat soaked shirt, with cobwebs still hanging from my hat.  More than a few people looked my way wondering what we had been doing.  Most of them had no idea that just across the river was a treasure that had been there for many years right under their noses yet they were blissfully ignorant.  The only trace of anything out of the ordinary was my daughter and I who had just stepped out of some story book adventure sitting in the corner eating ice cream.  But that was part of the fun for us.

It was those little moments from the adventure that filled her mind which ended up in her cut of the video and framed the way she photographed the day’s events.  It made me very happy and confirmed why I raised her the way I did—it was to nurture that spark of hopeful optimism that can always be present—even when the circumstances are quite scary.  There is a hope in the way my daughter photographs that is a liberating pleasure unmatched by anything else for me.  As an artist, the mind of the creator cannot hide so cynicism shows behind every attempt if it is present.  Adventure isn’t always about things “out there” but what’s really inside–the adventure of a Ghost Ship in our back yard, or a simple trip to McDonald’s, or running out of gas at a highway interchange with no stations in sight.  Adventure starts in the heart, not in the extraordinary and the best of those events happen  when a parent and their child get together for the fun of it—and joy, and lack of pretense just to live life and capture what comes as future memories.   A temple is a place of worship and our lives come together driven by mutual interest.  It is not the Temple of Doom that we share as a lifelong focus–but a Temple of Hope captured by photos for time to benefit.

Rich Hoffman   www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com 

Kingdom of the Cthulhu: The Lovecraftian horror of an ultraterrestrial universe built on sacrifice

Horror to be relevant as an art form must have some hook of reality to it before it can be considered effective.  The best horror writers avoid topics that are so fantastic that they extend beyond belief.  Among the best of the horror writers was a creation that John Keel would later term more scientifically as “ultraterrestrials” and that would be H.P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu.  This is a dominating creature that lives outside of human time and space pushing against a cosmicism of projected reality driven by limited human senses to manipulate the actions of the technically defined living being.  In theory those who attempt to reach beyond their senses into that world of Cthulhu run the extremely high possibility of insanity as minds often fold over on themselves once they leave the boundaries of four dimensions.  Cthulhu was a fictional creation by a writer who lost both of his parents to an insane asylum and had himself suffered tormenting dreams by strange creatures from a very young child.  But like all great horror writers, Lovecraft’s Cthulhu has its roots into a reality we all understand—but fear to comprehend for many reasons.  The mythology of Cthulhu allows human beings to explore those strange possibilities from the safety of their senses without plummeting over the edge of sanity into a realm they clearly are not ready for.  It is in that realm however that my own eyes have always looked as the cause of much misery and defaults in living as the primary source of superstition and religion—and a barrier to the truth.

When talking about such things I prefer the term ultraterrestrial to reference the type of creatures that Lovecraft wrote about in his Cthulhu mythos which has taken on a life of its own since his death in 1937.  The stories Lovecraft wrote were well ahead of their time as it has only recently been proven that there are more than 10 dimensional realities known to mathematics—and probably more.  Lovecraft’s stories explored the possibilities of beings from those other dimensions visiting from their realms in ways humans could not—which was a terrifying prospect.  It still is, and is why even nearly a century after his death there is a cult following of H.P. Lovecraft.  The reporter John Keel seemed particularly obsessed with this type of reality and reported about it in The Mothman Prophesies.  In that book Keel was very level-headed and factually based even though the subject matter was extraordinary—UFOs interacting with people, strange monsters appearing out of nowhere, Men in Black walking about dressed as government agents not quite appearing human—being slightly off to those who spoke to them.  Keel in that book was knocking on the door to Lovecraft’s Cthulhu and it could be said that the Mothman of Point Pleasant, West Virginia, or the “Bird Man” of ancient Cahokia or the many thousands of gargoyles poised from the buildings of gothic structures—particularly the Budweiser brewery in St Louis—were there to appease the demons who come into our world to terrorize and manipulate our reality.  Keel’s other books, Strange Creatures From Time and Space, Our Haunted Planet, Operation Trojan Horse, The Eighth Tower, The Cosmic Question, and Disneyland of the Gods are all works obsessed with this realm of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu.  Keel had been opened to the possibilities before his investigations into the strange creature in Point Pleasant during 1967 and once there had everything confirmed as though it was tailor-made for him by what he would later call ultraterrestrials—or tricksters.  Because of their power and influence he would spend much of the rest of his life all the way to age 79 when he died in 2009 avoiding any kind of electronic device such as computers, phones, televisions etc., because Keel believed that the “tricksters” used those devices to control and manipulate the world of human beings with impunity to counteraction.

As time went on Keel’s books became more and more paranoid, and his subjectivity diminished for a time as he appeared to have gone too far down the rabbit hole of sanity for a time.  Perhaps not as far as Lovecraft’s parents did—but the rope to reality which Keel held on to was slipping.  Toward the end of his life he regained some of his grip on reality.  The 2002 film adaptation of his book The Mothman Prophecies appears to have helped him and he spent the rest of his days giving lectures as the film brought his ultraterrestrials with the help of Richard Gere into the mainstream.

I have personally noticed this manipulation of these ultraterrestrials by Keel’s definition for a long time.  The lazy relegate their definition of ultraterrestrials as angels and demons but that has never suited me.  I have never been comfortable handing over my fate to beings that just flash in and out of my life with some advice—or appear in a dream to leave an imprint of instruction for me to execute.  If I had been Noah and God appeared to me in a dream telling me to build an Ark, I would have woke up the next morning and told him—“dude, I don’t have the time to build you a stupid boat.” And I would have ignored the command.  When the floods came, I would have survived somehow regardless of the advice.  My opinion is that unless the motives of such individuals from other worlds is known, there is no way to attribute value to them leaving you to play the part of a pawn.  Without knowing those beings personally there is no way to validate if the sources are good or evil.  My assumption is that they are almost always evil posing as good.  So to properly serve the good in the context of universal merit, those beings should be ignored.  In this way for years I have poked and prodded into their world without the usual fear of insanity because I simply don’t trust any of them even though they have constantly tried to throw me off the trail.

One night on New Year’s Eve my family was playing a late night game of Pirates the Constructable Strategy Game.  We were between rounds so as everyone got up and stretched I resumed to my living room chair to read another quick chapter of The Mothman Prophecies which I had taken an interest in after seeing the movie.  In the book there was a surprising amount of coverage of UFO lore and as I was reading it I couldn’t help but wonder if Steven Spielberg had read this very same book to inspire him to write Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Poltergeist because this was the subject matter by the very fact based reporting of John Keel.  I found the book terrifying refreshing and a key piece into a lifetime puzzle I had been assembling most of my life which attempted to define the world of Lovecraft’s Cthulhu.  As I had conceived that very thought outside my front window clearly over the golf course was a UFO floating freely over the tree line.  My first rational thought was that it was a helicopter picking up a crash victim, or maybe even some kind of pyrotechnic display celebrating the New Year.  But it was just floating there enticing me like a seductive siren attempting to lure me into the hidden rocks in the choppy waters of the ocean.  My children were in the kitchen so I calmly grabbed their attention and directed their sight asking them to identity what was there.  They went through the same process I did, helicopter, fireworks—UFO.  Once we realized that the strobe displays on the vessel did not look like anything Wright Patterson Air Force Base nearby could have put out—it was too large for a drone—and too lit up to be stealthy we put on our shoes to rush out and meet it. We piled into our car and raced down the road to intercept it as it was now moving slowly.  We turned left onto a road about a hundred yards north of our home and saw the vessel floating over a home valued near a million dollars and the strobe lights flashed down upon it.  I blinked to make sure my vision was not faulty and when I opened my eyes it was gone.  I stopped the car, got out and looked to the north.  The entire sky was filled with a blacked out vessel roaming northeast.  The moonlight had been showing the outlines of clouds, but this vessel concealed them all.  My kids saw it too and we watched as it was there moving toward downtown Trenton one moment covering the entire sky from our home, over the Miller Brewery all the way to Trenton.  It appeared to be about 7 or 8 miles wide.  Then within the blink of an eye, it too was gone.  If my kids hadn’t seen it with me, I would have thought it to be an illusion, but it was actually much more sophisticated as other minds witnessed it simultaneously.  Within 30 seconds of the encounter we were left wondering if we actually saw what we saw.  I got out of the car and walked up to the house where the vessel had loomed over and they had lost power.  Nobody appeared to be home at the time, but their internal lights had flicked back on and a computer in the living room that had been on was in a reboot phase.   So something material had been there and it caused the power to drop then come back on.

We had seen our first UFO as a family and it was exciting—it certainly wasn’t our imagination.  However, I was skeptical and not so sure that little green men came down from E.T.’s home planet to pick some flowers.  Rather, I was thinking of Keel’s ultraterrestrials—or even more cynically something like Lovecraft’s Cthulhu.  It was more than a coincidence that I was studying The Mothman Prophecies and reading about those exact occurrences at that particular moment.  And out of all the years I had been alive I had never seen a UFO until that moment.  I didn’t even have to leave my home to see it, the thing practically landed in my front yard to get my attention. But as soon as we could chase it down for confirmation and get our cameras turned on and toward the object—it was gone.  My intentions as it was happening was to find a way to get on the vessel and pull one of the pilots off and capture it so I could conduct a proper investigation.  I doubt that was the intention by the perpetrators—but that’s what was going to happen.

I did the same thing as I spent some time hunting for a Mothman one summer in the regions where sightings had occurred.  I was determined to capture the creature and put it in a zoo dispelling any folklore about it with scientific fact.   But the more I looked, the more obvious it was that I was not going to find it—it would have to find me because those things only appear in our dimensional plane of reality when they want to.  Over time I concluded that the UFO at our home, like the Mothman hunting, was a creation by ultraterrestrials to bait me into insanity by feeding my curiosity and thus directing my thoughts on the matter into a direction they desired.  The circumstances were just too perfect to be real in the context presented.  After that event I had a lot more respect for John Keel—he was certainly on to something.  And without question H.P. Lovecraft was as well.  The reason his Cthulhu mythos is so terrifying and is still very much alive after a century of development is that deep down inside we know there is some truth to it.  The fictional creation of Cthulhu is an attempt to put into mythology a reality that is difficult to otherwise deal with.

To a writer like Lovecraft who had been tormented by ultraterrestrial monsters in his dreams from a child to an adult constantly and lost both parents to insanity his philosophy of cosmicism is understandable.  The philosophy of cosmicism states that there is no recognizable divine presence, such as a god, in the universe, and that humans are particularly insignificant in the larger scheme of intergalactic existence, and perhaps are just a small species projecting their own mental idolatries onto the vast cosmos, ever susceptible to being wiped from existence at any moment. This also suggested that the majority of undiscerning humanity are creatures with the same significance as insects and plants, who, in their small, visionless and unimportant nature, do not recognize a much greater struggle between greater forces.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmicism

John Keel had come to many of the same conclusions as Lovecraft when he said at the end of his book The Complete Guide to Mysterious Beings, “there are entities on this planet, and around it, that are far beyond all efforts to translate them into understandable cellular creatures.  They are not real in the sense that we are animals motivated by sex and emotions.  They are part of the energies that were scattered into space billions of years ago.  Their intelligence is so vast and so ruthlessly inhuman there is no way for us to comprehend it or communicate with it as we talk to dolphins.”  Keel would then propose twice in that same book, “Someone within two hundred miles of your home, no matter where you live on this earth, has had a direct, often terrifying, personal confrontation with a shape-shifting, unbelievable. (ultraterrestrial)  Our world has always been occupied by these things.  We are just passing through.  Belief or disbelief will come onto you from another direction.”  What Keel was talking about was essentially Lovecraft’s Cthulhu.

Charles Fort said in his 1931 book Lo! during the time of Lovecraft, “There may be occult things, beings and events, and there may be something of the nature of an occult police force, which operates to divert human suspicions, and to supply explanations that are good enough, for whatever (minds) human beings have—or that, if there be occult mishiefmakers and occult ravagers, they may be of a world also of other beings that are acting to check them, and to explain them not benevolently, but to divert suspicion from themselves because they, too, may be exploiting life upon this earth, but in ways more subtle, and orderly or organized fashion.  In “The Call of Cthulhu”, H. P. Lovecraft describes the fictional Cthulhu as “A monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind.”[5] Cthulhu has been described as a mix between a giant human, an octopus, and a dragon, and is depicted as being hundreds of meters tall, with human-looking arms and legs and a pair of rudimentary wings on its back.[5]Cthulhu’s head is depicted as similar to the entirety of a giant octopus, with an unknown number of tentacles surrounding its supposed mouth. Cthulhu is described as being able to change the shape of its body at will, extending and retracting limbs and tentacles as it sees fit.”  This description is remarkably like the Mothman and is a creature of imagination brought to life through the reality of some ultraterrestrial shape shifter which is a trick as old as time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu

Many of the cultures of times past as in the present which call for sacrifice to bring about something desired must point their superstitions toward these creatures.  Not surprising those who attempt to map out that realm of the ultraterrestricals even in a fictional sense—such as the Cthulhu end up dead.  Lovecraft died by the age of 46 and many who go down a similar path end up in the same state.  Looking into that other world brings upon the cells of the human body an undoing which prevents living.  I too have seen this as most notably reflected in my personal UFO story.  There have been many times when shape shifting entities made their entrance onto the stages of existence and did just as Charles Fort stated—“policed” the explanations of reality to suit their desires.  But if an inquiry into the other realms goes too deeply, then death is soon to follow.  Sometimes it’s not even by deliberate attempt.  Every year, roughly 15,000 people vanish under the most incredible circumstances, again according to John Keel’s studies into the matter.  “A family man steps into his backyard to mow the lawn. He is never seen again.  A waitress steps out of a restaurant to put a dime in the parking meter and disappears forever.  A family of five in a suburb melt into nothingness, leaving behind all their cloths, bank accounts, the family car.  We have dozens of puzzling cases in our files.” (Keel’s files)   These Cthulhu stories by Lovecraft are terrifying—because they are grounded in a reality we are aware of but dare not probe.

Most people are happy to carry a lucky rabbit’s foot, avoid unlucky associations, or pray to a deity to navigate through the minefield of the ultraterrestrial traps.  I have seen the attempt firsthand to divert my own attention obviously when doing an investigation by having those same beings throw me a bone as a UFO flew outside my front window to take me in a direction of inquiry they approved of—a classic case of misdirection.  Entire societies have adopted the notion of sacrifice in substitution for productivity to essentially satisfy their unconscious appeasement of these metaphorical Cthulhu’s which loom like gargoyles over charity events and suck off the vanity of opulent socialites and the perfume bathed on to cover the smell of their decaying flesh.  From the darkness of other dimensional realities our world is observed and manipulated to suit the needs of the ultraterrestrial, not our own as the strings of many living marionettes are tied to the fingers of an actual Cthulhu.

But unlike Keel and Lovecraft I do not believe the human race is destined to be meager insects in comparison to the cosmos.   I believe in the thin veil of cosmicism but do not believe that the Cthulhu type creatures residing there are superior to the human being.  If they were, there would not be all these elaborate tricks, like UFO’s landing in our front yards, or strange stories to captivate the tabloid lover in all of us—to keep us distracted and thus sacrificing to these gods of the unseen.  Their tricks only have power of the one way mirror for if they enter our reality with us, they discover they have no real strength—only the ability to scheme for their own ends as a competing organism.  And that goes for any entity in the universe—if they were so bold and audacious, they would not avoid direct contact and hide behind curtains of dimensional reality.  So there is nothing really to fear from them once it is understood that they gain all their power and terror from dwelling in the unknown.  But science is taking human beings into their realm whether they like it or not—and once we are there—there won’t be anywhere for them to hide any longer.  They are not to be feared, but to be conquered and the way to beat them is to remove the concept of sacrifice from the human landscape.  They obtain their sustenance off the emotional energy of the human race by a means not yet discovered and require misery, fear, and death to fuel their own existence.

Good horror touches these known truths—these deep suspicions we all have that just walking out to the mailbox may be the last time our bodies inhabit the earth.  We all know someone who has suffered from paranormal experiences yet nobody discusses it because we feel the breath of the Cthulhu on the back of our necks.  We try to counsel ourselves that the breath we feel is God and we seek to appease him with more sacrifice at churches, or financial donations and our prayers, but deep down inside we suspect that God is really a Lovecraftian monster ready to yank our lives from our bodies and consume it like a snack on Superbowl Sunday.  So we don’t name the evil for fear that it has power over us, we don’t talk about it with others for fear that we might be discovered betraying our overlords.  But those beasts have no real power—only the ability to operate from concealment.  Cellular attacks can be countered, diseases overcome, and mental breakdowns—alleviated by a strong—well-read mind.  If one is playing the Arkham Horror game which is a Lovecraftian journey I said weeks ago that I would take because of the nature of it, the characters of Harvey Walters and Sister Mary who both have a sanity of 7 would be the type of examples I’m refereeing to.  I like Harvey and would like to teach everyone to be more like him so that they could have a proper defense against the Cthulhu terrorists of inter-dimensional sacrifice.  But man’s fate is not destined to yield to these creatures, rather the other way around—which is the big secret they don’t want you to know about dear reader.  The human mind has the power to create these Cthulhu monsters—but it can also destroy them.  The reality of the horror of the Cthulhu is that they cannot match the productive enterprise of human imagination and effort.  With those efforts the driving force of humanity, the Cthulhu has no defense leaving the ultraterrestrial empire without armament in a war that is as old as time.  It would be my position to teach people how to make those Cthulhu into pets instead of Gods and the horror of their imprint into a children’s story.

Rich Hoffman

 

 

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com  

“The Serpent Mound Disturbance”: A giant hole opens in Siberia–again

For those living near Cincinnati, Ohio they would likely know of the strange archaeological remains of Serpent Mound off to the east—a mound built by an ancient people several thousand years ago clearly displaying a serpent design visible to the air which has astronomical calculations built into certain points of the large site. The people who built it went to incredible trouble for reasons that are even more mysterious. Thickening the plot the site sits on a significant portion of a crypto explosion which took place over 300 million years ago. There was no way that the ancient people could have at the time known of the explosion as erosion had removed most of the sight references visible without advanced scientific equipment.   Yet out of all the locations that Serpent Mound could have been built—it was on the edge of this gigantic 4 mile wide crater that looks to have come from inside the earth as opposed to a traditional meteor impact from space. The reason this is significant is that modern scientists are mystified–a helicopter spotted a large mysterious hole in Siberia Tuesday July 15th, 2014—and it has left scientists largely perplexed thus far. The first explanation rationed was that gas from deep in the earth exploded due to the mystical global warming phenomena perpetuated by paper-thin intellectuals—a falsehood designed to disguise their ignorance.

The massive hole, about 260 feet wide, is located in the Yamal peninsula and can easily fit several helicopters inside the entrance, according to the U.K.’s Independent. It is believed to be about two years old, RT.com reported.

The area’s name, Yamal, translates to “end of the world” and is home to some of Russia’s largest gas reserves.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/07/18/a-giant-mysterious-hole-has-opened-up-at-the-end-of-the-world-in-siberia-and-its-left-scientists-baffled/

Yet this wasn’t the first such hole to appear in Siberia.

On June 30,1908, a giant fireball exploded in Siberia’s remote Tunguska region, leveling trees for more than 20 miles around and causing atmospheric shock waves that were detected round the world. At the time, scientists thought that a giant meteorite had crashed into the earth. Later, when they failed to find a major crater or clearly identifiable meteorite fragments at the site, they began to question their earlier theory.

Many scientists have since attributed the phenomenon to a comet head that exploded in the air before hitting the earth. Others suggest that a stray clump of antimatter from elsewhere in the universe was the cause through some dimensional portal—a fold of space and time which is concealing the evidence.

http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,908001,00.html

Back at Serpent Mound just outside of Cincinnati, hardly a location at the “end of the world” the same type of thing occurred long ago. The valley beneath the effigy is really the western rim of a mysterious, four-mile-wide, circular crater – the eroded remains of a huge, catastrophic event geologists call “The Serpent Mound Disturbance.” About 300 million years ago, either an asteroid collision or an underground explosion blew apart more than seven cubic miles of rock. The central area was uplifted more than 1000 feet, while an outer rim dropped more than 400 feet.

What we see today results from eons of erosion, although the shattered fragments of the “Central Uplift” remain among the hills above Serpent Mound. The distant ridge tops, visible from the overlooks, stand high today because they are the much harder Ordovician bedrock that was offset by the event.

The strange geology of this spot was first noticed in modern times by Dr. John Locke of Cincinnati, who named it “Sunken Mountain” in 1838. Yet, it’s not hard to imagine that the ancient effigy builders could have recognized the unusual land forms. The serpent looks out from the edge of the Central Uplift zone.

http://mobile.ancientohiotrail.org/sp-5.html

This little recent hole in Siberia is much smaller than the four mile wide one that occurred at Serpent Mound but one thing is for sure about the Serpent Mound crater—it wasn’t caused by global warming and much stronger forces were at work.   At this time the two craters may have been caused by entirely different forces but what is clear is that even with all of our modern equipment and satellite analysis the hole in Siberia wasn’t even noticed for two years.   This confirms that there is very little that modern science really knows about anything as our study into nature is still infantile. The cause and effects of forces known and yet to be discovered are not complete, so static conclusions are impossible at this time.

But what is most mysterious of all is that a so-called primitive people knew enough about the geology of the Ohio area which had filled back in after hundreds of millions of years of erosion to build a tribute to it as if they knew that their monument in the shape of a serpent might appease the forces that created the impact.

Many societies could have risen and fallen over several hundred million years and not all of them may have been terrestrial. Yet by some word of mouth or written documentation which is no longer seen, the ancient people who constructed Serpent Mound likely knew about the strange ancient events that took place on that site. And in our modern times similar holes are opening up right under our feet and we have no explanation for them but to blame the occurrences on our own development and science. That only goes to prove how feeble our modern grasp on reality truly is. The mysteries of the earth are alive and well, and mankind looks upon them with fear of the unknown for which they lack the courage to probe with honesty to an origin that does not reside on this planet—but out into the Milky Way toward one of NASA’s recent proclamations—that within 25 years life will be discovered afar and the answers to some of these mysteries will then become known—and we may not like the answer as it will disturb our religions, mythologies and basic concept of existence.   If history is to be followed when matched up against a superior intellect and culture—it is likely that we might want to build a monument to appease them in the same way that a weak-willed politician licks the boots of those they perceive to be their superiors. In that future time the real answer to the mysterious crypto explosions on earth will then be provided by documents that left long ago only to return by the minds responsible.

The term cryptoexplosion structure (or cryptovolcanic structure) means an explosion of unknown cause. The term is now largely obsolete. It was once commonly used to describe sites where there was geological evidence of a large-scale explosion within the Earth’s crust, but no definitive evidence for the cause such as normal volcanic rocks. These sites are usually circular with signs of anomalous rock deformation contrasting with the surrounding region, and often showing evidence that crustal material had been uplifted and/or blown outwards. The assumption was that some unusual form of volcanism, or a gas explosion originating within the crust, was the cause. The use of the term went away with the rise of the science of impact crater recognition in the late 20th Century. Most structures described as cryptoexplosions turned out to be eroded impact craters, caused by the impact of meteorites. Today geologists discount former cryptoexplosion theories.[1]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptoexplosion

Yet, geologists have yet to explain what caused “The Serpent Mound Disturbance” and have relegated their investigation to the back of their desk drawers and left investigations to theorists who must resurrect the term, “cryptoexplosion” once again to properly term the classification.  And such explosions are not regulated to the distant past, but still occur right under the nose of science who believed that just because they stopped using a term, that the need would cease to call attention to itself.  By the evidence of the new hole that has opened in Russia–”cryptoexplosion” would appear to be much more appropriate as a term than “global warming.”

http://magnetic.me/Serpent/crater.htm

Rich Hoffman

 

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com  

Declaration of Independance: Poor minds not qualified to care for such a wonderful document

I do not believe that there is a single lawyer, politician or lobbyist who could write the Declaration of Independence today in 2014. When modern progressives, socialists, and domestic terrorists declare that they believe the founding documents of America are “living documents” they are wrong—because the quality of the minds that could contribute in the ways they propose would only diminish the meaning. It is possible that John Adams, Ben Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson were among the greatest collected minds in human history when they gathered to write the Declaration. They were as proficient philosophically as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle only all existing at the same time and without the murder of one by a society protecting itself from their intellectual advancement. When those three gathered and Jefferson wrote the founding document, a new era of philosophic endeavor had begun in the wake of war. A unique window had opened and the three of them stepped in bringing the rest of the new country with them. The results were the Declaration of Independence that was presented and edited by the Continental Congress in the following days leading up to July 4th 1776.

Congress ordered that the draft “lie on the table“.[66] For two days Congress methodically edited Jefferson’s primary document, shortening it by a fourth, removing unnecessary wording, and improving sentence structure.[67] Congress removed Jefferson’s assertion that Britain had forced slavery on the colonies, in order to moderate the document and appease persons in Britain who supported the Revolution. Although Jefferson wrote that Congress had “mangled” his draft version, the Declaration that was finally produced, according to his biographer John Ferling, was “the majestic document that inspired both contemporaries and posterity.”[67]

On Monday, July 1, having tabled the draft of the declaration, Congress resolved itself into a committee of the whole, with Benjamin Harrison of Virginia presiding, and resumed debate on Lee’s resolution of independence.[68] John Dickinson made one last effort to delay the decision, arguing that Congress should not declare independence without first securing a foreign alliance and finalizing the Articles of Confederation.[69] John Adams gave a speech in reply to Dickinson, restating the case for an immediate declaration.

After a long day of speeches, a vote was taken. As always, each colony cast a single vote; the delegation for each colony—numbering two to seven members—voted amongst themselves to determine the colony’s vote. Pennsylvania and South Carolina voted against declaring independence. The New York delegation, lacking permission to vote for independence, abstained. Delaware cast no vote because the delegation was split between Thomas McKean (who voted yes) and George Read (who voted no). The remaining nine delegations voted in favor of independence, which meant that the resolution had been approved by the committee of the whole. The next step was for the resolution to be voted upon by the Congress itself. Edward Rutledge of South Carolina, who was opposed to Lee’s resolution but desirous of unanimity, moved that the vote be postponed until the following day.[70]

Here is the text as it appeared after those edits:

Introduction Asserts as a matter of Natural Law the ability of a people to assume political independence; acknowledges that the grounds for such independence must be reasonable, and therefore explicable, and ought to be explained.
In CONGRESS, July 4, 1776. The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen United States of America,When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.


Preamble Outlines a general philosophy of government that justifies revolution when government harms natural rights.[77]
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.


Indictment A bill of particulars documenting the king’s “repeated injuries and usurpations” of the Americans’ rights and liberties.[77]
Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness of his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these states

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.Denunciation This section essentially finished the case for independence. The conditions that justified revolution have been shown.[77]Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.Conclusion The signers assert that there exist conditions under which people must change their government, that the British have produced such conditions, and by necessity the colonies must throw off political ties with the British Crown and become independent states. The conclusion contains, at its core, the Lee Resolution that had been passed on July 2.We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.Signatures The first and most famous signature on the engrossed copy was that of John Hancock, President of the Continental Congress. Two future presidents, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, and a father and great-grandfather of two other presidents, Benjamin Harrison, were among the signatories. Edward Rutledge (age 26), was the youngest signer, and Benjamin Franklin (age 70) was the oldest signer. The fifty-six signers of the Declaration represented the new states as follows (from north to south):[78]

New Hampshire : Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts : Samuel Adams, John Adams, John Hancock, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island : Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut : Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York : William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey : Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania : Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware : George Read, Caesar Rodney, Thomas McKean
Maryland : Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia : George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina : William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina : Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia : Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_Independence

It is unlikely that there is a single mind in all of Washington D.C. who could write those sentences presently let alone put them into a contextual sentence.   Clearly those same minds are not capable of participating in a “living document” which evolves over time to accommodate changing circumstances. This is the actual sad part of our history is that the intention was that each generation would produce men and women like Adams, Franklin, and Jefferson, but this has not been the case. Instead, American society has regressed into the worship of stupidity and patted themselves on the back for passing gas in the form of a “fart.”

It would be my wish that I could associate with people like these Founding Fathers, instead of the weakened people of the modern age—people unable to understand the above document let alone produce another one of equal value. What is to be respected from this period in America is that intelligence was honored and valor was a part of daily existence and it is these traits that carried America to become the greatest country on earth. It was not the “come lately” types who spent years of their academic lives getting drunk, pursuing sex, and passing gas yet expecting to build their minds into understanding the need for the Declaration of Independence. Worse yet, to even entertain the belief that they were equal to men like the authors.

The sad state of our modern times is that intelligence is attacked and stupidity is worshipped, and it is for this reason alone that no modern man should even conceive of changing a single word of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution—because they simply are not qualified—intellectually. No modern Supreme Court Justice, no lawyer—anywhere, and no current resident of the White House are able to meet the task of intellectual aptitude required to care for the founding documents let alone amend them. They are only capable of winning elections and moving money from one pocket to another—but they are not stewards of America equal to the founders—and authors of The Declaration of Independence.

Rich Hoffman www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com 

The $2,474,520 Home of Lois Lerner: Life as a parasitic government employee

It’s not a problem for a person to have a home valued at $2,474,520 like Lois Lerner does—if they have earned it productively. However, Lerner and her husband have achieved much of their wealth as government parasites—meaning they live off the efforts of government specifically perpetuating the complexity of IRS law so that only they can translate the information to those willing to pay for the service.   Both Lerner and her husband are attorneys who haven’t been discussed in great detail after Lerner was forced to step down from her IRS position in the wake of serious scandal for which she has been caught. As a family of attorneys Lerner understands how to manipulate the system because it was her type who helped shape that same system. For those types of government parasites which Lerner and her husband are but a small part—times are good—so good that they can afford a multi million dollar home essentially living as second-handers. But before understanding why they are such prescribed leeches it is important to study a bit of their background.

Lerner is a member of the Massachusetts bar, having earned her juris doctorate degree from Western New England College School of Law, graduating cum laude. She completed her undergraduate studies cum laude at Northeastern University.

Lerner began her career in government as a staff attorney in the Honors Program at the United States Department of Justice. She served as a Special Assistant in the U.S. Attorney’s Office where she was lead counsel handling felony and misdemeanor prosecutions. In 1981, Lerner moved to the Federal Election Commission, serving as the Assistant General Counsel for Enforcement, and ultimately as the Acting General Counsel.[1]

Lerner is a past president of the Council on Governmental Ethics Laws (COGEL) and an active member of the Humane Society of the United States where her efforts in performing pet rescues necessitated by the 2005 Gulf Coast hurricanes were widely acknowledged.

Lerner began her IRS service in 2001 as Director Rulings and Agreements in the Exempt Organizations function of TEGE. [2] In January 2006, she was selected as Director Exempt Organizations. In this capacity, Lerner led an organization of 900 employees responsible for a broad range of compliance activities, including examining the operational and financial activities of exempt organizations, processing applications for tax exemption, providing direction through private letter rulings and technical guidance and providing customer education and outreach to the exempt community.[3]

On May 23rd, 2013 Lerner was placed on administrative leave. Acting IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel selected Ken Corbin as the acting director of the exempt organizations division. Corbin was the deputy director of the submission processing, wage, and investment division.

In 2014, Lerner was held in Contempt of Congress in connection with the 2013 IRS controversy.[4][5] The resolution, H.Res. 574, was introduced into the United States House of Representatives on May 7, 2014 by Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA).[6] The bill was considered on May 7, 2014, and passed in Roll Call Vote 203 with a vote of 231-187.[6] All of the Republicans voted in favor of the bill, along with six Democrats.[7] The resolution holds Lois Lerner in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify at a congressional hearing.[8] Rep. Steve Stockman filed a motion on July 10, 2014 that, if enacted by the House, would direct congressional police to arrest Lois Lerner for contempt of Congress.[9][10]

Lerner is married to Michael R. Miles, Esq., Partner, Sutherland Asbill & Brennan LLP.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lois_Lerner

Michael Miles provides insurance companies with creative solutions and tax planning strategies for their corporate, insurance, and reinsurance transactions, including cross-border transactions and corporate restructurings. Michael also advises on consolidated return issues, the general taxation of corporations and shareholders, the taxation of regulated investment companies, and the application of withholding rules (including FATCA). He has substantial experience in advising clients on the tax consequences of proposed mergers and other reorganizations, reinsurance transactions, stock and asset acquisitions, and dispositions, distributions, and redemptions.

Before joining Sutherland, Michael served as an attorney in the Office of the Chief Counsel of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). He has more than 30 years of experience in handling federal tax controversies, first for the IRS and now for the firm’s corporate and individual clients, as well as substantial experience in obtaining rulings for clients on corporate tax and other matters and in practicing before the IRS.

http://www.sutherland.com/People/Michael-R-Miles

Knowing these things about Lerner and her husband it becomes clear that their combined incomes exist primarily from second-hand sources—living off the efforts of others. They do not build things, or behave in a productive manner—one was an IRS insider while the other provided tax strategies to a complex code. Like many in the Washington D.C. beltway they are a professional couple making vast sums of money as second-handers. They directly benefit from the efforts of others then redistribute those efforts directly into their pockets. This is how they came to own such a nice home in Montgomery County outside of Washington.  It wasn’t earned by productive enterprise—but rather parasitic leverage—(insider knowledge gained by political connections.)

Montgomery County Home:

Owner: MICHAEL R MILES & LERNER G LOIS Total land value: $747,870 Total value for property: $2,474,520 Total assessed value for property: $2,474,520 Base area of building: 6,500 square feet

Read more: http://www.city-data.com/montgomery-county/F/Fernwood-Court-1.html#ixzz37ZfF3700

Lerner only became a household name when she was caught in the current IRS scandal and set up to take the fall so that the rest of the IRS could skate away unharmed as her lawyer husband and past legal experience handled things behind the scenes. Politicians on the Hill benefit from the same second-hander strategies so when the cameras are turned off, there is little will to actually throw Lerner in jail or punish her in any way. The essential reason why is that they are all guilty of the same type of behavior.   All around Lerner’s $2,474,520 home are similar properties owned and operated by carbon copies of Lois and her husband, Michael—professional parasites that live off the efforts of others. Once they extort all they can from those sources they move on to new clients to extract all they can from them—until that too is gone, and this process continues until they either run out of clients, or find themselves in legal trouble and having to flee behind the curtain of protected BAR associations and their congressional friends who reside there with them.

When it is wondered what is wrong with Washington D.C. all one need to do is look at Lois Lerner and her husband to know what it is. They represent a deep fault in the current American political system overrun by lawyers, con artists and general second-handers avoiding any productive enterprise aside from the theft of other people’s money.   Lois Lerner is not unusual—she is common in her neighborhood—there are carbon copies of her on nearly every street.   The only reason that anybody knows about her is that she was the one who got caught. Many of the others are still unseen because their efforts are not so easily detected.   But they all have nice homes like the one that Lerner has because they achieve the wealth to buy them from other people’s money as service to government has paid them a healthy ransom and allowed them to live a pirate’s life only with a suit and tie to hide their true identities.

Rich Hoffman www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com 

The Cincinnati Ghost Ship

overmanwarrior:

This is from my daughter regarding a recent adventure we went on together, from her perspective.  The photos are quite good.  

Originally posted on :

First, listen to this to truly grasp what this place feels like.

Where do I even start with this? This amazing adventure was much needed for me in a raw, knock me on my butt sorta way. To breathe the air in this magical forest, we had to hike through plants as tall as us, break through spiderwebs (teeming with spiders might I add!), get our shoes wet and muddy, sweat out half our body weight from the humidity, and fight any tiredness our bodies felt. But to locate and tell the story of something long forgotten made this entire journey worth it.A few weeks ago I told my dad I needed a father-daughter day badly. I’ve always been extremely close to my dad and the older I get, the more I want to make sure that always remains no matter how busy life gets. I would have been…

View original 581 more words

“I WAS ONLY DOING MY JOB”: Why Lois Lerner should be tarred and feathered

When John Adams defended the shooters of the Boston Massacre the essence of the defense was that the soldier, who fell under pressure from a raging mob—largely led by John Adams cousin Sam, accidentally fired into the crowd launching a barrage of shots from the other English troops killing several in the crowd. The defense was that the soldier was simply doing his job as a servant to the Crown and the uniform. Later of course John Adams would take up the patriot cause more and more until he would be an eventual President of The United States. However, the foundations of his argument hastens back to the many evils often perpetrated by individuals in service to a system created by collectivism and uttered by the simple words—“I was only doing my job.”

The term is used daily all across the world when phrased as an explanation for something that goes wrong. The presumption is that the individual is somehow disassociated from an act because of service to a system and the requirements of surrendering thought to collective action. When somebody does something bad against someone else they often look for the escape—“I was only doing my job” to alleviate responsibility for their actions.

For instance, when a cop gives an expensive ticket to a housewife on her way to the grocery store and she declares that the only reason she was getting a ticket is because she’s driving a nice car, lives in a nice area, and has a nice life and can therefore pay the ticket without further trouble for the court—the cop says—“I am only doing my job.” With those simple words the officer shrugs off any personal responsibility for decisions and surrenders his actions to the benefit of the collective whole even though he did target the housewife instead of the Cheech and Chong look-a-likes who might have been in the next car. The housewife was an easy target, low confrontation type who typically pays the fee without any trouble. The other types might not even have the money for the fee creating defaults in court, time in jail, and all kinds of further work for the officer, so he picked the housewife for a ticket and blamed the system he served.

When a White House spokesman lies to the public to defend a president guilty of many crimes—the spokesman claims that “I was only doing my job.” When a lawyer defends a murderer whom he knows is guilty but provides a defense anyway doing whatever may be done to get the client off the punishments for the accused crime the lawyer says—“it is my job.”   The term itself refers to the notion that crimes can be committed so long as they are for a collective causes within an institutional system—but if that same act is committed between individuals, then punishment is expected.

This term, “I was only doing my job” is an old archaic notion left over from our primitive past as nomads and hunters and gathers where a village chief pointed the society they led to the higher cause of collective salvation. Modern society is only a few hundred years removed from this type of remnant behavior, so the type of individuality represented by American philosophy has not yet been biologically accepted as a new static pattern socially. People are still socially, mindless creatures trying to figure out where they stand in the grand scheme of things and their personal focus is still centered on service to a system over their own impulses to think. This is what is meant when someone declares, “I am only doing my job.”

Responsibility is not lost to the phrase, just the acknowledgment of an imposition. It is impossible to blame a system blob like presence like the “federal government, or a corporation over the individual behavior of the participants. When the police declare that they are just doing their job to kick in doors and arrest people for charges more politically motivated than attempts at justice—they are allowing the institution and their service to it to guide their thought instead of contemplating the value of an order given by a “superior.” When something goes wrong, they declare—“I was just following orders.” In this fashion the current IRS scandals was thought to be avoided as the participants taken individually are likely good people who shop at the same stores as everyone else, raise kids, see movies and eat at restaurants. But when they were asked by Lois Lerner to perform illegal actions of activism they said to all who questioned them, “I am only doing my job.” In this way many crimes were committed by the IRS because the leader at the time was a political activist using the arm of the IRS for personal conquest of opponents to a big government philosophy.

When Commissioner of Customs John Malcolm was accused of telling on tea smugglers in Boston in 1773 he was stripped, tarred and feathered and paraded around the city as a victory against tyranny. Before the lynching the man attempted to declare—“I’m just doing my job” hoping that it would relieve him of judgment by the angry mob who was sick of taxation without representation and the monopoly power of the tea supply company to levy taxes. The mob, led again by Sam Adams and witnessed by his cousin John held the Commissioner responsible for his individual actions not as a member of the East India Company or a favored member of the Crown in England—but as an individual who made a conscious decision to participate in a system perpetrating tyranny against the colonies. The difference between then and now is that the Sons of Liberty involved in the Boston Tea Party were holding individuals accountable for their evils instead of allowing the responsibility of a “system” to suck blame like a black hole—and this forced change.

By those who resent America the Boston Tea Party is often thought of as a terrorist act comparable to something like the World Trade Center attack, or the Boston Marathon Bombing. But there is a distinct difference that must be brought to light. The radicals of Islam, and other related tribal mentality terrorism is utilized to attack the collective mass through fear to have an impact on the institutions represented. For instance, the World Trade Center attack was designed to strike at the American economy as an institution by attacking a collective symbol—the sky scrapers of economic activity. The essence of the Tea Party attack in 1773 Boston was to remove the mask of individual responsibility to collective evil—by negating the term—“I was only doing my job.”

The crises that John Adams felt—America’s second president—was that he had defended that institutional position when defending the Red Coats during the Boston Massacre. Because of his fair and civil defense of the Crown’s army, Adams was offered into the elite circles of the King’s personal advisors as a reward. Yet Adams turned away from this being appalled by the actions leading up to the Boston Tea Party ultimately he made the decision as a very good lawyer to stand behind individual merit instead of collective sacrifice. By the time he was nominated to attend the First Continental Congress, he had evolved as a person who could argue in defense of men guilty of crime by declaring that “they were only doing their jobs” and begin holding people accountable for their individual actions in spite of their role in the institutional representation.

Much evil is conducted behind the façade of goodness to an institutional cause. But this does not get people off the hook of judgment. They are still required to be good people and to make decisions based on what’s right as an individual–opposed to an entity functioning as a tyranny because of institutional commitment to non-thinking collectivism. The Boston Tea Party was an act of accountability—in not allowing individuals to hide behind institutional evils.   The 9/11 terror attacks were collectivist attacks upon an institution thought of as American imperialism. In that circumstance the terrorists were individuals serving a collective desire—whether that desire was world bankers advancing their investments, or crazed lunatics committed to Islam it does not matter. One was an act of aggression for the good and one was for the bad. The difference between good and bad in this case is the commitment to individual value or collective based institutional assessment. America was formed upon individual value and it is there that the great differences reside. It is why John Adams came to realize that his cousin Sam was actually not such a provocateur and was actually standing for something unique on the world stage—a commitment to justice as judged by individuals as opposed to institutional preservation. In this case the term, “doing my job” has roots in the value of the individual instead of institutional concerns and does not allow vile acts to be performed behind a curtain of indecision, such as what has been happening at the IRS which dictates another type of Boston Tea Party where the individuals helping conceal the crimes should be tarred and feathered in pursuit of justice that has value where it is otherwise vacant. And this should be the fate of Lois Lerner so to send the message that institutional preservation is not going to hide behind the evils, lies and deliberate crimes of IRS leaders and their political activism paving the way for attacks against value. She was not “doing her job,” she was allowing tyranny to spread through institutional corruption and that deserves punishment.

 

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com  

Saving a Cincinnati ‘Ghost Ship’: History and methods of resurrecting the ‘Sachem’

This is part two of a story previously articulated. CLICK HERE TO SEE PART ONE.

At first a visit I took to the “Ghost Ship” of Cincinnati was just to confirm that it was there and provide my daughter with an interesting subject to photograph, as she is a professional photographer. But after doing a little research it became quickly evident that there was more to the story of this ancient vessel rusting away in a tributary of the Ohio River across from Lawrenceburg, Indiana. The story of the ship was a compelling one describing a century of exotic adventures. It was certainly an oddity that such a historic vessel would end up beached in a completely foreign setting from the Caribbean Sea where it one time roamed. Upon seeing the ship after doing the research of its history it was easy to conclude that the Sachem had a tenacity which commanded respect and was in the fight for its life surrounded by a hostile forest environment that is trying desperately to denigrate it from rust to soil once again. So the trip my daughter and I took became more than a photographic voyage into the wooded areas of Northern Kentucky, it became an investigation into the viability of actually rescuing once again the ship that D’Andrea LaRosa is trying to raise money to save through her Lawrenceburg Art Foundation seen at the link below. The current owner Robert Miller out of money for many years now is in Mexico and had saved the ship once before but appears to not have the resources to do it again, leaving us to contemplate the condition of the ship during July when the water level was low and the ship could be seen from all angles feasibly. The walk about that ship can be seen in the video below with a visual commentary on what we were seeing.

http://www.dandrealarosaartfoundation.org/SachemCampaign.html

Looking into the life more of Robert Miller to discover if there was any way of helping the guy finish the restoration project of the Sachem which he so boldly attempted, I ran across the article below describing the conditions of the first rescue from the scrap yard as far back as 1985—which went into great detail of how the ship ended up from New York to Lawrenceburg on the Ohio River. Since the article is so old I am including it in its entirety for preservation purposes but link the original article following the text. It is quite a story describing a vessel that was much closer to being destroyed a long time ago than had been previously reported.

PROUD ‘LADY’ RESCUED FROM HUDSON SLUDGE

Frances Ingraham Staff writer

Section: LIVING TODAY,  Page: G1

Date: Sunday, September 14, 1986

The Sachem, a privately owned 187- foot yacht, built in 1902, once was an elegant lady of the sea. But time played its role, fortunes tossed it around, and by the time she was barely 50 years old, she was given up for dead.

However, that’s not to be. Not since Robert “Butch” Miller of Cincinnati surfaced and is determined to bring it back to life. “I’d been looking around probably eight or nine years for a steam yacht,” he said. “Not necessarily this one, and not with any intentions of purchase, because I figured it would be out of range financially for me. But I hadn’t seen any in a museum, any restored, any sunk on the bottom.. There just weren’t any around.”

However, stuck there in the sludge, where the Hudson twists into New Jersey, was the once-noble Sachem.

Seated in his cramped and cluttered living quarters on the ship that has now been raised, and docked at the Riverview Marina in Catskill, Cincinnati businessman Miller recalled how the forgotten ship became his.

He first saw it advertised for sale in Boats and Harbors magazine, but when he arrived at the site – in West, New York, N.J. – he discovered it was an endless hulk of rust bogged in the Hudson.

“The (seller) was selling his property,” he recalled, “and this was the last thing that was left. Everybody was afraid of it. They had tried to move it out a couple of times and it didn’t move. They tried to move it with bulldozers,” without success. Miller had no idea he would find it in this condition.

All the ad mentioned was that the vessel was a steel hull, it had an engine that wasn’t in running condition, and the size and the year the vessel was built.

“I thought, ‘Wow! That could be about the size of one of those old steam yachts!’” he recalled.

Miller decided to buy and restore the vessel, no matter what it took. So he paid the $7,500, called in the bulldozers and tugs and eventually prodded it in the Hudson, in the spring of ’85.

The upper deck was a shambles, leaving him the choice of sleeping outside or in the bathroom – which he didn’t recognize until he took a couple of inches of mud off it. The hull was sloshing with rain water. Parts of it leaked.

Miller wasn’t discouraged.

With his mother handling the family business of manufacturing auger bits and wire-stringing devices in Cincinnati, 35-year-old Miller has been living on, and patiently restoring, his “dream boat” ever since. Occasionally, he returns to be with his wife Deborah, a court stenographer in Cincinnati, and their five-year-old son.

One of these days, Miller says he hopes to sail the Sachem home – a 2,600-mile voyage through the Erie Canal, the Great Lakes and down the Mississippi to the Ohio River.

Just in case he should break down on his way, Miller has also bought a 12- foot, 1881 tug with a powerful engine for $1,250. Another reason he bought the tug was to save the $200 an hour it would have taken him to have the Sachem professionally tugged from Brooklyn to New Jersey before he could get his vessel going.

But why all the fuss? Why all the toil, the time away from home? Why has Miller already spent close to $50,000 to get the old tub going, and expects to spend close to $1 million before his dream boat no longer is a nightmare?

Because the Sachem isn’t just any boat, he reasoned.

The Sachem, a steel-hulled steam yacht, first named the Celt, was built by Pusey & Jones, Wilmington, Del., for a Manhattan entrepreneur J. Rogers Maxwell and launched in April 1902.

When he died, Maxwell’s widow sold it to a Matt B. Metcalf of New York City who continued to use it as a pleasure craft until 1917.

With World War I under way, the U.S. Navy requisitioned it. They thoroughly refitted the boat – removing the masts, sealed the ornate brass- fringed portholes with steel, raised the sides to make it ocean-worthy, added military navigational equipment…

By the time they were through with it, the yacht resembled a battleship.

She was pressed into service as a harbor patrol craft but was better known, at that time, as a floating laboratory for inventer Thomas A. Edison.

On board, Edison worked on and perfected more than 30 military aids, including underwater detection devices, the fog bomb, efficient nautical steering devices, underwater searchlights, airplane detectors, ship-to-ship telephonic communication.

After the war, in 1919, the Navy returned the Sachem to Metcalf who sold it to a Jake Martin. After using it for a years as a fishing charter boat out of Sheepshead Bay, L.I., the Sachem became the flagship of the Circle Line sightseeing service in Manhattan.

The vessel – close to 24 feet wide and sitting about 13 feet in the water – originally contained two deck houses, forward and aft, of solid mahogany with teak sills and brass handrails.

The furnished and accessorized state rooms, which were also finished in mahogany had adjoining bathrooms with mosaic-tiled floors, porcelain or vitreous walls that were five feet deep. It was equipped with modern plumbing and electric power throughout. The vessel was designed as a schooner, its stout masts made of Oregon pine. The engine was a four-cylinder powerhouse in an open engine room.

Miller added: “Norman Brauer, the curator of the South Street Seaport Museum (in New York City) said that there are only three of these steam engines left in the world.”

The past year “hasn’t been all unique experiences and fun for me,” said Miller. “You can’t just pull up to any ol’ dock and tie this boat up. You need a commercial-size dock and security for insurance and personal reasons.”

When he first rescued the ship, Miller he towed it to a lumber yard in Brooklyn and tied up to the loading docks.

With the engine in need of repairs, he said he would spend that time with interior renovations, then sail it to Cincinnati for further work.

It hasn’t quite worked out that way, though.

A gang of vandals applied an axe to the mahagony panels in the cabin, went to work with cans of spray paint, made off with the 2,000-pound anchor, most of Miller’s tools, a steam cleaner, band saws, paint remover, engine parts – even the garbage.

Late last September, it happened again: Vandals pitched the 900-pound engine heads overboard.

Miller tried to flee the damned area, but chronic engine problems had him grounded at the expensive Bay Street landing on Staten Island.

“It was kinda fun and scary,” Miller recalled. “I’d watch the Columbian freighters come in and vans from nowhere would pull up and park in the lot. The FBI kept an eye on me before the President’s arrival (for the Fourth of July Statue of Liberty celebrations). There was no protection or fences. Anybody, who wanted to come up on the boat, could.”

On the lighter side, while docked there, rock queen Madonna taped a fleeting moment of her new video “Papa Don’t Preach”in front of the boat’s bow.

During the past few months, Miller has shared his boat with an aging Afgahn hound. He said he has existed on a steady diet of canned goods, peanut butter, jelly, fruit and any produce he can buy.

One day soon, Miller hopes to be home with his “dream.”

“I’ve been interested in boats since I was 10 years old,” he said. “I always wanted to keep on going and not go back home at the end of the day. I thought that was the only way to go. My dad always had boats. I’ve never seen a boat or ship I didn’t want to have. I almost bought a 350-foot passenger cargo vessel once, and a P-T boat.”

Now that he’s skipper of his historic boat, Miller said: “I’m not going to make a disco, a floating shushi bar or sightseeing boat out of it. It’s just strictly my yacht; for me to be able to go whenever and wherever. Heck, I can use my 46-footer as the dingy for this boat!”

Miller always had the burning spirit of an adventurer in him, he said slowly, looking down in his cup of coffee. “Maybe now I qualify.”

http://alb.merlinone.net/mweb/wmsql.wm.request?oneimage&imageid=5453530

Surely enough Miller brought the ship across the country and boldly took it up a tributary with some idea of dry docking it for repairs. But at that point, as they often do, the adventure ran out, and reality caught up to the endeavor. The resources to repair the ship even back then would have been in the millions of dollars and now in the state it currently is, likely millions more, and there just aren’t many people out there who want to pour money into that kind of project just to preserve something. It wouldn’t make much economic sense—which has generated a very lukewarm reception of D’Andrea LaRosa’s fundraising campaign—even with the prestige of her family’s pizza empire at her back. This has left the Sachem in limbo—a kind of in between world squeezed by business finance, good intentions, historical value, and practicality. Yet as I looked at it beached in Northern Kentucky with the lush deciduous forest barking bird calls reminiscent of a rain forest in Peru I could think of many other instances where much more audacious efforts had been made for far less reason. What came to my mind were the many people who read Overmanwarrior’s Wisdom that contribute vast sums of wealth into political campaigns and if the same effort were given to the Sachem, the ship could be saved.

As I was looking at the Sachem it appeared to be stable enough to sustain lifting it out of the creek bed with a large construction crane supported at multiple points under the hull. There is a large field directly to the south which could lean over the tree line and down into the creek. Access to the field appears to be reasonable with a large truck to carry all the equipment to the proper location. The ship could then be lifted out and placed on a barge or large flatbed tractor-trailer and taken out of the area for repairs. Given the cost of making the ship sea worthy, it is likely prohibitive, but might be better suited as a dry docked museum, restaurant, or both. It would be a wonderful exhibit at Newport on the Levy, the Cincinnati Banks project, the Museum Center in Cincinnati, or even the Edison Museum in Michigan. The top of the ship could be rebuilt with wood to look like it did leaving all the plumbing and engines out of the restoration equation to save cost.

To receive the investment dollars, unconventional explorations should be utilized, such as informing location scouts for motion pictures who have a need for a location like the one where the Sachem is. As I was looking at the vessel, it looked marvelous in the woods and would fit nicely as a ship wreck for a movie that needed that type of setting. It would cost a lot to build such a location and the land around the ship would easily accommodate a film crew. Again the land to the south is flat and relatively open allowing for trailers, tents, and equipment storage for location shooting.   An example of the location and how it could be filmed dramatically can be seen in the sample video my daughter and I put together during our visit seen at the start of this article. After collecting the footage we went over to McDonald’s in Lawrenceburg and cut it together as we had lunch. It was only about a 7 to 10 minute drive across the bridge from the ship to the McDonald’s so a film crew would have no trouble finding nice hotel accommodations that are very comfortable. The land around the Sachem was actually magnificent visually allowing film crews to shoot other scenes not directly related to a ship wreck and fees collected from the use could help fund the restoration of the Sachem. Film studios are usually sympathetic to these kinds of causes and might be entirely supportive. The key would be to let scouts know about the location so it could be used in this fashion. Hollywood is constantly looking for locations that offer tax incentives, which is why the new Avenger films are being shot in Ohio. Kentucky and Indiana have wonderful locations that could utilize the same resources. It is in this fashion that resurrecting the Sachem makes the most sense.

Yes it is possible, and worthy—and would require a lot of people to do it for all the right reasons putting aside their need for private wealth, prestige, or other vanities and sincerely work to give new life to the Sachem—the Cincinnati Ghost Ship. An even better project would be to produce a series on the History Channel chronicling the life of the Sachem as a 7 or 8 part series and using the proceeds generated to actually save the ship. These are the only ways that I see a project of this scope happening—it certainly will take more than D’Andrea LaRosa’s kind efforts, or the other enthusiasts who have taken up the Sachem as a personal crusade. The money for the effort has to come from somewhere and it would be up to the parties involved to make it easy for that money to take up the cause—otherwise the ship will rot away on the banks of the Ohio River.

I certainly understand Robert Miller running out of gas on the project. He worked hard to get the ship saved from a New Jersey scrap yard, and his resources ran out once he got it to that creek and he hasn’t had the ability since then to continue. But he did his job as far as I’m concerned. Apparently the person he is now and the one described in the article is the result of many hard years and disappointments. But all hope is not lost. All that’s needed is a direction change and an emphasis on new methods to generate the funds required to save this remarkable ship filled with nautical history. It will take more than Robert Miller to save the Sachem this time—and it will take more than luck. But it is possible, and quite worth the effort.

Rich Hoffman

www.OVERMANWARRIOR.com