Letters to the Cyborgs

by Judyth Baker

  7. David Ferrie: Mafia Pilot, p. 498-499. by Judyth Vary Baker. Trine Day Books, 2014. The so-called “suicide note” is shown in the book to have been altered to appear as such.

  8. “Monkey Drumming Suggests the Origin of Music,” by Charles Q. Choi, Live Science Contributor , October 16, 2009 05:51am ET. When monkeys drum, they activate brain networks linked with communication, new findings that suggest a common origin of primate vocal and nonvocal communication systems and shed light on the origins of language and music.… Investigators at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany, scanned monkey brains while the rhesus macaques listened to either drumming or monkey calls. They found overlapping networks activated in the temporal lobe, which in humans is key to processing meaning in both speech and vision. “Monkeys respond to drumming sounds as they would to vocalizations,” researcher Christoph Kayser, a neuroscientist at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Tübingen, Germany, told LiveScience. “Hence, drumming originated as a form of expression or communication, possibly in an ancestral species common to apes and old-world monkeys, early during primate evolution.” http://www.livescience.com/9728-monkey-drumming-suggests-origin-music.html.

  9. Edgar F. Tatro is one of today’s preeminent experts on the Kennedy Assassination. Tatro holds a B.A. Degree in English, an MA in Urban Education and a Certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies in Educational Administration. He taught high school English for 38 years, specializing in science fiction, mystery and horror, satire and comedy, creative writing, media and propaganda, and the origin, history and poetry of rock music. He also taught college and adult education courses for 30 years, specializing in the JFK assassination, subliminal messages in advertising, the influence of rock music on drug abuse, backward messages in music, and plagiarism in music.

  Mr. Tatro is the author of more than 30 mystery and horror short stories, literary essays and poems published in many magazines across the country, including many research articles pertaining to the JFK assassination conspiracy. His work has been acknowledged or footnoted in many JFK assassination books, including Reasonable Doubt by Henry Hurt, Official and Confidential: The Secret Life of J. Edgar Hoover by Anthony Summers, Destiny Betrayed by Jim DiEugenio, (Probe Magazine) by Jim DiEugenio and Lisa Pease, The Kennedys: Dynasty and Disaster by John H. Davis, Killing Kennedy by Harrison Livingstone, JFK; The Book of the Film by Oliver Stone and Zachary Sklar, Doug Weldon’s essay in Murder in Dealey Plaza, JFK and the Unspeakable by Jim Douglass, and David Ferrrie: Mafia Pilot by Judyth Vary Baker.

  Ed is the original editor of Texas in the Morning, the memoirs of LBJ’s mistress, Madeleine Duncan Brown, and editor of the Bugliosi chapter in Biting the Elephant by Dr. Rodger Remington. He contributed research to Senator Sam Ervin’s Watergate investigative committee, the House Select Committee on Assassinations and the National Academy of Sciences (JFK acoustical analysis project). He attended Clay Shaw’s trial in New Orleans, in February 1969, and was given access to the court exhibits by Judge Edward Haggerty.

  Ed also served as a minor consultant to Oliver Stone’s film, “JFK.” He testified before the Assassination Records Review Board in March 1995, in Boston, Mass. He was responsible, via the ARRB, for the release of the unidentified print found on a box in the alleged sniper’s nest in the Texas School Book Depository, and, via the LBJ Library, for the release of the rough drafts of the rough draft of NSAM #273, which he shared with L. Fletcher Prouty, who shared them with Oliver Stone for post- “JFK” research.

  Mr. Tatro was a consultant to Nigel Turner’s “The Truth Shall Set You Free,” and “The Smoking Guns,” parts six and seven of The Men Who Killed Kennedy series. He was a primary recruiter and participant in Turner’s “The Guilty Men,” part nine of the same series.

  10. “Subliminal Messages Influence Our Experience of Pain” Simon Makin, September 1, 2015: Scientific American: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/subliminal-messages-influence-our-experience-of-pain/

  “[A] new study, from a team at Harvard Medical School and the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, led by Karin Jensen, shows that even subliminal input can modify pain – a more cognitively complex process than most that have previously been discovered to be susceptible to subliminal effects. The scientists conditioned 47 people to associate two faces with either high or low pain levels from heat applied to their forearm. Some participants saw the faces normally, whereas others were exposed subliminally – the images were flashed so briefly, the participants were not aware of seeing them, as verified by recognition tests. The researchers then applied a temperature halfway between the high and low levels, alongside either one of the conditioned faces or a previously unseen face. Participants rated how painful the new temperature was. The faces previously linked with high or low pain increased and reduced pain ratings, respectively, relative to the new face. The finding held whether the participant had seen the faces normally or learned the association subliminally. “Our results demonstrate that pain responses are shaped by expectations we may not be aware of,” Jensen says.… The finding also adds to the growing body of research showing that information that never reaches our conscious awareness can nonetheless influence our later behavior.”

  11. This is a real advertisement and was located online Jan. 17, 2016.

  12. This is a real advertisement and was located online Jan. 18, 2016.

  13. Vincent van Dragon is a short story for children written by this author in 2010 about a young dragon whose dream was to paint masterpieces in the style of Vincent van Gogh.

  14. The Elder refers to Kurt Vonnegut’s The Sirens of Titan, whose protagonist used ‘oxygen pills’ when living on Mars.

  15. Quoting from the Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas’ poem to his dying father. “Do not go gentle into that good night//Rage, rage against the dying of the light.…”

  16 PhysOrg.com) – Scientists from the UK, US and elsewhere have been carrying out a comprehensive assessment of flowering plants and adjusting the estimate of their total number. The new estimate is that there are about 400,000 flowering plant species… http://phys.org/news/2010-09-species.html[i]

  17. Klive was no phyicist: his idea of what happened had been gathered from popular media sources, which created a sloppy impression in his head that was something like this: “When the last of the once-mighty oceans were emptied, their contents hurled into space by massive slingshots that worked for 90 years at the task, they formed a huge ring of ice circling the planet. It was the most useful space station ever invented, and it was the last big invention. The ice ring was expanded with the earth’s entire supply of oxygen, carbon dioxide and turrets of nanocarbons set alongside every molecule of rust and bauxite that had once reddened the earth. The expanded material was thick, foamy and frozen rock-hard, but it had some heft and enough gravitational pull to help stabilize the earth’s core so that the moon’s waning gravitational influence would one day no longer matter. The ice ring was also capable of absorbing the impact of most meteors, and its strings of large, thick blocks could could be tilted to stop most meteors from reaching the earth. At the same time, the ice ring presented only its thinnest edge to the melting rays of the sun by means of the same system, when no meteor threat was imminent. The huge blocks in these rings had also been coated to reflect solar energy back to earth: they would never melt, therefore, but they would always generate energy, so long as the blocks’ engines were kept in good working order by the drone robots that serviced them –and which repaired themselves, too, in perpetuity, thanks to the bauxite, iron and solar heat…” By no meams was this an accurate or trily scientific description of what actually took place.

  18. A breath of ‘fresh air’? Oxygen micro-particle lets you live without even breathing (April 6, 2014) • Scientists were able to inject micro-particles filled with oxygen into rabbits’ bloodstreams• Rabbits’ windpipes were blocked – but were able to live up to 15 minutes • Once injected particles meet red blood cells – and 7
0% of oxygen travels within 4 seconds • Procedure could possibly be altered to keep subjects alive for 30 minutes. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2598208/A-breath-fresh-air-Oxygen-micro-particle-lets-live-without-breathing.html Acquired Dec. 8, 2015

  19. Nature, 02 Dec. 2015. “A €3-billion (US$3.2-billion) facility on Olkiluoto, an island off Finland’s west coast, will start storing waste in a deep underground repository from about 2023. It will pack up to 6,500 tonnes of uranium into copper canisters. The canisters will be lodged into a network of tunnels cut out of granite bedrock 400 metres underground; the canisters will be packed in with clay. Once the facility is sealed – which Finnish authorities estimate will be in 2120 – it should safely isolate the waste for several hundred thousand years. By then, its radiation levels will be harmless.” http://www.nature.com/news/why-finland-now-leads-the-world-in-nuclear-waste-storage-1.18903 acquired Jan. 19, 2016

  20. This statement is an example of how the literature of denouement device works in the new genre I call “The Literature of Surprise” or “Progression Literature” (not to be confused with “Progressive Literature”), See other stories as to how each device can link to provide a different idea of the truth in another story thanks to more information being revealed. Thus “truth” depends on how much information is made available or remains hidden. For example, in one story we learn that the whole episode about “Saving the Tiger” was a mere “Bollywood production.” In another, we learn that the leonine leprosy virus used to exterminate humans spared the Centauri race. The Literature of Denouement can be applied to a series of novels as well as to short stories. It can also be used in movies and plays. Professor Pat Rushin at the University of Central Florida wrote a letter recognizing the new literary genre in 1996, commenting that it could “replenish” literary theory. The author has Rushin’s letter in her possession.

  Her Way

  By Lee Harvey Oswald

  Introduction

  The short science fiction story, “Her Way,” was written by Lee H. Oswald and edited by Judyth Vary Baker in April and May of 1963 in New Orleans.

  Lee retyped this story twice; then I typed the final version, correcting misspellings and some grammar problems. By no means, however, should the reader be led to believe that Lee, who suffered from dyslexia, was not a potentially good writer in this genre. “Her Way” was his first story-length attempt to write fiction, and it is heavily laced with jargon that he made up, with a lively set of characters. “Alt” was based on Dr. Alton Ochsner and his personality (please see my book Me & Lee: How I came to know, love and lose Lee Harvey Oswald to appreciate Lee’s naming of this character after that eminent and powerful man). “Crawley” was named after Clay Shaw, the former Trade Mart executive and a close friend of Ochsner’s. Shaw, a man Lee disliked and did not trust, is also mentioned in Me & Lee. Shaw was the main subject in New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison’s quest for the killers of President John F. Kennedy after his prime suspect, my eccentric friend David Ferrie, was murdered (see my book David Ferrie: Mafia Pilot). A generally good portrait of Shaw’s trial, and of what Lee was up against as a secret agent of the government, is memorialized in Oliver Stone’s epic film, JFK.

  For those who might be confused about what Lee was trying to communicate when he writes of “spaces of Joy” and the desire of one character (Unnah) to continually laugh, as Unnah is obsessed with wanting to experience pleasure to the extreme, I was just as confused, until I discussed “Her Way” with Lee. As I retyped his third version, discovering words that never existed before (Lee said that through misspelling words, he found himself inventing new ones for his sci-fi story), my confusion about Unnah’s sanity increased.

  I finally understood when I asked why Lee was describing God as “The High Feeler” and Lee, laughing, said, “God promised everybody eternal happiness if they made it to heaven.” But how, he asked, can they make it to heaven if they have to go through life on earth first? Lee said Unnah could hardly bear to write a letter because he was all about “joy” and “fun,” since he lived most of his time in heaven. In fact, said Lee, Unnah would go crazy trying to get through just one ordinary day in a busy office on earth, which was full of tedious duties, stress, and bureaucracy. “Busy work,” Lee said, was driving sane people to drink and drugs every day. Then they could not go to heaven when they died. That was unfair! All of this simply provoked us to laughter.

  Lee did not capitalize pronouns relating to the High Feeler, using only ‘he’ instead of He, for example, with the observation that God didn’t have hang-ups about his importance, as lesser beings might, except for insisting on being understood and treated as the “only” God, however complex that night be, considering the Trinity, Allah, and The Great I Am.

  Lee had tried to sift out the problems of various religions from about the age of twelve, concluding, as he told me, that so many different religions out there meant that God was not a good communicator. “Therefore,” he said, “I am not responsible” if he came to the wrong conclusions. He was an agnostic, rather than an atheist, who avoided talking about Deity with most people.

  With me, it was different. Thanks to David Ferrie, whose ardent desire had been to become a real priest, Lee and I ended up having many discussions about religion, God, mortality and justice.

  At some point while I was working on a doctorate in English literature, I found that my biography had been written up in a “Who’s Who” publication that contained numerous errors. One of these errors was that I had written a book called “Her Way.” No such book ever existed. I did protect “Her Way” by emphasizing that it was a very important piece of writing. I kept the manuscript with my own stories written between 1963 and the present time, but have always described this short story as written by Lee, since 1980, when over 30 people suddenly learned that Lee and I had been friends, and that he had given me a green glass.

  I hope that an academe in linguistics will prove it, even though I altered about 25% of Lee’s story by suggesting certain phrases and by fixing typos and grammar errors (missed a few, which are pointed out in the endnotes as they occur).

  It is hoped that anyone who compares this short science fiction story with my own writings will be able to distinguish the differences in style between Lee and I. Had Lee lived, I believe he would have become a professor of political science and a writer, though he would always have a zest for adventure. No doubt Lee would have tried to remain in the CIA, as he told me when we made our plans to try to escape the big, bad world (by fleeing to the Yucatan, then eventually divorcing and marrying, likely in Merida, Mexico, after a year of lying low in the Cayman Islands). We dared to have such dreams because Lee had been encouraged to become a paid CIA informant in Mexico, where we both eventually planned to attend universities. Our friend, Dr. Mary Sherman, who had contacts in Mexico, would have helped us. But she was murdered in July 1964, the day the Warren Commission came to New Orleans.

  Everything the CIA promised Lee turned out to be a lie: On November 22, Lee, who had penetrated an assassination ring that planned to kill President Kennedy, was betrayed by the CIA and used for their own nefarious purposes. He had tried to save the president, but now was accused of killing him. Ironically, Lee saw himself made the villain, when he had sent warnings that helped save Kennedy’s life in Chicago. The CIA and FBI turned Lee into a patsy, then let him get gunned down in front of a host of Dallas police officers. Lee H. Oswald did not kill anybody. To my dying breath, I assert that he was an innocent man who did not dare say, “I am CIA! I tried to save Kennedy’s life!” because such a statement would have resulted in the executions of his CIA contacts and friends in the USSR, where Lee had lived undercover for thirty months as a spy, pretending to be a defector. The man who returned with a Soviet wife and daughter, without fanfare, without being detained, arrested, or even questioned, will be vindicated. Of that I am certain.

  JVB

  Her Way

  Lee Harvey Oswald (1963)

 
The Ontario was making a slow liftoff from St, Martinville. The big ship had already made its three trips and was too old for a fourth. It shuddered and creaked.

  Crawley tried to relax. He watched Alt’s calm face with envy; the fourth chance was usually safe, and meant big profits, but the suspicious noises in the joints and innards of the old tub got on his nerves. Crawley gazed anxiously at the dials and gauges, most of which were in operative1 order, and the needles began to swing reassuringly to the right, while the lights blinked steadily off and on. The robocomp began to hum consoling tunes into his headset; finally, Alt unbuckled his uniflow and slid out of the manual control chair, confident that the robocomp would make it okay now.

  Crawley stayed in his seat. This was his first trip Neptune-side, and like all neophytes, he had to go on a Fourth2 before he could get his own ship. In case anything happened to Alt, who had been on three rides and whose physiological process might not endure the disruption encountered on a Fourth, Crawley would be there to work manual. But now the young pilot had forgotten the potential hazards of Fourth; he was watching the planet swinging away under him.

  Neptune glowed3 like a melon under neon, and the black stabbing space around the slowly shrinking ball fascinated eyes accustomed only to the drab grays and white of humibunks and airlocks.

  “Look, Alt,” Crawley said, hopefully. “You oughta see this, Alt, you really oughta.”

  “I’ve seen it twice,” his companion said, squirting Dreamglo into his mouth. “That’s once4 more than’s safe. Don’t they teach you anything down there?”

  “Don’t go to sleep yet,” Crawley said. “You told me you would stay awake ‘til the first jump. These antique controls, they’re different from the ones they had me work on.”