I did another podcast interview that was released this week.
A lot of this will be familiar to you if you tuned into the first one.
But this time the Greg Carlwood went a little deeper into ‘The Caroline Group’ and some of the, umm… more… ah… conspiratorial? … aspects of the Townsend Brown story.
And I got to expound a little further on the place where the Philo Farnsworth and Townsend Brown stories dovetail together…
Listen on Apple Podcasts:
Today’s Guest: Paul Schatzkin is a biographer of obscure 20th century scientists. He has written “The Boy Who Invented Television” about Philo T. Farnsworth and “The Man Who Mastered Gravity” about T. Townsend Brown. Together, the two stories hint at – as science fiction pioneer Eden Philpotts predicted – a “Universe of magical things, patiently waiting for your wits to grow sharper.”
After Apple canned me in January ’22 and I had nothing but time on my hands, I started to wonder two things: 1) what to do with the time and 2) how to restore that little bit of income, which for five years had made the difference between living on ‘portfolio income’ and running out of capital before I run out of breath.
A couple of months after I’d hung up my Apple T-shirts I got a check from the self-publishing service called ‘Lulu.com‘ – which I’d used to publish the unfinished Townsend Brown biography after I abandoned the project back in 2009.The check was not very much, maybe $60 or $80 for a quarter.
Necessity being the mother of invention stories, that was enough to get me wondering: if I dusted off the manuscript, could that trickle be turnedinto an actual stream?
By then I’d had Mike Williams’ rewrite for several years.I tried to do something with it when Mike first presented it to me in 2018, but I didn’t have the patience then for the very granular work of restoring my ‘voice’ to the expedited narrative Mike had distilled.
It’s not like I’d ever stoped thinking about what-the-hell had happened back in 2009 – when my collaboration with Brown’s daugther went off the rails, when the only interested agent rejected the proposal, saying “there’s no meat on the bones” – when I closed the book and put it away. I did expect I might return to it some day. I just didn’t think it would be another twelve years.
Still, over the ensuing years I found myself returning to certain themes I could dwell on and some story points I could focus on.
The Room Where It Happened.
With nothing but time on my hands (and, more importantly, no co-habitant telling me not to) I re-visited the files in the spring of 2022.
I opened three windows on my 27″ display: my 2009 manuscript, Mike’s 2018 rewrite, and a new window where I cobbled the pieces back together.It took about six months to reconcile my original manuscript with the Mike’s scaled down version.
Fast forward to this recent spring.With the help of designers in Pakistan and Bangladesh I found through Fiverr.com, I had a book ready to upload to Amazon’s Kindle Direct platform.
I didn’t stop there.
Not only had I thought a lot about the themes running through the Townsend Brown story, I also thought a lot about what that story had in common with the Philo Farnsworth story that was published back in 2002.1 And it occurred to me that so much has happened since that book was first published that it was time for an update – and a new introduction to explore what ties the two books together.
These two stories – Farnsworth and Brown – are like swamp creatures crawling out of the priordial soup of 20th century cosmology – that bubbling cauldron of novel thinking from the likes of Planck, Einstein, Bohr, Schroedinger and all the others that gave us Relativty and Quantum Mechanics.
For example: You might be surprised to learn that Albert Einstein did not win his Nobel Prize in 1921 for either his Theories of Relativey or E=mc2.No, Einstein won his Nobel for the first paper he published in 1905 on the Photoelectric Effect.
You’ll be hearing a lot about the bomb and E=mc2 in a few weeks when the big feature film Oppenheimer is released.In the meantime, think about this:
E=mc2 gave us the atomic bomb, but the Photoelectric Effect gave us television and every video screen on the planet (including the one you are looking at now).
Now I have two books in circulation.They both draw from that well.
And now, this: Last month Amazon put more money in my bank account than I have ever earned from something I created and put into the world.2
At the ripe age of 72, I am actually earning a living (well, subsidizing my retirement) as an author.I’m not certain yet that the model is sustainable, but I’ve been learning how to run ads on Amazon and the results are quite encouraging.
Who’da thunk3?
In addition to the targeted advertising I’ve been doing on Amazon (thanks again, Holly Butler), I have also been interviewed for a couple of podcasts in the past few weeks, and each conversation has given me an opportunity to articulate some of the not-yet-fully-formed things I’ve been thinking about since I went back down the rabbit hole last year.
CYA at the bijou… and bring plenty of popcorn, it’s long one!
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1 Isn’t it curious that the Farnsworth book was published the last time I got fired from a job – when Gaylord took songs.com out to the woodshed and put it out of their misery?
2 songs.com not withstanding – that was mostly an aid to others putting their creativework into the world.
I contacted the host/producers of Mysterious Universe, and we spent more than two hours talking about the Townsend Brown biography and my earlier (recently re-released) bio of Philo T. Farnsworth, The Boy Who Invented Television. This was really the first opportunity I’ve had to talk about how the two stories dovetail to suggest a single story of forbidden science (fusion and gravity control) and the veil of mysteries surrounding both men.
Here are links if you listen via Apple Podcasts:
Paul Schatzkin joins us in this episode to explore his remarkable research on the obscure historical figures of Philo T. Farnsworth and Thomas Townsend Brown. We delve deeply into the narratives of these men, who pioneered technologies that revolutionized the world, while also contemplating some of the unrevealed technological advancements. Did Farnsworth unlock the enigma of fusion energy? Was Brown connected to a clandestine, highly advanced group?
..or here if you listen to podcasts on Spotify:
I am rather surprised and delighted that both books are starting to sell. It’s not huge numbers by any stretch, but I’ve been learning how to run ads on Amazon and get them to show up when users are searching related titles. I’m also working on tying my books into the release of the expected-to-be-a-blockbuster feature Oppenheimer when it comes out this summer:
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I have been thinking a lot about what ties all these stories together: that all the science involved begins with Einstein in 1905.
Townsend Brown was born in 1905, Philo Farnsworth in 1906. So both men were “relativity natives.” Like kids today who grew up with computers and smartphones and are considered ‘digital natives’ – these men who were born in the first decade of the 20th century never knew a world where relativity and its related discoveries didn’t exist.
At the very least, the breakthrough theories that led to the atomic bomb also led to electronic video – yes, the the screen you’re looking at now. Even though video is by far the more common and useful technology (lemme check… nope, no a-bomb in my pocket), that connection is largely lost to history. That is mostly because corporate greed and public relations swept Philo Farnsworth under the rug of history after the 1940s.
And Townsend Brown? Who the hell knows what happened there. I’ve been on that story for twenty years now and still have more questions than answers.
You can get a better idea what I’m driving at here:
*And in case you don’t recognize the song, Hey Mister, That’s Me Up On The Jukebox, listen to James Taylor from the album Mud Slide Slim (from 1971 –back when he, like me, still had hair:
I’m not exactly sure how this came to pass, but I learned this week that The Man Who Mastered Gravity has been discussed at considerable length on the Mysterious Universe podcast.
Discussion of the Townsend Brown story begins about 38:20 in – after some discussion of something called “The Ghost Moose.’ I guess that’s one thing I can cross off the bucket list: playing second-fiddle to a ‘ghost moose.’
Mysterious Universe is a very popular and long-standing podcast, ranking #5 in Apple’s listings of social science podcasts. From the listing:
Always interesting and often hilarious, join hosts Aaron Wright and Benjamin Grundy as they investigate the latest in futurology, weird science, consciousness research, alternative history, cryptozoology, UFOs, and new-age absurdity.
Just a quick scroll through the Mysterious Universehome page displays the depth and breadth of this podcast and its affiliated enterprises. These guys cover a lot of territory, some of it within the wheelhouse of my work (i.e. ‘lost science’ outside the realm of orthodoxy) and some of it, let’s be charitable and just say, ummm…. not so much.
Most of the discussion that is freely available is a recap of the early chapters of the book. There is a further discussion that gets into The Caroline Group and the rest of the story, but that’s behind a prescription paywall.
Gratitude
I have reached out to the producers of Mysterious Universe to see if I can get access to the subscriber-only edition. And (perish the thought!) offering myself up for an interview.
As I said, I don’t know how this came about, or how the book fell into their hands. I’m just glad that it did.
Yesterday, I listened to the episode in my – and had something of a moment. I listen to dozens of podcasts. I rarely listen to radio any more, just podcasts. And too often I’m listening with a twinge of envy, like “hey, I’ve written books… I’m interesting… why doesn’t anybody want to talk to me?”
So yesterday… finally! Hearing my own name and work mentioned in a credible manner was the most ‘external validation’ I’ve had for about twenty years. I know, we’re not supposed to rely on ‘external validation,’ we’re always just supposed to believe in our own work and purpose and just forge on in obscurity.
Well, fuck that. It’s nice to know that somebody else finds merit in the work.
(This is a cross-post of an item posted to ttbrown.com on March 18, 2023)
“Writing a book is adventure to begin with. It’s a toy and amusement; then it becomes a mistress and then it becomes a master and then a tyrant. The last phase is that just as you are about to be reconciled to your servitude, you kill the monster, and fling him out to the public.
That’s hardcover ($29.99), softcover ($19.99) and Kindle edition ($9.99).
What can I say other than, “I hope y’all will run right out (well, actually, sit right down) and buy a copy – and leave a glowing review on Amazon!”
Please note, the hardcover and softcover editions are print on demand (PoD), so delivery times are a tad longer than typical Amazon titles that are pre-printed and sitting in a warehouse somewhere.
I guess this is what the self-publishing gurus call a ‘soft launch.’ I don’t think of it so much as a ‘launch’ as just, well… like Churchill said, flinging it out to the public.
I am reasonably certain this edition is 98% perfect in terms of proofreading. I just haven’t found the other 2% yet. I was still finding typos etc. right up until I uploaded the files, so I am sure there are still some waiting to be detected. If readers will point them out to me, I’ll round ’em up and fix as many as I can all once.
The title has also been established with IngramSpark, which will distribute the print editions to bookstores if there is any demand.
This long-ago-abandoned project resurfaced in the months after I got fired from Apple. I suddenly found myself with all of my time on my hands. I dunno, maybe that’s a dangerous thing – quite arguable in this case, since the project continues to be a bottomless rabbit hole in which there is quite possibly no rabbit. Or maybe the rabbit is a squirrel. Still beats the fuck out of me.
Even though I set it aside – quite abruptly – back in 2009, this story always lurked in the back of my mind. When I ‘published’ the first draft of the manuscript that I’d written between 2005 and 2008 (Q: What’s that book about? A: About 500 pages…) I did it under the masthead of ‘Embassy Books and Laundry.’ That was a callback to a front-business that Townsend Brown and his wife operated in the 1950s when he said he was ‘done with science.’ I wasn’t done with the book, either, but I didn’t think it would be thirteen years before I returned to it.
I worked on the manuscript all summer and into the fall. I whittled 200,000 words down to about 100,000. I don’t know if what’s left tells the story, but it tells a story.
In December I sent it to a volunteer from my fusion website for proofreading. I got the file back from him at the end of January, and then had to spend a couple of weeks sorting through the fixes, prepping the illustrations and fixing the endnotes.
Last Saturday (February 11 – Thomas Edison’s birthday), I sent the file to a layout/designer in Pakistan. That was a bit of a monumental moment, representing nearly twenty years of thought and effort since I first went down the rabbit hole in 2003. (Incidentally, I found the layout/designer in Pakistan, and the woman who created the cover from Bangladesh, on Fiverr.com).
I just know I have to be careful, because I still don’t believe a lot of the things I think.
BTW, if anybody wants a copy when it’s finally ready, I’ll send you one if you’ll write a review on Amazon. I’m imagining an April 1 publication date. April Fools Day.
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People sometimes ask me if I cook for myself, and my usual weisenheimer answer is ‘well, I prepare meals, I don’t know if I’d call it ‘cooking’ exactly…
But last week I made chicken tikka masala from scratch and it turned out pretty well. I have a mason jar of sauce in the fridge so it’ll last me awhile. I don’t generally do photos of my food, but this is what the cooktop looked like before I started the cleanup:
I can make a mess with the best of ’em
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It’s either been a mild winter – or a late one.
Storms that have devastated other parts of the region just left a nice sheen in my neighborhood:
I dunno if I mentioned but I started reading Shakespeare last year. First Saturday of each month I meet up with the good folks from the Nashville Shakespeare Festival to read one the plays. Last month was “Much Ado About Nothing.” This month is “As You Like It.” Some evenings I sit in the treehouse while the sun sets and read a scene or two:
These winter sunsets from the treehouse are pretty colorful.
In the meantime, life goes on out here in West Bumfuque.
And, yes, I leave the ‘Winter Lights’ up until Daylight Savings starts again.
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Oh, and, one other thing. That pop-popping sound you hear? Pickleball. I’ve been playing a couple of hours nearly every day since last summer. I am powerless over pickleball and my life has become unmanageable, but I impress myself with my septuagenarian ability to nimbly chase after the balls I just missed.
I think a lot about what a weird destiny this has turned out to be, a life preoccupied with these two obscure, esoteric subjects. I need to write more about that, and what ties these two stories together – if I can ever figure out what it is exactly I’m thinking. Or, more precisely, find the nerve to actually say it.
As long as everybody else is reminiscing about Woodstock….
Was it really fifty years ago today?? Am I really that old??
Why, yes, I am. I will be 69 years old in November.
And I have survived – somehow, and despite my valiant efforts to the contrary.
The other good news is that my faculties are still (largely?) intact.
OK, I don’t exactly have photographic memory of everything that happened in 1969 – that is, after all, the year that the drugs kicked in, and I basically stayed stoned for the next two decades – but I made notes!
For almost all of 1969 and ’70, I kept a journal, and in that journal are the notes I recorded immediately after returning from Woodstock, which are compiled into three installments posted to Medium.com:
Rumson is the town near the Jersey Shore where I was a kid.My family lived there from 1950 until 1962 – from age 0 to age 11. My childhood, pretty much.
Over the decades since, I’ve gone back there several times.In the fall of 1984 I went back for two whole weeks.I owned a house in Hawaii at the time, and could have arranged a ‘vacation home exchange’ anywhere in the world. I could have gone to England or France; I chose instead to spend two weeks in New Jersey.But even that was not enough to heal the psychic wounds inflicted by the way I’d left 22 years earlier.
Prior to this most recent visit, the last time I was there was in 2002, when my sister and my brother and his wife and a couple of their kids and I granted our mother’s final wish and spread her ashes around the town where she’d spent the happiest years of her life – before our father’s untimely demise in 1958.
Today I am publishing a pair of companion pieces that explore my departure from Rumson in 1962 – and why I keep going back:
The Summer of ’62 is about the move.It’s a piece that I wrote as part of a memoir writing class I took in March of this year.
Return to Brigadoon is about one of those return visits in the summer of 1969; it’s based on a poem I found when I re-opened the journals I kept during my last year of high school and first year in college.
I’m posting these now as part of an attempt to find meaningful closure around some of what my new therapist calls “early childhood trauma.”
For the past 8 months, I have been working with Lee Norton, a therapist in Nashville who specializes in the full spectrum of trauma, from assault-rifle-massacre-survival to the sort of catastrophic early losses like I suffered when Harvey died. I’ve been in-and-out of therapy since I was in the third grade but this feels like the most productive therapeutic work I’ve ever done. Please don’t ask me why it took so long.
I’m not sure what the outcome of this current course is supposed to be. My 67-year-old-self has been spending a lot of time with my 7-year-old self, who, it seems, went into hiding about the time his father died. The kid and I are still deliberating over who liberates who.
I know what some of you are thinking: Why doesn’t he just get over it?His father died, the family moved, yada yada. It was 60 years ago.Move along…
I’ve even heard the word “indulgent” to describe these nostalgic disquisitions.
Yes, I am deeply conflicted about the whole proposition.On the one hand, it feels like necessary and unfinished work, despite the half-dozen decades between me and the events I keep returning to.On the other hand, at times the whole exercise seems like an excuse for not moving on to more constructive pursuits.
All of this came up in a session I had with Lee Norton shortly after this last visit to my point of origin. After wondering why am the only one of three siblings that continues to be affected by these long ago events, Lee offered:
One kid tends to get hit more than the others. Regardless of what the catastrophic loss was, the usual defense mechanisms are overwhelmed. It’s a very physiological process. The brain doesn’t have anywhere to put it, so it accumulates and sequesters in the right hemisphere which has no sense of time.
The brain always wants one linear, explicit storyline that it can then put away. Until you look into a catastrophic event and do something …. the brain does not recognize it as finished and when it’s not finished then all these unconscious processes kick in and we recapitulate. We’ll have relationship or job dilemmas; it’ll show up in lots of different ways – financially, self medication (umm…that would be me). The goal is you have to get it finished...
So I am, once again trying to get it finished.
For you, reading these things is optional.For me, apparently, writing them is not.
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A 180º panorama of Monmouth Avenue. It was a great neighborhood for kids and bicycles. No helmets required.
I surmise that anybody who’s been following this revival of my father’s writing has learned by now that Harvey died of cancer in 1958 at the ripe young age of 37. Therein lies the tragedy and the origins of the personal trauma that I’m exploring now (while undergoing a fresh round of new personal trauma right here in 2018. But we’ll get to that later…).
We don’t really know a whole lot about his illness nor his death. It came, frankly, as a complete surprise to my siblings and me, although I was only 7 years old at the time and my sister only 4. My brother (also currently deceased) might have had more of a grasp of it, but even he was only 10 years old at the time.
Almost everything I ever knew about his illness (which is to say, nothing), was expressed in a poem I wrote a long time ago about the Little Green Boat our family owned while we still lived near the Shrewsbury River in Rumson, New Jersey.
What I do have in the archives that I’m rummaging through now are three short essays that Harvey wrote about his experiences in the world of mid-1950s medical care. Herewith, then, are those three essays, starting with:
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A Visit To The Mayo Clinic – December, 1956
It’s peculiar that when reading the travel and resort section of the Sunday papers that I have never noticed any ads for Rochester, Minnesota as the ideal winter vacation spot. Much is written about Miami, Palm Beach, Bermuda, and the West Indies. But who is singing the praises of this happy little village nestled peacefully in the Zumbro Valley? (named for its discoverer Sam Zumbro, who mistakenly thought he had found the Khyber Pass.) Read More
