The Espresso Book Machine

The day before yesterday, Saturday, I decided to take a chance on seeing the rare machine that revolutionizes the publication process for thousands of fledgling authors in our neck of the woods.  I say rare because there are only two in existence in our region, one in Texas and the other at the University of Missouri, Columbia.  After having gone to the meetings of four Ozark writer’s groups filled with writers of all levels looking for a way to publish, I thought my visit would be instructive for them as well.

I found out about the event only a couple of days before by accident after calling to request submission guidelines for the possible printing of ten galley copies for my final edit of Journal of the Silent Majority. From where I live it’s a four hour drive up to Columbia, Missouri if you allow for the extra time it’ll take to find free parking and the Student Center where the free event, Mizzou Media’s Spring Self-Publishing Workshop was held on the lower level of the bookstore. Extra chairs had to be brought in and I’m sure the fall workshop will be heavily attended as well.

It made for a full day driving there and back in a down pour nearly all the way past the Current, Big Piney, and Gasconade rivers.  The dogwoods had already faded giving way to red buds clustered under the protective patches of forests.  Dramatic outcrops of metamorphic limestone line the highways nearly all the way to the Missouri River where it looked like it was at flood stage.  As a former state employee Jefferson City brought back a lot of memories. 

Thank goodness for the MU campus map they sent me.  The size of the place is intimidating, but parking is free at the Virginia Avenue Parking Structure (garage) about a block from the bookstore where the Espresso Book Machine (EBM) is located.  There it was, just like in YouTube with its transparent side panels of heavy plastic somewhat muffling the clicking and humming of the gears.  I read that the EBM cost $80,000. It was a surprise to learn that the main clients of the EBM were not academics, but ordinary writers wanting to publish their works.  Still, Columbia was a logical choice for its location because it’s probably the intellectual nerve center of Missouri. 

Workshop attendees were given a packet consisting of the first issues of their newsletter, Coffee Break (sign up for it via email), their Pricing Guide, How to Sell Your Book at the University Bookstore on consignment, and the very important 42 page espresso book machine HOW-TOGUIDE, submission guidelines.  For the ladies a testimonial was given by Meg Phillips author of ZenKinky and the Art of (not finding) Love on the Internet.  Contacts I noted from the literature are:

·         MizzouEBM.Wordpress.com/events/UNCOVER-2012

·         mizzoumedia@missouri.edu

·         www.mubookstore.com

·         facebook.com/mubookstore

·         twitter, #MUBookstore

The Espresso Book Machine in my case would create a prototype copy of my manuscript – not perfect, but usable for final editing purposes.  The cover would have on it: “Uncorrected proof.  Galley copy only.  Do not quote without prior permission from the publisher.” I believe editors prefer to read perfected galleys, however created. The Print on Demand technology of the EBM can also produce the first run of the book and its future runs on demand, so I’d be killing two birds with one stone.  That could be the start of a something good.

Milan and the Refrigerator Lady

I arrived in Milan from Turino very late in the day with only 2,500 Lire.  At 11:30 P.M. I started looking for a place to stay for the night.  I couldn’t help noticing the many Italian couples “sparking” near the hotels, in the shadows, and just about everywhere else.  It looked like five minutes before curfew at the women’s dorms at Harding College.  Italian men have no problem with catcalls, whistling, and public displays of affection.  I never noticed the love making in any other country like I saw in Italy.  If you were a beautiful woman, you had it made.

I left the station as the gypsy kids were begging outside.  As I started down the massive steps, I noticed an old woman who was struggling to carry a refrigerator tied to her back.  Of all the Italian men who passed her not one would help.  I’d never witnessed such a scene.  I got up alongside and told her that I would carry it for her.  She refused at first, but almost cried when I heaved it on my back.  She was so grateful when I got it to the bottom of the train station steps that she burst into tears; a foreigner was helping her while Italian men gave her no thought.  That incident told me a lot about Italy.

Some Italians do have a sense of humor.  As I traipsed and probed into the night looking for a room I stumbled upon the Grand Hotel.  I approached the desk clerk with my head still spinning from the sight of the palatial surroundings and asked him if there was a vacancy and how much it was.  With a sympathetic smile and look at my backpack he said, “16,000 Lire.”  We had a good laugh before I retreated to the streets.  The next hotel wanted 8,000 Lire and so on.  “All full Signore.” Finally, I discovered the Boston Hotel which probably had a negative star rating, but at least the desk clerk heard me out.  “How much for a room for one night?” said I.  Just like the dishonest mechanic Clark Griswold encountered in National Lampoon's Vacation movie, he said, “How mucha you gotta?”  There went my 2,500 Lire, but I was lucky to find a room overlooking their fine utility entrances and, as a bonus, I was serenaded by two tom cats that fought it out all night.

My stay in Italy was short and if I had it to do over, I would have gone to Rome, but backpacking has its drawbacks – you get so fatigued you need a vacation from your vacation.  I would have loved to get out of the cold and rainy Po region for the warmer and brighter environs of Rome, the Eternal City.  Trafalgar, Globus, and AAA Travel have escorted land and sea tours that take the stress out of travel.  A clean bed, good food, and modern air conditioned buses are incentives that may draw me back to Europe and Italy, but for the moment I knew little about any other way of traveling in my station in life as did hundreds of thousands of Baby Boomers who were on their European tours.  My consolation then was the anticipation of what I would see tomorrow and that meant the lake region, Como, the Lepontine Alps, the St. Gotthard Pass, and Zurich where I met another interesting fellow.

A Snow Day in Kansas City

Working in downtown Kansas City had its drawbacks.  Sometimes a prisoner from the Jackson county jail or court house would escape or there would be a drive-by shooting with bullets passing outside the dock where I worked at the Kansas City State Office Building.  On my trip to the employee parking lot, the old Kansas City Greyhound bus station, an escaped killer once ran by me. All too frequently there would be a take-down in our building where security would hustle off the perpetrator to the dock to be questioned and let go or locked in a police department’s paddy wagon.  Sometimes late employees would walk past the arrest scene through the docks and became so accustomed to the event they never gave it much thought; as state employees our case workers were used to low pay and being abused by their clients.  For the most part though, the day passed with the same boring consistency, but I appreciated the intermittent floor shows.

The arrival of mail to be sorted, the UPS pickups, its return in the afternoon, the outgoing mail, local and over-the-road deliveries proceeded without a glitch.  About once a month the recyclers from Batliner came to pick up their Gaylord boxes full of paper and cardboard.  I even got to use my basic Spanish once in a while with them.  A salesman sometimes would drop by to introduce a new product or correct an order.  In my humble position as Storekeeper I did everything including making I.D. tags for the whole building.  I think most Americans know what I mean about “everything” because when the axe fell in downsizing - thanks to Governor Blunt - you inherited the victims’ jobs as well.  Being flexible and low paid is what preserved me to retirement.

When it comes to the weather, Kansas City is no joking matter.  Certainly it’s not like St. Joseph, Missouri which seems to have its own Artic weather pattern, St. Paul, Chicago or Fargo, North Dakota, but when the weatherman talks, people listen.  I always listened real hard when he said something about ice.  For me using a sick day or vacation day was always appropriate.  I’ve had too much experience to jeopardize my truck and life with something so dangerous, but snow was different.  I didn’t mind snow at all, in fact, in downtown Kansas City, it was quite pleasant and welcome.  Maybe it was because snow is a fairly rare event there, not like it used to be when I was a kid.  Of course, there are exceptions like in November, 1992 when a sheet of ice fell followed by a foot of snow 15 minutes before rush hour.  It took me five hours to drive the 19 miles home after passing 46 abandoned cars on I-70 and Lee’s Summit Road.

I’ve always noticed how things become quieter with snow on the ground.  The downtown streets clear of people and cars; many head home to avoid the rush hour and those horrible bottle necks like the Jackson Curve.  Maybe the fondness for snow comes from the realization of the passing of seasons.  Snow meant Christmas to me.  People become a little more folksy and agreeable.  In their mad dashes for success and fame even the big shots in their concrete and steel monoliths are reminded of their terrestrial origin and limitations.

Masonry & the Military Channel

My first encounter with Freemasonry began when I worked for a large corporation in Kansas City.  I was a young man who’d been transferred to Material’s Management with the promise of entering management as a group leader.  Everyone there was a Mason, but I did not know anything about Masonry or their disproportional representation.  Before long, I noticed “something ain’t right.”  My boss once told me about management - “It’s all in how you manipulate people.”  Perhaps that started it all.  I was asked to do unethical things by a manager who first threatened me with “job reclassification.”  (That means change the job description and lower the pay.) In defense I filed a grievance against him and as my reward I was called before the head of purchasing (Mason) who told me if I wasn’t happy to leave and that my grievance was ridiculous.  As things grew louder, I told him, “You can have my time and energy, but you can’t have my soul.”  He actually shouted, “I want your soul and I want it now!”  For my acts of defiance I was fired.  More details are in Journal of the Silent Majority.  That was then.

What The Secret History of the Freemasons has to do with the Military Channel I don’t know, but I couldn’t resist commenting on the too obvious whitewash of Freemasonry.  The stigma of being “Godless conspirators that run the world” and having a disproportional representation in America’s political hierarchy is being challenged.  The show recasts Masons as “just normal folks” and a “boys club” exhibiting strong citizenship where secrets don’t exist.  Masonic rituals involve only acting and symbolism; the TV showing of the initiation to the first degree proves it. Opponents are dubbed as “men jealous of the power.”

Bravely the show challenges a seminal event in their checked past.  An account seldom mentioned in Masonic apologia is given of Captain William Morgan who in 1826 was set to take his manuscript to the printer exposing Masonry. “William Morgan broke his Masonic code of silence and paid the penalty with his life.  On Wednesday, September 20, 1826 he was murdered by three Masons.  Twenty-two years later one of the three made a deathbed confession.  That confession is printed in Finney’s book on pages 6-10.”  (source below) His body was never found.  The television narrator blames his death on renegades.

An important topic not discussed was the existence and role of the American Illuminati, Masons on steroids.  If there are no secrets, why wasn’t the “grand hailing sign of distress” revealed with its meaning?  Why wasn’t “Masonic partiality” discussed?  Would they agree to an audit of their funding?  I noticed no mention in the broadcast of thirty-third degree Mason Albert Pike’s Morals and Dogma.  One of the first critical books of Masonry is The Character, Claims and Practical Workings of Freemasonry by Charles G. Finney 1869, reprinted by JKI Publishing 1998.  Here are some interesting excerpts.

·         “From 1813 until our day, the Name of Jesus Christ has been forbidden to be uttered in Masonic lodges.”

·         “Masonic partiality also permits Master Masons to commit criminal acts and find protection among Masons.”

·         “Masonry claims that, to this day, none but Freemasons know even the true name of God.”

·         “Illuminated Freemasonry is the Freemasonry Morgan paid with his life to expose.  It was not the Freemasonry known to George Washington.”

In the book’s epilogue “Freemasonry’s Retaliation Against the Church,” 1998 by John Daniel” seven phases of attacks against American churches are presented covering such topics as the National Council of Churches, New Age Magazine, the National Education Association, and the United Methodist Church’s modification of biblical language.

The timing of the broadcast is interesting and instructive.  Christianity is being attacked with increased ferocity.  Is it so surprising that a rival religion is cleaning up its image as the attacks ramp up? Harry Truman once told my grade school class to study history and biography and that’s just what I did.  He was the only Mason I respected, but after a lifetime of research and personal experience I believe the cleanup of Masonry itself will be extremely difficult when Americans take time to look at the facts and decide for themselves.

Crossing the Alps

I left Lyon a little after noon June 14, 1972 with a terrible haze still engulfing the city.  It was so warm I didn’t need my jeans jacket and I stuffed it in my trusty K-Mart backpack with the other dirty clothes.  I always looked forward to finding Laundromats in Europe where I could rest and feel clean again.  Backpackers also meet interesting people there.  It’s not uncommon for enterprising women to do several people’s washing – a kind of co-operative thing.  When I left for the Alps I was down to my last t-shirt.

The next stops on the trip to Milan were Grenoble, site of the 1964 Winter Olympics, and Chambéry.  The Alps were magnificent, but on the dark side there are countless small factories in the Alps which produce bad haze and terrible pollution in the streams.  Hydroelectric plants fill the long stretch of railroad tracks and there are many quarries that leave holes in the sides of the mountains.  Foundries belch out blast furnace fire and steam and their smoke settles in the valleys. Above many of the smoke stacks you can see where the vegetation, including trees, has died on the slopes.  Many Alpine streams were laden with floating trash.

There was a 15 minute ride through the Frejus Tunnel north of where Hannibal is said to have crossed the Alps at Monte Viso at 12,602 ft.  My first impression of being inside a mountain was that it was dark.  (Well, there’s a first time for everything.)  At the border I had my passport checked four or five times and I remember one dandy Italian officer with one of those halo caps who saluted and clicked his heels just like in the movies.  At this time I didn’t have a Eurailpass, so clearing with the authorities took much of my time, but it was nice to have few people in my compartment – no smokers or personal menageries.

This part of Italy, the Piedmont, was personal for me.  I knew Dad served one year in Italy mostly at Leghorn and ran truck convoys with the Peninsular Base Section (PBS) in the final push against the Germans in WWII.  His farthest north run was to the truck head at Piacenza 35 miles SE of Milan on April 28, 1945.  By May 5, 1945 the Fifth Army had captured 150,000 German POWs including the 16th SS Panzer Division who were placed in “cages” at: Ivrea (J22-71), Legnano (E04-80), Rho (K14-72, Tradate (K04-93), Reati (J809-849), Candia, Bernardo, and the Ghedi airport (509-53).  As a POW guard Dad said, “You didn’t mess with the SS.” I could write a book about it.  I'm sure there are many Baby Boomers whose fathers were there also.

I arrived at Turino at the headwaters of the Po River at 7:30 P.M. when it was cold and raining.   After cashing in a Traveler’s Check I had only 2500 Lire, hardly enough to buy anything.  I immediately went to a waiting room to eat an orange and miniature pizza.  The bums milling about the area were bad enough to have the Italian police frequently comb the room to get them out.  As I re-boarded the train for Milan, a gypsy woman wearing one of those long and colorful dresses pushed (bumped) me in the aisle and I immediately checked my wallet.  I wanted to sock her.  Authorities warn tourists to beware of gypsies, but I always put my big traveler’s wallet in my front pockets.  Pick pockets prefer back pockets.

Deciphering American History

When does the moment of outrage occur?  What’s the trigger that makes you question the explanation of events put forward by agents of the PC crowd?  Is it their product of homogenized mumbo jumbo they pass off as American history?  The tipping point for me came when their explanations conflicted with my observations of the last half century.  Important people, events, and ideologies were routinely overlooked.  As I read biography I noticed the real movers and shakers explained events more candidly and honestly perhaps because they usually were retired or beyond the point of financial intimidation.  That’s one of the reasons why I like Harry Golden’s books.

Most people retain the memory of basic events:  the University Disorders, the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, and Watergate, even though they might remember little about them.  It’s like a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle with the picture on the box.  That’s the deductive process when you’ve taken other people’s evaluation and accept it.  Curiosity compelled me to take the slower course of induction.  That’s how history is supposed to work with documentation.  That’s how intelligence gathering takes place and even the way controversial Alex Jones does his popular documentary films. With the process of induction the average Joe can finally understand the agenda, tactics, and ideology of the men behind the scenes who determine American history.

My method of discovering the truth other than observation was simple.  It involved many hundreds of books, magazine articles, and newspaper clippings.  When I read a book the first time for instance, I’d high lite interesting sentences with yellow.  The second read involved a blue high lite.  I retained in file important revelations represented in the resulting green which I put in Word in footnote form.  The result is a list of quotes and sources a mile long.  The fun part happened when I began clustering the quotes into concepts and common themes.  I learned, for instance, in reading biography there were kingpins never mentioned in most history books: Stanley Levison, Harris Wofford, and Allard Lowenstein.  One could call them “gunslingers of the Left.”  Their unmasking gave me an understanding of those behind eras like the Civil Rights Movement. 

I was surprised to discover a major constant in American history, but it’s not too surprising because many militant atheists control the press.  I kept running into references like “the demon within” in Tom Hayden’s memoirs. I was intrigued to learn how Pablo Picasso went from a master of realistic painting to paintings of bizarre abstract ugliness caused by “the demon within.”  A book on the Warburg international banking family was chocked full of a fascination with the occult and evil as was Eldridge Cleaver’s The Cataclysm of the Revolutionary.  The missing role of evil in American history was a major discovery for me.

When you strive to unlock the secrets of American history there is a price to pay as Pat Buchanan and others know.  If you’re new, you will be ignored.  If you have some traction, you will be marginalized.  If you become well known, you will be demonized.  That’s what the Left does. It is also true that there are those who were never in the system and have nothing to lose by telling the truth.

Update: Journal of the Silent Majority

When you’re west of the Appalachians and out of the literati briar patch, fledgling authors run into monumental road blocks; there’s no one to talk to or confide in.  Writer’s magazines seem to be motivational forums, not involving the meat and potatoes (mechanics) of publishing.  You can join writer's groups, but soon you will find out most are just social groups with an interest in talking about books, not those primarily interested in mechanics and forcing the manuscript into publication.  I use force because it takes a certain tenacity and aggression to get the job done.  Please, less Twitter and more writing.  There’s no rah-rah club or amen corner like there is in New York where the gatekeepers are deeply ensconced in their literary bubbles.  Here in the Midwest there is no networking relationship where an agent knows the publisher, publicist or editor who’d give you even the first look.  That group plays it safe and bets on established authors – the brand. 

It doesn’t take many rejections (unless you’re a masochist) for one to consider more practical options in getting his or her book published.  Besides, a negative aspect of the traditional publishing route is the time it takes.  It’s almost like creating a book by chisel and hammer so  I decided to seriously consider self-publishing.  Edgar Allan Poe, Walt Whitman, and James Joyce were self-publishers.  Another consideration was the fact that I was already performing the functions of a publisher.  My first buy was tasking the design of the front cover to a Kansas City graphic arts company.  Next was having a professional photographer take my picture for the web site, JournalSilentMajority.com.  I hired printers to produce editing and backup copies of the book.  I began experimental newspaper advertisements.  Finally, I hired an attorney to create Valley Star Publishing, LLC. The best book on the process in my humble opinion is The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing by Marilyn Ross & Sue Collier - reasonably priced on Amazon.

I want the options of books in paper form and electronic form.  I don’t believe for one moment that millions of Americans, especially Baby Boomers, are going to discard their love of physical books, nor do I reject the legitimacy and reality of e-Books and the power of the Internet.  My plan is to produce both, initially with review copies assisting the editing process.  I’m particularly interested in the possibilities of the Espresso Book Machine (EBM).  The closer the manuscript is to a physical book, the closer it is to being a reality.  I believe potential reviewers are more likely to read it.

One major hang up is the editing of JSM because it involves complex editing.  There are approximately 751 footnotes and my text went through at least three versions of Word beginning with Windows 95. There are all kinds of unexpected glitches when I began doing the indexing like “Bookmark not Defined.”  It took me a long time to learn what the prompt for indexing was. (F9 prompt, cursor placed before the first letter of the first entry.) I learned to limit indexing to the body of the text and not involve the footnote area.  Indexes are important because they are a kind of topical fishing lure.  Before I read a book I scan its index.  If there’s none, I don’t consider the book serious; to me it’s on the level of cook books and romantic novels where the couple intertwines in blissful rapture. I believe JSM is a memoir and a serious U.S. history.

Finishing the editing process is where I’m at today.  There’s been fourteen of my own edits, and yes, I’m sick of it.  The first independent edit was humbling; I have no shortage of Post-It-Notes.  The second and hopefully final edit has started.  I want my book to be a quality product even if controversial nature of Journal of the Silent Majority turns some off with its uncomfortable truths.  Once the editing process is finished, publishing can begin. 

Night Train to Lyon

My original plan was see Spain, but I was getting tired of traveling and wanted to shorten my stay.  I took the 1:46 A.M. out of Limoges, France ultimately bound for Milan, Italy.  Surprisingly, there was little room on the train at this early hour of the morning.  The conductor somehow managed to get me a seat in one cramped compartment where he lifted my back pack to the rack above two women.  Later on, the train came to an abrupt stop and my pack fell on them.  Because there were so many people there was not enough oxygen.  Of course, on cue, the smokers began their ritual.  One woman, after sleeping like a drunk on a park bench, straightened herself up into a perfect rigid posture and delicately accepted a cigarette from one of the men.  The classy ceremony was most amusing just like in the movies with her fingers curved outward. 

The journey east was the eeriest trip I’ve ever made.  There was no light in the small towns and villages we passed. (I do not remember seeing a single light.)  The light from the train cast the oddest shadows on the unfamiliar and strange scenes.  It was like going back three hundred years to see old buildings, nocturnal pastoral scenes, and dim freezes from a passing time machine.  I could just see the coach of Louis XVI clambering by on this the Night of Spurs when he was fleeing for his life to Metz not far from Germany. I was also fleeing France. I remember passing the pleasant French countryside which finally yielded to mountains which I did not know were the Alps.  My first impression seeing them in the wee hours of the morning was that they were the most beautiful sight I'd ever seen.  The smaller mountains were pink and you looked up to white capped ones against the most beautiful sky.  I can still see them perfectly in my mind.  They looked like a giant layer cake.  Hannibal probably thought the same only with Rome’s plunder on his mind.

Excerpt from Journal of the Silent Majority:

“The Alps were always a silent magnificent wonder to the barbarian tribes.  As you go towards them, past the gently rolling hills of southern France, once the Hercynian Forest full of bears and wolves, towards the shrouded purple mists of the uplands to the pink of the mountain bases and finally to the lofty white peaks themselves and beyond to the world of ancient history, you will encounter a great reservoir of culture – Rome.

There were stories and fables that were told by Edward Gibbon that are today totally forgotten like the fable of the Seven Sleepers, the story of the Vestal Virgins, how there was a pale around the sun lasting for a year after the assassination of Caesar, how Constantine fought under the apparition of “By this Sign, Conquer,” and how Rome became the wonder of the world with theatres hosting over 3,000 dancers and 3,000 singers, 14 aqueducts, modern sewers, temples, marbled baths with running hot water, markets selling spices and pepper of India and the goods of Egypt, and the palaces of Rome each equal to a city.  There was the story of Romulus and Remus being suckled by the she-wolf.  Our history books delete the stories of how our European ancestors overcame the Carthaginian threat to destroy Rome. American children no longer know about Julius Caesar, Pompey, Julian, Augustus, the frail and crippled Emperor Claudius, or the killers Caligula, Diocletian, or Nero who even killed his mother.  American children aren’t inoculated against the ultimate abuses of authority by the knowledge of cruelties and exterminations beyond imagination.  They don’t know about how government under despots and tyrants routinely boiled, drowned, flayed alive, sewed up in animal skins, tore limbs asunder with horses, fried, mutilated, fed to lions and beasts like the bears Mica Aurea and Innocence, stabbed, beat with clubs, or blinded their enemies.  They will never have an appreciation or understanding of the dark side of human nature that tells us about the intrigues and conspiracies that routinely stain the annals of our majority history.  Genghis Khan and the Mongols in three capitals murdered 4,347,000 people.  Battles consumed generations and left the countryside void of people for hundreds of years.”

Lyon on the Rhone River held an interesting past.  It was a royalist city at the time of the French Revolution, in fact so royal that revolutionaries tried to raze it to the ground.  As a scene of massacres, the Rhone was cluttered with mutilated floaters.  In our time the Rhone is where the Soviets tested their new Mig 25 Foxbat by flying it down the Rhone Valley to see if the French Mirage jets could catch it.  I arrived in Lyons later on in the morning to industrial smog blanketing the city.  I could barely breathe.  All the romanticism of ancient culture quickly disappeared.