This is probably another chapter in my next book.  You may want to read the first chapter before reading this chapter.  It is here:

http://jamesbrausch.com/?p=64

Or maybe that’s the 2nd chapter and what follows is the first chapter.

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Adam and Lilith were more in love than any other couple Adam had ever observed.  His joy in life was waking up next to her after a good cuddle night and dreaming sweet dreams of embracing and laughing and being mesmerized by sunsets as they held each other close.

The only problem is that Lilith didn’t exist to the rest of the world.  She was Adam’s secret.  He had never told anyone about her, not even his parents when he first met her in his dreams as a very young boy.  His secret was completely safe because he had never told anyone at all about Lilith nor even hinted at her existence.

Still she was his life.  He could not imagine a life worth living without the hours he spent dreaming with Lilith at his side.  He kept her a secret, but he kept no secrets from her.  She was literally his other half and life was not worth living without her company each night.

Secrets were Adam’s life.  It was because of Lilith that Adam was granted the highest security clearance offered.  Adam met every new president soon after they were elected and knew the codes to launch a nuclear war.  Adam’s cell phone number was in the saved numbers list of the cell phone carried by the president’s aid who also carried the football that could launch a Nuclear strike.

When he met the president, he was always introduced by the outgoing president as the one man on earth other than the President who could be and was trusted with any and every secret.  In fact, two presidents conferred with him as a confidant before making a major decision that they didn’t even want their join chief’s of staff or their Vice President to know about.  The current president would probably never contact Adam in such a way though.

Adam alone knew that there was a small lie in the introduction he received when he met each new president-elect.  The introducer would claim that no man on earth would ever hold as many secrets as the current president and Adam.  Adam knew that he actually held one secret that no living president ever held.  Two if one counted the secret of “Lilith.” 

That was true because the last president holding that secret had recently died.  Since Adam and the current president weren’t exactly cozy, Adam had chosen not to reveal that secret to the current president.  Adam was the last man alive holding that one secret.  Unless a future president gave Adam a reason to divulge that one secret, Adam planned to go to his grave with it.  The world would probably be a better place if that happened anyway.

Lilith was the reason Adam held the highest security clearance possible… a security clearance so high that only the president and Adam even knew it existed.

One has to understand the way one gets a security clearance to understand how that is possible.  The lowest level of security clearance is called “Secret” and involved filling out a stack of paperwork listing every relative, best friend, ex-girlfriend and employer you have ever had.  You absolutely MUST list every single one or you will NOT be granted the clearance.  That is the first test you must pass… a test of 100% complete honesty on the forms themselves.  If you miss even one prior employer in the paperwork you will be denied the secret level clearance.

That is true even if you only worked for that employer for a single day and you were paid “under the table” in cash.  It doesn’t matter.  You have to list every single employer.  The same is true for every living relative and prior friend or romantic relationship.

Then a three letter agency spot checks everything in the paperwork.  Sometimes it is the FBI if you are working for a defense contractor at the time you need a “secret” level clearance.  Sometimes other agencies are given that task if you are actually in the military or have been elected to a public office.  There is no single agency that is responsible for granting security clearances… probably because there are so many agencies that need to remain so secret that they couldn’t even use a single agency to get security clearances researched and granted.

Adam’s first security clearance was granted by the FBI when he first took a job with an innoculous sounding company named Telecommunications Systems Architects or TSA long before the Transportation Security Agency took over those initials.

He was meticulously honest about everything except Lilith.  Since Lilith didn’t actually exist in the real world to most people, he felt he was still being honest and complete in his paperwork by not listing her.  Besides, there were no spaces for “imaginary friends” or “imaginary lovers”, were there?

After turning in his paperwork, the FBI spot checked it.  They visited his parents, his sister, his cousins, aunts and uncles and his one surviving set of grandparents.  They also visited everyone he had ever listed as a friend… even those he was no longer in contact with… which were all of them.

Although Adam was well liked and made friends easily, he never really made lasting and deep friendships.  That was also because of Lilith.  He simply couldn’t imagine having a close or deep friendship with anyone but her.  Lilith was everything he needed in a close friend.

The FBI also visited all of Adam’s school teachers starting with Kindergarten.  That isn’t normal for a “secret” clearance, but Adam was actually being researched for a “top secret” clearance which is the next level up.  At the “top secret” level, the FBI (or whatever agency is doing the background check) talks to every prior contact.

The interviews are always the same.  They first tell the person being interviewed that they must not tell anyone about the interview including the person being checked.  They read the law that makes it a felony to divulge that you were contacted for a background check for a security clearance.  They read the penalties for violating the National Securty Act which includes heavy fines, prison sentences of 25 years to life, or even… in some cases… death.

Most people realize that it is a scare tactic and know that the government has never really put anyone to death for telling someone about a background check interview.  In fact, most people receiving a security clearance are contacted during the background process by a parent, sibling or best friend to tell them about the excitement of being contacted by the FBI.

Adam was never contacted by anyone during that process though even though the FBI was extremely thorough and interviewed everyone who had ever been important in Adam’s life.

That too was indirectly due to Lilith.  Lilith had so encompassed Adam’s life from such and early age that Adam had never really had a close relationship with his parents or siblings.  In a similar way, he never had a really close relationship with any of his teachers, employers, friends or anyone else.  Lilith, although completely imaginary to anyone else who would have ever heard of her, was truly everything to Adam.  She fulfilled the needs that most people have fulfilled in close relationships with others.

The interviews then progress on to a standard set of questions that are designed to establish the character of the person being investigated.  They ask about drugs and alcohol use and abuse.  They ask about arguments, disputes, use of bad language, violation of laws, general honesty and likeability.

Of course Adam passed all of the interviews perfectly.  He was likable, honest, never intentionally broke any laws, never had arguments or disagreements.  He also never used drugs or alcohol or engaged in any other vices.

In fact, since his score was completely perfect, his case was referred to the FBI director because there was a suspicion that his “background” might have been completely hoaxed.

The FBI director was amused by the background check, but didn’t see any motive for such an elaborate hoax involving so many people.  The position being offered to Adam wasn’t one that would interest the Russians, China, Great Britain, France or Israel which are the only countries who could have possibly pulled off such an elaborate and expensive hoax.

Still, the FBI director decided to pass Adam’s file over the NSA to do some statistical analysis of the data.  The NSA had some amazing computers that could see statistical blips in the data and uncover such a hoax.  They reported that Adam was definitely a statistical anomaly, but did not uncover anything that would make one suspect that Adam was anything but that… a statistical outlier and an example of an extremely rare incidence of someone that was extremely trustworthy and honest.

The NSA kept his file and used it for training and showing others in the department how to tell the difference between a true statistical outlier that was just that… an outlier… a blip outside the norm… versus an outlier that indicated that things were not at all what they appeared to be.  That is how his file eventually came into the possession of one of the agencies that are so secret that they don’t even have a name.  They found it while interfacing with the NSA.

There are other factors that are used other than being honest and law abiding and getting along with others well in the issuance of a Top Secret security clearance.  One is the use of illegal drugs.

At the time, it was completely impossible to get even a secret clearance if one had ever used marijuana even one time.  It would be denied even if you had ever been in a place where marijuana was being used by others.  There were no exceptions.  A couple of presidents and their past indescretions have since changed that rule.  Still, it is very important to every agency that those receiving Secret or Top Secret clearances to not have used illegal drugs or had a problem with alcohol abuse.

The reason is obvious.  If you hold secrets and have a drug problem, other governments can get those secrets by simply offering you drugs or getting you drunk.  Adam had never drank alcohol or used drugs of any kind.  He felt completely fulfilled with his relationship with Lilith and had never had the occasion to ever want to drink alcohol or use drugs.

Debt is also a large factor.  Those who had had bankruptcies or owe a lot of money can be easily bribed by other governments.  Adam had no debt.  He had no vices that demanded money.  He lived in a plain home and drove a plain car and had paid cash for both.  His only vice was that he slept more than the average person to spend time with Lilith in his dreams, but even then… he only slept a couple of hours more than the recommended 8 hours of nightly sleep.

The last item that is always found to be important is your relationships with prior girlfriends or sexual relationships with members of the same sex.  It used to be that homosexuality ruled you out of receiving a security clearance.  It was usually never an issue since in years past the military had banned gays from serving.  The military was the largest organization that did background checks so it was easy to simply deny gay people on those grounds alone.

That’s no longer true, but it is still a big factor in a security clearance especially if you are gay and have not disclosed that publicly.  The same is true if you are very flamboyant and live a permissive lifestyle.  The reasons are obvious.  If you are a closet homo, other governments can blackmail you by threatening disclosure.  If you are very public and out about being gay, you can be influenced by a government seducing you with the perfect gay lover.

This factor is also important for heterosexuals.  Those who seem to always have girl problems are easy targets for other goverments.  You’ve seen the James Bond movies and know why that is true.  The other government simply hires a beautiful woman to seduce you and get all of your secrets while you are in bed with her.

Adam was not a homosexual nor did he have any girl problems at all.  He had never had a girlfriend that anyone else ever knew about.  His only girlfriend was hiss imaginary Lilith.

Part of what the NSA did in their analysis was to rule out that Adam was a homosexual.

Later, other agencies that are too secret to even have names would perform psycho-sexual testing on Adam to further conclude that he was heterosexual, but had zero sexual hangups and seemed completely fulfilled even though he had no apparent girlfriend.

You can fill in the gaps as to how Adam ended up with the highest security clearance possible.  His case was just so unusual and he was found so trustworthy and worthy of the highest security clearance possible that he was simply offered one job after another within the most top secret agencies of government.

There was always a need for someone with a higher level of security confidence to solve some problem or another that dealt with trusting people with secrets.  Adam had all of the qualifications to meet those needs in government.

And Lilith was the reason.

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I spent an hour listening to and watching various videos of the song “What A Wonderful World” on YouTube today.  I encourage everyone to take the time to do the same sometime.

A few days ago, I was floating in the ocean and it started to rain.  It was a gentle mist so I was surprised by the sound of girls squealing as they ran out of the water to get out of the rain.   How funny?  They were in the ocean all wet and they were concerned because it had started to rain.

It left the entire ocean to me (at least as far as I could see).  The mist then formed a rainbow.  The right side of the rainbow rested over my own beach house.  I couldn’t see where the left side rested.  It was out of sight somewhere in the gentle hills of the town.

I laid back and thought about what a wonderful world we live in. 

I thought about all of the rainbows that form all over the world every minute of every day. 

I thought about the babies crying and the bluebirds flying. 

I thought about the rugged coast of Northern California in the winter and how awesome the white waves are as they crash against the windswept trees which cling desparately to the rocky shores. 

I thought about how hot and barren and beautiful the Arizona and New Mexico deserts are in the mid-summer afternoon when only the lizards dare to expose themselves to the hot arrid sun. 

I thought about the pure joy I feel as we take the small boat on the six mile trip from Grand Cayman to stingray city and how I always recognize the perfectly formed and still clouds in the sky above that sea even years between visits.  Those clouds have never moved and I doubt they ever will.   They will be there to welcome me on my next visit to that paradise.

I pondered how so many people worry about so many things.  I pondered why I was alone in that ocean and free from worry and then thought about that day I vowed to never worry again.

It was easy.  I had lost everything and then I was suddenly wrapped in the warm blanket of God’s love.  I knew then and I know now that there is simply nothing to ever worry about.

On that day when I had lost everything including my own sanity, I was rescued by the love of God and led to food (good food), shelter (that reminded me of the dorms at my favorite summer camp as a child) and people who loved God and me and would help me understand that there is never anything to ever worry about.

On that day, I flew over the rainbow and realized how wonderful our world is.  I realized the divinity in all of us and realized that anything we can conceive of is possible.  And I set upon the journey that always results when one starts to challenge that reality by trying to conceive of purely impossible things… and then to experience them in reality.

I have lived in paradise ever since.  The scenes of paradise change constantly.  Sometimes the dessert.  Sometimes rural snow blown mountains snuggled up in a bean bag near the wood stove in the log home miles from anything and anywhere.  Sometimes the sea shore.  Sometimes the jungle.  Always over the rainbow in a truly wonderful world.

Sometimes friends and family ask me when I’m going to come back or when I’m going to “settle down.”   Of course it’s impossible for someone who has flown over the rainbow to ever come back.   We are always “settled down” since the entire world is our home and a gift from God Himself.

The day I became homeless was the first day I ever realized that I was truly home and could never be homeless ever again. 

It was the day I flew over the rainbow and saw the wonderful world we live in. 

I can never go back any more than a rainbow can become solid and “settle down” in one place.

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We spent the morning visiting with a large group of friends.  Kristi made chocolate chip cookies and cowboy cookies which were a big hit.  The kids all got along pretty well.

One couple among our friends here lived out of a car traveling all over Central America this week.  They build houses and ended up selling their own house and didn’t have a house ready to move into… so they packed up their two year old son and hit the road for a vacation.  It was fun hearing about their adventures.  We added some places to our list of places to visit.

Another friend finished a hip hop album.  Kristi and I offered to help him with the album artwork and getting it to a CD manufacturer and up on Amazon.com.  He will probably drop by some time this week.

I made contact with Joe Vitale who had cleverly posted a twitter to get my attention.  It’s a small world when you can just post a twitter with someone’s name in it and someone will pass the message along.  I received the message from a complete stranger in a bookstore.  I hadn’t been following Joe Vitale’s blog in awhile so it was nice to read about his experience having dinner with Kevin Trudeau last night.  Kevin and Joe are both on my list of people to have dinner with some day.

Our chiropractor friend just added massage to his practice.  We already have a private masseuse, but may give him a shot to check out his techniques.  Our yoga teacher friend is still trying to talk us into attending a yoga class.

We picked up plenty of fresh produce from our friends who grow basil, peppers and grapefruits.

After visiting, we all took a nap.  I woke up first and spent some time in the ocean.  The beach was full of surfers today and the surf was very high.   As I walked into the ocean, a wave curled right in front of me and I watched a sun fish swimming along the curl for a long way before the wave came crashing down.  

It was a nice swim.  The water was great once I got past the surf.  The surf was fun to play in too.

When I got home, my sailing friend was there with his daughter visiting with my wife.  His wife joined us later and we had pizza and ice cream and talked late into the evening.  I learned a lot about sailing routes for our upcoming sailing trip around the world.

I tried to talk him into joining us for our caribbean trip next week, but they like to plan things a bit further in advance.  We talked a lot about the LOA and prior stories.  He manifested his sailboat long before he ever heard about the LOA.  He’s very scientifically minded and was interested in hearing about how quantum physics is proving the concept of the LOA.  Although he has seen it work over and over in his life and others, he had always still thought of it as a bit hocus pocus.

We also got into a long discussion about the correlation (or lack thereof) between HIV and AIDS.

We are trying to keep the kids up late so they sleep in and do well in church tomorrow.  So far they are happy with staying up late.  I guess we’ll see if they are up to actually sleeping in tomorrow.

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The housekeeper comes on Tuesday and Friday at 10am.  She caught me still in bed today.

That set the tone for the entire day.  The power went off at about 11 and stayed off until after dark.  I caught up on some reading until one or so and then we went out for pizza.

After some more reading, I fell asleep on the couch and slept until the kids woke up.  Kristi had left to get supplies to make chocolate chip cookies for a get together tomorrow.

She’s still downstairs baking away.

Jimmy’s favorite book is now Green Eggs and Ham.  As I read it, he says “louder” and “more exciting” until I’m shouting the rhymes.

Peter enjoys quieter books.

Both of them love the game “lion” that they made up.  They come up to me and say “lion?  lion? lion?” until I growl and chase them around the room while they squeal.  Jimmy added a new part to the game a few days ago.  He will sometimes turn around and hug my leg saying “I capture you” (from a winnie the pooh heffalump movie).  I’m supposed to fall over and pass out on the couch when he does that.

Then either Peter or Jimmy kiss me on the cheek to revive me and remind  me that we are playing “lion.”

When I get tired of chasing them, I plunk down on the couch and say “no; I’m tired” as they say “lion? lion? lion?” over and over.

A couple weeks ago, they figured out a way to get a few more rounds.  They will switch to “tiger” or “bear” or “dinosaur.”  Somehow I’m too tired to play “lion”, but I can still manage another round of “dinosaur” which seems remarkably to be almost exactly the same game.

Finally when I’m too tired to play even “dinosaur”, they start trying other animals.  Some of the funnier ones are “zebra”, “giraffe” and “lizard.”

I went for a very short swim just after sunset.  The sunset was one of those really fiery bright orange sky ones without any clouds.  The water was freezing though (actually probably around 75, but that’s cold for here).  I ended up having a coke and watching the young lovers in sillouette against the orange sky.  Some tried to capture the moment with flash digital pictures.  I’m guessing it was impossible to capture that moment in a picture, but it was a nice try.

We opened a new bag of dried fruit today for our green drinks.  It’s blackberries now along with the wild greens we can get locally.  It’s a nice change, but the seeds will take a bit to get used to.  I was grateful for a green drink after a day of unhealthy eating with pizza and coke.  I need to pick up one of those battery backups to run the blender on days when the power is out.

A few blog entries ago, I wrote a chapter of a book I’ve been pondering.  It’s a sci fi genre.  I’m still pondering it, but can feel the idea conflicts slowly resolve in my head.  It is probably only a couple of weeks away from pouring out of me.  I’ll probably write it here on the blog just as I did the last book (The Voice Said “Obey” which you can get on Amazon).

We’re talking about a trip to a deserted caribbean island next week.  We’ll see.

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Last night was incredible.  We had planned to have an early dinner (Greek food with friends) on the beach and go to bed early.

It was not possible here.  The entire world exploded starting at about 10pm and lasting until 5:30am.  It was the most incredible fireworks show I have ever seen in my life.

We slept in until 10am or so.  It was date day and I knew our plans so I decided to buy a new book.  The boys decided to tag along for the walk.  The weather was perfect.  We stopped at a park on the way home from the book store and spent a couple hours there while I started my new book.

Then it was time for their nap and time for me and Kristi to sneak out for our date day.  We went to a 4 star resort and swam in an infinity pool until nearly sunset with frequent breaks to sit around the pool and read.

We then found out that we didn’t need to change to go to the four star restaurant at the resort.  We could order pool side and enjoy the sunset.  It was incredible.

Dinner was also great.  I had lobster corn fritters to start followed by a parmessan salad and seafood penne for dinner.  We had experienced dessert at this restaurant in the past so we knew what to order… an incredibly delicious banana creme brule.

After dinner and the last of the red sky faded to black, we went deeper into the resort to where the monkeys play.  Our favorite monkey had already gone to bed, but our 2nd favorite sisters (spider monkeys) were still out to play.  A dog started to warn us off as we approached, but a handler from the resort chased him off.

Both monkeys climbed right into our laps and just wanted to be held.  We held and stroked them as they traded laps several times and jumped down to tease the dog by pulling it’s tail a couple times. 

After a half an hour, we were a bit surprised to hear the city erupt into explosions and bands again.  We exited the resort to more parades.  We have no idea what they are celebrating now, but it has been a couple of hours and the bands, music and fireworks are still going off.  Maybe they celebrate New Years for a week or two.  They love any excuse to celebrate here.

It was perhaps a perfect day.

I made a New Year’s resolution several years ago to never make another New Year’s resolution.  So far I have kept to it, but today tempted me to make a New Year’s resolution to have many more days like today.

Next week might be full of them.  We are planning to visit a resort that is on a lake inside a recently active volcano.  It is currently inactive and a lake fills the crater.  We are staying in one of four thatch bungalows at the edge of the lake deep in the jungle.

2008 was a great year.  2009 will be even better.

Happy New Year everyone!

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A very few people are making a step in the right direction of thought.  They are proposing that governments allow civil unions for all and leave “marriages” for churches.

Of course that is only a word game.  It is a step in the right direction because somehow churches really seem to want that word “marriage.”  You can’t blame them much.  I imagine churches would be a bit upset if someone stole the word “baptism” and started using it for something immoral too.

I’m not sure if this is a solution for gays though.  I’m really not sure why they want to get married to begin with.  It’s not illegal to have sex outside of marriage and it’s not illegal to cohabitate as two males (althought it is illegal to cohabitate as a male and more than one female in several states in order to crack down on those evil poligamists).

I suppose there are probably two factors in play that cause gays to want to marry:

1. There are “rights” given specifically to married people.

2. It is an attempt to normalize their lifestyle and force others to gain more acceptance of it using the law.

Neither is a good reason to use the word “marriage” or even “civil union.”  Those “rights” that are given specifically to married people should be abolished.  There is no such thing as a “right” that is given to one group of people and denied to another.  Rights are universal by definition or they aren’t rights at all.

I really don’t even know what those so-called “rights” are.  I generally try to live my life in such a way that I don’t take advantage of special rights given to me, but not to others.  I would avoid taking welfare payments or any other kind of payments from the government for that reason.  It doesn’t come from the government.  It is stolen from my fellow citizens and therefore is a violation of their rights for me to take it.

I’ve heard about hospital visitation rights.  That is the one that makes the most sense.  In the scenario, your loved one is unconcious and therefore can’t make a decision about who they want to visit them (and also even make life choices for them).  Hospitals and the law have apparently created a fairly rational hierarchy of decision makers that includes something like: spouse, children, parents, extended family, friends.   Having the law recognize homosexual unions puts a homosexual loved one in the “spouse” position whereas otherwise they would be in the “friend” position.

I can see how that would be extremely important to a homosexual in a committed relationship with another.  However, these are all defaults in the law based on prior social structure.  Those defaults are easily remedied under our current system by establishing a contract.  Those in a committed homosexual relationship who desire their partner to make those kinds of decisions rather than their parents can simply file a living will stating so.  All hospitals and the law will accept a living will above the default societal norms for dealing with those kinds of situations.  You can even detail your own decisions in such a living will so that no loved one has to try to guess what decisions you would want to make.

I think a word game is what got us into this mess.   Substituting the words “civil unions” for “marriage” doesn’t get us out of this mess.  It just changes the parameters and delays the conflict until later.

Instead, we should be lobbying to stop the practice of governments being involved in marriages at all.  Governments do not add anything to marriage.  What has the government ever done to strengthen your marriage?

When I was married, my wife and I went to the county recorders office and filled out their forms and paid them their money.  Why?  Because our church expected us to.   That is the only reason.  If our church had not expected us to give money to the government for a marriage license, we would not have done so.  Neither of us care in the least whether the government considers us married or not.

In fact, we do not live in the same jurisdiction anymore.  Governments, like gangs, claim certain areas of geography as their “turf” and generally don’t recognize the actions of other gangs on their own turf.  That is the case for the governments of the three different land masses where we have lived since we were given permission to marry by the government.

The government of the current land mass where were live and the one where we lived for the prior year do not recognize marriage by any government but their own or the Catholic church.  We were married by the authority of a sealer of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who would only perform the ceremony if we had a marriage license from the state where we lived.  So the two authorities under which we were married are not recognized by the government where we now live nor the government where we lived for a year before now.

It doesn’t change our life one bit.  Oddly, our church still recognizes our marriage even though they required us to get a marriage license in Utah, but we now live in a country that doesn’t recognize our marriage license from Utah.  That’s a mind bender for a lot of even trained missionaries who serve down here.  How can church rules change based on your geography?  Isn’t God the same God for the entire earth?  I suppose that can be the subject of a future blog post.

In any case, the marriage that mattered to Kristi and I was the sealing that occurred in a temple of the Lord by an authorized priesthood holder acting on the authority of Jesus Christ.  It was a religious ceremony where we took various committments to each other and to the Lord.

The government paperwork was merely a nuisance and one that we would have completely ignored if our priesthood leaders hadn’t instructed us to do it.

The polygamists are in the same boat.  Since laws have been passed threatening their imprisonment for marrying more than one person, most have abandoned government marriages entirely.  Some will still use a government marriage with one of their wifes.  Others will marry and divorce each wife in turn in order to comply with the law.  Even those attempts to keep the government happy haven’t helped.  Several states now outlaw and threaten to imprison people who merely claim to be married to more than one person.

How ludicrous?  Even more disturbing to me is that faithful latter-day saints sometimes support such laws.  Do they not realize that we use the word “sealing” instead of “marriage” and that we are sealed to multiple people including most times our own children and our own parents? 

To those who don’t understand the religious significance of a sealing, that may sound shocking.  For those so shocked, I assure you that the concept of religious sealing has nothing whatsoever to do with conjugal relations.

The concept of sealing is mentioned in your own Bible if you are a Bible believing person.  It talks about the authority of the priesthood of God and that power to bind things together (or seal them together) on earth in a way that they will remain bound in heaven.  It is a religious process whereby a family can remain together forever which is central to our beliefs.

If you don’t believe that, then it shouldn’t bother you that we perform such an ordinance.  It only has meaning within a religious context like everything else to do with christenings, baptisms, marriage, confession, communion, last rites and other religious ceremonies.  All such ceremonies only have their meaning within the church that practices them.

So that’s why I don’t completely agree with the concept of “civil unions” as a 2nd class kind of marriage.  It’s just another word game.  There is no need for government to be involved in marriages or civil unions at all.  Any special rights that married people enjoy should be abolished.  There is no such thing as a special right.  Rights are universal or they simply aren’t rights at all.  Marriage is a relgious matter.  It always has been.  It always will be.

If churches really want to help in this matter, they would boycott the concept of government marriage.  What would happen if the pope of the Catholic church and the prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints instructed their respective memberships to avoid the practice of government marriage because it cheapens the church experience (which it certainly does)?  What if protestant ministers joined in the boycott?  What if they encouraged their followers to consider marriage as what it really is… a committment between two people and God… and therefore the government shouldn’t be involved?

In the case of our religion, I am confident that the prophet is being led by Jesus Christ himself even though the current actions don’t appear that way.  The church has gone through many times like this where the membership can’t see the whole picture.  Even in the time that Christ walked the earth, He spoke in parables.  Things are not always what they appear to be.  I trust that our prophet is following the personal instruction of the Lord in these matters.

Individually though, we all have the light of Christ and the Spirit to guide our actions.  I will continue to follow the Spirit in my reactions to these matters. 

I believe that homosexual conjugal relations are wrong and should be discouraged.  I believe they only lead to negative consequences and that their is nothing positive about those unions.  I also believe it is their choice to make though.  If two people consent to such relations, it is not my right to attempt to use the force of law as a threat to do violence against them or imprison them.  No law should be passed preventing such unions.  Also no law should be passed or kept the recognizes the government’s role at all in any marriage or civil union.

The same goes for polygamist marriages.  I do not support the right of anyone to commit violence against them or to imprison them.  I condemn the actions of government to commit violence against these people for living their relgious beliefs.

I do support the right of all individuals to persuade others that these things may be wrong.

-James Brausch

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Mormons are being boycotted and protested against everywhere for supporting a legal ban on gay marriage in California.  Many are having their names removed from the records of the church.  Others are openly critical of the general authorities advocacy in this matter, but are not leaving the church.  Still others (many) applaud the church’s involvement and herald it as a victory for the sanctity of heterosexual marriage.

Meanwhile, a group calling themselves Mormons, but not associated with the church in Utah is being persecuted for polygamy.  This is true even though there are no crimes against polygamy in the state where they are being charged… only for bigamy. 

Bigamy is generally considered to be the crime of being married to a second person without having been divorced from the first person without both persons knowing about the other marriage.  It is a crime akin to fraud.  It has a definite victim… the wife(s) who were defrauded into believing they were the only wife of a man (or the man who was defrauded into believing he was the only husband of his wife).

Of course, like most crimes, the law has been rewritten so that the state becomes the victim and prosecutor so that no victim needs to make a complaint.  In Texas, it was also rewritten so that merely purporting to be married to more than one woman constitutes the crime of bigamy.

Wow!  Merely uttering some words constitutes a crime?  I thought the first amendment generally protected the right to free speech within limits.  This doesn’t seem to meet the criteria of yelling “fire” in a crowded theater or damaging the reputation of another (the latter of which is generally a civil matter anyway).  Nor does it seem to have anything to do with inciting others to commit violence which is another generally recognized exception.

Gosh.  I married several little girls when I was a boy.  Oops… I just purported to be married to more than one wife.  I just committed a crime in Texas.  How bizarre?

The whole thing is bizarre in both cases.  I can’t pretend to understand why the general authorities of the church have decided to do what they have done recently.  I can only hope and expect that they are following revelation and there are some bigger issues.  We all fought a war in heaven on this issue of moral agency so I can’t imagine they suddenly actually switched sides to Lucifer’s plan of forcing others to make correct moral choices.

But I can make some observations about marriage and what it is and what it isn’t.  It is an ambiguous word.  In fact, Latter-day Saints have another word for a particular kind of marriage that has a very specific definition.  We call that kind of marriage a “sealing.”  It has no legal standing.  It is solely a spiritual term.

Marriage used to be a completely spiritual term.  In fact, in California where this whole thing has blown up… the purpose of turning marriage into a government matter was to prevent mixed blood (African & White European ancestry) persons from marrying either white Americans or African Americans.  That sounds pretty bizarre on it’s own; doesn’t it?  I remember being in the law library in Sacramento when the oldest law books in existence for California are stored.  I remember being curious about what the very first law was that was passed when California became a state.  It was the above law.  That was the most important thing on everyone’s minds at the time.

Of course, in a hundred years, we will probably look back on this gay marriage and polygamy stuff with the same kind of disgust and amazement.  How could people of 2008 who are facing war and famine in many countries and a world-wide financial collapse… be worried about whether a man is saying some words claiming to be married to two or more other women or to another man?

That’s what we are talking about… words.  Although words are extremely important in many contexts (we are taught in the scriptures that the world was spoken into being with words), we generally accept the concept that words should never be outlawed (with a couple of exceptions such as yelling ”fire” in a crowded theater).

We are also talking about outlawing religious practices that have nothing to do with harming another person in both cases.  Marriage is a religious practice and only a religious practice.  Let me illustrate.

If you have ever done genealogy, you will know that your ancestors of a mere hundred years ago often exist only in the following types of records:

1) Birth certificate

2) Christening or child blessing

3) Baptism

4) Marriage

5) Death

That’s it.  Those are the most important events in someone’s life.  Some people might have a newspaper article about some important thing they performed… or some military records… or perhaps a patent or a book they wrote still marking their existence.  A vast majority of people have only the above five records though.

A quick glance will generally reveal that all five items are of religious significance only and that the only government involvement has been forced for the purposes of empowering government.  In fact, if you go back about 300 years instead of 100 years ALL of the above records will be kept by churches and not governments at all.  If you want a birth, death, baptism, christening or death certificate of one of your ancestors that lived 300 years ago… you will go to a church… not a government building.  You will find out their religion so that you know what church to inquire to for their records.

Why a church?  Because ALL of these events are purely spiritual events.  They actually have no meaning whatsoever outside of the religion in which they occur (except birth and death… but certainly only religion can give either any meaning…  government involvement adds nothing).

We don’t have new births because of government.  A birth is a biological process.  In most religions, it is recognized as a miracle of God.  No government (even the Communist ones who outlawed the practice of all religions) pretended to replace God in that miracle.  It would be a ludicrous claim.

The same goes for death.  Those two are the easy ones.  They are both biological and you either are a member of a God believing religion and acknowledge God’s involvement in both… or you aren’t… but no-one gives any government any credit for births or deaths.

Let’s look at the two ceremonies at the other extreme that have absolutely no biological basis.  Everyone understands that government has absolutely no involvement in either of these two ceremonies.  One is a Christening (Catholic terminology) or baby blessing (LDS terminology).  I think pagans even have something similar.  No government has ever attempted to pretend to have any say in a Christening or baby blessing.  It is purely a church matter.

The meaning depends on the religion, but generally the idea is to dedicate a new child to God in some way.  it is a religious rite that has meaning only within a religion.

The same goes for baptism.  In fact, there is a bit of confusion between some religions that mix up the two ceremonies a bit.  Some religions only exist because of a disagreement about when a baptism should take place and whether there is even such a thing as a Christening or a baby blessing in the eyes of God.  No courts or goverment has ever gotten involved in these disputes.  It is purely a matter for theologians and everyone recognizes that.

Marriage is right in between these two extremes of life and death on one hand and baptism and Christening on the other hand.  It is loosely associated with the biological function the leads to a new life, but not always.  Many people have married after child bearing age simply as a committment to each other.  Many others have had children outside of a marriage.  It is fairly easy to see that marriage is the ceremony and sex is the biological act.  They are tightly coupled to one another in the same way that a christening or baby blessing is tied to a birth.  The birth is a biological function.  The Christening a religious ceremony.  Sex is a biological function.  Marriage is a religious ceremony.

Just as there are different names and different practices for christenings and baby blessings among the various religions, there can be and are different practices for marriage among the various religions.  If government doesn’t inject itself where it doesn’t belong, there is no problem that isn’t resolved easily by spinning off another religion which is a volutary activity among people and a much better solution than all of the violence currently being caused by the forced government involvement.

You see.  I’m not Catholic, so although I respect and will even attend a Catholic christening ceremony of a relative or friend’s new child… it holds no religious significance for me personally.  The same goes for my Catholic friends who may attend a baby blessing at my church.

The same goes for marriage.  In my church, the only kind of marriage that really counts is a sealing in a temple of the Lord.  I know my non-LDS friends and relatives don’t accept that.  That’s fine with me.  It only matters to me that I accept that, my wife accepts that… and in the case of our religion, that we believe God accepts that and is a party to that action.

So if the church of homosexual unions in California wants to have a ceremony they also call marriage between two men, it is accepted that I don’t recognize any religious significance to that… but it simply doesn’t matter to them… or it shouldn’t.  It is a religous ceremony.  It only has meaning within their religion.

Of course, there is another problem.  Since government injected itself into the ceremony of marriage, it has also created a number of “special” rights for married people.  This is a ludicrous concept.  There is no such thing as a “special” right.  Rights are based on our nature as human beings.  We are all obviously the same kind of creature so any theory of rights has to recognize the same rights for every individual regardless of what ceremonies they have engaged in.

This is the real problem.  We have allowed government to meddle in religious affairs.   We have also allowed government to define privileges for certain classes of people pretending that they have superior rights to others.

Both of those things need to be fixed.

If FLDS want to marry dozens of women (and those women agree), that’s fine with me.  It only has meaning within their religion.  If two men want to marry, that’s fine with me.  It only has meaning within their religion.

Let’s use another word to finalize the illustration.  Let’s say I just started a new religion that believes that we must undergo a religious ceremony called gugashumal in order to enter heaven.  It must be done with two members of our religion together.  Do you care?  Want to hear the ceremony before you decide?

These two people stand back to back and shout out the word “gugashumal” three times and then turn around and shake hands.

Sounds a little weird, but that’s what they believe is important to their God as a religious ceremony.  Should you have any say in that?  What if they start replacing the word “gugashumal” with the word “maraje”?  What about if they actually call it “marriage”?  Why does it matter what they call it?

That’s my take on the whole marriage thing.  It is an extremely important religious ceremony in my church.  I understand and recognize that it is also an extremely important ceremony in other churches and I respect their right to assign whatever meaning and to organize the ceremony in whatever way they see fit.  I also reserve the right to not recognize their meaning as my own meaning.  That is why they have one religion and I have another.  I also respect that they won’t necessarily accept the meaning in my religion.

I also understand that for evil purposes that government has tried to inject itself in this sacred ceremony for various reasons.  I reject the right of government to do that and oppose any growth of government involvement.  I reserve the right to use all moral means at my disposal to defend myself against government violence in the sacred institution of marriage.

I respect everyone else’s right to do the same.

-James Brausch

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I spent the last three days hanging out on a beach.  Actually, it was a business trip.  It’s time to move again and we aren’t exactly sure where we are suppose to go.  We have a feeling it will be in a very poor part of Central America and it will only be for 6 months to a year and then we’ll be returning to Costa Rica.

When we’ve felt these promptings before, we have learned to act quickly.  We always see that acting slower as we have sometimes done in the past has lead to lost opportunities.  We have also seen more blessings the faster we act.  We absolutely know that waiting to learn “why” is completely useless.  The Spirit has never told either of us “why” we should do something before we exercised obedience.  We have only sometimes learned some of the “whys” after we have chosen to obey.

So, this time… we decided to act quicker than the prompting itself.  We know the general direction of our move… it’s North.  We know it’s in another country.  We know it’s in Latin America.  That narrows it down to Mexico, Guatamala, Belize, Honduras, San Salvador and Nicaragua.   We actually even know it’s not San Salvador.  That leaves only five countries as possibilities.

Instead of waiting for the Spirit to tell us our final destination, we decided to act on what we already know.  I went to Nicaragua (the country just North of us) and rented a perfect 6 bedroom, 4 bathroom beach house.  It is perfect for our launching spot.  It’s close to the Honduran border in case our final destination is North of Nicaragua.

Until we get our final orders, we will enjoy the beach.  I spent the night last night at the new house and listened to the crickets and the stream running next to the house.  I got back to the airport at 4pm this afternoon and although it was great to see Kristi and the kids again after being gone for three days… I am already yearning to be back in the new place.

The whole family moves into the new place on Tuesday… just five days away.  We have a lot of work to do between now and then.

One thing we had to change was an upcoming visit by Kristi’s parents.  Kristi has already informed them that after our outing in Costa Rica to do some zip lining and Volcano eruption watching, that we will be returning home… but that home has changed to a slightly different country.

I’m so grateful that we have decided to live a full life of adventure following the Spirit wherever He may lead us.  We only live for a hundred and twenty years or so.  It’s such a shame that most people choose to spend those years dying in front of a TV set or at some mundane J.O.B.   I’m so glad we’ve been given a choice to actually live life to it’s fullest and that we accepted that choice.

We also need to change our church records.  We will be in another tiny branch.  We had both hoped for a strong ward after attending the Las Pavas Ward for a couple of weeks.  Hopefully our final destination will have a strong ward.  We could use a recharging.

Luckily the Spirit and the Gospel don’t require the presence of a ward or particularly strong priesthood leaders for any individual to enjoy the full blessings of the church.  President Uchtdorf just wrote an article in the Liahona called “Developing Christlike Attributes” that addressed the temptation to draw strength from the organization of the church… where sometimes… especially in small branches… no worthy priesthood leadership even exists.

“In contrast, the core of the gospel—the doctrine and the principles—will never change.” -President Uchtdorf

I needed to hear that.  Although we both long for a break in a strong ward again, we know that the core of the gospel–the doctrine and the principles–will never change.” 

As for me and mine, we will follow the Lord… and we welcome the opportunity to experience those consequences.

Thank you President Uchtdorf for being such a faithful servant of the Lord and delivering such an important message at such an important time.  We are so grateful for priesthood leaders like President Uchtdorf leading the Church of Jesus Christ here on earth.

-James Brausch

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The following is a chapter in a fiction book I am writing.  You may want to read the following post first:

http://jamesbrausch.com/?p=72

That post will probably be the first chapter and what follows will be the 2nd chapter:

—

In 2008, the first quantum encrypted message was sent.  It was announced that it was unbreakable.

In the strange world of quantum physics, nothing actually exists until it is observed.  Everything is merely a probability of existing.  That probability is often called a probability wave.  Electrons aren’t discreet objects rotating around a nucleas (unless you take a peek somehow).  They are a swarm of wavelike probabilities.  An electron might have a 37% chance of being at one place in an orbit or a 21% chance of being in another place.  Those probabilities are calculated based on surrounding observations that make one thing more likely than another.

The electron (and everything else in existence) only becomes in exactly one place at exactly one time when a human being uses something to measure it.  The so-called probability wave then collapses and the location and existence of that object becomes a probability of 100% and all other possible locations collapse to 0% odds.

I know it sounds strange.  Even Einstein didn’t like the idea.  He totally rejected quantum theory, but since then we have exploited it so much and performed so many experiments proving quantum theory that we can no longer reject the reality that reality itself is very, very bizarre.

Things simply don’t exist until someone looks at them.  Of course, existence is consistent so if you look at something that someone else has previously looked at (and their information can get to you in any possible way), then you’ll see the same thing they saw… or something that is explainable by normal laws of physics.

Scientists simply refuse to explore the obvious implications of this discovery.  This discovery obviously means that we are special in some way.  The universe is made for us.  It changes from a blur of possibilities into reality only when we look at it.

If the universe is made for us, then there must be a maker.  That is always a disturbing thought to many scientists.

It also means that the universe is rather artificial.  It is like a holodeck.  Everything is an illusion that is created at the very moment we look at it.  At that moment, it becomes reality in every normal sense of the word, but we have discovered the secret that it didn’t exist the moment before we looked at it (unless someone else had already made an observation of it or something else that forced it’s probability to be 100%).

Even more bizarre is that the maker theoretically could have made it impossible to see probability waves and therefore could have kept us in the dark about the secret that the universe is just a holodeck.  The creator didn’t do that though.

That makes one wonder why.  Those into computers in the year 2008 had more of a clue of why than the average populace.  Of course most people in the year 2008 didn’t even know about quantum physics nor any of the previously mentioned odd things that it revealed about us, our creator and the universe.

But some did.  Those that did thought about how they would create the illusion of reality in a way that matches the way the universe actually works.  Being computer people (mostly programmers), they thought in terms of computers.

The universe is made up of quadrillions of things.  All of those things (quarks or whatever you want to call the most basic an tiny particles that make up the universe) all have a location and that location changes over time (ie: they are moving and therefore have a trajectory).

Those things also interact with each other.  We call that interaction “forces” in the world of physics.  In 2008, they still hadn’t joined the weak force, the strong force, gravity and magnetism, but they strongly understood that they were really all manifestations of one kind of force just as they understood that all kinds of particles whether they be baseballs or electrons were really made up of one kind of particle that was extremely small.

Programmers realized that the universe would take up an extreme amount of memory.  In fact, it would use up everything in the superuniverse that it was created in to store that amount of data.

Think of it this way.  If you wanted to create a universe with the infinite complexity of our own universe within a computer model, you would have to store the location and trajectory of every particle in the universe somewhere.  We call those “bits” in the world of computer programming.  A bit is the smallest possible piece of information.

You can think of it as how you learned to count.  You may have used your fingers to learn to count to ten.  Each finger was a bit.  It was either up or down.  It represented a single bit of information.

The problem with trying to contain a model of this entire universe in some kind of computer memory is really the same problem you had trying to count past 10 when you ran out of fingers.  You see… you could used coins or anything else to represent those bits of information.  You could have placed coins heads up to represent one finger up and heads down to represent one finger down.  There are quadrillions of objects in the universe that you can place into one position or another to represent things so you could represent the binary state of quadrillions of objects.

The problem is when you try to represent the entire universe.  The entire universe takes an entire universe of objects to represent.

But computer programmers have had to deal with limited memory storage systems since the very beginning.  Actually they had to deal with limited storage even more in the beginning of computer science than they do today.  They have come up with all kinds of ways to compress data.

When a computer programmer who also knew about physics thought about the problem of how to simulate a universe in a computer the same way our universe is simulated, they came up with the obvious answer right away.

In the early days of computers we wrote flight simulators.  Storing all of the possible variations of a flight were impossible in the limited storage systems we had at the time.  Instead, it was done on the fly.  The entire flight couldn’t be known until the pilot actually started to move the controls of the simulated plane.  The simulation was calculated in real-time.

The secret to being able to do that in a limited amount of memory was that the program was written for the pilot.  It only had to simulate what the pilot would see.  It didn’t have to simulate anything outside the view of the pilot.  That makes quadrillions of pieces of information reduce down to just a few thousand pixels on a computer screen.

Those computer programmers obviously noticed what the creator had been up against when the creator made this simulated universe that we live in even though quantum scientists who weren’t computer programmers never talked about the creator much less the problems the creator must have tacked to create this simulated universe.

What they noticed was the explanation for why we can even detect that the universe is simulated.  The creator’s program (or whatever it is) only stores probabilities for everything in existence until the moment that a human (the pilot in the flight simulator example) actuall looks at something.

So a vast majority of the universe is just probabilities.  Those take very little memory to store verses trying to store the exact location and trajectory of every single infinitely small particle in the entire universe.

That’s why we are even able to discover the secret of quantum physics.

In fact, that is how we discovered it at all.

It is the infamous wave/particle duality experiment.  Someone set up a piece of paper with two slits cut into it and a piece of photographic paper behind it.  Then from the front, they fired individual protons in rapid succession at the piece of paper.

It made a pattern that made it look like light must be a wave.  The pattern was an interference patter that looked just like what you would expect if waves of water went through those two slits and then spread out and ended up touched each other and making that wave interference pattern that we’ve all seen.

If you don’t know what i’m talking about, go fill a bowl with water and let it get still.  Then drop a tiny pebble into it and watch the waves spread out from the point the pebble hit the water.  Now drop two pebbles in and watch what happens when waves touch each other.  We call that a wave interference pattern.  That’s what showed up on the photographic piece of paper.

That confused scientists.  That meant the entire universe was made up of waves, not tiny little particles which is what made sense to everyone.  Don’t be confused yourself.  Remember that this universe is a simulation.  Those waves simply represented possibilities.  We now know call them “probability waves.”  They aren’t actually waves of light.  It’s just that we aren’t looking at every individual particle so the computer running this universe doesn’t have to resolve which slit each particle went though.  Those particles don’t have to exist yet before nobody has looked directly at them so they just exist as probabilities and the wave pattern on the photographic plate shows the probabilities that each particle passed through each slit (or was completely blocked by the paper).

I know.  It still sounds bizarre, but that is what we found out.  Here’s how we found it out.

Scientists really didn’t like the idea that the universe wasn’t made of particles so they got better and better instrumentation and better ways of controlling how much light was being sent toward the paper with two slits.

In fact, they eventually came up with detectors that could detect a single photon and light projectors that could emit a single photon.

How is that possible if there is no such thing as photons?  If they are only waves and not discreet particles.  Well… it’s not; is it?

But scientists did that.  Then they put a detector on one of the slits and fired a single photon.  They could “see” that it went through the left slit and landed on the photographic paper exactly behind the left slit.  They did that over and over.  Each photon went through either the left slit or the right slit.  The wave interference pattern didn’t exist on the photographic piece of paper.  Only two slits of light proving that light was made out of particles.

Of course that was impossible.  How could light be particles and waves?

Even more disturbing was that the experimental results changed just because individual photons were being observed.  The existence of those detectors shouldn’t have changed the results on the photographic plate.  Yet they did!

Lots of other experiments were performed.  The beam of light was shown very fast, but each photon was detected as it went through one slit or the other.  The wave pattern didn’t exist.  They then left the detectors there, but didn’t record the results and the wave pattern was back.

Huh?

Then they recorded the results and held those results for a few days and looked at the photographic plate first.  No wave pattern.

Then they recorded the results and held them for a few days and then destroyed the results without looking at them and then looked at the photographic plate.  The wave pattern was back.

The very act of observing the experiment changed the results.

There is only one explanation, but scientists still don’t articulate it very much.  The explanation is that the wave pattern is a pattern of probabilities.  Those photons don’t exist as discreet things until we look at them.  Then those probability waves collapse into a 100% probability for each of those photons that they went through either the left slot or the right slot.

Although scientists dared never to talk of a creator, the fact the the universe is a vast simulation or the fact that they found a bug in the computer program running the universe, they do talk about how to make use of this interesting bug.

One of the most interesting uses was quantum crytography.  That is the ability to send encrypted messages in a way that is absolutely impossible to eavesdrop on without being detected.  That was first accomplished in the year 2008.

-James Brausch

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I just returned from a week in Bocas Del Toro, Panama.

I was warned before I left that Bocas beaches were ugly and full of sand fleas.  Everything about Bocas was horrible according to a prior visitor.

The same thing had been said about the caribbean side of Costa Rica by several people.  We were confused since we love the caribbean and have taken several cruises to various caribbean islands.  The warm turquoise waters and the white sand beaches are my version of paradise, not the cold dark green waters of the pacific.

Still our expectations were low since folks who had actually been there didn’t like Bocas.  We were in for quite a surprise.  The waters were the same beautiful turquoise calm waters that we love in Grand Cayman, Jamaica, Saint Martin, the Bahamas and other places we love to visit in the caribbean.  The beaches were spectacular ranging from the bright white sand famous on Grand Cayman to a bright orange sand that lines literally miles of pristine undeveloped beach called Playa Bluff.

We visited bird island which is a stereotypical rock covered with palm trees out in the middle of the caribbean.  It is inhabited only by birds which have thousands of nests on the two rocks jutting out of the sean.

We visitied Playa Drago which is perfect for kids.  After eating at an outside restaurant on the beach which served excellent sea food, we played in a little lagoon on Playa Drago while still shaded by palm trees that sporadically grew right up to the water’s edge.  In between the coconut palms are pristine white sand.  A couple of hammocks are strung up between the coconut palms.

We visitied starfish beach which has thousands of star fish just feet from the shore line.  I gathered starfish while Jimmy lined them up and counted them until he could count no higher.  The boat captain then gently let the air out of the few starfish that Jimmy had held above water too long.  The beach was miles long with 30 feet of fine orange sand.  The only waves were caused by the wake of boats going past.  There was no sign of civilization anywhere to be seen.  But we were only 10 minutes away from restaurant we had just enjoyed lobster at.

We were warned of bugs.  There were perhaps more bugs than in the central valley area of Costa Rica, but no more than in San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua or on the beaches we have visited in Guanacaste.  I did get a couple of mosquito bites on my legs from laying in the hammock on our porch after dark a couple of nights.  There are geckos waiting to gobble up bugs in the restaurants and in our room just as there are in San Juan del Sur.  We could find no evidence of sand fleas though.

Jimmy was scared of the crabs that are literally everywhere on the private island where we stayed.  He thought they were bugs.  They scurried quickly into their holes when we approached though.  I was only able to catch a couple for Jimmy and Peter to see up close.  Peter loved them.  Jimmy never did warm up to them.

The weather was warm (about 85 degrees).  Fortunately we had a suite with two bedrooms and air conditioning.  Jimmy and Peter slepted in one of the rooms allowing us to sleep in until 8am or so while they got up with the sun as is their tradition.  We all got minor sun burns the first full day there.  The rest of the time was spent being vampires and only coming out as the sun went down.

The main town has a lot of great restaurants.  We had indonesian food one night which was a first for me.  It was very yummy.  The greek place shut down the week before we arrived and we were never able to find the indian place open.

Kristi enjoyed the real hamburgers (Costa Rica isn’t very good at making a hamburger).  We met the owner of the famed Pickled Parrot.  He is quite a character.  The food is pretty good there too.  Skip the Buckaneer next door though.

-James Brausch

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