.
This is posted since traditional sites do not allow sufficient room to explain whom I am and what I have achieved. Here is my real story.
20276
Park Place, PO Box 21 - Coltons Point, MD 20626
Phone 301-769-2027 - email:
ivyonoak@yahoo.com
Ivy Hollow Productions
"An unusual collection of like-minded souls with considerable interest in the most ordinary and peculiar of things."
Jim Putnam, Proprietor
Did you ever wonder what it
would be like to be friends with Yogi Berra?
How
about having lunch with La Casa
Nostra Godfather Joseph Bonanno?
Or sit
on a remote New Jersey deck and chat with Brooke Shields?
Perhaps
tour a museum with Wernher Von
Braun, architect of our space program?
Or maybe
enjoy dinner backstage with singer Celine
Dion?
What
about helping Bobby Kennedy's son
Joseph II with his foundation?
Spend a
day with the original Rasta Man
Bob Marley?
Chat in
a locker room with Smokin' Joe
Frazier, world heavyweight boxing champion?
Be a
sponsor of Richard Petty, top
NASCAR driver in history?
Discover Hitler's secret SS film archives in the frontier outside Moscow?
What
do these things all have in common? Jim
Putnam did them.
The Early Years
Some people just do not belong here. Take Jim Putnam, an Iowa Hayseed for example. He established a philosophy on life early, very early, and people often found it unsettling.
His self-described mission was "to disturb all settled ideas." His approach to life was; "no definitions, no regulations, no laws and no prejudice." True to his love for Lewis Carroll and his magnificent Alice in Wonderland, in Putnam's world "nothing was as it seemed."
Putnam lived to experience life, every aspect of life
from the life force in all objects to the thrill of victory and annoyance of
defeat. Every day offered new capers and
every experience a new chapter in his "Commonplace" book on life. In his mind being open to anything and everything
was a gateway to more adventures and he instinctively knew the more he learned
the less he realized he knew.
Yet what chance did
he ever have to be normal? A female physician (a rare occurrence) delivered him
one year after two Atomic bombs ended World War II and then at six months old a
firefighter saved him from a burning apartment.
At one and one-half years, he suffered a concussion and broke his face
flying down a concrete stairway in a stroller.
At three, he was on IVs in a hospital with the mumps.
Four found him immersed
in ice to break a 106° temperature. By
five, he was up to his chest sinking in quicksand in Texas.
There was a shootout at six when he and his brother Bob threw a box of
bullets into an incinerator catching them in crossfire, followed by drowning at
age seven, in a pond at summer camp, when everyone ignored his calls for help
and he sank under three times.
By eight lightning hit
him in a lake. At nine, in his basement when
pretending to be a priest and holding Mass and Communion it was electrocution. A blizzard trapped him overnight in a cave
with below zero temperatures at ten.
Next, when eleven, he fell through the ice on a lake in frigid weather
and his clothes froze while trying to get home in the woods.
A speedboat collision
in a ferocious Lake Michigan gale at age
twelve split a second boat in two. Then
at thirteen he had a brain concussion in a football game, without equipment of
course, had total amnesia and went into a deep coma for days. All of this and he had not even started high
school yet.
The mystical and
magical Hopi Indians describe Jim Putnam as a "One Heart" who "walks
between worlds." In his world,
Putnam always said some people pray for miracles, he relied on them. When taking aptitude tests, Putnam used to
drive the nuns crazy insisting he wanted to learn and experience everything, not be pigeonholed into a career path. While in
religion class his persistent questioning of dogma and theology kept him in
constant trouble.
Born and raised in Iowa City, Iowa then moving
to Ottumwa when
he was eight, one might say he was a multi-tasking over-achiever from his
earliest years. In Kindergarten, he was
already winning book-reading contests at the Iowa City Library. He chose Greek Philosophers like Plato,
Socrates, and Aristotle over the Hardy Boys mysteries, Popular Science and
Popular Mechanics over teen magazines.
Oddly, by First grade
he was leaving weekly instruction notes to his mother informing her of school
and Church activities of the kids and reminding her about her duties that week
for PTA, lunches, church receptions, and lunch needs for the gang. He prepared his own meals by Third grade, and
did his own laundry and ironed his own clothes by Fifth grade. Before finishing Fifth grade, he read every
textbook to be read through the Eighth grade.
Just before Third
grade, his family moved from the youthful and vibrant Iowa
City college town to Ottumwa,
a struggling manufacturing town still trying to recover from coal mining
origins. His first memory of the town
was waking up in a funeral home where his dad stayed while looking for a house.
Putnam's first
memory of his new school, St. Mary's, was when the class had to have eye exams
and he could not see a single line on the eye chart. The nurse became furious with him saying he
was lying and reduced the new kid in school to tears in front of his new classmates.
The sad truth was
he was almost blind and no one had noticed, and the nurse refused to believe it
was possible, so Jim Putnam showed up in his new town and new school wearing
coke bottle glasses the lens were so thick.
From a cute little kid in a college town he became a freak in a foreign
wilderness, while the funeral home and eyeglass disasters were an indication
there was something foreboding about this place.
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| Putnam kids |
In fact, so upside
down was life in his new home that once his mother, in response to criticism of
her son by his teacher, wrote she "also found Jim strange and he often
seemed to live in another world."
Indeed, he did and his other world full of non-stop activity and endless
adventures kept him sane until he could make his great escape after high
school.
An exceptional
Knight of the Alter (Alter Boy) he memorized every Mass in Latin. In sports he was a YMCA swim team member and
basketball all star, also on the Country Club swim team, won state
championships in Little League and Babe Ruth baseball and was named Most
Valuable player in one state championship. His high school golf team played in four straight state championships.
When the Catholic high school for girls burned down just before Jim
started high school, and the girls and boys shared school, his class was first
to finish four years co-ed. Ironically, every elementary and secondary school he attended in Iowa City and Ottumwa has been closed and torn down.
During high school,
he earned fourteen varsity letters in five sports excelling in baseball and
golf, helped shatter records in basketball including a sweet sixteen berth in
the state basketball tourney though being from the smallest school in the
tourney, and finished ranked number one in the state in their class. In fact, during his four years in high school,
the varsity record was 84-11 and his team never lost a home game, thirty-four
straight games.
By the time he
graduated, he participated on numerous debate and speech clubs, was elected to
several school offices, and played in the high school band. A writer for the Unitas school newspaper and co-editor of the yearbook, Putnam also
had several articles published in the Des
Moines Register newspaper and won the Outstanding Journalism award.
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| Putnam brothers with Coach Kramer |
The Siren Call of Music and
Muses
In high school,
Putnam had a promising rock and roll band but gave it up to play basketball and
baseball for the University
of Arizona Wildcats. Interwoven throughout his life is music,
perhaps because he is a third generation musician from Iowa City.
His grandfather,
Wayne S. Putnam, had founded The Wayne
Putnam Swing Orchestra, a featured band on the Moose Club circuit back in the 1930’s and ‘40’s. His father, Wayne E. and Uncle Chuck both
played in the orchestra and his grandmother taught piano in Iowa City.
Music was not
limited to his father’s side of the family as his other Grandfather, Patrick
Campbell, also of Iowa City, used to drag his young grandson with him in
summers to his motel on the outskirts of Springfield, Missouri, the home of
country music in the 1940’s and early ‘50’s.
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| One of many Campbell clan castles in Scotland |
There young Jim
spent many long nights listening to the country stars jamming in the motel
coffee shop after gigs on the Smilin’ Jack Tyree Radio Show, or Korn’s
A-Krackin barn dance, which later became the Ozark Jubilee in Springfield.
Who showed up at the coffee shop in the wee hours of the night? It might be Porter Wagoner, Speedy Haworth,
Chet Atkins, Eddy Arnold, and the list goes on.
It was the
beginning of a lifelong interest in country music and the relationship between
Celtic and country music tying together his ancestral roots from Scotland and Ireland. Often as a kid, he would watch the University of Iowa Scottish Highlander bagpipe band at
practices.
Even when he went
to Arizona to
play basketball and baseball he often attended local performances of his
freshman classmate, an aspiring young singer named Linda Ronstadt. At the same time members of his Beta Theta Pi
fraternity were featured performers on the nationally broadcast Hootenanny Show
and the NBC Today Show. Among the many
entertainers who performed at their fraternity house was the national hit group
the Kingsmen of Louie, Louie fame.
He loved concerts
in the dawning of the rock and roll age and got to meet a host of stars like
Elvis, Sony and Cher, the Mamas and Papas, Moody Blues, and later got to work
with many more like the Turtles, Blood Sweat and Tears, Frankie Avalon, and
Frankie Valle and the Four Seasons on benefit projects.
 |
| Jim's first car in high school 1946 English Austin |
Right after he
graduated from high school, he travelled to New Haven,
Connecticut to meet with coaches at Yale University
to decide if he would attend that fall.
After spending two years completing the interview process to get into
Yale, he opted for Arizona. Ironically, had he gone to Yale his
classmates would have been Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton and George Bush, Jr.,
all Yale graduates from the same class as Jim.
During the same
trip, he spent a couple of weeks in NYC and DC.
While in NYC, he met Tiny Tim in The Page Three club in Greenwich Village, unbeknownst to Jim the most notorious
lesbian bar in NYC. He also was at the Blue
Note and The Gaslight Cafe, hangout of Bob Dylan.
He made the best of
NYC on his trip going to several Yankees games in the Bronx
where he was in the dugout meeting players like Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris,
Yogi Berra, and Whitey Ford. There were
also Mets games in their new Shea Stadium, the World's Fair in Queens, Coney
Island in Brooklyn, and he attended nearly a dozen Broadway plays in Manhattan.
At one point, he went
to the world famous Brill
Building located at 1619
Broadway just north of Time's Square and uptown from NYC's famous Tin Pan Alley
neighborhood. He met loosely affiliated
groups of songwriter-producer teams working there including Carole King, Burt
Bacharach, Neil Sedaka, Neil Diamond and Boyce and Hart, writers who dominated
the rock and roll charts whose songs were recorded by Bobby Darin, Aretha
Franklin, The Supremes, Ray Charles, Dusty Springfield, Paul Simon, and Elvis
Presley, also in the Brill studios.
Later in his career
Putnam returned to the Brill
Building to use the Broadway
Video studios 0f Loren Michael, creator of Saturday
Night Live, to produce an award winning television special. He and Chuck Hammer, legendary lead guitarist
with Lou Reed and David Bowie, often were partners in projects. Eventually Putnam would help found a company
housed at 52nd and 5th Avenue,
overlooking St. Patrick's Cathedral and NBC
Rockefeller Center,
just blocks from the Brill
Building.
June 1964 Putnam visited
the construction site of the Twin Towers, soon to be the tallest buildings in the
world, at a new complex called the World
Trade Center. It would open in 1970. In the 1980's when Putnam worked for the
Governor of New Jersey, on occasion he attended board meetings for the Governor
at the Port Authority in the Twin Towers, the government agency that owned the World Trade
Center complex.
February 26, 1993,
while working in Manhattan he was on his way to
a meeting in the North Tower of the World Trade
Center the day a terrorist
bomb exploded killing six and injuring over 1,000. September 11, 2001 Putnam, still working in Manhattan, was having coffee on the front porch of his
home in Jersey across the Bay from lower Manhattan,
when he saw the second airplane crash into the Twin Towers
and the subsequent collapse of the buildings in the worst terrorist attack in
our history. In time, Putnam would live
and work in New Jersey and Manhattan
longer than he lived in Iowa
in his youth.
Back to music, there
was another occasion when he spent an entire day with Bob Marley on a plane
trying to get through snowstorms into Minneapolis,
Minnesota, and finally giving
Marley his winter coat because the soft-spoken Jamaican did not own one.
Putnam integrated
music into almost everything he did from concerts in political campaigns, to
rock groups in public affairs programs, to Nashville recording sessions. He often used friends from Mannheim
Steamroller in Omaha
to perform at political events and play at studio sessions.
Once Putnam was
managing a very close Congressional campaign and needed minority votes to
win. He contacted the legendary BB
King's manager to get BB to give a boost to the campaign efforts. By arrangement, Jim and the candidate greeted
BB at his plane at the airport and escorted him to the waiting press inside the
terminal.
When he pulled off
his jacket, BB wore the candidate's tee shirt and he mentioned his "old
friend" to the waiting press. The stunned
media, suspecting the candidate knew nothing about BB King, asked him his
favorite King record, and the candidate replied, "Gotta Pay the Cost to be Boss."
In return, BB requested
a box of the best Omaha
steaks for him and his band after the concert and a small grill to cook
them. Shortly after Putnam departed the room
of BB and company fire alarms woke the hotel guests when a wind change blew the
smoke from the grill on a balcony just outside the room, back into the hotel.
After attending the
University of Arizona
on a sports scholarship and majoring in journalism, he attended Parsons College, now Maharishi
University of Management founded by
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a Vedic sage who was mentor to the Beatles at the height
of their career. Jim also went to the University of Nebraska
at Omaha, and by age 22 he began his career in
politics working for the first of three mayors of Omaha, Nebraska,
a Republican, followed by a Democrat, then another Republican who became a
Democrat.
During the next
four years, Putnam would undertake a series of pilot projects that would change
the way local and federal governments functioned well into the future. He was the second employee hired to create
the first Regional Council of Governments in the Midwest
to identify and implement government consolidations, mergers, shared services,
and coordinated planning in order to improve service and lower costs. The success was immediate as Albuquerque,
Indianapolis, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and Toronto launched
additional pilot programs. Jim was on
several task forces for the National League of Cities and US Conference of
Mayors.
The US Department
of Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics honored Putnam for being first statistician
in the nation to create a methodology to identify pockets of high unemployment
and poverty areas within metropolitan areas, data that became the foundation
for economic and work force training programs throughout the country.
Working with the
Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the Executive Office of the
President, he created the nation's first Comprehensive Manpower Program
consolidating 18 jobs, employment and training programs in five federal departments
into a single entity lowering administrative costs up to 80% and reallocating
nearly 50% into improved services. As a
result, the federal government implemented it nationwide saving tens of
millions of dollars a year.
Then he helped
consolidate both financial and management-reporting systems so local government
could use one report for all federal agencies.
The Omaha Riverfront Development Program he helped create with the Mayor
was a national pilot development program.
At one point, a temporary assignment to assist the director of the
federal Office of Economic Opportunity allowed Putnam to save federal funding
for the popular Headstart and Legal Services programs for low income.
Putnam published
award-winning studies such as a massive work titled The Invisible Americans identifying poverty in America, did
analysis to identify America's unemployed, and was part of the Census Bureau
Address Coding Task Force to see that all government data was available on a
block by block basis.
He served on task
forces to evaluate the Federal Bureau of Prisons, reform the welfare system, create
federal block grants to cities and states, design and implement the historic
General Revenue Sharing program for states and cities, and helped draft new
education, energy, environmental, housing, and Justice Department law
enforcement assistance programs to assist local governments.
After four years, he
was in our nation's capitol as a domestic affairs specialist for the Executive
Office of President Richard Nixon, reporting to Roy Ash, OMB Director and
founder of Litton Industries, and Frank Zarb, Associate Director of OMB and
later Chairman of the NASDAQ stock exchange.
Putnam was one of
32 specialists of the little known White House New Federalism Task Force that
restructured the entire federal domestic government from agencies to programs
to policy. The New York Times called the mysterious Presidential task force
the most powerful federal domestic initiative by a president since the New Deal
under President Franklin Roosevelt.
Silently it went
about the work of decentralizing the federal government and transferring powers
to our nation's governors during the darkest hours of the American presidency,
the year between the Watergate and Impeachment hearings.
Over the next
decade, he became a reporter for the Omaha World Herald, spent four terms
working for the US Congress, managed two successful congressional campaigns,
and helped elect the first Jewish US Senator from Nebraska.
Presidential
campaign experience included work for John and later Bobby Kennedy, and
Presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr., followed by work with Ross Perot on
presidential and NAFTA efforts. His
political experience included all aspects of the legislative and executive
branches of local, state, and federal governments and involved working for
Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.
Nationally, he
served as Deputy Arrangements Chairman for the 1972 Republican National
Convention and the largest presidential election victory in history resulted (Nixon
won 49 of 50 states). Putnam served as
campaign manager for US House and Senate races and culminated his political
career by hosting separate events with all four living GOP presidents (Nixon,
Ford, Reagan, and Bush 1) the same year.
While in politics
Putnam also worked with Governor Charles Thone of Nebraska and spent eight
years with Governor Thomas Kean in New Jersey (recently Chairman of the 9/11
Terrorism Commission), serving the latter as a chief of staff, media and
communications director and assistant state treasurer of New Jersey.
In 1981 Kean, a
moderate Republican won the governor's race by the closest margin in New Jersey history, just
1,797 votes of 2.4 million cast. By 1985
Kean won by the largest victory margin in history, getting 69.5% of the vote in
a Democrat state and winning by 794,229 votes.
Putnam was active in the 1985 campaign, the most successful "voter
inclusion program" ever undertaken by a GOP candidate in the nation. Kean's record margin included over 60% of the
Black, Labor Union, and Roman Catholic votes.
Jim worked with
former Kean chief of staff and campaign manager Greg Stevens and cabinet member
Leonard Coleman, who became President of the National League in Major League Baseball,
on the 1985 campaign. He helped
coordinate with Coretta Scott King, widow of Martin Luther King, Jr., who
endorsed Kean, and Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa. In January 1986, a song Putnam wrote at the
request of Coretta Scott King called I
Had A Dream performed at the first national holiday celebrations honoring
Martin Luther King, Jr. in Atlanta and San Francisco.
Working for
Governor Kean he successfully led the state effort to sue oil companies and won
over $600 million for the state. He was
a member of the State Planning Commission, the Farmland Preservation
Commission, the State Energy Planning Commission, and State Recycling program,
all nationally recognized initiatives of excellence in government. As chief of staff he also oversaw the New
Jersey Motion Picture and Television Commission headed by actress Celeste
Holm as well as state involvement in PBS stations in New Jersey and NYC.
The Kean years also
found Jim becoming acquaintances with New York Giants legendary coach Bill
Parcells and assistant coach Bill
Belichick (now coach of the New England Patriots) through the New
Jersey Sports Authority, owner of Giants Stadium, when Putnam represented the Governor
or Commissioner Coleman at meetings. The
Giants won two Super Bowls during those years.
Jim also became friends with New York Yankees All Stars Yogi Berra and Phil
Rizzuto during various political activities.
Passions and Pursuits - More
Music, Writing, and Entertainment
While working for
the Governor he created and produced a television special for the Arts and
Entertainment TV Network on energy conservation which won the Cable TV ACE
award, the Award for Cable Excellence, the national cable network Emmy, as best
public service program in America. The
program featured actress and singer Patti Lapone, Tony-winning star of the
Broadway play Evita, and the band he
created called State Property, the first government funded show ever broadcast
on the Arts and Entertainment network and first to win the coveted ACE award.
During this time,
he was a creator, partner, and collaborator with multiple Emmy winner Andrew
Carl Wilk, now Executive Producer for television at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in NYC. The credits include The Energy Show for Arts
and Entertainment Network, Flashpoint - a PBS weekly public affairs program,
and the Metropolitan Symphony Orchestra of NYC whose annual Salute to Broadway at the Paper Mill Playhouse, the largest
regional theatre in the nation, featured Tony winning actors performing the
best songs on Broadway.
Putnam wrote
several scripts for Jim Henson's Muppet
Babies TV program directed by Wilk and worked with Andrew (conductor and
director) in community and regional playhouse productions of Annie, Jesus Christ Superstar, Company and
Pirates of Penzance. A number of rising
stars on Broadway acted in these popular plays.
From politics, he
moved to Madison Avenue where he reunited with former Reagan and Bush
presidential campaign experts including Roger Ailes, media consultant and
recent President of Fox News. There were
also pollsters Richard Wirthlin and Neil Newhouse, and media creative master
Phil Dusenberry, Chairman of BBDO America advertising agency and creator of the
Michael Jackson, Ray Charles, and Cindy Crawford Pepsi ad campaigns among many
others. Phil's Crawford ad is one of the
top ten Super Bowl ads of all time.
The first person hired
at Media, Inc. in NYC, Jim helped grow it to $300 million in billings in three
years. He worked with a number of rock
stars on benefits like the annual Starlight Foundation gala, stars including Howard Kaylan, lead singer for the Turtles and Mothers of Invention, and
David Clayton Thomas and the Gellis brothers of Blood Sweat and Tears. He
once had dinner backstage with Celine Dion and Michael Boulton after a New Jersey amphitheater
performance.
While working in New York in 1994 he
formed his own media company, Ivy Hollow Productions, where he produced the
first digital recording of the New Testament of the Bible by renowned Shakespearian
dramatic actor Max McLean. Working with
Bob Monroe and his Monroe Foundation Jim used "hemispherical
synchronization" to increase reader retention when listening to the
recording.
After publishing
two books of poetry, he then wrote and published The Joshua Chronicles, an inspirational and mystical work of
fiction. At the same time, he began
writing the words and music for a song catalog that now totals over 500 songs,
and he formed two bands to record the music, Nashville Bound and the John Galt
Band. Over 15,000 Internet friends and
fans have helped the bands achieve over a million Internet plays.
National
Geographic Television, Ancient Cultures and Sacred Sites
His lifelong
fascination with ancient cultures led him to sacred sites around the world,
including many in Ireland, England, Scotland,
Wales, Mexico, Russia,
and Canada.
It was a stimulus to become involved
with Andrew Wilk again at the National Geographic Society television division
as a creative consultant and in providing soundtracks and themes for a number
of Nat Geo TV shows with the Pinnacle Group in Utah.
While at National Geographic Television, a series he helped create and
post produce with Chuck Hammer, Really
Wild Animals (CBS TV Network and Disney Network), earned one Emmy and
five Emmy nominations.
Ivy Hollow
undertook major national media campaigns for book publishers and record
companies in Nashville and Washington, D.C. Putnam also created and produced a nationally
syndicated weekly radio program in Nashville,
Family Values, introducing new
Christian singers and authors and launching numerous singers to the top of the
national charts including Point of Grace, Anointed, Jackie Velasquez, Rich
Mullins and many others.
Dancing the Tightrope and Take
Me Now God! are two books he wrote inspired by the experiences of his life
and the many influences growing up. The first book traces the early childhood
through teen years and the many adventures all kids shared while coming of age
in the days before cell phones, texting, video games and personal computers. The
latter is the end of the pursuit of the meaning of life, a rather hilarious
journey through the baby boomer maze of metaphysical and spiritual paths to the
truth.
His next literary
work led him on trips throughout Great Britain
and Ireland which preceded
travel to Russia
in search of secret Soviet film archives of Josef Stalin. In the frontier
outside Moscow on a military base near Stalin's
home, he discovered the extensive KGB cold war film archives of Stalin and the
Nazi SS film archives of Adolph Hitler, which had vanished 50 years earlier in
the fall of Berlin. Over 32 million feet of film footage was kept
in the top secret archives. Putnam was the first American the forty-nine
archive staff had ever met and only the second to visit the archive in the 60+
years since it opened.
After seven years
of research including access to previously "classified" files in
America, England, France, and Russia, he wrote his subsequent book, Saviors of the 20th Century - Hitler and Stalin
- the War of Annihilation between the Nazis and Communists. It is a non-fiction narrative history tracing
the roots and growth of Communism, Nazism, Hitler, and Stalin.
While in Russia, he was
able to acquire and bring back to the western world a stunning video documentary that
exposed horrid living conditions and death rates in Russian orphanages. It led to major changes in the health and
safety of abandoned children in Russia.
He also worked with
international groups to help adopt Russian and Chinese children. As a result, he made several appearances as a
guest and host of Russia Today, a
syndicated public education television program out of Washington, DC. In addition, Nazi footage acquired by Putnam through
the Russian archives has appeared in Turner Broadcasting Productions.
 |
| Beamish - Neapolitan Mastiff |
In 2000 he joined
The Interpublic Group of Companies (IPG) in NYC, one of the world's largest
media companies, after they bought Media, Inc., the media company which Putnam
helped create in NYC in the mid-1990's.
Energy
and Environment
Always intrigued by
science, physics and inventions, he studied math and physics and received a
license from the Atomic Energy Commission to handle radioactive materials fifteen
years before being involved in the clean up of the Three Mile Island nuclear
accident while working for the New
Jersey governor.
He received awards
from President Johnson for work with Keep America Beautiful and the National
Association of Business, and was involved in several environmental pilot
projects including industrial cogeneration, massive solid waste disposal incinerators,
fusion energy (Princeton, NJ),
and he oversaw implementation of the nation's first statewide mandatory
recycling program in New Jersey.
A member of the task
force to create the Federal Energy Agency in response to Arab oil embargoes, he
advocated alternative energy before it was popular, even patented and
manufactured a solar energy system in the mid 1970's. The latter involved a consortium he recruited
of blue chip corporations including PPG Industries, Phillips Petroleum, Goodyear
Tire and Rubber and Dow Chemical.
 |
| CuChulainn Deo Irie - Irish Wolfhound |
His fascination
with science and nature prepared him for a most unusual exposure to natural
disasters and the forces of nature. For
example, Jim had his homes hit by tornadoes in three different states, experienced
hurricanes in Texas, Florida,
and Maryland, floods in California,
Missouri, and Iowa,
and blizzards in Iowa and Nebraska.
As if that was not
enough, he also experienced earthquakes in California and Maryland (he was less
than 50 miles from the epicenter of a 6.2 quake that hit the east coast, the
strongest one in over a century), and was caught in the Mad Cow disease
outbreak in England.
Science
and Intelligence Agencies
A close friend and
confidant of Margaret (Maggie) Sanders, daughter of Colonel Harlan Sanders of
Kentucky Fried Chicken fame, it was through Maggie and her affiliation with the
National Academy of Sciences he interviewed numerous Nobel prize-winning
scientists as well as metaphysical personalities Maggie knew from her life-long
search for the Lost Continent of Atlantis.
Also through her Putnam was a participant in the MIT Media Lab - Society
of the Mind with Professor Marvin Minsky, founder of artificial intelligence in
Boston.
More recently,
Putnam worked with Victor Sheymov, a key KGB cold war defector to the US and with
James Woolsey, former CIA Director under President Clinton, to establish an
international computer security company, Invicta Networks, and to help publish
books on intelligence agency activities.
He also works with
CBA Pharma, Inc., a Kentucky
pharmaceutical company, with a promising potential treatment to cure cancer and
drug resistant diseases. CBA is the
first firm to enter FDA Phase 3 human trials with a natural compound that
results in the destruction of multi-drug resistant cells including cancer.
Of course, the
implications go way beyond cancer since most drug resistance happens in areas
of drug over-prescription and saturation over the years, such as treatment with
antibodies, medications for depression, high blood pressure, etc. Even diseases once thought wiped out are
making comebacks because of their ability to mutate and most dangerous of all
are the hospital-based drug resistant staff infections with their deadly
consequences.
The
Hopi Indians
Ever since his
first visit to meet the Hopi Indians near the Grand Canyon in 1964 Jim has
worked with indigenous spiritual leaders including the past three Hopi
traditional spiritual leaders along with Navajo, Algonquin, Ute, Sioux,
Australian Aborigine and many others to help preserve their cultures and their
sacred ways. His invitation to film the
fulfillment of numerous sacred prophecies with the Hopi, Algonquin, Ute, and
Dali Lama is a highlight of his fifty years working with Native Americans and
Indigenous groups around the world.
On one of his many
trips to Arizona, the National Park Service archeological
office had invited him to bring a film crew and shoot footage of a little known,
ancient Indian site with a twelve mile stretch of undisturbed ancient wall
paintings just above the Grand Canyon, called Snake Gulch
Canyon that could only be
reached by horseback.
While driving to
the site the evening before a coyote jumped in front of Putnam's van bringing
it to a screeching halt, and then disappeared.
The next morning as they made their way to the sacred site on horseback
Putnam's horse was startled by a snake, tossing him fifteen feet down a gulley
where he cracked three ribs. With no
access to medical treatment, he finished over ten more hours on horses completing
the shoot. The Hopi told him the "trickster"
coyote came to force Jim to take a long overdue rest.
Animal
Rescues
Throughout his life
he helped heal injured animals and birds his neighbors brought him. His most memorable rescue took place recently
in Southern Maryland one frigid winter day when he went into the bitter cold water
up to his neck to save a drowning and sick Bald Eagle along the shore of the Potomac River. He
saved the Eagle, it went to rehabilitation, and later Putnam was able to
release it back into nature. As a
volunteer of the Bald Eagle rescue center in Delaware
he released another Eagle in Maryland
as well.
From national politics
to cyber security to potential pioneering medical breakthroughs, he still most
enjoys music, writing, and trying to help people, animals, places, and things. Among many current pursuits he is a
songwriter through Steven Sharp, Sharp Objects Music Company of Nashville, and his bands,
Nashville Bound and the John Galt Band are popular internet groups at Soundclick,
MySpace, Indie Records, and many other internet sites.
Media
and Entertainment - News Reporting, Books, Music, Television and Publishing
Publishing
He designed a
national marketing campaign and produced an album of Christian artists to
introduce The Promise, a new CEV
Bible translation making it the first Bible to be #1 on national bestseller
lists in modern times.
Putnam is publisher
of the popular Internet based Coltons
Point Times newspaper with over 1,500 articles and columns online featuring
multiple investigative stories such as:
Lyme Disease - America's Next Pandemic
Our Broken Health Care System
Federal Campaign Reform
Politics and Political Parties
Histories Mysteries about Southern
Maryland
GMO's - Truth and Myth
Cyber Security - Are we really safe?
The Rothschild Dynasty - a Trillionaires
Delight
and,
serialized excerpts from several Putnam books
You can view his newspaper at:
http://coltonspointtimes.blogspot.com/
 |
| Mr. Henry - Bloodhound |
Books Authored
Words I Chose Not To Speak (poetry)
Second Thoughts (poetry)
Dancing the Tightrope (book and television series)
The Joshua Chronicles (spiritual and supernatural fiction)
Take Me Now God! (hilarious
comedy and parody of Baby Boomers)
 |
| Arizona Daily Star Tucson |
Saviors of the 20th Century - Hitler and Stalin - The War of Annihilation between the Nazis and Communists (non-fiction historical)
Left Handed, Four Eyed, Small Town, and
Catholic, and they call me Lucky? (autobiographical)
Television Shows
Jim Henson's Muppet Babies, wrote several scripts for the TV series
Flashpoint, created and produced a PBS weekly public service television
program
The Energy Show, Arts and Entertainment national broadcast - winner of ACE
- Award for Cable Excellence (cable
TV Emmy) Executive in charge of production
Really Wild Animals, National Geographic TV series on CBS and Disney, 26 episodes, winner of one Emmy and nominated for 5 Emmys - Creative
consultant for script and music and post production
Dancing the Tightrope TV Series in development - producer, writer and composer
Several Marilyn Monroe books and scripts under development.
Music
Bible Soundtrack - Max McLean and the Bible
Ivy Hollow Theme - co-wrote with Academy award songwriter Dennis
Matkosky
Nashville Bound band - wrote 23 songs recorded by Nashville
Bound in Nashville.
John Galt Band - wrote 150 songs for Dancing
the Tightrope TV series soundtrack The
Story of a Life
State Property band - executive in charge of production
for Arts and Entertainment TV special and six music videos
Ivy
Hollow music - wrote I Had a Dream
performed at first Martin Luther King, Jr. national holiday celebrations in Atlanta, GA and San Francisco, CA
Currently
additional 250+ songs in song catalog
Radio
Created and produced
nationally syndicated weekly radio show from Nashville called Family Values introducing Christian singers and authors
Organizations
University of Arizona Alumni
Beta
Theta Pi National fraternity
Omaha Press Club
White
House New Federalism Task Force
MIT
Society of the Mind
AEC
(Atomic Energy Commission) Radioactive Users license
.
