.
"Standard, typical, one to two page resumes discriminate more
against older people than any other form of discrimination."
When I was a chief of staff running operations with hundreds
or even thousands of employees, it always frustrated me when we needed new
employees and every resume looked the same.
Even if I wanted to hire someone directly out of college, I still had no
way to differentiate between the applicants because the resumes looked identical.
There is always a point in the hiring process when you have
to personally interview the applicant before making a decision, but I always
felt the preliminary screening process knocked many good applicants out before
I ever saw them.
Over the years there have been many fads to change, improve,
or otherwise alter resumes but the institutional bureaucracy always seems to
drift back to the same boring formats that never really worked in the first
place, at least from the employer perspective.
Therefore, I decided to try an experiment. What would happen if I threw out the formats
and created a document of my life story that actually told you what I did, to
some degree beyond a line on paper, as well as what characteristics, talents,
virtues, and creative solutions did I use to do what I did.
Since I have been around a while and did many things, it
gave me an opportunity to say all the things missing from a standard
resume. The result follows and is quite
different from you might be used to seeing.
So I am asking you, the reader, what you think of a
conversational resume I created that replaced the two page resume of my life
that did not allow me to summarize anything. This mini-documentary of a life does not fit
into a standard length and layout, as it must reflect what you actually did.
My question to you is does it give you a better idea of the
person you are reading about than a traditional resume, and if so, why are we
not encouraging college students and others to be more creative in presenting
their vitae.
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
Overview &
Background
·
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 Werner 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 Frasier, 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 don't belong
here. Take Jim Putnam, an Iowa Hayseed for example. His philosophy on life was established 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 own "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?
He was delivered by a female
physician (a rare occurrence) one year after 2 Atomic bombs ended World War II.
Then at 6 months old he had to be saved
by a fireman from a burning apartment?
At 1½ years he suffered a
concussion and broke his face flying down a concrete stairway in a
stroller. At 3 he was on
IVs in a hospital with the mumps.
At
4 he was immersed in ice to break a
106° temperature. At 5 he was up to his
chest sinking in quicksand in Texas. At 6 he and brother Bob were caught in a shootout when they threw a
box of bullets into an incinerator. At 7
he all but drowned in a pond at
summer camp going under three times.
By
8 he was hit by lightning in a
lake. At 9 he was electrocuted in his basement when pretending to be a priest and
holding Mass and Communion. At 10 he was
trapped overnight in a blizzard in a
cave in below zero temperatures. At 11
he fell through the ice on a lake in
frigid weather and his clothes froze while trying to get home in the woods.
At
12 he was in a speedboat collision that
split a 2nd boat in two in a ferocious Lake Michigan
gale. At 13 he had a brain concussion, 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
that he could not be pigeonholed into a career path when he wanted to learn and experience everything. And 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 8, 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
and Popular Science and Popular Mechanics over teen magazines.
By
1st 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 3rd grade and did
his own laundry and ironed his own clothes by 5th grade. Before finishing
5th grade he had read every textbook he would have through 8th grade.
Just
before 3rd 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 the new kid in school was reduced 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 to a freak in a foreign wilderness, the funeral home and eye glass
disasters were an indication there was something foreboding about this place.
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 it was his other world full
of non-stop activity and endless adventures that 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.
When the Catholic high school for girls burned down just before Jim
started high school, his was the 1st co-ed class to finish 4 years.
At
high school he earned 14 varsity letters
in five sports excelling in baseball
and golf, helped shatter records in basketball including a sweet 16 berth in the state basketball
tournament though being from the smallest school in the tourney, and being
ranked #1 in the state in their
class. In fact during his 4 years in
high school the varsity record was 84-11 and his team never lost a home
game.
By
the time he completed high school he had 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.
The Siren
Call of Music & 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.
Perhaps it is not surprising music was interwoven into his activities
throughout his life since he is a 3rd
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.
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
and 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. He also could be found watching 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. And members of his Beta Theta Pi fraternity were featured performers on the nationally
broadcast Hootenanny 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 & Cher,
the Mamas & Papas, Moody Blues and later got to work with
many more like the Turtles, Blood Sweat
& Tears, Frankie Avalon, and
Frankie Valle and the Four Seasons on benefit projects.
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 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 grads 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.
 |
| From the dugout of Yankees Stadium |
So
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 where 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. And he often partnered with Chuck Hammer, legendary lead guitarist
with Lou Reed and David Bowie, including projects for artists
like Carol King. Eventually Putnam would help found a company
housed at 52nd & 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 to be 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 6 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 2nd 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 snow storms into Minneapolis,
Minnesota and finally giving
Marley his winter coat because the soft spoken Jamaican didn't own one.
Music
was integrated into almost everything Putnam 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. So he contacted the
legendary BB King's manager to get
BB to give a boost to the campaign efforts.
Jim and the candidate greeted BB at his plane at the airport and
escorted him to the waiting press inside the terminal. BB was wearing the candidate's tee shirt and
mentioned his "old friend" to the waiting press. The stunned media, suspecting the candidate
knew nothing about BB King, asked him
his favorite King song and he 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 on.
Shortly after Putnam left BB and company in the room 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.
The
Political Years
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 government functioned well into the future. He was the 2nd employee hired to create the
first Regional Council of Governments
in the Midwest to identify and implement
government consolidations, mergers, shared services and 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.
Putnam
was honored by the US Department of
Labor Bureau of Labor Statistics
for being first statistician to create a methodology
to identify pockets of high unemployment and poverty areas within metropolitan areas, data that became the
foundation for economic and manpower training programs throughout the nation.
Working
with the Office of Management &
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. It was then implemented nationwide saving
tens of millions of dollars a year.
Then
he helped consolidate 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. He was assigned temporarily to assist the
director of the federal Office of
Economic Opportunity to save federal funding for the popular Headstart and Legal Services programs for low income.
He
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 was 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 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, the year of the largest
presidential election victory in history (Nixon won 49 of 50 states),
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 & Bush, Sr.) the same year.
While
in politics Putnam also worked with Governor
Charles Thone of Nebraska and spent 8 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, 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 was 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. He also oversaw the New
Jersey Motion Picture & Television Commission headed by actress Celeste Holm.
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 & Entertainment
While
working for the Governor he created and produced a television special for the A&E 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 Patti Lapone, Tony winning star of Evita, and the band he created
called State Property. It was the first government funded show to ever appear on A&E network and first to win the coveted ACE.
During
this time he was a creator, partner and collaborator with multiple Emmy winner Andrew Carl Wilk, now Executive Producer at Lincoln
Center for the Performing Arts in NYC on
projects including the Energy Show for
A&E 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 were launched from the 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 now President of Fox News, pollsters Richard Wirthlin and Neil
Newhouse, and media creator 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 3 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 & 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 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 & 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 and 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 & Disney Network),
earned one Emmy and five Emmy
nominations.
Ivy
Hollow undertook major national media campaigns for 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 49 archive staff had ever met and only the 2nd to
visit the archive in the 60+ years since it opened.
After
7 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 & 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 to the western world a stunning 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.
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
& the 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 15 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 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 was implemented
through a consortium he recruited of blue
chip corporations including PPG
Industries, Phillips Petroleum, Goodyear Tire and Rubber and Dow Chemical.
His
fascination with science and nature prepared him for a most unusual exposure to
natural disasters and the forces of nature as Jim had his homes hit by tornadoes
in three different states, has been in
hurricanes in Texas, Florida and Maryland, floods in California, Missouri and
Iowa, blizzards in Iowa and Nebraska, 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 even 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 cure for cancer. 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. He was honored to
be invited to film part of the fulfillment of numerous sacred prophecies with the Hopi,
Algonquin, Ute and Dali Lama.
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 12 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, then disappeared. The next morning Putnam's horse was startled
by a snake tossing him 15 feet down a gulley where he cracked three ribs. He finished over ten more hours riding to
complete the shoot. The Hopi told him the
"trickster" coyote was
sent 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. It was saved,
rehabilitated and Putnam got to release it back into nature.
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 John
Galt Band are popular internet groups at MySpace, Soundclick, Indie Records and many other internet
sites.
Media
& Entertainment - News Reporting, Books, Music, Television & 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 best seller list in
modern times.
Putnam
is publisher of the popular Internet
based Coltons Point Times newspaper with over 1,400 articles and
columns online featuring multiple article investigative reports 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
Books Authored
- Words I Chose Not To Speak (poetry)
- Second Thoughts (poetry)
- Dancing the Tightrope
- The Joshua Chronicles
- Take Me Now God!
- Saviors of the 20th Century - Hitler &
Stalin - The War of Annihilation between the Nazis and Communists
- Left Handed, Four Eyed, Small Town and
Catholic, and they call me Lucky?
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, A&E 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 & Disney, 26 episodes, winner of one Emmy and
nominated for 5 Emmys - Creative consultant for script and music &
post production
- Dancing the Tightrope TV Series in
development - producer, writer & composer
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 A&E TV special and 6 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
