My Newest Book - Take Me Now God! - on Amazon Digital - Finding Meaning and Purpose in Life

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I am pleased to report that my newest book will be out in the next day or so through Amazon Digital Services.  The following is a puff piece introduction to the book.

TAKE ME NOW GOD!

A story by Jim Putnam

So what happens when one pursues every course of self-enlightenment and discovery available to people with too much time on their hands?  And what happens when they have exhausted their search through religion, cults, mysticism, spiritualism, Native American cultures, prophecies, politics, the psychic world and beyond?

At the journeys end they have only one option left.  "Take Me Now God!"  A demand to the Creator, Source, or God, no matter what you choose to call him or her, for immediate salvation.  As the author says, "In the beginning was the Word, and no one listened."

In the first chapter of this "unauthorized autobiography", he laments; "She's right you know.  I'm not compatible with humans.  Hell, half the time my damn dog loses it's loyalty.  She once asked me if I ever considered suicide.  Who wouldn't after what I'd seen.  But I said no. So she rephrased the question.  Maybe I should consider suicide.  That's why I decided to end it."

Beginning with the opening Post Mortem, the author rushes to dispose of all that is important in his life so God can take him now.  Prepare yourself for a hilarious journey through the world of religions, the metaphysical, spiritual and more, leaving a trail of shattered searches for inspiration and failure to find the hidden meaning in life.

Excerpts:

True love: "I was star crossed from day one, double crossed by day two, and nailed to the cross by day three."

The Illuminati: "The New Age of enlightened beings - the Illuminati.  Often caught up in their own delusional hysteria.  Demanding to be heard. Demanding to be followed.  Judging others as they don't want themselves judged.  Know how to tell the difference between a fraudulent Illuminati and enlightened one?  You can't."

The Rapture: "There are a lot of interesting things in the spiritual world, but of all of them, the Rapture wins hands down.  Think about it, the optimum lift off.  The ultimate high.  No more bills.  No more taxes."

Creation: "Ever wonder about creation?  I do all the time.  Seems the Bible can account for about 6,000 years, back to the time of the big surf, or flood.  The Hopi and Mayan Indian can account for another 250,000 years, including the mystic kingdom of Atlantis.

"Dinosaurs are 60-120 million years old.  The Grand Canyon is 2 billion years old.  Earth 4 billion, while the universe as we know it is 26 billion years old.  I figure that is more than enough time to accommodate just about every version of creation there can be."

Channels:  "I want real proof.  Give me the winning numbers to next week's Powerball lottery and I'll be a true believer for the rest of my annuities.  Those damn lotteries.  Why is it there are only a few thousand possible combinations of winning numbers, yet the odds of winning are 12 million to one?  Where does that math come from?  Pythagoras in a drunken stupor?"

Native Americans:  "I always had an affinity for them.  Was the only kid that ever volunteered to be the Indian.  Didn't bother me to get killed in most battles.  Every once in a while we played Little Big Horn and I kicked some white ass."

Genetic Manipulation:  "I've had suspicions about it since I was 5 years old, when I first tasted cooked spinach.  That shit had to be genetically engineered poison.  And don't you think it made me more than a little suspicious about my mother, who was trying to kill me with it?"

Ancient Prophecies:  "There is nothing I want more than to believe the ancient prophecies.  After the mess we have made of the Earth, we deserve no less than the catastrophic earth changes that have been foretold.  It would be a fitting tribute to our self-aggrandizing ego trip."

From dogs to demons, Christians to pagans, Take Me Now God! takes one on a wild ride through the life of a searcher, albeit, one who came up empty handed but with no regrets.

Here is the opening of the book:

From: Take Me Now God!

Part One

The Fall

  

EPILOGUE

I got to taste the big time

been chasing dreams I thought mine

but then a cowboy he never learns

when to say no, when to go slow

and all those people ‘round me

all those good friends I thought I’d see

they disappeared in the night

maybe they’re right, I just shouldn’t fight

Keep searching for a home with laughter

seems I’ve some upon the final chapter

as I play out the last scene

footlights fade out, an end to my dream

That curtain it - began descending

as that final act was finally ending

that stage of life I had known

left me no home, left me alone

and don’t you know I can’t wait to get out of here

so tired of being alone

don’t you know I can’t wait to get out of here

I’ve got to find my home

  

-  -  -  -  Getting Acquainted  -  -  -  -

First, let me acquaint you with said subject me, the world I am trying to escape, her world, and the great beyond, my world.  Consider the obvious, and the less obvious becomes easier to comprehend.  I was Left Handed, Four Eyed, Small Town, and Catholic, and they called me Lucky.

The second son sandwiched 13 months on either side by much larger brothers.  I was born the first year of the Baby Boomers as the fallout was still raining down from the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan.  My Mother said I was quite an oddball even in the middle of the helter skelter revolutionary and often anarchist generation of the 1950's and 1960's.  

How many people do you know that start life with four strikes against them?  You see, I would have been most fortunate if those were the only strikes against me in life.  However, my role as entertainer to the gods or archangels or whatever celestial beings needed comic relief, endowed far more strikes against me than just left handed, four eyed, small town, and Catholic.

My maternal side of the family, the Campbell clan, left me with a legacy of the fantastic and mysterious ways of the Dark Irish, a familiarity with the little people from Fairies to Leprechauns, an unsought awareness of the ancient Druid wizards and high priests, healers, and storytellers, and a whole bunch of other weird, mystical, and metaphysical stuff.

Genetically manufactured with the best and worst of Scotland, Ireland, and the Celtic Campbell clan, truly, I was the ultimate hybrid or mutant DNA.

Then there was the paternal side, the Putnam clan, mostly English aristocrats with a touch of German engineering and inventiveness, and pretty much at odds with everything from the whimsical and magical world of my mother's ancestors.  They were the aristocratic ancestry leading to various figures of nobility I dare not mention lest I sully their memories in the history books we read.

Why my father's non-Catholic ancestors even had their own big church near London shortly after the English drove the Catholics out of Britain, meaning back when my father's side in jolly old England drove my mother's side from their ancient homes in the Scottish Highlands to Ireland, and eventually to land here in America.

I do not know a lot about DNA and genetic coding but if we are the product of our parents and ancestors combined DNA then I must have lived in a constant state of revolution and never known who I could trust from my own family.

However, I cannot afford to believe in the children inheriting the sins of their fathers or mothers or ancestors.  From the little genealogy I have dared to research about my family the burden of sins like those are of such tremendous magnitude that us siblings haven't got a chance in Hell of living normal lives.

That sucks...

When I get to the Pearly Gates and confront St. Peter, I expect he will not find my name on the invitation list.  You see, based on the sins of my families my judgment was a foregone conclusion long before I even died.

Still I am a writer and storyteller by birthright, ancestry, and intuitive expectation and I am an occasional believer, when it suits my purpose, that we can create our own reality.  So do not be surprised that the moment of my birth I had the dreadful realization that a very serious mistake took place.

It was a dread that would haunt me through my life.  You see, I just knew there was a serious mix up at God's baby processing facility in Heaven and some absent-minded angel had sent me to the wrong family on earth.

Over time, it was to become obvious.

House of Rothschild

I was supposed to be born a Rothschild in the legendary House of Rothschild in London, home of one of the most mysterious and powerful families in history.  Of course, there is no single House of Rothschild but castles all over Europe and the world.

My real family owned nations, kings, diamonds, gold, banks, and politicians.  Though my palate back in Iowa longed for lobster, caviar, sconces, and tea, I was stuck with pork, corn, hamburgers, and hot dogs.

I did the best I could in a world without soufflé.

Of course, there were serious sacrifices.  I expected armies of servants, limos and trillions of dollars, but I had to settle for an apartment in small town Iowa, parents who were just college students themselves, and a family history of bizarre tragedies and wild magic.

So very reluctantly, I had to accept the cards dealt to me in life and rest assured it was the last time I ever trusted a card dealer.  No matter what my birth certificate said, I was a Rothschild, quite Jewish, an English aristocrat, rich beyond imagination, and lost in the cornfields of Iowa.

My ancestors did not just read the Bible, they wrote it!

However, I never let go of the hope that one day when they audit the baby factory in Heaven they find and rectify the fatal mistake that made a potential Rothschild prodigy into a cursed Campbell-Putnam ancestor.

That "sins of the father" talk hits far too close to home.

Go back to the 1600's, just after the age of my favorite Queen of England, Elizabeth, Virgin Queen.  During her reign she did her best to prevent her father's (Henry the VIII no less her mother beheaded by old Henry) orders to persecute the Catholics by forcing them to renounce their Catholic faith or drive them from Britain.

It just happened that one of the most powerful Catholic clans in Scotland was the Campbell clan, my other folks.  For decades, maybe centuries they had ruled in the desolate but beautiful Scottish Highlands and fought for and against the imperial English rule depending on the mood at the time.

Of course, it was the same English rule that the non-Catholic Putnam family in London was advocating.  After Elizabeth's death at the turn of the 17th century King Henry's rule was finally enforced and the Campbell clan got a choice, denounce your Catholic faith or be banished to Ireland.  Refuse to choose and you lose - you die.

One of many Campbell castles in Scotland

What a choice.  Give up all ancestral religion, rights, titles, and property under Great Britain or go to Ireland.  They made it sound as if Ireland was a far worse fate than losing everything.

The part of the Campbell Clan refusing to convert to the Church of England knew those deceitful Brits were lying about how dreadful things were in Ireland.  The Brits just hated the place because the Irish kept rejecting English rule.  However, where else could Scottish Celts go to be among friends?

Another Campbell castle

My ancestors held to their conviction, then kicked out of Scotland, and banished from their homeland, estates, and titles.  After a few generations in County Cork Ireland, the Campbell family then migrated to America in the 1800's.  They were victims of one side of the family curse.

Once the Putnam's got the Campbell's and other Catholics out of Britain in the early 1600's they migrated to America, arriving in the mid 1600's in New England in the Puritan rush to Plymouth Rock, some 200 years earlier than the Campbell clan.

Yet another of the dozen or more surviving Campbell castles

Specifically the Putnam family arrived in New England and once unpacked, some chose to settle in a Puritan place called Salem, Massachusetts, just in time for the Salem Witch trials.  Thus, set in motion the other half of my family's ancient curse.

Here it gets quite complicated.  Look at the court transcripts of that fateful and tragic trial in the 1690's.

You see, there was a Puritan Putnam family who spent years creating a safe and isolated haven to protect the "witches" from harm by the village church fanatics.  They successfully hid those suspected of being witches for decades in their remote estates.  At the time of the trial, supposedly 6 of the 8 largest property owners in the Salem area were from the Putnam family.

Then into the story comes a young Putnam girl named Anne, but not from the Putnam family creating the safe haven, rather she was the minister's daughter from town.  She told her Putnam Preacher pop the witches possessed her and made her do evil things against her will.

It was a rather ingenious story perhaps but with deadly consequences.  Soon a bunch of other local kids joined the chorus and suddenly all those witches protected by one Putnam family were arrested and tried for practicing Black Magic on those poor innocent children of the villagers by the other Putnam family.

You probably heard the rest.  A couple of dozen witches were burned or hanged to death, later the kids admitted they made up the story, and thus began the curse of the Salem witches cast upon the immediate and all future Putnam descendants until the Putnam blood line was wiped out.

Seemed to me our family should have got some metaphysical credit for protecting the witches all those decades.  However, as far as the curse was concerned all Putnams looked alike.  It was as good a curse as any ancient Egyptian curse (King Tut) or medieval curse from the Spanish Inquisition.

At any rate, I would not have thought much about the curse except one day I was reading about Amelia Earnhardt, the world famous airplane pilot, and I realized that Amelia married a certain George Putnam of the New England Putnam family when she was 33 years old, and six years later, she disappeared off the face of the earth.

Well, so goes the story of my ancestry as passed down from generations of Celtic and thus Irish storytellers.  My Irish grandfather on the Campbell side used to tell me one should only half believe any good story told.

I can tell you this.  Where I was born, Iowa City, Iowa, was home to the University of Iowa Scottish Highlanders Marching band, one of the most famous bagpipe bands in the world.  Why a Scottish band was far from the magical land of the Loch Ness monster and located in the same town where I lived in Iowa is a mystery?

Okay, in spite of the curse, we survived which was somewhat unusual but I do feel the DNA coding with its highly conflicting Campbell and Putnam elements, which we did indeed inherit, is an important clue in the story of the wayward Iowa Hayseed.

Think about it.  DNA just might be the direct link to God since most of us blame Him or Her for giving it to us in the first place.  In fact, we do not control a number of critical life elements, like inheriting the DNA.  Did you pick the family you join, the country, state, town, or village?  Did you choose your family status in your town, rich, poor, or dependent?

Then there are the race, income, religion, language, and a host of other major cultural, religious, and demographic classifications in your life, and again you have no control.  Then, wait a minute.  What are the most significant influences on your life?

There is Survival 101 - your parents.  Then there is Survival 102 - your grandparents.  Finally, we have Survival 103 - your elementary, secondary, and higher education teachers.  What do they all have in common?  You did not choose any of them.

Add to that the millions of variables that make up your life, for instance the number and gender of siblings, their smarts, and their attitudes.  Toss a few dozen relatives, priests, ministers, mullahs, or rabbis into the mix and you have yourself one powerful cocktail.

What do these amazingly varied and seemingly unrelated components of your life all have in common?  On Judgment Day, any or all of these variables provide unintended consequences in your verdict.

In spite of the fact your Day of Atonement and moment of judgment will come from whoever your divine God might be, your fate relies on a whole bunch of factors and standards you did not control, select, or endorse!

You did not create!  You did not choose!

Yet they are the measuring sticks for your judgment.

Do not know about you but I feel I have just made a powerful case against the use of "free will" as a determining factor for judgment day.

There is nothing "free" about those varied components we inherited in our lives and it is about time we not be held responsible for all those impediments to the exercise of genuine "free will" on our part.

They are all someone else's "will" being unfairly imposed on our life.

That compelling argument and consequential attitude should get me off the hook on a whole lot of stuff when I stand before St. Peter awaiting judgment at the gate.

Youth is, wasted on the young.  If only we could have waited until we piled up all those experiences, feelings, joys, failures, loves found, and lost loves before we lost our innocence, our ability to dream, and our faith in the unknown.

Instead we spend a lifetime being beaten down, educated I guess they call it, tricked, fooled, disappointed, and occasionally, well, we might even find a moment to get happy.

That is not to say everyone is that way but now that I am much older and wiser I have noticed there are fewer and fewer happy people.

She is right you know, the Pretender.  I am not compatible with humans.  Hell, half the time my damn dog even loses its loyalty.  Every time I try to relate to anyone, I just seem to blow it.  Guess the only thing compatible with me is my cactus, and lately some of them have even taken to dying.

She once asked me if I ever considered suicide.  You would after what I had seen.  However, I said no.  Therefore, she rephrased the question.  Maybe I should consider suicide.  That is why I decided to end it.

My termination seems to be the only way to protect the human race from further contamination by me.  What did she call me?  Oh yeah, the Devil Incarnate, better known as the Prince of Darkness.

Once wrote a book that talked about the Prince.  Guess she finally figured anyone that knew as much about the Prince as I wrote about must be speaking from first hand experience.  She might be right I reckon.

Makes sense that the Prince would know all the details of Jesus’ life.  He was there tempting him in the desert, trying to seduce him with riches, power and women.  Finally, when he gave up on Jesus, he was there nailing him to the cross.

That could explain what I saw.  All the time I thought I was the reincarnation of Joshua, the friend and scribe of Jesus.  Never crossed my mind I might just be the Prince of Darkness.  It took the Pretender to wake me up.  Her insights take all the fun out of the end of the world.

Therefore, this must serve as my final will and testament.  Consider it my great escape.  This sorry world has hit such a subterranean level of degradation that anywhere can only be better.  It is the final plane ride to Neverland.

Some might call this a “Living Will” or something like that, but how could a living will be serving the dead?  Never did figure that one out.

That might have been my problem, always trying to figure things out.  My persistent questioning of anybody and everybody got me in more trouble than I could ever imagine.  That and telling stories.  When I was a kid, my grandfather and a bunch of other old men used to tell me stories, for hours.

They made me laugh.  They made me cry.  They even scared the shit out of me.  However, they always made me feel.  Nothing else ever did I guess, except those old stories.  It was a gift.  Made people feel good.  Made some like me feel for about the only time.

So there I was, just a kid, and already burdened by twin curses.  Curses, by the way, that would haunt me the rest of my life.  Figuring things out and telling stories.  Yes, maybe she was right; maybe I was the son of Satan.

You see there is no other logical explanation on why this Iowa Hayseed set out on his Quixote-like adventure through life as reflected in this story. 

I had a couple of advantages over my brothers to offset the many disadvantages and most important was my obsessive compulsion to read and write, something they found overly demanding with little downside reward.

Thus, I was the gatekeeper for all the knowledge of the universe found in books and I could communicate what I learned to others through the ability to write.

For quite different reasons they both settled on me being rather odd, although Bosco did find my adventures far more interesting and challenging than the Archangel did.

In my fantasy world, getting dirty was normal, getting in trouble was noteworthy, and getting someone mad was worth a merit badge.

For the most part our childhood memories consisted of observing the Biblical life style of the Archangel and causing as much chaos and confusion as possible for a couple of Afterthoughts.

Except for the scripted interaction from the parents in which the Archangel was to bestow on us his favor, we lived separate lives.  We were so separate in fact, that neither the Archangel nor we remember being friends or hanging out throughout childhood.

I did with my brothers what the laws of God and nature required, but that was the extent of it.  Beyond that I created a new world of boundless creative endeavors, the aggressive pursuit of knowledge, and the ability to instantly leap into the Land of Oz, Wonderland, Camelot or even the Alamo and still escape.

By kindergarten, my highly disciplined path began by joining the Public Library Book Reading Club where I won many honors reading the most books each month.  It was the first of my activities intended to separate me from my siblings, as the thought of joining a library book club terrified both.

My pursuit of information taught me what the kids in Russia, China, and Europe learned long ago; do not overlook our grandparents as a source of information and knowledge.

Interestingly, my grandparents on both the Putnam and Campbell sides found my curiosity to be charming and spent a lot of time sharing their knowledge with me and I shall forever be grateful.  I was far more comfortable in the company of adults than other kids were.

By the time third grade came, I found kids to be quite naive as they were clueless about world affairs, politics, or history.  Yet every weekend Grandfather Campbell would test me on current events that week expecting me to have read Time and Life magazines before I saw him for Sunday brunch.  Of course, he did not know I also read Popular Science, National Geographic, and Boys Life.

If you were I, how would you feel about having the four strikes against you at birth?  As you can see, my life was not just the four strikes against me but the fascinating DNA issues and the myriad of other factors dumped on me at birth and for a long time to come after.

I was born with a bull's eye on my back.

Before my mouth even opened, confusion and torment already threatened my existence.  Back when I was still in the womb I'm sure I sensed the foreboding and when I was jerked out into the world the first thing I saw was a woman doctor, quite uncommon back in those post-war days.

Then there was my religion.  Of course, I already mentioned I was really a misplaced Rothschild kid due to the screw up back at HQ.  That left me a Jewish-Catholic.

In my reality show family back in Iowa the ancient battles between my maternal and paternal ancestors were renewed, the battles where my non-Catholic father's English family helped drive my Catholic mother's Scottish family from their birthright, titles, castles, and money.

Now fast forward to my birth.  My father was a recent convert to Catholicism and when it comes to embracing religion, there is nothing like a new convert for enthusiasm and a bad case of religious fervor.

That meant instead of going to church once a week for Sunday services, my fanatical father decided he needed to go to church every day, probably to make up for all those years he had not seen the light.  Therefore, he dragged us kids along for the ride.

Whatever he expected from the hyper-Catholic activity, it did not seem to help us in God's favor.  No matter how hard I prayed, I was never going to hit the game winning home run or score a date with the beautiful rich girl.

Unfortunately, my dad's family never got over the traitor, my dad, who would forgo the eternal security of being non-Catholic to switch sides and join the dreaded mackerel snappers.

When we would visit the rest, of the Putnam family, I always searched around for any signs of cross-burning or voodoo dolls, knowing the deep-seated conflict between these surrogate families for the English and Scottish/Irish causes.

Oddly, both sides of the family accepted me, perhaps because I reminded them often of my true Jewish heritage, which thus made me much less of a card carrying Catholic threat.

Now the fact they seemed to accept me thus cast suspicion on my motives by my mother's Campbell side of the family who seemed to think I had been spiritually hijacked by those dastardly Putnam's and was probably already indoctrinated into the Masonic 50th degree secret society.

I did nothing to discourage the rampant rumors and innuendo, choosing to remain silent.  I am a great believer in the Tip O'Neill philosophy about saying little, "it is better people don't know what you know, than to know what you don't know."

On the other hand, I could always strike terror into the hearts of those Putnam's by threatening to join their Moose Club Lodge or Masonic Order, also secret societies I suspected of having a rather negative view of Catholics. They never had the heart to tell me I was ineligible.

Throughout my life, I was a most curious person about everything, which was another of my many demonic virtues according to my mother, and especially according to those priests and nuns.

Speaking of which, in spite of the Putnam pressure against it I actually joined a Catholic secret society, the Knights of the Alter, God's army for Pete's sake.  Okay, okay, so I was just an alter boy, but I was armed to the teeth with bells and smoke bombs, oh yeah incense I mean.

It was during my early Dark Ages, when the memory of my true Rothschild heritage was beginning to slip away in the chaos of growing up.  It was in the latter part of grade school.  At the time, I actually harbored the thought of becoming a priest, which I soon rejected based on observing those of the faith I personally experienced.

Then I figured I should not waste all those pious years of training to be a priest and I decided to be a religious brother, but there were far too many rules for such a simple life.  My idea of saving the world was not learning how to weed a garden.  I was thinking of being more like Thomas Aquinas or St. Augustine, theologians, not gardeners.

Therefore, my last grasp at retaining a link to all that Catholic education and training was to become a religious hermit because by this time having a conversation with me in a cave would be far more intellectually stimulating than remaining in my environment.

What ever happened to those glorious dreams of thinking I could save the world?

A fabulous world of classical literature, ancient Greek mythology, empires, kingdoms, warlords, and dragons drew me in.  So I am stuck with brothers who hated to read and abhorred the very thought of writing.  Intellectual stimulation to them was sticking your finger in a light socket.

By now, I had experienced the mysterious Catholic world of Baptism, First Communion, Confirmation, and Exorcism; I was ready to try something new.  It was time to experience rowing, croquet and polo instead of kick the can, cowboys and Indians.

By the time I reached the end of grade school, it was obvious I had greatly miscalculated my potential and possibilities.  I needed a fresh start.

Pity the child who knows no better, who taught himself everything.  Pity the child in the shadows, who taught himself how to think.  Pity the poor boy you never noticed, nobody really cares.  Pity the child you cannot see, in his world nothing is fair. 

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Reporting from Hurricane Joaquin - Potomac River Tidal Basin - Coltons Point, Maryland

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How often do I get a chance to show you where Coltons Point is located? Never.  Of course I do write about St. Clement's Island which is a few hundred feet out in the water from Coltons Point and it was the site of the pilgrim landing in 1634.

Once the settlers decided the Indians lining the shore and watching them were not hostile, they moved from the island to the shore and St. Clement's Manor was formed.  At the time the Manor territory included Washington, D.C. to Philadelphia and reached well into New Jersey.

All you need to remember is that Coltons Point is the oldest continuously occupied chartered community in the continental United States, we have now been here for 381 years.  Of course Jamestown, Virginia (1608) and Plymouth Rock, Massachusetts (1620) were the first two landings of pilgrims but neither settlement survived through the end of the 1600's, just Colton Point.

So I moved down here about a dozen years ago to write books since there is nothing else to do here and this weekend I will be celebrating my fourth hurricane in the Potomac Tidal basin.  I came from landlocked Iowa and I have a lot of friends back in Iowa and Nebraska so I thought I would give you a running account of the impact of Hurricane Joaquin.

As you can see from the maps, we are just up river from the point where the Potomac River hits the Chesapeake Bay.  For a frame of reference, you should know the Potomac is up to seven miles wide at this point, and over 100 feet deep.

My house sits between the River and a small inlet, or bay, less than 100 feet from the water either way.  From my porch I can see both bodies of water and from the second floor I can see much more of the river.

St. Clement's Island in horizon

As part of the tidal basin, we get ocean tides all the way up past Washington, D.C., which is about 65 miles by water up river.  Here in the Point it is common to get 4 foot tides daily. However, two days ago the weather in the ocean began pushing the water up the bay and river and today all the docks here are underwater, and we still have 72 hours of storms ahead of us.

St. Clement's Lighthouse and Cross

My intent is to file reports as long as the weather allows.  Winds are one problem here since all electric lines are above water.  Flooding is not so big a problem since the river is just a few hundred feet away and no one in their right mind has a place with a basement.  You see, we are only about 5-10 feet above sea level.

A typical hurricane will flood the roads coming to Coltons Point, and cut off access from where I live to the north and south ends of the community, isolating a handful of houses into a temporary island. Water saturation or tress falling generally take out the electric, cable and phone lines leaving us pretty much unable to communicate or get out.

If the eye of the hurricane remains far enough offshore we may not get the high winds, which have been over 100 MPH in the earlier storms.  Trees can still fall if their roots are underwater for a long period of time.  The surrounding area from Frederickburg, Virginia to Annapolis have already received over 6 inches of rain with major flooding so we can expect the runoff from up the river.

So that is the situation and I will be posting occasional updates as long as we have electric power.
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What does a Spanish Civil War revolutionary, The Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City, one of the most influential architects of the 20th century and Walsh High School in Ottumwa, Iowa have in common?

Felix Candela

Probably unbeknownst to most people from Ottumwa when the new Walsh High School opened in 1962 students stepped into an unusual building using a design by one of the most famous architects of the 20th century, Felix Candela.

Born in Madrid, Spain in 1910, Candela was a national sports champion in Spain and a noted award-winning architect who was pursuing graduate studies in Germany when the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936.

He left school to return to Spain and fight for the Republic against Franco and when Franco won he slipped into a refugee camp in France to avoid becoming a prisoner of the Franco regime.  In 1939 he was selected for relocation to Mexico and moved to his new home.

In Mexico Candela pioneered the use of thin shelled concrete in building construction and among the nearly 1,000 buildings he designed were the revolutionary 1968 Olympic Stadium in Mexico City and the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe in Mexico City.

The Guadalupe Basilica is the most popular Catholic pilgrimage site in the world drawing over 20 million visitors annually to see the tilma of Juan Diego with the image of Our Lady that was made December 12, 1531.

As a point of reference, at that time America had not been settled and Henry 8th was still King of England.

Candela developed a thin shelled concrete material for use in buildings called the "hyperbolic paraboloid" and his structures are located in Mexico, the United States, Spain, Venezuela, Columbia, Peru, Guatemala, Puerto Rico, Ecuador, Great Britain and Norway.

My father, Wayne E. Putnam arranged with Felix to use his designs for the new Walsh High School as well as our home overlooking the Ottumwa Country Club.  And that is how all those pieces in the title tie together. Felix Candela, a very nice man and world renowned architect whose world famous "hyperbolic paraboloid" design was incorporated into Walsh High School.

Local architects for both of the projects were Ken Steffen and Steve Stoltz.

Felix moved with his family to the United States in 1971 and taught at Harvard University and the University of Illinois.  He died at the age of 87 while living in North Carolina.

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Memoirs of a Walsh High Basketball Junkie - A Putnam Brother & Hayseed from Iowa

Go Gaels

You know there is a time and a place for everything and now that it has been a lot of years since the emergence of the Walsh High basketball dynasty of the 1960's I guess I can comment on what I know of the first half of the decade that laid the foundation for the dynasty.

First to address some background.  When Mike, Bob and I lived in Iowa City we had a basketball court in the attic of our garage.  Our dad played for Iowa City High School and graduated from the University of Iowa so we were hard core Iowa fans from birth.

In fact even after we moved to Ottumwa we returned to Iowa City every weekend for football games and cheered the Hawkeyes on to two Rose Bowl championships in the late 1950's.  When possible we also came back for basketball games, especially when Iowa was playing Ohio State and other legendary teams of the time.

When we lived in Iowa City we were supposed to go to St. Mary's High School and even our high school to be was a basketball powerhouse, thus increasing our desire to excel in order to make the team when we got to high school.

In fact after we moved to Ottumwa the Iowa City St. Mary's team won the Iowa State Class B high school championship in 1956 and 1957 and finished second in 1958, such was the quality of the players and organizations in our hometown.

Once in Ottumwa a different set of issues was involved as the Walsh Gaels had no legacy, in fact they even had no home as they played in the old Ottumwa High School practice court with the track overhead.

We joined the YMCA leagues in 7th and 8th grades where we played with and against the future stars of Ottumwa High School and together we made the All Star teams.  In other words, long before the so called bitter rivalry between Walsh and OHS which supposedly culminated in the 1963 District championship we were competitors and we were friends.

I think people perceived something that was never there.  We were fierce competitors in Little League, Babe Ruth and basketball but were always able to leave the game behind after it was over.  That was the nature of competition and sportsmanship.  If we had to lose in the tournament it might just as well be to OHS.

Of course we didn't really lose to OHS in that 1963-64 war did we?

Since Walsh never had enough students to mount a football team, my first love as a sport, we were also big supporters of the OHS Bulldogs and went to every home football game on Friday nights.

So along comes high school and Mike spent his freshman year at the old Walsh in South Ottumwa.  By the next year when I was a freshman we moved to the Airbase 12 miles away from Ottumwa into an abandoned building while work began on a new high school.

For basketball practice the team would have to get back to town and go to the civic auditorium basement, crawling through the city road vehicles and snow plows to a court, concrete of course, dimly lit, with no heat, and a steel girder directly over the baskets.

Needless to say there was no hot water for showers and in addition to having your shots blocked by freezing defenders you might have your vision blocked by the smoke pouring out of your mouth from the extreme cold.  Did I mention that the baskets were mounted on the coliseum walls so if you were charging to the basket for a lay in a second after the ball left your hand you crashed into the concrete wall?

In truth the conditions and the environment were far more suited for a Dicken's novel than for the foundation of a basketball dynasty.

Official games were played in the OHS practice gym with the running track above and you often had to strain to hear the ref when track runners were pounding overhead.  On one side bleachers pulled out from the wall and seated about 100 people (slight under-exaggeration).  The overflow had to stand on the track high above the game.

My freshman and sophomore years were spent commuting between the airbase, auditorium basement and practice court with the track overhead but something went right because we were 21-2 the first year I got to play varsity, in '61-62.

That was when I made a decision that Walsh had the potential to become good, really good, but no one would ever know around the state.  It became my mission to be the secret source of all Walsh basketball statistics for every major news outlet in the state.

Every week under a pen name from my sophomore year on I submitted weekly background for stories to the top newspapers, radio and TV stations from Des Moines to Dubuque, Davenport to Iowa City about the achievements of the Walsh Gaels.  Sports writers and broadcasters were inundated with Walsh info and stats and a running update of the career statistics of my brother Mike.  These same people were the ones who voted for the top ten basketball teams in the state in each class.

Only two people really knew what I was doing those three years because I had to share the strategy in order to be successful.  One was my close friend and sports editor for the Ottumwa Courier Alan Hoskins because I knew the sports people from around the state would want follow up info from a local reporter.

The second was my principal once we moved into the new Walsh High School, Father Ryan, aka Mister Golden Gloves, famous writer, etc., etc.  Now Father understood the value of publicity and I needed to stay on his good side because I was constantly in trouble with teachers, coaches and priests.

Like the time we borrowed a truck with a crane to move a 3000 pound bell out of the backyard of some unsuspecting people and mounted it as a victory bell at the airbase to generate school spirit.  I just knew we were going to have a great team and wanted to do something for the school.  Of course we had no driver's licenses nor permission to take the bell and we were all sworn to secrecy so no one knew from whence it came.

That is until photographer Michael Lemberger showed up one fateful day and took a school picture for the newspaper with the entire student body surrounding the bell out at the airbase.  The rightful owners had reported it missing and we did intend to return it after the last game of our first winning season but one day they found their missing bell on the front page of the Courier and eventually the cops forced a confession from us.  Still, we did get to keep it until after the last game since we would not be returning to the airbase the next year.

As for my secret journalism efforts, by the time we moved into the new school in 1963 Walsh was ranked number 1 in the state in class B where we stayed for two years.  My brother was all state his junior year and All American his senior year and Walsh, well we went 21-2, 22-2, 21-2 and 20-5 the four years I was there.

Mike broke the career scoring record in Iowa basketball and from 1960-64 Walsh had one of the best four year records in state history at 84-11, all while having to play schools up to 12 times as large during the tournaments.  At least I had something to write about those years.

The power of the press paid off as it helped us get the top ranking and kept me from getting expelled.  Of course Alan Hoskins and Father Ryan protected my secret.  It also might explain yet another mystery at Walsh.

Through no fault of my own (of course) I had been kicked out of journalism class from November until I graduated my senior year yet I somehow remained on the staff of the Unitas newspaper and was co-editor of the yearbook with Maureen Dessert.  Then I got the outstanding journalism award at commencement.  Perhaps the years of ghost writing were secretly recognized.

But there is more to the Walsh story and this part few know about.  I mentioned this to my friend Doug Potter who does an excellent job keeping the natives informed and now I will share it with you.

There is a class issue regarding Walsh basketball that often goes unnoticed like most class issues.  We all recognize that a team is made up of five or more key players but it was rather unusual that three of us were brothers and were starters for two years.

In the past 55 years Iowa boys high school basketball had 49 split state champions (two or more classes) and 6 single state champions.  The single champions were from 1960 - 1966.  My brothers and I played from 1959 - 1965.  In other words we played in 5 of the 6 single state champion years, and every year more than one of us played together there was only a single state champion.

Walsh was ranked #1 in class B both years the three of us started.  The highest state tourney finish by Walsh during the single champion years was 1964 when we reached the Sweet 16 before losing to eventual state runner up Cedar Rapids Jefferson.

Ottumwa High and Cedar Rapids Jefferson who knocked Walsh out of the state tourney in 1963 and 1964 both were in the top 15 largest high schools in the state for enrollment with over 1,500 students.  Walsh ranked about 360th in enrollment in Iowa with about 125 students.  Both times Walsh lost to schools 12 times larger.

By the way, that Sweet 16 finish in the 1964 season when I was a senior was the first time I got to play back in my home town, Iowa City, and finally I got to play in the University of Iowa field house before 14,000 fans, a far cry from the few hundred just three years earlier.

A few other notes from my ghost writing days.

In my three varsity years we never lost a home game.

Our worst record those years was 20-5.

Every year after winning sectionals we played Class A or AA teams from much larger schools.

During the time we played there were 3 All Americans from Iowa, Mike Putnam, Jerry Waugh from Mt. Ayr and Jim Cummins from Cedar Rapids Regis.

Regis won the single state championship in 1962 and finished 2nd in 1963 and Cummins went on to become a famous NBC News reporter.

Walsh in 1962-63 played against both other Iowa High School All Americans during the season, Cummins once and Waugh twice.

There were a whole lot of scoring and other records and Mike was inducted into the Iowa High School Basketball Hall of Fame for holding the career scoring record for some time.

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Publisher's Note - Count Down to the End of the World - 16 days

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As we close in on the last days of mankind according to the gaggle of channels and their party line IPhones with the Gods,  I thought I might suggest some things to do in preparation.

1.  Do not take your money out of the bank as the interstellar chatter might be wrong.  Besides, what would you do with it anyway.

2.  You might want to go visit someone you actually like just in case you are stuck with the same person in your next life you were with when it ended.

3.  If you have a bucket list you only have two weeks to complete it.  Consider revising the list.

4.  Should you have sensitive documents, like love letters to someone other than your wife or husband, you might want to burn them in case you get zapped out of here and your spouse is left behind and might find them.  You never know, he or she might hire a shaman to curse you in your next lifetime.

5.  In the unlikely event you have the opportunity to recreate yourself in your next lifetime you best decide who you want to be and secure a picture to take with you to give to the angel in charge of your new you.

6.  Figure out a way to practice being weightless since they claim you will have a light body, as in enlightened I presume rather than simply skinny.  You might try driving over hills fast to get that weightless feeling.

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