Pisco Sour: Reminscence of Peru
On July 22, 1996, Monday, two days after I met my wife Judy in Bolivia, I traveled to Cuzco, Peru where I would take a train at 5:30 a.m. from Cuzco, Peru to Machu Picchu speaking Spanish to a train filled with tourists from Brazil. They spoke Portuguese ; I spoke Spanish (well I attempted as much). Comical and frustrated, there was much pointing and head shaking. Annie Ullrich, a close friend in SoCal, told me that my trip to South America, “would change my life personally and professionally.” It did.
Tonight, February 17, 2014, Judy and I made Pisco sours, a drink I first tasted on that crisp, Andean and ancient evening as I sat outside at a table in the heart of Cuzco, Peru. The air smelled of cobblestone streets, Inka woman dressed in colorful woolen shawls wearing bowler hats, and men scuffling along the cobblestone streets in song and conversation. The taste lifted me back. This was a “clean well-lighted place”where I ended up that night sitting on that iron, green round stool watching people amble through the streets. I took a sip. The distinctive Pisco taste gave a taste to those journeyers and locals before me. Hours passed, I guess. I do not remember how long, but time did not matter. Ancient was all around, I felt it to my core, alive, exciting in my reflection. [Read more…]
Cycling To Raise Money for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society
I am a teacher. I am a writer. I am producer. I am a cyclist. I am a member of the National Capital TNT Chapter. I’m cycling 100 miles on October 5, 2013 with my team in Salisbury, Maryland to raise money for blood cancer research and support the LLS (Leukemia & Lymphoma Society).
My “Team in Training” (TNT) Team has raised over $124,000 to help stop Leukemia & Lymphoma. I have raised $1,025.00 to date. I ride twice a week to train for the Century ride in October,
My honored teammate is Dayle Zukor. She is the wife of a close friend in Los Angeles, California. At 63 years old, Dayle was diagnosed with Hairy Cell Leukemia a form of CLL (Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia). Dayle is a grandmother of six, mother of two sons, wife, and successful interior designer. She was in a convent for one year studying to be a nun so she could “do for others & help the world become a better place.” Later in her life, she converted to Judaism. [Read more…]
John Rides a Century (102 miles) for Leukemia & Lymphoma
On February 12, 2011 I was supposed to ride a Century Bicycle Ride (102 miles) with my “Team In Training” group for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society in Palm Springs, but my ulnar nerve had a different idea. For me, there will no bicycling for six weeks after my surgery.
Out of commitment and gratitude for my Leukemia & Lymphoma Society donors, I rode 102.86 miles on Saturday Jan. 22 after our Team in Training rode 81 miles; I did an additional 21.86 miles through Marina Del Rey, Venice, Santa Monica, and Brentwood and then back to Playa Del Rey’s Lagoon Park. Patty LaVigne and Chris Trent from Team in Training rode with me. Judy and I (with my left arm bandaged) will be with our “Team In Training” team to support them on February 12 in Palm Springs at the Tour De Palm Springs.
I rode Saturday January 22, 2011 to fulfill my commitment to The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, to thank those who made donations to the LLS cause, and to remember those individuals and family members who have struggled against Leukemia and Lymphoma. You will see the names of people inscribed on a bracelet which I had made and wore at my Century Ride on Saturday. I read their names aloud to my team before we rode off at 8:00 a.m.
The Ascendancy – Imagination & Vision
There is a profound change that is taking place on our planet…
Millions of people across the earth are feeling it. It is a universal sociological phenomena. It is political; it is religious. It is spiritual. It affects every aspect of every society on our planet, and will gather increasing momentum as our world approaches 2012.
THE ASCENDANCY first began as a screenplay years before the events of September 11, 2001. The characters, the plot, the central images and the locations were essentially unchanged when I wrote the novel, but since the world had drastically changed since September 11, the way the novel was perceived, by fact, had also changed. In essence, reality had colored and dramatically changed fiction.
As an author, who is passionate and committed to the theme of my novel, I decided that I had to preserve the story with its characters, locations, conflicts and symbols intact, as I had originally written it long before that horrific Tuesday morning, September 11, 2001.
Years of research, as well as several journeys to South America, went into the information contained in The Ascendancy. The Yamqui Drawing, or Jack’s dream, is an actual manuscript of chronicler Juan de Santacruz Pachakuti Yamqui Salcamaygua. It is the cosmological diagram of the Incas as the chronicler drew it four hundred years ago.
The prophecies of the Hopi and the Incas, the mathematics of the Mayan Calendar, the documented fall and subsequent collapse of the Inca civilization in Cajamarca, the discovery of the Bible Code by Dr. Eliyahu Rips, the Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea in Hawaii, the architecture of Machu Picchu in the Andes of Peru, all of these are based upon extensive research of historical events, scientific theories, and ascendant locations of our Earth.
What is remarkable is that the oral and written prophecies of diverse indigenous peoples, who were separated by centuries and thousands of miles, are similar, if not, in some cases, identical. What may be even more remarkable is that the knowledge derived by these peoples from listening to the earth and the universe leads us to the same conclusions obtained from the scientific research of quantum physics, string theory, mathematics and archaeology using the most sophisticated computers. These different indigenous cultures have collectively left a powerful message for us at the brink of the 21st Century.
Just as there is a diversity of cultures and governments on our planet, there is diversity in how humankind derives it information. They are all valid.
Out of the death and debris of September 11, 2001, there is a great hope, if we are willing to see it and we are willing to ascend.
John Weiskopf