Rosemary

by

John Presco

Copyright 2021

Bond, Rosemary, and Big Bones, are up at the bar in the Key Club. They are spotted by Thomas Pynchon who is playing Seven Card Stud. He folds his hand, and comes over.

“Hi Rosemary. Hello Bones!”

“Hey Bucky. How’s your luck tonight!” asks Bones, which caused James to raise his infamous eye-brow, and check this guy out. He had very bad teeth that protruded from his mouth. Are you going to take that insult? Or, are you going to be a man?

“James. I would like to introduce you to my co-worker, Thomas Pynchon. He’s on loan from Boeing. We are translating French electrical terms into English so one day men can walk in the moon.” Rosemary was proud of their work.

“Êtes-vous en train de suggérer que la lune est faite de fromage français cheese ? Bond offers with a wink.

Thomas takes this Englishman in. For sure he is beholding a Alpha Male, like his friend, Richard Farina. Thomas begins to stretch his arm across the body of his favorite Alpha Female, but James gives him a clue this was not proper etiquette.

“What is your name again?”

“Bond……James Bond!”

Just then, Eva Rubenstein came from the office where she was helping Big Bones Remmer with the books. She works as a dealer in the Menlo Club, along with her brother, Jack Rubenstein, who recently changed his name to Jack Ruby.

“How’s my favorite Rocket Scientist this evening?” Eva asked, putting her arm around Thomas’ waist and giving him a squeaze.”You’ll have to come see my exotic dancer from my Dalla club. Robin Hood is quite a dish.”

“You know I’m engaged to get married. Mary Ann wouldn’t like me oogling striptease girls!”

“Oh. I forgot to tell you. Mr. Rucker is hiring Mary Ann. She will be done with her job and Boeing and will be coming to the Bay Area.” Rosemary said with a smile.

“Does she know?” Tom asks.

“Not yet!”

“Come. Let’s go into my office!” Bones said. “You can give her the good news on my phone!”

Two months later Mr. Pynchon is on a Greyhound bus, heading for Mexico. Sitting next to him is this geek who is really into pulp fiction, and…White Russians. He’s showing Tom these Russian magazines. Then he pulls out a book of by Norbert Davis.

“Hey. I read that book. I love Norbert’s writing. We got allot in common. What’s your name?”

“Oswald……Lee Harvey!”

Pumping Lee’s hand, Tom does not have a clue he is being worked by several people, form many angles. No one has a better grip of his short-hairs than……Agent 007.

_______________________________

It is 1:28 P.M. October 24, 2021. I just woke from my old man nap and Christine wants me to sell ‘Rosemary’ to Amazon as a series. James Bond will babysit Rosemary’s Babies while she is working Sub-rosa. He wants to kick Wolf Victor’s ass, our deadbeat father, who is a Loan Shark. Rosemary is oversexed due to our Rose Line, from Rosamond Clifford. It’s in our Royal genes.

With the proceeds from the book and movie ‘Rosemary’ I will establish a Trust that will fund a forever investigation of The Truth that Democrats and American Voters were deprived of the Presidency of John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert. This Trust will investigate the death of my sister, Christine Rosamond Benton, and the coverup of events. Rosemary told me a month after her daughter was dead, that she took her own life, and there was a party planned at Rocky Point. This gathering was played down. It should have been the major theme of Rosamond’s biography and movie. Everyone that was invited, and packed a suitcase, should have been interviewed.

An investigation into the disappearance of my minor child will be launched. Who encouraged her to betray her father, and depict him as being deluded and insane, affectively hampering an investigation into all pertinent and legal matters. The Rosemary Trust will allow me to hire an attorney who will look after my interests, and the interests of my niece, Shannon Sidel, Christine’s eldest daughter.

After marrying Mary Ann Tharaldsen, her ex-husband and my wife had a custody battle for my thirteen year old step-daughter, that ended our short marriage. Mary Ann Tharaldsen lived with Thomas Pynchon in Mexico and Manhattan Beach. They met at Cornell, and were close friends of Richard and Mimi Farina, the sister of Joan Baez.

When I die, my amazing generation will not own The Whole Truth about the Kennedy deaths.

John Presco

President: Royal Rosamond Press

“In Mexico, Tharaldsen says, Pynchon wrote all night, slept all day, and kept mostly to himself. When he didn’t write, he read—mainly Latin American writers like Jorge Luis Borges, a big influence on his second novel, The Crying of Lot 49. (He also translated Julio Cortázar’s short story “Axolotl.”)

https://rosamondpress.com/2021/10/07/fleet-week-and-the-theory/

Rosemary – Who Killed Kennedy?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_fiction

Lee Oswald: Space Cadet?
by
Dave Reitzes
Since conspiracy theorists suspect every other U.S. government agency of some sinister role in Kennedy’s assassination, it’s no surprise to find that they suspect NASA too.
Anthony Summers writes:

“Before he left the William Reily Coffee Company, Oswald visited [garage owner Adrian Alba] to say goodbye. According to the record, he had been fired for malingering. Yet Oswald seemed pleased, telling Alba he expected to work next at the New Orleans plant of NASA — the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He never did work there, although four of his colleagues at Reily did move to NASA within weeks of Oswald’s departure. At all events Oswald departed, telling Alba, ‘I have found my pot of gold at the end of the rainbow’” (Anthony Summers, Conspiracy, 1989, Paragon House, 284).

This struck me as an extremely intriguing claim, and I wondered if I could verify it.
The sources listed in Summers’ endnotes (p. 589) refer to Adrian Alba’s recollections of Oswald, but not the particular claim that four of Oswald’s Reily co-workers moved “to NASA within weeks of Oswald’s departure.”

In summation, Anthony Summers’ assertion that “four of [Oswald’s] colleagues at Reily did move to NASA within weeks of Oswald’s departure” seems to have originated with Jim Garrison’s erroneous claim, first published by William Turner in 1968. From what we now know, a reasonable inference about the relationship between NASA and the Reily employees might be that the newly opened Michoud plant was hiring for better wages than those paid by the Reily Coffee Company, and, if Adrian Alba’s recollections are correct, it’s possible that Oswald was planning to apply for a job at NASA.

If, on the other hand, the remarks Alba attributes to Oswald were actually spoken by another Reily employee of Alba’s acquaintance, it would explain why this individual was so optimistic about his future at NASA, somewhere Oswald never even applied for a position. It would also explain why he said, “I have found my pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,” a statement which does not sound much like the Oswald we know, who denounced capitalism and complained to his friend George De Mohrenschildt that his wife was too materialistic.

PLAY BOTH VIDEOS AT SAME TIME. This will be the intro to ‘Rosemary’. This home movie was made by the Lewis family who owned the lima bean fields in Camarillo.

Missing person | Books | The Guardian

· At the launch of Thomas Pynchon’s latest novel, Mason & Dixon (1997), his publisher staged an unlikely Thomas Pynchon look-alike contest in New York. Unlikely because nobody knows what the reclusive novelist looks like (he was last photographed about 40 years ago). Was he the mysterious, white-suited man who watched the contest from the back of the room and spoke in an unconvincing French accent? Or is he the ageing hipster caught on camera by a CNN reporter? These questions and more are mulled over by an assortment of Pynchon’s fans, critics and acquaintances in Thomas Pynchon – a Journey into the Mind of [P.], a German documentary that opens at the ICA in London on Friday.

Directed by Fosco and Donatello Dubini, it’s a thoughtful and disturbing portrait of America at its most paranoid: the assassination of JFK (did Pynchon meet Lee Harvey Oswald on a train and was Oswald part of a government mind-control experiment?), Timothy “turn-on, tune-in, drop-out” Leary (was he a CIA stooge?), Operation Paperclip (when the US military rounded up Nazi scientists and brought them to America), the Vietnam war, the Cuban missile crisis, and so on. There is even some unpleasant footage of a ginger cat on LSD.

Hollander: Pynchon, JFK and the CIA (vheissu.net)

On the surface, The Crying of Lot 49 is so much a novel about Oedipa Maas, her life, her loves, her thoughts, that it hardly qualifies as what Irving Howe would describe as a political novel. [1] Yet while this miniature masterpiece is not a manifesto or a call to arms, some critics see reading it as a “subversive experience” that could generate contempt for power, a disrespect for the national leadership, because Lot 49 is a scathing history lesson, a look behind the political events and historical figurations that led America into the mess that was the mid-sixties ((Kolodny)). To study Lot 49 is to decrypt Pynchon’s encoded messages and enter split-level consciousness, to read the narrative against the subtext of historical allusions, to find how skepticism toward government is central to Pynchon’s work. When we do, we find Lot 49 to be Pynchon’s encrypted meditation on the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

In 1977, Jules Siegel recalled asking Pynchon a decade earlier: “‘What are you always so afraid of? … Don’t you understand that what you have written will get you out of almost anything you might get yourself into?’” Siegel also recalled recognizing Pynchon’s unvoiced answer: “‘You think that it is what you have written that they will want to get you for’” (172-74). “They?” Which they? “Get you,” Pynchon the invisible novelist? “Get you for” what? For writing, albeit in deep code, about the Kennedy regicide.

Pynchon, Oswald, Aerospace Cases

Posted on August 15, 2014 by Royal Rosamond Press

Sometimes information comes to me in dreams. I get huge downloads of information while I sleep. Last night, I was on the Papal and Pynchon Trail at the same time. (Why me?) I was led to a woman’s name. I told Pynchon we have to stop playing games because the Pope has called for a Holy Crusade against ISIS, and I need to blog on this. Tom gave me her name, that I could not quite make out. I tried to focus in and get it. This caused me to wake up…..with this conscious thought;

“Lee Harvard Oswald worked for Boeing, for NASA. So did Mary Ann, and….

“In the early 1960s, Phyllis was a Spanish teacher in Seattle, married to Fred Gebauer, a mechanical engineer doing work at Boeing he couldn’t discuss. At a party celebrating a mutual friend’s new piano, the two met Pynchon, a technical writer working for another part of Boeing.”

Then it hit me, how similar Thomas Pynchon is to Lee Harvey Oswald. They have been on a parelel path living a double life. These INFAMOUS LONERS are famous for their SECRETS, their covert activity. Some of the best detective minds have failed to discover WHO Lee was. Consider all the cult-like literary guesses about these two men, that if stacked up, would reach to the ceiling!

Has Tom made the Oswald connection? I had read about the Reily Coffee Company a year ago when I blogged extensively about the Kennedy assassination that some blame on the failed Bay of Pigs CIA operation. I googled ‘Oswald’ and ‘Aerospace’ and found this article and this name

“I then noticed that Alfred Claude, who hired Oswald for Reily, had also gone to work for the Chrysler Aerospace Division.”

Your CIA boss would be a real pig for information. Was Tom working on an assignment for the CIA? Did Mary Ann Thararldsen get him a job working for the CIA at Boeing? What were these eggheads doing in Mexico? What was Oswald doing in Mexico? Tom had to know folks around him could not talk about what they did for money and country. The Mailman has been corrupted. No one gets close the truth.

As I came fully awake, I thought about my mother’s job at Rucker, a company that made hydrolics for the Space Industry in Emeryville California. Rosemary would tell her children she helps some of the brightest minds in the country get their act together. They were eggheads. CIA material.

“Your mother helps put men in space.”

Once a year Rosemary would throw an office party. She was in charge of entertainment. There was a Jazz band that practiced at our home. My mother had these Space Men dress like Can-Can Girls. My father hated all the attention she was getting. Then she met Big Bones Remmer in the Key Club, a legal gambling joint in Emeryville.

Rosemary Rosamond, the ex-mother-in-law of Mary Ann Tharaldsen, scored the second highest score in the history of WAVES (Navy) when they gave her a IQ test. She was put to work spying on the Russians in Seattle where they intercepted radio chatter and deciphered it.

My brother worked on the Space Shuttles at Hughes Aircraft. He told me he had same TOP SECURITY clearance as the President. He designed War Toys. Mark’s wife was Sue Lyon’s good friend. My brother would drive Sue to Santa Monica College. Sue starred in the movie ‘Lolita’.

My reclusive brother disappeared himself. In 1987 he showed me a video of his top secret work. They were making tanks impervious to gas warfare. He said;

“We are like boys with new toys. We will play with them one day. This is why I want you to find some land in Oregon and build our family a bunker.”

In Boris Kachka’s article on Pynchon, he speaks of the dislusionment Tom suffered after being admitted into a inner circle at Boeing. He speaks of a “death-wish” he acquired there. Mary Ann was a part of that circle. Consider the “death-wish” in her apocalyptic paintings. Lee Harvey Oswald seems to have the same world-view, he not able to find himself after being introduced to the ‘World of Spooks’. No one is who they say they are! This is key!

Pynchon wrote the Minuteman Field Service News when he worked at Boeing that made the Minuteman ICBM missile. Did he want to own more math so he could actually build a missle, and get paid more money? He carried around fireworks and rockets that he would set-off. How many bright college kid’s brain and identities were buried in those secret silos hidden the cornfields of Kansas? During the Cuban Missle Crisis Rosemary told her kids;

“We were considering invading Russia at the end of the war.”

Rosemary also announced;

“I know who killed Kennedy.”
“Who?” her four children asked.
“I can’t tell you.”

There was enough paranoia to go round. Every family in America owned some. Mark worked at the Redstone Arsenal repairing ICBMs. He took the photo of my new bride and I at his home. My brother had a plan, that after Armageddon we would merge from the family bunker, kill all surviving males, rape all the women, and get each other’s offspring – with child! We would repopulate the earth! ZARDOZ!

http://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-168162265/a-trove-of-new-works-by-thomas-pynchon-bomarc-service

Mary Ann is/was the ‘All American Girl’ who bragged she descended from Vikings who discovered America. She was Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz. Was she a CIA Recruiter who led eggheads down the yellow-brick road, she answering her country’s calling to put a man in space, do something more spectacular than SPUTNIK?

We have arrived in Oz. We tear down the curtain and find THE COLD WAR. Oaths have been taken. There is a CODE OF SILENCE. Our brightest minds are given a new name. It doesn’t take long for them to conclude they have been compromised, and used. There is no way out of this covert world.

I thank the writer, Boris Kaccha, for his article on Pynchon and Mary Ann, that took us into the UNKNOWN. Boris took a good shot in the dark.

“Let there be light!”

It’s time for Tom to come out of the cold.

Jon Presco

Copyright 2014

Where’s Mark Presco?

http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/cadet.htm

“On the face of it, the idea that [the Marxist] Oswald could get a job at a space agency installation requiring security clearance seems preposterous. . . . But [Jim] Garrison points out that it is an open secret that the CIA uses the NASA facility as a cover for clandestine operations.”

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/jacketcopy/2011/05/thomas-pynchon-tom-a-remarkable-collection.html

According to Bailey, Pynchon “wrote for an intramural sheet called the ‘Minuteman Field Service News’ (to be distinguished from the company’s official house organ, The Boeing News).” Specifically, the two men “worked in the Minuteman Logistics Support Program,” and Pynchon had “a ‘Secret’ clearance.” Pynchon, Bailey recalls, was an introvert, had few friends at Boeing, and, while working, would occasionally “shroud himself in the enormous stiff sheets of paper used for engineering drawings and work within this cocoon, like an aerospace Bartleby, by whatever light filtered in” (96). The men became friendly when “Bailey made a casual literary reference one day, which generated an immediate and enthusiastic response from Pynchon.” Pynchon, Bailey discovered, was “‘very literate’” and also well-versed in “technical matters” (97). Unfortunately, Bailey’s reminiscences end there (except for a further brief reference, relegated to an endnote, to Pynchon’s technical competence), and Cowart, like Winston, fails to inquire further–about either Minuteman Field Service News or, more intriguingly, what Pynchon wrote for it.

“Two of Pynchon’s Cornell friends, his future girlfriend Tharaldsen and her then-husband, David ­Seidler, had moved to Seattle and encouraged Pynchon to join them. Tharaldsen says Pynchon arrived “depressed—very down.” She worked for Boeing, and hooked him up with a job writing technical copy for their in-house guide, Bomarc Service News. The aerospace giant was just then developing the Minuteman, a nuclear-capable missile that likely inspired Pynchon, years later, to cast Germany’s World War II–era V-2 rocket as the screaming menace of Gravity’s Rainbow. (One of the joys of tracking Pynchon is tracing the far-flung interconnections in his work to unlikely real-world experiences—dating an NSA worker; seeing Charles de Gaulle in Mexico; fooling around on a primitive music synthesizer in 1972.)

Boeing-built Minuteman missile systems, operated by the Air Force Combat Command, are long-range, solid-fuel, three-stage, intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of carrying single or multiple nuclear warheads.

The program, which began in 1958, is one of the company’s longest military contracts. By April 1967, 1,000 Minuteman missiles were operational and installed in six sites across the country. At peak production, 39,700 Boeing people worked on Minuteman projects. The company built, installed and maintained the missiles in their silos and trained Air Force personnel involved in the program.

Originally a chemical weapons manufacturing facility for World War II, the arsenal became the focal point of the Army’s rocket and space projects, including development of the first U.S. ballistic missiles and space launch vehicles in the 1950s.

Mary Ann Tharaldsen & Thomas Pynchon

Capturing Thomas Pynchon

Engineering physics, the hardest program at Cornell, was meant to supply Cold War America with its elites—the best and the brightest, junior league. One professor called its students “intellectual supermen”; Pynchon’s old friend David ­Shetzline remembers them as “the slide-rule boys.” But after less than two years in the major, Pynchon left Cornell in order to enlist in another Cold War operation, the Navy. He once wrote that ­calculus was “the only class I ever failed,” but he’s always used self-deprecation to deflect inquiries, and professors ­remembered universally good grades. Tharaldsen says she saw Pynchon’s IQ score, somewhere in the 190s. So why would he leave? He wrote much later about feeling in college “a sense of that other world humming out there”—a sense that would surely nag him from one city to another for the rest of his life. He was also in thrall to Thomas Wolfe and Lord Byron. Most likely he wanted to follow their examples, to experience adventure at ground level and not from the command centers.

His alienation had begun to coalesce into a worldview. Pynchon had written to the Sales that Seattle “is a nightmare. If there were no people in it it would be beautiful.” In his next letter, he complained that a group of “ten more or less individuals” at Boeing, “assembled in a conference room … turned into something else: The Magazine.” His letters, like his books, brim with the tension between individuals and groups, between intense curiosity and hopeless disillusionment. For much of his life he would flee crowds and cities, dipping a toe into cultures and communities and then leaving and skewering them in turn. (Friends describe him, in person as on the page, as an incomparable mimic.) Only rarely do we see him ask himself why—as when the Sales, later, pressed him on whether he hated Mexico, too. “What I hate is inside, not outside,” he wrote back, “a kind of deathwish I never knew I had.

In Mexico, Tharaldsen says, Pynchon wrote all night, slept all day, and kept mostly to himself. When he didn’t write, he read—mainly Latin American writers like Jorge Luis Borges, a big influence on his second novel, The Crying of Lot 49. (He also translated Julio Cortázar’s short story “Axolotl.”)

In his next letter, he complained that a group of “ten more or less individuals” at Boeing, “assembled in a conference room … turned into something else: The Magazine.” His letters, like his books, brim with the tension between individuals and groups, between intense curiosity and hopeless disillusionment. For much of his life he would flee crowds and cities, dipping a toe into cultures and communities and then leaving and skewering them in turn.

http://www.questia.com/library/journal/1G1-168162265/a-trove-of-new-works-by-thomas-pynchon-bomarc-service

NASA or NADA?

Lee Oswald: Space Cadet?
by
Dave Reitzes
Since conspiracy theorists suspect every other U.S. government agency of some sinister role in Kennedy’s assassination, it’s no surprise to find that they suspect NASA too.
Anthony Summers writes:

“Before he left the William Reily Coffee Company, Oswald visited [garage owner Adrian Alba] to say goodbye. According to the record, he had been fired for malingering. Yet Oswald seemed pleased, telling Alba he expected to work next at the New Orleans plant of NASA — the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. He never did work there, although four of his colleagues at Reily did move to NASA within weeks of Oswald’s departure. At all events Oswald departed, telling Alba, ‘I have found my pot of gold at the end of the rainbow’” (Anthony Summers, Conspiracy, 1989, Paragon House, 284).
This struck me as an extremely intriguing claim, and I wondered if I could verify it.
The sources listed in Summers’ endnotes (p. 589) refer to Adrian Alba’s recollections of Oswald, but not the particular claim that four of Oswald’s Reily co-workers moved “to NASA within weeks of Oswald’s departure.”

When Thomas Pynchon is just Tom: A remarkable collection debuts

May 5, 2011 | 2:08 pm

Pynchoninscription

Thomas Pynchon has surfaced in a remarkable book collection and the memories of his lifelong friend Phyllis Gebauer, who shared stories of one of America’s most reclusive writers Wednesday night in Los Angeles.

The only known collection of signed first editions of Pynchon’s works, a gift to the UCLA Extension Writers Program, debuted at an invitation-only event in Westwood. Although the exceedingly private author does not hold public book signings, he sent inscribed copies of each of his books as they were published to Phyllis and Fred Gebauer. The writer and the couple became friends in the early 1960s.

Most of Pynchon’s inscriptions include personal comments. In “The Crying of Lot 49,” Pynchon wrote, “For Fred and Phyllis, who saw this first, though we’re still friends anyway. — Tom.” One, in “Gravity’s Rainbow,” includes an illustration of a smiling pig, harking back to a piñata the Gebauers brought him as a gift when they were all living in Southern California.

Thomaspynchon_pig

Phyllis Gebauer was at the event to discuss the books, her friendship with Pynchon — whom she calls “Tom” — and the collection, which she hopes will fund scholarships to the UCLA Extension Writers Program where Gebauer has taught for more than two decades.

Gebauer talked to Pynchon extensively about the gift. “When Tom lived in L.A. he did a lot of research at the UCLA research library,” she said. “He likes the idea of these books being used to fund scholarships.” The two spoke on the phone for 90 minutes Tuesday, she said. Pynchon followed up with a fax, which Gebauer read to Wednesday night’s audience.

“I was planning to skydive into the middle of these proceedings,” joked Pynchon, who didn’t even attend the National Book Awards when “Gravity’s Rainbow” won in 1974. “Thank you for your teaching,” he continued. “Good work and good vibes to everybody there.”

The relationship between Pynchon and the Gebauers was based on a strange combination: a shared reticence paired with playfulness. And a fondness for charades.

In the early 1960s, Phyllis was a Spanish teacher in Seattle, married to Fred Gebauer, a mechanical engineer doing work at Boeing he couldn’t discuss. At a party celebrating a mutual friend’s new piano, the two met Pynchon, a technical writer working for another part of Boeing. Pynchon and Fred clowned around by reaching into the piano and plucking out the Yogi Bear theme song on its strings — “which did not delight the host,” Phyllis Gebauer said Wednesday night.

Fred couldn’t talk about his work, and Pynchon never mentioned he was writing a novel — instead, they talked and joked and Phyllis made lasagna and they played charades. “He’s a great charades player,” Phyllis said. “He’s great at puns. They’re awful.”

Fred and Phyllis only learned that Pynchon had been working on a novel when he sent them a copy of his first book, “V,” published in 1963.

The Gebauers’ lives separated from Pynchon’s. Phyllis, in a “mini-memoir” distributed at the event, wrote that aerospace workers of the era were called ” ‘aero-braceros,’ because they changed jobs and locales as frequently as Mexican field hands.”

The couple had moved several times in just a few years when Fred took a job at NASA — another one he couldn’t discuss — and, after being in Houston just a week, they bumped into Pynchon after a concert. “Phyl, Fred, what are you guys doing here?” she remembers Pynchon calling to them. The coincidence was the kind of thing that might happen in one of Pynchon’s books — but in Pynchon’s world it would have been the result of a deep and complex conspiracy.

The reconnected friends spent a lot of time together. In her mini-memoir, titled “Tom and Us,” Phyllis writes that Pynchon and Fred used to shoot toy rockets off the roof of their Houston house. She recalls that more than once she’d be talking to Pynchon on the phone, hand it over to Fred when she left for one of her graduate school classes — and she’d return hours later to find Fred still sitting in their knotty-pine lined family room, still talking to Tom on the other end of line.

“Tom at the time was working on ‘The Crying of Lot 49,’ and when that book came out and I read about his heroine — Oedipa Mass — ‘layering lasagna’ at the beginning of Chapter One,” Phyllis writes, “well, I can’t prove it, but hey — I’m sure that was our lasagna!”

When the Gebauers left Houston for Los Angeles Pynchon was right there with them — literally. They drove their Volvo and Pynchon drove their Hillman convertible. While living in Southern California — Pynchon is thought to have resided in Manhattan Beach, though Phyllis carefully avoided mentioning any specifics — their friendship continued, and the Gebauers brought Pynchon a pig piñata, which they named Claude.

A previously unpublished photograph of Phyllis, Claude and Pynchon — just his right arm, extending from behind a door with his hand in a peace sign — appears at the back of “Tom and Us,” dated 1965.

Pynchonpeacesign
Claude was perhaps the inspiration for what is thought to be the most valuable inscription of Gebauer’s collection, the sketch of a smiling pig saying “Love” in the 1973 novel “Gravity’s Rainbow.” That book was Pynchon’s most controversial. In addition to winning the 1974 National Book Award, it was unanimously recommended by the judging committee to be awarded the Pulitzer Prize. However, the recommendation was overturned by the advisory board, which found the book “unreadable,” “turgid,” “overwritten” and “obscene,” and elected not to award any Pulitzer for fiction that year.

Although by this time they were again living in different parts of the country, Pynchon continued to send inscribed books to Fred and Phyllis Gebauer. His inscription in 2006’s “Against the Day” was the first to Phyllis alone; Fred passed away in 1998.

Gebauer says Pynchon is not reclusive but simply very private. She channeled the author to describe his perspective: “Some people can pull this off, the balance between writing and going out to parties — Stephen King, Joyce Carol Oates. I get too easily distracted and I’m not good at schmoozing.”

In 2010, Phyllis met up with Pynchon in New York, where he handed her a copy of his most recent novel, the SoCal spoof “Inherent Vice,” over a seafood lunch in midtown Manhattan. Indeed, the writer is able to move around New York without being recognized.

“We toured this whole Barcelona exhibit,” Gebauer said Wednesday. “Nobody in his building knows who he is. Nobody knows what he does.”

In an era in which a Wikipedia scan identifies Pynchon’s wife, a literary agent, and son by name, his privacy could be one avid Googler away.

She’s discussed this precariousness with Pynchon. “In today’s world” she said, “the privacy he gets is that people seldom read.”

— Carolyn Kellogg

Photos, from top: A first edition of Thomas Pynchon’s “The Crying of Lot 49” inscribed by the author to Fred and Phyllis Gebauer, on display at UCLA; Pynchon’s inscription in “Gravity’s Rainbow” to the Gebauers, with pig cartoon; Phyllis Gebauer, with Claude the pig piñata and Pynchon waving a peace sign from behind the door, in Southern California in 1965. Credits: Carolyn Kellogg / Los Angeles Times; UCLA Extension

So let’s try another source. In Deadly Secrets (1992, Thunder’s Mouth Press), Warren Hinckle and William Turner write, “Oswald told Adrian Alba, the owner of the garage next door to where he was working, that his application was about to be accepted ‘out there where the gold is’ — the NASA Saturn missile plant in suburban Gentilly. NASA of course didn’t employ security risks. But tucked into its Gentilly facility was an active CIA station that provided a Kelly Girl service for operatives in between assignments” (p. 239).

The endnote reads, “The CIA’s practice of providing interim employment for its agents and assets is well known,” and refers the reader to an earlier article of William Turner’s, anthologized in The Assassinations: Dallas and Beyond (Peter Dale Scott, Paul L. Hoch and Russell Stetler, eds., 1976, Vintage Books), page 287.

The passage in Turner repeats the familiar statement from Adrian Alba, then adds, “On the face of it, the idea that [the Marxist] Oswald could get a job at a space agency installation requiring security clearance seems preposterous. . . . But [Jim] Garrison points out that it is an open secret that the CIA uses the NASA facility as a cover for clandestine operations.”

So the assertion that the NASA installation housed a CIA station would appear to actually be the unsourced claim of Jim Garrison.

Let’s see what Garrison has to say about all this. In his memoirs, Garrison begins with an item relating to a suspect of his, David Ferrie. Garrison writes, “Ferrie, once a pilot for Eastern Airlines, had been investigated by a private detective agency. I obtained a copy of its report. The investigators had maintained a stakeout near his residence and found that Ferrie was visited frequently by a man named Dante Marachini” (sic — Marochini; Garrison, On the Trail of the Assassins, 1991, Warner Books, 133-4).

Garrison notes that Marochini resided at 1309 Dauphine Street, which Garrison describes as being next door to the home of Garrison suspect Clay Shaw. He then observes that another resident of the building at 1309 Dauphine was James Lewallen, who had once shared an apartment with David Ferrie (Ibid., 134).

Some time later, I came across the name of Dante Marachini (sic) again. I had wanted to talk to individuals at the Reily Coffee Company who had worked with Lee Oswald or at a level immediately above him, so I sent Frank Klein over to the company to get their names and respective positions.
He returned rather quickly. “They’re all gone,” he said. “Anyone who ever had any connection with Lee Oswald left the Reily Company within a few weeks after Oswald did.” He laid a sheet of paper in front of me. “Here are the names and the new jobs.”

I glanced down at the list. One name jumped out at me immediately: Dante Marachini (sic). He had begun work at the Reily Coffee Company on exactly the same day as Oswald. Several weeks after Oswald’s departure, Marachini (sic) also left the company and began life anew at the Chrysler Aerospace Division at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), on the eastern side of New Orleans.

I then noticed that Alfred Claude, who hired Oswald for Reily, had also gone to work for the Chrysler Aerospace Division.

Then I saw that John Branyon, who had worked with Oswald at the coffee company, had left for a job at NASA.

At just about the same time, Emmett Barbee (sic — Barbe), Oswald’s immediate boss at Reily, left the coffee company and also inaugurated a new career with NASA (Garrison, 134-5).
He also found that James Lewallen, Ferrie’s onetime apartment mate, was working “for Boeing at NASA” (Ibid.).
Strangely, Garrison doesn’t mention anything about the facility housing a CIA station — something I’d expect him to emphasize, if true — but the information is intriguing nevertheless. So I went to see if I could verify the report.

The Warren Commission published a sworn affidavit from Emmett Charles Barbe, Jr., in their Hearings volumes (11 H 473). The affidavit was dictated by Mr. Barbe on June 15, 1964. Oddly, despite the claim that “Anyone who ever had any connection with Lee Oswald left the Reily Company within a few weeks after Oswald,” Emmett Barbe, Oswald’s supervisor at Reily, was still employed by the Reily company in 1964:

Emmett Charles Barbe, Jr. of New Orleans, La., being duly sworn, says:
1. I am employed by William B. Reily Company, Inc., as Maintenance Foreman. The William B. Reily Company plant is located at 640 Magazine Street, New Orleans, Louisiana. I have been employed by that Company for five years. During the year 1963 I was serving as Maintenance Foreman.
Emmett Barbe’s name also comes up in the Warren Commission testimony of one Charles Le Blanc, who trained Oswald at Reily, and described himself as probably Oswald’s closest associate there (10 H 217). Le Blanc was also still employed by Reily at the time of his April 1964 Warren Commission deposition (10 H 214).
His testimony seems fairly innocuous. Here’s a representative sample:

Mr. LE BLANC. . . . The way I broke him in, I told him, “Make sure that you have got everything on that one floor,” and I said, “If it takes you a day to do it, let it take you a day,” I said, “but make sure that you have got everything greased and oiled and cleaned.” And that is what he was supposed to do, and I told him, I said, “Then if you get finished the fifth floor, or whatever floor you are on, you can always work to the next floor.” And then in the evening at 3:15 when the lines were shut down, we had these three machines that had to be cleaned, oiled and greased every day and sometimes twice a day it all depends on how they ran and he had to see to it that each evening at 3:15 they was cleaned and greased.
Mr. LIEBELER. Now did he have anybody keeping track of him as a general proposition? He really didn’t, did he? I mean, he was just—-

Mr. LE BLANC. Well, the majority of the time he had somebody over him, but as a practice, I mean after you got broke in on your job, well, they wouldn’t look after you, keep looking after you. They figured, well, you knew your job and you would go ahead and do your job. But after awhile, well, they seen he was drifting off. Right to the last day before they let him go, why, we kept an eye on him, because we seen then that he wasn’t doing, the work that he was supposed to be doing.

Mr. LIEBELER. He really wasn’t doing the work?

Mr. LE BLANC. No.

Mr. LIEBELER . He wasn’t greasing the machines?

Mr. LE BLANC. No. And you see, we have a greasing log that when you grease the machine you log it the day that you grease it, and actually a lot of times I think he might have put stuff down in the log that he didn’t even get to sometimes.

Mr. LIEBELER. Just so I can get an idea of what kind of work he was doing, how were the machines greased? Did he have a grease gun or cups and—-

Mr. LE BLANC. Yes; well, we have an air grease gun and we also have these hand-type grease guns.

Mr. LIEBELER. And you used just regular Alemite fittings and grease guns?

Mr. LE BLANC. Yes.

Mr. LIEBELER So I would imagine from time to time he ended up with the grease on his hands and it was a greasy job?

Mr. LE BLANC. Yes; it was a dirty job.

Mr. LIEBELER. Did he ever complain about that?

Mr. LE BLANC. Well, he would complain now and then. I would tell him, well, that goes in with the job of oiling and greasing.

Mr. LIEBELER. Now was he just basically an oiler and greaser, or was he classified as a maintenance man?

Mr. LE BLANC. No.

Mr. LIEBELER. That is a different thing?

Mr. LE BLANC. He was hired as an oiler and greaser and helper (10 H 215-6).
Alfred Claude is next on Garrison’s list. Here we strike pay dirt. Alfred A. Claude, Jr., was interviewed by the FBI on November 26, 1963. He indeed was employed at the “Chrysler Aerospace Division, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Michoud, Louisiana,” which was where the FBI interviewed him. He had been with Chrysler since he resigned from Reily’s personnel office on July 1, 1963, which he estimated to be about four weeks after Oswald’s departure, loosely fitting the “few weeks” Garrison attributes to Frank Klein. Claude’s interview also seems fairly innocuous, devoted largely to Oswald’s poor work habits and quiet personality (CE 1940, 23 H 734).
Unlike Claude, however, Claude’s former associate in Reily’s personnel office, Robert Hedrick, had not moved to NASA, and was still at Reily when the FBI interviewed him on November 25, 1963 (CE 1903, 23 H 706).

Another co-worker, Arturo Mendez Rodriguez, was interviewed by the FBI on November 25, 1963. The report doesn’t state that he was still at Reily, but his occupation is listed as “Oiler — mechanic,” and “oiler” was the position he held at Reily, as did Oswald. If Rodriguez had changed employers, the report does not say so (CE 1898, 23 H 703). Rodriguez is also mentioned in passing in the Warren Commission deposition of Charles Le Blanc (10 H 217). Again, if Rodriguez left his job at Reily, there is no indication of it.

John Branyon was another name mentioned by Garrison. Like Claude, he too was indeed employed by NASA. However, Branyon did not work at the Chrysler plant — he worked at the Boeing Aircraft Division. He said that Oswald was still employed at Reily when he himself resigned on July 3, 1963. His statement describes Oswald’s duties as a machine oiler and his “lone wolf” personality (CE 1941, 23 H 735).

Another Reily employee’s name comes up in the Warren Commission volumes. John C. Clark was interviewed on November 25, 1963 (CE 1899, 23 H 704). He was still Reily’s Assistant Vice-President in Charge of Production.

Dante Marochini is not mentioned in the Warren Commission volumes, possibly because he had not been a co-worker of Oswald’s at all. Paris Flammonde describes “Marachini” as “a forty-two-year-old parts-scheduler for the Chrysler Company’s Michoud Assembly Facility” (Flammonde, The Kennedy Conspiracy, 1969, Meredith Press). Information in Flammonde suggests that Marochini probably had not known Oswald: “In April 1963, Marochini found employment with the Standard Coffee Company, owned by the William B. Reily Company, with locations at 725 and 640 Magazine. During the same period, Lee Harvey Oswald was employed at the same 640 Magazine address as an employee of the William B. Reily Coffee Company” (Ibid.). But according to researcher David Blackburst, Marochini did not work at the same location as Oswald after all.

Furthermore, if Marochini started at Reily in April 1963, he could not have “begun work at the Reily Coffee Company on exactly the same day as Oswald,” as Garrison claimed: Oswald began at Reily on May 10, 1963 (11 H 474).

Dante Marochini was subpoenaed by Garrison to appear before the grand jury in 1967. If the DA learned anything of value from Marochini’s secret grand jury testimony, he doesn’t say so in his book. In fact, he doesn’t mention that he ever questioned Marochini at all.

At one point, Garrison was certain that major aerospace contractors were culprits in an assassination conspiracy, as shown in an hilarious account from Warren Hinckle, the editor of Ramparts Magazine.

Paris Flammonde also reports that when Marochini was subpoenaed by Garrison on March 3, 1967, Marochini’s address was not 1309 Dauphine, but 4951 Music (Flammonde, 78). It is possible, of course, that Marochini had moved by that time.

I asked Ferrie expert David Blackburst whether Marochini was a friend of Ferrie’s. Blackburst informed me that the December 19, 1962, installment of the 1962-3 Southern Research report on Ferrie, commissioned by Eastern Air Lines in preparation for Ferrie’s dismissal/grievance hearings, details a surveillance of Ferrie’s apartment by Jack Oliphant on November 16, 1962. Oliphant observed Ferrie and two men leave the apartment and get into a car, and the registration was traced to Dante Marochini. Marochini, Blackburst reports, was a friend of Ferrie’s then-roommate, James Lewallen (E-mail to author, June 9, 1999).

Flammonde also mentions James Lewallen: “The thirty-eight-year-old, Cleveland-born James Ronald Lewallen, a quality inspector for the Boeing Company, worked at the Michoud Saturn rocket plant . . . Lewallen, a licensed (former Air Force) pilot, has been with Boeing in the Michoud plant since 1964, except for a brief period when he was farmed out to the Mississippi Test Facility in Hancock County, Mississippi. Reportedly possessed of security clearance, his sixty-day assignment in Mississippi was to check out ground support equipment for the test firing of the Saturn V booster. Lewallen was rated by a supervisor as having ‘a relatively good background in aircraft repair,’ and regarded him as a mild-mannered individual” (Flammonde, 180-1).

Flammonde also reports that Clay Shaw lived at 1313 Dauphine, suggesting that Garrison erred just slightly in placing James Lewallen’s 1309 Dauphine home “right next door” to Clay Shaw’s home — not that it makes much of a difference (Garrison, 134).

So while, in the end, Garrison was correct in stating that some of Oswald’s former co-workers had resigned from Reily and gained employment at the NASA installation in Michoud, the number turned out to be not four, but two — Alfred Claude and John Branyon — and one was hired at the Chrysler plant, while the other found a job at Boeing.

If Frank Klein did report to Jim Garrison that “Anyone who ever had any connection with Lee Oswald left the Reily Company within a few weeks after Oswald,” that report would have been false. In fact, the three Reily employees who had the most contact with Oswald — Emmett Barbe, Arturo Rodriguez and Charles Le Blanc — all seem to have still been with Reily well after Oswald’s departure.

In summation, Anthony Summers’ assertion that “four of [Oswald’s] colleagues at Reily did move to NASA within weeks of Oswald’s departure” seems to have originated with Jim Garrison’s erroneous claim, first published by William Turner in 1968. From what we now know, a reasonable inference about the relationship between NASA and the Reily employees might be that the newly opened Michoud plant was hiring for better wages than those paid by the Reily Coffee Company, and, if Adrian Alba’s recollections are correct, it’s possible that Oswald was planning to apply for a job at NASA.

If, on the other hand, the remarks Alba attributes to Oswald were actually spoken by another Reily employee of Alba’s acquaintance, it would explain why this individual was so optimistic about his future at NASA, somewhere Oswald never even applied for a position. It would also explain why he said, “I have found my pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,” a statement which does not sound much like the Oswald we know, who denounced capitalism and complained to his friend George De Mohrenschildt that his wife was too materialistic.

When Pynchon was writing Lot 49, the lingering scent of President Kennedy’s death hung over the land like pollen on a humid day. Telltale whiffs of napalm from Vietnam caused U.S. Senator J. William Fulbright to warn the nation against succumbing to the “arrogance of power.” Politicians and politics of many stripes were emerging, from Mario Savio and the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley, Donald (“Buzz“) Lukens and the Young Americans for Freedom, Tom Hayden and the Students for a Democratic Society, Stokely Carmichael and the Students Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the John Birch Society, H. Rap Brown and the Black Panther Party, the religious right, Betty Friedan and the nascent National Organization for Women, William F. Buckley and his National Review conservatives, Gilbert Harrison and his New Republic liberals, Allen Ginsberg and the nascent gay-rights movement, George Lincoln Rockwell’s American Nazi Party to Timothy Leary and the would-be drug-legalizing hippie anarchists. They were all competing for the nation’s ear, which (through the McCarthy period and the Eisenhower administration) had been deaf to the needs of many of these constituencies. “If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.” Louder and more strident expressions of anti-war sentiment trumpeted against government pro-war propaganda daily. Each special-interest group making up the counterculture tried to piggyback its issues onto the Vietnam War, much as Eleanor’s Roosevelt had tried to use the Second World Ward as a springboard for women’s and blacks’ rights a generation before. As more and more young people turned against the Vietnam War, the political arena became livelier and noisier. Those closest to the president were divided in their opinions, for and against the war. Still, a thousand young Americans a month would be sacrificed to the faulty domino theory.

Rosemary

by

John Presco

Copyright 2021

When James Bond entered the Key Club on San Pablo Blvd. he instinctively looked for the high rollers table, where the real money is being wagered. But, business first. Heading for the bar he beheld Rosemary for the first time. It was hard to believe she was the mother of four children. She was a knockout! She had the body of a twenty year old.

“Rosemary?” Bond ventured.

When she turned, James was taken back by how beautiful and sophisticated this mother was. He could see why she got the attention of powerful players who were recruiting her into their circle. She had come into the Key Club after work. She was an executive secretary at Rucker, a plant in Emeryville that made hydraulics for NASA. Rosemary helped put men in space. She was vital to the Space Race and all the propaganda that went with. The Soviet Union was the competition. As luck would have it, Sam Giancana was in town visiting Big Bones Remmer who had just become the manager of the Cal Nevada Lodge. Remmer had several clubs in San Francisco, and there was a plan to get this famous Sin City to legalize gambling again. The Barbary Coast had become famous. Gamblers had come from all over the world. There were dance halls and bordellos’.

Rosemary was shocked when Sam started telling her he did some work for the CIA. He was bragging about it – openly! After Sam asked Rosemary for a date, she called her old friend from Naval Intelligence who had tried to employ his ex-lover in some clandestine operations. Having four mouths to feed after her and Victor got divorced, she was asking if there would be pay for her work. Within hours, she is being told not to go to the CIA.

“I know someone in British Intelligence. We worked on a project together.”

“And you are……?”

“Bond…..James Bond!”

___________________

In 1963, while watching T.V. with her four children, Rosemary Presco made an announement.

“I know who killed Kennedy.”

“Who? we asked

“I can’t say.”

Rosemary told us a year earlier she was making porn movies for Big Bones Remmer, and was a hooker, sleeping with powerful men. Our mother was spending allot of time at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and we always found a doggy bag with a partially eaten stake. The hotel name was on the bag. We went for days without seeing Rosemary. She would later tell me the people she had orgies with were too racy – even for her. My mother was oversexed – most of her life! She was a real Bond Woman. I keep reading all these newspaper articles that treats James Bond like he is a real person. Why not employ James to solve the mystery of…..

WHO KILLED JOHN (JACK) KENNEDY?

Rosemary Rosamond was fated to be involved in The Kennedy Assassination’s, being her mother and father camped with members of the Black Mask, including Dashiell Hammet. The Kennedy Murder has generated more words, more mounds of paper, and more ‘Pulp Fiction’ than any crime case. I mix fiction with fact, and, the theory the movie The Rock, suggests Bond came to the Bay Area – on business! Is it possible that the Nine Muses exist, and, they are on the case?

JFK and Sam: The Connection Between the Giancana and Kennedy Assassinations: Giancana, Antoinette, Hughes, John R, Jobe, Thomas H, Hughes, John R., Jobe, Thomas H.: 9781581824872: Amazon.com: Books

Sam Giancana – JFK Ties, Mistresses, and the Outfit – American Mafia History

The Rock’s Wild James Bond Theory Possibly Proven True on Reddit (cbr.com)

Assassination of John F. Kennedy – Wikipedia

Cal Neva Lodge & Casino – Wikipedia

I Am Heir To Bay Area Gangsterism

Posted on October 22, 2021 by Royal Rosamond Press

“Racketeers let children into joints!”

I posted this on my Remembering San Francisco Facebook The press covered the affect Bay Area gambling had on families – even children! For this alone the Presco family is famous. Now add my grandfather the gambler, and the founding hippies involvement with the Hell’s Angels, then I might be Heir to Outlawism. I met the major manufacturers of LSD. I believe I know how the Mafia got a LSD lab and started selling on the East Coast. Ken Babbs just published ‘Cronies’. Pot is now legal in Oregon and is a billion dollar industry, as is legal gambling in Nevada – and elsewhere! I don’t see any interest in politics from the Kesey Krowd, whose Springfield Son partied with the Hell’s Angels in La Honda. The KK is leaving it all up to Jerry Russ – and whomever – to carry the Hippie Political Branch. As to who is carrying the Hippie Spiritual Torch now that Allan Ginsberg’s tiny finger symbols have become silent – who gives a rat’s ass. Feeling omnipotent and all powerful is the name of the American Game!

John

Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Lanza’s Mob: The Mafia and San Francisco

This is Bones Corner a gambling joint at Taylor and Eddy owned by Big Bones Remmer who I met, along with his wife. My mother met Bones at the Key Club in Emeryville where she went to have a drink after work. She worked hard to feed her four children. Bones, put her to work. When there was a big bust, Rosemary fled to LA and left us in charge of a old hag – with a big wart on her chin! Every Halloween I think of her – our other mother. One neighbor read an article in the Tribune. A judge was considering putting the four Presco children in an orphanage. Then, Rosemary came and got us. Packed into her little Ford Anglia, we headed to La La Land. We were treated to the King Breakfast….in King City.

Share this:

No member of my natal family loved my daughter and her family because the two families never met. Christine was dead for seven years when Heather came into my life. Her family did not love any member of my family. Because of the legal battle my niece Shannon was having over the creative legacy she inherited, I asked my daughter not to have anything to do with my family until things were resolved. There was no good reason for my daughter and her mother to try and get in the rival bio.

My daughter and her family knew Bill Cornwall and his father wanted me out of the picture, and wanted my grandson all to themselves – because Bill could not conceive a child. Either could Randall Delpiano whose name is on Heather’s birth certificate. Randy died childless. I told Patrice I wanted to have Delpiano removed from the name of my minor child who was sixteen when we first met. I did not know I concieved a child – with vivid blue eyes! Randy was a brown-eye Sicilian. I’m sure his mother and sister knew Randy did not sire Heather. That was the problem. His mother thought there was a curse on her son – from the Hanson family. Linda Comstock knew Randy could not sire a child – and thus Heather must be my child. Linda demanded I get a blood test – just incase I deny I sired Heather. Bill Comstock was a big shot attorney. Heather disappeared from my life when she was seventeen. She went and saw Shamus Dundon and his mother, Vicki Presco. Did Stacey Pierrot know this? Thanks to the law firm of Buck&Morris there appeared to be a Big Grab Bag going on, where outsiders held all the Family Power, and, thus could make you rich – somehow!

Bill Cornwall called me and said I was about to lose my daugher and six year old grandson. He called me a “parasite” a title members of the Tea Party love to use to divide our nation. Bill’s father was a higher up in the Tea Party – in Texas! I am positive the Cornwall family believes the Democrats stole the election and cheated their beloved Trump-David King our of his birthright. Let me say..

HA!HA!HA! Screw you Bill, you drunken lying dog parasite – LOSER! You and your father – LOST! You are friggen – BIG LOSERS! You two – LOST YOUR MIND!

Heather ceremoniously took my new grandchild from me, and made plans to have us never meet. Heather signed a legal document to be my Trustee when I got moneys from the Trust of my uncle, Vincent Rice. She refused to serve, and made outrageous conditions, being I sign a document saying I will not write about her and her family. In the history of literature, one would be hard pressed to find a more diabolical and uncaring attempt to get in the biography of a famous person as conducted by Heather and her family. Adults encourage a minor to betray her father and ignore the lies of strangers. Donald Trump had a T.V. show where he gave people a chance to be a Big Success. He fired – losers! American Voters – fired Trump! I dismissed Heather Delpiano as my Trustee.

There is no greater usurpation in literature conducted by a Minor Child, who was following the directions of devious adults who told my child it is just fine to hurt and destroy me – because I am mentally ill. So was my famous sister, Christine Rosamond Benton, who was seeing as many as three therapists.

John Presco

President: Royal Rosamond Press

Conservative attorney John Eastman said that the strategy outlined in a now-infamous memo about how to overturn President Joe Biden‘s Electoral College victory on January 6 was “crazy,” suggesting it was not a “viable” option.

https://rosamondpress.com/2021/06/18/my-minor-daughter-was-attracted-to-big-bucks/

Trump’s Big Lie is the new Lost Cause — and it may poison the country for decades (msn.com)

Supporters of U.S. President Donald Trump chant slogans and hold signs outside of the Philadelphia Convention Center as the counting of ballots continues in the state on November 06, 2020 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Chris McGrath/Getty Imageshttps://www.dianomi.com/smartads.epl?id=3533

Perhaps the biggest of many imponderables about Donald Trump has always been the question of what playbook was he following? His 2016 campaign didn’t have a plan beyond questioning the manhood of his male primary rivals and ceaseless yapping about Hillary Clinton’s “emails.” His 2020 campaign never found a focus until October, when he seized upon his victory over his own case of COVID-19 as evidence of his manhood. Remember his return from Walter Reed Medical Center to the White House? Trump was ripping off his mask on the Truman balcony! That’ll show ’em!

In between campaigns, Trump’s presidency seemed aimless, stumbling vaguely forward from one indictment to another until the time came to issue pardons, which we soon learned was his “favorite” presidential power — not being commander in chief, not ordering up Air Force One to fly him off on his many golf weekends, not even being able to pick up his bedside phone in the middle of the night and order a Big Mac and a Diet Coke. The pardon power was it.

Losing the election in November and having to move out of the White House has given him something to focus on, however. He never cared about governing and didn’t have much of an ideology to guide him, but he’s finally found something he can believe in and a playbook he can follow: his very own Lost Cause. Trump has embraced with gusto the South’s strategy after losing the Civil War: Tell your own people that you didn’t really lose, and double down on the nobility and honor of what they still believe in. In the case of the Civil War, it was slavery and the inherent superiority of whiteness and inferiority of blackness. The new Lost Cause is of course Trump himself, to whom his followers attach the same kind of gauzy metaphors that came into use after the Civil War: flags (Trump campaign flags, the Confederate flag and the “Don’t Tread on Me” banner are in heavy rotation) songs (“I’m Proud to be an American” by Lee Greenwood and — perhaps not so ironically now — “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” by the Rolling Stones are played at all his rallies) and symbols (Mar-a-Lago has become a kind of antebellum shrine to the garish excess Trump represents).

Patrice, Randall, and Heather Delpiano

Posted on November 26, 2020 by Royal Rosamond Press

When I saw my sixteen year old daughter for the first time, I told her and her mother I wanted to get rid of the surname, Delpiano, attached to my daughter. Her fake father was a major parasite on thousands in the Bay Area. Patrice had to know about MORE crimes of theft he committed. I now suspect Randy and Patrice were conning men in bars to get sympathy and money. They were a team. I am going to get court records. Randy used the death of Brent to solicit sympathy and get entry to the lives of those who grieve. This is what the con-artist did to my later sister’s legacy.

Brent Mydland – Wikipedia

That my neighbors depict me as a pariah and parasite, knowing the plight I am suffering to get my daughter free of these con-artists, is vile and evil. These two sucked the life and energy out of me – like vampires! To know this career criminal knew an innocent child was used in a demonic way, is the epitome of evil. In this article Randy may have conned a boy under eighteen to get in his mother’s home to rob her. Patrice told me who could not conceive, and thus he watched my child grow in his wives womb – knowing it was my child! I suspect they both looked for dark way to exploit my unborn child who was five when her fake father got arrested. Was she told? He then went on the lamb, the Oakland police hot on his trail. Did he stay with Patrice in LA?How many bad checks did Randy write that his wife knew about? I can not find a marriage certificate. Did he ever kill anyone?

I was the real and sincere artist in my family. The rest is illusion.

John Presco

Sep 1, 1990 — ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) _ Miss America 1990 Debbye Turner says … Oakland police are looking for Randall Delpiano to arrest him on a …

California. Supreme Court. Records and Briefs: S024867, Petition for Review – California (State). – Google Books

The State

JAN. 16, 198912 AM

A man who looted $4,000 from a woman’s bank account while posing as Grateful Dead guitar player Bob Weir has been sentenced to two years in prison and fined $500. The sentence was imposed by Alameda County Superior Court Judge Stanley Golde on Randall C. Delpiano, 33, described in a Probation Department report as having “achieved moderate fame by impersonating” Weir. Delpiano pleaded guilty in Oakland Municipal Court last month to one count of using a computer system to steal money. Other charges were dropped in a plea agreement. Authorities said Delpiano befriended the victim’s son and then moved into the family home. While the woman was out of town in October, they said, he took the money from her bank account using her automatic teller machine card.

When I found myself pregnant, I felt the father could have been
either John’s or my husband’s, but I had to convince the husband
that it was his baby or life would have been unbearable and the
chances of my baby’s survival would have been slim. I knew this baby
was meant to be, and be with me, and that was important. From there
moment she was born, I could see that she looked like John, but it
was the husband’s name that went on the birth certificate.”

Patrice Hanson falsified a birth certificate by putting Randall Delpiano’s name as the father, instead of me. Heather Hanson is MY daughter. Patrice admits she knew this in a letter she composed to send Oprah Winfrey. Randy is famous! He appears in two books as “Bogus Bobby”. Patrice says she was married to BB, but, I have my doubts. Patrice has never had a grasp on reality. She suffers from mental illness due to her severely mentally ill mother being violently beaten by Patrice’s father. This may have caused this poor mother of three to jump off a cliff, and kill herself. Patrice describes herself as being the surrogate mother to her siblings.

There can be no doubt that The Lord speaks to me in dreams. I will run for the office of Republican President on the platform I am getting messages from God, while Trump is getting messages from Satan who I suspect is/was…..King David! Trump is being called the Second Coming of King David.

Yesterday I came upon the Dream of Solomon! The writers of the Torah are giving to Solomon the power of prophecy that Samuel the Nazarite owned. Anyone who knew their Torah, knew Solomon has come to own the Wisdom of the Nazarite Judges, and the prophetic power of Samuel. This was written to thwart the power of David – and all his offspring – and bring them back to Yahweh!

I suspect Solomon – is a fictions character – who is placed before the Ark of the Covenant, which I suspect is still missing. It was never retrieved from the Philistines who probably destroyed while they had a chance. That it was housed in Solomon’s Temple is THE LIE OF LIES that the Trumpites will come to own. Many people are getting death threats. What will be the fate of Israel if Trump becomes president again. I will oppose him. I began calling my father Captain Victim because he was the biggest victim I ever know. Then, came Big Donald Victim….and millions of angry white men are eating it up. Hitler was a Big Victim – too!

I believe a child was placed near the Ark, and when he fell asleep, the Lord spoke to him.

“And a child will lead them!”

Millions of voters for both parties are coming to realize many leaders are getting death threats. Any minister who speaks against Trump will have his flock taken from him with the wave of Caesars hand. Biblical Knowledge no longer matters. Being a thug and racist makes you a true believer. We are beyond being divided. Truth no longer matters.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/poll-majority-of-voters-view-jan-6-probe-through-political-lens/ar-AAPQeoo?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531

I own the Wisdom of Solomon because only I figured out what Jesus wrote in the dust. I believe King David and his Philistine allies destroyed the High Place of Gibeon that Saul was protecting. Later day liars and writers, remove this blasphemy and have a fictional son of David got there before the altar. I believe I know where the Ark was taken.

Ask yourself why God did not bid Solomon to prepare to be crucified, and die for the sins of all people – including the Jews – so everyone can know Eternal Life? I suspect most Republicans could care less about living forever. Getting REVENGE…. is at the top of their wish list.

John ‘The Nazarite’

https://www.aeragon.com/itz/06/06-0101-0123-00.html

Ark of the Covenant – Wikipedia

Judging The Sotah

The architect of Trump’s plot to steal the 2020 election explains himself — absurdly (msn.com)

“Last week I had a dream about Dead Captain Victim. I was watching T.V. when I heard;

“Let me see the remote!”

I started to hand it over to him, then, pulled it away. This was his typical trick. He does not want to see it. He wants to – OWN IT! If I hand it over, I will never touch it again.

My father was a Grand Narcissistic Son of a Bitch. Rosemary told us a dozen times he stole our dentist appointments she made for us. He stole our Christmases, our Thanksgivings, our Easters, our Report Card Days…………If it was not about him, he was not just not interested, he would go out of his way to torpedo us. This is why Barbara Bush does not want this Saboteur at her funeral. He sabotaged the career of Billy Bush. He tempted this married man, and left him holding the bag.

https://rosamondpress.com/2018/04/21/i-am-the-historic-and-religious-heir-to-the-republican-party-3/

Solomon made an alliance with Pharaoh king of Egypt and married his daughter. He brought her to the City of David until he finished building his palace and the temple of the LORD, and the wall around Jerusalem.2The people, however, were still sacrificing at the high places, because a temple had not yet been built for the Name of the LORD.3Solomon showed his love for the LORD by walking according to the statutes of his father David, except that he offered sacrifices and burned incense on the high places.4The king went to Gibeon to offer sacrifices, for that was the most important high place, and Solomon offered a thousand burnt offerings on that altar.5At Gibeon the LORD appeared to Solomon during the night in a dream, and God said, “Ask for whatever you want me to give you.”6Solomon answered, “You have shown great kindness to your servant, my father David, because he was faithful to you and righteous and upright in heart. You have continued this great kindness to him and have given him a son to sit on his throne this very day.7″Now, O LORD my God, you have made your servant king in place of my father David. But I am only a little child and do not know how to carry out my duties.8Your servant is here among the people you have chosen, a great people, too numerous to count or number.9So give your servant a discerning heart to govern your people and to distinguish between right and wrong. For who is able to govern this great people of yours?”10The Lord was pleased that Solomon had asked for this.11So God said to him, “Since you have asked for this and not for long life or wealth for yourself, nor have asked for the death of your enemies but for discernment in administering justice,12I will do what you have asked. I will give you a wise and discerning heart, so that there will never have been anyone like you, nor will there ever be.13Moreover, I will give you what you have not asked for–both riches and honor–so that in your lifetime you will have no equal among kings.14And if you walk in my ways and obey my statutes and commands as David your father did, I will give you a long life.”15Then Solomon awoke–and he realized it had been a dream. He returned to Jerusalem, stood before the ark of the Lord’s covenant and sacrificed burnt offerings and fellowship offerings. ^[1] Then he gave a feast for all his court.16Now two prostitutes came to the king and stood before him.17One of them said, “My lord, this woman and I live in the same house. I had a baby while she was there with me.18The third day after my child was born, this woman also had a baby. We were alone; there was no one in the house but the two of us.19″During the night this woman’s son died because she lay on him.20So she got up in the middle of the night and took my son from my side while I your servant was asleep. She put him by her breast and put her dead son by my breast.21The next morning, I got up to nurse my son–and he was dead! But when I looked at him closely in the morning light, I saw that it wasn’t the son I had borne.”22The other woman said, “No! The living one is my son; the dead one is yours.” But the first one insisted, “No! The dead one is yours; the living one is mine.” And so they argued before the king.23The king said, “This one says, `My son is alive and your son is dead,’ while that one says, `No! Your son is dead and mine is alive.'”24Then the king said, “Bring me a sword.” So they brought a sword for the king.25He then gave an order: “Cut the living child in two and give half to one and half to the other.”26The woman whose son was alive was filled with compassion for her son and said to the king, “Please, my lord, give her the living baby! Don’t kill him!” But the other said, “Neither I nor you shall have him. Cut him in two!”27Then the king gave his ruling: “Give the living baby to the first woman. Do not kill him; she is his mother.”28When all Israel heard the verdict the king had given, they held the king in awe, because they saw that he had wisdom from God to administer justice.

“Racketeers let children into joints!”

I posted this on my Remembering San Francisco Facebook The press covered the affect Bay Area gambling had on families – even children! For this alone the Presco family is famous. Now add my grandfather the gambler, and the founding hippies involvement with the Hell’s Angels, then I might be Heir to Outlawism. I met the major manufacturers of LSD. I believe I know how the Mafia got a LSD lab and started selling on the East Coast. Ken Babbs just published ‘Cronies’. Pot is now legal in Oregon and is a billion dollar industry, as is legal gambling in Nevada – and elsewhere! I don’t see any interest in politics from the Kesey Krowd, whose Springfield Son partied with the Hell’s Angels in La Honda. The KK is leaving it all up to Jerry Russ – and whomever – to carry the Hippie Political Branch. As to who is carrying the Hippie Spiritual Torch now that Allan Ginsberg’s tiny finger symbols have become silent – who gives a rat’s ass. Feeling omnipotent and all powerful is the name of the American Game!

John

Amazon.com: Customer reviews: Lanza’s Mob: The Mafia and San Francisco

This is Bones Corner a gambling joint at Taylor and Eddy owned by Big Bones Remmer who I met, along with his wife. My mother met Bones at the Key Club in Emeryville where she went to have a drink after work. She worked hard to feed her four children. Bones, put her to work. When there was a big bust, Rosemary fled to LA and left us in charge of a old hag – with a big wart on her chin! Every Halloween I think of her – our other mother. One neighbor read an article in the Tribune. A judge was considering putting the four Presco children in an orphanage. Then, Rosemary came and got us. Packed into her little Ford Anglia, we headed to La La Land. We were treated to the King Breakfast….in King City.

I am poised to destroy Judaism and Christianity with the publication of my book that exposes the Tribe of Judah as they betrayers of God. Armstrong’s interest in the fate of the Lost Tribes, will remain as the paramount interest of Judeo-Christianity.

Our enemies are studying the truth that Christian leaders are still backing The Liar of Liars – because they may not have a choice. Religious Gangsterism has led to the creation of The Monster – The Liar of Liars…The Caesar of Caesars!

I warned you!

John

Judah – Son of Jesus

I Am Embodiment of Herbert Armstrong

Posted on July 25, 2021 by Royal Rosamond Press

With the Spencer connection, it is made CLEAR I am Heir to Herbert Armstrong’s Church and Radio. I ma REVERSING THE FLOW of American Women to Europe, back to America! Consuelo Vanderbilt had to know all about the Legend of Fair Rosamond, whose portrait was painted by the Pre-Raphaelites I turned my sister ‘Rosamond’ on to. King Solomon had many foreign wives. How about his great grandson?

Above is the crypt of ROSAMOND Vanderbilt! I will be ignoring the ignorant remnant of my family. Surely, the late and famous artist CHRISTINE ROSAMOND BENTON – is thrilled with all the wondrous connections I am making – FOR BOTH FAMILY ARTISTS! My attorney will make sure to make this point – over and over and over, and over – again!

Consider Solomon’s gold treasure that is part of the Bible. American Treasure saved many Royal Castles. I am the True Posterity Teacher who found the Rose Grail and Sword.

The Windsor Labyrinth at Belmont | Rosamond Press

Many evangelical ministers encouraged their sheep to not get vaccinated in order to weaken our Commander in Chief – knowing Russia was a real threat! Armstrong lost his followers when the Iron Curtain fell. His warnings about Russia – went unheeded!

John ‘The Artist-Prophet’

MOSCOW (Reuters) – The Russian navy can detect any enemy and launch an “unpreventable strike” if needed, President Vladimir Putin said on Sunday, weeks after a UK warship angered Moscow by passing the Crimea peninsula.

Putin says Russian navy can carry out ‘unpreventable strike’ if needed (msn.com)

Rosamond Lancaster Vanderbilt (1897-1947) – Find A Grave Memorial

In 1899, Vanderbilt married Virginia Graham Fair (1875–1935), a wealthy heiress whose father, James Graham Fair, had made a fortune in mining the famous Comstock Lode.

William Kissam Vanderbilt II – Wikipedia

The Vanderbilts separated after ten years of marriage but did not formally divorce until 1927 when he wanted to remarry. Divorce proceedings were handled by his New York lawyers while he and Rosamund Lancaster Warburton (1897–1947), a former wife of Barclay Harding Warburton II, an heir to the John Wanamaker department store fortune, waited discreetly away from the media at a home in the Parisian suburb of Passy, France. When the divorce was final, the couple were married at the Hotel de Ville (city hall) in Paris on September 5, 1927. Vanderbilt became a legal stepfather to Barclay Harding Warburton III once they wed.

‘Duchess’ Podcast Goes Behind the Scenes at Stately Homes in the UK | Tatler Hong Kong (asiatatler.com)

Consuelo Vanderbilt – Wikipedia

Determined to secure the highest-ranking mate possible for her only daughter, a union that would emphasize the preeminence of the Vanderbilt family in New York society, Alva Vanderbilt engineered a meeting between Consuelo and the indebted, titled Charles Spencer-Churchill, 9th Duke of Marlborough, chatelain of Blenheim Palace. 

1 Kings 10:14 says, “the weight of gold which Solomon received every year was 666 talents of gold, besides what came from tradesmen, from the traffic of the merchants, and from all the kings of Arabia and the governors of the regions.” (Jewish Study Bible).

Rosamond de Clifford (1136 – 1176) – Genealogy (geni.com)

Armstrong and Radio Free London

Posted on April 16, 2021 by Royal Rosamond Press

In memory of my Friend, Ben Toney, and Herbert Armstrong who broadcast WARNINGS about the Russian Menace. I talked with my man, Spooky Noodles, to get Meg Whitman to put a replica of Radio London offshore of her property in Dogpatch – two years ago!

Seer Jon

(16) Herbert W Armstrong- Proving the TRUTH(via The World Tomorrow Radio Program).wmv – YouTube

Augustus John, Ian Fleming, and Ben Toney | Rosamond Press

Russian Parliament Leader Encourages Kremlin to Respond With ‘Aggressive Action’ to U.S. Sanctions (msn.com)

“He argued that Russia should retaliate quickly and not rush to accept Biden’s summit offer.

“Revenge is a dish best served cold,” Kosachev wrote. “I believe the saying is quite adaptable to a situation when we talk not about revenge but a due answer to aggressive action by an opponent.”

(16) The Chantels – Maybe (1958) – YouTube

Church, State and the Pirate Ship Saga

By Neil EarleRadio Caroline was the first of the offshore “pirate ships” beaming into Britain, though the idea had been tried off California and elsewhere in the 1930’s.

(Jingle) “Radio London reminds you: Go to the Church of your choice.”

(Pause)

(Announce, loudly): “THE WORLD TOMORROW! Garner Ted Armstrong brings you the plain truth about today’s world news with the prophecies of the World Tomorrow!

(GTA): “And greetings friends, this is Garner Ted Armstrong with the good news of the World Tomorrow. World leaders admit that they are frightened, that they are engaged in a fantastic nightmare. They’re scared. They don’t know what to do. They’re wondering what is going to happen in the future and none of them really know.”

This was a typical opener for a “World Tomorrow” radio show beaming down on millions of Englishman in the Greater London area between late 1964 and August 15, 1967. This period is now somewhat notable in British broadcasting circles as the heyday of the Pirate Ships. A fascinating tale, this, of how the Armstrongs, Herbert and Garner Ted (successful radio evangelists based in America) ended up in a curious roundelay involving Her Majesty’s government in London, the BBC, some of Britain’s elite publications and a host of over-the-top radio personalities – some of whom ended up as legends of British popular culture.

The genius behind the pirate ship idea was the offshore positioning of creaky vessels and the occupation of abandoned World War Two-era sea forts as staging platforms to beam in the music millions in “swinging England” craved. As covered earlier, Radio Luxembourg had represented the first crack in the British Broadcasting Corporation’s (BBC) exclusive monopoly over radio broadcasting in Britain. But on March 28, 1964, from a 763-ton vessel propelled by a 1,000 h.p. diesel engine off England’s southeast coast came the jived up sounds of Radio Caroline, broadcasting on 199 metres. Radio Caroline was the first of the offshore “pirate ships” beaming into Britain, though the idea had been tried off California and elsewhere in the 1930’s. ¹

This British version of “offshore radio” was the brainchild of Irish entrepreneur Rohan O’Rahilly. O’Rahilly soon had competition from another swashbuckling entrepreneur named Alan Crawford. Both men came to the same conclusion about radio at the same time. An arrangement was made whereby Radio Caroline, now called Radio Caroline North, steamed to a position five miles off the Isle of Man in the Irish Sea while Crawford’s 470-ton Mi Amigo became Radio Caroline South, perched off the Essex coast. A Texas businessman named Don Pierson soon got into the act and set up Wonderful Radio London that Christmas, 1964.²

The assault was on. What tart British journalist Christopher Booker dubbed as “the farce of the pirate radio stations” had begun.³

Farcial only because of the nearly three year battle that soon ensued between the British Government and the “pirate ships,” as they were soon dubbed. Though the official term was “offshore broadcasting” there was just enough “nuts to the Establishment” tone embedded in the talented tonsils of deejays Simon Dee, Robbie Dale, Kenny Everett, and others to bother Harold Wilson’s Labour Government no end. “Some tastes are worse than wild” Lord Sorenson complained in the House of Lords. The House of Lords no less! Pop music and trendy D.J. patter in a pseudo-American style wafted onto an island population seeking relief from some of the BBC’s stuffier productions. “I can’t understand the Government’s attitude over the pirates,” Beatle George Harrison declaimed in an interview. ”Why don’t they make the BBC illegal as well. It doesn’t give the public the service it wants, otherwise the pirates wouldn’t be here to fill the gap.”⁴

Politics and Religion

Perhaps the “quiet Beatle” had missed the point. Not only had American religious broadcasters rushed in with their programming – from The Lutheran Hour to the Seventh day Adventist’s Voice of Prophecy – but concerns were being raised in parliament about the political nature of the matters being discussed along the blue yonder.⁵ Though there was never direct evidence in Hansard, the official record of British Parliamentary Debates, the indirect evidence is compelling that Garner Ted Armstrong may have been a particular thorn in the flesh. A December, 1966 Good News article by Charles Hunting, then Business Manager for the RCG’s United Kingdom operation, reported on the tug of war between the pirate ships and Her Majesty’s government, with “The World Tomorrow” often caught in the middle. “The Last Battle for Britain” was the hyperbolic, but not unreasonable in terms of broadcasting, title. Charles Hunting’s centerpiece was a quote from an editorial appearing in The Guardian, one of Britain’s most prestigious dailies. The writer may have got to the nub of the issue:

One reason why the Government got shifting over radio pirates was the threat of new pirate stations pouring out political polemic instead of perpetual pop. That seems to have been forestalled, but MPs are starting to take an interest in the pronouncements of one Garner Ted Armstrong, an American evangelist… who brings “news of the World Tomorrow.” News mostly about fundamentalist religion, but news too of political trends. One recent broadcast said that Britain was about to scuttle out of Gibraltar as a result of American pressure.⁶

Ouch! Ted was never averse to treading on Whitehall’s toes. In some ways as a red-blooded banjo-playing American he reveled in twisting the lion’s tail. Slightly up-tight Britain was never his favorite place to visit, though he admired the stalwart British character. So it came to pass that he was pleasantly surprised and bemused to hear his own voice coming out of several car radios one evening in the middle of Picadilly Circus. Interestingly, Dr. Scott Lupo, presenting on the Armstrongs at academic conferences in England in the 1990’s, found former British listeners turned academics remembering The Plain Truth’s dire warnings against the Common Market evolving into a future danger for Britain.⁷ Diverse audiences decode diversely. Broadcast scholar Eric Gilder even suggests on his web site that the Armstrongs received funding from the CIA in order to keep Britain out of Europe and safely pro-American. This is certainly untrue but…in popular culture decodings take place on multiple levels.⁸ In the event, typical British suspicion of Americans definitely affected the way GTA’s message was being received.

Ted’s days as “Captain Outrageous” in well-targeted Britain would be numbered but not before substantial inroads had been made into British thinking-man’s culture. The faceless bureaucrats across the Channel did make a tempting target for red-blooded Brits fearful of becoming perpetual Little Englanders in Europe’s shadow. The result? Guardian editors in sympathy with an irritating American orator – good heavens!

Thus tweaked, the British lion turned this challenge from the ether into a minor comic opera of sorts. The BBC’s supporters in parliament tried to turn the screws:

April 27, 1967: M.P Mr. Faulds asked the Secretary of State: “Will he amend the ‘Representation of the People Acts’ to give him power to proceed against persons who broadcast political propaganda from illegal radio stations.” Answer: “The Postmaster General has already done so.”

May 11, 1967: Faulds was back: “This is the first time that this country has been subjected to a stream of misleading propaganda from outside our territorial waters. I do not think that this is a matter for jokes.”

June 1, 1967: Sir C. Osborne counters: “Why should pirate radio stations be denied free speech on political matters?”⁹

Official harassment began. The Government Post Office (GPO) cut off Caroline’s ship-to-shore telephone. The Foreign Office lodged a protest with the government of Panama, where the Caroline was registered. The Times was suitably indignant. M.P.s fulminated. British audiences, however, were distinctly unamused. They rallied to the pirates from the beginning, especially the youth. “Within weeks,” wrote Booker, “a Gallup Poll provided the evidence – the Caroline was already rivaling Radio Luxembourg in popularity with around 7 million radio listeners.” Radio Caroline spawned a host of imitators – Radio 270, Radio Scotland, Radio 370, and five others. Roger Lippross, now a California resident after serving as the church’s publishing representative, was enchanted. He had remembered the distinctive Armstrong voice from Radio Luxemburg in the 1950’s when his father had forced him to burn RCG (Radio Church of God) booklets and other “American propaganda.” Now Radio Caroline North beamed into his home between Blackpool and Liverpool and the young pre-press expert was hooked.

Today he looks back and reminds us: “It was actually illegal to be listening to pirate radio!”

Tuned-in Britain

The struggling Radio Church of God in Britain was quick to eye this strategic opportunity. With the appearance of off-shore radio, Ambassador College executives in England could dream of saturating the British Isles with “The World Tomorrow.” A fascinating spin-off is the fact that for all the Armstrong media dominance in the United States and Canada, some of the most insightful appraisals as to their impact on 1960’s culture would come from irreligious, slightly-jaded Great Britain. Great Britain – where radio broadcasting was state-controlled even down to the 1980’s.

How did it happen?

Charles Hunting’s article traced it to the chance meeting of two old friends on a London street in late 1964. One of them was the advertising representative for “The World Tomorrow” in England. His friend was selling radio time on a new radio station due to soon start broadcasting off shore. The Good News reported:

A hurried conference was arranged with the station manager and Mr. Herbert Armstrong flew in from the United States. It was a difficult and tense situation! Although The World Tomorrow was one of the world’s largest buyers of radio time…a very sensitive situation developed. The station wanted to get away from the staid, rather dreary broadcasting format that was the normal bill of fare for British listeners. They wanted to project a new radio image – alive, fast-moving, totally musical-type programming. Talking programs were “out!” Educational-type programs were “out!” Religious programs were totally unacceptable!¹⁰

But HWA with his blood well up was hard to refuse, as Charles Hunting reported. “After two conferences with Mr. Herbert W. Armstrong and four-and-a-half hours of conversation, they were ‘in’ and probably the most costly single commercial radio contract in history was signed. Now, all stations have accepted The World Tomorrow program.” This was not an exaggeration. Robert Chapman and other sources mention “The World Tomorrow” and “Herbert W. Armstrong’s Radio Church of God” as the largest advertiser on the pirate ships.¹¹ Edward Smith’s detailed notes of Bricket Wood Bible Studies and Church Services are eloquent on that score. Church leaders of that era were worried about cost overruns, as much of the money was coming from the United States churches.¹² The Pirate Ship venture was proving expensive but, just as in America, the radio broadcast was a tremendous boon to the Work in Britain. Charles Hunting measured the sweep of that dramatic surge. “Just twenty short months ago [writing in 1966] there was no broadcasting of the World Tomorrow in England, and no possible hope of any,” he intoned,” Today, with the exception of a very few areas, the entire nation has access to the program.”

Access indeed!

Throughout 1965 and 1966 responses to the pirate ships dramatically pushed the WCG’s work ahead in Britain. The Bricket Wood office received about 135,000 letters in 1965 alone. This meant the addition of some 53,000 people to The Plain Truth mailing list – the church’s life blood. The 1966 Envoy reported that British Mail staggered away with sixty-five tons of PT subscriptions! By the end of 1965 there had emerged a total of nine WCG churches across the British Isles, servicing some 900 people. Festival attendance figures were always a primary index of church growth. It was thus exhilarating to report that Britain’s festival attendance zoomed from 1532 in 1965 to 3350 in 1972. As early as the June, 1965 Plain Truth editor Herman Hoeh was suitably ecstatic if a little hyperbolic about potential audience:

From the estuary of the Thames River “The World Tomorrow” can now be heard on Radio London by millions all over southern England at 8 o’clock in the evening. It booms in over London as a local station. And from the Irish Sea, Radio Caroline North beams the gospel over the British Isles daily at the same time – 8 p.m. Never in all history has there been anything like it. The potential listening audience of these two superpower stations broadcasting from ships at sea, is a condensed, concentrated 55 million people! The British Isles are, in area, only about the size of the southern half of California…yet more than 55,000,000 people are condensed in that little area.¹³

“Rare Sincerity”

By 1967, the growth of the British churches, fueled by the phenomenon of nationwide broadcasting, was impressive. Even more encouraging was the obvious impact of the radio program on the British Isles as a whole. Even faster than in the United States, Garner Ted Armstrong became virtually a household name almost overnight. Charles Hunting’s December, 1966 Good News report recorded a high-profile evaluation of “The World Tomorrow” from a leading medical journal. A letter to the editor penned in elegant style the listener’s pique at the seemingly indecent haste of the British Postmaster General (PMG) to ban the pirate ships:

The sudden urgency on the part of the PMG to ban “pirate” radio stations interests me. Is it because of the threat of an extra recruit allegedly about to broadcast political propaganda?…A type of propaganda is already being broadcast from private radios. Every day a remarkably attractive and compelling American orator, one Garner Ted Armstrong, puts over some extraordinarily healthy views to millions of listeners. His “plain truth” doctrine, under the generic title The World Tomorrow, always delivered with rare humor and sincerity, contains material which may well vex certain MPs [Members of Parliament] of all parties.

“Rare humor and sincerity” – a telling phrase. Garner Ted’s dramatic flair and yen for rhetorical “cut and thrust” could be quite appealing to the British temperament, American accent and all! “Heavy irony is always appreciated more in England than America,” says Roger Lippross “and Ted was almost fatally addicted to good sarcasm.” Some of his irreverent one-liners – “You could get yourself killed in a peace march,” “We can destroy the world fifty times over when once would be quite enough,” “What’s Lent? Something that sticks in your navel?” – took on legs. More highbrow listeners enjoyed the RCG’s tweaking of the accepted liberal myths of the 1960’s. That was one level. On another, worried Anglican parishioners could enjoy Ted’s witty sallies against evolution. Scoffing at evolution was particularly controversial in England, the home of Charles Darwin. Ted’s verbal Molotov cocktails were embedded even in the booklet titles he advertised over the air – the irresistible “A Theory for the Birds,” “Some Fishy Stories.” Then he would pause dramatically as a staged afterthought: “I think they call it evil-ution in England.” Or he might ask coyly: “Is it significant that the most popular idea for the origin of the universe is described as a huge cloud of gas?”

Rare humor had always been a Ted Armstrong stock in trade. But what were those “extraordinarily healthy views”? This phrase underscores just how much of a “broad text” of the popular culture the Armstrong radio insurgency had become. The upscale British listener continued his analysis:

For example, he advocates proper and reasonable discipline for children; deplores the “new morality;” is saddened by Britain’s decline as a world power; does not care for “weirdoes;” assaults sentimental Christianity as being against Bible teaching; is horrified by Britain’s obsession with gambling; considers that granting independence to unready countries is a mistake – and so on. Is this the real reason for the new drive to stop that voice as well as less attractive sounds?¹⁴

There was even subdued comedy “in house.” Herbert Armstrong with his dander up was often entertaining to watch, especially if you were well out of range. He decoded the controversy in an altogether different way. His Midwestern law and order proclivities were outraged at the mention of the phrase “pirate ships.” Pirate ships? “Pirate ships?” HWA was always ready to fulminate on the subject even years later: “They were not pirate ships!” he would protest to no-one in particular. Years later in the USBC booklet he was still settling scores. “They were not illegal! They violated no law of man,” he wrote. “But the British authorities called them ‘pirate’ ships. They were not pirates. They were not marauders…They harmed no one. But most governments of man would like to control what their people hear or do not hear.” As was not unusual, HWA’s hearers would glance down politely at the floor to hide slightly concealed smiles. In some ways this predictable Amstrong pique at Whitehall and its ways would be a rhetorical dress rehearsal for the far greater strife with the state of California in the next decade. In 1967, however, the British government was indeed able to bring pressure to bear to squelch the offshore broadcasting in the form of the Marine Broadcasting Offenses Act, to go into effect August 14, 1967. This was not, it turned out, a happy moment for the British churches. But for a while the Armstrong radio onslaught had thrown sedate Britain for a loop.

A Frenetic Summer

The implementation of the Marine Offenses Bill effectively ended the Worldwide Church of God’s radio insurgency in the British Isles. Bricket Wood Bible Studies and Sabbath services were replete with updates on this last-ditch “Battle for Britain” as the intensely mission-driven WCG put it. Elder Ed Smith’s detailed notes from the messages delivered to the headquarters congregation give some of the flavor of that frenetic summer with Pirate Ships, the Six Day War, WCG expansion into the Middle East and “end-time fever” all jumping around in the hopper:

May 5, 1967 – Good comments about HWA’s broadcast about sex. Many letters from teenagers. John Butterfield (head of Ambassador College Press) visited a printing seminar and spoke to groups of young people who had heard “The World Tomorrow” broadcast. An amendment is under way in parliament to suspend the Marine Offences Bill until BBC offers some suitable replacement. Radio Caroline vows to carry on regardless (Charles Hunting).

May 6, 1967 – Our new office being furnished in Jerusalem. The Marine Offences Bill to be raised in the House of Lords on Monday for its third reading before it goes back to the House of Commons to become law (Ronald Dart).

May 12, 1967 – Last night the first “World Tomorrow” television program broadcasted since 1955 – in USA on Channel 22; meanwhile new mail from radio ships up to 892 letters this week – third highest total ever. Radio London has the best reception; Radio Scotland heard in Glasgow… and coming through loud and clear (Charles Hunting).

May 20, 1967 – John Jewell, Mail Receiving Department head, will be going to Nicosia to assist in establishing a new office in Cyprus (Raymond McNair).

May 26, 1967 – Now nearly six weeks since Mrs. Armstrong died. New mail from radio ships now reached 897 letters this week. Only Radio 390 broadcasts once a day – all other ships twice daily (Raymond McNair).

May 27, 1967 – Middle East situation could blow up very soon, foul up God’s Work there. Remember Radio 390 and the ship situation in prayers (Raymond McNair).

June 2, 1967 – This week in U.K. the new mail from radio ships was above 1000 letters – the second highest response. Breakdown was: Radio London, 253 letters; Radio Caroline, 225; Radio 355, 190; Radio 390, 189, etc. There are only a few years left. Time has come for Israelis to take over the Temple site (Raymond McNair).

June 3, 1967 – Exciting news: entire Bricket Wood Chorale (the college choir) to be sent to Pasadena next January. Troubled situation in the Middle East – our advertising man, Milt Scott, has backed out; Stanley Rader also. We have perhaps four and a half years to go (before January, 1972); this world reeling in its corruption won’t be here in ten years; London won’t be here unless saved by God’s mercy (Herbert Armstrong).

June 10, 1967 – HWA has received many letters about Mrs. Loma Armstrong’s good example; Israelis will be building a temple very soon; perhaps only four more Ambassador graduations to go (Hebert Armstrong).

June 16, 1967 – Ship stations being allowed to carry on until BBC introduces a replacement; God had TV, radio and the press invented for the use of his church and no other purpose; God has warned the people through HWA and GTA (Hebert Armstrong).

June 23, 1967 – GTA in Texas; wife Shirley just had a still birth with normal labor but lost this little girl at five and a half months; they had hoped for a little daughter. HWA conferred today with Jordanian government representative Adli Muhktadi – “World Tomorrow” will now begin on Amman radio on July 1 (short wave and medium wave); HWA fells sympathy for King Hussein and the Jordanians; every penny they receive (from WCG) will be allocated to help Palestinian refugees; Jordanians look with favor on the Work of God (Herbert Armstrong).

July 1, 1967 – Pray for situation in Palestine; our broadcast due today on radio Amman; don’t get careless because of the Postmaster General’s latest dictum – a reprieve from banning the ship stations till September (Raymond McNair).

July 7, 1967 – The WCG’s broadcast named in the Sunday Sun newspaper; the article suggested that religion could save the North Sea radio pirates since their people could survive on “Church of God” revenues; “The World Tomorrow” has been the big financial backing behind these ships (John Portune).

July 15, 1967 – The ship stations due to be thrown off the air on August 15; all expect to end their transmissions by midnight, August 14. God can continue to hear our prayers and keep these stations open. Two new offices now established (Cyprus and Jerusalem); pray for safety of Mr. and Mrs. Raymond Dick and family; new office opening in Mexico City.

July 22, 1967 – Mr. Robert Boraker (Letter Answering Department, U.K.) back from seven months in Pasadena; speaks on crisis of Mrs. Armstrong’s sickness yet Mr. Armstrong very concerned about Mrs. Boraker’s health battles; Mr. Armstrong very lonesome in the evenings without his wife; a call for a further church day of fasting (re. pirate ship legislation) this week (Robert Boraker).

July 28, 1967 – Radio 390 off the air for good; their last message goes out tonight at 5:10 PM, closing with the national anthem; Radio London is also through; Radio Caroline will be on until August 15; feel a sense of loss as a part of the Work is shut down (Charles Hunting).¹⁵

A Bang Not a Whimper

The WCG’s pirate ship venture expired in fighting style. Edward Smith was in Belfast for the Sabbath of August 5, 1967 to hear local pastor James Wells report that Radio Manx on the Isle of Man will keep broadcasting. The next week, in Glasgow church, pastor Colin Adair passed on the news that the previous week was a record week for mail in the WCG’s British operation. People sough frantically to receive a Plain Truth subscription before the doors closed and 1119 of them wrote to the Bricket Wood office. The official tally went as follows:

Radio 355 – 367 letters

Radio London – 282 letters

Radio Caroline – 271 letters

Radio Scotland – 97 letters

Radio 270 – 63 letters

Radio 390 – 32 letters

Radio Manx – 6 letters

“People are hoping for an alternative to the pirate ships,“ Colin Adair commented to his congregation. “They will feel lost without the broadcast. People are very sorry at the loss of the stations. They are pleading for us to stay on.” The next week at the weekly Bricket Wood Bible Study, Raymond McNair cited a London Daily Mail headline, “Ban Silences Radio God,” a direct slap at “The World Tomorrow.” This echoed the previous week’s article in the London Observer referencing the “Pirate Radio Church of God.” As had and would occur in the United States, Herbert Armstrong’s media efforts were often underscored in counterpoint. Nevertheless, the Daily Mail and the Observer were respected British institutions. In their apparent glee at the Armstrong’s demise they were perhaps pointing up the impact the church was having in those tumultuous years. Meanwhile, one Letter to the Editor in the Daily Mail, lamenting the broadcast’s disappearance was headlined: “Final Link With Sanity Has Been Broken.”

Echoes of the pirate ship insurgency did remain, even four decades later. On September 28, 2003, a tongue-in-cheek obituary in the London Sunday Times satirized a BBC Radio 4 report announcing the passing of “one of religion’s best-known and best-loved voices.” Writer Paul Donovan asked: “What? Was Radio 4 going to say something nice about Garner Ted Armstrong, the American evangelist who believed Anglo-Saxons were one of the lost tribes of Israel and whose apocalyptic sermons on ‘The World Tomorrow’ went out for years on the North Sea pirate ships and another 300 stations worldwide?” The answer was, as expected, in the negative but a reflection, nevertheless, of one writer’s cultural memory. The February 5, 2005 Liverpool Echo Flashback, taking a look back at popular radio’s history of abundant variety, opined: “Religion was not forgotten either. At 11:30 P.M. each night the strident voice of American evangelist Garner Ted Armstrong would ring out telling us he was ‘bringing Christ to the nations.’”

Popular culture artifacts sometimes achieve a kind of lasting notoriety, as the fascination over Elvis Presley attests. As broadcasters, the Armstrongs were, in their way, unforgettable. The pirate ship era is remembered in WCG (now GCI) folk memory as one of the seminal periods of church growth in Great Britain. The ghost of the pirate ships themselves still haunt the air waves through the continuing adventures of Radio Caroline and the teasing suggestion on pirate web sites that the Labour Party’s defeat in the 1970 U.K. election could be traced to the loss of precious 18-year-old votes. These new teen voters chose to protest their government’s shut-down of one of the symbols of the Swinging Sixties. “God moves in mysterious ways” the British poet Edward Cowper had written. Thus, even in 1967, Charles Hunting could be philosophical about it all. As the WCG (U.K.) CFO he mentioned in the August 25 Bricket Wood Bible Study that the bill for the radio broadcasts in just one month came in at $65,000 – “a considerable sum: in Edward Smith’s phrase for the Britain of 1967. But one the church was more than willing to pay at the time.

(ED. – Excerpted from an unpublished manuscript “Blow the Dust Off Your Bible: Herbert Armstrong and American Popular Religion” by Neil Earle.)

1 “Radio Caroline,” Wikipeida.org/wiki/Radio_Caroline (5/3/2007)

2 “Wonderful Radio London,” Wikepdia.org/Wonderful_Radio_London (5/4/2007)

3 Christopher Booker, The Neophiliacs, page 236.

4 George Harrison quoted in “Disc” magazine, Ray Coleman interview, August 6, 1966.

5 Robert Chapman, Selling the sixties: the pirates and pop music radio (London: Routledge, 1992), page 189.

6 Charles F. Hunting, “The Last Battle for Britain,” The Good News (December, 1966), pages 8, 21.

7 Scott Lupow, personal communication, January, 2006. The teaching of a United Europe as allegedly foreshadowed in Revelation 17 and becoming the instrument of Britain’s demise was an Armstrong standard.

8 Eugene Michel, the WCG’s “Mr. Accounting” for many years, cheerfully dismisses this suggestion as he does the theories of support from Howard Hughes or H.L. Hunt (personal interview, May 8, 2007).

9 Hansard, General Index, Sessions 1966-67 (April 18, 1966-October 27, 1967).

10 Charles Hunting, The Good News (December, 1966), pages 8, 21. Most WCG details flow from this article.

11 Robert Chapman, Selling the sixties, page 188; “The Pirate Radio Hall of Fame,” http://www.offshoreradio.co.uk/djse2h.htm (5/3/2007).

12 Edward Smith, private communication, October 26, 2006.

13 Herman L. Hoeh, “And Now ‘The World Tomorrow’ Broadcast Bla

Fermor, Bond, and Fleming

Posted on April 16, 2021 by Royal Rosamond Press

The Real Royal Janitor

Last night I came upon an article about the love letters written between Ian Fleming and his wife, and was reminded of the fiery relationship I and Rena Easton nee’ Christensen, had. I lamented that we had not continued our LETTER EXCHANGE so that there would be such history available to me, the only living human being authoring a James Bond book – because I am related to Ian Flaming, and his tragic son, who was name after his uncle, who is the son of the artist Augustus John, who allowed Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor’s uncle, Howard Young, to sell his artwork in America. Around 9:00 A.M. on April 16th. 2021, I discovered that Fleming and his family were friendly with the Fermor family, who married into the Hesketh family, who married into the Sharon family of Belmont. This gives me the credentials – I deserve! I am a REAL AGENT FOR FREEDOM!

Our Letters | Rosamond Press

A week ago I was going to blog on a reunion at the Palace Hotel with fundraiser for ‘The Royal Janitor’. There would be a train trip to Belmont where a Celebrity Labyrinth would be made in Twin Pines Park. I would invite my Star, Lara Roozemond, and, my Muse, Rena Easton, whose grandmother was so grateful I rescued her, a Beautiful Damsel in Distress. I am so grateful to the World Wide Web for making my dream come true. I have not let my women down.

John Presco 007

Copyright 2021

President: Royal Rosamond Press

Ann Fleming, née Charteris, was born into the aristocracy and married wealthy men. Her first husband was Shane O’Neill, the 3rd Baron O’Neill. After his death in military action in 1944, she married the newspaper magnate Esmond Harmsworth, the 2nd Viscount Rothermere.

Ian Fleming’s Love Letters at Sotheby’s | The Book Collector

During both marriages she and Fleming were lovers, an intense relationship that had sado-masochistic elements. “I long for you even if you whip me because I love being hurt by you and kissed afterwards,” Ann once wrote to Fleming.

Russian Parliament Leader Encourages Kremlin to Respond With ‘Aggressive Action’ to U.S. Sanctions (msn.com)

Fermor (one-name.org)

From: Anne Farmer y@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: SHARON To: “John Ambrose” Date: Thursday, December 23, 2010, 3:34 AM Hi John- I will call Patrick Sharon after Christmas when I return to Seattle. Today I take mother to Portland on Amtrak for Chrustmas to see some friends.  Please send me your mailing address as I am sending out my New Year’s cards- thank you. Have a great Holiday and a very Happy New Year. Kindest Regards- Anne —

On Sun, 12/5/10, John Ambrose wrote: From: John Ambrose Subject: SHARON To: @yahoo.com Date: Sunday, December 5, 2010, 5:03 PM Anne;   Here is the number   John, Thanks for all of your information. I am still trying to find the list of the California Sharon Family Reuniun. This will help me establish family connections for all of us. As I mentioned my Great grandparents were the last of our family who received the invite.Their names are Samuel and Stella Sharon of Kansas City. Lets stay in contact. Patrick Sharon II

From: Anne Farmer y@yahoo.com> Subject: Re: Withersppon To: “John Ambrose” Date: Saturday, March 6, 2010, 1:41 PM Hi Jon- These I know- the Heskeths married into my side- the Fermors so they are distant cousins of mine. The Quakers, Methodists were the Fermor side- they never owned slaves like Witherspoon  did.I had heard about the Presbyterian strong influence- and how the Calvinists were more fighters. On my side we have the lovers, not fighters. Anne PS- I was just connected via a mutual friend to look up Theresa-Mary Morton while in London, who is  Queen’s librarian.

James Cecil Baring, 6th Baron Revelstoke (born 16 August 1938) is a British peer. A son of Rupert Baring, the 4th Baron, and Flora Fermor-Hesketh, daughter of the 1st Baron Hesketh, he was educated at Eton College. He married Aneta Laline Dennis Fisher in 1968. They had two sons, Alexander Rupert Baring, born 9 April 1970, and Thomas James Baring, born 4 December 1971. He married Sarah Stubbs in 1983. They had two daughters, Flora Aksinia Baring, born 17 July 1983, and Miranda Louise Baring, born 1 May 1987. He succeeded his brother, John Baring, 5th Baron Revelstoke, born 2 December 1934, in 2003. His half-sisters, by a later marriage of his mother to Lt.-Cdr. Derek Lawson, are Arabella Ann Spurrier (née Lawson), born 14 August 1946, and Caroline Flora Turner (née Lawson), born 23 September 1953.

Sharon-Hesketh Family of Piedmont | Rosamond Press

“I have put on pause my homework of family relations. I do know some of the California Sharons and I am familiar with the reunion that use to take place in San Francisco, but I have been swamped. I would love to refresh the reunion for our family. I am not familiar with the names on your email yet. I don’t know if you sent email to Philip or had misplaced my name. I will start more family connections with the Sharon clan soon.

Patrick Sharon

Hi Jon- Get ready- much info coming now- please go ASAP to tatler.com- June issue page 102- big article on the new owner of Easton Neston- Leon Max- I’m headed there with James Baring and Bob and Joanne Fermor tomorrow.
Anne

Le Royale Rouge Dragon | Rosamond Press

Teresa Rozemond Bond La Draco | Rosamond Press

Bringing Bond to book | Patrick Leigh Fermor

Researching details of voodoo rites in Live and Let Die, Bond consults The Traveller’s Tree by Fleming’s friend Patrick Leigh Fermor. Appropriately enough, 007 also likes a good thriller and purchases the latest Raymond Chandler at the close of Goldfinger, and in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service displays a ready familiarity with the Nero Wolfe series, written by the equally well-read Rex Stout. It turns out that M too knows of Wolfe. En route to Istanbul in From Russia with Love, Bond enjoys a literary busman’s holiday by reading Eric Ambler’s The Mask of Dimitrios.

Patrick Leigh Fermor, who has died aged 96, was an intrepid traveller, a heroic soldier and a writer with a unique prose style. His books, most of which were autobiographical, made surprisingly scant mention of his military exploits, drawing instead on remarkable geographical and scholarly explorations. To Paddy, as he was universally known, an acre of land in almost any corner of Europe was fertile ground for the study of language, history, song, dress, heraldry, military custom – anything to stimulate his momentous urge to speculate and extrapolate. If there is ever room for a patron saint of autodidacts, it has to be Paddy Leigh Fermor.

Rather than go to university in 1933, at the age of “18 and three-quarters”, he set out in December that year to walk from the Hook of Holland to what he insisted on calling Constantinople, or even Byzantium [Istanbul]. There was no hurry, he wrote 65 years later in an article for the London Magazine. His journey took him “south-east through the snow into Germany, then up the Rhine and eastwards down the Danube … in Hungary I borrowed a horse, then plunged into Transylvania; from Romania, on into Bulgaria”. At New Year, 1935, he crossed the Turkish border at Adrianople and reached his destination.

William, 4ème comte de Pomfret, FERMOR : Family tree by Base collaborative Pierfit (pierfit) – Geneanet

Alexander Fermor-Hesketh, 3rd Baron Hesketh – Wikipedia

FERMOR FAMILY HISTORY

Fermor (one-name.org)

The Creative Royal Fleet Sets Sail

Posted on April 16, 2018 by Royal Rosamond Press

Here are the vessels that Sir Caspar John served upon. He was born into a artistic family. I would like see the College of Defence Studies founded by the Artist, Sir Winston Churchill, expanded to include Creative People in Britain and the U.S. As a rule artists, writers, and musicians do not take slaves, gas people, and loot other people’s art. Hitler did all three. He was a bad artist who cost the world many lives, and a trillion dollars to put him down. We took back the art he stole and put it in sacred public places. I support Theresa May’s strike against Assad, who gassed his own people.

Below are the warships that Sir Ian Easton served on.

Jon Presco

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspar_John

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Easton

China’s interpretation of the law of the sea within what it claims to be its own waters has long clashed with that of maritime powers and the majority of members of the international community. The United States regularly asserts maritime rights and freedoms under its “freedom of navigation” program, much to Beijing’s chagrin.

Author

Lynn Kuok

Former Brookings Expert

Senior Research Fellow – University of Cambridge

LynnKuok

But as other maritime powers join the United States in taking steps to defend maritime rights—a British Royal Navy warship makes its way through the South China Sea this month—it is in China’s interests to learn from the Soviet example. As the Soviet navy transitioned from a “reactive coastal fleet” to a “proactive, expansionist, blue-water navy,” the Soviet attitude towards the law of the sea changed. It moved from one that sought to limit maritime freedoms to one that joined hands with naval powers, including its Cold War foe, the United States, to push for protection of such freedoms. A similar shift would help boost China’s international reputation, as well as protect and advance its interests across the globe.

Maritime powers join hands

British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson confirmed last month that a Royal Navy warship would sail through the South China Sea in March on its way back from Australia to the United Kingdom to assert navigation rights in waters Beijing claims. The HMS Sutherland left Sydney for the South China Sea on March 15, undertaking training with the Australian navy in the meantime. It is not clear what rights, exactly, the United Kingdom will assert—Williamson declined to say whether it would exercise rights to innocent passage within 12-nautical miles of disputed land territories or wider freedoms outside of territorial seas.

What is clear, however, is that in taking steps to assert rights vested under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) in the South China Sea, the United Kingdom joins other maritime powers in guarding against their erosion. In June 2016, the French minister of defense underscored his country’s commitment to the principles of freedom of navigation and overflight and the navy’s intention to continue to pass through the waters of the region several times a year. In the first half of 2016, French navy vessels deployed to the region three times.

U.S. Freedom of Navigation program

The United States, for its part, regularly asserts maritime rights vested under UNCLOS under its “freedom of navigation” program. The program’s name is a bit of a misnomer since it protects more than the right to navigate from point A to point B. It defends a whole basket of rights and freedoms, including the right of warships to exercise innocent passage within territorial seas without prior notification or authorization, and the freedom to conduct military activities, including surveillance and reconnaissance, outside of territorial seas. The U.S. freedom of navigation program also pushes back against excessive maritime claims that limit rights and freedoms of warships and warplanes. In the past year, U.S. forces under the freedom of navigation program challenged China’s claims to a territorial sea from offshore features not entitled to one under UNCLOS.

Given its wide scope, it is more accurate to describe the program as a “freedoms of the seas” or “excessive maritime claims” program. More accurate terminology would make it more difficult for China to sidestep real disagreements over legitimate rights and freedoms under UNCLOS. Beijing suggests that the United States and others invent concerns over “freedom of navigation,” but its argument only has superficial validity if we take “freedom of navigation” in its narrowest sense. Still, the term “freedom of navigation” operations, or “FONOPS,” has stuck. From October 1, 2016, to September 30, 2017, the United States conducted freedom of navigation operations to challenge the excessive maritime claims of 22 countries around the world.