William Bradford Cushman

In 1961 Bill could barely wait to graduate from High School so he could escape the Kansas City area where he was then living. In his youth he had loved to walk the grain fields of Kansas where he could turn completely around and see nothing but sky and wheat undulating under wind induced waves; and he yearned to see the waves of an ocean. At last his dream was about to became real. He joined the Navy and left for boot camp a week after graduation. Of course this decision was not entirely made without considering a highly probable invitation from the local Selective Service board should he not volunteer for the Navy. An invitation without the option of refusal, and almost certainly an invitation to crawl through mud among the snakes and biting insects of some tropical paradise like Viet Nam.

Bill had been playing with electricity since the fourth grade, and his test scores in the Navy reflected this fact. So the Navy sent him to Interior Communications Electrician school where he soon discovered that he was already familiar with almost every circuit principle explained. After weeks of perfect test scores, he was picked to teach the following class as Honor Man from his own class. This honor came with a promise of his choice of duty stations if he maintained his status until graduation. He did, and picked the smallest ocean-going Navy ship he could identify at that time, a Corvette, operating in the Atlantic. That way, he reasoned, he would probably visit Europe and would get really close to the sea. Naturally, the Navy assigned him to a huge aircraft carrier operating in the Pacific, the USS Hornet.

Bill had his eighteenth birthday while at the Navy's Service School, and given the circumstances saw no reason to sign up with Selective Service. That must have made them grumpy, because within weeks of Bill's birthday they drafted him to demonstrate their ire. Fortunately, when the Navy was informed of this conflict, they exercised their “dibs” option and kept him.

The next few years were very interesting for Bill, and he saw lots of beautiful ocean; albeit from a very high deck that was usually located over the waters of the Orient. Sometimes he even got to see some Oriental land areas, like various ports in Japan and Hong Kong. These rare visits to the firmer part of the planet varied between fascinating and wonderful (Japan) and completely heart wrenching (Hong Kong). For reasons Bill never did know, refugees were pouring into Hong Kong from mainland China when he was there. Bill saw snow in Hong Kong, and found it extremely difficult to helplessly watch tens of thousands of people trying to survive while sleeping on the rooftops and cold concrete sidewalks, huddled together with cardboard for blankets. He made a promise to himself in Hong Kong: that if he ever had the opportunity to help any people anywhere in the world, he would do it to the best of his ability.

Sailing on the yacht Hornet was a great adventure, and exceptionally educational. It was not all fun, however. Bill's status as a feudal serf (i.e. enlisted man) did chafe. So, after roughly three years, three months, nineteen days and two hours, in other words two days before his twenty-first birthday, Bill bid the yacht Hornet and the Navy goodby and became a civilian. He was discharged in San Francisco, so he put his thumb out to make his way back to Kansas City. When there, he found a cheap apartment and began looking for a job. While in the Navy he had risen to an E5 rating, had been in charge of about thirty men, and responsible for all the interior communications systems on the Hornet, plus the gyro-compasses and landing mirror system. “Surely,” he reasoned, “all this high-tech experience will get me a good job.” He was almost right! Seven or eight months later his experience did get him a job, just not a good one. He became a lineman doing pole line construction for the Telephone Company. This was not quite the highly technical job that he had in mind, as it mostly involved digging holes in the ground and putting big heavy poles in those holes. But, the pay was a few cents above the minimum wage --- and his diet was improved accordingly.

And then a miracle occurred. By 1966 congress was facing “recruiting” difficulties over their illegal aggression in Viet Nam that had killed so many of Bill's High School classmates. To “sweeten the deal,” they passed a second G.I. Bill that included educational benefits. This became effective on the first of June, 1966, and Bill was in class on the thirteenth; trying to figure out how to avoid a dog kibble diet and to also sleep under a roof on $100 a month. Another factor he was forced to consider was the unfortunate memory that he had never been much of a scholar. Actually, Bill barely managed to graduate from High School. These data were worrisome for Bill, because he quickly discovered that he didn't miss digging holes at all! The campus was beautiful, and so were the girls. A change in attitude concerning this “education” thing was obviously in order. Besides, a degree might make him employable in some manner that paid a decent wage and didn't involve a shovel. With these clearly defined aspirations firmly in mind Bill signed himself up as an Economics major.

Things did not work as planned. You would think that an excellent school like the University of Missouri at Kansas City would have people on staff with enough sense to not let irrelevant courses distract an impressionable young student. Especially one trying hard to become an employable citizen with a very practical course of study in Economics. A course of study that Bill was, frankly, becoming fascinated with. But no, indeed quite the opposite. The administration required every student to take at least one clearly irrelevant (from Bill's perspective) Philosophy course. So Bill grumbled and griped and practiced his “sailor talk” before signing up for a Foundations of Philosophy course that happened to be taught by one Hans Werner Uffelmann, Ph.D. This course proved to be the source of his eventual downfall. The damn course was fascinating! So fascinating that Bill took another from the same man, then another --- until he was sliding irretrievably down this slippery slope of hedonistic intellectual masturbation into complete and irrevocable unemployability.

Then one day Bill came briefly to his senses in the face of a terrible discovery. He was reviewing his transcript and the G.I.Bill time he had used to date, and discovered that he already had enough hours from the Department of Philosophy to graduate with a Philosophy major, but not enough for an Economics major --- and he was still listed as an Econ student. By the end of the current semester he would have used just twenty-seven months out of the thirty-six available. That datum meant he could finish his degree at the end of the semester in a totally unemployable field, and still have nine months to try for a Masters, or get to work and finish his Economics courses and get an employable degree with no time left over for further study. Bill liked Economics, especially the Institutional Economics taught in the excellent department at UMKC at that time, but he had to admit that he loved Philosophy much more, and especially Herr Doctor Uffelmann. It was a quandary.

Being ever optimistic, Bill decided on a gamble. He would graduate with the Philosophy degree, save his last nine months of G.I. Bill support, and use them to try graduate school. There was a slight difficulty, however. UMKC had no graduate program in Philosophy. But Bill had been thinking about the Peace Corps and his promise, and the guilt he felt about his country's actions in Viet Nam, and that detail worked into his plans nicely. He immediately applied to the Peace Corps, and selected Micronesia as a preferred place to work. Anyone who has ever spent a winter in Kansas City will understand the appeal of living on a beautiful tropical island in paradise for a few years.

The semester rolled along, and final exams began to loom ominously. It was time for Bill to start getting some studying done. The girls were mostly ignoring him anyway. Then one day he walked out to his mailbox as a break from cramming and found a letter from the Peace Corps. He ripped it open and to his delight found an invitation to teach Electrical Technology in Botswana! Botswana? “Where's Botswana?” he wondered. He checked his trusty old atlas --- and found no mention of the place. “Huh,” he reasoned. “It must be some little island in Micronesia too small to list!” The Peace Corps insisted on an immediate response so they could invite someone else if he wasn't interested. Bill remembered the “anywhere” part of his promise and replied with a “yes” --- and got back to the books. Several days later he finished his final final exam and with much excitement went to the library to see exactly where in the beautiful South Pacific Botswana was located. It didn't take long to discover that Botswana had only been a country for three years at that time (September, 1969), and was in southern Africa. Africa? Lions and tigers and snakes, oh my! Bill knew absolutely nothing about Africa at that time --- well, beyond the knowledge base he had picked up from a few Tarzan comic books he had studied when younger.

About five weeks later he found himself living with a family in the small village of Tshimoyapula (literally “Fields of Rain”) on the eastern edge of the Kalahari desert in Botswana. His younger “sisters” thought it was amusing to wake him every morning by herding goats into his rondoval to nibble on his exposed toes. This was training, Peace Corps style. Learn the language like a baby does. The people of Botswana took him into their homes and cared for him and showed him their love and made him feel at ease in ways Bill had never before experienced. He, like most of the other volunteers, learned to love the Batswana completely! After learning the language and customs over the course of the next months, Bill reported to the Botswana Training Centre at Gaborone and got to work teaching a subject he still loves and plays with.

Two years later Bill graduated a Botswana national treasure. His students all did so well on their final government exams that the exams were judged to be way too easy and revised several levels upward. To protect this investment Bill advertised the availability of his students nationally, and interviewed potential employers. During these interviews he extracting many beneficial promises for his students. All of his students did extremely well in their new jobs, and Bill could not have been prouder. Here is a quote from a letter Bill received from two students he had sent to a company developing a new diamond mine: “Sir, we arrived yesterday and were taken to a company house that had no wiring. All the supplies and equipment were there, and they asked us to wire it. The man said we had six weeks to do this. We both remembered you saying we should work quickly but always perfectly, so we wired it yesterday afternoon. You were right, we are both foremen now!”

Meanwhile back in Kansas City, the Department of Philosophy had been given the OK for a Master's program at long last. Bill applied, and was accepted. The timing was bad, though, and Bill needed to stall for six or seven months before he could start classes. Given his past work experience he did not feel that he could risk trying to get a job in the United States, and he was also, as usual, very short of money. So Bill took the price of his Peace Corps supplied plane ticket back to Kansas City in cash, and began to hitchhike slowly more or less north. He couldn't find a map until he got to Nairobi, but he was reasonably certain that keeping the sunrise to his right would result in running into Europe . . . eventually.

It was a wonderful trip! Bill almost always slept as a guest in villages along the way, often never discovering a single word in common with his hosts but always understanding them well enough because of their smiles and gracious manner. Eventually he made it back to Kansas City, having spent roughly $100 more than the money he had received in lieu of a ticket.

He had been sending letters to friends in the U.S. occasionally, but was completely out of touch from their perspective; both because post offices were rare in Africa, and because Bill generally didn't know where he would be at any given time. The Department of Philosophy had tried to contact him, but had not been successful. Unknown to Bill, the Master's program he was admitted to had been canceled. Bill discovered this a few days after arriving in the Kansas City area when he went to the University to register for classes.

This was a disappointment and a serious problem. Bill had been accepted by the Graduate School, but now was in no program leading to a graduate degree. His remaining nine months of G.I. Bill had also been activated . . . and Bill desperately needed to receive that first check. So he went searching for an alternative program at the university and, quite by chance, stumbled upon a Social Psychology program that had a heavy emphasis on animal behavior. Bill likes animals and watched them a lot in Africa, especially when on foot in the bush. He approached the head of the Social Psych program and asked to be accepted. What followed were some embarrassing questions about previous supporting courses that Bill had never heard of, let alone taken. Apparently the University was adamant about prerequisites, and Bill was politely told that: “I'm so sorry, but you wouldn't have any chance of success in our program with your lack of experience.”

That left Bill trying to decide whether to buy a bag of dog kibble now, or to hold off just a bit, because the future did not look bright. Then he had an interesting thought: “I bet nobody would notice I wasn't admitted to that Social Psych program if I just walked into registration and signed up for a bunch of their courses.” He was right, they didn't notice, and Bill signed himself up for a full load of graduate courses --- making sure to take one from the professor who was in charge of the program. At the end of the first semester Bill had straight “As” and went again to visit the man in charge. In the course of their conversation Bill asked: “Did I mention that I'd been a Philosophy major when I asked you if I could get into this program at the beginning of the semester?” The answer was yes. “Well, by now you must realize that from the perspective of a Philosophy major this Social Psychology stuff is not exactly an intellectual challenge. Do you still think I can't do the work?” The professor looked at Bill and slowly grinned. Then he said: “OK, I concede the point. We'll admit you!” Then he laughed, confessing that: “I've been wondering when we were going to have this conversation.”

Bill finished his Master's degree in two semesters and a summer session, but had to borrow $400 from Student Aid for the latter. It was 1973 by then, and the Banks were throwing another recession so they could consolidate their profits and make labor a bit more desperate and pliable. Bill, of course, was now completely unemployable. His G.I. Bill did, however, to his great surprise, qualify him for unemployment insurance. This amounted to a $50 per month raise over what he had been living on, and helped immensely to pay off his $400 debt. After several months of trying without success to find a job and no end to the problem in sight, Bill visited friends at the Department of Psychology to see if he could design and build any research equipment for them. He got a few jobs, and eventually made these jobs a small business that paid enough to feed and shelter him for the next few years. The dog kibble diet was again postponed.

This lasted until 1976 when Bill received an inheritance from his Grandmother, roughly $11,000. Bill could see a vicious cycle in the U.S economy by then that he really did not want to play in, so he decided to sell his few assets and set off for the coast to see about buying a sailboat to live on and to leave the country with if necessary. He also wanted to see if he could reacquaint himself with his Mother, who had essentially disowned him over issues such as his lack of religion, long hair, and war protesting. His mother lived in the Washington, D.C. Area by that time.

He visited his Mom and let her cut his hair. They agreed to let bygones be bygones and just not talk about anything of substance. It worked, and Bill loved her and cared for her when needed until she passed away in 2003. During the early part of this period he paid a visit to the Department of Psychology at the nearby University of Maryland to look for some business. He wandered the halls asking students if they had ever seen a professor there using an oscilloscope, and got the name of one who did. This professor had his doctorate in Physics, and was well known world-wide for his research in visual system physiology. He had just received a major grant with funds to build a new vision lab, and Bill suggested that this lab be built with integral computer control capability. Bill was itching to get his hands on the new microprocessors that were then becoming available. The professor was delighted with the idea and gave Bill the job. Bill built the laboratory, and after that became a student in the same lab, eventually earning his Ph.D.

Before starting this program, though, Bill was very mindful of the fact that his money was losing value daily due to inflation from constant bank manipulation of the economy. At the same time, the dollar was then very strong relative to the British pound, so Bill went to England and bought his boat, a Contessa 26. He learned to navigate with a sextant and to sail bringing it back to the United States. There were many misadventures, but as of this writing Bill has successfully avoided drowning or being recycled via fish excrement.

Bill applied for and was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship from the Navy after graduation, at the Navy Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory in Pensacola Florida. The fellowship turned into a full time job as a research scientist in the Vision Division. This lasted until the Navy apparently decided to close the laboratory, and initiated the process by making their bureaucracy so difficult that most of the scientists working there simply left. Bill was one of the first to leave, in 1991, and opened his own research laboratory in Pensacola. This laboratory, Poiesis Research, Inc., was formally dissolved in 2012, and Bill is now semi-retired. The Navy Aerospace Medical Research Laboratory was bulldozed to the ground a few years after Bill left. Over the life of his research career Bill published dozens of scientific papers, produced fourteen patents, found a wife, and managed an independent life entirely devoid of dog kibble --- except for his dog, that is.

The events of 11 September, 2001, changed Bill's perspective radically. Bill saw shocking videos where large chunks of concrete debris could be seen falling in open air beside the collapsing Twin Towers. The thing that caught his attention, though, was the fact that this debris was sometimes falling slower than the descending wave of destruction. He recognized immediately that this would be physically impossible under the Official Government Conspiracy Theory, and in fact only possible under a Controlled Demolition theory. No object can fall faster through the steel frame of a building than through open air without the timed destruction of that steel structure. If controlled demolition was used, however, this fact has interesting implications when one considers that this destruction was coordinated with hijacked airplanes to “account for” the destruction. Bill dealt with this “smoking gun” in his first novel, Sedition Awakening. He has given a lot of thought to the circumstances surrounding this event, and does not like his conclusions at all.

In Bill's view, the fundamental source of this, and many other problems our country faces, is traceable to a practice that our country has suffered since its inception that has now grown completely out of control. Since the founding of the United States, those with money sufficient to persuade or induce morally challenged politicians to provide favorable legislation, have been able to achieve this end through the indirect path of “being their friend” and providing them with election “support.” When those providing “support” are corporations, their stockholders explicitly agree that these expenditures are meant entirely to facilitate company profit. If they were for a “charitable end,” say, they would be illegal violations of corporate fiduciary responsibilities to those stockholders. Conversely, a morally challenged politician may “solicit” support from wealthy “donors” by providing, or promising to provide, favorable legislation. Legislation that may be provided with the implicit threat that the “friendship” offered is frangible. In both instances either a service or money is being used to persuade or induce, and this relationship is completely understood by all parties involved. The point of the relationship is obvious, and no “backroom deal” is necessary. Both practices constitute bribery. Both practices skew representation, and the distribution of wealth representation facilitates, in favor of those who can afford to bribe. Unfortunately, democracy cannot exist under this system. Moreover, a populace that allows this practice to dominate in their government will always find that their government has become either dysfunctional or focused entirely on the interests of the wealthy. Contrary interests, each with their own coin-operated politicians, will always insure dysfunction; and money in large quantities is almost always a persuasive argument. In the United States a simple majority of corrupt politicians is sufficient to insure complete plutocratic control of the country.

So Bill has again remembered the promise he made in Hong Kong, but this time he's trying to help the people of his own country by writing, calling attention to problems, and suggesting positive approaches to a solution (Revolution Handbook). And also by warning his countrymen of the imminent, horrid and entirely predictable outcome of present practices (Hubris Ark).