Doug Baldwin

I began publishing books when I turned seventy years old. In retirement, I finally had the time to collect and share my thoughts. In those seven decades, I married Katherine Louise Jones, fathered three kids, Noah, Tyler, and Anna, traveled around the world for two years as a middle-class American hippy, got a bachelor’s degree in visual science, a doctorate in optometry, and then a master’s degree in blind rehabilitation. I taught navigational skills to children in special education at the Millet Learning Center in Saginaw, Michigan for over thirty years, set up a vision clinic for handicapped kids (the Mid-Michigan Special Needs Vision Clinic), and I founded a non-profit agency to bring high-tech to navigationally disabled children. I have had a charmed life, and I am deeply grateful for the blessings that came my way.

All my life I have been fascinated with human cognition, especially the evolution of consciousness. During retirement, I also became fascinated with esotericism, Buddhism, and philosophy. My mind loves to synthesize; therefore, I was not surprised as all my interests, passions, and experiences began to coalesce.

I took a class at Saginaw Valley State University (SVSU) in 2016 called “How to Self-Publish.” As a class project, I wrote a book called “Bugs, Blindness, and the Pursuit of Happiness,” which I then self-published on Amazon. I was working on three books when I took the class at SVSU, so I simply took vignettes from those three works-in-progress and published them; “Bugs, Blindness, and the Pursuit of Happiness” was a way to introduce future books. I was quite pleased with the result and family and friends were supportive. I was then encouraged to complete my other three books and to self-publish them.

The next two books were “pretty dense” (as my daughter Anna told me). In retrospect, the books are really textbooks; they are loaded with research-based quotes and lengthy discussions of philosophy and science. “Consciousness: A New Slant on an Old Conundrum,” (2017) was based on a systems theory (dual-process theory). The main ideas for the book came like a flood. I woke up many mornings with my head full of new insights.

As I reflect on that second book, I realize that my insights were quite significant. I had stumbled onto something important. In my heart, I sincerely feel that I have made a significant contribution to the study of consciousness. It will be up to others to judge the value of these books.

But here I sit, in Saginaw Michigan, banging away on my keyboard, with essentially no way to share my insights. I have no university connections, I am not on the New Age lecture circuit, and quite honestly, I am running out of energy as I age. Therefore, I am deeply grateful that Amazon has championed self-publishing. At the least, my ideas, insights, and passions can exist in cyberspace, waiting to be discovered by those who share my path.

After I had solved the dilemma of consciousness (grin), I realized that there were consequences and responsibilities that arose from this knowledge. I felt driven to write a third book to explore these responsibilities. That third book is called “The Confusion Caused by Being Your Own Twin” (2018). This was a powerfully satisfying book. However, it was still dense and complex; I know my friends and family struggled as they tried to absorb the dialogue. But I also know that this is a valuable book. I deeply hope that students of consciousness will discover my insights and include the ideas in their own research.

After a meeting of the Saginaw Philosophy Club one Saturday morning in 2018, I was asked to summarize the philosophy behind my books. During the discussion, Dr. David Stanton, a developmental genetics professor at SVSU—and an avid science fiction fan—suggested that I take my esoteric and philosophical musings and write a sci fi book. That way, David said to me, with a grin, I could slip in the heavy science without inflicting undo pain on the reader. Because of David’s support, I eventually published “A Martyr for Mandelbrot” (2019). Writing that sci fi book was tremendous fun—the book just about wrote itself.

When a few friends read "A Martyr for Mandelbrot” they were puzzled; they could not resolve what the novel was trying to say. That is because “A Martyr for Mandelbrot” is not a novel. It is a mind dump, a catharsis, a self-conscious reflection on past and impending death. I am a futurist, so this book is despair mixed with humor, a reflection on the battle between syntropy and entropy, a witnessing of the decline of natural humanity. “A Martyr for Mandelbrot” is also a scream against the invasion of artificial love, fake love, love for profit. Finally, throughout the book is a rage against failing sexuality as age depletes the body. I love the book. It is funny and sad and profound.

In May 2021, I published two books about Helen Keller, "The Esoteric Helen Keller" and "Helen Keller: A Timeline of Her Life." I am writing a multi-volume set of books under the title "Knights for the Blind in the Battle against Darkness"--"The Esoteric Helen Keller" is Volume One. I spent my career, over thirty years, working with blind children; I felt that I was in a unique position to add new insights to the Helen Keller story.

In the summer of 2024, I completed Volume Two of the Knights series, a book about my friend and colleague Daniel Kish who is internationally known as the blind man who navigates using echolocation. Daniel, like Helen Keller, is on a global mission to improve the lives of blind individuals. Daniel's book, which we co-authored, is called "Blind Man Watching, The Echolocation Legacy of Daniel Kish."

I have also completed a second book about Daniel. In his first book, I was unable to discuss his spiritual journey and his (and my own) complex philosophy. The first book had gotten too long to include these important subjects. The second book is called "Swedenborg's Dilemma: The Origin of Human Duality." It was clear to me that this book should also be co-authored since Daniel edited and commented throughout the writing process.

Also, in the pipeline, I am writing a multi-volume set of history books about a Scottish Settlement in southeastern Michigan. Volume One was published in November 2024. I have begun writing the second volume in the series about the Swedenborgian Christians who came to southeastern Michigan before the American Civil War.

I completed a memoir called "Growing Old on the Road, Searching for Serendipity" in January 2025. I saved some valuable black and white photos in this book, which greatly pleases me since they now exist in cyberspace rather than in boxes in my basement. I am nearing 80 so I will call this Volume One of my senior adolescence and hope that future memoirs will be gifted to me. I am already working on volume two: "Further on Down the Road."

In February 2025, I sent a book of poems off to my publisher at Sleeping Cat Books for editing. This book is called "Reflections on Having no Future: Poems Written in Ted Roethke's House." Theodore Roethke is Saginaw, Michigan's Pulitzer Prize winning poet. The Friends of Theodore Roethke open the ancestral home to writers. It was a great honor to write at the table where Ted Roethke wrote his famous poems. "Reflections on Having no Future" was published in March and is now available on Amazon.

I am toying with the idea of going to France to write Volume Three of "Knights for the Blind in the Battle against Darkness," about blind French resistance fighter Jacques Lusseyran. We shall see how the future unfolds.

In August 2025, I published a second edition of my first book, Bugs Blindness and the Pursuit of Happiness (2016). I added AI generated images and included a few more black and white photos. There were rookie typos in the book because I didn’t have an editor then. Now I have a great editor, Sarah Holroyd, at Sleeping Cat Books. Sarah cleaned up the look and feel of the new edition. The highlight of this second edition is the afterword written by my good friend and colleague Daniel Kish. I had forgotten that Daniel had edited this book ten years ago and probably should have been listed as a co-author. Daniel tells me that parents of blind children read this book. That news brings joy and tears at the same time. I lowered the price of the book so that more people could afford the print version; the e-version is in e-pub format, which can be shared for free.

I probably should have started writing when I was younger because, obviously, I am going to run out of real estate before these ambitious projects can be completed, but what a wonderful way to go down swinging. I prefer going down in flames, rather than fading away.

I am greatly enjoying my senior years; I am a mentor for those who feel they are too old to make their voices heard. All my books are memoirs, of course; they contain what one human mind had to say at a certain time in history. I will soon become one of the ancestors, a voice from the past. But I am okay with that. Thanks for stopping by.