Just Hello

Hello Mark or Whom Ever;

I have been wondering why I was offered this opportunity.

Let me explain, I am a retired Viet Nam vet. After spending a year in the hospital where they gave Hepatitis C , the Army retired me at 100% when I was nineteen. Then I spent another year in a Veterans hospital. I’m not lamenting the retirement per se. It did allow me to raise two sets of children, my own and my ex-wife’s.

However I never learned anything of business. I was happy not to as I was a very peaceful person, and business was too cut throat to me. After the war I changed from aggression to peace. I couldn’t do anything that I considered hurtful to people. I loved people (not in job lots but one to one or in small groups. Large groups make me nervous, so I moved from Everett, WA. to a small town).

I love people enough that I went back to school in 1991 (I quit before high school). I got a B.A. in Theology and became a volunteer Pastor.

I always felt there was more to Adam and Eve than we’ve been taught. Not their stories, but their minds. Something man no longer has, but maybe could get back with time. You seemed to hint at it when you explained what Jesus was teaching His disciples.

A couple of years back I was in an accident that caused brain damage. I wasn’t myself for three weeks. My children were told I might never come back. I’ve had a full recovery. But its left me wondering why, who am I, what am I that I should survive.

I’m building a house at this time so I wasn’t reading your manuscripts a fast or as often as I should. I understood the first, but it didn’t seem to apply to me (business), but Superpuzzle I have had a hard time putting down. I find that in some places I know what is going to happen before it does, others are pleasant surprises. I attribute that to the fact that I have always loved to read. I’ve read many stories fiction and nonfiction along the lines of this one.

You need to be real with children or they will quickly know your full of BS. We teach our children at an early age that they must grow up fast. Then we teach them that the day they were born they began the process of dieing. We teach them how to be cruel. We take their innocence from them at a early age. In your book they were saved at an early age from that.

While reading Superpuzzle when came to Operation I, I stopped reading for three or four days. I knew what was going to happen and didn’t want to face it. I thought it was because of the patients death. It wasn’t until I read it that I found it was because of the pain of the operating team and the world when Martin died. I didn’t wish to share in the pain his loss caused.

You sent your ship to another planet to save a life. But you never went into why we aren’t visited. I’ve thought for years that might be because we are in quarantine. Until we’re ready for it, all that would happen is, that we would stop advancing as a culture. Maybe when we get past the Nuclear Threshold.

I love to study and to think, I’m no genius but learning is fun, and sometimes worrying. I get a bit impatient that I’m not learning fast enough. Oh well you can’t learn everything all at once and hope to retain it.

I’m not completely excepting of everything, but I have an open mind that is willing to wait and learn. And maybe be convinced by truth.

Arthur (Art) W. Ralls