Mark my words

My words

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;q=reveal&oq=reveal&aq=f&aqi=g10&aql=&gs_sm=3&gs_upl=173826l177084l0l177646l13l10l0l0l0l0l511l1459l4-2.1l3l0

Battle me like what did you expect from me
did you want me to step to your face
did you want to get next to me
bring you to extacy
well you see that not my job
to praise you with grace
get on top of your pace
get you licked and fuck your face
my lyrics are orgasmic super fantastic erratic and sporadic I want to leave u extatic cause you know I be compassionate
get that groove down to the inner depths of your soul
I gotta goal
need to make you wet get hot and work up a sweat
so you can bet on a sublime beat
from my heat it really kind of sweet
but this is just a tease
leaving many layers in this rhyme because old school music is just fine
but let's rewind to that bump and grind the kind u no longer find

oh a wah let's save the day get your on the floor tonight make my day
repeat *3

so if you like this style then you getting my flavor and I you can savor
I insist I like to twist roll up my hips and put my back in to it a bit getting low
with the flow like a pro always on the go
give it to me rough and hard on the boulevard get begging unfortunately more just hooked on hardcore
waiting some type of score to make me tingle and jingle this is my new single
bust a move on the dance floor have a drink relax get it on like dawn carry on

oh a wah let's save the day get your on the floor tonight make my day
repeat *3ascending from heaven
I'm deadly like 24/7
oh and did I mention with every word
I relate my intention
so pay attention
cause each moment is full of my affection
I love to love you down
take you to town
and shoot like a star
so high and and far
let's raise the bar start the car
show off my flavor
so I can savor
the sweet juicy taste at my pace
baby you can come fuck my face
spread my legs
stick it to me real
fruity like tootie frootie
or strawberry shortcake
a remake don't be afraid make
me shake and
scream from your wet ultimate steam
il be that girl of your dream
miss perfect let U jerk it
then swallow U whole
getting off is my goal
sexy noises you won't spoil
but eradicate
like fabric to your gel
lets make abtapestry
a heavenly creation
its wonderful so freaking amazing
you'll be pleased by what your tasting
some fine caviar elegant murr
is what your facing
expect me to be brutal
I enjoy the abusal
as long as its great
and gives me that ease
that leaves me begging for more
to get down on my knees
boy I'm asking please don't be a tease
give me what I want what it is I'm looking for cause I want it for eternity
I want it for life man
I could even handle being your wife
but I don't wanna bitch but you can count on it cause I'm definitely hoodrich
I've got heart I've got that spark
that makes you shine
always down to play a wine dine sixty nine you know I'm that kind of lady who is so fine the one u wanna call all mine
God is giving U a sign
just waiting in you to be fresh
so get undressed and lay it on me good
lets knock on wood its all good in my hood
be my bestfriend
my lover and I won't act like your mother
but we'll be especially good to each other
I love U
ur my nasty outcast from the past
so bend over and I'll kiss ur ass
if U let me come and get me

accuse assault battery break-in capital contract cover crack crime criminal(a) criminal(n) DUI fence finger flash forge frame fraud gang gangster genocide getaway godfather grass hit job malpractice massacre(n) massacre(v) mug murder(n) murder(v) nick offence piracy plant possession protection pull punk raid rape(v) rape(n) receiver receiving ring rob robbery roll scheme(n) scheme(v)shady steal suspect theft thief torch traffic underworld undesirable vice violate violation wanted

2020 The Predicted Future According to the CIA

“…the greatest benefits of globalization

will accrue to countries and groups that

can access and adopt new technologies.”

New technology applications will foster dramatic improvements in human knowledge and individual well-being.Such benefits include medical breakthroughs that begin to cure or mitigate some common diseases and stretch lifespans, applications that improve food and potable water production, and expansion of wireless communications and language translation technologies that will facilitate transnational business, commercial, andeven social and political relationships.Moreover, future technology trends will bemarked not only by acceleratingadvancements in individual technologies but also by a force-multiplying convergence of the technologies—information, biological, materials, and nanotechnologies—that have the potential to revolutionize all dimensions oflife. Materials enabled with nanotechnology’s sensors and facilitatedby information technology will produce myriad devices that will enhance health and alter business practices and models.Such materials will provide n\

ewknowledge about environment, improvesecurity, and reduce privacy. Such interactions of these technology trends—coupled with agile manufacturing methods and equipment as well asenergy, water, and transportation technologies—will help China’s andIndia’s prospects for joining the “FirstWorld.” Both countries are investing inbasic research in these fields and are well placed to be leaders in a number of keyfields. Europe risks slipping behind Asiain creating some of these technologies.The United States is still in a position to retain its overall lead, although it must increasingly compete with Asia and may lose significant ground in some sectors.

Craziness

24/7 Began 11,000 years ago 4015000 days which would mean we are in the era of 2000
There was daylight and there was night
There were pictures without words and the picture was with words
There were no laws and no numbers for commandments
Greed was sinful and not populated by numbers
Dinosaurs had a foodchain just like we do
God was wind fire water and earth
Gods sanctuaries were homes back in the day of cavemen when dying did not matter for they didn't have the knowledge to understand emotion
Graves were yards to our lands
The path on earth was led by the stars in the sky and the reflection of mirrors was the fairest of them all
A spiritual being was not good or bad
Food was a blessing one did not take for granted at all
The web was weaved because you were meant to get caught
Cellulars were to catch not to get caught
Tunnels were for shelter not regiments to get lost inside the world
Man was kind and Woman was one of a kind
Kingdoms were people not royalty and without jewels was loyalty
Betrayal came from killers people stuck together and killed only eat
Fear was invoked from survival of ANIMALS
Mistakes were lessons to teach us not guidance from teachers
Prophets of nothing profitted not
Before Human DNA Codes $ was a symbol not a figure
An amount was massive not a total
An Entrance was an opening not a four closed door
Paths were paved not streets
Signs were miracles not pickets
Fences were land not area borders
Water was health not wasted deaths
A mist a waterfall everything seems more clear
On shore is the days of our lives
Our days our numbered our lives are many men
Momentum is trivial the story was told wrong
Hands were meant for helping thats why we were given two
Sharing was oblivion and taking only what you need
Freedom is in the eye of the beholder
Beaty was inside of the land
Mountains were for climbing
Water and rain were resorces not sorces of space
A place was on earth and all around
Space was science fiction and not meant to be travelled
A temple was the hol answers not an unholy vessel
Books were meant to record thoughts not to tell lies
Parents were elders you were taught to respect
Respect was not demanded it was given to those that you knew
Knowledge came from lessons learned in life not from tall tales of men
To stand tall was to stand with your head high
How was why and why was how
Now was the present and then was the past and soon was the future
Time had no length because there was no length in time
Measurement was for eating not food for thought
Rainbows were a symbol to the after life
To be in good health meant your life would be good
Sickness meant soon you would pass on
Hunting was not meant for people to be hunted
Town were villages of folk not popultion of cities
Life was your work because you worked to live
Warriors were not feared they were a hope to end the wars
Churches are democracy instead of a place to bear thanks
Napolean---Concencus--Uninvite--Voting
Hold Your Hands Across the Borders To Declare World
Peace and you will have pieces to the equator
Listen not to your Idols but hear your inner voice your subconscious
Remember not what you have been taught and look back upon what you truly know like ABC-Hello Good-Bye Please Thank You and I
Begginning The End to fatal destiny
A journey for our souls
Travelling the future
Learning Lessons From the Past
Living instead of Hoping
Human Being instead of Co-existing
Testing...Testing...1 two 3
Never Sense Eternal Windows
Night Sleep Electric Walls
Nothing Scenery Empty Wishes
Nobody Signed Evil Will
4 nnnn 4 ssss 4 eeee 4 wwww
4 reign 4 seas 4 eves 4 double you
16 th Chapel
4 we sin in you and 1/4 All in All
Numbered Souls Enter Without
Nebulas Symptom Exodus Wrath
N.E.W.S. was rumours and talk
Glass was for seeing not meant for taking a look
North East West South
Up Down Right Left
Direction:Path-Way
Gateway:Door-Stairs
Net Strings Exit With
Choices-Good & Evil
God + Devil= A-Z = 26 = 8 =Spider Webs
Black Widow = Eve = Adam =Different= Dusk= Dawn = Dead
Solar System Shooting Star
Guardian of Evening angelic daylight describe tribunal souls
GateKeepers want to know why we should open the door?
Education equates senseless subjects of existence in heaven...
All In unfamiliar territory earth air water dimensions zero
Images were not meant to be taken they were ment for our memories to hold
Quotes are for the sum of artists not art for craft
Judgements were for actions not rulers
Cases were for study not laws
Jail should be punishable not punishnent
The body was a vessel for the soul before travelling to a new journey
Without riches poverty was cherished
Nature and weather was appreciated up on
Fire was waemth and heat bot the sign of the devil
Across was to travel not a symbol for death

We are like cattapillars who adventually weave a web for our cacoons once we go inside a deep slumber we tranform into a butterfly and once we learn and experience how to fly we shed our body and become one with the universe like a body of water

Surrey's Best: myiheartsite

vel

Immanuel Velikovsky
A Study in Anger in The Name of Science and Pride
In 2003 a book was released entitled "Immanuel Velikovsky The Truth Behind the Torment", by his daughter Ruth. The book documents the hate and prejudice against him and hints at the pain of rejection that he went through. Putting aside the brilliance of this one man momentarily, the event of the rise against him by accepted mainline scientists is worthy of serious attention and study. If for no other reason, but yet perhaps the most important reason, to see the mistakes of man when faced with a challenge to his/her pride. It strikes deeper than nearly any other instrument of emotion. This is clearly shown in the aforementioned book and in the few articles we will be posting on this page in the coming weeks and months. I recommend that you purchase the book, so that you can see the treachery for yourself as you read the articles that we post. The articles that we will post are some that have been previously published in magazines and periodicals mentioned in the book. These are not found on any other site on the web that we know of, but appear crucial to the understanding of the event. The impact on us in our day is evident. When we look to NASA for answers concerning the moon, Mars, or any other subject relative to our search for truth, you will see who you can trust and who you cannot trust.
In the first installment we look at the initial Harper's Magazine article that really got the fire going. It was written by Eric Larrabee, a Harper's editor at the time (January 1950). It was a prelude to the release of Velikovsky's first published book, Worlds In Collision. It's a supportive article and puts a "best foot" forward for Velikovsky. But the article created a firestorm that hasn't stopped today.

Harper's
MAGAZINE

The Day the Sun Stood Still

Eric Larrabee

The Old Testament describes an event over Palestine, when the Hebrew tribes were led into the battle of Beth-Horon by Joshua. "And he said in the sight of Israel, Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon; and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon. And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed, until the people had avenged themselves upon their enemies. Is this not written in the Book of Jasher? So the sun stood still in the midst of heaven, and hasted not to go down about a whole day."

The sun over Gibeon was in the forenoon sky. It would have been night or very early morning in the Western hemisphere.

There is a Mexican tradition, recorded in the Nahua-Indian in the Annals of Cuauhtitlan, that once in the remote past the night did not end for a long time. Friar Bernardino de Sahagun, a Spanish scholar who came to the New World a generation after Columbus, wrote that the American aborigines told of a great catastrophe, in which the sun had risen only a little way above the horizon, and then stood still. These are but two of the many traditions from all parts of the world which refer to a disturbance in the earth's orderly rotation.

It is conceivable that a large celestial body approaching the earth could exert an attraction sufficiently powerful to slow down its turning and make the sun appear to stop in the sky. The heads of comets are assumed to be composed of clusters of meteorites. If a comet were to come close to the earth, it would accompanied by meteors falling in a torent. The Old Testament, two verses above the description in the Book of Joshua of the sun standing still, contains the following passage: "As they fled from before Israel, and were going down to Beth-Horan... the Lord cast down great stones upon them in Azekah, and they died..."

In a book to be published in a few weeks called Worlds in Collision, Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky will present a great body of evidence to show that about 1500 B.C. a comet, a new member of the solar system, did pass close to the earth. This he places at the time of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. Fifty-two years later, at the time of Joshua, the same comet returned. At both of these two meetings with the comet, in Dr. Velikovsky's words, "according to the memory of mankind, the earth refused to play the chronometer by undisturbed rotation on its axis." Worlds in Collision is the first of four or more volumes in which the same author will maintain that not only on these two occasions but many times has the earth undergone vast and disastrous catatclysms in which its rotation was interrupted.

This article is an attempt, necessarily condensed and incomplete, to offer a preview of Dr. Velikovsky's findings. It is impossible to give here any idea of the extent of the material he has assembled to substantiate his argument. In the descriptions which follow, for every piece of evidence mentioned, Worlds in Collision, the first volume alone, contains scores more; and every statement in the book is supplied with numerous references.

Dr. Velikovsky's work crosses so many of the jurisdictional boundaries of learning that few experts could check it against their own competence. The main body of evidence in Worlds in Collision is historical, and the details are drawn from - among other sources - the Old Testament, the Talmud, the Egyptian papyri, the historical texts, traditions, and the legends of Rome, Greece, Babylonia, Arabia, Persia, India, Tibet, Finland, Iceland, West Africa, Siberia, China, Japan, the Pacific Islands, Mexico, and Peru. Dr. Velikovsky describes the area of his investigations as "anthropology in the broadest sense," concerning itself with "the nature of the cosmos and its history."

This universal student was born in Vitebsk, Russia in 1895. He studied natural sciences at Edinburgh, and law, economics, and history in Russia. He studied medicine at the Moscow Imperial University and medical law at the University of Charcow. Later he received his M.D. in Moscow.

During the early twenties he studied biology in Berlin. He foundede and edited the Scripta Universitatis, a joint work of Jewish scholars out of which grew the University of Jerusalem. Dr. Chaim Weizmann asked Dr. Velikovsky to direct the inception of that University, but he declined and in 1923 went to Palestine, where he practiced as a physician. Beginning in 1928 he studied psychoanalysis and the function of the brain in Zurich and Vienna, with Eugen Bleuler, Wilhelm Stekel, Alfred Adler, and other pioneers in the field. In 1937 he delivered an address to the International Psychological Congress, "On Psychological Roots of Hatred Among the Nations," and in 1939, five weeks before war broke out, he came to this country.

Dr. Velikovsky brought with him to America an unfinished book on Freud and His Heroes. In the study of Moses and Ikhnaton in preparation for this work, he came upon the idea that great physical catastrophes might be used to synchronize the the records of the ancient peoples of the Near East, and before the end of 1940 the main outlines of his work were clear. It is so far composed of Worlds in Collision, a natural history of the world catastrophes, and of two further volumes called Ages in Chaos. The latter (completed first though they will be published second) contain the elaborately documented rewriting of ancient history assumed in Worlds in Collision. "I ask a credence of the reader," says Dr. Velikovsky, "that he allow me to use this chronology until Ages in Chaos is published." He has been working on both books concurrently for the past nine years.

Professor Horace M. Kallen, former dean of the New School For Social Research, was among the first to read the manuscript of Worlds in Collision. "Even if I thought that Velikovsky's theories were entirely ungrounded," writes Professor Kallen of Velikovsky's historical and archaeological work, "I would treat them as an extraordinary achievement of the scientific and historical imgination....But it is myt belief that Velikovsky has supported his thesis with substantial evidence and made an effective and persuasive argument." Gordon A. Atwater, curator of the Hayden Planetarium, wrote to the Macmillan Company that, "the theories presented by Dr. Velikovsky are unique and should be presented to the world of science in order that the underpinning of modern science can be re-examined....I believe the author has done an outstanding job. In fact, he has gone beyond what normally be expected of a single individual."

II.
The comet, at the first of the two meetings reconstructed in Worlds in Collision, touched the earth with its gaseous tail, and one of the first signs of the encounter was a rain of fine, rusty pigment. The world turned red. “All the waters that were in the river,” reads the Book of Exodus, “were turned to blood.” The Manuscript Quiche’ of the Mayas tells of the rivers turning to blood, and so does the Papyrus Ipuwer of the Egyptians. Then, as the story continues in the Visuddhi-Magga of the Buddhists, the fine dust turned to coarse dust, “and then fine sand, and then coarse sand, and then grit, stones, up to boulders as large... as mighty trees on the hilltops.”

And with the shower of meteorites the earth stopped turning.

It came to rest so faced to the sun that a long night, darkened by the cosmic refuse sweeping in from interplanetary space, fell on Europe, Africa, the Americas, and the valleys of the Euphrates and the Indus. The Babylonians, the tribes of the Sudan, the Finns, the Greeks, the Peruvians, and the American Indians all have traditions of a long night accompanying a catastrophe which the earth did not survive. Further east, the Iranians saw the sun suspended several days in the sky. In china, it is said that in the reign of the Emperor Yahou the sun did not set for a number of days and all the forests burned.
We suppose that if the earth stopped turning it would destroy itself, as HG Wells imagined it would when his “man who could work miracles” commanded the same act. Our idea of momentum - and the Law of Gravitation, about which Dr. Velikovsky has much to say - leads us to assume that the earth’s surface would fly onward in the direction of its rotation and be torn apart. A great global catastrophe, with seas and continents changing their places,is in fact described in the traditions of mankind. The world gave every sign to its inhabitants of being on the brink of destruction.

Approached by the body of the comet, the earth was forced out of its regular motion; a major shock convulsed its entire surface. The major shift in the atmosphere caused by the approach of the comet and the stasis of the planet, itself produced hurricanes of enormous velocity and force. “The face of the earth changed,” writes Dr. Velikovsky, summarizing the Mayan account from the Manuscript Troano, “mountains collapsed, other mountains grew and rose over the onrushing cataract of water driven from the oceanic spaces, numberless rivers lost their beds, and a wild tornado moved through the debris descending from the sky.”

The human population was decimated and many species of animals perished entirely. The surface of the earth burst. Three Mexican manuscripts tell how everywhere in the Western hemisphere new mountains came into being. New volcanos opened and fissures in the flat land threw forth fire and smoke and liquid basalt. The rivers steamed and the sea boiled. The Zendi-Avesta of the Persians says that a star made the sea boil. The Polynesians say that a star caused new islands to appear.

It was the tenth plague of Egypt, the night of Passover, when the Lord passed over the huts of the Israelites and struck the mansions of the Egyptians (the light rush houses would survive and earthquake more easily than heavy stone ones). “There was not a house where there was not one dead,” says the Book of Exodus, and St. Jerome wrote that “in the night in which Exodus took place, all the temples of Egypt were destroyed either by an earth shock or by the thunderbolt.” The head of the comet cam close to the earth, breaking through the darkness of the dust cloud, and the Hebrew tradition tells that the last night of the Jews in Egypt was as bright as the noon of the summer solstice.

The blow fell at midnight. Dr. Velikovsky observes in passing that as the israelites counted the days from sunset it was for them the 14th Aviv; and, ever since, the Passover has been celebrated on the fourteenth day of the first month of spring. The Egyptians counted from sunrise, as we do, and for them it was the 13th Thout, a day forever after unlucky. As for the thirteenth of any month, said the Egyptians, “thou shalt not do anything on this day.” The Aztecs also counted the day from sunrise, and in their calendar it was noted that on the 13th Olin, a month called “earthquake,” a new world age had come into being.

When a comet encounters a planet, it may become entangled and drawn from its path, then forced into a new orbit, and finally liberated. This is what happened to Lexell’s comet, which was captured by Jupiter and its moons in 1767 and did not free itself until 1779. Some form of balance between attraction and inertia was maintained for twelve years; Jupiter and the comet did not crash together. Neither, according to Dr. Velikovsky’s thesis, did the earth and the comet that came near it in 1500 b.c. They exchanged discharges of electrical potential.

The action of the sun and the moon on the earth produces the ocean tides. If the earth were to slow down, the seas would first recede toward the poles; but the attraction of a large comet close to the earth would draw them back toward itself and heap them high in the air. The story of the seas divided and then rising to break over the land is widespread. The Choctaw Indians say that when the land was in darkness a bright light appeared in the north, “but it was mountain-high waves, coming nearer”; the Peruvians say that the ocean left the shore and inundated the continent; the Chinese annals say that in the reign of the Emperor Yahou a great tidal wave broke over the mountains into the Chinese Empire and flooded the land for decades.

The tides carried huge rocks along them. For instance, the Madison Boulder, near Conway, New Hampshire, is a ten-thousand-ton piece of granite quite different from the bedrock beneath it. An early nineteenth century explanation of this and other “erratic” boulders was that great tidal waves, originating in the north, must have swept the rocks and geologic till (clay, mud and gravel) across the land. According to the calculations based on the amount erosion under them, the boulders were deposited in their places less than six thousand years ago. It has been assumed that the stones were drawn along by the glacial ice sheet, but the disquieting fact is that accumulations of rock were moved from lower latitudes to higher latitudes - and even uphill toward the Himalaya, through the existing glaciers push stones down, not up, the slopes.

At the Sea of the Passage the Israelite tribes saw the water drawn aside and heaped up in a double tide; and, after they crossed, the waters of the Mediterranean fell and broke into the Red Sea ina great wave. “It was an unusual event,” writes Dr. Velikovsky, “and because it was unusual it became the most impressive recollection in the long history of this people. All peoples and nations were blasted by the same fire and shattered in the same fury. The tribes of Israel on the shore of a sea found in this annihilation their salvation from bondage. They escaped destruction but their oppressors perished before their eyes. They extolled their Creator, took upon themselves the burden of moral rules, and considered themselves chosen for a great destiny.”

Here is what Dr. Velikovsky’s description of the pageant that took place in the sky:
When the tidal waves reached their highest point, and the seas were torn apart,
a tremendous spark flew between the earth and the globe of the comet, which
instantly pushed down the miles-high billows. Meanwhile, the tail of the comet and
its head, having become entangled with each other by their close contact with the
earth, exchanged violent discharges of electricity. It looked like a battle between
the brilliant globe and the dark column of smoke. In the exchange of electrical
potentials, the tail and the head were attracted one to the other and repelled one
from the other. From the serpent like tail extensions grew, and it lost the form of a
column. It now looked like a furious animal with legs and many heads. The discharges
tore the column to pieces, a process that was accompanied by the brilliant globe
buried in the sea, or wherever the meteorites fell. The gases of the tail subsequently
enveloped the earth.

To the peoples of the earth below who witnessed this spectacle, the head of the comet and its tail seemed to be two separate bodies, The bright globe fought the “crooked serpent” and destroyed it, thus saving the world from further harm. It would be difficult, Dr. Velikovsky writes, “to find a people or a tribe on earth that does not have the same motif at the very focus of its religious beliefs.” The great spark that flew between the comet and Earth is remembered as the bolt of lightning, placed in the hand of a god who threw this thunderbolt at a world overwhelmed by water and fire: Zeus of the Greeks, Odin of the Icelanders, Ukko of the Finns, Wotan of the Germans, Mazda of the Persians, Marduk of the Babylonians, Siva of the Hindus. The pattern of conflict between the comet and its tail takes almost identical form in the battles of Zeus with Typhon, Isis with Seth, Vishnu with the Serpent, Indra with Rahu, marduk with Tiamat, Ormuzd with Ahriman. “A terrible comet was seen by the people of Ethiopia and Egypt,” wrote Pliny in his Natural History, “to which Typhon , the king of that period gave his name; it had a fiery appearance and was twisted like a coil, and it was very grim to behold; it was not really a star so much as what might be called a ball of fire.”

The earth was wrapped for decades in the gases of the comet and the dust of exploding volcanoes. No green thing could grow. The chinese called this time the Valley of Obscurity and the Somber Residence; the Nordics called it the Twilight of the Gods. According to the Annals of Cuauhtitlan there was darkness in Mexico for twenty-five years. The American Indians say that it was not until the fifteenth year that plants would bloom. And for the Hebrew tribes, who had been led out of bondage by the pillar of smoke by day and of fire by night, this was the Shadow of Death.

How did mankind live when nothing grew? The tail of a comet is composed of carbon and hydrogen gases, and these elements were in suspension in the earth’s atmosphere after the comet departed. The Hindu Vedas, the egyptian papyri, and the Hebrew legends say that the wind smelled sweet, and eventually the carbohydrates combining in the air precipitated. mankind fed on morning dew, say the Icelandic traditions, and the Vedas tell of the honey-lash falling - as the Greeks say ambrosia all fell - from the clouds. Where the honey-frost fell on the waters, it turned them milky and sweet. Ovid, the Vedas, and the Egyptians say the rivers flowed with milk and honey. The precipitate also fell among the Israelites, they called it Manna.

III.
The astronomical records of the ancient past raise perplexing issues. A scholar who examined the computations of the longest and shortest shadows observed at noontime in China about 1100 B.C. remarked that “they do not really represent the true lengths.” The Hindu astronomical tables compiled by the Brahmans show a uniform error of 21 degrees 46’. The astronomical tablets of of Babylon of the eighth century B.C. present three different schedules of planetary motion. The Venus Tables of Babylon, excavated by Sir henry Layard from the ruins of the library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh, show an irregular behavior of the planet Venus that differs from modern observations not by minutes but by weeks and months. The water clock of the Amon Temple of Karnak is consistently inaccurate for day and night, at any season, in the latitudes of Egypt. The shadow clock found at Fayum, Egypt, originating in the eight century B.C., will not show time correctly at Fayum or anywhere else in Egypt. And in the tomb of Senmut, the architect of Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt, there is an astronomical panel in the ceiling which refers to an earlier period; it is completely reversed and shows Orion Sirius group proceeding in the wrong direction.

Dr. Velikovsky presents historical evidence that these ancient records were not incorrect at the time when they were made. Astronomers will find this particular suggestion difficult to take, as the calculations of contemporary astronomy are precise and the play of mechanical forces on which they are based has been well understood for over two hundred years. Celestial mechanics, in fact, is one of the few sciences that has not been rudely disturbed by the discoveries of the past century, for the behavior of the solar system can be predicted so accurately on mechanical principles that no one has been able to replace them by another. Even with the tiny discrepancies which need the modification of the Theory of Relativity, the planets follow the immutable Law of Gravitation. They roll on and on, but only because the primevil inertia implanted within them.

Dr. Velikovsky willingly conceded that the behavior of the earth and the comet in his description is not in accord with the celestial mechanics of Newton. Indeed, it invites skepticism as to the infallibility of the law of Gravitation, a law heretofore so firmly established that it has never been successfully combined into one system with the laws of electromagnetics. It is Dr. Velikovsky’s contention that over three thousand years ago Nature performed a great experiment, in which it was demonstrated that the electromagnetic laws are as supreme in the heavens as they are inside the atom.
Niels Bohr was one of the first to compare the atom with the sun and the planets. The nucleus is like the sun, and the electrons are like the planets - but in applying the quantum theory to the atom it was found that things happen inside it that are not supposed to happen in the solar system. John J. O’Neill, science editor of the New york Herald Tribune, has written this description of the atom’s peculiarities:

In the atom, electrons revolve around the nucleus of the atom in a quiet,
orderly, orbital, rotation, just like the earth moving around the sun, and may
go through billions of rotations, or atomic years, without any major changes
taking place. Suddenly the atom emits a quantum of energy, and [an] electron
drops to an orbit nearer the nucleus, where its “year” is shorter, or the reverse
may happen: a quantum of energy is absorbed by the atom, and [an] electron
jumps to a higher, or outer orbit, where its year is longer.

In the same article from which this quotation is taken, Mr. O’Neill discussed the probable impact of Dr. Velikovsky’s research on the comfortable assumption that the planets and the jumping electron have nothing gin common. “Dr. Velikovsky finds evidence for new planets appearing in the sky,” wrote Mr. O’Neill, “and for the earth being struck by and passing through tails of comets.... [His work] presents a stupendous panorama of terrestrial and human history which will stand as a challenge to scientists to frame a realistic picture of the cosmos.

A charged body which rotates creates a magnetic field. The sun is a charged body, and it rotates, and charged particles arrive from it in a continuous stream. The earth is a charged body, and it rotates, and it possesses a magnetic field. If the magnetic field of the sun were to govern the earth’s motion, then after an encounter with a comet the earth could resume its rotation, though on a changed orbit. If it is true that the comet and the earth exchanged electrical discharges, as Dr. Velikovsky maintains that they did, then there may be even reason to suppose that the earth’s “inertia” is electrical in character. How do we know that the earth and the planets are so different from the electrons inside the atom. The answer has been phrased thus: “We do not read in the morning paper that Saturn and Mars have changed their places.” But we do read in the ancient records, says Dr. Velikovsky, that Venus, mars, and Earth have changed theirs.

Venus is the Morning and the Evening Star. It is the most conspicuous of the planets. Early astronomers observed its motion with great care, and the Mexicans computed the day when they thought the world would end by a cycle of fifty-two years based on Venus. So bright is Venus in the sky, in fact, that it is most remarkable to fin no record of its existence prior to the second millennium B.C.

Early Babylonian astronomy counted four planets and four only - Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, and Mercury. In the Hindu table of the planets attributed to 3012 B.C., Venus alone is missing, and it is said that the Brahmans “never mentioned five planets.” Later Venus is called “the great star that joins the other great stars” by the Babylonians. In all traditions the Morning Star is described as having a special birth, an event of great significance to the Tahitians, the Eskimos, and the Buriats, the Kirghiz, and the Yakuts of Siberia, as well as to more sophisticated peoples. Hesiod said the Phaeton, whose name means blazing star, drove the chariot of the sun too close to the earth, disturbing its rotation and was later changed into the Morning Star. The Chinese tell of a “brilliant Star” that appeared in the region of Yahou, and a Samaritan chronicle says that during the invasion of palestine by Joshua “a star arose out of the east against which all magic is in vain.” At the time of great catastrophes, Quetzalcoatl, the Venus of the Mayans, appeared in the sky for the first time. And the Chaldeans and the Chinese are in agreement that Venus “rivaled the sun in brightness.”

Dr. Velikovsky brings strong evidence to bear that the comet which so terrorized the earth was in fact the planet Venus - newly born, by eruption from a larger planet. While is was still a comet, Venus wandered erratically, which is why its course was so closely watched, why the Venus Tablets of Nineveh do not seem to make sense, and why the appearance of a comet has always aroused premonitions of disaster everywhere in the world. The dreaded comet Venus that was later to become a planet had many names -- Tistrya, Ishtar, Astarte, Isis, Baal, Beelzebub, Lucifer. Often it was confused with Jupiter (Isis in Egypt and Ishtar in Babylon were first names for Venus), for Jupiter was the planet from which Venus erupted as a planet.

Student of Greek and Roman mythology may object that according to legend it was Pallas Athene, or Minerva, who “sprang full grown from the brow of Jupiter.” The classical scholar may wonder, however, why Greek mythology contains no deity for the planet Venus and no planet for the deity Pallas Athene. The Greek equivalent of the Roman “Venus” was Aphrodite, who was identified with the Moon. The answer, once known but long forgotten, is that Pallas Athene was the Greek name for the planet Venus. (Plutarch said that Minerva of the Romans and Athene of the Greeks were the same as Isis of the Egyptians; Pliny said that Isis was the planet Venus.) The birth of Pallas Athene was “a day of wrath in all the calendars of ancient Chaldea.” During the birth of Athene, described in a Homeric hymn, the earth reeled and the sun stopped for a “long while”.

For many centuries the inhabitants of the earth were in such fear of Venus that human sacrifice was practiced in both hemispheres in the hope of placating its wrath. The Mexicans were so profoundly affected by the fifty-two year interval between Venus’ two encounters with the earth the they adopted the period in their calendar and made bloody sacrifices to Quetzalcoatl - the feathered serpent” who was identified with the Morning Star - when fifty-two years passed without harm. The years of terror lasted until the seventh century B.C. Venus, as the result of an encounter with another body, took up its present orbit and changed from a wild comet to a tame planet. Venus’ flirtation with another planet - that is, with Mars -- is a common theme in mythology. This meeting, a battle of Athene with the God of War, is described in the lliad, a conflict in the heavens which took place at the same time as the siege of Troy, “It is the conjunction of venus and Mars,” wrote Kucien, “that created the poetry of Homer.

The encounter between Venus and Mars disturbed Mars’ orbit, and at intervals of fifteen years Mars also passed close to the earth. On two days in particular - February 26, 747 B.C. and March 23, 687 B.C. - Mars caused a repetition of the earlier catastrophes on a smaller scale. In the year 747 B.C. a new calendar was introduced in the Middle East. It began on the 26th of February, and in the calendar of Mexico the 26th of February was also counted as New Year’s Day. It is during this period that the worship of Mars came into prominence among peoples whose institutions were not fully formed. The Romans had a vigorous cult of mars and regarded Mars as their national god, the founder of their state, and father of Romulus. The chief celebration of the Roams mars cult was on the 23rd of March. On the night of the 23rd of March, 687 B.C., the army of Sennacherib, the Assyrian king who invaded Palestine, was destroyed by a blast of fire from the sky. “On the 23rd of March, 687 B.C.,” wrote Edouard Biot in his catalogue of the meteors which were observed in ancient China, the fixed stars were not visible but, “in the middle of the night stars fell like rain.”

The battle between Venus and Mars ended with Venus, shorn of its power to disturb humankind, rotating on the the serene orbit it now occupies. Venus seemed to have fallen from its earlier eminence. This was the period of the Hebrew Prophets, men of astronomical skill who from watchtowers built in Judea, as elsewhere in the East (“Watchman, what of the night?”) recorded and predicted Mars’ fifteen-year approach to the earth and warned the people and their kings of coming catastrophes. After an upheaval that took place in the eighth century B.C., “Isaiah, Joel, Hosea, and Micah insisted unanimously and with great emphasis on the inevitability of another encounter of the earth with some cosmic body.” Their prophecies were fulfilled on the days when Mars came close to the earth and moved it from its place.

Finally they observed that a hated enemy - Beelzebub, the Morning Star, who had provoked pagan worship - was no longer powerful. Venus, which had “weakened the nations” and had tried to ascend on high, was cut down to the ground. “How art thou fallen from heaven,” wrote Isaiah, “Oh Lucifer, son of the morning.”

IV.
The history of the calendar is often used to exhibit the conquest of ignorance. Gradually the errors seem to have been removed from its first primitive efforts to codify time, until now we pride ourselves on a system that closely approximates the actual movements of the earth and its moon. Yet it is curious that the ancients should have used such hopelessly inaccurate calendars when their measurements of celestial motion were so carefully made. The Mexicans knew that the synodical moon period consists of 29.5209 days, a computation more exact than that of the Gregorian calendar, which was not introduced into Europe until long after America was discovered.

The introduction of a new calendar in 747 B.C. indicates to Dr. velikovsky that the orbit of the earth - the length of the year, the months, and the seasons - had actually changed. Previous to this time the Chinese, the Hindus, the persians, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Israelites, the Egyptians, the Romans,and the Mayans all used a calendar of twelve lunations of thirty days each, a year of 360 days. During the period of Mars’ meetings with the earth, the length of the seasons changed repeatedly, but at some time during the seventh century B.C. all these nations add five days to their calendars. The Persians called the five days Gatha days, the Egyptians' called them “the days which are above the year”, and the Mayans called them the “days without a name”. If the earlier calendars were merely mistakes, then in a man’s lifetime and error would have accumulated of an entire year, a dislocation in harvest cycles which could not have been ignored even in the most primitive of agricultural societies.

But more than the development of the calendar hangs on the assumption we make today: that the earth has rotated through millions of uninterrupted years, each consisting of 365 days, 5 hours and 48 minutes. Philosophy, science, religion - there is scarcely an area of knowledge or conviction invulnerable to Dr. Velikovsky’s detailed and documented denial that the earth’s history has been one of peaceful evolution. The long erosions of wind and rain, the slow buckling and folding of sedimented rock, and the infinitely graduated series of the developing species have hitherto provided a background of certainty. Now these orderly images have been challenged, and in their place a scholar has offered a basis of evidence for the astonishing pattern of catastrophe implicit in the world traditions. “If Velikovsky’s thesis should withstand the test of time and become generally accepted,” Clifton Fadiman writes, “revolutionary consequences ensue; and prevailing views in a dozen fields - including evolution, mythology, gravitation, and particularly classical and Biblical history - will have to be radically revised”.

“Collective amnesia” is the phrase Dr. Velikovsky uses to describe the “psychological phenomenon ...[in which] the most terrifying events of the past may be forgotten or displaced into the subconscious mind,” obscuring the real meaning of many archaeological discoveries and historical texts. Trained in psychoanalysis as well as in history, he is aware of the parallel between the reconstruction of buried events from the past of an individual and his own effort to bring to light the shattering experiences that affected all mankind.

In view of the cosmic upheavals of the past, our own time of trouble is dwarfed. There is also a hidden purpose in Dr. Velikovsky's book, a warning to the world that threatens to explode with hatred among the nations: the cosmic catastrophes may repeat themselves. “This world will be destroyed;” reads a passage from the Visuddhi-Magga which serves as motto for his final chapter, “also the mighty ocean will dry up; and this broad earth will be burned up. Therefore, sirs, cultivate friendliness; cultivate compassion.”

Bringing to this perspective all the apparatus of learning - from astronomy and physics to folklore, religion, geology, paleontology, biology and psychology - Dr. Velikovsky has undertaken the awesome task of making an “inquiry in the architectonics of the world and its history” and of applying the techniques of scholarship and psychoanalysis to the entire human race.

Gabor

Fall 2009, Vol. 41, No. 3

"I Wish to Acknowledge . . ."

By Jason R. Baron, Jeffery Hartley, and Ezequiel Berdichevsky

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––––––––––––––
David McCullough, Pulitzer
Prize–winning biographer of President Harry Truman,
researching at the Truman Library, ca. 1990.

(Harry S. Truman Library)

The names Claudia Anderson, Walter Hill, Michael Musick, Timothy Nenninger, Trevor Plante, John Taylor, and Steven Tilley, may not be as well known as some famous historians. But in the words of the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd—writing about NARA in another context—each of these archivists, and many more colleagues, are "macho heroes" in his or her own right.

They've been acclaimed for providing "invaluable assistance," being "especially helpful," serving as a "friendly and exceptionally knowledgeable guide," offering "wise suggestions and extraordinary assistance," acting as a "patient and assiduous pathfinder," and cited as proof that "the taxpayer is getting a good deal."

But even if the names aren't familiar, you've seen and admired their work.

That is, if you've read some books by well-known historians like Michael Beschloss, Rick Atkinson, David McCullough, Robert Caro, Douglas Brinkley, or Robert Dallek. Or even less famous authors like DeAnne Blanton and Lauren M. Cook, Jon T. Hoffman, and Edgar Leo Anderson. The compliments are from people like them.

Taylor, Plante, and the others are or were staff archivists at the National Archives to whom these noted historians, some of them Pulitzer Prize–winners, have turned for guidance and help when they were researching their books, many of which are now "must" reading for students of history.

These names are but a few of the hundreds of archivists, past and present, who work with authors and researchers every day to search the vast holdings of the National Archives nationwide—in Washington, D.C., and College Park and at regional archives and presidential libraries around the country. They help historians pursue the information they need to add new layers and new details to the story of America and its people.

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Trevor Plante has been praised by numerous authors for his diligence and invaluable assistance in finding key records.

(Foundation for the National Archives)

Occasionally, the archivist heavily influences the outcome of the research and the book that results; more often, he or she plays an important role in guiding the historian through the winding, and sometimes little-traveled, path through NARA's holdings. Sometimes authors thank these archivists by name and at other times they merely cite the "staff at the National Archives" or at a presidential library or regional archives.

Two-time Pulitzer Prize–winner McCullough summed up his feelings about the staff at the Truman Library in his acknowledgments in Truman, a biography of the 33rd President:

"There is no part of this book in which they have not played a role, both in what they have helped to uncover in the library collection and in what they themselves know of Truman's life from years of interest and study."

Vincent Bugliosi, writing in Reclaiming History:

The Assassination of John F. Kennedy,
noted that there was no way the book could have ended up being what it turned out to be "without the wonderful cooperation" he received from Tilley,

who is director of the Textual Services Division in the Access Program Unit of the Office of Records Services at NARA, as well as NARA archivist James Mathis.

Bugliosi's requests for large amounts of documents were continuous, the author recalls. "I kept wondering whether I'd soon be getting a letter from Steve or one of his assistants, saying, ‘Vince, please. Enough is enough,’ but I never did. What I always got, never accompanied by a complaint, was a very large envelope in the mail containing everything I had requested."

Tilley says he has "always gotten satisfaction from reference service, in providing help and guidance to researchers who came to the Archives for that help." He adds, "It is a sense of satisfaction in knowing that the author felt that my efforts were beneficial for the book or article, whether or not I agree with the conclusions reached." And that, he says, makes the job "interesting and worthwhile."

For 75 years, NARA archivists have found themselves key links in the writing of American history, providing valuable guidance, expertise, and assistance to thousands of authors looking to assemble the story of a particular aspect of the American experience.

"Historians rely heavily on archivists to orient them to new archives, to identify information not easily accessible, and to discover the research value of particular collections," wrote Catherine A. Johnson and Wendy M. Duff in "Chatting Up the Archivist: Social Capital and the Archival Researcher," in the Spring 2005 issue of The American Archivist.

This article goes on to trace the often underappreciated symbiotic relationship wherein archivists build up "intimate knowledge" of historical sources and help direct historians to sources and subjects that they would not have thought of on their own. In those cases, the archivist’s intimate knowledge, what Duff and Johnson term his or her "strong mental image," of a collection’s holdings becomes essential. Without that knowledge,critical sources would otherwise be overlooked. Similarly. Elsie Freeman Finch, in her book Advocating Archives, describes how the archivist plays multiple roles, simultaneously acting as "servant," "gatekeeper," and "partner" to the historian.

Civil War expert Plante says working with historians makes him a better archivist.

"I really enjoy talking to historians about the latest books that have come out on various topics to get their opinions of the books," he says. "I enjoy the back and forth conversation that takes place, of their telling me about books I was unaware of and vice versa. The conversations with historians definitely help keep me up to date in the field as I usually end up reading their recommendations, be it books on Civil War history or military history in general."

At the National Archives and Records Administration, archivists develop their "strong mental image" of a certain collection from the moment records are transferred to NARA for permanent storage.

Traditionally, records have come to the Archives in boxes from their originating agency, which has honed the shipment down to its most important records. Overall, only about 2 to 3 percent of all records generated by the federal government are deemed important enough to be permanently archived.

Depending on where an archivist works, he or she may be responsible for helping with the initial accession of the records, the review of those records, and the development of finding aids for those records. As a result, the archivist develops a comprehensive knowledge of the particular accession he or she is working with, such as records relating to a particular government function (e.g., foreign relations), stored in a particular medium (e.g., still pictures), or originating in a particular branch of the government (e.g., the Department of Commerce).

Archivists at locations all around NARA have been doing this for years. Although authors who have benefited from their work often acknowledge them in the final product, archivists view helping these authors as simply part of their job as steward of certain valuable records belonging to the people of the United States of America.

For example, Timothy Nenninger, who is chief of the reference section at the National Archives at College Park, receives plaudits from military historians. In Corps Commanders of the Bulge: Six American Generals and Victory in the Ardennes, Harold Winton writes that Nenninger "is an important asset to the study of military history in this country and a true friend to those who practice the craft."

Jon T. Hoffman in Chesty: The Story of Lieutenant General Lewis B. Puller, writes that Nenninger "performed his usual sterling service in unearthing boxes of records that otherwise seemed buried forever" and also cites archivist Richard Boylan for having "worked similar miracles" at the Washington National Records Center in Suitland, Maryland.

Both Robert K. Griffith, Jr., in Men Wanted For the U.S. Army, and Kathleen Broome Williams, in Grace Hopper—Admiral of the Cyber Sea, tell stories of Nenninger’s efforts to find new documents inspiring them to go on after these authors were "ready to give up" and "hit brick walls," respectively.

And Pulitzer Prize–winning historian Rick Atkinson’s The Day of Battle: The War in Sicily and Italy, 1943–1944, begins with a tribute to Nenninger that reads: "Virtually every page of this book bears Tim's imprint, and I am deeply grateful for his expertise, humor, friendship, and willingness to read a portion of the manuscript."

Working with people like these, Nenninger says, is not difficult because they were already knowledgeable about their subject, had realistic expectations about working with archival records, understood that NARA doesn't have everything, were receptive to advice, guidance, and direction—and "were not in a hurry."

These types of researchers account for less than 30 percent of on-site researchers, while most researchers are looking for something "pretty specific and easily identifiable," he said.

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The late John Taylor (seated) was an institution at the National Archives for over six decades, advising countless authors in the areas of World War II, the Cold War, and espionage. Pictured with him are former OSS agents (from left) Elizabeth McIntosh, Fisher Howe, and Barbara Podoski. (NARA)
Then there's the late John Taylor, for whom Nenninger once worked. Taylor was an institution unto himself during his six decades at the Archives and is mentioned in the prefaces and acknowledgments of countless books dealing with World War II, the Cold War, and the history of espionage over that period.

Michael Dobbs called him an "inexhaustible fount of information on World War II" in Saboteurs: The Nazi Raid on America. John Costello and Oleg Tsarev's acknowledgments section in Deadly Illusions referred to him as the "paradigm for all historical researchers," while Beschloss in The Conquerors referred to him as "redoubtable."

In 50 Days of War and Peace: July 16 to September 3, 1945, or Why Harry Dropped the Atomic Bomb, Edgar Leo Anderson recounts how Taylor gave him "the impetus to persevere over the years and complete the manuscript."

Iris Chang called Taylor "a friend and cherished fixture at the National Archives for more than half a century" and "one of the best allies an author could hope for," in The Chinese in America: A Narrative History. Chang further described Taylor as "compassionate," "profoundly wise," and "endlessly helpful," and credited him with playing a "special role" in the research of her book.

In Allen Dulles, Gentleman Spy, author Peter Grose notes, "I am only the latest in a long line of researchers to recognize a unique national resource in the person of John E. Taylor, who valued the fundamental freedom of information long before it became recognized in law."

Perhaps Edward S. Miller's acknowledgment in Bankrupting the Enemy: The U.S. Financial Siege of Japan before Pearl Harbor expressed it most succinctly when he called Taylor a "national treasure." One student intern reportedly put it simply: "Mr. Taylor knows everything."

The late Walter B. Hill, Jr., who was a senior archivist and subject area specialist in African American history, was cited often. Hill was described by Gerald Horne, author of Black and Brown: African Americans and the Mexican Revolution, as someone who not only provided "extraordinary assistance" on the writing of the book, but had also "become a good friend."

Other historians, such as Jeffrey Bolster, offer poetic tributes. In Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail, Bolster thanks Hill, John Vandereedt, and Aloha South as "archivists who steered me through the shoals of their collections." Hill provided guidance to many individuals researching African American history with his finding aids and guides to records pertaining to African Americans at the Archives.

Abraham Lincoln and Civil War–Reconstruction scholars have found much help at the Archives. In They Have Killed Papa Dead: The Road to Ford's Theater, Abraham Lincoln’s Murder and the Rage for Vengeance, Anthony Pitch thanks a host of archivists by name, but reserves his most interesting praise for Plante.

He notes that it was Civil War specialist Plante who "unwittingly" led him to "the discovery of an unpublished letter from Samuel Arnold asking Secretary of War Edwin Stanton for a job three months after he had agreed to help Booth kidnap Lincoln."

Pitch notes that after he "had told Plante [he] was on the lookout for correspondence from prisoners on the island garrison of Dry Tortugas," Plante suggested that Pitch look at records in the Office of the Quartermaster General. Shortly thereafter, Pitch "stumbled upon Arnold's sensational letter."

Plante and fellow Civil War expert Musick were singled out by Drew Gilpin Faust, who was a dean at the Radcliffe Institute working on a book, The Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War. Plante, she said in a Prologue interview last year, helped her dig out the stories of casualties during the Civil War. Musick greeted her on one of her visits to the Archives, with a couple of boxes of records, and the comment: "This will interest you."

Plante cites the relationship he developed with Faust while working on the book as typical of those that develop between authors and archivists who work together over longer periods.

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A forum on the 90th anniversary of the end of World War I held at the National Archives Building in November 2008 featured (from left), Edward M. Coffman, Mitch Yockelson, Richard Boylan, Douglas C. Waller, and Timothy Nenninger. (Foundation for the National Archives)
"One of the things I enjoyed most about working with Dr. Faust was that after our initial meeting, in which we discussed several secondary sources such as books and articles on death, dying, and burial in the Civil War, she sent me several articles that she had written on the subject," Plante recalls "It's not every day that a hard-working historian takes time out of her busy day to send an unsolicited and unexpected package to an archivist."

Musick's expertise on the Civil War is known far and wide. Blanton and Cook singled out Musick, now retired, in They Fought Like Demons: Women Soldiers in the American Civil War, where they noted that he "knows more about the Civil War and its sources than anyone else on earth." In The Army of the Potomac: Birth of Command, November 1860–September 1861, Volume I, Russell H. Beatie stated that Musick's "willing assistance is truly encyclopedic and always available." Musick was also cited by Thomas P. Lowry in Confederate Heroines as "legendary" and providing various good suggestions to make on alternative sources of records—without the use of a Ouija board—when the author's "séance with one of the Old Army consultants" left the subject of his work "still lost in the mists of time."

Another Civil War author, Tom Wheeler, recounted the unique "aha" moment he had at the National Archives that inspired him to write Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War. Wheeler found himself standing with a "half dozen other people amidst the miles of files in the vaults," as military records archivist Rick Peuser showed "a book of glassine pages, each of which contained a handwritten telegram in the precise, forward-leaning cursive of Abraham Lincoln." As Wheeler "turned the pages in awe," he proclaimed ‘These are Mr. Lincoln’s T-Mails.’"

Also known for expertise on a particular subject is Claudia Anderson of the Johnson Library. But few tributes to NARA archivists can match what Robert Caro said about Anderson in his Pulitzer Prize–winning work, Master of the Senate, the latest and the third of his four volumes on the life of President Lyndon B. Johnson.

Caro notes that the title "senior archivist" fails "to do her justice." She has "made it her business to know" the materials in her charge "as thoroughly as it is possible for a single human being to know these thousands of boxes of documents." Caro goes on to praise her commitment to access, in the sense that she wants historians to know said material, her "rare integrity and generosity of spirit," and ends his encomium by stating that he cannot imagine "any biographer who owes her more."

Presidential library staff also have received numerous heartfelt plaudits to staff, named and unnamed alike. Arnold J. Rotter in his Comrades at Odds: The United States and India, 1946–1964, writes that the Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy presidential libraries received him "with a spirit of generosity and a willingness to help that still takes my breath away."

Adam Cohen, author of the recent work Nothing to Fear: FDR's Inner Circle and The Hundred Days That Created Modern America, states his "enormous thanks to the staff of the Roosevelt Library Presidential Library . . . who do a laudable job of tending to the New Deal flame." Robert Dallek in his An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917–1963, praises the Kennedy Library's staff as "essential." Author Gary Dean Best, writing in Herbert Hoover: The Post-Presidential Years, stated that the staff were "unfailingly helpful" and that working there was a "delightful experience."

Not every author or researcher who avails himself or herself of the expertise and time—sometimes quite a bit of both—of a NARA archivist acknowledges that help in the book, and sometimes there will be effusive praise from authors that the archivist can’t remember.

Sometimes archivists get mentioned for special kinds of things they do or provide for the authors.

For example, in Democratizing the Enemy: The Japanese American Internment, Brian Masaru Hayashi notes that NARA archivists, including Aloha South, Larry McDonald, William Mahoney, David Pfeiffer, and Barry Zerby, challenged him "to inspect alternative sources" that he initially did not consider and "widened [his] horizons substantially."

Michael L. Krenn, in Black Diplomacy: African Americans and the State Department, 1945–1969, writes that Regina Greenwell of the Johnson Library "pointed me to several collections I might have overlooked and never blinked an eye at in my hundreds of declassification requests." Similarly, Michael Long's publication of the Civil Rights Letter of Jackie Robinson recognizes a debt "to Paul Wormser of the National Archives in Laguna Niguel, California" for encouraging the author "to take a look at the Jackie Robinson file in Richard Nixon's pre-presidential papers."

And Dobbs, in his book Saboteurs, begins his acknowledgments by saying he'd "particularly like to thank Greg Bradsher, who whetted my interest in the case by giving me a tour of the stacks."

In Hitler's Last Chief of Foreign Intelligence: Allied Interrogations of Walter Schellenberg, Reinhard Doerries captures the occasionally tense dynamic between driven researcher and patient archivist. Doerries not only gives thanks for the "ceaseless efforts" of Nenninger, but also explains that Boylan and Bob Wolfe "never lost patience when I was impatient and surely unkind under the pressures of research."

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David Nichols, historian of civil rights in the 1950s, acknowledged invaluable help at the Eisenhower Library from then-director Dan Holt and archivist David Haight. (NARA)
Author David Nichols's A Matter of Justice, about the history of civil rights in the 1950s, states that staff at the Eisenhower Library, particularly then-director Dan Holt, "encouraged the project at every junction, and archivist David Haight's encyclopedic knowledge and uncanny ability to find obscure documents made all the difference."

Erika Lee, author of At America's Gates, a book on Chinese immigration policies, said that writing her book was "made even more enjoyable by the camaraderie and valuable assistance" provided by "Neil Thompson, Waverly Lowell, and the entire staff of the National Archives, Pacific Region, in San Bruno," who "generously shared their own findings, greatly facilitated my research, and provided a second home to me."

Edwin Black's timely study of the oil crisis, Internal Combustion, praises NARA Great Lakes Region archivists, specifically Donald Jackanicz, Martin Tuohy, Scott Forsythe, and Peter Bunce for performing "miracles." Black notes that after these archivists discovered that "they held crucial forgotten court records," he called one day at noon and raced to the airport where "the next morning more than a dozen boxes were waiting on trolleys."

In his book about Betty Ford, Candor and Courage in the White House, John Robert Greene noted that "Writers only write alone. . . . Indeed, one of the greatest pleasures of any writing project is to freely admit that there is a list of names without any of whom this book could not have been written." He goes on to mention Dennis Dallenbach, David Horrocks, Helmi Raaska, William McNitt, and Nancy Mirshah, of the Ford Library, who "went far beyond the call of duty in helping me track down the photos that add to this book."

Martha Gardner, author of The Qualities of a Citizen: Women, Immigration, and Citizenship, 1870–1965, was grateful to staff archivists Waverly Lowell, Neil Thomsen, and Robert Ellis for being allowed "to rummage through the records of countless immigrant women."

Kenneth D. Ackerman, in Young J. Edgar: Hoover, the Red Scare, and The Assault on Civil Liberties, a book about the 1919–1921 Palmer Raids to round up suspected radicals, thanks archivists Fred Romanski and Alan Walker, who "came through for me time after time when I needed help in deciphering the complex systems of records from the era."

In The Burning of Washington: The British Invasion of 1814, Anthony Pitch provided the prototypical acknowledgment to an archivist when he expressed his gratitude to archivists Rebecca Livingston and Rod Ross for "plucking dusty files from sheltered safekeeping."

And James W. Hurst extolled NARA archivist Mitchell Yockelson's "vast knowledge" of archival holdings in Pancho Villa and Black Jack Pershing: The Punitive Expedition, while recounting the role Yockelson played in answering e-mail queries, telephone calls, and "digging out the boxes and boxes of documents."

Perhaps the strangest acknowledgment was written by author Andrea Tone, whose Devices and Desires: A History of Contraceptives in America recounts that the topic "imposed research challenges that might have been insurmountable were it not for the expertise, support and timely intervention of numerous archivists and scholars."

Tone goes on to thank Aloha Smith, for guiding her through postal records in Washington, D.C., as well as Tab Lewis who "located Federal Trade Commission transcripts—and registered appropriate combinations of enthusiasm and alarm when decaying diaphragms and condoms appeared glued to the transcript pages!"

This brief sampling of citations does not do justice to the hundreds of extraordinary members of NARA’s archival staff who have been similarly mentioned in books not recounted here. In recent decades, acknowledgments sections have become more fulsome.

But there are notable examples from a half-century ago. When Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., took the time in 1957’s The Age of Roosevelt: The Crisis of the Old Order, 1919–1933, to express "special acknowledgment" to Herman Kahn, then director of the Roosevelt Library, for demonstrating "with spectacular success how a library can serve the cause of scholarship," this was indeed an exception to the practices of the time.

And finally, author R. A. Ratcliff's words in Delusions of Intelligence: Enigma, Ultra, and the End of Secure Ciphers, while giving special praise to retired NARA archivist Timothy Mulligan, have special import as NARA (and all of government) finds its way in the future, awash in all manner of new forms of records on electronic media, residing side by side with vast and still growing collections of textual holdings:

The use of technology in archives has improved the researcher's lot tremendously; but no technology, however advanced, can provide a researcher with the depth of information . . . and numerous gentle nudges toward crucial documents that [he] has provided for more than a decade. Archivists such as he are a national resource, and they are retiring unreplaced. In the midst of its rush to acquire all things electronic, NARA's administration should not neglect this most valuable resource of all.
In fact, NARA is not neglecting this "valuable resource" known as the archivist, even as its lurches into the future of electronic records that will be available to anyone, anywhere, anytime via the Internet. The Archives has in the past few years hired a number of new archivists and given them intensive training in handling both traditional paper records as well as electronic records of all forms that are now being created by the federal government.

Sometimes the work of the archivist is so important it leaves the author wondering what Gabor Boritt asked in The Gettysburg Gospel: The Lincoln Speech That Nobody Knows: "[H]ow does one thank a learned archivist who finds precious items a researcher cannot locate and who, after a long exhaustive day of work, stays well beyond closing time to help? How?"

Ultimately, archivist Plante says, it doesn't make any difference whether the author thanks him or not. "I know that I have contributed to several books, some whose authors have thanked me, and others who have not," he says. "I know that I assisted them in the research they conducted which led to their final product, so I feel like I helped them in writing the book."

Many more acknowledgments deserved inclusion in this piece but could not be included due to space limitations in the printed edition. This online addendum lists acknowledgments to NARA and staff members in fuller form.

Authors

Jason R. Baron has held the position of director of litigation in NARA’s Office of General Counsel since coming to NARA in 2000. He holds degrees from Wesleyan University and Boston University School of Law.

Jeffery Hartley is chief librarian for the Archives Library Information Center (ALIC). A graduate of Dickinson College and the University of Maryland's College of Library and Information Services, he joined NARA in 1990.

Ezequiel Berdichevsky is an assistant general counsel at the National Archives. He is a graduate of the University of Maryland, the University of Michigan, and The George Washington University Law School. He has worked at NARA since 2007.

Articles published in Prologue do not necessarily represent the views of NARA or of any other agency of the United States Government.
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