FREE Tarot Readings Enchanted World Amy Zerner and Monte Farber

Amy and I hope that you all enjoyed a safe and restorative July 4th , 2004 Independence Day holiday. No matter what side of the political fence you are on, I think we can all agree that America is a wonderful place to live, an important political experiment with the potential to change for the better the way billions of people around the world live, and I think we can all agree that freedom is not free. We'd like to thank everyone working to bring peace, healing, and democracy to the world and that especially includes the men and women of our Armed Forces around the world. And please, if you haven't registered to vote, do so this week. OK, so you may get called for jury duty, but that's a very small price to pay for taking part in America.

Sorry to have been away from blogging for so long. Amy and I have never been busier and not just because it's summer in The Hamptons and we've been seeing friends of ours who only come out here during the summer. We have seven new book projects and two music projects in the works and I'll tell you all about them and the lucky amulet that seems to have brought such incredible good fortune into my life at a later date. I'd like to use this July 4th blog to tell you all a pretty funny cautionary tale of the last time I didn't listen to Amy when she had a strong intuition about something:

Back in the late 1970's, Amy and I were at a July 4th party at an enormous wooden barracks of a beach house on the ocean in Westhampton Beach. The house had been rented by “groupers,” not the species of fish, but a group of people, usually young and single, who rent a big house together and turn it into a non-stop party, at least on the weekends when they are not working at the high-pressure jobs that enable them to pay the exorbitant Hamptons summer rentals.

The owners of the house must have either hated sand or loved boardwalks because the house had an enormous deck that was about as wide as a four lane highway on the side that faced the ocean and ran the entire length of the house. We had just arrived, but through the sliding glass doors we could see that there were about twenty or thirty people outside shooting off fireworks, not little firecrackers or roman candles, but the biggest rockets I had ever seen up close. Each one looked like a star-spangled coffee can mounted at the top of a wooden yardstick and must have contained at least five pounds of explosives.

Fireworks are illegal in New York State, but these were not fireworks, they were explosive devises and would have been illegal anywhere in the world except in a war zone. There were over a dozen of them somehow stuck into the cracks between the boards of the deck, looking like a fence of noon-whistles, except that when they blew, a trail of sparks shot out and they went straight up, making huge bangs and impressive explosions of color. Some even had smaller fireworks that would rain down in ever-changing patterns. Like most men I know, the sight and sound and the smell hypnotized me.

As I put up my hand to open the sliding door between the fun and me, Amy suddenly cried out "Don't go out there!" It brought me out of my latest trance but back into the primeval male trance that happens when we are told not to do something because it might be a tad risky. I sternly pointed out that there was a crowd out there already, men and women, and that it appeared that basic safety rules were being obeyed, meaning that no one was spinning themselves around with a lit blowtorch in their hands, but Amy would have none of it. She actually stood in front of the door to stop me, saying that she had a bad feeling about my going out there. She had never acted like that before and I was not secure enough to just say the two words that every woman wants to hear more than any other words, "Yes, dear." I have since learned my lesson and become a leading spokesman for "The Very Loyal Order of Yes, Dear," though she tells me I am anything but obedient.

Back then, there was still some sanity left in me, though not much, and I did stop my forward progress toward the door. However, after a few minutes of puzzled stares and calls to come outside, we resumed our heated debate. I made the manly decision to do the manly (read "stupid") thing, and out I went, followed by my worried wife still trying to get me to come back inside the empty house, but I was not having any of it. I was too transfixed watching the next rocket get lit. Up it went until it arched off its course ever so slightly and exploded into fiery dandelion heads.

When I looked down, they were lighting the next one, but this one was apparently the most powerful of the lot. It seemed to go up and up and it was still going up when it should have exploded, or so I thought. Actually, it had gone straight up to the proper height but the fuse for the explosive part of the rocket was too long and the fireworks had not been ignited when the part of the rocket designed to propel it high into the air had burned itself out.

Suddenly, we all realized to our horror that the rocket had started falling straight down and pointed at the deck we were standing on! It shot right down the back of my head missing me by an inch, if that, and down my back showering sparks from the mercifully partial ignition of the main explosive, making me seem to be wearing a Native American Chief's headdress made of flying fire, not feathers, and the yardstick tail stuck straight up in the deck.

I happen to be an incredibly lucky person and I truly believe that I am protected from harm by others and from my own stupidity by forces that I can only assume want me to continue to teach people how to get in touch with their own power. I can't think of any other reason that my life has been spared so many times. This rocket could have been the last thing I ever saw, but a miss is as good as a mile and it missed. The only thing hurt was my pride because needless to say, Amy’s first words were "I told you not to go out." However, she was right and I learned my lesson and I have never not listened to her intuitions about dangerous situations again.

Thanks for reading this and I'll be more regular in my blogs from now on. We had some technical problems that hid this entry until July 6th, so I'll give it a couple of days and then I'll tell you a story about when I was a bad boy with Billy Joel one night/morning way back in the 1970's when we both should have known better.