It all started when Ms. Cusec (I really don’t recall the actual correct spelling), my fourth-grade teacher, loved field trips, and on one of those fortuitous outings she had taken the class to a local orchid grower and popular Florida tourist attraction, Fennell’s--The Orchid Jungle. I was so fascinated with the whole adventure, and most particularly intrigued with a laboratory that was also on display at this facility. Fennell’s was apparently amongst some of the first orchid hybridizers to become actively engaged in the “cloning” of orchids as well as the cultivation of orchids from their single-celled seeds. For those earlier times, this cloning process was something right out of a science fiction book, and from that very point forward, I was mysteriously and firmly hooked on all aspects of orchid cultivation and their rather totally unique and scientific cultivation that required a sterile environment laboratory in addition to the usual tropical environment greenhouse.

Adding to the overall drama of this adventure with orchids was a particular classmate, Malcolm Wisehart. His father was a rather prominent judge in Miami, and the man grew orchids just as a hobby. It was interesting that this man, in a most fatherly manner, told me to “enjoy these wonderful orchids, but never permit yourself to become involved with the American Orchid Society!” I had the best of intentions of following his fatherly advice, having somehow arrived at the intuitive belief that this sacred-cow organization must have been some kind of exclusive, typically high-class snobby group, with their noses way up their very smelly and brown messy posterior opening, that was most probably totally and inherently unsuitable for the more common folk like that of myself.

While attending Kinloch Park Junior High, I had built that slat greenhouse whose roof and four walls were are all connected by hinges so that he could be easily taken down and set up on another location that did happen when we moved away from that location on 43^rd Ave to a residence from which I attended high school. When I was in the ninth grade I entered the science fair and actually get first place in my division; I had entered a display which depicted the life cycle of an orchid. I remember having a flask that contained tiny orchid plants that had grown from a seed pod that I have developed myself. For your information orchids are grown from single celled seed that are developed in a pod that may contain as many as upwards to 1 million single-celled seeds. My orchid display also received an honorable mention from the National Science Fair Association.

Then, in both junior and high school, I became a big hit with the girls because all of my dates received arrangements of orchids from a local florist to whom I would often supplied cut blooms, often in exchange for delivering these auspicious arrangements on my behalf. All of this enthusiasm for orchids came to an abrupt close when going off to the University of Florida, which required my getting rid of the collection in its entirety. I had the very best of intentions for some day returning home to Miami after four years of higher education and rescuing that collection—it just never came about.

The undertaking of those college years created not only a temporary but also a long separation from this very passionate love affair with orchids. Eventually I moved to New Mexico in 1967, and because I had the unfounded and misconceived notion that orchids just could not be successfully cultivated in a desert environment, it wasn't until sometime around 1990 that those marvelous orchids once again became an integral part of my lifestyle. I then constructed two modest greenhouses at my home in Cedar Crest, New Mexico, where I could concentrate on the cool-growing varieties. My favorite genus is Odontoglossum, common to the higher altitudes of the Los Andes Mountains of Columbia, as well as their numerous inter-generic hybrids. At the time of writing this present tale, I am in the process of converting the smaller of my greenhouses into a laboratory where I can once again be germinating and propagating those microscopic seeds of orchids and their various hybrids. Significant to this very story and the cover of this book, which also contains an orchid, is the fact that all but one of my some 72 quality and recognition awards from the AOS have the intentionally designated clonal name of ‘San Damiano.’ This clonal name is assigned to the particular plant that is awarded in order to distinguish it from its siblings. I will naturally be developing many of my own unique hybrids, employing many of the plants that had been so serendipitously awarded by that infamous and politically corrupted American Orchid Society.

I had eventually moved to New Mexico where I thought that orchids would be unable to be cultivated. So it wasn't until 1989 when I had returned from California with John and the few orchids that bought in the time that I was in California. It was sometime in 1991 that because of the chance meeting of a young man at a nursery that sold orchids in Santa Fe New Mexico, that I had once again get myself involved with orchids. It was that young man that invited me to visit the New Mexico Orchid Society which I did. It was at that first meeting that I had met the president, Diann O'Neill, who was this rather dramatic woman that initially got my attention because of her enthusiasm for orchids. So I joined, and after an orchid show in 1991 in Denver, Colorado, Diana and I had mutually decided to become orchid judges at the encouragement of a cousin of mine, Steve Slaughter. Steve as it turned out was gay as well as an orchid judge from the Northwest, I believe somewhere in Oregon. Diann and I became orchid judge students at the Orchid Judging Center of the American Orchid Society that was located in Denver, Colorado.

It was this eventual move to the Land of Enchantment, New Mexico, in 1967, and ultimately in very large part my re-involvement with the avid cultivation of orchids, that set into motion the fertile background and events that were so unexpectedly necessary for this present narrative as well as the presentation of a rather strange and bizarre set of circumstances that made this whole story seem inevitable. The combination of these circumstances is another spiritual tale in and of itself, as you will soon discover.

At about the same time I was writing the narrative, Shamans of San Damiano I was about to finish another grueling literary project, that was, if I could ever bring myself to actually complete it: the third book of an epic trilogy tragically but all too appropriately entitled, The Orchid Hell Chronicles. That entire heart-wrenching saga is all about my overly poignant trials and harsh tribulations with the malicious prejudice and bigotry that was so terribly and unexpectedly encountered within the American Orchid Society, and I am most certainly the very tragic central character, dealing with falsification, caricature, deceit, betrayal, and the resultant entangled legal quagmire of a Federal lawsuit as well as so many of the other fowl odors of our American legal system. This hellish tale sucked me into its rather frightening and consuming clutches ever so covertly and unexpectedly as it rapidly developed, commencing some ten years prior to the writing of the tale of the, Shamans of San Damiano; little did I know at the time just how many other individuals had been so negatively and affectively involved before that terrible experience had finally reached its immoral, illogical, and all too devastating conclusion. What was even more amazing to me was that this other far more inspiring and certainly more positive tale of the Shamans continued to reveal itself, and in some strange fashion I was able to maintain its own unique integrity, while I was so unfortunately and tragically enmeshed in this other terrible exigency, which was and still is essentially responsible for the above and often mentioned suicidal ideation and the accompanying chronic depression that persistently haunts my entire life on a daily basis. Perhaps the timely presence of this Shamans’ narrative was some sort of a cosmic balance that presented itself just when I needed something far more affirmative in my life to ground me to this often-troubled and over-burdened earth. I have always felt that karma plays a significant part in all of our lives, and for all the hideous pain that I had then endured and suffered at the hands of some of the most dastardly-minded characters of the American Orchid Society, mostly for what I considered to be for the benefit of others, I certainly and even desperately needed to become involved in some other more life-giving and positive endeavor. And it would be helpful if that new endeavor didn’t involve orchids. Thus, the recording of a far more inspiring story that offered a greater promise for the often-sad state of mankind.

Because of the rather bizarre events that had occurred with the American Orchid Society were so strange that I wrote a warning in the first of the three books entitled: Unwritten Rules: A Case for White-Collar Bigotry. And believe me, the title says it all.

WARNING

This book is a work of serious non-fiction which does not always justly portray the writer as that real person who is best known by many of his loyal friends as someone of exemplary character; loving, caring and extremely generous. The first letter that is published in this book was written to a specific group of people that no doubt read it with an exclusive understanding of exactly what this writer wasn’t saying. He unknowingly left spaces between his lines that were later to be filled in by some of the guilty parties receiving or reading this letter. He knowingly left many actual facts out of this first crucial piece of correspondence to protect what he had earnestly thought were the innocent bystanders of a treachery that he had no idea that he was about to thoroughly expose. It probably won’t occur to you until you have patiently dredged through the first part of this book, the significance of the awful events that finally caused this courageous writer to want to fully disclose what he had come to understand as white-collar bigotry. In the very beginning, he was without doubt blindly traversing uncharted territory. In the spirit of sharing only the truth with you, he has not dared to change any of the facts or feelings of that initially lost soul, wandering helplessly alone. I suggest you read this book with a knowing confidence that you will likely think much better of this man at its conclusion than you would after only initial impressions.

A Friend

I had previously alluded to and expanded on in my trilogy, The Orchid Hell Chronicles. The first book of this trilogy, Unwritten Rules: A Factual Case of White-Collar Bigotry, begins with the line in the Forward “This literary piece could no doubt qualify for the Guinness Book of Records as the longest suicide note ever written.” After the above warning in the first book of the trilogy, the first book began with:

Diann and I were heading south on I-25 out of Denver. It was about 9:30 PM, November 9, 1991, and we were on our way back to Albuquerque. You can just imagine our state of total physical exhaustion considering we had left Albuquerque early that morning in order to be present for the regular monthly meeting of the Rocky Mountain Judging Center that started at 7:00 PM. Diann was going to drive the first half of this 450 mile return trip. She started making those usual cat-like car seat related gyrations in order to get comfortable, finally got herself settled into her seat, and reached over for a sip of black coffee purchased from one of those all-night convenience stores. She then emitted one of those groaning sadly questioning, low pitched, closed mouth sighs, and replied with a long and emphatic, sobering: “SO!!! What do you think these unwritten rules are?”

As you will soon discover about me—don’t dare ask a broad ranged question about some specific bit of knowledge unless you’re quite prepared to get a short discourse. My generally patented response to most any question having any number of possible answers or solutions is my biased preference for choice “d”-- “All of the above” as found on many multiple-choice quizzes. Unwritten rules? Obviously, the existence of unwritten rules is a most natural and convenient ‘verbally stated’ situation usually reserved for and employed by those autocratic rulers or bureaucratic funk-heads whose only claim to any real self-worth is the power they joyfully wield over others. I am constantly reminded of that phrase: “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This corruption of power is simply the usual filler for the void that is naturally created by the inherent absence of any true personal integrity in far too many people. Simply put: No moral character. As you continue to read this book, you may come to have a better understanding of just what I mean.

One of the five “certified” judges actually related one of these cardinal (unwritten) rules to us: “Keep your mouth shut, do whatever you are told, and in six years, you too, can be a bitch!” I didn’t really consider this questionably stated verbiage to be either the appropriate language or a very good example of the kind of attitude necessarily conducive to the success of what I might have otherwise imagined to be a quality public organization. But as we soon learned, we didn’t really get ourselves involved with a quality organization that should have made a more concerted effort to keep itself more closely associated with people of exemplary character. Political power and self-serving egos were obviously more valued by some of these AOS orchid people, as I have implied and explained above. And considering some of the abusive verbal diarrhea I later experienced, over which some of these poor AOS judges seemed to have had a noticeable lack of any reasonably expected amount of control, you could just imagine what some of their desperate needs must have been for some reasonable form of social order, corrupt as it often is. Should you think that these examples of corrupted social/political behavior are my sole discovery or observation, you have only to consider the thoughtful writings of Nicolò Machiavelli, some five hundred years ago. In his book, The Prince, he clearly conveys the perception that man has not only the potential for countless evil doings, but given even the slightest opportunity, he is far more apt than not to display his deviousness. So, in the broadest sense, there isn’t really anything new under the sun; though, as you will soon learn, this saga will vividly reveal some new and interesting contemporary twists. Mankind can be so very cleverly inventive in his constant effort to hold dominion over his environment in an endless effort to satisfy his insatiable greed, but his means are not always necessarily for the good of others that stand outside his own conceptions of reality.

The second book started off with: This volume is essentially a continuation of a book entitled: Unwritten Rules: A Factual Case of White-Collar Bigotry. I felt I had sufficiently established the use of the new coinage of words white-collar bigotry in this above-mentioned volume, but the story was not yet complete. I am writing this sad continuation with the hopes that the terribly damaging situations of the subtle bigotry that I had found myself experiencing at the hands of the American Orchid Society (AOS) would finally come to some reasonable resolve. Bondage in any of its many forms certainly places limits on the free expression of an individual's greatest potential and can crush the very spirit and life forces that give rise to one's own perceived meaning and purpose.

This devastating experience has taught me so much about the sad state of our society and the awful plight of spiritually and ideologically enslaved humankind. I appropriately titled the second volume of the Orchid Hell Trilogy the Freedom Seeker because I have finally come to a place in my own life where I fully understood the awful predicament of so many disenfranchised people. I have also finally come to fully understand and appreciate that what has happened to me happens all too often and to too many others in a mass array of circumstances and social/political environments. People are often falsely enslaved by engraved images that they have been taught to believe are a true and accurate representation of some Devine truth. We are all effortlessly fooled if by nothing else but the fact that we too easily come to believe that if something has been with us for so long, unchanged and unchallenged it must be the truth. Archbishop Desmond Tutu in an intriguing interview with Bill Moyers pointed to his head and exclaimed that the real damage suffered by the countless victims of apartheid occurred there. I have come to know that the bondage of false ideologies and beliefs are far more devastating to the overall health of an individual than any conceivable amount of physical constraint. It was once profoundly expressed by the greatest Freedom Seeker of all times that Truth and truth alone was the omniscient freedom-giver for the bondage of all mankind. The expression of "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness" haunts my mind daily and I question why I persistently feel the need to depart this modest life of mine in order to actually achieve any true peace at all. We were once commanded to “love one another” so that we might have joy in our lives; not for some promised afterlife! Why can't I find peace here in this God given Garden of Eden we have called earth?

I was fully prepared to "Love my neighbor…" and reap the promised reward of joy. Instead, I searched for and uncannily found the broken image of Humpty-Dumpty to best explain how too many of my neighbors feel and relate within this too often hostile world of ours. The damaged and hurt feelings can't always be observed from the outside and the individual is all often found in a depressed state of isolation and loneliness believing that they have somehow brought this internal devastation upon themselves. I fear that all the King's horses, all the King's men, all the King's money and all the King's courts of justice can't possibly put me or my broken brothers and sisters back together again. What ever happened in this our most beloved Garden of Eden?

When I had eventually filed that pro se federal lawsuit following a thorough effort to sincerely having the American Orchid Society act in a manner that would have reflected a more sane and sensitive organization. It was so sad that all of the AOS did, was to continue digging a hole that was only deeper for themselves. There is absolutely no way to cover all of the damaging and illegal events of the AOS that had caused me to eventually filed a federal lawsuit as opposed to my taking of own life.

I am sort of thankful for my having encountered their hate-filled bigotry at the hands of this American Orchid Society. Of course, I came awfully close to killing myself, but for the writing of the six books on the Age of Reality as well as this autobiography.

As a result of my filing a federal lawsuit against the America Orchid Society (AOS), I'm proud to relate that this wayward organization had made some positive changes, the first of which was their adding to monthly magazine a statement nondiscrimination that had nowhere appeared previously. It may be of some interest for you to know that I was once told by their national director that they had no need for discrimination clause. When I had once attended one of their nation trustee meetings, I was there to address their trustees in a truly loving effort to avoid a lawsuit. It was at this particular trustees meeting that I had addressed them saying, “I am very surprised that there are no people of color at this trustees meeting. Would you all believe that one of your members had once told me, the reason there are no blacks in the upper echelons of the American Orchid society is simply because blacks have no appreciation for orchids. And furthermore that member is in attendance at this very meeting. Now for the fun part; I was at the little shop that sells newspapers and toiletry items for their forgetful guests, standing in line, waiting for my turn with a rather large number of AOS members behind me. When my turn had finally come up I took the opportunity of addressing the cashier, a beautiful woman of color, whether or not did she like orchids. One might think with her response, that I had paid her to say what she said with both hands raised excitedly about her head, “Do I like orchids! Oh my God, I really miss the orchids that my mother had growing in front of our home, back in Jamaica. Do I like orchids; you can bet I do and that is one of the things I miss the most about living here in Pennsylvania. You can imagine the faces on many of the people standing behind me, a specially those who had heard that very damning statement that, “People of color just don't like orchids.” I left that weekend meeting early because I just did not want to be around such bigoted and negative individuals. This had taken place in the King of Prussia and I remain so surprised that the AOS had not made an effort to solve this problem which was clearly in violation of the civil rights of people of color, much less myself as a gay man living with AIDS. You may know that people living with AIDS is one of the groups that are protected under the American Disability Act.

These pompous asses that find themselves in the American Orchid Society are just as likely to have membership in one of the many denominations they claim to be Christian. I sometimes believe that so many God-fearing individuals living in this Christians theocracy have no idea just how much damage is done to individuals by their very own Christian churches. It seems to be of no matter to many of these often pious and hateful Christians, unless, of course, they happen to discover that one their close relatives are living in these horrible and often stifling gay closets. I do however feel that there is a slowly changing segment of society that truly believe that each individual should be free of discrimination no matter their own personal creed, origin of birth, sex, sexual preference, color of skin and the multitude of other discriminatory traits. I hope as this Age of Reality begins to take hold on all of society that discrimination in any form will most simply fall by the wayside. I find it ashamed that mankind after some two thousands years had not adopted the true teachings of Jesus of Nazareth.