 Red Room Writer Profile
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Michael L Schmicker's Blog
September 4, 2009
- Some spam is tasty. Possibly because I write on the paranormal, I received an unsolicited morsel this morning from online bookseller AbeBooks alerting me to their new “Weird Book Room.” The message showcased cover thumbnails of ten representative titles. My favorites: “The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories;” “Outhouses by Famous Architects;” “Old Tractors and the Men Who Love ...
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June 24, 2009
- Ready for some scientific heresy? First the orthodox sermon: In a January 19, 2007 article entitled “The Mystery of Consciousness,” Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard University, assured readers of Time magazine that “Consciousness does not reside in an ethereal soul that uses the brain like a PDA; consciousness is the activity of the brain.” Scientists had ...
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June 10, 2009
- How old is Egypt’s Great Sphinx? Controversial author Dr. Robert Schoch, Yale-trained geologist and professor of natural sciences at Boston University, is famous for re-dating its construction to 7000-5000 B.C. His well-researched conclusion, resting on the known physics of limestone weathering, enraged establishment Egyptologists who adamantly proclaim Pharaoh Khafre’s subjects carved the ...
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May 30, 2009
- I have a good friend who earned his Ph.D in chemistry from Harvard. He’s a college dean and professor of oceanography at a name-brand U.S. university. He’s authored textbooks in his field of research. In short, he’s the very model of a modern, major-league scientist. He tolerates my membership in the Society for Scientific Exploration and our interest in scientific anomalies, but has no ...
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May 26, 2009
- Mary Roach is a funny writer. While reading Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, I often found myself laughing out loud. The book is chock full of zingers and hilarious, footnotes. Her sharp, witty, humor-column style of writing makes the complex scientific and philosophical debate regarding survival of consciousness both entertaining and enjoyable. That’s the good news. The bad news? She ...
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May 15, 2009
- In 1997 an English housewife heard a voice in her head one evening when she was quietly reading at home. “Please don’t be afraid,” the voice said politely. “I know it must be shocking for you to hear me speaking to you like this.” The voice explained that it was only trying to help, that the poor woman had a brain tumor and should immediately seek a CAT scan at a certain London ...
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May 8, 2009
- The first and last time I jumped out of an airplane, I was 17 years old. It was my mom who nearly died of fright. She had to sign a waiver that listed in gruesome detail all the ways her underage, unlucky son could die or sustain serious injury from skydiving. True to the odds, nothing went wrong. After four hours of “training,” the actual skydive, from Geronimo! to hard landing, lasted just ...
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May 1, 2009
- “Those who don’t know history are destined to repeat it.” – Edmund Burke Oct. 1887 – As European powers divide up Asia, France seizes and colonizes Vietnam and the Kingdom of Cambodia. The kingdom of Laos is grabbed and added in 1893, forming French Indochina.1941-1945 – The U.S. Office of Strategic Services (the forerunner of the CIA) recruits Vietnamese nationalist/communist Ho ...
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April 30, 2009
- Forty years can do some serious damage to the dreams, reputation or health of people. Time certainly did that to several characters who frequented my diaries, or troubled my long-ago life in Thailand. Nixon was impeached; Hawk has disappeared; Boris is dead. But most sailed through the succeeding decades unscathed and fulfilled. A few still make headlines. Starting with Sterling, here’s ...
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April 29, 2009
- On April 16, 1972, I officially finished my three years with the Nuay Santipahp Saharat America, the Peace Corps. We got 100 pounds of air freight free to ship our stuff home; I packed mostly memories. If my son ever asks me “What did you do in the war, Daddy?” I would tell him that I didn’t kill anyone and I didn’t get killed. That I made a small difference in the lives of a few Thai ...
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April 28, 2009
- On June 13, 1971, the New York Times published the “Pentagon Papers,” the Defense Department’s secret, classified history of America’s involvement in Vietnam from 1945-1971. It exposed how we bumbled into the war, how President Johnson deliberately expanded it even after promising not to, and how the government continued to lie and hide the truth from Congress and the American people. ...
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April 27, 2009
- I arrived back in America on April Fools Day, 1971. My reward from Peace Corps for extending my service was a month’s vacation, six bucks a day per diem, and a ticket home and back. Bangkok and New York were antipodes on the globe, so I scored a round-the-world ticket. I was curious to see how I felt about America. We had been warned. Soldiers returning from Vietnam weren’t the only ...
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April 26, 2009
- A beaming Ajaan Boonsom called me into her office. A chocolate cake sat on her desk with a lit candle stuck in the frosting – a real farang cake from Seiler’s Bakery on Sukumvit.“Wow, what’s the occasion, ajaan?” “Khun Maitri, the Ministry of Education is submitting “Magic Chopsticks” to represent Thailand in the International Japan Prize ETV contest!” “Meet Mr. Maitri” was ...
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April 25, 2009
- Christmas was just around the corner, reminding me of home. I was tired of palm trees and rice for Christmas. Dad wrote and told me they had snow. I felt disconnected, edgy. My Peace Corps life was almost over but the Vietnam war wasn’t. Nixon had drafted another 163,000 kids and the madness and the killing continued. I dropped by Wat Bovornives to give a check to the Headmaster. The money I ...
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April 24, 2009
- Two weeks before Christmas, I walked into Seagrave’s office and handed him a story called “Twelve Hours on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.” In it was everything I had had come to understand and believe about our Indochina debacle after spending two years in Thailand – a final “letter home” as the end of my Peace Corps service approached. My family could share it with Joe at the gas ...
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