Category: Art

Then, a tour across the United States and the history of cold fusion took us just about from corner to corner. We returned back to the left coast this year low-budget style, going through hill and dale across the southern US, burning gasoline and taking the inventory of effects of The End of Oil Age.

The expectation of a flip in the arrangement for living on this planet spreads through an undercurrent of anxiety at the real mess we are in. Many people here in the US are in a type of stunned muteness as their notions of the world dissolve before them, and don’t understand why.

I’d say we spoke with a hundred+ individuals one-on-one in the context of a new energy paradigm and distributed the last of the stickers on hand (one thousand stickers distributed in total over two years). We spoke with people in the streets, and scientists in the lab. Everywhere, an eager ear to hear the news.

It’s all about accelerating the meme of hope: we don’t have to live this way.
We can choose another path and create that reality with each thought – and action.

C’mon along as Cold Fusion Now recounts the actions taken on the Cross-Country 2012 return to the Left Coast!

Miami, Florida

DJ Le Spam and the Spam Allstars

Half-a-year in Florida was spent researching and writing. While I was supposed to be writing a book about how the alphabet created math and science during the Ionian Revolution, I couldn’t stay away from the almost constant news about cold fusion. But there was a break. Almost every week for months, I went to DJ LeSpam‘s casa, and we jammed up mucho musica on stringed instruments. I have been learning the ukulele, and he played guitar, tres, and banjo.

DJ Le Spam is sound artist Andrew Yeomanson who started the Spam Allstars ensemble in the mid-nineties with yours truly, who played saxophones and flute back then. [visit] Though I left the area for a teaching job, Andrew kept the music alive. Today, the band gigs 3-4 times each week in Miami and South Florida. DJ Le Spam also curates museum performances and plays at nationally- and internationally recognized events. He is a bona fide expert in early Cuban jazz and regularly spins rare recordings at private functions.

As there’s nothing like art to communicate the impossible and inspire the incredible, I wrote a movie script for Andrew and his moviemaking pal Juan Maristany [visit] to make involving his car, his cat, and cold fusion. It’s called “A Car, A Cat, and Cold Fusion“. The plot involves a Hammond Organ, which contains some 3 grams of palladium in its electronics, Ernie Ball nickel guitar strings, a 1960s-era black sports car, and Andrew’s kitten Lil “Crisis” Crissy, a tiny bundle of fluff rescued from a Miami parking lot. You’ll have to wait for that action on screen; I’ll only say that there are Superwaves and the fight for free energy as the backdrop!

Andrea Rossi

I hooked up with Cold Fusion Now’s Eli Elliott and we got the opportunity to interview Andrea A. Rossi [video], the inventor of the first commercial cold fusion energy generator. We drove from Broward County down to Miami Beach to meet with Mr. Rossi for an hour between 3 and 4 o’clock at which time he’d have to step out.

We met him at his office in Miami Beach. It was situated close to Lincoln Road where cafes, boutiques, and art galleries lined the walkway. We parked inside the garage and took the elevator up to his place. He kindly offered coffee and drinks. We didn’t have much time and hurried to decide where to sit.

I went through some of the questions I would ask Mr. Rossi while Eli set up the cameras and microphone. There was only one he wouldn’t answer.

“I’m sorry”, he said, smiling and shaking his head regrettably. “I cannot tell you the location of the factory.”

“Oh we don’t have to disclose the location – we’ll go blindfolded!”, I assured.

Laughing, he said “No, no, we need to work in peace.”

Drat. That sure woulda been a scoop.

But who can argue? I dropped the matter knowing that these small, independent companies working on new energy need all the support they can get. There is plenty of friction surely coming down the pike as powerful forces behind regulators slow the dissemination of this breakthrough technology to save a dying economy. We as supporters want to make it easy as possible for these companies to operate and thus accelerate the process of moving away from dirty fossil fuels and dangerous nuclear power plants to clean, abundant cold fusion energy.

We met this fellow on the street, a good spirit, struggling, whose name I cannot remember now. We spoke about what was going down on the new energy front. When his friend came by, the two walked away. My friend here began telling his friend what I was saying about cold fusion, ‘It’s nuclear power from the hydrogen in water’.

Therein lies the power of conversation. No matter where you are, no matter who you’re with, talking about cold fusion only creates a larger set of minds thinking positively about the future.

St. Petersburg

Jack Kerouac

We then went to the bar where Jack Kerouac hung out, which was pretty far from his house. [visit] Since Kerouac didn’t drive, it’s speculated that he traveled on bus, since no one seems to remember him on a bike.

During the friendly conversation that can occur at a local pub, a former tattoo-artist-now-cartoon-graphic-artist at the bar asked where we were headed next, and I said, “Well, I’m going to the Nuclear and Emerging Technology for Space Conference outside of Houston. A fellow is going to speak on a new energy technology that he feels could power spacecraft for long voyages.”

The guy looked up at me, stunned; the pool player chuckled to himself, and whole bar went silent.

“Huh?”

Eli’s been through it before, so he knew what to expect when I started ministering the Cold Fusion to the crew. Needless to say, the bar where Jack Kerouac drank held an enthusiastic bunch, lifted-up by the possibilities offered by this revolutionary new energy. I was encouraged to put a Cold Fusion Now sticker on the bulletin board, and I did, to be seen by the many locals, poets, musicians and tourists that come by to honor this great voice of a generation.

The Woodlands, Texas

George H. Miley

It was along Highway 90 through the Gulf Coast to The Woodlands, Texas for the NETS conference. At NETS, I spoke with Professor George H. Miley of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champagne who would be speaking to rocket scientists about low-energy nuclear reactions LENR in his talk A Game-Changing Power Source based on LENR. [visit]

He was reticent about being videoed, but did agree to some later in the interview which I’ll be editing in the coming months. However, I was glad get audio of our conversation as it helped to describe his theoretical ideas on LENR loosely summarized as they were in the interview transcription.

Professor Miley is assisted in his LENR research by undergraduate students at the school, but at this conference, he was accompanied by two super-smart and hard-working graduate students. They weren’t so familiar with Dr. Miley’s LENR research as they had their hands full with the plasma thruster technology they were designing, as well as passing exams, but they both indicated how much they enjoyed working with Dr. Miley and how much fun it was designing rocket engines. Of course, Professor Miley was sitting right there! But it was all in fun, and the students were having a great time connecting and speaking with the other planetary scientists and spaceship designers.

The very personable Dr. Miley was kind and accommodating with his time. He spoke with the demeanor of someone who is very ‘even-keeled’. He has been researching cold fusion since 1989 and lived the history of this ostracized community, yet he has no anger about the injustices perpetrated during these past two decades. A consummate professional scientist, the hurdles and blockades only inspired him to succeed even more at unlocking the secrets of this mysterious energetic reaction between hydrogen and tiny pieces of metal.

Yes, Dr. Miley prefers to speak through science, and he certainly does. An octogenarian, he’s got the energy and looks of a much younger man. At the conference, he was busy attending meetings, talks, supervising students’ talks, poster sessions, and of course, speaking himself on LENR. I was grateful that he took the time to speak with me and explain his research in simple terms so that I could better represent this science to a larger audience.

Session 462 Advanced Concepts: LENR, Anti-Matter and New Physics

I sat upfront during the Session Advanced Concepts session hoping to get good pictures and audio, but I was only able to get an audio recording for transcription purposes. [visit]

The talks were alot of fun, with close to two dozen or so attending the late-Friday afternoon session. I might have been the only woman there, and I was surely the only non-rocket-scientist in attendance.

After the lectures, one of the organizers associated with Johnson Space Center JSC came up wondering who I was, and what was my purpose there. I told him I was passing through at an opportune time to meet up with Dr. Miley, and that I did clean energy advocacy for cold fusion. “Oooooh, I heard there would be someone here like that.” So, the JSC crew was alerted to my impending presence beforehand! Well, they did a great job with the lectures and all got a Cold Fusion Now sticker with the website on it to learn more about this impending new energy technology that offers a solution for both domestic and off-world energy problems.

Roswell, New Mexico

Roswell Museum of Art and Culture

Robert Goddard was an early rocket pioneer who, with funding from Charles Lindbergh, set up a lab in the Roswell area during the 1930s. The museum had a reproduction of his workshop and lots of little -and big- parts of rockets and tools that he used to build his craft.

On the way out of the museum I stopped by the front desk to sign-in as a Visitor, and struck up a conversation with the proprietors. Somehow, I got started on clean energy advocacy for cold fusion, (how did that happen?) and the one fellow said, “Yeah, they’ve been keeping that back for years, but now there’s a fellow, hmmm what’s his name… who’s coming out with some device…..”

“Oh wow, do you mean Andrea Rossi and his Ecat?”, I said.

“Yeah, that’s it!”

Well, it’s always nice to meet someone with the knowledge that cold fusion is real and almost ready, and we stood and had a little session on the topic. The second guy hadn’t really heard much about it, but he was interested, so I gave them both stickers with the website address, and they said they’d check it out.

Alamogordo, New Mexico

Museum of Space History

The museum has lots of early space program artifacts and historical missile technology. They had a Sputnik reproduction, and outside was this rocket booster from Starchaser that looked like it just arrived. [visit]

Oliver Lee State Park

As we spoke of the insanity of this world, and what it would take for people to learn how to live in peace with each other, with respect for all life on this planet, this retired, full-time RVer Volunteer Ranger’s words of wisdom on what I could do in my own small way to contribute to this world I seek were simple and stunning. He said,

“It doesn’t cost you nothing to say a kind word, and it doesn’t cost you nothing to listen.”

Wow. And all I had to give him was a Cold Fusion Now sticker.

When I came back from my hike, he made a point to tell me he’d check out the website. Going away, I thought to myself that I would really start to listen more. So good am I at talking; it’s that listening that needs more practice.

Santa Fe, New Mexico

Edmund Storms

He was finishing writing A Student’s Guide to Cold Fusion [visit] after completing a full-survey of the field, becoming up-to-date with the most recent experimental results. Looking at a wide range of published papers, he was searching for a connection, trying to piece together a logical structure that would allow him to name the conditions of this Rumplestiltskin-like reaction.

He spoke about his views on the Nuclear Active Environment NAE, now believing it’s the tiny cracks and spaces that are key to initiating a reaction. When hydrogen (or deuterium) are caught in the just the right-sized space, and jiggled with the right resonant frequency, the nuclei will somehow “fuse” together creating the much sought-after excess heat effect that is the focus of worldwide research.

If he’s right, naming the NAE is only the first step. There still needs to be a model for how the nuclei overcome the Coulomb barrier and join together during the reaction. Dr. Storms will be partnering with colleagues to test his hypothesis in the coming months, as well as writing a shorter, article-sized version of his ideas in A Student’s Guide. But, if his hypothesis bears out, it may mean that cold fusion can occur in all kinds of materials. Hydrogen would only need just the right space, and just the right frequency, and what an energy breakthrough that would be.

Our initial discussions were not on tape, so focused was I on following his words, but later we sat down for a video interview and I asked him some pointed questions about the current developments in the field. I’ll be editing that in the coming months.

On the way out of town, I spoke with the proprietor of Nicholas Potter Bookseller, a rare and used-book shop in old town Santa Fe, [visit] about the research occurring right in his own neighborhood and he was impressed. A special author book signing event might be a great opportunity to get The Science of Low Energy Nuclear Reaction for his shelves! [more]

Magdalena, New Mexico

The Very Large Array Radio Observatory

There was some kind of event going on for astronomers, and everyone had badges – except me. But the door was open, and so I sneaked in to leave a few Cold Fusion Now stickers on the table, and snuck out. No conversations were held as I wasn’t supposed to be there, but I snapped a few photos of the dishes and started back to the main highway.

And that’s when my truck broke down. (See what you get for sneakin’ around!)

Magdalena is an old Western cattle town, now economically-depressed. There’s no grocery store, food items are purchased locally at the gas station mart, but the auto garage had excellent mechanics who knew right away what was needed and fixed it promptly when parts arrived Monday morning. Thank you Winston’s Auto and Wrecker Service!

Truth or Consequences, New Mexico

America’s Spaceport

There is a town in New Mexico named Truth or Consequences, but the locals call it T or C. I trekked there to see Spaceport America, the new facility being built by Sir Richard Branson for his Virgin Galactic fleet of spaceships. [visit] The New Mexico Space Authority also kicked in and there will be other private space company launches as well. I’ve wanted to tell Sir Richard about the new energy industry that’s ready to pop and blow all other markets away, and give him a Cold Fusion Now sticker, for a long time now.

“May I go and check out the Spaceport?”, I asked.

“Nope, sorry, still under construction, but you can come back on the weekend for the tour.”

Well, I wasn’t going to be able to stick around the whole week for the tour. I pulled over in the little spot he directed me to, and snapped a few shots of the still-forming structure. Apparently, they’ve been having alot of engineering issues that have put the project over a year behind schedule, and it may be two years behind. There’d be no opportunity to personally lobby Sir Richard this time around.

Artesian Bath House and RV Park

Tucson, Arizona

I left New Mexico timidly, hoping my truck would make it through the barren southwest desert. In Tucson, Arizona, I holed up to write-up the Miley interview. The website had been neglected for quite some time while I’d been away, with lots of broken links and such due to the transition to a new platform made right before I left Florida. Fixing things would have to wait until I made it through this trip, but people were wondering “Where’s the news about George Miley?”

Saguaro National Park

When leaving the park, a couple down from Phoenix was sitting at the picnic table and asked where I was from. That started a conversation about energy, and before you knew it, they had a sticker in their hand, and were intrigued about investment opportunities. I told them to learn more about it on the website first before doing anything with their dollars, and said my goodbyes to these most pleasant and positive people.

Titan Missile Museum

I also bounced over to the Titan Missile Museum, a silo site with a decommissioned Titan missile still inside. [visit] Titan missiles carried devastating nuclear bombs and were part of the MAD Mutually Assured Destruction strategy during the Cold War years. Portions of the movie Star Trek First Contact were filmed there as well. Scenes where Zephram Cochrane readied the first rocketship with warp drive used this very silo in 1996.

The resident historian Chuck Penson, featured in the video at the beginning of the tour, [visit] followed our group around down in the underground rooms, and though I couldn’t find him afterwards, I left a Cold Fusion Now sticker for him at the front desk.

zed short

While in Tucson, I also met up with zed short, author of the short-story “The Believers” [read] and the play “Waiting for the E-cat: A comedy in two acts“. [read] He lives in a very remote desert region, and so he came up to meet me in town. We talked about the recent news and had a great conversation on how to move forward with this campaign for ultra-clean energy. He put a sticker on his pickup and I encouraged him to continue to write in service to a new paradigm of living.

Cold Fusion Now knows the importance of including artists in the new energy movement, for they give words and feeling to worlds not-yet-born so that we may recognize and become familiar with the new.

Biosphere2

I took the tour and saw incredible landscapes of desert, coastal, and rainforest reproduced on a small-scale in a huge greenhouse. These micro-environments are used as test cases to describe the real thing on Earth. Currently, scientists are testing the effect of less water in the rainforest biome. While they won’t be killing it by withholding all water, they’ll be reducing the amount of water provided to the forest and monitoring the effects. Obviously, parallels between these artificially-created micro-environments to Earth’s rainforests will only go so far, but having even the smallest amount of data can give some direction to managing the last natural areas of the planet.

At the end of the tour, back in the lobby, I knocked on the door on the manager’s office.

Curious, but encouraging, the woman replied smiling, “Why yes, I’d be happy too, thank you.”

I spent a moment telling her what cold fusion was, and she seemed intrigued. As I left, she carried the stickers out with her, walking away to presumably deliver them.

Meteor Crater, Arizona

But then a Guide appeared and I asked about Mr. Barringer.

“Oh no! He was trying to get rich by mining the metal left. He thought that he’d be able to find a big cache of the meteorite buried somewhere, and make alot of money by mining it out.”

I had to laugh, thinking, well that’s how it is, isn’t it. Taking a chance to win big – or just make a living, and you end up making breakthrough discoveries about this history of our planet, but penniless. Doesn’t that sound familiar? For many researchers in the new energy field, they are just trying to pay the rent, hoping to strike it rich with a new form of power that will give human beings a second chance at a technological future on a clean and green world.

A storm was coming in that weekend, and no “rim tours” were being held due to the really heavy winds. Could I escape the storm going north?

Grand Canyon

But the storm was coming in here too. It rained, it hailed, and was so windy I could barely stand upright. In the few moments of weather transition, I snapped a few photos myself and drove on down the mountain to southern Utah to escape the storm.

Glen Canyon Dam at Page, Arizona

But I kept thinking how all this infrastructure will one day be obsolete, as cold fusion slowly infiltrates society, and despite being technically spectacular, I said “with good riddance”. Power grids are inefficient, and water in the desert is not to be toyed with. And dams don’t last forever. At some point, their lifetime is reached, and they need to be rebuilt. What a huge use of resources!

When electricity can be made by small, portable cold fusion units, free of the grid, our lives will change completely and we’ll have an opportunity to explore life as we’ve never explored it before.

Kanab, Utah

Zion National Park

There’s nothing like a personal touch when enlarging a movement for clean, abundant new energy. You talk to somebody, and they talk to two people, and those two people talk to two people each, and you can see how this can avalanche.

I had been on the road for almost a month, and living out of my truck was taking a toll. I had to cancel the Las Vegas stop, and headed to Los Angeles, where I’d be staying for the summer.

Spaceport at Mojave, California

I stopped in the Spaceport’s Voyager Restaurant while I finished writing up the Session 46 Advanced Concepts. (And all typos, grammatical errors, and mixed metaphors are now corrected! Thanks Steve Schor.) I put a couple of my last stickers on their bulletin board, so all the space heads would see it when they came in for lunch, and said goodbye.

Last Stop for Now: Los Angeles

I regret missing my friends up in New England. Missing out on Cold Fusion 101 was a drag. Sadly, I was not financially able to stay up there during the winter and camping options are limited in the city. And not stopping in to see the many labs along my route was disappointing, but hey y’all: You haven’t escaped yet!

I have the feeling there will be other tours, and other trips, and who knows when some woman in a big blue truck will show up at your door and hand you a sticker! Cold Fusion Now continues to drive the most important issue facing humanity to new heights, for our survival as a species may depend on this revolutionary cold fusion energy technology.

You can see from this travelogue that being a clean energy advocate is easy and fun. It just means talking to the people you meet about what’s going on, and giving them a place to go for more information. I hope that you are inspired to take on the challenge, and do what you can to support

Cold Fusion Now!