cc: file, Tony Hafen, Pauline Nelson via mail, Sara and Des Penny, and Maxine Shirts
"Hard week for me emotionally, and I won't talk about it much at this time. Wish I handled emotions better. It almost seems like I care too much. Oh well!
Usually I find the hard weeks have a silver lining. The following was in the LDS Daily News e-mail which we receive:
Paul was on the team that put the virtual reality presentations
together tied to this gift. He got a bonus, which they can use,
he anticipates a summer 2003 internship in Detroit, and a
scholarship or internship to pay for his Masters Degrees coming
out of this project. It was a big week for Paul. Congratulations.
I've been reading the Doctrine & Covenants every morning as my personal scripture study for the last few months. The following caught my attention, and thought it would be a good theme for what I want to write:
I decided to write about some of my far out ideas and dreams,
so those of you who didn't know before, will know how crazy I
really am. As I read the commandment to build a city across
from Nauvoo, I could see in my minds eye the new temple at
Nauvoo looking across the Mississippi River. I could imagine
the kind of project Ray Gardner, Bill Bavinger, Rick Duran,
Jeff Winston, Dave Peterson, and others have been discussing
with me for the last 32+ years, and see it being implemented
on the shores of the Mississippi River. I could imagine how
the work we did on the Barker Project or Maudeen Marks Ranch
(see www.walden3d.com/w3d/design/W3D89A), the Columbus,
Texas Project, the Shirts' Canyon Project, the Hurricane
Project, the ideas I generated for use of Carl Nelson and
Dad's farm land (see ../gifs/MinersvilleRoad.gif for a map
where the yellow outlines the city shaped like a volcanic
flow, one story by the freeway, or bottom of the picture,
and probably about 15 stories by Grandma Nelson's house
on the farm, located at the top of the picture, with
irrigation water running down the top of the structure and
water falling off into a pond out in the valley, where the
housing units on the east are sunrise units and the housing
units on the west are the sunset housing units, and the
stores and entertainment and amenities are all along the
ground floor, like a big mall), and the thousands of pages
of notes and material I have collected over the last 30
years are finally put to use on a project like Zarahemla.
There were several phone calls with Basil Nwankwo, the Exploration Manager of Emerald Energy, and Dr. Vince O. Eleri of VRMT International, about defining how we are going to be working together on a go forward basis. If Emerald and I enter into an agreement, and if the reserves are there like we project, then I could have the resources to build something like Zarahemla. VRMT set up several meetings with Escopeta Oil & Gas who have a large lease in the Cook Inlet of Alaska. We signed agreements to agree this week, which if they are executed, and if we find some of the 4 TCF (Trillion Cubic Feet of Gas) we expect to find, will result in a 2% ORRI (Over Riding Royalty Interest) for Dynamic Resources. Of course, most of this would go into building the company for the first few years. It has been 161 years since the commandment to build Zarahemla was given, and so I don't expect a few more years will matter much.
Most of my week was spent working on the PetroChina project. It will be interesting to see how well my ideas are accepted. I have put together a bunch of work, and need to wrap it up by Tuesday evening. It is totally fascinating what they have sent to me. PetroChina is the 4th largest oil and gas company in the world based on in place reserves. The oil reserves are about 5 times what we predict the recoverable reserves in OPL-229 to be. I have now signed a confidentiality agreement, and so it is only appropriate to write about what is in the public domain. PetroChina received 80% of CNPC's (China National Petroleum Corporation's) assets when they went public in Hong Kong and New York a couple of years ago. I'm working on helping them be more efficient. I was describing in general terms what I am doing with Swede Nelson early in the week. He has great experience and provides me great advice, even though I don't tell him hardly anything. He suggested PetroChina should look for assets outside of China, and that the best place for them to look is South America. He further said one of the main things they need is heavy oil to make asphalt to support their efforts to improve infrastructure. The Chinese oil is lacustrine (from sediments deposited in large interior lakes like the Great Lakes) and waxy and light and it is hard to make asphalt out of it. There is a billion barrel heavy oil field that is going to be up for bid in a few months in Ecuador. He recommends I point this opportunity out to them. The commission would be sufficient to build a Zarahemla.
I described something I have been following ever since I was doing the consulting work for Boeing. It is based on a 1978 quote from Arthur C. Clarke, the science fiction writer, who wrote:
NASA and Boeing think so, and they have publicly
announced proof-of-concept studies. The work will be
based on the 1991 discovery of carbon nanotubes at Rice
University. These are the strongest material known.
A carbon-nanotube string half the width of a pencil can
support more than 40,000 kilograms (about 105,000
pounds), or the weight of 20 full-sized cars. The space
elevator will consist of a flat carbon-nanotube ribbon
100,000 km long (60,000 miles long), hanging from orbit
about 35,000 km above the Earth's surface. Of course,
the best place to do this is at the equator, and the
country with the highest mountains at the equator is
Ecuador, where a Zarahemla could be built by the heavy
oil fields. Some believe the space elevator will be
a reality within 15 years. Once it has been running
a few years a round trip ticket might only cost $20,000.
Last week in Gospel Doctrine, Marion Pickerd taught a lesson on Ezekiel 43-44 and 47 where the scriptures say:
These verses go on to describe the big earthquake at
the temple mount, when a river will be formed which
will flow to the east and heal the waters of the
Dead Sea. This is the same earthquake which Dr. Amos
Nur of Stanford University documented and predicted
in his self funded study of earthquakes of antiquity
in the Holy Land. Amos is on the Board of Directors
of Emerald Energy and VRMT. I recall as I read these
verses last week having my minds eye wander to the
source of light shining on Jerusalem and on Zarahemla.
I don't find where I have referred to this before, so
I will repeat myself. Several years ago I heard about
some Russian Cosmonauts shining a big mirror at the
earth for the purpose of creating daylight 24 hours
a day. I don't recall what scriptures we were studying
at the time, and yet it involved prophecy that there
would be sunlight 24 hours a day in Jackson County,
Missouri, not that far from the proposed Zarahemla.
I recall telling Todd Staheli that he and I were going
to build a mirror to provide continuous light to the
New Jerusalem and the Old Jerusalem. He told me I
was crazy, and we have still been best friends for
many years.
Some time ago I mentioned Buckminster Fuller's plan to build mile diameter geodesic spheres called Tensegrity Spheres. Quoting from Critical Path, page 336:
In fact, a floating Zarahemla could be the sky hook
that explains why the Salt Lake Temple was built with
upside down arches to support being picked up and
transported from Salt Lake City to the New Jerusalem
in Jackson County, Missouri.
On July 1st of 1973 I wrote a song I titled Deseret:
For years I have wondered, as Mordecai, Esther's Uncle
or cousin, as recorded in Esther 4:13-14:
I have had personal experiences, which to me are as real
as holding a piece of rock and studying the geology of
that rock, which have convinced me of the absolute
reality of Satan. My Patriarchal Blessing includes the
words:
However, my Patriarchal Blessing does not promise that
those I love will be protected in the same way. And
certainly, if I am correct in my statement there is a
Satan, and if the far out ideas and dreams I have
wrote about in this Thoughtlet are from a source
outside of myself, as I believe they are, then it
makes sense Satan will do everything he can to keep
these ideas from being implemented. The implementation
is simply a matter of turning dreams turned to virtual
reality and then to reality. And if Satan is going to
stop someone, even a very determined individual, there
are several fronts of attack.
First is showing the world and eventually the individual he is `crazy.' Maybe I'm struggling because I see this is too close to the truth.
Second, there is an attack on core beliefs. I have not yet been able to reconcile my life with the statements of those I believe are Prophets, specifically David O. McKay's statement:
And President Hinkley's closing comments in the last
General Conference:
Third, and possibly the best thing for Satan to do is
to attack and use those an individual loves. The
attack need not be head on, rather it can be
passive-aggressive, or full of angry words and
self-indulgent behavior.
It is late, and I'm being more direct than I mean to. Maybe I just need to realize there are lots of men, much better than I can ever hope to be, who have gone before with similar ideas and dreams. I've quoted from some. And none of them had the opportunity to actually implement their dreams and ideas. So is it just a big ego that makes me think I will actually be an instrument in the Lord's hand to implement some of these ideas? Do I simply escape into fantasyland when things are too hard emotionally for me to face. I expect there is truth here. I'm attempting to paint a picture of the struggle going in my mind. I recognize the struggle is in my mind. Every twice in a while my geodesic bubbles get popped, or my nanotube ribbons get cut, I get jerked out of my fantasy world and brought face to face with my failures as a father and a husband. Andrea tells me she does not want to be married to a failure, I need to really learn about repentance, and to stop taking responsibilty for other people's choices. Unintended consequences of independent decisions! Given the context `who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?', I am still forced to face the fact there might be nothing more than daydreams in regards to my vision of a family (../0003.html and 0218.html) or a church (../0020.html), or a physical instantiation (see the words to the song Deseret above) of a new Zarahemla.