...Strange Treasure...

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L. Moulton-Howe? I'd surmised she was heavy. By that I mean plump, ponderous ... weighty. I'd thought she was mannish, had gained *too much* weight? ...Since beauty queen days she’d emptied some plates. A butterball picture preceded her lecture, I'd thought her an endomorph—too fond French confecture...

And what's wrong with that—well, not a damn thing; it's preferred is the point—as a way to still think.

Oh, don't get me wrong ... I'm making no judgment — I fight it myself — I'm as fat as da' gub'mint. It's just that it's better to get the full message unfiltered by beauty's beguiling advantage. Balance ... confused and derailed enough by diversions inflicted to shake it all up!

I don't want her to *thrill* me... but that I'd want her to share... all her travels, conclusions, and what she's found where. I don't want a romance, or a man/woman thing, but I do want her mind and the songs it could sing.

I wanted her portly, to give her words weight; all 'prettiness' suspect! It changes things, mate.

She'd been just a voice, but I'd heard its expression; its concern, its grand sense ... its truthful connection. She was honest, and forthright ... brave to bring light to a darkness we're facing... ...all near the same plight...

...Our world is dying; her words were its tears. She clearly contends valid reasons for fear! The lungs of our planet are burning up daily, the fish are expiring! She points it up plainly! Conspiracy's real, and it gushes from founts! Enigma's approaching — anomaly mounts!

T'was then that we met, and I've got to be truthful ... transcends the ethereal; good Christ... she is beautiful! She was standing, alone, in front of the lift as I turned a sharp corner — struck dumb and bereft!

I held out my hand and tried to say something; God knows what came out; I felt speechless ... presumptive. See what I mean? Beauty is tyranny! I’d comment to make, but I'd lost all epiphany!

"...You are Ms. Howe..." my question a statement, she said, "why, ah…yes." And her smile was radiant. Her dress was so light, and it moved without breeze. As we walked to the lift? ...I was weak in the knees.

I was fifty years plus, with a seasoned immunity to "the ways of the flesh" in our human community.

...Still, I'm swept up, beguiled, in the scent of her clothes, the wave in her hair ... her pedicured toes. My mind was in hyperdrive, and I grokked her detail... those alien eyebrows, the questions entailed.

Then the way she regards you, your secrets laid bare; I felt compelled to cover up, ashamed what she'd find there...

...See, I'm unimpressed by General Officers! I bow to few women, no strutting, proud man — but something about our Ms. Howe is quite different, and it sails passed beauty ... she's sincere — understand?

...Well, she was on two, and I was on four; we've one floor together, then she's out the door. The time that was spent in the short little trip? I'll remember a while. Though it went by so quick.

I thanked her, her courage, and I lauded her book ... "would you autograph it please," and she said she surely would. ...And then she was gone, and the doors had rolled closed — Linda Howe's a strange treasure, a flower...

...A dark rose.

• alienview@adelphia.net
• http://www.alienview.net/

• She really is incredibly beautiful. Pity. I would just as soon it not get in the way.  This sentiment could have been made similarly were she to resemble a mossy sack of stomped frogs...
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• See, "warts" — imperfections likely shared in humanity's aggregate? These are reassuring, actually, and imply a potential for approachability. Beauty can be tyranny, as may the contrary physical ugliness, eh? This is even when it’s not the tyrant's fault. More's the pity.
• The perception with regard to Ms. Howe; however, is an inverse in some unexplainable way because, somehow... on anyone else? Her brand of personal loveliness would be an unwelcome distraction.  An exception proving the rule, she's the kind of person, you see, who makes her physical appearance fade in the listener's appreciation of what she has to say.
• Remarkably, she has plenty to say. I’m asserting that, verily, and especially in comparison to her impacted detractors, there is a much more satisfying and efficacious beauty in her expression than can be found in her mere appearance, and I say this remembering my own converse turn at how all I've here-to-fore described can turn cross with you. 
• See, she's not a woman you trifle with, clearly and decidedly.  I trifled to the smallest degree and its me in smoldering crosshairs... cut off at the presumptuous knees.
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• It remains the preceding was my fault, so working it into an appropriate appreciation's evalutory equation is redundantly dishonorable. So?  So, call her gullible, non-discerning, or credulous in my presence and court your back-sides loss.
• Say she has no filters, is not scientific, and is too self-involved while I'm listening to invite a lesson on ignorance of spirit and mind, n'est ce pas?  Imply she’s mendacious, obfuscating, or misleading to be found mendacious, obfuscating, or misleading, yourself. Call these bogus charges, say these thoughtless epithets, imply these canted assessments until cows return as prodigals... ...and get it as wrong as an out-of-control 720 degree turn from the truth could ever take you... verily.
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• No, rather... ...she trumps her too often conflicted, presumptive, and suspect detractors with sincerity, imagination, and bravery. Moreover, she is subject to the dismissive slings and arrows of these detractors (agency, institution — status quo) only because in many cases these lack her courage, intelligence, and earnestness. Finally, she is a woman making her way in a male dominated field, and is remarkably even given that fact, in my opinion.  The Dolans, and J. Vallee share a similar opinion.
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• Frankly, operating as she operates would make her just one of the boys if she was male. But she is female... so assertiveness becomes stridency. She is female... so thoroughness becomes obsessive-ness? She is female... so she’s not passionate... she's emotional. She is female so she’s not served by strong convictions... no ...she’s a "bitch"?
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• Not at this station... too wary boys and ever warier girls. You know who you are.
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• True, I usually have to make an effort to be *nice* to unusually pretty people ... by any stripe or definition of prettiness (charisma just pisses me off much to the horror and chagrin of the charisma-tized).
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• See, I feel many of these are so used to deferential treatment they have (many of them) lost the capacity to respectfully appreciate it, graciously. Ms. Howe is certainly attractive enough for me to dismiss, out of hand.
• ...But Ms. Howe also has unusual courage (I’m uniquely qualified to know what courage is, Sir and Madam!), plus evidence of putting herself in harm's way (...think about it...), and her obviously uncontrived and (cleanly healthy) passion for her subject is honorably admirable. I am loath to not appreciate what she has to say and the effort made to say it.
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• And I do appreciate her, share her concern for an abused Earth (the only home we've currently got), and support, in a material way, her ongoing investigation into that which should be of critical (gainful!) interest to every one of us.
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• I buy her books and eschew M. Shirmer's.
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• Why? Because the earnest report is preferable to the axe-grinding and exclutionary one. I'd rather have "the truth and a half" than "half the truth"... ...And dead wrong? I suspect she’s still more *correct* (whatever that may mean) than her canted, conflicted, and intellectually constipated opposition.  That's the long and tall right there.
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• God's speed and cleverness, Linda Howe. It's apparent you're one of the few who's at core as pretty on the inside as you most certainly are on the outside. Lovely, and still a minor god in my personal pantheon, and, currently still (...even if under original protest...)?
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• "...Reporting my skies."
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