This last week I tried A. O. Grigsby again and acquired two small news articles of his giving presentations at The First Society of Spirtualists.

So now I’m looking into the historical material on Spiritualists. It just happens that I know several people who attend spiritualist meetings so I emailed a couple of them. I also know about The Sunset Spiritualist Camp that happens every summer at the Spiritualist Camp in Wells Kansas. Since that location is one of the oldest in Kansas I am hoping that some additional material may show up through those sources.

Incidentally, they will start their 2016 summer camp on June 2.

Topeka must have been a real interesting place in 1900. What happened to the progeny of the people who lived in Topeka in 1900? I would like to talk to a few of those whose relatives were involved in Spiritualism, Christian Socialism, or Social Justice causes. Those who could answer some questions about the times.

T

Also found a notation on a woman who was named Nequa Law and lived in Topeka. Her birth year was in 1900.

As I am very obsessive, I have been looking again for more information on the NEQUA people. I found two more tidbits, two more leads on information that provide more questions than answers. Every couple of months or so I go back to the internet looking for new information on the NEQUA people, It seems that the internet will keep looking for additional material as long as there are requests being entered into the search engines.

A later news item also refers to the son working in the capitol. There is a question about his mother’s last name being the same as the auditors and a suspicion exists that there is some family favoritism. The auditor admits that Mrs. Lowe was from the same area he was from in Kentucky, Walter works for November and December of 1893 and January through June in 1894,

The Humanities Newspaper Project keeps digitizing newspapers, which means that more minute material shows up every time I recheck it. I have about a dozen subjects I use for searching every once in a while. Slowly but surely a clearer picture of the Lowes emerges.

The other day I talked with a couple of people who have actually read their copy of NEQUA. It was interesting to get their take on the book.

One person mentioned that he had enjoyed the inclusion of political ideas in NEQUA and that he had always wondered how Kim Stanley Robinson ever convinced himself that political commentary could be hidden in between the lines of his Science Fiction. I commented that he didn’t seem to hide ideas he just revealed them slowly and with sardonic humor. The Years of Rice and Salt instantly came to mind. It was political, but I took it in, as commentary of a spiritual nature. 

I remembered that when I first read The Years of Rice and Salt, I had just come across the idea that we usually view time on a vertical axis rather than on a horizontal plane. We should try thinking about time as a horizontal plane of events, a chronology of "events" that seem to have taken place along side each other. The horizontal idea coupled with a little reincarnation, allowed that we are born into a period just to the right of last time, IF, WE PROCEEDED correctly through last times lessons. 

IF WE HAD FAILED we were reborn to the left of where we had been and took enough of our personality along that there was always a nagging, déjà vu, feeling just behind almost every big decision we made. We lived almost all of the same life over again. It would explain several events in my present life.

"Do you really know?" Yes, I know, I know that this feeling is not just the results of spicy chili or too much wine. I’ve had the feeling, when stone cold sober. A feeling that “last time I really screwed up big time and at this same exact point in my life” It was accompanied  with, whole blood chilling sentences, that reverberated in my head, “No No don’t mess this up again” followed by a calmness, when the new decision was being encompassed and acted out like an actor on the stage.

 I would say that the writing in “The Years of Rice and Salt” indicates that Robinson has also had that same terror.

There are also the statements or a poetic turn of a phrase, that seems to speak specifically to my heart from time to time which seem to me to also be reminders, not just soulful, rather a soul full and spilling over moment.

Such is the line in “Amazing Grace”  -----“which saved a wretch like” or when Ira Tucker steps into “Love Me Like A Rock” with Little Stevie Wonder and Paul Simon.

Don’t ask me why but hearing Fred Sanford (Red Foxx), while courting a lady on Sanford and Sons say, “Nothing like two free birds getting together over a bottle of Ripple” provides some of the same type of heartfelt feeling.

A review of NEQUA found in Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction is now circulating. It is quite well done. Foundations is published in England.  Here are two quotes from the review.

“Mark Esping, who serendipitously came across a copy on a bookshelf and not hidden away in an archive, has meticulously researched the few clues that remain as to the authorship and inspiration for Nequa”

“.Nequa mediates between the dual American desires for an economically robust nation within a pastoral setting: ‘Not withstanding all the evidences of a highly cultivated country and the most active traffic and trade between the different sections, we nowhere discovered any indications of great cities… nowhere did we see vast clouds of smoke such as vitiate the atmosphere in the large cities and manufacturing districts of the outer world’ (p. 118).”

I also contacted The Midwest Book Review, which provided a pleasant surprise.  I dialed the phone number and a man answered the phone. It was Mr. Cox himself. He was not only pleasant but extremely informative.  I followed his advice and a review of NEQUA appears in the October on-line issue of Small Press Bookwatch. Take a look at http://www.midwestbookreview.com/sbw/oct_15.htm#Fantasy/SciFi

If anyone knows of some other places I should contact for reviews or places to place reviews please send me an email. 

Send an email to your entire email list telling them to buy NEQUA at Amazon.com or from KC Metro Books, listed on biblio.com.