Dan,
"All in fun," of course.
But Dan, a simple country journalist IS all that I really am.
Not a camouflage or cover for being some kind of "angel in human drag," my interest and eventual peripheral involvements in these various fields have arisen simply from looking around.
In your case, when did you decide to cease being a student of physics (or did you) to adopt an Eschatological Interface role? In all traditions there are folks who play roles in such dramas, no doubt none so important (at one time or another) as Dr. Hal Puthoff in earlier years of "asking questions" about RV @ SRI. And now, Hal is a "physicist, again," trying to do the math for a star-chasing drive that may not see operational reality for a century or two more, IF even by then.
Or Dr. Ron Pandolphi, inheritor of part of the very large chair of Kit Green, who BEGAN with his earlier work supervising the contracts of Puthoff & Co., only to grow and accelerate through his field and into areas no doubt the "kid Kit Green" was never able to imagine...(unless of course, he was...and did...which may have propelled him on his way to some "kid-dreamed" future). I doubt whether Kid-Kit dreamed of earning the National Intell. Medal. Given that such acknowledgements are not bestowed in any "light" vein, no doubt adult-Kit would never have wanted a "kid-Kit" even to imagine, let alone worry, about the kind of a world and "universe" where Kit, Hal, Ron and their peers wake up every morning and "go to work."
The key here, Dan, seems to be "balance." Theirs...mine...yours. Finding it. Keeping it. Enjoying it.
If one's life is too empty, too strained or too lonely for what is "real" to serve as a deep enough keel to keep you upright in the kinds of "psychic storms" and "consciousness cross-winds" that often arise "out there" (where "Truth" resides, or doesn't), then it is pretty easy to suffer a knock-down and be swamped.
Keeping with the sailing metaphor, because it's one that fits the "cosmic" travelling we all dream of doing sometimes, it is the mark of an experienced mariner to sense the weather and to know when to reef your sails...or to change course and head into the wind, surviving until a storm is passed... or simply to find a port and sit out the storm.
At moments like that, (ending the metaphor), it is helpful and good to have friends, family and some other contexts where a sense of "normalcy" can be relocated, restored and maintained.
As I've mentioned to you previously, perhaps the treatment of this kind of situation that comes closest to describing what I have learned about it from watching other "seekers" is the way Janet and Chris Morris handled it in "The Stalk." (ROC, 1994). I have beaucoup respect for Janet and her incisive reporting on the kinds of issues that face policy makers and shapers when a "reality base" is altered. As she (and John Alexander and Dick Groller) tried to make potentially positive in "The Warrior's Edge," ...and as her influences on Newt Gingrich, as evidenced in his "Windows of Opportunity" (1984, which Janet essentially is credited with re-writing and helping to focus)...Janet knows that even if "the aliens" land (or maybe are "already here"), we still have to pay the rent, feed the babies and take out garbage.
The determination (by whomever, for whatever) about what and when to "tell the people" whatever are the "biggest secret" kinds of things has to be "What will happen after we tell 'em?"
If a "Heaven's Gate 39" doesn't send a signal that some of us are not at all ready...or if your own suggestions for a "direct action" or the kinds of things Operation Right-To-Know plays at doing are any indication...then, heck no, we are NOT ready.
So, if you want to be "an angel" or Eschatological Interface, Dan, remember: "Angel is as angel does!"
Stay loose, guy. And be patient! It's not about you, me, Hal, Ron, Kit, Bruce, Rich, Nelson or "Larry the Rock."
rev. 5/19/97