Key West starving writer: It's more blessed to give than to receive

Valentine's Day, 2020

Yesterday afternoon, I told my good Republican friend Todd German, who lives on Cudjoe Key and works in Key West, that my new book, published by Absolutely Amazing Ebooks in Key West, can be purchased at AMAZON.COM A Southern Lawyer Who Became a Mystic in paperback and kindle, and I expect about same results as my 6 runs for mayor of Key West😎. 

Last night, my deceased father told me in a dream to do something "illegal" in the Florida Keys, which involved writing and an important chess game on which life itself depends. I saw locations from Key Largo down to Key West. Two nights prior my father and his deceased company CEO and a third man had asked me in a dream if I was not already making enough money? My sense was there are struggling people in the Florida Keys who cannot afford to buy books, and I was to let it be known the book can be read for free online, which "infringes" the publisher's copyright and violates the laws of capitalism. Strange counsel from a supercapitalist who was perplexed by my inability to fit into that "religion".😎

Actually, a trilogy:

A FEW REMARKABLE PEOPLE I HAVE KNOWN can be read for free at

https://afewremarkablealabamapeople.blogspot.com/ 

LAW & SPIRIT can be read for free at

https://lawandmysticism.blogspot.com/ 

SPONTANEOUS RAMBLINGS ON SOUL ALCHEMY can be read for free at

https://spontaneousramblingsonsoulalchemy.blogspot.com/ 

What cannot be read at those blogs are how the trilogy starts:

To Key West Poet Laureate Robert Frost

for taking the road less traveled by and that made all the difference

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author thanks his friends and relatives

for putting up with him,

and Absolutely Amazing Books in Key West

for publishing his often stranger than fiction ramblings

Heh -

Key West is known for writers, poets, playwrights and eccentrics.

Preface

I MOSTLY LIVED IN KEY WEST and just above there from late 2000 through 2018. I learned most people living in but not born in the Florida Keys were on the lam from … something. There isn’t much about that part of my life in this trilogy of little books by a southern lawyer who became a mystic:

• A FEW REMARKABLE ALABAMA PEOPLE I HAVE KNOWN

• LAW & SPIRIT

• SPONTANEOUS RAMBLINGS ON SOUL ALCHEMY

The three little books offer snapshots of my progression from birth and growing up in Birmingham, Alabama into lawyering, writing and being a mystic, the whole nine yards of which might take 10,000 pages to tell.

To save you the trouble, I tell you right now that I would be nuts if I thought I could prove in a court of law that any of the mystical events reported in the trilogy actually happened. Yet, during my often stranger than fiction meanderings I met quite a few people having mystical experiences. After hearing of some of my mystical experience, they did not say I was nuts, or made it up, or imagined it.

I sometimes wish doctors of the mind were treated to just a small portion of what I experience ongoing, and that I am a fly on the wall, watching. One good thing for me about living in Key West was it was viewed as an open-air insane asylum where you could say just about anything that struck your fancy and not get locked up.

Many Key West and Florida Keys people came to know of me through my claiming God told me to run for public office: six times for mayor of Key West, three times for county commission, and one time for school board. I attended lots of candidate forums and did lots of media interviews.

And, there were my somewhat popular blogs, goodmorningkeywest.com and goodmorningfloridakeys.com, where I published daily about my political, human and metaphysical wanderings. I was familiar on bigpinekey.com’s popular Coconut Telegraph public forum. The relatively popular good morning blogs ran their course and were replaced by the less visited afoolsworkneverends.blogspot.com, which seemed a more fitting moniker.

Maybe I never came close to winning a run for public office – whew! - because I hated politics and said things no politician would dare say and hope to get elected. But then, I was told a number of times that I had really good ideas and could have won if I had not talked about God, angels, demons …

Meanwhile, in the fall of 2019, I tried to get NPR interested in this trilogy, which I had parked on separate blogs. After reading of that, my longtime internet buddy, Sancho Panza, commented, and some banter ensued:

Sancho: Sloan, I don’t think NPR will find your piece on Charlotte and the Judge appealing to their Liberal Audience ... not PC, my man!

Don Quixote (me): When I lived in Boulder, and since then, I have thought politically correct is a terminal spiritual disease.

Someone recently told me to try Terry Gross, who hosts Fresh Air, and I got a canned email back saying they cannot respond to everything they receive, but they read it all.

Here is the text of my email.

Dear NPR Fresh Air:

I wish to present for Terry Gross and her show producer's consideration, A FEW REMARKABLE ALABAMA PEOPLE I HAVE KNOWN, self-published paperback, which started falling out of me in 2004, after I heard a couple of commentaries on NPR about stagnated writers whose careers were rejuvenated by synchronistic experiences. I was a stagnated writer. There were several reprints, and I suppose I gave away about 2,000 copies. I recently republished it at A FEW REMARKABLE ALABAMA PEOPLE I HAVE KNOWN, by a southern lawyer who became a mystic, where anyone can read it for free. Perhaps people not from Alabama, who read it, come away with a new perspective of Alabama.

The book introduces 6 larger than life Alabama people, who influenced me during my formative years.

1. My spiritual father, in his teens fell under a train he was hopping and lost both legs above the knee, attended night law school, piloted the federal debtors court, got appointed to the federal bench, used to drink moonshine, cussed, and did not attend church, ran the Alabama Democratic Party behind the scenes, before George Wallace took over state politics.

2. My black nanny, daughter of a southern slave, the greatest cook in the world, my spiritual mother, who loved me as her own, a living saint, worked behind the scenes during the time of troubles in Birmingham, counseling her people to be patient with and tolerant of their white brothers and sisters.

3. My father's older brother, called a spade a spade, a healer pediatrician babies loved, treated babies, not mamas, the greatest fisherman in the world, I wanted to be my father.

4. My great grandfather Polish Jew immigrant, wise, honest, small town banker, married Southern Baptist daughter of a Confederate officer, townspeople brought him their disputes to settle, instead of the town lawyers.

5. My mother's Episcopal minister, hated asking his congregation to give money to his church, told his vestry he would close their church in the rich, white Birmingham suburb, Mountain Book, if blacks were denied attending services.

6. The wise, smarter than a whip family attorney, who became a lawyer the old way, by working in a law firm, who told me I'd never be happy until I found God.

In "a prior life", I was interviewed by Jane Pauley on TODAY, about HOME BUYERS: Lambs to the Slaughter? There were lots of media interviews regarding that book.

Then came SELLING YOUR HOME $WEET HOME and KILL ALL THE LAWYERS? A Client's Guide to Hiring, Firing, Using and Suing Lawyers. Lots more media interviews.

That life ended, so to speak, and things got a lot more interesting, somewhat reflected in A FEW REMARKABLE ALABAMA PEOPLE I HAVE KNOWN and a more recent little agony and ecstasy sequel, LAW & SPIRIT, by a Southern Lawyer Who Became a Mystic, about my progression from human law into spiritual law, and then flashes back to my sometimes amusing and not so amusing legal training at the University of Alabama School of Law and later related events.

The third little book in the trilogy is a bit more ... mystical and intense.

Spontaneous Ramblings on Soul Alchemy, by a southern lawyer who became a mystic

Sincerely yours,

Sloan Bashinsky

Sancho: I think a little different; instead of you writing a book about interesting people you've known, you should look at finding an author to write the story of your life ... it would be very interesting, I think! Oink!

Sloan: If such a writer exists, s/he will be very busy for quite a while.

sloanbashinsky@yahoo.com