Claude Doudna:  

Hope everyone has done well. You can still call me Claude, but with all the "clod" jokes I've been going by my middle name: Allen. I've lived in Nebraska, California, Iowa, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Maryland, and Pennsylvania. I've been everywhere in-between as well as Canada, Alaska, Hawaii, Japan, Philippines, Kenya, Singapore, and Hong Kong--and a lot of this galavantin' around had nothing to do with the Navy! Six days after High School Graduation I was in Navy Boot Camp. All my brothers had been in the Navy. I wanted to be a science fiction writer and the Navy was the closest thing you could get to Space. On the side I might have a greenhouse or fish farm--things many experts said we'd have to do to survive in the future. Most of what passes for science fiction today isn't. In real science fiction you have to be fairly accurate to the facts as we know them. I might also write alternative history. It's not enough to just say the South won the Civil War, you have to figure out how that could have happened. For instance, if at Gettysburg Confederate General Ewell had simply went up to the top of Culp's Hill before the Union got men up there several hours later they could have rolled up the Union flank and won the battle. The North was weary of the war and this would have been the third major defeat in six months. A confederacy is not a firm nation but rather s loose association of nations--the United Nations is a confederacy--so every state in America would have become it's own nation. The railroad to California would never have been built and there would have been no Maxwell. I would often puzzle these things out by taking a walk from our place on the northernmost block of Maxwell to the Sand Hills a mile north. If you have not done so I very much recommend the view a mile north of Maxwell from atop the hill to the west of the road. I think it's more scenic than the view from Sioux Lookout, probably has something to do with the different direction of the light from the sun. Well, there's also Cedar Ridge south of Maxwell. Cedar Ridge was sacred to the Sioux, even though both Cedar Ridge and Sioux Lookout were well within Pawnee territory. My plans changed when I got to my first duty station after Boot Camp. I re-connected with the Church some uncles had taken us to when I was 10-12 and I realized many beliefs were incompatible with a career in science fiction. When the Viet-Nam War ended the Budget was cut and I looked like a good place to cut the Budget. A lot of guys received General Discharges but mine was an Honorable Discharge. I went to Union College in Lincoln and studied to become a pastor. The professors advised I was probably not cut out to be a pastor but would make a good lay elder and give the sermon when the pastor wasn't there. 1977-1978 I did my student preaching at a small church between Omaha and Sioux City. The summer of 1978 I sold Uncle Arthur's Bible Story door-to-door in Scottsbluff which tested a lot of things a pastor had to do other than preaching. I am not a salesman. I got a job building roof trusses in North Platte and have done mostly factory work since then. In 1981 I got a job at an aircraft factory in Maryland paying $10 an hour--about $60 an hour today. When a contract ended about a thousand of us were laid off and I was one. The local unemployment rate was 16%. I asked the Lord where we should go and He showed me Grand Island. I haven't regretted it. My first wife did and went back to Maryland refusing to live away from her family--extremely clannish. There was no way I could get my two daughters back so had to accept it. A little later I lost my shirt in the Commodities Market. I have often debated politics on Internet forums. If you want to know what will happen--in the long run--I can tell you: About every 80 years there is a major ground shift in politics. The Greeks and Romans noticed this in their histories and called it the Saeculum. About 1610 people began asking why they should remain peasants in England when they could cross the ocean and become lords of their own castles. 80 years later about 1690 the last Catholic king of England was deposed and England became a firmly Protestant nation, establishing a balance of power. 80 years later about 1770 we replaced rule by the King of England with rule by wealthy Americans, most of whom were Southern Plantation Aristocracy. 80 years later about 1850 Northern Big Business was big enough to challenge Southern Plantation Aristocracy--which was based on Slavery. About 80 years later Big Business was replaced by Big Government in the 1930s. Today is 80 years later and we should expect to see a Movement challenging Big Government and lo and behold we have the Tea Party. Tea Party thinking will dominate American Politics for the next 80 years. Most would say my life has been a waste. Depends on what you look at. A Liberal-Conservative Split began appearing in our local church and us Conservatives were kicked out. Because I was a "waste" but had most of the training for a pastor I was available to provide useful service to our little group. Each of us has talents that help everybody else. I usually have the sermon about once a month and now have the outlines for the last ten years on my computer. Each sermon has six verses and six illustrations: Our Problem, God's Answer, Applying the Answer. Since 1978 I have ...Expand for more