In February 1974 something happened to author Philip K Dick that changed his life forever. Was it an illness, a psychotic reaction, or something truly mystical? Early on, he came to the conclusion that the world is not entirely real and there is no way to confirm whether it is truly there. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

But, by 1969, he had published over 40 novels and stories, as well as winning the 1963 Hugo Award for The Man In The High Castle…and he was a heavy amphetamine user. In 1972, after his fourth marriage failed and his home was burgled, he made his first suicide attempt. He later entered the X-Kalay rehab centre to recover.

On 20 February 1974 Dick was at home recovering from dental surgery, which had involved sodium pentothal for the pain…The painkillers were delivered by a woman wearing a gold necklace with a Christian fish symbol. On seeing this he was suddenly blinded by a flash of pink light and a series of powerful visions ensued. He later described this vision as anamnesis – “loss of forgetfulness.”

He immediately knew he and the delivery woman were both persecuted Christians in ancient Rome. Time was unreal, or rather it was a Platonic ideal. More visions happened in the following months: abstract patterns, philosophical ideas, sophisticated engineering blueprints. He felt he was actually living two simultaneous lives. One of his visions told him his child had an undiagnosed life-threatening hernia, which turned out to be true.

His night-time murmurings turned out to be Koine Greek:

In that instant, as I stared at the gleaming fish sign and heard her words, I suddenly experienced what I later learned is called anamnesis—a Greek word meaning, literally, “loss of forgetfulness.” I remembered who I was and where I was. In an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, it all came back to me. And not only could I remember it but I could see it. The girl was a secret Christian and so was I. We lived in fear of detection by the Romans. We had to communicate with cryptic signs. She had just told me all this, and it was true.

For a short time, as hard as this is to believe or explain, I saw fading into view the black, prisonlike contours of hateful Rome. But, of much more importance, I remembered Jesus, who had just recently been with us, and had gone temporarily away, and would very soon return. My emotion was one of joy. We were secretly preparing to welcome Him back. It would not be long. And the Romans did not know. They thought He was dead, forever dead. That was our great secret, our joyous knowledge. Despite all appearances, Christ was going to return, and our delight and anticipation were boundless.

He called this “an invasion of my mind by a transcendentally rational mind.” The invader called Zebra, made more effective and rational decisions than he could, including sorting out his finances and royalties. Dick wrote a private journal – called Exegesis – from 1974 up to his death in 1982.

In it he tried to make sense of the intense visions he had experienced. He made a further suicide attempt in 1976 when his visions ceased. He worked on many theories for his visionary experiences: God, the KGB, satellites, aliens, a telepathic first-century Christian called Thomas, the CIA, a version of himself from a different dimension, his twin sister in the spirit world.

Most of Philip K Dick’s later works explore the gnostic ideas and implications of his visions. VALIS – “Vast Active Living Intelligence System” – is part of his unfinished trilogy of books about what he believed he had discovered.

In his Exegesis he wrote: “We appear to be memory coils… in a computer-like thinking system which, although we have correctly recorded and stored thousands of years of experiential information… there is a malfunction of memory retrieval.”

Think of it what you will, it seemed to make him happy and secure. Philip K Dick passed away on 2 March 1982. His ashes were buried next to his twin sister Jane, who had died in infancy. Her tombstone had been inscribed with both of their names at the time of her death, 53 years earlier.

NEW YORK (AP) — The new PBS documentary on dancer-choreographer Twyla Tharp is called “Twyla Moves”, which adequately captures the fierceness with which Tharp, who turns 80 this year, approaches both work and life.

It’s a fierceness that led her at one point to take boxing lessons with Teddy Atlas, who trained Mike Tyson, to get in the best possible condition for a piece she was doing. “I eventually had to stop boxing because I got hit and broke my nose,” she recalled in an interview this week. “I said, ‘OK, your boxing days are over.’”

It’s also a fierceness that greets you the minute you begin a phone conversation with Tharp, whose words tumble out with striking speed and rarely a second of hesitation. She doesn’t need long to formulate fully developed thoughts — nor does she seem to enjoy wasting time. In a recent Zoom group event, she was asked why she hadn’t done more movies. She proceeded to quickly list those she’d done — “Hair,” “White Nights” and “Amadeus” among them — with just a hint of impatience.

Given all that, it would seem obvious that something like a global pandemic wouldn’t force Tharp off course, or keep her on the sofa binge-watching Netflix. On a recent afternoon, Tharp began a conversation by explaining why she’d had to postpone a few hours: Since 4 a.m. that morning she’d been choreographing a new work with ballet dancers in Düsseldorf, Germany. Choreography via Zoom, she noted, “is very strenuous — very limited from a sensory point of view.”

And perhaps especially for a choreographer like Tharp, who doesn’t simply sit and instruct dancers — she teaches by showing, even now. To be in that kind of shape approaching one’s ninth decade on earth is a challenge that would elude most of us. Part of Tharp’s physical regimen involves sticking to 1,200 calories a day.

“I don’t like carrying extra weight,” she says. “I like feeling what I call ‘on the bone,’ literally very close to the bone. For one thing the feet have suffered a certain amount of abuse, and I like to keep as much weight as possible out of them.”

It’s shocking she hasn’t permanently damaged those feet. To say Tharp’s choreography is merely athletic is to understate the way in which it has stretched her artists and herself to the limits. Billy Joel, who collaborated with Tharp on the 2002 Broadway hit “Movin’ Out,” set to his music, speaks of being in rehearsal and watching dancers “throwing themselves around the stage — I was worried about people getting injured! I felt like, ‘Take it easy! Watch out for the end of the stage!’ They were risking life and limb every night.”

Musician David Byrne, with whom she worked on an earlier show, “The Catherine Wheel” in 1981, felt the same. ”These were top-notch dancers and she was pushing them to the limits of what they could do physically,” he says in the film.

Tharp explains it simply: “Part of the adventure for me has always been a physical challenge.” She notes matter-of-factly that at one point in her weight training, she could lift 227 pounds, “and I am 108 pounds, so that’s twice my body weight. I go for records and that’s what I do. I think anybody who works with me expects that same challenge.”

Needless to say, Tharp doesn’t seem to care a lot about physical comfort — or comfort of any kind. Ask, for example, whether she was comfortable being the subject of a documentary, and she says drily: “I’m not sure what you mean by comfortable.” Enjoyable? Nah. “It’s work, like anything else. I don’t attach to it commodities like comfort or enjoyment.”

Indeed, the theme itself is work. In one old clip, TV host Dick Cavett asks Tharp what she does to relax after a long period of work. “Work more,” she replies. You believe her.

Tharp didn’t want the film, directed by Steven Cantor and part of the American Masters series, to feel like a biography. She wanted a lot more present tense in there. “Often when you’re dealing with something that has as much history as I do or backlog, you can get lost in the past,” she says. “One of my conditions was that I’d be doing new work.”

So we watch her creating a new Zoom version of her work “The Princess and the Goblin,” with several prominent dancers handpicked for the film, including Misty Copeland of American Ballet Theatre, Maria Khoreva of the Mariinsky Ballet in Russia, Herman Cornejo of ABT, and Charlie Hodges, a longtime Tharp dancer. “Part of the mission here was that dance is always about getting the job done, that even under the most difficult of situations — no physical contact, good luck with that if your’e a dancer! — we can still deliver something, because we’re dancers. We’ll do it!”

But the jewel is her archive, which spans her career, beginning with her experiments in modern dance from the ’60s. She’s shown dancing with Mikhail Baryshnikov, or working with him on “White Nights” with Gregory Hines. There are snippets from gems like the hugely popular “In the Upper Room,” a ballet set to the propulsive music of Philip Glass. Tharp began videotaping her work in 1968. “I have many many many thousands of hours of tape thoroughly documenting every piece I’ve ever made,” she says, “because I am an art historian.”

There’s nowhere near enough time to include her vast repertoire. About half the show is on the Zoom project — 41 minutes, she notes with a choreographer’s precision — “and that leaves you with 20 from when you were born to grew up and you’re not not quite dead yet, then another 20 for 150 works and four books…”

And she’s not near done. Asked in the film whether she’s achieved her mission, she says: “Not quite.” Asked by this reporter when that might be, she offered: “When I die?”

“There’s nothing that could hold Twyla back from creating — it feeds her,” says Copeland in the film. “We’re all trying to keep up with her, is the moral of the story.”

The publishing house Bywater Books has added Cape Charles novelist Sheri Reynolds to its roster of authors. Reynolds, who returns to fiction writing after a decade focused on teaching, will publish her newest novel, The Tender Grave through Bywater Books this month.

Sheri is the author of the seven novels and the full-length play, Orabelle’s Wheelbarrow. She teaches creative writing and literature at Old Dominion University, where she serves as its Department Chair of English and is the Ruth and Perry Morgan Endowed Chair of Southern Literature.

Sherri’s novel, The Rapture of Canaan, appeared as an Oprah Book Club selection and was on the New York Times list of #1 bestsellers.

The Tender Grave is a story of two estranged sisters who find their unlikely way toward forgiveness—and each other—after a repugnant and disturbing set of circumstances.

At age 17, Dori participates in a hate crime against a gay boy from her school and runs away to escape prosecution—and her own harrowing childhood. In her pocket, she carries the address of an older, half-sister she’s never met. She has no idea that her sister, Teresa, is married to another woman, or that Teresa and Jen have tried and failed repeatedly to start their own family. When Dori and Teresa finally meet, they’re forced to confront that, while they don’t like or understand one another, they are inextricably bound in ways that transcend their differences. Together, the sisters discover that the shifting currents of family and connection can sometimes run deeper than the prevailing tides of abandonment and estrangement.

Here’s what the industry has to say:

In The Tender Grave, Reynolds weaves complex themes of parenting, forgiveness, guilt, and accountability into a lyrical and lushly woven tapestry that chronicles our enduring search for heart, home, and healing.

“Reynolds is a wonderful storyteller and master of pastoral imagery.”                                                   —The New York Times Book Review

 “Sheri Reynolds is an essential voice from the American South—rich, haunting, courageous, big, and true.” 

—Lee Smith, author of Fair and Tender Ladies

“I read everything that Sheri Reynolds writes with wonder and passion and a recognition of the way she speaks to and about my people—and this novel is cause for all of us to rejoice.” 

—Dorothy Allison, author of Bastard Out of Carolina

Due to the Covid-19 outbreak, many events had to go virtual in 2020. The Orchestra of the Eastern Shore is no exception.

However, you can still see and hear the beauty that the OES brings to our area. Last Fall’s performance was captured on video, and is now available for viewing on Youtube.

Recorded November 2, 2020 at Old Willis Wharf Storehouse, Willis Wharf, Virginia Additional footage from October 17, 2020 live concert at Eastern Shore’s Own Arts Center, Belle Haven, Virginia.

The Orchestra of the Eastern Shore is- Paul Sanho Kim, music director Pyotr Tchaikovsky: Andante Cantabile Rebecca Gilmore, cello soloist.

Emma Jackson is a new young author who lives part-time at Smith Beach on the Eastern Shore. Her books, The Cherrystone Creek Mysteries, are written based around the lower Eastern Shore using local businesses and landmarks you’re sure to recognize. 

Southern born and bred, Paige Reese plans to escape the stagnant Eastern Shore of Virginia for a big-city career. When Paige’s daddy dies unexpectedly, she agrees to return home to take care of his funeral business. As the acting coroner and mortician for small-town Eastville, Paige has plenty of time to resent her new life while trying to force a pleasant outlook for the locals.

Iraqi-war veteran Nott Smith has deeper scars than his fractured legs admit. Battling severe PTSD keeps Nott busy as he drifts around Cape Charles, collecting and restoring remnants of trash. Always a loner, Nott prefers to let his demons rage silently than to make friends in the quaint bay-side town. Good thing for Nott, Paige isn’t asking to be his friend.

When the unidentified body of a migrant girl is discovered in Cherrystone Creek near Nott’s ramshackle house and the Chief Deputy arrests Nott for the murder, Paige acts on instinct. Her new friend couldn’t be guilty of the crime. Could he?

With more questions than answers, Paige works to uncover the victim’s identity and cause of death, who is responsible, and why the authorities aren’t pursuing the murderer. Then the truth confronts Paige with the ugly possibility that her closest friends are more involved than she realized. Can she avoid becoming the next victim?

LITTLE GIRL UNKNOWN is available in e-book or paperback at Amazon.com. Go to: getbook.at/LittleGirlUnknown