(1) Rich is a retired United States Air Force Major whose major military decorations include: three Distinguished Flying Crosses, nine Air Medals, and two Air Force Commendation Medals. His "long search" for truth was primarily inspired by an emergency bailout in 1970 while flying AC-119K "Stinger" gunships in Vietnam. Rich subsequently flew as a pilot for both Pan Am and United Airlines for 15 years, retiring in 2004 with nearly 15,000 hours of pilot and flight engineer time. He holds both a BS in Marketing (1967) and an MBA (1976) from Penn State University. Rich has been married to his wife Sandy for 50 years and has two sons, Matthew, a Lead Corrective Exercise Specialist (LES), Weight-Loss Consultant and Personal Training Coach; and Aaron, a LMSW Child and Family Therapist. He has three beautiful granddaughters, Natalie, Gabriella, Sasha; and two handsome grandsons, Josiah and Elliot — all of whom he dearly loves.
(2) In addition to this 2017 republication of “Out of My Mind and Back to My Senses” (OOMM), this time in digital, audio and paper versions — a work Rich is fond of calling a “40 Year State of the Head Message” — with Redemption Press, Rich is considering publishing Vol. II of the "What Is Truth Series,” with a working title of, "Altered States Of Conception: Seeing Life In A New Light.”
(3) The “haiku-like, 7-7-7, standard inscription” that accompanies autographed copies:
“May the Words on these pages
Serve to “Reflect and Reveal”
the “Truth Written in Your Heart.’
(4) A “quick and dirty briefing” (as we called them in the military) used when Rich shares copies of OOMM with others:
“Not really a straight-through read, OOMM is more of an inspirational/meditational compilation, of various modes of creative self-expression, that intends to cross-triangulate “One and Same Truth,” seen from many different mental and emotional perspectives or points of view as possible -- the Same One Truth Rich experienced as a "heartfelt and know direct apprehesion of being, during two earlier life "epiphanies, one in 1966 and another in 1978.”
In this regard, Rich also suggests, as he does in the books Introduction, that in reading OOMM the reader (or listener) follow Thomas Merton’s sage advise, in a lovely book entitled “New Seeds of Contemplation”:
“As soon as any thought stimulates your mind or heart, you can put the book down because your meditation has begun.”
Rich further suggests reading the overflow endorsements at the front of OOMM, its Forward, Appendix A, “A Preface of Grace,” and Appendix I, “Additional Endorsements” for some helpful cross-correlating background and context.
(5) One of Rich/s favorite “expository endorsements,” by an extremely bright, retired UAL Captain, retired USAF Lt. Col, and long-time friend, as it appears in the overflow endorsements at the beginning of the book:
"We exist in a modern world of overpowering and relentless gray noise, bombarded and abased at every turn with a plethora of meaningless flat shades of vacant information, an overcast of empty platitudes. Through this morass of numbing proportions comes Richard's brilliant anthology - a sunburst of radiant colors to wash away the gray. Truth erupts from the pages in dazzling pyrotechnic fashion." Frank Lyons, UAL 777 Captain; President, FJL Consulting, USAF, retired
Read more
Read less
