Ramun Bjerken

After high school I had a year of engineering at Michigan Tech and four years in the Navy during the Korean War. I then finished three years of aeronautical engineering at the University of Minnesota, but dropped out before graduation: Something was wrong, I was wrong. I and two friends went to Santa Monica to work at Douglas Aircraft Company; I became an Inspector in their missel program. The longer I lived the stronger the awareness became. I took graduate courses in aeronautical engineering at UCLA; during one of our classes the instructor took us to a large telescope to see a planet and its satellite. There I had my first experience of “Something right”: those orbiting bodies were “inertial”. Which was wrong, obviously incorrect, but also somehow “right”. When Douglas lost its missel contract, member of the Inspection team left for jobs at other contracted companies. But that type of life was not for me; I and a friend went to Mexico on a 6 month Visa, I bought a typewriter and attempted to enunciate “something right”. No success. And the focused effort intensified the lurking awareness. I began heavy drinking.

I got married; worked as a Sign Inspector in the California Highway Department; went to Diving School, and worked in Santa Barbara for a Diving Company involved in the oil platforms out in the Bay; bought my own boat and dove for and sold abalone; my wife and I went to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for 6 months; when we returned I worked at the U of Minnesota in heart research, directly associated at that time with Mayo Clinic Surgery. We eventually had three children, which focused my life. We returned to the west coast, where I eventually managed a large four-home property in a green tree forest, stream and friendly animals in Montecito, while working for the Post Office in Santa Barbara; when the property owner retired we moved to Eugene, OR, where my wife died of severe dementia. All three of our family are professors. I will be 94 yo this year; I now live with youngest son and his family.

I continued attempting to intellectually grasp the haunting awareness: I wrote four books, “The Archaic Smile”, “On Spiritual Naturalism”, “The Harmony of the Sphere”, and finally achieved a sense of success with “A Poem in Prose”. And I hope to maintain this effort with, “Welcome”.