A Personal Note:
to Friends, Colleagues, and Website Visitors,
from Mickel and Mary Lynn AdzemaConcerning Ongoing Calamities, Corporate Corruption, Being Incommunicado, and the Upcoming National Election
22 August 2000
Dear Friends,Many of you, who have been visiting our site over the last four years since its inception, may have wondered at the minimal activity on it for especially the last year and a half. We would like to explain some of what has been going on with us, how this has related to website activity and to our inability also to keep up with correspondence, and how this relates to the upcoming election and to our renewed motivation to get back "in circulation" -- both in terms of building this website as well as being better correspondents and colleagues.
For starters, Mary Lynn and I think the upcoming American Presidential election is the most important Presidential election for the rest of our lives. You have probably not heard from us in a long time, but because of an urgency we currently feel, we are forcing ourselves back “into circulation.” For, despite our best efforts and the best of intentions, we have simply been bogged down in numerous crises and accompanying tasks, which have kept us unable to do more than to simply, day-by-day, attend to pressing concerns of a personal and survival nature.
We feel the need to describe what has been going on with us, for it is an unusual series of events that we don't believe anyone could imagine happening, as they did, one after the other, virtually without respite. But since we HAVE been out of touch and unable to respond to our correspondence for so long, just about all of our friends and colleagues have no idea of what has happened to us.
For this reason, we hope you will excuse the length of this detailing of events of almost four years. For it is news that we have been unable to share individually, regardless of the high regard or affection we retain for so many of you. We understand from the correspondences we have received that most people think we have truly "fallen off the end of the Earth"! And this distresses us for, previous to these calamities, we had the fortune of close ties with many wonderful folks, all over the country and in other countries; yet under the circumstances they might easily have come to the conclusion that we had forgotten them or they were out of our thoughts and our affections. We want you to know this is not the case, and to understand what abominable conditions have prevented us from being responsive and have rendered us virtually incommunicado with the world . . . for so long!
Some of the reasons we have been out of touch, and “swamped,” have to do with a 1997 auto accident that only through a miracle did not take our lives. Backing up a bit, we had co-chaired a conference, which occurred in San Francisco in March of 1997, for a professional organization with which we had been intimately involved for around five years at that point.
We had put all of our time and energy into the conference for a full four months prior to it to make it a success. We not only did the registration -- involving taking calls on our 800 number on a daily basis to talk up the conference and encourage people to attend as well as registering them over the phone -- but we put out our second Primal Spirit magazine, which heavily promoted the conference, and mailed it out to over ten thousand households, while arranging for friends all over the country to stack-drop the other ten thousand in major cities and prominent locations all along the Western Coast as well as back East. We did most of this at our own expense, while we faithfully sent all the money we collected on the conference to the organization's treasurer. In fact, we even wrote out personal checks from our own bank account for the rental of the rooms at the hotel, the keynote speaker, and we even wrote a personal check to cover the expenses of our other co-chair -- who was listed as the actual main chairperson!
The conference was a huge success. Not only did it result in significant attendance, but in our efforts to aid the organization in its cause, which we felt was not merely worthwhile but also essential, we had strongly encouraged people to join as members, when we, especially Mary Lynn, talked to them on our 800 line when they were registering. Our goal for years had been to increase membership and we had been instrumental in raising the membership roles to almost four times what it had been three years earlier, before we had begun our efforts as part of the membership committee of the organization. Indeed, while registering people for the conference we nearly doubled membership from the year before.
Nevertheless, this particular organization, which had been operating on the East Coast solely for its entire 25-plus years of existence and which had initially enthusiastically supported the idea of a West Coast conference, withdrew subtle but crucial support at critical junctures, as if wanting to unconsciously sabotage its own venture. (This is one of the reasons we ended up financing nearly all of it out of our own pockets. Though we expected that later we would be reimbursed.) We later learned that this reluctance to "go into the light," this fear of success, is a common neurotic pattern that occurs in groups both large and small when they are at a point of prosperity or doing extremely well. (See deMause's articles on this site, and his books, which describe this phenomenon.)
Not being familiar with prosperity and things going well, because of our underlying Pain, both individuals and collectively as nations, there is a tendency for "prosperity" and success to lead to wars, infighting, and all the myriad forms of sabotage that nations and individuals can engage in when success becomes too Painful to bear. We are reminded of the episode of the "Ally McBeal" show in which she needed to see her psychotherapist because she was having a major crisis: she was feeling happy. And we are reminded of the otherwise unfathomable popularity of George W. Bush (and even Ralph Nader) at a time in our nation's history when we are at a pinnacle of peace and prosperity, creating a foundation that makes possible, if we stay the course, for the first time in a lifetime the advancement and accomplishment of our most cherished national dreams.
But people have this tendency to "shoot themselves in the foot" when the going gets easy; it's just too scary going into the unknown -- success. For one thing, we fear, it might bring greater responsibility. And misery, along with low expectations, is something we know much more about and are comfortable with.
So that is what we experienced at the time of the conference that we had poured our hearts and every ounce of energy into. Afterwards, though, we invited organization friends to our home in California to hang out for days, to bask in the afterglow of it, and to share precious unstructured time with these people, who felt like family to us. We had only one day, after they left, in which to pack up and get ready for a Breathwork workshop we were scheduled to give that weekend in Santa Barbara.
You must understand that through the convention and even the time afterwards -- for obvious reasons -- we were operating in sleep deficit. And the one day in between the conference events and our workshop trip did not allow us time to catch up on our sleep. We left that morning -- two days after our organization friends left -- for the nine-hour trip South, having only had a few hours sleep the night before.
We decided to take turns driving. I took the first couple-hours stint. We stopped for Mary Lynn to have coffee. And she took the second stint, while I let the seat back, to grab a few zzzz's before I would drive again.
Unfortunately, Mary Lynn overestimated her ability to stave off the Sandman. She later said that she knew her eyelids were closing but she girded herself up, saying God's name to keep her awake, trying to make it to a particular exit where she would turn the wheel back over to me. She didn't make it. Mary Lynn fell asleep at the wheel. We narrowly missed heading straight into a freeway bridge support. She said that hitting one of the roadside posts as she was going off the left side of the road woke her up. Seeing that she was heading straight for the concrete abutment, she turned the wheel hard right.
This put us on the right side of the road, then, but our car was sideways. The car rolled two to four times, totaling the car and destroying all the workshop equipment we had with us, including our best and most expensive sound system.
Mercifully, I slept through the whole thing. I'll never forget coming to and looking up into the eyes of someone, probably a policeman, who was asking me: do I know where I am, do I know who I am. My answer was "no" on both those accounts.
It was the strangest of feelings. It was like I had just come into being at that point. Like I was a cyborg who had just been switched on for the first time, or I was a newborn (though a newborn would have more of a memory of itself than I did at that moment). I didn't know anything, and I watched, not understanding, as things were done to, for, and around me.
I remember looking up into the sky to see the row of people, Hispanics mostly . . . in this heavily agriculture area of California, who lined the freeway overpass above me. They were looking at me and what was going on around me. I remember seeing Mary Lynn, to my left, moving around in the limited space of the overturned vehicle, saying to someone that she could do it. I was happily surprised that she was obviously in one piece and was agile and able to move around like that. It was only beginning to dawn on me that we had been in an accident. But, quite frankly, I did not know why we were even in a car, let alone where we had been going, why, or where we were.
The fact that we were married came to me first. But upon the white screen of amnesia I at first projected some of my worst fears: Was I the driver? Was I responsible for this? I felt horror at the thought that I might be responsible for an accident in which my wife might be injured and which had destroyed her car. Worst of all, had I been drinking?! I had gone into recovery fifteen years earlier and had stayed sober; still, there had been times prior to that when I had been involved in accidents and had been drinking. The idea that I had dragged my angelic wife into my personal hell was the most horrific thought.
It was actually all quite a relief as the pieces of who I was and what had happened began to come together: I couldn't have been driving for I was on the passenger side and Mary Lynn was on the other. And of course this was a different time, way in the future, from my drinking days. Mary Lynn was not seriously hurt -- what a relief! I fought hard to remember why we were there and what we were doing. I remembered that we did workshops, but that took a seemingly long time to remember. I had a really hard time trying to remember who I was in my life, what I did, where we were going and why, and recent events. So I just surrendered to the strange goings-on around me and cooperated with whatever was being done to me.
I felt pain in various parts of my body, particularly my arm, but I did not want to look at or to know what had happened to my body. I was afraid of what I would see. Hell, I can't even look at those explicit surgery scenes on TV or the insertion of needles into arms, on TV or in movies, without feeling squeamish and putting my hand up in front of my face to block out the sight. No, I was not in a hurry to find out my condition.
And the pain was not excruciating (that wouldn't happen till later), so I simply focused on the patterns of sights and sounds surrounding me -- the events. I groked the movie unfolding and thought how odd that I would be one of its main characters (from the audience above me, I could see I was clearly "on stage") and yet be a witness. And now, as I write this, I think of one of the learnings my wife and I have received recently.
It was put succinctly by a hitchhiker in the movie, "Hurly, Burly" (an otherwise horrible movie): "The Flow doesn't care what you feel about It." Our recent understanding has been a deeper clarity about the fact that what will happen is going to happen (no matter how much we try to avoid it or make something else happen), that what is not going to happen cannot be made to happen (no matter how much we try to make it happen). What we had come to was a deeper realization that we are part of a play of which we are not the authors. That we are playing a part that will unfold according to the script, no matter how we feel about it.
So since it is a play -- or as Sai Baba puts it, a game -- we might as well accept what happens and enjoy it no matter whether it brings happiness or sorrow, pleasantness or unpleasantness, wealth and power or poverty and hopelessness . . . the Flow doesn't care what you feel about It. It just is. So you might as well, as they advise in the movie, "Magnolia," give up. And I would add, give up and enjoy the show. But participate in it as well: Baba says, "Life is a game, play it; Life is a challenge, meet it; Life is a dream, realize it."
But at that moment, lying there on the side of Highway 101 at Greenfield, well aware of the texture of concrete and the strangeness of the sensations of pebbles and roadgrit against my skin, I only knew that I was a helpless "participant." And the sense of surrender to the unavoidable was not just necessary but an unexpected relief -- a glimpse into the lack of worry we can experience if and when we truly stop taking responsibility for the script. I knew that whether I lived or died was totally out of my hands at that moment, just as it had been in those microseconds when the car was rolling and my body was pinballing inside of it and then being erased against the asphalt.
There were undoubtedly hundreds of events that happened in that fraction of a second between when the car was hurtling down the highway at 70 mph and it had come to a dead stop. Any one of those events altered slightly, or a combination of them, could easily have taken the life out of my body. But that hadn't happened; apparently it was not meant to be.
So instead of floating above my body, preparing to see a tunnel and a "white light" or something, I found myself lying on a highway shoulder, groking the sky and clouds; and the faces of people who would float above me and mouth questions or instructions; as well as the ongoing strangeness of the line of faces of people above me, leaning over the concrete bridge railing, for whom I had become the morning's entertainment. Not angry at that though, I would have looked myself. But how strange to be in such a position of total helplessness and unable to perform any action, at a time of my life when I was "acting" in one of the major scenes of my lifetime "movie"!
We were airlifted to a hospital in Salinas and made the nightly news there as "the miracle couple," with a police officer commenting that "no one makes it out of an accident like that alive." (See Mary Lynn's recounting of the accident and its influence on us in her article on this site, "Resurrection on Highway 101"). The accident didn't take our lives but, lacking health insurance, did result in a lawsuit that took other of our resources.
A mere month after our accident, I, Mickel, learned that my father was terminally ill. We traveled cross-country and visited him twice before his death, and on one of those trips we had our $5,000 laptop computer stolen from us at the Philadelphia airport.
At any rate, my father's death occurred a month after his diagnosis. If this were not enough, we were soon confronted with the deaths of my beloved grandmother, two uncles, and only a year ago, in August, 1999, with the passage of my young and much loved nephew, who was stricken with an extremely virulent form of cancer.
In the midst of this, and continuing since, we found that the organization referred to above -- which will remain unnamed for we wish them nothing but the best and it should not be disparaged for the actions of some of its individuals, some of whom have by now left their positions of power to be replaced by innocent others -- which we had devoted the previous 3-plus years to serving, could not find it in their hearts to support us during our crises, but instead used our need to attend to ourselves for a while as an excuse to scapegoat and slander us. I won't mention the things that we were told were attributed to us or said about us in our absence, for they are simply too heart wrenching to think about, coming from what we thought were our dearest friends and from an organization for which we had sacrificed so much of our time, energy, and even money (for which to this day we have not been reimbursed). This has been extremely distressing and has not been resolved to this day, despite our attempts to reach out and communicate with the parties concerned.
In July of 1998, my dear Godmother, who was wasting away in a nursing home, asked us to "rescue" her from it and take her into our home. Seeing it as service which we could not turn from, we flew back across country again; spent a week cleaning out her apartment, which still held the possessions of a lifetime; and brought her back with us to California. In California, we applied ourselves to the necessary day-to-day and round-the-clock care she required. We also put her affairs and finances in order. She lived with us for over a year.
These are some of the reasons we did not even notice the lawsuit, emanating from the auto accident (which indebted us to an amount of almost $30,000, though, despite receiving surgery, I had not spent even one night at the hospital), and the consequent judgment against us, until it was too late for us to do anything about it but pay it in full, borrowing the money to do so. This suit had come as a surprise in that we had been faithfully making monthly payments on all the hospital bills. But our efforts were not enough for the parties that sued us. (Something which ties in to our concern about this election and the health care concerns that are major issues in it.)
Because of these entanglements -- in which we put first the organization and then our family ahead of our own needs -- our taxes did not get filed for 1996 and 1997 and we were dealing with threats from both state and federal tax agencies. When I finally did our taxes for those years, they required over three months of work, because of our unusual and varied sources of income and several financially complicated and anomalous events, such as our purchase of a house in July of 1997 and my involvement in day trading in the stock market, which I undertook full time in mid-1997 to help us pay the huge medical bills, but which adds another exponent of complexity to already complicated tax laws. Indeed, the submitted return for 1997 ran approximately 37 pages and the one for the state was over 50 pages in length.
If all this were not enough, when I finally had only to put the finishing touches on our tax returns in early June, and after having finally set up our office -- with its extensive book collection and all our computer and electronic equipment -- a fire broke out and totally destroyed our office.
The timing, as usual, was strange and significant, pointing again to some kind of divine script of which we are not aware. The fire occurred just at the point when I was writing the first sentence of the second paragraph in response to questions of an interview that was to be published in The Animist -- an Australian electronic journal of the arts and humanities, edited by Ian Irvine.
Ian, after first publishing my article, "The Emerging Perinatal Unconscious: Apocalypse or New Age?" (reprinted on this site and since expanded into a book, available on this site) had wanted to give me recognition for my professional work and my writing. Though I've had numerous articles published in all kinds of publications, it was the first time anyone had asked to interview me for publication. Nevertheless, I had put Ian off for over three months because of the tax threats I had received, which had caused me to put doing my taxes first.
It was only when I was at a point that I felt the bulk of my taxes were done, and the office was finally, after living there for two years, put together, that I applied myself to working on the interview questions he had sent me. I smelled smoke right after I wrote the sentence mentioned. This led to an investigation. And soon enough to the discovery of the fire, which had taken a strong hold by then in the rear of the carport.
I fought the fire and alerted Mary Lynn -- who managed to get our disabled aunt out of the house in time -- as well as the entire neighborhood, with my yells of "Fire!" . . . at 1:30 am, which drew several into calling 911, as well as showing up to help me find hoses, fire extinguishers, etc. to fight the fire, and later to provide coffee, a blanket and a chair for my Aunt, hugs, and about three hours later, welcome lodging for the night.
I have not to this day had the leisure to return to working on that interview. I had to tell Ian that I couldn't come through at that time, and I am still waiting for a window of time so I can tell him that I can proceed, if he still wishes me to. There is still much of the message of the timings of these events that Mary Lynn and I have yet to discover.
Anyway, in the fire we lost not only our vast library, but more importantly our most valuable correspondences; my writings of almost thirty years that had not yet been input onto computer -- including the bulk of writing on over ten books-in-progress; very important and valuable writings from our authors that were slated for publication; and much else.
We were devastated, but that was nothing compared to what would soon be coming. For despite initial assurances from our insurance company, we found that we would soon become another casualty to the outrages that, we later found, were commonplace among insurance companies when it comes time to collect one one's insurance policy, especially in the state of California.
I will say a little about the context and background of our plight, inflicted by our insurance company (also to remain unnamed until the lawsuit is settled, for obvious reasons), because we have discovered that many people are shocked when they hear our story and they are distraught in finding out the truth of how insurance companies, as a matter of policy, regularly screw over their policyholders when it comes time to pay. People we've talked to universally wonder what they can do to avoid what has happened to us, and wish to know just which insurance company, if any, can be trusted.
Unfortunately, we have little solace to give for we have found out that insurance companies, as a matter of course, train their adjusters on how to hide from policyholders what they are due; and they engage in harassment, lo-balling, legal maneuvers, and delaying of payment as a way of grinding down the insured until they will accept just about anything in settlement.
Lest it be thought we are simply complaining or that our case is merely anomalous, I want to make note of something that has recently happened here in California -- a huge political scandal, and something which also ties in to the upcoming election. We had an elected insurance commissioner, Chuck Quackenbush, whose campaign for his office was heavily funded by the major insurance companies. Sure enough, with their boy in office, like a fox guarding the henhouse, the insurance companies after the huge Northridge earthquake disregarded good faith in the payment of the claims. It later came out (and this was in the headlines in California for weeks this summer) that there was so much lo-balling, delaying of paying claims, and excessive depreciation of houses and possessions, in dealing with those unfortunate quake victims, that the courts had recommended 4 to 5 BILLION dollars in punitive fines be levied against the insurance companies. Obviously it would have gone to alleviate the sufferings of the injured parties.
But their boy Quackenbush came through for the insurance companies. And in exchange for several hundred million dollars that the insurers agreed to put into a trust to further Quackenbush's political ambitions, Quackenbush waived the fines. So much for the Insurance Commissioner being the consumer's advocate. I think often of those many unfortunate souls, who had their tragedy compounded by their relief being taken from them in exchange for the ambitions of a corrupt politician.
Now, it is commonplace among many, especially my friends on the political left, to state that there is no difference between the major parties. But let me tell you that Quackenbush was a REPUBLICAN. Indeed one state legislator -- a DEMOCRAT -- at the risk of being disbarred (which is still being considered against her) leaked the findings of the state commission investigating the scandal. What she released to the press told of a concerted effort by insurance companies to deny policyholders their benefits through the aforementioned "lo-balling, excessive depreciation, and delaying of payments." The insurance companies that were "caught" the most in this were State Farm, Farmers, and Twentieth Century, with State Farm caught engaging in these practices in over 80% of its claims after Northridge. (It should be kept in mind, that these are the instances only when there was hard evidence; it does not include all the rest of the instances where people were robbed of what was due them but where the insurance companies had managed to cover their tracks, nor does it include the insurance companies that were caught less often.)
This scandal was so huge, after it was leaked by that Democrat, that Quackenbush had to resign in disgrace. The headlines here in the Sacramento Bee, when Quackenbush left office -- were as large as when World War II ended! Quackenbush was forced to leave without getting any deal, and he is liable to both civil and criminal prosecution. Although it should be mentioned that since he is not a Democrat, and his crime was simply stealing, and not something as horrible as having sex (like a Democratic scandal), no more mention of his prosecution or this scandal has appeared, to my knowledge, in the press or media since he left office. Also, once he was "outed" about his criminal actions, the Republicans and even the insurance companies, in true scapegoating style, condemned his actions vehemently and even his fellow Republicans pressured him to resign. The insurance companies played dumb about it all, as if billions of dollars waived had been an inexplicable surprise -- the criminality of which they would have totally objected to, if only they had known. (The sound you hear is the violins playing.)
At any rate, the unfortunate upshot for Mary Lynn and I in this scandal is that our fire occurred on June 3rd, 1999 -- fully a year before this information was coming out. So our insurer was undoubtedly heady with its power to do whatever it wanted in terms of the nonpayment of claims against it and the harassment of its policyholders. So we found ourselves confronted with those same tactics used against the Northridge quake victims. At the time we did not understand why they were engaging in these tactics, to the point of not just "bad faith" but outright fraud. It would astonish you to know to what extent our insurer was willing to engage in lies, broken promises, refusal to furnish documents -- hell, they wouldn't even supply us with a copy of our policy, which they are required to have on hand and to hand over at the moment it is requested! -- diversionary tactics, and -- we have evidence for this -- outright changing of documents (to put it euphemistically . . . we cannot say the specifics of the illegal tactics used against us until after the lawsuit is settled, for obvious reasons).
While our insurer was obligated by our policy to provide us with a place to stay, while out of our house, as well as to pay for additional living expenses, they balked at both of these, and Mary Lynn and I were forced to purchase a motorhome, for our security and for that of our disabled aunt, who was becoming increasingly more disoriented by our going from motel to motel. When we finally had to return her, because of her increasingly deteriorating condition, to the nursing home in Pennsylvania from which we had a year earlier extricated her, the motorhome provided a way to get her there, for she was in no condition to fly and the motorhome provided a familiar set of surroundings. Nevertheless, we were later to hear our plight described as us abandoning our house and going "on vacation"!
With nothing being done on our claim, we stayed in Pennsylvania at my mother's home, which had recently been vacated because of her also having to move into a nearby nursing home. We were forced to live there -- in circumstances much less desirable than "our normal standard of living" -- because of our insurer's recalcitrance in paying for our living expenses. Still, we were able to do service to my Parkinson's-afflicted mother, while we were there. And we were able to give her the pleasure of coming home a couple of times a week to the house in which she had spent most of her life, had raised all six of her children, and had said her last good-byes to her husband only two years earlier. Our service to her -- handling her correspondence and her shopping and keeping up the maintenance and repairs on her house, along with the myriad of little tasks that the elderly require, especially when they are wheelchair bound and unable to move very well because of Parkinson's -- were later to be included in our reputed "vacation" and thus used as an additional excuse to deny our living expenses. To this date our insurer has even refused to compensate us for the payments we were forced to make on our motorhome, which required that we take out second and third mortgages on our home in order to obtain.
By mid-September of last year we had finished the last of the paperwork to admit my aunt to her nursing home, which she now knew was the only option for her and would provide her some much needed stability and secure surroundings. And just as I was about to sit down and attend to doing, then, the 1998 taxes, which were hanging over our head, we were informed we needed to submit a detailed list of all of our lost contents, including the individual titles and replacement value of each of the 2,000-plus books, not to mention journals, in our library.
This was not common policy, as insurance companies in other instances have accepted an estimate of a book collection by taking the industry standard of the price of a book in a particular field times the number of books -- derived by a getting an estimate of the amount of total shelving divided by the average width of a book. But it was typical of our dealings with our insurer that they would place before us formidable tasks and myriad hoops to jump through (by the way, only at the end to throw out our calculations and utterly disregard the documents they required of us).
Anyway, with this new deadline looming, the 1998 taxes had to be put off as well. We applied ourselves for two solid months to putting together the contents inventory -- complete with the titles of 2,000-some books -- with all the detail and supporting evidence. We submitted our results on November 15th. We were assured that having done this, we would then be receiving a check for our contents, which would allow us to begin repurchasing the items we had lost and to begin rebuilding our lives.
Not so. Just before Christmas we were informed that, instead, our insurance company had hired the law firm with the nastiest reputation in California to put us through an Examination Under Oath, in which we would have to defend, under penalty of perjury, all that we had claimed . . . and if we were amiss on any aspect of it, they would deny our claim outright.
With that hanging over us through the holidays, and knowing we could be required to return to California at any time, even possibly missing out on spending what might be the last time we would get to spend Christmas with my mother, we continued our service to my mother and my Godmother, giving my mother what she later described as the "best Christmas she had in years."
So, only because it would have taken away from the law firms lawyer's holiday vacation, we did get to spend the holidays with my mother. But the date for the Examination Under Oath was set for soon after that, for mid-January. And we found ourselves packing up, leaving on January 7th, and rushing, willy-nilly, across the country in our motorhome to appear before the "tribunal"!
We made it, fortunately without incident, and spent the remaining time preparing as many documents as we could to defend ourselves. We had nothing to fear from the standpoint of fraud, still we were informed by the public insurance adjuster we had retained at our own expense, that it is common practice to hire a lawyer to be at your side, lest they "catch" us with one of their tricks.
We got through it unscathed. Not that they hadn't set a nice little trap for us with inaccurate documents, which by Divine Grace alone, backfired on them because they had made a mistake in their putting the documents together, which our lawyer caught.
The stressful Examination Under Oath behind us, we were assured that it was a last-ditch effort by the insurance company. And that shortly afterwards we would finally receive a check of settlement to compensate us for our losses. But even our lawyer and public insurance adjuster had no idea to what lengths the insurance company was determined to grind us down, apparently in that headiness of knowing that the Insurance Commission of California would give them free rein.
I know it is hard to believe, but they actually used another delaying tactic, which could have cost people their lives and may have been responsible for one.
During the Examination it had come out how I had been suffering from severe allergic reactions, requiring several different expensive prescription medications to keep at bay, ever since the fire. No doubt these severe reactions were attributable to smoke inhalation of the toxic fumes I inhaled at the time, which contained the byproducts of burned electronics and plastics such as cyanide and other dire poisons. But they flared up and worsened every time I entered the smoke-saturated house, which we were required to do to try to dig out documents supporting our claim. Under the guise that they were concerned about my health, the insurers determined they were going to do a test of the toxicity of the house.
My public insurance adjuster at the time told me that this was a common ploy to get into the house to try to get some evidence against us. He called it "the Trojan horse." He said that what they would do would be to send up the toxicology expert, but to have several from the insurance company tag along and go through our stuff while the tests were taken. For at this point they were way past the point where they could enter the house without our permission. Our public insurance adjuster was prepared, however, and he arranged to have our contractor be there at the site at the time the expert was to come.
Sure enough, the toxicology expert was not alone. Not only did the insurance company adjuster tag along -- the adjuster who had been the instrument of so much of our woes and had lied to our face and broken promises on numerous occasions -- but another insurance company representative arrived. Our contractor took their cards when they entered and watched as, while the toxicology professional did his job, the other two went through boxes of our packed possessions, and did other things, in an effort to find evidence to use against us. Our contractor told them they had no right to do this and that they were adding "rape" and "violation" to all they had done so far. They continued their work undeterred. Of course they found nothing against us, for we had been honest in our claims, to a fault actually.
But this is where it gets very interesting. Weeks after the test for toxins was done, we had still not received a copy of the report. Our lawyer and public insurance adjuster asked for it, and their adjuster told us we had no right to it. (Was this supposed to be out of concern for my health?) We persisted, of course, and the lawyer who had put us through the Examination Under Oath relented and turned over the document. Apparently he was aware of the severity of the charges that would arise by withholding it.
Sure enough, the toxicology report revealed that the house had suffered more than the toxicity from the dire chemicals released by the burning of the complicated electronic equipment. Rather, because of the insurer's delaying on releasing the funds to rebuild the house, the house had been left to sit all winter through the rainy season, pretty much exposed to the elements in the dank and humid conditions under the Redwoods. So not only was there smoke toxicity, but it had combined with deadly toxic mold, which had affected every item, every surface, and even the insides of the remaining appliances and electronics that were there. Nothing was salvageable. But more than that. The report concluded that the site had to be decontaminated by professionals -- essentially requiring something from a scene out of "Outbreak" -- where the house would have to be fully enclosed and decontamination specialists would need to go in with "spacesuits" on to do their work. In effect, no construction could be done, for the workers would be putting their lives at risk.
Confronted with these facts, including that their lawyer had released the toxicology report to us, the insurance company's adjuster had a fit. He called the lawyer an idiot for releasing the report; he said the toxicology expert was "stupid" and that "nobody told him to check for mold"; and when he was questioned about the health and possible death of anyone who might stray on the premises, particularly the workers, he said "if they get sick they can go on disability"! (And this was supposed to be for my health!)
Apparently the only toxicology report they wanted to present to us was one that showed there was no toxins, and the reason for having it was to try to find something on which to deny our claim. We felt like we were dealing with the Mafia, not a major household-name insurance company.
Apparently there was no concern for the health of my wife, myself, our public insurance adjuster, our contractor, or our tenants (who would occasionally go into the house to use the washing machine -- which still worked). In fact death was an acceptable option in trying to preserve their profits as I will now point out.
For the house had been becoming a topic of conversation, we learned, in the circles of public insurance adjusters and appraisers and the like. It was being called "The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb." I learned that this relates to the fact that when The Mummy's Tomb was discovered in Egypt and opened, all the people in attendance had within a short time died. It was discovered that the tomb contained a certain virulent fungus or mold, which had been lying dormant for thousands of years but had been released when the tomb was opened, resulting in the infection, and death, of all those in attendance.
Why our house was so likened? Because a heart-attack cluster was developing in relation to it. Most of the people who had spent a good amount of time in it doing their jobs had developed heart problems. Our public insurance adjuster was one who had a heart attack requiring a medical procedure to save his life. Our contractor required open-heart surgery. The appraiser we had hired, who had been over every inch of the house, crawling around in every nook and cranny to determine how many boards would be needed here, how many nuts and bolts there, and widgets and whatzits and grachkeys elsewhere had a heart attack. He's dead.
Recently two other people intimately involved with the house have developed heart problems of a lesser nature -- my wife and I.
But they wanted the toxicology report because they were concerned about my health!
To this date they have refused the money for decontamination, which their own expert had said was essential. As of mid-July, over thirteen months after the fire and with another rainy season ahead of us requiring that construction start right away, our public insurance adjuster demanded in a letter that they release the money within two weeks. That if they didn't, we would have to go ahead anyway with the construction -- the rainy season requiring that work be started immediately or it would be interrupted by the winter weather, which would further add to the complications and health hazards on the project . . . and that if they refused, that they would be held liable for any injuries, health problems, or worse.
Our insurers ignored this demand. Construction has had to go ahead, despite the risks. We were forced to enter a lawsuit.
The tenets of bad faith that were violated by the insurance company numbered 15 at one point in the spring when they were tallied. I stopped counting after that.
So at this point our extensive house fire has has kept us out of our home for over 14 months. And, true to form, despite the fact that it was their delaying that caused it to go on this long, our insurance company is claiming that they owe us nothing for additional living expenses after the first year; not that they have come through on what they owe us on living expenses for the first 12 months anyway.
And, if after all this you still think insurance companies have your interests at heart and like a good neighbor they are there or that they will "put you back where you belong" or that "you are in good hands," I recommend you read an article in -- of all places -- the Reader's Digest of July of this year titled, "When Your Insurance Won't Pay." Sadly for us, their anecdote of a woeful fate perpetrated on an insured by a mean insurance company sounds like a picnic compared to what we've been through. But the article does give valuable advice on what you can do to protect yourself, including getting your own insurance adjuster -- a public insurance adjuster -- to be your advocate for you, much as you would hire your own lawyer if you were involved with the lawyers of a corporation or any other entity on any matter, to look after your interests, not that of the insurance company that employs them. (By the way the website for public insurance adjusters is www.napia.com)
We might point out that we have also seen a segment on "Dateline NBC" in the last several months detailing how State Farm Insurance used a phony medical entity to cut its medical insurance claims by half. The segment included a doctor claiming that the insurance company, which had used a document to reduce benefits, which had his name on it, had actually forged his signature!
We have also seen several local segments -- when we were staying in the Nevada desert no less -- which described the prevalence, dangers, and health hazards of "toxic mold."
If these things can happen to so many people, like they have also happened to us, they can happen to you.
So, dear friends, we have been "out of touch" now for the better part of four years because of an auto accident; legal and tax burdens; the intimate involvement in the personal care of two elderly relatives; and because, currently, of our engagement with an intensive and bitter lawsuit and battle with an insurance company to rebuild our house and come through on the bare minimum of their obligations which they’ve utterly failed to do -- to name just a few of the tragedies and entanglements that have kept us in crisis mode for almost four years and unable to maintain our normal careers not to mention correspondence. Despite these tragedies and entanglements, some of which are still front and center, we are forcing ourselves to fit time in to work on this election, because we feel this election is, not only crucial for the country, but for all of our lives – ours and yours!
For this election means that either we will have a chance to realize some of our "Sixties" idealism and do something about the problems we became aware of then -- like environmental pollution, racism, sexism, corporate corruption and control of government, concentration of wealth and power in a minority elite, and the like -- or we will spend the rest of our lives undoing the messes that Republicans foist on ordinary Americans -- like Reagan-Bush's quadrupling of the National Debt -- in their pursuing their primary purpose for existing, which is to line their pockets and those of their corporate supporters and their rich friends . . . at whatever cost. If Bush wins, we feel we will lose the golden opportunity of a lifetime to realize those precious dreams – some of which many of us have held for decades. If Gore does not win now, we feel it likely that we will not in our lifetime ever again be in a position, like we are now, to build on our prosperity to meet the real and pressing needs of our citizens, if only to a level permitting America to join the ranks of the rest of the Western industrialized countries -- none of which allow people to die for lack of health insurance in that they ALL provide health care for all their citizens; and all of which have less of their people in jails; many of which have better educational systems; many of which do not allow irresponsible gun ownership and use by their citizens OR their police the way that we do; and virtually all of which have lower infant mortality rates, despite our highly touted high-tech medical births, because they have medical systems that put the infant and the mother’s interests above those of doctors, medical associations, HMOs, insurance companies, profits, and the like.
So we urge you to visit our webpage on Gore’s policies and the election, to continue to visit this website, where we will have lots more information on the upcoming election and its importance [see regular updates at Election 2000 Alert], and of course to vote in November and, if at all possible, to volunteer to work in the campaign to elect Gore-Lieberman and to bring back a Democratic Congress, which will work for people’s interests not just for the powerful. You can volunteer by logging on to the Gore 2000 site at www.algore2000.com
On a personal note, we want you, our long “neglected” friends, to know that we are working hard to put these crises behind us, or at least be on top of them, enough to take up our careers once again, and more importantly to renew our precious ties with you all. For those who’ve written or e-mailed us, we want you to know that we are hoping to respond soon, and take up again where we last left off with you, before our forty-plus months’ “dark night of the soul” began.
We also want you, our friends and colleagues, to know, that despite the tragic and calamitous tone of the combined pattern of events, you need not worry about us. We have found many allies in our plight; we have the support of a small circle of loyal friends who have been at our side through our travails; we have the support and affection of family; and we are kept "in the light" by those small number of our friends and colleagues who through happenchance have had their paths cross with ours during these times. More than anything, we know we are in the hands of a beneficent Universe, which has used our "trials of Job" to teach us many valuable lessons. And we have found Divine Grace amidst the tragedies. More than any other time, we know that our lives are part of a grander pattern -- though at times it is only our faith, not our understanding -- that has kept that intuition paramount. We have had our periods of dark despair. But we are the better for them -- "dying" and being "reborn" anew, again and again, in what seems to be ever more "enlightened" spiritual outlooks. Reincarnating this way again and again in this life, without actually dying, we feel has strengthened our character, streamlined our priorities, unburdened us of unnecessary attachments, and has actually been a boon in purging and purifying our hearts and helping us to appreciate the subtle but important things of life -- such as the gift of our love for each other and the contentment of unwavering partnership and the satisfaction of precious companionship it brings us; along with the day-to-day pleasures (not the least of which is the antics of our faithful cat, Muff -- our divinely administered antidepressant!); and, last but not least, the love and affection inherent in true friendship.
Mickel and Mary Lynn Adzema
P.S.: In the future, because of the changes we are sure to be making in our Internet Service Providers, please be sure to send all e-mail to mickel@primalspirit.com or marylynn@primalspirit.com -- from where they can be forwarded to any ISP we happen to be using at any given time.
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