Part 1 is a travel story through six countries from May 20 to August 4, 1998, illustrated with over 200 color photos. I am grateful to Michael Wood for coming out with a book and TV special called In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great while I was preparing for our trip In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great.I followed Mr. Wood's maps, noted his omissions, and expanded his narrow focus. I renamed our trip The 1998 Footsteps of Alexander the Great Tour ....Going into this trip, I was working from an interpretation of ancient history gained from Zecharia Sitchin that I sought to investigate. Sitchin suggests a 12th planet that orbits our Sun every 3,600 years produced agriculture (circa 11,000 B.C.), then the Neolithic culture (circa 7,500 B.C.) and, finally, the Sumerian civilization (circa 3,800 B.C.) .... My only problem with Sitchin is: Why wasn't the circa 200 B.C. fly-by of the 12th planet noted by ancient writers, who had informed us about Alexander, given the 3,600 year interval?
Author Biography:
Mansur Johnson was born in the USA in Illinois and has lived on both coasts. He has a BA from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, an MA from the University of Illinois, and 60 hours toward his PhD at the University of Iowa, all in English literature, with additional studies at the University of California at Berkeley and the Universidad de Mexico in Mexico City. After teaching English for one year at Northern Michigan University in Marquette, Michigan, Mansur retired from teaching and went to California to join the hippies. He became one of the first students of Samuel L. Lewis, a Sufi teacher and Zen Master, as well as his personal secretary. Mr. Lewis became the subject of Mansur's book Murshid: A personal memoir of life with American Sufi Samuel L. Lewis, Peaceworks Publications, Seattle, Washington, 2006. One of Mr. Lewis's colleagues was Shamcher Bryn Beorse, who was the subject of Mansur's book Shamcher: A memoir of Bryn Beorse's struggle to introduce Ocean Energy to the United States. This book is offered free online for activists to expedite the introduction of solar ocean energy, or OTEC, which stands for ocean thermal energy conversion. www.shamcher.org/6.html Mr. Lewis's teacher, Hazrat Inayat Khan, published 12 volumes of Sufi teachings in the 1960s, which Mansur read, and then extracted, all the Sufi stories embedded in the teachings. He compiled and edited over 400 of them, which he published as Big Tales: All the stories in the 12 volumes of The Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Einstein Academy, Tucson, Arizona, 2015. After Mr. Lewis death in 1971, Mansur started a Sufi Center in Boston, Massachusetts, and supported himself by installing auto glass, as well as traveling and teaching Sufism at weekend workshops and seminars. In 1980, Mansur moved to Tucson and found work in the film industry when Hollywood came to Arizona by working in 44 feature films and TV movies as a grip. He found employment on such big Hollywood local films as Tombstone, Maverick, and The Quick and the Dead. A member of IATSE, the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, Mansur transitioned from film to work as a stage carpenter at the University of Arizona's Centennial Hall for Broadway in Tucson, as well as a Trade Show professional. He retired in 2016. In 2017 The Einstein Academy published Don't Search, Celebrate! The Collected poems of Mansur Johnson.
