"At least you're awake," Judy Hammer said without so much as a good morning. "I'm-

"I thought you were going to call me out in emergencies," he interrupted her. "I wish you'd let me know about the truck driver at the Farmers' Market."

"You weren't needed," she said.

"Same M.O.? Was he cut on?"

"I'm afraid so. Several cuts to his neck with what looks like a razor, but none of them lethal," she replied. "Apparently, the assailants left in a hurry, and he came to long enough to call nine-one-one. The reason I called is, I'm waiting, Trooper Truth," Hammer let him know. "I thought you said your website was going up at six-thirty. That was five minutes ago."

It was her way of telling him good luck.

The rich early history of the U.S.A. is based largely on eyewitness observations described in letters, true adventures, testimonies, maps, and books published in the early seventeenth century. Most of those original accounts have been lost forever or are silently maintained in private collections. Other historical documentation, sadly, was stored in Richmond and burned up during the Civil War so Northerners could rewrite the facts and convince schoolchildren the world over that our country really got its start in Plymouth, which is simply a lie.

That lie and others should come as no surprise. So much of what we know as "fact" in life is, in truth, nothing more than propaganda or a well-meant reflection on how events and people are perceived by those with a bias and poor vision. Tales pass from lips to lips, from news story to news story, from e-mail to e-mail, from politicians to us, from witnesses to jurors, and eventually we are led to believe all manner of things that are grossly distorted if not patently false. This is why, as I begin to have these conversations with you, the reader, I will rely on my own primary research and experiences, and focus on science and medicine, which have neither imaginations nor personalities nor politics nor grudges.