Choosing Honor

Agoura Hills author's book on U.S. policies draws notice By Amy Bentley Wednesday, November 11, 2009 When Mary T. Ficalora wrote “Choosing Honor: An American Woman’s Search for God, Family and Country in an Age of Corruption,” she knew some of her ideas would spark criticism that she was anti-religious or unpatriotic. The attacks came her way, but nothing could be further from the truth, said Ficalora, an Agoura Hills mother of three whose first book is winning some positive reviews and honors this year, after its release last year by Avail Press in Calabasas. Only a few thousand copies were printed, but Ficalora believes her book is garnering attention now because “this year everybody knows we’re in an age of corruption. “People now see things are wrong in our country,” said Ficalora, 49. “We have to pay attention to what’s wrong. We’re being played as suckers.” The trouble with our nation’s monetary system and how it has led to a loss of personal freedom is one of the key themes of “Choosing Honor,” a spiritual self-help book that addresses political, religious and social issues. In the book, Ficalora, who is described in a press release from her publisher as an “old school Jeffersonian/Madison conservative,” promotes the notion that people must stick to the nation’s principles of self-determination, resist corruption, forge their own destiny and pay attention to “mind games” at work in society that undermine our authority and freedom. She talks about the “Ten Absolutes,” or steps to power. Ficalora maintains that the United States is not a Judeo-Christian nation, as it often is called. “Our political religion is freedom,” she said. “Let’s pay attention to what we are supposed to be and how far off the track we are.” Garnering notice “Choosing Honor” is being noticed this year by critics. The book was a finalist in the Religion: General and Current Events/Social-Political categories of the National Best Books 2009 Awards, and it was honored this year in the Inspirational category from the Mom’s Choice Awards. Mom’s Choice Awards founder Tara Paterson commented on amazon.com: “I had no idea when I sat down to read ‘Choosing Honor’ how powerful it would be. I honor Ficalora for having the courage to put this out there.” The book also is a 2009 finalist for the Eric Hoffer Awards, which recognizes excellence in independent publishing, and it recently received the Premier Book Award’s Non-Fiction Award as the second-place book of the year in the Religion/Spirituality category. The book is further nominated for the 2010 Irwin Award from the Publicists of Southern California. A key point Ficalora discusses is how control over the nation’s monetary system must revert to the people and be removed from what she calls a consortium of global banks that operate like a cartel. “The monetary system has to get back to what it’s supposed to be; it has to be returned to the people,” perhaps through community banks, she said. “The ‘too big to fail’ thing? Whoa! That’s not OK! The fact that Congress has to borrow money, that’s seriously flawed. We have three to four generations now indentured to that money. It’s completely wrong. “Most people are not conscious that is what’s going on. Money is not being invested in the United States. We traded our entire ability to be self-sustainable for cheap goods. We have to be aware this is happening.” Family roots The idea for the book grew from Ficalora’s childhood experiences in a devout Roman Catholic family where quite a bit of discussion took place at the dinner table about politics and government institutions. Her faith in government was severely tested by the Watergate scandal and the war in Iraq, and she also questioned her religious faith. Ficalora spent much of her childhood in South America and Italy and returned to America as a teenager. She attended schools in Italy, Uruguay, London and Connecticut while her father worked as a global corporate employee of IBM who traveled overseas to help IBM start offices in foreign nations. “We got a bird’s-eye view that things were not exactly like they were telling you they were,” said Ficalora, who graduated from Arizona State University with a bachelor’s degree in broadcasting. During her career in film and television production, Ficalora received a Seattle Emmy nomination in 1986 for producing and directing “The KXLY Video Rock-Off.” She received a producing fellow certificate from the American Film Institute Center for Advanced Film and Television Production and worked for several years at KAET-TV in Phoenix and KXLY-TV in Spokane. She also was a production assistant and postproduction coordinator for a Disney program in the late 1980s, “Backstage at the Zoo.” Today, Ficalora produces and coordinates continuing education courses for psychologists and works as a substitute teacher in Los Angeles. When asked her current political party of choice, Ficalora — who used to be a Republican, then a Democrat and now disavows both parties — said: “Our Founding Fathers. I want America to be what America is supposed to be.”