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Last week, just before the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001, this large Manila envelope arrived. My expectations of John Roberts are not low.

"9/11-3,000 deaths (really?) 9/11 = fraud," read one of the 20 black and white photocopies in the envelope.

The retired research librarian at Portage has sent me similar emails for more than 20 years. Yes, long before the 9/11 attacks.

"Cancer cured?" the faded page asked. "Cancer victims continue to suffer and die without being informed of the world's number one cancer treatment product."

Ever since I worked in the newspaper industry, Roberts has always believed that the global medical community is ignoring possible treatments for cancer and other major chronic diseases. Roberts insisted that thiazolidine-4-carboxylic acid or TAC, an acid related to penicillin and mushroom derivatives, has been successfully used in clinical trials in US military hospitals. He claimed that it is also widely used as a cancer reducing agent in other countries (especially Japan).

His proposition is the same every year in every post-sending thousands of printed materials to hundreds of people all over the world. (Roberts' extensive research can be viewed at http://web.archive.org/web/20070626191923/http://www.cancercure.ws/tac-cure.htm)

"What if I'm right?" Roberts asked me when sifting through piles of documents in his living room in 2003. "I can help save thousands of lives."

He wrote equally passionate letters, studied the same issues, made thousands of copies, licked hundreds of Manila envelopes, stamped them, and then threw them away, like injecting bottling information into an indifferent In the deep sea. His emails have drifted to several American presidents, including national cancer experts, state legislators, local mayors and doctors, Nobel Prize-winning scientists, various medical associations, international celebrities, national media, and local newspaper columnists.

"Jerry, you need to share this valuable information with your readers," Roberts once told me with the enthusiasm of a cancer cure fighter.

Tens of thousands of dollars, mostly from his pension, are long gone. The years of his life disappeared. When I visited an American veteran at his house, the band-aid on his right thumb cured all the typing blisters. His soft-spoken wife revealed to me that she was not sure whether her husband was saving the world or wasting his golden years.

"I married an idea," her husband told me.

Roberts is undoubtedly obsessed. For such a long time, I can't think of other words to describe this irrational but persistent determination. I used to put all his envelopes in a big box under the desk. Then I realized that I might be indisputably addicted to his obsession. I threw them into the recycling bin a few years ago.

Then, last week, I received another 23-page long article on various topics, from cancer treatment to 9/11 scams to reprinted letters with other conspiracy theorists around the world. "UFO does exist!" One page screamed.

I am fascinated by people like Roberts, who relentlessly focus on personal struggles in life. Or as Roberts said, married an idea. In my writing career, I have received hundreds of letters from such people. I still do.

There is a resident of La Porte County. His ongoing legal battle with La Porte City may have taken his life for many years. He sent me dozens (and dozens) of messages through Facebook, which contained updates, strategies, court briefs, allegations, and related materials. (I just received another message with a photo while writing this column.)

One Ms. Gary still believes that the federal government is eavesdropping on her privacy by "eavesdropping" on her apartment with hidden devices. A reader from Naperville, Illinois, repeatedly emailed me to mock my political stance, insisting that my column was rubbish and wasting his time. But I kept receiving letters from him, week after week, complaints and complaints. Long before the COVID-19 vaccine was developed, an older man peddled his anti-vaccination rhetoric to anyone willing to listen.

In different ways, each of them is attracted by their "causes", just like Captain Ahab chased the beluga whale into the ocean of madness. Herman Melville's classic novel portrays the classic story of obsession through the paranoid captain of the whaling ship Pequad. Ahab explained his crazy infatuation with this eternal line: "I stabbed you from the heart of hell; for hatred, I breathed out one last breath to you."

How many people today have a similar fascination with their own "Moby Dick"?

Should we have more empathy? Shouldn't we judge them? Should we question their mental health or our lack of compassion for their plight? As Melville wrote in 1851, "There is a kind of wisdom that is a curse; but there is a kind of sorrow that is crazy."

When I visited Roberts, his humble home was full of medical documents, folders, and research reports. I guess it still is. He told me that since he became obsessed in 1997, the postage alone has cost him a lot of money-$29 a day, $34 the next day, and $17 another day.

You can add another $2.20 to his recent mail to me. When I retrieved it from the mailbox, I just shook my head. How can he afford it?

"I can't," he told me years ago. "But I can't give up this."