Reagan Knew, How About You?

Remember those things that should never be forgotten, such as these goodies from the 1980s. To read in depth about President Ronald Reagan and UFOs, visit Grant Cameron's Presidential UFO site (see link) and go specifically to the Reagan page.

Correcting the Future, Narrowing the Deification

What with an epidemic of earthquakes, volcanic activity and disastrous oil spills (and, not to forget, climate change and national economies and back-stabbing political parties in tatters), I almost lost sight of the fact that this is also a joyous time of college graduations, high school proms and graduations, and teenagers both partying and driving badly -- for the last time ever, in some tragic cases.

As far as the eye can see, catastrophe seems commonplace: A paucity of good jobs for graduates; graduates who can neither read, spell nor add; illegal immigrants (rock on, Arizona, good for you!) and Islamic extremists with mayhem on their minds (our U.S. attorney general can't even bear to call them what they are, preferring instead to dance around the fitting words, Islamic terrorists, when questioned by Congress).

As I write this today, a radio broadcast blares with news about a new scientific study linking pesticides in food to attention deficit disorder (not that it's ever a good idea to spray lawns with pesticides, either, because kids, pets and wildlife are obviously an unintended target of this variety of better-living-through-chemicals -- but is this truly a surprise?).

What else. . .oh yeah, and divorces account for terminating more than one in two marriages now, all because of relationships endured by people who promised to love and cherish one another "forever," and instead end their blissful togetherness in fights, spousal homicide or murders of one's own children (if abused children don't take out mom or dad first). Not to mention the up-and-coming troubled or bored teens consistently plotting to blow up their schools, when just hoping to eradicate bullies or personal demons isn't quite enough.

Well, I thought this would be an appropriate opportunity to remind one and all not to worry to excess about these current, potential and ongoing natural/unnatural disasters. Remember: The dinosaurs probably thought their offspring were the hungry future, too (and don't bother hiding under the covers, under the bed or under anything handy -- when that Big Rock Candy Mountain in the sky arrives, it's all over, and all that stuff your mom said about wearing clean underwear in case you get hit by a bus and rushed to a hospital need not be a highlight of your daily lives).

Yes, young folk, if you must panic over something -- and who shouldn't these days? -- choose the fear of giant asteroids, those uncommon, yet in-your-face equal opportunity annihilators of the universe. Sooner or later, like census takers, they're sure to stop by to crash the party, albeit without drugs, alcohol or iPods.

So have fun, kids, and don't worry about the little things! You are the future, and all the growing horrors of the future are yours to embrace! At least, um, for a while.

The Crimson Cornfield

Sometimes they're meteorites and sometimes they're space junk. Sometimes they're plane crashes or balloons, and sometimes they're secret government projects you'll be chased away from. And sometimes they're strictly visual without apparent substance. Still, you know you saw something. But where did it go? What was it?

Dramatic, well-publicized UFO cases often seem impressive, but what about the rural incident which seems so insignificant, a mere blink in the night? When multiplied all over the globe by the thousands, do such events hold a special meaning?

Back in mid-April of 1994, at least four people reported observing something strange over a cornfield in the northern New York community of Oswegatchie. According to Associated Press reports, witnesses reported that something fell out of the sky around 8:15 p.m. -- that the fallen something had one or two rows of bright red lights and "flew over a cornfield" before it dropped straight down into that cornfield.

Observer Steve Ponko, outside, said "There were one or two rows of red lights. . .sort of shaped like a plane. It was coming toward me. . .all of a sudden, it dropped into the field." A border patrol agent and two women in different locations nearby also called police to report the strange sight.

Though dozens of volunteers and an infrared-equipped (for night vision) Army helicopter from nearby Fort Drum were dispatched, searchers found nothing (or so we are told).

"We don't know what it is," explained Kit Smith, district fire coordinator. "From what we were told, it did not resemble any type of conventional aircraft." Smith added that neither Ogdensburg International Airport nor the airport in Burlington, Vermont reported radio transmissions from incoming aircraft at the time.

Something or nothing? Yes, sometimes mysteries pulsate in hues of icy blue, as if cold and calculating, and sometimes they reflect against the evening sky in shades of jade green. At other times, they arrive innocently in sparsely populated areas, dressed informally in rows of crimson, here and then gone, perhaps manipulating time and space to their advantage. To whose advantage? We marvel, then dismiss the little things easily, finding no importance in those brief, yet ubiquitous shining treasures of the night. Why wouldn't we wave them off, if implications for the bigger picture are incapable of personal assessment?

UFOs 101

Not to be inhospitable or crankier than usual, but I don't know why so many members of the world press went bonkers over Philip Haseley, the Niagara County College anthropology professor (and MUFON representative) who recently stated that the UFO subject should be taught at the university level. I mean, I'm glad he received solid publicity and said what he said, but my question is for the media: Didn't those folks know that both credit and non-credit college UFO courses have been around for years?

The late Dr. J. Allen Hynek, former Air Force UFO consultant, taught students about UFOs for credit, as do Dr. David M. Jacobs and other professors. The late and somewhat under-appreciated (re his UFO research) Dr. Harley Rutledge also comes immediately to mind, and we're just talking about the U.S. collegiate scene. Even Prof. Haseley reminds us that such courses have existed, and of course his main point is that the UFO involves scientific study fit for a college classroom.

As mentioned in an early blog post here, I began teaching several sessions of a non-credit introductory UFO course at a college in 1976, eventually wrote about it for the magazine, Argosy UFO, and received lots of mail -- a significant amount of it from people looking for guidance to teach their own college classes on the subject. One of them, Christopher Centi, an investigator for the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO), developed a popular course at Jamestown (NY) Community College which received fair news coverage following its inception in 1977.

Back in the early 1960s, to my knowledge, there was hardly a college or university in the U.S. that would acknowledge the UFO subject as anything more than myth and legend. I suppose the emergence of the Socorro, New Mexico case helped to steer academia credibility in the right direction in 1964 -- but I also contend we're lucky that actor-comedian Jimmy Durante, in the twilight of his years, didn't blow the nation's serious interest all to hell in 1964 when his novelty song, "We're Going UFO-ing" hit the nation's AM music airwaves! (Yes, you can find it easily on YouTube and other places.)

We wish Professor Haseley much success as he embarks upon teaching his own UFO course -- for college credit, we assume -- because the need is there. But for every college professor willing to offer legitimate UFO information, there are probably 10 or more colleague-debunkers waiting in the wings, ready to annihilate his or her reputation without so much as a glance at the facts.

(Pictured: Newspaper headlines re the OCC and JCC courses, a snippet from an OCC newspaper ad re my UFO course, and my course topic list as it appeared in an issue of Argosy UFO when I wrote about the classes.)

He Said - She Said - It Said

Sometimes, we conveniently overlook contradictions in order to proclaim our own shallow victories. Take UFOs, for example. There are still people out there who insist UFOs are real, but must be an invention of ours, super-secret devices with abilities far beyond anything known overtly to conventional science and aeronautics.

That's nonsense, of course, because even a cursory review of the better UFO cases presents us with anomalies generally far removed from any presumably rational human thought or interpretation.

When we devote time and effort to thinking about the phenomenon/phenomena, whether scientists or laymen, UFOs simply drive us nuts. That's why some folks comfort themselves by stubbornly asserting that UFOs are man-made, relieving a lot of mental pressure.

I'm not surprised, therefore, when so many people believe that humans have caused intense and damaging changes in climate -- and will forever refuse to believe otherwise. Don't get me wrong, I entertain certain impressions that we do cause damage, merely because of our numbers on the planet. Wars over fresh, clean and mere traces of water, for instance, will escalate in the future -- a dilemma which wouldn't exist without billions of humans attempting to claim the treacherously minimal fresh water reserves readily available on Earth.

Now, we witness the ongoing BP (British Petroleum) oil leak tragedy, already deadly to humans on the platform and potentially catastrophic to all sea and land life for miles almost inconceivable. Unfathomable?

Yes, some rational minds and folks engaged in the serious business of wishful thinking would prefer that all oil drilling cease immediately, never to return. That won't happen, however, because the world still depends upon petroleum and simply must because currently there's no comparable substitute in quantities demanded by an oil-hungry world. One cannot lubricate the vast intricate mechanisms of the working world with windmill power or solar panels. The reality? In the immediate future and probably beyond that, we're screwed. Oil isn't going away and, if nothing else, we in the USA know very well that China, Russia, and a litany of other nations with petrol-thirstiness unbounded aren't exactly weeping over our likely coastline devastation and packing away their drilling equipment. Whose fault? Their fault. Our fault. Nature's fault. One of those things. Drooling over signage on Earth Day isn't going to help, either, and we may as well let political EPA hacks continue sleeping off their appointments and regulatory powers 'cause waking up and seeing clearly is so beyond the pale.

Contemplation. Petroleum comes from the planet, not from some laboratory specializing in squeezing oil from monkey livers. Like volcanic clockwork, one wonders how many times in a millennia the earth's own natural fountains have blasted petroleum into waters teeming with life, murdering creatures with killer crude, a substance destined to become the future human civilization's black gold.

Oh yes, it's a mysterious planet, all right. One need only reference the many books published by William R. Corliss at The Sourcebook Project (there is a Web site), extensive collections of scientific newspaper, magazine and journal articles gleaned from the past which question things we think we know, enigmas still unexplained and planetary cataclysmic events. Gaia, well, she's not always in a festive Disneyland mood, it seems.

Leery I am of those who profess that no crisis should go to waste. The oil disaster will propel them, energized like killer bees in the hot sun, to blame human activity for every ill on the earth, and CO2, though unrelated to the latest petro-calamity, will be portrayed as public enemy #1, surpassing even Iran's throwback knuckle-dragging dictators as a major threat. That's why I find this the perfect moment to return to a news report from March 30.

BBC News quoted Professor James Lovelock -- the very architect who developed the idea of Gaia -- who assures us that it's too late to "save" the planet. Believing climate change unpredictable, Lovelock warns that scientific models can't possibly tell us the future. Scientists, the 90-year-old says, have gone from seriously investigating data to "fudging" information. Even if humans did have a hand in modern climate alterations, he asserts, there's really nothing to be done about it, and basically we should just enjoy our lives while able. Trying to save the planet, according to Lovelock, "is a lot of nonsense."

Society appears to thrive more than ever on nonsense, but if Lovelock is refreshingly correct, can't we at least learn the truth about UFOs before we move on, giving up our place in evolution to the next sloth?