A Little Touch of Swerdloc for Christmas

Well, at this time of the rolling year, it is deemed meet and proper in certain circles to send out a Greeting of the Season; and so even though my fair wife has happily taken on the task of composing the obligatory Christmas Letter, which may have reached you by the conventional post, I find myself moved to endite yet this additional missive, to further commemorate the events of the past year and to wish you the Blessings of the Time of the Nativity.

Just about eleven months ago, I found myself celebrating my retirement from my employ with the Federal government, and was wined and dined (so to speak) at a luncheon in my honor, where various folk made speeches containing remembrances of the past thirty years or so, and I got to sing a little song in reflection. If you look above, you will find the family group arrayed, and a very somber spectacle we presented.

It’s a bit like the Last Supper, except not so jovial. That fellow on the far right, for instance, looks decidedly suspicious. My daughter Mary, on the far left (quite politically appropriate for her, actually), is at least honestly employed in capturing the whole thing on video. I, on the other hand, am just sitting on my backside and being perplexed.

It has been a quiet year since then, marked only by the plaintive sounds of waiting for OPM to get my retirement pay (pitiful though it may be) finalized, scrounging for a bit of consultative work, doing some freebie work anyway, and thinking that I should work harder on my left hand calluses so I can go out and play my guitar on the streets like an honest man. There is also a novel stewing in the backstreets of my brain, which if it comes to fruition may be something like the unholy union of Raymond Chandler and H.P. Lovecraft. My apologies in advance to both of those fine gentlemen.

So, leaving these disturbing reminiscences, we come to contemplate the cold and bleak landscape that the coming year—and 2012 beyond—present, and say: Humbug! I have been through five-count’em-five versions of Mr Dickens’s A Christmas Carol so far this month, audio and cinematic, and may have one or two more left in me; and my heart is with the Welsh coal-miners that Scrooge visited with the Ghost of Christmas Present, my forebears, singing their hearts out on a chilly Yuletide night, and to all the dark nights that may come, and all the naysayers of the spirit that exist within and without me, I echo Tiny Tim: “God bless us, every one!”

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and God keep you safe and well.

W.J. Smith

The Stewart/Colbert Rally

This is a brief report of my experience at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.  Mostly, I missed the show, but I certainly experienced the teeming crowds, the costumes, the signs, and the fun and fellowship. I left home at 11 a.m., thinking (stupid me) that the travel time would be not much more than a normal commute by Metro; i.e., about 40 minutes or so.  It probably ought to have been at least an hour earlier because the Metro and the Mall were absolutely packed.  My first indication of how things were going to go was when I arrived at the Metro station in Silver Spring and found double lines of hundreds of people waiting to get farecards.  I have never been so thankful I had a SmarTrip card, so I got right in…  …to a platform already crowded, waiting for a train that Metro had unwisely decided to keep to a regular Saturday schedule.  It was impossible to get on the first train that arrived, so I and a bunch of other folks crossed the platform, got a train in the opposite direction, got off at Forest Glen, crossed back over, and waited to squeeze onto the next train, which I just barely did.  It took about two hours to get there—finally getting off at Union Station (air! I could breathe!) and walking down to 3rd St or so--but there was no clear indication of how to get into the main area, which was fenced off; or even to a place where one could see the Jumbotron screens.  I heard some of the program, which was loud but indistinct, in the distance.  There were thousands upon thousands of people crowded together, trying to get to someplace where they could enter, but half were going one way, half the other, and a third half trying to cut across.  Long rows of port-a-potties were behind the fences, pointing the other way.  After more than half an hour of this I made my way to the edge of the crowd, where it thinned out a bit around the East Wing of the National Gallery; then went on across the street to where I could rest my tired buns for a bit outside the E. Barrett Prettyman courthouse.  I made several attempts to call an online friend from North Carolina, whom I knew was going to attend, on my cell phone, but service was pretty much unobtainable, just like it was on 9/11, because everybody was trying to use it at once.  I just enjoyed the crowd and what I could hear of the program, and sang along with Ozzy a bit on "Crazy Train."   There were many costumes, and many, many signs, some of them quite clever.  One I recall read: "I know the difference between socialism, fascism, and health care reform.  Please do not use them interchangeably."  I later heard from a friend of mine who saw a young lady in a very nicely trimmed witch costume, wearing a little sign that said, "I am not you."  There were at least two or three Waldos (as in, "where's ?")   Lots of good spirits and smiles.   Finally, because there was no way I could get to one of the port-a-potties that were behind the fences, I walked over to the Frances Perkins Department of Labor Building, where I threw myself on the mercy of the security guards as an aged retiree and asked if I could use the restroom.  They were very nice about it; and after all, I had worked there over 30 years. Then I slowly walked back to Union Station, and made my way back home, on another train that was filled to the bursting.  Almost without exception, the crammed crowds were polite and helped each other out.  But the next time I open a can of sardines, I shall do so with respect. The official permit for the event was for 60,000 people, and although the National Parks Service no longer provides estimates of crowd sizes, my personal guess was that they exceeded this several times over.  And though it was mainly "younger" people, do not let the media persuade you that this was just a young crowd.  I saw many, many geezers like me.   As for the media, or at least the MSM—forget them.  They don't get it, because they are incapable of getting it.  The Washington Post published an article this morning on the rally that was not too bad, but had a little of the self-congratulatory snark that they historically reserve for UFO stories.  I eventually heard from my NC friend, after the event was over, and I hope she made it back home okay.  As for me, I am resolving to get more exercise so I don't end up as tired and sore as I did.  And maybe watch a replay on TV.

I Am Not a Hero

          No, I am not a hero.  That fact has been drummed into me over and over again during the last decade.  It used to be when I was young and studied such things in school, that there were traditional notions of a hero:  for example, the protagonist in a story; someone like Hercules or Achilles, fabled in myth, characters who rose up out of adversity to achieve something good.  The type of character Joseph Campbell wrote about in The Hero with A Thousand Faces.  Or personal heroes, like one’s father or a mentor of some sort.

          But that isn’t so any longer, not according to the way the word is used in the common culture and in the media, certainly since 9/11.  A hero is someone who wears, or has worn, a uniform of some kind.  Soon after 9/11, there was a television concert called “A Salute to Heroes,” celebrating the work and sacrifice of the police and firefighters at the site of the Twin Towers and the Pentagon.  Then, this was reinforced for me about three weeks later, when I had to travel to Albuquerque to give a talk to a safety meeting of the Edison Electric Institute.  The guy who seemed to be running the presentations (a former Marine, although once a Marine always a Marine) showed a slideshow with music about the events of 9/11, as if anyone needed reminding.  Then he followed that with a tape recording of the service songs of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard; and enjoined anyone who had served in those organizations to stand when their service’s song came on, to be recognized as a hero.  Just to make sure, he also asked anyone who had ever served as a regular or volunteer member of the police or fire department, in any venue, to also stand as a hero.

          By the end, I was about the only one still sitting.  I was a career Federal employee, not a hero.

          The only time I have ever worn a uniform was when I was working at Albany Medical Center Hospital from 1972-74, as a porter (janitor), doing alternate service as a conscientious objector.  It was a crappy uniform: boiled and starched dull grey workshirts and trousers issued and laundered with industrial care by the hospital.  With a little nameplate that read “Mr. Smith,” so that you could be identified if you were caught goofing off somewhere.  That does not count as a hero’s uniform.

          Aside from police officers and firefighters and various emergency service people, the uniform that our designated heroes wear is generally the modern computer-designed digital “camouflage” BDUs that practically everybody in the military has been required to wear since 9/11.  (If it’s supposed to be “camouflage,” why does it stand out so?)  Which brings me to Memorial Day, which is a rightly solemn holiday and remembrance; but I heard in the broadcast media a great deal of the usual emotional calling-out of “heroes,” which for me are only one sort of hero; and many mentions of those who are fighting for our freedom abroad (i.e., in Iraq and Afghanistan).

          No one is fighting for my freedom abroad.  That is bullshit.  I feel deeply, painfully, for every one of the members of the service who are putting their lives and their mental and emotional wellbeing on the line every day, and have done so for repeated long stretches, for whom these stupid wars drag on with no end in sight.  It’s been nearly nine years since we went into Afghanistan, over seven since we invaded Iraq.  Thousands of people have died, and many thousands more have had their lives ruined, on all sides of these conflicts.  None of this has had a positive effect on my freedom, or anyone else in this country.  It may have done some good, somewhere, for some people in the countries we invaded—the ones whose lives were not ended or ruined.

          After all the thousands of years we have been on this planet, and two thousand since the message of the Prince of Peace, have we learned nothing?  Is this the best we can do?  Is this the only place to find our heroes?

          I admit that I am out of step with my world.  No hero of mine bears arms against an enemy.

          So I must have it all wrong, and will go back to my unheroic life.

 

 

X-Conference 2010, Part 2

Well now, where was I?  Oh yes, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.  (That’s a nod to the recently deceased British author Alan Sillitoe.)  Sunday morning’s commute was a lot longer than I wanted it to be, because not only does Metro run its trains at very lengthy intervals on Sunday, which left me standing in a cold wind on the platform in Silver Spring for almost half an hour, but it is doing admittedly-needed track repair on weekends, which meant slowed trains and single-tracking between Rhode Island Avenue and Union Station.  If this is too much detail for anyone, try and stop me.

As a result, I did not arrive at the National Press Club until about ten minutes to 9, when Peter Robbins’s presentation was scheduled to begin.  Peter was subbing for the originally-scheduled Jim Nichols, who was ill, and he spoke about the carefully orchestrated campaign of ridicule that has been imposed on the subject of UFOs by the media since the outset, or at least since shortly after the Roswell incident in 1947.  I only caught bits of his talk because I was minding the door and doing other things.

Next up was the estimable George Knapp, longtime TV reporter in Las Vegas and quite excellent substitute host of Coast to Coast AM on the radio.  He gave an informative and entertaining talk about his involvement with the UFO subject since about 1989, when he first interviewed Bob Lazar of Area 51 fame.  He also devoted a nice bit of time to his coverage of the Skinwalker Ranch in Utah, before, during, and after Bob Bigelow’s National Institute for Discovery Science took it over as a sort of experimental station.  I’m frankly fascinated by the stories of the appearance at the ranch of a Dire Wolf—which has been extinct for some 10,000 years—and other animal life forms that aren’t supposed to be hanging around in the 21^st century, and which seem to walk off into some kind of dimensional portal and disappear.

Then came the luncheon presentation of George Noory, who looks like he has lost some weight over the past year (but still has the black shoe polish hair dye job).  He told some halfway decent jokes, and actually gave a fair amount of time to acknowledge (i.e., calling up to the podium) two other speakers who were important to the success of Coast to Coast:  George Knapp and Linda Howe.  Because Sunday was Mothers Day, Noory made sure to wish a happy day to all the mothers in the audience; and Knapp said, “and happy Mothers Day to all the ‘mofos’ in the audience.”  I thought that was a pretty good line, although I had consumed a glass of wine at that point, because I actually got to eat at the luncheon.  I’m not going to criticize further a presentation where I got to have a good meal.

More than once during the day, during his remarks before and after speakers, Steve Bassett acknowledged that having the X-Conference on Mothers Day weekend was not such a great idea, and it would not happen again, although it would be held early in May as a nod to the original 2001 Disclosure Project press event.  That afternoon, I got to chat with Peter Robbins, co-author (with Larry Warren) of Left at East Gate, the most authoritative book so far on the Rendlesham Forest incident of late 1980.  I found out that he now lives just outside Ithaca, NY, near where I grew up, because his sister and her family live nearby and it’s a lot cheaper than Manhattan.  Very nice guy and a good speaker.

There were two more presentations left to go:  Linda Moulton Howe and Gary Heseltine.  Linda has been doing a lot of work on the Rendlesham/Bentwaters/Woodbridge incident, and brought with her John Burroughs, who was one of the airmen who figured greatly in those events.  Burroughs only recovered his full memories of the Rendlesham Forest incident after hypnosis in 1988, a video recording of which was shown, and it was very sobering stuff.  It was interesting when Linda called Burroughs up to the stage, because she’s only about five-foot-two and, even though she was wearing heels, Burroughs towered over her; he’s at least six-foot-five and perhaps more.  He comes across as a very honest, straightforward kind of guy.

The last presentation of the day was that of Gary Heseltine, who was and still is a serving police officer—a detective—in England.  He has a great Yorkshire accent.  Gary had a sighting of his own when he was 15, and has pursued the subject of UFOs ever since; and he’s also contributed to the Rendlesham research, because he himself was an RAF military police officer at a similar base in the early 1980s.  In 2002 he set up a database of police UFO sightings/incidents that he calls PRUFOS, and he’s hoping to expand its scope beyond the UK to become a reference for all police reports around the world.

That was about it for the conference, and in his closing remarks Steve Bassett called the volunteers who were still present up to the stage to be acknowledged, which was nice.  On Monday morning, I again made my way downtown to the NPC for the press conference at 10 am.  Mainstream media coverage was slim to none, owing at least partially to the fact that President Obama was announcing his nomination of Elena Kagan as a Supreme Court Justice at the White House at the same time.  But there was plenty of coverage by the mostly-internet-based media that focus on UFOs and similar subjects, and Steve Bassett reiterated his announcement of the Contact 2010 conference to be held at the NPCD in October.  That will be very interesting when it occurs.

I met a lot of very nice people during the weekend, many of whom have decidedly nonstandard outlooks on conventional reality, and who have a great range of political opinions—from the libertarian right to the far left.  And, even though Rich Dolan said that his co-author on A.D. had written a UFO-disclosure song called “Need to Know,” which has been recorded by Cherish Alexander and is available on iTunes, I’m feeling inspired to work on a UFO-themed song of my own.  But it’s not done yet, so don’t hold your breath.

Until next year—or maybe October.

 

X-Conference 2010, Part 1

So, anyway, this past weekend I was a volunteer for Steve Bassett/Paradigm Research Group at the X-Conference 2010, which was the sixth X-Conference (“X” for exopolitics) and the first one held at the National Press Club in Washington, DC—two blocks from the White House, and twelve from the Capitol.  I got there about 5.30 pm, because the conference registration was supposed to open at 6.30 and there was a “meet the speakers” cocktail party at 7, followed by the pre-premiere showing (i.e., directorial rough cut) of the film “The Day Before Disclosure” by Norwegian filmmaker Terje Toftenes.

Steve was delayed in getting there, but I got acquainted with some of the other volunteers and with Danish UFO/media people Frederik Uldall and Pia Knudsen.  Eventually we assembled the materials and started handing out registration packets to the appropriate people, giving directions to the restrooms (very important) and showing them into the room where the cocktail party was being held, which actually took up most of the evening.  There was food at the party but I didn’t get any myself, although I did manage to snag a beer at one point.  (One of my “takeaways” from the conference was the certainty that I would not want to be in the catering business.) 

I got to chat a bit with Dr. Bob Hieronimus, host of “21^st Century Radio” out of Baltimore and author of books such as the terrific United Symbolism of America.  (The radio show, which covers many fringe subjects, plus music and other things Bob is keen on, is available online and through iTunes, and is well worth a listen.)  Linda Moulton Howe was there briefly and then disappeared somewhere, but a bunch of the other speakers showed up:  A.J. Gevaerd from Brazil, Richard and Karyn Dolan, Peter Robbins, Gary Heseltine from the UK, and others.  Eventually I got to see most of the film that evening, which needed a little tightening editorially but was very nicely put together: an overview of the whole UFO phenomenon, from the beginning to the present, including abductions, animal mutilations, and other high strangeness.  Terje Toftenes is a tall, soft-spoken, amiable guy, and he was there with his wife/partner, Ragnhild Løken, also very tall and amiable, who reminded me of what a friend once called a female colleague:  Amazon dot blonde.  Fine-looking lady, if you ask me.

After a rather brief night with a few hours sleep (I was commuting by Metrorail from home, which meant late nights and early mornings), I joined the other volunteers and continued registering new people, handing out packets, taking money (cash or check only), and telling folks where the bathrooms were.  The conference itself was delayed in starting because it was being live-streamed on the internet, and the correct connections were not managed until about an hour and a half after the starting time.  Remember, it’s still Mercury retrograde until Tuesday evening. 

Eventually the technical problems were licked and Richard Dolan gave his presentation, which as usual was well-done, scholarly, and fascinating.  He has a new book coming out this September, which he is writing with the creator of the TV series “Dark Skies,” called A.D.: After Disclosure.  After this, there was a presentation during lunch by George Haas and Bill Saunders based on their works The Martian Codex and The Cydonia Codex, in which they relate many of the anomalous features of Cydonia to Mayan and other Meso-American artefacts.  Interesting and suggestive, but not entirely persuasive, to my way of thinking.

After lunch, A.J. Gevaerd—a very affable fellow—gave a lengthy and impassioned presentation on UFOs in Brazil, and the stance of the Brazilian government on the subject, which is a bit more enlightened than that of the USA.  Even if they haven’t got fully into disclosure mode, they are at least quite honest about the fact that their military has, indeed, been tracking this whole area for a long time.  Following him was Paul Stonehill, originally from Ukraine, who gave an enormously thought-provoking talk on UFOs in the USSR/Russia.  Possibly the most interesting information was on the topic of USOs—unidentified submersible objects.  He said the Russians have observed very large craft (or something) operating at great depths, not only in the ocean but in landlocked seas such as Lake Baikal.  On one occasion, he said, a Russian military unit found humanoids who were some eight to nine feet in height conducting operations underwater (in either Lake Baikal or another inland sea), at tremendous depths but without apparent diving gear.  The Russian commander decided to try to capture them, and sent divers down, who were fatally unsuccessful.

That evening—Saturday—was the banquet, which was something of a logistical nightmare.  For a while it seemed uncertain if George Noory would make it, because his plane was delayed after running into headwinds and being diverted to Richmond, but he eventually arrived.  Then, although we were very assiduous in checking tickets, there were many more people at the banquet than could be accounted for by ticket stubs, which meant that not only was there scrambling to get the facility staff to put on more place settings, set out more chairs, and provide more food, but the conference might be going seriously into the financial hole because each possible freeloader was getting a swell dinner that cost $80.  Personally, I hadn’t planned to stay for the banquet, and I left about 9 pm, after everyone was seated and eating.

 

To be continued…

 

 

W.J. Smith

Dr Swerdloc, O.B.F.

'Ars longa, vita brevis'

Hippytize

WOMAN 1

 

          That dress so good it looks on you.  You so lucky are that not inheriting of the Mom’s varnicose veins.

 

 

WOMAN 2

 

Oh but yes I did

 

 

WOMAN 1

 

So they just went away hey?

 

 

WOMAN 2

 

No I had them treated and fixed when the kids were asleep or something.  At a doctor.

 

 

WOMAN 1

 

Dint it hurt?

 

 

WOMAN 2

 

No it dint.  The doctor he hippytized me.

 

 

WOMAN 1

 

How he hippytize you hey?

 

 

WOMAN 2

 

He put on this record, old record you know, “Hippy Hippy Shake.”  And then he start to dancing around, and wave his arms, going hippy hippy shake.  And then I start to dancing too going hippy hippy shake.  Boy could that guy shake his moneymaker.

 

 

WOMAN 1

 

Sounds like fun

 

 

WOMAN 2

 

Oh yes, such fun.  And he just start yelling and running around, round and round the room.  And so I was yelling too also running.

 

 

WOMAN 1

 

What you was yelling?

 

 

WOMAN 2

 

We was yelling about the building falling down.

 

 

WOMAN 1

 

The building falling down?

 

 

WOMAN 2

 

Yes, it falling down, and bricks and stuff came and hit me and broke my foot.

 

 

WOMAN 1

 

I noticed your foot it don’t look so good like it’s broke.

 

 

WOMAN 2

 

Yes now I got to get another doctor for my foot to fix it that it’s broke.  Maybe he hippytize me.

 

The Moon and Wal-Marts

Some time ago I ran across a blog post on the web, titled, “We went to the moon.  Then we built a lot of Wal-Marts.”

 

That remark, attributed to a “young person,” pretty much sums up my dismay (as a long-time member of what Miles O’Brien calls Space Cadet Nation) at our generations-long decline of vision and spirit with regard to the exploration of space, our quest for knowing what really lies on the moon and Mars, which for me are bound inextricably with knowing who we are as a species, where we have been, where we may need to go, and caring for ourselves and our planet.  For as long as human space exploration has been a serious possibility—say, starting in the 1940s—there has been a quite valid school of thought that says: we should take care of our own house first, and deal with all the problems of the human race on earth before venturing elsewhere.

 

Of course we should meet the needs of people on earth—and in our own nation.  But I don’t believe that precludes seeking our destiny, and our history, beyond the earth.  Ever since the end of the Apollo program and the first years of the shuttle, America’s investment of both money and mind in the space program has been pitifully small.  During the same period, we have seen the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the “middle class” become a quaint notion that politicians can occasionally invoke.  Once upon a time in my youth, we used to subscribe to the idea that everybody deserved a good education, but no longer.  It’s like health care: if you want it, you can damn well pay for it yourself.  It’s not the public’s problem, not the government’s problem.

 

There are nearly seven billion people crowding this earth now, and with the ruination of our environment and the changes that Nature has in store for us, we may well want or need to be able to go elsewhere.  That would take some doing, and we have really not even started.  On the moon there is, we are told, a rich store of Helium-3 that could solve our energy needs.  If the USA is not interested, then China most certainly is. 

 

I don’t know what the answer is, and maybe it isn’t NASA at all.  We seem to have lost the right stuff a long time ago, but perhaps someone still has it.  Dickie Branson, or Bert Rutan, or Elon Musk, or Bob Bigelow, or someone else.  I just know that as much as I want peace on earth, and that its people know love and care, I still want to look up and have some real hope that our future lies in the stars.