Musing About New York City

Musing About New York City

            On last week’s A Prairie Home Companion, Garrison Keillor did one of his usual bits when the show is on the road:  singing “Hush Little Baby Don’t You Cry” with lyrics made to contain a boatload of references to local sights and activities.  It always gets a good reaction from the local audience, and this version, coming from the Town Hall on West 43^rd Street in New York, was no exception.  But this one left me a little cold and perplexed, because I didn’t know half the things he was referring to.  On the other hand, maybe I shouldn’t have imagined that I ought to.  Deane and DeLuca?  I had vaguely heard the name somewhere; I had to look it up.  Duane Reade?  Never heard of it.  Looked it up.  The Rose Planetarium?  Whatever happened to the Hayden Planetarium?  I have always wanted to go there. 

            I have long had a conflicted attitude about New York City, mixed abhorrence and fascination.  I was born, grew up, and spent the first quarter century of my life in New York State, but the first time I ever set foot in NYC—and then only briefly, for a day—I was more than a year out of college.  (And on that day I didn’t see any of the usual sights; my wife and I were attending the wedding of one of her college friends in Greenwich Village.)  When I was growing up, culture, via television, came from NYC.  The Ed Sullivan Show was my window on it.  But my parents, who lived into their eighties, were born, lived, and died in New York State, and to the best of my knowledge neither of them ever laid eyes on the City.

            And “the City” was what it was called by the people with whom I went to college/university, most of whom being from either the City itself or the metropolitan area.  For them it seemed to be the center of the universe; indeed, there was nothing else worth considering in the universe.  Sometimes it felt as if they beat me around the head with it, like a truncheon.  (I asked my freshman roommate what a bagel was, having never experienced one.  He said it was sort of like a soft pretzel.  I had never encountered one of those, either.)

            A couple of days after Keillor’s program I got an email from one of the mailing lists I have somehow got on, by a writer for Hay House books, a New Age/self-help publisher, about his New York City Holiday adventure.  He and his Californian family had spent Thanksgiving week in NYC, and he detailed the eight or nine things they had intended to do, almost all of which they accomplished in spades.  They included “watching the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, visiting the Natural History Museum, walking around Central Park, attending a couple of Broadway plays, seeing the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall, tasting real New York Pizza, exploring the 9/11 Memorial Museum, ice skating at Rockefeller Center, and just enjoying the sights and sounds of the city.”

            And I thought:  I have never done any of those things, with the possible exception of the “sights and sounds”, which I experienced in one brief, two-hour ramble around the middle of Manhattan in March 1975, including walking around part of the lower border of Central Park, walking around the base of the Empire State Building, walking past the then-closed Radio City Music Hall, and so on.

            I also thought:  this trip must have cost a bundle.  I do not have a bundle, just a small packet, pretty much all of which is obligated for paying bills.

            I was in New York City for about five days in the summer of 1995, doing a training session for the then-current-and-oh-so-urgent agency initiatives.  It was held in a hotel in Flushing, Queens, and what I saw of NYC was… Flushing, Queens.  The sessions were so exhausting that I had no energy left at the end of the day to do anything more than find something to eat, stroll around the local neighborhood (which seemed to be almost entirely Chinese) a bit, and collapse in my room.  On one evening the nominal “trainer” for the group led an expedition into Manhattan, and I think they went to Little Italy.  I was too tired to go.  But on the shuttle flight into the city I had got a good look at the Statue of Liberty from the air, on a nice clear day.  That was neat, a first and, perhaps, a last for me.

            I’ve read about New York, of course.  I read Pete Hamill’s book Downtown, about the history and geography of lower Manhattan.  I’ve recently read Dave Van Ronk’s memoir about the early folkie days in Greenwich Village, and I’ve read detective novels by astrologer/writer Mitchell Lewis, which contain a lot of local color about Manhattan.  These help my education.  In recent months I’ve seen references to the Highline and DUMBO, and, not having any idea what these were, looked them up on Wikipedia.  They sounded interesting.

            And one day, before I die, I still hope to see a Broadway show, on Broadway.  I’d like it to be something that I really want to see, not just any random play.  I’ve always been interested in the stage, and I spent a summer at Oxford doing a course of modern British drama, during which I saw Shakespeare by the RSC at Stratford and plenty of theatre in London’s West End.  I’ve seen road show performances in Washington, but never Broadway.  There was an opportunity once, back when I was in college taking a summer course in Modern Drama.  The teacher had organized a one-Saturday trip to NYC to see a Broadway and an off-Broadway show, but I didn’t go because Martha was working that summer as an elderly woman’s companion with only every other weekend off.  That was the weekend.

            Still I have hope; one day.  Maybe when the weather is warmer, and if I feel I have enough money and energy.  Things these days are never simple.  But one day, before I die.

Johnny Winter, the FM radio, and the Summer of 1972

Rest in Peace, Johnny Winter, 1944-2014, phenomenal blues rock guitarist.  He had been in poor health for awhile, and as I recall had back problems and never fully recovered from a fall that broke his hip, so he played sitting down in latter years, playing a cut-down Erlewine Lazer guitar.  I never saw him live, because the opportunities in my youth were rather limited, by location and other things. I have a clear memory of being bowled over by hearing Johnny play “Johnny B. Goode” in a live recording that was on the local (Binghamton) FM rock station, so it must have been the summer of 1972. 

 

I had got the FM radio as a college graduation present in May of that year, and it opened up a huge window into rock and other music for me.  Up till that time I had only limited avenues for hearing new music:  AM radio (Top 40), the very few times each year that a major act played at the University, and actually buying an album, usually without having heard it previously, with what little money I had.  Even if I’d had an FM radio, the college radio station had too weak a signal to reach our house, and I don’t think the Binghamton rock station (then WKOP-FM) started up very long before I got the radio.  I lived at home, so with very rare exceptions I wasn’t hanging around with people and hearing music they played. 

 

The handful of album purchases (sight unseen, or sound unheard)were carefully chosen, but among them was Delaney & Bonnie & Friends On the Road with Eric Clapton, which I still treasure.  I had never heard of them before so I was taking a bit of a chance, but it was a live album(a great plus) and it had Clapton, and it was great.  In 1972 I did get to see Delaney & Bonnie when they played at the university shortly before I graduated, but they had different Friends and no Eric Clapton.  I have since seen Clapton twice, in 1990 and again in about 2006.  While we were in college Martha gave me a couple of albums which introduced me to the Moody Blues (On the Threshold of a Dream) and the James Gang.

 

It was that same radio that finally, in 1979, allowed me to hear the entirety of The Who’s Tommy when it was played on a DC station.  The album came out in May 1969, right about the time I left Hartwick College and moved back home, so although I saw the album cover in stores I never heard it—not a note, really, from Townshend & co.—until ten years later. There were a few bits that I heard (again, on the radio) from an orchestral version that came out in late 1972 and a cover version of a couple of songs from a band called Mud.  I bought the single 45. It was… okay.  But not the actual Tommy, not even “Pinball Wizard,” until a Saturday evening in1979 when a DC rock station played the whole thing, and I recorded it on the cassette recorder that was happily included in the radio.  Ten years.  As time went on and I eventually had more disposable income, I got the album on cassette, and then on CD.  And I learned to play “Pinball Wizard.”

 

The radio doesn’t work anymore, but I still keep it.  It gave me too many gifts that will always stay with me.  Including Johnny Winter ripping it up on “Johnny B. Goode.”

 

It looked much like this, but in black.

 

Correction and addition: I have determined that the cover version I referred to came out in 1970, and was by a band called Assembled Multitude, which was basically a bunch of studio musicians doing covers, and it was of the "Overture" to Tommy b/w a tune called "Mud." I should also mention seeing the 1975 film version of Tommy, in which the member of The Who do appear (a bit). It was an over-the-top spectacle directed by Ken Russell, with Ann-Margret rolling about in an ocean of baked beans. This is just for the benefit of anyone who's interested, which I do not imagine anyone is.

 

 

W.J. Smith

 

Dr Swerdloc, OBF

'Ars longa, vita brevis'

 

Tuxedos

The other day I happened to be in Sears, which does not occur all that often, looking for a simple table lamp.  They did not have one—not a single lamp of any kind, as far as I could determine, although their web site indicates that they sell many kinds of lamps.

                While walking the length and breadth of the store in search of lamps, I noticed one of their little specialty enterprises housed in a kind of side parlor, featuring men’s formal wear.  They have a similar side parlor selling eyeglasses.  But the formal wear was interesting, because fashions change, and what they were offering on display was the kind of thing that seems to be popular these days for weddings and proms. 

                They had black formal jackets, which looked rather like old-style cutaways or morning coats, each paired with a vest-waistcoat and a matching necktie in festive hues like avocado and mango.  I have seen such things in recent years in photos from, as I noted, weddings and school proms.  Since I was perambulating the store rapidly I did not notice any matching trousers on view, and I casually wondered if they might be black (with a satin stripe, perhaps) or charcoal grey.

                I have donned formal wear, or a tuxedo, exactly three times in my life:  for my prom in junior and senior years of high school in the 1960s, and as an usher at a friend’s wedding in early 1972.  For my high school prom, the standard outfit at that time was white or off-white dinner jacket, boiled-front formal shirt starched within an inch of its life, black bowtie, black trousers with a satin stripe, and a cummerbund (also black).  Think Sean Connery as James Bond in Goldfinger.  Variations from the standard were not really contemplated.

                Just a few years later, at my friend’s wedding, we wore a double-breasted jacket and flared trousers in a kind of dark French blue, with ruffle-fronted shirts of powder blue, and big floppy bowties that matched the jackets.  That was the 1970s, and good riddance to them.  That particular experience helped me decide to forgo formal wear at my own wedding.  It was at a small church, out in the country, and the men simply wore regular suits.  (Mine was black, double-knit—as practically everything was at the time—and it lasted for many years.)

                But I have never worn the usual sort of male tuxedo, with black jacket and trousers.  Black has long played a featured role in my wardrobe, and I’ve had a number of black suits, jackets, and trousers over the years.  Plenty of white shirts and black ties.  But no tuxedos, nor have I wanted one.  I have a friend of the female persuasion who has, more than once, encouraged me to acquire one.  Her husband and sons own tuxedos, and she has argued that, if I got one, I would soon find many occasions on which to wear it.

                I do not think so.  In the forty-two years since I last wore a tuxedo, there has arisen no occasion for me that would have required a tuxedo; indeed, none for which such would even have been appropriate.  That’s not how the course of my life has tended.  Theoretically, if either of my two children should ever have a church wedding, they might ask me to attend in formal dress.  This seems exceedingly unlikely.

                So my appreciation of tuxedos and similar formal wear will remain academic, which is fine.  I can watch the trends come and go by paying attention to whatever they are wearing on televised awards programs.  And I can see the subtle changes that have come to pass (white tie giving way to black tie) in former years by watching Downton Abbey.

                Probably because they are so outside everyday dress, both business and casual, tuxedos seem to partake equally of the elegant and the ridiculous.  I like the joke Garrison Keillor told in the Prairie Home Companion movie, and more than once on the radio program.  “Two penguins standing on an ice floe. And the first penguin says, ‘You look like you're wearing a tuxedo.’ And the second penguin says, ‘What makes you think I'm not?’”  Some folks think that’s pretty funny.  I am one of them.

 

No Green Bearcat Then

May 20, 2013 at 2:26pm

I have been reading the accounts of this past weekend’s graduation ceremonies at my alma mater, Binghamton University, and marveling at how they differ from when I graduated 41 years ago.  This year, there were at least six (or maybe eight) separate ceremonies for the various schools of the university, spread out so that each graduate could march individually across a stage and receive a degree; and most of the ceremonies were held at the university’s Events Center, which did not exist until 2004. 

In 1972 there was one ceremony, at the West Gym, and about half of the graduating class of 1,000 did not attend, since it wasn’t required.  Those of us who showed up wore black caps and gowns, rented from the college bookstore, which were hot as we waited in the sun.  Although the university colors were, as they are still, green and white, they were not really on display; and there were no academic hoods for B.A. types. We didn’t have a formal graduation speaker, just the person who was the acting President, whom I do not recall at all (not even this person’s gender).  President Bruce Dearing had left a few months before, and President Peter Magrath had not yet taken office.  The only ones who marched to receive their degrees were the relative handful of master’s and doctoral candidates.  We Bachelor of Arts types just sat; no names were read.  The paper diplomas were handed out after the commencement, in separate ceremonies in the residential colleges.  Since I was a local, living off-campus, I had to go to the administration building and pick mine up after lunch.  My “magna cum laude” designation came in the form of a sticker, a couple of weeks later in the mail, so I could apply it myself.  Talk about getting a gold star on your paper.

No one graduated from the School of Management, or Nursing,or Education, because those were little more than twinkles in academicians’ eyes in 1972.  We had a few engineers, though.  Those were the guys who wore slide rules in holsters from their belts. Anyone remember slide rules? 

I’ve seen photos from Binghamton University portraying things like students from China at the School of Management being recruited at the Career Center by the likes of Ernst and Young.  No such thing was possible in my youth—no budding MBAs, no Career Center, no recruitment period. The only possible recruiters in 1972 were from the armed forces, and they weren’t allowed on campus. 

And of course it was not called Binghamton University.  It was the State University of New York at Binghamton (still its official name) or Harpur College, but "BU" discourages use of those terms nowadays.  The athletic teams are now called the Bearcats, changed from the culturally uncomfortable Colonials (named after the colonial mansion where Harpur College started in 1946) of yesteryear.  Which reminds me of the line from “Sweet Jane”:  “Ridin’ in a Stutz Bearcat, Jim / Those were different times.”   I hear you, Lou Reed.

 

 

W.J. Smith

 

Dr Swerdloc, OBF

'Ars longa, vita brevis'

 

Freshman Year

Here's a question to ponder: I just watched an interview with the actress Marilu Henner of "Taxi," who is well-known for an astounding autobiographical memory. She told of a recent experience when she had addressed a group, and challenged them to recall their freshman high school schedule. One member of the group initially did remember it--a 15-year-old girl!--but others eventually discovered pathways or keys back to remembering their schedule.

 

How many of us can do that? With a bit of effort, I can recall at least 75-80% of mine.

 

For me, that was the 1964-65 school year.

 

I remember Plane Geometry, taught by Miss Kropek, the first period after lunch in that miserable classroom on the same basement floor as the cafeteria, almost across from the band room; and I remember Candie Bell walking into that class, and I hear the Beach Boys singing "I Get Around."

 

 

I Could Have Danced With a Dame

I COULD HAVE DANCED WITH A DAME

It occurred to me within the last month that I once could have danced with a dame.  Not a dame in the sense of “there is nothing like a dame,” although, that too, applies.  No, I mean Dame of the British Empire.  At the time that I (theoretically) might have danced with her, she was not a dame.

In the summer of 1976, I was in graduate school at the University of Massachusetts, on a summer program at Trinity College, Oxford University.  It was a six-week term, from the end of June through mid-August, and I was studying modern British drama.  There were a number of other courses in English literature offered, all taught by British tutors, of whom one was Hermione Lee, whose seminar was (I think) on the Bloomsbury Group.

She caught my eye for several reasons, mainly being she was quite attractive:  young, tall, five-foot-nine or –ten, pretty in a very English sort of way—dark hair, fair skin—and trendily dressed.  I distinctly recall her wearing a long dark summery skirt with multi-colored striped knee socks.  But I was a married man, and my wife was back in the USA, so I was a good boy.  Looking, yes; nothing more.  I did my share of looking that summer.

After the final banquet that ended our program, there was a party with music and dancing in the beer cellar below Trinity College, and between the pre-banquet reception in the President’s Garden (sherry punch), the banquet (different wines with each course) and the party (beer on tap and champagne at midnight), most of the attendees got rather spiffed.  I was no exception.  And it was terrific to hear the music, since, for whatever reason, I hadn’t heard much during term time.

I am not an avid dancer when sober, and only somewhat more so when not-so-sober.  So I danced a couple of dances with a couple of my fellow students.  Mostly I listened to the music.  But a friend, Neil Bell, to whom I had mentioned my considerable esteem for Ms. Lee, suggested I ask her to dance.

Yes, there she was, tall and elegant in a dark violet, floor-length, backless dress.  Way the hell out of my league.  She danced with a guy named Jack, who was in one of the other courses; he had a fair amount of money, owned an antiques business, and I am quite sure his primary libidinal interest was not with ladies of the feminine persuasion.  But he had a great wardrobe, was wearing a swell suit, and hey! he could sure dance.   I watched them, and they looked great.  That was as far as it went for me and my non-relationship with (despite appreciation of) Hermione Lee.

Ms. Lee went on to carve out an estimable career for herself in academia and as a scholar of Virginia Woolf and Willa Cather, among others; she’s a well-known book reviewer and is now President of Wolfson College, Oxford.

And in the Queen’s Birthday Honours List this past month, she was named a Dame of the British Empire.

That’s the Dame I could have danced with.  Would’a could’a should’a.  Story of my life.

But congratulations, Dame Hermione.

Wintertime Blues

I am definitely not looking forward to this next storm, even though here—in the DC suburbs—we are not supposed to be hit with the blizzard threatening the middle of the country.  Instead, we are supposed to get sleet, freezing rain, and ice, maybe a quarter to a half inch of ice depending on when the temperature rises sufficiently to change the precipitation to all rain.

It will not be welcome because we have not yet really recovered from last week’s storm, which brought only about five inches of snow around here, but it was wet, heavy, snow, and it caused massive power outages.  I was fortunate to keep power on, although the cable and internet were down for over two days.  The storm hit on Wednesday, and by Sunday thousands of homes were still waiting for power in the cold and dark. 

There is widespread dissatisfaction with the local power companies, particularly PEPCO here in Maryland, at their failure to prepare for storms by trimming trees that abut power lines and their slow response in restoring power, as well as in their communication with people who are trying to report outages or get some idea of when the lights will come back on.  Personally I am really disgusted that, in the nation’s capital in the 21^st century, there is a really good chance that the power will go out if we have a storm of any magnitude, in any season.

And oh yeah: I’m also really tired of chopping through, then shoveling, the frozen snow that the plows bury my car in.  Fortunately, if John Hogue is correct, I can look forward to a hotter-than-usual summer.  When the power will go out again.

 

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.

 

Flu

I don’t believe anyone should be compelled or coerced to get a flu shot, for either regular seasonal flu or H1N1.  But whether or not one chooses to get one ought to be based on a realistic knowledge of one’s own health history and status, and that of one’s family or those with whom one comes into regular contact.

 

 They offer flu shots every year where I work (for Federal employees only, not the contractors, of which there are many), and most years I get one.  It seems to help ward the flu off, not infallibly, but a flu shot has never made me sick.  I have occasionally come down with it later in the year anyway; but there are lots of varieties of flu out there, and the seasonal flu shot is only good for whatever the popular flavor was the previous year and might be again this year.  I get the shot not only for me, but also for my immediate family (wife and daughter), who tend to get sick a lot and have chronic illnesses (diabetes and fibromyalgia for my wife, and asthma for my daughter).   And for myself, I seem to have an annoying tendency to develop pneumonia if I get a decent bug going.

 

This year, I did not get a flu shot at work, because I was sick when they were offering it.  With the flu.  Which I have had off and on for most of the last month.  By the time I felt better and was thinking about getting the shot anyway, they had run out of their supply.

 

I do not know for sure if I have had the H1N1 flu, since I did not get tested for it, and by the time I had decided that might be a good idea, it was really too late to bother.  It first appeared the last week of September, and then eased off (I thought it was gone) long enough for me and my wife to travel to Oregon for our nephew’s wedding.  Then it came back; went away again; and came back again.  It is mostly gone now.

 

Now, I had been led to believe that denizens of the geezer generation like me, who have been through an iteration or two of the swine flu and its kin in the past, are supposed to have some immunity to the current H1N1.  I still hope that is true, because I sure do not want anything worse.  This is a cruddy flu that, for me, made everything hurt, dissipated ambition for anything other than sleeping and sometimes listening to my new Woodstock box set, threw in some slight chills and yecchhiness early on, and hung on and on like your layabout offspring who can’t seem to find themselves a job.

 

Trust me, you do not want this.  I would not wish it upon anyone, not even the racists and fascists that some people see lurking under the kitchen sink.  Whether or not you get a flu shot (seasonal or H1N1) should be up to you, but at least remember to wash your damn hands whenever you get the chance, sneeze and cough into your sleeve or a tissue, and if you get sick, stay the hell home.  After a while, you will feel better, and so will everyone else.

 

Likenesses

The rapture is to evangelical Christians what the “keys of the kingdom” given to St Peter are to Catholics.  Tendentious and willful misreading of rather slender lines of Scripture.

 

At the X-Conference 2009

04-16-2009 06:00 PM:
At the X-Conference

I am now at the X-Conference in Gaithersburg, Maryland, or at least I've checked into the hotel. Registration is supposed to commence at 7 pm, and the conference sessions begin tomorrow morning. I have not seen any of the speakers yet, but I will go wandering around soon.

Unfortunately I do not have a camera, but I may go over to the local CVS drugstore and pick up a cheapie.

I'll try to post more as time allows.

04-16-2009 08:20 PM:

I have obtained a cheapo camera from CVS, and coffee from Starbucks, and walking back through the parking lot I passed Nick Pope. He didn't say anything, but the attractive young lady he was with smiled and said, "Hi!"

Just now in the lobby I saw Paola Harris pass through, and met a couple of guys who remarked on my Martin guitar cap. We chatted for quite a while about guitar picking, guitar pickers, and guitars. Not so bad, so far.

04-17-2009 06:27 PM:

So far today I have sat through terrific presentations by:

Richard Dolan, who has just completed Volume 2 of UFOs and the National Security State, covering the years 1973-91, which should be out in a couple of months. (I plan to get it.) He has a great deal of exhaustively researched information on the role of the non-governmental rulers of the modern world, and their interaction with and attempts to manage the UFO phenomenon. For one thing, he said that the Bilderbergers "made" the Presidents Ford through Bush I (at least), and almost casually suggested that they tried to kill Reagan. Hmm.

Colin Andrews, who gave a great and heartfelt lecture on both the UK government's role regarding the crop circle phenomenon--in which he had to refute a lot of the quasi-official things written by Nick Pope, who was in the audience and whom he said he continues to regard as a friend--and what he called "conscious" circles. Crop circles have emerged just because someone (among the researchers) mentioned the sort of formation they would like to see in conversation; and even Doug and Dave admitted that they didn't know exactly what drove them to make circles. This leads one to the notion that the crop circles are all consciously designed--no matter whether human actors are making them, or someone else is.

Alfred Webre, who looked at the coming of 2012 and our galactic alignment (which we are actually already in) through the lens of exopolitics. He is one who seems hopeful about what 2012 and the years following may bring, no matter how dire the events that may transpire then and after. One interesting thing he suggested was that money may come to be seen as a public utility like water and gas, and not a privately held commodity--held that is, he said, by the Rothschilds, who control the banks that make up the Federal Reserve.

Dr. Roger Leir, who presented a new case for the first time, in which the RF-emitting thingie that came out of a guy's toe came apart during the operation, but within two days, the fragments being stored in a vial of the man's blood serum were trying to reassemble themselves. The material was also analyzed and found to be made of meteoric iron, containing trace elements that are exceedingly rare on earth (including U238 but no other uranium isotopes) and may even be unlikely to come from this solar system.

That's it for now. I'm taking a few minutes to decompress from information overload and get ready for the cocktail party this evening.

Posted by Swerdloc on 04-17-2009 09:37 PM:

Back from the cocktail party, where they served up Chinese stir-fry, sort of, and had options for those of us who preferred tofu to beef, but had no Irish whiskey. There is an interesting mix of people, and I'm not really sure how to characterize them--or if one should, or can. Except that they all seem quite nice; it's a welcoming atmosphere. Where one can sort of relax, knowing that everyone around you doesn't think you're a nutjob for taking these matters seriously.

I'd like to get the chance to talk to Graham Hancock and Richard Dolan, at least, before this is over. I may not be able to supply pictures because the designated opportunity for a group speakers shot was orchestrated at the cocktail party, when I had left my cheapie camera in my room. There's always tomorrow and Sunday.

04-18-2009 02:28 PM:
Just a brief note between sessions

Graham Hancock was excellent this morning, as was Art Campbell with Bill Kirklin, and Nick Pope with Maj. Milton Torres. I got to chat briefly with Graham and with Richard Dolan. Next up this afternoon: Michael Salla, and the current host of weekday C2C.

Just trying to report what I'm seeing and get the message out, as Steve Bassett encourages.

Graham Hancock gave a great presentation largely culled from his 2005 book, Supernatural. I think I am definitely going to have to get it out and read it, even though it's rather weighty (i.e., a largish tome). He told me it's available in paperback, although for the paperback edition he edited down eight chapters on cave art to one (probably because of size and cost for reproductions); yet it's the cave art from thousands of years ago that really grabbed my attention in his lecture. He said he's just finished his first novel this week, which should be interesting.

Art Campbell and Bill Kirklin did a very interesting presentation on the incident at Holloman AFB in New Mexico, in February 1955, in which it appeared that President Eisenhower landed and then went into a flying disc that landed right by Air Force One, for a 40-minute meeting of some sort with whoever was in the flying disc. Another flying disc hovered nearby. They admitted that this was "hearsay" information, although Kirklin was at the base at the time and noted some odd occurrences relating to the visit of the President's plane which he was only able to put together 40 years later. Both of them seem quite credible.

Then Nick Pope gave a rundown of current UFO cases in the UK (within the last two years), and talked at some length about the UK's ongoing disclosure of UFO information. He also presented Maj. Milton Torres, ret., of the USAF, who also has a doctorate in mechanical engineering. Maj. Torres gave a very emotional account of being a fighter pilot stationed at Manston AFB, north of Dover on the Thames estuary in England, in 1957, when he was ordered into the air to chase and fire upon a UFO hovering over Ipswich, near Norwich. The UFO took off at something like Mach 10 when he locked onto it, and he did not fire. On returning to base, he was debriefed and told never to tell anyone, a condition that was only recently lifted by action of the UK.

Michael Salla presented a fascinating look at the possible prospects for disclosure--or at least something approaching UFO honesty--under the Obama administration, with a lot of detail on John Podesta's involvement with both the Clinton administration and his influence on the current White House. It's rather stunning to hear, over and over, about how Presidents have been determined not to have a "need to know" about UFO secrets, which begs the question: who determines this? Increasingly, it sounds like "black" nongovernmental, corporate, transnational entities that really run things in this world. The US Constitution becomes an irrelevancy.

The last speaker of the day was George Noory. Although I do have notes, I'll hold off on describing this presentation until I see a show of hands. Want to hear about it, folks?

04-18-2009 11:59 PM:

I have just come back from the banquet, which went on for a very long time, and I think I am going to have to save my observations for a slightly later time, because I need to get some rest. With one exception: one of the awards given out at the banquet was the annual Paradigm Research Group award for political courage, and it was given--in absentia--to John Podesta. Even though Podesta declined to show up to get the award, Steve Bassett wants everyone to know he won it.

Having heard only one objection (and you can ignore this or cover your ears or eyes if you wish), I’m going to report on George Noory’s “special presentation” at the X-Conference from roughly 4-6 pm on Saturday 18 April.  The talks given by Roger Leir, Graham Hancock, Edgar Mitchell, and John Alexander with Steve Bassett were also billed as “special presentations,” though none of them lasted two hours.

The presentation started late, as all of them did; the closest the conference came to being on schedule was 15 minutes behind.  Nevertheless, we had to wait a bit for Noory’s appearance, since Cheryll Jones, the host, and Bassett gave the introduction and left the stage, then nothing happened for a bit as we all looked around for Noory.  (All the other speakers just sat somewhere, generally near the podium, and came up when introduced.)  The C2C theme music came up, and then Noory finally came out from a side entrance and bounded up to the stage.  He’s a little dumpy-looking but not bad, of middling height, and he’s updated his hairstyle with a left-side part and a dye job the color of black shoe polish.  No kidding.  The moustache matches.

He greeted everybody, and talked for a while about the show, which he said is now up to 521 stations.  He said later, in response to a question, that they are going to work on the local affiliate, WMAL, which drops the last two hours in favor of a truckers’ show on weekdays; they broadcast the previous night’s program from the WMAL studios.

He had some kind of lame jokes but seemed genial enough, and quite sincere in his longstanding interest in and devotion to the “paranormal” and related subjects.  He played about ten clips from the show, including about five from interviews with presenters at the X-Conference, including Edgar Mitchell, Roger Leir (who he got up on stage to introduce his own clip), Nick Pope, Jeff Peckman, and Paola Harris.  Nothing too astounding there.

Then he took questions from a generally very friendly audience, which was probably the most entertaining part of the show.  He got one from “Jan from Brooklyn,” a very curious-looking little woman who carried some sort of red light in her hand.  Noory got her up on stage briefly.  She claimed the red light had various sorts of salutary effects on health and nutrition.  This is the same lady, who, in an earlier Q&A session with Graham Hancock, had said she underwent a serious negative experience after a shamanic ritual session six months before, which had left her saddled with a host of entities; but she said she had a machine at home that got rid of entities, though it took a month in this case.

Helping with the questions was Producer Tom (Danheiser), a rather hefty (some might say portly) youngish man with a recently-grown goatee about which Noory chided him.  Tom ran around with the microphone through the audience.

There was also a question from Nancy Burson, an interesting-looking woman who dressed in outfits in combinations of black and white that looked like they might be self-designed, and she asked Noory if he was familiar with the “extra-celestials,” a group with which she is in contact.  She said that they have altered her DNA, or given theirs to her, and she now produces or materializes golden pellets.  And crystals.  Noory offered to marry her if she really laid golden eggs, but she said they are actually quite small.

Then they set up a line for folks to meet Noory and have him sign things, he sitting behind a table on stage.  I left at that point, as did many others, although many also got right in line.

One of the presentations that made the biggest impression on me, or at least caused me to take a lot of notes, was that by Dr. Edgar Mitchell, on Sunday morning 19 April 2009.  He had  comparatively little in the way of prepared remarks, and spent most of his time in Q&A.  There were a LOT of Qs and As, but as a result, there is not a consistent organizing principle to his remarks—just lots of thoughts:

--“In the 21^st Century, we will become part of the community of planets with intelligent life…” 

--He regards energy and matter as dyads, with matter being another expression of them same thing that energy is.

--To develop the technology to get humankind off the planet, outside the solar system—which we must do ultimately to survive as a species—he thinks we can do that by the end of this century, but we have first to bridge the gap between quantum mechanics and general relativity, and it’s not clear how we are going to do that.  He does not believe that string theory and similar approaches ultimately hold water.  (He doesn’t seem to be a fan of Michio Kaku’s ideas.)

--He once wrote a 100-page manuscript on the weaponization of space, but couldn’t find a publisher for it, and it still sits in his files.  Someone suggested he publish it on the internet, and he indicated he might do something like that.

--The questioners for Mitchell included Steve Bassett, Dr. Roger Leir, and Dr. Michael Salla, who all presented at the conference.

--He said, in response to a question, that he was not aware of any parallel astronaut corps or space program, though he thinks that NASA currently is pretty ineffectual.  The questioner suggested going to www.smdc.army.mil, which he said is the website of a military space defense command.

--He said he believes absolutely that there is nonhuman intelligence interacting with humankind and flying UFOs, though he stated that he did not see ET evidences on the moon, and was never briefed on UFOs while in the Apollo program.

--He stated that John F. Kennedy “pulled a decade out of the 21^st century) into the 20^th to win the space race.

A Few Final Observations

There were only two more presentations I saw through before leaving at about 3.15 pm on Sunday.

[b]Paola Harris[/b] gave a very entertaining and nicely illustrated, but not too thoroughly organized, presentation on Hollywood’s role in the UFO phenomenon and disclosure.  She focused a great deal, as might be expected, on Steven Spielberg—from “Close Encounters” to “E.T.” to “A.I.” to “Minority Report” to “Taken” and beyond.  She also evoked Geo. Lucas and Shirley Maclaine, but also brought in some earlier stuff like the original “Day the Earth Stood Still,” though she seems quite taken with Keanu Reeves too.  And she made serious mention of the works of both Jacques Vallee and Philip K. Dick.

Paola then spent a fair amount of time dwelling on the work of James Cameron, specifically “The Abyss,” and showed an extensive clip from toward the end of the film, in which the aquanaut played by Ed Harris encounters the powerful aliens at their far-undersea base, where they seem to have resided for quite some time.  Looks like it’s worth another viewing.

The last presentation I attended was a debate/dialogue between [b]Col. John Alexander[/b], a slightly sympathetic skeptic who has “engaged” the UFO issue, and [b]Stephen Bassett[/b] of PRG; “engaged” is Bassett’s term.  There was a significant difference in perspective between the two, starting with the fact that Alexander had brought slides (some of which he got shown) and Bassett had not.  They both came out dressed in black, wearing sunglasses, and sat down in easy chairs facing each other across a coffee table.

Alexander is a very bright and perspicacious man, retired USAF, who has worked at the highest levels of classification in the military and the Pentagon.  While he is not unsympathetic to the UFO issue—and believes it’s probably ETs—he buys, ultimately, the notion that the government is telling the truth.  He said that he has talked to all the “Theys” in the government and military, and while many or most of them have either had their own sightings or otherwise believe the phenomenon is real, everyone—every agency—assumed [i]someone else[/i] was dealing with it.  (Reminds me of the “someone-else’s-problem” field described in Douglas Adams’s books.  It’s different to an invisibility field, because while someone can see the “cloaked” object, you just think it’s “someone else’s problem” and ignore it.)

Steve Bassett kept trying to get Alexander to acknowledge, in some way, that no matter what the ultimate provenance(s) of the UFOs, it was in some major respect a political issue.  On this Alexander did not, would not, maybe could not budge.  He showed statistics indicating that, while the public generally believe UFOs are real, it is not a “voting issue.”  Steve kept pressing on WHY it is not, if in fact it is not.  Is it because the government, for whatever reason, has systematically, over many years and in many ways including misinformation, disinformation, and the encouragement of derision, persuaded the public that this is not a big deal?

Beyond that, what of the role of entities in authority outside of the government—the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission, the CFR, the freakin’ Rothschilds and Rockefellers (!?!), who seem to not only exist but to control vast piles of money, taken largely or wholly from taxpayer dollars, who can determine if Presidents or anybody else has a “need to know” but who answer to no one but themselves?  (Or do they?  Where did those Annunaki go, anyway?)

Anyhow, that was it.  They ended on a kind of gag, in which they called up a slide of “Men in Black,” both Steve and Alexander put on their sunglasses, and Alexander pointed a wand with a red light at the end at the audience.

After that I packed up to go, since I was exhausted, but not before stopping at the PRG desk to ask Steve about volunteering as staff for next year’s X-Conference.  He said to send him an e-mail, and I will.

By the way, the attractive young lady with Nick Pope was Franky Ma, a reporter/presenter for Sky Channel 200 and apparently Nick’s main squeeze.  Way to go, Nick.