Nostalgia can sometimes hit you like a hurricane; a rush of emotions overwhelming the senses akin to a tidal wave overtaking a seawall. Searching for "1970s swing set" on Google and then searching Google Earth for the old homestead. That did it for me. In 1981, a teenager living on a farm in rural USA was babysitting a 9-year-old cousin. They decided to do something fun and different that weekend: they were going to camp out under the stars by throwing a blanket over the slide of the swing-set and the teeter-totter in the big front yard and sleep under that, with some bug repellent slathered on to combat the summer mosquitoes.
She ordinarily would not have suggested the camping out, except her father, whom she both despised and feared, had moved out of his parents' farmhouse a few months ago. The teen had been living there since she was three, her immediate family being a troubled one. Her dad was a drunk and a womanizer and abusive. He was also heavily into UFOs and Bigfoot and was obsessed with both to the point of annoyance. Even recently he had regaled the family: grandmother, uncle, and her, of tales of alien abductions and experiments the extraterrestrials performed on people. The teen was always terrified, and had trouble sleeping. And it had gotten worse in the year since her grandmother had seen a actual UFO coasting over the farm. She originally didn't believe her grandmother when she told the story, running in screaming from taking in laundry off the line. She made fun of her and told her grandmother she had to be seeing things. She didn't think her good Baptist, non-drinking grandmother would ever lie, but she was getting on in years. Maybe she was getting senile. The girl was of a rebellious nature. She didn't believe many of the things she was told through the years, even the stories of other family members having encounters with strange things, fireballs chasing their cars and lights in the sky that followed people home. People in the family who were sensitive to seeing or feeling when ghosts were present. Stories they told of the strange wanderer who somehow entered their locked houses and slept in a spare room, leaving money and a "Thank You" note on the kitchen table without being seen. Even though she had a great imagination, fancied herself a young writer, and she enjoyed a good tall tale, this had been a bit unreal and hard to accept. Still, the girl was the only one who didn't believe her grandmother, even a year later. But truth be told, she was afraid to believe it was the truth. Life proceeded as usual toward dusk. Dinner was made with both girls helping their grandmother, and after they ate, they gathered the blanket, some snacks and some water to enjoy as they lay in the makeshift tent, looking at the stars. Towards 9 o'clock, the younger girl was sleeping and the teen closed her eyes and was beginning to drift off when she heard a low humming noise in the distance. Thinking it was a plane at first, she tried to pat it no mind. But the humming kept growing. Finding it odd, because there was not another sound to be heard...even the crickets were quiet, finally, she peeked out from underneath the blanket. Her whole world changed in that second. Coming over the top of the cornfield was a slowly moving, very large, something. It was flattish and round, but kind of thick, like a real good pancake. There might have been a thicker part on the top, but many long years have past and she doesn't remember what the top of it looked it. It had colorful blue and red lights that blinked in turns all around the edge of it. And it was from this large flying craft that the humming sound was coming. She watched, mesmerized for a few seconds. Then, she shook her little cousin awake. "What.??" Alissa (name changed to protect living relatives) said. "What is it? What time is it?" The teenager said something like: "'Bout 10. Doesn't matter! You gotta get out here and look! Come on. It's grandma's UFO!" The smaller child gave her a look like she was being pranked. They did tease each other a lot, as cousins who are close will sometimes do. But the older girl, very serious, said: "I'm not kidding." Alissa crawled out from under the the slide and looked in the direction her cousin was pointing. By now the large UFO was even closer, getting ready to close in on the road separating the field and the yard where the girls stood. Alissa's mouth hung open. The teen's mouth hung open as they backed away toward the house. Then...Alissa screamed and took off running for the farmhouse. The teenage girl, as afraid as she was of many things, did not scream...did not run. She sensed a slight directional change, as if the motherwhateverthehellship floated right a bit (well...left in the perspective of whoever was flying it) and she moved over to stand at the edge of the driveway, but closer to the front door to the house...in case she had to book it (thats's what they said in the 80's... or haul ass...basically run). But she didn't want to go in , even though somebody was at the door calling her to come in (her grandmother...frightened...probably recognizing the same thing she saw). She didn't even hear them. Her focus was elsewhere. Because by now the UFO was across the road and nearing her. It was SO BIG. Her home life (aside from hanging with the cousin and her grandmother's loving care and inspiration and her Uncle who was funny) was crap. Her father was abusive. She was bullied at school for being poor. Her mother had left her father a few summers ago and she was miserable. Her first boyfriend was a jerk and cheated and broke up. She was past the point of caring. She felt like..."God, I just wish they'd beam me the hell up and get me off this rock!" a la Luke Skywalker...or something like that. Honestly, she just didn't give a fuck. As the huge pretty lighted disk flew over her, she looked up, eyes wide. Sort of defiantly. But it passed on over. After it had passed the small well-house behind her, and into the next cornfield behind that, she continued to watch it, amazed. Until it suddenly shot into the sky with a flash and was gone. She stood there, in awe, and somewhat sad and disappointed and not a little scared. But in the end, the awe won out over the fear. At the moment. After that, her father bullied her for details and wanted her to write it down. He bullied Alissa too. Her uncle told him to leave the girls alone. The teen tried talking to young cousin about it, but she just wanted to forget it. As for the teen, she refused to share the experience with her father. She kept it inside. And everything that happened later too. And whether she tells anyone but her girlfriend and a few other people about the other experiences she has had, both with the UFO phenomenon or with the paranormal, she isn't yet sure. Her younger cousin passed away in December 2020 of breast cancer, so the once-teen (now older woman ) can share the story publicly. But everything changed for her that night. Not necessarily bad...not all of it. But some if it was not necessarily good, either. But thinking back, remembering. She is glad it happened. She might like to see something like that again. She keeps on looking for people's renditions from that period and for other people's experiences...searching for someone who may have seen the same thing...she may have found one. Maybe another. A year to two apart. Someday, she might see how she can find out. Soon, she may post her own account on NUFORC or MUFON. And she keeps on looking up. Always.
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I'm placing some text here now, but I'm not making a comment on this yet. I have a bunch of mixed feelings swirling around and I need to sort it all out in my brain and heart and soul and maybe even my connective tissues before I write about what I think about it. Basically, it pretty much says what I thought it would and they promise to look for answers. In fact, DOD Press Secretary issued a statement about an hour after the report saying the task force will be given more to work with... I assume that means more people and equipment. We'll see. They also can't throw a lot at the American public. We're talking about a majority of people who are too stupid to wear a mask to protect their own children, ffs! Report is below... Still working on my witnesser post. Was relaying it over to a New Yorker on Twitter who said she'd "never seen anything like that" but did say she saw "two stars move strangely once and appear to wink" She said they moved quickly together and blinked a couple times together and moved apart again. I told her, "Stars don't behave like that, neither do satellites, or planes. Helicopiters? Possible, but not likely, if they moved very close together. They just don't like taking a chance on crashing. Hon, you saw something really cool." Unbelievably cool. Unidentifiably cool.
Today is the day before (supposed) disclosure. I've been reading some of the old Tom Delonge notes (posted by someone on 'alien reddit') from To the Stars Academy about "The Others" and it's really out there. If even, half of it is true, no wonder the global govs have kept a lid on it for nearly a hundred years. It's pretty shocking stuff. Yeah, world altering. Paradigm shifting. Reality changing stuff. The kind of stuff that , if true, that would drive some people over the edge. I could see it doing that. Religious people, especially. I mean, I can kind of see where govs get the idea of distraction now. And let's face it, us humans, even the brightest among us, are easily emotionally swayed. We really need to do something about that. (I need to do something about that my damn self, and am working on it, and as an empath, I have a lot of work to do on maintaining the sympathy level while losing all the anger I sometimes feel at worldly injustices). But like I said, much of that may not even be true. And, as Smoking Man said... "What is the Truth?" I think he said that at one time or another. Anyway, it's Kenneth Arnold day today. The day that the term "flying saucers" first came into being. The first modern UFO sighting, but not the first by a long stretch. Never the first. Read about it here! https://www.wdam.com/story/25854934/on-this-day-in-history-june-24th-1947/ Happy Solstice!
We passed through the solstice Sunday 6/20 at around 11:32 pm."This is when the Sun is farthest north for the year (in Earth's sky) and begins its six-month return southward." I've been under the weather, so the astronomy post is a bit late-sh this week. Also, I'm taking from a different site this week. Just to mix things up a bit. Tuesday, June 22nd: "The nearly-full Moon shines over Antares this evening. By 11 or midnight they're due south on the meridian, as shown below, meaning that Scorpius is as high as it gets." Wednesday, June 23rd: "Mars is passing through the heart of the Beehive Star Cluster, M44, this evening for North America. Get your binoculars or low-power, wide-field telescope on Mars, very low in the west-northwest, right at the end of dusk. (Faint Mars is about a fist at arm's length upper left of bright Venus.) At the time of dusk at other longitudes around the world, Mars will be more toward one edge of the cluster." Thursday, June 24th: "Full Moon (exact at 2:40 p.m. EDT). The Moon rises in twilight about a half hour after sunset." Saturday, June 26th: "On the eastern side of the sky, the big Summer Triangle holds sway after dark. Its top star is Vega, the brightest in all the east." (Vega is supposed to be the star I was born under. I found a thing online, but in the co-ordinates for the location of the town where I was born, and the time, and vroom! Vega is my star.) This week's Night Sky News was taken from "Sky & Telescope" magazine: https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/this-weeks-sky-at-a-glance-june-18-26/ With the UAP Report due out next week, I thought it might be a good time to go a little deeper into the studies and terminology of the UAP phenomena. We're likely only going to touch the barest tip of the iceberg of it next week, the stuff that military pilots have seen and experienced. Maybe we'll get into the stuff that commercial pilots have witnessed, if any feel comfortable enough to come forward without fear of losing their jobs or licenses. There have been plenty of those type of incidents. What we won't get into is the big scary A words...like "aliens" or "abductions." We will put those scary words wayyyyy up on the top shelf for now, behind some other scary words. But...we need to hear about them sooner or later. I will touch on them a bit here. Everyone ought to be familiar with J. Allen Hynek. He started as an astronomer and a professor, but he is probably best known as the U.S. Air Force's scientific advisor for first Project Sign, then Project Blue Book, two of the first government agencies tasked with researching UFO phenomena that operated during the 1950s and 1960s. Mostly it consisted of Hyneck being sent to interview people who'd seen UFO's and then the government telling him to report that it was swamp gas or weather balloons (as in the Dexter, Michigan case). Eventually, Hynek's work debunking for Uncle Sam led him to become a believer, and a UFO researcher. He created a scale of types of sightings and kinds of UFO/entity sightings, called "close encounters." There were originally three types of each in the taxonomy, but the kinds of close encounters have been added to over the decades by other researchers of UAP. Ted Bloecher's* Subtypes to the Close Encounters of the Third Kind are as follows:
I really think CE-6 and CE-7 should be switched because the thought of CE-6 is so incredibly horrifying, in my opinion. *From the New York Public Library's Archives & Manuscripts: "Ted Bloecher (1929- ) is a retired actor and member of the New York City Gay Men's Chorus. His papers (1950-2000) consist of correspondence, personal journals, a memoir and other writing, theatre memorabilia, and his New York City Gay Men's Chorus files. The papers document daily life of a struggling actor and singer in New York City, gay life before and after Stonewall, and thirty years of UFO research." One of the features this week is the Red Planet, Mars, and the Comet 7P/Pons-Winnecke. Saturday, June 12 Today marks the closest approach of Comet 7P/Pons-Winnecke to Earth, when it will come within 0.44 astronomical unit (1 astronomical unit, or AU, is the average Earth-Sun distance) of our planet. It’s currently magnitude 11 and is an early-morning object, rising around 1 A.M. local time in Aquarius, which also hosts the bright planet Jupiter. Saturn is nearby in Capricornus. A 6-inch scope under a dark sky will easily net you this fuzzball, which you can find 7.5° south of Jupiter or 7.6° east-southeast of Deneb Algedi. Venus also reaches perihelion today — the closest point to the Sun in its orbit around our star. Sunrise: 5:31 A.M. Sunset: 8:29 P.M. Moonrise: 7:06 A.M. Moonset: 10:44 P.M. Moon Phase: Waxing crescent (5%) Sunday, June 13 The Moon passes 3° north of Mars at 4 P.M. EDT. Look west shortly after sunset to spot the pair in Cancer, with Mars a little less than 3° to the thin crescent Moon’s southwest half an hour after the Sun disappears. Mars glows at magnitude 1.8, popping out among some of the brighter stars as the sky begins to darken. Much brighter Venus — magnitude –3.9 — stands 17.5° west of the Red Planet. Venus is located in Gemini, forming the point of a deep V between Pollux (left) and Castor (right). Sunrise: 5:31 A.M. Sunset: 8:30 P.M. Moonrise: 8:03 A.M. Moonset: 11:27 P.M. Moon Phase: Waxing crescent (10%) Thursday, June 17 Asteroid 3 Juno lies in the northeastern outskirts of globular cluster M10 tonight. Located in Ophiuchus, you’ll find the pair high in the southeast after dark. Juno glows a dim magnitude 10, compared with M10’s total magnitude of 6.6. You’ll need binoculars or a telescope to enjoy the view. First Quarter Moon occurs late tonight at 11:54 P.M. EDT. Sunrise: 5:31 A.M. Sunset: 8:31 P.M. Moonrise: 12:24 P.M. Moonset: 1:06 A.M. Moon Phase: Waxing crescent (45%) Astronomy highlights for the week are taken from Astronomy.com's Sky This Week feature. "It's white. It has no wings. It has no rotors." "It didn't fly like an aircraft. It was so unpredictable—high g, rapid velocity, rapid acceleration." "I didn't see a trail." "It was going 70-plus knots underwater." ~Cmndr. Fravor & Lt.Cmndr. Deitrich, describing their encounter with the UAP that has become known as the "Tic Tac." In 2019, Lue Elizondo, former head of the Pentagon's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), along with other parties interested in expediting the process of UAP disclosure in the US, made a documentary series called Unidentified: Inside America's UFO Investigation. I'm just starting to watch this series myself, so it is not on my earlier list of recommended documentaries to watch about disclosure...but I may need to revise that list. In an epsiode, Elizondo describes the key elements military personnel have been trained to look for when it comes to making credible witnesses for UAP (unidentified aerial phenomenon) sighting. He calls these elements "The Five Observables." Lue explains what the Five Observables are in the video clip from the series below, and he does it so much better than I do, so please watch it. But I will briefly list them below. The Five Observables:
This week, it's all about galaxies and asteroids! Highlights of "Night Sky News" copied from from Astronomy.com's weekly feature "The Sky This Week": Saturday, June 5 The constellation Virgo, now high in the southwest at sunset, hosts a smorgasbord of galaxies. That’s because in its direction sits the aptly named Virgo Supercluster. The cluster itself contains at least 100,000 galaxies; but tonight, we’re focusing in on just eight. Known as Markarian’s Chain, these galaxies sit in the sky near magnitude 4.9 Rho (ρ) Virginis. NGC 4438 sits roughly in the center of the chain, so if you have a go-to scope and can plug in its name or coordinates (Right Ascension: 12h27m45.6s, Declination: 13°00'31"), you’ll align your sights right where you want them to be. (Three galaxies! And we think we're alone in the universe!) Sunday, June 6 Asteroid 3 Juno reaches opposition at 6 P.M. EDT. Located in the large constellation Ophiuchus, you’ll find it rising this evening in the southeast after sunset. Roughly magnitude 10, you should be able to catch the small world with large binoculars or a small scope, as it floats 5° west-northwest of magnitude 4.5 47 Ophiuchi. Juno falls in the top 10 largest asteroids, spanning about 145 miles (243 km) across. It was the third asteroid discovered, as indicated by its number, and was first identified in September 1804 by Karl Harding. Once you’ve spotted Juno, it’s worth staying in the area to have a look around. Ophiuchus is a rich area and serves as home to several deep-sky objects, including seven Messier globulars sprinkled throughout the constellation: M9, M10, M12, M14, M19, M62, and M107. Sunrise: 5:32 A.M. Sunset: 8:26 P.M. Moonrise: 3:33 A.M. Monday, June 7 The crescent Moon passes 2° south of Uranus at 2 A.M. EDT. You can’t see them at that time, but the pair is rising in the east about an hour before sunrise if you want to try your luck then. At that time, they’re about 3° apart, with the now 8-percent-lit Moon sitting directly below Uranus in Aries the Ram. Uranus shines a dim magnitude 5.9, which will require binoculars to see in the growing twilight. If you choose binoculars with a wide field of view, you should be able to get both objects at once. Uranus spans a mere 3" across and will appear as a grayish, flat “star.” Another 11.5° above the planet (relative to the horizon) is Hamal, Aries’ 2nd-magnitude alpha star. The Moon also reaches apogee — the farthest point in its egg-shaped orbit around Earth — at 10:27 P.M. EDT. At that time, our satellite will sit 252,418 miles (406,227 km) away. Sunrise: 5:32 A.M. Sunset: 8:27 P.M. Moonrise: 3:57 A.M. Moonset: 6:02 P.M. Moon Phase: Waning crescent (7%) Wednesday, June 9 Asteroid 4 Vesta is currently sliding past a popular trio of galaxies known as the Leo Triplet. These three spirals — M65, M66, and NGC 3628 — lie between Theta and Iota (ι) Leonis and tonight, magnitude 7.5 Vesta is about 35' to their southwest. You can capture the 300-mile-wide (480 km) asteroid easily in most binoculars, and M66 is visible through 10x50s from the suburbs. The Triplet’s fainter components are more challenging, requiring at least 15x50 binoculars or a small scope. Any instrument or magnification that can fit a little more than a Full Moon (which spans about 30') into its field of view will do. The asteroid will remain in the Triplet’s neighborhood for another few days, so you can return to try again for the rest of the week if your views are hampered tonight or if you’re looking to spot the small world’s motion from night to night. Sunrise: 5:31 A.M. Sunset: 8:28 P.M. Moonrise: 4:55 A.M. Moonset: 8:02 P.M. Moon Phase: Waning crescent (0.5%) Friday, June 11 Venus appears low in the western sky at sunset, blazing a bright magnitude –3.9. It remains visible until nearly 10 P.M. Tonight, it’s sharing the constellation Gemini with a thin crescent Moon. The two hang less than 3° apart. Between them is 3rd-magnitude Mebsuta, an aging class G supergiant star that shines thousands of times brighter than the Sun, but whose surface temperature is much cooler. Through a telescope, Venus appears about 11" across and is nearly fully lit, showing a phase of 94 percent. That’s in stark contrast to the Moon, which is just over 2 percent lit by the time the pair disappears below the horizon. Binoculars will yield the best view, allowing you to more easily glimpse the thin crescent Moon against the darkening sky. Sunrise: 5:31 A.M. Sunset: 8:29 P.M. Moonrise: 6:15 A.M. Moonset: 9:55 P.M. Moon Phase: Waxing crescent (1%) Twitter was on High Meltdown Alert when all the newspaper stories, TV, and YouTube clips on UAP (unidentified aerial phenomena) started hitting the Trending section, and people everyone realized that #UFOTwitter is a thing. And a thing to be reckoned with.
Also, unfortunately, there were people who were skeptical about any of it: the report being released, whether or not UFOs were real or not, etcetera ad infinitum. Then there was (predictably) the Twitter complainer, a woman, who tweeted something along the lines of "No. I can't do this. Not after Trump and Covid. I'm too exhausted for aliens." As if the fucking world revolved around her only and UFOs would stop appearing to people if she didn't want them to. NEWS FLASH, HONEY. They won't. In accordance with my newfound desire to "let all frustration flow off me like water off a duck's backside" I let it go. I did respond to a few concerned unbelievers that seemed more worried than anything by it, by saying "Like it or not, UFOs are real...and just because the government finally agrees that they are real doesn't mean that they have not ALWAYS been real. They've been real for a long g*ddamn time." Since we first slid out of the mud, probably. In other words, they've ALWAYS been here. Aliens? Well, that depends. If there are any entities from outer space, then yes, they are aliens. What remains to be seen is if any entities are from "inner" space, in other words inter-dimensional. I think both of these are possible and maybe others. So do many in the UFO community. They may be living on earth as well (in the deepest parts of the ocean, or right among us...there are some who may resemble humans enough so that the alien parts of them are not noticeable from a distance (see my upcoming posts about my former coworkers and their experiences with dimensional stuff and human-like aliens living among us). The thing that gets me though, is that the doubt of the people who firmly don't believe and who say it's bullshit when they hear about the upcoming government disclosure are absolutely understandable for feeling that way. If the government had not lied for almost seventy years and covered UFO sightings up, maybe, just maybe, people would be more willing to believe that UAP (UFOs) are real. I'm really mad at those guys who did the covering up and who threatened people who witnessed these events. (I never reported my sighting, but I may now, now that I think no MIB will be coming after me). I am also happy about the current group of some brave government guys and grateful for their courage to start the disclosure process. Guys like Luis Elizondo (from Florida, grew up in Sarasota!) and Christopher Mellon and the brave military pilots who have reported their experiences. Even guys like James Clapper (former Director of National Intelligence), who admits they were wrong and that it was a crime to cover it up and lie to the people. It might feel like it is a "too little--too late" situation, the government finally admitting its wrongdoings on the UFO coverup. But I'm just glad it is happening. I'm glad I'll have the answer in my lifetime [hopefully] to "WHAT THE HELL was that thing?!" that my grandmother, uncle, and little cousin (who died this past year of breast cancer) did not get to hear. That my dad, as much as I hated him, did not get to hear. There's been talk that the Disclosure (at least part of it) is going to happen starting today (June 1st). I really hope so. |
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