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Unsung Heroes... These could be defined as critically
necessary persons better than yourself. Am I right?
These could be people who use personal stone to plug away at
pertinent but tediously detailed grunt-works of intellectual toil and who actually
flesh out the bones of our aggregate cultural advancement, grease civilization's wheels, or put the "there" there when the clueless are standing around plaintively wailing, "where... where"?
Could they be further defined as persons who take the long
hard haul in the aggregate production of our
meaningfully productive human consciousness? Could they take this arduous trek only as a result of selflessly honest
conscience and earnest
endeavor on their own? Seems so.
I find I can't be effusive enough about these people, forgetting they have the roughest row to hoe, and are so
deserving of praise. These are folks, you see, who handily satisfy the requirements of the
rare person who honorably endures the grueling "assembly strain" of an
evidentiary audit trail, data base, or
catalogue... and does this activity, performs this service with
discipline and an eye to the
rules of evidence. Tough work.
Sadly, Some of these persons can finally be defined as individuals braving unjust negative attentions from conflicted, biased, and contrary social *arbiters*...reflexive nay-sayers ...arbitrary
cowards, as a final point! Cowards with a
mangy dog in the hunt... cowards who attack and degrade "unsung heroes" because their own very palsied intellectual investment is
void... and they are threatened having to redo work they'd
wrongly presumed abundantly done? Yes.
An idle mind... is a tool. That it's the "devil's tool" is the duplicitous myth. The *crime* is that it is a power the individual, the unsung hero, can productively use.
I further define these unsung heroes as persons who take the high
hard road for little notice, less celebration, and the
least possible (very likely in deficit! )
remuneration. UFO are driven by uncomfortable and unsettleing truth-seeking and so are operated at loss almost exclusively.
The reader can provide their own definitions for these folks. You
know who these people are!They're the selfless men and women who
efficaciously network,
constructively frame, and
creatively facilitate the very productive data-stream we all swim in... ...because it's the
correct thing to do.
These persons operate at all societal levels and stations in self-deprecating shadows as if they would seem to be more comfortable in them. They perform such, in this manner, at all life's stations and at all walks of life... true... but,
in an effort to focus attention on the variety of "Unsung Hero" discussed in this essay...at least those "life-walks" requiring the "amassing and compiling," the "tabbing and indexing," the "cross-referencing and hyper-linking" of critical evidentiary information bases already alluded to.
Consider. Superstar lawyers have their diligent legal assistant or that
star quickly implodes. Brilliant research Doctors have their staffs or there is no data field they can productively mine. Police commissioners have their grunt-working line cops supplying
all the Sherlock or the serial killer remains undetected and out of sight...
...Presidents... especially the current one, have their *secretary* (Lilly Tomlin in "The West Wing") managing the very air that President breathes... or this President discovers he can't walk and chew gum at the same time. Hmmm... ...but I begin to digress.
The serious studies of Ufology have, of course,
many unsung persons of this heroic caliber. Such a person would be amply typified by those resembling Robert Gribble.
Bob Gribble. A more anonymous collection of small mouth noises could hardly be deliberately considered.
...John Smith? ...Jane Jones? ...Wendy Connors? Who is Robert Gribble?
Interested as far back as 1955, Robert Gribble began his
first order, first of its type, and very seminal
Phenomena Research Reporting Center (PRRC) in November, 1974. By the following year, and throwing caution to
brave winds, he began to refer to his center as the
UFO Reporting Center. Later, because good ideas
do, the UFO Reporting Center evolved in scope to become known as the
National UFO Reporting Center (NUFORC). A productive *
novelty* was enjoined, was off, and is
still running!
Mr. Gribble would tirelessly man the helm of this report collection activity until 1994 when it would be taken over by the able Peter Davenport, another "UnSunger", make no mistake, ...when Gribble retired from the active grind.
From the humblest of beginnings in late 1974, then, Mr. Gribble would come to produce an organization of
rare fidelity and trust, finally, providing a singularly non-judgmental "Joe Friday" no-nonsense and just-the-facts type of "place" or "nexus" (in a society generally hostile to that concept?)... ...but a place in which people might feel
adequately comfortable... eh? ...reporting their ubiquitous encounters with unidentified flying objects and the equally abundant and highly strange ancillaries of same.
In this new collegiate atmosphere? Reports quickly doubled those for previous years! Cue your most ominous music, reader.
Perhaps because Gribble relieved a
conflicted officialdom of its responsibility to do this universally
necessary and ultimately
required work? Gribble saw a heretofore unparalleled amount of cooperation with law enforcement, FAA radar, Sea-Tac Radar and even the military itself. This is one of the main reasons Gribble's organization was so successful in accumulating over 30 years worth of hard data regarding UFOs, and what makes it credible, relevant, and important to us
now.
It's all very likely
happened, reader, you see? It is happening now, and it will happen with greater and greater frequency as the future approaches, this writer suspects. UFOs exist to keep Science on its toes, I believe. UFOs exist to check pathelogical social behaviors of same.
How? They are real, but at the same time they do not submit themselves for the short focused and narrow beamed
arbitrations of infant science. They seem aloof and superior to a science really only minutes old...
Derisive? Science totters.
...But, returning to NUFORC, it was this
assistance it received from the extant *authorities* (...an ideal way, remember, to alleviate their own
inherent official
responsibilities regarding a
phenomena being witnessed by thousands of quality people...) that garnered the program its
lasting success. A cowardly and disingenuous mechanism of
Distance and
Plausible Deniability once again for the *authorities*... ...still, the
work got done!
Gribble made tape recordings of Americans,
everyday and *otherwise*, who found themselves confronting something completely outside their experience... ...scared folks who needed to talk about it with someone... only someone who wasn't
spring-loaded to thinking they were insane... or lying... or just stupid! The only three choices *science* allows remember,
mislead, misleading or
mentally ill.
Let me digress and remind the reader that one may BE legitimately skeptical of UFOs, boys and girls, but it REMAINS that diverse persons of education, experience, and quality from
all life's stations continue, as they have for many... many years, to observe objects in the sky they can't explain or hardly even accept
themselves...
Smoke
that!
What Bob Gribble did was to let
real people talk about
real experiences in their own
real words! What a concept! This is a concept for which
I am profoundly thankful. The reader can be
similarly effected.
See, it's another set of strong nails, et al, affixed to the coffin of our
insentient ignorance in this matter regarding UFOs... ...UFOs that are
real, reader!
Forget the airy proclamations of intellectually constipated Brits via the "
Condign Report." Ignore James Randi as he chuckles and snorts his reflexively derisive dismissive-ness. Dismiss in turn the acolytes of a moldering Philip Klass as they smirk and preen their back-stepping
CSICOPian cants.
You see... and I quote Wendy Connors, "We have this record, a historical record of rare quality in our hands
right now," to the stirring contrary! Thanks to the tireless Ms. Connors? Y
ou can have it in your hands, too... Be amazed.
Entirely convincing
all by itself ... even
if *merely anecdotal*... ...when it is inserted into an
incendiary evidentiary equation with
other factors... factors like ...vetted photographic evidence... documented historical evidence... serious artistic evidence... available physical evidence... ...and then compellingly buttressed by conclusive
personal evidence...?... the fat lady has
sung on CSICOPian nay-saying, reader! Skepti-Elvis skulks embarrassed and humiliated from the building!
"Proof" is just evidence
accepted as proof, reader. There are those among us reluctant to admit a junkyard dog biting down hard on their hindquarters at their skeptibunky
denouement.
...And cheese Louise, fellow buckaroos and sky watchers... ...a listener can only be
annoyingly astonished by the continued reluctance of
some (only a
few actually!), given this
wealth of evidentiary audit trails, to face the
highly strange music... ...music enduring despite being
forever marginalized... and
incompetently marginalized at that! Condign is the latest such example of the preceding.
...Does the aforementioned evidence available adequately
justify attention by the *mainstream* to perform a more
in depth investigation of UFOs? Absolutely"! Does Wendy Connors provide
same in her ample Aural History Series extant? Without doubt.
To
understate rather tediously: In Wendy Connors current disc compilation "Night Journeys in Ufology," and spanning the middle 70s... select case recordings from the
National UFO Reporting Center are heard...
Now, with zero hyperbole, let me advise a reader that in these select recordings they can
hear the stunned astonishment,
perceive the abject fear, or
feel the acute embarrassment of real people compelled, ANYWAY, to report something
twitchy they've observed to
somebody. That's right.
Get ready to identify, reader, with the curious
innocence of persons
enthralled with the perceived presence of an inexplicable *other*. Prepare to see how
real people deal, friends and neighbors, with their highly strange experience and come to grips with same.
But "for the grace of God go you...," besides... only
one of these reports has to be true... not false.
Never false.
It's not
one false case that debunks all cases... it's the one true UFO (TRUFO) providing validation for the UFOs too reflexively denied! Think there isn't at least
one true case, reader? Another think is due you.
Moreover, these
are people just like you... remember. They
are 'you' quite possibly... even if you have never made a report.
I've never reported,
and I'm a proclaimed witness... I'm
one of these people. Verily. I know of others. Maybe you?
Back to the Connors compilation...From almost two full 24 hour
days in a seemingly
endless steam of collected reports... ...some 252
incredible MP3 tracks... tracks
ensuring the listener has an
abundance of the
inexplicable whispering in their ears... these strange echoes of the felt presence of an *other* just around the para-psychological corner from the convenient prosaic... ...listening as they watch their busying night skies become busier... for
years to come. Six years less some change,
anyway...
...Good fare with which to be fairly
apprised ...as the strange singularity of this unspoken *other* accelerates closer and closer to us while
you read these words? This writer thinks so. But that's
good news, I contend.
...Closing, Wendy Connors brings
home the ufological bacon once again with her current compilation,
thrills the listener as she informs same, and provides for a more
expansive and more
robust reality for all... I am of the
not so humble opinion. Also, forgetting for a moment
that she is an unsung hero of sizable caliber herself, she is to be
heartily commended and
certainly celebrated for bringing yet another "unsung" ufological hero further into the appreciative light for a moment. It's her job.
Robert Gribble. Good SHOW, Sir!
If you're still with us on this chase, and you're feeling the breath of approaching
concrescence on the back of your neck like those of us remaining? My heartfelt thanks, a snappy salute, and a very public celebration of your contribution, Mr. Gribble!
If not? Twenty-one guns, Sir! Twenty-one freaking Guns! You get those regardless.
See:
http://www.fadeddiscs.com/nightjourneys.html if interested...
Read on.
