UFOs... Again?

Yes... UFOs, Again... And Again...>
by Alfred Lehmberg



It does little good and much bad to maintain that these are not ...precipitous... times. Lawlessness abounds with a tyranny reminiscent of the Sheriff of Nottingham lathered and fluffed by his preeminently evil enabler Prince "John." Every day is a new barrage of intellectual insult and impossible civil outrage difficult and dangerous to abide. ...Where is our Lord of Locksley?

Du Jour insanity provokes insensibility... and the "fringe" intrudes itself in even MORE precipitous ways! Why, the United States Navy just lately allows as how it's been "close encountering" with UFOs for quite some time, and lately... wait. What?

The New York Times, usually a scoffer of condescending dismissivenesses and reflex scientistic (sic) reductionisms regarding UFOs, writes multiple sober articles... even on the subject's immediacy! Indeed, mass media has a certain unsettling sobriety going 'round like a high mass of fresh moral authority. CBS, ABC, NBC... uh... FOX? All are down for a seemingly new UFO relevancy.

Even what purports itself to be a body of sobriety and deliberation, and what should really be aspiring to be just that in all the "hard rain" alluded to, Congress has been getting secret briefings on same. Secret briefings always unsettle in the connotation that there might be some dishonorable NEED for "secrecy." 

Eye on the prize. Focus. UFOs festoon the skies? Only, there have been earlier "festoonages" before, even huge ones. ...But, what if these festoonages had a reality... What if they were of the existential and in the corporeal. What could that mean going forward? What new sobrieties could be aspired to, then?

On the one hand, we look into untroubled skies with a good clearing breath in our collective chest. We remark, observing a plethora of genuine evidence in support, that it's a grand time to be alive... for some of us.

On the other hand—well, the other hand is empty... empty and cold, near death and wracked by palsies and littered with blood spots, old grime, and creakily painful joints inured to its suspect and finally fated futility. We should have that looked at, eh? Could it be as simply addressed as seeing dirt for dirt and applying some soap...

See? We harbor hands entirely soiled, soiled and apart from any admission of same! Consider, the vast majority of individuals on this planet, a planet where TENs of THOUSANDs of children starve to death every DAY, are passing their squalid moments très miserable, at best... discounted by a psychopathic western civilization as bigoted as it is arbitrary and as wasteful as it is self-consumptive. Sucks to us.

Clearly, Culture would seem to eat its young after dehumanizing, criminalizing, and otherwise short-sheeting them in camps of concentration on our southern borders. ...Culture... it's not your friend, it's been pointed out, before. One has to see very little of the planet to know that this is entirely true. This writer has seen much of that world. 

We feel this. We feel this on levels underlying the brave fronts we put up during the day, holding this tenuous *thing we call reality* together in gnashing teeth and scratching nails. 

Some of us are able to hear the screams of those who fall to the wayside, or underfoot, in this mad dash to covet some suggested material satisfaction largely unsatisfying in the achievement, we find; we smell the acrid miasmas of those ground up for their humble greases just to lubricate the lifestyles of an expanding compassionless few; we see the disrespected staggers of real people suffering their nutritionally induced retardations; we feel the hopelessness, despair, and anguish of a MAJORITY of INDIVIDUAL persons who inhabit our insignificant and brown tinged, if blue and white, point in space... All this, and the Kingdom IS at hand?

I suspect in reflection that this cognitive dissonance nurtured between what could be and what is might explain the popularity of the ubiquitous "Titanic" memes—despairing themes of increasing frequency for us. We sense a singularity (iceberg) of some conclusive concrescence approaching... ...Justice?

These are worrisome trepidations, experienced by many, that our "ship" of civilization, a metaphor for us and some *impossible cataclysm* looming... approaches its fate of fatally cruel and ship-grinding shoals... shoals rife with some fulsome, if unknowable and inexorable threat of mysterious prerogatives, evidenced proclivities, not of some alien threat, but one of our OWN manufacture and facilitating the worst of us! 

These threats include wholly unregulated and unaccountable psychotic predators suffering contagious and brain-eating (if wholly tolerated!) disorders of pecuniary *religulousness*. These are slavering wolves among the misinformed but scared and hopeless sheep! These "prosperity Christians" would ironically welcome an end-times of complete and absolute destruction, even disappearance, of the very foundational social ground upon which the reader might already be shakily standing... all to facilitate the pecuniary few pilfering our social security like lying leeches... all THIS suggesting that sudden plunging out of sight into the black, high pressure, and terrifying unknowns of soul death and corporeal dissolution... for the unworthy infidel... all pointing to fun fun fun in those foreshadowed and precipitous time, ahead!

Yeah... Maybe we go out with some blustery passion, or not—but go out we do? The slide to crushing conclusion is complete for both?

...Maybe. ...Only... Victory has been snatched from the jaws of defeat. We're famous for it. We'd do well to keep that in mind.

See, we are hugely powerful as a species! Look around and be glad no one had to wait until you invented all this stuff, right? And Consider! This might be evidenced by that same "religulousness" alluded to, religion used to remove that power apart from us so we don't have to take responsibility for it? 

The "power" of the Gods? Maybe that's OUR power. Gods draw their power from suns and zero-point nothingness, you see. We do that, ourselves, to a degree.

Hey, this writer stands as round-shouldered and vulnerable as any, but he squares those shoulders to hoist a one-fingered salute to any fate that sweeps down on all of us, or just on him, come to it. I'll face what's true, and make it work if I'm able! Or not. It's what we do.

The salute, an existential reality of occurrence, remains... as do the UFOs chased by our military aviators at least since 1952, we're informed by one Frank Feschino Jr., and perhaps to be chased in turn by same. That's always been the reality! 

See..., and gird loins for this, it just may be that the sturm and drang currently projected by the aggregate social society... is to provide for the necessary distraction from the UFO, itself a middle finger to that same culture, science, and society. That's what UFOs do, remember. They invalidate our religious hypocrisy, implode our scientific hubris, and humiliate our misinformed arrogance. 

This is a science and society that is going to have to change to something altogether different given a newfound ufological consciousness. ...And don't presume that those changes alluded to are going to be worse than what we have. 

Consider the glabrous mendacity of current leadership and its desire to cancel a citizenry's already inadequate healthcare, for example, in a comparison. Sure, fear the devil you don't know... but the devil we know's pretty bad. 

Good, bad, or undefinable... un-englishable even, UFOs, an agent of ultimate sedition, offer to end-run the prerogatives and prerequisites of ready political betrayers, religious psychotics, lack-wit authoritarian loving lap-dogs and their warm-beer rank-file of deplorable lickspittles... their  ceaseless, unending, and interminable mendacity, and the two color no-space of their social philosophy... as caustic as it is toxic and as outdated as it is irrelevant. 

UFOs aren't lying like we do, at any rate... and since biblical times, ironically enough. This the soul reason UFOs get short shrift in the first place. One reason night be that Catbirds have always been loathe to be moved from seats traditionally reserved for Catbirds. That's root, seed, and stem of our seeming inability, as a mainstream society, to regard UFOs intelligently, at all, is the observation of this writer. 

The Catbirds? They're just going to have to suck it, aren't they? They will be reluctant. Sure, suffocation of any type is not a pleasant way to slough the mortal coil, eh? But what if you had to give in... lose yourself to the death of an ego not serving you so you could return to yourself wholly improved and the richer for it. This writer suspects that's what we're going to have to do. Give in to get on. Give up to grow up. Tune. Turn. Trip. Live. Learn. Know. Read on.

...One Finger Salute...

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We gaze upon the vastnesses 
of a starry, starry night... 

see washed out points of light-polluted
... symbols... of our fright. 

Then, sensing but a fraction 
of the vastness truly there, 

we pray its existential-ness 
won't put us to its dare!

Though, proceed into that "darker" space! 

Why, your fraction's even smaller, 

despite (because!) you're seeing more? 
...Enigma growing taller!* 

That "space" is huge, immense, unknown. 

Its girth is ever larger. 

Its length and breadth accelerate, 
and it's not a disobliger.

Space, plus time and surface area! 

A wealth of all potential! 

A wealth of what's required 

for the human existential. 

The lesson is: no limits... 
...for the perspicacious mind! 

The individual's paramount, 

and SHALL NOT BE CONFINED!

It's there are found perspectives 

...of a billion trillion ids! 

If you've thought it? 
It has happened, friend, 

and has happened, as it did! 

...And much, much more WILL happen 

than is thought of in those minds 

who'd inhabit our shared multi-verse... 

quickened hugeness—hoary time!

There is darkness which transcends Heer TЯUMP... 

or Hitler—even Stalin! 

There are miseries undreamed of 
in the foulness of the fallen. 

Despair so thick it runs in veins 
of toxic waste it dreams 

...reflecting all the misery 
of shrieks and moaning screams...

...But balance is equality 
so "the inverse" also happens! 
There is truth and light 
and sun washed right 
to complement its lesson. 
There's the loving scent 
of leaves of grass 
on a million peaceful worlds, 
a touch of silk
—so cobweb sheer— 
on healthy frames unfurls. 
Unclouded and so unafraid...  
never "screwing for percentage," 
they are living, laughing, loving, 
and they know their sweet advantage.

Like it's fiction in a "Star Trek," 
or a "Star Wars"? Love abides. 
This means: feeling good is honored 
when it's felt with humble pride. 
This means looking out to see new works 
as lasting... without sin! 
This means achieving all their dreams 
AND satisfactions found therein!

See, here's breathing free with honor 
in a world they help build. 
There's completeness 
for that *spot* within... 
you love it when it's filled! 
They respect the individual, 
the key to their success! 
So, they live in lucent Edens 
they'd construct, but I digress...

You're Garibaldi, something like him, living lives of looming failure; you're his "Captain" taking sacrifice to task... ...Anything can happen on a million billion worlds! Dr. Drake can only tell you 'cause he'd ask.

...And Drake's more than just a WAG, my friend; 

he's conservative as hell; 
he is science très myopic... 
...but he's got a tale to tell. 
See, he qualifies veracity 
that *others* do exist, 
could watch us span potential ... 
watch as some of us resist... 
...Could be looking from the shadows 
some avoid in abject fear... 
... go beyond that jealous envelope 
one maintains and labels: "queer."

We profit from our darknesses? 
We hasten from the light? 
We live our short depressing lives 
in disrespecting spite?  
Earth is but a point in space... 
and cursed with infestation? 
A cancer rages in her flesh; 
it's humankind's gestation? 
Those self-aware must wonder... 
"...will we meet our test"? 
Will we wallow in our toxic filth 
or rise to be our best?

Will we screw for best percentage,  
though, like Ms. Ripley once observed, 
and grind ourselves beneath our heel 
unrepentant... undeterred? 
Or will we work to meet these *others*, 
grok a history "handed down," 
though it crumble proud foundations 
of old systems non-profound?

I'd like to think we're brave enough 
to face our craven monsters, 
though these monsters be ourselves, 
any chance... we must not squander.  
We are poets, not pretenders, 
we are languages of paint, 
we are writers and we're song-smiths... 
we'd aspire to the saints!

• lehmberg2002@gmail.com
• www.AlienView.net

It does little good and much bad to maintain that these are not ...precipitous... times. Restore John Ford.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*The bigger the "fire" is built, the more the "darkness" is revealed. This writer suspects that's a good thing.

Unjustified Ignorance: UFOs In Prime Time History

Pan American Airlines and Spring Break: Real or Fake?

Larry King Reports:

UFOs... Real or Fake?
Unjustified Ignorance: 
UFOs In Prime Time History 

By Alfred Lehmberg

Wow! Faint praise largely born of disappointed ennui, but it was a rare blue moon occurrence... as those moons pertain to UFO reportage! Actual and existential, more thoughtful wheat than dismissive chaff. One was almost made hopeful. Almost.

Though, that's the way of a dissolute corporate media when it condescends to pump its ratings by juicing on UFOs. Agendas will be both reasonable and unreasonable... in a "served" public's best interest... or not... expect, not. ...No upside to tellin' the truth. Where's the money in that?

It remains that, generally, public programming with regard to UFOs aspires to an illusion of a "balance" that, ironically, is anything but a "balance." Usually? Too much dismissively distracting chaff provided for justifiably curious wheat. A metaphor would be giving equal weight in a debate between a militant creationist and a credentialed string-theorist about... string theory. Yeah... we'll do that anymore... to be fair. Pause for squirty giggles.

How are these positions, for example, remotely equivocated? The former ignores the evidence, presumes a faith for what cannot be, in a reasonable sense, and can't give an inch on the evidence of its scientifically reductionist "scripture," which can only be taken, circularly, on that aforementioned faith, faith wholly untestable and so untested. The latter at least aspires to be mindful of evidence, would follow data to a conclusion and abhor the inverse of that process, and affirms that error, admitted, is a step up, still. 

Risking too fine a point, the latter put humans on the moon and harnesses massive energies in aspirations with regard to reaching for galactic efficacy. The former scrapes the genitals from little girls with garden tools and embodies massive hypocrisy as a digressive lifestyle. 

No, to equate these things is the same as equating the authoritative with the authoritarian, and this is not possible where it is the inferior authoritarian process which makes a more reasonable and sensible, vastly superior, authoritative process... look weak, in comparison, minus the authoritarian's obtuse and obnoxious hard line. That's the authoritarian's greatest sin!

Similarly, one cannot equate what can easily be repeated with what is patently unrepeatable and ascribe to them the same rules or have the same expectancies for them. The former can be commanded. The latter is beyond command. This is why science can't wrap its head around UFOs and exactly how UFOs make science appear, yes, even stupid.

This writer is aware of how fuzzy the line can get between the two philosophies, especially as it pertains to UFOs. Indeed, it may be hard to tell which is which in the bogus equation. Equate Kal Korff with Jacque Vallee. Tilt. Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Hard crash! Though some will try, even insist that it can be done. No, there is wheat and there is chaff. Their fallacious equivocation is the limit case for nonsense. You can live on the former, reader. On the latter, you'll only starve.

So, it was an unusual treat, back at the Larry King UFO ranch now, where perhaps a little representational imbalance was in order and appropriately mechanized to typify some real balance, at last! We'd gotten to see some Prime Time UFO reporting from a host of quality ufological proponents, while the insentient and irrelevant opponents of same were under-represented, thankfully, for a change... and badly at that, in a manner poorer and less competent than I have ever seen. That's a low bar, too. 

That's all a good thing. They bring it on themselves. One does not equate flawed with FUBAR and go unscathed or unwarmed!

Seth Shostak was there. He was all discredited slogans, snappy dismissive quips, and faux-confident or self-indulgent and patronizing smiles. That winning smile... a forced smile? He was still smoking slightly from his last debate with the late Stanton Friedman... Verily, and he visibly withered when King reported that Carl Sagan was "something of a believer" after all. Did you catch that, reader? It was a long time ago... Carl Sagan was not a complete sell-out.

The late Budd Hopkins? Even decidedly ill at this point, he was there. This was the Budd Hopkins before every one of his abduction cases were found to be pop-flies finally caught by legitimate skeptics in an outfield crowded with the good and the bad. 

This was the Budd Hopkins before taking a partisan and decidedly self-serving position with regard to David Jacobs, a person still held up as an authority or an elder UFO/Abduction statesman in a manner similar to Nixon with regard to politics (but for the Outré), in the round, despite the very emotionally cloying, if outrageous and still ongoing, Emma Woods affair (...those Shoes to drop, reader!). This was an anxious affair where clearly, unprofessional and malfeasant chicanery is the activity, even recorded for the record. This was the Budd Hopkins before... well, this writer still had the highest regard for him.

That said... real "sense" was made in this Larry King program... and when it was made it was Budd Hopkins, et al, who was making it. He was abundantly buttressed with a cognizant, competent, and very highly respected and googleable, if unpictured, experts JOHN SCHUESSLER, Rob Swiatek, and Bruce Maccabee, but Hopkins was at the top of his game.

Odd... but her eyes are just like this!

Then, we come to Dr. Susan Clancy. I've described her as the blonde leading the blind. Pretty much a flash in the proverbial UAP pan, ufologically, she appeared as a pretty beard for the counter-paranormal/skeptibunky/klasskurtxian set, I'm sure to her dismay as much as anyone's, as it turned out. 

She was deplorable. She was vastly uninformed. She was plainly hostile to a concerted inquiry. She was scientifically irrelevant. She made her bank; however, and moved on. It's what they, agents of fundy klasskurtxia, do, in a nutshell.

From the program:

HOPKINS, Re: a discussion he'd once had with legend Carl Sagan: "...But at any rate, we agreed that all of this [ufological stuff, taken] together constitutes an (sic) phenomenon and so... what I said to Dr. Sagan was: 'Instead of saying extraordinary claims demands extraordinary evidence... Shouldn't we be saying: an extraordinary phenomenon demands an extraordinary investigation? We're not getting an 'investigation' here. What we're getting, unfortunately, are lots of armchair theorists who sit away from the investigation process, who have actually never really gone out to examine the site, the physical marks... whatever it is... to do any medical work... but who have very glib explanations [ready] for each little piece of evidence that's brought up. ...But the accumulation of this evidence is overwhelming."

KING: I will confirm that, because I interviewed the late Dr. Sagan many times and he was, Seth [Shostak], open to the possibility of it and to more investigation of it.

SHOSTAK: I am as well. I am as well...

[scratched record sound] Full...Stop...

~When~, Dr. Shostak? ~Where~, Dr. Shostak? ~How~, Dr. Shostak? With regard to ~what~, Dr. Shostak?

Outside of his own parochial boondoggle at the Silly Exercise To Investigate (SETI)... when has Dr. Shostak ever championed an increase in the aggregate ufological consciousness? No, Dr. Shostak has only ever been a steadily smirking bulwark against same!

Dr. Susan Clancy, the only other skeptibunky representation, was clearly, even pathetically, out of her depth! She blithely displayed an astonishing ignorance about the whole subject of UFOs, and even used that tired old canard of "sleep paralysis" as the leading contender for explaining the still ongoing "alien abduction" conundrum! I was frankly embarrassed for her.

One is compelled to wonder why they'd be included at all. They added nothing but discordancy and obfuscation. Happy homocentrics stirring the bottom of the ufological pond with manicured reductionist fingers. Happy. Happy. Happy.

Additionally, Clancy's tedious and irrelevant book on same was well pumped on the program. Budd Hopkins, also on the program, did not so much as have his books mentioned.

In the aggregate, the proponents for UFOs (...HOPKINS, MACCABEE, SWIATEK & SCHUESSLER, sounding rather like a quality law firm...) acquitted themselves adequately enough I suppose... and the King program was no ~great~ disservice to greater ufology... a general plus as said above, but there was something missing as it pertains to openness, reader, and an old, surprisingly outdated, debate was dusted off yet again and tediously prosecuted... one more time. Did you catch it when it aired? We're still doing it today.

The very title of the Larry King piece says it all in a concise impact statement. Consider the title. "UFOs... Real or Fake"! Real or fake...? Real. Fake. That seems a question abundantly if only ceremoniously, asked. It becomes as tediously as it is ludicrously asked.

New conservative re-estimations of the Drake equation (that attempted rational stab at calculating the number of intelligent species in the universe?) puts the measurement probability for a plethora of off-world intelligences, I understand, so close to 100% that the difference cannot be detectably measured. This is to say that one has a much better chance of winning the Publisher's Clearing House lottery (approaching zero) than one does betting against extraterrestrial intelligence elsewhere in the universe... Yes. We ourselves are proof, if you will, of the Drake equation's validity...

Additionally, an immutable law of the universe is that what ~can~ happen... happens. ~We~ "happened"... proving the certainty of that particular potentiality with equal assurance... What happens once... happens again. Stuff happens, that is to say. There is a rude colloquial... and may even be used with regard to us, eh? Humility is called for.

Frankly, pretending we are alone in all this boundless magnificence, forgetting that that is just ludicrous... is naive and ignorant arrogance, I expect, at best. At worst, it may be sophisticated and better-informed arrogance... a knowing arrogance... conservant arrogance knowing otherwise! An arrogance as unjustified as it is self-defeating.

"UFOs... Real or Fake"? Why, this debate has been going on since at least 1947 in a seemingly apparent attempt to preclude substantive progress on it, at all! This writer is reminded of pigs and lipstick!

"UFOs... Real or Fake"? ...Are there not six levels of quality evidence very specifically indicative that UFOs are a reality? Almost (99.999999999%>) certainty! The huge volume of extant evidence is of a quality that cannot be forever ignored... even as Seth Shostak and Susan Clancy furiously try. What's their end but propping up a failing status quo for purloined contributions?

Yes, the quality anecdotal evidence, compounded with the vetted photographic evidence, and then added to the documented historical evidence, gives every indication that a ufological contention regarding that phenomena must be more real than not... duck suspects are waddlin' and quakin'! Hoofprints may be Zebra given reports of Zebra since biblical times and by the United States Navy, today!

Moreover, when the preceding is framed by the serious artistic evidence, qualified by the available physical evidence, and then compellingly buttressed by that full-on and conclusive personal evidence (...if a reader has some as this writer does.), I can only be annoyingly astonished by the "continued reluctance of some to face the highly strange music that just cannot be forever marginalized..." 

Aren't you, reader? This writer grows tired of the old same-o shine-on.

UFOs. Does the information available justify attention by the mainstream to perform a more *in depth* investigation of UFOs? Absolutely"! ...Sagan and Shostak, hilariously, agree!

But no... strange agents ooze forth, instead, periodically... to re-prosecute the unsolved skeptibunky case of yesteryear! Low fruit! These furiously spin the ufological reality extant in their cowardly attempt to reduce the level of ufological debate once again to its tiresome starting point! Real or Fake, indeed.

Their goal, reader, is to re-achieve an old, outdated, and tediously outrageous level of pre-discussion... re-discussing the (...thoroughly discredited!) possibility... that UFOs are likely something safely prosaic and certainly other than evidence of some significant alternative (off-planet!) intelligence. Yes.

"UFOs... Real or Fake"? Does the reader see how that suggestive statement brings the level of debate back to the decades-old, and very tedious, level of *conceivable deniability*? In other words... That it is somehow still very, very possible, boys and girls... that UFOs... may not... exist at all! ...Everybody draws a deeper, if fallaciously inaccurate, breath!

"UFOs... Real or Fake"? "There is no 'proof', you know, even as there may be some evidence for a ufological reality..." I paraphrase.

"UFOs... Real or Fake"? "Mind you, UFOs and aliens might exist, but no proof has been uncovered in over 50 years that this is so..." I paraphrase.

"UFOs... Real or Fake"? "~We~ are the only *proof* of intelligence in the whole of the universe..."

I paraphrase.

...Oh... so comforting, eh?

The preceding, frankly, is what we must move beyond. Yes... first we must get passed the level of the remotest denial in a discussion of UFOs, as the denial of UFOs cannot have the remotest validity given the work, research, and tight explication of a host of quality ufologists and researchers... forgetting the obvious inability of that well-funded opposition to discredit them! We must admit (and otherwise cop to) the aforementioned and ponderous volume (Six levels!) of evidence that exists regarding the ufological reality extant (...handily destroying or compromising every effort to make UFOs 'disappear' over many, many years...)!

We must demand official forthcoming-ness with regard to funded and open investigations, investigations both international and cross-cultural in scope (...and generations of corporate scofflaws can pay for it!)!

We must face our well facilitated and crippling fear cultivated by those unwilling to cop to UFOs... (Shostak and Clancy et al) step forward to, and embrace, the future! Not step back to a pie-in-the-sky past that only existed in a skeptibunker's spotty imagination, cowardly intellectualism, and suspect politics... anyway!

So, reader! High marks to Larry King for once seriously broaching the subject in "prime time," but minimal approbations are in order for having the same desultory dialogue dispensed on "Larry King Live" as from Frank Scully and Long John Nebel in the more justifiable ignorance of the '50s, so long ago. 

That ignorance, reader, is no longer, remotely, justifiable. Read on.

Tradijinae's Grace

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It's time I grab the cyber keys 

to my ship "Imagination," 

and fly out to the darkest... ...deepest space. 

Outside our solar system... 

I look back on—and can listen— 

to the mewling... febrile ravings 

of my squalid little race.

Oh, we hold ourselves so grandly 

in pretended understanding, while presuming 

we're the bee's knees of creation. 

Complacent, hearing screams, 

and discounting righteous dreams, 

we wallow in a morass, sans cessation.

I tap the keys... it's on! 

We SHRINK down—almost gone— 

this to satisfy the physics 

of our punch to airless spaces. 

Then space—so quick—surrounds us, 

and in awe we are confounded 

as potentials of a billion stars 

entreat us from their places.

Turning this'a way and that? 

We see the planets, eyes like cats; 

Jupiter and Mars approach like brothers. 

Quick as "that" they're gone, 

we're so far out... so far along, 

...adrift now—can't phone home—

...we search for "others."

We think about new races 

in these everlasting spaces 

—volumes within volumes... eggheads say... 

Thinking obviates mere prayers 

and I wonder what we dare, 

regards a blue-white living marble we betray.

There are *others*, out here with us? 

Do they watch—withholding trust—

enigmatic and just not coming when they're called? 

Do they lurk, just out of view, 

hide in sight, it's their's in purview...

Do they wonder why our engine, 

then, seems stalled?

We are a messy puzzle, 

so our watchers watch their sleeves; 

compared to them we're still a'crawl,

 abused on calloused knees! 

Perhaps old before our "dirt" 

had even crumbled from its "rock," 

they knew "planets in collision," 

third tier *science*—knew their "block"!

Too, they're interested in something—

we might be novel, think of that... 

Though, perhaps the way we're interested 

in a monkey or a cat! 

I hope they think we're beautiful, 

as it's when we're bad? We're bad... 

It's when we're good we're really good... 

...they might be gratified or gladdened. 

Art and love and music 

are our source's satisfaction... 

Is it that they find so pleasant 

...culled from chaos and malefaction?

Could it be that they're surprised, perhaps... 

our "peculiar" little antics; 

for them surprises few and far between? 

They thought they had shit figured out, 

then heard from us—what we're about? 

In many years of records ... oh... 

...the *things* they must have seen...

They watched "Titanics" going down 

with all the *rabble* locked below-decks!  

They saw the *function* of a 

*just* and *honored* Klan. 

They watched us filling prisons

—persons culled with imprecision— 

while we taught our trusting kids to *understand*? 

They watch us hate our sex-glands 

with our strictures, codes, and rules. 

They watch us blaming kids for crap, 

...them we bullshit in our *schools*! 

It's a madhouse they're perplexed by, 

it's a dance of fever dreams, 

a chaos we're presenting—

here we laugh and there we scream...

Still, they see us rescue fallen folk

when we think to lend a hand. 

They see a teacher teach the truth to kids, 

sans "agenda," understand? 

They see compassion where it suits us 

and I think they know our curse, 

we're at our best when life, as lived, 

takes that awful turn for worse.

Too, they see us give away our stuff

—effect a grander plan. 

They see us paint and write, and sculpt in light 

on mountains... living land. 

They see us slowly waking up to find 

that we are not alone 

—getting over our embarrassment 

(...that will go right to the bone!)...

...Or... maybe we're just useful ... 

like the laboratory rat, 

to help them with a problem 

that they're "plagued" with—is it that? 

We've got something special going, 

of that I feel assured. 

...Or, they'd do like us and whack us...? 

... and they could not be deterred!

...So, I'll sit out in the blackness 

of this dark between the stars... 

far "brighter" here... than does appear... 

as close to Sol as Mars... 

See, we're the proof they're out there; 

nothing happens "once"... 

we exist, a constant! 

There're others.  Call it bunce.

Now. I'll teleport you back, yourself 

(...it's a *pop* and you're back home...). 

Out here I'll sit and watch awhile... 

Somehow, be less alone...

 Well and truly a mere pipe dream 

a fantasy contrived, 

to keep at bay despair presumed 

by monsters we've despised...  

Though, consciousness pervades desire, 

and what we think comes true; 

Morbius discovered that, and...

...we're his peer review.

• lehmberg2002@gmail.com
• http://www.alienview.net/

Consciousness makes monsters, but consciousness also makes meaning. 

We are dangerous because we dream... and we are beautiful because we dream.

We better HOPE they're more ethical than we are. Kinder. More Humane! Too, sneer not at my film reference... it's a classic for a reason with roots deep in Shakespeare; one can read. 

It speaks to arrogance and an officious, certainly evil arbitrariness, that even a billion years of shining culture won't erase. A guard must always be kept. It must never be forgotten. Power will corrupt. It needs checks and balances. Absolute power? Absolutely.  

But, yes. Squeezed from between the fingers of an arrogant, officious, authoritarian, and gauntleted "rationality"... we live on to "believe it and it is so?" Make that so... only with a little more foresight than Morbius...

...But then, how? How, remembering the awful imperatives of the absolutist's corruption. ...A bridge crossed when we come to it. What else do we have but our expression of same? Read on! 

Restore John Ford!

That "Flatwoods Monster" ... 3 of 3

Something "Happened"?
It's happening.
It will continue to happen...
"We" happened... so! We're not alone.
We are not alone and them not being here
because we can't get there...
Is pretty weak tea.

That "Flatwoods Monster"  

... 3 of 3

by Alfred Lehmberg

At that moment of the portrait's startling reveal, history was barely if indelibly made as a shocked American public gasped at the sight of the "Green Monster of Braxton County " on their nascent television sets for the first time! Too searing to last apparently... eh? 

The oddly penultimate Flatwoods program is barely referred to in concerted research... and the signature "monster" segment of it not at all... It did happen, reader. It did. Happen. There is too much reportage of the event for it not to have happened. What happens...  remember, continues to happen.

Verily, the artist's rendering was "a lie telling a truth," but real tragedy on further investigation, reader. It was a foolish TV rendition facilitating naught but cheap-shots for the "effects" they encourage, echoing decades, from in the beginning... and to this very day. 

Chief among these "shots" are the regretted memories of collateral damages suffered. Consider the unreturning and forgotten pilots lost engaging those UFOs... their families... and THEN think through the wounded pride and sensibilities of the betrayed persons involved with the Flatwoods affair extant. We arrive finally to the ongoing disgrace of a media continuing to misinform us today!

Still reader, the "monster" was seen for the first time, after a fashion, during that broadcast 63 years ago and remains in the public imagination—even apart from Feschino's efforts to make the story known himself—today!  Sadly, then as sometimes even now but for Feschino's valiant efforts, the "Monster" was incorrectly portrayed by the sketch artist, this writer is compelled to reiterate to the reader. How?

No... just, no... and thanks, History Channel!

We flashback to an intrepid first responder! During Feschino's videotaping with the former reporter Stewart, Stewart held up a reproduction of the 1952 drawing, telling Feschino:

"The picture in question that always seems to be in a lot of the articles that've been seen is the one right here. The artist at We the People drew that in New York on the actual day we were there. In fact, it was the focal point of the entire show. They started interviewing Mrs. May, and then went to Lemon, which was all a question-and-answer situation. They gave me the opportunity of summarizing the thing [story] in general and then again finished with this particular picture. That was basically the entire program."

Kathleen May with drawing 
Stewart alludes to...

Mrs. May told Feschino the following about her interview on TV, "They asked me if I knew what it was—you know [pauses] and Lord I didn't know... I had no idea. I know it wasn't an airplane. That's the only thing I'd seen in the sky besides a kite."

Now reader, let's fast forward to Feschino's investigation and explain his work and findings regarding the witnesses with which he'd toiled for all these years... until their deaths, verily. Remember, Feschino is a trained illustrator who graduated with a four-year fine arts diploma in illustration from the prestigious Paier School of Art in Hamden, Connecticut.

Frank's training is not to be taken lightly as he was coached by some of the best artists and illustrators in the world, including Kenneth Davies, Rudolph Zallinger, and John Massimino. Let this writer proclaim that it was Feschino who sat with the witnesses and talked for countless hours, questioned them, and otherwise interviewed them about their lurid close encounter.  Most importantly reader, Feschino also sat with them and drew police-style forensic drawings of the "monster" from their descriptions... their correct recollections!

Subsequently, from his drawings and sketches, Feschino made comprehensive and detailed studies of the "monster," later composing detailed paintings from them. His due diligence, tireless investigation, and talented illustrations result in an informed perspicaciousness several orders of magnitude ahead of the artist from the We the People program... who too quickly hashed out an incorrect drawing depicting the 12-foot-tall giant as a claw waving "monster" inexplicably floating and wearing a skirt from the '50s.  That's "built-in" deniability, reader! ...Happens a lot. I won't digress but the reader may have... imagination.

Is this picture resolving yet? At this time, we do not know the name of the artist, but we know he didn't get it right. 

Off the set with the witnesses maybe the artist was rushed and under pressure to finish the drawing prematurely. Maybe he was instructed by the producers to make it look like a scarier monster for impact effect... or maybe he just totally had misunderstood the witnesses during the pre-talk interview. I point out in preceding articles in this series above how unlikely all that seems given he must have had some foreknowledge by way of the existing print reportage...  Regardless of the reason, the drawing was not portrayed correctly and it almost stuck... to the significant chagrin of principal persons... who?

...Ask the families of 2nd Lt. Jones and 2nd Lt. Del Curto, two USAF jet fighter airmen who vanished during 21-plus hours of continuous UFO activity on September 12th, the night of the "monster" encounter in Flatwoods, to begin to appreciate the enormity of this, even if innocent, error.

These were men launched into anxious flight
 with shoot-down orders, at night and 
in bad weather, during roughly 24 hours 
of continuous UFO activity all over the
United States, but specifically in the region in which
they were operating.  They were never seen again. 
This writer is a retired Master Military Aviator who flew 
in combat and reports that 
this is consummate bravery! 

Author/illustrator Feschino concludes, "When Mrs. May and the boys encountered the 'Flatwoods Monster' on the Fisher Farm on September 12, 1952, an alien being may have been inside of a large hovering probe or encounter suit, making it the reported twelve feet tall. The height of the figure witnessed was gauged by a tree branch under which it was seen. This mechanical, metallic-like hover-craft was more likely a shell with a propulsion system located at the lower torso. The color of the upper and lower torso areas was described as looking like the color of aluminum." One is compelled to gather back the fallen jaw.

Some of the witnesses described the metallic-looking body of the "monster" as green. Reasoned conjecture concludes that when May and Lemon cast their flashlight beams upon the "monster," it immediately reacted and the interior of the figure lit up, forcing bright light through the eye openings! Thus, the area was aglow and the (shiny aluminum-like) shell of the figure reflected the environment surrounding it, tree leaves and bushes. A reflected "green" is what they saw... Hence, the nickname, the "Green Monster." The following are the actual true descriptions of the "Flatwoods Monster" that Feschino describes here:

Forensic draft Sketch by Feschino as advised Freddie May 
with his mother Kathleen.

1. OUTER HELMET. A black ace-of-spades shaped outer helmet that sat upon the shoulders of the upper torso area. This outer helmet also had a clear glass-like barrier located at the front of it. The entire helmet was approximately three feet high and about three feet wide at the base.

2. INNER HELMET. Set inside the black outer helmet, was a red-colored interior helmet that had two large porthole eye openings. It was "worn" by the occupant. The neck area consisted of some sort of collar covering and this inner helmet rotated upon this collar.

3. UPPER TORSO. The upper torso of the structure was about three feet wide at the top and flared toward the waist area. Attached to the upper portion of the torso were a pair of antennae-looking devices, which were said to resemble small mechanical toy-like hands.

4. LOWER TORSO. The lower torso flared out from the waist area to the bottom area. The bottom area was said to be approximately four feet across. Set upon the lower torso were thick pipes situated vertically and equally spaced around the lower torso. They were described as being silver in color and as thick as a fireman's hose. The pipes seemed to be the exhaust outlets for the propulsion system capable of lifting the large fabricated unit.

Now reader, back to the original 1952 drawing, which is a focal point of this article. After the now we know doomed TV show, the three Braxton County residents stayed briefly in New York to see sites and then were flown back to West Virginia. 

Mrs. May was given the original drawing.  This she hand-carried with her back on the flight to Charleston, WV.

She told Feschino, "When we got off the plane down there in Charleston, Lord, there were photographers and everything else. They had taken pictures of me, and they were all waiting for us." The trio was taken to the Charleston Greyhound Terminal for their long trip back to Braxton County and Flatwoods. There, a Charleston Gazette photographer who had followed them from the airport took the below photo of Mrs. May and Eugene Lemon. This photo, as A. Lee Stewart pointed out to Feschino, has appeared in countless publications. 

...Too, it's funny... they don't look like hillbillies ...and, remembering that we all know a camera doesn't ordinarily add intelligence to someone's portraiture... it must have been a lucky shot. 

National News! ...And there WAS a "Flatwoods monster" We The People episode!

               

Trials and travails for the players were just beginning. Their ordeal would last for decades. I'm sure survivors are dealing with some aspect of it... even this moment.

Upon their arrival back home in Flatwoods, A. Lee Stewart would continue to handle the public relations, acting as the spokesman dealing with the media through his newspaper. The story was simply not containable as we would see... and top brass was worried about it.

Moving on, Mrs. May also told Frank about an incident involving a West Virginia National Guard commander the reader will remember, Colonel Dale Leavitt of Sutton, that bonafide hero of WWII we read about earlier. ...You didn't become CIC of the WV State Guard without a certain competence, eh?

Colonel Leavitt

Her meeting with Leavitt occurred in her house, which is near the farm, shortly after she returned home from Charleston, that afternoon.

All week long, Colonel Leavitt and groups of troops had been deployed on the Fisher property allegedly to control the large crowd of curiosity seekers and news reporters who were overrunning the farm and town. Upon her arrival home, Mrs. May explained the meeting she had with Colonel Leavitt and what curiously unfolded involving the drawing she had in her possession.

During an interview with Feschino, she reported, 

"I hadn't been home too long until this truck came up and it had all these troops and everything on it, and Dale came in. He asked me if he could borrow the picture and he took it out and showed it to all the boys [troops]. After a while, he came back in and said, 'Well, I want you to take a look at this' and he just turned it sideways and said, 'this is a complete missile.' "

The aforementioned missile is another reference to the 1952 drawing showing that Colonel Leavitt had actually held the illustration in his hands and displayed it to his troops as some kind of briefing aid!  He's turned it on its side to illustrate his supposition of the object as a mechanism. It also shows that even though the drawing was inaccurate, Leavitt already knew that it was something mechanical, some type of machine or rocket!

Remember, Leavitt, by his videotaped report, was tasked originally to collect leaked "oil" deposits and "debris" from the farm that night during a covert mission.  He also noted, "the [noxious] odor of burning celluloid" as he supervised that operation.  Leavitt ceaselessly talked to Mrs. May and all of the other witnesses in the days following the incident and stated, "Their stories are all identical." That's two good men, now. Feschino has them on tape.

During Feschino's interview with Leavitt on the Fisher Farm, Feschino asked: "Do you think it was an experimental CRAFT [of human manufacture], or do you think it came from someplace else?" 

Leavitt replied, "No... I think it came from someplace else..." ...And there we leave it?

Not quite. When pointedly drilled by Feschino, "What do you think happened here?" The colonel answered, "Well, there was something here that could fly backwards—or wherever they wanted [it] to go. Just anywhere, I think—As long as they don't tear up their equipment! It was right here."

Yes, reader, Colonel Leavitt knew it was not a monster, but a machine. ...What was the Colonel out there to actually search for? Why did he have towed watercraft and big caliber weapons?  We can't know that, as yet.

Subsequently, after the TV show, several more newspaper and magazine reporters set upon Flatwoods and interviewed Mr. May while several more photographers took photos of her in her home with the We the People "monster" drawing.  This would become harassment over the years and a reason Feschino had such a hard row in the township, initially. They'd had it to "here" with the ridicule!

Pioneer UFO researcher and writer Major Donald Keyhoe, USMC Retired, referenced in the epilogue below, wrote about the Flatwoods case in 1953, stating:

Donald Keyhoe

"...Then Mrs. May and the Lemon boy appeared on We the People and retold their frightening experience. It was obvious they believed the monster was real, and a dozen papers and magazines sent writers to Sutton [the nearby Braxton County Seat] for new angles on the story."  

No "ghosts," "haints," or Roc sized barn owls, then, eh?

Today, some of the photos taken of Mrs. May with the original 1952 drawing can be seen in numerous publications. It is incorrect to say that the original drawing has become a part of history regarding the "Flatwoods Monster" incident and endures as a legacy of the highly strange... for that reason.  Time marches on to reveal what it reveals. This writer suspects it'll be Feschino on the byline.

Kathleen May with We The People Illustration

Epilogue: 

The format of the We the People show, which was first telecast on June 1, 1948, was to interview various guests of the day about important events occurring in their lives. Ordinary people, celebrities, entertainers, and politicians alike were informally interviewed by the host, who would casually chat with them on the set. This informal talk show format made We the People one of the most popular TV shows of its time.

At the beginning of each segment, the guests were introduced with the opening line, "We, the People...speak." Yet, after airing the "Flatwoods Monster" story on September 19, 1952, this popular show was summarily and inexplicably canceled after the telecast of only one more program.  Highly strange, on September 26, 1952, the show made its final appearance on NBC TV. Curious, doubly so when you can find no trace of it in the current record... but, it did happen.

In closing reader, I would like to go back to 1952 and talk about a conversation occurring between Mr. Donald Keyhoe and Mr. Albert Chop, Public Liaison for the whole USAF.  Keyhoe, hugely respected at the time as a retired Marine officer aviator and former close aide to Charles Lindbergh, phoned Chop at the Pentagon and spoke to him about the Flatwoods case shortly after May, Lemon, and Stewart appeared on We the People and he witnessed the continuing press coverage of the story.  Keyhoe wrote the following in his 1953 book, Flying Saucers from Outer Space:

"This could get out of hand," I told Chop. Why doesn't the Air Force squelch it?"

"We've already said the object was a meteor," he retorted.

"A lot of people don't believe it. and the way it's built up it's bad. It plants the menace idea ten times more than the Desvergers story did..."

"It'll die out," Chop insisted.

"But people will remember it if something breaks." Keyhoe would finally insist.

Keyhoe would go on to say, "The Air Force hands-off attitude seemed peculiar to me. For the monster story was having a serious effect, in addition to letters from worried Americans." 

Was the frightening nationwide telecast of the "Flatwoods Monster" segment on September 19, 1952, the reason that the plug was pulled on We the People, reader? Well, here we are 66 some odd years later and still learning about the "Flatwoods Monster" incident.  Perhaps more truth looms in the upcoming future.  I'll stay tuned.

Read on...

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