Alien Lore No. 194 - The first UFO visit, and the first UFO crash 114 years ago?

 By Jack Brummet, Paranormal and Alien Lore Editor

This incident is often considered to be the first documented sighting of a UFO, although generally UFOlogists skip ahead to the Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting near Mount Rainier half a century later. . .

In 1897 a cigar shaped object--they weren't known as "flying saucers" until 1947--was reported by numerous Americans as it traveled from San Francisco to Chicago. Hundreds of people lined Lake Michigan in wait for it's appearance.  Earlier that same year, newspapers reported that a spacecraft crashed into a Judge J.F. Proctor's windmill and then exploded.  They found the body of a tiny pilot, described as "not of this world."  A journal found in the space vehicle contained writing in an unknown language.  Sweetly, the townspeople arranged for the burial of the tiny pilot.

In  1973, a Dallas Times Herald reporter, Bill Case, digging around the crash site found a number of metal fragments.  He brought the shards to Dr. Tom Gray, a North Texas University physicist, who said at least some of the strange pieces of metal could not be identified.

The reporter compared metal detector readings from the crash site to those at the grave of the space pilot. The unusual signals were identical. This first "documented" UFO crash is still a mystery.

Curiously, around the same time, Marie Harris, in Garland, Texas, found a strange thing growing in her backyard that was "as big as a platter, foamy and creamy, and pale yellow" and "pulsated like a beating heart." When Mrs. Harris chopped on it, its "blood" was a red and purple goo.  A biologist from the University of Texas called it a fungus. Finally, sunlight seemed to kill it.

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Bobby Kennedy's shining speech the night Martin Luther King was assassinated: video and transcript

By Jack Brummet,  
(research by Pablo Fanque, National Affairs Editor)

Senator Robert F. Kennedy, months before he, too, was assassinated

One of the great moments in American political history (see video, below) occurred the night Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. 

Bobby Kennedy arrived in Indianapolis to speak at an RFK for President campaign rally, three weeks after jumping into the race (and only a few days after President Johnson saw which way the wind was blowing and dropped out).  When RFK stepped off the airplane, he was told about King's death.

Instead of giving his usual inspiring stemwinder speech, he had to break the news of MLK's death to a large and potentially angry African-American audience.  The Indianapolis cops pressured Kennedy to ditch an appearance in what they considered to be a dangerous ghetto about to erupt. But Kennedy, God bless him, insisted on going on.  The crowd was pumped to see the rising firebrand political star, and a brother of a President they all loved.  They were enthusiastically waving RFK campaign signs.  Just before Kennedy stepped up on stage, he asked his hosts if the crowd knew of the assassination.  They did not. 

RFK made what has to be one of the greatest extemporaneous/impromptu speeches in American history.  Below is a good video clip of the speech (with Italian subtitles... of course) and a transcript.    According to a Wikipedia article on RFK's campaign: "Riots broke out in 60 cities in the wake of King's death, but not in Indianapolis, a fact many attribute to the effect of this speech."



Ladies and Gentlemen,


I'm only going to talk to you just for a minute or so this evening, because I have some -- some very sad news for all of you -- Could you lower those signs, please? -- I have some very sad news for all of you, and, I think, sad news for all of our fellow citizens, and people who love peace all over the world; and that is that Martin Luther King was shot and was killed tonight in Memphis, Tennessee.


Martin Luther King dedicated his life to love and to justice between fellow human beings. He died in the cause of that effort. In this difficult day, in this difficult time for the United States, it's perhaps well to ask what kind of a nation we are and what direction we want to move in. For those of you who are black -- considering the evidence evidently is that there were white people who were responsible -- you can be filled with bitterness, and with hatred, and a desire for revenge.


We can move in that direction as a country, in greater polarization -- black people amongst blacks, and white amongst whites, filled with hatred toward one another. Or we can make an effort, as Martin Luther King did, to understand, and to comprehend, and replace that violence, that stain of bloodshed that has spread across our land, with an effort to understand, compassion, and love.


For those of you who are black and are tempted to fill with -- be filled with hatred and mistrust of the injustice of such an act, against all white people, I would only say that I can also feel in my own heart the same kind of feeling. I had a member of my family killed, but he was killed by a white man.


But we have to make an effort in the United States. We have to make an effort to understand, to get beyond, or go beyond these rather difficult times.


My favorite poem, my -- my favorite poet was Aeschylus. And he once wrote:


Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
until, in our own despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
through the awful grace of God.


What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence and lawlessness, but is love, and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or whether they be black.


So I ask you tonight to return home, to say a prayer for the family of Martin Luther King -- yeah, it's true -- but more importantly to say a prayer for our own country, which all of us love -- a prayer for understanding and that compassion of which I spoke.


We can do well in this country. We will have difficult times. We've had difficult times in the past, but we -- and we will have difficult times in the future. It is not the end of violence; it is not the end of lawlessness; and it's not the end of disorder.


But the vast majority of white people and the vast majority of black people in this country want to live together, want to improve the quality of our life, and want justice for all human beings that abide in our land.


And let's dedicate ourselves to what the Greeks wrote so many years ago: to tame the savageness of man and make gentle the life of this world. Let us dedicate ourselves to that, and say a prayer for our country and for our people.


Thank you very much.

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Digital Art: Fraternal Robot Twins

Digital Art by Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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Blood In The Streets: Seattle Police Backlash

By Mona Goldwater

Seattle Metro Editor

As you know if you live in, or near, Seattle, there have been numerous incidents over the last year of the police allegedly, and actually, over-reacting, sometimes fatally.  This over-reaction may or may not stem from several incidents last year where police were gunned down in cold blood, including the ambush murder of four cops in a Lakewood coffee shop.

People have been reacting in various ways, from protests, to videotaping the police anytime they seem them pull someone over or stop them.  This morning, Kelly O of The Stranger reported on the Stranger blog (The Slog) that "somebody's hijacked a whole bunch of Seattle Times newspaper boxes, replacing the display copies with another copy that looks like this:"

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Poem: Evil Konks Out

Evil Konks Out
By Jack Brummet

In the end, evil konks out
Like a squid simmered in its own ink.

Evil fails the moment
It overcomes the good

And consumes the energy
To which it owed its duration.
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Poem by Jack Brummet: Turning, and revolution

Turning, and revolution
By Jack Brummet


When grass is pulled up
The sod comes with it

There is no one
Without the other

The host and the tenant are locked
In mostly benign equilibrium

Each valley is followed by a slope
And every going followed by a return

There is no relief without an ache
And no virus without a host

One who parries danger
Is testing the margins of life

The bricks tumble into the moat
The king's body hangs naked

From the flagpole
A ruler topples

And for one fleeting moment
The condition exists for change.
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Happy President's Day

Seattle's Aurora Bridge, fenced at last

By Jack Brummet, Seattle Metro Editor & Mona Goldwater, Psychology Correspondent

A week ago today, Wash. Department of Transportation crews finished the nine foot safety barriers on the sides of the 167-foot high cantilever/truss Aurora Bridge (a/k/a The George Washington Memorial Bridge)that carries Highway 99 (formerly known as The Pacific Highway) across the Ship Canal.  Hallelujah!  We drove by and admired the work this weekend. 

The Aurora Bridge's height and easy pedestrian access have long made it a popular location for suicide jumpers.  In fact, the first person to leap to their death from the bridge did so while it was still under construction, in 1932.  It took us until 2006 to install six emergency phones and 18 signs to encourage people to seek help instead of jumping.  People even put up home-made stickers that asked people not to jump and call a suicide hotline instead.  Someone even posted their own number "call me!  I care about YOU!"

These fences are a beautiful thing, when you consider their potential.  If only a couple of people turn away a year, it is money well spent.  The Aurora Bridge is the No. 2 bridge for suicides in North America.  It was No. 3 until Toronto fenced their bridge. In fact, since they put up that fence, there have been no suicides.  This has happened at every bridge where they have installed fences.  That is goodness.  One week in 2009, three people jumped from the bridge, two of them "successfully." True, you will not stop someone determined to end themselves, but you will stop impulse jumpers and people who might reconsider.  One statistic we heard recently said that of all the people who came close to jumping, but turned back, 94% don't ever come close again.  If these fences buy the despondent two minutes to think, then, in our booklet, that's five million dollars well spent.   Seeing these fences go up makes our hearts sing.

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Faces No. 190 - drawing by Jack Brummet

Faces No. 190 by Jack Brummet
[drawings in the faces series are usually hand-drawn/analog.  This one is all digital.]

click to enlarge

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Joseph Stalin and Keanu Reeves (and Stalin/Borat and Stalin/Hitler/Obama)

Jeff Clinton recently sent us the Joseph Stalin photo on the left, which reminded us of Keanu Reeves, so we put them together (and grey scaled and aged the Keanu photo, so it would match).

I emailed results to Dean Ericksen, who then responded with more Stalin photograph sets.   These are, unlike the one above, the more traditional and later photographs of Stalin we see all the time.

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Digital Painting: Diagram of Serene Branson's Migraine

Digital Painting:  Diagram of Serene Branson's Migraine, by Jack Brummet

click to enlarge

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A case study in persistent genital arousal syndrome

By Jack Brummet
Social Mores Editor

Thanks to the Old 97's for the news tip!

click to enlarge

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