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George Kapus

Cowboys of Rio Estranjero

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Starring John Wayne and a cast of hundreds.

In 1958, Howard Hawks was given a strange script with the above title, translated as: Cowboys of Alien River, but he didn’t like the plot, and the cost of all the special effect in the 1950s would have been prohibitive. Hawks only produced good old westerns, with no aliens and no plywood spaceships. So, he gutted the story and changed the title to RIO BRAVO. However, if he would have produced it, read on, as I have discovered some of the lost pages of the script for this offering.

Hawks couldn’t get Daniel Craig who would eventually star in “Cowboys and Aliens” as craig wouldn’t be born until 1968. So, he got John Wayne to play Sheriff John T. Chance. He couldn’t get Harrison Ford to play the boss of the wagon train, because at 16 years of age, Harrison was still in High School at Maine East High in Park Ridge, Illinois,  he got Ward Bond instead, to play Pat Wheeler as the wagon master. And of course, every western needs a town drunk that rehabilitates halfway through the story, so hawks talked Dean Martin into playing Dude or as the Mexican community knew him, Borrachón (or drunkard).

As Sheriff Chance’s love interest, Hawks could have gotten Abigail Spencer, however she wouldn’t be born until 1981. That would have been a long wait. So, he got Angie Dickinson, who was 27 and had a waist three years younger than her age; that would be 24inches. Just for the record, here are her measurements: 35-24-36. She played Feathers, a card shark. We’ll talk about some of the other characters as we go along.

Below, is a sampling of the script, from the original typewritten pages, for the movie that was never made: COWBOYS OF RIO ESTRANJERO.

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SCENE 1 – Carlos the barkeep comes running into his saloon, yelling.

“Sheriff Chance, there are aliens from space, and they are taking people to their spaceships. It’s a roundup!

“What in the name of Sam hell are you talking, Carlos?” asks the Sheriff. “What are you babbling about aliens and spaceships?”

“It is true, Señor Chance. They have these flying things all over town and they are taking men, women and children with these ropes with hooks on them and pulling them up into those flying things.”

“Carlos, have you been nipping your Tequila again?”

“Señor Chance, what means nipping?”

“It means, to sneak a drink, Carlos. Well, have you?”

“No Señor Chance, I have not. Why did not you just ask me in the first place, if I have been drinking?”

“Well?”

“No, Señor Chance, I have not been nipping my Tequila. It’s your deputy, Señor Dude, he is the one who has been nipping all my Tequila. That is why all my people they call him Borrachón.”

“OK, Carlos, I’ll have a talk with Dude.”

“Thank you, Señor Chance, but what about the Alien Roundup?”

“I’ll look into that. But first, get Dude and tell Consuela to go find Stumpy.”

“Si, Señor Chance! Ay, Dios…”

SCENE 5 – A wagon train rolls into town, followed by 200 head of cattle, with Ol’ Pat Wheeler in charge. He’s brought along a new hired gun, Colorado, played by 18-year-old Ricky Nelson in his first Movie gig and just old enough to smoke.

“Well Pat, how fast is the kid?” Asks Chance

“Why don’t you ask me Sheriff? I speak English!” Kentucky cuts in.

SCENE 7 – Carlos reports to the Sheriff.

“Señor Chance, Deputy Dude, he is on his way. But I forgot to tell you, a young woman, she came in on the last stagecoach and she got a room upstairs.”

“Who is this young woman, Carlos?”

“She call herself Feathers, Señor Chance.”

“What in the hell kinda name is feathers?” Chance irrupts, “did you ask her what kinda feathers?”

“No, Señor Chance!” Carlos shakes his head. “Just Feathers!”

SCENE 12 – Feathers walks down the stairs at the same time as Dude stumbles in.

“Hey Chance,” Dude mumbles, “I’m no good to you anymore. This morning, I shot myself right in the foot.”

“What in the Sam hell were you doing, cleaning your gun?”

“No, Chance! I was trying to shoot this damned six-foot rat that busted into the jailhouse and I missed.”

“That was no giant rat, Dude! It was probably one of them alien creatures.”

“Look at my hands. They’re shaking!”

“Sit down and have another drink!”

SCENE 24 – The Sheriff finally gets some alone time with shapely Feathers. “Well Feathers, how about we go upstairs and see if your mattress is firm?”

“Why, Sheriff, I’m not that kinda gal!”

“You sure were last night, Missy!”

SCENE 123 – Feathers has to get inside the spaceship and blow it up, rat-looking aliens and all.

“Why do you have to go up into that flying thing all alone?” asks Chance, “let me help you. I’m big and strong.”

“No chance, Chance!” replies Feathers. “You’re older than the saddle on my pony. You’ll just slow me down”

SCENE 124 – Feathers takes off for the mountain. Five minutes later, the Sheriff and a posse, made up of Dude, Carlos, Pat Wheeler, Kentucky, the Burdette Brothers, Consuela and 35 extras, follow.

SCENE 125 – Stumpy finally stumbles into the saloon, just as the posse takes off.

“Gall dang it anyhow,” he swears. “How come nobody around here never tells me what’s going on? Well, I might as well have me a whiskey, or two!”

SCENE 142 – The Sheriff’s posse, the Burdettes’ old gang, Chief Red Cloud and his war party of 47, picked up on the way, go up against the Aliens with their superior weaponry and defeat them and save the civilians that captured in the Alien roundup.

SCENE 143 – Just as the spaceship reaches a couple miles in the air, it blows into smithereens from all the dynamite Feathers and Sheriff Chance had tossed in it before it took off.

SCENE 148 – They all ride off into the sunset, as Dude, Stumpy and Colorado and Feathers sing “Fly Me To The Moon” with Chance on the harmonica and Carlos on the guitar.

THE END

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This would have almost been an impossible movie to make in 1958, had Howard Hawks not rewritten the script, eliminated all the Flying things, the aliens, and the giant spaceship sucking gold out of the mountain as well as 200 pages of the script. Instead, he created RIO BRAVO for the wide screen, running 2 hours and 21 minutes, at a whopping cost of $1.21 Million.

In 2011, COWBOYS AND ALIENS, based on that original 1958 screenplay, was produced by Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, with Steven Spielberg and director Favreau acting as the film’s executive producers, at a cost of $163 Million, with a ton of special effects. Compare that to the $1.21 million cost for Rio Bravo, which at current value only comes to about $10.8 million, in 2020. You would think that this complex Sci-Fi /Western would have been much longer, but it actually runs just a minute under 2 hours.

When RIO BRAVO came out in 1959, I was still attending Berkeley High School, a year away from graduating. Just so you understand my love for the western genre, you gotta know how I got to the USA and where from. We lived in France until 1956 February, when we finally made it here. However, I had by then seen a number of John Wayne Westerns; of course, most of them dubbed in French.

One of those early Westerns I got to see at the Odeon cinema in Algrange, France was “Le Bagarreur du Kentucky” (known in the US as “The Fighting Kentuckian starring, Jean Wayne, with a sidekick played by Oliver Hardy. Some of the other Wayne classics that came to town, were Fort Apache, Red River, Rio Grande, Hondo, and a few others. I was happy that we had made it to the US, so that I would get to see more westerns.

In March of 1959, when RIO BRAVO came out, my father acceded to my request and we all went to see it. Mom and dad loved the movie, as they already liked John Wayne and Dean martin, and they got to know young Ricky Nelson from The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and Walter Brennon from The Real McCoys . This was unfortunately, the last movie my father would see in a theater, as later on, that year, he passed away at the age of 62.

I have quite a collection of John Wayne classics on DVDs, although, I don’t own every movie he ever made, which is in the neighborhood of 169. But I do have about twenty-five of them. My wife Bonnie and I watch one every so often on a lazy Sunday afternoon while munching on popcorn. Of course, now, with the Corona Pandemic, and the fact that most TV shows are unable to produce new episodes, we get to enjoy more of these old classics from our DVD library.

I hope you realize that this whole cockamamy story about Howard Hawks’ rewriting of COWBOYS OF RIO ESTRANJERO and turning it into RIO BRAVO was just a parody. The actual title of that submission from many years ago was originally, RIO LOCO. Ha, ha, ha!

This piece was certainly not meant to disparage the Duke. On the contrary, it’s an homage to his talent and his ability to draw you into whatever movie he was starring in and I actually believe that if Howard Hawks would have convinced him to play an alien hunting sheriff, Wayne would probably have done it. After all, he did play Genghis Kahn in The Conqueror, and got lambasted for it by the critics and even some fans. It wasn’t really that bad, except, he was way kinda big for a Mongolian warrior. For that matter, he was a truly giant presence on the screen, in whatever role he played. Happy birthday, big guy!

ET Science Project? Part 1

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Back in 1958, when I was still just adjusting to our new life in the United States, as well as trying to get over my father’s death, some nice old ladies at Trinity Church in Berkeley, where my parents were caretakers, gave me an Ant Farm. I haven’t seen one for years, so some of you, particularly millennials, may not even know what I’m talking about. It was a box filled with sand, that a whole colony of ants had been relocated to. For hours on end, I could watch those hard-working little critters build tunnels, carry bits of gravel five times their size, as well as pieces of the tiny vegetation that had been planted on top of the sand. I just watched and watched, and wondered, what in heck the ants thought of my giant eyeballs observing their goings-on. I often wondered, how I would feel, being observed by beings that were far superior to me. Since ET beings may been observing us for years now, perhaps millennia, I have a sense of how those ants might have felt.

By the way, after a few months, the ant colony died out, just like I believe the first modern humans that had been transferred here to planet Earth did, by the ETs, 300 to 400,000 years ago, and again, 50,000 years or so ago, from our planet of origin.

Not only that, but I believe that along with us, other groups of Hominins had been “relocated” to various other regions of Earth; possibly, by various other extraterrestrial groups. Not only that but, the ETs may have not only been relocating and observing us,  but also manipulating our genome, as well as meddling in our affairs ever since.

Why, just the other day, I was trying to explain to a friend, why I believed that we Humans, did not originate on planet Earth but, might actually have originated on another planet, possibly Mars, making us extraterrestrials. My friend just smirked, saying “I can believe you came from Mars. You kinda look like a Martian!” He then left, laughing his head off. He thought that I had lost my mind. Sometimes you just have to open your mind to let new ideas in before you laugh your ass off! What he didn’t realize is “he,” would then also be a Martian. As I have indicated earlier, at the time of our resettlement from our planet of origin, there were already other hominins occupying different regions of Earth, who probably came here as we did, but much earlier and from other parts of the cosmos.

Over the years, I have found a handful of authors who investigate the possibility of our ET origin with a 21st century mindset. First, there is Erich Von Däniken who, all the way back in the early 1970s, came out with Chariots of the Gods, questioning long-held beliefs that we were the crown-jewel of creation (on Earth). Soon after, in 1976 came Zecharia Sitchin with a somewhat different take on humanity’s origins, with his 12th Planet series, explaining how it was the Annunaki who meddled in human affairs, by going as far as manipulating our genome to create the perfect worker humans. His best title on the topic, The Wars of Gods and Men, is an excellent read, as it details, why humans are such an aggressive, warmongering lot. And, the latest notable to join this rather limited group of clear thinkers is Ellis Silver, PhD, with his excellent tome, Humans Are NOT From Earth, listing hundreds of facts accumulated through exhaustive research, in support of his theory. There are others that I have not listed, and there may be others that I am not even aware of.

I became interested in the topic, way back in 1952 or 53, when one day, my uncle Bert brought home a French language tabloid entitled, Radar (Rah-dahr), with a front-page article entitled, L’Incident de Roswell, or, The Roswell Incident, of which I wrote a couple months ago. Just so you understand, at the time, we were living in France following a stint in a WWII Displaced Persons Camp in Austria before we got to emigrate to the USA. After one of my mother’s tasty Chicken Paprikash Sunday dinners, the grown-ups were relaxing with a glass of Mouton Cadet and a cigarette as they were listening to me reading the “Roswell Incident.” As I had been in school for the past three years, I was rather fluent in French, as opposed to the old folks, who needed a little more time to become comfortable with the language. As I got finished with the article, a discussion ensued. The grown-ups talked about the possibility of extraterrestrials and flying saucers, as well as the possible origins of humans. As I had not only read the article, but then translated it for them, I was allowed to partake in the discussion.

This is when my father declared that planet Earth was nothing more than a galactic Penal Colony, where Human beings had been banished for their criminal behavior. Papa went on explaining, “Just look at all the vicious, blood-thirsty dictators and their minions that the Earth has produced, like Hitler, Stalin, and Mao-Tze Dong.” He further explained how before the above three mass-murderers mowed down innocents all over the planet, we had numerous others who would have fit right in with this gang. He spoke of all the barbarians that rampaged throughout Europe and Asia, with nothing more than killing and conquest on their minds. He would say that men were the only creatures on the planet that went about killing the opposition as a solution to disputes. The first two thousand years of the Christian Era were all about war and conquest; over religion, no less.

Take for instance the Ottoman Empire which has threatened Christian Europe for over a thousand years, with extinction or conversion to its way of life by the sword. That is a pretty unnerving existence to have to live next-door to neighbors who would wish to wipe you out, because they couldn’t stand for the idea that you believed in a different God and prayed in a different church. To the list, my father added Tomás de Torquemada, the head of the Spanish Inquisition, who managed to prosecute around 150,000 souls for not properly following the teachings of the church, according to his interpretation. Out of that lot, the vicious head inquisitor managed to have between 5,000 and 6,000 put to death, all in the name of religion. Before that, we had the Crusades, another campaign over religious beliefs. It makes one wonder why the Extraterrestrials foisted religion on us Humans. Perhaps to give us reason to wage war and to distract us from spending too much time trying to discover our origins?

There was the Hundred Years’ War which lasted from 1337 to 1453, between the House of Plantagenet, rulers of England and the French House of Valois, over who would rule the Kingdom of France at the cost of thousands of lives. There are numerous other instances where war was waged to settle such differences; too many to list here. If you’ve ever taken a World History class, the main topic discussed is waging war for conquest, or who would be in charge.

Some of the wars that didn’t get discussed took place in the skies above India, as far back as 6000 to 7000 years ago. Some say that India’s ancient history might go back as far as 40,000 years. The reason we never talked about these aerial conflicts in ancient India is because, according to mainstream academia, these weren’t real events that took place. They were and are still considered mythological in nature; in other words, legends and faery tales. However, if you listen to some Indian scholars, they will tell you that these conflicts were, in fact, very real and are well-documented in ancient writings, such as the  Mahabharata and the Ramayana, wherein tales of opposing factions waged war in flying machines called Vimanas in the skies above ancient India and to the people of the time, these were very real events. Those Vimanas were able to shoot each other out of the sky with deadly ray weapons and even dropped bombs on each other’s earthly strongholds, wiping out cities and thousands of people. Some of the very ancient and highly decorated temple structures you find in India today, were actually designed to look like those ancient flying machines, the Vimanas. These ancient battles were again being fought between two opposing factions, over who would eventually be in power here on Earth and possibly in the cosmos.  

End of Part 1. This series to be continued in next month’s issue of ALIVE.

THE DPs (DISPLACED PEOPLE) OF OUR GALAXY

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Our distant ancestors were relocated to planet Earth, that is, they were displaced from some other planet of origin by benevolent extraterrestrials who were trying to save our kind, or else, some galactic Marshall Service was using Earth as a penal colony or as a Witsec (Galactic Witness Protection Program) safe location in a far out, little known corner of our galaxy.

Then again, it could all be blamed on gentrification of our home world; the swells—you know, all the ones living in gated communities on our planet—decided that it was getting too crowded for their liking, so periodically, they would thin the herd by contacting a Galactic Moving Company, with a request to remove and relocate several thousand undesirables. Either way, I’ll try to explain why I believe that humankind was displaced, and how I believe it was done, as well as what is still going on today.

Merriam-Webster’s defines dis·place/ displaced: To remove from the usual or proper place; specifically:  to expel or force to flee from home or homeland [or planet of origin.

For example, World War II displaced millions of people. Better yet, extraterrestrial interventionists displaced millions of humans from our planet of origin.

One idea that I have heard bandied about from various authors is, extraterrestrials relocated our ancestors, using cryogenic stasis, also known as cryostasis or cryogenic suspension, which is a form of stasis which can be induced by exposing humans to very low temperatures within some sort of a sealed, cryogenic container. If Human beings were to be relocated to Earth from their planet of origin light years away, this might be the only way to get them to their destination. This cryostasis would cause them to go into such a deep sleep that they would appear to be dead. However, to achieve this means of cryogenic transportation would require an advanced level of intelligence and technology, likely millions of years ahead of ours. That is what those ancient aliens were, who decided to deliver our distant ancestors to various locations on planet Earth; to either save them from disaster or as punishment. Then again, maybe, our planet of origin—Eridu or Nibiru, perhaps—was so overpopulated that the Galactic Federation of Peaceful Planets, or GFPP, issued a directive to relocate as many as possible to various habitable planets.

This process reminds me of the science fiction series from the early 2000s, Battlestar Galactica, wherein a humongous contingent of humans from some star system, far, far away, search the galaxy for an acceptable new home, travelling in a ginormous intergalactic transporter.

An alternative to the cryogenic transport model, I propose a somewhat different method of relocation. Let’s say that a giant starship was equipped with thousands of birthing chambers and cryotubes, and that live embryos were loaded into the birthing chambers, along with half of a crew of say 5000, also set into cryotubes. The birthing chambers would allow the embryos to grow into human males and females while being fed a combination of nutrients, keeping them alive for the duration of the journey, which at the speed of light might have taken 25 years or more.

Thousands of live humans would be ready for offloading to Earth, all of age 25 or perhaps a bit older, although, unfortunately, most of their memory would have been genetically wiped clean. It would be like that TV show I really hate—Survivor—except that our ancestors would have had to learn a lot of new skills, in a real hurry!

As far as the crew of the starship, they would have rotated in and out of the cryotubes on an annual cycle, so that by the time they got to Earth, they would only have aged 12.5 years, or slightly more. By the time they returned to the home world, they would still be relatively young. Some of the crew members might have wanted to stay behind. (We’ll look at this possibility, in a future story).

Now, there’s a third possibility. The extraterrestrials we are talking about, are so far ahead of us technologically that they had found a way to use a wormhole, folded space, or even an interdimensional portal, allowing them to shorten their voyages to Earth, down to say, a few weeks or months, using whatever interstellar transportation vehicle they wished.

As far as the vehicle itself, I believe that it could have looked something like that strange asteroid looking interstellar object that flew by Earth in 2017, before looping around and returning toward the center of our galaxy, Oumuamua. You have heard of it? In Hawaiian, it means “scout” or “messenger.” Or, why not a transporter? I have seen a radar screenshot of this object, which clearly shows about a hundred strategically placed teeny, tiny lights, all around the object, as though this so-called asteroid had occupants. I wonder if Oumuamua might have dropped some displaced people off, while doing their flyby. Then again, the transport vehicle could have looked like a humongous interstellar cruise liner. By the way, Oumuamua measured approximately 600 ft long x 100 ft high; a bit too small for my proposed transport vehicle. Recently, some folks, looking through telescopes have discovered what may be an interstellar superstructure circling one of the distant stars that appear to be several miles in length, which could have been a reasonably-sized transport vehicle used for the relocation of our distant ancestors.

In real time, this directive took several hundred thousand years to accomplish, as some of the very early transplanted humans weren’t able to survive, as it appears that the benevolent extraterrestrials erased much of their memory, hindering their ability to survive on a strange, new planet—one that was somewhat like their old home world, but not exactly like it. So, this project of relocating our distant ancestors took numerous attempts before we (humans) finally got a foothold and started multiplying, some 50 or 60 thousand years ago. However, at about 10,900 BC, a deluge of some kind wiped out most of Earth’s population, or the extraterrestrials became unhappy with their experiment and decided to start all over again. After several more missions to transplant humans to the region of present-day Iraq, known at the time as Mesopotamia, they started to thrive and began building a city state known as Sumer. There is a book entitled, History Begins in Sumer, that explores this.

Be that as it may, those extraterrestrials, perhaps the Annunaki, according to Zecharia Sitchin [1], went about trying to repopulate Earth with humans, and have not stopped in their relocation program, perhaps from Nibiru, the planet of the Annunaki. Each time new humans had been inserted into the Earth’s population, it appears that our extraterrestrial benefactors had done some serious genetic modifications, some of which involved gene splicing, according to Ellis Silver, PhD [2], to make humans more compatible with Earth’s biosphere.

Beyond that, they have also managed to insert themselves into the multitude of earth’s governmental systems as well. This way, they can not only observe us, but they can manipulate world events to suit their desired outcomes.

Now, back to why I firmly believe that we did not originate on planet Earth and are, in fact, displaced people of this galaxy. The simple answer is we’re always searching for something—something, we probably had on our home-world. But you know how the saying goes: You can never go home! So, we’ll never know what we’re really searching for, since Earth has become our new home. Although, we are already planning to send astronauts and expeditionary forces to the moon and mars, to establish colonies. Apparently, mankind is never satisfied to just sit still.

I will discuss some other reasons why I believe that we originated somewhere other than planet Earth, in another upcoming issue on ALIVE. 

References: [1] Zecharia Sitchin, The 12th Planet, Book one of Sitchin’s series of the Annunaki Chronicles. How the Annunaki genetically engineered Humans to be their workforce. [2] Ellis Silver, PhD,  Humans Are NOT From Earth,  listing hundreds of facts supporting his theory that Extraterrestrials relocated us on planet Earth and genetically manipulated our human genome. Excellent, detailed and well-documented.

Unraveling the Roswell UFO Crash Part II

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The next bold headline on the front page of the Roswell Daily Record on Monday, July 7, 1947, basically sucked the air out of the Roswell UFO Crash story, by stating, “Gen. Ramey Empties the Roswell Saucer,” and of course photographs taken by J. Bond Johnson started appearing in numerous publications, showing an embarrassed Major Jesse Marcel holding torn foil and rubber shreds of the purported weather balloon, substituted by General Ramey, at the Fort Worth, Texas Airbase.

Give this scenario, some thought Major Marcel has an embarrassed, almost apologetic grin on his face in the photograph as if saying, “You’ve got to be kidding. This isn’t the stuff I brought back from the Roswell debris field!” Not only that, Major Marcel was the Intelligence Officer of the 509th Bomber Group. Was he really that dumb? He’d been a pilot in WWII and had seen just about every model plane built at the time—and, he’d seen hundreds of weather balloons being sent aloft. He knew what he had seen, and it was no damned weather balloon!

Many years later, when both Marcel and Ramey had left the military, Ramey came over to visit Marcel one day, with his wife, as they apparently did on occasion for coffee and cake. When the two men were in the kitchen by themselves, Ramey pulled out of his jacket pocket, a short length of an I-beam from the Roswell Crash, with the strange purple hieroglyphic characters stamped on it and showed it to Marcel. They both just looked at each other and said nothing. They both knew something momentous had taken place that they both had participated in covering up. Over the years, the Roswell I-beam got lost in time. It’s probably sitting at the bottom of a drawer, waiting to be rediscovered.

A couple of things about those newspaper photographs have nagged at me since I first saw them in our little apartment In Algrange, Moselle, France, 5230 miles from Roswell, way back in 1952. I was just ten, and my father, George Sr., and uncle Bert, were discussing the Roswell Crash, which had just appeared in a French tabloid named Radar or La Dominica del Corriere. It showed the photo with General Ramey and Colonel Dubose, inspecting the fake balloon debris. I said to my father and uncle, “That stuff looks old and beat-up like it’s been sitting in somebody’s barn.” “Oui, oui,” they both agreed.

In 1956, we had made it to the United States. I was 14 and had to learn English and my folks had made it clear that I had to do well in school, just like I had done in France. My interest in UFOs and things extraterrestrial were put on hold.

A couple of decades down the road, I was married and had two daughters. I had a steady job and the old interest in things extraterrestrial reawakened. I started going to UFO conferences in San Francisco and San Jose, even traveling all the way to Laughlin, Nevada. At almost all of these gatherings, someone would make a presentation on the latest news regarding the Roswell Incident, as more and more evidence was being discovered about the UFO and its Alien occupants. After all those many years, witnesses were coming forward, who had in 1947, been threatened by the Military if they didn’t keep quiet about what they had seen. Even some members of the military who had participated in the crash recovery and the clearing of the debris field started talking as well; some even on their deathbeds, saying “I’m dying. What more could the military do to me?”

Let me add an interesting ingredient to the whole Roswell Crash soup. I’ve read about this over the years, but had not paid it much attention, until now. On or about Saturday, July 5th, 1947, a sheepherder in central New Mexico, came upon a crashed flying disk. He kept his discovery a secret for many years. So, at the time of the Roswell Crash, the whole world was unaware of his find; except perhaps the US Military? The reason I bring this episode up is, central New Mexico is a rather nonspecific location, which by the way, puts this discovery, not so very far from the Roswell Crash. So, here’s my theory:

1) When the spaceship that crashed near Brazel’s ranch was finally located, it had a large gash, as best as I can recall, on its left side. What caused the gash?

2) In addition, a couple of the occupants were badly mutilated. Why?

3) An enormous debris field was left behind, following an apparent explosion. A debris field covering an area of ¾ x ½ mile. Why such a large debris field from what was a relatively small UFO?

4)  Would an explosion have caused the large gash in the side of the Roswell Flyer, or did something perhaps collide with it, ripping open its side, causing it to spill a lot of its contents? And, in the process, also injure some of the occupants while causing the object to come crashing down in the gully, against the side of the arroyo?

Over the years, I have read that somewhere near the debris field, a circular imprint had been left in the soil, with apparently some vitrification of some of the gravel, indicating contact with a source of very high heat. Yet, the Roswell UFO was not circular in shape; it was rather oval and forward-moving, not spinning like a saucer. Also, no crashed saucer was found nearby. So, why were some folks claiming that a flying saucer had crashed at Roswell? Now, is it possible that a flying disk was observed and after colliding with the Roswell Flyer, made an emergency landing near the debris field, but then was able to take off, to eventually crash in “Central New Mexico?”

Is it possible that the witnesses claiming to have observed a flying disk in the general area of the Roswell Crash, had actually gotten a glimpse of the disk-shaped craft that had collided with the Roswell flyer?

These are just some of the questions I have never heard raised in any publication or at any lectures. At the speed that some of these UFOs have been clocked, these two objects colliding in mid-air would have been a genuine possibility. Also, the object was being tracked by several radar installations and would appear and disappear on the radar screens, occasionally changing size, then reappearing. Is it possible that the operators were actually observing not one UFO, but two? By the way, they had been keeping an eye on this UFO since the first or second of July 1947, just a couple of days prior to the Roswell Incident. There was also a concern by the radar operators that due to the extreme unevenness of the terrain, the radar equipment would occasionally lose the object which would then eventually reappear. Is it possible that they were, in fact, unknowingly tracking two separate UFOs, playing hide-n-seek with each other? I wonder if maybe, just maybe, the military knew, since the crafts (s) had been picked up snooping around the White Sands test range?

I’m a simple guy, with simple questions. Here’s another one: If the Roswell Crash was nothing more than a weather balloon, why all the cloak-and-dagger, coverup and deception?

Also, why was it necessary for the US Military to set up two [2] separate debris fields, filled with old balloon debris, near roads, to try to fool the curious public?

Sometime during 1997, on or around the 50th anniversary of the Roswell Incident, the United States Airforce released what they called the definitive report on what really happened at Roswell, in July 1947, entitled “The Roswell Incident: Case Closed.” This report stated that what the Army Air Forces (AAF) had recovered, were not the remains of a crashed “flying disc” near Roswell, New Mexico, as originally reported, but in fact was debris consistent with a balloon device that had most likely come from one of the Mogul test balloons. To make their case more credible, there were pictures of six-foot test dummies, that civilians had apparently mistaken for five-foot alien bodies.

One of the short occupants, with a head larger than a human’s, from the crashed UFO, was observed by several individuals, including civilians at the crash site, walking into the base hospital, alongside one of the nurses, a friend of mortician Glenn Dennis, and possibly even Sheriff Wilcox. So, here’s another one of my simple questions: Could those six-foot tall test dummies walk around, and why would they need to walk into the base hospital?

Final simple question: If it was indeed nothing more than a big balloon that had crashed, why was it necessary to write and release a comprehensive “Final Report,” and orchestrate a cover-up, while spending a fortune to hide the real evidence?

From some of what I read in this Final Report, all it did was further embarrass the Airforce for trying to convince the public that we are so stupid and gullible that we would believe any part of their ridiculous conclusion. A good idiom for the USAF to have abided by would have been, “Let dead aliens lie!”

To sum it all up, this is a tale of what might have been an extraterrestrial flying object crashing in the vicinity of Roswell, New Mexico and the convoluted efforts by the U.S. Military and Government to make the whole incident go away. But you know the old saying: “Once you’ve squeezed the toothpaste out of the tube, you can’t make it go back inside.”

If you decide to read any of the books I recommend or watch the videos listed below, you will realize that dozens of civilians and military personnel were told to keep quiet, or else. Why? Many of them have since come out, thirty and forty years later, to tell the story they were told not to tell, at the risk of getting in trouble with the government. You can read and see what really happened through their testimony. But why such great efforts have been put into covering up the crash of nothing more than a weather balloon, is beyond belief?

Therefore, we must assume that the government knew exactly what had crashed and, they also knew why they had to keep it a secret. They just didn’t want us, the ones who pay their salaries, to know, because they felt that we were too stupid and ignorant to understand the gravity of the secret. So, it must have been a very deep and dark secret indeed.

Perhaps, as some people have postulated, these beings were us, from the future, coming back to warn us? Remember the good Sgt. Gonzales who helped extricate the only live alien from the crashed UFO? Remember what he said: “The large headed diminutive, injured alien, communicated with me in English”?

Another, strange tidbit I picked up some while back, had to do with the “Alien Autopsies.” According to the results, these small beings were missing certain human organs, among them, a digestive system; i.e., the gastrointestinal tract, kidneys, pancreas, liver, gallbladder, etc. So what kept them alive? Or, is it just possible that they were/are some sort of living flesh and blood androids or robots? Perhaps, they are Genetically-Engineered Intelligent Biological Entities, or GEIBEs. I know, one can get carried away, trying to figure out what exactly we’re dealing with!

Also, quiet for some 40 years, a member of an archeological group surveying the area at the time of the Roswell Incident, who happened upon the crashed UFO and even attempted to help the injured alien but, was told by the high ranking officers to mind their business and not to say anything about what they saw, or else their projects might lose government funding. So, until the 1990s, they kept quiet, until finally, one of them, spoke out. This is why, at the time of the crash, no one was even aware of them.

No one knows if all who had been witnesses to the Roswell Crash of July 4, 1947, have been found or come forward to expose the most complex government cover-up ever. Is the Government afraid to release the truth because we might be unable to handle the truth? Will we ever know the truth about the Roswell Crash?

For more information about the Roswell Incident, I recommend the following:

Roswell 1947,  by Acie Cargill,

The Day After Roswell,  by Col. Philip Corso and William Birnes

The Truth About the UFO Crash at Roswell, by Kevin Randle and Donald R. Schmitt

There are a number of DVDs on the topic as well, including:

Alien Crash at Roswell: The UFO Truth Lost In Time, and UFO Secret: The Roswell Crash- The Best Evidence, 2 DVD Special Edition by Kevin Randle and Don Schmitt

There are many other books and videos available on the web, and in January of 2020, the History Channel series Project Blue Book will return, including one episode that deals with the Roswell UFO Crash.

The Roswell Incident Part 1

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It has been 72 years since the Roswell UFO Crash hit the news. For all those years, the U.S. Military and Government have maintained that it was nothing worthy of so much interest, “It was nothing but a weather balloon!” So why was and is there such effort to maintain a veil of secrecy and coordinated effort to suppress the original story and carry on with such a history of deception and misdirection?

If you haven’t heard of or read about the Roswell UFO Crash, then you have probably not heard of the many-layered cover-up carried out by the Government to hide the truth and mislead the public. You would think that all that effort by the authorities was carried out because they must have believed that the witnesses involved were a bunch of dumb, uneducated yokels who couldn’t identify cow dung, even if they had stepped in it.

Well, let me start with the very first witness, Mac Brazel, an old cowboy who was well acquainted with manure of the bovine variety. In his later years, he confessed that had he to do it all over again, he probably wouldn’t have told anybody, and most certainly, not the authorities, about what he found and would have kept the evidence and the story all to himself. But thanks to him, the Roswell UFO Crash became a worldwide sensation that is still floating around, waiting for a final verdict, thanks to the multi-layered cover-up that the U.S. Military and Government concocted.

I will try to unravel this dark web of secrecy and see what we find.

On Friday, July the fourth, 1947, Mac Brazel was sitting inside his small shack on the Foster sheep ranch where he was foreman, listening to claps of thunder. In the midst of all that clattering, he heard something that didn’t quite fit the pattern—a splintering boom, like some sort of explosion. The ranch was about thirty miles from the Roswell Army Airbase, and some distance further from the White Sands Testing Grounds. If you looked at a map of New Mexico, the ranch, the Roswell Army Airbase. and White Sands, form a perfect triangle.

               On July the 4th 1947, the Military was already aware of the crashed UFO and the Alien occupants. They had actually been aware of the UFO since July the 2nd. As a matter of fact, a fellow named Ragsdale and his girlfriend had decided to go camping in the hills which just so happened, were overlooking the crash site. When they noticed the military caravan of trucks and 50 or so men, they decided to beat a hasty retreat, back through the hills and away from any roads. They didn’t tell their story for several years later.

Mac figured that a plane might have crashed, or the people at White Sands had exploded another one of their bombs. Although, at the time, he had thought that the explosion had to have been a lot closer by the clarity of the sound. In the darkness outside, he couldn’t see any signs of an explosion, so he decided to wait until morning before venturing outside and investigating the source of the late-night racket.

A neighbor kid, William Proctor, showed up the next day, July 5, 1947 and he and Brazel rode out in the general direction the sound of the explosion had come from. They didn’t have to ride very far because they soon discovered that the ground in front of them was littered with dull and shiny, metallic looking debris, extending about three quarters of a mile in front of them, in the direction of some hills. The debris field was also about half a mile wide, or so they guessed. Mac figured, some fairly large object, had blown into pieces, to cover such a large area. What could it have been? Brazel couldn’t even imagine. He picked up some of the strange metallic pieces and broken balsawood-light metal beams and discovered that although they were light weight, he could not break or bend them, nor could he burn them with his lighter. Even the thin foil-like strips were impossible to cut with his pocketknife.

The next day, July the 6th, Brazel drove his pickup to the sheriff’s office in Roswell and showed the box of debris to Sheriff George Wilcox, who then suggested that maybe, they should contact someone at the Roswell Army Airbase.

The call was forwarded to Major Jesse Marcel. When Sheriff Wilcox explained to Major marcel that an old cowboy named Mac Brazel had come across a field practically covered in strange metallic looking debris, Marcel decided that he had better head out to Brazel’s place for a look-see. So, the Major and another man from the base drove out to Brazel’s place and the next day, July the 7th, both men loaded up their vehicles with all the strange debris they could fit into them and drove back to Roswell Army Airbase.

Now, you and I know that the news media have a way of sniffing out stories, so Frank Joyce, a reporter for radio station KGFL in Roswell, got a whiff of Brazel’s tale from Sheriff Wilcox. Joyce and the station owner, Walt Whitmore, got Brazel to do an interview, which they recorded on a wire-recorder and were going to put it on the air the next morning. Unfortunately for them, the Military showed up and the whole idea was nixed, when the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) threatened Whitmore and Joyce by telling them that if they wanted to keep the radio station and their license, they had better not air that interview. Back then, the government had the power to muzzle the news media. The recorded interview was also confiscated.

To keep anyone from talking with Brazel, the US Military kept him incommunicado for seven or eight days, in one of the base barracks, under lock and key. The Military claimed that it was for his own good. Even once, when he was allowed to return home, the Military kept an eye on him, to make certain that he wouldn’t tell his story, to anyone. He did tell family members, behind closed doors, some of the details that had gone onto the wire recorder. The irony of Brazel’s story was, he never actually got to see the crashed UFO up-close, nor did he know where it had crashed, because by the time he was able to return home, all the evidence had been gathered up and flown away to parts unknown.

While all this was going on, the U.S. Military actually knew of the crash and the alien bodies and had already dispatched a convoy of vehicles and men to start gathering up all evidence of the crash as they had been monitoring the UFO (s) at several radar stations. In addition, an MP on guard duty had actually witnessed the flash of the explosion. One of the MPs on the recovery team got there just in time to rescue the one living member of the alien UFO crew. Interestingly enough, the MP, a Sgt. Gonzales, claimed that the alien had communicated with him, get this, in English. (More on this, later.)

Here is how the whole story started. Unbeknownst to the local population, a UFO or Unidentified Flying Object of some sort, had been picked up on radar at Roswell Army Airfield, White Sands testing grounds, Alamogordo, and Albuquerque, on or about July the second 1947. This piqued the interest of various high-ranking military officers, as the object was flitting about in an area that was classified as a no-fly zone for civilian and even commercial aircraft.The radar operators, at the time weren’t even certain of what exactly they were tracking. They tracked the UFO until the night of the fourth of July, when the object disappeared after a big blip on the radar screens in the middle of that nasty and unexpected electrical storm. The Military had a general idea of where the object had had gone down, and a convoy of Jeeps and trucks loaded with servicemen was immediately dispatched to the scene, which was about 35 miles north to northwest of the Roswell Airbase.

               A number of civilians living in the general area who had also heard  or seen the object flying overhead, then heard the crash itself, decided to go see what it was, but were escorted back to the main road and prevented by the military to get near the site. Of course, by this time, they had actually caught a glimpse of the crashed UFO and even the dead aliens. Some of the civilians who got a glimpse of the crashed flying vehicle, claimed that it was not round or saucer shaped, rather it looked more like a spaceship with bat-like wings.

Now, the reason that there was so little detail available about what exactly had crashed, for twenty to thirty years, was that the military had surrounded the crash site with all the trucks and jeeps, all facing out, with their headlights turned on. This ring of vehicles was in turn surrounded by armed MPs (Military Police), who had, in turn, been ordered to face away from all the action, to make certain that nobody without the proper clearance would get through and, they themselves wouldn’t see all that was going on. After a few hours, the MPs were relieved by a new unit and returned to base. This is how, when some had been found many years later, they were unable to give many details about the crash, even though they had been there.

               One of those MPs, a Sergeant Gonzales, who had been at the crash site with the initial unit, claimed many years later that he had actually helped out of the crashed UFO, the only live Alien. Sgt. Gonzales also claimed that he communicated with the alien being, in English. I will try to explain in my conclusions, why this may be a curious little factoid.

            While the recovery effort was on the way, the Military was already working on setting up two fake debris fields, close enough to some dirt roads, so that onlookers would be able to view the field before the MPs would push them back to the roads. They wanted the civilians to get close enough to be able see the balloon pieces and even allowed a photographer to take some shots from the road; close enough, but not too close.

The core group of 10 to 12 high-ranking military, some from Washington, some from White Sands, a couple of staff scientists, and two photographers, were the only ones allowed to get anywhere near the crashed UFO. This was the group that saw not only the craft, but the diminutive occupants. At first sight, observers thought they were looking at midgets; about four and a half to about five feet tall, with larger than human heads. This is when the stunned group realized that the occupants, four dead and one mortally wounded, were actually otherworldly, humanoid beings. The one ET that was alive, was actually seen walking into the base hospital, under his (her?) own power. He/she is the reason why, after many years, several witnesses were able to confirm that the crashed flying object from Roswell, New Mexico, had not in fact been one of our airplanes.

The gathering at the crash site had the flying object (which by the way, at this point turned out not to be a Flying Saucer, rather, it was more of an oval shaped Omnidirectional Flying Object), and all the debris from the site, packed up into the trucks and taken back to the Roswell Army Airbase, where they were immediately, on orders from Washington, packed into a B-25, B-26 or possibly a B-29 and flown to Andrews Army Airfield and then to Patterson Army Airfield (now Wright-Patterson Airforce base). The crates containing the five bodies (the fifth, the one ambulatory alien crew member, eventually succumbed to his injuries) were loaded onto a Douglas C-54 Skymaster transport aircraft and flown to Andrews as well. According to witnesses, this was done on the orders of Army Chief of Staff, Dwight Eisenhower, so that he would get his first look at an extraterrestrial entity. From Andrews, that crate was also flown to Patterson, although, the military threw up so many misdirections, the crates could have ended up somewhere else altogether, perhaps Area-51 or Hangar 18.

This is when, the misinformation campaign went into full swing.

First came “RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch In Roswell Region” on the front page of the Roswell Daily Record’s, Sunday edition of July 6th 1947, because that is what Major Jesse Marcel, the Intelligence officer of the 509th Roswell Bomber Group had determined, upon his initial inspection of the recovered debris. Within a few hours however, this story fell apart when Brigadier General Roger Ramey and Colonel Thomas J. DuBose pulled a switcheroo by substituting damaged weather balloon parts and pieces for the original pile of debris that Marcel had collected, and which had been confiscated and flown to parts unknown. According to multiple sources, a photographer for The Daily Record, J. Bond Johnson, was only able to take four photos of Ramey’s phony display, because in his hurry to get the shots, he had only brought along two photo plate holders (you can take two shots on each one of these old-fashioned photo plates) for his Speed-Graphic camera.

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Catch part II in the December 2019 issue of ALIVE Magazine.

The Eagle Has Landed

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Just a couple of months ago, we celebrated a momentous, historical event. I am certain that most of you remember all the news media and television outlets, reminding us all of what had taken place fifty years ago. Do you remember that glorious day in 1969, when three American Astronauts arrived to orbit the Moon; our moon, and released the Lunar Module (LM) that would touch down on the lunar surface?

“Houston. Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed!”

Neil Armstrong uttered those unforgettable words as the Lunar Module, Eagle, touched down on the surface of the Moon.

Then, the whole world was watching in anticipation, huddled around black-and-white TV sets, as the grainy, grey image flickered, as a ghostly, shadowy shape of an astronaut with an enormous backpack, tentatively stepped off the footpad of the LM, onto to the uncertain surface of the moon. Then, Neil said what is possibly the most famous phrase in human history… 

“That’s one small step for [a]man, one giant leap for mankind.”

At 4:18 pm, EDT on July 20, 1969 and a cheer went up all around the world that might even have been heard by astronaut Michael Collins, still orbiting high above. For a brief moment, we, the people of Earth, a rather small, blue ball of dirt orbiting the Sun, in a little corner of an enormous galaxy among millions of other galaxies, almost lost in the vastness of the Cosmos, felt as one.

What an accomplishment it had been for that brilliant crew of astronauts, scientists, engineers, and technicians, now working tirelessly to accomplish this mission.

There were, of course, accolades, presidential visits, and parades around the world. The three astronauts were folk heroes. NASA, in the persona of Werner Von Braun, was already making plans for further goals in space exploration: Mars, Venus, and beyond. Dr. Von Braun stated, way back in 1969, “We could be on Mars in the next three to four years!” He was so certain of that goal that he had already drawn up plans for the rocket that could do the job. For whatever reason, others were not on the same page as the visionary Von Braun, as talks of plans for exploring Mars were put on hold.

That had indeed been, “One small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind!” (The indefinite article [a] was somehow muddled and never heard in the transmission but was recently found through sound analysis technology.) We (mankind) and Neil (man) had left our lonely little planet and traveled via an extraterrestrial flying vehicle, to set foot on an astronomical body in space, some 238,855 miles away. Quite an accomplishment, wouldn’t you say?

The real question is, was that the first time that an Eagle had landed on another celestial body?

Stories from the Ancient Near East, Mesopotamia, Sumer, and Babylon among others, are replete with the comings and goings of divine beings, between Heaven and Earth as well as flying to and fro, between their various residences around planet earth. These divine beings were often depicted in art and sculpture with wings attached to their backsides because the artists of ancient times couldn’t understand their method of transportation. At times, some of these divine beings were depicted with the head of an eagle, in addition to the feathered wings, and were often given the name Eagle Men. It makes one wonder if these Eagle Men might have communicated from their space ‘shuttles’ with their earthly command center and might have uttered such phrases as, “Eagle One here. We are on approach,” possibly followed by, “Command center, Eagle One has landed.”

As a matter of fact, early Akkadian, Sumerian and Old Testament texts leave little doubt that the people of that period firmly believed that what they saw happening in the skies, were, in fact, the gods of Heaven and Earth commuting from their Earthly stations, to their heavenly abode via celestial chariots or divine (at times black) birds. As these divine beings mingled with mere mortals (Earthlings), they could be observed changing attires, from their special flying garments to more earthly regal garments.

Their special “space” attires were apparently, regulation aeronautical or astronautical in design and description. For instance, Inanna/Ishtar, a well-known female deity, was known for numerous journeys to far-off lands, to visit her sister and brother, as well as flying to her special summer place, and was required to wear a PALA (Ruler’s) garment and six other very specific items. These were: 1) The SHU.GAR.RA helmet – Literally meaning, “That which makes go far into universe.” 2) “Measuring pendants,” on her ears. 3) Chains of small blue stones, around her neck. 4) “Twin “stones,” on her shoulders. 5) A golden cylinder, in her hands. 6) Straps, clasping her breasts, and 7) The PALA garment.

Unfortunately, except for the SHU.GAR.RA space helmet, for the rest of the required gear, I have found no explanation. However, when you take a look at the statue of the flying deity (Fig. 1) the seven parts of her flying attire appear to be functional and not decorative; especially the SHU.GA.RA or helmet with earphones [a]; the rectangular box attached to the back of the helmet [b]; the harness across her breasts and back (possibly some sort of safety harness) [c]; and the long tube dangling down her back [d], which might connect to some sort of rebreather apparatus, which may be the box at the back of her helmet. In ancient texts, we find Inanna’s explanation says that to visit the head god, Anu, in his celestial abode, she must wear this special attire.

The above description of Inanna may also indicate that she was not the one piloting the sky vehicle. The reason that I say that is, almost all of the Eagle Men are shown carrying a box dangling from their left hand (Fig. 2). These Eagle Men were, therefore, probably the rocket and shuttle (sky chamber) pilots. Today’s astronauts all carry an air-conditioning system box (Fig 3).  Perhaps an earlier version of the same apparatus is what those Eagle Men or yore were carrying?

In his quest for eternal life, Gilgamesh, the king of the city of Uruk in Sumer, at about 2900 BC, set out to find the place where Eagle Men launched rockets that transported the numerous deities to and from their heavenly abode, as well as between various cities of ancient Sumer, to ask the god, Anu, how he could obtain immortality. If you’d like to know the whole story, you could read “The Epic of Gilgamesh” that was interpreted from ancient tablet fragments into current languages, including English.

Several authors have re-interpreted and re-written the Epic, making it sound more current, all the while ignoring the fact that there are several instances in this story of Gilgamesh and his companion Enkidu encountering adversaries, that sound quite technical.

Gilgamesh embarks on a quest for immortality, accompanied by his beastly friend Enkidu and together they have to get to the place in the Cedar mountains (in Lebanon) where deities like Anu catch flights at a location known as “Place where the Rising is Made,” or, “The Landing Place.” In other words, the “Cedar Spaceport of the Gods.” On their way, the two companions have several deadly encounters with at least two mechanical beasts with deadly rays and vicious, chopping appendages. At one point, as the two get close to the forest, they notice that a massive fence surrounds the tall cedar trees.

Now think about it. This happens some six thousand years ago. Why would anybody surround parts of a forest with a fence, unless they had something to hide, right? And, that’s not all. When Gilgamesh’s companion Enkidu goes ahead of him to “break open the gate,” he is struck down with a powerful force that puts him out of commission for seven days. Who in their right mind would have expected an electrified fence, around some trees, 6000 years ago? The two eventually make it to the spaceport and Gilgamesh gets his audience with Anu. However, while they’re waiting for Enkidu to recover, the two tough guys have a strange vision. Well, they’re not certain whether it was a vision, or not. Here is what was written of Gilgamesh’s telling, in Sumerian, about this vision, which was retold another half-dozen times in various other Near-Eastern languages, centuries afterward.

The vision that I saw was wholly awesome!

The Heavens shrieked; the earth boomed.

Though daylight was dawning, darkness came.

Lightning flashed; a flame shot up.

The clouds swelled; it rained death!

Then the glow vanished; the fire went out.

And all that had fallen was turned to ashes.

If you think about this short description of the event, what would you think it might have been that Gilgamesh and Enkidu had witnessed? The first thing that came to my mind was watching a rocket launch at Cape Kennedy. Keep in mind that these two observers had not seen any launches in person or on a TV screen! They are giving you their impressions of the vision, as best as they (or the actual scribe stamping the tablets) could come up with, with their 2900 BC sense and language. Following this experience, the two managed to encounter the guardian of the Landing Place, a mechanical monstrosity named Humbaba; sort of a Bulldozer/tank with slashing appendages and a death ray.

I read four versions of the “Epic of Gilgamesh” to get a true sense of what was going on, and of the four authors, only Zecharia Sitchin gave the words true meaning, with what I’d consider “21st Century eyes and mind.”

Now, to show you that flying deities didn’t just frequent the Near East, let’s fly across the Atlantic to observe “La Danza de Los Voladores” or the Dance of the Flyers, which memorializes the descent of the Aztec (Flying) Gods from their heavenly abode (Fig. 5). The five dancers climb up an 80 to 100-foot pole and attach themselves to a length of rope which allows them to fly around in a circle while lowering them to the ground, where they land on their feet. There are four flyers and the fifth member of the (astronaut) crew, guides the ropes, ensuring that no tangles happen and the Eagles land without injury. We watched this dance in 2003, near Chichen Itza. The Aztecs have been performing this acrobatic dance for several hundred years; possibly ever since they first observed their heavenly flying visitors.

Interestingly enough, there is a fresco on a rather large temple in Tulum on the Atlantic coast, which shows a deity descending from above, upside down (Fig. 6) that for some reason, the archeological intelligentsia decided to call the “Bee God.” Why? I have seen it up close, and this fellow appears to be guiding his descent while behind him, his feet are touching pedals. There are pipes and spring-like mechanical devices extending out from the seat of this flying vehicle. These accouterments are NOT organic. But, hey, those guys think they know better. Who am I to argue with them? Look at the illustration and you decide.

Let’s now take a short jaunt north and look at Native American traditions and the role of the majestic eagle. There are numerous tribes in North America, and there were many in centuries past, that have Eagle Clans. The eagle is considered by most tribes as a sacred bird, having supernatural powers because it can fly so high and move so freely between heaven and earth.

In some legends, the eagle is considered a messenger, carrying special communications between humans and the Creator God. Even to this day, many tribes at large gatherings or powwows will have performances of the Eagle Dance. There are numerous other examples of Native American tribes’ beliefs in close connections with the Creator and other deities who are described as having extraterrestrial traveling capabilities and even extradimensional credentials. In the Southwest for instance, especially in the Four-Corners area of the United States, there are numerous vestiges of ancient cliff dwellings with rather sophisticated planning and construction, indicating advance knowledge of architecture, mathematics, and astronomy. A multitude of petroglyphs can be found as well in these areas, with strange and puzzling depictions of humanoid visitors from the stars and perhaps even from other dimensions.

There is so much evidence out there—all around us throughout the world—that I believe proves Earth was visited by beings from out there in the cosmos.  

I will keep digging for answers and try to connect the dots, to show you what those connections mean. Until then, keep checking the skies for those illusive flyers.

“Houston, the Eagle has landed! Over and out!”

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References: Great works by Zecharia Sitchin, who had the courage to look at ancient cuneiform tablets and re-interpreted those ancient tales with 20th century vision and thinking, to come up with more logical explanations for obvious high-tech engineering having created structures and extraterrestrial modes of transportation in our distant past; specifically The 12th Planet and Stairway to Heaven. The Annunaki Chronicles by Janet Sitchin, Zecharia Sitchin’s niece, who is following in her uncle’s footsteps. Three different versions of The Epic of Gilgamesh, one by Kent and Kevin Dixon, another by David Ferry and a third, by Herbert Mason. From the web: www.native-languages.org/legends, for information on the role of the Eagle in Indian lore.

Babbling in Roswell

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As the title indicates, it all started for me, way back in 1954. We were sitting around our little kitchen table in our one-room mine-housing apartment, in Algrange, Moselle, France, discussing the story of the Roswell UFO Incident of July 7, 1947; which had just made it across the pond and into the local tabloids in Europe. Remember, this discussion took place, some seven years after the fact and only a few months following my own encounter with one of those infernal, otherworldly machines.

This discussion was taking place on a Saturday afternoon, after lunch, while in the kitchen corner of this tiny apartment. My mother was finishing up the lunch dishes and was trying very hard not clang the pans and silverware, and perhaps was maybe even trying to catch some snippets of this very serious-like discussion, taking place just a couple of feet away. Three of my dad’s friends from refugee camp days (in Austria) had enjoyed my mother’s fine cooking and were attentively listening to my father’s hypothesizing about the aforementioned Roswell debacle. And, I don’t use that term lightly, since, as you may know, at first the U.S. Military claimed to have been in possession of a genuine alien flying saucer, and then one day later, retracted their statement and renounced the whole incident as a giant kerfuffle over nothing more than a pile of a crashed weather balloon’s parts and pieces. That’s when all of the denials and coverups began; well, modern-day coverups, that is.

Now, why am I telling this story, you ask?

First of all, I realized then and there (that would be Algrange in 1954), that serious war-worn grownups like my dad and his friends, were actually discussing the possibility of extraterrestrial travel and the universe being populated by intelligent beings, other than us; formerly, the stuff of science fiction stories. Secondly, that my dad had given some serious thought to our planet not being the only celestial body with humanoid occupants. And thirdly, well, let’s just say that I learned a lot that day; more than I would have expected.

At one point, my father postulated that Earth was no more than the penal colony of the universe; perhaps just of our galaxy. This almost sounded like something out of Star Trek, with the Galactic Federation of Planets. However, in 1954, Star Trek hadn’t been created yet. His reasoning for this analysis was, he said, “it just seems like Earth is full of murderous scumbag sociopaths like Hitler, Stalin, Mao-ze-Dung,” and he threw in the mix the deranged Japanese emperor, Hirohito. At the time, we had not heard of an accurate accounting of the number of deaths, this murderous bunch had caused. He might also have mentioned people like Al Capone and other Chicago gangsters, who also wantonly ended the lives of folks they disagreed with.

Interestingly enough, Dr. Ellis Silver of whose book I wrote in my previous article, came up with a very similar theory to my father’s. Dr. Silver stated, “the Earth might be a prison planet since humans seem to be a naturally violent species and are sent here until we learn to behave ourselves.” Wow, spot-on, except that my dad came up with this idea, way back in 1954—sixty-five years earlier! Also, George Sr. will never get any credit for his pronouncement as he died in 1958. I guess, my dad was way ahead in his thinking regarding this subject matter. I’m just glad that at least, for once, I paid attention.

So, what my dad and Dr. Silver hypothesized was that planet Earth started out like Australia, a penal colony. In a way, it makes some sense. All the members of the GFPP (Galactic Federation of Peaceful Planets) banished their worst offenders here, over a very long period of time. Which is why we have such a variety of races and languages. We did NOT all originate from the same source and we are not all related.

For instance, this may be why the Tower of Babel tale is full of holes. Following the “Earth as a Penal Colony” theory, all the various convict groups of the planet got together and tried to erect a launch tower for a rocket ship, so that they could escape from their confinement on this planet. They obviously didn’t succeed, because they didn’t have the technology and wherewithal to build anything that could take off from that tower and fly. One of the issues contributing to their inability to finish the project was language.

Here’s a good one for you: lately I have been hearing an advertisement for the Babble language program, on the radio. The announcer finishes his spiel by saying something to the effect of “…that’s why Europeans speak so many different languages because they learned them through Babble.” Nah, we learned so many different languages because our next-door neighbors in other countries spoke different languages and to communicate, we had to learn their languages, and they, ours. Which brings me back to the tower of Babble (Babel).

God didn’t scramble the language of the tower builders; they (the tower builders) already communicated in a variety of languages, depending on how many groups of builders had arrived from various parts of the globe; who had been deposited here, from different parts of the galaxy. You with me so far?

As I indicated before, I came to the United States over sixty years ago, at age 14. By then (age 14), and since I was born in Budapest, Hungary, I was nearly fluent in Hungarian. Then, while spending four and a half years in a U.S. military-operated refugee camp in Austria, I had to learn German, because that’s what Austrian kids spoke. From the camp, we moved to France, where we lived for seven and a half years, so, I had to go to school and learn French. As we got here, to the United States in February of 1956, I was starting to babble along rather proficiently in English. While attending Berkeley High School, I took two years of Russian. And, even though I don’t speak Japanese, I did learn to sing the 1961 Japanese hit song Sukiyaka, which had been made popular by Japanese crooner Kyu Sakamoto.

The point I’m trying to make here, and I’m not trying to show off (well maybe a little), is that none of the languages I managed to learn over the years, have anything in common with one another. While languages occasionally borrow words or expressions from one another, the languages that I mentioned above, did NOT originate from the same root. Learning French didn’t make it easier for me to learn Russian, and learning German, had not been made easier by being fluent in Hungarian. And, speaking of one language borrowing words or idioms from another language, when I get together with Hungarian friends who have been in the States for forty or fifty years, we end up chatting in Hunglish. You got it, right?

I once read an article by this British linguist, who wrote that the Hungarian language had really nothing in common with any other language he knew of and therefore, could possibly have originated on Mars. We (Hungarians) laughed at his assessment! But he stated in his article that he was rather serious. At my next encounter with extraterrestrials, I’ll try to address them in Hungarian. With my luck, they’d be speaking Hindi…

Please give the following information that I’m sharing with you some serious thought: according to Ethnologue, an annual publication on the languages of Earth, “There are currently (in 2019) 7,102 languages spoken around the globe. In Asia alone, there are 2,300 languages spoken, in Africa 2,143, in the Americas 1,060, the Pacific 1,306, and in Europe, only 288 languages are spoken.”

Would you have guessed any of this? I had to actually look this information up. I was guessing, maybe 300-400 languages for the whole planet. Even that would be quite a lot. Boy, was I wrong! But 7,102 languages, that’s mind-boggling. Hence, the few languages that I was trying to show off with, are nothing but a tiny tinkle in a huge ocean of languages.

Taking a serious look at our mode of communication, over the centuries and the millennia, all languages have changed and evolved and maybe even crossbred. Way back when there were much fewer languages. Still, the variety was there and claiming that one common language got scrambled at the Tower of Babel, is just not a satisfactory or logical explanation. For instance, if there indeed was just one common language in the beginning and got scrambled at Babel so that all the builders were now babbling in different tongues, the base of those languages would have to have been the same and would have probably been written using the very same characters. This is where the Babel-Babble argument falls apart.

Latin letters or characters originating in Rome have been and are still being used in most European languages, as well as in the Americas, except for the various native languages. But, even using the same characters, the writer could very well be writing in one of the 288 European languages or dialects. Therefore, even though I can write using those characters does not necessarily mean that I can read all 288 languages. Here are some examples: English – cheese, French – fromage, Hungarian – sajt, German – käse, Portuguese – queijo, and so on. As you can see, using the same characters, I typed the word cheese in five different languages, and, unless you are versed in those languages, you wouldn’t be able to understand what I wrote.

Let’s take it a step further, the Brahmi script, for instance, originated in Ancient India and modern Indian scripts as well as several hundred scripts found in Southeast and East Asia have evolved from Brahmi. I dare you to write a French or English word, using the Brahmi script. Let’s go in the other direction; could you communicate in Chinese using the Latin characters, or vice-versa? I don’t think so! Here’s what I’m talking about, let’s go with cheese again. Hindi – पनीर, Chinese – 奶酪, Persian – پنیر, Russian – Сыр. See where I’m going with this? Once you get away from the Roman (Latin) alphabet, you are lost in that vast linguistic ocean…

Language is one of the main reasons—maybe even the main reason—that I believe various groups of emigrants or felons were deposited in various regions of planet Earth, by several very distinct groups of extraterrestrial alien beings or “wardens,” or, if you like, gods,” who then taught skills that would keep their colonies alive, keep them from starving, here, on their new home planet. Isn’t it interesting that these new arrivals were able to understand the extraterrestrials’ instructions? That’s because, in each case, they were communicating in the same language. It is also possible that, upon being deposited here on their new planet, these various groups did not originally interact; but over the centuries, there was definitely contact made between them.

As I wrote earlier in this piece, most of us didn’t even start thinking about the possibility of other intelligent, humanoid beings sharing the galaxy and perhaps the whole universe, with us, in anything but science fiction stories. Then, in 1947, with the Roswell Incident hitting the newspapers, people started to at least discuss the possibility of extraterrestrial life and travel.

According to former military and government insiders, there was not only talk of space travel but, in fact, the military had taken into its possession, parts, and pieces of the crashed Roswell mystery vehicle (s), which as it turned out, was not a weather balloon as the military claimed after the fact but, a genuine flying saucer. Some of the crash parts and pieces bore markings in an unknown, indecipherable language. Some looked like Aztec or Maya symbols and some more like Egyptian hieroglyphs.

Soon after all the crash, debris was removed from Roswell and transported via military vehicles to Wright Patterson Airforce Base in Ohio and/or Area 51. There, government scientists began their efforts to try replicating the alien spacecraft, and of course, government officials denied all of it.

Some years ago, a physicist named Bob Lazar claimed that he had been one of the scientists who had been tasked with reverse-engineering the Roswell Flying Saucer. According to Lazar, they first started working on the project at Area-51 near Groom Lake in the Nevada desert, north of Las Vegas. Lazar claimed that he was on the team that was trying to unravel the propulsion system of the Roswell interstellar flyer. Lazar stated that the secret of the UFO’s propulsion system was based on the use of element 115, which is a heavy and highly unstable element. Officials countered that Lazar was basically a phony, out to make a name for himself and had actually never worked for the government. They were proven wrong.

Area 51

Just recently, in 2019, several decades after Bob Lazar’s original claim, American and Russian scientists (yes, you read that right!) working at a secret Russian laboratory, claim that they, in fact, were able to isolate element 115. I do wonder why are they publicly claiming this, and, is it in fact the truth? Or are they simply spoon-feeding us bits and pieces of supposed TOP secret information, so that we might stop asking questions about flying saucers? Are there crashed saucers stored in secret hangers and alien bodies in freezers at Wright-Patterson Airforce base? Do we possibly already have outposts on the Moon and maybe even on Mars?

Is it any wonder that these extraterrestrials have been keeping a very close eye on us for literally millennia, and not just since Roswell in 1947; to monitor what advances we have been making in our efforts to joining them in the Cosmos? Will an invite to join the membership of the GFPP (Galactic Federation of Peaceful Planets), be coming our way soon? Will we be able to understand the invitation? What language will they be using? Stay tuned…

Side note: In April of 2011, the FBI released thousands of classified documents. Among the thousands of papers, researchers found one very interesting briefing memo, addressed to J. Edgar Hoover, dated March 22, 1950. In it are a couple of surprising, typewritten lines. One of them has the following wording:

“…three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico…” and another line states: “…bodies had anatomical differences from humans…”

You may draw your own conclusions, but I find this intriguing.

These are, of course, my thoughts and ideas, based upon my research, facts culled from lectures, museum trips, web searches, books, magazines, and videos. In other words, they are but a small part of a larger compendium of speculative scientific theorizing assimilated over a period of sixty or more years.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic?

Are Our Creators Monitoring Us?

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The latest off the web: Three US senators have reportedly been briefed by the Pentagon Wednesday (06/19/2019) about recent reports of “Unidentifiable Flying Objects” or UFO sightings by military pilots. The revelation comes in the wake of President Trump stating that he had also been briefed on these unidentified aerial phenomena encounters but that he didn’t believe in them. I say, too bad! One of the three senators briefed was Mark Warner (D-Va.), the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, whose spokesperson said: “If naval pilots are running into unexplained interference in the air, that’s a safety concern Senator Warner believes we need to get to the bottom of,” Politico reported. Apparently, none of these recent objects posed any threat to the military flyers.

That’s the latest, in regard to Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. They have been called UFOs or Unidentified Flying Objects, or even OVNI (Objet Volant Non-Identifié) by the French, and sometimes we just call them Flying Saucers. However, we are no longer seeing just the characteristic saucer shape in these mysterious sightings; there have been cigar shaped objects, cube-shaped, ball-shaped, and even elongated asteroid-looking objects. The scariest part of all these sightings is that they are taking place all over the globe. What are these objects, travelling unencumbered in our skies, and who or what is piloting them? Are they friend or foe?

Here is where my open mindedness comes in. I have watched too many interviews and exposés to know that, even today, in the twentieth century, narrow-minded people, or scared people, seem to want to feed us the same nonsense that we have been fed since the Roswell Incident, and perhaps even since the middle ages and before. Numerous individuals, from senators to high-ranking military officers, have been shown strange, unexplainable video footage, and yet, they still haven’t got the courage to call these aerial phenomena what they are—either that, or they really do know their source: results of secret, black-ops-funded research projects. Otherwise, they must be otherworldly.

I for one, don’t believe that these objects belong to the Russians, Chicoms or the North Koreans, even if the Little Rocketman is in charge of North Korea’s missile program. All those illustrious geniuses believe that these are the results of our enemies’ possibly leapfrogging us in high technology. We’re talking here about aerial speedsters travelling at anywhere from Mach 3 to Mach 15 (762 mph x Mach designation) or 2,286 mph to 11,430 mph. If any of our Communist adversaries had been able to create these speed demons, we would already be at their mercy, and possibly even colonized by them. So, I must tell you, these unidentified speedsters don’t belong to our adversaries. They are therefore, probably, extraterrestrial in nature, and possibly even intergalactic. I also believe that they are somehow connected to the Creators I wrote about in previous articles, who created us, or, the Creators who created our Creators. Remember?

Well, here is one reason why I believe this: back in 1954, at age 12, a friend and I saw a flying saucer, which had landed on the plateau above the little town of Algrange, in the Moselle district of France. We had just gotten out of school and were on our way home while kicking a soccer ball around. Some kids, running down from the hill, convinced us to deviate from our course by telling us that they had seen a flying saucer landing up on top of the plateau. Neither of us believed any of it, but being curious enough, we decided to climb up the hill to the plateau.

To our surprise, at about a third of a mile distance, to our left and next to a fifteen foot tall hillock, there was indeed what appeared to be a circular object, emitting multiple colored halo of light, sitting on, or floating just above the grassy surface, just a few feet from the line of trees covering the back side of the mountain. We were awestruck by the sight and began slowly advancing toward the unidentified glowing thing, which, upon closer examination, did appear to be circular in shape—sort of like a saucer with a bowl sitting upside down on top of it.

We cut our forward movement short and never did get very close to the glowing thing, as our imagination led us to believe that this thing had come from Mars and its occupants were hell-bent on kidnapping us. So, we turned tail and ran back the way we had come, back down the hill, all the way home. In retrospect, I wish that we could have mustered up a little more courage and would have gotten a bit closer. (If you’re interested in the complete story, it is included in my book, DISPLACED, published by ALIVE Books).

The whole point of including my little incident in this article is, since that time, I have been interested in what’s going on in the skies above, as well as news of strange objects either landing or crashing, as well as the involvement of the military in their recovery.

The other reason for including my experience is that the shape of this strange aerial vehicle, which as it so happens, had been incorporated in several renaissance paintings as well as sculptures going back several thousand years. There have been images of strange flying vehicles found on the walls of pyramids in Egypt, tombs in India, Japan, China, and in Maya and Aztec structures. The reason I’m pointing this out is to show you that these strange flying objects have been around for quite a while, and yet learned academics and military and government officials still believe that they are not real—or at least, they tell us that they do not believe in their presence in our reality.

It does make one wonder whether they (these high-level mucky mucks) know much more than they’re willing to admit. Also, why all the cover-up and secrecy, especially lately, since the proverbial cat (UFO) is out of the bag and has been seen on military videos from jet fighters and has been shown on almost all of the mainstream media channels?

So, you ask “how does any and all of this connect to your (my) theory on who created us and where those creators come from?”

To get around the Cosmos, you need some sort of super speedy conveyance that can travel great distances in a very short time. What we are seeing in these videos taken by military pilots, are objects that can outmaneuver our fastest jet fighters with spectacular aerobatics that would be impossible to duplicate with even our latest model jets of today. The G-forces exerted by these unknown aerial vehicles doing those impossible maneuvers would kill any human pilot, which is why I don’t believe they originate on planet Earth, or else, they are piloted by androids or robots.

So, the big question we should really be asking is, why are they here, what is their purpose or mission; whoever or whatever they may be? My theory is that they are the Monitors or Watchers or if you like—the Observers sent here by the Creators—to check on humanity’s progress in attaining a higher level in their evolutionary plan. As I have written in prior articles, they (the Creators) basically planted us here on planet Earth. They periodically tweak our genome over the millennia and of course, watch over our progress.

As numerous people all over the world have claimed to have been abducted and (medically) examined with various laboratory samples being taken; they are truly keeping a very close eye on us. Either that, or planet Earth is nothing more than a giant zoo, for all the civilizations in the Cosmos to have a central repository of human and animal samples. Could the Earth actually be Noah’s Ark; I mean, the whole planet? Now, there’s something to think about.

Whatever you think or believe, there is plenty of evidentiary data to support my theory; that Humans did not originate on this planet. In his book, Humans are Not from Earth, Ellis Silver, Ph.D., an Ecologist, seems to agree with some of what I have been theorizing and writing, and gives his reasoning as to why he believes that we (Humans) are not of this Earth. He writes, Mankind is supposedly the most advanced species on the planet yet is unsuited and ill-equipped for Earth’s environment.

Paraphrasing some of his conclusions:

Humans suffer from bad backs because they evolved on a world with much lower gravity. We also have a lot of joint issues in our shoulders and the knees. Ruminate on this little factoid: standard atmospheric pressure is about 14.7 pounds per sq. inch at sea level. That’s the equivalent of holding a small car (you know, one of those Smart Cars) on your head at all time. Children are born with such large heads, making their delivery, not only very difficult but painful for the mother giving birth; the only species on this planet with this issue. We humans were not created to be exposed to the sun for great periods of time, without getting sunburned and over longer spans, risk getting Squamous cell carcinoma or skin cancer. Consider lizards and other wild animals that are able to live out in the open, under the Sun, full time, because they were designed for this planet. At a lecture many years ago, the presenter also brought up the issue of why so many of us have allergies or cannot eat certain kinds of foods.

I could go on, but I want to get back to our Monitors and how they are able to flit about in their ultra-high-speed flying vehicles and the fact that they seem to have been with us since time immemorial. Think about this: they are mentioned in the Bible, the Book of Mormon, Northern, Central and South American Indian lore, Chinese, Hindu and Japanese legends, Australian Aboriginal and Easter Island tales, as well as too many other writings to mention here, all clearly describing very similar origins for mankind and its interactions with visitors from the stars. So why, do those in the know in government and the sciences refuse to acknowledge that fact that interstellar voyagers, going back millennia have been in contact with us earthlings? Arrogance, perhaps? Or is it ignorance?

Those who have been shown the evidence but refuse to accept it for what it is, have blinders on their brains. To be continued…

Bullet Train Part Deux

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The project that started out as CAHSRA (California High Speed Rail Authority) has suffered some shortcomings. Among these was the Federal Government’s withdrawal of almost one Billion Dollars. This was also one of former California Governor Jerry Brown’s legacy projects. As a conservative, there were many issues on which I agreed with the former governor, such as his tight grip on spending our hard-earned tax dollars. The California Bullet Train to nowhere, however, was NOT one of them.

The problem was, it didn’t look like the empty suits in charge of CAHSRA, ever bothered to talk to anybody who already had such a system up and running. They could have spoken to the folks who run the TGV (Train Grande Vitesse) system of France. The TGV carries 100 million passengers per year and connects various large cities in France with Paris. My wife and I rode the TGV from the Charles de Gaulle Airport to Paris at the Latin Quarter station in about 47 minutes.

They could also have chatted with the people at Trenitalia, the national railway company of Italy, which runs their high-speed or Alta Velocità train system named, Frecciarossa (Red Arrow) travelling at speeds of 360 kph or about 223 mph, that connects major cities in Italy. And BTW, this is the train my wife and I rode in 2008, from Naples to Rome in 57 minutes, in comfort like on a 747 Jet.

They could have approached the people who run Eurostar, with trains travelling at speeds up to 186 mph and will get you from London to Paris in three hours. Even smaller countries like Austria and Hungary are connected via Railjet trains which link Austrian cities with Budapest, Prague, Munich and Zurich. Your Railjet ride from Budapest to Vienna only takes 2 ½ hours. How could these small countries build a high-speed rail system, and California couldn’t? Was it planning and cooperation? CAHSRA’s management could have spoken with Chinese High-Speed-Rail management that runs Maglev (or magnetic Levitation) trains, at speed of up to 268 mph, and HSR-wheeled high-speed trains which have attained speeds of 303 mph. They could have asked our friends in Japan, at the Shinkansen high-speed rail system if they could help us out. See where I’m going with this? All these countries, some that we consider beneath us technologically, have left us at the Bullet-Train station in nowheres-ville.

The point of these references is that all these trains run on board-flat topography. They go through tunnels and roll up on elevated tracks, as the ones proposed on the CAHSRA line. Tunnels need to be bored, to keep the tracks level, however elevated sections of tracks have already been built, 50 to 60 feet high above ground. What do you think will happen to a train travelling at 200 mph on an elevated track, in the event of an earthquake?

Some tunneling needs to be done. A 13 ½ mile tunnel is needed through the undulating topography of Pacheco Pass. Experts from around the world guestimated a price tag of between $5.6 billion and $14.5 billion, to get the tunneling done, which is exacerbated by the treacherous makeup of this seismically-active region; quite a chunk out of the $65 Billion budget.

California voters approved the $9 billion Proposition 1A to begin construction of the initial leg of this convoluted plan, which promised to eventually run from San Francisco to Los Angeles. The Jan 06, 2015 groundbreaking ceremony, which took place in Fresno, was for the first 29-mile segment between Fresno and Madera, with an expected completion date of December 31, 2022. The initial operating segment between San Jose and Bakersfield, was expected in 2027. The completion of the San Francisco to Anaheim line was to materialize sometime in 2033.

Sacramento thought that this was a great idea. Jerry Brown believed that it would be his legacy. Alas, his original $33 billion dream turned into a $65 billion nightmare by the 2nd year of construction. The worst part of Jerry’s nightmare is, Governor Gavin reconfigured the whole project as the Central Valley Express (CVE). CAHSRA will not connect San Francisco to L.A., because, the Governor has so decreed. The Central Valley Express will probably still cost $65 billion or more. There are many miles of high-speed rail already laid and numerous elevated sections built. However, segments of tracks are not yet contiguous. Perhaps, not even all the real estate has yet been purchased. The completed CVE will give farm workers between Fresno and Bakersfield a quick ride home after 12 hours of working in the fields. But, will they be able to afford the ride. And of course, former Democrat senator Reid of Nevada will be disappointed that CAHSRA won’t fly suckers all the way to Las Vegas.

My question is: if all the money spent didn’t go to funding this chug-along project, where did it go? Did some of it find its way to fill potholes in our decrepit roadways and bridges? Did the incompetents in Sacramento spend some of that money on fixing reservoirs and maybe building new ones? I haven’t seen any movement in those regards. Where did the money go? Did some of it go line the pockets of Democrat politicians. I don’t believe Jerry Brown pocketed any of those funds, because I actually believe that he’s a rather honest individual, due in part to his early Jesuit school training. But all that money had to go somewhere. Maybe it all sunk in the muck of the Sacramento swamp? California used to be hailed as the technological capital of the world. So, how come we couldn’t even conjure up a high-speed rail system?

Last year, I gave a reasonable alternative that would improve California passenger transportation. We already have several passenger train lines. One can ride the California Zephyr all the way to Chicago, leaving from Emeryville. We have the Capitol Corridor line which runs from San Jose to Auburn. The Sunset Limited will get you from Los Angeles to New Orleans. The Coast Starlight will take you from Los Angeles to Seattle. All these lines run Diesel locomotives able to reach speeds of up to 110 mph. That’s reasonably fast. However, the problem is not the speed the locomotives could attain. The problem is, freight trains have priority on all rail lines, because they own the tracks.

More folks would ride trains in California, if they would arrive at their destinations on time. The solution appears simple: instead of wasting Billions more on that CVE, build dedicated lines for passenger trains, so they don’t get stuck behind the lumbering freight haulers. How about connecting new passenger lines to the already build high-speed rail line? US diesels can roll at about 110 mph. That’s a lot faster than having to follow freight haulers. The most important thing is to get passenger trains their own tracks, which would greatly speed up passenger transportation.

For a bullet-speed future, have CAHSRA form a partnership with neighboring states, and then design a more encompassing plan, that would connect multiple states via high-speed rail. Learn something from our European friends about cooperation with neighbors. That way, the cost is shared as well as design resources. The whole idea out of Sacramento was, to show the rest of the country, and maybe the world, that California can accomplish anything it wants. And, Sacramento blew it by putting in charge a band of incompetents with enormous egos.

The result? Millions of dollars wasted, out of OUR pockets!

Memories of Notre Dame

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I was able to visit the Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral twice in my life. The first time was in 1954, when our family had been required to travel to the United States Embassy in Paris to apply for entry into the United States, in person, as emigrants. My second visit took place fifty four years later, in 2008, when my wife Bonnie and I travelled to Europe to attend my daughter Christina’s nuptials to her new husband Doug, in Praiano, Italy. Bonnie wanted to see Paris as she had never been there before. This second trip was a fun adventure, whereas the 1954 trip had to be undertaken out of necessity.

Although my 1954 visit to Paris had been my first, I and all the other little kids going to school in Algrange (Moselle district of north-eastern France) had seen plenty of photographs and artwork featuring Notre Dame. We had also been required to read the novel by Victor Hugo entitled The Hunchback of Notre Dame which, by the way, in French was simply, Notre Dame de Paris or Our Lady of Paris.

We all knew about the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, because by 1954, we had been treated to the movie The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the American version starring Charles Laughton and Maureen O’Hara, produced in 1939. The film was of course based on the aforementioned Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel. Of course, in Algrange, when we went to see the movie at the Odeon Theater, the title on the marquee was Le Bossu de Notre Dame, which had been a translation of the American title, referencing the Hunchback.

Now unfortunately, in Algrange, in the 1950s, you couldn’t buy popcorn in movie theaters. The French people would tell us “zee corn is for zee peegs!” We could buy cacahouettes (peanuts) and marron rôties (roasted chestnuts) at the theater, along with assorted candies and ice cream; but NO popcorn! Can you imagine that? I know, this was somewhat of a detour, but the whole popcorn issue really bugged me…

The first time that I visited the Notre Dame I was 12. My father had told me that I should be amazed by the grandeur of the massive 750 year-old structure. At 12, I must admit that it looked like a gigantic church, twice or three times bigger than the one I had to attend every Sunday. It was dark and smoky inside, and I couldn’t even see the enormous arches making up the ceiling. The smell of incense was overwhelming and a priest was singing the mass; the same mass I heard every Sunday, unless we attended the Protestant church, where they didn’t sing the service. By 12, I knew practically the whole Catholic mass Dominus vo biscum – et cum spiritu tuo – Oremus. Translated: “The Lord be with you, and your spirit, let us pray.” By the time we sat down, I was totally in sync with the lyrics the priest was singing.

As we finished our prayer, some balding monks in dark brown habits with hoods, straight out of the Middle ages, came by for donations, and back then, these monks didn’t take “NO” for an answer. When the basket at the end of a long pole, came by our way, right under my nose, my father put a pocketful of change into the basket. However, the stone-faced monk didn’t seem to think it was sufficient. So, he kept shaking the basket under my dad’s nose until he plunked in a one hundred Franc note (that was a lot, at the time). As the basket finally moved on to the next isle, my dad’s face was red. “This is outrageous,” he grumbled. “They now charge us for praying to God,” he went on rather loudly to my Mom. He then suddenly got up and told us we were leaving. He wouldn’t even let me finish singing the rest of the mass. I was somewhat disappointed, but he had me by the hand. That was literally the sum total of my visit to the Notre dame de Paris, in 1954, the very first time I saw her.

As a side note here, so you understand: while I was baptized Calvinist (Hungarian Protestant) we attended most Protestant services as well as Catholic masses, as my mother was Catholic. The agreement between Mom and Pop had been, if I was born a girl, I would be baptized Catholic. As a boy, I got baptized Protestant. While attending school in Algrange, all lower grades were public school and therefore Catholic. We only found out later that there was a small mixed belief school, farther down the road.

Anyway, while I was in the third grade, our catechism teacher, Père François (Father Francis), decided that I should be an altar boy because he noticed how I enjoyed singing the mass along with the priest. Of course, I missed my chance when I got transferred to Ecole Mixte (Mixed School) and they discovered that I was really Protestant. After that, I didn’t see Père François very often. I think I would have made a great altar boy.

I did learn to appreciate the history, beauty, resilience, and significance of Our Lady of Paris, once I grew a little older and we moved away from France to the United States. Over the years, friends from France would occasionally send me postcards with Notre Dame on them. And I learned over the past few years about several attempts to destroy this symbol of Catholicism, well really, Christianity, as well as the pride of the French people. There have been as many as four or five attempts at blowing up Our Lady, by the so-called Islamic State or ISIS. Luckily, these attempts were stopped in their tracks before they could do any damage. But our Lady of Paris actually survived many other ordeals with minor or reparable damage, over the centuries.

Did you know that Nazi General Dietrich Von Choltitz, when appointed as military governor of Paris in 1944, refused to destroy the city and reduce it to ashes, when so ordered by Hitler himself, because the general loved the beauty and architecture of Paris? This of course also saved Notre Dame from destruction. When Choltitz died in 1966, French generals attended his funeral in Baden because they deeply respected the bravery of the man who had defied the Führer, and had saved Paris and Notre Dame from destruction.

There had been several other attempts at destroying France’s religious and architectural symbol, some even by her own people. Around 1793, during the French Revolution, angry, anticatholic mobs and revolutionaries looted the medieval Gothic masterpiece during their bloody attempt to force France to sever ties to the Roman Catholic Church, and more specifically, the influence of Rome. A number of the statues, representing twenty-eight generations of kings of Judah, affixed to the church façade, above the massive doors, were publicly decapitated by the revolutionaries, the same year as Marie Antoinette was marched to the guillotine. This was a very dark period in France’s history, when the working class, calling themselves the Sans-Culotte or “without-breeches,” took to the streets of Paris and tried to make things right; the wrong way.

The Notre Dame de Paris was built on the Île de la Cité (or Island of the city), a rather large island in the middle of the Seine river, which is now connected to the rest of Paris by ten bridges to both banks of the river and to the Île Saint-Louis (or Saint Louis Island). The oldest surviving bridge is the Pont Neuf (New Bridge), which traverses the western pointed tip of the island, connecting both banks. Back in the really old days, before the cathedral was built, the island served as a mostly inaccessible fortress, to fend off Romans, Vikings, Huns and other assorted bands of marauding barbarians.

So, why the history lesson, you may want to ask. I wanted to show you what I had learned over the years about Our Lady of Paris, that I not only didn’t know at age 12, but also didn’t understand nor appreciate: how those builders of yore, from over 750 to 800 years ago, not only envisioned this masterpiece of religious architecture but were then able to turn it into reality with the tools of the time and without electricity at their disposal. I also learned to admire the resilience of Our Lady of Paris, having gone throughall the turmoil and still be standing, even today, although severely injured.

Back in 2008, when my wife and I spent four days in Paris, at the beginning of our European journey, we visited Our Lady of Paris on a beautiful, sunny day. We walked from our charming little hotel in the Latin Quarter and crossed Petit Pont (little Bridge) over the Seine and followed ‘Promenade Maurice Carême’ to Rue D’Arcole and here we were facing the Notre Dame.This was a real treat for Bonnie as she had never been to Paris. What she didn’t realize was that it was also a real treat for me. The day was beautiful and bright as opposed to 1954, on my first visit, when it had been gray and overcast. It was mid-morning and there weren’t a lot of people yet as there would be later on.

When you enter through the massive door, you truly feel as though you are on a pilgrimage and that somehow God may listen to you within this cavernous interior. Bonnie and I slowly toured the interior of the cathedral and I tried to take as many photographs as possible. Unfortunately, no flash photography was allowed, so no matter how steady I was able to hold my little camera, I missed a few good ones. More and more people started pouring in as we kept exploring and several good shots I was trying to take, ended up with a big head right in the middle.

We lit a couple of candles in memory of those who’d gone before us and my memory rewound back to 1954, when we had exited the cathedral in such a hurry and it made me wonder what had happened to the old, bald monks who used pass the collection baskets under the worshippers’ noses. On this occasion, we didn’t see any. Apparently, although services were still held in the cathedral, the monks had either moved out or moved on. I almost missed them, because in retrospect, they had added a certain sense of austere discipline and devotion in maintaining the serenity of the place. Although, remembering my dad, serenity would have been the last thing I would have attributed to him. But that was way back then. Now, in the twenty first century, everyone seemed to be more at ease, as though visiting a museum and not necessarily being in the presence of divinity. In a sense, this was sad. Although filled with statues, frescoes and marvelous stained-glass windows, including the beautiful north side Rose window, I still felt somewhat reverent while observing and touching the walls and some of those ancient relics such as the crown of thorns said to have been worn by Jesus Christ.

As I mentioned earlier, there were a great number of statues, inside and out. There was one special one dedicated to ‘Sainte Jeanne D’Arc’ or Joan of Arc, who was beatified on April 18, 1909. I was very familiar with her tale, as I had to write a report on her in my fifth-grade class at the Algrange ‘Ecole Mixte’. She was born in 1413. She led the armies of Charles VII to several victories gaining the crown of France for him. Unfortunately, she was captured at Compiègne by rebellious French allies of the British, put on trial and sentenced to death by pro-British French cardinal, Pierre Gauchon. When we had read that Gauchon sentenced Joan of Arc to death, the whole class renamed him Gauchon le cochon (the pig), we were so upset. What do you expect from little kids anyway? The brave young warrior was burned at the stake on May 30, 1431.

In addition to Joan of Arc, there are statues of kings and saints and whole gangs of gargoyles, all around the perimeter of the towers and the spire. Originally installed to keep rain water from damaging the structure of the cathedral, gargoyles are now just decorations and protrusions for the birds to perch on. Some look like scary, deranged creatures from Hades, some are long-beaked birds, and some are a cross between a human and the devil. Now, whose idea it was to decorate the top of the towers with these creatures, is beyond me. The way I understood, they weren’t part of the original plan and were actually installed a couple centuries later. Either way, they are fascinating and fun to photograph and draw.

The other day, when I heard on the radio that Notre Dame was burning, I couldn’t believe it. Who would do such a thing, I thought to myself? I was certain that it had to be terrorists. I had been wrong. When I finally got home to my TV, I was shocked to see the images of the clouds of smoke rising from the great cathedral, and to find out that it had been a bad accident, more than likely caused by the workers doing the renovation.

Notre Dame was built over a period of some 200 years. The project was started in 1163, during the reign of King Louis VII of France, and in the presence of Pope Alexander III, the first stone was laid. King Philip VI was the ruler of France when the project was finally finished in 1345. So, 856 years from the beginning of its construction and 674 years from the completion, a nasty fire almost destroyed Our Lady of Paris. Fortunately, enough of the structure is left that Président de la République Emmanuel Macron has vowed to have the cathedral rebuilt. As of the writing of this article, it has been announced in the media that several million Euros have already been raised for the reconstruction.

If I have a chance to visit Paris just one more time, I will want to see a resurrected Notre Dame, with all the art and artifacts returned inside, just the way I remember seeing it was back in 1954 and again in 2008. I believe, it will take a great deal of money, much of which has fortunately already been raised, to accomplish the task of restauration, but I’m willing to bet that the money will keep flowing in from all over the globe, from all the visitors who had seen the beauty of Our lady of Paris. I’ll also be sure to chip in all I can, for all the great memories of my visits there.

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