UFO History Group Get-together #4: a small add-on.

Robert Powell sent me some pictures of the May 22-24 get-together, and I wanted to use them as an opportunity to make a point or two about UFO research work and information sharing. {The above picture is of eight of us around the archives room table skyping with Barry Greenwood in Massachusetts.}

The point of the get-togethers seems at first to be information exchanges and brain-trusting but it's mainly about community building. In my many years watching the UFO researcher circus, the thing which has been most appalling to me is the lack of true community and, therefore, an unwillingness to contribute without ego to team projects. Community however takes work.

I and others [it seemed to me] had a need for creating true colleagues and ultimately true friends to facilitate getting projects done which almost demanded a team of people to encourage and support one another, and share the load. That's why I, not knowing if the concept was impractical or not, began inviting some old friends and some new associates, all of whom appeared as civilized humans, to come to Kalamazoo for small-work, high-companionship, styles of get-togethers. I was surprised a bit as to how much people wanted to do that "impractical" thing, and also how little [essentially zero] conflict occurred even among folks on record with opposing opinions on certain things.

{Barry and Bill via Skype}

I'm posting this because I believe that it's time for anyone in UFOlogy who has low enough ego and high enough humanity [and who has been lone-wolfing it] to quit behaving that way and create community with others who share one's UFO interest and who bring something to the table. {The Skype technology isn't ideal, but it allows a "nearly-personal" contact with great guys like Bill Chalker and Barry Greenwood who can't make it to Michigan}.

We all have experienced some of our field's Sounds-of-Thunder Stage-Dominating UFO Egos long enough. More tragic than the consistent lack of open-ness that we have to put up with from such "UFO authorities" is the other group of basically good people, who however have to plough on virtually alone with no real support and, this is important, no pre-publication sounding boards of respected people. We need research teams, and research teams who know one another as human beings and have civil sympathy for each other.

UFO research is hard. But it's a lot more promising [and fun] when you're doing it in a shared community relationship with people that you've grown to like.

As in everything: together is better than alone.

As the Wiccans are wont to say: Merry Meet and Merry Part, and Merry Meet again.

Till then, friends.

Research Note to Kevin Duggan

These are some suggestions to a recent inquiry about how to go about researching and writing about UFOs and the Colorado area. I'll be easy on myself and list points of possible interest in as simple a form as possible [because the question was just a bit like "could you tell me everything that you know?"]

a). Colorado isn't the richest state when it comes to UFO case reporting. There is no "Roswell" level case there, but there is no Roswell level case anywhere else in terms of complexity and drama. There are however several cases of interest if one works for them.

b). I have 19 cases in my files. Seven of them are Close Encounters of the second kind [physical effects] and one is a case where the UFO seemed partly present and partly not. There is one CE3. I've not re-read these files, but I must be impressed with them a little bit to have bothered to file them.

c). Mark Rodeghier collected UFO Reports involving vehicle interference up to 1979. He found four Colorado cases. The 1960 Left Hand Canyon case is interesting, and the Redvale 1967 case was looked at by the Colorado Project. I like the 1967 Texas Creek case.

d). Ted Phillips produced a similar catalog of Landing Trace cases up through 1977. He found ten Colorado cases. Four of these [Montrose 1967, "Colorado" 1967, Alamosa 1967, and Gleeson 1968] were within the Project period and all were ignored or botched.

e). George Eberhart's Geo-Bibliography of Anomalies lists >>>100 Colorado cases with their [usually newspaper citation] references. As you are, I believe, a newspaper man, you should be able to hunt down such citations. In fact a service to the UFO community would be the surveying of many Colorado newspapers for hitherto unknown cases.

f). one can go to the National UFO Reporting Center {NUFORC} and click on Colorado and get a long list of area sightings. Most are useless, but occasionally there is detail.

g). one can go to the UFO-DNA site and find near the bottom of their choices a click which sends you to a small crowded map. Some small messing around there will get you a regional listing of cases on the site {ex. Colorado cases mixed in with Wyomings Dakotas etc}. Some of these cases will be good ones though you will still have to find the reports.

h). If I were writing about Colorado and UFOs, I'd spend some time talking of the government element involved. Obviously the University Project was a big public deal, but also NORAD is there. There are things which NORAD calls "uncorrelated targets" [from all over the world] which they collect and then presumably analyze secretly, and as far as we're concerned, bury. There's at least a story there.

i). Lastly, there is something that you might be able to do for my special interest and the field's. The pretty dark-haired lady in the terrible picture above is Mary Lou Armstrong, the main data-collector and secretary of the Colorado Project. She played a big role in it, but no one followed her afterwards and sat down for a long tell-all interview. The UFO Community would VERY MUCH like to interview her for the Oral History Project --- if she still lives {she'd probably be in her seventies} AND IF WE KNEW WHERE SHE WAS. How about it? Give it a try to find her? Be a heck of a centerpiece for a book.

Peace.