Back in West Virginia, and maybe a new "plan" for doing the blog. As time in big chunks seems impossible, I'm going to try to take small bites of FSR [one number at a time] and see if that keeps things rolling forward. So, tonight, number one of the six part FSR for 1962. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A feature of this moment in UFO history is that FSR was wild about the Father Gill Boianai New Guinea sighting. [as illustrated to the left]. This they had good reason to be, of course, but the use they put it to was an attempt to support George Adamski with it. Their logic in this was that Gill and the locals had seen UFOnauts of definite similarity to ourselves and that objections to Adamski seeing the same sort of beings were now obsolete. Well, OK, in a way, but the similar forms of Adamski's blonde ETs was hardly the main reason why most people rejected him. Still, Waveney Girvan and Derek Dempster were warriors in Adamski's cause, and they utilized the Gill case in three different arguments in this issue. Girvan, in fact was able to get an interview with the London Daily News in which he preached the UFO gospel, using Father Gill's sighting as his siege gun. Dempster somehow managed to combine all this with Shklovskii's "artificial Phobos/Deimos" theory and the Tunguska event, hinting that the Russians may have an advantage over us in understanding these UFOs. Well, at least it was good to see that UFOlogists of whatever stripe recognized the Boianai case as the great one that it was. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The main FSR news on the Adamski front was the "archaeological discovery' in Brazil of Adamski-ish symbols [i.e. markings similar to those which he claimed to be on the soles of the spaceman's shoes left as marks in the desert]. This business seems to have been a complete boondoggle but unknown by Girvan at the time. The "scholar" in the story was one "Professor [makes me cringe] Marcel Homet" of Sao Paulo Brazil, honorary president of the Museum of American Man, and promulgator of the idea that at least one ancient South American civilization had flying machines. Regardless, because he allegedly discovered ancient script of an Adamski-ian type, Girvan accepted him as a renown archaeological scholar. Homet allegedly told someone [Girvan?] that he did not know about saucers and didn't believe in them. [As Adamski's later biographer, Marc Hallet, found, Homet had read Adamski's book before he published his own--thus becoming a liar of significance]. Girvan did not know this and wished Homet well on his adventures and the translation of this "Venusian" script. Hallet tried to explain how any of this could have happened and felt that Homet was trying to drum up interest in his book and included the Adamski angle [remember that Brazil was nuts over contactees--ex. Kraspedon and Guimaeres], to increase sales. On the internet today, Adamski die-hards still point to the Homet symbols as proof of Adamski's correctness, and try to make it even more mysterious by claiming Homet's first publication of these things as around 1965 [whereas he actually floated it out there in about 1958 or 59]. Yep. It's a great field of study sometimes.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peculiarly, to me, someone actually proffered the idea that the Pleiades star cluster was a prime origin of gods from the stars from ancient times. This fellow, the fairly erudite Kenneth Bayman, walked the readers through a thousand years of myth and history about the role of the Pleiades in cultures worldwide. Even Job gives biblical presence to them at one point. He speculates as to why their prominence and then comes up with the astronomically ignorant idea that they are the hub of the galaxy [about as crazy a thought as one would wish for] and have something to do with the control of gravity. Holey moley. I mention this only because other famous figures have tried to make the Pleiades the center of visiting alien cultures [ Shirley Maclaine and Billy Meier]. They could have [with a little astronomical knowledge] have chosen better. The Pleiades are one of the most recently formed star systems in the Milky Way. You can see this yourself in the accompanying picture. They have not even had time yet to sweep out the excess stellar dust from the collapse of the formative starclouds. What this means is that they haven't had any time to evolve advanced life and technical civilizations. The only way that anyone could be there is if they recently flew over from somewhere far older. Even then it would be improper to refer to oneselves as "from the Pleiades". Just one more of many reasons not to waste ones time with Billy Meier. Shirley Maclaine is a LOT more interesting person than Meier [and astonishingly "magnetic"/ I saw her briefly at a convention once and she was hypnotic] but the Pleiades part of her UFO revelations still makes no sense...alas.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An anonymous writer from New Zealand unloaded the to-be-popular theory that there were several different UFOnauts visiting us and that they not only looked different [he noted everything from hairy dwarves to the Flatwoods Monster] but drove a great variety of spaceship designs as well. This intellectually awkward ["now you're telling me that we've got not one but forty-three groups of aliens visiting Earth???"] but "sufficient to explain the lack of hard patterns" concept has stuck in the minds of some mainstream UFOlogists to this day. Its infinite "elasticity" makes it a tough sell. Nevertheless, this current blog-writer [as long-term readers have noted] believes that a case can be made for more than one civilization type being here. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There were [disappointingly] very few good cases in this issue. One of the very few is written up in the [later] words of Dick Hall [see above] as it is much superior to that which appeared in FSR.
The diagram at the left is a cleaned-up copy of the original drawing by Waldo Harris which he made to illustrate his aerial encounter. This Salt Lake City incident was the only thing in the issue which would make certain compilations like The UFO Evidence.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------A second, probably good, case was from Australia, and involved an RAAF policeman who saw a disk while on duty at Radar Hill, Laverton Airbase in September 1961. The corporal saw the amber, glowing disk come in and hover, rotating all the time. It then left slowly straight up and disappeared. Shortly it came back, this time spinning more rapidly and hovering in the same position. Then it rose slowly straight upwards again until it was out of sight. Fortunately for the case, the disk was seen by a second airman. This isn't a fabulous case but as long as the two witnesses are genuine, then it's worth keeping in your files.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------All-in-all the FSR put forward about ten major "intellectual" claims [i.e. categorically different ones] which have, given the perspective of the years, turned out to be 80% wrong---yep, dead wrong. 10% was a "neutral" score [that there might be more than one race of aliens involved], and the last 10% was half correct [that the Gill case was powerful] and half was false [so was Adamski]. That's a pretty poor batting average, and should tell us something about how non-convinced people view UFOlogy out of our own mouths.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Of course, something else happened during the period of coverage of this journal, but no one knew about that at all.
Back in West Virginia, and maybe a new "plan" for doing the blog. As time in big chunks seems impossible, I'm going to try to take small bites of FSR [one number at a time] and see if that keeps things rolling forward. So, tonight, number one of the six part FSR for 1962. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A feature of this moment in UFO history is that FSR was wild about the Father Gill Boianai New Guinea sighting. [as illustrated to the left]. This they had good reason to be, of course, but the use they put it to was an attempt to support George Adamski with it. Their logic in this was that Gill and the locals had seen UFOnauts of definite similarity to ourselves and that objections to Adamski seeing the same sort of beings were now obsolete. Well, OK, in a way, but the similar forms of Adamski's blonde ETs was hardly the main reason why most people rejected him. Still, Waveney Girvan and Derek Dempster were warriors in Adamski's cause, and they utilized the Gill case in three different arguments in this issue. Girvan, in fact was able to get an interview with the London Daily News in which he preached the UFO gospel, using Father Gill's sighting as his siege gun. Dempster somehow managed to combine all this with Shklovskii's "artificial Phobos/Deimos" theory and the Tunguska event, hinting that the Russians may have an advantage over us in understanding these UFOs. Well, at least it was good to see that UFOlogists of whatever stripe recognized the Boianai case as the great one that it was. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The main FSR news on the Adamski front was the "archaeological discovery' in Brazil of Adamski-ish symbols [i.e. markings similar to those which he claimed to be on the soles of the spaceman's shoes left as marks in the desert]. This business seems to have been a complete boondoggle but unknown by Girvan at the time. The "scholar" in the story was one "Professor [makes me cringe] Marcel Homet" of Sao Paulo Brazil, honorary president of the Museum of American Man, and promulgator of the idea that at least one ancient South American civilization had flying machines. Regardless, because he allegedly discovered ancient script of an Adamski-ian type, Girvan accepted him as a renown archaeological scholar. Homet allegedly told someone [Girvan?] that he did not know about saucers and didn't believe in them. [As Adamski's later biographer, Marc Hallet, found, Homet had read Adamski's book before he published his own--thus becoming a liar of significance]. Girvan did not know this and wished Homet well on his adventures and the translation of this "Venusian" script. Hallet tried to explain how any of this could have happened and felt that Homet was trying to drum up interest in his book and included the Adamski angle [remember that Brazil was nuts over contactees--ex. Kraspedon and Guimaeres], to increase sales. On the internet today, Adamski die-hards still point to the Homet symbols as proof of Adamski's correctness, and try to make it even more mysterious by claiming Homet's first publication of these things as around 1965 [whereas he actually floated it out there in about 1958 or 59]. Yep. It's a great field of study sometimes.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Peculiarly, to me, someone actually proffered the idea that the Pleiades star cluster was a prime origin of gods from the stars from ancient times. This fellow, the fairly erudite Kenneth Bayman, walked the readers through a thousand years of myth and history about the role of the Pleiades in cultures worldwide. Even Job gives biblical presence to them at one point. He speculates as to why their prominence and then comes up with the astronomically ignorant idea that they are the hub of the galaxy [about as crazy a thought as one would wish for] and have something to do with the control of gravity. Holey moley. I mention this only because other famous figures have tried to make the Pleiades the center of visiting alien cultures [ Shirley Maclaine and Billy Meier]. They could have [with a little astronomical knowledge] have chosen better. The Pleiades are one of the most recently formed star systems in the Milky Way. You can see this yourself in the accompanying picture. They have not even had time yet to sweep out the excess stellar dust from the collapse of the formative starclouds. What this means is that they haven't had any time to evolve advanced life and technical civilizations. The only way that anyone could be there is if they recently flew over from somewhere far older. Even then it would be improper to refer to oneselves as "from the Pleiades". Just one more of many reasons not to waste ones time with Billy Meier. Shirley Maclaine is a LOT more interesting person than Meier [and astonishingly "magnetic"/ I saw her briefly at a convention once and she was hypnotic] but the Pleiades part of her UFO revelations still makes no sense...alas.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
An anonymous writer from New Zealand unloaded the to-be-popular theory that there were several different UFOnauts visiting us and that they not only looked different [he noted everything from hairy dwarves to the Flatwoods Monster] but drove a great variety of spaceship designs as well. This intellectually awkward ["now you're telling me that we've got not one but forty-three groups of aliens visiting Earth???"] but "sufficient to explain the lack of hard patterns" concept has stuck in the minds of some mainstream UFOlogists to this day. Its infinite "elasticity" makes it a tough sell. Nevertheless, this current blog-writer [as long-term readers have noted] believes that a case can be made for more than one civilization type being here. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
There were [disappointingly] very few good cases in this issue. One of the very few is written up in the [later] words of Dick Hall [see above] as it is much superior to that which appeared in FSR.
The diagram at the left is a cleaned-up copy of the original drawing by Waldo Harris which he made to illustrate his aerial encounter. This Salt Lake City incident was the only thing in the issue which would make certain compilations like The UFO Evidence.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------A second, probably good, case was from Australia, and involved an RAAF policeman who saw a disk while on duty at Radar Hill, Laverton Airbase in September 1961. The corporal saw the amber, glowing disk come in and hover, rotating all the time. It then left slowly straight up and disappeared. Shortly it came back, this time spinning more rapidly and hovering in the same position. Then it rose slowly straight upwards again until it was out of sight. Fortunately for the case, the disk was seen by a second airman. This isn't a fabulous case but as long as the two witnesses are genuine, then it's worth keeping in your files.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------All-in-all the FSR put forward about ten major "intellectual" claims [i.e. categorically different ones] which have, given the perspective of the years, turned out to be 80% wrong---yep, dead wrong. 10% was a "neutral" score [that there might be more than one race of aliens involved], and the last 10% was half correct [that the Gill case was powerful] and half was false [so was Adamski]. That's a pretty poor batting average, and should tell us something about how non-convinced people view UFOlogy out of our own mouths.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Of course, something else happened during the period of coverage of this journal, but no one knew about that at all.
