UFO Conjectures

Friday, April 21, 2017

The young Betty and Barney Hill

Copyright 2017, InterAmerica, Inc.
I stumbled upon this photo of the Hills from a YouTube clip I think. (I removed, sloppily, the "run video" button that was in the middle of the photo.)

It shows the happily married, young bi-racial couple at a time when such a marriage was not acceptable, as it is now.

It's a lovely photo of a seemingly normal couple.

Could they have gone "off-track" later in life? Perhaps, but I wish to believe they remained happy and sensible right up to their (imagined?) incident.

Something happened to the Hills. What that was may have been psychological (a folie a deux?) or an actual traumatic event: alien kidnapping or human assault.

I've always thought Betty Hill was a sweet person, caught up in the mob hysteria of ufologists, and made off-kilter by the attention she was subject to.

That is, she was a victim, in some way or another.

RR

Something from Nothing?

Two books I'm dealing with elsewhere.

If you are interested in either (or both), leave a comment and I'll provide more info, but you should be able to find them online (at Amazon and other booksellers).

RR

“Use only the essentials.”

Copyright 2017, InterAmerica, Inc.
That “mantra” – the title above – came from Arnold Schoenberg (pictured) as advice to American composer, a student of his, Lou Harrison [d. 2003], who was profiled by Alex Ross in the April 24, 2017 issue of The New Yorker [Page 18].

The advice would be helpful for ufologists who want to get at the nub of various UFO events or incidents: Arnold’s sighting, Roswell, Socorro, the Hills’ “abduction,” et al.

To extricate the core “facts” of UFO sightings, new and old, investigators would do well to eliminate all the extraneous detritus that encrusts those sightings: third party commentary, accretions by investigators, researchers, and ufological wannabes.

This would take some effort, most iconic UFO cases flush with adornment or "decoration" that becloud cases. (The effort a form of Ockham’s Razor.)

But if “ufologists” want to find the truth of a case or even an explanation, they have to exclude the draperies of nonsense that have become attached to most, maybe all, UFO cases.

UFO buffs do want to know what UFOs were or are, yes?

Then heed composer Schoenberg’s advice to a musical genius.

RR

Ufology’s philistines

Copyright 2017, InterAmerica, Inc.
I have been soaked or dampened by UFOs (flying saucers) for most of my long life, a life longer than I express if I can avoid doing so.

(I noted, once, a thing I did years ago, and I lost a raft of followers, people who are prone to ignore geezers, as I do, usually.)

In my UFO sojourn the one thing that is palpable, blatant to me is that there is little or no refinement or culture in the UFO community; that is, I have rarely, if ever, met a cultivated, cultured, refined person inside the UFO society.

I don’t know, today, any person in “ufology” that I consider a sophisticated, urbane individual.

What spurs me to write this was a request from well-read, as far as I know, Terry the Censor who suggested that I provide links to my book-review sites, some new and one that’s been around for a long while as cognoscenti know.

To provide links would be, for me, casting pearls before swine, something I feel I often do here, at this blog.

Now I’m not being obtuse with this minor rant. TIME magazine, in its, current issue [4/24/17] for its page about books accented a hot book, Monsters in the Ivy League, that outlined, by the authors (Spy magazine staffers), a slew of Ivy Leaguers they know who they class as ne’er-do-wells, liars, criminals, wimps, anti-Semites, et cetera.

Currently, persons deemed to be less than what they pretend to be, are vilified in academic and social venues, including notables in the arts, old and new.

Since this blog is centered on the UFO community, ufologists, I felt it was necessary to point out that the category, ufology, is riven with ne’er-do-wells, and uncultured waifs, persons who wouldn’t know a Paul Klee painting from a Disney logo.

Mentioning Charles Ives’ The Unanswered Question, a musical “essay’ about the plight of humans in the Universe – something that UFO buffs feel also, if they have any sense at all – has never brought comment, making it clear to me that UFO readers here and generally have never heard the piece.

A posting I made about the important clues to relationships and situations in classical music that clarify those relationships and situations – insight of which could be applied usefully in ufology -- went unnoticed, even by persons who sometimes list my postings in their amalgam of sites that paranormalists might find interesting.

The post ignored because the persons seeing it understood, subliminally at least, that UFO people and paranormalists were not refined enough to get the message intended.

UFO people are clods pretty much. Yes, that’s a generalization that holds true as I see it, and I can’t imagine anyone coming forth to “debunk” my view.

They don’t have the wherewithal to do so.

RR