Clipping From Mom: 'Beached boxes mystery'

Mom sent me this clipping about the metal beach boxes from the Newport News paper.  (speaking of mom, here's her blog: Skazski...musings of a malcontent.) [Beached boxes mystery: UFO-related remains along coast unexplained; Terry Dillman.]As she commented in her note sent along with the clipping:

This clipping is the only mention of those "mystery boxes" that have turned up (Friday's Newport Times) --- maybe its because the story took place in another county (Lane) and therefore not of interest to people in Lincoln County and so it goes--- who said we were narrow-minded, ha!

About Bill Hanshumaker of the Hatfield Marine Science Center (HMSC), Dillman wites:

Hunshumaker told the News-Times that he couldn't even venture a guess as to what the boxes might be, espeically without direct examination. Two sets of HMSC volunteeres dispated to Bray's Point found nothing.

In other articles Hunshumaker has been quoted as suggesting the boxes were debris from docks or piers where construction has taken place, or some such...

The article goes on to say that volunteer groups, like CoastWatch, as well as the Oregon Parks and Rec department, have sent out people to look for the boxes; none were found.

And yet, as my mother herself commented, as well as others I've spoken with -- to paraphrase -- "The government can come in and whisk away anything they want and silence whoever they want, when they want." Well, we all know that's true. No argument there. Whether or not that's true in this case, well, I just can't help but think there's no there there.

Masko defends his on-line postings in the Dillman article:

...reproters today "spend all their waking hours" in front of various screens, gathering the news vicariously via computer ...rather than following the tried-and-true "old school" way of "wearing out shoe leather and actually talking to people."

Masko seems to do a bit of a back pedal by basically shrugging and saying the story has taken on its own life about "some junk on our beach."

All this is interesting from a variety of angles: folklore, UFO data, artistic license and expression, Fortean stuff for its own sake. To be fair, I haven't personally spoken with anyone involved in this story, or even been able to make it out to the coast yet to see for myself. (and by this time, that window of finding anything on the beaches seems long closed.)

It's the Paola Harris Show! Harris Speaks at McMinnville UFO Fest

It's The Paola Harris Show!

Paola Harris at McMinnville, OR UFO Fest 2011

I debated posting what I thought of Paola Harris’s presentation at the McMinnville UFO Festival this past May because I have nothing nice to say. This is what I emailed Deirdre O’Lavery when trying to come up with something about the presentation:

All right, well, I can't seem to write anything worthwhile about old Paola. Except that it was the worst thing ever ... but [I have] nothing articulate or insightful [to add]. I thought I had taken better notes but apparently I was so amazed I had doodled numerous semi-psychotic renderings. Hey, maybe that's what I'll say.

While I don’t agree with the exo-politics movement in UFOlogy, I don’t have anything against it. My issues with Ms. Harris’s presentation isn’t with her views on exo-politics (whatever those are; it was difficult to tell) but with her lack of coherency and her immense ego.

Harris was introduced as “the Barbara Walters of UFOlogy,” and that title was reiterated by Ms. Harris herself, but it became clear to me she isn’t that, but I will say she’s clearly the Sarah Palin of UFOlogy.

So the talk begins, and I am telling you, it was the craziest, most disjointed, manic, ego-fueled thing I've been to. It was so bizarre and surreal that it was funny.

While I’m not much for the exo-politics aspect of UFOlogy, which is what Ms. Harris is all about,  I was interested in Harris’s presentation for a couple of reasons. One, anything to do with UFOs (excluding the uber-psycho skeptics) I’m up for, and two, I was curious to hear about the San Antonio, New Mexico 1945 crash Harris promised to discuss.

The presentation began with  a montage of UFO images -- “sixty-one years of UFOs” Harris told us -- accompanied by Buffalo Springfield's Something's Happening Here. Instead of ending the introduction at that point, it continued with another slew of slides, this time accompanied by some kind of screechy space age music. Harris introduced the images by telling us it’s “sixty-one years” of UFOs but it appeared to be 108 years, since the intro slide read “1870 to 2008.”  It would have been nice to have captions of the photographs; when and where the UFO image was taken, or how the illustration related to what sighting, but all we got were slides. After slides. After. Slides. And then there were the slides.

After that overly long intro, Harris literally spent forty minutes talking about herself while showing several images of the book and magazine covers where she’s appeared in print, as well as photo after photo of her with various UFO bigwigs. “Here I am with so and so...” she announced. Over and over. Forty minutes! Literally. I timed it.

I detected an undercurrent of, not racism exactly, but a cultural ignorance or maybe it was cultural superiority. (Surprising since she has dual citizenship and  lived in Italy for many years.) She showed a slide of Israel, referencing that country’s UFO sightings, informing us that  “They talk Jewish over there.” She showed slides of  UFO researchers --  Jacques Vallee among them --  meeting with politicians in the Middle East and slides of the Muslim Brotherhood, and insinuated there is something insidious afoot about their interest in UFOs. We're  not told why this might be so. This was one of the problems with her presentations: lack of support for her case. (The other problem: her huge ego.)  Harris mentioned several times that she was a retired teacher, something I found simply astounding given her consistent rambling, incoherent, point jumping circus act. But, she did teach in an Italian private school and among her students were “Mel Gibson’s kids,” and other VIPS which Harris felt was a relevant bit of information to share with us.

After more than forty minutes of  It’s The Paola Harris Show, she gets to the 1945 San Antonio, New Mexico (not Texas,) crash. More slides of places and people but with little context.  It was such a rambling and nonlinear WTF mishmash I had no idea what she was talking about and  I didn’t learn anything about this case after her presentation. It was extremely disappointing.

There was also a video of Philip Corso; the video got stuck and there we sat, listening to audio of Corso while Harris looked adoringly on; again, how it connected to what Harris was talking about wasn’t made clear.  (I noticed that Harris conspicuously did not mention Bill Birnes.)

Harris finished with her “12 Protocols” of exo-politics which, it turned out, was really 9 protocols. Or maybe it was 7.  At that point however I didn’t give a damn how may there were. Besides, they weren’t exactly “protocols” as in: don’t use your salad fork when eating fish, but assumptions about the coming of the Space Brothers. The slide got stuck on number 1 and remained there; she either didn’t notice or didn’t care, and at one point said “It says there are 12 protocols but there’s really only 9” which is where I was afraid to look at Deirdre O’Lavery who was sitting next to me, because I knew we’d both lose it.

Glitches happen, but there were so many in Harris’ presentation I had the impression there was no care taken; just a thrown up mess of stuff at the last minute. Even those technical errors could be forgiven if Harris herself hadn't been so inept. Take your pick: her massive ego, her incoherent presentation, her rambling, her lack of cohesiveness, the lack of support for her case, the lack of editing: put it all together and it was one bad, very bad, UFO lecture. I was entertained  but that was inadvertent. It was a completely pointless presentation and absolutely embarrassing. And I’ve seen Stephen Greer speak, so that’s saying something.

Sometimes There Is A Buzz, Sometimes There Isn't . . .

An Evening With Fellow Saucer Heads
I spent the evening with fellow saucer-heads, including a MUFON person. We watched a video of one of Jim Sparks' talks.

The Alien Presence; Or, Not . . .
I've written before about how, when sitting around talking about UFOs, "they" suddenly appear. This has been confirmed by others. It's a distinct feeling, a consistent feeling. While watching the video, and before that, as we went around introducing ourselves, I wondered if "they' would drop by. It's been quite awhile since I've been to a gathering like this. (The last time the aliens dropped in for a listen was in my home, and there were four of us present.) So here we were, many of us with all kind of UFO experiences, including abductions and telepathic experiences, meetings with UFO bigwigs -- quite an eclectic and "serious" gathering of people with UFO interests.

But no hint of "them" dropping by. So I wonder what causes them to stop in and listen, and why they don't other times. Is it random? Is it based on intent and energies of the people involved? Are they interested in just one, or a few, individuals, and are tracking them?

I was looking forward to this meeting, and wanted to stay for the discussion afterwards, but suddenly I was hit with an overwhelming tiredness. I literally couldn't keep my eyes open. Even now I'm exhausted, yet can't stop myself from posting this. Watching the video, I felt both interested, and agitated. I couldn't wait to get out of there. It had nothing at all to do with the company or anything else; I just felt extremely tired.

Reversals
Sparks mentioned something about feeling different levels of energy when the aliens are around. The closer they are, the stronger the electrical feeling one gets. Maybe there was something in reverse at work tonight. Something draining energy, instead of giving it.

Following this idea of reversal; I was talking with a woman who has had her own telepathic experiences regarding alien entities. I mentioned how there are so many active, professional negative debunkers out there who attack -- and worse. They are on a mission. I asked, rhetorically, why are they so damn intent on doing this? As cliche and trite as it sounds, what are they afraid of?

She wondered if it might be an outcome of abduction from a different intelligence. As many abductees -- like Jim Sparks, who speaks about his process from fear to responsibility and care for the earth (his work regarding the rain forests, etc.) maybe others are also being abducted by a different set of beings, who instill some kind of counter active compulsion in people.

Owl Synchronicity
Owls are sometimes associated with UFOs; appearing as a kind of screen image to hypnotize or lead the UFO witness into the alien realm. Sparks mentions seeing a large projected image of owls before being taken -- or "pulled" as he puts it -- many other UFO writers and experiences have mentioned this as well. During the documentary Sparks showed they showed a giant floating owl image on the wall to represent what Sparks would sometimes see.

So I come home from the meeting tonight, get on-line, click on my home page which is the animal rescue site, click on rainforest and there it is, a large white owl staring right at me; the same kind of owl that Sparks showed; big and white. (owl shown here is not owl shown in video.)

PULLED
Sparks refers to being pulled, meaning, taken. He describes the literal pulling feeling on his legs, this after first hearing roaring, rushing sounds and energy swirling upwards from his solar plexus, the rushing roaring sounds becoming louder and louder, and then the pulling. I've had this same sensation many times; the last two being particularly interesting, having its own distinct paranormal vibe. My Utterly Completely Wondrous New Age OOBE

Stories
going around and around with all this stuff, all this UFO alien experiencer abductee stuff, one eventually reaches one of two conclusions. One, as far out, far fetched, even downright mad as it sounds, you begin to realize there's a lot of consistency out there, a lot of people out there telling their stories. So it's probably true, in some way. . . Aliens are here, get over it. The second conclusion is, we're all mentally ill or liars.

I've had my share of experience, as have family members, as have many people I've discussed this with, and there are consistencies of experience that are downright eerie. In other words, maybe we should be taking these things literally and at face value.

Yes, But . . .
But, I'm not ready to go there yet. Memories of abductions and other UFO high strangeness could be infinitely messed with, it seems, by aliens, so how do we know the experience we remember is the one that really happened?

That's a moot point though, because, even if that's true, the fact is: we are still left with very weird experiences. It doesn't explain a thing. Quibbling about the thin layers of differences, similarities and downright impossibility of such events doesn't change the fact they're happening.