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From: Rich Thomson <rthomson@ptc.com> Date: Fri, 11 Jul 1997 13:47:35 -0800 Subject: Roswell 50th Trip Report |
Thursday July 3rd:
A friend of mine and I pile into my Explorer to head out on the
highway to Roswell. It takes us 10 hours to drive to Albuquerque,
where we stay with a friend of mine after having a wonderful
meal at Los Cuates just off Lomas Blvd. The margheritas are tasty,
the beer is cold and the food is excellent.
Friday, July 4th:
The Crowds?
After resting up wonderfully, we begin the trek from Albuquerque
to Roswell. We take the I-25 down to San Antonio and head east
over US 70, the two-lane highway through Lincoln National Forest.
On the way into Roswell we pass a white van with NV plates. Did
the government disinformation agent give up his quest to seed
fear, uncertainty and doubt early? We press on.
We arrive in Roswell around 3:30 pm. We are surprised by the
distinct lack of crowds. Estimates reported in the press said
"50,000 to 100,000 people" would be attending. We were skeptical
of those estimates considering we could drive around and find
parking places close to major attractions without difficulty. A
survey of license plates consisted of (most common first): New
Mexico, Texas, Arizona, Nevada*, Utah*, California*, Maryland* (*
- only one sighted). I was getting the distinct impression that
the attendence numbers were a little bloated.
About 4pm we wander over into the Starchild shop to do some
mandatory souvenir buying. I get a couple T-shirts (Kokopelli
the Native American flute player as an alien motif, and a 50th
anniversary Roswell shirt) while my friend loads up on his bundle
of goodies.
Camping in a Lake
Around 5pm we wander over to the Museum to find out they closed
EXACTLY at 5pm -- this turned out to be the only thing in Roswell
that operated on-time. So, having been foiled in our attempts to
check out the UFO museum we proceeded to cruise around town to see
what sort of accomodations we could find for the night. Although
a number of hotels on the way into town didn't have their "no
vacancy" signs lit as we entered, they were all illuminated as
we drove back out attempting to secure a cheap hotel room. Foiled
in our plans for a hotel room, we headed out to the fairgrounds
and secured a tent-site.
Our choice of a tent-site proved to be a little disasterous.
Campers adjacent to ours told us how it had rained the night
before, but we didn't think there was much chance of it raining
again in Roswell that evening. Luck wasn't on our side, however!
Storm clouds began brewing and the rain started to drizzle down;
the winds were picking up too. It was already dark and hard to
tell the severity of the storm until it hit us full swing. The
rain pelted down so hard that it seemed to punch through the rain
fly of our tent and began getting inside. The winds and lightning
were pretty fierce, making me think of the lightning storm that
sent rancher Mac Brazel out the following day to check the
windmills for damage that led him to the "debris field".
After about half an hour of pouring rain, we found our tent
no longer resting on a campsite, but instead resting in the middle
of a temporary lake, about 1-2" in depth. Unfortunately the
nearby areas were draining into the road, which in turn drained to
where our tent was located! We relocated our slightly soggy
sleeping bags and soaked tent to underneath the covered livestock
area in the fairgrounds. This allowed us to dry off our gear and
get some shuteye.
Saturday, July 5th:
The Parade
After a breakfast at the Fairgrounds' "chuck wagon", we head into
town to check out the loonies. We arrive in town just in time for
the "parade". Well, at least they told us it would be a parade.
In fact, it turns out to be a lame assemblage of various "alien"
floats, one of which is nothing more than a man pushing his child
in a baby stroller while he wears a Blue Oyster Cult concert
T-shirt. This "parade" was a disappointment, especially
considering that we waited an hour and a half for it to start and
crowd control was so poor that the audience for all intents and
purposes _WAS_ the parade.
While waiting for the parade to begin, we talked with a camera
crew at the event for ABC network news. From their observations,
the majority of the visitors to Roswell were locals from
Albuquerque and only a few had travelled any significant distance
from out of state to attend the convention.
The Vendors
Oh well, on to the civic center to check out the various wares
being hawked by the vendors. Now here is where I made an
interesting observation about the "UFO believers" -- they aren't
interested in the memorabilia and trinkets that go along with
genuine space travel of the human variety. They aren't even that
interested in Star Trek memorabilia and trinkets. They have more
interest in "psychic readings" and other quasi-mystical New Age
things than anything bearing a resemblance to genuine science or
technology. Although Phil Corso's book seem to occupy a niche
on every table at the center, Kevin Randle's book about the
events in Roswell was conspicuously absent from every vendor's
table. Having read Randle's book, which I found to be a fairly
skeptical assemblage of the various eyewitness testimonies and
related government documents, and having read reviews of Corso's
book (pretty much describing it as a sham), this was a little
disconcerting. The attendees seem more intent on focusing on
the wilder versions of UFO lore rather than the careful,
meticulous examination of fact and documented evidence. I made a
feeble attempt to find the recent fictional Area 51 book mentioned
on this list, but noone had it in stock for me to thumb through.
There were no autographed photographs of astronauts, no models
of the space shuttle (or even the starship Enterprise), no
pictures of galaxies, or other astronomical phenomena. Instead
there was an endless array of "grey" merchandise -- jewelry,
posters, dolls, and so on -- as well as psychic readings by a
woman who claims that her unborn twin sister was abducted from the
womb and that anodized aluminum plates somehow turn a martini into
water in about 3 minutes.
The UFO Museum
From the exhibit hall we moved onto the main UFO museum in
Roswell. This is the museum located near the center of town on
Main St. with free admission. We toured through the museum and I
found it interesting that this portrayal of events laid out all
the eyewitness testimony as well as the government's version of
the story side-by-side. This is a fairer portrayal of events and
allows the audience to draw their own conclusions. Naturally the
recent report of the test dummies and so on from the "Case Closed"
report was also represented. The museum's commentary didn't go so
far as to state that the Air Force was lying, but it did cast
doubt on the most recent explanation. The underlying tone was
essentially still of the "you decide" variety, however. In
constrast to the vendors and attendees who were willing to believe
anything they were told, this was refreshing.
As I neared the end of the exhibit, they had a section on crop
circles and the ancient stone carvings of the Incas that could be
interepreted to be a diagram of an astronaut inside a control
capsule (i.e. "Chariots of the Gods"). I found this a bit of a
stretch (many crop circles have been admitted to have been created
by humans and the prehistory of central and south america is so
murky that no conclusive findings can be made on the origins of
the stone carving), but after that there was a refreshing few
stalls that focused on hard science -- results of tests that
showed the purported "crash fragments" were more likely examples
of a little known ancient Japanese jewelry making process as well
as several posters of the Milky Way and so on.
On my way out (we were forced to exit via the gift shop; now I
know why the museum itself was free :), I noticed that this museum
was the only place so far I'd seen selling Randle's updated book.
They also had a variety of genuine space merchandise for sale (I
bought a nice poster of the Solar System), although most of the
merchandise naturally focused on UFOs.
Budd Hopkins
After our little tour through the museum, we waited to hear Budd
Hopkins talk at 3pm. (My friend had an interest in alien
abductions and came to Roswell with the intent of getting an
abductee interviewed on tape.) We didn't pay to hear Budd;
apparently several speakers from the UFO convention were also
speaking in the museum for free, so we sat in on one of these free
talks.
Budd Hopkins is an alien abduction researcher (see the UFOmind
web site for details). First he talked about the UFO phenomenon
in general. He said he had been asked many times about why the
government doesn't reveal what it knows about UFOs if it is
keeping a secret? He said he believes that the government simply
can't admit to knowing anything because they are impotent to do
anything about the knowledge they would be admitting. In other
words, the President isn't going to say "Yes, we know all about
these aliens that have been landing since at least 1947, but
we're powerless to do anything about it, or keep them from
abducting our citizens."
This seems plausible to me (if you accept the preconditions that
the government knows something and is attempting to conceal it),
if only for the reasons that politicians think it is within their
power to do something about anything, regardless how rediculous
(the legislature in Utah passed a law forbidding the Great Salt
Lake to rise above a certain level, for instance).
He then went on to talk some about the abduction phenomenon and
the psychology of it. He introduced his webmaster, John Velez,
who told us they had a web site. I thought it rather silly to
mention that you have a web site, but not mention the URL. It is
linked on the UFOmind web page for Hopkins, so you can find it
there. Sadly, there was no information there about abductions at
all, just a bunch of dancing baloney (animated graphics and
various bits of flashey hoo-haa that deliver no content). Hopkins
claims to have a large photographic library of the physical
scars left behind from abductions. Having this photographic
library on-line would be more important to boosting his
credibility than all the dancing baloney he has on his web site.
John Velez is apparently an abductee himself and contacted Hopkins
to find out what Hopkins could tell him about his experiences and
possibly find some answers to his questions. At this point, I
remember the floor being opened up for questions from the
audience.
Someone from the audience asked how widespread Hopkins believed
the abduction experience to be. Hopkins said that he delivered a
survey to about 500 people, which was seeded with 5 questions
about common abduction experiences amongst a number of other
questions about occult matters (have you ever seen a ghost, etc.).
There was also one "loony filter" question in which Hopkins made
up a word and asked people if that word meant anything to them.
(If they answered "yes", they were removed from the survey sample.)
The results from this survey indicated that about 2% of the sample
base reported experiences consistent with the prototypical
abduction experience. That is not to say that those 2% were
abductees, merely that they reported phenomenon consistent with
the abductee experiences Hopkins has studied.
Next came a question about the Nova episode on alien abductions.
Hopkins and Velez (both were in the episode) made it clear that
they believed Nova to be on a "debunking mission" rather than an
objective assessment of the phenomena. I saw the episode in
question and came to that conclusion myself. Nova seemed
desperate to reach any conclusion other than allowing for even the
possibility of an unknown phenomenon (UFOs or not). Velez even
stated that he offered to have them conduct psychological profiles
and examinations of him to rule out psychosis as a possible
explanation (they didn't do this). So, it seems that the Nova
program made up their minds what the phenomena was before they
"investigated".
Back to Albuquerque
We left Roswell that afternoon around 5:30pm to head back to
Albuquerque to stay the night once more with my friend before
heading back to Salt Lake. Things were getting pretty dull at
that point since we weren't considering paying any money to hear
the speakers.
Summary
UFO Encounter '97 was indeed a loon fest. The highlights of the
convention for me were seeing the other UFO museum and just
checking out the general crowd. After having seen the crowds of
"believers" I can now understand why so few people are willing to
go on record as saying they believe in UFOs, extraterrestrials,
alien abduction, or anything else remotely resembling the belief
systems of the attendees I saw. However, it was mildly
entertaining; the parade was a disappointment and I was a little
bummed I didn't get to see our Fearless Leader once again (i.e. GC
:). Similar to what Glenn has said, for me it was mostly a
"checklist" item. Now that I've been to a UFO convention I know
that I don't ever need to attend another one in my life. :)
--
``Between stimulus and response is the will to choose.'' -- Steven Covey
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
3D Paint: The Power to Create in 3D; Rich Thomson
email me for more info rthomson@ptc.com
Index: Roswell Crash 50th Anniversary Celebration - July 1997
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