Bell Clown

The name "Bell" is one that often is found in twilight language material. Add in a clown, and this is worthy of our attention. 

There is news today from Bell, California.

An activist who often criticizes government officials while wearing a clown suit could get life in prison for allegedly threatening the Bell city clerk, reports KABC and the Los Angeles Times. 

Edwin Thomas Snell is accused of making threats at a recent Bell City Council meeting. Because he has two previous felony convictions, a judge could give the so-called "Clown-suit Activist" life in prison under California's "three-strikes" law.

Sheriff's spokesman Steve Whitmore said a Bell City Council member, whom he did not name, said Snell made threats directed at a staff member during a recent council meeting.

Prosecutors said the threat was directed at Bell city clerk Rebecca Valdez.

A spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney's office said Snell would be arraigned on the criminal threats charge this week in Superior Court in Downey. The case against Snell, who has two previous felony convictions, was filed as a third-strike case that could potentially bring life in prison.

But Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for D.A. Steve Cooley, said on October 20th that under the district attorney's policy, which sets a high bar for any case that could bring a life sentence, the case will probably be handled as though this were Snell's second strike. She said the charge grew out of a threat related to a public records act request.

Snell, known as the "Clown-suit Activist" because he wears the costume to government meetings across the state, often disparages public officials during public comment periods.

But authorities said they there was little humor in his alleged run-in in Bell, which has been rocked by scandals over high salaries and alleged corruption.

"Clown suit or no clown suit, some things aren't funny," Whitmore said.

Snell is well-known for his governmental harassment appearances in California. For example, Edwin Thomas Snell, 63, of Apple Valley, is shown at top in 2009, in clown regalia, with a Bill Postmus mask, complete with crack pipe, prior to addressing the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors in San Bernardino. He was photographed during the Board's special meeting on January 21, 2009, to discuss options for removing Bill Postmus from the Assessor's Office. (Gabriel Luis Acosta / The Sun Staff Photographer)

Giant Butterfly-Mothman Link?

 
Frank Frazetta's Mothman.  


Yes, I am going to be so bold as to predict that an earthquake, large enough for people to feel, is going to hit Los Angeles very soon. You decide what "very soon" means. This weekend, this coming month, in the next, well, thirteen months? Everything is relative, but something big seems to be in the future of the area. 

 

“The Curse Continues” © Charles Berlin, drawn exclusively for Loren Coleman.  

All the indicators are there: Mothman-like sightings, UFO encounters, swarms of Gulf of California quakes, animal attacks (such as the mountain goat killing of the hiker), pet disappearances, and moody people (like a mother stabbing twins). I would not doubt that car chases are on the increase too.  

We certainly know from research that changes in animal behavior and the appearance of earthquake lights are predictors of earthquakes. Could there be more bizarre precusors? You name it and SoCal seems to be generating lots of strange indications of the big one shaking soon. Does Mother Earth foreshadow her events so overtly and covertly? Perhaps.  

Let's look of some of the hints.  

Grant Lawrence has reported in recent days of the sighting of what naturally sounds like a Mothman to me. In his blog entitled "'The Giant Butterfly' Returns to Los Angeles: Witness Describes Amazing UFO Experience," Lawrence notes that a Los Angeles County resident "had an amazing sighting of a giant creature that flew over his home," which was described as "having an appearance of a 'giant butterfly.'"  

The eyewitness, Tim, experienced this incident in Montrose, California, Los Angeles County, just north of the Glendale/Burbank area, between 2:30 and 3:00 pm on October 15, 2010, which was a partly cloudy-partly sunny day. Looking in his backyard, Tim noticed above the tree line, coming from his right, a sizable object that was moving at a steady, moderate pace. It was not soaring fast, but just passing from right to left in the sky. Tim told Lawrence:

It didn't take long to realize that this object was something quite unique. It is hard to deduce the distance that this object had been out in the sky but it was too large to have been a regular bird and did not look like an airplane or anything mechanical. The reason why it was so odd is that although seeing this from my angle looking up at it, I could not make out any real definition but I did see what looked like wings above this mass that flapped like the wings of a butterfly.

It looked like what a gigantic butterfly would appear to be at a great distance in the sky. It was not streamlined or had wings open like a bird soaring. This is what really knocked me over. As it kept passing over I looked at this object that I then considered to be some kind of very large 'bird' because of the 'wings' that I saw flapping but in the motion that a butterfly would flap its wings. So in my mind my first thought was a huge 'bird' because of the many sightings of enormous 'birds' and the thought of a gigantic butterfly was to me, outlandish.

Lastly, I do remember some 'color' in this mass and to the best of my memory, shades of red-orange, possibly reddish-yellow but I did see a hint of color in it. It passed and it was gone. It flew like it was in no rush at all. I went around the building to see if I could see more of it but couldn't. I could not see any real definition like a head or tail but the 'butterfly' type wings and motion were standout in my memory.

Grant Lawrence remarkably makes the connection between this new LA-area sighting and a rather dramatic account that is part of February 24-25, 1942's infamous "Battle of Los Angeles." 

 

Los Angeles Times, February 26, 1942.  

As Lawrence points out, one of the objects reported in the early morning hours of February 25, 1942, looked like a "giant butterfly," a slow moving object, bigger than a Zeppelin that traveled from Santa Monica to Long Beach.  

A total blackout of LA occurred during the 1942 scare. At 3:16 a.m. the 37th Coast Artillery Brigade began firing 12.8-pound anti-aircraft shells into the air at "reported" aircraft; over 1,400 shells would eventually be fired. Three people on the ground were killed by the shells and three people died from heart attacks due to all of the excitement and stress of the "air raid."  

The Reno Evening Gazette, dated February 26, 1942, noted the following: "Still others who watched the spectacle, if it can be called that, sighted no planes in the glare of the army's searchlights. A number, however, reported seeing 'something that looked like a giant butterfly.'"  

Months later, a 6.6 magnitude earthquake hit southern California on October 21, 1942 at 9:30 am, PWT. The Fish Creek Mountains earthquake occurred on the southern section of the Coyote Creek fault, the southernmost section of the San Jacinto fault zone, in a fairly remote area of southern California. Thus, it caused relatively little damage for its size. However, it was felt over a large area of southern California, as well as parts of Baja California and Arizona. The quake caused rockslides in Carrizo Gorge, blocking Highway 80 and the San Diego & Arizona Eastern Railroad. It caused minor damage in Brawley, El Centro, Westmoreland, and even San Diego, where at least 40 aftershocks were reported felt in the following eight days. Hardest hit was Jacumba Hot Springs, fairly close to the epicenter.  

During late October 2010, what the Los Angeles area has been experiencing are low-level earthquakes. A couple weeks ago, Santa Monica had one, and in recent days, a swarm of quakes has centered in the Gulf of California. Furthermore, predictions of the "Big One" are being pushed up, according to the local media there. 

I

Illustration by Thom Marsh. 

Is one person's Mothman another person's Giant Butterfly? Is all the activity a clue to big news around the corner? Can "Giant Butterfly" sightings serve as banshee incidents, as has been assumed with the Mothman encounter history? Perhaps only time will tell.  

Thanks to Wil, Chris, and Patrick for info shared.

Geometric Shootings

Ponder this. An individual or individuals took aim at objects related to two geometric shapes ~ a triangle and a pentagon, on Sunday and Tuesday of this week.

Shots were fired at the Pentagon early Tuesday (October 19, 2010), striking a window of the building.  Pentagon police spokesman Chris Layman said it's not known who fired the shots. Pentagon police officers heard at least five shots around 4:50 a.m., Layman added.

According to another Pentagon Force Protection Agency spokesman, Terry Sutherland, two bullets hit the Pentagon on the south side of the building -- one striking a window and the other hitting the building itself. This is an unoccupied part of the building that is being renovated. Sutherland said a fragment of one of the bullets is lodged in the window. The windows, which are bullet-proof, did not shatter.

There was a partial lockdown of the Pentagon's south parking lot and south entrance for about an hour after the shooting, and authorities briefly shut down a portion of Interstate 395 going out of the capital -- which runs along the south side of the Pentagon -- to conduct a search in the investigation.

Major Chris Perrine, a public affairs officer for Defense Press Operations, said other temporary road closures may be necessary as police conduct their investigation.

Tuesday's shooting follows a similar incident Sunday, October 17, 2010, at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Triangle, Virginia, near the entrance of Marine Corps Base Quantico. A police statement Monday said "an unknown shooter or shooters fired shots at the National Museum of the Marine Corps, causing minor damage to the building's windowed roof and a steel wall at the base of the structure.

"The museum was unoccupied at the time of the incident, and no one was injured," the statement said.

Military police and the Prince William County Police Department are investigating that incident.

The Honeybee Killer

Law enforcement personnel are searching for an unkempt gunman who asked about honeybees before shooting three men, one of them fatally, in rural areas of Illinois and Indiana. This is being reported by the Associated Press and other news sources on October 7, 2010.

The (according to the media) random shootings began around 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, October 5, 2010, at a worksite in Illinois and ended about an hour later across the state line on an Indiana farm.



The gunman fatally shot 45-year-old Rolando Alonso and wounded 19-year-old Joshua Garza near Beecher (Will County), Illinois. The men were working at a fire-damaged home. A third worker escaped into a cornfield.

Beecher is situated in the center of Washington Township; Beecher was originally named Washington Center. The town of Beecher was named after Henry Ward Beecher (June 24, 1813 – March 8, 1887). Henry was the seventh of 13 siblings, some of whom were famous in their own right: Harriet Beecher Stowe who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin; noted educator Catharine Beecher; activists Charles Beecher and Isabella Beecher Hooker. In addition Henry was the uncle of Edgar Beecher Bronson. Henry was famous as an advocate of Women's suffrage, temperance and Darwin's theory of evolution, as well as a foe of slavery and bigotry of all kinds (religious, racial and social).

Police believe the same man showed up 15 miles southeast, in Indiana, after the Illinois incident and shot a 64-year-old farmer. The honeybee shooter wounded farmer Keith Dahl near Lowell (Lake County), Indiana. The suspect, described as heavyset, unkempt and mentally unbalanced, is thought to be driving a 1990s Chevrolet pickup with a loud muffler.

Will County Sheriff's Department spokesman Pat Barry said the man tried to talk to all three victims about bees.

Jack The Ripper: September 29, 1888

THE NEMESIS OF NEGLECT.
There floats a phantom on the slum's foul air,
Shaping, to eyes which have the gift of seeing,
Into the Spectre of that loathly lair.
Face it--for vain is fleeing!
Red-handed, ruthless, furtive, unerect,
'Tis murderous Crime--the Nemesis of Neglect!
Jack the Ripper cartoon was published September 29, 1888 in Punch, or The London Charivai, John Tenniel.

The attempted self-immolation by David Parker, 24, at Longfellow Square, Portland, Maine, a block from the Lafayette Hotel, occurred on September 29, 2010. As I have pointed out in recent postings here, the statue dedicated to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was unveiled on September 29, 1888.

This date is also linked to the infamous Jack the Ripper murders. The same day that Punch published a caricature of Jack the Ripper, the Ripper decided to strike again. The illustrator of that cartoon would be none other than Sir John Tenniel (28 February 1820 – 25 February 1914), who is remembered today for his illustrations for Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass.



While recorded to have been found dead on September 30th, 1888, the two victims, Stride and Eddowes, would have been killed on the evening of September 29, 1988. Elizabeth Stride was found with her throat cut in Berner Street, St George’s, London, the next morning, on September 30th, as was Mrs May (sic) Eddowes, who had been murdered and mutilated in Mitre Square, Aldgate, London. The Freemasonry symbolism of these 1888 serial killings, emphasized especially by the location of Mitre Square, have been discussed at length in the Ripper literature.

Talk about going through the looking glass.

Tragedy in Longfellow Square

Longfellow Square on February 26, 1981.


Boston Daily Globe headlines of September 29, 1888 events at Longfellow Square.

The Portland Daily Sun has followed up with an intriguing editorial look at recent events...based upon research you first saw here....

Tragedy in Longfellow Square spurs questions, eerie links by Curtis Robinson, Editor of the Portland Daily Sun.

Even in a somewhat experience-hardened newsroom, Wednesday's news that somebody had set themselves on fire at Longfellow Square was a shock.

The man, who was identified yesterday as David Parker, 24, of Portland, reportedly soaked himself with gasoline in his nearby apartment, walked over to the Longfellow statue and ignited the fuel. He has reportedly been transferred to a Boston burn center.

But the ripple effect from the event continues, with police urging witnesses to seek help if they need it. One local property manager noted that witnessing the man ablaze "is going to stay with me for awhile."

In the midst of the community conversation, some odd facts were emerging. They have, frankly, nothing to do with the event except of course ... well, judge for yourself.

Now, regular readers know that Loren Coleman is no stranger to our pages or out-of-ordinary. He's been in this and other papers and newscasts as owner of the International Cryptozoology Museum on Congress Street — near Longfellow Square.

But Coleman is also a suicide prevention researcher and author, and his most recent book includes a section about "suicide self-immolation." The book, "The Copycat Effect," was published in 2004 by Simon and Schuster.

He noted a couple of oddities:

(1) The statue of American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow in Longfellow Square, Coleman noted, was unveiled on the same date as the event (Sept. 29, 1888) as confirmed by a bibliography entry of the Maine Historical Society (" Exercises at the unveiling of the statue of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Portland, Maine, Sept 29, 1888.").

That means Wednesday was the 122nd anniversary of the statue's unveiling.

(2) Longfellow's second wife, Frances Appleton, died in 1861 after sustaining burns from her dress catching fire.
Random enough by any measure, but in the wake of a freak-out, it's also stuff that takes on eerie near-meaning.

Perhaps more to the point is the subtitle to the Coleman book: "How the Media and Popular Culture Trigger the Mayhem in Tomorrow's Headlines."

Coleman makes the oft-noted point that people seem to imitate what they've seen. He also takes some aim at media for the "if it bleeds, it leads."

Certainly there is ample evidence that suicide can bring suicide, and some of the better research is collected in the famous best-seller by Malcolm Gladwell, "The Tipping Point." So should we be concerned that the presumed suicide attempt at Longfellow Square, being so dramatic, might trigger copy-cat attempts?

By extension, does that mean we should not report on such things?

It's not acceptable in today's media environment, and casual media observers might doubt the industry's ability to make such efforts. If you're among those who think that sensationalism will always win, then two examples quickly prove you wrong.

Professional news organizations almost never disclose the name of a sexual assault victim, and we routinely do not publish the names of minors charged with crimes. So universal is this tradition that many people assume there are laws requiring the omissions — there are not.

News folks are not in the same league as police officers and other first responders when it comes to handling such things. Myself, I was once a coroner's photographer (well, a backup for when the real photographer was not available), and that was gory duty. But still, the despair one associates with setting yourself on fire is unsettling.

Hopefully, this is not going to create copycat activity. And hey, maybe even this column is "wrong."

So, what do you think? And if you e-mail an answer, please indicate if you want it published.

And, yes, there is irony in that request.

Curtis Robinson is editor of The Portland Daily Sun. Contact him at curtis@portlanddailysun.me

Self-Immolation in Maine [Identity Update]

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow statue, September 29, 2010.

+++
Thursday, September 30th update: Authorities identified the man as David Parker, 24.
+++

BREAKING NEWS: On Wednesday, September 29, 2010, in Portland, Maine, at Longfellow Square, according to eyewitness accounts, a lone man, covered in gasoline, set himself on fire beside the statue of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. The individual ran screaming out into the intersection of State Street and Congress Street and then fell to the ground. Emergency crews and police rushed to the scene as immolation sourced smoke filled the air.


Law enforcement officers are investigating, at this time. Eyewitnesses described to me that the individual was in his early 20s, had a small beard or goatee, and was Caucasian. One person who talked to him said the person repeated over and over, "Just let me die."

Several strange things of interest to twilight language students are developing with this event. Longfellow's wife died in a fire. And the the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow statue was unveiled in Portland, Maine, on September 29, 1888, according to a confirmation article published in the Boston Daily Globe. (Thanks to Robert Schneck, for the heads up on these bits of info.)




The aftermath. Police interview eyewitnesses. Loren Coleman Photo.

The Portland Press Herald has this information:

Bystander describes trying to save man on fire
By David Hench
Staff Writer

PORTLAND - A man set himself on fire in Longfellow Square shortly after noon today.

Police say the man apparently doused himself with gasoline in his second-floor apartment at 675 Congress St. He then walked across the street to the statue of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and ignited himself with a lighter, police said.

Robert Michael Rodriguez was one of the first on the scene, after someone came rushing into a nearby store, yelling for someone to call 911.

"I threw myself on the flames," Rodriguez said, describing flames that were shoulder high, even as the young man lay on the ground. As he and two other bystanders struggled to extinguish the flames, Rodriguez said he held the man's hand. "I wanted him to have hope."

The man was speaking clearly as rescue workers arrived to treat him, but fire officials said serious burns can gradually compromise a person's system. His burns were serious, but police had no immediate information about his condition.

Rescue crews responded. He was taken to Maine Medical Center and his condition is unknown.

By the time the fire was extinguished the man had burns covering most of his body from the chin down, police said.

Police said it appears to be a suicide attempt. There was no political statement associated with the self-immolation.

The Portland Daily Sun has this update, for Thursday, September 30, 2010.

Robert Schneck passes on this significant historical footnote along: ‎

On July 9, 1861, tragedy again tormented Longfellow when his wife died in a fire at age 44. She and her two youngest daughters, aged five and seven, were in the library. While melting wax to seal envelopes containing cuttings of her children’s hair, Fanny dropped a match onto her dress. Longfellow tried to rescue his wife by smothering the flames with a rug only to receive terrible burns on his hands and face. Since shaving became difficult due to scars from the fire, Longfellow grew a beard. Deeply depressed, Longfellow immersed himself in translating Dante into English and returned to Europe.

Emergency vehicles and traffic swarm around the scene, just before 12:30pm. Michelle Souliere Photo.

UNOOSA Name Game: It's A Hoax

UPDATE: IT'S A HOAX!!

Mazland Othman Not Earth's Alien Ambassador, After All


Astrophysicist Denies She is UN's New 'Alien Ambassador'

(Thanks for the heads up from SMiles Lewis for fakery revision.)

Earlier details:

Someone linked this news at The Daily Grail:

The United Nations was set today to appoint an obscure Malaysian astrophysicist to act as Earth s first contact for any aliens that may come visiting.
Mazlan Othman, the head of the UN's little-known Office for Outer Space Affairs (Unoosa), is to describe her potential new role next week at a scientific conference at the Royal Society’s Kavli conference centre in Buckinghamshire.
She is scheduled to tell delegates that the recent discovery of hundreds of planets around other stars has made the detection of extraterrestrial life more likely than ever before - and that means the UN must be ready to coordinate humanity’s response to any “first contact”.
During a talk Othman gave recently to fellow scientists, she said: “The continued search for extraterrestrial communication, by several entities, sustains the hope that some day humankind will receive signals from extraterrestrials.
"When we do, we should have in place a coordinated response that takes into account all the sensitivities related to the subject. The UN is a ready-made mechanism for such coordination.”
Professor Richard Crowther, an expert in space law and governance at the UK Space Agency and who leads British delegations to the UN on such matters, said: “Othman is absolutely the nearest thing we have to a ‘take me to your leader’ person.”
However, he thinks humanity’s first encounter with any intelligent aliens is more likely to be via radio or light signals from a distant planet than by beings arriving on Earth. And, he suggests, even if we do encounter aliens in the flesh, they are more likely to be microbes than anything intelligent.

Mazlan Othman.

M. Othman.

In some mysterious astral plane, I'm sure John Keel must be laughing his ass off right now :)

Saludos,

Miguel (red pill junkie)

NFL Suicides: 1942-2010

Kenny McKinley's suicide is the latest such event among NFL players. Here is a list of some famed, known American football players who have died by suicide.



2010

Kenny McKinley, a Denver Broncos (NFL) wide receiver who was out for the season recovering from knee surgery, was found dead of an apparent suicide September 20, 2010, Monday afternoon at his home, according to the Denver Post. The body of McKinley, 23, was found by authorities in a second-floor bedroom with what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound at around 3:25 p.m. MDT. A second-year player out of South Carolina, he had undergone season-ending surgery for a recurring knee injury in August 2010.

"Although the death of McKinley appears to be the result of a self inflicted gunshot, the investigation into this matter, conducted by the Arapahoe County Sheriff's Office and the Arapahoe County Coroner's Office, is on-going, " Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson told Denver's Fox 31 News.

The death is the third for the Broncos since 2007. Cornerback Darrent Williams died in a drive-by shooting and running back Damien Nash collapsed at a charity basketball game in 2007. The Denver Post reports that current and former Broncos were attending a fundraiser for the Boys & Girls Club of Metro Denver, site of the Darrent Williams Memorial Teen Center, when they learned of McKinley's death.

Earlier football suicides

1942

Lyle Randolph "Al" Bigbee (August 22, 1893 in Waterloo, Oregon - August 5, 1942 in Portland, Oregon) was a former outfielder and pitcher for the Philadelphia Athletics and Pittsburgh Pirates and halfback for the Milwaukee Badgers. Bigbee died by suicide due to a self-inflicted shooting.

1961

John Henry Mohardt (January 21, 1898 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – November 24, 1961 in La Jolla, California) was a former professional football and baseball player. Mohardt played in the National Football League for the Chicago Cardinals, Racine Legion, and Chicago Bears from 1922 - 1925. One of Mohardt's teammates with the 1925 Bears was pro football Hall of Famer Red Grange. Mohardt also played in five major league baseball games in 1922 with the Detroit Tigers. Mohardt later earned an M.D. and served in the United States Armed Forces during World War II. He died by suicide in La Jolla, California, on November 24, 1961, the day after Thanksgiving that year. (The football games and scores that Thanksgiving were Green Bay Packers 17, Detroit Lions 9 and New York Titans 21, Buffalo Bills 14.)

1980

James Efflo Tyrer (February 25, 1939–September 15, 1980) was an American football offensive tackle in the American Football League for the Dallas Texans/Kansas City Chiefs. He also played in the National Football League for the Chiefs and the Washington Redskins. After football, a series of apparent business misfortunes culminated on September 15, 1980 when Tyrer, the father of four, shot his wife and then died by suicide by turning the gun on himself.

1982

Benjamin "Benny" Friedman (March 18, 1905 – November 24, 1982) was an American football quarterback who played for the University of Michigan (1924-1926), Cleveland Bulldogs (1927), Detroit Wolverines (1928), New York Giants (1929-1931), and Brooklyn Dodgers (1932-1934). Suffering from severe diabetes, Friedman died by suicide in 1982.

1987

Larry Bethea (July 21, 1956 – April 24, 1987) was an American football defensive lineman who played six years in the National Football League for the Dallas Cowboys. He later played for the Michigan Panthers, Oakland Invaders and Houston Gamblers of the United States Football League. He died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound within hours of being identified as a suspect in two armed robberies.

1992

Michael Allen "Mike" Wise (June 5, 1964 – August 21, 1992) was a professional American football defensive end in the National Football League. He played five seasons for the Los Angeles Raiders (1986-1990) and the Cleveland Browns (1991). Wise was born in Greenbrae, California. He did by suicide at his home in Davis in 1992.

1993


Jeffrey Lawrence Alm (March 31, 1968 – December 14, 1993) was an American football player who played defensive tackle for the Houston Oilers of the National Football League. According to an eyewitness, Alm and his best friend, Sean P. Lynch, had dinner at a Houston-area steakhouse on December 13, 1993. At 2:45 a.m. Central Standard Time the following day, Alm’s Cadillac lost control heading south on Intrastate 610 southbound at the 59 north exit ramp and Lynch was thrown out of the car through the passenger window to his death. Alm had been speeding and lost control of his 1993 Cadillac Eldorado on a curved exit ramp. After the crash Alm ran across the ramp and looked down an embankment towards the Southwest Freeway, discovering that his boyhood friend had been thrown to his death 30 feet below. Apparently distraught by his best friend’s death, Alm took out a pistol grip shotgun, fired two shots into the air and then shot himself in the face.

1995

Thornton Steve Stonebreaker (born October 28, 1938 in Moline, Illinois; died March 28, 1995 in Metairie, Louisiana) was a professional American football linebacker in the National Football League. He played eight seasons for the Minnesota Vikings (1962-1963), the Baltimore Colts (1964-1966), and the New Orleans Saints (1967-1968). Stonebreaker died by suicide on March 28, 1995 by inhaling carbon monoxide from a car exhaust.

2000

Lawrence Morgan "Larry" Kelley (May 30, 1915 – June 27, 2000) was an American football player born in Conneaut, Ohio. He played end, for Yale University. While at Yale he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity and Skull and Bones, and was the second winner of the Heisman Trophy in 1936, the year it was renamed in honor of John Heisman. To benefit of his nieces and nephews, Kelley sold his Heisman Trophy at an auction in December 1999 for $328,110 to the owner of The Stadium Museum, Restaurant & Bar in Garrison, New York, where it now resides. On June 27, 2000, in failing health, Kelley died of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound at his home in Hightstown. It was said to be a suicide by the Hightstown police.

2005

Terry Long (July 21, 1959–June 7, 2005) was a National Football League offensive lineman. He played from 1984–1991 for the Pittsburgh Steelers. He died in 2005 from drinking antifreeze.

2006

Andre Waters (March 10, 1962 – November 20, 2006) was an NFL defensive back who played for the Philadelphia Eagles and Arizona Cardinals from 1984 to 1995. On November 20, 2006, three days before Thanksgiving, Waters died by suicide shortly after 1 a.m. on November 20, 2006 (three days before Thanksgiving), according to the Hillsborough County (Fla.) Sheriff's Office, dying of a gunshot to the head. He was at his home in Tampa, Florida where he was found by his girlfriend. No suicide note was found. Later investigations have revealed a possible link to mild traumatic brain injury, which may have resulted in post-concussion syndrome.

2009

Shane Dronett (January 12, 1971 – January 21, 2009) was an American football defensive lineman, who played for the NFL's Denver Broncos, Detroit Lions and Atlanta Falcons between 1992 and 2002. On January 21, 2009, Dronett was found dead at his home near Atlanta, Georgia. The death was ruled a suicide by the Gwinnett County Medical Examiner's office.

McNair's 2009 Death



It will be recalled that Stephen LaTreal McNair (February 14, 1973 – July 4, 2009), born on Valentine's Day, died on Independence Day 2009, when his mistress, Sahel Kazemi, shot and killed him before turning the gun on herself. Steve McNair (nicknamed "Air McNair") was an American football quarterback who spent the majority of his NFL career with the Tennessee Titans. He retired as a Baltimore Raven in 2007.

Rapture Cult Suicide Alert: They Found 'Em

Update: The missing people were found in a park, praying.

Was this all merely media manipulation, a false alarm, or true law enforcement concern?



At her Palmdale home, Jisela Giron, a former neighbor of alleged cult leader Reyna Marisol Chicas, contemplates the religious group's fate and the well-being of the missing children. Giron attended church with Chicas and said she never noticed anything unusual about her behavior. (Allen J. Schaben, Los Angeles Times)

Law enforcement agencies on Saturday, September 18, 2010, launched a manhunt for members of a cult-like group after five adults and at least eight children were reported missing in Los Angeles. The 13 people, including one whom authorities described as a " cult-like leader," were reported missing Saturday afternoon after leaving a prayer meeting, the Los Angeles Sheriff Department said.

The group was believed to be traveling in three vehicles: a white 2004 Nissan Quest, a 1995 white Mercury Villager and a newer-model, silver Toyota Tundra, according to the California Highway Patrol, which issued an alert for them.

The missing persons also include three sisters, ages 30, 32 and 40, a 19-year-old son and eight children ages 3 to 17, according to Sheriff's Capt. Mike Parker.

Though there is no evidence they were planning to commit group suicide, an all-out search was in progress on Saturday night in the Antelope Valley area to check on their welfare, he said.

All of them were El Salvadoran immigrants, and left behind evidence they were waiting for the Rapture, or the end of the world, Parker said.

The incident began at 1:45 p.m. when two husbands went to the Lancaster sheriff's station to report that their wives were missing.

The husbands said they believed their wives had joined a cult-like group that broke off from an unidentified church in Palmdale, Los Angeles, Parker said.

One of them said he had been told by the leader, Reyna Marisol Chicas, 32, to pray over a purse that was in a Palmdale residence.

Palmdale and Antelope Valley have intriguing histories tied to high strangeness (see, for example, here and here). Daniel Fry, a contactee, attended Antelope Valley High School in Lancaster during the 1920s. Frank Zappa attended Antelope Valley High School in Lancaster, graduating in 1958. He met Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart) there, a fellow student at the time.

California's links to cults and mass suicides, especially regarding such events as Jonestown and Heaven's Gate, have made authorities in the past quite anxious to prevent repeats of those scenarios.


Jonestown.

Flashback: Bombings on 11ths

Twilight Language in the Dates

As I wrote in The Copycat Effect (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2004), the 11 in 9/11, as in September 11, 2001, has been pondered by many scholars, intelligence services, politicians, and others trying to find some meaning in the choosing of this date and others.

Is there some special significance to the number in the date?

Perhaps there is none, but some terrorist attacks and bombings seem to go beyond mere coincidence, verging into the twilight language of numbers and dates.

Does history tell us anything?

On September 11, 1922, the British mandate of Palestine began.

On September 11, 1939, Iraq and Saudi Arabia declared war on Nazi-Germany.

The origins of the Black September movement began with Arafat's clashes with Jordan, intriguingly due to hijacked planes. On September 6-12, 1970, four TWA, Swissair and BOAC planes were hijacked (the El Al one failed), destroyed, and this was directly tied to Palestine civil uprisings and the resulting suppression that was to be called Jordan's "Black September."

We must note that on September 11, 1972, the Munich Summer Olympics ended. Of course, it was at this Olympics that the "Black September" terrorists killed 11 Israeli athletes, on the 5th.

As noted in the opening of my book The Copycat Effect, September 11th was the date of a previous assault by a private plane on the White House, in 1994, although the attack is little remembered today.

Pakistani Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the alleged Al-Qaeda mastermind behind the first World Trade Center bombing, who was quoted as saying after the failed 1993 attempt that they would do it right the second time, was also the brains behind the elaborate Bojinka, translated as “the explosion.” This was a plot to place bombs on 11 American jetliners and have them all explode on the same day, over the Pacific Ocean.

Yousef carried out a test run for Bojinka by planting a bomb that detonated on Philippines Airlines Flight 434, on December 11, 1994. One tourist was killed, ten injured. Yousef called the Associated Press after this bombing, to give credit to Abu Sayyaf. His friend Khalid Sheik Mohammed would launch the deadly September 11 terrorist attacks, which were built from parts of Operation Bojinka.

Looking at the unfolding of these events, it is clear a lot of elevens are involved in Bojinka.

Furthermore, it is no joke that some plotters of Bojinka in the Philippines actually used 7/11s (convenience stores) to copy documents, communicate by faxes, and transfer funds for their operations.

We must look deeper, even into the fact that the coding was there in the choice of American Airlines Flight 11 as the first flight hijacked in the September 11, 2001 attacks. "AA" are the initials for the airlines, and "A" is the first letter of the Arabic-influenced English alphabet, thus AA = 11. Flight 11 flew into the Twin Towers (symbolically an "11") on September 11, 2001.

The New York Times article, "Twin Bombs Kill Dozens in Algiers," of December 12, 2007, discussing the Algiers bombings on the previous day, December 11th, had this to say about the choice of the 11th day of the month for the latest attack:

"The 11th has become a day of choice for major Islamic terrorist attacks, beginning with those in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, followed by one in Djerba, Tunisia, on April 11, 2002, and one in Madrid on March 11, 2004. On April 11, [2007] Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb exploded two car bombs in the capital, killing 33."

As I point out above, it did not begin with September 11, 2001. No, it began before that. The New York Times' list is too limited. Others occurred later, as well.

Any 11th of the month bombing may be related to this terrorist war. For example, on Saturday, December 11, 2004, in Colombo, Sri Lanka, a hand grenade was lobbed into the VIP section of the audience at a Bollywood concert led by Indian film star Sharukh Khan (also spelled Shahrukh Khan). Two people were killed and 11 others wounded. Khan survived and promoted her desire to appear in a future James Bonds film.

Some consideration must also be given for the timing for two significant bombings and perhaps how their explosions were timed to impact the West working in a different time zone, and thus actually taking place on the 11ths. Consider these two:

October 12, 2000 - Yemen, the USS Cole: suicide attackers rammed the US Navy ship with a small boat loaded with explosives; 17 sailors died.

October 12, 2002 - Indonesia, Bali: a car bomb in a nightclub area; 202 people died and hundreds were injured (many of the casualties were Australian tourists); this is often referred to as Australia's 9/11.

The occult meaning behind "11" is there. The number 11 is seen by some numerologists to signify "Israel."

Is Doctor Al-Zawahiri or one of his planners fond of astrology too?

It has pointed out that the 11th of every equinox and then solstice month, every 3 years is dangerous. In other words, the 11th of every third month in the year, every third year, according to this short list:
- September 11, 2001 - New York;
- March 11, 2004: - Madrid; and
- December 11, 2007 - Algiers.

However, this overlooks the many other dates involving "11" on the the more comprehensive list of incidents, as noted above.

"Eleven" is not to be ignored.

Poltergeist Girls

Coleman, Loren. "Incendiary Poltergeists, Spontaneous Human Combustion and Fire Suicide Clusters." The Anomalist, Summer 1994.

Excerpt:

Fort and Fires

At eleven I devoured all the words I could discover by Charles Fort and recalled being struck by his discussions of fires. He probably put it most concisely in the following covert preface to his examination of weird fires, as found in Wild Talents (1932):

"Because of several cases that I have noted, the subject of Fires attracted my attention. One reads hundreds of accounts of fires, and many of them are mysterious, but one's ruling thought is that the unexplained would be renderable in terms of accidents, carelessness, or arson, if one knew all the circumstances. But keep this subject in mind, and, as in every other field of phenomena, one comes upon cases that are irreconcilables"

Fort then ventures forth into the topic of fires associated with poltergeist activity. Case after case is given of multiple fires starting in a house or a series of fires following a family from dwelling to dwelling as they attempt to escape the wrath of the unseen firestarter. The parapsychologist Nandor Fodor called them "incendiary poltergeists." In his chapter appropriately entitled "The Rage that Burns the House Down," Fodor used incendiary poltergeists to illustrate his underlying theory for the cause of all poltergeist activity, namely: "The chief motive behind Poltergeist disturbances is repressed aggression in the psyche of adolescents before puberty." He's talking about "psychokinesis" (PK), of course, which means "to move by the mind."

The Poltergeist Girls

The stories Fort gathered from the end of the last century and the beginning of this one certainly supported Fodor's thoughts in this direction. Fort's incendiary poltergeists accounts are populated by families containing adopted daughters, housemaids, servant girls and teenagers. Fort called these young women collectively, the "poltergeist girls." The work of Vincent Gaddis and the late D. Scott Rogo on poltergeists, likewise, contain sets of cases filled with mostly latency-aged and adolescent females. Rogo's excellent discussion of these fiery geists in the first half of his chapter "Bizarre Poltergeists" looks at both Gaddis' and Fodor's notions of PK-induced electrical charges coming from young people on-site. Rogo notes that such PK-sparks cannot explain why normally noncomhustible objects are also consumed by the incendiary poltergeists. Nevertheless, all of these authors agree to the abnormality of incendiary poltergeist incidents.

Fire insurance, it should be noted, was a direct result of incendiary poltergeist activity. During the turn of the century, in that de-bunking, rational thinking world, the rash of incendiary poltergeists 98 cases were more often than not placed at the hands of the young women who happened to be nearby. Human arson and mischievous firesetting were to blame, we are told. But in a personal discovery unrecorded to date in the anomalist literature, I found through a search of non-Fortean fire investigation history direct links between a series of what I would have to say were fire poltergeists in wealthy New York
City homes, the attempted blaming of these fires on mostly German housemaidens, and the development in the United States of fire insurance. The insurance underwriters were called in when the fires could almost be classified as an epidemic and the domestic help explanations were found to be full of holes. The implications of such a history are worth pondering for a moment.

Selected references at the end of my article:

Fodor, N. Between Two Worlds. New York: Parker, 1964
Fort, C. The Complete Books of Charles Fort, New York: Dover, 1974 (reprints of earlier works).
Gaddis, V. Mysterious Fires and Lights. New York: David McKay, 1967.
Rogo. D. S. The Poltergeist Experience. New York: Penguin, 1979.

Jerry Smith Remembered

A guest blog by Steamshovel Press Editor Kenn Thomas:


A Final Word on Jerry Smith
By Kenn Thomas

At the ARC conference recently in Bath, England I combined the lectures I have been doing on Wilhelm Reich and the Maury Island JFK case into one, entitled “Parapolitical Origins of the Military Industrial Complex.” The real mission, however, was to present a memorial tribute to Jerry Smith, which I accomplished with commentary and about fifteen minutes of video from one of Jerry’s lectures. Jerry died of pancreatic cancer last March [2010], after diagnosis in January [2010], and he had expected to speak at this conference. As with Danny Casolaro before him, I felt as if Jerry had dribbled the ball down the court and passed it, waiting for me to make the final dunk shot. Casolaro, of course, had passed the ball on to two mutual friends of Jerry Smith, me and Jim Keith. Like a couple of Globetrotters we passed it back and forth and finished the game by creating The Octopus, a book sort of like what Casolaro would have written if he hadn’t died under suspicious circumstance.

As I explained to the attendees, I did not expect to make much of a conspiracy out of Jerry’s death. I noted that fast acting cancers often play a role in parapolitical lore—Jack Ruby died of one, as did Mae Brussell. Jerry’s books on Weather Warfare and the HAARP array have been out for a quite a while and I was unaware of any new research avenues that would bring him to danger. Nevertheless, I did receive a note suggesting that Jerry’s death had something to do with the BP oil disaster and its connection to the HAARP array.

Seemed a bit of a stretch. As gallows humor, in my last communication to Jerry Smith I noted about his recent appearance on Jesse Ventura’s conspiracy show: “Jerry! You finally get some major media exposure and now this!” I intended, in fact, to suggest that I do make a big conspiracy out of it, noting that conspiracy issues surrounding Jim Keith’s death probably added a decade to the commercial shelf life of his books. Jerry died before I could make the suggestion, but I’m certain his cynical sense of humor would have at least appreciated the suggestion.

Jerry and I did Jim Keith’s memorial together at one of the Conspiracy Cons. At the time, I don’t think Jerry was entirely convinced of any conspiracy involving the death of my old writing partner, although that seemed to change in the years that followed. My case for it then, as now, remains: Keith died of a knee injury, surgical procedures for which previously had been banned because they led to fatalities. The reason for that eventually traced to a tissue bank in Atlanta that had been supplying cartilage tissue containing a bacteria called Clostridium perfringens. Shortly thereafter, our mutual friend and publisher Ron Bonds died from Clostridium perfringens. Long ago Keith had documented that the CIA maintained stockpiles of the bacteria.

Robin Ramsay once noted things in the conspiracy world develop as the result of either cock-ups, coincidence or conspiracy. Common sense dictates that no single one of these can explain everything, and that most parapolitical events come about as a result of some combination , and sometimes shit just happens. No one interested in Jim Keith’s death had the resources to investigate and come to absolute conclusions about the cause, and of course questioning the official version was where Jim’s work began. He fell off the Burning Man stage and died of the injury days later at the hospital. I think Jerry originally took the “shit happens” approach to understanding it but changed his mind as information about what happened at the hospital began to give him suspicions. I had only the intriguing coincidences—made more intriguing by the fact that clostridium is a bacteria genus of over 100 species, and these three instances involved the same precise one.

Although grieved, Jerry had felt overshadowed by the larger-than-life Jim Keith and even once remarked that he felt relieved to be out from under its shadow. Most people were acquainted with Jerry’s work as a helper to Keith and Keith treated him as a bit of a foil personally. Jerry did come into his own after Keith had passed, writing books on weather warfare, the HAARP array and even one on the Spear of Destiny, which supposedly pierced Christ’s side and eventually wound up in the hands of Adolph Hitler. Whereas Keith’s books all dealt with broad themes of mind control and mass manipulation, and weird sociological phenoms like black helicopters and Men In Black, Jerry zeroed in on particulars, like a fanboy obsessed with comic book trivia. Keith wrote with a charm that transformed the way people think about conspiracy; Jerry controlled the detail in a way that would make an academic envious. They had a sharp contrast in style.





Some of Jerry Smith's happiest moments were at Burning Man in Nevada, where he had years ago lost his best friend Jim Keith (shown below), in a strange "accident" in 1999. Above are photos of Smith at Burning Man in 2009 and earlier.



I let the ARC conventioners enjoy a good fifteen minutes of Jerry’s DVD on HAARP and noted that recent news reports recently have been connecting the array to things like the honey bee hive collapses and the recent heatwave in Moscow, and ended with a call for what turned out to be a long and loud round of applause for the dear departed. Then I returned to the business of outlining the parapolitical origins of the military industrial complex. When Keith and Bonds died, I used to tell interviewers “you’re drinking with number three”, as Jim Morrison said after Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix died. But I’m still here and they’d be drinking with number four now, so the quote loses its eerie quality. Shit happens, and I’m sorry to see Jerry go but I do not see a mysterious pattern of conspiracy here as I did with Big Jim Keith. It was, in fact, quite a counter-conspiracy coup that death didn’t stop Jerry Smith from making that last address to the ARC conference.

Wendelle Stevens Dies

Wendelle Stevens as a Major at the Wright Air Development Center in Dayton, Ohio.




Retired USAF Lt. Col. and UFO researcher Wendelle C. Stevens, author of such books as 1986's UFO Crash at Aztec: A Well-Kept Secret, has died at the age of 86. He passed away on Tuesday, September 7, 2010, at 4:21 p.m. of a massive heart attack. Another source says he died at 4:44 pm in his home in Tucson, Arizona of respiratory failure. He is dead, which is for certain.

Wendell C. Stevens was born January 18, 1923, in Round Prairie, Minnesota.

After enlisting in 1941 n the US Army and he was transferred to the Air Corps in 1942. He was accepted for Aviation Cadet Training the same year and graduated from Fighter Pilot Advanced Training in 1943 as a very young 2nd lieutenant in the then U.S. Army Air Corps. After that he attended the first Air Corps Flight Test Pilot School at Kelly Field where he learned to fly all the aircraft in the Air Corps inventory at that time, and a few U.S. Navy Aircraft. He was assigned as the first commander of the First ARU Floating, an aircraft, maintenance squadron, in the Pacific theater. This continued until the war ended in 1945.

After the war ended Stevens was reassigned back to the Flight Test Division. He continued in this capacity until the summer of 1947 when he was rotated to Alaska, where he supervised a special highly classified team of technical specialists who were installing hi-tech data collecting equipment. It was there that the data collecting equipment onboard B-29s detected UFOs.

Stevens also served as US Air Attaché in South America. He retired from the USAF in 1963 and worked for Hamilton Aircraft until 1972. He retired as a Regular Air Force Lieutenant Colonel, which grade he still held in retirement.

Wendelle Stevens was actively involved in ufology for 54 years, first as Director of Investigations for the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) in Tucson, Arizona, where he retired.

Becoming disenchanted with the dearth of detail on contact events reported in contemporary books and journals of the time, several years ago, Stevens began preparing detailed reports of his own investigations of extensive and on-going UFO contact cases that came to his attention. These reports often ran to over 200 pages and some to over 600 pages, in length and were published in heavily illustrated permanent hard cover library style bindings.

He amassed one of the largest collections of UFO photos and investigated a number of contact cases, published in more than 22 books. His most famous one was the Billy Meier case in Switzerland.

In December 1997 he received an award for lifetime achievement at the First World UFO Forum in Brazilia, capital of Brazil. He was a founder and Director of the International UFO Congress and recently transferred his extensive photo collection, library and archives to Open Minds Production.


Wendelle Stevens (Photo by Maritza Keefe)

Stevens often expressed strong opinions. For example, Stevens included a section in his UFO Crash at Aztec book about the alleged crash of a UFO at Laredo, Texas on July 7, 1948, believing that the UFO was a top-secret U.S. experimental aircraft and that the burned body allegedly found was that of a large rhesus monkey. In a 2009 interview, Stevens said that, although he believed many UFO incidents do involve extraterrestrial spacecraft, he thinks the 1948 Laredo crash was really a secret experiment that originated at the White Sands, New Mexico missile range.

For serious ufologists, one of the most problematic associations that Stevens had was with Billy Meier, who most in ufology feel is a hoaxer. Wendelle C. Stevens' several volumes of Message from the Pleiades: The Contact Notes of Eduard Billy Meier, were the world's introduction to the citizen of Switzerland who claims to be a UFO contactee and the source of many controversial UFO photographs presented as proof Meier has had contact with space aliens.

Adamski Name Game Pops Up Again

The Sturgis Journal of Michigan is reporting that a man gathering sweet corn near Burr Oak, Michigan, in the southern part of the state, is the latest to have an unexpected encounter with an alligator. As noted at Cryptomundo, there have been several crazy croc encounters this summer.

In the latest incident, Jeff Adamski of Burr Oak said he was picking corn near the Michigan-Indiana border when two women who were a few rows over came running and screaming, saying they had seen an alligator.

Adamski told the Sturgis Journal that the alligator darted toward him and kept coming as he backed away. Adamski moved faster, but then he began to worry about a child being attacked by the nearly 3-foot reptile. He grabbed a 4-foot bar from his truck and killed it.

But St. Joseph County's animal control officer told the Detroit Free Press that Jeff Adamski's reaction was a "little extreme."

"Hopefully, this guy doesn't think he's a hero," Tom Miller said Friday.

Adamski, 45, said he asked his brother-in-law to come get the alligator and put it in a freezer.

"I wasn't done picking corn yet," he told the newspaper. "And no one would have believed me. They'd say 'What time did you start drinking?' "

Alligators also have been seen in recent weeks in the Chicago River, a Boston suburb and New York City.



Within the realm of the "name game," it must be pointed out that the name "Adamski" has immediate association with ufology. George Adamski ~ pictured above ~ (April 17, 1891 – April 23, 1965) was a Polish-born American citizen who became widely known in ufology circles, and to some degree in popular culture, after he claimed to have photographed ships from other planets, met with friendly Nordic alien "Space Brothers," and to have taken flights with them to other planets.

Adamski was the first of the contactees of the 1950s, who styled himself to be a "philosopher, teacher, student and saucer researcher," though many of his stories were considered fictions and hoaxes. Also an author, Adamski wrote a 1949 science fiction book (ghost written by Lucy McGinnis) with a space travel theme, Pioneers of Space: A Trip to the Moon, Mars and Venus, published by Leonard-Freefield Co of Los Angeles. In 1953-1955, he reworked parts of the fictional material from that previous book and included it as fact within his Inside the Space Ships and his revised best-selling Flying Saucers Have Landed, co-written with Desmond Leslie. On April 23, 1965 at the age of 74, George Adamski died of a heart attack in Maryland.

The moniker Adamski has, therefore, instant name recognition and been aligned to UFOs for almost 60 years.

In recent years, Adamski has been the name used by an English dance music producer, prominent at the time of acid house for his tracks "N-R-G" and "Killer" (a collaboration with Seal). He was born Adam Tinley, December 4, 1967, in the New Forest, England.

Burr Oak, Michigan is a location with some weird history of its own.

The Burr Oak cemetery in Michigan (a historically significant AfricanAmerican resting place) is said to be haunted, and unsubstantiated reports of gaunt, black tux clad figures lingering near the old gates adjacent to the tri-state on-ramp are in the literature. On November 28, 2005, two greenish blue UFOs were reported at Burr Oak, Michigan. On June 19, 2009, sightings of a crescent moon shaped UFO were recorded for Burr Oak, Michigan.

In early August 2010, WWMT reported that a "mystery cat" (a cougar) killed a goat and mauled another at a farm in Burr Oak Township, Michigan.

In terms of the name game with Burr Oak, the name is used extensively in the Salt Fork Park, Ohio, area, and recent Bigfoot sightings in 2006, 2008, and 2009, have occurred on the trail near the Burr Oak Lodge, and near Burr Oak Cove on the northwest tip of the Burr Oak Reservoir.

Burr Oak is a variant spelling of Bur oak (Quercus macrocarpa). Bur oak is a species of oak in the white oak section Quercus sect. Quercus, native to North America in the eastern and midwestern United States and south-central Canada. This plant is also called Mossycup oak and Mossycup white oak. The term "Burr Oak" can refer to some places in the United States:
Burr Oak, Indiana
Burr Oak, Iowa
Burr Oak, Kansas
Burr Oak, Michigan
Burr Oak Township, Michigan
Burr Oak, Missouri
Burr Oak, Nevada
Burr Oak, Ohio
Burr Oak, Wisconsin
Burr Oak Cemetery in Alsip, Illinois
Burr Oak State Park in Ohio

Baran Dies

Annette Baran, the famed open adoption advocate of California, has died at the age of 83. Her Los Angeles Times obituary may be found here.


I worked with Annette, along with filmmaker Dan Porter from the University of Southern Maine's Muskie School, to produce adoption conferences in the Seattle area and in SoCal, as well as a documentary and a book. We coauthored, Creating Kinship by Sharon Kaplan Roszia, Annette Baran, and Loren Coleman (Portland, ME: University of Southern Maine, 1995).

Annette was a kind and gentle woman, and her spirit will be missed. What she did for the adoption movement was remarkable.

Return of Momo?

Alisa Maier has been found alive. The news was good this morning.

Registered sex offender Paul S. Smith, a suspect in the abduction of four-year-old Alisa Maier, who shot himself has died. He was discovered by police repainting his car in Hawk Point, Missouri. Some, even without any direct link being proven yet, are calling him a "Missouri Monster."

Have you looked behind the headlines, at the location, the twilight language, and the names?

Alisa Maier was kidnapped from her front yard in July 2010, in Louisiana, Missouri.

Why does this location sound familiar?

In July 1972, Louisiana, Missouri, was the site of one of the largest hairy hominoid flaps occurring in the midst of the high strangeness times of the 1970s. I wrote about the sightings and the era in Creatures of the Other Edge and Bigfoot! The True Story of Apes in America.

The image of Momo is well-known.



Momo is the name of the area's local eastern Bigfoot, which is reported to live in Missouri. The name Momo is short for "Missouri Monster" and it is reported to have a large round head, with a furry body, and hair covering the eyes. It is reportedly a large, 7 ft (~2.1 m) tall, hairy, black, manlike creature that kills dogs and emits a terrible odor.

In 1972, at 3:30 p.m. July 11, Momo was first reported by Edgar Harrison's children, Terry (8), Wally (5), and Doris (15), crossing through their front yard, carrying a dead, bleeding dog. The series of sightings lasted for about 2 weeks, and tracks were found. Edgar Harrison, a church deacon and the owner of a family business in town, became so obsessed with finding the creature, he camped out for 21 straight days at the bottom of a local hill where Momo was frequently seen.

Now comes the abduction and return of this little Louisiana, Missouri girl.

Investigators believe a man snatched Alisa Maier, the four-year-old girl from her front yard on July 5th, which prompted an Amber Alert. She was found more than 24 hours later on Tuesday night, July 6, near to a car wash, next to a Phillips 66 gas station. Talk about number games.

"I can't find words -- it's unbelievable. God was watching over that baby," said Kathy Tepen, Alisa's great aunt.

Alisa was found wandering at a gas station car wash in the 600 block of Gravois Road in old town Fenton, Missouri, around 9:45 p.m. Tuesday. St. Louis County police said witnesses contacted them to report seeing a young boy unattended. The boy turned out to be the girl, due to the fact her hair had been cut.

What was Alisa's mother's name? Kimberly Harrison. It is not a stretch of the imagination to think the family of this victim is related to the victimized, traumatized children of Edgar Harrison.



Two photos above show Roy Harrison, the grandfather of Alisa Maier, 4, who smiles while speaking with reporters at Maier's home in Louisiana, Mo., Wednesday, July 7, 2010. Maier was abducted Monday night from the yard of her home.

So, how closely related are these Harrisons to the 1972 ones in Louisiana, Missouri?

Connection confirmed: See the followup blog by clicking here.

Also, as noted privately to me by a cryptopolitical observer, regarding Louisiana, Missouri: "Pike County; the girl found in the St Louis area [that’s two 'Louis' roots, with Louis (or Lewis) of course important in Masonry as both a hereditary Mason and the device used to hoist worked stone blocks into position], plus the telltale cutting of the girl’s hair....It [was also] revealed that a carnival had been in Louisiana [Missouri] at about the same time, which suggests the possibility of, wait for it, clowns."