In 2006, I was with family in Kansas City, celebrating the holidays, when the O'Hare UFO sighting hit the front page of the newspaper. In my first 47 years, UFOs had never been anything more than the subject of Hollywood movies, science fiction, and news of the "believe it or not" variety. I'd never seen a UFO, and no event had ever pushed UFOs front and center in my mind.
The O'Hare UFO changed everything for me. I don't know exactly what switch it tripped inside of me, but I couldn't let it go. The event itself, all its pieces laid down in shades of gray—metal, cloud, newsprint—struck me as simple, elegant, powerful. Here was a metallic object hovering silently beneath the overcast above O'Hare. Here was a hole punched in the clouds when it vanished upward. Here were credible witnesses—mechanics and pilots—and a few of them expressing genuine, honest astonishment.
Whatever was hanging there beneath the clouds that day, it got to me. In its simple act of being there, and then not being there—of being seen, and then unseen—was a power to compel and evoke and inspire that remains with me today. And which inspires the creation of this blog, and the simple, honest, eloquent truths contained in the accounts from the 1700s and 1800s of encounters with unusual phenomena.
Every day since reading that news story in the Kansas City paper, my interest in UFOs—and as a matter of course, an interest in all things, from science, astronomy, and the paranormal to history and politics and human behavior—has deepened to a voracious hum. The sound of knowledge being vigorously inhaled. I wish my brain were bigger, my IQ higher, my age younger, so that I could stuff more information in and ponder more deeply the meaning of it all.
My journey this past year, while wholly fascinating, has also dropped me abruptly over some steep cliffs. I've seen things I was not prepared for. For the first time in my life, I've seen things in the sky I cannot explain. I videotaped two events, and the others are recorded in my memory. Perhaps these objects have always been there, for those curious enough to simply look up. But why it's taken this long for me to simply "look up" is a point of frustration.
As a result of everything that's happened this year, I've felt things more deeply and passionately than I ever imagined. I didn't anticipate this happening to me. But here it is. And it doesn't look to be going away.
This blog is an attempt to express some of that. I want to share some of what I've found, what I've felt, and what I've seen. To turn the tables on this massive intake of information, and create something with it outside myself.
The O'Hare UFO changed everything for me. I don't know exactly what switch it tripped inside of me, but I couldn't let it go. The event itself, all its pieces laid down in shades of gray—metal, cloud, newsprint—struck me as simple, elegant, powerful. Here was a metallic object hovering silently beneath the overcast above O'Hare. Here was a hole punched in the clouds when it vanished upward. Here were credible witnesses—mechanics and pilots—and a few of them expressing genuine, honest astonishment.
Whatever was hanging there beneath the clouds that day, it got to me. In its simple act of being there, and then not being there—of being seen, and then unseen—was a power to compel and evoke and inspire that remains with me today. And which inspires the creation of this blog, and the simple, honest, eloquent truths contained in the accounts from the 1700s and 1800s of encounters with unusual phenomena.
Every day since reading that news story in the Kansas City paper, my interest in UFOs—and as a matter of course, an interest in all things, from science, astronomy, and the paranormal to history and politics and human behavior—has deepened to a voracious hum. The sound of knowledge being vigorously inhaled. I wish my brain were bigger, my IQ higher, my age younger, so that I could stuff more information in and ponder more deeply the meaning of it all.
My journey this past year, while wholly fascinating, has also dropped me abruptly over some steep cliffs. I've seen things I was not prepared for. For the first time in my life, I've seen things in the sky I cannot explain. I videotaped two events, and the others are recorded in my memory. Perhaps these objects have always been there, for those curious enough to simply look up. But why it's taken this long for me to simply "look up" is a point of frustration.
As a result of everything that's happened this year, I've felt things more deeply and passionately than I ever imagined. I didn't anticipate this happening to me. But here it is. And it doesn't look to be going away.
This blog is an attempt to express some of that. I want to share some of what I've found, what I've felt, and what I've seen. To turn the tables on this massive intake of information, and create something with it outside myself.
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