Salton Skies

Salton Sea, southwestern CA, November 24 (finished on December 15 at a remote desert campsite 30 miles west of Salton Sea)

Hi folks,

Sorry for the delay in posting this – given my ominous last-post about ‘strange lights in the desert sky.’ Truth is, I wanted to think about it, do research (on how aircraft are supposed to be lit at night, among other things), plus go for a surf, which I did at Oceanside (a couple of you dropped by while I was parked at the beach, which was very cool). As often happens with me, the surfing and research got out of hand… You’d probably skip down anyway, so I’ll get right to the visuals…

A while back I joked that I might have to get in touch with you immediately if I came upon a squadron of UFOs, something to that effect.

Well, depending on how far you’re willing to stretch definitions, I did come upon something along those lines – we only have to define ‘UFO’ in the strict sense, i.e., ‘unidentified [by me] flying object.’ (I also realized that there is nothing urgent about this episode, so forget the ‘immediately’.)

Above I say that ‘I wanted to think about it.’ What I meant by that was not just to have time to do the research but also to mull whether I should post the above video and my analysis of it at all. Truth is, I almost didn’t… While at my Salton Sea campsite I asked the few fellow travelers in my immediate area if they had seen strange lights in the sky recently. None had. I then offered to show them what I’ve shown you here. To my surprise there was so little interest, so little curiosity, that – out of more than a half dozen individuals/couples, including one State Park Ranger – only one person had the attention span to watch the whole ‘show’ (and at that time I hadn’t added the subtitled explanations, meaning it was shorter). Added to that, it was only the one fellow who stuck it out (an elderly gentleman from Idaho) who leaned in for a better look at the images on my Mac screen. One woman actually took a step back… hesitated… then left.

One guy (mid twenties, SUV-with-wifey nearby), as I was explaining about running lights and strobes-only white lights on aircraft, walked away mid-narration; I turned to find myself talking to an empty space in the State Park store. I glanced at the Park employee at a nearby desk, who looked away quickly, as if to avoid being dragged over to examine what at least in theory could be a visitation from some other branch of reality.

‘Is that your dog?’ the clerk wanted to know, still avoiding eye contact and referring to Gus, peering in with cocked ears (someone was listening) through the glass door. ‘He’s blocking the door.’

‘She. My dog is a female.’

As usual, I had to ask, ponder even (hence the delay in posting), Is it me? Meaning: Has my interest in How The World Works (HTWW) gotten so out of hand that a few moving lights – amidst the myriad in the southern California skies – cost me so much in the way of time/pondering (including of my usual chain of causal implications, once some ‘truth’ has been established to my satisfaction) that it’s now nearly a month (since the filming), and you’re only now seeing it? Why would I have to read two books and spend several googling days (at a rural library) just in deciding What’s up with a few lights?

And what does the assumed fact – and for now I do see it this way – that the emitters of the lights are not conventional aircraft mean, in terms of HTWW, at least from my possibly skewed viewpoint? Do I figure that I’d captured extra-terrestrial/dimensional travelers visiting our planet/reality? Not at all, actually (although, as implied, it’s… possible).

But: that there are illegally lit aircraft (of some kind) zipping around these crowded skies, making sudden and drastic direction changes (impossible for winged aircraft), would seem to be worthy of someone’s attention. No? I mean how far along are we, in terms of disinterest in HTWW? Then again… (maybe it’s me, etc.)

You guys tell me. Seriously, whaddya think? Was the above worth my/your time and attention? Is my thinking off in my declaration that the above imagery indicates something odd, if not mysterious? (If the government is testing drones or some advanced flying machines over the California desert, should they not be legally lit, if only to avoid collision with civilian crafts? And if the images do not depict some government op, really, what the hell are they?)

A related issue, and if you hang in you’ll see that the rest of this post is where I hope to make up for possibly wasting your precious time and attention (no sarcasm meant) with a meaningless video:   My last post, wherein I only alerted you all that I’d soon be posting some imagery of strange lights in the desert sky, etc., resulted in the usual double digit number of unsubscribes (more than a score). Plus, between the first time lapse on November 22^nd (yes, coincidentally the anniversary of the 1963 coup d’ètat in Dallas) and the second, two days later, I got still another admonitory email instructing me to ‘write about surfing’ since the sender could watch ‘any TV news show’ for ‘depressing stuff’ about world events…

…yes, this is leading somewhere, meaning somewhere other than to another of my hostile rants or, worse, bouts of self-doubt. At the very least, hang in for the audio clip below….

If my stated (several times) fear of boring people were literally true I should be a most unhappy guy (given the unsubscribes and emails instructing me what to write). My fear is actually more nuanced: It is of Boring intellectually awake people.

But how to know the difference between ‘just people’ and those who fit the ‘awake’ bill? What I generally try to do, and will do here, is to provide in each post some bit of knowledge or wisdom of which there is no doubt in its worthiness (to a reasonable mind, or at any rate, to mine), and to do so in a way that somehow fits in the over all drift of the ‘questionable’ stuff I’ve subjected you to. In other words, I have doubts that my ‘lights in the sky’ stuff is of significance, given the oh-hum reaction of my Salton Sea fellow travelers, right?

One possibility is that the Salton contingent, plus any of you who find the matter of strange lights in the sky to be boring, are a bunch of dumb asses not worthy of my concern. The other possibility is that – hey, ask good old Jan Irvin, among others – is that I have work to do on myself, notwithstanding Orwell’s wisdom that ‘Sanity [or, presumably, dumb-assedness] is not statistical.’

(It has occurred to me that my Salton Sea audience was analogous to the interviewees from Water Time: It was fear of having their world views shaken up that was behind their apparent disinterest. Although I never mentioned anything about UFOs or aliens or the like, even the self-engendered thought of something ‘foreign’drove them away. Which would mean that disinterest was not the problem; in a sense, quite the reverse.)

So I’ll offer something which, if you don’t find it worthy, there is no doubt it’s you with the problem. This, combined with the offering’s theme being closely tied to the over all subject at hand (what in general is worthy of interest?), and we have what from my point of view is a successful – or at least internally consistent – blog post.

So here it is and I’ll intro it only by pointing out that the speaker is John Taylor Gatto (mentioned in a previous post), former Teacher of the Year in New York State and author of the seminal The Underground History of American Education, who directly and indirectly delves into the matter of why so many of us (citizens of United States) are uninterested in intrinsically interesting subjects (strange lights in the desert sky, maybe?):

(It’s only 12 minutes: You can handle it!)

To really understand the import and profundity of Gatto’s life experience and eloquent description thereof, they should be taken in in their entirety, via his book and by the immensely important video, The Ultimate History Lesson; A Weekend with John Taylor Gatto, produced by and available at Tragedyandhope.com.

Now you might recall that central to my definition and implementation of critical thinking is the matter of implications. Keeping this in mind, let’s dive right into this brief glimpse of an amazing and deeply caring intellect:

‘The term of childhood had been extended for four years because important people wanted it that way.’ (Gatto is quoting the Dean of Teacher Education at Stanford.)

Gatto tells us that the term of childhood was to be, and indeed has been, extended via compulsory public schooling. (The truth of this is inarguable, not only via Gatto’s work but that of others, such as Charlotte Iserbyt’s The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America. Also see the Congressional investigation recommended below.)

In the mid 19^th century public schooling itself underwent a change that, were it not so well documented, would have the feel of absurdity to us here in the current age. As explanation, I’ll pose a question: Can a modern parent imagine his/her 8^th grade child bringing home a semester’s reading list containing the likes of Melville, Poe, Hawthorne, Pope, Byron, Dickens, and Shakespeare? (With the possible exception of the last two, would the modern parent even be familiar with any of the above authors?) Until about 100 years ago, early exposure to such writers was the norm in the American educational experience.

If this doesn’t alter your image of the ‘little school house on the prairie’ and the intellects of the dirt farmer/pioneer cherubs who attended, I’ll quote a single paragraph from Thomas Paine’s pamphlet, ‘Common Sense,’ from 1776, a reaction to the tyranny, as Paine saw it, of the British monarch.

This passage is quite near the top, as in preamble Paine defines circumstances which bring about the ‘evil necessity’ (as he will term it) for government:

Thus necessity, like a gravitating power, would soon form our newly arrived emigrants into society, the reciprocal blessings of which would supersede, and render the obligations of law and government unnecessary while they remained perfectly just to each other; but as nothing but Heaven is impregnable to vice, it will unavoidably happen that in proportion as they surmount the first difficulties of emigration, which bound them together in a common cause, they will begin to relax in their duty and attachment to each other: and this remissness will point out the necessity of establishing some form of government to supply the defect of moral virtue.

If you found yourself struggling with Paine’s single-sentence drift, I can assure you the difficulty is not in the author’s reasoning or verbosity (neither does he use any unfamiliar 19^th century colloquialisms); it’s a goddamn good sentence! The problem is that you, indeed, we all, have been dumbed down – important people want it so.

That the schooling of 16^th century America was superior to that of present day should  give you pause – I mean literally, in the sense of a cessation of reading this, to recover from the shock. Or maybe it’s just me again…

In today’s parlance, ‘Common Sense’ went super-viral: Paine’s pamphlet – 55 pages of lucidly elliptical prose, well represented by the quote you (and I) just had a bit of trouble with — was read by virtually everyone in double digits of age in the Thirteen Colonies. That they not only read it but ‘got it’ should not come as much of a surprise once you reflect that Colonial youngsters of all ages were in their one-room schoolhouses raising their hands to questions about the moral and existential implications of Moby-Dick. (Although numbers vary, one Paine biographer states that 500,000 copies of ‘Common Sense’ were sold in the first year alone; this when the total population was a mere 2.5 million. Given the ‘small town’ demographics back then, we can assume that each copy was read by multiple people.)

Not only did our forebears easily get Paine’s drift but they got it so well that ‘common Sense’ has been often cited as the single most vital instigation of the War of Independence. (Notwithstanding the current sorry state of the Republic which resulted, this would make Paine’s the most important prose ever written, with the possible exception of Newton’s Principia.)

Back to Teacher of the Year John Taylor Gatto (who resigned when he came to understand that the system he was part of was ‘hurting the children’): ‘Enormous numbers of children have been dumbed down and made morally incomplete in the interest of a complex theory of social management, one which emerged full blown among corporate players somewhat over a century ago.’

Gatto goes on to explain why I have only recently come to the realization that I’m not as smart and creative as I could have been:

‘You seldom get to hear the problem of modern schooling framed as a conflict between the purposes of social managers and the purposes of individuals, families and communities because the twenty-three global corporations which control most of the flow of ideas, news, and information worldwide seldom find it convenient to encourage such speculation…’ (Gatto gives away the date/era of his reading, which I believe was in the early 90’s, by saying that ‘twenty-three’ corporations control the news, etc. The number is now down to five: soon enough keeping us stupid will be so convenient that fine tuning will likely be discussed on the front nine, without crowding the tee via overloading a foursome.)

The revelation that I’m not as smart or creative as I otherwise could be came to me in a flash: in (re)reading the above from ‘Common Sense’ it struck me that 8^th graders of a couple centuries ago were (in my imagination) nodding in approval on page three while I was still on page one, mentally looping dependent clauses to make sure I understood to what they referred…

You all may think I am too easily outraged, but the idea that – due to the machinations of power-hungry ‘social managers’/’important people’ of yesterday and today – I’m still struggling with this little essay rather than having finished it two weeks ago… and, worse, no matter how much effort I put into it, it will not be as well wrought as it could be… ahhhhhhh! Goddamn the bastards!!!

And it gets worse: As Gatto tells us, the educational system since the 19^th century has not only dumbed us down but made us ‘morally incomplete’: His anecdote about the 25 year-old Yale graduate (plus the father) trying to rip him off on the rent check rang personal bells aplenty: With dumbing down inevitably comes a deficiency in self-reflection (from which springs the ultimate fountain of insight) and hence a casual dishonesty in personal transactions.

…do you have an idea of my outrage? Ahhhhhhhh!

How are the end results of these ‘important people’s’ machinations different from a partial lobotomy, performed (say, on my anesthetized cranium surreptitiously during a wisdom tooth extraction) simply because they ‘wanted it that way’?

That 13 years of public schooling (not counting college) should be compared to a partial lobotomy may seem an extreme comparison but in reading Gatto’s book (and watching his ‘Ultimate History Lesson’) I look back into the haze of my schooling and see how utterly helpless we all truly were. And understanding history the way I do now, I can see how, in the quest for still more power (money having been left behind as their prime mover), self-serving psychopaths would want to keep us from ‘thinking too much.’ (Gatto puts the start date of the dumbing down as late 19^th century. To get an idea of how it was going about halfway between then and now, check out this interview with an aging survivor of a 1950s Congressional committee that formally looked into the subject. Be forewarned: One of the investigators literally lost her sanity when the implications of her findings really sank in.)

But here’s the difference: A lobotomy cannot be reversed. Difficult, yes, but it is possible to reverse, or at least mitigate, the damage of a public schooling. The difficulty is not a physical or outward one; like most real problems, the solution comes from within.

You should not take this the wrong way, given that I include myself in the implied catch-22: How do you get dumbed down people to ponder their own mental state? What I count on is that in the Bell curve of intellect/self-reflection, a certain number of you reside on the upper reaches, i.e., are capable of really thinking about a subject of import, especially when children – yours or anyone’s — are directly affected, which is surely the case here.

But ‘Whaddam I ‘sposed to do?’ you might and rightly ask. To which I answer (as I do in Water Time): If you know the truth, really know it – not just say you know it — you will do what you will do. Far be it from me to even suggest a reaction, let alone solution. First, last, and mainly: you have to know.

We have all been lobotomized. Ask yourself why.

#

Back to the lights in the sky: I have some smart people out there who have stuck with this blog. Folks who know stuff I do not. Let me hear from you. Did I miss something in my certitude that the origin of the lights were not conventional aircraft? This after all is the crux, narrowing possibilities down to two (as I see it): Government shenanigans or evidence of ‘other’ intelligences, from another place, time, or… reality.

I’m all ears.

Allan

Speaking of UFOs/E.T.s: This post ended up too long to include it, but I’ll soon analyze the profound change in Steven Spielberg’s alien-oriented work since he attended the Bilderberg meeting of 1999, plus the implications thereof.

Before I really sign off a quick note to Alan, Cayce, and Ryan: Your (late) DVDs are in the mail, finally! (Finding a P.O. out here in the wasteland wasn’t easy.) Also, anyone expecting DVDs but who hasn’t gotten them, remind me via email – my spotty Net connect equals some screw ups…

And finally: To those who sent cards, letters, packages, and bucks to my P.O. Box: Wasn’t easy but I finally got them forwarded. Thanks! (Especially to Ruth P., for your ‘real value’ gift. You’re a true sweetheart!)   You can still get to me via P.O. Box 395, Montauk, NY 11954, although I don’t ‘live there’ anymore.

And here comes my annual ‘Christmas gifts for your friends and loved ones’ pitch:   I’ve ordered bunch of In Search of Captain Zero and Cosmic Banditos audiobooks to go with the six Water Time DVDs plus Banditos and Can’t You Get Along With Anyone? hard copies I send to contributors (to this blog/website and the films I’m working on) of $100 or more.

If ‘a Ben’ (a term from my smuggling days, referring to the Founding Father who appears on the Federal Reserve Note in question) is beyond your easy means, remember that for $15 (or more) you get two signed Water Time DVDs, one of which will be a personalized thank you. Click here for the relevant page.

(If you want something signed to someone other than yourself, email me at allan at banditobooks.com with the name – do it separately from the Paypal instructions. Also, if you’re sending money to my P.O. box, email me with your address and I’ll get the package in the mail immediately. By the way, both audiobooks are very well produced, with cool packaging, etc. They do make great gifts.)

Another possibility is on the sidebar: A monthly donation of enough for a gallon of gas for the rig (the beast gets about nine to the gallon) — although I’d be hard pressed to find a gallon for $3.25 these days…

Any monthly donation or a $100 donation gets you an Associate Producer screen credit for Always Open (my next feature-length documentary) plus your initials scrawled in the ever expanding (I hope) circle around the rig’s gas cap.

Seriously: My expenses have gone way over what I expected. Any help is much appreciated. And PLEASE: If you find my blog worthwhile, help me out by recommending it to like-minded friends!