South Texas is a great place for chili peppers. I am looking forward to trying this Dorset Naga pepper.
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12792719
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Oysters and the Chesapeake
I grew up in Baltimore and oysters were a fixture on the menu. A fascinating article about using oysters to clean water. We just need to stop overfishing the bay.http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12795573
Music
This year I joined the Church Choir. Something I have wanted to do all my life. Always had a lot of excuses about why I couldn't join. Finally did, overcoming my anxiety about singing well enough to be in the choir. I have been enjoying it immensely. Singing has been one of the most challenging things I have ever done.
Another interesting, but disjointed article on music from the Economist. It has lots of ideas but none were developed well. Articles like this do give me many ways of jumping off in many directions though.http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12795510
Another interesting, but disjointed article on music from the Economist. It has lots of ideas but none were developed well. Articles like this do give me many ways of jumping off in many directions though.http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12795510
Angels we have heard on high!
In the first grade, I earned a glow in the dark Guardian Angel night light from selling the Catholic Review. This is an interesting article on Angels that I read in the Economist. http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=12792800
Friday, December 12, 2008
Sasaki Takuya
We started hosting a Japanese student through a program at the Alamo Community College. There are about 80 students here for a 3-week English intensive. We have a 25 year old young man named Sasaki Takuya. He said to call him Takuya (ta-coo-YAH). He is very pleasant and loves American television. He watches more American television in Japan than I do in the states. He knows all the popular shows but they seem to be a season or so behind Japan. Perhaps they only release them after the shows air here. In any case, he can correct me on the characters of several TV series such as Grey's Anatomy (which I only watch sporadically). He has not seen House and says medical shows are difficult to watch in Japanese because of all the jargon. He really enjoyed Mexican food, loves Italian food and pretty much all things American.
I was very surprised that he did not know the word 'Gospel'. We were browsing his Japanese-English electronic dictionary. The Japanese characters were on the left and the English word on the right. I saw the word 'Gospel' and asked him to click on the Japanese for it. He had never heard the word even pronounced in Japanese! He clicked it several more times so he could understand the Japanese pronunciation. The definition in Japanese was not exactly what I expected either. It translated something like a 'great undertaking.' I explained to him it meant 'Good News.' The story of Jesus.
I was very surprised that he did not know the word 'Gospel'. We were browsing his Japanese-English electronic dictionary. The Japanese characters were on the left and the English word on the right. I saw the word 'Gospel' and asked him to click on the Japanese for it. He had never heard the word even pronounced in Japanese! He clicked it several more times so he could understand the Japanese pronunciation. The definition in Japanese was not exactly what I expected either. It translated something like a 'great undertaking.' I explained to him it meant 'Good News.' The story of Jesus.
Around the Bloc
On Saturday, December 6th, I took a writing workshop with Stephanie Elizondo Griest on writing a memoir. I learned that a memoir is not an autobiography, that it may cover just a short portion of one's life, such as Ms. Griest's which details her life in Moscow as a student, and later Bejing and Cuba. Her book was entitled "Around the Bloc", meaning the communist bloc. An enjoyable and very personal book, I recommend to any who are interested.
New pug in the house
After the passing of our great companion friend, the Doberman named Dante, we needed to wait for awhile before getting another dog. My son and his wife introduced us to the world of Pugs. We found them to be delightful and a source of laughter. 'Multum in parvo' was the phrase applied to them centuries ago: "a lot of dog in a small package." Indeed, the pug feels bigger than her current 10 pounds. She is confident and quite willing to explore.
We contacted a breeder through the many friends my wife has in the dog world. The breeder we contacted was way up in Odessa (Texas, not Russia). From San Antonio, that's about 350 miles. After many emails and phone conversations we met her at a house on Lake LBJ near Austin. We spent about 4 hours there getting to know her and her dogs. They were all great. We took our pug home with us.
Wednesday, July 9, 2008
Baltimore - Fireworks and Canton
Baltimore in June and July can be humid and sticky, as it was on my recent visit to family and friends. Seeing my parents was a primary objective of the visit and taking my dad to numerous doctors for tests for a carotid artery. He does not need the surgery. Thank you, Lord.
I saw my sisters, nieces and friends. My niece, Jesse, a struggling artist, showed me her sketches for some new art works. She does a type of impressionism based on family photos from the 50s, 60s and 70s. Close enough that family can enjoy them through recognition, abstract enough that they are universally appealing for composition and color.
Fourth of July was spent with family in daytime. That evening my son and I were invited to a party in Canton. Canton is the old packing and canning industrial section of Baltimore City. Once home to many Polish immigrants, it has now become gentrified. If you are young and single and like to party, this is a place for you.
From the rooftop deck, 40 feet above the street, atop a rennovated townhouse, I had a view of Fort McHenry, the inner harbor, Johns Hopkins Hospital, and many funky Baltimore scenes. As my niece quoted an artist friend, "Baltimore is like your grandmother's attic." You have no idea what is there, but you will find it funky and delightful. A native of the city and resident until age 41, I felt she struck it on the head. Despite its "Wired" reputation, it is a delightful city.
From this deck, which belonged to Joe, a 360 degree panorama displayed the city's funkiness. All about us were other Independence Day Revelers on other decktop roofs. Like the sailors in the ships in the harbor, these other denizens of the decks shared comraderie with us and the many other land-locked poop decks. We hailed and cheered each other and as twilight emerged from what had been a gloomy wet afternoon, fireworks errupted from many in a fantastic display of creativity and craziness. I am glad my host refrained from such dangerous activities.
There was an eeire sense of Gotterdammerung from the glow of the city lights, the childhood smells of gunpowder and sulpher released by the fireworks, the percussive explosions felt and heard as some rocket exploded near-by. Also reminiscent of one of the final scenes in Fight Club where Tyler and his alter ego are struggling over the destruction of TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it).
It was a great and unique evening for me. Plenty of alcohol, tobacco and fireworks, America's favorite vices. Canton is a definite place to see if you visit Baltimore.
I saw my sisters, nieces and friends. My niece, Jesse, a struggling artist, showed me her sketches for some new art works. She does a type of impressionism based on family photos from the 50s, 60s and 70s. Close enough that family can enjoy them through recognition, abstract enough that they are universally appealing for composition and color.
Fourth of July was spent with family in daytime. That evening my son and I were invited to a party in Canton. Canton is the old packing and canning industrial section of Baltimore City. Once home to many Polish immigrants, it has now become gentrified. If you are young and single and like to party, this is a place for you.
From the rooftop deck, 40 feet above the street, atop a rennovated townhouse, I had a view of Fort McHenry, the inner harbor, Johns Hopkins Hospital, and many funky Baltimore scenes. As my niece quoted an artist friend, "Baltimore is like your grandmother's attic." You have no idea what is there, but you will find it funky and delightful. A native of the city and resident until age 41, I felt she struck it on the head. Despite its "Wired" reputation, it is a delightful city.
From this deck, which belonged to Joe, a 360 degree panorama displayed the city's funkiness. All about us were other Independence Day Revelers on other decktop roofs. Like the sailors in the ships in the harbor, these other denizens of the decks shared comraderie with us and the many other land-locked poop decks. We hailed and cheered each other and as twilight emerged from what had been a gloomy wet afternoon, fireworks errupted from many in a fantastic display of creativity and craziness. I am glad my host refrained from such dangerous activities.
There was an eeire sense of Gotterdammerung from the glow of the city lights, the childhood smells of gunpowder and sulpher released by the fireworks, the percussive explosions felt and heard as some rocket exploded near-by. Also reminiscent of one of the final scenes in Fight Club where Tyler and his alter ego are struggling over the destruction of TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it).
It was a great and unique evening for me. Plenty of alcohol, tobacco and fireworks, America's favorite vices. Canton is a definite place to see if you visit Baltimore.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Depopulation of the Great Plains
It seems the return to nature is happening in parts of the U.S. with no need of policies or laws.
The small farms that creatd the small towns all over the big stated of the Great Plains are disappearing. Along with them, are the towns and people. This article from The Economist sums up the situation. I have family in South Dakota so this is of interest to me. The first time I drove across the state was in 1973 with my future wife. She fell asleep in the car, we were on a state road, heading straight west. We didn't pass or encounter another car for over an hour. I was beginning to feel I was in an episode of the Twilight Zone. She awoke and I expressed my concern. She said it's perfectly normal. That was 36 years ago. I can't imagine it less populated!
Depopulation The Great Plains drain
Jan 17th 2008 CHEYENNE WELLS From The Economist print edition
How the interior is learning to live with a shrinking population
IN EASTERN Colorado, the human tide ebbs. Cheyenne county, which had 3,700 inhabitants in 1930, now has just 1,900. And the drift away from the area seems to be speeding up. In the old county jail, which is now a museum, a photograph from 1910 shows a three-storey schoolhouse towering over the town of Cheyenne Wells. The new school is one storey high—yet it already seems too big.
America as a whole is growing briskly. Between 2000 and 2006 its population swelled by 6.4%, according to the Census Bureau. Yet the expansion has passed many areas by. Two-fifths of all counties are shrinking (see map). In general, people are moving to places that are warm, mountainous or suburban. They are leaving many rural areas, with the most relentless decline in a broad band stretching from western Texas to North Dakota. In parts, the Great Plains are more sparsely populated now than they were in the late 19th century, when the government declared them to be deserted.
A big reason is improvements in farming technology. Tractors in eastern Colorado do not resemble the vehicles that trundle around farms on the east coast and in Europe. They are many-wheeled monsters, sometimes driven by global positioning systems. Toby Johnson says his 40,000-acre (16,200-hectare) ranch in Cheyenne county employed between eight and ten workers in the 1950s. It now has two, including him. When old farmers retire, their plots tend to be swallowed up by larger, more efficient operators.
The population of the Great Plains teeters on this shrinking agricultural base. While much of Colorado grew, Cheyenne county shrank every year between 2000 and 2006, when it lost more than 300 people. Children are disappearing even more quickly. Ten years ago 495 pupils enrolled in the county's public schools; this year 320 did. In Kit Carson, the second-biggest settlement, the school enrolled just four teenagers in the tenth grade. Shops and houses nearby are already boarded up. If the school were to close, there would be little reason for the town to exist at all.
Rayetta Palmer, a councilwoman in Cheyenne Wells, can nonetheless cite a list of local strengths. The few children get lots of attention: Kit Carson's schools have a pupil-to-teacher ratio of seven to one, compared with 18 to one in Denver, the state capital. As a result, they do well in tests. Crime is rare. The community is strikingly cohesive: at the petrol stations that double as cafés, locals do not take empty tables but sit together, as in a school dining room.
The trouble is that such qualities are not the sort of thing that might persuade businesses to move to the area. Some are more likely to deter them. The strong community spirit sometimes morphs into a fierce resistance to change, particularly when it is advocated by newcomers. Cindy Perry, who has tried to revitalise Kit Carson by renovating buildings and starting a shop, woke one morning to find a newly-painted building covered with graffiti.
Fighting back
Optimists point to two likely developments that may slow the decline. Assuming a power line is built, wind farms will probably appear in the area in the next few years, as they have in western Texas. That will generate construction jobs and tax revenues. A more ambitious proposal involves building a “super-highway” between Mexico and Canada, which would pass through eastern Colorado. Backers say it would almost double traffic through Cheyenne county, leading to an increase in jobs and perhaps even in people. Yet the road is many years from being built.
Cheyenne county is not especially poor. Indeed, at the moment it is enjoying an agricultural boom. Heavy snow last winter, combined with a drought in Australia, means local wheat farmers have a large crop to sell at record prices, which touched $10 a bushel for the first time last month. In parts of north-east Colorado, corn farmers are profiting from a strong demand for ethanol. Yet the future of irrigated agriculture (the most profitable kind) is gloomy. In central Colorado, thirsty cities have been buying water rights from farmers. Elsewhere, farmers have been prevented from pumping groundwater by lawyers in Kansas, downriver. If the wells close, the corn boom will end.
There is a somewhat drastic alternative. In the 1980s two academics from Rutgers University suggested turning the plains into a “buffalo commons”, where the animals that grazed the area before white immigration would be encouraged to return. The idea was so unpopular that its authors occasionally had to be protected by police. But it is nonetheless coming to pass.
Buffalo meat is leaner than beef, and thus well suited to contemporary health worries. Partly as a result, the buffalo are coming back: some 62,000 were slaughtered between January and November last year, a 17% rise over a year earlier. Of the plains states, only North Dakota has openly mulled turning over large tracts of land to the furry megafauna. But other areas, including eastern Colorado, have preserved grasslands and are touting their natural resources and history—a vivid one of brutal treks and Indian massacres.
Jo Downey of the Plains Development Corporation reckons nothing can stop the drift away from places like Cheyenne county, and others agree. The challenge for the future is not to stem the tide, but to keep life as pleasant as possible for those who remain. This is not an easy task. Compared with the consequences of rapid growth, such as traffic jams and illegal immigration, to which so much political energy is devoted, the problems of depopulation can appear intractable.
The small farms that creatd the small towns all over the big stated of the Great Plains are disappearing. Along with them, are the towns and people. This article from The Economist sums up the situation. I have family in South Dakota so this is of interest to me. The first time I drove across the state was in 1973 with my future wife. She fell asleep in the car, we were on a state road, heading straight west. We didn't pass or encounter another car for over an hour. I was beginning to feel I was in an episode of the Twilight Zone. She awoke and I expressed my concern. She said it's perfectly normal. That was 36 years ago. I can't imagine it less populated!
Depopulation The Great Plains drain
Jan 17th 2008 CHEYENNE WELLS From The Economist print edition
How the interior is learning to live with a shrinking population
IN EASTERN Colorado, the human tide ebbs. Cheyenne county, which had 3,700 inhabitants in 1930, now has just 1,900. And the drift away from the area seems to be speeding up. In the old county jail, which is now a museum, a photograph from 1910 shows a three-storey schoolhouse towering over the town of Cheyenne Wells. The new school is one storey high—yet it already seems too big.
America as a whole is growing briskly. Between 2000 and 2006 its population swelled by 6.4%, according to the Census Bureau. Yet the expansion has passed many areas by. Two-fifths of all counties are shrinking (see map). In general, people are moving to places that are warm, mountainous or suburban. They are leaving many rural areas, with the most relentless decline in a broad band stretching from western Texas to North Dakota. In parts, the Great Plains are more sparsely populated now than they were in the late 19th century, when the government declared them to be deserted.
A big reason is improvements in farming technology. Tractors in eastern Colorado do not resemble the vehicles that trundle around farms on the east coast and in Europe. They are many-wheeled monsters, sometimes driven by global positioning systems. Toby Johnson says his 40,000-acre (16,200-hectare) ranch in Cheyenne county employed between eight and ten workers in the 1950s. It now has two, including him. When old farmers retire, their plots tend to be swallowed up by larger, more efficient operators.
The population of the Great Plains teeters on this shrinking agricultural base. While much of Colorado grew, Cheyenne county shrank every year between 2000 and 2006, when it lost more than 300 people. Children are disappearing even more quickly. Ten years ago 495 pupils enrolled in the county's public schools; this year 320 did. In Kit Carson, the second-biggest settlement, the school enrolled just four teenagers in the tenth grade. Shops and houses nearby are already boarded up. If the school were to close, there would be little reason for the town to exist at all.
Rayetta Palmer, a councilwoman in Cheyenne Wells, can nonetheless cite a list of local strengths. The few children get lots of attention: Kit Carson's schools have a pupil-to-teacher ratio of seven to one, compared with 18 to one in Denver, the state capital. As a result, they do well in tests. Crime is rare. The community is strikingly cohesive: at the petrol stations that double as cafés, locals do not take empty tables but sit together, as in a school dining room.
The trouble is that such qualities are not the sort of thing that might persuade businesses to move to the area. Some are more likely to deter them. The strong community spirit sometimes morphs into a fierce resistance to change, particularly when it is advocated by newcomers. Cindy Perry, who has tried to revitalise Kit Carson by renovating buildings and starting a shop, woke one morning to find a newly-painted building covered with graffiti.
Fighting back
Optimists point to two likely developments that may slow the decline. Assuming a power line is built, wind farms will probably appear in the area in the next few years, as they have in western Texas. That will generate construction jobs and tax revenues. A more ambitious proposal involves building a “super-highway” between Mexico and Canada, which would pass through eastern Colorado. Backers say it would almost double traffic through Cheyenne county, leading to an increase in jobs and perhaps even in people. Yet the road is many years from being built.
Cheyenne county is not especially poor. Indeed, at the moment it is enjoying an agricultural boom. Heavy snow last winter, combined with a drought in Australia, means local wheat farmers have a large crop to sell at record prices, which touched $10 a bushel for the first time last month. In parts of north-east Colorado, corn farmers are profiting from a strong demand for ethanol. Yet the future of irrigated agriculture (the most profitable kind) is gloomy. In central Colorado, thirsty cities have been buying water rights from farmers. Elsewhere, farmers have been prevented from pumping groundwater by lawyers in Kansas, downriver. If the wells close, the corn boom will end.
There is a somewhat drastic alternative. In the 1980s two academics from Rutgers University suggested turning the plains into a “buffalo commons”, where the animals that grazed the area before white immigration would be encouraged to return. The idea was so unpopular that its authors occasionally had to be protected by police. But it is nonetheless coming to pass.
Buffalo meat is leaner than beef, and thus well suited to contemporary health worries. Partly as a result, the buffalo are coming back: some 62,000 were slaughtered between January and November last year, a 17% rise over a year earlier. Of the plains states, only North Dakota has openly mulled turning over large tracts of land to the furry megafauna. But other areas, including eastern Colorado, have preserved grasslands and are touting their natural resources and history—a vivid one of brutal treks and Indian massacres.
Jo Downey of the Plains Development Corporation reckons nothing can stop the drift away from places like Cheyenne county, and others agree. The challenge for the future is not to stem the tide, but to keep life as pleasant as possible for those who remain. This is not an easy task. Compared with the consequences of rapid growth, such as traffic jams and illegal immigration, to which so much political energy is devoted, the problems of depopulation can appear intractable.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Painted Churches of East Texas
It seems each group of visitors that come to SA come bearing their own agenda about what to see, where to go. My wife and I have found that by going with the flow we see many new things as well. After we adjust their perspectives, such as no we can't drive to El Paso and back this afternoon, we usually emerge with a do-able itinerary. Recently, some old friends declared they wanted to see the Painted Church. We had no idea what these were. Turns out they are churchs whose interiors are lavishyly painted with decorations, scenes, saints and symbols. The colors are bright and the visit on a Sunday afternoon was very quiet, almost eerie in how few people were around. We saw four churchs all near Schulenberg, TX, about half-way between San Antonio and Houston.
excellent link for more information: http://www.texasescapes.com/CentralTexasTownsSouth/PaintedChurchesTour.htm
excellent link for more information: http://www.texasescapes.com/CentralTexasTownsSouth/PaintedChurchesTour.htm
WEIRD TEXAS
Ghost towns
my sister and niece recently visited me in San Antonio, TX. My niece wanted to see Texas Ghost Towns. Happily, most are in far west Texas, with most of the rattlesnakes. Her request casued me to take note of this article from the Economist. East coasters have a strange idea of what Texas is like. Ghost towns, tumbleweed, not around here.
History in a half-brick
Dec 19th 2007 THURBER, TEXAS From The Economist print edition
What ruins reveal about America
LINDSAY BAKER walks through the streets of Thurber carrying a hoe. It is handy for killing rattlesnakes, which lurk in the long grass that has all but swallowed the town. He also uses it to scrape in the dirt for what the people who once lived there left behind. He finds some shards of an old medicine bottle, the cap of a salt-shaker and a half-brick with markings that date it sometime between 1904 and 1936. If a brush fire clears the grass, you'll see artefacts like this everywhere, explains Mr Baker, a historian whose boyish enthusiasm for ghost towns belies his years.
America has a lot of ghost towns. There are 1,000 in Texas alone. Thurber was once home to 10,000 people. Now there are only five. In its busy days, Thurber was a coal town. Immigrants flocked there from Italy, Poland and Mexico to dig up fuel for steam trains. The coal was also used to fire bricks made from local clay. The town boasted churches, baseball teams and even an opera house.
But then someone found oil in Texas. Before long, the trains started burning oil instead of coal. Thurber's mine closed in 1926. And since cheap oil prompted Texans to start using asphalt instead of bricks to pave their roads, Thurber's brick kiln closed, too.
The workers left. Their homes were sold for $50 to anyone who could carry them off. You can still see them in the surrounding countryside, serving as barns or storehouses. Little is left in Thurber itself but a smokestack, the graveyard (divided into Catholic, Protestant and black areas) and a few company buildings.
The story is not all wretched, however. Many workers found jobs in the oil business. The company that built Thurber struck oil and prospered. The old boss's daughter-in-law donated money for a museum to preserve Thurber's memory, which Mr Baker runs. His qualifications are ideal: besides teaching industrial history at nearby Tarleton State University, he is the author of “Ghost Towns of Texas” and “More Ghost Towns of Texas”.
Something about ghost towns grips the American imagination. They provide an eerie backdrop for movies, children's books and theme-park rides. Ghost-town enthusiasts devote countless weekends to searching out remote examples, photographing them and posting their findings on websites such as www.ghosttowns.com. Typically, they give imprecise directions so that only the most committed ghost-towners can follow their footsteps.
Ghost towns are sad places, but also monuments to American dynamism. When work moves, so do Americans. With so much space, especially in the West, it can make sense to let a town die. But its memory may live on. Ghost towns give people a tangible connection to a mysterious past, says Mr Baker. Others treat history more playfully. On a hill near Thurber, someone has built a hunting lodge in the shape of a Scottish castle.
Copyright © 2008 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
my sister and niece recently visited me in San Antonio, TX. My niece wanted to see Texas Ghost Towns. Happily, most are in far west Texas, with most of the rattlesnakes. Her request casued me to take note of this article from the Economist. East coasters have a strange idea of what Texas is like. Ghost towns, tumbleweed, not around here.
History in a half-brick
Dec 19th 2007 THURBER, TEXAS From The Economist print edition
What ruins reveal about America
LINDSAY BAKER walks through the streets of Thurber carrying a hoe. It is handy for killing rattlesnakes, which lurk in the long grass that has all but swallowed the town. He also uses it to scrape in the dirt for what the people who once lived there left behind. He finds some shards of an old medicine bottle, the cap of a salt-shaker and a half-brick with markings that date it sometime between 1904 and 1936. If a brush fire clears the grass, you'll see artefacts like this everywhere, explains Mr Baker, a historian whose boyish enthusiasm for ghost towns belies his years.
America has a lot of ghost towns. There are 1,000 in Texas alone. Thurber was once home to 10,000 people. Now there are only five. In its busy days, Thurber was a coal town. Immigrants flocked there from Italy, Poland and Mexico to dig up fuel for steam trains. The coal was also used to fire bricks made from local clay. The town boasted churches, baseball teams and even an opera house.
But then someone found oil in Texas. Before long, the trains started burning oil instead of coal. Thurber's mine closed in 1926. And since cheap oil prompted Texans to start using asphalt instead of bricks to pave their roads, Thurber's brick kiln closed, too.
The workers left. Their homes were sold for $50 to anyone who could carry them off. You can still see them in the surrounding countryside, serving as barns or storehouses. Little is left in Thurber itself but a smokestack, the graveyard (divided into Catholic, Protestant and black areas) and a few company buildings.
The story is not all wretched, however. Many workers found jobs in the oil business. The company that built Thurber struck oil and prospered. The old boss's daughter-in-law donated money for a museum to preserve Thurber's memory, which Mr Baker runs. His qualifications are ideal: besides teaching industrial history at nearby Tarleton State University, he is the author of “Ghost Towns of Texas” and “More Ghost Towns of Texas”.
Something about ghost towns grips the American imagination. They provide an eerie backdrop for movies, children's books and theme-park rides. Ghost-town enthusiasts devote countless weekends to searching out remote examples, photographing them and posting their findings on websites such as www.ghosttowns.com. Typically, they give imprecise directions so that only the most committed ghost-towners can follow their footsteps.
Ghost towns are sad places, but also monuments to American dynamism. When work moves, so do Americans. With so much space, especially in the West, it can make sense to let a town die. But its memory may live on. Ghost towns give people a tangible connection to a mysterious past, says Mr Baker. Others treat history more playfully. On a hill near Thurber, someone has built a hunting lodge in the shape of a Scottish castle.
Copyright © 2008 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved.
Sunday, February 3, 2008
WEIRD Texas
The UFOs are moving east!
First, Roswell. Then Marfa. Now Fort Worth!
Stephenville, Texas has had multiple sightings of UFOs in recent weeks. All this flatland and big sky just makes us irresistable to the intersteller critters!
Stephenville rides wave of publicity after UFOs
Web Posted: 01/19/2008 12:10 AM CST
Lisa SandbergExpress-News
STEPHENVILLE — All hype aside, space aliens have not invaded the streets of this rodeo town southwest of Fort Worth — though nearly everyone here is keeping at least a playful eye out for them.
And maybe no one here has encountered any little green men in the week after dozens of residents reported seeing a strobe light-flashing object zipping through the night sky because they don't exist.
Sightings from around the country suggest extraterrestrial beings are actually gray, not green, says Dennis Balthaser, a UFO researcher and former investigator with the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, N.M.
"They're somewhat humanoid looking," Balthaser says of such accounts nationally. "They have a big head, a small-frame body, anywhere between three and five fingers, no hair ... no ears as such. A slit for the mouth."
But even if there's been no space invasion of Stephenville, the recent obsession with them has been out of this world in the town of 15,400 — and far beyond.
Ken Cherry, the Texas director of the Colorado-based Mutual UFO Network, or MUFON, which describes itself as devoted to research on the topic, says the multiple sightings on the night of Jan. 8 could turn Stephenville into a mini-Roswell.
"Dozens of people are coming forward, responsible people, saying they saw something," Cherry said. "We're talking shop owners, ranch owners, oil field workers, just about every demographic imaginable."
Forget being the Cowboy Capital of the World. Folks in town are calling Stephenville the UFO Capital of the World.
Angela Joiner, the only full-time reporter at the Stephenville Empire-Tribune, can hardly put out a paper. Ever since breaking the story last week, she's been swamped with calls and e-mails from around the world — from people who either want to tell her about their UFO sightings or from international media types assigned to cover the story.
"I'm not accustomed to this. I don't do this!" Joiner, who's been on the job 18 months, said with a laugh.
Perhaps the only person who gets less work done these days is the local constable, LeeRoy Gaitan. He's in demand as the only elected official who can corroborate what dozens of others saw: something spooky in the sky over Erath County that evening.
He was on foot approaching his home when in the distance he saw a red glow, not as big as a hot air balloon but big. It didn't appear to be attached to anything. He watched it awhile before it burned itself out. Then it reappeared.
"I knew this wasn't right," he said. So he went inside to summon his family. His wife gave him this "get real" look, Gaitan said, but his young son came running.
Father and son saw what looked like really bright white strobe lights, nine or 10 of them. They flashed as the minutes passed. "All of a sudden, they shot off, they traveled northeast at a real high rate of speed," Gaitan said.
Though he doesn't believe it was a spaceship, he's had to answer calls from hundreds of people from around the country who do. His solution: "I've started screening my calls," he said.
Military officials have said they had no aircraft in the area at the time of the sightings.
And the military doesn't investigate UFO sightings. So that leaves Cherry's MUFON group. Five of its investigators will descend on the area today to begin interviewing witnesses.
It won't be a quick investigation, Cherry cautions. Interviews will be conducted one on one. And even after all the anecdotes have been gathered and sifted through — don't expect physical evidence — the researchers will hedge their bets.
"We could say we eliminated every other possibility. But we never say, 'This is alien technology' or 'This is a spacecraft,'" Cherry said.
For now, people around town are having a ball.
City Secretary Cindy Stafford wore a space alien mask to the City Council this week. It was fun, she said.
Because he hasn't done the research, Roswell's Balthaser isn't ready to make any educated guesses about what might have crossed the sky in Texas. But, if the lights were a mile long and half a mile across, as some have suggested, that would be the size of a "mother ship," which is much bigger than a flying saucer, he said.
Balthaser, a retired engineer with the Texas Department of Transportation, takes his research seriously and hates when other people don't.
He probably wouldn't appreciate the T-shirts produced by the high school science club here that proclaim: 'Erath County: The New Roswell' and depict a spaceship leaving earth and towing a dairy cow.
By Friday, the club had sold 400 of them.
lsandberg@express-news.net
First, Roswell. Then Marfa. Now Fort Worth!
Stephenville, Texas has had multiple sightings of UFOs in recent weeks. All this flatland and big sky just makes us irresistable to the intersteller critters!
Stephenville rides wave of publicity after UFOs
Web Posted: 01/19/2008 12:10 AM CST
Lisa SandbergExpress-News
STEPHENVILLE — All hype aside, space aliens have not invaded the streets of this rodeo town southwest of Fort Worth — though nearly everyone here is keeping at least a playful eye out for them.
And maybe no one here has encountered any little green men in the week after dozens of residents reported seeing a strobe light-flashing object zipping through the night sky because they don't exist.
Sightings from around the country suggest extraterrestrial beings are actually gray, not green, says Dennis Balthaser, a UFO researcher and former investigator with the International UFO Museum and Research Center in Roswell, N.M.
"They're somewhat humanoid looking," Balthaser says of such accounts nationally. "They have a big head, a small-frame body, anywhere between three and five fingers, no hair ... no ears as such. A slit for the mouth."
But even if there's been no space invasion of Stephenville, the recent obsession with them has been out of this world in the town of 15,400 — and far beyond.
Ken Cherry, the Texas director of the Colorado-based Mutual UFO Network, or MUFON, which describes itself as devoted to research on the topic, says the multiple sightings on the night of Jan. 8 could turn Stephenville into a mini-Roswell.
"Dozens of people are coming forward, responsible people, saying they saw something," Cherry said. "We're talking shop owners, ranch owners, oil field workers, just about every demographic imaginable."
Forget being the Cowboy Capital of the World. Folks in town are calling Stephenville the UFO Capital of the World.
Angela Joiner, the only full-time reporter at the Stephenville Empire-Tribune, can hardly put out a paper. Ever since breaking the story last week, she's been swamped with calls and e-mails from around the world — from people who either want to tell her about their UFO sightings or from international media types assigned to cover the story.
"I'm not accustomed to this. I don't do this!" Joiner, who's been on the job 18 months, said with a laugh.
Perhaps the only person who gets less work done these days is the local constable, LeeRoy Gaitan. He's in demand as the only elected official who can corroborate what dozens of others saw: something spooky in the sky over Erath County that evening.
He was on foot approaching his home when in the distance he saw a red glow, not as big as a hot air balloon but big. It didn't appear to be attached to anything. He watched it awhile before it burned itself out. Then it reappeared.
"I knew this wasn't right," he said. So he went inside to summon his family. His wife gave him this "get real" look, Gaitan said, but his young son came running.
Father and son saw what looked like really bright white strobe lights, nine or 10 of them. They flashed as the minutes passed. "All of a sudden, they shot off, they traveled northeast at a real high rate of speed," Gaitan said.
Though he doesn't believe it was a spaceship, he's had to answer calls from hundreds of people from around the country who do. His solution: "I've started screening my calls," he said.
Military officials have said they had no aircraft in the area at the time of the sightings.
And the military doesn't investigate UFO sightings. So that leaves Cherry's MUFON group. Five of its investigators will descend on the area today to begin interviewing witnesses.
It won't be a quick investigation, Cherry cautions. Interviews will be conducted one on one. And even after all the anecdotes have been gathered and sifted through — don't expect physical evidence — the researchers will hedge their bets.
"We could say we eliminated every other possibility. But we never say, 'This is alien technology' or 'This is a spacecraft,'" Cherry said.
For now, people around town are having a ball.
City Secretary Cindy Stafford wore a space alien mask to the City Council this week. It was fun, she said.
Because he hasn't done the research, Roswell's Balthaser isn't ready to make any educated guesses about what might have crossed the sky in Texas. But, if the lights were a mile long and half a mile across, as some have suggested, that would be the size of a "mother ship," which is much bigger than a flying saucer, he said.
Balthaser, a retired engineer with the Texas Department of Transportation, takes his research seriously and hates when other people don't.
He probably wouldn't appreciate the T-shirts produced by the high school science club here that proclaim: 'Erath County: The New Roswell' and depict a spaceship leaving earth and towing a dairy cow.
By Friday, the club had sold 400 of them.
lsandberg@express-news.net
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