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The Allen telescope array in search of alien life

Mainstream science tends to be Earth-centric when it comes to investigating alien life. In other words, when scientists talk about the search for aliens civilizations, they take the perspective that such beings generally will act – if not look—like humans. The aliens would announce their presence when they arrive and either be friendly or aggressive. They would have advanced technologies, but they wouldn’t break physical laws that we assume exist for the entire universe. They would be techies, but they wouldn’t walk through walls or float sleeping humans out of their bedrooms or communicate telepathically.

All these assumptions – and of course I’m making my own assumptions about mainstream science from what I’ve observed – lead us to Fermi’s paradox. Simply put, the paradox is the apparent contradiction between the supposition that civilizations must be abundant in the universe and humanity’s lack of contact with ETs, or evidence they exist.

Physicists Enrico Fermi and Michael H.Hart puzzled over the problem. They noted that the Sun is a young star, there are billions of stars in the galaxy that are billions of years older. Some of these stars no doubt have Earth-like planets, where intelligent life evolved. Presumably, some of those civilizations developed interstellar travel, and over tens of millions of years, the galaxy would be completely colonized.

So Fermi wanted to know what happened. Why haven’t alien colonizers arrived? He asked: “Where is everybody?”

The simplest solution would be that there is nobody else. No one is home elsewhere. In fact, there are no homes. If that’s the case, it seems that our vast Milky Way Galaxy would consist of a lot of wasted real estate. That belief was better suited for the Middle Ages. Yet, some scientists actually suggest that we may be the only intelligent race in existence anywhere. Hmm, talk about an Earth-centric point of view.

Another popular reason for the lack of contact is the so-called impossibility of inter-planetary space flight. In other words, it would just take too long to get anywhere—even if there were no traffic jams in deep space. But that again assumes all civilizations are restricted to the same limitations we face.

Meanwhile, mainstream science stubbornly rejects all hearsay and anecdotal evidence that aliens are already here and have been throughout our history, that humans are being abducted and subjected to invasive procedures, that the aliens have extraordinary abilities that bypass some of our physical laws. When asked about such contentions, they simply say that the evidence for an alien presence is non-existent.

Certainly, there are scientists who disagree, but who understand that speaking out on this issue is a career buster. And that’s the real paradox. If there is an alien presence, the most important issue of our time is not only being ignored by mainstream science, but it’s taboo. Aliens and UFOs cannot be discussed in serious scientific circles.

Meanwhile, the Internet has enough stories about sightings, encounters and abductions to keep us reading and wondering. As they say on The H2 Channel’s Ancient Aliens, “What if it were true?”

 On January 6, I wrote up a synchro that will appear this month called The Dolphin Returns Home. It concerned one of our daughter’s dolphin paintings that was bought by fellow blogger and friend, Nancy Atkinson. It was shipped to her place in Hawaii during a Mercury retrograde.

Whenever Mercury is retrograde – which it is three times a year – there are travel and communication snafus. I felt uneasy about shipping the painting during this period, but Nancy really wanted the painting for her condo in Hawaii, so off it went. There were many screw-ups with this shipment.  

At any rate, I finished the post, copied a link into it – and the entire post vanished. I searched my computer, figuring it had to be somewhere, but I never found it and I hadn’t yet copied it to my backup drive. So on the morning of the 7^th, I set out to reconstruct the post and had to look up the astrology information again, find the links, stuff that takes time.  I got sidetracked with some other astrology stuff and finally went to work on my ghostwriting project.

That afternoon – law of attraction? – I received an email from a woman who is editor of a business website,  asking if I would be interested in writing a piece for the site about the financial outlook for the 12 signs for 2014.  I told her I was  interested and asked what she wanted in terms of word count. It turned out that she was looking for 50 to 100 words per sign.

Here’s where the trickster had a great belly laugh. I thought that since it was a business website, they had a budget in mind.  But the editor wrote back and said $500 was a bit out of their price range. Even though they have 30 million unique visitors a month, the website isn’t turning a profit yet. Did I know of any other astrologers who might be willing to do the piece in exchange for exposure for their book or website?

I told her that none of the astrologers I know work for free, that the info doesn’t come off the top of your head but is time intensive. To do this kind of forecast requires hours of erecting charts and studying transits etc. to each of the sun signs. She said she understood and would keep looking.

Yes, good luck with that search.

The lesson I took away from this odd interaction is that I can’t assume anything about these types of synchros. Just because I was immersed in some astrology stuff shortly before I heard from this woman doesn’t mean it would necessarily pan out. In this way, it’s a lot like this synchro, which involved Ecuador and time travel, where an option is presented, but it isn’t necessarily the path you should follow.

 One of our daughter’s jobs is as an artist with Paint Nite, a company that began in Boston. As an art major in college, this job is great for her. The concept of Paint Nites is brilliant and simple: anyone can learn to paint in a relaxed atmosphere (bar), when a “master artist” leads the class, step by step, in how to paint a particular image. Paintings are chosen by the corporate headquarters and artists are encouraged to submit their own paintings for consideration. They are well-compensated for these events and earn money on the images they’ve created when they are used by Paint Nites in other cities.

Since Megan first started with this company last year, Rob and I have been students in her practice classes here at the house.  So it was fun to actually attend a paint nite that she taught.

This one was held at a bar/restaurant called Grafitti Junction, in the college park area of Orlando. The event started at 5 and ran until 7, but we arrived at 4 so Megan could help with the set up.

When we walked into the back room of the restaurant, I was impressed at how well-organized everything was.  At each of the 25 or so spots that had been set up, there were: a small easel with a 16×20 canvas on it; 3 paint brushes  (small, medium, large),  a plastic glass filled with water for cleaning your brushes, paper towels for drying the brushes, and a paper plate with blobs of acrylic paint in the colors that would be used for the night’s particular painting (featured above).  Draped over the back of each chair was a lime green apron to put on so the paint didn’t get on your clothes.  The color matched the fabric draped over all the tables and bar.

While Megan helped with the setup, Rob and I found a table outside and got a bite to eat. The weather was gorgeous – mid-60s, sunny. At 4:45, we went inside, took the chairs we’d claimed earlier, and the event started promptly at five. The painting we did was called Lily Pads.

I was thinking that the night before, when Megan had been practicing this painting, she’d gone through three canvasses (artist meltdown!) before she figured out how to teach it. But as she took her spot at the front of the room the evening of the event, and started talking, there was no trace at all of that angst. She had figured it out. And wow, did it ever work.

The class was small – 16 – four men, a dozen women – and Megan, her assistant, and the bartender. She took us through the process – background color is apparently key to everything else  – and  these people had fun as their creativity was released. It’s amazing to me that a group of people come together for a creative purpose and that within a few hours, they can take home something to hang on their walls.

How can writers do something like this? How would you even know where to start with the written language?

One of the most interesting participants was a man with a bald head festooned with an elaborate tattoo. He’s a tattoo artist, but has never painted. I snapped a picture of his head:

Before the end of the event, I understood a synchro that had occurred before we’d left Megan’s apartment that afternoon. She has a new roommate and one of the things Caitlan brought with her was a cool coffee table with a chalkboard surface. Using a piece of yellow chalk, Rob had written: Wherever you go, there you are. He pointed it out to Megan and she burst out laughing.

“Wow, this is a synchro. My friend Ryan wrote exactly same thing the other night.” She moved some papers around and showed us the faded writing. Sure enough, same words, and strangely similar handwriting (which didn’t show up in the picture I took).

In an odd way, these words fit everything Paint Nites is about.  In spite of the issues we human beings have, in spite of the state of the world or the universe or whatever, we are where we are and let’s enjoy it. Even if you’ve never painted anything in your entire life, you enter into this venue and your creative passions take over. Your muse rules the roost.

Wherever you go, there you are. A wise code to live by.

  These 3 friends are Noah – in the middle – Kilt to his left, and Willow to his right. Kilt and Willow are border collies who belong to our friend Cassie.

Cassie has worked in the horse industry for more than 20 years – as a groom, barn manager, the person who prepares the horses for competitions, travels with them overseas for competitions, sits in quarantine with them. In her business, the people/family who hire you usually pay – in addition to a salary – for your rent, car, phone,  travel expenses and so on. You must be mobile for this kind of work, nomadic, because competitive horse people spend the worst part of the winter in South Florida and the rest of the year elsewhere.

For the last 6 years, Cassie has worked for novelist Tami Hoag, who hired her to work with her horses on international competitions. But Tami decided she didn’t want to compete internationally and had to let Cassie go. So now Cassie works for the family who owns the Biltmore estate – the Vanderbilts – and had to move into a new apartment by January 1. But during the season in our area,  apartments are impossible to find, everything is leased, wrapped up, taken. So she and her two border collies moved in with us on January 1.

The first day was totally wild. Kilt and Willow were disoriented by the move. Kilt has more energy than several dozen humans and couldn’t quite believe that she had a pool and a yard that was visited by squirrels. She’s two. Her bro, Willow, is ten, more mellow, a kind of Downton Abbey dog, always reserved, as Cassie says, always in a tux. Willow is also interested in squirrels, but is quite pleased to stalk our two cats relentlessly. We had to set up boundaries, shut off certain rooms so that the dog and cat quarters are separate, at least until the critters all became accustomed to the living situation.

And now, into the second week, I’m happy to report that Noah is beside him with joy. He has other dogs to play with, to chase around the pool, through the jungle of our yard. He showed Kilt and Willow how to step into the pool on the shallow side, with the easy steps, and Kilt mastered the task in minutes, bounding in and out of the water with wild abandon. Willow is more cautious by nature and since his hips are ailing, he doesn’t leap in the way Kilt does. He does everything more slowly, but with the same degree of joy.

Kilt and Nika, who is part border collie, are the same age and share many of the same attributes. Both are affectionate, are happiest when they have a task, a mission, a goal, and they don’t bother the cats. Willow is just as sharp, but is really tempted by the presence of cats. Are you gonna run, huh? If you do, I’ll chase you…  That sort of interest.

Powder, our snow white cat, is probably the most tolerant cat I’ve ever met. She’s fine with more dogs in the house as long as they understand the rules – that if they get too close, they’ll be swatted, and she still has her claws. Simba, our male orange tabby, doesn’t want anything to do with any of them. He goes outside or hides out in our bedroom, but if he’s cornered, he’ll hiss and howl the way only a male cat can and fight. But when the dogs go into Cassie’s room at night, he struts out, wary yet fearless. Where are they, huh? Huh?

Somehow, these 5 animals have arrived at a living arrangement that works for all of them. And meanwhile, the tres amigos – two border collies and a golden retriever – gang up on us humans at dinner, in the yard, when we least expect it. Hey, humans, see how we do this?

Always, they are our teachers.

Synchros? I can’t find any right this second. It’s just about  life and big changes for humans and their animal buddies.

Back in the Bush era, we had one progressive radio show – Air America – and it was my link to sanity in an insane time.

Megan was in high school and when I made the drive to pick her up, I was usually listening to Air America, particularly during the 2004 election cycle. It was during this cycle that I really began to understand that the election would probably be stolen because Diebold – which supplied thousands of the voting machines in the election – was owned by Bush supporters, diehard Republicans. And in the election booth that November, I punched out Kerry’s name – and Bush’s name came up. I did it twice more and the same thing happened.  But that’s another story!

Air America was on the air from March 2004 to January 2010, when it declared bankruptcy. It featured an outstanding lineup of talent: author Thom Hartmann, Ed Schultz, Randi Rhodes, Mike Malloy, Al Franken, and Stephanie Miller. All of these people were bright and articulate and politically savvy on the radio.  What’s interesting about them is where some of them are now, in 2014.

Al Franken, a Minnesota native,  is now a U.S. senator – and yes, he’s still outrageously progressive. Ed Schultz hosts nightly The Ed Show on MSNBC, and his focus is on middle class Americans, unions, the working Joes. Thom Hartmann, who should have his own show on MSNBC, continues to write compelling books. Randi Rhodes is on Sirius Radio. Stephanie Miller, who is funny and really knows her politics, has her own show on Sirius Satellite Radio. She should have her own show on MSNBC.

Rachel Maddow is in a class apart. She now hosts the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, at the prime time slot – 9 p.m. Maddow holds a doctorate from Oxford. She’s openly gay. She’s upbeat, has a sense of humor, and she’s pretty, but not in the way the Fox News anchors are – who all look like Stepford wives.

Unlike Keith Olbermann, who first had her on his show as a guest, she invites people with opposing points of view. Sometimes they show up, most of the time they don’t – because they know they can’t defend themselves against the kind of investigative journalism that she does. You know, FACTS.

Maddow and her team scour local newspapers and websites for stories that might hold national interest and implications. Recently, she was the only national news person to report on the closure of the George Washington Bridge between New York and New Jersey, the busiest bridge (so they say) in the world.This scandal, which involves Chris Christie, the current New Jersey governor, may crush his shot at the White House in 2016 and could put him in federal prison for a number of crimes.

As Christie told it today in his TWO HOUR press conference, he was basically clueless (sure), and feels betrayed (uh-huh) by the people he trusted, some of whom he has since fired. There are more than 2,000 pages of emails available now on this bridge closure – which  tied up traffic for four days and had human repercussions. Emergency teams couldn’t reach a woman in cardiac arrest and investigative teams could delve into the disappearance of a child. That’s just for starters.

For the last several nights, Maddow’s show has focused exclusively on the Christie bridge scandal and has uncovered a pattern of Christie bullying and intimidation that smacks of the worst kind of politics: cross me, say something negative about me, and you’ll pay the price.

There are several theories about why Christie retaliated against the town of Fort Lee, New Jersey. But the bottom line here is that Christie appears to have used a federal facility – a bridge – for political gain and that’s a federal offense. I would like to see this blowhard in prison. But because he’s claiming he knew nothing about any of this (really? You’re that incompetent as a boss?) and because he’s a slick talker who may be the Republican party’s best hope for a presidential candidate in 2016, he will probably draw the DO NOT GO TO JAIL CARD.

As Rob points out, our governor, Rick Scott, became governor in spite of the fact that he was charged with Medicare fraud and belongs in prison.

So there you have it, American politics on the down and dirty side. I’m sure there ‘s a synchro in here somewhere, and eventually it will be found – by us, by you, by someone. And when it surfaces, we’ll post it.

In the mean time, though, we have this thought: everything in life appears to be political, even if you are not.

 People have different criteria about selecting books or deciding if they’re worthy of reading.  If I’m browsing in a bookstore and find a book that interests me, I’ll often read the first page and the last and if it feels right, I’ll buy the book.

Other people buy on the basis of the cover or the back cover copy and reviews.  And still others determine the book’s quality by opening it at random and reading whatever is there. But Mike Perry  takes a look at any page with a 6, 7, 67, or 76, his numbers.

Recently he posted about this on his blog, where the other number involved was a 3.

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from Mike:

I’ve been reading Rob & Trish’s book The Synchronicity Highway (and very good it is too). I’ve only got up to reading to page 49 but, as I sometimes do with books, I flicked through the pages quickly before I started reading to see if anything caught to my attention. It did.

I found that Trish and Rob have mentioned my synchro experiences three times in the book – and there’s a strange thing about the pages they are on.

The first in on page 7, so when looking at the book pages 6 and 7 are open (67 being one of the important numbers in my life).

The second synchro is on page 67!  “Bound to be a third,” I thought …

… and there it was on pages 105 and 106. Then it dawned on me 1+5=6 and 1+6=7 – so a third 67.

Now some will say things like this only happen because we are looking for patterns within our lives, but surely there is more to it than this. Otherwise why would so many of us say things happen in threes.

Are these threes perhaps pre-programmed as an attention seeking novelty item by the ‘Universe’? A bit too fanciful for you? Okay, maybe we create the third with our belief that there will be a third.

 ++

Numbers, matrices of messages. That’s how it seems to me.

In the end, isn’t it all about belief?

In September, our daughter, Megan, had her first art exhibit.  Our friend, Nancy Atkinson, whom we met through blogging and actually met in person in Oregon several years ago, bought one of the paintings. She asked Megan to ship it to Hawaii, where she and her family own a condo. She thought the dolphin would fit perfectly there.

However, Mercury was retrograde from October 21 to November 10 and I had reservations about mailing the painting during that time. In astrology, the planet Mercury rules travel and communication. Three times each year it turns retrograde – and appears to move backward through the zodiac. During Mercury retrogrades,  there are often travel snafus, communication goes haywire, computers misbehave. It’s wise not to sign contracts during a retrograde period unless you don’t mind re-negotiating when Mercury has turned direct.  It’s a good time to review and revise and re-think plans.

But Nancy was going to be in Hawaii only during the retro period, so Megan went ahead and mailed it in late October.  She was told the painting would arrive at Nancy’s place around November 2 or 3. When the 3^rd passed and the painting hadn’t arrived, Nancy emailed me and I asked Megan to check with UPS. They said the painting was still en route.

On the 9^th Nancy and her husband flew back home. The painting had never arrived, even though UPS indicated it had been delivered. She called the concierge of their condo in Hawaii, who hadn’t yet seen it but said he would keep an eye out for it.

On January 6, Megan called and said, “Mom, you aren’t going to believe what I got in the mail. The dolphin painting! UPS said it was returned because it was never picked up!”

Mercury retro in action. The dolphin had returned home.  The painting traveled more than 9,000 miles from Orlando, Florida to Maui, Hawaii, and will now travel another 2,500 miles plus to Nevada.  May its journey come to a peaceful end!

These conversations are rarely pleasant but  in the greater scheme of things are probably necessary.

Rob: What will you do if… I die tomorrow. Or next week. Or next month.

 Rob and I were in the car when he said this, returning from a trip to Whole Foods. For our international friends, Whole Foods is an organic market  where so many samples of foods are set out that you can graze your way through lunch and dinner free of charge. We go there once a week or so because they carry foods that no one else does. Strange conversations seem to occur to and from Whole Foods.

 “What’s that supposed to mean?” I asked. “You planning on checking out?”

“Well, no, but would you know how to access our bank records?”

Not long after we got married, Rob took over finances. I was always tardy on paying bills, I am terrible at math, our credit sucked. I was happy to turn this over to someone else.

“I would go immediately to your  computer. I would figure it out.”

Not long after Rob and I first met, we had a reading with a Cuban psychic named Aura. She lived in a small apartment in Miami’s Little Havana, didn’t speak much English, and her predictions turned out to be startling accurate.

She told me I would become Rob’s second wife and would be married to him for a very long time. She said I would write many books under an abbreviated “genderless” name (TJ MacGregor) and that we would be creative partners. All that is true. She said I would die when I was 74 – don’t know about that one yet!- and that Rob would marry for a third time, but his second wife wolds always be the love of his life. I really liked that part.

So when Rob asked this particular question, my thoughts immediately went way back to Aura. “I’ll kill you if you die first,” I said. “That’s not how Aura said it would happen.”

It’s not that I believe 74 is the checkout date just because a psychic way back said it was.  What was important was the idea of it all, the way our lives ultimately play out.  I always suspected that my mother would die before my dad did but was sure of it when she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, her way of exploring the afterlife without actually having to die. My dad was more intellectual in that sense,  he had to be able to mentally connect the dots first.    And he eventually did and died five years after my mother did. 

But the exploration Rob and I have taken during our 30 years together  has been radically different from that of our parents. We have explored and written about many  aspects of psychic phenomena. So it’s not death that either of us fear. I’m not even sure if fear figures into it.  We all die. Death is  the ultimate unknown.

If consciousness researchers are right , then we choose our deaths in the same way we choose the circumstances of our birth and it may nor may not have anything to do with genetic predisposition. Free will. Choice. When we came into this life, we knew where the chips lay. And at each step in our journeys, we make choices, we exert our free will.

When you talk about this stuff openly, it comes down to this:

Trish: If you die first, I wouldn’t stay in our house.

Rob: Me, neither.

Trish: I would move closer to Megan.

Rob: Let’s go eat that vegetarian lasagna you bought for lunch.

And so this very strange and important conversation ends over food, what we will eat for lunch.

Great, a story about a mysterious archaeological site with an alien connection. Right up our alley. But is it true or a hoax?

Probably the latter, but a complicated one. It’s different from our last post on the mass death of black birds, which was was clearly a satire fake newspaper web site. Like the stories in the Onion, you can be tricked once in a while, at least for a few minutes. Then you get it. It’s a joke.

Not so with the Ancient Arrow Project article, which I’ve linked here.  The author clearly wants you to believe. There’s nothing tongue in cheek about it.

In brief, the story is this: In 1972, a group of hikers exploring a remote canyon in New Mexico discovered peculiar pictographs and artifacts. An archaeologist from the University of New Mexico assumed the artifacts and wall paintings were made by a nomadic Native Americans since there was no evidence of a village.

“There were, however, two very puzzling questions. All but one of the artifacts could be dated to the 8th century AD. The exception, known as the ‘compass’ artifact, appeared to be an unusual form of technology, and was found among more typical artifacts like pottery and simple tools. The compass was covered in strange hieroglyphic symbols, some of which were also found on the pottery. Secondly, the pictographs that were found in the area had inexplicably appeared, and they were strikingly different than any of the other native petroglyphs or rock art found in the Southwest or the entire continent for that matter.”

Because of the two anomalies, the site was taken over by the National Security Agency, and the project was dubbed Ancient Arrow. “It was decided that these artifacts might suggest a pre-historical, extraterrestrial presence on earth, and that the NSA had the appropriate agenda and wherewithal to initiate a full-scale, scientific expedition to determine the nature and significance of the site.

None of the experts could decipher the pictographs and the project was soon sidelined and remained top secret. Then in 1994, a landslide exposed an entrance into a cavern containing 23 chambers. Each chamber featured more mysterious rock art messages and in the final chamber an object was discovered, an optical disc, that seemed to be dormant alien technology.

At that point the project was handed over to a secret ‘black bag’ group called Advanced Contact Intelligence Organization (ACIO), which “organized an inter-disciplinary research team to assess the exact nature of the site and attempt to discover additional artifacts or evidence of an extraterrestrial visitation.”

Eventually, the code was broken using the Sumarian language as the key, and the story came to light about the WingMakers,  a group of humans from 750 years in our future. “They claimed to be culture bearers, or ones that bring the seeds of art, science, and philosophy to humanity. They had left behind a total of seven time capsules in various parts of the world to be discovered according to a well-orchestrated plan. Their apparent goal was to help the next several generations of humans develop a global culture; a unified system of philosophy, science, and art.”

In early 1997, the ACIO scientist who had originally discovered the access code for the optical disc and translated 8,000 pages of information, became convinced that the ACIO would never share the discovery with the public, and he decided to take action. He provided documents to a journalist, who wrote the story as it appeared on the Internet in 1998.

* * *

I was fascinated, but wondered why I’d never heard about it, why hadn’t it been the focus of  an episode of Ancient Aliens? Why hadn’t a book been published as was the case of Hunt for the Skinwalker,  regarding alien/paranormal encounters on a ranch in Utah linked to Native American culture.

The story is complicated because the WingMakers web site has created a new version, altering the original story. The new version has been called disinformation. But maybe the entire saga is just that…a fake story intended to misguide and mislead and keep the public believing that the idea of an alien presence is bogus.

I sent the article to a couple of friends with insight into intelligence programs.  Joe McMoneagle, a former government remote viewer (aka psychic spy), was kind enough to read the article and respond. Here’s what he had to say:

“What makes this totally unbelievable is the fact that this is so far outside the mission statement of the NSA that it isn’t even feasible in the wildest sense of the word. If anyone was involved with this stuff, it would be the same folks who are mixed up with the documents released from the late 1940’s, early 1950’s – MAGIC Documents. A group so secret no one knows they exist [now there is a surprising story.] I think this is a good tale, but totally bogus, Rob.”

I also sent it to Peter Levenda, author of the Sinister Forces series and a genuinely mysterious fellow who has shown up in our lives from time to time. Here is what Peter had to say:

“Yeah, this looks like a hoax.  There are no such ‘doctors’ that I can find, and their institute doesn’t seem to exist except on the Net. However, this dovetails with an email I received yesterday…about an archaeological find in the Grand Canyon….The whole thing is very hinky, but the archaeological site, etc seemed like we were talking about a similar phenomenon just from different angles. Weird!”

…then fool me again.

And it almost happened. At least for a few minutes, I took two recent bogus Internet stories seriously, probably because I wanted them to be true so I could write cool blog posts.

But the first thing in both cases that alerted me that these stories might be made up was a little question in the back of my head.  Why hadn’t I heard about this before now? Well, interesting things do happen that we miss, even if our antennas for news of the weird are usually extended. And these two bits of news definitely fit  in that category.

The first one comes from a little known news outlet called Rock City Times in Arkansas. I noticed the link to this story on a podcast website on Jan. 2. It was fresh news from New Year’s Eve. In fact, the event in question—a massive die-off of red-winged black birds that fell from the sky over a one-mile area– occurred close to the stroke of midnight. There have been other mass deaths of birds reported and it seemed that this one was the most recent. I was hooked…well, at least for a while.

To my astonishment, the story said that this was the fourth year in a row that red-winged black birds had fallen in mass on New Year’s eve on this town. I did not know that. But this event was far and above the worst case ever reported. Supposedly, 18 million black birds simultaneously plummeted to their deaths. How, I wondered, had they come up with the number so quickly?

The story quoted a local couple who had witnessed the plague of dead birds, and a meteorologist who said several clouds of birds had been spotted on radar before the big plunge. An ornithologist suggested the death-dive indicated that this species of black bird was going extinct, that a mere 500 red-winged black birds remained. How did he know that?  Somehow, the scientist even knew that the birds had come from distant places, turning the small town of Bebe, Arkansas into Jonestown of the bird world.

Amazing, I thought. Great story for the blog, and started putting together a quick post when suddenly my computer froze. My Mac Pro had never simply stopped functioning. I couldn’t type. I couldn’t escape the page. I couldn’t do anything but restart the computer. Fortunately, that worked and I was back in action. But before returning to the blog post, I was distracted by various household ditties and it was a few hours before I sat back down and I discovered my post had vanished. And I’d just told Trish I’d found a very interesting story earlier, but oddly, very oddly, I couldn’t remember a thing about it.

I clicked onto my Internet history for the day, and fortunately I wasn’t hallucinating. There it was—the Rock City Times story of massive death of blackbirds. This time I took a closer look and noticed that below the name of the publication was a curious line: Arkansas’ 2^nd Most Unreliable News Source.

I realized I’d been had by a satirical web site, a protégé of The Onion, which has produced fake news for years and fooled untold numbers of readers…at least for awhile.

Fortunately, synchronicity saved me.  My computer simply froze at the moment of truth. The post was never written. But, hey, at least I got something out of it—an alternative post about how stupid I almost was.

I’ve left out the other part of the story. Yes, another web site almost blind-sided me earlier that same day. It features a really interesting, well-written article that amazingly combined my interest in archaeology and the UFO/alien scenario. I’ll go into that one in the next day or two. Fool me twice…and my computer stops working.