Army Barracks conditions in 82nd Fort (ft) Bragg

I don't know about you, but this made me a little sick to my stomach..and a whole lot disgusted!

Our wonderful men and women, who are sacrificing so much for us, deserve so much better than this!

Whether you approve or disapprove of what our country is involved in as far as the war is concerned, you HAVE to be angry about this sorry mess!

Dog, Cat, Rat Man

If only humans could get along as well!

Still In Doubt About Obama's Ties With Underground Terrorists?

In response to a previous post about the connection between Senator Barack Obama and The Weathermen Underground members Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, I received a link in comments from a fellow blogger which I considered too informative not to pass on to as many as possible.

I am aware that not everyone will follow a link, so I am posting it, in its entirety here, with my thanks to Larry Johnson at No Quarter.

Current Article

Why is Obama Hiding the Truth About William Ayers? Follow the Money

Barack Obama is not telling the truth about his relationship with Bill Ayers. There is more to this story than is already known, but Obama and his campaign are working hard to obfuscate and cover up the matter. Why? Because Barack Obama has had a close personal and business relationship with Bill Ayers that predates his run for the Illinois State Senate, and it is incumbent on the Senator from Illinois to come clean.

In fact, Barack worked for Bill Ayers for at least eight years and the press, so far, has not investigated this matter.

I predicted on this blog four months ago that Barack’s relationship with an unrepentant terrorist would become a heated issue in the presidential contest. Although Obama insists that he barely knows Ayers, this is not true. Democrats, beware — the problems of Obama’s associations with Ayers will create serious problems in the fall campaign if he is the candidate. Republicans take heart — if Barack is the nominee, your only problem will be deciding whether or focus your campaign attack ads on Obama’s questionable ties to the corrupt Tony Rezko, the racist Jeremiah Wright, the terrorist group Hamas, or the unrepentant bomber, William Ayers.

Can it be true that Obama is hiding the reality of the relationship? I will let you, the reader, decide for yourself.

In the ABC News debate in Philadelphia on April 16, Obama was asked about Ayers for the first time in a prominent public forum. It’s important to read the entire exchange in order to see that George Stephanopoulos’s question was precise in seeking information and that Obama’s answer was dismissive of the query and certain in refuting any close tie.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And, Senator, if you get the nomination, you’ll have to beat back these distractions.

>And I want to give Senator Clinton a chance to respond, but first a follow-up on this issue, general theme of patriotism, in your relationships. A gentleman named William Ayers. He was part of the Weather Underground in the 1970s. They bombed the Pentagon, the Capitol, and other buildings. He’s never apologized for that.

And, in fact, on 9/11, he was quoted in the New York Times saying, “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” An early organizing meeting for your State Senate campaign was held at his house and your campaign has said you are “friendly.”

Can you explain that relationship for the voters and explain to Democrats why it won’t be a problem?

OBAMA: George, but this is an example of what I’m talking about. This is a guy who lives in my neighborhood, who’s a professor of English in Chicago who I know and who I have not received some official endorsement from. He’s not somebody who I exchange ideas from on a regular basis.

And the notion that somehow as a consequence of me knowing somebody who engaged in detestable acts 40 years ago, when I was 8 years old, somehow reflects on me and my values doesn’t make much sense, George….

So this kind of game in which anybody who I know, regardless of how flimsy the relationship is, that somehow their ideas could be attributed to me, I think the American people are smarter than that. They’re not going to suggest somehow that that is reflective of my views, because it obviously isn’t.

Nice try, Barack. He conveniently forgot to mention what was already on the blogs — that Ayers held the first fundraiser at his home to help launch Obama’s state senate campaign in 1995; and that the two men have sat on the board of a private foundation in Chicago, the Woods Fund, for years, giving grants to, among others, a radical Palestinian activist named Rashid Khalidi.

But William Ayers was not just some guy who “lives in Barack’s neighborhood.” He is a well-known and controversial Professor of Education at the University of Illinois at Chicago. And Obama wants you to believe that he knew nothing of Ayers views or politics even though Barack participated in public forums with him there? I don’t think so.

But that is not all. Barack also was essentially an employee of Bill Ayers for eight years.

In 1995, the Chicago Annenberg Challenge was created to raise funds to help reform the Chicago public schools. One of the architects of the Challenge was none other than Professor Bill Ayers. Ayers co-wrote the initial grant proposal and proudly lists himself on his own website as the co-founder of the Challenge.

And who did William Ayers, co-creator of the Challenge, help select as the new director of the board for this program? Barack Obama. Barack Obama was the first Chairman of the Board of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. This appointment came at a crucial time in Barack’s life. He was on the verge of challenging longtime state Senator Alice Palmer for her job. When Barack decided to run, it is no surprise that he turned to William Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn for help in organizing the campaign and in hosting his first fundraiser in the district.

Obama served on the board for eight years until the Challenge ended in 2003. Bill Ayers was intimately involved in the Challenge over this same time period.

Now, let’s revisit Obama’s claim about Ayers in the ABC debate:

“Not someone I’ve accepted endorsement of, it’s not someone I exchange ideas with on a regular basis…”

That is a lie. Both parts of Obama’s statement are obviously false. Obama not only evaded Stephanopoulos’s question, he was deliberately deceptive and misleading.

Ayers helped select Obama to exercise a leadership role on the Annenberg Challenge. And Obama wants us to believe they never talked? Never exchanged ideas? Never identified issues to raise and policies to pursue? What is Barack hiding?

Senator Obama, how did you become acquainted with William Ayers? When and how did you and Bill meet?

Maybe Barack met Bill Ayers through his wife, Michelle Obama? That is one possibility. Michelle started working at the Sidley Austin law firm in Chicago in in the summer of 1988 (and stayed there until 1991).
Who else worked there? None other than Bill Ayers’ wife, Bernardine Dohrn, who worked at Sidley from 1984 through 1988. Indeed, she is widely thought in Chicago to have gotten this position due to the influence of her father-in-law, Thomas Ayers, former CEO of Commonwealth Edison, who was one of the law firm’s biggest clients.

In the aftermath of the ABC debate, no one in the mainstream media has dared probe into this relationship. The most informative article to appear since then has been written by Steve Diamond, law professor on the faculty of Santa Clara University School of Law in Santa Clara, California, on his blog, on April 22. None of what he reports has appeared in any major media outlet.

Here are key excerpts from Diamond’s report:

So, who “sent” Obama? The key I think is his ties…to the family of (in)famous former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers – not just Bill Ayers, but Bill’s father Tom Ayers and his brother John as well. Obama was a community organizer from about 1985 to 1988, when he left for Harvard Law School. . . .

Active in the local control-from-below side of this effort was Bill Ayers who had returned to Chicago in 1987 as a professor of education at the University of Illinois’ Chicago Circle campus, after surfacing from the underground, as well as Barack Obama’s Developing Communities Project (DCP). . . .

Thus, Bill Ayers was a vigorous advocate of local control along with a related concept called “small schools,” most likely because he believes it gives him the potential to build a political base from which to operate. He has discussed these ideas in speeches and writings on his blog. As he said in a speech he gave in front of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela in late 2006: “Teaching invites transformations, it urges revolutions small and large. La educacion es revolucion!” . . . .

In the fall of 1988, however, Obama left the city to go off to law school. My best guess, though, is that it was in that 86-88 time frame that Obama likely met up with the Ayers family. I will explain why I believe that in a minute. Interestingly, after his first year in law school Obama returned in the summer of 1989 to work as a summer associate at the prestigious Chicago law firm of Sidley & Austin. This in and of itself is a bit unusual. Very few top-tier law students work for big law firms during their first summer. The big law firms discourage it because if you work for them in the first summer you are likely to work for a second firm the following year and then the firms have to compete to get you.

So, why or how did Obama — at that point not yet the prominent first black president of the Harvard Law Review (that would happen the following year) — end up at Sidley?

Coincidentally, or not, Sidley had been long time outside counsel to Commonwealth Edison. The senior Sidley partner who was their key outside counsel, Howard Trienens, was a member of the board of trustees of Northwestern alongside Tom Ayers (as well as Sidley partner Newton Minow). Coincidentally, or not, Bernardine Dohrn worked at Sidley also, hired there in the late 1980s, many contend, through the intervention of Tom Ayers, even though she is not a member of the bar (as far as I can tell) because of her past jail time for Weather Underground activities. . . .

It is highly unlikely that a 30-something second-year lawyer would have been plucked from relative obscurity out of a left wing law firm to head up something as visible and important in Chicago as the Annenberg Challenge by Bill Ayers — unless Ayers had not already known Obama very well. Obama likely proved himself to Ayers in the battle for local school control when at the DCP in the 80s.

One guess as to why Obama does not play up his educational experience more thoroughly now -– it certainly could be of use to him one would think in beefing up his “I have the experience to be President” argument -– is that it would lead to a renewed discussion of the Bill Ayers connection, which is clearly toxic for Obama. This likely explains why Obama tried a kind of head fake when asked about Ayers in the recent TV debate. Obama said Ayers was a “professor of english.” Yet, Obama chaired the Annenberg Challenge for three years and served on its board for another three years, working closely with Ayers on grants to Chicago schools. And he did not know that Ayers was a professor of education? That strains credulity.

One final curiosity: Here’s yet another bizarre incident involving Ayers, reported in The New Yorker in 2001. Did Obama happen to be at this neighborhood event? We imagine he wouldn’t recall.

Dohrn teaches law at Northwestern University and is, at fifty-nine, still notably glamorous. Ayers, who is fifty-six, teaches education at the University of Illinois at Chicago; his business card reads “Distinguished Professor, University Scholar, Educator, Activist, Peacemaker, Flash-of-Lightning.” The night I got to Chicago, the couple was giving a party, timed to coincide with the booksellers’ convention, which was being held downtown… Ayers’s memoir, titled “Fugitive Days,” is coming out this fall, and he was handing his guests promotional stick-on tattoos of the Weatherman symbol–a three-colored rainbow crossed by a lightning bolt. He showed me a larger version of the symbol tattooed on his upper back.

It is of vital importance to clarify Barack’s relationship with Ayers. This is not a casual relationship. It is not a recent relationship. And, as reported in an earlier piece on this blog, Ayers has not changed his tune of political radicalism. I don’t challenge his right to believe such things, but Ayers certainly does not reflect the views of most Americans, both Democrats and Republicans. Why is Barack lying about this relationship? That is the question voters deserve to have asked and answered.

About: Larry C. Johnson is CEO and co-founder of BERG Associates, LLC, an international business-consulting firm with expertise combating terrorism and investigating money laundering. Mr. Johnson works with US military commands in scripting terrorism exercises, briefs on terrorist trends, and conducts undercover investigations on counterfeiting, smuggling and money laundering. Mr. Johnson, who worked previously with the Central Intelligence Agency and U.S. State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism, is a recognized expert in the fields of terrorism, aviation security, crisis and risk management. Mr. Johnson has analyzed terrorist incidents for a variety of media including the Jim Lehrer News Hour, National Public Radio, ABC's Nightline, NBC's Today Show, the New York Times, CNN, Fox News, and the BBC. Mr. Johnson has authored several articles for publications, including Security Management Magazine, the New York Times, and The Los Angeles Times. He has lectured on terrorism and aviation security around the world, including the Center for Research and Strategic Studies at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, France. He represented the U.S. Government at the July 1996 OSCE Terrorism Conference in Vienna, Austria. From 1989 until October 1993, Larry Johnson served as a Deputy Director in the U.S. State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism. He managed crisis response operations for terrorist incidents throughout the world and he helped organize and direct the US Government’s debriefing of US citizens held in Kuwait and Iraq, which provided vital intelligence on Iraqi operations following the 1990 invasion of Kuwait. Mr. Johnson also participated in the investigation of the terrorist bombing of Pan Am 103. Under Mr. Johnson’s leadership the U.S. airlines and pilots agreed to match the US Government’s two million-dollar reward. From 1985 through September 1989 Mr. Johnson worked for the Central Intelligence Agency. During his distinguished career, he received training in paramilitary operations, worked in the Directorate of Operations, served in the CIA’s Operation’s Center, and established himself as a prolific analyst in the Directorate of Intelligence. In his final year with the CIA he received two Exceptional Performance Awards. Mr. Johnson is a member of the American Society for Industrial Security. He taught at The American University’s School of International Service (1979-1983) while working on a Ph.D. in political science. He has a M.S. degree in Community Development from the University of Missouri (1978), where he also received his B.S. degree in Sociology, graduating Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa in 1976.See Authors Posts (583) on April 26, 2008 at 6:33 PM in Bamboozling, Barack Obama, Bernardine Dohrn, Weather Underground, William Ayers

Obama/Ayers/Dohrn...What IS The Connection?

Bill Ayers in February 2000. Photo for the Tribune by Kevin Tanaka

While listening to this, I was struck by William Ayers' frequent use of the word, "change." It makes a sensible person wonder about the connection between Ayers, and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, and just how much their influence has had to do with Senator Barack Obama's campaign for President of the United States...a place that Bill Ayers says makes him want to "puke."

After you watch this, go read Obama's Ties to Ayers and Dohrn Aren't Trifling for more interesting information from Donald Douglas, who shares other links on the subject of this interesting relationship.

Folks, this is serious business...nothing trifling about it.

I'm Back

Hmm..I don't know, but I think this could really drive a guy to drink, rather than encouraging him to decline! I guess we ladies, all, have had our ways of getting things done, but I'd be willing to bet that this one didn't work!

I've been out of town for a few days, and haven't been posting, so I know you must be tired of seeing that same old post that's been up all this time...I'm hoping this one will give you a smile!

It's surprising how much I missed reading all my friends' blogs while I was away, and surprising how much I thought of each and every one of you..wondering what you were writing.

I think I may need a day or two to rest up, and then I will get back to making you laugh a little, or making you mad at me..a lot!

Meanwhile, I will be catching up on everything I missed on here while I was away!

A "Green" House

Designed by an architecture professor at a leading national university, this house incorporates every "green" feature current home construction can provide. The house is 4,000 square feet ( 4 bedrooms ) and is nestled on a high prairie in the American Southwest. A central closet in the house holds geothermal heat-pumps drawing ground water through pipes sunk 300 feet into the ground. The water (usually 67 degrees F.) heats the house in the winter and cools it in the summer.

The system uses no fossil fuels such as oil or natural gas and it consumes one-quarter electricity required for a conventional heating/cooling system. Rainwater from the roof is collected and funneled into a 25,000 gallon underground cistern. Wastewater from showers, sinks and toilets goes into underground purifying tanks and then into the cistern. The collected water then irrigates the land surrounding the house. Surrounding flowers and shrubs native to the area enable the property to blend into the surrounding rural landscape.

This house is on a ranch near Crawford,Texas; it is the residence the of the President of the United States, George W. Bush.

This information has been circulated in an email, but it has been verified on Snopes.

It was intended as a comparison between the houses of Al Gore, and President Bush, and also included information about Gore's house in Tennessee.

Inconvenient Truth

With all the talk about global warming, and my own personal opinion of Gore's hypocrisy, I found this to be an interesting statement by Donald Douglas over at American Power.

Speaking of Gore, he said:

He's certainly reached the pinnacle of celebrity and policy acclaim with his Academy and Nobel awards. He's got this new climate change agenda taking off, so he's going to be right in the middle of all the global warming debates forthcoming in the next few years.
Now, if he can just work out the contoversies in his own personal carbon-trading regime then perhaps he might have a bit more respect!

So, since I just happened to have this nice picture of Mr. Gore's energy consuming house, I thought I'd share it with you, along with this interesting article, "Al Gore’s Personal Energy Use Is His Own 'Inconvenient Truth.'

AFROCENTRISM

Remember Senator Barack Obama's church?

Remember his pastor, and mentor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright?

Remember what is taught at that church?

No?

Well, allow me to gently remind you that what is taught there, where the man who could be the next President of the United States is, and has been, in good standing, as a member for twenty years or so, is Afrocentrisim.

Do you have any idea what that is? If not, you're not alone, because most of us have no idea what is wrapped up in that one one word: AFROCENTRISM.

If you would like to learn about it, and how it has become so prevalent, you can find it here where I found it after following the link for Best Read of the Morning, at Charming Just Charming.

Guy says:

"I am always impressed with the work of Mahone Dunbar and THIS ESSAY on AFROCENTRISM is no exception. So my friends, put on your scholar cap and take a few minutes to be taught by the best..."

Thanks for pointing me to such a fascinating, and informative read, Guy! I think it is something that should be read by everyone before deciding to whom they will give their vote in the upcoming election!

So Far, Today...

Well, let's see now..I don't curse, and don't use credit cards, but the rest of that stuff I could be just a little guilty of..especially when it comes to indulging myself with chocolate, and more especially if it comes wrapped around pretzels, strawberries, or grapes, I am guilty, guilty, guilty!

The other stuff, like being nasty, grumpy, selfish, etc., I really try to avoid, but I must admit, there are times that I have to pray just a little bit harder, and try to follow this good advice:

Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whasover things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things.

Phillipians 4:8

Pretty good advice, no matter who you are!

Shadow World

Dangers And Hazards Of Exploring Shadow World

By Brad Steiger

4-15-8

Some readers have got on my case because they found my book Shadow World to be in many ways too frightening. I have always advised people that Shadow World is a cautionary book, a book that seeks to warn everyone who will heed its admonitions that researching the paranormal is serious business.

Presently, when nearly every town with a population of 500 or more has at least one group believing that they are prepared to explore the unknown, it would be irresponsible for those of us who have been in the field for decades not to post a few warning signs for those who seek to venture where countless others fear to tread.

Truly, it takes more than watching a couple of specials on a cable channel and reading a few books to become a paranormal or UFO researcher. It takes years of studying the available literature, and, perhaps equally important studying the wisdom and knowledge of others is to take the necessary time to know oneself before one faces the inhabitants of Shadow World.

Some years ago, a young man we shall call Bill told me that he had assembled a dream team of individuals who he felt certain could play hardball with any of the multidimensional entities that had visited or invaded Earth's turf.

Bill told me that he had seen a UFO when he was a college junior at the University of Indiana at South Bend. Bill was a member of an informal group that got together once a week to discuss politics, philosophy. art, poetry, and things that went bump in the night. One night someone had brought up the topic of UFOs, and that very evening, driving back to their respective apartments, five of their number claimed to have witnessed a low UFO overflight.

Bill assured me that each of the five were all good students, physically fit, nondrinkers, nondopers, and two of them were Viet Nam combat veterans. Each of them prided himself on maintaining a cool, analytical approach to all aspects of life, especially toward anything that smacked of the occult or the bizarre. And yet each of them swore that he had seen what was unmistakably an object in the sky that he could not identify as a conventional aircraft, an ordinary celestial manifestation, a weather balloon, a bird, or anything known that could have been flying above them.

Four nights later, two of the five had seen another UFO.

Then, on the next evening, Bill and the other two saw a brightly glowing object overhead as they returned around one o'clock from a movie.

The five decided to form a splinter group in order to discuss the UFO phenomenon. They were well aware that the main group of culture vultures would mock them for their flying saucer experiences and make light of the entire subject, so they would head for an all-night pancake house to compare notes and thoughts on their subjective response while undergoing the experience of encountering what appeared to be an unknown phenomenon.

Bill said that it had not been long before the five of them had a group sighting, and from that evening on they had taken to nightly skywatches.

"We all witnessed UFOs cavorting in the midnight sky," he said. "On one occasion I stood within ten feet of two nocturnal lights hovering silently in midair. Later, we heard rappings in the dark, hollow voices, heavy breathing, and the crushing footsteps of unseen entities.

"Strangely enough," Bill said, smiling, "we were able to maintain our cool toward all the phenomena occurring around us. Maybe we got to thinking that we had been chosen for some special kind of interaction. Perhaps, secretly, we were beginning to view ourselves as masters of two worlds. I mean, we were all Dean's List students, all athletic young men, normally balanced emotionally, mentally, sexually. I guess we felt that modern Renaissance men such as ourselves could deal rationally with such phenomena and stay in control of the situation."

But then, Bill went on, the manifestations had become violent. They had swept through one of the group's home one night, pounding on the walls, yanking furiously at the bedposts, striking the startled young man in the face, terrorizing his entire family. Some of the group were followed by unmarked automobiles that seemed a bizarre mixture of styles and models--phantom automobiles, if you will.

Within the next few months, the number of harrowing incidents had increased and had expanded to include strange, dark-clad, nocturnal visitors in the apartments of several of the group members.

Radio and television sets switched on by themselves. Doors opened and closed-although, when tested, they.were found to have remained locked. One of the group made the wild claim that he had been teleported one night from his bedroom to the middle of a forest on the outskirts of the city.

"As preposterous as that sounds," Bill said, "I'm sure that most of us accepted it as true. since we had all undergone some incredible experiences. We had all lost our sense of perspective. I began sleeping with the. light on and a .38 Special under my pillow. Another of my friends invested heavily in weapons and began running with a group that offered sacrifices to Odin. A third was 'born again' into fundamental Christianity. The other two dropped out of college a month before they would have graduated with honors."

What did he think it had all meant?

Bill considered the question carefully. "I've thought a lot about that. I think the five of us had entered a kind of game, a contest, a challenge, a testing experience. The trouble was, we just didn't know all the rules.

"Modern society doesn't prepare us to play those kind of games. Modern society doesn't tell its kids that there is another reality around them. Our educators have ignored the individual mystical experience and the other dimensions that can open up to those who enter altered states of consciousness--whether it be through drugs or through accidentally stumbling into the twilight zones."

Is humankind involved in some kind of continuing interaction with the "Other"? Is it the same ancient intelligence that continually tests us, or do new teams come to play the reality game with us?

"I had the feeling," Bill recalled, "that my friends and I were dealing with some kind of energy.

At first I thought it was something from outer space, some alien world. But I've thought about our experiences a great deal, and I believe that we had somehow activated some energy that is a part of this planet. I think we might have triggered some kind of archetypal pattern with our minds. Maybe that's what magicians have tried to do since Cro-Magnon days--interact with and control that energy with their minds."
******

Henry Lazarus (The names of the individuals in the next case study are pseudonyms--for what will become obvious reasons.) taught physics in a small Midwestern college, and, in spite of his initial resistance to the UFO enigma, he found that he was becoming totally enthralled by those men and women who had immersed themselves in a field of research that challenged the scientific paradigm of the twentieth century.

During summer break, Lazarus flew to New York to proselytize UFOs to his old friend Benjamin Chiang, an university professor of physics. Chiang had always been one of the most open-minded individuals whom Lazarus had ever encountered, and his response to Lazarus' presentation of the subject had been customarily direct. Instead of relying upon secondary reports, why did they not travel to a scene of alleged UFO activity and collect their own primary data?

Lazarus was pleased with his friend's reasonable suggestion, and he was excited by the proximity to such an area of alleged phenomena. One of the speakers at a UFO conference had told him of a small town not far from Springfield, Massachusetts, where it was claimed that UFO manifestations could be observed almost nightly. The town was situated on the Connecticut River in the Holyoke Mountain Ridge.

Chiang had only an early morning class on Wednesday, the next day. They could be on the road long before noon, and after about a four-hour drive arrive on the scene in plenty of time to witness whatever activity the UFOnauts might have in store for them. Since his first class on

Thursday was not until late in the afternoon, they could afford the time to stay overnight if necessary.

Chiang asked if Henry would mind if he asked a friend of his, a very skeptical, hard-nosed professor of biology, to accompany them if his schedule were compatible with such an expedition.

In true scientific spirit, Lazarus welcomed a closed mind as a kind of control.

Two hours on the road, Henry had begun to regret extending his permission to invite Dr. Philip Reisman along on the excursion. Reisman was more than a skeptic, he was a cynic.

By three that afternoon, with only a couple of comfort stops, they had found their UFO harbor. As was to be expected, it looked just like any number of small New England river towns in the bright sun of a summer's day.

Henry remembered that his informant had said that there was a woman at a small local museum who had become an authority on the UFOs and the creature sightings that had been made in the area over the past twenty years.

The local UFO expert was a jolly, round-faced woman in her fifties, whose name was Mary Higgins, and being a widow with a very limited social life, she unhesitatingly accepted their invitation to dinner in exchange for her guiding them to one of the more favored UFO-spotting sites.

Mrs. Higgins seemed only mildly impressed by their academic credentials. She had, within the prior four months, brought two astronomers, a magazine writer, an Air Force officer, a documentary filmmaker, and an author of books on the paranormal to the same site to which she would guide them that evening.

Mary Higgins proved to be a delightful raconteur over dinner at the charming riverfront restaurant. She told them that the phenomenon often left scorched circles in the farmers' fields.

At least half a dozen men and women claimed to have been taken on board the craft, and they all described the UFOnauts as being no more than five feet tall with large heads, big eyes with catlike pupils, hardly any noses to speak of, just a couple of slits for mouths, and pointed ears.

No, she answered Phil Reisman's jibe, they were not green-skinned, but they had been wearing green-colored, one-piece jumpsuits.

All in all, the little New England river town and its surrounding environs seemed like a perfectly mixed cauldron of continually bubbling paranormal phenomena. For at least the last forty years--and before that if the old-timers could be believed--there had been regular manifestations of UFOs, Big Foot, Cat People, Giant Birdmen, ghosts, phantoms, and poltergeist activity.

Mrs. Higgins favored the theory that she lived in what some paranormal researchers termed a "window area," a portal between dimensions of reality. A place where, in what seemed to be cyclical patterns, mysterious phenomena continued to appear, then disappear. More aware intelligences, she speculated, such as the UFOnauts, made use of such window areas to enter and to leave our Space·Time continuum.

Philip Reisman stated his opinion that it all sounded dangerously akin to madness to his way of thinking.

That night at the very stroke of twelve, as beautifully choreographed as if George Pal, Ray Harryhausen, Willis O'Brien, Rick Baker, or any other of the great Hollywood special effects masters were producing live-action theater, a glowing UFO appeared above the clump of trees before which Chiang had parked his Volvo.

Lazarus felt fully alive for the first time in his life. Chiang was chortling with excitement. Mary Higgins was staring smugly at Philip Reisman, who was saying absolutely nothing, who seemed totally transfixed by the scene before him.

The Volvo could not contain them. Lazarus flung open the door as if he were his Biblical namesake throwing back the stone before his tomb. Chiang was already racing across the open meadow that lay before the grove in which the UFO appeared to have settled.

"Don't rush it, boys," Mary Higgins warned them. "Don't get too close. Give it a minute."

Reisman shouted at them to come back, to be careful. When they were about halfway across the meadow, two balls of greenish light moved out from the grove and came toward Chiang and Lazarus. The two physicists slowed their pace and looked curiously at the lights hovering above them.

Mrs. Higgins had stepped out of the car, and she was yelling at them that they were being monitored. Chiang and Lazarus felt that she might be correct.

And as they stood there, not wanting to offend or to transgress any rules they could not hope to comprehend, they heard the crushing footsteps of unseen entities moving in the grove ahead of them. To their right, they heard what seemed to be heavy breathing. To their left, the mumble of hollow, alien voices.

Chiang lifted his arms and shouted into the darkness that he was a man of goodwill and peace. Motivated by his friend's example, Lazarus did the same.

At that moment, the harsh, blaring, horribly discordant sound of the car horn shattered the almost reverential attitude of the two scientists toward the promise that lay beyond them in the grove of trees. The sound of the horn became the shriek of a frightened, demented beast, and it seemed to echo around them in a hundred variations of disharmony.

From the very first note of the metallic scream, every aspect of the UFO manifestation seemed to shrink back, as if the footsteps, the lights, the breathing, the voices were but multiple probings of a single entity--an entity that had now begun to retreat, to withdraw, like a wild thing startled by the blare of a hunter's trumpet.

In the matter of a very few seconds, all facets of the phenomena had seemingly been pulled back to the grove, and Chiang and Lazarus stood in the center of the meadow in anguish, as the UFO shot up into the night sky at a rate of speed that they could not comprehend in terms of the science which they understood. They felt alone, disappointed, like two small children who had only caught a glimpse of Santa's boot as the gift-laden elf disappeared up the chimney.

When they returned to the Volvo, they demanded to know why Dr. Reisman had pressed on the horn. His reply was barely distinguishable through his frightened, chattering teeth, but it had something to do with saving them from being taken into a spaceship and chopped up for food.

Mrs. Higgins' face in the light from the headlamps bore an expression composed of nearly equal parts of contempt and pity for the biologist.

"It's scared away now," she told Chiang and Lazarus. "You might just as well call it a night."

They drove Mary Higgins back into town and thanked her for her graciousness and her tolerance.

When they went in search of a motel that might still be open, Philip Reisman insisted that they return at once to New York City. Lazarus and Chiang acquiesced, since another day spent with the man would have been intolerable to both of them.

They were not five miles out of town when Reisman; who was sitting in the backseat, began to shout that they were being followed by two glowing green lights.

When Chiang glanced in the rearview mirror, he was excited to see that Reisman was correct.

Lazarus clutched his friend's shoulder and together, almost as one, they uttered a shared wish that they might have another opportunity for interaction with the UFO occupants.

But then the lights whooshed by them, one on either side, and vanished into the darkness.

By the time Chiang and Lazarus dropped Reisman off at his apartment a few minutes before dawn, the man was nearly hysterical. He had cowered in a corner of the backseat most of the way home, his teeth chattering. He had shouted out a dozen times that monsters lurked at the side of the highway.

When they walked into Chiang's apartment thirty minutes later, the telephone was ringing.

It was Reisman, babbling into the receiver about something pounding on his walls.

Ben was about to tell him to take some tranquilizers and to go to sleep when a remarkable thing occurred. A mysterious pounding began on the walls of his own apartment.

At this point, Reisman screamed that a dark, hooded figure had appeared in a corner of his bedroom.

>Almost as soon as Chiang repeated for Lazarus' benefit what the man had said, the two of them were gasping at the materialization of a dark, hooded figure in a corner of Ben's living room.