Watching a bewildering world from the middle of nowhere
Here’s my video from last month’s hiking trip on the Isle of Lewis and Harris. I decided not to add a music soundtrack to this video. You’ll hear what the camera heard — mostly wind and water. This is a high-definition video, but you should be able to select lower definition in the toolbar if your Internet connection is slow. But watch it on a big screen, if you can.
A Scottish meat pie bought at a High Street bakery in Dunbar. Click here for high-resolution version.
I’m home from Scotland, with stops in Edinburgh, Dunbar, Inverness, Stornaway, Tarbert, Uig, the wild west coast of the isle of Lewis and Harris in the Outer Hebrides, a quick pass through London, and a day in Oxford in merry old England. I plan several posts: a picture post; a video post (which may require a few days for editing); a post on finding traditional Scottish cuisine (not easy, but we found some); and a post on Harris tweed (which, of course, comes from, and only from, the isle of Lewis and Harris).
Though I had my ever-so-heavy Nikon camera with me, I found myself reaching again and again for my iPhone XR. Not only does the iPhone serve as an excellent camera for wide-angle shots, it also shoots superb high-definition video. On this trip I tried to capture, in video, as many of the sights and sounds as I could — screaming gulls, crashing waves, bleating sheep, thrumming ferry boats, a Scottish cat or two, and even a Scottish congregation singing a Sunday morning hymn.
But first, I’ve got to soothe a certain American cat hoarse from grieving, get some groceries, deal with some political obligations, and catch up on a few chores.
I also had my first Burger King Impossible Burger after returning to the U.S., so I’ll have a post about that, too.
As usual, I felt no cultural discomfort in the British Isles, which I think always feel like home to the Celtic psyche. But returning to America through the Raleigh suburbs was a terrible jolt.
I’m off to Scotland with my camera and walking stick. I’ll return to blogging the last week of August.
The destination this year will be the Outer Hebrides — the islands of Lewis and Harris. I’ll also have a couple of days in Edinburgh and a day in Oxford. On the way to the west coast of the Outer Hebrides, I’ll pass through Inverness, Ullapool, and Stornaway.
Deciding what to read on this trip was difficult. I wanted fiction set in Scotland. I finally settled on a historical novel by Nigel Tranter, Sword of State. It’s set in the 13th Century and has to do with Patrick (a future earl of Dunbar), and King Alexander II of Scotland. Tranter, I believe, is well known in Scotland. He wrote something like 90 historical novels, which is a lot of novels to crank out.
These are interesting times in Scotland and the United Kingdom. The U.K. has a new prime minister, and Brexit is looming. The Scottish people are very worried about Brexit and are rethinking the 2014 referendum in which Scotland voted against becoming an independent country. It is possible that, if the referendum were held today, Scotland would vote to break with the United Kingdom.
Summer here in the American South has been brutally hot. I’m looking forward to some cold, blowing rain off the North Atlantic and a bit of moor and bog.
A “black triangle,” Belgium, 1990 (Wikipedia photo)
For many years, I have been alert for anything that might advance our knowledge of UFOs. Very little that could be seen as reliable has come along. The Disclosure Project did some interesting work back in 2013. And, in 2007, France made its UFO files public. Other than that, it has been mostly crickets, other than the usual non-serious stuff.
But, in the past week, we’ve gotten a little traction. On May 26, the New York Times ran a piece on Navy pilots who have reported UFOs. On May 28, the Washington Post ran an op-ed with the headline UFOs exist and everyone needs to adjust to that fact. The author of the Washington Post piece, Daniel W. Drezner, includes a link to an academic article published in the journal Political Theory. The article is titled Sovereignty and the UFO.
Though the Washington Post piece includes a fascinating video of radar imagery from Navy jets, none of these articles advances our knowledge of UFOs in a scientific way. That’s not happening. Why?
Sovereignty and the UFO lays out a brilliant argument for why no one is permitted to take UFOs seriously. “Our argument,” the authors write, “is that UFO ignorance is political rather than scientific.” The questions then become: How do our political arrangements make it impossible to take UFOs seriously? And: How might it be possible to disable political control of the UFO mystery and make it a question for science instead? The authors’ arguments are dense and a touch postmodern. Nevertheless I found their case quite persuasive. In their conclusion, they argue that resistance is the key to making it politically and scientifically possible to seriously study UFOs:
The structuralism of our argument might suggest that resistance is futile. However, the structure of the UFO taboo also has aporias and fissures that make it—and the anthropocentric structure of rule that it sustains—potentially unstable…. The kind of resistance that can best exploit these fissures might be called militant agnosticism. Resistance must be agnostic because by the realist standards of modernity, regarding the UFO/ET question neither atheism nor belief is epistemically justified; we simply do not know. Concretely, agnosticism means “seeing” rather than ignoring the UFO, taking it seriously as a truly unidentified object. Since it is precisely such seeing that the UFO taboo forbids, in this context seeing is resistance. However, resistance must also be militant, by which we mean public and strategic, or else it will indeed be futile. The reproduction of UFO ignorance depends crucially on those in positions of epistemic authority observing the UFO taboo.
In the Washington Post, Drezner, also a scholar, is arguing that we must take seriously the possibilities that UFOs are extraterrestrial.
I am greatly concerned with the mystery of UFOs because, almost 50 years ago, I saw one. It was not a mere light the sky, and there was nothing vague about it. It was instead an enormous object less than a quarter of a mile away from me, well before dusk, in rural eastern North Carolina. The object appeared cylindrical. It was as long as a football field. It was hovering — silently — just above treetop level. There were lights — not exterior lights but what looked more like windows and a lighted interior. A friend who was with me saw it, too. We watched as it made a slow turning maneuver. After that, I can only describe it as falling upward into the sky at a steep angle. The acceleration was astonishing, and perfectly silent.
Epistemologically, I’m well aware that my testimony (even combined with my friend’s) proves absolutely nothing to anyone other than myself. But, because there was no mistaking what I saw, it proves to me only that UFOs are real and that their capabilities far exceed any earth technology. Because it fell into the sky and into space, then assuming that space is where it came from would seem reasonable to me. One of my great hopes — and I’m not getting any younger — is that I am able to live long enough to see the UFO mystery solved. I would agree with the authors of the Political Theory article that the investigation must be undertaken by science, and that political notions and political power must no longer be allowed to sweep UFOs under the rug.
The consequences of proving that there are UFOs and that they are extraterrestrial would of course shake our world profoundly. Many — particularly those who are powerful — don’t want the world to be profoundly shaken. But there are many like me who would like to see the lords of earth taken down a few notches. The authors of the Political Theory article write:
The ontological threat is that even if the ETs were benign, their confirmed presence would create tremendous pressure for a unified human response, or world government.
If you think for a while about the possibility of a galactic federation — as a great many science fiction writers have done — then the need for a unified earth, an earth subject to a whole new kind of sovereignty and law, becomes apparent.
No wonder the governments of earth find UFOs so threatening that they’re best denied and ignored. Wouldn’t it be fine thing to be a citizen of the galaxy, with a passport issued by the Planet Earth?
Update: In comments, Chenda and Ken asked for a sketch of the UFO I saw. I’m not much of an artist, but here’s a sketch. The object was just above the treetops, less than a quarter of a mile from us. It was a great deal longer than a Boeing 747. It was hovering silently. While we watched, it made a slow turning maneuver. Then it silently accelerated at a seemingly impossible rate (toward the northeast, at about a 45 degree vertical angle) and disappeared into space in seconds.
As for the location, it was along U.S. 264 about 10 miles east of Greenville, North Carolina. (See the red circle.) At the time, this was rural farming country. I remember power lines along the highway, but there were no houses in sight. The date would have been October 1971, I believe.
Lily often snuggles up beside me while I’m watching a movie on the television. She rarely pays attention to what’s on, though. She hates loud soundtracks. The only two things I’ve watched in the past few months that held her attention were “Watership Down” and “Kedi,” on the cats of Istanbul. “Kedi” is a documentary, and, if you’re a cat lover, you’ll want to watch it. With your cat.
How many people know lots and lots of knots, know just what knot is needed for a particular situation, and know how to tie it? Not many people, I’d imagine.
One of the many things you can find on the Internet is just the knot you need, with instructions on how to tie it. I needed the knot above to join two lengths of new clothesline. I Googled for “knots to join two pieces of rope.” I chose the “Carrick Bend” and followed an animated illustration on how to tie it.
The mission was to replace the clothesline and double its length. Mission accomplished, with new clothespins to boot.
Click here for high-resolution version
Nothing meaningful here … just that I’m continuing to experiment with black and white photography, both analog and digital, using household objects as models. These photos are digital. I’m still waiting for processing on my first roll of analog film with the new Mamiya RB67 portrait camera.
For high resolution version, click here.
For those who don’t share my truck fetish, I apologize. To me, carefully engineered machines are art. The beauty of military trucks is that there is little or no concern for showroom style. Rather, it’s all about function and the military specifications.
I believe I have identified this truck as an M109A3 shop van. It’s parked beside the road near Meadows, North Carolina, in Stokes County.
Shop vans were used as mobile repair shops. The interior of the truck’s body is probably more or less empty. If you want to turn a surplus military truck into a camper, this would be a nice way to go. A sticker that remains on the front of this truck indicates that it sold as a military surplus item for about $9,500.
The photograph was taken with my Nikon D2X camera in high-dynamic-range mode. Four images at varying exposures were combined into one.
Why is it that, though warm around-the-house winterwear is easy to find in the form of henleys and waffle-weave undershirts, nothing ever has a collar? Necks get cold. Sure, I have turtlenecks and even fleece neck-warmers that I keep in the Jeep. But the collarless winterwear needs a supplemental collar. The TV series Merlin (a guilty pleasure), suggested a solution.
The linen drawer in the kitchen always contains cotton muslin flour-sack towels, which can be bought on Amazon. I use the towels chiefly for drying greens and lettuce. I put the greens into the towel, which is 28 inches square, gather the corners of the towel, and then go out to the deck and sling the water out. It occurred to me that the flour-sack towels would make great neck rags. They work perfectly well in their natural white, of course, though they look a bit like spaghetti napkins. I got some dye and dyed them.
There you have it — cheap, effective, and easy to make. But they’re also like berets. Don’t dare be seen out in public with one.
