In my last post, I shared my personal reasons for naming my hand embroidery shop Squid Fishing Fleet. I wrote: To me, the phrase "squid fishing fleet" has come to represent the mixed nuts of UFO studies: its fringe intrigue, its Americana lore, its kitsch, its rainbow of personalities shining in shades of respectability, sympathy, amusement, curiosity, and actual bullshit.
It also stands for legit wonder. That adolescent passion for believing impossible things.
But, it's not just me connecting fleets of squid fishing boats with UFOs. It's REAL.
As recent as 2014, the International Space Station capture images of dense light off the coast of Thailand. From a distance on the water, as pictured above, these same lights could seem otherworldly. To flip the words of Dr. Bruce Maccabee, it's actually the squid fishing fleet. According to NASA's Earth Observatory: "Scientists first noted such night-lighting of the seas in the late 1970s and early 1980s, while compiling the first maps of Earth at night."
At night, fleets of fishing boats cluster over nutrient-rich, southern Pacific waters. Rigged with LED lights to lure a small species of squid, the boats light up the absolute darkness. It's all very magical seeming when you see images like the above, but a common place for these suckered squid to end up is in an air-locked package like that of popular Japanese snack.
Unless one knows about the squid fishing fleets, with their bright clear lights that seem to hover still and silent, it may rightly freak a person out.
That's why in the documentary UFO's Are Real Maccabee talks about his studies of the December 31, 1978 sighting off the coast of New Zealand. The former Navy physicist talks about thoroughly and as dryly as those jerky treats, but there's a tasty morsel of the quirkiness, facetiousness or innocence, that is what always draws me in to these kinds of stories.
Maccabee's site reads:
Subsequently, Philip J. Klass published the squid boat explanation in his book, UFOs, THE PUBLIC DECEIVED (Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY, 1983). After citing his reasons for agreeing with Ireland and Andrews, Klass wrote, "If the bright object photographed in Pegasus Bay was not a squid boat, the only plausible alternative is that it was an extraterrestrial craft from a distant world."
Could that be true? Is it possible that the light was not from a squid boat and therefore was from a ET craft? The following paper shows why it was not a squid boat....unless it was a
flying squid boat.
I can only take Maccabee's word, with his serious math and stuff, on what the New Zealand footage shows. Or not. But whether it's a real unidentifiable space craft, a hoax, Venus, Jupiter, mating mutton birds, or the squid fishing fleet isn't the point to me.
It's random pictures of a guy in a row boat staring at a glowing light on the horizon, taken out of context. It's what I said about the off-the-record, off-center cultural meme and all the characters playing a part.
In the late 1970s, Dr. Bruce Maccabee, a US Navy optical physicist, studied a film shot by a New Zealand news crew that may have captured a UFO. Being an expert in optical data and other Strategic Defense Initiative work, Dr. Maccabee studied the footage and of the spasmodically moving light in it, Dr. Maccabee says this in the 1979 documentary UFO's Are Real:
"I've concluded that the film does not show Venus or Jupiter. It does not show meteors or mating mutton birds. It does not show secret military maneuvers or the squid fishing fleet. I've concluded that the film is not a hoax."
Emphasis above is my own. That's because Squid Fishing Fleet is the name of my new craft and art shop!
A photo posted by judy webring-reynolds (@judy_webring_reynolds) on
You kind of have to hear him say it in the documentary because he speaks in short statements with a shield over any personal bias or emotion toward the topic, as a military professional would. He also gives off a nerdy vibe.
To me, the phrase "squid fishing fleet" has come to represent the mixed nuts of UFO studies: its fringe intrigue, its Americana lore, its kitsch, its rainbow of personalities shining in shades of respectability, sympathy, amusement, curiosity, and actual bullshit.
It also stands for legit wonder. That adolescent passion for believing impossible things.
So, I feel that, without thinking about it too much, it can encompass most of the themes that inspire me to create, whatever I end up putting out there. Some items aren't or won't direct related to UFOs; I make them because I think they're cool or pretty.
A piece of advice I held onto from a speaker at the 2016 Portland Creative Conference was to not think too much about what you're creating, just to make it. Similar to one of my favorite Cheryl Strayed sentiments from Wild:
"Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig."
Another great piece of advice comes from my fellow artist pal and long-time friend Natalie. She said that if I just make what I like and put it out there, the right people will find it.
Without making myself produce products that everyone likes or if I'm doing enough good marketing, I'm giving myself permission to make what I'm excited about. I'll will talk about it in a way that feels good. And, I'm going to keep my day job because I ain't paying the rent with threads and felt. That's how the world works right now, and I accept it in a way.
Meanwhile, for some background about how squid fishing fleets and UFOs are related, check out my next post!
Screen segment from the new, unique literary journal.
I encourage you to read this new literary journal, Navigating the Heavens. In this first issue, its eclectic collection of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry touch on the theme of "the light of God." This issue is balanced between short, thoughtful declarations directly speaking to the theme with more subtle pieces that only hint at the it.
I realize its editor, the lovely Elizabeth Carter, made informed and conscious choices about curating her journal. However, given the theme, I can't help but think that there's a little bit of an unseen force in there.
There's also Wayne Cresser's "All Aquiver" about dreams and waking. My piece, "A Documentation," attempts to address the topic as well, among others.
Reading these all together, I got a sense that the journal itself finds
the "light of God," or put more generally, the little coincidences that
pop up once in a while. Or, maybe that's what I want to believe. Any which way you see it, I find it all very enjoyable.
What odd little things have you experienced lately?
Recently on my morning train, I became engrossed by thisWired interview with anthropologist Kathryn Denning, in which she talks about her findings on the "very human way" we think about space exploration and alien life. Many of her statements described the popular fantasy of us, namely Americans, being greeted by extraterrestrials who will help us solve our massive world problems. This reminded me think of the Contactees.
After WWII and into the 50s, pop culture and pulp fiction trended on heavily on UFO and ET encounters. Enjoyed by those entertained and inspired by it, shunned by the unimaginative and the unwilling to speculate, this subgenre of sci fi developed at an apt time, after WWII. To put it in modern slang, that's when "shit got real."
Imagine having been born sometime between the late 19th century to the 1930s. You would have witnessed the introduction of cars, radio and/or television, maybe even the introduction of 20th century technology into the 19th century tactics of WWI. Perhaps you came of age during the Depression, passing the Kraft macaroni and cheese powder packet around the table like it's $10 Fleur de Gris. Then the explosion of nuclear science just in time for WWII.
You might be a little depressed with the outcome of things so far. I feel that way sometimes about the last few years (state of Arizona I'm looking at you). Last few years? Maybe since I've been a legal voter. Maybe since my dad first explained prejudice to me while in the drive-thru line at Wendy's after a grade school play. Personally, I turn to things like yoga, art, and Hello Kitty to make sense of existence.
Hello Kitty wasn't born until 1974, though. In the late 1940s and 1950s, some people turned to the stars seeking wisdom on how to live in a world—namely America—that created destruction out of the fundamental bits of all matter. And, by stars I mean things like "the planet Jupiter or one of the moons," as stated by George King in the documentary Farewell Good Brothers. You can watch the full film below, lucky you. I recommend you do!
This film features King, founder of the Aetherius Society, and other names and faces in the Contactee movement. While King comes off as an insincere self-appointed leader who puffs himself up by regularly speaking to Shakespeare with his powers of telepathic communication with the dead, some of the other individuals seem "for real." I personally enjoy the segment where a gentlemen being interviewed says that the aliens come every so often and pick him up in a car. He seems dead serious. Howard Menger, author of From Outer Space To You, is very passionate about his experiences flying with Venusians around the moon before the 1960 NASA moon landing. He seems sincere.
I like to be open to strange stories and unbelievable possibilities because I don't think I have an ego that tethers me from that openness. I don't really want to say I don't believe these Contactees (psst, I'm thinking it). It's not really what they're saying. They can wax poetic about their seat on the intergalactic version of the UN all day, but it's never less outrageous to me than a board of religious men attempting to put a value and claim ownership on my body and every other woman's body.
This is more outrageous than extraterrestrial visitation no matter what you believe.
It's not what the Contactees say at all. It's how the really sincere, passionate ones say it. You really, really think that you have flown to Jupiter in a spaceship? It's no use asking how that is even possible. They believe it. And, whether or not it's true, I'm assuming it got them through the rest of the nifty fifties and beyond.
Is believing that you take regular trips through the solar system with non-human beings harmful to the public? I'm not qualified to answer that, but I'm going to anyway and say, "Yes. No! Maybe?"
Going back to the Wired piece, interviewer Adam Mann asks anthropologist Denning to expand on the alien contact story arc—we meet, we fall in love, we get married and live happily ever after. (In case my smart ass is getting in the way, the story is more like: We make contact with aliens, humanity freaks out and forgets its differences. Poverty, abuse, power, and all the baddest of the bad things are gone from then on.) Contactees almost always thrive on this idea, adding that the aliens themselves tell them that humans must to forget their differences or else they will destroy themselves. It's curious that aliens are telling us this, because, well, isn't it obvious? If that's all the aliens have to offer, then so what?
Denning's explanation for the alien encounter narrative is this:
"One way to read that, in the most general sense, is that it’s a narrative that makes us feel better.One of the things that astronomy and space exploration in the 20th century has done is force us to confront the universe in a way that we never did before. We had to start understanding that, yeah, asteroids impact the earth and can wipe out a vast proportion of life, and our planet is a fragile spaceship Earth.I think this has given us this sort of kind of cosmic anxiety. And it would make us feel a whole lot better if we had neighbors and they were friendly and they could enlighten us."
Making ourselves feel better may not only be the MO of the Contactee. Do we only make ourselves feel better by buying what I like to call "Al Gore brand" light bulbs? Is it the least or the most we can do when polar bears starve and drown? For those of us like me, who have a nice bed to type away our thoughts, is it really that easy to sit and poke fun and speculate? I don't really know what to say to that, even though I brought it up.
Denning's reaction to the encounter narrative here is elegant. To me it means that it's not what people like the Contactees are saying, or even how they're saying it. It's the fact they they are saying it at all. They are not speaking for an esoteric community off the lunatic fringe. The Contactees' outspoken desire to receive and share (mundane) answers from the aliens with the general public's focus on and shunning of the "science fiction" aspect of the Contactees exposes a mokita—that humanity knows it has "effed" up and that shit has gotten real and that we don't really know what to do about it.
