Nevada L.O.W.F.I

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It would all make for a great early ’70s TV movie starring Gloria Swanson if it wasn’t so damn scary. Apparently, Africanized honey bees in Las Vegas swarm-stung a guy after he accidentally broke open their 50-pound underground hive. We’re talking more than a thousand stings here, people.

It happened late Saturday morning when the victim was digging a trench in the backyard of his son’s home off Spencer and Eldorado Drive. The man, operating a backhoe, moved a large boulder exposing a giant hive underneath. The man jumped from the backhoe, trying to escape by running into a vacant yard, but was brought down by the stinging horde.

Firefighters encountering the attack were forced spray the man down with a fire hose to halt the attack. The man was rushed to St. Rose Dominican Hospital-Siena Campus where he was listed in stable condition, but undergoing painful removal of the estimated 1,000 stingers, one-by-one.

I remember watching plenty of fictional and non-fictional TV shows dedicated to the impending attack of killer bees, including this one:

Learn more about “assassin bees” here.

And remember: Never jump into a pool to escape a swarm. They will simply wait for you to surface. Always try to outrun them, because they are slow.

Looks like the big bird came out on top, if a little banged-up:

Matthew Roberto Gonzalez of Opa Locka, Fla., was driving on U.S. Interstate 80 in northeast Nevada near Wells, about 60 miles west of the Utah line, when the eagle came crashing into the cab of his truck.

I really want to write a Gram Parsons-type truckin’ anthem loosely based on this event. Where’s my acoustic guitar at anyhow?

Spring in Death Valley is a breathtaking spectacle. What was once mere desert for nine months out of the year suddenly blossoms into a vast ocean of yellow and purple wildflowers, drawing photographers, sightseers, and whoever else happens to be driving through.

On the Nevada side, U.S. Route 95 borders the eastern portion of Death Valley National Park, about 140 miles north of Las Vegas. Driving the 95, you’ll find more than flowers, of course; you’ll also encounter giant salt deposits (left over from when the valley, like California, was an inland sea) that will tempt the B-movie director in you to film a low-budget sci-fi opus. Indeed, the beautiful desolation in wandering a seemingly infinite salt pan in the desert sun will leave its mark on your imagination.

And it wouldn’t require much of an imaginative leap to believe that somewhere around here a 19th-century American explorer named Captain Ives William Walker stumbled upon the vitrified ruins of a mile-long city. Among these ruins, there was, according to Walker, liquefied rock surface that looked to have “been attacked by a giant’s fire-plough.”

Walker’s mysterious observation first crops up in a 1977 book by Rene Noorbergen called Secrets of the Lost Races — without any citation, of course. Regardless, the Walker discovery has taken on the guise of fact and spread through the literature of what speculative researchers characterize as “ancient atomic warfare.” Basically, ancient atomic warfare is a term that helps explain geological anomalies like patches of fused green glass found in deserts around the world. After all, nuclear detonations at the Nevada Test Site just outside of Las Vegas, Nevada, turned desert sand into glass, right?

Well, lightning strikes and meteor impacts cause the same reaction. Except that many of these questionable patches lack the characteristic patterns created by lightning and meteors. So what caused these anomalies, then?

Speculative researchers like David Hatcher Childress (Technology of the Gods: The Incredible Sciences of the Ancients) and Charles Berlitz (World of Strange Phenomena) look no further than ancient Indian adventure narratives like the Bhagavad-Gita to posit their theories. These stories include descriptions of super-weapons like the “Iron Thunderbolt,” a death-dealing mega-bomb that eerily formed giant umbrella-shaped clouds in its wake. The Bhagavad-Gita was written around 500 B.C.

Of course, it was Robert Oppenheimer himself who noted the connection between the atomic bomb he helped father and the Bhagavad-Gita. Indeed, he famously quoted the ancient Indian text in the aftermath of the Trinity explosion at Alamagordo on July 16, 1945: “Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.” But it’s doubtful old Oppy would have placed any value in tales of prehistoric nukes.

Besides, ancient India is a long way from Nevada, even if UFO-flying extraterrestrials introduced the technology to humans in order to, say, turn the biblical Lot’s wife into a pillar of salt (which is not a post-nuke byproduct). Or to level Sodom and Gomorrah. And so on.

Squelching further the notion of Ye Olde Armageddon is the added fact that it’s impossible to find a single archeologist, geologist, or any “-ist” on the West Coast who has heard of Death Valley anomalies like glass-like sand fusions.

At the same time, however, there isn’t a single scientist who laughed at the question, “Do you believe in ancient atomic warfare?” Most have never heard of the theory and, believe it or not, are eager to learn more.

So maybe the anomalies are waiting to be rediscovered. Maybe William Walker’s vitrified ruins are out there somewhere in the desert’s expanse.

In any case, a trip to Death Valley trip is definitely a must-see part of your Nevada experience. The terrain is so marvelously strange — alternating between beautiful flowers and utter barrenness — that your mind will escape its shackles of convention and begin to ponder new and exciting possibilities.

Besides, according to Hal Turner, Chief Archeologist for the Nevada State Department of Transportation, the problem in locating an ancient nuke site is the simple fact that history is written by mainstream historians instead of long-time Nevadans with firsthand knowledge of the state.

“The old timers who might have know about something like a patch of fused green glass in Death Valley are dead or have one foot in the grave,” says Turner. “History continues to be lost.”

Now in its 19th year, the International UFO Congress once again convenes in Laughlin, Nevada, this week with what looks to be another great conference and a pretty rad schedule of speakers. The festivities began yesterday in the Aquarius Casino Resort and continues until Saturday. Some of the presentations I’m looking forward to include:

David Sereda — “Reverse Engineered: How Alien Technology Could Solve the Economy Energy and Global Warming Ecology Crisis” (Tomorrow, 3:30 p.m.)

Jeff Peckman — “Getting Extraterrestrial Messages to the Masses by Going over the Heads of the Feds” (Wednesday, 8:30 a.m.)

Haktan Akdogan (Turkey) — “Latest UFO Sightings and Close Encounters in Turkey” (Thursday, 11:30 a.m.)

You can still register for the congress’ remaining days here. See you there!

There are, in fact, a few virgins left in Vegas.

The Weeping Virgin stands proudly in the driveway of a residential home on the edge of North Las Vegas. Eyes askew, immaculate in her blue-green robes, she inhabits what looks like an old phone booth, its white paint flaking off. The booth is webbed in Christmas lights; a video camera is perched at the top.

A gold curtain frames Mary. There’s a picture of Saint Lucy with her trademark dish, upon which rest two plucked eyeballs. A ceramic Noah’s Ark burdened with animals. A black Saint Martin statuette posing with his broom. Flowers, dead and fake, surround the Weeping Virgin. Grocery-store prayer candles line a makeshift votive altar. Chairs and benches are arranged for visitors.

The driveway is covered by a crisp blue tarp. Everything else, though, seems a bit untidy. The dusty yard is completely devoid of grass and full of junk: Rusty AC unit. Charred grill. Shattered foosball table.

The neighborhood, predominantly Mexican, is a little on the loud side. Cars blast by on I-15 and someone nearby persists in lighting firecrackers in mid-August. A jet from Nellis Air Force Base screams overhead.

Otherwise, it’s the perfect prayer space.

Why would anyone want to pray here? Well, Our Lady of Guadalupe is originally from the Basilica in Mexico City. A man named Pablo Covarrubias brought her with him to North Las Vegas in 1991. According to Pablo’s friends and family, it’s true the statue was almost destroyed by U.S. customs. They assumed it was full of heroin. But Pablo prevailed, placing his personal Mary on a stone pedestal in the backyard of his home in North Las Vegas.

Two years passed before Pablo’s daughter Martha saw the statue weeping real tears. Pablo contacted KLAS-TV Channel 8. Video cameras were dispatched. But reporters insisted the statue be removed from its pedestal — just in case there was, you know, a water source hidden beneath? Pablo complied. Mary cried on cue.

At least that’s how Pablo’s people tell it. KLAS no longer has the tape, and Pablo took his copy with him when he returned to Mexico in 2004. According to religious Internet sites, the footage clearly shows tears falling down the plaster statue’s face.

But that’s not all that’s special about the Weeping Virgin. Her tears, when absorbed by cotton balls, have healing powers. They’ve remedied troubled pregnancies, corrected bad vision, and cured cancer. Also, the angel (that carries the moon Mary stands on) sweats a rose-scented oil. Over the years, other miracles have supposedly occurred — visions of Mary herself, crosses appearing on the statue’s forehead — but since the statue was moved from Pablo’s backyard to its current home in North Las Vegas in 2004, the miracles have come to a halt.

“I’ve never seen her cry,” says Juan Serrano, whose family now cares for the Weeping Virgin, “so I can’t say. But you never know. People come here from all over — Denver, Phoenix, L.A. — and for them it’s just enough to be in her presence.”

Juan maintains that he and his family dance for the Virgin on the Day of the Dead, and on Dec. 12, the Day of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Juan is a mestizo (a person of mixed Spanish and Amerindian blood), for whom dancing is a beautiful and sacred rite.

“We dance out of respect for Mary,” he says. “We dance out of happiness. We dance in celebration. And we dance so that Mary won’t feel so lonely.”

Juan doesn’t just dance in his front yard. He dances at the Winchester Cultural Center in Las Vegas with other mestizos at the Day of the Dead fiesta each year. The dancing involves the hypnotic rhythms of Indian drums, wild costumes and masks. Very intense.

Pablo transferred ownership of the statue to Juan and his family last year before moving back to Mexico. Juan invites kind and respectful people who wish to pay their respects to Mary to drive to 2809 Samantha Court (between Basin and Darby) on the Northwest end of the Community College of Southern Nevada’s Cheyenne campus.

Bring tissues. Just in case.