Oregon L.O.W.F.I

Posts Tagged ‘media’

UFO Mystic is back! Nick Redfern, Greg Bishop, Craig Woolheater, Lesley Gunter, Scott Corrales, Richard Thomas, and myself — so go take a look already!

At long last, the annual UFO conference line-up  in McMinnville  has been announced. And it’s a good one! George Knapp, my favorite “MSM” UFO reporter and C2C host, will be a presenter. As will Nick Pope, Linda Moultan Howe, and abductee/contactee Jim Sparks.

We’re already booked, but I was sad to find Comfort Inn booked solid, so we ended up in another chain motel, one which does not have the best of reviews. Staying at Hotel Oregon got old — while their rooftop bar is wonderful, and the place itself worth visiting for its overall joyful vibe and neat artwork everywhere, staying in their cramped rooms is not for me. Sharing a bath with someone was not a good experience either; creepy sloppy drunks hogging up the bathroom, making all kinds of noise, and leaving it a mess — gross. And management didn’t give a damn. Service was surreal — one wait person, a woman, actually said to us “Do you want to make something out of it?” when we complained about the half hour wait and cold — I mean, ice cold — food. Oh well. Still a good place to hang out and have one of their great beers.

Back to the conference. Looking forward to this one! We didn’t go last year, first one we missed in about five years. So am glad to know I’ll be returning this year.

For info on the UFO Fest visit link.

People feed the birds bread, popcorn, and junk food, which is very bad for the birds. Very bad. Please don’t do it.

Sharnelle Fee, director of state department’s Wildlife Center of the North Coast, said she has treated pelicans who have eaten hot dogs, doughnuts, potato chips and even chicken bones.
“When you have a hungry pelican, they’re going to eat anything you put in front of them,” Fee said. “These kinds of foods can actually kill them.”
Scientists advise people to avoid feeding any wildlife, but they are particularly strident in their appeals about pelicans because the availability of human food may be encouraging them to stay on the north coast during the winter instead of heading south to their Baja California breeding grounds.

The article also notes that the brown pelicans have been hanging around on the Oregon coast (we saw some a couple of years ago in November in Yachats) and they don’t know why that is. Climate changes/global warming wouldn’t have anything to do with it I suppose…

About three blocks from my home; heard the sirens last night: Motives of SUV arson unclear – Someone sprayed a vehicle with “Occupy Eugene” graffiti and then set it on fire in a west neighborhoodMy first thought while reading this was that it seemed suspicious; a set-up to discredit OWS and the Eugene version. As the article noted:

But at this point, police say they don’t know who set the fire or why they did it — despite the fact that the burned sport utility vehicle was covered with miscellaneous graffiti that included an anarchist symbol and messages consistent with those of the nation­wide “Occupy” movement protesting economic inequities.

Eugene police spokeswoman Melinda McLaughlin said it would be “unfair to blame any one group” for the arson.

“The graffiti is all over the map,” she said.

The SUV was painted with OWS type slogans, like “Oil is bad” which seems lame and clumsy. There was also an insult painted aimed at Eugene mayor Kitty Piercy, who is a liberal; the repug types don’t like her at all. That insult (whatever it was, the paper did not release it) adds to my suspicions. It’s illogical an OWS supporter would bash a liberal mayor,one who supports in spirit OWS. There is also the fact that the SUV wasn’t recognized by anyone in the area. It just appeared. Someone commented to me after reading the article that they thought it was insurance fraud.

Occupy Eugene responded:

Occupy Eugene spokeswoman Crystal Stanford said the group is part of “a peaceful movement” that does not condone violence or property destruction.

“My first thought (upon hearing of the SUV fire) was that people would think that we were on the fringe,” Stanford said. “We’re a populist movement, and our values are consistent with the values of the everyday, normal person.”

And I missed it! Damn, hate it when that happens. Right here in Eugene, or, technically, not Eugene proper but Junction City, 12 miles from here. Man sees many colored lights in the sky. Comments at the site include someone from Cottage Grove, about 30 miles to the south, who had a sighting. More here.

Local news reports a cougar sighted near Spencer’s Butte park, a popular hiking area (and, local lore goes, somewhat of a UFO hot spot) — there are rattlesnakes up there, and the occasional cougar report. I can see the Butte if I walk to the corner of my street… not far from me at all. With video and photo.

The day before yesterday all four of our cats were behaving very strangely. I even said to Jim that I wondered if there was an earthquake coming soon, because they were just so “off” — not their usual routine.Very agitated and confused, literally walking in circles sometimes. (In a weird way, not the usual that’s what cats do way.) Each cat has their own personality and what bothers one may not bother the other, but that day, they were all just crazy. Well, turns out there were earthquakes, several,  in the area: the Eugene (where I live) and surrounding area, sort of I-5 corridor, extending to the North up towards Portland area, which is about 100 miles from Eugene, and to the south, near Medford:

August 3rd: The Eugene area where I live, had a 1.1.

August 3rd, a 1.6.

August 3rd, 2.1 McMinnville area

August 4th, 2.1

August 5,th 2.2 (southern Oregon)

August 5,th 4.5 off Oregon coast 235 miles off the coast of Newport

(You can read the local news item about the earthquake off the coast, with an interesting comment by a reader who remarks his own animals were acting very strangely.)

Yep, there’s  Walmarts where I live in Eugene, Oregon, one being not far from my home, roughly two miles away. All kinds of stories concerning Walmart come to us almost daily from all over the U.S. and we all know about sites where you can see pictures of people dressed in sloppy, disgusting, whimsical, dirty, gross, fun, surreal, insane outfits  while shopping at their local Wal-Mart.

Wal-mart, remember, is the first chain to partner up with Homeland Security.  Ah, Wal-mart.

So the WalMart in Eugene is in the world news stream for discriminating against Sandy McMillin, who’s in her fifities and disabled. She’s bald. She’s overweight. It was 90 degrees.  And she was asked to cover up while shopping in the West 11th Walmart because her bikini top violated health codes. McMillin and her sister were then escorted out of the store.  That’s McMillin’s version. Walmart says McMillin was abusing customers, and is refusing to release the security tapes. The top she was wearing was one she bought at Walmart a year ago. McMillin is considering suing. I wonder if any of these people were asked to leave these Walmarts?

Bizzarely, the local newspaper The Register Guard actually thought this an  important enough issue to comment on in their opinion section. Not opinions of this episode from local citizens, but from the editors at the paper. Because there’s no other news going on in the world that’s more important, apparently.

This issue has been going on for a long time. Triangle Lake is not far from where I live; it’s only about twenty minutes away or so. For years, the residents in the area have been fighting this, as in other communities in my county as well as Oregon in general. From KVAL:

TRIANGLE LAKE, Ore. – Some residents are calling it an environmental horror story, and on Thursday they got the chance to voice their concerns to the state and federal governments.

Nearly 150 people packed the Grange Hall in Triangle Lake on Thursday night after more than 20 residents say their urine tested positive for dangerous pesticides.

It’s ugly. The meeting was called by “…state and federal agencies…” in order to potentially address the poisoning of an entire community:

In response to years of complaints, state and federal agencies held the meeting to lay out a plan for investigating any possible pesticide exposure. lay out a plan for investigating any possible pesticide exposure.

The article cited here doesn’t mention that residents paid for, out of their own pockets, the testing that proves they’ve been exposed. As one resident said

“One hundred percent of us tested positive for the two most dangerous timber industry pesticides in our urine, and we’re not happy about it,” said Dale Day.

I find it incredible — but not surprising — the agencies are only now just beginning to listen. Maybe, sort of.

Speaking of the Triangle Lake area, it is a very weird area in general. Only speaking for myself, and Jim, we have both felt immediate, oppressive and (for lack of a better word) haunted vibes when driving through there. There’s something about the area that literally feels, on a physical level as well as psychological and emotional, that there is an unseen presences about. I remember one drive out there to look at a house for sale; it sounded like everything we wanted; domed, a few structures, a couple of acres, near water… and the asking price was reasonable. But we couldn’t even get our of the car to look, the further in we drove, the worse this feeling got. We turned around and left. I’ve felt this very time i’ve gone out to the area.

I’m not suggesting this weird feeling has anything to with pesticides. And I realize many people love the area. Only speaking for myself.

Dealing with the feds in this case, I have no idea how this will turn out, but I hope it will turn well for the residents in the area. There’s a bit of hope; field burning was banned and I was convinced that would never happen. It was a long, long fight and an ugly one, but finally, we won on that one.

More on the OSS, which is this weekend! At Bigfoot Lunch Club.