By Bob Gaydos

   “They’re not out there.”

    The little green men.

    The flying saucers.

    The UAPs.

    The UFOs.

    The whatever-they-are that-move-faster-than possible.

     Trust us. It’s one big game of phone tag encouraged by movies, TV and conspiracy theorists. Nothing happening. Nothing covered up. Nothing being reverse engineered. Get on with your day. That is all.

       The above is the gist of a 67-page report issued recently by the Defense Department’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, entitled “Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena.”

    To wit: Nothing out there. Nothing in some desert in New Mexico. The AARO, given full funding by Congress to do its job, concluded that most sitings were simply “misidentification” and, contrary to recent whistleblower claims, it “found no empirical evidence for claims that the USG and private companies have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology.”

     Well … not so fast. I’m not a UFO fanatic or a conspiracy theorist, but I do believe the odds favor some form of life elsewhere in the universe and I know it’s risky business blindly accepting a report by a government agency summarily dismissing allegations against other segments of the same department.

   Also, I know that there were no weapons of mass destruction buried in Iraq, the U.S. did secretly buy weapons from Iran to arm Nicaraguan rebels and it’s still a bit sketchy on whether North Vietnamese ships really attacked U.S. Navy warships in the Gulf of Tonkin, thrusting the U.S. fully into the war in Vietnam.

    The point? The Defense Department investigating the Defense Department on a matter of wide public interest and controversy is probably not the best way to resolve long-standing questions.

      The mere fact that the government stopped referring to UFOs as UFOs and started calling them UAPs, unidentified aerial phenomena, suggests an effort to distance from easier public understanding of the topic. Give it a serious sounding name, suggesting all the other UFO stuff is just Hollywood making money. Most of the world will probably still refer to the balloons, satellites and other objects as UFOs, regardless.

     The report was requested by Congress after numerous reports by Navy pilots and other military personnel regarding the sighting of strange objects in the sky and reports from former Defense Department employees of some technology, not of this planet, being secretly reverse-engineered by  the government and private companies.

     A congressional committee held a closed-door meeting with the inspector general of the Intelligence community on such reports a while back and several members emerged thinking that, at the very least, the reports were credible enough for further investigation.

      AARO was given full funding by Congress to do so, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, of New York, being one of the senators pushing for the full funding. Haven’t heard any response from the senator yet to the AARO report.

       Most of the mainstream media simply reported the facts straight out of the report as presented: No UFOs, no little green men, nothing being hidden, ever, in the desert, or anywhere else regarding alien life. Just people repeating the same stories to each other, misidentified stuff, some references to other secret government programs and, well, maybe a few things there’s too little information on to draw a conclusion.

     Not good enough. Many of the recent reports, based on advanced technology, were made by credible witnesses. In fact, so were some of the older reports, many of which described objects similar to recent reports. Some older reports apparently were not even included in the AARO report.

   Instead of the Executive Department investigating the Executive Department, Congress, as an equal member of government, the funding member, should do so. There are reports that legislation is being prepared for just that purpose.

      People are unlikely to stop believing in UFOS or at least the possibility of them, especially when they’re dismissed as engaging in a game of phone tag. In fact, that’s the kind of response some bad Hollywood scriptwriters would come up with  

                                     ******

PS: The AARO report is unlikely to dampen the annual UFO parade and celebration in the Hamlet of Pine Bush in upstate New York. The UFO capital of the Northeast will hold its annual festivities June 1 and, yes, there will be little and big green men, robots, other strange creatures, lots of good food, music, goods to be bought and fun to be had. There will also be some serious discussion by serious people about UAPs, etc. I’d venture to say the AARO report will come up. A fun day for believers, non-believers and everyone in-between. Maybe Senator Gillibrand will stop by.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand
… holds hearing on AARO

What with all the news all the time being all things Trump these days, it has been easy to lose track of some of our elected representatives not directly involved in that slog through history.

For example, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, always an active, outspoken member of the upper chamber of Congress, had fallen completely off my radar. As a New Yorker, I assumed she was working diligently and, well, no news is good news, right?

       Then she recently reappeared in as unlikely a place as I could imagine and, almost literally, back on the radar.

        Remember those “Chinese” balloons flying over the United States a few months back? Perhaps you’ve seen on TV recently released Navy videos of strange objects their pilots couldn’t identify. UFOs. Or, as the government prefers to call them today, UAPs. Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.

      They’re on Gillibrand’s radar. She is chairman of the Emerging Threats and Capabilities Subcommittee of the Armed Services Committee. As such, she is charged with overseeing that government agencies charged with identifying, assessing, protecting against and notifying Americans about any emerging threats — identifiable, flying or not — are doing their jobs. Especially that notifying part.

     Those balloon sightings and recent public comments by a recently retired high-level intelligence officer that the government has had a long-standing secret program of crash retrieval and reverse engineering of unidentified spacecraft of “non-human origin,” have given sudden urgency and immediacy to Gillibrand’s Senate post. And she’s taking it seriously.

     She and Senator Marco Rubio, Republican of Florida, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, succeeded in adding an amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill requiring that any private enterprise which has been given a contract to retrieve, research or re-engineer anything discovered from unidentified, non-human phenomena make that information known to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office.

     That mouthful of an office was established in 2022 for the express purpose of resolving decades of UFO reports … and non-reports. Its report, due in June of next year, is supposed to include “any program or activity that was protected by restricted access that has not been explicitly and clearly reported to Congress,” and “any efforts to obfuscate, manipulate public opinion, hide, or provide incorrect unclassified or classified information about unidentified anomalous phenomena or related activities.”

      Any coverups.

      Typically serious about her responsibilities, Gillibrand fought for and gained additional funding for AARO, so that it could actually perform the function for which it was ostensibly established. Previously, it just had enough funding to cover office expenses. A front.

     Gillibrand wants any private businesses to report to AARO about any involvement in such retrievals and reverse engineering efforts and the requirement includes substantial financial penalties for anyone refusing to do so or hiding such information.

     The interesting thing about the claims made by the whistleblower, David Grusch, is that nobody in the government tried to quickly shut him up.

     Gillibrand’s subcommittee held both a classified closed hearing and an open hearing on AARO in April. Its director, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick was the sole witness. He testified: “I should state clearly for the record that in our research AARO has found no credible evidence thus far of extraterrestrial activity, off world technology, or objects that defy the known laws of physics. In the event sufficient scientific data were ever obtained that a UAP encountered can only be explained by extraterrestrial origin, we are committed to working with our interagency partners at NASA to appropriately inform U.S. government’s leadership of its findings.”

   Does Gillibrand believe Grusch or others who have reported witnessing non-human vehicles or other phenomena for decades?

     “I have no idea,” she recently told a reporter who asked her. “So I’m going to do the work and analyze it and figure it out.”

     She’s back on the radar.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

U.S. fighter jet approaches the first balloon over Alaska.

  Remember those “balloons“ that were shot down in rapidfire order, bang, bang, bang, a couple of weeks ago? Whatever happened to them? Anybody hear anything more about them?

    I’m not talking about that Chinese spy balloon, OK? They said it was theirs, but that it was just a runaway weather balloon so why’d we have to make such a big deal and shoot it down? We said we didn’t believe them so our Secretary of State canceled his trip to Beijing. Navy divers are still looking for the hardware at the bottom of the ocean off South Carolina. Not that one.

    The other three.

    No sooner had the bus-sized balloon become a political balloon in the U.S. (“Shoot it down! Don’t shoot it down! Why’d you wait to shoot it down? Our air space has been violated! Biden’s too old!”), than U.S. fighter jets shot down three smaller unidentified flying objects over Canada and the U.S. in the following week.

     All the Defense Department said was that a balloon the size of a small car was shot down over Alaskan waters on a Friday, a cylindrical object was shot down over the Yukon Territory in Canada on Saturday and an octagonal object with strings dangling off it was shot down over Lake Huron on Michigan on Sunday.

    A busy weekend for the Air Force and UFO enthusiasts.

    Of course, today, UFOs are called UAPs (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) by the Pentagon because, god  forbid, people would have a familiar reference point to know they were talking about stuff flying around out there and the government had no clue about its purpose or its origin. You know, Unidentified Flying Objects.

      The idea, of course, is to discourage talk and speculation about aliens being involved in these sightings, which the Pentagon recently acknowledged publicly were common enough to our pilots that further study was warranted. So the UAPs/UFOs are out there. And sometimes, apparently, we shoot them down and sometimes we don’t. Usually, apparently, because they’re too fast.

    Following the weekend string of UFO shootdowns, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean/Pierre told gathered reporters, “I know there have been questions and concerns about this, but there is no — again no indication — of aliens or extraterrestrial activity with these recent takedowns. I wanted to make sure that the American people knew that, all of you knew that and it was important for us to say that from here because we’ve been hearing a lot about it.”

     Well, yeah, but what do you expect when you scramble fighter jets to shoot down objects in the sky that you can’t identify (UFOs) and don’t tell people anything about what you just shot down except that they were comparatively small and posed a flight risk to commercial aircraft.

      People tend to start speculating about stuff like this when the government doesn’t tell them anything more about it. What else is floating around out there? If they weren’t extra terrestrial, who sent them up there and what were they for? What was their source of propulsion? How can you be sure that they weren’t alien?

     The three shootdowns occurred a week after that Chinese spy meandered across the United States.

     NORAD, the military radar command center housed deep in the mountains in Colorado, rejiggered its settings after the Chinese balloon incident, to be more sensitive to, umm, aerial phenomena. That means it’s now picking up more objects, including lower-flying unidentified objects, than before.

     Which begs the question, why weren’t we looking for these objects before? Did we not think they were there? Why not, when the sky seems to be full of them? And why do we automatically rule out alien civilizations clever enough to send an apparently harmless octagonal-shaped thing with stuff dangling off it as a way to check us out?

     Look, l’m not a conspiracy fan and I don’t see ET lurking around every galaxy, but I also believe it’s possible that there is intelligent civilization elsewhere in the universe and we should be open to that possibility.

     I also live next door to a community known as the UFO center of the Northeast — Pine Bush, N.Y. People here take UFO sightings seriously because there have been enough of them to warrant it. There’s even a museum downtown dedicated to such phenomena and a UFO-themed parade every spring.  

      Bottom line for the Pentagon? Don’t patronize people who want to know what the heck is roaming around our atmosphere and don’t act as if shooting down, never mind just seeing, a few UAPs or UFOs is no big deal. Local or interstellar, tell us what’s going on out there and get NORAD to fine tune its radar.

      Oh, and we still need to hear what you’ve learned about those three mysterious balloons, the ones not made in China.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.

By Bob Gaydos

A version of what some flat earthers believe our planet looks like.

 The Earth is not flat.

  UFOs do exist.

      In this debate about the nature of the universe, I am definitely taking sides.

     A bit of explanation: Firmly ensconced in the second year of Covid-inspired couch-surfing, we stumbled across a documentary called “Beyond the Curve.” I can’t shake the topic — flat earthers. Even in this era of anti-science, conspiracy-obsessed politics, this one baffled me. Still does.

     The movie focuses on three main characters, none of whose names I will use here so as not to give them any more notoriety than they already have. The main character is the apparent flat earth guru, A middle-aged guy with a YouTube show, who, for reasons that still escape me, decided at some point in his life that the Earth is not round. This, even though he can’t prove it. And even though fLat earthers’ own experiments in the film indicate otherwise.

        He believes the Earth is a flat disc surrounded by a wall of ice and covered by a gigantic dome on which someone (the government) projects images of the sun and the moon, which move continually across the fake sky.

         There’s also another, angrier wanna-be guru, who resents the main character’s influence among the believers, and a woman who has become a YouTube star among flat earthers with her “reporting“ on the issue. The group has annual international conferences.

          It’s difficult for me to be as respectful of the believers as the film is because no one in the film ever explains why he or she believes the Earth is flat. Nor does anyone disprove the existing science that proves otherwise. And, as I’ve said, the believers’ own experiments disprove their belief. So something else is at work here.

           Before I speculate on that, let me address that debate I introduced at the top. Obviously, UFOs exist because there have been countless sightings of unidentified flying objects by all sorts of people, Including Navy pilots. It doesn’t mean these are necessarily spaceships from somewhere else in the solar system, piloted by aliens, but I believe the odds are much greater of this possibility than that we are living under a gigantic dome. I paid attention in science class.

             (In the interest of full disclosure, I must report that I live in an area that has been described as the UFO capital of the Northeast. I myself have never seen a UFO, but the hamlet of Pine Bush has a UFO festival every summer, including a parade down Main Street. There’s even a museum. And yes, there have been numerous reported sightings in the area.)

             I guess I’m with Enrico Fermi on this. His paradox wonders why, given the preponderance of information that suggests a seemingly limitless universe, filled with countless planetary bodies, no one has apparently yet decided to pay us a visit. Maybe we haven’t noticed or maybe they can’t get through the dome. 

               Which brings me back to the Earth is not flat. To me, saying the Earth is flat without providing any evidence and indeed, in the face of evidence to the contrary, is akin to saying a presidential election was rigged without providing any evidence and in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It’s akin to saying vaccines don’t protect people from viruses and face masks don’t help stop the spread of viruses based solely on a “belief“ and in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. It’s akin to saying there was no violent effort to prevent certification of a presidential election at the United States Capital on January 6 when I saw the insurrection with my own eyes on TV, along with millions of other people.

               Some people, for whatever reason, are easily swayed. They will accept even the illogical because they can feel part of something. It provides an identity. Some people, for purely selfish reasons, gain their identity by swaying people to accept even the irrational. If people stop believing what they say, they lose their identity.

             So, if I am not a man cheated out of the presidency, as I claim, then who am I? Or if the Earth is not flat, as I say, then who am I?

           The answer in the first case is simple: You’re a loser.

            In the second case, it’s more complicated. Maybe you’re someone who needed to pay more attention in science class. Maybe you’re someone who never learned it’s OK to say you were wrong. Maybe you’re someone who needs to find a more productive way to gain people‘s approval. Maybe you’re someone who needs to keep walking in the same direction until you either bump into a glass wall or fall off the edge. 

           Or maybe you’re someone who needs to visit Pine Bush next summer when, hopefully, the UFO parade will be held again. Maybe you’re someone who needs to turn your gaze from down to Earth to up, up and beyond. These are true believers, too, but, unlike yours,  their belief has some legitimate science behind it. 

           I understand they’re always looking for new converts. You’d be quite a challenge, but  think of the new identity: The man who stepped back from the edge to play among the stars. Has a nice ring to it. Probably play well on YouTube, too. Just remember your new slogan. The Earth is not flat.

rjgaydos@gmail.com.

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.

BOB GAYDOS

THE REPORT … bad loans, Beyond burgers, UFOs, takeout

      So the cardinal count at our bird feeders has doubled. We now have two males. I take that as good news, believing there have to be two families close by that these dads are rushing back-and-forth to feed. By the way, there is no social distancing at the feeders.

     — Also by the way … Super stock analyst, TV star, Philadelphia Eagles fan and world-class speed talker Jim Cramer raised an important point on his CNBC show when he said, “I just want to know who made the bad loans.” The loans he was referring to came from the Paycheck Protection Program, part of the $2.2 trillion rescue plan passed by Congress to help small businesses affected by the coronavirus pandemic. Anyone casually familiar with social media the past few days is aware that many of these loans went to large corporations which were never intended to receive the money. Smaller businesses were shut out. In fact, the fund ran out of its original $349 billion cache after just a few days. When Shake Shack, the Los Angeles Lakers and other well-heeled companies were embarrassed by the publicity surrounding their getting the loans, many said they would return the money. But others said they would keep it.

       Two problems here. One, why did these large corporations even apply for the loans in the first place? Two, as Cramer wondered, who gave them the loans? “I think that banks were complicit. I think banks gave loans to very good customers, maybe because they needed to keep them afloat,” Cramer said. He said Americans are “sick” of this kind of behavior from banks and he’s absolutely right. Penalize the companies, who must have supplied phony info to even apply for the loans, and the banks, who surely knew. Make the names of those banks who approved the loans public, as Cramer suggested. Congress should investigate.

      — By the way … we finally found Beyond Meat burgers at the supermarket and created our version of a drive thru treat at home. Delicious. Of course, now, having already decided the Impossible Whopper is also delicious, some serious taste-testing is in order in the plant-based food wars. Any personal reviews out there?

     — By the way … speaking of out there, did you notice that little UFO item the Pentagon slipped out in the midst of the pandemic, maybe figuring no one was paying attention? It declassified videos

The Navy released this video of UFOs this week.

showing swiftly moving UFOs with the soundtrack of naval pilots expressing, well, awe. The videos were actually made public a couple of years ago by a private group, but the Pentagon had no official comment on them at the time. Recently, the Navy announced a formal policy on reporting UFOs. Apparently, the brass decided to believe their pilots were actually seeing something that they could not identify or explain. The Pentagon had a classified program to study numerous reports of such phenomena from 2007 to 2012, but abandoned it for what it said were more pressing priorities. The former head of that program resigned in protest in 2017 over the secrecy surrounding it. Retired former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, of Nevada, who pushed for the original program, tweeted that release of the videos now “only scratches the surface of research and materials available. The U.S. needs to take a serious, scientific look at this and any potential national security implications.” Or we can let the new Space Force handle it.

      — By the way … folks in my neighborhood have been familiar with the UFO phenomenon for a long time. In fact, Pine Bush, N.Y., has an annual parade/festival to celebrate its designation as the UFO capital of the Northeast. Nice event.  Unfortunately, it’s postponed this year until fall. Of course, some folks may think we’re a bit out of it, but It’s hard for me to discount the idea that there’s something out there and it’s intelligent, because it’s smart enough to stay away from us right now. Make a hard left at Earth, captain, and get out of the neighborhood fast.

       — Finally … scenes from a pandemic: Sitting in the parking lot waiting for our Chinese takeout. Customers preceding us waiting at the door, socially distanced, all wearing some variation of masks. When they leave, a silver hearse pulls up, white skull painted in the rear window and a spooky ghost in one of the side windows. Normal-looking lady wearing a mask gets out the driver side, goes in, picks up her takeout and drives away expeditiously. GrubHub? DoorDash? Thinking I’m definitely in a Coen brothers movie. By the way … I had shrimp lo mein.

Bob Gaydos is writer-in-residence at zestoforange.com.

rjgaydos@gmail.com

By Bob Gaydos

                     IR Photography
Cornelius Houston … the smoothies guy

There’s a new juice bar in my town. This is good news because it means someone thinks the town, Pine Bush, is ready to take that next step from “you’ve got potential” to “Where can I get a blueberry-kale-banana-beets-coconut water-smoothie?”

Why, right there on Main Street, fella, smack dab between the vegetarian/vegan restaurant and the health food store.

There was a time not so long ago that one could write about small towns and new businesses — “good news” — without feeling the need to explain that the motivation was at least partially to preserve one’s sanity and to reaffirm the belief that societies can survive even deeply disturbing times, such as ours, when “ordinary’ people do out-of-the-ordinary things because it feels right to them and it might be good for others as well.

Call this a mental health column.

So, smoothies …

I’m not a health food fanatic, but I do recognize and appreciate the benefits of being selective in what I ingest. As I’ve written about previously, my eating and exercise habits changed dramatically five years ago after a long-ignored visit to a doctor. Any doctor. The doctor I went to suggested I lose weight and avoid sugars, salt, red meat and fried or processed foods. The Great American Diet. Get some exercise, too.

She was pretty clear about the benefits of following her “suggestions” and just as clear about the likely consequences of ignoring them. To my credit, I’ve been doing my best to do as the doctor suggested without going to extremes. With the help of a persistent partner, I’ve lost 50 pounds and kept it off. I feel healthier, look better and eat very well, thank you.

This is why the smoothies guy coming to town was good news. It’s tasty food, healthful and a nice complement to the fine Asian, Italian and Mexican food already available.

The smoothies guy has a name, Cornelius Houston. He’s 38 years old, a big, friendly guy who says he got tired of not having a place to get the kind of healthful food he wanted in his town, “So I decided to open one myself.”

His establishment, Healthy Temptations, serves juices (orange, beet, carrot), smoothies (from the menu of fruits and veggies or create your own), salads, wraps and, yes, foodies, avocado toast with toppings and a baked bread that is a true treat.

Houston also grinds out wheatgrass shots for those who are fans of this superfood. It contains potassium, dietary fiber, vitamin A, vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin K, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, vitamin B6, pantothenic acid, iron, zinc, copper, manganese and selenium. It even contains some protein. A sign in the juice bar says one wheatgrass shot is the equivalent of 2 1/2 pounds of green salad.

While the science is still officially out on wheatgrass, health claims for it include acting as an antioxidant, fighting infections, managing gastrointestinal processes (it’s gluten-free) and providing energy. A lot of people swear by it. In my case, the jury is also out on taste, so I’m easing into it by taking a sip of my partner’s regular shot. She loves it.

My point here is not to try to convince anyone to like wheatgrass or smoothies or, heaven forbid, maybe to eat more healthful foods. Experience has taught me that, despite the conventional wisdom, you can talk to people about religion and sometimes politics, but don’t even suggest that they skip the cheesecake and try the fruit bowl. Not if you want to remain friends. Americans believe they have a god-given right to eat what they want, whenever they want and as much as they want. It says so in the Constitution, or something like that.

So be it. I’m just impressed to see a man take matters into his own hands and open a business in which he has no experience because he saw a need no one was addressing. That’s how communities grow and prosper.

I’m happy my partner can get her energizing wheatgrass shots whenever she wants and I can mix and match smoothies ingredients to suit my taste and that Houston offers tofu as well as chicken on his salads.

I’m glad Pine Bush now has a juice bar to go with its UFO parade and spectacular view on its list of “cool things.”

I’m pleased that others have noticed Healthy Temptations, which suggests that living healthier may be catching on. That’s encouraging. I think it’s more important than ever to be fit in body, mind and spirit these days and what’s good for the body is good for the soul.

I also think it’s fascinating and not altogether accidental that, in this two-stoplight town, McDonald’s, Dunkin’ Donuts, Subway and Stewart’s are located at the light on one end of Main Street and a vegetarian restaurant, health food store and juice bar are blended together at the other end. Synchronicity personified and a very smooth Feng Shui, Pine Bush.

(The writer has no personal connection with Healthy Temptations or its owners. Pine Bush is located in Orange County, New York, about a two-hour drive from New York City. It enjoys a beautiful view of the Shawangunk RIdge and has been known to attract UFOs.)

rjgaydos@gmail.com