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Lesley

Grey Matter

5.23.6

The Festival

So I popped on over to the Roswell UFO Festival Website (http://www.dfn.com/festival/) to check out what UFO elite might be coming to this years Roswell UFO festival and I was quite disappointed.

I know it is a “festival” meaning that it has fun for the whole family, but whoever puts this all together is doing a poor job in the way of entertaining people who are actually interested in UFO research. For the first time in my memory Stanton Friedman is not listed as a speaker. This is who is listed, Don Schmitt, Tom Carey, Darrel Sims, Freddy Silva, Ron Regehr and Dr. Bruce Cornett. The last 3 of those they do not even have bios for at the festival website. Roswell is suppose to be the biggest event in UFO history and that is the best they could do?

I know that many UFO researchers are scared away by the carnival type atmosphere and I can somewhat understand why. It is almost like the people who attend this, parading around in their alien costumes, are making fun of the true believers. They are taking an event, assuming it happened, it has profound implications for all mankind, it is probably the biggest story ever and they are honoring it with a “galactic costume contest,” “Lights at night parade on main street with alien invasion,” a “beer garden,” “Celestial County Concert” and “Terrestrial Tejano Concert.” Although, I have to say that the beer garden is a nice touch, especially if you are wearing a heavy alien costume in the hot July Roswell weather.

On the other hand, I think serious researchers are taking too serious the masses in their alien costumes. First off, it is summer time and people want to go places they can take their children and their children can enjoy it too. Second, that is the way we honor people and events in America, by dressing up in costume. If you don’t believe me check out any Star Trek or SciFi convention anywhere.

All the costumes and parades I could stand, even the horrible long drive to Roswell if they would get me some really good guests. They managed to get all kinds of top researchers there for the 50th anniversary, why not every year?

Here is what I would do if I were in charge of organizing this event. First, I would have all the kiddie events on the weekend, that would be the actual “festival.” The adult portion would take place after the weekend was over or before the weekend started. I would have a full week of guests who would not have to put up with people in alien costumes. Right here in NM, I could pick up several guest speakers that I wouldn’t have to pay cross country travel for, Linda Moulton Howe, Richard C. Hoagland, Charles Hall and Bob Lazar if I were lucky enough to snag him and I have a feeling there are several others that I am forgetting. Then you have all the people on the west coast who are cheap airfare as well. I would have to have, if at all possible, Stanton Friedman every year because lets face it, Stanton is the premiere Roswell researcher. This year I would have made sure to at least have George Knapp there since the Search for the Skinwalker book was probably the most talked about UFO book of the year and airfare from Vegas is pretty darn cheap.

I guess what I am saying is that I don’t believe the people who put together the “festival” are true UFO enthusiasts. They could do so much more with this event. They could make it the premiere UFO conference that everyone wants to attend, but they don’t. Instead of having a town full of tourists for a weekend, they could have a full week of them.

For several months I have been tinkering with the idea of what it would take to put on my own UFO conference here in Albuquerque. If Roswell isn’t going to take advantage of the week or even weekend before or after their festival, maybe someone here should. Albuquerque has a couple of advantages over Roswell that come to mind right away, a international airport and tons of hotels, motels, and restaurants. Also, Albuquerque is the largest city in NM so there are probably tons of locals who would go, Roswell has their festival and Aztec has some sort of crash retrieval conference, but really Albuquerque is the easiest city to fly into in NM so it would be more of a natural to host a big UFO event. This isn’t something I could probably do by myself and there is a lot to figure out, but I am thinking about at least looking into what it would take to host such an event.

So be warned Roswell, if you continue to not use your fame to the full advantage eventually someone, if not me than someone, will be willing to come in and ride your coattails to put on a real UFO conference.

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