Utter Neglect

I feel terrible. I have had all sorts of plans all week to write new blog posts, but I keep getting so absorbed in writing my biography of J. Allen Hynek that I forget about the blog. Can you forgive me?

Maybe you'll understand once I tell you what I've been going through...

First there was the "swamp gas" thing. I came up with 6 1/2 possible explanations for why Dr. Hynek said at a fateful March, 1966 press conference that the UFOs sighted the previous week in Michigan might have been swamp gas. Some of the explanations were demonstrably false, one was clearly an attempt at disinformation by the no-goodniks at the U.S. Air Force, but several of them were credible and I needed to explore them all.

What could I do? It's all about the truth, and the truth takes time.

Then there was the whole thing about why Hynek decided to be an astronomer. Was it because his mother read him a book about astronomy when he was 7 years old and sick in bed with scarlet fever, or because as a student he became fascinated by the hermetic writings of Max Heindel, Manly Hall and Rudolf Steiner?

Mystic Rudolf Steiner, as portrayed by Jeremy Irons.

First of all, when's the last time you heard of anyone coming down with scarlet fever? This is a disease so old it's treated with trips to the country, for Christ's sake. In other words, this is some ancient, ancient shit I'm dealing with here, folks, so you're going to have to cut me some slack to do my researching the right way. Second of all, have you ever tried to read the hermetic writings of Max Heindel, Manly Hall or Rudolf Steiner? It's the reading equivalent of molasses, and yes I know, nobody uses molasses anymore or has any idea why you can still buy it the supermarket, but I'm sticking with a theme here. I have a bottle of molasses in my kitchen with a freshness date of 10/24/07, and it doesn't matter.

So, what I'm trying to say is this: If I'm not here writing cool stuff about UFOs for my blog, it's because I'm writing cool stuff about UFOs for my book, so it's all good.

But I will try to be better about writing here more regularly, because the blog is, truly, my first love.