Still cold yesterday for Roswell standards but I ventured out ... still a bit of light snow but by noon patches of blue sky were visible.
I had noticed this the day before so I paid very close attention on the drive into town ... aside from all the shops using alien logos and names and caricatures ... there was another feature about this town that stood out to me ... one was the absolute size of the graveyard ... meaning it is large in two ways ... the number of interments and the amount of space for new ones ... the second was the number of funeral homes in this town ... all along the main drag ...
There are 50,000 people in Roswell ... given an even distribution of age ... given an actuarial expectancy of early death by misadventure or early death due to natural causes ... this would work out to be about 1 death every 2 days ... or 3 deaths/week ... this doesn't even begin to explain the number of graves or the room still available for new ones ...
One of 'Phil S' claims was that there was a huge construction force working underground ... building caverns like the one I saw near Eunice ... assuming that the construction force was 50,000 strong and that all deaths in this force were buried in Roswell ... this might account for what I had observed ... also the back story about constructing a missile defence shield around the airport in the late 1950s an adding the and then adding the nuclear missile silos in the early 1960s is the perfect cover story for the amount of construction going on ... to get the construction force underground ... after that ... this will require further investigation ...
My plan earlier today was to visit the museums in town ... using the concept of 'in plain sight', I theorized that if something needed to be accessed often enough ... something that needed to be studied over and over ... it would be on display at one of the museums ... to be used overnight for whatever research and then appear to be on display the next day ...
There was something else I was looking for ... there had to be a portal ... a portal that would talk someone from Roswell above ground ... to whatever what was underground ... again it had to be 'in plain sight' .... if my theory was right ...
My first stop was the Anderson Museum of Contemporary Art ... the museum is unique in the sense that it has an artist-in-residence program ... artists apply to be part of the program, are selected and then come to Roswell all expense paid to live and work ... what if they weren't artists ... what if they were scientists and engineers whose real work was something else altogether ... 'in plain sight' ... that would mean the portal ... or one of them ... would be in the Museum ...
I entered the Museum and signed the guest book as Fox Mulder ... a little Roswell humor ... the Museum contained over 300 original works of art by previous 'residents' ... or so it was claimed ... I viewed the complete collection 3 times ... I must admit I could find nothing that would suggest a portal ... that was when I received the text message ... from our friend, 'Phil S' ... it just said, 'Stairs' ... it was dated 1974 ... stairs ...with a capital 'S' ...
I went to reception and asked for a catalog of the art work ... I looked under the alpha listing by artist ... no 'Stairs' ... I asked the receptionist if she had a listing by title of the art work .. no ... but she said, 'try me ... I've walked around here often enough ... I said, 'Stairs' ... oh yes ... that's by Willard Midgette ... it's in the far wing on the back wall ... I walked back to the far wing ... and there it was ... people about to walk down stairs .. as if leaving the museum to go underground ... and some climbing the stairs about to exit into the museum from the underground ...
I had clearly missed this the first three times ... or had I ... was it there the first three times ... I looked again and almost dropped my camera ... I recognized the figure in the painting back to .. about to take the stairs down ... it was me ... in 1974 ...
But there was one other recognizable figure in the painting ...climbing the stairs ... just behind the black woman about to go down ... I knew this from a picture I had seen at the Visitor's Center the day before ... a picture I had asked about and the woman who was helping me spent a great deal of time talking about ... climbing the stairs is Major Jesse Marcel ... it was he who recovered the debris from the 1947 crash site here in Roswell and it was who would rekindle interest in the crash through his interview with Stanton Friedman in 1968 ... the year I started attending university ...
Mr. Friedman currently lives in Fredericton, NB ... I graduated from UNB in Fredericton, NB ... in 1974 ... the year of the 'Stairs' painting ... Mr. Friedman is white ... the black man about to exit the painting on the right ... is Mr. Friedman ....
There is only one thing to do ... I glance at my watch ... 3 Feb 2011, 12:17 PM Mountain time ... I walk towards the painting and step into it ... (to be continued) ...
To quote from verse 1974 of the Krome Koan,
' ... it pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out ... '
The Ale i.a.n. Hunter
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