Loren Coleman posted an item over at Cryptomundo today about an art exhibit at St. Edward’s Universtity, here in Austin, TX.

Jeff Wilson’s Cryptozoology photo exhibit, running through November 5 at the St. Edward’s University Fine Arts Gallery (map), is described as photography that “subtly insinuate(s) the existence of the mythological, mysterious and unexplained in everyday life .”

While, as Loren notes, the description of cryptozoology used in the full text of the promo material is flawed, I’ll reserve my judgement until after I’ve had a chance to look at the exhibit. I was also intrigued by the fact that the next exhibit, opening after Cryptozoology, is the Alchemy. (Granted this is art from David Mack’s Marvel icons book Kabuki, and not related in any way to historical alchemists or alchemy, but the Fortean in me couldn’t help but leap a little at the juxtaposition of the shows and their titles. Plus its the juncture of high art and comics! What’s not to get excited about there?)

For more information about both shows, and other events, visit the St. Edward’s University: Art Program website here.

The Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy has added archaeologist Kathy Moskowitz Strain to the list of speakers for their upcoming conference, October 18, in Jefferson Texas. Strain will be discussing her new book Giants, Cannibals & Monsters: Bigfoot in Native Culture.

We here at Anomaly have received a review copy of Giants, Cannibals & Monsters, and while we haven’t had the time to give it the proper, in-depth review it deserves, our initial impressions are positive. The book is gorgeously illustrated, and worth the price of purchase for the photographs alone. Nearly every page features amazing archival photography of the native peoples whose legends are discussed; including turn of the century candid shots of them going about their daily lives, participating in ceremonies and dances, and pausing to pose for gorgeous portraits.

The stories selected also seem to run the gamut, from clearly legendary tales with a tenuous connection to the subject of Bigfoot, to simple and straightforward accounts of hairy bipedal animals and their home ranges. Strain keeps the editorializing to a minimum, letting the stories stand on their own merits. While much has been made of the mythical aspects lent to hairy giants in some native tales, mainly by those attempting to discredit these stories as a legitimate source of pre-20th century bigfoot accounts, it’s worth remembering that coyote, spider, and raven all feature prominently in various Native stories, and all are also real creatures (as are the fox, tortoise, hare, and other creatures employed to great effect in the fables of Aesop and others).

Even if you do not believe in the physical reality of hairy bipeds roaming the forested hills and secreted valleys of the modern landscape, Strain’s book serves as a very nice catalogue of legends and I expect it to be invaluable to me in years to come as a reference for placing our modern bigfoot stories in a context of developing American mythos of the wild man legends and in comparing Native American stories to other wild man stories from around the globe.

Kathy Moskowitz Strain will be in Jefferson Texas the weekend of October 18 to discuss her work and book.

Dorothy Sisk, a homeowner whose beachfront property near Caplen, Texas was destroyed by Hurricane Ike, discovered this football sized tooth that Lamar University paleontolgist Jim Westgate identified as belonging to a Columbian mammoth. The tooth will likely be displayed at the Texas Memorial Museum in Austin.  AP story here.

That last post about Sarah Palin’s involvement with Pastor Thomas Muthee got a lot of us talking about witchcraft, the ongoing belief in, and fear of, witches in various parts of the world, and the consequences of mob rule and even legislating faith and morality. I’ve recently been reading “Passport to Magonia” and I’m sure the various writings of Jacques Vallee, no doubt, could place this in a greater historical context than I could hope to do in a simple blog post. The fact remains though, that occurrences that most of us would attribute to happenstance, coincidence, or, if it were something truly spectacular, maybe even to UFOnauts or extra-dimensionals, are still interpreted as witchcraft by others (and not just in far off, exotic locales like Kenya, although reports from Africa are more common, either because the media ignores such claims in the US press, relegates them to the “strange news” queue, or because social pressures keep more people from discussing their beliefs openly).

At some point in the future, I may even tell you about some of my own family’s stories regarding contact with malignant spirits they attributed to witchcraft (for instance my late grandmother Bailey always attributed misplaced objects in the home to “those little imps”, a clear ideological descendant of the brownies, boggarts, and house sprites her Scots and Irish ancestors would have believed in), but for now, we’ve got witchcraft links.  Below you will find several links to news stories discussing witchcraft in these various forms.

On the political front we have Palin blessed to be free from witchcraft.

In the cultural differences department, we’ve got African albinos persecuted as witches and witchcraft rumors sparking a soccer riot.

We’ve got a little of both, a smattering of xenophobia, and that legislation of faith and morality we discussed, with a witch trial in Saudi Arabia.

Finally we come full circle, and back to our concerns about separation of church and state, and legislating faith (an issue that concerns me, too, as that rare beast, a progressive, liberal Christian) with this commentary on, and video of, Pastor Thomas Muthee praying for Sarah Palin to help tear down the barriers that separate church and state. (Also embedded below.)

I’ve been labeled a politico in the past. I’ve been villified by readers who labeled me a “Godless liberal” and a “conservative fundamentalist mouthpiece”, for the same article on the seperation of church and state. I was even fired from my first newspaper job for writing anti-pollution editorials. With Anomaly Magazine though I’ve tried to stay away from politics, leaving that territory on this site to my more political and conspiracy minded compatriots. (A notable exception being my last post, on the arrests of protesters at the RNC in Minneapolis, because there are some impositions on our liberties that just can not go ignored.)

I don’t expect to be making any partisan pleas anytime soon. But a recent article from the TimesOnline , tying Palin’s success in her bid for the governorship of Alaska with the prayers of an African Witch Hunter, seems to dovetail too nicely with our format here at Anomaly Magazine to ignore. According to that article, Palin was impressed not with Pastor Muthee’s humility and deference to the Holy Spirit, but his ”powerful” demand that God “make a way” for Palin to succeed in her bid for the Governor’s seat. And it isn’t just God that Pastor Muthee is forceful with, but anyone he deems an enemy of his faith.  This includes people he labels as witches. As noted in the TimeOnline article: 

According to accounts of the witchhunt circulated on evangelical websites such as Prayer Links Ministries, after Pastor Muthee declared Mama Jane a witch, the townspeople became suspicious and began to turn on her, demanding that she be stoned. Public outrage eventually led the police to raid her home, where they fired gunshots, killing a pet python which they believed to be a demon.

And here you thought that only “radical anarchist organizers” (btw, isn’t “anarchist organizer” a bit of an oxymoron?) needed to fear having their doors kicked in under a McCain/Palin administration. 

It seemed like the “in” joke for speakers at the Republican National Convention this evening was “Community Organizer”. Sarah Palin used it to poke fun of Barack Obama’s experience during her acceptance speech this evening. Rudy Giuliani (who miraculously kept his mention of 9/11 down to one instance!) used the “Community Organizer” dig with gusto to attack Obama’s experience and bolster Palin’s so-called “Executive” experience (another catch prhase for the evening).

It should come as no surprise that the Republicans are opposed to community organization. If they are going to keep their base, they have to disable the grass roots apparatus that can get past the media they own and get the word out to the working poor that they are voting against their own economic interest each time they vote Republican. (For an excellent analysis of this, please read Deer Hunting with Jesus by Joe Bageant. An excellent book.)

It should also come as no surprise that in the run up to the Republican Convention, the police were rounding up and arresting activists and protesters and suspected protesters. Employing classic intimidation methods to discourage potential protests, they rounded people up, charged them with nothing, and released them without returning personal items such as journals, computers, and even a child’s shoes.

Take that community organizers! Nyah!

NLG Attorney explains the series of raids

Organizers gather in the street after being ejected during police searches

Journalist Amy Goodman caught up by overzealous police and arrested while covering protests

And, finally, police confiscate the bus/home and personal belongings of a group of sustainable living hippies… including the dangerous child’s shoes! (But let them keep their dogs and chickens, apparently underestimating and overlooking the potential risk of biological warfare via avian flu.)

Those who follow such things are probably already aware that two Georgia based “Bigfoot Hunters” are claiming to have the body of one of the creatures in their possession. They have been building suspense via YouTube postings and their website, www.bigfoottracker.com, for the past couple of months, claiming that the big disclosure was right around the corner, as soon as a few legal issues were resolved. As this post is being written the duo, police officer Matthew Whitton and former corrections officer Rick Dyer, who bill themselves as the world’s greatest trackers, are in Palo Alto, California, with Tom Biscardi preparing for a press conference to disclose their discovery, and possibly DNA evidence, to the media.

While some are being cautiously optimistic, most Bigfoot researchers are remaining skeptical, for various reasons. For instance Craig Woolheater, of the Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy, disclosed during a recent broadcast of the Squatchdetective internet radio program that the two principals attempted to become associated with his organization via a fictional third party, a “Dr. Paul Van Buren”, and claimed to be associated with the organization on their website when no such association existed. This has lead to some conjecture that the entire event is designed to poke fun of the Bigfoot community, a la the Penn and Teller hoax film. Dr. Jeff Meldrum has stated that their method of preserving the body, among other things, leads him to remain skeptical as well. A surgeon and a primate specialist who have examined the photos have told me that the supposed intestines lying on top of the “body” in the photo are too small to represent what they would expect to see even in the small intestines of a creature of this size. Others have noted the similarity of the creature’s face to a widely available Bigfoot costume. While the nares on the creature pictured are very similar to those seen in known primates, such as the gorilla, some eyewitnesses have stated that it does not resemble the creature they have seen. Finally there is the association with proven hoaxer Tom Biscardi, as well as inconsistencies in the story as presented via the Bigfoottracker.com website and YouTube videos and in the interview on the Squatchdetective program. For example, the duo have videos that show them involved in “Bigfoot research”, which led them to a hunter who shot this creature, but on the Squatchdetective program they claim to have not been involved in research prior to this discovery and to have stumbled across it while hiking. While they state on the program that the You Tube videos were intended to poke fun at Bigfoot researchers, they also say that the people featured in the videos are “real people” who contacted them via their tip-line. While this may simply be bad editing and/or lack of explanation on the part of the duo, it exemplifies their flippant treatment of the situation. They also claim that rigor mortis had set in when they found and transported the body out of the forest, however after about 72 hours rigor mortis releases, so the body should not have been rigid if the level of decomposition supposedly shown in the photos had time to occur. Their description of the creature as more human than ape-looking also contradicts the photo images, however they have insinuated in the Squatchdetective interview that the photo released may not be of the actual creature, reason for further skepticism from many.

While many in the Bigfoot community have taken an “I’m skeptical but I want them to prove me wrong” approach, hoping that will be enough to raise them above any fallout a hoax will have on the community, I will personally come out and say that I feel this is a hoax. There are too many elements that don’t fit, and the entire situation, from attempting to freeze the animal in a block of ice to the “sale of the body to an undisclosed millionaire” is way too reminiscent of the classic Minnesota Iceman situation.

But, I hope they prove me wrong.

CNN report on upcoming press conference

Language? Sentience?

What is it that makes us human? While we acknowledge that we are animals, vertebrates, mammals, what is it that separates us from the other animals? What sets us apart? Is it unique to us?

I don’t know the answers. And this video doesn’t answer them. But it raises those questions and so many more. The narrator is a little hokey, and I wish I’d been able to hear more from Dr. Savage-Rumbaugh, but it’s worth your time.

On his July 20 broadcast of Larry King Live, the CNN personality featured Robert Hastings, author of “UFOs and Nukes“, along with three retired Air Force personnel claiming that Unidentified Flying Objects had a keen interest in our burgeoning nuclear capacity. Among their claims are that UFOs caused missile malfunctions at Malmstrom Air Force base in 1967, and were even caught on film by Bob Jacobs during the filming of missile tests at Vandenberg Air Force base, but the films were confiscated by the CIA. You can watch a full YouTube version of the video by clicking on our “Video of the Week” link, or see the shorter version on the official CNN site by clicking here.

This isn’t the first time Larry King has used his show as a forum for discussing the UFO phenomenon. In November of 2007, for example, his program focused on the topic with a show entitled “UFOs: Are They for Real?”

(Part 1 of this episode linked here via YouTube)

However, while a part of me wants to applaud King for the courage to discuss UFOs in a public forum, my problem with King’s program, and most other treatments of the UFO phenomenon available on US television and across the width and breadth of the internet, is an extremely narrow focus on the Extra Terrestrial Hypothesis (ETH). Proponents of the ETH generally support the idea that UFOs are physical vehicles piloted, or remotely controlled, by intelligent beings assumed to be from another planet. Read more »

The Texas Bigfoot Research Conservancy (TBRC) has released a list of scheduled speakers for their upcoming 2008 Texas Bigfoot Conference in Jefferson, TX.

This list includes famed hunter and conservationist Peter Byrne, who participated in a number of Himalayan expeditions funded by Texas millionaire Tom Slick to locate the Yeti before developing an interest in the North American Sasquatch; retired zoologist Dr. W. Henner Fahrenbach, custodian of what is arguably the world’s largest collection of suspected Sasquatch hair; author and filmmaker Dana Holyfield, whose documentary film The Legend of the Honey Island Swamp Monster examines hairy biped reports from the swamps and bayous of Louisiana; co-founder of the North American Bigfoot Search (NABS) and author of The Hoopa Project, David Paulides; and TBRC stalwarts, wildlife biologist Professor Alton Higgins and former USAF airborne translator Daryl Colyer.

For more information about the conference and speakers, including admission costs and venue address, please visit the TBRC site by clicking here.