(3)

Once upon a time our planetary neighbors--and the rest of the cosmos--were still a huge, imagination-tweaking mystery.  We had not yet landed on the moon.  Sputnik 1 was still a few years away.

We only knew what we could see and what we could imagine.

And as so often happens with humans, our imaginings, fears and guesses became muddled up with bits of science and a lot of theory and boom--you have books like these written by hopeful people yearning for that GREAT CONNECTION.

I discovered this treasure where I discover so many of my vintage book treasures--at a Half Price Books Store.

You'l find no sketches of space people here.  No faux luxurious binding.  Just a simple book, inexpensively printed, documenting a collection of quasi-scientific, undoubtedly earnest explorations into the existence of intelligent  extraterrestrial life.

Enter the authors.

(4)

Chicago born George Hunt Williamson began his fascination with mystic phenomena as a teenager, shifting it into the field of archaeology as an adult (2).   He studied archaeology at the University of Arizona, centering his interest on Native American  history (2).   In "The Saucers Speak!" he delves into  Native American folklore and tales across a variety of tribes that describe  "flying boats" and  "little wise people". George was convinced that these tales served as a  kind of  proof of early extraterrestrial visits (3).

George's fascination with extraterrestrial life, mysticism and the occult grew rather than diminished.   He became a devotee of cult leaders William Dudley Pelley and George Adamski, using supposed telepathic communication via a homemade Ouija board to contact what they came to call the "space brothers"--an interplanetary group of space beings who evidently had learned enough English to engage in telepathic chats. (2,3)

(1) George H. Williamson (left)

Unlike George Hunt Williamson, Alfred C. Bailey was a bit more difficult to research.   George seems to have been the front man in this extraterrestrial-searching duo, with Railroad conductor Alfred Bailey (as well as his wife)  serving as George's main partner in Ouija-informed communications (2,3).

It should come as no surprise then that "The Saucers Speak!" is a "documentary" primarily relying on George and Alfred's copious Ouija-board sessions detailing repeated and at times lengthy "conversations" with "space intelligences" from our neighboring planets  as well as from  distant planets (Andromeda, Planet 15 of Solar System 22, the Toresoton Solar System, among many others*). (3)  Tucked in here and there amid the Ouija-based findings are tales of interstellar contact made by  ham radio operators, space being visitations made to remote  areas, often at night, and  reports of saucer sightings from around the globe.

However it is the transcripts of the Ouija-style "contacts" that are the most engaging--and there are plenty of them.

"Good and evil forces are working now.  Organization is important for the salvation of your world.  Contact us as soon as you can."  (Message from Masar (Mars) to Saras (Earth))  (Pg. 44)(3)

"'To apples we salt, we return.'  You may not understand this strange saying now, but someday you will.  It is from one of our old prophecy legends." (From Zo on Neptune to Earth. Pg. 50)(3)

"Kadar Lacu, my brothers.  I am several hundred years old.  A mere youth.  The time has come to reveal these things to you. If man would only realize that he should love his brother." (Pg. 75)(3)

Here and there George and Alfred also share various radio contacts made with our space brethren, mostly comprised of strings of numbers or letters with jumbled messages tossed in the middle:


"450 TE SA AFFA SWAP YOUR R 450 K SWAP T I ARE YOU APPEAR TO YOU LATER WHEN AS OR SHIP COMPREHEND DA DA K SE WID26 EE WID26 Q QRA WID26." (PG. 68)(3)

So what exactly is "The Saucers Speak!"?  A documentary as the authors claim?  A sci-fi spoof like "War of the Worlds"?  The obsessed fantasies of grown dreamers who are convinced that correlation really is causation?

I don't know.

As I read this book I realized how easily intelligent, well-meaning people can be led astray--led astray by a charismatic leader, or an engaging idea, or by their own minds.   Even now, over 60 years after this book was first published, we have a sizable swath of people who view scientific fact as optional--people who believe that   climate change is a hoax and that evolution is a theory.

Now, I'm not saying that I believe we are entirely alone in the universe with our big brains and opposable thumbs.   I think it is only a matter of time before SETI stumbles upon something mind-blowingly real that will put us in our place.

However I highly doubt that life forms living in distant galaxies would choose to communicate with us via Ouija board or  ham radio.

But you know what?  I may be wrong.

And that's the beauty of the unknown--you never know.

















*Don't bother looking up the names of these distant planets.  They resided exclusively in the head of George H. Williamson, Alfred C. Bailey and all their fellow Ouija-board loving interstellar enthusiasts. 

Sources

1. http://science.howstuffworks.com/space/aliens-ufos/ufo-history6.htm
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Hunt_Williamson
3. "The Saucers Speak!" by George H. Williamson and Alfred C. Bailey. New Age Publishing Co. 1954. 
4. http://rr0.org/people/h/HuntWilliamsonGeorge/

Telling It Like It Is on Mother's Day

My dear, equally book-crazed friend Sue gifted me a vintage book in honor of Mother's Day.

The Wonderful Story of HOW YOU WERE BORN by
Sidonie Matsner Gruenberg. Illus. by Hildegard Woodward.
Garden City Books. Garden City, NY. 1959.

This particular book is especially well-suited to Mother's Day as it is all about where babies come from--yes, that parentally-dreaded, all-important question to which parents know the answer, but don't know how to say the  words.

Considering that this book was first published in 1952, I at first rather expected it to either offer the standard stork/cabbage patch variety of explanation, or perhaps hide beneath vague euphemisms (neither of which, I might add, a child particularly needs or wants when asking this very important question).

The author, Sidonie Matsner Gruenberg  was born in Austria in 1881 and educated in Germany and New York (1).

From 1906 until 1961 she worked as a world-famous parenting and child expert, serving as director for the Child Study Association of America, conducting parenting lectures, serving on editorial boards for Parent's Magazine and Child Study and working on various White House subcommittees on behalf of children and parents. (1)

In addition to these achievements, she authored over 15 books on child issues and parenting aimed at both children and parents. (2)

What all this boils down to is that the book I hold in my hands was written by someone with considerable clout--so if this is the way Sidonie Matsner Gruenberg answers the question "where do babies come from?", then chances are this is a good way for most of us to answer the question.

 And just how does she answer this question?

Honestly.
With precocious and splendid honesty.

I was first struck by the cover.  Ms. Gruenberg and illustrator Ms. Woodward started right away visually reinforcing that how YOU were born is how EVERYONE was born.  Pretty much.

Now, Ms. Woodward could have drawn a few little adorable babies and left it at that--a few little 1959-ish white babies in bonnets and bibs. I may be generalizing a bit, but not by much I feel, based on the many, many illustrated covers of vintage 1950's children's books I have seen with my very own eyeballs.

But Ms. Woodward's  cover illustration offers a selection of children from obviously different backgrounds (delightfully enough, depicted from the front as well as the back on the book covers).   Both the cover art and the title page art seem to exude a kind of  idealized multi-ethnic spirit of childhood that appeals to the idealist in me.  The illustrations throughout the book are just soft and ambiguous enough to represent people from any number of countries.

And paired with these gentle, lovely illustrations is Ms. Gruenberg's carefully crafted text.


Ms. Gruenberg starts right off acknowledging how parents try to avoid answering the "Where did I come from?" questions and covers the gamut of standard answers:  babies are found under cabbage leaves (this explanation illustrated in rather disturbing detail at the bottom of page 3), are ordered from stores via mail order, are delivered by storks or brought by fairies.

The rest of the book is then dedicated to telling the REAL story--beginning with a gentle foray into the fact that  all living creatures--including humans-- come from eggs.







Ms. Gruenberg describes how the egg grows in the mother's womb (in the case of mammals) and describes the key changes that happen as the baby grows.

"A baby lies in the womb with his head near a passage in his mother's
body that leads to the outside.  This narrow passage is called the
vagina."   (pg.13)

There is then a description of childbirth itself that is in equal parts careful and blunt.  Ms. Gruenberg is careful to avoid absolutes:  "Most babies are born in a hospital because this is a convenient place for mother and baby to get all the attention they need." (pg. 17).   And while she mentions the pain of childbirth, she does so with reassurances for a young child listening to this book  and learning about this topic for the first time.
                                                                                         

On page 22, in the second half of the book, the father's contribution to the creation of a baby is explained--again in careful, honest detail using specific vocabulary.  

"In the mother's womb the egg is ready to begin
to grow into a baby.  But only if it is joined by
something else.  This very important something
is called a 'sperm', and it comes from
the father's body."  (pg. 22)

At this point the book seems to sigh with a bit of relief, having  succesfully navigated the murky waters of introducing the terms  "vagina" and "sperm" (or perhaps the sighing I hear is the collective timeless sighing of thousands of parents reading this book to their children.)

At any rate, the rest of the book is straightforward, discussing how the baby grows from an infant into a child, from child to teenager, from teenager to young adult.




The last few pages of the book skirt just a bit timidly  around the topic of puberty, the leap into a final technicolor celebration of family which while abrupt, is pleasing never the less.

I was pleasantly surprised by this book--by it's honesty, by the illustrations that sought to represent many different kinds of people, by the way it offered an easier way for parents to introduce a challenging topic to their children.

A final new edition was published in 1970.  This new edition included an enlarged  format and updated  text and  illustrations  (some of which, according to one Goodreads review, they "wouldn't want a younger child accidentally coming across." (3))

(4)

This is one vintage book that I feel has weathered the passing years quite well, even in its original edition.  Of all the lessons and information parents must pass on to their children,  the most difficult are those that strike the closest to our emotional hearts--birth and death, love and loss, pain and passion.

There is something  in this book, with its  gentle, pastel-tinted treatment of reproduction, parenthood and family, that is timeless and appropriate.

Especially for Mother's Day.

Sources

1. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0008_0_07935.html

2. https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/672138.Sidonie_Matsner_Gruenberg

3. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2691722-wonderful-story-of-how-you-were-born

4. http://www.amazon.com/Wonderful-Story-How-Were-Born/dp/0385036744

Imagining the Moon: Moon Landing Fictional Non-Fiction

You Will Go To The Moon by Mae and Ira Freeman.
Illustrated by Robert Patterson. Beginner Books Inc. 1959. 

 I wonder if there was a first human to look up into a moonlit night sky and wonder what it would be like to walk upon the faraway moon.

I can't help but feel that it had to have been a child.

I happened upon this children's book wedged into an overcrowded bottom shelf at Half Priced Books (which is quickly becoming one of my favorite book haunts).   It was an easy book to overlook--the spine is an unremarkable brown with white block letters spelling out the equally unremarkable title.  

But I slid it out anyway, and I am so glad that I did.

This book feels like a non-fiction book.   Easy vocabulary aimed at a 1st or 2nd grade reading level.   Specific scientific vocabulary such as "gravity", "centrifugal force" and "inertia" are discussed  in the text and then defined and described in detail in a brief, simply written glossary in back.

And perhaps in 1959 this was considered a non-fiction book of sorts--a scientific inspiration-sparker for young starry eyed someday astronauts designed to whet their whistles for the future of space travel.

But reading it now in 2016, 57 years after it was written and 47 years after the first actual moon landing, it seems almost campy--like a written version of early science fiction TV dramas.

Clearly the seeds for the actual moon landing in 1969 had been planted and informed by the Russian space endeavors, starting with the first ever earth orbiting satellite Sputnik 1 in 1957. (1).  This was followed closely by Sputnik 2 which sent the first living creature into orbit--a dog named "Laika". (1)

The gauntlet had been thrown down and the race was on between the USSR and the United States--who would get to the moon first?

Vostok 1 (4)

By 1961 the Russians had sent the first human (Yuri Gagarin) into orbit around the earth.(1)   Gagarin's spacecraft--named "Vostok 1", did not resemble the sleek rockets dreamed up by science fiction writers or even forward-thinking scientists. But the fuel for dreams was there--and I can't help but feel that images of these early Russian spacecraft fueled the illustrations for this book, at least in part.  And since the concept of multi-stage rockets has been around since between 1300-1350 AD in China (5),  both the authors Mae and Ira Freeman, and illustrator Robert Patterson must have had ample source material upon which to base the story and drawings.

But this book was written and published before Yuri Gagarin made his historic trip into orbit--and it shows.

Authors Mae and Ira Freeman must have been aware of where this book would stand--straddling science fiction and science fact.   To bridge this, they wrote the book in second-person future tense.  It reads like a narrator directing you through your particularly detailed and realistic dream and is reflected in the title You Will Go To The Moon.  






Take for example how space travel is depicted in the illustrations--the young main character and the "rocket man" (as he is called in the book) are shown wearing regular clothes, reclining in modified airline seats.










Also note the presence of a space station--depicted in the book as a kind of roadside rest stop at the halfway point between earth and moon.

*Please notice the obvious lack of women in space.  In fact the only woman
shown in this book is the boy's mother (accompanied by his father)
as they walk the boy to the rocket to see him off on his trip to the moon.

*Also space travel is not only devoid of  women, but also of any kind of
diversity.   Space travel in 1959 was evidently imagined as being solely
a "white guy" thing.   This makes me crazy.

In this space station, the young space traveler and his "rocket man" friend are able to enjoy various types of recreation while they wait for their "moon ship" which will take them the rest of the way to the moon.

The glossary  handily provides scientific definitions of "gravity" and "centrifugal force" to explain the presence of gravity on the space station.

The moon ship is shown as a 2-story vehicle encased in a dome of clear glass.

The text goes on to describe the three-day trip between the space station and the moon as a kind of weightless vacation in a space-age rec room replete with a tv showing a baseball game broadcast from earth, floating books to read, a magnetic chess set and various refreshments to enjoy.















Finally, one of the last pages in the book shows a "moon house", where evidently people will be able to live once they reach the moon.


When I read this book I ended up feeing rather wistful.  Once upon the time the idea of scientific endeavor and space exploration fired our imaginations and even built bridges between nations--shaky and perhaps short-lived bridges, yes, but bridges nonetheless--as we collectively tried to expand our understanding of the universe.

Now, in 2016, it seems that we humans have lost a lot of our curious spark, and have drawn away from imagining any kind of future except the kind we can peek at on the tiny screens we hold in our hands.

I admit my cynicism.

However I do take comfort in imagining the child who once owned this book.

Maybe a little boy or girl ("Ebward"?  "E.B. Ward"?) who read this book with a parent or a grandparent or a teacher and dreamed of going to the moon and living in a "moon house".

Maybe a little boy or girl who grew up and lived up to these dreams.

Who knows?








































Sources

1. http://www.historytoday.com/richard-cavendish/soviet-union-first-moon

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_11

3. http://ezinearticles.com/?Critique-Of-Ira-M-Freemans-Book:-All-About-The-Atom&id=6123395

4. http://eandt.theiet.org/magazine/2011/03/yuri-gagarin.cfm

5. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multistage_rocket#History_and_development