Rants from the Relic - Prove It

Caution:  You might be exposed to a puff or two of sarcasm in the paragraphs that follow.

Let’s start wide, then zoom into our area to see if there’s any lesson to be learned from a galactic analogy.

We begin with the uncertainty of extraterrestrial visits. Don’t go away, we’ll get back home quickly.

You’ve heard plenty about Area 51.  It’s the unofficial designation of a portion of the 8,000 square mile Groom Dry Lake Air Force Base tucked inconspicuously into the Nellis Range of Nevada. The ultra-secret base is thought to be the development site for high performance military aircraft beginning with the U-2 in the fifties and including the hot SR-71 Blackbird, the F-117A stealth fighter and the B-2 stealth bomber. These handy machines were instrumental in our gradual cold war and quick Gulf War victories.

Area 51 is also believed by UFO aficionados to be a magnet for extraterrestrial craft. Why Alpha Centaurians, who could choose Maui, Bar Harbor, Carmel, Captiva Island, New Orleans, Breckenridge, or any number of foreign tourist spots, would instead seek landing clearance in the desert 75 miles northwest of Las Vegas is not clear. These UFOlogists support their claim that celestial cruisers frequent Area 51 by noting that: a) the USAF is secretive about the activities there; and b) no firm evidence has been presented by any rationalists that ETs have NOT swooshed through the desert night air -- i.e. although no one admits that there IS an intergalactic base there, no one can prove that there ISN’T one -- ergo there MUST be one.

OK, got it?  We can’t prove there haven’t been visits from space, so there must have been.  Or maybe the visits are ongoing.  This, of course, is the shopworn argument of requiring you to prove a negative.

And one used by the noisy, anti-mining crowd.  “You can’t prove that mining won’t mar the BWCA, therefore it will.”

And these groups with interlocking members currently have the support of the powers in Saint Paul and Washington and they’re successfully retarding our area from launching a second era of mining and the reinvigoration of our economy that would result.

But maybe they’re right?  Maybe despite an 80 year history of underground mining upstream of the BWCA that left its forests and lakes so precious and pristine that over a million acres have been restricted to extremely limited use to save it from something that proved to not be a threat, they’re right? Maybe having strict environmental safeguards monitored by federal, state and county agencies would be more risky than the 80 years were without most of that supervision.

Maybe Area 51 really is an alien base?  If so, the reason we can’t see the evidence might be right here in Northeast Minnesota.

Known to only a few timberwolves is Area 102 -- so named because it is TWICE as secret as Area 51. So secret is it that the USAF has now classified both the noun “area” and the integer “102.” Certainty that it exists is obvious by the total lack of evidence. Note: if disconnected rumors, unreliable eyewitness reports, and institutional denials by the authorities have led us to conclude that ammonia-based life forms using Fission Assisted Kinetic Engines (FAKEs) are humming over Area 51 in the Nevada desert, then certainly the complete absence of even one molecule of evidence guarantees the existence of the doubly secret base, Area 102.

I believe Area 102 is right here. On July 4th, 1999,  a mysterious straight-line wind, believed by some to be a rare but explainable meteorological phenomenon, toppled 25 million trees in 250 thousand acres of wilderness along the Minnesota/Ontario border. Mysteriously, the USAF has NOT EVEN DENIED that this blowdown was the result of a backfire in the engine of a tour bus from Betelgeuse. This ABSENCE of a denial is indisputable proof of the existence of Area 102.

Much as 80 years of antique underground mining a mile from City Hall that didn’t harm downstream environs must be proof that modern, supervised, high-tech, underground mining will.

Phone home.

Doug Luthanen grew up in Ely and graduated from Memorial High School in 1967.  He wrote a weekly viewpoint column for the Northwest Arkansas Times for four years and is an occasional contributor to The Ely Echo.