Part 4

Let's close this chapter of 2007...

Reduced 69% 1260 x 727 (89.1k)

After a short break, we reconvened to toast the film and the men who made the film. The champagne was generously provided by Terry Smith of Long Beach, CA and from here on the celebration lived up to its name. Mary-Anne McTrowe who had traveled to the event with her husband entertained us with two incredibly witty bigfoot songs accompanying herself on the ukulele. Both were about the Patterson-Gimlin subject and both took jabs at the naysayers. This was a surprise highlight of the afternoon. I then played a few verses of Buddy Knox’s unreleased bigfoot song.

Reduced 53% 840 x 590 (42.63k)

Daniel Perez returned for a question and answer session and James “Bobo” Fay took some time to tell us about Irwin Supple, a man he befriended in the late 1980s who had bigfoot experiences in the area dating back to 1947. Irwin Supple actually had heard of the creatures back in his Army training days at the Presidio in San Francisco. An incredible story of a cavalry unit chasing one in the mountains of southern New Mexico in the 1930s was told to him and his unit stationed along the Mendocino Coast at the beginning of World War II encountered one as well. Bobo’s talk was informal and interrupted by frequent questions from the crowd. They seemed just as interested to ask Bobo an opinion on something bigfoot related as they did to hear his talk.

Reduced 53% 840 x 620 (64.6k)

We spent the rest of the afternoon talking bigfoot and enjoying the company of some dedicated individuals – dedicated enough to be in Willow Creek this day. I played my unreleased song “John Green” and pointed out a letter to the gathering from Dmitri Bayanov. We lingered at the hall until well into the evening when we broke away to grab a bite to eat. Some of us decided to take advantage of a break in the whether and followed Cliff and Thom Powell to Louse Camp two hours away. We spent the next two nights camped along Bluff Creek. A very appropriate way to cap off our celebration! (we'll save those stories for another thread..)

Reduced 53% 840 x 615 (96.39k)

THANKS!!

Thanks to all who participated in this historic occasion…Thom Powell made the event possible with his computer projector – and Mark Stenberg brought along an essential back-up projector! Scott McClean provided his computer and worked it all day during the presentations – and also designed the event poster, co-designed and produced the event commemorative t-shirt and printed out a plethora of articles for display…Cliff Barackman provided the PA system and had footprint casts on display. David Murphy made excellent displays about Roger Patterson. Daniel Perez brought relevant items to share and sold his “Bigfoot at Bluff Creek” booklet for 67 cents…Robert Leiterman, Bart Cutino, and Mark Stenberg helped with the set-up at the hall…and Terry for the bubbly...Bart for the non-al alternative...Joyce Kearney and yours truly organized the event. Phew! It was fantastic…glad we did it…see you in 5 years!

P.S.
there are about 20 t-shirts left...(XL and 3 L's)
I post a blog at www.bigfootsongs.com about how to order one...tomorrow.
we need to sell about 15 to break even on this wild celebration...
they'll be going for $15 plus $6 p/h...'cause I'm paying for the delivery confirmation, too.

ADDRESS sent by
Dmitri Bayanov, science director
International Center of Hominology
Moscow, Russia
to
Colleagues celebrating 40th Anniversary
of
the Patterson/Gimlin Bigfoot Documentary
in Willow Creek, Northern California

Dear friends,

Greetings to you from Russian hominologists in Moscow!
I am glad that you and we are celebrating the 40th Anniversary of this historic event jointly in thought and feeling, though physically apart many thousands of miles. We started the tradition of celebrating the film's anniversaries back in 1977, marking the 10th anniversary by a well-attended session of our Hominology seminar in the Darwin Museum (you can read about it and see the photograph in the book America's Bigfoot: Fact, Not Fiction - U.S. Evidence Verified in Russia. The book is devoted to and deals with our study and verification of the Patterson/Gimlin documentary).

We also celebrated the 20th anniversary in 1987 by a similar gathering in the Museum. You can also read about it in the same book, chapter Celebrations in Moscow.
Then to mark the 30th anniversary, in 1997, we organized something bigger - an International Conference, attended by Grover Krantz from the U.S. and John Green from Canada. This event is depicted in my new book, to be published this month, entitled Bigfoot Research - The Russian Vision.

Now, for the first time, celebrations are held simultaneously in Russia and America, and this is great.

A novice in our investigation may ask: What's so special about this seven-meter strip of cellulose that makes us celebrate its anniversaries? This is how I answered this question in our report read at the 1978 Sasquatch Conference in Vancouver:

"Until October 1967, we had lots of information on relict hominoids but they remained inaccessible to the investigators' sense of vision. We were dealing then with the underwater part of the 'iceberg', as it were. October 1967 was the time when the fog cleared and the tip of the iceberg came into view." And I added, now we "know how such a biped looks and how it walks, this knowledge being available now to anyone who wants to use their eyes..."

The validity of that statement depended, of course, on the truthfulness of the film, on its authenticity. So when was this first established and firmly and publicly stated for the benefit and knowledge of the scientific community? In 1972, Rene Dahinden presented us with two copies of the footage, and in 1973, after a thorough study of it, we found the documentary true, which was announced in Dahinden's book, and repeated by us in the December 1974 issue of Current Anthropology, the leading world journal of the sciences of man.

Did any mainstream scientist in the world, and in America in particular, pay attention to that and check our claim? Nothing of the sort. It was only 18 years later, in 1992, that Grover Krantz announced his analysis of the footage and also declared it genuine. Still, in 2000, Professor Philip Lieberman, of Brown University, wrote me the following: "The supposed Bigfoot film appeared to primate specialists to be that of a human walking, wearing a crudely modified ape costume." That is 33 years after the film was taken and 28 years after we in Moscow verified its authenticity. With reference to the International Society of Cryptozoology, based in your country, which organization's direct duty was to study and evaluate the Patterson/Gimlin movie, which it never did, I commented, "U.S. cryptozoologists have hidden the truth of the Bigfoot documentary not only from themselves but also from the whole of America."

If on this solemn occasion you don't mind my further recalling and sharing with you what I said in the past about the Patterson/Gimlin film, I will continue.

The first Bigfoot documentary film will always retain a special place, not only in Bigfoot research but also in the history of science in general. Why was it rejected in America in the first place? Why turned down in England? Why proven authentic in Russia? Why is it still being rejected in America? The shortest answer is in the word hominology. The analyst had to take a scientific approach in examining the film before accepting or debunking it. A scientific approach of what science? The answer is hominology. Bigfoot was unknown to science because there was no science to know it. Back in the 1970s, Russia had already a tiny team of hominologists who tested and verified the film in a scientific manner. The world outside Russia had no such specialists at the time and the documentary was inevitably rejected.

As for aspiring debunkers, one of the arrogant ones is British TV presenter Chris Packham, who ahead of Greg Long and Heironimus attempted in vain to re-enact the Bigfoot movie. In a September 1998 BBC Wildlife magazine article, titled "Bigfoot - Proof or Spoof?", he said that he and colleagues "talked to special-effects experts, who laughed at the simplicity of the suit. They produced one, and we re-enacted the encounter precisely, to the centimeter. We re-shot it using the same type of camera."
As a result, the Packham film shows with brilliant clarity that, with a monkey suit on, "a man's a man for a'that!"
To complete his mission, the TV presenter used the hospitality extended to him by the late Roger Patterson's wife, Patricia Patterson, for what Packham describes as "pawing through the perpetrator's personal effects, his wallet, his phone book, his letters, and photographs." Packham says that when he found what he sought, "My heart nearly leapt from my chest." But, "In a way, it was a huge anticlimax. I remember, - he said, - walking to the car feeling I had the blood of the Bigfoot legend all over my hands."

What compromising evidence did the TV presenter turned detective find among Patterson's personal effects that killed the Bigfoot legend? He wouldn't say. It's a secret.
This writer and film analyst is sure that a huge anticlimax for Chris Packham is still to come, and that his feeling of triumph in Mrs. Patterson's home was caused by an illusion. As any genuine (not fake) researcher of the Bigfoot film knows, its subject is unassailable, because it is made by Nature, not man. It is as true as the Earth is round.
"A stake protrudes from the bleeding heart of Bigfoot, from cryptozoology itself," boasted Packham. In fact, a stake protrudes from the bleeding reputation of the TV presenter who boldly staged an act of verbal hari-kari.

Another aspiring debunker, anthropologist Dr. David Daegling, in his book Bigfoot Exposed, says on p.205 that "Skeptical inquiry into the film has made significant strides since 1967." Actually, it hasn't moved an inch. On the contrary, all aspiring debunkers of the film over the past decades have been exposed and defeated, and not a single proof or argument put forward by us for the film's authenticity has been refuted.

Fed up with the opponents' monkey business, we at the International Center of Hominology in Moscow, in May 2004, made an announcement and offered $100,000 to anyone who can successfully demonstrate to a panel of hominologists and anthropologists that the Patterson/Gimlin film shows a human being in a special suit. Our offer is based on the security of the equipment, vehicles, and intellectual property of our organization. So far no application has been filed.

Now some words about the Bluff Creek heroes of October 20th, 1967. The famous film resulted not only from a fluke, but also from Roger Patterson's dedication, courage, resourcefulness, and adroitness. Quite a few other people, with cameras, have chanced to encounter a Bigfoot, but none has managed so far to rival Patterson's achievement. I can imagine any number of people, myself included, in Patterson's shoes at Bluff Creek, coming back empty handed. No doubt, his action was a feat of investigation.

As for Robert Gimlin, I love what Greg Long says about him in his book on p.159. He says that film producer Robert Guenette was one among many who offered Gimlin large amounts of money to "tell the truth" about what "really" happened that day. Gimlin's answer was, "I'm already telling the truth."

I commented: Noble Gimlin, I embrace you in my thoughts... How proud I am that you count me among your friends, how lucky I am to have mixed all along with people of your make, not that of Heironimus and his patrons. If only most people stood up for the truth as strongly as you.

As for the Bigfoot movie, it calls for action in two aspects: scientific and humanitarian. I wrote to Grover Krantz in 1982: "It's a crime against science and common sense that the film has not been studied by science in Patterson's own country." Grover agreed with me on this point. Regarding the humanitarian aspect, it's a shame and disgrace for America to have let Roger Patterson die without his exploit having been recognized and awarded. It's a shame and disgrace for America to have let the names of Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin be mocked and slandered for decades by unscrupulous glory vultures. I wonder how long such shameless violation of human rights in America can be tolerated.

But be sure, we shall overcome some day.
So don't worry. Be happy!

Dmitri Bayanov