THE WAR OF THE WORLDS Is there anybody out there?

The War of the Worlds
Letter from Moshe from the Windy City

First Moshe would like to explain where the name “windy city” comes from:
The city of Chicago has been known by many nicknames, but it is most widely recognized as the "Windy City". There are three main possibilities to explain the city's nickname: the weather, as Chicago is near Lake Michigan; the World's Fair; and the rivalry with Cincinnati. It has been suggested that politicians are largely responsible for the nickname. The earliest known reference to Chicago as the "Windy City" is from an 1858 Chicago Tribune article. The first known repeated effort to label Chicago with this nickname is from 1876 and involves Chicago's rivalry with Cincinnati.

The War of the Worlds was an episode of the American radio drama anthology series Mercury Theatre on the Air. It was performed as a [[/b [b]Halloween episode of the series on October 30, 1938 and aired over the Columbia Broadcasting System radio network. Directed and narrated by Orson Welles, the episode was an adaptation of H. G. Wells' novel The War of the Worlds.

The first two thirds of the 60-minute broadcast were presented as a series of simulated "news bulletins", which suggested too many listeners that an actual alien invasion by Martians was currently in progress. Compounding the issue was the fact that the Mercury Theatre on the Air was a 'sustaining show' (it ran without commercial breaks), thus adding to the program's quality of realism. Although there were sensationalist accounts in the press about a supposed panic in response to the broadcast, the precise extent of listener response has been debated. In the days following the adaptation, however, there was widespread outrage. The program's news-bulletin format was decried as cruelly deceptive by some newspapers and public figures, leading to an outcry against the perpetrators of the broadcast, but the episode secured Orson Welles' fame.

Is there anybody out there?

The idea of life ‘out there’ has entered our collective imagination as a form of modern mythology. The related phenomena of visitors from outer space, alien beings, extra-terrestrials, UFOs and flying saucers, sightings and abductions have all provided inspiration and subject matter for late 20th century and contemporary visual art, cinema and literature. And of course dancing. The present situation in our Ballroom Dance World created by the IDSF (and their National Members) examines aspects of belief, delusion, irony and fantasy around the subject of extra-terrestrial life.

Contact with extra-terrestrial beings has been a source of fascination throughout history. ‘Alien’ manifestations in art include UFO-like objects and ‘spacemen’ speculatively identified in ancient cave paintings and rock art on various continents, and the strange objects and apparitions that have repeatedly appeared in religious paintings since Byzantine times.

In 1938, Orson Welles, radio broadcast of H.G.Wells’ novel The War of the Worlds convinced many terrified listeners of a Martian invasion, but it was not until 1947 that the UFO/‘flying saucer’ entered modern mythology when a pilot described seeing ‘objects flying like saucers’ above the mountains of Washington State. By the 1950s, flying saucers appeared throughout popular culture. The writings of Carl Jung and Erich Von Daniken added momentum in the 1970s and by the end of the 1990s, interest in alien life peaked with millennium predictions.

Why is Moshe bringing this up?

Reading and listening about and from Fellow Dancers you sometimes may think to be exactly in this above described world. “Or is it the “”stuff” you just smoked? Or the extra glass of wine, or else? Halluciantions?

A hallucination, in the broadest sense of the word, is a perception in the absence of a stimulus. In a stricter sense, hallucinations are defined as perceptions in a conscious and awake state in the absence of external stimuli which have qualities of real perception, in that they are vivid, substantial, and located in external objective space. The latter definition distinguishes hallucinations from the related phenomena of dreaming, which does not involve wakefulness; illusion, which involves distorted or misinterpreted real perception; imagery, which does not mimic real perception and is under voluntary control; and pseudo hallucination, which does not mimic real perception, but is not under voluntary control. Hallucinations also differ from "delusional perceptions", in which a correctly sensed and interpreted genuine perception is given some additional (and typically bizarre) significance.

A mild form of hallucination is known as a disturbance, and can occur in any of the senses above. These may be things like seeing movement in peripheral vision, or hearing faint noises and/or voices. Auditory hallucinations are very common in paranoid schizophrenia. They may be benevolent (telling the patient good things about themselves) or malicious, cursing the patient etc. Auditory hallucinations of the malicious type are frequently heard like people talking about the patient behind their back. Like auditory hallucinations, the source of their visual counterpart can also be behind the patient's back. Their visual counterpart is the feeling of being looked-stared at, usually with malicious intent. Frequently, auditory hallucinations and their visual counterpart are experienced by the patient together.

Halloween

Back in the USA, the Windy City, I noticed Halloween is coming up – Party Time!
Being in the Dance World on a day to day basis, you could think Halloween has already started. Certainly in Switzerland’s Ballroom dance world.

Halloween is an annual holiday observed on October 31. It has roots in the Celtic festival of Samhain and the Christian holiday All Saints' Day, but is today largely a secular celebration.

Common Halloween activities include trick-or-treating, wearing costumes and attending costume parties, carving jack-o'-lanterns, ghost tours, bonfires, apple bobbing, visiting haunted attractions, committing pranks, telling ghost stories or other frightening tales, and watching horror films.

Somehow it looks much acquainted… doesn’t it? Certainly the trick-or-treating part, wearing costumes….. (Competitions??) and attending costume parties. Ghost Tours, yes, every competition that is organized by the WDC-AL could become a Ghost Tour for the couples attending if they still dance for the Swiss IDSF,

Committing pranks (OK what does this mean: The Prankster (Oswald Hubert Loomis) is a fictional character, a supervillain in the DC Comics universe and primarily a foe of Superman. The Prankster's first appearance was in Action Comics #51 (August 1942).

The Prankster's particular gimmick is the use of various practical jokes and gags in committing his crimes.

Boy this looks familiar….like the real world, but no, it is only Halloween, don’t forget.
We do not want to insult any body. By no means.

The remaining bit we know: telling ghost stories and other frightening tales.

What can I say? Sounds like weekly business, doesn’t it?

OK you dancers in Ol’ Switzerland, don’t give up. Great competitions are coming up.
All WDC-AL driven. Superman will be there and safeguard you through all the trouble.

Moshe
Chicago Il., Sept 22,2010