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Friday, March 30, 2012

Debris from Bluff Creek, Odds and Ends: Last Episodes of Season 2 BLUFF CREEK FILM SITE PROJECT; Bobo; Kodak Cine K-100 Camera; plus, Questions from Daniel Perez of the BF TIMES

Me and My Friend, the Kodak Cine K-100,
the same camera used by Roger Patterson for the PGF.
BIGFOOT'S BLOG, 
LATE MARCH 2012 EDITION

Before the next season of Bluff Creek adventures begin, I thought I'd better gather up some of the last loose ends from the previous season's efforts. Season Two of the BLUFF CREEK FILM SITE PROJECT is now completed (view the last episodes below), and we are working on plans for a major pow-wow of new investigations once the area up there is open again. Snow on the ridges and locked road gates usually keep us out until late June, and then lock us out again in late October. Loads of new information has poured in since we proved and verified the PGF site location, some of it very odd and confounding aspects of the Bluff Creek history. We've been told that Bob Heironimus was in Willow Creek in 1965, which is just too odd to blog about without further data. The investigation continues....

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An anonymous (for now) "R.K." sent me a vintage sixties Kodak Cine K-100 16mm film camera, just like the one used by Roger Patterson in 1967. It is an identical model, save that it has a front-loaded lens turret. It is in apparently functional working order, so it may come in handy for research this summer. Here are some nifty photos of that...
The K-100 with the three-lens front turret. Patterson had the single-lens setup.
Ahm a gonna film me one a dem sum-bucks!
Little Bigfoot walks behind the K-100.
Interior of the camera. Click to Enlarge.
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The continuing drama of the BLUFF CREEK FILM SITE PROJECT, Season Two, Episodes 63-67 
This is Season Two, brand NEW. Back to the Creek Again! Here you will find the "Checking the Grid and Site Draft Map, and Measuring the Big Trees" episode. Part 63. Check it out!
Here you will find the "Measuring the Big Trees and Making Test Footprints" episode.
Part 64. Check it out!
Here you will find the "Robert Survives Solo Camping on the Film Site and Does the Tree Bores" episode. Part 65. Check it out!
Here you will find the "Aftermath Discussion at the Old Bigfoot Motel" episode. 
Part 66. Check it out!
Here you will find the "Robert Interviews our Mathematician/Geologist on the Film Site Math Proof" episode. Part 67. Check it out!
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Before he awarded us the BIGFOOTERS OF THE YEAR award, Daniel Perez sent Robert Leiterman and I some questions. Here is that email interview....
QUESTIONS FROM DANIEL PEREZ, the Full Text.
(Parts of this were published between the December 2011 and January Issues of THE BIGFOOT TIMES. Click the name to visit Daniel's site and subscribe.)

Robert and Steven: some questions for a write up in the Bigfoot Times newsletter.
PEREZ: 1) Who made the decision to create The Bluff Creek Film Site Project?
STEVE: It was Ian and I who started this research project by obsessing over small details in the history of Bluff Creek. There were a lot of unanswered questions, and many outright contradictions. This included five main opinions as to the location of the PGF site, and many more minor locations proposed or hinted at by others. As explained below, the official “Project” was started in 2010, when Robert joined us and started filming our research and investigations, and releasing the results on the BFRO YouTube page. I’ve been blogging about it, too, on BIGFOOT’S BLOG. It has been a long personal process for each of us, but our collective work took the last two summer-fall seasons, with preliminary stuff between Ian and I before that in 2009.
PEREZ: 2) When did this project begin?
STEVE: Ian and I were separately heading up to Bluff Creek in the early to mid 2000s, and began working together on this history after meeting at the Yakima Bigfoot Round-Up in 2009. In 2010 we began working with Robert, who wanted to document the process. Three summer-fall seasons, then, went into this Project. I first looked for the film site, using John Green’s sketch in his first pamphlet/booklet, in 2001. Green’s map was rather vague and imprecise. Questions lingered until I was back up there in 2007 with Cliff Barackman, James “Bobo” Fay, and others. From their opinions, guided in part by what Gimlin had said in 2003, and the marked maps found in BIGFOOT AT BLUFF CREEK, we tried to find the film site. It was a strange place, at once familiar, and yet very alien. No clear indications were found anywhere of the scenery familiar in brief glimpses in the  PGF itself. The following years were a slow and sometimes agonizing process of trying to pull the real information from the word-of-mouth and presumptuous statements made by various researchers. Ian was there in 2006, where he met Daniel Perez and Richard Henry. His outdoors and navigational experience gave rise to a parallel interest in discovering the site. Ian and I met in YakimaWashington, but were able to conveniently meet and head to Bluff Creek as he lived nearby in Redding. I’d known Leiterman for a while, and when he heard about our research his own curiosity to find the site was ignited. He became a driving force to get us to apply our research on-site, rather than just hike around and theorize.

Perez, 2007, Willow Creek. Photo by Streufert
PEREZ: 3) Who was part of the project?
STEVE: Ian C., Steven Streufert, Robert Leiterman, with part-time participation of Rip Lyttle, and then Rowdy Kelley toward the end of it. We were aided immensely, of course, by the remaining older locals from the general Willow Creek area, like Al Hodgson and Jay Rowland, as well as many of the old-time Bigfoot researchers like John Green, Jim McClarin, Bob Gimlin… and yourself Daniel Perez, among many others.
PEREZ: 4) Many other parties claimed to know where the filmsite was but nothing bore fruit. Do you think they were doing it to attract attention to themselves rather than the subject?
STEVE: Before what I like to call the “Great Confusion of 2003" (when many major researchers along with Gimlin himself tried to find the site and could not), I think many just assumed that the site was “known.” We found, living here and having the time to try to actually find the spot, that it was NOT known. As it turned out, the spot found in BIGFOOT AT BLUFF CREEK was correct, but the trackway course was not found, nor the big trees, nor frankly any of the things actually seen in the film. The last positive ID of these features that we’ve been able to determine was made in 1983, by Thomas Steenburg, who had help from Dahinden. After this it really seems to have become overgrown and lost to time, with Green and Titmus not being able to find it at all by around 1998.

The many researchers who have made the varied claims of “their own” filmsite location seem to have suffered either the confusion of faded memories, or else a certain arrogance that their own “information” and “knowledge” were sufficient, despite a nearly total lack of verification and validation. Those like MK simply made up their own location, with no substantiation whatsoever save that the spot “felt” right to them, and they had heard some snippet or rumor that they felt must be accurate. We found, in trying to investigate this stuff, that there were MANY such snippets, and NONE of them could prove anything. What we saw was an oral history disintegrating into legend. We sought to correct that, and it truly was not easy to do. We sought to establish truth and reality, a real history, which are rare things in the field of Bigfooting, I’m sorry to say.

I have to say that the biggest enemy in this endeavor has been the presupposition of unfounded claims made by some researchers who never even bothered with proof and documentation. Just saying something is so is never enough. As in the case of MK, one false conception can lead to a thousand others following. Attention-getting? YES. It seems to be what drives Bigfooting the most, as we generally can’t seem to produce very good evidence of the phenomenon it give more weight to individual declarations, egotism, and imaginary and unsubstantiated claims to truth without real evidence. Everyone in this likes to call themselves “researchers,” but it is stunning how few of them actually bother to document and really study anything.
PEREZ: 5) Are you confident that after 40+ years you have located the exact spot?
STEVE: Yes. Indeed. Well, we still have to prove it absolutely to the world. Proof, in a scientific and surveying or optical/photographic sense, is a whole other order of business. The history is ambiguous and contradictory, too. I am satisfied, though, that this is the site, and I see absolutely NO evidence for any other location we have investigated. ALL of the evidence and history, such as it is, points to this one single sandbar on the long course of the creek. There is no doubt in my mind, as I walk on the very course of the trackway on that site. It is big enough, with all the landmarks and proportions in order. Once understood, the site becomes clearly visible (conceivable, at least, though one cannot really see in the way Patterson’s camera did back then), despite these 44 years passed and new forest growth since the filming event.
PEREZ: 6) Of the team, who had that Eureka moment of pinpointing the "big tree?"
STEVE: The “Eureka” moment was really a gradual process realized as a group over a few years. It was I, Steve, who began insisting on that particular big tree and area, and seeing the sandbar and the angle of view in the film toward the “right” side of the sandbar. But I'm not claiming credit for it personally. It was group research, and no one of us alone could have brought this project to fruition. That is why we go by "BLUFF CREEK FILM SITE PROJECT."
We’d looked in that area before, but always felt that the trees were just way off too far toward the end of the film. We had decided that we would focus on that spot and do a site survey last year, but we ran out of time with the seasons and weather changing. Robert and I were even more convinced when we heard that it was Gimlin who had identified the spot of the first sighting. Ian remained skeptical, thinking the site and big trees were not big enough, and so forth.
I found my way to that tree again this mid-summer (during a time when we were unable to get the group together up there), and gave it a serious new look. I had to change my whole mental image of the film site around to realize it was the correct tree in the right spot. In many ways the image in the film is an optical illusion of perspective, with a  moving subject and camera position. We had to think around “square” models such as seen in Murphy’s diorama of the site. I began pointing out that tree to the others, the biggest one down there in that general spot. Robert agreed, but reserved judgment until we could do the site survey grid. Robert was very determined to get to that level of documentation before concluding anything. Ian wasn’t able spend much time at the spot with us in the one time we were all of us together there this summer. He still has reservations, but I think we’re making a little headway convincing him.
When we did our survey with Rowdy we saw things in greater depth and focus, and the landmarks began to emerge from the “jungle.” We saw the trees for the forest. So many had assumed that that area was just not big enough, but when we measured it the known film distances fit in there perfectly, with all the right pieces of the puzzle. Next to that big tree there were others in what appeared to be exactly the correct locations. When we were there as a group surveying without Ian I showed that big tree to the guys again. Rowdy then insightfully spotted the maple next to the big tree, with a slightly bent trunk. I then identified the spiky snag, which I'd never thought before could still be standing. The "ladder tree" and middle tree were obvious, once the big tree was found. The other background big tree clusters are notably similar, but we have yet to fully study and measure all of them. Measuring anything on that hillside is very difficult.
Robert gets loads of credit for conceiving of and managing the site survey. It was Robert who was most fixated on the stumps, which are other lasting features that will help prove this location with finality. Rowdy helped out in huge ways at that point, in organizing and conducting the site measurements. Rowdy, who has a degree and works in film, has already contributed many new views and analyses that hadn’t occurred to us before he got involved.
Ian’s skepticism and rationalism have been constant guards against false assumption. 
The Process: The arrow in the Perez booklet identifies the end point of the film, pointing specifically to the upper sandbar zone. Gimlin identified the crook in the creek downstream as the first sighting spot in 2003, and more decidedly this summer on site. In 2010 Perez, upon being asked to pinpoint Rene's exact mark on the map, marked this very spot. We had already ruled out all locations downstream, and focused on the upper sandbar when Gimlin arrived here. We had to try to conceive of that sandbar without the new tree growth, trying to see again what Dahinden saw in his "aerial" shot from the hillside. We realized that the big trees had to be farther toward the end of the sandbar, and that the film was shot diagonally across the apparent north orientation of the sandbar. Munns put out an animation recreating the motion of cameraman and subject within the setting, and this was instrumental in our revisualizing the site. We drew a magnetic north axis on site and found it oriented perfectly with the biggest tree there, one we'd previously thought was way too far to the "right" to be the big tree. Upon close inspection, all the other main trees were found, and in our site survey the old stumps and debris piles were amazingly still there.

PEREZ: 7) In the blog site, it is stated, "Though the proof is not officially final..." Who makes it official?
STEVE: “PROOF” cannot be had by mere photography, as the site is a totally overgrown jungle now. Each detail needed to be analyzed by itself, and put into location on our site grid map in order to be seen and understood in context. This was the real, full “Eureka” moment, when Robert finished his map. There was so much more correspondence than we’d ever imagined we’d find.
We have shared our results with Bill Munns, and he has confirmed preliminarily that we’ve gotten it correctly. We are hoping to continue this work on-site in 2012, hopefully with those who have expert knowledge in surveying, cameras and optics, not to mention geology and natural history. We have found innumerable ways in to this subject, and have had to learn much in order to be able to understand what we were seeing and finding. We are all of us amateurs, so we did our best, and at this point we are hoping that others will be able to verify our findings in a fully convincing and professional way that will leave no doubt lingering into the future.
PEREZ: 8) About how many man hours did it take to produce your quadrant map?
STEVE: Ask Robert about that one. We spent three days the first trip, myself one day and Robert two days the next trip, in the map/survey process. Robert spent countless hours working on the maps once he got back from the site.

ROBERT: Daniel--Steven, Rowdy and I had spent approximately 60 man hours of actual work time on the film site gridding the gravel bar for the map during October, 2011. This included compass work, some brush clearing, tree boring (determining ages of trees), gridding and flagging the site with north/south (Y) and east/west (X) axis points and lines, also drawing in the stumps, logs, trees, debris piles and root balls (artifacts) and double-checking our data on the ground (searching/walking/confirming/correcting). See the hourly breakdown by researcher below.

October 22 nd. 2011 total combined 22.5 hours
Robert - 7.5 hours
Steven - 7.5 hours
Rowdy - 7.5 hours
October 23 rd. 2011 total combined 22.5 hours
Robert - 7.5 hours
Steven - 7.5 hours
Rowdy - 7.5 hours
October 30th 2011 total combined 9 hours.
Robert - 5.5 hours
Steven - 3.5 hours
October 31st 2011 total combined 6 hours.
Robert - 6 hours
Approximately 6 + 9 + 22.5 + 22.5 = 60 hours of field work and another few hours transferring the data to the final map.
The lower bend and root balls at PGF site area.
Photo by Steven Streufert
PEREZ:  9) When I told Robert in 2007 I believe it was a waste of time to look for the filmsite because I thought it was all changed forever, you didn't buy into that idea. Was this the result of training as a forest ranger and schooling and general experience about the woods and longevity of trees?
STEVE: Leaving this one for Robert…
My comment: We knew that the geology and history of the Bluff Creek area could be understood. We sought to discover all we could that would bear upon the stories told about the events from 1958 to 1967 that involved Bigfoot. What we saw in the creek area were the remnants of the 1964 Flood. We then understood that the sandbar, established by that 500-year event (or whatever it was) should still be there in some form. We found no evidence of logging having been done since 1965-66 salvage work post-Flood. Hence, we refuted the things people had been saying, such as: “It’s all been washed away,” or “The trees should be stumps now.” We showed that with persistence reality may be discovered and history documented. We showed that it is idiotic to just assume things as these people did, without any clear evidence for such assumptions.
We were determined not to just say, for instance, that we knew how to get to the Los Angeles urban area. We wanted to get to Norwalk, and then to a certain address, and eventually find the spot of a specific location, like finding Daniel Perez’ house there. Many said that it could not be found, or that it did not matter; but we found many clues along the way, and it was fun playing Sherlock Holmes with these Bigfoot-related mysteries.
ROBERT:  Steven covered some good stuff already. I will add to it. I find that few people have the patience to get down and get dirty in the field. Very few of us have the ability or take the time to double-check what others say about things. Sometimes we find it easier to assume the obvious and go with the flow, giving some statements credence. If three people agree it's got to be fact right? And let’s face it, we’re no longer a society of outdoorsmen and women whose very existence had depended on the ability to read the signs and predict the weather.

As a park ranger, spending time in the forest is my profession. Being able to read my surroundings can be an essential skill. Though not all park rangers live and work in forests, I do. I spend a considerable amount of time in the outdoors and have taken it upon myself to feel more comfortable in them. I have also tried to better understand my home area.

Back to the film site.... I realize a lot of change can happen on a gravel bar in 44 years, but I also realize that certain landscape features like trees, stumps and logs will take time to totally disappear. Much of that is dependent on insects, fungi, the weather, topography and other factors. Nature has its way of making sure of that. If there were once big trees, then there should be the remains of either the big trees themselves or stumps, and some stumps can hang around for a good bit of time. If the downed logs and stumps were no longer visible, then there should be debris pile remains in their place, possibly in the form of logs and stumps. Stumps last longer than most logs. Different tree species break down faster than others. As an example, alders and cottonwoods will break down faster than firs. Determining the age of trees on the floodplain could also help us see the forest despite the 40-year-old newer trees. For the most part, the positions of the artifacts (logs, stumps, trees) shouldn’t change unless they were washed away, buried or hauled away by salvage loggers. All we needed were clear pictures, a good aerial view of the P.G. Film Site (compliments of Rene Dahinden's 1971 overview) to match some artifacts, as well as patience and time. With the photographs in hand, and a little determination, we were bound to find something. As it was, we did find something... a whole lot of somethings that looked an awful lot like the Rene 1971 overview.

PEREZ: 10) The big tree, what is the present diameter and circumference of it? And is it in your opinion still the largest tree in that immediate vicinity?
STEVE: It is the largest tree in the upper sandbar area. Downstream from there we found two other trees of that huge size, but they are of course in the wrong places. Unfortunately, time and the mass of things to do somehow overwhelmed us, and we didn’t get to measure the diameter of the tree. You can see in the photo of it with me in front how large it is. I’m standing right at its base, so rough measurements of my size and the tree behind me may be made. I’d say the tree is about five feet in diameter. It is an old growth Douglas fir, of the top size found in that climate, soil and terrain, but it certainly is not the largest fir I’ve ever seen. I think it is big enough indeed to be the one seen in the film. Hopefully an optical expert like Munns with be able to tell us this with certainty, based upon our measurements.
PEREZ: 11) Was the Eureka moment derived by association of other items that made a match from 40+ years ago?
STEVE: That is explained above mostly. All the factors of history that we could find played into this. We talked to all the witnesses of the site and area that we could find, and investigated some six miles of the creek watershed. We were frankly astonished to find how much STILL remained, however much others assumed it would all be changed. I mean, stumps and big trees, yes, were there, but we also found the debris piles rotting away but still in the same places. We have over two dozen clearly identifiable matching features outlined in Robert’s comparison map done with the 1971 Dahinden “aerial” photo. And there are many more possible ID points to be found with further analyses. Even the empty spaces on the sandbar are positive data points, as it is quite unlikely up there for something NOT to grow on a spot. Hence, if there is no stump or tree over 40 years old on the site now, and the same state existed in 1967, that is another correlation and correspondence. Finding the big tree was great, but it was astounding to find the other trees along the line, one by one, and to see that their layout was a perfect match for what is seen behind the creature in the 1967 film.
PEREZ: 12)  Did the two of you have a physical advantage over the Bigfoot community because you live geographically closer to the area than most others?
STEVE: Of course! For some it is a lifetime Mecca journey to get up there. For me it is an easy day trip. Hence, we were able to return again and again to answer lingering questions and to explore new information, and finally to check and re-check data.
PEREZ: 13) To Robert, are you surprised that this area, once relatively clear, is an "overgrown jungle" today?
ROBERT: You mean young temperate forest? No. We’re talking successional growth, part of the natural cycle. The flood waters gave that bend in the river a clean slate. Sunlight, nutrients, organic debris for shelter against the harsh elements, the proximity of water, all of these were factors. The new layer of sand and silt was a seed bed for the successional plants. After they established themselves, the trees were soon to follow. What we’re looking at now is a forest reestablishing itself in a prior habitat right in the middle of the P.G. Film Site.

PEREZ: 14) Do you think you ruffled feathers with discounting Murphy's location and his physical filmsite model?
STEVE: Well, when I questioned Christopher Murphy about this stuff he was always open and helpful. When I contacted him before his Sasquatch Summit presentation he listened to my points without defensiveness, and then changed his talk to reflect parts of our research. He did a very fine job in making his site model diorama, but we found it ultimately limiting as it created a predisposition to view the perspective and motion in the film wrongly. It was just a recreation of frame 352, based on Dahinden’s measurements. When we cracked our minds out of those shells we were able to look at the actual locations in new ways.
The site location found in Murphy’s books was based on only one visit there in 2003, for only a few hours, so he cannot really be blamed for getting the location wrongly. It was really pretty close, but inexact. In any case, he was getting cues from others there, so any confusion in his books or internet statements only reflects the difficulties that PGF site location research faced at that point. It is not his fault, really, and he’s been a gentleman about it… unlike many others who have acted as if this were a PERSONAL ISSUE. It is not, and it should not be. It is about facts, not egos.
PEREZ: 15) Where many of the stumps noted in the original P-G film and noted by later researchers still there?
STEVE: I’ve answered this above. We need to get someone with high-level optical photo-analysis skills and software to look at this, but from Robert’s comparison work we’ve shown, I think, a level of correspondence that goes way beyond randomness and is in the highest level of certainty. This is just eyeball work, though, done while constantly having to adjust one’s assumptions trying to approximate the true film perspective in comparison with the site map and overview hillside photo. It isn’t easy to do. As far as we can tell at this point essentially ALL of the bigger features of the film are still present there, and are to be found in more or less exactly the same position and similar condition now as they were in 1967.
PEREZ: 16) Did the woodpecker holes that Peter Byrne said where there in 1972 on the big tree something that strengthened the case for the correct site?
STEVE: Well, Byrne’s memory of how to get to the film site seems to have faded over the years since he was there and it was recognizable. We know from his photos that he was there on the right spot. He took the best photos documenting the site. But since then he has been taking people or guiding them to the spot right at the road bottom, at the bat boxes. This is wholly implausible, much like the MK Davis location, for near-total lack of corresponding features and a landscape that is totally different from that in the film itself. One thing he DID remember was the pock-marked bark of the Big Tree. This is EXACTLY what we found when we identified the tree. Apparently these are holes made by woodpeckers trying to get at bark beetles and other insects infesting the tree. This may indicate weakness in the tree, so it may be quite aged and on its way out sometime in the not too distant future.
We are going to try to get a core-bore of the tree’s rings next summer, and of course this time we will have the required two people and time enough to get a diameter and circumference measurement of it. That is the funniest aspect of this research: just as we think we’ve discovered something or the solution to some mystery, we find that a dozen new avenues of research open up requiring further investigation. Something tells me this Project is not over, and will continue on for many more years.
One thing I’d like to say here is that Bob Gimlin was RIGHT. After all the researchers had become lost and confused, Bob, who had only been there once before 2003, was able to re-identify the site. This is a real kick in the pants of those who constantly want to say that Gimlin has poor memory, or that he is confabulating. ALL ALONG THE WAY we found that Gimlin’s accounts of the locality, the scene of the filming event, and the features found down in that creekbed were essentially CORRECT.
We have to give credit to Rene Dahinden, especially, as it was his memory and research dedication that were preserved in BIGFOOT AT BLUFF CREEK. To you, too, Daniel, we are very grateful in that you actually bothered to document that recollection before the site was lost entirely to time. The clues preserved added up to enough for us to find the site again.

PEREZ: Anyway, those are my questions. Should you have additional comments, just jot them down as I would like to go to press with this soon.  Best, Daniel Perez
Daniels 2007 table at the Willow Creek PGF 40th Celebration Conference.
There in the middle is Daniel's K-100 Kodak movie camera, very similar to ours.
We had NO idea that he was thinking of giving us the "Oscar" of Bigfooting at the point of this interview. Do keep in mind that this was done before we had final mathematical confirmation of the site geometry. We have that now, such that we now have absolute proof that we have found the correct location. What will follow is further measurement and hopefully more useful perspective on the film itself, and its strange, hairy subject.
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Recently Bobo, from FINDING BIGFOOT, stopped by BIGFOOT BOOKS. Though he is a friend, I couldn't resist getting him to sign a promotional card for the show for display in my shop. Here it is:
James "Bobo" Fay signed this card for Bigfoot Books.
Kids visiting the shop LOVE this thing, as they love the Bobes.
Unfortunately, Bobo was recently mauled by a Bigfoot on The Soup, but somehow survived to continue filming episodes of Season Three of the show. He is in Louisiana now, and we have word that they are heading to Australia for the Yowie, and to Southeast Asia as well. Wow! Here is the video of the attack:


And listen to a podcast episode from SAVAGE HENRY, a Humboldt humor magazine, to hear the "real" Bobo, complete with drinking games, here:  Episode 10 of SHIT Talkin'.

Until next time, SEE YA!
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ANGRY BIGFOOT SPEAKS! 

Me Mute.
No Me No Speak.

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This blog is copyright and all that jazz, save for occasional small elements borrowed for "research" and information or satirical purposes only, 2007-2012, Bigfoot Books and Steven Streufert. Borrowings for non-commercial purposes will be tolerated without the revenge of Angry Bigfoot, if citation and a kindly web-link are  given, preferably after contacting us and saying, Hello, like a normal person would before taking a cup of salt. No serious rip-offs of our material for vulgar commercial gain will be tolerated without major BF stomping action coming down on you, hu-man.