Gathering For The Alienated

They came to stand under a broiling desert sun, to stare at the place where 50 years ago today, they believe an alien spacecraft crashed. They stared fixedly at - nothing. “You can feel that something unexplained really happened here,” enthused Bill Taylor, 50, who made the trek from Minnesota. He was one of thousands of UFO believers flooding into Roswell, N.M., for a goofy festival - part holy rite, part carnival and part Graceland-kitsch - celebrating UFOmania. “It would be arrogant of humanity to think of ourselves as the only life form,” said Richard Saiser, 54, of Albuquerque, dressed in a Star Trek uniform. On Friday, a plaque was unveiled at the Corn Ranch, where some believe say the crash took place. It said: “We don’t know who they were; we don’t know why they came; we only know they changed our view of the universe.”