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Lima Area UFO Research Associates

P.O. Box 5193 Lima, Ohio 45802-5193
http://limaohioufo.blogspot.com/

Sept/Oct 2014
Issue # 25

LAURA CLUB MEETING REPORT
WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 17, 2019 @ 7:00 P.M.
NEW CREATION LUTHERAN CHURCH
LIMA, OHIO
BUSINESS:
1. Pres. Bob Prater opened the meeting at 7:05 p.m. with announcements and his usual knack for alien
humor.Approx. 19 persons were present.
2. Amber Horner Treasurer provided the following report:
Savings balance.................$1127.52
Checking balance................1006.32
Auction Income for Aug....... 269.50
MUFON Membership.......... 55.00
P.O. Box renewed.............. 106.00
3. Tonights refreshments were many and varied. Each person brought his own favorites. There was fresh apple
cider, Hawaiian bread with dip, popcorn, ice cream, crackers, chips and much more.
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4. It was announced that on Friday, Sept. 19th the ONU Observatory [Ada, Ohio], will be holding a star party.
They will be observing the Andromeda Galaxy, the largest galaxy in the Local Group.
5. President Bob and his more than able assistant Marcia presented an audio quiz playing the tune from the intro
of a past TV show. Amber (our know-every-tune Queen) answered it correctly as the theme from Mork &
Mindy series starring Robin Williams and Pam Dauber.
6. Pres. Bob asked if there had been any recent sightings. The recent viewing of the Northern Lights was
mentioned. Neil Nandi said he had seen a short red glow around 5:00 a.m. this past week.
7. Tom Bowman stated he will appear on WLIO on Monday the 21st to discuss SETI, The Search for Extra
Terrestrials.
An interesting follow up was that Amber presented the club with the latest edition of the MUFON J ournal for
Sept, 2014, in which appeared an article by Stanton Friedman titled SETI effort based on Ignorance,
Arrogance.
PROGRAM:
1. Tonights program was titled The Cash Landrum Incident that occurred on Dec. 29, 1980 in Texas. The
UFO sighting and contact was experienced by two women and a grandson. It occurred when they were in their
1980 Cutlass auto. Parties involved were Betty Cash, Vickie Landrum and the grandson Colby who was 7 at the
time.
2. A diamond shaped object appeared before the party with flames shooting out the bottom. The object was
approx.130 feet from the car and the heat was so intense the car became heated and Betty experienced burns on
her hand when she stepped outside the car. Betty received 2nd to 3rd grade (possibly radiation) burns. She was
later forced to close the restaurant she operated due to medical problems
3. Almost immediately after seeing the UFO they witnessed 23 Helicopters in the sky tracking the object.
Others in the party had lesser back and facial burns.
4. Betty was later told by Congressman Lloyd Benson to seek medical help at the VA and Bergstrom Air Base.
She later said she received poor help.
5. Some 18 years later UFO investigators get involved. J ohn Schuessler and police officer Ken Storch become
involved.
6. The road area at the site which had been damaged was mysteriously repaired.
INTERMISSION [7:57 p.m.]
PROGRAM PART 2:
1. A second video was show, this one from the series The UFO Hunters.
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2. At Piney Woods some 30 miles NE of Huston, Texas other witnesses see both the 23 Helicopters and the
diamond-shaped UFO. The event occurred about 9:00 p.m.
3. Colby Landrum later described the object as being bright, and red glowing.
4. J erry Lamar, a walker also stated he had seen the Helicopters and they were Double Bladed Chinook's.
5. Betty Landrum was treated for years by her doctor for Radiation exposure. Her doctor was unable to get
Bettys medical record from Parkway Hospital where she had been treated.
6. In 1998 Betty Cash died from radiation exposure.
7. The officer on duty at the Air Base at the time of the incident stated absolutely the military was not involved
however his on-duty notes of that night showed 100 Helicopters landed nearby at Fort Hood.
8. The program concluded at 8:50 p.m.
9. Footnote: Amber Horner announced that Dr. Bruce Maccabees new book is now available. He also recently
appeared on the overnight program Coast to Coast AM with George Noory.
Tom Bowman, LAURA Secretary
419-999-4785
mbowman27@woh.rr.com P.O. Box # 5193
Milky Way Galaxy 'Home to 3,000 Alien Civilizations'

There are probably thousands of alien civilizations living in the Milky Way, but
our chances of ever meeting them are extremely low, an expert has said.
Michael Garrett, head of the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy
(Astron), made the comments at the International Astronomical Congress in
Toronto.
Reported by Discovery News, the astronomer said data collected by NASA and other space agencies suggests
that Earth is one of 40 billion potentially habitable planets in our galaxy.
In addition, another habitable planet is believed to form every year, meaning the chance of alien civilizations
existing is very high - there may be around 3,000 alien civilizations already out there according to the study.
However, Garrett said that with the sheer size of the Milky Way, sending out signals and receiving one back
from a civilization advanced enough to possess this technology is unlikely at the moment.
"On average, you'd expect the civilizations to be separated by at least 1,000 light-years in the Milky Way," he is
quoted as saying. "That's a large distance, and for communication purposes you need to allow for twice the
travel distance, so you're talking about civilizations that have to be around for at least a few thousand years in
order to have the opportunity to talk to each other."
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He pointed to Earth as an example of how life developed, with extremely simple life forms having been around
for billions of years. Intelligent life only arrived much later, he said.
"We don't really know the time scales in which civilizations persist. [Intelligent life only developed] essentially
in the last few minutes of the overall evolution of life on the planet. I don't want to be too negative about this,
but... my basic conclusion is that SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence) signals will be rare in the Milky
Way."
While Garrett does not expect to hear from aliens in the near future, experts at SETI are more hopeful.
In March, leading SETI astronomer Seth Shostak said he expects to make contact within the next 20
years thanks to advances in technology.
Speaking to Popular Mechanics, he said the search is still in its infancy, and is limited by equipment and money,
but believes we are not far off: "My guess that we'll succeed in the next two decades is based on the fact that
with improvements in digital electronics and computers which are getting better and cheaper, following
Moore's law we will be continually sifting through the sky faster.
"And you can extrapolate how fast we'll be able to search, assuming we have the money, in the next decade or
two."

There Are Pretty Legit UFO Reports Coming Out of Colorado and Utah
If reports coming out of Colorado this past weekend are any indicator, then its time to break out the tin foil
hats, cuz theres something super mysterious flying overhead.
Normally when we see reports of UFO sightings, its in shoddy and likely doctored YouTube videos. Even
then, youll only see those make front page tabloid news or big conspiracy theory outlets at best.
Not so this time around, as Denvers NBC affiliate KUSA-TV aired a report on some mysterious shiny objects
hovering over Breckenridge last Saturday. With eyes trained on the UFOs eerily suspended over a ridge,
their reporter in the field dismissed any speculation that the sighting was merely a hoax.
Other big network affiliates picked up the story over the weekend as well, and even USA Today along with a
few other totally legit, non-tabloid national news outlets. Add the report by Salt Lake Citys Fox 13 of a nearly
identical sighting in Utah just a few days prior, and we have ourselves a nearly bulletproof UFO encounter.
But as we all know even credible media outlets are prone to misreporting. With an open police investigation
into the matter now underway, it would seem thats not the case this time around.
Moreover, KUSA-TV reported NORAD (The North American Aerospace Defense Command) was even
looking into the matter. Military spokesperson Army Major Beth Smith said, NORAD is not tracking any
anomalies in that location. We are investigating.
Cryptic, sure, but anything short of a flat denial from these tight-lipped guardians of our airspace should be a
sign that something caught their eye too even if theyre not certain what it is either.
Aliens or not, I guess it depends on what you wanna believe.
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Remembering Zimbabwe's great alien invasion
Twenty years ago, 62 pupils at Ariel School said they saw an alien spaceship. It's still regarded as one of the
most compelling events in UFO history.

Tracking down one of the Ariel School experiencers took some doing, but eventually I connected with Sarah*
in what she referred to as a most stubborn old Rhodie [white Rhodesian] bar in downtown Harare.
Of the more than 110 children and staff who had been at the school, which sits just outside the small
agricultural centre of Ruwa, when the aliens landed in 1994, she thought she was probably the only one still in
the country.
Everyones (word omitted) off to Canada or the UK, she said. -Or died.
When it became clear to her drinking buddies that we were going to talk UFOs, eyes began to roll.
Christ, S, not ET again, someone muttered.
She ignored him.
Whaddya wanna know? Actually, itll be simpler if I just shoot. It happened, OK. Sixty-two kids between the
ages of about six and 12 saw the aliens land and get out of their little ships. When the kids returned to class they
were completely freaked and couldnt stop nattering about little men who looked a bit like Michael J ackson.
The teachers told them to shut up, as teachers are wont to do, and classes proceeded.
But the next day the school received a bunch of calls from parents wanting to know why their kids were
spooked. It got so that the teachers started to freak out, too, and a local UFO expert called Cynthia Hind was
invited to speak to everyone. It was via her, I think, that we heard about a famous shrink who was coming from
the US to assess the children. What was his name now Mack, Dr J ohn Mack, who I heard was killed by a
drunk driver a few years back.
Dedicated investigator
Hind, who died in 2000, had publicly acknowledged her own experiences with other-worldly beings in the past,
and had dedicated the past decade and a half of her life to investigating UFO sightings on the African continent
on behalf of the Mutual UFO Network, and then publishing her findings in the very collectable newsletter,
UFO Afrinews.
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I had brought along a printout of Issue 11, which I opened on the bar counter before Sarah on Hinds article
UFO flap in Zimbabwe: Case No 95. It begins:
Wednesday, 14th September, 1994, was an exciting night for Southern Africa. Round about 20:50 to 21:05
hours, a pyrotechnic display of some magnificence appeared in the almost clear night skies of this part of the
continent.

An Ariel schoolchild telling her story of the alien who arrived.
Astronomers across the region soon reported that the pyrotechnic display, seen as far afield as Zambia and
Botswana, had been a meteor shower. Hind, though, recorded receiving dozens of reports of a capsule-like
fireball, trailing fire and flanked by two smaller capsules.
She also received several reports of alien sightings around the same time: a young boy and his mother reported
a daylight sighting; a trucker who had seen strange beings on the road at night. And then, on September 16,
Hind received the report from Ariel School, which she records as Case 96, and describes as one of the most
exciting UFO stories of this or any year.
Childhood recollection
Hinds narrative closely mirrors Sarahs recollection. At 10am, Hind writes, on a hot day, the children were let
out for their mid-morning break. They were drawn to an area beyond their playing field of long grass with
thorn and other indigenous bushes, trees growing higgledy-piggledy fashion, and undergrowth thick and heavy
enough to hide a child should he venture there.
The teachers had all entered the staff room for a meeting and the only adult outdoors was the tuck-shop
mistress, who was soon swamped by children claiming they had seen three or four objects coming into the
rough bush area disc-like objects coming in along the power lines and finally landing in the rough, among
the trees. The children were a little bit afraid, although they were also curious.
The UFO investigator goes on to record the testimonies of several of the children, who she says represented a
cross-section of Zimbabweans: black African children from several tribes, colored children (a cross-breeding of
black and white), Asian children (whose grandparents were from India) and white children, mostly
Zimbabwean-born, but whose parents were either from South Africa or Britain.
Although they all came from wealthy families (tuition at Ariel School was expensive), Hind believed their
cultural differences gave rise to differing interpretations of the event, and that the differences in interpretation
made the details that were common to all accounts very compelling indeed.
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One of the white students, for example, thought at first that the little man in black might have been Mrs.
Stevens gardener, but then he saw that the figure had long, straight black hair, not really like [a] black
[persons] hair, so he realized he had made a mistake!
Some of the black children thought the short little beings were zvikwambo, or tokoloshes the evil goblins of
Shona and Ndebele folklore and burst into tears, fearing they would be eaten.
Guy G said: [I] could see the little man (about a meter tall) was dressed in a black, shiny suit; that he had long
black hair and his eyes, which seemed lower on the cheek than our eyes, were large and elongated. The mouth
was just a slit and the ears were hardly discernible.
Parents disbelief
Hinds account ends with her outrage at the disbelief of the childrens parents.
What a frightening indictment of our society that when we are confronted by something we dont understand,
we dont even attempt to open our minds to the event.
After reading the article, Sarah ordered another Castle and said: To be perfectly honest, I dont think you
would be here talking to me now if it wasnt for that woman [Hind].
What happened at Ariel was certainly weird, so many kids coming back from break with such similar stories,
but I doubt many people would have heard about it if Hind hadnt made such a fuss. She was the first person to
interview the kids, and got the news out to all sorts of important people, Mack included, as if, you know, finally
here was some vindication.
Hinds descriptions of Mack from this time do indeed suggest she regarded him as something of a redeemer
figure, a man who was not only open-minded and prepared to listen, but an academic of some standing. And
one who has risked his credibility with his colleagues to come out and say he believes the experiences of
abductees are very real indeed.
Who was this man, Mack, whose interest transformed a local curiosity into a study that continues to animate
UFO chat rooms to this day?
Id been told a little of his biography by a relative of mine called Nicky Carter, who after hearing of the incident
from a brother at Ariel School had been the first media respondent, covering it as a producer for an SABC
current affairs program called Agenda.
Prize-winning author
Dr J ohn E Mack, she said, had been a Pulitzer prize-winning author (awarded for his 1977 study of Lawrence
of Arabia, A Prince of Our Disorder: The Life of TE Lawrence) and a professor of psychiatry at the
Harvard Medical School.
Highly regarded, Mack had nevertheless been having a tough year professionally when Carter met him. His
problems stemmed from his interest in the alien abduction phenomenon, which he had begun researching in the
early 1990s and about which he had written the bestselling book Abduction: Human Encounters with
Aliens.
Carter sent me Macks own account of the fallout. In the spring of 1994, he writes in his second book on the
alien abduction phenomenon, Passport to the Cosmos, one of the deans at the Harvard Medical School
handed me a letter that called for the establishment of a small committee to investigate my work [on the alien
abduction phenomenon].
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Dr John Mack was a Pulitzer prize-winner who came under fire for his UFO research.
After explaining vaguely that concerns had been expressed to the university about what I was doing
(although he told of no specific complaint, nor was any offered in the letter), he added pleasantly for he had
been a friend and colleague that I would not have gotten into trouble if I had not suggested in the book
[Abduction] that my findings might require a change in our view of reality, rather than saying that I had found
a new psychiatric syndrome whose cause had not yet been established.
Another peer, Paul McHugh of J ohns Hopkins Medical School, was less delicate, describing Mack in the Los
Angeles Times as a brilliant fellow who occasionally loses it, and this time hes lost it big time.
Macks standard rejoinder was to point out that, although alien encounters were not possible according to the
science of the times, they might nevertheless turn out to be real in some way that we do not yet understand
as the bizarre reports of rocks we now call meteorites falling from the sky seemed [impossible] in the 18th
century.
Attempted ouster
By mid-1994 Mack had overcome attempts at an ouster by some of his Harvard colleagues, and was planning to
expand the scope of his research to include African alien encounters and abductions. A flight was booked to
South Africa, where Mack had organized to meet with experiencers such as the well-known traditional healer
and author Credo Mutwa (who was to tell Mack, according to Carter, who covered the interview for the SABC,
about his rape by a golden-haired, blue-eyed alien female.)
As he was preparing to depart for Africa, news of the Ariel School encounter broke, and Mack adjusted his
travel plans accordingly.
These were the extraordinary coincidences by which the worlds most newsworthy psychiatrist happened to
land, meteor-like, in Zimbabwe. Hind recorded how he appeared on two radio shows and one TV program
before driving the 35km from Harare to Ruwa.
These days were filled with exciting revelations for him, wrote Hind.
J ohn was able to get through to parents and teachers and convince them that, even if they did not believe the
children, it was counterproductive to accuse them of lying.
What interested Mack was how the childrens accounts connected to things hed been told by other of his
experiencer participants, namely that the aliens had communicated an urgent environmental message.
In Passport to the Cosmos, Mack records that after some years of research he was astonished to discover
in case after case, powerful messages about the human threat to the Earths ecology were being conveyed to the
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experiencers in vivid, unmistakable words and images. He personally deemed it quite possible that the
protection of the Earths life is at the heart of the abduction phenomenon.
Original interviews
Snippets of Macks interviews with the children can still be found on YouTube today. A fifth-grader called
Francis tells the gentle-eyed psychiatrist he was warned about something thats going to happen, and that
pollution mustnt be. Eleven-year-old Emma says; I think they want people to know that were actually
making harm on this world and we mustnt get too technologic [sic].
I cued up one of the clips on my phone for Sarah, but she waved it away.
I cant, I cant no, Ive had too much of my own experience to want to relive somebody elses.
After a long draw on her beer she said: They werent wrong, though, about the environmental shit, were they?
If you go out there now youll see the Miombo forests have disappeared for firewood.




Drawings by pupils at Ariel School in Zimbabwe of the aliens visit to their school in September
1994.
But during my first visit to the district, what had struck me was not the state of the forests but the fact that Ariel
School had continued to grow in pupil numbers, and looked to be prospering.
The khaki uniforms, the red floppy hats, the break-time chirring it all matched the YouTube clips, only there
were no longer any white students, the white farming families having all moved elsewhere as a result of the
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governments radical land reform policies. The rough area beyond the playground had been stumped and
mown into a second sports field, dusty for want of rain. I asked a few teachers I bumped into about the events of
1994, but it seemed that aspect of the schools history had left with the farmers.
There was his documentary being made about it at one point, said Sarah, getting a little shaky on her stool.
An American chap. What was his name now Randall, Randy. Ha! Anyway, that was about seven or eight
years ago now, and I havent heard anything since.
Exploring the frontiers
I knew a little more than she did, again courtesy of my relative, who had provided local assistance to the
documentary-maker. After Mack was killed in a car accident in London in 2004, some of his supporters and
family members had founded the J ohn E Mack Institute, with a mission to explore the frontiers of human
experience, to serve the transformation of individual consciousness, and to further the evolution of the
paradigms by which we understand human identity.
In 2007, to further these rather grandiose aims, a young filmmaker called Randall Nickerson had signed on to
do something with the Ariel School footage. Geez, he was sooo handsome, said Sarah, slapping her palms
against her jeans.
I could hardly concentrate when he was interviewing me. Not only that, he understood the thing on a different
level, because he was an experiencer himself, who had been quite open about his encounter. I think he even
appeared on Oprah!
I had contacted Nickerson in 2008, and because he happened to be in Cape Town running former Ariel students
to ground, we arranged to meet and talk about his project. He cancelled at the last minute, though, saying he
didnt feel quite ready.
From time to time I checked the Mack Institute webpage for updates, but after a few years it seemed the project
had run into financial difficulties. Then, in late 2013, two hours of footage tagged with Nickersons name
surfaced on YouTube. I can recognize the carcass of a creative albatross when I see one, and the amorphous
video dump showed every sign of being just that.
As an accidental historical record, though, it is fascinating: a trove of rural school scenes from the eve of
irreversible societal change; the last generation of khaki uniforms, freckled noses and colonial English accents;
and Cynthia Hind, already an anachronism in a series of pre-independence floral print dresses, and wearing
what was described to me as a Bulawayo perm.
Tacked on at the end of the video are some snippets of interviews Nickerson conducted with former students.
It really does stick with me that something happened, something was out there, says a young man. I think
something definitely happened, says a young woman.
Amazing experience
A former teacher says We met up on many occasions after that and hugged and shook our heads and said that
was the most amazing experience of our lives, whereas another former student says he hasnt talked about the
event to anyone, because theyd probably think Im nuts.
When I told Sarah about the video she became very agitated. Can I see it? Oh God no, I dont want to. What do
they all say? Am I on it? she cried.
Ok, just show me.
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We watched the relevant part of the video, Sarah with a hand over her mouth.
God, their accents, she said at one point, of the now American, Australian and English tones that contrasted
so sharply with the voices she had known. It crossed my mind that the truly galvanic event in all of their lives
was not the UFO landing but the policy from upon high that had turned them into aliens in New York, London,
or wherever.
Then again, what did I know? When the clip ended Sarah stubbed out an Everest Menthol and shook her head.
You want to know the real message here? The real message is that this stuff can brand you for life. It
undermined Macks credibility, became this huge unending thing for others, and it certainly (word omitted) me
up. I mean, try telling people that you live in permanent fear of these things returning one day. Try telling them
that you can actually sense when theyre back in our atmosphere. Theyll think youre a kook. All this lot do,
she said, casting mock-angry eyes down the bar at a fellow boozer, who raised his glass and said: True, but we
love you anyway, S.
Despite her patently thick skin, a look of extreme sadness entered Sarahs eyes for a moment, as she pretended
to watch her fingers pulling the label from a beer bottle.
Christ, and to think I told the family I was just popping out to Bon Marche.
*Not her real name.

UFO Sightings on the Uptick? Seven States Reported 285 UFOs in August
Have we been seeing more visits from extraterrestrial visitors, or are more people just letting their imaginations
run wild? It seems like thats the question of the day, as UFO sightings were up in some states, with 285
sightings being reported across seven states over just the month of August.
The news came to us by way of OpenMinds, which pointed to a new report from the Mutual UFO Network
on the number of sightings in August of 2014. The states reporting the highest number of UFOs for August
were California, Washington, Illinois, Missouri, North Carolina, Oregon, Colorado, Indiana and New J ersey.
Seven states, though, combined for an impressive 285 UFO sightings for the month. Those were California,
Texas, New York, Michigan, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. California led the way with 99 UFO sightings
reported by itself, nearly half of the spike in what MUFON calls UFO Alert 3 states.
So, what were are people saying they see when they report UFOs? The most commonly reported UFO was the
spherical type, with 179 such cases being reported in August. Others report seeing circular UFOs, star-shaped
UFOs, and triangular UFOs. Other shapes include discs, ovals, fireballs, cylinders, cigars, and teardrops. There
were even a few Saturn-like UFOs, though we dont know if observers were looking through a telescope at the
time they saw those.
Its not just UFO sightings, though; MUFON also says people reported 28 occurrences of a UFO taking off,
hovering, or landing near them. In one case, an observer said they even observed an entity entering or exiting
a craft.
Seven states reported hundreds of UFO sightings in the month of
August. -Alien visitors, or overactive imaginations?
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As to whether UFO sightings are on the uptick, thats a bit hard to call. Reporting numbers fluctuate from
month to month. For instance, there were 99 sightings in California for the month of August, but that figure is
down from 104 cases in J uly and 107 cases in J une. In April, though, there were only 80 sightings reported,
down from 103 UFOs in March.
Lest you think the madness is over, you should know that witnesses are still reporting UFOs even now. In
Sayersville, NJ , a witness reported watching and photographing a diamond-shaped UFO moving at about the
level of the treetops.
The object was diamond-shaped, the witness reported, but concave towards the bottom. The back almost
looked like something out of a movie, like it would have engines off the back, only it wasnt moving in the
direction the engines were facing.
Of course, if youre of type to buy into this thing, you probably dont think UFOs are anything new. The
Inquisitr has on odd archaeological discoveries that some think depict UFOs and aliens visiting humans
thousands of years ago. Its not the sort of thing that will be resolved any time soon, though, so keep watching
the skies; you just might see something interesting.

The LAURA Club News is a publication of the Lima Area UFO Research Associates, in Lima, Ohio. The study group meets on the
3
rd
Wednesday of the month at the New Creation Lutheran Church (just west of Tom Ahl auto) in the upstairs church fellowship
hall at 7pm-please join us!

Contacts: President, Bob Prater ~~ ada_potato@hotmail.com
Secretary, Tom Bowman ~~mbowman27@woh.rr.com
Co-editors, Robert and Marcia Prater ~~ada_potato@hotmail.com