Murrey put down the camera and wiped the snowflakes off of his binoculars, holding them up to his blue eyes. He spun the focus and tried to shield the lenses from the driving wind as he gazed out across the icy plains. He lost feeling in his hands after only a minute of searching. It was hopeless anyways; the driving snow obscured anything over a few hundred yards away. Sighing, he lowered the binoculars and put his gloves back on, turning to face me. “No way we can get back to the Jeep in this stuff,” he said, “the blizzard’s gonna be on top of us within an hour and we better have some shelter by then.” I struggled to hear him over the shrieking wind, “What? No. No, we have to get back; we’re supposed to be shooting the next segment in St. Petersburg on Wednesday. If we don’t start driving tonight, we’ll never get back on schedule.” “You’re worried about the filming schedule?” Murrey gave me stern look, “You’ve never been in a Siberian blizzard have you? If we get caught on those open plains when the storm hits, we’ll freeze to death in ten minutes! Fuck the schedule, I’m worried about making it through the night.”

I knew Murrey well, he wasn’t the kind of guy who exaggerated. If he said we were in trouble, he truly meant that our lives were in danger. “Well, shit. Fuck the schedule then. What do we do now?” Even as I spoke I could feel the freezing wind gusting stronger, little jets of ice shooting through the seams in my parka and chilling me to the bone. Murrey had to yell to be heard over the gathering snowstorm, “Let’s head back to that forest we passed earlier. We can pile some branches and try to make a shelter before the worst of it reaches us.” “Alright Mur, you lead the way, I already feel half frozen.” Without further discussion we set off back across the snow laden fields; me struggling to follow Murrey as the driving gale buffeted me about, thick sheets of snow blocking out the golden evening sun and the dark shadow of my cameraman hurriedly trudging along before me.

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FILE - In this Tuesday Jan. 26, 1999 file picture, Cardinal Jorge Medina Estevez of Chile, holds the book "De Exorcismis et Supplicationibus Quibusdam" (Of Exorcisms and Supplications), the Vatican's new guidelines on exorcism, presented during a news conference at the Vatican. The 1999 guidelines, written in Latin, update the last set written in 1614. After four centuries, The Vatican's guidelines for driving out the devil includes a caveat not to mistake psychiatric illness for diabolic possession. America's Roman Catholic bishops say there's a shortage of exorcists in the country. To fix the problem, they're holding a conference Friday, Nov. 12, 2010 and Saturday in Baltimore on how to perform the rite. (AP Photo/Marco Ravagli)

NEW YORK — Citing a shortage of priests who can perform the rite, the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops are holding a conference on how to conduct exorcisms.

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Having spent my life in a buzzing metropolis, driving through the Midwest states was a hypnotic and sobering experience. Anyone who has seen the breadbasket of America will know what I’m talking about. Fields. Billions of acres of crops covering the land in waves of undulating leaves; the tamed wilderness organized into rows, blocks, and circles, continuing on for hours and hours and days and days. That’s one of the strangest things about driving through the Midwest. The endless ocean of cornfields, birthed by man’s labors seem to go on without end, but with no signs of those who created it. A car here, a small house there, a windmill, a rotting barn; it’s as if some great civilization built it eons ago and then died out, leaving the living remains of their creations for you to drive past and wonder at. That’s how I found myself on the evening of the last day in July, driving my red sedan along a veritable tunnel of a road cut across the cornfields. No broad highway for me; rather, I had chosen a graveled detour which I had been promised led back to the interstate. The last few exhausting days had seen me driving non-stop across the country, but today, as the sun peaked in the sky and began its free fall back into the earth, the end of my trip drew near. Rest, relaxation, and who the fuck knows maybe even fun lay at my feet; the only thing separating me from my goal was a mile more of gravel road and a few insignificant minutes on the freeway.

Unfortunately, my car was having a little trouble navigating the tiny country road. The assholes at the gas station had promised a worn but perfectly passable route, but a few miles in it became increasingly evident that neither description fit this sorry excuse for a road. Still, the anxiety didn’t really sink in until the gravel path degenerated into a dusty path and then into mere ruts on the ground. As the weeds growing between the tire tracks began to hit the underside of my car, I briefly grappled with the idea of turning around and taking the more traditional, albeit longer, paved route. But soon, that bitch, stubbornness, got her way and I plowed on forwards against the rising weeds and deepening dark…

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Letter beacons are radio transmissions of uncertain origin, which consist of only a single repeating Morse Code letter.

They are also often referred to as:

• SLB, or “Single Letter Beacons”
• SLHFB, or “Single Letter High Frequency Beacons”
• SLHFM, or “Single Letter High Frequency Markers”
• Cluster beacons
• MX — an ENIGMA and ENIGMA-2000 designation.

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WILMINGTON (AP) — It’s not clear what caused those booms that rattled south coast last week. But methane escaping from the ocean or even a small meteorite have been suggested as culprits.

John Huntsman is an associate professor of geology at UNC-Wilmington. He heard a boom on Friday but isn’t sure of the cause. There was a second Saturday.

It wasn’t an earthquake because there was no seismic activity. Military bases reported no aircraft exercises.

Similar booms have been heard along the South Carolina coast in the past. Suggestions have included methane bubbles being released below the ocean and breaking the surface.

Huntsman says some scientists have suggested they are caused by tiny meteorites hitting the atmosphere.

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