Thang Nguyen 555
Cultures on Collision Course
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Author: Thang Nguyen 555
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It’s the same person, going through “change, change, change” through chronological phases: birth, life, death and burial. A lifetime of accumulation: knowledge, hatred, love, giving and filtering (de-friending to lighten the load and to ease inevitable and eventual goodbye). A product of parental passing-down, we curate friendship, marriage (s), and parenting on. We cannot give…
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Earth cyclical and man-made Climate Change contribute to unbreathable air. For folks with asthma like myself, oh oh. The pill, please. This year (2023) is slated to be the hottest since temperature change first got recorded in 1979. That year, I was with an ABC News crew as an intern, covering the Three-Miles-Island incident. We…
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Can’t select the graphic to catch your eyes. Invisible man (Ralph Ellison). Invisible hand (Adam Smith). But this? like those hollowing of the aftermath? Time heals? Nelson Mandela (I saw Color of Freedom last night) was quoted as saying “Time heals wounds, but not invisible wounds”). How about our man in Louisiana solitary confinement for…
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per Colby, the lessons of Vietnam were partially learned: ” we must not try to determine the leadership of small and far away states whose cultures are different from ours, but that we should be true to our own values of democracy and human rights….” Lost Victory, pg 369 published 14 years after the last…
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I’d better put it down before I forget. 12 days on the road. Almost 4,000 miles. Some stretches were with “Fines double” signs. Other bridges that go nowhere. Eisenhower was so impressed with the German autobahn. Upon his return, he set out to remodel the US highway system (mostly to accommodate the logistics of transporting…
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My daughter, on the occasion of May 6 (King Charles), asked if I wanted to be King. No thank you. Just want to be myself, I replied. To be King in today’s world – post Cold War, post Covid world? Long time ago, folks lived within walking distance. Feudalism and Lordism. Land and letters. Today,…
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First, you’ve got to let go. All of it: pre-conception, pre-judging, fear and Likes (by peer). Once I survived a class on Survival in the Wilderness. Last week final? White Mountain, NH. Rain on the tent. Solo. Peanut butter. Nothing and no one around. Just silence. Sound of the wood. Of my inner self (a…
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That year, George had his first solo. Top of the chart. We got Hit Parade, which was the equivalent of my Farmer’s Almanac. Luckily, next door to us also lived a guitarist. So in love with Rock and Roll that I asked to be shown a few chords ( e.g. the guitar solo part of…
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As a kid, I looked up to my dad: tall, handsome, and well-groomed. I shined his shoes and fetched his coffee. From that vantage point (looking up from the floor), he was a towering figure. An Army discharged, he picked up a Sales/Collection job for various French business relics e.g. Grall Hospital or later Vietnam…
Thang Nguyen 555 