Thang Nguyen 555

I moved my lawn chair this morning to face the rising sun: shy, sneaky and seen slowly through and over our neighbor’s tree.

Nevertheless, it’s my greatest sun (to copy the US Olympic goal keeper’s memoir: My greatest save).

Until tomorrow and the next day.

Every time, every morning, we’re graced with this consistency, the warmth and brightness of it.

Solar universe.

Master of it.

We’re mere recipients, ungrateful ones.

Taking the sun for granted (unlike Ishiguro’s Klara, an AI toy – our equivalent of iPhone 12, who appreciated it for energy and recharge).

Here comes the Sun…it’s alright.

All things must pass. But one thing for certain: it will come out tomorrow, faithfully.

(or we just orbit around it on the dime to see it again in 24 hours).

Thanks.

On behalf of all those who are appreciative or ungrateful – taking you for granted.

Rest of the world relies on you to dry their hair, their clothes and even their fish.

In the desert, your arrival in the morning signals another day of bone-dry heat.

It’s OK. Creatures of the desert – cactus- will adapt. Like me of the tropics, now adapt to the loud tune of mockingbirds.

It wouldn’t be long before you go on, while I fade away. I wish I was composed of sturdier materials. But as it has been and always be, we’re mortal. You are not.

Hence, you will be around. To warm and recharge the likes of Klara.

It will be wild, a world without end, of e-mobile and solar energy. Of wireless and aimlessness.

My descendants of a lost tribe – will join in to thrive, to greet you every morning, like I do. That’s the only thing I am sure of, even after I have been long gone.

Here comes the Sun….it’s alright.

I too was mesmerized. Those hours of J6 Day 6 flew by so fast.

I will spare you the details. Just what struck me. Here was an aid to Meadows whose Verizon phone had been confiscated. Thousands of texts and tweets (aside from burner phones).

Yet she could recount almost verbatim, a year and a half later. “As an American, I was outraged”…

Who wouldn’t? My niece texted me immediately that same afternoon to apologize.

Under Oath. Everything is taped, replayed and stored for the record (even Watergate classified 18 missing minutes of tape).

The brave one. A younger version of Princeton’s Jodi Foster…”Are you talking to me?”

She was the only one there, in front of the microphone and tons of lenses. The “Taxi Driver” must have talked to her and only her.

Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Hollywood stuff.

Once only a whisper behind Mark’s closed door, now shouted from the rooftop.

It’s as if she were filling in today’s missing “18 minutes”. Our John Dean. Honest and forthrightly (unlike Jenna Ellis who was standing behind Giuliani, purportedly from the Evangelical world).

I have not been following political news up close until two years ago. When it’s the women, Vietnamese women, all 50 of them, signed on to denounce DJT. What did “napalm girls” have to do with he once bragged on Access Hollywood ” I just grabbed the p****”…. You can do anything (Even war-room Steve Bannon thought “there went our Presidential Dream”). But then, there are always two sides to a drama: what was the South VN flag doing there on top of the Capitol dome? Unthinkable.

From the “war room” at Willard hotel back and forth i.e., just tell them it’s all checked out (legal precedents researched by Eastman in Chapman U library), he (POTUS inside the Beast) is going with them to “hang M.P.” who deserved it (lynching is back, this time on South Lawn, not Southern Mississippi), and of course, here is David Letterman’s top 10 ” We love you. But you have to go home now” i.e., check out of your Northern VA’s hotel room (of course, you did not bring/stash those weapons and keep your ‘Oath” to hurt me – I am not Reagan”. If anyone, just shoot Mark – modern-day Brady).

In the line of fire, even macho Clint Eastwood would have to refuse to run alongside the Beast. (He would have to call in sick – contracted covid) leaving Rene Russo to fend for herself: ” Sir, we’re going back. Sir, take your hand off me.”

Of course, he wouldn’t know who Cassidy was. She played an abused and dutiful “housewife” who helped wipe dripping ketchup off the dining room (BTW, I played that role a lot in my childhood, so I can empathize completely). That “fly on the wall” finally broke silence for history to judge and righting itself.

I too was mesmerized. And I stand corrected: I thought his bone spurs would prevent his walk to the Capitol to “fight like Hell”. unlike Congressman Lewis marching across the Selma bridge (Mr. Lewis too raised his right hand under Oath and kept his oath).

Go girl. Greta, 50 Vietnamese women against Trump, and now Ms. Hutchinson. All in my growing logbook of modern heroes.

Big rocks first.

weeds and sand will cram and creep in over time.

We are unable to face silence and serenity! or patience and perseverance. We have to exchange our inner for outer, what’s intrinsic and intangible for countable and measurable. Welcome to the age of monetizing and materializing everything: Costco carts or our garages, non-empty bookshelves and cupboards.

BTW, the iPhone is celebrating its 15th birthday. A lot of apps, one for each of our whim. No wonder time escapes us (onto the other side of Steve Job’s mirror). Even Steve Jobs himself once posed for a photo in a room scarcely furnished . He definitely brought us a gift out of those undistracted meditation (if not making a dent in the universe) e.g. calligraphy.

Of late, I don’t see a lot of “think different”. It seems as though we’re still in 1984, still with a need for a sledgehammer (Apple Olympic ad showed an Olympian woman running in slow motion, tore through the screen: Think Different).

Decades have gone by with “paradigm shift”, “out-of-the-box”, “next level” “radical” ” compassionate conservatism” “pushing the envelope” only to find: Donald Trump is still babbling (despite his unseen elongated nose), Amtrak still operates with “Hell-on-Earth” derailment and better-life seekers and kids still died of dehydration on a deserted San Antonio stretch if not in school nearby in Uvalde.

Where have all the brains gone? Big Rocks? Best and Brightest? Think tank did not go to war and back in flag-draped aluminum coffins (easier for cross-ocean transport). Big picture kind of folks, behind the partition glass, behind the cushion and bullet-proof “Beast”. Get the apps out there, have a door dash lady picks up a sandwich for another lady. Voila. Scale it up. Money in the bank.

Winners and losers in the digital age. iPhones and Instagram, Samsung and social media.

You’ve got it!

Next frontier? Rare earth in Kenya, chips manufacturing in Taiwan (very much like Roger Moore’s Gold, the movie – set in S Africa back in the 60’s).

Every age has its own Archilles’ heels and opportunity costs. Ours? face-to-face interaction and environmental degradation.

Every force brings about an opposite reaction.

Fill it up with sand, you’ve got no room for big rocks.

Fundamental habits. Best practices. Then again, the arc of Wall Street i.e. Other’s People Money, casts a long shadow on stretched risk-tolerance and spread-out porfolio.

Then Others’ People Time and Energy. Just disintermediate them by being paradoxically in the middle of electronic transactions. We will always have the credit card issuers, the Amazon contract drivers etc. besides the recommendation apps.

Scaling and surfing. Go with the flow and fluidity of money, technology and trend. Small is not beautiful. Whites are (as once shown in Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous).

If preferable, it’s “suburban women”.. all the way: to the suburbs in the South, the boondocks, the KKK. To protect and preserve.

Yesterday’s “box”. Yesterday’s power. And of course, yesterday’s coffer. Why do you think there have been war after war after war. All in the name of a higher abstract notion e.g. liberty and justice for few. Now, please raise your hand.

The very hand that counts pennies, small change and Peter pence. No big rocks. No gold bars and no chunk of change at Chase bank. No wonder our time, energy and money all spent, like sand, filled up then swept away at first storm. Poofs! Ghost work. Ghost compensation.

I am back to checking my iPhone now. The app symbol is “f” (after the weather). No matter how anti-social I have tried to be. What big rocks! Steve said to stay hungry and curious. Well,..Out of curiosity, let’s check back in when the iPhone turns 30.

Let me guess. Faster internet, lonelier planet.

From Kushner to Kamala, “Bake” to Bush, they all did: emphasizing the positives and erasing the negatives. Hire a ghost writer, parade the best edited bio in alphabetical display at a library near you. Voila, the 4 th L ( legacy).

Once I worked in the International Telecom field. Oh my! Customer data dump, on an Excel spreadsheet, showed long and winding last names: from Croatian to Pakistan, from Chinese to Vietnamese. Had it not been for Customer ID, we would have gotten all the LD phone charges mix up.

Yet these folks got along fine with their children’s education first themselves last.

My Mom and Dad did. For us, three children. Then grandchildren. Hardly can you find less than a Bachelor degree in our “funny” last names (even taking on Ecuadorian one for a change. Talking about self-reinvention).

America’s last names in Exhibit A at the 9/11 Memorial, in contrast to the Vietnam Wall rosters. That’s how fast-changing our demographics are. (Just look at world population numbers in hockey-stick graph).

Our neighbours and co-workers are called P.J. or J.B. Faster that way at the Starbucks line.

Or Lady Ruby, at J6 commission testimony. Go girl!

May your brand endure and your only daughter go on to bigger and better things.After all she survived threat and harassment thrown at her in Fulton County.

America always bought in one version of dream (mostly Ponzi if not cultic) or another to reinvent itself: J.P. Morgan and other “too big to fail” names.

Those small and beautiful folks who came (of course from somewhere else) later?

“Too small to count!” (until it’s time for them to think “white” like Clarence Thomas and cohorts).

Bottom of the totem pole, opioid and vape addicts, with sign-up bonus for an “essential” worker shift while exempted “knowledge workers” clear out the last coffee cup, banter around the water cooler to be in office gossips (talk shop). It’s time to pour out and put back big rocks back in first.

That is, if the machine doesn’t take work away from both.

Bezos, Musk and Gates anticipated all that. What do you think? They don’t sit around vaping. Bezos bought the Post (stopped short of a name change to Bezos Graham), Musk wanted to tweet like Trump and Gates refused to pick up a lucky penny (I still do) time otherwise to read stacks of futuristic books (so as not to miss another “internet” next time around).

Divorce costs more when you are a Tech Titan. Be careful with self-reinvention and associated price-tag. You might get what you wished for.

Meanwhile, not only personal history but History itself got rewritten e.g. Roe put on a new robe last week. Poor young black LA women. Where are they gonna go? New Orleans back alleys?

History’s detour intertwined with our personal contour. All amounts to graveyards and grave markers, a lot more unknown than known.

Let’s make the best of our set of alterable and unalterable givens (I wished they had gene sequencing and editing to preempt biographical revisionism). Do no harm (or like Google’s Do No Evil). Earn that marker’s byline: “Here lays a good and grateful man.” (I once walked around a park, on a bench inscribed ” so and so, lover of Guinness).

My parents, my mom in particular, weren’t much into alcohol. Neither did they know much about self-rebranding (like DJT, an x-Democrat, now calling others RINOs to be hunted down – BTW, it’s a misspell) and narcissism. All they did was trying to survive hand-to-mouth in an upside-down world, itself in the process of re-drawing – reinventing its Colonial map.

R.I.P. dear Mom and Dad. Just wait. Don’t roll over just yet in your marked graves. Given my “unalterable” i.e. potential 90+ living, I do have some time learning from all those masters of self-reinvention at local library’s Biography aisle, from “Bake” to Bush, Kushner to Kamala.

No stranger to push back.

To divisiveness. First, it’s French Indochina (Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam).

Then within Vietnam, North, Central and South (except for Cape St Jacques and Dalat for the Madames to escape scorching heat while hubbies slept with mistresses). Then 1954 partition of North and South at the 17th parallel (even today, North and South Korea are starring at each other through those “binos”).

All of that before my time. Then, the oligarchs and autocrats, bringing the whole entourage (all in white suits – as opposed to N Korea’s all-Mao look) including Madame Nhu (unelected, yet yielded a lot of power). Then the brothers- elder one who donned his Signor robe to reign in Central region while her husband, our RfK, was in charge of security.

What Buddhist? Suppress them.

“Can we just shoot ‘m?”. “Let’s take a walk across the street to St John” – for a photo op, to show some strength.

Don Jr was pale in comparison to Asian cronysm like Clarence Thomas vs Thurgood Marshall (per Maureen Dowd), zeroes vs heroes…

I am no stranger to clashes and conflicts: splintered extended families, parental overblown crisis (makes me a border-line schizoid), civil demonstrations that brought out women and children – even monks and nuns (who were supposed to denounce all things worldliness). I can still recall the smokes and smells of tear gas, in ample supplies to suppress marchers (for religious freedom). We used nylon bags and lemon wedges for countermeasures.

Please view my other blog on the burning monk.

For now, it’s hot again here in the middle of America (the red line, where to exercise woman’s rights, assumed for the past 5 decades, one has to travel at least 400 miles out of state). It was hot back in 1963 near my neighborhood. Then topped it all with flick of the zippo. No hair smell. Just the smell of burned monk robe and flesh.

My first eyewitness of conscientious objection (on the other side of the pond, a Quaker guy from PA with young daughter nearby also lit a match , a self immolated protest at the steps of the Pentagon against another member of his sect: Nixon/Mc Namara. (Nixon was orginally a Quaker).

Not all Republican believe in the same thing. Not all Evangelical follow the same path. But of late, they have been subverted and re-directed by the likes of Proud Boys and PAC’s. More than 50 years of brewing. Sore losers and liars.

Plotting and planning a return of the King, of Theocratic reign of a thousand years (pre-mil).

Everyone forgets Love. Everyone forgets that for a life to be happy, we need relationships, healthy and hopefully friction-free.

Yet we are called to be all-out, take no prisoners…text in coded warring words… “stacking” “lynching”, “hanging” (stop short of “crucifying”).

The “kill” mentality. Death, destruction and reigning over the ashes.

Rome. Constantinople and Christ (to counter Romanov and Russian Orthodox). Cold war and Hot war. Back to selling arms and using arms. Carrying and concealing.

All the ammo and ammunition that characterize our current climate.

Rewinding the clock. Undoing the 60’s. Law and order (except this time, the Law i.e. Judges, is on our side). In the heat of the night once again w/out Sidney Poitier.

I am just passing through. Waiting for my connection. Just like that burning monk. This world is not for me, for him, for you. I long for yesterday, with only half left in my body and memory (“I am half a man I used to be”).

Memory of a burning monk, of protest by women (in Ao Dai) and children in blue/white uniform. Like a song “can’t get it out of my head”…. Do I have to do everything myself now….

Where are the Gretas of this world? if any left for them after all these showdowns. Spent cases and casualties of war.

Now, that’s another reason for Roe. Why bother to bring the likes of me to this hot world and its wars which I-others- did not ask for, and have no say to begin with.

F**k the French and their post-Colonial face-saving. Their beige suits and left-behind half-breeds. Alain Delon and La Rousse waning influence in Indochine. Yet today you can still find some remnants that stoke in-fighting among fellow Vietnamese American on facebook about artists and our equivalents of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, whose generations started all this, only to see it flips right back in J.D. Vance, and Matt Gaetz. Hilly Billies pissing on Kent State graves.

In 83 we didn’t smell hair burning. Only had I jumped out into the middle of that fateful intersection and sat down next to the burning monk.

Forgive me. I was only 7 at the time, with burning eyes courtesy of Monsieur Nhu, who married then student he tutored, who was unelected yet yielded a lot of power (enough to call out our National Guards to suppress our J6 equivalent).

Push them back, push them back, way back…

We slowly unravel one scientific mystery after another: from Archimedes to Alzheimer, from Pasteur to Pluto.

Then, bang, gone. Accumulated in a lifetime: memories, moments and misery, accidentally deleted.

What made us who we are triumph and trail of burned bridges. Gone. From then, we just vegetate from one day to the next. Every day is a new day, a 24-hour cycle with vague recollection ” what Omega 3 ?” “did I watch that movie?”

It would be like Brigitte Bardot and Alain Delon watching their own movies without recognizing the actors.

Bang! Welcome to the club of 6 million American (131 million worldwide) who are Alzheimer’s patients. The price tag keeps rising even as Medicare slashed Biogen expensive and unproductive treatment last June.

It is safe to say, to date, more clinical trials are failing than hitting the marks. Big ticket, big reward, big barrier to entry and big price to pay.

God is tossing his dice. Above 65? watch out for stroke, HIV etc… and of course this cosmic delete.

Neuro plasticity to neuro genesis…plaque or protein…. We’re studying and demystifying this disease.

Tough cookie!

Wish we could just swallow a pill. Like refreshing our computer.

Or the option to purchase more memory card. In the absence of real bull-eyes, we worked around the edges: disease awareness month, convention and booths, buttons and banners…while those clinical trials keep humming at the tune of billions.

For patients and care givers, the best hope is for additional stretch of life, quality of life.

I mourn for those lifetimes worth of experience and education.

Wisdom gained then lost.

Start sharing the snippets. You’ll never know. It could hit anyone, anywhere, anytime.

Then one day, your memory never benefits anyone. Your photos never get uploaded.

As if you have never existed in this Lonely Planet.

No wonder Kushner took an online writing class from Patterson (who incidentally has collaborated with Bill Clinton on some WH thrillers) after signing on for a 6-figure deal. The title has yet to be revealed, but I would venture to guess, it’s something to do with “surfing” (the waves of power and money).

The ultimate American oligarch and opportunist (the pardon broker for Eastman, Bannon, Clark and whole host of others). If DJT watched the insurrection from across the mall, his son-in-law watched it from thousands of feet above (always from his six).

A bird-eye view to secure his next residence in a Billionaire Bunker off the Miami coast (per Peter Baker) distancing and a step ahead of the carnage and mayhem of J6. Smart boys > Proud Boys i.e. connecting the dots… prepping for a comeback (re-branding) with boatload ill-gotten or blood money from the Middle East and future royalties. If it were just for the art of not giving a f**k, it would be worth it to learn from this guy and buy his book.

Unless he gets Alzheimer before finishing his manuscript. For the 6 million whose every day is a new day – self re-creation and plausible deniability (Reagan got this right at the time of testifying about the Iran-Contra affairs), it’s a blessing in disguise until death ends it all.

No memoirs there. No memory. All to waste: warp and wasted neuro links and hard-earned connected dots.

Go purple this September – Disease-awareness month. We’ve got thus far on marketing outreach, color-coordination, even clinical trials yet no cure.

I pray for a soonest breakthrough.

Whoops! I accidentally deleted what I have just written. No problems.

Just press the reverse arrow. Wish it were that easy in real life.

“To make a dent in the universe”….”would you live your life the same way, knowing you have one more week to live”…”stay hungry, stay curious”…By now, you should recognise those quotes.

So universally true. So simple yet profound. And worth-heeding since they came out of the mouth of our Next’s CEO. Next, next, next….that’s what your life and mine is, from one moment to the next, relentless and uncompromising.

Just like those waves that keep coming. Regardless. And no respects for anyone.

Whether you seek to blame others (for mistakes that were yours) or to claim credits (for the work of others), it doesn’t make a dent.

We exist, from one moment to the next, inadvertently build our brand: reputational currency, showing up and show biz (powder that nose, which gets longer as time goes on). Doesn’t make a dent.

Some attempts were flukes. Others hit the marks. We might inherit a loser’s streak or a winner’s portfolio, still doesn’t make a dent.

A few more weeks to live. Last week we mourned and celebrated the loss of PBS commentator, Mark Shields. The segment came across as positive and joyful, from the look of his daughter. Know when to hold, when to fold. Exit gracefully and gratefully.

Other versions of our life could be worse: covid, accident or assassination (as in Robert Kennedy whom Mark Shields worked for).

What to do when you know you don’t have much time to fool around?

• Time – limited time- dictates
• Quality in relationships, intra and inter (good with every bite, squeeze the hand that visited you, give each other plants and if possible, adopt a kid. More future, the better). Why should Fox news Murdoch get all the fun!
• Own your mistakes, past and present. make a list of negative people who dragged you down. Then burn it. Puff! Gone and forgotten. This way, we get to know our real self for the first time without the burden of self-defense
• It’s only human to deflect and defer to others e.g., circumstances, contexts and comrades (Uvalde Monday-morning quarterback shows there had been too many cooks in the kitchen). Yes, we are people of the system, but we are free agents capable of course-correction, to the minimum, like a version of an iPhone capable of downloading an update software
• write, instead of the “Art of the Start”, write the “Art of Adieu”. Sois heureuse. Avec, ce lui, qui ton coeur, a choisi. Let go. Fly out of Andrews Airforce base, and don’t look back
• When all said and done, Mark Shield’s and all the elections he covered made for a byline in history. That’s sad. Yet when building a brand, we succumb to self-delusion, a Shaman-like triumph at the Capitol Dias where minutes earlier, Mike Pence and his gavel had presided.

One thing from my expressed wish, that I would be burned to ash, is the enemy cannot piss on my grave. I already know, at a nano level, what I am made of. Dust come to dust. Vanity is what it is.

No dent in the universe. Just you and me and the wave, then next wave, until we are worn out. What’s happened happened before. Yet no one can dispute the freshness of the morning light and the scent of a flower. And wonder what we have done to deserve that.

All those blame-seeking and not owning up to our imperfect self amounts to opportunity cost and loss, occasions that could have been converted into self-improvement and advancement. Wish I had own up at every chance.

Knowing you don’t have much to live, before you turn to ash (back to the beginning), what would you do differently? Let’s put on Clapton ” Bell-bottom blues”: one more chance, another dance…

Fathers’ Day gift to you.

Hearts touched with Fire, by David Gergen.

Indisputable on every page. Like a good meal for our hard head and soft heart.

Perhaps when it was rushed to print, Putin had not yet invaded Ukraine. Or else, we would have had a chapter on Zelensky.

But for now, as far as Leadership studies, this is it. A compendium of role models, check lists and advices for both old and young people: on changing reality…”for centuries, Americans kept a Bible by the side of their bed, now, we keep an iPhone”….to leadership models, Alicia Garza ” If there are many leaders, you can’t compromise a movement and you can’t kill it” as told to Charlotte Alter (pg 243)..

We have all seen Mr. Gergen on TV, heard him on PBS or CNN, often right after a Presidential debate or State of the Union address. After all, he has been just a few doors outside of the Oval Office since the Nixon administration on down.

We’re fortunate to have him where he has been (certainly not in that engine room of a ship).

But then, as he mentioned numerous times in the book, it’s crucible that made a man “strong steel are made from hot fires”. The inner journey converges with the outer journey, then have them integrated before product – us – gets to market.

He saw Nixon wave from the helicopter, Ford fumble – or choose the least-voted-on speech version, Alexander Haig’s sweat when Reagan had been shot and Clinton hold CA traffic for a $200 hair cut.

His red flag: beware of power and its lures ( “There’s always something…” to quote All the King’s Men).

Mr. Gergen exemplifies the best of Speech Communication. How words matter.

How words galvanise a nation into action: “Ask not….”

Mr. Gergen also urges readers to study History, to have a better grasp at the time frame and flow, a pre req for having better judgment (Kennedy and the Guns of August – his reference point during the Cuban Missiles Crisis).

When everything is tied into a knot, handed to you still hot like “Hearts touched with Fire”, you can’t help but saying: “Thank You”.

I will read it. Will put it next to my bed beside the iPhone. And promises kept. I finished it (partly because I bought it full price, partly because it was a Fathers’ Day gift to myself, with tomorrow deadline).

Mr. Gergen was true to form. He embodies his message, peppers it with anecdotes from Reagan televised magic marker mishap (and subsequent ad-lib) to a post-impeachment Clinton, subdued and deflated.

He touched on Speech primers i.e. Ethos, Logos and Pathos (first, get a feel for your audience before delivering your message, often times persuasion – then as often be the case, add some humor that disarms them). – which triggers my one-liner for Facebook: “to change the world, one wife at a time” (no visual aids here).

He, the author, could have taken shots at recent leadership in the WH, but he chose to accentuate only the positive instead of wasting his energy on duplicating the work of Jan 6 commission. Besides, history has a funny way to pick winners (Nelson Mandela, who was baptized by fire) and losers (Nixon, who resorts to the low arts of Leadership).

I want to close with what struck me. When Mother Teresa who started out her chosen path at age 18, was asked why Calcutta? Her reply:” Because I want to live a hard life”.

The path to Leadership often goes against headwind, through rough patches, down and through the valley of the shadow of death. But comes the other side, like in the morning of October 28th, 1962, with Northern Hemisphere still in one piece, thanks to our nation’s leader who himself was reading History and not trigger-happy.

Today’s future mass-shooters could take a lesson or two from “Hearts touched with Fire” e.g. volunteer a few years of your wasted life in the service of others, find meaning in suffering (from Lincoln to Bonhoeffer) before those inner/outer journey align with True North. The young Shultz who was the whistle blower at Theranos, said on TV right after the verdict that all he wanted was a sense of vindication.

When your inner journey and others’ all confluence into something like a Naval Echelon, chances are we find ourselves vindicated and live in a much better world than ours today.

Happy Fathers’ Day.

Film studies 101 often showed The Birth of a Nation to lay the foundation for what’s to become of Hollywood. First silent feature film. Historical and technological, the later much faster.

Visual impact with hoodies KKK’s riding into the sunset to rescue an America on the decline. “If you don’t fight like Hell, you wouldn’t have a country”…sounds familiar?

Long coat, cold air ” …tear down this wall”, except more Grifter than Gipper.

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/02/08/383279630/100-years-later-whats-the-legacy-of-birth-of-a-nation

Then, any film crew member would know better NOT to sit in that empty Director’s chair, no matter how long the shoot has been, and how tired grips have felt. It’s a sine qua non. Script, sight and sound all in sync, or magically altered back in the editing room.

Today’s films (or for that matter, digital books) could be produced anywhere in collaboration with an international crew, as long as they have an internet connection.

A convergence of opportunities. Unfortunately, creativity and content have yet to catch up with Moore’s Law.

We “amused ourselves to death” with the small screen, silver screen and social media screen. If we don’t see it appear on screen, we tend not to believe it (as opposed to “have it in writing” as in years past).

“zip code?”

” Remove your card”….

“Select the grade.”

Ouch!

Samsung is doing well with its screen technology. It will soon expand out here in Round Rock, Tx. There seems to be no turning back. Not with a digital native generation . The Jan 6 commission got this. It shows clips etc… as opposed to long Watergate summer.

Human acceptance of technology (adoption) tends to clip human acceptance of fellow human being. Take the Birth of a Nation as an example. Films have moved on from its 1915 original screening i.e., Black and White, hours long etc…

But we still struggle with BLM’s and George Floyd aftermath. The concept of equality resides still in the Ivory Tower never siphoned down to Main Street.

Back then, it’s Boston NAACP chapter that protested the film. Today, it’s still Boston that champions Climate Change initiatives, MIT with robotic technologies on Route 128. East-Coast education for a Confederate mind.

So we have culture wars. We face decline and division: class, gender, politics and religion. All stove pipes.

In Hurt’s Locker and Virgin Suicide, we found female directors worthy of Oscars.

50 years of rising to the challenge ( of equal opportunities for men and women).

Don’t sit on that chair, unless you are the one, and don’t say “Cut” or “Action” unless you are damn sure make-ups, script, grips, lighting, camera, sound and clapper are all set.

We, the film tribal people, all share a common heritage: action heroes, sidekicks, Bogart watching the plane take off, the Sicilian mandolin sound track of the Godfather, and the blow up of the Challenger on live TV.

All those sight and sound strike a responsive chord, carrying us back to The Way We Were. A sense of nostalgia and melancholy. Of selective memory and a glorious past (that can no longer be Make Great Again-able).

Many technologists of religion, gizmology, politics are in search of a legal theory (per Judge Carter) at a precinct level, unhooded.

But underneath lays a birthing and development of a Nation, still prejudiced at the core. Ask Vincent Chin’s mom whose son was beaten to death on his bachelor’s night in Detroit some 4 decades ago. Ask a Floridian mom how Zimmerman who killed her son yet got away scotch free. And now at Tops to top it all. 18-year-old out-of-towner rode into town to mow down his purportedly “replacement”.

Until we see the Death of a Nation ( as opposed to its current schizophrenia ), we won’t get a Phoenix-rising nation, beacon of the world and city on the Hill.

Cut. Cut. Cut. (BTW, did someone promise “I will march with you”, only to collect your credit card plus fees to the tune of a quarter of a billion-dollar. Hard to fathom the depth of mayhem, caused all by one man, still at 44% approval as of today’s poll).

No wonder, as long as money talks, it can buy experts in all sorts of domain, from legal experts (Eastman) to communication experts (Fox), from religion/philosophy (Bannon – who thought 2016 campaign had tanked after the rant tape with Bill Bush came out) to local election volunteers (NV and AZ). Heck, back in Luther’s 1517, it could get you a one-way ticket (indulgence) out of purgatory, or in Kushner 2021, a spot on the pardon list.

We live in fear, paranoid and anxiety. Yet our imaginary fear doesn’t reflect what’s out there in reality. Yet, through mass hysteria, manufactured consent and a conspiracy mindset (“the Other”) we end up on the same page (but not the same script) in a movie called a Rebirth of a Nation.

Not unlike its original version in Black and White. Just as long and despicable as its original, only this time, it’s in plain sight, unhooded for the world to see. After all, it’s digital age, where tweets, texts, emails, cursing, hoarding, killing and selfies are all out there in the cloud, retrievable for analysts to slow mo (NYTimes piece on the Proud Boys).

BTW, what’s that SVN flag was doing on top of the Capitol dome on that fateful day? Somehow, the guy, his son and their Southern flag – now charged with federal crimes- were beaten to the summit by nimbler and light-weight rice-paddy folks, however misled on the days led to it, the media echo chamber, run on ill-gotten money and disinformation.

Back in the editing room, many wish they had studied films 101, to edit out and sanitize sight and sound. In the cloud. Out in the open, cold air.

Inside, with heat on and remote control, sit in that director’s chair, we both know who it was that peppered the day with nudges and nuances, hoping against hope: “from the bottom of our heart, we love you”. Til next shoot.

Saw Sidney Poitier’s In the Heat of the Night while in the heat of the day.

He played a homicide detective from Philadelphia, on his way home with train connection through small town Sparta.

That’s where it all happened: from mistakenly jailed for murder to being slapped (and slapping right back) for the color of his skin.

We’re in the thick of the heat, and it’s not even officially summer yet.

Heat could kill as much as the cold. Long ago, I read about the elderly in Chicago apartment who died from heat strokes.

Every summer as it seems, we have something going on that was unlike the summer before: restlessness, hearings and anniversary (Jan 6 and Watergate 50th).

This summer however, it’s gas price and the Wall Street tumbling.

The grifters still enjoy their bounty. Cooling their heels in the French Riveria or else where. Got to spend away OPM (other people’s money), since it’s ill-gotten and might not last.

What moral arc? what karma?

Nobody believes in those ideals and concepts. If so, they wouldn’t have ventured into the dark side in the first place.

There was a segment on the Newshour about Somalia’s mothers, who had to migrate to find milk for their children. Of course I couldn’t bear watching it.

We have outlived our welcome on this Earth, as it seems.

When lies, cheat and steal seem to go unpunished, and poor people scrape the bottom of the barrel to get by. We do seem to have a problem.

Forget empathy. Forget charity. Just grant us justice and dignity.

Aren’t human lives worth-protecting? We grieved over Uvalde, before and after that incident.

We might soon have a bill to track and trace mental health trajectory (of young people who show signs of self-harm and community harm).

In the heat of the night! People confessed “I didn’t mean to kill him”.

Must be tough to get jailed, slapped and bullied yet all the while trying to help solve a case out of professional courtesy. “The measure of a man” is his memoir. BTW, I saw a WSJ headline on how a Jewish waiter helped Sidney out with his speech, after he had failed an audition.

When a man has strong command of his speech, he commands his body language as well (as actors should).

Practice, practice, practice.

The earlier in life, the better to rid off bad habits and acquire good ones.

Stack them, name them with details (calling out etc….) as Atomic Habits teaches us.

Over time, our life and in turn, larger society would benefit greatly.

Wealth and good habit accumulation. Keys to a fulfilled life. Self-leadership doesn’t come in a vacuum.

Its contour includes crucibles and valleys of death. On the other side, triumph over the still-animal self.

The dog-eats-dog nature, of getting something for nothing, of grifting and preying on others’ gullibility and herd instincts. If in “The measure of a man” we don’t find mutual uplifting, then it should in its next revision. We need each other to finish this unchosen race of life in dignity and grace.

It’s not what happened to us. It’s how we respond out of our inner values and strength.

Those reflexes are decades in the making. We started out in kindergarten with ABC’s then on that building block, arises our speech.

Control your thought and tongue, you control your lives. In real life, S Poitier, with help, articulated and rid off his Jamaican accents. On the screen, “in the Heat of the night”, he controlled his rightful temper.

Times will change. It’s us who would have to be ready to adapt, to new nuances and living conditions. Among which, as of late, grifters seem to rule the day….for a while. Until the moral arc righting itself. You’ll see. It happens every time. On time. Like a train that our protagonist was waiting for in Sparta , a 4:05 AM , with a stepping stool for passengers, no matter how many expected at that early hour.

Yours and my alibi for showing up and dressed up for the ride.