Tag: John Travolta

My 70’s

Needless to say, my hair was long, my pants were bell-bottom and my shirt shiny.

I spent half of that decade in Vietnam, the other half in America.

But the youth culture helped bridge the cultural gap: we had already listened to James Talor, Gordon Lightfoot, Neil Young, Elton John before I jumped on to Year of the Cat and If by Bread (in the US).

In between the two worlds, I got stranded one whole summer in Wake Island,

listening to armed force radio station (Loving you, Theme from Mahogany, Band on the Run).  “Where are you going to, do you know?”

Towards the end of the decade, we watched a bunch of movies whose statures haven’t been surpassed since: Midnight Cowboys, Taxi, Deer Hunter.

The disco craze was well underway, with John Travolta and the Abba.

Dancing Queen.

American couldn’t stand the look of anything that reminded them of Vietnam (negative pair-association).

Cat Stevens was still OK then. George Harrison still had some staying power with “Here comes the sun”.

I was into media (post-Watergate hip major).

Journalism was cool, while computer science was a new field (my friend Al T. was quite nerdy and he belonged more to Bill Gates clan ).

America came across as weak after Watergate, Vietnam and the Iranian hostage crisis. Reagan landslide election was the reincarnation of John Wayne‘s shoot from the hip style (he himself got assasinated by Hinckley in 1981, but reemerged stronger for the line “tear down that wall”).

As of this edit, people are still protesting about sectioning it to build upscale high rises in E Berlin.

Meanwhile, Vietnam in the early 70’s lived life on the fast lane with the last PX supplies, napalm. Plenty of Agent Orange.

A large percentage of US enlisted men was into drugs (facts on file).

A repeated theme from “Last Men Out” was “how can this be”.

But this was how. We breathed our last breaths. Band on the Run.

Celebrating my last Tet (1975) here, I knew we were on oxygen mask. I shaved my head, trying to hit the books instead of  the night clubs. But still, the rumor and rumble or war had gotten near.

It’s like the Angel of Death was breathing down our necks.

You could feel your back hair stand up.

That’s how tense life was in my early 70’s.  Even today, many people are still living in denial, albeit with flashbacks. I forgot to mention  the Carpenters somehow managed to sneak into our consciousness even though by all measures, they look like a bunch of Mormons (unlike the Mamas and the Papas).

But we knew then that “We’ve only just begun”. Their cut of “SuperStar” still engages me today (but it’s just the radio….)

When you had a bunch of young people wearing tight jeans and tight shirts, on campus,

and all they wanted was to wait for Saturday Night to come (Fever), you know it’s peace time. The disco ball was our cross, and the DJ, our priest.

Today’s version of nightclub is version 3.0, with synthesized techno music, and a few easy refrains (suicidal…). In the 70’s you sat and watched the “Soul Train” with black folks doing the dancing, and the Huxtables doing the laughing.

Welcome to America. Now could you help push the car (Oil crisis).

Unsung Peacemakers

In the wake of a huge catastrophe, we tend to rely on experts, in this case, geologists to lecture us on aftershocks, fault line, Pacific Ring of Fire etc…

We tend to miss the human dimension of unsung heroes, the peacemakers.

There were a Japanese crew, earthquake experts, in New Zealand trying to help out in anyway they could. Little did they know, more abrupt crises awaiting them at home.

Venturing beyond one’s border for the sakes of others, to pay forward.

That’s the mission of a peacemaker. During the Haiti quake, then Gov. of FL refused to let relief efforts to use his home state as a base of operations.

On CNN, we witnessed a Vietnamese doctor ferrying out dying victims on a private chartered plane. Actors like John Travolta also chipped in.

Those who cross the cultures (Euro-centric to Pacific Rim for instance, or in the case of our current United Nations Secretary General, Ban Ki Moon  from Korea, who has his hand full of crises) encounter both culture shock and reverse culture shock.  Those who return from war abroad also face Post-Traumatic Disorder syndrome (the Deer Hunter, Born on the Fourth of July) being misunderstood and marginalized (De Niro played a returning veteran who asked the taxi driver to keep going, pass his welcome-home party).

This week, CNN showed a short video of “soldier surprised daughter at school” in Idaho.

The 9-year-old said it was like in a dream (upon spotting her still-in-uniform Daddy

show up at school after finishing his tour of duty).

The scene has been repeated many times in American history

(children running to the tarmac greeting returning fathers – You Tube

video for Reflections of My Life by the Marmalades).

We now have a second generation – children of  Vietnam era  and nemesis i.e.- flower children – both wanting to to know what’s it like for their fathers to leave the comfort of the then-Middle class environment to engage in unpopular battles  on the other side of the world.

Even when trying hard, they could only walk a mile in their shoes, albeit as backpacking tourists.

(recently two young American females died along with many others in a tourist boat accident. )

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/world/vietnam-halong-bay-boat-accident-kills-11-foreigners-list-of-names-51466.html

Three and a half decades after it ended,  this war still has some legs. Last month,  Prime Minister of Australia pledged more money to support a Vietnam Memorial Center, to bring world attention to the hefty price Australians paid during this “American war” as known in Vietnam. No one said it better than John Savage, one of the four main characters in the Deer Hunter ” I don’t fit in” (back on a wheel chair , playing Bingo in a  Pittsburgh nursing home).

So once again, we rely on musicians to help us sort through our conflicting emotions. In said movie, it’s a guitar piece from the Shadows.

Blessed are the peacemakers. For they gave their lives and limps for the idea and ideal of freedom taken for granted by us here in the West.

Time to reflect

Year in review. A look back at the decade that was.

We reflect so we don’t repeat the same mistakes.

Our brain can play trick: stand aside or step back, then press rewind.

I can still recall incidents when I was 4, or 7 and especially my first puppy love

(in this case, the song was “Super Star”).

The trick: embed those memories with a tune you heard during those times.

Do you remember where you were when you first heard the Bee Gee?

John Travolta and Saturday Night Live.

Or when I first heard “He ain’t heavy, he is my brother” performed by my high school band.

Quite impressive to a 6th grader at the time. (as of this edit, I finally entered the school after 41 years away).

Here were those guys, as tall as could be, with gadgets and instruments.

And they played well: no single person tried to stand out. One harmony one tempo.

I did not realize then, that’s team work at its best.

Later, we would learn team building (camping, school band and group white papers).  Instead of intramural sports, we got inter-school fights.

But that’s part of esprit de corps (dared to wear the school emblem on one’s shirt while various high schools were at war).

Through school, work and families, I learned the value of being part of a team, which is more than the sum of its parts.

When team works out, there is nothing like it.

But it takes hard work.

A lot of chipping in.

Until it’s your turn to receive.

Then you realize, “he ain’t heavy, he is my brother” works both ways.

This past decade has been tough: two recessions, two wars, twin towers and two incidents in Louisiana.

We need to double our efforts. This is not a time to reflect. It’s time to act.