Armistice Day, Veteran's Day

This was posted by me as a comment to another journal on OKCupid. The writer wrote about Veteran's Day, and made what I considered a few minor, yet specific errors in her otherwise well-written essay.

First error: "The holiday was established as Armistice Day in 1918 to honor soldiers who have served this country in the Air Force, Army, Marines and Navy."

Second error: "It’s not a day of remembrance, but of recognition."

I thought I'd put my comment here in my journal as well. First, to give paragraph breaks. ;) Secondly, so others who read my own journal may see where I stand on the issue.

~~~

Just a point of historical correction. The first Armistice Day was declared in 1919 by Woodrow Wilson to commemorate the end of the war. As the years went on, Congress decided to formalize the purpose of the Holiday, and passed an Act of Congress. As Wikipedia puts it: An Act (52 Stat. 351; 5 U. S. Code, Sec. 87a) approved May 13, 1938, made the 11th of November in each year a legal holiday; "a day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as 'Armistice Day'."

It was only after World War II and Korea that Armistice Day changed in meaning, from the dedication to world peace, to the commemoration of Veteran's service. In a way, I believe that this disenfranchised many people, such as the civilian contributors to wartime efforts, and those that strive for peaceful outcomes -- to ameliorate present conflicts and prevent future ones. If we returned to the original intent, then the vast majority of the world, civilians and soldiers alike, can feel invested in the cause of the day.

Lastly, I must correct this point of yours. For it is a day of remembrance. Indeed, around the nations of the British Commonwealth, it is still called "Remembrance Day," in commemoration of the Armistice and those that fought and died to achieve the peace that follows war. To remember, they wear the red poppy, symbolizing the fallen soldiers, strewn like flowers on the field.

Call me a traditionalist, but I believe that we should all remember that 20 million died in the First World War. 72 million in the Second World War. And, especially in the latter conflict, and to the present day, it is the civilians who suffer the vast majority of casualties. A mother huddled in a house, sheltering her children from the onslaught around her, knows the same -- if not greater -- threats and fears of battle as any soldier. All-too-often she and her children suffer the same fate the soldiers do. Armistice Day is now called Veteran's Day. Yet truly recall and reflect this year on the origins of the holiday, thank you.

~~~

This is not to disrespect the contributions and sacrifices of anyone in uniform. Indeed, anyone who knows my past will know the work I have done in analysis and commemoration of military history. Yet so long as we segregate the holiday to honor only those who wore a uniform (about 10% of the U.S. population), it bifurcates our populace, with the majority of the civilian population seeming only to mark the day as one of increased shopping discounts. How do we ensure that all people would reflect on the dangers of our world, and those who strove, and still work to keep us safe from them?

Ninety one years ago on this 11th of November was the original Armistice of the Great War. There was not a Second World War yet. Indeed, they had hoped that it would be the "war to end all wars." Sadly, there would be no "peace for our time." And through this very day, chaotic, violent wars are still being fought in dozens of conflict zones spanning both hemispheres. What can we do between now and the 100th Anniversary of the Armistice, the 11th of November 2018?

For me, and for some certain friends of mine, we are returning to an original intent. We are personally referring henceforth to the day as Armistice Day. Not out of spite to any veteran, but to remind all -- civilian and military -- that the origin of the national, indeed, global holiday was to ensure that we never again commit our nations to the horrific destructive methods and ends we, and our forefathers, sought in the past. That we seek a world where the amelioration and end to such horrors is a goal and an ethical standard we all must commit ourselves to.

So how about you? Would you support returning to the original intent of the holiday, and to call it Armistice Day? Should we specifically commemorate the uniformed veterans only, or should we consider the entirety of those involved -- civil government as well as military, those who serve in NGOs, the war correspondents, the peacemakers and the peacekeepers, the civilians and refugees. Can we use this day, once per year, to honor all those who suffer from war, and those who contribute to the cessation of hostilities. Can we commit ourselves, united again to the cause of world peace?

Wasteland Wandering

I walked under sun from El Alamein to Benghazi
Upon paper-dry chips and hard cubic faces
Caught in the barrens no man survives
But camels and bedouins and novelists

November is come past these sixty seven years
Of long-forgotten ribcages and burnt up boots
Failed crumbling attacks and Devil's gardens
All I could think of were the trees of Palermo

Yes, you left me to die without letter or love
What less should I expect from Fata Morgana?
Qattara swallowed me up then spat me out whole
That salty leviathan of vast dessication

As I sat and thought of your just-past birthday
Wondering if you would forgive all my bloodshed
The stars rose and the world turned frigid
With a shift in the phases came the British offensive

Right before me a shell took off his leg below the knee
Yet behold, unscathed I have no such crippling excuse
Why I never returned was due less to Allied assault
More instead to the cowardice bred from absolute failure

Ten years later in a sunset darkened cafe in Messina
I saw you beside that American from the broad boulevard
Who had deftly avoided Kesselring and captured your heart
Orders were clear to make a new retreat back to Cyrenaica

For all the twenty five pounders that thumped the horizon
Enduring crushing commands I strove so hard to trump
The inexorable advance of time in its long, drawn-out turns
I never truly suffered more or wished to die

Until the moment I watched you kiss him

About this poem

This poem was inspired by recently watching the movie El Alamein and by the West End Games boardgame I worked on decades ago, Desert Steel. It is informed through the knowledge gained by research on the North African and Mediterranean campaigns via innumerable books, magazines, movies and simulation games. A tip of the cap and bow is also due to T.S. Eliot and the Arthurian authors of the Grail legends. And, of course and ultimately, it was inspired by the historical deeds of hundreds of thousands of individuals who suffered through the Second World War conflicts in North Africa and Sicily.

Oh Good Heavens!

I just looked at the calendar, and realized how many months it has been since I've posted anything to my blogs. I've been busy over the summer, and am now employed full-time as a CAHSEE Specialist at a charter school in San Jose. It's good work!

Aside from that, I've shelved and delayed a lot of my plans for the Global Understanding Institute and Flowers in the Cracks. Partially due to some organizational disappointments. Also due to exhaustion in getting the new job!

Even so, I have plans to eventually get them going. So no worries with that. Life is nearing a new equilibrium, so I feel more comfortable coming up for air here.

I've been more active in Facebook than here recently. I believe I'll spend a bit of time going back over my Facebook posts and links and see what I can bring over here.

Where I Have Lived: 107 West Tremont Avenue

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I've lived here, from c. 1965-1970.

Before that I lived for a brief time on Shakespeare Avenue, though I am not sure of the address there. We always just called the house "107." If you ask people in my family, that's still what we call it. "Remember 107?" Yeah.

We loved that house!

Fire by BART Tracks Suspicious

The San Jose Mercury News reports that the two-alarm grass fire by the BART tracks was deemed suspicious by assistant fire chief Andy Smith.

The two photographs I took of the fire were uploaded to the Your Views section of the San Jose Mercury News:


Union City Fire 2 - 17 May 09


Union City Fire - 17May09

Please rate them!

-Peter.

Union City Fire Near BART Tracks - 17 May 2009

Smoke pouring over the barrier wall lining the BART tracks near 11th and D Streets in Union City, California, 6:00 pm, 17 May 2009.

UNION CITY, CA (17 May 2009) - Peter Corless - Just before 6:00 pm, a tall plume of dark smoke could be seen rising over Union City in the East Bay between Decoto and Whipple Roads. The source of the flames was a stand of trees lining the BART tracks near 13th and F Streets.

Flames cresting over the heights of the neighborhood houses consumed the eucalyptus and cypress trees lining the west side of the tracks. The barrier wall near the tracks served as a firebreak, but there were gaps in the wall where chain link fences exposed brush that could serve to spread the fire.

Homeowners on the east sides of the tracks near the intersection of 11th and D Streets doused the bushes near the barrier wall with buckets of water and garden hoses, in attempts to keep the fire from jumping over to threaten their clustered housing units. Crowds gathered on all the lawns to see if the fire would be contained or further endanger their neighborhood.

Within minutes, police and fire units were on the scene. The fire had burned down a long row of trees and advanced north and south through the trees along the tracks. However, the center of the fire had already shown signs of burning through its fuel, leaving charred trunks of blackened trees smouldering.

Flames rising over the barrier wall lining the BART tracks near 11th and D Streets in Union City, California, as seen from near Railroad Avenue, 6:02 pm, 17 May 2009.

So Predictable!

In the news: Mathematical model to forecast divorce

A British mathematician, James D. Murray, observing couples for but 15 minutes together, has created a sort of "Voight-Kampff" test to determine whether a relationship is humanly natural and likely to live on for a long while, or, like artificial replicants, are doomed to suffer a shortened life.



How can he tell? How people deal with each other in casual conversation. Humor is part of it. Conflict management and resolution styles are also part of it. Our different relationship styles, when compared with our partner's, will determine whether we are good long-term matches for each other. You can read Dr. Murray's presentation to the University of Minnesota in November 2004 online.

Fascinating work. Something we might wish to reflect upon as we flirt, posit and compare notes on romance!

Enjoy!

-Pete.

Spring Approaches

The darkening dusk of evening
So peaceful on a President's day
The light in the window leavening
Letting winter chill fall away

Spring approaches yet not quite
Water freezes after darkening dusk
Or in the shadows of low-canted light
Flowers wilted within wet withered husk

Yet spring approaches once again
That is the promise of the year
Triumphant blossoms remember when
It is proper for their ilk to reappear

Blossom in your heart as lilies do
Like lilacs and cherry and the rose most fair
Yet abide until the winter's through
Until the chill has left the air

Sit with me in the wan sunlight
Endure the coldness of the season
Ponder the flowers in struggling plight
How most fragile life shows nature's reason

Logic implicit in the strength of flowers gentle
Shows how we may thrive remaining most elemental

Valentine's Salvation

Cover my cuts in balm of love
Wounded and embarrassed by failure
Burned and charred by ashen end
Buffeted by rebuffed attention

Valentine then looses the dove
And through miracle most peculiar
Puts a heart to gentle mend
Though the softest-worded mention

"You are loved," and "I love you."
Recognition of each other's worth
Eases pains and ends the grief
That impales the strongest on ire's spike

So hearts may freely beat anew
We seek across this networked Earth
To crown counterparts with floral wreath
And share our souls with those alike

Be my fond darling, and I'll truly be yours
I love you my brothers, my sisters, even more than myself
Dearest mother, or father, or fair sweetest child
Valentine's salvation thus sacredly heals

Though generous love we manifest cures
The best elixir found on any alchemist's shelf
Whether passionate, silly, or modest and mild
This balm is best applied as each party so feels

Thus may you find a good doctor on this day's anniversary
And may Valentine himself tend your heart's garden nursery

2nd Iranian Literary Arts Festival, SF, 5-6 February 2009

Poetry about heart's love, healing life, and a homeland

30 years ago, the United States and Iran had the nationstate equivalent of a lover's quarrel. The divorce was terrible. As in such things, it was the children of Iran who suffered, and many were forced to leave home. Yet slowly, over time, the diaspora of Iranians around the world have used their beautiful language to help heal many of the old wounds and make sense of the world.

Belonging, the collection of Iranian poetry from around the world produced by Niloufar Talebi and her colleagues at the Translation Project, is an exquisite bi-lingual collection of such expressions. With English and Farsi on facing pages, the book is a visual depiction of the mirrored, reflective mind maintained the international Iranian community. Thinking of their new homes, and remembering their homeland.

The title is an imperative towards harboring a heart of bittersweetness: Be Longing. And a recognition of that conditional feeling of inclusiveness: Belonging.

The collected poetry comprises a sensuous world remembered and imagined, filled with lemons and oranges, romantic flowers, dull drab days, novelties of life in the Western world, old fondnesses of Iran, matter-of-fact realities, scathing ironies, and infinite personality quirks.

The free festival event this week, in partnership with the San Francisco Public Library, promises to bring the black-and-white words on a page to full color and lively bloom. Hope to see you there!

-Pete.

25 Things About Me

This is cross-posted from Facebook.

Rules:
Once you've been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it's because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to "notes" under tabs on your profile page, paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people [in the right hand corner of the app] then click publish.)

1. I keep a toy hobby horse in my car, named Bucephalas, named after the horse of Alexander the Great. It was awarded to me for playing the role of Gareth Beaumains, a character based off Arthurian myths in an online roleplaying game.

2. My name is mentioned as an inventor on six U.S. patent awards. #6,721,793 (2004), #6,728,773 (2004), #6,885,999 (2005), #6,959,289 (2005), #7,031,943 (2006), #7,426,495 (2008). However, after filing these patents, I transferred positions within Cisco and then was laid off in 2001 before they could be further developed or turned into industry standards.

3. During my undergraduate stint at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, an article featuring me appeared on the front page of the Wall Street Journal. It was about the growing ubiquity of computers on college campuses. My mother was quoted as saying, "Kids today take to computers like ducks to water!"

4. I just bought energy saver light bulbs for my apartment.

5. The hat I often wear, with the Eye of Horus embroidered on it, was gotten in 2006 at the public performance in San Francisco for the Martin Luther King, Jr. day festivities, following the Freedom Train ride up from Palo Alto.

6. Kathy is the most common name of women I have been romantically involved with. There have been five so far.

7. There are seven completely full bookshelves in my living room, two more in my room and the hall, and two new ones that I got last year that I need to shuffle books into.

8. I privately commemorate, when I am mindful, 11:11 am to recall Armistice Day of 1918, and 11:11 pm to pray for peace in our future.

9. My favorite constellation is Orion.

10. I own a kalimba. I got it at a Renaissance Faire in Califormia one summer along with an audio tape of African music. The best I can play on it is the theme of Beethoven's 9th Symphony, 4th Movement.

11. Beside my softball glove on the shelf is an Incredible Patent Picker Move Maker Machine from the 1974 Parker Brothers boardgame The Inventors.

12. I own a complete modern English edition of the 1086 Domesday Survey conducted by King William. I once wished to use it as the basis of an Arthurian roleplaying game.

13. When I dropped out of my Aikido and Kendo dojo, I left all my bokken there as a gift for others to enjoy. My teacher, a sufi, warned us all, years before 9/11, that there were terrorist training camps across the world which would one day attack the U.S. He said his training was preparing us for that day.

14. Other than a bent and bruised pinky or toe as a kid, which I never had x-rayed to be sure, I have never broken a bone in my body.

15. My favorite bakery in the world is Lord's Bakery on Nostrand Avenue at the diagonal junction with Flatbush Avenue, in Brooklyn. I always try to get a chocolate chip cookie there when I go back to New York City. The service is often brusque, but the buttery taste of a good fresh cookie is worth it! Even though it is on Nostrand, I call the place "Lord's of Flatbush."

16. My first job in California was at ComputerWare, doing technical support on the Macintosh. The year was 1989. It was my first taste of Silicon Valley California culture. Odwalla juices and warm hugs replaced Manhattan's caffeine and suits-and-ties. I really liked the difference.

17. I write poetry for women I have never met, often inspired just by seeing their profiles on online dating sites or interacting with them via Internet roleplaying games.

18. I own a pair of Roman caligae (sandals). The longest I ever walked in them was a weeklong hike along Hadrian's Wall from Newcastle to Carlisle in England, in 2006. My feet were blistered for a month.

19. I keep a jar of the fortunes I get from fortune cookies on my shelf.

20. While I have been a millionaire in the past, since I lost my fortune I feel like I am a nicer guy. I was a bad stress case. I dropped 50 lbs too. Had I continued on living the way I had before the NASDAQ downturn, I could have been dead of a heart attack by now. So in a way, I believe losing all the money helped save my life and returned me to being more "myself" again. If I ever get that sort of riches again in my life, I'll keep it all in perspective.

21. I often keep a passport-sized copy of the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution in my back pocket. I also keep a copy of a world atlas in my laptop bag.

22. Years ago I came to realize my mind spawns more creative, humanitarian and technical projects I would like to accomplish in my life than I will ever get done at the present rate. Even so, I've founded a few companies, worked with some nascent non-profits, and still gamely want to do more if given half a chance.

23. We kept a parakeet (actually a budgie) when I was growing up, named Petey. I always treated "Petey" as the budgie's name, whereas mine was "Pete" or "Peter." Even now when people call me "Petey," I want to reply with a chirp and squawk.

24. I loved the first, original three Star Wars movies. I cannot stand the recent ones.

25. Oregano is my favorite spice to add to food. I especially like it on tortellini.

What Do I Look Like?

I was asked by a person in the Philippines what I looked like presently. Here’s a photo that Franklin took of me last year during the 2008 Campus MovieFest.

Since then, my beard grew out even more. It needs a good trim!

Happy Birthday Jackson

Hey, Jackson Pollock.
Why did you break the rules
Making painters’ tarpaulins
The ideal of modern fine art?

Now it was impossible
To draw a good foot
For Mrs. Darvin
And be taken seriously.

Ah well, thanks too, you know.
For showing that the raw energy
Of creative expression
Is what people value most.

Like atomic explosions
Genetic recombination of photons
Even before Watson & Crick
Spoke the laws of biochemistry.

Somewhere in the recesses
Of my Colliers apartment
Is my own Art Students League medal
As meaningful to me as the Nobel prize.

During Odysseus’ voyage, the WPA
Gave you each day your daily bread
While each night you drank it away
Into the oblivion of Depression

Rising up on the engines of Jung
Borne aloft by an angel camouflaged
With nose art of mad dribbling paint
Guernica cried out, and then the world

That was when you threw book at the floor
“God damn it, that guy missed nothing!”
Yet life was not escaping you either
Except through methyl and methylene fumes

Probably sufficient to make first dance forgettable
But a knock on the door
Re-introduced you to romance of the sort
That only from death do-you-finally-part

Blitzkriegs shattered Europe and Asia
Yet all the while you two remained a neutral power
Until the fateful explosion of Oppenheimer
Ended the war, even on Long Island.

There in October, the Bessarabian and you
Began a resistance and revolution of your own
Three years after the wartime exhibit
Had made you and Lee Bohemian comrades-in-arts

Get rid of the labels
Get rid of the titles
Get rid of the intentions
Just look and let the image emerge

Get rid of the demons
Get rid of the bottles
Get rid of the cigarettes
That’s where we aesthetically diverge

Hey, Jackson Pollack
You had it all before you
At the age of forty-four
When you got into the Olds

Ruth’s Zowie and Metzger
Didn’t know what hit them
Neither did you
When your own painting stopped

Spattering yourself on time’s tragic canvas
Discovering incidental causality of a tree by the road
Departed at forty four by eight-eleven fifty six
Leaving shocked Lee in the proverbial lurch

Now I’m forty four and reflecting on you
Raising an ice tea in a toast of your life
Hoping there’s peace in the place where you’ve gone
Pondering abstractions of form on this Earth.

The light is remarkable outside the clear glass
Sitting amongst beauty and café conversation
A tree black and brown in the corner of view
Reminds me of organic chaos with a pattern implicit.

Horus’ eye gazes blinding eternal
From the hat off my head on my bag on the table
You broke the priest’s hieroglyphs
And paid the price of heresy.

Hey, Jackson Pollock
Thanks for the alchemical madness
That shattered expectations
And made people finally think

For themselves.

Vanity!

I decided last year to get an IMDB.com profile.

Earlier this month I wrote in eulogy for Patrick McGoohan. Though I am a free man, I am also a number. Many numbers, actually.

Henceforth, I, Peter Corless, am also to be known as http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3177242/.

I appeared in two short videos last year: Franklin Pham’s The Rehearsal (Canaan Project/Positive+Funk), and Three Cups of Tea for Global Understanding (Global Understanding Institute).

The former was awarded as a finalist from San Jose State University’s Campus MovieFest 2008. The latter won second place in the 2008 Mountain View Reads contest. This year, we have more plans for more films. Documentaries. Analysis. News. Opinions. Fantasies. Fictions.

Is this shameless self-promotion? Yes. Though in a way, it is actually quite humbling. Because the IMDB resumes are not really the same things as a regular celebrity profile. I had to pay to put it up there. I had to “prime the pump” of celebrity. I also registered in IMDBpro.com to put the information on these films into IMDB.com. However, though The Reheasal was shown in a few venues (SJSU, San Francisco Sundance Kibuki Theatre), and Three Cups of Tea for Global Understanding made it to community television (KMVT15 in Mountain View), neither title has made it into IMDB.com yet. Maybe one day!

It is my own way to help move forward the issues addressed in these films. If I need to put my face forward as a speaker for these movements, by process of marketing I need to become a celebrity. A spokesperson. An actor, with a cause.

Hopefully before too long, my STARmeter will rise. People may pay attention to my work, my causes, more than me. I might attract fans. Hey, I might even get paid! Yet moreso, the ideas I espouse might cause social changes in the world, producing results I would be pleased to look back upon some day in the future.

For now, my hope is to simply generate interest. To “market” the idea of Global Understanding, Positive+Funk, and the Canaan Project. And more ideas, like Flowers in the Cracks too! To put myself forward as a creative principle, and to hopefully get people to react to the “buzz” our community is beginning to create.

Vanity. Is it vain to strive towards these ideals? Franklin’s desire for social justice, peace, and sober acceptance of truth. Carlos’ desire for distributive justice and democracy. Harshi’s desire for us to get beyond sectarian hate so that love can bloom. Theresa’s desire for simple acceptance, health and happiness for us all. Michael’s desire for a sustainable economy and ecological life, even as our economy crashes down around our heads. Photographers capturing the light before it fades. Musicians and poets raising their voices even after the sun goes down. Scientists and writers, who are quite sure it is not just all in their heads.

I am awash in a sea of friends, each of whom has trials and tribulations, their triumphs and joys. People all over the world, each with their own story. Yet so many of us facing the same common crises and conflicts.

Vanity? Our struggles are not in vain. Even if no one understands what drives us — not even ourselves at times — we struggle for reasons. Purposes. There are implicit goals and desires for us. Outcomes waiting our efforts to manifest.

It would be vain to think I did not have an effect on the world. A false self-denial that should not be confused with humility. That would be a vain shattering of the mirror. Throwing a brick at it so I don’t need to look at myself. It would not change the fact that others can see me for who I am. And they are asking me to step up to the microphone of the stage of life right now. They want me to speak. They want to hear what I have to say.

Conversely, it would be vain to overstate my significance to the world. For I am only one voice of 6.7 billion in the world at this present point in history. If I raise my voice, it is only in reflection of the tremendous tapestry of events that has led us to this point in time, and which I see occurring in the world around me, leading towards our future.

Last year, with the founding of the Global Understanding Institute, and with the making of these modest movies with Franklin and others, I committed to put forth myself as an advocate. To lead. To be of service. To be a friend. As a protagonist in a screenplay of life.

All the world’s a stage and I am a player upon it. The curtain is of destiny is drawn for us all.

So, to everyone out there who feels that same impending sense of epic drama in the world, let’s learn our lines, and head onstage. It’s time. Let’s break a leg!

At this time... At this moment...

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The Inauguration Speech

Here is a document to be reflected upon.

“With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come.”

— Barack H. Obama, 44th President of the United States

Inauguration of Barack Obama

I have been watching the following people flow into the stands over CNN.com:

• Al & Tipper Gore
• George Herbert Walker & Barbara Bush
• Jimmy & Rosalynn Carter
  
• Hillary Rodham & William Jefferson Clinton
  

They just panned back to show the huge crowd. It is amazing. They estimate it at around 2 million people.

• The Bush daughters?
• The Obama daughters Malia and Sasha... to a huge round of applause.
  
• Laura Bush & Lynne Cheney

As I am watching the events, I saw someone take a photo of the Obama girls as they walked down the hallway. In return, Malia Obama pulled out a camera to take her own picture of the events.

• Michelle Obama
• George W. Bush & Dick Cheney in a wheelchair.
• Joe R. Biden, Jr.
  

And now, Barack Obama is approaching down the hall, with Nancy Pelosi and Dianne Feinstein in front of him.

A friend of mine on Facebook wrote that he “thinks Dick Cheney looks like Dr Evil in his wheel chair.” To which I replied:

Definitely James Bondian. He needs a white Persian cat on his lap. "No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die...!”

Here he comes:

• Barack H. Obama

I am listening to NPR while CNN shows the video. They noted John Lewis is standing in the crowd. 400,000 people came by subway alone.

Online, CNN is being utterly silent. No voice over. No comment. Those of us on Facebook are keeping the narrative.

Dianne Feinstein (D-California) is introducing the event. She is speaking about this is the product of non-violent democratic processes. How this is the turning point of change.

Pastor Rick Warren of the Saddleback Church now steps forward. Controversially chosen, He begins with “Everything we see, and everything we can’t see…” and credits it all to God. He, like Dianne Feinstein emphasises the “peaceful transition of power.”

Aretha Franklin is coming forward to sing “My Country Tis of Thee.” That’s when I couldn’t keep the tears of joy back any further. After she finished, the bells rang out.

Senator Robert Bennett then stepped forward to explain the giving of the Oath of Office to the Vice-President Elect. The Justice came forward. Joe Biden stepped forward. Joe Biden knew his lines. He had practiced this beforehand, and was eager to speak the words. He finished with an easy smile and a handshake, “Thank you, Mr. Justice.”

Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Anthony McGill, and Gabriella Montero play now for the assembled crowd. John Williams arranged the piece. It was based on the old Shaker dance song “Simple Gifts.”

Barack Hussein Obama came forward and, with all the eyes of the world on him, flubbed his lines. He had to have a section repeated to him. But in due time he got it all straightened out.

The 21-gun salute began then. And the crowd went wild. I gave a virtual Facebook hug to my sister-in-law.

Barack Obama came forward and began to speak. “On this day...”

Tuskegee Airmen were in the crowd. The camera returns to the new President. Barack’s words were tough and progressive. During her father’s speech, Malia snuck in a few more people. To the leaders of foreign nations, he says, “Your people will judge you on what you can build, not what you can destroy.”

“What is required now is a new era of responsibility…”

After the crowd cheered, Elizabeth Alexander, a poetess, came forward to recite, “Praise Song for the Day.”

Of all the words to arrest me, were these, “Repairing things in need of repair.”

Joseph E. Lowery then delivers the Benediction. The elder gentleman speaks airily and raspily. Yet his tone speaks of a life-long orator. “...and none shall be afraid.” He finishes with a rousing, "Say ‘Amen!’” The crowd obliges with laughter.

I sing along with the Star Spangled Banner. “…and the home of the brave!” With that, the game begins! The Presidential party begins to stream out of the stands. Kids dance arm-in-arm. People cheer for the cameras. By 9:43 AM Pacific time, the cameras of CNN finally cut to a commercial.

Free at Last!

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What a Week! Martin Luther King, Jr. Day + Barack Obama Inauguration

I thought I'd have some fun with the idea of the advance of civilization. It is amazing how far our social progress has advanced, and how far our English skills have slipped.

Please forgive my momentary bit of humor.

I can barely contain my joy at the prospect of the first black U.S. President. It is an event centuries in the making. Millions have marched, suffered, and died so that we might see this day come to pass.

• 233 years since July 4, 1776, when Thomas Jefferson asserted “all men are created equal.” Indeed, the more full quote is, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
  
  
• 145 years since September 22, 1863, the day President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which stated, “all persons held as slaves within any State or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforward, and forever free; and the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.”
  
  
• 143 years since the December 6, 1865 adoption of the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, which upheld Lincoln’s executive order via legislation which formally abolished slavery in the nation, stating, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”
  
  
  
• 140 years since the July 9, 1868 ratification of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, granting citizenship to all persons born within the United States (regardless of race), “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.”
  
  
• 138 years since the ratification of the 15th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution on February 3, 1870, which granted Congress the right to uphold the voting rights of all citizens declaring “the rights of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.”
  
  
  
• 128 years since the March 1, 1880 decision of Strauder v. West Virginia, in which the U.S. Supreme Court, by a vote of 7-to-2, determined that state laws excluding black persons from juries solely on the basis of their color was unconstitutional, violating the 14th Amendment, desiring “to assure to the colored race the enjoyment of all the civil rights that under the law are enjoyed by white persons, and to give to that race the protection of the general government, in that enjoyment, whenever it should be denied by the States.”
  
  
• 99 years since the February 12, 1909 formation of the Niagara Movement, which led to the 1911 foundation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), whose purpose is to “Ensure the political, educational, social, and economic equality of rights of all persons and to eliminate racial hatred and racial discrimination.”
  
  
• 54 years since the May 17, 1954 issuance of Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the landmark ruling of the U.S. Supreme Court which declared the de jure segregation of schools based on color unconstitutional.
  
  
• 45 years since the August 28, 1963 speech of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. before the Lincoln Memorial, in which he declared, “I Have a Dream!”

There have been far too many events which have led to this present moment than one can account. Treat the above as indicative of the scope of the history involving the march towards racial equality, and not its depth. Likewise, do not confuse the progress we have made as the final triumph in the march to judge persons based on the content of their character, and not on the color of their skin.

Even as we prepare to inaugurate Barack H. Obama as the 44th President of the United States of America, there are millions of persons around the nation beholden to racial hatred and xenophobia. A curious article and survey conducted by CNN in December 2006 highlights the problem: we may have turned a blind eye to bias in ourselves. Up to 80 of Americans may harbor racist tendencies that even they would not recognize in themselves, as per a study from the University of Connecticut, while only about 12-13% of Americans personally admitted they had racial biases.

Yet we also have no dearth of quite unapologetic, overt racism either. The Southern Poverty Law Center counts 888 active racial hate groups across the United States. In “liberal” California alone, there are no less than 80 such groups.

If you are interested in taking action, go to the Southern Poverty Law Center, and join your voice to their pluralist, tolerance-engendering countermovement, Stand Strong.

It’s now Inauguration Day on the east coast. Sleep well, Mr. Obama. The hardest work of your political career starts tomorrow!

”I am a free man!”

(CBS/AP) Patrick McGoohan, an actor who created and starred in the cult classic TV show "The Prisoner," died Tuesday in Los Angeles after a short illness. He was 80.

“I am a free man!”

This was the inimical quote of the character referred to as “Number 6.” No more fitting epitaph applies to Patrick McGoohan.



At a time when the Cold War was far less egalitarian, far less romantic, and far more notorious than anything depicted in a James Bond movie, The Prisoner was a spy series based out of the imagination of McGoohan and his colleague, George Markstein. The 1967 surrealistic mystery series was far closer to the social commentary and satire of George Orwell’s Ninteen Eighty-Four than it was to the glamorous James Bond of Ian Fleming.

In fact, McGoohan had already set a very different tone in his earlier series, Danger Man, which was known in the United States as Secret Agent Man. That 1964-1967 series kept itself “professional.” A lot less killing, and far fewer sexual escapades for visceral thrills and titilation, than the Ian Fleming series. Through trained in boxing, McGoohan had no personal penchant for depictions of violence.

Wikipedia notes, “McGoohan insisted on several conditions before agreeing to do the show Danger Man: all the fistfights should be different, the character would always use his brain before using a gun, and, much to the horror of the executives, no kissing. They hired him anyway.” The Trivia section on the Internet Movie Data Base (IMDB) notes, “Patrick McGoohan was adamant that Drake live up to a higher moral standard than the likes of James Bond. As a result, the character rarely becomes involved with women (beyond mission requirements), and rarely kills anyone - in fact he almost never carries a gun.”

McGoohan had in fact turned down the roles of both James Bond, and Simon Templar of The Saint. He wanted to pursue something of his own imagining. Thus the story of the resignation of “Number 6” from his life of covert operations was an analogy of McGoohan’s resignation from the omnipresent and controlling European production company, the Rank Organisation.

The concept of burying covert operations and operatives was alluded to in the opening segments of the U.S. series of 1966, Mission: Impossible, “As always, should you or any of your IM force be caught or killed, the Secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions. This tape will self-destruct in five seconds. Good luck, Jim.”

Our “free, democratic” governments were in reality doing things that would utterly shock or outrage the public and world. This was quite well-known. We were admitting by this dramatic conceit our leaders would lie to us to keep us safe from the truths they created. They’d carefully hide the evidence and dissemble the facts.

Patrick McGoohan decided to make his next television show about one such covert operative, who needed to be disavowed. Hushed up. Put out to pasture. Watched. How do you hide what you’ve done? How do you retire a man who knows too much? Unlike the 1956 Alfred Hitchcock thriller with James Stewart, The Man Who Knew Too Much, about an accidental encounter with the world of covert assassination, the protagonist of The Prisoner does not stumble into his knowledge. It had been his profession.

McGoohan’s charcacter is a secret operative who quits his day job. He wants to get out of the business for unstated reasons, though it is obvious he is not happy with his work any more. Angry in fact. He is not allowed the possibility of a regular retirement, and thus the character is transported to the Village where he can be safely watched and monitored.

The Prisoner was filled with surrealistic elements. From the large-wheeled bicycles and eerie landscapes of the Salvador Dali-like credits, to Rover, the large ballon that retrieves wayward runaways, to the edgily-discomforting smiles, fashions, furnishings, and other oddities of the Village. It was a rebellious series, set in the real world, yet apart from it. A metaphor appropriate for many people who, at the time, felt trapped by the heavy-hand of intrusive governments bent on imposing social order by violence and deprivation of liberties and lives if need be.

Watching it as a child on television in re-runs, I was struck by many foundational elements of the show. Ethics, hypocrisy, wit, color, psychology, freedom, anger, calmness. Science fiction. A fiction about unpleasant truths. It was a heroic yet everyman struggle against oppression. The spy-versus-spy craftiness of those who sought to set, or burst through, the boundaries of freedom.



One could see the false polite smile of the triumphantly powerful. In return, the silent yet unmistakeably defiant slap in the face of the powers-that-be. It was over-the-top, and clearly hyperbole—a warning of how the world might turn if we let it become so. The shape of things to come.



McGoohan went on after The Prisoner to do other work, yet that series became the pinnacle of his career. I was very pleased to see him in Braveheart, where he played King Edward Longshanks to steely-eyed dramatic perfection, though much of the movie was dross and historically inaccurate.

Throughout his career, he projected a gravitas to his person, yet limned with a gentlemanly wit and charm. He had a boldness and presence which was not just limited to the roles he played on screen. Long after his passing, he will remain one of the world’s unforgettable presences.

Mr. McGoohan, if you are reading over my shoulder, I have but one thing to say to you today:

“Be seeing you!”

Get Well, Steve Jobs. R.I.P. Ricardo Montalban

It has been a while since I have written anything on my own personal blog. And this is a sort of odd reason to post a new entry.

While I generally do not comment about specific business leaders or celebrities, there are two people who I wanted to make note of today.

Steve Jobs, recovering from pancreatic cancer, has taken a leave of absence from Apple for medical reasons until June. Steve, I wish you the best for a recovery, and my best wishes for your family this year. After your “April Fool’s Day” revolution, begun in 1976, and your championing the invention of the Macintosh, which was released twenty five years ago, you deserve a nice break from all the hullabaloo of Silicon Valley. You know, I fondly recall making some nice artwork which showed up well on the Lisa, and banged out my first manuscripts on an Apple IIe and an Applie IIc. My personal career in the arts, in gaming, in publishing, business, and my adventures in life would not be possible without the innovation you and your cohorts helped birth into the world.

Ricardo Montalban, the ever-optimistic-about-love Mr. Roarke of ABC’s 1970s television series Fantasy Island, and the “superior being” Khan of Star Trek, and the nemesis of James T. Kirk in the movie The Wrath of Khan, has died at the age of 88. A true romantic, he died a year after his wife of 63 years Georgiana Young. They married in 1944, at the height of the Second World War. IMDB.com has a fitting review of his storied career. One bit of trivia: his first film was the 1942 war picture Five Were Chosen, with Victor Kilian and Howard De Silva. Rest in peace.