Race Matters II

From Elstun over at Celtic Diva

Barack Obama is winning over swing voters because of what is called his "temperament". It turns out that his coolness, calmness and steadiness is just what voters are looking for and those qualities stand in great contrast to the "erratic" and fuming McCain-Palin campaign.

Because of the racism in the United States, Barrack Obama, like every African-American male who wanted to succeed, has learned how to control his anger, to swallow his outrage, and to respond with coolness. Angry black men had to transform their anger into some other socially acceptable manifestation - humor, the blues and gospel, slam dunks, knock out punches, or verbal virtuosity. While open anger no longer results in lynching, it can still cause serious damage to the person who expresses it in the wrong situation.

Obama, because of the color of his skin, had to learn to turn his anger into calm, articulate phrases.

Neighborhood Renewal Journal

I know that some of the people who drop by here now and then are interested in preserving livable neighborhoods, so I'm posting this email I got. Academic journals are a little pricy, but it should also be available through the UAA library and Loussac's journal data bases. It would be interesting to look at this subject in terms of renewing Alaska Native villages that have been so impacted by cultural disruption.

Neighbourhood – The International Journal of Neighbourhood Renewal

www.ijnr.co.uk

ISSN (Print) 1756-8676 ISN (Online) 1756-8684



I wanted to take this opportunity to update you on the development of the International Journal of Neighbourhood Renewal which will promote good practice in this field of public policy. The Journal is the only one of its kind to truly support global research in the field of neighbourhood renewal. The first edition of this peer-reviewed Journal is out now and the Contents of Edition One are shown attached. Edition Two is out in December 2008 and the planned contents are also shown attached. If you would like to subscribe now to the Journal, then please note that the costs are as follows:



(a) £149 per annum for a quarterly hard copy and electronic access.

(b) £99 per annum for electronic access.



Subscriptions can be via the Journal website at http://www.ijnr.co.uk/subscription_fees.php?id=1 or by emailing the Journal Office at newyork@ijnr.co.uk Subscriptions can also be taken via subscription agents such as SWETS and EBSCO. If you wish to subscribe please let me know and I will send you the copy of Edition One in advance of receiving your order.



I’d also be delighted to publish any of your work in this field and this can be done via the Journal website at http://www.ijnr.co.uk/submit_papers.html or by emailing the Journal Office at newyork@ijnr.co.uk



I look forward to welcoming you as a subscriber to ‘Neighbourhood’.



With kindest regards,



Ray





Ray Holden

Director of Development

Holden Publishing

UK Office Office
Horton House
Exchange Flags
Floor Five
Liverpool
L2 3PF
UNITED KINGDOM

Phone:+44 (0)845 6025280

Fax: +44 (0)151 2445401


USA Office
405 Lexington Avenue
The Chrysler Building
Floor 25
New York
10174 NY
UNITED STATES



Please consider the environment - do you need to print this email?

Man on Wire raises interesting questions

I saw Man on Wire listed as a movie in town and it triggered something in my brain, but I couldn't remember what it was about. Then I noticed someone googled to here with "Each day is like a work of art to him." When I checked to see what that post was about, I got this post on an NPR piece about Man on Wire.

So, my mom and I drove to the Beverly Center to see it last night. It's a quirky little film about a Frenchman who's goal is to walk a wire between the twin towers of the World Trade Center. It's all about his preparations for this feat and carrying it off.



Two big issues (of many possibilities) arose for me:

1. The inability of [in this case] police to just do nothing. They are programmed to take action even if the action is likely to cause more harm. In the clip, they threaten to use a helicopter to get the wire walker down. Our need for action gets us into a lot of trouble. There are lots of situations where doing nothing - at least for a while - is the wisest action. Look at the clip, and then think about the 'do nothing' option as you watch people in daily life and on the screen.

2. The general questions that get raised when people do high risk activities and society's response to them. The movie tracks Philippe Petit's preparation to walk between the twin towers. Earlier feats included walking between the towers of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, and the Sydney Harbor Bridge. While Philippe's main motivation is simply the challenge of walking across that space and the sheer beauty of that act of human defiance of the impossible, it is also made clear in the movie that the illegality of the act is also a draw. As one person interviewed said, it wasn't wicked or mean, just illegal.

US Americans clearly love daredevils. We have a history of stunts like riding barrels over Niagara Falls and making heroes out of people like Evel Knievil. Yet there is also an element that wants to save people from killing themselves. So, we congratulate the heroes who successfully get to the top of Denali and Everest, but shake our heads at the foolishness of those who die trying. As the film shows, Philippe's act is breathtakingly beautiful - it's a spiritual triumph to do something so seemingly dangerous and outrageous. Yet what if he had fallen to his death? What would we say then? What if he had killed several spectators as he landed?

We continue, as I think we should, to allow people to jump out of airplanes, climb difficult peaks, sail across oceans. But what is society's obligation to rescue such people if they run into trouble? Should public resources be diverted to saving daredevils? Should they be required to buy insurance? Could we NOT rescue them if they didn't? Summitpost.org writes about climbing Denali (McKinley):

If you have to be rescued off the mountain, you will likely be billed for the costs which can run into the tens of thousands of dollars. Rescue insurance or health insurance (if your rescue is a medical emergency) should cover the costs of the rescue. The park service monitors Channel 19 on CB radios. Cell phones also work well above 14,200 feet.

How do we distinguish between the 'experts' and the 'crazies' and should we? Clearly there is something highly inspirational when someone accomplishes a feat that seems impossible.
We've collectively decided it is worth the risk. The government even support this in programs like the space shuttle.

And I couldn't help wonder, given that this act was done at the World Trade Center, how 9/11 has affected adventures such as this. A group of men smuggling the equipment they needed into a building like the WTC today would immediately raise suspicions of terrorism. Would they got shot first and questioned later?

My mother didn't like this movie. But I thought it was fascinating watching the complexity of the preparations. How do you connect the wire between the two buildings? (They used a bow and arrow to shoot mono filament across. This was tied to a bigger rope which was dragged across, and this connected to the wire.) How do they attach it to the building? Besides the technical problems of getting the wire up, they had to solve the socio-political problems of getting past the guards and doing this illegal act. (In the movie, it appears no one considered asking permission, I assume they thought it would be turned down, and that the element of surprise would be lost.)

I can't say that I remember any news stories about this event. But I have an excuse. The walk was done on August 7, 1974. My son was born on August 6 that year and Richard Nixon resigned on August 8.

Frank and Larry's Hungarian Word Game

When Frank and Larry started telling me at dinner last night about the new word game they had created for themselves, I thought about Ropi and I knew I had to get this on video. So after dinner we went into the other room and we got it on tape.

Frank and Larry are brothers who grew up in Kosice, Czechoslovakia (now the Slovak Republic) in a Hungarian speaking Jewish family. Larry got to the US before WW II to go to college. Frank spent WWII in Europe. At that time Kosice was controlled by Hungary. In Fall 1940 he was conscripted into a forced labor camp attached to the Hungarian army. He was, in his words, lucky enough that the army unit to which his labor camp was attached was stationed and worked always in Hungary proper. Other units were sent out to the Russian Front. Their parents were first sent to a local ghetto and eventually to a railroad station where 80 people were squeezed into a cattle car and deported to Auschwitz in April 1944. (The cars were originally designed for 40 people or 6 horses.) His labor camp was about 150 men and sent to do work for the military such as building roads or whatever military projects were needed. (I was just clarifying background information to put the video into context. Yes, I realize I should video tape this too. But Frank has participated in the Steven Spielberg project to video tape Holocaust survivors, so he does have an hour or more of tape already recorded.)

[This is the corrected version.]

After the US got involved in WW II, and Larry was finishing school, he was given the option to be drafted into the US army or be among the first to be returned to Europe after the war. He joined the army and became an American citizen about 90 days later. He was sent to basic training in Camp Roberts, California as an infantryman, and during one of the exercises an American officer appeared who was looking for him. "They were interested in my educational background and high intelligence scores and took me out of infantry and sent me to officer training in Fort Benning, Georgia." After four months he became an officer - 2nd Lieutenant. He was scheduled to go to the Japanese theater of operations. Life expectancy there was very short so he contacted the intelligence officer and explained that the army would get better service from him in Europe because he spoke German, Hungarian, French, and understood Slovak, and had studied Latin. All this in addition to English.

They trained him for the European theater and send him for training in Maryland where he became a POW (prisoner of war) interrogator, mostly Germans. They also sent him to counterintelligence school and he successfully finished that and became a CIC (Counter Intelligence Corps) officer. He was sent to Germany. The war ended, and there were a lot of German prisoners of war he had to interrogate. He was helping to chase Nazi bigshots, and the most important Nazi he arrested was Ernst Ittameier.

Larry returned to LA in 1946 and Frank was able to join him in 1952. They have lived in Los Angeles ever since. Frank is now 92 and Larry is 88. They talk on this video about how they keep their minds sharp by tracking down the meanings of old Hungarian words and translating them into English.


For those who want to know why I was having dinner with them, well, it's a little complicated. My parents were divorced when I was five. My father didn't remarry until after I got married. After he died, his widow, my second mom, married Frank. I guess it wasn't that complicated.

Doonesbury Competing with Millions of Narcissists

OK, this is the last post on today's LA Times. But I can't pass up Doonesbury's take on bloggers. If you don't have a Sunday paper with Doonesbury, you can double click the picture to enlarge it enough to read it.

John Adams, Composer Autobiography - This is especially for Phil

While I'm looking (I'm still looking, this is a quick break) through the LA Times today, this story jumped out at me too. I know a composer. I never thought about composer autobiographies before. So, Phil, this one's for you.

BOOKS
John Adams explains how he found his voice in his memoir 'Hallelujah Junction'
The composer's autobiography shows how indirect his path has been.
By Scott Timberg, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 19, 2008
BERKELEY -- WHEN John Adams, the celebrated composer who is to his adopted California as Sibelius is to Finland, decided to write a memoir of his life and music, he realized there was virtually no model for his project.

"Most composers," he said over lunch at an upscale Italian cafe near his home here, "are composers because that's the way they want to communicate with the world. Even those who can write well, they don't want to express themselves in words."

The few existing examples didn't inspire him. "Most of them were really awful. I was painfully aware of the fact that the few composers who set out to write something wrote a boring then-I-did-this, then-I-did-that thing. The only one I thought was tasty and interesting was [Hector] Berlioz, but unfortunately the Berlioz is only good for the first 50 pages." [The rest is at the link above.]

Colin Powell Endorses Obama for President

From Voice of America
By Paula Wolfson
Washington
19 October 2008

Former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell says he is backing Democrat Barack Obama for president.

VOA's Paula Wolfson reports Powell made the announcement during a nationally broadcast television interview.

Colin Powell (2008 file photo)

Powell says Barack Obama has the ability to transform America and American politics.

"He has met the standard of being a successful president, being an exceptional president. I think he is a transformational figure. He is a new generation coming onto the world stage, onto the American stage. And for that reason, I will be voting for Senator Barack Obama," he said. [All the above including the photo from Voice of America]

.
I think this one is important because there was actually any doubt that Powell would do this.

As the most prominent African American in US politics before Obama, as a Republican who was burned by the Bush Administration over his Iran testimony at the UN, as a former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Powell was probably pulled in different directions, but I just don't see how he could do anything but endorse Obama. If Obama were a Palin type candidate, there's no way Powell would have endorsed him, simply because he was black. But a very credible candidate like this? How could he not?

If Obama is elected (yes, I know, I just don't count my chickens early) just his election will change the landscape of the United States and the world. We'll have a president whose consciousness is open to the future, not the past. Powell has to know this.


Don't hold you breath waiting for Clarence Thomas' Obama endorsement, though.

Why the mistakes at the Ted Stevens' trial?

After conducting the three Anchorage trials with intimidating precision, the Prosecution seems to have been uncharacteristically sloppy when they got to DC. We heard things like this from the Washington Post:

Prosecutors seriously bungled evidence and witnesses but Sen. Ted Stevens' corruption trial will proceed as planned, a federal judge ruled Thursday.

There are a number of significant changes between last year's trials and this trial: a different judge, a different venue, a different chief of the prosecution, and a different defense attorney, this one with a team. I've only taken in the trial through the news reports and blogs, but here are some hypotheses that ought to be explored further by those on the scene.

1. The Judge. Judge Sedwick in Anchorage was always very calm, and even when he admonished attorneys, he showed, at his worst, only annoyance. The Anchorage based prosecutors have worked with him often over the years. My reaction to the judge during the trials was that he was scrupulously fair and reasonable, but that was based on my novice court observer perspective. Looking back, he was an Alaskan judge who voiced clear concern for the people of Alaska given the corruption of their legislators and when discussing the sentencing guidelines, he weighed the violation of the people's trust heavily against the defendants.

Judge Sullivan, from the news reports, has been much more demonstrative in voicing his displeasure with the prosecution. Is he legitimately giving them less slack than did Sedwick? Does he just enjoy wielding his power? Is he making sure that if there is an appeal, that he can't be accused of favoring the prosecution? I have no idea, I'm just trying to spin out the possibilities.

2. Venue. Having the trial in DC means that the jury's knowledge of and relationship with the defendant is much different from an Anchorage jury's would be. The racial make up of the jury - predominantly black - could make a difference. The prosecutors would appear to think so since they added a new chief of the prosecution - a black woman - and the defense has a black attorney too. And the judge is black. While this may or may not impact the trial (I used the assumption that it would by whites as a lead into a discussion of race and the presidential election in a previous post) in general, it doesn't seem to have a direct relationship to the question of the prosecution's reported bungling.

3 Chief of the prosecution. The team in Anchorage seemed to know everything (about the case, about the procedures, etc.) and to be ready for any contingency. Was there something about the new head of the prosecution that affected the way the case was run? She hadn't been visibly involved with the previous trials and now was the lead. Were there disagreements among the team members and this is causing loss of the laser like focus they seemed to have in Anchorage? Again, this is simply speculation, not based on any hard evidence, but just looking at what has changed.

4. Defense attorney, this one with a team. Brendan Sullivan is characterized as one of the best criminal defense attorneys in the country and one of the most expensive. Is it just that the prosecution is up against a better attorney this time? Or that they are up against a much bigger team of attorneys with far more resources than the previous legal defense teams? That there is more of a level playing field this time?

Another, more disturbing thought is the possibility that someone on the defense team has intentionally botched things up. Given the Justice Department's various breaches during this Administration - from using partisan political tests of applicants to firing attorneys for not pursuing politically motivated investigations and everything in-between - one cannot rule this out totally. Again, this is merely speculation, as I try to map out the possible explanations for why what seemed like a well oiled legal machine was found to have sand in its gears for this trial.

Ultimately, we may never know, which of these, or which combination of these, led to the actions that raised the judge's ire. And it may not even matter. The jury will get this case Monday or Tuesday. We should have a verdict by the end of next week if not sooner. If Stevens is found guilty, it won't matter to the public. But I would hope the prosecution, which still has some indictments up its sleeve, will figure it out, if they haven't already.

Happy Go Lucky Day

The sky was still very blue when I ran around the Santa Monica Airport this morning (instead of down to the beach.) Just before I'd left, the doorbell rang and two people were there to get my mom to vote for Proposition 9[8], the proposition that is attempting to overthrow the California Supreme Court decision allowing gay marriage in California. I was agitated just thinking these people were at the door. When my mother said she agreed it was terrible to teach gay marriage to 2nd graders (that's what a political ad that keeps playing on the television asserts) I lost it completely. "You believe that bullshit?" They left. Fortunately, when I explained what the proposition wanted to do, my mom said she was opposed to it. But I still really needed to run.
By the time I saw this sign amongst someone's Halloween decorations - yes the people around here get excited about Halloween - I'd forgotten all about it, but was pleased to see the sign.
In the afternoon we went to the movies at Pico and Westwood. I hate parking garages, and this one was bumper-to-bumper both ways when I drove in.

Where's the Happy-Go-Lucky part, you're asking. Well, that was the name of the movie. My mom still likes movies, but she can't keep up with subtitles any more. This one seemed to get good reviews and was supposed to be an upbeat movie.

It is and it isn't. All the reviews focus on Sally Hawkin's performance. It is outstanding, but so are a number of other actors. There isn't much of a story. It's like a dozen scenes edited together. We hang out with Poppy and her friends for a couple of days in and around London. There are teachers - primary school, Flamenco (worth it alone), and driving (another incredible performance.) And there's a perfect performance by a six or seven year old kid. Everyone is outstanding. And the opening credits are shown around Poppy riding her bike.
Then dinner next door at Jaipur Indian restaurant. Just the name of the place was enough to pull me in, but they were so busy and brusque, that I figured they were not interested in knowing that'd I'd been to Jaipur. The food was ok, but not special. But it's nice to have a mom who's willing to eat strange food.

Self Realization Fellowship takes me back many years

I went to the Lake Shrine as a child and young adult. I never thought about the religious significance of it back then. It was just a beautiful walk with these somewhat unlikely decorations. Yesterday, when I called B, he surprised me when he asked me to show him something in LA. He lives in Anchorage, but his daughters - and more important his grandson - live in LA now. So he and J are here for the winter. But I haven't lived in LA for thirty years. But I remembered this place and no, they hadn't been here. So today we went.

The monarch butterflies are arriving. There's more explanation at Best-California-Beach:

Millions of Monarchs travel every year from the colder regions of North America to warmer sites where they can safely overwinter. They fly, en masse, as high as 10,000 feet, returning to the same groves as preceding generations.

Monarch butterflies usually only live for about six weeks, but the migrating generation can live for up to eight months. So Monarch butterflies manage to travel thousands of miles to arrive at a destination they've never been to before.

This windmill was on the site when the meditation group bought the property in the 1950's. There's a meditation chapel inside.



















And this Indian arch is across the lake from the windmill.















There are many, many, many flowers in the garden around the lake. Here's a rose.















On the hill above the garden is a Hindu temple. This was not here when we left LA 30 some years ago.


The orchid was in the temple.




From the Self-Realization Fellowship we drove up Sunset past the school I worked at while I was a student at UCLA. It was a great time. I had morning classes. Rode my Honda 50 down Sunset to the school where I worked noon duty on the playground, then rode the rest of the way - past the self-realization center - to the beach to play volley ball and body surf. Then back up to the school for after school playground, then back to UCLA, along a Sunset that had a lot less traffic than it does today.

No one had eaten much today, so we stopped at an upscale supermarket (we were in Pacific Palisades, so everything is upscale) where we got focaccia sandwiches cooked in the oven.








While waiting for the sandwiches to cook I wandered around the market. Here are some olives.








And, of course, I can't fail to notice the salmon. This is for formerly frozen salmon. This was the most expensive. They had some other wild salmon for as low as $15 a pound.




Then on the way home, B said we were relatively close to their daughter's place, so we took a small detour and visited her for a few minutes while the baby was napping.