Nine More People to Watch in the Second Post 9/11 Decade

Posted on January 4, 2011 | 5 comments

I have decided to  make this a one hundred person list. That decision to go with 100 instead of 91 is one of the remaining big decisions  in this little project. There are still of course all of the decisions related to deciding who will be on the list.

My first post on this list had twenty-five names:

https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/the-last-year-of-the-9-11-decade-has-begun/

President Barack  Hussein Obama , Josef Ratzinger, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, Her Britannic Majesty, Elizabeth, HRH Charles Prince of Wales, David Cameron, Sarah Palin, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Glen Beck,  Hillary Clinton, President Nicolas Sarkozy, Benjamin Netanyahu, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Carl Svanberg, UN Secretary Ban Ki Moon, Hu Jin Tao, Timothy Geithner, Al Franken, Barney Frank, Vladimir Putin,  Bobby Jindal, Bill Richardson, Bill Clinton and Osama Bin Laden

The second portion had fifteen people to watch:

https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/12/08/fifteen-more-people-to-watch-in-9112011-9112021/

Barons Rothschild, Britney Spears, Carl A. Brasseaux, Philip Lord Norton Baron of Louth, Carlos Slim Helu, Charles Bolden, Taylor Swift, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands,  Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson, Kate Middleton,  Catherine Princess of Wales, Princess William of Wales, Princess Catherine, Prince Luís of Orléans-Braganza (born Luís Gastão Maria José Pio Miguel Gabriel Rafael Gonzaga de Orléans e Bragança e Wittelsbach, Ms. Gail J. McGovern, Me,  His Highness Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani and Prince William of Wales

The third portion of my list had ten people watch:

https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/12/11/ten-more-people-to-watch-from-9112011-9112021/

Gaudencio Borbon Cardinal Rosales, Queen Sofia of Spain, Su Graciosa Majestad Sofia la Reina Catolica, Oprah Winfrey, Bill O’Reilly, Julie Ann Yannatta, Vitaly Alexandrovich Lopota, Amy Grant, Ratan N. Tata, Mark Zuckerberg and Jean-Cristophe Niel 

The fourth portion of my list had five people to watch:

https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/five-more-people-to-watch-in-the-second-post-911-decade/

Liu Zhijun: 刘志军, King George Tupou V, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Heinz-Otto Peitgen,  Julie Taymor

The fifth post had thirteen  people to watch:

 Charles Alan Murray, Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr, Professor Ei-ichi Negishi, Drew Brees, Angela Dorothea Merkel(- Kasner),  General Stanley Allen McChrystal, Danica Sue Patrick, Melinda French Gates (born Melinda Ann French, Marilyn Vos Savantt, Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, Carla Gilberta Bruni Tedeschi, Madame Nicolas Sarkozy,  Air Defense Commander Shigeru Iwasaki and Amy Hungerford 

https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/12/18/thirteen-more-people-to-watch-in-the-second-post-911-decade/

My most recent post in this series had  eight  people to watch:

Howard Lutnick, His Serene Highness Albert II, Sovereign Prince of Monaco (Albert Alexandre Louis Pierre Grimaldi), Elbert Leander “Burt” Rutan, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Hoseyni Khāmene’i ( سید علی حسینی خامنه ای), Dr.Tracy E. Caldwell – Dyson(Ph.D.),  Lang Lang,  Natalie Portman  ( נטלי פורטמן‎, Natalie Hershlag), John Christopher “Johnny” Depp II

https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/12/28/eight-more-people-to-watch-in-the-second-post-9-11-decade/

Then comes this post of nine people. That should bring my new total to eighty-seven. Twenty-five and fifteen brought us to forty. Ten more got us to fifty.  Five more to fifty-five. Thirteen more got us to sixty-eight. Eight after that came to seventy six and now nine brings us to eighty-five. The advantages to this odd system are actualy numerous. Given that they are embedded in this blog these posts have the advantage of all being of different numbers and so being easier to keep track of in this context.    I have now decided on one hundred people for the list. So that means I have fifteen people and probably two more posts listing those named left in the series. Probably the total will get uneven again. Eleven and four are the most equaly paired numbers for which I have not used at least one of the paired numbers in a previous post.  Then I hope to do a post on the top ten as the ones so far are in no particular order.  After that, assuming I am not derailed,  then before September get here I will do a post on those who almost made it and a post summarizing the list and its purpose. 

1.  Joanne “Jo” Rowling, OBE, J. K. Rowling  was born 31 July 1965  and is a British author best known as the creator and writer of the Harry Potter series of books series, which came to her as project concept on a train trip from Manchester to London in 1990. The original book series has ended and like some others on this loist she may seem to be someone who already had a great influence and despite her relative youth is on the way down as such things go.  However, she is on this list legitimately for the present and the future. To attest to this I note that in October 2010, J. K. Rowling was named ‘Most Influential Woman in Britain’ by a group of important magazine editors.  Her philanthropic contributions include supporting such charities as Comic Relief, One Parent Families, Multiple Slerosis Society of Great Britain, and Lumos (formerly the Children’s High Level Group).  She also has close ties to some young performing artists who are likely to shape their field in the near future to some degree. These include Daniel Radcliffe and Emma Watson who  were leading actors in  popular Harry Potter series of films, in which Rowling had overall  script approval and served as a producer on the final instalment as well as developing friendships with cast and crew to some real degree. The Potter books have  won significant awardsand sold more than 400 million copies. . Rowling was living on British welfare benefits before writing her way to multi-millionaire status and an Order of the British Empire. As of March 2010,  Forbes  listed Rowling’s net worth at $1 billion.  The 2008 Sunday Times Rich List  ranked her as the twelfth richest woman in Great Britain. Forbes  also ranked Rowling as the forty-eighth most powerful celebrity of 2007  and Time magazine named her as a runner-up for  2007  Person of the Year. She has promoted advanced literacy, the survival and popularity of the novel and mythological and flokloric literacy among many other schievements.  

2. Nicholas Sparks, Nicholas Charles Sparks  was born December 31, 1965  in Omaha, Nebraska and is an internationally-bestselling American novelist and screenwriter. Sparks has published 17 novels, with themes that include Christian faith, young love, marriage, romance,  tragedy and fate.  Six have been adapted to film, including  Message in a Bottle, A Walk to Remember,  The Notebook, Nights in Rodanthe,  Dear John and The Last Song.  Nicholas Sparks makes this list because of the seamless blend of a compelling commerical impact, compelling popular art, a dynamic and integrated personal and family life and his ties to sports, Roman Catholic and educational communities.  NicholasSparks  was born into the family of Patrick Michael Sparks who was a practicing professor and Jill Emma Marie (née Thoene) Sparks who was  a committed and an  optometrist’s assistant. He was the middle of three children, with an older brother Michael Earl “Micah” Sparks (1964–) and a younger sister, Danielle “Dana” Sparks (1966–2000), who died at the age of 33. Sparks has said that she is the inspiration for the main character in his novel A Walk to Remember. Sparks was raised Roman Catholic and is of English, German, Irish and Czech ancestry. While his family traveled for his father’s studies and early teaching gigs they settled in one place for his  years at Bella Vista High where he graduated  as valedictorian in 1984. He enrolled at the University of Notre Dame with a full track and field scholarship. In his freshman year, his team set a record for the 4 x 800 relay.  The world of Track has remained a huge part of his life as his website bio says of a later period in his life:  “That same summer, my oldest son, Miles, a seventh grader, began competing in track and field. I went out to the local public high school, where I’d been told they’d installed an all-weather track. I took a look, realizing it was nothing more than an oval, asphalt road. There wasn’t a chance kids could practice on it without getting injured, so my wife and I decided to donate an all-weather tartan track, one that would foster a love of running and appreciation of an active lifestyle.I also decided to begin coaching the local high school track team, focusing on the 400m and 800m, for competition at the high school and Jr. Olympic level. Little did I know how much a part of life coaching would become over the next few years.”  Sparks  did some writing of vaired kinds while at Notre Dame but majored in business finance and graduated with honors in 1988. He also met his future wife that year, Cathy Cote while they were both on spring break. They married on July 22, 1989 and moved to Sacramento, California. They are deeply tied to the Cahloc faith as he has said “I was raised Catholic, baptized, confirmed, Sunday School, went to Notre Dame, go to confession, go to church weekly. My oldest son is an altar boy. All my children go to the Catholic school. My wife Catherine was raised Catholic. We were married in the Catholic Church.”  The filming of his movies and the support the films have gotten from Sparks have made him a huge new factor in popular culture.  In June 2004, the film version of  The Notebook was released, starring Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling. It was a huge success,  he himself has called it “an instant movie classic, and a perfect companion to the book”.  That first published novel was an instant publishing success. It followed an unpublished novel and a book which he had collaborated on and which was published and which seems to be related to  the spirituality of the Lakota Sioux people.  The films sold his books and still do and more are being made into film as I type this. Discussing the period after the first movie Sparks writes:  “In August 2004, I was surprised when three of my novels, The Notebook, The Wedding, and Nights in Rodanthe, all appeared together on the New York Times paperback bestseller list”.  Sparks plowed that financial boom into lots more successful writing but also into sport and do-goodism. “Around that time, I was also asked to serve on the USA Track and Field Foundation Board of Directors, an honor which I eagerly accepted”. He coached New Bern High School to indoor and outdoor state championships. This and writing constant bestsellers was not  all he did.  He writes: ” Autumn 2005, brought yet another undertaking when my wife and I sponsored a family from New Orleans, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. The family – one member, a son, was a young athlete I had met the previous summer named Karjuan Williams – moved to New Bern, and my wife and I spent a lot of time and energy establishing them in a new household”. Early in 2006, Sparks and his wife together with Tom McLaughlin founded The Epiphany School. The school is a Roman Catholic prep school with a difference. “My intention is that, by the time every student has graduated, he or she will have visited 26 countries on six continents, whether it’s studying history of the Americas among Mayan ruins, Ancient Greece at the Parthenon, or ecology and the environment in the rain forests of Costa Rica”. His track coaching at the New Bern High School has more or less ended but was as successful at state and national levels as his huge writingcarreer has been. According to websites New Bern High School was recently voted the greatest high school relay team in history. In race records the team is either referred to as New Bern High School, or Track Eastern Carolina.  If America is to be remade then Nicholas Sparks is pised to be one of those involved in remaking it. Sexuality, family, sport and education are being impacted in the USA and abroad by this single private citizen and those with whom he associates.

3 . Maria Ioannidou, Μαρία Ιωαννίδου is director of the Acropolis Restoration Project and an independent architecture & planning professional  and civil engineer.  She directs an extensive, internationally acclaimed antiquity conservation and restoration programme  that has been ongoing on the Acropolis of Athens since 1975.  She is in an institution where past diectors have been men but where a female Greek-American archiect who is not herself has also made a major contribution. When one considers the history of Venetian Knights in Constantinople and Turks throughout the Hellenic world it is impossible to see the destruction of the Parthenon and acropolis as unintentional. the greatest cataclysm which can be usefull compared to two flying busses hitting the World Tade Center happened in the Great Turkish War in the late 17th century—when the Ottoman Empire was at war with Venice and other European countries and  Greece was an occupied nation. The Turks used the magnificent Parthenon they saw as a diabolic temple of pornography as an ammunition dump. Thea Venetian attack on Athens in 1687 included a cannonball that set off the Turkish munitions, blowing 700  huge stone blocks from the Parthenon’s now ruined walls that then eroded much more in recent centuries once out of structure and had all been  strewn around the Acropolis. From 1997 to 2002 Cathy Paraschi, a Greek-American architect fitted these damaged  pieces together. She made real progress but incomplete progress. Maria Ioannidou has the duty of leading the challenging Restoration, comprising a number of sub-projects that aim to stabilise, conserve and prolong the life of the Parthenon and other buildings on the Acropolis, is supported by the Greek State and the European Union.  Ioannidou explains, “we’ve adopted an approach of trying to restore the maximum amount of ancient masonry while applying the minimum amount of new material.” That means using clamps and rods made of titanium—which won’t corrode and crack the marble—and soluble white cement, so that repairs can be easily undone should future generations of restorers discover a better way.There have been some bravura feats of engineering. The 1687 explosion knocked one of the massive columns out of position and badly damaged its bottom segment. There have been new damages from recent earthquakes that the restorers have had to deal with along with everything else. The team and one of its expert leaders designed new equipment to deal with the problem including a metal collar that exerts precisely controlled forces to grasp a column securely without harming the stone. This allowed repair of bottom segments in massive columns and also allowed more learning about the column construction which has challenged many ideas in the histroy of technology. The knoweledge and symbolism involved explains why although on the brink of bankruptcy, the Greek government committs serious money to improving the country’s architectural treasures. In the next several day as of this posting, it will reveal a restored temple on the Acropolis rock.  Greek pre-Arabic mathematics were tied to geometry and the human measure and they were very advanced. They also had very advanced power tools and this personmakes the list for working in a nexus of productive science, patriotism, feminism and historical consciousness.

4. Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev, Дми́трий Анато́льевич Медве́дев,  was born  on September 14,  1965 and is the third and current President of the Russian Federation, inaugurated on 7 May 2008. He came to the presidency  after taking the  popular vote in the presidential election held on  March 2, 2008 with 71.25%. Medvedev’s candidacy was backed by then President Vladimir Putin and by his political allies and machine.  They belong to the same political party and he was first informally endorsed by this largest  Russian political party, United Russia and then later formally endorsed when several pro-presidential parties had been brought on board.   Medvedev had a solid background but more as an appointed technocrat and  had never held elective office prior to 2008. The current President has served as First Deputy Prime Minister of the Russian government,  Vladimir Putin’s Chief of Presidential Staff, e Chairman of Gazprom’s  (the oil and gas nationalized giant) board of directors and other minor or affiliated positions. His endorsement and partnership with Prime Minister Putin is significant with Putin’s history as the tough Commie headed for the inner circle who has tried to find his wayinto the world of reforms and to a role as enlightened man in a new political consensus. Medvedev has legitimate progressive libertarian and democratic credentials within the Russian context as well as a certain inborn facility with neo-tsarist icnography which he shares with the very different Putin.  Anatoly Sobchak was, an early democratic politician of the 1980s and 1990s  and was one of Medvedev’s professors.  Medvedev joined Sobchak’s team of democrats in 1988 and worked the  head of Sobchak’s successful campaign for a seat in democratized Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR. As President, Medvedev has made economic modernization one of his top agendas.   Even his childhood speaks more of intellect than toughness and ideological orthodoxies of the recent past.    Dmitry Medvedev I believe  born  and  certainly brought up in Leningrad.   Medvedev’s father was Anatoly Afanasevich Medvedev (November 1926 — 2004) a Professor at the Leningrad Institute of Technology, his mother is Yulia Veniaminovna Medvedeva (née Shaposhnikova, born 21 November 1939)His wife Svetlana Linnik seems to have been what Americans would call his high school sweetheart. He is half ethnic Ukrainian, was in Communist youth organizations and joined the communist party in college but has always been part of the wave seeking legitimacy within the constructs of Western Civilization’s political traditions. His work outside government also related to living out in the renewed free market. Medvedev earned a degree from the Law Department of Leningrad State University in 1987 (together with a number of influential soviet leaders of his generation most of whom continue as leaders of the Russian Federation) and in 1990, received his  graduate level Candidate of Sciences degree in private law there.  Medvedev , worked as a “docent” at his  alma mater university, now renamed to Saint Petersburg State University, in addition to his business activities and participation in the Saint Petersburg City Administration.  He is not so easy to read in souch a short sketch and his situation is not simple. Nor is there a simple way of describing Russia’s role itself. But he is certainly a person to watch in the coming decade.  .

5. Buzz Aldrin, Dr. (Col. {retired})Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr.  was born in Montclair, New Jersey on January 20, 1930. Aldrin is an American mechanical engineer, retired United States Air Force pilot and the  astronaut who was the Lunar Module pilot on Apollo 11,who on July 20, 1969,  was the second human being to set foot on the Lunar surface, following his mission commander Neil Armstrong.  Buzz became an engineer as a West Pointer when he graduated third in his class  from the US Military Academy.  He  joined the Air Force and dsitinguished himself as a combat fighter pilot  in Korea and was decorated with the Distinguished Flying Cross.  After more military experience he earned  his Doctorate of Science in Astronautics at MIT and wrote his thesis on Manned Orbital Rendezvous.  He came to  NASA in 1963 as part of the third  astronauts batch, Aldrin was the first with a doctorate nicknamed “Dr. Rendezvous.”  His mother, Marion Moon, was the daughter of an Army Chaplain and Aldrin celebrated the Eucharist according to protestant rites when he landed on the Moon.  His father, Edwin Eugene Aldrin who studied with rocketry’s early giant Goddard, served with distinction in the military becoming  a Colonel in the Air Force did advanced studies Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and towered over musch of Buzz’s early manhood as a resprected aviation pioneer.   Dr. Buzz Aldrin has at least three US patents freceived for rocketry inventions.  He devised many of the docking and rendezvous techniques  for spacecraft in orbit which are still used today.  These are just a few of his space related contributions.  But all these years are overshadowed by 21 hours  spent with Neil Armstrong on the lunar surface and when the two returned with 46 pounds of moon rocks having operated before history’s largest worldwide television audience of about 600 million people. He still stays in touch with the crew of Apollo 11, advocates for Space and had a brief stint on the popular show Dancing With the Stars. Dr. Aldrin is both my Facebook Friend  and part of an online novel’s reader group I have established but I do not really know him nor even know how much he really knows about me for that matter. 

 6.  Kundun, The Highest Point,Ogyen Trinley Dorje, Dalai Lama is currently unique in histroy and not really like any of his predecessors nor entirely separate from them.  Living in northern India and fleeing the conquest of Tibet by the Communist Chinese government  the 14th Dalai Lama serves as the head of state for the Central Tibetan Administration (“Tibetan government in exile”).  Bothe preserving and popularizing some of Tibaetan Buddhism’s religion and tradition hea has also been freed from huge amounts of time spent in ritual obligations and has become a popular culture star.   This 14th Dalai Lama remains the head of state for the Central Tibetan Administration (“Tibetan government in exile”) and is a worldwide spokesman both for deep Tibetan values in a sacred tradition and for whatever will help his case. He has never been a simple figure. His lack of orthodoxy is indicated when he has stated that the institution of the Dalai Lama may be abolished in the future, or the next Dalai Lama may not be Tibetan and may be female. The female thing and his many female admirers in the west maks the fact that all Buddhism has a very dark and arguably evil side of its history as regards women and that of all these traditions the one that most offend the sense of shared humanity, fairness and life for typical women the Gelug or “Yellow Hat” branch of Tibetan Buddhism. has the worst record. But of course that is a very incomplete and controversial part of the story. He has also been a symbol for Tibetans afraid of being overrun and wiped out by the Han Chinese. Tibet does have historic ties to the Chinese Emperors and the Chinese have kept some Lamaseries running and helped Tibetans. On the other hand heroic battles by Tibetans with swords on ponies against the superpower still occur and they remeber their Nobel Peace Prize winner and and he also gives some focus to their art. His title combines of the Mongolian word Далай “Dalai” meaning “Ocean” and the Tibetan word  ་”Blama” meaning “chief” or “high priest.”  The Dalai Lama is believed by his devotees to be the rebirth of a long line of tulkus who are considered to be manifestations of  Avaloitesvarahe bodhiattva of compassion, the reincarnation of a series of spiritual leaders who have chosen to be reborn in order to enlighten others.  The role of this man will continue to evolve and its relevance may be affected by changes in the East and West in the future.

7.  Zachary Richard    is an environmentalist ,poet and singer-songwriter who in1996 founded Action Cadienne  an organization dedicated to promoting of the French language and the “Cadien/Cajun culture of Louisiana. In choosing Zachary Richard I am especially aware of him as a musician and worry about choosing him to the probable exclusion of Michael Doucet and Paige Reese but he is much more than an Acadian musician. In March, 1997,   Zachary Richard was decorated Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et Lettres de la République Française. Also in 1997, Zachary was enrolled in the Ordre des Francophones d’Amérique by the government of Québec. Richard has received three honorary doctorates, bestowed by the University of Moncton (New Brunswick), the University of Louisiana (Lafayette) and Ste Anne’s University in Nova Scotia. His albums include High Times,  Mardi Gras and Migration, Mardi Gras Mambo, Zack’s Bon Ton,Snake Bite Love, Women in the Room, Cap Enragé and Faire Récolte. These works have generated recognition including gold and double platinum albums and numerous reviewed awards.   His role in the Cajun Renaissance was significant when as a young already working artist he bought a Cajun accordion.  From that basis he earned his credibility in promoting the Cajun tradition, because it really was Zachary who energized an increasing old man driven genre when he formed the first new generation Cajun/Rock band. While living  in Montreal, Zachary published three volumes of poetry and won  the prestigious Prix Champlain for  in 1998.   A third Zachary Richard volume, was awarded the Prix Roland Gasparic in Roumania with mention of his militant commitment to the defense of the French language in North America.  Zachary had published three children’s books with his daughter Sarah.   Recent years especially have seen him work in important television documentaries including his production, narration and scoring of Against the Tide, the story of the Cajun people of Louisiana with LPB which was awarded Best Historical Documentary by the National Educational Television Association (NETA) in 2000 and its truly French language version, received the Prix Historia from the L’institut d’Histoire de l’Amérique Française in 2003.  He has also worked with Coeurs Batailleurs ( a 26 part series exploring the Acadian diaspora), Migrations, about North American avian migration which won the Liriot D’or (first prize) at the International Ornithological Film Festival (France) in 2008, and  Kouchibouguac, about the  expropriation of 250 Acadian families in 1978 for the creation of a national park. 

8. Chett Chiasson,Executive Director of the Port Commission at Port Fourchon. He is a former Director of Economic Development for the port and has been promoted to  the top spot by The Greater Lafourche Port Commission  taking the reins from Ted Falgout, who retired at the end of 2009 after thirty-one years of port leadership. This tradition of long tenure, the BP disaster this year and the confluence of energy, economic and environmental issues  will make him a necessarily influential figure. The importance of Port FOurchon may be declining but it is truly enormous. “I am honored to be the Executive Director of the Greater Lafourche Port Commission,” says Chiasson. “I look forward to continuing the growth and success that was achieved during Mr. Falgout’s tenure. With the outstanding Board of Commissioners, employees, and tenants we have, the opportunities are limitless.” Chiasson has a B.A. in Political Science and a Masters in Public Administration and is in the AAPA’s Professional Port Manager certification program. His background has been an advantage to port business; he has brought in large projects and new lessees in Port Fourchon and helped to expand property interests at the South Lafourche Airport. Chiasson had been key in relevant activities before the BP disaster such as recouping losses from storm damage, working with several local, state, and federal agencies to repair and rebuild the port’s infrastructure and environment.  Chiasson will be Port Fourchon’s second Executive Director in port history and begins his new position as the port begins its fiftieth year.

9. Dr. E. Joseph Savoie, ” ‘Tit Jo'” Savoie  is the at the helm of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette, which is also the Universite des Acadiens and is former  Louisiana tate Commissioner of Higher Education. He is the university’s sixth president .   He relatively recently succeeded Dr. Ray Authement, who retired after serving as UL Lafayette’s president for 34 years. When hire he said, “ I’m excited about the opportunity to help steer the University of Louisiana at Lafayette as it continues to move ahead, always focused on student success.” President Savoie has  very strong ties to UL Lafayette before becoming Comissioner he had served asvice president for University Advancement, executive director of the Alumni Association, program director for the Union Program Council, student government advisor and as an adjunct assistant professor. He earned his  bachelor’s and master’s degrees in education from this same UL Lafayette. Savoie continuedhis studies with doctor of education in educational leadership and administration from Columbia University’s Teachers College in New York. Savoie work prior to presidency postsecondary education includes participating in these reforms in Louisiana: the restructuring of higher education governance; creation of the Louisiana Community and Technical College System; teacher education and school reform initiatives; fromulation of  the state’s Master Plan for Public Postsecondary Education and the promotion of collaboration within the entire education community. Savoie has received awards and honors including the 2007 CASE District IV Chief Executive Leadership Award, which has even been renamed the “Dr. E. Joseph Savoie Chief Executive Leadership Award,” the 2004 University of Louisiana at Lafayette Outstanding Alumnus Award and the 2000 Henry Mason Award, which is presented by the Louisiana Chapter of the American Association of University Professors. He and his wife Gail Savoie have a daughter, Jennifer Blaire Saulnier, and a son, Adam Savoie. Dr. Savoie was on the board which elected me as the winner of the 1989 May commencement Oustanding Graduate Award  of the Alumni Assoication of the university. I have known him for years and we have never been close or friends (nor open enemies or anything else intense). I believe he is capable of brokering any set of changes which might be good for the Univeristy and the region and other factors and people. He of course may fail as anyone may. However, given the opportunity he will be ablr to play a vital role should needed societal changes thrust his institution into national prominence.

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My next post in the People to Watch & Other Matters

Posted on January 3, 2011 | Leave a comment

Well, I am committed to doing neither more nor less than one hundred people in my series on “People to Watch in the Second Post 9/11 Decade”. The next installment will have nine people in the post. I have them all but these post always take longer than I hope that they will. Nonetheless, it will be coming out soon enough.

Relevant to this is the high incidence of injuries and the controversy that goes with it in the production of Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark which is the project being done by list member Julie Taymor. Also relevant is the launch of OWN the Oprah Winfrey Network this past New Year’s Day. I have been watching a bit and think it will be another success by list member Oprah Winfrey. Goldman SAchs has reached a huge deal with Facebook which should strengthen the financial secuity and flexibility of  list member Mark Zuckerberg. All of the members are doing relevant things on an almost daily basis but these seemed more relevant than most. Lastly, list member Philip Lord Norton Baron of Louth has reported the most popular (or visited posts) in his blog The Norton View this year. One of the top five posts is one that mentions list member me in the first sentence. That is his post “Coat of Arms” http://nortonview.wordpress.com/2010/04/14/coat-of-arms/ .  So keep patient the list will go on and be finished soon enough unless something stops me finishing it.

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A Little Update Post

Posted on January 2, 2011 | Leave a comment

Today the Catholic Church in the United States celebrated the Feast of the Epiphany because the Bishops of our national conference have saved us the inconvenience of an extra holiday on the sixth. Today my sister Sarah and her husband Kevin are celebrating their anniversary. Today the biggest bruise I ever got donating blood ripened into it complete purpling of an area the size of the bottom of a typical household can. Today, I finished determing who is on my next installment of people on my list of people to watch in the second post 9-11 decade. Today, I decided there will be nine people in the next post and it will be a list that goes to 100.
The day has been fair.

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Happy New Year’s Day and New Year Thoughts

Posted on December 31, 2010 | Leave a comment

I thank  God for all of the good things that happened to me and those I care most about this year. One good thing is that Sarah my sister and her husband Kevin who married on January 2,2009 will be celebrating their second wedding anniversary.  It is a blessing to see love making its way trhough this difficult world. Another blessing is that 2010 began with the New Orleans Saints preparing to win the Super Bowl and they are back in the playoffs.  Also this year  I got to see some great drama, sports and other activities in which my younger (and sometimes older) relatives were involved in making great things happen. But it was the year we lost my uncle William Charles Summers as well as some other people less near and dear but part of my life.

In terms of me personally looking back I would probably say that overall it was a bad year. But I would probably say that about almost every year. That assessment has nothing to do with the few facts and events mentioned about the year in this note.

 Compared to the end of 2008 this year the  midterm elections did seem to offer some check to the hubris of President Barack Hussein Obama. I am commenting on The Norton View at the moment but not the Lords of the Blog.   I am leaving this  year on this blog with a note from the tranistional days of 2008-2009. It first appeared in my Facebook profile notes. Here it is:

Starting and Continuing Journeys: Reflections on a New Year

by Frank Wynerth Summers III on Saturday, January 10, 2009 at 2:48pm
The year 2009 already has begun. That is the sort of gripping headline that has those of you who do read these notes sticking around. Or perhaps it is a rather predictable and ordinary statement about the change of a calendar year which we all could have predicted quite easily. The change of the year is one of those milestones that frequently are observed with some fervor by the people whose lives have aimed at a certain rhythym. There have been many societies where the balance provided by the holidays of each year was stronger than it is now in the same lands occupied by those former societies.

I just attended one of the more beautiful weddings and receptions which I have ever seen although it was a rural affair and not availed of some urban splendors. For the groom it was a first marriage of a musician, sailor, traveler and a young man with a bit of the swagger and reputation of a man who cut quite a figure as the free bachelor being joined to the joys and burdens of a lovely women with three beautiful children. My sister Sarah just got married to Kevin Joseph Granger. Her three beautiful children from her first marriage were included in a beautiful way in that event. Even the wedding itself which is a begining is also the end of a journey of engagement made possible by a journey of annulment to make her firts marriage a putative rather than bing Catholic marriage. That in utrn followed a heartbreaking journey of separation and divorce. That event was more in doubt than the calendar change was in most of our minds. The wedding was truly beautiful. Sarah and Kevin asked me to read and I was both honored and delighted to do so, it was a small but useful part of the whole ritual. Later we all had a reception in which music candlelight, christmas lights and fog combined for a really extraordinary ambience. Weddings are apropriately lavish affairs that allow people to engage in the right ways in the start of a journey through life together.

The video recording by my brother John Paul, the extensive preparation by my mother Genie and the relatively minor contribution by me which wore me out nearly because it was on top of and in the midst of Christmas was all part of a really wonderful whole that brought us closer together in a special way. There is in a wedding a networking with family and extended kindred in a way that is both stately and efficient. There is the test of handling a large project together. There is the right kind of redistribution of wealth in which those who can give only a small gift still get a good meal and a sense of bvelonging after paying what they can and those who have ample means can help a couple make a start while still getting something in return for their generosity. Without getting to the very important part about being joined in the eyes of God weddings already play many roles that make them very worthwhile if demanding launchsites for a life’s journey. Sarah and Kevin’s wedding launched a very exciting and impressive adventure that is of value to society as a whole.

I am writing the first draft at least of this sentence on January 6 the traditional date for celebrating the Feast of the Epiphany. This feast comemorates the visit to the Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph by the three Magi who had come from the East. These Magi brought gold, frankincense and myrrh to honor the newborn king who by then would almost certainly have been out of the manger but who was born there. Because Christmas is celbrated every year and because of that the Epiphany is kept near Christmas. The feast does not indicate anyone who scheduled it believing that the three kings of the East arrived only a dozen or so days after the Birth of Jesus. The Holy Family already had several reasons to want to re=establish their ties to their ancestral House of David and its ancient site so that they might have stayed there even as long as a year. The star if it appeared at his birth and waqs researche by the Magi may have become more meaningful as news arrived of various royal births and perhaps among the goodly number some rumors of an already growing Jesus story. Then they visited the royal palace of Herod in Jerusalem. His scribes agreed that the Messiah should be born in the City of David. They made their report to the King who met with his guests who then journeyed from Jerusalem to Bethlehem. Their coming would help provide means and incentive for the Holy Family’s flight into Egypt while they themselves returned home by a different route. For the wedding of Sarah and Kevin we had three visitors from the East which is West of Israel. Two Spanish priests and a seminarian came to us, the Priests concelebrated with the wedding mass and they have stayed and celebrated the Epiphany as well. One of them was baptized on the feast of the Epiphany many years ago. All are young and from a country which really celebrates the Feast of the Epiphany. It has been special to have them here at this time. 

The journeys on my mind today are numerous. One way in which journeys enter into this season for me is through the journeys of Marco Polo. Because I have traveled a great deal and because for much of my life I wanted to go to China and then did go and now remember going to China — Marco Polo has interested me. In his of tale of his journeys he tells of meeting worshiping communities, monuments and sites of ancillary wonders that were related to the Magi who visited the Christ child and which still survived autonomously into his own day. Marco Polo’s book has never been very respectable. Each generation has found something about it incredible and dismissed most of it. Usually those points of contention have been shown to be reliably and fairly accurately reported from Marco Polo’s point of view. Journeying always can bring people face to face with one thing or another that is almost incomprehensible to those who stayed behind. Probably the real magi who really did visit the real Jesus left behind a legacy which he observed transformed by retelling and ritual into a lovely heritage of magic and belief. Anyone who reads me knows that my respect for the modern kind of cynical skeptic has benn almost destroyed entirely by a 1000 experiences of their ridculous ignorance and fanaticism.

These wise kings are also some how a reminder that a kingis both royal and a monarch but the tow qualities are separate. Not all monarchs are royal and not all royals are monarchs. This is part of what Christians should undestand because of the importance of Jeus’s identity as king. So it is perhaps a final Christmas reflection from me in these notes.

When one thingks of the message to the shepherds recalled on Christmas one thinks of Peace on Earth to Men of Goodwill. Christianity is largely an antimagical religion that celebrates the three Wizard Kings and their goodwill to their central figure. Though, Marco Polo found the remenants of the Magi’s tradition often at war with Islam it was not a coherent tradtion in the way Catholicism is. Quite possibly these Magi left some seeds to germinate in Arabia which when fused with Judaism and Christianity and the tradtions of his particular tribe helped to create both the historic Mohammed and the historic early Islam. Later more official sort of people might have de-emphasized their influence since they are not entirely reputable from and Islamic point of view. Possibly even the genes of some of these kings and their ilk have meandered around into the blood of such men as King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia whether known to them or not. This journey of mystery and subterfuge might be both historical and historically significant in many ways that we will not ever know now. The long struggle of Christians and Moslems in the most important regions has probably erased any trails that could be profitably followed. I would mostly blame Islamic forces but think that Moslems might see things differently.

At the end of 2009 I reconnected with a woman I had known slightly as a girl and who has journeyed so much since that she is one of my very few peers in the area of travel. We chatted had coffee and I wrote her some verse and it seems our journey has ended there. But it was an inner journey for me nonetheless. For a very short time I journeyed back into the sense of happiness one has when it seems possible that life’s journey will be less bleak and horrible becuase one has the promise of sweet and good company. At the same time I was also in touch with the feminine inspiration I have not forgotten in China and yet find so very distant in time and space now. The woman I encountered again was in no way a 15 year old nearly mad Juliet nor am I in any way Romeo. Yet, whatever it was I was sad to see the light go out and leave me again in the dark in that particular way.She is on this List but she has never posted anything disclosing our flirtation on my page and so I will not expose her here. Life is full of the struggles of inner journeys as well.

I have also made a kind of journey to the end of my rope. This has been most specifially related to the Obama election in the larger context of our times. I may stay here till I die but I am pretty sure that I cannot keep living my life hoping for an American future for myself and my descendants. Fortunately, given the other factors, I have no descendants in this or any other country. But I have reached a point of not struggling to care. This has been an unsuitable place for me to live and now it is becoming an impossible one instead. I may simply whittle away my remaining years or I may move but I am beyond investing my deepest self here. That is a sad and unfortuante place to have arrived but it is where I am.

Through the latter part of 2008 and into 2009 I also had an unexpectedly prolonged dialog with Lord Philip Norton of Louth mostly on the “Lords of the Blog” section of the British Parliament website — www.parliament.uk –which has helped me make a sort of journey to dealing with some parts of both my Anglo and Acadian heritage. Mostly I have posted comments on his blogbut these are vetted and he has responded more than once. On one occasion I begged out of responding to a more technical question he posed for various reasons. So it has been a dialog facilitated by the instant journeying of the internet. A journey of some value.

Also in a year when NASA has been seen as a good target for budget cuts (and it may be) I have posted on the Planetary Society’s Facebook Group page a discussion post outlining how I would see Space exploration, travel and colonization in the human future. I believe that NASA has an important role to play in the journey of human civilzation becoming what it should become, more generally that we most journey to the moon and mars in the biggest and most responsible ways we can and as productively as we can while exploring space. We also have to journey into new ways of doing things that are more cost effective. 

While I believe in inner spiritual and intellectual journeys and I believe in relational journeys these are fed and not mainly in competition against journeys through space and place. In an era in which any two places on Earth can communicate in less than a second and one can travel between almost any two points on the earth’s surface within a few days it is vital that humanity preserve its sense of adventure by traveling beyond the Earth. Just as the weding of my sister had guests she alone or she and Kevin had been with in Spain and other countries to make her journey across kneeler and cake to KEVIN more full so we can hope for outer space to really enrich our lives on Earth. 

In this year may all of our journeys be more prosperous and happier than we expect. May they also bring us to good places.

 ·

  •  
    • Frank Wynerth Summers III HRH Louis de Bourbon has left my friends list of his own volition just before this comment was posted.
      January 29, 2009 at 12:05am · 
    •  
      Frank Wynerth Summers III I have just been notified that the HRH’s account was terminated. Repulican persecution is never a surprise nor do I say it is not understandable but since I cannot personally be sure right now and may not post more I will not speculate regarding any of this.
      January 29, 2009 at 12:30am 
END OF FACEBOOK NOTE
I am entirely engaged in the process of ending this year and starting the next. I am not living in the near past. However, I am wishing you and yours a Happy New Year! Just as I would have wished you on that or any other day. My family gathered today for a traditional New Year’s Eve meal of cabbage, ham and blackeyed peas. This was followed by traditional fireworks in the back   of the lawn surrounding the house. Those are going on as I finish this first edit. 

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The year is winding down.

Posted on December 30, 2010 | Leave a comment

The Year of 2010 is coming to a close and I am aware of it at many levels. The New Orleans Saints are in the playoffs. The list I am doing of people to watch in the second post 9/11 decade will be 100 and not 91 people. I had a rough day today but not terrible. New Year’s Eve is my ex-wife’s birthday. The weather where I am has been a roller coaster. Christmas has been a bit of a roller coaster as well. But whatever the reasons or rhymes of it all 2010 is ending.

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Eight More People to Watch in the Second Post 9-11 Decade

Posted on December 28, 2010 | 5 comments

In this blog post I will not be going over all of the people who have not made the list but are on the brink. As remaining available slots get fewer the proportion of those who almost made it gets greater and greater. I may do a separate  post at the end on all of the close candidates and I may post some more names of that kind on my next installment but today the only new names to discuss  or the ones in these eight sketches.  They join the others who have appeared in this series.

My first post on this list had twenty-five names:

https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/the-last-year-of-the-9-11-decade-has-begun/

President Barack  Hussein Obama , Josef Ratzinger, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, Her Britannic Majesty, Elizabeth, HRH Charles Prince of Wales, David Cameron, Sarah Palin, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Glen Beck,  Hillary Clinton, President Nicolas Sarkozy, Benjamin Netanyahu, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Carl Svanberg, UN Secretary Ban Ki Moon, Hu Jin Tao, Timothy Geithner, Al Franken, Barney Frank, Vladimir Putin,  Bobby Jindal, Bill Richardson, Bill Clinton and Osama Bin Laden

The second portion had fifteen people to watch:

https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/12/08/fifteen-more-people-to-watch-in-9112011-9112021/

Barons Rothschild, Britney Spears, Carl A. Brasseaux, Philip Lord Norton Baron of Louth, Carlos Slim Helu, Charles Bolden, Taylor Swift, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands,  Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson, Kate Middleton,  Catherine Princess of Wales, Princess William of Wales, Princess Catherine, Prince Luís of Orléans-Braganza (born Luís Gastão Maria José Pio Miguel Gabriel Rafael Gonzaga de Orléans e Bragança e Wittelsbach, Ms. Gail J. McGovern, Me,  His Highness Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani and Prince William of Wales

The third portion of my list had ten people watch:

https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/12/11/ten-more-people-to-watch-from-9112011-9112021/

Gaudencio Borbon Cardinal Rosales, Queen Sofia of Spain, Su Graciosa Majestad Sofia la Reina Catolica, Oprah Winfrey, Bill O’Reilly, Julie Ann Yannatta, Vitaly Alexandrovich Lopota, Amy Grant, Ratan N. Tata, Mark Zuckerberg and Jean-Cristophe Niel 

The fourth portion of my list had five people to watch:

https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/five-more-people-to-watch-in-the-second-post-911-decade/

Liu Zhijun: 刘志军, King George Tupou V, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Heinz-Otto Peitgen,  Julie Taymor

The most recent post prior to this had thirteen  people to watch:

 Charles Alan Murray, Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr, Professor Ei-ichi Negishi, Drew Brees, Angela Dorothea Merkel(- Kasner),  General Stanley Allen McChrystal, Danica Sue Patrick, Melinda French Gates (born Melinda Ann French, Marilyn Vos Savantt, Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, Carla Gilberta Bruni Tedeschi, Madame Nicolas Sarkozy,  Air Defense Commander Shigeru Iwasaki and Amy Hungerford 

https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/12/18/thirteen-more-people-to-watch-in-the-second-post-911-decade/

After that comes my current addition of eight more names. That will bring me to a total of seveny-six. However, I have not yet decided if it will be seventy-six out of one hundred or seventy-six out of ninety-one.

1.Howard Lutnick is a figure who it seems ought to be included near the top of any list that has anything to do with September 11,2010. His firm is among the most important of its kind in the world and its people were among the most affected by 9/11.   Mr. Howard Lutnick, the current Chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald LP  and sometimes of eSpeed, Inc. which has served as a publicly traded umbrella with evolving roles in the structure  at Cantor has been therefor almost thirty years now. Lutnick joined Cantor Fitzgerald in 1983. With fellow high-ranking executive Stuart Fraser he was among the first two to matriculate from Cantor Fitzgerald’s Brokerage Training Program. An alumnus of small Haverford College and a product of rising through the ranks he has had a reputation as kind of “down to Earth” in his rarified financial orbit both among players who see that as praise and those who would see it as an insult. Cantor Fizgerald was the principal party of its kind in dealing with US Treasury Securities in 25% or more of the total value of all such transactions when 9/11 occurred. The network of firms lost its headquarters and hundreds of employees, executives and associates in those attacks.     Howard Lutnick, Chairman & CEO of eSpeed, Inc. gave  a fair number of  speeeches, wrote notices and attended many funerals. Here is part of one the many things he had to express in writing in those days. New York, NY — September 20, 2001 — eSpeed :  “eSpeed has always been more than a team, or a vision, or even a company. At its heart eSpeed is a family. As a family, we mourn the losses of our siblings, our best friends — our partners. We cannot imagine work or life without them nor their vast array of qualities and characteristics that enhanced our lives.”  “It is with great sadness that I write of some of the lost eSpeed senior management family.”  – Frederick T. Varacchi, President & Chief Operating Officer, Director. Fred was my friend and an extraordinary businessman, technologist and leader. His energy, vision and enthusiasm created eSpeed and brought the company to preeminent status. His wife Eileen and their three children can always be proud of their father’s accomplishments. eSpeed was Fred’s company and will always stand as a tribute to his amazing drive and charisma”.  Lutnick is capable of bringing a presence in high finance which could help broker a a new American and global synthesis. One more aware of the threats that created 9/11.    

2.  His Serene Highness Albert II, Sovereign Prince of Monaco (Albert Alexandre Louis Pierre Grimaldi; born 14 March 1958) is the head of the  House of Grimaldi and the current ruler of the Principality of Monaco. He is the son of Ranier III, Prince of Monaco, and the American actress Grace Kelly. His sisters are Caroline, Princess of Hanover, and Princess Stephanie of Monaco. Born in the Prince’s Palace of Monaco, Monaco, Albert attended the Albert I High School, graduating with distinction in 1976. Albert reamained connected with is mother’s American heritage in a number of ways throughout life. The prince was a camper and later a counselor for six summers at Camp Tecumseh on Lake Winnipesaukee, Moultonborough, New Hampshire in the 1970s. While he has had specific years, weeks and days set aside for  training in various princely duties, this has not interfered with his other educational attainments too much.  In 1977 he began to matriculate at Amherst College in Masschusetts under the real but iregular designation of “Albert Grimaldi”. On campus his studies inluded political science, economics, music, and English Literature. Outside the classroom Prince Albert joined Chi Psi fraternity,  spent the summer of 1979 touring Europe and the Middle East with the Amherst Glee Club, participated in an exchange program with the University of Bristol, at the Alfred Marshall School of Economics and Management in 1979  and was known to be fully engaged in college life. He graduated in 1981 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science.  His role as Princely patron of Monaco’s football teams grows out of lifesyle in which he has mastered  a good number of sports and participated in far more. His membership in the International Olympic Committee since 1985 comes from a very deep rootedness not only in his overall athletic background but in an Olympic background as well. His famous mother’s not unacomplished American father John B. Kelly, and her brother John B. Kelly, Jr.,  both won Olympic medal winners in rowing and involved themselves in the Olympic movement. Inspired by this legacy the price entered the Olympic fray himself and international press reported the prince lived in the village without special treatment during his Olympic stints. He was a competitor in the bobsled at every Winter Olympics from Calgary in 1988 though Albertville, Lillehammer and Nagano to  his last foray at Salt Lake City in 2002.   Later that same year, on the 25th of  October, Albert visited Miami, Florida for a World Olympians Association . The group’s mission was to have the 100,000 Olympians get involved with their communities and talk to young athletes about dedication and training. He has also reached out to the world for small Monaco and its largely untaxed Monegasques though programs like the World Music Awards. Recenlty he has become engaged to marry South African Olympic swimmer Charlene Wittstock. The couple will be married in civil and religious ceremonies in July of 2011 and will be expected to produce a legitimate male heir. He has two ilegitimate children and the  succession has varied complexities.

 3. Elbert Leander “Burt” Rutan (born June 17, 1943) is involved with Richard Branson in creating the first commercial spaceline.  American aerospace engineer noted for his originality in designing light, strong, unusual-looking, energy-efficient aircraft. He is famous for his design of the record-breaking Voyager, which was the first plane to fly around the world without stopping or refueling, and the sub-orbital spaceplane SpaceShip One which won the Ansari X-Prize in 2004 for becoming the first privately funded spacecraft to enter the realm of space twice within a two week period. He has four aircraft on display in the National Air and Space Museum: SpaceShipOne, the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer, Voyager, and the VariEze. Beyond all that he has accomplished there is always the sense of possiblity that he may now be in a postion to access those  funds and social resources which may allow him to really play a role in creating innovations which in time will remake much of the aerospace industry.

4.Ayatollah Seyed Ali Hoseyni Khāmene’i ( سید علی حسینی خامنه ای ,  born 17 July 1939)  is an Iranian politician  who I should exclude because he is old and allegedy very sick. However, I see Iran as one of the most important countries in understanding the next ten years and the Ayotollah looms large as the figurehead of the Muslim conservative establishment in Iran and  Twelver shi’a marja. He was a President of Iran from 1981 to 1989 which is an important role of which he made a great deal in that revolutionary Islamic republic which is much better organized and sound in construction than an Al Qaeda type country such as the Afghanistan of the Taliban. He has been Supreme Leader of Iran since June 1989 when the Assmbly of Experts appointed him to succeed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who was President Jimmy Carter’s big nemesis.  In the religious and  political ideology of this country still defining itself he has been described as one of only three people having “important influences” on the Islamic Republic of Iran .  So far, the biggest challenge to his leadership has been the mass protests following the  June 2009 presidential elections.  Khamenei, however, continued to strongly support Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s policies and re-election. Khamenei  has a badly paralyzed right hand since he was the victim of an attack intended to assassinate him in June 1981 .

5. Dr.Tracy E. Caldwell – Dyson(Ph.D.) was born  on August 14, 1969 in Arcadia, California. A few weeks ago NASA published an image of astronaut Tracy Caldwell-Dyson floating at ease in the new cupola on the nadir side of the International Space Station she is relaxed in an almost classical pose and peering out of the windows of the  great new view space Caldwell-Dyson is not a ravishing beauty and no female astronauts are very bad looking either but she is better suited  to the Greek goddess role than most. The woman astronaut takes in the planet on which we were all born, and to which she  knew she would soon return. About 350 kilometers up she can clearly see the curvature of the Earth from the cupola. She views some of the Earth’s  clouds, in white, and lthe water rich and life giving blues of the  atmosphere and oceans. This photograph occurred during the  174 days Caldwell Dyson spent aboard the International Space Station as a Flight Engineer on Expedition 23/24. In this stint Caldwell Dyson performed three spacewalks for a total of 22 hours and 49 minutes of EVA time. The Expedition 24 crew returned to  the place they had left in April having a safe landing in central Kazakhstan on September 25, 2010. In completing this long duration mission, Caldwell Dyson logged a total of 176 days in space.   Back on Earth she is married to George Dyson  and has a wide range of Earthly interests. Caldwell-Dyson received a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from the California State University in 1993 and a Doctorate in Physical Chemistry from the University of California in 1997.  She is a respected member of the Sigma Xi Research Society and the American Chemical Society. Her formal recognitions have included the  NASA Performance Award (2002 & 2001), NASA Go the Extra Mile (GEM) Award (2001), NASA Superior Accomplishment Award (2000), NASA Group Achievement Award – Russian Crusader Team (2000), Camille and Henry Dreyfus Postdoctoral Fellowship in Environmental Science (1997). Outstanding Doctoral Student Award in Chemistry from the University of California Davis (1997). American Vacuum Society – Nellie Yeoh Whetten Award (1996). American Vacuum Society Graduate Research Award (1996). Pro Femina Research Consortium Graduate Research Award (1996). Pro Femina Research Consortium Graduate Award for Scientific Travel (1996).University of California, Davis Graduate Research Award (1996). University of California, Davis Graduate Student Award for Scientific Travel (1994). Patricia Roberts Harris Graduate Fellowship in Chemistry (1993-1997). Lyle Wallace Award for Service to the Department of Chemistry, California State University Fullerton (1993). National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates Award, (1992). Council of Building & Construction Trades Scholarship (1991 and 1992). Big West Scholar Athlete (1989-1991).  In graduate school and since and at NASA she has done a vaiety of useful work but perhaps all of this flows from her technical and careful foundation in aver all-American girl next door job when she worked as an electrician/inside wireman for her father’s electrical contracting company doing commercial and light industrial type construction.  She taught at the  University of California, Davis in  general chemistry laboratory while she  began her graduate research. Her dissertation included work investigating molecular-level surface reactivity and kinetics of metal surfaces using electron spectroscopy, laser desorption, and Fourier transform mass spectrometry techniques. She did a great deal of technical design and fabrication work in support of her research.. Dr. Caldwell has published and presented her work in numerous papers at technical conferences and in scientific journals. Dr. Tracy Caldwell has many varied interests from sports to currently singing in band and she is a private pilot and with conversational mastery in American Sign Language (ASL) and Russian.  Selected by NASA in June 1998 she began training in August 1998. Astronaut Candidate Training included  the classes and review of reseources anyone might expect as well as instruction in Shuttle and International Space Station  (ISS) systems, physiological training, ground school to prepare for T-38 flight training and learning water and wilderness survival techniques.  In 1999, Dr. Caldwell was first assigned to the Astronaut Office ISS Operations Branch as a Russian Crusader, participating in the testing and integration of Russian developed for the International Space Station.  Since then she has worked in support positions and in space. Several female astonauts were deserving of mention here but somehow I have felt that she has mapped the path in a way which can be relevant to the

6. Lang Lang Heralded as the “hottest artist on the classical music planet” by the New York Times. He is a bridge between East and West in an era whichsome people seem to think that all the bridges have already been built. Lang Lang began playing piano at the age of 3, and on reaching the age of 5 had won the Shenyang Competition and had given his first public recital. Entering Beijing’s Central Music Conservatory at age 9, he won first prize at the Tchaikovsky International Young Musicians Competition and played the complete 24 Chopin Études at the Beijing Concert Hall at age 13. Lang Lang’s break into stardom came at age 17, when he was called upon for a dramatic last-minute substitution at the “Gala of the Century,” playing a Tchaikovsky concerto with the Chicago Symphony. I am going to leave unmentioned almost all of the many musical awards, venues and recordings and commercial achievements that this  young man has achieved. I am only going to mention a few of them to show what he has done in establishing a base for the influence which gets him on this list.  A true product of the modern interchange of cultural educational resources 28 year-old Lang Lang has played sold out recitals and concerts in every major city in the world with a large venue for classical performance and is the first Chinese pianist to be engaged by the Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic and all the top American orchestras.  In 2008, over five billion people viewed Lang Lang’s performance in Beijing’s opening ceremony for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, where he was seen as a symbol of the youth and the future of China. This status has inspired over 40 million Chinese children to learn to play classical piano – a phenomenon coined by The Today Show as “the Lang Lang effect.” He has shown China to the world but also the world to China and in 2008 The Recording Academy  appointed him their Cultural Ambassador to China. It is not surprising that  Lang Lang was recognized in the 2009 Time 100 – Time magazine’s annual list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.   Lang Lang was named an official worldwide ambassador to the 2010 Shanghai Expo, and played at the opening ceremony. For almost ten years  Lang Lang has acted in decisive ways to  give back  to and support  children around the world by mentoring young talented pianists, leading 100 piano students in concert, performing for sick children in hospitals, performing music recitals in  remote communities, and volunteering his unpaid musical talents to raise awareness of other charitable causes. Lang Lang’s charitable efforts led to the recent launch of the Lang Lang International Music Foundation  which is committed to children and music education, Lang Lang works with varied impressive groups and individuals to inspire young people to believe that music can make life better.  This blends in with his paid activity as well Lang Lang paired up with jazz great Herbie Hancock at the 2008 Grammy® Awards, for a performance broadcast live to 45 million viewers around the world. The two pianists held an inaugural world tour in summer 2009.  In May 2009, Lang Lang had three young scholars chosen from his  foundation – aged between 6 and 10 years old – performed with him on The Oprah Winfrey Show on “Oprah’s Search for the World’s Most Smartest and Most Talented Kids.” Lang Lang is deeply committed to creating and participating in programs that bring sustained interest for music into the lives of children. China does not do very well in comparing with philanthropy elsewhwere. Lang Lang has a powerful role to play in creating a new philanthropic consensus of East and West in the new order as well as in creating great music.

7.Natalie Portman  ( נטלי פורטמן‎, born Natalie Hershlag; June 9, 1981) is an Israeli-American actress. Her first role was as an orphan taken in by a hitman in the 1994 French action film  known in the USA as The Professional.   She is known by the last name Portman. This stage name, is her maternal grandmother’s maiden name. Reportedly she first took this name out of fear she would discredit her parents in case her performance in The Professionnal was unsatisfactory. While she has done many films she achieved fame and fortune as Pahdme Amidala in George Lucas’s Star Wars prequel trilogy. She has since kept the name in order to help maintain her privacy and to keep her family out of the spotlight. She did use her real name in school however, in 1999, she enrolled at Harvard University to study psychology while she was working on the Star Wars films. She completed her bachelor’s degree in 2003 . While a good number of beautiful young movie stars have been welcomed by the Ivy League  her choice reminded some people of Jodie Foster’s  choice years earlier in going to Yale when their seemed to be many reasons to give her self up exclusively to Hollywood.  She added to her mystique certainly witrh this educational achievement and was already a little exotic. Natalie Portman was born on June 9th, 1981, in Jerusalem, Israel.  Her family lived in Jerusalem until she was 3 years old.  The family then moved to Washington D.C. in 1984 because of her father’s medical training and career advancements and then moved on to Connecticut in 1988. They moved again to Long Island, New York in 1990.  The compelling actress is about  5 feet 3 inches (160 cm), or maybe a bit shorter than that—more like 5′ 0″ or 5′ 1″ with dark brown hair often dyed a reddish-brown, usually kept fairly long and naturally somewhere between wavy and curly. She is well known as legitimately multi-lingual English and Hebrew; also some French and Japanese she studied at school. Near to her parents (  her father is a physician whose practice is as an Ob-Gyn/Infertility Specialist and he is married to a homemaker and full-time mother who invested  herself very heavily in Natalie and wh0 also enjoys art as a hobby and drew Natalie into various aspects of the love of art) Natalie now lives in Soho, NYC.   Natalie appeared in many plays at Usdan Theater Arts Camp. She playedroles as starkly contrastin as  Dora, in Fiorello andas Annie in Annie get your Gun.  Natalie has been a strict vegetarian since she was 8, allegedly after seeing a surgey on a chicken at a medical conference with her physician father. She does not eat meat but maintians a healthy vigor by eating eggs and drinking skim milk every day.  She recognizes that in 1999 appearing in the Star Wars films changed her life very dramaticaly.  In the promotion of the film she talked about the resources that the production brought to her transformation into character. In this light she discussed costumes: “I’m so lucky to have been able to wear them. I think they’re some of the most beautiful – if not the most beautiful – costumes ever made for film. Trisha Biggar did an unbelievable job, and the people who made the original sketches did too. […] It was just unbelievable, and it really helped me with the character, too – because you carry yourself so much differently when you’re wearing that kind of gear. […] To put on, it really didn’t take very long. Hair and makeup is probably about two hours – that was long. But the costumes snap on, snap off – because if I had to go to the bathroom or something, you don’t want to take all day.” Likewise she experienced big production assisstance and demands as regards vocals as she changed her voice for the role: “George wanted me to do something very different than myself. So he suggested the accent be in a deeper tone of voice. I worked with a dialect coach for about two days to make up a “nothing” accent that’s kind of unidentifiable and all over the place – an accent that was somewhat reminiscent of the older actresses like Lauren Bacall and Katherine Hepburn, who had that kind of regal tone.” (Star Wars Insider 1/2000) “After we completed the film, George electronically modulated it even more.” (Calgary Sun 5/1999) . In Star Wars and in The Other Boleyn Girl she portrayed young love and desire, relationships complicated by grand politics, childbirth and death. In V is for Vendetta she prtrayed associations with heavy male characters as Henry VIII, Anikin Skywalker and the  assassin in her debut film.  Her own connection to geoplotical horror is real enough. She discussed what that  connection iwht the Holocaust was when discussing her film work. ” Fortunately my grandparents escaped, but their whole family perished in the Holocaust. There were stories in the house of what had happened to them and it wasn’t that much talked about. I had to go on a website to read my grandfather’s descriptions of what happened to the family, but it is absolutely something I have lived with and have grown up with”.  Natalie Portman is young and vulnerable and kind of an ingenue by nature. Her body of work and her engagement with it reminds some people of the power and appeal of real sex for sex’s sake. Sex where desire, affection, fertility, need and covenant play their roles. It is an awareness of sexuality which will be necessary to the future survival of our civilization.   Rumours about her own life sexually and otherwise have abounded and will increase with Black Swan. However, she can play a very important role in a new synthesis. 

8. John Christopher “Johnny” Depp II (born June 9, 1963) is an American actor and musician known  as Johnny Depp for his portrayals of offbeat, eccentric characters such as Raoul Duke in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,  Ichabod Crane  in Sleepy Hollow, Edward D. Wood, Jr. in  Ed Wood, and  Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series.  It is the case that Depp has done remarkable things with the crime genre. This includes his portrayal of a key character in the suspenseful police procedural The Tourist which recently came out with Angelina Jolie. He rose to prominence in a lead role as a detective on the television series 21 Jump Street and quickly became regarded as a teen idol.He has explored the solid citizen and father as forced man of crime in Nick of Time and the crazed denier and mellow writer in Secret Window.  Other crime genre work includes  and later found box office success in roles such as Ichabod Crane in the new police procedural version of Sleepy Hollow,  the man who is much more than pirate but is clearly a pirate named Captain  Jack Sparrow  was potrayed by Depp in the Pirates of the Carribean film series. He portrayed the wrongly convicted man turned calculating monster in the title role in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007). Other crime stories have been the mob and FBI drama in which Johnny Depp played Joseph D. Pistone in  Donnie Brasco. Depp has also played great American gangsters from two eras in our national history in  his role as cocaine kingpen in Blow (2001). and more recently portraying bank robber John Dillinger  in Michael Mann’s 2009 film  Public Enemies. Depp has portrayed off-beat figures who are not criminals or lawmen such as independent film-maker Edward D. Wood, Jr., in Ed Wood, writer and drug enthusiast  Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,Peter Pan’s writing creator in Finding Neverland.  His fantastical portrayals in crime like Jack Sparrow have their counterparts as well.  He initially came to film prominence as the title character of  Edward Scissorhands  which was also the start of  collaboration with director and close friend Tim Buton whom Depp has joined  in seven films, including the most recent offerings Alice in Wonderland, and Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  Films featuring Depp have earned over $2.6 billion at the United States box office and over $6 billion worldwide. he has two children with his estranged wife and both claims and is reputed to be devoted to and has been liked with supermodels and famous women of varied stripes. His dark portrayal of the  dark and heavy title character in The Libertine seemed connected in real ways to the nonethless more properlyt evolved Depp. While he has been nonminated by all the major awards including the academy a good number of times his wins have been limited to one Golden Globe and one Screen Actors Guild award as far as I know. Depp can serve as a bridge for the Hollywood establishment should a transformative period occur. He has a grasp of aristocratic personal capital which is relevant to a future Hollywood and which has few clear precedents in history because of the size of the current entertainment sector.

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Merry Christmas and Christmassy Thoughts

Posted on December 23, 2010 | 3 comments

My brother Simon Peter Emmanuel Summers was born on Christmas Day. We will have a family birthday party for him and one of our cousins in which we will also wrap another Christmas Party for the family. The Posada will be the central ritual at this party. I have to rush through this blog to get to that next event.
Last year at Christmas oddly enough I took a break from blogging from the middle of Advent until nearly the end of the twelve days. This year I hope to do a little better. Not for the last time in this blog: Merry Christmas!

I have already blogged that the play which was both public and well-organized on the one hand and a family affair on the other hand and which is a Christmas tradition was a success.

https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/12/20/the-play-was-great/

I blogged that I would be going to the play. It was a Christmas related post.
https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/12/20/i-will-attend-god-is-with-us-in-new-orleans/

I blogged about other Christmas season events.
https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/12/16/christmas-is-a-coming/
Even before this I had some posts about all the holidays of the season which I will not link here.

Here is a post I wrote for my Facebook account Profile on December 22,2008. I may get out an original post today or tomorrow. But if I do not then this is fairly valid:
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone who reads this note. This is a season when we try to turn our attention to the best things in life and about life at many levels. The celebration of Christ’s birth is a powerful foundation on which a complicated cultural structure has been built and is being built still. I am blessed to be in a house with a Christmas tree, a nativity set and two turkeys in the refrigerator. I have a pile of gifts for my family that needs to wrapped and though they are not as nice as I wish they were I am pleased and proud to have them there. I got out fewer cards than I would have liked but more than many years. I have sent gifts out early enough to friends overseas that they could get them by Christmas Day or else have already gotten them. Other than a back plaster, some allergy pills and being out of shape I have few signs of ill-health. There have been quite a few years in my life when almost none of these good things and certainly not all of them would have been true. For my own Christmas present my parents paid for my three nights at the Sheraton in New Orleans, my attendance at the Southern Historical Association and a new suit for my sister’s wedding. That puts this Christmas in the well above average financial value section of my life’s course. In addition, I will still have a stocking and something to unwrap under the tree. I will have the presence of most of my family on the BIG DAY and of almost all of them during the twelve days. So it is true to say that I am aware of all these things and grateful for them and that makes this a good Christmas. On the other hand as for many other people it will be a difficult Christmas.

This is a tough Christmas for me but Christmas is still very special. It is a holiday to which I have always devoted as much time, energy and resources as I could. It is a time to recognize the birth of Jesus Christ. At Christmastime many of us can hardly help reflecting on all the things we might have hoped for at Christmas and did not get or hoped to be and did not become. People are aware of failed marriages and estranged friends and they are not always able to put things back together again or even sincerely regret the choices that ended those relationships but they still feel the end of those things and the absence of their good fruits during the holiday season. This Christmas is both better and worse than usual in that specific regard. At Christmas we have a whole bunch of images and memories and dreams that build up and are associated with that day and season. For me there is the fact that I was married on December 19 to a woman born on December 31. This season my sister will marry a man born on December 18 and they will be joined on January 2, 2009. It will be both easier and better in many ways and harder and worse in many other ways for those old dates paired in the now distant past to be overshadowed and reversed in sequence in the present and future.

We may not always know exactly how we wish things were or even feel strong enough to articulate how we think things are wrong but many of us see the lacks and voids in our lives at Christmas. W see faces that we hoped would be around in our minds’ eyes. We think of traditions that have gotten lost and we maybe even regret the loss of a spiritual purity we felt in some half remembered mass or  other worship service. We wish our choices and talents had enabled us to provide more for those small people who we would most like to see overwhelmed with delight. We may even remember the way previous Christmases were affected by wars or natural disasters in big and small ways we cannot change.

Yesterday, on the last Sunday of Advent, as I attended Saint James Chapel at Esther, Louisiana I found out that my overweight 44-year-old self with arthritis could not handle standing very well after I had stood all through mass. I stood through the mass because I had trouble finding my ankle braces and left without bringing a chair. There were no pews because Hurricane Ike had destroyed them with a flood just as Hurricane Rita had destroyed their longstanding predecessors not so long ago which left us without pews for Christmas that year as well. I have many memories of standing at relative attention for many hours at a time. But those memories are lies when translated to the body of a much heavier man who works out less and has fewer resources for recovery. Sometimes familiar holiday pain is harsher and sharper in a given year that we had expected or than our memories had prepared us for.

There have been years when I was able to buy a bicycle, or jewelry or something else that might be extraordinary for the recipient. There have also been years when there was little more than baked goods from our home kitchen that my ex-wife and I could put on our list. This is a year when the gifts are between those two posts on the lower end. But many of us still long to be able to do more and have a bit more flair. I have never bought the trendiest gifts but like the scarf I bought Anika for her birthday I have tried to buy classic gifts that would last and bring joy. However, I did not just come back from nearly a year of shopping in China this year.

In the movie When Harry Met Sally there is the theme wanting be with someone to kiss at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Most of us don’t want to stand alone beneath the mistletoe either. While I have not mentioned her directly in these notes before I remember watching When Harry Met Sally on DVD in my apartment with my Chinese girlfriend (who spoke very good English) and the thing she could not help saying was “How many couples are there in this movie?” , what she meant was how many times did the principal characters end up with somebody else before they ended up together. For some of us the holidays are about such a sensation being repeated again. There is certainly little sexual naiveté in modern neo-Communist China. What impressed her was the idea of a fiction or fantasy with so many false starts. Those of us who are getting older alone notice the rough edges getting sharper. This year I ran across a couple of nice women in the USA and the thing that I most note about the encounters was how little chance I felt existed of us sharing eggnog this holiday.The layers of disappointment build and one feels that Christmas is a reminder of all we don’t have right.

But, whether it was at the Christmas Concert I attended, or in Church or in a child’s hug we celebrate the birth of human baby boy who is somehow God-With-Us. This Emmanuel who is Jesus Christ ends up in a stable partly because his Royal Birth brings him to a decaying and overcrowded town where his royal ancestor David had his clan seat. There wise men, whom tradition knows as kings, would bring him gifts and they would have to be used to run into Egypt and live probably in the largest Jewish Community outside of ancient Israel, Alexandria. There he would learn the Greek which with Hebrew and Aramaic would be vital to his ministry later in life. He would thus escape the last great established King of Israel who was known to kill anyone who might be a threat of any kind. Wise in the world, cruel, treacherous, a master builder seeking redemption in building a great temple where Jesus would later preach this man’s name was Herod the Great.  Herod was near the end of his rope and life as this boy was born. A child with ties to the freest Jews , those of Galilee, the powerful priestly clans of Jerusalem and the most honorable of all royal houses — that of David — this child was a threat before Royal Eastern mystics came asking for him. It was with Herod’s collapsing dynasty divided into four small realms by the Romans that the adult Jesus would have to contend. We remember that Holy Family on the run. We look at all the good days they hoped for and we make what we can of angels singing to shepherds. Somehow, if we try we, find that God is with us too and we also can find peace and goodwill. We can put aside our sorrows and sing “Glory to God in the Highest” as we remember that First Noel. Then we can go out and try to bring a little Christmas to the world and into the rest of our year. I do not think that Christmas ought to be too theological. A little Santa Claus and a little of Holy Bishop Nicholas, a little tree and a little nativity scene can all make a more complete Christmas. The odd blend of the Charles Dickens Christmas Carol has its place. But Jesus certainly is the reason for the season.

Was Jesus born around Chanukah? I can assure anyone that there are no certain reasons to say he was not. It is true Christmas gradually emerged as a decent party to replace Roman Pagan feasts near this date. But that is much less than proof that there was no tradition linking his birth to Chanukah. In fact there are passages in the New Testament that could (or could not) suggest that he was  in fact early on marked with the Maccabean legacy perhaps by the time of his birth as well as other factors. There is great evidence  and abudant that Jesus tried to wield that part of his people’s heritage in with all the parts he inherited. Even big themes we never look at in those terms could be part of that reality. “Whatever came to be in him found life, life for the light of men. The light shines on in the darkness — a darkness that did not overcome it… the real light which gives light toevery man was coming into the world”. John 1:4-5, 9 (New American Bible). This theme of light is repeated many times by Jesus and his followers and was probably overdetermined. That is also why the Patriarch and Metropolitan Ordinary Bishop of Rome and Proto-Primate of the West whom we mostly call the Pope felt pastorally that as culture was becoming Christian then Christmas should replace the Feast of the Invincible Sun , Sol Invictus.    If one chooses to see then Jesus’s birth in Bethlehem is constantly referenced. It is the City of David and Son of David is how he is most often addressed. Bethelehm is also the House of Bread in Hebrew and Bread is a constant motif of Jesus’s teaching and ministry.   It might well have been seen as his part of his favored birth. Regardless, this is Christmas for us and we ought to say at least once this season “Happy Birthday Jesus!” Even if we only say it in our hearts.

End of Facebook Note….

This year my arthritis is better (today and lately anyway) than in 2008. Social, financial, familial and other matters of the heart have continued their downward trajectory for me overall. But I am still trying to  stay in the game. And wish a Merry Christmas to all those of goodwill who read this post.

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The Next Installment of My List of People to Watch … is coming

Posted on December 21, 2010 | Leave a comment

The next installment of my continuing list will probably be eight people. It may or may not be out before the New Year comes. I will say that with Christmas and other holiday posts it is less likely but also as the space available become more scarce choices get harder. I may go to 91 or to 100 people but after this next post 78 is the large portion of either number. Whether I will have 22 names left to list or only thirteen the bounds are very near indeed.

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The Play was Great!

Posted on December 20, 2010 | 3 comments

I really enjoyed the production of “God Is With Us” and it was in the Actors Theater of New Orleans and was very well produced with the Homeschool Acting Troupe, Agnus Dei Homeschooling Association and a great young cast all performing well.  The dramatic performances including my niece and godchild Anika as narrator, my niece Alyse as Mary and my nephew Soren as the shepherd who told the largest part of the angelic story at the manger side. But the excellence went beyond these performances. I was very glad I went.

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Yesterday was kind of a tough day…

Posted on December 20, 2010 | 1 comment

Yesterday was kind of a tough day. Well the Saints lost to Baltimore and are at 10-4 for the season. But probably my greater sense of loss was that I was married on Dember 19,1987 and in those 23 years my record is 7 with my wife and 16 alone (or at least single) since then.
Yesterday was kind of a tough day because I had a heated discussion I am sick of having and do not ever want to have in the place I live. But probably more because my wife and I lived in a rental house, two borrowed family houses, a leased town house and three apartments and although I once owned a farm I have never owned the house where I live. Except for about two years in places I rented — most of the last fourteen years since my divorce I have lived in houses that belonged to other married couples in my family.

Yesterday was a tough day because a lot of my life is tough, bad, annoying and not worth it being what is but more because like millions of divorced people I can remember a day when I was hoping for something different. In my case that was my wedding to Michelle on December 19,1987.

Like every Christmas season I remember the anniversary uncelebrated and her birthday on December 31 as holes in my schedule for the year. That more than the many reason for it to be a tough day made it a tough day.

I never regret marrying Michelle. I never regret not trying make it work out once it was hopeless. I never regret the time I spent with some other wonderful women since, whom I would not have ever known as I d did without that divorce. I never regret believing in the truth and trying to find a way in life that I could see as real and decent. However, life is mostly not so great and the future is mostly dark and bleak and it has mostly always been that way for me. I hate so much of everything that makes the world run as it does. When I look back and think of a time when I had the most hope and optimism and joy it would have to be December 19,1987.

Michelle, if by some freakish circumstance you ever read this (we have never seen each other since we split up), I love you. I don’t want you back and you are more like a fictional character to me after so long than a real person but I honor who you were when we were together and who I was when we were really a couple (however long that was). I do not think we are friends and we may not even be allies but the person you are as I remember you will always shine bright in my mind.

So that is my little lament. More troubles will distract me and things may well get worse but yesterday my troubles had more to do with something from the past than with my many present miseries.

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