Reasons for this final list are somewhat varied and complex. I have actually seen a dcline in my number of Facebook friends by almost half of one percent of the total since I posted the most recent and second to last installment. This ought to be another great reason to quit publishing this list and yet I do not choose to do so… I suppose that I feel that we as a nation and a society are not really doing well enough and that by setting out the list of cast members in the great world play of our times I can contribute to a better understanding of what is in general going on in life. I believe the time is running out for us to undertake the changes which will be necessary to save our civilization. My final list is indeed ranked from most watchable not to least watchable but rather to tenth most watchable person in the world which is in itself a staggering claim. It is made the more staggering as I have listed myself as most watchable. In this case the ten became a tie sharing tenth and eleventh place.
The Ten Standards:
The Standards used for selecting the final ten most watchable people on this list were aproximately the same as the standards used for ranking them on the list. In other words, more or less (but not perfectly and exactly) these people each generated a score by these standards and these scores were then ranked.
1. The absolute standard: All candidates from the list of one hundred and absolutley no other candidates were considered. Osama Bin Laden was not disqualified initialy because he was killed. Dominique Strauss Khan and Steve Jobs were not disqualified for losing their positions. Catherine Lagarde was not considered because she rose to DSK’s position and got lots of new attention. Nor were great overlooked painters, architects and sculptors reconsidered. How the first list was determined is not included in this discussion.
The First Cut: ONLY CANDIDATES WHO RANKED IN THE TOP FORTY AFTER THE FIRST THREE FACTORS WERE CONSIDERED FOR THE NEXT PHASE.
2.Current relevance: The persons on the list of one hundred were considered as towhether they were currently engaged in something really relevant to the likely readers of this post, to humanity and to the United States.
3.Potential: The candidates were considered as to whether they had a strong possibility that they would sustain or increase their significance or the significance of the work they have already done and still support over the next ten years.
4.Maximum Impact and Ambition: The candidates were considered in terms of what the significance would be of the success of their most ambitious or largest or most radical perceived ambitions.
The Second Cut: The Bonuses and Debits decreased the number to the last thirty
5. Candidates who could positively or negatively affect US national security were given a modest bonus.
6. Candidates Were given debits for the likelihood of becoming dead or less relevant right away, in a year or two or before September 2021.
7. Candidates were given a bonus if I thought they were under-reportsed or badly reported in key respects in larger media.
The Final Selection
8.All remaining candidates were ranked on three lists:
a.potential to continue doing what got them on the list.
b.Potential to do some new significant thing that did not directly get them on to the list.
c. Unique importance
9.Candidates on the bottom three slots of two or more lists were eliminated and those not in the top half of any list were eliminated.
10. Using my best judgement I attempted to reach a total of ten people but ended up with the eleven people most worth watchin in the coming decade ranked in order. To do this I considered those just missing the final list and all those in the final group on the basis of all the standards of the process from the start and weighed this against the standards i had set.
About the writing itself, I have to acknowledge Wikipedia, the CIA FActbook online, official websites for Chinese, US, British and Russian Governments, homepages of various associations, the Holy See’s online and the UK Parliament’s online resources among many others. All this comes on top of television, radio, periodical and book sources too numerous to mention. The work is mine as are the errors and the list remains little more than a list throughout and so I have not done much in terms of acknowledgements for what is mostly a list of public figures and my own opinions. Honestly, my on-line sourcing and crediting process is always haphazard. That is all I can say about this process here.
1.HRH Charles Prince of Wales is the Prince of Wales with the most formal education in history. He will not be a pet or showdog for anyone. Much of what he does is decent, admirable and very fine. He deals with issues others fail to see as vital as well as offering a unique and sustained contribution in areas where many otheres are also engaged in addressing various crises. The global warming issue is a trendier one which he has embraced but in his case it is part of large nexus of environmental and economic commitments which have occupied him for decades. He is not naive about the influence of American republicanism nor about the role the UK has played in manipulting its old adversary and in the rquisite conditions he could be very dangerous to US interests. On the other hand he may help resist greater mutual dangers. As is often found in Kings (which he is not yet) the best and worst of his complex heritage are present together in him. One of his many newer initiatives greatly acclerated since this series began is Accounting for Sustainability which is I think in part a response to the BP disaster. I think he was also very involved in the marriage of his son Prince William and trying to make a better and more secure future for both British royalty and the British people. prince Charles has been involved in restoring crafts to the Muslim world, in giving out starter funds to small businesses, i working to promote a more livable built environment, in seeking for greener and more sustainable agriculture to be preserved and has focused on preserving the British cultural heritage in countless ways. He is notanle for the many ways and times he has repeated the founding pf anew particualr instance in the network of ways in which he has taken modest sums of money from the Duchy of Cornwall, combined those funds with management resources made available through his Civil List and Royal House resources and joined all these things together with large groups of donors and key groups of leaders. He has sought to enhance and adapt to the best of it martial culture and to fulfill the duties of a Prince of Wales and Heir Apparent to the throne of the United Kingdom. He is socially learned and traveled as only a few widely diverse people of varied classes and types are in all the world. He takes account of a great number of factors in his life and in politics and he plays a very serious and well prepared game at the various tables at which he sits.
2. Josef Ratzinger, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI is the second consecutive Patriarch of Rome, Bishop of Rome and Supreme Pontiff and Successor to the Throne of St. Peter who has not been an Italian and that (without saying the Italians are not agreat people and without saying that Bishops ought mostly to come from their own lands or related lands) is a good thing. It would probably be good if about half of all Popes were Italian over time but I would not want to see dozens of Popes in a row who were not Italian so everyone must do the best they can. He is a German who fought in the regular nonpolitical part of the German forces doing his duty in World War II and is a very accomplished scholar. However, the service to any state headed by Adolf Hitler and his lunatics is a blemish on the Papacy. But the Papacy has had many blemishes — nonetheless I do not lay all the blame on him personally but I do hold it against him. He remembers the insanity of Nazi political religion and although his experience was more ambiguous than he admits he will work to see that the liturgy and practice of the Church draws forth a milieu such as produced Mozart, the Bach family and the Gothic Cathedrals. If he could say anything kind and honest to the Jews in the way of professional advice and have it received he would advise them to invest in their worship and liturgy to reach and surpass the heights of the Temple’s musical past.
Pope Benedict XVI has at once to contend with a very broad spectrum of issues and demands and has brought to bear his talents as a writer, thinker and organizer as well as his prodigious mental capacities. He, like everyone on this list and in the human race, is both empowered and sometimes trapped by who he is an by the experiences he brings to this office. He has written about Jesus Christ in a very compelling way and has sought to bring the Christ of Faith, the Jesus of History and the Jesus Christ of Cultural developments into a proper and good focus centered around the Jesus revealed in the Gospels. This is certainly a worthy goal and it fits in the larger context of a body of work. He specifically struggles with that German Teutonic impulse towards the struggle of the spiritual and the State which has always been pronounced but which which has been agonizingly disfunctional since the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
3.Hu Jintao 胡锦涛 is The Premiere in the People’s Republic of China will continue to try to develop the Presidency and Premiere powersharing and to increase the importance of the Congress of People’s deputies if he can. He will try to restore full regularity to the Chinese governments by incorporating Imperial and Confucian elements. He will reform the Party and execute those who commit crimes which bring the party into ill regard. Minority and foreign relations will be a continuous challenge and he will foster the development of Chinese urban consumer life to make China less dependent on Exports. He has been able to assert his policy agenda in the 17th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. His relationship with Wen Jiabao is very clearly important to him both personally and politically and although Wen has not often been named as a likely successor I believe that this option is being explored by Hu. Despite some minor progress in formal and informal regulations, the handover of national political power still remains one of the most under-institutionalized sectors in CCP political life. In CCP history, the practice of single-handedly picking successors by supreme leaders has had more failures than successes. Mao failed three times in personally appointing his successors and Deng Xiaoping, together with other party elders of his era, failed twice. Prescient of the intricate complications and potential disastrous consequences of any leadership transition fallout, Deng Xiaoping not only designated and offered a strong helping hand to his immediate successor Jiang Zemin, but also unequivocally decided on Jiang’s successor Hu Jintao. Owing to Deng’s authority as well as Hu’s extreme personal circumspection, the last power transition has been unprecedentedly smooth and apparently well-organized.There is on-going speculation and intrigue about Hu’s successor. Although the subject of succession speculation is largely taboo within the mainland Chinese media, Hong Kong and Taiwan media, as well as western media, have predicted a hot contest between Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang, currently party chief in Shanghai and Liaoning, respectively.
4.President Barack Hussein Obama This President of the United States of America will continue to set the tone for much of the American future and its policies for the foreseeable future. We face the future as best we can in a world where the election of Barack Obama has already shown us as profoundly weak in the eyes of so much of the world.Barack Hussein Obama it is to be noted is the descendant of an American mother and has married and had children with an American wife. The mother was white, the wife is black. Obama’s father was an African student and he also had an Indonesian stepfather. In a scoiety where forty-one percent of children are currently born out of wedlock, Schwarzenegger has been Governor of California, Jindal is currently Governor of Louisiana, Granholme was Governor of Michigan until two weeks ago and tens of millions live here without documents Obama has a strong basic appeal to our society which is committed to its own utter destruction at this time. Obama is a man with a very impressive resume and a lot of lessons and experiences that have not come together in the same individual before. Obama does not have any desire to compromise with the vast complicated burdens of American History. He is less aware of them than most Presidents have been and is more committed to policies and procedures that will undermine this country than he would be if he did not have the background he actually does have.
President Obama has been the expression of decades of continuous confusion and staggering forward. What will happen to him and to the country before heleaves the Oval Office behind is not entirely peedictable. Nor is it it clear what he or the Presidency will be like after his administration ends. If he leaves office alive after completing one or two full terms then the Presidency of the United States will be part of his impressive curriculum vitae which includes editing Harvard Law Review , traveling the world, authoring two very successful books, serving itn the United States Senate and given many famous speeches. If a major constitutional change occurs in the United States of America after his retirement from this office he will be in a powerful position to broker part of this change. However, his own tenure in office has contributed to America’s inevitably worsening troubles unless it does seriously reform.
5. Vladimir Putin ,Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin Влади́мир Влади́мирович Пу́тин, born on October 7, 1952 is a vigrous probably more physically fit than I on almost every measure despite being almost eight years my senior at an age where that really matters. Putin served as the post Soviet Russian Federation’s second President and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus and he is a man of broad appeal among several sgments of Russian society. He may be that kind of person once referred to as a reappearance of Aratos (a Greek politician of long ago) and because of who he is and his attitudes he will remain Putin while he remains alive. He became acting President as the world celbrated huge numbers of parties and even those dsiputing the calnedric significance on all sort of bases had gotten into the act of a milennial party this happened on my ex-wife’s thirty-third birthday which was December 21, 1999, when president Boris Yeltsin resigned in a surprising move. Putin’s rise to office slipped under this worldwide camouflage in a way that would be worthy of a former intelligence officer. He then began consolidating his power in a way that combined traditional Russian, Soviet, progressive democratic elements into a new decisive style. won the 2000 presidential election and in 2004 he was reelected for a second term lasting until 7 May 2008.He has many hopes he still cannot really do anything to achieve but he keeps chipping away at the obstacles. Putin did not demonize Yeltsin and the recent regime nor set about abolishing its forms and reforms in a systematic and aggressive way. Most of his harshest critics would acknowledge his role in creating or restoring political orderly process and Securing the rule of law. His presidency included gains such as the fact that Russia’s economy avoided a terrible and developing crisis, the increase by over 70% in the GDP , and probalbly lifting half the Russian poor out of poverty as well as securing the fragile middle class and working class segments of the new Russia by seeing average monthly salaries increase from less than $100 to well over $500. While high oil prices were part of this miracle his management of the oil boom was among the better responses to such mineral driven influxes of wealth in a crisis which the world has seen. He likes healing and building better but could become a figure of destruction fomenting hate — it just depends on too many factors to sort out here. His conduct in office has not always earned the respect of independent evaluators and its faults have been shown forth by domestic political opposition. Mostly he can be criticicized his record of both real and perceived restoration of some Soviet abuses which have violated human rights and freedoms; this has included improper conduct toward vocal opponents acts towards the former Soviet Republics both aggressive and of questionable legitimacy. He has shown a talent for balance, both in becoming Prime Minister and waiting to be able to run again and in his UN behavior with former Soviet Republics he seems to play a very hard game of politics rather than the great communist fault of abolishing civilized politics until the need becomes to great to avoid restoring them. He helped save what he could of socialist safety nets, bureaucratic expertise and tradition while securing emrging capitalism, free markets and private property. President Putin passed into law essential reforms such as a flat 13% income tax , a reduced profits tax, was well as credible and juridicaly workable land and legal codes . Based on his achievements, Putin is a man about whom pop songs have been written and performed. He is still exceptionally vigorous. There is little that can bedone to contain his personal networks or his base of popular support within and around Russia.
He is a man with whom a new future could be negotiated for the world should that happen and that has not been true of most Soviet leaders in my view.
6.Britney Spears: Ms. Spears is a dancer, singer , brand manager, sometimes a songwriter, a mother and an ex-wife. She is also a sort of political voice for the idea of a sexually explicit class or group of performers who are serious about not being antisocial. Avoiding uncontrolled drug abuse, staying with relatives, seeking to maintain discipline and other values have long been evident despite her many troubles. She is a person who could play a role in the emergence of a formal courtesan culture in the West even if she herself did not become one. I doubt that she would consider herself an intellectual revolutionary but she has played a role with social significance. Britney has had plenty of problems and they persist but her audience has moved and evvolved without ever losing some of its amazing vitalty as a group of listeners, viewers and consumers. She has continued to push the envleope for decades in some respects while attending to the basics of her business and art on the other hand. Her album and tour Circus and the still developing Femme Fatale show that she can still motivate the audiences and she inspire large number of women ranging from the very young to the nearly middle-aged to celebrate in her the Struggle for a humane and decent life and world for those for whom the sexual and social realities are never going to be entirely ordered and smoothly flowing in time. Rearing her childredn, marketing her range of products and maintaining her presence on the web are all part of her continuous struggle to express and develop a set of comments and expressions that are evolving in some relatively genuine way.
7.Philip Lord Norton Baron of Louth A created Peer and a prominent Conservative he is the author of many books including the British Polity and others that deal with issues of Parliament, governance and civil society. He is a professor at Hull University and leads a Parliamentary academic internship program as well as being active in varied fora in Europe and the Commonwealth. He is a truly prolific author and is supposed to write a great deal on the trains he rides frequently. He really is committed to his own connection to civilization as are so many on this list. He is the blogger on Lords of the Blog with whom I became most involved in dialog and later followed to the newerThe Norton View. I am back to commenting on the Norton View though not on the LOTB as I type this and perhaps comment often and but less in-depth.. Lord Norton was the youngest politics or government professor in the United Kingdom when he was appointed Professor of Government at the University of Hull in 1986 at the age of 35. In 1992 he also became Director of the Centre for Legislative Studies at the same university. In 1998 he was elevated to the House of Lords as Lord Norton of Louth. He chaired the Conservative Party’s Commission to Strengthen Parliament, which reported in 2000. From 2001 to 2004 he was Chairman of the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution. He is a cofounder of the Committee for an Effective Second Chamber. He is the author or editor of 28 books. His media appearances have been so very numerous and varied as to defy any listing whatever.
8.Her Royal Highness Princess Catherine Elizabeth, Princess William of Wales, Duchess of Cambridge
Her name title and form of address have changed and continue to change a great deal over the next decade or so. She was born on January 9, 1982 and on mugs, plates spoons and several television dramatizations as well as on the news she has been popularly known as “Kate”. This young woman, who is fairly mature for a first-time modern British royal bride, is the wife of Prince William, named Duke of Cambridge in the season of his wedding to her. William is second in line to the thrones of the varied realms of her Britannic Majetsy and the Queen of the Commonwealth realms. William’s grandmother is a Queen Regnant and in the event that he becomes king she will become queen consort like the current Queen’s deceased mother was. By its very event her marriage to Prince William embodies a commitment by the British royal family to the British people. She is smart and pretty and discreet as it is possible to be (which I admit is almost not at all in her situation). Catherine was born a true commoner whose industrious parents supported her and her siblings in country comforts and a the benefits of an elegant English education. The Princess grew up in Chapel Row at Bucklebury, a village near Newbury, Berkshire, England — deep in the Home Counties. She studied in Scotland at the University of St Andrews, where she met William in 2001. They started a friendship with overtones of attraction and then a romantic relationship that continued to bloom for some time. Upon the public acknowledgment of their relationship, “Will and Kate” were objects of media attention of various levels of ethical soundness and professionalism and there was much popular speculation that she and William would eventually marry.u In this very publlic affair there seemed to be peace and progress until a perhaps not quite certain cooling-off became the object of worldwide publicity and a break-up lasting for several months in 2007. However, the couple both behaved more clevery than some of theose hoping for real public emotional bloodshed would have liked and theyrekindled their relationship later that year. Prior to the wedding, Catherine attended many high-profile royal events. Their engagement was announced on November 16, 2010, and they married on 29 April 2011 at Westminster Abbey. the Duchess is amodern woman with a degree, good athletic credentials, fashion sense, caution and the necessary conservative instincts as well as a popular touch. She is devoted to her man. She dresses modestly enough to be respectable and revealingly enough to let the world see that her Prince has a woman who can do the very important wifely job of turning him on sexually. She is sweet and quiet in presentation and yet you can imagine a Knight who loved life wanting to seduce her in the days when this might have gotten his head rotting on a stake. She covers the bases and may turn out to be far more than that once her role is second nature. certainly a young woman of vast potential.
9.Ms. Gail J. McGovern was born in 1952 and reared as Gail J. Rosenberg in Springfield, New Jersey. She seems to have been a good student most or all of her life and not one to attract much public attention as a child. Upon coming of age McGovern attended John Hopkins University and there she received a Bachelor of Arts degree in quantitative sciences in 1974 when I was turning ten in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. McGovern an MBA from Columbia Business School in 1987. She is the American Red Cross’s current and seventh president and chief executive since 2002 facing in this 2011 calendar year the most epensive year of Natural disasters in US history day for day and doing so at a time when FEMA and the rest of the US government are really struggling much more than usual. However, she project amodest confidence that is very appealing and reassuring and it seems rooted in reality as she has more or less balanced the budget in a battered organization. The Red Cross she took over had tumbled with a $200 million deficit, and with penalties and fines related to its blood collection and distribution business it had other crises leading to low morale amid widespread staff cuts at the Washington headquarters. She left a position as a professor at Harvard Business School to lead this mess. She has stayed out of the spotlight except when doing expert and relevant things in dignified fora or running the large charity with a grand tradition. Gail J. Mc Govern, is a woman who like political leaders such as Sarah Palin seems to be really doing something to integrate the traditions of the distaff side with the values and leadership of a new feminist society. Unlike Palin and other professional politicians she does not have to give her opinions on this subject or any other very often. McGovern was a senior executive at AT&T and Fidelity Investments where she had a distinguished but not world-ranked carreer. At AT&T Corporation McGovern was a programmer and also worked in sales, marketing and management to the position of executive vice president for consumer markets where she was responsible for $26 billion in residential long distance service. She served in this high office for about a year and then left to join Fidelity Investments in September 1998 as president of distribution and services. At Fidelity McGovern’s department served 4 million customers with $500 billion in assets.She was recognizedas one of the top 50 most powerful women in corporate America by Fortune magazine in 2000 and 2001. She taught marketing and consumer marketing to first and second year students as an adjunct faculty of the Harvard Business School. From all of this she moved to her current role.
She assumed the role of president and CEO of the American Red Cross on June 23rd, 2008. She replaced Mark W. Everson, a former IRS commissioner and quickly added to internal challenges the challenge of making a mark in the new realtionship of the world to China. In a short period after starting her work McGovern was part of a delegation of 30 chosen by the United States Agency for International Development to visit China and those affected by the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. So far her work seems to be successful.
10 & 11. Mark Zuckerberg and Me
Me, Wynerth Summers III, Frank “Beau” Summers, Beau Summers. I make a note here that I am refraining from using and disclosing anumber of honorifics which mean something to some other people and also to me but which I do not use in my usual correspondence. I have worked in a number of public endeavors more or less continuously since I was four years old. However, I now feel that even if I die tomorrow my own mostly frustrated efforts will produce a few tangible and discernible ripples in the future which an astute person could discover and find significant. However, by any measure it is hard to argue that I am as successful as any other member of this list. They also have their secret successes but I must rely almost entirely on undisclosed successes to make up for the obvious differences, However, I will give myself a longer biographical note than anyone else because it is my post and becuase of the lack of other publicity. Of course because this is my blog I had a much easier time making the blog list than anyone else. This list is like most of the things I have done in my life in that it more resembles a failure than a success and yet it is a completed and worthy project which some people will read and some already have read.
I was born in 1964 and my mother Genie Summers and father Frank Summers began educating me imediately, lots of other people played small parts in the project My father was himself a student during much of my early childhood, so unlike some oldest children I was always in a house where school was in some sense part of life. while my Dad was a young law clerk for a federal judge my mother bought a course called Teach Your Baby to Read and did just that. I never stopped. I attended Happy Howard’s Nursery School in Abbeville and then my Dad went on to pursue an advanced law degree at King’s College in the University of London. We (Mom, Dad, my uncle Jed and I) lived in a small apartment in Soho. Jed however was usually at boarding school. I attended a a kindergarten that Americans call public in America. My mom educated me in museums, galleries, castles and markets. I also went to a cartoon theater and really was a pretty authentic Londoner. On holidays Dad took the helm and the steering wheel of our car and with Mom researching and Jed joining us or not we saw and studied Europe.
For first grade I attended Mount Carmel Elementary School in Abbeville. Dad then pursed yet another advanced law degree at Columbia University in New York. While he was there I attended Second Grade at St. Hilda’s and St. Hugh’s School in Manhattan. I returned from there to Mount Carmel Elementary from the third grade to the middle of Fifth grade.
My parents (and I ) had a transforming religious experience and went into the missions with the Marists. We lived in Maufanga, Nukualofa, Tongatapu, Tonga in Polynesia in the South Pacific. I attended Tonga Side School. Then we moved to Pago Pago American Samoa where I began to home school. I continued this as we worked for a while among the Navajos in New Mexico. Then I returned and did another year of Junior High School at Mount Carmel Elementary in Abbeville. Then I attended a very small start-up school at Our Lady’s Youth Center in El Paso while my parents ministered in a ministry to a large public high school. The little school I attended was called The Lord’s School. Then after a little home schooling, I attended a IDEAL (Instituto De Estudios America Latina) in Cuernavaca, Mexico for a basic course in conversational Spanish and Mexican culture. My father and I were classmates. Afterwards I returned to a homeshcooling program through many grand and small journeys. In Colombia where I lived in the same lay Catholic farming community as Miguel Angel Barriga, I borrwed the Colobian Government correspondence books and workbooks from other community kids while learning more Spanish, chess and agriculture. I resumed homeschooling thereafter until I both apprenticed informally to Bert Farquarh of Titahi Bay and enrolled formally at Viard College in Porirua near Wellington New Zealand. I was already involved in ministry and music and media for several years by that point. It was at that time that I reached the age of most Americans starting High School’s Senior year and we left in the middle of it to go to the Philippines. In the Philippines my main focus in school terms was accompanying my sisters on a long weekly journey to attend class, go to the library and hand in a week’s work at Nancy Knobloch School. . In Malalybaly and elsewhere I took minicourses in Cebuano-Visayan and I often taught mini courses in Theology or English. However I also did certified work, Icompleting a formal course at the Ateneo de Manila’s East Asian Pastoral Institute. It was called Scripture Ventures and was spear-headed by Fr. Herb Schneider SJ. Dad and I were classmates again. This was the last formal studying I did before enrolling in a University in the USA. I began my studies at USL in Lafayette Which is now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and I earned about a smemester of Advanced credits which I certified by completing the courses above them in the catalogue, I also took the course required to be enrolled in the Honors Program and this filled out my first semester pretty completely at the end of which I was a sophomore gaining on those my age who had started college a year before I did. But I left the uNited States returned to tthe Philippines with my family and ended up missing the next semester and the summer. When I returned I was enrolling at the Franciscan University of Steubenville in Ohio. I won the Sophomore Class Award there (so did a young woman as they were awarded to one male and one female student). I also had the part with the most line in the University of Steubenville production Thornton Wilder’s play Our Town — that of Stage Manager. But I left the school in the middle of my third semester there. After a bit of time welcoming my family back from the Philippines and working in parish based religious education I returned to U. S. L. My first semester there I met Michelle Denise Broussard the only person I have been legally and/or sacramentally married to and we began dating. We wed in December of 1987. I graduated in May of 1989 and was the Outstanding Graduate selection of my department and college as well as of the Alumni Association of the whole university. Michelle graduated the next semester in December. I enrolled at Tulane Law School the next fall — August 1989. I left the school in early 1990. I won the Board of Regents Fellowship to study History and did so at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. My last year was the only time I have so far been enrolled at the same place and at the same time with one of my syblings, Sarah was at LSU. I had driven her as a student to STM High School when I taught there. I received my Master of Arts degree there in 1993 shortly after the death of my grandfather former Louisiana Chief Justice Frank W. Summers. While there I published an article in the Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television. I returned to Tulane Law School in August of 1994. Michelle and I separated in January or so of 1995. I went to Micronesia to be with my family and shortly afterwards we divorced without contest on my part.
I want to list some or most of the groups and associations with which I have been involved although I cannot do much more than list them: Known Groups I have belonged to but did not help to Found and in which my records may be imperfect:National Rifle Association,Louisiana-Mississippi Press Associations Joint Roll, Louisiana Sportswriters Association, Community for Creative Nonviolence, Pax Christi, Bread For the World, Sons of Confederate Veterans, Blue Men of America, The Optimist Club and Student Catholic Action of the Philippines. Known Groups I have belonged regularly but did not help to Found and am now lapsed: Democratic Party, Certified Foreign Experts of the People’s Republic of China, University of Southwestern Louisiana Pre-Law Club, Knights of Columbus, Family Missions Company, American Cancer Society, United Blood Services, Louisiana State University Alumni Association, Mensa, Gamma Beta Phi, Phi Kappa Phi, USL Honors Program, University of Louisiana Honors Program Alumni Association, University of Louisiana Alumni Association, The Black Scorpions, Tulane Public Interest Law Foundation, Christian Association for Carreer Development in Youth Services, and numerous Facebook Groups. Known Groups I have Founded or Helped to Found outside of Facebook Groups regardless of other factors: Juventud San Pedro, Maranatha Youth Group, Bukidnon State Catholic Youth Congress, Brotherhood of the Cross, Open Dooor Community, 7 Cs. Facebook Groups I founded and destroyed when the rules changed: Crater Cap Colony Concept Group, Abbeville Louisiana’s Mount Carmel Elementary School Attendees, Summers Family Name Association, Seedbed of a New Geopolitics, Responsible Royalists Reforming Republics, Vermilion Parish Library Independent Patrons Association, Historical Restorarions, and eight others. HOWEVER, MUCH OF MY LIFE HAS BEEN SPENT IN SECRET GROUPS THAT ARE TRULY SECRET.
My work life woven in with my education is an almost impossible story to digest in a brief sketch like this so I am representing it here as a separate timeline. When I got back to Louisiana my family were coming back from the Philippines. We met up at my maternal grandparents home called Kisinoaks on the Bayou. My grand parents were now living only in the small house in the back leaving what some would call the mansion in the front unoccupied. Mom and Dad settled in and Dad (who had done legal work during many trips home) worked as a lawyer. They bought a house in Abbeville and I (who had broadcast experience of various kinds and who had taken mass communications in college) got my lifetime FCC radiotelephone license and got a job as a country music DJ. I went to work as a Director of Religious Education at St. Theresa Church in Duson , Louisiana where I lived in the rectory with Monsignor Ignatius A. Martin.I worked in seafood brokering and sales (which I had done before)and my contributions won me the honor of recognition as Honorary Lieutenant Governor of Louisiana. I left this work to be full-time theology teacher at Saint Thomas More Catholic High School in Lafayette where I taught for the 1990-1991 academic year. That year I was also certified as a Catechist at the basic level by the Diocese of Lafayette. My wife became the youngest branch manger in a major corporation with many branches and we lived well within our means. I went into food sales again and then did some legal assisting work of various kinds during the summer before I returned to Tulane Law School again. After Tulane I almost taught in Micronesia but returned to the United States to tend to my divorce before really getting started. Shortly after or before the final saga of the divorce procedure I returned to Abbeville alone from Micronesia. I was staying in Abbeville with my paternal grandmother and my family came back fromwhere we had all been in Chuuk together. I had been spending some time together with the only one of my sisters who had not made the journey. Sarah was married, had a daughter named Alyse and had graduated with a top ranking and perfect grade point average from LSU. She was giving birth to her second daughter Anika at about that time. I became Anika’s godfather. The role of parrain is very important to me and to some others around me. The rest of my family came back after my mother had come back to be with Sarah and the children and her husband. I reunited with my parents and younger siblings and all of us moved into a tiny house (for us a very crowded one) near the railroad tracks in Abbeille. Mom and Dad began building a large home on the smaller farm called the Big Woods Farm which was part of a larger feature called Big Woods and which had been part of my Dad’s large family farm when I was growing up. This would be a long process it seemed with my mother shopping for bargains on materials and her brother Bruce working as the contractor as well as one of the hands on carpenters. I was homeschooling my brothers Joseph and Jon Paul for free that year. I taught them film class, logic, the classics, an introduction to the martial arts and the Bible in five formal classes each meeting a few times a week and they worked on other things the rest of the time. I did many things in those early years after ending my publicly growing carreer but I did little that is well documented or worth including here.I went with my mother, brother John Paul and others on a pilgrimage to Grand Pre in Acadie Canada. We traveled to Domino Farms in Michigan to visit Susanna at FUS, Niagara falls, to historical sites in Boston, to the Shrine of the First North American Martyrs, and to visit my sister Sarah who was working at Yale’s Project on Nonprofit Organizations (PONPO) while her hubbie Jason was studying at Yale Divinity School. We had met up with her and her daughters at Niagara Falls and vacationed there. Some of the stops I mention were made on the way back but our trip’s high point for me was the sacred and powerful time in Acadie. The sense of union with my Acadian heritage was very meaningful to me. I came back and Dad transferred a very small farm to me called the Rock-a-Bye Tract One which I improved a good bit and later returned to him. The words buy and sell could be used but these family transactions are not the same as ordinary purchases really. I worked with this farm and distributed my mother memoirs Go! You are Sent around the country and the world along with other tasks. In the summer of 2000 I went alone on a long train trip. My mother met me at the end of it. I had business in Virginia and Alabama but also went to New Haven to watch Jason graduate, treat Sarah to a birthday celebration and bond with Alyse and Anika. On return in August of 2000 I began work as a substitute teacher for the Vermilion Parish School Board and continued to do the work on my farm and business doing this. While I was subbing my sister Susanna married Mike and at this writing they have Michael, Anthony, Dominic and Thomas. Susanna’s wedding was held in Mexico out of our family home and mission base once part of the palace of the Marquess de Aglaya to which I had then and later would make many short trips. I now kept up teaching, writing and continued the other things I was doing.The school system and other parts of my life were battered by a series of storms less famous than Katrina and Rita’s joint devastation years later. Just as that whole pattern was coming to an end I attended the Health and Life Insurance License required training offered by Insurance Specialty Training of Louisiana. I completed the course successfully. I then took the test, passed it and got my license. However, I was unable to find a real job selling insurance and have since let my license lapse although I once did renew it. The well known phenomena of Gulf of Mexico hurricanes in the form of storms less famous than Katrina or Rita had a lot to do with me looking for a change. In 2004 I went to China, a country I had always wanted to visit. I flew into Hong Kong hoping to take a train from there. Instead, I flew the rest of the way. I taught at the Shandong Institute of Business and Technology. I taught in several of the colleges within the university including the China Canada Higher Applied Technology College. I had wonderful students and a full load. From several of my classrooms I had a fabulous view of the Yellow Sea and a small view of it from my apartment. I toured extensively in Yantai, Shandong where I lived and in other places. I finished a semester having taught almost a year’s load of courses completely. Due to passport and visa paperwork problems I left early and was not able to return but had no calsses left in progress though others were scheduled to start. I returned feeling somewhat transformed to the United States fairly early in 2005. I wrote an article with photographs about my trip for a local cultural newspaper called Bonnes Nouvelles and that was the last real paid job transaction I have had in the united states outside of family transacttions except when I took a job helping my disabled brother Simon adjust to life outside his aprtment by working full time for IBC Healthcare. That job ended in the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita when I was injured and fled the chaos to San Diego and then Mexico. I have over the course of my life in fact been employed as a writer by The Daily Advertiser, the Abbeville Meridional, Bonnes Nouvelles, and The Vermilion among other periodicals. I have been employed to teach by quite a few institutions. I have over the course of my life had my own business, a farm, and numerous small jobs and projects. I have at one time or another spoken, read or written a really large number of languages although I am not comfortable calling myself fluent in very many of them. I think Americans are unlikely to re-examine ideas and assumptions about work but I think that they should.
I am still fascinated by the idea called “true work.” My work has been distributed or not in ways that have not made me rich or famous and sometimes without influecing others but includes studies and essays and group organizing related to family needs, scriptural exegesis, physical geometry, sexuality and politics among other things. That arduaous and obscure route has been my path on to this list. It has been in this larger and deeper context of work and responsibilities not so easily seen that I have done the things which qualify me for this list. Even here there are many things which will not be disclosed. Of the people in this list I am by far the least famous. Although I am known in some circles which are less reprted than broad that difference does not overcome the basic fact that I am the least known. Most of the reason that I am on this list will not be included on this little biography. However some reading no one part and some another part of the hidden realities. Only in the unlikely event of a large readership will most people reading it be entirely at the mercy of this brief sketch. To those few who are now I apologize.
Mark Zuckerberg, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg was born on May 14, 1984 and is the youngest person on this list, although close in age to the Duchess of Cambridge. Zuckerberg is someone millions of Americans picture as Jesse Eisenberg who portrayed him in the clever film the Social Network. However, a smaller group of millions can picture the young man himself who remains a very youthful self made billionaire and founder of Facebook on which medium this post is being completed first. In the last couple of years or less his real face and voice have complemented the Eisenberg portrayal during a special 60 Minutes episode and in the television show where he was designated by Barbara Walters as one of the years ten most interesting people. He is an American, one of four, besides myself, in the final ten, besides myself. He is the only one of the final ten whose main claims to fame or as computer programmer and Internet entrepreneur. Facebook’s chief executive and president has continued to grow and evelop his company and to avoid any sign of becoming the victim of fashion which other internet successes have become. Facebook has again and again received investments loans and venture capital which have boosted its value and Zuckerberg’s net worth since he co-founded the company in 2004 with classmates Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin, and Chris Hughes while they were students at Harvard. He was young but not naive when he founded the company. His home life was not aristocratic or very wealthy perhaps nut certainly his background included exposure, sophisitcation and breadth on a substantial scale. Born Mother Karen, a psychiatrist, and Edward Zuckerberg, a dentist Mark Zuckerberg is a native of White Plains, New York. Mark and his three sisters, Randi, Donna, and Arielle were reared in Dobbs Ferry, New York. Zuckerberg were relatively observant Jews andholidays were celebrated in meaningful ways and Zuckerberg also had a Bar Mitzvah as an adolescent. Although he has since described himself as an atheist it is unlikely that he rejects the Hebrew ethnic part of his background. Zuckerberg was involved with computing in a fairly sophisticated way even in middle school. His father began his instruction in programming in the 1990s, and then software hired developer David Newman to advance his private technical education in about 1995. Zuckerberg actually took a graduate course in the subject at Mercy College near his home in the mid-1990s. He complimented all this study with a variety of personal projects for fun and to meet business needs around him. He did show other interests at Ardsly High School but in his junior year transferring to one of America’s most exclusive schools the Phillips Exeter Academy and it was there his education and life began to become even more focused. Zuckerberg won prizes in science (math, astronomy and physics) . But according to official records he continued to excel in Classical Studies and could read and write to some degree in English, French, Hebrew, Latin, and ancient Greek. He was an athlete who became captain of the fencing team. He was already anle to trun his computer skills and creativity into a significant commercial success in high school but he avoided becoming too much the child prodigy and chose to go to Harvard and continue his education. There he found even larger success in Facebook and up until now that has largely defined his subsequent activity. He also met his girlfriend Priscilla Chan in college and they are still together. The bonds he developed in founding facebook and the woes that followed inspire and shape the movie The Social Network but it is doubtless a complicated story. Zuckerberg moved to Palo Alto, California, with Moskovitz and some friends. They leased a small house that served as an office. According to later interviews in Wired magazine and elsewhere, the group had intended to return to Harvard but eventually decided to remain in California. The company has resisted Buyouts and going public under Zucjerberg’s leadership and has resisted imposing heavy burdens on consumer type users. There has always been an element of a revolution involved and it continues to this day. Over that college experimental summer, Zuckerberg met Peter Thiel who invested in the company. They got their first real corporate office in 2004.
nce at college, Zuckerberg’s Facebook started off from Harvard and spread thropugh elite American universities such as Stanford,Dartmouth, Columbia, New York University, Cornell, Penn, Brown, and Yale. It then spread to other universities and later across Americansociety and the world. Facebook coroporate structure serves a social network with over 600 million members.
Named Time magazine’s Person of the Year in 2010 Zuckerberg continues to get richer and more influential. He has acquired this great fortune without being prostrate before avarice it seems as he funds huge school support charities in New Jersey and within the last two years and possibly once before (in a smaller amount of similar proportions) he gave away an enormous amount of money to various charities and especially to support public schools his giving is reported to have been about half of his net worth at the time the money was given. On this basis of 2011, his personal wealth was estimated to be $13.5 billion. He has at times been a vocal supporter of Barack Obama and is a very strong and hard personality. In the days when people read faces (as recently as the eighties a study was ublished but ignored in a big way) he has many facial characteristics of a general. He may play a vital role if America is to prosper in the coming period of years in which there are so many challenges. I think like a few other people he could do some entirely new things with, around and without Facebook.
O
The Snowball of Old Materials from this Series:
The five taken from those already my list of one hundred who are included for potential to break out and make a different mark are:
Myself, Sir Richard Nicholas Branson, Charles Allan Murray, Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales and Vitaly Alexandrovich Lopota.
At least eight and not more than nine of the people on my final list will come from those two short lists above. One or two will come from among the remaining eighty-five names on the basis of reasons not so easily categorized. However, whether a long and more satisfactory post will be possible I am not currently sure. But at least a final list of ten will be posted before the eleventh of September ifat all possible.
The last four of my 100 most watchable in the second post 9/11 decade can be found at this link:
Four People To Watch in the Second Post 9/11 Decade
Ben Shelley, President of the Navajo Nation; Helene Valerie Hayman née Middleweek , Baroness Hayman,
Phyllis Miller Taylor; Robert De Niro, Jr.
My first post on this list appeared in its original version September 11, 2010 and had twenty-five names:
Series Link 1. 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:
SL 2. 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:
SL 3. 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:
SL 4. 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
SL 5.
Thirteen More People to Watch in the Second Post 9/11 Decade
My sixth 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
SL 6.
Eight More People to Watch in the Second Post 9-11 Decade
My seventh post added thirteen more people to watch. In it I also published a final decision to make the list one hundred names long.
Joanne “Jo” Rowling, OBE, J. K. Rowling , Nicholas Sparks, Nicholas Charles Sparks, Maria Ioannidou, Μαρία Ιωαννίδου, Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev, Дми́трий Анато́льевич Медве́дев, Buzz Aldrin, Dr. (Col. {retired})Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr., Dalai Lama, Zachary Richard, Chett Chiasson, Dr. E. Joseph Savoie, ” ‘Tit Jo’” Savoie
SL 7.
Nine More People to Watch in the Second Post 9/11 Decade
My second to last post had eleven names:
Thomas S. Monson, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, Bill Ford, William Clay Ford, Jr., Michael Fred Phelps, Patriarch Kirill I, or Cyril I Кирилл, Патриарх Московский и всея Руси, born Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyayev, Владимир Михайлович Гундяев, His Suinine Majesty, Carl XVI Gustaf, Carl Gustaf Folke Hubertus , General David Howell Petraeus, Commander International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Commander, U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A) , Father Adolfo Nicolás Pachón S.J., S.T.D. , The Superior General of the Society of Jesus, Serena Jameka Williams , Shakira, Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll, Letizia Moratti née Letizia Brichetto-Arnabold , Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall,Camilla Rosemary née Shand, previously Parker Bowles
Eleven More People to Watch in the Second Post 9/11 Decade
But there is a time and a place for looking back on all that has happened in ones life and that place is this blog. The time is spread out over many posts and pages. The truth is that I was not always quite so late middle aged, directionless and chronically despondent as I am now. There were times when I aspired to other and more things in daily life than a differing serving of a perpetual mix of the routine, the impossible and the trivial. I was working hard at BYC but perhaps nobody got more out of it than I. I rejoice in the legacy I see although nobody else may see it the same way exactly.
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