I want to apologize to any visitors to Dancy's Corner who had to read through my celebrity tragedy (previous) post. I sometimes have to consolidate my percieved obligations. I felt/feel justified posting some of the unadulterated fluff I am sometimes reduced to submitting for a few schillings.
Besides, I learned something.
As a freelance journalist I missed an opportunity to make a statement. Spartacus reminded me in his response the importance of perspective. The smokescreen is only as thick as we allow it to be. The difference between the fluff and a statement is perspective. Ledger and Renfro visible, spoiled adults lapping at the teat of excess...no big loss. Young man seeking adventure in a foreign land with fantasies of killing terrorists dies in battle...no big loss?
The tragedies mirror each other I should not have mentioned one without the other. Especially right after another local dead soldier's return was being honored. It would have coincided with press time.
I dropped the ball.
Thank you Spartacus I will remember our soldiers.
I will remember we are at war.
The backdrop of perpetual war demands our attention.
Will we give it?
Will we finally give it?
I'll do my part...you do yours
I grew up in Berkeley Ca.. During the seventies and eighties it was- how do I say this?
Free?
I have witnessed some dramatic protests revolving around the removal of an oak tree, the name of a park and even public nudity.
A densely populated urban environment. Everyone jam packed into the east bay. Rich and poor, dumb and wise. Racial assimilation was apparent in the healthy number of bi racial children I grew up with. The only downside was the fact it was a eurocentric assimilation, less tolerant of other cultures.
It didn't hurt that the Black Panthers started to Police the Police while armed themselves.
"China is the sleeping lion...she will awaken".
Protest was part of my civic reality. It was pleasure and duty.
Berkeley, hell, The Bay Area is a petri dish of social policies that create an exciting mix of lifestyles all within spitting distance of each other.
Completely different universes sharing space but rarely colliding, each maintaing their stable orbit within their singular part of the glorious grid. It worked, it seemed chaotic at times, but it worked.
I grew up in the hills, a rare African American treat-at the time. Our elementary School, Kensington Hilltop School, bussed the inner city (thats media slang for black) kids in from Richmond. It was like a cultural exchange program . Instead of building good schools in predominately black neighborhhoods they would rather take a handfull of kids with high aptitude scores and give them a shot.No one starts shit anymore...I guess there is nothing to start shit over.