HEART AND LAUGHTER
CHAPTERS 10-12
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LAUGHTER AND TEARS
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A Write Right Quick Insert
The instructions from our teacher said remember, start writing! Do not stop to think it all through.
Write about a time you cried.
TEARS AND LAUGHTER
The woman was not a nurse. She stood at the foot of my hospital cranked-up bed wearing a fashionable long coat and chic suit and she had had her hair nicely done in a loosely elegant falling style. One would perhaps have thought “a socialite.” She had bought a new car that day, it was July 9, 2005, it was outside in the lot. This is California.
My injury - the last in a long line of (twice) broken - first playing tennis long ago at the hands of my former boss in the federal government – and in China (5 times) sprained ankles, an exploded knee and that little twisted spine thing when a fellow walked me off a cliff in China - was majorly in my foot this time.
I still cannot walk more than a few hundred steps now more than a year later so as President I may be a bit like FDR physically.
To avoid being in a no contact "bubble" I have adjusted my campaign public contacts systems to include web and pod cast kinds of communications with time set aside for access for each state (and other electoral areas such as Puerto Rico and other fine areas similarly situated), international relations, hostage release considerations, education, the professions, business, the military, youth, politicos, the press and so on. Still, several of my body systems had shut down for eight days and I was no more comfy than Gandalf atop Saruman's tower.
She was a Liaison Health Professional employed by the Health Maintenance Organization in which I was enrolled. Her job was to visit Kaiser patients placed in Physical Therapy and other short-, medium- and long-term rehabilitation facilities, often somewhat specialized and labor-intensive under contract with Kaiser for such care giving.
She asked me if I had any question she might be able to help me with.
In fact, although she was not nursing me in any way that I perceived, she was in fact, I think she told me, actually, a nurse. (See? I CAN be wrong.)
She was using her skills to oversee Kaiser’s placement decisions, make sure the nursing homes were doing their job right.
I had heard a song on the sound system that was a happy song, but surprisingly to me when I heard it instead of laughing I cried. For some reason, I thought this woman might know why. It turned out she did.
She told me laughter and crying come from the same brain impulses, originating from the same part of the brain.
One may cry at something joyous, like the marriage of your child, or laugh at something bitter, like the loss of your business.
It has been remarked upon that the shortest sentence in the New Testament of the Judeo-Christian Bible is just two words. Jesus wept.
There were likely dozens, hundreds, more times that the two-word sentence could be the other way around, Jesus laughed.
Why the Bible gives us his wepter instead of his laughter may have no meaning for those whose life no frost has touched. Those, perhaps most all, people go through life only laughing it seems, never crying.
It may be a bit like that scene in F. Scott Fitzgerald's fine book The Great Gatsby where The Rich People In Their Party go tinkling off into the distance leaving The Poor People stuck in their squalorous wasteland.
Then there are the rest of the people of this world.
Like the 1, 000,000 to 2, 000, 000 toddler aged children in concentration camp like conditions it seems North Korea under Kim Jong Il has starved to death, as revealed to the world on television by a German Medical Doctor, I think named Dr. Vollestsen. And me. I'm fighting back.* You can too; learn about this issue by clicking on the link below and adding it to your prayer and conversation subjects.
I cry. I laugh a lot too, of course, especially at the goofs in our government. But, I cry.
There are laughter and tears in great music of all genres. I am a lover of music and musicians. Music may sometimes play a role in the peacemaking and peacekeeping process.
At the time of the Camp David Framework For Middle East Peace Accords and consequent Egypt-Israel Peace Treaty, American-Israeli Concert Pianist Rami Bar-Niv was commissioned to compose an official original symphonic score which commemorated the Peace. If I recall correctly, the work was performed in a marvelous desert setting in Egypt.
When Rami Bar-Niv’s son Tal earned a Ph.D. in Music at The University of Southern California in Trumpet, thinking the day might come that he would have an opportunity to play a concert tour that would include China I purchased in Beijing a Chinese Trumpet and presented it to him at his Graduation ceremony at USC.
I would like to see, and hereby request, the Cultural Affairs departments of the three Governments - American, Chinese and Israeli - Foreign Ministries with the joint ability to do so connect Rami Bar-Niv Piano Concert Master, Tal Bar-Niv Trumpet Master together with China’s Ms. Han Mei Li, Piano Concertina, who I met briefly when she was playing at the Huatian Hotel in Zhuzhou, China and she may consider it a mark of respect and honor that I have structured around her and the impression she made on me one of the most important chapters of this book, in which I start to deal with a major world problem*, the next chapter Chapter 11 How Much I Love You.
This request envisions the cultural affairs departments underwriting and contributing for example the costs and expenses of travel and related arrangements such as accommodations, meals and logistics. I request the three foreign ministries agree, undertake and arrange for them to play a joint Concert Tour together.
As part of the Concert Tour of America it would be a fine and practicable thing to seek to have Neil Diamond – incidentally, I think I am right here, a Syracuse University alumni and supporter - and Carly Simon Guest Artist with them as their recent CDs have strong piano numbers and they would bring the element of Song to the Music.
China may provide a Chinese singing star for the Concert Tour part in China and it would be a fine thing to integrate the Concerts with the Great Beijing Winter Olympics stadium venues in 2008.
In the Concert Tour part in Israel, too, Shuli Natan, for example, might join her great voice in a heart and soul song for those who love Jerusalem Yerushalayim Shel Zahav
I think it is Jerusalem of Silver Jerusalem of Gold.
I had the great privilege and pleasure to see and hear her perform this striking number together with the President of Israel at the Bar Mitzvah of SAR EL in The Jerusalem Theater, to which I had been invited by SAR EL's Founder, my friend Major General Aaron Davidi.
In Chapter 11 I also mention, obliquely yet with some specificity, some aspects of the enormous volume of trafficking in human beings in Asia. This is not only an Asian scourge but there it numbers in the tens of millions, with horrific consequences.
This is not an easy problem to solve, yet I state clearly my recognition of it. This is quite important for you can only clean up a problem you realize needs fixing. As the wise Chinese say it A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Mary Poppins put it this way Well begun is half done! It is a subject for that Nike tennis shoes spirit Just do it. As President I will stay seized of the issue and will work in practical ways to alleviate it.*
In Carly Simon's sizzling latino-rhythymed song Better Not Tell Her
on her Reflections CD she artfully reminds us of the laughter and tears most of us learn are part of the knotty parts of love and broken love relationships.
After 911, those words in one of James Taylor's signature songs about sweet lives and dreams and flying machines broken in pieces on the ground now, when I hear that, and I love it, it is one of the songs I love, now, now I cry.
I laugh and cry over beauty, over the gentle sadness of a finite life, many things. Love most of all. Don't expect to never see me cry. Don’t expect to see me hide it. It is not a bad thing and, like A. Lincoln, Sir Winston, GHWB and others, it is part of who I am now.
When I am your President I will paint my forward-looking, future vision of America with a broad brush and strong strokes so that America is better for you and your children. It is going to be Laughter – and sometimes Tears - and most of all Love for my people, my country and the world.
* AS A GENERAL RULE I DO NOT LINK TO SOURCES OTHER THAN MY OWN AS THEIR TRUSTWORTHINESS MAY BE DOUBTFUL. I MAKE AN EXCEPTION AND PROVIDE A LINK BELOW TO SECRETARY OF STATE RICE'S 2007 REPORT ON HUMAN TRAFFICKING BECAUSE I AM A CHRISTIAN AND JESUS CHRIST SAID ONE SMALL SENTENCE WHICH HAS ROLLED THROUGH COUNTRIES ALL OVER THE WORLD CREATING CHILD LABOR LAWS AND OTHERS THAT SAVE AND SHELTER CHILDREN "SUFFER NOT THE LITTLE CHILDREN BUT LET THEM COME UNTO ME FOR OF SUCH IS THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN". THEREFORE I HAVE PLEDGED TO RECOGNIZE AND REMAIN SEIZED OF THE ISSUE OF HUMAN TRAFFICKING, WHICH STARTS IN AN INORDINATE PERCENTAGE OF CASES WITH CHILDREN.
TO VIEW THE OFFICIAL 2007 HUMAN TRAFFICKING REPORT OF U. S. SECRETARY OF STATE RICE CLICK BELOW
U. S. STATE DEPARTMENT 2007 HUMAN TRAFFICKING REPORT
My Father, an Assistant Corporation Counsel for The City of Chicago. and brother, a teacher and law student, shaking hands with me as I am awarded a Youth of the Year Award by the B'nai B'rith Youth Organization at their Starlight Ball in 1970.
CHAPTER 10
MEET JOE BLACK
When you see this film Meet Joe Black the one thing you should understand is it is not really about meeting Joe Black. This film is really about the glory and beauty of certain kinds of all-important love relationships and the nearly taken for granted absolutely excessive magnificent beauty of life.
The special love relationships so important they are set out in painstaking depth and details of self-examination are given us in order of their importance. Two of these so important relationships are interrelated and so nearly equal in importance that, like a two-layer cake the second is presented right within the expression of the first.
The first is the love of parents for their children, shown here as the love of a father for his two daughters.
The father figure here, the character marvelously portrayed by Anthony Hopkins named William – Bill – Parrish, whose surname is a play on the word perish because he will die soon, loves both of his daughters, but one gives him a special joy and is treated as his favorite – graceful, beautiful without even trying, an accomplished professional, a Doctor – as she is.
This is seen and felt by the second daughter who manifests her second-bestness in a life lived out in a devastating inadequacy. Do not let this happen to any child of yours, even though you may have favorite ones.
The second kind of love shown in this film is the great, deep passion of a man and woman so in love it is in fact overwhelming, an obsession that one cannot live without, a person so loved they are thought of every day, even when after a whole full life together one dies and travels on to that next place.
The scenes where the father explains this are worth watching several times. Early in the helicopter, where Bill Parrish speaks of love’s “passion, rapture, obsession” and that “well, if you haven’t really loved you haven’t really lived a life at all”, and later at the party, from him and from Quince, “No secrets, no regrets. No regrets. It’s a good feeling isn’t it?”
The conversation at the party where Joe Black questions Quince about Love and it shows incidentally that solving a complex big business betrayal and loss is more easily handled than the heart problem that can be caused by withholding part of yourself from your true love is another important facet of this learning.
This reflects once again the importance of the words of the woman in the film The Bridges of Madison County
" . . . to be known for all you are . . . "
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My mother going riding and jumping on my grandfather's or perhaps one of his friend's thoroughbred
CHAPTER 11
HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU
In 2004, when I was 52, I traveled halfway around the world to the city next to the city in The People’s Republic of China where Chairman Mao Tse Tung was born. I was told the Mayor of the City used the hotel I was staying in for special functions.
In my work in China the situations of many working women passed before my eyes and on occasion through my hands. Descending into the depths of the nether realms of the Orient, the vast extent of the trafficking in human flesh and souls pressed upon me the sweet flesh of its doomed young women.
They are brought in from cities thousands of miles apart. One effect of this is that no one will recognize them in the city where they have been brought to work. Another effect is that they will have no idea where they are in a strange city far from their hometown.
Therefore they will not be able to formulate an escape route should they want out before they have been so exploited they no longer can be sold or used in any way for anything of value. Another effect is that there will be no one they can turn to for help, no local family members for example. They will be completely dependent upon the men who are trafficking them.
The women, who are referred to as girls, are brought in from China’s great ancient cities with storied names. From Nanjing, formerly the capital city of China, famous for its rape by the Army of Japan in World War II, an exquisite, pretty woman with a voice like a silver bell. From Shanghai, with long straight hair like mahogany, tall, slim, graceful, who would have been a model anywhere else. From Chengdu, the laughing little funster who would later mention she must go to the hospital in the morning for a reason expressed only in silent mirth. She was described as the girlfriend, for then, of the name of a man we had been with the previous night. And, one nasty piece of work, not from a Chinese city, but still, brought in from far, far away. If you had a taste for a big white heifer with brassed, wave-ironed hair, one Miss “Do you know from what country I am?” then, well, as Tony Bennett sang in the song, tonight was going to be the big day for you. Ah, yeah, you know, From Russia With Lust.
So I responded with a generous and uplifting reaction to the lovely young prom dress wearing young women in honest work who are playing their hearts out in the piano lobbies of 5 star hotels for foreigners in China on lawful business.
In this instance, as I walked past her I put a 50 Yuan bill on her music as by custom and probably by law she could not set out a brandy snifter to rake in the tips like Billy Joel’s Piano Man.
Her youngness surprised even me. Her ball gown was mint green or silver grey, it was late at night and in subdued lighting so I cannot be sure of the exact color but I remember it these years later, made of all smooth satin, peculiarly what I just love, shoulderless, showing an immaculate beauty. She wore little girl pigtails. How young she was for what she was doing.
But the winter had come down and it was late night. I had come in a few minutes before closing. The Lobby Manager had shut off the heat a few minutes before. The beautiful little girl concertina suddenly sneezed.
Finishing my coffee at a table with a sofa and easy chairs, layered up under my shirt which was imprinted with the words Yin Tian’l meaning Silver Swan in Chinese and with the black lambswool sweater I often wear on top of the shirt, huddling a bit against the cold myself I thought how it must be for her to be in a shoulderless dress.
Suddenly, without a sound or rustle from her big skirted dress but with a warm smile and a child-like direct reaching out she stood there like a doll in front of me. She wanted me to know, in an indirect Chinese way, that she understood why I gave her the 50 Yuan and she appreciated that. She said in a little girl’s up and down singsong voice, “Hello. I think you like me very much.” I said yes she played very well and I enjoyed it very much. She said, “My name is Han Mei Li.” I said it back to her, but it was clear I was not sure I had heard her right or was saying it correctly. She took a step closer to me so I could hear well. Our heads were just about on the same level. She said again “My name Han Mei Li."Stepping close and putting her smiling face directly eye to eye with mine, she said again “My name Han Mei Li."Again "My name Han Mei Li just like . . . then, in a way that has given me a tender love for her all these years,
“How Much I Love You.”
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Author’s Note:
One of the charming, tantalizing things about working with China, the real China, is the exquisite attention they pay to details particularly about the importance of relationship.
I wrote I did not see her again. That is true.
Not, perhaps, until just last week, the first week of September, 2006 that is.
I believe her government brought her to America just because I had written this chapter and put it on my web site. Just to check the story out for truthfulness see?
With no previous notice, two discreet Chinese plainclothes men walked her silently past me in a Chinese restaurant. In that charming, tantalizing Chinese way, we did not speak, there was no actual confirmation it was Han Mei Li. Perhaps it was not her, but I think it was.
We looked directly in each other’s eyes again for a few seconds; actually, she looked into mine directly. She was smiling her same small closed mouth smile. I noticed her pigtails; same pigtails, but a bit out of place for her now as a young lady.
Yes, I believe it was her. Although she seems to have grown a foot in height in the past two years.
Neil Diamond captures some of the poignancy I felt seeing her again in the first few sentences of his song September Morn on his Greatest Hits Volume II CD. Like the first time we met, she faced me and looked me in the eyes a few seconds and then was gone again. Gone forever again it seems, yet with China, in that wonderful, charming and tantalizing way, there may be yet another time. In the Tears and Laughter insert preceding this Chapter 11 I envision a Han Mei Li America-China-Israel Concert Tour with Neil Diamond, Carly Simon and others I would like to see the relevant governments make possible.
Xie xie ni Zhongguo.
Read more. Download CHAPTER 12 THE BLACK BUDDHA
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China Hand Days Wearing My U. S. Coast Guard Working Jacket
Here I am checking 6 nested carved chests, one chest as a gift for a silent auction type of fundraiser for The Norwegian Seamen's Church, through U. S. Customs at Los Angeles - Long Beach Worldport where perhaps half of all shipping enters the U. S. by the West Coast. This location is specified by the 9-11 Commission Official Report as the second main target planned for 9-11. The RAND Corporation has recently released a study indicating as many as 60,000 people could be killed if a nuclear bomb is set off here by terrorists and within three days the effects of the bomb would be spread widely over most of the Los Angeles - Long Beach metropolitan area basin which is perhaps 75 miles coastwise by 50 miles from the Pacific Ocean shores to the encircling mountains. It is my opinion, having covered pretty much all of the ground many times from Malibu in the north to Huntington Beach in the South and from the pretty little port looking west from the Palos Verdes Peninsula to the sunset, called by the locals San Pedro where, like that Mordechai in the Bible who sat down at the gates of the city and observed all that happened, I once lived overlooking the main ship channel, up to the mountains overlooking the basin down to the sea, that a nuclear detonation here will kill millions of people wihin a very short time. There is a first-person report of what happens to people in an atomic blast in the last pages of the book titled Absolute Victory you see in a photo in Chapter 1 My Birth Story on this web site. If you want to understand this issue you can find that book in a library or good book store. The ones closest to the blast will be the most fortunate as death will find them in an instant before they even realize it has happened. They will never even hear the sound of the bomb exploding, the blast wave will move too fast and burn and or crush instantly all before it.
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Copyright John W. Stevenson 2006. All Rights Reserved.
Disclaimer required by the Federal Election Commission Rules:
This web site has been paid for by the Principal Committee To Elect John W. Stevenson President of The United States of America in the 2008 Election.
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My mother age 20 in Kentucky 1936.
The way these two photos laid out on the web site almost give the impression she is looking at me and what I have to deal with. It must have been the farthest thing from her mind then that some day her youngest of six children would be doing things to save America from a nuclear explosion. In fact, the atomic bomb had not even been invented. In the thousands of years of civilizational history up through her youthful days there was not even the possibility our country could be attacked by a nuclear bomb. Today, her own son, me, "the baby" - that is in the space historically speaking of just one generation - fights nuclear terror in that situation which is changed totally to the point where we are now able to destroy and be destroyed by nuclear bombs. The 9-11 Commission Official Report states no U. S. President can keep a promise to protect America from a nuclear bomb. It seems possible to me this may be what is meant by the Bible promise that in the last days God will "telescope history."
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