Strange Tango : Life as Art

REDIRECT TO STRANGE TANGO'S NEW BLOG

2009-12-23T16:28:00.000-08:00

Visit the newly-designed StrangeTango.com blog at: http://strangetango.com/blog/

NEW BLOG DEBUTS within 24 HOURS

2009-11-01T17:20:00.000-08:00

Yes! We've finished the new blog after a marathon 11 hours of tweaking between Boston and Oklahoma...however, being the consummate perfectionists that we are on both front and back ends, Chris Barros will officially do the honors and put the cutting-edge StrangeTango.com blog online after work at the Harvard Business School. We'll go live online within the next 24 hours...even I don't know the exact time. It's a lot like having a baby by natural childbirth: everything is an approximation until the infant emerges. ~A.

StrangeTango.com: Life as Art is a conceptual art installation in cyberspace.

"What remains as documentation of a life?"

This question was first asked in an anthropology class at Cornell University where two of our creative collaborators met for the first time and became lifelong friends. You can't authentically document a life unless you also document our world and its inhabitants...that's why this global platform is a space where visitors and friends may contribute their thoughts, words, and images.
A filmmaker in Los Angeles...a tech guru at the Harvard Business School...and a conceptual artist/literary stylist in America's heartland are collaborating on a cutting-edge blog for the personal website. This blog is a placeholder.

Ron Nance, Real Estate Visionary

2009-10-20T06:35:00.000-07:00

StrangeTango.com is an art installation in cyberspace that launched in August 2009 with the concept, “What remains as documentation of a life?” Through my illustrated memoirs, writings, and commentary, I am documenting my life, my friends, and the world we live in. The personal website was featured in a presentation on the innovation wave in the honors business curriculum at a major university, and we’re also submitting the site in consideration for the Webby Award for the best personal websites on the internet. Since the website continues to organically evolve, we will add experimental installations in 2010. We are currently revamping the blog and including a new feature that showcases innovators who inspire us with their passion, leadership, and creativity. So, it seems fitting that a childhood friend, Ron Nance, has the honor of being my inaugural interview.

Ron Nance is possibly the best-known public figure in Lawton, Oklahoma—both as a successful businessman and as an ambassador for a city viewed by the national media as a voice of America’s heartland. His civic accomplishments are long and impressive, an integral part of the city’s infrastructure: homebuilder for the ABC hit television program, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Lawton City Councilman, President of the Lawton Home Builders Association, Oklahoma Bison Association President, Director of the National Bison Association, Lawton Airport Authority Board Member, and member of a BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure initiative) Coordination Committee for a regional growth management plan for Lawton and Fort Sill, an adjoining, major military installation.

As President and CEO of Ron Nance Enterprises, an umbrella corporation for his business interests—including his new real estate developments, collectively known as The Oaks—he also owns and operates Comanche Buffalo, one of the largest, all-natural producers of buffalo meat in North America. Comanche Buffalo supplies natural food stores, national supermarket chains, and Fearing’s at the Ritz-Carlton, Dallas. Owner-chef Dean Fearing, a winner of the James Beard Foundation Restaurant Award for “Best Chef in the Southwest,” calls the buffalo tenderloin from Comanche Buffalo “…the best product I've ever dealt with…That buffalo is fork-tender.”

Few people realize that Ron and I are inextricably linked through time and memory.

Then known as Ronald Nance, he and I went through all of Woodrow Wilson Elementary School together starting in the mid-1960’s. Fred Thomason was the principal back then, a severely thin man with dark-rimmed glasses who strictly admonished students not to drag their feet while walking in a line down the hallway. The typical student didn’t have parents who were businesspeople, professionals, or entrepreneurs. We were from hardworking folk; many parents were affiliated with the military. Most of us had comfortable childhoods with two-parent, single-income families, siblings, a neighborhood support system, and teachers who were invested in our personal and educational development. I remember Ron as a quiet, laconic type who didn’t call attention to himself. We sat next to each other in the fifth grade, which is documented in the official classroom photograph of the time. Mrs. Mabel Otipoby was our teacher, the only Native American instructor either of us would ever have.

When, decades later, I returned to the place where I grew up, Ron and I were once again neighbors, only this time we both lived on one of the most prestigious streets in Lawton, our homes directly across from each other. Ron and his wife Susan, bearing a gift, attended our housewarming party, and I also came to know their adult children, Whitney Nance Perry, and Brennan Nance.

Occasionally, Ron and I would chat and marvel at how fate had strangely brought us together again. We realized how privileged we both are to have lived our dreams out loud and were now looking forward to what we would leave as a legacy. For me, my life involved global travel, affiliation with interesting and exciting people, institutions, and projects, and the fulfillment of my destiny as a communicator—both writer and artist. For him, it was more fundamental than that. So when Ron, Whitney, and I meet for what was to become a 3-hour visit, the first question I ask him is this:

“When did you know you were destined for something more than what life dealt you?”

Ron settles down in his deep leather chair to ponder a question that was completely unexpected. And when he speaks, his answer is very sure and clear. He recalls a time in the second or third grade when all the students in class were asked what they wanted to be when they grew up. For as long as he had a developed sense of consciousness, he always knew he wanted to become a millionaire. So that’s what he said. His classmates laughed. For the young boy, wealth represented money, status, and security. For the mature husband and father before me, becoming a multi-millionaire had come to symbolize something more elusive: a measurement of just how far he had come in his life. Wealth was a vehicle for achieving potential and manifesting results.

A self-made man, Ron’s journey took a detour before he had a life-changing epiphany. He had attended Southwest Oklahoma State University on a football scholarship, but one day he realized that he really wanted to be his own boss, a businessperson. So he returned to Lawton and enrolled at Cameron University. While still a student, he began selling real estate to support himself. He also had a business hauling hay. Soon, his industriousness paid off, and Ron became a first-time homeowner at the age of 19, before he had even graduated from college. This personal milestone, for him, ranks high among his lifetime achievements.

Ron credits his persistence and desire to learn from experienced mentors for what then became his career trajectory. By the age of 24, he had made the transition into commercial real estate sales where his youthful vigor and enthusiasm made him the go-to person for national chains that were trying to make inroads into the city. Elderly people who distrusted corporations owned much of the commercial land. But Ron was a local boy who was also well known and well liked. In the 1980’s, he had obtained the prestigious CCIM certification in commercial real estate and was given the chance to learn from astute investors and premier businesspeople.

McDonald’s sought him out when the company wanted to lease a prime location at the corner of 11th Street and Lee Boulevard for one of their franchise restaurants. After six months of negotiations, the multinational corporation had a 20-30 year lease, and the elderly lady who owned the land had made a deal that benefited not only her, but also left a sizable financial bonanza as a legacy to her heirs. Ron recalls how he took the time to educate his client. He honestly believed that the transaction would be in her best interest, and he was passionate that she see things his way. “I’ve never been able to sell something I didn’t believe in,” he confides. “I try to help people understand what is at stake.”

He prospered in his chosen industry, but Ron’s juggernaut was about to go supernova in the 1990’s with the Resolution Trust Corporation (RTC) and the savings and loan crises. The federal government was the largest owner of foreclosed properties he was trying to sell. People with money had no appetite for buying real estate, he found, and buyers who wanted properties had gone broke. So he decided to buy the properties his commercial clients were passing on. During this time of rapid acquisition, Ron aggressively purchased real estate at a cost of 25 cents on the dollar. His real estate portfolio included a commercial office building, retail space, and warehouses. As a long-term investor, he knew he could find tenants for his vacant properties, and he astutely recognized that property values would increase over time. When the real estate market eventually rebounded, his investments appreciated in value. Ron could now step away from the day-to-day commercial sales operations and focus on real estate development and investments.

Once again, he started modestly and worked his way up. As a small-scale homebuilder, he was developing 20 lots every few years. Because of the unpredictability of this venture, he had begun to investigate ways to control the construction process from start to finish. This meant developing raw land and producing a finished product. His first subdivision was Brentwood, named in honor of a family friend’s scenic and gracious hometown in Tennessee. The project was a success, and Ron’s reputation for stellar value and customer service grew.

In 2007, when the producers of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition came to Lawton, they were looking for an established builder who had the connections in the trade and with community resources to complete a turnkey project in just four days. The project would be a first for the show: construct an aesthetically pleasing home for the Westbrook family that would incorporate accessibility standards from the American Disability Act.

Gene Westbrook is a war hero who was paralyzed in the Iraq War. His then nine-year-old son James became paralyzed in an auto accident. In designing a house that would accommodate the special needs of Gene and James Westbrook, Ron had become profoundly affected by how trapped the family felt inside their home. He recalls that the living room was so small it could hardly contain two wheelchairs at the same time, and he wanted to give the family a beautiful and open space to live in.

His can-do attitude put to the test, Ron was excited by the challenge and at the same time a bit daunted by the seemingly impossible task he faced. As so often in the past, he relied on his sense of pragmatism and organization. One of the first calls he made was to the brotherhood of former Extreme Makeover homebuilders for their guidance and expertise. On February 17, 2007, an outpouring of men, women, and teenagers from Lawton, the Fort Sill military base, and the surrounding communities worked around the clock on everything from construction, to landscaping, to clean up. To add to the festive community atmosphere, a food tent was set up and a chiropractor was available on the premises. In the end, it would take all 45 of his direct employees, 200 tradesmen, and about 2,000 volunteers to build a 4,000 sq. ft. new construction home in 106 hours.

The producers of Extreme Makeover called the Westbrook home one of the best houses and best builds ever featured on the show. During the initial broadcast and re-runs, about 1 billion people viewed this popular episode in 78 different countries.

Lawton is a multiculturally diverse city of 100,000 with a sizable population that has lived and worked all over the globe. The impact of military base closings has brought an influx of new residents into Lawton-Fort Sill, more than 30,000 when the initiative is fully implemented. To accommodate this economic growth and resulting demand for new housing, the Oaks Development Company distinguishes itself by seizing on the concept of well-planned communities in the mid-range and luxury categories with shared outdoor amenities and a cohesive sense of community.

“Why the oak?” I ask him, already knowing the answer. The oak is a sturdy hardwood indigenous to this part of the country. Here, the oak tree symbolizes strength and longevity…an emblem worthy of the man himself.

Collectively known as The Oaks, Ron is enthusiastic about his company’s current residential development projects: Oak Pointe, with 900 available home sites, and Oak Ridge, starting at the intersection of 67th Street and Lee Boulevard—a square mile tract of land with space for up to 600 luxury homes. The Oaks is just minutes away from shopping centers, schools, hospitals, and clinics.

Oak Pointe features residences that are, historically for Oklahoma, at the $350,000 median price point. If you want to buy a home at Oak Pointe, Ron says, “We will make it as simple as we can.” Homes are available for either immediate occupancy or will be finished in six months from financing to building. The first step is to look at vacant new construction homes so the customer can get a realistic sense of what the family wants. An existing design plan can be amended several times or a custom home can be designed. A horticulturalist, designers, and the director of construction are available for weekly updates as new owners watch their houses being built. The final meeting is also a homeowner’s orientation with a walk-through before the closing and transfer take place. Warranty calls are made the first year of occupation to guarantee the owner’s satisfaction.

He is proud of the fact that The Oaks has always met a specified move-in date and that happy customers have resulted in a high rate of referrals. His goal has always been to give his buyers pride of ownership and a comfortable place to call home. Says Ron, “Our objective is to delight the customer.”

Across the street from Oak Pointe, the Oak Ridge development is where he plans to build a 12,000 sq. ft. estate alongside a 22-acre, man-made lake that will become his home in retirement. Whitney and her new husband have selected a lot right next door so that three generations of Nances—parents, children, and grandchildren—can all live adjacent to each other.

“I can see what it’s all going to look like when it’s completed,” he tells me with a gleam in his eye. “In fifty years there will be a canopy of overhanging oak trees lining the streets.”

Oak Ridge, with its stunning view of the Wichita Mountains to the north, is the embodiment of Ron Nance’s boyhood dreams. Designed to be a model village or enclave, all the homes here will be architecturally unified with a residential theme, an enduring, Old World European style—French Country, Tuscan Villa, or Mediterranean Estate. Artistic souls among us appreciate his vision of a classic, stately, and timeless residential community with state-of-the-art amenities—a task never before achieved in Lawton given the patchwork of housing styles to be found in any given neighborhood. Ron Nance Enterprises has evolved to virtually dominate the luxury market in the increasingly prosperous Texoma region with a level of architectural sophistication and construction expertise that had been missing until now.

Dream homes will be priced in the $450,000-$800,000 range for lots starting at ½ acre, or two lots to the acre. Estates sited along the lake are expected to sell for $1-$5 million, with lot sizes ranging up to six acres. Lakefront homes will be set on a hill overlooking the water and at lake level. These would be individually gated homes set back from the street—heirloom quality estates on beautifully manicured lots that can be handed down through generations. The city cooperated by passing legislation to allow estate-type compounds to be built in the subdivision. The rollout has begun, to be spaced out over a 10-15 year timeframe.

In Lawton’s future, Ron envisions a residential space that visually appeals to the senses and is harmonious, quiet, and safe. A place with a strong sense of community where residents can raise their families or retire comfortably, just like the neighborhoods where we both grew up. But his innovative leadership goes further: he wants his development to meet the life cycle needs of all age groups, from childhood to old age. In so doing, he is giving Lawton’s underserved demographics the kind of high-quality, one-of-a-kind residential stock and thoughtful, intuitive details they desire. For the area’s affluent immigrant community, with multi-generational families all living or visiting under the same roof, the zoning regulations will allow the construction of gated compounds that are common in their home countries. For the well off, retired empty nesters, Ron’s mantra is: “Downsizing doesn’t mean downgrading.”

In a nod to the lessons gleaned from the Extreme Makeover experience, every house in Oak Ridge will feature minimally accessible features to accommodate the needs of residents who are elderly or disabled. He rightly points out that the workplace is handicap accessible, but homes are not. Showers will have no rims to impede wheelchairs and walkers. A front step at the entrance will be eliminated, and each hallway and door will be at least three feet wide.

He takes special delight in choosing the names of the streets. He finds that each street has its own personality and practically names itself. On Oakmont Boulevard, Ron and Whitney take me on a tour of their 2009 Dream House. The Cypress Villa, a 4,000 sq. ft. home evocative of the history and charm of Tuscany in Italy, is the first property to be constructed on the raw land. It was Whitney’s perceptive idea that her parents swap the Dream House for their home in Wyatt Acres.

I tell Ron how baronial their new abode looks from the outside. Indoors, the artistic flourishes and luxurious materials—inlaid hardwood and travertine floors, granite countertops, and ceramic tiles—used throughout the residence impress me. The environment brings me back in time to an antiquarian world of elegance and refinement. It is the unexpected details like the intricate, cast stone ceiling and stone crafted fireplace…the graceful dome ceiling in the first floor master suite...that delight me. In the great room, spacious glass doors open to an outdoor living space with a fireplace, seating area, and outdoor kitchen.

State-of-the-art modern conveniences include radiant floor heating, a jacuzzi and waterfall shower, and tankless water heaters. Abundant built-in storage space throughout the house enhances the visual flow. On the second floor, a spacious and comfortable home theatre is worthy of being called a man cave. A warm and inviting gourmet kitchen with maple cabinetry, 6-burner stove, and a farmhouse sink is perfect for entertaining guests. By the garage, there is a laundry room, and a mudroom with personal lockers made of wood where occupants could leave keys or recharge cell phones.

By now, I have the sense that I am looking deep inside the mind of a highly creative individual who is tweaking my artistic surroundings in a way that both inspires me and optimizes my productivity each work day. To connect the customization concept even further, Ron Nance Enterprises has its own drafting department, which is digitized and computerized, as well as its own trim carpenters. The craftsmen who work on their projects are the best to be found in the region.

It is perhaps symbolic that the grand opening of the first completed home in Oak Ridge was also a fundraiser for a local children’s charity. More than $6,000 was raised for Food 4 Kids, which provided a total of 24,000 meals.

“I’m very fortunate and blessed to have a father who is a leader and who I can learn from.” As a child, Whitney enjoyed seeing what her father did for a living and the joy he brought to customers buying new homes. Initially, she had studied interior design, thinking she might follow the same career path that took her college friends to urban centers. But Lawton is growing exponentially as a result of the base realignments in Asia and Europe, with military families being reassigned to Fort Sill. In addition, Oklahoma’s fiscal conservatism protected its economy from the real estate collapse that has hurt much of the nation. Consumers purchased real estate as residences, not for rampant speculation. Agriculture, oil and natural gas production, and the defense industries have contributed to the stability of the state’s economy. Money magazine named Lawton one of the top 100 cities in the country to live in.

In the final analysis, for Ron as well as for myself, Lawton was our family’s base. Whitney also recognized there was no need to move anywhere else when you could always travel around the world for study or vacation. At the University of Oklahoma, she switched her major to marketing, and then spent a summer in Spain studying international business and European architecture. She sees the opportunity to work with her father as a way of carrying on the family business that he started decades ago.

As the Vice President of Marketing for the Oaks Development Company, Whitney has been involved with every aspect of the business, from construction to sales. She brings her own uniquely modern perspective to the table. Internet and multimedia savvy, she manages the company website and advertising, and she demonstrates the renowned Nance style of personalized customer service and outstanding value in all her dealings. Whitney’s imprint is also on Oak Ridge. She is the company executive who came up with the look and feel of the harmonious architectural styles that will be built on the development map.

“She’s my succession plan,” Ron quips. He has trained his successor well. Brother Brennan is a photographer and artist, but Whitney has been groomed since childhood to be an executive. Her parents’ appreciation for living well with art and beauty in one’s surroundings is also in her genes. It is an ethos they are happy to share with their customers and the larger community. As with everything he has earned in life, Ron Nance has planned for the best, perceptively recognized and doggedly pursued opportunity when it emerged, and built his legacy to last.

View the Facebook photo albums for Ron Nance: Real Estate Visionary and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and click on the be a fan icon.

Ron Nance, President/CEO
(580) 678-5222 (cell)
Whitney Nance Perry, Vice President of Marketing
(580) 917-2706 (cell)
Ron Nance Enterprises
1 SW 11th St. Ste. 210
Lawton, OK 73501
(580) 248-4411 (office)
http://www.theoaksdevelopmentco.com/
http://www.comanchebuffalo.com/

The Neo-Zen Sensibility

2009-10-14T14:38:00.000-07:00

My transformation from glamorous to spiritual was years in the making. When I worked for other people and had my own source of income, I purchased heirloom quality items to leave as a legacy for my niece. My curatorial sensibility was developed by taking courses in the liberal, literary, and fine arts at the largest university in the Ivy League and by being mentored by a professor of Japanese culture and comparative literature who is the director of the Society for the Humanities at Cornell. As a result, over time, my senses became sharply honed and more finely focused until I developed a distinctive voice, style, and sensibility that I call neo-Zen.

Friends and strangers call me psychic, or highly perceptive, but I say it’s a matter of cultivated attunement.

With an eye toward archival quality, my wardrobe consisted primarily of well-constructed and beautifully lined dresses and suits in sizes 0-4 by Italian, French and German designers: Ferragamo, Armani, Versace, Prada, Missoni, Chanel. Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Ferragamo are the logos on my leather accessories. The luxurious quality…the natural materials such as silk, wool, and leather used to craft these goods…the pride in workmanship by unknown artisans…I sensed all this whenever I held or viewed treasures from my stockpiled trove.

I understood that price is an artificial stimulus used to drive up desirability, but this principle had no bearing on the sensory joy that handling and using these goods brought me. However, if you learn to examine an object’s innate value to your own life, you might decide that you can do without. My classic, buff-colored Versace silk and linen blend trench coat is an object of beauty, but it loses its functional desirability if I have no business meetings to attend. So, when my husband and I decided to return to my family base in southwest Oklahoma and to leave behind our home, friends, and artistic lifestyle in New England, I had to reconcile myself to the idea that I was supplanting an exterior-driven existence for a far more insular one.

Now, almost everything in my work wardrobe has been meticulously archived, photographed, and carefully stored to bequeath to the next generation. I have streamlined and simplified my life so that my days are primarily occupied by my family and my time on my laptop computer, writing and otherwise multi-tasking. Instead of buying objects, I seek peak experiences that fill and inhabit my senses. I now select clothes for absolute comfort, which means silk-cotton-spandex blend textiles that weigh no more than four ounces per item. A friend’s mantra that downsizing doesn’t mean downgrading rings true.

But the interior changes that mirror my outer life are even more significant. Instead of an epitaph that reads: artist – traveler – citizen of the world, the plaque might now say: daughter – sister – aunt – wife.

And my legacy? It is my thoughts, my ideas, my writings…my sensibility—incorporating all of the above.

Neo-Zen is the sensibility...which I first captured when it surfaced in the 1980’s when the Millennial generation was being born. Strange Tango, the epistolary novella, is the heart of neo-Zen…and StrangeTango.com the personal website is but a glimpse into this, my inner world. Only a handful of people have read the manuscript of Strange Tango the epistolary novella—and they call it a masterpiece. My oeuvre will remain hidden from the world until it is published.

Road Trip, Part I: Artistic Santa Fe and Taos

2009-10-08T01:00:00.000-07:00

My husband and I love to pile into our comfortable SUV, throw in a few small pieces of luggage, and head for the open road with our family pet. We enjoy the time we spend together and the freedom of traveling at our own pace without the inconveniences that air travel now involves. I determine the total experience: the destinations, restaurants, and hotels, while Joseph plots the navigation.

For our autumn tour, we had planned to travel westward to the Grand Canyon, perhaps the only major national park we have yet to explore, and from there visit family friends in Phoenix and San Diego. However, we were stymied by the severe weather front coming in from Colorado, so we spent the extra days working around the house and changed course to take us on an abbreviated loop through Amarillo, Santa Fe, Taos, Colorado Springs, and finally to Denver, where we would be reunited with our longtime friend Jon Tesseo—from back in the day at Lotus Development in Cambridge, Massachusetts—and his family. Heading back home to Oklahoma, we hoped to stop in Kansas City for its famous barbecue.

Days 1 and 2: Amarillo, Santa Fe, Taos

Interstate Highway 40 took us through the Texas panhandle and Amarillo. Having stayed awake all night, I fell asleep and awoke just as we began to approach the town. The Palo Duro Canyon, the second largest canyon in the United States, punctuated the flat topography. Sightings of turbines in this windy corridor were in the distance. Amarillo had tripled in size since I last passed through the region and the old Route 66 back in 1994. The city was completely transformed with shopping centers, strip malls, and office buildings along both sides of an expanded highway.

Still, some landmarks remained comfortingly familiar: the Big Texan Steak Ranch, best known for its 72 ounce (4 ½ lb.) steak eating challenge shown on the Food Network and the Travel Channel, had not changed. And some miles outside of town, we were reminded of the thousands of penned cattle bound for major meat packing plants by the powerful stench in the air. I photographed the dynamic skies that stretched for miles, poised like a bell jar to envelope the landmass…the feeling was almost claustrophobic.

Fortunately, in just under four hours we would reach Santa Fe, our designated stop for the night. If the Texas panhandle were characterized by monotony, the breathtaking mesas that gave New Mexico its state nickname, “Land of Enchantment” took over the landscape. Nearing the city limits, my impression was that an advanced alien civilization had plopped this visually stunning settlement right in the middle of an arid plain. Santa Fe, quite simply, is breathtaking in its beauty.

Mountains, sky, and desert create a scenic environment quite unlikely to be found elsewhere in America. Against this backdrop, the consistency of the architecture astonished me, as though I were within a fantasy theme park. Everywhere we drove, this town of 70,000 was clean and beautiful. Spanish Pueblo Revival style based on indigenous adobe mud, straw, and wood construction is the adopted aesthetic, mandated by the city.

We hadn’t eaten all day, so we conveniently pulled up to a metered space near The Burrito Company, a family-run fast food restaurant serving Mexican/Tex-Mex/Southwestern food. Located just across from the plaza on Washington Avenue, the prices were affordable, and the combo taco and enchilada plate with sides was large enough for two.

We’re travelers, not tourists, so my husband and I generally eschew the sanitized, five-star hotel experience. But for our Santa Fe experience, I wanted a comfortable hotel that welcomed pets and was within striking distance of the town center. The El Dorado Hotel and Spa fit my requirements. I had asked my longtime travel agent, Joseph Tse, the president and owner of OT&T Travel Management, to book our regularly requested, charming room on an upper floor with a view. As always, OT&T did not disappoint.

As a New Age Traveler with a neo-Zen sensibility, I look for accommodations that are new, spotless, comfortable, and atmospheric. A part of the Preferred Hotels and Resorts Group, the El Dorado met my exacting standards. The location just steps away from the plaza was the perfect base for our forays.

An important art mecca, second only to New York City, Santa Fe is called the City Different and is a designated UNESCO Creative City. Truly, life is lived as art in this community. I had immediately noticed how unnaturally vibrant the light appears to be, the colors in nature more intense. The air 7,000 feet above sea level smells fresh and pure. For a self-defined conceptual artist such as myself, I sensed mystery and dynamic energy in this space. Artistry and public art is a facet of daily life. Whimsical wind sculptures appear unexpectedly alongside a church. Art galleries and boutiques abound, displaying everything from beautifully crafted Native American pottery and turquoise jewelry in contemporary settings to life-sized metal sculptures of native wildlife.

As we roamed the pedestrian-friendly streets, I was reminded of the sheltering, walled medieval cities in Europe, such as Carcassonne. Or of Kyoto where seemingly around every corner a picturesque sampling of still art could be found in the placement of garden plants or the positioning of window displays. The cultural cues may have been different, but a definable spirit of place imbued the sights, aromas, and sounds around me.

Our self-guided walking tour included stops along the Santa Fe Plaza, an historic landmark designating the end of the Santa Fe Trail. Here, historic buildings house modern vendors such as Starbucks. We strolled past the Native American artists selling silver and turquoise jewelry in front of the Palace of the Governors, then around the corner to the Institute of American Indian Arts. Directly across the street is the St. Francis of Assisi Cathedral, with a road that curves toward the Loretto Chapel, then down a charming street past a sculpture gallery, to the greenbelt along the river where we could spend some time walking Joy-Joy.

As evening settled in, we were left trying to decide where to go for dinner. On road trips, fine dining is out of the question as we either bring Joy-Joy everywhere with us, or Joseph stays outdoors with her while I go inside for take-out food. We had planned a return visit to the landmark Coyote Cafe, but the restaurant was serving a special wine menu that evening. So instead, we walked a block away and decided on Indian food.

The restaurant reviews named the India Palace Restaurant the best ethnic restaurant in town. It was located inside a municipal parking lot, but in this case, I was right not to judge the book by its cover. The smells wafting outside were enticing, and a review of the menu showed authentic Northern Indian cuisine from the Punjab region. I quickly ordered tandoori chicken wings, vegetable samosas, Kashmiri naan, chicken korma, chicken curry, mixed pickles, kulfi, mango lassi, and chai, which we then spread out on a table in the hotel room. Maybe we were just hungry, or the enhancement of the senses that characterizes Santa Fe kicked in...the traditional cuisine and spices were delectable and aromatic. And since I haven’t yet visited India, I would go on record to declare that London and Santa Fe are the two places where I’ve enjoyed the best of traditional Indian cuisine.

Early the next morning, Joseph alerted me that we would have to leave Santa Fe by lunchtime if we wanted to visit Taos and spend the night in Colorado Springs. This plan was perfect, as I often photograph objects and landscapes shortly after dawn for the best natural lighting. Since time was limited, I shifted into television news producer mode and efficiently took close-up and long shots of still life around the hotel and plaza, picked up coffee for us at Starbucks and a fluffy brioche at Café Paris in Burro Alley, and scooped up an official, Santa Fe 400th year commemorative t-shirt at Dressman’s Gifts and the Santa Fe Trading Company, the one-stop shopping place for souvenirs. I especially admired the Native American arts and crafts and silver and turquoise jewelry.

Andrea Fisher Fine Pottery is another must-visit establishment. It houses an impressive collection of fine Native American pottery from the Southwest, including pottery from the Acoma and Santa Clara pueblos. The museum-quality pieces are among the best I have seen. In a contemporary vein, Kiva Fine Art showcases a comprehensive collection of Native American fine art—sculpture, pottery, weavings, paintings, gourds, woodworking, hides, and kachinas.

I made a beeline for the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum and museum store and soaked in the spirit of New Mexico’s quintessential artist for all of half an hour. At the Coyote Cafe rooftop cantina, I placed a take-out order of gourmet tacos and tomato soup garnished with generous portions of large shrimp. Celebrity chef Mark Miller brought Southwestern regional cuisine into the national consciousness when he opened the original restaurant in the mid-1980’s. I savored a pink, prickly pear Margarita and rooftop views while waiting for my order. After lunch, we drove along historic Canyon Road, a six-block stretch of art galleries, a sculpture garden, and The Compound Restaurant, a secluded property that boasts a James Beard Award for Best Chef in the Southwest.

Our next destination was Taos, historically an artists colony and now also a haven for outdoors sports enthusiasts. For a time, Taos was the home of the English novelist D. H. Lawrence, and his ashes are enshrined in a small chapel on property he once owned. Located seventy miles north of Santa Fe at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains, the travel time is deceptive as the local scenic route winds through high desert plains and evergreen forests. Thunderstorms threaten in the distance, and the eerie combination provides spectacularly elemental photo opportunities. The route leading out of Santa Fe, through Taos, and on local roads leading to Colorado Springs reminded me of the sweeps and turns we encountered driving in Europe and through parts of the Black Forest of Germany.

At this point, we had spent $56 on gas and just over $100 on food for a party of three, over two days. Our neo-Zen aesthetic of spending wisely while optimizing sensory experiences was paying dividends.

Part II: Scenic Colorado Springs and Denver, Home

See all 90 photographs on the Facebook Strange Tango Fan Page Photo Album.
Click to be a fan.

(photographs, clockwise: St. Francis of Assisi Cathedral, Coyote Cafe, Dressman’s Gifts and the Santa Fe Trading Company, wind sculpture outside Loretto Chapel, banner by historic Santa Fe Plaza)

New Age Traveler: The Creative Process

2009-09-23T06:49:00.001-07:00

"Although these days I tend to travel in style, there is still a part of me that relishes the idea of roughing it and traveling lightly--to soak in stripped down, sensory experiences." New Age Traveler by A. D. Tejada, in Millennium Muse

The Strange Tango personal website is a living and evolving art installation in cyberspace—the innovation is the first of its kind in how we marry art and style, substance and content. My collaborators and I are savvy about new technologies...this global platform was built via a remote process and is regularly updated and upgraded several times a week. The six of us are based on both coasts and in America's heartland, so our discussions generally take place through email loops or Facebook online chats.

The musings on art, self-expression, communication, and connection are thoughtful and relevant. Currently, we are working on the design for New Age Traveler, a chapter in my book, Millennium Muse. When completed, the art installation will be housed on the experimental space on the website, also called Millennium Muse.

The Strange Tango project excites me, in particular, because of the intellectual and creative synergy between us across distance—it’s the quality and energy of pure thought.

I am continually reminded of how lucky it was to have found each other. I specifically tapped my brilliant, yet modest, collaborators because they are among the best in the world at what they do. The public often only sees the polished work when it is published. But what goes on behind the scenes is worthy of documentation and commemoration. Brian was in Mexico and Chris at work…but Dan, Marlee, Raphael, and I chimed in. Here is a special glimpse into our creative process:

Daniel Brunelle:

I’m thinking we should be focusing on the nonlinearity of Muse. I’ve read a few hyperlink fiction texts online and they haven’t been as effective as the idea suggests… It’s an idea a lot people have thought of and no one has really succeeded at. So, here’s why this is perfect: if you want to communicate the "journey" you must place the reader in an experientially synonymous place…not a series of pages but a network of experiences that are re-explored. It’s not so much that the words change but is rather connected in additional dimensions.

So, let’s use as an example one place you’ve been that made you feel sadness but inspired you to help the locals. I feel the connections should be emotional, a re-exploration of what has occurred previously. We can create the emotional feeling with nonlinear music and custom-built java app by Marlee. Frankly, the usefulness of music in Muse is directly proportional to the java app that supports it.

Music to me is pure abstraction of either emotion or the intellect. If it’s just an mp3 player then it’s nothing new, you know? A picture of an exotic place is nothing special to the random person, but an emotional approach to that moment is. If your story supplies the "moment" of a given moment, the structure will supply.

Really, all I’m asking is that you sit back and close your eyes and just remember all things you’ve done and keep track of the order they come up as your mind just remembers, and then do it again from a different memory. Follow tangents. Keep track of where they lead. Geography doesn’t exist anymore. Just think about ways to shuffle your story's deck…how can it be reordered.

Next time, I’ll tell you how I’m thinking of the music…

A. D. Tejada:

None of us ever had a chance to talk as a group about Muse. So, I was happy for the opportunity to chat online with Daniel Brunelle today.

He reminded me to return to my roots--which are highly conceptual and not necessarily accessible. Nonlinearity and the emotions evoked during travels is the key. So, we'd streamline the project, and perhaps we could pull in Brian to handle some of the visual workload.

I'd like to include the story...but we won't be quite as literal in the interpretation, so you can scrap the previous treatment. Most importantly, Daniel pointed out something that I had forgotten. He said it's not the tech, design, or visuals.

Millennials are the new influencers, and what intrigues them is my sensibility. I'm flattered, and humbled...thank you for that lesson, Dan.

Raphael Seligmann:

Trying to imagine what it'll look like--I'd expect a stunner from you, Marlee. Can't wait to see a mockup.

Audrey--you certainly got good advice. I'd just add that "not necessarily accessible" shouldn't be taken to the point of hermeticism. My suggestion for Muse is to (mine) the emotionality in the visuals and other non-text aspects of the user experience (even consider music at certain points) as a way of compensating for the allusiveness and reticence that marks the story. The user should always get a reward for staying with you. As Dan pointed out, the sensibility is the reward. That sensibility can come through different media in different strengths at different times. The web offers you the chance to switch channels while remaining inside a single artwork. Go for broke.

Marlee O'Neal:

I have a thought about Muse too…

Scrapping the book treatment and going with something more futuristic. I’m thinking…a holographic-looking tablet that is suspended in mid-air… Suggesting that someone from the future is presenting it to us. Just as the memoirs are about what happened in a past era, the reader gets a glimpse of a past in a future setting.

Thoughts?

A. D. Tejada:

Unbelievable...Can you actually do that, Marlee? I think the original story should, at the least, be presented somewhere as the basis for the inspiration.

It could even be a footnote clicked on...a secret for those following the trail.

Marlee O'Neal:

It suggests time travel…but without any mundane, linear looking timelines, of course. We are currently in the Information Age; segueing into an age of LIGHT. When I see how technology is evolving with more use of LIGHT, for example—laser disks, holographic emissions, it seems that we could push that envelope with the look and feel of Millennium Muse… New Age Traveler certainly is a great kick off to this theme.

A. D. Tejada:

I love your concept of light and time travel. The work is New Age Traveler, after all. We’ll still have the book as a framing device, because that is the form that best identifies it as a memoir. You open it to see the entire contents, with a link to New Age Traveler.

However, once the link is clicked on, the book dissolves to segue into the actual experiences. We can go wild from this point on. I could have the blurb about the almanac, or Raphael could come up with the kind of intro paragraph that he does so beautifully. The manuscript itself could be accessed by a discreet link or icon so that we can see the original material that inspired the treatment.

I like the idea of a surprise that challenges expectations and assumptions: you think you're going to read a book, but the book is only the portal...

Millennial Spirit

2009-09-18T17:14:00.000-07:00

Bianco’s Italian Restaurant is a landmark in Lawton, Oklahoma. The restaurant still makes the same spaghetti sauce that Tony Bennett enjoyed when he performed at the local auditorium decades ago.

Each Friday afternoon before heading off for a game, the 63 members of nearby Lawton High School’s football team gather together to share fellowship and a meal of spaghetti, salad, bread, and blue Gatorade.

I was waiting for a take-out order of lasagna and spaghetti when three busloads of young athletes filtered in. They knew the drill and seemed very organized and disciplined. I graduated from LHS decades ago, although physically I am often mistaken for a college student. Before the meal, a student stood up and said grace. This was an eloquent prayer giving thanks for the food and fellowship. His earnest words were inspirational to me, so I asked the young black male sitting closest to me if the team captain gives the prayer.

“No, ma’am,” he politely replied. Anyone could say grace. I looked at the 12 tables in the small restaurant, completely filled with courteous young men who addressed their elders as “ma’am” or “sir.” Black or white, or any other color, ethnicity made no difference in how the team members arranged themselves.

I tried to think of any teacher or administrator from my time who could still be at the school. But that was decades ago. “Do you know Mrs. Brammer?” finally spurted out of my mouth. The convivial players at the table seemed surprised that this stranger had heard of the popular English teacher at their school. I had never met Mrs. Brammer, but I had interviewed an outstanding prospect for my Ivy League alma mater earlier in the year who happened to be her son. JP had asked if he could stay in touch. It is rare for two students from this town of just under 100,000—the hometown of Lauren Nelson, Miss America 2007—to be accepted to the same Ivy League school in the same year. JP was one of them, but he had opted to attend school closer to home on a full scholarship.

“She’s JP’s mother… Y’all know JP…he was Lore yearbook editor last year.” By now they were engaged…they recognized JP and his mom. “JP is a friend of mine,” I continued. Evidence of how small my world has become…a hometown girl transplanted to the East Coast who returned home to her roots, where her parents, as first generation immigrants, were among the first Asians to settle in this part of southwest Oklahoma in the 1960’s.

By then, my take-out order had arrived. I wished the team luck in tonight’s game against Altus and told them I would post our meeting as an inspirational story on the StrangeTango.com personal website tonight. One of my friends is an assistant coach who recently enthused about a young athlete who is charismatic, humble, hungry, and overly polite. At Bianco's Italian Restaurant this afternoon, I’m privileged to have been in a room full of them.

Mantra Wall

2009-09-11T08:29:00.000-07:00

We commemorate 9/11 with our personal words to live by, posted on the MANTRA WALL of the Strange Tango Facebook Fan Club Page. We invite you to add your own thoughts and philosophy of life.

- "...elegant, eclectic, minimalist, surprising..." - Strange Tango, the novella by A. D. Tejada

- "I don't compete: I won't be an afterthought." - Strange Tango, the novella by A. D. Tejada

- "It's not about me." - Angela Treadway, Patterson, NC

- "How much is enough, how much do I really need, and why have I been given more than I need?" - Angela Treadway, Patterson, NC

- "If life passes you by...down shift." - Andrew Barros, Tewksbury, MA

- "Never be bullied into silence. Never allow yourself to be made a victim. Accept no one's definition of your life; define yourself. ~ Harvey Fierstein" - Virginia Lusby, Dallas, TX

- "To be good is noble, but to show others how to be good is nobler and no trouble. ~ Mark Twain" - Shaun Heath, Norman, OK

- "Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else. ~ Judy Garland" - Virginia Lusby, Dallas, TX

- "I remember a story of someone trying to rescue a loved one from a pit. Nothing seemed to work because the victim was evidently too weak to be of any help in the rescue. Finally, the person attempting the rescue apparently lost all sense of reason and began to dance around the rim of the pit. The victim, after more pleading and weeping, eventually recognized that life looked much better on the rim and climbed out on their own." - Jack Hunsucker, Lawton, OK

- "The only source of knowledge is experience. ~ Albert Einstein" - Yanni Hufnagel, Cambridge, MA

- "Success, like wine, is enjoyed most when it is shared. Never drink alone." - Frank Witsil, Detroit, MI

- "Things do not change; we change. ~ Henry David Thoreau” - Jerome Tse, Ithaca, NY

- "God knows each of us better than we know ourselves. He knows the deepest desires of our hearts and the needs of our bodies, minds, spirits. He exalts in our joy and he lifts us up in our despair. He is with us always. Be at peace." - Maria Rodriguez Piña, Seattle, WA

- "There's more to life than hard news..." - A. D. Tejada, the world

Serge

2009-09-03T21:33:00.000-07:00

Serge was easily over six feet tall, his father being a Russian colonel, his mother Korean.

We were in high school together. Serge went off to study government at Yale, as did I at Cornell, and he had been accepted to law school. Apparently, he had died in an automobile accident; I heard he swerved to avoid a deer, which was definitely in keeping with his character. The news came to me from a friend in broadcasting, who had tracked me by calling my mother.

Serge had been a student radical in the 1970’s, an idealist. He and my sister, who studied philosophy and religion, would attend political demonstrations together and end up in jail as peaceful protesters. My highly traditional parents were horrified to see her on television news when, on one occasion, the two of them drove to Ohio for a commemoration of the Kent State killings.

After our youthful escape from Oklahoma to the East Coast, my sister at Barnard and I at Cornell would visit Serge at Yale. During one overnight stay in his dorm suite, I had lost my wire-rimmed glasses, and she had swiped his flannel shirt; Serge had told her to keep it, which was definitely a sign of affection.

"You know," he once said to her, "I think one day you should be my old lady."

We had always expected him to show up at our doorstep—like me, he is the sort to appear unexpectedly, much to everyone’s delight—though he would be scraggly and carrying a knapsack. When he hadn’t through the years, my sister had wondered why. After I told her, she then knew, and we both cried.

Cull the Pithy Metaphor

2009-08-31T22:42:00.000-07:00

“The methodology requires intensity coupled with bouts of stillness to cull the pithy metaphor.” Strange Tango, the epistolary novella, page 39.

Strange tango is my metaphor for life.

I could have blogged about gardening...foodie reviews...travel...culture...or politics. But I decided the website and blog space should be about life—which encompasses all of the above, its synthesis, and more.

“What kind of niche is that?” a publisher or an internet marketer might ask. Life is so unwieldy and overwhelming. True, but the unifying theme is the uniqueness of my voice and perspective. If a person or an event has been a part of my life, then that is incorporated into my life history. As an individual and as an artist, I fully inhabit the present, and my gaze is always towards the future.

My past, however, is commemorated as a memory.

During the artistic process from idea, to development, to production, launch, and beyond, my collaborators and I encountered recurring questions, which are answered here for their insight into the Strange Tango mission.

1) What inspired the title "Strange Tango"? Question asked by Sangita Chandra, producer/reporter, WCVB-TV 5, Boston.

The title intuitively came to me in a flash of inspiration two decades ago. Like Athena emerging as a complete figure from Zeus’ head. I was smiling at the time…the name conveyed precisely what I had crafted my imprint to be:

Tango: "passionate," "sensuous," "romantic," "elegant," "stylized," "intricate," "distanced," "a universal dance."

Strange: "means that there’s a twist," "subversive," "slyly satirical."

2) How much of the website is based in fact vs. fiction? Follow-up question asked by Sangita Chandra, producer/reporter, WCVB-TV 5, Boston.

Everything on the blog is my life, my reality. Nothing is fiction. As an essayist and belle-lettrist, I have a distinctive writing style that is very fluid and lyrical, so passages may read like fiction. In Bereaved, I give a blow-by-blow description of the sudden death of our family cat and my internal state of grief. I also honor our pet’s life by commemorating the love and the life lessons Seraphin taught me in his brief time on earth.

3) What is it about? Question asked by Jennifer 8. Lee, New York Times reporter and author of The Fortune Cookie Chronicles at An Evening of Hope and Good Fortune at Harvard University.

The concept is the documentation of a life—capturing sensations and perceptions, letting the details build up to a 360-degree portrait of the artist—and, by extension, of our world. The tag, "life as art," is about learning to find beauty in the places you travel, the people you meet, and the thoughts in your own head…

4) What are you selling? Question asked by Farland Chang, CEO and founder of WorldBizWatch and former NBC News correspondent, at a Cornell University alumni networking event in Washington, D.C.

We have nothing to sell; my vision is merely out there—its value unfolds in the visitor's life.

A moment of peaceful reflection in the visitor's busy, over stimulated day…a thoughtful and welcoming space on the web…pithy and quotable mantras to ponder and apply to life.

5) What is the point of the website? Question asked by many.

To showcase a distinctly contemporary aesthetic—a visual look and prose style for the emerging neo-Zen movement ushered in with the election of President Barack Obama and a new, more collaborative political and economic order.

The neo-Zen aesthetic is encapsulated in our own example: a way to live life to its fullest in a complex, complicated, and often hurtful world by savoring the evanescent, embracing change, and appreciating the small things and daily activities that accumulate to become a documentation of one’s life.

Visitors are often surprised to learn that the personal website is the work of six collaborators, not just one individual. Having provided the vehicle for my immensely gifted collaborators to unveil their talents for the world to see gratifies me. I front Strange Tango because I blog on the website and post on Facebook, http://bit.ly/Strange_Tango_FB_fan_page, pretty much on a daily basis. But think of the Rolling Stones. Does Mick Jagger have a solo album? Was the rock group ever called Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones? No such thing. All the members are rock stars in their own right.

For Brian Saffold, whose first job in the film industry was working on the atmospheric blockbuster, Batman Begins, his dream is to have an agent who can facilitate a career as a Hollywood filmmaker. It would be nice for this consummate professional to not have to struggle for resources...his video for Strange Tango is pitch perfect.

Daniel Brunelle—whose evocative compositions for the website, Tango for Diving Birds, and Lover’s in Reverse, have visitors already asking when a Strange Tango soundtrack will be released—likes to mix things up...it is all about freedom of artistic expression to him. Dan would own up to wanting the fun projects and the Hollywood lifestyle just because.

Marlee O’Neal longs to achieve her full flowering as an artist in her own right and to work with creatively fulfilling projects, her own included, that feed her spirit. Her dream is to have a beach house on the ocean, with views of the waters that inspire her.

Chris Barros and Raphael Seligmann are two of the most altruistic and selfless souls I have encountered in my lifetime...they are primarily involved as my knights in shining armor because my longtime friends understand the purity of my motivations and have always been very protective of my ethereal and hyperperceptive nature.

Me…I want to share Strange Tango with the entire world, to push boundaries and tell a story wrapped around the innovative concept of literature as an art installation in cyberspace...anything else is just more good karma.

Hopefully, we will all reach the promised land together soon.

Message left by a visitor to the Strange Tango website:
“I have been exploring the site and am just mesmerized at what you have done. It is an amazingly multidimensional work of art!”

Sree

2009-08-27T03:41:00.000-07:00

At the beginning of my journalism career, I was the AAJA/New England National Board representative as well as the AAJA National Scholarship Chair at UNITY ’99 in Seattle. It was at this joint convention of several thousand journalists from AAJA, NABJ, NAHJ, and NAJA that I met Sree Sreenivasan in person at the Gala Scholarship and Awards Banquet. (I became acquainted with fellow Filipina, Michelle Malkin, at UNITY as well, but it was Sree who stood out for me.)

I don’t believe he remembers the introduction, but Sree was well known to me as a co-founder of SAJA since a number of my friends were South Asian journalists. Even then, Sree was notable for his sense of engagement and the posts he broadcasted on the somewhat limited forums of the time.

When, as a newbie, I opened my first social media account in June 2009, Sree was one of my first Facebook friends. Each day, I would look forward to the provocative posts and quality links he shared on Facebook and Twitter, and I found myself giving some thought to the comments solicited.

So, given the recent buzz surrounding StrangeTango.com in media circles (disclosure: AAJA convention co-chair, Sangita Chandra, is a longtime personal friend, former colleague, and adviser to StrangeTango.com), I felt it was only fitting that I devote a post to the hugely popular Professor and Dean of Student Affairs at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism known—like Oprah—by his first name. Here are some of Sree’s recent links on Facebook, followed by my comments.

Sree: What do you think of this list? - 25 things journalists can do to future-proof their careers: http://bit.ly/Oc1S4 (by Chris Lake)
Audrey Dolar (A. D.) Tejada: ...strangely, before I ever read Mr. Lake's article, we had already incorporated most of his suggestions into our collaborative project: StrangeTango.com. This from a trained broadcast journalist who cut her teeth at World News Tonight, CNN International, and WCVB, the flagship Hearst station in Boston. Prescient...I saw the writing on the wall when new media appeared 15 years ago and made the right transition to crafting our own unique brand: life as art... ~A.

Sree: READING: "How Facebook Can Ruin Your Friendships" by WSJ's Elizabeth's Bernstein: http://bit.ly/uCpzL ["...we're breaking a cardinal rule of companionship: Thou Shalt Not Bore Thy Friends."]
Audrey Dolar (A. D.) Tejada: Thanks for the post, Sree...Before I joined Facebook a few months ago, I used email exclusively to connect. I’m tolerant…I never asked to be unsubscribed from friends’ boring emails and chain letters. Therefore, in the rare instances when people asked to be removed from my targeted listserv, I also removed them from my Christmas card list and, therefore, from my friendship circle. ~A.

Sree: READING: "Online, your private life is searchable" by LAT's David Sarno: http://bit.ly/N9iyP (didn't know about snitch.name)
Audrey Dolar (A. D.) Tejada: Thanks for this quality link, Sree...I had written an unpublished essay, "Speak, Memory," about how frighteningly easy it was to use the internet to fill in the gaps in the lives of friends from college to the present day. Gary Guzy, Paxus Calta (nee Sky Flansburg) and Joey Green...all became public figures. I decided to launch my personal website after a local newspaper article and photo of me and my dad on my first day in the first grade in Oklahoma surfaced on the internet...! ~A.

Sree: MUST-READ: The case for SLOW communication - an essay by Granta editor John Freeman in WSJ: http://bit.ly/3EkTUd (strange to post it here, of course)
Audrey Dolar (A. D.) Tejada: ...it's our manifesto, too, on our new website, Strange Tango: life as art... ~A., StrangeTango.com

Re-post from Facebook:
"Rahilla Zafar congrats on your shout out:
@sreenet: Sree Sreenivasan is an incredibly popular J-school professor at Columbia who tweets political and media
http://current.com/1k5tm4cTop 100 Twitterers in Academia // Current
Source: current.com
These 100 Twitter feeds come from admissions office, student affairs departments, professors, athletics departments, and more, bringing you information about…http://current.com/1k5tm4c"

Guest Room: A Memory of Senator Ted Kennedy

2009-08-26T17:12:00.000-07:00

A shared memory of Senator Ted Kennedy by Paul Redmond. Paul is my former neighbor in pastoral Windham, New Hampshire; his late father was a former Massachusetts congressman who worked alongside the Kennedy clan.

"I just woke from a sound sleep to the impending news from CNN of the loss of our nation’s most beloved statesman...Edward Moore Kennedy...friend of the average, champion of the poor, unfortunate, and unrepresented, but more importantly the discarded and forgotten constituents of our world.

His passing has crushed anyone who has hailed as a native from the Bay state, the U.S., or who has benefited from his unwavering duty to public service. It was expected, yet still heart breaking. He was a great patriarch to his family. He alone remained as the legacy of our nation’s most unexpected and painful chapter in the loss of his brothers.

My family had the privilege of working with him, his brothers, and the Kennedy ideals. We had the privilege of being Kennedy Democrats. We will never forget the impact of his and his family’s influence and duty to our country. We have lost an incredible American."

Paul Redmond
Windham, NH

It’s a Multimedia, Multiplatform World

2009-08-25T19:35:00.000-07:00

I was present when multimedia began to take over the world. Around 1994, interactive multimedia and internet technologies—new media—made its way into higher education. One of the first journalism schools to teach classes in this emergent field was the Boston University College of Communication. William Lord, a former Vice President of ABC News and ABC News Interactive, headed the program. I was one of Bill’s first students. For my multimedia project, I produced a CD-ROM, Balikbayan: Return to the Homeland, and for a graduate project, I wrote and produced a documentary on cyberspace and education, Cyberspace@COM.

The first Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) convention I ever attended was in Boston, in 1997. As a newly-selected Hearst-Argyle Fellow in television news, I remember that Sangita Chandra, a past fellow, and I helped Carol Fulp, the administrator of the fellowship program, set up equipment for a workshop by WCVB–TV 5, the Boston ABC affiliate.

I also attended the 1998 AAJA convention Chicago. A year later, at the UNITY ’99 convention in Seattle, I was the New England chapter’s representative to the National Board and the AAJA National Scholarship Chair–the same year AAJA/NE won chapter-of-the-year honors.

These singular memories are very meaningful to me. Fifteen years later, I would launch a personal website, StrangeTango.com, during the 2009 AAJA convention held at Boston’s newly reinvented Seaport district. It took 15 years for interactive multimedia technologies to become sophisticated enough for my collaborators and me to design and build a personal website that expressed my multifaceted vision of life as art.

The creative collaboration’s advisers include a Pulitzer Prize finalist in public interest reporting and an Emmy Award-winning television arts and culture producer/reporter based in a major media market. Early in the morning on the first day of registration, a journalism student in the AAJA Convention News program interviewed me about StrangeTango.com. Jackie Watanabe conducted and taped the interview with a cell phone as part of the mobile journalism training. The interview was later edited with additional clips, uploaded on YouTube, and placed on the AAJA website.

With AAJA’s return to Boston, Sangita co-chaired the convention. Carol is now John Hancock’s highly influential Vice President for community relations and corporate philanthropy. Carol was also the co-chair of Boston 2004, which brought the Democratic National Convention to Boston and gave a global platform to an electrifying keynote speaker, Barack Obama.

New media, as well, has advanced in startling ways: what was then a technology that mainstream media seemed reluctant to embrace is now ubiquitous in newsrooms around the globe. I have culled some of the best take-away information and cutting-edge concepts gleaned from my attendance at five panel presentations on digital multimedia.

Audience Engagement and Development
Doris Truong, Copy Editor, Style, The Washington Post
Joshua Benton, Director, Nieman Journalism Lab at Harvard University
Angie Goff, Reporter, WUSA9, Washington, D.C.
Vindu Goel, Deputy Technology Editor, The New York Times

How can multimedia platforms develop and engage an audience? The panel offered valuable tips on the use of social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, to drive traffic to a website. Mobile technology and crowd sourcing were brought up as low-cost ways to outsource labor.

Doris introduced the panelists and moderated the discussion. Social media is the new SEO. Vindu emphasized that social conversation is the way to build audience, that there is an etiquette to using social media. Blogging is the most powerful tool used in evolving stories and breaking news, from on-the-scene Twitter updates to links in the blogosphere.

Twitter acts as an echo chamber, and users tweet to be re-tweeted. The Nieman Journalism Lab has more than 13,000 followers. Joshua estimated the Lab sends out 15-20 tweets per day, re-tweeting the day’s news later in the evening. Followers can also ask questions via Twitter. He suggested using crowd sourcing, like an open call, as a way to tap the collective wisdom of the audience and to cultivate audience engagement.

Accordingly, journalists now act as curators for readers, sifting through what is important and finding the best sources of news and information.

Angie offered specific examples of how social media helped her build a loyal following as a traffic reporter—Angie’s Army—to gain leverage within her workplace and to transition into money-making franchises such as a clothing line and jewelry. Do not expect to go viral right away, she cautioned, keep it simple by using Facebook and Twitter as initial, cross-media platforms.

More tips for successful social media networking:
- Increase your search engine ranking and traffic
- Gain credibility in the eyes of the reader
- Foster transparency in reporting
- Jump into the social conversation to build reader loyalty
- Respect your audience, do not tease with refers – they will go elsewhere
- Share link love
- Use your actual photograph in your profile
- Have a unique voice, use social media and audience engagement to build community

Recommended resources:
http://twittercounter.com/ - Twitter follower statistics
http://bit.ly/ - a simple URL shortener

Creating a Web Site: A Quick Guide
Leezel Tanglao, Online News Producer, KCBS 2/KCAL9, Studio City, California
Elizabeth Jia, Multimedia Journalist, WUSA9, Washington, D.C.

Our collaborators and contributors took a year to create StrangeTango.com. Elizabeth and Leezel showed how easy it is to build a professional-looking website in no time, without any knowledge of HTML, Flash, or JAVA.

Online templates and tools, such as WordPress and Blogger, allow the user to set up a website or blog with little trouble. Elizabeth stressed the importance of physical location and reliability of the web host/server and noted that websites can be customized with themes, widgets, auto-updates, and by adding embedded videos and Twitter plug-ins.

Leezel and Elizabeth advised the audience to anticipate emerging technologies and to print hard copies of important documents as back up.

Design tips:
- Avoid clutter
- Use images wisely
- Pick smart website navigation
- Interactivity keeps a blog relevant
- Attribute by linking to original work with hyperlinks
- Use RSS feeds
- Promote your website on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, send email blasts
- Place your website URL on your Facebook profile

Recommended resources:
http://www.gettyimages.com/ - royalty free images
http://www.drpic.com/ - crop and modify photos without PhotoShop
http://www.vimeo.com/ - HD quality video sharing site
http://www.slide.com/ - create slideshows for websites

Doing It All: Tips for Working on Multiple Platforms
Niala Boodhoo, Multimedia Specialist, The Miami Herald
Victor Merina, Senior Correspondent/Special Projects Editor, Reznet
Ram Ramgopal, Executive Producer, CNN

Today’s journalists must be versatile enough to write for a convergence of print, broadcasting, and online media. This panel demonstrated how to take your writing, and your career, to a multiplatform level.

Print and broadcasting differ from online journalism in one fundamental way. In the former, the journalist can repeat and rephrase questions, or use these techniques as part of the pre-interview. Multimedia, on the other hand, requires planning and forethought. Broadcasting on the online platform has many of the same elements as a performance art piece. Whether long-form or short-form, the emphasis is on looking at stories in a new way.

In Ram’s artful and playful television packages for CNN, the tone was natural, conversational, and authentic—the narrower the focus, the stronger and more tightly focused the story. His advice was to keep the tone conversational, to use natural sound to capture a slice of life, and to know when less is more: cut in and get out.

Victor shared his comprehensive checklist for creating unique, one-of-a-kind online features.

- Try different things
- Seek a voice, appreciate the details
- Provide perspective—history, context, and culture
- Consider the language, hear the silence
- Be a reporter, whether it is a personal piece or an essay
- Write with authenticity, not arrogance
- Have a sense of place and of character
- Make the personal universal
- Make a point, and a clear one
- Use powerful imagery, what resonates
- Give telling examples, details, and anecdotes
- Use contrasting descriptions
- Use a quote that matters from a person who is meaningful
- Employ good structure and organization
- Have a recognizable tone to your piece
- Have a distinctive style or approach (experimentation, individualization)
- Emphasize good, interesting writing
- Finally, move the reader along—think story, not therapy

The media is always looking for new sources of unique and interesting content; aggregation sites are becoming increasingly influential. Twitter is especially useful as a community-building tool.

In answer to my closing question, “What is the next wave in online media, in telling a story?” Niala’s response was perceptive. She said the future is user-generated content on his or her own platform: everyone wants to be his or her own brand.

Recommended resources:
http://tweetdeck.com/beta/ - a simple way to manage Twitter

Copy Editing, Big Type and Search
Gil Asakawa, Manager, Audience Development, MediaNews Group Interactive
Henry Fuhrmann, Assistant Managing Editor, Los Angeles Times
Craig Silverstein, Director of Technology, Google

Publishing to the web extends your brand. In the competition to be the first to get the story out, Google, Yahoo, and other search engines play an important role. How the choice of headlines, lead-ins, and search terms matters in getting a story noticed.

Gil emphasized that users do not browse, they search. Traffic comes from search engines, other websites, and social networking sites. Henry added, “…channel what you’re already doing.” He called Craig a rock star, while Craig revealed that Google’s “secret sauce” is basically to think like a person. He advised journalists to “be smart” about writing articles that stand on their own, such as breaking up briefs to provide more stand-alone content for Google to search.

Much of the panel discussion focused on questions from the audience.

I asked why Strange Tango appeared at the top of Bing’s searches, while its position migrated between the top and bottom of Google searches. The personal website had launched two days earlier, and I wanted to know how to rise to the top of Google’s page ranks. In response, Gil kindly typed in the URL so the entire, standing-room-only crowd could view the new website. A Google search further revealed that StrangeTango.com populated the entire page: Google had found Strange Tango.

In internet marketing, the objective is to rise in the Google page rank—strategies include links to social aggregation sites, other websites, blogs, link exchanges, and using keywords. Content ranks higher in search as Google searches the tops of stories. The same keywords should show up in title bar, URL, lede and headline. Popular referring domains include Google, Yahoo, The Drudge Report, Bing, Facebook, Twitter, and blogs.

The best tips to make your content search-engine friendly include:
- Use keywords where search engines scan: title bar, URL, headline, and tops of articles, use keywords in the first several paragraphs
- Front-load the headline–Google’s algorithm focuses on the first few words
- Use hard news ledes instead of feature ledes–Google searches the tops of stories
- Be first–what gets posted first, gets indexed first
- Break up briefs packages–post items separately for cumulative effect.

Recommended resources:
http://www.google.com/trends - analysis tool that allows comparisons of how often specific search terms are being searched on Google
http://freekeywords.wordtracker.com/ - daily search volume of keywords

Multimedia Storytelling and Planning
Andrew DeVigal, Multimedia Editor, The New York Times
Victoria Lim, Multiplatform Reporter
Constance Hale, Director, Program on Narrative Journalism, Nieman Foundation at Harvard University

Alternate story forms engage the audience. This panel focused on writing for the web and nonlinear narratives, defining the elements of the best multimedia storytelling.

The collaborative team at The New York Times integrates interactive news, photography, graphics, video, and design as part of the company’s multimedia strategy. Projects designated as one-off projects may take weeks to produce, while templated projects, such as an audio slideshow, are built once and used recurrently. Andrew gave the audience insight into the process and technology of an innovative, interactive multimedia presentation that illustrated reactions of fans to Michael Jackson’s death. The proprietary software was created using Flash authoring software and was originally commissioned for another package before being redirected for this breaking news story. Representative figures of fans around the world could be clicked on to read each individual’s comments.

Compelling journalism innovates by using a unique narrative voice and style. Constance identified the elements of narrative journalism—modeled after literature—as human drama involving a hero or protagonist, literary structure, metaphor, and craftsmanship. The best storytelling is an emotional, cathartic experience, told in an artful way with foreshadowing and a layered narrative. Slide shows, videos, and powerful images enhance the emotional experience.

Victoria Lim gave examples of how her television broadcast packages were repurposed as online content.

Recommended resources:
http://www.10000words.net/ - tips on how to incorporate multimedia technologies into journalism
http://www.vuvox.com/ - create interactive slideshows and presentations

I came away from the AAJA convention feeling encouraged and rejuvenated. The meticulous planning that went into the yearlong, highly collaborative process of creating the personal website—serendipitously—had already integrated the cutting-edge concepts of engaging storytelling and iconic style highlighted by the panelists!

For my friends and me, in the near future, it will be very interesting to follow Strange Tango’s journey from its launch during the AAJA Boston convention to its positioning as a global platform.

Mission: Create a website that is edgy and ethereal

StrangeTango.com: Literature as an Art Installation in Cyberspace

“What remains as documentation of a life? Strange Tango mines the boundaries of digital streams and visceral storytelling, where pixels and dreams flow together. Video, reportage, and nonlinear narrative meld in captured moments from the life of A. D. Tejada, artist - traveler - citizen of the world.”

The Muse Room

2009-08-23T16:13:00.000-07:00

I've alluded to The Muse Room in my dispatches and postings. It is room 856, The Royal Sonesta Hotel, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. When I first checked in, the reservationist told me the room was special.

Indeed it is--stunning view of water, sky, and cityscape that fills one wall...my favorite hotel room in all Boston. Inspiration for the images in StrangeTango.com and chapters of Millennium Muse poured out in this womb room.

Peter Jennings

2009-08-22T19:12:00.001-07:00

Peter Jennings was my inspiration for choosing graduate school in broadcast journalism over law school. Peter’s former executive producer basically recruited me, over lunch at the Harvest in Harvard Square, to enter the master’s program at the Boston University College of Communication.

Although I left television news for a fellowship at Harvard University and, later, for my passion for writing and StrangeTango.com, my experiences at World News Tonight with Peter Jennings left its mark on my hard news judgment and what I choose to post. I will always remember "The Rim," the morning call presided over by Rick Kaplan, lunch in Peter’s office, and shadowing in the wings as this consummate professional settled into the anchor desk each evening.

As an intern at ABC News in New York, and then later at CNN International in Atlanta, I also gleaned much from my interactions with Michael Schulder, then a writer on the program and now a Senior Executive Producer at CNN Atlanta; I was also shown the ropes by Bob Aglow, then a national producer at WNT who became Executive Producer, News Coverage, MSNBC on the Internet, and is now the founder of ClimateQuest.

The 8x10 autographed photo is a lovely memento I’ll always treasure...

(photo from my personal collection)

A./Dream: The Strange Tango Backstory

2009-08-16T12:54:00.000-07:00

I would describe myself as a hybrid: a literary stylist and a formally trained broadcast and print journalist inhabiting the same body. Not all of the entries in the Life as Art blog are 3,000 word essays and commentary. Some days, the visitor may see an image that conveys 1,000 words, or a 4-word mantra/haiku, such as: “Inhabit a stolen moment.”

For five years, I have been distributing my writing through a private channel, my email account. There were literally hundreds of entries from which to choose to populate the blog. I winnowed the offerings to 27 entries for the inaugural run to feature a representative sampling of my work and my world, the Strange Tango cosmology. I have grouped the entries into two categories, “A.” and “dream”. “Dream” consists of all 27 entries—ranging from narrative nonfiction, to political analysis, to Neo-Zen style, to food recipes.

“A.” is my first initial and, alphabetically, leads the tag list. “A.” chronicles Strange Tango's yearlong journey—from its conception as an innovative personal website that would take content, art, and literature to a multilayered level never seen before in cyberspace—to its live launch on 8.12.09 during the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) convention in Boston just last week.

As we neared the completion date for the website, I felt that social media would be the best way to simultaneously pre-launch StrangeTango.com and to get in touch with all the high school friends who wondered what had become of me all these years. I signed up for Facebook on June 19, and in six weeks I had 72 Facebook friends and a potential 50,000 connections. I opened a Twitter account not long after. I’ll send out my first tweet this week.

In the space of less than two months, my writings had migrated from email…to Facebook…to the personal website/global platform. Facebook forced me to be very economical with words; it was also highly addicting, and I must have accumulated about 100 posts and comments during that time. Since 75% of my family and friends are not on Facebook, I would copy the posts, minus the photo and video links, and send them out as an email blast. Eventually, I may post the Facebook entries on the blog.

Visitors have commented on the iconic image of the website, the New Age Mona Lisa. Fittingly, the concept is a contemporary take on Renaissance master Leonardo da Vinci’s legendary muse since the personal website exists as a paean to beauty, art, passion, and inspiration. Cosmically, the difference between the Renaissance and the new Millennium is this—Leonardo the artist was male and his muse was a younger woman; however, in Strange Tango the epistolary novella (that became the inspiration for the personal website), the reverse is true: the artist is a young woman and her muse is an older male.

The process by which we created the oeuvre was collaborative to a very high degree. I was responsible for the art direction of the website; the writings are the products of my intellect; and all the images seen on the web pages are my photographic work—I created the special effects in-camera. Truly, I was extremely fortunate to have discovered stellar, relatively unknown talents from all around the country whose work I could showcase. The buy-in was that our combined skills and passions could create something special to share with the world.

Chris Barros and Roger Fussa, who later became the Associate Director of Alumni Relations at Boston University, were my two best friends when I worked at the Harvard Business School. Chris is a beloved figure and tech guru at HBS who thought it would be fun to work with me on the website. He was the first collaborator I added, and our partnership was responsible for all the pre-production work on the website.

Brian Saffold, who produced the film treatment iteration of Strange Tango, had generously produced, gratis, our audition tape when his sister Nicole and I applied for The Amazing Race 10. I was so impressed with the cleverness, subtlety, and professionalism of Brian’s work that I began to look for an opportunity to give him a larger stage for his talent.

For the music used in the Strange Tango video, Dan Brunelle had very kindly given Brian permission to use his composition, "Lover's in Reverse," when they were students at Columbia College Chicago, the innovative school for media, arts, and performance.

Raphael Seligmann has been a dear friend and alter ego since our undergraduate days at Cornell University. No one but Raphael could have written the eloquent words on the Prelude and the double-sided information sheet and press release.

Raphael referred Marlee O'Neal, who came on board only two months before the launch to weave all the elements and contributions into one seamless whole. After I described the project and art direction, Marlee spent some time by her favorite destination at the beach and ocean and quickly came back to me with pdf files of her pitch perfect interpretation. Marlee also suggested a music player on the website, so we all listened to some royalty free music. I decided then that since Dan’s composition on the Strange Tango video was so sublime, that perhaps he would consider writing iconic music for the website.

Dan is a busy musician in the Chicago area and is much in demand by Grammy Award-winning artists and filmmakers, so when Brian and I finally got a hold of him we were thrilled when he said yes. It took until the 11th hour and four different music sketches, but Dan told me I wouldn’t be disappointed. I had much faith in his musical gifts and was overjoyed at the final result. Dan's original composition for the Strange Tango website, "Tango for Diving Birds," is a favorite of his.

We try to keep the website content fresh. I post regularly, and since this is a fluid site, enhancements to original postings are made as needed. The Millennium Muse chapter is also the space for experimental work, which we may add on a seasonal basis, more or less.

I want to acknowledge the contributions of Sangita Chandra, Dolores Kong, and Alan Hoffman. Since they are not listed as collaborators, I am giving our chief advisors a category of his or her own on the Life as Art blog. Sangita, Dolores, and Alan brought exquisitely meticulous sensibilities to help us critique and fine-tune the personal website.

Sangita is an Emmy Award-winning arts and culture producer/reporter at WCVB, the Hearst-Argyle flagship television station in Boston; her expertise in visuals and content was invaluable. Dolores is a Pulitzer Prize finalist in public interest reporting from her days at The Boston Globe. She is now a Senior Vice President at Winslow, Evans & Crocker, Inc., a Boston financial services firm. Dolores is responsible for the idea of having my own website, so I could have a worldwide audience for my musings.

Alan is another friend for life from our college years at Cornell. He is the founder of the Mission Group in San Diego, from its website, "an innovative planning firm developing cutting-edge strategies for improving the functioning of cities." Alan was one of two people, the other being Raphael, with whom I shared my earliest drafts of Strange Tango the epistolary novella.

life: strange tango

Alan suggested Strange Tango as the name for the personal website, telling me, “You are Strange Tango.”

In addition to Sangita, Dolores, and Alan, our expanded advisory board gave immediate feedback and suggestions on the smallest details: Nicole and Bill Maskiell, Mari and James Rubio, Khushi Bhatia, Byron Lee, Conway Kennedy, Bill Jennings, Steve Granada, Mai Huynh, Jackie Old Coyote, Amy Besaw, David Murphy, and Susie Barros.

So, this is our backstory. The mission: create a website that is edgy and ethereal.

Digital Multimedia Platforms / Spirit of Place

2009-08-14T04:01:00.000-07:00

Day #3 at the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) convention in Boston and the StrangeTango.com launch. I've been attending the panels on digital multimedia platforms and social media and technology. There is so much valuable take-away information that I will write the recap, in my signature thorough and engaging style, this weekend.

I do see the imprint of Sangita Chandra, convention co-chair, in the thoughtful offerings. Sangita, along with longtime AAJA/New England treasurer, Dolores Kong, has been involved with StrangeTango.com from the website's planning stage a year ago to its debut this week. With both the convention and the personal website, Sangita brings the qualities of refinement, perfectionism, and professionalism to everything in her purview. We first met as Hearst-Argyle Fellows at WCVB-TV 5 in Boston more than a decade ago. A mentor, then the director of community relations at the station, had encouraged me to introduce myself to Sangita, the fellow from two years previously. Sangita recently won her first Emmy Award!

At one of the panels where I was passing out my business card, I was thrilled to learn that a person sitting next to me, an Assistant Managing Editor at the Los Angeles Times, had first heard about StrangeTango.com through a Facebook post a week ago from a mutual friend in San Francisco. Rene Astudillo had sent out a post urging his Facebook friends to bookmark StrangeTango.com. People are sometimes incredulous that I write my essays, commentary, and observations from my home office in southwest Oklahoma. The internet makes our world so much smaller.

In fact, my collaborators--Raphael, Marlee, Brian, Chris, and Daniel--and I worked on the website through email and Facebook. We're based in Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Virginia, and Oklahoma. We had no budget, and we're not monetized, so the project was pretty much done pro bono. We're sharing StrangeTango.com with the world as a labor of love and a platform for original and passionate creativity. As the website becomes established, I hope to showcase emerging talent and new ideas on this platform. About 75% of my family and friends in the real world do not use Facebook or Twitter, so the website is also a way for them to stay connected with me without being a part of Facebook's grand social experiment.

On the website, the Millennium Muse chapter is scheduled to open in Autumn 2009. We wanted to give our visitors something new and fresh to look forward to in the next few months. Muse is also a major project in and of itself. It will feature New Age Traveler, a chapter from the manuscript, which details my travels on 35 countries and 5 continents. Our visitors will authentically experience the spirit of place through my eyes in image and documentation. Dan Brunelle, our music virtuoso/visionary, will compose the original music score and design through special computer software that will provide a unique experience for each visitor.

Our challenge was to merge both iconic style and content in a technologically sophisticated way. Well, I did flatly declare up front our ambition: there is nothing on the web like StrangeTango.com.

"So you're Strange Tango! Everyone is talking about it!"

2009-08-13T03:46:00.000-07:00

Day #2 at the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) convention in Boston. I realized we had achieved a milestone when someone I was just introduced to excitedly exclaimed, "So you're Strange Tango! Everyone is talking about it!"

At the UNITY: Journalists of Color convention in Seattle in 2000, I was the AAJA National Scholarship Committee chairperson and the AAJA/New England National Board representative the year that AAJA/NE took home chapter-of-the-year honors.

Being sentimental, I wanted to give the AAJA student journalists programs the opportunity to break the story about Strange Tango and its unique concept: Literature as an art installation in cyberspace. First thing in the morning at the registration desk, I was interviewed by a reporter with the mobile journalism project, and I also talked with the editor of AAJA Voices.

I've heard from friends around the country who are helping us go viral around the globe with this mantra:

Visit, bookmark, share: StrangeTango.com

Feedback:
"Deep and artistic"
"WOW....You're mentioned the site but completely different then I imaged. Different...alluring"
"Interesting...good read"
"I'm forwarding this site to friends. love the mix of current events & short stories. Sort of a one place shopping for the artistic at heart"

World-Wide Debut: StrangeTango.com is Live!

2009-08-12T04:14:00.000-07:00

StrangeTango.com: Literature as an Art Installation in Cyberspace

Welcome to the StrangeTango.com personal website. We are a creative collaboration of 2 genders, 3 ethnicities, 3 different generations, 4 artists in different media, and all 6 of us are spread out on the East Coast, West Coast, and in America's heartland to bring you 1 seamless oeuvre.

It's a labor of love, not of commerce, and we worked on the website while juggling regular jobs and family responsibilities. Please help us spread the buzz with this mantra:

Visit, bookmark, share: StrangeTango.com

Thank you from: A. D. Tejada, Brian Saffold, Chris Barros, Dan Brunelle, Marlee O'Neal, Raphael Seligmann

Dreams are Wonderful Things

2009-07-01T13:36:00.000-07:00

A year ago, it was my dream to share my work with the world. After trying the conventional channels, I made a complete break from the past. I felt like Adam Lambert—whom music executive Simon Cowell called a “world-class talent” and whom the country discovered on American Idol. Adam held a string of odd jobs to support himself while trying to make it as a breakthrough music artist…even though Adam came in second to Arkansas homeboy Kris Allen, Adam was the one who landed the coveted cover on Rolling Stone and who is collaborating with the best production talent in the business. When a reporter asked why he wasn’t discovered earlier, despite his stupefying talent, Adam said maybe it was because he had not gone through the conventional channels.

Essentially, I had to become my own publisher, create a healing and convivial space on the web, and invite the entire world to the party. My husband Joseph, who has seen my spirit crushed when I worked in monolithic environments, told me he would offer tech support, but that I would have to fund Strange Tango out of my own income—he was testing my resolve and depth of commitment. People don’t move to southwest Oklahoma to further their careers, and the only job I was offered was to be the producer of the evening news at a local tv station—a job which paid a fraction of my previous salary. Clearly, it was not a cost-effective option for me. This meant I would have no budget for the personal website.

But, time and time again, I make things happen by force of goodwill, resourcefulness, and on occasion, charisma. It’s a lot like creating a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, a skill I have pulled out time and time again working in academia. The idea—the concept—would have to carry the day, and I had a repository of vetted work that I knew would pass muster. So, I reached out to my world, and then the magic began to happen.

Neo-Zen Tasting Menu

2009-06-08T18:46:00.000-07:00

If you've been watching "The Next Food Network Star," you'd know that each contestant on this 10-week reality competition has a culinary point of view. For me, it's Neo-Zen cuisine—yet another essentialized tagline I coined. Neo-Zen is all about flavor, simplicity, low calories, and nutrition.

During the summer months, my meals are streamlined, simple, inexpensive affairs. However, this doesn’t mean that I lose out on taste. Many of the fresh ingredients are sourced from my own garden, leaving a burst of pure flavor in my mouth. The other day, I spent 2 hours cooking 4 dishes that I have apportioned to eat over 3 days (my husband, being a carnivore, prefers to eat red meat and processed foods).

I've banned red meat, sugar, dairy, white flour, rice, soda, and alcohol. In addition, I’m up at dawn, and my exercise regimen includes cycling and cardio for at least 90 minutes a day.

For Neo-Zen dining at its finest, here’s the tasting menu, approx. 181 calories, at a cost of $2.11, for my 5-course meal:

Gulf Oyster on the Half Shell - cost 63₵ per oyster
huge, pristine oyster served with home-made cocktail sauce of ketchup, grated horseradish, and lemon juice

Broiled Norwegian Salmon – cost 63₵ per serving
fresh salmon seasoned with a splash of liquid hickory smoke, a drizzle of olive oil, soy sauce, lemon juice, and a Pacific Northwest Potlatch rub made of kosher salt, paprika, crushed red pepper, chili pepper, oregano, basil, coriander, and safflower oil

Eggplant Hummus – cost 22₵ per serving
oven roasted eggplant pureed with cannelloni, fresh parsley, garlic, lemon juice, olive oil, and my own sea salt and pink peppercorn blend

Herb Stuffed Mushrooms - 41₵ per serving
fresh mushrooms stuffed with a chopped mint and parsley mixture, minced garlic, grated parmesan, bread crumbs, sea salt, and olive oil

Italian Gazpacho - cost 22₵ per serving
tomatoes, basil, bay leaf, onions, garlic, parsnip, celery, and salt and pepper blend simmered for 90 minutes, then pureed

Desserts are fresh fruit, and beverages are filtered water, kombucha, green and herbal teas, and mojito tonic.

Recipe for low-calorie Mojito Tonic:

I pick mint leaves from my garden to make this refreshing and delicious virgin mojito. It's a tonic that's also good for you, 75 calories.

Take a large handful of mint leaves, juice from 1 fresh lime, and a tablespoon or two of agave nectar (I use this sweetener instead of honey) and pulse a few times with a couple of ice cubes in a blender. To your individual taste, combine in a glass with lots of ice and 16 ounces of kombucha. Swirl to blend.

This recipe is adapted from a vegan restaurant.

Kombucha is fermented tea that is slightly carbonated. It is purportedly high in antioxidants and is regarded as a "fountain of youth elixir."

Analysis and Synthesis: Current Affairs and Presidential Legacies

2008-11-17T18:50:00.000-08:00

An early ambition was that I might enter politics or academia, or become a diplomat/lawyer/corporate executive with an international career. But my perspective has always been one of multiplicity: it felt more natural to me to see the interrelatedness of humanity than to become an expert specializing in a fragment of the universe. I wanted a personal life and the freedom of my own thoughts and ideas.

Formally, my education includes studies in literature and the liberal arts, aesthetics, theory, production and performance of art and visual works; cultural analysis, expressive arts and symbolism, identity, social groups and institutions, power and politics, law; historical and intellectual analysis, cognitive psychology and behavioral analysis, sociology; management, organizational behavior, micro-and macro-economics, statistics; earth science; communications, print journalism, foreign reporting, interactive multimedia, and electronic news production.

Despite my reputation for scholarship, leadership, and organizational abilities, I viewed myself as an artist. But not just any kind of artist: I work with what is intangible, non-verbalized, and emergent. My purpose is to see and to experience the future before it manifests, to reveal the soul, to create what has not been seen before, and still to make a difference in the world. There is no conventional training for this unique vocation, so I set out to collect the memories and the portfolio of life and work experiences that would enable me to fulfill my destiny. You cannot consider yourself to be a true artist unless you have experienced complete joy and serenity, catharsis, intense feelings, bittersweet memories, and sorrow—the awakening of the kundalini life force.

Given this filter, here is my analysis of the current state of affairs:

I like Barack Obama and sense that he is a person of destiny. The present conservative agenda, which first gained a stronghold during the ascent of Reaganomics, is now a thing of the past. It is about time that the shrill and divisive practitioners of media yip-yap will soon be subordinated—along with outmoded management styles and corporate/consumer excesses.

The nature of American society and corporatism tends to mirror the personality and policies of the commander-in-chief. In Reagan we had a man in his dotage; in Bush I a wealthy elitist who was seriously out-of-touch with how common people lived; in Clinton and Bush II, there was slippage into adolescent behavior. But Obama is something else—a consistently virtuous, mature, sober, and responsible adult. The smart way his presidential campaign was run is a sign of what is to come. What the mantra, “It’s the economy, stupid.” was to the Clinton administration, “good judgment” will be to the Obama administration.

The four C’s—communication, connection, creativity, and collaboration—will rule. Obama brings style and substance, the likes of which the world stage has not seen before. Look for equality, compassion, innovation, ethics, service, and discipline to be the imprints of an Obama administration. Barack Obama ran for president because he wanted to make a difference, to change the world, and as an internal challenge to himself. An only child from a single-parent household with an absent father, there is incredible personal loneliness given this status. From the time he was a child, Obama had to create his own place and make his own way in the world: he had nothing to lose and everything to gain. Obama’s internal motivation was to create something of stability and substance, and to challenge society’s assumptions.

Obama has just over 60 days before he is sworn in as president of the United States. He has collected a coterie of like-minded individuals into his orbit, and he and his team plan to hit the ground running. I respect the fact that Obama will not allow himself to be rushed into doing anything ill considered or unseemly. He will wait until the present administration is out of office before he reveals his true plans. I do not feel Obama will attempt too much at once. To do so would be foolhardy. First, the economy must be placed under control. It was pointless to hand over $700 billion in taxpayer funds without strings attached, so you can expect an Obama administration to address this loophole. The United States did not have a true free market economy in the first place; the system was weighted in favor of the plutocracy. What we will probably see in the future is a hybrid version of free market enterprise and socialism. The bailouts already amount to a form of corporate socialism. As well, you can expect a foreign government to try to take advantage of Obama early in his administration; he will be tested on the international front sooner rather than later. Also, the government must do all it can to keep President Obama and the first family safe.

When the timing is right, President Obama will begin to unfold his administration’s initiatives. If all goes well, Obama’s administration can expect to be in power for eight years; American voters are inclined to give a new president two terms in office. If the country is prosperous, another Democrat will succeed him. As I mentioned earlier in the year, I don’t sense that Hillary will ever become president. She had a chance to become vice-president in 2008, but she and former President Clinton held onto their sense of entitlement too long and had not built a bridge to Obama’s inner circle. And do not discount any lingering feelings of rivalry. Rarely does rivalry fully dissipate, and feelings of rivalry are constructive only when sublimated. Interestingly, Obama and Hillary are very similar in one startling way. They are both strongly motivated by a mission of purpose and public service in their lives: they differ in that Obama is innately collaborative while Hillary has been controlling. That her core staff uses the term “Hillaryland” as a form of self-designation reinforced the impression of imperialist tendencies.

Hillary completely redeemed herself during the general election and has the political capital to become the nominee in 2012, but this would be a denouement. Like John McCain, in four years her time will have passed. I see her more in the mold of a Ted Kennedy. Like Kennedy, whose own presidential ambitions were thwarted, over time, Hillary will follow his lead as an elder stateswoman and national power broker. In the future, Hillary could still become a vice-presidential candidate to balance a ticket, if the position were handed to her on a silver platter. Obama is a tough act to follow. Do not expect another black/bi-racial/minority president to follow in Obama’s footsteps in the foreseeable future. A female or ethnic minority as vice-president would be a likelier scenario: the glass ceiling has been shattered.

While Hillary, John Kerry, and Bill Richardson may all be interested in becoming Secretary of State, there is a pecking order. There are always political debts to be paid with a successful campaign and, in this respect, Obama is no exception. Kerry might have the backing of the Kennedys, but Hillary has more clout. Hillary helped deliver her constituency of women and blue-collar votes during the general election; Kennedy and Kerry combined did not have the traction to deliver Massachusetts to Obama during the Democratic primary. Hillary’s influence and stature will continue to grow. Once Ted Kennedy passes, so too will the vested power and authority of the clan. Right now, there is no one in the generational pipeline with the larger-than-life ambitions of their predecessors. Caroline and her late brother John were raised as Bouviers by their mother, not as Kennedys…they always wanted a private life. Kerry’s visibility at this time is due in large part to his his wife’s inherited wealth; the nation had already rejected him as a presidential candidate. Richardson is a prominent link to the Hispanic constituency, and his loyalty has already been severely tested. The Clintons gave Richardson a national profile and career, but he gave his endorsement to Obama. Theirs is a multicultural bond and, in the future, viable political candidates will want to emphasize a multicultural or bi-racial connection to appeal to the increasingly influential Millennial generation.

Historically, Hillary has carved an independent identity from her husband, the former president. Bill Clinton scored record-high approval ratings and the economy soared under his administration. For years, this was enough to stave off concerns about Clinton’s ethical lapses and the sexual misconduct allegations. Al Gore would have become president if not for the Lewinsky sex scandal and subsequent impeachment proceedings against the president, so it is fair to say that Bill Clinton lost the White House for the Democrats. The combination of inappropriate sexual conduct and impeachment was a national distraction that ushered in the current, failed presidency.

Sarah Palin’s moment has passed. The media leaks about outlandish behavior occurred because Republican stalwarts wanted to discredit any claim she has to an important role or stature in the Republican Party. Palin is trying to prolong her news cycle because she wants a viable career, but she is woefully not ready for prime time. As a voter and taxpayer, I am highly offended that the Republican Party tried to sell her to the American people while Republicans kept harping on Obama’s inexperience to become president. Her selection completely torpedoed that argument. To be fair, I felt the complaints about Palin’s new $150,000 wardrobe were largely irrelevant. Virtually every female network and major market news anchor receives a clothing allowance if she appears on prime time, and a Republican donor or a discretionary budget could have provided the funds. However, what is hypocritical is holding Palin up as a Walmart mom after her wardrobe makeover. You would not find any of the designer fashions from Neiman Marcus at a Walmart. I do not see Palin as a political power player on the national stage; she may instead find herself relegated to Ollie North territory.

Prior to Super Tuesday, I suggested Mitt Romney for the Republican ticket. In the general election, the popular vote differential was 6% and there were five battleground states. Romney has credibility as an executive and for his economic expertise. Wall Street likes Romney, and so does Middle America. It was inane to tap Palin because of concerns about energizing the conservative base. To whom would the fundamentalists and conservatives turn? In a general election, between Obama/Biden and McCain/Romney, passions would have run high and the base would have shown up at the polls.

Romney spent millions of his own money to buy entry into national politics. He is deceptively smart, ambitious, and strategic; if he wants it enough, he will be the Republican nominee in 2012. Romney has a joint J.D./M.B.A. from Harvard Law School and Harvard Business School; in addition, he was a Baker Scholar in the top 5% of his HBS class. He was CEO of the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, which he used as his political springboard to become the Republican candidate for Ted Kennedy’s U.S. Senate seat in 1994. Taking on the patriarch of the Kennedy clan gave Romney immediate standing and visibility. Romney won his bid to become governor of Massachusetts in 2002. In 2007, when his first and only term as governor ended, Romney ran for president and collected political capital as an effective surrogate for John McCain during the 2008 general election.

With Romney on the Republican ticket instead of Palin, Obama still might have eked out a victory. Fortunately, McCain was desperate enough to want to win that he placed his trust in the wrong people and resorted to contrivance. This blatantly political gesture was enough to seal the outcome.

While waiting outside the door of my niece’s classroom at St. Mary’s parochial school, I viewed the pictorial line of U.S. presidents extending from George Washington to Barack Obama, the 44th office-holder. It occurred to me that what made many of these presidents so memorable were the historic events that took place during their tenure or the landmark legislation and seismic changes in society left as a legacy of their administrations. I felt a sense of pride in the accomplishments and resiliency of our republic through the passage of time and its leadership in world events under the stewardship of heads of state democratically elected by a heterogeneous populace. This to me is the essence of America.

George Washington (1789-1797) – the American Revolution, the Constitution, the birth of the nation

Thomas Jefferson (1801-09) – the Declaration of Independence, the Louisiana Purchase

Abraham Lincoln (1861-65) – the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, the abolition of slavery

Theodore Roosevelt (1901-09) – the Sherman Antitrust Act, the Panama Canal, the conservation movement

Woodrow Wilson (1913-21) – World War I, the League of Nations, the Treaty of Versailles, creation of the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Reserve System, and a federal income tax; I attended Woodrow Wilson Elementary School

Herbert Hoover (1929-33) – the Great Depression, Works Progress Administration, Civilian Conservation Corps, prohibition

Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933-45) – the Great Depression, the New Deal, Social Security, Pearl Harbor, World War II, the Good Neighbor Policy, the United Nations, the Yalta Conference, creation of the Securities Exchange Commission and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the Tennessee Valley Authority, Japanese internment camps

Harry Truman (1945-53) – the Fair Deal program, the United Nations, the U.N. General Assembly, World War II, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, the Potsdam Conference, the Berlin Airlift, the Cold War, NATO, the National Security Act, the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency and the national Security Council, the Korean War, the Republic of China (Taiwan), McCarthyism

Dwight Eisenhower (1953-61) – the Cold War, the Korean De-Militarized Zone, the interstate highway system, nuclear weapons, the Eisenhower Doctrine, creation of HEW, Brown v. Board of Education

John F. Kennedy (1961-63) – the youngest president elected to office, the first and only Roman Catholic president, first televised presidential debates, 1,000 days in office, Pulitzer Prize winner in history, the New Frontier, civil rights, the modern feminist movement, the Vietnam War, the Peace Corps, the Space Race, the Arms Race, the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Cuban Missile Crises, the Berlin Wall, the Immigration and Nationality Act

Lyndon Johnson (1963-69) – the Vietnam War, the Great Society, the Civil Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, the Voting Rights Act, the “War on Poverty,” appointment of Thurgood Marshall, the first African-American to serve on the Supreme Court, urban renewal and beautification programs, creation of the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Public Broadcasting Act, the Higher Education Act, the Bilingual Education Act, urban mass transportation, fair housing, the Gun Control Act, won presidency with 61% of vote and widest popular vote margin in history

Richard Nixon (1969-74) – end of the Vietnam War, the Watergate scandal, the first man on the moon, rapprochement with the People’s Republic of China, détente with the Soviet Union, SALT talks, creation of EPA, DEA, OSHA, Skylab, federal affirmative action plan

Jimmy Carter (1977-81) – Iran hostage crises, energy crises, stagflation, Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, Arab-Israeli peace treaty, Camp David Accords, return of the Panama Canal Zone to Panama, SALT, creation of Department of Energy and Department of Education, airline and communications industry deregulation, civil service reform, record number of minority appointees, human rights, gay rights, Voyager 1, amnesty for Vietnam War draft evaders, 1980 Moscow Olympics boycott

Ronald Reagan (1981-89) – Reaganomics, deregulation and income tax overhaul, peacetime prosperity, end of the Cold War, Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty with Mikhail Gorbachev, the Iran-Contra affair, the bombing of Libya, the invasion of Grenada, “Star Wars” Strategic Defense Initiative, the War on Drugs, “Just Say No” anti-drug advertising campaign, the Challenger disaster, the Immigration Reform and Control Act, the oldest president in office

George H.W. Bush (1989-93) – the Persian Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm, the end of the Cold War, the collapse of Communism and the dissolution of the U.S.S.R., the fall of the Berlin Wall, the U.S. invasion of Panama, high deficit spending, “No New Taxes” broken pledge, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Clean Air Act, the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the North American Free Trade Agreement

William J. Clinton (1993-2001) – the longest period of peace-time economic expansion in American history, record low unemployment and inflation, balanced budget and budget surplus, triangulation policy, North American Free Trade Agreement, United Nations peace keeping forces in Bosnia, Operation Desert Fox, the Battle of Mogadishu, the Oslo accords, welfare reform, Family and Medical leave Act, failure of health care reform, worldwide campaign against drug trafficking, highest rate of home ownership, children’s health insurance, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" gays in the military policy, placing the White House and federal agencies on the internet, sexual misconduct allegations, the Lewinsky scandal, impeachment, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, the Brady Bill, Travelgate, Whitewater, Troopergate

George W. Bush (2001-09) – 9-11 terrorist attacks, the worst financial crises since the Great Depression, the Iraq War, the War in Afghanistan, $700 billion bailout of U.S. financial system, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, Hurricane Katrina, Operation Desert Shield, global financial crises, sub prime mortgage crises, federal takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the War on Terror, Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse, Guantanamo Bay detainment, the No Child Left Behind Act, illegal immigration, temporary guest-worker program, opposition to the Kyoto Protocol, global warming, stem cell research, Terrorist Surveillance Program, Hurricane Katrina, midterm dismissal of U.S. attorneys controversy, Plamegate, hanging chads, highest disapproval ratings in polling history; historians view this Bush presidency as a failure

Barack Obama (2009 - ) – first African-American/bi-racial/non-white president in American history, first president born outside of the continental United States, U.S. financial crises (TBD: signature, landmark legislation in race, financial reform, environment, homeland security, international affairs, energy, education, universal health care, ethics?)

Obama 2008: An Intuitive Campaign

2008-11-07T18:59:00.000-08:00

If I were president and a highly ambitious, driven individual with my iron fist inside the velvet glove, how would I choose my staff and cabinet?

I would first turn to friends with whom I have a high comfort level, to smart and capable people who have proven themselves over the years and have remained personally and professionally loyal. Then, I would look outside, to a mix of new blood and veterans. I would want diversity in my administration, because I would feel that the different backgrounds, expertise, personalities, and voices would keep me grounded in reality: the mix would keep the dialogue fresh and intellectually stimulating. Working in concert, we would all be able to come up with innovative ways to deal with the challenges the country faces, to govern efficiently and effectively, and to move the nation forward with a progressive agenda.

This is precisely what Obama has done with his selection of Rahm Emanuel to become his chief of staff. It is something of a good cop-bad cop partnership, an extremely smart and pragmatic choice. As president, Obama should strive to remain above the fray and to continue the discipline and discretion that was the hallmark of his victorious campaign. He needs his enforcer, and Emanuel has worked with him in the trenches of Chicago politics, is a seasoned Washington veteran from the Clinton administration, a straight-talker, and is intensely loyal to Obama.

Obama’s election, in large part, is the handiwork of Chicago’s vaunted political machine, no longer just a machine but now a talented network of politicos and supporters that have made their mark in the Windy City. Obama’s Chicago-based team includes David Axelrod, the chief campaign strategist, a University of Chicago graduate and former journalist from the Chicago Tribune with a background in television advertising, David Plouffe, the campaign’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, and the queen of all media herself, Oprah Winfrey.

Axelrod and Obama are a perfect pairing. Axelrod crafted the soaring message and tone of Obama’s campaign. According to his website, “David Axelrod is one of the pre-eminent political media consultants in the United States, having produced winning media and messages for over 150 campaigns at the local, state, and national levels. Since opening the firm twenty years ago, Axelrod has been attracted to candidates and causes that offer more humane policies and progressive change.”

The Obama campaign was something the world had not seen before: this is the first time the public has seen a presidential campaign waged using poetry and psychologically intuitive methods. The Camelot comparison during the Kennedy era and the Reagan presidency had parallels, but neither achieved this artful, insinuating level of conquest. Everything was pitch perfect—from the innovative use of the internet to reach a global audience, to the sub-text, the prose, the symbolism, the images—in a way that conventional writing and logic cannot inspire. Obama and his team won the election because the campaign transmitted emotional nuances and chords that touched and resonated at a deeply profound, human level...perhaps a long-forgotten memory. The language of symbols, images, and memory is timeless, with no worldly boundaries. As the audience, we all became part of something larger than ourselves, a global community, the human family. President-elect Obama has engendered copious goodwill because of this emotional buy-in, which he can wisely use to establish his historic presidency.

Certainly, my own world and experiences have been populated by direct and personal contact with people of vision, creativity, and imagination: educators, poets, MacArthur fellows, and Nobel laureates. What Obama has done at a political level, I have practiced for over a decade in my literary writing. I recognized early on that there was a more direct way to touch the soul and the spirit than through plot and characterization. Perhaps because my creative writing professor was also a poet and essayist, my literary output was nonlinear, compact, dense, and encoded; my first literary novella was just over 100 pages long. It may be that my writing style and the ascendance of the Obama era merged at some point: if this is so, then perhaps the world may see for the first time a new form of literary writing to coincide with the rise of this historic, new world order.

Obama, Race, and Identity

2008-11-05T19:09:00.000-08:00

The crowds present at Barack Obama's victory speech last night was the first time I have witnessed the most powerful manifestation of America's collective subconscious. Bush and his cronies seriously underestimated the damage their policies have done to the population at large, so in psychic terms, yesterday's election results represented a cleansing—the passing of the old guard and a step into the future.

Obama brought together a powerful coalition of voters that is coming into its own and supplanting the old order: ethnic minorities, youth, independents, and netizens. I didn't have time in my 2,250 word essay that I wrote in under four hours to do more than touch on the significance of what will be the most important legacy of the Obama era: race. In the coming years, I hope to write more extensively on this premise.

In the year 2000, at the dawn of the new millennium, I was there as part of Census 2000—the nation's first multicultural and multilingual census. I served on the regional media team on the staff of regional director Arthur Dukakis and as a press advance for the national director of the Census Bureau. For the first time in history, respondents to the census questionnaire were given an opportunity to self-identify their ethnicity. In the past, there were only a few boxes to check off: for example, bi-racial people had to choose between being black or white. In many ways, it was like choosing between one of your parents in a divorce case. In terms of identity politics, the decision was simplistic: if you were dark-skinned, you were black, and if you were light-skinned, you passed for white.

I would argue that Obama's historic achievement would not have been possible but for the rise of multiculturalism in this country and its celebration among America's immigrants and its youth. Assimilation is no longer preferable to acculturation for ethnic minorities as it was in the decades I was growing up. Yes, Obama is a light-skinned black and considers himself an African-American; his base is in the African-American community. However, he was raised and strongly influenced by his mother and maternal grandparents—all of them white. Culturally, his formative experiences took place among Asians and in Southeast Asia: his vaunted cool and serenity is extraordinarily Asian in temperament...very disciplined, very Zen (am I the only one who has made this connection?). Obama doesn't have the hell fire and political resume of a Jesse Jackson and would not have succeeded had his image and campaign been seen in the same light. Psychologically, as a blank slate, voters could project something of themselves onto the candidate. This is the first time in my lifetime that I can say we will have a president who truly represents the diversity that is America.

Millennials, multiculturals, intellectuals, independents, intuitives, and netizens understand this and, as voters, viewed Obama as someone who transcends race: a planetary citizen. When people see me for the first time, they see a woman who looks like a college student despite her age, a person of Asian descent; some might guess that I am a Filipina. Sometimes I am underestimated because I am stereotyped as a young and submissive Asian female. This is convenient and laughable essentializing. The reality is that I have for all my life identified myself as a global citizen, an evangelistic warrior and precursor of a future where there are no barriers of gender, race, or ethnicity: this is why I have easily mingled in many ethnic, social, cultural, and artistic milieus. In similar fashion, President-elect Obama has a thin line to walk given the huge and sobering task of governing a heterogeneous United States.

Of course, the Obama administration will deal with race, giving the issue the depth it has long deserved. But if he is to govern effectively and to deliver on the promise for a bright and inclusive future for all Americans, a President Obama must remain a bridge: an eloquent and transcendent figure.

As for the question: "What were you doing when Obama was elected president?" My husband, our Shih-Tzu, and I settled on the sofa in front of the television and watched split-screen election coverage from 4pm on. I had made buttermilk-soaked fried chicken and baby greens salad for dinner in front of the tv; we had snacks and drinks well-stocked. We're not political professionals or pundits, just deeply engaged and highly informed netizens (my husband started his high tech career with Lotus Development, and I used to work in television news…as an intern, I saw Peter Jennings—my tv news idol—in person every day; Peter would have loved this 2008 campaign). We predicted the election would be determined early, by 10pm the election would be called in Obama's favor and McCain would concede shortly afterwards. I also predicted the win would be a landslide, but that the election would be closer than expected: I was right on both counts. It was an electoral landslide, but the popular vote was much closer, only by 6% of total votes cast. At 10pm CST, as polls closed on the West Coast, all the major networks broke the news of Obama's projected win. Everything played out as predicted, and I stayed awake practically the entire night and well into morning watching and reading news updates.

My Life in an Obama Administration, Part II

2008-11-04T19:16:00.000-08:00

I’m declaring for Obama in a landslide.

We knew the election results would either be a blowout or closer than expected. Nothing about the 2008 election season was ever middle ground or middle of the road. The 2008 election is nothing less than a battle for the hearts and minds of the American voter, a referendum on the future.

At 8:45 a.m. this morning, I arrived at Holy Family Catholic Church, in the 62nd district of Oklahoma, to cast my vote for Barack Obama. As I approached the church, the parking lot was filled to near capacity, as though a Sunday church service was already in session. But walking through the doors, the sight astounded me. There were about 200 people in line ahead of me, and it would be another 75 minutes until I was inside the auditorium to vote. I would learn that early risers who arrived to vote at 7:00 a.m. would have an even longer wait, an hour and a half. Early voting took place at the courthouse in our city on the previous Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday—the line at the courthouse snaked even longer, with voters waiting an hour and a half to vote. My elderly father showed up at 7:00 a.m. at the Episcopalian church near his home and finished voting in no time flat.

I saw my congressman standing in line, presumably to vote for his own re-election. I was tempted to ask T.W. Shannon—an African-American man, a Republican, and a neighbor—if he would vote the party line or with history. Of the voters I saw, most were middle age or older and white. Fewer than 25% were people of color or college age or younger, and maybe 10 were soldiers in uniform. The time passed more quickly than expected as people engaged in friendly banter and an air of civic-mindedness prevailed. The retiree next to me complained that he hated it when news organizations projected the winner ahead of time; he felt it was a disincentive for people to come out and vote. Most voters arrived singly…there were retirees, farmers, older Asian women, college students, and African-American couples in line. Young families came out together to vote. Mothers with toddlers in tow waited their turn, as did elderly citizens in wheelchairs. Neighbors chatted with neighbors. My neighbor, Linda, who’s married to a psychiatrist, saw me and told me she was looking forward to my next opinion piece. Friends and acquaintances caught up with each other. Here’s a sampling of the conversation I caught:

Middle-age man: “I know you…you used to be the postman who delivered my mail in Chattanooga. I always used to see you at square dancing.”
Retired postal worker: “I never delivered mail in Chattanooga, I did in Faxon.”
Middle-age man: “Well, I saw you at square dancing all the time. I don’t square dance any more…too old. I was the 17th person in line to vote in Faxon at 6:30 a.m. this morning. ”
Me: “Don’t the polls open at 7:00 a.m.? So didn’t you end up waiting about 45 minutes to vote?”
Middle-age man: “Yes, but people who showed up at 7:00 a.m. would have to wait about an hour.”

At 9:57 a.m. I finished voting. Oklahoma’s election ballot is an oversized sheet of paper printed on both sides. Voters draw a straight line in the middle with a felt-tip pen to connect the point of an arrow to the tail end. I felt good as I left the polling place…it was heartening to see so many people who made an effort to vote before their shift at work, spent their lunch time waiting in line, brought their young children with them. Regardless of who was their candidate of choice, voters understood that this was an historical election.

I lived for several years in New Hampshire, with its first-in-the-nation primary. The New Hampshire town of Dixville Notch traditionally tallies the first presidential votes cast in the nation. Obama won in a landslide, which came as something of a surprise. I now live in Oklahoma, which the national media views as the heartland of the new millennium. In 2006—the year my husband and I relocated from New Hampshire to return to the state where my family has lived for more than 40 years—Oprah, The New York Times, Design Star and The Contender featured Oklahoma and Oklahomans; in 2007, Lauren Nelson, a resident of our town was crowned Miss America 2007, and a local family had their dream house built and broadcasted on Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. In 2005, Oklahoma native Carrie Underwood won American Idol and went on to become one of the franchise’s most celebrated alumni.

So what does Barack Obama represent to me, and what would his administration mean to the country? Well, as I have just described, he has brought with him an earnest sense of engagement and civic participation in the political process. To have inspired the fervor that he has means that the electorate would have made an effort to be better informed about the candidates’ position on issues. After what amounts to years and even decades of voter apathy, all these changes can only be for the better.

Certainly, Obama was the beneficiary of acts of god and nature that kept his candidacy afloat, the most compelling being the public’s furor over the sinking economy and the bailout of Wall Street. For too long, under a Republican administration, the heavy-hitting oligarchy was allowed to play fast and loose with the economic system without the necessary and responsible government oversight. When Wall Street failed, the bailout was necessary…virtually everyone was impacted, including Middle Americans with their pensions tied up in retirement plans. Anger over the economy, coupled with the disenchantment with the war in Iraq, proved too much to ignore. Sarah Palin became a drag on the Republican ticket. Has a vice presidential candidate’s qualifications to be commander-in-chief been so derided since George H.W. Bush hand-picked a little-known Indiana congressman to be his running mate? It’s a toss-up between Palin and Dan Quayle. Even voters who might have seemed suspicious of the change that Obama represented came to recognize that change was not a mantra for the sake of change but, rather, a referendum and a recognition that the system could not go on as in the past. John McCain is certainly a maverick, but this quality is most pronounced in his personal conduct rather than in his voting record, which shows a 90%-95% accord with President Bush. McCain is not the systemic change agent needed to overhaul a superannuated bureaucracy.

Obama impressed us all with his riveting speech at the 2004 Democratic convention in Boston. Two years later, he began the long campaign to endear himself to the American public. Along the two-year slog through the Democratic primary season and the general campaign, Obama has made few mistakes. What potential minefields he encountered were the result of questionable associations, from which he quickly distanced himself. In those instances where he did not, notably, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama demonstrated an initial willingness to support his friends and mentors until it was unsustainable to do so.

What I admire most about Barack Obama is that he took a dream—a vision of what American has been and could yet become—so that we could see the potential in buying into his long-range thinking. He brought a fresh perspective to how we could approach the challenges that face our country. He did so through the power of words, his innate ability to articulate and to communicate what other presidents and candidates could not. Yet, his interpersonal and communication skills were honed because he himself spent much of his life at the margins of society. In his background, Obama was as far away from the profile of recent American presidents except for, perhaps, Bill Clinton.

Technically, Barack Obama is not black. He is bi-racial—an important distinction in an increasingly multicultural society—the product of a white mother from the Midwest and a black father from Africa. He grew up without his birth father in his life, raised by a single parent and then later by his white grandparents. His early environment was Hawaii, easily the most diverse state in the country where people of color hold influential roles and positions in all aspects of public life. Obama spent his formative years in Hawaii and in Indonesia, a Southeast Asian republic republic with a Muslim majority; the country is itself at the crossroads of the Pacific Rim.

Once on the mainland, Obama first attended a small, liberal arts college in Los Angeles before transferring to Columbia University in New York City. After graduating from Harvard Law School, he made his way to Chicago where he began to build the base for his political career. By all accounts, Obama's trajectory onto the national stage was meteoric.

I am a foreign-born Asian-American woman. As a person of color, many of my mentors have been African-American. Politically, this is because at the time I first became an activist in the 1970’s and 1980’s, African-Americans were better organized as a result of the Civil Rights movement than was the Asian-American community.

Traditionally, the South Side of Chicago is the nation’s bedrock of Black Power. Politically active and connected, the African-American community here is an influential network that raised and supported Barack Obama like many black politicians before him. While much about Obama’s delivery may come across as elitist and coolly intellectual, his rhythmic intonations and stylings are a product of the old-time sermons, a form of traditional storytelling by black preachers who were looked upon as the paternal head of the community. This is one reason why Obama was unwilling to turn his back on Jeremiah Wright until the former pastor disowned him.

Obama grew up without ever really knowing his father. His lost his mother too soon, when he thought there was still time. The recent death of his grandmother, for all purposes, is the last link to Obama’s former life. But he has reinvented himself. He now has a family of his own and had grafted himself onto a social, cultural, and political context of Black empowerment. The vision was Obama’s own, and he found a way to, methodically, realize his dreams. There are many success stories told by first generation immigrants and racial minorities in America, but this may be the greatest of them all: the audacity of a bi-racial boy raised by a single mother on an island halfway between the American mainland and Asia is on the verge of becoming the first non-white president of the United States. And who can say that Obama is not prepared? By virtue of his excellent education, his political apprenticeship and superlative mentors, his empathy with people on the margins of American life, his own hard work and effort, he has brought us all along for the ride and, in so doing, is guiding us gently and resolutely towards the challenges we face in the future. Ever the collaborator, Obama aims to create a unified country and an inclusive society. In his background and personal narrative is woven the tapestry of America's multi-cultural history. This is why his story resonates...why his time is now...why the outcome is inevitable.

In closing, what does Obama’s election as president, personally, mean to me? More than 13 million Americans are Asian-American, and Filipino-Americans are second only to the Chinese in numbers. I was born in the Philippines, raised in Oklahoma, have lived in California, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, New York, Washington, D.C., Oklahoma, Texas, Kentucky, and Georgia, and have an Ivy League education. As an intellectual, writer, artist, and observer who, by virtue of my own experiences, can crawl inside Obama’s brain—does this now mean that I, too, can have a significant global platform? For someone who has remained true to her own voice and artistic vision, does the elevation of a kindred spirit who has shown the entire world the power of prose over conventional plot and characterization now mean that I can get published? Obama’s ascendance means to me that complexity is no longer verboten, and that unique ideas, authenticity, and originality are to be cultivated and celebrated. If all this is true, then—for the first time in my life, in an Obama administration—I can feel as though I were a part of the American mainstream.

Bereaved

2008-10-27T19:20:00.000-07:00

Today I vacuumed my mother's floors, did four loads of laundry, emptied the trash, fed Seraphin the cat his last meal on earth, then ended the day by burying him.

There have been times in my past when people I cared about were taken from me because of unexpected circumstances. Simply, they disappeared from my life one day... An awful misunderstanding between two very close friends. A cutthroat power play in the workplace with collateral damage. But there was a reprieve: in the first case, I surreptitiously spotted the former associate—looking lonely and withdrawn—on board a subway train eight years after our acrimonious parting; and in the latter, a budding friendship continued long after the job had already ended.

Just like that. He was gone. I will never again see his furry face or feel him rub against my leg at my parents' doorway. My heart is bleeding, like the liquid redness oozing from his mouth.

What does it say about the value we ascribe to life in a civilization that is on the verge of deterioration? The careless and unnecessary loss of life diminishes us all. The hit-and-run driver didn't even stop. When I lived in pastoral New Hampshire, following a rainfall the country roads would team with wildlife…I always swerved to avoid hitting a stray animal—whether chipmunk or tiny frog. Why was this unwelcome stranger using our street as a thoroughfare? It is common enough to see dead mammals alongside the highways, but not in an established family neighborhood populated with children and pets.

The last time I saw Seraphin alive, he was enjoying a tendon I had placed in his food bowl from the stewed meat I braised for three hours just that morning. “Look at our baby,” I exclaimed to my mother who had walked me to the door. “Seraphin really enjoys his food.”

“Yes,” my mother slowly replied. “that cat always likes to eat.”

I headed out to complete my errands and when I returned less than an hour later before 3:30 p.m. he was gone. As I pulled into the driveway, I saw my husband by the fence, chatting on the phone about the family cat and whether or not anyone had seen him. “He was eating a while ago,” I answered. “All I have to do is call him and he’ll come running.” Ludicrously, in the surrealistic scene across the street, a ginger colored cat lay prostrate, its pink and neon green tags visible from the fur. My sister, brother-in-law and their children had driven past my parents’ home and saw a lifeless cat in front of our neighbor’s house. They called my husband to be sure Seraphin was safe. My rational mind had initially refused to make the connection that my intuition had instantly realized. I ran inside the house in my uncontrollable grief screaming. I couldn't return outside, even as my husband pleaded with me to keep my emotions in check. He kept asking for a shovel and a box, before another car could hit and disfigure our Seraphin’s body. How could he comprehend my grief? To him Seraphin was a stray cat that appeared one day and never left. He did not know that I was…Seraphin’s mother.

If I hadn't stopped by Kmart to look at the Martha Stewart turkey baster, I might have arrived home a little sooner and perhaps this slight alteration in the wrinkle of time would have saved Seraphin from fate. My mother had already set aside the leftovers for his evening meal. While I was away, Seraphin had finished the tidbit I lovingly fed him. One minute Seraphin was enjoying the sunlight as he bounced across the yard. An instant later, he was dead. If death had come elsewhere, in some alley or on another street, if he had never returned, we might have continued in ignorant bliss, thinking he had left home, found love, and started a family. But the reality is that blunt trauma had hit him on one side of his face, leaving a gash from which blood spurted in his head and bloodying his teeth and mouth. On the other side from where he landed, there were no such signs, he could have been sleeping in the middle of that busy street, rerouted that day through a family neighborhood because of the eminent domain taking of family homes to convert to commercial real estate less than two blocks away.

Whoever had done this deed had to have known that Seraphin had a family. He was too well-cared for, glossy, and was wearing pink and neon green tags that gave a contact telephone number and showed that his annual immunizations were current—proof that he was beloved, that he mattered to someone. He was snatched from an elderly couple, their small grandchildren, other family members, and me.

“Killing a cat is nine years bad luck," my mother whispered. Consumed with commingled rage and a bottomless sorrow, I was motivated to run into the street and scrawl graffiti on the spattered pavement, “Who killed our cat?" I grieved for some hours, then I composed myself and decided instead to commemorate Seraphin’s life in the only way I knew how, by crafting in my masterful, visceral, gift for words an homage to a beloved family member and the love he inspired in a family that took him in, cared for him, and loved him as one of their own. In this way, I hope to bring Seraphin back to life.

A pet. A being. A life.

I was the one who found Seraphin. Following one of my regular visits to my parents’ house, I was preparing to leave when I heard a plaintive sound, like a terrified infant crying. It was the voice of a disembodied kitten, but we couldn’t see him in the shrubs and bushes of the foundation plantings. Eventually, we localized the pitch as coming from the engine of my parents’ seldom used car, a capacious Cadillac. The kitten had to have been small enough to pass through the tubing and compartments of the engine. I tried to tempt the animal to make an appearance by leaving food and fresh water next to the wheel well. He was either frightened—or once he scampered up he didn’t know how to climb back down—because the leftovers remained untouched. There was no way something that new could have made its way to our yard and sought shelter in a car engine. Someone had to have brought him here. Left him to the vagaries of fate. Why couldn’t his owner have rang our doorbell and asked us to take him in instead of abandoning him and fleeing like a thief? We wouldn’t have turned them away…that is not our custom.

Several weeks passed before the frail and skinny creature came to trust humans once again and was comfortable enough to venture near me. We knew he was still alive because the plates of food were completely eaten and we could often hear a rustling as he darted unseen among the shrubbery. In time, he showed himself—a beautiful and graceful kitten, slight in build, with golden fur touched by clear pinkness around the nose, mouth, and ears. Having quietly gained his trust, the kitten now lingered by the tire on the driver’s side and scampered up to eat from my hand.

My niece named him Serafin, after her best friend in school, Sera, or Serafina, who moved when her father was reassigned to another military posting. This told me that she missed Sera terribly, in a way she couldn’t yet articulate, and was trying to keep her friend in her life by giving the foundling her friend’s name. I changed the spelling to Seraphin, because of its approximation to “seraphim,” a member of the highest order of angels with a pink cherub’s head and wings in Renaissance paintings. Somehow, the spelling seemed right to me.

As the months passed, Seraphin imperceptibly grew from a foundling to a handsome and lusty cat. When my mother was exercising by doing yard work, he would stay by her side until she finished for the day. When unoccupied, he would sit in the driveway, a muscular watch cat. His first home was in a car engine, so Seraphin had no fear of cars. This observation filled me with dread. Often, I would see him underneath one of the numerous cars parked in the driveway to shade himself from the hot sun. I would start my car engine then peer underneath to be certain Seraphin was out of harm’s way. There seemed to be no need for this, however, since Seraphin would dart to safety as soon as he heard an engine start up.

In the winter, faced with below freezing temperatures, my husband constructed a new home for Seraphin. Recycling a medium size-moving box, Joseph cleverly constructed an insulated igloo using foam and an old blanket, with a small hole cut just large enough for Seraphin to crawl inside. My fondest memory of Seraphin is how he would stand outside my parents’ door, eagerly anticipating whatever leftovers I brought for him as a treat, aside from his daily fare of household leftovers and premium, shredded canned cat food, of which we had just purchased another month's supply. I lavished him with grilled sardines and steamed shrimp—he would expertly gulp down the head, bones, and shells like a snake. There was also mesquite smoked barbecue, shredded meat from a chicken carcass, the trimmings from gourmet dishes I regularly made from scratch. Now, each time I have entered my parents’ home, I experience a wave of sadness. I miss his expectant presence that always brought a smile to my heart. Although I wanted to touch him, as an outdoor cat, Seraphin harbored fleas and parasites that could spread through my garments to our indoor pets and the children. Instead, I would often bring my face to his level and make kissing sounds and gestures while I admonished him to wait until I unwrapped his treat, or I would rub his head with my toe.

I would take Seraphin to the veterinarian and feed him his daily meals, but he was considered to be my mother’s cat. That is, until this past summer when a startling incident created an emotional bond between us. In his young life, Seraphin had experienced much pain and discomfort. Perhaps as a precursor to his eventual fate, someone had taken a BB gun and left what looked like a large and bloody shotgun hole in his right hindquarter. He never cried or complained, and calmly tried to lick clean the area around the wound, so no one in our family thought to bring him to the clinic. In fact, the veterinarian herself thought Seraphin had scratched an abscess underneath his fur. She retracted her diagnosis weeks later when she noticed the perfectly round scar—undeniable evidence of the damage left by a BB pellet.

But horrified, I had taken it upon myself to find a box large enough to fit Seraphin inside, even as he tried to claw his way out. For two weeks, I drove to my parents’ house like clockwork twice a day, eight hours apart, to administer antibiotics by mouth to Seraphin. To make the medicine palatable, I would choose a savory morsel and stick the small pill inside, then hand feed it to Seraphin to be sure it was completely swallowed. Along the way, I took to refreshing his water bowl and sweeping any leaves or debris near his insulated igloo. We tried to create a nest for Seraphin by the back door, inside a shed, or elsewhere around the property, but he had made his home in the space between the Cadillac and the den, right alongside the sheltered doorway entrance beyond the carport. As a sign of his affection, I would sometimes find half-pawed, small birds and mice near the gated door.

After the BB gun incident, we wanted to contain Seraphin. I wanted to train him to stay within the confines of our fenced yard. If he would only stay inside this charmed circle, he would remain forever safe. Everything he needed was within its boundaries—food, shelter, comfort, and love. We thought about constructing a 6x8 cage at the back of the house. We also considered boarding him with family friends. They were landlords who rescued the cats their tenants left behind by building a small addition at the back of their house. Up to a dozen cats would laze in comfort. There was no room to scamper, they could only sit and became very fat cats. There was a heater to keep them warm in the winter, and they were given fresh food and water. In the morning, Uncle Arturo would sit inside the cat condo, with his cup of coffee and newspaper, surrounded by his beloved cats while his long-suffering wife, who loved him very much even as she was allergic to cats, would empty out the litter box each day. Neither option seemed viable, or would make Seraphin happy, so we instead had him neutered, assured by the vet that the procedure would somewhat diminish his wanderlust.

Two months ago, Seraphin’s death had been foretold to me in a lucid dream. In the dream, a man, my father, was speaking to me, telling me that Seraphin had been hit by a car, and that it was a painful death. At the time, I wondered whether to dismiss this knowledge as a manifestation of my fear: that this fate was inevitable for a cat that felt comfortable around vehicles. But perhaps it was my sixth sense preparing me for what was to come. I was terrified enough to revisit the options for keeping Seraphin contained, but I understood that, at heart, Seraphin was an alley cat. I was resigned to the probability, and the expectation, that he would be a part of my life for no more than 3, 4, or 5 years, and hopefully many more. But the average lifespan of a feral cat, if he makes it past kitten hood, is less than two years. Alley cats are likely to remain feral, unless a bond is established when the kitten is still a few weeks old. We were able to socialize Seraphin while he was still young, so that he learned to trust humans. He was about 18 months old at the time of his death.

I have no photographs of Seraphin. Now, he exists only in my mind and in my heart. I try to forget how I emptied an ornate document box, decorated in red and gold trim, with a golden palm tree on the cover. How I gently lifted Seraphin’s cold remains with rigor mortis setting in and placed him in a familiar curled position with his forepaws tucked under his chin. I try to forget the dried blood that my mother told me was not necessary to wash away, and the prayer I composed in my mind through my tears, for his soul and in gratitude for the gift of Seraphin’s presence in our lives, as my husband, a high tech guru, and my brother-in-law, a physician, mixed concrete with water for a slab. They placed the casket on top of the hardened slab, and then covered the hole made in the ground with more concrete. In my handwriting, I wrote a love note to our beloved cat, and when the surface was fixed, they placed fresh dirt and grass to level with the walkway.

You might ask yourself: “What kind of person sees the meaning of existence in the shortened life cycle of an outdoor cat?” I will give you the answer: I am someone who transfigures daily or overlooked rituals and details to give transcendence and permanence to the stream of life. All of life is, to me, art—that elusive, emotional or sensory connection that allows us to appreciate beauty as a portal to the harmony, balance, and rhythm in the universe, and our own relation to this eternal mystery.

When we hand-pick people and other living beings to let into our lives, it is a vulnerable act. You are exchanging a part of yourself that you can never get back. To lose the beloved is to forfeit a piece of your soul. There are those who, after episodes in their lives—sometimes precious and memorable, other times damaging—move on without a thought about a past connection. The chapters of life, to people like these, are expendable, throwaway. Then there are others, like myself, for whom this mindset is incomprehensible: the very gift of life is to be honored, commemorated, no matter how seemingly insignificant. This to me is the ultimate litmus test of the kind of world we choose to live in. Seraphin was taken from us too soon, but in the all too short time he was mine, this abandoned kitten who grew into a magnificent cat inspired me with his loyalty, his fortitude, and his full, sensory, appreciation for the simple comforts of a well-lived life.

My Life In an Obama Administration, Part I

2008-10-22T19:24:00.000-07:00

The political momentum has shifted back and forth in the seven weeks leading to November 4. The bump following the convention brought a sense of renewal to the Republican party—and suggested a promising conservative talk show career for Sarah Palin post-election. The deepening financial and housing crises, which reared its head for much of the past two years, finally exploded into a full-scale, global, economic meltdown. Independents and disaffected voters began to make up their minds.

And this week’s coup de grâce: former Secretary of State and army general Colin Powell’s endorsement of Barack Obama—which effectively undermined his long-time friend John McCain even as it boosted Obama’s foreign policy credentials and qualifications for becoming commander-in-chief. My husband and I were watching Powell’s interview on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday when we suddenly had an inkling that an important endorsement was about to be announced. "He has both style and substance. I think he is a transformational figure," summed up Powell’s influential blessing.

I suppose that now seems a good time to begin to speculate about my life and role at the dawn of the Obama era, but it’s still two weeks to go until the presidential election, and much can still go wrong. All I need do is recall what appeared to be a slam-dunk outcome a mere eight years ago when the winner of the popular vote by almost a half million votes lost the election by 5 electoral votes, with 1 abstention.

Al Gore obsessed about his loss at the 2005 Webby Awards. His pithy, 5-word haiku, acceptance speech? “Please don’t recount this vote.” Two years later, Gore’s winning of both the Nobel Peace Prize and an Academy Award as an eloquent voice on the dangers of global warming might have seemed compensation enough for his eked-out election loss (I truly empathize...I once lost an election for high school student body president by 1 vote and, like the good citizen I was and continue to be, I actually returned the extra ballot I was given! A few years later, I was elected in a landslide to the Board of Trustees of the largest university in the Ivy League and became a finalist for Glamour magazine’s Top Ten College Women in the country).

If a Republican were destined for the White House in 2000, that president should have been John McCain instead of George W. Bush. But McCain’s time has passed, and his series of questionable decisions and actions—from the improperly vetted elevation of Sarah Palin as his running mate, to his showcasing of “everyman” Joe the Plumber (an unlicensed plumber who owes back taxes)—to the puzzling photograph of him at the end of the last presidential debate (in a decidedly un-presidential caricature of the Hunchback of Notre Dame lumbering behind Barack Obama) simply washed away any benefit of the doubt that I and many other leftist-leaning, pro-military friends in Oklahoma may have extended to a war hero and former prisoner of war in Viet Nam.

What concerns me in 2008 is that the fate of the nation rests on 5 battleground states—Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, Colorado, and Nevada and their 76 electoral votes. The western states, Nevada and Colorado, have 5 and 9 electoral votes, respectively. A candidate could win 99% of the popular vote in Nevada, but in the winner-take-all electoral college only 5 votes would count toward electing the president. There has got to be a better formula for electing our president, which I will leave to policy wonks, elected officials, and high school debaters to sort out. In 1974-75, the national high school debate topic of the National Forensic League was the resolution, “Resolved: That the United States should significantly change the method of selecting presidential and vice-presidential candidates.” 34 years and 6 presidents later, no changes have been made.

You’d think a candidate with a 3-generation, family tradition of exceptional military service to the country would go down fighting and, indeed, McCain has refused to concede. But Barack Obama has shown himself to be a master of political warfare. His success in the 2008 campaign owes much to his lawyerly mindset that meticulously and thoroughly combs the margins—the fringes—for every possible advantage. If Obama had been a high school debater in 1974, he might have looked for ways to exploit the present system and optimize its loopholes. Who would have thought that the aggregate impact of caucuses and states with small electoral counts would make such a difference? This ingenious strategy explains how he won the Democratic Party nomination over an historic female candidate who was widely viewed as the inevitable Democratic nominee, and it is a strategy that has carried over to the general election.

This psychology of taking nothing for granted is the reason why Obama has remained steady and centered and why he will do nothing foolish in the remaining two weeks of the campaign. In his long-range planning, Obama has shown that he has been focused on the end game all along. Obama opted out of public funding so that he could continually renew his coffers by returning to small contributors. By tapping both traditional, major donors and small contributors reached in part through the internet, Obama has amassed a sizeable war chest, a record-shattering $150 million raised in September alone. Unlike John Kerry, who foolishly had $13 million left from his campaign 2004 and lost the election, Obama will raise and spend what he must to win the presidency.

What makes me hopeful about America’s future and the outcome of the election is the paradigm shift in younger voters who view Obama as an inspirational figure and transformative candidate. One of the students I mentor is an 18-year-old senior at a prep school near Boston voting in his first presidential election. Among many other accomplishments, Jerome Tse is the co-president of the Multicultural Students Association at the Noble & Greenough School. He and his classmates shared their thoughts on what this historic 2008 election means to them. The respondents of this Quick Poll are primarily, like myself, independent voters who may be affiliated with a political party; the lone Republican respondent plans to vote for Obama.

I’m posting Jerome’s reply in its entirety.

Jerome Tse, Senior at the Noble and Greenough High School:

1) Is this the first presidential election in which you will vote? Yes

2) Which candidate do you plan for vote for, and why? I plan to vote for Barack Obama for several reasons. I highly respect John McCain, but in my opinion, he has poor judgment and is too old. His policies are close to 95% the same as those of the Bush Administration, and everyone knows, this country is need of political and economic change. Barack Obama, despite not having as much experience as John McCain, has sound judgment, which will be especially important when it comes to making foreign policy decisions on America's situation in Iraq/Afghanistan and future threat, Iran. We need a leader whose first priority is negotiating peace with the enemy, but who is not afraid to take military action if needed. This is especially important regarding the Georgia/Russia conflict, which if handled over-aggressively, could lead to a third world war.

3) How do you plan to make your decision about whom to vote? What has made the difference in my selection for president were the candidates' motives for foreign policy. I like Barack Obama's opinion that we need to get out of Iraq and shift our focus on Afghanistan, the true center of terrorism, and negotiate with Pakistan, where bin Ladin is supposedly hiding. This kind of direct answer of what he is going to do attracted me, especially because his opinions are the same as mine in terms of foreign policy.

4) What concerns you most about the future? Barack Obama's inexperience. He has the right judgment, and I trust him for that. However, it is true that good leaders, especially presidents, need experience before they take over arguably the most powerful position in the world.

5) What is your political affiliation? Class year? Age? Republican, Senior, 18

6) Anything on which you care to elaborate or vent? John McCain could run into health problems in the near future, and if that were to be the case, Sarah Palin would take over as president. As a Republican, I respect Palin for what she has done as governor of Alaska, but she simply does not have the experience and has not proven to me yet that she has the right judgment when it comes to making economic, political, and military decisions for the United States.”

God Sent Us an Angel

2008-10-10T19:29:00.000-07:00

God sent us an angel. That's what the preacher's wife told me when I saw her today. Yesterday, she had been sitting at a makeshift table wondering how she was going to get the zip codes to mail business announcements to the hospital at Ft. Sill. I overheard her and volunteered to deliver her menus to a contact at the military base.

She was grateful for my offer and seemed eager to hear more, so I found myself making suggestions that ranged from ambience, to color palette, to lessons in product consistency, gleaned from my avocation as an East Coast foodie who is passionate about flavors, tables, and presentations. This new business run by a preacher and his wife has some of the best pit barbecue in Texoma—the southwest Oklahoma-north Texas region—that I had ever tasted. During family get-togethers, the mesquite-smoked meats—beef, pork, chicken, and seafood—had been perfected, and now the entire clan was working together to try to make a success of it.

I placed a second take-out order, and then went home to spread the word about my new find. I e-mailed 50 friends and neighbors affiliated with the media, hospitals, schools, major car dealerships, real estate, and construction, including the owner and anchor of the ABC television affiliate. I hand-delivered a dozen menus. Even then I couldn't stop; I wrote a testimonial the Atkinsons could copy to place in their restaurant and use when soliciting catering jobs.

Today, I returned and saw how quickly the family had implemented my suggestions. Annette informed me that new faces had shown up during lunchtime. At a family powwow a few nights previously, they had discussed buying a television for customers to watch while waiting for their food; so it had surprised them when I presented the idea of making the small restaurant a place where customers could linger, by putting up a television and adding a family portrait of their clan at home enjoying barbecue. I told them not to slather the meat in sauce, but to offer sauce on the side, or to cover only the bottom half of the meat. "Customers want to taste the mesquite smoke, not cover its pungency."

"When you see young soldiers start to come in, that's a sign that you need to have more chicken wings on the menu." I told them. "People like chicken wings, and young soldiers either don't like to or can't cook. They'll come back if your place feels like home."

I was acquainted with young adults like these who had already been sent to Iraq and were being shipped out for their second tour. They were barely out of their teens and many were away from home for the first time in their lives, so cooking is the last thing on their collective minds.

It made me angry to hear of John Kerry's botched comments directed at George Bush, "Do you know where you end up if you don't study, if you aren't smart, if you're intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq." Despite their youth, these soldiers impressed me with their precocious maturity, their sense of responsibility and discipline. One veteran was a young woman, sent to Iraq as a nurse; she looked like she could have been a student in high school or college. High school students playing dress up as soldiers. Only, this is their reality.

I heard her voice continue, "You are an angel. We were talking about how God sent us an angel to help when you began giving us all this advice." I smiled. I, too, had felt an unseen hand in this affair. There I was waiting for my food order, when the sight of a motherly black woman worrying out loud in these tough economic times touched my heart.

"My husband Richard, he told me just be patient...God will provide. Then you appeared." I had sensed her distress. Otherwise, I might have just picked up my food and gone on my way. But God gives each and every one of us a gift of humanity, and mine is empathy. I couldn't turn away.

I gave the preacher's wife my personal e-mail address and told her she could contact me if needed. For sure, my family will hire them to cater our next function. Last week, my sister and her husband hosted a dinner for my brother-in-law, himself a veteran of the war in Iraq. If I had known of the Atkinsons' bbq business beforehand, we would have hired them and promoted their food to all in attendance. That was a missed opportunity. But something tells me the family won't need my help much longer...their work ethic and the quality of their food are already there. The word-of-mouth groundswell I set in motion has begun and now, customers just need to find them.

Artist and Muse

2008-09-29T20:23:00.000-07:00

To answer your questions about the strange tango that informs the primary relationship/love story in the work:

Artist and Muse. I feel that people who are creative, receptive, are open to inspiration from various dimensions and influences. The artist is a channel, a conduit, a seer/mystic/psychic, if you will…who sees the future, reads souls, intuits the heart of a situation through her dreams and daydreams. Her points of reference are unusually eclectic, yet cohesive. Her portal to a meaningful life is through her muse.

Any time you deal with the notion of soul mates and polar opposites, you leave open the door to duality. The artist seems torn between the fierce expressiveness of her transfigurative art and a strong spiritual aspect that causes her to take to heart the imitation of Christ. She’s always trying to do the right thing, at great cost to her emotional psyche…she’s thoughtful and vulnerable, she already knows the ending to the story but understands that—for her personal and artistic growth—this complicated, strange tango is a crucible she must undergo…she tolerates abuse from female relatives because she refuses to turn her back on her marriage…in the end, she releases her muse, but leaves him with a sustaining dream (was the artist, in fact, a muse to her own muse?).

In the end, it's questionable that the artist needs the muse more than the muse needs the artist. He's too pedestrian...he can’t deal with the gift of faith and inspiration conferred by the irrational…he isn’t a creative problem-solver. She lets him down gently, but maybe it is, in fact, a curse…she’ll always have her imagination, but to the end of his days, she will be an ephemeral dream that he will remember with love and longing in his heart.

(Can you almost see an Obama-Clinton representational, generational, clash in this?)

Manifesto

2008-09-29T19:31:00.000-07:00

I had sent out a Quick Poll asking for feedback about the characteristics of my audience and writing style, and after many vibrant exchanges I can definitively articulate these qualities:

Audience: people who are intuitive (direct perception of truth, fact, etc., independent of any reasoning process; immediate apprehension), instinctive (visceral, spontaneous, unpremeditated), and/or aspirational (yearning; ambitious, desirous of success)

Writing Style: (note that these adjectives describe the writing, and not necessarily my personality...)
intelligent (a capacity and taste for the higher forms of knowledge; astute, clever, alert, bright, apt, discerning, shrewd, smart), illuminating (informative, insightful, enlightening), articulate (using language easily and fluently; expressed, formulated, or presented with clarity and effectiveness), holistic (emphasizing the importance of the whole and the interdependence of its parts), charming (pleasing, delightful, winning), intriguing (arousing the curiosity or interest of by unusual, new, or otherwise fascinating or compelling qualities), eclectic (not following any one system, but selecting and using what are considered the best elements of all systems)

What started four years ago as musings from a private blog, distributed via email in-box to serendipitously counteract the humorlessness found in the workplace, is going global. Here is just a small but representative sampling of people who read and share my posts:

- an African-American VP in corporate philanthropy who leads a major political action women's group supporting Barack Obama, co-chair of the host committee that brought the 2004 Democratic national convention to Boston
- a Korean-American arts and culture television producer and former White House intern in Al Gore's office
- a Native American model-actress-dramatist from Montana who is a director of education and outreach at Harvard
- a former software executive turned entrepreneur
- a high tech guru and former architecture student who repairs his own cars and renovates his own real estate properties
- an international transportation consultant in San Diego and former business professor in El Salvador
- a physician and former military officer in Hawaii
- an up-and-coming author and Ph.D. candidate in history who does field research in the Netherlands and Curacao
- an influential talent agent in NYC
- an information officer at the World Bank in Hong Kong who covers the entire Asia region and is an extreme sports enthusiast
- a high school senior who is a "triple threat": top scholar-multicultural student leader-varsity athlete who trains with a former Olympian in crew
- a cryptologist/engineer in Texas with more than 5 U.S. patents
- an intellectual property attorney who has lived on a sailboat in a Boston marina for more than 16 years and leaves a very small footprint

Addendum, August 2009:
- highly engaged print, broadcast, and online journalists across the country

(photo: room with a view from the Miyako Hotel, Higashiyama-ku, Kyoto)

Political Predictions from America’s Heartland

2008-09-12T19:36:00.000-07:00

I always had my eyes on the end game. Political events have borne me out.

Just before the flush of Super Tuesday elections, I e-mailed that the race for the Democratic nomination would be extremely close and that there was no guarantee of a Democratic victory in the general election, regardless of President Bush's negative ratings. I wrote: "...a significant percentage of voters will not vote on the issues but will vote according to emotional comfort level." Allowing for the strength of incumbency, my only error was in picking Hillary Clinton to eke out the nomination; however, I also declared that she would not become president.

I am an Ivy League intellectual and internationalist, and Barack Obama is my kind of candidate. Never before have I had the opportunity to vote for a candidate who so closely mirrors me and my beliefs. But Obama is also a generation ahead of his time—according to the U.S. census, twenty years from now, the minority population will achieve majority status in American society. At present, I fear the coalition of liberals / intellectuals / independents / Millennials / minorities /netizens is not large enough to overcome the silent majority represented by middle America without the addition of crossover voters.

My affiliations are frankly elitist (Cornell, Harvard—Office of the Assistant to the President / Harvard Law School / Harvard Business School / Graduate School of Design / Faculty of Arts and Sciences—Boston; U.S. Department of State, U.S. Census Bureau; ABC News, CNN International, Hearst-Argyle) and I have traveled independently all over the world. However, I grew up in America's heartland, and I understand the strength of the heartland's ingrained values.

The election was Barack Obama's to lose until the evangelical base became energized by the presence of Sarah Palin. Evangelicals are not just religious fundamentalists. They are also people like my neighbors and family friends who believe in God, country, and patriotism. They are pro-life, even though they may believe in a woman's reproductive rights. Many of them are multi-millionaires, even if they attended state universities. Others are first-generation immigrants who came to America as physicians and military officers.

Given my environment, I may be an anomaly as a supporter of Barack Obama. I applauded the inclusive society and sense of innovation that his candidacy represents. But Obama's greatest misstep is that he and his advisers assumed that American is a meritocracy, that the people want a well-educated, literary, and eloquent change agent who will bring us into the future and provide equal opportunity for all. They groomed and presented us with one of the best America has to offer: the zenith of what America can represent around the world is, indeed, embodied in a bi-racial man raised in our most diverse state of Hawaii who lived in and imbibed the cultures of Southeast Asia and a classic African-American stronghold in Chicago.

Regardless of what the Republicans threw at them, the Democrats would win hands-down if Hillary Clinton were Obama's running mate. Obama demonstrated his conservatism by selecting Joseph Biden as his running mate. Biden, although an elder statesman, brought nothing of demographic importance to the party. With Clinton, there was a chance to create the irresistible double whammy of a minority-female ticket, but Hillary and Bill played nice too late. Obama and his people did not trust them. The nominating convention was not the time and place for the Clintons to redeem themselves, though they have done so admirably.

If Obama loses in November, he will not have a second chance. The seismic shift of his candidacy was predicated in part on its insurgency. For what is change but insurgency? Hillary Clinton will likely then be the Democratic nominee in 2012; however, if her positioning strategy was to let Obama be the standard bearer with the expectation that he would lose the White House in 2008, her strategy will backfire. Americans are predisposed to give an incumbent president two terms in office, and there is nothing Clinton can do to unseat a sitting president.

Here is my great fear: Sarah Palin will become America's first female president.

John McCain is 72 years old and could conceivably be in office until he is 80. He has already suffered a cancer scare. The probability is very high, given the stress of the job, that McCain could become incapacitated while in office. My family and friends in southwest Oklahoma have a strong tradition of public service, so we like and respect John McCain for his years of service as a Navy officer, a prisoner of war, and a senator: we understand his drive to be of service to his country. However, at some point, this sense of service was supplanted by an ambition to be elected president at all costs. McCain must have been rankled by the idea of an upstart taking precedence over someone who waited his turn. So he made a deal with the devil and master manipulator Karl Rove.

Rove knows the right buttons to push to elicit a visceral reaction, and I see his fingerprints all over the elevation of Sarah Palin. Hers is a Cinderella story come to life because Rove went trolling for someone who could steal Obama's thunder. As such, Palin had not been fully vetted.

Palin is the ying to Obama's yang.

A woman, a working professional and soccer mom: a member of the religious right and of the NRA. She is a natural in front of the camera, and her persona is approachable and salt-of-the-earth. To me, the Republican ticket is a manufactured creation, designed by Karl Rove in the same way that Sean "Diddy" Combs auditions the members of the boy bands and girl groups he matches up.

It is irrelevant, in a larger sense, to speak of someone as not having the experience to become president. Nothing in life really prepares one to be the leader of the free world. In America, anyone can win the presidential lottery. All we voters ask is that we have enough time and opportunity to get to know our candidates—their assets and liabilities—and an abbreviated general election season does not allow a thorough vetting of a relative unknown for a hand-picked spot on a presidential ticket.

Make no mistake:
1) the election will be a litmus test of the culture wars
2) the election will be won through coverage and momentum in the media news cycle
3) the election results will be closer than expected
4) Obama is very much in danger of losing the election
5) if the Republicans win as a result of unethical ploys or controversy, as in 2000, race riots will break out

I have accurately called every election since Ronald Reagan was elected (I knew Al Gore would not win...he seemed to have lost his sense of self during the campaign, which cost him votes, and George W. Bush's identifiable persona was someone you could have a beer with), but this is the first time I am calling the election a toss up.

Political psychology has always fascinated me. I was a dual government major at Cornell University before I switched to English and comparative literature and creative writing. In college, I spent my summers working at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C. in competitive, paid internships with the Foreign Service and the Office of Public Affairs. I have run for and won elective office all the way from junior high school through college, and I was chosen for Oklahoma Girls State and 1st alternate to Girls Nation in Washington, D.C. I learned more about the art of leadership and politics at the elbow of Charles Ogletree, Barack Obama's Harvard law professor and trusted adviser, who appeared in the campaign video shown at the Democratic convention.

What can Obama do in the time remaining to win the election? And if he loses, what will it take to elect a minority person to the Presidency? Hopefully, I will have time to mull over these questions before I head to Boston. This is for certain: in twenty years, any minority candidate will have to reach out and make substantial inroads into African-American, Asian, Hispanic, and Native American communities.

Iconic Style

2008-09-04T19:43:00.000-07:00

Simplicity—in its heightened form—is a chaste elegance, refinement, and self-knowledge. For an artist in the purest form of the word, everything that defines one is an act of creative self-expression.

To me, the components of a full life heavy with symbolism and meaning include intellectual stimulation and emotional engagement, serenity, constant exposure to beauty, scent, color, design, style, art, architecture, literature, travel, landscapes, and gardens…

Exquisite is the word that best describes my favored style—combining the serenity of the East Asian tradition with the rococo of the Mediterranean and the functionality of the European.

I opt for quality over quantity, so my possessions are rigorously minimal. What qualifies as exquisite is a streamlined culling of what is best in class or breed that innately applies to my image and lifestyle—I rigorously reject what is irrelevant, and I seldom deviate from my favorites.

Al Fresco

2008-08-29T19:46:00.000-07:00

I've been very busy redesigning my garden. The landscaping the previous owners had professionally installed was heavy on xeriscaping; it had a very natural, low-maintenance look with out-of-control winter jasmine shrubs, liriope, hawthorne, and fountain grasses.

But my favorite gardens are manicured, with fragrant plants that include roses, orchids, peonies, lily-of-the-valley, lilies, gardenias, irises, plumeria / frangipani, and pikake / jasmine sambac.

I'd guess that considerable sums were spent on landscaping 1/4 of an acre and installing a wall fountain. I'd rather that the money have been spent on a small swimming pool. It's tough to retro-fit for a pool now since one side yard is blocked by a brick wall and the other side yard houses the central air conditioning system which makes the path too narrow for a bulldozer.

Since moving in, I've pretty much pulled up or given away many of the original plantings and replaced them with plants better suited to my color schemes and sculptural forms. The knock-out rose shrubs can triple in size within a year; the leaves remain green and the flowers continuously bloom all year long.

This week, between the Olympics and the Democratic convention, I've put in about 50 hours of work in the yard—between 7am-noon/break for lunch, nap, and errands/back between 5pm-8pm. I've been burning up to 400 calories per hour and my body is sore and tired when I go to sleep. I also had a nasty run-in with some fire ant hills around my ankles...the bites have finally started to scab over.

But now it's all worth it: with everything perfectly in place, the beautiful views remind me of the wonderful al fresco dining experiences I enjoyed in Italy and France.

Here are some of my favorite sources for plants in my garden:

http://www.treepeony.com/
http://www.johnscheepers.com/
http://www.vanengelen.com/
http://www.stokestropicals.com/
http://www.schreinersgardens.com/miva/merchant.mvc?Screen=SFNT&Store_Code=SIGO
http://www.reneesgarden.com/
www.whiteflowerfarm.com
http://heirloomtomatoplants.com/

Back in the summer of 2005, when I was looking for a house to buy, one of the properties I viewed had a swimming pool and cabana that pretty much filled up the entire back yard. There was also a small lake/canal just outside the pool gate. If the house hadn't been so old, dated, and over-priced, it would have been on my short list.

Instead, our best option was a well-designed home that gives us about 1,500 s.f. less than our home in New Hampshire but makes better use of the space. The builder used to construct homes in Palm Springs, so the house has a vibe that that's very casual / open plan / low-maintenance.

Sometimes, I think about the new construction home with a pool we could have built on a hill overlooking Lake Lawtonka, but waiting 18 months to move in and sharing the mountaintop with the vermin that inhabit the area bring me back to reality. I'm very happy that we opted to scale down.

Spa Cuisine

2008-08-14T19:54:00.000-07:00

One of my dreams has been to write and produce coffee-table books on cooking and entertaining. My preferred entertaining styles are global/authentic/eclectic and Neo-Zen. People have asked me if I own a restaurant and have suggested I apply for The Next Food Network Star.

I've received a request for vegetarian dishes and, being primarily vegetarian myself, happily supply these recipes for vegetarian spa cuisine. Use organic produce when possible, and go ahead and splurge on artisanal salts, vinegars, and oils. A little goes a long way, and I can taste the difference. My supplies primarily come from Williams-Sonoma, Formaggio in Cambridge, and Whole Foods Market.

Spa cuisine emphasizes simplicity and purity of flavors, enhanced in part through the infusion of marinades, dipping sauces, and dressings.

My calorie count is kept low using seafood and white meat poultry as a source of protein and controlling portions to a 2 oz. serving of protein for lunch and dinner. You can lose weight and eat flavorful foods through a judicious and balanced diet. You will lose weight more quickly if you incorporate 90 minutes of exercise each day, aerobic and free weights. I can lose 7-10 lbs in 2 weeks on a strict diet and exercise program.

One of my favorite meals is salad with enough texture and variety that I'm not bored eating the same thing for several days. I usually prepare sufficient quantities for 6 individual servings lasting 2-3 days.

organic mesclun
mache
baby arugula
tomatoes
fennel
carrots
radish
red onion
asparagus
haricots verts
1/4C fresh, thinly minced dill

optional: pomegranate seeds, olives, and/or feta cheese for garnish

Clean, wash, and prep all vegetables. Spin dry the mesclun and mache. If using grape tomatoes, cut in half, otherwise cut a larger tomato into 8 half wedges. I use a small Japanese slicer with ceramic blade to thinly slice the fennel, carrots, radish, and red onion. Blanche the asparagus and haricots verts by plunging into salted boiling water for 3 minutes, then removing and placing in cold water with ice cubes to quickly cool down.

Incorporate the dill into the leafy vegetables. You can store by placing all the vegetables in a large bowl, covering with plastic wrap, and refrigerating. I have a special square, covered glass container for this purpose and store by separately mounding the individually cut vegetables in the container. To serve, simply create a photogenic presentation of the assorted vegetables with garnish, sprinkled sea salt, freshly ground black pepper, and homemade salad dressing.

In all the following recipes, it's important to taste and to correct the seasonings. For this reason, I recommend adding ingredients such as salt and liquids a little at a time rather than all at once. If the recipe seems too salty, cut with water or vinegar or use less salt. If the texture seems too thick, you can thin with liquid. If you don't like too much garlic, then simply use less.

I actually have a staple repertoire of a half dozen varieties of salad dressings. Here are two of the simplest.

Basic Oil and Vinegar Dressing: Drizzle walnut vinegar and first pressing artisanal olive oil to taste, plus sprinkled sea salt and freshly ground black pepper over the entire salad. Gently toss with your fingers so that a little salad dressing goes a long way. You can also substitute fresh lemon juice for the walnut vinegar.

Basic Vinaigrette: 1/4C olive oil, 1/4C balsamic vinegar, few grinds of black pepper, 1/4t sea salt (I use hand harvested fleur de sel from France), 1/2t Dijon mustard, 1 clove crushed garlic. Place in a covered bottle and shake vigorously.

Before he became nationally famous, I once ate at Emeril's restaurant at the MGM Grand Hotel in Las Vegas. I had ordered an oyster po'boy and noticed that the flavorful greens that accompanied the dish were mixed in a large bowl with a splash of dressing. The cook used a gloved hand to vigorously incorporate the greens with just a sheen of dressing. This avoided the gloppiness that can sometimes weigh down a delicate leaf and, considering that 1 tablespoon of olive oil has 119 calories, also minimized the amount of olive oil used.

Here's an artichoke recipe that can be added to the salad composition or eaten as a separate vegetable dish.

Clean, prep, and quarter 2 large artichokes. Place in a pan and cover with water, 1T salt, juice from 1 lemon, 1 bay leaf, whole peppercorns. Bring to a boil, then gently simmer, partially covered, for 40 minutes or until soft enough to eat. The seasonings enhance the flavor of the artichokes.

I like to dip the leaves and heart in either a garlic aioli or tahini sauce.

Easy Garlic Aioli: To 1/3C mayonnaise, add 1T fresh lemon juice and 2 cloves of garlic squeezed through a garlic press. Mix completely and add sea salt to taste.

Easy Tahini: To 1/3C tahini (I like the tahini made by Tarazi Specialty Foods with no preservatives, no additives, and no salt), add 1T of chilled, filtered water, or enough to mix into a smooth, velvety paste. Add 1T fresh lemon juice, 1 clove of garlic squeezed through a garlic press, and sea salt to taste.

The salad goes well with this simple preparation for flavorful poached salmon.

Place a 4 oz. piece of salmon in a small pan and just cover the fish with water and a splash or two of any kind of white wine lying around the house. Add a pinch or two of sea salt. Bring liquid to a gentle boil, then immediately place on a gentle simmer and cover the pan, leaving a slight opening. Poach for 5-7 minutes, depending on how well done you like your fish.

I'll usually defrost a few pieces of fish in the chiller compartment of the refrigerator and poach individual portions as needed since the fish takes no more than 7 minutes to cook.

Bon appetit!

Julio Iglesias

2008-06-26T19:57:00.000-07:00

Does she yearn to discover the secret to Julio Iglesias, Japan, or Jesus?

Here is a link to an intimate hotel in Punta del Este, Uruguay. La Posta del Cangrejo (http://www.lapostadelcangrejo.com/en/galeria.php) is where Julio Iglesias and I both stayed—separately, of course...the staff gave me a tour of the suite where he stays when he's in town.

It's fascinating what the universe sends your way when the time is right...I can honestly say that some of the touchstones in my life were never planned.

Well into my twenties, I was conditioned to uphold traditional standards in comportment. But in my newly adult life, I allowed myself to become receptive to the unknown and emotionally invested in new experiences. I seized and followed to its furthermost limitations whatever the universe threw my way...and yes, my willingness to venture into uncharted territory changed my life. I had long hair down to my hips and my dress size was 0. Dangling earrings and dark red lips were part of my signature dramatic style. There was a certain power I could wield given this ability to infatuate.

In a way, Strange Tango is my commemorative tribute to a fleeting time of youthful exuberance and physical beauty. In my meditative state of writing, I transposed, transferred—magnified—my reality into a heightened form of hyperreality and poured my passion into my work to create art. That is why I say Strange Tango is a literary work of art. By its very process, I could have been creating a piece of sculpture, or a painting...but instead it was a book.

As part of my experimental makeover, I began to indulge in activities that were fairly common for most people, yet for me out of character—such as waiting in line for Julio Iglesias' autograph. Was I obsessed? Yes, never before had I felt such passion welling within me, as though the powerful kundalini were rising (http://www.themystica.com/mystica/articles/k/kundalini.html).

I was determined to go with the universal flow, to challenge fate...to meet Julio face to face. He was tall, had dark hair, and was very handsome. He was also gentlemanly, suave, and intelligent. I freely admit I became a paying member of the Julio Iglesias East Coast fan club and attended his concerts in Foxborough and Las Vegas. I acquired 15 of Julio's cd recordings and two videos of his concerts, En Espana and Starry Night. I bought one cd at the opening of Coconuts, a music store on Boylston Street, now closed. Julio’s limo arrived late, and I must have stood in line for more than an hour with a long queue of fans that snaked onto the sidewalk. When my turn came, I went to the raised table for Julio’s autograph (photos were not permitted). I remember he took a long look at me and asked where I was from—his first wife is a fellow Filipina...his son, singer Enrique Iglesias, is part-Filipino. The women around me said Julio thought I was very cute with my long flowing hair and white linen dress of Italian design.

Julio insinuated himself into my existence in unexpected ways: the Chanel national make-up artist who did my cosmetic makeovers for several years lived in Miami, where Julio then resided. He would tell me of his Julio sightings at various parties in town.

Another time, Julio was performing at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas, so my entire family came along for the trip. They decided to indulge me when I told them I wanted to hear Julio in concert. I was actually in the hotel pool when his entire entourage made a grand entrance. Here I was in my bikini, when Julio entered the water no more than 40 feet away from me and simply stood there facing me. A photographer was taking photos, and I know he would have agreed to my request to have my photo taken with Julio had I gotten out of the pool and asked him with a smile...but I didn't. This was meant to be private time, and my sense of restraint—and abbreviated clothing—kept me from being intrusive. So there went my photo opportunity with my idol...the primary inspiration for the Libra male in Strange Tango.

Yes, Julio is a Libra, born in September. One of his cd's is even titled, Libra. In an interview, Julio once said he didn't like Libra...he had recorded it at a time in his life when he said he felt emotionally exposed and vulnerable. To me, Libra is his best work overall. The best artists are able to connect with their audience, to resonate in their souls. I felt Julio was trying to make a connection with me...and I followed him across the country and to another continent. The songs in Libra are among his most heart achingly poignant.

Listen to Tu Y Yo and more on this sample:
Ni Te Tengo, Ni Te Olvido
Dire
Ni Tu Gato Gris, Ni Tu Perro Fiel
Todo Y Nada
Abril En Portugal
Coracao Apaixonado
http://www.amazon.com/Libra-Julio-Iglesias/dp/B00000265B/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1214453169&sr=8-1 (scroll down)

Then listen to:
De Niña A Mujer
Moonlight Lady
Fragile
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000QKDIPI/ref=dm_sp_adp?ie=UTF8&qid=1214453169&sr=8-1

It's Official! StrangeTango.com

2008-06-23T20:00:00.000-07:00

We went through several iterations before coming up with the name for the website: Mermaid and Sun...Muse and Tango...Millennium Muse…among them. The act of naming a personal website is like choosing a baptismal name—signifying a new life—for yourself. So I sent out a Quick Poll to gauge the fleeting impressions left by prospective titles.

One response, by Alan Hoffman in San Diego, read my soul.

”I'm more partial to Strange Tango, because it speaks directly to the inter-relationship and inter-action between you and your subjects (the Tango); the adjective "Strange" serves to modify the noun not in the traditional sense of "strange" but rather to signify that it's not about the actual dance.”

So StrangeTango.com became the name of my personal website—now it’s official!

For me, anything sustainable has to originate organically. Here's my backstory:

When my Harvard Business School experience ended in May 2004, I kept myself busy by co-founding the Harvard Administrative Fellows alumni association a month later. Simultaneously, I started The Cool Community, the precursor to my popular e-mail communiques, which would morph into the book of essays, memoir and musings—Millennium Muse—and the cyberspace platform for my writings and experiential work—Mermaid and Sun—which was officially named StrangeTango.com. Then in April 2006, Joseph and I relocated to southwest Oklahoma to be closer to my family. Many in my wide friendship circle in Greater Boston and Cambridge were demonstrably distraught at my departure, so I began producing prodigious amounts of content that popped up regularly in their in-boxes, so much so that one of my confidants commented, "It's as though you never left town!" So, I've essentially been blogging for four years—enough time to hone my craft and my message of: literature, art, inspiration, and amplitude

This was the process of karmic causation: my departure from HBS meant there was no economic reason for me to remain in New England, which inspired me to relocate to Oklahoma and dive full-time into my personal life with my extended family, which led to a streamlined spa lifestyle...and thus the time and inclination to indulge my literary, artistic, conceptual, and entrepreneurial talents.

StrangeTango.com is a global platform.

Why?

Well, why not?!

Why move online now?

When a notable friend repeatedly encouraged me to set up my own website two years ago, her opinion spoke volumes to me. And imagine my surprise when my husband's former manager, from more than a decade ago at a blue chip high tech company, e-mailed me: "I like to see your name in my email. You are such a unique coin and I enjoy reading what you have written."!

What inspired me that I could touch a mass audience were sentiments expressed by my nephew in Hong Kong who wrote, "I like your writing," and a longtime assistant to one of my mentors who asked me to keep sending her e-mails, "...I have met a lot of people, you are one of the people I will always remember."

Two years ago the technology wasn't quite yet in place for how I wanted to brand myself. Even though schools started teaching interactive multimedia around 1994, only since 2006 have personal websites become notably sophisticated in design and technology. By 2007-2008, I was excited to see some of the most original personal websites I had ever discovered on the web.

I am reminded of a comment from a person in Great Britain left on a website design blog: "I’m always wondering what more can be done with a blog? It seems almost a shame that people ‘only’ go the journalistic route, or the photo-a-day route, or the rant route. There should be more we can do with blogs than simply post text and photos."

I agree: I believe the time is now to take the personal website to the next—experiential—level. My vision for StrangeTango.com is to create an interactive, literary work of art in cyberspace: I don't know that it's ever been done before. And instead of outsourcing this cyberspace branding project to an interactive marketing agency, my collaborators and I are doing this ourselves...how authentic can you get? We're building the site in our spare time because most of us have full-time jobs and various responsibilities.

There's nothing obvious in my writing that would suggest I'm a female Filipino-American author/artist/activist/intellectual born in the provinces and raised in southwest Oklahoma, with an Ivy League and blue chip pedigree. A citizen of the world who has traveled on five continents, a stay-at-home wife whose interests are protean. I've always been very Zen (noun, a Buddhist doctrine that enlightenment can be attained through direct intuitive insight) in my sensibilities. Given all of the above, I feel I can articulate a collective subconscious that transcends demographic barriers.

Intellectual Property

2008-06-19T20:04:00.000-07:00

I copyrighted the title and manuscript of Strange Tango almost two decades ago, and the title has appeared in my published official biographies and blurbs since the 1980’s.

I have waited a very long time to publicly introduce my work.

A part of it was that the book's complexity is deceptive—there are multiple layers of interpretation and only 103 pages—I did not feel it would be understood in a world that was stratified, viewed largely in black and white. So basically, I had to wait for the world to become more complicated, disaffected, progressive, and multicultural—as well as to develop my own audience, cyberspace platform, and cosmology.

Also, I am difficult to categorize…I was one of the first to adopt the concept of hybridization in my work. I am not an academic, so I was not forced to publish or perish. Nor am I a pundit for whom talk is cheap.

No, the time was not right for me, so all these years I deliberately did not publish or debut any other writings, articles, essays, and various other works: mine is a clean slate for branding. Moreover, I am decidedly absolutist when it comes to controlling my original work, image, and intellectual property because I am such an intensely private individual.

The strength of my body of work is that it is so authentically unique that it really can't be duplicated: this is by deliberate design. I'm happy to incubate, exchange, and promulgate ideas—but my belief is that within each of us is the capacity to create and to mold—a child, a definitive statement, a mantra, a product—to reveal and to document, that which singularly represents one's time on this earth.

And Strange Tango is mine…

Elegant, Eclectic, Minimalist, Surprising

2008-06-18T20:07:00.000-07:00

Strange Tango is the name of my personal website—as well the literary novella that inspired the site. The website is a showcase for emerging talent and a platform for my writings, photography, and experimental work. Thus, the website and my novella are inextricably linked—each enhancing the experience of the other.

In the novella, the mantra “This is my manifesto: elegant, eclectic, minimalist, surprising” refers to two things: the items packed for trips/the objects the artist collects on her travels, as well as the clarity that allows her to see past noise and clutter directly to the heart of a matter.

Actually, the travel gear is something of an infinite jest: the artist claims she travels light yet elaborately lists dozens of items she packs. (Basically, she brings her home with her wherever she may be.) However, the quantities are so minimal and the fabrics and textures so lightweight that everything fits neatly inside a carry-on suitcase. It’s sort of a metaphor for how something large and encompassing can be condensed to its stripped-down components.

On the website, we have a display of artifacts in the first scene of the video. I wanted clutter in the background and two portraits and a blue stone in the foreground. Like the interpretation of art work, the composition is meant to express the following:

- the two portraits—one a Polaroid snapshot, the other in a filigree frame—are intended to show the dual face of the artist as being entirely modern/global and baroque/internal. Her ethnicity is indeterminate...in the photos, you can't tell if she's Asian, Hispanic, Arabic, or multiracial in some proportion. Also, from the photo effects, she seems ageless...her actual age an unknown.

- the panoply (n. a complete and impressive array) of jewel tones, highlights, and artifacts in the composition is meant to convey a casual busyness and internal richness to the artist's life, objects in the shadows evoke mystery, curiosity; however, the center positioning and highlighting of the portraits and blue stone direct your eyes toward them as something symbolic.

Not coincidentally, in Strange Tango the novella, the silver frame and a pebble are deeply meaningful and symbolic personal artifacts...the pebble is the portal that transports the artist back in forth in time through her dreams and visions; the pebble is transmuted into a blue stone on the website. The blue stone—a turquoise—is the artist's birthstone, which anticipates two chapters in the book, one on the connection between archetypes/psychology of dreams/popular astrology and the other on Native American lore.

In the book, the artist is attuned to the symbolism of colors: "I wear a Japanese silk party dress patterned after the cool denseness of green mountain fog, the cold currents beneath a dark, blue ocean. My elements are fire and the sea."

The color blue—in the stone and the dress—has these psychological connotations: the sea, skies, peace, unity, harmony, tranquility, calmness, coolness, water, ice, loyalty, dependability, cleanliness, technology, idealism, air, wisdom, Earth (planet), strength, steadfastness, light, friendliness, truthfulness, love, sadness, aloofness, the Virgin Mary. In many diverse cultures blue is significant in religious beliefs, believed to keep the bad spirits away.

For the recurring image throughout the website—I wanted the face of a modern-day Mona Lisa. (I showed the image to a graphic artist who studied the art in museums in Florence, Italy...she agreed the portrait fit the imagery.)

As far as I know, no one has tried to create a website that is—essentially and metaphorically—a work of literary art in cyberspace, so this was a challenge that intrigued me.

7 Levels of Meaning in the Epistolary Novella

2008-05-28T20:25:00.000-07:00

Even the unwitting taking of a single pebble will cause an endless amount of trouble. Unknowingly, the pebble is a "touchstone," a portal to vivid dreams, the ancient world, the collective subconscious.

(I can almost hear the reader saying, "Don't pluck the apple! Don't take the stone!")

The beauty of Strange Tango is that you're never sure if the action is in the artist's head or if it is her reality...given the language of the oeuvre, it's as seamless as a South Sea pearl. The story is deceptively simple: but when when you figure in the symbolism of anthromorphological objects—whether the classic "kiss" found in magical realism or the psychoanalytical meanings of figures and actions strung together in her technicolor dreams, or even the carefully-chosen gifts the artist bestows upon her beloved—you have an entirely different level of subtextual interpretation.

I wrote the first version of Strange Tango when I was still in my 20's. I put it away for more than a decade and went on and did other things with my life...the life experience and maturity that would inform my work toughened what was then an extremely sensitive and fragile psyche. Also, at the time I began writing Strange Tango in the 1980’s, interactive multimedia hadn't yet made its popularized appearance in our global order. My mental processes and imagination have always been in a matrix pattern, which allows me to pick and choose from an eclectic assortment of influences without consideration for a linear order—this is one reason why I plumbed so many disparate areas and endeavors like my favorite Renaissance figure, Leonardo da Vinci...what appeared to be job-hopping was simply collecting a portfolio of experiences that was meaningful to me...and today, ironically, it's relatively rare that anyone stays in one job/career for life. It took the pre-eminence of interactive multimedia to make my thought processes ubiquitous so, yes, I had to wait until the world changed and my timing was right before I revisited Strange Tango, and revealed its existence and my early aptitude for being a writer. After re-working and trimming about 5% of the original, my first literary effort has amazingly stood the test of time and relevance.

When I began writing the manuscript, before the advent of multimedia, I realized that matrices and layering could figure into the construction of my 103-page novella, almost like a chess game or like solving a metaphysical mystery.

(I sat in the turret penthouse of my 3-story Victorian, within walking distance to the ocean, and for hours on end roamed the earth and interconnected my education and knowledge to come to a synthesis of my experience of the world...while repeatedly playing in the background Robert Palmer's "She Makes My Day"...I feel so lucky loving her, tell me what else is magic for..)

Flash forward 19 years...you now have the time-and-space-leaping conundrum of "Lost" and video games that allow you to start at a point of origin and to follow an action or narrative to a non-predetermined end.

I understand some readers feel a sense of disquietude at the end of the reading, so to immerse you in the cosmology of Strange Tango, here are seven such levels of interpretation.

Level 1: The artist and the muse are from different cultures, backgrounds (she's an artist, possibly multiracial Asian/Mediterranean; he's a businessman), and generations, though not quite a May-December match. They are simultaneously soul mates and polar opposites (e.g., she never wears watches and he owns a collection of watches). Karmic attraction and a love of beauty draw them together, but pragmatism pulls them apart. (Question: can we all really get along?)

Level 2: Follow the transfiguration and migration of ordinary objects. The unopened envelope is the portal to the unknown...like Pandora's box. The kiss...well, it's a chaste kiss, but it's enough to rupture one's certitude and moral paradigm...like the first step into oblivion. The pebble...yes, it's a play on words: the stone is no ordinary stone but a stone, touchstone, lodestone that brings vivid, frightening dreams, that recur throughout the book.

Level 3: Magical realism and metaphysical mystery. The portrait of the narrative voice probably owes more to Latin American writers than any other influence. Of course, the voice is very contemporary and female, but writers such as Garcia Marquez and Borges freely adopted dreams, the occult, fate, seers, mystics, and horoscopes into their works. It's like this...you're happily living your life in the real world, and then fate intrudes because of a single, solitary action or object, and you're cast into another dimension. Now what?

Level 4: Freud, Jung, psychology and the interpretation of dreams, astrology. Yes, colors set the mood and tone, especially white, blues, and reds...the elements as well, especially the symbolism and depictions of water, air (she's always jetting off somewhere...), fire, and earth. The disembodied dreams can also be interpreted in classic fashion. Finally, why is it that, today, many major newspapers and web portals have an astrology section? Here's why: in the modern era, psychology and astrology are linked through their dependence on archetypes...Jung has called astrology “a summation of all the psychological knowledge of Antiquity.”

Level 5: Feminist interpretation. An articulate exposition of marriage, childbearing, and a litany of girls' names which, if you look closely, have their own stories to tell as they are the heroines of numerous literary classics from around the world, including Emma (Jane Austen), Beatrice (Dante), Thais (Massenet opera), Scheherazade (Persian), Gigi (French)... (As a child, I rarely watched television, I just went to the library a lot and got a head start on reading world literature...Sherlock Holmes was an early hero...)

Level 6: Literary: epistolary novella, prose-poem. Strange Tango is non-linear, compact, dense, and encoded. Therefore, words, not plot, carry the action. The work is extremely descriptive, whether in describing an object or action in reality, or taking the reader insider the intimate recesses of a one's thoughts. Is the artist a woman or, in fact, a spirit?

Level 7: Congratulations! You have advanced through 6 levels to:

Desperately Seeking "J". The artist, never named, appears embarked upon a quest. Does she yearn to discover the secret to Julio Iglesias (love), Japan (art), or Jesus (spirituality)?

One of my first readers, Nicole Saffold Maskiell, not only reached level 7, but also line edited the manuscript and wrote a reader’s review, similar to what you’d find up on Amazon.com. Nicole writes, “I can't express how moved I was by the end of this piece. It brought me to tears. I found myself reading sections over and over…” Nicole's comments are especially meaningful as she is a dear friend who is an up-and-coming novelist and a Ph.D. candidate in History at Cornell University. She is also a Harvard University cum laude graduate in History and Literature who founded the Cambridge Writers Group.

Alan Hoffman’s analysis was also very perceptive. Alan is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Cornell who was a student activist in college before earning degrees at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He writes,

"Even if your relationship to your muse is celibate, the very notion of a muse carries with it some form of sexual tension, and it neither detracts from your work nor your authenticity to share that tension with potential readers. In fact, it is in how you deal with your muse, how you draw your boundaries, that others might find some degree of identification. So something that emphasizes the muse's power over you...and your ability to deal with that power...is what is so intriguing about Strange Tango.

I'm glad to see you've returned to Strange Tango; at some point, it will need to be published. Much as unsolicited advice is often wide of the mark and hence of dubious value, I hope you will at least permit me the observation that a possible difficulty in publishing the work in earlier decades was the use of the first person, now widely embraced in blogging, but then a difficult innovation for many to swallow.

I offer this observation as someone who's seen you at times misunderstood precisely because you were so far advanced beyond the perceptions and understandings of those who may therefore have been threatened by your vision and capabilities. In Strange Tango, you get to explore the kind of (revisitation) that represents what I would call the dynamic resolution of Naipul's "post-colonial" character, someone who does not merely sit outside of cultural norms but who has fully transcended them and become a truly global human being. What then makes Strange Tango so much of a tango is the interaction of this global human being with the elements of culture, myth, art, and achievement that tradionally have defined what people are."

My blurb:

"Strange Tango is a travelogue through the physical and spiritual world, fresh and contemporary in a way that appeals to the personal journey and no boundaries mentality of the Millennial / MySpace generation. Unfolding through a series of evocative and interrelated vignettes, and set in no specific time or place, the book’s style and form seem almost a throwback to the timeless world literature of layered psychology, metaphysics, and wordplay of which Woolf, Calvino, and Borges are among the best-known practitioners."

Here's the re-write:

STRANGE TANGO

An envelope...a kiss...a single pebble touched at an ancient ruin...three symbolic objects seamlessly interwoven in a literary debut that is part epistolary novella, part spiritual travelogue.

Strange Tango reads as an internal, dramatic soliloquy building toward catharsis. Though thoroughly accessible, its vignettes mine an internal landscape, organically developing in a way that is non-linear, compact, dense, and encoded—dream-like and poetic—vivid, touching, and illuminating.

On a literary level, the plot is multi-layered: "Strange Tango may be subtitled, "Desperately Seeking 'J'". The artist, never named, appears embarked upon a quest. Does she yearn to discover the secret to Julio Iglesias (love), Japan (art), or Jesus (spirituality)?"

On a commercial level, the plot is a simple one: "Searching for and finding your karmic soul mate...but, it's complicated."

5 Things About Strange Tango:

2008-05-12T20:32:00.000-07:00

1) epistolary novella = internal dramatic soliloquy = catharsis

2) plot: there is no plot (Strange Tango is a visceral experience that transports you simply through my love of words...nonlinear, compact, dense, encoded.)

3) encoded: computer code = the coded constructs of poetry and poetics = nonlinear, compact, dense

4) the literary blurb for Strange Tango:

"Strange Tango may be cleverly subtitled "Desperately Seeking 'J'". The protagonist, never named, appears embarked upon a quest. Does she yearn to discover the secret to Julio Iglesias (love), Japan (art), or Jesus (spirituality)?"

5) the mass market blurb for Strange Tango:

"Searching for and finding your karmic soulmate...but, it's complicated."

Documentation of a Life

2008-04-11T20:34:00.000-07:00

It seems to me that passion is not given enough credibility. It certainly took me a long enough time to realize that I wasn't entirely being true to myself, though certain patterns in my life propelled me, for decades, to the inevitable conclusion.

Service to god and country was always a strong part of my upbringing, and I was one of those people raised to be a high achiever. It was always expected by the people around me that I would assume the kind of leadership positions I held throughout high school and college, if not earlier, in life. When you're young and repeatedly told that you're brilliant and accomplished, you can do anything and the world is yours. The problem is in sifting through the non-sustainable and non-viable options to focus on the kind of life you want to lead and the legacy you want to leave.

I saw no need to explain myself to anyone. It was never about money. I had opportunities early on to end up as a high-powered corporate executive or lawyer or entrepreneur. But having had considerable exposure to many areas of endeavor—partly opportunism and partly as a means to discover the commitment and compromises I was willing to make to reach these milestones—I realized that my passion was a very simple and potentially narcissistic one: to articulately express myself and my thoughts in word and image and to surround myself with my family. In my purest essence, I wasn't interested as much in becoming a conventional master of the universe as I was in remaining a uniquely free spirit, a very disciplined and discerning soul.

And so, at each turn, I subconsciously made the choices that would potentially take me to this point. Because I grew up in an extremely sheltered and protective environment, it was important to me that I had a connection to the secular world, to navigate my way around complexity, rather than to seclude myself and keep all ugliness and complications away. I avoided servitude in hierarchical structures, yet I've participated in public life through a portfolio of creative and personal projects, as well as professional projects in higher education, media, government, and business: if judged by the kind of company one keeps, then my amplitude and networks were certainly to a very high level and degree.

In Strange Tango, my first book, I asked the question, "What remains as documentation of a life?"

The quote seemed prescient given the Millennial generation's preoccupation with viral media. In fact, not only did I document my life and the lives of various family members through words, photographs, video, and cds, but I also documented for posterity the friends, people, and world around me in the anecdotes, characterizations, and analyses I have shared.

And now, I am ready to make what is for me the ultimate commitment. While using my home as my base—in the comfortable, stylish, and streamlined lair I have created—I am going to craft my books. I'd like to fulfill my destiny as a literary stylist, a belle lettrist, an essayist, a multi-platform, 21st century journalist. I am going to produce a critical mass of my memories, thoughts, words, and images as A. D. Tejada.