Part_Time_Job photos on Flickr

22

Just wanted to say hello to you all!

I still don't have the internet :( so I'm sorry for not keeping up. But to be honest, I'm finding this break quite good. I was spending way too much time on here, and now after a couple of days / weeks without the internet, I feel quite refreshed! I've been doing lots of other stuff and I'm happy to say I found a wee part time job :) Well, I don't really know if I can call it a job, but I don't care what it is, because I'm loving it anyway! I met a great experienced proffesional photographer who agreed to have me around and assist during his photoshoots. I'm humbled and really grateful that I'm being given this opportunity to learn more stuff! You guys know very well how much this means to me! I have some other photoshoots arranged, too. Family, friends and friends of friends are suddenly asking me to do portraits of them and their families, parties etc... So my diary is slowly filling up with stuff to do, finally giving me a reason to get out of bed!

I'm really pleased with the way things are going right now. I feel like I might have turned the corner :)

I really hope everyone is well! Rob, Vanessa, Luis, Jogeshwar, Kelly, George, Kat, Mike, Chris & Chris, Jose, Sandra, Elma, Ian, Elam and everyone else - I miss you! I want you to know that! And thank you for being patient!

Oh, and Elam, thank you for being there and helping out with the directions! You really helped me a lot! :)

Hugs and kisses to everyone!

xxx

Maid Sama DVD Art by David Valenzuela

Misaki Ayuzawa

Voiced by: Ayumi Fujimura (Japanese), Monica Rial (English) Sanae Kobayashi (Drama CD)

The main female character of the story, 16-year-old Misaki Ayuzawa (鮎沢美咲 Ayuzawa Misaki?) is the first female student council president at Seika High. She is known for her extremely bossy and strict attitude towards boys, and relentlessly attempts to reform them to live up to what she considers are acceptable standards of behavior. Though many of the male students fear and hate her, the ones who get to know her come to see that she's actually very fair and willing to help anyone who needs it.

She eventually becomes widely respected for her good grades, her great athletic skill, and her many accomplishments as president. Her negative attitude towards males is mostly attributed to her father amassing a huge debt and then disappearing. Misaki became determined to make sure her sickly and helpless mother, Minako (美奈子?) would not have to work so hard to support both Misaki and her younger sister, Suzuna (紗奈?). After her father left, she studied hard and learned martial arts and became Seika's president. To this extent, she secretly, and at first reluctantly, works as a maid-waitress at Café Maid Latte. Misaki is always driven to do her best regardless of the endeavor, and has a strong sense of justice, though she also has a tendency to be too selfles for her own good.

At Café Maid Latte, Misaki is called "Misa-chan" by her coworkers and customers. Misaki was shown being the most passionate with her job when she was dressed as a male and appealing to woman, saying she would like a guy like herself.

Despite her initial annoyance towards Usui and her belief that his interest in her stems from being the only one who knows she works as a maid-waitress, she is in love with him. However, Misaki always denies her feelings for him and becomes awkward whenever a potentially intimate moment arises between them. She eventually confesses her feelings for him and they become a couple, though secretly at Misaki's insistence to preserve her reputation as the Student Council President. When Usui reveals that he is to transfer to Miyabigaoka, she openly reveals their relationship to the students at Seika High, despite the potential damage it may cause to her appearance. When told that Usui would be going to England, Misaki was shocked but kept her composure and openly accepted his choice. After Usui stops texting her from England she seeks the help of the Miyabigaoka High School President for a way to travel to him. The deal between the two is for Misaki to travel to see Usui, but in return she must tell Usui to not cut all ties between himself and the Walker Family; benefiting the Miyabigaoka Highschool President in him being in contact of a person of royal blood such as Usui.

In chapter 81, Misaki and Usui get engaged, and in chapter 85, Misaki becomes a diplomat/lawyer and they get married.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Takumi Usui

Voiced by: Nobuhiko Okamoto (Japanese), David Matranga (English), Tomokazu Sugita (Drama CD)

Is the most popular boy at Seika High. Takumi Usui (碓氷拓海 Usui Takumi?) is a 17 year old boy who appears to take little interest in anything and prefers to observe things as they unfold. He proves to be extraordinarily talented in a number of different fields, including cooking, the violin, chess, and table etiquette. He also gets excellent grades and is an excellent athlete. However, he reveals very few details about his past willingly. He has taken an interest in Misaki because she stands from everyone else and her hard work makes her unique. He expresses his feelings mainly by teasing her and passing perverted comments to see her funny expressions, and she nicknames him "perverted outer-space alien". Usui was also the first Seika student to discover Misaki's maid secret and even though he is concerned about her risky work habits, she brushes it off as him wanting to blackmail her.

At Misaki's insistence, he reveals that he is an illegitimate child. His mother, a Japanese-English woman from the wealthy Walker family, had an affair with an unknown Japanese man (later revealed to be a butler of the Walker family); his mother died in childbirth. To conceal his origins, his maternal English grandfather sent Usui to live with his mother's Japanese grandmother's family, resulting in little contact with his older half-brother. Adopted by his mother's cousin, Usui's education was primarily through tutors, partially explaining his academic excellence (as shown when he mates the president of the Miyabigaoka high school chess club in very few moves). However, he became bored of the isolation and randomly selected a standard high school to attend; after enrolling in Seika High, he moved into a high-rise condo where he lives alone. During his first year at Seika, he quickly became popular among the girls, but not being interested in them, he systematically rejected them whenever they confessed to him, thus earning Misaki's resentment of him. Within his class, even his classmates respect him and he is called "Usui-san"; "-san" being a Japanese honorific.

Usui eventually begins dating Misaki once she confesses, yet he is forced to transfer to Miyabigaoka High School for his third year of high school. However, he still makes an effort to go out of his way to see Misaki every day. When in England, Usui texts Misaki everyday until his brother takes his phone away. And in the Manga he got angry at Tora for forcefully Kissing Misaki on their way back to Japan. In chapter 81, Usui (with permission from Misaki's father) proposes to Misaki, and she accepts. In chapter 85, Usui became the royal doctor of his royal family, even though his grandfather still hasn't accepted Usui as his grandson, he was accepted by the whole town; and he finally married Misaki in this chapter.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Suzuna Ayuzawa (鮎沢紗奈 Ayuzawa Suzuna?)

Voiced by: Kaori Ishihara (Japanese), Jad Saxton (English)

Misaki's younger sister. She is very apathetic and shows little to no emotion, though is actually rather perceptive and known for her deadpan humour. She does not work at any part time jobs and appears to be in middle school. Suzuna has a friendly relationship with Shintani, whom she recalls from when he and Misaki were childhood friends. In the anime, she often enters magazine contests and always seems to win food prizes. Her first appearance occurs late in the manga, while she is a frequent recurring character in the anime. From Chapter 65 onwards, Suzuna attends Seika High as a freshman student. While she is instantly popular with the male population, most of the boys are wary of her being Misaki's sister and they fear that her easy-going personality is a ruse. It is also shown in later chapters (particularly during her first few days at Seika High) that Suzuna has a deepening affection towards Hinata. During the events of the final chapter, she marries Shintani Hinata.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sakuya Ayuzawa (鮎沢咲也 Ayuzawa Sakuya?)

Misaki and Suzuna's absentee father. He left his wife and daughters with tremendous debt, which is the primary source of Misaki's initially deep resentment towards men. Little is known about him at first, though Misaki's mother notes that Hinata's personality reminds her of her husband, despite Hinata's vehement denial of the comparison. He later appears as a new cook at Maid Cafe and proves to be an excellent chef with a bright and cheery personality reminiscent of Hinata. His circumstances before being hired are unknown, aside from the fact that he apparently had been abroad. However, he takes pains to avoid Misaki and Suzuna until Suzuna recognizes his cooking and he forces himself to reveal his identity as their father. It's revealed that Minako lied about the lazy gambling father they imprinted in her daughter's minds and in reality, Sakuya shouldered his friend's debt and left to go find him. But when he found him, he found out that he started his own family and couldn't return to Japan. In attempting to try to make up to his daughters, he spent many nights wandering and sleeping in the streets before making it to the Maid Cafe. Since he returned, Misaki and Suzuna welcome him back but don't forgive him completely, forcing him to continue living in the streets and working part time at the Maid Cafe.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Sakura Hanazono (花園さくら Hanazono Sakura?)

Voiced by: Kana Hanazawa (Japanese), Margaret McDonald (English)

A good friend of Misaki's and one of the few female students at Seika High, Sakura is friendly and cheerful and, like the rest of the girls, relies on Misaki for protection from the wild behaviour of the boys. She is quite popular amongst the boys, but frequently rejects their confessions; in particular, she’s rejected ex-rugby captain Masaru Gouda (剛田将 Gōda Masaru?) two hundred times. According to Shizuko, Sakura falls in love without carefully considering what the person is really like, as exampled by her persistent feelings for Kuuga, the two-faced, womanizing singer of the popular rock band UxMishi from a nearby high school. Her persistence pays off when Kuuga finally returns his feelings for her. They later get married with a child and another one on the way by the time of Misaki's marriage.

UxMishi continued as a very popular band around the world.

Wikipedia Quotes

Henry Fonda by Truus, Bob & Jan too!

8 1

Dutch postcard by 't Sticht, Utrecht, no. 3601. Photo: R.K.O. Radio Films.

Blue-eyed American actor Henry Fonda (1905-1982) exemplified not only integrity and strength, but an ideal of the common man fighting against social injustice and oppression. He is most remembered for his roles as Abe Lincoln in Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), for which he received an Academy Award Nomination, and more recently, Norman Thayer in On Golden Pond (1981), for which he received an Oscar for Best Actor in 1982. Notably he also played against character as the villain 'Frank' in Sergio Leone's classic Spaghetti Western Once upon a time in the West (1968). Fonda is considered one of Hollywood's old-time legends and his lifelong career spanned almost 50 years.

Henry Jaynes Fonda was born in Grand Island, Nebraska in 1905. His parents were Elma Herberta (Jaynes) and William Brace Fonda, who worked in advertising and printing and was the owner of the W. B. Fonda Printing Company in Omaha, Nebraska. His distant ancestors were Italians who had fled their country around 1400 and moved to Holland, presumably because of political or religious persecution. In the early1600's, they crossed the Atlantic and were among the early Dutch settlers in America. They established a still-thriving small town in upstate New York named Fonda, named after patriarch Douw Fonda, who was later killed by Indians. In 1919, young Henry was a first-hand witness to the Omaha race riots and the brutal lynching of Will Brown. This enraged the 14 years old Fonda and he kept a keen awareness of prejudice for the rest of his life. Following graduation from high school in 1923, Henry got a part-time job in Minneapolis with the Northwestern Bell Telephone Company which allowed him at first to pursue journalistic studies at the University of Minnesota. In 1925, having returned to Omaha, Henry reevaluated his options and came to the conclusion that journalism was not his forte, after all. For a while, he tried his hand at several temporary jobs, including as a mechanic and a window dresser. At age 20, Fonda started his acting career at the Omaha Community Playhouse, when his mother's friend Dodie Brando (mother of Marlon Brando) recommended that he try out for a juvenile part in You and I, in which he was cast as Ricky. Then he received the lead in Merton of the Movies and realized the beauty of acting as a profession. It allowed him to deflect attention from his own tongue-tied personality and create stage characters relying on someone else's scripted words. The play and its star received fairly good notices in the local press. It ran for a week, and for the rest of the repertory season, Henry advanced to assistant director which enabled him to design and paint sets as well as act. A casual trip to New York, however, had already made him set his sights on Broadway. In 1926, he moved to the Cape Cod University Players, where he met his future wife Margaret Sullavan. His first professional role was in The Jest, by Sem Benelli. James Stewart joined the Players a few months after Fonda left, but he would become his closest lifelong friend. In 1928, Fonda went east to New York to be with Margaret Sullavan, and to expand his theatrical career on Broadway. His first Broadway role was a small one in A Game of Love and Death with Alice Brady and Claude Rains. Henry played leads opposite Margaret Sullavan, who became the first of his five wives in 1931. They broke up in 1933. In 1934, he got a break of sorts, when he was given the chance to present a comedy sketch with Imogene Coca in the Broadway revue New Faces. That year, he also hired Leland Hayward as his personal management agent and this was to pay off handsomely. Major Broadway roles followed, including New Faces of America and The Farmer Takes a Wife. The following year he married Frances Seymour Brokaw with whom he had two children: Jane Fonda and Peter Fonda, also to become screen stars.

The 29-year old Henry Fonda was persuaded by Leland Hayward to become a Hollywood actor, despite initial misgivings and reluctance on Henry's part. Independent producer Walter Wanger, whose growing stock company was birthed at United Artists, needed a star for The Farmer Takes a Wife (Victor Fleming, 1935) opposite Janet Gaynor. I.S. Mowis at IMDb: “With both first choice actors Gary Cooper and Joel McCrea otherwise engaged, Henry was the next available option. After all, he had just completed a successful run on Broadway in the stage version. The cheesy publicity tag line for the picture was "you'll be fonder of Fonda", but the film was an undeniable hit.” Wanger, realizing he had a good thing going, next cast Henry in a succession of A-grade pictures which capitalized on his image as the sincere, unaffected country boy. Pick of the bunch were the Technicolor outdoor Western The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (Henry Hathaway, 1936) with Sylvia Sidney, and the gritty Depression-era drama You Only Live Once (Fritz Lang, 1937) with Henry as a back-to-the-wall good guy forced into becoming a fugitive from the law by circumstance). Then followed the screwball comedy The Moon's Our Home (William A. Seiter, 1936) with ex-wife Margaret Sullavan, the excellent pre-civil war-era romantic drama Jezebel (William Wyler, 1938) featuring Bette Davis, and the Western Jesse James ( Henry King, 1939) starring Tyrone Power. Fonda rarely featured in comedy, except for a couple of good turns opposite Barbara Stanwyck and Gene Tierney - with both he shared an excellent on-screen chemistry - in The Mad Miss Manton (Leigh Jason, 1938), The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941) and the successful Rings on Her Fingers (Rouben Mamoulian, 1942). Henry gave his best screen performance to date in Young Mr. Lincoln (John Ford, 1939), a fictionalized account of the early life of the American president as a young lawyer facing his greatest court case. Henry made two more films with director John Ford: the pioneering drama Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) with Claudette Colbert, and The Grapes of Wrath (1940), an adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel about an Oklahoma family who moved west during the Dust Bowl. In his career-defining role as Tom Joad, Fonda played the archetypal grassroots American trying to stand up against oppression. His relationship with Ford would end on the set of Mister Roberts (John Ford, Mervyn LeRoy, 1955) when he objected to Ford's direction of the film. Ford punched Fonda and had to be replaced.

The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, 1940) set the tone for Henry Fonda’s subsequent career. In this vein, he gave a totally convincing, though historically inaccurate, portrayal in the titular role of The Return of Frank James (Fritz Lang, 1940), a rare example of a sequel improving upon the original. He projected integrity and quiet authority whether he played lawman Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine (John Ford, 1946) or a reluctant posse member in The Ox-Bow Incident (William A. Wellman, 1943). In between these two films, Fonda enlisted in the Navy to fight in World War II, saying, and served in the Navy for three years. He then starred in The Fugitive (John Ford, 1947), and Fort Apache (John Ford, 1948), as a rigid Army colonel, along with John Wayne and Shirley Temple in her first adult role. The following years, he did not appear in many films. Fonda was one of the most active, and most vocal, liberal Democrats in Hollywood. During the 1930s, he had been a founding member of the Hollywood Democratic Committee, formed in support of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal agenda. In 1947, in the middle of the McCarthy witch hunt, he moved to New York, not returning to Hollywood until 1955. His son Peter Fonda writes in his autobiography Don't Tell Dad: A Memoir (1999) that he believes that Henry's liberalism caused him to be gray-listed during the early 1950s. Fonda returned to Broadway to play the title role in Mister Roberts for which he won the Tony Award as best dramatic actor. In 1979, he won a second special Tony, and was nominated for a Tony Award Clarence Darrow (1975). Later he played a juror committed to the ideal of total justice in 12 Angry Men (Sidney Lumet, 1957) which he also produced, and a nightclub musician wrongly accused of murder in The Wrong Man (Alfred Hitchcock, 1956). During the next decade, he played in The Longest Day (Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton a.o., 1962), How the West Was Won (John Ford, Henry Hathaway, George Marshall, 1962) and as a poker-playing grifter in the Western comedy A Big Hand for the Little Lady (Fielder Cook, 1966) with Joanne Woodward. A big hit was the family comedy Yours, Mine and Ours (Melvillle Shavelson, 1968), in which he co-starred with Lucille Ball. The same year, just to confound those who would typecast him, he gave a chilling performance as one of the coldest, meanest stone killers ever to roam the West, in Sergio Leone's Western epic C'era una volta il West/Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) opposite Charles Bronson and Claudia Cardinale. With James Stewart, he teamed up in Firecreek (Vincent McEveety, 1968), where Fonda again played the heavy, and the Western omedy The Cheyenne Social Club (Gene Kelly, 1970). Despite his old feud with John Ford, Fonda spoke glowingly of the director in Peter Bogdanovich's documentary Directed by John Ford (1971). Fonda had refused to participate until he learned that Ford had insisted on casting Fonda as the lead in the film version of Mr. Roberts (1955), reviving Fonda's film career after concentrating on the stage for years. Illness curtailed Fonda’s work in the 1970s. In 1976, Fonda returned in the World War II blockbuster Midway (Jack Smight, 1976) with Charlton Heston. Fonda finished the 1970s in a number of disaster films wilth all-star casts: the Italian killer octopus thriller Tentacoli/Tentacles (Ovidio G. Assonitis, 1977), Rollercoaster (James Goldstone, 1977) with Richard Widmark, the killer bee action film The Swarm (Irwin Allen, 1978), the global disaster film Meteor (Ronald Neame, 1979), with Sean Connery, and the Canadian production City on Fire (Alvin Rakoff, 1979), which also featured Shelley Winters and Ava Gardner. His final screen role was as an octogenarian in On Golden Pond (Mark Rydell, 1981), in which he was joined by Katharine Hepburn and his daughter Jane. It finally won him an Oscar on the heels of an earlier Honorary Academy Award. Too ill to attend the ceremony, Henry Fonda died soon after at the age of 77, having left a lasting legacy matched by few of his peers. His later wives were Susan Blanchard (1950-1956), Leonarda Franchetti (1957-1961) and Shirlee Fonda (1965- till his death in 1982). With Blanchard he had a daughter, Amy Fishman (1953). His grandchildren are the actors Bridget Fonda, Justin Fonda, Vanessa Vadim and Troy Garity.

Sources: Laurence Dang (IMDb), I.S. Mowis (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

The City of Chicago Was The Choice I Made For A Destination by gardeniac_hungma

1

On the 180th birthday anniversary for the City of Chicago founded on March

4, 1837, I remember why Chicago was the choice I made for a destination.

When my parents decided to live in the United States of America, I was

living in the Cuban city of Santiago de Cuba and attending elementary

school in Spanish. One day, my Mother told me that both my parents decided

to leave Santiago de Cuba and settle in another city of the United States

of America. She asked me in which city we should live? There were many

choices of cities based on the family relatives who were already in the

USA. Since Catholic Charities sponsored the Freedom Flights, "Vuelos de

Libertad", the Catholic Church offered help in Connecticut and Chicago to

relocate Cuban families there. My Mother and Father thought that

Connecticut was very, very cold and farther north in the East Coast. While

Chicago was in the Midwest, a city by Lake Michigan, one of the Great

Lakes--Erie, Huron, and Superior. My parents had Cuban friends in

Connecticut and Chicago, as well as in other American cities. However, the

City of Chicago was unanimously our choice for a destination in the United

States of America. My Grandmother had Cuban friends in Chicago and

business connections to the mail-order stores like Montgomery Ward, Sears,

etc. My parents had Cuban-Chinese friends in Rogers Park, on Howard

Street, near Evanston, Illinois. Even now, the far north communities of

Edgewater by Lake Michigan, Rogers Park, Andersonville, and Evanston still

appeal to my family in general. Military friends from the Great Lakes and

visitors from the USA encouraged my Mother and Father to leave Santiago de

Cuba.

Chicago Catholic Charities welcomed my family with open arms, kindness,

generosity, and goodwill when we arrived in July 1971. My Father, Mr.

Roberto Hung Juris Doctor and my Mother, Mrs. Gardenia Fong Ramos, myself,

and my youngest brother, Roberto Santiago Hung were referred for relocation

to the Montfield Hotel at the corner of Sheffield and Belmont Avenue in the

Lake View neighborhood, near the Illinois Masonic Medical Center on

Wellington Street. Later, my Father was referred to a Baptist Church

Pastor, Fabio Abreu of Dominican descent and his Canadian-American wife for

relocation to the first floor of a Chicago home owned by Mrs. Marie Palmer,

a Protestant Lutheran American widow, his neighbor across the alley who

needed a responsible and reliable tenant with a family to help her maintain

here Chicago real estate property at 2930 North Albany between Wellington

and George, near Kedzie Avenue where Avondale Elementary School was

located, across from the Grace Lutheran Church.

The Baptist Pastor Fabio Abreu from the Dominican Republic and his Lutheran

American-German neighbor Mrs. Marie Palmer were heaven sent during our

relocation from the Montfield Hotel in Lakeview to the Avondale community

near Logan Square, not far from our Cuban-

Chinese friends, Fernando Wong and Yolanda Fen with two children, a

retarded daughter with spinal bifida, Zuling, and a male Fernandito Wong

Fen who wanted to be an architect engineer later in life. Afterwards,

Fernando and Yoli Wong had a daughter named Meiling who lived in the Rogers

Park community, near Evanston and Skokie in Illinois.

While I was attending Avondale Grammar School, on Kedzie Avenue, aka

Loganddale Elementary School, I used to participate in an abridged 6th

grade program, instead of the corresponding 8th grade program which I would

later trafer. Since my Mother had my Cuban grammar school transcripts, she

told the Principal in Santiago de Cuba that I had alread passed 6th, 7th,

and 8th grade programs in Santiago de Cubqa in Spanish.

The obvious problem for all of us was how to speak English, write in

English, and attend school of course, obviously, my family and I had to

make a transition from spoken Spanish to American English, fluently. There

were Free English courses and classes at the Casa Central in Logan Square,

Chicago, Illinois 60618, USA. My parents and I, used to practice speaking

English in Santiago de Cuba, later on, we, as a family began to speak

English at home in Chicago with the television programs of Sesame Street

and the Electric Company featuring Rita Moreno, among other television

personalities and talent,as well as other TV programs like Perry Mason,

classic western movies with John Wayne, and the musical songs of Doris Day,

Glen Miller's American Jazz band, Lawrence Welk, which we used to watch

before.

Soon, we made friends with the neighbors like Ludivinia "Ludi" Villareal,

whose family was Hispanic from Méjico and invited us to her birthday party

for "tostadas", tacos, etc. There were also Cuban-Americans like Armando

and his youngest brother who went to Avondale Elementary School also with

myself and my youngest brother Robert S. Hung. My 6th grade teacher was

Miss Honeywood and my English As A Second Language Teacher was Miss Pantos

who later married and changed her name. Later, I was double transferred to

8th grade with Mr. Herbert Hebel where I graduated with High Honors from

Avondale Elementary School.

In Chicago, my Father, Roberto Hung was able to find employment at the

warehouse in Montgomery Ward and Sears, Roebuck and Company. Later he

worked for Marshall Field's and the Theatrical Dance Supply Company.

Fernando and Yoli Wong Fen recomeded my Father to work for Felt-Products,

on McCormick Boulevard in Skokie, also known today as Federal Mogul, a

corporation in the automotive industry manufacturing "oil gaskets" with a

patented adhesive created and designed by Albert Mecklenburger, a

German-American from Berlin, Germany.

My Mother also had to get a job with Goldblatt's on Milwaukee Avenue, right

in the midst of the Polish American neighborhood. Then, she found another

part-time job at Tic-Toc with Mrs. Sherman. Later, my Father recommended

her to work for Felt-Products with him in Skokie, also.

I started working at the Offices of Edelstein & Edelstein on Irivng Park

Road who needed to make collection calls on the telephone and paid a

minimum wage of $4 per hour. Afterrwards, I found a job at McDonald's at

the corner of Irving Park Road and Elston Avenue, not far from the Irving

Park Shopping Center, the Y.M.C.A. and Madonna High School.

In order to *"Make Ends Meet"*, both my Father and Mother went to work, and

during my 3rd year as a junior at Madonna High School, age 16-years-old,

Sister Rosemarie from Counselling referred me to get a job and follow the

American Dream working hard to make a living. Mrs. Palmer used to say

before she left for work as an Administrator and Office Manager at the

Civic Opera, *"I owe, I owe, so off to work I go."*

*Chicago* is also known as the Windy City because of the cross-winds across

Lake Michigan cause whirlwinds and all-changing weather due to the Lake

Effect and the Great Lakes. It is still a beautiful city by the Lake

Michigan, *"the city with the broad shoulders"* as a client and friend from

Helsinki, Finland, calls the City of Chicago. Mrs. Marie Palmer used to

tell me, *"if you don't like the weather in Chicago, wait a minute, it will

change."*

I have grown up in Chicago for the last 46 years on the Northwest side of

the Windy City and attended and graduated from Northeastern Illinois

University after graduating from Madonna High School on May 27, 1977 with

High Honors, as a member of the National Honor Society and the French Honor

Society. Later, I pursued Graduate Studies at the University of Illinois

at Chicago with the *Abraham Lincoln Fellowship for Rhetorical Criticism,

Speech Writing, Communications, and Theatre* granted by the UIC Department

of Communications and Theatre managed by Dr. Anthony Graham-White. I have

written my Master's Thesis as an ethnography about *"The Chinese in Cuba:

Assimilation and Acculturation*" presented by Dr. Thomas Kochman, Ph.D.

The City of Chicago celebrates today 180 years since its founding fathers

established the settlement by the Chicago River and used the name

familiarly with the *"wild onions"* growing by the river banks. *"Happy

180th Birthday Anniversary, Chicago!"*

I have rented and lived in a studio apartment on the Northwest side of

Chicago near my Father, Mr. Roberto Hung Juris Doctor, on Sacramento and

Belle Plaine, near Irving Park Road, in a building owned by Mrs. A.C.

Nylen, a German-American realtor in Chicago and the Midwest.

My Mother, Mrs. Gardenia Fong Ramos began to work at Felt-Products Inc. and

attended Loyola University Lewis Towers Campus pursuing a Master's in

Spanish Literature with Dr. Martinez, Dr. Carol Holdsworth, and Dr. Luján.

Chicago has always represented the spirit of its community people to

prevail and overcome adversity in the challenges that life brings over

time, place, and physical presence. The people of Chicago have a fighting

spirit to survive and fight for justice, equity, and fairness. Chicago is

today a cosmopolitan metropolis and a credit to its sprawling communities

by Lake Michigan in the state of Illinois, USA. Happy 180th Anniversary,

Chicago!

The Chicago River

Gardenia C. Hung, M.A., B.A.

Consulting Social Media Arts Communications

en.gravatar.com/gardeniahung

www.intranslations.blogspot.com

www.coroflot.com/gardeniahung

www.linkedin.com/in/gardeniahung

www.vimeo.com/consultingmedia

www.vimeo.com/communicatemedia

www.vimeo.com/languagesculture

Put the Two Together by kawkawpa

6

"The U.S. military also announced Thursday that two U.S. soldiers were killed the day before .... Those deaths, along with the deaths of nine other troopers announced Wednesday, brought the American death toll for the month to at least 82. Last month, 104 U.S. troops were killed in Iraq." U.S. Military IDs Missing Soldier's Body, By Ravi Nessman, Associated Press Writer, May 24, 2007

U.S. Deaths Confirmed By The DoD: 3,428

Reported U.S. Deaths Pending DoD Confirmation: 6

Total as of May 24, 2007: 3,434

[from icasualties.org/oif/]

Put the two together.

A baby born in red and bawling joy, in pain, womb deflated,

nine months of daily heart and hectic,

changes in routine,

certainty to what the next year – twenty more, thirty –

takes and gives in how you live your life,

what you might expect, what will not occur.

Baby life to son, to birthday, to scrapes and friends

and daily daily there and always growing,

clothing to the yard sale,

budget means to choose what needs first,

School to dreams and casual plans,

summers normal around,

more scrapes and camp and friends,

heat and bills and too much to drink,

routines always fit for family,

evolve,

“promising”, the teacher said,

the nurse “a cough is all”,

then nearly all the world and life hang,

nearly all the vision gone

for the next year – twenty more, thirty –

but passing, health and fidgeting to play outside,

routine

edges back again.

Dramas and the left-there hobbies,

more yard sales, hand-me-downs to relatives

with young,

sometimes now too busy, just no time.

Girls, remember? When did all this happen?

It’s now routine, and arguing routine,

come to expect it,

and dinnertime he’s out, and part-time job,

a used car,

college – this one? Maybe ROTC?

Father died, gone, mother some time later,

all the world away, unreal,

and pray, the future dimmed without them,

memory the next year – twenty more, thirty –

not the same it seems,

but soon it comes routine,

bills and visits rare from the boy these days,

work, but e-mails from my son,

rumors of a war.

Put the two together.

Nothing’s hypothetical, just on paper.

Nothing’s worth the casual media

insulating day to day

matter-of-fact cocoon

and all routine, bills paid and getting up for work.

A real family living

all those minute minute minute days to months to year after year

of routine and bills and scrapes and sick nights

and not talking as much as we used to –

a real real many years of life and the next year –

twenty more, thirty –

dies.

Dies.

Hit Head On

(Note: I used my own baby picture for the composite image that illustrates this poem so as not to associate anyone else but me with the implied death in combat of the pictured youngster.)

I read the Associated Press article this morning and it impacted me emotionally. Almost 200 American young whole lives ended in just two months... God knows how many Iraqi whole lives ended in those two months. And the infuriating thing that hit me so emotionally this morning is that if these 200 deaths in two months happened without all of the deaths in the months and years before - they happened all of a sudden in just two months - it would be the top news story. There would be shock and action would be demanded in a way that would get action. It's the nature of life and the way our life processes work to become habitual... to become used to things... There are good reasons for that. But that process also gets us used to what we should never be allowed to get used to... The only way we snap out of that is if we are affected in a real way - are impacted by the thing in a way that affects our personal immediate interests on an ongoing basis A family member in the combat zone, for example. There are degrees of being affected - like having a strong inner-renewing outrage... or having personal responsibility for others' lives, and feeling it... The average person reading the morning paper may be angered at the article on the war news, but it is suppressed and the daily routine kicks in. Like me. Tomorrow I'll be right back to what fills my day-to-day daily cycle between waking and going to sleep again. So while I'm feeling this impact, I'm making an impassioned record of it...

Let's start with this:

War is necessary sometimes. It is.

There have always been countries willing to wage aggressive war on other countries if they stood a good chance of getting something out of it. The intention was to conduct the war regardless of any other solution. That targeted county has a choice then - to submit to the will of that other country, or to defend itself militarily.

If you balk at the idea that war even in defense is wrong, consider this:

That invading country is Hitler-led Germany. You're a Jew or a gypsy or gay or a Communist or have a severe mental disability (or someone you love does). Or you are safe from being any of these targeted populations, but you have the mind and sense of right and wrong you do now - and you realize that as time goes by, the schools are teaching your son and daughter in the ways of the Nazi Regime. Your children are being indoctrinated to be little Nazis, to hate and dehumanize - and be disgusted by - certain elements of your society. And all of the categories of knowledge being learned by your children, as they grow to become adults and older, now are slanted to the view of the rulers - propagandized, but to the youth in your society it is learned as indisputable fact. Organized religion, including your church, is suppressed unless the message to the flock is strongly mixed with praise for the new rulers and edicts to conform and honor the values of the new state - and take an active part in supporting it, including informing on those who don't. Your children learn this in everything they are a part of - school, church, clubs, athletic activities, TV, radio, music, and on and on - an environmental web of conformity to the values that the state decides you must have. And this doesn't end. Your children grow up in the new state to be model citizens, to your horror. Your grandchildren are headed for the same. Your great-grandchildren... If there is the least whiff of disapproval, those people disappear. Those individuals in the population who are targeted as less than human and cancer on society - neighbors, friends, family, strangers - are quietly taken away a few at a time, or more forcefully in large groups with media confirming just how right it is to be doing this... a benefit to your country... And your children agree.

What is worth a war...? What is worth whole lives being taken from us...?

If you had a farm at the edge of your country and you knew that a horde of tens of thousands armed men were on their way, murdering whole families, taking what they wanted, raping, torturing without compunction - and there was no reasonableness... no discussion... no mercy... just the will of other men to do with you and your loved ones whatever they desired... Question: What is best in life? Answer: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of the women. (Conan film, 1982) It's real. There were and still are those in the world who would find pleasure in this. So what would you do? Run? What if there's no place you can go to get away?

There are times when organized violence is necessary. These instances are no brainers. It's the instances that aren't no brainers that we're really talking about. In a complex world, what is "defense"?

Look at the Monroe Doctrine, a building block of American history. What if you were head of state in any other nation in the western hemisphere. America has decided that its defense means that your nation is forbidden to enter into any tie with a European power that America feels is a threat to the US. Your nation is forced to dance to another country's tune, even if your own interest is better served otherwise. This is a world of bullies' rules on the playground - the kind of kids who put rocks in their snowballs if they think you deserve it, so you conform.

Just letting other forces chip away at your own power and independent will, and that includes your family and your way life - the environment you live daily life in - can eventually have an effect. How do you know when to make a stand? How do you know when to do something about it before it's too late?

Maybe that's a vital question: what is too late? What would you consider to be crossing that line? Once you've decided that, then you start working backwards from it to get an idea of when you'd need to take action to prevent that line being crossed, and consider options of what to do & how to be effective in doing it.

But wait... You find that in order to be effective, you have to think of yourself first. You've always been considerate of others' rights, but now - to survive down the road in a continuing way of life you choose for yourself and your family, and to maintain the world you live in on a day-to-day basis - you have to make your own interests the priority, and everyone else's lower priorities. Where there is a confrontation of your priority and anyone else's, yours has to be the one that prevails.

You balk at that for a moment, then recall how you got here... to this conclusion. What would be crossing the line? When do you need to do something in order to prevent it? What would you have to do to prevent it? How would you effectively accomplish that?

Oh yeah... It was a logical process to get to here - where your interest takes precedence. Period. See how simple it becomes?

Except it's not, is it? Someone in power is making that decision for you. Do you trust his ability to discern the answers to those questions? If the decisions in answer to those questions require military action, individuals die. You. Your children. Whole lives. Whole lives. Lives erased from the impact they'd have for the rest of them if they hadn't been stopped... ended... in violent death...

And that is the point here. The point of this poem and this essay. What is worth the loss of a single whole life? Some things are. But the answer to that question must be made in consideration of an army of single persons' - one individual whole life times thousands - being put at risk of loss. Again: what is necessary to do for what is of value to you, when what is of value to you is threatened*, balanced against the losing of even one single whole real baby kid teenager friends love scraped knees hugs whole whole life.

Put the two together...

* (and doing the crossing of the line working backwards to prevention thing)