LAnthony, Mystery Author
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July 1, 2018 LAnthony	Leave a comment
242 years ago, a group of men were forced to declare the independence of the lands they held. Three things they agreed were priorities were to protect life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. They had to be willing to die.
Since then those lands have grown. And the people have increased to over 300 million. And the heirs of those men have had to share the priorities with women, and the families of freed slaves. And its been a fight. Sometimes more violent of a fight than the original revolution that began our nation. Sometimes a much longer fight. One that's lasted generations.
On the eve of the anniversary of the declaration of independence, can you say what your priorities are? Are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness your main desires? If so, what would it look like for you?
To have a family, in whatever form we choose, in a home wherever we can afford to live safely, with the ability to educate ourselves to our maximum potential.
To have beneficial relationships with those around us, the ability and opportunity to accumulate wealth, to create community, to make positive change in our world, to be able to decide how and by whom we are governed.
To take part in an economy that allows us to spend quality time doing the things we like with and for one another.
Anniversaries are a chance to think about the past, present and future. Consider where we have been. Recognize where we are. Figure out how to get where we want to go. Can we talk about where we are in relationship to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? Then work on where we should so next?
Can you talk about your priorities?
Final Declaration
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.
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3 Things to Consider
June 30, 2018 LAnthony	Leave a comment
Think about how those involved are working to make things better.
Every city has ghosts, but some have more than others. Detroit is one of those places. When you have a city with such an incredible and tragic past still reeling from issues and challenges that impact a vulnerable population, spirits will linger. The truth is that in order to really appreciate and understand Detroit, you need to go looking for them. They're not hard to find here – every building, park, street and community has a story to tell that goes beyond the surface. If you care enough to listen, the ghosts reveal themselves. Sometimes, they find you instead of the other way around. This is what happened to me on a recent Saturday morning. I was taking an aimless drive around the city, when I passed by a cemetery. The cemetery is a place that I can't resist visiting. Whenever I go to a new city, it's one of those places on my list of things to see. I've visited cemeteries in cities across the U.S., in Scotland, Germany, Armenia and Mongolia. They offer the best insight in getting to know where you are. They help piece together the story of a place that can't be told just by its current facade.
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WRITE A HOUSE
We fix up homes in Detroit to award creative residencies to writers.
Keys to Staying Positive
Simplify your life.
Watch your thoughts. What goes in, comes out.
Surround yourself with positive people.
Take time for yourself, even if it means saying "no" to others.
Be grateful, laugh and celebrate life.
Think more about what you have as opposed to what you don't have.
via A21.org
Julia* grew up picking mushrooms and fruit in a small village in the countryside of Bulgaria. She loved this pastime and enjoyed doing it alongside her family—but she saw that everyone around her in the village was struggling. Julia* wanted something more for her life.
When she was offered an opportunity to pick mushrooms in the Netherlands for higher pay, she accepted. She was excited to do what she loved, with job security, and a hope for a better future.
But when she arrived, Julia* discovered that she had been deceived. She was thrown into a house crammed with other foreigners and forced to work from dawn to dusk for little or no pay. She had been trafficked for her labor, enslaved, and trapped. But, after some time, Julia* bravely escaped out of a window and ran to safety.
With the assistance of A21, she was safely repatriated home to Bulgaria. Since coming into our care, she has completed our aftercare program and found employment through our social enterprise, Liberty.
After all of the trauma and abuse she experienced, Julia* has continued to recover step by step. She's had a safe environment to work in, community to support her, and time to heal. Now, after two stable years of employment, with Liberty on her résumé, Julia* is able to bravely take steps toward a life of full independence
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Invitation to Disaster…
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WRITEAHOUSE.ORG
July 1, 2016 LAnthony
Both sides of my family migrated to Detroit in the first half of the 20th Century. Both of my parents were born there. It is the place where our history, our culture, our collective memory, the proof of our existence to the physical world emanates from. Some have left, many have died. Others have remained to witness the horror, the transformation of a great community.
There are newcomers, such as Liana, who's home is here because of Write A House. Here is her blog about her experience in Detroit.
I now do most of my writing from an upstairs room that overlooks most of my street. The room is stark, with freshly painted white walls (Thanks Write A House crew), a wooden desk and an aluminum folding chair. I've kept it bare to minimize distraction and maximize output. I am easily distracted. I lose focus. I am not one of those writers who can write comfortably anywhere, at any time. To get a place of pure, magical focus and creativity, I have to expend so much energy. But even a minimally decorated, quiet room has not stopped my mind from wandering elsewhere.
Source: WRITEAHOUSE.ORG
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Why The Dark Knight is to blame for our current political quagmire.
Image June 29, 2016 LAnthony Leave a comment
It's been 8 years since the epic Detective Comics based mega motion picture exploded into neighborhoods across this great land. Hardly seems like it. Yet the damage wrought by the creative carnage has spread like a malignant tumor into the very fabric of the American ethos. Spread to the degree that our political system sits precariously now, perched over a terminally ill cliff, with a diagnosis of death by self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Let me explain. When popular culture crowns a product with a tiara of success, it generally conveys some level of artistic achievement that transcends genre. Our addictive obsession with film and the cult of stardom which parasitically attaches to it pay homage to the idea that is espoused with the cliché 'life imitates art'. So when $1 billion is earned in box office revenue alone, not to mention DVD/Blu-Ray and merchandising, consider that more clue than hint. When the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences changes its award eligibility criteria, take that as more coronation than concession. Multitudes of fanboys attending multiple theater viewings aside, both dinner debates in the homes of moguls and agent provocateurs, along with power lunches turned hushed lecture sessions in see and be seen west side eateries, speak to the level of penetration Filmmaker Christopher Nolan's experiment had into the collective consciousness of Americana.
Hyperbole! You say. Allow me to add wax. What we have here is not a failure to communicate. Our society has done nothing less than exemplify a failure to educate, to motivate, to compete, to shake loose the bourgeois trappings of prosperity a priori obesity, to care enough about each other, our children and ourselves. And, for lack of a better phrase, to thrive. As a result our institutions begin to topple. Schools, private industry, the Congress, the White House, and SCOTUS, all frayed at the edges. Forget about apple pie. What happened to the foundation of our democrapitalism, organized labor? Ask a millennial to define pension. Don't panic when you get a description of Orange is the New Black. Symptoms. Gotham City, USA has never looked so bad. There isn't anyone left that matters apparently, who can compare current events with the 1930s or the 1860s. Are the recent 60s and 70s now thought of as the good old days? Great revisionist history, Batman!
Back to the Caped Crusader, as you were. Consider Bruce Wayne, with power nonpareil – as masked and armed – and financed the same. Does that bring to mind President Barack Obama? Then compare how our public is led to scorn the vigilante when he dares use his assets to do battle for the home team. Why, some want him prosecuted! Our hero. Don't they realize his intentions are to act in the best interests of those he would protect? Metaphorically going halfway across the globe to rein in Wall Street villains in the persona of mob bagman Lau, he is thwarted by bosses Gambol, Sal Maroni, and the Chechen, when they take a contract out on him with The Joker himself, who we'll call ISIS for arguments sake. Gambol aka public education, Maroni aka an intransigent Congress, and the Chechen aka the exodus of middle class wage careers, conspire against him to attack his Achilles heel, foreign policy.
While his attention is diverted by an old flame Rachel Dawes, none other than Hillary Clinton, he's hit with one sucker punch after another; Benghazi, Libya, Syria, Egypt, Israel, the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty negotiations with Iran. But who can blame him? Rachel has a new rival for her attention, Harvey, the real Donald J. Trump, Dent. He is the savior. The man with a plan. So easy, so easy, so easy, let me tell you. So quick, so quick, so quick. The Great White Hope, riding in on his white horse, is a stark contrast to our Black Knight. AND light minded PEOPLE BELIEVE HIM. Why he's the legitimate offspring of E. F. Hutton and the most interesting man in the world.
But he's not alone. Championing his cause as the true blue representative of the people is Coleman Reese, who follows the Joker's lead and attempts to expose Batman for the fraud he is, not addressing the fact that we never learn anything about our Joker other than what he cares to share in his fable-like musings. Stunt doubles for Reese include the Sean Hannity lead Fox News Network, backed by the understudies Limbaugh and Coulter et al.
Smack in the middle of this standoff is The RNC or Gotham PD, helmed by Commissioner Gordon – Reince Priebus. Forced to carry the torch for Dent, Gordon, surrounded by corruption within the ranks, falls on his sword to save the convention ceremony and takes a bullet for the cause. Laid up, he is helpless to prevent Dent from revealing his two-faced nature long hidden beneath the surface. A latent xenophobic tendency which The Joker exposes with every hospital bombing and nightclub massacre. Yet Gordon's fate is sealed when he makes a deal with the devil to perpetuate a lie so that the public is convinced of Dent's integrity. Dent can't be a fraud. Everyone knows the Batman is to blame. Don't they?
In the end the Joker is defeated, and declared the loser. Or is he? At what cost to society was this victory purchased? Has the interim damage opened such a crack in the foundation that constructors will be forced to start over with new blueprints? Check back in November for the next episode titled: Doctor Strange. Pray to God that this time art imitates life.
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Prepared text of the 2016 Stanford Commencement address by Ken Burns | Stanford News
Image June 16, 2016 LAnthony
Excerpt of Ken Burns Stanford Commencement Address
Our spurious sovereignty is reinforced and perpetually underscored to our obvious and great comfort, but this kind of existence actually ingrains in us a stultifying sameness that rewards conformity (not courage), ignorance and anti-intellectualism (not critical thinking). This wouldn't be so bad if we were just wasting our own lives, but this year our political future depends on it. And there comes a time when I – and you – can no longer remain neutral, silent. We must speak up – and speak out.
"We must remain committed to the kindness and community that are the hallmarks of civilization."
For 216 years, our elections, though bitterly contested, have featured the philosophies and character of candidates who were clearly qualified. That is not the case this year. One is glaringly not qualified. So before you do anything with your well-earned degree, you must do everything you can to defeat the retrograde forces that have invaded our democratic process, divided our house, to fight against, no matter your political persuasion, the dictatorial tendencies of the candidate with zero experience in the much maligned but subtle art of governance; who is against lots of things, but doesn't seem to be for anything, offering only bombastic and contradictory promises, and terrifying Orwellian statements; a person who easily lies, creating an environment where the truth doesn't seem to matter; who has never demonstrated any interest in anyone or anything but himself and his own enrichment; who insults veterans, threatens a free press, mocks the handicapped, denigrates women, immigrants and all Muslims; a man who took more than a day to remember to disavow a supporter who advocates white supremacy and the Ku Klux Klan; an infantile, bullying man who, depending on his mood, is willing to discard old and established alliances, treaties and long-standing relationships. I feel genuine sorrow for the understandably scared and – they feel – powerless people who have flocked to his campaign in the mistaken belief that – as often happens on TV – a wand can be waved and every complicated problem can be solved with the simplest of solutions. They can't. It is a political Ponzi scheme. And asking this man to assume the highest office in the land would be like asking a newly minted car driver to fly a 747.
As a student of history, I recognize this type. He emerges everywhere and in all eras. We see nurtured in his campaign an incipient proto-fascism, a nativist anti-immigrant Know Nothing-ism, a disrespect for the judiciary, the prospect of women losing authority over their own bodies, African Americans again asked to go to the back of the line, voter suppression gleefully promoted, jingoistic saber rattling, a total lack of historical awareness, a political paranoia that, predictably, points fingers,always making the other wrong. These are all virulent strains that have at times infected us in the past. But they now loom in front of us again – all happening at once. We know from our history books that these are the diseases of ancient and now fallen empires. The sense of commonwealth, of shared sacrifice, of trust, so much a part of American life, is eroding fast, spurred along and amplified by an amoral Internet that permits a lie to circle the globe three times before the truth can get started.
We no longer have the luxury of neutrality or "balance," or even of bemused disdain. Many of our media institutions have largely failed to expose this charlatan, torn between a nagging responsibility to good journalism and the big ratings a media circus always delivers. In fact, they have given him the abundant airtime he so desperately craves, so much so that it has actually worn down our natural human revulsion to this kind of behavior. Hey, he's rich; he must be doing something right. He is not. Edward R. Murrow would have exposed this naked emperor months ago. He is an insult to our history. Do not be deceived by his momentary "good behavior." It is only a spoiled, misbehaving child hoping somehow to still have dessert.
And do not think that the tragedy in Orlando underscores his points. It does not. We must "disenthrall ourselves," as Abraham Lincoln said, from the culture of violence and guns. And then "we shall save our country."
This is not a liberal or conservative issue, a red state, blue state divide. This is an American issue. Many honorable people, including the last two Republican presidents, members of the party of Abraham Lincoln, have declined to support him. And I implore those "Vichy Republicans" who haveendorsed him to please, please reconsider. We must remain committed to the kindness and community that are the hallmarks of civilization and reject the troubling, unfiltered Tourette's of his tribalism.
The next few months of your "commencement," that is to say, your future, will be critical to the survival of our Republic. "The occasion is piled high with difficulty." Let us pledge here today that we will not let this happen to the exquisite, yet deeply flawed, land we all love and cherish – and hope to leave intact to our posterity. Let us "nobly save," not "meanly lose, the last best hope of earth."
Let me speak directly to the graduating class. Watch out. Here comes the advice.
Look. I am the father of four daughters. If someone tells you they've been sexually assaulted, take it effing seriously. And listen to them! Maybe, some day, we will make the survivor's eloquent statement as important as Dr. King's Letter from a Birmingham Jail.
Try not to make the other wrong, as I just did with that "presumptive" nominee. Be for something.
Be curious, not cool. Feed your soul, too. Every day.
Remember, insecurity makes liars of us all. Not just presidential candidates.
Don't confuse success with excellence. The poet Robert Penn Warren once told me that "careerism is death."
Do not descend too deeply into specialism either. Educate all of your parts. You will be healthier.
Free yourselves from the limitations of the binary world. It is just a tool. A means, not an end.
Seek out – and have – mentors. Listen to them. The late theatrical director Tyrone Guthrie once said, "We are looking for ideas large enough to be afraid of again." Embrace those new ideas. Bite off more than you can chew.
Travel. Do not get stuck in one place. Visit our national parks. Their sheer majesty may remind you of your own "atomic insignificance," as one observer noted, but in the inscrutable ways of Nature, you will feel larger, inspirited, just as the egotist in our midst is diminished by his or her self-regard.
Insist on heroes. And be one.
Read. The book is still the greatest manmade machine of all – not the car, not the TV, not the smartphone.
Make babies. One of the greatest things that will happen to you is that you will have to worry – I mean really worry – about someone other than yourself. It is liberating and exhilarating. I promise. Ask your parents.
Do not lose your enthusiasm. In its Greek etymology, the word enthusiasm means simply, "God in us."
Serve your country. Insist that we fight the right wars. Convince your government, as Lincoln knew, that the real threat always and still comes from within this favored land. Governments always forget that.
Insist that we support science and the arts, especially the arts. They have nothing to do with the actual defense of our country – they just make our country worth defending.
Believe, as Arthur Miller told me in an interview for my very first film on the Brooklyn Bridge, "believe, that maybe you too could add something that would last and be beautiful."
And vote. You indelibly underscore your citizenship – and our connection with each other – when you do.
Good luck. And Godspeed.
Text of Commencement address
Source: Prepared text of the 2016 Stanford Commencement address by Ken Burns | Stanford News
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July 18, 2015 LAnthony	Leave a comment
Life changer….
This post from fellow blogger fortygirl is a personal account about facing a life changing event. While there are many such stories, I am struck by the honesty and the transparency of her writing. I hope we can call upon others for support through times like this.
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Write A House in detroit
The quoted description below was taken from writeahouse.com
Our mission is simple: to leverage Detroit's available housing in creative ways to bolster an emerging literary community to benefit the City of Detroit and its neighborhoods. We enliven the literary arts of Detroit by renovating homes and giving them to authors, journalists, poets, aka writers. It's like a writer-in-residence program, only in this case we're actually giving the writer the residence, forever.
Write-A-House (WAH) is a Detroit based organization that seeks to teach and support trade crafts and literary creativity. Our key tactic involves leveraging the easy availability of distressed housing in order to promote vocational education, home ownership, neighborhood stabilization, and creative arts. In short, WAH will work to support a more vibrant literary arts community that lives at a grassroots level and helps Detroit's neighborhoods.
Project Goal
WAH seeks to (1) educate the under-employed on carpentry and building skills (2) use those skills to renovate Detroit city homes and (3) award those homes to writers. Like any literary community, writers will be awarded based on their writing and their desire to be here. WAH seeks to support low-income writers by awarding at least three homes each year. We will also publish a journal of arts and creative non-fiction to document the process, work to determine a sustainable and green approach to home renovation, and connect writers to support a more vibrant literary community in Detroit. Our long, long term goal involves building a literary colony in Detroit, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
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