Siberian Tigers

By Si Dunn

Tragically, zoo tigers once again are in the news. On Christmas Day, 2007, a Siberian tiger somehow escaped or was let loose from captivity and killed one person and badly injured two others at the San Francisco Zoo. Police officers fatally--and correctly--shot the Siberian while it was in the process of savagely mauling one of its victims. Nothing else could be done at that point. Even though the tiger had been born and reared in captivity, it reverted to its nature once it was out of its enclosure.

Where possible, wild animals should be protected and given sanctuary in their natural habitats. This should include very strict enforcement of anti-poaching laws. Numerous animal species, including tigers, are prized in some cultures for their pelts, paws, meat, organs and blood. Poachers can make many thousands of dollars off animals such as tigers and gorillas by selling them, in pieces and vials, in international medical and souvenir black markets.

One example of poacher economics: Fewer than 400 Siberian tigers are still alive in the snowy forests of Far Eastern Russia. But a billion people want them made into rugs and drugs. In a cruel twist of the laws of supply and demand, each endangered tiger now is worth tens of thousands of dollars to thieves willing to kill and steal the animals from nature preserves and zoos.

Unfortunately, many nations are letting economic development--some of it illegal--encroach on their nature preserves. Wild animals are being forced into smaller and smaller spaces that can only support fewer of their species.

More should be done--now--to protect animals in the wild and animals in zoos, just as more should be done to protect zoo visitors wishing to see magnificent creatures up close.

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Fixing Washington -- Two Modest Proposals

Can Congress and the White House get any more unpopular in 2008? Well, yeah, but their 2007 popularity (or lack of popularity) ratings have been plenty ugly enough. Indeed, they were, as many Texans like to say, downright double-ugly as the year ended.

Modest Proposal #1: To end Washington, D.C.’s “inside the Beltway” fixation on running—and ruining--America, why not move the nation’s capitol to a city near the geographical center of the United States? Yep, Wichita, Kansas, should become the next vortex sutra of American politics. Our leaders should have to rule from the very heart of the heartland. And those poor, left-behind K Street lobbyists? They will just have to buy plane tickets, bus tickets and train tickets if they wish to bring their bags of cash into the new center of influence.

Modest Proposal #2: We can keep electing presidents, vice presidents and governors. But everyone else over the age of 40 should have to register for the political draft and, if selected, be required to serve a four-year term as a U.S. or state senator or representative. There will be no more campaigns and no more cash donations for these offices. All political draftees will attend eight weeks of special boot camp, where they will re-learn American history and appropriate state history. They also will study the contents of key historical documents and learn how to work together as teams willing to honor, protect, defend and serve their states and nation. It will be government of the people, by the people, for the people, in a much truer sense.

Religions (or no religion), handicaps, birthplace, and income levels should be no impediment to holding office, as long as one is a native or naturalized citizen. Someone living on Social Security, Medicare and Republican rip-off drug plans could be drafted and suddenly find themselves drawing a U.S. Senator’s salary, with full benefits.

Anyone claiming to be “too stupid” or “too crooked” to serve will not be allowed to dodge the political draft. America has survived many episodes of these two qualities already, at all levels of government.

Moving the capitol to the heartland and letting America’s “real” people rule will not destroy our nation. Indeed, it couldn’t make us any worse than what we have already become: a dollar-ocracy where everything, including loyalty and patriotism, gets sold to the highest bidder.

These two changes might even help us become the kind of nation we were taught to believe in—and often did believe in—when we were young: America the Beautiful; esteemed leader of the free world; open to all, friend to all; the land of opportunity—not opportunism.

Wichita vortex America!

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Home-Schoolers for ‘Huckleberry’ Huckabee?

The Washington Post is crediting an “extensive network” of conservative Republican home-schoolers with helping fuel Mike Huckabee’s rapid rise from political obscurity to leading the GOP race in Iowa just before the Jan. 3, 2008, caucus.

The Post has offered this observation: “Home-schoolers could …prove to be a powerful force on caucus night. By one estimate, about 9,000 Iowa children are home-schooled. Their parents could form a sizable portion of the 80,000 or so Republicans expected to show up on Jan. 3.”

Here’s a bit of a news flash for the Washington Post: Not all home-school households are Republican. Indeed, many Democratic and politically independent households also are home-schooling some or all of their children.

Home-schooling often is chosen so children can pursue special interests and talents in the arts or science or pursue curriculums that range far beyond what is now offered in public schools hobbled by state and federally mandated testing programs. Also, many liberal-minded and independent families are troubled by political and religious clashes in local school board meetings and the spillover effects on teachers and administrators.

Yes, many religious conservatives do home-school their children. Some even use the Bible as a math book, physics text or inerrant world history book. They are free to do this in many parts of the United States, just as they are free to vote for Mike “Huckleberry” Huckabee.

But even if Huckleberry Huckabee scores a stunning win in Iowa and home-school families are given much of the credit, don’t automatically assume that all home-schoolers are conservative Republicans.

GOP home-schoolers may be better organized (especially around religious affiliations), and they may be getting most of the publicity. However, the Democratic and independent candidates in Iowa and elsewhere also can count on enthusiastic votes from home-school families who fervently share their values and hopes for a better America.

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Robert M. Young on Working with Actors

Robert Malcolm Young, who has been hailed as “one of America’s foremost independent filmmakers,” is widely regarded as “an actors’ director.”

Bob Young now is in his early eighties. But, as he demonstrated at the first Lone Star International Film Festival in November 2007, he still working and enthusiastic about using new technologies to tell stories.

His numerous film and television credits span several decades. They range from a 1956 documentary, Secrets of the Reef, and several "National Geographic Specials" in the 1970s, to feature films that include Alambrista! (1977), One Trick Pony (1980), Saving Grace (1985), China: The Panda Adventure (2001) and Human Error (2004). He also directed several episodes of the TV series “Battlestar Galactica” between 2004 and 2007.

How does he approach working with actors and screenwriters?

“You have to be willing to let your own perceptions be challenged. I don’t think of a script as a bible,” he says. “It’s not just about the script but about the humanness of the characters. My responsibility is to the authenticity of the material."

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The Acting Spark

By Si Dunn

Actors arrive at the craft and art of acting from many different directions.

This point was well illustrated during the “Acting for Dollars” panel discussion at the 1st Lone Star International Film Festival, Nov. 9, 2007, in Fort Worth, Texas.

For more than 25 years, Xander Berkeley (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0075359/) has been playing mainly character roles in movies and television, and he typically is cast as “the bad guy.” Indeed, one of his best-known roles is Gibbs, the evil Secret Service agent who betrays the President (Harrison Ford) in Air Force One. Berkeley isn’t exactly sure when his acting spark started during childhood. “But I didn’t want toys when I was little. I only wanted costumes,” he told the panel’s audience. “I also got interested in accents.” Later, he became adept as a makeup artist, as well, a talent he recently displayed while playing the character George Mason on the hit TV show, “24.”

Xander Berkeley’s wife, Sarah Clarke (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1020124/), was an architectural photographer before she became an actor, with recent roles that include the turncoat government agent Nina Myers on “24.” “I just thought actors were big hams,” she told the panel audience. “But later, I took an acting class in Italy, in Italian.” The challenges of that experience kindled a deeper interest that led her onto the stage, then into movies and television. “The universe kind of guides you, but you need to pay attention,” she said.

Matthew Steven Tompkins (Missionary Man, Living & Dying, Killing Down) (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0867004/) has had a wide range of roles in a career stretching more than 15 years. “My father was an actor who never got to act,” Tompkins told the audience. The elder Tompkins’ family wouldn’t let him perform. But he never lost his enthusiasm for acting and actors, and his “performances” while watching others perform ultimately gave young Matthew an excellent role model for his own acting career. “My father would pull up a chair to watch Peter Sellers and The Pink Panther, and I would pull up a chair to watch my father,” Tompkins explained.

Julio Cedillo (The Mist, Killing Down, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada) (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0147814/) also has been working as an actor for more than 15 years. “I came here from Mexico at age four. I learned to speak English when I was six, sitting in front of the TV,” he explained. “I started mimicking the people who were on TV, while my mother made tortillas. And I was hooked.”

Oliver Tull (Killing Down, Equilateral, Saving Jessica Lynch) (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0876358/) got his first acting role in 1982 “to get out of work” while he was in the Army. “Being on a sports team got us out of work. Then there was a play on the base. I auditioned and got picked.” He discovered then that he also had an in innate love of story.

The acting career of the panel’s moderator, David Newsom (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0628392/), spans almost 20 years. He said he started out wanting “to play a bunch of great roles.” But the New York theater and movie business was crowded and fiercely competitive. “My father said, ‘Why don’t you move to a smaller market?’” Newsom took the advice. While building sets for the Catskill Actors Theater, he was given two lines to speak as a waiter in “Death of a Salesman.” Later, he went to Los Angeles, worked odd jobs, and eventually landed roles in TV shows, including “China Beach” and “Quantum Leap.” After parts in many other shows, Newsom recently has been pursuing other career directions, including producing the award-winning short film, Mother. As an actor, he pointed out, “your destiny is out of your own hands. People in other rooms make decisions about the next six months of your life. I want to be able to tell my own stories in my own ways.”

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The Next Clinton Administration

By Si Dunn

Yes, the next presidential election is still many months away. But I am already thinking that a Clinton-Obama ticket will bury Romney-Huckabee deep under a landslide of votes for drastic change and new directions.

Predictions are cheap and easy, so I am predicting Hillary Clinton will be the first female President of the United States, and Barack Obama will be America’s first black Vice President. Might as well get two precedents out of the way for the price of one.

Suggestions also are cheap and easy, so I am making some suggestions for who I would like to see in the next Clinton Administration. You, of course, you are free to post your own predictions and suggestions and to vehemently disagree with any and all of my views. That is one of the great features of our democracy.

Bill Richardson, I think, should serve another stint as Energy Secretary. This position will be more critical than ever to America’s national and international security and to the battle against global warming. The job will require strong international credentials, as well as many domestic leadership skills. Gov. Richardson has a very rich and varied resume that could help him serve America well in a time of increasingly complex challenges.

Madeline Albright should be brought back as the Clinton-Obama Administration’s Secretary of State. She knows and is respected by many of the key international players, and she has the right combination of skills and knowledge to help rebuild America’s tattered international reputation and leadership abroad.

John Edwards could be a very effective Secretary of Health and Human Services, if he wouldn’t view the post as a great demotion after competing so long and hard for the presidency. His comprehensive health plan focusing on revenue sources and cost containment could become a key part of the national debate over how to provide affordable medical coverage to all Americans.

Joe Biden believes strongly in working to improve America’s economic competitiveness. He could make many contributions as Labor Secretary, a post that also will have to deal heavily with illegal immigration and guest worker issues, as well as outsourcing, strengthening unions and domestic job creation, to name just a few.

Christopher Dodd has campaigned forcefully against constitutional encroachments and abuses of executive power. As Attorney General, he could work to help restore constitutional balance and bring a new focus on decency, honesty and fair play in the Executive Branch. He is fluent in Spanish, so he also could help the Clinton-Obama Administration tackle some increasingly thorny immigration issues.

Dennis Kucinich has made peace and international cooperation the centerpiece of his campaign. He should be appointed United Nations Ambassador, so he really can give peace a chance in a very troubled world.

Mike Gravel has been an outspoken advocate for better veterans’ care and for full disability payments for victims of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He should head the Veterans Administration and try to help bring new resources and efficiencies to that long-troubled agency.

As previously noted, we are still many months away from casting votes for President and Vice President of the United States. But, with many critical issues becoming more pressing by the day, it is not too early to start casting grassroots votes for the other key players we would like to see in the next Administration.

Don’t just sit there stewing, disagreeing and being mad. Make your own choices known, now.

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Have You Read a Book…This Year?

By Si Dunn

Be honest: Have you read a book…this century?

A new study from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) once again highlights a disturbing trend: Americans seem to be doing less reading than ever, and reading skills in most age groups continue to plunge.

Indeed, the new study, titled "To Read or Not to Read: A Question of National Consequence," echoes and amplifies the findings of an earlier NEA survey, “Reading at Risk.” According to CBS News, that 2004 survey “found an increasing number of adult Americans were not even reading one book a year.”

Think about it. In a nation in which we are free to read virtually any book ever printed, we now are choosing to read almost no books at all. We are letting vast quantities of knowledge, experience, imagination and entertainment go to waste while we stare slack-jawed at reruns of America’s Hottest Super Slobs on wall-sized TV screens or hang out online at social websites, exchanging “OMG! LOL! 2 HOT!” messages with digital strangers.

Okay, I’ll confess: Sometimes, I get paid to read. I earn part of my income by reviewing books for a major daily newspaper. And, I read books for research while writing articles, books and screenplays.

But, at the end of each day, when the computer, the TV, the cell phone and the radio are all powered off, and when I can at last enjoy some quiet time, I often grab a book.

To turn it on and boot it up, I simply have to open its front cover. After that, I can be transported to almost any time or any place in the imaginable universe, just by reading a few words. On paper. (Remember paper?)

Have you read a book this year? Have you read a book yet this century?

Would it really hurt you to read two books this next year and maybe help turn the disheartening trend line upward for a change?

You can start by turning off this blog. I won't mind. I'll be reading, too.

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Political UFOs - Updated

By Si Dunn

Like Dennis Kucinich, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter and former Arizona Gov. Fife Symington, I, too, have seen a UFO.

However, unlike their not-so-close encounters, I had a much clearer look at what I saw. And I knew exactly what I was seeing.

Of course, my sighting was long ago, in a universe far away: Little Rock, Arkansas, circa 1958, well before the invention of YouTube videos and cell phone cameras.

Thus, you’ll have to trust the memories of a 63-year-old observer with a reasonably good mind, a long-running reputation for honesty, and absolutely no desire to run for public office.

Anyway...

I was 14 years old, standing in my front yard on a warm summer afternoon. I liked to watch the changing cloud shapes and the silver gleam of the then-fearsome B-47 jet bombers as they slowed over Little Rock and turned toward runways at the nearby Jacksonville Air Force Base.

As I looked almost straight up at one B-47 starting its northeastward landing approach from about 3,000 feet, I suddenly saw a light-grey disk perhaps 30 feet in diameter appear just 50 yards or so behind the B-47’s stabilizer. The grey disk seemed to have a smaller, lighter disk perhaps 10 or 15 feet in diameter underneath at its center.

My immediate impression was that someone had just popped open a parachute. But no one had ejected from the B-47. The bomber simply continued its normal descent, passing a short distance north of the Arkansas State Capitol building.

The grey disk, meanwhile, lingered behind, hanging eerily in the sky, showing no apparent movement at all.

Then, after about 10 seconds, it began to drift due north, accelerating faster and faster. Finally, it zipped into a cloud and disappeared.

What did I see? I saw an unidentified flying object, one that displayed a classic shape reported by many UFO observers. “Flying saucers” had been in the headlines many times in my young life.

Do I believe “my” UFO came from outer space, from a distant civilization far advanced to ours? Perhaps.

It is also possible, as some theorists contend, that it came here from a world which shares our world, in dimensions we cannot sense.

All I know is this: I saw a UFO. And, maybe someday, New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson will help me sort out what it was.

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Mumblecore: Are You Ready to…Crumble?

By Si Dunn

It’s time for senior moviemakers to step up and show the mumblecore movement how to stop muttering into its angst and actually say something worth hearing.

Okay, okay, so I’m being sarcastic about this surging outbreak of ultra-low-budget movies featuring twentysomethings talking, talking, talking about relationships and sex and then about sex and relationships, while, like, you know, not quite finishing their sentences. Like.

We seniors could call our new movie movement grumblecore, because many of us have plenty to complain about: multi-decade marriages gone south; jobs moved overseas; new careers we can’t compete for, nor even comprehend; retirement savings that won’t last one “golden year”; no long-term care insurance; family members scattered across the nation and universe; and guaranteed short-term futures as a varsity players in shuffleboard hell.

We also could call our movement stumblecore. We have, after all, managed somehow to stumble a long way through life, figuratively and literally. Now we may be having real balance problems when we walk or when we try to put two thoughts together as we we talk.

We could call our movement crumblecore, as well. Hey, you think you’ve got angst, mumbledude? Try riffing about sex and relationship woes when you don’t have your false teeth pasted firmly in your mouth, when every joint in your body aches, and when your impotence medicine suddenly is making everything and everybody look blue. Likewise, try getting on with your life’s next great chapter knowing that it’s, like, death, and it really is, like, just ahead.

Will it be a cardiac roadside bomb? A sniper attack by the Big C? A no-joke stroke? Or just one of a million other sanguinary surprises?

Mumble, mumble, mumble; mutter, mutter, mutter; grumble, stumble, crumble....

Cut! That’s definitely a wrap!

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Writers’ Strike: Don’t Write for Free!

By Si Dunn

As a professional writer and editor, I spend several hours each week surfing the Web in search of interesting new paid assignments.

Unfortunately, I am sensing a growing trend. More and more Web publications and entertainment producers are putting out calls for writers willing to create articles, blogs, screenplays and TV show concepts for free, in return for “exposure” or “good recommendations” or “credits” or “a percentage of earnings from future sales” or “a cut of future advertising revenues,” to name just a few of the no-pay ploys.

In one especially egregious example, I recently saw an online advertisement for an unpaid movie project. The text went something like this: “Actors, crew and equipment are standing by, ready to shoot a movie. All we need is a great screenplay based on our idea. No pay but copy, credit and great exposure!”

Never mind that it can take up to a year of someone’s life to create and polish a screenplay. Too many people think writers can just gush out words, sentences and coherent plots on demand, like a water faucet.

Strike!

While this was being written, Hollywood’s unionized writers were on the verge of a possible strike against motion picture and television producers, networks and studios. Several issues have been at stake in their long negotiations, including how much writers are paid when their works are released on DVD or distributed on the Internet.

Actor and movie producer Alec Baldwin noted in an Oct. 30, 2007 blog posting at The Huffington Post that “[t]he studios and networks claim that their profits are eroding and blame the cost of stars' salaries and expensive marketing campaigns. One more thing the studios and networks ought to consider is how overstaffed they are themselves.”

Baldwin also pointed out that writers typically are the lowest paid, by far, of a movie or TV show’s “above-the-line” talent, well below actors and directors. Indeed, without the screenplay, there would be no movie or TV show to pay everyone’s salaries. Without a story, you simply would have a bunch of people, equipment and vehicles standing around.

Squeezing money out of writers, the low men and women on the entertainment industry’s “above-the-line” totem pole, is wrong. That is little different than imposing new taxes on the battered middle class and the poor while the rich grow richer.

Don't Give Up Your Day Job?

By some estimates, a typical professional writer earns less than $25,000 per year—a great deal less in most cases. A few (very few) screenwriters and novelists make more than a million dollars a year. Skilled technical writers and popular journalists often earn comfortable, if not spectacular, wages. The vast majority of professional writers, however, pursue writing as a second-income career. They can’t afford to give up their day jobs.

Many writers in Hollywood contend it is time to push the financial squeeze higher up, to the motion picture and television producers’ plush offices and plush benefits, to the outrageous star salaries, and to the overblown publicity campaigns that sometimes cost as much as the movies or TV shows they advertise.

Out here in the rest of the world, it is time for writers to show solidarity by saying “NO!” to the rising tide of “free” opportunities to create written works.

The people trying to get us to write for free gladly would pay someone $100 to unstop their commode or $200 to fix their car or $1,000 to paint their house. They should be willing to pay for our creative talents and labors, as well.

Don’t give away a screenplay, a novel, an article, a short story or even a poem. Make ‘em pay something, so you, too, can afford a plumber, a mechanic or a house painter when you need one.

“Freelance” should never mean “free ride.”

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Political UFOs

By Si Dunn


Like Dennis Kucinich and Jimmy Carter, I, too, have seen a UFO.

However, unlike their not-so-close encounters, I had a very clear look at what I saw. And I knew exactly what I was seeing.

Of course, my sighting was long ago, in a universe far away: Little Rock, Arkansas, circa 1958, well before the invention of YouTube videos and cell phone cameras.

Thus, you’ll have to trust the memories of a 63-year-old observer with a reasonably good mind, a long-running reputation for honesty, and absolutely no desire to run for public office.

Anyway...

I was 14 years old, standing in my front yard on a warm summer afternoon. I liked to watch the changing cloud shapes and the silver gleam of the then-fearsome B-47 jet bombers as they arced over Little Rock and turned toward runways at the nearby Jacksonville Air Force Base.

As I looked almost straight up at one B-47 starting its northeastward landing approach from about 3,000 feet, I suddenly saw a light-grey disk perhaps 30 feet in diameter appear just 50 yards or so behind the B-47’s stabilizer. The grey disk seemed to have a smaller, lighter disk perhaps 10 or 15 feet in diameter underneath at its center.

My immediate impression was that someone had just popped open a parachute. But no one had ejected from the B-47. The bomber simply continued its normal descent, passing a short distance north of the Arkansas State Capitol building.

The grey disk, meanwhile, lingered behind, hanging eerily in the sky, showing no apparent movement at all.

Then, after about 10 seconds, it began to drift due north, accelerating faster and faster. Finally, it zipped into a cloud and disappeared.

What did I see? I saw an unidentified flying object, one that displayed a classic shape reported by many UFO observers.

Do I believe it came from outer space, from a civilization far advanced to ours? Perhaps.

It is also possible, as some theorists contend, that it came here from a world which shares our world, from dimensions we cannot sense.

All I know is this: I saw a UFO. And, maybe someday, Bill Richardson will help me sort out what it was.



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