They keep telling me that I am insignificant; that I am inconspicuous to the grander scheme of things around; that I am just passing through. My existence in time is less than a millimicrosecondth of the 13.8 billion years since the time Big Bang happened. They ask me to be humble, to bow to the forces of Nature and to remember that I am weak; all just flesh, blood and bone. I am so brittle, organic and living on borrowed time. At the bat of an eyelid, I may be down and out. I remain but just dust, a part of the galaxy. I am told to invoke the blessings of the celestial bodies that govern our every move and not to incur their wrath.
This message of humility is apparently applicable only to some. It is shoved down the throats of lesser beings who are powerless and have to forever live on the goodwill of the crumbs from the mighty, the courageous and the wealthy. Social and moral mores are not applicable to them. They can act without impunity till death do them apart, or the Agent Intellect shine the ray of wisdom on them.
When their Consciousness becomes more manifest, they will insist that they are reformed and be given a new slate and a new lease on life. With their unholy earning, they would kosher it with mammoth structures to remind mortals that they are nothing. They would be anything but humble.
But then these megalomaniacs are the ones that history remembers. The average Joe whose existence follows the actual path of moderation as preached by the elders hardly matters to the more important direction of the human civilisation. Their lives are quickly forgotten.
My assertion is that rules only apply to the weak. The valiant segment of the population is exempt from the common rules and regulations. Well, some people are more equal than others. Some leave a legacy behind, others not even their carbon print or footprint.
They gaze into the horizon without a care in the world. If a dog wags its tail and jumps around your legs for attention, it is because it thinks you are God. A cat, on the other hand, does not give two hoots to your presence. Cats have perfected the way to strut the posterior in front of your face in defiance in an art form humans call 'catwalk'. The cats do not think of humans as God but instead perceive themselves as the intermediaries to the Gods. Thanks to their ancestors who were placed on a pedestal by Queen Cleopatra and her band of rulers, as well as the unique place conferred to members of the Cat Family in ancient belief systems (Al Uzza with her cat and Durga with her Bengal Tiger), cats wander with a chip on their shoulders. With their eight other lives to spare, they roam haughtily with their snouts high in the air as if breathing on imported air. Like in Boy George's 'Karma Chameleon', they come and go as they please. Unlike other domesticated animals, they managed to convince Man that they need not be leashed.
With their alluring meowing and their fluffy, soft bodies, cats know they can get away with murder, but they only use their charm to cajole the gullible public to depart from some mouthwatering chow.
This Turkish documentary is an exceptional presentation that would melt the hearts of any cat-lover. Using low cameras to follow the path of the stars of the film, the cats, it manages to capture many fantastic close-shots of members of the feline species. It appears that the Turkish community is quite accommodating in having stray cats wander about their streets, cafés, roofs, and even homes. The shows mostly try to outline the daily routines of many street cats while taking many striking photographs of these sly animals. As it is mentioned in this offering, cats offer comfort to anxious and weak souls. It redefines the meaning of our existential presence. They may open our soul to accept life beings as a continuum of the Universe rather than treating animals as second-class lifeforms that do not deserve our respect or a kind of punishment for their doings in their past lives. Maybe their presence on Earth acts as a testing bed for us to place us in the karma cycle when we are done with this present life on Earth.
‘As the World Turns’ Interrupted by Kennedy’s Shooting
Clockwise from top left, Helen Wagner and Santos Ortega in the episode of “As the World Turns” that was interrupted by a CBS News Bulletin, as Walter Cronkite began reporting on Kennedy’s assassination. Cronkite’s updates were followed by commercials, like one for Nescafé.
PHOTOGRAPHS FROM CBS
By THOMAS VINCIGUERRA
NOVEMBER 22, 2013
As usual, on that Friday afternoon, Mable Snodgrass, a 19-year-old first-time mother, was at home in Echols, Ky., watching “As the World Turns.” Ten minutes in, at about 12:40 p.m., the soapy drama was bubbling. Nancy Hughes, played by Helen Wagner, had just told Grandpa (Santos Ortega) that her son, Bob, had invited his ex-wife, the scheming Lisa, and their young son, Tom, to Thanksgiving dinner.
After his initial shock, Grandpa ventured, “That was real nice of the boy.”
“And I’ve thought about it,” Nancy said, “and I gave it a great deal of thought, Grandpa ——”
At that instant, Nancy and Grandpa were wiped off the screen, replaced by the words “CBS News Bulletin” slide and the urgent voice of Walter Cronkite.
“I was fixing to get angry because they were screwing up my show,” Ms. Snodgrass recalled. “And then I found out it was about the president.”
Americans of a certain age remember where they were when they learned of the shooting of John F. Kennedy on Nov. 22, 1963. But no group was united in quite the same way just then as those who were tuned to “As the World Turns.”
Fifty years ago, “A.T.W.T.,” as it came to be known, was not merely television’s most popular daytime drama. At the moment of the assassination, the slow-moving series about personal and professional goings-on in fictional Oakdale, Ill., was the only regular program being broadcast nationally by a major network — specifically, throughout the Eastern and Central time zones. In Washington, the NBC and ABC affiliates were scheduled to present “TV Beauty School” and “Divorce Court.” In Dallas, a discussion of winter coats with hidden zippers was the focus of “The Julie Benell Show,” a local effort by the ABC affiliate WFAA.
Today, the live telecast of “As the World Turns” No. 1,995 (there was no title) remains frozen in time as a last semblance of normalcy before the face of television changed permanently. The very ordinariness of Wagner’s scene — “my dubious claim to fame,” the actress once called it — underscores the day’s nightmarish events.
“Look at that conversation between Nancy and Grandpa,” said Lynn Liccardo, the author of the e-book “as the world stopped turning ...” “They’re dusting books. And then he gets a cup of coffee.”
Was that conversation between Nancy and Grandpa important? No, said Sam Ford, a great-nephew of Ms. Snodgrass’s and co-editor of “The Survival of Soap Opera: Transformations for a New Media Era.” “There’s rarely one scene in a soap opera that’s ever pivotal, because there is so much redundancy built in.”
An uninterrupted version of the episode is preserved at the Paley Center for Media, in New York and Los Angeles. In it, Nancy boldly predicts that Bob and Lisa will reunite.
But it is the fragmented version, available on YouTube, that has gone down in TV history. Among other things, it offers the bizarre sight of Cronkite’s dire updates being followed by cheery commercials for Nescafé instant coffee (opening, ominously, with a slowly swinging pendulum) and Friskies puppy food. In those first few frantic minutes, CBS programmers were scrambling. So were those on the soap opera set at the Hy Brown studios on West 26th Street in Manhattan.
Don Hastings, who played Bob Hughes, knew something was amiss as he prepared for a restaurant scene with Henderson Forsythe after the Nancy-Grandpa exchange.
Mr. Hastings, 79, recalled: “Phil Polansky, our cameraman, said, ‘Don’t tell the actors what? The president’s been shot?’ He had headphones on, and he was talking to the control room. We got our cue and we just kept going, because no one else knew what to do.” Mr. Hastings was unaware that the news was already blacking out the first half of his scene.
The show’s last act, with Eileen Fulton as Lisa Hughes tensely phoning her mother, Alma (Ethel Remey), about a deposit on an apartment, as well as her and Bob’s mutually lingering love, was pre-empted entirely. By then, the crew had heard about Dallas. Ms. Fulton hadn’t.
“I had a very emotional scene,” the actress, now 80, recalled. “When we finished, my cameraman, Joe Hallahan, had tears running down his face. I said, ‘I’m good, but I didn’t know I was that good.’ ”
When the show wrapped shortly before 2 p.m., “the studio went absolutely dark, which must have been some security thing,” Mr. Hastings said. “The monitors went out, and we had no communication with CBS except through a guard on the floor who had a radio.”
The soap’s scheduled episode was canceled on Monday, Nov. 25, amid CBS’s continuing news coverage. One line of that episode’s unused script holds special poignancy: “A dream can be aborted before it’s even born.”
Edward Trach, the supervising producer of the soap opera for the sponsor, Procter & Gamble, said, “When we were able to get back on the air, we tried to do so in a coherent and dramatically effective manner.”
But on that Monday afternoon, when the cast assembled to read through and time Tuesday’s segment, it was hard to focus. Mr. Hastings ducked repeatedly into the control room to watch the funeral cortege. “They kept coming to get me, because I was just destroyed at that point,” he said.
Rosemary Prinz, who played his sister, Penny, hoped for some on-air reference to the killing. But Irna Phillips, the show’s all-powerful creator, wanted no outside intrusion on the make-believe of Oakdale. “She was the meanest bitch on the planet, and you can quote me,” Ms. Prinz, now 82, said.
Ms. Prinz, who still wells up when recalling the assassination, eventually saw her chance during a scene with Mr. Ortega.
“I was supposed to go on about Tom and his father,” she recalled, “and I said instead: ‘Oh, Grandpa, here we are talking about little Tom. My God, after what the country has gone through, it seems so out of proportion. But, of course, we have to go on.’ Santos had very, very round eyes, which he always opened wide as Grandpa anyway, and he opened them even wider.”
An infuriated production team promptly descended on Ms. Prinz. She was unfazed.
“I said, ‘I just went blank and said the first think I could think of, and then I got back to the script.’ Everyone knew I was full of it. But I made the point.”
This must be one of few attempts of Kollywood at a disaster movie; one which delves into the procedural intricacies of a rescue mission. It probably goes in the vein of great Hollywood flicks like 'Earthquake!', 'Jaws' and even 'Apollo 13'.
On top of dealing with the nitty-gritty issues of rescuing a child trapped in a disused well, the film managed to bring to light many of the issues plaguing the common man in Tamil Nadu, may be in anywhere in the world.
It is the eve of the launch of a rocket in India. The euphoric mood is palpable everywhere, but nobody seems to know what the hype is all about, but they join the revelry, nevertheless. On the one hand, the country appears to be at the zenith of technological know-how. At the same time, the state fails to satisfy its citizens' fundamental necessity, water supply. The film then focuses the plight of villager plagued with extreme water shortage. In this urgent situation, a toddler falls into a 93-feet narrow disused well.
It would have been just another sob story of a child from the disadvantaged class of the community succumbing to the negligence of the people entrusted to serve the people if not for the dedication of an IAS (Indian Administrative Service) officer. Her non-swaying stand against the powers that be exposes the lackadaisical attitude of the administrative arm of the Government, the partisan stance and the kowtowing of the police to the political leaders, the corrupt practices of the elected leaders and the ugly nature of class politics. The media can sometimes be a double-edged sword when their practitioners become overzealous in trying to expose a scoop.
The film ends on a positive note. It sends home the message that we determine our future. Nobody can be trusted to do our dirty work. We have to fend our ourselves. There is only so much that can be depended on the assistance of the state. Above all, we must have our own safety nets. Everyone is on the lookout for their own skin.
I grew up in an environment where it was ingrained in us that a man can be a man only if he is productive. He has been sent to Earth on a mission and that purpose is to do his age-appropriate duties.
Amma used to remind us to keep a keen eye on the task at hand and not to be swayed by idle banter and purposeless chats. Her favourite Tamil proverb drove home her point - 'A talking dog is no use for hunting'! Appa, being the non-verbal one, asserted his teaching through his actions. In his 42 years' career, he never once called in sick, barring the times our family were stuck in floods when we were stuck in a relative's house when we visited them on a Sunday and the time he was admitted for diabetes.
So, these thoughts came to my mind as I was passing through Singapore airport. If one had been to Singapore, he would not fail to notice the high numbers of members of the geriatric population still engaged in economic activities namely the service industry. In a food court, I could not keep my eyes off a severely kyphotic uniformed lady in her late sixties, probably, with a weak left upper limb dragging herself religiously clearing up the utensils and crumbs left by the patrons. She was working with such dexterity that would put an average adult to shame. When a looked around, I saw that everybody was working individually, focused on the job at hand. Nobody had time for small talks. It was just performance and the aim to have their tasks done. They were not robotic in that sense as they were just as forthcoming with pleasantries to the customer when warranted. The Japanese work ethics that our ex-Prime Minister was coaxing our population to emulate must have spilt over to our neighbours, never actually embraced by Malaysians. The river had flown leaving the source dry.
A one-kilometre channel that separates these two countries seem to demarcate them worlds apart. A one-hour flight later at the luggage collection belt, what do I witness? Three able-bodied adults assigned to supervise the placing of luggage on the belt; one to adjust the placing, another to supervise him and yet another to supervise the other but more engaged in talking grandmother stories!
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Asoka Chakra, quintessentially Odiyan
For 17 years, I have been receiving referrals from the world over. On the morning before my long procrastinated maiden trip to India, to Bhuvanesvar specifically, where did I receive a referral from? Well, what do you know? It is from Bhuvanesvar! If you do not call it coincidence, what else? Or is it that I am specifically on the lookout for these quirky incidences. Perhaps if I were to look at other tiny unimportant data, I would surely see a pattern and claim synchronicity! [Referral]
Am I so important to the Universe that it decides to indulge in some kind of divine game? A mystical prank. That would be putting own self as a point of reference as if Nature gives a damn to the single individual.
In fact, complex mathematical formulas had been employed to calculate the possibilities of these seeming coincidences that defy logical explanations. The odds of experiencing these type of similar events are actually, not as low as we think it is. It is just that we fail to see other happenings that occur at similar frequency without we batting an eyelid to see them whiz us by.
Sorry to burst the bubble but there may not be a governing body in the Department of Synchronicity up there who is responsible for ensuring that events periodically happen at a pattern to show us who is The Boss! It is just an order in the chaos that we selectively choose to see.
Synchronicity (German: Synchronizität) is a concept, first introduced by analytical psychologist Carl Jung, which holds that events are "meaningful coincidences" if they occur with no causal relationship yet seem to be meaningfully related. ... Jung used the concept in arguing for the existence of the paranormal. [Ref:https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/ciencia/ciencia_synchronicity05.htm]
(Listen to segment 19:00 through to 27:30)
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A half-century ago, much of the world appeared to be in a state of crisis. Protests erupted in France, Czechoslovakia. Germany, Mexico, Brazil, the United States, and many other places. Some of these protests ended peacefully; many were put down harshly. Two of the biggest catalysts for the protest were the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and the ongoing lack of civil rights in the U.S. and elsewhere. Two of America’s most prominent leaders, Dr Martin Luther King Jr. and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, were assassinated within months of each other. But some lessons were being learned and some progress was being made—this was also the year that NASA first sent astronauts around the moon and back, and the year President Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law. It’s fitting that I post this retrospective today, since it is the day I was born—January 10, 1968. So, a 50th birthday present from me to you today: a look back at 1968.
A U.S. Marine keeps his head low as he drags a wounded buddy from the ruins of the Citadel's outer wall during the Battle of Hue in Vietnam on February 16, 1968. Bettmann / Getty
United States President Lyndon B. Johnson listens to a tape recording from his son-in-law Captain Charles Robb at the White House on July 31, 1968. Robb was a U.S. Marine Corps company commander in Vietnam at the time. Robb was later awarded the Bronze Star and, after returning home, became governor of Virginia in 1982, and later a senator for the same state. Jack Kightlinger / AP
Original caption: Several hundred hippies gathered at "Hippie Hill" in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park for a happening at which several bands played rock 'n' roll music. Most of the hippies sat and listened, but some just couldn't keep from dancing to the rhythms. Bettmann / Getty
Mexican army soldiers crouch with weapons ready in Mexico City's Tlatelolco district, in this October 2, 1968 photo. The truth behind the stunning assault on a peaceful democracy protest known as the Tlatelolco Massacre, in which some 300 people are believed to have been killed, remains largely hidden by government and military secrecy. AP
Soldiers cut a student's hair after he was arrested during the first hour and a half of shooting in the Tlatelolco area in Mexico City on October 3, 1968. Another student stands against the wall. AP
SRI’s Bill English, the engineer who built the first computer mouse prototype, prepares for the December 9, 1968 "mother of all demos." The demonstration is hailed as one of the most significant technological presentations in history, showcasing technologies that have become what we now know as modern computing. He gave the first public demonstration of a computer mouse, a graphical user interface, windowed computing, hypertext, word processing, video processing, and much more. SRI International
Richard M. Nixon is mobbed by wildly cheering supporters as he arrives at the Hilton Plaza Hotel, his Miami Beach headquarters. Bettmann / CORBIS / Getty
French Foreign Minister Michel Debre and U.S. President Lyndon Johnson watch television coverage of the flight of the Saturn 1 B Rocket launching from Cape Kennedy, Florida, on on October 11, 1968, in the White House Office in Washington, D.C. Charles Gorry / AP
A heavy beard covers the face of astronaut Walter M. Schirra Jr., Apollo 7 commander, as he looks out the rendezvous window in front of the commander's station on the ninth day of the Apollo 7 mission on October 20, 1968. Apollo 7 was the first Apollo mission to carry a crew, and it made 163 orbits around the Earth in 10 days, setting the stage for Apollo 8, which was heading to the moon. JSC / NASA
Apollo 8, the first manned mission to the moon, entered lunar orbit on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1968. That evening, the astronauts—Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders—held a live broadcast from lunar orbit, in which they showed pictures of the earth and moon as seen from their spacecraft. Said Lovell, "The vast loneliness is awe-inspiring and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth." They ended the broadcast with the crew taking turns reading from the book of Genesis. NASA
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