Prof. Randy Pausch, in his "Last Lecture," (just after being told that he had 2-5 months of good health before he started to deteriate and die), before he left Carnegie Mellon University, discussed "head fakes," a football term where the tackler thought that a ball carrier was running in one direction (because of a head fake) but the ball carrier was actually intending to run in another direction. My last story "Death Can Be Fun....For The Living" was an attempt at that. Some thought that it was about dying but really it was a hymn to the fun of living.

Do you have any "head fake" stories? You do not have to tell what the head fake is. Leave that to each of our own stories, our imagination and our own thoughts. Of course, a good football player has double head fakes and triple head fakes in order to cross an imaginary goal (line.)

Tu amigo,

Jose (or Joe in English)

When Joe signed off as "Tu Amigo," it reminded me of an old story that my father used to recite when I was a kid.  Later, when I was working on my PhD at the University of Washington, I read the same story in a book titled: EL CONDE LUCANOR.  This book contained many stories that were quite prevalent during the Middle Ages, and all of those stories had come down from Greek and Arabic influences.  Many authors, including Shakespeare, made use of those popular themes such as The Taming of the Shrew.  In fact, EL CONDE LUCANOR included a story that was named: HOMBRE QUE SE CASO CON MUJER BRAVA, which literally means:  A Man Who Married a Wild Woman. This was the same story as The Taming of the Shrew. However, the story that I want to talk about is a story titled: A Half Friend.  The story goes like this:  A young man was tending a flock of about 100 sheep for his father, and his father noticed that week after week the flock was getting smaller instead of larger.  So, he asked the young man the reason for that.  His son replied that every time a friend came to visit he would give him a lamb to demonstrate his friendship, and that he had a lot of friends.  His father thought that he would teach his son a lesson.  So he slaughtered a lamb and stuffed the bloody lamb into a burlap sack.  Then he instructed his son to take the bloody sack to his most trusted friend and tell him that he had killed a man, and that the police were coming to investigate.  He told his most trusted friend that he needed for him to hide the bloody sack until the police were gone!  His most trusted friend refused to do so, so the young man went back to his father and told him what had happened.  His father told him to take the same bloody sack and to go tell his "half friend" the same story.  The half friend immediately told the young man to go in peace.  He said,"  "You go in peace, young man and tell your father that I will gladly take care of this matter and the police with never find this body."  So the young man went back to his father and told him exactly what the half friend had said.   His father said to his son:  If this is what a "half friend will do for me, can you imagine what a full friend would be willing to do?"  "Son, I hope that you can choose your friends a little better."

Joe and Frank make very interesting points. I need to step back and look at my own behavior and see how I can serve my eClub better. At RGHF, we're deep into a discussion about "what is fellowship."

My best example was told by a past RI president. He was pressured into participating in a Rotary activity. He was much too busy, he told the audience. He had been his country's representative to the United Nations and many other positions of leadership. He did not have time for a Rotary activity of any kind.

Finally he gave in and joined other Rotarians for an outing with young boys from bad homes. They were what we call kids at risk.

He was assigned the most difficult of the young boys and decided that he'd just get through it and then never do this again.

By the end of the day the boy and the man had formed a solid bond of respect and even affection.

That day Bhichai Rattakul, Thailand, became a Rotarian.

Jack  Selway, Founder & CEO of RGHF, Rotary Global History, Pueblo, CO, USA

When I read the call for Head Fakes, the first thing that came to mind was a description I once heard of a not-especially-straight road:

"It has more twists and turns than a Bollywood movie plot."

Perhaps obscure for some, but very funny to those who have seen one of those randomly-break-into-song flims.  Great stuff!

More seriously, the post calls to mind a Chinese story I learned about in college in San Antonio, which I managed to find at http://resources.alibaba.com after successful Googling. It goes:

There is an ancient Chinese story of a farmer who owned an old horse that tilled his fields. One day, the horse escaped into the hills and when the farmer's neighbors sympathized with the old man over his bad luck, the farmer replied, "Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?"

A week later, the horse returned with a herd of horses from the hills and this time the neighbors congratulated the farmer on his good luck. His reply was, "Good luck? Bad luck? Who knows?"

Then, when the farmer's son was attempting to tame one of the wild horses, he fell off its back and broke his leg. Everyone thought this very bad luck. Not the farmer, whose only reaction was, "Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?"

Some weeks later, the army marched into the village and conscripted every able-bodied youth they found there. When they saw the farmer's son with his broken leg, they let him off. Once again, the farmer's only reaction was, "Bad luck? Good luck? Who knows?" 

Another site, http://www.asianresearch.org/articles/1691.html, had this to add:

Try not to be too complacent when things go smoothly and too discouraged and depressed when you run into troubles.

More good stuff, no?  I pass the ball of this particular game onto another RECSWUSA member or guest.  Don't fumble! 

Carol Anderson

Frank, Jack, Rushton and Carol: Your stories are wonderful and they do express "head fakes," thinking something is going in one direction and then growing when it goes in another. Carol's story reminded me of my son, Christopher, and his running the 200 meters in the Special Olympics. Christopher is mildly retarded and I think that, with my multiple degrees from several universities, I should be able to teach him something. Also I ran track, played basketball and football in high school and college. My father was a minor league baseball player who believed in the adage: "Winning is not everything; it is the only thing."

Therefore, when the big day came for the Regional Trials for the State Special Olympics, I pulled Christopher aside and told him: "Son, run hard on the first 100 meters and as you come down the straightaway for the finish, I will be standing on the sidelines, yelling: "Run, Chris, run; win, Chris, win." My son is adopted from Korea and probably comes from North Korea since he is tall with long legs and runs like the wind. He was ahead when he rounded the last turn, and I was there yelling, "Run, Chris, run; win, Chris, win!" over and over again.

As he neared the finish line, he was ten to fifteen yards in front of the nearest contender. He slowed down just before the finish line, took the hands of all the other runners, and they walked over the finish line together. Christopher had followed my directions exactly: "Run, Chris, run: win, Chris, win!" The only difference from what I expected was that his father WON TOO!

It is an image that will always stay with me. Winning isn't everything; it is the only thing, but there are many ways to win.  

To use a Chinese proverb which Rushton might mention: "A journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step." On that sunny morning, I took a giant step.

Joe

It did not start as anything but a way to include my five-year old grandson into the conversation with the nine-year old granddaughter and myself. My grandson, Matthew,  said something like: “Moolie-waa, bugga nogga,” and gave me the sternest look that his young face could muster. My granddaughter, Erin, chimed in, “Um wa boo na, sippie szo,” in a high light voice with just a touch of humor in it. Of course, I over-laughed and smiled my answer, “Wotswala mugga me. No buta wompagna,” shaking my finger at each of them and pointing to the swimming pool. It went downhill or uphill from there, depending on how you were viewing the scene. We talked gibberish for at least an hour, making faces, changing the intonations in our voice, gesturing grandly, using soft, medium and loud voices, pointing, pounding and punishing the air. We communicated, laughing a lot at what we said without saying anything.

Anne, my wife, walked through the scene once and looked a little bewildered but went on her way with only one shake of her head.

As we talked this gibberish, our sentences got longer, and our intonations got more sophisticated and complicated. Each of us made an oration, mixed with short sounds of agreement. Both the kids and this old man were enjoying our communications without ever using English, or any other known language, except the language of momentary invention. We thought the gesture and then put sound and motion to it. It was the essence of improvisation. What surprised me was that the kids enjoyed it as much as I did. We had a conversation without saying anything that we understood if one is just listening to the words. But we did communicate by the use of our face, our body, our hands, our fingers, and the hidden meanings in the sounds that we were making.

Now, when Erin or Matt has to talk to someone, they have the extra tools to speak when the words finally go along with what they already know: what our bodies tell others about our wants, our joys, our sorrows and our need to make others understanding that we wish to communicate. For an hour, we had fellowship, and if you asked us what we told each other, no words would come that came close to describing what we said. I think that what we all learned was: it is not the words that you use but the meanings behind the words that really makes communication. Most of all, we had fun! It was the essence of a head fake. 

Last week, when the rains came when we were swimming, and the lightning mixed with thunder frightened Matthew, we three ran indoors and cuddled in the guest room, pulling the covers up for protection, got out the flashlight and alternately told stories with the beam of the flashlight on the ceiling as our moving brush to illustrate each scene. Another head fake! Next week, Erin goes to the “Y” camp for twelve days. I hope that she takes her flashlight. Fun does not cost money or expensive toys.

Joe

I have enjoyed the "head-fake" stories by Joe,Jack,Carol and Rushton.  This is what Rotary Sharing is all about.  Like Joe, I learned to head-fake while playing football, but the most memorable "head-fake" stories came from my father who was a great raconteur and always relished the opportunity to teach ethical or moral lessons via the stories he told so skillfully.

I remember one cold day when we were sitting by the fire during an unusually cold day in Texas when he mentioned that he wanted to tell us kids a story that would serve us well "for the rest of of lives."  He proceeded to tell us that many children never listened well and never heeded the wise words of their parents.  He went on to say that a father lion was giving advice to his young cub so that he could live many years and grow old as he had done.  He explained that no other animal was stronger, skillful in the hunt, and more powerful than a lion.  He said: "you are the kind of the jungle and there is no other animal that can surpass you in strenght and ability to kill in order to survive.  He did, however, caution the young cub that an animal who walked on two feet (a man) was a lot smarter and possessed firearms that could kill in a flash.  He cautioned his young cub to avoid any confrontations with the two legged animal. 

One day the young cub saw a man walking on the other side of a path, and he observed him very carefully.  He followed him all day without being seen, and after a full day of observation, he concluded that there was no way that the man could beat him in a fight.  He knew he was very powerful, and a lot quicker than the man.  He thought that he could jump on the man before the man had a chance to fire his rifle.  So, once the young lion was fully convinced that he could kill the man without a problem, he decided to attack.  At the right moment, the young lion gave out a great roar and ran after the man.  Upon seeing the young lion, the man ran as fast as he could and turn into another path.  He had skillfully dug a pit and covered it with branches from trees, and when he reached it he swung on a rope that he had tied from a limb of a tree, and was carried quickly onto the other side of the pit.  The lion tried to jump over the branches, but fell to the bottom of the pit.  Suddently, he heard the man clearing the branches from the top of the pit.  The lion tried to jump as high as he could, but was unable to reach the top.  The man aimed his rifle while the lion was thinking that he should have listened to the wise words of his old man.  "Man is smarter than we are," he had said.  Because he did not heed his father's advice, the young cub died with a bullet in between his eyes.

I so enjoyed all of your "head fake" stories.

Thank you for sharing them. 

Joe, your story about Christopher brought such a beautiful visual to my mind.  I envioned this little Korean boy (probably now 6' something now) stopping just before the finish line, to wait for the other runners so he could hold their hands and cross the finish line with him.

It doesn't get any richer than that.  Wow.

I'm not a good story teller at all, but enjoy reading them.

 Looking forward to reading your next story.

About a year ago I had the pleasure of teaching a course that "was required" - general core class - for a university degree. (Normally, I teach specific degree courses, so students actually want to be enrolled.)  I had a student, a young male, who e-mailed me that he was being "forced" to take the course, didn't want to take it, and wouldn't enjoy it. He also told me that he would only do the minimums required and would not participate in discussions or team projects.

Well, imagine my surprise!  I know students sometimes don't want to take a course but to put it in writing was a new approach! So, I wrote him back and told him I was sorry that he was in such a position. I understood his concerns and appreciated his feelings; my goal was to help him be successful and help him reach his goal of a degree - which required this course to do so.  I also told him that I could not force him to do anything; he was in charge of his destiny but know that I would be nearby and ready should he need assistance or change his mind.

Well, each week I sent an e-mail checking on him; just a "howdy and how are you doing" to let him know I was still there and available. One day, I received the nicest note from him.  It told me what a great and supportive teacher I was, how he appreciated all my concern and support and he apologized for being difficult and slow to participate and hoped I would forgive him(?).

Then he went on to write that his wife had passed by the computer and read my message over his shoulder; she then made him show her all of my notes, which then had her promptly hit him on the arm and let him know to "shape up and apologize to the nice instructor".  She also laid out the law that they were scrimping and paying for graduate school so he'd better get his act together. Moral is - head fakes often work in weird ways as well

Sher

It is interesting to see the overlap in approaches that other eClub members use in their professions. That was certainly true when I read Dr. Sher Downing’s recent contribution to “Head Fakes.” What it did was remind me of two instances which are similar to her experience with the reluctant student: 1) One is when I moved into our present home here in “The Livable Forest: Kingwood” and 2) the other is how I approach my students in my Art Appreciation class. For over forty years, most of my students take the class because it is a requirement for graduation. On the first day, I tell them, “I teach this class to turn you on to the world around you and in you.”

When Anne and I moved into our home two years ago, we were told by the sellers that the man next door would be a problem since he complained loudly about everything. In the first few weeks, we built a shed out back to house the art collection and my own art works. When it was finished, I was told by my shouting neighbor that the building as two feet too high. I told him that I would look into it. He was right in terms of the Neighborhood Code (wrong in how he tried to intimidate a new neighbor but right in his information.) I wrote him the nicest letter that I could, thanking him for his information and promising to correct the problem (which I did.) He never replied nor yelled at me again. And for the last two years, he has been quiet about what we do with our own property. The other neighbors try to argue back with this man when he yells at their children in front of his house. He says nothing to me about my grandchildren doing the same thing in the street. I think that he does not know what to do with someone who will not fight with him. If he complains, I will write another letter asking for understanding. I write, not fight, because he is not worth the anguish. 

I use the same kind of “head fake” with my students. I give them wise sayings from Dr. Seuss and from The House at Pooh Corner. They believe that children’s literature is only for children. It is later that they find out that it is like any fable: there are multiple levels of meaning. Here are three examples which I use: two from children’s lit and one from a newsman.

"You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself in any direction you choose.
You're on your own.
And you know what you know.
You are the guy who'll decide where to go."
-- Dr. Seuss

"I can't imagine a person becoming a success who doesn't give this game of life everything he's got."  - - Walter Cronkite

"By the time it came to the edge of the Forest the stream has grown up, so that it was almost a river, and, being grown-up ,it did not run and jump and sparkle along as it used to do when it was younger, but moved slowly. For it knew now where it was going; and it said to itself, "There is no hurry. We shall get there some day." But all the little streams higher up in the Forest went this way and that, quickly, eagerly, having so much to find out before it was too late."  A.A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner.

Sometimes with this kind of head fake, students learn that “they are not just in an art course, but that ART courses through them.” Last semester, at the end of the class, I got this special email:  

“I hope you realize how much how you recognize what I do means to me!! As I've progressed through my years of high school and college, I've felt more and more like the teachers are just there in class for the money. It's "just a job". They aren't there because they are truly passionate about the material they teach.  They don't pride themselves in spreading their knowledge to the students either. Perhaps that's because the students do not show an interest in their class.  Whatever the case, it's a pitiful situation in my eyes. 

You however, have proved to be an exception. Not only was I interested in the material you put before me, but the way you presented it made the class what it is- brilliant, rewarding, and wonderful. You always came to class in a good mood, eager to start at exacly 8 a.m. and I LOVED that! I was disappointed to see students coming in 20 or even 30 minutes late because I knew just what they were missing. I hope you continue to teach your future classes as passionately as you did mine. You have made an outstanding impact on my life, and I appreciate that more than anything. I never hoped to come into this class and gain as much as I did, not only about the history of art, but about myself and the world around me.

The knowledge that I will use outside of class is just as important as the factual information I learned inside the classroom. I'm also grateful that you as a teacher acknowledged my honest and sincere participation in class. I try very hard in every one of my classes, but I was so much more motivated in yours because I knew that you saw just how much I truly desired to learn and succeed.”  

That email is one of reasons that I continue to teach (although I retired from museum management in 2000, having no problems stepping away from raising money and helping to lead a Board of Directors.) I have always been a teacher. Traditionally, the final essay from my students has been two typewritten pages double space that covers: What did you come into this course knowing about art? What did you learn here that you will take with you into whatever you do in life? What ideas will you revisit later when you think that you might need them? What would you change in the course to make it better? The email above was beyond that required essay. I give my email address to all students at the beginning of a semester. That action, in itself, is a head fake. 

Joe

Reading Randy Pausch's book, the chapter 'I Never Made it to the NFL', talks about the head fake, that Joe used in the first post.  In reading further I found this.

"There are two kinds of head fakes.  The first literal.  On the football field, a player will move his head one way so you'll think he's going in that direction.  Then he goes the opposite way.  It's like a magician using misdirection.  Coach Graham use to tell us to watch the player's waist. 'Where his belly button goes, his body goes, he'd say".

He goes on to say that the second one is really important, it teaches people things they don't realize they are learning.

Carol Anderson

What is most interesting about a head fake, anybody or any institution can do it. It took 68 years of viewing exhibitions at one museum to give me a real "head fake."

Life on Mars: 2008 Carnegie International Exhibition

Since I was right years old, I have gone to the Pittsburgh International Exbibition (which a few years ago was renamed to the Carnegie International). Traditionally, it filled the two upper galleries in the old museum and recently the new galleries on the top floor in the new contemporary museum. Today, when I visited, it took almost all the new museum and several traditional galleries of the old wing. It was a surprise to see contemporary works in the Greek and Roman section. The whole exhibition, for someone who sees “a lot of new works of art,” was a genuine head fake. Even the title, which was conceived before the forty artists were chosen, was a head fake. The exhibition had everything and nothing to do with “life on Mars” because it became clear was you walked from floor to floor, gallery to gallery, this was about how Mars was here, now, everywhere. “Remember, when in a foreign land, you are the foreigner!” If it is hard to see where we are since it is changing all the time, we all live in a foreign land, an alien world. We might as well call it MARS.  As the curator, Douglas Fogle, stated in the foreword to the exhibition brochure: 

“Conceived around the title Life on Mars, the 2008 Carnegie International explores the increasingly relevant yet perplexing proposition of what it means to be human today. The question, “Is there life on Mars?” is a rhetorical one posed in the face of an increasingly accelerating world in which global events challenge and threaten to overtake our everyday existence. 

The forty artists from all over the globe in this exhibition, each in his or her own way, metaphorically ask, “Is there life on Mars?” Their myriad perspectives and responses investigate the nature of humanness in this radically unmoored world and the alien inside us. Moving from micro to macro levels of experience and along paths that are both introspective and worldly; their explorations traverse the dramatic spectrum from tragedy to comedy. Questioning the absurdity of our lives yet demonstrating hope for humankind, these artists are inheritors of an artistic legacy that seeks to produce not the monumental but the momentary, the ephemeral, and the modest.

Working in all media, from painting and sculpture to film, video, photography, and drawing, they foreground the poetic over the absolute and the intimate over the heroic. In so doing, they transport us aesthetically to other worlds with the hope that each of us will learn to start loving the alien. In the end, Life on Mars poses a series of questions each of us must answer: Are we alone in the universe? Do aliens exist? Or are we, ourselves, the strangers in our own worlds? We are not alone.” 

You arrive on a level from the parking lot on the shiny, stainless steel elevator and emerge into a long hall that has been conceived and installed by Barry McGee, a San Francisco artist who loves to reflect punk, outside, and folk art in his creations. The walls and ceiling had the uncontrolled atmosphere of street art and the mediated contemporary art gallery. Found, discarded and recycled objects, motorized figures spray painting the walls, audio components, and video monitors exist alongside portraits, text, assemblages of framed photographs and drawings, and sections of optical color-field “wallpaper” explode within your eyes. It is a Best Buy store on steroids. The motorized figures include his trademark images of morose, droopy, caricatured faces inspired by the transient and homeless population of San Francisco. Walking by this art, it is like all the mega-cities of the world.  As the brochure says, “The temporality of his visual language and the immediacy of its communication convey a history that is continually written, erased, and written again.” 

From that experience you walk up the long steps, with broad steps, color exploding quietly from the primary-colored walls, and into the first gallery, filled with cartoons that act as important art. When the International first opened this time, a guard who could not take the lowering of traditional standards on what he thought was the art that should be shown, took a knife and cut arpart a painting, valued at several thousands of dollars. Arrested, he no longer guards the works on the walls. He was from Pittsburgh; these works of art were from Mars. 

In gallery upon gallery, you find eclectic ranges of media; Maria Lassnig’s paintings from Vienna, Austria, which shows the anguish of her life (“I want to be as independent as possible of machines and complicated tools. Painting is a primeval art.”); Daniel Guzman’s drawings from Mexico City which seems anguished and intimate, yet also bitterly ironic (“Here, pre-Hispanic symbols, such as the moon, the pyramid, and the rabbit, join with caricatures of politicians, cosmic imagery, and rock music icons in a vomiting-up of hope and greed, good and evil, pleasure and violence.”); sculptures wrapped for sending (to God know where) by Matthew Monahan of Los Angeles, California, seem to be composed and decomposed from a wide range of materials (“…translucent structures integrate and encase these grotesque bodies, incomplete and (filled with)…museological piety and violent iconoclasm-both set loose.”); Mario Merz’s art encapsulates a confrontation with the technological, the rational, and the mass-produced (“His work shares many of the preoccupations of Arte Povera- literally “poor art”- a term coined to describe the work of a loosely associated group of artists working in the vibrant milieu of the Italian art scene beginning in the 1960s onward.”); and then, at the end of gallery, off to the far left is an entrance created with cardboard and shiney, plastic, brown package tape, we were transformed into modern cavemen. It was a work by Thomas Hirschhorm, who was born in Bern, Switzerland, but lives and works in Paris.

As the brochure tells us, “Cavemanman (2002) is a sprawling, shambolic network of cardboard caves, a spectacular information-crammed labyrinth of slogans and tableaux concerning Iraq-war militarism and martyrdom, sadomasochism, and materialistic greed. This unforgiving environment excavates and examines the brutality and consumerism of our time.”  

As you walked through this last statement of where we all live in our “abundance of abundance” and “abundance of less”, the televisions on the walls walked us through the Lascaux Caves and the cave drawings of the first humans who walked upright on this globe.  

Just when you think that you have left this International Exhibition in the galleries, it opens up again in the traditional museum, the Science Wing, the traditional Roman and Greek statue wing held two almost-last exhibits: One by Bruce Conner, who recently died in San Francisco (a classmate of mine at the University of Colorado in their master’s program) and Mike Kelley of Los Angeles.   

Bruce was an artist who, whether responding to atom bombs, or surfing, the Kennedy assassination, Western movies, Christian iconography, outer space, Marilyn Monroe, or television advertising, refused a characteristic style. He almost did not graduate because of this aspect of his personality. “His work often expresses his strong aversion to commercialism, celebrity, and assimilation, and it can also reflect narratives such as the explosion of mass-media culture following World War II and the paranoia of the cold war.”

Among the Greek statues of gods, the curator placed Conner’s work “in memoriam.”  The images, called the Angel series, are captured without a camera. The apparitions result from standing in front of light-sensitive paper that was then exposed to the beam of a slide projector.  “As the visual memory of an elusive artist who has continually disrupted attempts by art history to pin him down- and who for many years refused to be photographed- the Angels are an affirmation of the ineffable, the ungraspable, and the extraordinary.”  

On seeing these images, Bruce Conner is still an alien in our midst, an artist who stands outside the establishment, and, in a strange turn of our curious workings, is now glamorized by a selected spot in the traditional wing of the Carnegie Museum of Science and Fine Arts. Another artist, Mike Kelley, was similar in his approach over his three decades of work. 

When you walked into the bottom level of the traditional Greek and Roman gallery, you knew that this was a strange, new world, a world of constant global weather change and domed cites with piped in clean air.  “The Kandors series (2007) takes its inspiration from the fictional city of Kandor in Superman comics. Kelley re-envisions Superman’s lost homeland as miniaturized Atlantis-like cityscapes covered by glass domes. Sound, light, and motion envelop a surrealistic topography through an all-encompassing sensory experience.”  

To bring us all back to the real of our world and things that we understood, we walked through the newly-redone wing of  Carnegie’s science section, the museum’s dinosaur room. Outside, at the bus stop with a bronze dinosaur’s neck overhanging the walkway, a derelict asked for donations for dinner. A discarded soft drink can was wedged amongst the bushes. While we passed that way, the bus came with advertisement for Hellboy II, The Mummy and The Dark Knight.

On arriving home, we caught the final moments of gymnastics, Michael Phelps swimming for another gold metal, some saber fighting, beach volleyball, laced with commercials for Coca Cola and GMC. We were citizens again from Mars and as good citizens we were reticent to question our multi-colored, multi-dimensional, and many-layered commercial existence. It was a great head fake of a day. We even had video-tapes of the (Greek) Olympic opening which a friend had recorded for our later viewing so that Beijing, which was really Mars (but we never questioned that also), could be seen in all its five hours of magnificent commercialism, selling the New China (a new landing on a planet, like Mars, that most of the world had never seen.)

What an interesting bunch y'all are.  Being painfully aware that I'm in "hit the meeting, cut and run mode", I'm bemused by your extended sharing.  Grateful but bemused.

Still, gotta go catch an airplane.  tayl . . .

Karen -