We Need Healing by Cadence

These are two music videos by Cadence, Jaden and little brother. They are children of Jordan and Michael "Kay" Klindt. I was honored to be one of Michael's teachers when he was in middle school. Now, as you can see, he is a teacher with a capital T!

Jayden's song

Policing Model

Back from the Listening Circle. Digesting. We'll see what happens.

Best thing that can happen: this is a step. People were honest.
Worst thing that can happen: More sacrifices.

What I Saw and Heard at DisOrient 5

I was asked for names of films I saw so my friends and relatives who did not go to DisOrient can google.

(*) means I have bought a festival copy or will buy as soon as it becomes available. (&) means I have the CD and can sing along! (**) means the festival copy is uniquely coolly packaged and if you go to festival to see this, buy one now and don't wait!

**Opening Night: "Mr. Sadman" Patrick Epino, director and Al No'mani as Mounir, a Saddam Hussein double, unemployed goes to Amerika and to borrow a phrase from Spike Lee's "Malcom X," Plymouth Rock lands on him. Al No'mani's Mounir is hard to shake. Get ready to have him stay with you for awhile. You will be having conversations with yourself, so, my suggestion is go to see the film with friends who like to talk about films.

& "American Me" songs and music by Dawen, available now on CD GET IT!

"Lovely to Me, Immigrant Mother" music video by Taiyo Na. Download!

"Keep Pushin" music video by Johnny Le for Kero One. Johnny's from Portland! Check him out! He and ROP represented us!!

Shorts:
*"Born Sweet" (28 minutes) documentary Cynthia Wade, Cambodia. To say it's about the effect of arsenic poisoning on a rural area and a 15 year old's survival and achievement of a goal to be a karaoke star just does not do this dvd justice. It's such a powerful story.

*"Guam is Crying" Alex Munoz's music video a must download.

"I Want to be Desi" Allan Tong

*Lt. Watada (40 minutes) documentary by Freida Lee Mock highlights Ehren and his family in his courageous stand

*Feature "Why Am I Doing This" Tom Huang comedy about the plight of actors of color getting work

*"A Village Called Versailles" documentary directed by Leo Chiang, a documentary of the Vietnamese community in New Orleans after Katrina and how they united to stand up for their neighborhood -- young and old -- and learned about civics not from a book but on a grassroots level.

*I have "Midas' Son" dvd. I missed this but have a copy and will view it. It's a short directed by Annetta Morgan who was present.

*"Ajumma! Are you Krazy???" directed by Brent Anbe (comedy short) Ajumma are outspoken women, middle aged. These three are also fans of a Korean celebrity track him down when he visits their town in Hawaii and the escapade follows.

*"You Can't Curry Love" directed by Reid Waterer a sweet romance set in India between an East Indian businessman from London visiting New Delhi and meeting a local man. Must choose between love and business promotion. Bollywood dance included.

"Works of Art" directed by Andrew Pang, a short about a struggling NY actor snags an interesting, unwelcome role with a twist.

"Security Guard Karaoke King" directed by Jazmin Jamias, an "all too short" piece about her dad.

"Empire Corner" directed by JP Chan
ans "Wu is Dead" directed by Richard Wong are two shorts, two parts of a story which I want to see a lot more of!

"Love? Pain" directed by Han Tang You've got to see it. To speak it doesn't really give you the impact. As the title says, it is about Love? and Pain and you'll feel it when you see it. Also check Han Tang and James Horiuki Liao's "Yellow Face"!

"Operation Baby Lift" directed by Tammy Nguyen Lee, feature documentary. Important because of the revealing and rich interviews of the adults who were some of the 2500 babies airlifted out of Vietnam at the end of the war and adopted by Americans. I don't understand why a third of the film focused on the American social workers in orphanages in Viet Nam who made the decisions for Operation Babylift. Now elders, and seemingly still burdened with their personal pain resulting from the controversy which followed their involvement in "Operation Babylift" it was another story and, in my opinion, clashed with the story of the adult adoptees.

*&"Fruit Fly", a musical and comedy by HP Mendoza who was accompanied by actor, LA Renigen to the festival. LA plays Bethesda, performance artist, affectionately called a "Fruit Fly" by her friend Mark who comforts her as she searches for her biological mother and struggles to become a performance artist in SF on the one hand and bristles at the label "Fag Hag" given to her by her roommate. (Sorry, forgot his name.) She finds respect, peace and community in between her auntie's calls from the Philipines. The songs are catchy, clever, funny and presses to the edge so smoothly that although in any other person's hands some of the lyrics may earn an R rating, it's as PG as a family gathering or hanging out with best friends. From 12 - 72, we're singing along and tapping our feet, having a happy time. What can I say. We love HP. There's no one like him. And he talks really fast so sit toward the front during the Q and A.

I will embed the wonderful Rites of Passage films by our students.
Shown were:
Race wars
Dream No More
Pursuit of Hapaness
Normal
My Life in brown and Pink

Carrying On! DisOrient Asian American Festival 5!

DisOrient Asian American Film Festival has found the groove and has grown into its own unique self. Happy Fifth Year!! Something beautiful happens in town when our artists travel here, stay in our homes, become part of community, when the local circle stays unbroken and just gets bigger. Something powerful and real happens when our brothers and sisters, allies join too and our visitors see the full circle -- the whole community which in Eugene is multi-multi. We can't do anything here without each other. It was beautiful then (Nobuko, Frank Chin, Lawson, Chris Ijima, Chop Suey, Janice Mirikitani, Free Cho Sul Lee! Unity, Taiko) and it's beautiful now (Patrick Epino, HP Mendoza, James Horiyuki Liao, Han Tang, Leo Chiang, Dawen, Johnny Le,Tom Huang, Brent Anbe, Marvin Choi, Daniel Kim, Jeraad Virani, Jazmin Jamais with best friend and brother). These long years of Asian invisibility between then and now is lifting and again, it's through ART.

Something beautiful happens when we just stay real and don't try to be LA corporate sponsored, suites for the big wigs. Nothing wrong with that. But if we try to pretend we're LA, everyone gets sick. It's natural and good to accept and be accepted for who we are and do what we do. We come to watch films loudly and with spirit. We come to get excited and have fun. We come to feed the people. We come to hang together and expand the circle bigger. We come to see the human heart in all its complicated ways through the stories of the filmmakers, actors, through the producers who put everything on the line so stories can be told, through film, through the music and songs and be moved. We come together without turning backs on our networks, or alliances, our friendships, our families and extended families for the weekend (too busy) because when the artists go, it's cool they leave behind an inspired movement who went through it together. Anything important is to be shared.

Something beautiful happened when we stayed true to our original vision -- a social justice vision.

I loved it that the filmmakers carried around their dvd's in backpacks, hand made dvd's just for the festival, just like then (books or poetry and history and radical analysis guerilla- printed at universities and sold up and down I-5 to spread the history of our people and the loud VOICES of artists who should never be gagged, sold out of backpacks). We line up to buy the films for the same reason -- to crack things wide open and to be inspired to carry it on, to nourish us until we meet again, to speak the unspoken, to shine light in the dark, to spread the love for our community and for those growing up behind us -- who by the way, are also there, taking tickets and hosting, showing films, both sides of the dance. It was beautiful to see DisOrient find their groove and be appreciated for it. It was beautiful to see that the Festival is about these artists -- both the homegrown filmmakers and musicians and those who travel all up and down I-5 and from all over Amerika and beyond who are making Asian American film and music stronger and a force in the world, who bring their art and stay awhile, and everywhere they go, they ARE the Festival, open hearted, generous, with full backpacks of "necessary supplies" to empty in each city or burg and spread the love.

DisOrient 5 has grown into its Vision, unashamed of self, doing it your own way -- carrying on with purpose, claiming its own place/spirit/time. Small festivals may not be the ones who push the film into the big industry audience, but they do take the films and make a movement.

Filmmakers and musicians, can you hear it? That's your art reverberating, echoing, bouncing back and forth across all lines. Can you feel it? You took art a bit further. You said some truth in your own way, with your own angle which made it memorable -- like a "cheating heart guy" having to eat his shirt for dinner (you have to see it) You made a place safer for kids, safer to love who you love, to walk hand in hand in public, to "come out" to your family (Just like Mom, we all "heart" you, Jaz!), opened up hearts which will lead to marriage equality. That is my faith. You just took the toxic out of the word Gay and made it a regular word: if one can sing it enough times in a minute, you can remember it and it becomes part of your cells. You lit a fire under the next generation and gave them hope that they can be the solution and city council, mayors and even the frigging military machine and "liar liar pants on fire" Presidents are supposed to work for the people. You gave us new young role models and with it gave our youth real options. You blew open our minds about arsenic poisoning. Spread this around the world. You told the dirty secret about how thousands of Guamanians have been cannon fodder for this war, unmasking colonialism and made people feel it through film, music and a story which reaches in and grabs the heart in a way mere words cannot. You soothed some pretty bad wounds and helped us put some humor into it. And, you just helped us lance that boil of hate which popped out of all of us from deep down where high school bullies still hide, recognize it, and then go on to keep on with what needs to be done to stop hate. You made us giggle/laugh out loud and in loving our aunties and our fathers, by loving all the quirky ways we are who we are as APIA's, love ourselves more. Can you feel it? Thank you! (Listening to Dawen's sounds right now!)

Carrying on! Congratulations and thank you, DisOrient 5! Encore!! Gotta' go now and get me some Boba, three at a time.

The View Outside the Belly

Today, while driving, news came on. The focus was the "financial situation" of the US. One speaker after another talked about the fear of future needs for bailouts and the financial condition.

You know you're outside the belly when all of this sounds like another language, an alien concept. Everyone I know is focused on what is happening to the Earth, other living beings, and Wall Street is not real.

You know you're outside the belly when nothing President Obama has done affected your life positively -- and you voted for him! There is no difference from the Bush years. You know you're outside the belly when news that he spent a whole day on the Space Program puzzles you. It stopped me in my tracks because my mind had already wandered to the expansion of environmental disaster on a galactic scale.

You know you're outside the belly when health care debates don't affect you because it doesn't cover your doctor. In fact, Indian doctors make no living off of curing people. You know you're outside the belly when you look on roadsides in the spring, checking for this year's medicine.

You know you're outside the belly when someone comes to your door and offers to mow your lawn and when you begin to say No, they look surprised. You realize that all over the neighborhood, manicured lawns make yours stand out as a field. "Uh, I'm waiting for the hyacinth growing in the lawn to fade," I clumsily explain.

You know you're outside the belly when you see a lawn full of dandelions and say, we must really need dandelions this year, not remembering up and down the street people armed with poison are eradicating them.

You know you're outside the belly when your leader, your doctor, your spiritual advisor -- the person you take guidance from on all levels -- is off the radar to political leaders and BIA tribes -- yet known all over the world.

This is really an outside the belly moment, that people with authority in this country, the experts, the people we're supposed to follow, listen to and believe, cannot see what every other world leader sees, cannot hear Truth, cannot see the true form of the true crisis, and instead chases paper money, and numbers, clinging to a world created by people like them visible only on balance sheets, stock market lists, totally made up. Can't see it, smell it, taste it, hear it, touch it. We are taught that this false reality can make you "rich" enough to buy health, home, prepare you for natural disasters, safety, influence, prestige -- money can buy all that.

But it's a lie. Winnemem teaches us that. New Zealanders know that. Cuba exists to reveal, it's all a lie.

Seriously, when I pick up a paper, tune into the news now, I feel like the media commentators -- whether left or right --, the Washington DC politicians, I feel like a bunch of mutants or alien beings have taken over these places. It's like we are not living in the same world. It's quite a Mad Hatter's party inside the belly of the beast.

ADDENDUM: Thanks to my friend Barry Reid's conversation starter on Facebook about physicist Stephen Hawkins warning of the real probablity of Alien Beings and cautioning everyone that they are more than likely coming to take over things, and in light of my own thoughts during that conversation, I must change the ending of this blog to delete any reference of alien beings and stick with the mutant metaphor. I do believe that somehow, maybe on a DNA level for some, they have mutated to mammom-centered, material-minded, profit-prioritizing species whose life goal has become to run amok -- scampering around, not knowing what they're doing or what they should be doing as part of Earth's living things, making horrible mischief -- and the salmon, the bear, the deer, the eagle and the mouse can no longer help them.

So my advice to Stephen Hawkins would be do not move toward fear, do not follow the mutated perspective how to be on Earth and fill your eyes with Life. Follow the salmon. Follow the water. The sacred is our teacher.

Please Hold in Prayer

The Winnemem Wintu Human Rights Violation Court Case has been taken off the court's calendar for Friday April 23, according to Chief Caleen Sisk Franco. Apparently, the judge will make a ruling and sending it to the attorneys. I can only pray this is all part of the Nur Ceremony and that the Winnemem and all that they stand for -- the Salmon, the Sacred Lands, their Ancestors, their Tribal Way of Life -- will persevere in the courts and Justice will finally be served. I can only pray that the rights of tribes and human beings, the rights of Nature and Earth are important.

So I agree with our Chief in asking all of you to say strong prayers for the Winnemem, the the courts will uphold the human rights of the Winnemem and all they stand for.