Rommel, Africa's Desert Fox, Nazi General

From the Wikipedia:

Erwin Rommel

In the course of the war, during parliamentary debate following the fall of Tobruk, Prime Minister Winston Churchill spoke of Rommel as a "daring and skillful opponent... a great General", comments for which the British Parliament considered a censure vote against Churchill. Writing about him years later, Churchill offered the following:

"His ardour, and daring, inflicted grievous disasters upon us. But he deserves the salute which I made him, in the House of Commons, in January 1942. He also deserves our respect, because although a loyal German soldier, he came to hate Hitler and all his works, and took part in the conspiracy to rescue Germany by displacing the maniac and tyrant. For this he paid the forfeit of his life. In the sombre wars of modern democracy, there is little place for chivalry.^[190]"

Rommel is regarded as having been a humane and professional officer.^[4] His Afrika Korps was never accused of war crimes, and soldiers captured during his Africa campaign were reported to have been treated humanely.^[5] Orders to kill Jewish soldiers, civilians and captured commandos were ignored.^[6] Late in the war, Rommel was linked to the conspiracy to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Because Rommel was a national hero, Hitler desired to eliminate him quietly. He forced Rommel to commit suicide with a cyanide pill, in return for assurances that Rommel's family would not be persecuted following his death. He was given a state funeral, and it was announced that Rommel had succumbed to his injuries from an earlier strafing of his staff car in Normandy...

Cultural Gulfs Tribute to Lucille (I Love Lucy) Ball, Chica Brava

The Woman Behind the Clown

Honorary new member of Chicas Bravas.  Lucy passed 25 years ago.

Sunday AM tribute in the vein of "Cultural Gulfs", and how urban USA markets create an incubator for diversity and equality to triumph in.  USA television became a vehicle for women's rights, cultural integration, and spawned a "Star Trek" culture where the vision of the future is cooperative diversity - the exact opposite of Hitler's Nazi Arian monoculture and Sharia etc.   Thanks, Lucy.

(PS: Funny, I wrote and posted this without even realizing it was the 25th anniversary of her death, I was just inspired by laughing at a rerun of I Love Lucy, and started blogging..."Like laundromats heros are sometimes right under our noses"... written with no clue she's on the cover of Huffington Post today)

Hispanic husband 6 years younger? So?

Rising on my list of heroes. Lucille Ball.  An honorary Chicas Bravas.

Hardest working woman in 1950s showbusiness.

Lucy's insistence on better quality led to invention of live studio taping, multi camera editing rooms. She and Desi negotiated to pay (rather than network pay) for the higher quality in return for the first "syndication" (rerun) ownership rights of their own I Love Lucy show, a smart move that paid for their own studio. She strong-armed Hollywood into accepting America would accept a bicultural husband-wife sitcom, and carried the ball.

What brought them down? Divorce didn't help. But according to this article Lucy got leveraged on production costs for these weird expensive production shows... Star Trek and Mission Impossible - which all the other studios had passed on.

She was scorned by many older, more powerful, Hollywood men. A real glass ceiling pounder. If we had had stronger womens equality in the 50s and 60s, and a kickstarter campaign, Lucy would probably be bigger than George Lucas.

Another Desilu production passed over by bigger Hollywood Studios?  Carl Reiner's Dick Van Dyke Show, which I grew up loving.  She sold Desilu to Gulf and Western in 1967, which combined it with Paramount pictures, a studio G&W bought a year earlier..

And I would add that it was Lucy who muscled in the inter-cultural marriage which made Loving vs. Virginia, the Supreme Court case legaizing all interracial marriages, easier for America to swallow.

Search periodicals like "The Economist" for insights into how Womenomics works.   Glass ceilings (and bamboo ones) hold back Japan, Africa, and Southeast Asia.

How Lucille Ball Made STAR TREK Happen

Published September 08, 2013 by Devin Faraci

Editor Wanted: Because Less Is More

Las Vegas, 4/18/2012.   Weather will finally hit the 80s today - it has been hotter at home in Vermont so far this week than here in Nevada.  Groups and small talk.  Tweet talks.

Had a long after-dinner discussion with someone whom I deeply respect in our little computer refurbishing community last night.  I know something in the blog wasn't resonating with him, thought we'd have a drink and he'd give me some guidance.   He's 11 years older than me, started out as a hippy scavenging from his job on a garbage truck, amazed by what people throw away.

Benjamin Franklin at work on a printing press. Repro of a Charles Mills painting

While he said he could respect the long-bomb "Foreign Affairs" posts, that he simply didn't have time for them, and said more importantly that my denser posts, digressions, and obscure historical parallels were losing people he hoped would be my allies.  He says that groups in the refurbishing community, in particular, could become a groundswell of support for the "geeks of color", the counter- obsolescence planning, and other crusades I'm engaging.

Sounds like a case for less is more.

Now, this blog began (if you go back to the first years posts) as a journal I was convinced that no one at all was reading.   I was shocked by the first comment ever posted... "Not quite no one."

Well, my secret desire is that I'm going to have time one day to tear all 2000 pages (including a number of as-yet unpublished posts that I wasn't happy with) down into 249 pages that say something that hasn't been said in a way that more people would listen to.  I don't happen to care whether that's during my lifetime.  I'm acutely, or rather chronicaly aware I could die next year.

My evening mentor said that's fine, but he'd like to see me pay $14 per hour to some college student or professor just to edit each post as it comes out.  After listening to him, it seems ironically more arrogant not to pursue the idea.