I finally got my old film “PedantPhilia” (originally on 16mm) re-digitized thanks to Dino from USC Cinematic Arts and it looks fabulous! And I have to admit, I was having a lot of trouble working with the whole download thing with dropbox because while it wasn’t that big of a file (17 GB), I am a noob, and I was working with Firefox, and my computer kept crashing at about an hour in. I still am not sure why. Finally I used the Edge, which I hate to be honest, but my new computer swears by it, and it seems to be what is de facto lately because that’s the PC for you. I’m a dinosaur.
Ok, I’m happy enough for now. So much more organizing to do, cleaning, and inventing. ugh.
Recently I was asked to speak about Asian American Pacific Islander issues for the Cultural Competency Committee. I was allowed 10-15 minutes to speak, and I chose to involve my friend, Pam Inaba to speak on her personal experiences with our culture as well. I gave myself the task of creating an interactive presentation in Prezi, and ultimately I also chose Visme to create timeline graphs with icons for my infographics from the Noun Project. This post serves to credit all of my resources for this project, and formally thank everyone in the community for their work. I was learning a lot about Asian Americans which would not have happened without this community of people who were able to share their legacies, and those who wrote about them.
The following is a scrapbook of ideas, artworks, and statements from people to whom I am indebted. There are more links referenced in this Prezi.
Yue Minjun Yue minjun and the symbolic smile poster, 2007Daniel Tommie Yin and Yang Sun and Moon Among the Clouds Wall Art | Yin Yang Decor | Sun and Moon Decor | Laser Cut Wall Art CompAidedCrafting
Filipinos in US Louisiana 1763Champion Chinese Hose Team of America, who won the great Hub-and-Hub race at Deadwood, Dak., July 4th, 1888. //www.loc.gov/item/99613961/
While browsing the Library of Congress’ Prints & Photographs Online Catalog, I came across two wonderful photos of Chinese “hose teams.” To commemorate July 4, the teams were competing in a fire hose tournament, also known as a “hub-and-hub” race. The teams raced 300 yards and competed for a $500 prize, a small fortune that would be worth around $13,680 today. As wonderful as these photos are, they also raised one important question: Why were Chinese immigrants in Deadwood, South Dakota, of all places, a town populated with colorful figures including, Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Potato Creek Johnny, Seth Bullock, and Al Swearengen?
The answer?
Founded in 1876 after settlers discovered gold deposits, Deadwood became an important, albeit small, town during the gold rush era.
The National Library of Medicine/Centers for Disease Control via Nature science journal Two men dissecting rats believed to be spreading the plague. The National Library of MedicineUnidentified Sikh men photographed in Bellingham, c. 1907 (Photo courtesy of the Whatcom Museum of History & Art)Filipino immigrants employed by a California farm in the 1920s. (Source)
Fumiko Hayashida holds her daughter Natalie on Bainbridge Island, Wash., on March 30, 1942. Hayashida and her family were forcibly removed from their home on the island and sent to internment camps in California during the US effort to imprison Japanese American’s following the bombing of Peral Harbor. (Smithsonian)
Living quarters of evacuees of Japanese ancestry at this war relocation authority center as seen from top of water tower facing southwest in Poston Arizona on June 1, 1942. National Archives
Surprise your loved ones with a set of 10 beautiful postcards featuring groundbreaking women of color psychologists. Each postcard includes a detailed biography of one female psychologist!
Professor Jean Lau Chin (1944-2020) Sticker Prof. Jean Lau Chin. An educator and clinical psychologist that worked to highlight clinical practice and ethnic minority issues within the mental health field.
Bettmann/Getty ImagesDr. Judy Chu was elected in July 2009 and became the first Chinese-American woman to serve in the U.S. Congress. She became Chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus (CAPAC) in February 2011. [Read More]Reinforcing the racialization of Asians as one and the same and positioning whiteness as the antidote and savior in fighting against them as a “disease,” more memes emerged that sought to reinforce these ideologies. In May 2020, Donald Trump, Jr. shared a meme on his instagram account that featured his father as the “Kung Flu Kid” (Moran 2020) (see Figure 2). Presenting an altered image of the 1980s film poster for The Karate Kid, the Instagram post features Donald Trump as the Karate Kid with former Vice President Michael Pence being photoshopped in as Mr. Miyagi. The number of issues present here are numerous and evident in just a glance: the text of the poster has been changed to say “the Kung Flu Kid,” and karate (a Japanese martial art) and kung fu (a Chinese martial art) are being conflated. In addition, the altered image and meme of Trump being the “Kung Flu Kid” implies that he himself is fighting the virus, with Mike Pence as his trusty sidekick.Hyun Jung Grant; Paul Andre Michels, Xiaojie Tan, Delaina Ashley Yaun Gonzalez GoFundMe; Kennesaw Police Department/Facebook (3)
Christina Yuna Lee and Michelle Go were killed within weeks of each other. It hits so close to home.
Yes, for one dollar more, you can get the neopolitan shake. What they don't tell you is that they mix all the flavors together. It tastes very good, and I also enjoyed their fries.
We did a bangbang with this and Big Jo's, where I ordered the fish burger. This is another very good Santa Monica restaurant where we need to return to try their burgers.
And not only is it impressive, but it crashed my browser just by loading more work. I haven’t had a lot of web crashes and it reminds me of the days of Flash and older when it happened much more often. This tells me they are doing a lot without even having to look at the code.
I just realized I’ve never looked at the code from a mobile browser before. New lesson:
This coded bookmark really works and is easy to install!
I’m trying to inspire myself to make more animation experiments. I’ll probably post some simple things with the two new Adobe products I installed recently. One is character Animator, and the other is the latest reboot of flash, Animate. Eventually I’d like to try Open Toon and Kryta to see what they’re like.
I could revisit the Hung Moon twins (conjoined by the hair) with the character design featured on the site. It would be nice to see them brushing their hair and trying to get to the middle together. Maybe that’s a little too much like Lady and the Tramp? Another thing that might be fun is braiding the hair or weaving a ribbon through it to keep it easier to manage. I also really like Sia’s hair bow, and I imagine one sister wanting the bow and the other really not into that style at all. I’m wondering if the other would prefer a bow made of hair over a fabric bow, or not any bow at all.
I’ve been making a lot of bonnets lately, and experimenting with different knitting patterns to complete them. In this instructional Beehive winter headwear booklet, it’s pictured on the little girl on the right in yellow.
While I like the original pattern, something about the fact that the pattern is turned in a new direction in the back panel doesn’t agree with me. So I started with some planned pooling on variegated yarns, using a number of stitches that would make plaid patterns. No that doesn’t fix the 90 degree turn on the pattern, but I was also able to use mitered squares to help the colors make more sense at least. In another version, I tried a couple of planned pooling patterns, one for the sides and another for the back.
Part of me didn’t like that solution either, so I’m still experimenting, now with a brioche honey comb pattern that I’m hoping will look better at 90 degrees. It’s also a much more bulky stitch which will make someone very warm with this on.
Some notes about the brioche stitch: it’s very easy to make mistakes with the k1b and slip a stitch, and a lot of trouble to fix or frog stitches. The pattern when examined closely looks a lot like a stockinette stitch with extra large stockinette stitches overlapping. The back side looks like the garter stitch backside of a plain stockinette stitch even though you are never asked to purl. It’s a very stretchy lost stitch and that can affect the final size of the bonnet. Instead of casting on 110 stitches, I might be inclined to stay with just 100.
I’ve decided to make a new section on my website for knits and crochet. Please check out https://wisforweb.com for this new section. I’m also thinking about adding a new section just for logos, although I don’t normally think of logo creation as my strong suit.
My beau Edwin bought this book for me as a Christmas gift, and I’ve chosen it as my first good read on my New Year’s Resolution book reading list, one of ten good books to read. It was edited with an introduction written by Jennifer Lee. It’s a sampling of some well known writers, some famous people, all on the topic of Paris. She does a fairly good job of cutting away at just the most exciting bits of what we adore about Paris from chocolate to fashion to the people, always just right on the nose.
I’m thinking a lot these days about a lot of things, and I’m in a writing mood.
I’ve had a lot of issues stabilizing my emotions lately with the world the way it is. I feel uncontained, and out of control; like there might be an explosion any minute and maybe a voice will come back to hurt me. I’ve been scared. I’ve felt haunted. It’s been provoking, and I’ve had a lot of weird dreams.
But I’m also hopeful. I’m wondering if there’s something good I can be doing that might be helpful others to make things better. It’s going to take a lot of work and a lot more courage, but I might be able to support.
I was baking chestnuts, and so many of them were just not good. But if I could just find a few good chestnuts, and really make sure they were beautiful, it would make all my hard work pay off. That’s the way I feel about documentary film making, too. We spend a lot of time rummaging through found footage for some very beautiful moments that just have to feel right, and unfortunately a lot of it goes in the trash. I want to salvage it if I can with animation, and there’s this very silly side of me that knows I could do that with anything. But that’s where I need to get my perspective on and figure out my purpose and balance on. What do I know about my subject? What am I trying to say? Have I said it? and is it clear? Knowing me, usually my meaning isn’t very clear.
I was thinking about how often we with schizo-affective disorder feel like the Joker in Batman; we are encouraged to look on the bright side of things yet we know we have to play the part of the person with the disability. In other words, we always feel two-faced because of the role we must play. The part people tend not to empathize with is that we might not have control of being appropriate, or having a flat affect. I don’t think it makes sense to carry a card around to permit being inappropriate, to help people understand it’s part of a largely misunderstood disability because I think that makes it seem like you might be pan-handling. However, am I enabling a stereotype to persist about mental illness and crime? The problem is that usually the mental illness occurs after the crime. It’s a problem of the chicken and the egg again. You are smelling the smoke before the fire ever occurs. It’s too easy to blame the victim. More often you have people who are relatively unknowns who either never hurt anyone, or more likely become the victim of abuse, sometimes self-inflicted. I’m thinking specifically of a young actress, Elizabeth Hartman who died after receiving the most aspiring young actress award in “A Patch of Blue”.
I have been crocheting with a new technique called “planned pooling” and I made a small sample in a very colorful fiery festive mango in red heart colors. I turned it into a cozy for my Calif mug, an independent living center organization that helps people with disabilities advocate for themselves with housing, health, and other benefits. I felt that this particular crochet piece worked well with the mug because it reflects the dramatic vibrant colorful clown-like show we often put in front of us to show the world how well and “normal” we have made ourselves or rehabilitated ourselves in order to fit in. Underneath the cozy, of course is the CALIF disabilities logo.
Last night I had a weird dream and it made me wonder. How mature could I be these days socially at school? In this dream I was given a second chance at entering kindergarten, this time with a full understanding of the English language. For those of you who don’t know, I was raised with Chinese and Taiwanese language only, so I remember being very confused in every school I entered even when asked about my name. In fact, in this dream, I was asked to participate in choir as well. I knew this could not be first grade but they gave me a full Manila packet with my name on it and told me where to meet all the other choir students. I was very excited. There was even a little change in the envelope like two dollars and fifty cents. And everyone was rushing to get places. People were all looking to see where to go. It felt like an episode of survivor because everyone was obviously much older than just first grade but having a difficult time finding the rooms they needed to find.
I woke up before I got there. But I found myself curious about how confident a child I might have been if I had had the same chances as others at success with being popular socially. Or would I have worse off?
I have been reading something that says that being joyful and less worrisome lends itself to bring curious. In other words, you attract opportunity by being positive. It helps to stay confident because people can entrust you with more responsibility and see that you are still well through it. Hopefully, it is a genuine confidence and one that can help others as well. Being able to confide in others is a strength because honesty is fundamental to happiness. For every joy we know we have seen sorrow. Honesty and joy is the ability to tell the story with the perspective and Grace that G-d allows us resilient time to live, flow, and move on from it.
If I remember correctly, Taiwanese is one of those languages where there is no past tense, and no future tense, so there is no need to conjugate. It makes me wonder how much the sense of time and urgency is felt in an island, and how true it is that Asian time or island time is very casual. In other words, everyone is always late, and now is always both everywhere and all the time with as much presence and pleasure as yesterday.
It’s very opposite the feeling I get from being from New York where being on time is so important and especially calling in sick when you are not going to be in to work or at school.
I mean, my father didn’t even know what day he was born, and he was a twin. That alone gives you an impression of how little importance that time had back then, particularly birthdays, and how different the culture was or perhaps still is.
Today, which is now two days later from the dream, I had an interesting conversation with a friend about sex, which got me to think that this might also be my philosophy about what a good story is as well. There are two good reasons for having it: the curiosity of self-discovery or for the mission of pro-creation with both ultimately having everything to do with how well the relationship goes with the other person. Lately I think the problem of our society is how hard it is to maintain healthy interpersonal boundaries with people especially with all the different hats we all wear and the many different ways we’ve learned to communicate these days with technology, roles, and the many different political situations that very much complicate each path. I’m hoping that whatever happens in this weird political climate, we learn to find some easier paths to make communication better, simpler, and more helpful especially for those who need help with advocacy.
My name is Sandra Cheng, and I am a mental health recovery specialist, also known as a peer advocate.
One of the things I’ve learned about myself through this job is that I am still learning. Every day there is more to know, and I am looking for clues as to how to achieve my goals with a positive attitude and encouragement of myself and others.
One of my latest challenges has been to befriend everyone on Facebook that requests it. Normally I think of myself as a very private person, and I don’t like to “meet” new people online. I am not using the site as a dating site, as some might, but I also do not disclose my relationship status online in an effort to remain simply me without a temporary definition of who I want to be. I am opening myself up to new kinds of online relationships, the kind that provides support without crossing unhealthy interpersonal boundaries.
I hope that you are enjoying my posts, and feel free to reach out to me. I really am not looking to chat anyone up online, but simply remain in wonder of what each of us has to offer as an online friend.
I’m not usually one to make political statements but the latest banter about Hilary’s issue with the emails bugs me. As a woman who has witnessed so much injustice personally regarding fair wages and sexual infidelity, I can’t help but see that people who are criticizing Hilary for her “secrecy” as being completely negligent of the fact that she was the victim of a lot of secrecy from her husband. With his many sexual escapades, who is to blame for the security issues in our government?
Technological competence is a luxury that elite and usually simply younger people only can afford. I can barely understand what was wrong with this server issue, and I am someone who was coding in html and working with plenty of different computer systems. How can I blame just her for this email scandal when I myself wouldn’t know how to do what those people were asking for right now? This problem was and probably still is systemic, and endemic of a political structure full of discrepancies, especially with regard to sexual, racial, and international politics.
In fact, I bet that Hilary had a right to being an angry, neglected wife who really needed to vent. Who could trust this “security” protocol which was also keeping her husband’s secrets from everyone? Shouldn’t I write emails as a form of therapy to anyone who would listen? I can’t imagine how horrible that kind of emotional stress must have felt to each and every one protecting the First Lady and the President.
My only problem with having Hilary as the President would be having Bill as the First Gentleman. I am very uncomfortable with that. It feels like a position that should go to the man of her choosing. I suppose if she forgave him, there must be something worth looking at there. I’ll have to follow their ideas more closely before I vote for anyone. But as someone in the field of recovery and healing from addictions, I think it’s my responsibility to give people a second chance. People do change. Perhaps this role as First Gentleman would heal something in us as well, because we’ve all been lied to before, and we’ve all had to forgive. Maybe it’s time to see things change by giving Hilary a chance to allow him to help her.
Confessions of an Artist 
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