Liberal-oriented columns, commentary and archived articles on national and international news, politics, and the communication arts--with emphasis on China--by Joseph Bosco, author, journalist, director and actor; Professor of Drama and Communications at Beijing Foreign Studies University. 

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Exit Laughing, Surgery at Beijing # 3


I have just learned from my orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Liu Zhongjun, that I will finally enter Beijing Hospital # 3 this next weekend, May 30, for a very difficult, high-risk surgery to repair both old and new injuries to my spinal chord and spinal column--two metal plates will be screwed into place in the hope that I will walk freely again. I have been lying in bed for 4 months now awaiting this surgery. I will not go into the reasons it took so long for this to happen: after all, this is China. And most folks, most of them Chinese, think I am absolutely out of my mind crazy to have such problematical surgery here rather than in America.

My answer is always the same: China is my home now. I left the USA six years ago and no longer have a home there anywhere. Also, the people I most want around me as I go into surgery, and one would hope out of it, are here.

I have no delusions. This is dangerous surgery and I will be a "foreigner" in a setting that quite rarely has accommodated same. I am scared. Very scared. Yes, I have had 3 lumbar fusions in the States back during the 80's; I have broken most of the major bones in my body, including my neck, and have had operations to remove any number of bodily parts, from a big toe to my gall bladder, plus tumors in my lung and intestines, and the surgical inflation of a collapsed lung, among so many other maladies that come with living life immoderately. For various reasons, however, this surgery scares the hell out of me.

But, come what may, I will do it here; in China. The surgeon has an excellent reputation, and I trust him.

I have made many enemies, and generated many critics, in my life and through my published works. I regret only some of them. I have made even more friends. I ask for friend and foe alike to take a moment in these weeks to come to send good wishes my way cosmically, and prayers, even though I am not a "believer." I need all of the luck and good will that is possible for a life-long heretic such as myself to engender. Please.

I have posted the picture above, from the recent gala event celebrating the opening of the Chinese film, One Man's Olympics, because not only did I defy doctors orders and leave my bed and home to attend the event, in great pain and with much risk, I am laughing greatly for the first time in a long time. They have just presented one of the many awards of the night, a real "starters" pistol to Li Zhaolin, a graduate from China's Central Academy of Drama, and a true athlete, who stars as Liu Changchun in the film--we just called him "The King" on the set ala Elvis Presley. For many different reasons I had a good belly-laugh at the moment.

I truly hope I will have many more such moments.
  

8:37 PM / Editor / permalink    1 comments



Thursday, May 22, 2008

One Man's Olympics Opens


The Chinese feature film, One Man's Olympics, that we shot all last summer, has opened nationwide. I will not review the film overmuch, since I play a featured foreign role; which renders me too subjective to do so. I will say this: through out my career I have hated to watch myself, and very rarely do so, be it on TV or film. However, under the direction of Hou Yong, a genius with light and the moods of color, for the first time I did not flinch whenever this craggy old face was on screen.

It is the story of Liu Changchun, the first person to represent China in the Olympics, in Los Angeles, 1932. While the liberties of storytelling somewhat gloss over absolute historical fact, it is a very human film that makes one feel good to be one, and particularly to be a Chinese human during those so turbulent times. The screenplay has some structural problems, with perhaps too many flashbacks in a short period of time trying to cover a rather epic story.

Yes, it is undoubtedly a "feel-good film," which does not diminish its impact as a story worth telling; I hope it receives the box-office attention expected of it. It is scheduled to run 100 days in cinemas across China. The tragic earthquake in southwest China has preempted the press coverage the film was geared to garner for its opening. Indeed, the gala celebration of its opening turned into a combination film fest and a fundraiser for the as yet untold thousands of victims of the quake.

A short review from CRI is available here; and a really fun presentation of that gala night is here, and here. Yes, my vanity insists that I post a picture of the cast of the film on-stage below; I'm the ugly old dude center-left (in stage direction lingo), minus hat, which was lost that night, damn it!

  

5:06 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Sunday, April 20, 2008

Joseph Allen Bosco, Happy Birthday Number One!

Okay, big deal, so I'm six days late, shoot me, please: On April 14, Joseph Allen Bosco, my first and only granchild, celebrated his FIRST BIRTHDAY! I am certain he was surrounded by at last two very special, loving families--along with a few of my old ballplayers and second sons--in New Orleans.

But, dadgum, I can't give you the picture proof because for some silly reason the Baby Joseph Allen Bosco website won't load here in China, at least not in the last few days. Surely it can't be the Great FireWall of China; that young'n and his mom and pop are not into politics of any kind, not even local.
  

8:17 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




I'm Hurting and Soon They'll Be Cutting...

It's been close to three months since I've posted to these pages. The reasons are not ideological, external (or internal) banishment, nor can I say that I was too busy. The reason is quite simple. Doctors ordered me not to. No, I don't mean that doctors specifically ordered me not to post to The LongBow Papers; the doctors ordered me not to come even close to my desk, which is where my computer is. The doctors ordered me to stay flat on my back in bed. Period. And I don't own a laptop; consequently, no posting. Those orders have not changed. I am finally defying doctors' orders because a lot of people think I vanished from the face of this earth, a goodly number of them do so with much pleasure; so here's to 'em! And then there are the many wonderful people who are wondering why I haven't answered e-mail since god was a pup.

The reason doctors rendered such an order is also simple; albeit the full story behind it is 26 years old and quite complex. But I won't punish you with the full ancient history here; folks that know me well know that story all too well. The present situation alone takes a bit of telling.

In late January, I began to lose control of my legs, quickly. Within days I went from more than my usual slight limp to lurching and hobbling, with pain over-the-top; soon my legs were crumpling without warning and I was falling down in public and crawling. I couldn't make my legs do what I wanted them to do. The humiliation was and still is unspeakable. Thank goodness most people around the university were gone for the winter break and Spring Festival. Unfortunately, that also left me alone--without the ability to walk.

I managed to lurch, hobble and crawl enough to stock the apartment with a lot of instant Chinese fast-food. I then spent the next 3 weeks hobbling and crawling thankfully out-of-sight at home. And the pain grew--exponentially.

When people returned and found me in such a state, I was able to get to a hospital. I was not the least bit surprised to learn that I had severely injured my lower spinal chord and needed major surgery. Not surprised, but angry as hell at myself and the cosmos.

26 years ago, I fell off of a stage and fractured L-5 vertebrae. I then had three lumbar fusions during the late '80s, all unsuccessful. The doctors wanted to continue their annual cutting, right through the largest muscle and cartilage mass in the human body (the reason we can walk upright and dogs can't); with each one meaning a month in a hospital and a year in a torturous body brace hoping one's own bone wouldn't pull a Benedict Arnold and reject its own.

But I said that's it, no more surgeries on my back. I said it emphatically and somewhat cutely: "When you guys come up with a zipper to put back there, maybe then I'll let you try again!" I'll never forget my surgeon's words (he was and still is a dear friend, just very far away now, and retired): "All right, Joe. But some day you're gonna come back in a wheelchair crying for it." I said, "No, doc, I won't. You really don't know me."

For the next 21 years I tried my best to live a normal life; in pain constantly, but it was manageable. I didn't take pain-killers because I couldn't write or think clearly with them. Scotch helped a lot; so did a bunch of aspirin and really good "smoke." I mean, I beat that sucker for 21 years, and I was damn proud of it.

I'm not a Christian, but in the Bible it says that "Pride goeth before a fall." And so it did. It laid me low. But so much worse than before; the damn spinal chord now is almost clipped shut!

I have been confined to bed for 8 weeks now, waiting for the bureaucracy to twiddle and piddle its way through so I can have my back operated on--that which I swore I would never let happen again. But there is little choice. It's either surgery, or I'll never walk again--nor do any of the other things the lower half of one's body is blessedly useful for.

But no bone fusion this time. They have high-tech procedures now. A thin titanium plate with tiny screws will lock it up right and tight--after and if they can get all of that bad bone out of the way. You see, it is also now high-risk surgery because of all that useless bone that was taken from my thigh and packed along side L-5 and L-4 vertebrae with a wing and a prayer that it would all fuse together into a stable lower mid-spine.

I can't have an MRI due to some steel buckshot still in my head from my crazy youthful days; one is buried in the optical nerve behind my left eye and would be pulled in a yankee instant ripping and tearing through the eyeball by the magnetic field created by the fandangle machine. So the surgeons won't truly know the condition of the bone where the screws must go until they get inside.

As a fine Chinese doctor said to a close confidante upon a visit to refill my prescription of anti-inflammatory medication (he won't even let me out of bed to get my medicine): "If we make a tiny mistake and hit the nerve...?" and let his words trail off ominously. That was the English translation of what he had said in Chinese, but the meaning when translated and mimed later was all too telling.

And that brings up a question I am too often asked: Why am I not going back to the States for the surgery? And this question comes from Chinese friends mostly, because virtually all of my friends and associates are Chinese.

Therefore, in no particular order: Reason number one, I can't afford it. Reason number two, China is my home now. Reason number three, almost all of the people I care about the most are in China. Reason number four, I no longer have a home anywhere in America. Reason Number five, the only family in America I love and trust enough to be with me in a hospital room and not pull a plug and murder me, is my son Joseph, his wife Michelle, and Baby Joseph Allen Bosco--and with his blessed addition to their life and home, they have no room for me to stay before and after surgery. It would also put my son Joseph in the terrible position of having to stand against a couple of family members who would be most likely to pull the plug, people whom he loves very much.

And reason number six: The surgeons in China are as good as any in the world.

In closing this overlong tale of woe, I want to say how wonderful Beijing Foreign Studies University, my employer, has treated me throughout this ordeal--and continues to. Since I have not been able to teach at all this semester, by contract they could have sent me packing, bag and baggage many weeks ago, evicting me from my home of the past four years. But they have not. They are doing everything possible to secure my complete recovery and continue my stay here at Beiwai well into the future. I am so very grateful; truly beyond measure.
  

6:34 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Friday, February 01, 2008

Give Me That Old Time Liberalism

It is frightening but amazing what living on the other side of the world--in both distance and culture--can reveal about home to an American who understands the privilege of being one. In my case, it is from Beijing, China--the Capital of an authoritarian state far, far removed from being anyone's model of good governance--where for the better part of a decade now, I've watched and shuddered at what America became at-large in the 21st Century world.

It is with joy then that I pine for a better turn of the electoral screw in the presidential election that will finally end the criminal misrule of what was unquestionably the worst American administration in a century or more. We will do this huge thing well less than a year from now. But who will fill the Black Hole of leadership that was Bush & Cheney? Surprisingly, it's still too early to venture a responsible call. But below I offer some attributes I believe imperative that we find in her or him, a timely exercise with the looming 'national primary' and the unseemly rancor of the primary races:

He will speak like Democrats used to. She will speak the words we need to hear from a fellow citizen leading the still greatest experiment in Freedom the world has yet known. He will remind us that we love freedom so much we will gladly pay the price of an open society rather than accept the slavery of a closed one in exchange for some dubious promise of safety. That is not America. She will tell us that the lesson of 9/11 was not how vulnerable we are. America has always been vulnerable to those who will use our freedoms to strike at us. But how often has it happened? Rarer than hen's teeth.

He will say that the lesson of 9/11 was and is how a great and open nation of people living free have the proven durability of our constitutional system to shake off everything from a great Civil War, two world wars to end all wars, assassinations of presidents and citizen leaders, even the stealing of a national election, yet still the ship of state will right itself and remain the envy of all people dreaming to live free.

With a clear and ringing voice she will have us remember that there was honor in never striking first. He will say there was greatness in climbing up from the bloodied ground and striking back with justice and the unwavering force of a nation united.

Those days can not come again, the dangerously rash first-blow was struck, but the principles can; we simply need the return of leaders who actually believe in America and Americans, all of us. We need leaders with the clarity of an informed world vision; we do not need leaders who vent and flail about in personal rage and messianic revenge. We are America. We whipped Hitler and Tojo at the same time; we did it with indisputable right on our side. We did it with no brag or strut from the White House or the houses of state.

We did it after being attacked enforce in the ultimate sneak attack by a whole nation, a major nation with a military dwarfing our own; not by a gang of disparate zealots murderously out-of-time living in caves and huts and crowded one-bedroom walkup flats next to strip malls. You beat nations with armies; you bust criminal gangs with damn good cops, and a plan; there are excellent precedents for both notions.

So how can we let anyone continue to change us only because we are afraid of being hit again? When did we become the bloated silver-spoon pretender on the school playground who cries for sympathy, railing in self-pity and self-righteousness when sucker-punched by some loudmouth loser? Give us back our honor and our freedom to choose greatness over smallness. Give us back men and women who know that being an American means that we must live and act above lesser, malignant systems, even when it hurts and bleeds; especially then.

Give us leaders who wield the rule of law and rationality, not the rule of born-again believers of intolerance who revel in their dependency upon only their own kind. Give us men and women who are not afraid to be wrong and say so. Give us leaders who will talk to us and lead out front, not preach at us and hide in back.

Give us leaders with big ideas, not small ideology. Give us leaders who love words and books and art and all the things that lift up our eyes and minds to see and imagine what we can become, not only what we have been. America has always been about the future; a well-intentioned better one more often than not, albeit with many contradictions and moral aberrations we must never forget.

But mostly give us leaders who know that America is a state of mind, not a state of mine or yours, or us or them--then no one but the most base will feel the need to strike it down because it is not theirs. Yet when they do strike, give us leaders who will lead openly, honestly as we march back with deliberate pace, together, with might and right in our rifle clips, Humvees and stealth bombers.

Where are such men and women to be found today when we need them more than breath itself? Because to continuing breathing the air of fear and hatred, the air of isolation and incivility towards those whose language, race or culture is different, is not to live and breathe as Americans at all.

Clinton or Obama? Let us hope either or both of them can rise above their vote-gathering and be the leaders we need so badly. It surely won't come from the other party, which has all but conceded its right to govern the Republic for time unseen by its accumulations of crimes against it.
  

7:22 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Sunday, January 13, 2008

Sanity Rules In Taiwan

It is surely no surprise to regular readers of these pages that I agree with China's central government on the national status of Taiwan. By modern international decree, at the very least, (i.e. Messrs. Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin.; etc., etc.) it is a province of China--which is almost universally recognized as the People's Republic of China--and should remain so, albeit with some extraordinary concessions that cannot be ginger-cake.

It is also no surprise to me that many, if not most of you disagree; some of you vehemently. Nothing wrong with that.

The short version of why I think as I do is one word: Sovereignty. The long version is also short: Sovereignty is everything; without it, there is no nation-state. Therefore, to remain a nation-state, sovereignty must be rationally claimed and defended to conclusion, whatever that conclusion might be.

The arguments and analogies pro or con are all but endless and, more importantly, are better served in lecture halls and diplomatic backrooms than in these pages. I will only excerpt and link to a news story in The New York Times that I find heartening in its facts, and believe you should read.

Opposition Wins Taiwan Parliamentary Election

By DAVID LAGUE
Published: January 13, 2008

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- The opposition Kuomintang party won a landslide victory in parliamentary elections in Taiwan on Saturday. President Chen Shui-bian, who has antagonized China with his efforts to forge a national identity for the self-governing island, resigned as chairman of the governing Democratic Progressive Party to take responsibility for the loss.

The victory by the Kuomintang enhances its prospects of success at the voting for president in March, in which it is expected to continue campaigning for closer ties with China.
Please continue reading at The New York Times
  

6:11 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Saturday, January 05, 2008

First Christmas

Ya gotta be kidding me, Grammy. Are all Holiday Seasons this good?

This is Grandpa Bosco, and well, yes, they are, Baby Joseph Allen Bosco; during those magical days and years of youth, or at least they should be. Children with the joy of wonder in their minds and hearts, who are loved by the family around them come what may, special children like you, are truly blessed. That is the essence of the Christmas Story, is it not? That is why Christmas--and the Holiday Season around it--is only really Christmas when there are children at the center of it.

While I am on the other side of the Planet from you, and likely will be for some years to come, please know that you are a huge chunk of my life every moment, regardless of the global time of day or distance between us.

And now the photographic tale of Christmas, family-style in New Orleans, 2007, which will forever be your first: It is a very good one, with your sense of self and style emerging daily in the photographs I treasure. Thank all gods for the Internet. Without it, we would too long age and develop with little visceral knowledge of one another. And I wouldn't have the thrill of knowing that more than a few thousand people every month, from all over the world, are also getting to know you in these pages.

Mr. Personality in Sartorial Christmas Splendor
* * *


The Holiday Season Begins!


Dad, I heard you tell Grandpa and 'Grandma' Bosco that it never freezes in New Orleans--what's up with this?


Hey, Big Guy, I've been good; really, I have, take my word for it.


I heard Holiday Season is also Party Time, Dad?


And so it is, with Uncle Alex.


Hey, I like this Party Time stuff, Uncle Alex!


Let the good times roll! Forget dem Saints; go Peyton!


Yeah!


Christmas is here! But, Dad, where's your hat?


There ya go. Aren't we cool?


Grandma Linda is in her sartorial Season splendor: "No rush, I'll be walking soon, and you'll get more than your exercise running after me."


Grandma Pat and Grandpa Allen are looking good, too.


Grandpa Allen pointing the way...


...to here. Let's eat!


Grandpa Allen is taking care of the bountiful feast in store.


With more than a little help from Grandma Pat.


Christmas is about love, and I've got plenty of it.


Christmas Dinner!


Christmas morning with Mom and Dad.


It's all about you, Baby Joseph.


Mom, you're the best!


You too, Uncle Alex and Aunt 'Princess.'


Mom and Aunt Princess and lots of good stuff!


How's about a little help here?


Baseball! When's Grandpa Bosco coming back from China?


See? I've got the best looking Mom and Aunt going!


Just me and you, Mom.


When we going fishing, Dad?


That's nice, Mom, but look what I've got!


What's in it, Mom?


Oh, yeah, this'll work!


Everybody knew you were going to get me a rocking horse, Grandma Linda, and I love it! Is it like the one Dad had when he was little? No, it's much better!


More...?


Is that it...?


Good...I'm about done for the morning.


Nap time in Grandpa Allen's arms.
  

4:14 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Friday, January 04, 2008

The Nobility of Suicide in Beijing

Dead bodies on a stage make a searing impression on an audience; Shakespeare's Othello can conveniently end with three corpses on stage. That textually logical effect and purposeful staging of the Moor of Venice was a large part of our winning First Place at the Third Chinese Universities Shakespeare Festival last year. Perhaps two will do the trick this time.

Our staging of Shakespeare's Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra for the Fourth Chinese Universities Shakespeare Festival, hosted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, goes to finale black with both Marc Antony and Cleopatra dead on the stage and Octavius Caesar pronouncing the "solemnity" of it all.

After presenting it to an audience on December 20th, we are now in the exciting process of editing the video from three cameras, shot over multiple performances, and producing the highest quality 20-minute DVD we can. We must submit that to the festival by January 15th and then anxiously wait, hoping we make the finals. The 12 finalists, chosen by international judges after viewing some 3-dozen plus DVDs, will then present their show live in Hong Kong in May. The lucky over-all winner there gets a trip to London and the Shakespeare tour. Can we do it again? Who knows?

I must say that the raw video is quite good and I am very pleased with what is coming together in the editing studio in the Television Department of BFSU. Some still shots have come in from the live performance; they are posted below.
Marc Antony -- Liu Siyang
Cleopatra -- Guo Wenna
Octavius Ceasar -- Chen Tao

Marc Antony and Cleopatra: "Vanish, or I shall give thee thy deserving, And blemish Caesar's triumph."


"O, make an end of what I have begun. Let him that loves me strike me dead."


"And welcome, welcome! die where thou hast lived; quicken with kissing: had my lips that power, thus would I wear them out."


"The crown of the earth doth melt. My Lord! O, withered is the garland of the war, The soldier's pole is fall'n: young boys and girls are level now with men; the odds are gone, and there is nothing left remarkable beneath the visiting moon."


Octavius and Cleopatra: "Cleopatra, know, we will extenuate rather than enforce; if you apply yourself to our intents, Which towards you are most gentle, you shall find a benefit in this change..."


"This is the brief of money, plate, and jewels, I am possess'd of: 'tis exactly valued; Not petty things admitted."


"Therefore be cheered; make not your thoughts your prisons; no, dear queen; For we intend so to dispose you as Yourself shall give us counsel."


"Our care and pity is so much upon you, that we remain your friend; and so, adieu."


"Peace, peace! Dost thou not see my baby at my breast, that sucks the nurse asleep?"


"...but she looks like sleep. As she would catch another Antony In her strong toil of grace."

 

3:04 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Thursday, January 03, 2008

The Sound of One Shoe Dropping...?

Ka-plunk roughly approximates the foreboding sound of good shoe-leather falling upon hardwood floors in the beginning revelations of illicit affairs of sex or State. There is certainly nothing sexy about the subject or object(s) of this CIA-generated Ka-plunk, which we have addressed earlier.

I am too deeply absorbed into editing the 20-minute DVD movie of our Antony and Cleopatra entry in the 4th Chinese Universities Shakespeare Festival, hosted by the Chinese University of Hong Kong, to write more than the brief metaphor above to recommend, excerpt and link to an article in The New York Times.
Justice Dept. Sets Criminal Inquiry on C.I.A. Tapes

By MARK MAZZETTI and DAVID JOHNSTON
Published: January 3, 2008

WASHINGTON -- Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey said Wednesday that the Justice Department had elevated its inquiry into the destruction of Central Intelligence Agency interrogation videotapes to a formal criminal investigation headed by a career federal prosecutor.

The announcement is the first indication that investigators have concluded on a preliminary basis that C.I.A. officers, possibly along with other government officials, may have committed criminal acts in their handling of the tapes, which recorded the interrogations in 2002 of two operatives with Al Qaeda and were destroyed in 2005.

C.I.A. officials have for years feared becoming entangled in a criminal investigation involving alleged improprieties in secret counterterrorism programs. Now, the investigation and a probable grand jury inquiry will scrutinize the actions of some of the highest-ranking current and former officials at the agency.

The tapes were never provided to the courts or to the Sept. 11 commission, which had requested all C.I.A. documents related to Qaeda prisoners. The question of whether to destroy the tapes was for nearly three years the subject of deliberations among lawyers at the highest levels of the Bush administration.
Please continue reading at The New York Times.
  

10:24 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Wednesday, January 02, 2008

He Ain't Heavy, He's My 'Obstruction': Another Tale of Missing Tapes

The words of Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton are heavy; but then we've seen this movie before, or certainly its closest facsimile--the missing Nixon tapes? Those less than two-dozen minutes of audio tapes, that were apparently destroyed some 35 years ago, brought down a sitting president, through resignation, for the first and only time in American history. Richard M. Nixon avoided his congressional legal fate by quitting.

With but a year to serve, George W. Bush is not likely to face that choice. But for those many hours of CIA interrogation videotapes allegedly destroyed, somebody will pay his due for him. Would that it could be Cheney the Terrible, he with the still strangely Teflon credits with too many of my mainstream journalistic colleagues. But that is pie-in-the-sky wishing. Justice for the low-down most-high? Only in movies and overly ambitious liberal websites is that even imaginable.

The scapegoat that now must be forthcoming, due in no small part to an Op-ed piece in today's The New York Times by Messrs Kean and Hamilton, is likely to hold a significant position in the Bush administration--in name value perhaps not, since almost all of the major names have already left this reeking, foul ship of state.

I have had little time of late to post in these pages for various reasons, some of them very good; but I had to post this item, albeit with at best a cursory introduction, or be forever ashamed of myself.

MORE than five years ago, Congress and President Bush created the 9/11 commission. The goal was to provide the American people with the fullest possible account of the "facts and circumstances relating to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001" -- and to offer recommendations to prevent future attacks. Soon after its creation, the president's chief of staff directed all executive branch agencies to cooperate with the commission.

The commission's mandate was sweeping and it explicitly included the intelligence agencies. But the recent revelations that the C.I.A. destroyed videotaped interrogations of Qaeda operatives leads us to conclude that the agency failed to respond to our lawful requests for information about the 9/11 plot. Those who knew about those videotapes -- and did not tell us about them -- obstructed our investigation.
Please continue reading at: The New York Times
  

8:33 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Sunday, December 23, 2007

No Blue Christmas in Beijing

It's been awhile since I've posted to these pages. Most everyone who knows me even casually knows of my decades of the Christmas Holiday blues, begun the midnight after Christmas, 1975, when my father was killed by a train on the Mississippi Gulf Coast. But that is not the reason for my absence from LongBow this Holiday Season; that thing is gone, for reasons better recounted at another time, perhaps another venue, but gloriously it is gone.

Yes, Hell, internal and seemingly eternal, is the only way I can label almost all of October and November, 2007. But, as said, that is gone--not the problem, mind you, just my attitude towards it.

I am about as happy and fulfilled as it gets in my work and in my personal life again, just very busy. Shakespeare's The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra, after two months of work, went before an audience a few nights ago on the main stage here at BFSU and did so rather well, folks say. I won't know until I see the video of the 3-camera-shoot, from which we will edit and produce a 20-minute movie on DVD for our entry in the first round of the Fourth Chinese Universities Shakespeare Festival.

So, kind of at the last minute, I am posting a genuinely Happy Holiday Season greeting for the first time in way too long. However, it ain't original, I didn't do it. In fact, I am shamelessly recycling a Holiday Season greeting in total, even the caption, sent to me by Edie McClurg, one of America's most gifted actors, a dear, dear friend:
This is fun and nice! Click on the dogs, two at a time, until you have the puzzle solved and then you will see the card. I've come down with bad cold and am very behind on my holiday tasks--so forgive me if I don't send a real card in hand to you this year. Please know I am thinking of you & wish you well for a Wonderful, Prosperous New Year! Love, Edie McClurg

Merry Christmas

Click
Now, as proof that all is well, that I still exist in the flesh, below is a photo taken only days ago by a very kind and special friend (who is also shy and asks for no attribution). The picture was taken for a few reasons. The most compelling was that I would know where I was and how to get there again. It was also to note one of the more important construction projects propelled by the coming Olympic Games that is up and running now--another Subway Line and stations for a spiffy clean and rider-friendly system that is already overloaded and is just not going to be enough to handle the crush coming in 2008... .

But, then, this is China; here, the impossible (or its relative equivalent) is always only a mass-effort away at any moment and occasion under siege. So, who really knows how it will all shake out...?


Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year

  

8:59 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Monday, November 26, 2007

He's Got Personality, And Then Some...

It was a quiet Thanksgiving for us in China. Back home in New Orleans, however, it was another matter--it was Baby Joseph Allen Bosco's first Thanksgiving, and the family had a splendid beginning of the Holiday Season. The picture proof is below.

Mr. Personality


Mom Michelle and Baby Joseph.


Dad Joseph and Baby Joseph.


Baby Joseph's first Thanksgiving dinner, with Aunt 'Princess' almost center frame.


Grandpa Allen and Baby Joseph.


Grandma Pat with Baby Joseph, right after she's given him his first taste of grownup food.


Grandma Linda with Baby Joseph.


Uncle Richard and family with Baby Joseph.


The really big one got away!


Opening day of duck season.


For me, another Christmas season far away from family; it will be Baby Joseph's first Christmas.


Mr. Personality
  

11:07 PM / Editor / permalink    3 comments



Thursday, November 15, 2007

O. J. Simpson is Bound Over For Trial...!


Get outta town! It's really going to happen. O. J. Simpson will face another criminal jury and take his chances with extralegal, mass-market manufactured perceptions, perceptions a jury is never supposed to consider during any trial and its deliberations. Except that petit juries have been doing some version of it since well before Lady Liberty was even a gleam, and they do it somewhere every day in the United States; they do it in cases no one cares or knows about unless the crime happens in their town, neighborhood or extended family.

In truth, though, the overwhelming majority of juries in the United States get it right because few questions are truly in material dispute--or the defense attorney was 'calling it in.' That's not what is happening here. Unbelievable.

This piece of surreal history repeating itself presents me with more than a few professional and personal problems--and challenges. Regular readers will know of them so I will not repeat myself here, particularly when a new reader only has to scroll down a bit and get the gist of this too public mill.

I can only speak from the gizzard at the moment: It is screaming that I must finish what I started. It then quickly whispers the question -- how often does such a thing happen in anyone's life? Rarer still to an author and journalist: another pass at getting the story right, a story that will follow him into the grave no matter what.

Holy smokes! What to do? Said the rabbit. Leave China, my home now by emotional, metaphysical inertia and the surprising solidity of the several parts of me that now approach a whole that is decidedly better than what came before? Golly goddamn, I do not know! Only stupid criminals return to the scene of the crime. Only a relatively few folks think I am a criminal (but, thanks to the Internet, they are vocal); me being stupid, on the other hand, is a very open and legitimate question.

Oh, the story of the judge's ruling that I link-to below is from the Associated Press and not my customary tip of the keyboard to The New York Times.

The reason is that the AP story is written by Linda Deutsch. She is the best trial reporter living, period. Seeing Linda, being with her, working with her again, is just about reason enough to go back to the States to cover this story. Linda was mentored by the legendary crime reporter Theo Wilson, who passed from this life the very day her long-awaited memoir was published, a year or so after the Simpson criminal trial ended (the too few hours spent listening to Theo explain how she did it in trials immemorial were invaluable to this reporter).

But, gracious, Linda is good! Many readers may not know that because her byline may not appear in their hometown newspapers that carry her file stories. But from Manson to Sirhan to Rodney King to O. J. (1 & 2) to Kimes, Petersen, Blake, Pellicano, etc., and O. J. 3, she knows, but never tells; Linda, as only great storytellers come to understand, shows, she doesn't tell.
LAS VEGAS -- O.J. Simpson must face trial on kidnapping, armed robbery and other charges stemming from a suspected sports memorabilia heist, a justice of the peace ruled Wednesday, despite fierce defense attacks that characterized prosecution witnesses as con artists and crooks out for a buck.
Please continue reading here;

or if you prefer here.

Pool photo (above ) by Jae C. Hong/Getty Images
  

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Tuesday, November 13, 2007

This, I Never Would Have Believed...(redux, a bit)

No way. There wasn't even a chance of me believing that O. J. Simpson would one day go to trial on charges including kidnapping and armed robbery in a Las Vegas hotel room, apparently captured on audio tape. Of the many ways I imagined Act 3 of Mr. Simpson's turn-of-the-century Passion play to conclude, this one ain't even close!

Jeezemtally. Do I go home to cover the damn thing? Some time ago I reconciled with the god awfully ugly notion that shortly after my son calls the undertaker, my obituary, large or small, will have O. J. Simpson and/or 'Trial of the Century' somewhere in the first 3 sentences no matter what I do in the meantime.

With that given in mind, how do I not leave China, my mostly happy home for more than 5 years, and go back to my natural home to finish my alotted part in perhaps the 20th Century's most perfect murder case, in the sense that it is has every element any storyteller of any kind could ever want?

What's there to lose?

The changes in my life would be significant and many. Why jump back into that fire when I more or less escaped the conflagration alive and relatively sane the first time around? Why get in the skillet while also turning up the flame with information and research I never stopped gathering and doing through a bunch of years? That question is particularly problematical considering the fact that more than a few folks know something about its scope but very little about its produce.

Yet, no way can I come out of it any the better if I do. After Tom Lange's and Phil Vannater's book, Evidence Dismissed, written with Dan E. Moldea (Pocket Books 1997), came out with only one footnote in its entirety, one concerning William Benson Wasz, I worked a story I sensed was central to the case and worked it to the bone--thousands of hours and hundreds of 4-hour drives through California deserts. And all it got me was infamy and the loss of respect from many of my mainstream press colleagues. Who can blame them? I do not. Not after recently learning that I was wrong about a crucial, fundamental element of Bill's story.

Also, beginning with my turn upon the witness stand in the criminal trial and my unknown role in the back rooms of the civil trial--which I could not cover inside the Santa Monica Courthouse because I was on both side's witness list from the start and stayed there even though neither side planned to call me to the stand and knew it from the beginning of pre-trial discovery--I became a participant in the story I was reporting.

This became even more complex ethically and personally after I entered into a secret, ad hoc investigatory role with the Los Angeles District Attorney's Office and the Robbery/Homicide Division of the Los Angeles Police Department, on the Bill Wasz phenomenon. I worked with two of the less than a handful of truly informed folks on the Bundy murders who weren't too publicly attached to and tarnished by Marcia's pre-ordained crash and burn prosecution, two people of integrity, two people I respected each in their own fashion, one of whom would become a life-long best-friend no matter who's doing the shooting: Bert Luper and Bill Hodgman.

And later, after Time Magazine, with whom I had just shortly before worked splendidly on a major scoop in the Ennis Cosby murder, commissioned the story for the long-haul, I had the budget to bring aboard all of the investigative skills and resources of Lynda Larsen, of the Larsen AVR Group. Lynda and her associates took the work I and a small group of specialized researchers working with me had gathered over months and years and they then dug deeper in all directions into the hidden world of 'O. J. Simpson/Robert Kardashian & Company.'

To be more specific, whole trees-worth of paper were ground into the shaft where I had finally hit critical mass ('Follow the Money,' duh!): R & R + a multitude of brazenly bogus fictitious DBAs--at a time when such records were only available on paper via index cards and their all-important numbers in file boxes, which would eventually lead to the parsimonious release of individual sheaves of documents for on-premises review in the archival basements of courthouses throughout Southern California.

The activity uncovered had nothing to do with the Bill Wasz 'story' as such--albeit, a significant amount of it was discovered as eye-popping product of research generated from our need to check out Bill's claims about the activities of the people in his story.

What to do? Have a scotch, think about a down-right cross by the actress playing Cleopatra in Shakespeare's Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra, and save the decision for another day? Yep, I think so.
O.J. Due in Vegas Court on 12 Charges

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: November 8, 2007

LAS VEGAS (AP) -- When O.J. Simpson returns to a courtroom to face armed robbery charges, the former football star will also be facing years of doubts and questions about his acquittal on murder charges more than a decade ago.

A Las Vegas justice of the peace will be asked to determine after a two-day hearing starting Thursday if there is enough evidence to take Simpson and two co-defendants to trial on charges that they robbed two sports memorabilia dealers in a Las Vegas hotel room.

In Simpson's mind, according to a close friend, the charges are rooted in Simpson being found not guilty in the 1994 slayings of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. "He believes he's being tried for that now," said Tom Scotto, 45, a North Miami Beach, Fla., auto body shop owner.

The men arrested in the Sept. 13 incident were brought together by Scotto's wedding.

Simpson and co-defendants Clarence "C.J." Stewart and Charles Ehrlich face 12 charges, including kidnapping, armed robbery, assault with a deadly weapon, conspiracy and coercion. A kidnapping conviction could result in a sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole. An armed robbery conviction could mean mandatory prison time.

"He's taking this serious," Scotto said. "It is serious."

No one disputes that Stewart, Ehrlich and former co-defendants Michael McClinton, Walter Alexander and Charles Cashmore went with Simpson and California collectibles broker Tom Riccio to meet memorabilia dealers Alfred Beardsley and Bruce Fromong in a casino hotel room.

Simpson has maintained that he wanted to retrieve items he claimed had been stolen from him by a former agent, including the suit he wore the day he was acquitted in Los Angeles.

The case is likely to pivot on Simpson's contention that he didn't ask anyone to bring guns, that he didn't know anyone had guns and that no guns were displayed.
Three of Simpson's co-defendants have pleaded guilty or agreed to do so and are expected to testify against him.

Cashmore, 40, a journeyman laborer, said McClinton displayed a gun.
Please continue reading at The New York Times
  

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Saturday, November 10, 2007

Now There Are No Giants at All...

Norman Mailer died today. There is nothing I can write at the moment other than to link you to an obituary in The New York Times.
Norman Mailer, Outspoken Novelist, Dies at 84
By CHARLES McGRATH
Published: November 10, 2007

Norman Mailer, the combative, controversial and often outspoken novelist who loomed over American letters longer and larger than any writer of his generation, died today at Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York. He was 84.
Please continue reading at The New York Times.
  

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Wednesday, November 07, 2007

A Worried Mind...continues


Frankly, folks, I'm working hard at working some personal things out; but it doesn't look good at present. I appreciate the continued traffic and e-mails; and when this worried mind pulls its pitiful ass out of the sucking marsh-mud of regret--a most futile endeavor, to be sure, but we are flesh--I will get around to replying to e-mails, and posting in these pages stories still relevant to the old, yet forever new baggage that is eternally strapped to my back. Stories that have never been told, but now need to be. Or so I am told; and I'm starting to listen. In the case of the Simpson murders, I did not follow those voices in the past and am poorer for it commercially; but more importantly, I am concerned about what is on and what is not on the public record.

Also, much has changed recently in my extended circle of work and life. A number of folks have died; some folks are now public property; some obligations of confidentiality are no longer binding; and some folks and some truths just need to be exposed. I have no projected schedule of when these stories may appear; I'm in no hurry to tell them, some of them are dear to me and some of them are not particularly flattering.

For some reason, fate, destiny--bad advice!--my publishing career took a movie-like automobile u-turn, and then a y-turn or two, and I ended up writing about murder almost exclusively, most of the time high profile murder cases. (Although far more often I worked cases I knew I would never sell anywhere, book, magazine, alternative press, nothing, cases most people would never hear about; but cases where my work with a few gifted defense attorneys and my recognizable presence in otherwise empty courtrooms sometimes served justice for the better. Not often, mind you; Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, veterans and esteemed fellow colleagues of Camp O. J. and The Trial of the Century, are my heroes in that category; and should be yours. )

But, unlike many other writers, with an emotionally worried mind, I'm stymied. Under pressure, stress, instant obligations and responsibilities--deadlines!-- that are real and imposing, I produce like a trained-seal. But I can do little with a worried mind. Most assuredly that kind. That's just me.

But maybe it's starting to get a little better, there is a pinhole of light in the far darkness. We will see what happens.
  

1:46 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Happy Birthday, Linda

Below is my favorite photograph of Linda Powajbo Bosco, my teenage bride, mother of our son Joseph, and my beautiful, loving wife from 1968 until 2001. Today is her birthday. I have had much reason to think of her recently, with love; although she will hate the thought and sentiment. That's okay, because no one we know mutually will tell her the post is here, upon her orders.

Happy Birthday, Linda

Linda Bosco - Smoky Mountains, Christmas 1981

Yes, she still thinks that badly of me. Who can blame her? Not I. From the recent pictures I have seen, she is still as beautiful as that Friday night in early October, 1964, outside the Ocean Springs Community Center, when she got into the backseat of my car with a group of her friends from that hotshot high school across the Bay. We small-time yokels had just won another big football game, and they were 'slumming.' First I heard her voice, then I turned around...

  

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Monday, October 22, 2007

It's Time to Get Over It, Bosco...

And there's the reason why, Joseph with Baby Joseph, on the Riverwalk, that day of days


I have always lived on dreams and hope, and far more often than not, professionally, creatively, both have served me well. Would that I could say the same about my personal life. Even though hopes and dreams also fueled and guided its course through the same five decades, failures of every kind, with their requisite pain and misery--to me, surely, but to way too many innocent people around me--predominated. That has not changed. I am sorry to say.

Late last month, I embarked on a trip and a mission of love, discovery and family reclamation that I can truly say I believed would be the highwater mark of my private life to date. The joyful, all but obsessed planning and anticipation, which occupied months of my time, was for me unprecedented. Never had I worked so hard, and hoped and dreamt so much upon and about a trip. It was tightly planned to be a week's visit to the States; New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, to be precise. Home.

I was going to meet my first grandchild, Joseph Allen Bosco, and to introduce a newer, better part of me to people I thought still loved me as only blood kin can. For almost four days it was a sublime dream coming true. Then the floor fell away and the ceiling disappeared. Every goddamn demon in the Ocean Springs, Mississippi, Boscos' past came out of the woodwork, rapacious fangs ripping, spitting and hoarding with abandon. The bites sinking to the bone. It hurt. Like hell. It always has.

So what? That's who we are and have been for a very long time. The loss in the States was beyond normal measurement; but the loss when we returned to Beijing was infinite. Goddamn it! Why?

Say, what?

Yep, that's the linear skinny of it. I can't tell the story--to protect the guilty and the innocent. Most certainly not myself. When you hit rock-bottom, everything else is up.

But we did have a transcendent experience with he whom I on pure faith believe will be the best Joseph A. Bosco of a lengthy line.

Yes! That's me, the old dude, with Joseph Allen Bosco! And then there is the wonderful moment of Baby Joseph and his so very special dad--my son, my grandfather's namesake--at the New Orleans Riverwalk, on perhaps the last day of pure happiness I will know for quite some time. Shhh, he's sleeping. But what a day! Our visit with Baby Joseph, Joseph and Michelle (my amazingly talented, loving daughter-in-law) was worth every price, both metaphysically and in RMB/U.S Dollar.

By the way, if I owe you an e-mail, or if you have come here looking for some words about O. J. Simpson, Bill Wasz or Bill Pavelic (and his forthcoming book), have patience with me. My innards burned and then melt into nothingness for a spell--yes, too long of a spell--but, I'm out now, lookin' for daylight! It must be there. It's always been before.
  

5:16 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Thursday, October 11, 2007

"Home"...

Sylvia, Mom, me and Prince at Beach House late 50's


...ain't what it used to be, or was it ever even that?

At last we are back in Beijing; nightmares private and public, to be spoken of later, delayed our return from New Orleans for some two dreadfully uncertain days. We could not imagine such a happenstance, of course. That is until attempting to check in at the Continental Airlines counter at New Orleans International Airport for the first leg of the trip home to China before dawn Friday, the 5th; and then scooting back (barely) into our now sold-out hotel with the city filling up with football fans. We finally arrived at Beiwai early Monday evening, the 8th.

Very tired, with the jet-lag dues still twanging, I have returned to work. Tonight we finished auditions for BFSU's entry into the 4th Chinese Universities Shakespeare Festival, and will begin rehearsals for "The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra" and/or "Measure for Measure" this weekend.

Yes, I have not made up my horribly distracted mind (maybe we'll do both?)--but my heart's starting to make noises at the head about it's another season and another show, and the only thing professionally I'd rather do than direct is write and I don't have to quit one for the other. So, goddamn, let's buckle up and go back to play (work for some, but I'm not one of them; although I am paid for it, albeit quite modestly).

More later, when Bosco family demons old and new stop clawing, ripping, tearing, and there is some modicum of objectivity within grasp. Maybe.

Too much, too many moments of all colors to remember at this moment.
  

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Monday, October 08, 2007

When Can We Be Free to Tell? (Redux)

NOTE: *Updated from the post of Wednesday, September 19, 2007.

We will continue to mark the release of The New York Times Chinese journalist Zhao Yan after three years of harsh imprisonment. These pages will republish a few of the most distinguished of a series of op-ed pieces written on the highly visible case by then sophomore journalism majors at Beijing Foreign Studies University that first appeared in WOW: We Observe the World in the winter of 2004/2005. For the most part, these are the same students who founded WOW in the Fall of 2004 at about the same time that Mr Zhao was arrested. The op-ed below is one of them.

*It must be noted that this op-ed was mysteriously removed from WOW by someone other than the Editors and Faculty Advisor. We did not realize this until some days after Zhao Yan's release and there was interest in the original series of op-eds by the WOW student journalists at Beiwai.
When Can We Be Free to Tell?

By Leslie Sun

To be frank, I was not surprised when I read about Zhao Yan's case. I've known for a long time that the Chinese government does such things. I am quite used to it.

I used to dream of being a journalist who could let the majority hear the minority and let the minority hear the majority. But I don't have this dream anymore. They won't let me do that, will they? I may be thrown in jail like Zhao.

I wanted to introduce China to the world, but what to introduce depends on them. I may not know a lot about my own country's business, because there is no way for me to know. In other words, a journalist in China knows little about what's happening and there's little he can report to the public about what he does know.

I feel deeply sorry about my career and my countrymen. To some extent, I loathe the Chinese government because they don't respect their countrymen's right to know and speak. And for journalists it's not only a right but also a responsibility.

China has a very long history. All during this history the Chinese people have been treated like fools. There's an old Chinese saying: Be on alert for people's mouths, as they're even more dangerous than the flood. There's not been a minute in this history when Chinese people really had the right to know and speak. Maybe some people will argue that it's a problem of the whole of human society, not merely China, but you have to admit it's especially serious here.

In the Qing dynasty, there was a phrase, "Word Jail," to describe those people who were thrown into jail for saying bad words about the government. In almost every era people were killed or imprisoned because they said something bad about government. There is little difference now. I admit that we are way more free than they were; but there is such a long way to go.

China is now on a fast lane to develop, and I'm very glad and proud to see my country gain more and more respect from other countries--both from our friends and from those countries that don't take us as a friend. No one can deny that China is developing at an impressively high pace economically. In other fields, however, we haven't made such rapid progress. I'm deeply worried that in years to come China will be a country full of rich but ignorant people.

I know the government has its justifications. But I'm not talking about state secrets. I totally agree that the public should not know state secrets. But what can be defined as a state secret? A thing that is surely to happen in a few days, such as Mr. Hu taking the place of Mr. Jiang? That cannot be a state secret. If the explosion of an atomic bomb will take place Wednesday afternoon, you cannot tell other people about it Wednesday morning. That is a state secret. The Chinese government displayed its over reaction on a less than important issue. It acted like a moron on this issue, and on countless such issues.

As you can see, I'm still mad about it. I think that is good. I mean, it's good that I'm mad about it. I know a lot of people, and they are all mad about it. I sincerely hope these mad people--including me, of course--will make a change in the future. And I hope Mr. Zhao will come back soon.
Please read more contributions in the series: A WOW Special Feature: China, Journalism and the State series

For background, you might want to read: A Moment In Beijing.
  

4:26 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Friday, September 28, 2007

Gone to New Orleans

We're going to New Orleans and the Mississippi Gulf Coast to meet my first grandchild, Joseph Allen Bosco; leaving on a jet plane today. Home, it's been a long time coming. It will be a short visit, though, only a week, spanning the National Day Holiday. I won't be posting during the trip; we return to Beijing Saturday, October 6.
  

9:59 AM / Editor / permalink