IN MEMORIAM FOR MICHAEL JACKSON

In Memoriam For Michael Jackson

August 29, 1958 to June 25, 2009

JILL DELBRIDGE

Bayonne, New Jersey, America

Jill Delbridge is the founder/group owner of THE ARTIST LOUNGE, a multi cultural eclectic group of artists spreading love, encouragement, support, and promoting of each other’s poetry, music, and literature in all genres.

She also hosts a live/recorded weekly radio show every Sunday night via phone/pc with live performances, networking, interviews, book reviews, and talk of the arts in all forms, in which everyone is welcomed.

THE ARTIST LOUNGE

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THE ARTIST LOUNGE’S TALK SHOW

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”My first memory of Michael Jackson was seeing him on TV.   His aura was of love, magical, dancing, and an angelic voice.

I was at home with my family when I learned of Michael's untimely death listening to the news.  Teardrops fell and my heart raced as I prayed for the best.  When I heard the reports of him being unconscious upon his arrival at the hospital then finally his demise, I felt frozen, angry, and extremely grief stricken as though I lost a family member!

Michael Jackson, in my humble opinion, was and will forever be a messenger of love through his legacy of artistry.

He was a peacemaker bringing folks together through his massive God-given talent, a gentile childlike presence though he grew into a wonderful man.  His aura was of innocence, tranquil, inviting, mesmerizing, and genuine flowing endless unconditional love for one and all regardless of their race, culture, creed, beliefs, or lack their of.

He traveled the world spreading an abundance of joy, peace, and love, giving of himself completely and effortlessly, commanding peace, respect for humankind and nature, and unity for everyone through his artistry and giving of himself visiting and contributing to countless charities and causes.

I feel as though Michael was taken for granted, used, too many yes people, from abusing his trust and abysmal love.

He was tortured by the press, the stress, the trying to fit in, the pressures, and the insecurities.  His words:  “By the time I was a teenager I was a veteran.”

Persons entrusted to care for and maintain his physical and mental health failed him over, medicated and emaciated him, which lead to his fatality!

He sang soothing words of love, hope, humanity, unity, promise, and feel good words soothing and entertaining his fans.

Who was there truly for him bestowing unconditional love? Certainly he had to know his impact and feel the second hand love from his fans, friends, and family.

He pleased his parents, worked with his siblings, seeking everyone in his life, including his fans, happiness over his own.  Denied a childhood he created one in his home, assisting, supporting, and caring for needy and terminal children.

But, no one gave him one on one unconditional love!  He yearned to be loved and accepted not as Michael Jackson King of Pop but, Michael the sun, brother, uncle, father, cousin, fellow human being, and, most certainly, a man.

Being an artist is extremely lonely.  Artists are loners seeking love and acceptance through their gift, releasing their inhibitions, an unquenchable need for love, always giving but, rarely receiving or taking, sheltered, living behind gates, constantly in demand, no freedom as he cried for in "Leave me Alone".   He did what he did because he truly loved it, he was masterfully talented, and passion unleashed which was felt through his song and dance.

I felt Michael’s love and his has immensely inspired and mused me as an artist and writer.

The impact Michael made is a legacy of love, which will be felt forever! May he Rest in Peace and live in our hearts until the end of time.

You Are Not Alone Michael

by Jill Delbridge

I Rocked with you!

"She's out of my Life"

...Helped me deal

With personal loss and strife

Michael,

I read between the lines

Of your songs ....

"Come Together"

"We are The World"

"Human Nature"

"They Don't Care about Us"

"I Can't Help It"

"Heal the World"

"Keep the Faith"

"Another Part of You"

Just to name a few

Your need

For Love and acceptance

Rang true

Giving somuch Love and of your self

As , you declared "I'll be there "

Yes you were !

Breaking down racial barriers

Through beautiful song

and dance

Mesmerizing the masses

In an awing trance

Crossing , mending bridges

Captivating souls across oceans

Michael, you were "BAD”!

I looked beyond

"Man In The Mirror"

I saw the beauty that

lies within

“You give me butterflies.”

Angels will be your back up dancers

Singing your refrain

Float on the sea of rain (tears)

From earth to Heaven

Moonwalk across the stars

You are FREE!

You made a the World

A better place for you and me....

No longer a need to bellow

"Leave Me Alone"!

There my Brother

"You are Not Alone"

It does not matter if you are

"Black or White"

I Pray to greet you

When I return Home

You will live Forever

Through your gift of song

Gone Too soon

I will always

"Remember The Time"

"The way you made me feel"

R est I n P eace, Michael

I love you

Jill 

*2009 © Night Writer

STEVE WICKHAM

Melville, Australia

SP[Australia]) and a qualified, unordained Christian minister (GradDipBib&Min). His blogs are at: http://epitemnein-epitomic.blogspot.com/ and http://inspiringbetterlife.blogspot.com/ and http://tribework.blogspot.com/. He ministers via Twitter and Facebook - http://www.facebook.com/steve.j.wickham. Steve welcomes likeminded friends.

“My first memory of Michael Jackson was as a high school student grooving to Beat It, Thriller etc. Thriller was my favourite, though I love Earth Song and the wisdom he had regarding his care of planet earth.

I was inspired to write about THIS IS IT because it moves us to change and shows us just how special Michael was - and IS - as he lives through our memories. I believe God blessed us with Michael.

Where was I when he died... at home... and forlorn….”

http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Steve_Wickham

THIS IS IT!

“What have we done to the world?

Look what we've done

What about all the peace

That you pledge your only son...”

-Michael Jackson, Earth Song.

This is hallowed turf we stand on. Michael Jackson should not be dead. On June 25, 2009 the world, and certainly Michael's millions of fans, came to feel his pain, cataclysmically, yet for the last time. The journey of his astoundingly enigmatic life ended; a person of unusually deep emotion reconciled, finally.”

THIS IS IT (2009), the final curtain call as recorded during rehearsals for Michael's fifty London shows, is an inspiringly reverential and breathtaking behind-the-scenes production--a treat for all humanity, not simply for the MJ tragic. It's the way we want to remember this modern-day icon, the King of Pop.

As a Christian it is hard for me to stomach references that Michael Jackson (MJ) came close to being considered a deity; nevertheless, his steeped presence in this 'curtain call' exposé is something to behold. "Unique," as a word, seems so understated and therefore unfitting for MJ--as an artist and as a person. The incredibly talented artists working with him revered him with god-like awe. One just feels for these artists who make it to the halcyon in one leap, performing with MJ.

What about the artist--Michael Jackson? What could someone take from THIS IS IT, having not been around him previously? He is genius on a whole separate level to common humanity as far as genius is concerned. His artistic thought revealed other seasoned geniuses as confused deer in the headlights-he felt things so purely. He pushed the boundaries, always. To call MJ a "professional" would be a common, blatant insult. He was on another plane altogether.

"Lights out

Let it burn"

-Michael Jackson, concluding Beat It.

What about the person--Michael Jackson--spokesperson for the health of planet earth? This speaks to his love...

It would not be fitting to conclude a shutter-speed exposé on Michael Jackson without burrowing into his purity at a human level. Paradoxically harangued like a criminal since at least 1993, his felt love would be hard for almost anyone to attain. And one feels the thin blue line between a world of love and a world of pain was frequently breached and blurred, for love and pain are such close kin--the kaleidoscope of emotive experience in one concept. He must have felt it all.

As he would say, and now we say back to him, 'God bless you.”  God bless you.

© S. J. Wickham, 2009.

Ode to a Never Forgotten Hero

© S.J. Wickman 2010

He came to our worlds lighted and hot,

pressing delight and hot to trot,

worthy esteem we could but give,

some it seems disparagingly grieve.

Leaving us then, sad but true,

why now, why ever, only God knew,

leaving a hole, one that grew,

we now sit obliged giving him due.

Alive we stand for this time we do,

cherishing the wonder and how life’s new,

willing we are astride the queue,

he lives in our memory forever askew.

Finally, paraded, he will not give,

apart this world without to live,

for us to recoil we do but know,

he pushes us off inspired to go.

Poet Wayne Lanter: Memory And Men Explored In Lanter's "In This House Of Men"

Christal Cooper – 1,020 Words

caccoop@aol.com

caccoop@gmail.com

Facebook @ CHRISTAL ANN RICE COOPER

Memory And Men Explored In Lanter’s In This House of Men

 “Every poem of In This House of Men has a different source.”

Wayne Lanter

Illinois poet Wayne Lanter’s latest collection of poems, In This House of Men, is based on a deep sense of experience, his memory, and the importance of memory.

Lanter started writing at the age eight and credits his mother for his love of reading and writing.  For the most part, during his early years his father, a coal miner and blacksmith, was not around.

“Then when I was 13 or so, I looked around and saw that this house was no more than my sisters and my mother.  I missed my father.”

Lanter decided it was time to find his father and for the next several years worked with his father in the blacksmith shop.  He, along with his father, would get up at 3 a.m., and sometimes work twelve or fifteen hours a day.  It was here that his appreciation for men in his life was formed.

“There is a whole series of men that I attached myself to, who filled a role in my life:  coach, teacher, mystic, father – some like brothers.  But I’m not glorifying them.  I simply wrote about them as I remember them – but still with a great deal of admiration, for both their foibles and failings, and for their goodness.”

One of the men Lanter writes about in this book of poems is a mystic, Jesuit historian from St. Louis University.  What’s unusual about this is that Lanter, reared Catholic, describes himself as an agnostic.  This has caused a number of people to inquire how an agnostic could admire a religious man such as a Jesuit.

“They wanted to know how it was that I could admire the Jesuits so much and have so little to do with religion. (I told them) I was interested in the good these men had to offer.”

Lanter thinks that religion in itself is very primitive and infantile, particularly when one thinks about the universe.

“The more you find out about the universe the more it appears that it didn’t have a creator.  It just doesn’t fit our concepts of beginning and ending. Our mind is limited and has a difficult time with thinking about the unlimited.  I’m not interested in religion (the Catholic Church) but I am interested in the litany, which is basically art.  Art is the exclamation of the human spirit.”

Lanter’s poems are mostly narratives dealing with memory.  Most individuals associate memory with the duration between when an event actually took place and when the event is remembered.

“Memory is essential to all human interaction.  It is the recognition of something occurring in time.  Everything we do is from memory.  We experience memory on a moment-by-moment basis. But it also has to do with intelligence. If you can’t remember the number 2, you have no way of understanding that 2 and 2 equals 4.”

In other words, someone thinking about her mother who died a year ago – that is memory. But memories can also be buried in our genetic code.  A mother with no experience in child care, caring for a child for the first time, and knowing how to do it correctly, or a scientist adding the right amount of a chemical in an experiment, that too, is memory. 

In This House of Men is divided into five sections: “In the Morning;” “Reading Poetry;” “On the River;” “Picking up the Pieces;” and “In This House of Men.” 

The first section, “In the Morning,” focuses on contemporary matters such as the space shuttle disaster, the Iraq War and Civil Rights.  

The second section, “Reading Poetry,” deals with therapy, helping other people, and counseling children.  This section is somewhat autobiographical:  Lanter worked as a therapist for the Jewish Children’s Bureau in Chicago from 1964 to 1968. 

         “It changed me irrevocably.  We were in an experimental program living with 18 seriously disturbed adolescent boys.  I went in as one person and came out as a completely different human being.  I’ve only written a few poems about the experience,” Lanter told a reporter in 2004.

The third section of the book, “On the River,” is based on an article Lanter came across in an old issue of the Golconda Gazette.  The article was printed in January 31, 1898, about a man named Faro Bowman, who, along with his wife and two young daughters, drowned in the Ohio River.

The fourth section, “Picking up the Pieces” contains a number of Lanter’s rewrites of selected Biblical stories.

The fifth section, ”In This House of Men,” is about the men in his life.   He also dedicates the book to his ancestors, grandfathers and father, and to his descendants, which include his two sons, and a grandson, five-year-old Max.

Lanter describes In This House of Men as unique in that it is double the length of a typical poetry book - 148 pages, with over 55 poems.  The book’s cover was arranged by Lanter, and features two images: one of an abandoned grain elevator located in East St. Louis, Illinois on Hwy 64 (“At one time I thought it would be a good idea to raise money and buy the elevator and turn it into a museum and bookstore”) and the other from a picture posted at the Mother Jones Monument in Mt. Olive, Illinois commemorating the Virden Massacre on October 12, 1898 in Virden, Illinois. 

Lanter writes every day, usually in the morning, and manages to produce a couple poems per month.  He also teaches Creative Writing at Southwestern Illinois College.  When not teaching or writing, Lanter spends time in Paris and the Greek Islands, usually from a few weeks to several months each year.  He also founded River King Poetry Supplement, and co-edited it for ten years. He is the author of poetry collections: The Waiting Room, 

Threshing Time:  a Tribute to James Hearst, 

Canonical Hours, 

At Float on the Ohta-gawa, 

and A Season of Long Taters. 

He co-edited the poetry anthology New Century North American Poets.

Contact Lanter at www.waynelanter.com for more information.

ENTREPRENEUR PING FU: BEND AND NOT BREAK

Chris Cooper – 1772 Words

caccoop@aol.com

caccoop@gmail.com

Facebook @ CHRISTAL ANN RICE COOPER

BEND AND NOT BREAK

“Bamboo is flexible, bending with the wind but never breaking, capable of adapting to any circumstance.  It suggests resilience, meaning that we have the ability to bounce back from even the most difficult times.”

Excerpted from Bend and Not Break:  A Life In Two Worlds

Pages 10 – 11.

On December 31, 2012 Portfolio of Penguin Press published Ping Fu’s business memoir Bend and Not Break:  A Life In Two Worlds, in which she tells of her life during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution, which include being gang raped at the age of 10 as well as years in a dormitory, forced to live apart from her family.  She also writes of her rise to become co-founder (with Herbert Edelsbrunner) and CEO of Geomagic, a software development company.  Since its publication a group of netizens has gone repeatedly to Amazon and other book review pages giving her book one star and scathing reviews.  Some of the reviews have been accusatory, hateful, and ugly.  

            “These people who attack me have gone from smear to hate  – most who have never even read the book.  They don’t understand and don’t care I wrote a business memoir with a cross section of my life.  This is not a history of the Cultural Revolution or biography of my entire life.  They really don't care about the truth; they simply want to discredit me and to damage my reputation and my private life.  It’s cyber bullying.  I saw that there would be some disagreement and I never thought I would be subject to this kind of attack.  It brings back unnecessary emotional trauma to my life.”

            Despite false accusations of her being a communist and a liar, she refuses to respond in kind; and instead chooses to respond the way she was taught as a child:  with love, compassion, and hard work.

“I see the pain in people’s voices when they attack me.  In some ways I empathize with those people because they are probably angry in life.  I don’t want to be in a place of hatred but only a place of love.  That’s what made me survive my childhood and I’m not going to change that.”

***

            This love, compassion and hard work is how she was reared by her aunt and uncle who treated her as their own – in the three-floor home on a road that was curtained by trees in Shanghai which was also known as the “Paris of the East.”

Ping Fu was born in May 30, 1958 in Nanjing.  As a newborn she was sent to live with her uncle and aunt.  

She described her family life as peaceful, her parents never fought, being surrounded by books which she read voraciously as a child, and given the nicknames Little Apple and Pearl In The Hand because of how delicate and precious she was to her family.

But in 1966, at the age of eight, that all changed when she was taken from her family and became ward of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution and sent to live in a dormitory in Nanjing, with her four-year-old sister Hong as her roommate.

“After Mao’s death in 1976, reformers led by Deng Xiaoping gained prominence.  Most of the Maoist reforms associated with the Cultural Revolution were abandoned by 1978.  The Cultural Revolution has been treated officially as a negative phenomenon ever since.”

Fu was freed from the dormitory and passed the national exam in 1978, which allowed her to attend Suzhou University (then called Jiangsu Teacher’s College) where she studied Chinese language and literature.  For her senior year thesis she travelled to the countryside to research the effects of China’s newly implemented one-child policy.

“I eye-witnessed and documented the practice of female infanticide which was widespread.”

When the authorities learned of this they briefly imprisoned her.

“It was the research material that got me into trouble.  A teacher gave the material to friends and then to more prominent people.  They took my material and never gave it back to me.”

            “In 1982, the world was watching the implementation of China’s one-child policy.  A Shanghai newspaper called for an end to gender discrimination.  Later that year and in the following year, the Chinese Communist Party made strong statements opposing female infanticide.  China’s national paper, The People’s Daily, in Beijing, acknowledged that peasants were killing baby girls.  The news spread to the International Press, which used this acknowledgment as evidence of China’s violations of human rights.  Theodore W Shultz, a Nobel Laureate in Economics and advisor to the United Nations, denounced a proposed UN award to the Chinese Minister of Family Planning, Qian Xinzhong.  Schultz said China’s one-child policy had caused a large increase in female infanticide.”

As a result of her research material on the one-child policy and female infanticide, Fu was told to leave the country and to never come back.  On January 14, 1984, after a long struggle to obtain a passport and visa, she departed to the United States, a place that was totally foreign to her including the language: she knew how to speak three English words:  hello, thank you, and help.

During her early days in America she worked as a waitress and a-live-in-nanny.

Her superiors were English-speaking Americans, and this helped her learn the English language in six months.

Once she mastered the English language, she enrolled as a matriculated student at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, where she majored in English as a second language and in computer science.

She then moved to San Diego, and attended the University of California San Diego computer science program.  It was here that she got her foot in the door of the career field of computer science and started working for Lane Sharman, founder and CEO of Resource Systems Group.  She eventually earned her BA in Computer Science and a minor in Economics and continued to excel in her job at Resource Systems Group.

She then moved to Illinois where she worked at Bell Labs, and attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she received her MS degree in May of 1990.  It was here that she met her husband former Geomagic-co-founder Herbert Edelsbrunner, (the couple are now divorced), and gave birth to their daughter.

***

In 1997 Fu co-founded (with Edelsbrunner) Geomagic, a software development company focused on 3D software and technology for design and manufacturing.  Geomagic’s 3D imaging software affords precise replication of complex shapes from custom cranial plate (benefiting ABC’s Bob Woodruff), to heat tiles for the space shuttle, and Invisalign braces, making the exact match to an individual’s tooth in every stage of the movement, and to prosthetic limbs with fashionable faring and human shape.  

            “The design starts with you, the person.  We wanted to combine thousands of years of handcraftsmanship with the Internet.  We are a technology company that focuses on the human aspect of things.”

Geomagic is now located in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina where Fu resides with her daughter and her mother.

***

            For a few years, Fu spent time researching her own story by coming up with 300 pages worth of material – though she never though of actually publishing a book but rather writing a legacy for her daughter. 

            “Friends and people who heard about my story and know me wanted me to write a book.  I majored in literature in China and I wrote in a journal that was burned so I was writing the book as a way to confront my own fear and continue the process of healing.”

            She finally decided to make it official and in 2012, started writing the book with co-author MeiMei Fox.  The book took nine months to write.

            “I didn’t want to write a self-help book.  I wanted to write a business memoir.  I have quite unconventional attitudes on leadership – that’s shown through in the book and I wrote this book – in a small way – to illustrate a better way to conduct business, a better way of who you are and what you are and how I came to be who I am today.”

***

            Many successes have come and continue to come for Geomagic.  In 2003, Geomagic opened Geomagic GmbH, its first wholly owned subsidiary based in Germany, and completed its first acquisition of Cadmus Consulting in Hungary. 

            In 2005, Ping Fu was selected Entrepreneur of the Year by Inc. Magazine.

            In 2008, for President Barack Obama’s first Inaugural Speech as President, she was invited by First Lady Michelle Obama to attend the speech in her own special box – making Fu one of 15 guests.

            In 2010, she served on President Barack Obama’s National Advisory Council for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.  She also sits on the board of the Long Now Foundation.    Along with her great success, Fu sometimes finds herself in great isolation.

            “I’m one of few female entrepreneurs in the country in the high technological field and it is sometimes lonely.”

Presently Geomagic consists of 100 employees and due to a merger with 3D Systems the employee count exceeds 1200 employees.   Fu will become the Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer of the 3D Systems, a leading public company in 3D printing.

            The majority of Fu’s time is not in her office or on any board but on airplanes traveling the globe.

            “I am not in the office enough – my job as CEO is to understand what are the big issues in the outside world and bring those problems inside the company for solutions.    On the road – I go talk to customers and analysts and we want to democratize that in the community – kind of bridge the real world problems and issues and come back to help and reform those problems.”

***

            Despite being known as the cream-of-the-crop CEO, the one question that people ask her is how she endured the atrocities she endured and still became such a success not only in business but also in her well-being.

            “We know from psychology that half of how we feel is inborn.  I was born to have a healthy mental attitude.   The mental metaphor of the glass half full and never half empty helps me to think through things.  The other half is a healthy mental metaphor.  I like to think life is a mountain range – at different peaks, the views are different.  However, you can’t reach another peak without going down.  In American education we like to use going up as a metaphor “glass ceiling” and corporate ladders are about going up, which is really hard.  I like to think of going forward, traveling up and down on the mountain range.  There are much more opportunities if we continue progressing forward.”