I Don't Think Most Americans Could Pass The Test!

 

   I went with a close friend yesterday for his interview to become a United States citizen. His journey began when he came to America from China on a student visa. The schooling didn't work out and he eventually had many jobs. He married an American but that marriage soon dissolved. He later met and married his husband in 2012 and they moved to Palm Springs. 

    However, that story didn't end happily. His husband retired in June of 2023 and was shortly after diagnosed with lung cancer. After removing a lung in October it was discovered it had spread to his liver and he passed away in January 2024. He was with my partner and I going to help him and his husband, away for just a few minutes. When we returned he had died.

    This year we were both surprised when he received a letter from The Naturalization Dept. shortly after Trump became president, asking him if he wanted to become a citizen. Since he knew he would never return to China to live again and was a very successful salesman at a store in the Cabazon Outlets, I urged him to apply. I helped him through the entire process and as a citizen myself, realized just what the process was like. Despite having a German father, I was born in Ohio, a citizen by place of birth.

    We filled the application online. Be prepared to spend a few hours. Question after question, something being born here you never see or hear about. We sent in his application form and a credit card payment of $725.00 then sat back and waited for an appointment date.

    Next, we went to Amazon to find the BEST book explaining how to become a citizen that included the background and the questions with answers you would likely be asked about our history and current political affairs.

    When he got the book and began studying, I quickly realized a great many Americans probably couldn't answer these questions. How do I know that? All you have to do is watch questions people are asked on the street and the fact their answers are mostly incorrect. A sizable number of Americans actually don't know where Canada or Mexico are. I listen to friends spout incorrect statements and have learned to never correct them because these are the truths they believe despite what the truth is. Listen to RFK, Jr. and you'll know exactly what I mean.

    We went over the 10 test pages of 100 questions over and over again. I must admit, despite all I've read and know about the U.S. government and our history I missed a few questions. In effect we both learned something about the United States. Like, who wrote the Constitution and in what year? Do you know? I wasn't sure though I knew Madison played a role in it and wrote many of the Federalist Papers using a pseudonym. It was written in 1787 by later president James Madison.

    Saturday, June 14th we got up early and headed out finally leaving around 5:30 am for his 7:15 am appointment (on a Saturday no less). Going through the book one last time I came across clothing instructions. No shorts that he was wearing. After all this IS Palm Springs and it was 109º yesterday so everyone wears shorts! We turned around so he could change and once headed west began asking questions one last time. As he still stumbled I gave him pointers on how to remember the answers. 

    We arrived early, he studied his notes and we finally, after an TSA like check at the door went to the waiting room. Other than officials, I was the only white person there. There were Chinese, East Indians, Latins and a smattering of other groups I couldn't identify. They were all there, on an early Saturday morning wanting and willing to swear allegiance to the United States. It made me feel proud, that despite all the current turmoil. the now frequent ICE raids in California, they were willing to risk all to stay here. Every American citizen needs to experience this and realize they are not to be feared but embraced to our shared destiny.

    He was called about 30 minutes late as it was a busy day already. I was reading IT CAN'T HAPPEN HERE by Sinclair Lewis, realizing it COULD happen here and I was living it, when there was a tap on my shoulder. I looked up and there was my friend, back 20 minutes later. I asked, "Do we need to come back?" He smiled and gave me a paper that in a middle box, that was checked, said he was a United States Citizen. We hugged and were told to check in downstairs. They took his paper, giving him another with a small American flag and told to sit down. Everyone else held a paper and flag too.

   

Finally a man came up front and introduced himself, maybe from West African (I was in Peace Corps Liberia), who explained the ceremony and asked them to rise and pledge their allegiance to the United States. He then explained they were getting an official document that said they were now citizens. Sign with blue or black ink and NEVER laminate the sheet or lose it. It would cost them dearly in time and money to get a new one.

    We were done. Everyone lined up to take photos next to an American flag holding up their citizenship certificates.  It was a heartfelt moment for all. We hugged and went to the car. 

    On the way home he pointed out that June 14th, today, was Trump's 79th birthday. I noted what an irony. Today a Chinese citizen, a group he despises, became a citizen of color (along with many others) on his birthday! To me, in this political climate I call them heroes!!!

    The United States has a poor record on how it's treated its immigrants. We need to consider this. How many of our greatest or innovative naturalized citizens have shaped us and made us at some point leaders in the world?

    There is of course Elon Musk. Erratic as he is, he has changed our use of solar energy and use of  EV cars such as we will never go back. Steve Jobs, though adopted, had a Syrian father. Then there's Tesla (Serbia), Einstein (Germany), Sergey Brin (Russia) of Google, Andrew Grove ( Hungary) Intel, von Braun (Germany) NASA, Andrew Carnegie (Scotland) US Steel, Fei-Fei Li (China) AI, Charlie Chaplin and Cary Grant (England), Yo-Yo Ma (Chinese born in France), Mark Rothko (Latvia) painter, and the list goes on and on. Rather than deporting people (granted with a very few exceptions), we should be welcoming people with open arms. When you say we need to make America "Great" again, oftentimes it was immigrants that made that happen! Americans should NEVER forget that. Remember, unless you are a native American who migrated here 18,000 years ago, you and your family came from somewhere else!

Thank you for reading my blog! Please be sure to visit on a regular basis or contact me at KrugsStudio@gmail.com. New blogs are added all the time. In conjunction  with my store I feel that “design” is an important part of our lives. Everything we use or live by was designed by someone. Please tell your friends, artists or anyone who appreciates design about my blog.

Please be sure to visit my store, KrugsStudio.etsy.com on a regular basis. New birdhouses, craft items, photography and canvas paintings are added all the time. Please tell your friends, artists or anyone who appreciates local handcrafted items about my store.

Why Is Science Fiction So, Well, Violent?

I love to read. I was late to the party but have since caught up. You see by the third grade, despite good grades, my mother discovered I couldn't read. Oregon public schools in the 1950's taught us to read by sight! Despite being a visual learner letters arranged in patterns taught me nothing. 

So my parents bought phonics cards and night after night in what seemed like forever I learned the sound of each letter and pairs such as th, sh, wh and such. They then took me to the library and I can vividly remember spending the summer between third and fourth grades devouring every book I could get. Years later I did the same thing with my students as a Peace Corps teacher in Liberia. It pleases me that AFTER all these years LA Public schools are finally changing to phonics! Reading scores will jump at long last.

Because I loved comics, Superman, Batman and quite a few sci-fi comics I graduated to Bradbury, Heinlein, Clark, Asimov's Foundation series that stretched to 12 or so books and many, many more.

One book was quite upsetting: THE MARTIAN CHRONICLES. I could never get past the chapter where humans land on Mars, are greeted by Martians, wined and dined then killed in their sleep. I abhor violence and that upset me greatly. I finally, on my third try, just skipped that chapter and read on. Bradbury remains one of my favorites today.

However, that didn't stop me from seeing THE BLOB or THE FLY, MONSTER FROM THE BLACK LAGOON even PSYCHO that I couldn't watch again for 60 years. It seemed at least some of those books offered possibilities for a better future even if the movies couldn't.

I've seen 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY at least 40 times, even the anniversary edition a few years ago. As everyone agrees, Kubrick changed the face of sci-fi forever. No more Buck
Rogers with wispy smoke coming out of his rocket and a cheesy control deck. Every time I hear The Beautiful Blue Danube I conjure up the Pan Am shuttle rotating with the space station as it docks and/or the moon rocket landing on the moon! There was ultimately hope and a warning of the AI we are grappling with today. Remember the HAL 9000? "Open the pod bay doors HAL" as it kills all the slumbering crew.

Before we finally launched a satellite after Russia's Sputnik, we would stay up all night waiting for NASA's Vanguard rocket to launch only to see it blow up time and again. Finally a military Redstone rocket got us into space. And the race was on!

Those were both tense yet heady years.

HAL 9000

STAR WARS, Episode 4, first of a nine part series came out in September 1977. We went to see it in Westwood near UCLA when that was the place to go. Clearly it built on Kubrick's 2001 creating a world as real as ours. However, it was replaced by the drama and strife we see on earth magnified by a thousand different planets and species. The barroom scene in many ways says it all. And this strife was carried on in just about every sci-fi series from then on.

I picked up one of the myriad STAR TREK series at the Palm Springs Library, a series  that seems never-ending. STAR TREK: DISCOVERY started almost out the gate with that old adversary, the Klingons attacking a Star Fleet starship of the Federation. And that's when I asked myself the question, will space

STAR WARS Bar scene

exploration always be violent? Should we meet an alien and will they be our enemy? In Asimov's FOUNDATIONS END humans meet Daniel, the only surviving robot from our era and ask, "Is this the end of space? He answers yes. He has protected the human race the best he could asking, "Didn't you ever wonder why you never saw an alien race? We picked the dimension that was safest for you." They had nothing to say.

A few months ago I saw MICKEY 17, a sci-fi creation of the Korean director who created and directed, the grim movie PARASITE. Since the killer was holed up in the basement of the man he's murdered home, everyone was expecting a sequel. It wasn't.

MICKEY 17 was a name for an "expendable," a man who felt he was of little worth and agreed to have his DNA copied as well as his memories and was given jobs everyone knew would kill him. We meet Mickey in his 17th iteration as he's about to freeze to death in a crevice on a planet his and many others have gone to with a Jim Jones like leader who couldn't get his way on earth. As they wish him well and will see him as Mickey 18 he is resigned to his death. However, he didn't die. 

Creatures on this barren planet no one knew about save him by dragging him to the surface. He makes it back to the base and meets Mickey 18, something that is forbidden to happen. There are issues and violence leading to the leader and his McBethian wife dying and they then face a standoff of the native creatures who arrive to the base by the thousands. The two Mickey's go out to face them and in a twist I haven't seen, in like forever, they agree to live side by side and the colony can move on. Wouldn't that have been nice here in 1620?

Boon Joon Ho took an almost warn out genre giving us hope that "contact" doesn't necessarily have to be violent. Jodie Foster's CONTACT spread a similar message as aliens asked for help that would be repaid.

One of the sweetest sci-fi films I seen in a long time is JULES starring Ben Kingsley, Jane Curtin and Harriet Sansom Harris. Milton (Kingsley) has an alien space craft crash in his back yard. Soon an alien emerges and he takes him in and feeds him. For some reason the alien keeps drawing stick figure cats. The three try to help and keep him from the government that wants alien and machine. Geared for seniors it's a wonderful family movie and again no real violence with a touching, NON-violent ending. 

Do we really know what would happen? It would be nice to consider what the future could bring us benficially without the violence we see around us as each and every day. We hardly need our entertainment making it worse. And yet it does. 

Thank you for reading my blog! Please be sure to visit on a regular basis or contact me at KrugsStudio@gmail.com. New blogs are added all the time. In conjunction  with my store I feel that “design” is an important part of our lives. Everything we use or live by was designed by someone. Please tell your friends, artists or anyone who appreciates design about my blog.

Please be sure to visit my store, KrugsStudio.etsy.com on a regular basis. New birdhouses, craft items, photography and canvas paintings are added all the time. Please tell your friends, artists or anyone who appreciates local handcrafted items about my store.

OWN or GIFT an original work of art this year!

Picking Up The Pieces

    I've been making my own Christmas cards since 1962, the year my father died and I was almost 17. To this day I never understood the reason why. My father died the day before my sister's 8th birthday and I was staying with an aunt and uncle when he passed. We were all still stunned as it ended up being a tramatic year. Death, the Cuban Missle Crisis, Portland completely without power on Columbus day at the same time. I think being high school yearbook editor helped me through those traumatic days.

The Blanks

    By Christmas our small family had no spirit left. So paper and paints in hand I created those first cards, a tradition I maintain today, 62 years later. 

     Coming up with an image each year is never easy. In Africa, during my Peace Corps years I hand made 30 "Wishing You A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year" in the letters of JOY. They took forever. 

Creative work on Santa's
beard made me
reconsider the possibilities

    The first year my son was born I took a beautiful photo of him sleeping, something he rarely did. Lots of comments on that. When first my son and then son and daughter were able, we would struggle to get a printable, decent card (I don't know what it was but bring out a camera and they would begin to fight) I had them printing postcards of the "best" Christmas shot. I would expose the paper, my son would develop the print, my daughter would fix then put into the water bath. We started her a bit after age 1. 

     Her knowledge served her well when she was an exchange student in High school. Her Swiss class traveled to France where the teachers gave them cameras and for some reason use of a darkroom. No one knew what to do so she quickly organized them, put the film on reels to develop, lined them up to develop the prints she made. She surprised everyone, and I think even herself. You just never know what your kids will remember!

   Recently I was looking at all the after Christmas bargains I had bought at Michael's and JoAnn's that are years old. They were thin wooden ornaments some blank, others with a printed image to paint. I suddenly realized I could paint them and could attach them to a card, taken off and then hung on a tree. AND, not just hung this year but depending, maybe for many years a memory of dad, father, uncle, cousin, friend. 

Cute but not memorable.

    

    So I got to work, first on the one sided designs but soon realized when I got to the 5 Santa's, they would be nothing remarkable. So fresh off a frenzy of 3D Zentangles bee and birdhouses (in 3D form I call them Doodling) I experimented with Santa's hat and beard. I liked the look then played with snowflakes, Angel's and stockings. Before I knew it (well after two full day sessions that exhausted me) I had 20+ ornaments, each one building on the lessons learned from the one before.

Great diversity of even same style blanks.

    It was not easy after straying from the printed design. These are cute but not memorable no matter how hard I tried. There comes a time I learned that you truly must think beyond the box or in this case the ornament. 

Same blank, different designs!

    Sitting on my cluttered 

workbench was the Mason Beehive. Its sides were decorated with bees and Zentangle flowers and designs. Eyeing the blank forms that clearly showed by their shape what they were made me feel it was an open invitation to experiment! So what was i to do? I doodled. As you can see, like them or not, they ARE memorable. 

    What especially makes the blank shapes so wonderful is the same shape can be decorated in unlimited ways. Things can be added, wooden hearts, jewels, shiny hearts and patterns that make them so different from each other. You can even modify printed designs (the two snowflakes above.) One blue, one yellow where each arm has a different design.

    To the above here you see a stocking blank and two variations, one with a thin painted wooden heart and another with a Christmas tree with jeweled ornaments...both sides. I will drill them for hanging thread so they (hopefully) decorate a tree for many years.

    We are creatures of habit and sometimes need to think out of the box. What items have you had for years and never used? Dig them out and see how else you could use them  It's been great fun and got the creative juices flowing again!!!

Thank you for reading my blog! Please be sure to visit on a regular basis or contact me at KrugsStudio@gmail.com. New blogs are added all the time. In conjunction  with my store I feel that “design” is an important part of our lives. Everything we use or live by was designed by someone. Please tell your friends, artists or anyone who appreciates design about my blog.

Please be sure to visit my store, KrugsStudio.etsy.com on a regular basis. New birdhouses, craft items, photography and canvas paintings are added all the time. Please tell your friends, artists or anyone who appreciates local handcrafted items about my store.