Hasta La Gadget!

Seeing the shades of white and blue dissipate around the majestic crown of St Paul’s, the lights of all those striking buildings across the river glitter through the depths of evening hues, I realized I just don’t come to this part of London often enough. It felt like a treat to be there, to walk to the Tate and study Dali’s Metamorphosis of Narcissus and then to set foot on the floating Millennium Bridge, with the Cathedral dome shining with sublime yet unassuming magnificence on the other side, and then to walk in the relentless bitter cold — this was certainly not part of the treat — to the National Theatre for a play.

And while I walked with an old friend, rather hungry and thinking about a hot and wholesome dinner, I came across a board outside a pub with the saying by Samuel Johnson, “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life,” so very apt to see this by the river with the constant flow of inspiration glowing at you morning to night. There was a time when I used to be desperate to escape the cold of London winter, to always be away during those months of icy platforms, frozen fingers and deep grey skies. I thought I might have Seasonal Affective Disorder — who doesn’t! But this winter, everything has seemed a little different. The weather hasn’t quite affected me the way it normally does.

It dawned on me today that in everything that I was doing and everywhere I was going, from passing through a park to sitting in a café to a brisk walk by the river, London was springing to life, the morning sunshine was adding brilliance to an otherwise dull day, the evening lights blanketed the streets in warmth, and all that is indoors is deliciously cosy. Of course, it’s all in the eye of the beholder, it’s all in the mind, but it’s also all about creating the life, rising above the cold and dark to catch the beauty of historic buildings, to derive happiness from appreciation of the city we’re living in, the variety we are constantly surrounded by and by all that changes and remains static around us.

And on one of those downcast days, when you simply cannot help but feel sunken in that feeling of hollowness, to do one of two things, or both: find a place of beauty — outdoor or indoor — a place of inspiration and upliftment, and to sit and have cake or tea or to take a walk; or to cook a hearty soup full of the protein-fueled lentils and vegetables, a soup that has all those cosy shades of red and orange, and to sit on the sofa, snuggled with a hot water bottle, sipping on this bowl of absolute goodness, while watching an episode of Downton Abbey.

So, here’s the recipe for the soup — in case you decide it’s too cold to venture to Southbank.

Red Lentil Soup with Celery and Spinach

Serves 4

150g red lentils
800ml water
1 teaspoon coconut oil
2 garlic cloves, finely diced
2 onions, finely diced
1 teaspoon cumin powder
1 teaspoon chilli powder
½ teaspoon turmeric powder
1½ teaspoons sea salt
4 celery sticks, diced
6 tomatoes, diced
1 litre vegetable stock
150g spinach leaves, washed
1 tablespoon yoghurt, for garnishing
coriander leaves, for garnishing

Begin by rinsing the lentils under cold running water in a sieve or colander. Using a large saucepan bring the lentils to the boil. Gently cook the lentils for 15-20 minutes over a low heat until soft.

Now you can start to sauté the onions in coconut oil, then add the garlic and diced celery. Stir the celery for a few minutes, then add the spices, tomatoes, vegetable stock and lentils. Allow to simmer for 20 minutes and then add spinach. Leave this to simmer over a low heat for a little longer before garnishing with coriander and serving.

Add a spoon of creamy yoghurt before serving — just for that extra richness and variety.

The news is enough to drive you crazy. So much stupidity and life-destructive behavior. So many mind-blowing challenges and just bits and pieces of solutions here and there. How to make sense of it all? How to live your life in the face of the insanity that surrounds us?

More and more people are desperately trying to find meaning in a world gone mad. As escalating planetary destruction threatens to overwhelm earth’s resilience and our own survival — let alone our children’s and grandchildren’s possibilities — to keep going we need to tap into strengths we didn’t know we possessed or had access to.

Here are seven practical things to do that can help us find direction and inspiration in the midst of chaos:

1. Reconnect with the sacred in nature. Whatever your spiritual orientation — religious, “spiritual but not religious,” agnostic or atheist — the rest of nature is a powerful healing presence we can all experience. “Forest bathing” in the woods, surfing the ocean’s rocking waves, walking quietly while listening to what the Lakota Sioux call “all our relatives,” hugging a beloved person or animal, tending plants in a tiny garden near our backdoor, dancing or doing tai chi in the park — all can connect us to cosmic powers far greater than ourselves that put things in perspective and calm our fears. (And it’s also good to know that many world religions now have active “green” or “creation care” sub-groups focused on taking better care of our home planet and its inhabitants.)

2. Breathe deeply and settle into just this one moment on just this particular day. No matter what is happening all around us, at this one time we can focus on the simple and joyful act of breathing in and out, sitting quietly or moving with our breath. Meditation and mindfulness are ancient practices that are as relevant and useful today as they were in ancient times.

3. Be part of the solution, even if in tiny ways. Find people in your community who are doing good work towards peace, sustainability and planetary harmony and join them. They need help! Even if you have grave doubts that any of this work will stem the oncoming tide of destruction, this practice will be healing both to you and to all living beings who benefit from your help. So dig a hole for a plant in a community garden, rescue a suffering animal, teach a child, participate in a community protest. It all matters!

4. Take a media vacation. Not forever, of course. But take regular breaks from the swirling info-ocean on our screens, giving yourself time to put things in perspective.

5. Take the permaculture design course for a positive, upbeat approach to sustainability where you’ll learn practical ways of providing for yourself and your community while having fun with a good group of eager folks.

6. Read books by wise people who are wide-awake to the challenge and yet offer positive approaches. My favorites are Buddhist ecophilosopher and ecopsychologist Joanna Macy’s Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in without Going Crazy (written with physician Chris Johnstone) and Carolyn Baker’s Navigating the Coming Chaos: A Handbook for Inner Transition.

7. Form a small, local circle of community members to discuss these books. If things like environmental degradation and social injustice deeply move you, it’s important to have other people you can talk with who get it and are supportive. For a while, my husband and I were part of a reading circle that discussed Baker’s book a chapter a week and we made some good friends doing that. It’s a blessing to know other people who are not only awake to what’s happening but are also involved in creating solutions and providing positive emotional support for each other — and enjoying life to the full in the face of the huge challenges.

You know them well. Perhaps too well.

The Fab Five and their friends.

From Kermit the Frog to Buzz Lightyear. From Iron Man to Darth Vader.

Among the stable of American cultural touchstones, they stand emblematic as a cross-generational binder of a people and a product. More a symbol of America in its minted-by-Wall-Street and cemented-on-Main-Street role as a global ambassador than Lady Liberty herself, the Walt Disney Company has risen from a cartoon maker of its eponymous animator to a warehouse of media brands unrivaled in its sheer breadth.

And it is that last part that might well be a big part of why the ‘remaking’ of Disney under the direction of outgoing Chairman and CEO Robert A. “Bob” Iger may well signal the decline of the brand itself. Mickey Mouse is Disney. Minnie Mouse and Donald Duck are Disney. As are Pluto and Goofy. But, once we move beyond the endearingly drawn and meticulously marketed page jumpers sketched by Disney — the man and not the brand — and his Nine Old Men, the marquee becomes harder to define as being Disney.

Such was the intent of Bob Iger when he succeeded Michael D. Eisner in his transition from one-time weatherman to programming executive and now chieftain of a media empire. A noted manager and delegator, two defining words not in sync with the traditional studio head, Iger went about acquiring content creators as the steward of America’s premier producer of content that defied the limits of age and transcended cultures.

With success unrivaled, it is hard to conceive how the man who delivered for Wall Street, for the financial community, could have somehow diminished the brand or worse. Then again, it is often difficult to analyze the climb from the summit. Still, the fall is a given.

“It’s in our best interest to put some of the old rules aside and create new ones and follow the consumer — what the consumer wants and where the consumer wants to go,” said Mr. Iger back in 2005.

Disney, Walt Disney, understood the people and the product. He knew of the wants of the consumer, often before they themselves knew, and the needs of the machine of manufacture. He also instilled a sense of significance at his company of the work being done and for the workers, or cast members in Disney jargon, doing it.

As Mr. Eisner said to the Harvard Business Review in February of 2000:

[A] few years ago, I was walking around Walt Disney World, midnight, by myself. I got to a pavilion that was being renovated. I figured I would climb over the barricade and see what was going on. I started walking around, and pretty fast a junior security officer came toward me with a flashlight. I introduced myself. Luckily he had heard of me. So, we got talking, and he knew where all the plans were. He wasn’t involved in the construction at all, but he knew all about it. He was interested. He cared. He went through every page of the plans with me. He knew everything, and he really was passionate and intelligent about the project. It was obvious to me that this guy was special.

Now, while it can rightfully be said that times change, the life cycle of a brand is dictated by its ability to deliver the product welcomed by a wanting marketplace. When that product drifts into territory foreign to the consumer, the once reliable revenue streams created by these individual consumers will follow.

To date, the Walt Disney Company has largely drawn from the remainder. A sizable crowd, no doubt. But, there is a difference between the toe-dipper and the marathoner. For years, for generations, Disney has been the ultimate beneficiary of the latter. Successively, without pause, families turned to Disney for their prepackaged entertainment of all sorts.

And as Ron Suskind — whose son Owen is autistic — documented in his book Life, Animated about piercing the autism spectrum through the dialogue and songs of Disney’s animated movies, so strong is the bond between the product and the people that Disney’s content has even been adapted for therapy.

Whether speaking of an outing to the multiplex to catch the latest from its feature animation division, raiding the store aisles of its consumer products division’s offerings or making that pilgrimage to Walt Disney World or Disneyland, the Walt Disney Company has delivered without fail.

In the cyber world, Disney has built a fountainhead of near-endless adulation that runs perilously close to cult status. While in the world outside of its electronic confines, families have even migrated from points afar to build “the Disney Driven life” centered at or adjacent to Disney’s parks and resorts.

But, perhaps as the bellwether of the new century and new economy, even among these most loyal and forgiving of fans of all that represents the iconic Disney brand a splintering of sorts has challenged whether Disney is deserving of such praise and devotion.

Drawn from a report co-authored by this contributor:

Starting in the mid-1990s, superfan Al Lutz became a prominent voice on the Disney brand as the Burbank-based media behemoth increasingly relied on the cash heavy theme parks and resorts as a backstop for failures and deficiencies in other segments of the company. Using at first the MousePlanet.com imprimatur and later that of MiceChat.com, Lutz championed the vaunted Disney of Walt’s day.

Delivering management changes at the parks, specifically in Anaheim at the industry making Disneyland, Mr. Lutz became a well-known personality and pundit of the Disney product from the consumers’ lens. With that, for the first time, Disney found itself being questioned not by Wall Street but by Main Street.

Not long after Mr. Lutz launched into the Disney-verse, Stephen Frearson, an import from the United Kingdom, premiered wdwmagic.com — a Walt Disney World centered site. And around both, communities grew and conversations were had. Still today, these conversations occur with regularity. Only, the dollars spent on Disney by these most devoted of fans have dwindled.

Visit any one of these sites today and you will likely find discussions ranging from the minutia of Disney’s parks and resorts to the import facing the Walt Disney Company with no apparent successor in place for the Wall Street-maker and Main Street-breaker Bob Iger. Who, somewhat ironically, was ushered into his role as CEO by Walt’s nephew, the late Roy E. Disney, after the twenty-one year tenure of Mr. Eisner.

Now, as the play is on for that post, Disney has few inside candidates for the role. Disney CFO Jay Rasulo, an often puckish glad-hander, and Parks & Resorts Chairman Tom Staggs, an oddly waifish man of anemic personality, are the only two names in the already full throttle effort to succeed Iger. In 2010, they actually swapped jobs. Yet, with pause, many media types note that Disney experienced the greatest period of growth in the company’s history when it last went outside of the company to fill the top spot.

That was in 1984, when Sid Bass and Roy Disney brought Michael Eisner on board along with Frank Wells and Jeffrey Katzenberg.

In spite of his effortless transition from an entertainment executive into an ‘Uncle Walt’-like figure and widely admired media head, Mr. Eisner was ultimately dismissed from a company he is both credited with having saved and criticized for having somehow diminished. And yet, it is Bob Iger who has almost certainly done the latter by approaching a creative powerhouse like a floor manager at a manufacturing camp on the outskirts of Shenzhen.

In his successor, it may now be time, for only the second time since its founding in 1923 as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, for the Walt Disney Company to close the door on rotating internal candidates into this role and bring back the perspective only an outsider can deliver.

As to the consumer, whose focus is not on slick and sappy marketing but the actual product delivered, Disney is not a jumble or inventory of creative content. It is not a Time Warner or a Comcast. Disney has the liability and the gift of being Disney.

Only these days, more of its most zealous followers are straying as they question whether Disney remains Disney. Whether the company that delivered Steamboat Willie and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs has any connection — any sense of heritage — with a company spitting out popcorn and pop culture products under the shingles of Marvel Entertainment and Lucasfilm placed upon a castle built by a man named Walt Disney.

Or, for that matter, a studio stuck in a cycle of sequels named Pixar led by the equally entrenched John Lasseter and Ed Catmull.

“Sometimes you just have to be there with your people. You have to be in the same room with them, look them in the eyes, hear their voices,” said former Disney CEO Eisner.

As his successor Mr. Iger said at the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit held just last fall of the typical Disney consumer, “We have no idea who they are. We don’t know what they are willing to spend, what they like and what they don’t like.”

Walt knew. Michael too.

Gary Snyder is a member of the Redstone family, whose company, National Amusements, owns Viacom and CBS, among other media assets. He is an advisor on Western media and culture to China.

Thirty years ago, video game controllers were plastic, and they looked like this:

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Now, thanks to ColorWare, a company that offers color customizations for a variety of electronic products, a handful of gamers can join the “Call of Duty” frontlines with 24-karat gold controllers in hand:

ColorWare’s gold-plated PlayStation 4 controller. (Photo: ColorWare)

The gold-plated controllers, which ran $300 — not much less than an actual Xbox One or PlayStation 4 system — were announced on ColorWare’s Facebook page Wednesday and had already sold out by Sunday morning. ColorWare produced 25 for each of the two gaming systems. The usual controllers for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 systems cost $59.99.

ColorWare’s gold-plated Xbox One controller. (Photo: ColorWare)

The golden controllers won’t give owners the Midas touch in gameplay — they’re functionally no different than any other controllers for the systems. In other words, they’re luxury for luxury’s sake.

In fairness, that isn’t exactly a new idea when it comes to consumer electronics. If you wanted to, you could order a $4,600 Lamborghini phone running an outdated version of Google’s Android operating system. And just last week, a well-known video game collector posted a new video showing his massive hoard of Nintendo memorabilia, including 20 different Nintendo 64 systems that are identical apart from color differences on the outside.

The gold-plated controllers are probably a safer investment than a pile of game consoles from 1996, though: The value of the precious metal has started to rebound in recent months.

(This article is published in “The Louisiana Weekly” in the Jan. 26, 2015 edition.)

The penalty phase of the Gulf spill trial, pitting the federal government against BP Exploration & Production Inc. and Anadarko Petroleum Corp., began in U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier’s courtroom on Poydras St. last Tuesday. This third and final segment of a trial without a jury could extend for another two weeks in New Orleans and is focused on U.S. claims for civil penalties under Section 311 of the Clean Water Act.

Two years ago, the Gulf states thought BP might pay as much as $21 billion in CWA penalties, based on a maximum $4,300 per barrel spewed in 2010. But on January 15, before this trial’s phase three began, Barbier ruled that 3.19 million barrels of oil were discharged into the Gulf versus the feds’ 4.2 million estimate. That count makes BP’s highest possible CWA penalty $13.7 billion. An expected smaller fine affects Louisiana’s ability to fund its $50 billion, 50-year 2012 coastal master plan. Under the 2012 RESTORE Act, 80 percent of civil and administrative CWA penalties for the Deepwater Horizon disaster will be directed to five Gulf states.

BP subsidiary BPXP in Houston was the lease holder and operated the Macondo well when it exploded off Louisiana’s southeast coast on April 20, 2010, killing eleven rig workers. A nearly three-month gush polluted coastal areas in five states. Anadarko owned a 25-percent, non-operating interest in the well.

BP acted with gross negligence in precipitating the April 20, 2010 spill, Barbier ruled last September. This mid-January, he found that BP wasn’t grossly negligent or reckless in its source-control efforts to stop the spill.

In opening comments Tuesday, U.S. Justice Department attorney Steven O’Rourke said BP will try to make the case that it has mitigated for the spill with cleanup work and by compensating victims. But he said BPXP broke the law when the rig exploded and the spill occurred. After that, the company “broke the law lying during the response,” he said. Then BP began to comply with regulations that require cleanup and payment of claims. “Now they want credit for mere compliance,” he said.

O’Rourke said BP continues to focus on its own hardships rather than the harm it caused. BP and Anadarko will say they’ve paid enough, “as though we should be thanking them for their expenditures,” he said. But BP had to clean up oil to avoid losing its operating license in the Gulf. Meanwhile, for its part, Anadarko seeks no CWA penalty, he noted.

BP will argue it has spent over $40 billion on response claims, damages, litigation and other items, O’Rourke said. But he added that shouldn’t be surprising since the disaster was the biggest U.S. offshore spill ever. O’Rourke conceded that BPXP made some payments that weren’t required by law or the Unified Command in charge of the cleanup, and he said they could be considered if Judge Barbier is inclined to trim BPXP’s CWA penalty from a possible $13.7 billion. “But you should stay close to that maximum amount because of the seriousness” of the disaster, he said.

“You can consider the criminal fine, and you should consider payments that were made by BPXP above and beyond what was required by law,” O’Rourke said. The fine combined with those payments totals $2 billion. “You should not deduct all of that, but they’re factors,” he said, adding that the company’s CWA civil penalty should be well north of $11.7 billion.

As for a civil penalty against Anadarko, “the maximum is $3.5 billion but we don’t think you should impose anything that high,” O’Rourke said. However, he said it should be significantly above a $1 billion CWA civil penalty that Deepwater Horizon rig owner Transocean paid in a 2013 settlement.

On Tuesday, Kirkland & Ellis attorney Mike Brock, representing BP, said his client spent $16 billion on its immediate spill response, which included capturing, burning and skimming oil, and another $34 billion in a continued response. BP implemented a spill response plan as soon as the explosion occurred, and its joint effort with the U.S. Coast Guard “significantly changed the outcome to the environment,” he said. Thirty-seven percent of oil discharged from the well was removed, he said.

Brock noted that BP has already paid a CWA criminal penalty of $1.2 billion. He said BP’s spill-related payments include $11.2 billion in Gulf Coast claims; $1 billion for researchers to collect and analyze environmental data; $500 million for an independent research group in the Gulf; nearly $600 million for a Vessels of Opportunity program employing fishermen to remove oil; millions of dollars that increased over time to each Gulf state to help with their spill responses; $230 million to Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida for promoting tourism; $100 million for a rig workers’ fund; and money for seafood testing and marketing.

Brock said BP remains committed to a clean Gulf and currently staffs two “fire houses” on the coast with standby personnel to deal with any remaining oil. He said the spill’s impact on fish, birds, sea turtles, dolphins and coral was very limited. “There’s an absence of measurable negative impacts” on fish populations, he said. “From the U.S. live-bird-oiling data collection observed in the relevant period, over 99 percent have no visible oil.” Of the 400 sea turtles collected “through a very vigorous, very effective rehabilitation program, almost all were returned to the Gulf,” he said.

Brock said the company’s Gulf activities generate 2,300 jobs. He said BPXP’s current value, considering the recent drop in oil prices, is $5.1 billion. The company can’t afford possible CWA penalties well in excess of that amount. Judge Barbier, however, asked if penalties couldn’t be structured so that they’re paid over a number of years.

The U.S. government’s witnesses last week said the spill’s harm to the environment and coastal residents was greater than BP maintains. On Wednesday, professor Donald Boesch, president of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science, said post-spill studies indicated that oxygen-depleted seaweed reduced fish habitat. Ocean fish were potentially impacted by the disaster. A number of birds, mammals and turtles were stranded on beaches during the spill. Turtle carcasses found along the Gulf were well above historical rates. Almost 15,000 young turtle hatchlings were moved for their protection and released elsewhere.

“The number of dead dolphins washed up on beaches during 2010 went way up, and they went way up in particular during the months in which the spill was occurring,” Boesch said. The oiled birds that were found could have been the tip of the iceberg, and many more may have been killed than were collected.

Boesch, a Ninth Ward native of New Orleans, said of the 1,100 miles of oiled Gulf coast, 220 miles were moderately to heavily oiled. Some coastal marshes were permanently lost. “In Louisiana, marshes don’t come back once they’re eroded and don’t regrow without intervention” by pumping in dredged material, using river-sediment diversions or taking other steps, he said.

At Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, the Natural Resource Damage Assessment-Oil Spill Team that’s authorized to discuss spill-related matters late last week declined to comment on reduced expectations for CWA fines against BP. CPRA head Jerome Zeringue resigned last week and was replaced by Chip Kline, Governor Bobby Jindal’s deputy director for coastal activities. Speculation is that Zeringue may run for a state political seat. end