XXI: A Visual Influence Edition

Ok, the Umbrella Academy is kind of hard to explain, but it is super creative and a fun show to watch with your teenage daughter. We started this about five years ago and it is one of those insanely intriguing pieces that sort of pulls you in. These young adults all have powers and make up the group in the academy. Most interesting, this series started as a comic book and came from the mind of Gerard Way, the lead singer for My Chemical Romance.

My favorite character is the old guy trapped in the body of a kid who is a bit more sensible than the others and able to teleport himself, much like the character Nightcrawler from the X-Men comics. The timeline story in the second season goes back to Texas in the 1960s and has an interesting twist on a particular historic event.

A good reminder of leadership: everyone needs an occasional escape, hobby, or downtime to relax and reset.

This is one of my all-time favorite Ted Talk-related videos, featuring the great scientist Frans de Waal. Dr. de Waal passed away last month. Much of his work focused on animals’ emotions and especially the similarities between us ape species. Very interesting stuff. This is the excerpt from a talk he gave that discusses a topic I have written about: inequality.

See any similarities with how we handle things?

We are emotional creatures, and expectations of equality may be innate, or natural.

This is an intriguing short film from The Guardian. During the building of the airport on St. Helen’s Island, a burial place for enslaved Africans is discovered. It is a reminder of how many of our ancestors died unknown in foreign places. There’s a paradox here of lots of history being written about one man (Napoleon) while thousands are buried nearby in obscurity, at least partly at the hands of Americans. I can only assume that many of these individuals perished during transport, and it is quite moving when one young curator shows the beads and necklaces recovered from the unmarked graves.

One cannot comprehend what the terror must’ve been like. Even today, the United States has never really come to terms with our history of slavery. All over the South, there are newly found cemeteries of former slaves and some are yet to be discovered.

History serves a great purpose for how to live, what kind of decisions to make (or not), and to assess where we are headed. Unfortunately, the ignorance and hate of the past are still here, and still being stoked by predatory enablers.

Remember: you as a leader have a responsibility to know who you are in the long thread of time, and to discover a purpose for being here.

This is a rare five-minute narrated piece of film from the Battle for Iwo Jima. My grandfather was in the 5th Marine Division and this is exactly what it was for him. When I see videos like this, I keep an eye out in case I see a likeness of his face. He was wounded in the opening action and evacuated to a ship offshore. Thousands of Marines did not make it. Though this battle was won by the Americans, it was a disaster for the Marines. Nearly 6,000 were killed in the short operation.

My grandfather did not talk much about the actual combat or the “clean-up operation” that he was involved in. He felt fortunate to have lived. Though having been through hell, he expressed sympathy for the men he knew who did not make it, and for the many Japanese families who would never know what happened to their loved ones.

Conflict is a part of the human experience. If anything is ever to change, leaders must have a good general knowledge of both the warriors and the peacemakers.

Whenever I need a laugh or to change my attitude, this short clip is my go-to. After seeing it years ago, I delved into the background to discover a little bit more. This is from a British kid’s television show. The puppeteer, who we never see, is well-known and has been doing these gigs for decades. The puppeteer was known for “pulling the strings” of his castmates at times and trying to get them to break character on live television, and the sincere effort of the co-host to control her laughter gets me every time. I hope you enjoy it.

SNIPPETS

• The Frans de Waal book Our Inner Ape is a first-rate read.

• Arcane on Netflix is the best-animated series of the last five years.

Hope to see you next time. Make sure you have a bit of laughter in your life. Keep reading, practice your gratefulness, and remember: Be a good human.