My Founding Father

The sun has been trying to punch through the clouds all afternoon, and it seems to be finally making it happen. This morning I celebrated Independence Day by paying my respect at the graves of Bruce and Brandon Lee. I didn't stay long because there was a group of young men and women there already. I was drenched in sweat from having run the Lake Union Loop, and I had the feeling that I was making the young men uncomfortable.

I stayed long enough to tell the group that Enter the Dragon changed my life when I saw it as a fourth grader. This year is the 40th anniversary:

Enter the Dragon's Jim Kelly Dead

Monday evening is usually the time that I post some thoughts on work. But before we get to that, a few words about Jim Kelly, the martial artist and actor who appeared in Bruce Lee's Enter the Dragon (1973). Kelly died of cancer on Saturday. I read the LA Times obit online today at work. For me, a Hippie kid entering the fourth grade, the character he portrayed -- Williams -- was the personification of Black Power cool. He was fast and strong; -- of the street, but smart and suave; with his afro and his Onitsuka Tigers, he stole the show.

The idea I have is that the Watergate-era was a high point for the country. The high-stakes battle waged at top levels of government -- basically because of the Vietnam War -- left the people free of the usual endo-colonization for several years. A lot of what was going on in the 1960s -- the anti-war protests, the repudiation of consumer culture -- achieved mainstream validation with Nixon's political immolation during Watergate. Ever since, the wheels have been grinding away trying to dig us back to pre-Nixonian, pre-Johnsonian terra firma.

The two parties have done almost everything imaginable to get us back there. Clinton helped a lot. So did George W. Bush and 9/11. And Obama has been a faithful servant to the cause. But now there's a ray of Watergate-like sunshine for the endo-colonized citizenry. Edward Snowden's revelations are creating havoc. It's too early to say if this is another Pentagon Papers. (I got giddy over Occupy only to be disappointed.) Things could either get a lot worse or somewhat better. But right now things look promising. Obama has been exposed as a charlatan. His presidency is mortally wounded; his base is fractured because of this. And even if the Republicans are as reactionary and as menacing as ever, people will be free to battle them without placing their hopes, money and energy in a chimera.

At work today the A/C was out on the second floor, which is the floor where all the business offices are. The temperature was fine on the first floor, which is where the file room and other storage rooms and the large meeting hall and the industrial kitchen are located. The thermostats located everywhere on the second floor all read in the mid-80s°F. Almost all of my coworkers couldn't take it. They had to relocate to the first floor and pretend to work from there.

The message? Don't let yourself get overweight. Exercise. Subject your body to some physical stress and strain regularly. Get your heart rate elevated. Take the stairs. Walk or run. Don't let yourself get soft. Work will be much easier.

The musical immersion over the weekend was the Grateful Dead. Hours and hours of the Grateful Dead on Sunday. I was wiped up from running for over an hour in 77% humidity on Saturday and then waking at 4:30 AM on Sunday to do two loads of laundry. After laundry I laced up the shoes and went for another run, but I had to abort it after ten minutes. I was flat-out empty. I came home, showered and started listening to the Dead. I had the volume at a level that was audible but not too loud.

A Visit to Bruce & Brandon Lee's Gravesite

Bruce Lee's body lies buried in my neighborhood. His grave site, beside his son Brandon's, is in Lake View Cemetery next to Volunteer Park on Capitol Hill.

For the first few years after I swore off women I would make a special trip up to the cemetery on the Fourth of July to pay my respect. I didn't last year for some reason. The Bruce Lee explosion happened when I was a kid in grade school. He was a big hero of mine. I don't know how many times I went to see Enter the Dragon when it was released shortly after his death in 1973.

I went out this morning to do my four-mile run. I've been saving the longer, 7.8-mile Lake Union Loop run for Sunday now that the football season is over. But this morning I had to break off the run early. I was just out of gas; that, and too much strong coffee. I cut over to 15th Avenue East via the Grand Army of the Republic Cemetery (another great place in my neighborhood) enjoying Erykah Badu's "Fall in Love (Your Funeral)":

I trotted up the bike path on 15th and decided to enter Lake View Cemetery. No one was about. Following Badu, by happenstance of the alphabetical sort of song titles, was King Crimson's "Fallen Angel":

It took a little bit of time to find the grave sites, but I eventually did. It's difficult because there are several spots as you move up the hill to the west that look similar to where Bruce and Brandon are buried. Always on Bruce's grave are pennies and flowers. I paid my respect to father and son, which is always a farewell to my childhood, and then took off back down the hill. After returning to my apartment building, during the warm-down stretch on the front steps, Sly and the Family Stone's "Family Affair" played: