Jacob Lawrence - Famous American Painter

Post based primarily on Story Painter, the life of Jacob Lawrence by John Duggleby

America is the country that it is because of the characters that live, (and lived) here.  This story was told by John Duggleby, won a Carter Woodson and Smithsonian award so it amplifies Jacob’s amazing life. If you have never heard of Jabob Lawrence, a Google images search will bring a smile to your lips.

He was born to a poor African American family in 1917 at a time most people of color lived in the South. But change was afoot, the greatest move North since the Civil War itself.  His parents Rose and Jacob found that life in the North was not easy, jobs were scarce.  His father left the family when he was seven leaving his mother to care for him and his brother and sister.  His mother left to find work in New York, but didn’t have enough money to send for her children for three years, but finally the kinds rejoined her in Harlem. Jake struggled in school and play with other children, but found peace in art. He developed a folksy style that depicted life in the 1930s in Harlem. Great speaker/historians like Allen and Seyfert and other speakers in Harlem were the source of his inspiration and education.

People began to appreciate and show his works, not in powerhouse galleries or museums at this point, but the Harlem YMCA and library. His big break was a government program called The Easel Project. He was being paid to paint. Those paintings are lost sadly.  Nevertheless, with the time to focus on art, he began to develop campaigns or a series of related paintings to tell a story.

In 1940 he began the series that would make him famous, the Migration of the Negro. A year later he married his fellow art student Gwen. The series was found by gallery owner Edith Halpert and soon after purchased by the New York Museum of Modern Art and Phillips Collection in Washington DC. After a stint in the US Navy where Carlton Skinner noticed his talent and added painting Navy life to his official duties. He continued painting, Halpert continued selling and he was soon recognized not as a black artist, but a great artist and this being the 1940s was a great, (and needed), contribution to our culture. In 1970 he did a portrait of Jesse Jackson for Time magazine.

In the same way art teachers in Harlem had encouraged and guided him in his youth, Jacob gave back by teaching art including at the University of Washington where he became a full professor in 1971. His great honors include being invited to attend and paint Jimmy Carter’s inauguration and having a painting chosen by the Pope for the Vatican.

Jacob would love attending SANS Rocky Mountain 2017 to tell the story of the creative and skilled subculture of cybersecurity professionals. Stephen Northcutt is Director, Academic Advising at SANS.EDU.

Kim Rich, author of Johnny's Girl

Kim Rich was born in 1958 to John, (Johnny), Rich, a real Alaskan character that left his input of this great nation. He was married to Frances Ann Chiaravalle, a striking woman that sometimes worked as an exotic dancer, prostitute and B-Girl, (convincing gentlemen to purchase expensive drinks on commission). Johnny, may be best described as a gambler, but he tried a number of businesses and schemes including concert promoter for B.B. King. At the time of his death he owned two massage parlors and a firearms resale business.

While he certainly left his mark on Anchorage Alaska, his daughter, Kim, almost certainly left a larger mark and qualifies as a true American character. She graduated from Alaska University Anchorage with a degree in journalism and did the research to tell Johnny’s story. This became a book, a movie and a play, titled Johnny’s Girl, that gives insights into Johnny’s life, the seedy underworld he operated in and Anchorage Alaska in the rough and tumble 70s and 80s.

The book is of the genre memoir. According to the author,

"Memoir writing is a search for  'what happened' and more importantly, 'why' it happened.  Why did one's parents fall in love?  Why did they marry?  What was it like when they had me?

Memoir writing is also a search for justice.  This can mean justice on a personal level or a societal level or even justice in the arena of the courts.  But true justice can only be obtained through an accurate and fair -- as much as possible -- exploration of the 'what happened' and again, the 'why.'"

Kim Rich would really enjoy flying from her home in Texas to visit SANS Rocky Mountain2017; as a student of culture, I am sure she would enjoy getting to know the security researcher field.

Stephen Northcutt is director of Academic advising at SANS.EDU, an accredited cybersecurity graduate school.

Edward Warren - First American Aviator

According to Aviation Wings, "“With the steady fortitude of an old voyager,” 13 year old Edward Warren acknowledged the crowd below with a “significant wave of his hat.”   Attached to a tether, Warren flew upward on the first “American Aerostatick Balloon” before a “a numerous and respectable Congress of People.”  After the flight, Warren disappeared into obscurity." Suzy Northcutt, upon reading the story remarked, "Ha! I’ve raised teenagers. I know exactly what happened to Edward Warren. He’s STILL grounded!"

Warren is considered the first American Aviator. The man behind the balloon is Peter Carnes. According to Famous Daily, "Peter Carnes, a lawyer and tavern keeper from Bladensburg, Maryland, read the storied reports of the Montgolfier’s experiments with hot-air flight. Carnes was inspired to recreate the experiment himself, and announced in the local papers he would launch his own balloon."

  According to the Washington Post:
200 years ago Peter Carnes tried to be the second American to fly in a balloon for a paid audience. The spectators in the Philadelphia commons watched in awe as the 200-pound man rose about 20 feet. But a shift of wind pushed his ingenious machine into a wall, breaking the chains and dropping him to the ground.

Many in the crowd had not seen Carnes fall, and so were horrified when the balloon, which had continued to climb more than a mile, caught fire. They assumed that the pieces of platform and furnace that dropped from the sky were Carnes' body. 

As it turned out, Carnes landed unhurt in a prison yard and chose to end his ballooning career with that spectacular July 1784 episode.

Peter Carnes, inventor, risk taker, researcher, would have been quite at home at SANS Rocky Mountain 2017, where the storied faculty have many of the same traits. Stephen Northcutt is Director, Academic Advising for SANS.EDU, an accredited cybersecurity graduate school.

Dan White - Twinkie Defense

NOTE: this is cross posted to my information warfare blog, because it is such a strong perceptor. Dan White shot and killed the first openly gay elected official in America, San Francisco Mayor George Moscone. He was a tortured soul and ended up committing suicide. According to Biography, "During a videotaped confession, White came across as a pathetic man who was barely able to explain why he had assassinated his colleagues. His defense lawyer, Douglas R. Schmidt, claimed White had acted in the heat of passion and not out of malice. He made a plea of "diminished capacity," due to extreme stress in White's home life and depression. Describing White's emotional state, psychiatrist Martin Blinder, one of five defense therapists, explained that in the days leading up to the shootings, White grew slovenly and abandoned his usual healthy diet and indulged in a diet of sugary junk food like Coke, doughnuts and Twinkies instead.

Newspapers across the country picked up on a great headline, and today the term "Twinkie defense" is a derogatory label implying that a criminal defense is artificial or absurd."

In 2016 America is starting to normalize gay, lesbian, transgender, lifestyles. Part of that is increasing focus on so-called hate speech, (Hate speech is speech that offends, threatens, or insults groups, based on race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, disability, or other traits.). You can trace the roots of that particular perceptor campaign to On November 27, 1978 and the murder of George Moscone, (as in the Moscone convention center). While it gave that cause a focus point and it is true that Dan White was anti-homosexual, most of the data indicates this was more about money, a job position.

The other key point is the so-called "Twinkie defense".  According to Wikipedia, ""Twinkie defense" is a derisive label for an improbable legal defense. It is not a recognized legal defense in jurisprudence, but a catchall term coined by reporters during their coverage of the trial of defendant Dan White."

Wikipedia is not exactly correct here. The so-called "Twinkie defense" got the charge reduced from pre-meditated murder to manslaughter and White served five years in prison for the murder of two men. According to Snopes, "Even though White had entered City Hall carrying a gun loaded with especially lethal ammunition, climbed through a basement window to avoid metal detectors, evaded Mayor Moscone's bodyguard, reloaded after killing Moscone, and walked across City Hall to find and gun down Harvey Milk, the jury found that White's actions were not premeditated."

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the "Twinkie defense" is there were no Twinkies. According to SFGate, "The "Twinkie defense" is so ingrained in our culture that it appears in law dictionaries, in sociology textbooks, in college exams and in more than 2, 800 references on Google. Only a few of them call it what it is: a myth.

"I don't think Twinkies were ever mentioned in testimony," said chief defense attorney Douglas Schmidt, who recalls "HoHos and Ding Dongs," but no Twinkies. In fact, the cream-filled confections were mentioned, but only in passing. Junk food was an insignificant part of the defense. The matter was raised briefly in testimony by Marin psychiatrist Martin Blinder, one of five defense therapists."

By the way, Hostess brands, the maker of Twinkies has really turned their business around, according to the Washington Post, "Where the company just five years ago had 8,000 employees — 75 percent of whom were represented by unions — the company now says in filings that it has a “streamlined employee base” of roughly 1,170 workers. That workforce is the shadow of a once-vast empire, which shortly before its troubles totaled 22,000 workers across more than 40 bakeries." How do they do it? Robots make the Twinkies and HoHos. They are now planning for an IPO.

Stephen Northcutt is director for Academic Advising at SANS.EDU and serves as the chair for SANS Rocky Mountain 2017 in Denver starting June 12, 2017. Hostess is led by billionaire C. Dean Metropoulos who drove the move to automation. I think he would appreciate the degree of cyber-security automation in the courses we offer.

Shetamia Taylor - protected son in Dallas shooting

A few weeks ago Kathy and I watched the movie Protocol with Goldie Hawn, where she is shot trying to prevent an assassination and is thrust into the spotlight. I wonder what will happen with Shetamia Taylor, will she be able to use her fame to effect change, or will if be 15 minutes of fame. Only time will tell, but one thing is certain, she is one of the characters that make America the country that it is.

She gave a television interview a couple hours ago and made some very cogent points. As the mother of four black kids, after so much senseless violence, she sat down with her sons and said if you are dealing with the police be respectful and comply. Right now tensions are high on all sides.

Another important takeaway from her interview was when they heard the first shot they weren't sure what it was, it was so close to the 4th of July. The second shot tagged an officer that told her, "he has a gun, run".

In Hawaii, we refer to a perceptor, that has a strong emotional response as follows, "that gave me chicken skin". When we got to the part of the interview where she was laying on her son to project him and told the officer she was hit and he jumped on top of her, that gave me chicken skin. And other officer at their feet, another covering their heads, still more lined up along the wall. This is a strong and much needed word picture for the time we are going through.

Then she saw another officer get shot and the grief Shetamia exhibits is clearly genuine. They managed to extract Shetamia and her son in a squad car to the hospital and she talks about praying all the way, she was separated from her other sons and then she expresses gratitude, "I'm thankful for the Dallas Police Department. When she refers to the shooter she says, "I'm sorry that person thought that it would be OK." and does not mention him by name; nice. We are all very busy, but if you have the chance to watch and share the video, please do. This is the message we need to dwell upon.

Shetamia is a true American character. And I hope that she has more than 15 minutes of fame. I tossed her name into Google before announcing this post on Linkedin and all I could find were stories from July. If you know where she is today, what she is doing, how she is doing please leave me a comment.

Stephen Northcutt is the chair of SANS Rocky Mountain 2017 in Denver 6/12/17. Normally, I base the evening talks on just cybersecurity, but if you know someone in law enforcement in the Denver area that can give a credible talk on what to /not to do when there is a shooter, please introduce us, seems like this is happening a bit too much.