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I doubt that you were surprised. How could you be? With out-of-control spending in Washington having ballooned our national debt to nearly 16 trillion dollars—that’s sixteen TRILLION, with a “T”—we all knew that “oversights” like this were probably common. We just don’t want to believe it. I don’t know about you, but for me it’s a bad dream where I keep repeating, “This can’t be happening. There’s no way they would do this.” But they do, do it—and they just keep on doing it.

I grew up in the 1960s—the era of Vietnam and “flower power,” when mistrust of big government became mainstream. Maybe you weren’t around yet but some of us remember the revelations of $400 hammers and thousand-dollar toilet seats—all products of the “military-industrial complex.” This propensity to spend without limit is nothing new, but the problem is, it’s getting worse, as that glaring “T” number above bears witness.

One thousand, thousand is one million. One thousand, million is one billion. A thousand billion is one trillion. To get a picture of what a trillion dollars looks like, a stack of $1,000 bills, four inches high, is one million dollars. A stack of $1,000 bills 358 feet high is a billion dollars. With a trillion, your stack is 67.9 MILES high. You’d have to be launched ten times higher than the space station orbit—over 1,086 miles into space—just to see the top of a stack of $1,000 bills. hat is our current (and growing) national debt.

Just how much debt is that, really?  It translates into over $50,000 dollars for every citizen—every man, woman, child, infant—in the United States. Is that a lot? The Treasury Secretary of the United States, Timothy Geithner, apparently doesn’t think so. He recently appeared on Meet the Press and spoke of our national debt as if it were little more than a modest nuisance—something that will be handled in due time.

I know I’ll get some flack for saying this, but my 1960’s upbringing won’t allow me suppress it, so here goes: Thank God for the Tea Party! They were the ones that most recently started shining some light into the filthy, black hole of unaccountable government spending.

As the GSA debacle unfolds, we shouldn’t be surprised to learn about legions of other “public servants,” caught in the act of shredding, burning or erasing the telltale tracks of outrageous waste.

I’ve always heard that trust is something you earn. But when those “T” dollars are thrown around, without so much as a faint appreciation of the fact that it came to them by way of the sweat of your (and my) brow, to my way of thinking, the GSA and their ilk have yet to earn even one red cent’s worth.

To one degree or another, we all share in a day to day struggle to manage our time (or more accurately, our actions) in terms of “must-dos,” “should-dos,” “want-to-dos,” and “like-to-dos.” Time management gurus tell us that if we are grounded in what we value most, managing time is simply a matter of dividing our activities into categories like urgent, important, trivial and useless.

As many people likely define their highest values in terms of things like family or duty to God or country, these are expressed in terms of a hierarchy of responsibilities. For example, because one places a high value of providing for their family’s physical needs, they spend a great deal of time working in some career or job. While this is all very natural and I won’t suppose to know what you value most, I do believe we are sometimes prone to under-valuing essential parts of our character that contribute much to our humanity—those parts of us that are emotion, creativity and artistic expression.

Our dramatic cover and the accompanying article about Native American artist, John Balloue reminds us that there is so much more to life than our “should dos.” What are the things that enrich our life experience? What contributes significantly to joy and fulfillment for ourselves and others?

My message this month is simple: regardless of what you consider to be most important, forget about feeling guilty. Find a place in your schedule for joy and artistic expression. In your own way you will be contributing to the richness of life’s experience for yourself and for everyone around you.

Opening the Festival on March 10 at the CineArts in Pleasant Hill is the moving French-Russian drama and Golden Globe nominee Le Concert about an ousted Bolshoi Orchestra conductor who dreams of performing one last concert in Paris. “If you like Tchaikovsky and want a film that celebrates the triumph of the human spirit, then this is a film for you,” says Ilana Revelli, co-chair of the Festival.

Sunday, March 11’s line-up includes a film that not only celebrates a particular music genre, 70’s pop rock, but is also a musical itself. In Mary Lou, award-winning Israeli director Eytan Fox has created a feature film that showcases the songs of singer and composer Svika Pick. “This wonderful film takes you on a journey with its protagonist, a young man who searches for the mother who abandoned him as a child,” Festival co-chair Kim Weinstein notes. “To familiarize our audience with Pick’s music, we’re preceding the screening with a mini-concert by The Vibers, a local band.”

The Wednesday, March 14th film Mahler on the Couch is an edgy drama about the famous conductor and composer Gustav Mahler, who turns to Sigmund Freud after the former’s wife has an affair with another artist. The film examines the cultural life of Austria in the late 19th century and the bonds that develop between a patient and his psychoanalyst.

Showing on March 17th at the Orinda Theatre with Restoration, an award-winning film about a restorer of antiques who himself is restored by a stranger, is the Bay Area premiere of the German drama Wunderkinde. It follows the lives of three teen musicians during World War II. “Although we did not purposefully seek out films with a musical bent,” says Revelli, “we were immediately moved by their ability to illustrate how music can bring people together as well as inspire them.”

In contrast, Wagner and Me reveals a different side of the power of music. This British documentary by actor Stephen Fry explores how he, as a Jew and grandchild of Holocaust survivors, struggles with his love of Wagner’s music even though the composer was an infamous anti-Semite. The documentary asks the question: Can you separate the artist from his art?

In addition to music-focused films, the Festival features non-music driven films, including many East Bay premieres and award-winning films. At the March 11 screening of Gei Oni, veteran Israeli director Daniel Wolman will be in attendance to discuss his film’s recent winning the Best Film prize in China’s this past October. A last minute addition to the Festival is Le Chat du Rabbin (The Rabbi’s Cat), an animated film for adults and older teens that is set in Algeria in the 1920s. Based on a French new wave comic strip, this witty and highly original movie features a talking cat who wants a Bar Mitzvah, his rabbi, a wise Arab sheik and an eccentric Russian millionaire — all of whom journey to the heart of Africa.

The East Bay International Jewish Film Festival is presented by the Jewish Federation of the East Bay and is co-sponsored by Peet’s Coffee & Tea, Diablo Magazine, Auntie Anne’s Pretzels and City National Bank. Films will be screened at the CineArts in Pleasant Hill, the Orinda Theatre and the Vine Cinema in Livermore. For tickets and a brochure, call the box office at 510.318.6456 or visit the website at www.eastbayjewishfilm.org.

The highest motive is to be like water. Water is essential to all living things, yet it demands no pay or recognition. Rather, it flows humbly to the lowest level. Nothing is weaker than water, yet for overcoming what is hard and strong, nothing surpasses it.

Over the past seven years, our advertisers have partnered with us in supporting numerous worthwhile organizations that benefit our community. By committing their advertising dollars to ALIVE, we have, in turn, been able to support a considerable number of organizations. So far, since 2005, our advertisers have directly impacted the following organizations:

• Alamo Danville Artist’s Society & Art in the Park
• All Wars Memorial Foundation
• American Diabetes Association
• Assistance League of Diablo Valley
• Bay Area Crisis Nursery
• Blackhawk Chorus
• Blackhawk Museum Guild
• Blackhawk Women’s Scholarship Fund
• Boy Scouts of America
• California Sons in Retirement
• CCAR Scholarship Fund
• Chelsea’s Hope Children’s Lafora Research Fund
• Children’s Hospital Research Foundation
• City Impact
• Community Presbyterian Church
• Concord High School Track & Field
• Contra Costa Science & Engineering Fair
• Devil Mountain Run
• Discovery Counseling Center of San Ramon Valley
• East Bay Stand Down
• Father Frank’s Kids
• Fund a Field
• Have a Ball Foundation
• Hospice and Palliative Care of Contra Costa
• Lafayette Film & Entertainment Foundation
• Lindsay Wildlife Museum
• Links for Life
• New Life Church
• Oakland Rotary Endowment
• San Damiano Retreat Center
• San Francisco City Academy
• San Ramon Valley Girl’s Athletic League
• San Ramon Valley High School Instrumental Music Program
• She is Safe East Bay Chapter
• Soroptimist International
• The Fallen Heroes Organization
• The Parkinson’s Institute
• Troops Direct
• USS Hornet Museum

As you think about where you do business, please consider ALIVE advertisers FIRST. While they may not draw attention to their own participation in this “cumulative effort,” we are honored to have each and every one of them as our partners.

They are the water in our local community.

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If you’re an ALIVE reader, you know our mix and depth of material is extensive. We cover everything from music, gardening, finance, golf, automotive, cooking, beauty, film and fashion; to sports, travel, trivia, law, psychology and humor. Where else can you learn about the world of private investigations, facial cleansers, the Galopagos Islands and Honey-Glazed Butternut Squash Salad, all in a single issue of a magazine?

In addition to being regular contributors of features and columns in ALIVE, many of our writers, like Bob, Peggy, Harry, Trina, and Anita, are accomplished authors as well, having their own, highly acclaimed books in the marketplace. (Just do an author search on Amazon to find their books).

While ALIVE may have already cornered much of the writing talent in the East Bay, the fact is we live in an area rich in editorial expertise, so we thought it might be of interest to share a bit about the Indie Publishing industry. Beginning on page sixteen, you’ll read Anita Venezia’s first hand account of her experiences as a newly published author, attending a writer / publisher trade show. If you are an aspiring author, you don’t want to miss this piece!

And, speaking of aspiring authors and publishing … ALIVE is excited to announce our own upcoming launch into the world of book publishing, under the banners of ALIVE Publishing Group and ALIVE Book Publishing. With an “official” start date of April 2, 2012, ALIVE will begin offering comprehensive book publishing and marketing services to local authors.

Now, more than ever, if reading (and now writing) are your thing, you’ve come to the right place — ALIVE!

First off, we begin the year with an historic, important event. While it is controversial as many regard it’s timing as ill-conceived, the withdrawal of our troops from Iraq is reason for celebration, if only for the reason of once again uniting families that have been painfully and fearfully separated by war.

We must all hope and pray that the return of our troops is completed in an appropriate, successful way that will be honorable and long-standing. Our nation, the liberated people of Iraq, and the entire free world must recognize nothing less than an enormous obligation to the men and women returning, and more importantly to those who will not return, that the sacrifices they made will not have been made in vain.

Next, it is an election year, which brings the opportunity (and responsibility) to all citizens to support or oppose candidates and policies that impact us collectively and individually. Regardless of the candidate or position, just the fact that we have this opportunity reminds us to breathe in the air of positive expectation, and feel encouraged that we have another chance to do what we can to get things moving in the right direction.

I join the rest of our crew here at ALIVE in wishing you all the best in the New Year ahead. May you rejoice in what we hope are many positive, fond memories, and may you be empowered to shake off anything that might stand between you the joy that is yours for the taking!

The film stars Carlo Ljubek as Alexander (Sashko) and Miki Manojlovic as Alex’s grandfather, Bai Dan. The opening scene is Sashko’s birth in 1975, followed by a flash forward to today, where Sashko is a young man, riding in a car with his parents.

He sustains a life-altering injury as the automobile crashes. His parents are killed and he is struck with total amnesia, not remembering anything of his life or identity before the accident.

Defying the strict, disinterested and impersonal grip of the medical establishment’s institutional approach to Sashko’s treatment, his grandfather, Bai Dan, takes control of the situation and convinces his grandson to leave the hospital in order to join him in a mission to recover Sashko’s past.

Bai Dan happens to be a renowned backgammon champion, and the game he made for Sashko when he was only seven years old is the touchstone first employed to connect Sashko with his earlier life. The film uses flashbacks of Sashko’s childhood and his family’s dramatic struggle to emigrate from Bulgaria during the waning years of Soviet block domination as vehicles for revealing to Sashko the rich yet difficult odyssey that his life has traveled thus far.
With the expected warmth and gentleness of a grandfather, and a firmness of conviction and wisdom learned, having lived under the spectre of a totalitarian state, Bai Dan takes Sashka under his wing as the two embark on a tandem bicycle journey across Europe, from Germany, back to their roots in Bulgaria.

The film adeptly weaves the young man’s personal journey and struggle within the cultural and historic one that his parents and grandparents ultimately survived. As Sashko’s memories return, the grand story and import of his heritage is artfully portrayed through the story.

Throughout the film, Bai Dan offers a steady hand to both Sashko and the audience, often through his knowledge and life application as a backgammon sage, as he tells his grandson, “life is like the dice in our hands; fate is determined by the skill and luck of the player.”

The simplistic first impression of this film gives way to the realization of a more complex, rich storyline—the hallmark of well crafted cinematic expression. The performances are solid and believable and you are left feeling very good, indeed, at the end of this film. Four out of five stars — you won’t be disappointed!

In the spirit of the season, I believe it is long overdue that we recognize one particular group — one profession, to which it is no exaggeration to state that our entire system, indeed, our way of life, depends. Members of this profession have been mocked and maligned — the butt of numerous jokes — for as long, I would say, as relationships between people have existed.

Like anyone who has lived and worked for more than a “few” decades, I’ve had the opportunity to meet and work with a vast numbers of individuals of different professions; many with impressive resumes that include advanced degrees in their particular field — engineers, lawyers, doctors, accountants, educators, psychologists…you get the idea. By their accomplishment in earning their various professional ranks, by definition, all of these individuals have achieved “success.”

And yet, without exception, the degree to which these individuals have been able to use their advanced, specialized knowledge and training in productive ways has always been dependent upon other skills that, to my knowledge, are not included in any curricula of the aforementioned professions.

I am referring, if you haven’t already guessed, to the profession of sales. The act of “selling,” is a relational skill — many would say an art—which everyone possesses in some measure. Every job applicant must “sell” their prospective employer as to why they should get the job as opposed to other applicants, and when your group of friends decide which restaurant you’ll visit for your Friday night gathering, the one you go to will likely be determined by the individual with the most persuasive argument.

While we all possess a measure of sales ability, some have chosen sales to be their vocation — to sales “professionals” it is their passion. The fact is, professional sales people comprise much of the membrane between what is and what will be, as it is through effective selling that every new idea is advanced.

Sales professional ought to be appreciated and held in high esteem. So this holiday season, I pay a special tribute and thanks to sales professionals everywhere. You make all of our lives better for the work you do every day.

Active and inquisitive, Mirco is a typical boy, ever willing to challenge authority. One afternoon, after playing with friends, Mirco returns home to repair a broken toy and is distracted by the forbidden fruit of his father’s shotgun hanging high on the wall, well beyond Mirco’s reach. But parental securing of the gun is no challenge for Mirco, as he climbs up to take it and the inevitable happens.

The accident leaves Mirco partially blind, only able to discern shadows. As Italian law does not allow blind children to attend regular public schools, and Mirco’s heartbroken parents cannot afford a private tutor, Mirco is sent to a well known Catholic boarding school / institution for the blind, in Genoa.

The school’s stern headmaster (Norman Mozzato), also blind, has apparently discovered the ideal solution for finding “appropriate, productive” lifestyles for these young boys he considers hopelessly handicapped. As his own life’s dreams and ambitions apparently died along with his eyesight, so too must it be for everyone else. There is no place for the “luxury” of creative expression, in the world of the blind.

But Mirco has other ideas. And while he has some difficulty in adjusting at first, we soon learn it is not a bitterness for his being blind that troubles him, but for the attempts of others to stifle his inner passion and creative spirit. What first appears as an understandable anger becomes revealed, simply, as the yearning of the creative soul seeking an outlet for expression.

Mirco befriends another boy named Felice (Simone Gulli) who has been blind since birth. In one poignant scene we glimpse that Mirco has some unique gift for capturing and communicating the essence of reality, transcending visual blindness by describing colors to his new friend. “Blue is like riding your bike and the wind hits you in the face,” Mirco tells his new friend, and “Red is like fire. Like the sky at sunset.”

The persistence of Mirco’s creative energy becomes focused, as he discovers a reel-to-reel tape recorder and soon, teaches himself how to use it. He learns a new way to bring his imaginations to life by telling stories with recorded sounds. When Mirco’s teacher, Don Giulio (Paolo Sassanelli) assigns an essay about the four seasons to be written in Braille, Mirco follows his own path and creates a recording that tells the story. Don Giulo recognizes the boy’s genius, but the headmaster, of course tries to deny and extinguish the Mirco’s blossoming, creative e spirit.

Mirco attracts the attention of a girl, Francesca (Francesca Maturanza), who becomes a collaborator in his audio fabrications, and it isn’t long before their exciting new activities enchant the other children in the school, even the class bully, Valerio (Andrea Gussoni).

The film follows a predictable path, as the mean-spirited headmaster tries to maintain order, but Don Giulo rises to champion Mirco’s cause, and the children perform for their parents in an “ear opening,” watershed performance. While it may come off as bit simplistic, its impact is enhanced by the fact that the film is based upon the true life story of the award-winning, Italian sound editor, Mirco Mencacci.

Produced and directed by Cristiano Bortone, Rosso Come il Cielo (Red Like the Sky) is a delightful, must-see film by any standard. Its well crafted cinematography and artful directing make it visually rich, and all of the roles are superbly acted. Without a shred of hesitation, it is five out of five, very solid stars for this film!