NAME RECOGNITION IN AMERICA EXPLAINED, TO BE OR NOT

Two nights ago I watched Hamnet from the blue velvet couch.

It’s about Shakespeare, which isn’t a spoiler. At least it shouldn’t be.

With one of the more helpful movie openings, it explained that Hamnet and Hamet are the same name. The same.

So I was set. Hamnet it is?

No, it’s not.

Not only a mistake on the name, but also in casting a tortured looking leading man nothing like the bald guy with side curtains staring out with what looks like a ‘spectrum’ gaze for the last five hundred years.

Hamlet we know. Hamnet? Who’s that guy?

I’m not bragging, but I’m considered a Shakespeare expert by many people based on my extensive experience:

Took the year long Shakespeare sequence in college, bought the huge Riverside book, stopped in Stratford for a cup of coffee, and walked around the Globe in Ashland, Oregon.

What more is there to do? Hamlet is Hamlet, but Hamnet is one of the best movies I’ve ever seen. Ever.

I give it four tissues, and you’ll need as many when you see it.

Shakespeare had the name recognition and Hamnet delivered.

It doesn’t always go so well.

 

What’s In A Name

I remember a golden time called the 1960’s and being young enough to ignore everything from social change, hippies, and the Vietnam War.

Young people today, millennials and below, won’t have the same advantage I did because of social media.

Not only do they get the minute by minute details of everything all of the time, but they have to be experts in parsing the real and the not so real.

I hope they’re more convincing than I am claiming Shakespeare as my brother. He’s not, but with AI . . .

 

I remember comfort food growing up.

 

 

The parents called this dish Spanish Rice. Everyone loved it.

Rice, tomato sauce, ground beef, maybe some onion.

It looked a lot like the picture at my house, except in a bigger pan and about a pound of chopped green pepper mixd in.

Raising kids, if one of them turned as green as a pepper trying to eat, I’d take note and not do it the same way.

When I was the young kid my task was to sit there at the table, to hold my seat whether I ate or not.

There was something about green peppers that turned my stomach. Even tagging along at the grocery store I rushed past the peppers.

But my parents, being responsible and all to turn out a well-rounded young man, figured it was in my best interest to stay at the table until everyone finished, then sit there until I finished, or went face down asleep in my plate.

Either way was a win for them, and every night after that dinner I had to wash my face so I wouldn’t leave Spanish Rice goo on my pillow.

I grew up and ate my first Chinese fried rice. Yes.

I went to Spain and ate paella. Hell yeah.

Most recently I had the best Thai fried rice of my life in Portland, Oregon.

Safe to day I overcame my aversion to Spanish Rice. I could even bite a green pepper today without throwing up.

 

As The Stomach Turns

Name recognition in America means a special place in the world where some jacked up GS-5 government employee in a mask doesn’t drop you for looking different.

Positive name recognition means a pumped up little dude in war gear won’t pump a round or five in your direction, won’t kneel on your neck until dead, and won’t push you down and pass by while you bleed from your ear.

American name recognition means understanding the mission to help make the world a better place, to go where others refuse, and bring hope, food, and water to those without.

It means keeping tabs on friends and foes, of turning foes into friends without losing friends.

The baby boomer lifespan includes the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe after WWII, along with Japan, Korea.

It includes writers writing about what went right, and what went wrong.

I’m not that writer, but I’ve done some traveling, some reading, this blog.

I remember P I G S, Portugal, Italy, Greece, and Spain, famous for under-performing.

Recently:

 

In the case of Spain, GDP increased by 0.6% in the last quarter of the year, while Italy grew by 0.2% and Portugal by 0.8%. These figures contrast with those of Germany (-0.3%), France (0%), Sweden (0.1%) and Austria (0.2%).

What was observed in the final quarter of the year is part of a trend that has been observed since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

While the German economy has remained frozen at its pre-war size, the southern countries have managed to maintain dynamism.

 

There’s a big job in America with the most name recognition in the world.

It’s a job with an oath:

 

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”

 

PS:

If you’ve shown the best you can do is not good enough, you try something different.

Work to find a solution to a problem, not make more problems to cover a bigger problem.

Change the Spanish Rice after the first involuntary gagging episode instead of adding more green pepper.

 

PSS:

Try walking in another person’s shoes.

They probably won’t be Florsheim shoes, they probably won’t fit, but go ahead.

The idea is to feel something.

Belgium is feeling something; Spain is feeling something; Denmark is feeling something.

How you feeling?