Author Archives: Alan O’Hashi, Whole Brain Thinker

Unknown's avatar

About Alan O’Hashi, Whole Brain Thinker

I’ve been involved with community journalism since 1968 when I wrote for my junior school paper, the "Tumbleweed," through high school and college and then wrote for the "Wyoming State Journal." I put aside my newspaper pen and began Boulder Community Media in 2005. There wasn’t much community journalism opportunity, so I resurrected my writing career as a screenwriter. My first short screenplay, “Stardust”, won an award in the 2005 Denver Screenwriting Center contest. I've made a number of movies over the years. Filmmaking is time-consuming, labor and equipment intensive. I recently changed my workflow to first write a book and make a movie based on that content. - Electric Vehicle Anxiety and Advice - This is a memoir travelogue of three trips covering 2,600 EV miles around Wyoming (2022) - Beyond Heart Mountain - Winter Goose Publishers released my memoir in February (2022) - The Zen of Writing with Confidence and Imperfection - This is a book recounting how luck planed into my signing a book deal after a 15-minute pitch meeting. (2020) - True Stories of an Aging Baby Boomer - War stories about living in a cohousing and lessons others can learn when starting their communities (2021) - Beyond Sand Creek - About Arapaho tribal efforts to repatriate land in Colorado (PBS - TBA) - Beyond Heart Mountain - Based on my memoir about my childhood in Cheyenne facing overt and subtle racism toward the Japanese following World War II (PBS - 2021) - New Deal Artist Public Art Legacy - About artists who created work in Wyoming during the Great Depression (PBS - 2018) - Mahjong and the West - SAG indie feature which premiered at the semi-important Woodstock Film Festival (2014) Over the years, I’ve produced directed, filmed and/or edited several short movies, “Running Horses” (Runner Up – Wyoming Short Film Contest), “On the Trail: Jack Kerouac in Cheyenne” (Lowell Celebrates Kerouac Festival, Top 10 Wyoming Short Film Contest), “Gold Digger” (Boulder Asian Film Festival), “Adobo” (Boulder International Film Festival), “A Little Bit of Discipline” (Rosebud Film Series), and two feature length documentaries “Your Neighbor’s Child” (Wyoming PBS and Rocky Mountain PBS), and “Serotonin Rising” (American Film Market, Vail Film Festival). He also directed and produced the award winning stage play “Webster Street Blues” by my childhood friend Warren Kubota. Boulder Community Media is a non-profit production company dedicated to democratzing media in all their forms - large and small screens, printed page and stage by providing sustainable and community-based content. I mostly work with community-based media producers, organizations, and socially-responsible businesses to develop their content via – the written word, electronic and new media, the visual and performing arts in a culturally competent manner – I’m what’s commonly called a niche TV and movie producer. Along with all this is plying my forte’ – fund development through grant writing, sponsorship nurturing and event planning.

Are you honest with yourself and with others ALL THE TIME or blame everything on Obama?

Posted on by
Reply

I was at the Conference on World Affairs today and the topic of one of the lecture panels was about spin doctoring and little lies and artful truth-stretching. I think that spin doctoring is most closely associated with politicians and public relations strategies, but the panel discussants made the topic more personal through their own stories and experiences.

The guy on the right is a columnist for the Chicago Sun and gave examples on how his outlandish claims were actually true. The next speaker from Down Under had rationalized working for Shell Environmental after knowing Shell Oil was a major polluter in Nigeria. The third panelist is a rock musician who told the story about his father who finally fessed up that he was a co-pilot and not a pilot during WWII. The final speaker from Hollywood is a show runner for reality TV in LA and explained that everyone in Tinseltown are liars.

The guy on the right is a columnist for the Chicago Sun and gave examples on how his outlandish claims were actually true. The next speaker from Down Under had rationalized working for Shell Environmental after knowing Shell Oil was a major polluter in Nigeria. The third panelist is a rock musician who told the story about his father who finally fessed up that he was a co-pilot and not a pilot during WWII. The final speaker from Hollywood is a show runner for reality TV in LA and explained that everyone in Tinseltown are liars.

 

For most of you out there, you’ve probably never heard of CWA.

This is a week-long conclave with a bunch of talking heads of various academic disciplines who come together to lecture to an audience about current topics. The topics are mundane in nature, but the panels can get very heady.

I tend to go to the sessions that have some practical applications in my day-to-day world. I suppose it’s because I still work and try to gain some new insight into how to conduct my business.

There are lots of retired people who seem to go for the more heady sessions about war and peace in the middle east, etc. etc.

Stuff that I think the average Joe or Joette, really have no control over, but are interesting to talk about and there’s little personal risk in doing so.

Anyway, this spin doctoring panel about the art of rationalized lying fit in with one I heard earlier in the day about the future of communication. I was also interested since my recent illness, I’ve started to get a lot off my mind to relieve stress.

Turns out, being frank and honest may add more to my stress, than I imagined, which I’ll explain later.

What did I learn?

Like Jack Nicholson says in “A Few Good Men” – “You can’t handle the truth.”

In our daily lives as we meet our neighbors, go to work, interact with friends of various ilks, I’ve learned that people can’t handle the truth, unless they’ve concocted their rationalizations or come to grips with their truths.

The session earlier in the day I attended about the future of communication had a big discussion about the “filter bubble” of internet searches.

As the search engines become better at “dialing in” the words and phrases of our searches, if a person relies too heavily on the search results, the narrow results put us in our own artificial realities that only reinforce what we think, rather than providing a broader perspective.

The example used by one of the presenters, if a political extremist only googles obama, guns, 2nd amendment, the only results that will come up will be those that have come up time and time again, thereby leading the activist to think that “everyone” holds the same views.

Since my flirt with death, I’ve had a big attitude adjustment that life is too short to “beat around the bush” and have become more forthright in my comments and approach to people. Based on reactions I get from people, this isn’t an acceptable cultural norm.

People aren’t interested in hearing frank and unfiltered opinions, especially if they concern them. So far, folks get defensive, push back, and jump to conclusions. I may have to return to my wicked ways and join the crowd, since others aren’t willing to face their big and little demons openly.

I’ll be more selective in my battles, for sure.

I’m figuring out that most people like telling the little lies and concocting stories backing them up; rationalizing their questionable actions as being positive choices.

By the way, if anyone posts that Obama is a liar or Congress members are liars, your comments will be nixed. Those targets are too easy.

This is about you and I coming to grips with our own behaviors before knocking anyone for theirs. Now that I think about it, if we only surround ourselves with people and media accounts that only bolster our own perspectives, we are enabling the status quo liars in Washington D.C.

eGo Car Share service is handy, but for now, I’ll stick with the VW Eurovan

Posted on by
Reply

I don’t know if this car sharing service works in communities other than those with compact borders, but there’s always an eGo Car Share car parked on the corner in my neighborhood.

I’m still not fully confident in my driving – physically and automotive-wise. The Eurovan has had more than it’s share of problems, but I think it is finally getting to the point where I trust it.

The engine blew up in the middle of nowhere outside of Fort Washakie, Wyoming because the instrument panel had a short in it and wasn’t detecting engine temperature – although I could have checked under the hood more often (that was fixed under warranty). Many thanks to Gary Collins who towed the van from Lander.

The exhaust system is rotted out and that will be fixed tomorrow; it’s a manual transmission and I am gaining strength back in my clutch leg / foot and I put new rubber all the way around.

I’ve been exploring different transportation options, leasing from a dealer, selling the Eurovan and buying new; and the eGo Car Share. I haven’t had a new car since the 1970s and I don’t know what got into me that I would investigate one now!

Although I did become more fluent in the car leasing game. The current deals you see offered aren’t the best deals. I will check again at the end of the year for the 24 month lease with nothing down.

Even if I have to put a few hundred into a used vehicle, it’s still less expensive than maintaining a new one. Now that the Eurovan will soon be road worthy and a couple thousand bucks later, it may be worth using the loaner car from time to time.

The eGo Car Share is a local nonprofit company that owns a bunch of cars and trucks that get loaned out to Boulder and Denver users for an hourly rental charge. It must be a franchise of some sort.

At my first glance, the Car Share is best suited for a person who doesn’t own a car and just needs one to run a few errands, haul a load of dirt, etc.

People who don’t drive much already have a small carbon footprint, but for someone like me, it’s probably not the best option since I drive quite a bit in a single – occupancy vehicle.

But at least the Eurovan is bought and paid.

Since I’ve known about the service for some time, I decided to sign up to find out what it is all about.

It’s a simple enrollment process on the internet and once a guy has filled out the forms, taken a quiz about the service, a “fob” is mailed out which is used to lock and unlock the car. Once inside, the key is wired onto the steering column and away you go.

All you have to do is get approved, pay any monthly fees and then reserve a vehicle on line or call their office. If you’re looking for a particular kind of vehicle, say a van or pickup, then accessibility may not be as handy.

If a person doesn’t have a car or at least one that’s all paid off, this is a pretty good option. Included in the $4.50 to 6.95 hourly rate is a $250 deductible insurance plan and vehicle wear and tear. The rent maxes out at $39 to $49/day which is comparable to a car rental place.

You get 50 miles included then $.33 to $.38/mile after that. The person who uses the car when the gas tank gets to be about 1/4 full is responsible for filling up. There’s a credit card in the glove box to cover that cost.

Today, I drove a Honda Fit for a few errands to try out the program. For less than 10 bucks, I went to the office supply store, stopped off for a few groceries and dropped the car off in the Holiday Neighborhood.

How does this compare to renting at, say, Enterprise car rental where I do most of my business.

Depending on the season, an Enterprise intermediate or standard car rents for anywhere between $25 to $50 / day with unlimited mileage. You either buy their insurance or cover the rental under your own policy. Enterprise also has a $10/day weekend rate Friday through Monday during certain times of the year.

Renting a car is definitely cheaper than the Car Share for basically the same deal if a person wants to use it for quick errands around town.

Car Share is not good for driving to work and letting it sit for eight or ten hours, unless your work is near a check in point.

I’ll stay enrolled in the eGo Car Share deal. It’s a good complement to my RTD ECOPass bus pass, my Eurovan and Enterprise car rentals.

For more info, http://carshare.org/

Part III – I got my handicapped parking permit the other day – and shot a movie

Posted on by
Reply

Who would have thought. The Affordable Care Act open enrollment period is ending soon and from what I gather, there’s been a big flurry of people trying to get signed up, including a bunch of young people to counter balance us oldsters.

I think the news and fake news people forget that who we’re talking about here is 15percent of the labor force who are schmucks like me who are self-employed or otherwise don’t have another source for insurance as a benefit, compared to the 85 percent of the workforce covered by employer benefit plans, Medicaid, Medicare or another program like Romneycare in Massachusetts

It will be interesting to find out the final enrollment numbers are after the March 31st deadline passes. There are a lot of data to crunch so I’m not holding my breath as to when they will be known.

Back to reality.

I got my handicapped parking permit the other day.

They can be good indefinitely or for three years. Mine is for three years. The best guess is that I will be better before then, but you never know.

I also have the option of a handicapped license plate. After talking to a guy in the county clerk’s office, he advised me against it since they can get stolen and I’m not quite ready to give up my old plate number.

I didn’t see the day that I would ever need one. I took the weekend to check out the handicapped parking scene as part of my occupational therapy which was to make a movie.

I organized a shoot for a short called “Caught Up in the Moment” which I wrote based on a short story by a facebook pal, Mark Trost, who lives up in the Twin Cities area in Minnesota. The movie is called “Caught Up” the other was too long.

It was cast in a couple days, the locations were set up a few days after that and the crew was skeleton. I checked out the handicapped parking situation at the Dangerous Theatre where we shot. Turns out the theatre is in a warehouse district and there was scads of parking.

The theatre is owned and operated by Winnie – the actor I cast as Jane in the short movie. Her character is a chain smoker, and the space worked perfectly for that character quirk.

Movie? Did I say we’re making a movie?

Whenever I talk about movies, it always entails some script analysis.

So bear with me.

There’s a big difference between screenplays and just about any other written form. Novels have the advantage of giving the reader insight into what’s happening in a character’s mind and generating hundreds of gray pages.

I’d say most writers – probably myself included – don’t want their words changed, but I’ve become okay with it, if the story stays in tact.

Screenplays have to portray words and thoughts through visuals and action. One mistake to avoid is writing characters who talk too much which, more times than not, entails rewriting and truncating the original words and likely adding different words – especially when using other source materials.

I don’t think writers like that so much. William Faulkner said something like, writers have to learn how to kill their darlings. Novel writers, pretty much, have as many pages as they want to get across their story. Good screenwriters kill their darlings, bad screenwriters keep them all in their work and cluttering up the story.
Screenwriters have, in the case of this short film contest, around 10 pages and for a feature around 90 pages. When I have too many darling lines or scenes, I don’t kill them, I put them aside for other projects. This is based on one page equaling a minute of movie.

Had I wanted long dialogue, I would have written a stage play. Oh and another big diff, novels are set in the past, screenplays in the present.

In the case of the “Caught Up” project, the 10 pages of source material I had is an excerpt from a much longer work. I didn’t have much context for the characters.

Mark seemed to be religious and I left that, but there needed to be a little more, so I used his character also for exposition. Since the movie had to be set in Wyoming, he became a University of Wyoming professor in the Space Sciences Department, and also an avid UW sports fan, of which there are many in Laramie.

Jane was pretty much a chain smoking writer with a love – hate relationship with Mark. She’s left in tact.

I cast Winnie (Jane) and Brainard (Mark) because they have a natural rapport – turns out they have worked together before. In a character-driven story like this, I’d rather have nature rapport than trying to get two people to develop it.

Enough Robert McKee screenwriting gibberish.

As mentioned previously, my Eurovan has been in and out of the shop for the past few months with major and mInor repairs. I gave it a work out by driving the Eurovan to Denver, which gave me a little more confidence in the vehicle.

Anyway, the Dangerous Theatre is in Denver – 2nd and Bryant, just off I-25, as mentioned before, is owned and operated by Winnie. Turns out Brainard Starling is actually a rocket scientist.

The movie will be entered in the Wyoming Short Film Contest. The main rule is the story has to be shot in Wyoming. I’ve had three films finish as the runner up and five in the top 10, so I think I have the formula down. The grand prize is winner take all $25,000.00 for the next film made in Wyoming.

The day started at 6am for me and I had a production assistant, Ian Glass, to help me load out all the gear. I used to be able to schlep everything, but now now. I probably should have had a strong back or two help me all along.

The shoot went smoothly from 9am to 2pm on Sunday. My style is run and gun and we finished an hour early. We’ll see how the edit goes.

Needless to say, I was tired when I returned to Boulder.

I’m still on oxygen from time-to-time, mostly when I exert myself too much or exercise. If I exercised more I probably wouldn’t exert myself so much through daily life.

I took Ian for a meal on the Pearl Street Mall and there were no handicapped parking spaces near Illegal Pete’s and the Parking garage was closer.

We had a pretty good talk. He’s just back from Argentina where he taught English and has an interest in film and video production and is trying out lots of different roles. He also may find a new place in the world to teach English – he’s an English / humanities major.

We also talked about college majors that do no good when out in the labor market. My degrees are in biology and political science. No wonder Ian and I connected, we’re academic square pegs trying to fit into a job pool of round holes.

Trader Joe’s.

I did make it over to Trader Joe’s in Boulder today for the first time. A new one here that opened up at the 29th Street Mall. I’ve previously been to one in Acton, MA and NYC just down the block from my friend Tom Crisp.

They’re not very big, but mostly carry their own brand of food.  Trader Joe’s marketing effort is a push and pull between being a healthy food store and a run of the mill store. I think they are mostly known for their pre-prepared dry and frozen foods, which by definition aren’t that healthy because of all the preservatives that are required and are over packaged.

Since being down and out, I’ve been having groceries delivered from King Soopers (Kroger’s) for the past couple months. I’ve become more aware of grocery prices.

I must say that Trader Joe’s prices for some items are less than the other places – but maybe it’s for stuff that a guy really doesn’t need to be eating like potato chips, but I mostly buy staples. A gallon of milk at Trader Joe’s was $3.29, which is comparable to other places.

I did find bargains on rye bread, oranges, frozen fruit and a few other things. That’s saying something since Boulder has a huge number of food stores: 2-Safeway; 2-Kroger’s; 2-Sprouts; 1-Alfalfa’s; 3-Wholefoods; 1-Walmart Marketplace; 1-Target; 1-Lucky’s Market (indie).

One thing I did notice when I got home.

I decided to have a pan-Asian breakfast: instant Thai rice noodle soup and kimchi. Trader Joe’s sourced the noodles from a company in Thailand, but not exactly the most enviro-friendly food.

There was the cardboard cover, then the cellophane wrapper around the bowl, then the plastic bowl with the styrofoam covering.

Inside the bowl were the food stuffs including two cellophane bags of oil and other veggies and a foil bag with the spices. The soup cost 99cents and I’m pretty sure it will cost more than 99cents to sort through all the packaging that ended up in the regular garbage. I was able to recycle the cardboard cover and the bowl.

I had kimchi already fermenting in the fridge.

Oh, I did finally get to use the handicap parking permit at Trader Joe’s.

If anyone needs a passenger driving anywhere, I’m your guy.

_________________

NOTE: This is likely the last part on this topic unless something drastic happens – positive or negative in the upcoming couple weeks. I have figured out that one good thing about facebook, is there is this note / blog function that operates outside the timeline and the front page. I’ll write things from time to time as the ghost of newspaper writers past move me.