He doesn't have an entry in Wikipedia. Yet. The present entry in Wiki under the name, "Dalton James", belongs to a 1971-born actor. But the way he is going, I am sure one day somebody somewhere will post an entry about him out there.
Say hello to Dalton James from Oak Ridge, Tennessee. Dalton is seven going onto eight, and studies in the first or the second grade at Woodland Elementary School in his hometown. And he has authored a full-color, children's paperback, "The Sneakiest Pirates", with its own ISBN number! Priced USD 10.95, the book is already available in the all the major outlets, both offline and online. The cartoon faces on the book cover cheekily stand out in the crowd of the more somber subjects such as "Community Psychology", "Mind over Markets" and "Personal Financial Planning" written by other James and Daltons namesakes - try googling his name on Amazon, and wow at the august assembly the kid is in already!
The 20-page book's plot is about a father-and-son duo tracking down a treasure looted by the villain named Peg Leg Chuck.
Sigh. And here I am. Last weekend, I deleted two whole chapters - worth nearly three months of effort - of my fiction work because I had woven in them a character which my inner critic now says "doesn't make sense, very superficial, distracts from the main theme, where is your plot going?". "Still doesn't have any depth in it, Sanjay. Why don't you stick to your software development and your systems analysis and designing and coding and support? Stick to manual writing and technical documentation, not creative writing. Who told you that you could be a writer too? This is just not your line, dude. Sheeesh! What an utter, sheer, imbecile waste of time!" No such self-examination, introspection, self-critiquing for young Dalton. He simply went ahead and did it.
And there is another project - a non-fiction, in the genre of self-development. Two years, and the chapters are still at the stage of notes-making. And this young Dalton, he is already working on a second book whose title he has already thought of - "The Heroes of Googly Woogly", and whose subject he has already made up his mind about: outer space. Talk of inspiration!
Though the young author's first book-signing ceremony was reserved only for peers at the school, I am sure there will be more occasions where you can join the queue to have your own copy with Dalton's signature on it.
Wouldn't be surprised if Oprah's people call upon Dalton one of these days. That is now the ultimate American dream today, isn't it: to shake hands with Oprah and appear on her show. And why not? Dalton, you deserve it boy!
This is an inspiring story of a mother who got tired of asking her kids to, for their own sake, tone down the volume of whatever it was they were listening. Seeing that her shouting only hoarsened her throat and nothing else besides, she decided to do something more constructive. And how!
Christine Ingemi, the 39-year-old mother from Amherst, New Hampshire, researched on ear buds that would refuse to increase the volume of sound beyond a certain safe level, never mind what the input volume coming from the sound system is. Concluding that there wasn't such a product available at all, she simply went ahead and invented one for her kids.
The entrepreneur bug bit her, of course. Realizing that there was money to be made, she applied for a patent, floated a company, anointed herself its president, got a website designed to promote the product, showcased her product in invention contests, and went to market.
The result? This mother's product has sold over one hundred thousand pieces all over US and Canada. The ear buds have won her the third prize in the "Modern Marvels Invent Now Challenge", 2007. Enthused by success, finally having located the perfect mantra that gives professional acclaim, respect and moolah rolled in one, she has her sights set on new inventions already!
Must be heavy reluctance, to leave aside the tasks of home-making, the dusting and the mopping, no? And to have to jet to exotic locales and stand at the podium and deliver keynote addresses to hundreds of peers, and to clink glasses with business honchos who want to know about one's next idea...? Do the kids miss their mom's shouting at them, or do they mind her being away for long durations? No, they must be lapping up all the attention their mother is getting on the TV! Imagine them bragging about it in school!
We think inventing a new gadget or a widget or device is best left to the nerds or the geeks or the people who spend all their time in the libraries. You know, the ones who earn the creamiest scores in SAT and GRE and GMAT. Actually no, turns out that it is not the speed of the left brain's neural circuits that matters, but it is the creative idea of the right lobe that makes all the difference.
Wouldn't be surprised if one fine morning the news wires flash the press release about Ingemi Corporation, Christine's company, making an initial public offering, with the green shoe option please. Here's wishing you all the best, Christine! The point is that, if Christine can do it, so can you and I. All it takes is an idea, and belief in oneself.
It was a pleasure to be called by the young director to see the rushes of the new movie project. The auditorium was full of these twenty-something kids, all of them bubbling with excitement and thrill at the prospect of seeing their own performances on the big screen. Some of them already established; others on the way to make their own mark under the limelight. There were a few others whose role in the event was to critique what was being shown to them. I felt rather out of place amidst such a young crowd, but gradually they soaked me into the group, and I surprised myself by interacting with the same gusto and fervor as they were. The energy of youth is indeed contagious!
As script writer for the project, they had wanted me to generate alternate endings to the story. This seems to be the fad these days: you have the main storyboard, and then you work creatively on how the story could alternatively pan out. What if the story ends this way, and not that? What if the two do not unite in the end, so it is a sad ending? What if the ending is kept deliberately blurred, so as to keep the viewer in suspense even while they walk out of the hall? How will the audience react to this particular ending?
After receiving scripts for three alternative endings from me, the Director shot all of them, and there we were, finally looking at the four sets of what was essentially the same movie, critiquing and taking a call on which one will finally be released. (I am told it will be ready by May/June. 2008, that is.)
While returning home, I couldn't help reflecting on what had been achieved. It was I who wrote all the four alternative scripts of the story. It was I who decided how the story would end - okay, it was a group effort. Finally it was I who gave it to the Director who went ahead and manifested the story into reality. Can't I do the same thing for my life? Why can't I be the script writer of my own life-story?
There was a point in time, up until which, my life was scripted by seniors who took decisions on my behalf, deploying their supreme wisdom about what was and what was not best for me. Later these seniors faded away from the scene. From that point on, although I did take over, parental/senior supervision and monitoring and control over my actions still continued with the same finger-wagging intensity; this happened through the "inner voice", or call it "conscience", that would "guide" me on what was "appropriate" and what was not.
Then one fine day it dawned that, oh my god, I was still on auto-pilot. "Do this. Not that. This. This is correct. This is not." Now why was this so-called "conscience", the "inner voice" telling me something that I did not like at all? Why was this dichotomy there in the first place? Why was there a difference between what I was doing and what I really, really wanted to do? Unless I took the controls in my own hands, I realized, I will not be able to fulfill the core needs that I had been seeded with and yearned for.
So I began searching for all the shackles which bound me, inhibited me and prevented me from fulfilling my _needs_, and which were really based on somebody else's values and beliefs on how life must be lived. And began shearing them away, one by one, these shackles. That was the time when I well and truly became the script writer of my own life.
Now that I am without bounds and on my own, what alternate realities can I begin to script for myself? Ah. So many umpteen possibilities open up. All that I have to do is to pick and choose the one that matches my core yearnings perfectly.
I put down in a notepad file how I want my life to be lived from here on, keeping in mind the full and complete knowledge of my present configuration. Now all I need to do is to invest a lot of emotional energy in my script. Freud calls it cathexis. While the learned man inevitably develops this very potent idea along his favorite route of libido and repressed erotica, I choose to give it a, uh, happy spin, if you please. I simply pour in a lot of mental and emotional energy into my particular alternate reality that I wish to have manifested in my life. And with a prayer on the lips and faith in the heart, I hand over the script to the Greatest Director Of Them All.
And what does the GDOTA do? In His infinite wisdom, He simply evaluates whether my script is in harmony with the need that He had seeded in me from my first incarnation onward, and having satisfied Himself, proceeds to shoot the film. Hey presto! I begin to live my new alternate reality!
What if my alternate reality requires the contribution of some other individual - or group of individuals - who I have no control over? Oh it is simple. This individual also has some script of their own - if they are not creating it so systematically and consciously; then the sum-total of their deep desires and needs becomes their default alternate script. The GDOTA simply matches, and if the matching is satisfactory, hey presto again!
Tell me now; wouldn't you want to be a script writer yourself? It is simple, you see, first you will have to open a notepad file...
What made this man think that lamb's blood could be pumped into a human being? Had he blabbered about it today, he would have been laughed at, at best, or been labeled a voodoo artist at worst. Blogs would have sneered at him. If lucky, he might have even developed a cult following. If luckier, TV channels would have grabbed at one more bizarre phenomenon to fill their bytes with, with anchorpersons interviewing him from every angle possible. The zenith of course would have been to get an invitation to appear in TV czarina Oprah Winfrey's show, no less...
Denis Jean-Baptiste, the son of a civil engineer in Louis XIV's government, attracted controversy from the start.
Born sometime in the 1640s, Denis called himself a doctor in medicine, but the Montpellier school of medicine from where he claimed to have earned his degree, doesn't seem to have any record of his being a student there. He also assumed the title of "Professor" to teach Mathematics and Philosophy to students; and characteristically, he didn't have any papers to prove that he had any formal grounding in these subjects. That he could still hold fort on these admittedly high-brow subjects speaks volumes of this man!
Coming back to the point, it was Denis who hit upon the idea of pumping the blood of lambs into human beings. Back then, our good doctors were still groping in the dark on what makes life tick (they still grope, in the dark I mean, but that's a different story), and a guy named William Harvey had just discovered that blood took a closed-circuit loop in the body: from the heart to the farthest cells of the body through arteries, and back again to the heart through veins.
A clutch of scientists from England took the excitement further, and we had Christopher Wren who began giving his first intravenous injections (now what drug was he administering his patients in those days?), and Richard Lower who discovered that it was quite easy to transfuse blood from one dog to another. Not to be outdone (patriotic pride!), scientists in France set out to replicate these experiments themselves, and Denis was one scientist to take up the challenge.
After discovering the ease with which transfusion worked successfully in dogs (extract blood from one dog, and transfuse into another, and the recipient survived the experiment) - Denis was exhilarated. The thought of an entire new world (the word "hematology" hadn't been coined then) about to open up for him gave him sleepless nights.
Thinking out of the box, he wondered - why not try this blood transfusion into human beings? And with this thought taking root in him, he got the first opportunity on 15 June 1667 - exactly this day 340 years ago - when a young man walked into his clinic. The man was in "a drowsy and feverish state", and other doctors had given up on him. Quickly concluding that his standard set of medicines wouldn't work, he got hold of a lamb, withdrew from it about 12 ounces of blood, and transfused the blood into his patient. His reasoning? "A lamb is full of gentle 'humors', and its blood will infuse in the man its natural enthusiasm and bounce." ^+^
Lo and behold! The man recovered in no time!
Elated, our Denis performed this same technique on another patient, this time a 45-year old chair bearer. Instead of a lamb, Denis now got hold of a sheep, using his own quaint (!) line of logic. Again, the man recovered!
The name and fame of Denis spread like wildfire, as expected. Extremely complicated cases would now be referred to him, and his prestige in the eyes of his peers grew.
Alas, success in a man draws antagonism and jealousy in fellow beings. So when one transfusion experiment failed and the patient died, a canard was spread that the good Doctor was the perpetrator. The case was brought to court, and though Denis successfully extricated himself of the charges, the incident shook his beliefs. He stopped transfusions from then on.
Though he was later invited to the court of England, where he demonstrated his prowess in blood transfusion, disillusionment had set in, and the man who "pumped lamb's blood into humans" faded away into oblivion.
It was almost one hundred fifty years later, when a British obstetrician, Dr. James Blundell, discarded the "gentle animal blood" theory and transfused blood from human being to human being.
What I liked about this man, Denis Jean-Baptiste, was his creativity and daring. While the buzz about animal-to-animal blood transfusion was around him, he thought of the next step of performing the first animal-to-human transfusion; never mind the soundness of his logic.
