An Open Letter to Generation X...my peoples

Okay....what appears below explains My Conflict Minerals Indie PSA's/Vlog/Live Petition.  This is some of the "why" beyond the call of duty on the matter of the Conflict Minerals, themselves and my DEEP concern for the Congo and her people, God's people, our people....check the video if you haven't and yes I noticed the Yoplait container and the "too much stuff" after the uploads (youtube, facebook and blogger)...

This is an email to a friend and it got so long that I thought would share.  I welcome feedback or comments, but to the Generation X'ers I really want to hear you...

(From Danna to "new friend")
Something that you said was so striking today...it has played back in my head since earlier and I have tried to ignore it only because I feel like it's true... it is a "funky" truth one about which I wonder too often....you said (to paraphrase) "trying to figure out why Generation X is so fucked up"

I will share my ruminations and thoughts on it and I will direct you to a blog I wrote almost 2 years ago that provides a more sensitive insight into the matter from a very personal POV







I am a fifth generation away from Slavery...My Great Great Grandather Mark Kiel (Mark Todd before marrying and being given the name "Kiel" as a wedding present by slavemasters) was the last slave on my father's side....His son Henry Kiel was my great grandfather with whom I (and my twin sister) communed with until we were 10 and he 107, his son Damon Kiel Sr was my Grandfather, a liquor bootlegger in a dry county of Alabama and a landowner who ran his own logging and timber business and My father Damon Kiel Jr who earned a BS in Electronics from Tuskegee Institute before the hybrids between a Trade and a Discipline disappeared from the Catalog...I told people my Dad was an Electircal Engineer... I was in graduating High School before I reflected upon and understood the difference and distinction of one from the other...






I believe we are funked up because we are the products of the failure and successes of design not definition






...I mean that we experienced 1st hand the computer go from a novelty and an experiment ...from DOS to the TRS 80 or the Commodore 64 and programming language (I took a Fortran Class at Skegee) before "programming language" (remember PASCAL) became Windows and Windows became a tool of construction, not the house itself and the internet became the new hammer while smartphones have become some of the nails...






We saw Hip Hop be born....we saw the age of music video be born...we had a magic bullet in our homes at our fingertips that we could teach ourselves the things that some were imagining, then teaching themselves and then learning in a home environment...with  no classroom or teaching  standards to filter the "Wild Sound" and now where the race and those running in it had become a cogent group with a certain set in 1st, a specific group in 2nd and another group in 3rd it was now a marathon without end for which all the runners were all over the place and some even running at their own pace...but all still running






We watched and experienced much in the raw footage stage before it was digitized and its effects rendered and then all edited into a final cut...we regularly used prototypes before they were tweaked for the marketplace....the manufacturers didn't know they were prototypes until they knew what the final products were and began to sell those to us, as well






As a result a lot of us became seers and prophets and could therefore see through the marketing and beyond...we became commentators but not doers or craftsmen because for a brief time there was currency for our thoughts (and way more than a penny) ...






we watched the busy signal dissolve into call waiting, three way calling, call blocking we even saw little white answering machines disappear into voicemail services...I believe we saw too much evolve too fast and all the while we were getting through college and grad school and professional school over an everchanging landscape of pure change itself...we had nothing to dig into or plant solid feet upon....the teachers, the lawyers and the doctors faired well because the way did business never changed much ...more toys and improved delivery systems but their content was relatively rock solid...



Somewhere in it "Deming Management" was being hailed as an important business and operations management model ...there was the idea that science and math could solve all of our problems and things like passion and commitment fell way to the way side like the two solid rocket boosters on the Shuttle (we saw Shuttles, hell...we saw a new frontier into space being televised as it had when Man walked on the moon...the shuttle take-offs and landing were our "walk on the moon" or at least as close as we were going to come)....we saw everything go from bigger to smaller to bigger again and faster but not always stronger but a lot better ..overall

The world become modern in front of our eyes and under our noses.


we saw cocaine become crack...



We saw all of this between about 1964 - 1985 and then a steady pattern of growth began to emerge but I don't think the word got all the way out until about 1994 or so and by then we were starting to get married and make babies and trying to ensure they did not come out funked up only for them to turn out better and worse than we did...most of us have turned out to be jacks/janes of all trade masters of little to none who are blooming LATE because there is finally a road for our rubber to actually meet...



We saw our only solid rock ....our identity... disintegrate...and now we are all putting our own pieces back together.... (with that new hammer and those new nails)