My father served in Korea, protecting their borders, then built California's Vaca Valley Raceways in the mid-1950s. My step-mother, since I was five, is Native American, as are my two half-sisters and my step-sister. Another half-sister is half Mexican.

When I was four, and after my parent's divorce, my mother dated a black man masquerading as a Hindu named 'Korla Pandit' from New Delhi - he turned out to be married though.
She dated a blind man later who had lost his eyesight building the Oakland Coliseum - a welder.
I won't mention the poor alcoholic fellow she dated and attempted to help.
She also dated my doctor for many years... long before that door became visible on that proverbial 'closet'. He needed to be seen in social life with a woman, my mother. Many of our greatest times were with ‘Doctor and Bob’ (Bob: Doctor's 'house mate'). We got to borrow their blue MGB many times when they went to Europe for vacations.
We also spent lots of time with my Great-Aunt and Great-Uncle in San Francisco where they lived, overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge and SF Bay - he was a multi-millionaire.
Another family friend was the son of Depression era gangster 'Pretty Boy Floyd' - fond memories there too.

I've hosted numerous Japanese student visitors over the years, as well as some African Children’s Choir kids. I've worked with everyone from former Hells Angel and Bandito Presidents to minor-aged refugees from various countries... and have lived outside of the USA for 15+ years with my 'foreign' wife. Or is the USA actually the foreign locale now?

I've had a close friend who dodged the Vietnam draft and another WWII Normandy invasion veteran hero. I have worked construction, drywall contracting, youth & adult prisons, Corrections' HQ, CA Dept. of Justice, a rehab center, etc., and with the State Dept. at a US Embassy where I gained the opportunity to meet and shake hands with 'then' President Obama and the First Lady during his visit for reception of the Nobel Peace Prize here in Norway, which included two voluntary HQ-Command Center shifts for the final day of their stay, culminating with the announcement of "Wheels Up!"… and have been fortunate enough to receive a Letter of Commendation from both a California prison Correctional Captain and the USA Ambassador to Norway.

On the party-political front, however, my zealotry remains defused by my persistent ability to see both sides of an argument, or as is my current circumstances… multiple angles of view. I fall far short of obtaining the anti-intellectuals' senseless ability to embrace nauseously archaic two-party political systems. I suppose being nurtured and raised in the ever-fading shadows of those writers inhabiting the 'realms' of Rod Serling, Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, George Orwell, Jacques-Yves Cousteau, and even King Solomon's works, etc., produced a life-long effect on me - their socio-philosophical sowings planting those multi-level analytical-thinking self-germinating seeds that took their humanitarian toll upon my cognitive processes from my earliest years - as well as stirring up my innate antipathy towards forms of baseless prejudice; all of this occasionally resulting in hours of soliloquy debate between Me, Myself, and I, with no clear 'winner'.

And... guess what... I am an immigrant now myself, as are many of my friends/acquaintances from Syria, Afghanistan, Russia, Poland, Bosnia, Hungary, Serbia, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Ukraine, Africa, and beyond; and, fortunately, live on the side of the globe where people are not labeled by their place of origin, skin color, or political influences.

With a family heritage that spans sharecropping farmers to multi-millionaires, and from a California State Prison inmate to a California Superior Court Judge, not to mention all of the rest... or even the spiritual aspects of life... join me and let’s all keep reading!