Eight More People to Watch in the Second Post 9-11 Decade

In this blog post I will not be going over all of the people who have not made the list but are on the brink. As remaining available slots get fewer the proportion of those who almost made it gets greater and greater. I may do a separate  post at the end on all of the close candidates and I may post some more names of that kind on my next installment but today the only new names to discuss  or the ones in these eight sketches.  They join the others who have appeared in this series.

My first post on this list had twenty-five names:

https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/the-last-year-of-the-9-11-decade-has-begun/

President Barack  Hussein Obama , Josef Ratzinger, His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI, Her Britannic Majesty, Elizabeth, HRH Charles Prince of Wales, David Cameron, Sarah Palin, George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, Glen Beck,  Hillary Clinton, President Nicolas Sarkozy, Benjamin Netanyahu, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Carl Svanberg, UN Secretary Ban Ki Moon, Hu Jin Tao, Timothy Geithner, Al Franken, Barney Frank, Vladimir Putin,  Bobby Jindal, Bill Richardson, Bill Clinton and Osama Bin Laden

The second portion had fifteen people to watch:

https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/12/08/fifteen-more-people-to-watch-in-9112011-9112021/

Barons Rothschild, Britney Spears, Carl A. Brasseaux, Philip Lord Norton Baron of Louth, Carlos Slim Helu, Charles Bolden, Taylor Swift, Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands,  Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson, Kate Middleton,  Catherine Princess of Wales, Princess William of Wales, Princess Catherine, Prince Luís of Orléans-Braganza (born Luís Gastão Maria José Pio Miguel Gabriel Rafael Gonzaga de Orléans e Bragança e Wittelsbach, Ms. Gail J. McGovern, Me,  His Highness Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani and Prince William of Wales

The third portion of my list had ten people watch:

https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/12/11/ten-more-people-to-watch-from-9112011-9112021/

Gaudencio Borbon Cardinal Rosales, Queen Sofia of Spain, Su Graciosa Majestad Sofia la Reina Catolica, Oprah Winfrey, Bill O’Reilly, Julie Ann Yannatta, Vitaly Alexandrovich Lopota, Amy Grant, Ratan N. Tata, Mark Zuckerberg and Jean-Cristophe Niel 

The fourth portion of my list had five people to watch:

https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/12/15/five-more-people-to-watch-in-the-second-post-911-decade/

Liu Zhijun: 刘志军, King George Tupou V, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Heinz-Otto Peitgen,  Julie Taymor

The most recent post prior to this had thirteen  people to watch:

 Charles Alan Murray, Henry Louis “Skip” Gates, Jr, Professor Ei-ichi Negishi, Drew Brees, Angela Dorothea Merkel(- Kasner),  General Stanley Allen McChrystal, Danica Sue Patrick, Melinda French Gates (born Melinda Ann French, Marilyn Vos Savantt, Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías, Carla Gilberta Bruni Tedeschi, Madame Nicolas Sarkozy,  Air Defense Commander Shigeru Iwasaki and Amy Hungerford 

https://franksummers3ba.wordpress.com/2010/12/18/thirteen-more-people-to-watch-in-the-second-post-911-decade/

After that comes my current addition of eight more names. That will bring me to a total of seveny-six. However, I have not yet decided if it will be seventy-six out of one hundred or seventy-six out of ninety-one.

1.Howard Lutnick is a figure who it seems ought to be included near the top of any list that has anything to do with September 11,2010. His firm is among the most important of its kind in the world and its people were among the most affected by 9/11.   Mr. Howard Lutnick, the current Chairman and CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald LP  and sometimes of eSpeed, Inc. which has served as a publicly traded umbrella with evolving roles in the structure  at Cantor has been therefor almost thirty years now. Lutnick joined Cantor Fitzgerald in 1983. With fellow high-ranking executive Stuart Fraser he was among the first two to matriculate from Cantor Fitzgerald’s Brokerage Training Program. An alumnus of small Haverford College and a product of rising through the ranks he has had a reputation as kind of “down to Earth” in his rarified financial orbit both among players who see that as praise and those who would see it as an insult. Cantor Fizgerald was the principal party of its kind in dealing with US Treasury Securities in 25% or more of the total value of all such transactions when 9/11 occurred. The network of firms lost its headquarters and hundreds of employees, executives and associates in those attacks.     Howard Lutnick, Chairman & CEO of eSpeed, Inc. gave  a fair number of  speeeches, wrote notices and attended many funerals. Here is part of one the many things he had to express in writing in those days. New York, NY — September 20, 2001 — eSpeed :  “eSpeed has always been more than a team, or a vision, or even a company. At its heart eSpeed is a family. As a family, we mourn the losses of our siblings, our best friends — our partners. We cannot imagine work or life without them nor their vast array of qualities and characteristics that enhanced our lives.”  “It is with great sadness that I write of some of the lost eSpeed senior management family.”  – Frederick T. Varacchi, President & Chief Operating Officer, Director. Fred was my friend and an extraordinary businessman, technologist and leader. His energy, vision and enthusiasm created eSpeed and brought the company to preeminent status. His wife Eileen and their three children can always be proud of their father’s accomplishments. eSpeed was Fred’s company and will always stand as a tribute to his amazing drive and charisma”.  Lutnick is capable of bringing a presence in high finance which could help broker a a new American and global synthesis. One more aware of the threats that created 9/11.    

2.  His Serene Highness Albert II, Sovereign Prince of Monaco (Albert Alexandre Louis Pierre Grimaldi; born 14 March 1958) is the head of the  House of Grimaldi and the current ruler of the Principality of Monaco. He is the son of Ranier III, Prince of Monaco, and the American actress Grace Kelly. His sisters are Caroline, Princess of Hanover, and Princess Stephanie of Monaco. Born in the Prince’s Palace of Monaco, Monaco, Albert attended the Albert I High School, graduating with distinction in 1976. Albert reamained connected with is mother’s American heritage in a number of ways throughout life. The prince was a camper and later a counselor for six summers at Camp Tecumseh on Lake Winnipesaukee, Moultonborough, New Hampshire in the 1970s. While he has had specific years, weeks and days set aside for  training in various princely duties, this has not interfered with his other educational attainments too much.  In 1977 he began to matriculate at Amherst College in Masschusetts under the real but iregular designation of “Albert Grimaldi”. On campus his studies inluded political science, economics, music, and English Literature. Outside the classroom Prince Albert joined Chi Psi fraternity,  spent the summer of 1979 touring Europe and the Middle East with the Amherst Glee Club, participated in an exchange program with the University of Bristol, at the Alfred Marshall School of Economics and Management in 1979  and was known to be fully engaged in college life. He graduated in 1981 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in political science.  His role as Princely patron of Monaco’s football teams grows out of lifesyle in which he has mastered  a good number of sports and participated in far more. His membership in the International Olympic Committee since 1985 comes from a very deep rootedness not only in his overall athletic background but in an Olympic background as well. His famous mother’s not unacomplished American father John B. Kelly, and her brother John B. Kelly, Jr.,  both won Olympic medal winners in rowing and involved themselves in the Olympic movement. Inspired by this legacy the price entered the Olympic fray himself and international press reported the prince lived in the village without special treatment during his Olympic stints. He was a competitor in the bobsled at every Winter Olympics from Calgary in 1988 though Albertville, Lillehammer and Nagano to  his last foray at Salt Lake City in 2002.   Later that same year, on the 25th of  October, Albert visited Miami, Florida for a World Olympians Association . The group’s mission was to have the 100,000 Olympians get involved with their communities and talk to young athletes about dedication and training. He has also reached out to the world for small Monaco and its largely untaxed Monegasques though programs like the World Music Awards. Recenlty he has become engaged to marry South African Olympic swimmer Charlene Wittstock. The couple will be married in civil and religious ceremonies in July of 2011 and will be expected to produce a legitimate male heir. He has two ilegitimate children and the  succession has varied complexities.

 3. Elbert Leander “Burt” Rutan (born June 17, 1943) is involved with Richard Branson in creating the first commercial spaceline.  American aerospace engineer noted for his originality in designing light, strong, unusual-looking, energy-efficient aircraft. He is famous for his design of the record-breaking Voyager, which was the first plane to fly around the world without stopping or refueling, and the sub-orbital spaceplane SpaceShip One which won the Ansari X-Prize in 2004 for becoming the first privately funded spacecraft to enter the realm of space twice within a two week period. He has four aircraft on display in the National Air and Space Museum: SpaceShipOne, the Virgin Atlantic GlobalFlyer, Voyager, and the VariEze. Beyond all that he has accomplished there is always the sense of possiblity that he may now be in a postion to access those  funds and social resources which may allow him to really play a role in creating innovations which in time will remake much of the aerospace industry.

4.Ayatollah Seyed Ali Hoseyni Khāmene’i ( سید علی حسینی خامنه ای ,  born 17 July 1939)  is an Iranian politician  who I should exclude because he is old and allegedy very sick. However, I see Iran as one of the most important countries in understanding the next ten years and the Ayotollah looms large as the figurehead of the Muslim conservative establishment in Iran and  Twelver shi’a marja. He was a President of Iran from 1981 to 1989 which is an important role of which he made a great deal in that revolutionary Islamic republic which is much better organized and sound in construction than an Al Qaeda type country such as the Afghanistan of the Taliban. He has been Supreme Leader of Iran since June 1989 when the Assmbly of Experts appointed him to succeed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini who was President Jimmy Carter’s big nemesis.  In the religious and  political ideology of this country still defining itself he has been described as one of only three people having “important influences” on the Islamic Republic of Iran .  So far, the biggest challenge to his leadership has been the mass protests following the  June 2009 presidential elections.  Khamenei, however, continued to strongly support Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s policies and re-election. Khamenei  has a badly paralyzed right hand since he was the victim of an attack intended to assassinate him in June 1981 .

5. Dr.Tracy E. Caldwell – Dyson(Ph.D.) was born  on August 14, 1969 in Arcadia, California. A few weeks ago NASA published an image of astronaut Tracy Caldwell-Dyson floating at ease in the new cupola on the nadir side of the International Space Station she is relaxed in an almost classical pose and peering out of the windows of the  great new view space Caldwell-Dyson is not a ravishing beauty and no female astronauts are very bad looking either but she is better suited  to the Greek goddess role than most. The woman astronaut takes in the planet on which we were all born, and to which she  knew she would soon return. About 350 kilometers up she can clearly see the curvature of the Earth from the cupola. She views some of the Earth’s  clouds, in white, and lthe water rich and life giving blues of the  atmosphere and oceans. This photograph occurred during the  174 days Caldwell Dyson spent aboard the International Space Station as a Flight Engineer on Expedition 23/24. In this stint Caldwell Dyson performed three spacewalks for a total of 22 hours and 49 minutes of EVA time. The Expedition 24 crew returned to  the place they had left in April having a safe landing in central Kazakhstan on September 25, 2010. In completing this long duration mission, Caldwell Dyson logged a total of 176 days in space.   Back on Earth she is married to George Dyson  and has a wide range of Earthly interests. Caldwell-Dyson received a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from the California State University in 1993 and a Doctorate in Physical Chemistry from the University of California in 1997.  She is a respected member of the Sigma Xi Research Society and the American Chemical Society. Her formal recognitions have included the  NASA Performance Award (2002 & 2001), NASA Go the Extra Mile (GEM) Award (2001), NASA Superior Accomplishment Award (2000), NASA Group Achievement Award – Russian Crusader Team (2000), Camille and Henry Dreyfus Postdoctoral Fellowship in Environmental Science (1997). Outstanding Doctoral Student Award in Chemistry from the University of California Davis (1997). American Vacuum Society – Nellie Yeoh Whetten Award (1996). American Vacuum Society Graduate Research Award (1996). Pro Femina Research Consortium Graduate Research Award (1996). Pro Femina Research Consortium Graduate Award for Scientific Travel (1996).University of California, Davis Graduate Research Award (1996). University of California, Davis Graduate Student Award for Scientific Travel (1994). Patricia Roberts Harris Graduate Fellowship in Chemistry (1993-1997). Lyle Wallace Award for Service to the Department of Chemistry, California State University Fullerton (1993). National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates Award, (1992). Council of Building & Construction Trades Scholarship (1991 and 1992). Big West Scholar Athlete (1989-1991).  In graduate school and since and at NASA she has done a vaiety of useful work but perhaps all of this flows from her technical and careful foundation in aver all-American girl next door job when she worked as an electrician/inside wireman for her father’s electrical contracting company doing commercial and light industrial type construction.  She taught at the  University of California, Davis in  general chemistry laboratory while she  began her graduate research. Her dissertation included work investigating molecular-level surface reactivity and kinetics of metal surfaces using electron spectroscopy, laser desorption, and Fourier transform mass spectrometry techniques. She did a great deal of technical design and fabrication work in support of her research.. Dr. Caldwell has published and presented her work in numerous papers at technical conferences and in scientific journals. Dr. Tracy Caldwell has many varied interests from sports to currently singing in band and she is a private pilot and with conversational mastery in American Sign Language (ASL) and Russian.  Selected by NASA in June 1998 she began training in August 1998. Astronaut Candidate Training included  the classes and review of reseources anyone might expect as well as instruction in Shuttle and International Space Station  (ISS) systems, physiological training, ground school to prepare for T-38 flight training and learning water and wilderness survival techniques.  In 1999, Dr. Caldwell was first assigned to the Astronaut Office ISS Operations Branch as a Russian Crusader, participating in the testing and integration of Russian developed for the International Space Station.  Since then she has worked in support positions and in space. Several female astonauts were deserving of mention here but somehow I have felt that she has mapped the path in a way which can be relevant to the

6. Lang Lang Heralded as the “hottest artist on the classical music planet” by the New York Times. He is a bridge between East and West in an era whichsome people seem to think that all the bridges have already been built. Lang Lang began playing piano at the age of 3, and on reaching the age of 5 had won the Shenyang Competition and had given his first public recital. Entering Beijing’s Central Music Conservatory at age 9, he won first prize at the Tchaikovsky International Young Musicians Competition and played the complete 24 Chopin Études at the Beijing Concert Hall at age 13. Lang Lang’s break into stardom came at age 17, when he was called upon for a dramatic last-minute substitution at the “Gala of the Century,” playing a Tchaikovsky concerto with the Chicago Symphony. I am going to leave unmentioned almost all of the many musical awards, venues and recordings and commercial achievements that this  young man has achieved. I am only going to mention a few of them to show what he has done in establishing a base for the influence which gets him on this list.  A true product of the modern interchange of cultural educational resources 28 year-old Lang Lang has played sold out recitals and concerts in every major city in the world with a large venue for classical performance and is the first Chinese pianist to be engaged by the Vienna Philharmonic, Berlin Philharmonic and all the top American orchestras.  In 2008, over five billion people viewed Lang Lang’s performance in Beijing’s opening ceremony for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, where he was seen as a symbol of the youth and the future of China. This status has inspired over 40 million Chinese children to learn to play classical piano – a phenomenon coined by The Today Show as “the Lang Lang effect.” He has shown China to the world but also the world to China and in 2008 The Recording Academy  appointed him their Cultural Ambassador to China. It is not surprising that  Lang Lang was recognized in the 2009 Time 100 – Time magazine’s annual list of the 100 Most Influential People in the World.   Lang Lang was named an official worldwide ambassador to the 2010 Shanghai Expo, and played at the opening ceremony. For almost ten years  Lang Lang has acted in decisive ways to  give back  to and support  children around the world by mentoring young talented pianists, leading 100 piano students in concert, performing for sick children in hospitals, performing music recitals in  remote communities, and volunteering his unpaid musical talents to raise awareness of other charitable causes. Lang Lang’s charitable efforts led to the recent launch of the Lang Lang International Music Foundation  which is committed to children and music education, Lang Lang works with varied impressive groups and individuals to inspire young people to believe that music can make life better.  This blends in with his paid activity as well Lang Lang paired up with jazz great Herbie Hancock at the 2008 Grammy® Awards, for a performance broadcast live to 45 million viewers around the world. The two pianists held an inaugural world tour in summer 2009.  In May 2009, Lang Lang had three young scholars chosen from his  foundation – aged between 6 and 10 years old – performed with him on The Oprah Winfrey Show on “Oprah’s Search for the World’s Most Smartest and Most Talented Kids.” Lang Lang is deeply committed to creating and participating in programs that bring sustained interest for music into the lives of children. China does not do very well in comparing with philanthropy elsewhwere. Lang Lang has a powerful role to play in creating a new philanthropic consensus of East and West in the new order as well as in creating great music.

7.Natalie Portman  ( נטלי פורטמן‎, born Natalie Hershlag; June 9, 1981) is an Israeli-American actress. Her first role was as an orphan taken in by a hitman in the 1994 French action film  known in the USA as The Professional.   She is known by the last name Portman. This stage name, is her maternal grandmother’s maiden name. Reportedly she first took this name out of fear she would discredit her parents in case her performance in The Professionnal was unsatisfactory. While she has done many films she achieved fame and fortune as Pahdme Amidala in George Lucas’s Star Wars prequel trilogy. She has since kept the name in order to help maintain her privacy and to keep her family out of the spotlight. She did use her real name in school however, in 1999, she enrolled at Harvard University to study psychology while she was working on the Star Wars films. She completed her bachelor’s degree in 2003 . While a good number of beautiful young movie stars have been welcomed by the Ivy League  her choice reminded some people of Jodie Foster’s  choice years earlier in going to Yale when their seemed to be many reasons to give her self up exclusively to Hollywood.  She added to her mystique certainly witrh this educational achievement and was already a little exotic. Natalie Portman was born on June 9th, 1981, in Jerusalem, Israel.  Her family lived in Jerusalem until she was 3 years old.  The family then moved to Washington D.C. in 1984 because of her father’s medical training and career advancements and then moved on to Connecticut in 1988. They moved again to Long Island, New York in 1990.  The compelling actress is about  5 feet 3 inches (160 cm), or maybe a bit shorter than that—more like 5′ 0″ or 5′ 1″ with dark brown hair often dyed a reddish-brown, usually kept fairly long and naturally somewhere between wavy and curly. She is well known as legitimately multi-lingual English and Hebrew; also some French and Japanese she studied at school. Near to her parents (  her father is a physician whose practice is as an Ob-Gyn/Infertility Specialist and he is married to a homemaker and full-time mother who invested  herself very heavily in Natalie and wh0 also enjoys art as a hobby and drew Natalie into various aspects of the love of art) Natalie now lives in Soho, NYC.   Natalie appeared in many plays at Usdan Theater Arts Camp. She playedroles as starkly contrastin as  Dora, in Fiorello andas Annie in Annie get your Gun.  Natalie has been a strict vegetarian since she was 8, allegedly after seeing a surgey on a chicken at a medical conference with her physician father. She does not eat meat but maintians a healthy vigor by eating eggs and drinking skim milk every day.  She recognizes that in 1999 appearing in the Star Wars films changed her life very dramaticaly.  In the promotion of the film she talked about the resources that the production brought to her transformation into character. In this light she discussed costumes: “I’m so lucky to have been able to wear them. I think they’re some of the most beautiful – if not the most beautiful – costumes ever made for film. Trisha Biggar did an unbelievable job, and the people who made the original sketches did too. […] It was just unbelievable, and it really helped me with the character, too – because you carry yourself so much differently when you’re wearing that kind of gear. […] To put on, it really didn’t take very long. Hair and makeup is probably about two hours – that was long. But the costumes snap on, snap off – because if I had to go to the bathroom or something, you don’t want to take all day.” Likewise she experienced big production assisstance and demands as regards vocals as she changed her voice for the role: “George wanted me to do something very different than myself. So he suggested the accent be in a deeper tone of voice. I worked with a dialect coach for about two days to make up a “nothing” accent that’s kind of unidentifiable and all over the place – an accent that was somewhat reminiscent of the older actresses like Lauren Bacall and Katherine Hepburn, who had that kind of regal tone.” (Star Wars Insider 1/2000) “After we completed the film, George electronically modulated it even more.” (Calgary Sun 5/1999) . In Star Wars and in The Other Boleyn Girl she portrayed young love and desire, relationships complicated by grand politics, childbirth and death. In V is for Vendetta she prtrayed associations with heavy male characters as Henry VIII, Anikin Skywalker and the  assassin in her debut film.  Her own connection to geoplotical horror is real enough. She discussed what that  connection iwht the Holocaust was when discussing her film work. ” Fortunately my grandparents escaped, but their whole family perished in the Holocaust. There were stories in the house of what had happened to them and it wasn’t that much talked about. I had to go on a website to read my grandfather’s descriptions of what happened to the family, but it is absolutely something I have lived with and have grown up with”.  Natalie Portman is young and vulnerable and kind of an ingenue by nature. Her body of work and her engagement with it reminds some people of the power and appeal of real sex for sex’s sake. Sex where desire, affection, fertility, need and covenant play their roles. It is an awareness of sexuality which will be necessary to the future survival of our civilization.   Rumours about her own life sexually and otherwise have abounded and will increase with Black Swan. However, she can play a very important role in a new synthesis. 

8. John Christopher “Johnny” Depp II (born June 9, 1963) is an American actor and musician known  as Johnny Depp for his portrayals of offbeat, eccentric characters such as Raoul Duke in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,  Ichabod Crane  in Sleepy Hollow, Edward D. Wood, Jr. in  Ed Wood, and  Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean film series.  It is the case that Depp has done remarkable things with the crime genre. This includes his portrayal of a key character in the suspenseful police procedural The Tourist which recently came out with Angelina Jolie. He rose to prominence in a lead role as a detective on the television series 21 Jump Street and quickly became regarded as a teen idol.He has explored the solid citizen and father as forced man of crime in Nick of Time and the crazed denier and mellow writer in Secret Window.  Other crime genre work includes  and later found box office success in roles such as Ichabod Crane in the new police procedural version of Sleepy Hollow,  the man who is much more than pirate but is clearly a pirate named Captain  Jack Sparrow  was potrayed by Depp in the Pirates of the Carribean film series. He portrayed the wrongly convicted man turned calculating monster in the title role in Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007). Other crime stories have been the mob and FBI drama in which Johnny Depp played Joseph D. Pistone in  Donnie Brasco. Depp has also played great American gangsters from two eras in our national history in  his role as cocaine kingpen in Blow (2001). and more recently portraying bank robber John Dillinger  in Michael Mann’s 2009 film  Public Enemies. Depp has portrayed off-beat figures who are not criminals or lawmen such as independent film-maker Edward D. Wood, Jr., in Ed Wood, writer and drug enthusiast  Hunter S. Thompson in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,Peter Pan’s writing creator in Finding Neverland.  His fantastical portrayals in crime like Jack Sparrow have their counterparts as well.  He initially came to film prominence as the title character of  Edward Scissorhands  which was also the start of  collaboration with director and close friend Tim Buton whom Depp has joined  in seven films, including the most recent offerings Alice in Wonderland, and Willy Wonka in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  Films featuring Depp have earned over $2.6 billion at the United States box office and over $6 billion worldwide. he has two children with his estranged wife and both claims and is reputed to be devoted to and has been liked with supermodels and famous women of varied stripes. His dark portrayal of the  dark and heavy title character in The Libertine seemed connected in real ways to the nonethless more properlyt evolved Depp. While he has been nonminated by all the major awards including the academy a good number of times his wins have been limited to one Golden Globe and one Screen Actors Guild award as far as I know. Depp can serve as a bridge for the Hollywood establishment should a transformative period occur. He has a grasp of aristocratic personal capital which is relevant to a future Hollywood and which has few clear precedents in history because of the size of the current entertainment sector.