Untitled Document
StrangeTango.com is a multilayered art installation in cyberspace…the documentation of a life in three iterations: as a film treatment, a book, a blog.
“What remains as documentation of a life?”
Strange Tango haunts the boundaries of digital streams and visceral storytelling, where pixels and dreams flow together.
Video, reportage, and nonlinear narrative meld in captured moments from the life of A. D. Tejada, artist - traveler - citizen of the world.
Life is a strange tango...
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 John Psaropoulos
John Psaropoulos is the Editor of The New Athenian; he is also a correspondent for National Public Radio (NPR) and CNN in Greece. We had met at the start of our journalism careers working at CNN International in Atlanta. John had studied at King’s College in London, and I had a master’s degree in broadcast journalism from Boston University’s top-ranked College of Communication. At the time, Riz Khan was an anchor and top executives Eason Jordan, Chris Cramer, and Rena Golden were at the forefront of CNNI’s regionalization strategy. A decade later, John and I reconnected on Facebook through a web site set up for CNN alumni. As a guest columnist, John shares his sensibility as a modern day Athenian.
Continue reading Cloudburst
 Erin Yoshimura and Gil Asakawa
Gil Asakawa and I first met at a multimedia presentation during the Asian American Journalists Association (AAJA) convention in Boston this past summer. As a former AAJA/New England National Board member and National Scholarship Chair, the launch of the personal website StrangeTango.com: Life as Art in my former hometown of Boston was personally significant to me. I had been chatting with a new friend, Henry Fuhrmann, the Assistant Managing Editor at the “Los Angeles Times,” who had learned of the website prior to its launch from a Facebook post broadcasted by Filipino/Asian American activist Rene Astudillo in San Francisco, when Gil took the empty seat next to me. Henry and Gil knew each other so introductions were made.
Strange Tango is a labor of love, I explained to Gil. He mentioned that he and his wife were working on something that was for them also a labor of love: a project involving Asian American leaders. He wished me luck and said he hoped the website paid off for me. I replied that Strange Tango―non-commercial and non-monetized―already had.
I have been involved with social media for less than half a year. As a newcomer to Facebook, Gil Asakawa, a nationally known Asian American writer and online content and SEO expert, became one of my first cyber friends. His informative and personable posts would range from music, to Asian American culture, and even dining reviews. Since I was planning a trip to Denver, I thought Gil would be an interesting subject and emailed a request for an interview. He agreed but also let me know his wife Erin Yoshimura was working on a new project and would I interview her instead? This suggestion gave me the best of both worlds, so we all arranged to meet for lunch at Domo, an authentic, Japanese country restaurant that he had posted about on #twEATs.
This is how I found myself in downtown Denver on a warm and sunny day, inside a beautiful, traditional Japanese garden on the edge of a commercial district. Continue reading Erin Yoshimura, Gil Asakawa, and visualizAsian.com
 Me, at the time I began writing Strange Tango.
The destinies of a pantheon of gifted Cornell graduates unfold through the internet.
After my niece had graduated from pre-kindergarten several years back, she started summer classes at vacation bible school where she saw Luke, a former classmate who had left the class to be home-schooled in anticipation of his father’s deployment to Iraq.
“Do you remember me?” she asked him.
“Yes,” he shyly replied. “I do.”
The weeklong pattern of rainy and gray New England weather inspired me to remain in my cocoon and to revisit my early adulthood. Once a person has entered my orbit and been a significant part of an era in my life, a bond of shared experiences is created. There is history between us. I carefully choose the people I invite into my space, so relationships have been of long duration. I can recall only one significant disappointment.
Prompted by a vivid dream, I sought to reconnect with someone who once mattered to me. “We don’t want any contact with you at all,” he replied. Still, I persisted. How could someone with whom you have had a symbiotic bond—a karmic connection—change, or age, so much? He had such love of beauty, how could charm and grace be replaced by fear and inflexibility?
Or had he simply forgotten me?
For the next nine months, I sought openings that would reveal the answer to me until, finally, I released the beautiful memory of a dear friend to the stranger he had become. My dream was indeed prophetic: his heart was dead inside.
Other reconnections have had far happier endings. Continue reading Speak, Memory
 Moulton Brown's New Age Traveler kit
New Age Traveler is an excerpt from Millennium Muse, my book of narrative nonfiction, essays, and observations.
My favorite travel agent booked me for automatic electronic upgrades to first class, so on two round trip legs between Manchester, New Hampshire, and Chicago, air travel was sheer bliss. On the second trip, I gave my seat to my father, who had joined me. He was pleased with the personalized service, comfortable seating, and the meal of fried rice, lechon (pieces of roasted whole pig), and wine.
I fly first class as an upgrade whenever possible, usually paying $50 per leg for an upgrade ticket, but complementary is always nice. I’ve done well cultivating longstanding relationships that offer value-added benefits with products and services.
I’ve traveled to at least thirty-five countries on five continents. These days, it’s leisure travel for me, with stays at some of the finest hotels in the world. However, my travel habits have remained the same. Unless I’m on a cruise ship where I don’t have to unpack more than once, I keep things simple. Continue reading New Age Traveler
 Our home in Windham, New Hampshire Nest is an excerpt from Millennium Muse, my book of narrative nonfiction, essays, and observations.
Except for the house in Somerville, which Joseph bought with our best man at our wedding as the first real estate project for flipping, I have always located the properties and negotiated the purchase of the houses we’ve called home.
I found the three-family Victorian in Savin Hill, a gentrified neighborhood of Boston. We placed an offer the day after I saw the dwelling in a real estate ad and was inspired to drive to the other side of town to see the property. The house looked like a castle. It had a turret, and the exterior had light yellow, vinyl siding. The property was minutes away from the Savin Hill train station, close enough so that I could cycle to the beach and ocean and smell the sea breeze from my porch in the morning.
We stayed at Auckland Street far longer than we ever planned. This was in part because Joseph’s parents lived in one of the units. Each day, his father took the train to Chinatown where he would read a newspaper in Cantonese and socialize with his elderly friends all day before returning home for dinner. Continue reading Nest
Jerome Tse is a student in the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration. Originally from Boston, Jerome plans to obtain a degree in hospitality. He is also a Cornell ambassador and enjoys working at the front office of the university-run Statler Hotel. I have known Jerome’s father professionally for several years and recall the photographs of [...]
Jack Hunsucker was my debate coach at Lawton High School in Lawton, Oklahoma. He fielded award-winning debaters, speakers, and orators on the high school and National Forensic League circuit and later became a drama coach. Thanks to my debate instructors, I became the first place women’s extemporaneous speaker in our NFL tri-state region. In retirement, Jack has taken on the role of author with his homespun and sensible, everyman observations. In his guest column, Jack shares his passion for teaching.
 Jack Hunsucker, teacher and writer. “I have done many things during my life. Student, sailor, pop salesman, radio/tv repairman, real estate agent, real estate broker, teacher, computor software salesman, parent, and husband. My life has been a series of discoveries, “Well here’s something else I don’t want to do.” ~ Jack Hunsucker
When I became a teacher, I honestly had not a clue as to what to do. I did have one principal belief. That was that no one is capable of teaching anyone anything that they don’t wish to learn. I understood that my challenge was to make my subject matter relevant and interesting, but I wasn’t sure how to accomplish that. I knew that my own life had been turned around by my experiences in the theatre, but I honestly couldn’t put my finger on the element that had made the difference. Continue reading Passion for Teaching
“The next step is sharing her vision of cyberspace as the next frontier in the literary arts. Says Tejada, “For my collaborators and me, Strange Tango is a labor of love and a global platform for original and passionate creativity.’” ~Raphael Seligmann
Welcome to the world of Strange Tango. Conceptually speaking, the blog before you is an illustration of my thought processes─multilayered and cross-referenced, in a matrix pattern─that places the visitor in the navigational cockpit. Content is layered throughout the website: hover and click on images, text, and links. Continue reading The Key to the Strange Tango Kingdom
 Ron Nance and Whitney Nance Perry of The Oaks Development Company in front of the 2009 Dream House, the Cypress Villa. StrangeTango.com is a literary and conceptual art installation in cyberspace that launched in August 2009 with the theme, “What remains as documentation of a life?” Through my illustrated memoirs, writings, and commentary, I am documenting my life, my friends, and the world we live in. The personal website was featured in a presentation on the innovation wave in the honors business curriculum at a major university, and we’re also submitting the site in consideration for the Webby Award for the best personal websites on the internet. Since the website continues to organically evolve, we plan to add experimental installations in 2010. We are currently revamping the blog and including a new feature that showcases innovators who inspire us with their passion, leadership, and creativity. So, it seems fitting that a childhood friend, Ron Nance, has the honor of being my inaugural interview.
Ron Nance is possibly the best-known public figure in Lawton, Oklahoma—both as a successful businessman and as an ambassador for a city viewed by the national media as a voice of America’s heartland. His civic accomplishments are long and impressive, an integral part of the city’s infrastructure: homebuilder for the ABC hit television program, Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, Lawton City Councilman, President of the Lawton Home Builders Association, Oklahoma Bison Association President, Director of the National Bison Association, Lawton Airport Authority Board Member, and member of a BRAC (Base Realignment and Closure initiative) Coordination Committee for a regional growth management plan for Lawton and Fort Sill, an adjoining, major military installation.
 Ron and daughter Whitney. Ron is President and CEO of Ron Nance Enterprises, an umbrella corporation for his business interests—including his new real estate developments, collectively known as The Oaks. His daughter, Whitney Nance Perry, has a high profile role as the company’s Vice President of Marketing. Ron also owns and operates Comanche Buffalo, one of the largest, all-natural producers of buffalo meat in North America. Comanche Buffalo supplies natural food stores, national supermarket chains, and Fearing’s at the Ritz-Carlton, Dallas. Owner-chef Dean Fearing, a winner of the James Beard Foundation Restaurant Award for “Best Chef in the Southwest,” calls the buffalo tenderloin from Comanche Buffalo “…the best product I’ve ever dealt with…That buffalo is fork-tender.”
Few people realize that Ron and I are inextricably linked through time and memory. Continue reading Ron Nance, Real Estate Visionary
My transformation from glamorous to spiritual was years in the making. When I worked for other people and had my own source of income, I purchased heirloom quality items to leave as a legacy for my niece. My curatorial sensibility was developed by taking courses in the liberal, literary, and fine arts at the largest university in the Ivy League and by being mentored by a professor of Japanese culture and comparative literature who is the director of the Society for the Humanities at Cornell. As a result, over time, my senses became sharply honed and more finely focused until I developed a distinctive voice, style, and sensibility that I call neo-Zen.
Friends and strangers call me psychic, or highly perceptive, but I say it’s a matter of cultivated attunement. Continue reading The Neo-Zen Sensibility
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