Grandsons Unite!

James Lawrence Tiglao greets Luca Santiago Augier-Comolli.

These are my grandsons. As the editor of Predictify, I predict a great future for both of them!

Welcome, Grandson!

Baby boy Augier-Comolli was born in Portland, Oregon, today, July 23, 2008, at 11:05 a.m., weighing 9 lb. 4 oz., and measuring 20.5 inches in length.

That compares with his Mom, who at birth was only 5 lb. 3 oz. and 18 inches in length. It's a safe bet her son is going to be taller than Laila by age 13 or so...But I'm quite sure he'll always look up to her, as in fact all of us in this large, extended family do.

Congratulations, Laila and Loic!

We understand a number of first names are still under consideration.

Here's an early photo of the baby with his father.




***


And that's the headline news here at Hotweir today. Everything else can wait...


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Louis Rossetto: Our First "Featured Predictifier"

Predictify Launches “Featured Predictifier” Program

New Program Provides Forum for Noteworthy Guest Contributors to Tap Predictify Users' Collective Wisdom


Redwood City, Ca – July 22, 2008 – Predictify, an online prediction platform that leverages the wisdom of crowds to add an interactive, forward-looking dimension to the news, is launching its “Featured Predictifier” Program on July 22.

Each week the program will feature a noteworthy guest contributor, or Featured Predictifier, who will pose a question of importance to them and society at large on Predictify’s homepage.

By featuring prominent individuals from a variety of fields, such as public service, philanthropy, and business, Predictify will add a new dimension to its forward-looking, interactive take on the news. In return, Featured Predictifiers will gain access to the unique insight generated by the collective wisdom of Predictify’s audience as they make predictions and engage in discussion with other members.

“The Featured Predictifier program provides a unique forum for prominent individuals to pose thought-provoking questions to our highly-engaged audience,” said David Weir, Predictify’s Editor-in-Chief. “I predict that both our users and our guest contributors will love it.”

The first Featured Predictifier will be Louis Rossetto, co-founder of Wired magazine and former CEO of Wired Ventures. In 1991, Rossetto and his partner Jane Metcalfe resettled from Europe to the U.S. to raise capital for Wired, and they launched the magazine on a shoestring budget in San Francisco in January 1993.

Rossetto is widely recognized as a visionary who foresaw the transformation of the media industry that would result in the Internet Age. According to Wikipedia, "Wired was greatly admired for its bold design and its coverage of digital culture. Its deliberately provocative editorial reflected Rossetto's beliefs in a far-reaching ‘digital revolution’ based on global consciousness and networked markets. Under Rossetto's five years as editor, the magazine won two National Magazine Awards for General Excellence, and one National Magazine Award for Design." Consistent with his passion for digitization, Rosetto will pose a question on which brand-name magazine will be the first to abandon the field of print publishing.

In addition to Mr. Rosetto, other Featured Predictifiers in coming weeks will include:

* Steve Westly, formerly Controller for the State of California;
* Raymond Nasr, former Director of Executive Communications at Google;
* Greg Stuart, former CEO of the Internet Advertising Bureau;
* Phil Bronstein, Editor at Large, San Francisco Chronicle;
* Alana Conner, PhD, Psychology; Senior Editor, Stanford Social Innovation Review;
* Andrew Golis, Deputy Publisher, Talking Points Memo;
* Perla Ni, Founder of GreatNonprofits.org

About Predictify
Predictify is a community-based prediction platform that makes predicting real-world events easy and fun. Users can research, discuss and predict the future, build a reputation based on their accuracy, and even get paid real money when they’re right. Marketers can create awareness, engage consumers, and gather data by posting promotional questions about a product or service. Since its launch in October 2007, Predictify has partnered with the New York Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, Freakonomics, Mashable and ReadWriteWeb. Predictify can be found at www.predictify.com/.

PR Contact:

Tiffany
Curci
Voce Communications

208-725-2062


Valley of the Jolly Green Midget

I love startups. I've loved them all my adult life. The first one I worked on was SunDance magazine, at 1913 Fillmore Street, in San Francisco in 1971. After a half dozen or so others, Rolling Stone hired me in 1975; and though it no longer technically qualified as a startup, it was still in Act One of its particular drama, as I've written and blogged about many times in many places.

I was part of Mother Jones, as it started; and New West/California during its all-too-brief reign. The most important startup of my entire career was (and remains) the Center for Investigative Reporting, which I helped build from scratch from 1977-1989. Ever since, I've remained on the board, trying to stabilize and extend this valuable institution into the future.

But it was not only media companies that attracted me. I've also devoted a substantial part of my energy to helping build non-profits devoted to global environmental and social justice issues. The prime examples are the Pesticide Action Network and the Rainforest Action Network, but there are many, many more. Some are still active; some are not.

Nevertheless, despite all of these efforts, nothing had adequately prepared me for what confronted me when I joined HotWired late in 1995. This was ground zero for Web 1.0. Wired magazine had already caught the publishing world's attention and won National Magazine Awards, but despite my background in magazines, I didn't join that side of the company.

Rather, I agreed to become the producer of The Netizen, on HotWired, the first daily political news site on the still-young web. I'd cut my web teeth by helping launch what would eventually come to be known as Salon.com in the fall of 1995, but HotWired was potentially the Rolling Stone for its generation, if only it could win a race against time, and against the expectations of greedy investors who ultimately chose to kill the golden goose rather than allow it to flourish.

There have been many other startups for me since then, but tonight my mind is on HotWired, because tomorrow, for the very first time since I was laid off by Wired in late 1997, I'm again working with my friend, Louis Rossetto, the founder of Wired and its former Publisher.

Louis is one of the best bosses I've ever had, for a myriad of reasons. That our mutual dreams did not work out is insignificant in retrospect. Tomorrow, we launch a new collaboration, one that, though modest, carries much potential.

You know: Startups. That's where the likes of me belong.

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Scene of (Re) Construction

It's a foggy, cool weekend here in the city by the bay. My nine-year-old and I visited a non-profit outlet called "Scraps," in the warehouse district between Bernal Hill and Bayview. For six bucks, we loaded up on pieces of cloth, paper, wood, glass, and other castaways from our wasteful consumer culture; then came back home to recycle our acquisitions into something new.



Back home, we looked at the old pistol and pipe dug out of our 1890's privy by the S.F. Historical Museum two summers back. We've taken care of these relics; they are in the same shape as when we recovered them.



Out back, there are clusters of cherry tomatoes reaching their orange stage -- my favorite color in their ripening cycle.



Our wax bird was illuminated by the late-afternoon sun that broke through our fog soup.



Out front, the pink roses next door open, bloom, age and die in a colorful display of the cycle of life.



Inside, my little designer and I completed this room in what we eventually hope to be able to call a house. It's a beach cottage, with an exterior painted blue (at her insistence). It therefore recreates one of the happiest moments in my life, although she is utterly unaware of it. The late '80s, spending chunks of every summer in our inherited cottage on the beach at Sanibel Island, Florida. I'd work all day, writing this book or that, while my older kids grew up in paradise.

In the afternoons, while the kids played inside our little blue cottage looking out at the Bay, I would rewrite and edit my day's work. By late afternoon, it was time to party, and there were multiple ways to do that on Sanibel. I remember driving my kids over to their friends' parent's house, music blaring.

In retrospect, it never gets better than that. Never.

That's what my blissfully naive 9-year-old doesn't know -- the memories she is triggering within me -- as we create this little blue beach cottage together, or maybe somehow, on a deeper, more intuitive level, she does.

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Home (Not) Alone.1

I haven't really updated this blog with my personal circumstances in a while. I live alone. My kids spend a certain amount of time with me but they don't really live here, any longer, so they pretty much consider "home" their Mom's house, and this place just "Dad's house."

I understand.

My GF got her own place recently, across town, but she hasn't really moved in there yet, because she's been traveling -- in Japan at present.

Given the state of the economy, and the fact that nobody much ever spends the night here, I've been wondering whether I should get a roommate? I'm not much attracted to the idea, but the financial benefits are undeniable.

We Americans are all, in one way or another, struggling to cope with the changing circumstances we find ourselves in. House values are falling everywhere, even here in the Bay Area (finally). Job losses are rising. Defaults on loans are up, as are foreclosures, and many people are dipping into their retirement accounts to stay afloat.

My immigrant Scottish grandfather would turn over in his grave if he knew the way my youngest child views money. She sees no reason whatsoever to store her money away. Like most kids, she gets money gifts, and earns allowances, and so forth, so she always has a small bit of "savings."

But to her, money means very little. As soon as she hears somebody needs some money to buy something, she quickly and enthusiastically gives what she has to that person. I haven't intervened yet, summoning my Scottish genes, to explain to her that this is not necessarily the best way to go about migrating through American capitalist society.

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Backyard Beauty

Two Women Heroes

As a very reluctant viewer (to put it mildly) of Larry King on CNN, for reasons I need not go into, lately I've been absolutely captivated by his interviews with two amazing women -- French/Colombian politician and former hostage Ingrid Betancourt, and tennis star Venus Williams.

Betancourt endured ineffable horrors as a kidnapped hostage in the Colombian jungle until her daring rescue by the Colombian military aided by American military intelligence officials. Her elegance, emotional honesty, and articulate conversation in her third language was captivating as well as horrifying.

As an experienced interviewer myself, I thought King handled this delicate situation very well. Clearly, this woman is going to be fighting many PTSD-type difficulties, not to mention Stockholm Syndrome symptoms so clearly on display during her interview.

Venus Williams is at a different point in her story -- she's literally at the top of her game. She just won another Wimbledon. Rarely have I watched a more all-American girl, modest, self-deprecating, sweet, strong and well-spoken than she is. What a poster girl for this country, as she again heads to the Olympics.

So, there you have it, hats off to Larry King. Anyone who's done interviews knows that it is an art to do them well, turning them into conversations as opposed to interrogations. I learned more about these two amazing women from these two television interviews than I'd picked up from scanning dozens of print interviews.

I still don't like TV, nor any of the practitioners of TV journalism, but every now and again, these guys do it right. When they do, they deserve credit.

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An American Hero

Many people don't bother to read the "comments" that readers may post to this and other blogs, so I want to re-post my cousin Dan's description of the astonishing corruption his Dad encountered inside the Chrysler Corporation in the late '50s. Of course, I was clueless about all this at the time. As a son of Motown, I followed everything the auto companies did, which is to say I drank their public propaganda like Kool-Aid.

Uncle George, meanwhile, was clearly a thoroughly good man. Through my child's eyes, I observed a patient, unassuming, kind man, who worked hard and loved his family, Aunt Reta, George, Jr., Dan, and Gordon.

As his parents' only son and youngest child, George moved his family to Florida to be close to my grandparents as they approached the last years of their lives. I knew about that, but I didn't know the following, though I do now, courtesy of Dan:

"If it is higher level collusion and intrigue that interests you, exploring Dad's early experience at Chrysler Corporation might fascinate. The same qualities that propelled his early automotive career at Fisher Body came squarely against the corruption at Chrysler in the late 50s.

"As the youngest General Superintendent at Chrysler, heading up skilled trades at the then new Twinsburg Stamping Plant, he uncovered a scheme involving a corporate vice president who was getting kickbacks from a sham business operated in his wife's name. In spite of attempts to threaten and bribe him, (Dad) exposed what he knew, leading to a corporation wide shake up in 1959 and 1960.

"A well known Detroit based attorney, Sol Dan, moved legal action which eventually blew the lid off and ultimately changed the Chrysler board. At one point, Dad threw a corporate rep out of his office when the rep told him it would be a shame if anything were to happen to his young family.

"On another occasion, Mother called him at the plant to say there was a strange man attempting to leave an expensive shop tool at our home. He had her put the man on the phone and told him that if he and the tool did not leave immediately, he would call the police to have him arrested."


***

There are lots of people who've done fine things and become quite famous as a result. They are the ones who run for President, or hawk brands, and have PR and marketing agents to repackage their stories.

Real heroes, to me, are like my Uncle George Anderson. He did the things he did out of a personal sense of honor and principle.

I'll be his PR man any day of the week.

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My Moonshiner Roots

Wow, thanks to cousin Dan I now know my Grandpa was a moonshiner. Well, not quite. He made wine during Prohibition, not rot-gut whiskey. I wonder how he did it? Where did he get grapes? The only grapes I remember spotting in Michigan were wild Concord grapes, very blue, tart and with not much meat around the seed.

But, I also remember that Grandpa had a deep love of green grapes, so without any empirical evidence, I bet he made white wine. The irony here is he was no drinker himself, as Dan notes. He was a strict follower of Christian Science. But he also apparently hated any government interference in a man's personal life; thus his Prohibition-era activities.

One thing I don't yet know is whether he gave this home-made wine away or sold it? I imagine some family member much more in the know than I can supply the answer.

I could never get close to my grandfather. He was too intimidating, and dismissive of my oddness. He could not appreciate that I was born lacking all engineering skills. These many decades later, another irony is that I work only with engineers.

Plus this: He and I share a deep resentment of gratuitous government power. My immigrant Grandpa and I were much more alike than I ever realized when I was young. The only way I've discovered this is through this blog.

If anyone ever needed a reason to begin this kind of personal blog, maybe this story will help them start one.

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Boys, Girls and Cars

Though she's off to Japan for a while, often as not lately when I get home and she is here, Junko's been reading something or another about automobiles. Such is the obsession of the new driver, even at middle age (44.5), who's still amazed at how well she can maneuver cars of various sizes in this, one of the strangest driving environments on the planet.

After all, we don't just have hills in San Francisco, we have mountains. Plus a confusing array of one-way streets that only occasionally continue to be one-way streets as they bifurcate the city. No, that would be far too easy. Our streets like to tease drivers: Now I'm one-way that way; now I'm two-way; oh oh, now I'm one-way the other way!

If this sounds like our population, sobeit, but hey, I'm not complaining here. The sexual orientation of those around me only make this place more interesting. I see, I sense, I appreciate. Sometimes, I admit, I feel even older than I am biologically, because I am so boring, i.e., single-minded as far as my sexual proclivities are concerned.

My only consolation is that I love women SO much that I hope that counts for something somewhere for somebody. And I do. My eyes still wander; Junko makes fun of me for it. "You love Asian women so much, you really should move to Daly City," she says sincerely. But no, I protest, I also love white, black, Latina, Indian, Filipina, and Indigenous women -- do they live there too?

It's a familiar joke, because she knows I could never live in Daly City. Malvina Reynolds sealed that deal a long time ago when she wrote "Little Boxes," and enshrined the term "ticky-tacky" in our language eternally.

In any event, the title of this post contains a promise, so I best deliver on it. The image of a car above is a 1956 Ford, blue and white. As the new cars were being promoted in late summer/early fall 1955, I was 8, and I got my hands on the photos of what was soon to be coming down the line.

I fell in love with this particular car with this particular color scheme.

But it was forbidden love, naturally the most exciting kind. I already knew that NOBODY in my family would buy a Ford. Why? Because, according to family legend as it was related to me, Ford stole my Grandpa's tool and die tool designs and patented them, never compensating him a dime.

I do not know the truth of this family story, but I'm thinking my cousin Dan might. The way I heard the tale, Grandpa quit Ford when he found out that he had been ripped off. It may have been during the Depression or maybe in WW2. But, so I recall being told, he went over to GM, and from then on, we all only bought GM or Chrysler cars.

I know my Uncle George went to work not for Ford or GM but for Chrysler. Was this related to the insult to our immigrant clan? Again, I just don't know. Probably my big sister Nancy or Dan's big brother George know many more facts than I, in this regard.



When I reached age 16, I'd been working summer and after-school jobs for around four years. I'd delivered newspapers, picked tomatoes (learning a bit of Spanish in the process), managed a Hobby Shop, walked dogs, babysat, and done odd jobs in the neighborhood.

This lovely colored Oldsmobile, or rather one that could be its twin, came on the market near where we lived at the time, just outside of Bay City, Michigan. The asking price was $40. Despite my work habits and my inherited (from my Scottish Grandpa) ability to save pennies, I still didn't have that much, and my parents were in no position to help me buy it.

So I lost it. Somebody else claimed the car I lusted after, as much as any girl I lusted after at that age. Instead my first car came into my possession a few years later. We called her "Alison's Restaurant," but that's another old story, one to be told some other time...

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Past Blaster

Saturday night.

We finally found the Porridge King in Daly City that we've been intending to visit for the better part of a year. Peking Duck, or duck in any form, tends to exert a magnetic pull on me. Porridge exerts a similar pull on Junko. Tonight's surprise was how much I liked the porridge, which reminds me of southern grits, another of my cullinary favorites. (Oh, I wish I had some boiled peanuts tonight.)

The porridge we ordered had some shredded duck and also pieces of black duck eggs. Yummy.

I was only one of two white people in the place, as Junko gleefully noted. An Asian treasure this place. Our dinner bill (with three entrees) was $22.85.

Back home, when I turned on my TV what popped up was a classic baseball channel, and the game being played was a Giants-Padres game in 1987. Suddenly there was number 22, Will Clark, my older kids' hero and the player who made me a Giants' fan. Clark had the sweetest swing of anybody of his era.

Peter was only six and hadn't yet started his own little league career. Two years later, Clark led the Giants into the only Bay Bridge Classic ever played -- a World Series between the A's and the Giants.

The Loma Prieta earthquake interrupted that series and rendered it irrelevant, as we collectively recovered from a massive case of shock. But tonight, all of that was still in the future. It was Will's second season, and his play helped his team clinch the NL West (there were but two divisions then.)

What shocked me was what a simple world it was 21 years back. No ads behind home plate. No fancy camera angles. Skinny bodies on the players; clearly not yet any steroids in the mix.

Pure talent mattered. A good eye, a fantastic swing, an aggressive attitude really mattered. To all of us, Will Clark mattered.

Thanks, Will the Thrill.

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Eagle's Donuts

The heat wave has passed, for those of us living on the coast, but inland California continues to sizzle. Hundreds of wildfires continue to raze south to north all the way up into Washington.



Here the sky is white by day (foggy) and black by night. There have been three or four shootings, some fatal, a few blocks from here at a gang boundary line. My homeless buddy, Gonzo, was harassed by a rookie cop from a different part of town. He knows all the Mission Station cops, and they protect him.



The kids and I stopped by the best donut shop around -- Eagle's on Mission near Bernal -- to buy our breakfast. The friendly lady behind the counter knows the kids well, and also their preferences.

It's Saturday. After a week of long hours commuting and working, I'm looking for a way to wind down today. Maybe I'll go back to bed, find a New Yorker I've not yet finished, and save my second cup of coffee for later this morning...

The Sad End of John McCain

In our nation's dodgy past, historians tell us, ignorant mobs cheered the burning of innocent women deemed by the powers of the day to be "witches." Other mobs of ignorants cheered the lynching of humans assessed as three-fifths human in our Constitution, simply due to the color of their skin.

More recently, prominent men espoused a virulent Anti-Semitism and urged our government to side with Adolf Hitler in WW2. During my own lifetime, especially in the early years in Michigan, I heard countless slurs issued by friends and family against all of these groups -- women, blacks, Jews.

Being a black Jewish woman (in disguise), of course I stayed silent, but their slurs ripped bloody stripes across my body that, upon close examination, are visible to this day.

In the back alleys and underground tunnels of WASP culture, these three biases still exist, though it is no longer socially acceptable to say anything that might be overheard.

Against this entrenched culture of hatred and mistrust comes the 2008 Presidential election. As I consume each day's flow of political news as only a news junkie can appreciate, I'm struck by how many old sores are being reopened on the other side of the WASP piece of America.

* Women voters, so energized by Hillary Clinton's candidacy, exhibit bitterness that their candidate fell short of attracting enough support to be the Democratic Party nominee.

* Black elders, like Jesse Jackson, denigrate the first realistic Presidential candidate their party will ever have nominated, come late August.

* American Jews maintain skepticism about supporting Obama. Is he really pro-Israel enough?

Honestly, I find all of these debates laughable. History, when you are in the middle of it, has a way of blinding people just as much as San Francisco's summer fogs prevent those of us who live here from seeing much further than our own navels.

If I was in a McCain-bashing mood tonight, which I am not, I would lift from YouTube the video of his embarrassing inability to answer a question about whether allowing insurance companies to pay men to obtain Viagra is fair when we don't allow women to get coverage for abortion. (When Obama needs to gain the trust of women voters.)

Or, the video of his idiot adviser, Phil Graham, denouncing working-class Americans as "whiners" for faking their pain during the present recession. (When Obama needs to gain the trust of white working class voters.)

But, you know what? I don't have the heart to do that to this old man. My own sense is he might be in serious health trouble, given the way he kept covering his face today. That left cheek of his is swollen again, which I find scary.

The political fact is that McCain just seems sadly out of touch. He says he doesn't really know how to use a computer! That is why my prediction a long time ago, here, that Obama would be our next President, seems pretty safe tonight.

That, dear reader, is an understatement.

Finally, close readers should ask, what was I really referring to regarding group #3, you know, the Jews? Well, all that happened is that archeologists and historians have been able to decode the writing on a stone tablet from Jordan that appears to confirm that at least some Jewish sects had the reincarnation myth (die on Friday, get resurrected on Sunday) firmly in place before Jesus ever showed up. In fact, it is starting to look like a guy called Simon was the main character in this ancient myth.

Now, none of this has anything to do with politics, but it is interesting evidence that the religion so many Americans and Europeans consider to be central in their lives apparently is nothing more than one more sect of a far older religion -- Judaism.

That is our punchline: We are all Jews! Don't even bring up Mohammed, his Jewishness has long since been confirmed, not to mention the fact that it was other Jews who saved him from the early Jihadists who chased him around as if he were Salmon Rushdie!

Good old Salmon Rushdie. Not one to let a fatwa prevent him from writing many more books and living to a ripe old age, he's back on the book tour circuit once again.

It all just goes to show that any publicity is good publicity in this over-mediated world we live in. Plus this: Thank God, whoever she may turn out to be, for writers!

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1,001 and counting

Upon reflection, we've decided to keep this blog going. Can't promise you we'll make it to 2,000 posts, but there are still too many stories to tell and retell for us to close down the shop.

For instance, those of us who grew up in and around Motown know all too well how badly the U.S. auto industry misread the future for their vehicles, over and over and over.



Still, it is shocking that GM is presently losing one billion dollars a month. Here in Silicon Valley, we could fund 2400 new startups a year just from GM's burn! In fact, they could all be tasked with creating the ultimate fuel-efficient, non-polluting car, and I betcha we'd have a hell of a better chance getting the innovation so badly needed than allowing GM to continue to throw good money down a bad drain.

I think there should be a shareholder's revolt to accomplish just what I've proposed. It won't be led by me, however; I have no GM stock and don't want any, even at today's paltry price of ten bucks a share. There's a fairly good chance the company is headed for bankruptcy and delisting from the stock exchange, anyway.



What makes me sad is not the waste so much, as this is an old story, but the cold hard fact that GM will be shedding some great brand names soon. Remember the Oldsmobile? Well, what will go next -- Pontiac, Buick, Saab, GM Truck, Saturn? They're all rumored to be clinging to life support as major GM brands.

I'm gathering up old photos of GM cars, 'cause I figure by the time my younger kids are driving, none of the old models will exist anymore outside of some museum in Flint, Michigan...

Number 1,000 (finally)

12-year-old Uncle Dylan with his nephew James.


There are so many more things to say than can ever be said.

Any blog is like a plant pushing up through loose, moist soil. Who knows if it will make it or not? Some sprouts do; others don't. (When it comes to my gardening skills, almost all don't!)

This particular blog has proved to be both a success and a failure. For a long time, I've thought about retiring it when we reached this milestone, our 1,000th post, if only because it is likely we've served whatever purpose we possibly could have served.

It all started with a broken heart, at my oldest daughter's urging. It's evolved into an online journal of sorts, blending my personal life with my political and professional lives into a strange sort of unspicy gumbo, I fear.

Should I go on? Or is it time for this blog to wither away, as in Lenin's idealistic version of the Communist state, albeit never followed by the evil Stalin...

I will rely on you, dear readers, to decide. Please post your comments, anonymously, if you wish, below, and your vote will govern my decision. Part of me thinks that one thousand heartfelt posts may have been enough. I do not know if anyone really wants this blog to go on.

I am old, tired, unhealthy, and doubting whether this blog is serving any useful purpose any longer. Please let me know what YOU think.

Celebrating Our Lives

(When we both were much younger.)

This, the 7th day of the 7th month, will always be a special date to me, the day my first son was born, way back in the dark ages when Reagan was President. Peter was a scrappy little character from the beginning. Once, with a driving rain drenching us while he was still a baby, he slipped right out of his car seat in the backseat of my 1966 Volvo, where it was parked downtown, and slid straight out of the car into the gutter, where he sank, briefly, under water.

I of course grabbed him and held him aloft, fearful that I'd just committed one of the cardinal sins of parenting, i.e., exposing your child to unnecessary danger.

Not to worry. My little boy was laughing!

Later, we shared those magic years when a son discovers some of the same passions his Dad had, decades earlier -- sports, collecting, BB guns, books, cars, and imaginary games.

I re-experienced all of those with him, from working on his baseball skills (he was a truly talented hitter and fielder); to collections (he helped me organize our baseball cards, old coins, and stamp collections); to our BB guns (we assembled an arsenol); to books; to cars (I taught him to drive a stick shift by age 9); to imaginary worlds only the two of us could ever understand, let alone communicate to others.

Happy Birthday, Peter! You've always been your father's hero, no less so now than ever before. I love you and am so proud to be able to say I am your Dad.

(Peter is working at Wood's Hole on Cape Cod this week as part of his summer work in the midst of gaining a PhD at Cal Tech in neuroscience.)

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Pretty in Purple

I spent July 4th making my first batch ever of plum jam. It's a bit rough, given the state of the plums that drop in my backyard, but those who have tasted it tell me it's sweet and pleasant. Maybe I'll start selling it for $5 a jar, first come, first served? More likely, I'll just give it away, first come, first served. You know, better to seed the market...

***

After a recount and an audit, we here at HotWeir World Headquarters are pleased to announce that we in fact NOT yet reached the 1,oooth post milestone. Nope, there were several never-posted "drafts" in the queue, which fooled the automatic counter. In fact, this is post #998, so two more will be required before we hit that big mark.

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Happy Birthday, America

Photo by Sarah

On this celebration of our nation's Independence Day, I'm honoring our diversity, our optimism, and our magnificent First Amendment. My lovely grandson James is a poster boy for America's future. A very serious young man, as is evident already by age one and a half, when he chooses to smile, he has the power to light up the world around him.

Six decades hence, when he reaches my age, I truly hope the things that make this country great are still in place. Early this morning (I'm always up by 6 a.m., workday or not), I read Sy Hersh's article in this week's New Yorker about the Bush administration's secret covert efforts to provoke Iran into doing something stupid, and therefore creating the pretext for Dick Cheney's greatest remaining wish -- an excuse to bomb and then invade Iran.

I've known Sy for many years, and am quite familiar with the quality of his reporting. He has the best sources within the U.S. military and the CIA of any journalist in America. When he writes a story like this, it is coming from the deepest sense of patriotism that any American could possibly have.

Our best military and intelligence minds fear the civilian hacks like Cheney who continue imposing their private-sector values on a public-spirited military-intelligence establishment.



Obviously, if the unqualified maniacs currently in power in Washington, D.C. have their way, they will drag this great country of ours into yet another quagmire that results only in turning yet another generation of potential friends into fanatic jihadists.



The Iranians are a great people, with an ancient civilization rich with a linguistic tradition that has spawned literary greatness and a mathematical tradition that has yielded fabulous mercantile genius. Not to mention artistic and entrepreneurial contributions that dwarf those of its neighbors on all sides.

A wise leader would realize that the ancient empire of Persia is a natural ally of America. Idiotic leaders, drunk on the inherited and no longer enforceable power of compelling the import of cheap oil to power our absurd civilian fleet of Hummers that truly represent an ineffable national embarrassment of epic proportions are so out of touch with the cycle of history as to be laughable -- except we have not yet rid ourselves of these fools.

Those who criticize Barack Obama for his apparent willingness to reconsider his former position to withdraw our forces from Iraq are hypocrites. To me, his statements recently are comforting, because I am old enough to remember when we left Vietnam precipitously (under a Republican administration) and what a disaster ensued as a result.

I hope President Obama proceeds cautiously in both Iraq and Iran. Thanks to Sy's article, it is clear he will inherit covert ops much like those John F. Kennedy found himself saddled with in 1961. We all know (or should know) what happened then -- the Cuban Missile Crisis, which almost led us into an unsurvivable nuclear war.

The Bush-Cheney team aims to push Obama into a similar no-win corner. Only a person deeply committed to our greatest national strengths -- diversity, optimism, and freedom of speech/press/religion and assembly can do what needs to be done circa 2009.

And that is to keep our troops firmly in place in Iraq until stability reigns; to negotiate a new relationship with Iran, Syria, and other powers in the Middle East; and to relentlessly pound Al-Qaeda and the Taliban along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

I believe Barack Obama is the person best qualified to implement these policies, and I also think he will be our President next year. Therefore, even though I also respect John McCain almost as much as Obama, I believe that peace, finally is at hand.

And even though I am utterly non-religious, I can say "Thank God." (Whoever you think (s)he may be.) Why? Because I believe for the first time in my adult life, we have two truly great Americans running for the Presidency, either of whom will help us find our way to a better future.

The problem for McCain is he now seems to be heading backwards in time, rather than where I suspect his heart would go, but he cannot seem to stop himself from being pragmatic politically. I guess he has given in to the lust for power, and therefore, is abandoning his core principles.

Obama, on the other hand, represents a beacon to the future. But if I detect a similar shift by him, I will denounce it just as quickly as I am doing tonight, against McCain.


-30-

War: My View (3)

This is post #1,001 here at Hotweir.com. I can't believe I didn't notice yesterday that we had reached a milestone, but there you have it; I've been so busily engaged in my new job that I missed what should have been a moment of celebration.

When I was a young teenager, my cousins George, Jr., Dan, and Gordon and I had one of those conversations that only young boys have. We discussed the various ways we might die and which one would be preferable. My memory may well be flawed, but I believe we all agreed that dying in the service of our country would be the best way to go.

I probably still held this view when I started attending classes at the University of Michigan in the fall of 1965, because I was (1) naive, (2) conservative by nature, and (3) pro-war, in the sense that I agreed with the 1964 GOP Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater's proposal to drop a nuclear bomb on Vietnam.

But, in this new environment, where people were openly debating every sort of question, for the first time in my life I was able to honestly reflect about what my own beliefs were. Slowly, I came to realize that I was, both by instinct and experience, an outsider.

In January 1966, an older friend on campus, Ed Herstein, and I went to the basement restaurant in the Student Union, where we discussed all the pluses and minuses of my country's war in Vietnam.

I emerged from that conversation, based in logic, as an opponent of that war. And that has made all of the difference ever since.