The Politics of Race

It was a day of events in the City -- Love Fest, and a bluegrass festival, for starters. It was also the rarest of days for our Weir clan -- all six of my children and all three of my grandchildren in the same place at the same time.

It was the third day of the tenth month of this year and the very first time that has happened in 2009.

Two of the kids did not feel well at various times in the day, creating concern, since this is flu season. They both got better as the day went on.

It also was clean-up day at the high school, soccer for the little girls, and a chance for me to BBQ chicken and pork ribs.

Tonight a gathering involving all of us plus various friends of all ages came together, despite the minor illnesses, the fierce winds, and my shopping malfunctions.

I've been thinking a lot about racism lately. And by racism I mean discriminatory behavior and attitudes toward black people by white people. There are plenty of other racist syndromes in this society but this one is the base for all of the rest. As a friend put it tonight: "How can we point to a founding document that defines black people as property and that assigned them 3/5ths the value of a white person?"

Strict constructionists and conservatives of many stripes do not necessarily have a problem with that part of the Constitution, I have concluded. What we as Americans in the 21st Century ought to do is denounce all of the crap that our "Founding Fathers" believed, keep only what is useful and hold up the rest to public ridicule.

Those elitists were hardly the know-all, be-all wise men so celebrated by the political rhetoric employed by all government leaders to this day. They had some extraordinary men among them, it is true, and they established some revolutionary progress in the structure of government.

But they also institutionalized racism and set this society on a collision course with decency, equality, and fairness. We've been at war with ourselves ever since, and racism of the kind discussed here will be with us far into the future.

It is residual racism that fuels the "birthers," "truthers," and other extremists of the Christian right. These people are the most dangerous people in the world -- far more than al-Qaeda, to cite another despicable movement.

The American right wing is more dangerous because it has resources and it numbers and it thrives on hate. It is determined to disrupt the Obama Presidency, not based on ideas or ideals but simply because he is black.

They will never admit this, but I am making the accusation. I've watched and listened closely enough to comprehend that what they are seeking is the overthrow of an elected President by any means possible, including violence.

Fortunately, the great majority of them are soft, fat wimps without the courage to do anything of significance, let alone undertake the heinous actions implied by their words.

They are cowards.

So in all likelihood, their flatulent spouting of hate will die away as it becomes ever more clear they have no place in leadership in this society going forward. They and their bitterness will go to their graves, but racism, even then, will still be with us.

When the evils of the past are so great, and so deeply ingrained, there is no possible way to transcend them until many more generations have come and gone. I had wished I would see a better day in my lifetime, and in some way I have, with the election of the brightest President in history.

But so much more remains to be done, and it is a long, long way from here to where we need to get to.

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Capacity Exceeded

I've posted so many photos to my blogs that Google won't allow me any more free storage space. I'm going to have to purchase more space to keep showing photos in the future.

This has been a luxury I didn't fully appreciate until it went away. There were photos I would have put up last night & tonight, but they'll have to wait until I fork over some money to the richest company in the world.

Don't get me wrong; I don't resent the limitation. Server space is expensive, and nothing of value is free. It's just that so much of the blogging experience is free (Blogger hasn't charged for having too many words -- yet) that one forgets that unless this can be built into a business, it will eventually become a cost center.

I've been struggling with AdSense trying to make this an ad-supported space, but I currently make around twenty cents off of each one of these posts. If you wonder why print journalists have struggled to survive in online media, it's because if this were published in print, I'd make more like $3-500 per post.

It's a new world, one that confuses us as much as it inspires us. Of course, this blog, as more of a journal, or personal exploration, is not really intended to be a money-maker.

It just would be nice, that's all.

As we approach our 1,500th post here at Hotweir, I'm reminded that I almost hung up my cleats when I reached 1,000. I'm surprised to be approaching another milestone so soon; it doesn't seem very long ago.

I'm uncertain about the future of this blog, frankly. I love posting here, but the audience is fairly small (though much larger than in the old days) and I never settle into a pattern with the content.

It's personal but not very revealing. It's political but not doctrinaire. It's about family but only at a high level. The writing is not very emotional because I am not in a mood to go there these days.

It is not about business or my profession because I write about that stuff elsewhere. It just is what it is, and I have no idea whether it is serving a useful purpose for anyone other than me.

I'll commit to getting to 1,500 and then reconsider. That should be in about a week...

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Losing Battles, Winning Wars

The kids played hard but lost another difficult game today. Their record is now 4-3-1.

Meanwhile, it was Back to School Night in San Francisco.



This school is officially the most diverse in San Francisco, a very diverse city. It is a school with a tough background, but one that over the past few years, has transformed itself into what is now the most requested high school in town.



Like every freshman parent, I was a bit disoriented about where to go, what to do, and what the place is really about.

But my initial impressions are extremely positive. My young athlete-scholar is doing well in his classes; his teachers seem to like him and think he is trying hard.

That's all I ever ask for -- trying hard. The results are another matter. You don't always get an "A" and you don't always get a "W."

But there soon will be another test or another game. And at his age, that is all that matters.

At my age, what matters is that I was here today, not across the country. If Woody Allen is right, and what matters most is showing up, I want to show up for my kids -- at games, at school, and anywhere else that matters to them.

It's the least a parent can do, and yet so many don't. They have their reasons -- jobs, business trips, other commitments.

I understand. It happens to me too. But the beauty of a second time around (two families separated by 13 years) is you get to choose the "show up" button a bit more frequently, because by my age, fewer people have a piece of you.

So, I pick up my kids at school, I sit in the stands at soccer games, I pick organic tomatoes in my garden for my one-year-old grandson, who inexplicably loves tomatoes.

Actually, he loves all food, and I'm convinced he will be a giant some day.

With my two grown daughters, one son-in-law (the other is at work in Kenya), three grandsons, and my three little children plus various friends, this flat is a hub of activity this month.

Good times...

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Vine-Ripened Keepers

In math, teachers introduce children of a certain age to "math families." This is when they are teaching basic arithmetic -- especially multiplication and division.

So a family would be 6 x 7, 7 x 6, 42/6, 42/7.

Tonight, with the back door open and letting some cool fall into my heated kitchen, hours after I fed part of my gathered clan dinner, in the bedroom I can hear one of my daughters singing all three of my grandsons to sleep.

Or at least she is singing to them, hoping they may fall asleep. The two older boys are so wound up about their reunion, they do not show any signs of being interested in sleep even as the last hour of September is rapidly approaching.

The bunkbed in the room where both girls are now trying to coax the boys to sleep dates from the 1980s, when these two 30-something mothers were tots themselves. One night, their little brother, barely older than their own sons are now, tried to climb the ladder to the upper bunk and fell hard to the floor in our flat on Ashbury Street.

He suffered one of several mild concussions in his youthful years, so I rushed him to the E.R. in his PJs, where a doctor asked him a series of questions to gauge his injury. I remember that Peter's answers amused the doctor, who though trying to be diligent, couldn't help smiling at the boy's obvious spunk.

"He's a keeper," he said under his breath as I carried my oldest son back home.

The doc got that one right.

Today, I took my oldest grandson, James, with me to pick up my own youngest daughter from school. He was instantly the hit on campus. She scooped him up and carried him around school on her hip, showing him off to administrators, teachers, students and parents alike.

He is all of two and a half, so this was a big deal for James. "I a big boy now," he kept repeating to me in his high little voice.

"Soon enough," I thought to myself. It all goes in an instant, a flash.

He is a keeper too. They all are.



Those who do not share the experience of watching their kids continue to play competitive sports beyond the Middle School years may imagine it is all a fun, cozy experience.

But the truth is that much of the time you are consumed with worry. Games like soccer at the high school level in a big city are not tea parties. These are big, rough kids playing at this level.

There is always a substantial chance that your son or daughter could get injured -- seriously.

So, first of all, you want to be present. Should anything happen, you want to be there.

I read the worry in other parents' eyes. We recognize each other even before we meet. Of course, we are happy for our kids, playing at this level. In life, all advances come through a funnel. Most fall aside; a few advance.

So we celebrate their wins and console them after losses.

We rehydrate them, run them baths, cheer them up, and encourage them to keep playing. But long after they are asleep, we are still tossing and turning about that near-miss, that elbow to the throat that sent him flying to the pitch, counting each second until he popped back up.

We inquire about the sore foot, the twisted ankle, that calf bruise, the cut above his nose, the split lip, the hip pointer, the shoulder that hit the ground hard after that vicious hit by the kid who drew a yellow card.

The answer is always the same: "It's fine, dad."

They are keepers too. All kids show us how to live. If only we could hear better, we would recognize the message: "Keep living your own life this way. Take better care. Bounce back to play another game tomorrow."

Tomorrow, here, literally means another big game against Mission High. I wouldn't want to be anywhere else on earth than watching my boy play in it.

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Please Boycott Yahoo

(UPDATE: Thanks to Elizabeth L., who after reading this post suggested I demand to move up the management chain at Yahoo Customer Service. It worked to the degree I extracted more concessions, including a substantial payment toward future travel in lieu of an outright refund. I have canceled the trip, and will spend the extra time with my kids.)

Tonight I am launching a campaign urging anyone and everyone who reads these words to boycott Yahoo. This is hard for me to do, because I have long been a fan of the company. But it has revealed itself to be much less than I'd hoped it would be, in two specific ways that have hurt me and my family very deeply.

Over the past year Yahoo has managed to confuse my closest friend into thinking I was "active" on its Personals site, when I had never so much as done anything other than open and delete irritating messages like "We have a match for you," even though I'd closed my own Personals account over three years earlier (soon after I met her).

It turns out that Yahoo's policy is to continue stating that you are "active" even if all you do is throw away their insipid attempts to introduce you to people you don't want to meet -- years after you've decided the last thing you need in your life is an online dating service, especially one as insipid at Yahoo's.

Of more immediate relevance: Several weeks ago, I booked a trip via Yahoo Travel to New York later this week for a meeting I wanted to attend. At that time, however, I had no idea the events that would ensue.

It turns out that if I were to go on this trip, I will have to be away from my children three weeks out of four at a time when they really need me to be around. Of the three trips, this one is the most expendable. After all, I am to be only a minor attendee at a meeting that will go fine without me.

Therefore I tried to cancel this trip tonight, but the inevitable unctuous customer service rep in Bangalore informed me that if I did so, I would have to pay an enormous fine, essentially half the cost of the trip!

Yahoo is responsible for all of this nonsense. It has inserted fine print into the booking deals to trick people like you and me.

So tonight I am declaring a one-man war on Yahoo. Please join me. My hope is that we can bring some sense back to a company that appears to have become lost in its mindless pursuit of profits.

BOYCOTT YAHOO!

I wonder whether some of you may have experienced similar insults? If so, the only mechanism I can think of to express our shared outrage, for now, is for you to reTweet this and try to start a movement.

Please help.

Writing in the (Tropical) Night

One of the enduring images I have in my mind's eye of a writer is that of the great Rudyard Kipling, banging away on a manual typewriter, the tap-tap-tap of the keys audible through an open window somewhere in Lahore as he wrote the great Kim over a century ago now.

Of course, I have no idea whether he wrote Kim in Lahore, which was then part of India, but it really doesn't matter. The point is that the idea of him at work captured my imagination, sometime at a much younger age, and it motivates me still.

I've never published a novel, or even a short story, under my real name, but I have written articles and books (some on manual typewriters) in the tropics. I've written in India, Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tahiti, Mexico, Costa Rica, and Tahiti, among other places.

But my best writing (fiction and non-fiction) came at Sanibel Island, off the Gulf Coast of Florida.

Lately, I have been revisiting some of that material, trying to craft a novel, or at least a series of stories, out of the stuff I produced (on an old manual typewriter I still possess) in our family cottages on the island.

I've posted some of that work earlier here ("Tidelines") but the writing continues, often at night, here in a place no one would call tropical, though given the strange weather patterns we are enduring plus global warming, who knows?

The tap-tap-tap now is on a keyboard, and represents an interactive opportunity for me to share it with you, dear visitor, which I will try to do as soon as the next few chapters reveal themselves to me, their measly vessel.

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Future Hall of Famer

Some little kids think they can do anything.

My theory is it's good parenting to encourage them to believe that, at young ages, so they keep trying to do everything that comes along.

Here's one such little boy. He loves sports. Late this afternoon, it was time for baseball.

He can hit, he can run, he can pitch.

There's nothing to it.

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Kids Training Kids

When I was in Afghanistan, as a Peace Corps Volunteer 40 years ago, it was a common sight to see older children carrying younger children on their hip, minding the younger siblings all day long.



That's not common here, but today my 15-year-old worked with his ten-year-old sister, as he has been for a while now, teaching her how to play soccer.



Today, five of her teammates showed up for "soccer camp," as well, and he showed them basic moves.



A big chunk of our extended Weir Clan is gathering this fall, based at my house. Two of my grandchildren and their parents arrived last night. One's talking in full sentences at age two and a half, and the other is just getting acclimated -- he's at the beginning of it all.



One shoots baskets and hits baseballs, and one watches quietly. Everybody loves the outdoors and sports in this family.



The little boys are so beautiful, perfect, and lovely to hold.

A nice distraction from other realities, in my business realm, which frankly suck at the moment. A bad year this week turned much, much worse.

Now, family is the antidote.

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