David Weir

Math Homework, Ugh

2012-01-30T18:21:00.000-08:00

Whenever I work with my kids on math, I invariably confront the gap between where they are coming from and where I am coming from. This is hard for me, because math is a secondary, not a primary interest for me.

Words and stories are my primary concern, so naturally I quite easily gravitate to reinforcing their own interests in words and stories. All six are great writers and story-tellers, BTW, but only a few are "good" at math.

In that context, let's consider Fibonacci numbers.

They represent one of the lovely mathematical patterns that I'd forgotten about until recently when a math-teacher friend reminded me during a visit to a coffeehouse on Clement Street.

Here's how they work -- the first two numbers in the Fibonacci sequence are 0 and 1, and each subsequent number is the sum of the previous two.

Thus, these are Fibonacci numbers: 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89,144...Do you copy? At the higher levels, they become more interesting and complex, and therefore useful in algorithms.

But what's more interesting and complex about Fibonacci numbers to me is their occurrence in nature. They show up in the branching in trees, the arrangement of leaves on a stem, such as in pineapples, artichokes, ferns and pine cones.

Therefore, it's worth considering when and where they were "discovered" by our ancestors. The Italian mathematician Fibonacci wrote about them in 1202, although Indian mathematicians had described them even earlier than that.

The very concept of an algorithm, so central to everything we experience these days online, dates back to an ancient Persian mathematician.

Which brings me back to my main point, which is the beauty of math. I struggle day after day to try and find ways to get my teenagers to appreciate math more than they seem willing to do.

Hour after hour, I labor with my youngest, waiting for the moment that a light bulb goes off over her head and she sees that math is not just an irritation, but music, art, design. Things that she truly cares about.

It's just so hard to bridge the gap from onerous tasks like homework to the world of Fibonacci numbers, or for that matter, Pascal's Triangle.

But that's a story for another day.

G-O-A-L!

2012-01-29T16:50:00.000-08:00

When you're part of a team, you rise and fall with your team.

I played softball for 29 years with an outfit called the Michigan Mafia. Although I never totaled it all up, even though I was the team stat-head, I'm pretty sure we lost just a few more games than we won over those decades.

We made the playoffs a few times, and the championship game just once, where we got creamed.

My only claim to fame personally is I went 3 for 3 in that championship game, in September 1994, just a few weeks after my second son was born. (He was at the game.)

So I can say my lifetime batting average in championship games stands at 1.000. And there's no chance it will go down from there because my playing days are long over.

***

Now on to a real athlete and his accomplishments, not just his Dad's. Aidan's winter soccer regimen consists of futsol, an inside game played om basketball courts.

It's very fast-paced and intense. Today's opponent for Aidan's team, the Seals, was Jamestown, the local powerhouse.

The Seals had never beaten Jamestown before in four seasons of trying until today.

Aidan scored a goal and played great defense as the Seals prevailed with a goal in the final the seconds, 8-7.

***

Sports, in reality or as metaphor, will only take you so far in life. What really matters is connection. By that, I mean, humans connecting with one another.

I tell stories like those I post here, and at other blog sites, hoping just to connect.

If you are a parent, you know about the pride of seeing your child do well. If you are competitive on any level, you know how nice it is to win. If you are breathing, you know how important it is to not feel alone.

At the base, this blog is simply about trying to remind anyone who stops by that you are never actually alone, even when you may be physically alone. You can always visit a place like this, read a story like this, like it or not like it, depending on your preferences, react, comment if you wish, but remember:

These stories are for you. Not me.

Love, David

The Surprises That Await Us All

2012-01-26T19:55:00.000-08:00

The truth is, when I open up this field and begin to tap in words, I normally have little idea where I am going, or what story I really want to share.

But tonight, I know exactly where this is going.

The day began like any Thursday, with me waking up very early, brewing coffee, and preparing to drive my youngest son and his carpool-mates out to Lowell High School, considered the best public high school in this area.

By many estimations, the best west of the Mississippi River.

But I don't know about that, because who gets to decide?

Anyway, the four very smart kids in my car as we navigated our way through a very thick fog debated this year's disappointing political races, all the negativity and the apparent lack of awareness all politicians of any ideological stripe project that most of us simply do not care about theories or all that crap.

We just would appreciate a government that helped make our lives better, or got itself out of our way! For a bunch of teenagers, I'd say they were pretty damn clear about that.

For the sake of brevity, I'll avoid my many professional engagements from this daily journal entry, and get back to the parenting theme.

Working with my youngest daughter this afternoon on preparing for her math test tomorrow required all of my patience, always a commodity in limited supply, in the best of times.

Wat irks me is how easily she becomes discouraged, throws her head down on the desk, and seemingly gives up on our mutual quest to find a way that makes sense to her to solve the problems at hand.

She just has no confidence in her own ability to solve mathematical problems. Is this my fault? Her fault? Our society's fault? Her teacher's fault? Something as basic as the unintuitive numerical sequences enforced by our language compared to the super-intuitive versions available via Chinese?

I do not know that answer and I cannot calculate it.

In the meantime, my 17-year-old son, the athlete, and never one to describe himself as an academically-oriented person stole the day.

Just as he was rolling up his sleeves to show his tattoo, and adjust his earring, and go to the gym to continue his vigorous weight-lifting regime, and just as I was about to frame his latest all-city soccer certificate, news flashed across the local Internet site that he had been selected as one of two kids from his school for a city-wide arts award.

What?

It turns out that, on his mother's urging, he submitted a poem several months ago to a competition.

As it also turns out, he is to be recognized at an event on the night of my next birthday.

"No way," he told his Mom, about attending that ceremony here in San Francisco, "I want to celebrate Dad's birthday that night." I didn't know at the time exactly what was going on, immersed as I was with my daughter in her math.

But when I got home and checked my email, I figured out the magnitude of his honor, and so texted him to say that the best thing I could ever imagine on my birthday would be to accompany my son when he is honored as a poet.

A soccer-playing poet! How many of those do we have among us? The title of his poem is "Imagine." I've not read it, obviously, but with his permission, I will reprint it here when I do...

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Peripheral Vision

2012-01-25T17:40:00.000-08:00

Dad, the sky's turning pink and purple.

Riding on the bus, I watch the buildings as we pass them by, block by block. Usually, I am the driver, not the passenger. In that role, I may glimpse the same buildings, but only in a peripheral sense, never able to consider their essential meaning.

Now, as our giant Muni vehicle lumbers by, block by block, I notice the cracks and peeling paint, the defacements -- in sum, the vulnerabilities of many of these aging structures.

I also see the people on the sidewalks and bus stops with different eyes. As a driver, they are a constant cause for concern. So many elderly, young, distracted, or disabled people populate our sidewalks that I'm constantly worrying about making sure they do not edge out in front of my car.

As a passenger on the bus, these folks become the object of my study. Suddenly I am not their protector, hoping not to inadvertently hurt them, but a writer, curious about their stories.

Everyone has a story to tell.

That old Asian woman, bent over at the waist, proceeding along at a pace resembling that of a melting glacier, knows more about a time long ago and far away than you or I will ever be graced to share.

That odd fat, and (sorry) quite ugly man, dressed up as a woman opera singer, is either going somewhere for an event, or has a serious identity issue, at his age. I hope for the former, because if so, he's just having fun.

That little baby, with her bright eyes, is noticing everything as she is pushed along in her stroller by her nanny. She already has stories to tell, even though she appears to be at a pre-verbal stage of development.

Do you follow me?

The pace at which we absorb the visual presentation of the lives that surround us matters -- a lot.

Whenever we are in a hurry, for reasons good or bad; or whenever we are in an unnatural position of unnatural control (such as being the driver), we miss a lot.

What we see when we are in a position to see tells us who we are as human beings, in essence. Our essential selves have no power whatsoever. We are entirely vulnerable to the whims of nature, of human constructs, and (if you prefer) of the gods.

Time comes. Time goes. People come. People also go, often quite suddenly, without any warning. Words get spoken. Words remain unspoken. We all underestimate the effects we have on one another. That appears to be our collective fate, which is our greatest sadness.

I am a writer, As long as I can breathe, I hope I also will write. Word by word, I am attempting to tell a story. It's not really my story exactly; it's our story.

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Parents

2012-01-23T20:03:00.000-08:00

By nature, most of what I post as a parent comes in on the positive side of the scale, but as any parent knows, there are easily as many frustrating, scary, and confusing moments as any of those celebratory times when your kid gets all-A's, wins a big game, or does something sweet and endearing.

For example, there are those moments when they get into fights, red-faced, and embarrass both themselves and you in the process.

There are the times their report card arrives and you almost have a heart attack, knowing how short-term under-performance in today's world often can preclude options for their future chance at success.

Then there are the awful times you see them withdraw into themselves, go silent, and refuse to connect with you for reasons you have absolutely no visibility into.

It's never easy being a parent, but it is immeasurably more difficult being a teenager.

Just back from 48 hours of around-the-clock work as this kind of parent, I can attest to the exhaustion that results.

Hell, nothing really bad happened in the great scheme of things. They all seem to be fine. But I'm a total wreck.

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Republican Dreamers

2012-01-22T00:24:00.000-08:00

Newt Gingrich won the South Carolina primary tonight going away, leaving Mitt Romney in the dust, for now. Rick Santorum lags in third place, thanks to some pretty incompetent counting out there in Iowa.

(Math lessons for Iowans, anybody?)

All of this stuff interests a political analyst like me because we are accustomed to assessing how candidates grow or shrink under the withering media glare we all, in large or small ways, combine to generate.

In my view, what happened in South Carolina says a lot of good things about the Republican Party, and also some very revealing things about the leading candidates. Start with Romney.

Here is a very rich man who has been successful in business, which is a good thing. He also, uniquely among all GOP hopefuls, served as governor in a very liberal state as a Republican and got some significant stuff done, which is another good thing.

He appears to have led an exemplary personal and family life, with no affairs or divorces or other of the typical problems that dog many charismatic politicians, and even though that is a third good thing, therein may lie one of his essential problems.

He lacks charisma.

Americans like their political heroes to be real people. We are less concerned about their flaws than their ability to connect.

Romney blew his lead by appearing to be insensitive to the plight of normal people with some offhand comments about money. To him, earning some $370,000 a year in speaking fees is chump change, because he earns far more than that simply off his investments.

Romney's error, and this may well prove fatal, was not comprehending (or not being well-enough prepared by his staff to express) that what to him is chump change is to most of the rest of us to be the difference between being able to take care of our families or not.

That is Romney's problem. He does not seem to know what being an average American is actually about. He's very clearly among the one percent. Which would not be a problem except for the impact of the Occupy movement.

We may actually be witnessing the prospect of a real fight for the Republican nomination that could go on for some time.

If I were an Obama strategist, therefore, I would hope that a wounded Romney makes a comeback in Florida, which is a much larger media market, where advertising dollars will matter. Gingrich may have trouble generating enough money fast enough to challenge Romney there.

But Newt has all of the momentum.

There are other factors in play.

My sense is that if Romney releases his tax returns, presumably with no damaging surprises, and use his financial advantage to deploy the right media strategy, he may be able to regain his lost momentum.

But my deeper sense is that Newt has taken over this thing, for now.

It is still too soon to say we're looking at Newt vs. Barack. The GOP race remains open, to a degree we have not seen very often during recent election cycles.

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Not Alone But Connected

2012-01-20T19:15:00.000-08:00

This is a very personal post. Outside, here the rain has given the streets sound, in the form of every passing car. Some of my kids love this weather. I'm not sure why, but maybe it is partially due to me.

I have always loved complicated weather. Maybe because when the outside world begins to reflect to me the way my emotional arc travels, the whole universe seems much more in sync.

Or maybe because I'm just looking for an excuse to stay inside and feel safe? So rain says, "David, don't go out."

Of course, there is no safety in staying home, in the end. A disaster could easily strike, such as Katrina or a massive earthquake. Then, if I survived, where would I go?

The only way we grow and develop is by reaching out, going into the snow or the rain and finding out what our earth has to teach us, once the climate becomes challenging.

It's not less true in heat.

A long time ago and long way ago, I learned this lesson on an island in the Gulf of Mexico. There, I had the rare privilege to walk a long beach utterly alone, collecting seashells and other treasures left by the sea.

In the process, I was recovering my physical health, which had been compromised by infections I picked up in India and Afghanistan.

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Storytellers, Anonymous

2012-01-19T22:06:00.000-08:00

Do you ever wish you could back through time and change things?

Whenever I teach a class in memoir writing, I'm struck by the high degree of emotional honesty of my students.

By that I mean they try very hard to tell their story as they think it occurred, regardless of whether it casts them in a good light or a less than flattering light.

I've often been struck by this -- that people are willing to try so hard to get it right.

What we have at least partially in common with others is our past together. The parts that overlapped between our lives and theirs is our shared history.

Each of us owns a share of that past, and to tell that story, we have to do it in our own way.

Because, of course, story-telling is generally a solitary art form.

There are new, collaborative story-telling models emerging, courtesy of technology, but these remain to be developed in robust enough ways that the traditional model gets broken.

For now, it is me telling our story my way and you telling it your way.

As a writer, I've always been very sensitive to the nuances of how the other person might choose to tell our story as opposed to how I do.

These are boundaries, creatively, that need to be preserved, IMHO.

Then again, when the other person absents herself entirely from the process, choosing silence, I suppose your only choice left is to reflect her POV best you can, as you truthfully try to tell the tale.

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How Many Special Things Happen in a Lifetime?

2012-01-18T21:18:00.000-08:00

Here is a link to my oldest son Peter's work on how fruit flies use sunlight to navigate. The only time I (and a friend) visited his lab at Cal Tech is one of my fondest memories.

It is illustrated by my youngest daughter Julia's work on an iPad.

Seeing his research in print is an amazing honor for me, as his Dad. He is not only a talented scientist, but a fine writer. Most important of all, his work matters.

And so does his little sister's. She is trying to establish her voice as an artist.

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Today's News Today

2012-01-18T20:12:00.000-08:00

I'm so proud of one of the companies I often work with, Wikipedia, for its leadership today in the anti-SOPA/PIPA movement. There is evidence that what Wikipedia and other leading Internet companies did today will perhaps cause these well-intentioned, but dangerous bills to go back for revision, so that they never get the opportunity to cause much more harm than good.

Which is what would have happened had they been passed and signed into law.

Don't get me wrong. I oppose online piracy, just as fiercely as I oppose all forms of plagiarism. As a lifelong journalist, I have been victimized by plagiarists on a number of occasions. And the content that I constantly create has been stolen by many.

One funny story in this regard is something a former staffer of then Senator Al Gore told someone I know years ago. It seems that Gore had prepared a statement declaring that he had created the concept of a "circle of poison" to describe the process by which banned pesticides from the U.S. were being dumped in Third World countries.

In fact, that phrase was the title of my first book, co-authored with Mark Schapiro. I can assure you that Al Gore had nothing to do with it.

Of course, stealing ideas is not necessarily a crime -- people have done it since time immemorial. And, with the Internet, everything happens at hyperspeed, including the theft of intellectual property.

But SOPA and PIPA are not the right way to deal with piracy, stealing and copyright infringement.

Those of us whose only real assets are our intellectual skills, in the form of the ability to create original content, stand the most to lose from those who poach, and copy and exploit us.

But we also must stand on the front line of free speech, because without it, we wouldn't be creating content. We would be in jail.

My note to our legislative leaders is to try and write legislation that actually addresses real problems in ways that promise real solutions. Do your homework. Don't create sledgehammers to fix problems better attacked with a well-placed pencil lead.

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This Site Is Blocked

2012-01-17T23:08:00.000-08:00

In solidarity with the anti-SOPA/PIPA movement, this blog goes dark tonight. We will not post any new content during this Internet-wide protest.

End these legislative intrusions!

Or else, this blog, and many other, much more important communication channels, shall cease to exist permanently.

P.S. Just try to access Wikipedia right now...

Nuances of a Day

2012-01-15T21:36:00.000-08:00

The first-ever meeting between the youth teams of the professional San Jose Earthquakes vs. the San Francisco Seals this morning was an entertaining match in blustery western San Francisco.

Bruised up a bit after the game, my player (#16) said he enjoyed the game, which was close, and that the opponents reminded him of a team he'd faced in Europe last summer, also a youth professional development team, that one from Sweden.

Afterwards, I drove down the peninsula for a work meeting as the startup I'm helping prepare for launch approaches D-Day.

Tonight, my daughter came over for a relatively rare evening alone. I prepared edamame, rice and beans, with cheese, and a plate of fresh fruit. When she's the only one eating with me, I'm happily vegetarian, just like her, I find.

It's a pleasing experience for me.

With the boys, I'm a carnivore, not quite a "paleo"-diet fanatic, but we eat a lot of meat-centric meals.

At the end of the evening, after our healthy food, my daughter and I shared a bowl of popcorn while watching one of her favorite TV shows.

Just another day here in our town.

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Awards Night

2012-01-14T20:51:00.000-08:00

Awards, trophies, medals, certificates, speeches, applause. It's hard to believe how fast your kid's high school years pass by, so as you watch him being praised and honored by the school's principal, athletic director and his coach for the quality of his play, what's going through your mind is that this is the second to last time you'll ever be able to experience a moment like this.

It's an odd example of not living in the moment. Then, you snap back to your senses, and let out a whoop when he walks to the front of the room. There he is, wearing one of your shirts, and his black beanie, his gold earring and his star tattoo -- his own (young) man, a star in his own right.

After all, this is his night, not yours.

You are the observer.

Afterwards you shake his hand and tell him once again how proud you are of him. Something sits out there, in both of your minds, not yet expressed. It is a vision of the one last season to come, the season where he brings home something much more special to both of you than individual honors.

That would be a city championship, the first for his school in over three decades. For that to happen, he will have to have a breakout senior year, becoming even better at what he is already very good at, and also becoming a leader.

This may be more difficult that it sounds. As one of the few native English speakers on his team, and the only white person, he's always chosen to take a quiet role, in the background, on defense.

But there he is, with the rest, the tallest man in the room, smiling just a bit. Will he be up to the task?

Ask me a year from now. Even though I already think I know the answer.

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Bon Appetit

2012-01-12T20:42:00.000-08:00

Among life's best treasures are those moments when somebody really wants to see you, and makes sure you know that. That happened to me today, as my three-year-old buddy and grandson had his Mom message me and find out if I could come over for a "play date."

"Yes."

It's pretty special at any age when somebody invites you on a play date. As I was driving across the bridge to the East Bay, I mused about lots of potential kinds of play dates, before shaking myself back to reality.

As always, I was greeted by my little friend in the most sincere and truly loving way a person can be, and soon we were off, him riding his little bike, me hustling on foot to keep up from behind. To a park, the library (where he selected many more books than we could carry home), and then back to his house for lots of fun games.

At some point in the afternoon, he convinced his Mom to let us all cook Christmas cookies. As we kneaded and flattened the dough, he got out those cookie cutters and started sorting them by name.

Here, I was impressed that his language of choice was French, which for some time now he has more freely and openly been mixing with his English.

First, I heard him say "arbre de Noël," then "étoiles," mainly to himself, then to his Mom and me, "bonhomme de neige."

Next, he came out with "Gingerbread Man," which I'm fairly sure is what a French speaker who have to say also.

Finally, after mumbling "reindeer" under his breath, he came out with "rennes."

It's a wonderful privilege to watch a young child, thoroughly bi-lingual, work out his linguistic choices at a time like that.

Neither his Mom or I could figure out why he suddenly chose French on this occasion, bit we went along with it and reinforced the words as he came out with them.

The cookies, once ready, were quite delicious.

Bon appetit...

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Family Movies

2012-01-11T21:26:00.000-08:00

So my kids have been making funny movies for years now and posting them to YouTube. So far none have gone viral, so far as I know, but here is one of their efforts, five or six years ago, in which I make a cameo appearance.

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Drift of What's to Come

2012-01-10T22:07:00.000-08:00

So, the final numbers in New Hampshire will eventually confirm that Romney won, and it looks like he gathered 38-40 percent, followed by Paul at 23 percent and Huntsman with 17 percent. Gingrich (10) , Santorum (10), and Perry (1) continue to be non-starters.

The only drama left in this race will develop if one of the challengers can break out in South Carolina and/or in Florida. But, frankly, this looks to be over, and Romney the GOP's candidate.

I do not consider him to be a very string candidate, and in fact this entire field of candidates is very weak, given that incumbent, President Obama, presides over a very weak economy and a nation with millions of unhappy citizens.

It is hard to imagine Romney beating Obama, frankly. He'll pick a conservative for his V-P, obviously, but that is unlikely to make much of a difference.

I have not done a state-by-state breakdown yet -- that can come later, but while it should be a pretty close race, I think the Obama camp has to be pretty happy about their opponent will be.

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News From New Hampshire

2012-01-10T13:14:00.000-08:00

Nothing too surprising, but early exit poll data indicates Romney winning with 36.8 percent, following by Paul at 26.3 percent, and Huntsman with 21.1 percent. Gingrich is fourth with 10.5 percent, and Perry is getting 5.3 percent. I'm not sure what happened to Santorum.

These figures are unlikely to prove an accurate breakdown of the actual vote totals once those are tallied tonight, because they appear to be based on only a one percent sampling so far.

But, as a rough snapshot of what the results will be, it's safe to assume that Romney has won, and that Huntsman may have lived to fight another day. Paul is not a serious candidate for the White House, so his support represents more about his constituency (Libertarians) than him as a potential nominee.

I suspect Paul would be better suited as a third-party candidate that could really articulate an agenda that differs radically from what even conservatives and Tea Partiers aspire to accomplish.

BTW, the final average of major polls anticipated pretty much the picture emerging from the exit polls. Here is how that spread turned out: Romney at 37.5 percent, Paul at 17.5 percent, Huntsman at 14.5 percent, Santorum at 11.5 percent, Gingrich at 10.3percent, and Perry at 1.0percent.

1-0

2012-01-08T17:21:00.000-08:00

Futsol season is here and my kid's team got off to a strong start, winning 15-2. But their opponent today was the younger half of their split squad -- the 16-year-olds vs. the 17-year-olds.

In the nine-team league, there are four such franchises, which is one of the oddities of futsol. Sitting with the parents of kids on both squads, all I could do was to cheer for both teams, especially in the second half, after a 9-0 start.

Aidan played well, very well, which is one reason the other squad didn't get any clean shots on goal for the whole first half. In the second half, everyone kind of loosened up and played more or less for fun.

When you're used to soccer, with the big expansive field outdoors, this tiny court, indoor game is like soccer on steroids. Everything happens so fast, you can hardly keep pace. Any kick can potentially result in a goal from anywhere on the court.

Afterwards, Aidan worked out again, first at home, then at the gym. He drinks his muscle-building, protein powder concoctions after his workouts. Although his older brother used to hoist himself on a bar we had over the door to his bedroom, doing pullups every time he entered or exited his room, I've never had such a compulsive exerciser on my hands before.

Maybe he gets that from his Mom. She's always been big on exercise, though not on sports. After one play today, when the opposing goalie dropped the ball just after blocking a shot, and it rolled into the goal, she asked, "Does that count?"

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Parenting Athletes

2012-01-07T17:50:00.000-08:00

Today, after his intense, two-hour futsol practice, my son and I visited a local gym, where I purchased him a membership. As I signed his parental permission form, the woman who signed him up told me very few 17-year-olds work out, compared to people of other ages.

Of course, according to national studies, very few people work out at all.

Something like 70 percent of Americans do not even meet the minimum recommended level of exercise per week. Many are obese.

When you go down the demographic segments to teens, I suspect the percentage is microscopic. Certainly, when touring the gym today, among the hundreds of patrons I saw exercising there was not a single other teenager.

Finances are, of course, an issue, but they are also an issue for us. On the other hand, my son's commitment to stay in the best possible shape as he continues to develop as an elite soccer player is more than enough for me to lay down whatever cash I can for him to reach his goals.

Besides, this was one of his Christmas presents.

Less than an hour (and a Jamba Juice) after I got him his membership, he was back there, working out on the machines on his upper-body strength.

The football coach from his high school recognized him. "Working out on a Saturday, very impressive!"

I tried to do some research about how many teens work out in gyms, but this is a new field for me, and I couldn't locate any reliable statistics.

When I picked him up afterwards, he said it had been "fun."

Exercise releases endorphins. It is fun.

Too bad more people don't realize that.

Tomorrow will be his first futsol game of the season. I'm looking forward to that...

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Election 2012: Post Two

2012-01-05T22:40:00.000-08:00

If you like to follow Presidential politics in the U.S., this promises to be an exciting year. You know, it happens only every fourth year.

Today's news (according to CNN) include some statements by Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich that border on racial stereotyping of the sort that often seems to pop up in advance of the South Carolina primary (which is scheduled for January 21st this year.)

It's weird how election cycles tend to repeat themselves like endless versions of the film Groundhog Day, trying to get it right.

Iowa, especially the Republican Party in Iowa, is made up mainly of white people, Christians, farmers, hard-working, decent, parochial folks with little interaction with the diverse, immigration-rich societies that dominate our coasts.

So what these nice people think reflects little beyond what that -- what they think. It is not reflective of the nation at large.

The winner in Iowa, Mitt Romney, stands to claim New Hampshire next. I'm not sure who is going to win South Carolina -- probably not Romney. Whoever does win becomes the automatic alternative to Romney, and perhaps the candidate that could mobilize the conservative base for the GOP.

Thus, today's attention on Santorum and Gingrich is relevant in that either of them could be that candidate.

Gingrich, the intellectual with tremendous baggage, is an investigative reporter's dream candidate. Let me assure you that even an inexperienced journalist who digs hard enough can expose things about Gingrich that would alienate a large swath of voters.

Yet Gingrich also has always been a man of ideas, and some of his ideas have wide appeal to American voters who like to think about political issues, not just vote from an emotional place.

As a political analyst, I understand both the emotional and the intellectual aspects of campaign-year dynamics. People want to both feel good about the candidate they support and also believe to be in league with his or her ideas and positions.

But to get elected, candidates have to espouse centrist ideas, because there are not enough leftists or rightists to carry an election. Enough voters are capable of swinging between the parties that no one can get elected from an extreme, except in rare circumstances, such as occurred in 1980 when Ronald Reagan swept to power.

Republicans like to demonize Barack Obama as a leftist but that only shows they don't know what a true leftist is. This guy, our President, is a centrist -- that's why he won in 2008.

The GOP's best chance to unseat him is Romney, another centrist. But if the radicals of the party undermine Romney enough to destroy his chances to win the centrist vote, he will go down to a definitive defeat.

I haven't mentioned the ideological purist yet, Ron Paul. The libertarian in me loves him. But the problem with Paul is he connects with only one small slice of our common Americanism. Let's call it one-fifth of who we are.

That will never lead to him winning an election.

Obama's dream scenario? Paul leaves the GOP and runs as an independent. Then the final numbers will look like this: Obama 45%, Romney 35%, Paul 20%.

You read that here first.

Stay tuned.

-30-

Election 2012: Post One

2012-01-03T23:10:00.000-08:00

Well, it's fairly clear that, barring some major surprise, that Mitt Romney of Massachusetts will be the Republican Party's nominee for President this year against incumbent President Barack Obama, a Democrat. He's more or less won the Iowa caucuses tonight and will no doubt win the New Hampshire primary soon. After that, his momentum will be hard to slow, unless someone more conservative emerges in South Carolina.

Rick Santorum is not going to be the nominee. Can you imagine a candidate campaigning on something as obscure and meaningless a political issue as abortion? And there is no other credible Republican candidate for President. Newt Gingrich, probably the GOP's best chance, crashed and burned too quickly under fire, so he faces an uphill battle to get back.

Despite the horrible economy, and the substantial anger in many quarters of our society about the state of things, from the Tea Party on the right to the Occupy movement on the left, the Republicans can only offer Romney as their alternative?

IMHO, if Obama was going to be defeated this year, some sort of populist candidate would have had to emerge. To tell you the truth, until recently, I expected that to happen. Someone connected to the Tea Party would have seemed to be the GOP's best choice.

But that has not happened, at least not yet.

So, instead, it appears a milktoast Republican, Romney, is the best the opposing party can muster.

Obama, a master campaigner and debater, will eat him for lunch.

As it stands now, our President will be re-elected, despite his deserved unenthusiastic support from his own base. Let's hope, if that happens, for the good of our country, that he can at least sweep in some Democrats to the Senate and House as well, because this country does not need four more years of the pathetic kind of gridlock a split government has delivered us these past two years.

It's a long time from here to November. As of now, the Republicans stand to win the Senate, and re-claim the House, but lose the White House.

That, too, may change, especially with the lack of enthusiasm for Romney by the party's conservative faction.

I suppose, as a journalist, I hope some of this will change, so there is something to write about. But for now, it will be Obama defeating Romney easily in November. The situation in Congress remains too unsettled to call.

-30-

Go Already, Year, Get Out of Here

2011-12-30T16:40:00.000-08:00

Very soft, cold misting outside here, suitable for ushering a dying year to its grave. The sky is dull grey; the hills are obscured. The wetness makes the vehicles swish as they pass. The daylight, such as it is, escapes; the temperature falls further.

Back where I grew up, winter was a time of snow, ice, wind, fires in the fireplace. Here it is a mostly dull season, when the rains are supposed to fall, except when we have a drought.

This has been one of the driest Decembers on record.

But it also can be sunny and bright, if rarely warm in winter. Sometimes, when the sky is blue, the Bay Area serves as a beacon to those in the snow belt. Hell, even today's weather probably would appeal to them over what they often have back home.

The year just inches away, minute by minute. I don't know why, but this is always an extremely emotional time for me; I find myself taking stock personally of the year as it ends.

At some point, I just want to be rid of it, to close the books, and look back as little as possible going forward.

But for now I'm stuck with it, this measly representation of a 12-month standstill. The damn thing doesn't seem to have enough sense to speed up its departure, like a party guest that overstayed her welcome.

In the mist and the gathering darkness, the only sound left is that of my fingers tap-tap-tapping.

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From Us to You: Happy New Year

2011-12-29T20:34:00.000-08:00

The year evaporates before our eyes. It's time to remember what has and hasn't happened during 2011 and to hope for better times ahead. It's time to say what we really want to say to one another.

Why hold back? Time is slipping away, and around 52 hours from now, the year will be gone, never to return.

A year ago, I would never have predicted that an entire set of 365 days could have come and gone without certain things happening. I would have thought that they had to happen.

And yet they didn't.

The silences, the absences, the unhappenings. They amaze me.

I wish more happenings had amazed me. There were a few, very special moments, that I will cherish.

But it is what it was. A disappointing year, at end. A year of few accomplishments, many sadnesses, including tragic losses. Of course, every year promises as much, but still, we begin anew every January expecting at least some sort of resolution of the unresolved issues from the year before, right?

The great confusions and disruptions of 2010 left me lost a year ago, seeking resolution that only others could provide. A year later, I'm still waiting.

No story is ever over until it's over. Nevertheless, one option left to you as the storyteller is to change the narrative arc, change its beginning and middle, once you realize you cannot affect its end.

You have, therefore, the power to decide that it never happened the way you used to think it happened.

That very special person you thought mattered so much was never really who you thought she was. She never fell in love with you, nor your words. In fact, she never even existed, now that you think clearly about it.

You see, she was nothing more than a figment of your over-active imagination.

Some would call this insanity.

I call it getting your history straight. Time may be running out on this calendar year, but in the realm of how our mutual history will be told, time is running out even more rapidly.

Time, in fact, is up.

Love, or what we thought of as love, dies and rots as certainly as does flesh and blood, muscle and skin. Dust to dust. When it reaches the very end, there is nothing at all left to say. Except that the story you both once thought you were creating, left unresolved, will never, therefore, be told. It will fade instead into nothingness.

Thus is all art, all magic, all life. Not all stories get told, only the special ones. Only the ones where both or all parties have the courage to be honest.

Happy New Year! May 2012 and the stories it brings contain more resolution than the nebulous, foggy ambiguity that will apparently be 2011's only enduring legacy, at least for you, and for me, and most permanently for us.

Happy New Year, once again, dear friends, listeners, and fellow travelers.

-30-

Your Memory is My Memory

2011-12-29T15:22:00.000-08:00

A funny thing happened on the way from here to finishing the ebook I am writing on How to Write Your Memoir.

First, I should say, the book is now 28% done, which is much further along than I have ever previously gotten in one of these efforts. So maybe this one will ultimately come to fruition; at my present rate, somewhere late in Q-1, 2012.

Regardless, this is what happened. As I attempt to explain to people who presumably do not primarily -- or even at all -- consider themselves writers how to approach a memoir project, I find myself increasingly drawing on other people's stories, not necessarily mine, to illustrate the methodology that I think they should consider.

I include some of my own stories as well, of course, but as this phenomenon of using incidents from the lives of others has become apparent, I started wondering about it.

As a journalist, naturally, I've spent over four decades telling other people's stories, so there is nothing on the face of it that should be strange about any of this. But I now realize that I sometimes remember the stories others have told me about their lives more vividly than I remember my own history.

In this way, perhaps I have served as a receptor, a vessel collecting the memories of others in order to better pass them on to those who care about them, or in a universal way, to all of us who care about each other, collectively, in a manner that is both bigger and more enduring than the littleness that each of us presumes our own identity to represent in the greater scheme of things?

Maybe. I don't know. This is a new insight. There are so many stories I could tell you about other people. Stories of all kinds, including many they no doubt would prefer I not tell.

As for my own journey, after so many years listening and cataloging the world around me, I sometimes come up empty about the real me, the one who watches, witnesses, records, and describes, but in the end remains alone, invisible, unknown and just perhaps unknowable -- even by himself.

Which would be a tragedy, perhaps, unless his only true role was to tell your story, not his. In which case it would be a blessing, no?

p.s. Image above under consideration for cover of my book. Idea is that a memoir is but a slice of your life, much like seaglass. Feedback welcome.

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Julie, Julia, Cal and Me

2011-12-28T19:28:00.000-08:00

Maybe I no longer recall when or with whom I first saw the wonderful movie, Julie and Julia, but I often cook meals according to what I learned from it. Especially omelettes.

But there is also the question of pot roasts, and when it comes to cooking those, I turn to my oldest son for advice. He cooked a delicious pot roast for our extended family a few nights ago, just before Christmas, in Sacramento.

I may also used to have known how to cook a pot roast, but if so, I have forgotten, just as I have forgotten when or with whom I saw the movie I'm watching, off and on, tonight, while toggling between stations on my TV.

Why the back and forth? Because my oldest son's alma mater, Cal, is playing in a bowl game, and I want to root for his team to win.

Memory is a funny thing.

The space in your brain apparently becomes limited, so that you can only remember a finite number of things, or maybe you only want to remember certain things and forget others. So, faced with these two competing programs, and trying to balance watching both, my brain chooses to remember what my son cares about more than whoever that may have been who was with me the first time I saw Julie and Julia may have cared about.

So, back to the pot roast and back to the Cal game it is! Sorry Julie and Julia -- great movie, but maybe another time for the likes of you.

-30-

愛, not

2011-12-26T14:19:00.000-08:00

Last night, walking back from a store with Gatorade for my daughter, a car drove past with mismatched headlights -- one whitish and one yellowish.

Walking to the grocery market last week, I passed two women helping a disabled woman walk near KQED. The woman they were helping could only make one sound over and over, which resembled a cat's meow.

The homeless man on my corner was sweeping up today, asking whether Christmas was nice this year. It's cold, very cold here.

A deep fog fell over the city last night. My daughter and I watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory on TV. After a good night's sleep, she started feeling better this morning and ate some cereal with milk.

It's the details, day in and out, that perplex me most. How time slows down and speeds up -- why does it act that way?

I gave myself a Christmas present -- the Japanese film Norwegian Wood, based on Murakami's novel. I watched it last night after my child was asleep, and again today. It's a tragic, haunting film, with a life-affirming ending.

It's all about the nature of love.

I've been eliminating foods from my refrigerator and cupboards lately -- lots of old items placed there by others, not me. As I discard each package, I examine it closely, wondering what the person who bought it saw in it.

Most of them are strange (to me) pastes, noodles, and sauces. They are perfectly good still, I'm sure, but since their purchaser(s) no longer visit this space, there is no reason for them to remain either.

As I recycle them, they join other ghosts to leave this place.

Since the latest water cooler disaster, I've relocated dozens of boxes of papers and files to the small bedroom, where no one sleeps. Slowly, I've opened some of the ancient yellow envelopes to examine what's inside.

Invariably, I'm amused to see what the younger me thought worthy of saving. So much paper! So much evidence of life lived! But probably no longer relevant to anyone or anything.

By far the trickiest stuff is all of my unpublished writing. I've already thrown some of it away, but I'm not sure if that was wise. There is plenty of it, some quite crummy, I'm sure; other drafts seem quite promising, even through my aged eyes.

When I was young, I wrote tons of poetry. I don't think any of it was ever published. Most of it I never showed anybody.

It is not good, I think, but it is an authentic representation of the feelings I was struggling to release as a young man. Maybe I should finally publish some of it here?

Other writings, fantasies, essays, unpromising novels -- all should perhaps be discarded. Except for a few of the essays -- it would be good to preserve my idealism from 40 years ago, I think.

There's a song playing in the background. What was thought to be the right way, turns out to be the wrong way after all.

What was that from?

Why do things become confusing at times? And then, all of a sudden, such clarity that it burns your eyes?

Where is the adjective that captures this, among all of the words available to me. Where is it? Or maybe it's a noun.

What is that word I am grasping for and why is it absent from my life?

Ah yes, now I remember: 愛

-30-

Christmas

2011-12-25T21:24:00.000-08:00

It's been a good one, with lots of family time. Two of the kids have only been able to partially enjoy it, however -- my oldest son and youngest daughter have been very sick with stomach ailments. I've been taking care of my youngest all day and she's also spending the night here, and that makes this one of my favorite Christmases of all. She's bundled up on my couch with blankets, and we're watching movies on TV.

We did have a very scary moment yesterday, on Christmas Eve, when my youngest son fainted, and then, trying to get up, fell back again, hitting his head hard against the wall.

This scared all of us a lot. Was it a seizure of some sort or just a case of a teenager fainting?

For his part, true to form, he was just embarrassed to have caused us trouble and drawn unwanted attention to himself. He's such a brilliant young man, a reader, a thinker, a lover of history.

His intellect is truly amazing, but does not always translate into high grades at school. This is one of the reasons I am skeptical about schools, not to mention teachers. If any teacher of any subject cannot hold his interest long enough for him to earn a high grade, as a long-time teacher myself, I believe it is the teacher's fault.

I hope and believe it was just a fainting episode. Teens faint often. Sometimes it's low blood sugar or dehydration.

But whenever your child has a sudden health problem you become worried. So this has been a Christmas of worry for me as well.

***

Life is complicated. One perspective on Christmas allows people like me, with no religious orientation, to enjoy it. The way this works is to consider it a time to better connect with family and friends.

I've done a good job connecting with family this Christmas, but less so with friends. It can be hard, in our society, to maintain very many intimate friendships. I've tried, for years, but when it comes down to it, for most of the years since my marriage broke up I have tried to rely on one special friend, as opposed to a community of friends.

Many men make this mistake; fewer women, in my observation.

This is the second Christmas in a row, therefore, that there is no one special friend for me to share the holiday spirit with.

I suppose, when it comes around to New Year's resolutions, I should address this issue. Soon it will be time to envision what 2012 might be, and what each of us should try to do to make the most of the next year, should we be granted enough more time to experience it here on earth.

First and foremost, I always hope and wish for my children's and grandchildren's health and safety and success.

After that, I have to get to the hard part -- me. And that, of course, is the problem.

-30-

The Weir Dudes

2011-12-24T18:13:00.000-08:00

My three sons have long called themselves by that name; they've made movies that are available on YouTube, and last night, they worked together to try and solve some crossword puzzles. That is what this shot captures.

As you could probably guess, I am impossibly proud of these three young men, aged 17, 30 and 15, all so tall and beautiful and brilliant, and kind, sweet and loving, each in his own way.

Of course, as their father, I also worry about each of them, and their vulnerabilities, which I can only too clearly see.

One way or another, I've been sort of like each of them in certain details, yet never anywhere near anyone of them in their total loveliness.

But I will say this, as the purported Super Weir Dude, though none of them have yet given me that title (hint, boys) -- I do think I could probably still (for a while yet) beat any of you at word games, should you care to give me a run...

-30-

Whispers of a Dying Year

2011-12-24T01:42:00.000-08:00

It's easy to see that this year, like all others before it, is determined to come to end, quite quickly now. I don't want to characterize it one way or another, as good or bad.

It was complicated.

Another year like it simply cannot follow. Some things must change. Two years ago this time, I would never have predicted what 2010 would bring. I will never consider 2010 to have been a good year, for it was a disastrous year.

As years go, I despise its memory. As a year, it betrayed my trust and left me talking to myself.

Given all that, 2011 represented a holding pattern -- a year of standing still. Others would not agree and would say I moved ahead resolutely, accomplishing much. For my family, it was a year we can collectively be proud of.

But for me, another year best forgotten, more or less. What might suit others, for perfectly good reasons, doesn't cut it for me, or for what I expect of myself.

There was some good writing that emerged from these fingers tapping this keyboard -- I'll allow that much.

But nothing great or memorable. Nothing likely to last in any meaningful way. That I made our limited resources stretch to cover the essentials is fine, I suppose, but I expect more of myself, really.

Of course the economy sucks. We are in the midst of historical readjustments. Our expectations for the future cannot match those of our past.

They can't. The future can never be what the past was, let alone what we imagine we remember it to be.

The very nature of memory is romantic. Story-tellers are romantics; I used to be at once a story-teller and thus also a romantic.

Unless prompted, I rarely tell stories any longer. I'm no longer convinced anyone wants to hear them, outside of my closest family members.

With them I still joke and recall the past, both the ancient past and the more recent romantic versions of our collective family history.

As the paternal keeper of our past, and the elder, I have a certain responsibility to them to get the stories straight if they often were crooked in nature, or at least I think they may have been crooked in real-time.

Life never proceeds in a straight line. Here I am, long after everyone else around me is asleep, pecking out letters and words -- why? Is it that I sense how time evaporates and takes all meaning with it, like echoes from a tunnel when you exit, blinking into the bright sun of everyone else's reality.

There are those who would be surprised that they still play starring roles in our family stories. They would conclude, logically, that they would by now have been written out of what we share with one another, but a family like ours -- a family of writers -- doesn't work that way.

Just because you die or split or try to become a stranger doesn't mean that we don't remember you, that we don't know you, that we do not know how to fit you into our shattered mirror of reality as we have known it, from all sides now.

Families like this one don't work that way.

I may be the elder and the keeper of the story but that doesn't mean my stories hold the most weight. No, every other member of this family has her or his own version, and if you listen carefully enough, you'll pick up on that music.

You can come. You can go. But you can't stop the family music.

What's that? I thought I heard an echo of someone, of something. Ah. It's easy to see that this post, like all others before it, is determined to come to end, quite quickly now.

Cousins Rock Out

2011-12-23T00:06:00.001-08:00

Holiday Gathering

2011-12-22T23:57:00.000-08:00

Early Morning Walking

2011-12-22T00:04:00.000-08:00

Dropping the car off for service and walking back home through the Mission, past the workday city waking up, with coffee the fuel of choice among my fellow pedestrians. For days, workers have been trying to fix various leaks in my flat; by last night the main culprit, a leaking water heater, was gone, replaced by a new model.

Three other kitchen sink-related leaks were fixed by installing new equipment as well.

The banalities of daily life.

The mechanic called with a revised estimate upward. Out for another walk, to the supermarket, with the kids still sleeping in, when he called back yet again, this time with worse news.

The bill now climbed over $1,000, putting a serious crimp into my holiday plans.

Back out for another walk, with my daughter, to the discount store, where I bought her a winter coat.

Soon after, walking again, now with the boys, to get Mexican food for lunch.

Finally, in late afternoon, when the car was ready, we packed and headed out of town, eastward, to join up with the rest of the family for the holidays.

***

Worrying but hoping for the best for my brother-in-law, who underwent surgery in Ann Arbor. Concerned for the strain on my sister as well.

***

Along the freeway, part of the flood of cars headed east, we cut through the Delta in the dark. Adele came on the radio as we neared Sacramento.

My two oldest grandsons, aged 4 and 3, came running out of the front door as we pulled up. "Grandpa!" they yelled, with their arms spread wide, running down the sidewalk in greeting.

-30-

Images From Another Day

2011-12-17T18:47:00.000-08:00

If you can catch it, the season's spirit has the capacity to warm your lonely soul. But beware, there are dark spirits lurking around the holidays, as well.

This particular holiday season, I've found myself choosing happiness at every juncture. It's not that I think of happiness as a choice; our emotional states are much too vulnerable to environmental factors, naturally, for our own wishes to prove paramount.

But when and wherever I can, I'm choosing to see the joyous over the darkness.

I'm not sure why it is like this this year for me. Something must be going on. Maybe time is catching up with me, as it has a way of doing, and on some level I've come to appreciate that the opportunity to close out another year with my family, seeing their smiles, is as great a gift as there is.

That, and the knowledge that there are a finite number of such gifts, for time itself is limited.

Concretely, our activities are much like everyone else's. My kids and I watch romantic movies on TV; my youngest and I shop and wrap presents together. We imagine the happy faces of the smaller children when they find out what the imaginary gods have brought them.

We also have to eat. So she and I, while her older brother-coach was practicing futsol in the Richmond, visited Clement Street. We found a small coffee house; she ordered a bagel and I ordered edamame.

We visited the locally legendary Green Apple Books.

We fought traffic to park our car. We walked, crossing Geary Avenue four times.

The sky was blue, the church steeples outlined above us. To many, those are the symbols of the gods.

We went into a Chinese market. Many of the best hereabouts lie along Clement. She held her nose against the smell of fish. We searched for a certain Chinese soda she favors but they didn't have it; she bought some sour candy instead.

The lady at the cash register smiled and spoke perfect English. To the woman in front of us, who was Asian, she said "Thank you," and that's also what she said to us.

My daughter smiled as we exited the store, finally exhaling and breathing fresh air again. "I can't stand that fish smell," she told me.

"Maybe when fish forms such a big portion of your diet, you don't mind the smell," I suggested. "Maybe it smells good to you."

She raised one eyebrow at me, a skill she inherited genetically from her father, from me.

Now I like fish a lot, but I also hated the way that market smelled today.

***

The basketball court where her brother's futsol team practices is in a Lutheran Church facility, which also apparently operates a "day school."

We got back there, her and I, in time to watch the last four or five fast-paced scrimmages. Her brother was on the "yellow" team, wearing number 8. Kinda funny about the two of them, coach and player, they've always only been either #8 or #16, multiples.

He did it again, today. He wowed us. After over a month and a half off, with no soccer or practice whatsoever, he was dominant out there, on the small court, guarding his team's net and setting up their offensive thrusts.

When I got there, another Dad whispered, "The red team is killing everyone else."

If true that ended when we arrived. The yellows beat the reds, then the greens, then the reds, then the greens again, in a series of fast-paced 5-minute scrimmages. The cumulative score was something like 15-5.

What was striking was the way every time save one another player smashed into her coach, he being the last line of defense before a goal, he won the battle. Several times, the attackers ended up on the floor; whether or not that happened he ended up in control of the ball and jump-started his team's offense.

There was no way to count how many assists he had but he did score one goal during this flurry of action.

Afterwards, he said he felt good and glad that he's been continuing his weight-lifting and workouts multiple times daily. Since lately he has been expressing reservations about how important soccer may be to his choice of colleges, I've also been scaling back my own expectations.

But today, watching him perform, I had to ask myself why he shouldn't continue to shoot to be a star?

-30-

-30-

Congratulations to Our Defender!

2011-12-12T18:15:00.000-08:00

For the second straight year, Aidan Weir has been named to the all-city team here in San Francisco, this time as an honorable mention.

He had a great season, not only on defense, but also scoring two goals and racking up multiple assists.

The way these honors are awarded in San Francisco has a lot to do with which four of the thirteen teams make the playoffs, and in the end, Aidan's team, Balboa, finished with the fifth-best record, and so did not get a playoff slot.

But his play individually was probably twice as good as last year, when his team made the championship game.

Such is the nature of things, I suppose. I've known this news for weeks, but frankly have been so underwhelmed by the way the system works I could not bear to post about it.

But tonight, I finally want to celebrate my son's fantastic season, and his award, even if it may be far less than he truly deserves. And much more, his love of the game. He doesn't play for certificates or medals; he plays because he loves the game of soccer. Not only does he love to play it, he loves to coach it.

So while, in the end, recognition for talented athletes like him is nice, you'd have to there in person to see how he plays the game to understand what really matters to him.

I, of course, was there, and I know what I saw. He's a gamer.

Congratulations, Aidan!

-30-

First Time Since 2008

2011-12-10T20:00:00.000-08:00

We have a Christmas tree and other decorations at our house tonight. This hasn't happened here for three years, but today the kids and I started preparing for the holidays in a traditional sort of way.

Tonight, I am watching that holiday movie,"Love Actually."
I know longer remember who first suggested this to me as a film for this season; no doubt I discovered it by accident somewhere along the way.

Anyway, it works.

Happy holidays.

-30-

Conversing with Ghosts

2011-12-09T23:32:00.000-08:00

When there's nobody there, sometimes there is. That's when the words start, when you learn what you want to say. Someone told me once to write a letter to a departed lover, telling her everything I wanted most to say, but never send it.

Blogging isn't really a form suitable for that, because you never know when your departed lover may show up virtually and read. So that's not a real option here.

Yet, in a way, posting to a personal blog can be a way to accomplish what the person who gave me that advice meant. She meant to get the feelings out, to not hold them in.

Even when your lover has vanished, presumably never to return, you may still have a lot to tell her -- that you need to tell her. These conversations can never happen for real, so they enter the realm of the imaginary.

You might call them the source of fiction.

You can use a similar technique to talk to many beyond ex-lovers, for instance with those who have died, or to friends who have inexplicably fallen away somewhere along the line.

Or, at the extreme, to talk to imaginary friends. Now, you either are completely crazy or you have truly entered the realm of fiction at its best.

I've been hungry for good fiction lately, but reading non-fiction -- great, long, detailed works of history or analysis, science, biography.

But it's fiction I yearn for, both to read and to write. Truth is (a funny phrase in this context), I've been working on my novel, but in fits and starts. Meanwhile, non-fiction is what dominates my days, as I continue to churn out voluminous works on various subjects just as I did back in the days when journalism was a paid profession, instead of an elaborate euphemism for being unemployed.

Itinerant writers, nomads of the word -- that is what journalists have become. They find piecework, they may trade their services for something they need in return, like a phone or a hat.

They might write for food.

Society is changing so rapidly that what we used to call journalism may no longer be fully capable of telling the story of that change. Especially since the story-tellers themselves have largely been disenfranchised, disintermediated.

Still, of course, there is fiction. The imaginary world where your words might still matter, even if those you most wish would hear them no longer, or more probably never even really did, exist.

After all, should someone turn out to not be the person you thought she was, the only logical conclusion is that you imagined her in the first place. You can be riding on a bus, traveling along the main street in your town, and glimpse someone who looks a lot like her walking along on the sidewalk.

Is it her? Could it be?

Does it matter? Of course not.

You turn away, to look at the other side of the street. No matter who that other woman was, she is not someone you know now...or ever knew at all. Just another candidate for a character in your novel, that's all.

Just a figment of your over-active imagination.

-30-

Americans

2011-12-07T20:25:00.000-08:00

When you get right down to it, we, the people who inhabit this continent now, and who benefit from its riches, are nothing more than accidents of history. Our predecessors came here out of a variety of needs, escaping religious discrimination, drought, or other horrors, and when they arrived here, they found a safe haven.

In the meantime we all have benefited.

Today, as the richest people on earth, we face a truly moral dilemma. Is the accident of history that placed us here a God-given right?

I think not.

I think that who we truly are, and what we ought to do next, is better represented by looking at the world at large.

The world at large is still a very poor place. Over half of the people on this planet do not have cell phones, laptops, or even enough food to eat.

Yet we are all of the same substance. Rich or poor, we are all made of the same stuff. Who is rich or poor today is not a matter or merit but of history that none of us living had anything to do with, one way or the other.

Probably the better sides of all of us would like to even this out. How can we do that?

That is the main question facing us, morally, not all of these silly political divisions in America. It is not about Obama. It is not about Gingrich. To pretend the choice is socialism or corporate welfare is specious.

Much more is at stake. It's a much larger debate. I just wish that we could get that started.

FDR's Speech When Japan Hit Pearl Harbor

2011-12-06T23:20:00.000-08:00

I think to properly understand the complex relationship with the Americans and the Japanese in modern times, we have to revisit the President of the United State's speech after what happened 70 years ago tomorrow:

To the Congress of the United States:

Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with the government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific.

Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his colleagues delivered to the Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. While this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or armed attack.

It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time, the Japanese government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.

The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. Very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.

Yesterday, the Japanese government also launched an attack against Malaya.

Last night, Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.

Last night, Japanese forces attacked Guam.

Last night, Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands.

Last night, the Japanese attacked Wake Island.

This morning, the Japanese attacked Midway Island.

Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.

As commander in chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense.

Always will we remember the character of the onslaught against us.

No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.

I believe I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again.

Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger.

With confidence in our armed forces - with the unbounding determination of our people - we will gain the inevitable triumph - so help us God.

I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, Dec. 7, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.

Christmas Lights

2011-12-06T21:54:00.000-08:00

Rounding a corner, and driving down a narrow street in the Mission, I see a black plastic bag tumbling slowly. It assume the shape of a prehistoric bird about to lift off, as I pass.

Picking up kids for choir practice; an early-morning ritual. By noon, a return trip to pick up my youngest son, who stayed home sick with the flu.

Hours later, back again, for pickups of the other two, and dog-walking duties.

Then, tonight, after dinner and a few hours of TV, back again so they can sleep at their Mom's before another school day tomorrow.

Yesterday, on the bus going downtown, a black woman in the back is talking loudly to no one in particular. There's a certain narrative to her babble, one picked up on by a black man in the front, wearing raggedy clothes and a perpetual smile.

He understands her code. "Waitin' in line at the drug store. That be taking your ID, yep."

An Asian man got on and swiped his card but the sensor beeped three times, meaning it was invalid. "You gotta do that again, sir," said the bus driver. "It has to beep once."

He gets up, swipes the card again with the same result and sits down.

"Again," said the driver. The man appears to barely understand English, but he gets up again, tried again, with the same invalid result.

Then he sits down again, apparently not comprehending, or perhaps not caring to comprehend what the driver is telling him.

The driver shrugs and gives up.

My youngest son, now the principal dog-walker, is sad that one of the dogs has aged and no longer has the energy she had even just a few months back. She has trouble climbing the stairs to her house, taking one step at a time, ever more slowly.

He mourns her loss of energy, the sense of her life slipping away.

His sadness is a daily event, as the younger dog still has plenty of energy and wants to run freely while the older dog seeks only more and more chances to rest.

"They're pulling me in two different directions," he complains to me.

Life and death. The daily struggle facing us all. We're all somewhere along that spectrum, on the upswing or the down. It may be sad, in many ways, but it is also life's natural cycle.

Caring about animals can help a young person deal with far harder experiences yet to come...as well as for as-yet unrealized joys

My granddaughter started crawling yesterday.

Driving back tonight, in the darkness, a yellow cat passed just before my car; he was never in danger, I was driving slowly.

The temperature is falling; it's winter.

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Going Viral

2011-12-04T22:34:00.000-08:00

As this weekend ends, this music video is approaching 20,000,000 views...Now You're Just Somebody That I Used To Know.

How do friends and lovers become strangers? The disconnecting process is one of the oddest facets of human culture.

People walk away from one another as if they believe they have a better future, once freed of the connection.

Thing is, it doesn't work that way.

Some of us may have a better future; all of us share the past.

And unless you have resolved your past, you will have no better future. This song reminds me of this eternal truth. It apparently appeals to many other people as well.

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Newbies

2011-12-02T22:37:00.000-08:00

When the year started, these youngest two hadn't even arrived yet. How do you measure a year? Perhaps no better way than the start of new lives. So, 2011 will always be the start point for Sophia and Oliver.

Human babies have enormous curiosity about each other, and a lot of innate gentleness and kindness. Of course, they have other traits as well, some less benign.

But good parents strive to bring out the good parts, and these two little ones have very good parents.

During this century as it unfolds, I can feel confident the world will be a better place with them in it.

At the other end of the age spectrum, rather than waking up to a new world, one can feel the shadows approaching that presage shutting down, hopefully gradually, but stages of life, once they settle in, are unmistakeable.

The past year a lot has changed, some for the worse, some for the better.

But these two little arrivals are among the very best 2011 has had to offer.

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Winter's Time

2011-11-29T22:16:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is the last day of the eleventh month of the year, and the time is approaching to take stock of it -- the year -- for what it was and wasn't. Being mathematical by nature, I often break down years by numbers. I add up things like money made and money spent, articles published, trips taken, the wins and losses by my favorite sports teams, and so on.

Just trying to make sense of it all.

Of course, these are at best crude measures of a year, mere signposts that barely scrape the surface of what living in real time feels like. In truth, the emotional journey of any particular year would require far more skill to document. How do you measure gradual revelations such as that "being in a relationship" is far more trouble, ultimately, than it is worth; or, alternatively, something that feels a lot like love is likely just around the next corner?

Depression is the term we use to cover a broad range of states (note that I do not call them diseases) that many of us experience during the course of a year, or a month or a week, a day, even an hour or a specific collection of minutes. Although I recognize that at its extreme manifestations, depression amounts to a debilitating state, other, milder versions of this part of being alive can provide some of a writer's more productive moments.

Because, it is when we reach this state that our ability to capture commonalities across the barriers of age, race, gender and all of the other human categories used to divide us one from the other begin to melt away. This is when we access empathy and find ways to tell stories that, though they may start deep within us, stretch far outside of our own limited consciousness to touch someone else.

Every writer dreams of connecting. No word has ever been written by anyone in the hope that no other human eye would absorb it. The collection of words we choose are meant to soften, sear or unlock, but never to hide from another.

Always, we hope you are there, in one sense or the other, perhaps lurking secretly, perhaps bravely coming forward to react.

Then again, writing does not always relieve depression's symptoms; sometimes it deepens them. Why? Because by writing what you feel, honestly, you may sink to the deep end of your own experience of those feelings. That's the risk.

The cycle continues. The effort goes on. Blogging, in this instance, may be a dying art form, so soon after it emerged.

There is no money in it. There is no way to sustain yourself. If you are a very talented writer, why choose this uncompensated channel when you might better capitalize by writing a book?

Then again, if what you really seek is that ineffable sense of remaining connected, when all seems adrift, maybe there is no better way than to release your words like a child's birthday balloons, and watch them drift this way and that, on the winds, wondering whether they ever might alight in another's life at one of those moments when we all might feel a tad bit happier, and lighter, that a pretty little thing found its way to our doorstep.

The sky outside is dark. The storm clouds gather. Bad news is always just a cloudburst away. Yet, as those of us who grew up in winter climates know, at times like these, there is no warmer state than being invited into a friendly, safe, intimate place by somebody else, let's call her a friend.

Welcome to my blog. And I hope you like this balloon.

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Someone Like You (Don't You Remember?)

2011-11-27T16:53:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, as I observe all of my children as they are, with all of their brilliance and beauty, I suspect that it my be that my youngest son is the one who has inherited a certain tragic-romantic nature, and therefore I fear for his heart.

Here are some clips by his favorite artist, Adele:

I only wish for the best for you...

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Thanksgiving, Part Three

2011-11-27T15:08:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving, Part Two

2011-11-27T00:08:00.000-08:00

Thanksgiving Part One 2011

2011-11-25T18:53:00.000-08:00

Ghosty's Story

2011-11-21T20:17:00.000-08:00

Some eleven years ago, we were at a school picnic in Golden Gate Park, having just moved back to the city from an ill-conceived attempt to relocate to the Washington, D.C. area.

Oh, the area was great, and I liked it there, but my wife was unhappy and insisted that we move back to San Francisco.

So we did, and the minute I stepped off that plane and smelled our sweet fresh air here on the west coast, I knew it was no mistake.

We would be raising our three young kids in the best city on the continent, which was fine by me, although it also meant, of course, that my career as a writer would be much further from New York than a convenient Amtrak commute.

In the park on that day, my six-year-old son heard a kitten cry.

Following his lead, he and I crawled through some dense brush to discover a small gaggle of kittens, hungry and sad, abandoned and left to die.

He carefully lifted them, one by one, out of the bushes to me.

Other families adopted some of them but we kept the one he loved the most. He named her Ghosty.

Three years later, his Mom and I broke up. She moved to a house on Bernal; I moved to a flat in the Mission.

During the relocation process, she took the kids back east, and left the cat with me. By this point, I had a girlfriend, and she loved Ghosty.

One night, Ghosty, who has always been an inside and an outside cat, went missing. As the kids were still back east, I dreaded having to tell them that Ghosty was gone, so my friend and I went out back, night after night, calling to Ghosty, hoping she would show back up.

Cats, after all, are notoriously unfaithful, much like human beings.

The kids came back learned the awful truth, and we papered our neighborhood with signs like you've often seen: "Missing Cat."

Still, she didn't come back.

Then, one night, my friend and I were out back calling to her when we heard a faint meow. "I think that's her," my friend said.

We called some more and the cat called back. Over and over we continued this call and response until, gloriously, Ghosty herself lept over my back fence straight in to my arms.

***

Recently, Ghosty was attacked by another animal on Bernal. Maybe a cat or maybe a raccoon. The tear in her skin was huge. Today, when I picked her up from the vet, she said she will be fine.

I first brought her back here, to my place, but she obviously felt disoriented, perhaps even remembering those traumatic events so long ago here, and staying in her carrier and just peaking her head out, as in the photo above.

But when I took her back to her real home, in Bernal, she started wriggling with delight.

Home. Such an enormous concept, such a concrete reality, so elusive when you are not there, and so natural when you are.

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On a rainy weekend...

2011-11-20T19:29:00.000-08:00

...and with all us suffering from colds, yesterday was that time-honored season-ending event in kids' soccer, the pizza party. This one, for me, was like none other, if only because I had not only one child among the players on the team, but another as its head coach.

How would he handle the traditional coach's speech, where he would be expected to praise the players and make some inspirational comments about their season?

As it turned out, the girls had their own plan for how the day would unfold. They asked all of the adults, including "Mister Coach, Sir" to stay in another room while they got organized.

When we entered the room, they had it set up as if it were a British talk show, with one of the girls adopting a perfect accent seated at the top of the room with an empty chair next to her.

She then announced that her first guest would be the team's head coach, where she asked him directly what he felt about the team's play this season. He smiled and launched into what he could remember of the speech he had been planning to give.

He said lots of nice things -- complementing them all on how much they had improved, how hard they had competed, and how they had applied the things he taught them at practice into games.

When the "host" asked him another pointed question, he temporarily lost his train of thought and smiled. "I'm not really a public speaker," he apologized.

Then, he recovered his place and urged the girls to stay in shape over the winter, by playing futsol or basketball, by running or training or going to the gym every day.

He told them he thinks they are all talented enough to play at the next level, which for many of the girls will be high school or club soccer, but only if they are committed to staying in peak physical condition.

His comments here are against the backdrop that many of the kids complained early in the season that he was a "hard" coach, in that he made them run laps and perform a lot of drills at practice that required running, including sometimes "suicides," the sprints that are the consequence for the losing side of an intra-squad scrimmage.

Funny thing is that over the course of the season they stopped complaining, kept running and were no longer coming out of games struggling for breath or too exhausted to keep going.

He also told them he was "honored" to be their coach and to be part of their team. All in all, it was an exceptional performance, sincere, low-key, and effective. And I'm not saying that only because I am his Dad. If he had had a bad day, I'd say that as well. The girls listened carefully to him; their respect was obvious in their expressions.

Afterward, he spoke with the parents for a long time, answering their questions and elaborating on his coaching philosophy, which is remarkably nuanced for a 17-year-old, I believe.

When we finally left, and I asked him what he thought, he just said, "That went well."

Indeed.

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A Running Story

2011-11-14T20:09:00.000-08:00

As my daughter and I drove out through the Mission and the Haight to the Inner Richmond and finally to the venue of the city's championship cross-country races today, in the outer reaches of Golden Gate Park, I couldn't help think back to a year ago, when we made a similar trek.

Today no one and nothing was on either of our minds other than how pumped up she felt about competing once again. Before the race, she set a goal, about where she hoped to finish.

Before the race, she helped a teammate with his hair, tying it into a perfect braid. How small some boys are at this age compared to girls! Of course, she is a tall young woman, at 13.

This team! What a bunch of jokers, all from a small school that takes things like races far less seriously than many of the other independent schools they compete against.

In the end, she met her goal, precisely. I told her I was proud of her, we hugged, and this cross-country season came to an end.

As I drove away after the race, I noticed that the color of some of the leaves on some of the trees are changing, even in here in a city that seemingly knows no seasons.

Yet there always are seasons, aren't there? And the past will never return, so what might have been possible a year ago no longer is. Once one set of leaves have browned and fallen to the earth, their time has passed.

And now it is time for the fruits of a new tree to replace what has been lost. That's what my runner knows.

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First Visit

2011-11-11T13:10:00.000-08:00

Little Oliver is 17 days old and his uncles and aunt are having their first chance to meet him during a brief visit spent mainly playing with his "big" (4 and 2) brothers.

Last Post From Tokyo

2011-11-07T20:18:00.000-08:00

Here is the last article I wrote from Japan. My long love affair for the country and its people reached its peak, in words if not deeds, with this writing early in January 2007.

I flew home today (Thursday), which is the longest day of the young year so far. For me, it is a 41-hour day. All was well late Thursday afternoon as I took off from Narita, but when it reached midnight Thursday, we crossed the International Dateline, and had to return to Go.

We flew backwards through time the rest of the way until landing by 7 am Thursday in San Francisco. Mark picked me up, and we had breakfast -- my second of this particular Thursday.

Later, I had my second lunch today; later still my second dinner. Now it is dark again, and I am enduring my second Thursday night. My little children are here with me; they squealed with joy at the modest little gifts I brought them.

Given that I rarely can sleep on planes, I am back to that dark time of night, less than three hours until midnight Thursday, once again. I couldn't sleep the first time, high above the Pacific, nor can I yet relax this second time, at ground level or the equivalent here in the Mission.

I decided tonight to post a few final images from my ten-day voyage through Japan. I want to make it clear that any errors in interpretation of the many stories I've recounted in the thousands of words posted here the past two weeks are strictly my own, and not my Japanese informant's.

Since most of my readers still are Americans, some of whom may not yet have visited Japan themselves, I've tried to capture the place and its people the best I can.

But, as always, the story is limited by the storyteller's limits, and I am no scholar, nor even an expert journalist on the subjects I've discussed here. My hope is just to shine one light, capturing what I saw when among these gentle people in this beautiful land.

It is time now to speak of other things. We are on baby alert tonight. My first grandson is going to be born tomorrow, we think. There are some worries, as there often are at this stage.

But I have a sacred amulet given to me in Japan and I am holding it tonight to guard my daughter and her son, keeping them safe, as she delivers him into this world tomorrow.

My next post will be on behalf of my family.

Thank you, Japan. You may be the only nation on earth who can count on each and every one of your citizens to do their loving best to render you truthfully. And since Truth indeed is Love, you and I can love each other tonight, truthfully.

Arrigato.

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Science & Art

2011-11-06T23:19:00.000-08:00

One of My Last Posts From Japan

2011-11-05T23:12:00.000-07:00

(This is a re-post from January 2007.)

Rinky Dink Studio

Let it be understood, please, that I do not want to make fun of anyone's English here. If I had to write a sign in Japanese, say, advertising "Please come in and read my blog," it would no doubt come out as "Please admit I have a giant horse up my ass."

I know this. Nevertheless, there are many amusing signs here.

Koenji pigeons

Today, I had the pleasure of visiting one last Tokyo neighborhood -- Kichijoji. Like all the others it is built in concentric circles around its train station. Unlike Minatoku, where many gaijin live and Ginza or Shinjuku, where they shop, this seemed to be almost entirely a Japanese neighborhood.

Not a Japanese company, but European

I finally had an American-type meal, more or less, my first since arriving here, at Japan's original burger joint, called Mos Burger. If you have seen the recent Pink Panther movie, you'll recall the scene where a supposedly French Steven Martin tries to learn how to pronounce "hamburger" before he visits New York.

His is almost a perfect imitation of how the Japanese pronounce "am-abou-aguh." So, for example, you may wish to order Spicy Hamburger, in which case you want to say "aspiceeamabougah."

I find it interesting that at the time when hamburgers were introduced here (by Mos Burger) the Japanese experimented and eventually determined that a 70-30 ground pork-ground beef mixture maximized the flavor of their burgers.

Today, most stores and shops still use the 70-30 formula, or some other mixture, like 50-50, because they say it is more flavorful than pure beef. They also somehow manage to cook the burger so it is soft and juicy, never hard and dry.

Swan boats after dark in pond at Kichijoji

Today, I also visited a "100 Yen" shop, which is the equivalent of a "dollar shop" back in the States. Actually, it is the equivalent of an 85-cent shop at the current rate of exchange. In any event, I was shocked at the quality of the workmanship in the goods being sold at these bargain-basement prices.

I purchased several items made of wood -- the kinds of things my father would have loved. I wish I could have brought him these items, because I know he would have marveled at both the grains in the woods and the workmanship. I will give them to his grandchildren instead.

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Season's End

2011-11-03T23:20:00.000-07:00

On a cold, rainy day and night, my son's soccer season came to a close. They finished in third place, missing the playoffs for the first time since he joined the team as a freshman two years ago.

This team suffered a lot of losses to injuries, illness, grades, and penalties, and basically had no offense its last four games, scoring just twice, and watching their chance at the playoffs escape their grasp.

He did not play today because he is hurt, with a pulled leg muscle from last Sunday's game with his club team. He probably shouldn't have played in Tuesday's all-important game, but he did and his leg has been worse since.

Today's game was the only blowout loss his team has suffered all year, 1-6, against the best team in the city, which has a 36 game winning streak now over two years. All six goals were scored from "his" side of the defensive line, and afterwards his teammates jokingly blamed him for the loss.

I don't know that his team would have won the game with him in there, but I do know that most if not all of those goals would never have happened.

It's odd watching a game when your kid isn't playing. He was still out there, towering above his teammates, in their huddle, rooting for them from the bench, joking with various friends who stopped by to say "Hi."

He's an upperclassman now, respected, and as far as I can tell, well-liked. He's also had a fantastic season, with two goals, 4 assists, and 21 shots on goal, while anchoring his team's defense game after game. They had five shutouts and gave up 22 goals in the 17 games he played in, and then six goals in the one game he didn't play in.

That's it. Season over. And only one more left in his high school soccer career.

***

Tonight, babysitting my 3-year-old grandson, I thought about my own Dad, who would have been 95 today. How much he would have loved hearing about his grandson's soccer play and his great-grandson's antics.

But he died in January of the year my son first started playing soccer, that September. That was 12 years ago.

As we all know, time waits for no one, and in the end, makes fools of us all. I shivered in the cold today. It wasn't just the weather that got to me, but the passage of time, and awareness of how much that has passed will never be returning.

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More From Japan

2011-11-02T19:41:00.000-07:00

Note to Reader: I'm re-posting this as one of a series of articles I wrote when last visiting Japan a number of years ago. I'm trying to understand my own motivations for going there, and how doing so changed my life in ways both good and bad. I hope that what appears here from there helps you in some way or another...

As my trip begins to wrap up, I'm trying to see all of the key parts of Tokyo. But it is such an enormous city that covers so much territory here on Honshu, the "main island" of Nippon, it really will not be possible.

I had heard of the Ginza for many years before I first visited Tokyo. My first mother-in-law told me about this central shopping district, and her memories of visiting it as she raised her children here in the '50s.

Her name was Grace Symroski and I loved her dearly. Because of her stories, I always wanted to visit Ginza. Since the '80s, when I was last here, the Ginza district lost favor among young people, who started flocking instead to other areas.

In recent years, a major effort has been undertaken to revitalize this old section of Tokyo. Now, it is the center of amazing architecture and tony international shops. Young people now flock to the area, especially if they have money. Nine out of every ten people on the street tonight were young women.

The Tokyo government built several white elephants with "Bubble" money, including the utterly amazing Tokyo International Forum. The sculptures and artwork captivated me, especially those laced with rainbow colors, like the glass balls pictured at the top of this post.

Many young and middle-aged Japanese women eat alone at the cafes near Ginza after work, as this is a major center of corporate employment in Tokyo. You can feel the sheer financial power of this country best here and in Shinjuku.

Whenever I travel anywhere, I cannot help fantasizing about moving there for a while and trying to make it as a writer. For me, Tokyo feels like a very easy city to live in, although given my awful sense of direction, which is more properly described as the lack of any sense whatsoever of direction, I am afraid I would get easily lost on the subways here, even though every sign in every station is clearly labeled not only in Japanese but in English.

The Japanese honor their writers and poets and artists. They used to have many local coffee shops, the faded signs for which can sometimes be glimpsed here and there amidst the modern glitz. But Starbucks has taken over the market. Besides the coffee shops, there are the tiny pubs and big bookstores, with readings by authors. Any writer would feel at home here.

I know I am not talented as a photographer, and I apologize to anyone who happens to read this blog for the poor quality of my pictures. But I get so excited wherever I go, I just want to create some sort of record in images, not just in words.

Note to reader: I've been re-posting articles I wrote during my final trip to Japan in January 2007. This is mainly for me, as I try to make sense of why I went there then, what I hoped to find, and how my life was changed, irrevocably, by going there.

Regardless of all that, there may be something of interest here for you, which is why I am doing this.

All too soon, of course, I must abandon this exploration of an exotic place, and the feelings of renewal and hope that have swept over me here. It is time soon to go back home, and continue my life as a commuter to the land of computers.

I hope some of you have enjoyed these travelogues. Thank you, "Anonymous," for the one comment I have received since arriving here.

Mixed Emotions on a Warm Evening

2011-11-01T21:55:00.000-07:00

Walking back home on a summery night, after parking several blocks away, I ran into two of my neighbors, separately, both young women, both walking their dogs. Our neighborhood has felt safer lately, since the horrific wave of gang killings appears to have subsided.

A film crew from New York spent the morning here, filming me for an upcoming documentary on a major figure from the 60s. Talking on camera brought up a lot of old memories and feelings form the 70s, which is when much of what people call the 60s actually happened.

In a sad turn of events this afternoon, my son's high school team lost a soccer game that -- had they won -- would have sent them to the city playoffs for a third straight year. They are a small school, about half the size of the larger school they lost to today, 2-1.

My son played the entire game hurt, but nobody knew that but him and me. He didn't tell his coach or teammates, because there was no way he was going to miss this game, with the season on the line.

The injury is to his right leg, the outer muscle on his calf, probably some sort of twist or sprain that has made walking difficult since it occurred in another game Sunday afternoon.

He was in one of those high-speed collisions with an opposing player that makes you catch your breath and hope for the best. Although I could see he was limping a bit afterward, he said he was fine at the end of the game.

But starting that night, the pain was bad enough that he realized he was hurt, and it hasn't abated much since. Nevertheless, with Ibuprofen, stretching and adrenaline, he was perfectly able to play at a very high level today.

In the photo above, he is doing his usual job, guarding an opposing striker. But he also got in on what little offense his team generated, and even after the sting of defeat tonight, I was left with a picture in my mind of the play (no photo, alas.)

From his position at right back, and even with the hurt right leg, he arched a long kick that traveled over half the length of the soccer pitch (over 50 yards) in the air to his left forward, who was in the box to the left of the goalkeeper.

Perfect reception and a cross to the front of the net to a third teammate, and Boom! A goal.

At that point, ahead 1-0, our guys looked like they were on the way to victory and a place in the city playoffs next week. But it was not to be. The other team came back to tie it before the half, and win it in the second half.

I've written many times that sports teaches you not only how to win but how to lose and hopefully to do both gracefully. Although my own kid and his teammates looked pretty downcast after a terrific season fell just short of where they'd hoped to finish, it's also true that soccer is only a game.

And long after I forget who won and who lost, what I'll remember is how he played the game.

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Japanese Memories, Part 3

2011-10-31T19:30:00.000-07:00

When reading these posts I wrote across the Pacific, be aware that was nearly five years ago.

Japan is an intensely emotional place. The people carry so many feelings around inside of themselves, and rarely let them show, especially to a stranger.

But their gentleness comes out in their art forms, and even in the workings of their infrastructure. The trains do not lurch about the tracks as in New York; if you have to stand, you barely need to brace yourself as the train pulls into or out of a station.

The gardens are breath-taking. I have visited this country in springtime and the beauty of the cherry blossoms could never be overstated. Even the phone booths are like little Pagodas -- so pretty.

It is a land of beautiful women. They move their hands with lyrical grace as they speak in soft, clear voices. None of which is meant to imply that Japanese women are docile or passive; they are not. Today's modern woman in Tokyo could be in New York or Los Angeles or London quite easily.

They are serious career women, educated, fashionable, worldly. What Westerners often mistake as subservience in fact is a certain refinement of sensibility that Americans -- men and women -- would be wise to emulate.

Japanese men are also very gentle and often very kind. Modern Japanese men can make great fathers -- rarely have I seen fathers so openly affectionate and loving as here in Japan. The one public display of affection that seems permissable is for a Dad to nuzzle, and kiss his little child on the train.

On my other trips, I perceived some of what I have written during this visit, but never in any depth, because I was working most of the time here, giving speeches, participating in conferences, touring factories,conducting interviews.

Also, now I am older, I think I see more. My eyes gather a different kind of information now. These may be the most gentle people on earth, and it is easy to love them.

Koenji KFC

Col. Sanders was out late last night. I think all of his likenesses have immigrated to Japan, where they like to hang out near the Drunk Raccoons and mechanical cats waving one paw.

window displays

No one knew where he came from, but a rogue monkey terrorized Tokyo a few years back. He broke into homes and stole food all over town, escaping every time across the rooftops before striking again. When he was finally captured, he was checked and found to be healthy. Just lost.

I didn't realize Japan had wild monkeys who live in the mountains far from Tokyo. There's not enough time during this visit to go to that distant place, but filmmakers have documented monkey families soaking in hot springs just like humans do.

There was a naughty monkey in the Akita Zoo. He would perch himself at the front of his cage and puff his cheeks out, looking cute. When an unsuspecting visitor drew close enough, perhaps to shoot a photo, he would splatter them with water he was holding in his mouth for just such an opportunity. Then he would clap his hands and screech with laughter at having tricked a human monkey.

little red truck

It's a gray, cool day here in Tokyo. Maybe I'll go out for a walk. The first day of the New Year is now night in the States. Here it is noon on the 2nd.

bamboo screen

I saw these two women on the train today coming back from a religious shrine I visited in Chiba. People in white uniforms bowed all along the way to the temple. They repeated over and over the phrase,"Congratulations on the New Year."

The faithful in this particular religion, which is related to both Shintoism and Buddhism, number nearly 900,000 in Japan. Today, people came both from Tokyo and from the countryside. The former wore the short skirts and boots and fancy hairdos of the fashionable; the latter wore simple clothes and often had rugged faces from working in the sun. Some of the country people actually stared at me, the only obvious gainjin who was present this afternoon, among thousands of Japanese pilgrims.

For the first time during this visit, I felt conspicuous. Since I do not share any religious belief, the best I could do was to bow politely to the faithful, but I could hardly pray, though I tried to a little bit. Many of the displays in the buildings I toured told the story of founder of this church, who passed away in the 1980s. There were the early implements he used as he carved his beliefs out of the earth. There was the simple, elegant rooms where he prayed and studied.

Inspired by his quest to find meaning in life, people gradually joined him, and together they built a magnificent garden, with waterfalls and blossuming trees, rock sculptures, and beautiful temples.

So this place I visited today, 1.5 hours from Koenji, truly felt like a spiritual place. It was so nice to see all of the people who were visiting the shrine, and how happy it made them to be there. This clearly is a compassionate religion, where the faithful devote themselves to try and be better people, kinder, and more forgiving of others.

***

Afterwards, I visited a place that is the polar opposite of the temple -- the largest store in Tokyo, filled with every consumer item imaginable.

It was WalMart on steroids, nine vast floors of consumer goods sold at discount prices. There were too many choices: I felt over-stimulated, and had to leave. I like the small shops with the mechanical cats in the window.

More From My Trip To Japan (late '06-early '07)

2011-10-31T19:10:00.000-07:00

Here is the second in a series of entries from my trip nearly five years ago.

Shinjuku Station is so crowded! And immediately, on this blustery Friday night, I notice a transformation in the daytime crowd.

Then, they were all bustling about, eyes downcast, expressions serious, with few words spoken.

Now, after dark, they are traveling in clusters, smiling and laughing. Most are dressed expensively, stylishly.

One of the current controversies in Japan is over whether/how the national pastime, Sumo wrestling, could/should be extended to allow women to participate. As with everything involving gender politics here, it is complicated. The main issue, as I can make it out, is what kind of uniform the female wrestlers could wear. Obviously the sort of thong bikini thingies the men wear is not appropriate.

The women would need an entirely different costume. But Sumo is an ancient tradition, like Geisha, and there simply is no precedent for how to incorporate women into the sport, at least not yet.

My impression is that the Japanese will eventually figure this out, but not until the entire nation has contemplated it for enough time to have puzzled their way to a collective decision.

Of course, in Japan, nobody really makes personal decisions, as we do in the West. Here, the interlocking sets of responsibilities toward one another need to be taken into account before any substantive decision can be taken.

Only this cultural factor can explain how such a peaceful, gentle, even docile people could be whipped up into an imperialist frenzy, yielding the earliest terrorists (kamikazes) willing to crash their planes into U.S. targets -- a tactic never seen before in war.

My ten-year-old will be happy to know that the newest U.S. brand to penetrate the giant Tokyo market is his favorite donut company. It was fascinating to see hundreds of young, slender people standing in line in the cold night air over Shinjuku near Kabukicho to taste these delicacies. I bet the majority of Krispy Kreme's sales here will be one donut at a time.

In fact, I bet the girls will split a donut! I don't think they like to eat anything, let alone something so sweet, in as large a portion as a typical Krispy Kreme donut.

Into a huge bookstore, I had one of those experiences that people claim only happen to me. Everyone was bent over, treading ever so delicately, near the entrance to the store. A contact lens must have been lost. I joined the hunt, the only foreigner to do so. While the Japanese were performing a sort of delicate ballet in slow motion, first raising one leg, then the other, as they awkwardly navigated the area, I squatted down to see it all from a different angle.

Immediately, the lost lens materialized to my sight. Everyone broke into a loud state of excitement, bowing and thanking me over and over. Arrigato! Arrigato! Arrigato! I imagine they were passing the story down the line: "Did you see that? The foreigner found the missing contact lens. How extraordinary!"

I hope so at least; it would be nice to give them a happy story.

Finally, I have reached my true destination: the main red-light district of Tokyo. Giant posters reach into the sky flashing faces of the consorts within each establishment. Lovely female faces, hundreds of them.

But what's this? Here is a section identical to the last one but all of the faces are of gorgeous young men. Is this the gay section? No, I am assured, wealthy Japanese women visit these places to spend time with lovely young men.

(There also is a gay red-light district nearby, but I don't get to see it this night.)

In Japan, sex is something that it is said often happens outside of marriage. Once a couple has produced a child or two, many of them may stop having sex. If a married man after a certain age discovers his wife is once again pregnant, he will act as if he is terribly embarrassed, even if privately he is happy, and loves his wife and loves sleeping with her still.

Maybe this is because he does not wish to present himself as sexually unavailable when there are so many attractive women around. He may wish to be seen as not sleeping with his wife, but instead as consorting with a mistress, even if it is not true.

I cannot help but wonder, though, whether modern Japanese, like modern Chinese, and Vietnamese, and all Asians, may not be hungering for relationships more like the idealized (and virtually unattainable) Western marriage model. When I see Japanese men with children, for example, they are invariably gentle and loving, extremely attentive.

Yet, according to statistics I have seen, Japanese men spend less than half as much time with their kids as American men. (The top Dads in terms of time spent, according to the study, were Canadians.)

One last observation about the red-light district. I'm not entirely sure the local people come down here to actually have sex all that often. The foreigners do, of course. Many men come to Japan explicitly for this purpose and the Japanese brothels accommodate them. But maybe the Japanese themselves are more interested in engaging in elaborate pre-mating rituals.

They like to purchase time with a beautiful, refined young person. Many of these girls are college-educated and capable of conducting a sophisticated conversation on world affairs. After a long work week, some salary man spends their wages here, drinking and talking late into the night with beautiful young women.

Sometimes, if he pays even more, they may have sex. Other times, he may simply fall in love with one of these girls, and come back to drink and talk with her again and again, only rarely or never actually crossing over into actual sexual relations. It is an extended opportunity to flirt for a people who cannot ever do that openly outside of this district.

It is simply considered too rude even to look at another person suggestively. Men do not turn their heads to watch a woman walk by, they don't look them up and down, they do not whistle or make rude gestures or comments.

Instead, all is sublimated into a modern-day version of the ancient art of the Geisha.

Of course, all of the above is only speculation, and I certainly do not wish to imply that all Japanese men like the hostess bars. In the end, it is a game only the rich can play. You can easily drop thousands of dollars down here if you are not careful.

***

Very nearby this district is a magical discovery: Golden-gai. This nexus of five impossibly narrow alleys features 250 tiny bars, each of which can accommodate perhaps 8 people, max. The bars have hand painted signs, and just like the brothels, photos of the kinds of people who can be found inside.

So, there are pubs for musicians, for writers, for artists, for every kind of citizen or visitor. Some of the famous come down here to their favorite pubs, where the bartender and the locals all receive them warmly. There are drawings made by artists pinned over the bar -- gifts to the host.

He doesn't consider it as an object of potential value -- as something to sell on eBay for instance, but as a private token of the artist's respect. In these establishments, the bartender takes your order, and then cooks you a small meal. He tells you the history of the area, how in the 50s when an official crackdown on the brothels led by a feminist politician missed the private clubs that continued to flourish in Golden-gai, much like Speakeasies during American Prohibition. I'm unclear when exactly the little pubs took their place, but apparently there are no longer brothels in Golden-gai, just bars.

For 50 years, this magical little district where there are no motor vehicles, only foot traffic or bicycles, has offered safe harbor to Japanese of all ages and stations of life.

These are, truly, for many men, their "living rooms."

p.s. One word of warning for foreigners who may wish to visit Golden-gai. If you get easily offended by a system where are no set prices, stay away. The host, when sizing you up, may choose to do as mine did, and overcharge you by ten percent or so. This is fine with me, but may not work for you.

This country celebrates the Western New Year, not the Chinese Spring Festival. This weekend, here in Tokyo, everyone is out and about, having a good time. Tonight I had the most delicious Beijing Duck in a Chinese restaurant that remains open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

People still smoke inside restaurants in Tokyo. And this has to be the city with the most bars per capita of any in the world. I always thought San Francisco could claim that prize, but only, as it turns out, inside the continental U.S.

Here, people drink like there is no tomorrow. Even when drunk, however, they bow and offer others the chance to go into or out of an elevator, for instance, with respect and kindness. I have not yet seen a fight in Japan. The people do not seem to get angry when they drink; rather they get happy.

Tonight I saw the Clint Eastwood/Steven Spielberg film about Iwo Jima (the Japanese version, with English subtitles.) It was deeply moving to watch this among the Japanese. Many people cried.

I wish these two wonderful cultures -- Japanese and American -- could find a middle ground. We are not respectful enough. They are not independent enough. Together, we should make a perfect fit.

Reprise: Japan and Me

2011-10-30T02:15:00.000-07:00

I've decided to repost a series of articles from early 2007, when I last visited Japan. Here are the earliest ones, to be followed by others. This was a significant moment in my life. The stories I tried to tell from there seem to me now, in light of all that has happened since, as hopelessly naive.

But of course, that is when we are at our best, isn't it? When we have no idea that this moment is as good as it ever was to get.

Over the next few days, I'll try to repost the rest of this series. In retrospect, I had no idea at the time what I was getting myself into.

But that is another story altogether...

Back for my third visit to Japan but first in 20 years. It is pouring here tonight (Tuesday) even as Christmas night is ending back in San Francisco. The district where I stay, Koenji, is an old neighborhood criss-crossed with narrow brick alleyways and covered arcades, shotengai, filled with brightly lit shops open late at night. Lots of little restaurants and shops and book stores. Of course, the signiature KFC is here also, with one of the genuine Colonel Sanders statues out front. These are extremely popular in Japan, where the menu includes teriyaki chicken. A sports tradition has come to be involving throwing the Colonel into the river after a victory (or a loss). He's then retrieved, dried off, and placed back in front the franchise outlet from which he was pinched. His expression never changes.

Tokyo is a huge city where no one locks up their bicycles. People don't steal bicycles very often here and when they do, they often return them.

I'm so sleepy after my long flight, I'll close for now, and soon sleep to the sounds of rain outside the window.

It was a tremendous downpour that soaked the city as I arrived, and through most of the night. In the middle of the night, I awoke to light flashes over the city sky. Then, counting the seconds until the terrific booms of thunder, I could trace the storm's trailing edge, as it departed the city and traveled further inland, over this craggy, mountainous series of islands.

There are so many Japanese here! Hai! Tokyo has such a magnificent system of interconnecting railroads that most residents have no need for a car. If they have one, it is mainly for weekend use, and must be stored in a tiny parking place here or there for maybe $300-400US per month.

Therefore all, or much of life, is visible on the train. Only the older of the businessmen are able to be heading home at rush hour, just as I am traversing the city from Narita through Chiba to the brightly lit Shinjuku-ku, center of Tokyo nightlife. One more transfer over to Koenji, where I am staying some of the time here.

Tokyo is a city built around the main stations of the train systems ("Skyliner," and "JR," etc.) Life in the surrounding districts proceeds outward in concentric circles of apartments, shops, theatres, tiny bars, and so many small, cozy restaurants as to render home-cooking distinctly optional for employed persons. There is hardly any auto traffic in the inner circles of these tightly clustered neighborhoods.

Every district has a different flavor, but I do not know Tokyo at all well enough to describe these as yet. In this way, however, it reminds me of two other familiar places -- Paris, and Washington, D.C., the latter, of course, designed by a Frenchman.

As far as I know, the Japanese came up with this concept of circular cities within a grand city quite independent of the French, but the effect is similar. Think of Dupont Circle in D.C. and you'll picture what I mean.

Another interesting factor is that as they bisect these districts, the train lines themselves have developed distinct cultural nuances, favoring certain types of residents, restaurants, and shops. The line I ride to get here is one favored by artists, actors and writers. (Think "red line" on the Metro, or the subways that rumble to Prospect Park from Manhattan.)

Foreign investors, like Starbucks or KFC, first need to grasp these cultural nuances, of course, and the demographics that embrace and define them, in order to optimize their investments. American consumer brands, including McDonald's, have enthusiastically embraced by the Japanese, and tend to be very successful here.

Colonel Sanders himself was said to favor Japanese KFCs over all others (including Kentucky's) and the locals here hypothesize that it is because Japanese franchisees follow Colonel's formula so precisely and unerringly that one can be assured of a perfectly produced KFC meal, matching the original specifications without deviation, throughout Japan.

There are so many young women and men on the trains at rush hour and later. Like youth everywhere, they are always on the move. Japanese young people in the cities are especially stylish, from expensive torn jeans with designer labels on their butts, to sexy skirts and boots. The girls often link arms and sway together on the trains, giggling into each other's ears.

Fewer young men are about at this hour, because, as I said, this is the time when only the older executives who wish to go home, do so. By contrast, the stereotypical Japanese salary man may be in his 30s or 40s and holding down a middle-management position. These men work themselves almost literally to death. And, although they may have a wife and a child at home, when their workday finally ends later in the night, they often choose to go to bars and clubs to unwind.

There are certain clubs, I forget their name, where young female escorts await this clientele, serving them drinks, giving them companionship and conversation. The women serve as virtual dates for these hard-working salary men as they decompress from their stressful days. The drinking can go on for many hours, and if you are about in the wee hours of the night in Tokyo, you can see many men, drunkenly reeling on street corners, flagging a taxi for the ride home.

It is said that, for an extra fee, a man can purchase the affections of some of these young, flirtatious escorts after hours. This is, of course, by another name, prostitution, though distinct in type from that on display in the infamous Red Light District at Shinjuku-ku, which I hope to visit (in a strictly professional capacity as a journalist -- hai) in order to compare to the similar parts of Amsterdam and Paris, both of which alternatively sickened, fascinated, and saddened me.

The world's oldest profession, as an exchange of services for cash, strips sex of all romance, and therefore has never held even the slightest glimmer of attraction to me, as a male. Though I may be interested in female prostitutes as chaaracters for my novel, what I always desire for myself is more complex -- romance.

These tightly woven little neighborhoods strike me as nice places for a Romantic to live. The sounds and lights are stimulating at all hours of night and day. A foreign writer like me can easily rent a room or apartment on a weekly basis, set up a computer connection or visit a wireless cafe, and write happily for hours, drinking coffee, and eating the incomparable ramen, not the frozen Chinese variety, but a rich, spicy dish of noodles served pipingly hot in pork or chicken broth -- or vegetarian, if you prefer.

Soba places also abound. You can find somewhat more authentic soba in New York, Seattle and San Francisco than ramen places.

One never need step inside a car here, all needs are satisfied on foot or via a train ride. At night, if you wish, the tiny local bars accommodate perhaps ten patrons each, serving Japanese beers, sakes, and whisky.

Walking through the winding alleyways, I find my eyes seeking out English, naturally, as I can read no Japanese whatsoever. One sign is "Hot Hands" and pictures a young man and a young woman. This is a professional massage business, non-sexual, although it is said that for an extra fee, additional services may be procured. Again, this has a name, but I find it remarkable how unconcerned the typical Japanese person seems to be what in the Christian U.S. are considered the "sin crimes."

For instance, cigarettes are sold in the arcades in machines. There is little way to regulate underage smoking, which is frowned upon, but only in symbolic ways. What I mean by this is that during the daylight hours, teenagers cannot easily purchase smokes at this vending machines, because they are still wearing their school uniforms, and some adult will spot them, and come to shoo them away, shaming them.

At night, however, wearing their sexy clothes, makeup, and hats, the youth masquerade as adults, and many of them pursue their smoking habits by making after-hour purchases. This must be a source of tremendous upside market developments for the many American brands on display here. I have not done any solid research, but much like the Catholic Church, the tobacco industry's philosophy has always been to "get them when they are young."

I'm curious about the marketing campaigns these companies use here, whether the scandalous "Joe Camel" images, which originally targeted American youths, have proved effective here as well. Of, if, as I suspect, smoking is mainly sold for its supposed sex appeal. (Personally, I find tobacco breath offensive, but maybe that's only me. And it breaks my heart to see a beautiful young woman smoking; or a middle-aged man, hollow-eyed and hollow-chested, tied to his fag as to a ball and chain.)

One thing that has accelerated here since the early 80s, I believe, is female drinking. It was at least my impression at that time that while women shared beers and sake with men in the bars, that they rarely became as openly inebriated. But today, I am told, if you travel late at night, you can see so many young women passed out or sick on the trains or street corners.

Since most other people out at those hours are older men, it is said that many of these choose to act in a gentlemanly way, and help these inebriated young women get safely home.

That job is often left to taxi drivers, however, almost all of who in Japan also are men.

They say that drunken young women are the worst customers, because it is forbidden to touch them at any time, thus they cannot do as they do with drunken men, i.e., grab them by the shoulders and shake them awake.

The image of dozens of taxi drivers, helplessly yelling and waving their arms at the oblivious young women safely passed out in their backseats, their sexy tops and miniskirts awry, their makeup smudged, their long black hair spread like a wreath, all over Tokyo is somehow, I don't know, so Japanese!

Japan is like a painting in the following way. An artist arranges the elements, just so, and tries to bring out beauty from the shadows. The Japanese landscape somehow naturally arranges itself into a series of sensuous hills, green terraced rice fields, and wide rushing rivers filled with rounded stones of many colors.

As you ride in the sweetly named Romance Car out of Tokyo southwest to the mountains above Hakone, the air turns colder and wetter, and the stomach begins anticipating the area's dried fish and fish cakes; the rest of one's body is aching for the area's legendary hot springs. One's eyes will long for parquetry, the uniquely constructed wood patterning work done here that my father would have appreciated.

This district has long been a weekend retreat for Tokyo's large population. For over 100 years, ryokan, the small traditional Japanese inns, have hosted travelers.

Here, you can just look around and see tiny maple leaves still hanging on to their branches, denying winter’s arrival; or, once they fall, ever so delicately complicating the rock paths that serve as sidewalks in this ancient tourist crossroads.

This is a place the Japanese come to have fun, including illicit fun. So, if you look carefully at the couples who arrive here (which locals do), you may spot powerful politicians and wealthy businessmen with their mistresses, but, of course, given this is Japan, nobody ever speaks, nothing is revealed, and no price is ever paid, except, of course, that of the cheating heart.

Further up the mountain from Hakone, you ride on a train that has to switchback its way up the steep cliff. The recorder voice piped throughout the train explains this is second-steepest mountain scaled by any train in the world.

I wish my photos could do it justice. But they cannot. Next, I promise to take you on a visual tour of one of the world's greatest open-air sculpture museums.

-30-

On the Short End

2011-10-30T01:12:00.000-07:00

Things have not been going so well on the soccer pitch lately. It's at that point in the season where the competition is at its peak, and only the best teams survive to play on in pursuit of a trophy.

First, my daughter's team, coached by her big brother, has lost a couple of games to very tough opponents, but still have a winning record with two more games to go in the playoffs. If they win one of those games they will have their first winning season ever. If they win both, they will be crowned as champions of their division.

In today's loss, they were down 0-2 at the half. I normally keep a distance from my son's halftime huddles but this time I stepped close enough to hear what he was telling them.

They were somewhat dispirited and also exhausted in what (for us) was the extreme heat of the day, which left me sunburned afterward.

What he told them was, "Go back out there, play hard, forget the score. To me, it's zero-zero. They are big and physical and they are hitting you guys. Hit them back."

In the second half, his players put on a great effort, dominating play and almost scoring numerous times, before giving up a back-breaking goal late in the game. Even then, they kept fighting back and one particular defender, the younger sister of the coach, played a particularly spirited and extremely physical half, at one point knocking a larger girl from the other team to the ground while stripping the ball away and preventing a shot on goal.

I think that was probably the best half of soccer she has ever played, albeit in a losing cause.

But that's how it is in team sports, and also, of course, in life. You can have a great day, do great things, and still end up on the losing side.

We'll see how what happened today affects what happens next Saturday and the one after. Somehow, I doubt this team will end up with a losing record, but who knows? Stay tuned.

-30-

Family Albums

2011-10-27T16:04:00.000-07:00

As much of the clan as able gathered in Sacramento this week to welcome our newest little boy to the family. Oliver arrived at 7:03 pm Tuesday and weighed 5 lb 14.5 oz at birth. He starts out as the smallest of the five grandchildren by birth weight, and is as cute a baby as can be imagined!

***

Also, a very happy 13th birthday to my youngest, who is also the inventor of the Window Box Weather Ecosystem.

She's been a committed environmentalist for years, and is always coming up with ideas for ways to make the world a better place.

-30-

Welcome Oliver!

2011-10-25T21:35:00.000-07:00

Sacramento

Just back from the hospital to meet my latest grandson, Oliver, born tonight! Congratulations, Sarah and Larry and big brothers, James & Leif! Mother and baby are resting peacefully.

-30-

What Winning Is

2011-10-24T19:07:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure why my youngest child's races bring out an especially tender side for me, but maybe it's because she is probably never going to win a race or finish among the leaders, yet she runs on, doing her best, and finding ways to feel good about her performances in personal, not competitive terms.

Today, on one of the roughest courses in the city, which includes running up a steep set of steps three times, through sandy soil along the edge of a golf course, and then weaving through narrow sidewalks that allow few chances to pass the runners ahead of you, she started out way in the rear of the pack, by my count 42nd or so among under 50 girls in her age group.

By the end she had passed over a quarter of those ahead of her to finish as #31, and she "kicked" to the finish line in impressive fashion.

Of course, there are no rewards when you finish 31st in anything in this life. And since our society rewards success and competitive achievement above all else, you might be forgiven for thinking I would not be especially proud of this result.

But you would be wrong. I am very proud of her.

She really isn't built to be a runner; she's stronger than most girls her age and she is still growing. What she may not have in pure speed she has in endurance -- I can see that if she chooses to continue running in the future she could be a pretty good participant in long-distance races.

Because she gets better as the event proceeds.

Anyway, as much as it's fun to see your child win a game or a race or some other accolade, the real joy in the experience is just being there with her. I ran into various friends, there rooting for their daughters and sons, and revisited the campus of the school where my two older daughters attended for their elementary years.

It was a cool, foggy afternoon. A giant wave of the white stuff rolled in over the Pacific, coating the western half of the city and keeping the runners comfortable, even as those of us watching started to shiver.

As always, as a single parent, I had no partner there with me to witness this event, nor anyone to talk about it with afterward, except you, dear reader. Thanks for listening.

-30-

False Alarm

2011-10-23T20:40:00.000-07:00

Tonight, on my block, we all smelled smoke, so we all thought fire. Someone dialed 911, and soon after the fire trucks showed up and we all gathered outside.

It turned out to be a false alarm. But a few of us got to meet each other for the first time.

Maybe next time that will matter.

-=30-

Something About Bin-Laden's Death You Didn't Know

2011-10-19T22:31:00.000-07:00

I've always been a big reader, and when I find a book I like I often reread it several times over the years. Such is the case with Peter Hopkirk's classic The Great Game, which details the struggle over Central Asia between Russia and Britain that raged for a century or more and peaked in the late 1800s.

I highly recommend this book for a number of reasons.

Around halfway through it you will learn of the British military officer and explorer John Abbott, who was a key player in the great game of spying and deception in the middle of the 19th century.

He eventually was knighted and a British garrison town in Pakistan -- Abbottabad -- was named after him.

Earlier this year, when the Navy Seals tracked down and killed Osama bin-Laden, it was in modern day Abbottabad, still a military-dominated town over a century and a half after its founding.

Given the origins of the Mujahideen warriors bin-Laden purported to lead (who were funded and organized by the CIA and American military agencies in response to the Russian invasion of Afghanistan in 1979), there are layers of irony and historical precedent regarding where this clandestine assassination took place.

There's perhaps no better way to appreciate the nuances of these events than revisiting the historical context, especially because most of it has so long since been collectively forgotten.

On a Chill Wind Blowing

2011-10-15T20:27:00.000-07:00

Every coach knows his team will have good days and bad days. Today, facing their arch-rivals from seven seasons of competition, the Palos were in for a challenge.

That they trailed only 0-1 at the half was a credit to how well they played.

At half, their coach exhorted them to fight hard in the second half, which they came out and did. But the other team was too skilled, and a few breaks went their way as well.

As these events were transpiring on the field, a cold front moved in from the ocean nearby, peppering the sky with a thousands puffs of white. A chill came over the scene.

The girls fought on, now without any real hope of catching the other team before the final whistle, but pushed to the opposing net over and over and finally -- on one of the corner kick set pieces they have practiced with their coach for weeks, punched in a goal late in the game.

Final score 1-4. "Keep your heads up," called their coach. "You played well."

On the way back, he told me, "I'm glad they scored that goal."

Something to build on after a loss. He's thinking like a coach. It's about halfway through the season, their record is 3-2, and until today, improbably, they were in first place.

So, a winning season seems within reach, which would be a first, and a run at the playoffs. Looking up at the sky as we walked off, I thought to myself about all the things that athletics represents -- winning, losing, sportsmanship, persistence, the value of hard work, never giving up.

Never giving up. That's the big one. That's the one so many people right now, tonight, in so many desperate situations, need.

Don't give up. Play on. There will be a different day, when the clouds pass, the sun shines, and the match turns out a different way.

-30-

Coach's Assistant

2011-10-14T20:20:00.000-07:00

Today, a young coach-in-the-making helped out at practice.

It's a warm night.

-30-

Monday, Monday Report

2011-10-10T18:21:00.000-07:00

Rainy days are some of my youngest son's favorite days, and within limits, especially when I have a good writing project at hand, I sometimes feel the same way. Today was one of those days; he'd spent the night in order to watch two of his favorite TV shows, Dexter and Breaking Bad, last night, then slept in almost to noon, which was not a problem, because today is one of those strange federal holidays -- Columbus/Indigenous Peoples Day.

We walked in a light mist over to our favorite local restaurant, El Matate, for lunch, then returned to an afternoon of homework and TV for him, research and writing for me.

Working and writing from home is an inherently isolating lifestyle. Some days, the most human contact you will have is an outing to a coffee shop or the corner store. So on this quiet Monday, having his company made this a very nice day indeed.

All Alone at the Worst Times

2011-10-08T21:38:00.000-07:00

Getting into the car to drive my son and myself to a funeral today, I discovered my battery had died. We walked in the heat, and I told him, "I'm glad you're going with me, because the only thing worse than going to a funeral is going alone."

The mother of a former fellow soccer teammate had died recently and we wanted to pay our respects.

We got on a bus, and got out a few blocks later to transfer, and were halfway to the church, when another parent showed up to pick us up. I waved for him to go on, while I returned home.

After all, my daughter was home alone, and not having a working vehicle while living alone is not an option for me. I had to call for help. If it came soon enough I could get to the service a bit late.

Road service never comes quickly. But the man who came remembered having come once before to help me for the same problem. Afterwards, I looked back through receipts and he was right. It was a year and a half ago.

How different my life was then. How many people have died since then; others disappeared from my life. In some ways, it's as if there was an unspoken evacuation, but of course that is not how life works.

Later in the afternoon, as I was trying to find out if the funeral was still going on, the front gate squeaked open, and my son walked in the front door. He looked inconsolably sad.

"I just couldn't stay," he said, looking down. "I was alone, at the back, standing."

I hugged him, and said I understood. After all, I had let him go to a funeral alone. That that is a cardinal sin for a parent, I readily admit. He did have friends there, even his mother, but none of them were within reach, at the particular moment he needed them.

That's how it works. We all may end up being alone at the times we most need someone to be with us. A related tragedy is many people feel much more alone than they are because they can't find a way to ask for help.

As it turns out, in our extended community, there is another funeral tomorrow. "It seems like too many people have died lately," my son said. As he spoke these words, I glanced at the memorial at the telephone pole in front of my house.

Last night, as I went out to after my plants, I saw my dead neighbor's mother, alone, arranging the flowers and lighting the candles. I greeted her and she smiled sadly at me.

"Bless you," is all I could think to say.

-30-

One Boat in the Sea

2011-10-05T19:02:00.000-07:00

The other day, waiting for the race to start, I wandered in the rain down along a path I haven't traveled in a while, when I spotted this boat cutting through the surf. Chrissy Field, as this area is known, is a stretch of bay-front wetlands along the north edge of the old Presidio army base.

Nowadays, it is a national park.

The boat, a nice-looking specimen, was small in that setting, though through my zoom lens, it appears here as more prominent than it was in fact. Everything and everyone is small when you get far enough away from them. When scientists discovered that the universe is expanding at ever greater rates some years ago, they confounded some of our assumptions about the nature of life.

How could everything be getting further away from everything else?

Unless you work very hard and patiently at it, human society can often seem to be following the same law of the universe. People can seem to be getting further and further away from one another.

Small things lead to cracks in relationships, cracks deepen into huge gaps, and silence eventually is all that remains.

The real calamitous events that eviscerate our social connectedness are often breakups and job losses. For people who invest a lot in their primary relationships, this can be especially true.

I count myself in this category. As I stood alone, shivering in the rain, looking at the boat, I started thinking about my partners, one after the other, and how every time I tried not only to have a person to live with, but a best friend, and a keeper.

By keeper I mean becoming the keeper of each other's stories. To me, this is a vital part of life, and this is what long-term partners can do for one another.

There are, of course, options. Good friends can serve as documentarians for you, as you can for them. Family plays an important role, but if your siblings are far away, as is the case with me, you too rarely can get together or even talk to penetrate far below the surface of life's constantly shifting surface.

Your children are your children. Although you share everything you can with them, it's not their role, especially at young ages, to be your best friend. They need you to be their parent, which itself is extraordinarily complex work, one I have written about many times here.

In recent years, I have devoted myself to being the best parent I can be, even to the exclusion of other needs. I don't regret it, and I hope I won't regret it, even if it turns out that I end up living alone from here on out.

Because I've slowly come to comprehend that meeting anyone actually able and willing to fit into my particular family ecosystem, with its stresses and boundaries, is probably impossible now.

***

I don't moan about any lost partner; I don't pass my days thinking about this person or that, wondering about how life might have turned out differently had we stayed together.

The heart, the mind, the spirit work in much different ways than that. My record is even -- I left some loves; others left me. Someones the reasons were clear; sometimes murky. Sometimes other people were involved; sometimes not.

None of those details are salient about how I feel tonight. For it is at night that the images start to creep into my world, unbidden and largely unwelcome. They cut through the surf in my mind much as that boat cut through the Bay, with their own purpose.

All I am is an observer.

What I miss about people are very specific things, little things like the way they ran their fingers through their hair, the way they crossed a room, the way they sang along with a song they loved.

How they became excited, how it felt to comfort them when they were sad.

I also have a strange sort of muscle memory of them, about how we felt when we were in a certain place and time. Having mostly lived in the same city for decades, there is barely any neighborhood, and precious few intersections, even, where a memory doesn't exist for me.

A memory of being with someone else.

I think of these as ghost stories now, for better and worse, and maybe ghosts are on my mind for a lot of reasons.

***

Steve Jobs died today. I never met him, and didn't know him at all. Given my line of work, I know people who knew him, but that is different. I have little to add to the memorials of those who did know him that will emerge in the coming days and weeks. So I won't write one myself.

But his death, at 56, was sadly premature, according to our expectations for ourselves, though given his repeated health setbacks in recent years, not at all unexpected. His Wikipedia page has been updated accordingly.

***

The storm season has begun along the north coast, so we are now being visited by a series of rains swept in off the mighty Pacific. Just the other day, dropping off something for one of her brothers, I was surprised to find my daughter washing her mother's car, out in front of their house.

"I just like to do it," she explained. Then, perhaps sensing my mood, she walked over and gave me the best hug I have had in a long time. I referred obliquely to this moment in my post the other night, "...Why Hugging Matters."

On that particular day, the things that most bother me these days were getting the best of me. Lack of connection, isolation, loss of intimacies, the unrelenting visits by memory ghosts at night -- these were approaching feverish pitch.

It is easy for any of us to think no one remembers or is still thinking about us until it turns out that they, in fact, are.

The problem, of course, is one of how to express such complex emotions. How to tell someone that even though you don't still want to be in love with them that you actually still love them?

The much bigger problem than that is that we will all perish, sooner or later, and if you don't find a way around this conundrum, you will experience regret. I know what I am talking about based on very painful experience.

***

Work friends are another matter, although the relationships we establish at work really dominate most adult Americans' time. When we have jobs, we are mere visitors in our families -- a conflict that bothered me for decades.

It is considered "unprofessional" to talk too much about what is going on at home, even my wives counseled me about this, and yet, for me, the very essence of life is what is going on at home. It's a huge factor in why I work, earn money, and occupy my time with tasks that can be, at times, boring or even onerous.

It's all worth it because you are taking care of your loved ones and their needs.

But work, for me, as also been an outlet for my passion for words and story-telling and sharing ideas. I've loved being part of teams, working collaboratively to build companies and products, including magazines, newspapers, books, radio programs, TV shows, movies, websites, and much more.

I've been, in every single case, a loyal team member, yet also due to the nature of my particular talents, one to whom the task inevitably fell to "tell the truth" at crucial moments in an organization's history to the person in charge.

This has proved to be a fatal role, every single time, because no powerful person ever wants to hear what they don't ant to hear especially at the very moment they most need to hear it.

This "truth" is not my truth, but the collective truth based on what these days is considered "crowd wisdom." I may or may not have had a personal opinion about the matter at hand, but my peculiar role in groups seems to be to sense when a turning point has arrived and be the one to voice that uncomfortable fact in ways that -- if the leader is willing to accept it -- could save the company.

If not, well, we all know how that story turns out. And most of the places where I worked have indeed disappeared from existence. This experience is eerie and has left me shaken.

Again, my nights entail visits by more ghosts, now from the workplaces where I have have devoted so much of my time, and whatever intellectual capital I've had to expend.

None of this would really matter, of course, if my fate had turned out to be one of those who ended up with enough resources to support himself and his children as long as they all needed his support. (And, though improbably, that may still turn out to be the case -- there is always reason for hope.)

But even when a person does great things, as opposed to only good things, and acquires great wealth, as opposed to modest wealth, death will choose its time to end his story.

This Steve Jobs is gone. All all of us, me the writer and you the sharer of these words, are still here...for now.

The skies are darkening on the west coast now. A homeless person is banging my gate out front, trying to figure out if I have a bottle or can to recycle. The candles in memory of my fallen neighbor have gone unlighted in recent nights. Maybe his family no longer has the heart to come out a few yards from their front door to light them.

Or maybe the rain snuffed them out.

Me? I keep seeing that boat in the Bay and wondering what this all means, if anything at all, and when -- or if -- I ever will find out.

I'll see you in my dreams!

-30-

Rainy Monday; Why Hugging Matters

2011-10-03T19:57:00.000-07:00

No happy story this time around. My daughter competed but did not do well in the rain in this race in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge.

Still, I'm proud of her. She competes. She cares about her teammates. She doesn't always do well in these races, and today she felt pretty bad about her performance. And I did too, but only because she did.

On a tough field, in the rain, she didn't meet her own objectives, but does that matter?

Not to me, her Dad. because this 12-year-old girl gives the best hugs any father has ever received.

And that matters a hell of lot more than where she finishes in a mere race. But still, I know, this was a very tough day for her. So tomorrow I will give her a very big hug back.

-30-

Winning Streaks Are Nice to Have

2011-10-01T21:33:00.000-07:00

With his clipboard, whistle, and red coach's cap, he walked behind the line of girls on his team as they greeted the team they had just beaten, 1-0, a few blocks from the Pacific Ocean in the late afternoon sun.

He's quietly, calmly, and steadily building them into a team of winners.

He has gotten these girls' attention, which means they can learn from him both how to win -- and to lose -- games.

In sports, somewhat more dramatically but far less painfully than in real life, you learn what it means to lose, with lots of short-term pain involved. You also learn the joy of winning, which also turns out to bring a relatively brief sense of ecstasy.

No matter what happens, from the coaching perspective, there is the next game to prepare for. So what you are really teaching is persistence, improvement, resilience.

-30-

In a Nutshell

2011-09-30T22:39:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure when I've seen tomato plants go this crazy before -- they've soared into giant bushes, although they are bearing very little fruit.

It's the weekend. Watching my young coach work with his team tonight, several other parents and I agreed he seems to know what he is doing.

The team is 2-1 with their fourth game tomorrow in Golden Gate Park. Problem is this is a huge free concert weekend and the area will be clogged with people and cars.

Beyond logistics, it should be another good game, after their 1-0, 1-2 and 2-0 contests.

He also played two games himself this week; his team is 6-3, one point out of the playoff race with seven games to go.

Whenever the rest of life becomes almost too much to bear (which was the case at times this week for me), I turn to my kids and their soccer, their homework, and their needs that I can supply -- food, clothes, drives, and so on.

It sounds mundane, and much of parenting is indeed mundane.

There isn't a lot of excitement in my life and hasn't been for a while now. I write every day, working hard for my two clients and filing my professional blog posts.

And I parent.

That's it. That's the sum of my life.

Or not.

There is much more, of course, including all that must remain secret, but for that part of the story I would have to switch over to the realm of fiction.

-30-

Bob Dylan, Merle Haggard and Willie Nelson

2011-09-26T23:51:00.000-07:00

Two Apples Can't Make Love, Sorry

2011-09-26T22:06:00.000-07:00

What I like about photography is the unexpected. If you shoot lots of pictures, as I do, sometimes you get a surprise. I wasn't trying to capture apples, actually.

It's the same with words. You don't always know what you might be able to do with words when you're writing them. First, you don't know who will read them. Second, you don't know what they will draw from them if they do read them. Third, you don't know, really, what you want to happen.

It is an act of faith every single time that you write, especially in this era, with blogging. For all we know, this will turn out to have been an interlude, and blogs will be replaced with other forms -- if so, hopefully more lucrative, which would not be difficult when your financial reward is precisely...zero.

But the emotional reward can be significant from writing, on blogs or elsewhere. Just knowing that your words touch somebody, move them, brighten their day, is magic.

Most of my career I was an investigative reporter. In that phase, my words were more likely to wound or injure than to inspire or heal. I still have the capability to act as an investigator. Once you acquire that skill set, you never really lose it.

Investigators can find out pretty much anything we what to find out about anybody anywhere -- except, of course, what matters most.

Because no amount of investigative reporting will ever reveal the inner secrets of the human heart or untangle the web of human emotions.

You can gather all of the facts you may wish but they do not add up to a narrative. They do not add up to a story. And most certainly, they will never add up to the ultimate, which would be a love story.

-30-

Letter to Someone

2011-09-25T19:24:00.000-07:00

Look up, look up, the sky is open.

  Look down, look down, your footsteps leave no trace here.

Under cover of darkness, all manner of secrets find refuge.   In distant places, new thoughts take root, and old stories find new chapters. Driving through the rain, threading your way between two huge tractor-trailers, the image forms of what would happen if you slipped a bit left or a bit right. Sudden death = release.

 How did it happen? The voices would ask.  

Back in the City, walking alone until suddenly you have a companion. Where did you come from? Is this a dream?   Is anyone watching us? Does anyone know you're here? The rain closes around you protectively, keeping all the rest of the world at length. This is your place, just you two, making amends.  

  "This never happened," she breathes into your ear, stepping on her tiptoes to do so.

Once a writer poured his heart out, not onto paper but into cyberspace, a keystroke at a time. There is nothing remarkable about this; people post to blogs all the time, and much of the content is so intensely personal that it would freak us all out if we decided to listen.

 How can it be that a man can be alone in his house, writing, when he suddenly senses a new presence? Someone new is listening; she may be close or she may be far away, but she is there, he knows it, just as you are now.  

Suddenly it is as if this invisible presence has taken over his hands, his fingers, willing him to say things he otherwise might not have said, not like this, not here, not now.

  It's a spooky sensation, as if he, the writer, no longer controls his story. Then again, maybe that isn't so strange; writers often don't know where their writing is going until it gets there.  

Still, this time was special. His unseen visitor is encouraging the words to tumble out of him. "Tell me, I'm listening," she whispers on the eastern wind. "Do not fear, I will appear in the flesh," she whispers from the west.  

He looks up; he looks down. There is nothing, not even a shadow.   But the words begin.  "I'm sharing my secrets with only you. I know you are there, reading them, reading me. You see me as no one else has ever seen me."

  He waits for her answer. It comes in the form of a whisper from the north: "I know, I know. Just keep telling me. I'm waiting."  

Her eyes big as moons but dark as the night, hiding as much as they show.   But nobody saw. So nobody knows.

The Day That Was

2011-09-24T21:13:00.000-07:00

Fog coated our city, we knew the heat couldn't last. Out to the Presidio we went, and I watched as my 17-year-old coached his third game this fall. His 12 and 13 year old girls played their hearts out, implementing his game plan to perfection.

His little sister played her part very well.

By halftime, they had the lead, and he explained to them how they should play the second half to keep it.

They listened. And they won 2-0.

Victors! Big brother coach and little sister player.

Then he and I headed south to Hayward, for his game in one of the State Cup matches with his club team, the Seals.

He played very well but in a losing effort, 0-3.

That's how it goes in sports. You win one. You lose one. One minute you are up top and smiling; the next you are down and out.

Think about it. Sports are probably the best metaphor for life. I only wish I had been healthy enough as a kid to have competed myself, because if so, everything subsequently might have turned out differently.

As I drove him home after his club team's loss, the winning coach still felt good about his day. Very good, actually.

That you win some and lose some is something he knows.

But I don't.

-30-

Weekend Preview

2011-09-23T22:24:00.000-07:00

The heat continues here; old-timers call it "earthquake weather." Let's hope not. Friday nights are practice nights for this U-13 girls team and their young coach.

Saturdays are game days. Tomorrow's game will be in the Presidio at noon. After that, the coach will don his uniform for the drive south to Hayward, where he'll compete in a State Cup game with his club team.

I've always loved back-lit photographs this time of year. The angle of the sun in late afternoon brings out details and colors that remain obscured much of the year, or from other angles.

If we could back-light our own lives, maybe everything would look a little better than it does in the harsh glare of everyday reality. Or maybe we'd be even more captive to the illusions that trap most of us into believing that we know anything at all.

Anything at all.

-30-

Old Men and Their Foolish Loves

2011-09-22T21:57:00.000-07:00

Wakeful Dreamings

2011-09-22T16:49:00.000-07:00

Summer is here while most people experience fall, but that's San Francisco for you. It was 95 the other day when I was in Palo Alto; 80-something yesterday in downtown SF. This morning's fog was cool but burned off quickly enough for sunbathing by those so inclined (there are a few around here) by late morning.

But I was writing and watching over my sick child, who called not long after being dropped at school at 7, having thrown up. So, back across town and back home again. After a day of rest, hopefully, tomorrow will be a day to get back to school and catch up.

I've been gathering the apples that fall in great volume in my backyard. They're not really edible, unless you are starving, but letting them lie there only leads to a rotten experience underfoot.

Still, I found one large green one that was pretty good today. Maybe I should gather up a bushel and try cooking something with them.

So many meetings, so many posts to write. So many stories to try and tell, few of which are my own. The best I can do on a blog like this is hint around at the things that really bother me, or inspire me, or visit me in the night.

There is one persistent dream that puzzles me. Someone is still with me who for quite a while has not been. Yet there she is. I don't get it; I don't understand why these dreams keep happening.

What am I supposed to do with this information? How I am to react?

As long, fitful bouts of sleep give way to the darkness of morning (no early sunrises any longer, now the seasonal pivot has occurred), I awake in confusion as to what and who is real or ever was, as opposed to who or what is fake and always was.

Or maybe that's a false choice, too absolute. Maybe, all was and will be gray, cloaked in illusion, much as the city is when it's bathed in fog. You cannot see very far, and what you do see is hazy -- more like an outline than anything tangible or real.

Grasping for pith from shadows is most certainly a dangerous exercise. What, for example, if there was something or someone there after all?

-30-

A Day With Nothing But Bad Luck

2011-09-20T22:30:00.000-07:00

The minute I got to the game today I had a bad feeling. When you've watched your kid play for so many (12) years, you know when something is wrong with him.

Even from way across the stadium, I could see that something was wrong with his left hand; he was holding it at a funny angle, and there was some sort of bandage or ice-pack attached to it.

I tried to get his attention but when I did he brushed me off.

That's when I knew for sure.

In any event, even if his hand was broken, which six and a half hours later I do not believe is the case, he would of course play the game.

Which he did.

But this was not to be one of the good days, the kind where you have a happy story to tell afterwards. Although he played well, his team's offense did not show up. And much like the deeply disappointing San Francisco Giants baseball team this season, his soccer team's offense is largely MIA.

They lost 0-1 to a vastly inferior team (by the numbers) and perhaps now their season, which started out so promising, is falling apart.

Or not.

Athletics is every bit as much about failure and recovery as it is success and consistency. An individual athlete playing a team sport has very little control over the outcome of any individual game -- all (s)he can do is do her very best and try to contribute.

Often, they have to play hurt, as #16 did today. He believed that a small bone at the base of his little finger was broken or dislocated, because it hurt so much. During one of the many collisions he sustained today, he winced and jumped around in obvious discomfort, shaking the hand again and again in order to try and make the pain calm down enough to keep playing on.

After it was over, dejected much more at losing than being hurt, he barely spoke a word on the long drive back home. We iced the hand, he took Ibuprofen, I felt it gingerly, trying to gauge where the pain was worst, and tried to evaluate how swollen it was.

After hours of this, my conclusion was it is probably a deep bone bruise, not a break. But I'm no doctor (and who can afford to go to them anyway these days?), so I think we will just hope for the best over the coming days.

There are really no words that can comfort a competitive athlete after a game like today's. His team faces a crisis of confidence and of leadership.

Whether they can find themselves in time is an open question -- next week they play two of the toughest teams in the city. Both routinely make mincemeat of the team they lost to today.

But that is what sports is like. Anyway who thinks it's easy hasn't played. And the longer you play, the higher level you reach, everything, including the competitive aspect, becomes magnified.

For now, we have to find a soft hand brace, so this injury doesn't interfere with our all-city defender's ability to continue to do his part -- win or lose -- as this season continues.

-30-

Grit True

2011-09-19T19:01:00.000-07:00

When I picked her up after school today, my daughter had her cross-country uniform on, ready to race in the first city-wide event of the season.

But she also was limping (she's had sore ankles for weeks) and was worried about the heat. It was over 80 degrees here in the Mission, where her school is located -- not good running weather, to put it mildly.

On the way to the Polo Fields, we stopped by Whole Foods in the Haight, so she could get a fruit roll and an apple. I also bought her a tube of Arnica, a homeopathic pain-relief cream that might (I hope) help relieve some of her chronic ankle pain.

Once the race started, she fell into the stream of runners near the rear. She was easy to spot, in her yellow uniform wearing #13, as she was the only girl from her school competing at the 7th/8th grade level.

As she neared the halfway point in the race, she was limping noticeably and dead last among the 40 or so girls competing. I called out to her as she passed, asking whether she was okay and whether she wanted to quit, given how badly she obviously was feeling.

She didn't answer, but ran on.

Then, something remarkable began to happen. As I watched her as the group rounded the first quarter of the second lap, I noticed that she was starting to pass other runners. First one, then two, then five, then ten, and by the time she was approaching the finish line, by my count there were at least 16 girls behind her.

On the final stretch, she ran at a strong pace and came in as #20.

Her face was red and she was favoring her right ankle as we embraced and I gave her her water bottle.

"My goal was to finish twentieth and I did," she said.

Normally, you would never congratulate an athlete for finishing about halfway in a field, but on this day, I did.

This girl has guts, perseverance, and a competitive streak that allows her to overcome injuries and bad weather conditions. I look forward to seeing what she can do once she is healthy.

-30-

p.s. I accidentally destroyed my digital photos of today's race, darn it.

On the Road to Reno

2011-09-18T19:09:00.000-07:00

Up, up, up from the Sacramento Delta and its gathering heat early this morning, we rose along with the foothills, climbing toward the sky. The thermometer on my rear-view mirror that senses the outside temperature had hit 75 degrees when we started the serious upgrade; when I glanced again maybe fifteen minutes later, it had fallen to 58 degrees.

By now we were in the shadow of the western-facing peak, shaded from the eastern sun. Magnificent Ponderosa Pines rose on every side, lining the jagged peaks that fanned outward like the granite fingers they are, reaching from deep in the earth below.

The soil was red.

Up to the summit, way over a mile above sea-level, on through the Donner Pass (~7200') we drove. Now the outside temp was back up to 75 degrees and climbing. We drove parallel to a train along the transcontinental railroad built under great duress by Chinese workers in the century before last.

I did my best to make this brief road trip a history and geography lesson, but my 17-year-old had something else on his mind – his first tattoo.

He’s been planning this since he was 16, but in our home state it’s not legal until you are 18. Thus, our trip across the borderline, down the eastern face of the mighty Sierra.

Reno’s a bit different from San Francisco, you might say, a casino town, with a thriving tattoo parlor business. Here you need only be 16, with your parent’s permission, to get your body defiled – or beautified, depending on your perspective.

“You seventeenish?” was the greeting as we entered the shop.

My son is nothing if not strong-minded. Once he sets his mind on something, he’s hard to move off the ball, just as on the soccer pitch.

The tattoo artist, Brian, tried to convince him to adjust the placement and gave him all the reasons to do so. He gave us ten minutes to think it over, during which a couple giggling teenage girls entered. One wanted a tattoo on her foot re-done.
When Brian said it was our turn, my son said he wanted it in the original place, on his upper left arm, he’d previously chosen.

When it comes to parenting teens, you gotta pick your battles. Come to think of it, that’s necessary with your average two-year-old, as well. Parents who try to hold to too strict an approach often encounter rebellions that disrupt and undermine their relationships with their kids in ways that are difficult to repair over time.

Giving in all the time isn’t an option, either. There are real dangers out there, and no matter what, you can’t parent as if your wish is to be your child’s best friend.

I think it’s more like the buck who shows up in the Bambi story, though hopefully not in that dire a context; you should be there when it matters, and meanwhile, don’t sweat the small stuff.

Many will disagree with me, but a tattoo (it’s a nice one – of the sun) isn’t one of the battles I choose to fight about. In fact, I like the way he connects the image with the meaning of his name (“bearer of fire”) and his naturally competitive nature.

This all seems natural to me.

Helping them mature and ultimately letting them go means navigating that narrow line that runs through the intersection between providing guidance, threatening discipline in the form of consequences, allowing mistakes, forgiving mistakes, exerting needed control and letting go of control.

And no engineering feat along the interstate highway system we navigated to get here rivals anything like the complexity of this mix.

The older I get, the more I admire and love youths, not just my own. It was a long time ago when I was their age, and I didn’t do a very good job of living life, in retrospect, until about the age of 19.

It’s a joy and privilege seeing how my progeny are doing a better job than I did years younger than that. It took me until the age of 24 to experience some things that helped me define a path to the future.

Getting a tattoo at the age of 17 requires thinking ahead, something I didn’t do well at that age.

Today, I suspect, the state of Nevada just won itself a new fan. If in the future, he regrets today's actions, I will bear full responsibility, as the parent who facilitated his first tattoo to happen.

Should that turn out to be the case, we will have both made a mistake.

As we retraced our steps back up and over the Sierra, he soon fell asleep in the wake of the adrenaline rush that led up to the appointment.

When we descended back into the great central valley of California, the temperature outside hit 95 degrees. A 37 degree swing during the course of a few hours -- that's one aspect of living out here that I love.

Slowly we made it back to the Bay Area, where to our surprise, it is a sweltering (for us) night, i.e., in the 70s.

All I know for sure is that it was a beautiful road trip, my boy's dream came true, and as for the wisdom of the whole experience, well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

-30-

Hot Day in California

2011-09-17T22:35:00.000-07:00

Sacramento

Lovely weather out in Golden Gate Park today of the second game of the season for the U-13 girls team and their new coach. He drew up a game plan of all the things he wanted to remember to tell them and wrote everything out on his clipboard.

The never gave up against a better team but lost in the end, 1-2. But he coached well, they played well, and they're 1-1 on the season now.

Afterward, he and I hit the highways north and east on a short road trip. Sacramento tonight, Reno tomorrow.

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Little Boys and Big Boys

2011-09-14T20:36:00.000-07:00

My youngest grandson, at two, loves to play with trains and blocks. Tonight, I gave him a small wooden horse to carry around and he kept saying "Horse jump table." Apparently, this is something he saw at the State Fair recently.

His big brother, at four, eats like a bird, and I thought I wouldn't find anything he'd like until he found some "healthy" chips. Those he liked.

Their two big teenage uncles came over to play with these guys during an impromptu family gathering this cold, Wednesday night in SF. Big guys and little guys. Guys of all types and sizes, but guys for sure.

Pizza, carrots, soda, sports talk, music talk, school talk, girl talk. Lots of chatter. Maybe males do talk as much as females, but only once we have gathered in sufficient numbers to set the tone. My poor daughter, Mom of these two beautiful little boys, was the one female among six males, including her husband.

But she's used to it, and with a third boy growing inside her, by later this fall she'll be the mother of a hat trick of boys. I see a lot of soccer games in her future!

-30-

Not Really About Soccer

2011-09-13T22:17:00.000-07:00

Yes it was another good day for a certain high school in the Excelsior, which now is 5-0 so far this season.

Next, they face a renewal of their arch-rivalry from last year's championship game Thursday with another 5-0 team.

Anticipating that game for the next two days will be sweet. Watching my son compete in these high school games is, as I am well aware, as good as it gets...and as good as it will ever get.

***

Yesterday, a talented young woman showed up at my front door, as expected, to film an interview with me about events that happened over 30 years ago. Twice last week, I spoke to students in local colleges about journalism past and present.

Later this week, I'll go on a local radio station to talk about the same topic.

These days, there are a regular stream of requests for me to talk about what has been a very long life indeed in the world of journalism. This is what it means to be an elder, of course, and I understand and accept that role.

But even though my body is old, there are few moments when I, my spirit, feels old.

When it comes to watching kids play soccer, or interviewing entrepreneurs, or (on the occasional lucky day) hanging out with a much younger, beautiful woman, I somehow don't feel like the old man I most certainly am.

So what's up with that?

***

Yesterday I also hung out for a while with two young men out front who were friends, perhaps relatives, of my murdered neighbor. They were both struggling to make sense of this awful crime.

One of the young men would be called black in this society, the other would be called Latino. To my eyes, they are both beautiful young people, somebody's sons, and somebody else's future fathers.

The dark-skinned man felt like talking. "I wonder where he is now?" he said about our fallen friend. "He got too big a heart to just be dead. He got to be somewhere. Where he is?"

The lighter-skinned man's eyes were filled with tears and he had no words to offer.

I tried my best to answer the first man's question. "Nobody knows what happens when we die," I offered. "People believe all sorts of things, but I think we just don't know."

Then I said this: "No matter where he is, he's still alive for you, right? You don't have to let go of somebody you love just because they are gone. And he was one of those people who always had so much to say to all of us, maybe all we should just do is remember that, and keep talking to each other, also."

Just keep talking to one another. Maybe that is a lesson for all of us. Because sooner or later, our voices will be stilled, too, and wouldn't it be a pity if we stopped talking too soon?

-30-

Ten Years Ago

2011-09-11T10:48:00.000-07:00

(Note: This post is part of a series of articles by various writers organized by my friend Tyge O'Donnell. I urge anyone interested to read them all at his site, The Neon Lounge.)

Ten years ago, my wife and I owned a house in Noe Valley, our kids were 7, 5 and 3; and I had a great job as founding editor of a new city magazine. There were dark clouds on the horizon, however, with the dot-com implosion, and stress lines in our marriage.

Still, when I woke up that morning of September 11, 2001, I had plenty of reasons to be hopeful about the future. The city where we chose to live, San Francisco, has endured a endless series of booms and busts since the Gold Rush Era, and people here know nothing if not how to be resilient.

I was getting ready to head downtown when my wife heard the report of a plane hitting the World Trade Center on NPR. She called out to me to turn on our TV, which was located in my basement office to prevent the kids from exposure to its presumed evils.

Rushing into my office, I left the door open while I snapped on the TV. Our seven-year-old son quietly entered behind me, just as the second plane smashed into the second tower.

I heard his gasp, turned and swept him out of the room. He went upstairs, got a piece of construction paper and drew the image that appears at the top of this post.

***

It took weeks for life to resume any sort of normal rhythm. Barry Bonds was having the greatest home-run hitting season in baseball history, but all sports contests were suspended for a while.

Tourism came to an end, and with that development, the city slowed to a crawl. There was no one in the restaurants that normally would be packed, and the hotels were empty.

City magazines exist by selling ad space to local businesses. Ours, which had launched literally a week before 9/11, now looked to be dead on arrival. After a series of crisis meetings, the small group of us who had launched it decided we would cut back production to every other month, defer our salaries, and accept trade as opposed to cash for ad space in the book.

That fall and winter and the next spring were extremely difficult, both for the magazine, for the city, and for me. I had to take out a huge equity loan to keep paying the house payments, and all of the strains evident before 9/11 worsened in its wake.

While many dot-com companies had survived the stock market bubble that had started popping in April 2000, now the entire first wave of web-based startups started failing left and right, and it turned into an economic disaster for this region.

Tourists stayed away in droves, and it was deep into 2002 before the core element of the city's economy began a fitful recovery. By then, I had been forced to leave the magazine for a position as a visiting professor at Stanford, where the plan was for me to write a book.

***

By remembering all of this, I do not wish to imply any causal relationship between 9/11 and the chaos that visited my world, because it's all much more complicated than that. Besides, others suffered far worse pains than I did, including a friend and former colleague whose sister was killed when the plane hit the Pentagon.

But through a series of setbacks, I eventually found myself without that house, without that marriage, and without what until then had been an extremely successful career as a journalist.

Over the years since, in most ways, life has proved to be a much more difficult challenge than it had previously been. In most ways, it continues to prove more difficult year by year.

I won't chronicle the losses, disappointments, or the many crushed dreams. Many, many people have been struggling mightily in this historical adjustment of the U.S. national economy as it integrates into a global economy where "we" have far less leverage over our economic fate than when U.S. hegemony was clearer, and less under assault from aggressive centers of growth overseas.

But there are many bright spots around here and I post about them week after week. San Francisco is the center of another tech boom, bringing waves of entrepreneurial innovation to the rest of the world, like we always do when on top.

I'm chronicling that boom for the very magazine that I helped launch a decade ago.

The little boy who drew that sad picture on 9/11 is now a junior in high school, and all-city soccer star, and coach of a younger girls' team that yesterday won their opening game, 1-0.

There are flowers blooming in the garden out back, and somewhere way up in an apple tree, I can hear the sweet sound of a pair of birds singing...

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Victory!

2011-09-10T21:41:00.000-07:00

Coaching his first game today, this was a 17-year-old with a plan. His players had only one practice under their belts -- and that was late yesterday -- and they were neither in game shape yet, nor used to winning soccer games.

But, as they say, you could throw away the history books today. This didn't look like the same team that had won only six of its previous 43 games. The defense was terrific, and the midfielders and strikers kept getting to the ball first and punching the ball into the other team's zone.

When he saw they were bunching up too much during the scoreless first half, he told them to spread the field in the second. A few other adjustments and about fifteen minutes into the second half his team scored the first goal of the season.

That was all it would take.

After their 1-0 victory, the girls all high-fived their new coach, whom some of them have taken to calling Mister Coach Sir, with a smile.

It's just one game, of course, but this might be a pretty good story beginning here...

One other detail -- the player at right defense, his little sister, played with a sore ankle and a bad cold. And, she played her best game ever.

-30-

Game Day

2011-09-10T10:54:00.000-07:00

Watching your young sons grow into men and your your young daughters grow into women is part of the deal, of course, with parenting, and it's easy to detect the combination of lament at lost childhood and pride at emerging adulthood in any parent's voice.

This is a very quiet and hot Saturday morning in the city. The fan's on overhead; the back door is open, and I can hear a few birds in the back garden. A lazy, slow-moving haze lightens what would otherwise be our bright blue Northern California sky.

Neighbors rush around, getting ready for their weekend routines. I remember back in the years when I was employed the stark difference between weekday and weekend -- a difference for me that has largely evaporated.

Now every day has a great deal of sameness to it. Every night as well, which is not a good thing.

But today is one I've been anticipating for a while. My 17-year-old starts his formal coaching career. His U13 girls' team held their first practice last night and they were energetic but definitely rusty. He had them running and passing and receiving and defending for an hour and a half.

They listen to him, which is a good thing. But afterward, he said to me, "The thing about girls is they talk so much. And not about soccer. It's hard to keep their attention on the game."

Nevertheless that is his job, to keep their attention on the game. He's not taking over a winning franchise, since in previous seasons these girls have won six, lost thirty-five and tied two games. So that's a .163 winning percentage.

But he seems up to the challenge, which includes coaching his little sister, who plays defense on the team.

A few hours from now, I'll be standing on the sidelines with many other parents out at the Polo Fields, all rooting for our kids. But I'll probably be the only Dad with both a player and a coach in the game.

-30-

Spiders, Webs, and Striking Back

2011-09-08T21:42:00.000-07:00

One of the main topics of conversation on the street out front lately has been spiders. You might think that a group of neighbors hanging around, drinking beer, mourning the brutal death of a man we all knew to varying degrees and liked, would talk only about that, about him, but that's not how this works.

In the end, there is nothing much to say about him. He is gone; most of us don't have much of a clue why, and those that do aren't talking. Who knows how many other secrets may reside in the hearts of those who visit this shrine. And who knows how many more may die before this latest wave of gang violence subsides.

But one thing we can all agree on is that we don't like spiders. Oh, there is the occasional one among us who will defend them, either a romantic (a fan of Charlotte's Web), or a pragmatist ("they kill flies.")

The problem for us humans is that they bite us. One of my neighbor's 3-year-old sons is allergic to spider bites. He had a huge red welt on his arm the other night as he ran around out front.

His dad said the doctor said not to worry unless he develops a fever.

Quite a few of us have noticed the invasion of a breed of strange yellow spiders that have proliferated around here in recent years.

***

Yesterday, as I was standing in my bathroom, peeing, at the back of my building, I noticed something weird. First, it was just one, then another, than a countless number of tiny yellow spiders spiraling down from the top of the back window to the bottom below.

It was a mesmerizing scene, as if I were witnessing an invasion, a military action.

That got me to wondering where military leaders first got the idea of parachuting soldiers behind enemy lines, because this sure looked like something like that.

My job, I decided on the spot, was to protect my kids from these invaders. But to learn about that counter-action, you'll have to tune in another time, because that's another story altogether.

-30-

Alone and Together Again

2011-09-07T23:12:00.000-07:00

How to ever capture the emotions of a day? So many ups and so many downs. So many lonely moments and so many warm, intimate moments?

The most important thing about today, and this date, is it is one of my kids' birthdays. I remember the day he was born. It had been 13 years since I'd had a child, and when he arrived, he became my second son.

But he wasn't my youngest for long. Within a few short years, he was the oldest of three. A middle son, with two older sisters and one younger sister.

This weekend, he will become the head coach of his younger sister's soccer team, even though it will be another year before he will no longer be classified as a "minor" himself.

Tonight, at our little family birthday party, his oldest sister and her two young children came to celebrate at his Mom's house. We decided it would not be safe to gather at my house, where tensions on the street out front remain high, amidst a string of retaliatory gang-related murders that took the life of one of my neighbors last week.

While playing with his nephew and niece, the birthday boy also received an energetic call via Skype from his other two nephews in Sacramento, the children of my middle daughter.

This all gets confusing sometimes, this family story. Yes there are a lot of us, which is ironic, given my status as paternal head of the family tree. After all, I live alone, am single, and am a writer -- the epitome of a lone wolf.

Check out my career as an investigative reporter, and the improbability of all of this becomes clear.

Yet nothing I've ever done, or no label ever applied to me has ever felt real to me. I'm none of the things others ascribe to me. I am, have always been, and always will be a complete outsider, except in one very special sense.

And that is when it comes to my family.

But this is not about me. This is about my son's birthday. I picked him up from a friend's house after school and drove him to the Haight. We bought a few items of clothing from the stores he likes best there. As we walked back to my car, I showed him the flat where his older three siblings grew up, just half a block from the corner of Haight and Ashbury.

Back at Bernal, we ordered pizzas. His Mom brought cupcakes, like she did when he was small. We lit candles and sang the song. He smiled and played happily with his three-year-old nephew, who was in a rambunctious mood.

When it was time for the little guy to leave, with his Mom and baby sister, he looked out of the window and saw the strange night sky of lights twinkling through the fog of Twin Peaks.

His eyes got huge and he started to feel scared.

His uncle gave him a big hug and told him he would be fine. His Grandpa scooped him up in his arms and carried him out into that dark night, to secure him in his seatbelt.

"We have to be careful in our car," he told his Mom.

His uncle jogged back up the stairs, as his Mom drove him off into the night. After one more round of hugs, I did so as well.

-30-

Comfort for the Afflicted

2011-09-04T19:33:00.000-07:00

The mourning goes on out front day after day. The police drive by. Kids play. people light candles and burn sage. Guys drink beer. Neighbors stop by while walking their dogs or carrying home laundry, groceries.

As the light fades, and the chill of night starts driving us inside, people trade stories of the little things in life -- spider bites, the Giants' disappointing collapse, kids' soccer, people moving in, people moving away.

The crowd out front is so mixed -- black, white, Asian, Latino -- that it well represents our community. All different kinds of people; all concerned with the same kinds of things.

In the aftermath of this tragedy, the best we can do is connect with one another, share thoughts, and try to act more like a community than isolated groups of individuals hiding in fear behind closed doors.

-30-

It's Time to Notice

2011-09-01T19:50:00.000-07:00

As she and I reached the top of the hill walking the dogs yesterday, my daughter and I saw a red-tailed hawk scream and fly toward us, not 20 feet over our heads, as it soared above from one perch to another.

I momentarily felt a shudder at the site of this predator, not out of any sense of personal danger, since what raptor would bother with an old man who is over the hill when younger, sweeter food is available nearby? (Well, not literally over the hill at that particular moment, but on top of the hill, but you get the drift.)

No, what I was feeling was what it must be like to be a mouse or other small creature, hearing that scream high overhead and sensing that wingspan, those talons, those eagle eyes, that beak that tears.

I suppose part of my instinctive response was protective of my daughter, but rationally, no bird could represent a threat to her, either. Though only 12, she is tall, strong, and athletic and could easily swipe that hawk out of the air and send it tumbling into the dirt if she wanted to.

Of course, she would never do such a thing, because she loves animals -- much more than I do -- and volunteers at the SPCA to protect them, whereas her Dad has a checkered career as a hunter and fisherman, things I should probably admit to her someday, even though it will lessen me in her eyes.

***

Out front of my house, the memorial to my fallen neighbor grows. When I got home tonight, a man was crying and wailing, as other men drank beer and bore witness. The candles and flowers continue to arrive.

The pain felt by those who loved him is palpable on this block. He has two young daughters who now no longer have a Dad. His mother sits on her porch forlorn and aging rapidly.

A guy I know well at the corner store stood outside today looking sad. I gave him a hug. His eyes filled with tears.

What can you say at a time like this?

I also watched my athletic son play soccer today -- his high school team won again, that's three in a row, and this looks to be a very promising season. He very nearly scored anther goal after getting his first the other day.

So much hope and so much hopelessness, all in the same day. The soccer coach told me that he is counting on my son to help some of the Latino kids on the team develop better study habits and improve their grades.

Every day there is a mandatory study hall for the kids who want to play soccer. This is a good thing, I think, although it extends their schooldays to ten or eleven hours most days, and causes me to have to do a lot more driving than I would want to do.

But that's a small price to pay if my son, who is an A student, can help other kids who otherwise might fail become C students. The incentive is soccer. Anyone who doesn't think race and class is still a major factor in who succeeds and who doesn't in this society isn't paying attention.

Sports are great, and it's fun to watch my kid compete and be successful. But I value his work as a fellow student helping other students do better in school far more.

Because all of these kids -- black, white, Latino, Asian -- are "our" kids. They represent our future. The kids who murdered my neighbor are, by police reports, very young Latino kids, perhaps very much like the ones my son works with in study hall to help stay in school and get their diploma.

Some join gangs, are given guns by older men, and earn their stripes by murdering people like my neighbor. Others stay in school, get better grades, earn a diploma, and get a job.

The difference between one outcome or the other can be razor thin, for teenagers.

Those who think we exist on a level playing field are delusional. This society remains deeply biased when it comes to race or class or even gender. The greatest compliment I can pay to my son is he knows that and he cares about that. He has a big heart.

Meanwhile, he's also an extremely competitive athlete, which just happens to give him credibility in the eyes of those kids who are failing in the classroom but will listen to an upperclassman about why it's important to study and learn.

We all should be studying and learning. Maybe most of all, those of us who enjoy the privilege of not being from poor, minority communities. Maybe we are the ones who finally should start trying harder to become real Americans, instead of blaming others for being poor, for turning out how our system dictates they should turn out, as failures.

-30-

Life & Death

2011-08-31T19:05:00.000-07:00

After I dropped my kids off at their Mom's last night, and parked my car, and walked home, something awful happened.

I was writing, as usual, in the front room of my apartment when I heard five gun blasts from a pistol out front. The blasts were so loud, I knew they were from a serious weapon, probably a 45 caliber.

The explosions set off the automated alarm at the corner store. As I ran out front to see what had happened I first glanced left, toward the store, because of the alarm. Not long before, one of my kids had walked there to buy some treats for himself and his siblings, as all three of them have done countless times over the years.

As I watched, a neighbor from across the street who works at the store ran out of his front door and headed there on the run.

But then I looked right. And there on the sidewalk lay a man face down. I immediately dialed 911, and told the operator that a man has been shot, please get here fast, come right away, it's bad, really bad.

As she took down my name and address, I saw his body heave its final sigh and collapse into an awful flatness.

"He's dead!" I screamed.

Within seconds, the first responders arrived. I watched as they tried to revive the man. Meanwhile, another neighbor, a young man, distraught and hysterical, ran up and down the street yelling: "No! Oh no!"

Yet another neighbor, much older, with hair as white as mine, also was on the scene, and looked disoriented and very disturbed. He approached the body as the emergency workers tried to revive it and had to be told to back away.

Soon the area was covered in cops, firemen, all sorts of responders. A woman ran out of her house nearby and screamed "He is my son. Can you save him? CAN YOU SAVE HIM?!" She had to be restrained, sobbing and wailing into the night, one of the most awful sounds I have ever heard.

As I watched, they gave up and laid a piece of plastic over the man. Then the crying spread as other family members rushed to the street and realized what had happened.

The dead man had been walking his dog. Over the years, I got to know him due to his friendly manner. He was a striking figure -- tall, lean, black, with a fancy hat and the kind of attitude that revealed a sense of humor and an ability to connect with others around him.

I'd say he had charisma.

Normally, I'm pretty reclusive, like most writers, and kind of shy. I don't get to know my neighbors easily, like many inner-city residents, and I am not proud of that. But this man was among my favorite people to encounter when I was out and about.

He always had a knowing smile, a greeting, a certain way of connecting. "How are the kids?" He'd ask. "They're gettin' big."

He made me feel oriented, in that way, recognized as a part of the neighborhood.

Today, I went down to his relatives' houses, took off my hat and held it over my heart, and told them how sorry I am that he has died. I told them he was a good man. They thanked me, but their eyes were filled with tears.

Tonight, a memorial is growing outside of my front window. There are many candles, flowers, and lots of empty beer and liquor bottles (I don't understand the those empty bottle gestures but pretty clearly all the men around here are getting drunk, and I fear there may soon be more incidents. Guys are yelling.)

There also have been many people gathering here all day long. And reporters and photographers and undercover police, no doubt hoping that the killers decide to revisit the scene.

I've read the press reports and talked to the neighbors. I know what the conventional wisdom is. He was a drug dealer. He had problems. He was affiliated with one of the Latino gangs that war over territory around here, the "Northerners" and the "Southerners."

But I also know he was a very friendly man in a pretty unfriendly place, a place that can be lonely and alienating and scary at times, but the place I also call home.

And I'm going to miss him.

Last night, after being interviewed by the cops, I sat alone here, shaking and scared. I didn't know what to do but I needed to "talk" to somebody. So I emailed my adult kids, but by then it was after midnight.

Then, I did something very strange. It surprised me. I emailed the ex-girlfriends who, over the eight years I have lived here, sometimes stayed here with me and know what this neighborhood is like.

Two of them responded, and one of them called me.

I feel a great deal of comfort as a result. After all, I live alone, and when this happened, I wish I had had someone here to hold onto. But I don't. But at some points in the past I did. So those people remain precious to me, and I when I needed them last night and this morning, they chose to respond.

There really is no way to express what that means to me other than to say that what one of them told me a long time ago might just turn out to be true: "Once you've loved someone, on some level, you will always love them."

Thank you, J&J. Thank you.

-30-

First Goal, First Interview

2011-08-30T22:14:00.000-07:00

The pace of life changes substantially as the school year gets underway. And, especially with soccer, my weeks start to revolve around these games and practices and driving from point to point along the grid of high schools and parks spread throughout the 49 square miles that defines the city and county of San Francisco.

In tonight's game, my sixteen-year-old, who wears #16, had a turning point game. He's a junior, starting his third season as right back on his high school team. This year, for the first time, his coach has given him some new marching orders.

Noting his height, he is now sending him in on set plays like corner kicks and telling him to try to get his head on the ball. Tonight, in the fifth minute of a game against a traditionally very tough opponent, the coach's strategy worked, as we saw the red-headed #16 soar high above the scrum at the front of the net to put his head on the ball as it arced in from the corner.

He met the ball perfectly and redirected it into the upper left hand corner of the net for his first goal ever -- in a high school game.

For a second, I stared in disbelief, as this was so unprecedented as to be unimaginable. A goal! Then I broke into a long throaty cheer. A kid who, no matter how well he's played, has rarely ever had a taste of this kind of glory, now was being high-fived by his teammates for putting his team ahead, 1-0.

Eventually, after his team won the game, 2-1, he got to have another "first" experience, as a young athlete.

One of the small group of reporters and photographers covering the game asked if he could interview him. He asked him about scoring that first goal, about beating such a touch opponent, and about holding the opposition scoreless under their increasingly desperate assault throughout the second half.

As I watched my young son field these questions, I could tell that he was feeling a bit embarrassed by being made the center of attention, but I also was struck by his poise. He complimented the other team, saying how tough they were to play against, and how talented they were. He also allowed that it was a real thrill to score his first goal.

I wish I had gotten that reporter's card, because maybe someday this interview will prove to have been the first of many. Who knows? But for now, for me, it was good enough just to witness this newest stage in the development of my young athletic star.

-30-

Another Summer's End

2011-08-29T16:46:00.000-07:00

The day after tomorrow, my seventh-grader sees the end of her summer as school finally starts. (Her brothers are into the third week of their school year already.)

Today, in anticipation of all that, we decided to harvest the onions we've been growing in the flower boxes out front. She pulled them out of the soil, clipped the roots, cleaned off the dirt and washed them.

Then we sliced them and sauteed them in olive oil with canola spray, dusted them with salt and garlic powder, and served them over white rice with seaweed, butter and soy sauce.

Such tiny domestic tasks, for her and me, cement our days when we are alone together. The rest of the time, I was interviewing CEOs, blogging, and communicating with clients, while she was finishing one of the books on her summer reading list.

This afternoon, we walked the dogs around Bernal Hill. On the southeast side there is a large blackberry patch, so we took the dogs there today and picked a bunch of berries.

With the city laid out below like a giant Lego construction, and the sky blue overhead, with a breeze from the west cooling what otherwise was a layer of warm air, both of us picked and ate and offered some to the dogs.

One likes blackberries and gulps them happily. The other likes to smell them but refuses to eat them.

Afterward, as we descended the hill, we compared fingers. Both hers and mine were red with the juice from the berries, but mine were darker red because the berry-loving dog had thoughtfully licked hers for her.

We passed a mail truck on the way down. I explained to her the difference between UPS, USPS and FedEx.

She told me that until recently, she had never noticed the arrow in the FedEx logo. That gave me an excuse to go into one of my talks about her future.

She wants to study art and to become an artist. Her portfolio of drawings is growing; I often proudly publish bits of them here, usually without labels.

But, of course, as her (aging) parent, I worry about what choices she may make. Being an artist does not strike me as a particularly sustainable future for her in an ever-more difficult economy.

I don't think 12 is too young an age to discuss practicalities, particularly when she is one of the most practical of all of my children. Evidence of that includes her bank account, which due to her many small jobs like dog-walking is more robust than anyone else in her immediate family.

In fact, she often extends loans to the rest of us and charges no interest rates. (Note to self: I should talk to her about interest.)

But what I chose to talk about when she mentioned the FedEx arrow is the role designers play in branding for companies. I explained how artists come up with concepts like colors and symbols and branding icons, such as arrows or the Nike swoosh.

"That's how you can pay your bills while you pursue your passion," I suggested.

This seemed to sink in, who knows. Each of our conversations of this type is loaded by my acute awareness of our extreme age differential. My ability to exert influence over her choices has to be expedited just in case I am not around long enough to be her consultant in her 20s or into her 30s.

Although it sometimes makes me sad to know that I probably will not be, it also adds some determination and purpose to each and every conversation like the one we had today, because I know she is listening quite carefully.

And I'm quite sure she will remember.

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Memories of a Storm

2011-08-28T10:26:00.000-07:00

Walking through this foggy neighborhood this morning, Johnny Cash's Sunday Morning Coming Down playing in my head, I passed a small Latina girl, maybe five years old, taking care of two younger siblings on the sidewalk in front of her house. She stared at me.

I smiled meekly at her, and said "Hi." She continued to look at me with that kind of frank, open stare that only children employ as I passed her. At the last second, she smiled back and said "Hi."

I'm a storm news junkie, and so have been watching CNN a bunch this weekend. Thankfully, the East Coast dodged disaster pretty much.

That brings back certain memories, as I've been in the glancing blows of two big hurricanes myself.

One in Bermuda, with my then-GF. We were staying on the top floor of a beachfront hotel, when the hotel staff posted a sign in the lobby (this was before the Internet, email or cellphones so communication options were limited), warning guests to check frequently for updates on the situation.

As the hurricane approached, all flights were cancelled, so our return to the States was delayed -- not necessarily a major inconvenience in this case. Then the skies darkened ominously and the ceiling of our room (which was the roof of the hotel) started banging ominously.

Various generators, vents and other attachments to the roof were getting battered by the gusts, and it felt scary -- like the roof might well blow in. Then we lost power.

Back down the stairs to the lobby, now the elevator didn't work, we gathered with other guests to wait out the storm.

But, almost as suddenly as it had arrived, the edge of the storm bounced off of the shoreline and tore itself, spinning, off in another direction. The winds fell, the skies lightened, the power came back on, and the sign in the lobby said "All Clear."

The story of the other hurricane I'll leave for another day.

As much reason as there is to feel melancholy about many things, there is every bit as much reason to feel grateful for friends and family on the East Coast, and that at least this one danger has now passed.

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2011-08-25T20:06:00.000-07:00

Finally, soccer is back, and along with it, a great deal of pleasure for me. My player is no longer the youngest player on the pitch in the San Francisco public school system games, as he was much of the past two years, but an upperclassman, big, tall, strong, fast, and with a certain amount of attitude.

At this point he knows the way the game is played around here, he knows the fields, and he knows the refs.

The ref in today's opening season game is not one he likes. "He's a power freak. If you question his calls, he talks you down," he told me after the game.

I'm pretty sure what he means by that is the ref makes a player feel disrespected when he questions a call.

The situation today that precipitated our conversation afterward was the moment when I saw Aidan get in the ref's face. An opposing player had kicked his teammate, the keeper, in the chest during an attempt to score but was not called for a foul.

Aidan chose to disagree. The problem with this is he already had been called for a yellow card when he had taken out a striker earlier, and with one more, he would be disqualified from playing in next Tuesday's game.

To his coach's and my relief, a second card was not delivered.

After the game the coach walked over to me and said, "I was really proud of the way Aidan defended his keeper."

That's the essence of soccer for a defender -- you don't stand by and let any opponent mess with your teammate, especially your keeper.

After the game, I watched Aidan and his keeper embrace and smile, because at the end of it all, they had beaten the other team, which was short-handed, 10-4.

Not really anything more than a warmup game, under the circumstances. But a good start, with more difficult challenges to come.

You know what's cool? In a society that continues to pretend that race is a divisive issue, I have a son who is the only white kid on a team with two Asians and maybe 25 Latinos. English is the second language on this team. He's an outlier, in other words, someone way outside of the normal comfort zone for most kids like him.

But then again he's an athlete, who loves soccer, and considers himself a student of the game. And, he's a competitor who plays the game hard.

For me, it's all just a joy to watch. Plus his Spanish is getting way better.

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America: Bad English and Bad Policy

2011-08-20T15:54:00.000-07:00

I fear I'm doing a really bad job, now, at blogging.

In order to do this (or any kind of writing) well, it should be a daily habit, as I've always told my students.

But I've allowed myself to grow distracted and not given this space the attention it deserves.

Consider the DMV. For those not in California or some other location that uses the same idiotic abbreviation, this would be the Department of Motor Vehicles.

I've been hanging out there a lot lately, as I try to help my 16-year-old get his "learner's permit."

In case you've not been lately, it's not a lot of fun at the DMV. Even my son, who's normally forgiving and rather sweet about people and their frail points, has begun to rail against bureaucrats.

He also, like me, has a serious problem with taking multiple-choice tests.

***

When I was young, most of the feedback I got from teachers and peers and from the others in our community who shape our early perceptions of who we are was that I was smart.

I had no independent concept of what "smart" meant.

I was just me. Where I lived, "smart" was not a good thing, actually, but the kind of quality that easily got you beat up.

My Dad, probably sensing all of this and more, taught me how to defend myself, should attacks be forthcoming, and I think I learned his lessons well.

***

As my son was told he had failed his first attempt at passing the DMV written test, he shrugged his shoulders, turned, looked at me with that knowing gaze, and we left the building.

Nonsensically, I know, the sound track playing through my head as we left was "Elvis has left the building."

Because, compared to that ridiculous test, those helpless bureaucrats who administer it, and most of all those terrible writers who actually wordsmith such documents, he is a rock star.

The questions he "missed" were the same ones I would miss -- questions so poorly worded, so ambiguous, incomplete and misleading that no true 16-year-old could guess at what the right answer might be.

Allow me to give you an example. I have his test results right here.

Consider Question 26:

Which of these statements is true about child passengers?

1. Children one or older and over 20 pounds should ride in the front seat.
2. Children under age of one should not ride in the front seat in air bag-equipped vehicles.
3. The front seat is generally safest for children six years of age and older.

The correct answer, of course, is (2). But consider the brain development of a 16-year-old, particularly one who has a lot of experience with little nephews in the age range of one to six.

Naturally, the manipulation of answer (2) eluded him, because he was seeking the least-worst answer, and easily chose a six-year-old to be in the front seat over anything mentioning a one-year-old.

His question to me, when he saw he had answered it wrong, tells it all: "Why did they ask about a one-year-old and air bags? Shouldn't a kid be, like 12, before they sit there, Dad?"

He's right, and the question-maker is wrong.

Case closed, but that also raises the issue of whether we should even be expecting kids his age to learn how to drive in our modern society.

Maybe the whole problem is that as a society have not bothered to develop a decent public transportation system. Like other parts of adulthood, voting and drinking, maybe the legal driving age should be raised too.

If I'm not mistaken, it was set at 16 at a time when we were largely a rural people. Even then, in my youth, it extracted a terrible toll to have teens behind the wheel.

Now? If the only way we can keep them from obtaining their permits is via bad writing, trick questions, and the like, maybe we need to find a better route to the destination we all,collectively, ought to be seeking.

Time Being Relative

2011-08-11T19:59:00.000-07:00

There are reasons to appreciate the perspective of a twelve-year-old over that of someone four or five times older, and vice-versa, but in the spirit of the former, today I enjoyed driving my youngest daughter back home from a vacation with friends up in Sonoma County.

She sees everything with fresh eyes. She said she'd never seen the fog rolling over the Marin Headlands like a waterfall today. Or that house way up above Sausalito (probably because she's usually in the backseat.)

But my favorite was about the unripe pear we plucked from a tree up-country before we began our long drive south.

It was firm, too firm to eat, and I told her with a bit of time it would become nicely edible.

Apparently, she interpreted that to mean time in the short-term sense.

As we reached San Francisco, she grabbed the pear and pressed it. "Feels still the same, no softer yet."

No indeed. Not quite yet.

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