Tuesday, May 12, 2026

Some Write to Remember...and Some Write to Forget

The line between what we remember and what we imagine to have happened in the past is a fine one. That line skinnifies with age. Thus, every skilled nursing facility and assisted living facility I stayed in six+ years ago had a "memory care" section.

Most of the time, the door to that area was locked. When someone needed admittance, they knocked loudly and an attendant came. I watched patients get wheeled in and heard the sound of the door locking behind them.

It's just random selection, I'm sure, but I never saw anyone come back out.

***

To work as a teacher requires a fundamental assumption: That you have something of value to impart.

People go through a complex curriculum of subjects before they get certified as teachers; I'm curious whether addressing this assumption is on the agenda at any of the institutions that offer those certifications.

There is always that blank space on any form you have to fill out about yourself that asks about your profession. Teachers can say "educator." Others may say "retired librarian." I always write "journalist."

But when I think carefully about the past half-century+, almost as much of my energy went into teaching as it did into journalism. All of it was uncertified.

It started when I was 22 in the Peace Corps, teaching Afghan students English. It started up again when I was in my 30s. Having published a bunch of stuff I was asked to teach journalism, first at U-C, Berkeley, later at Stanford and San Francisco State.

Those were the formal teaching jobs I had, but there were many others along the way. My students ranged in age from 7 to 95. The younger ones were second-graders whose teachers asked me to visit and discuss the global environmental issues that concerned me as a journalist.

The first time I remember doing that was in 1983, when I was 36.

Later, I taught through U-C Extension. Those classes were at night and the students were noticeably less privileged than my students enrolled in the U-C and Stanford graduate school classes.

Still later, I was asked to teach memoir-writing to senior citizens through the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at S.F. State and U-C. It needs to be noted that I have not to this date ever published a memoir, though I have published articles that probably fall into that category of writing.

Most of the students were older than I was at the time, which was challenging. Since the goal was to encourage them to write stories based on their lives, I knew they would have to confront that basic assumption: That they had something of value to impart to others.

My technique was to start each class by asking for volunteers who would be willing to talk about their lives. As they did this, invariably and universally in my experience, the other students gave them positive feedback.

This, in turn, seemed to motivate them to take the next step -- to actually begin the process of writing it all down. A little bit each day will do. Five hundred words a day will yield 182,500 words over a year's time.

That's plenty enough for a memoir.

One of the more intriguing teaching experiences I had was to sit at a table with the third-grade boys at my children's school who were having "trouble with math. Often this meant they would disrupt the other students by acting out. They seemed to have trouble sitting still and concentrating.

There were only a few such boys, four or five per class, and the teachers had me sit with them at a table in the rear of the classroom, while they conducted math class for the rest of the students. When I asked the teachers what I should do, the answer always was "I'm not sure. Just try to keep them quiet."

The only idea I could come up with was to start a chain story-telling circle. Typically, I would start the story ("Once in a place far from here, a group of boys...") and then ask each student to add a line. They embraced this approach enthusiastically. and most importantly, from a discipline perspective, they stayed quiet and listened to one another.

Over time, I tried to work the math concepts the teacher was conveying to the other students into our story circles. Ever meet a rhombus chased by pirates? I have.

When my youngest son was in the third grade, he pulled his chair over to our table. He didn’t need extra help in math, so I glanced at his teacher; she gave me a nod back that it was okay.

I always visited the school for this purpose on Thursday mornings. Now, with my son on the team, the story circles were getting better. He is, and was then, a gentle, sensitive person, cerebral but empathic and funny in a self-deprecating way. 

After completing my math counseling on those Thursdays 15 years ago, I would get in my car and head south to Palo Alto and my writing classes at Stanford. There, nobody had trouble sitting still or concentrating. Nobody disrupted the class, nobody had trouble learning. Nobody had trouble participating and nobody had trouble writing stories.

Over time, in this group we dug into some of the deeper motivations behind the urge to tell stories. 

And that led me to the title of this essay.

HEADLINES:

TODAY’s LYRIC:

“Hotel California” by the Eagles

How they danced in the courtyard
Sweet summer sweat
Some dance to remember
Some dance to forget

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Monday, May 11, 2026

From the Edges

Thie earliest version of this essay is from June 2007.

“Writing is more than living…it is being conscious of living.”

-- Anne Morrow Lindbergh 

Yesterday, I finally got the tides right. The result was a harvest of green seaglass and pebbles.

Of course, I couldn’t resist picking up other colors as well, but green is my current passion. When you’re walking along the tideline at a beach, head down, examining the gifts from the sea*, there’s much to choose from. 

I was lost in the moment, thinking of the elegant simplicity of the writing style of the small band of American literary environmentalists whose work in the 1950s introduced me to the principles of ecology. Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Rachel Carson, John Storer.

Those writers also knew the unique pleasure of strolling along the beach just at the edge of the continent, seeking treasures. You can’t be too greedy about it; the sea will give you what it pleases, when it pleases.

But persistence has its rewards. I was so engrossed in my search that I barely took note of the others around me -- several people and dogs. At one point, approaching a rock outcropping that one can breach only at low tide, I noticed an oddity -- a beach patrol jeep drove past me, up to that spot, then hung a U-turn and started back. I waved to the driver, who then stopped and lowered his window.

“We’re looking for a lost Chihuahua mix, about 15 pounds, black, black collar, no tags,” he explained. “Since I can’t drive any further due to that rock so will you keep an eye out?”

“Sure,” I answered.

I rounded the outcrop and continued southward along Ocean Beach. It was windy and the waves were impressive — surfers were paddling out to the highest breakers offshore. 

Soon, I was into good seaglass territory -- it often appears in clusters, similarly sized to the pebbles and shell fragments surrounding it. In these banks of natural (and man-made) detritus from the sea is written a history of the relentless combined power of currents, sand, sun, and waves, grinding all things into softened, polished fragments of their former selves.

Like what life does to us. 

p.s. I didn’t find the dog.

Endnote: “Gift from the Sea” is the title of one of Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s books.

HEADLINES:

  • Checkmate in Iran (Atlantic)

  • Trump rejects Iran’s ceasefire proposal response. (NPR)

  • Long Overlooked, Caspian Sea Provides Strategic Trade Route for Iran (NYT)

  • Iran responds to US ceasefire proposal as drones target Gulf nations (AP)

  • A Private Call Reveals Democrats’ Desperation Over Tossing of Map (NYT)

  • Platner points to Ohio GOP defying courts in response to Virginia redistricting ruling (The Hill)

  • Tennessee redistricting plan splits Memphis neighbors and reshapes midterms as other states follow (AP)

  • Rapid changes in power have become the new normal in American politics. Here’s why (CNN)

  • Violent crime rates plunge in America’s big cities (Axios)

  • Trump Exempted Some of the Nation’s Biggest Polluters From Air Quality Rules. All It Took Was an Email. (ProPublica)

  • Keir Starmer’s party lost big in U.K. local elections. Here’s what comes next (NPR)

  • U.S.-China Rivalry Reaches South American Skies (NYT)

  • Russia accuses Ukraine of violating US-brokered 3-day truce (AP)

  • I Have Some Questions for the New Florida U.S. History Curriculum (Atlantic)

  • All Those A.I. Note Takers? They’re Making Lawyers Very Nervous. (NYT)

  • WWII Veteran Standing On Field Not Planned (Onion)

 

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Sunday, May 10, 2026

Off to College, Again

In one of my latest dreams, I was a 79-year-old freshman heading into U-C, Santa Barbara. Nobody in the dream seemed to think that was strange, although everybody else was around 20.

As I navigated my way through an unending range of options to find a major, I (unsurprisingly) picked journalism.

But when I filled out the form listing my experience, so they could place me at the proper level, the administrators suggested it would be better for me to be a teacher than a student.

So I decided to look for another major, something where I would be less qualified. It turned out there was an aerial broadcast unit, so I met with the faculty head for that.

He was also an older gentleman, hard of hearing, who told me to write down my cellphone number so he could call me when their flying gadget was ready.

I tried to write down my number but I got stuck, not quite getting it right. Finally, after trying over and over I did, and just as that happened I woke up. 

Back in reality, although I have no plans to re-enter college myself, my two oldest grandsons — James and Luca — head off to college later this year.

James will enter U-C, Davis, and Luca, U-C, Santa Cruz.

HEADLINES:

 

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Saturday, May 09, 2026

A Secret Rendezvous

UPDATE: The tomato plant mystery remains unsolved. One plant remains, several days after the other five disappeared. We’ve not yet captured the intruder on camera.

NOTE: I published the following essay in the early stages of the pandemic. It still feels relevant six years later.

It isn’t the extraordinary things -- the breakthroughs, the awards, the dream vacations. It isn’t even the special moments we knew we were falling in love.

Those are our memories and they remain as intact as ever.

Rather it is the ordinary things that we did almost without thinking that have been stolen from us. This came to me as I rode masked in a car through my old neighborhood one day on the way to the neurologist.

There was that one special cluster of wisteria under a tree. A lone hummingbird usually was hovering among the flowers as I passed. I’d stop and it often rose to greet me, face to face. It became our secret rendezvous.

There was the house that always seemed to be under construction. A large truck was parked in the driveway; the workers went in and out of the site through an opening where the garage door used to be. I’d always stop to chat with them.

“Buenos dias hombres. ¿Cómo es el trabajo?” “Hola tio. Lamento que nuestro camión esté en tu camino. Usa tu bastón!”

There was the cafe where I used to order tuna melts. Now we were getting close to the office. There were the benches where my work friends who smoked would gather on breaks.

I liked the people who smoked. They remind me of my Dad.

There is the corner where I turned to get to the office. Every morning at 9:25 sharp, the UPS delivery truck arrived. Also at 9:25 every morning, I arrived.

As I swiped my ID badge to enter the front door, other colleagues would often be arriving. I enjoyed holding the door open for them.

Many hours later, I would reverse my route and return home.

It was all so simple, so thoughtless; it’s just how I passed my days.

But on this particular day in the car, I was just passing through. My son had set up an appointment for me because he felt I was still too weak and frail from my illnesses to get there on my own.

Meanwhile, I’d developed the idea that I was like an onion and it was quite an elaborate identity, with layers and layers of complexity. 

I asked my son on our way to the neurologist if I should tell her about the onion concept. He said, “No, Dad, let’s save that one for another day.” At the meeting the doctor administered the cognition test -- the same one they gave me at the hospital many times.

My score, she reported, was 100 percent. Just like Trump!

She explained that I’d had a stroke and that I had symptoms, including tremors, consistent with Parkinson’s. That is why my hospital doctor had prescribed Carbidopa Levodopa.

I loved the sound of that drug, Carbidopa Levodopa. I used to play with the nurses when they brought it to me. “Can you say that quickly six times?”

“Carbidopa levodopa carbidopa levodopa carbidopa levodopa carbidopa levodopa carbidopa levodopa carbidopa levodopa.”

They all could do it and it sounded lovely to me. Most of them wore a far-away expression as they did it.

This particular day, as it happens, would be last time I drove along that route. So it was the end for the wisteria, the hummingbird, the workers, the benches, the smokers, the UPS truck and my ID badge.

It was not, however, the end of the Carbidopa Levodopa.

***

There are people who think that it doesn’t matter that a man in power repeatedly used his money and access to sexually abuse women. That saddens me.

That there are people who support a coward, an obvious bully, a man who abuses other people from behind his shield of bodyguards, saddens me.

That there are people who don’t care that such a man attacks my colleagues in the press who are only doing their jobs saddens me very deeply.

That there are people, many people, who buy his bullshit, saddens me, and yes, even angers me.

I didn’t devote 54 years trying to practice socially responsible journalism and survive a stroke for it to come to this.

So yes I am nostalgic, I’m wistful, I miss what I’ve lost. But that stroke didn’t kill me. 

I still have my voice.

HEADLINES:

  • Court rejects Virginia redistricting in a blow to Democrats’ counter to Trump, GOP (NPR)

  • US fires on and disables 2 more Iranian tankers as tensions rise in the Strait of Hormuz (AP)

  • Trump threatens EU with ‘much higher’ tariffs if no trade deal signed by new deadline (CNBC)

  • April jobs report: Economy adds 115,000 jobs, far better than expected (Yahoo)

  • Emerging picture shows Reform gains as Labour counts losses in heartland seats (BBC)

  • Prime Minister Keir Starmer vowed to fight on to deliver on his promise to bring "change" to Britain after his Labour Party suffered heavy losses in local elections. (Reuters)

  • Polls in California Reflect a Chaotic Governor’s Race (NYT)

  • Trump reveals what he told Rubio to convey to the Pope — and it’s the thing he keeps saying on TV (Independent)

  • Russia and Ukraine accused each other of violating a unilateral two-day ceasefire announced by Russian President Vladimir Putin to cover the anniversary celebrations of the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany. (Reuters)

  • ABC Accuses Government of Violating First Amendment (NYT)

  • Amanpour expresses ‘concern’ over future of CNN, citing ‘ideological realignment’ at CBS (The Hill)

  • A deadly hantavirus outbreak aboard a cruise ship in the Atlantic is unlikely to spread globally like the coronavirus did, even though the virus has a long incubation period and some of the ship’s passengers have already disembarked, the World Health Organization said. [HuffPost]

  • Meta Is Dying. It’s About Time. (NYT)

  • Anthropic’s Mythos set off a cybersecurity ‘hysteria.’ Experts say the threat was already here (CNBC)

  • Sam Altman had a bad day in court (BI)

  • Five Ways A.I. Search Beats an Old-School Google Search (NYT)

  • Tech is turning increasingly to religion in a quest to create ethical AI (AP)

  • A.I. Populism Is Here. And No One Is Ready. (NYT)

  • Taylor Swift Fires Fixer Who Forgot To Kill Justin Baldoni (Onion)

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Friday, May 08, 2026

A Lost World

Until the early 1990s, print journalism had relied on essentially the same technology ever since well before the American Revolution.

Newspapers, broadsheets, magazines, and books had all existed when the Constitution was written and their co-dependence was critical to how democracy in North America started.

The Constitution with its First Amendment guaranteeing our rights wasn’t broadcast and it wasn’t posted to the Web. It didn’t get tweeted or followed on Instagram. No one made a YouTube video about it. You couldn’t tell your friends on Facebook or TikTok about it. You also could not scroll through it on your cellphone or send a text about it.

Of course, earlier in the 20th century another form of electronic technology, radio, had disrupted the publishing industry, followed by a few decades its close cousin television, but the federal government had regulated both of those much more tightly than print — largely to minimize the potential for authoritarian abuse.

The initial regulatory structure for the airwaves was established in the 1920s and led by Herbert Hoover, who was the leading voice for how to preserve free speech while managing the anti-democratic threat posed by radio. The Communications Act of 1934 codified these principles and extended them to telecommunications.

But by the time web browsers came along in the last decade of the century, the government chose not to apply its broadcast regulatory system to the Internet for fear of stifling the growth of a lucrative new industry.

Congress debated what to do at length and the result was Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. That regulation essentially guaranteed the freedom of web-based companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple and (soon) Google, Facebook, and Twitter to host user-generated content without being liable for its accuracy or fairness.

This instantly put both print and broadcast media outlets at a major disadvantage, one from which they have never recovered. What it actually meant in practice is that anyone could now call himself or herself a journalist and attract an audience for their claims, however bizarre and undocumented they might be.

Millions of people quickly took advantage of that opportunity and new websites popped up everywhere. Among them were a handful, like Wired, Salon and Slate, that attempted to preserve the quality standards of traditional journalism during the transition to this new interactive digital world, with varying degrees of success. (I worked at both Salon and Wiredduring this period.)

But the traditional media and new media alike were quickly overwhelmed by the sheer volume of new information sources. Very rapidly, the existing world of media began to crumble into ruins.

Thirty years later, it’s fair to say we are paying the price for what’s been lost. Now we live in an information ocean polluted by conspiracy theories that help authoritarians and weaken democracy.

HEADLINES:

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Thursday, May 07, 2026

Imagining and Predicting

“I cannot define the real problem, therefore I suspect there’s no real problem, but I’m not sure there’s no real problem.” -- Richard Feynman

One of the most confusing things about our imagination is when it takes us to a place we can’t go to physically. 

We know the universe is vast and that the odds of other inhabitable worlds are extremely good. We also know that the sun will ultimately explode and die, rendering life on this planet impossible. So for our species to survive we will eventually have to travel.

While we believe these things to be true, our ability to do anything about them is supposedly limited by the laws of physics. On the other hand, quantum mechanics, suggests none of those constraints are immutable -- that space and time and consciousness are all more or less constructs of our imagination.

Thinking too hard about all this will take us around the circle Feynman so eloquently described. There seems to be no escape.

But some of us yearn to break away from the constraints that bind us to our current reality. That includes the journalists stuck covering reality in its gritty detail every day. That is where some combination of art and fiction may provide relief, as our most imaginative impulses take the form of music, dance, painting, sculpture, film, novels, short stories, poems and more.

These help deliver an alternative future to us. Meanwhile, predicting it is, at best, a crap shoot.

The book “Super Forecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction,” by Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner, describes a massive effort by an army of volunteers to forecast global events. According to this research, once they given the best evidence, about two percent of those involved prove to be “super forecasters,” able with uncanny accuracy to figure out what is going to happen next about almost anything.

Note to self: I’m not one of them.

HEADLINES:

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Wednesday, May 06, 2026

The Intimidator

Donald Trump just can’t let his loss in the 2020 election go. 

You’d think retaking the White House in 2024 would have satisfied his urge for revenge, but clearly it did not.

There never has been any evidence of significant fraud in 2020.

Yet Trump has his Justice Department seeking the identities of thousands of poll workers in Fulton County, Georgia, a few months after seizing the ballots from the 2020 election there.

Why? The only feasible reason for this now is to harass and intimidate them, perhaps with an eye toward undermining this year’s midterm elections in the process.

It would be difficult to overestimate the amount of damage to our electoral system that Trump has already done by these and other actions.

He refused to concede his loss in 2020; instead he incited the mob to attack Congress on January 6th. And since regaining power, he’s pardoned all those responsible for that riot, further undermining our criminal justice system and rewarding criminals for their loyalty to him and his demonstrably false claims.

It is abundantly clear that Donald Trump wants to go down in history as the greatest U.S. President.

But many historians may consider him the worst. 

*** 

In the California gubernatorial debate last night there was no clear winner but three of the seven — Democrats Matt Mahan and Antonio Villaraigosa and Republican Chad Bianco — looked out of their league.

The three remaining Democrats — Xavier Becerra, Katie Porter and Tom Steyer — and one Republican, Steve Hilton, performed relatively well. Porter and Steyer will probably split the progressive vote, while Becerra seems to be the “establishment” candidate, under fire from everyone else.

Hilton, who has Trump’s endorsement, may be one of the two finalists to emerge from the upcoming primary, when only two can move on to the general election this fall.

UPDATE : On the tomato plant mystery. This one is headed for a bad ending. On a rainy, windy overnight, the thief returned to make off with two more plants, leaving only one survivor from the original six. Unfortunately, the wind also knocked the camera over, so we have no footage of the crime.

HEADLINES:

  • Trump says Hormuz operation paused amid US, Tehran talks (Al Jazeera)

  • Iran has hit far more U.S. military assets than reported, satellite images show. (WP)

  • White House gave Iran private message before new Hormuz operation (Axios)

  • Trump keeps changing his timeline for ending the Iran war (WP)

  • US intelligence assessments indicate that the time Iran would need to build a nuclear weapon has not changed since last summer. (Reuters)

  • Trump Tries to Downplay Economic Effects of the Iran War (NYT)

  • Sherrod Brown wins Democratic Senate nomination in Ohio, setting up a key battleground race (NBC)

  • Seven state senators in Indiana who helped defeat Trump’s plan to redraw their state’s voting map last year faced Republican opponents endorsed by Trump — most were defeated. (WP)

  • Key moments from CNN’s California governor primary debate (CNN)

  • Republicans propose $1 billion in taxpayer dollars to secure Trump ballroom (NBC)

  • Is Todd Blanche Already a Worse Attorney General Than Pam Bondi? (Slate)

  • F.D.A. Blocked Publication of Research Finding Covid and Shingles Vaccines Were Safe (NYT)

  • Want more Black representatives? Elect more Democrats. (Silver Bulletin)

  • G.O.P. Proposes $1 Billion for Security Improvements in Ballroom Project (NYT)

  • 16 days from momentum to meltdown in Canada-US trade talks (Politico)

  • Why Europe’s car industry is at the centre of a new US trade war (Al Jazeera)

  • Anthropic CEO warns of cyber ‘moment of danger’ as AI exposes thousands of vulnerabilities (CNBC)

  • Roomba inventor unveils a companion robot that’s more pet than helper (Mashable)

  • States across the wildfire-prone Western US are using AI for early detection (AP)

  • Coinbase cuts 14% of staff, citing AI (BI)

  • Anthropic and Wall Street Giants Join Forces to Create New A.I. Firm (NYT)

  • ‘I have an A because I use Chat’: What UC students say about using AI — and whether it’s cheating (SFC)

  • Epidemiologists Confirm First Airborne Transmission Of Mar-A-Lago Face (Onion)

 

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