Under a feathery sky

The rain forecast for this area didn't arrive today. Instead, early morning commuters were greeted with a strangely unexpected sight -- blue sky, sunshine, and the shredded remainders of a weather front hanging over us in impossibly soft and poetic loops no painter could capture. The wisps of clouds were twisted this way and that, as if landfall here in Northern California had broken them into a thousand gentle jigsaw pieces, much as the Internet breaks each new software release any company tries to launch here in our little corner of this world.

There are two broad rivers of commuters on this particular far edge of America, (called 101 and 280) and both flow both ways at all times, ignoring the laws of nature. Those of us from the City move like schools of brightly colored fish southward to the Valley, while suburbanites of various stripes cluster into their own schools and stream northward into San Francisco.

Both flows reverse at the end of each workday, and we all pass each other once again, strangers in the night, never knowing what it might be like to actually meet one another, and we probably never will. Meantime, me being who I am, I suddenly noticed the tag line advertising the phone number on a UPS truck the other morning. It is 1-800-pick-ups!

Yes. That explains that company's success. Not too subliminal that -- getting picked up is pretty much we'd all like to do, right?

***

It is time for me to start packing for New York. My companion this trip will be my 7-year-old daughter. She thinks she has never been to the City, and that is more or less true, because she is too young to remember her previous visits.

So we'll call this her first, and I'll try to make it special. The centerpiece of our brief visit, and the reason I am going, is to participate, as I do every six months, as a member of the editorial board of The Nation magazine. If you are unfamiliar with this special publication, please visit their excellent website, at The Nation .

One of the things I love most about The Nation is the conference room where we will hold our twice-annual meeting. On the walls are images of some of the great issues in this magazine's rich history as the longest-running political magazine in America.This reproduction dates from 1865, and includes an article by Abraham Lincoln.

How cool is that?

I also hope to show Julia that our family has a long relationship with The Nation. I started publishing there a quarter century ago, admittedly not very impressive compared to Honest Abe, but my main pride is not related to my pieces but to a certain issue in 1989, when Julia's big sister Laila Weir and her friend Cristina Martin published an interview with Jessica Mitford, the legendary muckraker.

So, that is our family connection to that room and the stacks of past issues. Maybe someday a long time from now, Julia will return to New York and return to The Nation, which I am quite confident, will still be thriving, because no combination of forces will ever be able to kill off the essentially progressive spirit that flows through the veins of Americans. When she does go there, she can see these posters of issues past, and also perhaps locate the edition containing that interview by her big sister -- who, if I am not mistaken, was one of the youngest authors in this wonderful magazine's entire history.