Asia and America, Baseball, Women and Men, Sons and Daughters, Wives, Girlfriends and a World Full of Strangers (Online Dating Continued)

Asia y América, béisbol, mujeres y hombres, hijos e hijas, esposas, novias y un mundo por completo de los extranjeros, or(en línea el fechar continuado)

他人、続くオンラインで日付を記入することの十分のアジアおよびアメリカ、野球、女性および人、息子および娘、妻、ガールフレンドおよび世界

All of which comes back to us as: "Others, the Asia and America of the sufficient of the thing which enters date the online which continues, the baseball, the woman and the person, the son and the daughter, the wife, the girl friend and the world."

Wow. No matter we all have trouble understanding each other. As everyone who's read Deborah_Tannen knows, women and men speak different languages. Yet as hard as I've tried, again and again I've fallen victim to the gender differences in how we communicate our feelings. I can only imagine how men (or women) fare who remain blissfully unaware of how deep the chasm between the sexes actually is.

Then there are the anthropologists who study (for example) how men and women interact in a bar. The synchronicity of their movements if they are attracted to each other is a true tip-off, much as batters and base-stealers benefit from noting when a pitcher drops down as he pitches a curveball, or whatever, in my favorite sport, baseball.

For baseball fans, the race to the playoffs this year is a wonderful, late-season treat. The Detroit Tigers, of all teams, enjoy one of the best records in the major leagues. The Giants have young Matt Cain, who may eventually throw as many no-hitters as Nolan Ryan; and the Phillies have young Ryan Howard, who may eventually hit as many homeruns as Willie Mays.

The Giants also have Omar Vizquel, who is the greatest shortstop in the game, and lots of other veterans near the end of their careers. Including the big guy. Don't look now, but they are within striking distance of winning the NL Wild Card in the next three weeks. Stay tuned.

Today was bookmarked by time with my oldest son, Peter. I haven't been able to spend so much time with him since he was a little boy. We had breakfast at the Atlas Cafe, a neighborhood haunt -- lattes and chocolate croissants.

When I got home from work, he had the pork ribs boiling on the stove, giving our place a cozy smell as I came in from the wet, windy cold fog that has descended over our city. We ate and watched the Giants (and Cain) beat the Padres, 4-0, in the living room. (Since the little ones weren't here, we could break the rule of No Eating in the Living Room. Or, El ningún comer en la sala de estar . Or, 反響室で食べること, which, of course, comes back as "Eat in the Echo Chamber."

Hmmm. I like that. "Eat in the Echo Chamber." What the hell is an echo chamber? Maybe a blog like this one of mine, that probably nobody ever much reads. Oh, I know from the StatCounter tally, that thousands of page views have been recorded, but as an Internet denizen, I also know that many people may hit the page by mistake, back away quickly, fooling StatCounter perhaps, but certainly not me.

The average blog has five readers, like the fingers on your hand, the toes on your foot, or the cards in your poker hand.

StatCounter believes the visitors who have stopped by this modest corner of the blogosphere number as follows by country:

Num Perc. Country
1888 83.95% United States
68 3.02% Canada
66 2.93% Chile
51 2.27% Japan
30 1.33% United Kingdom
10 0.44% Unknown -
10 0.44% Singapore
9 0.40% Spain
7 0.31% Hong Kong
7 0.31% Philippines
6 0.27% India
6 0.27% Argentina
5 0.22% Netherlands
5 0.22% Indonesia
5 0.22% Germany
5 0.22% Qatar
4 0.18% Turkey
4 0.18% Australia
4 0.18% Mexico
4 0.18% Ireland
4 0.18% Dominican Republic
3 0.13% Myanmar
3 0.13% Portugal
3 0.13% France
3 0.13% Venezuela
3 0.13% Colombia
3 0.13% China
3 0.13% Belgium
2 0.09% Estonia
2 0.09% Taiwan
2 0.09% Syrian Arab Republic
2 0.09% Denmark
2 0.09% Peru
2 0.09% Italy
2 0.09% Uruguay
2 0.09% South Africa
2 0.09% Ecuador
1 0.04% Romania
1 0.04% Andorra
1 0.04% Poland
1 0.04% Sweden
1 0.04% New Zealand
1 0.04% Slovakia
1 0.04% Thailand
1 0.04% Oman
1 0.04% Norway
1 0.04% Malaysia
1 0.04% Kuwait
1 0.04% Finland

***

What does any of this have to do with online dating? My informant tells me that my previous reference to 30% of those who meet online actually meet in person, and the majority of those become intimate, was a study of married people only.

Hmmm.

Not to my taste. I don't wish to fool around with a married person, or with anyone who's still emotionally involved with someone else.

First, I don't want to hurt anyone else.

Second, and more importantly, I'm greedy. I want her to only be into me.

-30-

Songs we sing

You know what's great about the Web?

You can discover your own history.

Tonight, I was suddenly and inexplicably struck with curiosity about two vague memories, both involving live musical performances. I searched and found the first one, from a colleague and old friend, Ben Fong-Torres. Here is his memory:

"I wrote the songs for amusement; this was decades before radio shows concocted and aired parody songs every morning. But at Rolling Stone magazine in the Seventies, I continued my little hobby, and at least two songs were performed. One, to the tune of Bob Dylan's Hurricane (The Ballad of Reuben Carter), celebrated the magazine's big scoop in 1975 on the Patricia Hearst/SLA kidnap and aftermath. I vaguely recall doing the song, with real musicians behind me, on a couple of occasions, including a nightclub, the Boarding House:

Doorbell rang out in the Berkeley night
Into the apartment house they burst
Knocked down Steven Weed with hardly a fight
And made their getaway with Patty Hearst!

Here comes the story of the Rolling Stone
Of David Weir and of Howard Kohn
They found the trail of Patty Hearst
And they wrote about it first.


I remember that night very clearly, Ben. You were great on stage.

The second memory is harder to trace, but involves a kid from Sanibel Island, which is where we were in those days when we weren't in San Francisco. This guy was a country singer and he dedicated a song to me, based on the Patty Hearst stories, one night in southwest Florida, probably at a club in Ft. Myers or Ft. Myers Beach.

I heard later on that he made it, more or less, on the country music circuit, so I sure as hell wish I could remember his name. It'll probably come to me over the next few days.

The lithograph photographed above hangs in my living room. It was the artwork used to produce the cover page of Rolling Stone when Howard and I wrote our big story, one of several "15 minutes of fame" both of us have experienced before then and since. As I pull together the story of my own life in the coming years, I wish I had a tape of Ben and the musicians performing his ballad that night 30 years ago at the Boarding House.

But maybe these experiences are best left to the hazy mists of our memories? After all, we can't go back.

Ghosts in Trees

You'd think we were big on anniversaries in this country, if you watched TV, listened to the radio, or followed President George W. Bush's daily schedule of speeches. In a few days, the fifth-year anniversary of "9/11" will be celebrated by a political leader desperate to prevent his party from suffering what is shaping up to be a massive political defeat this November, despite the incompetence of the opposition party.

The only purpose behind the Bush administration's actions is political. There is simply no other justification for this frenzied activity. It does not require being a partisan (which I am not)* to recognize Bush's current series of scare-tactic speeches as the callous exploitative actions they most certainly are.

It's sadly ironic to see the tremendous buildup for the 5th anniversary of "9/11" so soon after the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. That, too, featured speeches by Bush as he photo-op'd his way through Biloxi, Gulfport, and New Orleans, pledging his word to help rebuild the ruined Gulf Coast. But his words sound cruelly empty to the people whose lives, one long year later, remain utterly ruined. Yes, the Coast will be rebuilt, but the people I'm talking about -- black, white, Latino, or Vietnamese, but all poor -- are being left out of the future.

The casinos are back. The developers are swarming. The politicians are posing. The media come, the media go. Lights, sound, action.

Then, a profound darkness, silence, and inaction set back in. The main tragedy of Katrina is that an entire generation of people, the working poor, who had been getting by as they had for decades, within vital communities, are now steadily losing their sense of hope.

The cruelest result of poverty is how it reduces a person's imagination. For, as long as you can dream of a better future for your children, the present circumstances are usually bearable. Now, all along the Gulf Coast, as well as in the poor wards of New Orleans, hope is fading. The President's words fall on ears that no longer can bear to listen.

The shame of Clinton and the Democrats is that they have not stepped forward to speak out on behalf of these people. Groups like Coastal Women for Change (please visit their site) are growing more frustrated as their sense of abandonment grows. Where are the political leaders who will turn talk into action? What good is a national media that comes down, shoots footage on anniversaries, but fails to explain that the human crisis is not easing but becoming ever greater with time?

Only NPR, among the major media, continues to do a good job.

What I and others are looking for is a politician with the guts to mobilize all the good-hearted Americans who not only were shocked by the images of poor people lacking the means to escape the storm a year ago, but who want this society to be democratized so that those at the bottom finally have a voice in their own future.

You won't find people anywhere in this nation who are friendlier, funnier, more generous, or more welcoming than the displaced residents of the Gulf Coast. But soon, if present trends continue, you won't be able to find people who are angrier, more bitter, or more alienated than these same folks.

For America, this is the true moral challenge of a generation. Next to it, the so-called "war on terror" is no more than a tiny pimple on an elephant's enormous ass.

* Just tonight my second wife, my oldest son and I were discussing the leading candidates for the 2008 election, John McCain and Hillary Clinton. I'm afraid my liberal friends would not appreciate the voting choice at least two of us would make in that contest. That could change if the Democrats mobilized around Katrina. Otherwise, they will lose these votes. At least McCain has a proven record of not being afraid to take a stand, regardless of polls and other distractions.

(Note: the photo above shows how Katrina shredded and splattered the plastic sheeting from boathouses into the trees of East Biloxi.)

Online Dating: the future is now

Fluffy Cats.psd

We're all playing with technology around here: I'm fixated on photoshopping pictures and paintings; Dylan's dubbing his mini-movies; Aidan's programming his new cell phone (a present for his 12th birthday, which is tomorrow) and playing RuneScape; and Julia's playing Poppit! Peter, meanwhile, is sharing his Burning Man photos with friends. We all have email; there are four computers on our home wireless system; three cellphones, one land line/fax, a scanner, a printer, three digital cameras, and a bunch of random accessories.

Yesterday's technology stands silent. Two TVs, a couple CD/radio sound systems, several old cameras, laptops, telephones, tape recorders, a VCR, a DVD player, and so on. Nobody's using them.

The adoption cycle for new technologies is almost (but not quite) frightening. We are far from the most literate family, technologically, around here. Hell, there are at least a half dozen wireless networks accessible from this house, which is one indication, but people more into gadgets than I am own fancier versions of everything around here, and additional toys/utensils that don't appeal to me.

As I watch my children manipulate technologies to their purposes, it's easy to see why there's no turning back. These tools are not only way too much fun, they are essential for how my children will live and learn and work. They are the platforms from which their creativity and their social contributions will be launched, as well as the basis for how they maintain their social networks and make new friends.

***

Being a father, especially as a single father, seems to give me a lens for peering into the future.In a few months, when I become for the first time a grandfather, I suspect this lens will expand its reach. Right now, when I think ahead, it is the years 2035-2057 that seem within my grasp. Those are the years that each of my children, successively, will reach the age I am now. My new little grandson will push that horizon out another eight years.

Of course, unless I become the oldest man in the world, I will be long gone by then. It is, in fact, weird, strange and perhaps somewhat perverse to honestly consider the odds I would have to beat to make it to the first year of that span, 2035. Actuaries would certainly calculate my demise as somewhere between now and then, particularly if they had access to all pertinent information. I suspect most of the older Baby Boomers (as a cohort, we are now 43-60) feel the way I do -- that our time is limited, so why not tell the truth, reach for meaning, contribute whatever we have to offer, while we still retain our vitality.

I imagine that one thing some of my kids and grandkids will decide to do is explore the digital archives of their forebearers. It is sad that our history for all intents and purposes will have started with the invention of the world wide web, but that differs from the present only in degree. For young people today, the world before TV and movies is vague and ill-formed.

Of course, academics will continue to make use of the books and other written documents that still form the bulk of our intellectual heritage in the early part of this 21st century. But this is really the end of that era, the hegemony of the written word. We are reverting to an older model -- the oral tradition -- via email and other interactive communication channels...talk/writing, write/talking, chatting,SkypeOuting, i.e., connecting with each other from anywhere, to anywhere, anytime, all over the world in ways traditionally confined to our ancestral villages.

The implications of this transformation are awesome. Consider the most basic human interaction -- how new couples meet. A friend familiar with the studies tells me that 30% of people who meet online eventually meet in person. The majority of them then have sex.

Sounds like a new paradigm to me.

Sort of like Fluffy Cats, as adjusted.

Entrepreneurial Love

Happily, more and more women are moving into the world of startups in Silicon Valley and San Francisco. I don't have firm statistics, but my eyes don't lie. It's still a white male-dominated domain, at the top of many companies, but the actual workforces are diverse in all the ways demographers like to categorize people.

One place to see this diversity is Google's campus, but it is true all over the valley. The main promise of the Internet -- the emergence of a democratized global interactive network -- depends on it.

The link I posted yesterday We Feel Fine is one important example of what our future could be like -- where we have tools that allow us to integrate our emotional lives with millions of others in real time.

As I have stated several times, I only became fully aware of how much my own emotions change moment to moment this past January, when it was explained to me in language I could understand. So I may be an emotional "baby." But it clearly is the case that whatever we may be feeling at any particular moment is shared by many others around us, though we may not recognize that with the conventional tools available to us.

That is what's changing. On We Feel Fine , you can see the correlation between your feelings and the weather, for example, or how they correspond with your gender, age, and location. It's a digital validation of whatever emotional state you may find yourself in. It may not be a panacea for loneliness, alienation, or isolation, but to me, at least, this site is a place that makes our world as a whole feel a little less lonely, alienated, and isolated...

***

My 2nd, 5th and 6th graders walked to school this foggy morning with their new backpacks and lunch boxes and nervously excited faces. Julia's main focus seems to be on the news that one of her teachers hands out candy on field trips. Dylan and Aidan are worried about their homework loads.

So, summer is officially over and fall has begun. Tomorrow is Aidan's birthday. He'll turn 12. Having six kids means I have six birthdays a year that stand out from all others. One way to navigate through time is by anticipating upcoming birthdays. I've long since stopped anticipating my own; they come and go so rapidly now I can perhaps be forgiven for losing track of how old I apparently have become.

But as of tomorrow, time elapsed in terms of the six-birthday metric will jump from 67% to 83% of 2006. Only Julia's will remain...

-30-

Your first kiss 1.1

Before I get started on this subject, I ask you to visit this website, the most amazing one I have ever seen... We Feel Fine .

Now, imagine a line. Think about how this line might connect all of us, all over the world. Whatever we might be doing or feeling, one thing is for sure. We are alive at this same moment in time.

Tomorrow, we may not all be. A bus may hit one of us. Another, fallen by a stroke or heart attack. Here, one dies in war; there, one dies by racial hatred. Sexist violence kills that one; economic violence removes this one, though no one will cop to it.

A lack of health insurance kills this woman's baby. Being conceived on the wrong side of earth at the wrong moment in time dooms this baby. But if your parents happened to make love in this place, at this time, you may be born to the possibility of great wealth, good health, and an endless set of possibilities.

All of us who count ourselves as among the living, right now, have a story to tell. And that, of course, is what this blog is about. Have you stopped to think recently about that first kiss you experienced with someone new? Have you considered the meaning of that kiss? Do you remember where and when it occurred and why? Can you still honor that meaning?

In the words of the immortal John Lennon, a man I am happy to have known, all too briefly, "all you need is love." Let's pray he was right...

Summer's Dead, Long Live Summer

Dusty cars and dusty people with dusty tents and dusty coolers streamed back into the Bay Area today from Burning Man in Nevada. Two cars pulled up to this house: Our upstairs neighbor's rented van, and later, my car, driven by Peter.

The little kids and I yesterday did school shopping -- lunch boxes, notebooks, calculators, paper, pens, math supplies, etc. One thing we didn't have to buy this year -- pencils. I got the ones in this photo at a garage sale our neighbors across the street had a few weeks back.

The school year starts for the little guys on Wednesday. Peter leaves in two weeks for Cal Tech. Larry's starting Med School. Sometime soon, I'll start teaching memoir writing to boomers. Next Sunday, "Fall Ball" starts -- Aidan's sixth season of Little League. Julia and Aidan's soccer seasons are poised to begin.

While everyone celebrates the start of something, I'm in a more melancholy mood. Once again, summer has come to an end. This one was far better than I ever could have expected last spring. My expectation was to never leave town at all this summer; to work, and take care of the kids on weekends.

But I got three short vacations -- Mountain Home Ranch, Gold Country, and Vancouver. When I was a teenager, I used to mourn summer ending for all the usual reasons. Hot weather in Michigan typically fades by September. No more swimming, no more fishing. No more seeing the girls who were the object of my summer crushes. No more fresh blueberries or corn on the cob. (Note to youth: Everything was seasonal in the old days.)

This summer I felt closer to being a teenager than any in decades.

My big sister, Nancy, sent me an old photo today -- Christmas 1961. Kathy and I wear the classic glasses of the day. Carole didn't need any yet. Our nephew Jim was one.

It's the beginning of fall here. The apples fall in clusters out back, the grasses are brown, and the pumpkin plant knows it only has eight weeks to deliver its goods. You can never go back. You try to love someone; she leaves you. She says everything will change with time; that you'll both feel different in the future.

The future never arrives. All there is is the day to day. Day by day summer crawled along. Then, one day, a new breeze blew some fresh feelings your way. You remember the precise moment -- Golden Gate Park, the arboretum, early July. Suddenly all of your moods shifted.

If you are the type who likes to care for people, take care of them, give them things, like love, it becomes so ingrained as your habit that you forget that some people don't really want what you have to give. They find your attention unwanted, an unnecessary burden, an intrusion on their private existence. It's true that with separation you can begin to forget how to love someone, especially when it was someone who never wanted all your attention anyway. So, with the passage of time and distance, you begin to revert to your essential self, the one who loves without reservation, without conditions.

At this point, you can make a foolish mistake, perhaps out of nostalgia, or misguided sentimentalism. Never try to take care of someone who does not want to be taken care of. To do so is an insult to her, and deeply damaging to you.

There are breakups, and there's getting "obliterated." (Thanks, Shea.)

I hope I never get obliterated again. I know this much. The new David can still give his heart away freely. But he listens more carefully. Any reservations she might have are duly noted. I won't ever try to convince anyone anymore. And I won't chase after anyone.

If it's mutual, everything will fall into place in time. If it's one-sided, you get obliterated. I'm not doing the rescue thing ever again, and I'm not into getting obliterated by others; I'm good enough at finding my own self-destructive impulses, thank you.

Once Peter leaves for his PhD program, I'll be living alone 57% of the time, and my kids will be here 43% of the time, just like always. I'm single. I see friends, but at the end of the night I'm alone.

Why will I continue writing this blog? Because I hope to discover a new future for myself, and I hope to at least suggest another model for human love relationships than those many of us have experienced in the past. Something that can begin once our summers are past...

Liquified Rare Sea Glass

Ten-year-old Dylan recently showed me how to manipulate photos in PhotoShop. The above image in its original form appears at my photo blog Seaglass (click here to visit).


I've been playing with these photos on airplanes, when reading can be hard on the eyes. Here's another one: Liquid Browns. Again, the original of the photo is posted at Seaglass.

Yesterday, one my friends asked me "What is seaglass?" She explained that in her country there isn't any word she is aware of, but I think she may have been wrong, because I found this 海ガラス, which seems to translate back quite well. Maybe the cultural difference is that in America, we collect the stuff, turn it into jewelry, and even mass produce it in various forms, including as bags of marbles.

Vancouver, being so wonderfully and accessibly multi-cultural, reminded me of the best part of my own country -- its diverse melting pot of immigrant cultures, always blending into new combinations of ethnicities and colors. On our northern border, a similar experiment in cultural evolution is taking place. All over North America, new people from distant places are joining our society, bringing an energy for innovation that fuels economic growth and political change, linguistic pollination and mixed racial identities.

If there is to be a future for this world, its look and feel can be glimpsed in the streets of Vancouver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Honolulu, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Sydney, and Kuala Lumpur, Taipei, Papaete -- all cities I have visited and all nodes on the emerging network of Pacific Basin centers for trade, investment, and tourism. Of course there are many more key ports I've not yet seen -- Seoul, Saigon and parts of South America.

As I gazed out over Vancouver from my hotel balcony the other night, I felt like I could easily have been in any of these other cities, with the same Pacific breeze cooling my face from every angle and every corner of a vast new world still struggling to be born...

Steps of Ancestors

This street musician was bagpiping on the site of an old graveyard in Stanley Park yesterday, here in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. My mother's family spread across the continent when they immigrated from Scotland in the 1920's. Some settled in Halifax, Nova Scotia on the far east coast; some out here in Vancouver, on the distant west coast; the rest of us in Detroit, right at the center of North America.

Having now visited both of the far-flung Canadian cities, I see I can easily feel at home there, especially Vancouver.
Everywhere I looked were traces of the Scots, from the bagpiper, to meat pies in the delis, top Allsorts licorice and shortbread in the shops, the plaids of the clans here and there, and of course the ruddy faces so familiar, each looking like they could be one of my long-lost aunts or cousins or grandparents.

Vancouver is such an easy-going, friendly, pretty city with lively cafes, pubs and parks. The population is a diverse outpost of the Pacific Basin, with many Asians arriving in recent decades. Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Korean, Tagalog, Punjabi, and Vietnamese all can be heard on the downtown streets.

The harbor is busy with both commercial and private boats. Downtown is crisscrossed with bridges and ferries connecting the islands and peninsulas that make up the greater Vancouver area. The "public markets" are filled with fresh fruit and vegetables, lots of it organic produce. The hotel's policy is to only change sheets and towels if guests request it; cards in the rooms note how wasteful this practice is around a globe that faces increasing shortages of vital resources. The hotel also urges guests to recycle.

All this was part of a refreshingly progressive local culture, tolerant and supportive of the many interracial couples; friendly and curious about visitors, safe, clean, cheerful. The seafood is subperb. The drinking water is sweet and fresh. The air feels pure. It is my first visit but only the first of many, I hope.