Being Super

Where do I start? That is always the hardest decision. Maybe, tonight, I'll start with books, even as music is pounding in my head.

Books are brain food; music is heart food. Art, your own art, is soul food.

One of the nice parts of living in San Francisco is the opportunity to get to know many artists. In the early '70s, a cultural revolution was raging in this town. Psychedelic posters, political photographs, plus primordial products proactively penetrated practically, potentially, potently popular places, positively.

Where was I? I hate it when this happens. Alliteration slips out of my lips, or my fingertips, and there's no way for me to stop it. I think I was looking for a synonym for "market."

Back then, leftists activists like me considered market economics to be the enemy of all we held dear. We looked to Che Guevara, Mao Tse Tung, V. I. Lenin, and many others to lead us in a different direction, a much more utopian vision, one based, quite frankly on our hearts, even if it ostensibly was intellectual.

Nope, it was emotional. The intellectual integrity of Communism turned out to be deeply flawed. But it was a nice try.

Anyway, in the '60s, the old Commies were still active, more or less like beneficent uncles guarding their wayward nephews and nieces -- those of us on what was termed the "New Left."

No doubt about it, I was there at the center of the New Left. Somehow, I obtained an original copy of the Port Huron Statement that launched SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), and I've kept it to this day.

Its key author, Tom Hayden, and the leftist professor Staughton Lynd wrote books about American imperialism in Vietnam that influenced me greatly. As a high school contemporary of my big sister's in Royal Oak, he and I happened to share some history that I did not discover until many years later.

But I was lucky to edit some of Tom's excellent essays about the Vietnam War in Rolling Stone, and later, to work on a film with him and Jane Fonda, called Rollover.

These days, Tom and I are both members of the Editorial Board of The Nation magazine in New York. Headed there again soon.

***

Tomorrow is my grandson James's one-month birthday! He is smiling now, alert, and, according to his mom, anxious to be able to get moving and explore his world. I'll go back up to see him very soon.

***

My 12-year-old has entered puberty. He also is growing like Jack's Beanstalk. He is already about 5'2", and looking down on his friends' heads for the first time ever. He also has developed such an amazingly active jump shot in basketball that watching him play is a pleasure others, not just his doting father, are commenting on.

He is growing so fast, with his 8.5 shoe size anchoring his height, I wonder of he will not overtake his oldest sister when she marries this summer? After all, she is only 5'3".

***

We had some friends over today for a Super Bowl party, just like Americans did all over the country. But our party might be a bit Left Coast for mainstream taste. I served pickles, olives, baby carrots, chips, cucumber, fresh basil, red pepper, cherry tomatoes, lettuce with a dressing of Ume Plum Vinegar/Olive Oil/Garlic Powder/Balsamic Vinegar.

It was, shall we say, redolent.

Just to safe, we also had pizza and diet Coke.

***
My serious rearranging of my flat continues unabated. All sorts of memories are being resurfaced around here. My eight-year-old daughter rediscovered her favorite reading books today, and the boys found lost toys.

As for me, I found some old photographs of my parents with their new little grandson, some 12+ years ago, now the emerging basketball star. Both have since died, but if I choose the two people I would most love to talk to about his athleticism, it would be them, my mom and my dad.

They look so nice in this photo, and they were nice. I have no idea how they ever put up with the likes of me -- a mutant, of sorts, as I (and my generation) challenged everything they held dear.

Well, not everything. We connected again as loving parents, doting grandparents, and survivors of life storms. Blood runs thicker than ideology, and may it always be so!

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