School's Out

Burning Bridges.



It's Friday night in San Francisco, warm and peaceful.



Apple's stock just keeps rising. It's now over $124/share. The company's new iPhone, which launches near the end of June, is widely expected to be a success, much like the iPod is. I really wish I hadn't sold 100 shares last year when the stock was in the high $60s. Had I waited, those shares would have appreciated by ~$6,000.

At least I kept most of my Apple Stock, which I bought when it was in the $20s.



I'm not much of an investor. I went headfirst into the market at the height of Web 1.0 mania, and I pretty much lost my shirt. This was brought home to me today when I filled out my form for yet another class-action lawsuit against one of the companies in my portfolio that went bankrupt.

Other than Enron (which I probably would have bought if I'd known about it), I chose almost every big loser of the era. Thus, I've received pennies on the dollar from lots of class-action settlements as the legal system tries to recover a measure of justice for all the small people (I qualify as one) who were essentially cheated by corporate managements that bent the law and cooked their company's books for their own benefit.



Today's form was more emotional than others, because the company involved was Excite@Home, my former employer. Naively, in early 2000, I bought 500 shares of this doomed company when its stock was in the mid-$30s. (Note to my kids: Never, NEVER invest in the company you work for. Trust me. You do not need that kind of redundancy of risk in your portfolio!)

I sold all 500 shares in December 2000 when the stock had fallen to just above $4/share; plus I learned (at the company's Christmas party) that I was to be laid off early in the following year.

Yep, I lost over $15,000 on that foolish investment, along with hundreds of thousands of unvested stock options that would never find a market. Today, to my surprise, I found that I am apparently due to get some $1,200 back from this particular lawsuit, which is a huge amount in matters like these. Even though it hardly makes up for the losses I suffered, it will be welcome in a summer when I have a daughter getting married, and lots of kids' camps to help pay for...



I'm sorry if this has been a rant about my personal economics. Maybe, I'm a bit angry that having reached an age that I could well have retired had not these investments gone sour, I'm instead reduced to filling out boring forms to reclaim a fraction of what I have lost. Others, I know, suffered far worse losses. Unlike me, they didn't have any assets to lose, other than their pensions that their owners cheated them out of in what is truly among the most despicable of white-collar crimes. (Reference: Enron again.)



Today, the school year came to an end. The kids are ecstatic, naturally.



These photos capture more or less what we have been doing around here. Money is really not that much on my mind. The hopes and fears of my kids; the beauty of birds and flowers; the promise of new love always in the air -- these are my focus now.




And, as always, our "family art." We continue to play with colors, shapes, representation, impression, and (courtesy of PhotoShop) distortion.

From us to you, happy first night of summer!

The secrets beneath our feet

Tonight, there's a news story moving on the AP wire you really ought to look at:

Slave Passage Found at Washington House .

Archaeologists unearthing the remains of George Washington's presidential home have discovered a hidden passageway used by his nine slaves, raising questions about whether the ruins should be incorporated into a new exhibit at the site.

The underground passageway is just steps from the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. It was designed so Washington's guests would not see slaves as they slipped in and out of the main house.

"As you enter the heaven of liberty, you literally have to cross the hell of slavery," said Michael Coard, a Philadelphia attorney who leads a group that worked to have slavery recognized at the site. "That's the contrast, that's the contradiction, that's the hypocrisy. But that's also the truth."

Also visit: National Park Service site .

***

If I could be reborn, one of the careers I would choose would be archaeologist. Who else is as engaged in rediscovering what we might otherwise forget than those who dig up the earth that represents the last few centuries of life on earth?

So, it is no secret that our very first president, George Washington, kept slaves -- some 300 of them, nor that he decreed they be freed upon his death. But this particular find, in the house where President Washington lived (before there was a White House), show how the nation's leader maintained a secret passageway for his nine house slaves to come and go, outside of the view of his many esteemed guests.

This, indeed, should be converted into a national museum, to counter the ultra-phallic Washington Monument that dominates the Mall. Washington relied on his slaves to maintain his lifestyle in his presidential palace, yet he did so hypocritically. After all, even in the late 1700's, it would have offended many foreign dignitaries to witness the leader of what eventually would be come to be known as the "free world" living in a luxury based on exploiting slaves.

Every time another artifact of that era comes to light, I am struck by the ugliness that made the privilege of our "Founding Fathers" possible.

And these are the guys the strict constructionists among us worship?

Not me. The most useful thing we could do as a society is to revise history and bring honesty to our collective story. Maybe then, our ugliest problem, racism, could finally find its only possible resolution: apology, forgiveness, integration, reconciliation, and the recognition that all people, regardless of race, religion, or national origin, are truly created equal under the eyes of "God," which in this country, is the Constitution.

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Life in the Big City

Driving home with my kids this evening, as we reached this neighborhood, we entered a war zone. The first indication something was seriously wrong came when I noticed that traffic was blocked up on Bryant Street, heading north, for as far as I could see back at 22nd Street.

So, I turned right and discovered that I could not even reach my street (which was two streets eastward) because a contingent of police cars had it sealed off. After sitting in a jam for a few minutes, I realized we were blocked from proceeding in that direction, so I hung a u-y (is that how the Aussies spell it?) and joined a throng trying to snake northward along York Street.

It is frightening and exciting to be trying to go home and encounter this kind of chaos.

First of all, what the hell was happening?

My mind was suspecting a gang shootout, partly because of a recent piece in the San Francisco Chronicle profiling the two main Latino gangs warring in this neighborhood. (More on that in another post.)

The reason it was frightening was that I had my three young children in my car, and if they were going to be exposed to danger, I wanted no part of whatever was going on.

The reason it was exciting is that I am a reporter, rarely active in that role any longer, but on-scene journalism is something you never completely eliminate from your bloodstream once it's in there.

The York Street to 20th Street conversion was scary when someone started screaming loudly, but that just turned out to be a young woman with a loud voice, two friends in her car, acting obnoxiously because she (like the rest of us) couldn't go where she wanted to go as fast as she wanted to.

Further from my house than I would usually park, I pulled over, grateful that there was any space at all to dump my vehicle. As we got out into the open air, we became aware of the many helicopters hovering overhead -- an ear-splitting cacophony all the more irritating to human ears because it is an uneven sound, a slashing, chopping of the air that sends bifurcated sound waves angling uneasily toward the earth, where they bounce back up, messing with our inbuilt ability to locate where those sounds are coming from.

Helicopters are one reason many civilians and soldiers alike suffer PTSS, I'm quite sure.

Just to make things complicated, as we started walking toward our street, where a phalanx of cops were directing drivers hither and yon, my 12-year-old, ever the vigilant oldest child, put his arms out and tried to turn us around.

"Dad, a crazy person."

Sure enough, a street person, as we so euphemistically like to say here in the States, was perched outside the corner store. He was scary-looking (to a kid) but clearly not much of a threat, as he was squatting on lifeless limbs, and clinging to a walker, which was clearly his only way of getting around.

Still, he exuded an evil spirit as he begged: "Please, pretty please," to the kids (they told me this detail later). I, meanwhile, was looking east, trying to determine whether it was safe to take the kids around the corner and home.

We got to the corner and I instructed them to stand in a group there and wait for me. I walked out into the intersection to interview one of the police officers occupying the intersection.

"It's a bomb threat at a building near General Hospital."

(That's a couple blocks from my house.)

"You're outside the danger area, at least as far as we've been told," he told me, indicating a yellow hazard tape barrier one-half block away.

Although that was not entirely comforting information, I decided we would all be better inside than outside, so I hustled the kids into my house, locked the doors, and turned on the radio.

At this point, I transitioned from my natural role (reporter) into a consumer of the news. Eventually, the story was nailed down. Channel 5 Report .

By then, we were deep into our Wednesday night ritual here, which is spaghetti and meatballs night. Since my 11-year-old refuses to eat any birds, a pork-beef mixture familiar to those who make meatloaf has replaced ground turkey meat.

My eight-year-old loves to cook this with me, so she has been taking over more and more of the tasks: breaking up the pasta, stirring it; forming the meatballs, spicing them with various herbs and seasonings, adding in the tomato-based sauce, and then turning and blending it all into the eventual final result: "Dad's and Julia's Special Spaghetti."

***

She, my youngest child, recently discovered a guacamole she considered delicious. Here is the list of ingredients she instructed me to obtain in order to replicate this traditional Mexican dish for her:



Am I right to be a tad bit skeptical?

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Keep on changing

Answer to yesterday's trivia question posed at the end of that post:

Q: I can take, say, an image of a pretty Japanese girl and transform her into a series of colorful dots. Now, I ask you, what could be cooler than that?

A: What would definitely be cooler than that would be if I could conjure from a series of colorful dots a real, live, pretty Japanese girl.

(Stay tuned. I'm working on that.)

***



Bottle Art.



Plum Tree Art.



Pepper Art.

***

For the following, I have Adam Gopnik, of The New Yorker, and NPR, to thank. I don't usually republish poetry in this space, but when I do, it is with deep appreciation for the ultimate art form crafted with words. Every word matters; there can be no sloppiness, as simple bloggers like me suffer our readers with, over and over.



A Tale Begun

by Wislawa Szymborska



The world is never ready
for the birth of a child.

Our ships are not yet back from Winnland.
We still have to get over the S. Gothard pass.
We've got to outwit the watchmen on the desert of Thor,
fight our way through the sewers to Warsaw's center,
gain access to King Harald the Butterpat,
and wait until the downfall of Minister Fouche.
Only in Acapulco
can we begin anew.

We've run out of bandages,
matches, hydraulic presses, arguments, and water.
We haven't got the trucks, we haven't got the Minghs' support.
This skinny horse won't be enough to bribe the sheriff.
No news so far about the Tartars' captives.
We'll need a warmer cave for winter
and someone who can speak Harari.

We don't know whom to trust in Nineveh,
what conditions the Prince-Cardinal will decree,
which names Beria has still got inside his files.
They say Karol the Hammer strikes tomorrow at dawn.
In this situation let's appease Cheops,
report ourselves of our own free will,
change faiths,
pretend to be friends with the Doge
and say that we've got nothing to do with the Kwabe tribe.

Time to light the fires.
Let's send a cable to grandma in Zabierzow.
Let's untie the knots in the yurt's leather straps.

May delivery be easy,
may our child grow and be well.
Let him be happy from time to time
and leap over abysses.
Let his heart have strength to endure
and his mind be awake and reach far.
But not so far

that it sees into the future.
Spare him
that one gift,
0 heavenly powers.


(Excerpt from View with a Grain of Sand, copyright © 1993 by Wislawa Szymborska, English translation by Stanislaw Baranczak and Clare Cavanagh copyright © 1995 by Harcourt, Inc.)

***

It doesn't really matter how much academics, critics, and others try to abstract their thoughts about what is art. Of course, there is Leo Tolstoy, who, as I've mentioned before, who posed the question bluntly: "What is Art?"

In my view, we remain biological creatures; our eyes define the limits of art. I suspect Tolstoy would agree with me. Thus, I rather like this one:



This, to my eyes, is art.

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Let's get serious. Consigamos serios. 讓我們更加嚴峻 . になろう。

(Note: This post contains sections in four languages. If anyone needs help translating what I have written, please feel free to email me and I'll send the whole thing in your language of choice.)



First, from our sister blog, Sidewalk Images, which has recently transformed into a Spanish language site:

Entiendo que ésta es una tarjeta del teléfono que te permite a la llamada detrás a casa. Y, por supuesto, utilizan a las muchachas bonitas para vender cada clase de materia. Pero esta señora mira aprensivo downright. ¿Es porque ella teme ser llamada por un stalker? No la consigo. ¡Ella debe parecer feliz! Emocionado que la has llamado.



Second, can anyone identify this earring?
這是你的耳環 ,由機會 ? 它被樓下有一陣子 ; 最近我們發現它. 是否有脫落 ,昨晚在2003年10月, 當你坐在膝上,在一張椅子在花園深夜?



How old is this piece of wood cut from a tree?



How old is this piece of wood? Think of all that trees witness. They stand, stoic and solid, while we mammals come and go frenetically, as if this were our world.

I have gotten married twice; once at age 22, once at age 45. (At that rate, I should tie the knot a third time by age 69. Hmmm, a nice image of love, that: 69.

Where was I? Yes, my marriages led to honeymoons. The first one, when we were so young, was a driving trip through my father's native Canada, where we visited Montreal, Quebec City, Halifax, and Prince Edward's Island.


The second one, at a transitional moment, involved another driving trip, this one up and down the Sierra Nevada. We ended up spending Thanksgiving with a writer friend living in a cabin just outside the Calaveras Big Trees State Park. Here stand some of the oldest living things on earth. A few of these massive trees were standing right here when, for example, Jesus was wandering around the Middle East.

When it comes to big trees, which of course, like everything else on earth, are now endangered species, I think of my lovely young friend, Julia Butterfly Hill, and her epic treesit in the tree she named Luna. If you've not yet read her book, please do.



We have such vivid imaginations, and are able to turn almost anything into something else. I think of this as the Age of Transformers, and have done so since the '80s, when I first noticed my son Peter's ability to manipulate the toys of that time into multiple outcomes.

I could sense that something big was afoot; I just wasn't quite sure what to call it.



Now, I know its name. This is indeed the Age of Transformation. I can take, say, an image of a pretty Japanese girl and transform her into a series of colorful dots. Now, I ask you, what could be cooler than that?

今、私は名前を知っている。 これは全く年齢のである 変形。 私はきれいののイメージを撮ってもいい 日本の女の子は一連の多彩な点に彼女を変形させ。 今、私は尋ねる、何それより涼しいがあることができるか。

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The forecast is for morning fog, burning off by afternoon

Tomorrow, my nephew Andrew ships out to Baghdad. I'll be worrying about his safety along with his Mom (my sister), his Dad, and his sister. The kids made him this card and we snail-mailed it. I heard from my sister that he got it in time.



My daughter and her son. James is ~5 months old now! He is holding his head up, smiling, clapping his hands, and interacting with his parents at an ever-greater level of engagement.



As I've said before, I'm such a sucker for romantic movies. My youngest and I love to watch Love, Actually, actually, and we do so quite frequently. Of the various love stories chronicled in this film, my favorite is the Jamey-Aurelia relationship.

He's an English writer whose girlfriend cheated on him (with his brother, no less.) His specialty is crime novels, and his current project is a murder mystery. He goes to France to work on the book, where he meets a young Portuguese woman who works as his housekeeper.

Neither can speak a word of the other's language, and though they quite clearly are falling in love, they part at the end of his time there, as he returns to London, and she returns to Lisbon.

You'll have to get the movie to find out when happens in the end.




Between children, flowers, ripening fruit, reading The New Yorker and The Times, cooking the kids pork ribs and fixing their lunches for tomorrow's field trip, you'd probably think I wouldn't have had time to watch baseball on TV; if so, you would be wrong.

This season is not going so well for my team, the Giants. Although they lead the league in what are known as "quality starts" (in which the starting pitcher lasts at least six innings and gives up no more than three runs, they have a losing record.

The game has changed since I was a boy. Then a "quality start," if the term had been in use, would have meant nine innings and three runs. The game has devolved into an era of specialists, much like Academe has splintered into so many esoteric sub-fields that the big, general majors of years past now seem genuinely left in the past.






The pundits seem to think the Democrats are a shoo-in to win the Presidency next year. Bush's historically low ratings, and the lack of any truly attractive candidate at this point may indeed bode ill for the Republicans. Under some scenarios, the current leading candidates (Sen. Hillary Clinton and ex-Mayor Rudy Giuliani) won't make it to the ballot.

Strange though it may seem, the names Al Gore and Newt Gingrich are back in circulation. As a veteran of covering many campaigns, I'll withhold my judgment, for now. Obama vs. Rice would have a nice symmetry.



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