Fallen Apples

Looked at one way, I'm an expert at transitions, having made it into and out of a dozen jobs in the past 20 years, 8 different houses, and roughly a half dozen serious relationships. So, from this perspective, change has long been the rule in my life, as opposed to the exception.

Yesterday's lunch was with a friend who has known me throughout this period of constant change, but who has lived a very different life, at least at work, from mine. For almost four decades, he checked in at the corner of Fifth & Mission Streets in downtown San Francisco, for the great bulk of years entering the Fifth Street door (to the old San Francisco Examiner), then, since the beginnings of the 21st century, through the Mission Street door to the headquarters of the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Examiner was the flagship newspaper started by the legendary William Randolph Hearst, but over the years it ended up as an afternoon paper in a morning town. Finally, when the heirs agreed to sell the Chronicle to the Hearst Corp., my friend and the entire Examiner management team simply moved around the corner and took over the morning rag.

As part of the deal, the Hearst Corp. dumped the Examiner, which has since changed hands and is a free, tabloid style daily. Free of direct competition, you might have expected the Chronicle to flourish, but in the Internet Age, you would have been wrong.

Instead it has floundered, losing circulation and over $50 million a year.

***

One day recently, after his long and illustrious career, my friend was called into a conference room by the HR person and handed his walking papers. In the way of this time and place, there was no ceremony, no word of thanks, nothing, just: "Go." Around a hundred veterans of the newspaper business were let go at the same time in that old building, which now echoes with the nuffled voices of their ghosts.

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Disruptive Technologies

As one with theories about just about everything, I've become enamored over recent years with the concept of disruption. Partly as a management technique, I've learned that unpredictable shifts and experiments can help organizations (companies, non-profits, government agencies) shake off their lethargy, and acquire a new agility, embracing new opportunities.

On the other hand, by nature, I am not a disruptive person, nor have I ever been. The kind of person who introduces a sudden tension into the room is not someone I admire or aspire to be like. Preferring compromise to confrontation, and reconciliation to alienation -- synthesis being my goal -- I'm always happiest when the groups I am in find a happy medium, as opposed to one extreme or another.

Thus, it is with some irony that I often find myself perceived as a disruptor, not by personality type so much as by a congenital intellectual restlessness. It seems that I cannot shut out new pieces of information that adjust whatever complex puzzle I am helping to assemble.

In the technology sector, we recognize that certain technological advances disrupt business as usual. Even as the Web 1.0 bubble burst, there was no doubt that the Internet had successfully disrupted every business activity on earth, rendering the old ways obsolete and the new ways inevitable.

We are in the midst of a second wave now, Web 2.0, even as the stock markets undergo a serious "correction" that is the classic sign of the end of the Bull market, and the beginning of what for lack of a better term will be a recession. Credit will be harder to obtain, for individuals and companies, growth will slow, and forming new ventures may once again become more difficult.

(My Apple stock has dropped the 30 points from 147 to 117 almost as rapidly as it gained them. Markets go up; markets go down. Timing is everything. Small investors like me are losing money faster than we could have spent it, but if I learned one lesson from the Web 1.0 bubble bursting it is to stay the course, stop looking at the latest numbers, and wait for the recovery.

After all, where are baby boomers going to invest their money if not in the stock market? Most own their own homes already. And, all pension funds and IRAs are deep in the markets.

Therefore, I am not particularly concerned about this downturn in the Dow-Jones, NASDAQ, et. al. It's the inevitable disruption of stupid sub-prime loans, granted by greedy lenders to greedy borrowers, and in this, I am a Darwinian. The markets are weeding out those ignorant and reckless enough to gamble their assets on an ever-more-prosperous future.

Better, I say, to buy seeds and plant your own salads. Shop for used clothes. Eat chicken gizzards. Ride out the hard times, but don't use your credit card, and don't panic. After the storm, the sun will again shine.

Disruptions, even painful ones, are good for the system overall, much as a forest fire is good for the trees.

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White Man's Theory.2

So, as an official "MLB blogger," you understand, I feel an obligation to write about baseball, but as I do so, I always try to draw out some universal points, plus provide some (hopefully useful) explanations for why those of us who love America's Pastime do so so unconditionally.

Tonight, in Atlanta, Barry Bonds hit his all-time record 759th home run in the House that Aaron Built, i.e., Atlanta, the place where the former HR king, Hank Aaron played until near the end of his storied career (which ended back in Milwaukee, where he had started out.)

When Bonds broke Aaron's record a week ago in San Francisco, the Giants management played a video-taped message from Aaron on the center-field scoreboard. For those who have been paying even moderate attention, this development had to have come as a shock.

According to the Conventional Media Wisdom, Aaron did not support Bonds' pursuit of his hallowed record, that his statement that he had no intention (at age 72) of following Bonds around, waiting for him to do it, was somehow an affirmation of what I am going to call the White Man's Theory that Bonds has only accomplished what he has due to steroid-induced cheating.

The reason I have chosen this name for the anti-Bonds campaign so successfully waged over the past couple of years by a relatively small group of media elitists is that I have yet to meet the person of color to support what amounts to a legal and journalistic witch hunt against Bonds.

You need to know, dear reader, that one of my great activist passions in my youth was supporting anti-grand-jury-witch-hunt activists, courageous people who refused to testify against their friends and colleagues during the large-scale attempt to suppress leftists conducted by the evil Nixon administration in the early '70's. (My earlier activism involved the civil rights movement, the antiwar movement, and early environmental consciousness, the gay rights and feminist movements.)

Therefore, it is entirely consistent for me to denounce those who would use the judicial system, not to attain true justice, but to persecute what one of the greatest playwrights of all time, Henrik Ibsen, called the "Enemies of the People."

The irony here is that Barry Bonds is not an enemy of the people, and the people themselves -- baseball fans -- know it. He is an enemy of the establishment.

I was sickened while in France to read a column in the International Herald Tribune reprinted from the New York Times, in which the author, whose identity I will spare for the moment, disparaged Bonds' accomplishments, declaring that Aaron is the "true king," a great man, while Bonds is a mere pretender to the throne.

With all due respect, Bonds has done many things in his career that Aaron never could have matched (walks, stolen bases, on-base percentage), not to mention Bonds' unparalleled and unprecedented role as the greatest Intimidator of all time. No one has ever affected the way opposing teams play baseball the way Bonds does.

If you really want to know how out of touch sportswriters and the fat-assed pundits are with the people who pay for seats in baseball parks, just look at the recent home runs Bonds has hit in San Diego, Milwaukee, and tonight, in Atlanta.

Before he bats there are the media-driven taunts and insults, plus the excited anticipation of the crowd. As he bats, there are camera flashes everywhere throughout the park. As he swings the bat and connects, at first there is a mixture of boos and cheers, but by the time he reaches first base, inevitably, the venue is overtaken by cheers, and a pretty good imitation of a standing ovation.

Tonight, as he trotted out to left field after his HR, the fans actually stood and cheered him so thunderously that he had to remove and tip his cap--several times.

The locals who have created much of the anti-Bonds content that pollutes our media environment are white men. The two Chronicle reporters, as I have previously noted, should be ashamed -- accepting secret grand jury excerpts from a self-serving source (a lawyer) trying to divert attention from his client, and never developing a single, on-the-record source or document to support their explosive allegations.

Even worse, the local fat-ass idiot white man columnist who has repeatedly dissed Bonds. I want to know what this guy has ever accomplished on or off an athletic field besides passing evil-smelling gas disguised as a newspaper rant?

As you may divine, I have had it with Bonds' critics, all of whom strike me as cowards, fools, and racists. For Christ's Sake, even this alleged "girlfriend," Kimberly Bell, is appearing nude in Playboy this fall, hoping to enrich herself by sharing her version of the "truth" about Bonds.

Give me a break. Gold-diggers, whores, would-be athletes, flatulent pundits, narrow-minded and misguided "investigative reporters," and all the other detritis of society will be lost to history.

Whereas those fans in left field in Atlanta tonight who stood and cheered Barry Bonds represent the very best of this game and its devotees -- the people who understand and appreciate greatness when we see it.

Note to Baer/McGowan: Bring Barry back next year. He already has 25 this season, and will reach at least 30-35, it appears. That brings him within striking distance of 800 HR's, not to mention 3,000 hits. Given your laudable commitment to Giants history, you need to shut out the idiots and listen to the people standing and cheering on the road.

Barry and a bunch of young guys: Not a bad vision for a ball club next year. After all, one thing the babbling classes don't realize is Barry is a teacher, a man who shares his massive knowledge about hitting and pitching with young players unselfishly.

I have known this for years, courtesy of my former students at Stanford, many of them athletes, who benefited from Bonds' kindness as he worked out on campus. But where is this fact disclosed in our dominant media?

Nowhere. You have to find an obscure blog post like mine to learn it.

Class dismissed.

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Empty Nesting

Yep, transitions suck, and there's nothing quite as bittersweet as seeing your children off on their youthful adventures. Last night, at midnight, I went to SFO; tomorrow at 4:30 am, I go there again, and then later, around 10 am, yet again. By the end of this, all of my six children, born here in my adopted hometown, will be off elsewhere, and I, alone, will remain.

For our dinner party tonight, prior to their departure tomorrow, I made a dinner out of free-range chicken, artichokes, broccoli, lettuce, cucumber, and tomato salad, french fries, and a few side dishes. There were eight of us around the table, half of whom are my kids, aged 8-31.

After dinner, the games began.









Now, it's on to the future.

Neighborhood Walk

This is the former German Lutheran church that is now a Buddhist temple -- the one my cousin Mike is a member of...



All over the Mission, murals are common. This one runs along an entire block of Bryant Street. I remember a long time back, when the only murals here were on Balmy Alley. Balmy still has its murals (which I'll get around to photographing one of these days), but so does the entire neighborhood.

I'm not sure how many places openly display ethnic art as The Mission does.



This part of San Francisco is pretty much the warmest micro-climate in the City, so we have magnolia trees that actually bloom here.



The patterns of various walls here become tightly defined when the light is good.



We have vehicles here that you rarely will find elsewhere.



More wall patterns.



Oops, this is not my neighborhood. This is our global neighborhood. My buddy Yogesh created this welcome sign for those down in Biloxi welcoming some visitors from India.

If you read this, the pronunciation is: SUSWAGATAM, DOSTO.

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The Color of Feelings

My rendition of the snake oil salesmen I imagine having roamed this neighborhood 125 years ago, much as the Mexican ice-cream men do nowadays.



We could have leaned out these same windows back then, and purchased remedies for consumption, or the other maladies of the day.



Gathering the small treats provided from the soil covering that era -- with all of its hopes, dreams and errors, realized or unrealized -- is a primary joy for me.



The ancient pottery, so recently rescued from its ash-filled grave, cracks and wrinkles much like the face of an old man, every line a trace from laughter, tears, hopeful moments, as well as the times of deep despair.



Do you remember the woman who jumped off a bridge in Seattle some years ago, after being egged on by a mob of morning commuters angry that she was holding up their mass migration to work? Her helpless, sad form conformed to the laws of physics as it raced down the equivalent of 16 floors before slamming into the watery surface below as helplessly as if it had hit solid concrete.



Incredibly, she lived.

I think about her, and the many other hopeless souls now and again, when I contemplate this personally-crafted poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti for our "Desire" issue of 7x7. Can you read it? (Click on all of my photos to see them in a larger size.) Isn't his writing beautiful?

The point is that even if one day we are the essence of another's desire, we can just as quickly be transformed into the dust under his or her shoes -- and/or then back again, as if raised from the dead, which I assume is the actual point of the Christian myth of The Resurrection.

Besides, here in the City of Seven Hills, how nice to have a favorite son poet whose name rhymes with spaghetti. Especially, as he is our living link to Kerouac, Ginsberg, and all of the Beats. Almost alone, he persists.



Little girls play with dolls, preparing to be mothers.



People of many ages worship their icons, believing that they are watched over by angels. Such is grace.



Little boys play with guns, bats and balls, and dream of one day being heroes.



The apples on a tree ripen and fall. Are they are only real when somebody gathers and eats them, or do they enjoy an independent existence?



Long after the roar of the crowd fades away, no matter what we may or may not have accomplished, the feelings remain. We do not talk about how we looked, how we smelled, how we touched, how we tasted long after the moment has passed, because we no longer know.

But we always can recall how we felt. In the end, that is all that remains.

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