Whose art is this?

Have you ever considered who it is that gets to determine what is art and what is not?

Tonight, I am thinking about an old friend of mine named Ken Kelley. He, along with Alison and me and Craig Pyes created SunDance magazine in San Francisco at 1913 Fillmore Street late in 1971.

My friend Ken was a wild, brilliant, tortured soul. He was a homosexual, a drunk, an artist, and a big baseball fan. Thanks to Ken, I got to meet Ernie Harwell, the legendary broadcaster for the Detroit Tigers, who said "hi" over the air to my parents back in Michigan from the broadcast booth in Oakland one night.

Alas, Ken had other proclivities, and federal agents nailed him on child pornography charges a few years back. He was stripped of all dignity; his apartment was searched in the presence of a reporter who found nothing smacking of child pornography, but lots of baseball cards (signed) and other mementos from the career of a truly brilliant interviewer.

Thus was he disgraced and rendered despicable.

Despite his obvious weaknesses, Ken was a true artist, who cared about those he loved from his heart. I could never defend his actions, but I can say that I was honored to be his friend.

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Quieting

As the days grow shorter and shorter, the air chillier, the nights darker and colder, out come the sweaters, wool hats, and boots. Most of the old housing stock in this city has no central heating, making for drafty cold seasons. Everyone around me has been sick lately. Today we've added a humidifier.

This mundane reportage may not rock your world but it pretty much sums up my day. When picking out a (cheap) humidifier qualifies as a highlight, you know you won't be making the ESPN reels any time soon.

I've become aware of a withdrawal urge lately, to turn inward and avoid unnecessary stresses in the outside world. I read, write, paint and cook; drive kids here and there, stand at the sidelines of their practices or in the back rows at their recitals.

Exchanging pleasantries with other parents is a comforting part of this quiet routine. But driving is increasingly scary around here. The state law preventing drivers from holding their cellphones to their ear hasn't kicked in yet, and every time I go out it seems some idiot pulls or turns suddenly and sharply in front of me. There's the invariable lurch as I brake, honk the horn loudly, and curse.

For blocks afterward I can be heard muttering one awful word or phrase after the other. By the time I've calmed down, it's probably about to happen again.

The city law banning plastic bags from grocery stores is in effect, however, and already we have much less plastic blowing around the Mission's streets.

But, along with all the good books I've read lately, I bought one that turned out to be exceptionally bad -- an academic treatise composed by one who routinely uses 30 words in a sentence, when eight would quite suffice.

All the wordiness serves to do is render the author's points unintelligible. Not everyone should write books, it says here in my waste bucket. Nor should everyone drive.

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What's work got to do with it?

A strange aspect of these transitional periods in my life, when between jobs, is that once I get used to the new daily habits so that it often feels like nothing has changed.

When I've left a company on bad terms (having been forced out in a political fight, or betrayed by ambitious colleagues), I sink into a depression, as much over what the experience says about the human race in general, as my own professional disappointment.

But that is not the case with the latest job loss. That job just sort of petered out. We parted with generally good feelings, although I did mourn, for a while, the work I was doing (without interference or encouragement from above) on building a truly useful global news service online.

In America, we have for way too long defined ourselves by what we do, what our job is, or our title, etc. That is starting to change, however. My hope for my native culture is that we adopt some aspects of European and East Asian cultures.

There, if one is a writer, you feel like a writer. People seem much more interested in the quality of your ideas than whether you have written a best-seller or not.

In the U.S., by contrast, writers are pushed to think like businessmen or businesswomen. We always have to worry about marketing and promotion. Editors have virtually disappeared, replaced by MBAs who seem too busy imagining dollar signs to notice the words we've crafted.

So, okay, maybe I am a bit depressed, over the state of my craft and the lack of creative opportunities to pursue it fully. This modest little blog is my main line of "business;" it's made about $12 over the last six months...at that rate I'll receive my next check from Google ($100 minimum required) in about four years.

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Clay to clay

There are certain spots, along Bay Area beaches, where you come upon wet clay outcroppings. They've always seemed like special spots, and worthy of showing to friends.



Of all the creative uses of clay by artists, my favorite has to be the legendary British clay animation movies with the characters of Wallace and Gromit. If you've not seen them, please do.



Gardeners hereabouts often inherit yards rich in clay but lacking in other fundamentals. What to do?

If you think about it, what we call soil is a lovely mixture of weather-beaten rock, minerals, decayed plant materials and other organic ingredients. To be healthy and productive, it requires a balance of air, water, nutrients, and organic matter.

Adding organic matter is important. When I built my clay-rich garden in Mill Valley 20 years ago, I carefully worked in horse manure from a nearby farm. This helped the soil to hold nutrients, hold water, and improve its drainage.



Thereafter, our small garden plot out by the street became a rich black soil capable of growing any manner of crops, which we proceeded to do.



Alas, all such things must come to an end. As my marriage crumbled, and I had to find another place to live, that garden became overgrown with native plants like blackberries, and the wild garlic and onions that gave the great city of Chicago its name, courtesy of the indigenous people who lived there before the arrival of the White Man.



If you drive down Northern Avenue, past our family house, even today, at the right season you will smell the garlic and onion and you can pick the blackberries.



Alas, my other crops have been lost to time, no doubt enriching the soils for some future farmer, should one arrive. Meanwhile, here in my apartment, we create clay figures, representatives of our physical forms.

Dust to dust.

Clay to clay?

Such is the nature of art, in a modest place, without pretention, just living the best we can.

(clay art and photo courtesy of JuJu and Junko)

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Unmentionable Epidemics

http://www.cdc.gov/nccdphp/dnpa/obesity/trend/maps/index.htm

We are a society of addicts, it is fashionable to say, and I have no evidence to the contrary. The above link, which was introduced to me today by one of the scientists at Pesticide Action Network, is a government graphic that tracks how we, as a nation, have become dramatically fatter over the past two decades.

As a long-time journalist, few things shock me, but this one does. Please click on the link and watch the changes in our body shapes since 1985. Many people have theories about why this is happening, and no doubt most of those theories are correct.

But as one who deals in facts, and trends, I have to say it appears that we are rapidly eating ourselves to death. Why? Is this some sort of awful collective suicide impulse? I've always thought that most people wish to remain youthful in appearance, and as good-looking, and as healthy as possible.

Of course, there are many fat activists and apologists, those who will send me angry emails about the position I am taking here. But my belief is that we should all start practicing how to live more lightly on this earth, and that means, especially in the United States, consuming fewer resources.

I've bulked up myself in the past two years and I am not proud of the fact. I'm reviewing my dietary and exercise habits, conducting a sort of personal audit, not so much in a quest to regain my girlish figure (smile), but to be a better citizen, and a more responsible member of our global community.

I hope you'll join me. We're not the only ones.

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Connections

Quite certain that I have offended numbers of my namesake's fans in the U.K. (he's a popular soccer player), I hereby apologize to every British and Scottish sports fan who has inadvertently landed here, at my modest corner of the vast global blogosphere.

But, consider this: He and I may well be related. A group of my ancestors left Ireland in the 1830s. Maybe if we established the family tree in detail, David Weir, the excellent soccer player, and David Weir, the blogger, just might be distant cousins, or whatever.

In this new world, with its digital, global connectivity, anyone can meet anyone. The very best part of blogging for me has been the new friends I have made and the old friends I've reconnected with. This should be true for all of us. I met my girlfriend through this blog. She read it, she contacted me, we met, and the rest is history.

How cool is that? I never knew how to date, or how to meet women. Every relationship I'd had was just due to the beauty of coincidence. I'm not an aggressive man, not at all, but I have always loved women -- looking at them, talking with them, listening to them, touching them...you get the picture.

Not that I do not like men, but, over the course of my life, it has often proved difficult to maintain close male friendships. However, I have noticed, as I age, that many of my male friends have become more available emotionally, and our connections have deepened as a result.

Overall, as a writer, I am essentially a loner. Given the choice between attending a party or writing this blog, for example, I always choose the second option. On the other hand, going out and connecting with friends, new and old, often stimulates me in ways that communion with myself cannot.

That's the eternal dilemma for writers. We have to be alone to do what we do but we also need contact with others to keep going. I'm sure I am not alone in saying I don't write for me; I write for you, dear reader, whoever you are and wherever you may be. I mean to bring comfort, intimacy, and humor into your room, via the Internet. Whether you know me or not, my writing is an attempt to connect. Therefore I am always happy to hear from readers. Probably, if and when you do connect with me, I'll encourage you to write, to create your own blog, which I will, of course read.

It's a one-to-one world now. The old one-to-many media model has been shattered. There are no gods in this new world who have the power over the truth. The world, finally, has been rendered flat.

There are signals and there is noise. Send out your signals. Someone always will be grateful to receive them.

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