Soundlessnesses

If a tree falls and no one is here to hear it, does it still make a sound? -- George Berkeley



Today, with my best friend Howard and his family visiting, we went down to the baseball park at China Basin, intending to circumnavigate that lovely structure.



As good luck would have it, we were allowed inside the park to tour a small portion of the outfield area.



Inside the stadium, which currently is set up for a college football bowl game on the 28th (Maryland v. Oregon State), the seats were all empty, no food was on sale, and therefore, no seagulls bothered to soar overhead.



It was, in one sense, a lonely venue.



Still, having been here so many times when the seats were packed, Aidan and I could hear the ghosts cheering for our heroes of past years.



Now, of course, our greatest hero of all, Barry Bonds, stands indicted on charges of perjury over whether he used steroids to achieve some of the amazing feats we witnessed and celebrated.

Such a lonely place, now.

-30-

Rumors v. Journalism

One aspect of the Internet that reporters have often decried is the way gossip and rumor have come to the fore, competing with what we might professionally call the "publishable truth." The Drudge Report is the best-known purveyor of media and political gossip, but despite the many errors Matt Drudge has made over the past decade, his will always be remembered as the first website to report that President Bill Clinton had had an affair with an intern named Monica Lewinsky.

The irony that all reporters know privately is we often trade in gossip and rumor, because we are the ones on the front lines of where the documentable meets the undocumentable. I'm reminded of how every reporter I met in Washington, D.C., during the closing year of the Clinton administration (when I was bureau chief there for Salon) claimed to have known about Newt Gingrich's affair, which he conducted while he was leading the Republican attack on Clinton for his sexual misbehavior.

If they knew it, why didn't they consider it newsworthy? If the tawdry affairs of one party are fair game, what about those of the other?

Whatever. My solution to the rumor mill syndrome was to recommend that Salon hire a gossip columnist, which we subsequently did, and she was a good one. Hell, I enjoy political rumors as much as the next person, as long as it is clearly labeled as such.

-30-

The Algorithms of Lovers

This is a true story.

A middle-aged couple in their 50s are going through a divorce. The man was resisting it, but the woman insisted. Once the legal proceedings were underway, the woman followed her friend's advice and posted to the online dating service match.com , hoping to find a new man to date, and, who knows, maybe more.



As with all such services, match.com asks members to answer a series of questions that its computers then compare for compatibility with another member whose "profile" matches up along the scale of factors believed to be important in whether people will be attracted to one another.



In this case, the woman in question got a severe shock when match.com returned a man who appeared to be her perfect mate.

It was her (soon to be) ex-husband. Yikes!



First of all, she was surprised, given his supposed resistance to the divorce, that he had already uploaded his profile on match.com. Secondly, she wondered, how could they possibly be each other's perfect match when they were in the midst of breaking up?



My own advice, had it been solicited, would have been to consider calling off the divorce, at least long enough to take a romantic vacation somewhere together and make sure splitting is indeed their best option.



As to what will happen to the actual couple in this case, I have no clue, so stay tuned. If I find out, I'll update this post, with an appropriately iterative title.

***

Note: Photos above (one) of my son's Varsity team; and (5) from the offices of an intriguing startup I hope to blog about soon...

-30-

Back to Africa

So here's the thing. We Americans have so many choices in life, but sadly, most of the time most of us remain oblivious to our relative position of privilege vs. that of people in other countries. You have to get out and about, globally, to appreciate what I am talking about.

No one I meet in the daily course of events impresses me more than immigrants. Here in the Bay Area, especially in Silicon Valley, one encounters brilliant people from all over the world. Each has his or her story to tell, and it's never a story you expect it to be.

They come from places our ignorant President has identified as part of the "axis of evil," but there is nothing evil about them. They may be Jews or Moslems but there is no antagonism between them; they are brothers/sisters in the search for algorithmic solutions to our information dilemmas.

They grew up in places that sound romantic, like Casablanca, Kyoto, Venice, or Prague; or in places that we imagine as hell, like Calcutta, Kabul, Baghdad, or Dacca. But none of our stereotypes capture the nuances of their experiences.

Bob Dylan sang that he pitied the poor immigrant, and in his case, he was certainly describing a typical down-on-his-luck American artist's feelings toward a landlord...the role many immigrants find themselves in.

My own landlady is Indian, and, if I were given to a Dylanesque analysis, she comes up short on doing repairs (like repairing those persistent bathroom leaks) that would make life easier here, but she remains kindly disposed to my own oddities, like my ever-changing states of employment, my visibly questionable artistic experiments (think of the colored bottles), and a large cast of characters, both adults and children, who greet her here whenever she might chose to visit.

We like each other, she and I, and I am happy that she got married this past summer.

The very best thing about America is our multi-racial, multi-cultural diversity.

The absolute worst thing about America is the tendency of some among us to disparage that diversity. The racists, of course, will not inherit this great nation, but the immigrants most certainly will.

Anyone who believes in God, and 90% of Americans say they do, has to admit that we are genetically 99.9% the same in our DNA, and therefore race and nationality has nothing to do with anything in the eyes of our Lord.

The title of this post reflects my plans to travel to Nairobi, Kenya, next month, to attend a United Nations plenary on agricultural sustainability. As scientists have established without a doubt, we are all Africans.

Therefore, I look forward to returning to our common home, the place of our origin, where we first learned to stand upright and use our eyes to see beyond our immediate environment.

Where we first learned to consider the bigger picture, the one I am writing about here and now.

-30-

This is Flat Julia. She is hoping to go along on some adventures this holiday season, collect some photos and text about her adventures, and return to school in January with the real Julia, who will explain where her flat alter-ego went and what she experienced.

Julia hopes her big sister Laila, who lives in Santiago, will take Flat Julia on a Chilean adventure or two. Thanks to the magic of scanners, email, color printers, and digital cameras, this little story may come true.



My younger basketball player got in for three minutes in today's game, and he is starting to feel more comfortable. Although he again did not touch the ball or create stats of any kind on the score sheet, he told me afterward that he felt confident that if he had gotten the ball, he could have a made a shot.



He posed for me outside of the gymnasium, which is located on the sprawling new UCSF campus that is becoming visible below Potrero Hill along Third Street from the Giants' baseball stadium all the way out to 16th Street.



After Dylan's JV game, which his team won, 35-21, the bigger boys took the floor.



The outcome for the Varsity was less satisfying. They lost, 50-29. My shooter scored just two points with one assist and so felt afterward that he had failed, terribly.

Parenting young athletes requires a set of skills, most of which we have to acquire along the way, in real time, without any guidebooks or angels to show us the way. My way is to gently urge the boy or girl out of his/her funk, and point out the good things (s)he did in the game.

Then I change the subject. Sports are only one type of the activities that we want our kids to experience. Art, theater, music, dance, community involvement, charity -- there are so many others.

A game like basketball is among the simplest of experiences. You either win or you lose. Regardless of the outcome, another game looms. So, the goal is to help your kid learn to just keep competing. Each new game represents a blank slate, maybe the moment he or she will break out and have a great game.

Or maybe not.

Either way, (s)he are part of a team. True team members are unselfish and focused on the common good, not individual accomplishments. Later on, no one will remember who won or who lost, but everyone will remember how good it felt to be in it together.

I knew my Varsity player felt a lot better when I dropped him off at his Mom's later tonight when he said, "I love you, Daddy. Thanks for a great night." Usually I am "Dad," so this was a sweet surprise.

His next game is Thursday night. Stay tuned; I suspect he will have a big game...

-30-

Let me tell you a story...

Not long ago and not far away, something special happened. You may be excused, dear reader, for dismissing it as quite nearly nothing at all, once I get around to the details, but for now, please trust me when I say, "life is short, so treasure each moment."



Our perspective on lifespan is highly influenced by whatever age we happen to be when we think about it. My sister Kathy, for instance, whilst a teenager, told me she knew she wouldn't live past 29. Her certainty actually alarmed me, because I had no such insights into when my own demise might occur.

Luckily, she was dead wrong, and happily for all of us, she's already made it to twice that fateful age. Meanwhile, I rather blithely flirted with death at age 24, averting that fate (according to my doctors) by about an hour on January 10, 1971.



India. A hospital bed. Doctors and nurses hovering with worried faces. Fluids pouring out of any exit point my badly dehydrated body could provide.

"What's this?" thought I, in my semi-delirious state. "Death here, now, like this?"

"Hell no," came back the answer.

Thus I am still here tonight, nearly 37 years later, recounting this tale.

Let's see, where did the next length of the thread of this post go?



Aha! Since I was spared death in that distant place so long ago, I eventually reproduced, not once or twice but six times! And the fifth of those six special children is my youngest son, Dylan, 11 years old at present, with a prodigious appetite for serious books by serious historians.

The last time Dylan played competitive sports was, what, five years ago? Because he was playing with his older brother's peers, he was declared ineligible to stay on the team, and that was the end of his interest in team sports.

Until recently. Somehow he decided to give basketball a try. Tonight, he actually got into a game. His team won 16-11. He played about one minute of the 28 minute game and he didn't make a single mistake. In fact, he never actually touched the ball. But he did run back and forth with his teammates, locating the proper position on the court where he was to play, held his arms up in defense, and maintained an alert, watchful presence while he was on the floor.

In addition, he rooted on his teammates from the bench, placed his hands in with the others for the team cheer, and lined up to shake the opponents' hands after his team's victory.

From the scorer's table, where I worked the game, the best moment of this story for me was when I looked up and saw little number 4 reporting that he was the next guy checking into the game. He knelt next to us, as all incoming players do, and when the buzzer sounded, in he went.

Sorry to say, I had to look down at the score sheet so no one would see the emotion in my eyes.

Don't get me wrong. Sports, especially kids' sports are, of course, a minor concern in our world filled with dangers and confusion. I must appear to be a sports fanatic to some of you, given my frequent postings about baseball, the Giants, and other sports. To others, I must seem like a typical soccer mom, i.e., a parent so focused on his own kid's athletic accomplishments that he easily loses sight of the bigger picture.

Well, I plead guilty to all of the above...guilty as charged.

But, this little story is not about me, it is about Dylan W., as he invariably signs his name. I am very proud of my youngest son, because I know how much he dreaded going out there, in front of an audience, and performing under the glare of the lights.

This little boy will one day do great things, I believe. They probably will not be on a basketball court. But his willingness to try and compete in an alien environment will serve him somehow, someway, I'm quite sure.

Congratulations, number four!

p.s. I love you -- Dad.

-30-

Return to the Haight

(Yes, he's grown again. Aidan is now taller than 5'6" and with his jumping ability he's that much closer to being able to dunk the ball.)

As I think back over my life, there has been no one part of town, here or in the other eight cities where I've lived at least three months, that can compete with the Haight. After all, I was there for a baker's dozen or so years.

I lived at three separate addresses in the Haight -- on Masonic, Haight, and Ashbury Streets. My first three kids were born during that period, I had my Rolling Stone years, my CIR* years, the majority of my world-trotting years.





(Photo by Dylan) Today, we returned to the Haight, and I passed my old addresses as the kids shopped for Christmas presents. The Haight's upgraded a bit in recent years; there still are used clothes stores and tons of pierced, tattooed kids along the street, but there also are seriously upscale boutiques. It feels more like the Village than in years past.





You know that when you walk streets you used to walk that you'll be flooded by memories, and I'm no different in this regard.

We passed a used bookstore where I once found two slender volumes about the English language written in the early years of the last century. Those two small books triggered a pent-up desire to learn the history of my birth language, and a dozen other books have followed in my quest to understand how old German, Anglo-Saxon, post 1066 Norman French, Latin, and many more recent foreign influences have layered this malleable language into one with so many nuances and so many shades of meaning that when I (somewhat compulsively) play an online word game, I invariably learn new three and four letter words every time.

We passed the shop where I purchased the album "Imagine" on the night John Lennon died. I was crying and couldn't hide it. I took the album home and played it all night long.

There were a lot of other ghosts and images, which I will not detail here. I'm going to have to go back again and let more of them in...


* = Center for Investigative Reporting

p.s. We had a surprise birthday party here tonight. The kids pulled it off expertly.