The Day in Pictures

Maybe I'll add a story later. For now, you get the idea. It's a warm night back home, I am sun-soaked after a day spent in three San Francisco Parks -- Garfield in the Mission; Douglas in upper Noe; and the Polo Field in Golden Gate, near the ocean.

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History and Irony

The Japanese use the same word for fingers and toes. How can that be?



Tonight, watching the A's-Mariners game on TV, played in Seattle, I witnessed the crowd's chant "Ichiro, Ichiro!" This is the way the greatest hitter of our era, with a career .332 batting average, who happens to be Japanese, is worshiped by Seattle fans.



I wonder how many Americans reflect about the strange relationship we maintain with Japan. When I was a kid, in Royal Oak, Michigan, it seemed like every cheap item had a "Made in Japan" label, much as the "Made in China" label dominates now.

Yet, this was only a decade after we had dropped not one, but two atomic bombs on unarmed citizens in two cities. During my reporting career, I interviewed a number of the scientists who created the bomb as part of the Manhattan Project. Every one of them regretted what our government did with their discovery.

In retrospect, however, I think the U.S. government's decision to bomb Hiroshima was correct. We had to show the stubborn Japanese elite that we had a weapon so terrible that resisting would mean suicide. It is clear that the Japanese military leadership, which continuously lied to the Emperor and the population alike, had bullied an entire nation into being willing to fight to the death rather than allow the evil U.S. to conquer their homeland. The loss of life that would have resulted from a land invasion, Americans and Japanese, is unimaginable.

But the second bomb, on Nagasaki, remains, in my opinion, indefensible. Whenever you take the time to study history, and the repercussions of the decisions leaders take, you are required to exercise your own judgment.

I've read everything I could get my hands on about the Pacific Theater of WW2. My conclusion is my country committed a war crime on Nagasaki. Sixty years later, we don't yet have any resolution whatsoever. All we have is the haunting chant for a Japanese hero in a baseball stadium in the far northwest. Few, if any, of those chanting, I would guess, have any sense of the terrible and tragic irony this represents.

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Driving Lessons

This just in.

It’s that time of year again, time for the BNET Media Industry Award for the Best Political Report on Television, that is, in the Context of the Best Business Plan.

I’ve been an vocal admirer of Comedy Central’s Jon Stewart for several years now, but what he did on Earth Night (April 22) simply went over the top. At the end of another long Primary Tuesday skipped by the “major” networks, we needed some comic relief.


***

It's another lovely day in this (expensive) corner of paradise. My driving student has progressed to the point where she can circumnavigate much of this peninsula, driving 30-some miles over an hour and a half, without making any mistakes.



It's been her dream to drive through the Presidio. She did, passing this "Coyote Crossing" warning sign in the process.



Back home, the sun opened all the golden poppies.



As well as the colorful vine flowers climbing the fences.



Thanks to my older kids & my student driver, I have a new digital camera, with a 6X zoom. I'm seeing familiar things in new ways.



Like the baby plums overhead, already coming into their second color, in the green-to- yellow-to-red maturation process. This summer, I'm determined to make plum jam. If it's any good, I'll offer samples via this site. The title of this blog tonight again links to my professional blog at BNET.

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San Francisco is still...

...San Francisco, and hopefully it always will be. Prices are high here, higher than most of us can afford unless we work around the clock, inherit a bundle, or get lucky in the lottery (read: stock market). Me, I've scrabbled enough the past 37 years to remain here, but I'm not quite sure how much longer that will be the case.

This blog is a non-profit personal journal. It's not meant to earn money, or promote me or my writing, or anything of that nature.

I just write about my life, family, friends, and work in ways that are meant to help others deal with the emotional roller-coaster we all face. It has been gratifying the past 24 hours to have heard from so many other friends of Ken Kelley's, many of whom shared different parts of Ken's life from those I knew about. That's the thing about Ken; he was a wondrously complex man, with an unending appetite for meeting new people.

But he also always stayed loyal to those of us from Michigan who had known him since his teens. He and I did so many favors for one another over the years it would be impossible to keep score, not that either of us ever would have cared about that. Nevertheless, it's true that we lost track of one another during his final, tragic two years.

But, those who know me best know the reasons we were out of open contact had a lot less to do with Ken's problems than with mine. In fact, near the end, we were in touch, we exchanged some telephone and email messages, and he knew he had my support and faith that he could overcome his difficulties.

At the same time, I was going through my own ordeals, and withdrawing from practically everybody for a period of time felt like a necessary step toward self-preservation.

I have a friend who says as long as you are in someone else's thoughts, you are not really alone. Ken remained in mine to the end, and he remains there now. I say this because among all the lovely emails and comments I have received, thanking me for spreading the word about Ken's passing when the mainstream press remained strangely silent, one lone anonymous writer sent me a vicious, bitter diatribe, which I declined to allow to be posted to this blog. (I screen all "comments," mainly to avoid self-promoters and porn-posters, of which there are many.)

Anonymous comments are welcome here in order to protect a person's privacy; but not to protect hate speech by a coward. Whether you agree or disagree with my views is never an issue for me. (Check out the many attacks on my politics posted here by Danogram.)
The truth is I love debate, welcome criticism, and hold a diverse array of opinions, the sum of which could never be reduced to a simple niche of standard ideology.

Anyone willing to openly post about his emotional life the way I do is going to rub some the wrong way. Just speaking the truth about Ken's life offends some people, who would prefer that his many flaws be ignored in light of his many strengths. I don't see people that way -- as teflon images of purity. People are messy, complicated, unpredictable, prone to error, yet capable in the end of great acts of compassion.

Bitterness is a state many older people seem to sink into, which is sad. It's not my fate, hopefully; my messages ultimately boil down to just one word: Hope.

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Ken Kelley, R.I.P.

Finally today, 100 days after he passed away, Ken Kelley's death was finally reported by his adopted hometown newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle. According to those who produced his obituary, they found out about his passing by reading my tribute.

Let's pull back a bit. Our world is changing. It used to be that until an "official" news source, i.e., a newspaper, reported something, it simply didn't happen. But Ken did die, as I reported over three months ago in this blog. Why did it take so long for his death to become "official"?

I don't have any answers to this question. But it may be connected to why newspapers are collapsing and blogs are exploding.

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Through New Eyes

This is a signed baseball card from Roger Craig, former pitcher and Giants manager and one of the fine people in Major League Baseball. It belongs to my son, Peter, who was given it as a gift from my friend, the late Ken Kelley, just at the point Peter was really getting into baseball, baseball cards, and all the attendant fantasies many young American boys share.

I include this tonight, because tomorrow or soon thereafter, our hometown newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, will finally publish a staff-written obituary about Ken's death, which occurred over three months ago.



Meanwhile, the me who is a photojournalist has a new, powerful tool tonight, courtesy of Junko and my oldest kids. It's a digital camera with far more functionality than I've ever had before.



So, you should expect far clearer and more interesting photos from me, from here on.

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Ask me on Tuesday*

This should be an interesting week. Though our weather has turned windy and chilly, it still is brilliantly sunny as well. Everything that can grow, is doing just that.



Colors splash across our yards and the empty places deep in this inner-city neighborhood. Every crack in a sidewalk, every empty lot, even many rooftops are sprouting grasses, flowers, vines.



Several massive Sequoias grace Garfield Park in the Mission, which used to be a drug dealer haven but now is a busy soccer field for kids. Still, this neighborhood is host to gang warfare. Wear the wrong color in the wrong place and you pay for it with your life.

Friday night an apparently innocent man wearing the wrong color was murdered several blocks from here, at Mission & 19th. Tonight, my little daughter and I took a short walk just before sunset to get some ice cream. An hour later, as we passed the store where we made our purchase in our car, headed back to her Mom's place, the entire block was taped off and under occupation by police cars.

It looked like a probable robbery. It looked like a probable shooting scene. It made my stomach sick (which isn't all that hard to do, unfortunately.)



Some plants grow better when I don't plant them. This one grew from a bulb.

Some stories improve when you don't plan them. They just emerge from underground, much as if some spore or bulb had been waiting for the precise moment at which it should appear.

Poof! We have a live one. Who knows where or what it will become but the energy is undeniable. Just a castoff seed or pit or (in the case of what birds and land creatures do best) an excreted seed or pit. Several months later, courtesy of rain and sun, suddenly a new member of that plant's race takes its place in this complicated ecosystem.



It can get a bit too cold to work in here, but a hooded sweatshirt helps.



For the first time in months (money is tight) we had a boneless leg of lamb for dinner, cooked to perfection courtesy of Ask.com. Everybody said they loved it. As a single Mom, working from home and having trouble making ends meet, this result made me happy.

As I was preparing the food, I thought about writing and the irony of success. I've published so many articles in so many publications, won so many awards, and gotten so much positive feedback for a long, long time.

I've also suffered blistering criticism, smothering rejection, and the utter lack of enough self-confidence to continue with this work. Objectively, by my late '30s, I decided that I could only be good, not great, as a writer. That decision, combined with practical concerns (supporting my ever-growing families) dictated my next set of decisions, to bank on my managerial ability and my interest in running efficient businesses, to make far more money than even my most successful writings could ever provide.

In the middle of this mid-career change of direction, I also discovered that my life-long interest in numbers, combined with a frugal sense of staying with budgets, formed a managerial strength that was (how to put it?) unusual in the brave new world of the web. The Wild West had been replaced a century later by the Wild Web.

Our companies' budgeting process, I was told, was simply to "keep track" of expenses, as we expanded rapidly, devouring the funds either venture capitalists or public investors had given us.

Over those halcyon years, I always brought my departments, divisions, and units in under budget. It's wasn't that hard, frankly.

This post has now wandered far away from where I thought it was going. Or maybe not. I wanted to tell a story, and I suppose I just have. There is no ending to this story, yet, because I am still awaiting my next opportunity.

It can go two ways. Some company will need an editorial leader and appoint me as such. Or, at long last, defying a life-long pattern, I will finally settle in and believe in myself enough as a writer to just spend the rest of my years writing...living and dying, as it were, on whatever talent I may -- or may not -- possess.

The answer, for me, is blowing in this cold western wind.

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p.s. The Pennsylvania primary, two days from now, is the next key link in this year's election cycle. I'll have predictions by late tomorrow...