Coast to Coast

Leaving New York City this morning, I passed a neighborhood that is new to me, Koreatown, where I had dinner last night. On the TaxiTV, I watched a promo for the Tribeca Film Festival. People were coming and going. My eyes fell upon a fleeting image of a lovely woman with long hair serving as a translator.

Outside the cab window, which I had rolled down, were the usual Saturday morning sights in New York. I've come and gone so many times from this great City that each additional time I have to say goodbye now feels like the last -- you know, how much longer can these feelings last?

New York, for a person like me, is much like Europe. I'm allowed to feel like a writer there. My ideas are valued.



Back home, here in the sunshine state, the dominant reality is not intellectual but physical. I made it to my soccer star Aidan's game just in time to witness the opposition's first goal in a 6-0 rout.



But he played well, as he always does.



Afterwards, as is always the case in our clan, the brothers closed in on each other, with other topics to discuss than the lost game.



Dylan likes to claim the high ground.



JuJu likes to dance up and down the steps.



Our community of friends includes so many big brothers and sisters loving little brothers and sisters. When you are young, a few years make a huge difference.



And, in the end, friendship always trumps outcome.



The way my youngest works her way into this male world fascinates me. The big boys always like her, and she likes them. Of course, on the soccer field she is her own terror. That's why they call her Thunderfoot.

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It's My New York...

...and I Heart it. This is Gramercy Park on a spring morning.



My New York is centered around The Nation, which has been chugging along as a truth-teller since the Civil War.



Many of the greatest writers of the past century and a half published there. Many still do.



Everything about New York becomes familiar quickly: Its architecture, skyline, parks, crowds, smells, sounds, and tastes.



My visit has coincided with a slight mist and a cooling trend. Too bad, I am told I just missed a heat spell when the girls all wore tank tops.



Last night, it was coats and scarves, but they still looked beautiful.



I could never live here. If I did, I'd have to become a scavenger. New Yorkers throw out more stuff each week than some societies consume in an entire year. I see magazines and books I want to read, picture frames and art I want to collect, and files, photographs, notebooks documenting contemporary urban culture.

It would be irresistable to a collector like me. Best be going back to the West Coast, which is exactly where I'm headed today...

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A Dubious Anniversary

There are, as I'm sure you know, a collection of buffoons on TV, who in a previous era would probably have been barking at carnivals, or selling snake oil.

Yesterday was the fifth anniversary of Li'l Bush's pronouncement that the U.S. had won the war in Iraq. You may recall that particular photo-op, with the President, dressed in his best fighter-pilot camos, "co-piloting" a Navy warplane onto the deck of an aircraft carrier languishing off California, (far from the theater of action, except in a Hollywood sense) and declared "Mission Accomplished."

But you may not recall the way MSNBC's shameless Chris Matthews covered the story. His guest was Ann Coulter, the right-wing commentator who spews only hate. Matthews breathlessly declared that Bush was a "hero," swooning: "He won the war. He was an effective commander. Everybody recognizes that, except a few critics."

Alas, five years, thousands of casualties, and billions of dollars later, the Iraq war has hardly been won. MSNBC still employs Matthews. Is there any lesson to be drawn from this?

Of course: Bring back the snake oil salesmen. Maybe things weren't so bad in the old days, after all...

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Chelsea Blues

The thing about being here in Manhattan, as I am tonight, is learning to go with the flow where Fifth (which separates East from West) and Broadway cross. If I were a quarterback, this would be the ultimate crossing route, but which one should I pick?

Alas, I am not a quarterback; only a modest blogger. Not to worry, though, as there is a deli on every corner and they are open 24 hours a day. Good thing, too, because I was famished after my all day plane ride from the coast.

All they offered us on the plane was a boxed "snack," which cost five dollars. Inside was nothing but leftover samples from some food trade show or another. "You just paid five bucks to get marketed to," pointed out my seat mate, helpfully, as I perused the unappetizing mix of plastic-wrapped, preservative-laden, "natural" items.

He was right, of course, but I was so hungry, I would have eaten the American Way magazine if they had given me some salt and ketchup. Now, a couple slices of New York pizza and a banana later, it is easy to joke about this, but man, what if I were seriously hypoglycemic? Makes me shiver to even imagine it.

At least in this town, which never sleeps, a man can get the sustenance he needs without pushing a call button.

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Life Advice for Home Buyers

So, here we are in what many are calling a "recession," but I don't think that is correct. This is more like a correction, IMHO. Housing values are falling everywhere, even here in the over-priced Bay Area, and of course that is a bad thing for those who signed sub-prime mortgages without reading the fine print, and therefore now face losing their property, as their monthly payments progress upwards toward a market-appropriate interest level.

Excuse me, but I don't have all that much sympathy for the "victims" of this popping bubble. Nor, do I weep for the lenders who now face all kinds of problems, given their dubious role in signing up those hoping to attain the American Dream, even when they obviously did not have the assets to yet do so. Actually, both lenders and lendees now need to share the pain. None of the rest of us need be involved.

Let's be blunt. Buying houses is both an art and a science. You've got to do some research. It's no help to fall in love with a piece of property, which many consumers do, if "buying" it will place you and your family at more risk than is reasonable, given your present and likely future circumstances.

So, what I am saying is: Please do not be overly emotional when buying a house. This is probably the biggest cause of the eventual breakups of couples, as they quarrel over such a life-changing decision. (It has been so in my own life, twice.) So much seems to be at stake as to validate Karl Marx's observations oh so long ago.

But please don't ever place your marriage or partnership on the line in the name of acquiring custody of any piece of property, because property will always change hands, whereas love, once lost, can never be reclaimed.

That, simply, is not worth that cost.

No Sleep Til Book Land*

With all four pupils (two blue eyes, two brown) dilated, we made our way gingerly back across the city with its late-afternoon glare, from our annual pilgrimage to the eye doctor.

There's a new test, the M-Pod, which measures your pigment, and I was pleased to learn I scored a very good 67% on this test. I'm not sure what this means, mind you, but if Dr. Chan says it's good, that's enough for me.



Listening to NPR in my car, realizing just how badly the Democratic Party is splitting apart along class grounds, I started wondering whether Sen. Barack Obama will indeed win his party's nomination, and then the Presidency. Maybe race is simply the stalking horse for the real issue -- class?

Political and social views tend to diverge in modern America less along racial lines than along wealth and education levels. Richer, better-educated people support Obama. Working class people, especially whites, support Sen. Hillary Clinton. There is irony here. Clinton grew up privileged and attended elite schools; Obama grew up with a single Mom, and got into good schools because he was exceptionally bright.

Thinking back to former Presidential races, there have been a number of Democratic nominees who seemed to lack the street fighter nature to wrestle with meaner Republican opponents. Think Dukakis, Mondale, Kerry. Could Obama, too, be too nice, too civilized for the job?

Nobody ever called Dick Nixon a nice guy. And few would employ that label for either Bill or Hillary Clinton, after this year's elongated campaign. I am not expressing any kind of personal preference here, but I've participated in a few campaigns myself, and I discovered an incredibly deep competitive nature within myself in the process.

Not to mention the way I played softball during my 29-year career!

My Dad raised me to compete. I learned his lesson well.



Meanwhile, on an entirely different tack, The New York Times mis-reported that pop star Miley Cyrus appeared "topless" in a Vanity Fair photo shoot. In fact she appeared "backless." This incident is the subject of my professional blog today over at BNET. Please visit it and comment, if you are so inclined.



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* Apologies to the Beastie Boys

Jaws

There was a fatal great white shark attack in California a few days ago. Meanwhile, there's a free-for-all shark feeding on the newspapers of this country. They are losing readers faster than a balding man loses his hair. Click on the word "Jaws" at the top of this post for a sense of how bad the situation has become.

What I am trying to do at the moment is to convert whatever skill I may have as a writer and a story-teller into some sort of business. Most of my adult life, the only practical choice was to find an employer who would pay me enough to get by.

As I became more successful, the options included finding employers who could help me not only support my family but save some money. Last night, I was talking with a young Latino guy working in a corner market near here. He was wearing his baseball cap backwards, and an over-sized white tee-shirt and saggy black jeans.

He was impressed when my youngest son pulled out his wallet, thick with birthday cash and babysitting revenue, to help pay for the treats we were buying. He told me that his little brother (aged 19) is also a saver, but that he himself is a spender. "I see something I want and I have to buy it. My brother, he just saves whatever money he gets and he is ten times richer than I am."

Like this guy's brother, I'm a saver by nature. I've probably got a few thousand pennies in a bag somewhere, not that that is wealth.

But I've also squirreled away whatever excess I could generate annually all of my adult life. The other key to surviving bad times is cutting expenses, which I know how to do, thanks to my Scottish grandparents, my Depression-era parents, and my own frugal nature.

When nothing much is coming in, nothing ought to go out: That's my philosophy.

When the money starts flowing again, that might be a time for some travel, a few movies, some nights eating out. I can't really identify with my fellow citizens who keep living at a high standard when their income bumps down into a lower level.

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California Dreams

Tonight might be a good time for cliches.



Nobody ever accused me of being a "man of few words." Hell, just this blog alone, contains probably ~500,000 words in English, not to mention the other languages that I post in, when the mood strikes me.



"A picture is worth 1,000 words." Actually, I do not agree with this one. But, I am a writer, not a photographer. As is the case with most folks, I suspect, I yearn to be what I cannot be, in this case, a photographer.



Today's weather was fantastic. We spent half the day in Marin, and the second half in the Mission.



As I age, I've begun to appreciate what, when I was younger, puzzled me, and that is a deep, almost primal appreciation for the beauty of other animals and for plants.



I was always enamored of the vines that hung from big trees at Ludington, or the fish that swam up our ditches in Bay City. I always loved trees and blueberry bushes.



But I didn't necessarily feel an urgent need to document their lives.



Now, I do. Why? Is it that I am old?



Near sunset, my young boys and I took a walk. We breathed the sweet, warm air, and agreed it felt good to be out together, without having to bundle against the usual cold.



Meyer lemons are sweet; these are courtesy of our friends, Eve and Sam. They recently married, a romantic moment between two youthful people whose combined age (150) really seems like half as much. They are runners. Sam recently ran the Boston Marathon. Both will probably run in this year's 50th Dipsea!



As night fell, I sat in my backyard and gazed upwards.




I saw a jet far overhead, flying out toward Hawaii or Asia. I heard birds settling into trees, chirping their night calls.



I felt a shiver of familiarity, as I walked back up my stairs and looked into my house. "Always on the outside, looking in."

Now there is a cliche I can embrace.

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