Saturday in a Sweet City

At the center of this photo is my 14-year-old soccer star kicking the ball. It went straight at the goal but the keeper made a nice save, though he was shaking his hands afterwards from the force of this particular kick.

Score at this point late in the second half: 0-0.



A little later, the game was won. Score 1-0!.



Earlier my nine-year-old warrior tied her hair back to begin the game. Her nickname is "Thunderfoot."



Her coaches huddled with the team, discussing strategy.



Later on, it was art time.



More art time.



And more art time.

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The Three E's in This Election -- Part Six

John McCain has often admitted that he is very weak in economics. He said he was reading Alan Greenspan's book, "Age of Turbulence," to get educated about how our economy actually works.

Meanwhile, this story is breaking today from AP:

WASHINGTON - Alan Greenspan says the country can't afford tax cuts of the magnitude proposed by Republican presidential contender John McCain — at least not without a corresponding reduction in government spending.

"Unless we cut spending, no," the former Federal Reserve chairman said Friday when asked about McCain's proposed tax cuts, pegged in some estimates at $3.3 trillion.


As the readers of my first five parts of this long series will recall, I committed to analyze the intersection of economics, energy and the environment in order to provide some balance to the inflated rhetoric that always seems to dominate Presidential campaigns.

My analysis is that of a fiscally conservative small businessman, and I believe the first five parts validate that self-image. As longer term readers of this blog know, I read Greenspan's book when it came out. It was perhaps the 100th book on economics I've read over my career -- not my first.

It is quite easy to tell whether a candidate understands economic principles, let alone the math that measures economic performance, simply by listening to him. McCain almost never talks about the economy, even though that is by far the most serious issue facing the nation this fall.

When he does, he spouts Republican orthodoxy -- tax cuts for all. This always plays well with voters, and this year is no exception. But under present circumstances, it is irresponsible to present tax cuts as the type of reform that will yank our economy pull out of its stagnant state.

It's also a lie. If elected, McCain will not be able to cut taxes -- as Greenspan's comments confirm. Let's remember that this is a not some liberal Democrat but the most conservative of Republicans saying that McCain's tax policy is nonsense.

Does anybody care? Is anybody paying attention? Or are enough voters choosing to remain ignorant of the facts and just vote their emotions?

I know for many Americans, Sarah Palin is a refreshing candidate for Vice-President. That is partly because they identify with the way she presents herself -- as if she is closer to how they are than big politicians usually seem to be.

But, as one who has covered politics for 42 years now, let me issue a word of warning: Beware. Don't fall for the cover, study the book. Palin is a very dangerous individual, much like Democrat Huey Long -- if you don't know his story, please open up your history books.

From the perspective of an economic conservative, I simply cannot vote for McCain and Palin. They represent pork-barrel politics, the same old, simply Bush.3. I'll assess Obama's economic packages in future columns.

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The Three E's in this Election -- Part Five

So far, I've mostly dealt with economic issues, because they seem like the most immediate and urgent problems to focus on this election season. But political leaders should not just be evaluated on their ability to come up with short-term solutions; they also need to understand and articulate a long-term vision, particularly an energy policy and an environmental plan.

One of the lowest moments of the two party conventions was when Republicans started yelling, in unison, "Drill, Baby Drill," during Sarah Palin's acceptance speech. That is the kind of moment that sends shivers down my spine -- a demagogue with her mob. Are there significant fossil fuel reserves remaining in the U.S. or off our coasts?

Of course there are. But that is not the point.

Ask yourself: Why have we, as a nation, not rushed to develop them yet? Is it an evil conspiracy of eco-nuts and fuzzy liberals that should be blamed?

Or is it, because like all oil reserves, they are finite in nature. They require a major investment of time and money before they can become productive. Meanwhile, the odds are pretty high that at least one major oil spill will further foul our badly polluted coastal waters and the continental shelf that we rely on for much more than energy.

Understand this critical point: Differentiating between national oil reserves and foreign oil reserves is a red herring. It is a non-issue. The global oil market is so enormous that no one party -- no producer and no consumer -- has the ability to affect oil prices any longer.

So, the political pandering inside this country is all aimed at you, dear fellow voter. Since I have already bashed Sarah Palin, let me now bash Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic Speaker of the House. Her explanation of the choice facing this nation's consumers is whether we consumers will pay more for gas or whether "Big Oil" will earn more profits.

B.S. Actually, there is hardly any relationship whatsoever between Chevron's profits and what you pay to fill up your car at a Chevron station. It's nice to pretend there is, and maybe it's even smart politics for Pelosi, but in my book, it's no better than the "Drill, Baby, Drill" chant.

Both are emotionally satisfying sermons to true believers.

Neither speaks to the hard truths Americans need to hear.

Since no one else seems willing to tell you, my fellow Americans, what is actually going on, I will try to do so.

First of all, our lifestyle is over. Even if we "drill, baby, drill" we will not produce enough oil to sustain our automobile-centric lifestyle. For much longer than was reasonable, we have enjoyed low gas prices that have allowed us to take long road trips, commute to work in distant communities, and buy inefficient vehicles in which to do these things.

That era has ended.

In the future, we will have to be much more conscious than we have ever been about the environmental impact of our vehicles. To be blunt, if your next car is not a hybrid, you are fooling yourself about what you need to do in order to remain financially viable in tomorrow's reality.

Do you see what happened to Bear Stearns, Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac, and now Lehman Brothers? They are much bigger than you are, my friend. They ignored realities and now they are paying the price. Please do not be an individual fool like they were, collectively.

It's over. No more big cars, no more SUVs. No more pickup trucks. No more driving a long way to work as the single occupant of a vehicle.

Over. It's over. Adapt or die. That is the Darwinian principle at work here.

You don't believe in evolution, like Sarah Palin? I am sorry to tell you that you are roadkill, my friend. Just as she is.

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The Monster Eating Texas

From space, NASA satellites capture the massive hurricane, Ike, churning into the Gulf of Mexico like the missing piece of a puzzle. On the ground, despite warnings they face "certain death" some coastal residents did not evacuate from the area around Galveston, Texas, where the storm will make landfall overnight.



We're around the midpoint of the hurricane season, and it's already been a busy one. Even just a few hours before it slashes into Texas, nobody has any idea how much damage Ike will cause. This is also the major oil refinery center for the United States, so there may be serious economic damages beyond the human and property tolls.

With Lehman Brothers, the largest independent brokerage on Wall Street, poised on the verge of collapse, and several other financial institutions teetering as well, the country's economy is causing a lot of people a lot of pain this election season.

Bill Clinton's advice to Barack Obama yesterday reportedly was to ignore Sarah Palin and her jabbing, goading mannerisms, and focus exclusively on the economy. It was Clinton's adviser, James Carville, who came up with the phrase, "It's the economy, stupid!"

That was in 1992, the year Clinton defeated an incumbent President named Bush.

Obama's suggestion to John McCain that they appear together at Ground Zero yesterday and refrain from political attacks was a nice gesture that illustrates Obama's consistent attempts to keep his campaign on the high ground. Democrats are divided by this approach, because they feel the Republicans will lie, cheat, distort and "swift-boat" their way into the White House, just as they have the past two cycles.

McCain once pledged to stay on the high ground, but he has violated that pledge, which is a shame, because the country is not getting any kind of debate about the economy -- a debate that is badly needed. I've written very little about any issue but the economy myself, because I believe that's what we all should be concentrating on.

Instead, our politics once again has become mired in the small town, name-calling distractions that only a campaign empty of ideas would resort to. There's still time for the country, however, if not for those facing certain death in Texas tonight.

UPDATE: WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Federal Reserve Bank of New York held an emergency meeting on Friday evening with top financial market representatives to discuss recent market developments, a Fed official said.

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The Three E's in This Election: Part Four

Energy. You can't write, type, or input the word without thinking of the brilliant Albert Einstein. Whatever our energy needs as a people may be, we already have plenty of it, right here on earth, thanks to God.

Okay, that was a cheap shot. I apologize. Everyone knows I don't believe in any gods and that I despise what religions are doing to our precious societies. If Christians, Jews, Muslims, Hindus and the rest would actually do something -- anything! -- to promote world peace and understanding, I would probably convert, just as a gesture of support. Because I have never opposed faiths. They just are not for me. I'm sure, when we each die, our soul (i.e., consciousness), goes somewhere or another, and I truly hope that that is a better place.

Maybe it's a Universal Soul Repository (USR), where the accumulated wisdom we've achieved on this planet gets banked into a massive spiritual database that will somehow be applied (by a superior power) to improve life here on earth, and all the other places where life exists throughout the vastness of space.

But I doubt it. Our genes tell a story and it isn't a pretty one. Our planet's history tells a story, and that, too, is not a pretty one.

Here is the essential qualification for any candidate who wishes to be President or Vice-President of the U.S., IMHO. Admit that climate change is at least partially, and probably largely, caused by human activity.

Anyone who cannot do that, again IMHO, is too intellectually-challenged to be a leader. So that is the bottom line. My advice to all registered voters is to check out the candidates' positions on global climate change. As you do so, don't think about your own life, which like mine, is not at risk, no matter what happens.

Think instead about your children, and their children. Please, please, please think far into the future. You and I will be dust, but there will be others struggling with the same kinds of issues that face us, here and now, in our time.

This is not a Democratic issue, or a Republican issue. This is a question about the survival of our species, homo spiens. Screw politics and politicians! My question is who gets it and who doesn't?

The answer, if you truly care about the future when both of us are long gone, should be clear.

It Can't Happen Here, Right?

My, we now have quite a serious problem here in America. A candidate who faced difficult odds, John McCain, has added somebody to his ticket that many Americans, for thoroughly understandable and honorable reasons, feel excited about.

After all, in the whole long history of this country, only once before was a woman nominated for Vice-President, and that was Geraldine Ferraro in 1984. I happened to spend some time in Washington, D.C., that election year, and I was appalled to be present at a gathering of some of this country's leading investigative reporters as they salivated at the prospect of destroying her candidacy through the shady connections of her husband, John Zaccaro.

I tell this story because I left that evening feeling nauseated about how biased our national press was -- not against conservatives, but against women.

So, to my friends who continue to believe in the fantasy that the national mainstream press has a liberal bias, I can tell you that, even if it does, which I doubt, a far deeper bias has been against women candidates.

So, all the chickens are coming home to roost. Now, when all of these biases are swept aside, what are we doing as a people? The polls favor the McCain-Palin ticket. So let's take this straight-on. America could well end up with a person a heartbeat away from the President whose record suggests she could be one of the most dangerous leaders to attain power in the history of this country.

To my many friends of a conservative bent, let me entreat you to take a deep breath and evaluate who this nominee really is. Do you want her as your Commander-in-Chief? If your answer is yes, I would submit that you are a racist, pure and simple. Because what you are really saying is that you can't accept a far more qualified black man.

That, of course, is what this election is all about. If you click on the title of this post, you can explore how Germany and Italy turned into the most dangerous countries on earth in the '30s.

Those who ignore the lessons of history are doomed to repeat it. That is what we are witnessing, my friends.

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The Three E's in this Election -- Part Three

We have a problem, folks. Neither candidate for President has presented any kind of plan that would speak to the actual economic problems we face, not to mention meeting the principles we've established as the necessary bedrock for any type of economic recovery.

The blunt truth is that our national economy has been so mismanaged, and so recklessly unregulated, these past eight years that we are in much worse shape, as a nation, than we would ever have imagined we could be a this point in our history.

Today, the Congressional Budget Office projected a massive federal deficit of $407 billion this year, more than double last year's huge deficit. So far, neither McCain or Obama have said anything to give me confidence that they recognize how serious this crisis is. After all, they are both pandering to voters who have been living on credit for so long, they wouldn't know a wise consumer decision if it hit them straight between the eyes.

Going back to my very conservative roots, I am discouraged. Will either candidate make the difficult speech that we need to hear this fall? The speech that tells us to cut up our credit cards, batten down the hatches, and ride this consumer depression out?

I doubt it, which is why I am an Independent who distrusts both parties.

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A Tie in November?

Eight years ago, I participated in a guessing game among political junkies about what the final distribution of electoral votes would be that November. As the election neared, the polls indicated such a close race between Al Gore and George W. Bush that the state-by-state searches I did indicated that the unthinkable was possible -- an electoral tie.

This can happen because there is an even number of electoral votes, so depending which way each of the 51 states (including the District of Columbia) break, the 538 votes could be allocated 269-269. As it turns out, that is not what happened in the 2000 election. Al Gore won the popular vote, including, apparently, Florida, but the Republican state government of Florida thwarted all attempts to get the matter resolved.

The Supreme Court then intervened, ceased all recounts, and declared Bush President.

This year, the candidates are again neck and neck in the popular vote, with McCain trending ahead at the moment, but only within the margin of error. Therefore, we face the possibility of another split decision this year, wherein the winner of the popular vote loses the election.

Obama is projected ahead in electoral votes at the moment, but the other day, I went state by state and tried to allocate all the "swing states." The result? 269-269.

Now, should that happen this November, the outcome will not be determined by the popular vote at all, but the election will be thrown over to the House of Representatives. That's the way it works in this electoral system. On this matter I am not a partisan.

If McCain wins the popular vote and ties the electoral vote, Obama will be awarded the Presidency because his party controls the House. To me, that is wrong. I hope none of the nightmare scenarios that currently seem possible come to be. But if one does, I then hope we engage in a true national debate about why we cling to an ancient electoral vote system rather than a direct popular vote system, which would finally mean every person's vote would matter, unlike now.

Living in California, for example, my vote does not matter one whit. The Democrats will win this state, no matter what. Next door, in Nevada, my vote would count for a lot. It's a swing state.

Or, if as is likely, the political class does not have the stomach for election reform, perhaps at least we could agree to drum up an extra electoral vote somewhere in the restlessly growing country, and get the overall total to an odd number, 539. Then, a tie would be less likely, though (with third party candidates some years), still a mathematical possibility.

The Three E's in this Election -- Part Two

Now that we've established that the principle of personal responsibility is at the core of any equitable economic program, we need to extend that principle upward from the individual consumer to the corporate sector, the non-profit sector, international organizations and government regulators.

Here again, we encounter a basic reality. Small is good. Big is bad.

Big Labor, Big Companies, Big Government, even Big Universities -- they're all corrupt. They're all wasteful, inefficient units that suppress innovation, experimentation, and creativity. They all become Orwellian bureaucracies, with so many rules, policies, prohibitions, and contradictions that one can be forgiven for regarding them as nothing more than elaborate human inventions to avoid all personal liability.

I once worked in middle-management in a company where the main preoccupation for executives at my level was to compel those who reported to us to iterate on an endless series of power point presentations, which we would duly review and send up to the next layer of the company's hierarchy.

They, in turn sent it to their superiors, who then reported to the Board. For around six months, the same set of power point slides circulated first up, and then back down, this corporate ladder. Nobody was ever satisfied so we all just iterating. When I left that company, that preso still wasn't finished -- but the company, for all intents and purposes, was.

A year later it was bankrupt.

The fundamentals of our national economy rest on competition, innovation, the public markets, supply and demand. But our national economy has lost much of its significance in the globalized economy that now drives every aspect of our lives as producers and consumers.

As our national economies become ever more interlocked and inter-dependent, we need a new set of understandings to guide our decision-making. Although it may satisfy certain nostalgic urges in parts of our citizenry, complaining about outsourcing, or jobs going overseas, or foreign ownership of American companies is, excuse my French, pissing into the wind.

It's way too late to stop globalization, which even if we could (and we are not that powerful), would have disastrous consequences. Rather, our urgent need is to embrace the global changes and play a leadership role in promoting the most equitable distribution and use of resources possible.

Free trade is not an option, it is the only option. There should be no barriers, no subsidies, no tariffs except in a slender number of cases involving the externalities that our free-market economy cannot handle. This means in the area of environmental, safety and health protections, where mitigation is necessary.

Later in this series, I'll consider Energy and the Environment, and how they fit into the case I am making. The above paragraph hints at where I'm going...

The foreclosure situation in America raises another fascinating aspect of where personal responsibility is strong and where it is weak. In the American middle class, it is weak. Among the poorest of the world's women, in Third World countries, it is strong.

As all academic studies of the "Bottom of the Pyramid" illustrate, micro-loans to Third World women are re-paid at a rate way over 99%. Now that is a good business -- lending to poor people. Too bad U.S. banks pursue bloated margins by feasting on the "dumb and dumber" types who sign on for sub-prime loans.

Finally, I do not support government bailouts for anybody. Not for consumers, not for lending organizations, not for Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Our short-term pain would be great, but if we discarded this bailout philosophy, and concentrated on some of the principles enunciated above and in Part One of this series, we could get our piece of the global economy back on track.

While we're at it, let's eliminate entitlements of the type that have locked California's state budget into an endless game of chicken by political partisans. Starting back at the individual and family levels, it would be irresponsible for us to overspend when our income is low. Promises of all sorts turn into welfare, which rots the cycle of innovation and competition that fuels growth.

Thus, we have a rotten mess in California's state government, which needs to be cracked up so it can start over.

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What happens at Dad's house...

...stays at Dad's house.

There is some serious kid action going on in this space. We've got the electronics, the building materials, an awesome Lego collection, a basketball court, the snacks and treats and some of the best music and coin, stamp, seaglass, shell, old bottle, foreign currency, bottle cap, fake gun, photo, book, magazine, stone, fossil, and board game collections known to humankind.

There is also Dad. He's a bit problemmatic, to be truthful, but there's nothing wrong with his cooking. We believe in family dinners around here. Everyone sits around the kitchen table, eating and talking and debating the issues of the day.

Staying quiet isn't an option.

When we go down the back stairs and get into basketball games, the competition can be fierce. Here, on home court, anyone might win. You've gotta consider the apple tree, the bamboo, the posts, the cracks in the cement, the stairs, and the angle of the sun.

Our family is Dad, two boys & a girl, with other blood relatives and friends showing up from time to time. What we do not have here, deep in the gang-ridden Mission District (*more on that in a minute), is the reliable presence of a woman.

Everyone I've dated the past five+ years has loved me, but not my "baggage." So be it. I understand. If I were in their shoes, I'd feel the same way. So it will continue: Dad's house is a bachelor pad, which isn't such a bad thing.

Unless, of course, you'd prefer that the dishes were washed, the towels were clean, the beds were made, and a quiet sense of order would replace the barely controlled chaos that somehow seems at home here.

Beyond that, our lips are sealed. I suppose this is the way it will be until the kids grow up and go away. By then, I'll be 70. Hmmm. I wonder how many women will be interested in me then?

Check back. Not that I'll have enough brain cells functioning to tell the tale...

* Gun violence (thanks, NRA members) has broken out here, with six shooting deaths in the past week. We've always had two warring gangs, but now we have motorcycle gangs as well. Every night, someone gets shot down -- over there, or there, or there. Blood soaks our streets. Here, in the city of love, there's still plenty of hate. Those of us not involved just have to hope we stay out of the way of the stray bullets as the warriors pursue their supremacy, block by block. Thanks again, NRA members and advocates. Thank you so much for threatening peaceful families like mine. What a nice gesture. How good the prospect of your leadership. How thoughtful.

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The Three E's in this Election: Part One

Part One: The Economy



Economics, Energy & the Environment are interlocked under The First Law of Ecology: Everything Is Connected to Everything Else, as Barry Commoner so brilliantly formulated in his classic book, The Closing Circle, over three and a half decades ago.

Although it is impossible to segregate one issue from the other two, as they are so inextricably interlinked, for analytical purposes, I must try. The point of this post is to deconstruct the economic crisis in a straight-forward manner in order to serve as a conscientious voter's guide for evaluating the major candidates for President and Vice-President.

This is not a partisan analysis, but it is personal. These ideas and conclusions are based in my own experiences, beliefs and observations during my 32-year career as a journalist. Although I've studied and am familiar with economic theory, I won't talk in abstract terms. It's important to be concrete.

I am a small business person, an entrepreneur, a fiscal conservative, and a humanist. These filters guide my thinking. Small business is the engine fueling growth not only in our country but all over the world.

Large, state-run enterprises emerged, especially in "socialist" countries, but also here in the U.S., either in idealistic attempts to reform an imperfect world, or to extend the benefits of wealth to a broader swath of the population.

They largely failed, and that model for organizing an economy stands lifeless and discredited. But the rhetoric of the era when Big Government was still an option survives in our politics, which I would characterize as the gutter politics of clueless power-seekers.

It makes me cringe to listen to most politicians as they bungle their way through economics proposals. So, first principle: Unless your politician speaks directly and bluntly to you about what you have to sacrifice in order to get things right, he or she is pandering.

True economic health requires all of us to abandon the slavish, greedy lifestyles based on credit, and re-embrace the wisdom of our grandfathers and great-grandfathers. One of my grandfathers was a Canadian farmer, and was dirt poor. The other was a Scottish tradesman who immigrated here to work for the automobile industry.

My Farmer-Grandpa died over two decades before I was born, but I am very proud to bear his name. All of my life, I have been fascinated by farming, by growing things, and by the way a farmer evaluates the future, factors in unknowns (like the weather) and plants his seeds, protects his tender crops as they grow, and harvests what he hopes will be a banner crop.

As often as not, he fails, but he succeeds just enough to keep going. And, always, he protects and improves his best seeds, so that next year, he'll face better odds of outwitting nature than he did last year. Where I grew up, winter time was the season of taking stock, doing the calculations, repairing the machinery, surviving on what you were able to bottle or can or dry and salt, all the while protecting your seeds for the next planting.

My Scottish Grandpa taught me, often with scowls and grumbles, to never pass a penny lying on the street. Save it. Don't spend it. To this day, under my bed, I have a paper bag bursting with pennies. I'm quite sure all of my children think this is one of their Dad's peculiar quirks.

In fact, there have been times that bag became useful. There have been rainy weekends in our family when the kids didn't have anything better to do than bundle up a hundred of those pennies at a time, turn them in at a bank, and get something they deemed far more useful -- dollar bills -- that they in turn used to obtain some little something or another that brightened the gray skies overhead for a while.

I am, at my core, a saver.

As an executive, in every job I've ever held, my goal has been to come in under budget. Usually, I've succeeded. They key has been to track the numbers closely, understand what you are spending and what you are bringing in, and always try to make the latter exceed the former.

It makes me a little nauseous, as sometimes happens, when a higher-level official tells me to go ahead and spend money because it is "in the budget, and if you don't spend it, we'll lose it." I'd never make it as a bureaucrat in Washington, where whole divisions of agencies have disappeared even as I write these words, to use up their travel budgets before the fiscal year ends.

That's right, folks, on our dime, "public" officials are partying in Africa, Asia, South America, and Europe while you read my words, just making sure they "use it" and don't "lose it."

I would support any candidate for President who had the guts to end this gluttony. Alas, most of them don't even know about it. And none of them know who I am, what I know, or what they could learn reading this blog.

You see, most Americans may believe we reporters are biased, but that view entirely misses the point. Of course, we are biased -- just like you! Who said any person is a God?

(Well, a couple major religions did, but let's leave that aside for now.)

Small is good, in economics. Big is bad. You can improve your own economic situation through sacrifice, delayed satisfaction, and careful budgeting. If you want to start a company, apply these same simple rules.

If you've ever tried to hire anybody to work from the ground up, you have learned an amazing fact. People don't agree to come over for the money; they come for the idea of a future. All good employees are willing to sacrifice immediate gains for future possibilities, at least here in America, where opportunity is so great.

This idealism of the small business unit inspires me. It also is the spirit that makes this country great, IMHO.

Sadly, we have other forces at work. Your mailbox, like mine, is cluttered by glittery, seductive offers for yet more credit cards. "For everything else, there's MasterCard."

Bullshit. For everything else, there is patience.

This may seem like a paltry effort at describing an economics program, but it is so fundamental that I've devoted all of these words to attempt to say it. Personal responsibility...until you embrace that, we have nothing to talk about.

Welfare, entitlements, handouts, rebates, "free money" of any type represents horrible economic policy. If you are facing tough times here in the richest land the world has ever known, take a good look in the mirror.

How many pennies have you passed up on the sidewalks of your life? How many times have you suppressed an urge to consume, thinking about tomorrow. To borrow a phrase from a great song, "Don't Stop...Thinking About Tomorrow."

You also shouldn't forget which President danced to that song as he ascended to the White House. He is the only occupant of the Oval Office who carried out a very wise economic policy, without which none of the wealth generated by small businesses the past 16 years would have been possible.

Ignore rhetoric. Ignore personal or religious issues. Ignore demagogues, i.e., "inspiring speakers." Ask about their economics plans. Ask yourself about your economic plan.

It all starts at home. Check your emotions at the door. Forget about abortion, God, and guns, please! For just this once, think about butter!*

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* If you did not study economics at school, please track down the connection between guns and butter...

Day Games & Night's Magic

Warm Nights, Beach Bonfires

It's the start of our summer here in San Francisco, when the fog holds back, and the heat lasts far into the evening.



Today was also the start of soccer season. In our family, however, far more important than soccer heroics is that our precious red-headed terror on the pitch is turning 14 tomorrow.



Ocean Beach was lighted by many such celebrations tonight. But the most special one, IMHO, was for our very special Aidan (here, on the left).

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