The Long Distance Blogger

It looks like we're now within a half dozen posts of last year's total, with a month to go. I briefly considered closing this unprofitable blog when we reached the 1,000-post total, but I'm glad I didn't.

Although the topics and tone here vary considerably from day to day, the times that this blog means the most to me are when I am going through yet another transition (or two or three of them simultaneously.)

That's when I have a lot of time alone, which means time to think and time to write.



However, thanks to a long holiday weekend, I'm only alone after dark. The kids and I have spent most of the daylight hours the past three days together, which has provided my nourishment.

Part of the best parenting moments come, for me, when I get a little one-on-one time. My 12 year old and I took a nice walk yesterday; he told me lots of his thoughts about the way he sees the world these days. Tonight, he played "The Entertainer" on the piano for me, and then pulled out one of his favorite books. It was a book of explanations and showed me some of his favorite pages, which invariably imparted obscure knowledge about random phenomena.

What intrigued me was his deft literary criticism of the choices the authors made to explain issues such as the distance between planets in the universe. "It's fine they use metaphors to break it down," he told me. "But some of these metaphors simply don't hold up. They needed to find better metaphors, in my opinion."

***

My ten year old and I have a habit of taking afternoon walks around our neighborhood. In the Mission, a large percentage of buildings have murals and paintings, some authorized, some not, on their sides.

She found her favorite little bear and instantly struck a pose, "holding" it.

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Holiday Greetings

Cold Days, Grim Days

The weather has turned. The brightness gives way to a gloomy season, a time of abandonment and lonely confusion. I know holidays are supposed to be happy times, but for me personally, they usually prove to be the opposite.

The state of the world hangs heavily over this holiday season. The terrible terror attack in Mumbai continues to threaten to destabilize of one of the world's biggest and most important countries.

At home, the President-elect risks sacrificing the sense of excitement that would have greeted his inauguration on January 20th by feeling it necessary to appear at major events almost daily, publicizing his appointments and policy plans to stabilizing this nation's economy.

A side effect of the economic meltdown, which continues to look as if it will get far worse for a long time before it gets better, is the opportunity for Americans to break out of the ideological gridlock that has virtually paralyzed effective government since Newt Gingrich, one of the most polarizing figures in modern political history, drove his right-wing agenda into Republican control of the House.

To be fair (and accurate), it was a centrist Democrat as President, Bill Clinton, who in the early part of his administration committed two huge blunders -- forcing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" on an unwilling military, and then ending his wife Hillary to try and establish a national health plan that a coalition of opponents was able to paint as "socialism."

Now we have another, perhaps more determined centrist Democrat. My more liberal friends and colleagues preferred John Edwards early on, and Hillary later, apparntly because they feel more ideologically compatible with those politicians.

Not me. I liked Obama early and I liked him often. Now I like him better than ever. The economic team he's assembled is distinctly non-ideological. There is both a continuity between his team and the current leadership, and some glaring differences, in that Obama's team is preparing to try and right the situation, not just apply band-aids.

For those both on the right and left who like to fight more than they care about the actual fate of our people, I'm afraid you are in for a dark winter indeed. Right-wingers: Your fantasy that Obama is a dangerous liberal is essentially a neurosis. Get over it or seek professional help.

Left-wingers: Your tendency to project onto Obama an opportunity for "pay-back" against eight years of Bush/Rove/Cheney supremacy says a hell of a lot more about you than him.

Read his books. Study his speeches. Evaluate his appointees and take the time to carefully read through his complex policy proposals.

This is a President for the ages. For once, we Americans have actually gotten it right at the polls. I just hope that the convergence of global political and economic crises does not so handcuff him in his first term that we fail to experience the full force of his leadership potential.

With this qualification, despite personal gloom, I remain what is called "cautiously hopeful."

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Where it all comes from...

The soul of humanity is in our music.

Perhaps the greatest song of the 1960s was this one by Otis Redding. He died in a plane crash before it was released. So it went, for too many artists of that era.



But there were also were others:




































xxxx

The Greatest Performance of All Time

From Wikipedia: "Lynyrd Skynyrd (pronounced /ˌlɛnɚdˈskɪnɝd/) is an American Southern rock band. The band became prominent in the Southern United States in 1973, and rose to worldwide recognition before several members, including lead vocalist and primary songwriter Ronnie Van Zant, died in a plane crash in 1977 five miles northeast of Gillsburg, Mississippi. A tribute band was formed in 1987 for a reunion tour with Johnny Van Zant, Ronnie's younger brother, at the helm, and continues to record music today. The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 13, 2006."



Free Bird!

One of the Worst Moments in Our Shared History

Have you ever heard of a "not-for-profit" enterprise. Of course you have. That, dear reader, is what this blog represents. The only way its author will be able to sustain it over time is if the Google ads and search options on the upper left side get used by visitors.

Anyone who visits, but does not exercise those options, is lurking, in the lingo, which, to be clear, is fine by me. So, I am not asking anyone to click on my sponsored ads, but I am pointing out that if you do not do so, you are in effect saying "I don't care whether your blog survives as a business or not."

Given the recession we have entered, many valuable things will disappear. I am not so arrogant as to suggest this blog is valuable to anyone but me, but if you wish it to continue, perhaps you'll consider helping me out?

Most of what I do, as a writer, gives me at least a modest compensation. This blog does not. It is a loss-leader, and its fate depends completely on you.


***

Now, on to today's post.

Today, we are witnessing by far the scariest event since I started writing here two and a half years ago. The terrorist attack on Mumbai, which when I visited it 27 years ago was still called Bombay, may signal the beginning of World War Three.

I hope not. But consider history. An obscure assassination in the Balkans triggered World War One.

The unsettled aftermath of that awful struggle set off World War Two.

In my lifetime, despite many close calls, we have somehow avoided a third global conflict, when way too many parties have weapons that could easily destroy life on our planet. One of these nuclear powers in Pakistan.

Meanwhile, the most unstable of all places in the world is Pakistan. Taliban insurgents now control two-thirds of that country, and it is teetering on the verge of collapse.

The terrorists who hit Mumbai today arrived by boat.

If it turns out they came from Pakistan, how do you imagine the Indian government will respond?

This, my friends, is how global disasters begin.

I just hope I am wrong. But my sense is that we face dire circumstances in the days ahead. A nuclear bomb exploded anywhere on earth threatens life everywhere on earth.

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Cornered

As I write these words, 22 U.S. banks have failed so far this year.

What is the magnitude of this? Consider that over the previous three years, 2005-'7, the total of bank failures in our country was...three.

Wow. And this accounting of unprecedented institutional carnage does not include banks that the Bush administration has deemed too big to fail, and therefore qualified for its TARP "bailout" funds to keep them afloat, at least for now. These include, most recently, CitiBank, until an eye blink ago the biggest bank on the planet.

As this is the beginning of the holiday season, many Americans will no doubt watch "It's a Wonderful Life," Frank Kapra's 1946 classic film starring James Stewart, Donna Reed, and Lionel Barrymore.

This film's premise is that the American Dream requires a decent, ordinary guy to sacrifice all of his own dreams to save his community. Even then, he fails, and sinks into the depths of a suicidal depression. His salvation comes through the grace of an angel, who forces him to confront what a world without him would have become.

Naturally, this story appeals to Americans of all stripes. The concept that any one of us matters that much is deeply ingrained in our collective consciousness.

This is a society of would-be heroes, those who would stand up, against all odds, in opposition to the forces of evil.

If only our lives were that simple! If only we could live in a comic book version of reality, as opposed to our true circumstances.

All of this makes me so, so sad. It is an ineffable sadness, a bottomless pit. No words I can string together can express how harmful I feel the dishonest and cruel propaganda Frank Capra inflicted on my fellow citizens was -- in the year before I was born.

We do not need more fake Daddies who sacrifice their own lives as if that was what their children would most honor. Every child I've ever met, including all of my own, would never hope for that fate to befall me. They all support me and my writing and my quests to make a difference in this difficult world, despite the fact that many of my choices have and continue to subject them to a less secure future than I am sure they would prefer.

Why?

Because our love for one another is secure, set in granite as tough as anything Mount Rushmore has to offer. The love between a parent and his or her children is not based on the mistakes that all of us imperfect humans make. It is based on a deeper understanding that each of us does whatever we can, to the best of our abilities, on behalf of everyone else in our family.

Tonight, on the verge of yet another Thanksgiving holiday that I will no doubt spend alone, due to financial and logistical circumstances beyond the control of any of us, I will still be giving thanks for what I have, as opposed to what I do not have.

Americans always yearn to return "home."

As for me, I have no such home, in the sense that no place exists where all of those I love could gather in true peace and love. But many others, far less fortunate than I am, share this fate, so I feel no self-pity.

I just hope that we all make it through yet another depressing fake holiday intact, able and willing to go forward, with some semblance of hope in our hearts. And that we can forgive those among us who no longer prove strong enough to do so. After all, an angel does not always show up at the right place and the right time, right?

And that's okay with me.

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Global Poverty

So, help me here. I know we here in the Home of the Brave and Land of the Free have entered hard times, from a middle class American perspective, though hardly from a global perspective.

Truly hard times will be when we start starving to death, which, of course, may yet happen in the U.S., as it did in the Depression 75 years ago, but I doubt it.

This country continues to maintain a huge advantage in resource consumption per person over the rest of the world. Why, exactly, do we deserve this position?

Only on the basis of military power. Thus we have many, diverse enemies, with more emerging from the ghettos and slums in Third World cities every single day.

We also have a young, brilliant, President-elect, who may be our last, best hope to survive the coming disaster that threatens to engulf all peace-loving people, not to mention all animals and plants around the globe.

Will we come together behind his leadership and find a new path to survival, or will we go the way of the Dinosaur.

As Bob Dylan would say, "the answer, my friend, is blowing in the wind."

David's World

There's never a time that I visit New York, and come back home, that I do not think about a life that might have been. Manhattan is home to the traditional publishing industry. It has always had the power to make a writer a star, much as L.A. controls the future for aspiring actors.

By the time I was 19, I knew I was a writer, though there was no way, internally, that I could tell whether I was a run-of-the-mill writer, a hack, a very good writer, or something beyond all of that.

Like many writers, I've lived in a private world, all of my life. Inside David's World, everything is different than in the "real" world we share with one another. Much of my world is fantasy, most probably the type of fantasies that most others would find exceedingly bizarre.

For example, I live privately in a world of numbers. I see numbers, and the lovely patterns they reveal, all around me. There is a certain mathematical logic behind street signs, retail displays, emerging buildings, and backyards that gives me immense pleasure.



But, only as I've grown older have I come to understand that others see these visible aspects of our environment differently, that the patterns that mean so much to me can actually be defined as neuroses, i.e., coping mechanisms, not the beautiful swashes of art that display themselves to me.

***

I have a new book idea! Shall I reveal it here? I've been developing it over the past few months, as I've watched Obama sweep to victory, promising a new era of governing, while I work with my colleagues in Silicon Valley to launch a new version of our website.

Naturally, you can see where I am going. Government 2.0. You heard it here first.

The back of my house has been bolstered with new redwood studs and repainted salmon. Either my landlady is rolling in cash, or (as I suspect) this place is about to be put on the market.

Call me paranoid. I've been called worse things. But I hope I am wrong, because the kids and I want to remain here, for a few more years. We need to get them through high school and into college.

On the other hand, should my new book idea prove to be a runaway best-seller, perhaps I may soon be capable of buying this, or another appropriate home for my family.

I don't know anything, other what is going on inside my own head. Tonight, I am seeing the numbers of a people still hoping that tomorrow may be better than today. I see a young President-elect who understands his moment in history, and who therefore will be launching initiatives that can help us collectively get there.

So, in the end, from the writer who is me, the main message I have to offer is a simple one: Hope. It is, when you analyze Obama's speeches, essentially what he is offering.

Think of it this way. Either we collectively believe in tomorrow or we don't. I do. He does. What about you?



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