Riding That Train

(The national stimulus package to be issued early in the Obama administration envisions a massive federal investment in infrastructure projects. In that spirit, here's a personal story.)

My Saturn was long overdue for service. Not because I didn't try to take it in; the dealerships all closed down around here this fall, probably part of GM's gradual failure as a company, and for a long time there was no authorized maintenance destination.

Fast forward to a couple weeks ago: A notice came in the mail that a Chevrolet dealer had taken over the responsibility for fixing Saturns, and he enclosed a coupon for a bargain oil change & lube job.

So, I called and made an appointment. They said they couldn't fit me in until December 3rd (Wednesday of this week). I dropped the car there, and was driven home by the shuttle. That was a nice touch, as I barely missed a beat working on Wednesday, which is how I like it.

When I called late in the day, the service agent admitted they hadn't gotten to my car yet, but there was a good chance they would the following day (Thursday), since a computer ranking determined which vehicles had been waiting the longest, and mine qualified.

Yesterday, I took public transportation to work. It took 20 minutes to walk to Bart, the subway system in the Bay Area. A train came immediately, and we headed south. According to my glance at the map, the southern-most station, and therefore presumably the right one for me to hook up with Caltrain and get the rest of the way to Redwood City was Millbrae.

That was true, but -- my bad! -- the train I was on didn't make it to Milbrae. It ended at SFO (the airport) instead. No matter that the airport is at Millbrae, too. The airport Bart and the Millbrae Bart stations, which sit just across the 101 freeway from one another, are not linked.

So, I sat in the same train that had carried me there, and waited for the "airport special" to start its return journey. Quite a bit of time passed, during which I memorized the "In Case of Emergency" poster. I also read and reread the notice that "Federal Law Demands that these Seats be Reserved for Seniors and the Handicapped."

Finally, we eased out of the SFO station northward. I was retracing my steps.

By now, I knew to get off at San Bruno, where I promptly caught the next southbound train to Millbrae. Finally, my transfer station!

There was only one problem. "A system-wide computer breakdown is causing major delays for all trains north and south," boomed a station loudspeaker, every five minutes or so.

I and several dozen other stragglers had no option but to wait it out. After an agonizing stretch, during which I studied every face of my fellow riders for clues about the meaning of life, a train actually did show up.

This would have been pretty much the end of the story, since the next scheduled stop was Redwood City, where I work, but this particular train made an "unscheduled" stop somewhere along the tracks between Millbrae and RWC.

We just sat and sat. The train operator came on periodically, almost mournfully, to express his regret. I couldn't tell whether he was more saddened by our stoppage or his inability to explain why we were stationary.

As is the case with all things in life, good or bad, this (motionlessness) too came to end, and our train filled with battered riders screeched itself the rest of the way to (my) destination.

Yep. Public transportation! It only took me two-and-a-half hours to complete a commute that normally take me 30 minutes in my car.

That was only half of yesterday's story. later on in the day I had to get home, remember! Maybe I'll tell that story later...

So, please Mr. President-elect, yes, please do something about improving our public transportation systems.

A Christmas Story

Like most people, I work hard, take care of my family, and keep my nose out of other people's business. Although I do donate some money to charities, and I also have been known to empty my pockets of change for a homeless person, I'm not a big guy on the bleeding heart circuit.

Most of time, I more or less try to ignore as many of the many needy around me, if only as a form of self-protection, you know?

Today, going about my daily business, (albeit a little ticked off because my car was sitting in a GM repair shop that eventually admitted it was so busy that they wouldn't be able to even look at it until tomorrow, meaning I had no real option here in public-transportation-unfriendly California to get to my job), I was picking up some supplies for dinner at the corner store.

The men who operate the convenience shop are brothers, tall, Middle-Eastern immigrants, smart, honest, and friendly, with wives and children and deep hopes for their kids' futures.

In other words, the truest and best sort of Americans.

They also have a little brother. I say "little" because of his small stature, but I don't know what his age might be. He has Down's Syndrome. Over the past year or two, one of the brothers has been bringing him to work.

He's become a fixture at my corner, in his sweatshirt with a hood, his ready smile, and his obvious love toward all children who come into his view. My kids, for example.

Often, for whatever reason, after I pay his brother, I have given this man the change. I think it's just because I like him so much and he smiles so nicely at any gift, however tiny.

Tonight, anticipating my action, he pointed to a cardboard display, where you can give quarters to kids suffering from Muscular Dystrophy. When I gave him the quarter from my change, he carefully placed it into a slot on the display.

He pointed at the small girl whose photo appeared there. "Girl," he said, with a beautiful smile, "Nice."

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Nostalgia? Or Does Life Pass Too Quickly.

Sometimes, I try to imagine life back in the world when I was born. Rows of new houses built in suburbs like the one I grew up in -- Royal Oak -- just outside Detroit, claiming land from the farmers who still worked within sight. Milk delivered by a milkman, who slid the bottles through one of those cold lockers into our house. Black sedans with running boards, men still wearing parts of their uniforms from the recently ended war, young couples starting new families.

The music of the time was still the romantic, crooning ballads of the '40s, the styles owed more to the pre-war '30s than to the as-yet undefined '50s.

By the time I was old enough to look around my environment, everything was changing. There were so many of us "baby-boom" kids that the world was, in many ways, dominated by us. Tons of kids just poured out into the streets, running here and there, almost without any purpose other than the need to expend pure energy.

The automobiles started assuming new designs, with colors and curves and jets and other affects. They lost their running boards, and picked up horsepower. A horrible, life-threatening plague swept through our communities -- polio.

The milkman started to disappear, as the corner store emerged to offer new consumption opportunities.

In music, the crooners and cover artists continued to dominate our parents' music, but something else was emerging that would challenge the status quo and ultimately topple it: Rock n Roll.

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Tell Me a Better Story

The magnitude of the changes sweeping our world require a certain restraint from a writer like me. It would be easy to magnify some of these developments to the point where a reader could easily conclude that I think humanity has never before faced such challenges.

I don't.

We have.

Although many of the current crises -- especially human-caused climate change -- are most likely unprecedented since we evolved into something resembling our current state, so too is our collective scientific knowledge and technological capacity to rectify our errors.

I've never subscribed to the school that humanity's collective future is hopeless. We can and we will survive, if that is our top priority.

In order to do so, however, many of the current values in my country need to undergo a radical change. The selfishness of not only the rich but the aspiring rich is nauseating.

We need balance. We need reason. We need modest desires -- our children and grandchildren growing up with good health and happiness. Our ability feed ourselves returned to some sort of local, organic, socially-just system that rewards farmers and consumers in proper proportions.

Much of what many of us currently do can easily be done away with. Let go. Much of our overbuilt housing stock, our over-sized vehicles, and our unjust level of resource consumption should burst just like the bubble that was the sub-prime mortgage bubble.

We can be better than that. Many of us yearn for a better life, not necessarily a richer life, but one with more meaning and one better grounded in the reality of our ecological relationship with the earth.

If what I describe sounds like a "back to the land" hippie of the '70s, know that I never was that kind of person and I still am not. I'm a city-dweller, an activist, a man who works more hours every day than most people a third of my age.

I'm a writer. What I most yearn for now is a story of our people worth celebrating.

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Winter's Sudden Summer

An odd thing about living in Northern California is that you might as well toss the calendar into the trash when it comes to predicting what the weather will be like.



Today turned out not only to be the last day of November but a strangely hot beach day. It wasn't a Santa Ana, technically, but a soft warm breeze from the north, as near as I could tell.



In the park, mating pairs of ducks, geese, and seagulls were having a field day consuming the seeds thrown by humans.



It was a lovely, peaceful scene; the only break in the calm came when various male Mallards sensed another bird moving in on their family territory.

Sure enough, there in the shadows, young ducks were cowering, not quite yet ready for prime-time, with hawks, crows and Pacific gulls overhead, and snakes always on the prowl nearby. The problem with the shore, of course, is the raccoon, never far away, with its sharp claws, silent step, and very long reach.



Big trees line the lake.



With amazingly thick patterns of bark.



Skinny bamboo lines the island.



A lone turtle sunbathed, undisturbed by all around him.



At the shore, the peace was replaced by a strange violence. Monster waves rushed ashore, discouraging all but one lone surfer from testing their violent currents.



Hundreds of people lined the cliff over Ocean Beach, mesmerized by the sight of an ocean raging in ways rarely seen.



The occasional kid tested the tide line.



Creatures with no hope of surviving the gap between low and high tide were pushed up onto the sand by today's huge waves.



Back home, I have a newly redone back porch, looking west, toward where I spent this day, in the park and on the beach. It wasn't winter this day.

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