The View Up Top

As I look eastward over this hilly city toward the skyscrapers downtown, the weather forecast is for rain the rest of this week, though tonight it remains clear.

No one can see forever. And no one will see forever.

Our time is finite.

As far as I can see tonight, what becomes visible in the night is my gratitude for being alive and feeling loved. That is enough to see. And not even the rains to come can wash that away.

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A present

My daughter painted this and gave it to me for Christmas.

She's at an age when everything is changing for her. Moods come and go at the speed of light, often unanticipated, often opaque.

It's a special age for a girl; a difficult age for her father.

A time to listen as closely as I can; to affirm my unconditional love. She pours a lot into her art projects.

One thing I like about visual art is you see what you want to see in it.

I see an 11-year-old sorting her way, stroke by stroke, while filling the canvas.

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City Lights at Night

After the storm passed, the city was peaceful late last night when I shot this photo from my window in the facility where I am recovering this holiday season.

Each day I get stronger. Soon, I hope, I'll resume my former habit of long blog entries.

For now, these virtual haiku will have to suffice.

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Lightning Over the City

It's rare in these parts, but a thunder storm moved in over the peninsula tonight and sent several large lightning bursts over San Francisco.

We cheered.

Maybe it was a sign from the heavens that we are doing something right around here.

The rains that preceded it and are still falling in its wake are, as usual, badly needed in this drought-prone area.

Merry Christmas, a day and a night late.

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Peace on This Earth

Wherever you are or whatever you are doing, my hope for you is that you are at peace with yourself tonight. In a world where so many feel pain, where there is much loneliness and despair, remember that as long as someone is thinking of you, you are not alone*.


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*Thank you to J.

A Poem, Son to Father

My son gave me a poem last night, Invictus. Here is the first verse:

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

He told me he believes I am "truly unconquerable."

I don't know whether he is right about me, but I will try to live up to his vision of his father.

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Escapes from the Mind

It's fairly easy to get trapped in life, in a job, in a relationship, in a lifestyle, in almost any set of circumstances that don't work for us.

Making them work is work.

Life is an organic process; it goes on until we end.

Sometimes the escape from the circumstances that seem to confine us are only in our mind. Sometimes we don't even want to leave.

Then, a window that beckons turns into its own trap -- a place we don't really want to go.

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Lighting Up the Night

Some friends brought a little holiday cheer to a patio in the Western Addition.

Dad Won't Be Home for Christmas This Year

There comes a time in life when, no matter how hard we try, we simply cannot be where we most want to be. But health is health; money is money, geography and the laws of physics are immutable.

This holiday season I will not be able to be in my own home, but I will see at least some of my children, probably on Christmas Day and several days before then and after.

The holiday period is approaching; it's a tricky time of year, whatever your holiday/religious traditions may be. People are rushing about, buying presents, sending cards, making cookies.

I'm resting, and recovering. I feel stronger each day. This particular Dad won't be home for Christmas this year; but I hope and plan to be around for many more in the years to come.

Happy Holidays, everybody.

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Patience

I've received expressions of concern. I am okay, just had a bit of a health episode that requires rest and recuperation. I'll try to post short messages now and then.

Warmest wishes to all.

Short Break

Friends:

I am suspending this blog for a bit. I will be back.

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Obama's Afghan Policy is the Best of Poor Choices

Photo Courtesy of the White House

After a few days investigating what went into President Barack Obama's decision to send more troops to Afghanistan, I have come to the conclusion he chose the best policy option open to him.

The previous administration started the war in Afghanistan, of course, in the weeks following the 9/11 attacks. The stated reason for the invasion was to hunt down Osama bin-Laden and al-Qaeda, but the U.S. military let the terror network leader slip away after cornering him at Tora Bora late in 2001.

I've not been able to locate any persuasive explanation for that stupendous failure. It is one of the greatest tactical errors in modern military history, frankly.

Meanwhile, over the past eight years, the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan has morphed into a dubious nation-building exercise and, increasingly, an attempt to curtail the return of the native Afghan Taliban movement, which held power when the Bush administration invaded.

To my mind, there is no chance for the U.S. to "win" this war. But, much as happened in Vietnam, there is a good chance of "losing" it. Obama clearly feels painted in a corner by the circumstances he inherited.

Those attacking him now include many who naively believe everything any President does is political. No President is that cynical. Obama is Commander-in-Chief. He's received more in-depth briefings about this conflict than any predecessor about any inherited war over his first 12 months in office.

He wants a troop surge, and he wants it faster than the military felt it could deliver it. Then he wants a timed draw-down of troops faster than anyone believes will be possible.

Finally, he says that the conditions on the ground in Afghanistan will determine the actual timetable for withdrawal.

You could find aspects of this plan to disagree with, whatever your politics. But if you take the time to study what he is trying to do, and balance all known factors, you may come to the same conclusion as I have:

Obama is doing the right thing.

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Blogging for B&N

I've posted to various blogs over the years. Recently, Barnes & Noble asked me to write a post about the move from physical to digital books.

Here is the result.

The best part about blogging is when you get comments. In that spirit, I want to thank those who comment at this blog. This is, of course, a relatively obscure blog, with somewhere around 50-100 visitors a day.

B&N, by contrast, is obviously a major platform, and therefore dozens of people posted comments behind my piece there.

Please visit the link, and if you so choose, add a comment!

Thanks.

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If Loneliness is Contagious, So is Hope

Wow, I've let almost an entire workweek get away from me without posting here -- my bad.

I have spent a bunch of that week downtown, attending a conference and meeting with more promising media startups.

Although this is the worst of times to be a professional journalist (we're all out of work), it's a fascinating time from the perspective of changing communication habits.

Take blogs. A decade ago, hardly anyone was blogging.

Today, millions of people blog. It's become a major way of connecting with one another in an otherwise fragmenting world.

According to a report in the Washington Post recently, loneliness is contagious.

That caught my eye, because I've often noticed the effects, some of them quite subtle, people's emotional states have on each other. The studies in the report covered by the Post indicate that one person's loneliness can be transmitted to others via a variety of pathways.

At the core of our humanity is our capacity for empathy. Just sensing the deep loneliness another feels triggers a response inside many of us. We can so easily imagine feeling the same way, and sometimes, of course, we do.

Isolation, alienation, loneliness -- these are major social diseases of modern society. To address them, there is another tool within our grasp and that is hopefulness, optimism.

I observe that expressing one's essential hopefulness if contagious as well. Some may dismiss you as lacking the appropriate degree of cynical realism about our actual condition if you act hopeful, but others will thank you for making their day a little brighter.

With that in mind, I'll try to end this post, on a cold winter's day, with few tangible amenities available to view, on a hopeful note. Things may get worse, it's true; yet they may get better.

I'm opting for the latter view...

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As a Decade Ends

Remember the fears over the Y2K?

That is how this decade started out. I was living in Takoma Park, Md., at the time, and I remember purposefully filling my car with gas before driving the family over to my sister's house in Vienna, Va., early on New Year's Eve night, 1999.

Rumors and reports of impending disaster had been circulating for months, and those given to apocalyptic visions were hunkered down, awaiting the inevitable.

But it never happened.

Having quite a few engineer friends, I considered the prospect of a global Internet failure remote, but I filled up that car anyway, just in case.

Where exactly I was thinking of taking my young family to escape whatever horrors might have ensued a Y2K disaster now eludes my faltering memory. Probably getting to my sister's house was as safe a haven as I could have imagined.

After all, thanks to my nephew, they had the best toy gun arsenal I had witnessed up until that time.

***

It's good to be able to sit up and walk around tonight, after a pinched nerve laid me low over the weekend, after our 1,000+ road trip through Arizona last week.

But I'm blessed by a body that (still) recovers quickly, and by tomorrow sometime, I should be back to normal.

***

A much more shocking event than any Y2K scenario awaited America as the decade, century and millenium pivoted, of course, and that was to occur on September 11th, 2001.

The Bush administration had every piece of information it needed to have to be able to recognize the magnitude of the threat from al-Qaeda, but the record shows they ignored all of it.

Nevertheless, once hit, this country came together and started striking back.

That is the problem. We reacted like the hurt monster we, in fact, were, and still are. We struck out at the people we perceived as our enemies.

Eight years later, tomorrow night President Obama will announce a troop "surge" of 30,000 young men and women who will lay their lives on the line in Afghanistan.

Remember, I know Afghanistan.

I'll listen to his arguments, but for me, and for many others, he has a skeptical audience to convince this is the wisest course at this point in our troubled history.

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500 Miles Away From Home (Sacred Ground)

There is something about a road trip that reveals the deepest truths about this country, as wandering minstrels, poets, and ordinary folks have been saying for as long as we've been here.

Here is my best friend trying to copy a cactus that is probably twice as old as she is, because this particular species doesn't develop "arms" until it's been around for at least 75 years, according to my big sister.

America is a huge country. Once you hit the road, you can drive forever, it seems. You'll encounter all sorts of options along the way, one of which, in the West, includes Indian reservations.

On this trip, I've been reading Antonio D'Ambrosio's intriguing book, "A Heartbeat and a Guitar: Johnny Cash and the Making of Bitter Tears. This is the story of Cash's passionate attempt to illuminate the plight of American Indians; an attempt that was suppressed by the music industry.

We European settlers don't really like to be reminded of what our predecessors did to the native people who were here when they arrived. We also would prefer to forget what was done to non-white immigrants -- Asians and Latinos -- who came here for the same reasons we did. A generation ago, the lovely person sitting next to me in our car would have been sent to a concentration camp.

The only way to interpret the great folk song, "This Land is Your Land" is that it was meant for all of us, not a privileged few. The indigenous cultures that existed here for millenia before the invaders arrived don't believe in the concept of individual ownership of land anyway. You cannot own Mother Earth.

But you can be good custodian, preserving what you find for future generations.

The only items we bought on this trip were from Native American stores, where the proceeds go to natives. As we move along the great highways in the West, we know we are cutting through sacred ground.

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Hoover Dam & bin-Laden: We Foot the Bill

Half an hour outside of Las Vegas sits Hoover Dam, an engineering marvel from the 1930s. It was built by Warren Bechtel, the founder of the Bechtel Corp., headquartered in San Francisco.



The Dam was on al-Qaeda's target list, so after 9/11, the federal government decided to build a bridge 1,000 feet high over the dam to reduce its vulnerability to attacks, such as by truck bombs.



Scheduled to be completed next year, the construction project rivals the dam in its complexity and grand scale.



I don't recall seeing a more impressive bridge at the partway-built stage anywhere before.



If Osama bin-Laden accomplished nothing else by his terror attacks, he has cost the U.S. taxpayer a frightful amount of money trying to secure our borders and our most vulnerable national assets.

A visit to the dam during the current recession is a sobering reminder of that sad fact.

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Sedona

If you want to take a road trip, you could do a lot worse than drive around in Arizona.



That's what I've been doing this week, with a friend. I've been to the state maybe a half dozen times over the years, but never with as much freedom to explore as we had this week.



These photos are from what many in these parts would agree is one of the most spiritual places in this state: Sedona.



If you are moved by nature's endless ability to inspire, go to Sedona. It is a desert town with enough water to support deciduous plants and fancy resorts. But we didn't go to the fancy resorts.



If you are on a budget, (as I always am) there are lovely and affordable places to stay in this town, at least briefly. The best thing, when you arrive after dark, is to wake up and see the outcroppings that ring this place.



There is so much variety in these formations, each of which have special names I will not burden you with here, and so many different angles from which to view them, that Sedona is a photographer's dream.

It is even more a realm for painters.



Like the Grand Canyon, the sun lights the stage in Sedona. As the sun moves in its inexorable arc, ever higher in the early part of any year, and always lower in the latter half, it illuminates each and every crack and crag and cave in these uniquely red rocks.



Red is a color that elicits strong feelings inside all people. As a writing teacher, one of my favorite exercises is to tell my students that I will name a color, ask them to write what they feel about that color in five minutes, and then hand that writing in.

My favorite color for this exercise is red.



The answers to that particular question tell a lot about the writer's age, class, gender, ethnicity, national heritage, but most of all, about that writer's imagination.

As a writer, I never presume to have any useful words for any other person about their personal quest for spirituality. That is as deeply personal as any journey one takes. But my feeling while in Sedona is that this could be a very good place indeed for you to visit if you are searching in that sense.

Meanwhile, since this is Thanksgiving Day, I'd just like to say thanks for Sedona.

And thanks for red.

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Happy Thanksgiving

I hope everyone reading these words has a sense of peace and fellowship on this holiday.



Celebrating with my older sister and husband here in lovely Arizona.

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The Grand Canyon

Through my eyes, recently...

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Road Tripping: Route 66

These images are from a recent drive I took along the western end of the old Route 66.



Some of these towns, and cafes, and tourist stops could well disappear in the coming decade.



Not many folks continue to live in these small towns, since the freeways bypassed them.



Maybe, in the end, the only ones left will be those who originally lived here, the people the early Europeans called "Indians." After all, they are still here, just as they have always been.



But Route 66 for most Americans is about nostalgia, not Natives.



I understand.



The '50s. Only problem is, I didn't feel comfortable in the '50s, and I was a kid then. The style may have been great, but it was rock 'n roll that freed us from all of that.

Remember?

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My Musical Genius (Who Insists He Isn't)

I have a kid who hates any kind of public attention. Thus he hates to perform in plays, he hates giving speeches, he hates pretty much any situation that places him in the eye of others.

On the other hand, he (like all of us) can only avoid being seen for who we really are for a limited period of time. Just being alive and on the planet means you'll be noticed.

The cliche is "don't hide your light under the bushel." (The final word is often shortened to "bush" in colloquial American.)

But so many special people try to do that, at all ages and stages.

In fact, it is the shyest kids who invariably turn out to be the most interesting adults, on many levels.

As much as I respect those who somehow are born with, or acquire, superior social skills, I also have to say that the deepest spirits, the oldest souls, the most intriguing people I've encountered along the way were, at least as children awkward, unsure, and probably just sort of weird.

Although he would disagree, I know that my little guy is deeply gifted as a musician. He doesn't understand how good he is because there is not enough social value around this particular skill from his peers for him to let that information in.

You know the best part about today? His big brother, whose gifts are in athletics, was even more nervous than he was. He sat upstairs in the balcony, worrying, waiting for his little brother to take the stage.

When he finally did, he was masterful. If you like music, or even if you don't, please watch this clip and tell me what you think. Remember, since it is at YouTube, to let the whole clip load before you try to watch it, for a better viewing experience.



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My Little Ecologist

In my youth, I was an activist for many causes. Pro-civil rights, anti-war, pro-women's rights, pro-gay rights, anti-grand-jury abuse...but my first and truest cause, the one that has endured my entire life was, is, and always will be environmentalism.

To me, wandering free through nature was the greatest pleasure of my childhood. I was a lonely child, not because I never had friends, but probably because I was a loner by nature.

My natural love has always been for trees, plants, birds, fish, other animals, the sky, clouds...Of course I love people, too, but my feelings toward people are complicated by the way we, collectively, treat our common planet.

This is why the so-called "debate" over climate change is so offensive. It really doesn't matter how much our role as an obscenely over-populated species has contributed to the indisputable warming of Earth.

What matters is that we have not treated our home with respect.

My youngest child probably knows very little about the earlier stages of my career. I do not show my kids my books or articles, unless they ask. That work occurred a long time ago.

But, in her own powerful way, she is an activist who wants to make an impact on environmental grounds. She's only eleven. She's already a vegetarian. She also likes to use the visual arts to express her beliefs.

So this is the work she did today. It adorns our front fence, as the photos below capture.





Back when there were hippies, stoned on dope but aware of karma, everyone would say, "what goes around, comes around." I hope that is true.

At least in my little world, it feels true tonight.

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What if we could all just switch sides?

Lots of people come here to give talks. It's like that in all big cities, but a citizen seriously committed to finding out as much as possible about a wide variety of topics could do a lot worse than sample what our city has to offer.

At San Francisco's Commonwealth Club Monday night, for example, a panel debated "The Future of Books."

One of the speakers was Dan Clancy, who is the chief engineer at Google Books, which is a controversial effort to scan millions of out of print books and make them available in digital form to anyone who wants to access them. (Most will have to be bought, but some will be free.)

One of the most prominent opponents of a proposed settlement of a class-action suit against this Google effort is Dr. Pamela Samuelson of U-C, Berkeley. She has demonstrated in a series of interventions how Google and the parties to the lawsuit could improve it for the good of all, but have not done so.

Clancy and Samuelson have obviously met often in public debating this issue and remain cordial and respectful toward one another. But they are also on an intellectual collision course, as the case wends its way through the courts.

Watching these two impressive people struggle with the issues that divide them got me to wondering: What if they switched sides? You know, like in Debate Club.

What if Google hired Samuelson and Berkeley hired Clancy.

Give them a year to get used to their new digs (and perks) and then have them meet again.

To tell you the truth, as I see it, neither of these two would change much. And, to be fair, their skill sets (she is an expert in law and copyright; he is an engineer) could not simply be swapped, so my fantasy could never, in fact, come true.

But the point is, from my experience, you argue from the interest that you represent. If your boss is a search engine, you are representing a search engine. A university is a slightly different kind of boss, but from my years inside Berkeley and Stanford, I can tell you there are certain pressures that come down from above there, as well.

Anyway, it was a nice event at the Commonwealth Club, which has been presenting lectures and panels for over a century now, here by the Bay.

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Bill Ayres and Bernardine Dohrn, Good Americans

Listening to Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn speak yesterday at the Green Festival here in San Francisco, I couldn't help but think back to last year's absurd attempt by the Republican Party to link then-candidate Barack Obama with terrorism, via a bridge with this couple's past.

The layers of irony here are that these are two extremely privileged people from rich families who are highly educated and have devoted their entire adult lives to helping other people.

For a relatively brief period of their youth, perhaps because they came from such sheltered backgrounds, they flirted with what they thought was "revolution," and participated in a bunch of activities anyone from a lower class background, such as mine, could have told them would turn out to be unsuccessful and counter-productive.

Though a fellow son of the Midwest, and a University of Michigan student like Ayres, our paths never really crossed until yesterday, though of course I was aware of him, and attended some meetings as he and others were forming a precursor group of the ill-fated Weather Underground fantasy.

But, after their speeches yesterday, I briefly encountered him outside the hall, touched his arm and said, "Nice job, Bill."

That's it, I'm sure, the only contact I will ever have with Bill Ayres, but had we had a bit longer together, I would have also said these things:

"Thank you for being funny and self-deprecating. If anyone on the purported 'right' in this country had even a fraction of your sense of humor, many other Americans might become conservatives, because all our collective instincts hew in that direction. But, no, the only laughter at self we ever encounter comes from the outsiders on the left. (Mike Huckabee is probably the lone exception on the right, which is why I liked him, as well.)"

"That said, thank you for reminding us that we, those of us who share progressive ideals, are actually the majority in this country, even though for some reason we act, most of the time, as if we were outside of the mainstream.You and Bernardine reminded me today that we actually are the mainstream. It is the right-wing that is living on the margins of the new America."

"Thank you, most of all, for the obvious love you and your wife have for each other. She, too, is a gifted speaker and activist. You both are, clearly, loving parents and grandparents."

For my part, I feel lucky, as an American, that we have people like Bill Ayres and Bernardine Dohrn, among us, still working hard and speaking out about what truly matters if we are to become a truly great nation, not just one that throws its military and financial weight around like a bully on the world's playground.

I'll repeat something I wrote a year ago. I'd love to have dinner with Bill and Bernardine. They have much to say about our society, where it has been and where it is headed.

Plus, I'm quite sure that if it was safe for him to say so, President Obama would agree with me, but he can't and he won't, not until he leaves office and rejoins the rest of us still trying to organize our communities to transform this nation into a true Democracy...which, due to class, it is not tonight, as I write these words.

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You Win Some, You Lose Some

Whether you are a parent or not, or your kid competes or not, there are lessons to be learned from kid sports.



Sometimes you win and sometimes you lose.

Every now and again, your team reaches the championship game of whatever division or level to which you have been assigned. That is what happened to my youngest child yesterday. They played well. They lost. This photo is from late in the game, and you can see she was still competing.


As I've written here before, the best thing about competitive sports for kids is learning about how to lose.

Can you guess how these girls reacted yesterday as their season ended? They cheered. They jumped and yelled and shouted their team chant as if they had won the game. The other team watched them with open mouths, not believing.

If there is a lesson, it is this: Being truly part of a team is so special, that it has a value that none of us could ever calculate.

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San Francisco: A Love Story

Over the course of an adult lifetime spent mostly based here in San Francisco, I've witnessed the transformation of its population by continuous waves of new arrivals, mainly immigrants from Asia and Central America, and by young, artistic or entrepreneurial migrants.

I came here as one of the second type, at age 24, never having lived in a big city before. So San Francisco is, for me, the prototype for a city, even though I realize, through the massive number of trips I've made to other cities on this continent and around the world, that this place is typical of nowhere!

No, San Francisco in unique, but you can find other somewhat similar venues if you consider only a few of its strengths -- climate, physical beauty, architectural heritage, racial and ethnic diversity, collective intelligence, radical culture, nightlife, cuisine, liberal politics, wealth, entrepreneurial spirit, historical significance -- and I could go on and on, but not all of them.

Nobody except us have it all.

I do love this place. But the main source of my love is a belief in the ability of people to find renewal here, by the Bay, next to the mighty Pacific, buffeted by the whitest fog and bluest sky imaginable, not to mention the purest air.

A week ago tonight, I stopped by a local club, in the Mission, where a singer friend of mine was performing, an author was reading, and a photographer was signing copies of his photos. All of this was going on inside one small club just off Mission Street, with a cover price of $12.

If you've never tasted San Francisco's brand of culture, but want to, contact me and I'll be happy to give you a top ten list of "do not miss" ways to begin to understand how we live here -- not how the national media says we live, not how the talk-show maniacs who demonize us say we live, not the comedians -- but us, the residents of the best city in America, bar none.

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Working Holiday: How It All Fits Together

It's a national holiday today, so I can take it off from work. Funny thing about freedom, though, it doesn't always work out the way you'd hoped. Freed from my dreary routine, I decided to take a walk.

Taking my camera, I figured this was a chance to enrich the "pending SI" file I maintain on my laptop. That is where upcoming photos of the streets around me are stored for my photo blog, Sidewalk Images.

Today, however, we came up empty, my camera and me. We saw all the assorted stuff -- plants, trash, cars, people, pets, fixtures, buildings with their slants and angles -- but we couldn't take any photos.

So, I did what I had to do. I published no image, just my admission of the failure of obtaining any image.

Turns out photographers can lose their voice also.

Since I haven't been eating much lately, and in celebration of the holiday, I had steak and eggs for breakfast. On my recent walk with friends in Mill Valley, I'd secured a handful of Laurel Bay leaves, which I grilled the sirloin in.

Steak?

I got it cheap. Safeway has these periodic sales, where you can get them for a buck each. The nice thing about bay leaves is they not only infuse the meat with taste, they aromatize your entire house.

A natural air freshener.

So now I sit here, back from my empty walk, with an empty day and an empty agenda. The silence again closes in around me, and the writing voices erupt. "Do this!"

"No, do that!"

It's Veteran's Day, a time to honor all of those who have served our nation, even when the cause wasn't a just one. They never got to choose; they followed orders. They were brave even when they didn't know whether it mattered.

Maybe it always matters to be brave. Courage comes in many forms, large and small. It's hard to be brave enough to put yourself out there, to do what you can, even to be free.

My camera is held together by duct tape, anyway. It's really hard to take photos anymore. The duct tape stretches, and the photo-taking fails. If only I could use duct tape to fix all the other parts of my life that are broken, solving this mess would be easy.

But something tells me it's not going to be easy, not this time.