Mill Valley Strollers

This was the home of S.I. Hayakawa, the controversial former President of San Francisco State University and a Republican U.S. Senator (from the Bay Area!) and also, less famously, a brilliant expert on the English language, and the dangers of propaganda and the difficulties of translation between hostile parties.

One of my personal characteristics that I've come to finally appreciate (among a whole host of aspects I despise) is my open-mindedness. For this, I have my journalistic training to thank, in a small way, but some other tendencies, perhaps genetic, or perhaps genetic in a mutational way.

Whatever the origin of this tendency of mine may be, let me at least try to describe it: I love discovering sides of people that my usual set of friends and colleagues dismiss because of their political leanings.

Hayakawa is that kind of guy. My leftist friends revile him to this day because he suppressed a famous strike at SF State in the '60s. I, too, once reviled him for that, but that was before I knew who he truly was, intellectually.

Once his academic work on English, and translation came to my attention, during a period when I sought out obscure books on the origin of this wonderful language, I developed a deep appreciation of him, and a new comprehension of why he felt as loyal to his country and its dominant language as he did.

I've never read a psychological assessment of S.I. Hayakawa, so I am not sure whether there may have been some sort of self-hating component to his makeup. But since his origins were as a Japanese person, not as one of the more conventionally self-hating ethnic, religious, or racial groups, I accept him at face value.

Intellectually, he remains one of my heroes.



That said, my companions today are also heroes in my eyes. A small group of old friends, not one of which would in any way agree with the part of me on display above.



We are a progressive community here in the Bay Area. I also share their values and hopes and political leanings, most of the time.



But, as always, I never really fit in.



Whatever, even though this is ostensibly a memoir of some weird sort, what interests me far more is the reaction of you, who may visit to the ideas expressed here.



I have some pretty big news.



No, I do not have a new girlfriend, I am not getting married, I am not expecting yet another child, nor do I have a new book about to appear.

Nothing that big, just something rather small, actually. Small in the overall scheme of things, for sure. But for me, as a writer, a rather big thing, or at least maybe a medium kind of sized-thing.



Here are my companions today on our hike. Obviously I lagged far behind. That is, of course, only appropriate. (Hint: If you click on these images, you will see them at a far larger -- and clearer -- size.)

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