A winter haze has settled through our city this weekend -- it's cold dirty air. Something is happening to our climate. For days and days now we have had only sunny skies; the temp is in the forties at dawn but climbs to the seventies by mid-day.
Sunsets are muted pink and peach; the nights are silent.
New growth covers our yards, fields and hills. But something is wrong. This is supposed to be our rainy season.
Day after day, however, no rain comes. Memories of our last great drought return. Cars, houses, sidewalks all so filthy. People not showering as often. Jokes about the British. Public service ads advising "Shower With a Friend," yielding some of the worst pickup lines of an era.
I had an old car I seldom drove at that time. There were no parking restrictions in most San Francisco neighborhoods, so you could keep your vehicle in the same parking place for weeks or months.
Every few days, I'd check on my old junker, and marvel at the thick coating of black particulates. A drought is an extended bad air event. People start suffering from asthma and other respiratory disorders to such an extent that the City has to issue warnings that the vulnerable should stay indoors.
If one issue above all others has occupied my mind-share during most of my journalism career, it has been the environment. This, I'm sure, dates from my youth, especially my lonely years, from age 10-17.
These were years of illness, isolation, alienation, desperate shyness, and the construction of a thick protective shell that successfully kept others at a distance most of the rest of the first 40 years of my life.
Life unfolds in chapters, like a novel. There are stages we all must go through. It doesn't really matter how intelligent you are, or faithful, or honest, or well-intentioned. Emotional development is an awkward, life-long quest that none of us escape -- except, of course, the arrogant rich bastards who all too often rise to the top of companies, universities, political parties, churches, and most other institutions in our society.
As I've said and written many times, the problem with wanting to be number one is that, in any particular setting, only one person can win. That leaves legions of wannabes stuck in an inferior position.
This type of system leads to dysfunctional organizations, with The Biggest Asshole at the top, and many disgruntled mid-level executives below. Therefore, getting the top job is a mixed bag -- you are likely surrounded by sharks whose toothy smiles conceal the fact that those same smiles can (and will) kill you in an instant.
Et tu, Brute?
Darwin, one of greatest scientists, documented how only the strong survive. But Shakespeare, one of greatest artists, told the other side of the story.
To me, human ecology is as natural as that governing the rest of the animal and plant worlds. The only difference is that we, as a species, are so arrogant that we collectively represent that Biggest Asshole on the planet.
Thus, it remains for journalists, activists, lawyers, novelists, artists, poets, and other truth-tellers to bring the mighty to their knees, so that the truest among us -- the meek, the unassuming, the kind, and the compassionate -- do indeed inherit this earth, and share it with all the other creatures and plants that inhabit this paradise with us.
Should we fail, climate change will render everything we know as dust, and in my view, rightly so.
-30-
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Friday, January 16, 2009
Our Superstar
What a week for my 14-year-old basketball star. His team, which is on its way to the city championship for middle schools, won all three of their games by a cumulative score of 96-42.
He didn't score all the much in these three games (12 pts) but he grabbed 22 rebounds, had 8 assists, 10 steals, 11 blocks, and won all 3 jump balls at the start of these games, while playing only three-quarters of each game, on average.
If you are not into statistics, or for that case, basketball, all I can say is that his play elicits only one word: "Wow!"
En folkefiende (1882)
Yesterday, I posted a short piece arguing how journalists are necessary in a society such as this one in order to keep power accountable and to expose abuses of power. This is precisely what an investigative reporter does. (S)he examines the behavior of those in positions of authority, public, private, or non-profit, with an eye to uncovering corruption, unfairness, cheating, misrepresentation, and a whole host of other crimes.
Reporters follow the money, finding out who is paying whom to do what.
Most of the time, this is not the kind of work that leads to glory. (Sorry, Hollywood.) Most of the time, this makes you no friends but a considerable number of enemies. These days, this kind of work is being eliminated entirely from most media organizations, because it cannot be justified on financial grounds.
That presents a moral dilemma for our democracy. Do we believe in our inherent goodness enough to allow this essential "check" to expire. The answer my friend, is...(you can easily fill in the blanks.)
p.s. The intellectual framework for this post is Henrik Ibsen's brilliant play, "Enemy of the People." Please read it and send me your thoughts.
-30
Reporters follow the money, finding out who is paying whom to do what.
Most of the time, this is not the kind of work that leads to glory. (Sorry, Hollywood.) Most of the time, this makes you no friends but a considerable number of enemies. These days, this kind of work is being eliminated entirely from most media organizations, because it cannot be justified on financial grounds.
That presents a moral dilemma for our democracy. Do we believe in our inherent goodness enough to allow this essential "check" to expire. The answer my friend, is...(you can easily fill in the blanks.)
p.s. The intellectual framework for this post is Henrik Ibsen's brilliant play, "Enemy of the People." Please read it and send me your thoughts.
-30
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Fears and Heroes
Today, somehow a man landed a passenger jet in the Hudson River. All of his passengers survived.
Like most people, I am always scared when I have to fly. It is all too obvious that my fate lies in the hands of the person in control of the craft.
This pilot is a hero.
-30-
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
Swimming Upstream in Today's World
There is an old tale popular in non-profit circles, one I first heard from the venerable Anwar Fazal, the Malaysian activist who, as much as any other person, has inspired me over the past many decades in my effort to try and balance professional journalism with a social conscience.
The story, as I recall it, goes like this. You are standing next to a river, when you notice a drowning baby being swept by the current, so you step in, grab her, dry her off, and place her safely on the ground next to you.
Just then, out of the corner of your eye, you spot another drowning baby. You save him, and then, you spot yet another...
The point of this story is that you can spend a lifetime saving drowning babies without ever getting the chance to move up-river and find out who the hell is throwing these kids into the river in the first place.
The role of a journalist, in our society, is to be that person who makes it up-river. This work is hard, and even when you do it well, you are more likely to make new enemies than friends.
A lifetime spent in the craft has taught me that many among us do not want to know the scientific truth so much as they want their own conclusions to be confirmed.
But we journalists have no such luxury. To do our work well, we cannot simply substantiate our theories about how we would like to think this world works. We have to take into account each new piece of evidence we discover, particularly when it challenges our working theory, if we are to maintain our integrity.
In this way, we are like scientists, testing a hypothesis, gathering evidence, pushing to the point where we can publish our findings. We even have a version of peer review (called fact-checking) that, at least traditionally, acts as a check on any excesses we might otherwise assert.
Yet, then again, sadly, the process I describe is by and large now from bygone days. There are few fact-checkers left, not to mention copy editors, real editors, or any of the others who traditionally helped us achieve our best published findings and avoid our worst mistakes.
Today, more often than not, it's just us and our readers, unvarnished, unfiltered. As a lifelong writer, I don't mind this direct access to my readers, but I'm also aware that those others who used to help me have fallen silent, perhaps in ways that do not serve my readers' best interests.
And that makes me sad.
-30-
The story, as I recall it, goes like this. You are standing next to a river, when you notice a drowning baby being swept by the current, so you step in, grab her, dry her off, and place her safely on the ground next to you.
Just then, out of the corner of your eye, you spot another drowning baby. You save him, and then, you spot yet another...
The point of this story is that you can spend a lifetime saving drowning babies without ever getting the chance to move up-river and find out who the hell is throwing these kids into the river in the first place.
The role of a journalist, in our society, is to be that person who makes it up-river. This work is hard, and even when you do it well, you are more likely to make new enemies than friends.
A lifetime spent in the craft has taught me that many among us do not want to know the scientific truth so much as they want their own conclusions to be confirmed.
But we journalists have no such luxury. To do our work well, we cannot simply substantiate our theories about how we would like to think this world works. We have to take into account each new piece of evidence we discover, particularly when it challenges our working theory, if we are to maintain our integrity.
In this way, we are like scientists, testing a hypothesis, gathering evidence, pushing to the point where we can publish our findings. We even have a version of peer review (called fact-checking) that, at least traditionally, acts as a check on any excesses we might otherwise assert.
Yet, then again, sadly, the process I describe is by and large now from bygone days. There are few fact-checkers left, not to mention copy editors, real editors, or any of the others who traditionally helped us achieve our best published findings and avoid our worst mistakes.
Today, more often than not, it's just us and our readers, unvarnished, unfiltered. As a lifelong writer, I don't mind this direct access to my readers, but I'm also aware that those others who used to help me have fallen silent, perhaps in ways that do not serve my readers' best interests.
And that makes me sad.
-30-
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Home Town Boy's Latest (not last) Hurrah
Along with any complaints I might have about living in San Francisco, lo, these many years (37+), I have to admit that for the most part, the local press has been very kind to me.
They often write nice stories when I get jobs, and they almost always write nice stories later on when I lose those jobs.
Today, a reporter for the SF Weekly, Peter Jamison, posted a very kind and thoughtful piece about my latest transition.
When you've been around and active in the same profession for as long as I have, you've crossed roads with so many others, many briefly, perhaps only once, that even with Facebook and LinkedIn, you could never re-establish ties with all of them. But a particular concern of mine my whole adult life as been the fate of quality journalism -- and most particularly, the fate of young journalists.
My oldest child is a journalist, a very good one. But she's found it tough to make much money over the years, regardless of her skill and eloquence as a writer. Many of my former students and interns have stayed in touch over the years, and I am aware of how many struggles they have endured trying to practice this profession, which really is essential if we are to build a great democracy out of the present, most imperfect union.
I've often fantasized about being once again in the position to hire and manage a staff of journalists, because there simply are so many good, decent people who enter this battered profession for all the right reasons. Forget the screamers you witness of TV, they are not journalists, they are performers.
They pretend to report by putting on camouflage in some Third World venue or standing on a beach in fancy foul-weather gear as a tropical storm approaches. But they never stay, and only rarely do they return to cover the aftermath. There are, mind you, serious reporters on TV, (such as my former student Michell Won in NYC) but they are not the people I'm dissing here.
One name: Geraldo.
Case closed.
Nope, many of the reporters we should be worried about toil away inside the daily and weekly newspapers in our communities, the radio stations (especially NPR affiliates), or in non-profits like the Center for Investigative Reporting. You may not know these people's names but they are the vital eyes and ears of our democracy. So, here's a question: Given the dismal state of their employers, how are we going to help ensure their voices don't fall silent?
-30-
They often write nice stories when I get jobs, and they almost always write nice stories later on when I lose those jobs.
Today, a reporter for the SF Weekly, Peter Jamison, posted a very kind and thoughtful piece about my latest transition.
When you've been around and active in the same profession for as long as I have, you've crossed roads with so many others, many briefly, perhaps only once, that even with Facebook and LinkedIn, you could never re-establish ties with all of them. But a particular concern of mine my whole adult life as been the fate of quality journalism -- and most particularly, the fate of young journalists.
My oldest child is a journalist, a very good one. But she's found it tough to make much money over the years, regardless of her skill and eloquence as a writer. Many of my former students and interns have stayed in touch over the years, and I am aware of how many struggles they have endured trying to practice this profession, which really is essential if we are to build a great democracy out of the present, most imperfect union.
I've often fantasized about being once again in the position to hire and manage a staff of journalists, because there simply are so many good, decent people who enter this battered profession for all the right reasons. Forget the screamers you witness of TV, they are not journalists, they are performers.
They pretend to report by putting on camouflage in some Third World venue or standing on a beach in fancy foul-weather gear as a tropical storm approaches. But they never stay, and only rarely do they return to cover the aftermath. There are, mind you, serious reporters on TV, (such as my former student Michell Won in NYC) but they are not the people I'm dissing here.
One name: Geraldo.
Case closed.
Nope, many of the reporters we should be worried about toil away inside the daily and weekly newspapers in our communities, the radio stations (especially NPR affiliates), or in non-profits like the Center for Investigative Reporting. You may not know these people's names but they are the vital eyes and ears of our democracy. So, here's a question: Given the dismal state of their employers, how are we going to help ensure their voices don't fall silent?
-30-
Monday, January 12, 2009
New Beginnings, New Games
It's easy to see why for so many of us California is a land of magic. Not only can you pursue dreams that may seem unachievable elsewhere here, you'll probably meet a movie star or two, make more money than you thought possible, and eat the best fruits and vegetables available on this continent.
Furthermore, whenever you may feel down and out, new growth springs out of our rich soils, reminding you that life renews itself, season after season, regardless what we mere humans do to mess things up.
Today was an incredibly warm day with temps in the 70s. Tonight's was a lovely sunset. The rest of this post is devoted to photos of my athletic son's futsol and basketball triumphs yesterday and today.
These gave me more pleasure than I can express. Have you thought about why games matter? Because we are hard-wired to learn through playing games. Games are a vital part of how we have evolved, not to mention how we continue to evolve, as a species.
Games are at least as important as school, work, or love. Think about that.
His team won these games, thanks in no small part to his play. The best part of tonight's basketball victory was Aidan played point guard the entire second half with the four substitute players who usually sit on the bench. His job was to distribute the ball to each of them so they got some chances to score baskets. Before the game was over, he'd succeeded and his grin was as wide as I've ever seen it.
Everybody on the team had scored. The final tally was 29-7 and their team is now 4-0 for the season.
-30-
Sunday, January 11, 2009
This Blogger's For Hire*
* This post is best read while listening to a certain Bruce Springsteen song. Please email me if you don't recognize which one I am referring to...)
Those of you who are long-time readers of this blog probably recall that I chose to violate a long-held journalistic rule and come out strongly for Barack Obama for President more than a year ago now. But I did so mainly with my writing. I didn't donate money (I never have to any candidate), and beyond some insipid sign-posting (which made me feel silly) I did no organizing work to help him get elected.
But I did write, and I circulated those writings far and wide, especially among conservatives and Christians that I know or whom I am are related to. What I got in response, not surprisingly, was an in-box filled with hateful messages, as if mere words could somehow unleash an ugliness that, at least in public, has been mostly hidden in this society for years now.
That didn't bother me, except for the nasty words and sentiments various friends and relatives, all of whom I treasure, added to the pile-on. At some point, I realized that my thoughts and feelings about this election were not welcome, because they triggered deeply suppressed fears these people are living with that make the devils hounding my tortured mind look like bathtub toys.
It's already three days since I was laid off, or, depending on how you view these things, liberated from my most recent job. To quote James Brown, "I feel fine." What surprises me is that I feel no bitterness, no regret, and no anger about this development. I knew when I took the job that it would most likely last only 6-12 months.
It lasted around eight.
Back when Predictify hired me, there were hints that an economic collapse was coming, but only in the form of those low, dark storm clouds every resident of the Gulf Coast is all too familiar with.
During the periods when I lived in Florida, we always recognized the violent anger those clouds potentially portended. But we also knew that more times than not, that violence was inflicted elsewhere, and all we felt was the echo.
This recession became visible last September. By then, I'd been on the job at Predictify for four months, half of my eventual total. We'd not only launched a home page, we'd begun iterating on it.
Never since Wired had I experienced an engineering team capable of moving so quickly as this one did. The site improved monthly, then weekly, then daily. The call "we are pushing," indicating yet another new release, became almost a daily experience.
I love those guys and how hard they are working. They are like the spawning salmon, swimming upstream in rivers where human intervention is so pervasive it is more like running an unnatural gamut than doing what nature has programmed them to do.
Will this little company survive and prevail? I hope so, even if it is too late for me to benefit from their success.
***
That was merely my introduction, dear reader.
Yesterday's post was sent to the Obama transition team as a "personal story," in the hope that somebody with influence might read it and recognize there is an opportunity to help millions of hard-working, older Americans of modest means right now. It requires very little money, but it would put all of us back in the employment pool, ready to help, even at vastly lower paying positions than we are used to.
My idea would turn willing senior citizens into an army of Vista/Peace Corps volunteers, much as we agreed to be 48 years ago, when we were young, and the last truly inspirational President took office.
***
That was Act Two.
Here is the meaning of this day's post. I want to secure a job that lasts at least for a little while, that matters, in a big way. I want to put whatever skills I may have to work on behalf of a cause much bigger than myself.
Politically, I am an Obama supporter, but I am neither a liberal, a conservative, a libertarian, a centrist, or any other known label. Let's just say I'm a pragmatist, and that is precisely why I responded to Obama's message.
I would like to work for the Obama administration, in whatever position it deems appropriate. In that context, today, I applied for a job at http://www.change.gov.
Will you support me in this quest? If so, please let me know and I will find a way to let the transition team know mine is not a quixotic quest, but one backed by real Americans, the kind of people, who like me, are proud to drive a car made in the USA, and would happily join the CIA in order to help catch bin-Laden, but who also believe that a progressive, compassionate political agenda is the only moral choice acceptable in this, the richest nation on earth.
-30-
Those of you who are long-time readers of this blog probably recall that I chose to violate a long-held journalistic rule and come out strongly for Barack Obama for President more than a year ago now. But I did so mainly with my writing. I didn't donate money (I never have to any candidate), and beyond some insipid sign-posting (which made me feel silly) I did no organizing work to help him get elected.
But I did write, and I circulated those writings far and wide, especially among conservatives and Christians that I know or whom I am are related to. What I got in response, not surprisingly, was an in-box filled with hateful messages, as if mere words could somehow unleash an ugliness that, at least in public, has been mostly hidden in this society for years now.
That didn't bother me, except for the nasty words and sentiments various friends and relatives, all of whom I treasure, added to the pile-on. At some point, I realized that my thoughts and feelings about this election were not welcome, because they triggered deeply suppressed fears these people are living with that make the devils hounding my tortured mind look like bathtub toys.
It's already three days since I was laid off, or, depending on how you view these things, liberated from my most recent job. To quote James Brown, "I feel fine." What surprises me is that I feel no bitterness, no regret, and no anger about this development. I knew when I took the job that it would most likely last only 6-12 months.
It lasted around eight.
Back when Predictify hired me, there were hints that an economic collapse was coming, but only in the form of those low, dark storm clouds every resident of the Gulf Coast is all too familiar with.
During the periods when I lived in Florida, we always recognized the violent anger those clouds potentially portended. But we also knew that more times than not, that violence was inflicted elsewhere, and all we felt was the echo.
This recession became visible last September. By then, I'd been on the job at Predictify for four months, half of my eventual total. We'd not only launched a home page, we'd begun iterating on it.
Never since Wired had I experienced an engineering team capable of moving so quickly as this one did. The site improved monthly, then weekly, then daily. The call "we are pushing," indicating yet another new release, became almost a daily experience.
I love those guys and how hard they are working. They are like the spawning salmon, swimming upstream in rivers where human intervention is so pervasive it is more like running an unnatural gamut than doing what nature has programmed them to do.
Will this little company survive and prevail? I hope so, even if it is too late for me to benefit from their success.
***
That was merely my introduction, dear reader.
Yesterday's post was sent to the Obama transition team as a "personal story," in the hope that somebody with influence might read it and recognize there is an opportunity to help millions of hard-working, older Americans of modest means right now. It requires very little money, but it would put all of us back in the employment pool, ready to help, even at vastly lower paying positions than we are used to.
My idea would turn willing senior citizens into an army of Vista/Peace Corps volunteers, much as we agreed to be 48 years ago, when we were young, and the last truly inspirational President took office.
***
That was Act Two.
Here is the meaning of this day's post. I want to secure a job that lasts at least for a little while, that matters, in a big way. I want to put whatever skills I may have to work on behalf of a cause much bigger than myself.
Politically, I am an Obama supporter, but I am neither a liberal, a conservative, a libertarian, a centrist, or any other known label. Let's just say I'm a pragmatist, and that is precisely why I responded to Obama's message.
I would like to work for the Obama administration, in whatever position it deems appropriate. In that context, today, I applied for a job at http://www.change.gov.
Will you support me in this quest? If so, please let me know and I will find a way to let the transition team know mine is not a quixotic quest, but one backed by real Americans, the kind of people, who like me, are proud to drive a car made in the USA, and would happily join the CIA in order to help catch bin-Laden, but who also believe that a progressive, compassionate political agenda is the only moral choice acceptable in this, the richest nation on earth.
-30-
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