I Wish I Was Special

But, as the song goes, I am a Creep, I am a Weirdo.



Thus, of course, I don't belong here.



Thanks, Radiohead! (And also thanks to my ever alert rock adviser, Aidan.)

Circles of Love

"What are you doing now?" This is more or less the very simple question that made Facebook a success and is now creating an even bigger success at Twitter.

I have written extensively about these companies at my media blog.

But this post is not about what I am doing, except that what I am doing is watching the classic film, "The Sound of Music."

This is, of course, a story with lessons for everyone, even if the coolest among us may deny it.

A long time ago, I co-authored a book called "Circle of Posion." Someone commenting on the ever so cool HuffPost mentioned the idea behind that book, which I discovered while watching this movie.

All of it broke my unbreakable heart.

As per my previous post, I may no longer believe in "love," but I do still believe in true love, if you catch my drift.

Hopefully, somebody will.

Oh yes. The reason behind this post is that after we published "Circle of Poison," one of the surviving Von Trapp children contacted me from his home in Vermont. He, too, was worried about our global environment, way back before it was cool to do so.

What am I doing tonight?

Remembering things.

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Letter From an Old Friend

Dear David:

You never write about love anymore, or relationships. I started reading your blog because you wrote from a deeply broken heart, bleeding, leaving no corner of your pain hidden from view. I hadn't encountered a writer like you anywhere before -- in fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or online. At first, I thought this what was a "blog" was, because yours was my very first blog.

Thank you, BTW, for all you have done for me. But why can't you write about love anymore?

When this message (via email) arrived the other day, one thing it didn't do was break my heart. Why? Because I no longer have a heart capable of being broken.

Since this blog's beginning, I've learned many things. One is, do not place too much trust in the various emotional connections that you think you've forged with others, particularly with those who for whatever reason you feel attracted to.

They will only hurt you. They will leave, disappear, abandon you. They will invent reasons to do so. They will find a way to leave you alone, confused, without any clue as to what it is you have supposedly "done" to deserve such treatment.

Why? Because that is the way of all love.

My advice, buddy, is to avoid this fate. Do not open yourself up that much to any other human being.

If it is companionship you need, find a friend.

If it is sex you desire, post an ad on Craigslist.

If you want to be admired, do something worth admiration.

But please, whatever you do, don't "fall" in love. This is a despicable condition, well-documented by scholars as one of the most pitiable states. For, if you do, you'll end up as I am, anyway -- alone, unloved, deserted by those he tried to love.

For no reason whatsoever.

-30-

Preparing for Japan's Invasion

Just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, towering high above the lovely metropolis of San Francisco, are the Marin Headlands.

As we ascended these coastal mountains yesterday afternoon, in the third leg of a three-legged road trip celebrating spring break, the views took our collective breath away.




"I've always wanted to come up here," said one of the kids. "This feels a bit like a roller-coaster," said another, somewhat uneasily. The third just stared, open-mouthed.

As we crested the peak and assumed the position to head more or less straight down the western slope toward the Pacific below, I paused, checking my brakes, and trying to settle my stomach, which was jumping about. This truly is one of the most terrifying roads you could ever drive in the Bay Area.



We descended cautiously, snapping photos along the way, none of which can do justice to this truly magnificent vista. From these heights, the ocean presents itself in a vast palette of blues, greens, turquoise, white, purple, and white.

It also appears almost peaceful.

Round a hairpin curve, and there, suddenly to the south, San Francisco shimmers like Oz, ever so briefly, then disappears again from view, as if a mirage.



In our time, Marin Headlands has gone from being a classified military reserve, pocked with bunkers batteries, the SF-88 Nike Missile silo, and banks of radar towers, to a national park.


(Hawk Hill)

The centerpiece of the area is Hawk Hill, where each fall, tens of thousands of hawks, kites, falcons, eagles, vultures, osprey, and harriers swoop down to feed among the abundant small mammals that inhabit these parts.



We spotted several raptors, then slowly drove down to Fort Cronkhite and Rodeo Beach, now a wildlife preserve and conference center, complete with a Hostel, where the winds were whipping from the now wild-appearing Pacific across the lagoon inland.

The military history of the Headlands dates to the 1890s, but the most active period was during World War II, when U.S. military officials feared Japan would follow up on its assault on Pearl Harbor to invade the West Coast.

That never happened, and slowly, as the Cold War wound down, the military finally retreated from the area, leaving yet another bit of Northern California's paradise to those of us curious enough to explore it.

-30-

Photos by Julia, Dylan, and Aidan.

The View from China Camp

China Camp has long been a ghost town.



Starting around 140 years ago, Chinese immigrants established a thriving shrimp business at this placid location, largely outside of the view of the European immigrants who were systematically taking control of Northern California throughout the 1800s.



The people who lived and worked here had their own little paradise. The winds and fogs that assault most of the Bay Area rarely visit this obscure shore.



Looking out from the windows in their wood and brick shrimp factory was like moving back to an earlier time, when being yellow or brown skinned in California meant you had to watch your back.



You knew that a violent race of warrior people, in the midst of conquering an entire continent, were bound to show up eventually and destroy whatever little paradise you had managed to create, even if it was hardly a rich enclave.



Indeed, the whites did show up, and determined in their racist wisdom that this community was stealing some of the fishery they felt was theirs, God-given.



What followed was inevitable.



New rules. New barriers. New limits. You know the routine.



"Why is it that white people have always been so mean, so racist, so cruel," my kids asked, after reading the exhibits that in plain language, without any rhetoric whatsoever, laid out the sad fate of the Chinese people who once thrived here.



"Why, Dad?"



I'm sure a normal parent wouldn't take his kids on this kind of road trip, right? He'd take them to Disney's Fantasy Planet or Tahoe's Make-Believe-We-Are-Rich-Enough-To-Be-Here fake winter world, all fueled by plastic.



But I am not a normal Dad.



My kids' got a road trip touching in at a remote Mt. Vision, China Camp, and a stretch of the Marin Headlands that document how the U.S. was prepared to meet a Japanese invasion in the 1940s that never came.



Some fun!

But to their credit, none of them are complaining.

Photos by Aidan, Dylan, and Julia.

The View From Mt. Vision

Road-tripping with my three youngsters today, we didn't exactly encounter beach weather in Marin. But as we drove out Lucas Valley Road to the village of Nicasio, then south to Sir Francis Drake Drive and out to Pt. Reyes, we moved into a surreal world of austere beauty, bathed in fog.



Every now and again, it seems like you can see best when you can't see much at all. Northern California's skies often are such a pure, bright blue, bereft of clouds, that it almost hurts to see.



Not so on the summit of a modest hill, surrounded by a thick fog, and craggy trees with Spanish Moss. The world of prehistoric monsters?

No one else was around. The four of us took a short hike. It was utterly silent. The beauty was terrifying. Our hands grew cold. When we returned to the car, everyone shuddered slightly and then felt the warm internal air close around us for the return drive.

Through the camera lens, all colors had disappeared, leaving a world of black, white, and gray...

Photos by Julia and Dylan.

Rising Tensions Grip Us All

It's Cherry Blossom time in Japan and so also in Japantown. For Jews, it's Passover; for Christians, it's Easter.



The rains have revisited us. Great cumulus buildups all around.

It's spring break and the kids are restless.

Beyond that, the world as we've known it is tense. Americans are tense, very tense. There are signs of trouble everywhere, if you look carefully enough.

*After years of declines in road rage, I'm seeing scary incidents almost every day.

*The Washington Post asks whether the economy is linked to the sudden increase in mass killings in the U.S. In just one month, 57 people were killed in eight mass murders.

* Finally, there is this item: Modern life's pressures may be hastening human evolution.

-30-

Move Over, Mini Cooper, Plus So Much More

Preamble: There's a new champion parking car in town, the tiny Smart Car.

Time was you couldn't beat the Mini for fitting into some of our notoriously snug parking places in this city, but the Smart Car found a way.

I noticed these two nestled together the other day in the Mission. Cute.

Part One: Yesterday, for the first time in a while, I got to "teach" part of a journalism class, this time out at San Francisco State University. The 600 or so journalism majors there have to be one of the largest groups studying in one place in the world.

I know a few of the faculty members, of course, and in fact have taught out there myself three or four times for a semester at a time. The students in the class I visited (television writing) had lots of questions for me, mainly about the future of the profession they are training to enter.

I told them what I believe -- that this is the most exciting time imaginable to be a journalist, though naturally it may not be the safest.

But these are revolutionary times for journalists, as the old order collapses, and a new one has yet to emerge. What better time to join those of us unafraid of these transitions.

I came of age as a writer at a somewhat similar moment in history: The '60s. Old media were not dying at the time, but they had erected high walls against those in my generation who were all about challenging the status quo.

Shut out, as it were, partly by personal choice, we had no options but to start our own media. So that is what we did. My wife and I drove our old Chevy van, with Ft. Myers, Fla. stenciled on its side, all the way across the country, stuffed both with our few belongings and some of the critical production equipment for the soon-to-be launched SunDance magazine.

Part Two: Our office was at 1913 Fillmore Street in a storefront that exists in exactly the form it did then today. But it has long since transmogrified into a boutique. No magazines are produced in that part of town any longer.

Gone too are almost all of the bars and clubs, including Minnie's Can-Do, my all-time favorite, which through the magic of the web you can still "visit," 38 years later.

Cities are always changing, of course. In years past, in its earlier iterations, The New Yorker captured Manhattan's evolution in its upfront section called The Talk of the Town.

It still does, occasionally, but these days that space is reserved for brilliant essays about politics, the economy and other pressing topics by writers I enjoy like Hendrik Hertzberg and James Surowiecki.

Part Three: Around 4 a.m. tomorrow, my youngest son becomes a teenager. Of my six children, that leaves only one still in the child stage, as opposed to the young person stage.

She's declared herself a vegetarian, but tonight she offered to resume helping us create meatballs -- long one of her fun activities here at Dad's House. Her 12 and 364/365ths year old brother is unusual and special in a lot of ways. One is he still happily puts his arm around her as they walk down the street, scarcely aware and utterly uncaring whether his peers would consider that "cool" or not.

Trust me: he's cool. Way cool!

Happy Birthday-Eve, Dylan...

-30-

Tiburon, Continued

When I posted these photos yesterday, I could not bear to also add the words that must accompany this mini-slide show.

Tonight, I can. These shots are of the charming little town, thus named, which graces an eastern-facing peninsula in lovely Marin County, which has become one of the richest enclaves on earth.



This place has history, beauty, and also deeply personal memories for me, from when my older kids used to live nearby, in Mill Valley. My first son and I used to come here to visit The Attic, which sadly closed its doors four months past.



Now, to me, it is a ghost town, a place reserved only for the very rich, almost all white, and apparently clueless about what is happening outside of their sheltered cove.

Don't get me wrong -- Tiburon is a wonderful place, somewhere that a writer, for example, would love to live. But we are living through an era when these places, where artists should in fact outnumber bankers, can no longer be the case.

Not now. Now, only those who have been involved in stealing the wealth of the working and middle classes can afford to reside here.

That makes me ineffably sad. And also, very, very angry.

-30-