The Right Ingredients

Today my teenage boys truly surprised me. For the first time in three years, they asked to go to a park and play baseball.

The only problem is they've long outgrown the old equipment. They have stretched upwards around a foot each since 2006, when the older of the two decided to forego baseball to concentrate on soccer and basketball.

So we went off to a local sports store.



We found a Maplewood bat, a glove and a couple of baseballs, and headed off to a local park. It was old-fashioned fun.

Back home, the electrician has finished up his work fixing my place after we blew out an outlet the other night. There are only 40 amps coming into this large flat; probably half of what a modern family requires.

But, he split a few circuits, added an outlet, replaced a switch, and now I'll be in better shape when my daughters and grandsons start arriving next weekend for a nice long visit.

As I was picking the tomatoes and onions shown at the top of this post earlier today, I thought to myself, "I hope enough of these are still harvest-able a week from now.

Summer's Days, Fall's Nights

San Francisco's weather is always something of a puzzle to outsiders, but even those of us who live here marvel at what a spectacular month September can be. On another sunny day, in our new twice-a-week routine, my 15-year-old and I shared another soccer game.

His team won again, 6-0; they're tied for first place (4-0); and he played well, once again starting and playing all 90 minutes as a freshman. I'm seeing him mature as a player game by game, and enjoying that immensely.

Meeting some of the other soccer parents (and the school principal, who attends the games) is a treat for me. Without sports, I might never get to feel at home at a big urban high school. I never really felt comfortable at my older kids' schools, knowing few other parents and having little reason to get involved on any substantive level.



This school is different; not long ago it had a very rough reputation, but like most local public schools, it has been working hard to improve, and the results are starting to impress people around the city.



He's the kind of kid who honesty likes diversity and people from different backgrounds and cultures. He is friendly, and already has made friends. And here is something any parent of a kid entering high school should consider if (s)he (or you) are on the fence about playing sports:

He now has friends who are freshmen, sophomores, juniors and seniors. How cool is that! Without sports, he would be confined to one-fourth of the school's population, essentially.

I've always been a big booster of sports for kids. Some of my most impressive students at Stanford were student athletes, often times very successful ones, but they also excelled in the classroom.

There's a lot to learn from sports -- the value of hard work, discipline, teamwork, how to become resilient, how to channel your emotions, how to set and achieve stretch goals.

These qualities are the reason so many former athletes also succeed in business. If you know how to work hard to accomplish something important to you, you are going to have an advantage over others who simply feel entitled to success.

Success has to be earned.

Practice, practice, practice. As Malcolm Gladwell proves in Outliers, anything special that you want badly enough in most fields of endeavor will require at least 10,000 hours of practice.

By the time a young athlete graduates from college, he or she will have hit that number of hours in most cases.

Think about that.

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The Party is Over

The Grand Old Party that my father supported, the Republican Party, is dead.

There simply is nobody with any ethical core left. The party has been hijacked by right-wing, radical Christian, racists.

There is no point in covering or analyzing the activities of foolish, fearful little people like "truthers," "birthers," "tea-baggers," or the like. These are fragmented, marginal sickos.

Beyond them, and their freakish heroes, like Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin, is nothing of substance, nothing to discuss.

They are modern "know-nothings." They occupy the lowest cut in any IQ curve -- they live in a giant echo-chamber for fools. They make noise, they pretend to be activists, but they know nothing about grass-roots organizing.

The only accurate historical precedent for them would be the Nazis. Until they find their Adolph Hitler, they will thrash around as they currently are doing, without impact or meaning of any kind.

Should they find their Hitler, the rest of us will have to act.

And we will, collectively, as a society. Those of us who are unafraid to debate issues, disagree with one another, and respect each others' perspectives about what really matters, now hold the upper hand and we will continue to reshape this society for the benefit of all of our children and grandchildren, regardless of any trash-talk from the marginalized right.

Nothing can or will stop the wave of dramatic reforms now under way. In times like these, a frightened fringe often develops. These pathetic souls, too, will soon grow despondent as, one by one, they see their vision of this country -- a place for white evangelicals lord it over the rest of us -- dissipating rightly into the dustbin of history.


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Tuesday Correction

Weeks start taking a better direction each Tuesday and Thursday this fall when I can watch my kid play soccer.



His team is undefeated after three games. He starts and plays the whole game -- a Freshman's dream.

I'd write more but Blogger is screwed up tonight. Technical problems...

(Later) Okay, I'm back.



My sliced finger is recovering, and doesn't seem to be infected with potato toxin. It's not rotting away.



One things raising kids does for you is to add a bit of perspective about how short our time here is, how vulnerable we all are, and how important it is to enjoy each day.

But you don't have to be a parent to gain this perspective; many other life experiences bring similar wisdom. Helping people who really desperately need your help can bring it.

Being emotionally honest with those closest to you can bring it.

Playing sports, winning or losing, can bring it.

Being willing to take chances, at any age, can bring it.

Taking artistic risks can bring it.

Just connecting with somebody else can bring it.



As I watched my son play this game today, I began to realize just how talented he actually is, which is a terrible thing to admit, but I always try to keep expectations low. And that's how he is, too. But we both now know he is a potential star for years to come.



Others have been telling me this for years. Other parents, coaches, friends. As I watched him take on older kids and strip the ball from them again and again, I could finally see what others see.

He is a star.

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Accidents, Learnings

So, I guess this is what it gets to be: Everything collapses and then you have to put it together again.

The weather, as previously noted, turned weird here over the weekend, but what else is new on the far edge of North America. Nobody ever moved here seeking "normalcy," or if they did, I'm quite sure they were bitterly disappointed.

Anyway, it rained again last night but that's getting ahead of ourselves. While in a major funk, as I tried to multi-task in both familiar and unfamiliar ways, I managed to injure myself in the kitchen yesterday.

Now even the most casual reader of this modest little blog, which is neither commercial nor ambitious in its reach, knows about my love affair with food and with cooking, especially for those I love.

Since our family life has become complicated lately, I've had to make lots of adjustments, not the least of which is abandoning my old favorite habit of cooking a Sunday roast for my kids.

Our schedule works like this: Their Mom drops them off at 4:30 on Sundays, and we all eat together an hour or two later.

At least, it used to work like that.

Then, the boys became teenagers, with schedules that often disrupt my expectations. Then, their little sister announced she is a vegetarian, which really complicated the whole family roast Sunday thing.

The good news is I discovered how delicious vegetarian spaghetti can be. We call it "orange spaghetti" around here, no meat, a few ingredients from the garden like snow-white green onions and sliced ripe red tomatoes, but I don't serve it swimming in sauce -- just delicately coated with a fine orange-colored minimalist sauce.

Plus lots of grated cheese.

Yesterday, however, in a revisionist mood, I was determined to cook, at least for the boys and me, a good old-fashioned Midwestern Sunday meal. I started early. The goal was a pork loin roast wrapped in bacon, with baked potatoes covered in sour cream and chives, plus a serving of edamame as the veggie.

You know, I am not really good with technology, or with cooking utensils. I have a lifetime's worth of evidence of these truths, all of which makes me want to cry, as I contemplate the unrelenting series of failures to reach anything close to my expectations, over and over, again and again.

Yesterday, therefore, happily peeling the inevitable bad spots off potatoes before baking them, I managed instead to slice off a piece of my finger, spreading bright red blood, Type O-Negative, over all the patiently waiting potatoes.

Yuck. "This is not good," I thought to myself. "I can't think of anyone even able to give me a lift to the E.R., should it come to that."

Then, I remembered the last time this happened. That time, I cut off the end of my finger with a fishing knife, while trying to perfect slicing limes for an upcoming margarita party in the Pink House (Don't ask.)

That time, my future son-in-law, a medical student, taught me what to do when this kind of thing happens. "Pinch the cut, hold it above your heart, and wait."

I may well not be the brightest light in the attic but I am not the dimmest, either. Larry's advice worked eventually, and so I resumed the meal prep. But then I noticed something truly gross, besides all of my blood in the sink.

The potatoes had green mold on some parts of their lovely brown skins.

They'd grown too old! I knew this much from growing up in farm country: Never eat a moldy potato.

The point is the accident never need have happened had I checked what bad shape the potatoes were in before I started cutting.

And it didn't help that I was trying to watch my beloved Giants on TV in the other room, over my shoulder, whilst I skinned those damnable potatoes. Plus, I also tried to watch how the 49ers were doing in their season opener on my computer, at my pathetic workstation in my kitchen.

This post could go on and on. I could tell you about travails with my scanner/printer today and how hard it is to extract crumpled paper from a tiny space when you actually need to use a finger that has a big, black, splotch of dried blood holding its flaps together, but I'll save that for another day.

Let's just say I wish someone -- anyone -- had been here with me to help. Sometimes it is very, very hard to make it through the day, let alone the night, completely alone, at least if you're me.

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Gathering, Shopping

One thing I've been largely dependent on women for all of my life is clothes shopping. It's pretty ridiculous, at my age, but I still doubt my own choices.



So, I'm pretty likely to return to whatever venue my most recent girlfriend went with me when I shop, even for simple things, like jeans.

That's what I did today, successfully (I think).

That and gather fresh ingredients from the garden for a vegetarian omelette. There's nothing like shopping for clothes to make me reconsider my diet, at least briefly.

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