Remembering Andrea Lewis

When I found out this week that Bay Area journalist Andrea Lewis had passed away two months back, I felt very sad and very bad. Somehow, this news had completely eluded me. I was traveling; then I was ill...one way or another, I just never heard the news until now.

Andrea and I worked together years ago and only recently she had gotten back in touch. She was a person of great passions and principles and a fellow native of Detroit. It's terrible that she was taken at such a young age. I'm sorry we never got to have the reunion we had discussed in email.

Looking back in my email in-box, I found her last message to me. It is strange to sense her wonderful, lively voice. I reproduce it here in her honor:

"Hey David Weir! This is a total blast from the past. Remember me from those crazy days at Mother Jones when I was a research editor and you were the coolest guy in the joint? We'll have to catch up on everything that's transpired in lo those many years..."

I'll edit her message only to say I was never the "coolest guy" anywhere, but that was Andrea -- always able to make others feel special in her spirited way. I'll miss her. We all were made better by her presence, and are weakened by her loss.

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State of the Union? Pity the Messenger in the Dark Cave

The State of the Union gathering tonight was not a pretty sight. President Barack Obama did his best under difficult circumstances -- difficult in the sense that a malaise has settled in over the body politic.

An entrenched, cynical political establishment, particularly the two houses of Congress, have managed to subvert whatever hope and goodwill the American people sent to Washington a year ago in the form of their rhetorically gifted young President.

But idealism in the face of moneyed interests faces a jarring comedown and that has been the reality of Obama's first year in office. His speech tonight, accordingly, lacked most of the uplifting notes he can so easily strike as a speaker when the topic is hope.

I would not go so far as to conclude he has lost his own sense of hope about what he can do as President, but clearly his faith has been seriously shaken. I won't bother going into the substance of his speech, because I assume many pundits are already doing so. Instead, I am reacting only to how the President's talk made me feel.

It made me feel sad for him and for the lost promise of what he brought to Washington. Is our political culture so ingrown, corrupt and out of touch with the lives we ordinary people live that the bickering and gridlock of the past year is the best they have to offer?

Because if so, expect most of a generation of young Americans not to follow Obama's example and go into public life, but to turn away in disgust and boredom. The pragmatism that governed most of his talk may be of interest to policy wonks, who get excited slicing and dicing nuance, apportioning the implications out along a spectrum from Republican to Democrat, which is a narrow political spectrum indeed.

But little of this struck me as relevant or important. Only near the end of his long speech did Obama attempt to reclaim higher ground. Then, briefly, he spoke in more inspirational terms, exhorting his audience in Congress (and us) to be better than we have proven to be so far in his still-young term in office.

I was vaguely moved by this portion of his talk, but it was too little, too late, from my perspective. We need Obama to be that leader who inspires us, even as those around him (Democrats and Republicans) desert our common principles to their own disreputable ends.

I'm left feeling sorry for him, for us, for our country. If this is the best we can do -- fight as a people over scraps of policies that barely address the true problems in our deeply unequal class society, than we are in far worse trouble than the President articulated.

He said he is more hopeful than ever, but I'm not buying it. He didn't say that like he meant it. There was a notable lack of passion in his presentation. He seemed (to me) tired, depressed, dispirited.

After listening to him, so am I.

I'd grade it a C-, but with all due respect to Obama, it was not his fault that he failed. It takes an honestly engaged audience for a speech like this to be great, yet he was surrounded with the detritus of American politics, the worst audience one could imagine.

For the next State of the Union, he should dis-invite Congress (let them watch from home) and fill a large chamber with real people. Then perhaps he could give (and be rewarded for) the speech he should have given tonight.

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Spaghgetti With or Without Meatballs

Tonight, I glanced at my 15-year-old's school planner and noticed below his name on the address line that he had neatly entered both his Mom's 3-digit, 7-letter street address, and my 3-digit, nine-letter street address. We share the same zip code.

This tiniest of details was a small reminder of the life of a divorced kid. He has two addresses, not one. On nights like this one, when he was with his Dad, the fact that his Physics textbook was back at his Mom's created a homework problem.

It was not a big issue in this case, but yet another reminder that divorced kids face additional complexities that children in intact marriages do not. Not a big deal, no. A small deal.

But there are a lot of small deals in life, and they add up to the zigsaw puzzle of how each individual turns out. Divorce is so common in our society that no one much thinks about it anymore, but I still do.

Not a day goes by that I do not mourn on behalf of all six of my children the lives they never quite knew. The lives they have known instead are good lives, for the most part. We've managed to work out most of the details.

Sure, a Physics book gets left behind now and then; plus on certain days (like today), I somehow found myself driving up and down the hilly cul-de-sac where their Mom lives six (count 'em!) separate times.

Not the best for the brakes and clutch on my now wholly-owned automobile, the one that is an orphan brand now that GM has ceased supporting it.

A brand floating in space.

I've been taking on the "expert" computer in Scrabble,lately, winning 25 of 27 games in the past week or so by an average score of about 310-230. But that didn't prevent me from losing tonight in the first game I've played against a human lately, my friend J in New Orleans, by virtually the identical margin, 247-310.

She outplayed me start to finish.

Tomorrow is a big day for computers, as Apple unveils its e-reader tablet.

It's an even bigger day for politics as President Obama gives his State of the Union address.

The title of this post refers to the dinner I cooked for my one vegetarian and two meat-eating kids. The photo refers to nothing at all.

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Change Perspective

The other day, looking up and over through a drizzle at the mighty Bay Bridge, I watched a Muni bus running its route from Treasure Island into the City proper.

The island was long a Navy base but now it is a neighborhood of sorts, out in the middle of the Bay.

The bus looked tiny from my vantage point, near the Ferry Building, but still substantial once my brain's eye had calculated the relative distances involved, plus it was moving at quite an impressive speed.

You could certainly tell it wasn't rush hour.

What went through my head was how everything is relative, dependent so much on our perspective of the moment.

From a couple hundred feet up, we look like mice; a bit further out, we appear like ants; further still we disappear but our buses still move about visibly. Eventually they disappear too, of course.

Back inside our own body, we can take ourselves quite seriously, as if our every move matters. But from a certain distance we're nothing but mice, ants, or completely invisible.

My point, if there is one, may be that we shouldn't take ourselves too seriously. A related point is that if we can just wait long enough, our perspective may change, and we might gain a new insight into our predicament.

It is best, in this way of thinking, to not act rashly, on the basis of incomplete information.

In a related way, albeit obliquely, everything about our lives can be altered to better conform with out wishes. It's strange how often we leave ourselves, our ability to act, to reach out to others, out of the equation.

I've written about myself that I often remain passive in the face of life's daily, weekly and monthly offerings. That works sometimes, but it also carries a certain price.

If we want things to change, we have to change things.

Nothing very profound here, just the ramblings of a guy watching at a bus speeding across a bridge in the rain.

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The Fools On The Hill -- Plus You and Me

This week, President Barack Obama will deliver his first State of the Union address.

As is customary, unfortunately, he will no doubt tell the gathered members of Congress, his Cabinet, and the Supreme Court that the state of the union is "strong"...that things are fundamentally "fine."

This is unfortunate because I fear that the state of our union is not fundamentally fine, nor is it at all strong.

We live instead in a tragic, bickering society, filled with noise from malcontents and wannabes. The politically active segment is divided neatly into camps that wage rhetorical wars in order to avoid any serious discussion of issues.

The White House itself, reeling from losing a Senate seat in Massachusetts, of all places, is said to be striking a "populist" tone now.

But, as Dan Balz, one of the best political reporters out there, despite a long career inside the Washington Post, correctly notes, Obama has long positioned himself as "the antithesis of the class warrior."

So Obama has a problem. Besides, there have long been two populist traditions in the U.S. -- one on the left and one on the right.

In today's political conversation,furthermore,"populist" on the right connotes a jiggly fat drug addict who soils himself while broadcasting -- that he has any influence whatsoever only illustrates the psychological immaturity of the so-called "right" segment of the American political system.

This is not a movement, it is not a community, it is not any kind of legitimate voice, but it is loud.

Why?

Screaming sells, and to a media industry (which I cover closely) that is desperate for ad dollars, whatever sells will be given a voice, even if it treads dangerously close to provoking assassinations and hate crimes, which is what the right in this country apparently seeks to accomplish.

Meanwhile, as Balz again notes: "Obama...is trying to quell anger that points in two directions at once."

The current "left" is similarly a-historical. Too many on the left have equated their political sympathies with government-based solutions. Long-time readers of my blog know I am no friend of Big Government. Bureaucracies makes things worse more often than not. It is crime to delay action in a world where people starve and commit suicide due to lack of access to the resources they need to support their families.

Every suffering addict out there on the street owes at least part of his misery to the government bureaucrats who collect money in his name but do nothing to help him.

No, there is no "strong" union on this continent, unless you count Canada. The U.S. is in truly pathetic condition, ruled by weak leaders. I have not yet lost all hope in Obama, and I am sure he will deliver an uplifting speech Wednesday night, but I'm not sure his words can or should be enough any longer.

As I noted repeatedly during the 2008 campaign, he is a centrist and a pragmatist. At the time, I'd hoped this kind of approach to American policy debates would be healing, after the Age of Idiocy, as coordinated by the very smart yet very evil Dick Cheney.

I was wrong. The fools on the hill have spoken. They will also speak Wednesday night. They will clap, they will nod. They will smile or frown, it makes no difference.

None of them are working for you or for me.

The sad irony is that there is one man genuinely in our employ and that is Obama, but neither you nor I nor any other American has the guts to reward him for that truth.

It is a dark day to be an American, for this is a country dripping with shame, greed, dishonesty, and an utter lack of purpose. We can listen to our young President's words; but I fear none of us will have the courage to act.

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