Go Already, Year, Get Out of Here

Very soft, cold misting outside here, suitable for ushering a dying year to its grave. The sky is dull grey; the hills are obscured. The wetness makes the vehicles swish as they pass. The daylight, such as it is, escapes; the temperature falls further.

Back where I grew up, winter was a time of snow, ice, wind, fires in the fireplace. Here it is a mostly dull season, when the rains are supposed to fall, except when we have a drought.

This has been one of the driest Decembers on record.

But it also can be sunny and bright, if rarely warm in winter. Sometimes, when the sky is blue, the Bay Area serves as a beacon to those in the snow belt. Hell, even today's weather probably would appeal to them over what they often have back home.

The year just inches away, minute by minute. I don't know why, but this is always an extremely emotional time for me; I find myself taking stock personally of the year as it ends.

At some point, I just want to be rid of it, to close the books, and look back as little as possible going forward.

But for now I'm stuck with it, this measly representation of a 12-month standstill. The damn thing doesn't seem to have enough sense to speed up its departure, like a party guest that overstayed her welcome.

In the mist and the gathering darkness, the only sound left is that of my fingers tap-tap-tapping.

-30-

From Us to You: Happy New Year

The year evaporates before our eyes. It's time to remember what has and hasn't happened during 2011 and to hope for better times ahead. It's time to say what we really want to say to one another.

Why hold back? Time is slipping away, and around 52 hours from now, the year will be gone, never to return.

A year ago, I would never have predicted that an entire set of 365 days could have come and gone without certain things happening. I would have thought that they had to happen.

And yet they didn't.

The silences, the absences, the unhappenings. They amaze me.

I wish more happenings had amazed me. There were a few, very special moments, that I will cherish.

But it is what it was. A disappointing year, at end. A year of few accomplishments, many sadnesses, including tragic losses. Of course, every year promises as much, but still, we begin anew every January expecting at least some sort of resolution of the unresolved issues from the year before, right?

The great confusions and disruptions of 2010 left me lost a year ago, seeking resolution that only others could provide. A year later, I'm still waiting.

No story is ever over until it's over. Nevertheless, one option left to you as the storyteller is to change the narrative arc, change its beginning and middle, once you realize you cannot affect its end.

You have, therefore, the power to decide that it never happened the way you used to think it happened.

That very special person you thought mattered so much was never really who you thought she was. She never fell in love with you, nor your words. In fact, she never even existed, now that you think clearly about it.

You see, she was nothing more than a figment of your over-active imagination.

Some would call this insanity.

I call it getting your history straight. Time may be running out on this calendar year, but in the realm of how our mutual history will be told, time is running out even more rapidly.

Time, in fact, is up.

Love, or what we thought of as love, dies and rots as certainly as does flesh and blood, muscle and skin. Dust to dust. When it reaches the very end, there is nothing at all left to say. Except that the story you both once thought you were creating, left unresolved, will never, therefore, be told. It will fade instead into nothingness.

Thus is all art, all magic, all life. Not all stories get told, only the special ones. Only the ones where both or all parties have the courage to be honest.

Happy New Year! May 2012 and the stories it brings contain more resolution than the nebulous, foggy ambiguity that will apparently be 2011's only enduring legacy, at least for you, and for me, and most permanently for us.

Happy New Year, once again, dear friends, listeners, and fellow travelers.

-30-

Your Memory is My Memory

A funny thing happened on the way from here to finishing the ebook I am writing on How to Write Your Memoir.

First, I should say, the book is now 28% done, which is much further along than I have ever previously gotten in one of these efforts. So maybe this one will ultimately come to fruition; at my present rate, somewhere late in Q-1, 2012.

Regardless, this is what happened. As I attempt to explain to people who presumably do not primarily -- or even at all -- consider themselves writers how to approach a memoir project, I find myself increasingly drawing on other people's stories, not necessarily mine, to illustrate the methodology that I think they should consider.

I include some of my own stories as well, of course, but as this phenomenon of using incidents from the lives of others has become apparent, I started wondering about it.

As a journalist, naturally, I've spent over four decades telling other people's stories, so there is nothing on the face of it that should be strange about any of this. But I now realize that I sometimes remember the stories others have told me about their lives more vividly than I remember my own history.

In this way, perhaps I have served as a receptor, a vessel collecting the memories of others in order to better pass them on to those who care about them, or in a universal way, to all of us who care about each other, collectively, in a manner that is both bigger and more enduring than the littleness that each of us presumes our own identity to represent in the greater scheme of things?

Maybe. I don't know. This is a new insight. There are so many stories I could tell you about other people. Stories of all kinds, including many they no doubt would prefer I not tell.

As for my own journey, after so many years listening and cataloging the world around me, I sometimes come up empty about the real me, the one who watches, witnesses, records, and describes, but in the end remains alone, invisible, unknown and just perhaps unknowable -- even by himself.

Which would be a tragedy, perhaps, unless his only true role was to tell your story, not his. In which case it would be a blessing, no?

p.s. Image above under consideration for cover of my book. Idea is that a memoir is but a slice of your life, much like seaglass. Feedback welcome.

-30-

Julie, Julia, Cal and Me

Maybe I no longer recall when or with whom I first saw the wonderful movie, Julie and Julia, but I often cook meals according to what I learned from it. Especially omelettes.

But there is also the question of pot roasts, and when it comes to cooking those, I turn to my oldest son for advice. He cooked a delicious pot roast for our extended family a few nights ago, just before Christmas, in Sacramento.

I may also used to have known how to cook a pot roast, but if so, I have forgotten, just as I have forgotten when or with whom I saw the movie I'm watching, off and on, tonight, while toggling between stations on my TV.

Why the back and forth? Because my oldest son's alma mater, Cal, is playing in a bowl game, and I want to root for his team to win.

Memory is a funny thing.

The space in your brain apparently becomes limited, so that you can only remember a finite number of things, or maybe you only want to remember certain things and forget others. So, faced with these two competing programs, and trying to balance watching both, my brain chooses to remember what my son cares about more than whoever that may have been who was with me the first time I saw Julie and Julia may have cared about.

So, back to the pot roast and back to the Cal game it is! Sorry Julie and Julia -- great movie, but maybe another time for the likes of you.

-30-

愛, not

Last night, walking back from a store with Gatorade for my daughter, a car drove past with mismatched headlights -- one whitish and one yellowish.

Walking to the grocery market last week, I passed two women helping a disabled woman walk near KQED. The woman they were helping could only make one sound over and over, which resembled a cat's meow.

The homeless man on my corner was sweeping up today, asking whether Christmas was nice this year. It's cold, very cold here.

A deep fog fell over the city last night. My daughter and I watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory on TV. After a good night's sleep, she started feeling better this morning and ate some cereal with milk.

It's the details, day in and out, that perplex me most. How time slows down and speeds up -- why does it act that way?

I gave myself a Christmas present -- the Japanese film Norwegian Wood, based on Murakami's novel. I watched it last night after my child was asleep, and again today. It's a tragic, haunting film, with a life-affirming ending.

It's all about the nature of love.

I've been eliminating foods from my refrigerator and cupboards lately -- lots of old items placed there by others, not me. As I discard each package, I examine it closely, wondering what the person who bought it saw in it.

Most of them are strange (to me) pastes, noodles, and sauces. They are perfectly good still, I'm sure, but since their purchaser(s) no longer visit this space, there is no reason for them to remain either.

As I recycle them, they join other ghosts to leave this place.

Since the latest water cooler disaster, I've relocated dozens of boxes of papers and files to the small bedroom, where no one sleeps. Slowly, I've opened some of the ancient yellow envelopes to examine what's inside.

Invariably, I'm amused to see what the younger me thought worthy of saving. So much paper! So much evidence of life lived! But probably no longer relevant to anyone or anything.

By far the trickiest stuff is all of my unpublished writing. I've already thrown some of it away, but I'm not sure if that was wise. There is plenty of it, some quite crummy, I'm sure; other drafts seem quite promising, even through my aged eyes.

When I was young, I wrote tons of poetry. I don't think any of it was ever published. Most of it I never showed anybody.

It is not good, I think, but it is an authentic representation of the feelings I was struggling to release as a young man. Maybe I should finally publish some of it here?

Other writings, fantasies, essays, unpromising novels -- all should perhaps be discarded. Except for a few of the essays -- it would be good to preserve my idealism from 40 years ago, I think.

There's a song playing in the background. What was thought to be the right way, turns out to be the wrong way after all.

What was that from?

Why do things become confusing at times? And then, all of a sudden, such clarity that it burns your eyes?

Where is the adjective that captures this, among all of the words available to me. Where is it? Or maybe it's a noun.

What is that word I am grasping for and why is it absent from my life?

Ah yes, now I remember: 愛

-30-

Christmas

It's been a good one, with lots of family time. Two of the kids have only been able to partially enjoy it, however -- my oldest son and youngest daughter have been very sick with stomach ailments. I've been taking care of my youngest all day and she's also spending the night here, and that makes this one of my favorite Christmases of all. She's bundled up on my couch with blankets, and we're watching movies on TV.

We did have a very scary moment yesterday, on Christmas Eve, when my youngest son fainted, and then, trying to get up, fell back again, hitting his head hard against the wall.

This scared all of us a lot. Was it a seizure of some sort or just a case of a teenager fainting?

For his part, true to form, he was just embarrassed to have caused us trouble and drawn unwanted attention to himself. He's such a brilliant young man, a reader, a thinker, a lover of history.

His intellect is truly amazing, but does not always translate into high grades at school. This is one of the reasons I am skeptical about schools, not to mention teachers. If any teacher of any subject cannot hold his interest long enough for him to earn a high grade, as a long-time teacher myself, I believe it is the teacher's fault.

I hope and believe it was just a fainting episode. Teens faint often. Sometimes it's low blood sugar or dehydration.

But whenever your child has a sudden health problem you become worried. So this has been a Christmas of worry for me as well.

***

Life is complicated. One perspective on Christmas allows people like me, with no religious orientation, to enjoy it. The way this works is to consider it a time to better connect with family and friends.

I've done a good job connecting with family this Christmas, but less so with friends. It can be hard, in our society, to maintain very many intimate friendships. I've tried, for years, but when it comes down to it, for most of the years since my marriage broke up I have tried to rely on one special friend, as opposed to a community of friends.

Many men make this mistake; fewer women, in my observation.

This is the second Christmas in a row, therefore, that there is no one special friend for me to share the holiday spirit with.

I suppose, when it comes around to New Year's resolutions, I should address this issue. Soon it will be time to envision what 2012 might be, and what each of us should try to do to make the most of the next year, should we be granted enough more time to experience it here on earth.

First and foremost, I always hope and wish for my children's and grandchildren's health and safety and success.

After that, I have to get to the hard part -- me. And that, of course, is the problem.

-30-

The Weir Dudes

My three sons have long called themselves by that name; they've made movies that are available on YouTube, and last night, they worked together to try and solve some crossword puzzles. That is what this shot captures.

As you could probably guess, I am impossibly proud of these three young men, aged 17, 30 and 15, all so tall and beautiful and brilliant, and kind, sweet and loving, each in his own way.

Of course, as their father, I also worry about each of them, and their vulnerabilities, which I can only too clearly see.

One way or another, I've been sort of like each of them in certain details, yet never anywhere near anyone of them in their total loveliness.

But I will say this, as the purported Super Weir Dude, though none of them have yet given me that title (hint, boys) -- I do think I could probably still (for a while yet) beat any of you at word games, should you care to give me a run...

-30-

Whispers of a Dying Year

It's easy to see that this year, like all others before it, is determined to come to end, quite quickly now. I don't want to characterize it one way or another, as good or bad.

It was complicated.

Another year like it simply cannot follow. Some things must change. Two years ago this time, I would never have predicted what 2010 would bring. I will never consider 2010 to have been a good year, for it was a disastrous year.

As years go, I despise its memory. As a year, it betrayed my trust and left me talking to myself.

Given all that, 2011 represented a holding pattern -- a year of standing still. Others would not agree and would say I moved ahead resolutely, accomplishing much. For my family, it was a year we can collectively be proud of.

But for me, another year best forgotten, more or less. What might suit others, for perfectly good reasons, doesn't cut it for me, or for what I expect of myself.

There was some good writing that emerged from these fingers tapping this keyboard -- I'll allow that much.

But nothing great or memorable. Nothing likely to last in any meaningful way. That I made our limited resources stretch to cover the essentials is fine, I suppose, but I expect more of myself, really.

Of course the economy sucks. We are in the midst of historical readjustments. Our expectations for the future cannot match those of our past.

They can't. The future can never be what the past was, let alone what we imagine we remember it to be.

The very nature of memory is romantic. Story-tellers are romantics; I used to be at once a story-teller and thus also a romantic.

Unless prompted, I rarely tell stories any longer. I'm no longer convinced anyone wants to hear them, outside of my closest family members.

With them I still joke and recall the past, both the ancient past and the more recent romantic versions of our collective family history.

As the paternal keeper of our past, and the elder, I have a certain responsibility to them to get the stories straight if they often were crooked in nature, or at least I think they may have been crooked in real-time.

Life never proceeds in a straight line. Here I am, long after everyone else around me is asleep, pecking out letters and words -- why? Is it that I sense how time evaporates and takes all meaning with it, like echoes from a tunnel when you exit, blinking into the bright sun of everyone else's reality.

There are those who would be surprised that they still play starring roles in our family stories. They would conclude, logically, that they would by now have been written out of what we share with one another, but a family like ours -- a family of writers -- doesn't work that way.

Just because you die or split or try to become a stranger doesn't mean that we don't remember you, that we don't know you, that we do not know how to fit you into our shattered mirror of reality as we have known it, from all sides now.

Families like this one don't work that way.

I may be the elder and the keeper of the story but that doesn't mean my stories hold the most weight. No, every other member of this family has her or his own version, and if you listen carefully enough, you'll pick up on that music.

You can come. You can go. But you can't stop the family music.

What's that? I thought I heard an echo of someone, of something. Ah. It's easy to see that this post, like all others before it, is determined to come to end, quite quickly now.

Cousins Rock Out

Holiday Gathering

Early Morning Walking

Dropping the car off for service and walking back home through the Mission, past the workday city waking up, with coffee the fuel of choice among my fellow pedestrians. For days, workers have been trying to fix various leaks in my flat; by last night the main culprit, a leaking water heater, was gone, replaced by a new model.

Three other kitchen sink-related leaks were fixed by installing new equipment as well.

The banalities of daily life.

The mechanic called with a revised estimate upward. Out for another walk, to the supermarket, with the kids still sleeping in, when he called back yet again, this time with worse news.

The bill now climbed over $1,000, putting a serious crimp into my holiday plans.

Back out for another walk, with my daughter, to the discount store, where I bought her a winter coat.

Soon after, walking again, now with the boys, to get Mexican food for lunch.

Finally, in late afternoon, when the car was ready, we packed and headed out of town, eastward, to join up with the rest of the family for the holidays.

***

Worrying but hoping for the best for my brother-in-law, who underwent surgery in Ann Arbor. Concerned for the strain on my sister as well.

***

Along the freeway, part of the flood of cars headed east, we cut through the Delta in the dark. Adele came on the radio as we neared Sacramento.

My two oldest grandsons, aged 4 and 3, came running out of the front door as we pulled up. "Grandpa!" they yelled, with their arms spread wide, running down the sidewalk in greeting.

-30-

Images From Another Day

If you can catch it, the season's spirit has the capacity to warm your lonely soul. But beware, there are dark spirits lurking around the holidays, as well.

This particular holiday season, I've found myself choosing happiness at every juncture. It's not that I think of happiness as a choice; our emotional states are much too vulnerable to environmental factors, naturally, for our own wishes to prove paramount.

But when and wherever I can, I'm choosing to see the joyous over the darkness.

I'm not sure why it is like this this year for me. Something must be going on. Maybe time is catching up with me, as it has a way of doing, and on some level I've come to appreciate that the opportunity to close out another year with my family, seeing their smiles, is as great a gift as there is.

That, and the knowledge that there are a finite number of such gifts, for time itself is limited.

Concretely, our activities are much like everyone else's. My kids and I watch romantic movies on TV; my youngest and I shop and wrap presents together. We imagine the happy faces of the smaller children when they find out what the imaginary gods have brought them.

We also have to eat. So she and I, while her older brother-coach was practicing futsol in the Richmond, visited Clement Street. We found a small coffee house; she ordered a bagel and I ordered edamame.

We visited the locally legendary Green Apple Books.

We fought traffic to park our car. We walked, crossing Geary Avenue four times.

The sky was blue, the church steeples outlined above us. To many, those are the symbols of the gods.

We went into a Chinese market. Many of the best hereabouts lie along Clement. She held her nose against the smell of fish. We searched for a certain Chinese soda she favors but they didn't have it; she bought some sour candy instead.

The lady at the cash register smiled and spoke perfect English. To the woman in front of us, who was Asian, she said "Thank you," and that's also what she said to us.

My daughter smiled as we exited the store, finally exhaling and breathing fresh air again. "I can't stand that fish smell," she told me.

"Maybe when fish forms such a big portion of your diet, you don't mind the smell," I suggested. "Maybe it smells good to you."

She raised one eyebrow at me, a skill she inherited genetically from her father, from me.

Now I like fish a lot, but I also hated the way that market smelled today.

***

The basketball court where her brother's futsol team practices is in a Lutheran Church facility, which also apparently operates a "day school."

We got back there, her and I, in time to watch the last four or five fast-paced scrimmages. Her brother was on the "yellow" team, wearing number 8. Kinda funny about the two of them, coach and player, they've always only been either #8 or #16, multiples.

He did it again, today. He wowed us. After over a month and a half off, with no soccer or practice whatsoever, he was dominant out there, on the small court, guarding his team's net and setting up their offensive thrusts.

When I got there, another Dad whispered, "The red team is killing everyone else."

If true that ended when we arrived. The yellows beat the reds, then the greens, then the reds, then the greens again, in a series of fast-paced 5-minute scrimmages. The cumulative score was something like 15-5.

What was striking was the way every time save one another player smashed into her coach, he being the last line of defense before a goal, he won the battle. Several times, the attackers ended up on the floor; whether or not that happened he ended up in control of the ball and jump-started his team's offense.

There was no way to count how many assists he had but he did score one goal during this flurry of action.

Afterwards, he said he felt good and glad that he's been continuing his weight-lifting and workouts multiple times daily. Since lately he has been expressing reservations about how important soccer may be to his choice of colleges, I've also been scaling back my own expectations.

But today, watching him perform, I had to ask myself why he shouldn't continue to shoot to be a star?

-30-


-30-

Congratulations to Our Defender!

For the second straight year, Aidan Weir has been named to the all-city team here in San Francisco, this time as an honorable mention.

He had a great season, not only on defense, but also scoring two goals and racking up multiple assists.

The way these honors are awarded in San Francisco has a lot to do with which four of the thirteen teams make the playoffs, and in the end, Aidan's team, Balboa, finished with the fifth-best record, and so did not get a playoff slot.

But his play individually was probably twice as good as last year, when his team made the championship game.

Such is the nature of things, I suppose. I've known this news for weeks, but frankly have been so underwhelmed by the way the system works I could not bear to post about it.

But tonight, I finally want to celebrate my son's fantastic season, and his award, even if it may be far less than he truly deserves. And much more, his love of the game. He doesn't play for certificates or medals; he plays because he loves the game of soccer. Not only does he love to play it, he loves to coach it.

So while, in the end, recognition for talented athletes like him is nice, you'd have to there in person to see how he plays the game to understand what really matters to him.

I, of course, was there, and I know what I saw. He's a gamer.

Congratulations, Aidan!

-30-

First Time Since 2008

We have a Christmas tree and other decorations at our house tonight. This hasn't happened here for three years, but today the kids and I started preparing for the holidays in a traditional sort of way.

Tonight, I am watching that holiday movie,"Love Actually."
I know longer remember who first suggested this to me as a film for this season; no doubt I discovered it by accident somewhere along the way.

Anyway, it works.

Happy holidays.

-30-

Conversing with Ghosts

When there's nobody there, sometimes there is. That's when the words start, when you learn what you want to say. Someone told me once to write a letter to a departed lover, telling her everything I wanted most to say, but never send it.

Blogging isn't really a form suitable for that, because you never know when your departed lover may show up virtually and read. So that's not a real option here.

Yet, in a way, posting to a personal blog can be a way to accomplish what the person who gave me that advice meant. She meant to get the feelings out, to not hold them in.

Even when your lover has vanished, presumably never to return, you may still have a lot to tell her -- that you need to tell her. These conversations can never happen for real, so they enter the realm of the imaginary.

You might call them the source of fiction.

You can use a similar technique to talk to many beyond ex-lovers, for instance with those who have died, or to friends who have inexplicably fallen away somewhere along the line.

Or, at the extreme, to talk to imaginary friends. Now, you either are completely crazy or you have truly entered the realm of fiction at its best.

I've been hungry for good fiction lately, but reading non-fiction -- great, long, detailed works of history or analysis, science, biography.

But it's fiction I yearn for, both to read and to write. Truth is (a funny phrase in this context), I've been working on my novel, but in fits and starts. Meanwhile, non-fiction is what dominates my days, as I continue to churn out voluminous works on various subjects just as I did back in the days when journalism was a paid profession, instead of an elaborate euphemism for being unemployed.

Itinerant writers, nomads of the word -- that is what journalists have become. They find piecework, they may trade their services for something they need in return, like a phone or a hat.

They might write for food.

Society is changing so rapidly that what we used to call journalism may no longer be fully capable of telling the story of that change. Especially since the story-tellers themselves have largely been disenfranchised, disintermediated.

Still, of course, there is fiction. The imaginary world where your words might still matter, even if those you most wish would hear them no longer, or more probably never even really did, exist.

After all, should someone turn out to not be the person you thought she was, the only logical conclusion is that you imagined her in the first place. You can be riding on a bus, traveling along the main street in your town, and glimpse someone who looks a lot like her walking along on the sidewalk.

Is it her? Could it be?

Does it matter? Of course not.

You turn away, to look at the other side of the street. No matter who that other woman was, she is not someone you know now...or ever knew at all. Just another candidate for a character in your novel, that's all.

Just a figment of your over-active imagination.

-30-

Americans

When you get right down to it, we, the people who inhabit this continent now, and who benefit from its riches, are nothing more than accidents of history. Our predecessors came here out of a variety of needs, escaping religious discrimination, drought, or other horrors, and when they arrived here, they found a safe haven.

In the meantime we all have benefited.

Today, as the richest people on earth, we face a truly moral dilemma. Is the accident of history that placed us here a God-given right?

I think not.

I think that who we truly are, and what we ought to do next, is better represented by looking at the world at large.

The world at large is still a very poor place. Over half of the people on this planet do not have cell phones, laptops, or even enough food to eat.

Yet we are all of the same substance. Rich or poor, we are all made of the same stuff. Who is rich or poor today is not a matter or merit but of history that none of us living had anything to do with, one way or the other.

Probably the better sides of all of us would like to even this out. How can we do that?

That is the main question facing us, morally, not all of these silly political divisions in America. It is not about Obama. It is not about Gingrich. To pretend the choice is socialism or corporate welfare is specious.

Much more is at stake. It's a much larger debate. I just wish that we could get that started.

FDR's Speech When Japan Hit Pearl Harbor

I think to properly understand the complex relationship with the Americans and the Japanese in modern times, we have to revisit the President of the United State's speech after what happened 70 years ago tomorrow:

To the Congress of the United States:

Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.

The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with the government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific.

Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his colleagues delivered to the Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. While this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or armed attack.

It will be recorded that the distance of Hawaii from Japan makes it obvious that the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time, the Japanese government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace.

The attack yesterday on the Hawaiian islands has caused severe damage to American naval and military forces. Very many American lives have been lost. In addition, American ships have been reported torpedoed on the high seas between San Francisco and Honolulu.

Yesterday, the Japanese government also launched an attack against Malaya.

Last night, Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong.

Last night, Japanese forces attacked Guam.

Last night, Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands.

Last night, the Japanese attacked Wake Island.

This morning, the Japanese attacked Midway Island.

Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions and well understand the implications to the very life and safety of our nation.

As commander in chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense.

Always will we remember the character of the onslaught against us.

No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.

I believe I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost, but will make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again.

Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger.

With confidence in our armed forces - with the unbounding determination of our people - we will gain the inevitable triumph - so help us God.

I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, Dec. 7, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire.

Christmas Lights

Rounding a corner, and driving down a narrow street in the Mission, I see a black plastic bag tumbling slowly. It assume the shape of a prehistoric bird about to lift off, as I pass.

Picking up kids for choir practice; an early-morning ritual. By noon, a return trip to pick up my youngest son, who stayed home sick with the flu.

Hours later, back again, for pickups of the other two, and dog-walking duties.

Then, tonight, after dinner and a few hours of TV, back again so they can sleep at their Mom's before another school day tomorrow.

Yesterday, on the bus going downtown, a black woman in the back is talking loudly to no one in particular. There's a certain narrative to her babble, one picked up on by a black man in the front, wearing raggedy clothes and a perpetual smile.

He understands her code. "Waitin' in line at the drug store. That be taking your ID, yep."

An Asian man got on and swiped his card but the sensor beeped three times, meaning it was invalid. "You gotta do that again, sir," said the bus driver. "It has to beep once."

He gets up, swipes the card again with the same result and sits down.

"Again," said the driver. The man appears to barely understand English, but he gets up again, tried again, with the same invalid result.

Then he sits down again, apparently not comprehending, or perhaps not caring to comprehend what the driver is telling him.

The driver shrugs and gives up.

My youngest son, now the principal dog-walker, is sad that one of the dogs has aged and no longer has the energy she had even just a few months back. She has trouble climbing the stairs to her house, taking one step at a time, ever more slowly.

He mourns her loss of energy, the sense of her life slipping away.

His sadness is a daily event, as the younger dog still has plenty of energy and wants to run freely while the older dog seeks only more and more chances to rest.

"They're pulling me in two different directions," he complains to me.

Life and death. The daily struggle facing us all. We're all somewhere along that spectrum, on the upswing or the down. It may be sad, in many ways, but it is also life's natural cycle.

Caring about animals can help a young person deal with far harder experiences yet to come...as well as for as-yet unrealized joys

My granddaughter started crawling yesterday.

Driving back tonight, in the darkness, a yellow cat passed just before my car; he was never in danger, I was driving slowly.

The temperature is falling; it's winter.

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Going Viral

As this weekend ends, this music video is approaching 20,000,000 views...Now You're Just Somebody That I Used To Know.

How do friends and lovers become strangers? The disconnecting process is one of the oddest facets of human culture.

People walk away from one another as if they believe they have a better future, once freed of the connection.

Thing is, it doesn't work that way.

Some of us may have a better future; all of us share the past.

And unless you have resolved your past, you will have no better future. This song reminds me of this eternal truth. It apparently appeals to many other people as well.

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Newbies

When the year started, these youngest two hadn't even arrived yet. How do you measure a year? Perhaps no better way than the start of new lives. So, 2011 will always be the start point for Sophia and Oliver.

Human babies have enormous curiosity about each other, and a lot of innate gentleness and kindness. Of course, they have other traits as well, some less benign.

But good parents strive to bring out the good parts, and these two little ones have very good parents.

During this century as it unfolds, I can feel confident the world will be a better place with them in it.

At the other end of the age spectrum, rather than waking up to a new world, one can feel the shadows approaching that presage shutting down, hopefully gradually, but stages of life, once they settle in, are unmistakeable.

The past year a lot has changed, some for the worse, some for the better.

But these two little arrivals are among the very best 2011 has had to offer.

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Winter's Time

Tomorrow is the last day of the eleventh month of the year, and the time is approaching to take stock of it -- the year -- for what it was and wasn't. Being mathematical by nature, I often break down years by numbers. I add up things like money made and money spent, articles published, trips taken, the wins and losses by my favorite sports teams, and so on.

Just trying to make sense of it all.

Of course, these are at best crude measures of a year, mere signposts that barely scrape the surface of what living in real time feels like. In truth, the emotional journey of any particular year would require far more skill to document. How do you measure gradual revelations such as that "being in a relationship" is far more trouble, ultimately, than it is worth; or, alternatively, something that feels a lot like love is likely just around the next corner?

Depression is the term we use to cover a broad range of states (note that I do not call them diseases) that many of us experience during the course of a year, or a month or a week, a day, even an hour or a specific collection of minutes. Although I recognize that at its extreme manifestations, depression amounts to a debilitating state, other, milder versions of this part of being alive can provide some of a writer's more productive moments.

Because, it is when we reach this state that our ability to capture commonalities across the barriers of age, race, gender and all of the other human categories used to divide us one from the other begin to melt away. This is when we access empathy and find ways to tell stories that, though they may start deep within us, stretch far outside of our own limited consciousness to touch someone else.

Every writer dreams of connecting. No word has ever been written by anyone in the hope that no other human eye would absorb it. The collection of words we choose are meant to soften, sear or unlock, but never to hide from another.

Always, we hope you are there, in one sense or the other, perhaps lurking secretly, perhaps bravely coming forward to react.

Then again, writing does not always relieve depression's symptoms; sometimes it deepens them. Why? Because by writing what you feel, honestly, you may sink to the deep end of your own experience of those feelings. That's the risk.

The cycle continues. The effort goes on. Blogging, in this instance, may be a dying art form, so soon after it emerged.

There is no money in it. There is no way to sustain yourself. If you are a very talented writer, why choose this uncompensated channel when you might better capitalize by writing a book?

Then again, if what you really seek is that ineffable sense of remaining connected, when all seems adrift, maybe there is no better way than to release your words like a child's birthday balloons, and watch them drift this way and that, on the winds, wondering whether they ever might alight in another's life at one of those moments when we all might feel a tad bit happier, and lighter, that a pretty little thing found its way to our doorstep.

The sky outside is dark. The storm clouds gather. Bad news is always just a cloudburst away. Yet, as those of us who grew up in winter climates know, at times like these, there is no warmer state than being invited into a friendly, safe, intimate place by somebody else, let's call her a friend.

Welcome to my blog. And I hope you like this balloon.

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Someone Like You (Don't You Remember?)

Sometimes, as I observe all of my children as they are, with all of their brilliance and beauty, I suspect that it my be that my youngest son is the one who has inherited a certain tragic-romantic nature, and therefore I fear for his heart.

Here are some clips by his favorite artist, Adele:







I only wish for the best for you...

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Thanksgiving, Part Three

Thanksgiving, Part Two

Thanksgiving Part One 2011