-30-
Saturday, April 04, 2020
Lunch at the Fireplace
The simple pleasures remain the best ones.
Peter and Claire and Bettina came by and brought us the much-coveted missing item, toilet paper.
It's raining silently outside.
-30-
Family Over the Decades
There are relatively few things I have left from my parents -- shawls from my mother, candlesticks from my father, and a very old box from Scol;and made in the 1800s with a slot for coins. This houses my "old money"collection.
-30-
When the Singing Stops
This is as yet all quite novel -- sheltering in place, working remotely, maintaining social distance. We are starting to see some among us fall: At least two CNN anchors are out with coronavirus. I would expect the toll among politicians to be especially severe. Many are elderly, they specialize in greeting people, touching people, thus they are prime candidates to catch the disease.
t
There is a natural resilience, an urge to provide positive messages. The people in Italy, shut in, singing from their balconies. Here, a girl the next street over had a birthday. People wrote her birthday greetings in chalk on the sidewalk of her block.
But that is sadly only a phase. A deep depression is beginning to settle in as we collectively begin to perceive that this may be only a harbinger of worse things to come.
Reports are that the singing in Italy has ceased.
The current state of our medical philosophy seems to be that there is physical health and there is mental health -- two different categories.
Of course they are intimately related. My argument is by attending to the little daily physical tasks -- brewing coffee, washing dishes, sweeping floors, watering flowers -- we are simultaneously minding our mental health.
We *need* to keep doing these small things.
Take something as simple as peeling a banana. I was telling one of my grandchildren yesterday that the large, plump, yellow fruit we eat in this country is but one of many types of banana on this planet.
When you travel to the places where bananas are grown commercially -- Asia, Central America, Hawaii and many more, with India, China and Indonesia being the three largest, you see bananas of many different colors and sizes. One of my favorites is the mini banana, only a couple of inches long, very sweet with a very thin peel.
When you go to a shop in these growing regions, you see the full range of crops on display. Oddly, you may rarely see the dominant variety we know in this country. Most of those are exported while still green in refrigerated containers.
Like coffee, my inquiry into banana production grew out of my fixation on the Circle of Posion syndrome. Pesticides applied to banana trees rely on nematocides like DBCP to kill the nematodes (tiny worms) that feed on the roots of the plant.
DBCP proved to be very effective at doing its job; meanwhile the chemical was absorbed by the banana tree's roots and spread systemically, finally ending up deposited inside the peel in the fruit -- to the banana.
Yes, bananas grown in this industrial manner may contain small residues of pesticides, though they probably are of no consequence to those of us who eat bananas. The farmworkers who apply the pesticides are another matter.
Companies continued using DBCP overseas years after scientists here determined it caused sterility among the workers who manufactured it. In our travels investigating the Circle of Poison, we met with many farmworkers in countries like Costa Rica who couldn't reproduce due to exposure to DBCP.
But this story has a happy ending. Lawyers in the U.S. took up the cause of foreign banana workers and won them large legal settlements due to their sterility. The companies would have to develop less harmful alternative ways to control those pesky nematodes.
The happy ending is that the men's sterility proved to be only temporary. Their sperm counts gradually returned to normal once they were removed from exposure to DBCP.
It is not a perfect story. our society could have demanded that we perform the science necessary before putting many thousands of people through this ordeal, but we did not. The lessons remain -- test first, approve later.
Meanwhile, I think I'll go peel a banana.
-30-
t
There is a natural resilience, an urge to provide positive messages. The people in Italy, shut in, singing from their balconies. Here, a girl the next street over had a birthday. People wrote her birthday greetings in chalk on the sidewalk of her block.
But that is sadly only a phase. A deep depression is beginning to settle in as we collectively begin to perceive that this may be only a harbinger of worse things to come.
Reports are that the singing in Italy has ceased.
The current state of our medical philosophy seems to be that there is physical health and there is mental health -- two different categories.
Of course they are intimately related. My argument is by attending to the little daily physical tasks -- brewing coffee, washing dishes, sweeping floors, watering flowers -- we are simultaneously minding our mental health.
We *need* to keep doing these small things.
Take something as simple as peeling a banana. I was telling one of my grandchildren yesterday that the large, plump, yellow fruit we eat in this country is but one of many types of banana on this planet.
When you travel to the places where bananas are grown commercially -- Asia, Central America, Hawaii and many more, with India, China and Indonesia being the three largest, you see bananas of many different colors and sizes. One of my favorites is the mini banana, only a couple of inches long, very sweet with a very thin peel.
When you go to a shop in these growing regions, you see the full range of crops on display. Oddly, you may rarely see the dominant variety we know in this country. Most of those are exported while still green in refrigerated containers.
Like coffee, my inquiry into banana production grew out of my fixation on the Circle of Posion syndrome. Pesticides applied to banana trees rely on nematocides like DBCP to kill the nematodes (tiny worms) that feed on the roots of the plant.
DBCP proved to be very effective at doing its job; meanwhile the chemical was absorbed by the banana tree's roots and spread systemically, finally ending up deposited inside the peel in the fruit -- to the banana.
Yes, bananas grown in this industrial manner may contain small residues of pesticides, though they probably are of no consequence to those of us who eat bananas. The farmworkers who apply the pesticides are another matter.
Companies continued using DBCP overseas years after scientists here determined it caused sterility among the workers who manufactured it. In our travels investigating the Circle of Poison, we met with many farmworkers in countries like Costa Rica who couldn't reproduce due to exposure to DBCP.
But this story has a happy ending. Lawyers in the U.S. took up the cause of foreign banana workers and won them large legal settlements due to their sterility. The companies would have to develop less harmful alternative ways to control those pesky nematodes.
The happy ending is that the men's sterility proved to be only temporary. Their sperm counts gradually returned to normal once they were removed from exposure to DBCP.
It is not a perfect story. our society could have demanded that we perform the science necessary before putting many thousands of people through this ordeal, but we did not. The lessons remain -- test first, approve later.
Meanwhile, I think I'll go peel a banana.
-30-
Friday, April 03, 2020
The Bacon Chronicles
Yesterday, my grandson Luca (11+) finished his homework early and came out to the living room, where he sat on the couch across from the chair where I sit, hooked up to my electronic gear, reading, writing, and listening to country music.
He wanted to talk -- about gambling, fishing, the pandemic, and, ultimately, bacon.
A classmate of his had impressed him by bringing real gambling chips, the silver ones, to school one day. "I guess she must have gone to Vegas."
We discovered that we have both visited a certain casino/hotel on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe, and We recalled you have to walk through the casino to get to the elevators that take you up to your room. We agreed that a kid, say an 11-year-old, would not be able to successfully stop at a blackjack table or a roulette wheel. But we also agreed no one would notice if that kid dropped a chip into one of those slot machines that beckon, row after row, from across the floor.
Next, he told me he's been watching fishing videos nd he showed me one of a guy who travels the world seeking to catch (and release) large fish. In the video the man catches big fish after big fish without interruption. I suggested to him the video may have been edited a bit. He agreed.
He noted that it really didn't matter that they've cancelled school. in this second semester. "We already know what to do, how the system works." But he vigorously protested against the notion they might cancel the fall semester. "They can't do that. I'll be starting a new grade (7th) at a new school with new teachers and students. The fall semester is when we will learn the new system and find out what to do. They can cancel next spring if they want to, but not the fall."
Now I'd skipped breakfast and so had he. "I almost never eat breakfast," he told me.
For some reason we both spontaneously started singing the praises of bacon. His Mom overheard us and said she would pull a frozen pack of bacon out of the freezer and run cold water over it so it would thaw.
We kept talking about bacon until agreed we were both getting rather hungry. It must have been around 11 a.m.
The bacon was soft by now. His Dad came upon the scene and showed us a new (to us) way to cook bacon. You just lay the thin strips of fatty pork on a cookie sheet in the oven, turn the temperature to 450 (no preheating necessary) and set the timer for 10 minutes.
Soon, we were gulping down fresh bacon, scrambled eggs, sausage bits, English muffins, and in my case, coffee.
We had literally talked ourselves into a meal.
Afterward, his Mom returned to collect the bacon grease and add it to a jar of the solid white stuff. "It's as good as butter to cook things with."
I could sense the wheels turning in my grandson's head. "Hey, we could slice it up, package it as 'bacon butter' and sell it to the neighbors!"
His father later told me, "That kid is going to be an entrepreneur. He's always playing the angles."
-30-
He wanted to talk -- about gambling, fishing, the pandemic, and, ultimately, bacon.
A classmate of his had impressed him by bringing real gambling chips, the silver ones, to school one day. "I guess she must have gone to Vegas."
We discovered that we have both visited a certain casino/hotel on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe, and We recalled you have to walk through the casino to get to the elevators that take you up to your room. We agreed that a kid, say an 11-year-old, would not be able to successfully stop at a blackjack table or a roulette wheel. But we also agreed no one would notice if that kid dropped a chip into one of those slot machines that beckon, row after row, from across the floor.
Next, he told me he's been watching fishing videos nd he showed me one of a guy who travels the world seeking to catch (and release) large fish. In the video the man catches big fish after big fish without interruption. I suggested to him the video may have been edited a bit. He agreed.
He noted that it really didn't matter that they've cancelled school. in this second semester. "We already know what to do, how the system works." But he vigorously protested against the notion they might cancel the fall semester. "They can't do that. I'll be starting a new grade (7th) at a new school with new teachers and students. The fall semester is when we will learn the new system and find out what to do. They can cancel next spring if they want to, but not the fall."
Now I'd skipped breakfast and so had he. "I almost never eat breakfast," he told me.
For some reason we both spontaneously started singing the praises of bacon. His Mom overheard us and said she would pull a frozen pack of bacon out of the freezer and run cold water over it so it would thaw.
We kept talking about bacon until agreed we were both getting rather hungry. It must have been around 11 a.m.
The bacon was soft by now. His Dad came upon the scene and showed us a new (to us) way to cook bacon. You just lay the thin strips of fatty pork on a cookie sheet in the oven, turn the temperature to 450 (no preheating necessary) and set the timer for 10 minutes.
Soon, we were gulping down fresh bacon, scrambled eggs, sausage bits, English muffins, and in my case, coffee.
We had literally talked ourselves into a meal.
Afterward, his Mom returned to collect the bacon grease and add it to a jar of the solid white stuff. "It's as good as butter to cook things with."
I could sense the wheels turning in my grandson's head. "Hey, we could slice it up, package it as 'bacon butter' and sell it to the neighbors!"
His father later told me, "That kid is going to be an entrepreneur. He's always playing the angles."
-30-
Thursday, April 02, 2020
Rituals, Memory
There is so much we cannot control in these times that the only sensible choice we have is to continue (or reinstate) the small daily rituals that bring us comfort. One of these for many of us is coffee. I've gone back to grinding whole beans, filtering the grounds, and drinking the coffee black.
As I do so, I remember passing the piles of coffee beans on the side of the road in Central America and Southeast Asia. At the time I traveled there, I was gathering follow-on research for Circle of Poison, the book I wrote with Mark Schapiro.
Part of that research indicated an ugly fact: The pesticides I was researching could work their way systemically within the coffee plant and end up as deposits in the beans -- the two flat sides of each pair nestled like a peanut inside the purplish-reddish shell.
No scientist I interviewed believed the tiny residues that ended up in your cup, after shelling, grinding, filtering and coated with boiling water, represented any health threat whatsoever to human beings.
So, almost counter-intuitively, I found myself arguing in media interviews that there was no danger from drinking coffee. In fact, it had never been my intention to investigate American consumer safety. My motivation was to highlight the dangers to Third World farmworkers who sprayed those pesticides on the coffee plantations.
As a former Peace Corps Volunteer, and a journalistic world traveler, I'd seen many examples of these dangers, including from overhead crop dusters. On several occasions I was coated by clouds of pesticides while doing my research; in fact I was hit by malathion so often I knew its smell.
But the occasional chemical shower I received was nothing of consequence when stacked against the daily experience of farmworkers and their children. I was the privileged visitor who could choose to be there and get sprayed or not.
They did not have that choice.
I struggled over the years yo try and break through globally to Western consumers (the same "circle" syndrome as here existed in western Europe and Japan) but in the end I largely failed.
Now I am resuming my coffee ritual, in the midst of this pandemic. As I contemplate my life and compose my memoir, the coffee tastes good; the memories bittersweet.
-30-
As I do so, I remember passing the piles of coffee beans on the side of the road in Central America and Southeast Asia. At the time I traveled there, I was gathering follow-on research for Circle of Poison, the book I wrote with Mark Schapiro.
Part of that research indicated an ugly fact: The pesticides I was researching could work their way systemically within the coffee plant and end up as deposits in the beans -- the two flat sides of each pair nestled like a peanut inside the purplish-reddish shell.
No scientist I interviewed believed the tiny residues that ended up in your cup, after shelling, grinding, filtering and coated with boiling water, represented any health threat whatsoever to human beings.
So, almost counter-intuitively, I found myself arguing in media interviews that there was no danger from drinking coffee. In fact, it had never been my intention to investigate American consumer safety. My motivation was to highlight the dangers to Third World farmworkers who sprayed those pesticides on the coffee plantations.
As a former Peace Corps Volunteer, and a journalistic world traveler, I'd seen many examples of these dangers, including from overhead crop dusters. On several occasions I was coated by clouds of pesticides while doing my research; in fact I was hit by malathion so often I knew its smell.
But the occasional chemical shower I received was nothing of consequence when stacked against the daily experience of farmworkers and their children. I was the privileged visitor who could choose to be there and get sprayed or not.
They did not have that choice.
I struggled over the years yo try and break through globally to Western consumers (the same "circle" syndrome as here existed in western Europe and Japan) but in the end I largely failed.
Now I am resuming my coffee ritual, in the midst of this pandemic. As I contemplate my life and compose my memoir, the coffee tastes good; the memories bittersweet.
-30-
Wednesday, April 01, 2020
Family Updates
Aidan and Kelsey moved into their apartment today, on Bush Street in San Francisco. I spoke with them by phone and they sound excited. It is partially furnished; they have no dishes or sheets and covers yet.
Aidan says on almost all of his EMT shifts thy go right by Cadence, my assisted living facility in Millbrae, on their way to Mills Hospital, which is my hospital system. He said he helped transport a coronavirus patient recently.
Here, the three of us adults match up with the three children as we help them with their schoolwork. It is not homeschooling exactly, because their teachers are assignment regular schoolwork, but it has the feel of homeschooling.
Phone conferences are daily events: Luca spoke with his San Jose cousins tonight.
I'm feeling stronger and am heartened by the large response from old friends to my Facebook posts, all of which appear here first.
-30-
Aidan says on almost all of his EMT shifts thy go right by Cadence, my assisted living facility in Millbrae, on their way to Mills Hospital, which is my hospital system. He said he helped transport a coronavirus patient recently.
Here, the three of us adults match up with the three children as we help them with their schoolwork. It is not homeschooling exactly, because their teachers are assignment regular schoolwork, but it has the feel of homeschooling.
Phone conferences are daily events: Luca spoke with his San Jose cousins tonight.
I'm feeling stronger and am heartened by the large response from old friends to my Facebook posts, all of which appear here first.
-30-
Time to Think of Non-Profits
They are going to have a rough year. Their main supporters are wealthy people who are heavily invested in the stock markets.
But the markets are tanking. Wealth, on paper, is evaporating.
Even property values are falling. Rents in San Francisco fell abut 4-5 percent last month alone.
I'm thinking of the many non-profits I've been involved with over the years. I plan to make some recommendations soon.
-30-
But the markets are tanking. Wealth, on paper, is evaporating.
Even property values are falling. Rents in San Francisco fell abut 4-5 percent last month alone.
I'm thinking of the many non-profits I've been involved with over the years. I plan to make some recommendations soon.
-30-
The Silence of the Passing
Now the federal government estimates that from 100,000 to 240,000 may die during the current wave of this epidemic. I say "current wave" because it is clear it will be back long before a vaccine can be developed.
Assuming -- and this is a big assumption -- we get a break from the onslaught this summer, the virus will return this fall and winter and who knows after that,
Meanwhile, we will be coping with losing so many people in short bursts of time. The sad, lonely truth is they will die alone, not surrounded by friends and family. They will be extremely fortunate if one caretaker, wrapped in protective gear, can be there to hold their hand.
In the assisted care facility where I was staying we talked about death. We talked about the virus. One resident, 82, threw up her hands and said, "We're going to die of something anyway."
I was with both of my parents as they passed away. I got to talk to them, kiss them, and tell them it was okay to go. I also was with a few friends as they neared death.
I'm familiar with dying.
But this is unprecedented -- so many dying alone. A profound silence is going to settle over this land. What the survivors can do is find a place to sit in the open air, look at a tree and locate, when it is still, the sound of one leaf turning.
-30-
Assuming -- and this is a big assumption -- we get a break from the onslaught this summer, the virus will return this fall and winter and who knows after that,
Meanwhile, we will be coping with losing so many people in short bursts of time. The sad, lonely truth is they will die alone, not surrounded by friends and family. They will be extremely fortunate if one caretaker, wrapped in protective gear, can be there to hold their hand.
In the assisted care facility where I was staying we talked about death. We talked about the virus. One resident, 82, threw up her hands and said, "We're going to die of something anyway."
I was with both of my parents as they passed away. I got to talk to them, kiss them, and tell them it was okay to go. I also was with a few friends as they neared death.
I'm familiar with dying.
But this is unprecedented -- so many dying alone. A profound silence is going to settle over this land. What the survivors can do is find a place to sit in the open air, look at a tree and locate, when it is still, the sound of one leaf turning.
-30-
Tuesday, March 31, 2020
Pandemic Beards
I imagine most men, myself included, are growing beards and long hair. The barber shops are closed. My hair is all white now.
I sat in the sun and watched small birds take off and land on a bush. The branch they settled on would be the only one moving until a slight breeze came up and shook the whole.
The weather is superb. The sun after days of light rain means everything has turned bright green.
***
If the pandemic kills off the elders, families everywhere will be poorer. Our memories stretch back decades to a different era. My generation grew up in the wake of World War Two and the Depression. We experienced the exhilaration of a nation growing up, while we did the same.
The cars were big, the houses were new, and there were so many of us we broke every school's capacity to handle us. As we got older we brought rock 'n roll to the front as the anthem of a generation.
We danced to that beat.
-30-
I sat in the sun and watched small birds take off and land on a bush. The branch they settled on would be the only one moving until a slight breeze came up and shook the whole.
The weather is superb. The sun after days of light rain means everything has turned bright green.
***
If the pandemic kills off the elders, families everywhere will be poorer. Our memories stretch back decades to a different era. My generation grew up in the wake of World War Two and the Depression. We experienced the exhilaration of a nation growing up, while we did the same.
The cars were big, the houses were new, and there were so many of us we broke every school's capacity to handle us. As we got older we brought rock 'n roll to the front as the anthem of a generation.
We danced to that beat.
-30-
Siege Diversions
(Apologies in advance if all of my suggestions fall into the category of the obvious. I used to say, hey I grew up in the Midwest, where we specialized in saying the obvious. That, of course, does not mean these insights are any less true.)
Here, we're ordering dried fruits and nuts to snack on during the day. After all, when you're cooped up, one thing you can do a lot of is to eat.
I suppose an option is ice cream and chocolate, but too much of that brings on other problems of course.
How about dried Turkish apricots, dried peaches, dried apples, yellow raisons, dried bananas (Filipino style whole bananas), sunflower seeds, cashews, pine nuts, pistachios, almonds, and peanuts?
As for entertainment, there are so many movies -- I toggle between adventures (Air Force One, Independence Day) and romantic comedies (Maid in Manhattan, Definitely Maybe). Getting lost in a movie is good for the soul. Always appreciate the writing involved.
Those with young children in the fortress may need to become especially creative. Here in El Cerrito, we have lots of schoolwork to help them with. I'm reminded of the methods I developed as a father -- encouraging phonetic spelling with young kids as they write their stories. If it is an open-ended writing assignment, "write what you care about, don't worry what people will think."
As one who supervised many writers over the decades, I always found of the two categories of stories -- those I assigned and those they self-assigned -- the latter turned out to be much more successful.
With math, get out physical objects to illustrate multiplication and division.
One of the best free time activities for children and adults is art. I always got a wide range of supplies for my young artists, because using mixed mediums yields wonderful results. Again, especially adults, don't care what anyone thinks.
Communication -- this is a great opportunity to return to an earlier era and send people home-made cards and letters. Especially if you are isolated, alone, reach out. Use the tools available. Facebook is free -- that's why I use it. Forget about their data collection practices -- all irrelevant now.
The simple luxuries matter. Coffee. Toast with jam, if you can get the jam.
If you cook, baking basic foods matters -- bread, cookies, brownies. Make your own granola.
Buying luxuries matters -- crepes, caviar, oysters.
Enjoying all of this, or other things, matters most of all. Try not to think about what you no longer can do; focus on what you can do.
I have a dear friend who used to stop by the Atlas Cafe every morning to pick up a coffee on his way to the office. Now he is homebound he can no longer do that but he can grind his own beans, heat his own water, filter the grounds and savor the result.
Shortages are a new reality. Buy/order just a little more than you need. Don't hoard. Supply will soon catch up to the new demand.
Try to fully experience this moment. Make of it what you will.
-30-
Here, we're ordering dried fruits and nuts to snack on during the day. After all, when you're cooped up, one thing you can do a lot of is to eat.
I suppose an option is ice cream and chocolate, but too much of that brings on other problems of course.
How about dried Turkish apricots, dried peaches, dried apples, yellow raisons, dried bananas (Filipino style whole bananas), sunflower seeds, cashews, pine nuts, pistachios, almonds, and peanuts?
As for entertainment, there are so many movies -- I toggle between adventures (Air Force One, Independence Day) and romantic comedies (Maid in Manhattan, Definitely Maybe). Getting lost in a movie is good for the soul. Always appreciate the writing involved.
Those with young children in the fortress may need to become especially creative. Here in El Cerrito, we have lots of schoolwork to help them with. I'm reminded of the methods I developed as a father -- encouraging phonetic spelling with young kids as they write their stories. If it is an open-ended writing assignment, "write what you care about, don't worry what people will think."
As one who supervised many writers over the decades, I always found of the two categories of stories -- those I assigned and those they self-assigned -- the latter turned out to be much more successful.
With math, get out physical objects to illustrate multiplication and division.
One of the best free time activities for children and adults is art. I always got a wide range of supplies for my young artists, because using mixed mediums yields wonderful results. Again, especially adults, don't care what anyone thinks.
Communication -- this is a great opportunity to return to an earlier era and send people home-made cards and letters. Especially if you are isolated, alone, reach out. Use the tools available. Facebook is free -- that's why I use it. Forget about their data collection practices -- all irrelevant now.
The simple luxuries matter. Coffee. Toast with jam, if you can get the jam.
If you cook, baking basic foods matters -- bread, cookies, brownies. Make your own granola.
Buying luxuries matters -- crepes, caviar, oysters.
Enjoying all of this, or other things, matters most of all. Try not to think about what you no longer can do; focus on what you can do.
I have a dear friend who used to stop by the Atlas Cafe every morning to pick up a coffee on his way to the office. Now he is homebound he can no longer do that but he can grind his own beans, heat his own water, filter the grounds and savor the result.
Shortages are a new reality. Buy/order just a little more than you need. Don't hoard. Supply will soon catch up to the new demand.
Try to fully experience this moment. Make of it what you will.
-30-
Monday, March 30, 2020
Dr. Fauci, National Hero
The nation's top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, is the leading voice on this pandemic. He estimates we could experience between 100,000-200,000 deaths. His statements are invariably clear, direct, unemotional.
In a political sense, he is the best thing the Trump administration has going for it during this heath crisis and the collapse of our economy.
So it is ironic that the far right wing of Trump's base is attacking Fauci for undermining the Trump presidency. They are doing this because Fauci corrects Trump when he makes inaccurate statements about the pandemic.
In fact, Fauci is a national hero and will be recognized as such by historians. Those who attack him during this national emergency shame themselves.
-30-
In a political sense, he is the best thing the Trump administration has going for it during this heath crisis and the collapse of our economy.
So it is ironic that the far right wing of Trump's base is attacking Fauci for undermining the Trump presidency. They are doing this because Fauci corrects Trump when he makes inaccurate statements about the pandemic.
In fact, Fauci is a national hero and will be recognized as such by historians. Those who attack him during this national emergency shame themselves.
-30-
Sunday, March 29, 2020
Goodbye to Hampshire Street
Today was finally the bittersweet day that my kids removed the last of my things from the two-bedroom flat in the Mission District where I've lived since the summer of 2003. The very last possession to go was my Patty Hearst painting.
***
In 2003, I moved in at a very different moment in my life. The previous fall I'd started teaching journalism at Stanford. That October my mother had died at age 87. I also was sad that my marriage was failing; that my three youngest children, as had been the case for my three oldest, would grow up without having parents in an intact marriage.
For the kids I focused on the good news. "Now you will have two homes!" They were 8, 7 and 4. Another piece of happy news -- there was a corner store and I would let them go there to buy treats. There also was a big backyard where we would hang a hammock, install a basketball court, and where they would play a game called "sour grass airport."
There was a large apple tree and a large plum tree. There were aging, sagging wood fences on every side. Over the years the boys -- Aidan and Dylan -- would shoot their BB guns back there.
You could see the sunsets from the back porch.
I had the front bedroom; they shared the back one. The boys had a bunkbed and Julia had her own bed.
On the nights they stayed with me, usually Tuesday, Friday and Sunday, I'd make them ridiculously large lunches for the next day. Then I'd drive them to school in the morning. We were never late.
We'd rent movies on Fridays nights and I'd order pizzas. We called it "Dad's Friday Night Pizza Night." Sometimes they would have sleepovers with friends in the living room.
Around that flat the neighborhood was slowly evolving. From a borderline slum where almost everyone spoke Spanish, it became a hot neighborhood for techies. The rents went through the roof.
But my landlady played by the rules. For years the rent stayed at $1650/month. Then she gradually raised it most years until it topped out at $1966.50. This month was the last one I paid the rent.
The kids grew up and moved away. Today they are 25, soon to be 24 and 21. We celebrated 17 years of birthdays there.
For the first time in my life I really learned to cook a few basic meals -- spaghetti and meat sauce, steak strips and mashed potatoes, baked chicken and vegetables, spicy Chinese soups. Every day on Tuesdays and Fridays when I brought her home from school, Julia had cucumbers and other vegetables and hummus -- I always arranged it on her "special plate."
My girlfriends joined our family -- a few. They added a special presence, not the least of which was that Julia was no longer outnumbered by males, 3-1. She cried when I told her the last one had left
I adapted to being a single Dad, even thrived in the role. I attended virtually every Little League, soccer, and basketball game and their school footraces. My voice was among the loudest cheering from the sideline.
They are all on their own now, forming relationships, finishing college, starting jobs and emerging as socially conscious adults.
Our time on Hampshire Street is over. I'm on my own now too.
-30-
***
In 2003, I moved in at a very different moment in my life. The previous fall I'd started teaching journalism at Stanford. That October my mother had died at age 87. I also was sad that my marriage was failing; that my three youngest children, as had been the case for my three oldest, would grow up without having parents in an intact marriage.
For the kids I focused on the good news. "Now you will have two homes!" They were 8, 7 and 4. Another piece of happy news -- there was a corner store and I would let them go there to buy treats. There also was a big backyard where we would hang a hammock, install a basketball court, and where they would play a game called "sour grass airport."
There was a large apple tree and a large plum tree. There were aging, sagging wood fences on every side. Over the years the boys -- Aidan and Dylan -- would shoot their BB guns back there.
You could see the sunsets from the back porch.
I had the front bedroom; they shared the back one. The boys had a bunkbed and Julia had her own bed.
On the nights they stayed with me, usually Tuesday, Friday and Sunday, I'd make them ridiculously large lunches for the next day. Then I'd drive them to school in the morning. We were never late.
We'd rent movies on Fridays nights and I'd order pizzas. We called it "Dad's Friday Night Pizza Night." Sometimes they would have sleepovers with friends in the living room.
Around that flat the neighborhood was slowly evolving. From a borderline slum where almost everyone spoke Spanish, it became a hot neighborhood for techies. The rents went through the roof.
But my landlady played by the rules. For years the rent stayed at $1650/month. Then she gradually raised it most years until it topped out at $1966.50. This month was the last one I paid the rent.
The kids grew up and moved away. Today they are 25, soon to be 24 and 21. We celebrated 17 years of birthdays there.
For the first time in my life I really learned to cook a few basic meals -- spaghetti and meat sauce, steak strips and mashed potatoes, baked chicken and vegetables, spicy Chinese soups. Every day on Tuesdays and Fridays when I brought her home from school, Julia had cucumbers and other vegetables and hummus -- I always arranged it on her "special plate."
My girlfriends joined our family -- a few. They added a special presence, not the least of which was that Julia was no longer outnumbered by males, 3-1. She cried when I told her the last one had left
I adapted to being a single Dad, even thrived in the role. I attended virtually every Little League, soccer, and basketball game and their school footraces. My voice was among the loudest cheering from the sideline.
They are all on their own now, forming relationships, finishing college, starting jobs and emerging as socially conscious adults.
Our time on Hampshire Street is over. I'm on my own now too.
-30-
Life in a Bilingual Household
Where I am sheltering in place, I live with my daughter, son-in-law and three children. My son-in-law was born in France and raised both there and also here in the Bay Area. In recent years, the whole family has obtained French citizenship so they are all dual citizens now. They also are all bilingual.
They recently returned from five months in Bordeaux, where the children attended French school and perfected their language skills. This morning, six-year-old Daisy and I were the first two up. Over a breakfast of granola, she told me about her first day of school in France last August:
"I was scared. I was shy. But the very first day I made two friends. They could only speak a tiny bit of English. So I spoke French."
***
Me, I understand very little French. But I love the sound of it. So living in a home where everyone flows effortlessly back and forth between English and French is wonderful for me. It is like living in a home of beautiful music. You don't need to know the words.
They recently returned from five months in Bordeaux, where the children attended French school and perfected their language skills. This morning, six-year-old Daisy and I were the first two up. Over a breakfast of granola, she told me about her first day of school in France last August:
"I was scared. I was shy. But the very first day I made two friends. They could only speak a tiny bit of English. So I spoke French."
***
Me, I understand very little French. But I love the sound of it. So living in a home where everyone flows effortlessly back and forth between English and French is wonderful for me. It is like living in a home of beautiful music. You don't need to know the words.
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