Left by the Wind

(I first published a version of this piece on my blog 16 years ago.)

One of my favorite sites is Found Magazine, which publishes random items discovered by its readers — “love letters, birthday cards, kids’ homework, to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, receipts, doodles - anything that gives a glimpse into someone else’s life.”

Sometimes things like that land right in front of my house in the Mission District of San Francisco.

That’s because my side of the street -- the west side -- is the recipient of many lost items, courtesy of a wind tunnel that swirls through here much as those that used to cause those pop-ups of legendary movement back at old Candlestick Park. 

This note I am posting tonight came drifting into my front yard the other day. 
It has has two sides, and reads: 

Michelle & Justin:

I am trying to sell my car. I need bus money only to get hom(sic) to Detroit. Michelle this is your moms(sic) car. Do you want it? My food stamps didn't come. I don't want to cause anyone any trouble. I just want to get home!! I'll see you later.

The author shares my hometown -- Detroit -- which makes his story the more poignant to me. San Francisco is not for everyone, so I hope he gets enough bus money to make it back home. 

***

Most of us who live here, in this city perched unsteadily above the San Andreas Fault on the tip of a peninsula that measures almost precisely 7 by 7 miles square, have spent many years hearing references to a certain number -- "49." How many of us realize how mathematically perfect this number is for our town? We all know, of course about the Gold Rush that built San Francisco back in 1849, but that isn’t the origin of the nickname.

It’s the geography.

San Francisco is also a windy town. There must be a million scraps of a million stories like the one I found blowing in that wind.

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Death of the Queen

Within minutes of the confirmation of the queen’s death, major media outlets around the world started publishing obits and tributes. That is because to a large extent they were already written and just waiting for this moment. By the age of 96, the queen’s death had been anticipated for a long time.

In fact, news reports indicate that the royal family had been preparing extensively for her memorial services for the past 60 years. That is a rather ghoulish thought, but an indication of how seriously they take the pomp and circumstance of the throne.

In any event, as a story this one is unique for our time. A queen’s reign that stretched from the end of World War II to the war in Ukraine has come to a close. She was the one person in a prominent position who has always been in place for as long as most of us can remember.

When anyone who led an exceptionally long life dies, there is a certain familiar reaction among the rest of us — how much history they must have seen! We can’t help but compare our own vintage and measure ourselves accordingly.

Queen Elizabeth II was born in 1926, the same year my paternal grandfather died in Canada, which of course was part of the British Empire. When she became queen I was five. She was old enough to be my mother.

I’ve never been a fan particularly of the monarchy but as for Elizabeth herself, I’ve always felt a certain respect. Various members of the royal family have been the objects of scandal or ridicule during her reign but never her. She always seemed to remain a figure of dignity and restraint.

As a young boy I collected stamps. By far the most common image on a stamp from anywhere in the world was the face of the queen. She had become queen in 1952, when Truman was president and Churchill was prime minister. Now her son, a man nearly my age, is king, which is an odd transitional moment for someone of my generation. Then again, the president of the U.S. is even older than he is, or than I am.

During our life spans, we grow dependent on certain people being in the world, for better or worse. Our sense of stability is partially built on their continued presence.

As we grow up, human beings learn that everyone dies. We experience our first death at different ages and in different ways. But still, when somebody close to us dies it is a shock that sends us into a period of mourning. That is because although you can prepare yourself for an event like that, you can never fully anticipate the emotional reaction you will experience until it happens.

Then you feel some of the deepest emotions you will ever feel.

Public figures die all the time like everyone else. Relatively few of those deaths provoke a public sense of immense loss for just about everyone in the world. The death of Elizabeth is one of those few.

May she rest in peace.

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Slow News Day

During this heat streak in Northern California, the air has started looking tropical in the morning as the world heats up. I can’t explain that; it just changes its appearance in this type of weather.

Wednesday was the day I finally had a 500-point game of Scrabble — 501 to be precise. I’ve been gradually improving by playing robots at Pogo.com, an activity I recommend especially for older adults concerned about maintaining cognitive skills and warding off dementia. My previous high over the years was 484.

It was a słow news day. At one point, I was asked how it feels as a journalist when you are on the verge of breaking a big story. My answer is that you’re excited of course, but also wary. A lot of things can go wrong with big stories, the worst of which are errors that only come to light after publication.

We go to great lengths to avoid mistakes, but they can still sneak through. So you live in fear of that happening.

It was a very slow news day. 

Then overnight came the news that the Queen is dying.

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  (Reuters)

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Afghan Conversation 41: Our Public Health System

This is the latest in a series of conversations I am having with a friend in Afghanistan about life under Taliban rule.

Dear David:

On top of everything else in Afghanistan, our public health system here is a disaster. Standard health indices, including the infant mortality rate, the childhood mortality rate, and the maternal mortality ratio, are among the worst in the world. The government does not regulate the pharmacies or the hospitals. Many pharmacies sell drugs that have been imported illegally. They also sell drugs that are ineffective. Many of our hospitals do not meet the minimum standards for adequate health care.

Two weeks ago, my brother who lives and studies in Kabul got a rash. When he visited a doctor who said she was a dermatologist, she prescribed him some antibiotics and a balm. He used these but his rash got worse. The “doctor” didn’t actually say anything to my brother and it turned out later that she is not a dermatologist at all and is illiterate.

Through friends I located a competent dermatologist. When my brother visited him, the dermatologist diagnosed my brother’s condition as a very common allergic reaction, and said that when he used the antibiotics prescribed by the first “doctor,” it had only made the condition worse than it should be. 

In Afghanistan we have no recourse when something like this happens. There is no authority to report the fake doctor to, and no authority to address the situation.

Last year, when my friend's father got sick, he took him to a nearby hospital. The doctor told him that his father had a common cold and injected him with Ceftriaxone, which is an antibiotic used for the treatment of a number of bacterial infections. It can have many serious side effects. The next day his father fainted so he took him to another doctor. The other doctor explained that his father had had a heart attack. The doctor could not save him. His father died. 

Last year, another friend's father died after a dentist pulled three of his teeth without checking his blood pressure. 

Such stories are common here. But again, we have no recourse. We cannot sue the doctors for malpractice. They stay in business while we mourn our dead.

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  (Associated Press)

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  The only way blackouts can now be avoided is if consumers double or even triple their efforts to conserve electricity, officials said. [HuffPost]

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  (Associated Press and Reuters)

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Money

The average cost of a one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco is now about $3,300 a month. A full-time medical assistant earns about $3,500 before taxes a month. A high school teacher makes about $4,750, firefighters in the same range.

You get the picture. Currently, the best estimates are that a single renter in the city needs to be earning about $93,000 a year gross income to live “comfortably” in the city

Lower-wage workers and those just starting out in their careers have to share housing, move in with their parents, or get multiple jobs or all of the above just to get by.

Meanwhile, most Millennials and Get Z kids have college loan debts from getting their undergraduate degrees and also face continuing educational costs as they earn their postgraduate degrees. Biden’s college loan relief program will help a bit but much more in the way of public policies are needed for them to get by.

Some say, “Why can’t they just live somewhere else?” 

That presumes they need us as much as we need them. I challenge that assumption. For many of them this is and always has been home.

A city needs teachers, firefighters, artists, police, EMTs, journalists and historians. It needs young people just starting out. It needs a population that can dream of a better life in the future.

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Weekend Pivot

Spending eight hours in my favorite city Sunday transformed my mood completely. I’ve been in a pretty down cycle for what seemed like weeks, but being in San Francisco’s fresh air with people I wanted to see changed that very quickly.

You can email, text or talk on the phone with people you love but that doesn’t compare to meeting up in person, hugging and spending hours catching up on things. 

Our favorite place on Bernal was bustling, but we were able to spend plenty of time at brunch. Then, during the afternoon and evening in Glen Park, I was able to see most of my grandchildren and enjoy a Korean BBQ for dinner.

I’ll be back in the city today for more catching up. Partly it’s been Covid that’s been to blame in July and August, as one case after another has kept me from seeing my younger kids for two entire months.

It’s been like the worst of the pandemic all over again, and the fact that it’s happened in summer has made the situation all the more difficult to tolerate. But now we’ve pulled through that stretch, hopefully we can get back to a normal pace.

As Labor Day weekend continues, everyone’s conscious that summer is ending. The kids are back in school; families are back from vacations. There are still a lot of locals out at Burning Man, of course, which is another way summer ends around these parts.

Soon, the Bay Area will be filled by the tell-tale dusty cars and trucks of the returnees. Hard-core burners won’t wash it off for weeks. Then, of course, from a climatologist point-of-view, the Bay Area’s real summer begins — September and October.

The fog retreats; the sun shines; the tourists disappear; and one of the best cities on the continent gets its groove back.

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Top Stories

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  (Reuters)

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  (Associated Press)

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